[Speech of Robert G. Ingersoll at the banquet given in New York City,
April 2, 1891, by the Liederkranz Society to Edmund C. Stanton,
director of German Opera in New York, and Anton Seidl, orchestral
conductor. William Steinway presided, and called upon Robert Ingersoll
to speak to the toast, "Music, Noblest of the Arts."]
MR. TOAST-MASTER:--It is probable that I was selected to speak
about music, because, not knowing one note from another, I have no
prejudice on the subject. All I can say is, that I know what I like,
and, to tell the truth, I like every kind, enjoy it all, from the
hand-organ to the orchestra.
Knowing nothing of the science of music, I am not always looking for
defects, or listening for discords. As the young robin cheerfully
swallows whatever comes, I hear with gladness all that is played.
Music has been, I suppose, a gradual growth, subject to the law of
evolution; as nearly everything, with the possible exception of
theology, has been and is under this law.
Music may be divided into three kinds: First, the music of simple time,
without any particular emphasis--and this may be called the music of the
heels; second, music in which time is varied, in which there is the
eager haste and the delicious delay, that is, the fast and slow, in
accordance with our feelings, with our emotions--and this may be called
the music of the heart; third, the music that includes time and
emphasis, the hastening and the delay, and something in addition, that
produces not only states of feeling, but states of thought. This may be
called the music of the head,--the music of the brain.
Music expresses feeling and thought, without language. It was below and
before speech, and it is above and beyond all words. Beneath the
waves is the sea--above the clouds is the sky.
_ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Photogravure after a photograph from life_
[Illustration]
Before man found a name for any thought, or thing, he had hopes and
fears and passions, and these were rudely expressed in tones.
Of one thing, however, I am certain, and that is, that Music was born of
love. Had there never been any human affection, there never could have
been uttered a strain of music. Possibly some mother, looking in the
eyes of her babe, gave the first melody to the enraptured air.
Language is not subtle enough, tender enough, to express all that we
feel; and when language fails, the highest and deepest longings are
translated into music. Music is the sunshine--the climate--of the soul,
and it floods the heart with a perfect June.
I am also satisfied that the greatest music is the most marvellous
mingling of Love and Death. Love is the greatest of all passions, and
Death is its shadow. Death gets all its terror from Love, and Love gets
its intensity, its radiance, its glory and its rapture from the darkness
of Death. Love is a flower that grows on the edge of the grave.
The old music, for the most part, expresses emotion, or feeling, through
time and emphasis, and what is known as melody. Most of the old operas
consist of a few melodies connected by unmeaning recitative. There
should be no unmeaning music. It is as though a writer should suddenly
leave his subject and write a paragraph consisting of nothing but a
repetition of one word like "the," "the," "the," or "if," "if," "if,"
varying the repetition of these words, but without meaning,--and then
resume the subject of his article.
I am not saying that great music was not produced before Wagner but I am
simply endeavoring to show the steps that have been taken. It was
necessary that all the music should have been written, in order that the
greatest might be produced. The same is true of the drama. Thousands and
thousands prepared the way for the supreme dramatist, as millions
prepared the way for the supreme composer.
When I read Shakespeare, I am astonished that he has expressed so much
with common words, to which he gives new meaning; and so when I hear
Wagner, I exclaim: Is it possible that all this is done with common
air?
In Wagner's music there is a touch of chaos that suggests the infinite.
The melodies seem strange and changing forms, like summer clouds, and
weird harmonies come like sounds from the sea brought by fitful winds,
and others moan like waves on desolate shores, and mingled with these,
are shouts of joy, with sighs and sobs and ripples of laughter, and the
wondrous voices of eternal love.
Wagner is the Shakespeare of Music.
The funeral march for Siegfried is the funeral music for all the dead.
Should all the gods die, this music would be perfectly appropriate. It
is elemental, universal, eternal.
The love-music in Tristan and Isolde is, like Romeo and Juliet an
expression of the human heart for all time. So the love-duet in "The
Flying Dutchman" has in it the consecration, the infinite self-denial,
of love. The whole heart is given; every note has wings, and rises and
poises like an eagle in the heaven of sound.
When I listen to the music of Wagner, I see pictures, forms, glimpses of
the perfect, the swell of a hip, the wave of a breast, the glance of an
eye. I am in the midst of great galleries. Before me are passing the
endless panoramas. I see vast landscapes with valleys of verdure and
vine with soaring crags, snow-crowned. I am on the wide seas, where
countless billows burst into the whitecaps of joy. I am in the depths of
caverns roofed with mighty crags, while through some rent I see the
eternal stars. In a moment the music becomes a river of melody, flowing
through some wondrous land; suddenly it falls in strange chasms, and the
mighty cataract is changed to seven-hued foam.
Great music is always sad, because it tells us of the perfect; and such
is the difference between what we are and that which music suggests,
that even in the vase of joy we find some tears.
The music of Wagner has color, and when I hear the violins, the morning
seems to slowly come. A horn puts a star above the horizon. The night,
in the purple hum of the bass, wanders away like some enormous bee
across wide fields of dead clover. The light grows whiter as the violins
increase. Colors come from other instruments, and then the full
orchestra floods the world with day.
Wagner seems not only to have given us new tones, new combinations, but
the moment the orchestra begins to play his music, all the instruments
are transfigured. They seem to utter the sounds that they have been
longing to utter. The horns run riot; the drums and cymbals join in the
general joy; the old bass viols are alive with passion; the 'cellos
throb with love; the violins are seized with a divine fury, and the
notes rush out as eager for the air as pardoned prisoners for the roads
and fields.
The music of Wagner is filled with landscapes. There are some strains,
like midnight, thick with constellations, and there are harmonies like
islands in the far seas, and others like palms on the desert's edge. His
music satisfies the heart and brain. It is not only for memory; not only
for the present, but for prophecy.
Wagner was a sculptor, a painter in sound. When he died, the greatest
fountain of melody that ever enchanted the world, ceased. His music will
instruct and refine forever.
All that I know about the operas of Wagner I have learned from Anton
Seidl. I believe that he is the noblest, tenderest and most artistic
interpreter of the great composer that has ever lived.