1
The futility of attempting to trace the source or primal impulse of an
art-inspiration may be admitted without granting that human qualities
or attributes which go with personality cannot be suggested, and that
artistic intuitions which parallel them cannot be reflected in music.
Actually accomplishing the latter is a problem, more or less arbitrary
to an open mind, more or less impossible to a prejudiced mind.
That which the composer intends to represent as "high vitality" sounds
like something quite different to different listeners. That which I
like to think suggests Thoreau's submission to nature may, to another,
seem something like Hawthorne's "conception of the relentlessness of an
evil conscience"--and to the rest of our friends, but a series of
unpleasant sounds. How far can the composer be held accountable? Beyond
a certain point the responsibility is more or less undeterminable. The
outside characteristics--that is, the points furthest away from the
mergings--are obvious to mostly anyone. A child knows a "strain of
joy," from one of sorrow. Those a little older know the dignified from
the frivolous--the Spring Song from the season in which the "melancholy
days have come" (though is there not a glorious hope in autumn!). But
where is the definite expression of late-spring against early-summer,
of happiness against optimism? A painter paints a sunset--can he paint
the setting sun?
In some century to come, when the school children will whistle popular
tunes in quarter-tones--when the diatonic scale will be as obsolete as
the pentatonic is now--perhaps then these borderland experiences may be
both easily expressed and readily recognized. But maybe music was not
intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better
to hope that music may always be a transcendental language in the most
extravagant sense. Possibly the power of literally distinguishing these
"shades of abstraction"--these attributes paralleled by "artistic
intuitions" (call them what you will)-is ever to be denied man for the
same reason that the beginning and end of a circle are to be denied.
2
There may be an analogy--and on first sight it seems that there must
be--between both the state and power of artistic perceptions and the
law of perpetual change, that ever-flowing stream partly biological,
partly cosmic, ever going on in ourselves, in nature, in all life. This
may account for the difficulty of identifying desired qualities with
the perceptions of them in expression. Many things are constantly
coming into being, while others are constantly going out--one part of
the same thing is coming in while another part is going out of
existence. Perhaps this is why the above conformity in art (a
conformity which we seem naturally to look for) appears at times so
unrealizable, if not impossible. It will be assumed, to make this
theory clearer, that the "flow" or "change" does not go on in the
art-product itself. As a matter of fact it probably does, to a certain
extent--a picture, or a song, may gain or lose in value beyond what the
painter or composer knew, by the progress and higher development in all
art. Keats may be only partially true when he says that "A work of
beauty is a joy forever"--a thing that is beautiful to ME, is a joy to
ME, as long as it remains beautiful to ME--and if it remains so as long
as I live, it is so forever, that is, forever to ME. If he had put it
this way, he would have been tiresome, inartistic, but perhaps truer.
So we will assume here that this change only goes on in man and nature;
and that this eternal process in mankind is paralleled in some way
during each temporary, personal life.
A young man, two generations ago, found an identity with his ideals, in
Rossini; when an older man in Wagner. A young man, one generation ago,
found his in Wagner, but when older in Cesar Franck or Brahms. Some may
say that this change may not be general, universal, or natural, and
that it may be due to a certain kind of education, or to a certain
inherited or contracted prejudice. We cannot deny or affirm this,
absolutely, nor will we try to even qualitatively--except to say that
it will be generally admitted that Rossini, today, does not appeal to
this generation, as he did to that of our fathers. As far as prejudice
or undue influence is concerned, and as an illustration in point, the
following may be cited to show that training may have but little effect
in this connection, at least not as much as usually supposed--for we
believe this experience to be, to a certain extent, normal, or at
least, not uncommon. A man remembers, when he was a boy of about
fifteen years, hearing his music-teacher (and father) who had just
returned from a performance of Siegfried say with a look of anxious
surprise that "somehow or other he felt ashamed of enjoying the music
as he did," for beneath it all he was conscious of an undercurrent of
"make-believe"--the bravery was make-believe, the love was
make-believe, the passion, the virtue, all make-believe, as was the
dragon--P. T. Barnum would have been brave enough to have gone out and
captured a live one! But, that same boy at twenty-five was listening to
Wagner with enthusiasm, his reality was real enough to inspire a
devotion. The "Preis-Lied," for instance, stirred him deeply. But when
he became middle-aged--and long before the Hohenzollern hog-marched
into Belgium--this music had become cloying, the melodies threadbare--a
sense of something commonplace--yes--of make-believe came. These
feelings were fought against for association's sake, and because of
gratitude for bygone pleasures--but the former beauty and nobility were
not there, and in their place stood irritating intervals of descending
fourths and fifths. Those once transcendent progressions, luxuriant
suggestions of Debussy chords of the 9th, 11th, etc., were becoming
slimy. An unearned exultation--a sentimentality deadening something
within hides around in the music. Wagner seems less and less to measure
up to the substance and reality of Cesar Franck, Brahms, d'Indy, or
even Elgar (with all his tiresomeness), the wholesomeness, manliness,
humility, and deep spiritual, possibly religious feeling of these men
seem missing and not made up for by his (Wagner's) manner and
eloquence, even if greater than theirs (which is very doubtful).
From the above we would try to prove that as this stream of change
flows towards the eventual ocean of mankind's perfection, the art-works
in which we identify our higher ideals come by this process to be
identified with the lower ideals of those who embark after us when the
stream has grown in depth. If we stop with the above experience, our
theory of the effect of man's changing nature, as thus explaining
artistic progress, is perhaps sustained. Thus would we show that the
perpetual flow of the life stream is affected by and affects each
individual riverbed of the universal watersheds. Thus would we prove
that the Wagner period was normal, because we intuitively recognized
whatever identity we were looking for at a certain period in our life,
and the fact that it was so made the Franck period possible and then
normal at a later period in our life. Thus would we assume that this is
as it should be, and that it is not Wagner's content or substance or
his lack of virtue, that something in us has made us flow past him and
not he past us. But something blocks our theory! Something makes our
hypotheses seem purely speculative if not useless. It is men like Bach
and Beethoven.
Is it not a matter nowadays of common impression or general opinion
(for the law of averages plays strongly in any theory relating to human
attributes) that the world's attitude towards the substance and quality
and spirit of these two men, or other men of like character, if there
be such, has not been affected by the flowing stream that has changed
us? But if by the measure of this public opinion, as well as it can be
measured, Bach and Beethoven are being flowed past--not as fast perhaps
as Wagner is, but if they are being passed at all from this deeper
viewpoint, then this "change" theory holds.
Here we shall have to assume, for we haven't proved it, that artistic
intuitions can sense in music a weakening of moral strength and
vitality, and that it is sensed in relation to Wagner and not sensed in
relation to Bach and Beethoven. If, in this common opinion, there is a
particle of change toward the latter's art, our theory stands--mind
you, this admits a change in the manner, form, external expression,
etc., but not in substance. If there is no change here towards the
substance of these two men, our theory not only falls but its failure
superimposes or allows us to presume a fundamental duality in music,
and in all art for that matter.
Does the progress of intrinsic beauty or truth (we assume there is such
a thing) have its exposures as well as its discoveries? Does the
non-acceptance of the foregoing theory mean that Wagner's substance and
reality are lower and his manner higher; that his beauty was not
intrinsic; that he was more interested in the repose of pride than in
the truth of humility? It appears that he chose the representative
instead of the spirit itself,--that he chose consciously or
unconsciously, it matters not,--the lower set of values in this
dualism. These are severe accusations to bring--especially when a man
is a little down as Wagner is today. But these convictions were present
some time before he was banished from the Metropolitan. Wagner seems to
take Hugo's place in Faguet's criticism of de Vigny that, "The staging
to him (Hugo) was the important thing--not the conception--that in de
Vigny, the artist was inferior to the poet"; finally that Hugo and so
Wagner have a certain pauvrete de fond. Thus would we ungenerously make
Wagner prove our sum! But it is a sum that won't prove! The theory at
its best does little more than suggest something, which if it is true
at all, is a platitude, viz.: that progressive growth in all life makes
it more and more possible for men to separate, in an art-work, moral
weakness from artistic strength.
3
Human attributes are definite enough when it comes to their
description, but the expression of them, or the paralleling of them in
an art-process, has to be, as said above, more or less arbitrary, but
we believe that their expression can be less vague if the basic
distinction of this art-dualism is kept in mind. It is morally certain
that the higher part is founded, as Sturt suggests, on something that
has to do with those kinds of unselfish human interests which we call
knowledge and morality--knowledge, not in the sense of erudition, but
as a kind of creation or creative truth. This allows us to assume that
the higher and more important value of this dualism is composed of what
may be called reality, quality, spirit, or substance against the lower
value of form, quantity, or manner. Of these terms "substance" seems to
us the most appropriate, cogent, and comprehensive for the higher and
"manner" for the under-value. Substance in a human-art-quality suggests
the body of a conviction which has its birth in the spiritual
consciousness, whose youth is nourished in the moral consciousness, and
whose maturity as a result of all this growth is then represented in a
mental image. This is appreciated by the intuition, and somehow
translated into expression by "manner"--a process always less important
than it seems, or as suggested by the foregoing (in fact we apologize
for this attempted definition). So it seems that "substance" is too
indefinite to analyze, in more specific terms. It is practically
indescribable. Intuitions (artistic or not?) will sense it--process,
unknown. Perhaps it is an unexplained consciousness of being nearer
God, or being nearer the devil--of approaching truth or approaching
unreality--a silent something felt in the truth-of-nature in Turner
against the truth-of-art in Botticelli, or in the fine thinking of
Ruskin against the fine soundings of Kipling, or in the wide expanse of
Titian against the narrow-expanse of Carpaccio, or in some such
distinction that Pope sees between what he calls Homer's "invention"
and Virgil's "judgment"--apparently an inspired imagination against an
artistic care, a sense of the difference, perhaps, between Dr.
Bushnell's Knowing God and knowing about God. A more vivid explanation
or illustration may be found in the difference between Emerson and Poe.
The former seems to be almost wholly "substance" and the latter
"manner." The measure in artistic satisfaction of Poe's manner is equal
to the measure of spiritual satisfaction in Emerson's "substance." The
total value of each man is high, but Emerson's is higher than Poe's
because "substance" is higher than "manner"--because "substance" leans
towards optimism, and "manner" pessimism. We do not know that all this
is so, but we feel, or rather know by intuition that it is so, in the
same way we know intuitively that right is higher than wrong, though we
can't always tell why a thing is right or wrong, or what is always the
difference or the margin between right and wrong.
Beauty, in its common conception, has nothing to do with it
(substance), unless it be granted that its outward aspect, or the
expression between sensuous beauty and spiritual beauty can be always
and distinctly known, which it cannot, as the art of music is still in
its infancy. On reading this over, it seems only decent that some kind
of an apology be made for the beginning of the preceding sentence. It
cannot justly be said that anything that has to do with art has nothing
to do with beauty in any degree,--that is, whether beauty is there or
not, it has something to do with it. A casual idea of it, a kind of a
first necessary-physical impression, was what we had in mind. Probably
nobody knows what actual beauty is--except those serious writers of
humorous essays in art magazines, who accurately, but kindly, with club
in hand, demonstrate for all time and men that beauty is a quadratic
monomial; that it _is_ absolute; that it is relative; that it _is _not_
relative, that it _is _not_... The word "beauty" is as easy to use as
the word "degenerate." Both come in handy when one does or does not
agree with you. For our part, something that Roussel-Despierres says
comes nearer to what we like to think beauty is ... "an infinite source
of good ... the love of the beautiful ... a constant anxiety for moral
beauty." Even here we go around in a circle--a thing apparently
inevitable, if one tries to reduce art to philosophy. But personally,
we prefer to go around in a circle than around in a parallelepipedon,
for it seems cleaner and perhaps freer from mathematics--or for the
same reason we prefer Whittier to Baudelaire--a poet to a genius, or a
healthy to a rotten apple--probably not so much because it is more
nutritious, but because we like its taste better; we like the beautiful
and don't like the ugly; therefore, what we like is beautiful, and what
we don't like is ugly--and hence we are glad the beautiful is not ugly,
for if it were we would like something we don't like. So having
unsettled what beauty is, let us go on.
At any rate, we are going to be arbitrary enough to claim, with no
definite qualification, that substance can be expressed in music, and
that it is the only valuable thing in it, and moreover that in two
separate pieces of music in which the notes are almost identical, one
can be of "substance" with little "manner," and the other can be of
"manner" with little "substance." Substance has something to do with
character. Manner has nothing to do with it. The "substance" of a tune
comes from somewhere near the soul, and the "manner" comes from--God
knows where.
4
The lack of interest to preserve, or ability to perceive the
fundamental divisions of this duality accounts to a large extent, we
believe, for some or many various phenomena (pleasant or unpleasant
according to the personal attitude) of modern art, and all art. It is
evidenced in many ways--the sculptors' over-insistence on the "mold,"
the outer rather than the inner subject or content of his
statue--over-enthusiasm for local color--over-interest in the
multiplicity of techniques, in the idiomatic, in the effect as shown,
by the appreciation of an audience rather than in the effect on the
ideals of the inner conscience of the artist or the composer. This lack
of perceiving is too often shown by an over-interest in the material
value of the effect. The pose of self-absorption, which some men, in
the advertising business (and incidentally in the recital and composing
business) put into their photographs or the portraits of themselves,
while all dolled up in their purple-dressing-gowns, in their twofold
wealth of golden hair, in their cissy-like postures over the piano
keys--this pose of "manner" sometimes sounds out so loud that the more
their music is played, the less it is heard. For does not Emerson tell
them this when he says "What you are talks so loud, that I cannot hear
what you say"? The unescapable impression that one sometimes gets by a
glance at these public-inflicted trade-marks, and without having heard
or seen any of their music, is that the one great underlying desire of
these appearing-artists, is to impress, perhaps startle and shock their
audiences and at any cost. This may have some such effect upon some of
the lady-part (male or female) of their listeners but possibly the
members of the men-part, who as boys liked hockey better than
birthday-parties, may feel like shocking a few of these picture-sitters
with something stronger than their own forzandos.
The insistence upon manner in its relation to local color is wider than
a self-strain for effect. If local color is a natural part, that is, a
part of substance, the art-effort cannot help but show its color--and
it will be a true color, no matter how colored; if it is a part, even a
natural part of "manner," either the color part is bound eventually to
drive out the local part or the local drive out all color. Here a
process of cancellation or destruction is going on--a kind of
"compromise" which destroys by deadlock; a compromise purchasing a
selfish pleasure--a decadence in which art becomes first dull, then
dark, then dead, though throughout this process it is outwardly very
much alive,--especially after it is dead. The same tendency may even be
noticed if there is over-insistence upon the national in art. Substance
tends to create affection; manner prejudice. The latter tends to efface
the distinction between the love of both a country's virtue and vices,
and the love of only the virtue. A true love of country is likely to be
so big that it will embrace the virtue one sees in other countries and,
in the same breath, so to speak. A composer born in America, but who
has not been interested in the "cause of the Freedmen," may be so
interested in "negro melodies," that he writes a symphony over them. He
is conscious (perhaps only subconscious) that he wishes it to be
"American music." He tries to forget that the paternal negro came from
Africa. Is his music American or African? That is the great question
which keeps him awake! But the sadness of it is, that if he had been
born in Africa, his music might have been just as American, for there
is good authority that an African soul under an X-ray looks identically
like an American soul. There is a futility in selecting a certain type
to represent a "whole," unless the interest in the spirit of the type
coincides with that of the whole. In other words, if this composer
isn't as deeply interested in the "cause" as Wendell Phillips was, when
he fought his way through that anti-abolitionist crowd at Faneuil Hall,
his music is liable to be less American than he wishes. If a
middle-aged man, upon picking up the Scottish Chiefs, finds that his
boyhood enthusiasm for the prowess and noble deeds and character of Sir
Wm. Wallace and of Bruce is still present, let him put, or try to put
that glory into an overture, let him fill it chuck-full of Scotch
tunes, if he will. But after all is said and sung he will find that his
music is American to the core (assuming that he is an American and
wishes his music to be). It will be as national in character as the
heart of that Grand Army Grandfather, who read those Cragmore Tales of
a summer evening, when that boy had brought the cows home without
witching. Perhaps the memories of the old soldier, to which this man
still holds tenderly, may be turned into a "strain" or a "sonata," and
though the music does not contain, or even suggest any of the old
war-songs, it will be as sincerely American as the subject, provided
his (the composer's) interest, spirit, and character sympathize with,
or intuitively coincide with that of the subject.
Again, if a man finds that the cadences of an Apache war-dance come
nearest to his soul, provided he has taken pains to know enough other
cadences--for eclecticism is part of his duty--sorting potatoes means a
better crop next year--let him assimilate whatever he finds highest of
the Indian ideal, so that he can use it with the cadences, fervently,
transcendentally, inevitably, furiously, in his symphonies, in his
operas, in his whistlings on the way to work, so that he can paint his
house with them--make them a part of his prayer-book--this is all
possible and necessary, if he is confident that they have a part in his
spiritual consciousness. With this assurance his music will have
everything it should of sincerity, nobility, strength, and beauty, no
matter how it sounds; and if, with this, he is true to none but the
highest of American ideals (that is, the ideals only that coincide with
his spiritual consciousness) his music will be true to itself and
incidentally American, and it will be so even after it is proved that
all our Indians came from Asia.
The man "born down to Babbitt's Corners," may find a deep appeal in the
simple but acute "Gospel Hymns of the New England camp meetin'," of a
generation or so ago. He finds in them--some of them--a vigor, a depth
of feeling, a natural-soil rhythm, a sincerity, emphatic but
inartistic, which, in spite of a vociferous sentimentality, carries him
nearer the "Christ of the people" than does the Te Deum of the greatest
cathedral. These tunes have, for him, a truer ring than many of those
groove-made, even-measured, monotonous, non-rhythmed, indoor-smelling,
priest-taught, academic, English or neo-English hymns (and
anthems)--well-written, well-harmonized things, well-voice-led,
well-counterpointed, well-corrected, and well O.K.'d, by well corrected
Mus. Bac. R.F.O.G.'s-personified sounds, correct and inevitable to
sight and hearing--in a word, those proper forms of stained-glass
beauty, which our over-drilled mechanisms-boy-choirs are limited to.
But, if the Yankee can reflect the fervency with which "his gospels"
were sung--the fervency of "Aunt Sarah," who scrubbed her life away,
for her brother's ten orphans, the fervency with which this woman,
after a fourteen-hour work day on the farm, would hitch up and drive
five miles, through the mud and rain to "prayer meetin'"--her one
articulate outlet for the fullness of her unselfish soul--if he can
reflect the fervency of such a spirit, he may find there a local color
that will do all the world good. If his music can but catch that
"spirit" by being a part with itself, it will come somewhere near his
ideal--and it will be American, too, perhaps nearer so than that of the
devotee of Indian or negro melody. In other words, if local color,
national color, any color, is a true pigment of the universal color, it
is a divine quality, it is a part of substance in art--not of manner.
The preceding illustrations are but attempts to show that whatever
excellence an artist sees in life, a community, in a people, or in any
valuable object or experience, if sincerely and intuitively reflected
in his work, and so he himself, is, in a way, a reflected part of that
excellence. Whether he be accepted or rejected, whether his music is
always played, or never played--all this has nothing to do with it--it
is true or false by his own measure. If we may be permitted to leave
out two words, and add a few more, a sentence of Hegel appears to sum
up this idea, "The universal need for expression in art lies in man's
rational impulse to exalt the inner ... world (i.e., the highest ideals
he sees in the inner life of others) together with what he finds in his
own life--into a spiritual consciousness for himself." The artist does
feel or does not feel that a sympathy has been approved by an artistic
intuition and so reflected in his work. Whether he feels this sympathy
is true or not in the final analysis, is a thing probably that no one
but he (the artist) knows but the truer he feels it, the more substance
it has, or as Sturt puts it, "his work is art, so long as he feels in
doing it as true artists feel, and so long as his object is akin to the
objects that true artists admire."
Dr. Griggs in an Essay on Debussy, [John C. Griggs, "Debussy" Yale
Review, 1914] asks if this composer's content is worthy the manner.
Perhaps so, perhaps not--Debussy himself, doubtless, could not give a
positive answer. He would better know how true his feeling and sympathy
was, and anyone else's personal opinion can be of but little help here.
We might offer the suggestion that Debussy's content would have been
worthier his manner, if he had hoed corn or sold newspapers for a
living, for in this way he might have gained a deeper vitality and
truer theme to sing at night and of a Sunday. Or we might say that what
substance there is, is "too coherent"--it is too clearly expressed in
the first thirty seconds. There you have the "whole fragment," a
translucent syllogism, but then the reality, the spirit, the substance
stops and the "form," the "perfume," the "manner," shimmer right along,
as the soapsuds glisten after one has finished washing. Or we might say
that his substance would have been worthier, if his adoration or
contemplation of Nature, which is often a part of it, and which rises
to great heights, as is felt for example, in La Mer, had been more the
quality of Thoreau's. Debussy's attitude toward Nature seems to have a
kind of sensual sensuousness underlying it, while Thoreau's is a kind
of spiritual sensuousness. It is rare to find a farmer or peasant whose
enthusiasm for the beauty in Nature finds outward expression to compare
with that of the city-man who comes out for a Sunday in the country,
but Thoreau is that rare country-man and Debussy the city-man with his
weekend flights into country-aesthetics. We would be inclined to say
that Thoreau leaned towards substance and Debussy towards manner.
5
There comes from Concord, an offer to every mind--the choice between
repose and truth, and God makes the offer. "Take which you
please ... between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the
love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first
philosophy, the first political party he meets," most likely his
father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation. Here is another
aspect of art-duality, but it is more drastic than ours, as it would
eliminate one part or the other. A man may aim as high as Beethoven or
as high as Richard Strauss. In the former case the shot may go far
below the mark; in truth, it has not been reached since that "thunder
storm of 1828" and there is little chance that it will be reached by
anyone living today, but that matters not, the shot will never rebound
and destroy the marksman. But, in the latter case, the shot may often
hit the mark, but as often rebound and harden, if not destroy, the
shooter's heart--even his soul. What matters it, men say, he will then
find rest, commodity, and reputation--what matters it--if he find there
but few perfect truths--what matters (men say)--he will find there
perfect media, those perfect instruments of getting in the way of
perfect truths.
This choice tells why Beethoven is always modern and Strauss always
mediaeval--try as he may to cover it up in new bottles. He has chosen
to capitalize a "talent"--he has chosen the complexity of media, the
shining hardness of externals, repose, against the inner, invisible
activity of truth. He has chosen the first creed, the easy creed, the
philosophy of his fathers, among whom he found a half-idiot-genius
(Nietzsche). His choice naturally leads him to glorify and to magnify
all kind of dull things--stretched-out geigermusik--which in turn
naturally leads him to "windmills" and "human heads on silver
platters." Magnifying the dull into the colossal, produces a kind of
"comfort"--the comfort of a woman who takes more pleasure in the fit of
fashionable clothes than in a healthy body--the kind of comfort that
has brought so many "adventures of baby-carriages at county
fairs"--"the sensation of Teddy bears, smoking their first
cigarette"--on the program of symphony orchestras of one hundred
performers,--the lure of the media--the means--not the end--but the
finish,--thus the failure to perceive that thoughts and memories of
childhood are too tender, and some of them too sacred to be worn
lightly on the sleeve. Life is too short for these one hundred men, to
say nothing of the composer and the "dress-circle," to spend an
afternoon in this way. They are but like the rest of us, and have only
the expectancy of the mortality-table to survive--perhaps only this
"piece." We cannot but feel that a too great desire for "repose"
accounts for such phenomena. A MS. score is brought to a
concertmaster--he may be a violinist--he is kindly disposed, he looks
it over, and casually fastens on a passage "that's bad for the fiddles,
it doesn't hang just right, write it like this, they will play it
better." But that one phrase is the germ of the whole thing. "Never
mind, it will fit the hand better this way--it will sound better." My
God! what has sound got to do with music! The waiter brings the only
fresh egg he has, but the man at breakfast sends it back because it
doesn't fit his eggcup. Why can't music go out in the same way it comes
in to a man, without having to crawl over a fence of sounds, thoraxes,
catguts, wire, wood, and brass? Consecutive-fifths are as harmless as
blue laws compared with the relentless tyranny of the "media." The
instrument!--there is the perennial difficulty--there is music's
limitations. Why must the scarecrow of the keyboard--the tyrant in
terms of the mechanism (be it Caruso or a Jew's-harp) stare into every
measure? Is it the composer's fault that man has only ten fingers? Why
can't a musical thought be presented as it is born--perchance "a
bastard of the slums," or a "daughter of a bishop"--and if it happens
to go better later on a bass-drum (than upon a harp) get a good
bass-drummer. [Footnote: The first movement (Emerson) of the music,
which is the cause of all these words, was first thought of (we
believe) in terms of a large orchestra, the second (Hawthorne) in terms
of a piano or a dozen pianos, the third (Alcotts)--of an organ (or
piano with voice or violin), and the last (Thoreau), in terms of
strings, colored possibly with a flute or horn.] That music must be
heard, is not essential--what it sounds like may not be what it is.
Perhaps the day is coming when music--believers will learn "that
silence is a solvent ... that gives us leave to be universal" rather than
personal.
Some fiddler was once honest or brave enough, or perhaps ignorant
enough, to say that Beethoven didn't know how to write for the
violin,--that, maybe, is one of the many reasons Beethoven is not a
Vieuxtemps. Another man says Beethoven's piano sonatas are not
pianistic--with a little effort, perhaps, Beethoven could have become a
Thalberg. His symphonies are perfect-truths and perfect for the
orchestra of 1820--but Mahler could have made them--possibly did make
them--we will say, "more perfect," as far as their media clothes are
concerned, and Beethoven is today big enough to rather like it. He is
probably in the same amiable state of mind that the Jesuit priest said,
"God was in," when He looked down on the camp ground and saw the priest
sleeping with a Congregational Chaplain. Or in the same state of mind
you'll be in when you look down and see the sexton keeping your
tombstone up to date. The truth of Joachim offsets the repose of
Paganini and Kubelik. The repose and reputation of a successful
pianist--(whatever that means) who plays Chopin so cleverly that he
covers up a sensuality, and in such a way that the purest-minded see
nothing but sensuous beauty in it, which, by the way, doesn't disturb
him as much as the size of his income-tax--the repose and fame of this
man is offset by the truth and obscurity of the village organist who
plays Lowell Mason and Bach with such affection that he would give his
life rather than lose them. The truth and courage of this organist, who
risks his job, to fight the prejudice of the congregation, offset the
repose and large salary of a more celebrated choirmaster, who holds his
job by lowering his ideals, who is willing to let the organ smirk under
an insipid, easy-sounding barcarolle for the offertory, who is willing
to please the sentimental ears of the music committee (and its
wives)--who is more willing to observe these forms of politeness than
to stand up for a stronger and deeper music of simple devotion, and for
a service of a spiritual unity, the kind of thing that Mr. Bossitt, who
owns the biggest country place, the biggest bank, and the biggest
"House of God" in town (for is it not the divine handiwork of his
own-pocketbook)--the kind of music that this man, his wife, and his
party (of property right in pews) can't stand because it isn't "pretty."
The doctrine of this "choice" may be extended to the distinction
between literal-enthusiasm and natural-enthusiasm (right or wrong
notes, good or bad tones against good or bad interpretation, good or
bad sentiment) or between observation and introspection, or to the
distinction between remembering and dreaming. Strauss remembers,
Beethoven dreams. We see this distinction also in Goethe's confusion of
the moral with the intellectual. There is no such confusion in
Beethoven--to him they are one. It is told, and the story is so well
known that we hesitate to repeat it here, that both these men were
standing in the street one day when the Emperor drove by--Goethe, like
the rest of the crowd, bowed and uncovered--but Beethoven stood bolt
upright, and refused even to salute, saying: "Let him bow to us, for
ours is a nobler empire." Goethe's mind knew this was true, but his
moral courage was not instinctive.
This remembering faculty of "repose," throws the mind in unguarded
moments quite naturally towards "manner" and thus to the many things
the media can do. It brings on an itching to over-use them--to be
original (if anyone will tell what that is) with nothing but numbers to
be original with. We are told that a conductor (of the orchestra) has
written a symphony requiring an orchestra of one hundred and fifty men.
If his work perhaps had one hundred and fifty valuable ideas, the one
hundred and fifty men might be justifiable--but as it probably contains
not more than a dozen, the composer may be unconsciously ashamed of
them, and glad to cover them up under a hundred and fifty men. A man
may become famous because he is able to eat nineteen dinners a day, but
posterity will decorate his stomach, not his brain.
Manner breeds a cussed-cleverness--only to be clever--a satellite of
super-industrialism, and perhaps to be witty in the bargain, not the
wit in mother-wit, but a kind of indoor, artificial, mental arrangement
of things quickly put together and which have been learned and
studied--it is of the material and stays there, while humor is of the
emotional and of the approaching spiritual. Even Dukas, and perhaps
other Gauls, in their critical heart of hearts, may admit that "wit" in
music, is as impossible as "wit" at a funeral. The wit is evidence of
its lack. Mark Twain could be humorous at the death of his dearest
friend, but in such a way as to put a blessing into the heart of the
bereaved. Humor in music has the same possibilities. But its quantity
has a serious effect on its quality, "inverse ratio" is a good formula
to adopt here. Comedy has its part, but wit never. Strauss is at his
best in these lower rooms, but his comedy reminds us more of the
physical fun of Lever rather than "comedy in the Meredithian sense" as
Mason suggests. Meredith is a little too deep or too subtle for
Strauss--unless it be granted that cynicism is more a part of comedy
than a part of refined-insult. Let us also remember that Mr. Disston,
not Mr. Strauss, put the funny notes in the bassoon. A symphony written
only to amuse and entertain is likely to amuse only the writer--and him
not long after the check is cashed.
"Genius is always ascetic and piety and love," thus Emerson reinforces
"God's offer of this choice" by a transcendental definition. The moment
a famous violinist refused "to appear" until he had received his
check,--at that moment, precisely (assuming for argument's sake, that
this was the first time that materialism had the ascendancy in this
man's soul) at that moment he became but a man of
"talent"--incidentally, a small man and a small violinist, regardless
of how perfectly he played, regardless to what heights of emotion he
stirred his audience, regardless of the sublimity of his artistic and
financial success.
d'Annunzio, it is told, becoming somewhat discouraged at the result of
some of his Fiume adventures said: "We are the only Idealists left."
This remark may have been made in a moment of careless impulse, but if
it is taken at its face value, the moment it was made that moment his
idealism started downhill. A grasp at monopoly indicates that a sudden
shift has taken place from the heights where genius may be found, to
the lower plains of talent. The mind of a true idealist is great enough
to know that a monopoly of idealism or of wheat is a thing nature does
not support.
A newspaper music column prints an incident (so how can we assume that
it is not true?) of an American violinist who called on Max Reger, to
tell him how much he (the American) appreciated his music. Reger gives
him a hopeless look and cries: "What! a musician and not speak German!"
At that moment, by the clock, regardless of how great a genius he may
have been before that sentence was uttered--at that moment he became
but a man of "talent." "For the man of talent affects to call his
transgressions of the laws of sense trivial and to count them nothing
considered with his devotion to his art." His art never taught him
prejudice or to wear only one eye. "His art is less for every deduction
from his holiness and less for every defect of common sense." And this
common sense has a great deal to do with this distinguishing difference
of Emerson's between genius and talent, repose and truth, and between
all evidences of substance and manner in art. Manner breeds
partialists. "Is America a musical nation?"--if the man who is ever
asking this question would sit down and think something over he might
find less interest in asking it--he might possibly remember that all
nations are more musical than any nation, especially the nation that
pays the most--and pays the most eagerly, for anything, after it has
been professionally-rubber stamped. Music may be yet unborn. Perhaps no
music has ever been written or heard. Perhaps the birth of art will
take place at the moment, in which the last man, who is willing to make
a living out of art is gone and gone forever. In the history of this
youthful world the best product that human-beings can boast of is
probably, Beethoven--but, maybe, even his art is as nothing in
comparison with the future product of some coal-miner's soul in the
forty-first century. And the same man who is ever asking about the most
musical nation, is ever discovering the most musical man of the most
musical nation. When particularly hysterical he shouts, "I have found
him! Smith Grabholz--the one great American poet,--at last, here is the
Moses the country has been waiting for"--(of course we all know that
the country has not been waiting for anybody--and we have many Moses
always with us). But the discoverer keeps right on shouting "Here is
the one true American poetry, I pronounce it the work of a genius. I
predict for him the most brilliant career--for his is an art
that...--for his is a soul that ... for his is a..." and Grabholz is
ruined;--but ruined, not alone, by this perennial discoverer of pearls
in any oyster-shell that treats him the best, but ruined by his own
(Grabholz's) talent,--for genius will never let itself be discovered by
"a man." Then the world may ask "Can the one true national "this" or
"that" be killed by its own discoverer?" "No," the country replies,
"but each discovery is proof of another impossibility." It is a sad
fact that the one true man and the one true art will never behave as
they should except in the mind of the partialist whom God has
forgotten. But this matters little to him (the man)--his business is
good--for it is easy to sell the future in terms of the past--and there
are always some who will buy anything. The individual usually "gains"
if he is willing to but lean on "manner." The evidence of this is quite
widespread, for if the discoverer happens to be in any other line of
business his sudden discoveries would be just as important--to him. In
fact, the theory of substance and manner in art and its related
dualisms, "repose and truth, genius and talent," &c., may find
illustration in many, perhaps most, of the human activities. And when
examined it (the illustration) is quite likely to show how "manner" is
always discovering partisans. For example, enthusiastic discoveries of
the "paragon" are common in politics--an art to some. These
revelations, in this profession are made easy by the pre-election
discovering-leaders of the people. And the genius who is discovered,
forthwith starts his speeches of "talent"--though they are hardly
that--they are hardly more than a string of subplatitudes,
square-looking, well-rigged things that almost everybody has seen,
known, and heard since Rome or man fell. Nevertheless these signs of
perfect manner, these series of noble sentiments that the "noble" never
get off, are forcibly, clearly, and persuasively handed
out--eloquently, even beautifully expressed, and with such personal
charm, magnetism, and strength, that their profound messages speed
right through the minds and hearts, without as much as spattering the
walls, and land right square in the middle of the listener's vanity.
For all this is a part of manner and its quality is of splendor--for
manner is at times a good bluff but substance a poor one and knows it.
The discovered one's usual and first great outburst is probably the
greatest truth that he ever utters. Fearlessly standing, he looks
straight into the eyes of the populace and with a strong ringing voice
(for strong voices and strong statesmanship are inseparable) and with
words far more eloquent than the following, he sings "This honor is
greater than I deserve but duty calls me--(what, not stated)... If
elected, I shall be your servant" ... (for, it is told, that he
believes in modesty,--that he has even boasted that he is the most
modest man in the country)... Thus he has the right to shout, "First,
last and forever I am for the people. I am against all bosses. I have
no sympathy for politicians. I am for strict economy, liberal
improvements and justice! I am also for the--ten commandments" (his
intuitive political sagacity keeps him from mentioning any particular
one).--But a sublime height is always reached in his perorations. Here
we learn that he believes in honesty--(repeat "honesty");--we are even
allowed to infer that he is one of the very few who know that there is
such a thing; and we also learn that since he was a little boy
(barefoot) his motto has been "Do Right,"--he swerves not from the
right!--he believes in nothing but the right; (to him--everything is
right!--if it gets him elected); but cheers invariably stop this great
final truth (in brackets) from rising to animate expression. Now all of
these translucent axioms are true (are not axioms always true?),--as
far as manner is concerned. In other words, the manner functions
perfectly. But where is the divine substance? This is not there--why
should it be--if it were he might not be there. "Substance" is not
featured in this discovery. For the truth of substance is sometimes
silence, sometimes ellipses,--and the latter if supplied might turn
some of the declarations above into perfect truths,--for instance
"first and last and forever I am for the people ('s votes). I'm against
all bosses (against me). I have no sympathy for (rival) politicians,"
etc., etc. But these tedious attempts at comedy should stop,--they're
too serious,--besides the illustration may be a little hard on a few,
the minority (the non-people) though not on the many, the majority (the
people)! But even an assumed parody may help to show what a power
manner is for reaction unless it is counterbalanced and then saturated
by the other part of the duality. Thus it appears that all there is to
this great discovery is that one good politician has discovered another
good politician. For manner has brought forth its usual talent;--for
manner cannot discover the genius who has discarded platitudes--the
genius who has devised a new and surpassing order for mankind, simple
and intricate enough, abstract and definite enough, locally impractical
and universally practical enough, to wipe out the need for further
discoveries of "talent" and incidentally the discoverer's own fortune
and political "manner." Furthermore, he (this genius) never will be
discovered until the majority-spirit, the common-heart, the
human-oversoul, the source of all great values, converts all talent
into genius, all manner into substance--until the direct expression of
the mind and soul of the majority, the divine right of all
consciousness, social, moral, and spiritual, discloses the one true art
and thus finally discovers the one true leader--even itself:--then no
leaders, no politicians, no manner, will hold sway--and no more
speeches will be heard.
The intensity today, with which techniques and media are organized and
used, tends to throw the mind away from a "common sense" and towards
"manner" and thus to resultant weak and mental states--for example, the
Byronic fallacy--that one who is full of turbid feeling about himself
is qualified to be some sort of an artist. In this relation "manner"
also leads some to think that emotional sympathy for self is as true a
part of art as sympathy for others; and a prejudice in favor of the
good and bad of one personality against the virtue of many
personalities. It may be that when a poet or a whistler becomes
conscious that he is in the easy path of any particular idiom,--that he
is helplessly prejudiced in favor of any particular means of
expression,--that his manner can be catalogued as modern or
classic,--that he favors a contrapuntal groove, a sound-coloring one, a
sensuous one, a successful one, or a melodious one (whatever that
means),--that his interests lie in the French school or the German
school, or the school of Saturn,--that he is involved in this
particular "that" or that particular "this," or in any particular brand
of emotional complexes,--in a word, when he becomes conscious that his
style is "his personal own,"--that it has monopolized a geographical
part of the world's sensibilities, then it may be that the value of his
substance is not growing,--that it even may have started on its way
backwards,--it may be that he is trading an inspiration for a bad habit
and finally that he is reaching fame, permanence, or some other
under-value, and that he is getting farther and farther from a perfect
truth. But, on the contrary side of the picture, it is not unreasonable
to imagine that if he (this poet, composer, and laborer) is open to all
the overvalues within his reach,--if he stands unprotected from all the
showers of the absolute which may beat upon him,--if he is willing to
use or learn to use, or at least if he is not afraid of trying to use,
whatever he can, of any and all lessons of the infinite that humanity
has received and thrown to man,--that nature has exposed and
sacrificed, that life and death have translated--if he accepts all and
sympathizes with all, is influenced by all, whether consciously or
sub-consciously, drastically or humbly, audibly or inaudibly, whether
it be all the virtue of Satan or the only evil of Heaven--and all,
even, at one time, even in one chord,--then it may be that the value of
his substance, and its value to himself, to his art, to all art, even
to the Common Soul is growing and approaching nearer and nearer to
perfect truths--whatever they are and wherever they may be.
Again, a certain kind of manner-over-influence may be caused by a
group-disease germ. The over-influence by, the over-admiration of, and
the over-association with a particular artistic personality or a
particular type or group of personalities tends to produce equally
favorable and unfavorable symptoms, but the unfavorable ones seem to be
more contagious. Perhaps the impulse remark of some famous man (whose
name we forget) that he "loved music but hated musicians," might be
followed (with some good results) at least part of the time. To see the
sun rise, a man has but to get up early, and he can always have Bach in
his pocket. We hear that Mr. Smith or Mr. Morgan, etc., et al. design
to establish a "course at Rome," to raise the standard of American
music, (or the standard of American composers--which is it?) but
possibly the more our composer accepts from his patrons "et al." the
less he will accept from himself. It may be possible that a day in a
"Kansas wheat field" will do more for him than three years in Rome. It
may be, that many men--perhaps some of genius--(if you won't admit that
all are geniuses) have been started on the downward path of subsidy by
trying to write a thousand dollar prize poem or a ten thousand dollar
prize opera. How many masterpieces have been prevented from blossoming
in this way? A cocktail will make a man eat more, but will not give him
a healthy, normal appetite (if he had not that already). If a bishop
should offer a "prize living" to the curate who will love God the
hardest for fifteen days, whoever gets the prize would love God the
least. Such stimulants, it strikes us, tend to industrialize art,
rather than develop a spiritual sturdiness--a sturdiness which Mr.
Sedgwick says [footnote: H. D. Sedgwick. The New American Type.
Riverside Press.] "shows itself in a close union between spiritual life
and the ordinary business of life," against spiritual feebleness which
"shows itself in the separation of the two." If one's spiritual
sturdiness is congenital and somewhat perfect he is not only conscious
that this separation has no part in his own soul, but he does not feel
its existence in others. He does not believe there is such a thing. But
perfection in this respect is rare. And for the most of us, we believe,
this sturdiness would be encouraged by anything that will keep or help
us keep a normal balance between the spiritual life and the ordinary
life. If for every thousand dollar prize a potato field be substituted,
so that these candidates of "Clio" can dig a little in real life,
perhaps dig up a natural inspiration, arts--air might be a little
clearer--a little freer from certain traditional delusions, for
instance, that free thought and free love always go to the same
cafe--that atmosphere and diligence are synonymous. To quote Thoreau
incorrectly: "When half-Gods talk, the Gods walk!" Everyone should have
the opportunity of not being over-influenced.
Again, this over-influence by and over-insistence upon "manner" may
finally lead some to believe "that manner for manner's sake is a basis
of music." Someone is quoted as saying that "ragtime is the true
American music." Anyone will admit that it is one of the many true,
natural, and, nowadays, conventional means of expression. It is an
idiom, perhaps a "set or series of colloquialisms," similar to those
that have added through centuries and through natural means, some
beauty to all languages. Every language is but the evolution of slang,
and possibly the broad "A" in Harvard may have come down from the
"butcher of Southwark." To examine ragtime rhythms and the syncopations
of Schumann or of Brahms seems to the writer to show how much alike
they are not. Ragtime, as we hear it, is, of course, more (but not much
more) than a natural dogma of shifted accents, or a mixture of shifted
and minus accents. It is something like wearing a derby hat on the back
of the head, a shuffling lilt of a happy soul just let out of a Baptist
Church in old Alabama. Ragtime has its possibilities. But it does not
"represent the American nation" any more than some fine old senators
represent it. Perhaps we know it now as an ore before it has been
refined into a product. It may be one of nature's ways of giving art
raw material. Time will throw its vices away and weld its virtues into
the fabric of our music. It has its uses as the cruet on the
boarding-house table has, but to make a meal of tomato ketchup and
horse-radish, to plant a whole farm with sunflowers, even to put a
sunflower into every bouquet, would be calling nature something worse
than a politician. Mr. Daniel Gregory Mason, whose wholesome influence,
by the way, is doing as much perhaps for music in America as American
music is, amusingly says: "If indeed the land of Lincoln and Emerson
has degenerated until nothing remains of it but a 'jerk and rattle,'
then we, at least, are free to repudiate this false patriotism of 'my
Country right or wrong,' to insist that better than bad music is no
music, and to let our beloved art subside finally under the clangor of
the subway gongs and automobile horns, dead, but not dishonored." And
so may we ask: Is it better to sing inadequately of the "leaf on Walden
floating," and die "dead but not dishonored," or to sing adequately of
the "cherry on the cocktail," and live forever?
6
If anyone has been strong enough to escape these rocks--this "Scylla
and Charybdis,"--has survived these wrong choices, these under-values
with their prizes, Bohemias and heroes, is not such a one in a better
position, is he not abler and freer to "declare himself and so to love
his cause so singly that he will cleave to it, and forsake all else?
What is this cause for the American composer but the utmost musical
beauty that he, as an individual man, with his own qualities and
defects, is capable of understanding and striving towards?--forsaking
all else except those types of musical beauty that come home to him,"
[footnote: Contemporary Composers, D. G. Mason, Macmillan Co., N. Y.]
and that his spiritual conscience intuitively approves.
"It matters not one jot, provided this course of personal loyalty to a
cause be steadfastly pursued, what the special characteristics of the
style of the music may be to which one gives one's devotion."
[footnote: Contemporary Composers, D. G. Mason, Macmillan Co., N. Y.]
This, if over-translated, may be made to mean, what we have been trying
to say--that if your interest, enthusiasm, and devotion on the side of
substance and truth, are of the stuff to make you so sincere that you
sweat--to hell with manner and repose! Mr. Mason is responsible for too
many young minds, in their planting season to talk like this, to be as
rough, or to go as far, but he would probably admit that, broadly
speaking--some such way, i.e., constantly recognizing this ideal
duality in art, though not the most profitable road for art to travel,
is almost its only way out to eventual freedom and salvation. Sidney
Lanier, in a letter to Bayard Taylor writes: "I have so many fair
dreams and hopes about music in these days (1875). It is gospel whereof
the people are in great need. As Christ gathered up the Ten
Commandments and redistilled them into the clear liquid of the wondrous
eleventh--love God utterly and thy neighbor as thyself--so I think the
time will come when music rightly developed to its now little forseen
grandeur will be found to be a late revelation of all gospels in one."
Could the art of music, or the art of anything have a more profound
reason for being than this? A conception unlimited by the narrow names
of Christian, Pagan, Jew, or Angel! A vision higher and deeper than art
itself!
7
The humblest composer will not find true humility in aiming low--he
must never be timid or afraid of trying to express that which he feels
is far above his power to express, any more than he should be afraid of
breaking away, when necessary, from easy first sounds, or afraid of
admitting that those half truths that come to him at rare intervals,
are half true, for instance, that all art galleries contain
masterpieces, which are nothing more than a history of art's beautiful
mistakes. He should never fear of being called a high-brow--but not the
kind in Prof. Brander Matthews' definition. John L. Sullivan was a
"high-brow" in his art. A high-brow can always whip a low-brow.
If he "truly seeks," he "will surely find" many things to sustain him.
He can go to a part of Alcott's philosophy--"that all occupations of
man's body and soul in their diversity come from but one mind and
soul!" If he feels that to subscribe to all of the foregoing and then
submit, though not as evidence, the work of his own hands is
presumptuous, let him remember that a man is not always responsible for
the wart on his face, or a girl for the bloom on her cheek, and as they
walk out of a Sunday for an airing, people will see them--but they must
have the air. He can remember with Plotinus, "that in every human soul
there is the ray of the celestial beauty," and therefore every human
outburst may contain a partial ray. And he can believe that it is
better to go to the plate and strike out than to hold the bench down,
for by facing the pitcher, he may then know the umpire better, and
possibly see a new parabola. His presumption, if it be that, may be but
a kind of courage juvenal sings about, and no harm can then be done
either side. "Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator."
8
To divide by an arbitrary line something that cannot be divided is a
process that is disturbing to some. Perhaps our deductions are not as
inevitable as they are logical, which suggests that they are not
"logic." An arbitrary assumption is never fair to all any of the time,
or to anyone all the time. Many will resent the abrupt separation that
a theory of duality in music suggests and say that these general
subdivisions are too closely inter-related to be labeled
decisively--"this or that." There is justice in this criticism, but our
answer is that it is better to be short on the long than long on the
short. In such an abstruse art as music it is easy for one to point to
this as substance and to that as manner. Some will hold and it is
undeniable--in fact quite obvious--that manner has a great deal to do
with the beauty of substance, and that to make a too arbitrary
division, or distinction between them, is to interfere, to some extent,
with an art's beauty and unity. There is a great deal of truth in this
too. But on the other hand, beauty in music is too often confused with
something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair. Many sounds
that we are used to, do not bother us, and for that reason, we are
inclined to call them beautiful. Frequently,--possibly almost
invariably,--analytical and impersonal tests will show, we believe,
that when a new or unfamiliar work is accepted as beautiful on its
first hearing, its fundamental quality is one that tends to put the
mind to sleep. A narcotic is not always unnecessary, but it is seldom a
basis of progress,--that is, wholesome evolution in any creative
experience. This kind of progress has a great deal to do with
beauty--at least in its deeper emotional interests, if not in its moral
values. (The above is only a personal impression, but it is based on
carefully remembered instances, during a period of about fifteen or
twenty years.) Possibly the fondness for individual utterance may throw
out a skin-deep arrangement, which is readily accepted as
beautiful--formulae that weaken rather than toughen up the
musical-muscles. If the composer's sincere conception of his art and of
its functions and ideals, coincide to such an extent with these
groove-colored permutations of tried out progressions in expediency,
that he can arrange them over and over again to his transcendent
delight--has he or has he not been drugged with an overdose of
habit-forming sounds? And as a result do not the muscles of his
clientele become flabbier and flabbier until they give way altogether
and find refuge only in a seasoned opera box--where they can see
without thinking? And unity is too generally conceived of, or too
easily accepted as analogous to form, and form (as analogous) to
custom, and custom to habit, and habit may be one of the parents of
custom and form, and there are all kinds of parents. Perhaps all unity
in art, at its inception, is half-natural and half-artificial but time
insists, or at least makes us, or inclines to make us feel that it is
all natural. It is easy for us to accept it as such. The "unity of
dress" for a man at a ball requires a collar, yet he could dance better
without it. Coherence, to a certain extent, must bear some relation to
the listener's subconscious perspective. For example, a critic has to
listen to a thousand concerts a year, in which there is much
repetition, not only of the same pieces, but the same formal relations
of tones, cadences, progressions, etc. There is present a certain
routine series of image-necessity-stimulants, which he doesn't seem to
need until they disappear. Instead of listening to music, he listens
around it. And from this subconscious viewpoint, he inclines perhaps
more to the thinking about than thinking in music. If he could go into
some other line of business for a year or so perhaps his perspective
would be more naturally normal. The unity of a sonata movement has long
been associated with its form, and to a greater extent than is
necessary. A first theme, a development, a second in a related key and
its development, the free fantasia, the recapitulation, and so on, and
over again. Mr. Richter or Mr. Parker may tell us that all this is
natural, for it is based on the classic-song form, but in spite of your
teachers a vague feeling sometimes creeps over you that the form-nature
of the song has been stretched out into deformity. Some claim for
Tchaikowsky that his clarity and coherence of design is unparalleled
(or some such word) in works for the orchestra. That depends, it seems
to us, on how far repetition is an essential part of clarity and
coherence. We know that butter comes from cream--but how long must we
watch the "churning arm!" If nature is not enthusiastic about
explanation, why should Tschaikowsky be? Beethoven had to churn, to
some extent, to make his message carry. He had to pull the ear, hard
and in the same place and several times, for the 1790 ear was tougher
than the 1890 one. But the "great Russian weeper" might have spared us.
To Emerson, "unity and the over-soul, or the common-heart, are
synonymous." Unity is at least nearer to these than to solid geometry,
though geometry may be all unity.
But to whatever unpleasantness the holding to this theory of duality
brings us, we feel that there is a natural law underneath it all, and
like all laws of nature, a liberal interpretation is the one nearest
the truth. What part of these supplements are opposites? What part of
substance is manner? What part of this duality is polarity? These
questions though not immaterial may be disregarded, if there be a
sincere appreciation (intuition is always sincere) of the "divine"
spirit of the thing. Enthusiasm for, and recognition of these higher
over these lower values will transform a destructive iconoclasm into
creation, and a mere devotion into consecration--a consecration which,
like Amphion's music, will raise the Walls of Thebes.
9
Assuming, and then granting, that art-activity can be transformed or
led towards an eventual consecration, by recognizing and using in their
true relation, as much as one can, these higher and lower dual
values--and that the doing so is a part, if not the whole of our old
problem of paralleling or approving in art the highest attributes,
moral and spiritual, one sees in life--if you will grant all this, let
us offer a practical suggestion--a thing that one who has imposed the
foregoing should try to do just out of common decency, though it be but
an attempt, perhaps, to make his speculations less speculative, and to
beat off metaphysics.
All, men-bards with a divine spark, and bards without, feel the need at
times of an inspiration from without, "the breath of another soul to
stir our inner flame," especially when we are in pursuit of a part of
that "utmost musical beauty," that we are capable of
understanding--when we are breathlessly running to catch a glimpse of
that unforeseen grandeur of Mr. Lanier's dream. In this beauty and
grandeur perhaps marionettes and their souls have a part--though how
great their part is, we hear, is still undetermined; but it is morally
certain that, at times, a part with itself must be some of those
greater contemplations that have been caught in the "World's Soul," as
it were, and nourished for us there in the soil of its literature.
If an interest in, and a sympathy for, the thought-visions of men like
Charles Kingsley, Marcus Aurelius, Whit tier, Montaigne, Paul of
Tarsus, Robert Browning, Pythagoras, Channing, Milton, Sophocles,
Swedenborg, Thoreau, Francis of Assisi, Wordsworth, Voltaire, Garrison,
Plutarch, Ruskin, Ariosto, and all kindred spirits and souls of great
measure, from David down to Rupert Brooke,--if a study of the thought
of such men creates a sympathy, even a love for them and their
ideal-part, it is certain that this, however inadequately expressed, is
nearer to what music was given man for, than a devotion to "Tristan's
sensual love of Isolde," to the "Tragic Murder of a Drunken Duke," or
to the sad thoughts of a bathtub when the water is being let out. It
matters little here whether a man who paints a picture of a useless
beautiful landscape imperfectly is a greater genius than the man who
paints a useful bad smell perfectly.
It is not intended in this suggestion that inspirations coming from the
higher planes should be limited to any particular thought or work, as
the mind receives it. The plan rather embraces all that should go with
an expression of the composite-value. It is of the underlying spirit,
the direct unrestricted imprint of one soul on another, a portrait, not
a photograph of the personality--it is the ideal part that would be
caught in this canvas. It is a sympathy for "substance"--the over-value
together with a consciousness that there must be a lower value--the
"Demosthenic part of the Philippics"--the "Ciceronic part of the
Catiline," the sublimity, against the vileness of Rousseau's
Confessions. It is something akin to, but something more than these
predominant partial tones of Hawthorne--"the grand old countenance of
Homer; the decrepit form, but vivid face of Aesop; the dark presence of
Dante; the wild Ariosto; Rabelais' smile of deep-wrought mirth; the
profound, pathetic humor of Cervantes; the all-glorious Shakespeare;
Spenser, meet guest for allegoric structure; the severe divinity of
Milton; and Bunyan, molded of humblest clay, but instinct with
celestial fire."
There are communities now, partly vanished, but cherished and sacred,
scattered throughout this world of ours, in which freedom of thought
and soul, and even of body, have been fought for. And we believe that
there ever lives in that part of the over-soul, native to them, the
thoughts which these freedom-struggles have inspired. America is not
too young to have its divinities, and its place legends. Many of those
"Transcendent Thoughts" and "Visions" which had their birth beneath our
Concord elms--messages that have brought salvation to many listening
souls throughout the world--are still growing, day by day, to greater
and greater beauty--are still showing clearer and clearer man's way to
God!
No true composer will take his substance from another finite being--but
there are times, when he feels that his self-expression needs some
liberation from at least a part of his own soul. At such times, shall
he not better turn to those greater souls, rather than to the external,
the immediate, and the "Garish Day"?
The strains of one man may fall far below the course of those Phaetons
of Concord, or of the Aegean Sea, or of Westmorland--but the greater
the distance his music falls away, the more reason that some greater
man shall bring his nearer those higher spheres.
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