Studies in modern music

Front matter

fEcToR. Berlioz Robert" Schumann fticHARi) Wagner

Cornell University Library ML 390.H13 v 1

Studies in modern ..^"f' Ja.

Contents

MUSIC AND MUSICAL CRITICISM : A DISCOURSE ON METHOD

CHAP. PAGE

I. — THE CONDITIONS OF THE PROBLEM, . . 3

II Principles Of Musical Judgment

First, and most essential, is the Principle of Vitality. The Composer, in one word, must be the parent of his ideas, not their fabricator. In the truest Art the thought is conceived spontaneously, by a single creative impulse, and though the artist may spend much subsequent labour upon its development or presentation, yet the labour is but the nurture and training of the living thing, not the birth-pang that gives it life. Socrates could learn nothing from the Athenian Poets as to their method of production : ' They seemed,' he says, ' to write by a divine madness and enthusiasm.' Goethe could give no account of his Torquato Tasso except that it was ' bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.' And if we consider the white heat at which Shelley wrote, or Blake painted, or Schubert composed, we shall realise that there is something unconscious, something almost passive in the attitude of genius towards the idea that it expresses. The creative faculty, in short, is intuitive, not ratiocinative.

This by no means precludes the other factor in the case — the necessity of skill and trouble in the phrasing of the thought, and still more in its extension and treatment. Beethoven, as is well known, often tried three or four versions of a theme before he found the particular shape that suited him ; but those versions were simply successive embodiments of an idea that was true and vital from the beginning. Again, in an elaborate and complicated work like a symphony or a sonata, there are many occasions for the use of judgment or selection, or other deliberative faculties, but their function is entirely subordinate to the original intuition, from the results of which alone they obtain their credentials. The Athenian Poets who answered Socrates so ill knew that there were certain laws of form to which their tragedies were subject ; and knew also that no analysis of those laws could ever reveal the difference between work that was first-rate and work that was not. No doubt all artists, by long practice in their craft, acquire such facility of expression that they can at any time produce something ; no doubt, also, a few yield to the temptation, and vex the world with pot-boilers and pieces d occasion: but in so doing they manifestly offer an unworthy gift, and receive in exchange a transitory reward. ' If poems do not possess life,' as the shades of Landor's critics told Plato, ' it would be but a paradox to accredit them with immortality.'

The distinction, after all, is readily enough admitted in the other Arts. Everyone recognises that there is a difference between poetry and verse, and that the difference resides not in the skill of rhyme or phrase, but in the vitality and depth of thought. It is precisely the same with Music. In a perfect scheme of criticism, compositions could be arranged into two classes, of which the second resembles the first as little as a clockwork automaton resembles a man.

So far this may seem to deal with the matter exclusively from the Composer's point of view. He will know whether he is being carried away under the stress of inspiration, or is 'beating his music out' with no higher object than to make his name, and fill his pockets, but how is the world at large to decide ? What is this vitality, and how are we to discover its presence? Life in the physical world implies certain definite characteristics by which it can be determined: if, then, 'life' in the artistic world be anything more than an empty metaphor, it must also have marks or qualities sufficient to ensure its recognition. It would merely insult the reader to make the whole difference between true and false Art depend on a principle of which no account can be given.

Now in the physical world it is impossible to define life. We can tell that it is not expressible in terms of chemistry, for living and dead protoplasm are chemically identical, and we are therefore driven to the conclusion that it is an original simple faculty incapable of analysis. But at the same time we have fairly accurate tests for determining its presence. The distinction between organic and inorganic holds good, and science has little difficulty in observing these broad lines of classification. In other words, though we cannot tell what life is, we know enough about its phenomena to make our distinction of 'living' and 'not living' reasonably secure. Similarly it may be impossible in the artistic world to give a logical definition of vitality, but there is no difficulty in supplying a test by which we can detect it. A work of Art is living if it bears throughout the impress of its maker's personality : it is dead if we can trace its true inspiration to an external source.

Every artist has his own manner of thought, and no two artistic characters are alike. If, then, the work be really part of a man's self it will reproduce his features, it will speak with his voice. ' Originality,' says Ruskin, ' is not newness, it is genuineness.'

Thus the work of a true Composer forms one organic whole which differs essentially from that of his predecessors or his contemporaries. Even in the old contrapuntal days, when men were bound by a common method, the distinctions are real and unmistakable ; much more in the freer atmosphere of the present time. Schumann, Wagner, Dvorak have as little in common with each other as Bastien- Lepage with Meissonier, or Keats with Browning. Each learns at first hand a portion of Divine truth, , and, according to the measure of his capacity, translates it for our understanding. Each speaks out of the abundance of his heart, and brings us a message which it is his alone to conceive and formulate. No doubt all musicians are influenced at first by the phraseology of the times in which they work, but, except for rare instances of quotation, they employ it solely to express their own thoughts, and discard it as soon as they have reached maturity. In any case a Composer is estimated by what he creates, not by what he borrows.

In like manner the primary test of bad Art is its want of genuineness. It is deliberate, artificial, imitative, the lifeless result of forces wholly external. At best it may show the same skill of workmanship as Ausonius' cento from Virgil or the Empress Eudocia's from Homer : at worst it degenerates into a mere patchwork of incongruous phrases, gathered together without love, without intelligence, and sometimes without even the common honesty of the artisan. The ephemeral ballads and dances, which appear for a season and then vanish to their appropriate limbo, are to be condemned not because they are trivial, for there is room in Music even for triviality, but because they have nothing to say to us which has not been better said before. Our waltz writers draw upon Strauss and Chopin for their rhythms, and give us for melody half-remembered echoes of Schumann or Mendelssohn. Our compilers of ballads would indeed be in evil case if it were not for the Volkslieder and the great treasures of Song. Not that they consciously put the Classics under contribution ; but having no inceptive force of imagination, they fall back upon memory as its substitute, and decorate their 'crazy quilt' with the mutilated fragments of a Master's weaving.

Music, then, to be worthy of serious regard, must stand as the outcome of its composer's character, and primarily of his original imaginative power. Now there are four ways in which a composition can recall to us the reminiscence of a previous work, and it is important that they should be classified, because on them our whole appreciation of musical plagiarism and musical vitality may be said to depend.

First, by pure coincidence. There are many phrases and cadences which represent the simplest way of saying an elementary thing, and so form a sort of common stock which Composers may employ without any reference to one another. The final bars of a movement, for instance, exhibit in many cases a form as traditional as are the ornamental epithets of the old ballads. Further, a natural thought may occur to two musicians without any suspicion of transference. The opening theme of the Eroica Symphonycoincides with a tune from an early Operetta of Mozart, which Beethoven had probably never heard and had certainly no intention of copying. The E-flat variation of Schumann's great duet for two pianofortes contains a passage melodically identical with one in the slow movement of Beethoven's third Rasoumoffsky Quartett. The ' subject ' of the chorus, ' And with his stripes,' in the Messiah appears also in No. 44 of Bach's Wohltemperirte Klavier and in the Kyrie of Mozart's Requiem. But all these examples prove nothing except the fact of resemblance. There is no reason for supposing that the one Composer imitated the other, for the thoughts are simple enough to have occurred to both spontaneously, and the similarity does not in any of these cases extend to the treatment. A more curious and subtle form of coincidence is found when two ideas, of a more elaborate or recondite nature, resemble each other in embodiment while differing wholly in spirit and feeling. The song ' Willst du dein Herz mir schenken ' ( attributed to Bach) is extraordinarily close in outline to the air for variations in Beethoven's Serenade Trio, and yet the two not only are alien from one another in character but belong to separate and distinct periods of musical development. So for a few notes the opening melody of Brahms' second Violin Sonata may recall the Preislied from Meistersinger, but they have really no more in common than a Botticelli has with a Tintoret. In such cases the test is to be found in the relation borne by the disputed passage to the style of the Composer who uses it on its second appearance. The tune from the Serenade Trio is pure Beethoven, and could not possibly be ascribed to any other master. The tune from the Violin Sonata is, both in thought and treatment, intensely characteristic of Brahms. In both instances the points of likeness are verbal and superficial, and the true comparison is to enumerate the points of difference.

Secondly, by quotation, that is to say, the borrowing from some previous work of a single passage or melody which is foreign to the style of the borrower. Instances of this are rare in all the imaginative Arts. We occasionally find them in Poetry, and though it may give us something of a shock to read the phrase ' most musical, most melancholy ' in verse that is not of Milton, it is hard to see on what principle we should be justified in condemning its adoption by Coleridge. Sometimes, too, the Poet makes the quotation his own, as in Tennyson's exquisite adaptation of Dante in Locksley Hall, and indeed we may hold that the proceeding is always legitimate when the words have to be translated from one language to another and where the obligation can be acknowledged. In Music translation is out of the question, acknowledgment is not always possible, and thus the use of quotation is confined within even stricter limits. Still three varieties may be noticed, of which the third is by far the most important to the musical critic. The first is the employment of an existing melody as a theme on which to write original variations. Spohr in his Octett founds a movement of this nature on a rather imperfect version of Handel's ' Harmonious Blacksmith : ' Chopin's famous ' Op. 2 ' was a set of variations on ' La ci darem : ' Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, and other Composers have similarly drawn upon the work of predecessors or contemporaries.

Here, of course, the character of the artist has abundant opportunity of manifesting itself, especially in these modern days when variations are rather independent studies of the theme than embroideries of its texture. But at the same time we feel that the liberty should not be abused, and that it can only be enjoyed by Composers who have elsewhere shown the possession of a high melodic gift. Next comes the selection of some well-known tune as the subject of a thematic movement, e.g., in Schumann's Overture on the Rheinweinlied, or Brahms' on the Student Songs of Germany. This differs from the first in that it leaves even more room for the individuality of the Composer, since the presentation and influence of the subject occupy so much smaller a part in the work as a whole. It must be remembered that conception and treatment are not absolutely exclusive of one another, and that there is as much opening for originality in the accessory ideas as in the main centre round which they are grouped. Last and most remarkable is the incorporation into a work of a single detached episode which does not belong to the Composer. Examples of this are so infrequent that we may doubt whether it has ever been done consciously by any musician of eminence. It seems unreasonable to suppose that the man who could write Beethoven's first Pianoforte Sonata should deliberately borrow the two or three bars from Mozart which stand out, irreconcilable and uncompromising, in the development section of the last movement ; or that Gounod should elaborately recall Mendelssohn's ' Be thou faithful until death ' to adorn the Pentecost number, of his Redemption. Certainly the resemblances are too detailed to be fortuitous, but the most

3<d Music and Musical Criticism

probable explanation is that men of such wide reading were sometimes led to obscure the line between imagination and memory. Psychology knows how closely the two faculties are connected in everyday life, and though their provinces are more distinct in Music than in any other form of human activity, we may at least allow them a strip of march land. Finally, if these quotations are defects they are only spots in the sun. We do not count it a slur upon Coleridge that he owes to Wordsworth a stanza in the 'Ancient Mariner,' and if we did we have all the rest of the poem to admire.

The third type of resemblance is more serious, consisting, as it does, of the wholesale appropriation of an entire number or movement. Here, of course, the classical example is Handel. In the Israel in Egypt alone there are large excerpts from a serenata by Stradella, from Erba's Magnificat, and from Urio's Te Deum, while, by way of climax, the chorus, ' Egypt was glad,' is transcribed almost note for note from an organ canzona by Kerl. This is beyond the skill of any advocate. Even when a Composer borrows a movement from himself we are a little inclined to resent the economy, much more when he breaks into his neighbour's storehouse instead of his own. It is no palliation to urge 'Je prends mon bien la. ou je le trouve,' for that maxim would excuse the burglar as well as the conqueror. To urge that nobody would have heard of Kerl if Handel had not immortalised his work is to hold that the owner of the ewe lamb ought to feel himself compensated by the fame of the rich man's banquet. If we are to face the facts without sentiment and without prejudice we must admit that these numbers are blots upon the great oratorio of which they form a part. Possibly Handel was tempted by stress of time, for the whole of Israel in Egypt was written in twenty-one dayi. He was, we know, in the habit of making pasticcios from his own works, notably from the early set of chamber duets, parts of which reappear in Act's, in the Messiah and in Judas Maccabceus, and thus may have acquired the custom of transference without sufficiently considering the nature of the source on which he drew. Of course the Israel as a whole needs no defence. There is enough magnificent music in the remaining numbers to place Handel in his acknowledged position of supremacy. But, as George Eliot says, with some pertinence, ' You cannot mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right'

Last, and worst of all, is the adaptation of another Composer's structure or method. This may be done deliberately, as in Schumann's ' Erinnerung ' or Keats' ' Stanzas in Imitation of Spenser,' to produce some special effect of attribution or reminiscence, which is legitimate enough. But, as a rule, it is the distinctive mark of the bad Artist, and lies below the line which separates true work from false. Its general practice belongs to the sutlers and camp-followers of Music, men who are so far from leading that they do not even belong to the rank and file. From these come organ voluntaries which copy Mendelssohn's mannerisms without a spark of his genius ; from these come overtures which have nothing to say about themselves but a great deal to say about Wagner; from these come drawing-room ballads in which humour is represented by mild flirtation or pathos by the hundredth variant of Hans Andersen's

' Match-girl ' ; from these come anthems and services, chants and hymn tunes, dances and fantasias, in which there is not one touch of originality or one stroke of real and loving workmanship. They have no style of their own, they change like a chameleon by reflection of whatever is nearest, and their sole value is to give some secondary indication of the composer whose writings happen for the moment to be in vogue.

The principle of vitality affords a basis for criticism so far as relates to the ideas presented by the Composer. If these ideas are spontaneous and genuine they fulfil all that we have a right to demand of them; for Music is an Art so ideal in its conditions that in it the first elements of truth and beauty coincide. Our Novelists, we are told, sometimes feel the truth of an ugly story with such overwhelming force that they are constrained against their will to tell it. But Music pure and simple has no story to tell, and if a composition is ugly it is so of deliberate intent. Hence it would follow in natural order to consider those principles which seem to regulate the treatment and presentation of musical ideas when once conceived.

, Of these the most obvious is the Principle of Labour. The composer who stands in any true relation to his idea will spare no pains to present it in its most attractive aspect, and to deck it with the utmost ornament that it can legitimately bear. ' If you wish to touch my heart,' writes Horace to the Poets, ' you must begin by showing me that you have touched your own ' ; and no thought can ever arouse love and reverence in the audience which has not already aroused love and reverence in its creator. A great deal is written about the vanity of the artist,

Music and Musical Criticism t>2>

and no doubt when it becomes introspective and self-conscious it deserves to be satirised. But none the less the parental impulse on which it rests is the one essential condition of all good Art. It was not vanity that called forth Handel's tears over ' He was despised,' or that made him see the Heavens opened above the splendours of his ' Hallelujah.'

In one word, if the artist does not love his work he forfeits his claim to the title ; if he does, he should •devote to its expression and elaboration the best skill at his command. Sometimes, though very rarely, we find evidences of hurry or carelessness even in the great musicians. The opening of Berlioz's King Lear overture, for example, is imperfectly thought out, and contains an error against symmetry which may roughly be paralleled by a false rhyme in a stanza of verse. Here, no doubt, the fault must be admitted, though it is condoned by the vigour and novelty of the rhythm. So, again, one of the principal reasons why we are losing our taste for the Italian operas of half a century ago is undoubtedly to be found in the laxity and indolence of their Composers. Rossini was a man of unquestionable genius; 'Vieil Olympien,' as M. • Montdgut says, in contrast to the heroes who have won their way to apotheosis; but ■Rossini's very facility constituted a temptation which he had seldom strength to resist. The result is that he constantly gives us the impression of working below his best, of clothing his thoughts in the first cheap accompaniment that came into his head, of using his orchestra, in short, 'like a guitar.' The case is stronger with regard to Donizetti. 'Ah! madame,' he said, when asked which was his favourite work, ' a mother always loves her crippled child the best, and

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I have so many.' To which we may answer that a Composer has no right to have ' crippled children,' still less to introduce them to the world as ragged starvelings.

In strong contrast is the custom of the greater Masters. Take any one of Beethoven's sonatas and notice, apart from the magnificence of the thoughts, the consummate skill with which he varies his phrases and develops his figures. Take any song of Schubert or Schumann or Brahms and see how the accompaniment supports and illustrates the melody. Not that there is any appearance of effort, for the artist has not reached maturity until he has assimilated the discipline of toil and made it a part of his organic nature. But none the less effort is presupposed. The ease of true artistic expression is not that of a boat drifting down stream ; it cuts the water with the sweep of steady oars that .have learned their lesson of mastery by long training. Genius is not, perhaps, adequately defined as the power of taking infinite pains, but it necessarily implies that gift if its results are to be worthy of its character. A man must work with patient and single-hearted devotion if he is to attain to the dash of Tintoret or the unerring rapidity of Velasquez.

It may be urged that this insistence on elaboration would be fatal to the simplicity of artistic conception, and would give us results like Thackeray's portrait of Louis XIV., in which the monarch is so disproportionate to his robes. But the question of simplicity is not touched. Nothing can be simpler than Schubert's Forelle, and yet it has room for the little flashing figure that completes its charm. Nothing can be simpler than the ballad in Dr Parry's Judith, and yet the accompaniment is a study of the highest artistic value. Handel 'wrought with the primarycolours,' but to do so he had to learn everything which the science of his time could teach him. Even

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in the most elementary Volkslieder there is a right and a wrong way ; the few chords which they require may contain the affirmation or denial of some harmonic truth, and occasionally, as in Dr Stanford's Songs of Ireland their value may be enhanced by a skilful setting which loses no whit of their original purity and lustre. All, in short, which the present principle implies is that the workmanship shall be as good as possible in its kind, a condition as clearly fulfilled by Papageno's songs in Zauberflote as it is by ' Widmung ' or ' Mein Lieb' ist Griin.'

But it is one thing to be simple, another to be mawkish. There is no room in Music for the ' Ambrose Philips ' style of composition, and the drawing-room bard who ' prattles like a meer stammerer ' is in sore need of a new Martinus Scriblerus. The prettiness of melody to which our fashionable ballads owe their favour is in many cases the pale reflection of some Classical beauty, and the accompaniments are too often thin, perfunctory, loveless, the handiwork of men who write for fame or profit and not for Art. Our amateur Composers who boast that they have never studied, our traffickers in Music who make a market of their garrulous facility, our popular song writers who have just wit enough to ' vamp ' the tunes that they have borrowed from better men, these are the real traitors in our camp, the real obstacles to progress and enlightenment. Yet in spite of all progress is ultimately certain. The bad music of to-day is in advance of the bad music of twenty years ago. It is still tricky and artificial, but the tricks are better and the artifices less obvious. And meanwhile it is not the feeling of the public that is at fault but its experience.

Yet, if the musical taste of the nation is sound at heart, why does it tolerate bad work even for a moment ? Why does it not instinctively turn from productions that are feeble or insincere and enjoy at once those beauties which it is implicitly capable of recognising ? Why, in short, has the history of Music been so often a history of conquest over apparently antagonistic forces?

There are three main causes of this phenomenon. First, fashionable music is by no means the worst that is written. It generally implies some cleverness, it often displays a superficial charm or piquancy which may, for the time, deceive a careless hearer. To gauge its originality requires some knowledge, to estimate its intrinsic value .demands some attention, and the public is usually too busy either to inform itself about the conditions or to give any careful inspection to the result. Hence we grow suspicious of true craftsmanship, let the great work pass as unintelligible, and fall back upon cheap effect and facile prettiness, which involve no effort of comprehension because they have nothing to say. If we could only take the trouble and responsibility of judging for ourselves we should anticipate the decision of posterity, instead of stultifying ourselves by running counter to it. We have no brief to maintain, we are arbiters, not advocates, and the only thing required of us is that we should not go to sleep upon the bench.

Secondly, there are personal and extraneous reasons. In consequence of an unfortunate royalty system it sometimes happens that a great singer will throw the glamour of his voice and method over an entirely unworthy composition. We hear the performance at a ballad concert, we confuse, because we are too lazy to distinguish them, the interpretation with the thing interpreted, we go home with a sense of enjoyment which we take no trouble to analyse, and the next day everybody has bought the song, only to find that its grace was borrowed and its value factitious. A second extraneous reason is that our libretto writers, most of whom seem devoid of any real lyric gift, have fostered a remarkable taste for narrative songs: 'three verse epitomes of three volume novels,' as a distinguished Professor of Music has called them. These, from the very conditions of the case, must be flimsy and superficial ; they have no scope for true feeling of any sort, still less for the intensely personal feeling which lyric poetry implies, and to raise them to an artistic level is a task of almost superhuman difficulty. No wonder, then, that the Composers find their nature subdued to what it works in, and turn out with mechanical regularity products which bear the same relation to Music as the ' sensational shillingsworth ' of the bookstall does to literature. They find favour because the British Public will always listen to a love story, however ill told ; but it is their subject and not their treatment that wins them acceptance.

The third cause lies in our own inadequacy as performers. A generation ago Englishmen who played the piano were almost non-existent, and Englishwomen ended their education with the ' Battle of Prague.' Even now the amateur level in this country is not very high, and we have as yet little chance of • familiarising ourselves with Beethoven and Schubert, of bringing them to our firesides and admitting them to our friendship. This is, of course, the principal reason why good Art is ever neglected. To appreciate the best music we must hear it often : to hear it often we must live with it : to live with it we must be in the company of those by whom it can be played and sung. At present we are like the guest in Juvenal, waiting, crust in hand, till the more generous viands make their appearance. Our appetite is healthy enough, but we cannot get at the dishes. No doubt the great Concerts and Festivals have done and are doing incalculable service ; but these rare banquets lose a part of their efficacy if we only starve at home. The one certain panacea for all diseases of musical judgment is that we should learn to perform the great works adequately, and to listen to them with dispassionate minds.

An indication of this lies ready to hand. The average of performance is gradually improving in England, and the love of so-called ' Classical Music ' is growing in exact proportion with it. There is still much room for advance, but we have made a start. Musical education is more serious and more widespread ; our amateur societies are growing more numerous, and more earnest in aim ; the foolish social conventions of a past age are dying out, and the musician is finding his proper place in the artistic world. True, the influence has not yet reached the home, and no great reform can be expected while it remains outside. But meanwhile it is drawing nearer and nearer, and its ultimate establishment among us is only a question of time. We may retard it, if we will, by carelessness or indifference, but we cannot stop it or turn it aside. The love of beauty is an inborn faculty in man, and the laws of its growth are the laws of all human progress and human development.