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HOW TO LISTEN TO MUSIC
HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS TO UNTAUGHT LOVERS OF THE ART
BY
HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL
_Author of "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama," "Notes on the Cultivation
of Choral Music," "The Philharmonic Society of New York," etc._
_SEVENTH EDITION_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1897
COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
* * * * *
TO
W.J. HENDERSON
WHO HAS HELPED ME TO RESPECT MUSICAL CRITICISM
* * * * *
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The author is beholden to the Messrs. Harper & Brothers for permission
to use a small portion of the material in Chapter I., the greater part
of Chapter IV., and the Plates which were printed originally in one of
their publications; also to the publishers of "The Looker-On" for the
privilege of reprinting a portion of an essay written for them
entitled "Singers, Then and Now."
CONTENTS
[Sidenote: CHAP. I.]
_Introduction_
Purpose and scope of this book--Not written for professional
musicians, but for untaught lovers of the art--neither for careless
seekers after diversion unless they be willing to accept a higher
conception of what "entertainment" means--The capacity properly to
listen to music as a touchstone of musical talent--It is rarely found
in popular concert-rooms--Travellers who do not see and listeners who
do not hear--Music is of all the arts that which is practised most and
thought about least--Popular ignorance of the art caused by the lack
of an object for comparison--How simple terms are confounded by
literary men--Blunders by Tennyson, Lamb, Coleridge, Mrs. Harriet
Beecher Stowe, F. Hopkinson Smith, Brander Matthews, and others--A
warning against pedants and rhapsodists. _Page 3_
[Sidenote: CHAP. II.]
_Recognition of Musical Elements_
The dual nature of music--Sense-perception, fancy, and
imagination--Recognition of Design as Form in its primary stages--The
crude materials of music--The co-ordination of tones--Rudimentary
analysis of Form--Comparison, as in other arts, not
possible--Recognition of the fundamental elements--Melody, Harmony,
and Rhythm--The value of memory--The need of an
intermediary--Familiar music best liked--Interrelation of the
elements--Repetition the fundamental principle of Form--Motives,
Phrases, and Periods--A Creole folk-tune analyzed--Repetition at the
base of poetic forms--Refrain and Parallelism--Key-relationship as a
bond of union--Symphonic unity illustrated in examples from
Beethoven--The C minor symphony and "Appassionata" sonata--The
Concerto in G major--The Seventh and Ninth symphonies. _Page 15_
[Sidenote: CHAP. III.]
_The Content and Kinds of Music_
How far it is necessary for the listener to go into musical
philosophy--Intelligent hearing not conditioned upon it--Man's
individual relationship to the art--Musicians proceed on the theory
that feelings are the content of music--The search for pictures and
stories condemned--How composers hear and judge--Definitions of the
capacity of music by Wagner, Hauptmann, and Mendelssohn--An utterance
by Herbert Spencer--Music as a language--Absolute music and Programme
music--The content of all true art works--Chamber music--Meaning and
origin of the term--Haydn the servant of a Prince--The characteristics
of Chamber music--Pure thought, lofty imagination, and deep
learning--Its chastity--Sympathy between performers and listeners
essential to its enjoyment--A correct definition of Programme
music--Programme music defended--The value of titles and
superscriptions--Judgment upon it must, however, go to the music, not
the commentary--Subjects that are unfit for music--Kinds of Programme
music--Imitative music--How the music of birds has been utilized--The
cuckoo of nature and Beethoven's cuckoo--Cock and hen in a seventeenth
century composition--Rameau's pullet--The German quail--Music that is
descriptive by suggestion--External and internal attributes--Fancy and
Imagination--Harmony and the major and minor mode--Association of
ideas--Movement delineated--Handel's frogs--Water in the "Hebrides"
overture and "Ocean" symphony--Height and depth illustrated by acute
and grave tones--Beethoven's illustration of distance--His rule
enforced--Classical and Romantic music--Genesis of the terms--What
they mean in literature--Archbishop Trench on classical books--The
author's definitions of both terms in music--Classicism as the
conservative principle, Romanticism as the progressive, regenerative,
and creative--A contest which stimulates life. _Page 36_
[Sidenote: CHAP. IV.]
_The Modern Orchestra_
Importance of the instrumental band--Some things that can be learned
by its study--The orchestral choirs--Disposition of the players--Model
bands compared--Development of instrumental music--The extent of an
orchestra's register--The Strings: Violin, Viola, Violoncello, and
Double-bass--Effects produced by changes in manipulation--The
wood-winds: Flute, Oboe, English horn, Bassoon, Clarinet--The Brass:
French Horn, Trumpet and Cornet, Trombone, Tuba--The Drums--The
Conductor--Rise of the modern interpreter--The need of him--His
methods--Scores and Score-reading. _Page 71_
[Sidenote: CHAP. V.]
_At an Orchestral Concert_
"Classical" and "Popular" as generally conceived--Symphony Orchestras
and Military bands--The higher forms in music as exemplified at a
classical concert--Symphonies, Overtures, Symphonic Poems, Concertos,
etc.--A Symphony not a union of unrelated parts--History of the
name--The Sonata form and cyclical compositions--The bond of union
between the divisions of a Symphony--Material and spiritual links--The
first movement and the sonata form--"Exposition, illustration, and
repetition"--The subjects and their treatment--Keys and nomenclature
of the Symphony--The _Adagio_ or second movement--The _Scherzo_ and
its relation to the Minuet--The Finale and the Rondo form--The latter
illustrated in outline by a poem--Modifications of the symphonic form
by Beethoven, Schumann, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Saint-Saëns and
Dvorák--Augmentation of the forces--Symphonies with voices--The
Symphonic Poem--Its three characteristics--Concertos and Cadenzas--M.
Ysaye's opinion of the latter--Designations in Chamber music--The
Overture and its descendants--Smaller forms: Serenades, Fantasias,
Rhapsodies, Variations, Operatic Excerpts. _Page 122_
[Sidenote: CHAP. VI.]
_At a Pianoforte Recital_
The Popularity of Pianoforte music exemplified in M. Paderewski's
recitals--The instrument--A universal medium of music study--Its
defects and merits contrasted--Not a perfect melody instrument--Value
of the percussive element--Technique; the false and the true estimate
of its value--Pianoforte literature as illustrated in recitals--Its
division, for the purposes of this study, into four periods: Classic,
Classic-romantic, Romantic, and Bravura--Precursors of the
Pianoforte--The Clavichord and Harpsichord, and the music composed for
them--Peculiarities of Bach's style--His Romanticism--Scarlatti's
Sonatas--The Suite and its constituents--Allemande, Courante,
Sarabande, Gigue, Minuet, and Gavotte--The technique of the
period--How Bach and Handel played--Beethoven and the Sonata--Mozart
and Beethoven as pianists--The Romantic composers--Schumann and Chopin
and the forms used by them--Schumann and Jean Paul--Chopin's Preludes,
Études, Nocturnes, Ballades, Polonaises, Mazurkas, Krakowiak--The
technique of the Romantic period--"Idiomatic" pianoforte
music--Development of the instrument--The Pedal and its use--Liszt and
his Hungarian Rhapsodies. _Page 154_
[Sidenote: CHAP. VII.]
_At the Opera_
Instability of popular taste in respect of operas--Our lists seldom
extend back of the present century--The people of to-day as
indifferent as those of two centuries ago to the language used--Use
and abuse of foreign languages--The Opera defended as an art-form--Its
origin in the Greek tragedies--Why music is the language of emotion--A
scientific explanation--Herbert Spencer's laws--Efforts of Florentine
scholars to revive the classic tragedy result in the invention of the
lyric drama--The various kinds of Opera: _Opera seria_, _Opera buffa_,
_Opera semiseria_, French _grand Opéra_, and _Opéra
comique_--Operettas and musical farces--Romantic Opera--A popular
conception of German opera--A return to the old terminology led by
Wagner--The recitative: Its nature, aims, and capacities--The change
from speech to song--The arioso style, the accompanied recitative and
the aria--Music and dramatic action--Emancipation from set forms--The
orchestra--The decay of singing--Feats of the masters of the Roman
school and La Bastardella--Degeneracy of the Opera of their
day--Singers who have been heard in New York--Two generations of
singers compared--Grisi, Jenny Lind, Sontag, La Grange, Piccolomini,
Adelina Patti, Nilsson, Sembrich, Lucca, Gerster, Lehmann, Melba,
Eames, Calvé, Mario, Jean and Edouard de Reszke--Wagner and his
works--Operas and lyric dramas--Wagner's return to the principles of
the Florentine reformers--Interdependence of elements in a lyric
drama--Forms and the endless melody--The Typical Phrases: How they
should be studied. _Page 202_
[Sidenote: CHAP. VIII.]
_Choirs and Choral Music_
Value of chorus singing in musical culture--Schumann's advice to
students--Choristers and instrumentalists--Amateurs and
professionals--Oratorio and _Männergesang_--The choirs of Handel and
Bach--Glee Unions, Male Clubs, and Women's Choirs--Boys' voices not
adapted to modern music--Mixed choirs--American Origin of amateur
singing societies--Priority over Germany--The size of choirs--Large
numbers not essential--How choirs are divided--Antiphonal
effects--Excellence in choir singing--Precision, intonation,
expression, balance of tone, enunciation, pronunciation,
declamation--The cause of monotony in Oratorio performances--_A
capella_ music--Genesis of modern hymnology--Influence of Luther and
the Germans--Use of popular melodies by composers--The
chorale--Preservation of the severe style of writing in choral
music--Palestrina and Bach--A study of their styles--Latin and
Teuton--Church and individual--Motets and Church Cantatas--The
Passions--The Oratorio--Sacred opera and Cantata--Epic and
Drama--Characteristic and descriptive music--The Mass: Its
secularization and musical development--The dramatic tendency
illustrated in Beethoven and Berlioz. _Page 253_
[Sidenote: CHAP. IX.]
_Musician, Critic and Public_
Criticism justified--Relationship between Musician, Critic and
Public--To end the conflict between them would result in
stagnation--How the Critic might escape--The Musician prefers to
appeal to the public rather than to the Critic--Why this is
so--Ignorance as a safeguard against and promoter of
conservatism--Wagner and Haydn--The Critic as the enemy of the
charlatan--Temptations to which he is exposed--Value of popular
approbation--Schumann's aphorisms--The Public neither bad judges nor
good critics--The Critic's duty is to guide popular
judgment--Fickleness of the people's opinions--Taste and judgment not
a birthright--The necessity of antecedent study--The Critic's
responsibility--Not always that toward the Musician which the latter
thinks--How the newspaper can work for good--Must the Critic be a
Musician?--Pedants and Rhapsodists--Demonstrable facts in
criticism--The folly and viciousness of foolish rhapsody--The Rev. Mr.
Haweis cited--Ernst's violin--Intelligent rhapsody approved--Dr. John
Brown on Beethoven--The Critic's duty. _Page 297_
* * * * *
PLATES
I. VIOLIN--(CLIFFORD SCHMIDT).--II. VIOLONCELLO--(VICTOR
HERBERT).--III. PICCOLO FLUTE--(C. KURTH, JUN.).--IV. OBOE--(JOSEPH
ELLER).--V. ENGLISH HORN--(JOSEPH ELLER).--VI. BASSOON (FEDOR
BERNHARDI).--VII. CLARINET--(HENRY KAISER).--VIII. BASS
CLARINET--(HENRY KAISER).--IX. FRENCH HORN--(CARL PIEPER).--X.
TROMBONE--(J. PFEIFFENSCHNEIDER).--XI. BASS TUBA--(ANTON
REITER).--XII. THE CONDUCTOR'S SCORE. _Page 325_
INDEX _Page 351_
How to Listen to Music
I
_Introduction_
[Sidenote: _The book's appeal._]
This book has a purpose, which is as simple as it is plain; and an
unpretentious scope. It does not aim to edify either the musical
professor or the musical scholar. It comes into the presence of the
musical student with all becoming modesty. Its business is with those
who love music and present themselves for its gracious ministrations
in Concert-Room and Opera House, but have not studied it as professors
and scholars are supposed to study. It is not for the careless unless
they be willing to inquire whether it might not be well to yield the
common conception of entertainment in favor of the higher enjoyment
which springs from serious contemplation of beautiful things; but if
they are willing so to inquire, they shall be accounted the class
that the author is most anxious to reach. The reasons which prompted
its writing and the laying out of its plan will presently appear. For
the frankness of his disclosure the author might be willing to
apologize were his reverence for music less and his consideration for
popular affectations more; but because he is convinced that a love for
music carries with it that which, so it be but awakened, shall
speedily grow into an honest desire to know more about the beloved
object, he is willing to seem unamiable to the amateur while arguing
the need of even so mild a stimulant as his book, and ingenuous,
mayhap even childish, to the professional musician while trying to
point a way in which better appreciation may be sought.
[Sidenote: _Talent in listening._]
The capacity properly to listen to music is better proof of musical
talent in the listener than skill to play upon an instrument or
ability to sing acceptably when unaccompanied by that capacity. It
makes more for that gentleness and refinement of emotion, thought, and
action which, in the highest sense of the term, it is the province of
music to promote. And it is a much rarer accomplishment. I cannot
conceive anything more pitiful than the spectacle of men and women
perched on a fair observation point exclaiming rapturously at the
loveliness of mead and valley, their eyes melting involuntarily in
tenderness at the sight of moss-carpeted slopes and rocks and peaceful
wood, or dilating in reverent wonder at mountain magnificence, and
then learning from their exclamations that, as a matter of fact, they
are unable to distinguish between rock and tree, field and forest,
earth and sky; between the dark-browns of the storm-scarred rock, the
greens of the foliage, and the blues of the sky.
[Sidenote: _Ill equipped listeners._]
Yet in the realm of another sense, in the contemplation of beauties
more ethereal and evanescent than those of nature, such is the
experience which in my capacity as a writer for newspapers I have made
for many years. A party of people blind to form and color cannot be
said to be well equipped for a Swiss journey, though loaded down with
alpenstocks and Baedekers; yet the spectacle of such a party on the
top of the Rigi is no more pitiful and anomalous than that presented
by the majority of the hearers in our concert-rooms. They are there to
adventure a journey into a realm whose beauties do not disclose
themselves to the senses alone, but whose perception requires a
co-operation of all the finer faculties; yet of this they seem to know
nothing, and even of that sense to which the first appeal is made it
may be said with profound truth that "hearing they hear not, neither
do they understand."
[Sidenote: _Popular ignorance of music._]
Of all the arts, music is practised most and thought about least. Why
this should be the case may be explained on several grounds. A sweet
mystery enshrouds the nature of music. Its material part is subtle and
elusive. To master it on its technical side alone costs a vast
expenditure of time, patience, and industry. But since it is, in one
manifestation or another, the most popular of the arts, and one the
enjoyment of which is conditioned in a peculiar degree on love, it
remains passing strange that the indifference touching its nature and
elements, and the character of the phenomena which produce it, or are
produced by it, is so general. I do not recall that anybody has ever
tried to ground this popular ignorance touching an art of which, by
right of birth, everybody is a critic. The unamiable nature of the
task, of which I am keenly conscious, has probably been a bar to such
an undertaking. But a frank diagnosis must precede the discovery of a
cure for every disease, and I have undertaken to point out a way in
which this grievous ailment in the social body may at least be
lessened.
[Sidenote: _Paucity of intelligent comment._]
[Sidenote: _Want of a model._]
It is not an exaggeration to say that one might listen for a lifetime
to the polite conversation of our drawing-rooms (and I do not mean by
this to refer to the United States alone) without hearing a symphony
talked about in terms indicative of more than the most superficial
knowledge of the outward form, that is, the dimensions and apparatus,
of such a composition. No other art provides an exact analogy for this
phenomenon. Everybody can say something containing a degree of
appositeness about a poem, novel, painting, statue, or building. If he
can do no more he can go as far as Landseer's rural critic who
objected to one of the artist's paintings on the ground that not one
of the three pigs eating from a trough had a foot in it. It is the
absence of the standard of judgment employed in this criticism which
makes significant talk about music so difficult. Nature failed to
provide a model for this ethereal art. There is nothing in the natural
world with which the simple man may compare it.
[Sidenote: _Simple terms confounded._]
It is not alone a knowledge of the constituent factors of a symphony,
or the difference between a sonata and a suite, a march and a mazurka,
that is rare. Unless you chance to be listening to the conversation of
musicians (in which term I wish to include amateurs who are what the
word amateur implies, and whose knowledge stands in some respectable
relation to their love), you will find, so frequently that I have not
the heart to attempt an estimate of the proportion, that the most
common words in the terminology of the art are misapplied. Such
familiar things as harmony and melody, time and tune, are continually
confounded. Let us call a distinguished witness into the box; the
instance is not new, but it will serve. What does Tennyson mean when
he says:
"All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd
To the dancers dancing in tune?"
[Sidenote: _Tune and time._]
Unless the dancers who wearied Maud were provided with even a more
extraordinary instrumental outfit than the Old Lady of Banbury Cross,
how could they have danced "in tune?"
[Sidenote: _Blunders of poets and essayists._]
Musical study of a sort being almost as general as study of the "three
Rs," it must be said that the gross forms of ignorance are utterly
inexcusable. But if this is obvious, it is even more obvious that
there is something radically wrong with the prevalent systems of
musical instruction. It is because of a plentiful lack of knowledge
that so much that is written on music is without meaning, and that
the most foolish kind of rhapsody, so it show a collocation of fine
words, is permitted to masquerade as musical criticism and even
analysis. People like to read about music, and the books of a certain
English clergyman have had a sale of stupendous magnitude
notwithstanding they are full of absurdities. The clergyman has a
multitudinous companionship, moreover, among novelists, essayists, and
poets whose safety lies in more or less fantastic generalization when
they come to talk about music. How they flounder when they come to
detail! It was Charles Lamb who said, in his "Chapter on Ears," that
in voices he could not distinguish a soprano from a tenor, and could
only contrive to guess at the thorough-bass from its being
"supereminently harsh and disagreeable;" yet dear old Elia may be
forgiven, since his confounding the bass voice with a system of
musical short-hand is so delightful a proof of the ignorance he was
confessing.
[Sidenote: _Literary realism and musical terminology._]
But what shall the troubled critics say to Tennyson's orchestra
consisting of a flute, violin, and bassoon? Or to Coleridge's "_loud_
bassoon," which made the wedding-guest to beat his breast? Or to Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe's pianist who played "with an airy and bird-like
touch?" Or to our own clever painter-novelist who, in "Snubbin'
through Jersey," has Brushes bring out his violoncello and play "the
symphonies of Beethoven" to entertain his fellow canal-boat
passengers? The tendency toward realism, or "veritism," as it is
called, has brought out a rich crop of blunders. It will not do to
have a character in a story simply sing or play something; we must
have the names of composers and compositions. The genial gentleman who
enriched musical literature with arrangements of Beethoven's
symphonies for violoncello without accompaniment has since
supplemented this feat by creating a German fiddler who, when he
thinks himself unnoticed, plays a sonata for violin and contralto
voice; Professor Brander Matthews permits one of his heroines to sing
Schumann's "Warum?" and one of his heroes plays "The Moonlight
Concerto;" one of Ouida's romantic creatures spends hours at an organ
"playing the grand old masses of Mendelssohn;" in "Moths" the tenor
never wearies of singing certain "exquisite airs of Palestrina," which
recalls the fact that an indignant correspondent of a St. Louis
newspaper, protesting against the Teutonism and heaviness of an
orchestra conductor's programmes, demanded some of the "lighter" works
of "Berlioz and Palestrina."
[Sidenote: _A popular need._]
Alas! these things and the many others equally amusing which Mr. G.
Sutherland Edwards long ago catalogued in an essay on "The Literary
Maltreatment of Music" are but evidences that even cultured folk have
not yet learned to talk correctly about the art which is practised
most widely. There is a greater need than pianoforte teachers and
singing teachers, and that is a numerous company of writers and
talkers who shall teach the people how to listen to music so that it
shall not pass through their heads like a vast tonal phantasmagoria,
but provide the varied and noble delights contemplated by the
composers.
[Sidenote: _A warning against writers._]
[Sidenote: _Pedants and rhapsodists._]
Ungracious as it might appear, it may yet not be amiss, therefore, at
the very outset of an inquiry into the proper way in which to listen
to music, to utter a warning against much that is written on the art.
As a rule it will be found that writers on music are divided into two
classes, and that neither of these classes can do much good. Too often
they are either pedants or rhapsodists. This division is wholly
natural. Music has many sides and is a science as well as an art. Its
scientific side is that on which the pedant generally approaches it.
He is concerned with forms and rules, with externals, to the
forgetting of that which is inexpressibly nobler and higher. But the
pedants are not harmful, because they are not interesting; strictly
speaking, they do not write for the public at all, but only for their
professional colleagues. The harmful men are the foolish rhapsodists
who take advantage of the fact that the language of music is
indeterminate and evanescent to talk about the art in such a way as to
present themselves as persons of exquisite sensibilities rather than
to direct attention to the real nature and beauty of music itself. To
them I shall recur in a later chapter devoted to musical criticism,
and haply point out the difference between good and bad critics and
commentators from the view-point of popular need and popular
opportunity.
II
_Recognition of Musical Elements_
[Sidenote: _The nature of music._]
Music is dual in its nature; it is material as well as spiritual. Its
material side we apprehend through the sense of hearing, and
comprehend through the intellect; its spiritual side reaches us
through the fancy (or imagination, so it be music of the highest
class), and the emotional part of us. If the scope and capacity of the
art, and the evolutionary processes which its history discloses (a
record of which is preserved in its nomenclature), are to be
understood, it is essential that this duality be kept in view. There
is something so potent and elemental in the appeal which music makes
that it is possible to derive pleasure from even an unwilling hearing
or a hearing unaccompanied by effort at analysis; but real
appreciation of its beauty, which means recognition of the qualities
which put it in the realm of art, is conditioned upon intelligent
hearing. The higher the intelligence, the keener will be the
enjoyment, if the former be directed to the spiritual side as well as
the material.
[Sidenote: _Necessity of intelligent hearing._]
So far as music is merely agreeably co-ordinated sounds, it may be
reduced to mathematics and its practice to handicraft. But recognition
of design is a condition precedent to the awakening of the fancy or
the imagination, and to achieve such recognition there must be
intelligent hearing in the first instance. For the purposes of this
study, design may be held to be Form in its primary stages, the
recognition of which is possible to every listener who is fond of
music; it is not necessary that he be learned in the science. He need
only be willing to let an intellectual process, which will bring its
own reward, accompany the physical process of hearing.
[Sidenote: _Tones and musical material._]
Without discrimination it is impossible to recognize even the crude
materials of music, for the first step is already a co-ordination of
those materials. A tone becomes musical material only by association
with another tone. We might hear it alone, study its quality, and
determine its degree of acuteness or gravity (its pitch, as musicians
say), but it can never become music so long as it remains isolated.
When we recognize that it bears certain relationships with other tones
in respect of time or tune (to use simple terms), it has become for us
musical material. We do not need to philosophize about the nature of
those relationships, but we must recognize their existence.
[Sidenote: _The beginnings of Form._]
Thus much we might hear if we were to let music go through our heads
like water through a sieve. Yet the step from that degree of
discrimination to a rudimentary analysis of Form is exceedingly short,
and requires little more than a willingness to concentrate the
attention and exercise the memory. Everyone is willing to do that much
while looking at a picture. Who would look at a painting and rest
satisfied with the impression made upon the sense of sight by the
colors merely? No one, surely. Yet so soon as we look, so as to
discriminate between the outlines, to observe the relationship of
figure to figure, we are indulging in intellectual exercise. If this
be a condition precedent to the enjoyment of a picture (and it plainly
is), how much more so is it in the case of music, which is intangible
and evanescent, which cannot pause a moment for our contemplation
without ceasing to be?
[Sidenote: _Comparison with a model not possible._]
There is another reason why we must exercise intelligence in
listening, to which I have already alluded in the first chapter. Our
appreciation of beauty in the plastic arts is helped by the
circumstance that the critical activity is largely a matter of
comparison. Is the picture or the statue a good copy of the object
sought to be represented? Such comparison fails us utterly in music,
which copies nothing that is tangibly present in the external world.
[Sidenote: _What degree of knowledge is necessary?_]
[Sidenote: _The Elements._]
[Sidenote: _Value of memory._]
It is then necessary to associate the intellect with sense perception
in listening to music. How far is it essential that the intellectual
process shall go? This book being for the untrained, the question
might be put thus: With how little knowledge of the science can an
intelligent listener get along? We are concerned only with his
enjoyment of music or, better, with an effort to increase it without
asking him to become a musician. If he is fond of the art it is more
than likely that the capacity to discriminate sufficiently to
recognize the elements out of which music is made has come to him
intuitively. Does he recognize that musical tones are related to each
other in respect of time and pitch? Then it shall not be difficult for
him to recognize the three elements on which music rests--Melody,
Harmony, and Rhythm. Can he recognize them with sufficient
distinctness to seize upon their manifestations while music is
sounding? Then memory shall come to the aid of discrimination, and he
shall be able to appreciate enough of design to point the way to a
true and lofty appreciation of the beautiful in music. The value of
memory is for obvious reasons very great in musical enjoyment. The
picture remains upon the wall, the book upon the library shelf. If we
have failed to grasp a detail at the first glance or reading, we need
but turn again to the picture or open the book anew. We may see the
picture in a changed light, or read the poem in a different mood, but
the outlines, colors, ideas are fixed for frequent and patient
perusal. Music goes out of existence with every performance, and must
be recreated at every hearing.
[Sidenote: _An intermediary necessary._]
Not only that, but in the case of all, so far as some forms are
concerned, and of all who are not practitioners in others, it is
necessary that there shall be an intermediary between the composer and
the listener. The written or printed notes are not music; they are
only signs which indicate to the performer what to do to call tones
into existence such as the composer had combined into an art-work in
his mind. The broadly trained musician can read the symbols; they stir
his imagination, and he hears the music in his imagination as the
composer heard it. But the untaught music-lover alone can get nothing
from the printed page; he must needs wait till some one else shall
again waken for him the
"Sound of a voice that is still."
[Sidenote: _The value of memory._]
This is one of the drawbacks which are bound up in the nature of
music; but it has ample compensation in the unusual pleasure which
memory brings. In the case of the best music, familiarity breeds
ever-growing admiration. New compositions are slowly received; they
make their way to popular appreciation only by repeated performances;
the people like best the songs as well as the symphonies which they
know. The quicker, therefore, that we are in recognizing the melodic,
harmonic, and rhythmic contents of a new composition, and the more apt
our memory in seizing upon them for the operation of the fancy, the
greater shall be our pleasure.
[Sidenote: _Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm._]
[Sidenote: _Comprehensiveness of Melody._]
In simple phrase Melody is a well-ordered series of tones heard
successively; Harmony, a well-ordered series heard simultaneously;
Rhythm, a symmetrical grouping of tonal time units vitalized by
accent. The life-blood of music is Melody, and a complete conception
of the term embodies within itself the essence of both its companions.
A succession of tones without harmonic regulation is not a perfect
element in music; neither is a succession of tones which have harmonic
regulation but are void of rhythm. The beauty and expressiveness,
especially the emotionality, of a musical composition depend upon the
harmonies which either accompany the melody in the form of chords (a
group of melodic intervals sounded simultaneously), or are latent in
the melody itself (harmonic intervals sounded successively). Melody is
Harmony analyzed; Harmony is Melody synthetized.
[Sidenote: _Repetition._]
[Sidenote: _A melody analyzed._]
The fundamental principle of Form is repetition of melodies, which are
to music what ideas are to poetry. Melodies themselves are made by
repetition of smaller fractions called motives (a term borrowed from
the fine arts), phrases, and periods, which derive their individuality
from their rhythmical or intervallic characteristics. Melodies are
not all of the simple kind which the musically illiterate, or the
musically ill-trained, recognize as "tunes," but they all have a
symmetrical organization. The dissection of a simple folk-tune may
serve to make this plain and also indicate to the untrained how a
single feature may be taken as a mark of identification and a
holding-point for the memory. Here is the melody of a Creole song
called sometimes _Pov' piti Lolotte_, sometimes _Pov' piti Momzelle
Zizi_, in the patois of Louisiana and Martinique:
[Music illustration]
[Sidenote: _Motives, phrases, and periods._]
It will be as apparent to the eye of one who cannot read music as it
will to his ear when he hears this melody played, that it is built up
of two groups of notes only. These groups are marked off by the heavy
lines across the staff called bars, whose purpose it is to indicate
rhythmical subdivisions in music. The second, third, fifth, sixth, and
seventh of these groups are repetitions merely of the first group,
which is the germ of the melody, but on different degrees of the
scale; the fourth and eighth groups are identical and are an appendage
hitched to the first group for the purpose of bringing it to a close,
supplying a resting-point craved by man's innate sense of symmetry.
Musicians call such groups cadences. A musical analyst would call each
group a motive, and say that each successive two groups, beginning
with the first, constitute a phrase, each two phrases a period, and
the two periods a melody. We have therefore in this innocent Creole
tune eight motives, four phrases, and two periods; yet its material is
summed up in two groups, one of seven notes, one of five, which only
need to be identified and remembered to enable a listener to recognize
something of the design of a composer if he were to put the melody to
the highest purposes that melody can be put in the art of musical
composition.
[Sidenote: _Repetition in music._]
Repetition is the constructive principle which was employed by the
folk-musician in creating this melody; and repetition is the
fundamental principle in all musical construction. It will suffice for
many merely to be reminded of this to appreciate the fact that while
the exercise of memory is a most necessary activity in listening to
music, it lies in music to make that exercise easy. There is
repetition of motives, phrases, and periods in melody; repetition of
melodies in parts; and repetition of parts in the wholes of the larger
forms.
[Sidenote: _Repetition in poetry._]
The beginnings of poetic forms are also found in repetition; in
primitive poetry it is exemplified in the refrain or burden, in the
highly developed poetry of the Hebrews in parallelism. The Psalmist
wrote:
"O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath,
Neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure."
[Sidenote: _Key relationship._]
Here is a period of two members, the latter repeating the thought of
the former. A musical analyst might find in it an admirable analogue
for the first period of a simple melody. He would divide it into four
motives: "Rebuke me not | in thy wrath | neither chasten me | in thy
hot displeasure," and point out as intimate a relationship between
them as exists in the Creole tune. The bond of union between the
motives of the melody as well as that in the poetry illustrates a
principle of beauty which is the most important element in musical
design after repetition, which is its necessary vehicle. It is because
this principle guides the repetition of the tone-groups that together
they form a melody that is perfect, satisfying, and reposeful. It is
the principle of key-relationship, to discuss which fully would carry
me farther into musical science than I am permitted to go. Let this
suffice: A harmony is latent in each group, and the sequence of groups
is such a sequence as the experience of ages has demonstrated to be
most agreeable to the ear.
[Sidenote: _The rhythmical stamp._]
[Sidenote: _The principle of Unity._]
In the case of the Creole melody the listener is helped to a quick
appreciation of its form by the distinct physiognomy which rhythm has
stamped upon it; and it is by noting such a characteristic that the
memory can best be aided in its work of identification. It is not
necessary for a listener to follow all the processes of a composer in
order to enjoy his music, but if he cultivates the habit of following
the principal themes through a work of the higher class he will not
only enjoy the pleasures of memory but will frequently get a glimpse
into the composer's purposes which will stimulate his imagination and
mightily increase his enjoyment. There is nothing can guide him more
surely to a recognition of the principle of unity, which makes a
symphony to be an organic whole instead of a group of pieces which are
only externally related. The greatest exemplar of this principle is
Beethoven; and his music is the best in which to study it for the
reason that he so frequently employs material signs for the spiritual
bond. So forcibly has this been impressed upon me at times that I am
almost willing to believe that a keen analytical student of his music
might arrange his greater works into groups of such as were in process
of composition at the same time without reference to his personal
history. Take the principal theme of the C minor Symphony for example:
[Music illustration]
[Sidenote: _A rhythmical motive pursued._]
This simple, but marvellously pregnant, motive is not only the kernel
of the first movement, it is the fundamental thought of the whole
symphony. We hear its persistent beat in the scherzo as well:
[Music illustration]
and also in the last movement:
[Music illustration]
More than this, we find the motive haunting the first movement of the
pianoforte sonata in F minor, op. 57, known as the "Sonata
Appassionata," now gloomily, almost morosely, proclamative in the
bass, now interrogative in the treble:
[Music illustration]
[Sidenote: _Relationships in Beethoven's works._]
[Sidenote: _The C minor Symphony and "Appassionata" sonata._]
[Sidenote: _Beethoven's G major Concerto._]
Schindler relates that when once he asked Beethoven to tell him what
the F minor and the D minor (Op. 31, No. 2) sonatas meant, he received
for an answer only the enigmatical remark: "Read Shakespeare's
'Tempest.'" Many a student and commentator has since read the
"Tempest" in the hope of finding a clew to the emotional contents
which Beethoven believed to be in the two works, so singularly
associated, only to find himself baffled. It is a fancy, which rests
perhaps too much on outward things, but still one full of suggestion,
that had Beethoven said: "Hear my C minor Symphony," he would have
given a better starting-point to the imagination of those who are
seeking to know what the F minor sonata means. Most obviously it means
music, but it means music that is an expression of one of those
psychological struggles which Beethoven felt called upon more and more
to delineate as he was more and more shut out from the companionship
of the external world. Such struggles are in the truest sense of the
word tempests. The motive, which, according to the story, Beethoven
himself said indicates, in the symphony, the rappings of Fate at the
door of human existence, is common to two works which are also related
in their spiritual contents. Singularly enough, too, in both cases the
struggle which is begun in the first movement and continued in the
third, is interrupted by a period of calm reassuring, soul-fortifying
aspiration, which in the symphony as well as in the sonata takes the
form of a theme with variations. Here, then, the recognition of a
simple rhythmical figure has helped us to an appreciation of the
spiritual unity of the parts of a symphony, and provided a commentary
on the poetical contents of a sonata. But the lesson is not yet
exhausted. Again do we find the rhythm coloring the first movement of
the pianoforte concerto in G major:
[Music illustration]
Symphony, concerto, and sonata, as the sketch-books of the master
show, were in process of creation at the same time.
[Sidenote: _His Seventh Symphony._]
Thus far we have been helped in identifying a melody and studying
relationships by the rhythmical structure of a single motive. The
demonstration might be extended on the same line into Beethoven's
symphony in A major, in which the external sign of the poetical idea
which underlies the whole work is also rhythmic--so markedly so that
Wagner characterized it most happily and truthfully when he said that
it was "the apotheosis of the dance." Here it is the dactyl, [dactyl
symbol], which in one variation, or another, clings to us almost as
persistently as in Hood's "Bridge of Sighs:"
"One more unfortunate
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death."
[Sidenote: _Use of a dactylic figure._]
We hear it lightly tripping in the first movement:
[Music illustration] and [Music illustration];
gentle, sedate, tender, measured, through its combination with a
spondee in the second:
[Music illustration];
cheerily, merrily, jocosely happy in the Scherzo:
[Music illustration];
hymn-like in the Trio:
[Music illustration]
and wildly bacchanalian when subjected to trochaic abbreviation in the
Finale:
[Music illustration]
[Sidenote: _Intervallic characteristics._]
Intervallic characteristics may place the badge of relationship upon
melodies as distinctly as rhythmic. There is no more perfect
illustration of this than that afforded by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Speaking of the subject of its finale, Sir George Grove says:
"And note--while listening to the simple tune itself, before
the variations begin--how _very_ simple it is; the plain
diatonic scale, not a single chromatic interval, and out of
fifty-six notes only three not consecutive."[A]
[Sidenote: _The melodies in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony._]
Earlier in the same work, while combating a statement by Lenz that the
resemblance between the second subject of the first movement and the
choral melody is a "thematic reference of the most striking
importance, vindicating the unity of the entire work, and placing the
whole in a perfectly new light," Sir George says:
"It is, however, very remarkable that so many of the
melodies in the Symphony should consist of consecutive
notes, and that in no less than four of them the notes
should run up a portion of the scale and down
again--apparently pointing to a consistent condition of
Beethoven's mind throughout this work."
[Sidenote: _Melodic likenesses._]
Like Goethe, Beethoven secreted many a mystery in his masterpiece, but
he did not juggle idly with tones, or select the themes of his
symphonies at hap-hazard; he would be open to the charge, however, if
the resemblances which I have pointed out in the Fifth and Seventh
Symphonies, and those disclosed by the following melodies from his
Ninth, should turn out through some incomprehensible revelation to be
mere coincidences:
From the first movement:
[Music illustration]
From the second:
[Music illustration]
The choral melody:
[Music illustration]
[Sidenote: _Design and Form._]
From a recognition of the beginnings of design, to which
identification of the composer's thematic material and its simpler
relationships will lead, to so much knowledge of Form as will enable
the reader to understand the later chapters in this book, is but a
step.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] "Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies," p. 374.
III
_The Content and Kinds of Music_
[Sidenote: _Metaphysics to be avoided herein._]
Bearing in mind the purpose of this book, I shall not ask the reader
to accompany me far afield in the region of æsthetic philosophy or
musical metaphysics. A short excursion is all that is necessary to
make plain what is meant by such terms as Absolute music, Programme
music, Classical, Romantic, and Chamber music and the like, which not
only confront us continually in discussion, but stand for things which
we must know if we would read programmes understandingly and
appreciate the various phases in which music presents itself to us. It
is interesting and valuable to know why an art-work stirs up
pleasurable feelings within us, and to speculate upon its relations to
the intellect and the emotions; but the circumstance that
philosophers have never agreed, and probably never will agree, on
these points, so far as the art of music is concerned, alone suffices
to remove them from the field of this discussion.
[Sidenote: _Personal equation in judgment._]
Intelligent listening is not conditioned upon such knowledge. Even
when the study is begun, the questions whether or not music has a
content beyond itself, where that content is to be sought, and how
defined, will be decided in each case by the student for himself, on
grounds which may be said to be as much in his nature as they are in
the argument. The attitude of man toward the art is an individual one,
and in some of its aspects defies explanation.
[Sidenote: _A musical fluid._]
The amount and kind of pleasure which music gives him are frequently
as much beyond his understanding and control as they are beyond the
understanding and control of the man who sits beside him. They are
consequences of just that particular combination of material and
spiritual elements, just that blending of muscular, nervous, and
cerebral tissues, which make him what he is, which segregate him as
an individual from the mass of humanity. We speak of persons as
susceptible or insusceptible to music as we speak of good and poor
conductors of electricity; and the analogy implied here is
particularly apt and striking. If we were still using the scientific
terms of a few decades ago I should say that a musical fluid might yet
be discovered and its laws correlated with those of heat, light, and
electricity. Like them, when reduced to its lowest terms, music is a
form of motion, and it should not be difficult on this analogy to
construct a theory which would account for the physical phenomena
which accompany the hearing of music in some persons, such as the
recession of blood from the face, or an equally sudden suffusion of
the same veins, a contraction of the scalp accompanied by chilliness
or a prickling sensation, or that roughness of the skin called
goose-flesh, "flesh moved by an idea, flesh horripilated by a
thought."
[Sidenote: _Origin of musical elements._]
[Sidenote: _Feelings and counterpoint._]