THE SYMPHONY
I. WHAT IS A SYMPHONY?
In the first chapter I discussed the nature of music itself in order
that I might clear away certain popular misconceptions about it and
arrive at some estimate of what it really is. In the intervening
chapters I have dealt with various phases of music: I have discussed
it in connection with words or action, as a sociological force, and
as a matter of pedagogy, and in so doing I have had to take into
consideration all sorts of non-musical factors. Now the symphony is
“pure music,” so called; it exists as a separate and distinct thing
whose only purpose is to be beautiful and true to life. Furthermore it
has always been largely independent of its audience. The opera has been
subject to the vagaries of singers, to the demands of the audience for
fine costumes and scenery; the symphony, on the contrary, has grown
naturally and freely, being hindered only by the slow development of
instruments and of the technique of playing them. Nearly every great
symphony has persisted in the face of the opposition of the public
and of many of the critics; the gibes hurled at the First Symphony
of Brahms were as bitter as those hurled at the Second Symphony of
Beethoven. In discussing, therefore, what is undoubtedly the greatest
of musical forms, I desire first to state as nearly as may be what, in
its essence, it is.
A symphony is, of course, like other music in being an arrangement
of rhythmic figures, of melodies (usually called “themes”) and of
harmonies. But before describing it as such--before dealing with its
materials, its form, its history, and its place in the art of music--I
wish to treat it solely as a thing of beauty expressed in terms of
sound. Many people seem to think music an art dealing with objects or
with ideas. Some, never having become sensitized to it in childhood,
look upon it as of no importance whatever. A large number have tried
to perform it on an instrument and have failed. Others have succeeded
at the price of thinking of it only in terms of technique. A certain
happy few, some of whom can perform it, and some of whom cannot, are
satisfied to take it as it is and be stimulated by it. These are the
true musicians and we should all aspire to join their happy company.
What we call a symphony is merely a series of ordered sounds produced
by means of instruments of various kinds. It is sound and nothing
else. Our programme books tell us about “first themes” and “second
themes,” and we make what effort we can to patch together the various
brilliant textures of symphonic music into a coherent pattern, but
the music we seek lies behind these outward manifestations as, in a
lesser sense, the significance of a great poem lies behind the actual
words. So it is with all the greatest art, whatever the medium may
be. The chief difference between a symphony and any other form of
artistic expression--such as a novel, a play, a painting, or a piece
of sculpture--is that a symphony is not a record of something else; it
is not a picture of something else; it is itself only. And it is this
quality or property of being itself that gives to all pure music its
remarkable power. Any intelligent person, on being shown a diagram or
plan of a symphonic movement, could be made to understand how and why
the material was so disposed, for that disposition is dictated to the
composer by the nature of sound and by the limitations and capacities
of human beings, and it conforms to certain principles which operate
everywhere; but that understanding would not reveal the symphony to him.
There is in every one of us a region of sensibility in which mind and
emotion are blended and from which the imagination acts, and it is to
this sensibility that music appeals. Now, the imagination, which we
believe to be the highest function of human beings, cannot act from
the mind alone. Mathematics, for example, does not lie entirely in
the domain of the mind, and the same thing may be said of any other
department of science. The chief value of scientific studies in school
and university lies in the stimulation of the student’s imagination
rather than in the acquisition of scientific facts. Now, we cannot
conceive any act of the imagination whatever that does not glow with
the radiance of emotion, so that music, in appealing to the whole
being, is not so completely isolated as is generally supposed. But
the simultaneous appeal of music to the mind and the feelings has led
to much confusion on the part of writers who have not been sensitive
to all its qualities. In his essay on “Education” Herbert Spencer, for
example, in discussing the union of science and poetry, says: “It is
doubtless true that, as states of consciousness, cognition and emotion
tend to exclude each other. And it is doubtless true also that an
extreme activity of the feelings tends to deaden the reflective powers:
in which sense, indeed, all orders of activity are antagonistic to
each other.” Now this statement reveals at once the limitations of a
philosophic mind when dealing with something that requires apprehension
by the feelings also. In listening to music the reflective powers are
not engaged with objects or with definite ideas, but with pure sound
that requires correlation only with itself, and the condition of mutual
exclusion between thought and feeling no longer exists because the
music is expressing thought and feeling _in the same terms_.[9] Spencer
speaks of science as full of poetry, which is true enough, but his
statement about music reveals an incapacity to understand it. And his
misconceptions about art in general may be illustrated by the following
concerning the axis in sculpture as applied to a standing figure: “But
sculptors unfamiliar with the theory of equilibrium not uncommonly
so represent this attitude that the line of direction falls midway
between the feet. Ignorance of the laws of momentum leads to analogous
errors; as witness the admired Discobolus, which, as it is posed,
must inevitably fall forward the moment the quoit is delivered.” This
observation completely misses the quite sound reasons for the pose of
that remarkable statue, and, if applied to sculpture in general, would
destroy the famous “Victory of Samothrace” and many other fine examples
of Greek sculpture.
But it is strange and mysterious, after all, that these ordered sounds
should be so precious to us; that we should preserve their printed
symbols generation after generation and continually reproduce them as
sound, feeling them to be strong and stable and true; that we should
even come to say, after many generations, that their creator was a
wise man who had in him a profound philosophy. But it is stranger
still to realize how convincing this philosophy is as compared to any
philosophy of the reason, and to see how profound in it is the sense of
reconciliation--a reconciliation that the mind seeks in vain. Our life
consists of thought, feeling, and action, phenomena of what we are, and
in actual life never quite reconcilable. But the world of music is not
actual life. Music is absolved from actual phenomena, and achieves by
virtue of this freedom a complete and profound philosophy--a philosophy
unintelligible to the mind alone, but intelligible to the complete
being. The strength of every art lies chiefly in its detachment from
reality. Sculpture does not gain by being realistic, picturesque, or
decorative; on the contrary, it is at its highest when it is ideal,
detached, and superhuman. Painting does not gain by being categorical,
but is greatest when it seeks something beyond the outward, physical
view. The novel or the essay depends for its greatness on its power of
relating real persons, things, and ideas to that greater and deeper
reality of which they are a part. In this sense music stands supreme
above the other arts because it is the most detached. The elements of
thought and feeling are, in music, presented as elements; the thought
is not thought even in the abstract, for it is not “about” anything;
the feeling is not actual feeling, and the action is not real action.
Each of these properties or states of the human being is here expressed
in its essence, detached from all actual manifestation. None but the
highest type of mind, none but a heart full of deep human sympathy,
none but a vigorous militant spirit could have conceived and brought
forth such compositions, for example, as the Third and Ninth Symphonies
of Beethoven, yet they are nothing but sound--neither the thought nor
the feeling nor the action is real.
But we may also truly say that in Conrad’s novel it is not the person,
Lord Jim, who moves us, but rather the author’s deep insight into the
elements of human character expressed through the central figure. A
portrait by Velasquez is a portrait of the personality that lived
within the outward appearance. The figure of Pendennis is not so much
the youth by that name as it is youth itself--youth, care-free, but
bound by tradition and love. All great art is subjective, lying in the
mind of man.
It is from this point of view, then, that I approach the symphony. I do
not need now to dwell on its history, on its form, or on its means of
expression, because they are merely incidental to its being a profound
human document. Pure music at its highest is the will of man made
manifest, and one may doubt if that will becomes fully manifest in any
other of his creations. It compasses all his actions, all his thoughts,
all his feelings; it translates his dreams; it satisfies his insatiable
curiosities; it justifies his pride (as he himself never does); it
makes him the god he would be; it is like a crystal ball, in whose
mystic depths the whole of life moves in a shadow fantasy.
II. HOW SHALL WE UNDERSTAND IT?
It is obvious, then, that the only possible way to understand a
symphony is to accept it as it is and not try to make it into something
else. Music is not a language; it does not exist in other terms, but
is untranslatable. When a trumpet blares and you make any of the
conventional associations with the trumpet, such as a battle, a hunt,
a proclamation, a signal, off goes your mind on a stream of alien
ideas that may carry you anywhere and that will certainly carry you
farther and farther away from the music itself. Each of the orchestral
instruments has its own individual association--the oboe reminds you
of a shepherd’s pipe, the flute of a bird’s song, the French horn of
hunting, and so forth; but each one of the instruments in the orchestra
as you listen to it is forming lines, and adding colors, as it were, in
a great design. And this design, always complete at any one point, goes
on unceasingly forming itself ever and ever anew. It is always complete
and always incomplete, always moving onward, always delicately poised
for inevitable flight. As you listen you have lived a thousand lives;
dream after dream has dissolved itself in your consciousness; each
moment has been a perfect and complete existence in itself. When it is
finished you awake to what you call happiness or unhappiness, peace or
struggle, satisfaction or chagrin; the unreal spectacle of the world
imposes itself upon you again; you are once more a human being. Why ask
that glorious world in which your nature has been freed and your soul
has been disencumbered of your body to assume all the imperfections of
this one? The gods, of necessity, dwell in the heavens. No, you cannot
understand music by translating it into other terms, or by preserving
your associations with the world in which you live. Mind and feeling,
sublimated by the magic of these sounds, must detach themselves and
rise to a world of pure imagination where there is no locality.
Reconciliation! A philosophy without a category; a religion without a
dogma; an indestructible shadow world which offers no explanations,
promulgates no opinions, and has no mission--which exists completely
in itself. What more shall we ask for? Why cry to the heavens for a
manifestation? Why take refuge in a so-called “system” of philosophy?
Why shuffle off the whole problem on a dogma? What comfort to a
squirrel in a cage to know the number of its bars? Is our slow
and inevitable progress from the unknown to the unknown any more
significant because we have learned to tell our beads, intellectual,
religious, or æsthetic, to mumble our little formulæ, and to pick our
way, eyes downward, amongst the stones and thorns, never once glancing
clear-eyed upward to the sun? We have always sought a fourth dimension,
and have always had it. We want what we have not; we wish to be what we
are not; and all the time they have been within our grasp. We make a
far away heaven to answer this universal cry, when our hand is on its
very doorlatch. Our imagination falters most when we apply it to things
nearest us. Where _can_ heaven be if not here? Is it an omnibus in
which you may secure a comfortable seat by paying your fare? Or is it
a state of yourself toward which you continually struggle and to which
you occasionally attain?
This, then, is my thesis. A symphony is not merely an arrangement of
rhythms, melodies, and harmonies; it is not a record of the thoughts,
feelings, and deeds of men; it is not a picture of man or of nature.
Rather does it launch itself from these into the unknown. It is pure
imagination freed from the actual.
The foregoing does not, in any sense, preclude that idea of a symphony
which is expressible in terms of rhythm, melody, and harmony. What
I have said has been said for the purpose of preventing a conception
of it _in these terms only_ (and, of course, in still lower terms).
Our physical hearing is a transit to the imagination and we want the
physical hearing to serve that purpose. Nothing retards it more than
an attempt _at the time_ to intellectualize the process. In other
words, listening to a symphony should consist in giving yourself
freely to it; in making of yourself a passive medium. Your study of
the arrangement of themes, and so forth, should precede or follow
the actual experience. And if you have no leisure or opportunity for
such study and depend entirely on an occasional concert, you should
nevertheless continue to pursue the same inactivity, allowing the music
itself to increase your susceptibility little by little. If the mind is
employed in an attempt to extricate order from confusion, it usurps for
the moment the other functions of listening. And I would go so far as
to say that the proper goal of a musical education should be to arrive
at such a state of impressionability to pure music as would leave the
mind, the feelings, and the imagination free to act subconsciously
without active direction, and without struggle. The matter is so
obvious. There is the music; here is the person. It awaits him. It was
created of him and for him. It is inconceivable without him. It is his
spirit coming back to him purified. It is the only thing he cannot
sully, and which cannot sully him, for in the very nature of it, it
cannot be turned to base uses. What man would be, here he is. In making
this beautiful spectacle of life, as Conrad says, he has found its
only explanation. So we should avoid marring the actual experience by
conscious intent on the technical details.
What I have said thus far may seem of but slight assistance to the
average person who attends symphony concerts. I have stated what I
thought symphonic music to be, and have urged my readers not to listen
to it analytically. But my purpose here is not to attempt to blaze an
easy path for the music-lover; in fact, I am unqualifiedly opposed to
that too common practice of æsthetic writing. There is no easy path,
and an attempt to find one is disastrous to any progress whatever.
Every person who has attained to a real understanding of æsthetic
objects knows that the growth of that understanding has been slow.
The characteristic weakness of our artistic status is self-deception.
We are not frank with ourselves; we are unwilling to admit ourselves
in ignorance; we advance opinions which are not our own. The only
possible basis for advancement in anything is intellectual honesty.
Information about a symphony is useless unless there is a real appeal
in the music itself. So I do not attempt to provide here a panacea;
just the opposite is my purpose. All I want to do is to show that the
symphony is worth struggling for, and to brush away such misconceptions
about it as might retard the progress of those who have the will and
the perseverance to struggle. And when there is no will to struggle,
nothing can be accomplished. What is called “mental lassitude” is
almost a contradiction in terms.
It is obvious that a proper musical education would have solved our
problems in a natural manner. If, as children, we had been taught to
sing only beautiful songs; if we had been trained to listen to music;
if our memory for musical phrases, rhythms, etc., had been cultivated,
we should be quick in apprehending all the qualities of a symphony,
for all our analytical reasoning would have been done beforehand. And
nothing can ever take the place of such an education, because the
natural taste for music, which is so strong in childhood, has in us
been allowed to lapse. So that our first duty is to our children. We
want them to avoid our mistakes. In every household, in every school,
public or private, this ideal of music-study should be upheld--namely,
that the children should enter life so prepared by their early training
as to be able to enjoy the greatest music.
I take a form of pure music as a type of our highest attainment,
because when music is allied to words or to action it gives certain
hostages. Furthermore, the symphony evolved slowly under the law of
its own being, and it represents the application to music of those
general laws of proportion and balance, of unity and variety, which
govern all artistic expression. It has never been subjected to alien
influences; popularity has not been its motive power; virtuosity has
never dictated to it. If you understand the symphony you can apply that
understanding to any other form of music. If one compares it with the
opera this distinction is at once evident. In the opera that antagonism
of which Spencer speaks between states of feeling and of cognition does
exist, because the mind is there appealed to through objects rather
than through pure sound. The symphony speaks in its own terms; opera
speaks in terms of characters in action, of costume and of scenery,
as well as of music. Even the greatest operas cause you to reflect on
something outside themselves--on human motives as they find expression
in human action. In either “Don Giovanni” or “Tristan,” although the
music reaches great heights of beauty and is profoundly moving, there
is the inevitable struggle between seeing and hearing, the inevitable
difficulty between a simultaneous state of cognition and of feeling.
The symphony entirely escapes this dilemma. Np doubt great motives lie
beneath it; no doubt it, too, is a drama of human life, for otherwise
it could not be great as a work of art; but the play of motives in a
symphony is hidden behind the impenetrable veil of sound. The Third,
Fifth, and Ninth Symphonies of Beethoven are truly dramatic, but only
in this sense. They range from the tender to the terrible; they have
their own emotional climaxes; they philosophize, they brood, they grin
like a comic mask; action and reaction follow each other as in life
itself; nothing is lacking but that one inconsequential thing, reality.
Art is truth; life is but a shadow fading to nothingness as the sun
sets.
III. THE MATERIALS OF THE SYMPHONY
I have said that the symphony evolved slowly under the laws of its
own being, and I wish to state briefly and (as far as possible) in
simple terms how that evolution came about. If I should go back to the
very beginning I should have to point out that the primal difference
between music and noise consists in the intensity of vibration and in
the grouping of the sounds into regular series by means of accents. A
series of unaccented tones does not make music. If a clock, in striking
twelve, should, by accenting certain strokes, throw the whole number
into regular groups, it would supply the basis for music. In any great
piece of martial music these accents and these impulses in groups
constitute the element that moves us to comply with it ourselves; we
beat time with hand or foot; we are infused with the momentum. And
the force of the impetus may be observed at the close of nearly every
piece of music where conventional chords ease off its stress. The last
forty measures of the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven constitute a sort
of brake on the huge moving mass. Chopin’s Polonaise, opus 26, number
1, on the contrary, does not end; it stops. In Fielding’s “Tom Jones”
the impetus of the action is carried on so far that the climax is
postponed to a point dangerously near the end of the book, which leaves
us with a sense of breathlessness or even of aggravation. In music,
when this impetus is of extreme vigor, any temporary displacement of
it produces almost the effect of a cataclysm--as in the first movement
of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, where great chords in twos clash across
already established metrical groups of threes. Within the metrical
groups all sorts of subdivisions may exist, and these constitute what
is called “rhythm” in music. Rhythm, in brief, is the variety which any
melody imposes on the regular beats that constitute its time basis.
It is from this rhythmic movement that the symphony gets its quality
of action, and the precursors of the symphony in this respect were
the old folk-songs and dance-tunes the melodies of which are full of
rhythmic diversity. The line from these early naïve compositions down
to symphonic music was never broken, and there is hardly a symphony in
existence that does not pay direct tribute to them.
I dwell on this point at some length because here lies a large part
of the energy of music. The rhythmic figures to which I have already
referred contain within themselves a primal force. They are capable
of throwing off parts of themselves, and these, caught in the primary
orbit, live as separate identities, until the too powerful attraction
of the greater mass absorbs them again. As rhythm, then, a symphonic
movement is like sublimated physical energy. As the first oscillations
of its impulse strike our consciousness we are caught up into a world
of movement which has the inevitability of star courses. We ourselves
are all rhythm--rhythm imprisoned and awaiting release. In music we
become one with all that ceaseless movement or vibration without
which there would be no physical or spiritual world at all. I say,
then, that rhythm is the very heart of music; that while we are all
susceptible to it (though comparatively few people can move their hands
or feet or bodies in perfect rhythm--they would be much better off if
they could!) we do not altogether see what significance it has as an
æsthetic property of music. When the heart of music stops beating (as
in one of Beethoven’s scherzi) we are surprised, or perhaps disturbed,
not answering to the marvelous silence; when two or even three rhythms
are acting simultaneously we are confused and helpless before the most
fascinating of æsthetic phenomena.
Let me next dwell briefly on that element in the evolution of symphonic
music which consists in the use of several themes simultaneously.
Should we trace this back to its original we should find ourselves in
the ninth century. Now, while I know that this is not the place for a
dissertation on any abstruse musical terms, I shall venture this much,
not only because this method of writing is used in nearly all really
fine music, but because a large part of the pleasure to be derived
from listening to a symphony depends on our capacity to follow the
varied strands of melody that constitute it. Is it not so, also, with
the novel? The chief theme of Meredith’s “The Egoist” has numberless
counter-themes running through and around it. It is not by any means
to be found in Sir Willoughby alone, for you understand it through
Vernon’s good sense, through Clara’s dart-like intuitions, through
Mr. Middleton’s patient surprise at having such a daughter, through
Letitia, and Crossjay, and Horace De Cray--all these are continually
explaining and illuminating the theme for you. It is true that music
asks you to listen to several melodies at once, but what does the
episode of Crossjay’s unwitting listening to Sir Willoughby’s belated
declaration to Letitia ask you to do? Is it enough merely to record
the scene as it is unfolded to you? Or do you remember Crossjay’s
father stumping up the avenue in his ill-fitting clothes? Clara’s
intercessions for Crossjay? Vernon’s attempts to adjust himself to
Sir Willoughby’s overbearing grandiloquence? And do you not have to
remember, especially, that Crossjay had been locked out of his room by
Sir Willoughby and had sought the ottoman as a refuge? These are all
strands of the chief melody in that remarkable composition. (Not all
the strands are there, for satire never tells the whole truth. “Tony”
in Ethel Sidgwick’s “Promise” and “Succession” is also an egoist.) A
novel, then, in this sense, is not successive, but _simultaneous_. All
that has been and all that is to be exist in every moment of life, for
that is all what we call “the present” means. The chief difference
between such play of character around an idea and the movement of
many musical themes around a central one lies in the detached and
spiritualized quality of sound.
It is obvious that music, written for an orchestra containing some
twenty or more different _kinds_ of instruments and scores of
performers, must have great variety of expression. Each instrument has
its own tone color, its own range, and its own technique, and each
must be given its own thing to say. In this sense symphonic music is
an intricate mesh of melodies, each intent on its own purpose, each a
part of the whole. In no other of its varied means of expression is
the symphony more strictly and more fully an evolution than in this
one of complex melodic textures. There has been no hiatus. From its
first great moment of perfection in the time of Palestrina, through the
madrigal and fugue, through dance-tunes conventionalized in the suite,
through organ pieces, oratorios, and the like, this method of writing
has persisted. Wagner bases his whole musical structure on the play and
interplay of melodic lines in his _leit-motifs_. Bach is all melodic
texture. Music written in this manner is called “polyphonic,” and the
method of writing it is called “counterpoint.”
In direct contrast to this is “monodic” music which employs only one
melody against an accompaniment of chords. A large part of the music
we hear is monodic; an aria by Puccini, a popular song, most church
music--these have one melody only. So has Poe’s “For Annie.” Polyphonic
music has the great advantage of being intensive in its expression; it
evolves out of itself. When I say that almost the whole of the first
movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is evolved out of a few measures
near the beginning, I mean that the melodic fragments of the theme
take on a life of their own and by so doing illustrate and expound
the significance of the original thesis from which they sprang. This
quality, or property in music, upon which I have laid some stress, is,
then, not so much a matter of technique as of æsthetics. The thing done
and the manner of doing it is each the result of general laws, and I
venture to dwell on them here, not for expert, technical reasons, but
because I wish to offer the listener to symphonies one of his most
delightful opportunities. Note should finally be made of the important
fact that only those symphonic themes which have a varied and vibrant
rhythm serve well the purpose of counterpoint, for the essence of
instrumental counterpoint lies in setting against each other two or
more melodic phrases in contrasting rhythms.
I do not mean to imply by the foregoing that symphonic music
persistently employs counterpoint as against simple melody. There are
whole passages in the symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven where
one tune is given out against an accompaniment of chords, and a lyric
composer like Schubert employs counterpoint somewhat rarely. But in
the greatest symphonies the predominating method of expression is
through polyphony.
In writing about counterpoint I have dwelt on the rhythmic quality
in melody, and have stated that a well-defined and varied rhythm is
essential to contrapuntal treatment. I might almost have said that
all good melody depends on rhythm. I do say--expecting many a silent
protest from certain of my readers--that all the greatest melodies have
a finely adjusted rhythm, and I apply this statement to all melody
from the folk-song to the present time. I might enumerate beautiful
melodies whose effect depends on other properties than rhythm,--as the
second melody in Chopin’s Nocturne in G major, opus 37, number 2,--but
I should add that, as melody, existing by itself, it is not fine and
the reason is that its rhythm is monotonous.[10] And when I say it is
not fine, I mean that it is not highly imaginative, and that it depends
too much on its harmonization. And when, in turn, I say that, I mean,
perforce, that it is too emotional. The difference between such a theme
and one with a really fine rhythm is the difference between Poe’s “The
Raven” and Keats’s “Ode to a Grecian Urn.” In the former the mind is
being continually lulled by the soft undulation of the rhythms and
rhymes; in the latter the mind is being continually stimulated by their
complexities. Yet Keats’s ode is as unified as Poe’s lyric. There are
melodies for songs for the pianoforte, for the violin, and for the
orchestra; there are sonata melodies and there are symphonic melodies
just as there is a shape for a hatchet and a shape for a pair of
scissors--which is only stating once again the old law that the style
must suit the medium of expression, or that the shape must suit the
uses to which a thing is put. Symphonic themes, in contradistinction
to themes for songs or short pianoforte pieces, or dances, should be
inconclusive; they are valuable for what they presage rather than for
what they state, and they should indicate their own destiny. The four
notes with which the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven begins are so,--in
fact the whole theme is valueless by itself,--but they contain enough
pent-up energy to vitalize not only the first movement, but the three
which follow it. If it were possible for each reader of these words
to hear--as an interlude to his reading--a series of great symphonic
melodies, and if he would listen to them carefully, he would find
almost every one to contain a finely adjusted rhythm.
Symphonic themes present certain difficulties to the listener whose
understanding of melody is limited to a square-cut strophic tune. He
is accustomed to a certain musical punctuation--a comma (so to speak)
after the first and third lines of the music, a semicolon after the
second, and a period at the end. And when he gets an extra period
thrown in (as he does after the third line of the tune “America”)
he is all the happier. When he hears the opening theme of the
“Eroica” Symphony break in two in the middle and fall apart, he gets
discouraged, for his musical imagination has not been sufficiently
developed to see that that very breaking apart presages the tragic
turmoil of the whole movement. When Brahms gives out, in the opening
measures of his Third Symphony, two themes at once, he does not fathom
the element of strife which is involved, and so cannot follow its
progress to the final triumph of one of them.
But the symphony contains everything, and there is a place in it for
lyric melody, provided the flight be long and sweeping. The “slow
movement” of a symphony contains such themes, but they are not content
to be merely fine melodies. They, too, must contain some potentiality
which is afterwards realized. The best and most familiar example will
be found in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, where the first rhythmic unit
(contained in the first three notes) of the beautiful romantic theme
detaches itself and pursues an almost scandalous existence full of
delicate pranks and grimaces, and comic quips and turns, now gentle,
now ironic, now pretending to be sentimental, until it finally rejoins
the theme again. This piece is a romance touched with comedy--a romance
great enough to suffer all the by-play without the least dilution of
its quality.
Any attempt in a book like this to explain the intricacies of harmonic
development as it is seen in the symphony must be inconclusive. Harmony
is, in itself, less tangible than either rhythm or melody, for it
lacks to a considerable extent the element of continuity. I mean by
this that groups of harmonies do not possess coherence in relation to
each other. They do not stay in the memory as a line of melody does;
the impression we get from them is fleeting. It may touch with light or
shade one brief moment in a piece of music (as it frequently does in
Schubert’s compositions); it may produce a bewildering riot of color
(as in ultra-modern music); or it may cover the whole piece with a
subdued shadow (as in the slow movement of Franck’s quintette). But the
real office of harmony is to serve melody. I mean by this that when
two or more melodies sound together they make harmony at every point
of contact, and this harmony, incidental to the movement of melodic
parts, has a reality which chords by themselves cannot acquire. And
the whole justification for many of the sounds in ultra-modern music
lies in this one perfectly correct theory. Not that the laws must not
be obeyed--as they frequently are not; not that a composer may violate
nature, and do what he likes. He must, as of old, justify in reason
all the dissonances arising from his melodic adventures. He should
remember Bach, whose melodies clash in never-to-be-forgotten stridence,
striking forth such flashes of strange beauty as can only come from a
war of themes.
The symphony is, then, an arrangement of rhythms, melodies, and
harmonies. Each of these three elements has a life of its own,--the
rhythms, taken altogether, have their own coherence, the melodies
theirs, and the harmonies theirs,--but each belongs to the whole.
The rhythm of Poe’s “For Annie” would be an impossible rhythm with
which to carry forward the purposes of any part of “The Ring and the
Book.” Equally useless would be the rhythms of Schubert’s “Unfinished”
Symphony to carry forward the purposes of Beethoven’s Ninth. The whole
structure of Poe’s poem would disintegrate if one single word fell
out of place; so would the fabric of a Schubert melody were a note
destroyed.
In every direction, wherever we look, this cohesion of all objects in
themselves, this blending of all objects into a greater body, reveals
itself. This is the basis of all religious belief, of a novel, of the
composition of a picture, or of life itself. To say that a symphony is
made up of separate elements, that each of these elements has a life
of its own, and that they all unite in a common purpose, is to state
a truism. And to suppose that a symphony can be understood without an
understanding of all its elements is to suppose an absurdity.
IV. TONE COLOR AND DESIGN
Such has been the development of the elements of symphonic music.
The processes I have described are the natural processes of an art
which is continually striving for wider and deeper expression. And,
speaking humanly, it is not too much to say that within ourselves there
should take place a complete analogue to that development and to those
processes. The connection between ourselves and the sounds may graduate
all the way from complete unconsciousness of their significance (even
though we hear all the sounds clearly) to that state wherein they
strike fire in our souls, and there passes between the imagination of
the composer and our own that spark of undying fire which illumines our
whole being. For in the last analysis it is not so much the music that
communicates itself as it is the soul of the composer reaching us over
whatever stretch of time. He who creates beauty is immortal.
Is not this what we seek? Is not this the object of all beauty
everywhere? Is it not always trying us to see if we are in tune?--as,
indeed, everything else is: labor, love, objects, knowledge,
religion--all these await our answer.
But I should not leave this part of my subject without setting forth
the relation between these elements of symphonic music and the
orchestral instruments by means of which they find expression. I do not
wish to attempt here any account of orchestration, as such, but rather
to point out that in symphonic music it is by the quality of tone that
the essence of an idea is conveyed. The tone of the instrument is like
the inflection of the voice in speaking, wherein the truth is conveyed
although you speak an untruth. An oath might be a prayer but for the
inflection.
The pianoforte or the violin, or any other single instrument, has
but little variety of tone; the orchestra, on the other hand, has
not only four distinct groups of instruments, each group having
its own tone quality, but within two of these groups[11] there are
considerable differences in what is called “tone color.” It is of no
great importance to know that the solo near the beginning of the slow
movement of the César Franck symphony is played on an English horn,
but it is important to feel the quality of the tone, and to realize
how largely the effect of the theme depends on it. For some obscure
reason many people remain insensitive to qualities of tone color.
(Perhaps they have received their musical education at the pianoforte
which, under unskillful hands, differs only in loud and soft.) One so
seldom observes a listener even amused by the antics of Beethoven’s
double-basses, and yet, in at least four of his symphonies, their
behavior is at times extremely ludicrous. He whose humor ranges all
the way from the most delicate, ironic smile to a terrible, tragic
laughter, wherein joy and sorrow meet,--as meet they must when either
presses far,--he achieves these remarkable effects largely by means
of the tone quality of the instruments. In his Fifth Symphony he
creates the most thrilling effect by means of some score or more of
reiterated notes in the soft, muffled tones of the kettle-drum. In
the finale to the First Symphony of Brahms it is the tone of the
French horn, and again of the flute, that creates for us such profound
illusions of beauty as pierce to our very soul. From the depths of the
orchestra the horn chants its ennobled song; then follows the dulcet
blow-pipe of the flute singing the same magic theme. These varied tones
succeeding one another, or melting one into the other--these are the
colors that animate and beautify the forms into which the thoughts
fall. What delicate nonsense filigree the violins draw in the slow
movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony; how sepulchral the bassoon
with its mock sadness; what a vibrant quality do the violoncellos and
the contra-basses give to the great melody in the finale to the Ninth;
with what poignancy does the clarinet give voice to the sentiment of
the second theme in the slow movement of Brahms’s Third Symphony. How
luxurious and vivid is the application of all these varied hues to the
design.
A fine singing voice has, perhaps, the most beautiful of all tone
colors, but the sensibility of many people seems to be limited to
that alone. In fact the love of singing is, in many cases, merely
a sentimental thrill unconnected with any intellectual process and
entirely devoid of imagination. In the orchestra the tone of the
instrument is to the theme itself what the color is to the rose. It
is much more than that, of course, because it is at any time both
retrospective and prospective; _this_ tone color is a darker or lighter
shade of _that_, or, perchance, another hue entirely. The colors shift
from moment to moment always as a part of the design rather than as
mere color.
Taking it all together--rhythm, meter, melody, harmony, and tone
color--this substance of a symphony is a wonderful thing. Nothing
quite so delicately organized has ever been created by the mind and
the imagination of man. With an interplay of parts almost equal to
that of a finely adjusted machine, it seems to go where it wills to go
regardless of anything but a whim. How marvelously does it express
both the actions and the dreams of human beings; how true is it to
their deeper consciousness--a consciousness that dimly fathoms both
life and death; that knows itself to have come from across the ages,
and feels itself to be a part of the ages to come. It is just as likely
that life is a brief, shadowed moment in an endless light, as that it
is “a rapid, blinking stumble across a flick of sunshine.”
FOOTNOTES:
[9] I stated in the first chapter what justification there is for using
the word “intellectual” in regard to music, and I speak here of thought
in that sense.
[10] As examples of melodies with finely adjusted rhythms I may cite
the theme of the slow movement of Beethoven’s pianoforte sonata, opus
13, and that of the slow movement of Brahms’s pianoforte quartette,
opus 60.
[11] In the “wood-wind” group, so called, there are flutes, oboe,
clarinets, bassoons, English horn, etc.; in the brass, there are
trumpets, French horns, trombones, tubas, etc.