The author of the "Remarks on the Essay on Musical Expression" was the aforementioned Dr. W. Hayes, and although the learned doctor's pamphlet seems to have died a natural death, some idea of its strictures may be gained from Avison's reply. The criticisms are rather too technical to be426 of interest to the general reader, but one is given here to show how gentlemanly a temper Mr. Avison possessed when he was under fire. His reply runs "His first critique, and, I think, his masterpiece, contains many circumstantial, but false and virulent remarks on the first allegro of these concertos, to which he supposes I would give the name of fugue. Be it just what he pleases to call it I shall not defend what the public is already in possession of, the public being the most proper judge. I shall only here observe, that our critic has wilfully, or ignorantly, confounded the terms fugue and imitation, which latter is by no means subject to the same laws with the former.

"Had I observed the method of answering the accidental subjects in this allegro, as laid down by our critic in his remarks, they must have produced most shocking effects; which, though this mechanic in music, would, perhaps, have approved, yet better judges might, in reality, have imagined I had known no other art than that of the spruzzarino." There is a nice independence about this that would indicate Mr. Avison to be at least an aspirant in the right direction in musical composition. His criticism of Handel, too, at a time when the world was divided between enthusiasm for427 Handel and enthusiasm for Buononcini, shows a remarkably just and penetrating estimate of this great genius.

"Mr. Handel is, in music, what his own Dryden was in poetry; nervous, exalted, and harmonious; but voluminous, and, consequently, not always correct. Their abilities equal to every thing; their execution frequently inferior. Born with genius capable of soaring the boldest flights; they have sometimes, to suit the vitiated taste of the age they lived in, descended to the lowest. Yet, as both their excellencies are infinitely more numerous than their deficiencies, so both their characters will devolve to latest posterity, not as models of perfection, yet glorious examples of those amazing powers that actuate the human soul."

On the whole, Mr. Avison's "little book" on Musical Expression is eminently sensible as to the matter and very agreeable in style. He hits off well, for example, the difference between "musical expression" and imitation.

"As dissonances and shocking sounds cannot be called Musical Expression, so neither do I think, can mere imitation of several other things be entitled to this name, which, however, among the generality of mankind hath often obtained it. Thus, the gradual rising428 or falling of the notes in a long succession is often used to denote ascent or descent; broken intervals, to denote an interrupted motion; a number of quick divisions, to describe swiftness or flying; sounds resembling laughter, to describe laughter; with a number of other contrivances of a parallel kind, which it is needless here to mention. Now all these I should chuse to style imitation, rather than expression; because it seems to me, that their tendency is rather to fix the hearer's attention on the similitude between the sounds and the things which they describe, and thereby to excite a reflex act of the understanding, than to affect the heart and raise the passions of the soul.

"This distinction seems more worthy our notice at present, because some very eminent composers have attached themselves chiefly to the method here mentioned; and seem to think they have exhausted all the depths of expression, by a dextrous imitation of the meaning of a few particular words, that occur in the hymns or songs which they set to music. Thus, were one of these gentlemen to express the following words of Milton,

429it is highly probable, that upon the word divide, he would run a division of half a dozen bars; and on the subsequent part of the sentence, he would not think he had done the poet justice, or risen to that height of sublimity which he ought to express, till he had climbed up to the very top of his instrument, or at least as far as the human voice could follow him. And this would pass with a great part of mankind for musical expression; instead of that noble mixture of solemn airs and various harmony, which indeed elevates our thoughts, and gives that exquisite pleasure, which none but true lovers of harmony can feel." What Avison calls "musical expression," we call to-day "content." And thus Avison "tenders evidence that music in his day as much absorbed heart and soul then as Wagner's music now." It is not unlikely that this very passage may have started Browning off on his argumentative way concerning the question: how lasting and how fundamental are the powers of musical expression.

The poet's memory goes back a hundred years only to reach "The bands-man Avison whose little book and large tune had led him the long way from to-day."

430

CHARLES AVISON

V

Having stated the problem that confronts him, namely, the change of fashion in music, the poet boldly goes on to declare that there is no truer truth obtainable by man than comes of music, because it does give direct expression to the moods of the soul, yet there is a hitch that balks her of full triumph, namely the musical form in which these moods are expressed does not stay fixed. This statement is enriched by a digression upon the meaning of the soul.

VI

VII

Then follows his explanation of the "hitch," which necessitates a comparison with the other arts. His contention is that art adds nothing to the knowledge of the mind. It simply moulds into a fixed form elements already known which before lay loose and dissociated, it therefore does not really create. But there is one realm, that of feeling, to which the arts never succeed in giving per434manent form though all try to do it. What is it they succeed in getting? The poet does not make the point very clear, but he seems to be groping after the idea that the arts present only the phenomena of feeling or the image of feeling instead of the reality. Like all people who are appreciative of music, he realizes that music comes nearer to expressing the spiritual reality of feeling than the other arts, and yet music of all the arts is the least permanent in its appeal.

VIII

The poet makes no attempt to give any reason why music should be so ephemeral in its appeal. He merely refers to the development of harmony and modulation, nor does it seem to enter his head that there can be any question about the appeal being eph437emeral. He imagines the possibility of resuscitating dead and gone music with modern harmonies and novel modulations, but gives that up as an irreverent innovation. His next mood is a historical one; dead and gone music may have something for us in a historical sense, that is, if we bring our life to kindle theirs, we may sympathetically enter into the life of the time.

X

XI

The really serious conclusion of the poem amounts to a doctrine of relativity in art and not only in art but in ethics and religion. It is a statement in poetry of the prevalent thought of the nineteenth century, of which the most widely known exponent was Herbert Spencer. The form in which every truth manifests itself is partial and therefore will pass, but the underlying truth, the absolute which unfolds itself in form after form is eternal. Every manifestation in form, according to Browning, however, has also its infinite value in relation to the truth which is preserved through it.

XII

As to the questions why music does not give feeling immortality through sound, and why it should be so ephemeral in its appeal, there are various things to be said. It is just possible that it may soon come to be recognized that the psychic growth of humanity is more perfectly reflected in music than any where else. Ephemeralness may be predicated of culture-music more certainly than of folk-music, why? Because culture-music often has occupied itself more with the technique than with the content, while folk-music, being the spontaneous expression of feeling must have content. Folk-music, it is true, is simple, but if it be genuine in its feeling I doubt whether it ever loses its power to move. Therefore, in folk-music is possibly made permanent simple states of feeling. Now in culture-music, the development has constantly been442 in the direction of the expression of the ultimate spiritual reality of emotions. Music is now actually trying to accomplish what Browning demands of it:

This is true no matter what the emotion may be. Hate may have its "eidolon" as well as love. Above all arts, music has the power of raising evil into a region of the artistically beautiful. Doubt, despair, passion, become blossoms plucked by the hand of God when transmuted in the alembic of the brain of genius—which is not saying that he need experience any of these passions himself. In fact, it is his power of perceiving the eidolon of beauty in modes of passion or emotion not his own that makes him the great genius.

It is doubtless true that whenever in culture-music there has really been content aroused by feeling, no matter what the stage of technique reached, that music retains its power to move. It is also highly probably that in the443 earlier objective phases of music, even the contemporary audiences were not moved in the sense that we should be moved to-day. The audiences were objective also and their enthusiasm may have been aroused by merely the imitative aspects of music as Avison called them. It is certainly a fact that content and form are more closely linked in music than in any other art. Suppose, however, we imagine the development of melody, counterpoint, harmony, modulation, etc., to be symbolized by a series of concrete materials like clay bricks, silver bricks, gold bricks, diamond bricks; a beautiful thought might take as exquisite a form in bricks of clay as it would in diamond bricks, or diamond bricks might be flung together without any informing thought so that they would attract only the thoughtless by their glitter. But it also follows that, with the increase in the kinds of bricks, there is an increase in the possibilities for subtleties in psychic expression, therefore music to-day is coming nearer and nearer to the spiritual reality of feeling. It requires the awakened soul that Maeterlinck talks about, that is, the soul alive to the spiritual essences of things to recognize this new realm which composers are bringing to us in music.

There are always, at least three kinds of444 appreciators of music, those who can see beauty only in the masters of the past, those who can see beauty only in the last new composer, and those who ecstatically welcome beauty past, present and to come. These last are not only psychically developed themselves, but they are able to retain delight in simpler modes of feeling. They may be raised to a seventh heaven of delight by a Bach fugue played on a clavichord by Mr. Dolmetsch, feeling as if angels were ministering unto them, or to a still higher heaven of delight by a Tschaikowsky symphony or a string quartet of Grieg, feeling that here the seraphim continually do cry, or they may enter into the very presence of the most High through some subtly exquisite and psychic song of an American composer, for some of the younger American composers are indeed approaching "Truth's very heart of truth," in their music.

On the whole, one gets rather the impression that the poet has here tackled a problem upon which he did not have great insight. He passes from one mood to another, none of which seem especially satisfactory to himself, and concludes with one of the half-truths of nineteenth-century thought. It is true as far as it goes that forms evolve, and it is a good truth to oppose to the martinets of settled445 standards in poetry, music and painting; it is also true that the form is a partial expression of a whole truth, but there is the further truth that, let a work of art be really a work of genius, and the form as well as the content touches the infinite; that is, we have as Browning says in a poem already quoted, "Bernard de Mandeville," the very sun in little, or as he makes Abt Vogler say of his music, the broken arc which goes to the formation of the perfect round, or to quote still another poem of Browning's, "Cleon," the perfect rhomb or trapezoid that has its own place in a mosaic pavement.

XV

XVI

Another English musician, Arthur Chappell, was the inspiration of a graceful little sonnet written by the poet in an album which was presented to Mr. Chappell in recognition of his popular concerts in London. Browning was a constant attendant at these. It gives a448 true glimpse of the poet in a highly appreciative mood:

THE FOUNDER OF THE FEAST

1884