One of the most disputed questions in modern music is that of opera. Although we have many controversies as to what purely instrumental or vocal music may do, the operatic art, if we may call it so, always remains the same. In creating the music drama, Wagner put forth a composite art, something which many declare impossible, and as many others advocate as being the most complete art form yet conceived. We are still in the midst of the discussion, and a final verdict is therefore as yet impossible. On one hand we have Wagner, and against him we have the absolutists such as Brahms, the orthodox thinkers represented by Anton Rubinstein and many others, the new Russian school represented by Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, and the successors of the French school of Meyerbeer, namely, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, etc.
In order to get a clear idea of the present state of the matter we must review the question from the beginning of the eighteenth century. For many reasons this is not an easy task, first of all because very little of the music of the operas of this period actually exists. We know the names of Hasse, Pergolesi, Matheson, Graun, Alessandro Scarlatti (who was a much greater man than his son the harpsichord player and composer, Domenico), to name only a few. To be sure, a number of the French operas of the period are preserved, owing to the custom in France of engraving music. In Germany and Italy, however, such operas were never printed, and one may safely say that it was almost the rule for only one manuscript copy to be available. Naturally this copy belonged to the composer, who generally led the opera himself, improvising much of it on the harpsichord, as we shall see later. As an instance of the danger which operas, under such conditions, ran of being destroyed and thus lost to the world, we may cite the total destruction of over sixty of Hasse's operas in his extreme old age.
The second point which makes it difficult for us to get an absolutely clear insight into the conditions of opera at the beginning of the eighteenth century lies in the fact that contemporary historians never brought their histories up to their own times. Thus Marpurg, in his history, divides music into four periods; first, that of Adam and Eve to the flood; second, from the flood to the Argonauts; third, to the beginning of the Olympiads; fourth, from thence to Pythagoras. The same may be said of the celebrated histories of Gerbert and Padre Martini.
On the other hand, we are certain that much of the modern speculation was anticipated by these men. For instance, Matheson calls pantomime “dumb music,” freed from melodic and harmonic forms. The idea was advanced that music owes its rhythmic regularity and form to dancing, and architecture was called frozen music, a metaphor which, in later days, was considered such an original conception of Goethe and Schlegel. This same inability of historians to bring their accounts up to the contemporary times may be noticed in the later works of Forkel (d. 1818) and Ambros (d. 1876).
Yet a third reason remains which tends to confuse the student as to what really constituted opera. This is owing to the fact that there existed the very important element of improvisation, of which I shall speak later.
In order to see what Gluck, Weber, and Wagner had to break away from, let us look at the condition of opera at the beginning of the eighteenth century. We remember that opera, having become emancipated from the Church long before any other music, developed apace, while instrumental (secular) music was still in its infancy. In Germany, even the drama was neglected for its kindred form of opera; therefore, in studying its development, we may well understand why the dramatic stage considered the opera its deadly enemy.
The life of the German dramatist and actor of the first half of the eighteenth century was one of the direst hardship and poverty. Eckhof, one of the greatest actors of his time, made his entry into Brunswick in a kind of miserable hay cart, in which, accompanied by his sick wife and several dogs, he had travelled over the rough roads. To keep warm they had filled part of the wagon with straw. The German actor and dramatist of that time often died in the hospital, despised by the richer classes; even the village priests and ministers refused to allow them to eat at their tables. Their scenery rarely consisted of more than three rough pieces: a landscape, a large room, and a peasant's hut interior. Many even had only two large cloths which were hung about the stage, one green, which was to be used when the scene was in the open air, and the other yellow, which was used to represent an interior. Shakespeare's “Poor Players” were certainly a stern reality in Germany. In order to attract the public the plays had to consist for the most part of the grossest subjects imaginable, it being barely possible to smuggle some small portion of serious drama into the entertainment.
With opera, however, it was vastly different; opera troupes were met at the city gates by the royal or ducal carriages, and the singers were fêted everywhere. The prices paid them can only be compared with the salaries paid nowadays. They were often ennobled, and the different courts quarrelled for the honour of their presence. The accounts of the cost of the scenery used are incredible, amounting to many thousands of dollars for a single performance.
One of the earliest German kapellmeisters and opera composers was Johann Adolf Hasse, who was born in Dresden about 1700. To show the foundation upon which Gluck built, we will look at opera as it existed in Hasse's time. In 1727 Hasse married at Venice, Faustina Bordoni, the foremost singer of the time. He wrote over one hundred operas for her, and had a salary of thirty-six thousand marks, or nine thousand dollars, yearly. Now these operas were very different from those we know. The arias in them (and, of course, the whole opera was practically but a succession of arias) were only sketched in an extremely vague manner. Much was left to the singer, and the accompaniment was sparsely indicated by figures written above a bass. The recitative which separated one aria from another was improvised by the singer, and was accompanied on the harpsichord by the kapellmeister, who was naturally obliged to improvise his part on the spur of the moment, following the caprice of the singer. There was no creating an atmosphere for a tragic or dramatic situation by means of the accompaniment; as soon as the situation arrived, an aria was sung explaining it. Now, as the singer was given much latitude in regard to the melody, and absolute liberty in regard to the recitative, it is easy to see that, with the astounding technical perfection possessed by the singers of the time, this latitude would be used to astonish the hearers by wonderful vocal feats intermingled with more or less passionate declamation.
The composer was merely the excuse for the opera; but he needed to be a consummate musician to conduct and accompany this improvised music, of which his written score was but the nucleus. The wretched acting of opera singers in general has been rather humourously traced back to this epoch. Nowadays, in an opera, when, by way of example, a murder is to be committed, the orchestra paints the situation, and the act is accomplished without delay. In those olden days a singer would have indignantly refused to submit to such a usurpation of his rights; he would have raised his dagger, and then, before striking, would have sung an aria in the regular three parts, after which he would have stabbed his man. The necessity for doing something during this interim is said to be responsible for those idiotic gestures which used to be such a seemingly necessary part of the equipment of the opera singer.
In the ordinary opera of the time there was the custom of usually having about from twenty to thirty such arias (Hasse's one hundred operas contain about three thousand arias). Now these arias, although they were intended to paint a situation, rapidly became simply a means to display the singer's skill. The second part was a melody with plenty of vocal effects, and the third part a bravura piece, pure and simple. So there only remained the recitative in which true dramatic art could find place. As this, however, was invariably improvised by the singer, one can see that the composer of music had his cross as well as his brother the dramatist. The music having no vital connection with the text, it is easy to see how one opera could be set to several texts or vice-versa, as was often done.
Another factor also contributed to retard the artistic development of opera. All these arias had to be constructed and sung according to certain customs. Thus, the fiery, minor aria was always sung by the villain, the so-called colorature arias by the tall, majestic heroine, etc.
All this seems childish to us, but it was certainly a powerful factor in making fame for a composer. For, as has been said, while a modern composer writes two or three different operas, Hasse wrote one hundred versions of one. This also had its effect on instrumental music, and, in a way, is also the direct cause of that monstrosity known as “variations” (Händel wrote sixty-six on one theme.) In our days we often hear the bitter complaint that opera singers are no longer what they used to be, and that the great art of singing has been lost. If we look back to the period under consideration, we cannot but admit that there is much truth in the contention. In the first place, an opera singer of those days was necessarily an actor of great resource, a thorough musician, a composer, and a marvellous technician. In addition to this, operas were always written for individuals. Thus, all of Hasse's were designed for Faustina's voice; and by examining the music, we can tell exactly what the good and bad points of her voice were, such was the care with which it was written.
Before we leave the subject of Hasse and his operas, I wish to refer briefly to a statement found in all histories and books on music. We find it stated that all this music was sung and played either loud or soft; with no gradual transitions from one to the other. The existence of that gradual swelling or diminishing of the tone in music which we call crescendo and diminuendo, is invariably denied, and its first use is attributed to Jommelli, director of the opera at Mannheim, in 1760. Thus we are asked to believe that Faustina sang either piano or forte, and still was an intensely dramatic singer.
This seems to me to require no comment; especially as, already in 1676, Matthew Locke, an English writer, uses the [crescendo] sign for the gradual transition from soft to loud. For obvious reasons there could be no such transition in harpsichord music, and this is why, when the same instrument was provided with hammers instead of quills, the name was changed to pianoforte, to indicate its power to modify the tone from soft to loud.
Naturally Händel, who was a man of despotic tendencies, could not long submit to the caprices of opera singers. After innumerable conflicts with them, we find him turning back to one of the older forms of opera, the oratorio.
Bach never troubled himself about an art from which he was so widely separated both by training and inclination. Thus the reformation of opera (I mean the old opera of which I have been speaking) devolved upon Gluck. His early operas were entirely on the lines of those of Hasse and Porpora. He wrote operas for archduchesses (“Il Parnasso” was played by four archduchesses and accompanied on harpsichord by the Archduke Leopold), and was music master to Marie Antoinette at Vienna. It was owing to these powerful influences that his art principles had an opportunity to be so widely exploited. For these principles were not new; they formed the basis of Peri's first attempt at opera in 1600, and had been recalled in vain by Marcello in 1720. They were so simple that it seems almost childish to quote them. They demanded merely that the music should always assist, but never interfere with either the declamation or dramatic action of the story. Thus by Gluck's powerful influence with what may be termed the fashion of his day, he did much to relegate to a place of minor importance the singer, who until then had held undisputed sway. This being the case, the great art of singing, which had allowed the artist the full control and responsibility of opera, thus centering all upon the one individuality, degenerated into the more subordinate rôle of following the composer's directions.
It now became the duty of the composer to foresee every contingency of his work, and it lay with him to give directions for every detail of it. As a result, the singers, having no longer absolute control but still anxious to display their technical acquirements, gradually changed into that now almost obsolete abomination, the “Italian opera singer,” an artist, who, shirking all responsibility for the music and dramatic action, neglected the composer so far as possible, and introduced vocal pyrotechnics wherever he or she dared—and their daring was great.
In the meantime, as Gluck was bringing in his reforms, songs were gradually introduced into the Schauspiel or drama, the ill-fated brother of opera in Germany; and just as the grand opera reached its highest point with Gluck, so this species of melodrama grew apace, until we see its culmination in Weber's “Freischütz.”
The good results of Gluck's innovations and also, to a certain degree, its discrepancies, may be plainly seen in Mozart's operas; for only too often in his operas Mozart was obliged to introduce fioriture of the poorest possible description in situations where they were utterly out of place. This, however, may not be entirely laid at the door of the exacting singer, for we find these same fioriture throughout his harpsichord music.
We may almost say that the union of drama and music was first definitely given status by Mozart; for a number of his operas, such as the “Schauspieldirektor,” etc., were merely a form of the German Singspiel, which, as I have said, culminated in “Freischütz.”
Thus, at the beginning of our century we find two art forms: First, grand opera of a strange nationality, and second, the small but rapidly developing form of comedy or drama with music.
In order to show how Wagner evolved his art theories from this material, we must consider to some degree the general conditions of this period.
As late as 1853, Riehl wrote that Mendelssohn was the only composer who had the German public, whereas others had only a small section of it. For example, Schumann, whose music he did not like, was accepted as a new Messiah in the Elbe River district; “but who,” he asks, “knows anything about him in the south or west of Germany?” And as for Richard Wagner, who, he says, is a man of extravagant ideas and a kind of phenomenon of no consequence artistically, he asks, “who really knows anything about him outside of the little party of fanatics who profess to like his music (so-called)?” Its only chance of becoming known, he says, is in the public's curiosity to hear works which are rarely given. This curiosity, he continues, will be a much more potent factor in his chance of becoming known than all his newspaper articles and the propaganda of his friend, Franz Liszt.
For the German opera there were half a dozen Boersenplätze—Berlin for the northwest, Hamburg for the northeast, Frankfort for the southwest, Munich for the southeast. As Riehl says, a success in Frankfort meant a success in all the Frankfort clay deposit and sandstone systems, but in the chalk formation of Munich it stood no chance. Thus Germany had no musical centre. But after Meyerbeer found such a centre in Paris, all other Germans, including Wagner, looked to Paris for fame.
At the end of the eighteenth century, Vienna was the art centre; nevertheless Gluck had to go to Paris for recognition.
Mendelssohn only succeeded by his Salonfähigkeit. Always respectable in his forms, no one else could have made music popular among the cultured classes as could Mendelssohn. This also had its danger; for if Mendelssohn had written an opera (the lack of which was so bewailed by the Philistines), it would have taken root all over Germany, and put Wagner back many years. At the death of Mendelssohn, the Philistines heralded the coming of a new German national school, founded on his principles (formalism), one that would clarify the artistic atmosphere of the turgid and anarchistic excesses of Wagner and Berlioz and their followers. These critics found already that Beethoven's melodies were too long and his instrumentation too involved. They declared that the further music departed from its natural simplicity the more involved its utterance became, the less clear, and consequently the poorer it was. Music was compared to architecture, and thus the more Greek it was, the better; forgetting that architecture was tied to utilitarianism and poetry to word-symbols, and that painting is primarily an art of externals.
Riehl says that art is always in danger of ruin when its simple foundation forms are too much elaborated, overlooking the fact that music is not an art, but psychological utterance.
It needed all Wagner's gigantic personality to rise above this wave of formalism that looked to the past for its salvation, a past which was one of childish experimenting rather than of æsthetic accomplishment. The tendency was to return to the dark cave where tangible walls were to be touched by the hands, rather than to emerge into a sunlight that seemed blinding.
There is much of value to the student to be derived from a study of the lives and art principles of the composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To go back to an earlier period would hardly be worth while, as the music composed in those days is too much obscured by the uncertainty of tradition and the inevitable awkwardness of expression that goes with all primitiveness in art.
The first whom I would mention are Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, and Ludovico Viadana.
The former was a nephew of the Archbishop of Naples, was born in 1550, and died in 1613. His name is important from the fact that he went boldly beyond Monteverde, his contemporary, in the use of the new dissonant chords (sevenths and ninths) which were just beginning to be employed, and adopted a chromatic style of writing which strangely foreshadowed the chromatic polyphonic style of the present century. He wrote innumerable madrigals for a number of voices, but his innovations remained sterile so far as the development of music is concerned, for the reason that while his music often acquired a wonderful poignancy for his time by the use of chromatics, just as often it led him into the merest bramble bush of sound, real music being entirely absent.
Viadana (1566–1645) has been placed by many historians of music in the same category as Guido d'Arezzo (who is credited with having invented solmization, musical notation, etc.), Palestrina, Monteverde and Peri, who are famed, the one for having discovered the dominant ninth chord, and the other for the invention of opera. Viadana is said to have been the first to use what is called a basso continuo, and even the figured bass. The former was the uninterrupted repetition of a short melody or phrase in the bass through the entire course of a piece of music. This was done very often to give a sense of unity that nowadays would be obtained by a repetition of the first thought at certain intervals through the piece. The figured (or better, ciphered) bass was an entirely different thing. This device, which is still employed, consisted of the use of figures to indicate the different chords in music. These figures or ciphers were written over or under the bass note on which the chord represented by the figures was to be played or sung. A 5 over or under a bass note meant that with that note a perfect major triad was to be sounded, considering the note written as the root of the chord; a 3 was taken to stand for a perfect minor triad; a 6 for the chord of the sixth (first inversion of a triad), and 6⁄4 for the second inversion; a line through a 5 or 7 meant that the triad was a diminished fifth or a diminished seventh chord; a cross indicated a leading tone; a 4 stood for the third inversion of the dominant seventh chord. This system of shorthand, as it may be called, was and is still of tremendous value to composers. In the olden days, particularly, when many of the composers engraved their own music for publication, it saved a great deal of labour. It is probably not generally known that the engraving of music by the composer was so common; but such was the case with Bach, Rameau, and Couperin.
And this reminds me that the embellishments, as they were called, which are so common in all harpsichord and clavichord music, were also noted in a kind of shorthand, and for precisely the same reason. The embellishments themselves originated from the necessity for sustaining in some way the tone of the instrument, which gave out little, dry, clicklike sounds; if the melody were played in simple notes, these sounds would mingle with the accompaniment and be lost in it. Therefore, the embellishments served to sustain the tones of the melody, and thus cause them to stand out from the accompaniment. Their notation by means of symbols copied from the primitive neumes vastly facilitated the work of engraving. Much confusion arose in the notation of embellishments, owing to the fact that each composer had his own system of symbols.
Alessandro Scarlatti and his son Domenico, both celebrated in their day, are the next to demand attention. The former was born about 1650 and died about 1725. He wrote many operas of which we know practically nothing. His son was born about 1685 and died in 1757. He was the most celebrated harpsichord player of his time; and although his style, which was essentially one of virtuosity, was not productive of direct results, it did nevertheless foreshadow the wonderful technical achievements of Liszt in our own times. It is indeed a great pity that Domenico Scarlatti's work did not bear more direct fruit in his day, for it would have turned Mozart, as well as many others, from the loose, clumsy mannerisms of the later virtuoso style, which ran to the Alberti bass and other degrading platitudes, paralleled in our comparatively modern days by the Thalberg arpeggios, repeating notes, Döhler trill, etc.
Two masters in music, Händel and J.S. Bach, were born the same year, 1685; their great French contemporary, Rameau, was born two years earlier and died in 1764; while Händel died in 1759, and Bach in 1750. Bach was destined to give to the world its first glimpse of the tremendous power of music, while Rameau organized the elements of music into a scientific harmonic structure, laying the foundation for our modern harmony. Händel's great achievement (besides being a fine composer) was to crush all life out of the then promising school of English music, the foundation for which had been so well laid by Purcell, Byrd, Morley, etc.
Jean Philippe Rameau was born in Dijon, and after travels in Italy and a short period of service as organist at Clermont, in Auvergne, went to Paris. There he wrote a number of small vaudevilles or musical comedies, which were successful; and his music for the harpsichord, consisting almost exclusively of small pieces with descriptive titles, soon began to be widely played in France. Much later in life he succeeded in obtaining a hearing for his operas, the first of which, “Hippolyte et Aricie,” was given in 1732, when he was fifty years old. For thirty-two years his operas continued to hold the French stage against those of all foreigners.
His style marked a great advance over that of Lully, the Italian, of the century before. Rameau aimed at clearness of diction and was one of the first to attempt to give individuality to the different orchestral instruments. By some strange coincidence, his first opera had much the same dramatic situation that all the early operas seemed to have, namely, a scene in the infernal regions. Rameau's operas never became the foundation for a distinctly French opera, for at the time of his death (1764), Italian opera troupes had already introduced a kind of comedy with music, which rapidly developed into opéra comique; it was reserved for Gluck, the German, to revive grand opera in France.
As a theoretician, Rameau exerted tremendous influence upon music. He discovered that the chord which we call the perfect major triad was not merely the result of an artificial training of the ear to like certain combinations of sounds, but that this chord was inherent in every musical sound, constituting, as it does, the first four harmonics or overtones. All chords, therefore, that were not composed of thirds placed one above the other, were inversions of fundamental chords. This theory holds good in the general harmonic system of to-day. But although the major triad and even the dominant seventh chord could be traced back to the harmonics, the minor triad proved a different matter; after many experiments Rameau gave it up, leaving it unaccounted for.
Rameau was also largely instrumental in gaining recognition for the desirability of dividing the octave into twelve equal parts, making all the so-called half-tones recur at mathematically equal distances from each other in the chromatic scale. In 1737 his work on the generation of chords through overtones caused the equal temperament system of tuning to be generally accepted, and the old modes, with the exception of the Ionian and Æolian, to be dropped out of use. The former became known as major and the latter as minor, from the third, which was large in the Ionian and small in the Æolian.
Händel, as before stated, was born in 1685 (February 23), in Halle, in the same year as J.S. Bach, who was a month younger (born March 21). His father was a barber, who, as was common in those days, combined the trade of surgery, cupping, etc., with that of hairdressing. He naturally opposed his son's bent toward music, but with no effect. At fifteen years of age, Händel was beginning to be well known as a clavichord and organ player, in the latter capacity becoming specially celebrated for his wonderful improvisations. In spite of an attempt to make a lawyer of him, he persisted in taking music as his vocation, after the death of his father.
In Hamburg, whither he went in 1703, he obtained a place among the second violins in the opera orchestra. 15 Realizing that in Germany opera was but a reflection of Italian art, he left Hamburg in 1707 and went to Italy, where he soon began to make a name for himself, both as performer and composer. One of his operas, “Agrippa,” was performed at Venice during the Carnival season of 1710.
The Hanoverian kapellmeister, Staffani, was present and invited him to Hanover, whither he went, becoming Staffani's successor in the service of the Elector of Hanover. Several trips to England, where he was warmly welcomed, resulted in his accepting from Queen Anne, in 1713, a salary of two hundred pounds yearly, thus entering her service, notwithstanding his contract with the Elector. In 1714 the Queen died, and the Elector of Hanover was called to the English throne under the title of George I. Händel, in order to escape the impending disgrace occasioned by having broken faith with his former employer, wrote some music intended to be particularly persuasive, and had it played on a barge that followed a royal procession up the Thames. This “Water Music,” as it was called, procured for him the King's pardon.
From this time he lived in England, practically monopolizing all that was done in music. In 1720 a company for the giving of Italian opera was formed, and Händel placed at its head. In 1727, on the occasion of the accession of George II, Händel wrote four anthems, one of which “Zadok the Priest,” ends with the words “God save the King,” from which it has been erroneously stated that he wrote the English national hymn.
In 1737 Händel gave up the writing of operas, after sinking most of his own savings in the undertaking, and began to write oratorios, the germs of which are found in the old Mysteries and Passion plays performed on a platform erected in the chapel or oratory of a church. Much has been written about Händel's habit of taking themes from other composers, and he was even dubbed the “grand old robber.” It must not be overlooked, however, that although he made use of ideas from other composers, he turned them to the best account. By 1742 Händel was again in prosperous circumstances, his “Messiah” having been a tremendous success. From that time until his death he held undisputed sway, although his last years were clouded by a trouble with his eyes, which were operated upon unsuccessfully by an English oculist, named Taylor, who had also operated on Bach's eyes with the same disastrous result. Händel became completely blind in 1752. Up to the last year of his life he continued to give oratorio concerts and played organ concertos, of which only the tutti were noted, he improvising his part.
Händel's strength lay in his great ability to produce overwhelming effects by comparatively simple means. This is especially the case in his great choruses which are massive in effect and yet simple to the verge of barrenness. This, of course, has no reference to the absurd fioriture and long passage work given to the voices,—an Italian fashion of the times,—but to the contrapuntal texture of the work. Of his oratorios, “The Messiah” is the best known. Two of his “Concerti Grossi,” the third and sixth, are sometimes played by string orchestras. Of his harpsichord music we have the eight “Suites” of 1720 (among which the one in E is known as having the variations called “The Harmonious Blacksmith”), and a number of “Harpsichord Lessons,” among which are six fugues. All these may be said to have little value.
J.S. Bach differed in almost every respect from Händel, except that he was born in the same year and was killed by the same doctor. While Händel left no pupils, with perhaps the exception of his assistant organist, Bach aided and taught his own celebrated sons, Krebs, Agricola, Kittel, Kirnberger, Marpurg, and many other distinguished musicians. Bach twice made an effort to see Händel at Halle, but without success. On the other hand, there are reasons for believing that Händel never took the trouble to examine any of Bach's clavichord music. He lived like a conqueror in a foreign land, writing operas, oratorios, and concertos to order, and stealing ideas right and left without compunction; whereas Bach wrote from conviction, and no charge of plagiarism was ever laid at his door. Händel left a great fortune of twenty thousand pounds. Bach's small salary at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig made it necessary for him to do much of his own engraving; and at his death, though he had helped many young struggling artists, his widow was left so poor that she had to be supported by public benevolence. Bach's works were neglected by his contemporaries, and it was only in the nineteenth century that he began to be appreciated in a way commensurate with his worth.
Bach was born in Eisenach, in Thuringia, and it is of interest to know that as far back as his great grandfather, Veit Bach (born about 1550), music had been the profession of the family. Bach's parents died when he was a boy of ten, and his education was continued by his elder brother, Johann Christoph, at a town near Gotha, where he held a position as organist. The boy soon outstripped his brother in learning, and continued his studies wholly by himself.
After filling a position as organist at Weimar, in 1703 he accepted one at a small town, Arnstadt, at a salary of about fifty-seven dollars yearly. He had already begun to compose, and possibly in imitation of Kuhnau, whose so-called “Bible” sonatas were at the time being talked about, he wrote an elaborate clavichord piece to illustrate the departure of his brother, Johann Jakob, who had entered the service of Charles XII of Sweden as oboist. This composition is divided into five parts, each bearing an appropriate superscription and ending with an elaborate fugue to illustrate the postillion's horn. I believe this is the only instance of his having written actual programme music. After leaving Arnstadt he filled positions as organist at Mühlhausen, Weimar, Coethen, etc. It was before 1720 that he paid his two visits to Halle in the hope of seeing Händel. At this time he had already written the first part of the “Wohltemperierte Clavier,” the violin sonatas, and many other great works. Ten years later, when Händel again came to Germany, Bach was too ill to go to see him personally, but sent his eldest son to invite Händel to come and see him, although without success.
In 1723 he obtained the position of Cantor at the St. Thomas School, in Leipzig, left vacant by the death of Kuhnau; here he remained until his death. In 1749 the English oculist, Taylor, happened to be in Leipzig. On the advice of friends, Bach submitted to an operation on his eyes, which had always troubled him. The failure of this operation rendered him totally blind and the accompanying medical treatment completely broke him down. On the eighteenth of July, 1750, he suddenly regained his sight, but it was accompanied by a stroke of paralysis from which he died ten days later.
So far as his church music is concerned, Bach may be considered as the Protestant compeer of the Roman Catholic, Palestrina, with the difference that his music was based on the tonalities of major and minor and that his harmonic structure was founded on a scientific basis. What is mere wandering in Palestrina, with Bach is moving steadily forward with a well-defined object in view. With Bach, music is cast in the definite mould of tonality, while with Palestrina the vagueness of the modes lends to his music something of mystery and a certain supernatural freedom from human will, so prominent a characteristic of Bach's compositions. In considering Bach's music we must forget the technique, which was merely the outside dress of his compositions. His style was the one of the period, just as he wore a wig, and buckles on his shoes. His music must not be confounded with the contrapuntal style of his utterance, and although he has never been surpassed as a scientific writer of counterpoint, it would be unjust to look there for his chief glory. As a matter of fact, when his scientific speech threatened to clash with the musical idea in his composition, he never hesitated to sacrifice the former to the latter. Thus Bach may be considered the greatest musical scientist of his time as well as the greatest breaker of mere rules.
Of his sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel is the most celebrated, and did much to prepare the way for Haydn in the development of the sonata. J.S. Bach wrote many sonatas, but none for the clavichord; his sonatas were for the violin and the 'cello alone, a great innovation. The violin sonatas bring into play all the resources of the instrument; indeed it is barely possible to do them justice from the technical standpoint. His “Wohltemperierte Clavier” naturally was a tremendous help to clavichord technique, and even now the “Chromatic Fantaisie” and other works require fine pianists to perform them properly.
In considering the development of music, it must always be remembered that Haydn, Mozart, and their contemporaries knew little or nothing of Bach's works, thus accounting for what otherwise would seem a retrograde movement in art. C.P.E. Bach (born 1714) was much better known than his father; even Mozart said of him, “He is the father, and we are mere children.” He was renowned as a harpsichord player, and wrote many sonatas which form the connecting link between the suite and the sonata. He threw aside the polyphonic style of his father and strove to give his music new colour and warmth by means of harmony and modulation. He died in 1788 in Hamburg, where he was conductor of the opera. It should be mentioned that he wrote a method of clavichord playing on which, in later days, Czerny said that Beethoven based his piano teaching.
Up to the period now under consideration, music for the orchestra occupied a very small part in the composer's work. To be sure, J.S. Bach wrote some suites, and separate movements were written in the different dance forms for violins, with sometimes the addition of a few reed instruments, and possibly flutes and small horns or trumpets. It is in the works of C.P.E. Bach, however, that we find the germ of symphonic orchestral writing that was to be developed by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. The so-called “symphonies” by Emanuel Bach are merely rudimentary sonatas written for strings, with flutes, oboes, bassoons, trumpets, etc., and have practically no artistic significance except as showing the inevitable trend of musical thought toward greater power of expression. In Germany (and indeed everywhere else) the Italian element had full sway over opera, and non-Italian musicians were forced into writing for the concert room instead of the stage. Even Beethoven had many disappointments in connection with his one opera “Fidelio,” and so strong was the Italian influence, that here in America we are only just now (1897) recovering from the effects of it.
Franz Joseph Haydn was born near Vienna, in 1732, of humble parents, his mother a cook in a count's family, and his father a wheelwright and sexton of the parish church. When a young boy Haydn had a fine voice, on account of which he was admitted as a member of the choir at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. This entitled him to admission to St. Stephen's School, connected with the cathedral, in which the city paid for the board and lodging as well as the instruction of the singers. When the boys' voices changed or “broke,” however, they were turned adrift. On leaving the cathedral, Haydn suffered the direst poverty, engaging himself at one time as valet to the Italian singing teacher, Porpora, in order to secure some lessons.
He gradually managed to make himself known, and was engaged by Count Morzin, a rich nobleman, to organize an orchestra of about eighteen, which the count retained in his service with Haydn as leader. Here he wrote his first symphony (for strings, two oboes and two horns, in three movements) and a number of smaller works. When he was twenty-nine, Count Morzin gave up his establishment and Haydn entered the service of Prince Paul Esterhazy, in Eisenstadt, Hungary, in the same capacity. Here he had an orchestra of sixteen, composed of good musicians, whom he could call up at any hour of the night to play if he wished, and over whom he had complete control. Although the contract by which he was engaged names the most degrading conditions, and places Haydn on a par with all the other servants, the pay, though small (two hundred dollars yearly), was certain and regular. From this time Haydn was free from the hardships of poverty. His salary was soon increased to five hundred dollars, and he made as much more from his compositions. He wrote over one hundred and twenty-five symphonies, sixty-eight trios, seventy-seven quartets, fifty-seven concertos, fifty-seven sonatas, eight oratorios and cantatas, and nineteen operas, besides innumerable smaller things, for instance, between five hundred and six hundred vocal pieces. His operas, of course, are mere trifles compared with our more modern ones.
His friendship for Mozart is well known. As for his relations with Beethoven, it is probable that their disagreement was merely the effect of pride, and perhaps a certain amount of laziness on one side and youthful bumptiousness on the other. Haydn was returning to Vienna via Bonn, from England, where he had been welcomed by the wildest enthusiasm, when Beethoven called on him to ask for his opinion as to his talent as a composer. It resulted in Beethoven's going to Vienna. After taking a few lessons of Haydn he went to another teacher and made all manner of contemptuous remarks about Haydn, declaring he had not learned anything from him.
After two highly successful visits to England, in 1792 and 1794, Haydn returned to Vienna and wrote his two celebrated cantatas, “The Creation” and “The Seasons.” His last appearance in public was when he attended a performance of “The Creation” in 1808, at the age of seventy-six. He was received with a fanfare of trumpets and cheers from the audience. After the first part he was obliged to leave, and as he was being carried out by his friends, he turned at the door and lifted his hands towards the orchestra, as if in benediction; Beethoven kissed his hand, and everyone paid him homage. He died during the bombardment of Vienna by the French, May 31, 1809.
Haydn's later symphonies have been very cleverly compared with those of Beethoven by the statement that the latter wrote tragedies and great dramas, whereas Haydn wrote comedies and charming farces. As a matter of fact, Haydn is the bridge between the idealized dance and independent music. Although Beethoven still retained the form of the dance, he wrote great poems, whereas the music of Haydn always preserves a tinge of the actual dance. With Haydn, music was still an art consisting of the weaving together of pretty sounds, and although design, that is to say, the development of the emotional character of a musical thought, was by no means unknown to him, that development was never permitted to transcend the limits of a certain graceful euphony which was a marked characteristic of his style. His use of orchestral instruments represents a marked advance on that of C.P.E. Bach, and certainly very materially helped Mozart.
Of Mozart we probably all know something. Born at Salzburg, in 1756, his was a short life, for he died in 1791. We know of his great precocity; his first compositions were published when he was six years old, at which age he was already playing in concerts with his eleven-year old sister, and was made much of by the titled people before whom he played. The rest of his life is one continual chronicle of concerts given all over Europe, interrupted at intervals by scarlet fever, smallpox, and other illnesses, until the last one, typhoid fever, caused his death. During his stay in Italy he wrote many operas in the flowery Italian style which, luckily, have never been revived to tarnish his name.
His first works worthy of mention are the clavier concertos and several symphonies and quartets, which date from about 1777. His first important opera is “Idomeneo, King of Crete,” written for the Munich opera. In this he adopts the principles of Gluck, thus breaking away from the wretched style of the Italian opera of the period, although the work itself was written in Italian. His next opera was in German, “Die Entführung aus dem Serail,” and was given with great success at Vienna, in 1782. It was followed by “The Marriage of Figaro,” “Don Juan,” and the “Magic Flute.”
The story of his death is well known. A stranger, who turned out to be the steward of Count Walsegg, came to him and ordered a requiem, which was played in 1793 as Walsegg's own composition. Mozart thought the man a messenger from the other world. He died before he completed the work. So great was his poverty that it was difficult to get a priest to attend him, and a physician who was summoned would come only after the play he was attending was ended. He had a “third class” funeral, and as a fierce storm was raging, no one accompanied the body to the grave. His widow gave a concert, and with the help of the Emperor money enough was raised to pay the outstanding debts.
It is difficult to give an adequate idea of Mozart's works. He possessed a certain simple charm of expression which, in its directness, has an element of pathos lacking in the comparatively jolly light-heartedness of Haydn. German opera profited much from his practically adopting the art principles of Gluck, although it must be confessed that this change in style may have been simply a phase of his own individual art development. His later symphonies and operas show us the man at his best. His piano works and early operas show the effect of the “virtuoso” style, with all its empty concessions to technical display and commonplace, ear-catching melody.
15 At that time the harpsichord player was a very important member of an orchestra, as he accompanied the recitative from figured bass and was practically the conductor. On one occasion when the harpsichordist was absent Händel took his place with so much success that it paved the way for a hearing of his operas.
There is one side of music which I am convinced has never been fully studied, namely, the relation between it and declamation. As we know, music is a language which may delineate actual occurrences by means of onomatopoetic sounds. By the use of more or less suggestive sounds, it may bring before our minds a quasi-visual image of things which we more or less definitely feel.
Now to do all this, there must be rules; or, to put it more broadly, there must be some innate quality that enables this art of sounds to move in sympathy with our feelings. I have no wish to go into detailed analysis of the subject; but a superficial survey of it may clear up certain points with regard to the potency of music that we are too often willing to refer back to the mere pleasing physical sensations of sound.
Some consideration of this subject may enable us to understand the much discussed question of programme music. It may also help us to recognize the astonishing advance we have made in the art; an advance, which, strange to say, consists in successively throwing off all the trammels and conventionalities of what is generally considered artificial, and the striking development of an art which, with all its astounding wealth of exterior means, aims at the expression of elemental sensations.
Music may be divided into four classes, each class marking an advance in receptive power on the part of the listener and poetic subtlety on that of the composer. We may liken the first stage to that of the savage Indians who depict their exploits in war and peace on the rocks, fragments of bone, etc. If the painter has in mind, say, an elephant, he carves it so that its principal characteristics are vastly exaggerated. A god in such delineation is twice the size of the ordinary man, and so it is in descriptive music. For instance, in Beethoven's “Pastoral” symphony, the cuckoo is not a bird which mysteriously hides itself far away in a thicket, the sound of whose voice comes to one like a strange, abrupt call from the darkness of the forest; no, it is unmistakably a cuckoo, reminding one strangely of those equally advanced and extremely cheap art products of Nuremberg, made of pine wood, and furnished with a movable tail.
The next stage is still a question of delineation; but of delineation that leads us into strange countries, and the sounds we hear are but the small door through which we pass. This music suggests; by way of example, the opening of the last movement of the “Pastoral” symphony, the march from Tchaïkovsky's “Symphonie Pathétique,” the opening of Raff's “Im Walde,” and Goldmark's “Sakuntala.” Such music hints, and there is a certain potency in its suggestion which makes us see things. These two divisions of music have been termed “programme” or “objective” music.
The other two classes of music have been termed subjective. The first is declamation, pure and simple; the singer may be telling a lie, or his sentiment may be insincere or false; what these sounds stand for, we know from the words, their grade of passion, etc. The last phase of our art is much more subtle, and is not amenable to such accurate analysis. If we may liken music to painting, we may, I think, compare the latter to the first three stages of this new language of music; but it can go no further. For that art must touch its audience through a palpable delineation of something more or less material; whereas music is of the stuff dreams are made of. It is hardly necessary to say, however, that our dreams are often much more poignant than the actual sensations caused by real occurrences would be. And it is because of this strange quality, I think, that dreams and music affect us in much the same manner.
The vital principle of Wagner's art was that he not only made startlingly vivid pictures in his music, but that he made the people in these pictures actually walk out of the frame and directly address the audience. In other words, his orchestra forms a kind of pictorial and psychological background from which his characters detach themselves and actually speak. If they speak falsely, the ever present orchestra, forming as it were a halo, unmercifully tears away the mask, like the mirror in old fairy tales.
In Wagner's operas, however, the intrusion of gross palpable machinery of the stage, as well as that of the actor's art, too often clouds the perfect working of this wonderful art conception. It is just this intrusion of materialism in Wagner's music dramas which constitutes their only weakness.
At this point I wish to insist upon the fact that in music it is always through declamation that the public is addressed most directly; not only that, but declamation is not necessarily tied by any of the fetters of the spoken word; nor is it subservient to any of the laws of articulate speech as we meet with them in language. This being admitted, I have no hesitation in giving my opinion that opera, or rather the music drama, is not the highest or the most perfect form of our art. The music drama as represented by Wagner (and he alone represents it) is the most perfect union of painting, poetry, and music imaginable to our nineteenth-century minds. But as regards representing the highest development of music, I find it too much hampered by the externals of art, necessary materialism in the production of palpable acts, and its enforced subjection to the laws that govern the spoken word.
Music is universal; Wagner's operas, by the inherent necessities of speech, are necessarily and irrevocably Germanic. “Les Maitres Chanteurs,” “The Dwarfs of Niebelheim,” “Elizabeta,” are impossibilities, whereas, for instance, Beethoven's “Eroica” labours under no such disadvantage. “Goodbye, My Dearest Swan,” invests part of “Lohengrin” with a certain grotesque colour that no one would ever dream of if there were no necessity for the singer to be tied down to the exigencies of palpable and certainly most materialistic language. The thought in itself is beautiful, but the necessity for the words drags it into the mud.
This certainly shows the difference between the language of music and what is called articulate speech, the purely symbolic and artificial character of the latter, and the direct, unhampered utterance of the former. Music can invariably heighten the poignancy of mere spoken words (which mean nothing in themselves), but words can but rarely, in fact I doubt whether they can ever, heighten the effect of musical declamation. To my mind, listening to Wagner's operas may be likened to watching a circus with three rings. That containing the music should have our closest attention, for it offers the most wonderful sounds ever imagined by any man. At the same time it is impossible for any human being not to have his attention often lured away to the other rings, in one of which Fricke's rams vie with the bird and the dragon; or where the phantom ship seems as firmly fixed as the practical rainbow, which so closely betrays the carpenter. In the other ring you can actually hear the dull jokes of Mimi and the Wanderer, or hear Walther explain that he has passed a comfortable night and slept well.
The music to these remarkable scenes, however, does not deign to stoop so low, but soars in wonderful poetry by itself, thus rejecting a union which, to speak in the jargon of our day, is one of the convincing symptoms of decadence; in other words, it springs from the same impulse as that which has produced the circus with three rings.
Summing up, I wish to state what I consider the four elements of music, namely, music that paints, music that suggests, music that actually speaks, and music that almost defies analysis, and is composed of the other three elements.
When we were considering the early works for harpsichord, I said that music could define certain things with quite reasonable exactitude. Just as in the Egyptian hieroglyphics a wavy line stands for water, so it can in music, with the latitude that it can mean anything in nature that we might consider of the same genre. Thus, the figure in Wagner's “Waldweben” means in that instance waves of air, and we know it by the context. His swaying figure of the “Prelude to Rheingold” is as plainly water as is the same figure used by Mendelssohn in his “Lovely Melusina.” Not that Wagner plagiarized, but that he and Mendelssohn recognized the definiteness of musical suggestions; which is more than proved by their adopting the same musical ideas to indicate the same things.
More indefinite is the analysis of our second type or element of music. The successful recognition of this depends not only upon the susceptibility of the hearer to delicate shades of sensation, but also upon the receptivity of the hearer and his power to accept freely and unrestrictedly the mood shadowed forth by the composer. Such music cannot be looked upon objectively. To those who would analyze it in such a manner it must remain an unknown language; its potency depends entirely upon a state of willing subjectivity on the part of the hearer.
The third element, as we know, consists of the spoken word or phrase; in other words, declamation. In this, however, the composer cuts loose entirely from what we call language. It is the medium of expression of emotion of every kind. It is not restricted to the voice or to any instrument, or even to our sharps, flats, and naturals. Through stress of emotion the sharps become sharper, with depression the flats become flatter, thus adding poignancy to the declamation. Being unfettered by words, this emotion has free rein. The last element, as I have said, is extremely difficult to define. It is declamation that suggests and paints at the same time. We find hardly a bar of Wagner's music in which this complex form of music is not present. Thus, the music dramas of Wagner, shorn of the fetters of the actual spoken word, emancipated from the materialism of acting, painting, and furniture, may be considered as the greatest achievement in our art, an art that does not include the spoken word called poetry, or painting, or sculpture, and most decidedly not architecture (form), but the essence of all these. What these aim to do through passive exterior influences, music accomplishes by actual living vibration.
In speaking of the power of suggestion in music I wish at the outset to make certain reservations. In the first place I speak for myself, and what I have to present is merely an expression of my personal opinion; if in any way these should incite to further investigation or discussion, my object will in part have been attained.
In the second place, in speaking of this art, one is seriously hampered by a certain difficulty in making oneself understood. To hear and to enjoy music seems sufficient to many persons, and an investigation as to the causes of this enjoyment seems to them superfluous. And yet, unless the public comes into closer touch with the tone poet than that objective state Which accepts with the ears what is intended for the spirit, which hears the sounds and is deaf to their import, unless the public can separate the physical pleasure of music from its ideal significance, our art, in my opinion, cannot stand on a sound basis.
The first step toward an appreciation of music should be taken in our preparatory schools. Were young people taught to distinguish between tones as between colours, to recognize rhythmic values, and were they taught so to use their voices as to temper the nasal tones of speech, in after life they would be better able to appreciate and cherish an art of which mere pleasure-giving sounds are but a very small part.
Much of the lack of independence of opinion about music arises from want of familiarity with its material. Thus, after dinner, our forefathers were accustomed to sing catches which were entirely destitute of anything approaching music.
Music contains certain elements which affect the nerves of the mind and body, and thus possesses the power of direct appeal to the public,—a power to a great extent denied to the other arts. This sensuous influence over the hearer is often mistaken for the aim and end of all music. With this in mind, one may forgive the rather puzzling remarks so often met with; for instance, those of a certain English bishop that “Music did not affect him either intellectually or emotionally, only pleasurably,” adding, “Every art should keep within its own realm; and that of music was concerned with pleasing combinations of sound.” In declaring that the sensation of hearing music was pleasant to him, and that to produce that sensation was the entire mission of music, the Bishop placed our art on a level with good things to eat and drink. Many colleges and universities of this land consider music as a kind of boutonnière.
This estimate of music is, I believe, unfortunately a very general one, and yet, low as it is, there is a possibility of building on such a foundation. Could such persons be made to recognize the existence of decidedly unpleasant music, it would be the first step toward a proper appreciation of the art and its various phases.
Mere beauty of sound is, in itself, purely sensuous. It is the Chinese conception of music that the texture of a sound is to be valued; the long, trembling tone-tint of a bronze gong, or the high, thin streams of sound from the pipes are enjoyed for their ear-filling qualities. In the Analects of Confucius and the writings of Mencius there is much mention of music, and “harmony of sound that shall fill the ears” is insisted upon. The Master said, “When the music maker Che first entered on his office, the finish with the Kwan Ts'eu was magnificent. How it filled the ears!” Père Amiot says, “Music must fill the ears to penetrate the soul.” Referring to the playing of some pieces by Couperin on a spinet, he says that Chinese hearers thought these pieces barbarous; the movement was too rapid, and did not allow sufficient time for them to enjoy each tone by itself. Now this is colour without form, or sound without music. For it to become music, it must possess some quality which will remove it from the purely sensuous. To my mind, it is in the power of suggestion that the vital spark of music lies.
Before speaking of this, however, I wish to touch upon two things: first, on what is called the science of music; and secondly, on one of the sensuous elements of music which enters into and encroaches upon all suggestion.
If one were called upon to define what is called the intellectual side of music, he would probably speak of “form,” contrapuntal design, and the like. Let us take up the matter of form. If by the word “form” our theorists meant the most poignant expression of poetic thought in music, if they meant by this word the art of arranging musical sounds into the most telling presentation of a musical idea, I should have nothing to say: for if this were admitted instead of the recognized forms of modern theorists for the proper utterance, we should possess a study of the power of musical sounds which might truly justify the title of musical intellectuality. As it is, the word “form” stands for what have been called “stoutly built periods,” “subsidiary themes,” and the like, a happy combination of which in certain prescribed keys was supposed to constitute good form. Such a device, originally based upon the necessities and fashions of the dance, and changing from time to time, is surely not worthy of the strange worship it has received. A form of so doubtful an identity that the first movement of a certain Beethoven sonata can be dubbed by one authority “sonata-form,” and by another “free fantasia,” certainly cannot lay claim to serious intellectual value.
Form should be a synonym for coherence. No idea, whether great or small, can find utterance without form, but that form will be inherent to the idea, and there will be as many forms as there are adequately expressed ideas. In the musical idea, per se, analysis will reveal form.
The term “contrapuntal development” is to most tone poets of the present day a synonym for the device of giving expression to a musically poetic idea. Per se, counterpoint is a puerile juggling with themes, which may be likened to high-school mathematics. Certainly the entire web and woof of this “science,” as it is called, never sprang from the necessities of poetic musical utterance. The entire pre-Palestrina literature of music is a conclusive testimony as to the non-poetic and even uneuphonious character of the invention.
In my opinion, Johann Sebastian Bach, one of the world's mightiest tone poets, accomplished his mission, not by means of the contrapuntal fashion of his age, but in spite of it. The laws of canon and fugue are based upon as prosaic a foundation as those of the rondo and sonata form; I find it impossible to imagine their ever having been a spur, or an incentive to poetic musical speech. Neither, pure tonal beauty, so-called “form,” nor what is termed the intellectual side of music (the art of counterpoint, canon, and fugue), constitutes a really vital factor in music. This narrows our analysis down to two things, namely, the physical effect of musical sound, and suggestion.
The simplest manifestations of the purely sensuous effect of sound are to be found in the savage's delight in noise. In the more civilized state, this becomes the sensation of mere pleasure in hearing pleasing sounds. It enters into folk song in the form of the “Scotch snap,” which is first cousin to the Swiss jodel, and is undoubtedly the origin of the skips of the augmented and (to a lesser degree) diminished intervals to be found in the music of many nations. It consists of the trick of alternating chest tones with falsetto. It is a kind of quirk in the voice which pleases children and primitive folk alike, a simple thing which has puzzled folklorists the world over.
The other sensuous influence of sound is one of the most powerful elements of music, and all musical utterance is involved with and inseparable from it. It consists of repetition, recurrence, periodicity.
Now this repetition may be one of rhythm, tone tint, texture, or colour, a repetition of figure or of pitch. We know that savages, in their incantation ceremonies, keep up a continuous drum beating or chant which, gradually increasing in violence, drives the hearers into such a state of frenzy that physical pain seems no longer to exist for them.
The value of the recurring rhythms and phrases of the march is well recognized in the army. A body of men will instinctively move in cadence with such music. The ever recurring lilt of a waltz rhythm will set the feet moving unconsciously, and as the energy of the repetition increases and decreases, so will the involuntary accompanying physical sympathy increase or decrease.
Berlioz jokingly tells a story of a ballet dancer who objected to the high pitch in which the orchestra played, and insisted that the music be transposed to a lower key. Cradle songs are fashioned on the same principle.
This sensuous sympathy with recurring sounds, rhythm, and pitch has something in common with hypnotism, and leads up to what I have called suggestion in music.
This same element in a modified form is made use of in poetry, for instance, in Poe's “Raven,”
Quoth the raven, nevermore,
and the repetition of colour in the same author's “Scarlet Death.” It is the mainspring (I will not call it the vital spark) of many so-called popular songs, the recipe for which is exceedingly simple. A strongly marked rhythmic figure is selected, and incessantly repeated until the hearer's body beats time to it. The well-known tunes “There'll Be a Hot Time,” etc., and “Ta-ra-ra, Boom-de-ay” are good examples of this kind of music.
There are two kinds of suggestion in music: one has been called tone-painting, the other almost evades analysis.
The term tone-painting is somewhat unsatisfactory, and reminds one of the French critic who spoke of a poem as “beautiful painted music.” I believe that music can suggest forcibly certain things and ideas as well as vague emotions encased in the so-called “form” and “science” of music.
If we wish to begin with the most primitive form of suggestion in music, we shall find it in the direct imitation of sounds in nature. We remember that Helmholtz, Hanslick, and their followers denied to music the power to suggest things in nature; but it was somewhat grudgingly admitted that music might express the emotions caused by them. In the face of this, to quote a well-known instance, we have the “Pastoral” symphony of Beethoven, with the thrush, cuckoo, and thunderstorm. The birds and the storm are very plainly indicated; but it is not possible for the music to be an expression of the emotions caused by them, for the very simple reason that no emotions are caused by the cuckoo and thrush, and those caused by thunderstorms range all the way from depression and fear to exhilaration, according to the personality of individuals.
That music may imitate any rhythmic sounds or melodic figure occurring in nature, hardly needs affirmation. Such devices may be accepted almost as quotations, and not be further considered here. The songs of birds, the sound made by galloping horses' feet, the moaning of the wind, etc., are all things which are part and parcel of the musical vocabulary, intelligible alike to people of every nationality. I need hardly say that increasing intensity of sound will suggest vehemence, approach, and its visual synonym, growth, as well as that decreasing intensity will suggest withdrawal, dwindling, and placidity.
The suggestion brought about by pattern is very familiar. It was one of the first signs of the breaking away from the conventional trammels of the contrapuntal style of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The first madrigal of Thomas Weelkes (1590) begins with the words, “Sit down,” and the musical pattern falls a fifth. The suggestion was crude, but it was caused by the same impulse as that which supplied the material for Wagner's “Waldweben,” Mendelssohn's “Lovely Melusina,” and a host of other works.
The fact that the pattern of a musical phrase can suggest kinds of motion may seem strange; but could we, for example, imagine a spinning song with broken arpeggios? Should we see a spear thrown or an arrow shot on the stage and hear the orchestra playing a phrase of an undulating pattern, we should at once realize the contradiction. Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner, Liszt, and practically everyone who has written a spinning song, has used the same pattern to suggest the turning of a wheel. That such widely different men as Wagner and Mendelssohn should both have adopted the same pattern to suggest undulating waves is not a mere chance, but clearly shows the potency of the suggestion.
The suggestion conveyed by means of pitch is one of the strongest in music. Vibrations increasing beyond two hundred and fifty trillions a second become luminous. It is a curious coincidence that our highest vibrating musical sounds bring with them a well-defined suggestion of light, and that as the pitch is lowered we get the impression of ever increasing obscurity. To illustrate this, I have but to refer you to the Prelude to “Lohengrin.” Had we no inkling as to its meaning, we should still receive the suggestion of glittering shapes in the blue ether.
Let us take the opening of the “Im Walde” symphony by Raff as an example; deep shadow is unmistakably suggested. Herbert Spencer's theory of the influence of emotion on pitch is well known and needs no confirmation. This properly comes under the subject of musical speech, a matter not to be considered here. Suffice it to say that the upward tendency of a musical phrase can suggest exaltation, and that a downward trend may suggest depression, the intensity of which will depend upon the intervals used. As an instance we may quote the “Faust” overture of Wagner, in which the pitch is used emotionally as well as descriptively. If the meaning I have found in this phrase seems to you far-fetched, we have but to give a higher pitch to the motive to render the idea absolutely impossible.
The suggestion offered by movement is very obvious, for music admittedly may be stately, deliberate, hasty, or furious, it may march or dance, it may be grave or flippant.
Last of all I wish to speak of the suggestion conveyed by means of tone-tint, the blending of timbre and pitch. It is essentially a modern element in music, and in our delight in this marvellous and potent aid to expression we have carried it to a point of development at which it threatens to dethrone what has hitherto been our musical speech, melody, in favour of what corresponds to the shadow languages of speech, namely, gesture and facial expression. Just as these shadow languages of speech may distort or even absolutely reverse the meaning of the spoken word, so can tone colour and harmony change the meaning of a musical phrase. This is at once the glory and the danger of our modern music. Overwhelmed by the new-found powers of suggestion in tonal tint and the riot of hitherto undreamed of orchestral combinations, we are forgetting that permanence in music depends upon melodic speech.
In my opinion, it is the line, not the colour, that will last. That harmony is a potent factor in suggestion may be seen from the fact that Cornelius was able to write an entire song pitched upon one tone, the accompaniment being so varied in its harmonies that the listener is deceived into attributing to that one tone many shades of emotion.
In all modern music this element is one of the most important. If we refer again to the “Faust” overture of Wagner, we will perceive that although the melodic trend and the pitch of the phrase carry their suggestion, the roll of the drum which accompanies it throws a sinister veil over the phrase, making it impressive in the extreme.
The seed from which our modern wealth of harmony and tone colour sprang was the perfect major triad. The raison d'être and development of this combination of tones belong to the history of music. Suffice it to say, that for some psychological reason this chord (with also its minor form) has still the same significance that it had for the monks of the Middle Ages. It is perfect. Every complete phrase, must end with it. The attempts made to emancipate music from the tyranny of this combination of sounds have been in vain, showing that the suggestion of finality and repose contained in it is irrefutable.
Now if we depart from this chord a sensation of unrest is occasioned which can only subside by a progression to another triad or a return to the first. With the development of our modern system of tonality we have come to think tonally; and a chord lying outside of the key in which a musical thought is conceived will carry with it a sense of confusion or mystery that our modern art of harmony and tone colour has made its own. Thus, while any simple low chords accompanying the first notes of Raff's “Im Walde” symphony, given by the horns and violins, would suggest gloom pierced by the gleams of light, the remoteness of the chords to the tonality of C major gives a suggestion of mystery; but as the harmony approaches the triad the mystery dissolves, letting in the gleam of sunlight suggested by the horn.
Goldmark's overture to “Sakuntala” owes its subtle suggestion to much the same cause. Weber made use of it in his “Freischütz,” Wagner in his “Tarnhelm” motive, Mendelssohn in his “Midsummer Night's Dream,” Tchaïkovsky in the opening of one of his symphonies.