Part 11 (1/2)

The other point is the change in emotional and melodic phraseology, due partly to the influence of Beethoven and Schubert, partly to that of the more distinctively Romantic composers. It is quite certain that the characteristic melody of the eighteenth century is, on the whole, more susceptible of polyphonic treatment than that of our own time. The finale of the Jupiter Symphony is, in any case, a stupendous effort of genius; but take five typical tunes of Liszt or Berlioz, and Mozart himself could not have dealt with them as he dealt with his own phrases.

The curve of melody has altered in some degree, and thus, while it has given new effects of beauty, it has become a little less adaptable to certain of its requirements. No doubt Schumann developed a wonderful polyphonic system of his own; but even in him we may recognise certain limits: and, moreover, he stands, in this respect, almost alone as an intermediary between Bach and Brahms. We are driven, then, to conclude either that polyphony should grow obsolete, which the most unthinking audacity can hardly affirm, or that the extreme of Romantic expression has lost in art what it has gained in poetry. And herein Brahms appears as a true reformer. His thought is in full accord with the general poetic conception of our age, but he has selected from its entire range those particular forms of phrase and melody which are most conspicuously plastic and malleable. The opening of the A major Quartett is romantic enough, but it admits of that marvellous piece of contrapuntal imitation which surprises us in the coda. The Symphony in F major is one of the least formal of compositions, but the most laborious academician in music could not compile a more elaborate polyphony than Brahms has here created. Indeed, there is little necessity to search for instances: they may be found on almost every page of the concerted or choral works. And, though it be true that Bach is often curiously modern in idea, though he frequently stands nearer to us than Handel or Haydn or Mozart, the fact still remains, that Brahms is in closer and more intimate sympathy with him than even the romantic composers who made him their ostensible pattern and prototype.

So far, then, as relates to the harmonic aspect, Brahms may be regarded as a real stage in the evolution of Musical Art. There remains the more important question of his contributions to the development of structure: in other words, of his relation to Beethoven. The harmonic ideal had been maintained, in varying degree, by all composers of the first rank, and herein the traditions of Schumann and Chopin were of distinct and momentous service to their successor; but the structural ideal had, since 1830, been allowed to fall into comparative neglect, and in restoring it Brahms had virtually to do his work single-handed. No doubt, in short lyric forms, and even in their direct expansion to a larger scale, the Romantic musicians had shown a considerable mastery of outline; but in the more complex organism of symphony and concerto, they had fallen somewhat out of the line of progress, and had diverged from the methods of the 'Emperor' and the 'A major.' Hence the estimate of Brahms' position in this matter is of double interest: partly because of the intrinsic value of key-structure in musical organisation, partly because the line of development was in some degree broken and obliterated.

Now it has been already maintained that the sonata form, in its widest and most comprehensive signification, represents the highest type of structure to which the Art of Music has yet advanced. Other instrumental forms--the romance, the fantasia, the nocturne--are modelled, with more or less of exact.i.tude, upon sonata movements; and the same is true even of vocal forms, except in so far as they are influenced by the fugue or affected by the extra-musical requirements of the words. It is therefore to works ostensibly in sonata form that we must primarily address ourselves. And here it may at once be stated that in a vast majority of the details, Beethoven seems to have reached

The outside verge that rounds our faculty.

In the construction of the separate movements, taken as individual unities, there has been little or no progress since his time, for little or no progress was possible. We can only say, then, that in this respect the work of Brahms is as organic as that of his master; and, in saying this, we are merely propounding a matter of comparative a.n.a.lysis which can readily be settled by an appeal to facts. It is as true of Brahms as of Beethoven, that there is in him no redundant phrase, no digression, no parenthesis, nothing that does not bear some intimate relation either to its immediate context, or, with more subtlety, to a remoter part of the subsequent issue. Take, for instance, the rondo tune which opens the Finale of the B flat Sestett. A careless observer may regard the beginning of its second stanza as mere padding, devised to fill a gap until the princ.i.p.al strain recurs. Turn a few pages, and we find that it was the presage of a complete and important episode which itself is vital to the structure as a whole. Again, in the first movement of the same work, if any reader will compare the entry of the second subject with the corresponding place in Beethoven's Hammerclavier Sonata, he will see with what accuracy Brahms learned his lesson and with what consummate skill he applied it. And in all other qualities of organic structure--in choice of tonal centres, in the relative length of const.i.tuent sections, in perfect balance of exposition and development--the same line of legitimate succession may be traced. It is not a question of imitation. Brahms is no copyist, reproducing with careful fidelity the precise outline of a master's original. In this, as in his polyphony, he has a.s.similated the principles of a past method and has turned them to his own account.

But for the complete organisation of a symphony, or a sonata, it is not sufficient that each movement should be structurally exact; they must be so inter-related as to produce an effect of organism in the whole. And there are three chief ways in which this inter-relation can be secured.

The first is by unity of emotional effect; by making the whole work tell the same story, and represent the same general type of feeling. In Beethoven's Appa.s.sionata, for instance, a scherzo would be an impertinence, in his Eighth Symphony a slow movement would be an intrusion; for the one is as wholly tragic in character as the other is light and humorous. The second is by the proper choice of key for each of the successive numbers; for the selection, that is, among all possible alternatives, of the tonic note that will give the most complete and satisfying result. And herein we may confess that we have one of the few cases in which Beethoven's work was injuriously affected by convention. Of course, the Seventh Symphony stands almost unique and unapproachable, a culminating point of structural excellence, but, as a rule, his scheme, though less h.o.m.ogeneous than that of Mozart, has too little diversity to be accepted as final. Thirdly, the entire composition may be held together by a transference of themes, that is, by the reminiscence in one number of phrases or melodies that have already been employed in another. Of this device there is hardly any example in Beethoven until the end of his career, and even then the only conspicuous instance is the finale of the Choral Symphony. It is, indeed, the latest-born of all the forces that tend to organisation, and along its lines the sonata form of the future will probably find the readiest opportunity of progress.

If, then, Brahms is the inheritor of Beethoven's method, we may expect to find a continuity of tradition in his treatment of these three points respectively. And a.s.suredly the a.n.a.lysis of his work will not disappoint us. For, in the first place, the poetic unity of his compositions is beyond dispute. In each of the great concerted pieces, whether for the chamber or the orchestra, we find one general type of feeling worked out, it may be, to successive issues, but developed in orderly sequence from a single source. His cast of mind is usually grave and reflective, therefore he has for the most part discarded the scherzo, and replaced it by a movement of more earnest and serious character. His manner of thought is logical and coherent, therefore his finales, like those of Beethoven, are not mere light-hearted fantasias, intended to send away the audience in a good temper, but true conclusions, carefully planned and adequately presented. Even in such works as the Horn Trio, where the contrast is probably at its strongest, there is no real obscurity in the underlying relation; while in the four symphonies, to take the opposite extreme, we need only hear the sequence of movements to p.r.o.nounce it inevitable.

And as we find an organic unity in the emotional aspect, so we find an organic diversity in the choice of keys. Except for the obvious principle, that first and last movements must acknowledge the same tonic, Brahms admits none of the _a priori_ laws by which his predecessor was occasionally bound. In other words, he takes as his unit not the separate movement but the entire series, and selects his keys for Adagio and Intermezzo with the same structural care as he uses for a 'second subject,' or a 'development section.' Allusion has already been made to the Violoncello Sonata in F, one of the most marvellous pieces of successful audacity in all musical form; but hardly less remarkable is the Symphony in E minor, where the key of the slow movement is equally unusual, and equally necessary. Indeed, any of the concerted works will serve for ill.u.s.tration. The choice is sometimes simple, sometimes recondite, but in all cases it is justified by the event.

Transference of themes is a device attended by one imminent danger. If awkwardly employed, it may look like poverty of thought, or at best that artless _navite_ of repet.i.tion which is only tolerable in a ballad literature. But if this danger be avoided, and its avoidance is only a question of skill, the reminiscence of a previous melody may round off and complete an entire work in much the same way as the 'Recapitulation'

rounds off and completes a single movement. It has been already said that Beethoven makes little use of this method. Schumann indicated some of its possibilities, but Schumann died while the work was still incomplete, and left its further elaboration to other hands. And though Brahms is somewhat tentative and uncertain in the matter, though he leaves room for future advance and future progress, yet at least we may say that he has explored more of the new ground than any of his predecessors. In the Finale of the G major Violin Sonata, and in that of the Quartett in B flat, he is satisfied to carry out the suggestion of Schumann;[56] but elsewhere, as in the second Symphony and the clarinet Quintett, he develops them in a new direction, by founding two movements on thematic variants of the same idea. It is difficult to overrate the value of these hints for future guidance, though, as yet, they are only hints, not complete solutions. For, grant that an entire sonata or symphony can never be called organic in precisely the same sense as its const.i.tuent parts; grant that their a.n.a.logue is the man, and its a.n.a.logue the corporate community; still some further organisation of the whole is undoubtedly possible, and we may well expect it to follow the method which Brahms has here indicated.

In one word, he has completed, for present purposes, the emanc.i.p.ation of musical form, not by the false freedom of anarchy, but by the true freedom of a rational code. Artistic progress, like that of the political commonwealth, has always tended towards the abolition of purely conventional laws, and to the maintenance and development of those that are founded upon broad principles of human nature. By Brahms, so far as we can see, the last links of convention have been snapped, and the form has now room to grow and expand in perfect liberty. Look, for instance, at his treatment of the Concerto, which, up to his time, was the most unsatisfactory, because the most conventional, of all cla.s.sical types. He has broken down the unnecessary rule of the three movements, he has finally overthrown the tyranny of the solo instrument, he has given the whole form a free const.i.tution similar to that of the Quartett and the Symphony. And though we be disinclined to regard our present sonata-form as ultimate; though it may some day develop into a new type, as it was itself developed from the Part.i.ta, yet the very possibility of future advance depends upon conditions which it has been the work of Brahms to secure. Hence, to call him a reactionary, as some writers are fond of doing, is simply to misunderstand his whole relation to musical art. In all history, there is no composer more essentially progressive.

But, it may be objected, is not all this insistence on minutiae somewhat pedantic and artificial? Does it really matter whether a concerto has four movements or three? whether an adagio is in A flat or A natural?

Indeed, is not the whole sonata-form a piece of academic subtlety, and _a fortiori_, must we not regard its details as points of grammar rather than points of art? And the critic, whom we are only too probably supposing, will go on to speak of 'melody beaten out into thematic gold-leaf,' or will even tell us that there is more music in an intermezzo, where the composer's thought 'runs freely without restrictions of form,' than in all the studious ingenuity of codas and development sections. In short we are asked to believe that beauty is too spiritual for legislation, and that any attempt to render it amenable to a code is as futile as the countryman's endeavour to break Pegasus into harness.

Now, in the first place, to commend a musician for disregarding the laws of form is even more unreasonable than to commend a poet for his halting verses, or a painter for his bad drawing. If by laws are meant conventions, then the criticism is just in itself, but it does not touch the point at issue; if natural laws are meant, then the critic has done no more than express his own personal preference for chaos. The little pianoforte pieces of Brahms, for example, are charming, not because they are formless, but because their form is perfect. The only difference between them and the sonata movements, from which they are derived, is a difference of development: the underlying principles are identical. In the second place, it has already been maintained that the sonata is not an artificial construction, but an organic growth evolved, in steadily-increasing complexity, from a living origin: and, further, that its const.i.tuent parts represent between them all the general types of all existing instrumental compositions. Either, then, this conclusion must be refuted, or the 'academic' view of the sonata must be abandoned as untenable. And in the third place, if it be demurred that although some general laws of form are advisable, yet the artist should treat them with a free hand, and not expend himself on niggling details, then it is an obvious answer, that this objection rests on a confusion of thought. The little masters have sometimes to choose between a superficial facility and an elaboration that smells of the lamp: the great masters have so a.s.similated their principles, that exact.i.tude with them is a second nature. In Tintoret's Miracle of S. Mark, the twisted rope strands could not have been drawn more perfectly if they had cost weeks of calculation and measurement: yet each is finished with a single sweep of the brush. And so again in Brahms this accuracy of detail is not a matter of diligence, but a matter of insight, cultivated, no doubt, by past training, but employed at the moment with a direct and unerring certainty. It may legitimately be questioned whether perfection of form is not sometimes too dearly bought by a sacrifice of vigour or originality: if the two can be set in ant.i.thesis, we may understand that a critical judgment should hesitate between them.

But, given vigour and originality, and, in Brahms, no serious writer has ever denied these gifts, it hardly admits of discussion that the form of a work is, in some degree, a measure of its artistic value.

We may conclude, then, that in what has been called the treatment of the musical medium, Brahms occupies an incontestable position among the greatest composers of the world. It now follows that we should consider the character of his ideas, the nature of his melody, and, in a word, the particular qualities implied in his power of invention and his emotional standpoint. It is, perhaps, inevitable that we should do this with something of a prepossession. For, as we have already seen, in music, form and thought are obverse and reverse of the same set of relations, and the organism of the one is our best guarantee for the vitality of the other. Here, at any rate, academic methods are always imitations, copies which in no way advance upon their pre-existing model: and thus, if the artistic structure of a work be really living and progressive, we need have little fear about its artistic function.

But, at the same time, music can adumbrate so many different types of emotion, that it is worth inquiring whether a given artist has seized them all, and whether, if he be limited to a part of the field, his value is affected or impaired by the limitation.

Now it is sometimes maintained that the music of Brahms is deficient in emotional sensibility: that it is too sober, too self-controlled, too intellectual to be really artistic. The composer, like the poet, should be animated by a 'divine madness and enthusiasm;' he should leave to philosophy the more cautious attributes of deliberate thought; he has the free wind of heaven in his sails, and should run before it on a full tide, neither anxious for his safety nor careful of his direction. But of two things, one: Either we are to hold that art gains by hysteria and extravagance, and that its highest climax is a delirium of unrestrained and riotous pa.s.sion; or, if this be impossible, we must accept the only alternative, and admit self-control as a necessary principle. The only true question at issue, then, must be the measure in which the restraining influence is to be exercised--the point at which it sets up its barrier and says, 'Thus far and no farther.' And if we recall the t.i.tanic strength of Brahms' first Symphony, or the romance of the _Tragic Overture_, and the vigour and variety of such 'Dramatic Lyrics'