Part 1 (2/2)

Not, of course, that our appreciation of these two works is merely emotional; to say this would be to deny their position as products of art; but it has its emotional side, of which we are all conscious in a greater or less degree. It is a commonplace of criticism that verse which is religious or patriotic is often estimated entirely out of relation to its artistic worth; and that a poor poem may strike a responsive chord in our nature which leads us to give it an altogether fact.i.tious importance. And this error of judgment is due not to the spiritual part of our nature, for that takes artistic form for granted, and rises above it, but to an emotional sympathy with the tenour of the poem which blinds us for the moment to its literary imperfection. So in Music, it does not follow that because we feel ourselves stirred by a certain combination of notes, we are therefore in the presence of a real masterpiece. The pa.s.sage in question may strike us because it is great, but it may equally do so because we are unintelligent; and though in either case our att.i.tude has its n.o.ble aspect, for all genuine admiration is good up to its limits, yet it is a matter of some moment whether we are burning our incense before a true or a false shrine.

There is no small difference between being stimulated by some prophetic utterance, and finding our consolation in the sound 'of that blessed word Mesopotamia.'

Third, and most vital of the three, is the rational or logical side, through which we appraise an artistic work, not by any test of sensuous pleasure or emotional stimulus, but by some definite and intelligible scheme of aesthetic laws. To this belongs our appreciation of style, our appreciation of structure, all that we really imply in the word 'criticism.' By this we estimate everything in art, of which the estimation can be reduced to laws, everything that is not confined to a bare statement of personal likes and dislikes. In the two previous forms of affection we are merely pa.s.sive, the recipients of some mechanical or semi-mechanical impact from outside; in this alone we aid the composer by our own judgment, and respond to his call with a sane and intelligent answer. Grant that the application of logic to art has special and serious dangers, that to its misuse we owe all the pedantry and all the intolerance by which the history of criticism has so often been defaced; it still remains true that the method, if rightly exercised, is the one condition of any sound and scientific a.n.a.lysis.

Grant that the highest art and the highest appreciation are both, in a sense, spontaneous, it will be found that they have not disregarded reason, but absorbed it. To touch the most purely spiritual part of man's nature is, _ipso facto_, to have removed furthest from the purely animal; and it is no very extreme paradox to hold that, if a limit be transcended, it must first have been traversed. So the greatest masterpieces in Music will be found to contain sensuous, emotional and rational factors, and something beside, some divine element of life by which they are animated and inspired. The fourth of these we shall never be able to a.n.a.lyse, but we may, at least, devote a little attention to the organic chemistry of the others.

The sensation of sound is, on its material side, an affection of the auric nerve, under stimulus of regular and periodic air vibrations. The physical pleasure which results from it is entirely dependent on the degree of stimulation, and is therefore conditioned by two variables--the manner of vibration in the air waves, and the particular receptivity of the nerve. It will be convenient, for the sake of clearness, to take these two separately.

The simplest air vibrations may differ from each other in three ways.

By their rapidity is determined the pitch of the sound, that is, its distinction of high and low; by their size, the volume of the sound, that is, its distinction of loud and soft; and by their shape, the _timbre_ of the sound, that is, the peculiar quality which distinguishes the 'voices' of the different musical instruments. It does not appear that the pleasurableness of the result is seriously affected by the first two of these, provided that they fall within the limits of clear sensation. No doubt there are at the extreme ends of the gamut notes which we cannot detect without some difficulty, but between them the differences of pitch are recognised by everyone as plain facts, which have little or nothing to do with the agreeableness of the tone. Again, when we are standing near the organ, on which some follower of Master Hugues is 'blaring out the Mode Palestrina,' our ear may be overcharged with sound, but in that case we can no more be said to hear the music than the eye can be said to see when it is dazzled with a sudden splendour of light. Differences of _timbre_, on the contrary, do seem to imply distinctions of pleasurableness or the reverse. Almost all people of imperfect musical cultivation have their favourite instruments; one enjoys the violin, but cares nothing for the piano; another remains in frozen indifference until he is melted by the human voice; another finds all music comprised in the invigorating skirl of the bagpipes. It must be remembered that such influences are wholly physical. They have nothing to do with artistic appreciation in the proper sense of the term; they are as purely sensuous as our delight in the colour of a flower or the taste of a dish.

Now, the immediate effect of music upon the nervous system is incontestable. It has often been noticed in animals other than man; it is a matter of common observation in children; it has been made the basis of a proposal to use the art as a medicinal agency.[2] And as no two sets of nerves are exactly alike, it follows that in no two organisms will the same effect be produced. If the temperament be highly strung, and if there be no intellectual enjoyment of the art to divert attention, the nerve may be over-stimulated, and the result will be a feeling of pain. As the nerve strengthens, it will grow more tolerant; as education advances, the mind will be occupied with new interests.

Questions of form and style will a.s.sert their pre-eminence over questions of tone. In a word, body will

Get its sop and hold its noise, And leave soul free a little.

Theophile Gautier honestly defined music as 'le plus desagreable de tous les sons.' Charles Lamb rushed from the opera-house to solace his sufferings amid the rattle of the cab wheels. And equally the child Chopin cried with pain at the first sound of the pianoforte, and the child Mozart fainted under the intolerable blare of the trumpet. In all these cases the explanation is the same--a nerve too delicate to endure the stimulus, and an absence of any counteracting influence that could inhibit the sensation.

It is thus wholly erroneous to suppose that there is a gulf fixed between the man who 'has no ear' and the trained musician: on the contrary, the two extremes shade into each other by a thousand varieties of gradation. And this is particularly true of these complex impressions which result from several notes combined in harmony. The stimulus which we receive from a chord is, for obvious reasons, more vehement and acute than that which we receive from any of its const.i.tuent notes taken separately; and hence it is in our appreciation of harmonies, more than in any other form of musical effect, that the sensuous side of the art becomes apparent. Now, there is not a single chord in common use at the present day which has not been at some time condemned as a dissonance. The major third was once held to be a discord; so, later, was the dominant seventh; so, within living memory, was the so-called dominant thirteenth. Fifty years ago Chopin's harmony was 'unendurable;' thirty years ago the world accepted Chopin, but shrank in terror from Wagner and Brahms; now, we accept all three, but shake our heads over Goldmark. And the inference to which all this points is, that the terms 'concord' and 'discord' are wholly relative to the ear of the listener. The distinction between them is not to be explained on any mathematical basis, or by any _a priori_ law of acoustics; it is altogether a question of psychology.

At the same time, it may be held, fairly enough, that a composer is bound to write in a manner intelligible to his generation. Volapuk may be the language of the future, but a poet who, at the present day, should publish his epic in that tongue, has only himself to thank if he find no readers. True, but the composer, like the poet, is himself a part of his generation, and, if he write simply and naturally, may be trusted not to pa.s.s out of touch with contemporary thought. He is a leader, but it is no part of a leader's business to lose sight of his army. And in Music, it is not the sensuous question which matters, but the intellectual; not the fact of concord or discord, but the way in which they are employed. We still find Monteverde harsh and the Prince of Venosa crude, not because they use sharp dissonances and extreme modulations, but because they fail to justify them on any artistic grounds. They are in this matter children playing with edged tools. So, at the present day, a composer who should end a piece on a minor second would be deliberately violating the established language of the time; and would be reprehensible, not because a minor second is ugly--for it will be a concord some day--but because, in the existing state of Music, it could not be naturally placed at the close of a cadence. Imagine Handel's face on being shown a song which finished on a dominant seventh out of the key. And, having imagined it, turn to Schumann's _Im wunderschonen Monat Mai_.

Again, supposing that a generation has mainly agreed to find the climax of sensuous pleasure in certain chords--the augmented sixth, the diminished seventh and the like--it by no means follows that a composition is delightful because it contains those particular effects.

Everything depends on their relation to their context, or the standpoint from which they are introduced, on the general style of the pa.s.sage in which they appear. Any amateur purveyor of hymn tunes and waltzes can learn to write them; the difficulty is to present them fitly and properly, and to place them, as points of colour, where they will harmonise with the complete scheme of the work. Even more recondite effects, like the wonderful 'voca me c.u.m benedictis' in Dvorak's _Requiem_, are _qua_ sensuous of secondary value. Their true importance lies in their intellectual side, in their function of exhibiting new key relations.h.i.+ps or new methods of resolution. And if a chord does not fulfil some such duty, if it does not justify itself by bearing some definite organic part in the total plan, then it is not art but confectionery. Hearers, whose only delight in music arises from the perception of 'sweet' harmonies, are on a par with the schoolboy in Leech's picture, who suggests that the claret would be improved by a little sugar.

From this two conclusions would seem to follow. First, that Music can never be adequately criticised on sensuous grounds, partly because the receptivity of the nerve differs in different temperaments, partly because even where there is an agreement the sensuous side is wholly subordinate to the intellectual. Secondly, as a corollary from this, any musician who deliberately aims at sensuous effects alone, _ipso facto_, commits artistic suicide. He can be beaten on his own ground by the great masters, and he leaves untouched the whole of that field to the occupation of which they owe their greatness. Finally, it may be added, that sense notoriously grows tired, while mental activity endures. We very soon weary of the average drawing-room ballad, even if it gave us some animal pleasure at the first hearing: but we return again and again to the fugue of Bach or the sonata of Beethoven, because there we find the permanent expression of mind and intelligence. And thus the musical critic may virtually disregard the element of sensation, or at most may allude to it only so far as to show that it is, in Aristotle's phrase, 'obedient to reason.'

Music affects our emotional nature in two ways: partly through the nervous system, partly through the ordinary law of a.s.sociation. It is a commonplace of psychology that our emotions are largely conditioned by physical states in the body,[3] and to this rule music a.s.suredly offers no exception. Under certain circ.u.mstances, a current of energy, after pa.s.sing from the ear to the brain, is trans.m.u.ted into the nervous movements which const.i.tute the material cause of the simple feelings, and thus we are roused or exhilarated or depressed by means as mechanical as those of any agency in external nature. Here, again, as in sensation itself, much depends upon the receptivity of the nerve. One hearer may be thrown into agitation by an impulse which leaves another comparatively cold, a strong temperament may be vehemently excited by conditions under which a weaker organism is stunned or paralysed. But all who are in any degree susceptible of the influence of music, have experienced some measure of this emotional stimulus, poured into the brain through sensation, and then sublimated in a physical alembic.

Among the most conspicuous existing causes may be noted the rapid tremolo of the strings, as in the death song at the end of _Tristan_, the beat of a recurring figure, as in the 'Ride to the Abyss' of Berlioz' _Faust_, the reiteration of high notes on the violin, as in much of Dvorak's chamber music, and the restlessness of frequent modulation or uncertain tonality. Any reader who is at the pains to a.n.a.lyse the effect produced upon him by these means of musical expression, will probably agree that they rouse first a particular kind of stimulus in the sense, and then, without any conscious intervention on his own part, a corresponding state of emotional feeling.

Far more important is the influence of a.s.sociation. There is no reason _in rerum natura_ why the minor mode should be sad, but our first ancestors noticed that a cry sank in tone as the power of its utterance failed, and hence established a connection between depression of note and waning strength. So began an a.s.sociation of ideas to which, by transmission and inheritance, the pathos of our minor keys is mainly due. Again, the ba.s.s naturally suggests gravity and earnestness, because that is the case with the speaking voice. 'No man of real dignity,' says Aristotle, 'could ever be shrill of speech;' and similarly, when we look for serious or dignified music, we expect to find some prominence given to its lower register. Much, too, of this a.s.sociation is due to the motions of our ordinary life: the force that strikes like a blow in the first phrase of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the agitation so often expressed by rapid and irregular movement; the broken voices at the end of the Funeral March in the _Eroica_; and others of similar kind. Of course music cannot define any specific emotional state: it is far too vague and indeterminate to be regarded as an articulate language; but it undoubtedly can suggest and adumbrate general types of emotion, either by producing their sensuous conditions, or by presenting some form of phrase which we can connect by a.s.sociation with our own experience.

But it is not in this emotional influence that the truest laws of musical criticism are to be sought. Its criterion is n.o.bler than that of sense, partly because it deals with an aspect of our nature which is less animal, partly because it implies a greater degree of skill in the artist; but it is too personal and intimate to afford a satisfactory basis for discussion, and taken by itself, it offers little or no opportunity for the exercise of the higher faculties. In the _Journal des Goncourt_, there is a well-known pa.s.sage describing the effect of music on a roomful of highly-strung and unintelligent listeners. The picture is not a little degrading to our humanity: nervous emotion trembling on the verge of hysteria, sentiment that has pa.s.sed out of rational control, an intoxication of feeling morbid in itself and dangerous in its inevitable reaction. The case may be extreme, the account may be rhetorically exaggerated, but it contains a salutary truth. If we look on music merely as a stimulus to our emotional nature, we are really disregarding all that makes it of permanent value as an art. We are lowering it to the level of sentimental romance or bloodthirsty melodrama. Grant that this form of indulgence is less gross than the direct gratification of the senses, it is not a whit more critical. While we are under its spell, we are as incapable of sane judgment as Rinaldo in Armida's garden; we have abrogated our manhood, we have drugged our reason, we are lying pa.s.sive and inert at the mercy of an external will.

It is hardly necessary to point out that this state of mere recipience is altogether different from artistic appreciation. Art is not more a riot of the pa.s.sions than it is a debauch of the senses: it contains, no doubt, sensuous and emotional elements, the importance of which there is no need to undervalue, but it is only artistic if it subordinate them to the paramount claims of reason. Even the purest and n.o.blest emotions do not const.i.tute a sufficient response. We are only in a position to criticise when we have pa.s.sed through the emotional stage and emerged into the intellectual region beyond. To judge a composition simply from the manner in which it works upon our feelings, is no better than judging a picture or a poem merely from our sympathy with its subject.

To this conclusion two possible objections may be urged: first, that it takes an 'ascetic' view of art; second, that it places the criterion in a mere subservience to abstract and mechanical laws. Both of these rest on a misunderstanding of the position. True art is neither ascetic nor intemperate: it implies a full command of the sensuous and emotional factors in beauty, but it knows how to employ them. Its object is to make the whole work beautiful, not to elaborate this or that aspect at the expense of the rest; and such an object can only be achieved in virtue of certain intellectual principles. Beethoven's harmony is not less exquisite, or his pa.s.sion less true and vital because he regards the requirements of style and structure as paramount. On the contrary, the sensuous and emotional beauties of his work are themselves enhanced by the unerring skill with which he places his effects and contrasts his colours. Again, whatever their intellectual laws may be they are not mechanical. They afford no excuse for _kapellmeistermusik_, no justification for cold accuracy and dull correctness: so far from precluding genius, they presuppose it. They are not grammatical conventions which can be learned from text-books, they are the direct and spontaneous outcome of the human reason. Thus, in order to ascertain them, we must begin by discovering what is the broadest principle of formal beauty which can be deduced from the laws of mind, and use it as a provisional hypothesis with which to approach our problem. We shall then see how far this principle finds actual embodiment in the works of the great composers, and if there are exceptions or divergences, how far they can be explained. If our original hypothesis is confirmed by experience, we may reasonably conclude that it is true; if not, we must recognise that we are on the wrong line, and we must retrace our steps. In musical criticism, as in every other form of scientific investigation, it is not the function of man to antic.i.p.ate facts, but to interpret them.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] See an interesting essay in Dr Frank's _Satyrae Medicae_. See also Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, II. ii. 6, 3.

[3] On this point, see Professor James' _Principles of Psychology_, chap. xxv.

II

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