Those who have had sufficient interest to read any considerable number
of the foregoing chapters cannot have failed to perceive that, to the
mind of the author, the sister arts, music and poetry, sustain to each
other an even closer, more vitally intimate relation than the family
connection generally conceded to them.
It is a kinship of soul and sympathy, as well as of race—a similarity
of aim and influence upon humanity; a similarity, even in the kind of
effect produced, and the means employed to produce it, which renders
them largely interdependent and reciprocally helpful. The purpose of
both is expression, chiefly emotional expression, descriptions of nature
and references to natural phenomena being introduced merely as
accessories, as background or setting for the human life and interest,
which are of primary importance. Both express their meaning, not through
imitated sounds or forms borrowed from the physical world, but by means
of audible symbols devised by man for this express purpose, which have
come by long usage and general acceptance to have a definite
significance, but require a certain degree of education to comprehend
them, and which are therefore more intellectual, more adapted to the
expression of the subtler phases of life, and more purely human in their
origin, than the media of form and color employed in the plastic arts.
True, the one uses tones, the other words, as its material; but the
difference is by no means so radical as at first appears. Both exist in
time, while all other arts have to do with space and substance. Both
have but one dimension, so to speak,—namely, duration,—and owe
whatever of the beauty of form and proportion they possess to a
symmetrical subdivision of this given duration into correspondent parts
or sections, by means of accents, brief pauses, and rhymes or cadences.
Both may successfully treat a progressive series of moods or scenes, of
varying character, and fluctuating intensity, which is not possible in
the plastic arts, limited as they all are to the portrayal of a single
situation, a single instant of time, a single fixed conception. Both,
again, possess a certain warmth and inherent pulsing life, which is
their common, dominant characteristic, due to the heart-throb of rhythm,
which is lacking in all other arts.
Even in the media they employ, there is a strong though subtle
resemblance; both appeal directly to the sense of hearing, which
scientists tell us is more intimately connected with the nerve centers
of emotional life than any other of the senses. In both cases the
immediate appeal is to the feelings and the imagination, without
recourse to intervening imagery borrowed from external nature. Both
embody the cry of one soul to another, and they are not widely divergent
in quality or effect. Language at its highest is almost song, and music
at its best is idealized declamation. All good poetry must be musical.
It should, as we say, sing itself; and all good music must be poetical,
conveying a distinctly poetic impression.
To me every poem presupposes a possible musical setting, and every
worthy composition, a possible poetic text. Hence the language used, in
describing music, must of necessity, so far as the powers of the writer
permit, possess a generally poetic character. In all my thought and
reading, along this line, it has seemed to me, not only of extreme
interest, but of great practical value to every musician and writer, to
devote careful study to the analogy between these arts, to the
correspondences between artists, in these parallel lines of work, and
between their special productions in each, to obtain the widest possible
familiarity with both arts and their mutual relations, with a view to
letting each aid to a fuller elucidation and better appreciation of the
other. I have always grouped together in my mind Bach and Milton,
Beethoven and Shakespeare, Mozart and Spenser, Schubert and Moore,
Schumann and Shelley, Mendelssohn and Longfellow, Chopin and Tennyson,
Liszt and Byron, Wagner and Victor Hugo.
Bach and Milton seem to me to occupy corresponding niches in the temples
of music and of verse, because of the strong religious element in the
personality of both, of their severe, involved, lengthy, sonorous, and
dignified style of utterance; their mutual disdain of mere sentiment and
softer graces, and their fondness for works of large dimensions and
serious import. Furthermore, because of the proneness of both to
religious and churchly subjects, and the corresponding position which
they occupy as veteran classics in their respective arts.
The analogy between Beethoven and Shakespeare is almost too obvious for
remark. They are the twin giants of music and literature in their
colossal and comprehensive powers, in the breadth and universality of
their genius, and in the verdict of absolute superiority unanimously
accorded them by all nations, all schools, and all factions, both in the
profession and by the public. They are like the pyramids of Egypt; they
overtop all altitudes, cover more area, and present a more enduring
front to the “corroding effects of time” than aught else the world has
known.
Mozart and Spenser resemble each other in their quaint and classic, yet
naïve and sunshiny style, their abundance, almost excess of fancy, and
their fondness for supernatural, though for the most part non-religious
and non-mythological scenes, incidents, and characters; also in their
habit of treating startling situations and normally grievous
catastrophes without exciting any very profound subjective emotions in
their readers and hearers. Not that they are flippant or superficial in
character; far from it; but with them art was somewhat removed from
humanity. With Spenser literature was not life, and with Mozart music
was not emotion. We smile and are glad at heart because of them, but we
are not thrilled; we are pensive or reflective, but we rarely weep and
are never plunged into despair. There is a moral lesson, it is true, in
the feats of the knights and ladies in the “Faery Queen,” as also in the
vicissitudes of that rather admirable scoundrel, Don Juan, but it is not
burned into us, as by a keener and crueler hand. Those who enjoy poetry
and music, rather than feel it, love it, or learn from it, are always
partial to Spenser and Mozart.
No artistic affinity is more marked than that of Schubert and Moore.
They are both preëminently song-writers. Both had a gift of spontaneous,
happy, graceful development of a single thought in small compass. Both
are melodious beyond compare, and both wrote with an ease, rapidity, and
versatility rarely matched in the annals of their arts. Moore is the
most musical of poets, and Schubert, perhaps, the most poetic of
musicians. One of Moore’s life-purposes was the collection of stray
waifs of national airs and furnishing them with appropriate words.
Likewise, one of Schubert’s main services to art was the collection of
brief lyric poems and setting them to suitable melodies. Each reached
over into the sister art a friendly hand, and each, unawares, won his
chief fame thereby. Moreover, though clinging by instinct and preference
to the smaller, simpler, more unpretentious forms, each wrote one or two
lengthy and well-developed works, such as the “Lalla Rookh,” with Moore,
and the “Wanderer Fantaisie,” with Schubert, which gloriously bear
comparison with the masterpieces of their type from the pens of the
ablest writers in the larger forms.
Shelley has been called the poet’s poet, and Schumann might as aptly be
termed the musician’s composer; because the subtle, fanciful, subjective
character and the metaphysical tendency of the works of both require the
keen insight and the fertile imagination of the artistic temperament, to
follow them in all their flights and catch the full significance of
their suggestions. With both, the instinct for form is weak, and the
constructive faculty almost wanting. Ideas and figures are fine,
profound, and astute, but there is a lack of lucidity, brevity, and
force, as well as of logical development, in their expression. A few
bits of melody by Schumann, such as the “Träumerei,” and an occasional
brief lyric by Shelley, like “The Skylark,” have become well-known and
popular; but their works, in the main, are likely to be the last ever
written to catch the public ear. They appeal the more strongly to the
inner circle of initiates who are familiar spirits in the mystical
realm, whose language they speak. Where Shelley is the favorite poet,
and Schumann the favorite composer, an unusually active fancy and subtle
intellect are sure to be found.
Mendelssohn and Longfellow are alike in almost every feature. Both are
in temperament objective and optimistic. Both are graceful, fluent,
melodious, tender, and thoughtful, without being ever strongly
impassioned or really dramatic. Both display superior and
well-disciplined powers, nobility of sentiment, and ease and grace of
manner. Perfect gentlemen and polished scholars, both avoid all radical
and reformatory tendencies, to such an extent as to lend a shade of
conventionality to their artistic personality, as compared with the
extreme romanticists of their day. Both have reached the public ear and
heart as no other talent of equal magnitude has ever done. Many of the
ballads, narrative poems, and shorter pieces by Longfellow, and the
“Songs Without Words,” by Mendelssohn, have become so familiar as to be
almost hackneyed, even with the non-poetic and non-musical populace.
Chopin is beyond dispute the Tennyson of the pianoforte. The same depth,
warmth, and delicacy of feeling vitalizing every line, the same polish,
fineness of detail, and symmetry of form, the same exquisitely refined,
yet by no means effeminate, temperament are seen in both. Each shows us
fervent passion, beyond the ken of common men, without a touch of
brutality; intense and vehement emotion, with never a hint of violence
in its betrayal, expressed in dainty rhythmic numbers as polished and
symmetrical as if that symmetry and polish were their only _raison
d’être_. This similar trait leads often to a similar mistake in regard
to both. Superficial observers, fixing their attention on the preëminent
delicacy, tenderness, elegance, and grace of their manner and matter,
regard them as exponents of these qualities merely, and deny them
broader, stronger, sterner characteristics. Never was a grosser wrong
done true artists. No poet and no composer is more profound, passionate,
and intense than Tennyson and Chopin, and none so rarely pens a line
that is devoid of genuine feeling as its legitimate origin. But the
artist in each stood with quiet finger on the riotous pulses of emotion,
and forbade all utterance that was crude, chaotic, or uncouth. Both had
the heart of fire and tongue of gold. Tennyson wrote the model lyrics of
his language and Chopin the model lyrics of his instrument, for all
posterity. Edgar Poe said of Tennyson: “I call him and think him the
noblest of poets, because the excitement which he induces is at all
times the most ethereal, the most elevating, and the most pure. No poet
is so little of the earth, earthy.” The same words might well be spoken
of Chopin.
Liszt and Byron were kindred spirits, both as men and artists. Among the
serener stars and planets that move majestically in harmony with
heaven’s first law, to the music of the spheres, they were like meteors
or comets, appearing above the horizon with dazzling brilliance, and
darting to the zenith, through an erratic career, reaching a summit of
fame and popularity, attained during his lifetime by no other poet or
musician, and setting at defiance all laws of art, of society, and of
morals. Brilliancy of style and character, haughty independence,
impetuous passion, a matchless splendor of genius, a supreme contempt
for the weaknesses of lesser mortals, combined with the warmest
admiration for their peers, are the distinguishing attributes of both.
Byron’s devoted friendship for Moore and Shelley corresponds exactly to
Liszt’s feeling for Chopin and Wagner. Liszt himself recognized this
affinity between himself and Byron. The English poet was for many years
his model and favorite author; many of his scenes and poems he
translated into tones, and his influence is marked in most of his
earlier compositions. The works of both are remarkable for a fire and
fury almost demoniac, alternating with a light and flippant grace,
almost impish. Both understood a climax as few others have done, and
both had the dramatic element strongly developed. Both were lawless and
dissolute, according to the world’s verdict, yet scrupulous and refined
to an extreme in certain respects. Each scandalized the world, repaid
its censure with scorn, and saw it at his feet; and each left, like a
meteor, a track of fire behind him, which still burns with a red and
vivid, if not the purest, luster.
Wagner and Victor Hugo are the two Titans of the nineteenth century,
having created more stir and ferment in the world of art and letters
than any other writers, contemporary or previous. Each is the leading
genius of his nation. They resemble each other in the pronounced
originality of their genius, their virile energy and productivity, and
their colossal force. Of both, the rare and singular fact is true, that
their productions all attain about the same level of merit. Most authors
and most composers are known by one or a few sublime creations. I know
of no others who have written an equal number of great works and none
that are mediocre or feeble. They are also alike in the circumstance
that while each has done fine work in a number of other departments, it
is the dramatic element which forms the strongest feature of their
artistic personality. Few French novels can compare with those of Victor
Hugo; but it is the powers of the dramatist displayed in the plot,
striking situations and characters, which constitute their chief merit;
and in his writings for the stage he has far surpassed all that he has
done as novelist. Likewise, while Wagner’s orchestral works for the
concert room would alone have made him a reputation, it is by his operas
that he has made the world ring with his fame. Each had a sense of the
dramatic and a mastery of its effects not even approached by any other
artist. They bear, furthermore, a strong resemblance in their
revolutionary character and tendencies. Both were born pioneers,
innovators, reformers. Both headed a revolt against the reigning
sovereigns and the established government of their respective arts and
after a desperate struggle came out victorious. Both have been followed
by a host of disciples, belligerent and radical beyond all that the
annals of music and literature can show. They were like two powerful
battering-rams, attacking the bulwarks of classic prejudice and
conventionality. The revolution which Wagner brought about in opera was
exactly matched by Hugo with the drama. His “Hernani” was as great a
shock to the established precedents of the stage, as was Wagner’s
“Nibelungen.” Lastly, both display the unusual phenomenon of retaining
their creative power into extreme old age, and both died when life and
art and fame were fully ripe, with the eyes of the world upon them and
their names on every tongue.