THE IDEA OF PROGRESS IN MUSIC
In the history of the world as we know it we discover that not all
forms of death are immortal. There are animals which are extinct,
there are plants which have disappeared, there are flowers which bloom
no more. In vain has life fixed their images in that immortality of
automatic repetition which we call death. Even death, we seem to find,
is occasionally an illusion and its sleep is not more eternal than a
man’s dream. It is probable that all things as _things_ are perishable;
and we have no reason to believe that even the music of Beethoven will
last for ever, or even for as long as man lasts. But there is the
problem why some things last longer than others, and this perhaps
raises the question of value, of goodness. Here is a new element in
the idea of progress. Is it possible to discover any principle in
the history of music which explains why, already, Bach has outlasted
Frohberger?
If we say that Frohberger is superfluous because Bach is the same as
Frohberger, only better, we are saying something very difficult to
understand, for how would it be possible to prove that two things can
be the same and yet different, one of them being better--except by
making goodness depend on quantity? But, obviously, to think that Bach
is three Frohbergers is not the same as thinking he is three times as
good as Frohberger. As the ordinary man speaks this is not at all what
he means. We definitely do think Bach is better than Frohberger, not
that he is Frohberger plus a Frohberger fraction. I submit that we
think so because we find all Frohberger in Bach plus something more
which is not Frohberger. But this has a tremendous consequence for,
if true, it means that Frohberger is not unique. He is included in
Bach. And may we not think that the music which vanishes from human
consciousness is the music which is not unique and that so long as
a composer is unique his music will be heard? I believe so. It is
reasonable to think that every act, everything created has value. Our
minds cannot imagine a Universe in which that would not be true; but we
can imagine complex organizations incorporating simpler organizations,
which then cease to have a separate existence. Therefore it is possible
that nothing goes out of the Universe, and the idea that a thing may
be lost seems illusion. Our minds find it difficult to imagine an
exit from the Universe. _Where?_ But the incorporation of the lesser
within the greater remains, as stated, a mechanical idea. We can find
no satisfaction in a mere increasing complexity of structure. “If
that is all that makes Bach better than Frohberger”--we can imagine
someone saying--“I never want to listen to music again.” The process,
we feel, must have a purpose or a meaning. Well, we have forgotten
one vital element. Delight. The Universe is the imagination of its
delight. If the purpose of the Universe were merely to attain to an
ever higher degree of complexity for its own sake it would not be
littered with these innumerable shapes of death--the violet, the lily,
the rose, the cedar, the oak, the pine, the butterfly, the tiger, the
elephant, and all other lovely and curious structures. Even man has
not supplanted the ape, nor has the fugue of Bach annihilated the
song of the shepherd boy. We may think all these things are unique
and that is why they still persist. But what about Frohberger, was he
not unique? Why has Frohberger vanished? For if Frohberger was not
unique how did he come to appear? Not to be unique is not to exist.
Yes, but his uniqueness may not have been in his music. Here at last
we have it. And _his_ music does not exist since there is no music
which can be said to be his. This is a different kind of non-existence
to that of the Dinosaur, the Dodo, the Great Auk. Although their
death-shapes no longer repeat themselves upon the earth they have not
completely vanished. Their images live in the imagination of man,
vivid, individual, unique. We have no such image of Frohberger’s music.
It is a shrivelled, meaningless ghost, a letter in the alphabet of
music, which has in itself no life. Frohberger’s music is not like
the Great Auk, an isolated death-shape of the physical world, nor
like the Centaur, an isolated death-shape of the intellectual world,
its position in music is that of one of those intermediates which,
like the “missing link,” can never be found because the mind works
_per saltum_. Frohberger and the “missing link” are for ever lost
in the gaps. All that is without residuary value, all that has been
completely incorporated in a new structure disappears thus because it
slips through the mesh of the mind--not because the mind is not fine
enough to retain the most minute differences, but because it chooses
not to perceive. This reconciles the pre-Bach existence of Frohberger’s
music with its present non-existence and delivers us from the apparent
contradiction; for it allows us to make what is, philosophically, a
necessary assumption, namely, that no two things are ever exactly the
same, and consequently that Bach’s music does not contain Frohberger’s
music absolutely. Therefore the equation is not:
Bach = B(ach) + F(rohberger)
but
Bach = B + (F-X)
X being that unknown quantity which is Frohberger’s uniqueness and
which we to-day cannot perceive.
But although art feeds on knowledge as life feeds on death at the same
time creating more knowledge, as life creates more death--_Ecstasy
clothing Himself in Forms_--yet there remains much that is mysterious.
Why there are different forms of art is a question which insistently
recurs. A comparison of music with the other arts in order to discover
a value specific and exclusive to music is not likely to enlighten us.
Painters talk of “pictorial construction” as the specifically painter’s
element which in all good graphic art is wedded to the illustration,
psychology, representation or whatever other content a picture may
yield, be it ancient or modern. They point out that the spectator is
not emotionally moved by the representation of tears but by the rhythm
of lines and the recession of planes. The good writer knows that a
description of a sad event is not in itself saddening, it may even
be comic; but unlike the painter he has no technical term for this
essential quality without which literature is mere verbiage--unless,
indeed, we apply the word “poetic” to this quality, as we have every
right to do. Painting which is without this vital element--call it
“pictorial representation,” “significant form,” or what you will--is
not art but knowledge or science.[3] Literature which is without
this “poetic” quality is, again, mere knowledge, mere fiction. We
have no need to seek for examples. A dozen famous names leap to our
minds. Rather have we to seek for that literature which is poetic.
Similarly in music there is a specific, purely musical quality without
which music also is mere science. This quality I will call melodic
imagination.
And here an interesting fact emerges. In all three arts the valuable
element, the element of life is linked with the imagination. In
painting pictorial imagination, in literature verbal imagination,
in music melodic imagination--_imagination_ always is the magical
essence, the power referred to in the lines:
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word
was God.”
And we may be sure that there can be no art unless the word is made
flesh--in the forms of painting, literature, or music--and dwells among
us. But when we ask ourselves why it should take the form of painting
or of words, or of music, it is impossible to give an answer. We can
only echo: Why the lily, the rose, the violet? Why the tiger, the
elephant, the antelope? Why the Moon, Venus, and the Stars? _Ecstasy
clothing Himself in Forms._
And still we have failed to discover in music any principle of progress
other than increasing complexity of organization and a multiplication
of lovely deaths. A principle which does not as yet satisfy our
instincts since it seems quantitative rather than qualitative. But
perhaps we are on the verge of a discovery.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Such according to eminent critics is the work of the painter
Sargent and, for my part, I have no difficulty in seeing that what they
say is just.