The musician's imagination takes fire from his playing, and his music
seems like a glorious palace which he is building. The notes are
conceived as spirits doing his bidding (stanzas i-iii). As he proceeds
the images change, and heaven and earth seem to unite with him in his
creative activity: light flashes forth, and heaven and earth draw
nearer together. Now he sees the past, the beginnings of things,
and the future; even the dead are back again in his presence. His
imagination has anulled time and space. As he thinks of his art, it
seems more glorious to him than painting and poetry: these work by
laws that can be explained and followed, while music is a direct
expression of the will, an act of higher creative power.
When the music ends he cannot be consoled by the thought that as good
music will come again. So he turns to the one unchanging thing, "the
ineffable Name." Thus he gains confidence to say, "there shall never
be one lost good." All failure and all evil are but a prelude to the
good that shall in the end prevail. So he returns in hope and patience
to the C major, the common chord of life.
ART VOGLER is famous, not only for its confident optimism, but as
an example of Browning's power of annexing a new domain--that of
music--to poetry.
Where does the musician cease to speak of Solomon's building and begin
to describe his own? Note, in stanza ii, how he speaks first of the
"keys," and afterwards has in mind the notes; how he speaks of the
bass notes as the foundation, and the upper notes as the structure.
Where is the climax of his creative vision? What does he mean in line
40? Is he right in saying music is less subject to laws than poetry
and painting? Why is he sad when his music ceases? Why does he turn to
God for consolation? Follow carefully the argument in stanza ix. Is
it convincing? What analogy does he find between music, and good and
evil?