Part 3 (2/2)

The first of these divisions rests upon the employment of the lowest form of conventional musical idiom. The material which the natural world provides for imitation by the musician is exceedingly scant.

Unless we descend to mere noise, as in the descriptions of storms and battles (the shrieking of the wind, the cras.h.i.+ng of thunder, and the roar of artillery--invaluable aids to the cheap descriptive writer), we have little else than the calls of a few birds. Nearly thirty years ago Wilhelm Tappert wrote an essay which he called ”Zooplastik in Tonen.” He ransacked the musical literature of centuries, but in all his examples the only animals the voices of which are unmistakable are four fowls--the cuckoo, quail (that is the German bird, not the American, which has a different call), the c.o.c.k, and the hen. He has many descriptive sounds which suggest other birds and beasts, but only by a.s.sociation of idea; separated from t.i.tle or text they suggest merely what they are--musical phrases. A reiteration of the rhythmical figure called the ”Scotch snap,” breaking gradually into a trill, is the common symbol of the nightingale's song, but it is not a copy of that song; three or four tones descending chromatically are given as the cat's mew, but they are made to be such only by placing the syllables _Mi-au_ (taken from the vocabulary of the German cat) under them. Instances of this kind might be called characterization, or description by suggestion, and some of the best composers have made use of them, as will appear in these pages presently. The list being so small, and the lesson taught so large, it may be well to give a few striking instances of absolutely imitative music. The first bird to collaborate with a composer seems to have been the cuckoo, whose notes

[Music ill.u.s.tration: Cuck-oo!]

had sounded in many a folk-song ere Beethoven thought of enlisting the little solo performer in his ”Pastoral” symphony. It is to be borne in mind, however, as a fact having some bearing on the artistic value of Programme music, that Beethoven's cuckoo changes his note to please the musician, and, instead of singing a minor third, he sings a major third thus:

[Music ill.u.s.tration: Cuck-oo!]

[Sidenote: _c.o.c.k and hen._]

As long ago as 1688 Jacob Walter wrote a musical piece ent.i.tled ”Gallina et Gallo,” in which the hen was delineated in this theme:

[Music ill.u.s.tration: _Gallina._]

while the c.o.c.k had the upper voice in the following example, his clear challenge sounding above the cackling of his mate:

[Music ill.u.s.tration: _Gallo._]

The most effective use yet made of the song of the hen, however, is in ”La Poule,” one of Rameau's ”Pieces de Clavecin,” printed in 1736, a delightful composition with this subject:

[Music ill.u.s.tration: Co co co co co co co dai, etc.]

[Sidenote: _The quail._]

The quail's song is merely a monotonic rhythmical figure to which German fancy has fitted words of pious admonition:

[Music ill.u.s.tration: Furch-te Gott! Lo-be Gott!]

[Sidenote: _Conventional idioms._]

[Sidenote: _a.s.sociation of ideas._]

[Sidenote: _Fancy and imagination._]

[Sidenote: _Harmony and emotionality._]

The paucity of examples in this department is a demonstration of the statement made elsewhere that nature does not provide music with models for imitation as it does painting and sculpture. The fact that, nevertheless, we have come to recognize a large number of idioms based on a.s.sociation of ideas stands the composer in good stead whenever he ventures into the domain of delineative or descriptive music, and this he can do without becoming crudely imitative. Repeated experiences have taught us to recognize resemblances between sequences or combinations of tones and things or ideas, and on these a.n.a.logies, even though they be purely conventional (that is agreed upon, as we have agreed that a nod of the head shall convey a.s.sent, a shake of the head dissent, and a shrug of the shoulders doubt or indifference), the composers have built up a voluminous vocabulary of idioms which need only to be helped out by a suggestion to the mind to be eloquently ill.u.s.trative. ”Sometimes hearing a melody or harmony arouses an emotion like that aroused by the contemplation of a thing. Minor harmonies, slow movements, dark tonal colorings, combine directly to put a musically susceptible person in a mood congenial to thoughts of sorrow and death; and, inversely, the experience of sorrow, or the contemplation of death, creates affinity for minor harmonies, slow movements, and dark tonal colorings. Or we recognize attributes in music possessed also by things, and we consort the music and the things, external attributes bringing descriptive music into play, which excites the fancy, internal attributes calling for an exercise of the loftier faculty, imagination, to discern their meaning.”[B] The latter kind is delineative music of the higher order, the kind that I have called idealized programme music, for it is the imagination which, as Ruskin has said, ”sees the heart and inner nature and makes them felt, but is often obscure, mysterious, and interrupted in its giving out of outer detail,” which is ”a seer in the prophetic sense, calling the things that are not as though they were, and forever delighting to dwell on that which is not tangibly present.” In this kind of music, harmony, the real seat of emotionality in music, is an eloquent factor, and, indeed, there is no greater mystery in the art, which is full of mystery, than the fact that the lowering of the second tone in the chord, which is the starting-point of harmony, should change an expression of satisfaction, energetic action, or jubilation into an accent of pain or sorrow. The major mode is ”to do,” the minor, ”to suffer:”

[Sidenote: _Major and minor._]

[Music ill.u.s.tration: Hur-rah! A-las!]

[Sidenote: _Music and movement._]

How near a large number of suggestions, which are based wholly upon experience or a.s.sociation of ideas, lie to the popular fancy, might be ill.u.s.trated by scores of examples. Thoughts of religious functions arise in us the moment we hear the trombones intone a solemn phrase in full harmony; an oboe melody in sixth-eighth time over a drone ba.s.s brings up a pastoral picture of a shepherd playing upon his pipe; trumpets and drums suggest war, and so on. The delineation of movement is easier to the musician than it is to the poet. Handel, who has conveyed the sensation of a ”darkness which might be felt,” in a chorus of his ”Israel in Egypt,” by means which appeal solely to the imagination stirred by feelings, has in the same work pictured the plague of frogs with a frank _navete_ which almost upsets our seriousness of demeanor, by suggesting the characteristic movement of the creatures in the instrumental accompaniment to the arioso, ”Their land brought forth frogs,” which begins thus:

[Sidenote: _Handel's frogs._]

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