individual religious feeling. His music is peculiarly a hymning of the
religious sentiment of Protestant Germany, where salvation is to be
wrought out with fear and trembling by each individual through faith
and works rather than the agency of even a divinely constituted
Church. It reflects, with rare fidelity and clearness, the essential
qualities of the German people--their warm sympathy, profound
compassion, fervent love, and sturdy faith. As the Church fell into
the background and the individual came to the fore, religious music
took on the dramatic character which we find in the "Passion Music" of
Bach. Here the sufferings and death of the Saviour, none the less an
ineffable mystery, are depicted as the most poignant experience of
each individual believer, and with an ingenuousness that must forever
provoke the wonder of those who are unable to enter into the German
nature. The worshippers do not hesitate to say: "My Jesus,
good-night!" as they gather in fancy around His tomb and invoke sweet
rest for His weary limbs. The difference between such a proclamation
and the calm voice of the Church should be borne in mind when
comparing the music of Palestrina with that of Bach; also the vast
strides made by music during the intervening century.
[Sidenote: _The motet._]
Of Bach's music we have in the repertories of our best choral
societies a number of motets, church cantatas, a setting of the
"Magnificat," and the great mass in B minor. The term Motet lacks
somewhat of definiteness of the usage of composers. Originally it
seems likely that it was a secular composition which the Netherland
composers enlisted in the service of the Church by adapting it to
Biblical and other religious texts. Then it was always unaccompanied.
In the later Protestant motets the chorale came to play a great part;
the various stanzas of a hymn were given different settings, the
foundation of each being the hymn tune. These were interspersed with
independent pieces, based on Biblical words.
[Sidenote: _Church cantatas._]
The Church Cantatas (_Kirchencantaten_) are larger services with
orchestral accompaniment, which were written to conform to the various
religious festivals and Sundays of the year; each has for a
fundamental subject the theme which is proper to the day. Again, a
chorale provides the musical foundation. Words and melody are
retained, but between the stanzas occur recitatives and metrical airs,
or ariosos, for solo voices in the nature of commentaries or
reflections on the sentiment of the hymn or the gospel lesson for the
day.
[Sidenote: _The "Passions."_]
[Sidenote: _Origin of the "Passions."_]
[Sidenote: _Early Holy Week services._]
The "Passions" are still more extended, and were written for use in
the Reformed Church in Holy Week. As an art-form they are unique,
combining a number of elements and having all the apparatus of an
oratorio plus the congregation, which took part in the performance by
singing the hymns dispersed through the work. The service (for as a
service, rather than as an oratorio, it must be treated) roots in the
Miracle plays and Mysteries of the Middle Ages, but its origin is even
more remote, going back to the custom followed by the primitive
Christians of making the reading of the story of the Passion a special
service for Holy Week. In the Eastern Church it was introduced in a
simple dramatic form as early as the fourth century A.D., the
treatment being somewhat like the ancient tragedies, the text being
intoned or chanted. In the Western Church, until the sixteenth
century, the Passion was read in a way which gave the service one
element which is found in Bach's works in an amplified form. Three
deacons were employed, one to read (or rather chant to Gregorian
melodies) the words of Christ, another to deliver the narrative in the
words of the Evangelist, and a third to give the utterances and
exclamations of the Apostles and people. This was the _Cantus
Passionis Domini nostri Jesu Christe_ of the Church, and had so strong
a hold upon the tastes of the people that it was preserved by Luther
in the Reformed Church.
[Sidenote: _The service amplified._]
[Sidenote: _Bach's settings._]
Under this influence it was speedily amplified. The successive steps
of the progress are not clear, but the choir seems to have first
succeeded to the part formerly sung by the third deacon, and in some
churches the whole Passion was sung antiphonally by two choirs. In the
seventeenth century the introduction of recitatives and arias,
distributed among singers who represented the personages of sacred
history, increased the dramatic element of the service which reached
its climax in the "St. Matthew" setting by Bach. The chorales are
supposed to have been introduced about 1704. Bach's "Passions" are the
last that figure in musical history. That "according to St. John" is
performed occasionally in Germany, but it yields the palm of
excellence to that "according to St. Matthew," which had its first
performance on Good Friday, 1729, in Leipsic. It is in two parts,
which were formerly separated by the sermon, and employs two choirs,
each with its own orchestra, solo singers in all the classes of
voices, and a harpsichord to accompany all the recitatives, except
those of _Jesus_, which are distinguished by being accompanied by the
orchestral strings.
[Sidenote: _Oratorios._]
[Sidenote: _Sacred operas._]
In the nature of things passions, oratorios, and their secular
cousins, cantatas, imply scenes and actions, and therefore have a
remote kinship with the lyric drama. The literary analogy which they
suggest is the epic poem as contra-distinguished from the drama. While
the drama presents incident, the oratorio relates, expounds, and
celebrates, presenting it to the fancy through the ear instead of
representing it to the eye. A great deal of looseness has crept into
this department of music as into every other, and the various forms
have been approaching each other until in some cases it is become
difficult to say which term, opera or oratorio, ought to be applied.
Rubinstein's "sacred operas" are oratorios profusely interspersed with
stage directions, many of which are impossible of scenic realization.
Their whole purpose is to work upon the imagination of the listeners
and thus open gate-ways for the music. Ever since its composition,
Saint-Saëns's "Samson and Delilah" has held a place in both theatre
and concert-room. Liszt's "St. Elizabeth" has been found more
effective when provided with pictorial accessories than without. The
greater part of "Elijah" might be presented in dramatic form.
[Sidenote: _Influence of the Church plays._]
[Sidenote: _Origin of the oratorio._]
[Sidenote: _The choral element extended._]
[Sidenote: _Narrative and descriptive choruses._]
[Sidenote: _Dramatization._]
Confusing and anomalous as these things are, they find their
explanation in the circumstance that the oratorio never quite freed
itself from the influence of the people's Church plays in which it had
its beginning. As a distinct art-form it began in a mixture of
artistic entertainment and religious worship provided in the early
part of the sixteenth century by Filippo Neri (now a saint) for those
who came for pious instruction to his oratory (whence the name). The
purpose of these entertainments being religious, the subjects were
Biblical, and though the musical progress from the beginning was along
the line of the lyric drama, contemporaneous in origin with it, the
music naturally developed into broader forms on the choral side,
because music had to make up for the lack of pantomime, costumes, and
scenery. Hence we have not only the preponderance of choruses in the
oratorio over recitative, arias, duets, trios, and so forth, but also
the adherence in the choral part to the old manner of writing which
made the expansion of the choruses possible. Where the choruses left
the field of pure reflection and became narrative, as in "Israel in
Egypt," or assumed a dramatic character, as in the "Elijah," the
composer found in them vehicles for descriptive and characteristic
music, and so local color came into use. Characterization of the solo
parts followed as a matter of course, an early illustration being
found in the manner in which Bach lifted the words of Christ into
prominence by surrounding them with the radiant halo which streams
from the violin accompaniment. In consequence the singer to whom was
assigned the task of singing the part of _Jesus_ presented himself to
the fancy of the listeners as a representative of the historical
personage--as the Christ of the drama.
[Sidenote: _The chorus in opera and oratorio._]
The growth of the instrumental art here came admirably into play, and
so it came to pass that opera and oratorio now have their musical
elements of expression in common, and differ only in their application
of them--opera foregoing the choral element to a great extent as being
a hindrance to action, and oratorio elevating it to make good the
absence of scenery and action. While oratorios are biblical and
legendary, cantatas deal with secular subjects and, in the form of
dramatic ballads, find a delightful field in the world of romance and
supernaturalism.
[Sidenote: _The Mass._]
[Sidenote: _Secularization of the Mass._]
Transferred from the Church to the concert-room, and considered as an
art-form instead of the eucharistic office, the Mass has always made a
strong appeal to composers, and half a dozen masterpieces of missal
composition hold places in the concert lists of the singing societies.
Notable among these are the Requiems of Mozart, Berlioz, and Verdi,
and the Solemn Mass in D by Beethoven. These works represent at one
and the same time the climax of accomplishment in the musical
treatment and the secularization of the missal text. They are the
natural outcome of the expansion of the office by the introduction of
the orchestra into the Church, the departure from the _a capella_
style of writing, which could not be consorted with the orchestra, and
the growth of a desire to enhance the pomp of great occasions in the
Church by the production of masses specially composed for them. Under
such circumstances the devotional purpose of the mass was lost in the
artistic, and composers gave free reign to their powers, for which
they found an ample stimulus in the missal text.
[Sidenote: _Sentimental masses._]
[Sidenote: _Mozart and the Mass._]
[Sidenote: _The masses for the dead._]
[Sidenote: _Gossec's Requiem._]
The first effect, and the one which largely justifies the adherents of
the old ecclesiastical style in their crusade against the Catholic
Church music of to-day, was to make the masses sentimental and
operatic. So little regard was had for the sentiment of the words, so
little respect for the solemnity of the sacrament, that more than a
century ago Mozart (whose masses are far from being models of
religious expression) could say to Cantor Doles of a _Gloria_ which
the latter showed him, "_S'ist ja alles nix_," and immediately sing
the music to "_Hol's der Geier, das geht flink!_" which words, he
said, went better. The liberty begotten by this license, though it
tended to ruin the mass, considered strictly as a liturgical service,
developed it musically. The masses for the dead were among the
earliest to feel the spirit of the time, for in the sequence, _Dies
iræ_, they contained the dramatic element which the solemn mass
lacked. The _Kyrie_, _Credo_, _Gloria_, _Sanctus_, and _Agnus Dei_ are
purely lyrical, and though the evolutionary movement ended in
Beethoven conceiving certain portions (notably the _Agnus Dei_) in a
dramatic sense, it was but natural that so far as tradition fixed the
disposition and formal style of the various parts, it should not be
disturbed. At an early date the composers began to put forth their
powers of description in the _Dies iræ_, however, and there is extant
in a French mass an amusing example of the length to which
tone-painting in this music was carried by them. Gossec wrote a
Requiem on the death of Mirabeau which became famous. The words,
_Quantus tremor est futurus_, he set so that on each syllable there
were repetitions, _staccato_, of a single tone, thus:
[Music illustration: Quan-tus tre---mor, tre-- etc.]
This absurd stuttering Gossec designed to picture the terror inspired
by the coming of the Judge at the last trumpet.
[Sidenote: _The orchestra in the Mass._]
[Sidenote: _Beethoven and Berlioz._]
The development of instrumentation placed a factor in the hands of
these writers which they were not slow to utilize, especially in
writing music for the _Dies iræ_, and how effectively Mozart used the
orchestra in his Requiem it is not necessary to state. It is a safe
assumption that Beethoven's Mass in D was largely instrumental in
inspiring Berlioz to set the Requiem as he did. With Beethoven the
dramatic idea is the controlling one, and so it is with Berlioz.
Beethoven, while showing a reverence for the formulas of the Church,
and respecting the tradition which gave the _Kyrie_ a triple division
and made fugue movements out of the phrases "_Cum sancto spiritu in
gloria Dei patris--Amen_," "_Et vitam venturi_," and "_Osanna in
excelsis_," nevertheless gave his composition a scope which placed it
beyond the apparatus of the Church, and filled it with a spirit that
spurns the limitations of any creed of less breadth and universality
than the grand Theism which affectionate communion with nature had
taught him.
[Sidenote: _Berlioz's Requiem._]
[Sidenote: _Dramatic effects in Haydn's masses._]
[Sidenote: _Berlioz's orchestra._]
Berlioz, less religious, less reverential, but equally fired by the
solemnity and majesty of the matter given into his hands, wrote a work
in which he placed his highest conception of the awfulness of the
Last Judgment and the emotions which are awakened by its
contemplation. In respect of the instrumentation he showed a far
greater audacity than Beethoven displayed even in the much-mooted
trumpets and drums of the _Agnus Dei_, where he introduces the sounds
of war to heighten the intensity of the prayer for peace, "_Dona nobis
pacem_." This is talked about in the books as a bold innovation. It
seems to have escaped notice that the idea had occurred to Haydn
twenty-four years before and been realized by him. In 1796 Haydn wrote
a mass, "In Tempore Belli," the French army being at the time in
Steyermark. He set the words, "_Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi_,"
to an accompaniment of drums, "as if the enemy were already heard
coming in the distance." He went farther than this in a Mass in D
minor, when he accompanied the _Benedictus_ with fanfares of trumpets.
But all such timid ventures in the use of instruments in the mass sink
into utter insignificance when compared with Berlioz's apparatus in
the _Tuba mirum_ of his Requiem, which supplements the ordinary
symphonic orchestra, some of its instruments already doubled, with
four brass bands of eight or ten instruments each, sixteen extra
drums, and a tam-tam.
FOOTNOTES:
[H] "Notes on the Cultivation of Choral Music," by H.E. Krehbiel, p.
17.
IX
_Musician, Critic, and Public_
[Sidenote: _The newspapers and the public._]
I have been told that there are many people who read the newspapers on
the day after they have attended a concert or operatic representation
for the purpose of finding out whether or not the performance gave
them proper or sufficient enjoyment. It would not be becoming in me to
inquire too curiously into the truth of such a statement, and in view
of a denunciation spoken in the introductory chapter of this book, I
am not sure that it is not a piece of arrogance, or impudence, on my
part to undertake in any way to justify any critical writing on the
subject of music. Certain it is that some men who write about music
for the newspapers believe, or affect to believe, that criticism is
worthless, and I shall not escape the charge of inconsistency, if,
after I have condemned the blunders of literary men, who are laymen in
music, and separated the majority of professional writers on the art
into pedants and rhapsodists, I nevertheless venture to discuss the
nature and value of musical criticism. Yet, surely, there must be a
right and wrong in this as in every other thing, and just as surely
the present structure of society, which rests on the newspaper,
invites attention to the existing relationship between musician,
critic, and public as an important element in the question How to
Listen to Music.
[Sidenote: _Relationship between musician, critic, and public._]
[Sidenote: _The need and value of conflict._]
As a condition precedent to the discussion of this new element in the
case, I lay down the proposition that the relationship between the
three factors enumerated is so intimate and so strict that the world
over they rise and fall together; which means that where the people
dwell who have reached the highest plane of excellence, there also are
to be found the highest types of the musician and critic; and that in
the degree in which the three factors, which united make up the sum
of musical activity, labor harmoniously, conscientiously, and
unselfishly, each striving to fulfil its mission, they advance music
and further themselves, each bearing off an equal share of the good
derived from the common effort. I have set the factors down in the
order which they ordinarily occupy in popular discussion and which
symbolizes their proper attitude toward each other and the highest
potency of their collaboration. In this collaboration, as in so many
others, it is conflict that brings life. Only by a surrender of their
functions, one to the other, could the three apparently dissonant yet
essentially harmonious factors be brought into a state of complacency;
but such complacency would mean stagnation. If the published judgment
on compositions and performances could always be that of the
exploiting musicians, that class, at least, would read the newspapers
with fewer heart-burnings; if the critics had a common mind and it
were followed in concert-room and opera-house, they, as well as the
musicians, would have need of fewer words of displacency and more of
approbation; if, finally, it were to be brought to pass that for the
public nothing but amiable diversion should flow simultaneously from
platform, stage, and press, then for the public would the millennium
be come. A religious philosopher can transmute Adam's fall into a
blessing, and we can recognize the wisdom of that dispensation which
put enmity between the seed of Jubal, who was the "father of all such
as handle the harp and pipe," and the seed of Saul, who, I take it, is
the first critic of record (and a vigorous one, too, for he
accentuated his unfavorable opinion of a harper's harping with a
javelin thrust).
[Sidenote: _The critic an Ishmaelite._]
[Sidenote: _The critic not to be pitied._]
[Sidenote: _How he might extricate himself._]
[Sidenote: _The public like to be flattered._]
We are bound to recognize that between the three factors there is,
ever was, and ever shall be _in sæcula sæculorum_ an irrepressible
conflict, and that in the nature of things the middle factor is the
Ishmaelite whose hand is raised against everybody and against whom
everybody's hand is raised. The complacency of the musician and the
indifference, not to say ignorance, of the public ordinarily combine
to make them allies, and the critic is, therefore, placed between two
millstones, where he is vigorously rasped on both sides, and whence,
being angular and hard of outer shell, he frequently requites the
treatment received with complete and energetic reciprocity. Is he
therefore to be pitied? Not a bit; for in this position he is
performing one of the most significant and useful of his functions,
and disclosing one of his most precious virtues. While musician and
public must perforce remain in the positions in which they have been
placed with relation to each other it must be apparent at half a
glance that it would be the simplest matter in the world for the
critic to extricate himself from his predicament. He would only need
to take his cue from the public, measuring his commendation by the
intensity of their applause, his dispraise by their signs of
displeasure, and all would be well with him. We all know this to be
true, that people like to read that which flatters them by echoing
their own thoughts. The more delightfully it is put by the writer the
more the reader is pleased, for has he not had the same idea? Are they
not his? Is not their appearance in a public print proof of the
shrewdness and soundness of his judgment? Ruskin knows this foible in
human nature and condemns it. You may read in "Sesame and Lilies:"
"Very ready we are to say of a book, 'How good this
is--that's exactly what I think!' But the right feeling is,
'How strange that is! I never thought of that before, and
yet I see it is true; or if I do not now, I hope I shall,
some day.' But whether thus submissively or not, at least be
sure that you go at the author to get at his meaning, not to
find yours. Judge it afterward if you think yourself
qualified to do so, but ascertain it first."
[Sidenote: _The critic generally outspoken._]
As a rule, however, the critic is not guilty of the wrong of speaking
out the thought of others, but publishes what there is of his own
mind, and this I laud in him as a virtue, which is praiseworthy in the
degree that it springs from loftiness of aim, depth of knowledge, and
sincerity and unselfishness of purpose.
[Sidenote: _Musician and Public._]
[Sidenote: _The office of ignorance._]
[Sidenote: _Popularity of Wagner's music not a sign of intelligent
appreciation._]
Let us look a little into the views which our factors do and those
which they ought to entertain of each other. The utterances of
musicians have long ago made it plain that as between the critic and
the public the greater measure of their respect and deference is given
to the public. The critic is bound to recognize this as entirely
natural; his right of protest does not accrue until he can show that
the deference is ignoble and injurious to good art. It is to the
public that the musician appeals for the substantial signs of what is
called success. This appeal to the jury instead of the judge is as
characteristic of the conscientious composer who is sincerely
convinced that he was sent into the world to widen the boundaries of
art, as it is of the mere time-server who aims only at tickling the
popular ear. The reason is obvious to a little close thinking:
Ignorance is at once a safeguard against and a promoter of
conservatism. This sounds like a paradox, but the rapid growth of
Wagner's music in the admiration of the people of the United States
might correctly be cited as a proof that the statement is true. Music
like the concert fragments from Wagner's lyric dramas is accepted
with promptitude and delight, because its elements are those which
appeal most directly and forcibly to our sense-perception and those
primitive tastes which are the most readily gratified by strong
outlines and vivid colors. Their vigorous rhythms, wealth of color,
and sonority would make these fragments far more impressive to a
savage than the suave beauty of a symphony by Haydn; yet do we not all
know that while whole-hearted, intelligent enjoyment of a Haydn
symphony is conditioned upon a considerable degree of culture, an
equally whole-hearted, intelligent appreciation of Wagner's music
presupposes a much wider range of sympathy, a much more extended view
of the capabilities of musical expression, a much keener discernment,
and a much profounder susceptibility to the effects of harmonic
progressions? And is the conclusion not inevitable, therefore, that on
the whole the ready acceptance of Wagner's music by a people is
evidence that they are not sufficiently cultured to feel the force of
that conservatism which made the triumph of Wagner consequent on many
years of agitation in musical Germany?
[Sidenote: _"Ahead of one's time."_]
In one case the appeal is elemental; in the other spiritual. He who
wishes to be in advance of his time does wisely in going to the people
instead of the critics, just as the old fogy does whose music belongs
to the time when sensuous charm summed up its essence. There is a good
deal of ambiguity about the stereotyped phrase "ahead of one's time."
Rightly apprehended, great geniuses do live for the future rather than
the present, but where the public have the vastness of appetite and
scantness of taste peculiar to the ostrich, there it is impossible for
a composer to be ahead of his time. It is only where the public are
advanced to the stage of intelligent discrimination that a Ninth
Symphony and a Nibelung Tetralogy are accepted slowly.
[Sidenote: _The charlatan._]
[Sidenote: _Influencing the critics._]