The particular functions of the elements which are substituted
for geometrical symmetry have been made clear; their presence
lends variety and richness to the balance of motor impulses.
But this quality of repose, or unity, given by balance, is also
enriched by a unity for intuition,--a large outline in which all
the elements are held together. Now this way of holding together
varies; and I believe that it bears a very close relation to the
subject and purpose of the picture.
Examples of these types of composition may best be found by
analyzing a few well-known pictures. We may begin with the class
first studied, the Altar-piece, choosing a picture by Botticelli,
in the Florence Academy. Under an arch is draped a canopy held
up by angels; under this, again, sits the Madonna with the Child
on her lap, on a throne, at the foot of which, on each side,
stand three saints. The outline of the whole is markedly
pyramidal; in fact, there are, broadly speaking, three pyramids,
--of the arch, the canopy, and the grouping. A second, much
less symmetrical example of this type, is given by another
Botticelli in the Academy,--"Spring." Here the central female
figure, topped by the floating Cupid, is slightly raised above
the others, which, however, bend slightly inward, so that a
triangle, or pyramid with very obtuse angle at the apex, is
suggested; and the whole, which at first glance seems a little
scattered, is at once felt, when this is grasped, as closely
bound together.
Closely allied to this is the type of the Holbein "Madonna of
Burgomaster Meyer," in the Grand Ducal Castle, Darmstadt. It
is true that the same pyramid is given by the head of the
Madonna against the shell-like background, and her spreading
cloak which envelops the kneeling donors. But still more
salient is the diamond form given by the descending rows of
these worshiping figures, especially against the dark background
of the Madonna's dress. A second example, without the pyramid
backing, is found in Rubens's "Rape of the Daughters of
Leucippus," in the Alte Pinakothek at Munich. Here the diamond
shape formed by the horses and struggling figures is most
remarkable,--an effect of lightness which will be discussed
later in interpreting the types.
A third type, the diagonal, is given in an "Evening Landscape"
by Cuyp, in the Buckingham Palace, London. High trees and
cliffs, horsemen and others, occupy one side, and the mountains
in the background, the ground and the clouds, all slope
gradually down to the other side.
It is a natural transition from this type to the V-shape of the
landscapes by Aart van der Neer, "Dutch Villages," in the London
National Gallery and in the Rudolphinum at Prague, respectively.
Here are trees and houses on each side, gradually sloping to
the centre to show an open sky and deep vista. Other examples,
of course, show the opening not exactly in the centre.
In the "Concert" by Giorgione, in the Pitti Gallery, Florence,
is seen the less frequent type of the square. The three
figures turned toward each other with heads on the same level
make almost a square space-shape, although it might be said
that the central player gives a pyramidal foundation. This
last may also be said of Verrocchio's "Tobias and the
Archangels" in the Florence Academy, for the square, or other
rectangle, is again lengthened by the pyramidal shape of the
two central figures. The unrelieved square, it may here be
interpolated, is not often found except in somewhat primitive
examples. Still less often observed is the oval type of
"Samson's Wedding Feast," Rembrandt, in the Royal Gallery,
Dresden. Here one might, by pressing the interpretation, see
an obtuse-angled double-pyramid with the figure of Delilah for
an apex, but a few very irregular pictures seem to fall best
under the given classification.
Last of all, it must be remarked that the great majority of
pictures show a combination of two or even three types; but
these are usually subordinated to one dominant type. Such,
for instance, is the case with many portraits, which are
markedly pyramidal, with the double-pyramid suggested by the
position of the arms, and the inverted pyramid, or V, in the
landscape background. The diagonal sometimes just passes over
into the V-shape, or into the pyramid; or the square is
combined with both.
What types are characteristic of the different kinds of pictures?
In order to answer this question we must ask first, What are the
different kinds of pictures? One answer, at least, is at once
suggested to the student on a comparison of the pictures with
their groupings according to subjects. All those which represent
the Madonna enthroned, with all variations, with or without
saints, shepherds, or Holy Family, are very quiet in their action;
that is, it is not really an action at all which they represent,
but an attitude,--the attitude of contemplation. This is no
less true of the pictures we may call "Adorations," in which,
indeed, the contemplative attitude is still more marked. On the
other hand, such pictures as the "Descents," the "Annunciations,"
and very many of the miscellaneous religious, allegorical, and
genre pictures, portray a definite action or event. Now the
pyramid type is characteristic of the "contemplative" pictures
in a much higher degree. A class which might be supposed to
suggest the same treatment in composition is that of the portraits,
--absolute lack of action being the rule. And we find, indeed,
that no single type is represented within it except the pyramid
and double-pyramid, with eighty-six per cent. of the former.
Thus it is evident that for the type of picture which expresses
the highest degree of quietude, contemplation, concentration,
the pyramid is the characteristic type of composition. Among
the so-called "active" pictures, the diagonal and V-shaped types
are most numerous.
The landscape picture presents a somewhat different problem. It
cannot be described as either "active" or "passive," inasmuch as
it does not express either an attitude or an event. There is no
definite idea to be set forth, no point of concentration, as
with the altar-pieces and the portraits, for instance; and yet
a unity is demanded. An examination of the proportions of the
types shows at once the characteristic type to be here also the
diagonal and V-shaped.
It is now necessary to ask what must be the interpretation of
the use of these types of composition. Must we consider the
pyramid the expression of passivity, the diagonal or V-shape, of
activity? But the greatly predominating use of the second for
landscapes would remain unexplained, for at least nothing can
be more reposeful than the latter. It may aid the solution of
the problem to remember that the composition taken as a whole
has to meet the demand for unity, at the same time that it
allows free play to the natural expression of the subject. The
altar-piece has to bring about a concentration of attention to
express or induce a feeling of reverence. This is evidently
accomplished by the suggestion of the converging lines to the
fixation of the high point in the picture,--the small area
occupied by the Madonna and Child,--and by the subordination
of the free play of other elements. The contrast between the
broad base and the apex gives a feeling of solidity, of repose;
and it seems not unreasonable to suppose that the tendency to
rest the eyes above the centre of the picture directly induces
the associated mood of reverence or worship. Thus the
pyramidal form serves two ends; primarily that of giving unity,
and secondarily, by the peculiarity of its shape, that of
inducing the feeling-tone appropriate to the subject of the
picture.
Applying this principle to the so-called "active" pictures, we
see that the natural movement of attention between the different
"actors" in the picture must be allowed for, while yet unity is
secured. And it is clear that the diagonal type is just fitted
for this. The attention sweeps down from the high side to the
low, from which it returns through some backward suggestion of
lines or interest in the objects of the high side. Action and
reaction--movement and return of attention--is inevitable under
the conditions of this type; and this it is which allows the
free play,--which, indeed, CONSTITUTES and expresses the activity
belonging to the subject, just as the fixation of the pyramid
constitutes the quietude of the religious picture. Thus it is
that the diagonal composition is particularly suited to portray
scenes of grandeur, and to induce a feeling of awe in the
spectator, because only here can the eye rove in one large sweep
from side to side of the picture, recalled by the mass and
interest of the side from which it moves. The swing of the
pendulum is here widest, so to speak, and all the feeling-tones
which belong to wide, free movement are called into play. If,
at the same time, the element of the deep vista is introduced,
we have the extreme of concentration combined with the extreme
of movement; and the result is a picture in the "grand style"
--comparable to high tragedy--in which all the feeling-tones
which wait on motor impulses are, as it were, while yet in the
same reciprocal relation, tuned to the highest pitch. Such a
picture is the "Finding of the Ring," Paris Bordone, in the
Venice Academy. All the mass and the interest and the suggestion
of the downward lines and of the magnificent perspective toward
the left, and the effect of the whole space composition is of
superb largeness of life and feeling. Compare Titian's
"Presentation of the Virgin," also the two great compositions
by Veronese, "Martyrdom of St. Mark," etc., in the Doge's Palace,
Venice, and "Esther before Ahaseurus," in the Uffizi, Florence.
In these last two, the mass, direction of interest, movement,
and attention are toward the left, while all the lines tend
diagonally to the right, where a vista is also suggested,--the
diagonal making a V just at the end. Here, too, the effect is
of magnificence and vigor.
If, then, the pyramid belongs to contemplation, the diagonal
to action, what ca be said of landscape? It is without action,
it is true, and yet does not express that positive quality, that
WILL not to act, of the rapt contemplation. The landscape
uncomposed is negative, and it demands unity. Its type of
composition, then, must give it something positive besides
unity. It lacks both concentration and action; but it can gain
them both from a space composition which shall combine unity
with a tendency to movement. And this is given by the diagonal
and V-shaped type. This type merely allows free play to the
natural tendency of the "active" picture; but it constrains the
neutral, inanimate landscape. The shape itself imparts motion
to the picture: the sweep of line, the concentration of the
vista, the unifying power of the inverted triangle between two
masses, act, as it were, externally to the suggestion of the
object itself. There is always enough quiet in a landscape,--
the overwhelming suggestion of the horizontal suffices for
that; it is movement that is needed for richness of effect, and,
as I have shown, no type imparts the feeling of movement so
strongly as the diagonal and V-shaped type of composition.
Landscapes need energy to produce "stimulation," not repression,
and so the diagonal type is proportionately more numerous.
The rigid square is found only at an early stage in the
development of composition. Moreover, all the examples are
"story" pictures, for the most part scenes from the lives of
the saints, etc. Many of them are double-centre,--square, that
is, with a slight break in the middle, the grouping purely
logical, to bring out the relations of the characters. Thus,
in the "Dream of Saint Martin," Simone Martini, a fresco at
Assisi, the saint lies straight across the picture with his
head in one corner. Behind him on one side stand the Christ
and angels, grouped closely together, their heads on the same
level. These are all, of course, in one sense symmetrical,--
in the weight of interest, at least,--but they are completely
amorphous from an aesthetic point of view. The forms, that is,
do not count at all,--only the meanings. The story is told by
a clear separation of the parts, and as, in most stories, there
are two principal actors, it merely happens that they fall into
the two sides of the picture. On the other hand, a rigid
geometrical symmetry is also characteristic of early composition,
and these two facts seem to contradict each other. But it is
to be noted, first, that the rigid geometrical symmetry belongs
only to the "Madonna Enthroned," and general "Adoration" pieces;
and secondly, that this very rigidity of symmetry in details
can coexist with variations which destroy balance. Thus, in a
"Madonna Enthroned" of Giotto, where absolute symmetry in detail
is kept, the Child sits far out on the right knee of the Madonna.
It would seem that the symmetry of these early pictures was not
dictated by a conscious demand for symmetrical arrangement, or
rather for real balance, else such failures would hardly occur.
The presence of geometrical symmetry is more easily explained
as the product, in large part, of technical conditions: of the
fact that these pictures were painted as altar-pieces to fill
a space definitely symmetrical in character--often, indeed,
with architectural elements intruding into it. We may even
connect the Madonna pictures with the temple images of the
classic period, to explain why it was natural to paint the
object of worship seated exactly facing the worshiper. Thus
we may separate the two classes of pictures, the one giving an
object of worship, and thus taking naturally, as has been said,
the pyramidal, symmetrical shape, and being moulded to symmetry
by all other suggestions of technique; the other aiming at
nothing except logical clearness. This antithesis of the
symbol and the story has a most interesting parallel in the two
great classes of primitive art--the one symbolic, merely suggestive,
shaped by the space it had to fill, and so degenerating into the
slavishly symmetrical; the other descriptive, "story-telling," and
without a trace of space composition. On neither side is there
evidence of direct aesthetic feeling. Only in the course of
artistic development do we find the rigid, yet often unbalanced,
symmetry relaxing into a free substitutional symmetry, and the
formless narrative crystallizing into a really unified and
balanced space-form. The two antitheses approach each other in
the "balance" of the masterpieces of civilized art--in which, for
the first time, a real feeling for space composition makes itself
felt.
V
THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC
V
THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC
I
THERE is a story, in Max Muller's amusing reminiscences, of
how Mendelssohn and David once played, in his hearing, Beethoven's
later sonatas for piano and violin, and of how they shrugged
their shoulders, and opined the old man had not been quite
himself when he wrote them. In the history of music it seems
to be a rule almost without exceptions, that the works of genius
are greeted with contumely. The same is no doubt true, though
to a much less degree, of other arts, but in music it seems that
the critics proposed also excellent reasons for their vehemence.
And it is instructive to observe that the objections, and the
reasons for the objections, recur, after the original object of
wrath has passed into acceptance, nay, into dominance of the
musical world. One may also descry one basic controversy running
through all these utterances, even when not explicitly set forth.
It was made a reproach to Beethoven, as it has been made a
reproach to Richard Strauss, that he sacrificed the beauty of
form to expression; and it was rejoined, perhaps less in the old
time than now, that expression was itself the end and meaning of
music. Now the works of genius, as we have seen, after all take
care of themselves. But it is of greatest significance for the
theory of music, as of all art, that in the circle of the years,
the same contrasting views, grown to ever sharper opposition,
still greet the appearance of new work. It was with Wagner, as
all the world knows, that the question came first to complete
formulation. His invention of the music-drama rested on his
famous theory of music as the heightened medium of expression,
glorified speech, which accordingly demands freedom to follow
all the varying nuances of feeling and emotion. Music has
always been called the language of the emotions, but Wagner
based his views not only on the popular notion, but on the
metaphysical theories of Schopenhauer; in particular, on the
view that music is the objectification of the will. Herbert
Spencer followed with the thesis that music has its essential
source in the cadences of emotional speech. In opposition
primarily to Wagner, the so-called formalists were represented
by Hanslick, who wrote his well-known "The Beautiful in Music"
to show that though music ha a limited capacity of expression,
its aim is formal or logical perfection alone. The expressionist
school could not contradict the undoubted fact that chords and
intervals which are harmonious show certain definite physical
and mathematical relationships, that, in other words, our
musical preferences appear to be closely related to, if not
determined by, these relationships. Thus each school seemed
to be backed by science. The emotional-speech theory has been
held in a vague way, indeed, by most of those theorists whose
natural conservatism would have drawn them in the other
direction, and is doubtless responsible for the attempts at
mediation, first made by Ambros,<1> and now met in almost all
musical literature. Music may be, and is, expressive, it is
said, so long as each detail allows itself to be entirely
derived from and justified by the mere formal element. The
"centre of gravity" lies in the formal relations.
<1> _The Boundaries of Music and Poetry._
To this, after all, Hanslick himself might subscribe. Other
writers seek to balance form and expression, insisting on
"the dual nature of music," while resting ultimately on the
emotional-speech theory. "The most universal composers,
recognizing the interdependence of the two elements, produce
the highest type of pure music, music in which beauty is based
upon expression, and expression transfigured by beauty."<1>
<1> D.G. Mason, _From Grieg to Brahms_, 1902, p. 30.
This usual type of reconciliation, however, is a perfectly
mechanical binding together of two possibly conflicting
aesthetic demands. The question is of the essential nature
of music, not whether music may be, but whether it must be,
expressive; not whether is has expressive power, but whether
it is, in its essence, expression,--a question which is only
obscured by insisting on the interdependence of the two
elements. If music has its essential source in the cadences
of speech, then it must develop and must be judged accordingly.
Herbert Spencer is perfectly logical in saying "It may be
shown that music is but an idealization of the natural
language of emotion, and that, consequently, music must be
good or bad according as it conforms to the laws of this
natural language."<1> But what, then, of music which,
according to Ambros, is justified by its formal relations?
Is music good because it is very expressive, and bad because
it is too little expressive? or is its goodness and badness
independent of its expressiveness? Such a question is not
to be answered by recognizing two kinds of goodness. Only
by an attempt to decide the fundamental nature of the musical
experience, and an adjustment of the other factors in strict
subordination to it, can the general principle be settled.
<1> _On Educaiton_, p. 41.
The excuse for this artificial yoking together of two opposing
principles is apparent when it is seen that form and expression
are taken as addressing themselves to two different mental
faculties. It seems to be the view of most musical theorists
that the experience of musical form is a perception, while the
experience of musical expression, disregarding for the moment
the suggestion of facts and ideas, is an emotion. Thus Mr.
Mason: "In music we are capable of learning, and knowledge
of the principles of musical effect can help us to learn, that
the balance and proportion and symmetry of the whole is far
more essential than any poignancy, however great, in the parts.
He best appreciates music...who understands it intellectually
as well as feels it emotionally;"<1> and again, "We feel in
the music of Haydn its lack of emotional depth, and its lack
of intellectual subtlety."
<1> Op. Cit., p. 6.
It is just this contrast and parallelism of structure as
balance, proportion, symmetry, addressed to the mind, with
expression as emotional content, that a true view of the
aesthetic experience would lead us to challenge. If there
is one thing that our study of the general nature of aesthetic
experience has shown, it is that aesthetic emotion is unique--
neither a perception nor an intellectual grasp of relations,
nor an emotion within the accepted rubric--joy, desire,
triumph, etc. Whether or not music is an exception to this
principle, remains to be seen; but the presumption is at
least in favor of a direct, immediate, unique emotion aroused
by the true beauty of music, whatever that may prove to be.
With a great literature in the form of special studies, we
must yet, on the whole, admit that we possess no general
formula in the philosophy or psychology of music which covers
the whole ground. Schopenhauer has said that music is the
objectification of the will--not a copy or a picture of it,
but the will itself; a doctrine which however illuminating
when it is modified in various ways is obviously no explanation
of our experience. Hanslick has but shown what music is not;
Edmund Gurney's eloquent book, "The Power of Sound," is
completely agnostic in its conclusion that music is a unique,
indefinable, indescribable phenomenon, which possesses, indeed,
certain analogues with other physical and psychical facts, but
is coextensive with none. Spencer's theory of music as
glorified speech is not only in a yet unexplained conflict
with many facts, but has never been formulated so that it could
apply to concrete cases. The same is true of Wagner's "music
as the utterance of feeling."
But there is a body of scientific facts respecting the elements
of music, in which we may well seek for clues. As facts alone
they are of no value. They must be explained as completely as
possible; and it is probable that if we are able to reach the
ultimate nature and origin of these elements of music they
will prove significant, and a way will be opened to a theory
of the whole musical experience. The need of such intensive
understanding must excuse the more or less technical discussions
in the following pages, without which no firm foundation for a
theory of music could be attained.