Does the influence of music make us less inclined to perpetrate
murder, suicide, or cruel practices? Everybody has heard the story of
the famous Italian composer and vocalist, Stradella, whose wonderful
singing in an oratorio made such a profound impression on two men who
had been hired to murder him, that they not only spared him, but gave
him warning that his life was in danger. This story is now regarded as
a myth by some of the best authorities; but the fact that it was so
long believed universally is not without significance. Take another
case, which, though occurring in a ficticious drama, might easily be
true. Faust, in Goethe's drama, when on the point of committing
suicide, is brought back to his senses on suddenly hearing the Easter
hymn. But in this case it might be said it was not the music itself,
but the religious and other associations and memories awakened by it,
that prevented Faust from carrying out his criminal intention. Such
associations must always be taken into account when estimating the
moral value of music; and yet they do not explain everything. A
residue is left which must be placed to the credit of music.
Perhaps the vice best adapted to illustrate the direct influence of
musical culture is cruelty. If you find a boy in the back yard
torturing a cat or a dog, or bullying and maltreating his playmates,
it will probably do no good to sing or play to him by way of softening
his heart. On the contrary, he will probably not appreciate or
understand the music at all, and the interruption will only annoy and
anger him. But if you take that same boy and put him in a house where
there is an _infectious musical atmosphere_, the chances are that
before long his feelings will undergo a change, and he will no longer
derive any pleasure from cruelty. This pleasure is one which boys
share with savages, and the best way to eradicate it is by cultivating
the æsthetic sensibilities. "It cannot be doubted," says Eduard von
Hartmann, in his "Philosophie des Schönen," "that æsthetic culture is
one of the most important means of softening the moral sentiments and
polishing coarse habits;" and Shelley, in his "Defence of Poetry,"
says, "It will readily be confessed that those among the luxurious
citizens of Syracuse and Alexandria who were delighted with the poems
of Theocritus were less cold, cruel, and sensual than the remnant of
their tribe."
Now, music seems to be better adapted to bring about a regeneration of
the heart than even poetry, and for two reasons: In the first place,
poetry can, and often does, inculcate immoral sentiments, whereas
music, pure and simple, can never be immoral. As Dr. Johnson remarks,
"Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice." Secondly, it is in
childhood that our moral habits are formed, and it is well known that
children are susceptible to the influence of music at least five or
ten years before they can really understand poetry. The infant in arms
has its impatience and anger subdued countless times by the charms of
a cradle song; and in this way music sweetens its temper, turns its
frowns into smiles, and prevents it from becoming habitually cross and
vicious. True, some young children also like to read and recite
poetry, but what delights them in this case is the _musical_ jingle of
rhyme and rhythm, rather than the specific qualities of the verse.
Later in life, when the children go to school, they are, as expert
testimony proves, beneficially affected by singing together, which
rests and refreshes the brain, and teaches them the value and beauty
of co-operation. While thus singing, each child experiences the same
joyous or sad feelings as its classmates, and learns in this way the
great moral lesson of _sympathy_. And this brings us back to what was
said a moment ago regarding the vice of cruelty. Sympathy is the
correlative and antidote of cruelty. If savages were not utterly
devoid of sympathy, they would not take such strange delight in
witnessing the cruel tortures they inflict upon their prisoners.
Indeed, it may be asserted that almost all crimes spring from a lack
of sympathy, and modified forms of cruelty. If you reflect a moment,
you must admit that a man who is truly sympathetic--that is, who
rejoices in his neighbor's happiness and grieves over his
misfortunes--can be neither ungenerous, nor deceitful, nor covetous,
nor jealous, nor ferocious, nor avaricious, etc.; and one need not
therefore be a pantheist to agree with Schopenhauer, that Mitleid, or
sympathy, is the basis of all virtues. If, therefore, it can be shown
that music is a powerful agent in developing this feeling of sympathy,
its far-reaching moral value will become apparent. And this can be
done easily.
Rousseau named his collection of songs "The Consolations of the
Miseries of my Life;" Shakspere called music "The food of love;" and
Chopin, in one of his letters to a friend, after referring to his
first love affair, adds, "How often I relate to my piano everything I
should like to communicate to you." Similar remarks might be quoted by
the score from the letters of composers and other great men devoted to
music, showing that music is valued like a personal friend who is
always ready to sympathize with our joys and sorrows. And when a real
music-lover comes across a beautiful new piece, how he bubbles over
with enthusiasm to play or sing it to his friends, and let them share
the pleasure; his own being doubled thereby! I know of no other art
that so vividly arouses this unselfish feeling, this desire for
sympathetic communion. Indeed, music is the most unselfish of all the
arts. A poem is generally read in solitude, and a picture can be seen
by only a few at a time; but a concert or opera may be enjoyed by
5,000 or more at a time--the more the merrier. I have already stated
that in public schools music helps to develop a sympathetic feeling of
mutual enjoyment. And why is it that music, ever since the days of the
ancient Hebrews and Greeks, has been always provided at political
meetings and processions, at picnics, dances, funerals, weddings--in
short, at all social and public gatherings? Obviously, because it has
the power of uniting the feelings of many into one homogeneous and
sympathetic wave of emotion. It has a sort of _compulsive_ force which
hurries along even those who are sluggish or unwilling. Plato, in his
Republic, gives the curious advice that, at meetings of older people
wine should be distributed, in order to make them more pliable and
receptive to the counsel of sages. Many would object to such a risky
policy, which, moreover, can well be dispensed with, since music has
quite as much power as wine to arouse a sympathetic and enthusiastic
state of mind at a public assembly, and without any danger of
disastrous consequences. It is the special function of music to
intensify all the emotions with which it is associated. It inflames
the courage of an army of soldiers marching on to defend their
country, their homes and families. It exalts the religious feelings of
church-goers, and makes them more susceptible to the minister's moral
counsels. Is it not absurd to say that such an art has no moral value?
One of the most eloquent of modern preachers, the late Henry Ward
Beecher, went so far as to admit that "In singing, you come into
sympathy with the Truth as you perhaps never do under the preaching of
a discourse."
The Rev. Dr. Haweis also bears testimony to the moral value of music,
in the following words: "I have known the Oratorio of the Messiah draw
the lowest dregs of Whitechapel into a church to hear it, and during
the performance sobs have broken forth from the silent and attentive
throng. Will anyone say that for these people to have their feelings
for once put through such a noble and long-sustained exercise as that,
could be otherwise than beneficial? If such performances of both
sacred and secular music were more frequent, we should have less
drunkenness, less wife-beating, less spending of summer gains, less
winter pauperism. People get drunk because they have nothing else to
do; they beat their wives because their minds are narrow, their tastes
brutal, their emotions, in a word, ill-regulated."
These remarks suggest one of the most important moral functions of
music--that of _weaning the people from low and demoralizing
pleasures_. In proportion as the masses are educated to an
appreciation of the subtle and exquisite pleasures afforded by the
fine arts, and especially by music, will they become indifferent to,
and abhor, exhibitions which involve cruelty to man and animals, such
as dog-fights, boxing-matches, dangerous and cruel circus tricks,
executions of criminals, etc. The pleasure derived from such brutal
exhibitions is the same in kind as that which prompts savages to flay
alive their prisoners of war. And the morbid pleasure which so many
apparently civilized people take in reading in the newspapers, column
after column, about such brutal sports, is the survival of the same
unsympathetic feeling. I am convinced that no one who really
appreciates the poetic beauty of a Schubert song or a Chopin nocturne
can read these columns of our newspapers without feelings of utter
disgust. And I am as much convinced as I am of my own existence, that
a man who derives more pleasure from good music than from these vulgar
columns in the newspapers, is morally more trustworthy than those who
gloat over them. Music can impart only good impulses; whereas, we hear
every day of boys and men who, after reading a dime novel or the
police column in a newspaper, were prompted to commit the crimes and
indulge in the vices they had read about. Hence, if people could be
weaned from the vulgar pleasure of reading about crimes and scandals,
and taught instead to love innocent music, can any one doubt that they
would be morally the better for it? Just as a tendency to drunkenness
can best be combated by creating a taste for harmless light wines and
beer in place of coarse whiskey and gin, so a love of demoralizing
and degrading amusements can best be eradicated by educating the
poetic and musical sensibilities of the masses. Why are the lower
classes in Germany so much less brutal, degraded, and dangerous than
the same classes in England? Obviously, because, after their day's
labor, they do not drink poisonous liquor in a dirty den of crime, but
go to sip a few glasses of harmless beer in a garden while listening
to the merry sounds of music.
Men _will_ have, and _must_ have, their pleasures. Social reformers
and temperance agitators could not make a greater mistake than by
following the example of the Puritans and tabooing _all_ pleasures.
They ought to distinguish between those that have a tendency to excess
and vice, and those that are harmless and ennobling, encouraging the
latter in every possible way. And first among those that should be
encouraged is music, because it is always ennobling, and can be
enjoyed simultaneously by the greatest number. Its effect is well
described in Margaret Fuller's private journal: "I felt raised above
all care, all pain, all fear, and every taint of vulgarity was washed
out of the world." I think this is an extremely happy expression.
Female writers sometimes have a knack of getting at the heart of a
problem by instinct, more easily than men with their superior
reasoning powers. "Every taint of vulgarity washed out of the world by
music." That is precisely wherein the moral power of music lies; for
vulgarity is the twin sister of vice. It is criminal to commit a
murder; it is vulgar to gloat over the contagious details of it in
books and newspapers. But how rampant vulgarity still is, and how rare
æsthetic culture, is shown by the fact that two-thirds of the
so-called news in many of our daily papers consist of detailed reports
of crimes in all parts of the world, which are eagerly read by
hundreds of thousands, while our concert halls have to be filled with
dead-heads.
There is one more way in which music affects our moral life, to which
I wish to call attention, namely, through its value as a tonic. No
operatic manager has ever thought of advertising his performances as a
tonic, yet he might do so with more propriety than the patent medicine
venders whose grandiloquent advertisements take up so much space in
our newspapers. Plato, in the "Laws," says that "The Gods, pitying the
toils which our race is born to undergo, have appointed holy festivals
in which men rest from their labors." Lucentio, in "The Taming of the
Shrew," advances the same opinion in more definite and pungent terms:
"Preposterous ass! that never read so far
To know the cause why music was ordain'd!
Was it not to refresh the mind of man
After his studies, or his usual pain?"
There can be no doubt whatever that music has the most remarkable
effect, not only on our minds, but on our bodies. Physiologists tell
us that different kinds of mental activity are carried on in different
parts of the brain, and that, in order to recover from fatigue, we
need not rest altogether, but merely take up some other kind of work.
Hundreds of times I have found that, however much I may be fatigued by
a day's brain work, I can play all the evening, or attend a concert or
opera, without in the least adding to my fatigue. On the contrary, in
most cases it disappears altogether, the music acting on the mind as a
surf bath does on the body. Like many others, I have found that the
best way to cure a headache is to attend an orchestral concert. It
works like a charm. It stirs up the circulation in the brain as a
brisk walk does in the body. Even brain disease is eased in this way.
The power of music even to cure insanity altogether, was frequently
maintained in ancient and mediæval times. This claim is doubtless
exaggerated, yet there is more than a grain of truth in it. There can
be no doubt that violent maniacs can be calmed, and melancholy ones
cheered and soothed, by music. To get an authoritative opinion on this
subject, I wrote to Dr. Hammond. He answered: "I know of no cases of
insanity that have been cured by music, but I have seen many cases in
which music has quieted insane persons, exerting the same calming
influence that it does on most of us when we are irritated by petty
annoyances."
"When we are irritated by petty annoyances." It is then that music
becomes a medicine and a moral tonic. Writers on ethics have,
hitherto, too much overlooked the moral importance of health. Where
there is a lack of health, we rarely find any moral sweetness of
temper. The vices may be small and peevish, but in their aggregate
they are enough to poison the happiness of the household. If a man
comes to ruin from drink and the crimes it leads him to commit, we
call him immoral. But is he not also immoral if, from excess of work
and worry, and wilful neglect of exercise, rest, and recreation, he
breaks down and beggars his family, becoming a burden to them instead
of a help? I think he is, and that, instead of pitying such a man, we
should censure him. Ignorance of the laws of hygiene, physical and
mental, is no valid excuse. He can buy a book on the subject for one
dollar. But he does not even need to do that. Music, we read in
Shakespere, has the power of "killing care and grief of heart," and
what he needs, therefore, is to hear some good music every evening, at
home or at the opera. This will draw the blood from the over-worked
part of his brain to another part, and by thus relieving it of the
tormenting persistency of worrying thoughts and business cares,
enable him to enjoy refreshing, dreamless sleep afterward. In this way
music may help to restore his health, cure his dyspepsia, and sweeten
his moral temper.
In America, more than anywhere else, is music needed as a tonic, to
cure the infectious and ridiculous business fever which is responsible
for so many cases of premature collapse. Nowhere else is so much time
wasted in making money, which is then spent in a way that contributes
to no one's happiness--least of all the owner's. We Americans are in
the habit of calling ourselves the most practical nation in the world,
but the fact is it would be difficult to find a nation less practical.
For, what is the object of life? Is it to toil like a galley slave and
never have any amusements? Every nation in Europe, except the English,
knows better how to enjoy the pleasures of life than we do. Our
so-called "practical" men look upon recreation as something useless,
whereas in reality it is the most useful thing in the world.
Recreation is re-creation--regaining the energies lost by hard work.
Those who properly alternate recreation with work, economize their
brain power, and are therefore infinitely more practical than those
who scorn or neglect recreation.
The utility and the moral value of refined pleasures is not
sufficiently understood. It should be proclaimed from the housetops
every day. Bread and butter to eat, and a bed to sleep in, are not the
only useful things in the world, but, in the words of Shelley,
"Whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the
imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful." Music is useful
because it does this, and it is useful in many other ways. Singing
strengthens the lungs, playing the muscles, and both stimulate the
mind. Milton, Schiller, George Sand, Alfieri, and other geniuses have
testified that music aroused their creative faculties; and in
Beaconsfield's "Contarini" occurs this passage: "I have a passion for
instrumental music. A grand orchestra fills my mind with ideas. I
forget everything in the stream of invention." Furthermore, music is a
stepping-stone to social success. A gifted amateur is welcomed at once
into circles to which others may vainly seek admission for years; and
a young lady with a musical voice has a great advantage in the period
of courtship. But most important of all is the moral value of music as
an _ennui_ killer. _Ennui_ leads to more petty crimes than anything
else; and a devotee of music need never suffer a moment's _ennui_.
There are enough charming songs and pieces to fill up every spare
moment in our lives with ecstatic bliss, and to banish all temptation
to vice. It is in reference to similar pleasures that Sir John
Lubbock, in his essay on the "Duty of Happiness," exclaims: "It is
wonderful, indeed, how much innocent happiness we thoughtlessly throw
away." The art of enjoying life is an accomplishment which few have
thoroughly mastered.
V
ITALIAN AND GERMAN VOCAL STYLES
Why is it that most persons are more interested in vocal than in
instrumental music? Obviously because, as Richard Wagner remarks, "the
human voice is the oldest, the most genuine, and the most beautiful
organ of music--the organ to which alone our music owes its
existence." And not only is the sound or quality of the human voice
more beautiful than that of any artificial instrument, but it is
capable of greater variation. Although a good artist can produce
various shades of tone on his instrument, yet every instrument has a
well-defined characteristic _timbre_, which justifies us in speaking,
for instance, of the majestic, solemn trombone, the serene flute, the
amorous violoncello, the lugubrious bassoon, and so on. The human
voice, on the other hand, is much less limited in its powers of tonal
and emotional coloring. It is not dependent for its resonance on a
rigid tube, like the flute, or an unchangeable sounding-board, like
the violin or the piano, but on the cavity of the mouth, which can be
enlarged and altered at will by the movements of the lower jaw, and
the soft parts--the tongue and the glottis. These movements change the
overtones, of which the vowels are made up, and hence it is that the
human voice is capable of an infinite variety of tone-color, compared
with which Wagner admits that even "the most manifold imaginable
mixture of orchestral colors must appear insignificant."
Notwithstanding that the superiority of the voice is thus conceded,
even by the greatest magician of the orchestra, we daily hear the
complaint that the good old times of artistic singing are gone by, and
have been superseded by an instrumental era, in which the voice merely
plays the part of the second fiddle and is maltreated by composers,
who do not understand its real nature. So far is this opinion from the
truth that it must be said, contrariwise, that it is only within the
last century--I might almost say the last half century--that composers
have begun fully to recognize the true function of the human voice and
its principal advantage over instruments.
What is this advantage? It is the power of articulating, of uniting
poetry with music, _definite words with indefinite tones_. Every
instrument, as I have just said, has a characteristic emotional
tone-color. But the emotions expressed by them are vague and
indefinite. A piece of instrumental music can express an eager,
passionate yearning for something, but it cannot tell what that
something is--whether it is the ardent longing of an absent lover, or
the heavenward aspiration of a religious enthusiast. The vocalist, on
the other hand, can clearly tell us the object of that longing by
using definite words. And by thus arousing reminiscences in the
hearer's mind, and adding the charm of poetry to that of music, he
doubles the power and impressiveness of his art.
Now, a very brief sketch of the history of solo singing will show that
this special advantage of the human voice over instruments was, if not
entirely overlooked, at least considered of secondary importance in
practice, until Gluck and Schubert laid the foundations for a new
style, in which the distinctively _vocal_ side of singing has
gradually become of greater importance than the instrumental side; as
we see in the music-dramas of Wagner, and the Lieder, or parlor-songs,
of Schumann, Franz, Liszt, and others.
Although _folk-song_ appears to be as old as the human race, the
history of _artistic_ song, or song written by professional composers
for the concert hall, can be traced back only about three centuries.
Before that time vocal music was generally polyphonic, that is, for
several voices; and a contrapuntal style of music had been introduced
into Italy from the Netherlands, which was so complicated and
artificial that the poetic text had no chance whatever of asserting
its rights and being understood. Now, the modern opera, which was
originated about three hundred years ago by a number of Florentine
amateurs, although it sprang from a desire to revive the ancient Greek
drama, in which music was united with poetry, represents at the same
time a reaction against this unintelligible Netherland style. The new
opera at first went to the opposite extreme, making the distinct
declamation of the text its principal object and neglecting vocal
ornamentation, and even melody, on purpose. The famous vocalist and
teacher, Caccini, although he taught his pupils how to sing trills and
roulades, declared that they were not essential to good singing, but
merely a means of tickling the ear, and, therefore, generally to be
avoided. He taught the Italian singers how to express the passions,
and reproduce the meaning of the words they sang--an art which,
according to the Roman, Pietro della Valle, was not previously known
to them.
The dry declamation of the first Italian operas, however, was not
supported by a sufficiently rich accompaniment to be enjoyable after
the first sense of novelty had passed away; and even the gifted
Monteverde's ingenious innovations in instrumental coloring and in
the free use of expressive discords, could not ward off a second
reaction, in favor of song pure and simple, which set in with
Scarlatti, the founder of the Neapolitan school, whose first opera was
produced a little over two centuries ago. From this time dates the
supremacy, in Italy, of the _bel canto_, or beautiful song, which,
however, gradually degenerated into mere circus music in which every
artistic aim was deliberately sacrificed to sensuous tone-revelry and
agility of execution, the voice being treated as a mere instrument,
without any regard for its higher prerogative of interpreting poetry
and heightening its effects.