Before doing this, however, let us briefly touch upon one or two other
main issues.
The first point I lay stress on is this, that "form" in programme
music cannot mean the same thing as form in absolute music; and for
this reason. So long as you work in one medium alone, the form is
controlled simply by the necessities and potentialities of that medium.
In a symphony or a fugue you have to consider nothing but the nature
of absolute music; in the drama, you have to worry about no problems
except those that lie in the nature of drama. But as soon as you begin
to work in a form that is a blend of the two, each of them wants to
pull the other along its own road, and a compromise has to be arrived
at. This is why it is easier to satisfy our sense of form in a drama
or a symphony than in an opera or a symphonic poem. We see the same
thing in prose literature. If you are going to write a pure romance,
concerned with nothing but romance, your course is fairly easy. If
you are going to write a treatise on society, again, you are bound by
no laws but those pertaining to this kind of work. But if you want
to combine the two--if you want to write a novel that shall not only
depict character but also enforce a sociological lesson, as in Zola's
novels or some of the stories of the American Frank Norris, then
there is a wrench between the two tendencies. The sociology is apt to
spoil the fiction, and the fiction the sociology. So it is in poetic
music; the poetry wants the music to go _its_ way, the music insists
on the poetry going _its_ way. In the case of the sociological novel,
what really happens is this. We admit that Zola's _Débâcle_ is not so
artistic a piece of work as, say, R. L. Stevenson's _Prince Otto_; but
we make allowances; we give up a little purely æsthetic pleasure in
consideration of getting a great deal of another kind of pleasure--that
of seeing a bigger picture of a more real life put on the canvas. If we
can only get the larger human quality in fiction by giving up a little
of the æsthetic gratification that comes from perfect form--well, being
reasonable creatures, there are times when we will cheerfully accept
the situation and make the compromise.
And so it is in poetic music. Wagner's _Tannhäuser_ overture and the
_Tristan_ prelude are not so satisfactory, from the point of view
of pure form, as a movement from a Beethoven symphony. We get the
repetitions of the themes determined by poetic rather than musical
necessities. Push the principle a little further, and you will get
almost no musical continuity at all, but a continuity of picture only.
If we examine the prelude to the _Dream of Gerontius_, we see that the
order of the themes follows a poetic or scenic purpose rather than
a musical purpose. This is legitimate so long as it does not go too
far, so long as we are not made to feel that the musical continuity is
absolutely thrown overboard to secure didactic or literary continuity.
But the broad principle is, that a piece of musical development, like
the _Tristan_ or _Gerontius_ prelude, that would not be altogether
satisfactory in absolute music, is quite satisfactory in poetic music.
It tells the literary story well enough, and yet does not starve our
musical sense.