appear to be such palpable facts, that it is hardly worth while to
assert their existence. In conversation, in travel, in all intercourse
we are constantly being reminded that Europe is divided by frontier
lines, drawn, no doubt, over the surface of a common earth, but for all
that, setting up barriers which are not solely geographical. There is
some intermixture of races, but it only bars the rule with a rare
exception. There is a growing development of breadth and sympathy, but
it only teaches us that the foreign standpoint is as good as our own,
not that it is the same. The human mind, says Bacon, is a broken and
distorted mirror which can but reflect a part of the truth, and
assuredly the part reflected by any individual mind is in great measure
determined by national and social conditions.
Again the poet, though he be the spokesman of the whole world, is in a
more intimate degree the spokesman of his own country. He has a
particular set of traditions for background, he has a particular
language for vehicle, and both of these give shape and colour to the
abstract ideas which it is his function to express. Wordsworth, for
example, is as purely English as Victor Hugo is French or Goethe German;
each is the embodiment of a national spirit, each make a closer appeal
to his compatriots than to the wisest and most liberal criticism across
the border. And this does not depend upon the mere difficulty of
translation, it is not a question of grammar and dictionary, rather it
is the point of view which seems strange to a foreign reader, which
requires some readjustment before the true focus can be obtained. Nor is
the discrepancy less in the minuter points of rhythm and versification.
The assonances of Calderon are perfectly satisfying to a Spanish ear; to
us they have simply the effect of a false rhyme. Alfred de Musset threw
French literature into a ferment by ending an Alexandrine with the words
'tu es;' we pass over the line without noting anything unusual in its
cadence. In a word, apart from Heine, we shall hardly find an instance
of great poetry which is not saturated with a national atmosphere, and
even Heine is an exception easily explained, and more easily overstated.
The rule is equally applicable to painting. When Mr Whistler tells us
that 'there is no such thing as English art,' and that 'we might
as well talk of English mathematics,' we can only suppose that he is
experimenting in paradox, at least we may wait for conviction until we
have found the counterparts of Reynolds and Gainsborough, of Morland
and Constable. The last of these, indeed, may be taken as a crucial
case. There can be no doubt that the Barbizon School was influenced by
his method and example, that in some degree it shared his aim and
followed his style, yet Constable is as English as the 'Excursion,'
Millet as French as the 'Feuilles d'Automne.' The distinctions may be
more subtle than those of language, but they are not more unreal. The
lines of demarcation may be obscured by imitators and copyists, but they
still exist for those who make their art a reality. Even community of
school or subject will do very little to obliterate the inherent
differences of temper; a man may find his teacher in Paris and his model
in Rome, and learn after all that 'cælum non animum mutat.'
Here an objection occurs. Grant, it will be said, that the
representative arts are in some way affected by the _entourage_ of the
artist, we cannot therefore infer that the same will hold good of music.
They are comparatively material and concrete, they depict the actual,
they stand in direct relation to an external world, but in music we are
dealing with pure abstract form, and the laws of form are universal.
Hence the composer is not bound by national limitations; he stands above
them, 'he alone with the stars;' he is the citizen of an ideal kingdom
where there is one common language and one common scheme of life. To
this it is an obvious answer, that music idealises the natural language
of emotion, and that if the emotional temper differs in separate
countries, the music must differ also. The abstract element is the
paramount need of balance and symmetry, but there are a thousand ways in
which this requirement can be fulfilled, and the method selected by any
school or country will depend upon its own predilections and its own
character. And if the music be true and vital, it will always be found
to embody some phase of the national temperament, it will speak with a
tone and cadence that are unlike those of neighbouring lands, it will
express shades and nuances of feeling which are in some way special to
the country that has given it birth.
There is little likelihood that we shall ever be able to reduce these
distinctions to phrase and formula, but we may readily observe them by a
comparison of the Volkslieder that obtain among the different races of
Europe. Here we shall find the national idioms in their simplest and
most unsophisticated expression, the direct primary utterance of the
same ideas, which attain a fuller and more developed beauty at the hands
of the great composers. Of course, as the music of a country progresses,
it will advance farther and farther from the Volkslied, it will grow
richer and more complex, it will treat its material by methods which the
artist has inherited, not so much from his nation as from his
predecessors in the art. Yet it still remains true, that the line of
ancestry is continuous, that the course of genealogy may be traced, and
that the masterpiece, with all its finish and civilisation, is of the
same flesh and blood as its humbler compatriot. Again, there are cases
where a composer has naturalised himself in a new home, and has become,
in a sense, bilingual; in all these it will be found that the language
of his birth holds the predominance, and that his new acquirement is
only an added grace. Brahms, for instance, does not treat the Hungarian
idiom in the same way as Liszt, or even as Schubert, he employs it with
extraordinary ease and mastery, but he never lets us forget that he is a
German.
We may conclude, then, that a composer of genius, if he write simply and
naturally, will express his own character, and in so doing will express
that of his country as well. More particularly will this be true if he
appear during the stir and stress of a patriotic movement, if he be
occupied in constructing a system for the guidance and direction of his
successors. For a time of political crisis not only brings out all that
is best in a man, it also draws him nearer to his people, and makes him
at once more desirous and more capable of serving as its true
representative. And so it has been with Dvořák. If we compare his
melody with that of Smetana, and with that of the Bohemian folk-songs,
we shall find a notable resemblance of thought and feeling, they are all
of one family, of one kindred, connected by a sympathy that the widest
distinctions of treatment cannot annul. No doubt Smetana is often
content to reproduce the methods of the folk-song, while in Dvořák
the curves are made richer, and the designs more complex and beautiful,
still the emotional basis of the one is that of the other, and the
distinctions between them depend partly on the personal element, partly
on the accident of historical position. Smetana came first into the
field; it was his work to gather the stones and to lay the foundation.
Dvořák followed him, and began, with the same materials, to raise a
superstructure.
Hence it is not a little significant that his few misadventures have
always marked some momentary defection from the national cause. The
first version of 'King and Collier' has long passed beyond the reach of
criticism, but at least we know that it was written in imitation of
Wagner, and that it was unsuccessful. The 149th Psalm is merely a
careful and conscientious expression of German method, and has hardly a
greater value than that which belongs to an Academic exercise. The
Oratorio of St Ludmila is a concession to the supposed requirements of
English taste, and in the record of its composer's works it has almost
dropped out of account. And if we turn for contrast to such achievements
as the Pianoforte Quintett, or the Spectre's Bride, or the D minor
Symphony, we are at once struck, not only with the difference of result,
but with the total difference of character. Here Dvořák is delivering
his own message in his own words, here he attains a native eloquence
that can readily compel our attention. It is surely no extreme inference
that we should here recognise some connection of cause and effect.
At the same time we must remember that the racial element is only one
among formative conditions, and that it is itself a factor in personal
idiosyncrasy. 'Just what constitutes special power and genius in a man,'
says Matthew Arnold, 'seems often to be his blending with the basis of a
national temperament some additional gift or grace not proper to that
temperament.' And of this we may find a ready illustration in
Dvořák's treatment of the scale, an illustration of double interest,
partly because it shows one of the most distinctive attributes in his
music, partly because even here he stands in direct relation to an
ethnological background. We have already seen that the scale now in use
among western nations was set in course by the Florentine revolution of
1600, and that it spread from Florence to Paris, and from Paris to
Leipsic, until it was finally established by Sebastian Bach. Hence the
music of Italy, France, and Germany grew with its growth, developed with
its development, and constructed by its means a common body of system
and tradition. With all their divergencies of emotional impulse, the
composers of these three countries have this formal point of union, that
they accepted the diatonic scale as their unit, and treated the
chromatic rather as an appenage and an extension. From this followed an
important consequence. For, in the first place, a settled scale is not
only a vehicle for melody, it is also a means of modulation, and this
latter function comes more into evidence as music becomes more complex
and the need of modulation increases. And, in the second place, it is an
essential characteristic of the diatonic scale, that some of its notes
should be more nearly related than others, and that composers who found
their work upon it should therefore acknowledge some modulations as
comparatively easy and natural, some as comparatively remote and
recondite. Of course, as time goes on, we become familiarised with
effects that once appeared violent and extreme, yet even now we
recognise certain relative limitations. Alfio's song in _Cavalleria_,
for example, gives us merely the impression of deliberate defiance, it
is not construction but demolition, not freedom but revolt.
For obvious historical reasons the growth of this scale system left
Bohemia altogether untouched. She did not enter the field until this
part of the work was completed, she bore no share in the traditions
which its gradual evolutions had established in neighbouring lands.
When therefore she came to the making of her own music, she could look
upon this scheme from outside, she could treat it dispassionately, she
could take it without any of the limitations that had hitherto marked
its course. And in doing so, she produced a result to which the whole
history of music affords no exact parallel. Dvořák is the one
solitary instance of a composer who adopts the chromatic scale as unit,
who regards all notes as equally related. His method is totally
different from that of chromatic writers like Grieg and Chopin, for
Grieg uses the effects as isolated points of colour, and Chopin
embroiders them, mainly as appoggiaturas, on a basis of diatonic
harmony. His 'equal temperament' is totally different from that of Bach,
for Bach only showed that all the keys could be employed, not that they
could be arranged in any chance order or sequence. But to Dvořák the
chromatic passages are part of the essential texture, and the most
extreme modulations follow as simply and easily as the most obvious. In
a word, his work, from this standpoint, is truly a _nuova musica_,
developed, like all new departures, from the consequences of past
achievement, but none the less turning the stream of tendency into a
fresh direction.
It may at once be admitted that from this cause the music of Dvořák
loses something of strength and massiveness: that it is Corinthian
rather than Doric. But, at the same time, it compensates, at any rate in
part, by a certain opulence, a certain splendour and luxury to which few
other musicians have attained: and, beside this, its very strangeness
constitutes an additional claim upon our interest. We rather lose our
bearings when, in the second of the Legenden, we find a phrase which
has its treble in G and its tenor in D flat; or when, as in the fifth
number of the Spectre's Bride, the music passes from one remote key to
another with a continuous and facile display of resource that is
apparently inexhaustible. Often, too, the devices outmatch the utmost
capacity of our recognised symbols. Mendelssohn's famous crux of 'Fes
moll' would be plain sailing to a composer who, in his third Pianoforte
Trio, writes passages in D flat minor, and B double-flat major, and
other keys of a signature equally undecipherable. And though these
matters may seem trivial enough when they are submitted to the indignity
of our musical nomenclature, we should yet remember that there is
nothing trivial in the habit of mind which they imply. It is to them and
to their like that we owe all the warmth of colour, all the richness
of tone, all the marvellous effects of surprise and crisis that
are so eminently characteristic of Dvořák in his best mood. To an
imagination so vivid as his, the possession of an extended scale was a
priceless opportunity; and he has used it to fill his work with incident
and adventure as varied and brilliant as were ever lavished by the hand
of Scott or Dumas.
His treatment of the classical forms is much influenced for good by his
long and patient study of Beethoven. In the more highly-organised types
he certainly falls short of his great master: he lacks the perfect
balance that marks the first movement of the Appassionata or the A major
Symphony; as we should naturally expect, he tends rather to restlessness
of tonality and to a page overcrowded with accessory keys. But, in spite
of this, his instinct for structure is real and genuine; it ranks higher
than that of Chopin--far higher than that of Liszt or Berlioz; and his
outline, though not always in complete symmetry, is firmly drawn and
filled with interesting detail. Some of his larger forms are pure
experiments in construction: such, for instance, as the opening movement
of the Violin Concerto, the Finale of the G major Symphony, and the
Scherzo Capriccioso for orchestra: sometimes he founds an entire number
on a single melodic phrase, as in the slow movement of the Second
Pianoforte Trio: more often, as in the F major Symphony and the String
Sestett, he takes the established type and modifies it in some important
particular. But whatever the result, his structure always gives us the
impression of thought and design. He has his own method, and even when
he fails of conviction, he can generally command respect.
The two forms in which he is most successful are the two most usually
associated with his name--the Dumka and the Furiant. Both of these are
real accessions to musical literature: not because they are new in
conception, for, like all other structures, they descend in direct
evolution from the folk-song, but because they have developed the
primitive type in a new way, and have enriched the existing stock
with a strain of collateral relationship. The Furiant is one of the
national dances of Bohemia, and is frequently employed by Dvořák as a
representative of the scherzo. In adopting it he has, to a great extent,
altered its character; he has enlarged its range, quickened its tempo,
and replaced, with a more vigorous gaiety and _abandon_, its original
tone of half-humorous assurance. If we compare the example in the A
major Quintett with the traditional melody--either as it appears among
the Volkslieder, or, as it is used by Smetana in the Bartered Bride--we
shall see at once that Dvořák has done more than borrow from the
existing resources of his countrymen; that, as a matter of fact, he has
taken nothing but the mould, and has used it for the casting of an
entirely different metal. Even more distinctive is his treatment of the
Dumka or 'Elegy,' a complex form which, like a sonnet-sequence, holds in
combination a series of separate poems. It is here, indeed, that he has
brought his constructive power to its highest attainment. The whole
scheme is of great interest and value: varied without digression,
uniform without monotony, flexible enough to answer all moods and engage
all sympathies. The stanzas admit a sharper contrast than is possible to
the subjects of a 'sonata movement': the key system, though it would be
impracticable on a larger scale, is admirably suited to these brief
moments of concentration: the recurrent themes maintain the organism in
proper balance and equipoise. There is little need to speculate on the
ancestry of the form, though it is worth noting, that a simple instance
occurs in the Serenade trio of Beethoven: whatever its origin, it
acquires in the hands of Dvořák a special significance which is
quite enough to place it among the most notable of his gifts. For
illustration, we may turn to the slow movement of the Pianoforte
Quintett, or to that of the Third Symphony, or to the six Elegies that
have recently been published for pianoforte trio. They are all
beautiful, they are all characteristic, and they fill their canvas with
a most ingenious diversity of design.
This feeling for colour and movement, which appears partly in his
rhythms, partly in his use of the scale, partly in his preference for
lyric and elegiac forms, may also account in some measure for his
unquestioned and supreme mastery of orchestration. Here at least there
is no counterchange of victory and defeat, no loss in one direction to
balance gain in another; here at least every achievement is a triumph
and every work a masterpiece. Nor has he alone the lesser gift of
writing brilliant dialogue for his instrument, of making each stand out
salient and expressive against a background of lower tone; he is even
more successful in those combinations of _timbre_ which harmonise the
separate voices and give to the full chord its peculiar richness and
euphony. When we think of his scoring, it is not to recall a horn
passage in one work or a flute solo in another--plenty of these could be
found, and in a master of less capacity they would be well worth
recording--but it is rather the marvellous interplay and texture of the
whole that remains in our memory and compels our admiration. Look, for
example, at the Husitska Overture, or the third Slavonic Rhapsody, or
the slow movement of the Symphony in D minor. Hardly in all musical
literature are the orchestral forces treated with such a warmth of
imagination or such unerring certainty of judgment.
Hence it is not surprising that a great part of his finest work should
be instrumental, and that even his masterpieces of Hymn and Cantata
should be written, more or less, upon instrumental lines. He is always
rather hampered than aided by the collaboration of the poet; his
chromatic style is better suited to strings and wind than to the
peculiar limitations of the human voice; his vigorous rhythms are in
some degree impeded by the slower articulation of the words; his sense
of form finds its most natural expression in symphonic and concerted
music. Again, so far as the distinction is applicable at the present
day, he belongs rather to the classical than to the romantic school; he
is more concerned with producing the highest beauty of sound than with
following, through all its phases, the emotional import of a poem. His
operas are for the most part essentially undramatic, and if they hold
the stage, will survive as displays of pure melody. His great choral
compositions--the Stabat Mater, the Spectre's Bride, the Requiem--stand
in a loose relation to the texts on which they are founded; embodying,
no doubt, the general tendency of thought, but always acknowledging the
melodic requirements as paramount. Even his songs offer no exception to
the rule. It is true that, after the Zigeunerlieder, they undergo a
remarkable change in treatment and elaboration, but although they lose
the shape of the ballad, they are never out of touch with its character.
Nothing, in short, is further from Dvořák's ideal than the imposition
of a programme. He is essentially what the Germans would call an
'absolute musician;' content to express the broad general types of
feeling, and, within their limits, wholly engaged with the special
service of his art.
This statement requires a word of qualification. The great masters of
pure classical style,--Haydn, for example, and Mozart, and Beethoven,
have, as their predominant gift, the sense of outline, and their sense
of colour, however keen and vivid, is always kept in subservience to the
requisitions of design. As a natural consequence, they are supreme
in the string quartett, which, among all types of composition,
demands purity of line as its first essential. But with Dvořák,
the relation of these attributes is reversed, in him the sense of
colour preponderates, and the demands of pure outline, though never
disregarded, are nevertheless relegated to the second place. Thus, in
his music for strings alone, the Sestett in A, the Quintett in G minor,
the four Quartetts, we feel that he is chafing at the restraints of
monochrome, that he wants the whole palette, that he is always held in
check by the absence of orchestral resources. The result is not that
he writes orchestral music for the strings; he is too true an artist
to fall into this error; but that he writes string music under
difficulties, that he foregoes all the better part of his equipment,
that he is accomplishing a task in which his special gifts have little
opportunity of display. No doubt these works contain passages and even
numbers of great beauty, but as a whole they do not bear comparison with
the Violin Concerto or the Symphonies, or the Carnaval Overture. Here
Dvořák obtains his contrast of tone, here he has the whole gamut of
colour at his command, here he can win the full measure of success from
which he is in part precluded by a severer method. Yet it would be wrong
to class him, for this reason, among the romantic composers. He shares
with them one of the most important of their qualities, but he uses it
for the furtherance of an end that is different from theirs. The
fundamental distinction is one of ideals, and in ideal Dvořák is on
the side of the classics.