THE SYMPHONY (_continued_)
I. THE UNITY OF THE SYMPHONY
For the ordinary listener to a symphony the one great difficulty lies
in “making sense” out of it as a whole. He enjoys certain themes
and is, perhaps, able to follow their devious wanderings, but he
retains no comprehensive impression of the symphony as a complete
thing, and he may even never conceive it as anything more than a
series of interesting or uninteresting passages of music. Now, it is
obvious that an art of pure sound, if it is to have any significance
at all, must have complete coherence _within itself_, and that the
longer the sounds go on the more necessary does this coherence
become. This is, of course, the problem of all music. Even opera must
have a certain musical coherence, for it cannot depend entirely on
being held together by the text and action; even the song must make
musical sense in addition to what sense (by chance) there is in the
words. Give what glowing, what romantic, even what definite title
you will to a piece of programme music,--call it “The Hebrides,” or
“Death and Transfiguration,” or descend to such a title as “A Simple
Confession,”--you must still give your music coherence in itself. As a
matter of fact, the titles of pieces of programme music do not lessen
the composer’s responsibilities in the least, and there is no fine
piece of such music in existence that does not obey the general laws of
form as applied to music. The title is, after all, merely a suggestion,
an indication, an atmosphere. Schumann’s “The Happy Farmer” is merely
jolly; it is not even bucolic, and you hunt for the farmer in vain;
“Träumerei” is made rhythmically vague in order to create the illusion
of reverie, but has, nevertheless, complete musical coherence; “Tod und
Verklärung” of Strauss contains no evidence of sacrificing its form to
its so-called “subject,” and the Wagnerian _leit-motif_ is suggestive
and not didactic.
The development of form in the symphony is too large a subject to
be covered here, but there are certain fundamental aspects of it
upon which I may dwell with safety, since they obey laws which
apply everywhere. To make clear what I mean let me say that an art
whose fundamental quality is movement must have for its problem the
disposition within a certain length of time of a certain group of
themes or melodies. The distinction between this art and that of
painting is that in music the question is “When?” in painting “Where?”
In this sense literature is nearer music than is painting, and I shall
shortly point out some analogies between literary and musical forms.
I stated in the first chapter the fundamental synthetic principle of
music, which is that no one series of sounds formed into a melody can
long survive the substitution of other series, unless there be given
some restatement, or, at least, some reminder of the first. There is
no musical form that does not pay tribute directly or indirectly to
this principle. And this, much modified by the medium of language,
applies also to literature. Most novels contain near the end a “looking
backward over traveled roads”; a too great digression from any thesis
requires a certain restatement of it. The first appearance of Sandra
Belloni is heralded by her singing in the wood near the Poles’ country
house. The epilogue to “Vittoria” closes with the scene in the
cathedral: “Carlo Merthyr Ammiani, standing between Merthyr and her,
with old blind Agostino’s hands upon his head. And then once more, and
but for once, her voice was heard in Milan.” The unessential characters
and motives of Sandra Belloni disappear in “Vittoria”--Mrs. Chump, an
unsuccessful essay in Dickens, finds a deserved oblivion; so do the
“Nice Feelings” and the “Fine Shades”; but the presence of Merthyr in
the cathedral is as necessary to that situation as is the absence of
Wilfred. “War and Peace” would be an inchoate mass of persons, scenes,
and events, were it not for certain retrospects here and there which
hold the whole mass together. “The Idiot” is a striking illustration,
for the early part of Mishkin’s career only appears in the sixth
chapter, as if to tide over more successfully the vastness of the
scheme; and the final chapter brings back most vividly the experiences
of his boyhood. The sonnet is the most concise example of this process,
and I do not need to dwell on the precision with which it illustrates
it.
One great difference exists, however, between music and literature,
and that is in the number of its subjects or characters. “War and
Peace,” to take an extreme example, contains scores of characters,
while a whole symphony would usually contain not more than twelve or
fourteen themes. The prime reason for this is that themes have no
established law of association, and so do not represent something
else with which we are already familiar as do names of persons in
books. We remember the names of such characters as Joseph Andrews or
Tom Jones, or even Dr. Portsoaken, for, although they lived a long
time ago, we have enough word association to contain their names and
we can understand them and can follow the devious courses of their
adventures and the philosophy of life they represent. (The absence of
this association makes it difficult for us to remember the characters
in Russian novels.) When we hear a musical theme, however, we have to
remember it as such.
I have frequently stated the somewhat obvious fact that music obeys
general æsthetic laws, and the foregoing is intended to show how these
laws are modified by the peculiar properties of sound. A symphony in
this sense, then, is a coherent arrangement of themes. This brings
me to the important question of the detachment or the unification
of the several movements of a symphony. Is a symphony one thing or
four? Should we listen to it as a unit, or as separate contrasting
pieces strung together for convenience? The conventional answer to
these questions--the answer given by the textbooks--is that a few
symphonies transfer themes from one movement to another, but that,
speaking generally, a symphony is a collection of four separate pieces
contrasted in speed and in sentiment, etc. Now I wish to combat this
theory as vigorously as possible, and I should like to rely solely
on general æsthetic laws, and say that no great work of art could,
by any possibility, be based on such a heterogeneous plan as that.
Or I might base my opinion on psychology and say that, since there
are four different movements, different in general and in particular
characteristics,--one containing themes which evolve as they proceed,
producing the effect of struggle toward a goal, another suited to
states of sentiment, another for concise and vivid action, and so
forth,--and since the mind of a great man is a microcosm of the world
and contains everything, it follows, as a matter of course, that he
tries to fuse his symphony into one by filling its several parts with
the various elements of himself, a process that has been going on
ever since there has been any music at all. The composer is not four
men, nor is his mind separated into compartments. One symphony will
differ from another because it will represent a different stage in his
development, but any one symphony--unless arbitrarily disjointed--will
express the various phases of its composer’s nature at the time,
and will have a corresponding internal organism. This is sufficient
evidence of the soundness of this view in the great symphonies
themselves. I cannot specify at length here, but any reader having
access to Mozart’s, Beethoven’s, and Brahms’s symphonies or that of
César Franck may investigate for himself. Let me merely point out a
few instances which I choose from celebrated and familiar symphonies.
In the last movement of the C major of Mozart (commonly called the
“Jupiter”) there is a rapid figure in the basses at measures nine
and ten which is derived from the beginning of the first movement.
The theme of the last movement is drawn from--is another version
of--the passage in measures three and four of the first movement. In
Beethoven’s “Eroica” the first theme of the last movement is drawn
directly from the first theme of the first movement. The theme of the
C major section of the “Marche Funèbre” is the theme of the first
section in apotheosis, and each owes a debt to the first theme of the
first movement. Illustrations of this principle could be multiplied
almost indefinitely, and it is not too much to say that there is in all
great music this inward coherence. In other words, form in music is not
merely a sort of framework, or, if you please, a law or precedent, but
the expression of an inward force.
Themes having no organic relation are, of course, introduced in
symphonic movements for the play of action against each other which
results from their antagonism. The novel depends largely on the same
element. If it were not for Blifil there could hardly have been a Tom
Jones. Sandra Belloni must have Mr. Pericles as a foil to that finer
character of hers which rises above the prima donna, and she needs
Wilfred and Merthyr in order to achieve Carlo. In short, the symphonic
movement is not unlike the novel which is based on the juxtaposition
of contrasted or antagonistic characters or elements, the struggle
between the two, and, finally, their reconciliation; and sufficient
analogy could be drawn between this and life itself to illustrate the
principle as a cardinal one. But I believe the symphony to be still in
flux. I see no reason why it should not continue to develop from within
and finally to achieve an even greater inward coherence than that
already attained. This will almost certainly not be brought about by an
extension of its outward form or by an enlargement of its resources--as
is the case with many modern symphonies.[12] In brief, the composer
is an artist like any other; he is dealing with human emotions and
aspirations as other artists are; he is subject to the same laws; he,
too, draws a true picture of human life in true perspective, with all
the adjustments of scene, of persons, of motives, carefully worked
out--even though he deals only with sound. It is almost incredible that
any one should suppose otherwise; the real difficulty is in getting the
ordinary person to suppose anything! So I say that the symphony is a
mirror of life, and that all the great symphonies taken together are
like a book of life in which everything is faithfully set forth in due
proportion and balance.
I have said that the symphony contains everything and that it has room
for disorder. This is its ultimate purpose. The secret of its power
lies in this. Life itself is an inexplicable thing. The great symphony
compresses it into an hour of perfection in which all of its elements
are explicable. Here that dream of man which he calls by such names
as “heaven” or “happiness,” and which he has always sought in vain,
becomes not only a reality, but the only reality possible for him. For
nothing would be more terrible than endless happiness or a located
heaven.
II. STAGES OF ITS DEVELOPMENT
The history of the symphony is the history of all art. It moves in
cycles; it marks a parabola. It began as a naïve expression of feeling;
it learned little by little how to master its own working material,
and as it mastered that, it became more and more conscious in its
efforts; as soon as new instruments for producing it were perfected, it
immediately expanded its style to correspond to the new possibilities;
as its technique permitted, it continually sought to grasp more and
more of the elements of human life and human aspiration and to express
them. In Haydn we see it as naïve, folk-like, tuneful music, not highly
imaginative, smacking of the soil--like Burns, but without his deep
human feeling. In Mozart it reaches a stage of classic perfection
which may be compared to Raphael’s paintings. Hardly a touch of the
picturesque, the romantic, or the realistic mars its serene beauty; it
smiles on all alike; it is not for you or for me,--as Schumann is,--but
for every one. And being purely objective it belongs to no time and
lasts forever. And how delightful are Mozart’s digressions. He is
like Fielding, who, when he wants to philosophize about his story,
proceeds to write a whole chapter during which the action awaits the
philosopher’s pleasure. Later writers never drop the argument for a
moment; if there is a lull in the action it is somehow kept in complete
relation to the subject-matter. Mozart often enlivens you with a story
by-the-way, but he always manages to preserve the continuity of his
material. The difference between his method and that of Brahms, for
example, is like that between Fielding’s philosophic interlude chapters
in “Tom Jones” and Meredith’s “Our Philosopher,” who, looking down from
an impersonal height upon the characters in the story, interjects his
Olympian comment.
A new and terrific force entered music through Beethoven, new to
music, old as the human race--namely, the spirit of revolt. The world
is always the same. In its fundamentals, human life, within our
historical retrospect, remains what it was. An art takes what it can
master--and no more. Music was ready; the world was in a turmoil at
just that moment, and the result was what we call “Beethoven.” Mozart
was his dawn, Schumann and the other Romanticists his mysterious
and beautiful twilight. He himself represents at once the spirit of
revolution, that inevitable curiosity which such a period always
excites, and that speculative philosophy which tries to piece the
meaning of new things. The world was full of flame; battle thundered
only a few miles from Vienna; the spirit of equality and fraternity was
hovering in the air. Beethoven’s piercing vision compassed all this.
He sounded the triumph of the soul of man--as in the great theme at
the close of the Ninth Symphony; he took the simplest of common tunes
and made it glorious--as at the end of the “Waldstein” Sonata; his
imagination ranged at will over men struggling in death-grapple, over
the gods looking down sardonically on the spectacle. He was the great
protagonist of democracy, but he was also a great constructive mind. He
never destroyed anything in music for which he did not have a better
substitute, and there is hardly a note in his mature compositions that
is not fixed in nature.
This great force having spent itself, the art turns away and starts in
another direction--as it must. The lyric symphony of Schubert appears.
His was the most perfect song that ever asked for expression by the
orchestra. With small intellectual power, with but scanty education of
any sort, Schubert, by the very depth of his instinct, creates such
pure beauty as to make intellectualism seem almost pedantic. He strings
together melody after melody in “profuse, unmeditated art.” He was a
pendant to Beethoven, and often enough in listening to Schubert’s music
we catch the echo of his great contemporary. Then comes the so-called
“Romantic School” of Schumann with its tender, personal qualities, its
glamour, its roseate hues. Like all other romantic utterance it had a
certain strangeness, a certain detachment from reality, and a certain
waywardness which give it a bitter-sweet flavor of its own. Like all
other romantic utterance, too, it was impatient and refused to wait
the too-slow turning of the clock’s hands; it is the music of youth
and of hope. Its effect on the development of the symphony was slight.
It was ill at ease in the large spaces of symphonic form, for its hues
were too changing, its moods too shifting, to answer the needs of the
symphony. No really great symphonic composer appears between Schubert
and Brahms, but during that period the rich idiom of the Romantic
School had become assimilated as a part of the language of music.
Brahms using something of this romantic idiom, but having a broad
feeling for construction, and firmly grounded on that one stable
element of style, counterpoint, produced four symphonies worthy to
stand alongside the best. They are restrained in style, for Brahms has
something of that impersonality which is needed in music as much as in
other forms of art (and one may say, in passing, that the greatest of
all composers, Bach, is the most impersonal). The flexibility of the
language of music increased rapidly during the nineteenth century aided
by Wagner and the Romanticists, and in Brahms the symphony becomes less
didactic and more introspective. I may, perhaps, make the comparison
between music like his and that later stage of the English novel
wherein the author desires the action to appear solely as the result of
the psychology of the characters, and wherein, also, words are made
to answer new demands and serve new purposes. Brahms could not have
said what he did say had he been limited to the style of Mozart; nor
could Meredith had he been limited to the style of Thackeray. Brahms’s
symphonies, in consequence of the complicated nature of his style,
are not easily apprehended by the casual listener. Let a confirmed
lover of Longfellow, or even of Tennyson, take up for the first time
“Love in the Valley” and he will have the same experience. Every word
will convey its usual meaning to him, but the exquisite beauty of the
poem will elude him. He will go back to “My Lost Youth,” or to “Blow,
Bugles, Blow,” for healing from his bruises. Any one of my readers who
has access to Brahms’s First Symphony should examine the passage which
begins twenty measures before the _poco sostenuto_ near the end of the
first movement if he wished to understand something of Brahms’s powers
of re-creating his material. Here is a melody of great beauty which is
derived from the opening phrase of the symphony, and which has a bass
derived from the first theme of the first movement. As it originally
appeared it was full of stress as though yearning for an impossible
fulfillment. Here its destiny is at last attained, and the law of its
being fulfilled. Music progresses from one point of time to another.
Contemporaneous with Brahms stands Tschaikovsky to reveal how varied
are the sources of musical expression. No two great men could be
farther apart than these--one an eclectic, calm, thoughtful, and
impersonal, restraining his utterances in order to understate and
be believed; the other pouring out the very last bitter drop of his
unhappiness and dissatisfaction entirely unmindful of a world that
distrusts overstatement and has only a limited capacity for reaction
from a colossal passion. Of Tschaikovsky’s sincerity there is no doubt
whatever. He so believed; life was to him what we hear it to be in his
symphonies. But life is not like that. If it were we should all have
been destroyed long since by our own uncontrollable inner fires. So,
aside from any technical considerations,--and he contributed nothing of
importance to the development of the symphony,--Tschaikovsky represents
a phase of life rather than life itself. Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony
adds a new and interesting element to symphonic evolution. Dvořák was
like Haydn and Burns, a son of the people, and the themes he employs
in this symphony are essentially folk-melodies. But where Haydn merely
tells his simple story with complete unconsciousness of its possible
connection with life in general, Dvořák sees all his themes in their
deeper significance. The “New World” Symphony is a saga retold.
A new phase in the development of the symphony appears in César Franck,
whose musical lineage reaches back over the whole range of symphonic
development and beyond. His spirit is mediæval. In his one symphony
rhythm plays a lesser part, and one feels the music to be quite
withdrawn from the vivid movement of life, and to live in a realm of
its own. Franck was one of those rare spirits who remain untainted by
the world. His symphony is a spiritual adventure; other symphonies are
full of the actions and reactions of the real world in which their
composers lived. This action and reaction always depends for its
expression in music on the play and inter-play of rhythmic figures.
Franck’s symphony broods over the world of the spirit; his least
successful themes are those based on action.
III. CHAMBER MUSIC AS AN INTRODUCTION TO SYMPHONIES
My object in writing all this about the form and substance of the
symphony, and in drawing comparisons between it and the novel or
poetry, has not been to lead my readers to understand music through the
other arts, for _by themselves_ such comparisons are of small value.
I have dwelt on these common characteristics of the arts because they
exist, because they illuminate each other, and at the same time because
they are too little considered. The only way to understand music is
to practice it, or, failing that, to hear it under such conditions as
will permit a certain opportunity for reflection. We are incapable
of understanding symphonic music chiefly because we have so little
practice in doing so. An occasional symphony concert is not enough.
How shall this difficulty be overcome? There is a natural way out,
and it consists in what is called “chamber music.” A piece of chamber
music is a sort of domestic symphony. A string quartette, a pianoforte
or violin sonata, a trio, quartette, quintette, etc.,--these are all
little symphonies; the form is almost identical, the same devices of
rhythm, melody, harmony, counterpoint, and so forth, are employed. In
chamber music paucity of idea cannot be covered up by luxury of tone
color; everything is exposed; so that only the greatest composers have
written fine music in this form. Now, if in every community there
were groups of people who played chamber music together, and if these
would permit their friends to attend when they practice, the symphony
would soon find plenty of listeners. Such rehearsals would give an
opportunity to hear difficult passages played over and over again;
there would be time for discussion, and, above all, for reflection.
Every town and village should have a local chamber-music organization
giving occasional informal concerts. Under these circumstances a
sympathetic intimacy would soon be established between the performers
and listeners and the music itself. The inevitable and indiscriminate
pianoforte lesson is an obstacle to this much desired arrangement. Some
of our children should be taught the violin or the violoncello in
preference to the pianoforte. Then the family circle could hear sonatas
for violin and pianoforte by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, or Brahms, and
would accomplish what years of attendance at symphony concerts could
not bring about. Chamber music has the great advantage of being simple
in detail; one can easily follow the four strands of melody in a string
quartette, whereas the orchestra leaves one breathless and confused.
The practice of chamber music by amateurs would be one of the very best
means of building up true musical taste. I cannot dwell too insistently
on the fact that the majority of those people who do not care for such
music would soon learn to care for it if they had opportunities to
listen to it under such conditions as I have described. The argument
proves itself, without the evidence--plentiful enough--of individuals
who have gone through the experience. Furthermore, by cultivating
music in this way, we should gradually break down some of the social
conditions which now operate against the art. If we all knew more about
it and loved it for itself, we should give over our present adulation
of technique. We should put the performer where he belongs as an
interpreter of a greater man’s ideas. By our uncritical adulations we
place him on far too high a pedestal.
IV. THE PERFORMER AND THE PUBLIC
I have spoken of certain social conditions which affect music
unfavorably. There has been always a certain outcry against music
because of its supposed emotionalism. The eye of cold intelligence,
seeing the music-lover enthralled by a symphony, raises its lid in icy
contempt for such a creature of feeling. The sociologist, observing
musical performers, wonders why music seems to affect the appearance
and the conduct of some of them so unfavorably. The pedagogue, who has
his correct educational formula which operates like an adding-machine,
and automatically turns out a certain number of mechanically educated
children, each with a diploma clutched in a nervous hand--he tolerates
music because it makes a pleasant break in diploma-giving at graduation
time, and because it pleases the parents. The business man leaves
music to his wife and daughters and is willing to subscribe to a
symphony orchestra provided he does not have to go to hear it play.
Now, if the sociologist would put himself in the place of the singer,
who, endowed by nature with a fine voice, is able, on account of a
public indifferently educated in music, to gain applause and an undue
source of money, even though he has never achieved education of any
sort whatever--if the sociologist would but think a little _about
sociology_, he would perhaps finally understand that he himself is very
likely at fault. For it is very likely that he knows almost nothing of
this art which is one of the greatest forces at his disposal. He is,
perhaps, one of the large number of persons who make musical conditions
what they are. Public performers are the victims, not the criminals. We
must remember of old how disastrous has been the isolation of any class
of workers from their fellows.
I have referred in this and in the preceding chapters to certain
unities in symphonic music--in its several elements of rhythm, melody,
and harmony, and in the whole. I have said that every object is unified
in itself, and that it is a part of a greater whole. In this sense a
symphony is a living thing; every member of it has its own function,
and contributes a necessary part to the whole. But is not this equally
true if we carry the argument into life itself and say: Here is a thing
of beauty created by man; it is a part of him--one of his star-gleams;
can he be complete if he loses it altogether? Can his spirit hope
for freedom if he depends on his mind alone? Is the satisfaction of
intellectual or material achievement enough? Would he not find in music
a realm where he would breathe a purer air and be happier because he
would leave behind him all those unanswerable questions which forever
cry a halt to his intelligence? Moral idealism is not enough for the
spirit of men and women, for, humanity being what it is, morality is
bound to crystallize into dogma. The Puritans were moral in their
own fashion, but they were as far away from what man’s life ought to
be--under the stars, and with the flowers blooming at his feet--as
were the gay courtiers whom they despised. Intellectual idealism is
not enough, because it lacks sympathy. We all need something that
shall be entirely detached from life and, at the same time, be wholly
true to it. Our spirit needs some joyousness which objects, ideas, or
possessions cannot give it. We must have a world beyond the one we
know--a world not of jasper and diamonds, but of dreams and visions.
It must be an illusion to our senses, a reality to our spirit. It must
tell the truth in terms we cannot understand, for it is not given to us
to know in any other way.
FOOTNOTE:
[12] The reason for this is one to which I referred in the chapter
on “The Opera”--namely, that a work of art must not overstrain the
capacities of those human beings for whom it was intended.