[Footnote 321: An ideal with Hegel is not necessarily an image of the
mind, but far more generally the concrete realization of life.]
[Footnote 322: He should have added Tintoretto at least. What could be
more pertinent than his Sages in the Palazzo Reale in Venice.]
[Footnote 323: Applies to the study rather than the talent exercised.]
[Footnote 324: _Aber ganze Grundbild des Charakters darstellen._]
[Footnote 325: _Den geistigen Sinn und Charakter._ He means the entire
spiritual impression, heart, soul, and intelligence, with its practical
effect in substantive character.]
[Footnote 326: I think this is implied here in Hegel's use of the words
_verarbeitet durch den Geist._ But it may mean "in the face as worked
upon the soul within the _person portrayed._"]
[Footnote 327: _Die wahrhaften absoluten Momente für die
Characteristik._]
[Footnote 328: The German expression is, "It is not a serious affair
with her sinning." I am not sure that Hegel's view here does not lean
towards the sentimentalism he generally so strongly opposes. No doubt a
clear conception of the Magdalene's character is difficult. But it is
obvious that the less stress we lay upon her sin, the less weight her
conversion carries from the religious point of view, and the less great
appears the effect of the interposition of her divine Master. Correggio
was not a master likely to penetrate profoundly into his subject.
But, on the other hand, it must be admitted that Hegel's contention
is in one aspect of it supported by the far finer conceptions of the
Magdalene in Tintoret's work. At least this great master clearly shows
us that in his view of her she was strongly emotional, heart and soul
in everything whether for good, under good influence, or for evil under
opposite direction. It is possible to understand Hegel's interpretation
as one mainly aesthetic.]
[Footnote 329: In Berlin. The statement is made in February 1829.]
[Footnote 330: The omission of the Spanish school at least omits a most
important link with modern impressionism and its close relation to that
transition to music. And it is impossible to indicate the progress of
landscape without reference to the English school.]
[Footnote 331: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. I, p. 279.]
[Footnote 332: The words _in ähnlicher Weise_ make no sense.]
[Footnote 333: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. I, p. 280.]
[Footnote 334: Literally the sense is "Which (apparently agrees with
the trait of piety) invigorates with soul that assuredness and accepted
fact (_Fertigkeit_) of existence, which is from the very first (_von
Hause aus_) more decisive (_entscheidenere_) in this province of
salvation (_des Heils_)." _Heils_ must obviously be used in the same
sense as _Heiland_ above. My translation is necessarily rather free,
but I hope I have emphasized the meaning.]
[Footnote 335: _Ein ideal bleibender Uebergang._ The transition is
rather one the soul imagines than an actual fact. "Ideal persistence"
is perhaps better.]
[Footnote 336: _Religiosität_ here used in good sense.]
[Footnote 337: Lit., "More free from struggling." Compare Saint John
and Saint Paul as examples on the higher levels.]
[Footnote 338: That is Italian painting.]
[Footnote 339: Hegel's delight in Italian opera is well known to
readers of his correspondence. In the above fine passage he to some
extent unbelts himself from his ordinary tone of rather austere
reticence.]
[Footnote 340: The distinction seems to be between the more formal
unity of personality and the peculiarly seductive charm of Italian art.
It is rather a fine one and it seems to me rather confusing. Moreover
I do not quite see the pertinency of the simile of a Psyche that is
wafted as a butterfly even round blooms that have been spoiled of
their treasure, for such I understand to be the sense of _verkümmerte
Blumen._ A butterfly comes into no active relation with such unless the
idea is pictorial decoration. But possibly Hegel was thinking of his
reference to Dante, and in that case employed the metaphor loosely,
rather too loosely I should say.]
[Footnote 341: "Stunted" is perhaps the best translation. The fault
of the simile lies in its superficiality. It does not penetrate the
conception Hegel has before him.]
[Footnote 342: Giotto, Mantegna, Carpaccio, Masaccio, would be leading
names in point here. Hegel mentions two himself lower down.]
[Footnote 343: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 4.]
[Footnote 344: _Grelle._ That is harsh and flagrant outline.]
[Footnote 345: _Ihrer_ must refer I think to the Italians, though the
sentence might mean, "In contrast to these Greek productions."]
[Footnote 346: _Als Ueberzug._ The expression suggests it was used as a
facial glaze or varnish.]
[Footnote 347: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. I, p. 312.]
[Footnote 348: That is mixed with the attrited colour in its dryness.]
[Footnote 349: _Leimen. Leim_ is size or lime, in the compound word
_leim-farbe_ signifying distemper.]
[Footnote 350: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 42.]
[Footnote 351: Decam. Giorn., 6. Nov. 5.]
[Footnote 352: Such as S. Francis as presented us in Giotto's great
frescoes in Assisi.]
[Footnote 353: No doubt the serious aspect is less imposingly
emphasized; but if the opinion condemned below is too sweeping it
remains the fact that we can imagine nothing more profoundly serious in
the religious sense than the frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua.]
[Footnote 354: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 73.]
[Footnote 355: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 213.]
[Footnote 356: _Aufgaben_, artistic problems, themes.]
[Footnote 357: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 243.]
[Footnote 358: This of course is too strong a statement, and indeed is
ridiculous to anyone who has complete knowledge of the best work even
of Giotto.]
[Footnote 359: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 252.]
[Footnote 360: The frescoes of Mantegna, and those of Ghirlandaio, we
would mention in particular the fine examples in the S. Maria Novella
church in Florence, or for Mantegna our own cartoons at Hampton Court
and the invaluable but now hopelessly ruined frescoes of Gozzoli, in
the Campo Santo of Pisa, are fine illustrations of the text.]
[Footnote 361: _Des inneren Geistes_ may here refer to the ideal
aspects of civil and domestic life, but I think Hegel is contrasting
the two extremes and it refers to the religious content.]
[Footnote 362: "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 282.]
[Footnote 363: To make this judgment in any degree a sound one we
must assume the stress is laid on the mysterious aspect of expression
and form. The genuine examples of Leonardo are so very few. But quite
apart from that unless we exclude the great triumvirate of the Venetian
school altogether Tintoret, Titian, and Veronese, the praise here given
to Leonardo as a consummate master of the technique in oil-painting can
only be received with considerable reserve and qualification.]
[Footnote 364: Compare "Ital. Forsch.," vol. II, p. 308.]
[Footnote 365: _Die reinste Vollendung._ The adjective refers to the
character of the perfection as an expression of artistic feeling and
execution.]
[Footnote 366: _Halbdeutliche Erinnerungen._ Not I think memories that
are obscure themselves so much as memories which have failed to grasp
the content of what is recollected. The expression is rather confused.]
[Footnote 367: Modern criticism would doubtless have a good deal to say
in qualification of this. The name of Bellini alone is sufficiently
suggestive.]
[Footnote 368: This emphasis on the work of Raphael and Correggio is
characteristic of the best art criticism of the times of Hegel, but
marks its limitations. Neither Raphael nor Correggio can be called
religious painters in the sense that those profound masters Tintoret
and Michelangelo were such. The essentially academic aspect of so much
of Raphael's later production is not noticed. And it is these three
great names, Titian, Tintoret, and Michelangelo, who most truly mark
the transition to our modern outlook.]
[Footnote 369: _Eine aüssere Abgeschlossenheit._ This must mean, I
think, a dignified and reserved treatment of the technique mainly of
such themes.]
[Footnote 370: The technical and somewhat long-worded aspect of Hegel's
style is here at its worst and I find it hard to make complete sense
of this doubtless unrevised passage. The main difficulty is this, that
the sentence appears to assert that "the centre" (_der Mittelpunkt_)
of religion persists (_fortbleibt_) and yet asserts in the same breath
that the informing unity is broken up. I have done my best.]
[Footnote 371: A piety which is not merely emotional, but is concrete
in active life, possesses practical content.]
[Footnote 372: See note at end of chapter.]
[Footnote 373: This appears rather to contradict what Hegel has said
before of the impression a fine picture such as Correggio's Magdalene
leaves upon us that we cannot imagine the character to be other than it
is. See note below.]
[Footnote 374: More literally, "Without the alleviating effect of what
is comic."]
[Footnote 375: I presume _die Formen_ refers here rather to the
artistic forms of grouping and composition than the traits of vital
expression. But perhaps the latter interpretation would be more natural
to the words.]
[Footnote 376: The above survey of Dutch art is of great interest, and
in its careful comparison of the type of that art with the national
development of the Dutch may be contrasted favourably with the somewhat
prejudiced criticism of such a critic as John Ruskin. At the same
time I think it must be obvious that Hegel is a little inclined to
overrate the ideal aspect of that portion of it we may indicate in
the work of painters such as Wouvermans or Teniers, many examples of
which are little removed from the defects of theme he points out in
more modern work. Also personally I should say that, if we exclude
the supreme genius of Rembrandt, he rather exaggerates their rank as
supreme colourists in respect to the scintillation, mystery, and other
effects of light. To consider that they rank above the Venetians in
this respect is wholly impossible, to say nothing of Velasquez. Rubens,
however, may add some support to the view, but he is hardly in the
school described, and Van Dyck stands with him.]
CHAPTER II
MUSIC
INTRODUCTION
If we glance back at the course the evolution of the several arts has
taken, we shall find that it began with _architecture._ It was the art
which was least complete; for, as we discovered, it was, by reason of
the purely solid material, which it attached to itself as its sensuous
medium, and made use of according to the laws of gravity, incapable
of placing before us under an adequate mode of presentation what is
spiritual; it was consequently constrained to limit itself to the
task of preparing from the resources of the mind an artistic external
environment for Spirit in its living and actual existence.
_Sculpture_, on the contrary, and in the _second_ place, was able,
it is true, to accept the spiritual itself as its object. It was,
however, neither one in the sense of a particular character, nor as the
intimate personal life of soul, but rather as a free individuality,
which is as little separate from the substantive content as it is
from the corporeal appearance of Spirit; a presentment which only
displays itself as such individuality, in so far as the same enters
into it, in the degree that the same is actually required to import
an individual vitality into a content which is itself intrinsically
essential. Moreover, it only, as such ideal spiritualization, is
fused with the bodily configuration to the extent of revealing the
essentially inviolable union of Spirit with that natural embodiment
which is consonant therewith. This necessary identity in the art of
sculpture of Spirit's independent existence wholly with its _corporeal_
organization, rather than with the medium of its own _ideal essence_,
makes it incumbent upon the art still to retain solid matter as its
material, but to transform the configuration of the same, not, as was
the case with architecture, into a purely inorganic environment, but
rather into the classical beauty adequate to Spirit and its ideal
plastic realization.
And just as sculpture in this respect proved itself to be pre-eminently
fitted to give vitality to the content and mode of expression of the
_classical_ type of art in its products, while architecture, despite
all the service it rendered in the content which belonged to it, was
unable in its manner of presentation to pass beyond the fundamental
mode of a purely _symbolical_ significance, so, too, _thirdly_, with
the art of painting, we enter the province of the _romantic._ No doubt
we find still in painting that the _external_ form is the means by
virtue of which the ideal presence is revealed. In this case, however,
this ideality is actually the ideal and particular _subjectivity_,
is, in short, the soul-life returning upon itself from its corporeal
existence, is the individual passion and emotion of character and
heart, which are no longer exclusively delivered in the external
form, but mirror in the same the very ideal substance and activity
of Spirit in the domain of its own conditions, aims, and actions. On
account of this intimate ideality of its content the art of painting
is unable to rest satisfied with a material that, in one aspect of
it, is in its shape merely solid matter, and in another as such crude
form is merely tangible and unparticularized, but is forced to select
exclusively the show and _colour semblance_ of the same as its sensuous
means of expression. The colour, however, is only present in order to
make still apparent spatial forms and shapes as we find them in the
actuality of Life, even in the case where we see the art developed
into all the magic of colouring, in which the objective fact at the
same time already begins to vanish away, and the effect is produced
by what appears to be no longer anything material at all. However
much, therefore, painting is evolved in the direction of a more ideal
independence of a kind of appearance which is no longer attached to
shape as such, but is permitted to pass spontaneously into its own
proper element, that is, into the play of visibility and reflection,
into all the mysteries of chiaroscuro, yet this magic of colour is
still throughout of a spatial mode, it is an appearance growing out of
juxtaposition on a flat surface, and consequently a _consubsistent_
one.
1. If, however, this ideal essence, as is already the case under
the principle of painting, asserts itself in fact as _subjective
soul-life_, in that case the truly adequate medium cannot remain of a
type which possesses independent subsistency. And for this reason we
get a mode of expression and communication, in the sensuous material of
which we do not find objectivity disclosed as spatial configuration,
in order that it may have consistency therein. We require a material
which is without such stability in its relation to what is outside
it, and which vanishes again in the very moment of its origin and
presence. Now the art that finally annihilates not merely _one_ form
of spatial dimension, but the conditions of Space entirely, which is
completely withdrawn into the ideality of soul-life, both in its aspect
of conscious life and in that of its external expression, is our second
romantic art--_Music._ In this respect it constitutes the genuine
centre of that kind of presentment which accepts the inner personal
life as such, both for its content and form. It no doubt manifests
as art this inner life, but in this very objectification retains its
subjective character. In other words it does not, as plastic art,
suffer the expression in which it is self-enclosed to be independently
free or to attain an essentially tranquil self-subsistency, but cancels
the same as objectivity, and will not suffer externality to secure for
itself an inviolable presence[377] over against it.
In so far, however, as this annihilation of spatial objectivity,
regarded as a means of manifestation, is an abandonment of the same
which is itself already in anticipation asserted of the sensuous
spatiality of the plastic arts themselves[378], this principle of
negation must also in a similar way have its activity conditioned by
the _materiality_, which, up to this point, we have indicated as one
of tranquil independent self-subsistency, just as the art of painting
reduces in its province the spatial dimensions of sculpture to the
simple surface. This cancelling of the spatial form therefore merely
consists in this, that a specific sensuous material surrenders its
tranquil relation of juxtaposition, is, in other words, placed in
motion but is so essentially affected by that motion that every portion
of the coherent bodily substance not merely changes its position, but
also is reacted upon and reacts upon the previous condition[379]. The
result of this oscillating vibration is _tone_, the medium of music.
In tone music forsakes the element of external form and its sensuous
_visibility_, and requires for the apprehension of its results another
organ of sense, namely hearing, which, as also the sight, does not
belong to the senses of action but those y of contemplation; and is,
in fact, still more ideal than sight. For the unruffled, aesthetic
observation of works of art no doubt permits the objects to stand
out quietly in their freedom just as they are without any desire to
impair that effect in any way; but that which it apprehends is not
that which is itself essentially ideally composed[380], but rather
on the contrary, that which receives its consistency in its sensuous
existence. The ear, on the contrary, receives the result of that ideal
vibration of material substance[381], without placing itself in a
practical relation towards the objects, a result by means of which it
is no longer the material object in its repose, but the first example
of the more ideal activity of the soul itself which is apprehended. And
for the further reason that the negativity into which the oscillating
medium here enters is from one point of view an annihilation of the
spatial condition, which is itself removed by means of the reaction
of the body[382], the expression of this twofold negation, that is
tone, is a mode of externality which, in virtue of its very mode of
existence, is in its very origination self-destructive, and there and
then itself fundamentally disappears. And it is by virtue of this
twofold negation of externality, in which the root-principle of tone
consists, that the same corresponds to the ideal personal life; this
resonance which, in its essential explicitness[383], is something more
ideal than the subsistent corporeality in its independent reality, also
discloses this more ideal existence[384], and thereby offers a mode of
expression suited to the ideality of conscious life.
2. If we now, by a reverse process, inquire of what type this inner
life must be, if we are to prove it on its own account adapted to the
expression of sound and tones, we may recall the fact already observed
that by itself, that is, accepted as a real mode of objectivity, tone,
in contrast to the material of the plastic arts, is wholly abstract.
Stone and colour receive the forms of an extensive and varied world
of objects, and place them before us in their actual existence. Tones
are unable to do this. For musical expression therefore it is only
the inner life of soul that is wholly devoid of an object which is
appropriate, in other words, the abstract personal experience simply.
This is our entirely empty ego, the self without further content. The
fundamental task of music will therefore consist in giving a resonant
reflection, not to objectivity in its ordinary material sense, but to
the mode and modifications under which the most intimate self of the
soul, from the point of view of its subjective life and ideality, is
essentially moved.
3. We may say the same of the _effect_ of music. The paramount claim
of that, too, is the direct contact with the most intimate ideality of
conscious life. It is more than any other the art of the soul, and is
immediately addressed to that. The art of painting, no doubt, as we
have observed, is able to express in physiognomy and facial traits with
other things the inner life and its activity, the moods and passions
of the heart, the situations, conflicts, and fatalities of the soul;
what, however, we have before us in pictures are objective appearances,
from which the self of contemplation, in its most ideal self-identity,
is still held distinctly apart. However much we become absorbed in or
penetrate into the object, the situation, the character, the forms
of a statue or a picture, admire a work of art, lose ourselves in or
possess ourselves with it, the fact still remains that these works of
art are and remain objects of independent subsistency, in respect to
which it is quite impossible for us to escape the relation of external
observation disappears. In music, however, this distinction disappears.
Its content is that which is itself essentially a part of our own
personal[385] life, and its expression does not result at the same
time in an objective mode of spatial _persistency_, but discloses, in
virtue of the continuity and freedom of its flight as it appears and
vanishes[386], that it is a manifestation, which, instead of possessing
itself an independent consistency, is dependent for its support on the
ideality of conscious life, and only can exist for that inward realm.
Tone is therefore no doubt a mode of both expression and externality;
but it is an expression which inevitably disappears precisely at the
point of and in virtue of becoming externality. At the very moment
that our organ of sense receives the sound it is gone. The impression
that should be given is at once transferred to the tablets of memory.
The tones merely resound in the depths of the soul, which are thereby
seized upon in their ideal substance, and suffused with emotion. This
ideality of content and mode of expression in the sense that it is
devoid of all external object defines the purely _formal_ aspect of
music. It has no doubt a content, but it is not a content such as we
mean when referring either to the plastic arts or poetry. What it
lacks is just this configuration of an objective other-to-itself,
whether we mean by such actual external phenomena, or the objectivity
of intellectual ideas and images. We may indicate the course of our
further examination as follows:
In the _first_ place we have to define more accurately the _general_
character of music and its effect in contradistinction to the other
arts, not merely from the point of view of its material, but also from
that of its form, which the spiritual content accepts.
_Secondly_, we shall have to discuss the particular _distinctions_, in
which musical tones and their modes[387] are developed and mediated
partly in respect to their temporal duration, and partly in relation to
the qualitative distinctions of their actual resonance.
_Thirdly_, and in conclusion, music possesses a relation to
the content, which it expresses, either by being associated as
an accompaniment[388] with emotions, ideas, and considerations
independently expressed by word of mouth, or by its free expansion
within its own domain in unfettered independence.
In proposing now, however, after having thus in a general way specified
the principle and division of the subject-matter of Music, to enter
into a more detailed examination of its particular aspects, we are
inevitably confronted with a peculiar difficulty. In other words, for
the reason that the musical medium of tone and ideality, in which the
content moves as a process, is of so abstract and formal a character,
it is impossible for us to attempt such a closer survey without at
the same time broaching technical formulae and definitions such as
belong to the relations of tone-measure or distinctions that apply to
different instruments, scales, or chords. I must admit to no expert
knowledge in this sphere of musical science, and can only offer my
apologies for being unable to do more than limit myself to more general
points of view and a few isolated observations.
1. THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF MUSIC
The essential points of view which are of general importance in a
survey of music we may examine under the following heads of division:
_First_, we have to compare music on the one hand with the plastic
arts, and on the other with poetry.
_Secondly_, we shall by means of the above comparison be in a better
position to understand the way in which music is able to master and
disclose a given content.
_Thirdly_, and as a result of the latter inquiry, we may with more
accuracy explain the peculiar effect which the art of music, in
contradistinction to the other arts, exercises on the soul.
(_a_) With regard to the first point we should, if we are desirous of
setting it forth clearly in its specific individuality, compare music
with the other two arts from three distinct points of view.
(_α_) And, _first_, it may be observed that it stands in a relation of
affinity to _architecture_, although it is in strong contrast with it.
(_αα_) Our meaning is this. In the art of building the content which
should be made apparent in architectonic forms, does not, as is
the case in works of sculpture and painting, wholly enter into the
configuration, but remains distinct from it as an external environment;
so, too, in music, under its aspect of the most specifically romantic
art, the classical identity of ideality and its external existence
receives its resolution in a similar, if converse, way to that in
which architecture, as the symbolical type of presentation, was not
as yet wholly able to secure such a unity. For this ideality of
Spirit proceeds from what is purely the concentration of soul-life,
to ideas and images and the forms of such, as elaborated by the
imagination, whereas the art of music is throughout more occupied in
expressing merely the element of feeling and furthermore surrounds
the independently expressed ideas of the mind with the melodic chime
of emotions, just as architecture in its province places around the
statues of the god, no doubt in an unyielding way, the reasonable forms
of its columns, walls, and entablatures[389].
(_ββ_) In this way tone and its formative combinations is for
the first time a medium _created_ by art and entirely artistic
expression of a wholly different type from that we find in painting
and sculpture acting through the material of the human body and its
pose and physiognomy. In this respect, too, music may be more nearly
compared with architecture, which does not accept its forms from what
is actually presented, but as the creation of human invention, in
order to inform them, partly according to the laws of gravity, and in
part according to the rules of symmetry and harmonious coordination.
Music does the same thing in its own sphere, in so far as it from one
point of view follows the harmonious laws of tone which depend on
quantitative relations independently of the expression of emotion,
and in another aspect of it, in the recurrence of time and rhythm
no less than in the further development of the tones themselves, in
many respects is subject to the forms of regularity and symmetry.
Consequently we find operative in music not merely the profoundest
ideality and soul, but the most rigorous, rationality. It unites, in
fact, two extremes, which readily lend themselves to emphatic contrast
in their independent self-assertion. In this aspect of independence
music more particularly assumes an architectonic character when we find
in it a coherent temple of harmony of its own creatively composed and
co-ordinated according to the laws of music, and released from the
direct expression of soul-life[390].
(_γγ_) Despite all this similarity, however, the art of tones moves
to quite as large a degree in a sphere wholly opposed to that of
architecture. We find, no doubt, in both arts as a basis quantitative
or more accurately measure relations; the material, however, which
in each case is informed, agreeably to such relations, is totally
different. Architecture attaches itself to the heavy sensuous material
in its tranquil juxtaposition and external form in Space. Music, on
the contrary, lays hold of the tone-spirit[391] as it rings freely out
of the spatial material in the qualitative distinctions of musical
sound and in the flow of a movement subject to the condition of time.
For this reason the works of both arts belong to two entirely distinct
spheres of spiritual activity. The art of building places in an
enduring form its colossal constructions for external contemplation in
symbolical forms. The swiftly evanescent world of tones, on the other
hand, directly penetrates through the ears of man to the depths of his
soul, attuning the same in concordant emotional sympathy.
(_β_) And if we, in the second place, consider the closer relation
of music to the two other plastic arts[392], we shall find that the
similarity and distinction, which attaches to such a comparison, is in
some measure founded upon the truths already enunciated.
(_αα_) Of these music is furthest removed from sculpture; and this is
not merely so in respect to material and type of configuration, but
also in that of the completed coalescence of its ideal and external
aspects. There is in short a closer affinity between painting and
music. In part this is due to the predominant ideality of expression
exemplified in both; in part it is referable to treatment of material,
in which, as we have already seen, it is permissible for the art of
painting to approach the very boundary of music itself. Painting has,
however, for its aim in common with sculpture the representation of
an objective form in Space, and is restricted in its material to the
actual form of things already present outside the sphere of art. It is
unquestionably true that neither in the case of the painter nor the
sculptor do we accept a human countenance, a position of the human
body, the outlines of a mountain, the leafage of a tree precisely in
the forms they present to us as here or there in Nature; in both cases
we are bound to justify what we have before us under the conditions of
the art in question, to adapt it to a particular situation, no less
than to employ it as a means of expressing the inevitable artistic
result of the entire content of the work. We have, therefore, in both
cases on the one hand an independently recognized content, which has
to receive artistic individualization, and, on the other, we are
confronted with the forms of Nature as they are similarly presented
in isolation; and the artist is bound, if he be truly an artist, and
seek to unite these two sources of inspiration in his composition,
to discover in both the material and support[393] for his conception
and execution. In short, he will, acting in the first instance on the
security of such general principles[394], endeavour on the one hand to
fill out with more concrete detail the generality of his imaginative
idea, and on the other to idealize and spiritualize the human or any
other of the forms of Nature, which are submitted to serve him as
particular models. The musician, on the contrary, it is true, does
not abstract from all and every content, but finds the same in a
text, which he sets to music, or with absolute freedom gives musical
utterance to some definite mood in the form of a theme, which he
proceeds to elaborate. The actual region, however, of his compositions
remains the more formal ideality, in other words pure tones, and his
absorption of content becomes rather a _retreat_ into the free life of
his own soul, a voyage of discovery into that, and in many departments
of music even a confirmation, that he as artist is free of the content.
If we are in a general way permitted to regard human activity in the
realm of the beautiful as a liberation of the soul, as a release from
constraint and restriction, in short to consider that art does actually
alleviate the most overpowering and tragic catastrophies[395] by
means of the creations it offers to our contemplation and enjoyment,
it is the art of music which conducts us to the final summit of that
ascent to freedom. Or in other language that which the plastic arts
secure through the objective fact of a plastic beauty, which displays
the entirety of human life, human nature as such, its universal and
ideal significance, in the detail of its particularity, without losing
that essential harmony, this effect music must produce in a wholly
different manner. The plastic artist need only _exhibit_, in that which
is enclosed in the conception, what _was already therein from the
first_, so that every detail in its essential determinacy is merely
a closer explication of the totality which already floats before the
mind in virtue of the content which is there to exhibit it. A figure,
for example, in a plastic work of art, requires in this or that
situation a body, hands, feet, bust, a head with a given expression,
a given pose, other figures, or other aspects to which it is related
as a whole, etc., and all these aspects presuppose the others, in
making collectively essentially complete work. The elaboration of the
theme is in such a case merely a more accurate analysis of that which
already itself essentially contains it, and the more elaborate the
picture is, which thereby confronts us, the more concentrated is the
unity, and the stronger becomes the connection of the parts. The most
consummate expression of detail must be, if the work of art is the best
class, at the same time an elucidation of the highest form of unity.
No doubt the ideal articulation and rounding off in a whole, in which
the one part follows inevitably from another, ought to be present in
a musical composition. But in some measure the execution here is of a
totally different type, and moreover we can only accept the unity in a
restricted sense.
(_ββ_) In a musical theme the significance which has to be expressed
is already exhausted[396]. If it is repeated or carried on to
further oppositions and mediations these repetitions, modulations,
and elaborations by means of other scales may very readily appear
superfluous, and rather are appertinent to the purely musical
development and the assimilation of the varied content of harmonic
progressions which are neither demanded by the content itself[397], nor
remain dependent upon it, whereas in the plastic arts the execution of
the detail and the passage to it is simply and always a more accurate
exhibition and analysis of the content itself.
But of course it is impossible to deny that another theme is actually
motived by the way a theme is developed, and each of them, then, in
their alternation or their interfusion progress, change, are at one
time suppressed, at another emphasized, and by their victory or defeat
are able to make a content explicit in its more definite features,
oppositions, transitions, developments, and resolutions. But in this
case, too, the unity is not made more profound and concentrated by
virtue of such elaboration as is the case in sculpture and painting,
but is rather an expansion, an extension, a correlative series[398],
an addition of remoteness or a return, for which the content, which is
thus expressed, remains no doubt the universal centrum, yet does not
keep the whole so securely together as we find it is possible to do in
the plastic arts, particularly where their subject-matter is confined
to the human organism.
(_γγ_) Looked at from this point of view the art of music, as
contrasted with the other arts, lies too close to the medium of that
formal freedom of soul life, and thereby cannot fail to a greater
or less degree to be diverted beyond what is actually presented, in
other words the content[399]. The recollection of a theme proposed
is likewise a self-revealment[400] of the artist, in other words is
an ideal realization, to the effect that this self is the artist, and
he may progress just as he likes, and by what by-paths he likes. But
on the other hand the free exercise of imaginative caprice of the
above description is expressly to be distinguished from a musical
composition which is essentially conclusive, that is to say, which
constitutes a fundamentally self-integrated totality. In the free
improvization[401] the absence of restrictions is itself an object, so
that the artist is able to assert his caprice in the acceptance of any
material he chooses, to interweave acknowledged melodies and motives in
his improvized productions, to emphasize some new aspect of such, to
elaborate them in a variety of modifications, or make them steps in his
progression to other material, and advance from thence in the same way
to developments of still more arresting contrasts.
In general, however, a musical composition determines the freedom of
the composer, either by limiting it to a more self-contained execution,
and the observance of what we may describe as a more plastic unity, or
by permitting him with the full force of his personality and caprice
to pass at every point into more or less important digressions, to let
spontaneous ideas travel hither and thither as they please, to lay
stress for the moment on this or that motive, and then once more to
drown it in an overwhelming torrent. While, then, the study of Nature's
forms is essential to both painter and sculptor, the art of music can
look for no such fixed body of fact outside its own prescribed forms,
with which it would be forced to comply. The extent of the regularity
and necessity of its formal character is almost wholly determined
within the sphere of tone itself, which does not come into so close an
association[402] with the definition of the content that is therein
reposed, and consequently in respect to deviations beyond the same
permits for the most part a considerable opportunity for the free play
of the characteristic impulse of the composer.
And this is the main point of view, from which we may contract music
with the strictly plastic arts.
(_γ_) Looked at from _another_ aspect music is, in the third
place[403], most nearly affiliated to _poetry_; both in fact make use
of the same sensuous medium, that is, tone. Despite this, however,
these arts are very strongly distinct from one another not only in
virtue of the mode of treating tones in each case, but also in respect
to their different modes of expression.
(_αα_) In poetry, as we have found already in our general
differentiation of the several arts, tone is not as such elicited and
artistically produced by various humanly constructed instruments,
but the articulate sound of the human organ of speech is reduced
to the mere symbol of speech, retaining thereby nothing more
than the value of a sign of ideas, which is by itself devoid of
significance. Consequently we find here that tone remains throughout a
self-subsistent sensuous entity, which, as the mere symbol of emotions,
ideas, and thoughts, possesses the externality and _objectivity_ which
is _inherent in itself_ simply in virtue of the fact that is a _sign_
and nothing more. For the true objectivity of the soul-life as such
does not consist in utterance and words, but in this fact, that I, as
subject, am aware of a thought, a feeling, and so forth, that further
I confront it as an object, and in this way have it present to the
imagination, or forthwith develop for myself what is implicit in a
thought or a conception, setting forth in a series the external and
spiritual relations of the given content, and relating the particular
features of it to one another. Unquestionably we think throughout
in language, without, however, needing actual speech as spoken.
By reason of this ability to dispense with speech-utterance in its
sensuous aspect as contrasted with the spiritual content of ideas,
etc., to elucidate which they[404] are employed, tone receives once
more self-subsistency. In the art of painting no doubt colour and its
arrangement, regarded simply as colour, is likewise by itself without
significance, and in the same way, as contrasted with the spiritual
embodied, thereby a self-substantive sensuous medium; but we get no
painting from colour simply as such: we must first attach to it form
and its expression. With these spiritually animated forms colouring is
brought into an association by many degrees more constrained than that
which pertains to uttered speech and its coalescing result of words
with ideas.
If we will now look at the distinction between the poetical and musical
use of tones we shall find that music does not depress the tone sound
to the mere speech-utterance, but creates out of tone simply its own
independent medium, so that, in so far as there is musical tone, it is
treated as the object of the art[405]. And on account of this the realm
of tone, inasmuch as it cannot serve merely as a symbol, is by virtue
of this emancipated function of its life[406] able to attain to a mode
of configuration, which makes the form that is its peculiar possession,
that is to say, the modes of tone as artistically developed, its
fundamental aim and object. In recent times especially, the art of
music, by its wresting itself from all content that is independently
lucid, has withdrawn into the depths of its own medium. But on this
very account and to this extent it has lost its compelling power[407]
over the soul, inasmuch as the enjoyment, which is thus offered, is
only applicable to one aspect of art, in other words, is only an
interest in the purely musical characteristics of the composition and
its artistic dexterity, an aspect which wholly concerns the musical
expert, and is less connected with the universal human interest in art.
(_ββ_) All that poetry loses, however, in external objectivity by
being able to place on one side its sensuous medium, in so far as
that can be wholly dispensed with by art, it secures for itself, in
the ideal objectivity of its vision and ideas, which poetical speech
presents to soul and mind. For it is the function of imagination to
clothe these concepts, emotions, and thoughts in a world that is
itself essentially complete[408] with its events, actions, moods,
and exhibitions of passion, and by this means it creates works, into
which the entire fabric of reality, both in its external aspect as
phenomena and in the ideal significance of its content, is brought
home to the emotions, vision, and imagination of spiritual life. It
is this type of objectivity which the art of music, in so far as it
asserts its independent claims in its own province, is compelled to
renounce. In other words, the realm of tone possesses, no doubt, as I
have already indicated, a relation to the soul, and an alliance which
is consonant with its spiritual movement; but it fails to pass beyond
a sympathetic relation which is always of an indefinite character,
albeit in this aspect of it a musical composition, if originating in
the soul-life itself, and permeated by genius and emotions of a rich
quality, cannot fail to react on our nature with an equivalent power
and variety. In the case of a content and the ideal and personal
creation such as poetry implies our emotions pass more completely out
of their elementary medium of undefined conscious life into the more
concrete vision and more universal[409] imagination which is embodied
in such content. This may also be the effect of a musical composition,
so soon as the emotions which it excites in ourselves by virtue of its
own nature and the artistic energy that animates it are involved more
closely in ourselves with a distinct vision and ideas, and thereby
present to consciousness the tangible definition of soul-impressions
in a more stable outlook and more universally accepted ideas. This
is, however, _our_ imagination and vision, which no doubt has been
suggested by the musical work, but which has not been itself directly
disclosed by virtue of the artistic elaboration of musical tones.
Poetry, on the contrary, expresses emotions, perceptions, and ideas as
they are[410], and is further able to delineate a picture of external
objects, although it cannot itself either attain to the plastic clarity
of sculpture and painting or the spiritual intimacy of music, and is
consequently obliged to call as auxiliary to its powers the direct
vision we otherwise receive through the senses and the speechless
apprehension of soul-life in music.
(_γγ_) _Thirdly_, however, the art of music does not confine itself
to this independent position over against that of poetry and the
spiritual content of conscious life. It allies itself with a clearly
expressed content already completely elaborated by poetry, and as the
accompaniment of emotions, opinions, events, and actions. If, however,
the musical aspect of such a work of art remains the fundamental and
predominant one, the poetry, whether in the form of poem, drama, or
any other, has no right to assert an independent claim of its own
therein. And as a general rule in this association, of music and poetry
the preponderance of one art is injurious to the other. If therefore
the text, a poetical creation, possesses a fully independent value
of its own, the support to be expected from music should be merely
an insignificant one, as we find, for example, was the case with
the dramatic choruses of the ancients where the music was nothing
more than an incidental accompaniment. If, conversely, the music is
composed with a more independent individuality of its own, then the
text in its turn should be of a more superficially poetical execution,
and should as an independent production confine itself to emotions
of a general character and ideas depicted on universal lines. The
poetical elaboration of profound thoughts is as little appropriate to
a good musical text as is the delineation of the objects of external
Nature or descriptive poetry generally. Songs, operatic arias, the
texts of oratorios, and so forth may be consequently, so far as the
detail of their execution as poetry is concerned, jejune and of a
certain degree of mediocrity. The poet must not make his merits as
poet too conspicuous if the musician is to find in his text a genuine
opportunity. In this respect it is especially the Italians, such as
Metastasio and others, who have displayed the greatest skill, while
Schiller's poems, which were never written with such an object in
view at all, have been shown to be ill adapted and indeed useless for
musical composition[411]. In cases where the music receives a more
artistic elaboration, the audience understands next to nothing of the
text, and this is more particularly so with our German speech and
pronunciation[412]. For this reason it is not in the interest of music
that the weight of interest should be reposed in the text. An Italian
audience, for example, chatters away during the unimportant scenes of
an opera, takes refreshment, plays cards, and so on; but the instant
an aria of emphatic appeal or an important musical movement begins,
every section of it is all attention. We Germans, on the contrary,
take the greatest interest in the fortunes and speeches of the princes
and princesses of opera with attendants, squires, intimates, and
waiting-maids, and we do not doubt there are many among us still
who regret the fact, when the singing begins, that the interest is
interrupted, and take their refuge in conversation.
In religious music also the text is either for the most part a
well-known _credo_, or a selection of single psalms, so that the words
are regarded as merely an incitement to a musical commentary, which
possesses an independent style peculiar to itself, that is to say one
which not merely is used to expound the text, but which for the most
part simply emphasizes the universal character of the content much in
the same way that painting selects its material from sacred history.
(_b_) The second aspect of our present inquiry is that of the
distinction that obtains between the way in which the art of music
lays hold of its subject-matter as contrasted with the other arts,
the form, that is, in which, whether it be as an accompaniment or
independently of a given text, it is able to apprehend and express a
particular content. As to this I have already observed that music is
not only more capable than the other arts of liberating itself from
an actual text, but also from the expression of a definite content,
in order that it may find its satisfaction in an essentially complete
series of combinations, modifications, contrasts, and modulations,
which are comprised within the realm of absolute music[413]. In such a
case, however, music is empty, without significance, and is, for the
reason that one fundamental aspect of art, namely spiritual content
and expression, is absent, not really genuine music at all. It is only
when that which is of spiritual import is adequately expressed in the
sensuous medium of tones and their varied configuration that music
attains entirely to its position as a true art, and irrespective of
the fact whether this content receives an independent and more direct
definition by means of words, or is perforce emotionally realized from
the tone music itself and its harmonic relations and melodic animation.
(_α_) In this respect the unique function of music consists in this,
that whatever its content may be it is not so created by the art for
human apprehension as though it either was held by consciousness as
a _general concept_ is so contained, or as definite external form is
ordinarily presented to our perception, or as such receives its more
complete reflection in the artistic counterfeit, but rather in the
way in which a content is made a living thing in the sphere of the
_personal soul._ To make this essentially veiled life and in weaved
motion ring forth through the independent texture of tones, or attach
itself to expressed words and ideas, and to steep such ideas in this
very medium, in order to re-emphasize anew the same for feeling and
sympathy, such is the difficult task assigned to the art of music.
(_αα_) The life of soul itself is consequently the form in which music
is able to grasp its content, and thereby seeks to absorb within itself
everything that can generally enter into the shrine of the soul and
above all disclose itself under the veils of emotional movement. But
from this it necessarily follows that the art of music must not attempt
to minister to sense-perception, but must restrict its effort to making
soul-life intelligible to soul, whether this is effected by its making
the substantive and ideal depth of a content as such penetrate to the
very core of soul itself, or by its preferring to disclose the life and
motion of a content in the soul of some particular person, so that this
inward life of itself becomes its actual object.
(_ββ_) This abstract inwardness of soul is in the most intimate sense
differentiated, under the mode in which music is related to it, by
_feelings_ in other words the self-expanding medium of the personal
subject, which unquestionably moves in a content, but suffers the same
to persist in this direct self-seclusion of the Ego, and in a relation
to the Ego, that is, void of externality. Consequently feeling is
throughout simply all the envelope of that content, and it is the
sphere which is claimed by music[414].
(_γγ_) It is a province which unfolds in expanse the expression of
every kind of emotion, and every shade of joyfulness, merriment, jest,
caprice, jubilation and laughter of the soul, every gradation of
anguish, trouble, melancholy, lament, sorrow, pain, longing and the
like, no less than those of reverence, adoration, and love fall within
the appropriate limits of its expression.
(_β_) Tone as interjection, as the cry of grief, as sigh and laughter,
is already, outside the province of art, the most immediately vital
expression of soul-conditions and feelings, the ah and oh of the soul.
We find in it a self-production and objectivity of soul as such, an
expression which stands intermediately between unconscious absorption
and the self-return to thoughts ideally determinate, a disclosure,
which has no relation to external fact, but is confined to the
contemplative state, just as the bird, too, in its song possesses this
enjoyment and this production of its inner self.
The purely natural expression, however, of interjections is not as
yet music, for though these outcries are no doubt no intentionally
articulate sign of ideas as speech is and consequently express no
conceived content in its generalized form as concept, but give vent to
a mood and emotion in and through tone itself, a state which is reposed
immediately in similar tones and opens the heart in the outburst of
the same, yet this emancipation is not one which is promoted by art.
The art of music must on the contrary bring the emotions into tone
relations of definite structure, and wean the expression of Nature of
its wildness, its uncouth deliverance, and ameliorate it.
We may perhaps say that interjections constitute the point of departure
of music; but it is only music when an interjection in the form of a
cadenza, and in this respect it has to elaborate its senuous material
artistically in a higher degree than either painting or poetry before
it is qualified to express the content of spirit. We shall have to
examine later on more narrowly the particular way in which the content
of music is worked up to such a pitch of adaptability; at present
I will merely repeat the observation that the tones are themselves
essentially a totality of differences, which are capable of disuniting
and uniting themselves in the most varied kinds of immediate concords,
essential discords, oppositions and transitions. To these opposed and
united tones, no less than the differentiation of their movements and
transitions, their entry, their progression, their conflict, their
self-resolution and their disappearance, the ideal character both of
this or that content and of the emotions, in the form whereof both
heart and soul obtains the mastery of such content, corresponds in
closer or more remote affinity, so that the like tone relations,
apprehended and informed conformably thereto, disclose the animated
expression of that which is present to Spirit as definable content.
The medium of tone asserts itself as more cognate with the ideally
simple essence of a content than the senuous material previously
dealt with for this reason that tone instead of making itself secure
in spatial form and coming to a halt as the varied presentment of
juxtaposition and extension, is comprised in the ideal realm of _Time_,
and for this reason does not progress to a condition under which simple
ideality and concrete bodily shape and appearance are differentiated.
And this is equally true of the form of the _feeling_ of a content
whose expression mainly falls upon the art of music. In other words in
sense-perception and conception we have already, as in self-conscious
thought, the necessary distinction between the perceiving, conceiving
and thinking Ego and the object of perception, conception, and thought.
In emotion, however, this distinction is resolved, or rather it is
never propounded, but the content is interwoven with the inner life
without such division. When consequently music is united as an art of
accompaniment with poetry, or conversely poetry is united with music
as an interpreter to its elucidation, in such a case music is unable
to render conspicuous in an external form or to reflect with intention
ideas and thoughts as they are thus apprehended by self-consciousness;
it is obliged as stated either to offer the simple character of a
content in true relations to feeling, as they are cognate with the
ideal relation of this content, or to seek more nearly to express, by
means of tones which accompany and give intensity to poetry, that
feeling itself, which the content of perceptions and ideas can arouse
in the spirit that is both sympathetic and imaginative.
(_c_) Following the course of these remarks it is possible in the
_third_ place to form an estimate of the unrivalled power which is
thereby directly exercised by music on the soul, which is neither
carried forward to the vision of reason, nor diverts consciousness in
isolated points of view, but is accustomed to live within the ideal
range and secluded depths of pure emotion. For it is precisely this
sphere, the intimacy of soul-life, the abstract appropriation of its
own realm, which is grasped by music, which thereby sets in movement
the source of these ideal changes, namely, the heart and soul, which
we may consider at this concentrated focus and centre of our entire
manhood.
(_α_) In a particular sense sculpture endows its art products with a
wholly independent subsistency, an objectivity essentially exclusive
whether we regard it from the point of view of its content, or that
of its external art-manifestation. Its content is the substantive
being of the life of Spirit possessed no doubt with individual
vitality, but along with this reposing in self-subsistent coherence
on itself; its form is the material configuration under the condition
of space. For this reason a work of sculpture retains as an object of
sense-perception the highest degree of self-subsistency. A picture,
as we have already pointed out in our consideration of the art of
painting, comes into closer contact with the spectator. In part this is
due to the essentially more subjective[415] content thereby depicted;
in part it is referable to the fact that it is merely the show of
reality which it displays, thereby making us aware that it is not a
thing independently substantive, but rather essentially something
intended for something else, and exclusively so, in other words for the
human vision and soul. Yet even in the case of a picture we have still
left us a freedom more independent it fails to absorb; even here we
have still only to do with an object externally presented, which only
reaches us through sense perception, and only thus excites our emotion
and imagination. The spectator may consequently approach the work of
art as he likes; he may observe this or that aspect of it; he may
analyse the whole, as it throughout persists confronting him, may make
it the object of various reflections, and in short remain throughout at
liberty to continue his independent review of it.
(_αα_) The musical work of art, on the contrary, no doubt, as such a
work, posits in like manner the incipiency of a distinction between
the work itself and the individual that enjoys it; that is to say in
its actually resonant tones it receives a sensuous existence that
is distinct from the soul of the listener. But on the one hand this
opposition does not proceed, as in the case of the plastic arts, to
an external subsistency in Space and the visibility of a mode of
objectivity that coheres independently, but on the contrary makes
its real existence vanish in the immediate passage through Time. On
the other hand the art of music does not make the separation of its
external material from its spiritual content in the same way that
poetry does so, in which the aspect of idea is elaborated with more
definite independence from the sound of speech[416], and more cut off
as it is than any of the arts from this aspect of externality, issues
as such in a unique progression of mental ideas constructed by the
imagination. No doubt the observation may readily be made here that,
agreeably with what I have already stated, the art of music is able
to conversely to release tones from their content and thereby give
them independent form; this liberation is, however, not that which
really falls within Art's province, which on the contrary wholly
consists in employing harmonious and melodic motion for the expression
of the content originally selected and the emotions, which the same
is qualified to excite. Inasmuch as, therefore, musical expression
has for its content the inward life itself, the ideal significance
of fact and emotion, and a tone-world which, at least in art, does
not proceed to spatial configuration, and in its sensuous existence
is wholly evanescent, it follows that music directly penetrates with
its movements to the ideal _habitat_ of all the fluctuations of
soul-life. In other words it seizes on consciousness, where it is no
longer confronted with an object, and in the loss of this freedom
from the flood of tones as it streams on is itself whirled away with
it[417]. Yet there is here, too, by reason of the divers directions
which music may separately follow, an effect of varied character. In
other words, when a more profound content, or, to put it generally, an
expression more steeped in soul, is absent, we may find as a result
that we experience on the one hand delight in the purely sensuous sound
and harmony without any further emotional movement, or, on the other
hand, we follow the course of the harmony and melody with our critical
judgment, a progression by which the inmost heart of us is no further
touched or affected. Or rather we may say that pre-eminently in the
case of music there is such a purely critical analysis, for which there
is nothing else presented in the work of art to evoke it beyond the
skill of an expert in its laboured production[418]. If we, however,
withdraw ourselves from this critical science, and give ourselves up
unreservedly, we become entirely possessed with the musical composition
and are carried with it quite independently of the power, which the art
of it simply as art exercises upon us. And the peculiar power of music
is an _elementary_ force, that is to say it lies in the element _of
tone_, in which the art here moves.
(_ββ_) The individual is not only carried away by this medium in
virtue of the character of its exposition in any particular case,
or simply drawn to it by the specific content thereof; but, viewed
simply as self-conscious subject, the core and centre of his spiritual
existence is interwoven with the work and himself placed in active
relations with it. We have, for example, in the emphasis of the music's
current rhythms, an opportunity to beat in time with it, or unite
our voices with the melody, and in the case of dance-music at least,
we may associate the movement of our legs. And, generally speaking,
the claim is made upon us as distinct _personalities._ Conversely,
in the case of purely methodical action, which, in so far as it is
subject to time relations, is compatible with a distinct beat in
virtue of its regularity and possesses no further content, we require
on the one hand an expression of this regularity as such in order
that this action shall be present to the individual under a mode that
is itself subjective; and, on the other, we require a more intimate
realization of this rhythm. Both requirements are supplied by the
musical accompaniment. This is effected, for instance, by music as
associated with the march of soldiers. Such arouses the soul to the
rhythmical beat of the march, makes the individual full of the fact of
his marching[419] and steeps him in the harmonious action of it. In
something of the same sense the unregulated bustle of a _table d'hôte_
and the unsatisfactory excitement it arouses annoys many people. Such
feel that the moving up and down, the clatter and chatter should be
subject to rule, and as we have in our eating and drinking an empty
space of time to deal with, we should have that emptiness filled up
for us. Such, therefore, is also an occasion among many others when
music will help us considerably, suggesting as it does other thoughts,
recreations, and ideas.
(_γγ_) In these instances we are made aware of the connection between
the individual soul with _Time_ simply, a condition in which the
medium of music consists. In other words the inward life regarded
as subjective unity is the active negation of the indifferent[420]
juxtaposition in Space, and thereby _negative_ unity. In the first
instance, however, this identity remains in itself entirely _abstract_
and void of content, and consists merely in this that it makes itself
an object, though it then annuls this objectivity, which is itself of
a wholly ideal type and of the same character which the subject of
consciousness is, in order thereby to enforce itself as subjective
unity. An ideal negative activity of the same kind in its sphere
of _externality_ is Time. For in the _first_ place it effaces the
indifferent _co-extension_ of the spatial condition and concentrates
the continuity of the same in the _point_ of Time, the Now. The point
of time, however, _secondly_, discloses itself at the same time as
_negation_ of itself; in other words _this_ Now no sooner is than it
annuls itself in another Now, and by doing this makes apparent its
negative activity. _Thirdly_, we no doubt do not get, on account
of externality[421], in whose element Time is in motion, the truly
_subjective_ unity of the first point of Time with the next, to which
the Now by self-effacement proceeds, but the Now remains throughout in
its change always the same[422]. For for every point of Time is a Now,
and is as undifferentiated from the other Now, taken as the bare point
of Time, as is the abstract Ego from the object, relatively to which
it annuls itself[423], and in which it falls into self-coalescence,
for the reason that this object is itself merely the empty Ego. The
actual Ego itself, too, belongs yet more closely to Time, with which
it coalesces, in so far as it is, if we abstract from the concrete
content of consciousness and self-consciousness, nothing but this empty
movement which posits itself as another and then cancels the exchange,
in other words cancels itself, in order thereby to conserve the Ego and
here only the abstract[424] Ego therein. Ego is in Time, and Time is
the being of the conscious subject itself. Inasmuch, then, as Time and
not the spatial condition as such supplies the essential element, in
which tone secures existence in respect to its validity as music, and
the time of tone is likewise that of the conscious subject, for this
reason tone, by virtue of this fundamental condition of it, penetrates
into the self of conscious life, seizes hold of the same in virtue of
the most simple aspect of its existence, and places the Ego in movement
by means of the motion in Time and its rhythm; while in addition to
this the other configuration of tones, as the expression of emotions,
brings yet further a more definite material to enrich the unity of
consciousness, a wealth by which it is at once affected and carried
forward.
We find, then, that the fundamental ground for the elementary might of
the art of music is of this nature.
(_β_) In order, however, that music may exercise its full effect we
must have something more than the purely abstract tone in its movement
in Time. The _further_ aspect we have to attach to it is a _content_,
an emotional wealth steeped in spirit presented to the soul, and the
expression, the soul of this content in tones.
We have no right, then, to entertain any exaggerated[425] opinion of
the sovereign might of music simply as music, about which ancient
writers, both sacred and profane, have told us so many fabulous tales.
If we go back to the miracles which Orpheus performed as a pioneer
of civilization we find indeed that tones and their movements spread
their influence to the wild creatures, which encircled him shorn of
their wildness, but they did not extend to humankind, who required
the content of a nobler strain. It is something of this latter kind
that we must attach to the hymns ascribed to Orpheus, which, in the
form we have received from tradition, even though it be not their
original one, support mythological and other ideas. In a similar way,
too, the warlike songs of Tyrtaeus are famous, by means of which, so
we are told, the Lacedaemonians, after long and fruitless conflicts,
were stirred up to an irresistible enthusiasm and finally were wholly
victorious over the Messenians. In this case, too, the content of
the ideas which these elegies excited was the main thing, although
pre-eminently in the case of barbaric peoples and in times of deeply
moved passions we cannot deny that the musical aspect of them exercised
a real force and effect. The pipes of the Highlanders contribute
essentially to the animation of their courage, and the power of the
Marseillaise as sung in the French Revolution is undeniable. The real
source of enthusiasm is, however, to be looked for in the definite
idea, in the true interest of the Spirit with which a nation is
steeped, and which can be exalted to a more direct and living feeling
when the notes of music, the rhythm and the melody carry along whoever
may give himself up to them. In our own days, however, we can hardly
hold that music is capable by itself of evoking such a courageous
temper and contempt of death. Almost all armies nowadays have excellent
regimental music, which calls the soldiers to their duties, releases
them from such, gives life to the march and incites them to the attack.
No one, however, dreams of beating the enemy with such means. The
courage of the field of battle does not come with the blast of trumpets
and the beat of drums, and it will indeed take a host of trombones
before a fort will tumble in ruin at their blast like the walls of a
Jericho. It is the enthusiasm born of ideas, cannon, and the genius of
generals which are the main thing now rather than music, and this can
only act as a support of the forces which have already filled and taken
hold of the soul.
(_γ_) In conclusion, we may point out in respect to the personal
effect of musical sound there is an aspect which is referable to the
particular manner in which the musical work of art approaches us in
its distinction from other works of art. In other words, inasmuch
as musical tones do not as buildings of construction, statues, and
pictures possess independently a permanent objective consistency, but
vanish in the act of passing by the musical work of art requires in
virtue of the fact of this purely momentary existence a continuously
repeated _reproduction._ And what is more, the necessity of such a
renewal of life points to a further more profound significance. For, in
so far as it is the personal soul itself, which music accepts for its
content with the object, to make manifest itself not as external form
and objectively subsistent product, to this extent the expression of
it must also assert itself immediately in the form of a communication
disclosed by a _living_ person, in which that person reposes his entire
and unique personality. This is to the fullest extent the case in the
song of the human voice, but it is relatively so in all instrumental
music, which can only be executed by means of a practised artist and
his living and spiritual no less than technical powers as such.
It is only by virtue of this personal relation in respect to the
active effect of the musical work of art that the significance of the
subjective aspect of music is substantiated, which, however, too, it is
possible in this direction to carry to the extreme length of isolation
in the case, that is, where the personal virtuosity of the reproduction
as such is made the exclusive focus and content of the enjoyment to be
derived.
With the above observations I will now close what I have to say with
regard to the general character of music.
2. THE PARTICULAR DEFINITION OF THE MEANS OF EXPRESSION IN MUSIC
We have hitherto contemplated music purely under the aspect, that
its function is to embody and give life to tone as the musical
expression of the personal life of soul; we have now to ask ourselves
the further question, by reason of what it is both possible and
necessary that tones are no purely natural outcry of emotion but
the articulate artistic expression of the same. For feeling as such
possesses a content; tone regarded as mere tone is without such. It
must consequently first be rendered capable by means of an artistic
treatment of essentially assimilating the expression of an ideal life.
Speaking generally, we may establish the following conclusions on this
head.
Every tone is a substantive, essentially accepted real thing,
which, however, is neither articulated nor consciously apprehended
in a living unity, as is the case with the animal or human form,
nor from the further point of view demonstrates in itself, as a
particular member of the bodily organism, or any isolated trait of
the animated body, whether in its spiritual or physical aspect, that
this individualization can only exist in vital association with the
other limbs and traits, and secure thus its meaning, significance, and
expression. Viewed according to external material, a picture no doubt
consists in single strokes and colours, which can also independently
exist, but the real material on the other hand, which first creates a
work of art from such strokes and colours, the lines and surfaces that
is to say of the form, have only a meaning when viewed as a concrete
totality. The _separate_ tone, on the contrary, is _independently
substantive_ and can also be animated up to a certain degree by means
of emotion and receive a definite expression.
Conversely, however, inasmuch as tone is no purely indefinite rustle
and sound, but only possesses in general musical validity by virtue
of its clear definition and pure tonality, it stands immediately, by
reason of this definite articulation, not merely according to its
actual sound, but also its temporal duration, in a relation to _other_
tones; nay, this _relation_ is that which first contributes to it its
real and actual definition and along with this its difference and
contrast as opposed to other tones or its unity with such.
In presence of the more relative self-subsistency this relation,
however, remains as something _external_ to the tones, so that the
relations into which they are brought do not appertain to the single
tones under the mode of _their notion_, as we find such in the members
of the animal and human organism, or also in the forms of natural
landscape. The coalescence of different tones in different relations is
consequently something which albeit not contradictory to the essence
of tone, is, however, in the first instance _artificial_, and not
otherwise presented in Nature. Such a relation proceeds to that extent
from a _third party_ and only exists for such, namely, for the person
who apprehends[426] it.
On account of this externality of the relation the definition of
tones and their co-ordination subsist in the relation of _quantity_,
in relations of number, which of course have their foundation in the
nature of tone itself, yet are employed by music in a system which is,
in the first instance, discovered by Art and modified[427] in the most
varied manner.
From this point of view it is not essential vitality, regarded as
organic unity, which constitutes the foundation of music, but equality,
inequality, etc., and generally the form of the understanding[428],
as it is asserted in quantitative relations. If we consequently speak
definitely of musical tones we indicate the same purely by numerical
relations as also by letters selected at will by virtue of which we are
accustomed to indicate the tones according to such relations.
In such a reference back to mere quantities and their intelligible,
external definition music possesses its most pronounced affinity with
architecture, inasmuch as it, just as this latter art does, builds up
its inventions upon the secure basis and scheme of proportions, a basis
which does not essentially expand and coalesce through vital unity in
an organically free articulation, in which the remaining differentiated
parts are given with the one aspect of definition, but only begins to
grow into free art in the further elaborations, which are enabled by it
to arise out of the aforesaid conditions.
Although architecture carries the process of liberation no further than
a harmony of forms and the characteristic animation of a mysterious
eurhythmy, music, on the contrary, for the reason that it has for
its content the most intimate, personal, and free life and essence
of the soul, strides into and emphasizes the profoundest opposition
that exists between this free life of soul and those quantitative
relations on which it is based. It is, however, unable to persist in
this opposition; rather it is its difficult function to overcome it as
essentially as it accepts it, by assigning to the free movements of the
soul, which it expresses, a more secure foundation and basis by means
of these necessary proportions, a basis on which it then, however,
gives movement to and develops the inner life in the freedom which
for the first time receives its fulness of content by virtue of such
fundamental necessity[429].
In this respect there are in the first instance two aspects of tone
we should distinguish, according to which it is artistically to be
employed. First, we have the abstract foundation, the universal but
not as yet _physically_ specified element, that is, _Time_, in the
domain of which tone falls. After that we get sound itself, the _real_
distinction of tones, not merely according to aspects referable to the
difference of the sensuous material, which sounds, but also in that
aspect of the tones themselves as they are related to one another,
whether in their singularity or as a whole. To such we must then adjoin
_thirdly_, the _soul_, which gives animation to the tones, rounds
them off in a free totality, and gives to them a spiritual expression
in their temporal movement and their real sound. By virtue of these
aspects we receive for their more definite classification a series of
stages as follows.
_First_, we have to occupy our attention with the purely temporal
duration and movement, which it is the function of art not merely to
leave to chance in their arrangement, but to determine according
to definite measures, and to render various by virtue of their
differences, and once more again to establish their unity in these
distinctions. From this we deduce the necessity for _time-measure_,
_beat_, and _rhythm._
_Secondly_, however, music has not merely to deal with abstract time
and the relations of longer or shorter duration, musical phrase and
so forth, but with the concrete time of their _sound_ according to
definite tones, which consequently are not merely distinct from one
another according to their duration. This difference reposes, in the
first place, on the specific quality of their sensuous material, by
reason of whose oscillations the tone is produced; on the other hand
it depends on the different number of such oscillations, in which the
resonant bodies oscillate in an equal measure of time. And furthermore
these differences assert themselves as essential aspects for the
relation of tones in their concord, opposition, and mediation. We may
give this portion of our subject the general designation of the theory
of _harmony._
_Thirdly_, and finally, it is the _melody_, by virtue of which on
these foundations of a beat characterized by rhythmical vitality and
of distinctions and movements of harmony itself that the realm of
tones is unitedly discharged in a spiritually free mode of expression,
and conducts us thereby to the final main section of our subject,
which will undertake to consider music in its concrete unity with the
spiritual content it is intended to express in beat, harmony, and
rhythm.
(_a_) _Time-measure, Beat, Rhythm_
So far as in the _first_ place the purely _temporal_ aspect of musical
tone is concerned, we have _first_ to discuss the necessity, which
generally in musical time is the dominant factor. _Secondly_, we shall
consider beat under the aspect of time-measure wholly regulated under
scientific rule. _Thirdly_, we shall treat of the rhythm, under which
a start is made in animating this abstract rule by the prominence or
subordination it attains to definite divisions of time.
(_α_) The figures of sculpture and painting are placed side by side
in space and present the extension of reality in actual or apparent
totality. Music, however, can only place before us tones in so far as
it makes a body under the spatial condition tremble, setting the same
in an oscillating motion. These oscillations only affect art under the
aspect, that they follow one another; and for this reason the sensuous
material generally only enters into music with the _temporal_ duration
of its movement instead of taking with it its spatial form. No doubt
that motion of a body is always present in space, so that painting and
sculpture have the right to exhibit the appearance of movement, albeit
their figures are in their reality at rest. In respect to this aspect
of Space, however, music does not accept movement, and there remains
consequently as part of its configuration only the time, into which the
oscillation of the body falls.
(_αα_) Time, however, in consequence of what we have already
above considered, is not as Space is, the positive condition of
juxtaposition, but on the contrary _negative_ externality. As
juxtaposition, which is cancelled, it is the point of passage, and
as negative activity it is the abrogation of this point of time in
another, which is itself immediately cancelled, and becomes another and
so on continuously. In the continuous series of these points of time
every single tone not merely is asserted independently as single, but
is brought from a further point of view into quantitative association
with other tones, by which process Time is referable to _number._
Conversely, however, for the reason that time is the unbroken rise and
passage of such points of time, which, regarded as mere points of time,
possess in this unparticularized abstraction no distinction one to
another, for this reason to a like extent time appears as the equable
stream, and the duration essentially undifferentiated.
(_ββ_) In this indeterminacy, however, music is unable to leave
time. Rather it is compelled to define it more narrowly, to give it
a measure, and regulate its stream according to the rules of such a
measure. By virtue of this regular treatment we get the _time-measure_
of tones. And here at once arises the question, wherefore then once and
for all music requires such measure. The necessity of definite periods
of time may be evolved from this fact, that time stands in the closest
affinity with, the self in its simplicity, which apprehends, and has
a right to apprehend, its inward life through the medium of tones;
time, in fact, regarded as externality, essentially possesses the
same principle, which is active in the Ego as the abstract foundation
of all that pertains to the soul and spirit. If, then, it is the
simple self, which as soul-life has to be made objective in music,
so, too, the universal medium of this objectivity must be treated
conformably to the principle of that subjective life. The Ego, however,
is not the indefinite continuance and the unbroken[430] duration,
but is only self-identity when we regard it as an aggregate and a
return upon itself[431]. The assertion of itself, wherein it becomes
object, is doubled back in the being thus self-for-itself; and it is
only through this relation to itself that it becomes self-feeling,
self-consciousness and so forth. In this aggregate, however, we find
essentially a _breaking off_ of the purely indefinite change, such
as we held time to be in the first instance, in which the rise and
suppression, the disappearance and renewal of the points of time were
nothing but a wholly formal passage from every now to another present
of similar character, and consequently nothing but an uninterrupted
progression. In contrast to this empty process the self is that which
itself _persists by itself_, the totality whereof essentially breaks
up the undefined series of time points, creates an infraction into the
abstract _continuity_, freeing the Ego, which recollects itself in this
process of discrete division and finds itself again therein, from what
is a purely external process of change.
(_γγ_) The duration of a tone does not, agreeably to this principle,
pass away in a process of relative indeterminacy, but emphasizes with
its beginning and end, which accordingly is a definite beginning and
cessation, the series of the time moments, which, apart from it, are
not thus distinguishable. If, however[432], many tones follow one
after another, and every one of them receives a duration which can
be separately distinguished from each other, then we must assume
that instead of having that original _indefinite_ series _devoid of
content_, we only once more get by a converse process the fortuitous,
and, along with this to a like extent, the _indefinite variety_ of
particular quantities. This unregulated rambling about contradicts
quite as much the unity of the Ego as the abstract progress forward;
and it can only find itself reflected and satisfied in such a varied
mode of definition in so far as single quantities are brought under
_one_ unifying principle, which for the reason that it subsumes the
_particular parts_ under its synthetic embrace, must itself be a
_definite unity_, yet in the first instance as merely an identity of
external application can only persist as one of an external type.
(_β_) And this carries us to the further principle of coordination
which we find in the _time-beat._
(_αα_) The first thing to be considered here consists in this, that,
as stated, distinct divisions of time are united in a unity, in which
the Ego independently creates its identity with itself. Inasmuch as the
Ego in the first instance only supplies the foundation as _abstract_
self this equability, in respect to the advance of time and its tones,
can only assert itself as operative under the mode of a uniformity that
is itself abstract, that is to say as the _uniform repetition_ of the
same unity of time. Agreeably to the same principle the beat according
to its simple definition can only consist in this, that it establishes
a definite unity of time as measure and rule not merely for the
deliberate[433] breaking up of the time-series held previously without
such distinction, but also for the equally capricious duration of
single tones, which are now apprehended together under a definite bond
of union, and that it permits this measure of time to be continuously
renewed in abstract uniformity. In this respect time-beat possesses
the same function as the principle of symmetry in architecture, as,
for instance, when this places side by side columns of similar height
and thickness at intervals of equal distance, or co-ordinates a row
of windows, which possess a definite size, under the principle of
equality. We find present in this case, too, an assured distinction
of parts and a repetition in every way complete. In this uniformity
self-consciousness discovers itself once more as unity, in so far
as it in part recognizes its own equality in the co-ordination of a
fortuitous variety; partly, too, in the return of the same unity, it is
recalled to the fact that it has already been there, and precisely by
means of its return asserts itself as the prevailing principle[434].
The satisfaction, however, which the Ego receives through the time-beat
in this rediscovery of itself is all the more complete because the
unity and regularity do neither apply to time or tones as such, but
are something which is wholly appertinent to the Ego, and is carried
into the time relation by the same as a means of self-satisfaction.
We do not find this abstract identity in what is wholly of Nature.
Even the heavenly bodies retain no regular time-measure[435] in their
motions, but accelerate or retard their course, so that they do not
pass over equal spaces in identical periods of time. The same thing
may be said of falling bodies, with the motion of projectiles, etc.,
and we may add that animal life to a still less degree regulates
its running, springing, and seizing of objects on the principle of
an exact recurrence of one definite time-measure. In this respect
the time-measure of living things proceeds far more completely from
spiritual initiative than the regular definitions of size applicable to
architecture for which we may more readily discover analogies in Nature.
(_ββ_) If, however, the Ego is to return upon itself by means of the
time-beat by thus appropriating throughout an identity which it itself
is and which proceeds from itself, we imply in this, in order that the
distinct unity may be felt as a principle, that in a similar degree
what is presented to it should be that which is _unregulated_ and _not
uniform._ It is in short only through the fact that the definite beat
of the measure prevails over and co-ordinates what is capriciously
unequal, that it asserts itself as unity and regulating principle of a
fortuitous variety. It must consequently appropriate the same within
itself, and suffer uniformity to appear in that which is not so. This
it is which first gives to the time-beat its specific and essential
definition to be asserted too in contrast to other measurements of
time, which can be repeated relatively to the same principle.
(_γγ_) By reason of this the multiplicity which is enclosed in a given
time-measure possesses its definite _standard_ according to which it is
divided and co-ordinated. From this we arrive, in the _third_ place,
at distinct _kinds_ of _time-measure._ The first thing of importance
to notice in this connection is the division of time according to
either an _even_ or an _uneven_ number of equally divided parts. Of
the first kind we have, for example, the two-four and the four-four
time. In these even number is predominant. Of the opposite kind is the
three-four time, in which the co-ordinate divisions constitute a unity
of equal parts, of course, but in a number that is uneven. Both types
are to be found united in six-eight time, to take an example, which
no doubt numerically appears to be similar to the four-four time, but
as a fact, however, does not fall into three but into two divisions,
of which, however, the one no less than the other, relatively to its
closer aspect of division, accepts three, that is an uneven number, as
its principle.
A particularization of this kind constitutes the constantly repeated
principle of every particular measure of time. However much
notwithstanding the definite time-measure is bound to control the
_variety_ of the time-duration and its longer or shorter sections, we
must not therefore extend its effective power to the length that it
places this variety in subjection in a wholly abstract way, that in
short, for example, in the four-four measure only four notes of equal
length as fourths can appear, in the three-four time only three, and so
forth. The regularity restricts itself to this, that as, for instance,
in the four-four time the sum of the separate notes are only equal
to four equal parts, which may not only be divided into eighths and
sixteenths, but conversely may again contract into less divisions, and
indeed are capable moreover of more diffuse division.
(_γ_) The further, however, this elastic mode of differentiation is
carried the more necessary it is that the essential divisions of the
time should be asserted as predominant and also should be indicated in
an effective way as an illustration of the fundamental principle of
their co-ordination. This is carried out by the _rhythm_, which first
gives vital significance to time-measure and the beat. With respect to
this vitalization[436] we may distinguish the following points.
(_αα_) In the first place we have _accent_, which to a greater or less
degree attaches in an audible way to definite divisions of time, while
others pass by on the other hand without an accent. By virtue of such
emphasis, or lack of emphasis, which is itself of various kinds, every
particular measure of time possesses its particular rhythm, which is
placed in exact association with the specific mode of division to which
its rhythm applies. The four-four time, for instance, in which an even
number is the principle of division, has a twofold arsis; on the other
hand there is that on the first note or fourth division, and then,
though in weaker power, on the third. The first is called on account of
its stronger accentuation, the _strong_ accent, the second in contrast
to it the _weak_ one. In the three-four time the accent rests entirely
on the first fourth, in six-eight time on the contrary it is on the
first of the eight divisions and the fourth, so that in this case the
twofold accent asserts a division of equal length in two halves.
(_ββ_) In so far as music is an accompaniment rhythm is brought into
essential relation with _poetry._ In the most general way I will on
this merely venture the observation that the accents of the musical
beat ought not to directly contradict those of the metre. If, for
example, one of the unaccentuated syllables, relatively to the rhythm
of the verse, is placed in a strong accent of the beat, while the
arsis, or it may be the caesura, falls in one of the weak accents of
the music, then we get a false opposition between the rhythm of the
poetry and that of the music which it is better to avoid. We may affirm
the same thing with regard to the long and short syllables. These also
ought in general to fall into harmony with the duration of the tones,
so that the longer syllables are coincident with the longer notes, the
shorter with the shorter, albeit this accordance is not to be pressed
with absolute precision, inasmuch as music is frequently permitted
greater play for the duration of its long notes, no less than for the
exuberant subdivision of the same.
(_γγ_) In the _third_ place we may at once in anticipation observe
that we have to distinguish the animated _rhythm of melody_ from the
abstractly considered and severely regular return of the beat rhythm.
In this respect music possesses a similar and, in fact, yet greater
freedom than poetry. In poetry the beginning and termination of
_words_[437] need not necessarily coincide with the beginning and end
of the verse feet; rather a thoroughgoing coincidence of this nature
gives us a verse that halts and is without caesura. And, furthermore,
the beginning and ending of the sentences and periods ought not
throughout to mark the beginning and conclusion of a verse. On the
contrary, a period will terminate more satisfactorily in the beginning
or even in the middle and near the last feet of the verse. From which
point we begin with a new one which carries the first verse into the
one that follows. The same thing holds good in the case of music
relatively to its time-beat and rhythm. The melody and its different
phrases[438] need not absolutely commence with the fall of a beat
and close with the conclusion of another: such may in a general way
move freely to this extent that the main-arsis of the melody may be
incident to that portion of a musical beat, on which, relatively to
its ordinary rhythm, no such emphasis applies; whereas, conversely,
a tone, which in the natural process of the melody would necessarily
receive no accentuated prominence, may quite conceivably be placed
in the strong accent of the time-measure, which requires an arsis,
so that consequently such a tone, relatively to the time-rhythm, has
a different effect from that which the same tone claims to assert as
distinct from that rhythm and purely in the melody. This opposition,
however, asserts itself most strongly in so-called syncopations. If,
on the other hand, the melody absolutely adheres in its rhythms and
divisions to the time rhythm it tends to drag, and lacks warmth and
invention. In short, what is required is a freedom from the pedantry
of metre and the barbarism of a uniform rhythm. A deficiency in more
free movement readily increases the limpness and sluggishness to the
point of actual gloom and depression; and in this way, too, many
of our popular melodies possess aspects of mournfulness, drag and
burden, in so far as the soul merely possesses a means of advance
as its expression more monotonous than itself, and in virtue of
such is constrained to consign to it also the doleful emotions of a
broken heart. The speech of Southern peoples, on the other hand, more
especially the Italian, offers a rich field for a rhythm and flow
of melody which is more notable for its variety and movement. And
it is precisely here that we mark an essential distinction between
German and Italian music. The uniform coldness of the Iambic mode of
scansion, which recurs in so many German songs, kills the free and
jubilant impulse of the melody, and restrains any further rise and
devolution[439]. In more recent times Reichard and others, owing to
this very fact that they have said goodbye to this iambic drone, have
imported into their lyrical compositions a new and rhythmical life,
although we still find traces of the former type in some of their
songs. However, we do not only mark the influence of the iambic rhythm
in songs, but also in many of our most important musical compositions.
Even in the Messiah of Handel the composition does not only in many
arias and choruses follow the meaning of the words with declamatory
truth, but also adheres to the fall of the iambic rhythm, partly in the
distinction simply that it makes between its long and short duration,
partly in the fact that the protraction of the iambic rhythm requires a
more elevated tone than the corresponding short syllable in the metre.
I have no doubt this is one of the characteristic features of Handelian
music, owing to which we Germans feel so much at home with the same,
quite apart from its excellences in other respects, its majestic swing,
its victorious onward movement, the wealth it discloses of profoundly
religious no less than more simple idyllic emotions. This rhythmical
substance of the melody comes more directly to our sense of hearing
than that of the Italians, who are inclined to find in it a want of
freedom, as something, too, that strikes the ear as strange and alien.
(_β_) _Harmony_
The further aspect, in virtue of which alone the abstract basis of
time-beat and rhythm receives its fulfilment, and thereby is enabled
to become actually concrete music is the kingdom of tones regarded as
such. This more essential domain of music is dominated by the laws
of _harmony._ We have here a further elementary fact to deal with.
In other words, a material substance[440] does not only through its
oscillation for art emerge from the mere visible reproduction of
its _spatial_ form, and is carried further into the elaboration of
its configuration _in Time_[441], but it produces _distinct_ sounds
according to its particular physical constitution no less than its
different length and brevity and number of vibrations through which it
passes in a given period of time, and consequently in this respect,
too, Art is compelled to take account of it and give it form agreeably
to its own nature.
With regard, then, to this second element we have to emphasize with
more accuracy three main points.
The _first_ one presented to our consideration is the difference
between the various _instruments_, whose invention and elaboration has
been found essential to create that totality of musical sound, which
in respect to musical sound constitutes a sphere of different tones
independently of all distinction of the relation of pitch whether it be
a high or a low one.
_Secondly_, however, musical tone is, quite apart from the different
peculiarities of either instruments or the human voice, itself an
articulated totality of different tones, tone-series, and scales, which
in the first instance repose on quantitative relations, and in the
determination of these relations are tones which it is the function
of every instrument and the human voice, according to its specific
quality, to produce in less or greater completeness.
_Thirdly_, music neither consists in single intervals nor in purely
abstract series of tones, that is, keys unrelated to each other,
but is a concrete interfusion of opposed or mediating sound, which
necessitates a forward progression and a passage from one point
to another. This juxtaposition and change does not depend on mere
contingency and caprice, but is subject to definite rules, which
constitute the necessary foundation of all true music.
In passing now to the more detailed consideration of these several
points of view I am forced, as already stated, to limit myself for the
most part to the most general observations.
(_α_) Sculpture and painting discover their sensuous material, such
as wood, stone, metals, and the like, or colours and other media of
that type more or less straight to hand, or, at least, they are only
compelled to elaborate the same in a subordinate degree, in order to
adapt them to the uses of art.
(_αα_) Music, on the contrary, which throughout is set in motion
through a medium artificially prepared for the purposes of art from
the first, must necessarily pass through a distinctly more difficult
preparation before the production of musical tones is secured. With the
exception of the human voice, which returns us Nature in her immediacy,
Music is compelled itself to create all its other instruments of
genuine musical tone throughout before it can exist as an art.
(_ββ_) With regard to these means as such we have already above formed
our conception of the _timbre_ proper to them in the sense that it
is the result of a vibration of the spatial medium, is the first
excitation thereof of ideal import, which enforces itself as such in
contradistinction to the purely sensuous juxtaposition, and, by virtue
of this negation of spatial reality, asserts itself as the ideal unity
of all the physical qualities of specific gravity and the purely
sensuous type of corporeal coalescence. If we inquire further as to
the qualitative peculiarities of the medium thus made to emit musical
sound we shall find that in its character as material substance no
less than as artificially constructed, it varies greatly. We may have
a longitudinal or oscillating[442] column of air, which is limited
by a fixed channel of wood or metal, or we may have a longitudinally
stretched string of gut or metal, or in other cases a stretched surface
of parchment or a bell of glass or metal. In this connection we may
draw attention to the following distinguishing features. In the _first_
place it is the _lineal_ direction[443] which is mainly predominant,
and produces the instruments most effective in musical employment;
and this is so whether, as in the case of wind-instruments, the main
principle is represented by a column of air which is relatively more
deficient in cohesion or by a material line adapted to tension, but
of sufficient elasticity to be made to vibrate, as is the case with
stringed instruments.
_Secondly_, we have the principle of surface rather than line
represented in instruments of inferior significance, such as the
kettle-drum, bell, and harmonica. There is, in fact, a subtle sympathy
between the self-audible principle of ideality and that type of
rectilinear tone[444], which, by virtue of its essentially simple
subjectivity, demands the resonant vibration of simple line extension
rather than that of the broad and round surface. In other words,
ideality is as subject this spiritual point, which is made audible
in tone as its _mode of expression._ But the closest approach to the
exposition and expression of the mere _punctum_ is not the surface, but
the simple linear direction. From this point of view broad or round
surfaces are not adapted to the requirements and enforcement of such
audibility. In the case of the kettle-drum we have a skin stretched
over a kettle or basin, which by being struck at a single point sets
the entire surface vibrating with a muffled sound. Though a musical
sound, it is one which from its very nature, as belonging to such an
instrument, it is impossible to bring either to clear definition or any
considerable degree of variety. We find a difficulty of an opposite
type in the case of the harmonica and the bells of glass which are set
in vibration in it. In this case it is the concentrated intensity of
tone which fails to project itself, and which is of such an affecting
character that not a few, when hearing it, receive actual nervous
pain. But, despite this specific effect, this instrument is unable to
give permanent pleasure and is with difficulty combined with other
instruments on the rare occasions such an attempt is made. We find the
same defect on the side of differentiation of tone in the bell and a
similar punctually repeated stroke as in the case of the kettle-drum.
The ring of a bell, however, is not so muffled as in the latter; it
rings out clearly, although its persistent reverberation is more the
mere echo of the single beat as struck at regular intervals.
_Thirdly_, the human voice may be regarded in respect to the tones
emitted as the most complete instrument of all. It unites in itself
the characteristics of both the wind instrument and the string. That
is to say we have here in one aspect of it a column of air which
vibrates, and, further, by virtue of the muscles, the principle of a
string under tension. Just as we saw in the case of the colour inherent
in the human skin, we had what was in its aspect of ideal unity, the
most essentially perfect presentment of colour, so, too, we may affirm
of the human voice that it contains the ideal compass of sound, all
that in other instruments is differentiated in its several composite
parts. We have here the perfect tone, which is capable of blending
in the most facile and beautiful way with all other instruments. Add
to this that the human voice is to be apprehended as the essential
tone of the soul itself, as the concordant sound which by virtue
of its nature expresses the ideal character of the inner life, and
most immediately directs such expression. In the case of all other
instruments on the contrary we find that a material thing is set
in vibration, which, in the use that is made of it, is placed in a
relation of indifference to and outside of the soul and its emotion.
In the human song, however, it is the human body itself from which
the soul breaks into utterance. For this reason, too, the human voice
is unfolded, in accord with the subjective temperament and emotion,
in a vast manifold of particularity. And this variety, if we consider
its distinguishing features sufficiently generalized, is based on
national or other natural relations. Thus, for example, we find that
the Italians are pre-eminently the people among whom we meet with
the most beautiful voices. An important feature of this beauty is
to start with the content of the sound simply as sound, its pure
metallic quality, which neither fines away in mere keenness or vitreous
attenuation, nor maintains a persistent muffled and hollow character,
but, at the same time, though never carried to the point of tremolo
in its tone, preserves in the compact body of its tone something of
the vital vibration of the soul itself. Above all else the purity of
voice-production is most essential, or in other words we must have no
foreign element of sound asserted alongside of the freest expression of
essential tone.
(_γγ_) Such a totality of instruments the art of music can employ,
either in separation or complete combination. In the latter case
of late years we may note an exceptional artistic development. The
difficulty of such artistic collaboration is enormous. Every instrument
possesses a character of its own, which is not directly congenial to
the peculiarity of some other instrument. It follows from this that
whether we are considering the harmonious co-operation of various
instruments of different type, or the effective production of some
particular quality of sound such as that of wind or strings, or the
sudden blast of trombones, or the successive alternations of change
that are inseparable from the music of a large choir, in all such cases
knowledge, circumspection, experience, and imaginative endowment are
indispensable, in order that, in every example of the kind, whether
of tonal quality, transition, opposition, progression, or mediation,
we do not lose sight of an ideal significance, the soul and emotional
value of the music. For example, I find in the symphonies of Mozart,
who was a great master of instrumentation and its sense-appealing,
that is its vital no less than luminous variety, a sort of alternation
between the different instruments which frequently resembles in its
dramatic interplay a kind of dialogue. In one aspect of this the
character of some particular type of instrument is carried to a point,
which anticipates and prepares the way for that of another; looked at
in another way, one kind of instrument replies to another; or asserts
some typical mode of expression which is denied to the instrument it
follows, so that in the most graceful fashion we thus get a kind of
conversation of appeal and response, which has its beginning, advance
and consummation.
(_β_) The _second_ material which enlists our attention is no longer
the physical quality asserted in the sound, but the essential
definition of the tone itself, and its relation to other tones. This
objective relation, whereby musical tone in the first instance, not
merely in its essential and emphatically defined singularity, but
also in its fundamental relation to simultaneously persistent tones,
expatiates, constitutes the actual _harmonious_ element of music,
and is based, regarded under its own original physical conditions,
upon _quantitative differences_ and numerical proportions. A closer
examination of the contents of this system of harmony presents, as
understood to-day, the following points of importance.
_First_, we have _separate_ tones in their definite metrical relation,
and associated with other tones. This is the theory of particular
_intervals._
_Secondly_, there is the connected series of tones or notes in their
simplest form of succession, in which one tone immediately leads up to
another; such are the _scales._
_Thirdly_, we have the distinctive characteristics of these scales,
which, in so far as each starts from a different tone, as its
fundamental tone, is thereby differentiated into the particular _keys_
distinct from each other, and into the system of keys which they
constitute.
(_αα_) The particular notes do not only receive their tone, but also
the more inclusively positive[445] determination of such sound by
virtue of a corporeal substance in vibration. In order to get at this
determinacy we have to define the type of vibration itself not in
any chance or capricious manner, but once for all as it essentially
is. The column of air, for example, or the string or surface under
tension, which produces sound possesses invariably a certain length or
extension. If we take a string, for instance, and fasten it between two
points, and set the part of it thus stretched in vibration, the points
of initial importance to discover are the thickness of the string, and
the degree of tension. If we have these two aspects identical in the
case of two strings then the all-important question follows, as was
first noticed by Pythagoras, what is the string's length, the reason
being that strings, in other respects identical, if of different
lengths give a different number of vibrations in the same interval
of time. The difference of one of these numbers from another and the
relation of any one to another constitutes the fundamental ground for
the distinction and relation between different tones in their degrees
of pitch as high or low. Doubtless when we listen to notes thus
related our perception carries little resemblance to one of numerical
relations. It is not necessary for us to know anything of numbers and
arithmetical proportions; and indeed when we do actually perceive a
string vibrating, such vibration passes away without our being able
to apprehend the numerical relation, while of course it is equally
unnecessary for us to glance at the body in vibration at all, in order
to receive the impression of its tone. An association, therefore,
between the tone and its numerical relations may very possibly at first
sight strike us, not merely as incredible, but we may receive the
impression that its acceptance implies that our sense of hearing and
ideal apprehension of harmonies suffer even depreciation when we look
for their cause in that which is purely quantitative. However this may
be, it is an undoubted fact that the numerical relation of vibrations
in identical periods of time is the foundation of the specific
definition of tones. The fact that our sense of hearing is essentially
simple is no valid objection. The apparently simple impression, no
less than the complex may, in respect to its essential character
and existence, carry within its compass other aspects essentially
multifold and related fundamentally to something different. When we
perceive, for example, blue or yellow, green or red, in the specific
purity of these colours, we receive in like manner the appearance of
a perfectly simple determinacy, whereas violet readily is decomposed
into its constituent colours of blue and red. Despite this fact the
pure blue is not a simple fact, but a distinct correlation and fusion
of light and shadow[446]. Religious emotions, a sense of right in any
particular case, appear to us in the same way as simple; nevertheless
all religious feeling, every impression that partakes of this sense
of right, is related to ourselves in entirely different ways, though
producing this simple feeling as its point of unity.
In just such a manner, then, tone is based upon a manifold, however
much we hear and perceive it as something entirely ultimate; a varied
nature, which, for the reason that musical tone comes into being
by means of the vibration of a body, and thereby together with its
vibrations is subject to temporal condition, is deducible from the
numerical relation of this oscillation in _time_, in other words from
the _determinate number_ of vibrations in a given period. I propose
to draw attention merely to the following points in respect to this
deduction.
_Tones that accord_ in the fullest sense, and on hearing which a
distinction is not perceptible as opposition, are those in the case of
which the numerical relation of their vibrations is of the _simplest_
character; those on the contrary which are not so out and out accordant
possess proportionate numbers more _complex._ As an example of the
first kind we have _octaves._ In other words, if we tune a string,
where we shall have the keynote given us by a definite number of
vibrations, and then halve the same; in that case this second half will
give us in the same time precisely the same number of vibrations as
the previous entire string[447]. Similarly in the case of _fifths_ we
have _three_ vibrations to two of the keynote; in the case of _thirds_
we have _five_ to _four_ of the keynote. In the case of seconds and
sevenths we have a different kind of proportion; here to _eight_
vibrations of the keynote we have in the former case _nine_ and in the
latter _fifteen._
(_ββ_) Inasmuch then--we have already referred to this--as these
relations cannot be posited as we like, but disclose an ideal necessity
for their particular aspects[448], no less than the totality they
together constitute, for the like reason the particular intervals,
which are fixed by such numerical relations, do not persist in their
relation of indifference to each other, but are inevitably comprised
together in and as a whole. The first form of this totality of notes
thus created is, however, as yet no _concrete_ concord of different
notes, but an entirely abstract series of a system, a series of notes
related under the most elementary mode to each other, and their
position within the totality thus comprised. This is no other than
the simple series of notes known as scales. The fundamental basis of
this is the tonic, which repeats itself in its octave, and is extended
through the remaining six notes placed between these limits, which by
virtue of the fact that the keynote directly falls into unison with its
octave makes a return upon itself. The remaining notes of the scale
either harmonize completely[449] with the keynote, as is the case with
the fifth and the third, or possess a more fundamental distinction of
sound in conflict with it, as is the case with seconds and sevenths,
and take their place consequently in a definite series, which, however,
I do not now propose to discuss or explain further.