Style in musical art

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Contents

PAGE

^ I. Forecast ...... 1

Sphere of style — Sources of differences of style — Properties of material and their influences — External influences and their reactions — Complications — Reasons of simplicity of style in early Church Music — Influence of the connection of Music with words^Influence of the stage — Differences between Operatic and Instrumental Styles — Racial predispositions — Qualities of style illustrative of sincerity of intention — Style in great and small things — Style and contents — The ideal of style^Tests.

Index To Illustrations ... 439

FOEECAST

{Oxford Inaugural Ledwre, March 7, 1900.)

One can hardly think of style in anything whatever without being importunately haunted by the familiar French saying, which conveys to the superficial mind the view that manner counts for more than man. In any case "Le style c'est I'homme" compares unfavourably with the more ancient saying, " By their fruits ye shall know them," but it is possible that it was not intended to attribute so much importance to externals as the aptitude of men for misunderstanding things which are too tersely stated leads them to infer. There are thousands of things by which a man's nature may be gauged besides style. Everything that is part of him may in some sense be a gauge of him. Just as a great naturalist has been said to be able to reconstruct some unknown animal from a single bone, men say a man's nature can be told by the shape of his nose or his hand, or the expression of his mouth, by his walk, by the tone of his voice. Everything may serve the quick-witted as a basis of inference, though all may not be equally trustworthy. Style is mainly

2 STYLE IN MUSICAL ART i

an external attribute — a means to an end, and in no wise comparable to actual qualities of character or action in man, or the thought embodied in what is said in poetry, or the idea embodied in art. But, at the same time, neither man nor art can do without it. It is present in everything which has real vitality, and in every moment of art's existence, and as it is infinitely variable in relation to the conditions in which artistic work is presented, it serves as a very comprehensive means of estimating the genuineness either of man or of artistic work.

Difierences of style are the outcome of the instinct for adaptation. In art the most perfect style is that /which is most perfectly adapted to all the conditions [ofjpresentment. Many different factors minister to its development. The influences which are most obvious are the properties of material. If a work has to be executed in stone the particular qualities of the material necessitate a style of art difierent from that of works executed in iron. The efiects \ which can aptly be produced in one material are quite 'different from those which can be produced in another. The result of trying to imitate in one kind of material effects which can be produced in another which has quite different properties is either stupid or false in proportion to the dexterity of the worker ; and style is either gratifying or repulsive in proportion to its just relation to its conditions. There is a technique of life also, as weU as of art, and the style of every section of society varies in accordance with its conditions ; and the outcome of attempts to adopt a style belonging to one branch of society in a branch of society whose conditions of life are altogether different is a familiar form of what is called vulgarity, f

When we come to apply these considerations to music we find circumstances of the same nature. In music the simplest parallel to the differences of material in plastic arts lies in the varieties of means by which music is to be performed and made appreciable to sense. All music which is worthy of the name must in the nature of things be written to be performed by instruments or voices ; and they all have their particular idiosyncrasies. Organs have their special aptitudes and their special inaptitudes ; and the music which is written for them, if it is to attain to any degree of artistic perfection, must be based upon a recognition of the fact. Violins have their special powers of expression and effect, and their special limitations ; horns have theirs, and trombones theirs. Voices can do certain things that instruments cannot do, and all instruments can do things which voices cannot do. There is, as it were, a dialect' appropriate to each instrument and each class of| voice ; and there even are ideas which can be better; expressed in one dialect than another ; and the employment of any particular means of utterance] whether violins, pianofortes, organs, hautboys, bassoons, voices, harps, or trumpets, is only justified | when they are used for passages which can be given with fullest effect by them. '

If there is a style for each individual member of the orchestra, even more essentially is there a style for the orchestra as a whole. It is capable of almost unlimited complexities of rhythm and figure, of varieties of colour which are countless. In power of tone it is tremendous, in depth of expression infinite. To venture to put such an engine of power into motion at all seems to be courting responsibility.

And to put it into motion to utter things which would be quite adequately expressed by a pianoforte or a set of voices is like calling the House of Lords together to cook a homely omelet. Few people hear orchestral music often enough to realize what the highest instrumental style is. But any one who has any sense of the adequate adaptation of technique to material or means of performance realizes the absurdity of choral music written in the style of a brass band or organ music which is mere pianoforte music or orchestral music in disguise. But the hurry and lack of concentration of modern life, and the desire of purveyors of music to ingratiate a public which has neither discrimination nor education, and the habit of playing such a vast amount of arrangements, all tend to dull people's sense of the essential meaning of musical style, and to make composers miss the higher artistic opportunities in the urgent desire to gratify the ephemeral whims of fashion.

But style is far from being regulated only by the , essential peculiarities of the instruments by which the music is to be performed. Every detail in the situation for which the music is intended, the attitude of mind to which it is to appeal, and the circumstances under which it is to be performed, have their bearing upon the methods suitable to be employed, and therefore upon the style. When music is intended for domestic consumption it entails a totally different style from that which would be suited to some great public function. It entails its being pure enough to live with, and rich enough to sustain constant interest, and a level of thought more near to the contemplative than to the active, while the music of the public function must be stirring and brilliant, direct and forcible, and attains j its highest standard when it is elevating and noble in diction. Even in characteristic deteriorations the diflferences of style peep out. The risks of the domestic style are sentimentality and languorous and unhealthy sensuosity, and the risk of the public-rejoicing style is blatancy.

Of style in relation to attitude of mind and mood that of the old Church music is probably most characteristic. Its contemplative and devotional character, its quietude and inwardness, were partly owing to the limited development of artistic technique before the latter part of the sixteenth century, and to the fact that no other style was sufficiently developed to distract the minds of composers. The effect of such circumstances and of the attitude of submission to the authority of the Church was to produce a style so subtly consistent and so perfectly regulated that hardly anything in the range of modern art can compare with it. The instant true secular music came into being this perfect aptness was doomed. The secular phraseology could not be kept out of it, and in no great space of time submerged the devotional element, and the hybrid which resulted was of the most mixed quality, sometimes even divinely beautiful, and at others grossly repulsive; sometimes vibrating with human love and tenderness, and sometimes redolent of the most nauseous vulgarities of the opera. But in either case the style was7 mainly governed by the attitude of mind to which/ the composers intended to appeal. __ — I

Conspicuous differences of style are induced by different conditions of presentment. This is obviously the case in respect of music which is associated with words and music intended to be performed without them. In music associated with words it is absolutely inevitable that the mood and expression of phrase and figure and melody and harmony, and even of form, must be in close and intimate relation with them. The more perfect the instinct of the composer for the musical equivalents of the sentiments expressed by the words, the more perfect wiU be the style ; and the more perfect the invention which can dispose of the ingredients in an efi'ective and original manner, the more complete the work of art. The composer has the moods and details of expression supplied him, and the hearers understand the music through its relation to the words. But in music that is intended to be performed without words the composer is himself answerable for the moods he presents, and he has to find inherent justification for every bar he writes in some artistic, intellectual, emotional, or aesthetic principle. To write music for instruments in the style of vocal music is doubly fatuous ; for it is inadequate on the grounds that not only can instruments do so much more than voices, but that the absence of words leaves the music entirely without ostensible reason for existence, when there is little or no intrinsic interest in the workmanship.

Even in the various departments of word-wed and wordless music there are infinite shades of variety of style. The music of the theatre absolutely demands a method and style difi'erent from that appropriate to the vocal music of the concert-room, and from the style of the domestic art song. The dramatic music of the theatre derives both advantages and disadvantages from its associations with scenery and action. For, while the mind is distracted in one respect, and pays no attention to artistic qualities which would be prominent in a quartet or a symphony, it is helped in others which would be out of place in instrumental music. The listener would probably miss the development of figures and the subtleties of abstract design if he attended to the drama, but would be quick to feel the intention and purpose of progressions, harmonies, resolutions, and successions of keys which, though unintelligible without the words, become vividly effective from the situations with which they are associated and the development of passion which they portray. In songs which are not intended for the theatre, the qualities and methods used in quartets and sonatas are much more appropriate, because the mind is less distracted from the music itself, and has more attention to spare for interesting constructive features and subtleties of detail. In the j ust apportionment of style for emotional and dramatic effects in theatrical music and domestic" music the resources are so different that they can hardly be judged on the same footing. People who judge of what is dramatic in the light of what is histrionic would hesitate to call anything dramatic which was in the true style of a solo song. But indeed there is a just way of expressing tragedy, pathos or despair in the style suited to solo song, and a just but different way of expressing ' it for the stage. The opportunities of the one are moreT analytical and subtle, and of the other more directj and sensational. It is by no means essential that a thing shall be in histrionic style in order to justify a claim to being dramatic, and the same is the case with the song style — for both are limited by the more delicate instinct of highly organized artistic beings in such a way that much which would be admirable in one style is positively vulgar in the other.

But if the provinces of two different kinds of vocal music are so strongly distinct, the differences between the style and even the material of operatic music and pure instrumental music are more striking still. The differences of method are so pronounced that the histrionic and the absolute seem to represent distinct territories in the musical art ; and most people who call themselves musical live almost entirely in one of them, and make little effort to appreciate the good features of the other. It cannot be said that either party has all the right on their side. It is quite true that people who are very fond of the opera are most frequently not musical at all in any sense. But there are a good many who really judge it from the artistic point of view and understand it, and are perfectly justified in objecting to operas written in the style and with the methods belonging to instrumental music.

On the other hand, it may fairly be said that men of high artistic taste and perception, habituated to the purer style of absolute instrumental music, are not altogether liberal in their judgment of operatic music, and are not sufficiently ready to admit what is admirably devised for its conditions. They are apt to fall into the misconception that because certain principles of form and procedure are almost indispensable to instrumental music, any music in which they do not find them is necessarily bad. In this connection it is impossible not to think of the violent antipathy which Wagner's style produced in men of intelligence and cultivated taste. His mature style was certainly as strongly different from that of composers of instrumental music as it is possible to conceive. It was the product of a disposition more essentially dramatic and poetically imaginative than musical. It repelled musicians who appreciated highly the time-honoured methods of art which had been consecrated by the greatest masters of instrumental music, because the composer aimed, with an instinct of genius never before shown in such a degree, at a style which was essentially adapted to the conditions of the stage ; with all the distractions of the acting, the scenic display, and the interest of the drama. It repelled, because the composer in the instinctive search after a new ideal of style disregarded all the conventions which had grown up in connection with the only branches of art which had hitherto been really mastered.

It disregarded the classical rules of resolution of discords, progressions of chords, conventions of design, and clearness of tonality. Yet to the great mass of cultivated people his ideal of style proved convincing. He at all events did not make the mistake of supposing that his principles of procedure were applicable to independent instrumental music of any kind. That mistake was left to his imitators. The unsuitableness of the operatic style for instrumental music is obvious to all people of taste and artistic intelligence; but in truth the employment in operas of the style which has been developed for pure instrumental music is just as futile. In both cases it is the employment of resources which have been developed for one group of conditions in conditions to which they are unsuited. There is no reason why operatic music should not be just as well provided with beauty and interest of detail as instrumental music. Coarseness and commonness of texture are not confined to operatic music, though found there more frequently than in other branches of art. There is plenty of flabby and conventional instrumental music, which the world has gladly let drop and be forgotten. The difi"erence of style which is entailed by the bestowal of loving care on details or indifference to them is more a question of disposition than a necessary basis of contrast between operatic art and instrumental art. The difference is illustrated in the widest sense by the broad distinctions between the tastes of the southern and the northern I races.

The southern races seem to delight in what us voluptuous, and in the elements of art which 'appeal to sense. They set no great store on purity, and enjoy their art with indifferent promiscuity rather than with love and reverence. The northern races treat their art with more respect, and look for qualities of virginal purity upon which they can j dwell with constant loving contemplation. The southerns delight in broad sweeping effects, in which details are of little consequence. The northerns, without losing anything in general imposing effect, love to make every part of their artistic work vital \ and interesting, so that nowhere shall commonness and I the insincerity of indolence or convention be visible. The effect is shown in a very interesting phase by the story of organ music in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Italians set the ball rolling in grand style with the help of many noble composers, of whom Frescobaldi was chief. But deterioration soon set in when a facile style was adopted, in which the details were merely conventional formulas ; and the southern school of organists came to worse than nothing ; while the northern organists, putting their whole souls into every part of their work, rose higher and higher, and attained first to the luxury of fancy and ricliness of appropriate detail which is shown in the works of Buxtehude, and ultimately to the supreme ideal of the highest possibilities of art in the work of J. S. Bach.

The work carried out with real love and devotion has a higher and more permanent interest than work done under a more vague and uncritical impulse. The difference in such respects between the southern and the northern attitude is well illustrated in the respective styles of Handel and Bach. Bach's style was evolved in the intense devotion to personal ideals. Though he studied all schools of art and absorbed from all quarters such principles as were available for his peculiar artistic disposition, he always worked with the true northern bias to present his thoughts with perfection of detail as well as of general impression ; and the subordinate features of his work are therefore in the highest degree interesting and rich ; while Handel, following general public taste, which was mainly Italian, aimed at greatness of general impression, at what have been described as cosmic effects, and was often voluptuous in melody and conventional in phraseology, and his work presented much less interest in the details. Handel holds his own by sheer weight of greatness, but the works of a large number of lesser composers who have worked on the same lines and in the same style have deservedly fallen into complete oblivion.

Qualities of style are eminently illustrative of sincerity of intention. The periods in which men / wrote half-heartedly^ with no genuine personal intensity, prove in the end to be styleless. If the style is not distinctive, the product frequently proves to be intrinsically worthless. The truly great individual masters of style are such as we know to have been passionately in earnest, and deeply absorbed in the endeavour to attain an ideally perfect presentation of their thoughts. Beethoven and Bach, who had the most consistent degree of personal style, attained to it by infinite labour in pruning, rewriting, remodelling, and constant self-criticism. The composers who had phenomenal facility are by no means those whose style is most individual. Handel was individual in his greatness, but not in the manner of his diction. Mozart was pre-eminent in his sense of beauty, not in the originality of his manner. The most striking and persistent qualities are such as belong to the adamantine natures, not to those which are most easily malleable. The rugged manner of Carlyle cost himself and his friends untold misery ; and the powerfully distinctive style of Brahms must have cost him extraordinary concentration of faculty, even if he mended and pruned less than Bach and Beethoven. At the same time style cannot be gauged by the amount of individuality which is expressed by it, however much that compels conviction, for there are infinite shades of it which are good, so far as they are apposite.

As there is a style for the greatest things, so there is for the least. There is a style for the music hall, which of its kind may be good and consistent, as well as for the grandest works of art. A great deal of the low and repulsive vulgarity to be met with in such quarters arises from the fact that the true ratio of style has not been found. Even popular comic operas can be admirable when the true style has been found ; when they are repulsive it is mainly because the makers of them have no sense of style at all. And it would be absurd to consider the style of light art as of no consequence. There must be in all men's lives infinite degrees of mood, from serious to playful. It is a very poor nature that can never be gay ; but it is of great importance that the gaiety shall be of good and honest quality, and not degenerate into brutishness. And it seems to be even more important in this country than elsewhere. For almost the only English music which has been cordially welcomed by the great mass of average English people throughout the world is the music of farce and topsy-turvydom. It is probably the out- / come of that dislike of appearing to be pedantic and solemn, characteristic of certain classes, which causes them to refuse to take music anyhow but as a joke. Such taste in music is the counterpart of the habit of persiflage which has been justly attributed to a large section of upper-class wealthy society, which does not necessarily imply an incapacity for being serious and devoted, but a dislike of showing it. It is an afi"ectation of nonchalance which is really more dangerous in art than it is in everyday life. For the persistent habit of using an art, which is one of man's most sacred inventions, for mere trifling and fooling, is not only a degradation and an insult to the art, but is bound to produce deterioration of the standard of appreciation, and a lowering of the intention and faculty of composers. English people seem to have less quickness in perception of style than many other nations, especially in things musical. Hence the question of style in light things becomes of the more importance, since, owing to their predisposition for farcical and irresponsible music, lack of style will the more surely leave them wallowing in sheer unalloyed stupidity.

While insisting that style is a desirable and possible quality in every standard of art, it must be admitted that it is no positive criterion of the quality of the thoughts expressed in the style. The style can be no more than a criterion whether the thing is well expressed or no. Yet style is so closely interwoven with every moment of art's existence that a great thought is hardly separable from the style in which it is expressed ; and a great thought which comes from a full heart is almost sure to be expressed in a style which is consistently noble and dignified, whereas a thought that a man is only trying to make appear great is often betrayed by some triviality of detail, some glaring inconsistency of phraseology which betrays the mountebank or the

^charlatan.

The greatest achievement in point of style is to convey the idea which belongs to the artist or the speaker in its widest significance in the exact terms — no more and no less — which will make it take the most complete hold of the human mind. The perfect

"^tyle does not weary with superfluous explanations, nor leave in doubt by lack of decisiveness. It anticipates how far a suggestive word will carry the mind, and how much can be left out. It pfeys with associations, with relations of terms to one another, with the lilt of rhythm and the infinite variety of tone. The resources of artistic appeal to men's sensibihties and intelligence seem almost inexhaustible. But there is a very important consideration, which restricts the range of what is available, and that is the vital urgency of consistency. It is the misuse of resources which is mainly responsible for vulgarity : the hodge-podge of phraseology belonging to the

I FORECAST 15

pulpit and the street; tlie jumble of symphonic style and the histrionic. Some methods of art are more capable than others of absorbing a great variety of traits drawn from many different quarters. The greater somewhat easily absorbs the less. But yet the greater is soon impaired and its nobility is tarnished by the unseasonable utterance of a triviality. An inconsistency of style may be an accident. But if the accidents recur what seemed to be an accident becomes an essential. Many gifted composers have gone so far as to give the world a noble phrase which seems to have the qualities of fine music. But the impulse does not last. Lack of fibre, lack of the power of persistence, prevents the maintenance of the high level of thought, and then comes the inevitable make-up — mere phrases decked in futile and superfluous ornament ; tricks of art which have no real relation to the mood at first suggested. The incapacity to maintain the standard of style betrays the unsubstantiality of the initiatory spasm of inspiration which seemed to promise such great things. The great minds maintain the relevancy of the mood and the style. There is no variableness nor shadow of turning in the rugged Promethean spirit of the first movement of the Ninth Symphony, no shufiiing make-believe to mar the fiery concentration of the first movement of the Symphony in C minor, no mundane irrelevance to weaken the triumphant sweep as of the singing of an infinite heavenly host in the " Sanctus " of the B minor Mass. The consistent elevation of the style is equal to the depth and fervour of the thought.

Things which are expedient with one group of conditions are absolutely inexpedient with others.

16 STYLE IN MUSICAL ART i

There is a style which is apt for things mundane, and a style which is apt for things devotional; a style for things pathetic, a style for things gay. Trivial phraseology is out of place in times of mourning, tragic violence in times of merriment. And as the style which is inconsistent with the mood makes the product ring false, so is it with inconsistency in relation to conditions of presentment — the operatic work written in the style of absolute music, the instrumental music written in the histrionic style. There may be positive vulgarity in thought, but the greater part of vulgarity arises from misapplication of style. While even things little and light may be made admirable by dexterous consistency of style, the greatest inspirations cannot dispense with it.

In the end style is the sum of the appearances of all the factors which make up a work of art or any living thing. It is the sum of the outward manifestations of qualities. The style of an apple tree is the sum of the appearances produced by the shape, colour, texture, and set of the foliage, the ruddy red of the fruit, and its relation to the colour and character of the foliage, and the angles of the ramifications of the branches. The style of an orange tree is quite different. The glossy leaf, the bright yellow fruit, the scent, the method of growth of the boughs, present quite a difierent effect, and suggest a different climate and different conditions and surroundings. We can hardly imagine such a monstrosity in nature as a tree made up half in the style of an apple tree and half of an orange. The absurdity of gathering grapes of thorns or figs of thistles is self-evident. Yet the law of consistency in art is just as essential

I FORECAST 17

and as logical as in things organic. The worst fault in style is the mixing up of types which are especially apt to different groups of conditions, different situations, and different attitudes of mind. A perfect work of art is a perfectly organized presentation of an original unity. If grapes are found on one bough and figs on another, men may guess that it is a sham. The perfect adaptation to conditions entails perfect unity of style, and it may be inferred conversely that complete perfection of style is to be found not in intrinsic qualities but in perfect and relevant consistency.

II Choeal Style

To people wlio find the art of tlie present quite sufl&ciently enjoyable and adequate to supply all their needs, the attitude of another sort of people who appear to be superfluously enthusiastic about the products of the past is inevitably rather puzzling. And when these unaccountable people lay much stress upon the discovery of details which to the majority do not seem worth knowing at all, it conduces to some gentle mockery. Indeed it may be fairly admitted that the competition to discover things which are unknown to other explorers makes such people a little undiscriminating ; and stress is sometimes laid upon trifles in a manner which shows that their discoverers do not fully understand their meaning. But it may well be that if ardent lovers of early stages of art and poetry had not the predisposition to over-estimate the importance of details, the true quahties which distinguish such art and poetry could not be adequately and truthfully interpreted and reinfused with life.