Just as the average programmist is, on the whole, more generous in
his appreciations than the average absolutist, so he has done more
to clear up the darkness that envelops too much of the subject. From
this side there has come some good æsthetic discussion; from the
other side there has come little but dogged and tiresome repetition
of old catch-words, without any serious attempt to grapple with the
psychology of the question as a whole. In the latest edition of Grove's
Dictionary of Music, Mr. Fuller Maitland gives us an example of this
method of "killing Kruger with your mouth." "It is only natural," he
says, "that programme music should for the time being be more popular
with the masses than absolute music, since the majority of people
like having something else to think of while they are listening to
music." The last clause I take to be purely random assertion; there
are millions of people--even among the masses--who prefer abstract
ear-tickling that saves them the trouble of thinking of anything else
while they are listening. Nay, one of the complaints of the untutored
amateur against programme music is that it is so hard to follow--that
he cannot sit quietly in his seat and just listen to the music as it
comes, but must needs first read and pre-digest a long story out of
the analytical programme. Minds of this kind--and I have met with many
of them--protest simply because they _have_ to think of something
else while the notes are being poured into their ears. This rather
lame device is one way of disparaging programme music--the device
of implying that it is most popular with the "masses," with people,
that is, of limited musical culture--which is of course not true. The
other way of denigrating it is the time-honoured one of an appeal
to the past; it is the æsthetic equivalent of the frequent appeal
to the Agnostic to remember what he "learned at his mother's knee."
"In the great line of the classic composers," Mr. Maitland tells us,
"programme music holds the very slightest place; an occasional _jeu
d'esprit_, like Bach's _Capriccio on the Departure of a Brother_,
or Haydn's 'Farewell' Symphony, may occur in their works, but we
cannot imagine these men, or the others of the great line, seriously
undertaking, as the business of their lives, the composition of works
intended to illustrate a definite programme. Beethoven is sometimes
quoted as the great introducer of illustrative music, in virtue of
the Pastoral Symphony, and of a few other specimens of what, by a
stretch of terms, may be called programme music. But the value he
set upon it as compared with absolute music may be fairly gauged by
seeing what relation his 'illustrative' works bear to the others. Of
the nine symphonies, only one has anything like a programme; and the
master is careful to guard against misconceptions even here, since
he superscribes the whole symphony, 'More the expression of feeling
than painting.' Of the pianoforte sonatas, op. 90 alone has a definite
programme; and in the 'Muss es sein?' of the string quartet, op. 135,
the natural inflections of the speaking voice, in question and reply,
have obviously given purely musical suggestions which are carried out
on purely musical lines."
To all this there are a good many objections to be raised. (1) In
Bach's time programme music, as we understand it, simply could _not_ be
written. There was not the modern orchestra with the modern orchestral
technique; you could no more delineate _Francesca da Rimini_ with the
instruments of Bach's time than you could adequately suggest a rainbow
with a piece of paper and a lead pencil. Further, for the expression
of a number of things that we now express in music, there were needed
(_a_) the modern enlargement of the musical vocabulary, and (_b_)
the "fertilisation of music by poetry," on which Wagner rightly laid
such stress. But in any case Bach's neglect of programme music is no
argument against the form. We might as well say that the fact that he
wrote no operas is a proof of the natural and perpetual inferiority of
opera. (2) Mr. Maitland passes over the fact that, imperfect as their
means of utterance were, many old composers _were_ frequently obsessed
by the desire to write something else than absolute music. He says
nothing of the attempts of Muffat, of the composers represented in the
Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, of Jannequin, of Buxtehude, of Frescobaldi,
of Hermann, of Gombert, of Carlo Farino, of Frohberger, of Kuhnau,
of Couperin, of Rameau, of Dittersdorf, and others, of some of whom
I shall speak shortly.[19] There has always been a strong desire
to write "illustrative" music, but for a long time it was checked
by the imperfection of the media through which it had to work. (3)
He ignores Haydn's excursions into "illustrative" music in the
_Creation_ and the _Seasons_--the representation of chaos, of the
passage from winter to spring, of the dawn, of the peasants' joyful
feelings at the rich harvest, of the thick clouds at the commencement
of winter; he says nothing of the "illustrative" symphonies or parts
of symphonies and other works of Haydn--"the morning," "midday,"
"the evening," "the tempest," "the hunt," "the philosopher," "the
hen," "the bear," and so on. (4) He says nothing of the manner in
which the overture, both operatic and non-operatic, became more and
more "illustrative" at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of
the nineteenth century; he does not refer to the works of Beethoven
in which the "illustrative" function is very apparent, such as the
_Battle of_ _Vittoria_, the _Leonora_ overtures, the _Egmont_, the
_Coriolan_, the _Ruins of Athens_, the _King Stephen_, and so on. (5)
He blindly accepts Beethoven's nonsensical remark about the Pastoral
Symphony being "more the expression of feeling than painting." The
imitations of the nightingale, the cuckoo, and the quail may or may
not be a Beethoven joke; but if they are not specimens of "painting"
in music it is difficult to say what deserves that epithet. If the
peasants' merrymaking, again, the brawl, the falling of the raindrops,
the rushing of the wind, the storm, the flow of the brook--if these
are not "painting" but merely the "expression of feeling," well, so is
the hanging of Till Eulenspiegel, the death-shudder of Don Juan, and
the battle in _Ein Heldenleben_. (6) Even supposing that Beethoven's
words could be taken literally, even supposing that in his music he
had not given them contradiction after contradiction, still this would
not settle the matter. Music did not end with Beethoven, and he might
have detested "illustrative" music to his heart's content without that
fact being an argument against the writing of it by other people. It
is curious that the men who always tell admiringly the stories of
Beethoven breaking through the fetters in which his contemporaries
would have bound him, should try to use the same Beethoven as a barrier
against all future innovations. _He_ was great because he refused to
write in any way but his own; _we_ are to be great by submitting our
convictions to those of a hundred years ago. With all respect, and
without any irreverent desire to pluck the beards of our fathers, we
are unable to regard the question as finally settled by what Beethoven
said. He himself would surely have been the last man to play the
ineffective Canute, and dictate to the art the exact spot on the beach
to which its flood might rise. There is no evidence that he meant his
words to be a judicial condemnation of anybody or anything; there is no
evidence that he had ever given much critical thought to the question;
and it is quite certain that no matter how much he had thought about it
he could not have seen in it all that we, with our later experience,
can see.