Part 6 (2/2)

A third type, the diagonal, is given in an ”Evening Landscape”

by Cuyp, in the Buckinghah trees and cliffs, horsemen and others, occupy one side, and the round and the clouds, all slope gradually down to the other side

It is a natural transition from this type to the V-shape of the landscapes by Aart van der Neer, ”Dutch Villages,” in the London National Gallery and in the Rudolphinuue, respectively

Here are trees and houses on each side, gradually sloping to the centre to show an open sky and deep vista Other exa not exactly in the centre

In the ”Concert” by Giorgione, in the Pitti Gallery, Florence, is seen the less frequent type of the square The three figures turned toward each other with heads on the saht be said that the central player gives a pyramidal foundation This last els” in the Florence Acadethened by the pyraures The unrelieved square, it may here be interpolated, is not often found except in somewhat primitive examples Still less often observed is the oval type of ”Sa Feast,” Reht, by pressing the interpretation, see an obtuse-angled double-pyraure of Delilah for an apex, but a few very irregular pictures seeiven classification

Last of all, it reat majority of pictures show a combination of two or even three types; but these are usually subordinated to one dominant type Such, for instance, is the case with many portraits, which are ested by the position of the arround The diagonal sometimes just passes over into the V-shape, or into the pyramid; or the square is combined with both

What types are characteristic of the different kinds of pictures?

In order to answer this question we must ask first, What are the different kinds of pictures? One answer, at least, is at once suggested to the student on a co to subjects All those which represent the Madonna enthroned, with all variations, with or without saints, shepherds, or Holy Family, are very quiet in their action; that is, it is not really an action at all which they represent, but an attitude,--the attitude of contemplation This is no less true of the pictures we may call ”Adorations,” in which, indeed, the contemplative attitude is still more marked On the other hand, such pictures as the ”Descents,” the ”Annunciations,”

and very enre pictures, portray a definite action or event Now the pyramid type is characteristic of the ”conteree A class which est the same treatment in composition is that of the portraits, --absolute lack of action being the rule And we find, indeed, that no single type is represented within it except the pyrahty-six per cent of the former

Thus it is evident that for the type of picture which expresses the highest degree of quietude, contemplation, concentration, the pyra the so-called ”active” pictures, the diagonal and V-shaped types are most numerous

The landscape picture presents a somewhat different problem It cannot be described as either ”active” or ”passive,” inasmuch as it does not express either an attitude or an event There is no definite idea to be set forth, no point of concentration, as with the altar-pieces and the portraits, for instance; and yet a unity is demanded An examination of the proportions of the types shows at once the characteristic type to be here also the diagonal and V-shaped

It is now necessary to ask what must be the interpretation of the use of these types of composition Must we consider the pyraonal or V-shape, of activity? But the greatly predo use of the second for landscapes would re can be more reposeful than the latter It may aid the solution of the problem to remember that the composition taken as a whole has to meet the demand for unity, at the same time that it allows free play to the natural expression of the subject The altar-piece has to bring about a concentration of attention to express or induce a feeling of reverence This is evidently acco lines to the fixation of the high point in the picture,--the small area occupied by the Madonna and Child,--and by the subordination of the free play of other eleives a feeling of solidity, of repose; and it seems not unreasonable to suppose that the tendency to rest the eyes above the centre of the picture directly induces the associated mood of reverence or worshi+p Thus the pyra unity, and secondarily, by the peculiarity of its shape, that of inducing the feeling-tone appropriate to the subject of the picture

Applying this principle to the so-called ”active” pictures, we see that the natural movement of attention between the different ”actors” in the picture must be allowed for, while yet unity is secured And it is clear that the diagonal type is just fitted for this The attention sweeps down froh soestion of lines or interest in the objects of the high side Action and reaction--movement and return of attention--is inevitable under the conditions of this type; and this it is which allows the free play,--which, indeed, CONStitUTES and expresses the activity belonging to the subject, just as the fixation of the pyraious picture Thus it is that the diagonal corandeur, and to induce a feeling of awe in the spectator, because only here can the eye rove in one large sweep from side to side of the picture, recalled by theof the pendulu-tones which belong to wide, free movement are called into play If, at the same time, the element of the deep vista is introduced, we have the extreme of concentration combined with the extrerand style”

--co-tones which wait on motor impulses are, as it were, while yet in the sahest pitch Such a picture is the ”Finding of the Ring,” Paris Bordone, in the Venice Acadeestion of the doard lines and of the nificent perspective toward the left, and the effect of the whole space co Coreat compositions by Veronese, ”Martyrdoe's Palace, Venice, and ”Esther before Ahaseurus,” in the Uffizi, Florence

In these last two, the mass, direction of interest, movement, and attention are toward the left, while all the lines tend diagonally to the right, where a vista is also suggested,--the diagonal nificence and vigor

If, then, the pyraonal to action, what ca be said of landscape? It is without action, it is true, and yet does not express that positive quality, that WILL not to act, of the rapt conteative, and it deive it so positive besides unity It lacks both concentration and action; but it can gain them both from a space composition which shall coiven by the diagonal and V-shaped type This type merely allows free play to the natural tendency of the ”active” picture; but it constrains the neutral, inanimate landscape The shape itself imparts motion to the picture: the sweep of line, the concentration of the vista, the unifying power of the inverted triangle between two estion of the object itself There is always enough quiet in a landscape,-- the overwhelestion of the horizontal suffices for that; it is movement that is needed for richness of effect, and, as I have shown, no type ional and V-shaped type of coy to produce ”stional type is proportionately id square is found only at an early stage in the development of composition Moreover, all the examples are ”story” pictures, for the most part scenes from the lives of the saints, etc Many of theht break in theout the relations of the characters Thus, in the ”Dream of Saint Martin,” Siht across the picture with his head in one corner Behind hiether, their heads on the same level These are all, of course, in one sense syht of interest, at least,--but they are completely amorphous from an aesthetic point of view The fors The story is told by a clear separation of the parts, and as, in most stories, there are two principal actors, it merely happens that they fall into the two sides of the picture On the other hand, a rigid geometrical symmetry is also characteristic of early composition, and these two facts seem to contradict each other But it is to be noted, first, that the rigid geos only to the ”Madonna Enthroned,” and general ”Adoration” pieces; and secondly, that this very rigidity of symmetry in details can coexist with variations which destroy balance Thus, in a ”Madonna Enthroned” of Giotto, where absolute syht knee of the Madonna

It would seem that the symmetry of these early pictures was not dictated by a conscious deement, or rather for real balance, else such failures would hardly occur

The presence of geometrical sye part, of technical conditions: of the fact that these pictures were painted as altar-pieces to fill a space definitely symmetrical in character--often, indeed, with architectural ele into it We es of the classic period, to explain why it was natural to paint the object of worshi+p seated exactly facing the worshi+per Thus wean object of worshi+p, and thus taking naturally, as has been said, the pyra estions of technique; the other aiical clearness This antithesis of the sy parallel in the two great classes of priestive, shaped by the space it had to fill, and so degenerating into the slavishly sy,” and without a trace of space composition On neither side is there evidence of direct aesthetic feeling Only in the course of artistic developid, yet often unbalanced, sy into a free substitutional sy into a really unified and balanced space-form The two antitheses approach each other in the ”balance” of the masterpieces of civilized art--in which, for the first ti for space composition makes itself felt

V THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC

V THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC

I

THERE is a story, in Max Muller's a reminiscences, of how Mendelssohn and David once played, in his hearing, Beethoven's later sonatas for piano and violin, and of how they shrugged their shoulders, and opined the old man had not been quite himself when he wrote them In the history of music it seeenius are greeted with conturee, of other arts, but in music it seems that the critics proposed also excellent reasons for their vehemence

And it is instructive to observe that the objections, and the reasons for the objections, recur, after the original object of wrath has passed into acceptance, nay, into dominance of the musical world One h all these utterances, even when not explicitly set forth

It was made a reproach to Beethoven, as it has been made a reproach to Richard Strauss, that he sacrificed the beauty of form to expression; and it was rejoined, perhaps less in the old ti of enius, as we have seen, after all take care of thenificance for the theory of music, as of all art, that in the circle of the years, the sarown to ever sharper opposition, still greet the appearance of neork It ith Wagner, as all the world knows, that the question came first to complete formulation His invention of the htened ly de and ee of the ener based his views not only on the popular notion, but on the metaphysical theories of Schopenhauer; in particular, on the view that music is the objectification of the will Herbert Spencer folloith the thesis that music has its essential source in the cadences of ener, the so-called formalists were represented by Hanslick, rote his well-known ”The Beautiful in Music”

to show that though music ha a liical perfection alone The expressionist school could not contradict the undoubted fact that chords and intervals which are harmonious show certain definite physical and mathematical relationshi+ps, that, in other words, our musical preferences appear to be closely related to, if not determined by, these relationshi+ps Thus each school seemed to be backed by science The eue way, indeed, by most of those theorists whose natural conservatism would have drawn them in the other direction, and is doubtless responsible for the attempts at mediation, first made by Ambros,<1> and now met in almost all musical literature Musicas each detail allows itself to be entirely derived froravity” lies in the formal relations