THE LESSER MASTERS.
"And the soul of a child came into him again."--_I Kings, XVII: 22._
If, one day, some one should say to you, earnestly: "Well day are to
you!" you would scarcely know what to make of it. You would at once
understand that the person had knowledge of words but could not put
them together rightly. And if the person continued to talk to you in
this manner you might feel inclined to lose your patience and not
listen. But if you would stop and consider things and examine yourself
you would learn something well worth thinking about.
You would discover that your own ability to put words in the right
order has come from being obedient. First of all, you have been
willing to imitate what others said until you have thereby learned to
speak quite well. Besides that, you have been corrected many times by
those about you at home, and in school, until language is at length a
careful habit in you. Every one knows at once what you mean. You see,
therefore, that you may combine words in such a manner that you will
be easily comprehended by others; or, as in the case of the imaginary
person we began with, they may be combined in a perfectly senseless
way. Consequently, it is not enough to know words alone, we must know
what to do with them. The true art of using words is to put full and
clear meaning into a few of them; to say as much as possible with as
few words as you may select.
Tones may be treated in the same manner as words. One can write tones
in such a manner as to say quite as senseless a thing as "Well day are
to you!" Many do. This teaches you that true and simple
tone-sentences, like similar word-sentences, must have for their
object to say the fullest and clearest meaning in as little space as
possible.
For many hundreds of years thoughtful composers have studied about
this. They have tried in every way to discover the secrets underlying
tone-writing so that the utmost meaning should come out when they are
united. Tones thus arranged according to the laws of music-writing
make sense. To learn this art all great composers have studied
untiringly. They have recognized the difficulty of putting much
meaning in little space, and to gain this ability they have found no
labor to be too severe.
We must remember that there is no end of music in the world which was
not written by the few men whom we usually call the great composers.
Perhaps you will be interested to know about these works. Many of them
are really good--your favorite pieces, no doubt. When we think of it,
it is with composers as with trees of the forest. Great and small,
strong and weak, grow together for the many purposes for which they
are created. They could not all be either great or small. There must
be many kinds; then the young in time take the place of the old, and
the strong survive the weak. Together beneath the same sky,
deep-rooted in the beautiful, bountiful earth, they grow side by side.
The same sun shines upon them all, the same wind and the same rain
come to them, selecting no one before another. What are they all
doing? Each living its true life, as best it can. It is true they may
not come and go, they may not choose, but as we see them, beautiful in
their leaves and branches we feel the good purpose to which they live
and, unconsciously, perhaps, we love them.
Among us it is quite the same. Some are more skilful than others. But
be our skill great or small, we are not truly using it until we have
devoted it to a worthy purpose. And as with us, so it is with the
musicians. There are the great and small. The great ones--leaders of
thought--we call the great masters. The lesser are earnest men, who
have not as much power as the masters, but they are faithful in small
things.
They sing lesser songs it is true, but not less beautiful ones. Often
these lesser ones think more as we do. They think simply and about the
things which we have often in our minds. It is such thoughts as these
which we have in our best moments that we love so much when we see
them well expressed by one who is a good and delicate writer, either
of tones or words. Particularly do we understand these thoughts well
in the first years of our music when nearly all the works of the
greater composers are above us.
Thus are the many composers (who yet are not great masters) of value
to us because they write well a kind of thought which is pure and full
of meaning, and which we can understand. They give us true pleasure
day after day in the beginning and seem at the same time to help us
onward to the ability of understanding the great masters. This they do
by giving our thought training in the right direction.
Now, we know that the very best music for a young musician to learn in
the first days is that of the lesser tone masters, together with those
simpler pieces of the great composers which come within his power to
comprehend--within the power of a child's hands and voice. Let us see,
once again, if it is not clear:
True composers, great and small, sing from the heart. If one having a
little skill turn it unworthily away from the good and true work he
might do, then he does not use rightly his one talent. He does not
give us true thought in tone. He writes for vanity or a low purpose,
and is not a lesser master but he is untrue.
It is not our right to play anything. We may rightly play only that
which is full of such good thought as we in our power may understand.
It is to supply us with just this that the lesser masters write. In
simple, yet clear and beautiful pictures, they tell us many and many a
secret of the world of tone into which we shall some day be welcomed
by the greater ones if we are faithful unto the lesser.