Part 14 (1/2)

[Sidenote: _”Il Trovatore.”_]

I, myself, have known an ardent lover of music who resolutely refused to look into a libretto because, being of a lively and imaginative temperament, she preferred to construct her own plots and put her own words in the mouths of the singers. Though a constant attendant on the opera, she never knew what ”Il Trovatore” was about, which, perhaps, is not so surprising after all. Doubtless the play which she had fas.h.i.+oned in her own mind was more comprehensible than Verdi's medley of burnt children and asthmatic dance rhythms. Madame de Stael went so far as to condemn the German composers because they ”follow too closely the sense of the words,” whereas the Italians, ”who are truly the musicians of nature, make the air and the words conform to each other only in a general way.”

[Sidenote: _The opera defended as an art-form._]

[Sidenote: _The cla.s.sic tragedy._]

Now the present generation has witnessed a revolution in operatic ideas which has lifted the poetical elements upon a plane not dreamed of when opera was merely a concert in costume, and it is no longer tolerable that it be set down as an absurdity. On the contrary, I believe that, looked at in the light thrown upon it by the history of the drama and the origin of music, the opera is completely justified as an art-form, and, in its best estate, is an entirely reasonable and highly effective entertainment. No mean place, surely, should be given in the estimation of the judicious to an art-form which aims in an equal degree to charm the senses, stimulate the emotions, and persuade the reason. This, the opera, or, perhaps I would better say the lyric drama, can be made to do as efficiently as the Greek tragedy did it, so far as the differences between the civilizations of ancient h.e.l.las and the nineteenth century will permit. The Greek tragedy was the original opera, a fact which literary study would alone have made plain even if it were not clearly of record that it was an effort to restore the ancient plays in their integrity that gave rise to the Italian opera three centuries ago.

[Sidenote: _Genesis of the Greek plays._]

Every school-boy knows now that the h.e.l.lenic plays were simply the final evolution of the dances with which the people of h.e.l.las celebrated their religious festivals. At the rustic Bacchic feasts of the early Greeks they sang hymns in honor of the wine-G.o.d, and danced on goat-skins filled with wine. He who held his footing best on the treacherous surface carried home the wine as a reward. They contended in athletic games and songs for a goat, and from this circ.u.mstance scholars have surmised we have the word tragedy, which means ”goat-song.” The choric songs and dances grew in variety and beauty.

Finally, somebody (tradition preserves the name of Thespis as the man) conceived the idea of introducing a simple dialogue between the strophes of the choric song. Generally this dialogue took the form of a recital of some story concerning the G.o.d whose festival was celebrating. Then when the dithyrambic song returned, it would either continue the narrative or comment on its ethical features.

[Sidenote: _Mimicry and dress._]

The merry-makers, or wors.h.i.+ppers, as one chooses to look upon them, manifested their enthusiasm by imitating the appearance as well as the actions of the G.o.d and his votaries. They smeared themselves with wine-lees, colored their bodies black and red, put on masks, covered themselves with the skins of beasts, enacted the parts of nymphs, fauns, and satyrs, those creatures of primitive fancy, half men and half goats, who were the representatives of natural sensuality untrammelled by conventionality.

[Sidenote: _Melodrama._]

Next, somebody (Archilocus) sought to heighten the effect of the story or the dialogue by consorting it with instrumental music; and thus we find the germ of what musicians--not newspaper writers--call melodrama, in the very early stages of the drama's development.

Gradually these simple rustic entertainments were taken in hand by the poets who drew on the legendary stores of the people for subjects, branching out from the doings of G.o.ds to the doings of G.o.d-like men, the popular heroes, and developed out of them the masterpieces of dramatic poetry which are still studied with amazement, admiration, and love.

[Sidenote: _Factors in ancient tragedy._]

The dramatic factors which have been mustered in this outline are these:

1. The choric dance and song with a religious purpose.

2. Recitation and dialogue.

3. Characterization by means of imitative gestures--pantomime, that is--and dress.

4. Instrumental music to accompany the song and also the action.

[Sidenote: _Operatic elements._]

[Sidenote: _Words and music united._]

All these have been retained in the modern opera, which may be said to differ chiefly from its ancient model in the more important and more independent part which music plays in it. It will appear later in our study that the importance and independence achieved by one of the elements consorted in a work by nature composite, led the way to a revolution having for its object a restoration of something like the ancient drama. In this ancient drama and its precursor, the dithyrambic song and dance, is found a union of words and music which scientific investigation proves to be not only entirely natural but inevitable. In a general way most people are in the habit of speaking of music as the language of the emotions. The elements which enter into vocal music (of necessity the earliest form of music) are unvolitional products which we must conceive as co-existent with the beginnings of human life. Do they then antedate articulate speech? Did man sing before he spoke? I shall not quarrel with anybody who chooses so to put it.

[Sidenote: _Physiology of singing._]

Think a moment about the mechanism of vocal music. Something occurs to stir up your emotional nature--a great joy, a great sorrow, a great fear; instantly, involuntarily, in spite of your efforts to prevent it, maybe, muscular actions set in which proclaim the emotion which fills you. The muscles and organs of the chest, throat, and mouth contract or relax in obedience to the emotion. You utter a cry, and according to the state of feeling which you are in, that cry has pitch, quality (_timbre_ the singing teachers call it), and dynamic intensity. You attempt to speak, and no matter what the words you utter, the emotional drama playing on the stage of your heart is divulged.

[Sidenote: _Herbert Spencer's laws._]

The man of science observes the phenomenon and formulates its laws, saying, for instance, as Herbert Spencer has said: ”All feelings are muscular stimuli;” and, ”Variations of voice are the physiological results of variations of feeling.” It was the recognition of this extraordinary intimacy between the voice and the emotions which brought music all the world over into the service of religion, and provided the phenomenon, which we may still observe if we be but minded to do so, that mere tones have sometimes the sanct.i.ty of words, and must as little be changed as ancient hymns and prayers.

[Sidenote: _Invention of Italian opera._]

[Sidenote: _Musical declamation._]