THE SUBJECTS AND METHOD OF EDUCATION--DRAWING AND MUSIC.
§ 41. It is likely that most writers on Greek education have
exaggerated the importance and diffusion of drawing as an ordinary
school subject. Even in Aristotle’s day it was only recognized by
some people, probably theorists;[41] and Pliny tells us that it was
Pamphilus, Apelles’ master, who first had it introduced at Sicyon,
from which it spread over all Greece. These combined notices point to
its not being general before the days of Alexander. But the theorists
recognized its use and importance earlier, first and most obviously for
critical purposes, that men might better judge and appreciate works
of art; secondly, for that æsthetical effect which is so forgotten by
us, the unconscious moulding of the mind to beauty by the close and
accurate study of beautiful forms.
The usual word ζωγραφία for painting, and ζωγράφος for drawing-master,
suggests to us that _figure-drawing_ was the early and the principal
branch of the art known and taught. From the earliest times rude
figures had been scratched and colored on vases, and the number of
vase-painters in historical Greece must have been so considerable as
to disseminate some general feeling for the art, though we hear of
no amateur vase-painting, such as is in fashion among ladies of our
own day. On the other hand, landscape-painting was of late growth
and very imperfect development. The prominence of sculpture, even
polychromatic sculpture, made its absence less felt. Owing to the old
Greek habit of personifying nature, and expressing every mountain and
river by its tutelary gods, we find in the great pediment sculptures
of the best epoch that curious indication of the landscape by its
tutelary gods--looking on calmly and unconsciously at the action of the
principal figures--which is perhaps the most peculiar characteristic
of all Greek art. Thus the local rivers, the Alpheus and Cladeus, are
represented lying at the ends of the great eastern pediment of the
temple at Olympia, witnessing the combat of Pelops and Œnomaus with no
more expression of feeling than the landscape which they represent
would manifest.
The earliest essays at landscape proper were, moreover, not rocks and
trees, or that wild country which the Greeks never loved, but buildings
and artificial grounds, with regular lines and definite design. The
first attempt was made to satisfy the requirements of the theatre, and
the fact that scene-painting and shade-painting (or perspective) were
used as synonymous terms shows the truth of the report that Apollodorus
(_cir._ 400 B.C.) first discovered the art of representing the straight
lines of a building in depth, by a departure from that _orthography_ in
geometrical drawing which had hitherto been practised.
If we may judge from the many sketches of this sort of suburban
landscape which are preserved on Pompeian walls, the proper knowledge
of perspective was not even in later times diffused among ordinary
artists, whose figure-painting on these walls is in every respect
vastly superior. On the other hand, the figure-painting even on vases
of the best epoch is so conventional that we cannot believe Greek boys
were taught to draw figures with a proper knowledge of living or round
models, and must assume the drawing-lessons to have been chiefly in
geometrical designs.
According to Ælian, there were maps of the Greek world to be had at
Athens, and therefore presumably in schools, when Alcibiades was a
young man; but this isolated notice, backed up by one or two allusions
in Aristophanes, must not be pressed too far. The confusion between
the terms for drawing and for writing utensils arises from the same
materials being used in practising both--as if we used pencils only
in learning to write. The same stylus (γραφίς) which was used for
writing on wax tablets was used for drawing outlines on the same; and
the earliest training in drawing, if we may trust the statement of
Böttiger, was the copying of the outlines of models proposed by the
master.[42] After firmness had been attained, delicacy of outline was
practised, and ultimately a fine paint, which was used to paint black
and red outlines on white tables, or white on black.
§ 42. Though the diffusion of drawing was late and doubtful, this was
not the case with music, in its strictest sense. For its importance was
such as to make it a synonym for culture in general, and to leave us
doubtful in some cases whether Greek authors are speaking in this wider
or the narrower sense. But it is from music proper that they all would
start, as affording the central idea of education.
Here is one of the features in which Greek life is so different from
ours, that there is the greatest possible difficulty in understanding
it. When modern educators introduce music into boys’ recreation time,
and say it has important influences in humanizing them, though in this
they may approach the language of Greek social reformers and statesmen,
they mean something widely different. The moderns mean nothing more
(I conceive) than this, that the practice of music is a humane and
civilizing pursuit, bringing boys into the company of their sisters
and lady friends, withdrawing them from coarse and harmful pursuits,
and thus indirectly making them gentler and more harmless men. It
is as an innocent and social source of amusement that music is now
recommended. Let us put out of all account the far lower and too often
vulgar pressure on girls to learn to play or sing, whether they like
it or not. For here the only advantage in view is not the girl’s moral
or social improvement, but her advancement in life, by making her
attractive in society. Such a view of musical training is quite beneath
any serious notice in the present argument.
What has above been said will be considered a fair statement of the
importance given to music by modern thinkers. And accordingly, when
we find all Greek educators and theorists[43] asserting a completely
different kind of importance in music, we find ourselves in presence
of what is strictly an historical problem. It is not enough for the
Greeks to admit that martial music has strong effects on soldiers going
to battle, or that doleful music turns the mind to sadness in a solemn
requiem for the dead. They went so far beyond this as to assert that by
constantly playing martial music people would become martial, that by
constantly playing and singing passionate and voluptuous music people
became passionate and voluptuous. Consequently, the proper selection
of instruments of music and of words became a subject of serious
importance. The flute was cultivated at Athens till Alcibiades spurned
it for distorting his handsome face, and caused it to go out of fashion
at Athens. But this aversion to the Bœotian instrument was supported
by the theorists on the ground that it had no moral tendency, that it
was too exciting, and vague in the emotions it excited; also, that it
prevented the player from singing words to his music.
But when we would infer from this that it is really the text, and not
the actual music, which has the mental effect--when we are disposed
to add that in our own time instrumental music is a higher and more
intellectual kind of music, which has no moral effects save good ones,
and that it is the libretto of the opera or the sentiment of the song
which does harm--the answer from the Greek point of view is conclusive
against us. Though much stress was laid upon the noble words which were
sung, the music was known to have the principal effect. Plato, in a
celebrated passage, even inveighs bitterly against the gross immorality
and luxuriousness of all mere instrumental music, which allowed of so
much ornament, so much exaggeration of expression, so much complexity
of emotion, as to be wholly unsuited to his ideal state. It is,
indeed, perfectly true that the intellectual effort in understanding
instrumental music, at least some instrumental music, is far greater
than is required for appreciating, or imagining one appreciates, a
simple song. To understand a string quartet of Mendelssohn, or, still
more, a symphony of Beethoven, is an intellectual task far exceeding
the abilities of nine tenths of the audiences who hear them.[44] But,
apart from all such intellectual strain, there is a strong though
indefinable passion about this very music which has the deepest effects
on minds really tuned to appreciate it.
If this be too subtle an instance, there is another so striking that
it is worth mentioning on the chance of the reader’s verifying it some
day for himself. The Hungarian gypsies who form the national bands
are chiefly occupied at entertainments in playing for the national
dance--the _csárdás_--tunes which have now become familiar, some of
them, through the transcriptions of Liszt and Johannes Brahms. The
dance consists in a gradually increasing excitement, starting from a
slow and grave beginning. The change is produced merely by increase of
time in often repeating the same air,[45] and also in adorning it with
flourishes, which are added _ad libitum_ and somewhat barbarously, by
the members of the band according to their taste. The effect of this
gradual hurrying and complicating of the same tune is inexpressibly
affecting to the mind. It represents excitement, and often voluptuous
excitement, to the highest degree. It would have thoroughly shocked
Plato and his school.
This simpler example, though less easily verifiable to the English
reader, is really more to the point, for there can be no doubt that
it is owing to the increase of complication, and the growth of the
intellectual combinations in music, that we have lost sight of what the
Greeks thought so vital--the direct moral effects of music.
§ 43. The question remains, What did the Greeks convey by this theory?
Were they talking nonsense, or was their music so different from ours
that their theories have no application in our day? We cannot adopt
either of these solutions, though all our researches into Greek scales,
and into the scanty examples of tunes still extant, are unable to show
clearly what they meant. We cannot make out why tunes in the Doric
scale--a scale varying slightly from our ordinary minor scale--should
be thought manly and moral, while Lydian measures--a scale like our
ordinary major scales--should be thought immoral.[46] We must give up
the problem of finding out a solution from the Greek scales. But this
we may fairly assert, that our music, being directly descended from
the old Church scales, which again were derived from the Greek, cannot
be so totally different from that of the old Greeks as to warrant
the inference that theirs could be moral or the reverse, and ours
indifferent to morals. We may depend upon it that they did not talk
nonsense, and that the general consent of all their thinking men on
this curious point is well worthy of our most serious attention.
It is probable that the far greater complexity of our music, the
multiplication of instruments, the development of harmony, has brought
out intellectual instincts unknown to them, and so obscured the moral
questions once so striking. The Chinese of the present day, who have
a music far simpler than ours, mostly on the tetratonic scale, are
said to speak of the moral influence of music as the Greeks did, and
to put the composing and circulating of tunes under a certain control.
They used to have state composers charged with this duty, in order to
preserve and improve the morals of the people. Although, then, it seems
that the simpler the character of a national music, the more clearly
its moral effects are perceived, we only want a closer analysis to
detect the same qualities in our own composers. Much of the best music
we now hear is unduly exciting: it feeds vain longings, indefinite
desires, sensuous regrets; and were the evidence stated in detail, the
sceptical reader might be convinced that here we are far behind the
Greek educators, and that we often deliberately expose our children
to great moral risk by inciting them to express their semi-conscious
desires in affecting music. The majority who have no soul for music
may be safe enough (though this is not certain); but those whose
soul speaks through their fingers, or their voice, are running a
very serious danger, of which there is not the least suspicion among
modern educators. To seek corroboration from the characters of leading
musicians were invidious, but not without instruction.[47]
This inquiry is no digression which requires apology. It is a point in
which we do not seem to have reflected as deeply as the ancients, and
which is well worth discussing without pedantry or sentimentality. It
is also true that the general aspect of this side of Greek education
is more interesting and fruitful than the inquiry into the structures
of the particular instruments they used--an antiquarian question very
minutely discussed by learned historians of music, and by compilers of
archæological lore. On these details we may here be brief. The subject
has been exhausted by Mr. Chappell, our best historian of music.
§ 44. In education we never hear of the use of those more complicated
instruments, such as the τρίγωνον, or harp, the double flute and
others, which were used by professionals. On the other hand, the
favorite syrinx, or pandean-pipe, was only in fashion among shepherds,
and not in schools. We may assume that nothing was there admitted but
the simplest form of stringed instrument, the lyre (λύρα), which was
originally made by stretching strings across the inside of the back
shell of a tortoise. These shells are often to be found dry and clean
in river-courses through Greece. The tortoise when dead is eaten out by
ants or other insects; the shells separate, and are carried away and
cleaned by floods. This most primitive kind was, however, supplanted by
a more elaborate form, which used the two shells of the tortoise, and
fastened, in the position of its front legs, a pair of goat’s horns,
which were spanned near their extremity by the ζύγον, or yoke, to which
strings were drawn from the far end of the shell, over the nether
surface, or breast shell, which was flat. This, with seven or at most
ten strings, was the ordinary instrument used to teach Greek boys to
play. The more elaborate cithara, which still survives, both in name
and structure, among the Tyrolese, was a lyre with a sound-box built
of thin wood or metal plates, and elongated into hollow arms (where
the lyre only had horns, or solid wooden arms), so that the resonance
was considerably greater. This, in the form called πηκτίς, had fifteen
or more strings, and does not here concern us. The use of the bow for
stringed instruments was unknown to the Greeks, but they used for
playing the _plectrum_, which is still used by the Tyrolese for their
_zither_.
The favorite wind-instrument was not our flute, which was called
πλαγίαυλος, or “cross-played aulos,” and which was not popular, but our
clarinet, the αὐλός, which was held straight, was wide at the mouth,
and produced its tone by means of a vibrating tongue in the mouthpiece.
The ordinary aulos was played without any artificial aid; but for the
double aulos, where two reeds of different pitch were blown from the
same mouthpiece, a leather bandage was tied over the player’s mouth,
into which the mouthpiece was fitted. This was the most extreme form of
that disfigurement of which the Greeks complained in flute-playing.
The tunes taught to boys are now lost, and we cannot hope to reproduce
them. But there is good reason to think that they would not suit the
developed taste of our day, and would be considered dull and even ugly.
This we may infer from the few extant fragments of Greek tunes.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] ἔστι δὲ τέτταρα σχεδόν, ἃ παιδεύειν εἰώθασι, γράμματα καὶ
γυμναστικὴν καὶ μουσικήν, καὶ τέταρτον ἔνιοι γραφικήν.--_Pol._, viii.
p. 259.
[42] Ὑπογράφεσθαι is the technical term for this drawing of models.
[43] Aristotle implies in his discussion (“Pol.,” bk. vii. 1) that
there had arisen in his day radical critics who asserted that music was
merely an amusement, with no other importance. But he sets aside this
opinion as hardly deserving of refutation, seeing how strong was the
consensus of opinion against it.
[44] Aristotle fully appreciates this, and admits, even in his
perfect polity, popular music to suit the vulgar listener, who cannot
understand what is really classical (“Pol.,” viii.: ὁ γὰρ θεατὴς
φορτικὸς ὤν. κ.τ.λ.).
[45] In some cases a very florid adagio is succeeded by a lively plain
tune in galop time.
[46] Some people have thought these scales only indicated differences
of pitch. This is false, or rather a misapprehension, because in a
fixed set of notes--like the white notes in our pianos--various scales
could only be found by starting higher or lower. But how could a
difference of pitch affect morals?
[47] It is not difficult for a man who has devoted sufficient time
to music, and has known many musical people, to find some analogy to
Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian modes, as moral agents, in our modern
music. For surely the real meaning, the real depth, in the art is
this: that it represents, and by representing stimulates within us,
various emotions. Like all the other faculties of man, the emotions
are a great class of mental phenomena improved and strengthened by a
certain quantity of stimulus, but exaggerated and injured by being
overstrained, or too perpetually exercised. And it is the peculiar
province of music to awaken emotions too subtle and various for the
coarser utterance of words, and therefore to fill the mind with
feelings delightful, indeed, and deep, but from their very nature
unutterable in words and inexplicable except by sympathy. You cannot
convey to an unmusical man what is called the expression of an
air--that is to say, the emotion it has caused within you. Let us add
that if you could explain it, it would not have the distinctive value
which it really possesses. It is this very feature in the question
which has caused the moral effects of music to be wholly overlooked
in a cold and logical age, when many men are not affected by it, and
in which everything inexplicable by direct statement is likely to be
considered unreal.
The emotions, then, which it is the proper object of music to
stimulate, are of that subtle character that they cannot be defined.
Different composers will, no doubt, excite a different _complexion_
of feeling in the mind. The works of Handel and J. S. Bach produce a
thoroughly satisfied and cheerful temper, even when they treat sad
subjects; whereas Beethoven has almost always about him that profound
melancholy which is to a mind in distress more sustaining in its
sympathy than all the comfort of consolation. But this only describes
the general character of the emotions produced, and not the emotions
themselves. For these are often not consciously before us at all, but
influence us, like our prejudices, from a hidden vantage-ground within
the soul.
But, alas! the history of this delicious stimulant is like that of all
the rest. Men begin to crave for it, and then constantly pursue it;
they will not be satisfied without stronger doses, and, presently,
even these cease to have their effect except by intoxication. In such
case, the stimulant is no longer applied to exciting an emotion, but
to satisfying a passion. And this latter differs from the former in
being more violent (being, perhaps, compounded of several emotions),
and in containing some coarser bodily element, either consciously or
unconsciously.
It may be illustrated from what are called sentimental songs. If we
compare the old chaste love-songs that are found among the national
melodies of England, and still better of Ireland, with the love-songs
in one of the greatest of modern operas, Gounod’s “Faust,” the
distinction will be easily apprehended. When an Irish girl puts sweet
wild music to the words of her song, and is then better satisfied with
it than if she merely spoke it, the reason is this, that there are in
her love a number of tender emotions, far too subtle to be uttered in
the words, but which are conveyed in the expression of the melody. The
very same may be said of the solemn, almost religious love-songs of
the old Italian composers, in which knightly reverence for the gentler
sex is so apparent. Let the soberest critic compare this music with
the splendid duet in the garden scene of Gounod’s “Faust,” and more
especially with the concluding song of the act (that in six flats).
Expressive this music is beyond description, and expressive of love;
but how different!