CHAPTER VII
A SUMMARY OF MUSIC'S ATTRIBUTES.
WHAT CONSTITUTES MUSICAL INTELLIGENCE?
Although some of the attributes of our art have received repeated mention in previous chapters, I feel that a short summary of their distinguishing qualities might serve to throw the outlines of my sketch into clearer relief. I shall seek this background without resorting to technical analysis.
Before undertaking this task I should like to emphasize the oft-announced fact that music is a thing apart. It, like language and the other arts, follows lines that lead from individuality to outside intelligence. In the case of music, these lines start in the innermost recess of the composer's emotional nature, and connecting with lines that lead through our intellects into the equally secret chambers of our natures, bring to us sentiments intelligible, but too intimate to endure analysis.
Civilized nations have long associated rhythms and moods,—i.e., a marked four-quarter measure has always been characteristic of the march, etc., but rhythm, although it is music's heart-pulsation, is only the metre for musical thought.
Scientists teach us that certain sounds are adapted to conjunctive use as chords because of the mathematical relation existing between the vibrations, of which they are the audible results. They go on from this beginning through the gamut of musical learning, and close without having given us a key to interpretation; so music is, and must remain, an untranslatable language of the soul, producing effects and inducing emotions, using the intellect as a medium only.
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Music which is translatable is necessarily of a low order." This sentiment is true, and it voices a fine sense of music's nature and limitations, remarkable in a layman, for there exists a disposition to pull the creations of the great masters down to earth, and to make them tell tales of earthly experiences.
Music's purity, strength, and beauty are always sacrificed through attempts to materialize it, for great music results from the natural development and the felicitous expression of characteristic musical thought, and not in the ingenious tonal illustrations of scenes or sentiments, which have been, or might better be, expressed in words, because of their material character.
Pure, complete conceptions cannot take form in other than sensitive natures; sensitive to the influences of life's surroundings, receiving impressions from the bird's song, the flower's perfume, the storm's might, the mountain's grandeur, the rippling stream, the peaceful valley, and filled, at least for the time, with love for God and man; nor could such conceptions pass to expression through intellects that had not been tempered, refined, and broadened to grasp all the resources that tonal science offers.
It is in artificial music only,—born of purpose and not of inspiration,—or in the work of unripe musicians, that science obtrudes itself. In other words, when the means are noticeable, they have either been unskillfully employed, or the composer has been actuated by the ambition to display scholarly qualities regardless of æsthetic considerations.
How often we hear works in which any possible sparks of sensibility and spontaneity have been smothered beneath loads of counterpoint and thematic development, which are devoid of significance because not evolved in logical sequence! Drawing and anatomy are to painting and sculpture, and grammar, rhetoric, and metre are to poetry, what musical science is to musical art, inasmuch as in each the capacity to produce, or to appreciate what others have produced, is largely proportioned to one's knowledge of these structural laws.
Temperament, natural endowments, culture, and habit play such important rôles in creating individual conceptions of beauty that we can only consider as our criterion the judgment of people existing in our own environment.
The first essential of beauty is symmetry. A rose cannot be beautiful unless gracefully formed and poised. The Creator's hand may have tinted it incomparably, may have distilled the daintiest fragrance for its portion, but these will avail naught if it has inherited ungraceful proportions, or if the world has distorted it during its period of growth.
As the rose requires color and perfume to perfect its charms, so each animate and inanimate creation in this world requires its suitable accessories to symmetry.
According to our standard, woman should have a lithe, plastic form, with fluctuating color and an all-pervading fragrance of intellectual modesty; whereas man should have a sinewy form, bold and strong, the color of perfect health, and the fragrance of intellectual fearlessness. Each must possess clearly defined individuality.
God's creations are never exact duplicates, and still we have numerous beautiful roses and women and Apollo-like men, each with appropriate attributes, and each satisfying the æsthetic taste of some one person or class of persons, because of the affinity to that object of the personal ideal which was implanted in this person or these persons by God, and which has been nurtured by conditions of life.
As in everything else that lays claim to beauty, so in music, symmetry must underlie all other attributes. The laws regulating musical symmetry are so rigid, when viewed from one stand-point, and are so elastic when viewed from another and higher, that it is not at all strange that young composers stand aghast when they reach the neutral point of receptivity from which these apparently contradictory conditions first manifest themselves. But these conditions are not really contradictory, for prescribed form is but a properly proportioned and adjusted skeleton, an outlining framework, subject to such modifications as will adapt it to the character of our schemes. These modifications must not, however, involve the use of eccentric lines, or the omission of essential members of the body musical, for such action would result in malformations.
The composer, having articulated his form, clothes it in such melodic and harmonic material, moulded into such shape, as will realize his fancy's ideal. The outcome of exhaustive knowledge, directed with justifiable freedom, is musical symmetry.
The next attribute is, as in the case of the rose, color; which in music is more or less attractive according to the richness of the material applied and the artistic skill and care bestowed upon its arrangement.
There are several sources to which the tone painter may resort for what might be termed primary colors,—viz., the human voice, the characteristic qualities of instruments, harmonic compounds, and rhythm, the combining and blending of these primary colors so as to produce the most effective shade for each episode, not only when considered by itself, but also in its relations to the whole panoramic succession of the finished picture, is the problem that so few solve. Most composers seem to feel quite satisfied if they succeed in startling us with uncommon combinations, however crude and irrelevant.
Next comes sentiment, which is to music what fragrance is to the rose, and what intellectuality is to woman. All three would be hollow mockeries without this parallel endowment. A piece of music must express a human desire, a belief, or an emotion, otherwise it is but empty sound.
These three attributes—symmetry, color, and sentiment—are at the command of all talented musicians, but the all-pervading individuality that so adjusts form, so arranges color, and gives such adequate expression to each shade of feeling as to create natural but unique tone pictures, is possessed by few composers of any given generation.
So-called original music may be nothing more than the fruit of good taste displayed in the arrangement of laboriously sought peculiarities of means and modes, and it is therefore only outwardly individual; but music whose themes spring from a pronounced individual feeling, which feeling moulds its form and makes each contributive detail conform to the spirit of the initial impulse, is truly original. Individual music is then radically original, but original music is not necessarily individual.
A spark of individual genius, because of its clean brilliancy, sends out its rays into illimitable space; whereas a whole bonfire of purposeful eccentricities curtains its flames with non-radiating elements, illuminating but a small field.
Now we must step backward beyond that point where science begins to shed her light upon natural laws. What agency produces life, starts and keeps in motion the machinery of our bodies, and places a soul behind our features? The same agency must guide us in the conception of musical ideas, or they will lack all living elements. This power is God: God in us,—a well-spring of inspiration for those whose susceptibilities are sufficiently acute to feel its influence.
Science can teach us to produce rich harmonic successions and instrumental colors, but it cannot impart the magical power of spontaneous and sequential growth that characterizes great compositions, nor can it show us how to identify the spirit which pervades such works. Any one can prepare himself to weigh the intellectual properties of a musical work, but the spirit which these properties are supposed to clothe will not materialize for unsympathetic souls. Herein exists the reason for differences of opinion entertained by cultured and honest critics.
Some works possessing all the attributes of greatness must be often heard before they begin to enlist our sympathies. Others, equally inspired, fail to awaken responsiveness in certain persons. Differently constituted natures cannot be expected to vibrate in unison, and as real music is soul vibration made audible, it seeks responsiveness in our natures, as any given tone lays hold of objects whose vibrations are sympathetic, causing them to emit consonant sounds.
The impression made by music can only be similar even—in character and intensity—where the hearers are equally endowed and cultured, and are equally conditioned mentally to surrender themselves to its influence. As long as each member of the human family is distinguished by individuality, so long will the impressions made by the intangible elements in art be diverse.
Suggestiveness is the highest quality with which a poet, an orator, a painter, a sculptor, or a musician can endow his productions. Its existence implies a clear conception, rooted in sentiment and adequately expressed through adaptable means, but well within the line of demarcation which separates logical terseness from redundancy.
Who can listen to Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, or Wagner and not find himself in a dreamland, peopled not so much by children of the great master's brain, as by the offspring of his own fancy? These results are the fruits of suggestiveness.
Routine often leads to diffuseness; the lack of it always results in illogical and inadequate expression; but routine directed by genius seldom fails to discover the vital line which marks the boundary of completeness. On one side of this line we have inland waters, flowing from the author's fancy: on the other, and fed therefrom, the open sea of semi-conscious cerebration, with its capricious winds and tidal currents.
If a writer succeed in enlisting our sympathies, the flow of his thoughts will impart the impetus requisite to carry us beyond this line; but here his direct influence ceases, for the stream of his fancies becomes merged in the ocean of each of our lives' memories, hopes, and experiences, and each having received an impulse comporting with his receptivity and habits of mind, sails away upon his course propelled by unfettered imagination.
MUSICAL INTELLIGENCE.
A symphony is like an epic poem; its salient points rather than its rounded whole appeal to the average reader or listener. The striking episodes of unfamiliar compositions in large form, are prone to come out into undue prominence, and so blind us to their true significance as phases of sequential development. The sustained effort, and experience demanded by a symphony, are the supreme tests of a composer. We therefore have no right to an opinion in regard to the merits or demerits of a large earnest work until study and hearing have, in our understanding, joined its episodes and given them importful continuity.
Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Wagner were endowed with great talent, which indefatigable energy advanced to genius. They worked upon a plane far above other men. We cannot hope to feel what they felt while creating, but we can work, the while knowing that as we approach their level in knowledge and experience our minds will better assist our understanding of their conceptions. Their joys, their sorrows, their triumphs, their every sentiment should find response in our hearts; but the impression made by music can only be distinct after we have made ourselves acoustically receptive, after our natures have become attuned like æolian harps to responsiveness when waves of melody strike upon them.
Our minds can be sounding-boards, which gather and reflect upon our souls the tone pictures we hear. A wooden surface must be smooth, properly formed, and perfectly poised, or it will not collect, focus, and reflect sound effects. In the same way our mental sounding-boards must be properly prepared, or they will not collect details and reflect sentiments. This preparation involves the use of all available means for shaping, refining, and poising. The earnest study of any branch of learning broadens, and the contemplation of the beautiful in nature and art quickens, the perceptions.
Pedantry—another name for self-sufficient ignorance—will warp and so distort our reflector as to mar its efficiency, making it unjust alike to the subject and to us.
The ear should be capable of transmitting correctly, and if possible in detail. Some persons are endowed with absolute pitch. These fortunates, if they persist in careful listening, can become able to follow an intricate composition, in its modulations, thematic development, etc., more easily, as well as more accurately, through hearing than through reading the printed page. This ability marks a long stride towards sympathy with the composer, especially as its exercise involves undivided attention to the subject in hand.
The absence of absolute pitch is no indication of lack of talent, and those who cannot acquire it have no reason for discouragement. Every ordinarily gifted student can educate his hearing to recognize intervals (seconds, thirds, etc.) and the tendency of chords, as based on the relations existing between the tones of which they are composed—to each other and to the key.
We should strive to make ourselves good mediums. Refined creations cannot appeal to crude natures. The savage, although sometimes possessing poetic instincts, prefers his own music, with its monotonous weirdness, to that which more civilized communities can offer. Our right to pass judgment upon others' creations will therefore depend largely on the distance we are removed from the savage in the process of evolution.
THE END