a paradox, moments of the most penetrative insight alternating
unaccountably in him with fits of prejudice or narrowness that suggest
the existence upon his mental retina of incurable blind spots. What
could be more illuminating in their unconventionality than such
judgments as these, for example:--Of Schumann: "A genius in short and
simple works, he finds himself lost when he has to build a musical
monument. He then lets himself be guided by sentiment alone, and in
spite of his often very fine ideas he can only _improvise_ works of
limited range, hasty fruits of an art not sufficiently conscious."
Of Mendelssohn:--"Always skilful in appropriating the knowledge of
others, the Jews are seldom, true artists by nature." Of Grieg: "His
short inspiration and his absolute ignorance of composition render him
entirely inept in the construction of symphonic works; he produces then
only hybrid assemblages of short fragments, unskilfully welded together
or simply juxtaposed, without appearance of order or unity either in
conception or in execution."[54] But the fastidiousness already verging
here on the finical seems always to be in danger, in dealing with
subjects on which he has active prejudices, such as Jews, Protestants,
free thinkers, and modern Germans, of overshooting its mark, losing
the sense of proportion, and becoming narrowly sectarian. Someone once
said of him that he had the spirit of the mediæval religious fanatics,
and had he lived in the Middle Ages would have been burned at the stake
for his convictions, or would have burned others, as the case might be,
with equal ardor.
One thus catches sometimes a note of intolerance, almost of
superstition, even in some of his most valid judgments, putting one a
little on guard, perhaps rather by what is omitted or implied than
by what is actually said. Thus Bach is great, "not because of, but in
spite of, the dogmatic and withering spirit of the Reformation,"[55]
and Franck's comment on Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," that it was
"_très amusant_," is commended as one of the finest criticisms, "coming
from the mouth of the believing French musician, that could be made
of the heavy and undigested critique of the German philosopher."[56]
Again "The present-day symphonists of Germany seem totally incapable
of making anything great: they content themselves with making it big,
which is not quite the same thing." They are charged with "total
absence of artistic taste, misunderstanding of all proportion and of
all tonal order."[57] They are "almost devoid of musical taste; they
cannot distinguish good music from bad; the opinion of a German on a
musical work has no importance."[58] The sympathy of the judicial with
these pronouncements wanes as they increase in animus; the justice
of the first, to which any thoughtful musician could hardly take
exception, is obscured by the evident exaggeration of the last; and
musical criticism too evidently loses itself in chauvinism.
We need not concern ourselves here to estimate the exact proportion
between wisdom and prejudice in d'Indy's writings; the materials for
a judgment have been admirably set forth in Rolland's essay, and each
reader may judge for himself. The aim of these citations is rather
to illustrate the temperament of their author, and to show that in
the last analysis, even though these writings make up perhaps the
finest body of musical criticism produced by a creative musician
since Schumann, that temperament is after all originative rather than
judicial. Much light as there is in it, there is even more heat. D'Indy
is a crusader of beauty; the shining spear is his natural weapon; and
when he takes to the clerk's ink-horn and balance sheet it is always
with a sort of youthful impatience. He is essentially a poet, a maker;
it is in his music that he finds his truest self. Indeed, he is too
many-sided to be quite justly appreciated by his contemporaries; the
poet has too much disappeared for us behind the teacher, the scholar,
the critic, the philosopher, the devotee. On the occasion of the
revival of "Fervaal" in 1913, M. Vuillermoz published an imaginary talk
of this composite d'Indy to his adoring pupils, asking them not to
idealize him, to let him remain human, to see in him the simple human
lover, like his Fervaal, which he felt himself to be. It is time, for
our own sakes, that we paid more attention than we do to this human
lover that finds supreme expression in the Symphony in B flat, in
"Istar," in the E major Quartet, in the "Jour d'Été à la Montagne." He
it is who speaks to the young men, to his fellow lovers of immortal
beauty, to the future. For, as one of his most understanding critics,
Louis Laloy, has written of him: "Emotion is queen, and science is her
servant." If d'Indy has studied as few modern musicians have studied,
if he has drawn on the past for his ample means, it has been only in
order to take more beauty with him, and to enable us to take it, into
the future; and for all his intellectual power he has never forgotten
that "Only the heart can engender beauty."
FOOTNOTES:
[32] Musiciens d'aujourd'hui; Romain Rolland.
[33] _Harmonie et Melodie._ C. Saint-Saëns.
[34] _César Franck_, by Vincent d'Indy.
[35] Inquest on the influence of Germany, especially of Wagner, on
French music, January, 1903.
[36] "Revue Politique et Littéraire" (_Revue Bleue_), March 26, 1904.
[37] _Revue Musicale S. I. M._, February 15, 1913.
[38] _Cours de Composition Musicale_, Book I, page 123.
[39] _Cours_, I, 27.
[40] See the present writer's paper on "The Tyranny of the Bar-line,"
New Music Review, December, 1909.
[41] _Cours_, I, 217.
[42] _Cours_, I, 40.
[43] Compare what is said of Debussy, for example, above, page 143.
[44] _Cours_, I, 91 and 116.
[45] _Cours_, Book I, pp. 126 and 132; Book II, Part I, p. 245.
[46] _Cours_, Book II, Part I, pp. 454, 452.
[47] _Cours_, II, I, 165.
[48] Compare, also, the theme of the Piano Sonata, in E minor,
beginning with the note B, with the same theme altered, "_Mutatum_," in
E major, beginning with G sharp.
[49] See for instance the "Poème des Montagnes," opus 15, for piano,
and the Symphony on a Mountain Theme, opus 25, for piano and orchestra.
[50] Note the progress from the dark key of C minor to the bright B
major in "Dawn," reversed in "Evening," as another instance of the
expressive use of modulation.
[51] The references are to the pocket edition of the score, published
by Durand.
[52] _Cours de composition musicale_, Book II, Part I, pp. 241-242.
[53] "Le Bon Sens," _Revue Musicale_, S. I. M., November, 1912.
[54] _Cours_, Book I, Part II, pp. 406, 411, 419.
[55] _Tribune de Saint-Gervais_, March, 1899.
[56] "Life of Franck," French edition, page 40.
[57] _Cours_, Book II, Part I, 487.
[58] _Revue Musicale_, December 1, 1906, quoted.
VI
MUSIC IN AMERICA
VI
MUSIC IN AMERICA
I
In the discussions of "American music" that go on perennially in our
newspapers and journals, now waxing in a wave of patriotic enthusiasm,
now waning as popular attention is turned to something else, in war
time much stimulated by an enhanced consciousness of nationality
(unless indeed they are totally elbowed aside to make room for more
immediate subjects), a sharp cleavage will usually be observed between
those whose interest is primarily in the music for itself, wherever it
comes from, and those in whom artistic considerations give way before
patriotic ardor, and propaganda usurp the place of discrimination. One
group, in uttering the challenging phrase, "American music," places
the stress instinctively on the noun and regards the adjective as only
qualification; the other, in its preoccupation with "American," seems
to take "music" rather for granted. Unfortunately the former group
constitutes so small a minority, and expresses itself so soberly,
that its wholesome insistence on the quality of the article itself
is likely to be quite drowned out by the bawling of the advertisers,
with their insistent slogan "Made in America." All the advantages of
numbers, organization, and easy appeal to the man in the street are
theirs. Even if we ignore those venal music journals which make a
system of exploiting the patriotism of the undiscriminating for purely
pecuniary purposes, there remain enough enthusiasts and propagandists,
indisposed or unable to appraise quality for themselves, to create by
their "booming" methods a formidable confusion in our standards of
taste. Inasmuch, therefore, as we are condemned, for our sins, to be
not only producers but consumers of this "American music," it behooves
us to make careful inspection of the claims for it so extravagantly put
forth, and to assure ourselves that we are getting something besides
labels for our money.
What, then, is the precise value we ought justly to ascribe to that
word "American" as applied to music, and wherein have those we may
call champions of the adjective been inclined to exaggerate it? If we
analyze their attitude, we shall find them the prey of two fallacies
which constantly falsify their conclusions, and make them dangerous
guides for those who have at heart the real interests of music in
America. The first of these fallacies is that which confuses quantity
with quality, and supposes that artistic excellence can be decided
by vote of the majority. The second is that which identifies racial
character with local idioms and tricks of speech rather than with a
certain emotional and spiritual temper. Both lead straight to the
oft-repeated conclusion that "ragtime" is the necessary basis of our
native musical art.
Listen, for example, to one of the most persistent, courageous, and
often interesting advocates of ragtime, Mr. H. K. Moderwell. "I can't
help feeling," says Mr. Moderwell,[59] "that a person who doesn't open
his heart to ragtime somehow isn't human. Nine out of ten musicians,
if caught unawares, will like this music until they remember that they
shouldn't. What does this mean? Does it mean that ragtime is 'all very
well in its place'? Rather that these musicians don't consider that
place _theirs_. But that place, remember, is in the affections of some
10,000,000 or more Americans. Conservative estimates show that there
are at least 50,000,000 copies of popular music sold in this country
yearly and a goodly portion of it is in ragtime.... You may take it as
certain that if many millions of people persist in liking something
that has not been recognized by the schools, there is vitality in
that thing." No doubt there is, just as by the same argument there
is vitality in chewing gum and the comic supplements. The question
is, of course, what sort of vitality? Yet if you raise this question
of quality, you are immediately charged with being a "highbrow," "a
person," in Professor Brander Matthews's already classic definition,
"educated beyond his intelligence,"--a charge from which any sane
man naturally shrinks. "The best American music is that which the
greatest number of Americans like; the greatest number of Americans
like ragtime; therefore ragtime is the best American music." This is
a specious syllogism, which you may oppose only at the risk of being
thought a highbrow and a snob.
Suppose, for instance, that you really do not happen to care for
chewing gum, that just as a matter of fact, of personal taste, and
not through any principles or sense of superiority to your fellows
you prefer other forms of nutriment or exercise. You confess this
peculiarity. Can you not hear the reproachful reply? "I can't help
feeling that a person who doesn't open his heart to chewing gum somehow
isn't human. Nine out of ten travelers on the subway, if caught
unawares [with gum disguised as bonbons, let us say] will like it until
they remember that they shouldn't. What does this mean? Does it mean
that chewing gum is 'all very well in its place'? Rather that these
punctilious people don't consider that place _theirs_. But that place,
remember, is in the affections of some 10,000,000 or more Americans.
The annual output of the chief chewing gum manufacturers"--etc., etc.
Thus are you voted down if you happen to be in the minority. It does
you no good to protest that you are really quite sincere and without
desire to _épater le bourgeois_; that you can't help preferring
Mr. Howells's novels to Mr. Robert W. Chambers's, Mr. Ben Foster's
landscapes to Mr. Christy's magazine girls, Mr. Irwin's "Nautical Lays
of a Landsman" to the comic supplements, and MacDowell's "To a Wild
Rose" to "Everybody's Doing It." If you stray from the herd you must be
sick. If you vote for the losers you must be a snob.
Such charges are the more dangerous in that they sometimes contain
a half-truth. There is a kind of person, the simon-pure snob, who
casts his vote for the loser just because he is a loser, because he
is unpopular, who prides himself on his "exclusiveness," "excluding
himself," as Thoreau penetratively says, "from all that is worth
while." His is a sort of inverted numericalism, based on quantity
just as essentially as the crude gospel of the "10,000,000 or more
Americans," but on quantity negative and vanishing towards the zero
of perfect distinction. It is from his kind that are recruited the
faddists, those who "dote on Debussy," the devotees of folk-songs not
for their human beauty but as curious specimens, those who invent all
sorts of queer connections between music and painting or poetry, and
indeed seem to find in it anything and everything but simple human
feeling. It is not from these that we shall get any help towards the
truth about ragtime. Indeed, they seem because of their unsympathetic
attitude toward the spirit of music--its emotional expression--and
their preoccupation with the letter of it, to be especially susceptible
to the second fallacy of which we spoke--that of identifying racial
quality with mere idiom rather than with fundamental temper.
Mr. Moderwell shall be spokesman of this view also. "You can't tell
an American composer's 'art-song,'" he says, "from any mediocre
art-song the world over.... You can distinguish American ragtime from
the popular music of any nation and any age." Let us agree heartily
that the mediocre "art-song" (horrid name for a desolating thing) is
probably no better and no worse in our own than in other countries.
Does this not seem an insufficient warrant for the excellence of types
of art that can be more easily told apart? For purposes of labeling
specimens earmarks are an advantage, but hardly for appraising modes
of expression. If the important matter in American music is not
its expression of the American temper, but the peculiar technical
feature, the special kind of syncopation we call the "rag rhythm,"
then the important matter in Hungarian music is not its fire but its
"sharp fourth step." Beethoven ceases to be Teutonic when he uses
Irish cadences in his Seventh Symphony, and Chopin is Polish only
in his mazurkas and polonaises. Of course this will not do; and Mr.
Moderwell, to do him justice, after remarking that "ragtime is not
merely syncopation--it is a certain sort of syncopation," adds "But of
course this definition is not enough. Ragtime has its flavor that no
definition can imprison." Our ultimate question is, then, not how many
people like ragtime, or how few like it, or how easily can its idiom
be told from other idioms, but how expressive is it of the American
temper, how full an artistic utterance can it give of the best and
widest American natures? This is a question not of quantity but of
quality: of the quality of ragtime, the quality of America, and the
adequacy of the one to the other.
II
Suppose, bearing in mind Mr. Moderwell's warning against snobbery, that
"A Russian folk-song was no less scorned in the court of Catherine the
Great than a ragtime song in our music studios to-day," we examine
in some detail a typical example of ragtime such as "The Memphis
Blues," of which he assures us that "In sheer melodic beauty, in the
vividness of its characterization, in the deftness of its polyphony and
structure, this song deserves to rank among the best of our time."[60]
Here are the opening strains of it.
[Illustration: =FIGURE XXXI.
From "The Memphis Blues."=]
Folks, I've just been down, down to Memphis town,
Oh, that melody, sure appealed to me,
That's where the people smile, smile on you all the while
Just like a mountain stream ripling on it seemed
Approaching them with the eager expectation that such praise naturally
arouses, can we, as candid lovers of music, find anything but bitter
disappointment in their trivial, poverty-stricken, threadbare
conventionality? How many thousand times have we heard that speciously
cajoling descent of the first three notes, that originally piquant but
now indescribably boresome oscillation from the tonic chord in the
third measure? These are the common snippets and tag-ends of harmony,
kicked about the very gutters, ground out by every hurdy-gurdy,
familiarity with which breeds not affection but contempt. Their very
surface cleverness, as of meaningless ornament, is a part of their
offense. Russian folk-song indeed! Compare them with the simple but
noble tonic, dominant and sub-dominant, of the "Volga Boat Song"
and their shoddiness stands self-revealed. And the melody? Bits and
snippets again, quite without character if it were not for the rhythm,
and acquiring no momentum save in the lines "I went out a-dancin',"
etc., where they build up well, but to a complete anticlimax in the
return of the obvious opening strain.
As for the rag rhythm itself, the sole distinctive feature of this
music, it has undoubtedly something of real piquancy. The trick, it
will be noted, is a syncopation of half-beats, arranged so as to pull
bodily forward certain comparatively strong accents, those at the
middle of the measures[61]--a scheme to which words as well as melody
conform. The left hand meanwhile gives the regular metrical division
of the measure, and a writer in the London Times, defining ragtime
as "a strongly syncopated melody superimposed on a strictly regular
accompaniment," points out that "it is the combination of these two
rhythms that gives 'ragtime' its character."[62] This is perhaps not
strictly true, since in some of the most effective bits of ragtime the
metrical pulsation may give way momentarily to the syncopation, and
everyone remembers those delightful times of complete silence in which
the pulse is kept going mentally, to be finally confirmed by a crashing
cadence. But it is usually the case that both time schemes, metrical
and rhythmical, are maintained together. For this very reason we must
question the contention of the champions of ragtime that its type of
syncopation is capable of great variety, a contention in support of
which some of them have even challenged comparison of it with the
rhythmic vigors of Beethoven and Schumann.[63]
The subtlety of syncopation as an artistic device results from its
simultaneous maintenance of two time-patterns, the rhythmic and the
metrical, in such a relation that the second and subordinate one,
though never lost sight of, is never obtruded. The quasi-mechanical
pulse of the meter is the indispensable background against which only
can the freer oscillations of the rhythm outline themselves. The moment
the sense of it is lost, as it is sometimes lost in those over-bold
passages of Schumann where a displacement is too emphatically made or
too long continued, the charm disappears. In the following from his
"Faschingsschwank," for instance, the interest of the rhythmic accent
on beat "three" lasts only so long as we oppose to it mentally a
regular metric accent on "one."
[Illustration: =FIGURE XXXII.=]
In the continuation of the passage, for which the reader is referred
to the original, our minds are apt to "slip a stitch," so to speak,
letting "three" and "one" coalesce. The moment this happens the passage
becomes commonplace. But suppose, on the other hand, in the effort
to maintain our sense of the meter, we strike the bass notes on each
"one." Now equally, or indeed more than before, the charm is fled,
and the passage rendered stale and unprofitable, through the actual
presentation to the ear of so mechanical a reiteration. In short,
the metrical scheme has to be mentally maintained, but actually, so
far as possible, eliminated. Looking back, in the light of these
considerations, at "The Memphis Blues," we shall realize that whatever
the pleasing eccentricity of the rhythm, so relentless a meter as
we here find thumped out by the left hand cannot but quickly grow
tiresome, as indeed it will be felt to be after a few repetitions.
Reference to another well-known theme of Schumann will reveal a further
weakness of ragtime. The second theme of the finale of his Concerto
for piano runs as follows:
[Illustration: =FIGURE XXXIII.=]
Here the indescribably delightful effect is evidently due not only
to the purely rhythmic syncopation, but also to the fact that on the
silent strong beat of every second measure harmony and melody as
well as rhythm are so to speak "tied up," or suspended, in such a
way that the syncopation is at the very heart of the whole musical
conception, and cannot be omitted without annihilating the music.
Beside such essential syncopation as this the mere pulling forward of
certain notes, as in "The Memphis Blues," is seen to be superficial,
an arbitrary dislocation which may disguise but cannot correct the
triteness of the real melodic line. In fact, we seem here to have
tracked ragtime to its lair and discovered what it really is. It is no
creative process, like the syncopation of the masters, by which are
struck forth new, vigorous, and self-sufficing forms. It is a rule
of thumb for putting a "kink" into a tune that without such specious
rehabilitation would be unbearable. It is not a new flavor, but a kind
of curry or catsup strong enough to make the stale old dishes palatable
to unfastidious appetites. Significant is it that, as the writer in the
Times remarks, "In American slang to 'rag' a melody is to syncopate a
normally regular time." The "rag" idiom can thus be put on and off like
a mask; and in recent years we have seen thus grotesquely disguised,
as the Mendelssohn Wedding March, for instance, in "No Wedding Bells
for Me," many familiar melodies. To these it can give no new musical
lineaments, but only distort the old ones as with St. Vitus' dance.
Thus the technical limitations of ragtime which we have tried to
analyze are seen to be in the last analysis the results and indices
of a more fundamental shortcoming--an emotional superficiality and
triviality peculiar to it. Ragtime is the musical expression of an
attitude toward life only too familiar to us all, an attitude shallow,
restless, avid of excitement, incapable of sustained attention,
skimming the surface of everything, finding nowhere satisfaction,
realization, or repose. It is a meaningless stir-about, a commotion
without purpose, an epilepsy simulating controlled muscular action.
It is the musical counterpart of the sterile cleverness we find in so
much of our contemporary conversation, as well as in our theater and
our books. No candid observer could deny the prominence in our American
life of this restlessness of which ragtime is one expression. It is
undoubtedly what most strikes superficial observation. The question
is whether it is really representative of the American temper as a
whole, or is prominent only as the froth is prominent on a glass of
beer. Mr. Moderwell thinks the former: "I like to think," he says,
"that ragtime is the perfect expression of the American city, with its
restless bustle and motion, its multitude of unrelated details, and its
underlying rhythmic progress toward a vague somewhere." "As you walk
up and down the streets of an American city you feel in its jerk and
rattle a personality different from that of any European capital....
This is American. Ragtime, I believe, expresses it. It is to-day the
one true American music."
To such an idolatry of precisely the most hideous, inhuman, and
disheartening features in our national and musical life a lover
of music and a lover of America can only reply that, first, it is
possible that America lies less on the surface than we think, possible
that it is no more adequately represented by Broadway than France is
represented by the Parisian boulevards, or England by the London music
halls; but that, second, if indeed the land of Lincoln and of Emerson
has degenerated until nothing remains of it but "jerk and rattle," then
we at least are free to repudiate the 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 subway
gongs and automobile horns, dead but not dishonored.
III