(_γγ_) _Thirdly_, in these scales we find the source of different

_keys._ In other words, every note of the scale can, in its turn,

be posited as the keynote of a fresh series of notes, which is

co-ordinated precisely as the first is. With the development of

the scale through an increase of notes the number of keys has

correspondingly increased. Modern music avails itself of a larger

variety of keys than that of the ancients. Further, inasmuch as

generally the different notes of the scales, as already observed,

are related to one another in unobstructed harmony, or a relation

that deviates from such immediacy in a more fundamental way, it

follows that the different series which arise from these notes, taken

severally as keynotes, either display a closer relation of affinity,

and consequently permit of a passage readily from one to another, or,

on account of their alien character, do not so admit of this. Add to

this that the keys are divided from each other by the distinction

of hardness and softness, that is, as major or minor tonality; in

conclusion they possess, in virtue of their key-note, from which

they are generated, a definite character, which of itself responds

to a particular kind of emotion, such as lamentation, joy, mourning,

and so forth. In this particular even writers in ancient times have

anticipated much on the subject of distinction between the keys, and

applied their theory in many ways to actual composition.

(_γ_) The _third_ important matter, with the discussion of which we may

conclude our brief remarks upon the theory of harmony, is concerned

with the simultaneous concord of the notes themselves, in other words,

the _system of chords._

(_αα_) We have no doubt already seen that the intervals constitute a

whole; this totality, however, is in the first instance comprised in

the scales and the keys merely in the form of an associated series, in

the succession whereof each note is asserted separately in isolation.

In consequence the tonal sound remained abstract, because we find here

that it is only one particular and determinate tone that is asserted.

In so far, however, as the notes in fact are what they are[450] merely

in virtue of their relation to one another, it follows necessarily that

their tonal modality should attain also an existence as this concrete

body of tone itself, in other words different notes will have to

coalesce in one and the same body of tone. In this conjoint fusion, in

the composition of which, however, the mere number of notes capable of

such coalescence is not the essential point, for we may have a unity of

this kind with merely two[451], we possess our definition of _chords._

For inasmuch as the different notes are not definable for what they

are as a result of caprice or chance, but are necessarily regulated

by virtue of an ideal principle and co-ordinated in their actual

succession, it follows that a regularity of similar character will have

to declare itself in the chords, in order that we may determine what

kind of associations will be adapted to musical composition, and what

on the contrary must be excluded. It is these rules which first give us

the theory of harmony in the full sense; and it is according to this

we find again that the chords are embraced in an essentially regulated

system.

(_ββ_) In this system chords are particularized and distinguished in

their passage from one to another, inasmuch as it is clearly _defined_

notes which thus sound together. We have consequently to consider as

an immediate fact a totality of separately distinguishable chords. In

attempting the most general classification of these we shall find that

the original distinctions we cursorily alluded to in our discussion of

intervals, scales, and keys will once again serve us.

In other words the _first_ kind of chords are those in which notes

come together, which are completely consonant. In the musical effect

of these consequently there is no opposition, no contradiction

perceptible; the consonance remains completely undisturbed. Such is

the case in the so-called _consonant_ chords, the foundation of which

is supplied by the _triad._ This confessedly is generated from the

key-note, the third, the mediant[452] and the fifth or dominant. In

these we find the notion of harmony expressed in its simplest form, or

rather the intrinsic idea of harmony generally. For we have a totality

of distinct notes under consideration, which assert this distinction

while they also declare an undisturbed unity.

We have here an immediate identity, which moreover is not without the

element of separation and mediation, albeit this mediation is not at

the same time limited by the self-subsistency of different tones[453],

satisfied with the mere transitional passage from one note to another

in the relation of a series, but the unity is here an actual one and a

return in immediacy upon itself.

But in the _second_ place we may observe as a further incident of

distinct types of the triad, which I cannot now examine in more detail,

the deliberate appearance of a deeper mode of opposition. We have,

however, already at an earlier stage seen that the scales contain

over and above those notes, which coalesce without opposition, others

which annul such consonance. Examples of these are the diminished

and augmented seventh. Inasmuch as these notes equally belong to the

totality of tones, they too will necessarily find an entrance into the

triad form. And when this happens it follows that the immediate unity

and consonance above mentioned is disturbed, to the extent that we

have added a tone essentially of another character, by means of which

for the first time we meet with a _genuine difference_ which actually

asserts itself as contradiction. In this way we have the true depth of

musical tone really asserted. It proceeds to contradictions that are

fundamental and does not flinch from the acerbity[454] or fracture they

involve. And, in fact, the notion in its truth is no doubt essential

unity; but it is not only immediate unity, but one which ideally is

disrupt, which falls into contradictions. In this sense I have for

example in my Logic developed the notion as subjectivity, but at

the same time disclosed how this subjectivity, as ideal transparent

unity, is resolved in that which confronts it in opposition, namely,

objectivity. And further such subjectivity regarded as itself wholly

ideal is nothing more than a one-sided and abstract presentment of

it, which as such retains a something else, an opposed other over

against it, namely, objectivity, and only becomes subjectivity in the

profounder significance of its truth, in so far as it enters into this

opposing other-than-itself, overcomes it and resolves it. And for

this reason in the world of reality it is to the higher natures that

power is given to endure the pain of that fundamental contradiction of

conscious life and to overcome it. In order that music therefore may as

an art express the ideal significance no less than purely subjective

emotion of the profoundest content, that of religion for example, and

above all that of the Christian religion, in which the profoundest

depth of suffering is an essential constituent, it must possess the

means within its empire of tone to depict such a conflict of opposing

forces. And a means of this kind it does possess in the so-called

dissonant chords of the seventh and ninth[455]. The function of these,

however, I cannot venture further to discuss here.

Looking, however, from a general point of view at the nature of these

chords I would draw attention to the _further_ important point, that

they hold what is contradictory, under the mode of contradiction

already explained, in one and the same unity. That, however, what is

contradictory as such should remain in unity is a contradiction in

terms and unintelligible. The very nature and notion of a contradiction

assumes that assured repose in it and what it implies is impossible.

On the contrary it is as such self-destructive. Harmony is therefore

unable to remain in chords of this character; our ear and feeling, in

order to obtain satisfaction, imperatively demands their resolution.

To the extent of this contradiction we are inevitably impelled to seek

a _resolution_ of dissonance and a return to the consonant triad. And

this motion, as the return of the principle of identity upon itself,

is the movement of truth in the widest sense. In the art of music,

however, this completed identity is only possible as a succession

of its moments in time, which appears consequently as a series, but

declares its collective dependence in this that a necessary movement of

an advance, which is essentially self-caused and a movement of change

belonging to its very nature, is thereby asserted.

(_γγ_) And this suggests a _third_ point it may be as well to draw

attention to. In other words just as the scale was an essentially

co-ordinate, albeit in the first instance still abstract series

of tones, so too the chords do not persist in their isolation and

self-consistency, but possess an ideal relation to one another, and a

necessary impulse to change and progress. In this advance, although

the same can be changed and extended to a far more considerable extent

than in the scales, yet again mere caprice is not more possible in the

one case than the other. The transition of chord to chord is effected

in part by the nature of the chords themselves, and in part by the

keys, to which these chords lead us. It is in virtue of this that the

theory of music has established many rules, to enumerate and adequately

explain which would, however, extend our survey into much too difficult

and discursive matters. I must therefore rest content with having

confined myself to a few observations of most general interest.

(_c_) _Melody_

Taking now a glance in retrospect on that which, as connected with the

means of musical expression, has already engaged our attention, it will

be seen that first in order came the mode of configuration appropriate

to the _temporal_ duration of tones considered as time-measure, beat,

and rhythm. We then proceeded to discuss the _actual tones_ of musical

sound themselves; _first_, that is to say, in the sound produced by

musical instruments and the human voice; _secondly_, in the fixed and

determinate measure of the intervals, and the abstract succession of

notes that are subject to them in the scale and the various keys;

_thirdly_, in the rules which appertain to the different chords and

their conjoint progression. The concluding subject, which still remains

for us to consider, and in which those previous to it discover their

synthetic unity, and disclose in the same the fundamental form by

virtue of which tones are for the first time in veritable freedom and

union unfolded and coordinated, is _melody._

In other words, harmony possesses merely the essential relations,

which establish the law of necessity in the world of tone; but these

are not in themselves, any more than beat and rhythm are, actually

music: they are rather the substantive basis, the foundation of rule

and principle, upon which the soul in its freedom expatiates. The

poetry of music, that speech of human souls, which pours forth the

ideal atmosphere and the pain of emotional life, and in this overflow

is raised with a sense of alleviation above the natural constraint of

feeling, by making present to the soul that which actually affects it

strongly; by enabling it freely to dally round its essential being, and

by liberating it by this very means from the oppression of joys and

sufferings--well, this power of soul-expression in the domain of music

is in the first instance melody[456]. It is this concluding section

of our inquiry, in so far as it constitutes the more supremely poetic

aspect of music, the realm of its really artistic creations, while

availing itself of the elements previously discussed, which obviously

possesses an exceptional claim to our attention. Unfortunately it is

just in this direction that we find ourselves confronted with the

difficulties already adverted to. In other words, to mention one of

them, a detailed and scientific treatment of the subject implies a more

accurate knowledge of the laws of composition, and a totally different

sort of acquaintance with the masterpieces of musical composition to

any I possess or indeed am able to secure, for we seldom hear anything

of a definite or conclusive character on this head either from musical

experts or practical musicians, from the latter, only too frequently

men of very average intelligence, least of all. And we may further

observe that it is a characteristic of the art of music itself, that we

should find the task of presenting and expounding particular detail in

general terms a less easy matter than in the case of the other arts.

It is true enough that music, as other arts, deals essentially with a

spiritual content, and propounds the ideality of this subject-matter,

or the ideal movements of emotional life, as the object of its

expression: yet for all that this content remains more indefinite

in outline and more vague, for just this very reason that it is

apprehended with exclusive regard to its ideality, or is reflected in

sound as subjective feeling; and the transitional states of music are

not in each case at the same time the change of a particular emotion

or idea, a thought or an individual form, but are merely a musical

progression, which consists in self-exposition or play, and avails

itself of artistic method for this purpose. I will consequently limit

myself merely to the following general observations, which have fallen

in my way and strike me as of interest.

(_α_) From a certain point of view, no doubt, melody, in its free

disclosure of musical tone, floats independent of beat, rhythm, and

harmony; but none the less the only means employed in its realization

are just these rhythmical and metrically constructed movements of tone

in their essentially necessary relations. The movement of melody,

therefore, is inseparable from the means employed to create it, and, if

merely opposed to the practical necessity of the subjection of these

means to rule, is unable to exist at all. In this intimate association

between melody and harmony, however, no real surrender of freedom is

involved: what melody is thus emancipated from is a purely capricious

fancy of the composer exercised in odd or eccentric progressions and

transitions. It is united by this very association to a stable and

self-consistent art. Genuine liberty is not opposed to the principle

of necessity as a foreign and therefore oppressive and suppressive

power; rather it possesses in the substantive character of the same

what is a constituent of and identical with the core of its being; in

following the demands of it it therefore is only conforming to its own

laws, acting in accordance with its own nature. And in fact it is by

the rejection of such proscriptions and only then that it proves an

alien to its nature, untrue to itself. Conversely, it is sufficiently

obvious that beat, rhythm, and harmony are, taken independently, merely

abstractions, which as thus isolated have no musical[457] significance,

and are able only to acquire real existence as music in virtue of

melody, and as within the domain of this, supplying moments to or

aspects in its realization. It is precisely in the manner that the

distinction between melody and harmony is thus effectively mediated and

resolved that the secret power of great compositions is disclosed.

(_β_)_Secondly_, in this question of the _individual_ character of

melody the following points appear to me of importance.

(_αα_) In the _first_ place, melody may be restricted, if we consider

its harmonious progression, to a very simple compass of chords and

keys, extended within the embrace of tone-relations destitute of all

opposition in their harmonious fusion, which it employs merely as the

fundamental ground on which to develop its more appropriate form and

movement. Song melodies, for instance, which be it understood are not

on that account in the least superficial, but may express the depths

of soul-life, as a rule are motived by constructive harmony of this

most simple character. They do not propound the more difficult problems

of chords and keys in so far as they deal with such things and their

modulation at all. They are mainly satisfied with obtaining a simple

harmonious accompaniment, which is not carried to the point of serious

opposition, and consequently requires few resolutions in order to

recover the final impression of unity. Such a mode of composition no

doubt may lead to superficial results, such as we find in a great many

modern Italian and French melodies. In such cases the development

of the harmony is entirely superficial. The composer endeavours to

substitute for the genuine demand of his work in this aspect of it

a merely piquant charm of rhythm or flavour of some kind. Generally

speaking, none the less the emptiness of a melody is not the inevitable

result of a simple harmonic basis.

(_ββ_) A further distinction consists in this that melody in the case

supposed is no longer developed, as in our previous example, merely in

the exposition of separate notes composed upon a relatively independent

harmonic progression, regarded simply as the base of it: in the

melody now under consideration every separate note of the melody is

substantially complete as a concrete whole In a chord. In this manner

it, on the one hand, includes a world of tones, and from another it

is so closely interwoven with the movement of the harmony, that it is

now impossible to retain the distinction previously accepted between a

melody unfolded in relative independence, and a harmony which supplies

the emphatic pauses of the accompaniment and its more fixed and

determinate musical basis. Harmony and melody are here one and the same

compact whole, and a modification of the one implies a correspondent

and necessary alteration of the other[458]. This may be pre-eminently

illustrated by chorales written in four parts. In like manner the

same melody can be so interwoven in the varied vocal expression of its

parts, that this interlacery itself creates a harmonic progression; or

we may have different melodies in a similar way elaborated harmonically

in association, so that the union of particular notes of these melodies

produces musical harmony. We often, for example, meet with this in the

compositions of Sebastian Bach. In such cases the music progresses by

means of parts that vary greatly from one another in their character

and movement, which appear to associate or inter-thread with each other

on independent lines, yet retain at the same time an essential harmonic

relation to each other. A necessary and coherent union is thereby

asserted.

(_γγ_) In composition of this kind it is not merely necessary for music

which has any claim to profundity to be developed to the bare limits

of undisturbed consonance, nay, even first to pass beyond it in order

that it may return thereto: rather the first simple mode of concord

will have to be rent asunder in dissonances. It is only through such

conflict that the profounder combinations and mysteries of music in

which an independent necessity reposes, discovers their source and

ground; and for the same reason it is only in such profounder harmonic

progressions that the arresting moments of melody originate. A bold

style of musical composition will consequently part company with a

purely consonant progression. It will pass into the sphere of opposing

forces, will summon to its aid the most discordant contrasts, and

disclose its unique power amid the tumult of all the resources of

harmony, the conflicts of which it is equally able to calm, wholly

confident in its ability to celebrate finally the grateful triumph of

melodic tranquillity. We have in short here a battle waged between

freedom and necessity; a conflict between the freedom of inventive

genius, seeking to yield itself to its upward flight, and the

necessary constraint of those harmonic conditions, which it is forced

to acknowledge as the means of its expression, and in which its own

ideal significance is reflected. On the other hand if the harmony, the

employment, that is, of all its resources, the unrelenting nature

of its conflict in the disposal of them and in its attitude to them

is the main interest, the composition may very easily become heavy

and overweighted with science, in so far at least as the freedom of

movement is really impaired, or at least we are not allowed to feel the

complete effect of its triumph.

(_γ_) To put the matter in other words, in every genuine melody a truly

melodic, songful impulse, which is its essential type as music, must

declare itself as predominant and independent, as something which it

neither forgets nor loses in the plenitude of its expression. Thus

regarded melody presents, no doubt, an infinite power of adaptation

and coordination in the progressive motion of tones, but the mode or

form of this must be such that throughout we are made aware of an

essentially complete and self-subsistent whole. This totality contains,

it is true, a varied complexity, and implies in itself a forward

advance; but it must for all that, regarded as a whole, be beyond

all doubt rounded off and secure. It must therefore have a distinct

beginning and termination to the extent at least that the intermediate

part of it may be simply presented as the mediating link between that

beginning and end. Only as such a movement, asserted with unmistakable

emphasis, itself self-differentiated and returning on its own unity,

does the melody of music reflect the free self-consciousness[459] of

soul-life, whose expression it ought to be; only as thus perfected can

music, in its own peculiar medium of ideality, enforce expression in

its pure immediacy, or avail itself of the ideal freedom of that mode

of expression which is the untarnished reflection of the inner life, an

expression which, despite its subordination to the necessary laws of

harmony, enables the soul to perceive a more exalted vision.

3. THE RELATION BETWEEN MEANS OF EXPRESSION IN MUSIC AND ITS CONTENT

After passing in review the general nature of musical art we considered

the particular aspects according to which notes and their duration in

time secured their necessary form. Having now arrived in our discussion

of melody at the confines of a world of free artistic invention and

actual musical composition, what we have now to deal with is a

_content_, which, under its rhythm, harmony, and melody, is capable of

receiving an expression conformable to art's requirements. After fixing

clearly in our minds general modes of this expression we shall as our

conclusion be in an advantageous position to review the different

provinces of musical composition. With these objects before us we may

in the first instance advert to the following important distinction.

On the one side music may be, as already observed, in the nature of

an _accompaniment._ This is the case where its spiritual content is

not merely seized in the abstract ideality of its significance, or

as individual emotion, but enters into the movement of the music

subordinate to the significance it has already received from idea and

words. As a type of music opposed to this we have the composition which

is disconnected with any such content already prepared for it; music

in this case establishes itself in its own proper sphere, so that

it either, if it still is forced to deal with a definitely received

content, resolves the same wholly in melodies and their harmonic

development, or asserts its _absolute independence_ in the medium

of musical tone simply and its harmonic or melodic configuration.

We have already seen that a similar distinction is apparent in a

wholly different section of our inquiry. I refer to the case of

architecture considered either as an independent art, or in the service

it renders to that of building generally. But in music the mode of

its accompaniment is of an essentially freer type than that of our

illustration; it is far more intimately united with its content than is

ever possible in the case of architecture.

In the actual domain of art this distinction marks the difference

between _vocal_ and _instrumental_ music. We are not, however, entitled

to accept it in the purely external interpretation of it, as though

in vocal music it was merely the sound of the human voice, while in

instrumental music it was the more varied tones of the many distinct

instruments which were made serviceable. We must not in other words

overlook the fact that the voice expresses at the same time in its song

deliberate speech, presenting us the ideas of a specific content, so

that music, regarded as the _word that is sung_, if the twofold aspect

of the same in tone and human speech is not to fall into a condition

of indifference or absence of relation, is obviously bound, so far as

the art enables it to do so, to supply its musical expression to this

_content_, which as such _content_ is brought before the receptive

faculties in its nearest approach to definition, and no longer is

left unrelated in more indefinite feeling. In so far, however, as

the presented content, as libretto, is, despite of the above union,

independently ascertainable in legible form, and is also consequently

distinguishable in the mind itself from its musical expression, to this

extent the music attached to a libretto is an _accompaniment_, whereas

in sculpture and painting the unfolded content does not already attain

to any presentment independently of its artistic form. At the same time

we must be careful not to go to the other extreme and entertain an idea

of such accompaniment, as though its entire purpose were one solely

of subordination; the truth is precisely the reverse. The libretto is

written in the interest of the music, and has no further importance

save in so far as it brings home to the mind a more intimate knowledge

of the actual subject the artist has selected for his work. Music

maintains this freedom pre-eminently by virtue of the fact that it does

not apprehend the content in the manner the libretto may be assumed to

make it intelligible. Rather it exhibits its mastery of a medium, to

which sense-perception and imaginative idea do not belong[460]. In this

respect I have already, when discussing the general characteristics

of music, pointed out that music expresses the principle of ideality

in its intrinsic quality. The ideality of soul-life, however, may

be of a _twofold_ type. That is to say, to accept an object in its

_ideal presentation_[461] may, in the first place, mean that we do

not conceive it in its actual appearance in the phenomenal world,

but relatively to its _ideal significance._ We may, however, mean by

this, secondly, that a content is expressed as we find it realized in

the experience of personal _emotion._ Both forms of idealization are

represented in the art of music. I will therefore endeavour to explain

in more detail how this comes about.

In old church music, take the movement of a _crucifixus est_ for

example, we find that the profound meanings unfolded in the central

idea of the Passion regarded as Christ's suffering, death, and burial,

are severally so conceived, that it is not simply one merely _personal_

feeling of sympathy or individual pain over these facts that is

expressed, but along with this the very facts themselves, or in other

words the depth of their significance is motived by the harmony of the

music and its melodic progression. It is, of course, true that even

here the impression is one which acts upon the emotion of those who

hear it. We do not actually _perceive_ the pain of the crucified, we do

not merely receive a general _idea_ of it; the aim is throughout that

we experience in the depths of our being the ideal substance of this

death and this divine suffering, that we absorb with heart and soul its

reality, so that it becomes as it were a part of ourselves, permeating

our entire conscious life to the exclusion of everything else. And in

like manner must the soul of the composer, if his work is to disclose

such a power of impress upon others, entirely lose itself in these

facts and only in them. It must not merely have experienced a personal

emotion of them. It must accept as its aim the task of making in its

music the facts themselves live again for the ideal sense.

Conversely, I may read a text, a libretto, which narrates an event,

places before me an action, gives to feelings the impress of speech,

and thereby become moved even to tears in my profoundest being. This

effect of _personal_ emotion, which may attend all human action and

conduct, every expression of inner life, and further may be excited

by the perception of every such event and by participation in the

presentment of such, the art of music is able to regulate; by so

doing it ameliorates, tranquilizes and idealizes by its influence the

fellow-feeling in the listener who finds himself attuned to it. In both

cases, therefore, the content rings through the inner life, in which

music, for the very reason that it subdues consciousness in the simple

attitude of rapt attention[462], is able to restrain the unfettered

range of thought, imagination, sensation, and passage beyond the true

boundary-line of the subject on hand. Music, in short, keeps the soul

absorbed in a particular content, fructifies its energy therein, and

moves and fills the life of feeling up to the brim within these limits.

Such is our conception and description, so far as the present occasion

permits, of the manner of which music, as an accompaniment, when

dealing with a definite content which is, as previously explained, set

before it by means of a libretto, elaborates that aspect of it we have

termed ideality. Inasmuch, however, as music is pre-eminently called

up to do this in vocal music, and the human voice is added to this

associated with instruments, it is customary to speak of instrumental

music in a special sense as the music of accompaniment. It is no doubt

true that it accompanies the voice, and should not either assert

unqualified independence or claim an unqualified precedency. But for

all that vocal music is placed, as thus associated, in a more direct

relation still under the definition previously given of an accompanying

tone. The voice expresses words articulate to the mind; and song is

merely a fresh or additional modification of the content of these

words, or in other words it is the explication of them in the language

of the emotions. In the case of instrumental music, if taken by itself,

the expression of imaged idea vanishes, and such music must necessarily

confine itself to the means and modes of purely musical expression[463].

The discussion of these points suggests a _third_ one, which, in

conclusion, it is well not to overlook. I have previously drawn

attention to the fact that the reality of a musical composition, in

its full and vital embodiment, depends on a continually repeated

reproduction. In this respect it is at a disadvantage as compared

with sculpture and painting. The sculptor, no less than the painter,

conceives a given work and executes it throughout. The entire artistic

activity implied therein is centred in one single individual, and

by this means absolute reciprocity between the creative idea and

its execution is secured. The architect, on the contrary, is in a

less favourable position, who, in carrying through all the variety

of structure in a building, has to entrust such work to other hands

than his own. The composer in a similar way, must leave the execution

of his work to other hands and voices. But in his case there is

this difference, that the execution, from the point of view of mere

technique, no less than that of the vital spirit of his work, itself

demands an artistic activity, not one of mere craftsmanship. In this

respect we may in our own time, no less than previously in that of

the older Italian opera, whereas in other arts there has been little

or nothing fresh of the kind, point to a marvellous advance in two

respects in music. The first is to be noted in the conception, the

second in the increased virtuosity of execution. It is due to these

results the very notion of what music implies and is able to perform

has, even in the case of acknowledged experts, been increasingly

enlarged[464].

We may now briefly summarize the heads of the concluding sections of

this portion of our work.

_First_, we shall investigate more carefully music regarded as

_accompaniment_, and raise the question with what modes of expression

in a given content it is as a rule most compatible.

_Secondly_, it will be necessary to consider this question more closely

as viewed in relation to musical composition that is _exclusively

independent._

_Thirdly_, our conclusion will be reached with a few observations upon

artistic _execution._

(_a_) _Music as Accompaniment_

It follows, as a necessary result of what I have already described

as being the relative position of libretto and music, that, in this

sphere of its activity, musical expression is compelled to concern

itself far more exclusively with a defined content than in the

alternative case where it is able to surrender itself without restraint

to its own movement and inspiration. A libretto offers us to start

with definite ideas, and compels the attention to forsake that field

of more visionary emotion destitute of distinct idea, in which we are

permitted to range without interruption, and are not forced to abandon

our licence to receive from pure music whatever chance impression or

wave of emotion it may arouse. In this act of artistic interlacery

with words, however, it is not right that music should carry its

loyalty so far as to impair the free course of its progressions, even

though it do so with the object of emphasizing the full character of

what is contained in the libretto. To do this is to employ the mere

pedantry of learning, to adapt means of musical expression for the most

faithful presentment possible of a content which is not in the first

instance its own, but supplied it externally. It is to accept this

artificial result rather than the creation of a real self-subsistent

work of art. And to that extent we have here evidenced a definite check

and hindrance to free artistic activity. It is equally wrong in the

opposite extreme that music should, as is almost invariably the fashion

with modern Italian composers, wholly emancipate itself from the

contents of the libretto, as though its specific character were only a

bond, and with no other aim than that of approaching independent music

as closely as possible. The true function of such music is this. It

ought to steep itself in the meaning of the expressed words, situation,

or action, and by virtue of such impregnation, ideally conceived,

discover therefrom a vitally arresting expression, and elaborate

the same in terms congenial to art. That is the course followed by

all great masters. They appropriate everything of vital interest in

the words; but the stream of their music, the tranquil flow of the

composition, remains for all that as free as ever. We acknowledge the

natural growth of the music no less than its affinity to the text it

illustrates. We would draw attention to _three_ distinct types of

expression all illustrative of this free spirit.

(_α_) To start with, there is that aspect of musical expression which

we may describe as the truly _melodic._ We have here simply emotion,

the utterance of soul itself, which, apart from anything else, finds

self-enjoyment in such expression.

(_αα_) The domain here, in which the composer moves, is coincident with

the human heart and the moods of the soul; and melody, which is the

pure musical utterance of this inward world, is in the most profound

sense the soul of music. Musical tone only attains to expression

that is really vital when emotion is embodied in it or reflected in

sound from it. Connected with this the purely natural cry of feeling,

whatever it may be, of horror, for example, or the sobbing of grief, or

the exclamation or outburst of uncontrolled jubilation, are themselves

highly expressive; and indeed I have already referred to them as the

starting-point of music, subject of course to the statement that art

is unable to accept them under the mode of purely natural utterance.

Here, too, we find a distinction between music and painting. The art of

painting is frequently able to produce the most beautiful and artistic

effect by its realization in every respect of the actual form, the

colour and animation of a particular human being in some definite

situation and environment, and its complete reflection of all that it

has thus assimilated and received in its bare vitality. The truth of

Nature, if presented conformably to artistic truth, is here entirely

justified. But the art of music ought not thus to repeat emotional

expression in the form it assumes as a purely natural utterance of

passion; what it should do is to vitalize with the emotional forces

musical sound elaborated under the definite conditions of its tonal

progression, and to this extent resolve the expression in a medium of

sound wholly created by art and inseparable from the artistic purpose,

a medium in which the mere cry becomes a series of musical tones with a

definite progression, the transitions and course of which are subject

to the laws of harmony and unfolded in the completeness of a melodic

phrase.

(_ββ_) The essential significance of this melodic quality and its

bearing on the human spirit is best apprehended if we view the latter

as a whole. The fine arts of sculpture and painting give an objective

existence to the ideality of soul-life; moreover, they liberate

the mind from this externality of their presentation in so far as,

from a certain point of view, it discovers itself therein as an

ideal, spiritual work, and from another everything which partakes

of adventitious singularity[465], of capricious idea, opinion, and

reflection, is rejected, the content thereof being placed before us

in its entirely appropriate individuality. The art of music, on the

contrary, as we have repeatedly pointed out, possesses as a means to

such objectivity merely the element of the soul-life itself, by means

of which that which purely belongs to this enters into conversation

with itself, and as expressed in the utterance of emotion itself

returns, as it were, upon itself. Music is spirit or soul, which ring

forth in their untrammelled immediacy, and derive satisfaction in this

record of their self-knowledge. As a fine art, however, it is its

necessary function to regulate the expression of such life no less

than its effects. It ought not to permit that expression to be whirled

away in bacchantic thunder and tumult, or be left in the distraction

of despair, but retain the blessed freedom of its deliverance in the

extremity of sorrow no less than the jubilant outburst of delight.

And this is the character of truly ideal music, the utterance of

melody such as we find it in Palestrina, Durante, Lotti, Pergolese,

Glück, Haydn, and Mozart. Tranquillity of soul is never lost in the

compositions of these masters. Grief is no doubt often expressed, but

the resolution is always there; the luminous sense of proportion never

breaks down in extremes: everything finds its due place knit together

in the whole; joy is never suffered to degenerate into unseemly uproar

and even lamentation carries with it the most benign repose. I have

already, when discussing Italian painting, emphasized the fact, that

a spirit of reconciliation is not wanting even in extreme examples

of sorrow and distraction of soul; by virtue of this, even where we

have tears and suffering, some trait of tranquillity and assurance is

preserved; the tenderness and grace which assert themselves in the

harlequin's rôle illustrates the same truth. In like manner a feeling

for nature and the endowment of musical expression is preeminently

a characteristic of the Italians. In their earlier church music we

find that, along with the deepest devotional feeling, the sense of

reconciliation is expressed in its purity; and though grief may stir

the soul most profoundly, yet beauty and rapturous joy, the simple

greatness and impress of an imagination which discovers delight in

its own varied expatiation, is equally present. It is a beauty of

an apparently sensuous type, so that it is not unusual to refer to

such melodious contentment as a purely sensuous enjoyment. But it is

sometimes overlooked that it is precisely in this realm of the senses

that art discovers its life and movement, and thereby transfers Spirit

to a sphere in which, as in the world of Nature, this essential wave of

self-satisfaction is throughout the fundamental tone.

(_γγ_) Albeit, therefore, _particularity_ of emotional content must

be duly represented, yet it is right that music, while permitting

passion and imagination to stream forth in its harmonies, should at

the same time lift the soul that is absorbed in such emotion over the

same, enable it to hover around such content, and in short create an

atmosphere wherein the recovery from such an absorption, and the pure

reflection of itself is possible. This it is which gives us in fact

the really melodious character to song-music. The important feature

of it is not merely the progression of determinate emotion such as we

indicate by the words love, yearning, jollity, and so forth; it is

rather that inward sense, which presides over it, which expatiates

in its suffering no less than its delight, and finds satisfaction in

doing so. Precisely as the bird in the brake, the lark on high sings

its glad and touching song for the mere sake of singing, an outburst

of Nature herself, having no further thought or intention whatever,

it is just the same with human song and the expression of its melody.

Consistently with this not infrequently Italian music, in which this

truth is pre-eminently emphasized, will, just as poetry will, pass into

mere melodious sound simply, and can readily appear to part company

with the emotional stimulus and its particular mode of expression, or

even in fact do so, for the very good reason that its object is the

enjoyment of art by itself, and the contentment of all who thus are

able to enjoy themselves. And apart from the Italians this is more or

less the characteristic of all right melody. The specific nature of the

expression, albeit present also, passes away, in so far as our hearts

are absorbed in what we appropriate rather as our own, than in that

which belongs to another, a something beyond us. By reason of this and

this alone--it is much as we receive the impression of pure light--we

are admitted to the most intimate conception of ideal blessedness and

attuned spirits.

(_β_) In the art of sculpture the predominant impression is ideal

beauty or self-repose. Painting, on the other hand, already presents

a movement in the direction of specific characterization, and the

emphasis it attaches to articulate expression is an essential feature

of its executive purpose. In a similar fashion the art of music is

unable to rest satisfied with melodious expression as above indicated.

The purely emotional grasp by the soul of its intrinsic nature, and the

play in musical sound of this apprehension is, regarded as the mere

atonement of mood, when we take it strictly, too general and abstract.

It is inseparable from the danger not merely of an alienation from the

more careful interpretation of the content expressed in the libretto,

but of that of becoming generally empty and trivial. If sorrow, joy,

yearning, and so forth are to find adequate reflection in melody, the

soul that is actual and concrete only comes by such emotions in the

downright reality of the same as involved in a veritable content,

that is, in particular situations, events, actions, and so on. If,

for example, a song arouses the emotion of mourning, the lament at a

loss, we inevitably ask ourselves, what is the nature of that loss.

Is it, shall we say, the loss of life with all its many interests?

Is it a loss of youth, happiness, wife, beloved, children, friends,

or anything else? For this reason it is further incumbent upon music

that it should of itself differentiate in like manner its mode of

expression when dealing with a _specific_ content and the _various

relations_ and situations, which the soul has experienced, and the

more ideal or intimate life of which it seeks to reflect in its

harmonies. Music in short is not primarily concerned with the bare form

of the inward soul, but with that innermost life as replenished, the

specific content of which is most closely related to the particular

character of the emotion roused, so that the mode of the expression

will, or should, inevitably assert itself with essential differences,

according to the varied nature of the content. In a similar way the

soul, precisely in the degree that it takes a headlong plunge into

any distracting experience, proceeds through an accumulating series of

effects, and, in opposition to our previously described state of benign

self-contentment, passes through conflicts and distraction, wrestlings

with passions, and in short reaches an extreme of division, for which

the mode of expression hitherto observed is no longer adequate.

Now what we mean by the detail of the content is just that which is

supplied by the _libretto_ or words. In the case of a simple melody,

which is less concerned with this specific character, the more defined

characteristics of the _libretto_ are appreciably of less importance.

A song, for instance, although it essentially implies as a poem and

text a whole of variedly motived moods, perceptions, and ideas, none

the less as a rule asserts throughout one fundamental progression of

emotion; it is primarily one chord of the soul that it emphasizes. To

grasp this, and to reflect the same in the language of music, this

is what such song-melody is mainly called upon to do. Consequently

we may have identically the same music through all the verses of our

poem, although the meaning they carry admits of much variety; and

what is more, this very repetition, so far from proving injurious to

the effect, may serve to enforce and enhance it. We may see the same

thing in a landscape, where, too, the most varied objects confront

the vision, and yet for all that the prevailing mood and aspect of

Nature, which animates the whole, is one and the same. It is just such

a prevailing tone that ought to assert itself in the song, and this,

though it only applies strictly to some of the verses, but does not so

apply to others; and the reason of this is that here the specific sense

of the words is not to be taken as of most importance. What comes first

is the simple melody that floats freely over all variety of content. In

the case of many compositions which infringe this principle, and which

start every fresh verse with a novel melody, which not unfrequently

varies from the preceding one in beat, rhythm, and even scale, it is

quite impossible to understand why, if such essential modifications

were really inevitable, the poem itself ought not to have been altered

in metre, rhythm, and rhyme, through all its verses.

(_αα_) What is, however, appropriate for the song, which is a genuine

melodious utterance of the soul, is not applicable to every kind of

musical expression. It is necessary, therefore, to draw attention to

a _further_ aspect in contrast to pure melody as such, one of equal

importance, and by virtue of which alone song is really brought into

line with accompanying music. We find this in that mode of expression

which is dominant in the _recitative._ Here we have no independently

exclusive melody, which at the same time reflects the fundamental mood

of the content, in the elaboration of which soul-life, as at home

with itself, receives back in musical sound some portion of its ideal

activity; rather in the case before us the content of the words, to the

full compass of its specific character, is imprinted upon the musical

expression, the import of which no less than the course it determines;

and this is so whether we regard it from the point of view of the

elevation or profundity which distinguishes it, or the prominence

or subordination of its particular features. By such means music,

as contrasted with melodic expression, approximates to an emphatic

declamation, one accurately corresponding with the movement of the

words, whether the view we take of them be that of their meaning, or

that of their syntactical arrangement. And in so far as it adds also,

as a novel element, the aspect of a more exalted emotion, it stands

midway between the pure melody and poetical speech. Conformably to

such a station, therefore, we have a free accentuation, which adheres

strenuously to the specific sense of particular words. Moreover it

is not necessary for the libretto in this case to be written in

any particular metre, nor need the musical exposition, as the pure

melody does in a like case, follow beat and rhythm with absolute

precision; rather the music under this condition of it, that is in its

acceleration, suspension, or pause in particular progressions, or rapid

passage over such, is entitled to adapt itself freely to the emotion

aroused by the meaning of the words. For the same reason the modulation

is not so restricted as in the case of melody. Precisely as the text

which it attempts to express may suggest, it may begin, proceed, pause,

break off, begin again, or stop with absolute licence. Unexpected

accents, progressions only partially mediated, sudden transitions

and resolutions are equally permissible; and, in direct contrast to

the continuous stream of melodious music, provided always that the

libretto's content requires it, this latter mode of expression is

equally in its place, though delivered in fragments, and torn asunder

by passionate emotion.

(_ββ_) Being of this character this form of declamatory expression,

known as recitative, is suitable for tranquil statement of situation,

or facts, no less than the presentment of the entire compass of the

emotions, under which the distraction of the soul in exceptional

circumstances is depicted, and which in its soul-full harmonies stirs

the heart sympathetically with its every movement. The recitative

is first mainly applicable to the oratorio, either as the declamed

narration, or the more vivacious presentment of instantaneous

occurrence; or, secondly, we find it in dramatic song, in which case

it can appropriately express every shade of parenthetical statement,

no less than every sort of passion, it matters not whether the result

be expressed in abrupt, curtailed, or fragmentary variation, or with

aphoristic violence, or in a dialogue of rapid lightning flashes

and counter flashes, or in a more continuous stream. In both these

provinces of epic or dramatic poetry, we may add that instrumental

music is a possible accompaniment. Its function in either case

is either quite simply to emphasize the pauses in the harmonic

progression, or to interrupt the course of melody with incidental

music, which, agreeably to the general import of the former, depicts in

musical language other aspects and movements of the situation.

(_γγ_) What, however, we find defective in this declamatory recitative

is just the qualities which are essentially characteristic of the pure

melody; these are the definite articulation and unification of its

parts, the expression of that spiritual homogeneity or unity of which

we have spoken, that which, it is true, is confined in a particular

content, but at the same time asserts its own sense of unity in that

content, being enabled to do this through its refusal to be distracted

or broken up by its absorption in particular aspects of it, or rather,

instead of this, still retaining in them as predominant its ideal

coalescence. For this reason the art of music cannot rest satisfied,

even where we are dealing with the more sharply defined features

of the libretto proposed, with such recitative of declamation; nor

in general can it remain content with the unmediated _difference_

between the pure melody, which, in comparison with it and as above

explained, floats over the particularity of the words, and the

recitative, whose task it is so far as possible to identify itself

with it. On the contrary we must look for some mode of _mediation_

between these extremes. We may compare with this new type of unity a

constituent which entered into our consideration of the distinction

between harmony and melody. This harmony was acknowledged as being not

merely the general, but to a like extent the essentially specific and

particularized foundation of melody; and far from the latter being

thereby deprived of its freedom of movement, we found that it only

thus secured for the same a power and definition comparable to that

the human organism secures by virtue of its consistent bone-structure,

which only impedes inappropriate postures and movements, while it adds

stability and security to the right ones.

This brings us to the final point of view of our discussion of music as

an accompaniment.

(_γ_) This _third_ mode of expression consists in this that the melodic

song, which accompanies words, is also involved in their particularized

substance, and thereby is not permitted to remain wholly indifferent

to the principle of most force in recitative; rather it appropriates

this with the result that while it repairs its own defects in clear

definition, it confers on the characteristic recitative an organic

articulation and a unified self-consistency. For, as already observed,

even that which is throughout melody is impossible without a certain

defined content. When, therefore, I mainly emphasized the fact that in

all and every mode of it the tranquil self-reflection of the soul's

own essential substance and ideal unity is the mode of expression

peculiarly that of simple melody, inasmuch as, musically considered, it

presents a similar unity and a similarly complete return upon itself, I

did so because I then had in view this aspect as the distinctive point

of contrast between the pure melody and the recitative. It is, however,

further incumbent on the melodic phrase to bring it about that its

mode come into actual possession of that which in the first instance

appears necessarily to have its movement outside it, and by means of

this replenishment, in so far as it then is equally of a declamatory

or a melodic character, for the first time attain to a truly concrete

expression. It follows also from the converse point of view that the

declamatory part of it is no longer independently aloof from it,

but finds its own one-sidedness supplemented in like manner by the

accretion of melodic expression. This is what constitutes the necessary

condition of such concrete unity. In order to examine this more closely

we had better keep distinct the following points of view.

_First_, it will be as well to glance at the kind of _libretto_, or

text, which is adapted to musical composition, and for this reason that

it has been now proved that clear definition in the content of words

adapted to music and its expression is of essential importance.

_Secondly_, we have now introduced as a fresh constituent of

_composition_ declamatory characterization; it will therefore be

necessary to consider this in its relation to the principle, which we,

in the first instance, identified as that of melody.

_Thirdly_, we must endeavour to specify the more prominent _modes_

under which we may review this type of musical expression.

(_αα_) Music[466] is not merely in a general way an accompaniment of

the content of a work in a sphere which already engages our attention,

but it is part of its function, as already observed, to define still

further the characterization of such a work. It is consequently an

injurious assumption that the construction of the libretto is a matter

of indifference to the musical composition. We find, on the contrary,

that really distinguished musical compositions presuppose an excellent

libretto, carefully selected by the composers or actually written by

them. It is impossible that an artist should treat with indifference

the material with which he is dealing and a musician least of all,

precisely in the degree that poetry has already worked out and settled

for him the epic, lyrical, or dramatic configuration of the content in

question.

What is of first importance in the construction of a good

text is this that its content should be stamped by essential

_self-consistency._[467] It is impossible that music should conjure

forth an artistic product of real strength and penetration from what

is commonplace, trivial, barren, or absurd. With all the spices and

seasonings in the world your musical chef will never make a hare

pie out of a roasted cat. In the case of song compositions no doubt

the nature of the words is less decisive, yet even here we require

words with a really genuine content. From a further point of view,

however, it is equally necessary that such a content should not tax

our reflection too much, or aspire to philosophical profundity, as is

rather the case with the lyrics of Schiller. In such an example the

extraordinary range of pathos exceeds the musical expression of lyrical

emotion. The same thing may be said of the choruses of Aeschylus

and Sophocles. The penetrative power here displayed in imaginative

conception is so exceptional, they are so elaborate in their detail

whether regarded in their scenic or ideal presentment, they are already

so absolutely complete as poetry that we have nothing left for music

to add to them[468]. We have literally no room left us for any further

play or exposition of ideal significance or movement beyond that

already presented. The more modern material and mode of treatment we

find in the so-called romantic poetry are in their type the strongest

contrast to these. Their pretension, as a rule, is that of being naive

and popular; but we only too frequently find a _naïveté_ which is

finical, artificial, and stilted. Instead of pure and genuine emotions

we get a _simplicitas_ that is nothing but feeling worked upon and

acting under the constraint of reflection; a false kind of yearning

and affectation, which is far too complaisant with dulness, stupidity,

and vulgarity, and is equally blind to the defects of passions, envy,

licence, and even devilish wickedness wholly without ideal content;

which is, moreover, as self-satisfied with its assumed excellence in

the one case as it is with the dissolution and baseness of the other.

Emotion that is spontaneous, simple, thorough, penetrative, is here

entirely absent, and music, in any attempt to reproduce it, can suffer

no greater injury. We may therefore accept the fact that neither mere

depth of thought, nor the vanity or worthlessness of mere emotion can

give us a satisfactory content. On the contrary what is most adapted

for music is a certain intermediate type of poetry, which we Germans

are loth even to admit as poetry, and the true feeling and talent for

which is more largely possessed by Italians and Frenchmen. It is a

poetry of a genuine lyrical quality, extremely simple, which indicates

situations and emotions in a few words. Where it is more dramatic it

remains luminous and vital without too involved a development; detail

is not so much elaborated, but it is rather, as a rule, concerned to

supply general effects, than the completely articulate results of a

poet's activity. We find here that the composer receives, in accordance

with his demand, merely the general foundation, upon which he can,

in subordination to his own invention, and his own threshing out of

motives of every kind, erect his building, treating many aspects of the

subject as part of his own life and movement. For inasmuch as music

has to adapt itself to words, these words should not particularize

the picture too closely; if they do the musical declamation becomes

absorbed in trifles, lacking in a common impulse, too contracted in

the direction of particular features, and the unity and general effect

is impaired. In this direction people are only too frequently at fault

when expressing an opinion upon the excellence or insufficiency of a

libretto. It is one of the most common verdicts, for example, that

the libretto of the Magic Flute is hopelessly bad, though this piece

of manufacture is nevertheless among the best of opera librettos.

Among the many wildly fantastic and commonplace productions of his

pen Schickaneder has in this for once hit the right track. The empire

of Night, with its queen, the empire of the Sun, these mysteries,

these initiations, this Wisdom, Love, these ordeals, and with it all

this typically world-wise ethic, excellent in the breadth of its

applicability--all this when combined with the depth, the bewitching

loveliness and soul of the music expands and floods our imagination,

and warms the heart.

To mention further examples, the old Latin texts of great masses and

other services are unrivalled for religious music. This is in part

due to the fact that they set before us in the greatest simplicity

and brevity the most general content of religious faith, in part also

to this that they present in the same spirit the varied stages of

emotion that accompany the substance of this in the consciousness of

the community of the faithful, and by doing both offer the musician a

wide field for his own particular development. The great Requiem and

many selections from the Psalms are equally serviceable. In a similar

way Handel welded his texts, partly from religious dogmas themselves,

but, above all, from scriptural passages and situations of symbolical

import, into a completely consistent whole.

In the field of lyrical poetry the more suitable for this purpose are

the emotional and shorter poems, in particular the simple ones, in

content no less than speech, steeped in emotion, which penetrate into

one prevailing mood or affection, or those too of lighter and more gay

character. There is hardly a nation that does not possess such. In the

sphere of drama I will only mention Metastasio, and with him Marmontel

the Frenchman, who, himself richly emotional, cultured, and lovable,

instructed Piccini in French, and knew so wisely how to combine in the

drama grace and vivacity with the skill and interest of the action and

development. But before all else we shall do well to emphasize the

libretti of the famous operas of Glück. Without exception we shall

find their motives simple. The content they offer to the emotions is

in a sphere the most sterling of all, depicting as they do the love of

mother, wife, sister, friendship, honour, and so forth, and permitting

these simple motives and the form of their essential collisions to

unfold in an atmosphere of tranquillity. And for this reason the

passion they disclose is throughout pure, great, noble, and of plastic

simplicity.

(_ββ_) It is, then, the function of music, by the characterization of

its expression no less than its wealth of pure melody, fittingly to

reproduce a content of the above nature. And that we may obtain such

a result it is not merely necessary that the text contain in itself

earnestness of heart, the comic and tragic greatness of human passion,

the depth of religious idea and emotion, the powers and fatalities

that the human breast discloses, the composer also on his part must be

absorbed wholly in the composition, and must have lived in and through

it heart and soul.

What is equally important is the relation under which what is

characteristic and melodious in such music is on either hand

associated. The main point appears to be, that as between them it

is the melodic expression which without exception, as the factor of

synthetic unity, which gains the day, rather than that which tends

to distract and break up the whole into particular characterization.

To take an example of the latter case from modern dramatic music,

the effect often sought for here is one of powerful contrasts, and

this is brought about by forcing into one continuous stream of music,

under the conditions of conflict permitted to the art, contrasted

passions. We have, it may be, expressed for us jollity, marriage,

and festive associations, intermingled with which we may have hate,

revenge, hostility, so that for result we are presented a fine uproar

in which joviality, delight, dance-music, passionate scolding, and

the very extremes of distraction are all involved. But contrasts of

interrupted life such as these are, and which tumble us from one side

to another, without any principle of union, are opposed to harmonious

beauty precisely in the degree that the point of opposition in such

characterization is acutely emphasized, and any return of the melody

to a real self-repose and self-enjoyment is out of the question. And

in general the union of the melodic and characteristic features of

such music readily incurs the risk of overstepping the finely drawn

boundaries of musical beauty, more especially when the intention is

to express force, selfishness, evil, impetuosity, and other extremes

of exclusive passion of a similar nature. The moment that music is

involved in its abstract task of such characteristic limitation it can

hardly avoid making for chaos, becoming, that is to say, more acute,

unpliable, and, in fact, thoroughly unmelodious and unmusical, to the

extent even of sheer misuse of discord.

A similar result will be found if we look at the _different_ features

of characterization generally. I mean that if these are strongly

emphasized in their independent form the connection between themselves

and other traits is readily weakened and their self-subsistency in

repose is at once evident: but in musical exposition our difficulty is,

we have an essential movement throughout, and it is in this progression

that we are forced to look for the relation of stability; this being so

the isolation of effect cannot fail to act injuriously on the flow and

unity of the music.

Genuine beauty in music consists, under the aspect now being

discussed, in this, that while there is no doubt a movement towards

characterization out of that which is simply melodic, yet within the

sphere of this more defined articulation[469], the melodic aspect

is still maintained as the sustaining soul and unity, much as we

find in what is most characteristic in the paintings of Raphael the

fundamental tone of beauty is throughout conserved. Melody is then not

without definite significance, but in all such definition betrays a

coalescing and suffusing principle of life, and more characteristic

detail presents itself merely as the emphasized prominence of certain

aspects, which are none the less always and essentially fused again

in this medium of unity and animation. To hit off the just mean in

this respect is, however, a more difficult task for music than the

other arts, for the reason that music surrenders itself more readily

to such antagonistic modes of expression. For this reason criticism

over musical composition is almost always divided into two camps.

The one attaches most importance to the melodic structure, the other

prefers further advance in characterization. Handel, for example, who

frequently in his operas insisted on having certain lyrical episodes

emphasized acutely, had to face many a tussle on this head with Italian

singers, and was finally compelled, when the public ranged itself on

the side of the Italians, to confine himself wholly to the composition

of oratorios, in which field his genius pre-eminently asserted itself.

In the time of Glück also the long and vehement controversy between

the supporters of Glück and Piccini is famous. Rousseau also in his

turn insisted on the superiority of the more melodious Italian music

as compared with the deficiency in this respect of the earlier French

composers. We have in our own days the same old controversy waged for

or against Rossini and the more modern Italian school. The opponents of

the former condemn his music as if it were so much empty ear-tickling;

if we, however, assimilate his melodies more generously we shall find

that there is much in this music of real feeling and genius; it is not

without a real message to our faculties, although it does not make any

claim to the characteristic effects, which are more especially dear

to our severe German musical sense. And indeed it must be admitted

that only too often Rossini says good-bye to his libretto, and gives

free vent to his melodies, precisely as his mood dictates, so that

we have nothing left us but the alternative either to stick to the

subject-matter and grumble over the music that is indifferent to it,

or abandon the former and take our hearty delight in the inspired

irrelevances of the composer and the soul which they reveal[470].

(_γγ_) I will now in conclusion briefly summarize the most notable

_forms_ of music regarded as accompaniment.

_First_, in the order of our classification we may mention

_ecclesiastical_ music. Music of this type, in so far as it is not

concerned with the personal emotion of individuals, but with the

substantive content of emotion in its widest compass, or shall we say

the universal emotion of the community viewed collectively, is in

a large measure throughout of _epical_ consistency, even though it

instructs us in no events in so many words. How an artistic conception

is able to be epical in significance, though we have in it no narrative

of event, we shall endeavour to explain at a later stage when we come

to deal more closely with epic poetry. This fundamentally religious

music is among the profoundest and most impressive creations that Art

can bring into being in any sphere whatever. Its true position, in so

far, that is, as it is associated with the sacerdotal petition for the

community, we find in the cult of _Roman Catholicism_, conjoint with

the Mass, and more generally as a means of musical devotion attendant

to the most varied ecclesiastical functions and festivals. Protestants

can also boast of musicians of the profoundest gifts not merely as

religious men, but also in the sterling character and opulence of

their imaginative resource or executive ability. Sebastian Bach here

stands before us as the master of masters. For the first time in our

own day we have been taught to appreciate at something like its value

the great genius of this man, his truly protestant, robust temper, and

withal his profound erudition. Of first importance we may observe in

this connection, and in contrast to the direction followed by the music

of Catholicism, the emergence in complete form of the oratorio, in the

first instance out of the Passion music. Nowadays, of course, music

for Protestantism is no longer so closely associated with the cult of

religion, nor so essentially a part of its services; and indeed it is

often more a matter of exercise in musical scholarship than a really

vital creation.

_Second_ in order we have _lyrical_ music, which expresses in melody

isolated moods, and for the most part should be disjoined from the

wholly characteristic or declamatory mode, although it may rightly

undertake to combine with its expression the specific content of the

words illustrated, whether their import be religious or otherwise.

Tempestuous passions, however, which neither issue in repose or

finality, the unresolved division of the heart, emotional distraction

destitute of all relief, such experiences are more suitably reproduced

as an integral part of _dramatic_ music; they are out of place in the

harmonious consistency of the lyrical mode.

This _dramatic_ form is then our _third_ and final division. The

tragedy of the ancients was associated with music; but this aspect

was not emphasized, and for this reason that in truly poetical works

precedence must necessarily be given to human speech and the poet's

own exposition of ideas and emotion; the only way music could in these

times assist--which in its harmonic and melodic expression had not as

yet reached that of a subsequent Christian era--was mainly from the

rhythmical point of view by heightening with increased animation the

musical sound of the poetical language, and thereby bringing the same

more home to the heart.

Dramatic music, however, receives a really independent position when

once the form of church music is essentially complete, and in lyrical

expression some degree of perfection has been attained. We find this

in our modern operas and operettas. It must be admitted that from

the point of view of song the _operetta_ is a half-way house of less

importance, one which mixes together with no vital connection speech

and song, what is musical and unmusical, the language of prose and that

of melody. It is a common objection no doubt that song in the drama is

without exception unnatural. Such an objection cannot be pressed, and

would be far less open to argument as against the opera, in which from

the first line to the last every idea, emotion, passion, and resolve is

accompanied by and expressed in song. On the contrary, it is rather the

operetta which still requires justification in so far as it introduces

music in which we have a more animated presentment of the emotions and

passions, or the latter are adapted for such presentment, while in

the juxtaposition of a confused melody of prosaic dialogue with these

artistically treated interludes of song we have what is a perpetual

embarrassment. In other words, the emancipation of art is incomplete.

In genuine _opera_, however, in which the action throughout receives

its musical analogue, we are once and for all transported into an ideal

world of art, the atmosphere of which is throughout the work maintained

in so far as the music accepts for its fundamental content the ideal

aspects of emotional stress, the particular phases of such in specific

situations, and the conflicts of passion, that it may, by virtue of

the more complete effects of its expression, add the final emphasis

they would otherwise have lost. Conversely in the _vaudeville_, where

airs already popular and well known are set to the more pointed and

arresting rhymes, singing is merely a self-imposed kind of irony. The

fact that there is singing at all is intended to be taken rather as

parody or amusement: here the main point is the meaning of the text and

its fun, and the singing has no sooner ceased than we laugh that it

should ever have commenced.

(_b_) _Independent Music_

We may compare melody, as an essentially self-contained and

self-supported whole, to plastic sculpture; in the more detailed

characterization of painting we shall find an analogous type to

that of musical declamation. And inasmuch as in the latter case we

have an aggregate of specific differentia unfolded such as the more

simple movement of the human voice is unable in all its variety

to express, the more all these many aspects of life enter into the

movement of the music, to that extent instrumental music is a necessary

accompaniment. In addition to this, as a _farther_ point of view,

whether in its relation to the music that accompanies a libretto, or

the characteristic expression of the words, we have to recognize in its

freedom a content of definite ideas, which is, as transmitted, wholly

independent of musical sound.

Now what constitutes the essential principle of music is the ideality

of the soul-life. But this innermost, or ideality of the concrete self

is the subjective state in its bare simplicity, that is, as defined by

no assured content, and for this reason not forced into motion either

one way or another, but reposing on its unity in unfettered freedom.

And if this subjective principle is to come entirely to its own in

music also it must rid itself of a traditional text, and in all purity,

out of its own resources, master its content, the movement and the kind

of expression, the unity and development of its creation, the carrying

out of a main conception, no less than all episodical or incidental

matter; and in doing this, for the reason that the significance of the

whole is not expressed in language, it must restrict its means to those

exclusively of musical value. And this is what does take place in the

sphere I have already described as _independent_ music. Music, as an

accompaniment, possesses that which it undertakes to express outside

its own domain; to this extent it is associated in its expression

with that which does not belong to it as music, but to an alien art,

poetry. If music is to be nothing but music simply, it must disengage

itself from this factor, which it has only borrowed elsewhere, detach

itself absolutely from the definite substance of language. Thus alone

it becomes entirely free. And this is the point we have now to examine

more closely.

We have already noticed the beginnings of such an emancipation within

the limits of music as an accompaniment. For though it is true that

in part here music was compelled by the force of poetical language

to be subservient, yet also in part it either moved in benign repose

over the more _limited_ characterization of the words or removed

itself entirely from the significance of ideas therein expressed, to

expatiate of its free will in the musical language of joy or sorrow.

The same result is apparent in its effect on an audience, the public

as we say, and more especially in its attitude to the music of drama.

In other words, an opera has many constituents. We have the local

condition, landscape and the rest, or the movement of the action, or

incidental episodes and pageants. From another point of view we are

confronted with human passions and their expression. In short, there

is a twofold content--namely, the external action and the soul-emotion

that corresponds. If we take the action simply we shall find that,

though it is that in which all the parts cohere, yet regarded merely

in its movement forward it is less adapted to musical expression and

mainly elaborated in recitative. With a content of this nature an

audience is not so arrested; its attention is particularly liable to

wander off from the dialogue of recitation, and to fix itself upon

the portion of the work that is really musical and melodious. We have

an exceptional illustration of this--I have already adverted to the

fact--in our modern Italian opera, which is from the first made to

fall in with the custom of the audience to engage in conversation, or

other ways of enjoying itself, during the chatter or trivialities of

the musical dialogue, and which only returns to that part of the music

which is truly music, with the full measure of sympathetic attention,

enjoyment, and delight. In this case we find, then, that composer,

no less than audience, barely fall short of bidding good-bye to the

libretto's substance altogether, and of treating music for the purposes

of enjoyment as an absolutely independent art.

(_α_) The true province of such independence is, however, not the

accompaniment of vocal music undeniably conditioned by a text, but

instrumental music simply. As already observed, the human voice is the

appropriate musical expression of man's inner life in its entirety, a

life also expressed in ideas and words, which therefore discovers in

its own voice and song its distinctive organ, so often as it seeks to

express and recover this inner world of its ideas permeated throughout

with the concentrated intensity of emotion. In the case of instruments

taken by themselves, however, this basis of an associated text of words

disappears; here we find an opening for the empire of a music that is

confined strictly to its own unassisted powers.

(_β_) Such a music of particular instruments presented us in quartets,

quintets, sextets, symphonies and the like, without text or vocal

music, remains unrelated to any movement of ideas independently

asserted, and is for this very reason compelled to have recourse to

emotions of a more indefinite character, emotions which in such music

can only be expressed in general terms. The aspect of importance

here, in short, is the varied motion of the music simply, the ups

and downs of the harmony or melody, the stream of sound through

its degrees of opposition, preponderance, emphasis, acuteness or

vivacity, the elaboration of a melodic phrase in every respect that

is suitable to the means of musical art, the musician-like fusion of

all the instruments as one _ensemble_ of tone, or in their succession,

alternation, and emphatic display of themselves and each other. It is

in this sphere pre-eminently that the distinction between the _ordinary

person_ and the _expert_ of music asserts itself. The ordinary man

likes best in music an expression of emotion and ideas that is at once

intelligible, that whereof the content is obvious; his predilection

is consequently for music under the mode of an accompaniment. The

connoisseur, on the contrary, who is able to follow the relation of

musical sounds and instruments as composition, enjoys the artistic

result of harmonious modulation, and its interwoven melodies and

transitions on its own merits. He is entirely absorbed by this alone,

and is interested in comparing the detail to which he listens with the

rules and principles he is fully able to apply to it, in order thus

to follow the performance with judgment and delight, although even in

his case it frequently happens that our modern type of virtuosity,

with variations in tempo or other nuances for which our connoisseur

is unprepared, will perplex him not a little. A complete satisfaction

of this kind comes rarely to the mere amateur. He is seized with the

vain desire to master this apparently phantomnal process of music, to

discover arresting points for his attention in the musical development,

and generally more definite ideas and a more detailed content in the

volume of sound that invades him. In this respect he seeks to attach to

music a symbolical significance, yet can find in the same little beyond

mysterious problems that vanish in the moment they are propounded,

which baffle his powers of solution and in general are capable of a

variety of interpretations.

The _composer_ is able, it is true, on his part to associate with

his work a definite significance, a content of specific ideas and

emotions, which are expressed articulately in movement that excludes

all else; conversely he can, in complete indifference to such a scheme,

devote himself to musical structure simply and the assertion of his

genius in such architectonic. Composition, however, of this character

readily tends to become defective both in the range of its conception

and emotional quality, and as a rule does not imply any profound

cultivation of mind or taste in other respects. And by reason of the

fact that such a content is not necessary, it frequently happens that

the gift of musical composition not merely will show considerable

development in very early age, but composers of eminence remain their

life long men of the poorest and most impoverished intellectual faculty

in other directions. More penetration of character may be assumed where

the composer even in instrumental music is equally attentive to both

aspects of composition; in other words, the expression of a content,

if necessarily less defined than in our previous mode, no less than

its musical structure, by which means it will be in his power at one

time to emphasize the melody, at another the depth and colour of the

harmony, or finally to fuse each with the other.

(_γ_) We have throughout posited subjectivity in its unconstrained

presentment within the limits of music as the general principle of this

type of composition. This independence of a content already proposed

to it from an alien source will, however, more or less assert itself

in opposition to mere caprice, though the restrictions under which

it admits it are not defined rigorously. For, albeit this type of

composition has its own rules and modes, the authority of which no

mere whim or fancy can reject, yet they are regulations which only

affect the broader aspects of music; in actual detail there is no end

to the opportunity which the inner content of soul-life[471], provided

it once accepts the boundaries fixed by the essential conditions of

musical composition, may discover for its otherwise free expatiation

and exposition. And, in fact, as a result of the elaboration of modes

congenial to this type, the caprice of individual composers asserts,

in contrast to the steady advance of purely melodic expression and

music in association with a definite text, a practically unrestrained

mastery in every sort of conceit, caprice, interlude, inspiriting

drollery, startling suspension, rapid transition, lightning flashes,

extraordinary surprises and effects.

(_c_) _The Artist as Executant_

In sculpture and painting we have a work of art presented us as an

external and independent _result_ of artistic activity; we do not

regard this activity itself as the actual creation of life[472]. It is,

however, necessary to the presentation of a musical work of art that we

should have an executant musician in co-operation, just as in dramatic

poetry we have the representative presence of living manhood as an

essential factor in this type of art's realization.

We have, then, reviewed musical composition under the two aspects, that

is to say, in so far as it sought to conform with a specific content,

or struck out on its own free path of independence. We may now in the

same way distinguish between two main types of purely executive art.

The one is wholly absorbed in the work of art on hand, and makes no

attempt to reproduce anything over and beyond this. The other, on the

contrary, is not simply reproductive; it actually creates expression,

delivery, in short the essential animation of the work, not merely from

the composition as composed, but predominantly from its own resources.

(_α_) In the case of the epic poem, wherein the poet seeks to unfold

an objective world of event and modes of action, the rhapsodist, who

recites it, has no occasion to do anything further than wholly withdraw

the expression of his own personality in the presence of the exploits

and events he brings home to us. The more reserved he is in this

respect the better; indeed such recitation is not incompatible with a

monotoned and unemphasized delivery. What is effective here is the fact

of the poem, the poetical execution, the narrative itself, not its

realization in voice and speech. This illustration will suggest to us

the _rationale_ for our first type of musical reproduction. In other

words, if the composition is in a similar way of a genuine objective

quality, in the sense that the composer has simply translated his

subject-matter, or the emotion that is absorbed with it, into musical

language, the artistic reproduction should retain the same objective

character. It is not merely true that here there is no reason for

the executant to import into it his idiosyncrasies; by doing so he

necessarily impairs the true artistic effect. He must subordinate

himself entirely to the character of the work, and prescribe to himself

simply this attitude of attention. On the other hand, he must not,

as is too frequently the case, confuse such an attitude with that

of the purely servile artisan, and lower himself to the level of an

organ-grinder. If such execution is to retain any artistic claim the

artist is bound to avoid leaving the impression of a musical automaton,

which merely repeats its prescribed lesson mechanically, and instead

to animate the entire work with the heart and soul of the composer

himself. The virtuosity of such a vital reproduction is restricted,

however, to the just elucidation of the technical difficulties

presented by the work, and in doing so the object will be not merely to

cover any appearance of triumph over an exacting task, but to portray

the freest movement under such conditions, and, in so far as superior

artistic endowment and experience can in the particular case manage

to do so, attain in the reproduction to the spiritual altitude of the

composer and reflect the same in actual performance.

(_β_) It is another matter when we come to deal with works of art,

in which personal idiosyncrasy and caprice are even by the composer

himself features brought into prominence, and where generally we

find the traces of such a clearly objective quality in expression,

the treatment of the harmonic or characteristic development less

pronounced. In such a case the _bravura_ of virtuosity is, it is our

first distinction, quite admissible; and over and above this executive

ability is not only limited to the reproduction of the actual score,

but may considerably amplify; an artist will _himself_ add to the

composition in his delivery, supplement defects, add substance to what

is comparatively superficial, import into parts a new life, and in

doing so assert independent judgment and invention. In the Italian

opera, for example, much is always left to the singer's discretion; in

particular where we have embellishments a more liberal opportunity of

display is granted, and in so far as the exposition of sound is further

removed from the mere interpretation of the libretto, the execution in

its independence becomes a more spontaneous flow of melody, in which

the soul of the singer is permitted to enjoy itself and exult in its

own free rapture. When therefore it is objected that Rossini for one

has made the singer's task too easy, the stricture is only in part

justified. The difficulty is none the less there, only he frequently

leaves it to the trained intelligence of the executant to work it out

for himself. If in the result we are conscious of the cooperation of

genius, the work as thus reproduced makes an exceptionally favourable

impression. We have not merely a _work of art_ reproduced, but we

are conscious at the same time of actual _musical creation._ In

this very present realization of life the external conditions of

artistic reproduction disappear, such as place, opportunity, the

local associations of a divine service, the content and intent of a

dramatical situation; we have no further need for, nor do we desire

any text, we have left us simply the unspecialized impulse of emotion,

in the element of which the soul of the artist can surrender itself

without let or hindrance to its own rapture, displaying thereby

inventive genius, the finest qualities of emotion, and a mastery of

technique; and in fact, provided we find the right spirit, ability, and

personal charm to justify it, it may venture to interrupt the flow of

melody itself with humour, caprice and virtuosity, and accept for once

the moods and suggestions of the moment.

(_γ_) This kind of virtuosity is yet more remarkable in cases where

the instrument is not the human voice, but one of _human invention._

By this I mean to say that such naturally in the kind of sound they

produce are further removed from the soul's direct expression;

they are in relation to that of an external object, apiece of dead

mechanism, and music is essentially a spiritual movement and activity.

When we find, therefore, this externality of the instrument vanishes

altogether, in the case, that is, where the music of the soul breaks

right through this alien crust of mechanism, by means of such

virtuosity, even an instrument of this character is transformed

into one as fully adapted to express the soul of the artist as it

is possible to conceive. Among the memories of my youth I can still

recall the case of an astonishing executant on the guitar, who in

his own eccentric fashion had composed huge battle-pieces for this

comparatively insignificant instrument. By profession, if I remember

rightly, he was a weaver, and in conversation he had little enough

to say for himself. But no sooner did he begin to play than one

wholly forgot the absurd pretensions of his composition, forgot these

precisely as he forgot all else but the music, and the marvellous

result he made of it by being totally absorbed body and soul in his

instrument, entirely witless of any form of nobler execution than that

expressed in the tones of a guitar[473].

A virtuosity of this type, in so far as it asserts such a unique

superiority, is not only a proof of extraordinary mastery over

material forces, but we receive from it as it strides victoriously

over difficulties apparently unplayable, even turns aside to add to

them, or in wayward mood breaks in upon us jestingly with I know not

what interruptions and surprises, and by original invention even

makes us enjoy what would otherwise be vulgar, is a direct reflection

of absolutely free soul-life[474]. It is quite true that a mere

charlatan[475] of this type is unable to produce original works of

art; but where real genius is part of the endowment we can have

extraordinary mastery in composition no less than over a particular

instrument, the limitations of which this virtuosity lays itself

out to overcome, and in audacious vindication of its triumph will

reproduce the artistic effects of other instruments entirely remote

in other hands from its own. It is an accomplishment of this kind

which delights us with our acutest sense of the life of music. And

this riddle of riddles we discover in the fact that a mere piece of

mechanical craft can become an instrument one with our life, which

enables us to follow, as through a flash of lightning, a power of ideal

conception no less than execution, by virtue of which the imagination

of genius penetrates to the core of life as instantaneously as it

vanishes therefrom.

Such, then, are the most essential features, which I have selected from

my own experience of music, the more general points of view which I

have detached from the subject and concentrated attention upon in the

present discussion.

[Footnote 377: _Ein festes Daseyn_, lit., an assured existence.]

[Footnote 378: We should not expect the plural. Hegel apparently

includes the transitional relief of sculpture.]

[Footnote 379: Lit., "But also strives to set itself back into the

previous condition." He refers to the mutual relation of tones.]

[Footnote 380: _In sich selbst Ideellgezetzte._ That is, posited as

ideal in the way music does with its object, as to which further

explanation is given below.]

[Footnote 381: It is difficult to follow closely this very technical

interpretation of musical sound, and a doubt may be perhaps permitted

as to whether it corresponds to the scientific facts. I mean it does

not appear fully to do justice to the reaction of the organ of human

hearing itself and the intelligence with which it is related upon

the sound waves that through such mediation are cognized as musical

sound. The ideality appears to me to be more complete than even Hegel's

theory would suggest, or, at any rate, some of his expressions. And

surely, too, in sight, though it may be true we see independent

objects, we only do so, in so far as their secondary qualities

are concerned, by virtue of a considerable action of what he here

calls _Seelenhaftigkeit._ But this is not the place for more than a

suggestion. The main points of contrast are in Hegel's interpretation

sufficiently obvious.]

[Footnote 382: _Des Körpers._ I am not sure that I quite follow the

meaning of this second moment of negation. If it means the reaction

or synthetic process of human hearing it removes in great measure the

objection above. We then have as the twofold negation the negation

by the ideality of sound and that through the human sense. But owing

to Hegel's use of _Material_ to indicate the medium which is subject

to oscillation, it would rather appear to mean that one vibration is

cancelled by another.]

[Footnote 383: _Das an und für sich schon etwas Ideelleres ist._ This

would correspond to the ideality of the first negation of spatial

condition.]

[Footnote 384: He means its own ideal existence. _Aufgeben_ must here

be used in the primary sense of "delivers." He does not mean that it

gives expression to the ideality of spirit; this is added by the next

clause.]

[Footnote 385: This is, I think, Hegel's meaning for _das an sich

selbst Subjektive._ Its content is also formally ideal or abstract as

above explained, but to express this he would rather have used the word

_ideell_ or _innerlich._ It is also, as I have pointed out, in great

measure ideal in the sense that as musical tone it is not natural even

in the qualified sense that colour is. It is even more dependent on the

human organism for its quality and synthesis. But I do not think Hegel

means subjective in this sense, but that it directly expresses human

emotion.]

[Footnote 386: Both ideas are contained in the word _Verschweben_,

which means to hover and slowly vanish away.]

[Footnote 387: _Figurationen._ Their modal combinations.]

[Footnote 388: It is obvious that in this respect music to some extent

infringes on the distinction Hegel has already pointed out between its

content and that of poetry.]

[Footnote 389: By _verständige Formen_ Hegel means, of course, forms

that express an artistic, that is, an intelligible purpose. The whole

passage is not very clearly expressed. The general meaning is, however,

that as architecture surrounds its statues with a medium of material

environment co-ordinated by artistic design and invention, so, too,

music in its medium of emotional content is equally indefinite and may

be used as an accompaniment (as architecture is a kind of accompaniment

to statuary) in the melodic play of its harmonies to definite ideas

in uttered speech. The reader of Browning will doubtless recollect

the fine use made of architecture as metaphorical illustration in the

poem "Abt Vogler." I think it was Schopenhauer who first spoke of

architecture as frozen music. But Schelling speaks of it in the same

way.]

[Footnote 390: I presume Hegel here refers primarily to scholastic

music, musical exercises intended to exhibit the structure of music.

The exercises, for example, of Cramer or Fuchs. Bach's forty-eight

fugues would occupy a transitional place.]

[Footnote 391: _Tonseele._ There is, of course, something almost mystic

in Hegel's conception of musical sound as the ideality issuing from the

material world.]

[Footnote 392: That is, sculpture and painting.]

[Footnote 393: By _Haltpunkte_ Hegel appears to mean material that will

act as stays and supports in contrast to those which are indifferent.]

[Footnote 394: I presume by _solchen festen Bestimmungen_ Hegel refers

to the general definition of artistic function just enunciated. But

the sense may possibly be, "while the point of departure is the stable

determinations of natural form."]

[Footnote 395: We are inevitably reminded of the release which Art was

to such men as Beethoven, Dante, Milton, and Blake.]

[Footnote 396: In the theme.]

[Footnote 397: It seems doubtful how how far a musician would accept

this at least in so far as it applies to classical music of the formal

type. The development, for instance, on the repetition of a theme in a

sonata is at least part of the formal content of the sonata movement as

a whole.]

[Footnote 398: _Ein Auseinandergehen._ Variations on a theme would be

a good example. But surely the development of a theme may do precisely

this in great measure, I mean disclose both the depth of it and its

concentration.]

[Footnote 399: No doubt this is so if we assume the content to be

mainly a theme, a motive. But the content of a movement includes the

development. The main difference after all is the fundamental one that

in music the content is unfolded in a time series and in the plastic

arts instantaneously in spatial form. And in poetry the apprehension is

also in a temporal series.]

[Footnote 400: It is impossible in English to reflect the play of words

between _Erinnerung_ (memory) and _Er-innerung_ (self-penetration or

ideal realization).]

[Footnote 401: I am not sure whether Hegel exactly means by

_Phantasiren_ what we understand as Improvization. But it is the

only form of music that strictly applies to his definition. Even the

rhapsodies of Liszt are controlled by the form, as in a sense all music

is.]

[Footnote 402: As the plastic arts. It certainly is not so closely

associated with a definition given outside it by Nature, that is, but

it is obviously very closely associated to the formal modes of music,

such as the laws of counterpoint, fugue, sonata, etc.]

[Footnote 403: The first is its relation to architecture, the second

that to the plastic arts.]

[Footnote 404: That is, the ideas. By "receiving self-subsistency"

Hegel means it maybe regarded independent of the art, something

essentially outside it.]

[Footnote 405: By _Ton_ Hegel means, of course, musical sound. The

object of music is music and ideas only in so far as they are expressed

in music.]

[Footnote 406: _In diesem Freiwerden._ In this free medium of its

existence.]

[Footnote 407: How far would Hegel have applied this criticism to the

great symphonies of his compatriots? I think it is obvious, at any

rate, that his criticism of pure music is somewhat lacking in sympathy.

Nowadays it is not even a wholly obvious fact that the song or the

opera are the most popular. The truth is that musical education, and

that is what the appreciation of programme or symphonic music implies,

has made enormous strides since his day. But his criticism will still

hold for many in regard to more modern developments in Strauss and his

school.]

[Footnote 408: By _fertig_ Hegel must mean here that the world of

poetry is one whose claims to independent coherence is generally

acknowledged.]

[Footnote 409: By "universal" Hegel appears to mean more universally

intelligible, He uses the same word in a like sense just below.]

[Footnote 410: If Hegel means to imply that pure music, in so far

as it presents ideas by suggestion, has any advantage over music

the effect of which is entirely a musical effect he is on dangerous

ground. The Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven may or may not be more

popular than Beethoven's other symphonies, but it is unquestionable

that its artistic merit depends exclusively on its claims as musical

composition. And indeed its worth as music suggestive of ideas is

mainly so great because, as Beethoven himself claimed, it is rather a

suggestion of emotional mood than the imitation of natural sounds or

the suggestion of distinct ideas. So far as popularity or universality

of appeal is concerned, he may be right. But this is obviously no

final test of the significance of music as compared with other arts,

though it may mark a distinguishing feature. And surely music expresses

emotions at least "as they are" (_selber_) more directly than poetry.

Poetry no doubt gives them as we express them in ordinary life. But

music makes us feel them as they are unexpressed in our souls, a still

higher grade of reality.]

[Footnote 411: Hegel probably never heard Beethoven's ninth symphony

with its "Song of Joy." As to its success as set to music there may be

two opinions, but the fact that it is the culmination of so celebrated

a composition is in itself a qualification of Hegel's statement.]

[Footnote 412: Both Mendelssohn and Schumann deplored the fact that

they could get no really good libretto and would unquestionably

not have received all the statements here without considerable

qualification. Hegel appears to be too dominated by the character of

Italian opera. German opera as further developed by Wagner and even

in the hands of Beethoven and Glück and Weber makes a very different

demand. It is unquestionably true that there must be a certain

reciprocity of quality between the two. But some of the finest music

has been written for some of the finest poetical language, namely that

of our Bible. Composers like Bach, Handel, and S. S. Wesley insisted on

having the very best form of their religious ideas they could obtain.]

[Footnote 413: Lit., "Within the purely musical realm of tones."

Hegel's strictures would only apply to the most formal kind of

exercises or studies. It would really be a misnomer to say that

Chopin's studies for the piano or Spohr's or even Kreutzer's exercises

for the violin wholly come under it.]

[Footnote 414: It is on this ground that Aristotle calls music the most

imitative art. They represent emotions directly without the mediatory

office of Nature's objectivity (_vide_ "Three Lectures on Aesthetic,"

by Bernard Bosanquet, p. 53).]

[Footnote 415: It is more subjective because the content is more ideal,

and more closely related to the artist's personal qualities.]

[Footnote 416: More definite than feeling and soul-life is from tone.]

[Footnote 417: That is, vanishes with the evanescence of the music.]

[Footnote 418: _Die Geschicklichkeit eines virtuosen Machwerks.

Machwerk_ is used, of course, in a depreciating sense. The contrast is

between it and a truly inspired composition.]

[Footnote 419: Lit., "Of the business on hand."]

[Footnote 420: _Gleichgültig._ I am not sure whether Hegel means

fortuitous in the sense that Nature in its abstraction is such, or

purely objective, _i.e._, no self-reflection, probably the latter. They

are "dead elements."]

[Footnote 421: That is, spatial externality.]

[Footnote 422: The meaning appears to me that apart from conscious life

which can contrast the fleeting moments of Time with its permanent

self-identity the process is without meaning--there is no process, it

is a παντά ρεῖ with no differentiation.]

[Footnote 423: It cancels itself in so far as it makes itself an

object. The dialectical movement of self-consciousness is here viewed

in the bare form of its original abstraction.]

[Footnote 424: _Das Ich als solches._]

[Footnote 425: _Abgeschmackte._ Not so much bad taste here as false

judgment.]

[Footnote 426: _Auffasst._ Hegel would appear to mean the intelligent

hearer rather than the composer, though the word would refer to either.

Even then it is not clear why music should not be said to exist by its

mere performance. But, of course, such presupposes the human executant,

and this is possibly what Hegel intends to imply.]

[Footnote 427: _Nüancirt._ Made subject to the nuances or modifications

introduced into such relations.]

[Footnote 428: _Verstand_ as contrasted with _Vernunft._ The analytical

faculty of science.]

[Footnote 429: That is, the quantitative basis.]

[Footnote 430: _Die haltungslose Dauer._ That is, a duration that is

unbroken by arresting points in its progress.]

[Footnote 431: That is, self-conscious, synthetic unity holding the

temporal process in relation to itself. It thus becomes not merely a

_werden_ but a _für sich seyn._ In contrast to the purely abstract

process the self is _das Bei sich selbstseyende_ _i.e._, that which

persists along with itself. This totality or aggregate of particulars

Hegel calls _Sammlung._ The analysis is really an analysis of the form

of conscious experience.]

[Footnote 432: This is the converse case of a series of definite points

of contrast, but unrelated by any integrating principle. I admit

frankly that I am not sure I have wholly seized the meaning in these

difficult paragraphs. I have adhered in my translation, therefore, as

closely as possible to the original.]

[Footnote 433: _Markirte._]

[Footnote 434: _Herrschende Regel._]

[Footnote 435: Because their orbits are elliptical and motion is

accelerated as they approach the focus.]

[Footnote 436: _Verlebendigung._]

[Footnote 437: He means of a specific collection of words, sentences.]

[Footnote 438: _Perioden._]

[Footnote 439: _Umschwung._ Perhaps all that is meant is the return to

the previous level, as we should speak of the rise and fall of voices.]

[Footnote 440: _Ein Körper._]

[Footnote 441: _Seiner zeitlichen Gestalt._]

[Footnote 442: _Gezwungene._ I presume the meaning is that the

oscillations are effected by a curved form of musical instrument.]

[Footnote 443: I am not sure there is not a certain confusion here.

Our text, at any rate, when speaking of wind instruments, refers to

the column of air as the medium of sound, but in the case of stringed

instruments draws attention rather to the thing which creates the

waves of vibration, the string itself. The nature of the timbre of

an instrument is no doubt an important one, but it may be questioned

whether this distinction between line or column and surface is very

satisfactory or sufficient.]

[Footnote 444: _Jenem linearen Tönen._ The expression appears to

me not very easy to interpret even from Hegel's own point of view.

In what sense can you call a musical tone linear? The theory here

stated, though ingenious enough, appears to me to miss the fundamental

question, what actually constitutes the timbre of an instrument,

in its assertion, for instance, of distantly related harmonies or

non-assertion of such. Even assuming that the form of the instrument,

or the part of it set into vibration, may partially explain this, it

is obvious, I think, that Hegel's manner of stating it is open to

considerable criticism.]

[Footnote 445: _Die näher abgeschlossene Bestimmtheit._ The meaning

seems to be that definition of them in which they stand out with most

distinctness from others.]

[Footnote 446: The comparison is unfortunate--in two respects. Violet

is a cardinal colour, and the theory of Goethe to which it refers is,

of course, untenable.]

[Footnote 447: The true scientific reason why octaves resemble each

other so much more closely than two notes at any other interval is

that the upper of two notes at an octave's distance is the first

"upper-partial" tone of the lower, and all its harmonies are also

harmonies of the lower note; the compound tone, for there is no

entirely simple tone, of the higher note contains no new sound, which

is not in the compound tone of the lower. This is not the case with two

notes at any other interval.]

[Footnote 448: _Ihre besonderen Seiten._ I presume this means what is

immediately called below the several intervals between note and note.]

[Footnote 449: There is really a distinction between the consonance of

the dominant and a major or minor third.]

[Footnote 450: That is, the third is only third in relation to the

key-note, or the leading-note only as the note previous to the octave.]

[Footnote 451: Three notes are really essential to any true chord.]

[Footnote 452: The mediant lies about midway between the tonic and

dominant as the third of the scale. The researches of Helmholtz

prove that the distinction between consonant or semi-consonant and

dissonant intervals is not arbitrary, but the result of the nature

of the intervals themselves. A musical tone is mostly a compound

one, containing, besides its principal tone, other tones with fixed

relations to the lowest note, called harmonics, or "upper partials."

Helmholtz has shown that when two of the earlier-produced and stronger

of these upper partial tones coincide in two notes sounded together,

the resulting tone is pure, free, that is, from the inequalities known

as "beats" (Prout, "Harmony," 10th ed., pp. 21, 22).]

[Footnote 453: As, of course, in the scale, notes independent of each

other.]

[Footnote 454: _Schärfe._]

[Footnote 455: The reader of Browning will recall how the poet in his

"Abt Vogler" exclaims "Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony

should be prized?" or speaks of blunting the minor into the ninth where

the musician "stands on alien ground, surveying awhile the heights."]

[Footnote 456: This extreme emphasis on melody must be read as further

explained lower down of melody in the wider sense. Even as thus

qualified it is rather an overstatement. It may be questioned whether

in the mind of a musician of genius the freedom of harmonic progression

is of a different quality to that of melodic. It may _appear_ no doubt

less spontaneous. But it is the task of the great artist to overcome

that appearance in one case as much as in the other.]

[Footnote 457: It may be doubted how far such a statement is true of

many chord progressions in modern music. It seems to me that this

notion of harmony as _für sich_ having no musical significance is, to

say the least, very misleading.]

[Footnote 458: This really is the point. Inspired harmony in its

progression unfolds what is really a tissue of melodic threads. The

complex musical structure of a Brahms symphony is a good example.]

[Footnote 459: Lit., "the free self-subsistency (_Beisichseyn_) of

subjective life."]

[Footnote 460: Hegel puts it the other way. What he means is that in

the medium of music we neither apprehend objects of sense nor ideas as

we receive them in imagination or thought.]

[Footnote 461: Hegel throughout uses the term _Innerlichkeit._ That

which is the Inmost is, in fact, the ideal. It is the _raison d'être_

and the notion itself.]

[Footnote 462: He means at the point proposed by the dramatic theme.

Hegel's words are literally "it subdues the subject (_i.e._, of

consciousness) referably to its simple concentration (_i.e._, on the

subject at hand)."]

[Footnote 463: The above distinction is hardly consonant with that

of customary parlance. We should rather say that the melody of the

song gave an utterance to the words, and the instrumentation was,

for the very reason that it was more independent, more directly an

accompaniment. But the point emphasized here seems to be the closeness

of the association. In this aspect, no doubt, the music actually

sung is more an accompaniment to the intelligible content. As a rule

accompaniment is generally used as the accompaniment of a song or

choral writing, and Hegel himself uses it in this sense previously.]

[Footnote 464: A general truth, no doubt. But not without qualification

if we consider the works and indeed the execution of such giants as

Bach and Handel.]

[Footnote 465: That is, particularity due to the idiosyncrasies of

the artist, and merely personal to him. But the statement applies to

classic art more strictly than modern.]

[Footnote 466: That is, music as an accompaniment.]

[Footnote 467: _Gediegenheit._ Something that rings true as a whole,

not a thing of patches.]

[Footnote 468: The music of Mendelssohn and others in this direction

will raise a doubt in some whether Hegel does not rather overstate his

case here.]

[Footnote 469: _Besonderung._ The relative isolation that is effected

by marked assertion.]

[Footnote 470: Throughout this discussion the personal bias of Hegel

for the Italian opera is obvious. In the light of the actual knowledge

of his day the wonder is that his own tastes permitted his being even

as fair as he is. It may be doubted whether he had any strong sense

for orchestral or chamber music at all. His reflections must be read

throughout with this reservation.]

[Footnote 471: Or, as Hegel more technically calls it, and I have above

translated it, "subjectivity."]

[Footnote 472: That is, dependent on living beings for its presentation

in every case.]

[Footnote 473: The execution of Paganini is, of course, the classic

example. But all cadenzas executed by a great artist, even though

carefully studied, express something of the spirit.]

[Footnote 474: Hegel means that such music expresses not so much

rational freedom as the fundamental independence of the self-conscious

principle.]

[Footnote 475: By _dürftiger Kopf_ I understand Hegel to mean the

headstrong charlatan as contrasted with the virtuoso who is also a

trained musician. Paganini had a vein of both in his composition. The

epithet _dürftig_, lit., thirsty, is, however, not very clear, and

in so far as it is, the emphasis would not be so much on quackery as

absence of all training.]

END OF VOL. III