NO critical review of the development of the tone art is complete without notice of the intellectual and emotional impulses which governed that development, and of the characteristics of the three grand periods into which the history of music is divided. Two primary impulses have operated in the formulation of a system of musical art. These impulses are called Classicism and Romanticism. The terms are very glibly used by many music lovers, but are not definitely understood by all. The ordinary concert-goer, whose terminology is nothing if not vague and unprecise, calls all artistic music, above the level of that heard in operettas or ballrooms, "classic." The term should be strictly applied to those works which have stood the test of time and have by the general consent of enlightened music lovers been accepted as masterpieces. From the fact, however, that the great masterpieces of the classic composers were conspicuous for their development of a clear, symmetrical, and logical form, the term "classical" in music has come to be applied to all works in which pure beauty of form and matter are the most conspicuous features. "Romantic" is applied to music in which the form is made for the immediate purpose of a particular work, and is the direct outgrowth of the thought contained in that work. As Dr. Parry has worded it:—
"'Classical' is used of works which have held their place in general estimation for a considerable time, and of new works which are generally considered to be of the same type and style. Hence the name has come to be especially applied to works in the forms which were adopted by the great masters of the latter part of the last century, as the instrumental works in the sonata form and operas constructed after the received traditions; and in this sense the term was used as the opposite to 'romantic' in the controversy between the musicians who wished to retain absolutely the old forms and those, like Schumann, who wished music to be developed in forms which should be more the free inspiration of the composer and less restricted in their systematic development."
The controversy is now at an end, and it is generally conceded that a modern composer may fully choose whether he will embody his romantic thought in the classic sonata form, as Brahms did, or make new forms to suit his purpose, after the manner of Liszt and Tschaikowsky. The contest between classicism and romanticism began as soon as musical science had formulated sufficient law to enable composers to work according to some system. The very development of the classical era itself was due to the impulses of romanticism. But the process of perfecting form is a purely intellectual operation. Hence the dominance of formal development was due to a belief that form was of paramount importance in music, and to a determination to work according to that belief. The dominance of romanticism, or free emotional impulse, could only come when composers had arrived at the intellectual conviction that this impulse ought to be permitted to make its own forms according to its needs. At this point I must ask the reader to accept a somewhat long quotation from another book of my own ("What is Good Music?"), simply because I cannot present in any different form what I have already said and now desire to say again:
"Music was originally a free dictation of fancy or feeling, and it dates back to the night of time. When I say 'free,' I mean in respect to form. It was probably a kind of intonation employed in the solemn speech of ceremonials, as instanced in the First Book of Samuel, x. 5: 'After that thou shalt come to the hill of God, where is a garrison of the Philistines; and it shall come to pass, when thou art come thither to the city, thou shalt meet a company of the prophets coming down from a high place with a psaltery and a tabret and a pipe and a harp before them; and they shall prophesy.' Further historical support of the probability that song began in mere inflections of the voice is found in the old Neume notation, which preceded the notation now in use. The Neumes were marks, somewhat like the Greek accents, placed over the vowels of a text, to indicate the intervals, up or down, through which the voice should pass in intoning. What we now recognize as melody was developed by gradual growth from intonations of this kind. Rhythm must have made its appearance in music as soon as it did in the verses to which music was set. Eugene Veron, in his 'Æsthetics,' says:—
'A very important characteristic of ancient languages was rhythm. The more or less regular recurrence of intonations and of similar cadences constitutes for children and savages the most agreeable form of music. The more the rhythm is accentuated the better they are pleased; they love not only its sound, but its movement also.... The most civilized nations cannot escape this tyranny of rhythm.... Rhythm seems, indeed, to contain some general law, possessing power over almost all living things. One might say that rhythm is the dance of sound, as dancing is the rhythm of movement. The farther we go back into the past, the more marked and dominant is it found in language. It is certain that at one period of the development of humanity rhythm constituted the only music known, and it was even intertwined with language itself.'
"The earliest music, then, must have been a kind of intonation, in which the rhythm was simply that of the text, and the melody a derivative of the inflections of the voice, as dictated by the natural utterance of that text. The most artificial attempts in music have been based on the idea that we could return to that primitive form. One attempt was that of the founders of the church chant; the other was that of the inventors of opera. It is incumbent upon us to consider now only the first of these. At the beginning of modern artistic music (not the music of the people, the folk songs) we find the Gregorian chant, a musically formless droning of the church liturgy, in which the only rhythm was that of the text, and the melody was the outgrowth of mere intonation. The cultivators of artistic music were the monks, who found as material ready to hand only the folk songs of the people and the music of the Greeks. The latter appealed to these cloistered mediæval scholars as the only proper material for churchly use, and they set to work to develop a system. It was inevitable that modern scientific music should begin with the invention of the materia musicæ. These old monks had first to develop melody, and it was natural that having once started upon that labor they should carry it out to its logical issue. Melodic form is more obvious than harmonic, hence they developed it. Having once got the melodic idea firmly fixed in their minds, they conceived a composition to be a combination of melodies, and when at some period about the end of the eleventh century the device of imitating in a second voice the melody uttered by the first was invented, counterpoint, single and double, grew with great rapidity."
In their exploration of the possibilities of melodic combinations, Okeghem, Des Prés, and their successors laid down the primary laws of music and consequently established the first forms, for in music form is the first manifestation of law. The first of all musical forms was that found in the songs of the people in which the rhythmic dependence of the music upon the text was the controlling principle. But the earliest scientific composers, the monks and church writers, having only the liturgy in mind, ignored the folk songs and so robbed themselves of the aid of the simple rhythmic forms dependent upon verse. They naturally could not avail themselves of these forms because the liturgy was not written in verse.
Having, therefore, nothing to serve as a model, they were obliged to start from the foundation and build a wholly new musical system. Thus they produced, in a series of developments occupying nearly 700 years, the most closely knit and purely intellectual group of musical forms, those classed as canonic or fugal. Hence we find that the first of the three great periods of musical history, the Polyphonic, is chiefly distinguished by intellectual characteristics, because, as I have said, the evolution of form is in the main an intellectual process.
But even the canonic forms were modified by the irrepressible spirit of romanticism. Whenever in the history of music the desire to express one's self has acted upon a man of original mind it has caused a change in forms. The first period of the Netherlands school, for example, was devoted to the formulation of musical science. In the second period came Josquin des Prés, whose desire for pure beauty in music led him to modify the forms left him by Okeghem. In the third period, as we have seen, Willaert and others still further modified forms and introduced the element of tone-painting. In the fourth period we find Lasso again modifying forms and introducing the element of pure emotional expression, which, in so far as unaccompanied church music is concerned, was perfected by his great contemporary, Palestrina. In later periods we find that Haydn laid the foundations of the sonata, Mozart of the concerto and genuine opera, Beethoven changed the whole trend and scope of the symphony, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt remodelled the diction and the technics of the piano, and Wagner produced an absolutely new operatic form. These are only a few instances. This book is made up of the accounts of these and others.
Every original genius in music, then, has something to alter existing forms. Why? Because he could not say exactly what he wished in the forms as he found them. Classicism, in its old sense always resisted just such movements. Original geniuses are not numerous. One makes or changes a form. The mechanical workers (often mistaken for geniuses) take the forms left by the geniuses and use them. The impression spreads that the form is the essential thing, and he who does not strictly adhere to it is condemned. An era of formalism usually follows any great improvement made in form by an original mind. This continues till another original mind makes a new departure, which is accomplished always in the face of opposition. This opposition is not wholly wrong, for it must be proved that a man is a genius before it can be admitted that he has a right to offer a new form to the world. It may be that his genius is purely technical, as in the case of Liszt, or wholly spiritual, as in the case of Schumann, but there must be something convincing in the man and his work. A small mind which has nothing to offer cannot justify an alteration of accepted forms.