THE PRINCIPLES OF PURE MUSIC
Just as success in the intellectual and moral worlds results from
power to shape ideas and conduct, to make syntheses which combine
the most various elements in unity, so artistic success results from
the power to shape into a single organism the various elements of
artistic effect. Art may make a deep appeal to us by the richness
of its sensuous charm, and a still deeper by the eloquence of its
emotional expression; the deepest of all appeals it will not make, we
have asserted, unless, by marshalling its materials into an obvious
order, it adds to its sensuous and expressive charms the æsthetic
charm, the greatest of all--beauty. Art, we hinted, was beautiful in
the proportion of its unified variety; and we set ourselves to see
what methods men gradually worked out, in the seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries, by which the wonderfully various effects of their
new music could be stamped with final unity.
In the fact that they attain beauty through the presentation of variety
in unity, all the arts are alike; yet they differ much in the way they
accomplish this end, because of their differing conditions. Those
arts, notably sculpture, painting, and architecture, which adjust
their materials in space, necessarily use methods quite different from
those of the temporal arts of literature and music, which, existing
solely in time, have no spatial relations of any sort. The spatial
arts, presenting all their elements simultaneously, differentiate and
at the same time interlink them by means of relative position, size,
and prominence. In a well designed figure or group of figures, in
sculpture, there is always a balance of masses, by which the whole
work, however diverse in detail, is knit into unity. The centre of
gravity is kept well in toward the centre of the entire mass; all the
features at the extreme edges lead the eye back to the middle to rest;
there is centralization of effect, balance, poise. In a good picture,
all spots of high light, all prominent lines, all striking lineaments
of every sort, are similarly contrived to equalize the tensions of
the eye, to keep it in that state of attentive rest, or anchored
discursiveness, which is so indescribably delightful. The same is true
of all well-proportioned buildings and other architectural monuments.
Activity of eye and mind are stimulated, but also governed and
directed. Howsoever the eye, in looking at any good picture, statue or
piece of architecture, may quest and rove, it is constantly brought, by
the gentle power of good design, back to the centre of rest; the sense
of interesting variety is always wedded with the sense of ultimate
completeness and repose.
In the temporal arts of literature and music the same effect is
gained by quite different means. Here the elements are not presented
simultaneously, spread out for the attention to wander from and revert
to at will. Each is presented but for a moment, after which it exists
only in the memory. Nevertheless all literature and music worthy the
name of art give us, in common with the spatial arts, the sense of
symmetrical shape, of ordered profusion. Though we are aware of each
single lineament but for an instant, after which it is supplanted
by the next, yet we know that all combine into just as complete and
satisfying a scheme as that of the well-designed statuary group,
the well-composed picture, or the well-proportioned building. This
consciousness of form or design in a series of momentary impressions,
on which all the high æsthetic value of the temporal arts depends, is
made possible to us by our mental powers of memory and recognition.
Literature and music deal with memorable units, which are repeated.
Familiarity with their methods quickly accustoms us to expect the
repetitions; whereupon there arises a succession of expectations,
followed by their fulfilments, by which the so fleeting impressions are
arranged in our minds in a fixed and satisfying order. And so arises
the sense of beauty in the contemplation of a poem or a piece of music.
In poetry two different modes of repetition are utilized, each arousing
its own peculiar expectation, which combines with its fulfilment
to give the sense of order. The first mode is that of metrical
repetition, the establishment and reiteration of a certain scheme of
accentuation of syllables practically equal in duration. In heroic
verse, for example, the scheme is a succession of ten syllables, every
alternate one accented, and beginning with an unaccented. When a single
line of this sort is heard, it forms a pattern in the mind, and arouses
an expectation of another of the same sort. The fulfilment of the
expectation gives rise to the sense of form. In rhymed verse, a second
kind of repetition is added to this fundamental metrical one, namely,
the repetition of the terminal sound of the line. When we read “’Tis
not enough no harshness gives offence,” the obviously regular character
of it in respect of accent leads us to expect very confidently another
line of the same metrical structure; and our familiarity with rhyme
disposes us to think it highly probable that the new line will moreover
end with a sound similar to the final one in “offence;” so that when
the line comes--“The sound must seem an echo to the sense,”--it fulfils
both of our expectations, and we get a double sense of design in it.
The rhythm, or reiteration of the metrical scheme, is supplemented by
the rhyme, or repetition of the terminal sound. In the more complex
forms of verse the two schemes of design not only become far more
subtle in their single application, but are made to cooperate and
reinforce each other in all sorts of ingenious ways. The couplet,
the ordinary quatrain, the Omar Khayyam quatrain, _terza rima_, the
rondeau, the rondel, the triolet, and all the stanza forms, are simply
different schemes of combining rhythm and rhyme, the two fundamental
formative devices of all poetry.
Like poetry, music welds its elements by means of two modes of arousing
and fulfilling our expectations; but these, though they are somewhat
analogous to poetic rhythm and rhyme, are so much less close to our
ordinary experience that they will need a slightly more detailed
explanation.
All modern music is divided up into beats, or equal time divisions,
arranged into groups or measures by some regular system of
accentuation. The accented beats, like the accented syllables in verse,
impress the mind as goals of movement, in reference to which the light
beats are felt as transitions or preparations. The regularity of
the alternation of transition and goal is such that the mind quickly
forms the habit of expecting each goal beforehand, and of taking a
proportionate satisfaction in it when it arrives. This process of
expectation and fulfillment links the successive beats together in
an organism, which we may call the musical foot, after its analogy
with the poetic foot.[25] So limited is the mental span that it is
practically impossible for us to group more than three beats together
in this way into a single organism; and all music consequently consists
of combinations of either duple feet (one light beat followed by a
heavy), or triple feet (two lights followed by a heavy) or complex
arrangements of both sorts together. After this fundamental grouping of
the time-elements is made, the mind instantly proceeds to recombine the
groups into larger groups called phrases or sections. This it does by
the same device of accentuation, either actual or ideal. It conceives
one measure or foot as heavier or more significant than another, and
so leaves one as a transition, to approach another as a goal. Thus
groups of simple elements become themselves the compound elements of a
larger synthesis, and the entire musical fabric gains definiteness and
organization through the process of aroused and fulfilled expectation.
Any metrical formula, like that of a bugle call, interrupted at any
note before the last, gives us as vivid a sense of incompleteness as
a statue with arms and legs broken off, or a ruined building, or a
mutilated picture.
Metrical structure in music is thus, obviously enough, fairly analogous
with metrical structure in verse, with its grouping of syllables into
feet, of feet into verses, and of verses into couplets or stanzas.
When we pass to the second sort of musical structure, however, which
we may call tonal or harmonic structure, the parallel analogy with
poetic rhyme is much less satisfactory. It is true that harmony and
rhyme both act by presenting similar sounds at given points in the
series of impressions; but harmony is a far more subtle, various, and
potent organizing agent than rhyme. Harmony depends on the fact that
the tones, or pitch elements, used in music, can be distinguished
into unrestful and restful, or into transitional and final, just as
the metrical or time-elements are. In primitive music, in which but
one tone sounded at a time, the matter was almost absurdly simple:
high notes were unrestful, because they involved muscular tension;[26]
low notes were restful, because they meant relaxation of vocal effort.
Consequently, a descent of the voice meant a transition to a goal, and
songs were divided off into sections by successive falls of the voice
or cadences. The word “cadence,” so important in musical terminology,
preserves in itself the record of this phase of musical growth; from
the Latin _cado_, to fall, it means primarily a sinking or lapsing, and
hence, in general, a coming to rest.
As soon as two or more melodies were sounded together, however, the
sense of rest following activity, the universal generator of design
in a temporal series of impressions, could be produced in a far more
subtle way. It could be produced by making the melodies pass through an
inharmonious or dissonant chord or series of chords, to a harmonious
one. As soon as dissonance came into general use, in other words, the
sense of unrest, of impulsion toward something else, of progressive
movement, that it imparted to music, was so potent that cadences could
be made upward as well as downward; whenever dissonance resolved into
consonance the effect of cadence ensued. And as dissonances are of all
conceivable degrees of harshness, cadences could be made of any desired
degree of finality. Moreover, as the tonal material of music grew more
and more systematized, the feeling of key sprang up in men’s minds;
all music was felt to be in a certain key, that is, grouped about a
certain tone, the centre and goal of all the others; and then cadences
came to have even greater variety in the degree of finality they seemed
to assert, dependent not only on the strength of the dissonances they
followed, but also on the remoteness or nearness of their final chord
to the key-note of the piece. All this meant greater and greater
resources for building up music into complex and yet perfectly definite
organisms; and as harmonic form constantly interacted more and more
subtly with metrical form the capacities of design became practically
infinite.
Lest the reader get lost in the maze of technical details, however,
it will be well now to revert to the general principles underlying
all these musical phenomena, and to sum up, before passing on, the
essential points we have been trying to come at. Those arts which,
like poetry and music, present their matter to us in a temporal
series, depend for that organization of variety into unity which is
beauty (and the _sine qua non_ of all art) on the arousal in us of
expectations, which are presently fulfilled. By first leading us to
expect something, and then presenting it, they enable us to group our
impressions, to feel that they are interrelated and mutually dependent,
to get, in short, the sense of design or order. Music effects this by
means of metrical and harmonic form, which act is the same way so far
as they present unrestful, followed by restful, impressions, though
in different ways so far as the technical basis of these impressions
is concerned. Psychologically speaking, metrical and harmonic form
cooperate to give music definite structure in our minds; to reclaim
it from the condition of a mere sensuous or emotional stimulus, and
engraft upon it the final and supreme beauty of order.
All absolute or pure music depends for its structure on these two
great formative agents of metrical and harmonic design; but the
mode of their application progressed from simplicity to comparative
complexity as music evolved from the choral song of the sixteenth
century, out of which it grew, to the modern sonata and symphony. It
would be quite impossible to examine in detail, here, all the stages of
that progress. Our effort must be rather to define three well-marked
phases of the many-sided growth in general and summary terms, taking
for granted, meanwhile, the minor variations and modifications which
elude our somewhat rough analysis. These three phases have in common
certain essential traits. In each we see music making up its elementary
units of effect, out of unorganized tones, by the aid of metrical and
harmonic form; in each we see it combining these units into complex
designs by means of the principles of variated repetition of them. The
difference between the phases is that in the later ones the units are
larger and more definite, and are combined into broader, more complex
organisms.
The first phase is that in which short musical “subjects,” called
motifs, are made the elements of contrapuntal forms such as the canon,
free prelude, invention, madrigal, and fugue. This phase, in which
pure music makes its first appearance, emerging from the choral music
which needed no musical principles of design because it took its shape
and meaning from words, grew naturally out of the choral music which
preceded it. Imagine any bit of melody springing into existence in
connection with a verbal phrase or sentence; then fancy it sounded
without the words which gave it reason for being: it is easy to see
that the only way it can now be given significance is by being made
the subject of a _musical_ design, that is, by being repeated, either
literally or in modified form. Even the most primitive savages have
always felt this. In Sir Hubert Parry’s book on “The Evolution of
the Art of Music” we find many examples of formulas of notes used by
savages as motifs, and developed simply by endless repetition. Such
formulas as the following, for example, become, by mere repetition,
true music of a primitive type:
[Music: score]
[Illustration: FIGURE VI.
FROM PARRY’S “EVOLUTION OF THE ART OF MUSIC,” p. 49.]
The earliest attempts at pure music, though infinitely more advanced
than these childish forms, were, like them, built up out of short
motifs, of anywhere from two to a dozen tones, given definiteness by
fixed metrical and harmonic relationships, and developed by means of
repetition. All through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries such
contrapuntal forms were being developed to a high pitch of perfection,
and they reached their culmination in the great fugues of J. S. Bach
(1685-1750). Let us, then, instead of poring painfully over the obscure
steps by which this vantage-point in art was reached, make a brief
analysis of the consummated fugue-form, as it was treated by this
supreme master.
The fugue of Bach, as it is represented, for example, in the
forty-eight fugues of his “Well-Tempered Clavichord,” is a
contrapuntal or polyphonic form; that is, it is made up of from two to
five voices or parts, progressing with complete melodic independence
of one another, yet in entire harmony. It is based on, or proceeds out
of, a short motif or subject, often but a measure or two in length, but
subjected to the most ingenious, varied, and exhaustive manipulation.
It has certain structural divisions, and always ends in the key in
which it began; yet its form does not, strictly speaking, depend on its
sectional structure, as is the case with the song, dance, and sonata
forms, but rather on the logical exploitation of the motif. The motif,
in a word, is the primary fact of the fugue, the seed from which is
germinated all the luxuriant florescent life of the subsequent music.
Since the motif is the animating force of the entire fugue, it is
obvious that upon its pointedness, variety, and interest will depend
the vitality of the composition as a whole. Bach accordingly spares no
pains in the construction of his motifs. Much as they differ in length,
expression, and style, all are brimful of interest. Each embodies
some striking musical idea; some persuasive or emphatic rhythm, some
definite tonal design which either by its oddness or by its utter
naturalness and inevitability lays firm hold upon the attention at
once, and coerces interest whenever it recurs. Here are a few motifs
from the “Well-Tempered Clavichord”:
[Music: score]
[Illustration: FIGURE VII.]
The variety is wonderful, even in these five subjects; and it will
be seen at once how provocative of musical thought they are, like
condensed aphorisms, packed with suggestions that send the mind
questing through endless vistas of imagination.
As for the further treatment of the fugal motif, the actual formal
rules, despite the awe they have immemorially aroused in the popular
mind, are few and simple. After the first announcement of the subject
by a single voice, it is answered by a second voice, at an interval of
a fifth above;[27] then again stated by a third voice, and answered
by a fourth. This process goes on until each voice has had a chance
to enunciate the motif, after which the conversation goes on more
freely; the subject is announced in divers keys, by divers voices;
episodes, in a congruous style, vary the monotony; at last the subject
is emphatically asserted by the various voices in quick succession
(“stretto”) and with some little display or grandiloquence the piece
comes to an end. But simple as is this scheme, it gives the composer
ample opportunity to develop his theme with the utmost ingenuity, to
subject it to the most surprising metamorphoses, and to place it in
ever new lights and postures.
[Music: score]
[Illustration: FIGURE VIII.]
Practically all the possibilities of developing a motif were
exploited by Bach in his marvelous fugues. The development of the
motif means, in the most general terms, the repetition of it in forms
sufficiently like the original one to be recognizable, yet sufficiently
unlike it to be novel and interesting, to exhibit it, as has just
been said, in “new lights and postures.” Now, since the identity of
the motif depends on the fixed metrical and harmonic relations of its
constituent tones, it is obvious that variation of it will have to
consist in slight alterations of these metrical or of these harmonic
relations, or of both, managed with such skill that they do in effect
vary, without disintegrating, the motif. Our next task, then, will be
to describe the chief means, both metrical and harmonic, by which the
motif, in the hands of Bach and of all his successors, is modified
without being destroyed.
Mere repetition, of course, is not, strictly speaking, development,
however efficient it may be as a means of building up musical
structures. With the repetition of the motif at a different place in
the scale, however, such as is used in the “answer,” we have a true
development, though an elementary one. Here all the metrical and
harmonic relations of the motif are kept intact, at the same time that
the bodily shifting of it in the scale throws upon it, so to speak,
a new light. This will be felt at once by any musical person who will
play over attentively the two subjects and answers of Figure VIII. A
much more radical change is effected when the motif is changed from
major to minor, or vice versa, or presented in some key other than the
dominant and more remote, or presented with new harmonization. Still,
even in such cases, the metrical and fundamental harmonic form of the
subject remains unaltered.
In the device called “inversion,” much used by Bach, we have an
essential change. The metrical form of the subject, remaining
unchanged, ensures recognizability, but the harmonic relations, while
remaining identical in respect of size, are exactly reversed in respect
of direction; in other words, the subject is turned upside down. A few
examples will explain this better than many words.
In Fugue VIII, Book I, W-T.C.,
[Music: score]
[Illustration]
becomes
[Music: score]
[Illustration]
In Fugue XX, Book I, W.-T.C.,
[Music: score]
[Illustration]
becomes
[Music: score]
[Illustration: FIGURE IX. EXAMPLES OF INVERSION.]
Many other examples might be given, for Bach is endlessly ingenious in
his use of inversion, and all the composers who followed him have used
it. Its effect, as will be seen from the examples, is most stimulating;
the mind easily perceives the likeness to the original subject, since
the rhythm is retained intact; yet the turning upside down of all the
pitch relations produces most unexpected and interesting features.
So much for modifications dependent on altered tonal relationships.
Those produced by metrical alterations are if anything even more
serviceable to the composer. The simplest metrical change possible
is produced by increasing or decreasing the actual duration of all
the tones in the motif, while retaining jealously their proportionate
duration. Thus the identity of the motif is not tampered with, but it
is made to bear a new relation to its musical context. This device is
named augmentation or diminution, according as the time-values of the
motif are augmented or diminished.
In Fugue VIII, Book I, W.-T.C.,
[Music: score]
[Illustration: FIGURE X. EXAMPLES OF AUGMENTATION AND DIMINUTION.]
becomes by augmentation,
[Music: score]
[Illustration]
In Fugue II, Book II, W.-T.C.,
[Music: score]
[Illustration]
is treated as follows:
[Music: score]
[Illustration]
In Fugue IX, Book II, W.-T.C.,
[Music: score]
[Illustration]
becomes by diminution,
[Music: score]
[Illustration]
It will be well worth the reader’s while to play through the entire
fugues cited, noting the marvelous skill and subtlety with which Bach
weaves his fabric.
In augmentation and diminution the original accents of the motif are
for the most part retained--it is only the durations that are altered.
More transformative still, therefore, are those devices which actually
shift the accents of the motif, its most salient and identifying
features. The most important of these, which we may call “shifted
rhythm,” is seldom found in Bach; for its frequent and exhaustive
application we must look to Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms. As its name
indicates, “shifted rhythm” consists in bodily shifting or transposing
the motif in such a manner that its heavy beats become light, and its
light ones heavy. In order to complete our account of the chief means
of exploiting motifs, a few examples of shifted rhythm may find place
here, even though they are not taken from Bach.
[Music: score]
[Illustration: FIGURE XI. EXAMPLES OF SHIFTED RHYTHM. From the Minuet
of MOZART’S String Quartet in C-Major.]
[Music: score]
[Illustration: From the First Movement of BEETHOVEN’S
Eighth Symphony.]
[Music: score]
[Illustration: From the First Movement of BRAHMS’S
Second Symphony.]
The foregoing discussion and examples will serve to give a slight idea
of the wonderfully varied means of manipulating short motifs or musical
subjects which composers derive from the peculiarities of metrical
and harmonic organization. These means were utilized by Bach in the
fugue with tireless industry and inexhaustible imagination. The fugue
became in his hands the most perfect in its orderly complexity of all
the forms of pure music; for sheer intellectual interest of a highly
abstract kind his fugues have never been surpassed. Nor are they, as
those unfamiliar with their intricacies are apt to suppose, devoid of
emotional expression. The profundity, poignancy, and variety of the
feeling they express are as marvelous as their consummate beauty of
structure. They voice every mood, from the most earnest and impassioned
gravity to the lightest banter. They are the first great independent
monuments of pure music; and wherever future musicians may wander in
the quest of new forms and new potencies of expression, Bach’s fugues
will always stand magnificent on the horizon, marking the unassailable
eastern heights from which pilgrimage was begun.
It is true, nevertheless, not only that the fugue form makes the
severest demands on the attention and intelligence of the listener, but
also that, because of its ecclesiastical origin and polyphonic style,
it is incapable of the kind of highly personal, secular expression
that it was in the spirit of the seventeenth century to demand. The
prototypes of secular expression are the popular dance and song, and
as soon as learned musicians had discovered means to give to dance
and song movements the completeness, breadth, and organic coherence
requisite to large beauty, they began to turn their attention away
from the austere if noble contrapuntal forms, and to base their art
on more popular models. The result was that even in the age of Bach
the suite of dance and song movements began to be cultivated almost as
sedulously as the fugue, and Bach himself wrote suites which in their
way are quite as good as his more polyphonic works. The second great
phase in the application to pure music of the principles of metrical
and harmonic design is represented by the Suite.
As practiced by Bach, the suite is a series of dances and songs,
written in a style partly polyphonic and partly monodic (that is,
consisting of a single melody with subsidiary accompaniment). His
introductory movements, allemandes in the French suites, preludes in
the English, are stately or energetic contrapuntal pieces, intended to
commence the suite with an impression of dignity. They are followed by
courantes, bourrées, sarabandes, minuets, airs, and gavottes, all more
or less definitely rhythmical and animated; and the concluding movement
is generally a rollicking gigue. These suites of Bach may be considered
perfect models of the form.
Now, when we contrast the suite with the fugue, the first difference
that strikes us is that while the fugue, of polyphonic and
ecclesiastical origin, is not definitely rhythmical, but proceeds
somewhat amblingly and without division into segments of definite
duration, the suite movements, owing their origin as they do either
to songs intended to be sung to verses of equal length, or to dances
intended to accompany symmetrical motions of the body, are markedly
rhythmical--are made up, in fact, of phrases of equal length, balancing
one another and giving an impression of complete symmetry. A fugue
proceeds like a prose sentence; a gavotte or a bourrée or a minuet
sounds more like a stanza of verses. In short, the fundamental element
in a dance or song is not a fragmentary motif, but a complete phrase,
filling, as a rule, two measures, though sometimes four, eight, or even
three or five. The phrase begins with a motif, but fills it out with
additional matter rounded off by some kind of cadence. That the phrase
is thus a more complex and extended unit than the motif, a few examples
from Bach will make clear.
[Music: score]
[Illustration: FIGURE XII.
EXAMPLES OF PHRASES. Gavotte from BACH’S Fifth French Suite.]
[Music: score]
[Illustration: Bourrée, from BACH’S Third Suite for 'Cello.]
It will be seen at once that in each case the second phrase
answers or supplements the first. Like it in length and in general
contour, it is at the same time more positive and final, so that the
combined effect of the two is much like that of a couplet of verses.
The first phrase, in fact, arouses in our minds an expectation, which
only the second can satisfy; so that we have here a new and larger
application of the now familiar device for binding together successive
impressions. So characteristic is the supplementation of one phrase
by another that theorists have adopted a set terminology suggested by
it, calling the first phrase in all such cases the “antecedent phrase,”
and the second the “consequent phrase.” It will also be noted, however,
that the pair of phrases, once heard, becomes itself a unit in the
mind, and arouses a new expectation of further matter to establish a
still larger balance; and a reference to the pieces of Bach cited will
show that Bach in each case follows up his pair of two-measure phrases
by a four-measure phrase which supplements them as they supplemented
each other. And so the process goes on, the piece growing ever larger
and more complex by a regular accretion, until at last a phrase of
definite and entire finality is reached, and the movement stands
complete. All short songs and dances illustrate this progressive
accretion of phrases into larger and larger units, by means of a
constant unfolding of new expectations and fulfilments. To trace it
out, to analyse what the composer has so ingeniously built up, is one
of the most fascinating of studies; for it shows us how the simplest
song is organic like a crystal, a flower, or an animal.
It is neither possible nor desirable to lay down here any rigid rules
as to the metrical or harmonic relationships between the phrases.
Generally, the metrical balance is fairly simple; a two-measure phrase
is usually answered by another of the same length; two such phrases
are often answered by a single four-measure phrase. But sometimes
four measures are answered by two; and not infrequently three-or
five-measure phrases appear unexpectedly but with quite satisfactory
effect. The sense of balance must be given--that is all we can
say: just how it shall be given will depend, as Mr. Weller would
say, “on the taste and fancy of the composer.” As for the harmonic
relationships, endless variety is possible. Yet we may here point out
certain general principles. Every phrase, as we have seen, ends with
some sort of a cadence, strong or weak according to the harshness of
the dissonance it contains and the nearness of its final chord to the
tonal centre, or key-note, of the piece. Now, as the salient tones of
any key are its tonic and its dominant, the most obvious and natural
course for the composer is to embody these in the successive phrases;
and as the tonic conveys the impression of finality it is natural to
use that last. A glance at Figure XII will show that Bach makes his
antecedent phrase, in the first instance, end with a tonic chord, but
a weak one; in the second instance, with a dominant. In both cases
the consequent phrase ends with a strong tonic. Thus the harmonic as
well as the metrical relations produce the effect of expectation and
fulfilment, of antithesis between a transitive and a final impression.
This is the general principle of all harmonic structure. The final
impression is given by a strong tonic chord; the mediate impression,
arousing the sense of anticipation, is given by some weaker and
contrasting harmony, in the vast majority of cases the dominant chord.
A full sense of the inexhaustible capabilities of this sort of harmonic
structure can be gained only by a careful analysis of many pieces such
as the movements of Bach’s suites. To this the reader is recommended.
When once composers had grasped the possibilities of structure by means
of harmony, they quickly proceeded to work them out in the large, as
applied to a complete musical form. They began to organize whole pieces
by means of a grouping or ordered antithesis of different harmonic
centres. Working without models and in the dark, they made many false
starts and wrong moves, they tried many hybrid and unstable forms;
but eventually, in the course of years of experiment, they developed
two great types of structure, based on fundamental principles, and
embodied, with unimportant minor modifications, in almost all the
suite-movements of the seventeenth and of later centuries. The first
of these two great general types of structure, called Binary Form,
contained two distinct members or sections; the second, called Ternary
Form, contained three sections.
The essential principle of binary form is the simplest conceivable.
Every piece in binary form may be likened to a journey to a neighboring
place, followed by a return home. “The King of France, with forty
thousand men, marched up the hill, and then marched down again.” In
the case of binary form, the king of France is the subject or theme of
the piece; the forty thousand men are the variations or developments
on this subject that are worked out as the piece proceeds; the hill
is the progress from the tonic key to the contrasted tonal centre,
generally the dominant, or, if the piece is in a minor key, its
relative major; and the march down again is the return to the home
key. More specifically, the first section begins with the announcement
of the theme in the tonic key, and proceeds to ring changes upon it,
meanwhile modulating to the contrasted key and ending with a firm and
memorable cadence there. At this point the second section begins, with
the theme as at first, but in the new instead of the original key;
the modulation is reversed, the original key re-entered, and the same
cadence already heard repeated, but now even more firmly, and with the
added finality of the home key. The device is simplicity itself, yet
it admits a surprising variety of detail within its perfectly obvious
and satisfying unity of ultimate effect. Most of Bach’s allemandes,
courantes, airs, sarabandes, and gigues, are executed in binary form.
The great disadvantage of this admirably concise and organic structure
proved in the course of experience to be a certain monotony and
rigidity. As movements became longer and more complex, the division
into two sections, embodying but two keys in spite of momentary
excursions to more remote centres, came to seem rather constricting.
There was a dearth of variety about it, and a tendency to obviousness.
The element of contrast, of adventure far afield, was somewhat
lacking. Composers accordingly worked out, of course unconsciously, a
more various but equally organic scheme of design--ternary form. In
ternary form the first section is practically identical with that of
binary form; but the second, instead of “marching down again,” makes
the contrasting tonal centre it has reached but a starting-point for
still further excursions. It modulates freely, using to the utmost the
privilege of admission to all the keys of the gamut that music owes
to Bach and his system of equal temperament; it plays with the theme,
subjecting it to the modes of development we have already studied; it
indulges in all sorts of pranks and whimsies, departing as much as
possible from the set formality of the first section; in a word, it
endeavors to establish a complete contrast with what has gone before,
and while never violating logic, to get away as far as possible from
the beaten track, from the rut of routine. Then, after this interregnum
of variety, comes the third section with an emphatic reassertion of
regularity, presenting once more the subject as at first, and in the
tonic key, vindicating the unity of the movement of the whole, and
rounding it out to orderly completeness. Splendid examples of this
splendidly organic structure are most of the preludes, gavottes,
bourrées, and minuets of Bach’s suites.
In the suite, then, as it was practiced by Bach and other
seventeenth-century composers, we see operative a constantly
broadening application of the use of expectation and fulfilment, in
the interests of organic structure. Applying to artistic music those
methods of metrical and harmonic form that had long determined the
growth of folk-song and dance, the composers of this period gradually
learned to make even wider and more intricate syntheses of their
materials. So skilfully did they avail themselves of the relations
between contrasting harmonic centres that they were able eventually
to write whole movements as firmly organic, as deftly coordinated, as
a vertebrate animal. By the ever-extending use of thematic variation
and of free modulation, they made their pieces as various as they
were systematic. And at last, in ternary form, they established that
succession of statement, contrast, and reassertion, which seems even
to-day the last word in the philosophy of general musical structure.
The gradual expansion and increase of complexity in the movements
of the suite, made not only possible but logically necessary by the
structural potencies of these great principles of statement, contrast,
and reassertion, and of antithesis of keys, led eventually to a new
phase of musical structure, the third and last in the evolution we
have been tracing. The suite, in the seventeenth century the most
successfully cultivated of all the forms of pure music, gave place in
the eighteenth century to a still higher form, the sonata, which has
held the position of supremacy ever since. The sonata form is, not
only by tradition but by natural right, the norm of modern musical
structure. Almost all the chief works of all the great composers
from Haydn and Mozart to Brahms and Tschaïkowsky are cast in this
mould, as we easily realize if we remember that not only those pieces
specifically named “sonatas,” but also trios, quartets, quintets,
and the like, and overtures and concertos and symphonies, are but
pieces in sonata-form intended for various groups of instruments.
The string quartet is a sonata for two violins, a viola, and a
'cello; the concerto is a sonata for solo instrument with orchestral
accompaniment; and the symphony is a sonata on a large scale, for
orchestra. This remarkable prevalence of a single type of structure in
modern music means far more than the accidental survival, by inertia,
of an artificial convention; it means that this type of structure is on
the whole the best possible embodiment of variety and unity in tonal
effects; that it is the natural outgrowth of more primitive forms; and
that it is elastic enough to admit into its uniform scheme of order
the most diverse expressions of individual temperaments and ideals.
Tschaïkowsky’s intuition of beauty in tones is different enough from
Haydn’s; and the formal medium of which both can avail themselves
without violence to their genius must obviously be founded deep in
universal human psychology.
The modern sonata consists, as a rule, of four movements, contrasted
in character and in key, but combining to form a rational and complete
whole. In expression, the movements conform deftly to the natural
requirements of human nature. The first is energetic, vigorous, and
complex. The second is sentimental, melancholy, noble, or profound. The
third affords relief from the emotional concentration of the second; it
is a dance, full of vivacity, humor, fantasy, and whimsical impulse;
with Beethoven it becomes a consummate embodiment of the spirit of
comedy, which is quite as essential a part of human nature as that of
tragedy and earnest emotion. The fourth and last movement is again
vigorous and dashing, but in a less intellectual way than the first; it
ends the whole composition in a mood of simple and happy animation. As
regards structure, moreover, the movements differ in conformity with
the needs of the situation. The first, which is to be heard when the
mind is most attentive and unfatigued, is by far the most complex,--is
indeed often the only one in what is technically called “sonata-form.”
The second, the interest of which is more emotional than intellectual,
is usually of fairly primitive structure. The third, a dance, is in the
simplest of ternary dance-forms, that of the minuet, and, as written
by Haydn and Mozart, might almost be taken bodily out of a suite. The
final movement is also usually of simple, obvious structure.
It is clear, then, that of all the movements of the sonata, the
minuet is the nearest, in structure, to those more primitive types
embodied in the suite.[28] It makes a link bridging the gap between
the older form and its more highly-developed supplanter. A glance at
its construction will show how near it is to those simple ternary
forms already described in connection with the suite. The symphonic
minuet of Haydn is built up out of phrases, welded together in the
manner now so familiar to us.
[Music: score]
[Illustration: FIGURE XIII.
THEME OF MINUET, IN HAYDN’S “SURPRISE” SYMPHONY.]
But there is a considerable increase in the subtlety with which the
phrases are combined, in the “modelling,” so to speak, of the melody.
Greater variety is perceptible, the balance of the phrases is less
obvious, while equally satisfactory. The structure, in the more
extended sense, is ternary.[29] The first section of Haydn’s Minuet,
just cited, ends, after eighteen measures, in the dominant key. The
second section, or section of contrast, contains some passages that
are markedly different from the original theme, though congruous with
it, and modulates so far afield as E-flat major (the home key being
G). After twenty-two measures of this digression, the section of
reassertion enters with the original theme in the tonic key, lasts
twenty-two measures, and ends strongly in the home key. The minuet
proper, as with Bach, is followed by a similar short piece, called
the trio, put in for the sake of contrast. After it the minuet recurs;
and it is an interesting fact that the whole movement is thus a large
example of the same device of statement, contrast, and reassertion
that is exemplified in its parts. In other words, the whole minuet is
a “statement,” the whole trio a “contrast,” and the repeated minuet
a “reassertion.” We see here, then, the fundamental form which we
described as ternary, and which may be symbolised by the letters A B
A, utilized as a structural agent both in the individual parts, and in
the whole of the movement. The symphonic minuet is quite obviously the
child of the suite minuet, but a child approaching maturity, becoming
complex and intricate in coordination.
The form generally adopted for the last movement of sonatas exemplifies
a different way of utilizing the same general principles of design. As
its name of “rondo” implies, it consists of a constant recurrence or
“coming around” of the main thematic idea, which, as before, we may
call A; but with several contrasting sections, instead of only one.
The rondo type of structure may be symbolized by the letters A B A C A
D A, etc. It embodies, obviously enough, a greater variety than the
simpler dance form out of which it grew, and at the same time preserves
unity by the repetition of the main theme. It is less perfectly
coordinated, however, than the minuet; for as each episode occurs but
once there is a deficiency of logic and of artistic economy; and as the
principle of the form is sectional there is no intrinsic reason why it
should not be prolonged indefinitely. It is, therefore, an essentially
imperfect and indeterminate organism, although it is serviceable enough
as the mould of a movement in which gaiety and general animation are
more important than highly articulated plastic beauty.
The slow movement is of all the parts of the sonata the least uniform
in structure. Often it is written in the primitive aria-form, identical
with the minuet form; sometimes it is an adaptation of rondo form to
the exigencies of deliberate movement and emotional eloquence; and not
infrequently it is a modification of “first movement form,” or sonata
form proper. Its value depends but little on its structure, and almost
entirely on its expressive qualities.
Of all the movements of the sonata, as has already been said, the
first, which comes when the listener is fresh and disposed to give
minute and unflagging attention, is the most complex. First movement
form, however, is but a further application of the simple principles
of statement, contrast, and reassertion, and of contrast of keys, that
are already operative, in an easily understood way, in the minuet, the
aria, and the rondo. The first movement of a regular sonata begins
with a first subject, or theme, in the tonic key, built, of course,
upon a striking, individual, and memorable motif. After this has been
well impressed upon the mind by a certain amount of repetition, either
literal or modified, there is a formal transition to a contrasted key,
generally the dominant, or, if the movement be in minor, the relative
major, and a second subject enters, is in its turn well impressed
upon the attention, and ends with an emphatic cadence or close in the
contrasted key. This much makes up one complete section of the form.
Historically, it is an outgrowth of the first part of an ordinary small
ternary form, by simple magnification of the elements, and increasing
definition of and contrast between them. What was at first but an
inconspicuous modulation becomes a formal transition; and what was but
a cadence in the contrasting key becomes a new subject, with its own
individuality and function in the organism. And thus is built up the
section of statement, with quite a high degree of complexity of its
own. This is sometimes called the Exposition.
Next comes the “Free Fantasia” or “Working Out,” the section of
contrast, derived from the similar section in the minuet, but far
longer and more intricate. In material it is a development, or
manipulation, of the thematic germs stated in the exposition, by
aid of all the devices for developing motifs that we have traced.
Structurally, its function is to establish complete contrast, to
do away with the impression of rigid system that the first section
is likely to engender, and in every possible way to give variety,
surprise, and interest to the musical tissue. It is accordingly
absolutely free in modulation, unsystematic in arrangement, and
irregular in metrical division. In it the composer gives rein to his
fancy, obeys the impulse of the moment, and lets his ingenuity rather
than his shaping instinct determine his progress. Yet the section of
contrast is not a mere limbo of chaotic impulses. It must have its
own logic, it must be a true “development,” it must be throughout
obviously founded on the themes already stated. There is no part of
the sonata-form in which all the composer’s strength is more taxed
than the Free Fantasia; here, indeed, freedom brings its own heavy
responsibility.
After the contrast comes the reassertion, or “Reprise.” Having
displayed his materials in every light his imagination can suggest,
and having meanwhile almost obliterated his hearer’s sense of the key
of the piece, the composer now carefully prepares to gather up all
his flying threads, to stamp all this baffling variety with ultimate
unity. Re-entering the home key, which has gained by its long silence
a new power to delight and satisfy, he restates his two subjects or
themes, in their original guise, but now both in the home key. As the
essayist, after all his examples and figures and metaphors, returns
to a bald, emphatic, final assertion of his thesis, the composer now,
after all his playing with his ideas, reinstates them in more than
their primitive simplicity.[30] To give them perfect finality he
even reiterates them with fresh assertiveness, seems unwilling to
leave them, and insists, in his Coda or tail-piece, that we take away
with us a full sense of their import. Thus restatement, emphatic and
prolonged, following upon contrast and digression, completes the unity
of the whole composition, and closes the cycle to our satisfaction.
It is impossible to conceive a type of musical structure which should
better satisfy our demand for profusion of detail together with clarity
of fundamental shape, than this highly perfected product of a long
evolution, sonata-form.
It must not be supposed that this wonderful scheme of design reached
its maturity in any short period of time, or through the labors of a
few musicians. Infinitely slow and gradual was its growth; and though
the immediate followers of J. S. Bach, and especially his own son,
Philip Emmanuel Bach, brought it to a condition in which its general
outline was pretty well established, it was still, at the time when
Haydn appeared on the scene, incapable of that free manipulation which
high musical beauty requires. It was Haydn who removed the last traces
of stiffness and primitive angularity from the sonata-form; it was
Haydn who brought it to complete definiteness as an artistic device
and stamped it with lasting individuality; and it was Haydn who at
least hinted and foreshadowed those subtleties and accommodations in
its treatment which, as extended by Mozart and Beethoven, perfected its
capabilities and brought it to its mature estate as the most vital,
elastic and beautiful of modern musical forms.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] The musical foot does not always correspond exactly with the
“measure”; for the measure begins with the accent, while the foot often
ends or culminates with the accent. The measure is marked off by the
bar lines, but the foot sometimes spans the bar line.
[26] It must be remembered that all primitive music was vocal.
[27] The reason of the “answer at the fifth” is this: the tonic and
dominant being the two tonal centres of the key, about which all its
sounds are grouped, it is natural that they should be treated as
complementary to each other and made the bases of contrast effects.
After the subject is announced in the tonic, then, it is answered in
the dominant, or a fifth above (or a fourth below, which amounts to the
same thing). See Figure VIII.
[28] A still more primitive type of structure, occasionally but not
uniformly used in symphonies and sonatas, is the variation form. This
consists of a theme, generally in simple binary or ternary form,
subjected to many successive modifications or “variations,” generally
of a superficial kind. Though low in the scale of musical organisms,
it is surprisingly effective in the hands of real masters of musical
development such as Beethoven and Brahms.
[29] This is the case with the Trio, or second Minuet, as well as with
the Minuet proper.
[30] At first the second subject was in a contrasted key; now both
subjects are in the tonic.