Update for 76559HEADmain

8 files changed, 4540 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/76559-0.txt b/76559-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9839aa5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/76559-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1549 @@
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76559 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                               TERPANDER
+
+
+
+
+                               TERPANDER
+                                 _or_
+                         MUSIC AND THE FUTURE
+
+                                  BY
+                            EDWARD J. DENT
+
+
+                            [Illustration]
+
+
+                               New York
+                        E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
+                           681 Fifth Avenue
+
+
+
+
+                            Published, 1927
+                       BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
+
+
+                         _All rights reserved_
+
+
+                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+_All ancient writers who mention the progressive state of music in
+Greece, are unanimous in celebrating the talents of TERPANDER. Several
+writers tell us that he added three strings to the lyre, which before
+his time had but four. Plutarch, in his “Laconic Institutions,” informs
+us that Terpander was fined by the Ephori for his innovations. However,
+in his Dialogue on Music, he likewise tells us that the same musician
+appeased a sedition at Sparta, among the same people, by the persuasive
+strains which he sung and played to them upon that occasion. There
+seems no other way of reconciling these two accounts, than by supposing
+that he had, by degrees, refined the public taste, or depraved his own
+to the level of his hearers._――BURNEY.
+
+
+
+
+                               TERPANDER
+
+
+
+
+                                   I
+
+
+In the early years of the present century a certain learned and
+cultivated musician, then about eighty years of age, was heard to
+say, as he came out from a concert at which works by Debussy had been
+played: “Well, if this is the ‘music of the future,’ I’m very glad
+I shan’t live to hear it!” Debussy has passed over to the classics
+since then, but there are still plenty of music-lovers, many of them,
+too, not more than middle-aged at the most, who feel apprehensive
+about the future of music. Wherever they turn, there seems to be
+complete chaos. The music of the present day is for them an unending
+succession of hideous noises. There are some who, remembering that in
+their own lifetime they have passed through periods when even Brahms
+and Wagner, Richard Strauss and César Franck seemed unintelligible,
+are yet resolved not to be baffled by Schönberg and Stravinsky. They
+study contemporary music with perhaps little pleasure, but with
+passionate interest and curiosity. Yet they are inevitably conscious
+of difficulties which do not appear to have confronted them before.
+They can see in the music of the early twentieth century some clear
+continuance of the classical tradition; in the later music they can
+find nothing that gives them even a faint hope of being able to
+understand it――some day if not now. They find themselves in the
+position of a man who sets out to learn a language which has no
+connection with the Indo-European stock. It is bad enough to have to
+master a new alphabet; one may possibly, by dint of strenuous effort,
+commit to memory a vocabulary of words which bear not the remotest
+resemblance to any in French or German, Latin or Greek; but when
+it comes to tackling an entirely strange system of syntax for the
+expression of unfamiliar ideas, the mind revolts and the student asks
+whether all this jargon can really have any significance at all. And
+the student of modern music is made still more sceptical by the fact
+that the musicians whom he respects among the apparent initiates are
+seldom in any agreement as to which of the various conflicting systems
+of music is to be regarded as the expression of the true faith. Can you
+tell me, he asks, often with genuine humility, of one living composer
+whom you wholeheartedly accept as a great creative genius, in the way
+in which you once accepted Beethoven, or Brahms, or Wagner, as the
+case might be? The hardened critic hesitates, names tentatively this
+or that musician――No, replies the other firmly; there seems to be no
+one whom you can name without some qualification. And to scepticism
+he adds fear. The new music, he begins to feel, requires not merely a
+new and unaccustomed intellectual effort: it demands a new outlook on
+life altogether. It may affect and disturb fundamental principles such
+as most people prefer to leave untouched. It may be in truth what the
+old fogeys of the past have always said of it: it may be “positively
+dangerous.”
+
+Let us consider our fundamental principles. Let us forget for a moment
+all this contemporary turmoil and ask ourselves what is honestly our
+attitude to the classics that we revere. Music, it has often been said,
+appeals to us in three ways. It affects us first by the mere sensuous
+beauty of sound; as we become more familiar with the art, it works upon
+our emotions, and finally we learn to contemplate it intellectually.
+_La musique est l’art de penser avec les sons._ To the musician who has
+been brought up on the classics this definition of Combarieu’s sums
+up his most complete experience. The three forms of appeal summarily
+described above divide listeners conveniently into three categories,
+but it is a very rough division, and the same person may at any one
+time of his life and experience find himself in any one of the three
+groups according to the particular work which he may be hearing. But it
+may be safely said that the large majority of those whom we can call
+music-lovers belong to the class for whom the appeal of music is mainly
+or exclusively emotional. The first group, those who are affected only
+by the physical quality of musical sound, may be disregarded here.
+And it must be remembered that any one who is sufficiently musical to
+enjoy what we colloquially call “a tune,” however simple, has at least
+the germ of intellectual appreciation; he recognizes that a tune has a
+definite rhythmical shape and a definite tonality, even if he is not
+able to say so in technical language. But most people, when they listen
+to music, do not want to be bothered with formal analysis; they want to
+have their emotions aroused. The analysis of their musical experiences
+is a very complicated matter and far beyond the scope of this book.
+There are many people who fear that if they acquired a knowledge of
+the structural principles of music they would lose all their pleasure
+in it. They are confirmed in this belief by finding that persons who
+are learned in the science of music undoubtedly lose pleasure in much
+that satisfies the emotional requirements of the uninitiated, and may
+in some cases appear to have lost pleasure in hearing any music at
+all. The fear is groundless. The character and quality of the pleasure
+may change, and undoubtedly does change as a result of ripening and
+decaying age; but no one, even among those who detest all modern music,
+however sadly he may say _si vieillesse pourrait_, would admit after
+personal experience that the essential joy of music was destroyed by
+knowledge.
+
+In default of knowledge, the “emotional” group of music-lovers,
+eagerly desiring to find some significance in the music which they
+hear, often try to translate it into some other language with which
+they are more familiar. Some listeners maintain that music gives them
+positive sensations of colour. There are many who in listening to music
+consciously construct pictorial images. Others will seek to interpret
+it as meaning something that could be expressed in terms of literature.
+Experiments have generally shown that when a number of listeners are
+asked to give their impressions of the same piece of music agreement
+hardly ever goes further than to such vague indications of character as
+the composer himself might give in his conventional Italian directions
+for performance, except in cases where the composer has deliberately
+set out to evoke some literary or pictorial image or has employed
+some well-worn conventional device for the awakening of familiar
+associations.
+
+The psychological process of musical creation has hitherto eluded
+all scientific research. No satisfactory result can be obtained from
+comparing the recorded utterances of the composers themselves as to
+what induced the composition of their works or what they intended to
+express in them. People who are inclined to interpret the music which
+they hear in literary or pictorial terms are naturally attracted
+by definitely descriptive music, and readily produce evidence in
+support of the theory that all composers set out to write music with
+a deliberately descriptive intent. But the history of music shows us
+clearly that deliberately descriptive music rarely stands the test of
+time. There are plenty of examples to be found of acknowledged great
+composers such as Byrd, Purcell, Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Beethoven,
+who have now and then set out to be descriptive; and in almost every
+case we feel that their descriptive music is on a far lower level than
+their non-descriptive music. Indeed, in many cases it is painfully
+ridiculous both as pure music and as description. If it can be saved at
+all, it is only by concentrating attention on its purely musical aspect.
+
+The trained musician is content to take music as music and nothing
+else. It is a logical and reasonable language, although it cannot
+be translated into words. Writers on painting seem now to be pretty
+generally agreed that the “story” of a picture has nothing to do
+with its value as a work of art; that depends upon line and colour
+alone. It is nearly half a century since Walter Pater wrote that “all
+art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.” It was yet a
+generation earlier that Hanslick put forward his theory of musical
+beauty. That theory of “abstract music” did not satisfy the age of
+Wagner and Liszt; but although Hanslick failed to work out his theory
+as fully as he might have done, its further implications have come to
+be accepted with surprising cordiality by a generation of musicians
+whose art would probably have filled Hanslick himself with the most
+unspeakable horror.
+
+Music expresses itself and nothing else. A work may be dramatic,
+illustrative, or even descriptive in certain aspects; but unless it
+is intelligible simply as music alone, constructed on its own purely
+musical principles, apart from all external considerations, it must
+fall short of perfection as a work of musical art.
+
+
+
+
+                                  II
+
+
+Those who have been brought up on the music of Bach, Beethoven, and
+Brahms can readily accept this theory of musical æsthetics. It is
+eminently satisfactory as an interpretation of all that we commonly
+call classical music. There are many people who do not want to listen
+to any other kind of music. They have heard of great names in the
+days before Bach, but they are easily inclined to take the view that
+such composers as Purcell and the elder Scarlatti were merely the
+necessary forerunners who prepared the way; that Palestrina was an
+exceptional and unaccountable expression of a peculiarly exalted age
+of religious belief, and that any one belonging to an earlier date can
+be dismissed as a primitive interesting only to the antiquary. But
+at the present day the antiquaries are coming into their own. Both
+in England and abroad there is a vigorous revival of interest in the
+music of the centuries before Bach. After long years of dusty research
+the antiquaries have at last begun to convince a younger generation
+that a great deal of this so-called primitive music can be given life
+in performance, and performance has shown that it has a surprisingly
+vivid power of appealing to the emotions of modern hearers. Leaders of
+contemporary music indeed are clearly feeling that pre-classical and
+even mediaeval music has in many cases a more intimate affinity with
+that of our own day than the music of the last two hundred years. It
+has even come to exercise a definite and admitted influence on the
+technique of modern composition.
+
+To dissect out the causes and effects of this tendency would be a
+complicated and difficult task for which there is no space here. But
+there is one point which is a matter of common knowledge to the trained
+musician, and the general musical public is probably more or less
+aware of it though unable to explain it in technical language. From
+the year 1600 to the year 1900, roughly speaking, all Western music is
+based on the same fundamental principle of _tonality_. All music is
+composed in a key. One note is adopted as a centre. The remaining notes
+of the octave are brought into various clearly defined relationships
+to it. They may further be arranged in groups, sounded simultaneously,
+known as chords. Each of these chords has its own fixed arrangement
+and its fixed relationship to the centre. What has been done for one
+note of the octave may be done in exactly the same way for any other,
+forming what we call the key of that note. The musician may shift from
+one key to another in the course of his work, but it is understood
+that he must make his main key clear and definite at the outset and
+must re-establish it again with equal decision at the end. In the early
+years of the seventeenth century the efforts of musicians were directed
+chiefly to establishing one key clearly and towards the training of
+audiences to grasp the first principles of the system. As they became
+more and more accustomed to the system the composers were able to
+extend and elaborate it. The interrelations of notes and chords became
+increasingly subtle and delicate from the days of Monteverdi to those
+of Wagner; but the fundamental key-system and the rhythmical system
+which is inseparable from it remained always precisely the same. The
+language of music developed steadily and rationally just as the English
+language has developed from Shakespeare to Swinburne. It is no wonder
+then that most musicians regarded its foundations as indestructible.
+
+Its grammar was codified by Rameau early in the eighteenth century,
+and later theorists saw no reason to repudiate the main principles
+of Rameau’s doctrine. In the passionate stateliness of Rameau’s own
+music, in the gigantic dignity of Handel, in the genial _Gemütlichkeit_
+of Bach, we see the same lucid and logical precision of language. It
+was only natural that eighteenth century criticism should regard the
+music of earlier centuries as crude and barbarous. The nineteenth
+century approached the older music with a more penetrating sense of
+scholarship, but could not help reading it in the same spirit. An age
+of antiquarian research inevitably tended to consider its discoveries
+as historical documents to be examined in the dry light of theory
+rather than as the expressions of intensely passionate humanity. The
+music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was interpreted according
+to the system of Rameau, for no other system could be conceived. If
+under these conditions it failed to make any emotional appeal, that
+did not matter: reverence for antiquity discouraged the unveiling of
+passion.
+
+
+
+
+                                  III
+
+
+The development of all kinds of historical studies during the past
+half-century has caused a wide and by no means learned public to take a
+keen interest in the life of the past and in its artistic expression.
+We can no longer quietly accept the doctrine that music began with
+Bach, or even――as Victor Hugo suggested――with Palestrina. The
+architecture, sculpture and painting of the remote centuries, as well
+as their poetry, bring the ancient and mediaeval world vividly before
+our eyes and minds. We cannot help seeing that music must have been no
+less important in the lives of our ancestors than it is in our own;
+indeed, it often seems that in those far-away times the art of music
+exercised an even more cogent influence than it does now. How can it
+be, we ask, that people so strangely susceptible to the power of sound
+and at the same time so consummately accomplished in the other arts
+should have left behind them an art of music which we can only regard
+as crude and primitive?
+
+If we attempt to consider this question seriously we shall soon find
+that we are confronted with fundamental problems of æsthetics. First of
+all we must rid ourselves of the habit of regarding music as something
+printed on paper which can be played on the pianoforte. Modern
+civilization easily leads us to take it for granted that whatever has
+been written down or printed is clearly fixed and recorded for all
+time. But the real music is not that which is written down: it is the
+sounds which are made by those who perform it. A physician cannot cure
+his patient merely by giving him prescriptions to read. The written
+notes, even those of our own day, require imaginative interpretation;
+they require, too, an interpretation based on tradition and experience.
+Complicated as it is, our contemporary notation is very inadequate,
+although we of to-day are thoroughly accustomed to the practice of
+conveying information by written signs. It is only natural that in
+centuries when very few people were able to read or write words at all
+the notation of music should have presented still greater difficulty.
+We can see from early documents such as the ecclesiastical manuscripts
+of the tenth century that if music was written down it was not in
+order that complete strangers should be able to read it clearly and
+accurately at sight, but merely to serve as a reminder to the singer of
+what he had already committed to memory by ear.
+
+The records of the other arts are solid material facts, things of
+wood, metal or stone which are always before our eyes. The music that
+was contemporary with them has disappeared into silence, but that
+does not necessarily prove that it was not worth preserving. Yet we
+may well ask ourselves another question: is any art worth preserving?
+From the historian’s point of view everything is worth preserving as
+a historical document; but if we judge works of art from a purely
+æsthetic standpoint can we honestly say that the art of the past has
+any value for us?
+
+Directors of museums and galleries may perhaps be shocked at so
+heretical a question. But if, as so many art-critics have suggested,
+music is the ideal type of art we may legitimately approach the
+subject from a musical point of view in preference to a pictorial one.
+The records of the other arts are solid material facts: temples and
+cathedrals, statues, panels, canvases. Compared with a symphony that
+may last an hour in performance, they are almost to be considered
+indestructible and eternal. If on hearing the symphony we find that
+it gives us no pleasure, it is soon over, and we need never hear it
+again. Once the cathedral has been put up, it is more trouble than
+it is worth to take it away again. A second generation may think
+it hideous, a third takes no notice of it, a fourth venerates its
+antiquity, yet another decides to find it beautiful. The statue or the
+picture meets with a similar fate, but as it is less bulky, it can at
+least be sold, bought and sold again. It may acquire value as a rarity,
+for every material work of art is unique, whereas a piece of music
+can be reproduced as many times and in as many different places as we
+choose. The owner of a picture by Titian possesses property which is
+his and his alone. He might say the same of an autograph manuscript by
+Beethoven; but he cannot possess the symphony itself――that belongs
+to the world at large. The autograph may fetch a thousand pounds at
+auction, but it is no more than a piece of dirty paper. You can hear
+the symphony played for a shilling.
+
+The fundamental question at issue is this――is a work of art a complete
+and finite thing, beautiful when it left its maker’s hand, beautiful
+now and for ever, or is it frankly transitory, a momentary expression
+of a momentary experience, speaking as a rule only to those who
+belong to the same generation? The art dealer and the museum director
+naturally take the first view. If you have paid some huge sum for a
+picture, you may hesitate to burn it as soon as you are tired of it.
+You must at least go on pretending to admire it. And since material
+works of art are always before us, it is natural that philosophers
+should have started to construct their artistic theories from an
+architectural or pictorial point of view. It is perhaps inevitable
+that the criticism of music should borrow phrases from that of the
+plastic arts, because music is an art so entirely complete in itself
+that it has never yet evolved an adequate vocabulary of technical
+terms, let alone a vocabulary in which its nature can be described
+to the non-technical reader. But although there may be something to
+be said for Goethe’s famous comparison of architecture to “frozen
+music,” it is with poetry rather than with the plastic arts that music
+more legitimately may seek affinity. Literary critics have never yet
+succeeded in defining what poetry is; but we can at any rate say that
+what distinguishes poetry from a statement of the same idea in prose
+is chiefly the presence of qualities which are common both to poetry
+and to music. It has been clearly shown, for instance, that the lyric
+poetry of classical Greece employed devices of construction which are
+curiously similar to those of Beethoven. Habit induces us to imagine
+that the value of Beethoven’s music depends on our conventional
+scale and the harmonies derived from it; but though we are bound
+to admit that every artist is limited by the peculiar qualities of
+his materials, whether they be words, marble or musical sounds, we
+know that they cannot be turned to artistic account unless he has
+chosen them, imperfect as they are, to serve him in the expression of
+something conceived in his imagination――something of which he himself
+is definitely aware although he cannot communicate it to others without
+this material presentation.
+
+That which is common to poetry and music is not a metaphysical figment.
+It may often elude analysis; but at present it has hardly been
+investigated scientifically. It ought to be possible to find out a
+great deal more about it, and to find out a great deal more about what
+constitutes the “poetical” quality――to use the epithet in a familiar if
+not very accurate sense――of musical interpretation, for these things
+are problems of actual physical sound.
+
+The close connection between music and poetry would indeed be more
+immediately apparent if people of to-day had not acquired a distorted
+view of poetry by reading it in silence instead of reciting it aloud.
+Cheap printing and popular education have given readers――poets too,
+perhaps――an entirely false set of values. People talk of the beauties
+of Greek poetry; how can they have any idea of them when the most
+learned scholars admit that nobody knows how classical Greek ought
+to be pronounced? They are in the same position as a musician of the
+future might be if he studied the scores of Beethoven without any idea
+of what a tone or a semitone was. They know what the words mean, but
+they are in much the same case as the man who sees nothing in a picture
+beyond the story which it tells. This preoccupation with the “story”,
+natural and inevitable as it is, has dominated the whole conception of
+art; it has even contaminated the conception of music. It is necessary
+to draw attention to it here, because it constantly distracts the
+attention from the fact that all the arts are in a perpetual state
+of change. We see the human form represented in the plastic arts and
+are inevitably tempted to judge them according to their skill in
+representing it faithfully. We read about the common experiences of
+human life in poetry, we accept translations from other languages
+without demur, and take pleasure in the sense of human continuity. The
+stability of material works of art gives us a false idea of æsthetic
+permanence; we are easily induced to take an analogous view of poetry.
+But in actual fact language, which is the material of poetry, is in
+constant flux; we are so well aware of that fact that we have almost
+ceased to notice it. Language changes because it is, if not the most
+immediate, at least the most useful, of our means of expression. The
+most immediate means of artistic expression is music, and consequently
+music is of all the arts the most subject to change, perhaps the most
+subtle, certainly the most transitory.
+
+
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+
+The art of music undergoes change, as does language, because it adapts
+itself to the expression of changing views of life. “Everything new,”
+says Frazer, “is apt to excite the awe and dread of the savage.” The
+active and exploring temperament seeks new experiences intellectual
+as well as physical; the temperament that is sedentary and passive
+shelters itself behind what is already well established. It dreads
+novelty and dreads it particularly in music――that is, if it is
+susceptible to music at all――for the very reason that music is the most
+immediate means of expressing innermost experiences such as mankind
+often fears to express in the more easily misinterpreted medium of
+words. Music has at all times been strangely associated with fear. From
+the earliest days it was the confederate of magic and religion. Even
+in classical Greece it was regarded as a thing of danger if not kept
+under the severest control. Sir Henry Hadow has pointed out that in the
+whole of classical Greek literature there is not a word of what we can
+call musical criticism, that is, criticism of music simply as an art
+in itself. But although moralists discussed it from a strictly ethical
+point of view, their very fear of it shows how powerful must have been
+its influence on those who enjoyed it. The absence of critical writings
+does not necessarily imply an absence of artistic feeling or artistic
+discrimination. It is a matter of common knowledge that the Greek word
+for “music” covered a far wider field than the word does to-day. Music
+was to the Greeks practically inseparable from poetry, so that we find
+on the one hand that their poetry absorbs much of the inventive skill
+which we now consider to be more appropriate to music, and on the other
+hand that music comes in for a good deal of the ethical censure which
+is more likely to be due to the poetry. Fortunately artists have at all
+times been reluctant to submit to the tyranny of moralists.
+
+Although practical experience may force us to admit that the perpetual
+change to which music has been subjected during the course of centuries
+makes it impossible for us to arrive even after prolonged study of
+documents at a complete understanding of the art of the remoter past,
+it is nevertheless interesting to make the attempt for the sake of
+deepening historical knowledge. If we cannot enter into the life of
+our ancestors without studying their arts as well as their politics,
+we must certainly pay as careful an attention to their music as we do
+to their architecture or their painting. The historians of music have
+only recently begun to set forth in a tentative way the evolution of
+musical forms. They have paid little or no attention to the varying
+relations of music to the other arts and to life in general. Nor have
+they considered seriously the history of musical appreciation. But if
+we are to understand the significance of music at various periods it
+is obviously of interest to discover at what date music began to be
+regarded as an independent art――independent, that is, not merely of
+poetry, but also of magic, religion or ethics. And this will further
+lead us to the closely connected question of its varying psychological
+appeal.
+
+The rough division, suggested in a previous chapter, of that appeal
+into the three aspects, physical, emotional and intellectual, will at
+least serve to provide us with an experimental basis. If we find it
+unsatisfactory we shall at least hope to make our minds clearer as
+to its real nature in the process of submitting it to a historical
+test. There is, too, another well-known classification of artistic
+experience under the adjectives “Dionysiac” and “Apollinian.” The
+latter coincides, if I understand it aright, more or less with what
+I have called the “intellectual” appreciation of music; but the
+“Dionysiac” view of music seems to require more searching analysis. It
+is clear that the Dionysiac view of music must be very much the older,
+as well as the commoner, of the two. The remoteness of Greek art of
+all kinds has caused most people to regard it in a very chilly light,
+although modern archæology has gone some way towards correcting this
+view. But it is highly probable that even to the more intellectual of
+Greek music-lovers music (using the word in our normal sense) was more
+frankly a matter of physical sensation than cultivated musicians, at
+any rate in England, would willingly admit it to be for themselves.
+It was pre-eminently vocal, and as the Greeks were a Mediterranean
+people with a very clear and concrete outlook on life, its appeal to
+them might be more reasonably compared with that of opera to South
+Italians. To people vividly conscious of all physical things singing
+naturally implies intensification of the personality――including
+the physical personality――of the singer. This will account for
+Plato’s intimate conjunction of music with bodily conditions and his
+consequent apprehension of its possible danger to morals. Evidently,
+too, the associational appeal of music was then already recognized
+and deliberately exploited by composers, though here it is difficult
+to separate clearly musical from purely rhythmical and poetical
+associations.
+
+The Romans seem to have regarded music merely as an amusement. There
+are plenty of people in all countries to-day, even in Germany itself,
+who take the Roman view of music. It does not necessarily preclude
+the view of music as an art by those who practise it for the mere
+amusement of others, although it tends to lower standards because it
+inevitably encourages commercialism. Among the early Christians we at
+once perceive a return to the fear of music as a dangerous thing. It
+could only be tolerated as the “handmaid of the Church”; but though
+that doctrine is still being preached, musicians have rebelled more
+and more resolutely against the acceptance of the ancillary position.
+St. Augustine’s famous description of the effect that music had on him
+shows how apprehensive he was lest music should become a more potent
+influence than dogma. Others, less sensitively susceptible to the voice
+of music than Augustine, speak of it as a thing purely subservient.
+The most illuminating phrase is that of St. Basil who compares the
+use of music in association with doctrine to the physician’s use of
+honey to disguise the unpleasant taste of his medicines. Yet it is
+clear that during the first thousand years of the Christian era there
+was developed in the shadow of the Church an art of music which was
+highly sophisticated and self-conscious. The ecclesiastical view of
+music had at least this to be said for it, that it caused music to be
+written down. It had for ritual reasons to be definitely fixed in an
+authoritative record, whereas the music of the profane world, composed
+for the delight of the moment, was not recorded and has therefore been
+lost for ever.
+
+
+
+
+                                   V
+
+
+The mediaeval development of musical notation has an important bearing
+on the history of music as an art. It brought music into direct contact
+with the graphic arts and must have helped to suggest that the melodies
+written in a book were no less beautiful and no less permanent than
+the pictures which illustrated the text. The monks who invented
+notation in order to preserve liturgical music intact and uncorrupted
+from the vain errors of sinful man did as a matter of fact thereby
+provide him with the means of developing his error scientifically. It
+occurred to someone that secular music could be recorded in notes as
+well as sacred. The alphabet ceased to be practically a monopoly of
+the Church. The social status of the musician rose as soon as notation
+made it clear that the composition of a piece of music could be a
+thing apart from its performance. When music can be read from notes
+its hearers inevitably begin to realize that the individual performer
+has no exclusive property in it. His voice may have lost none of its
+thrill, but the listener knows now that interpretation is not the same
+thing as spontaneous creation. If a song or a dance tune is thought
+worth the trouble of writing out, it means that it is held to be worth
+preserving. The musician who made it begins to take rank with the
+learned clerk instead of being classed with tumblers and acrobats,
+rogues and vagabonds. The cultured amateur makes his appearance in the
+ages of chivalry.
+
+Music, considered as a fine art, belongs to the privileged classes
+alone. No doubt the illiterate people had their songs and dances, but
+the ordered progress of musical development was of necessity carried
+on mainly by those who could read and write. It is in this period
+that the musical styles of East and West are sharply differentiated by
+the discovery of the principle of harmony. Harmony, the simultaneous
+sounding of two or more different notes, is so indispensable a part of
+music to-day that many people find it almost impossible to conceive
+of an art of music based on melody alone. The most unlearned are so
+accustomed to the sounds of harmonic music that although their natural
+instinct inclines them first towards pure melody it may be doubted
+whether they can recall an ordinary tune without at least some vague
+half-conscious recollection of a harmonic basis to it. This suspicion
+is confirmed by the fact that many tunes have become widely popular
+in which the melody has at moments no significance apart from the
+underlying harmonies.
+
+The early history of harmonic experiment is still a matter of
+controversy; but whether it came from the Netherlands, from England or
+from Scandinavia, it undoubtedly originated in the North of Europe,
+and for several generations the chief focus of musical development was
+centred in Flanders. This geographical factor has its significance.
+Melodic music is individualistic, harmony is co-operative. When two
+voices sing different notes simultaneously in a piece of music, they
+are obliged to show a certain consideration for one another. In the
+first place they must not try to shout each other down. Secondly, they
+must agree to accept some common system of rhythm and pace, if there
+is to be ordered principle of consonance between them. And if their
+music is to be pleasing in its general effect, they must accommodate
+their voices one to the other so that they blend agreeably. Each of
+these points involves a certain self-sacrifice and subordination of
+the individual to the community which is fundamentally irksome to
+the Mediterranean temperament. The distinction between composer and
+performer becomes sharper than ever. The history of musical composition
+from the time of _Sumer is icumen in_ (1260) to that of Josquin des
+Prés (c. 1445–1521) shows the persistent effort of musicians to
+curb the recalcitrant independence of the individual parts in the
+interests of harmony and order. The writing down of music no doubt
+helped considerably towards this. The tradition of extemporary singing,
+even in harmony, was kept up for a very long time, but it is obvious
+that awkwardnesses which might be overlooked at a single _impromptu_
+performance would be submitted to criticism and correction when they
+had been set down on paper. The Netherland school of the fifteenth
+century devoted much study to intricate technical devices, and we see
+here the most conspicuous example in early times of music in which
+emotion is completely sacrificed to mechanical ingenuity. It need
+hardly be said that this elaborate art was employed exclusively in
+the service of the Church. The extreme examples of it can hardly
+have afforded any listener the opportunity of enjoying the sensuous
+pleasure of sound, either in single voices or in the combinations of
+its harmony. Nor can we imagine that it was a type of music which
+evoked associative images. A product of the intellect it certainly was;
+but Apollo must have been as little responsible for its inspiration as
+Dionysus. It was discipline; and at any rate its poverty of melodic
+invention, its passionless indifference to sensuous beauty and its
+rigid obedience to rule may have represented the three monastic virtues.
+
+
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+
+Yet some of the very composers who devoted their time to the solution,
+or construction, of such futile puzzles were themselves pioneers of
+what we can call modern, as opposed to mediaeval, music. With Josquin
+the Renaissance in music may be said to begin. His sense of harmony
+might be compared with the dawning sense of perspective in painting.
+The true history of the part played by music during the Renaissance has
+yet to be written. Here only a few salient points can be touched upon.
+The invention of printing brought music within the reach of a far wider
+circle. The cultivated amateur comes more and more into notice. The
+leaders of music in the earlier period were still the Netherlanders.
+They overran Italy and came into contact with Italian poets. The
+offspring of this union was the madrigal. The output of secular music
+from the presses of Italy was enormous, and it was soon imitated in
+other countries. Music was still to a large extent under the patronage
+of princes, but instead of being a rare luxury for the enhancement of
+courtly splendour it became a universal ornament and pleasure of all
+cultured society. This is especially observable in Elizabethan England.
+What is important to realize about the secular music of the sixteenth
+century is that music was no longer the monopoly of a close corporation
+of professional musicians in which the distinction between composer and
+performer was very indefinite; it was written very largely with full
+consciousness of the enjoyment which ordinary people could derive from
+the actual practice of it. As music becomes more and more one of the
+normal delights of cultured life, it becomes less and less of a mystery
+and more of a conscious art. Josquin and his school had laid the firm
+foundations of the classical language of music. If we take a long
+view of the history of the art from ancient times to the present day,
+concentrating our attention mainly on secular music, which obviously
+expresses the genuine musical feelings of mankind, rather than on
+church music, which in spite of the natural impulse of composers has
+always been subject to anti-artistic restrictions of style, we shall be
+convinced that the revolution associated with the name of Monteverdi
+and the beginnings of opera was a small matter compared with the
+establishment of the harmonic system a century and a half earlier.
+
+The ecclesiastical composers had undoubtedly made important
+contributions to technique. For one thing, the mere length of the
+works required gave them space in which to work out their technical
+devices completely. Secular music, with its swifter interplay of
+emotion, required a more compressed style, an art of vivid suggestion
+rather than of exhaustive discussion. From the beginning of the
+sixteenth century onwards music moves gradually faster and faster.
+Its development assumes in the listener a knowledge of what has gone
+before. Madrigals were arranged for the lute, just as nowadays operas
+are arranged for the pianoforte. A good deal had to be left out in
+the process of arrangement, but some acquaintance with the original
+might reasonably be presupposed. Music thus develops as an art of
+associative suggestion. Naturalism plays its part, probably under
+the influence of naturalistic painting. Often enough the results are
+ridiculous, but the general effect, viewed at the distance of time, was
+to enrich the musical language. The intimate association of music with
+poetry sometimes led the musician into dangerous paths. An interesting
+contrast is exhibited by Byrd and Marenzio. The Italian is vividly
+descriptive and illustrative; only his strong sense of key prevents
+his work from becoming fragmentary and disjointed as he follows every
+suggestion of his poet. Byrd is never literary; he is perhaps the
+greatest pure musician of the whole age. He represents the perfect
+Apollinian type, Marenzio the Dionysiac, and it is odd to find the
+Mediterranean romantic and the Northerner classical.
+
+
+
+
+                                  VII
+
+
+The appetite for music increases in the seventeenth century and
+the development of musical drama brings the commercial aspect into
+prominence. It is the age of the theatrical and rhetorical style. It is
+an age of speed. There was little music printed, but much circulated in
+manuscript. This does not mean that the general output was less than
+before. The manuscripts are much more easily legible than the printing
+from type; only engraving, rarely practised outside England, can rival
+them. It is the century of “figured bass,” a system of notation which
+enabled a composer to write down a mere outline of his accompaniments,
+leaving them to be filled up _extempore_ by the player. It saved time
+in composition, time in writing out; copying by hand took less time
+than type-setting, and there was no need to multiply copies to any
+great extent. By the time that the copyist has made one the composer
+has produced another work, and his public want the very latest. One of
+the things that strikes us in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
+is the incredible fertility of composers. Operas, cantatas, quartets
+or symphonies――it is nothing unusual to find composers reckoning them
+in hundreds. And we cannot dismiss this copious output with contempt.
+It is easy enough to say that one work sounds very much like another,
+and that even the greatest men have their moments of dullness; but even
+for people who have not specialized in antiquarian studies there is a
+vast quantity of this music which still seems to have power to stir the
+emotions. It must have been composed in a hurry, performed in a hurry
+and thrown away in a hurry; it is a marvel that at this distance of
+time we can still feel that even if we do not want to hear it often we
+are still glad to hear it once.
+
+The agitated rhetoric of the seventeenth century becomes in the
+eighteenth a convention of grandiloquence. The intellectual basis
+of the classical key-system proves to be a foundation upon which
+structures of extraordinary massiveness and dignity can be reared. The
+immense productivity of the age was only made possible by the frank
+acceptance of convention, even in the case of those rare composers
+like Domenico Scarlatti and Haydn who systematically made fun of it.
+This acceptance of convention was stabilized by the fact that there
+had been time for the long accumulation of tradition. The constant
+demand for new music was in no way inconsistent with the preservation
+of tradition; it was preserved not so much by the practical revival of
+old music as by the absorption of its style into what was contemporary.
+It is significant that the eighteenth century marked the beginning of
+the study of musical history.
+
+
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+
+It is during the eighteenth century that the classical symphony
+becomes a power that could seriously threaten the supremacy of vocal
+and dramatic music. The chief centres of symphonic activity are those
+places where northern and southern musical culture met――Vienna,
+Mannheim, and in a lesser degree Paris. It was in the north that the
+preparatory work had been done long before, in the music meetings at
+Oxford and in the _Collegium musicum_ of German universities. That
+movement towards instrumental music was largely due to the amateurs.
+It must not be forgotten that the orchestra of Prince Esterhazy for
+which Haydn composed symphonies was made up mainly from the domestic
+servants of the household. The Conservatoire at Vienna was founded
+by amateurs in order to provide them with help in their own private
+performances. The symphony, along with the string quartet and the
+sonata for harpsichord or pianoforte, was the means of transferring
+the musical expression of the Italian opera to the homes of people who
+had no opportunity of entering an Italian theatre. The operatic aria
+became idealized and transfigured in the process just as a hundred
+years later the operatic melodies of Bellini were transfigured in
+Chopin’s nocturnes. The spiritual result may be looked at in two ways,
+according to our temperament and our point of view. We may say that
+this transference conveys music to a higher æsthetic plane in that it
+removes it from the direct contact with physical human personality to
+a region of suggestion, association and evocation. Or we may say that
+in losing this direct contact we are losing touch with reality, that
+we are sentimentalizing the art until we prefer pretence to truth.
+It is at this stage of musical history that the fundamental æsthetic
+problem becomes acute, although it must have existed for centuries
+beforehand. That the problem was felt to be acute at the moment is
+shown by the appearance in 1750 of Baumgarten’s _Æsthetik_, which was
+the starting-point of modern æsthetic philosophy.
+
+It has often been said that in the eighteenth century the musician had
+no other function than to accompany the clatter of dishes at princely
+dinner-tables. Even if this were strictly true one might at least reply
+that in this respect the aristocracy of the eighteenth century did more
+for the art of music than their descendants. The music of that period
+may have been conventional, courtly and designed to give pleasure;
+but if so, its freedom from emptiness, vulgarity and triviality is
+astonishing. Church and State may have deliberately encouraged the
+“light-hearted gaiety of the Viennese” in order to distract their
+thoughts from the more serious problems of politics; but music in those
+days was at any rate still an art, not a mere commercial product. At
+the same time the printing presses were active. A symphony might have
+been composed for the entertainment of a prince, but as soon as it was
+printed it became accessible to audiences outside the aristocratic
+circle. It was an age of “sensibility”; fine feelings, sighs and tears
+were all the fashion. Music begins――we can see it in Couperin, in
+Boccherini, in Mozart too――to display the quality of refinement, a
+quality which in a later generation was to have a disastrous effect on
+the vitality of the art.
+
+
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+
+The outstanding characteristic of the nineteenth century is its moral
+fervour. The religious preoccupation of Victorian England is only a
+small part of this age of aspiration. In most countries of Europe
+philosophy, science, literature, art, and social life bear witness to
+the ethical passion, even in the cases of the most indignant revolt
+against it. It dominates music from the time of Beethoven onwards; and
+even now it is not entirely extinct in the musical world. The spirit
+of the French Revolution transformed the musician from a lackey to a
+prophet. Mozart was cut off just as he had recorded his vision of the
+new age in _The Magic Flute_. Beethoven proclaims it in the _Choral
+Fantasia_ and illuminates it still more intensely in _Fidelio_, in
+the _Choral Symphony_, the _Missa Solemnis_ and the last quartets.
+One cannot class Beethoven with the Romantics any more than Kant or
+Goethe. Romanticism stood not for enlightenment but for the reaction
+against it. The Romantics were like men who after an earthquake return
+to the ruins of their city to see what they can recover from them. It
+was not always their own property that they recovered. The aristocrats
+had lost their material privilege, but they were still determined to
+remain a class apart. The Catholic revival, on the Continent even
+more than in England, was the assertion of aristocracy as a moral
+principle. It affected music apart from the music that was definitely
+liturgical because it brought about a revival of interest in Palestrina
+comparable to the revival of interest in Dante. The emancipation of
+the artist from feudal servitude encouraged him to assume something of
+the privilege of the aristocracy. The typical figure of this movement
+is Paganini, from whom are descended Liszt and a multitude of minor
+musicians who made it their life-work to play the prophet in public.
+The mechanical developments of the new century contributed to the
+development of the new outlook on music. As travelling became easier
+and music-printing cheaper concerts increased in number and increasing
+newspapers gave them increasing publicity. “_Seid umschlungen,
+Millionen!_” sang Beethoven, and the millions were embraced, though
+perhaps not quite in the way in which Schiller and he had intended.
+
+The modern musician is often tempted to see nothing in the art of
+the past century but pretentiousness. It is not altogether just to
+accuse the century of megalomania. Isolated musicians, such as Liszt,
+Berlioz and Wagner, were certainly possessed with the idea of their
+own greatness. One might say the same of Beethoven himself; but in
+Beethoven’s case the consciousness of his own greatness was inseparable
+from a deep feeling of humility and an overwhelming sense of duty.
+Beethoven was no respecter of persons, but he had the philosopher’s
+intuition of his relation to humanity and of humanity’s relation to
+the universe. Undoubtedly many artists of the nineteenth century
+were stimulated by his example to attempt works on a needlessly
+colossal scale, especially in Germany, where metaphysical studies have
+always influenced a circle that extended far beyond the professed
+philosophers. An ethical view of music became more and more strongly
+marked in Germany; during the latter half of the century it made itself
+felt in England, and to a slighter extent even in France. By the end
+of the century there was a very definite tendency to regard music as a
+form of free religious worship, expressing and stimulating mystical
+experience for temperaments which could no longer be satisfied by
+dogmatic theology.
+
+
+
+
+                                   X
+
+
+It is at all times difficult to draw a line between religious
+exaltation and rhetorical pretentiousness. A consideration of the
+technical means of expression in music may help us to clear our minds.
+Since the middle of the fifteenth century music has exhibited a
+perpetual struggle between counterpoint and harmony, between what are
+sometimes called the horizontal and vertical tendencies of the art. The
+horizontal conception of music is, as all musicians know, the primary
+musical instinct to sing and to elaborate the art by the combination
+of voices each singing its own independently expressive line and
+achieving further emotional force by the ordered clash of dissonance.
+The vertical conception cannot really be separated entirely from the
+horizontal, for it has grown out of it. It derives its emotional force
+from the assumption of periodic stresses, and the study of harmony is
+therefore inseparable from that of rhythm. It is regular rhythm which
+gives different kinds of chords their æsthetic and the quasi-logical
+values.
+
+Melody represents individuality and counterpoint the interaction and
+conflict of individualities. Harmony represents the community as a
+whole under the direction of the mind which has created the music.
+It is therefore natural that as music comes to be associated with
+communal feeling on a large scale, with such ideas, for instance, as
+the universal brotherhood of man, it should tend to become more and
+more predominantly vertical in method. The ordinary music-lover can
+realize this from his recollections of Bach and Handel. Bach’s music
+is mainly horizontal in tendency. It is music for small groups of
+performers, seldom suited to interpretation by large bodies. Handel’s
+music, in which the vertical method is far more conspicuous, gains
+rather than loses by the multiplication of voices and instruments, and
+for this reason Handel is to most Englishmen the ideal composer for
+occasions of national ceremony. The emotional effect is intensified
+by the actual increase of sound and along with this by the rhythmical
+unanimity of the chorus or orchestra. The ordinary man seems to be
+curiously susceptible to emotion at the sight of several hundred
+people doing exactly the same thing at one moment, as in military and
+gymnastic displays, even though the movements executed may be not in
+the least interesting in themselves.
+
+The communal feeling which is at the back of most of the music of
+the nineteenth century finds its technical expression in blocks of
+chords and in strongly accentuated rhythms. A typical example is
+the theme which opens the _finale_ of Beethoven’s C minor symphony.
+_Lohengrin_ and _Elijah_ are full of instances. In some cases the
+impression may be no more than momentary, a mere two or three chords,
+but the trick makes its effect. It becomes too obviously a trick in
+the hands of Liszt. As a pianist he could not help being attracted
+by it. The mechanism of the pianoforte suits full chords better than
+the complication of counterpoint, and the percussive action of itself
+exaggerates rhythmical stresses. It was the ideal instrument for
+Liszt’s grand heroic manner.
+
+The pianoforte was the amateur’s instrument as well as the _virtuoso’s_.
+The nineteenth century is the age of the amateur pianist. Music became
+the pleasure of the rising middle class, for whose domestic consumption
+an endless flood of polite and agreeable music was printed after the
+examples set by Mendelssohn and Schumann. Whatever the present age may
+think of those two composers it can safely be said that no musicians
+have ever been regarded by the general musical public with so widespread
+and so heartfelt an affection. Whoever easily recalls the lines
+
+    As for some dear familiar strain
+    Untir’d we ask, and ask again.
+    Ever, in its melodious store,
+    Finding a spell unheard before――
+
+must surely connect them in immediate memory with the _Scenes of
+Childhood_ or the _Songs without Words_.
+
+It used often to be said of Mendelssohn that “he had nothing to say,
+but said it like a gentleman.” To that I may add the observation of
+one of my own teachers: “When Mendelssohn couldn’t think of anything
+else to say, he said his prayers.” Is it surprising that the England of
+Thackeray adored him? To Mendelssohn and Schumann we owe the fashion
+of what used to be called “characteristic pieces”――quasi-pictorial
+exploitations of certain idioms which at once established themselves
+as universally recognizable conventions both of technique and of
+sentiment――all those “hunting songs,” “spinning songs,” barcarolles,
+cradle songs, wedding marches and funeral marches. At this distance of
+time they may have the charm of old-world refinement. But considered
+historically, what they brought into music was a multitude of insincere
+_clichés_. Mendelssohn and Schumann are themselves remembered for
+their very genuine merits. The style which they represented was
+absorbed into the work of followers whom it is equally impossible to
+forget as well as into that of the innumerable hundreds of purely
+commercial composers. Romantic _cliché_ reached its apotheosis in the
+symphonic monstrosities of Gustav Mahler. But between Mendelssohn
+and Mahler there came others――worthy in some ways of our deepest and
+sincerest respect――who from their own high seriousness became victims
+of the impressive platitude. Ethical fervour led them only too fatally
+into reverent pomposity.
+
+All this false sentiment was diffused universally by the pianoforte;
+not merely by the enormous multiplication of instruments and of
+performers thereon, but by the intrinsic acoustical character of the
+instrument itself. For the sound of the pianoforte cannot press onwards
+like that of the voice, the wind instrument or the violin. That is why
+“horizontal” music is in reality impossible to it; the most it can do
+is to recall the memory of something heard before. It can do this with
+extraordinary subtlety. The sudden impact of the hammer on the string
+gives it even in its most delicate moments a far clearer articulation
+than the voice or the singing instruments. Its whole art is an art of
+evasion, illusion and association. It was the ideal instrument for the
+romantic temperament. It suggested melody, it intensified harmony; it
+falsified the values of both.
+
+The pianoforte naturally attracted intelligent musicians of all grades
+because it seemed to place the whole of music within the grasp of two
+hands. Singing came to be regarded as something almost vulgar, the
+more so since nature has not always distributed voices and brains in
+equal proportions. As the ethical view of music deepened, musicians
+of serious intention turned more to the stringed instruments than to
+the human voice. The instruments could do so much more, they could run
+about faster, they had in practice a cleaner accuracy of intonation
+and a more extended compass. It was easy to forget that after all they
+were nothing more than instruments, and indeed the very fact that they
+were instruments seemed to give them a magical character that appealed
+mysteriously to the romantic mind.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XI
+
+
+Professor Weissmann has well pointed out that in the romantic days the
+orchestra dominated music because it was made to represent the unseen
+supernatural forces against which mere humanity struggled in vain.
+And the orchestra appealed to many sides of human temperament. It was
+the appropriate instrument of an age of machinery, and mechanical
+invention rapidly increased its powers. It appealed to the megalomania
+of certain types of genius, as well as to the philosophical worshipper
+of the infinite. It appealed to the plain man by its discipline, by its
+presentation of a number of nameless individuals doing the same thing
+at the same moment, and in later days――now, perhaps, more than ever
+before――by the sight of this huge force controlled and directed by the
+apparent inspiration of the _virtuoso_ conductor.
+
+The great singers, the few who have reached the highest summits of
+fame, have always wielded an incomparable power over their hearers.
+But that very element of personality which gives the supreme singer
+his greatness distracts the listener on any level but the highest.
+Personality is a capricious thing, and in singing, more than in
+any other form of music, the listener’s judgment is liable to be
+distorted by temperamental considerations which have nothing to do
+with art. In the case of the instrumentalist they can be more easily
+set aside. Personality is what human nature values more than anything
+else in the artist. We see it at its plainest when a singer faces
+an unsophisticated public; when the public is less simple-minded
+and inexperienced, when the music put before it is less direct and
+immediate in its expression, the judgment of personality may be
+misleading, and may easily mislead artistic judgment. A vigorous
+personality may delude the public into accepting bad music as good;
+certain types of music, on the other hand, may falsify the judgment of
+personality. These statements represent merely the obvious extremes;
+what must be remembered is that this interaction may vary subtly from
+moment to moment even during the course of one piece of music.
+
+The multiform appeal of orchestral music bewilders even those who
+deliberately listen to it in an analytical frame of mind. The
+difficulty is complicated by the luxuriant growth, during the last
+hundred years, of what is called “programme-music”――music that sets
+out to describe or illustrate some idea that can be expressed, and
+often better expressed, in a literary or pictorial form. To dissect
+out and trace the history of all the means of emotional stimulus in
+such modern orchestral music as has become generally popular――such
+names as Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Richard Strauss, Elgar and Scriabin will
+give a sufficient idea of the category――would require a whole volume
+of highly technical analysis. Fortunately there are many music-lovers
+who have heard enough music to grasp intuitively, if vaguely, certain
+principles, conventions and technical methods which they are unable
+to describe in words. They will recognize how “picturesqueness” is
+achieved by the exploitation of conventional idioms: how these idioms
+evoke associations not merely with things outside music, but far more
+widely with the recollection of music of past generations as familiar
+to them as it was to the composer who exploits it. They will recognize
+conventions of sound without sense――strings of notes that perhaps
+once had musical value but have now become mere formulæ, rushing winds
+and roaring waves “full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing.”
+They would have learned also, one hopes, to mistrust the composers
+who delude their audiences, perhaps delude themselves too, with a
+shimmering veil of indeterminate harmonies, and to mistrust no less
+those who with an aggressive air of sincerity and directness assume the
+solemn pose of mystery and chivalry.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XII
+
+
+Those who live on the outskirts of the world of music may say that they
+cannot get as much of it as they desire; those who are in the midst
+of it are painfully aware that they cannot escape the overwhelming
+flood. The commercialization of music has led to overproduction. This
+is apparent enough in England, where commercialization has fostered the
+spawning of a thoroughly degraded type; in Germany the over-production
+has been a greater danger because the vast complexity of the musical
+industry has encouraged respectable mediocrity. It is not to be
+wondered that plenty of musicians would be glad to make a clean sweep
+of all the music of the past and start fresh from the beginning. We
+cannot; it is a hopeless delusion. Even if we could make the clean
+sweep, we are still men of the twentieth century; we cannot return,
+for just one aspect of our lives and that perhaps the most direct
+and immediate, to primitive savagery. Civilization has forced us to
+remember what we ought in the nature of things to have forgotten.
+Commercialism has always been only too glad to throw dust in our eyes
+with the pretence of culture. We tell people that they ought to know
+and love their musical classics. Being out of copyright, they can be
+reprinted cheaply. Teachers find it least troublesome to teach what
+they have always taught; concert-givers play what they have always
+played――it is the safest thing and requires the least rehearsal and
+study. The casual listener loves the “dear familiar strain.” It is not
+as if people knew their classics intimately in a scholarly way. And
+the scholar is easily tempted into false judgments under the itch for
+research. Old music has its interest for the musical anatomist, but
+from an artistic point of view most of it is much better forgotten.
+
+There are some who sadly deplore the popularization of the classics on
+the ground that they risk being desecrated. Why not? If some unlettered
+person goes into a cinema, hears a fragment of the _Unfinished
+Symphony_ for the first time and receives a new thrill, surely it is
+all to the good, at any rate for him. If others feel that the vulgar
+associations of the cinema have destroyed the music’s beauty for them,
+let them have done with it, throw it away as a worn-out thing and
+turn to something else. We may reasonably say that people who are
+the prey of their unwilling associations, unable to view a work of
+art with detachment, do not deserve to experience artistic enjoyment;
+but at the same time we should do well to admit frankly that music
+which cannot survive momentary degradation (and all things connected
+with music are and must be merely momentary) is not worth preserving
+and reproducing. When we consider the innermost nature of music it is
+surprising that any of it should survive for more than a generation.
+Some has survived for less, some for far more; but that is no reason
+why it should survive for ever. Occasionally some work of a remoter age
+is exhumed and seems to have a new significance for us after having
+been forgotten for centuries. But its significance is what our own age
+puts into it. That is one of the advantages of dealing in the art of
+the past; we can do what we like with it. The art of the present, if it
+has any vitality, compels us to submit our minds to itself.
+
+The present age revolts from the music of the past century because
+of its insincerity and pretentiousness. Musicians of the older
+generation will repudiate this charge with indignation. The criticism
+is indeed a very summary one, and the man of to-day, if pressed with
+cross-questioning, may probably be induced to admit a good many single
+exceptions to his universal condemnation. But technical analysis will
+show that there is a sounder basis for modern criticism than mere
+caprice of youthful iconoclasm. The wealth of harmonic resource which
+the nineteenth century built up was derived, as has been shown, to a
+large extent from associations, some extra-musical, some intra-musical,
+some derived from literary or pictorial ideas, some depending on
+recollections of previous music. These two categories interact on
+each other again and again, so that it is not easy to separate them
+out clearly. Like a system of monetary wealth, the wealth of western
+music has become largely a paper currency and with the realization of
+this fact values have in many cases become suddenly depreciated. It
+may be urged that music as an art has derived enormous benefit from
+the tendency to widen the scope of its significance, from its closer
+alliance with other intellectual activities and from the deepening
+conviction of its ethical influence. Is it not childish, it may be
+asked, for us deliberately to throw away all that we have gained and
+revert to a condition of music in which it shall be at best a mere
+entertainment or possibly no more than a physiological stimulus of
+dangerous passions?
+
+The lofty idealism of Beethoven and certain of those who came after
+him, both composers and interpreters, is a thing which we cannot
+possibly deny or ignore; but we may justly question whether the
+artistic expression of it is still convincing to modern ears. That
+noble and visionary idealism, in its ardent insistence on the
+spiritual, tended more and more to suggest that the reality of music
+lay not so much in the actual sounds perceived by the physical ear
+as in the relations between them, in sounds――or rather in relations
+between sounds――never actually heard at all, but induced in the
+perceptive faculty by association. The works of Beethoven’s third
+period often seem to lead us into a metaphysical labyrinth. But
+philosophical language is apt to degenerate into a jargon, and
+philosophical music, when it is the product of lesser minds than
+Beethoven’s, into platitudinous rigmarole.
+
+    “Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle, we take it, is dee.”
+
+Swinburne’s parody has its musical application too. The classical
+key-system of Rameau and Bach established a tradition that was academic
+in the most honourable sense of the word. It won too much respect.
+It had the symmetrical logic of the heroic couplet in poetry. We can
+see how in literature the austere reverence for the great academic
+tradition inevitably petrifies poetry into what discreet reviewers call
+“scholarly verse.” Music followed an analogous course. By the irony of
+fate the music of the last century, when it was designed to edify, has
+become vapid and tedious; what has survived, quaintly artificial though
+its freshness may be, is the music that was made only for ephemeral
+entertainment. _La Belle Hélène_ has outlived _Les Béatitudes_.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XIII
+
+
+It is quite untrue to say that the music of to-day is predominantly
+frivolous. The modern composer might well reply that even for those
+who cling to the ideals of the past there are plenty of old-world
+frivolities that have triumphed over their contemporary solemnities.
+The devotees of Haydn, Mozart and Cimarosa easily forget that all these
+three wrote music of deeply serious character and that it was chiefly
+their serious music which won the respect of their own audiences.
+There is not even anything new in the modern composer’s occasional
+habit of making a fool of his critics. But the jokes of the old
+composers, like those of Aristophanes, often require the elucidation
+of learned commentators, whereas in our own day the newspapers provide
+the needful commentary, sometimes before the musician makes his joke.
+The “verbal hæmorrhage”――as it has been appropriately called――of
+musical journalism is responsible for most of the deliberate silliness
+recently perpetrated by composers, who in these days are fully alive
+to the value of publicity. Music of this type is as ephemeral as the
+criticism which it is designed to provoke. At the same time it is
+perfectly reasonable that modern composers should occupy themselves in
+an artistic spirit with modern dance-forms. They may well take their
+place in musical history just as the waltz, the minuet, the pavan and
+the galliard have done.
+
+Weakness of inspiration is more evident in the tendency to play
+modern tricks with old forms and old styles. The sham antique suite
+of nineteenth-century drawing-room music is one of the products
+of the past which are now beneath even ridicule; the contemporary
+practice of taking a theme which suggests some commonplace of Bach or
+Haydn and treating it to a development which suggests an orchestra
+of amateurs reading at sight from badly copied parts may fulfil some
+useful function in making the idolatry of the classics ridiculous,
+but as contributing to the expression of contemporary thought its
+value is purely negative. There is enough criticism of music already
+without that which is written in notes. It is natural enough that young
+composers should wish to shock the respectable and it is very good for
+the respectable to be shocked. Music which is intentionally destructive
+may help to clear the ground and sweep away some of the romantic
+rubbish that still encumbers the minds of us who listen. But the
+composers must be careful not to forget that the listeners will be only
+too glad to return to the fleshpots of sentimentality if the prophets
+of the new generation can give them nothing but emetics with which to
+assuage their hunger.
+
+A characteristic of modern music which often baffles the listener of
+an older generation is its abruptness. There are various causes which
+contribute to this. Abruptness of expression is characteristic of our
+time; it is the mark of our speech as well as of our music. Abruptness
+is often deliberately assumed by composers as a protest――perhaps
+superfluous――against the ceremonial formalities of the older music.
+It is sometimes even a new form of sentimentalism, a cult of the
+mysteriously fragmentary, a continuation of the example set once or
+twice by Schumann. And in very many cases it is due to the examples
+of the painters, who have little scruples about exhibiting sketches
+which are studies of particular technical problems. A great deal of
+modern music is sketchy for the simple reason that a great many new
+technical problems have arisen and it is both interesting and necessary
+to make studies of them in isolation. The publication of such studies
+may often help other people to understand what the artist is trying to
+achieve, whether in paint or in sounds. It is the museum habit and the
+astuteness of the picture-dealer which have combined to make the public
+attribute to these things an exaggerated value, for financial values
+easily become confused with moral ones. In the case of musical studies
+of this type it is perhaps more often the composer who attaches the
+exaggerated value and the public that is disappointed at not obtaining
+it.
+
+The most frequent accusation brought against modern music is that
+it is devoid of melody. It is an accusation which has been made for
+at least a hundred years. When it is made to-day the modern musician
+may point out that many of the most advanced teachers of composition
+insist on their pupils practising the composition of real independent
+melodies, that is, of melodies which do not depend on an implied
+harmony. The ordinary lover of melody is hardly capable of realizing
+what this means, and the most gifted pupils generally find it an
+unexpectedly severe discipline. What the plain man understands by a
+tune is a melody in simple and obvious rhythm; and he is by now so
+accustomed to the classical key-system that its conventional stresses
+automatically suggest――even if only half consciously――the conventional
+harmonic relations, with the result that he is quite willing to accept
+as a tune a succession of notes which in reality is often meaningless
+when considered as a pure melody. Our popular hymn-books will provide
+plenty of examples. The rejection of the classical key-system makes
+this type of melody impossible, and one of the chief reasons why the
+present age has rejected the classical key-system is because it is
+seeking new and more supple rhythms for its melodic line.
+
+Another favourite accusation, expressed in different ways by different
+people, and to most people curiously difficult of expression, may
+be generally formulated by saying that modern music is devoid of
+feeling, or even that it stimulates and appeals to feelings which are
+unpleasant or even morally repugnant. My attempt to put this charge
+into a few words is unreasonable, I admit, but I think it more or less
+represents the attitude of a large number of people whose conduct is
+guided more frequently by good feeling than by conscious reasoning.
+Such people feel instinctively that music, more than anything else,
+is or ought to be a matter of instinctive feeling. As music-lovers,
+they are exactly the people who are most completely under the spell of
+association. But as I have already attempted to show, it is just this
+tyranny of association against which the leaders of new movements most
+energetically rebel. In time they or their successors will accumulate
+a new store of associations; for the present they are compelled and
+indeed anxious to do without them altogether. If the older listeners
+persist in attaching unpleasant associations to the new music, it is
+the listeners’ own fault; it is they who by force of habit provide
+those associations out of their own good feeling.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XIV
+
+
+It is by no means the first time that musicians have tried to “return
+to nature,” but the difficulty of going back to a state of primitive
+savagery presumably becomes greater as civilization becomes more
+elaborate. The enthronement of idiocy may for a moment be amusing
+but it soon becomes tiresome; these two favourite epithets of musical
+journalism are not without their appropriateness. Nevertheless it
+is only common sense frankly to face the fact that music is made up
+in the first instance of physical sounds. The metaphysical attitude
+towards music has given us the last quartets of Beethoven, but in the
+general practice of music it has done much to lower our standards of
+performance, especially in the matter of singing; indeed among singers
+who have deservedly obtained a reputation for high musicianship and
+intelligence those purely vocal qualities on which the emotional power
+of the voice in the first instance depends are in all countries only
+too often conspicuous by their absence. Instrumental music has been
+affected hardly less.
+
+It is difficult for the musician who has been trained on the classical
+system to adapt himself to this new point of view. He feels inevitably
+that he is being asked to lower his intellectual standards. He has
+built them up by the application of a lifetime; they have brought him
+his most precious experiences and he feels that to desert them is
+an act of disloyalty to his most cherished ideals. It is one of the
+consolations of increasing years that our intellectual appreciations
+are deepened; at any rate we like to think so. But we have regretfully
+to admit that increasing years are apt to bring a blunted sense of
+emotional values. Our direct impressions are less vivid, our capacity
+for enthusiasm shrinks. Before it is altogether too late, before we
+lose all sensitive response to the stimulus of musical sound, it
+may perhaps be wise to relax our austerity of principle and allow
+ourselves to enjoy the primary pleasure of sound as we once did naked
+and unashamed. It might yet be the beginning of a genuinely new and
+delightful experience if we would risk the adventure.
+
+All art, after all, is an adventure. In the art of the past the things
+which directly move our æsthetic emotions are the moments of adventure,
+the moments at which we join the artist in perceiving intuitively and
+directly something which we know to be artistically true and beautiful
+although it is not consistent with the conventional principles on
+which the art is based. As culture ripens and art becomes a recognized
+and definite part of our spiritual life, conventions are codified and
+systematized. In music the classical key system provides us with an
+obvious example. We acquire the habit of applying our intellectual and
+reasoning faculties to it. But our æsthetic emotions are not stirred
+until we are thrown into contact with the irrational. The irrational in
+this case does not imply utter intellectual chaos and anarchy any more
+than it does in mathematics or metaphysics. The mathematician perceives
+a new truth intuitively by an act of imagination, but it is of no use
+to him until he can prove it by reason; yet reason is of no use to him
+unless he has creative imagination as well. This imaginative plunge
+into the irrational is what produces a number of common and elementary
+physical pleasures, such as the child’s first attempt to walk and such
+diversions as swimming, riding a bicycle and flying, although all
+these processes very soon become rational and indeed automatic. We
+have analogous adventures in the world of art from the beginning. We
+may say that music is to speech as swimming is to walking. The mind
+very soon regularizes the new experiences, but the fascination of the
+arts is that they are always offering us the chance of further ones.
+We do not enjoy music as an art until we have learned to appreciate it
+rationally; but at the same time it cannot give us a real æsthetic
+emotion unless it confronts us forcibly with a further irrational
+element.
+
+It is this irrational reaction which causes us still to be stirred by
+the music of the past. We listen to a quartet of Mozart; we recognize
+a familiar convention, we are easily set back into a past cultural
+period in which Mozart’s language was the language of the day. We
+understand every phrase, and we may even run the risk of being bored.
+Suddenly Mozart does something which the average music-maker of his
+day would not have done; we are thrown off our rational balance, we
+have to apprehend directly and intuitively. Our minds have to make some
+unfamiliar movement just as our bodies may in certain circumstances
+have to make some movement incompatible with normal equilibrium. In
+the case of bodily movements practical experience and a knowledge
+of mathematics may subsequently show that this unfamiliar movement
+is really just as reasonable as walking. Something of the same kind
+happens in our artistic experience too. Even Mozart may cease to
+interest us. The once unfamiliar experience becomes automatic, the new
+harmony becomes a _cliché_.
+
+There need not really be anything so very terrifying about the
+abandonment of the classical system. After all, we can always go back
+to it when we feel inclined, just as we may take up Dante and return to
+mediaeval astronomy. The lurking fear which besets us is perhaps that
+if we abandoned ourselves to the artistic adventure of modern music we
+might find, not merely that we did not particularly enjoy it, but that
+somehow it had made it impossible for us to go back wholeheartedly to
+the music of our youth. It is impossible. Everybody has to ask himself
+the question and answer it for himself honestly――am I ready and keen
+to face fresh intellectual adventures? As age increases, increasing
+vanity has to be taken into account. We elderly people are easily prone
+to deceive ourselves and to think that we can convince others of the
+doctrine that connoisseurship is an adequate substitute for direct
+enjoyment.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XV
+
+
+Some of the composers of the present day appear to be pursuing
+adventure in a definitely intellectual spirit comparable almost to
+that of the mediaeval Netherlanders. Their admirers often seem to be
+somewhat at a loss to expound their music to the uninitiated. They
+draw our attention to various technical ingenuities and they insist,
+no doubt justly, on the entire sincerity of the composers. As regards
+sincerity, it is a virtue with which art has no concern. As regards
+technical ingenuities, we have learned too many lessons from the
+past. There are many devices which look quite amusing on paper, but
+which in practical performance pass unnoticed. To this the composer
+may reasonably reply that the perception and enjoyment of technical
+ingenuities in performance is a matter of practice and experience;
+there is no reason why he should compose music for fools. Ingenuity is
+by no means a quality to be despised; there are innumerable moments
+in the works of Purcell, Bach and Mozart at which technical ingenuity
+has brought about some peculiarly poignant expression of beauty.
+Constructive skill――and this is what is really meant by the musician’s
+technical word _form_――is what makes music an art; and constructive
+skill has to be attained by study and experiment. It is desirable too
+that listeners should be trained in its appreciation, not so much by
+books and lectures as by the actual experience of hearing.
+
+The composers to whom I have alluded assume in their hearers a long
+experience of music in general and also something of that habit of mind
+previously mentioned which tends to regard music less as a series of
+actual sounds than as a series of relations between sounds. It may be
+called a mathematical conception of music, and, like mathematics, it
+soon comes to deal with irrational quantities. It is an interesting
+question how far the human mind can advance in this direction. To
+certain temperaments music of this type is definitely repulsive; but
+they often feel no less repulsion towards mathematics and philosophy,
+studies which have been closely associated with music from very early
+times. We must however beware of being misled by superficial criticism
+into supposing that the understanding of such musical complexities
+requires a practical knowledge of mathematical or philosophical
+technicalities. In the scientific study of musical æsthetics there
+ultimately arise problems which bring all three branches of learning
+into contact; but in common practice they do not affect either the
+composer or the listener. There are writers on music who make use of a
+philosophical jargon to conceal their incapacity for clear thinking;
+but the truly philosophical habit of mind aims, if but with rare
+success, at lucidity.
+
+The practical value of this “mathematical” system of composition lies
+not so much in its employment of technical devices which were practised
+some five hundred years ago, as in its new method of handling them.
+It was a great moment in the history of music when someone first
+discovered that two different tunes could be sung simultaneously
+and thereby produce harmony. The artistic result of this proceeding
+depended on two factors which had to be brought into relation――the
+interest of each tune considered by itself, that is, the driving force
+which made it perceptible as a continuous tune, and, secondly, the
+satisfaction derived from the consonance of the two voices where it
+happened to occur. At one period the interest of the tune predominated,
+at another it was sacrificed to the interest of consonance. Both
+interests are however subject to changes of value in the course of
+time. It is clear enough that such composers as Purcell, Bach and
+Mozart were deeply interested in the problem of exploiting these two
+interests, and of finding out how far the driving force of a tune could
+induce the listener to put up with dissonant harmony. We can see now,
+at this distance of time, that they positively increased the value of
+the harmonic interest by the way in which they deliberately tortured
+the ear of the sensitive listener of their own time. Our ears have
+become not less but more sensitive to dissonance, more able at any
+rate to discriminate between varieties of it. But, as I have already
+indicated, this preoccupation with harmony and with relations between
+sounds has led to an indifference towards the actual sounds themselves,
+and the loss of interest in the actual sounds has certainly brought
+with it a diminished appreciation of melody. This is clear, not from
+the complaints directed against the unmelodiousness of modern music,
+but from the common inability to appreciate the emotional force of
+melody as it was conceived by composers of two hundred years ago and
+more, composers who undoubtedly were intensely preoccupied with pure
+melodic expression.
+
+Certain modern composers are devoting themselves to the same fundamental
+problem that interested Purcell, Bach and Mozart――how far the inherent
+force of melody can carry the listener over the obstacles of dissonance.
+It is not for me to attempt to measure the force of the actual melodies
+which they write. This force, too, is curiously complicated by problems
+involving various qualities of sound. The harshness of a dissonance may
+be mitigated or aggravated according to the instruments which produce
+it, and modern musicians are devoting much care to the minuter shades of
+what are sometimes called “colour-values.” The name is misleading, like
+all expressions which tempt the reader to apply to music the critical
+methods appropriate to painting. It has been suggested that music is now
+moving towards a phase in which “colour-values” will be the principal
+means of expression. The experiment may be tried, and it may well
+contribute something useful towards the stock of artistic material. What
+this movement really signifies is nothing more than a subtilization of
+already recognized harmonic values, for from the point of view of
+acoustics it is impossible to draw any clear distinction between what
+is perceived as a “tone-colour” and what is perceived as a “chord.”
+
+
+
+
+                                  XVI
+
+
+The mechanical inventions of recent years have provided us with
+increased facilities for the diffusion of music. The present era may
+come to be regarded as similar in historical importance to those which
+first benefited by the invention of the stave and by the invention
+of music-printing. To some extent these changes represent merely the
+adaptation of practical conditions to the increase in population. But
+whereas the invention of the stave and the invention of music-printing
+must in all probability have increased the number of persons who
+could read music at sight, the modern reproductive machinery cannot
+do more than increase the number of those who confine themselves to
+listening. It remains to be seen what proportion of those who acquire
+the habit of listening will be stimulated to learn something of the
+art of performing. We hear much of the enthusiasm for music amongst
+“the masses.” Apparently they are now singing Bach, whereas their
+grandparents sang Handel; does it make much difference?
+
+It is said that modern music has lost contact with “the people.” Had
+it ever any contact with them, if by “the people” is meant those whose
+musical education is not more than elementary? By all means let us do
+our utmost to raise the standard of musical education in all classes
+of society; but we cannot get away from the fact that at all periods
+of musical history the music which really made that history was in its
+own day the possession only of a limited circle of highly cultivated
+enthusiasts. This is inevitable. The moment we recognize music to be
+an art and not merely the instrument of magic we have to apply our
+intellectual faculties to the understanding of it. Architects and
+painters complain bitterly enough of the public’s unwillingness to meet
+them halfway. For the musician the case is still worse; the practical
+difficulty of grasping a piece of music in the transitory moment of
+performance is one reason, and another is the intensity with which
+musical sounds act upon human emotions. It is small wonder if large
+numbers of people still regard music as almost magical.
+
+It is the remnant of these primitive beliefs which leads so many
+serious-minded and otherwise reasonable persons to take an apprehensive
+view of modern music, even though they may consider themselves more
+enlightened than those who view the music of all ages with moral
+apprehension. The danger, if it exists now, has always existed; people
+have always feared that which they do not understand.
+
+“It is difficult,” says Dr. Burney of Plato, “to refrain from numbering
+this philosopher, together with Aristotle, Aristoxenus and Plutarch,
+though such illustrious characters, and, in other particulars, such
+excellent writers, among the musical Grumblers and _Croakers_ of
+antiquity. They all equally lament the loss of good music, without
+considering that every age had, probably, done the same, whether right
+or wrong, from the beginning of the world; always throwing musical
+perfection into times remote from their own, as a thing never to be
+known but by tradition. The Golden Age had not its name from those who
+lived in it.”
+
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ Transcriber’s Notes:
+
+ ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
+
+ ――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
+
+ ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
+
+ ――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76559 ***
diff --git a/76559-h/76559-h.htm b/76559-h/76559-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a90a67b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/76559-h/76559-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,2975 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+
+    <title>
+      Terpander; or, Music and the Future | Project Gutenberg
+    </title>
+
+    <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+
+    <style>
+
+/* DACSoft styles */
+
+body {
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+/* General headers */
+h1 {
+    text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+/* Chapter headers */
+h2 {
+    text-align: center;
+    font-weight: bold;
+    margin: .75em 0;
+}
+
+div.chapter {
+    page-break-before: always;
+}
+
+.nobreak {
+    page-break-before: avoid;
+}
+
+/* Indented paragraph */
+p {
+    margin-top: .51em;
+    margin-bottom: .49em;
+    text-align: justify;
+    text-indent: 1em;
+}
+
+/* Unindented paragraph */
+.noi {text-indent: 0em;}
+
+/* Centered unindented paragraph */
+.noic {
+    text-indent: 0em;
+    text-align: center;
+}
+
+/* Non-standard paragraph margins */
+.p2 {margin-top: 2em;}
+
+.p6 {margin-top: 6em;}
+
+.pad2 {
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    margin-bottom: 2em;
+}
+
+/* Horizontal rules */
+hr {
+    width: 33%;
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    margin-bottom: 2em;
+    margin-left: 33.5%;
+    margin-right: 33.5%;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+hr.chap {
+    width: 65%;
+    margin-left: 17.5%;
+    margin-right: 17.5%;
+}
+
+@media print {
+    hr.chap {
+        display: none;
+        visibility: hidden;
+    }
+}
+
+hr.r15 {
+    width: 15%;
+    margin-left: 42.5%;
+    margin-right: 42.5%;
+    margin-top: 1em;
+    margin-bottom: 1em;
+}
+
+/* Physical book page and line numbers */
+.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+    /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+    position: absolute;
+    right: 3%;
+/*    left: 92%;  */
+    font-size: x-small;
+    font-style: normal;
+    font-weight: normal;
+    font-variant: normal;
+    text-align: right;
+    color: gray;
+} /* page numbers */
+
+/* Text appearance */
+.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+.smfont {
+    font-size: .8em;
+}
+
+.tinyfont {
+    font-size: .6em;
+}
+
+/* Images */
+img {
+    max-width: 100%; /* no image to be wider than screen or containing div */
+    height:auto;     /* keep height in proportion to width */
+}
+
+.illowe4 {width: 4em;}
+
+.figcenter   {
+    margin: auto;
+    text-align: center;
+    page-break-inside: avoid;
+    max-width: 90%; /* div no wider than screen, even when screen is narrow */
+}
+
+/* Poetry */
+.poetry {
+    display: block;
+    text-align: left;
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;}
+
+.poetry .verse {
+    padding-left: 3em;
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+.poetry .indent0 {padding-left: 3em;}
+
+/* Transcriber's notes */
+.tnote {
+    background-color: #E6E6FA;
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+    padding: 0.5em;
+}
+
+.tntitle {
+    font-size: 1.25em;
+    font-weight: bold;
+    text-align: center;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+/* Title page borders and content. */
+.title {
+    font-size: 1.75em;
+    font-weight: bold;
+    text-align: center;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+.halftitle {
+    font-size: 1.5em;
+    text-align: center;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+.author {
+    font-size: 1.25em;
+    text-align: center;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+.works {
+    font-size: .75em;
+    text-align: center;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+    </style>
+</head>
+
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76559 ***</div>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter x-ebookmaker-drop" id="cover_sm">
+  <img class="x-ebookmaker-drop" src="images/cover_sm.jpg" alt="book cover" title="book cover">
+</figure>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="noi halftitle">TERPANDER</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h1 class="nobreak">TERPANDER<br>
+<span class="tinyfont"><i>or</i></span><br>
+<span class="smfont">MUSIC AND THE FUTURE</span></h1>
+
+<p class="p2 noic">BY</p>
+
+<p class="noi author">EDWARD J. DENT</p>
+
+<div class="pad2">
+<figure class="figcenter" id="logo">
+  <img class="illowe4" src="images/logo.jpg" alt="logo" title="logo">
+</figure>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noic"><span class="smcap">New York</span><br>
+E. P. DUTTON &amp; COMPANY<br>
+<span class="smcap">681 Fifth Avenue</span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="noic">Published, 1927<br>
+<span class="smcap">By</span> E. P. DUTTON &amp; COMPANY</p>
+
+<hr class="r15">
+
+<p class="noic"><i>All rights reserved</i></p>
+
+<p class="p6 noi works">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="p2"><i>All ancient writers who mention
+the progressive state of music in
+Greece, are unanimous in celebrating
+the talents of TERPANDER. Several
+writers tell us that he added three
+strings to the lyre, which before his
+time had but four. Plutarch, in his
+“Laconic Institutions,” informs us
+that Terpander was fined by the
+Ephori for his innovations. However,
+in his Dialogue on Music, he likewise
+tells us that the same musician appeased
+a sedition at Sparta, among the
+same people, by the persuasive strains
+which he sung and played to them
+upon that occasion. There seems no
+other way of reconciling these two accounts,
+than by supposing that he had,
+by degrees, refined the public taste,
+or depraved his own to the level of
+his hearers.</i>—<span class="smcap">Burney.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTERS">LIST OF CHAPTERS</h2>
+
+
+<p class="noic"><a href="#I">I</a><br>
+<a href="#II">II</a><br>
+<a href="#III">III</a><br>
+<a href="#IV">IV</a><br>
+<a href="#V">V</a><br>
+<a href="#VI">VI</a><br>
+<a href="#VII">VII</a><br>
+<a href="#VIII">VIII</a><br>
+<a href="#IX">IX</a><br>
+<a href="#X">X</a><br>
+<a href="#XI">XI</a><br>
+<a href="#XII">XII</a><br>
+<a href="#XIII">XIII</a><br>
+<a href="#XIV">XIV</a><br>
+<a href="#XV">XV</a><br>
+<a href="#XVI">XVI</a><br></p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p>
+
+<p class="noi title">TERPANDER</p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="I">I</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In the early years of the present
+century a certain learned and cultivated
+musician, then about eighty years
+of age, was heard to say, as he came
+out from a concert at which works by
+Debussy had been played: “Well, if
+this is the ‘music of the future,’ I’m
+very glad I shan’t live to hear it!”
+Debussy has passed over to the classics
+since then, but there are still plenty
+of music-lovers, many of them, too,
+not more than middle-aged at the
+most, who feel apprehensive about the
+future of music. Wherever they turn,
+there seems to be complete chaos. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>[2]</span>
+music of the present day is for them
+an unending succession of hideous
+noises. There are some who, remembering
+that in their own lifetime they
+have passed through periods when
+even Brahms and Wagner, Richard
+Strauss and César Franck seemed unintelligible,
+are yet resolved not to be
+baffled by Schönberg and Stravinsky.
+They study contemporary music with
+perhaps little pleasure, but with passionate
+interest and curiosity. Yet they
+are inevitably conscious of difficulties
+which do not appear to have confronted
+them before. They can see in the
+music of the early twentieth century
+some clear continuance of the classical
+tradition; in the later music they can
+find nothing that gives them even a
+faint hope of being able to understand<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span>
+it—some day if not now. They find
+themselves in the position of a man
+who sets out to learn a language which
+has no connection with the Indo-European
+stock. It is bad enough to have
+to master a new alphabet; one may
+possibly, by dint of strenuous effort,
+commit to memory a vocabulary of
+words which bear not the remotest resemblance
+to any in French or German,
+Latin or Greek; but when it
+comes to tackling an entirely strange
+system of syntax for the expression of
+unfamiliar ideas, the mind revolts and
+the student asks whether all this jargon
+can really have any significance at
+all. And the student of modern music
+is made still more sceptical by the fact
+that the musicians whom he respects
+among the apparent initiates are seldom<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span>
+in any agreement as to which of
+the various conflicting systems of music
+is to be regarded as the expression
+of the true faith. Can you tell me, he
+asks, often with genuine humility, of
+one living composer whom you wholeheartedly
+accept as a great creative
+genius, in the way in which you once
+accepted Beethoven, or Brahms, or
+Wagner, as the case might be? The
+hardened critic hesitates, names tentatively
+this or that musician—No, replies
+the other firmly; there seems to
+be no one whom you can name without
+some qualification. And to scepticism
+he adds fear. The new music, he
+begins to feel, requires not merely a
+new and unaccustomed intellectual
+effort: it demands a new outlook on
+life altogether. It may affect and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span>
+disturb fundamental principles such
+as most people prefer to leave untouched.
+It may be in truth what the
+old fogeys of the past have always
+said of it: it may be “positively dangerous.”</p>
+
+<p>Let us consider our fundamental
+principles. Let us forget for a moment
+all this contemporary turmoil and ask
+ourselves what is honestly our attitude
+to the classics that we revere. Music,
+it has often been said, appeals to us in
+three ways. It affects us first by the
+mere sensuous beauty of sound; as we
+become more familiar with the art, it
+works upon our emotions, and finally
+we learn to contemplate it intellectually.
+<i lang="fr">La musique est l’art de penser
+avec les sons.</i> To the musician who
+has been brought up on the classics<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span>
+this definition of Combarieu’s sums up
+his most complete experience. The
+three forms of appeal summarily described
+above divide listeners conveniently
+into three categories, but it is
+a very rough division, and the same
+person may at any one time of his life
+and experience find himself in any
+one of the three groups according to
+the particular work which he may be
+hearing. But it may be safely said that
+the large majority of those whom we
+can call music-lovers belong to the
+class for whom the appeal of music is
+mainly or exclusively emotional. The
+first group, those who are affected
+only by the physical quality of musical
+sound, may be disregarded here.
+And it must be remembered that any
+one who is sufficiently musical to enjoy<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span>
+what we colloquially call “a
+tune,” however simple, has at least the
+germ of intellectual appreciation; he
+recognizes that a tune has a definite
+rhythmical shape and a definite tonality,
+even if he is not able to say so in
+technical language. But most people,
+when they listen to music, do not want
+to be bothered with formal analysis;
+they want to have their emotions
+aroused. The analysis of their musical
+experiences is a very complicated matter
+and far beyond the scope of this
+book. There are many people who
+fear that if they acquired a knowledge
+of the structural principles of music
+they would lose all their pleasure in
+it. They are confirmed in this belief
+by finding that persons who are learned
+in the science of music undoubtedly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span>
+lose pleasure in much that satisfies the
+emotional requirements of the uninitiated,
+and may in some cases appear
+to have lost pleasure in hearing any
+music at all. The fear is groundless.
+The character and quality of the pleasure
+may change, and undoubtedly
+does change as a result of ripening and
+decaying age; but no one, even among
+those who detest all modern music,
+however sadly he may say <i lang="fr">si vieillesse
+pourrait</i>, would admit after personal
+experience that the essential joy of
+music was destroyed by knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>In default of knowledge, the “emotional”
+group of music-lovers, eagerly
+desiring to find some significance in
+the music which they hear, often try
+to translate it into some other language
+with which they are more familiar.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span>
+Some listeners maintain that
+music gives them positive sensations
+of colour. There are many who in listening
+to music consciously construct
+pictorial images. Others will seek to
+interpret it as meaning something that
+could be expressed in terms of literature.
+Experiments have generally
+shown that when a number of listeners
+are asked to give their impressions
+of the same piece of music agreement
+hardly ever goes further than to such
+vague indications of character as the
+composer himself might give in his
+conventional Italian directions for
+performance, except in cases where
+the composer has deliberately set out
+to evoke some literary or pictorial
+image or has employed some well-worn
+conventional device for the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span>
+awakening of familiar associations.</p>
+
+<p>The psychological process of musical
+creation has hitherto eluded all
+scientific research. No satisfactory result
+can be obtained from comparing
+the recorded utterances of the composers
+themselves as to what induced
+the composition of their works or
+what they intended to express in them.
+People who are inclined to interpret
+the music which they hear in literary
+or pictorial terms are naturally attracted
+by definitely descriptive music,
+and readily produce evidence in
+support of the theory that all composers
+set out to write music with a deliberately
+descriptive intent. But the
+history of music shows us clearly that
+deliberately descriptive music rarely
+stands the test of time. There are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span>
+plenty of examples to be found of
+acknowledged great composers such
+as Byrd, Purcell, Bach, Handel,
+Haydn, and Beethoven, who have
+now and then set out to be descriptive;
+and in almost every case we feel that
+their descriptive music is on a far lower
+level than their non-descriptive
+music. Indeed, in many cases it is painfully
+ridiculous both as pure music
+and as description. If it can be saved
+at all, it is only by concentrating attention
+on its purely musical aspect.</p>
+
+<p>The trained musician is content to
+take music as music and nothing else.
+It is a logical and reasonable language,
+although it cannot be translated into
+words. Writers on painting seem now
+to be pretty generally agreed that the
+“story” of a picture has nothing to do<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span>
+with its value as a work of art; that
+depends upon line and colour alone.
+It is nearly half a century since Walter
+Pater wrote that “all art constantly
+aspires towards the condition of music.”
+It was yet a generation earlier
+that Hanslick put forward his theory
+of musical beauty. That theory of
+“abstract music” did not satisfy the
+age of Wagner and Liszt; but although
+Hanslick failed to work out
+his theory as fully as he might have
+done, its further implications have
+come to be accepted with surprising
+cordiality by a generation of musicians
+whose art would probably have filled
+Hanslick himself with the most unspeakable
+horror.</p>
+
+<p>Music expresses itself and nothing
+else. A work may be dramatic, illustrative,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span>
+or even descriptive in certain
+aspects; but unless it is intelligible
+simply as music alone, constructed on
+its own purely musical principles,
+apart from all external considerations,
+it must fall short of perfection as a
+work of musical art.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="II">II</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Those who have been brought up
+on the music of Bach, Beethoven, and
+Brahms can readily accept this theory
+of musical æsthetics. It is eminently
+satisfactory as an interpretation of all
+that we commonly call classical music.
+There are many people who do
+not want to listen to any other kind
+of music. They have heard of great
+names in the days before Bach, but<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span>
+they are easily inclined to take the
+view that such composers as Purcell
+and the elder Scarlatti were merely
+the necessary forerunners who prepared
+the way; that Palestrina was
+an exceptional and unaccountable expression
+of a peculiarly exalted age of
+religious belief, and that any one belonging
+to an earlier date can be dismissed
+as a primitive interesting only
+to the antiquary. But at the present
+day the antiquaries are coming into
+their own. Both in England and
+abroad there is a vigorous revival of
+interest in the music of the centuries
+before Bach. After long years of
+dusty research the antiquaries have at
+last begun to convince a younger generation
+that a great deal of this so-called
+primitive music can be given<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span>
+life in performance, and performance
+has shown that it has a surprisingly
+vivid power of appealing to the emotions
+of modern hearers. Leaders of
+contemporary music indeed are clearly
+feeling that pre-classical and even
+mediaeval music has in many cases a
+more intimate affinity with that of our
+own day than the music of the last
+two hundred years. It has even come
+to exercise a definite and admitted influence
+on the technique of modern
+composition.</p>
+
+<p>To dissect out the causes and effects
+of this tendency would be a complicated
+and difficult task for which there
+is no space here. But there is one point
+which is a matter of common knowledge
+to the trained musician, and the
+general musical public is probably<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span>
+more or less aware of it though unable
+to explain it in technical language.
+From the year 1600 to the year 1900,
+roughly speaking, all Western music
+is based on the same fundamental
+principle of <em>tonality</em>. All music is
+composed in a key. One note is
+adopted as a centre. The remaining
+notes of the octave are brought into
+various clearly defined relationships
+to it. They may further be arranged
+in groups, sounded simultaneously,
+known as chords. Each of these chords
+has its own fixed arrangement and its
+fixed relationship to the centre. What
+has been done for one note of the
+octave may be done in exactly the same
+way for any other, forming what we
+call the key of that note. The musician
+may shift from one key to another<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span>
+in the course of his work, but it
+is understood that he must make his
+main key clear and definite at the outset
+and must re-establish it again with
+equal decision at the end. In the early
+years of the seventeenth century the
+efforts of musicians were directed
+chiefly to establishing one key clearly
+and towards the training of audiences
+to grasp the first principles of the system.
+As they became more and more
+accustomed to the system the composers
+were able to extend and elaborate
+it. The interrelations of notes and
+chords became increasingly subtle and
+delicate from the days of Monteverdi
+to those of Wagner; but the fundamental
+key-system and the rhythmical
+system which is inseparable from it
+remained always precisely the same.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span>
+The language of music developed
+steadily and rationally just as the
+English language has developed from
+Shakespeare to Swinburne. It is no
+wonder then that most musicians regarded
+its foundations as indestructible.</p>
+
+<p>Its grammar was codified by Rameau
+early in the eighteenth century,
+and later theorists saw no reason to
+repudiate the main principles of Rameau’s
+doctrine. In the passionate
+stateliness of Rameau’s own music, in
+the gigantic dignity of Handel, in the
+genial <cite>Gemütlichkeit</cite> of Bach, we see
+the same lucid and logical precision of
+language. It was only natural that
+eighteenth century criticism should
+regard the music of earlier centuries<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span>
+as crude and barbarous. The nineteenth
+century approached the older
+music with a more penetrating sense
+of scholarship, but could not help
+reading it in the same spirit. An age
+of antiquarian research inevitably
+tended to consider its discoveries as
+historical documents to be examined
+in the dry light of theory rather than
+as the expressions of intensely passionate
+humanity. The music of the Middle
+Ages and the Renaissance was interpreted
+according to the system of
+Rameau, for no other system could be
+conceived. If under these conditions
+it failed to make any emotional appeal,
+that did not matter: reverence
+for antiquity discouraged the unveiling
+of passion.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="III">III</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The development of all kinds of
+historical studies during the past half-century
+has caused a wide and by no
+means learned public to take a keen
+interest in the life of the past and in
+its artistic expression. We can no longer
+quietly accept the doctrine that music
+began with Bach, or even—as Victor
+Hugo suggested—with Palestrina.
+The architecture, sculpture and painting
+of the remote centuries, as well
+as their poetry, bring the ancient and
+mediaeval world vividly before our
+eyes and minds. We cannot help seeing
+that music must have been no less
+important in the lives of our ancestors
+than it is in our own; indeed, it
+often seems that in those far-away<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span>
+times the art of music exercised an
+even more cogent influence than it
+does now. How can it be, we ask, that
+people so strangely susceptible to the
+power of sound and at the same time
+so consummately accomplished in the
+other arts should have left behind
+them an art of music which we can
+only regard as crude and primitive?</p>
+
+<p>If we attempt to consider this question
+seriously we shall soon find that
+we are confronted with fundamental
+problems of æsthetics. First of all we
+must rid ourselves of the habit of regarding
+music as something printed
+on paper which can be played on the
+pianoforte. Modern civilization easily
+leads us to take it for granted that
+whatever has been written down or
+printed is clearly fixed and recorded<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span>
+for all time. But the real music is not
+that which is written down: it is the
+sounds which are made by those who
+perform it. A physician cannot cure
+his patient merely by giving him prescriptions
+to read. The written notes,
+even those of our own day, require
+imaginative interpretation; they require,
+too, an interpretation based on
+tradition and experience. Complicated
+as it is, our contemporary notation is
+very inadequate, although we of to-day
+are thoroughly accustomed to the
+practice of conveying information by
+written signs. It is only natural that
+in centuries when very few people
+were able to read or write words at all
+the notation of music should have
+presented still greater difficulty. We
+can see from early documents such as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span>
+the ecclesiastical manuscripts of the
+tenth century that if music was written
+down it was not in order that complete
+strangers should be able to read
+it clearly and accurately at sight, but
+merely to serve as a reminder to the
+singer of what he had already committed
+to memory by ear.</p>
+
+<p>The records of the other arts are
+solid material facts, things of wood,
+metal or stone which are always before
+our eyes. The music that was contemporary
+with them has disappeared into
+silence, but that does not necessarily
+prove that it was not worth preserving.
+Yet we may well ask ourselves
+another question: is any art worth
+preserving? From the historian’s point
+of view everything is worth preserving
+as a historical document; but if<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span>
+we judge works of art from a purely
+æsthetic standpoint can we honestly
+say that the art of the past has any
+value for us?</p>
+
+<p>Directors of museums and galleries
+may perhaps be shocked at so heretical
+a question. But if, as so many art-critics
+have suggested, music is the
+ideal type of art we may legitimately
+approach the subject from a musical
+point of view in preference to a pictorial
+one. The records of the other
+arts are solid material facts: temples
+and cathedrals, statues, panels, canvases.
+Compared with a symphony
+that may last an hour in performance,
+they are almost to be considered indestructible
+and eternal. If on hearing
+the symphony we find that it gives us
+no pleasure, it is soon over, and we<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span>
+need never hear it again. Once the
+cathedral has been put up, it is more
+trouble than it is worth to take it away
+again. A second generation may think
+it hideous, a third takes no notice of
+it, a fourth venerates its antiquity,
+yet another decides to find it beautiful.
+The statue or the picture meets
+with a similar fate, but as it is less
+bulky, it can at least be sold, bought
+and sold again. It may acquire value
+as a rarity, for every material work of
+art is unique, whereas a piece of music
+can be reproduced as many times and
+in as many different places as we
+choose. The owner of a picture by
+Titian possesses property which is his
+and his alone. He might say the same
+of an autograph manuscript by Beethoven;
+but he cannot possess the symphony<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span>
+itself—that belongs to the
+world at large. The autograph may
+fetch a thousand pounds at auction,
+but it is no more than a piece of dirty
+paper. You can hear the symphony
+played for a shilling.</p>
+
+<p>The fundamental question at issue
+is this—is a work of art a complete
+and finite thing, beautiful when it left
+its maker’s hand, beautiful now and
+for ever, or is it frankly transitory, a
+momentary expression of a momentary
+experience, speaking as a rule
+only to those who belong to the same
+generation? The art dealer and the
+museum director naturally take the
+first view. If you have paid some huge
+sum for a picture, you may hesitate to
+burn it as soon as you are tired of it.
+You must at least go on pretending to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span>
+admire it. And since material works of
+art are always before us, it is natural
+that philosophers should have started
+to construct their artistic theories from
+an architectural or pictorial point of
+view. It is perhaps inevitable that
+the criticism of music should borrow
+phrases from that of the plastic arts,
+because music is an art so entirely
+complete in itself that it has never yet
+evolved an adequate vocabulary of
+technical terms, let alone a vocabulary
+in which its nature can be described to
+the non-technical reader. But although
+there may be something to be said for
+Goethe’s famous comparison of architecture
+to “frozen music,” it is with
+poetry rather than with the plastic
+arts that music more legitimately may
+seek affinity. Literary critics have never<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span>
+yet succeeded in defining what
+poetry is; but we can at any rate say
+that what distinguishes poetry from a
+statement of the same idea in prose is
+chiefly the presence of qualities which
+are common both to poetry and to music.
+It has been clearly shown, for instance,
+that the lyric poetry of classical
+Greece employed devices of construction
+which are curiously similar
+to those of Beethoven. Habit induces
+us to imagine that the value of Beethoven’s
+music depends on our conventional
+scale and the harmonies derived
+from it; but though we are
+bound to admit that every artist is limited
+by the peculiar qualities of his
+materials, whether they be words,
+marble or musical sounds, we know<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span>
+that they cannot be turned to artistic
+account unless he has chosen them,
+imperfect as they are, to serve him in
+the expression of something conceived
+in his imagination—something of
+which he himself is definitely aware
+although he cannot communicate it to
+others without this material presentation.</p>
+
+<p>That which is common to poetry
+and music is not a metaphysical figment.
+It may often elude analysis;
+but at present it has hardly been investigated
+scientifically. It ought to be
+possible to find out a great deal more
+about it, and to find out a great deal
+more about what constitutes the “poetical”
+quality—to use the epithet in a
+familiar if not very accurate sense—of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span>
+musical interpretation, for these
+things are problems of actual physical
+sound.</p>
+
+<p>The close connection between music
+and poetry would indeed be more immediately
+apparent if people of to-day
+had not acquired a distorted view
+of poetry by reading it in silence instead
+of reciting it aloud. Cheap printing
+and popular education have given
+readers—poets too, perhaps—an entirely
+false set of values. People talk
+of the beauties of Greek poetry; how
+can they have any idea of them when
+the most learned scholars admit that
+nobody knows how classical Greek
+ought to be pronounced? They are in
+the same position as a musician of the
+future might be if he studied the
+scores of Beethoven without any idea<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span>
+of what a tone or a semitone was.
+They know what the words mean, but
+they are in much the same case as the
+man who sees nothing in a picture
+beyond the story which it tells. This
+preoccupation with the “story”, natural
+and inevitable as it is, has dominated
+the whole conception of art; it
+has even contaminated the conception
+of music. It is necessary to draw attention
+to it here, because it constantly
+distracts the attention from the fact
+that all the arts are in a perpetual
+state of change. We see the human
+form represented in the plastic arts
+and are inevitably tempted to judge
+them according to their skill in representing
+it faithfully. We read about
+the common experiences of human
+life in poetry, we accept translations<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span>
+from other languages without demur,
+and take pleasure in the sense of human
+continuity. The stability of material
+works of art gives us a false idea
+of æsthetic permanence; we are easily
+induced to take an analogous view of
+poetry. But in actual fact language,
+which is the material of poetry, is in
+constant flux; we are so well aware of
+that fact that we have almost ceased
+to notice it. Language changes because
+it is, if not the most immediate, at
+least the most useful, of our means
+of expression. The most immediate
+means of artistic expression is music,
+and consequently music is of all the
+arts the most subject to change, perhaps
+the most subtle, certainly the
+most transitory.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="IV">IV</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The art of music undergoes change,
+as does language, because it adapts
+itself to the expression of changing
+views of life. “Everything new,” says
+Frazer, “is apt to excite the awe and
+dread of the savage.” The active and
+exploring temperament seeks new experiences
+intellectual as well as physical;
+the temperament that is sedentary
+and passive shelters itself behind what
+is already well established. It dreads
+novelty and dreads it particularly in
+music—that is, if it is susceptible to
+music at all—for the very reason that
+music is the most immediate means of
+expressing innermost experiences such
+as mankind often fears to express in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span>
+the more easily misinterpreted medium
+of words. Music has at all times
+been strangely associated with fear.
+From the earliest days it was the confederate
+of magic and religion. Even
+in classical Greece it was regarded as
+a thing of danger if not kept under
+the severest control. Sir Henry Hadow
+has pointed out that in the whole
+of classical Greek literature there is
+not a word of what we can call musical
+criticism, that is, criticism of music
+simply as an art in itself. But although
+moralists discussed it from a strictly
+ethical point of view, their very fear
+of it shows how powerful must have
+been its influence on those who enjoyed
+it. The absence of critical writings
+does not necessarily imply an absence
+of artistic feeling or artistic discrimination.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span>
+It is a matter of common
+knowledge that the Greek word for
+“music” covered a far wider field than
+the word does to-day. Music was to
+the Greeks practically inseparable
+from poetry, so that we find on the
+one hand that their poetry absorbs
+much of the inventive skill which we
+now consider to be more appropriate
+to music, and on the other hand that
+music comes in for a good deal of the
+ethical censure which is more likely to
+be due to the poetry. Fortunately artists
+have at all times been reluctant to
+submit to the tyranny of moralists.</p>
+
+<p>Although practical experience may
+force us to admit that the perpetual
+change to which music has been subjected
+during the course of centuries
+makes it impossible for us to arrive<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span>
+even after prolonged study of documents
+at a complete understanding of
+the art of the remoter past, it is nevertheless
+interesting to make the attempt
+for the sake of deepening historical
+knowledge. If we cannot enter
+into the life of our ancestors without
+studying their arts as well as their
+politics, we must certainly pay as careful
+an attention to their music as we
+do to their architecture or their painting.
+The historians of music have only
+recently begun to set forth in a tentative
+way the evolution of musical
+forms. They have paid little or no attention
+to the varying relations of
+music to the other arts and to life in
+general. Nor have they considered
+seriously the history of musical appreciation.
+But if we are to understand<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span>
+the significance of music at various
+periods it is obviously of interest to
+discover at what date music began to
+be regarded as an independent art—independent,
+that is, not merely of
+poetry, but also of magic, religion or
+ethics. And this will further lead us
+to the closely connected question of
+its varying psychological appeal.</p>
+
+<p>The rough division, suggested in a
+previous chapter, of that appeal into
+the three aspects, physical, emotional
+and intellectual, will at least serve to
+provide us with an experimental basis.
+If we find it unsatisfactory we shall at
+least hope to make our minds clearer
+as to its real nature in the process of
+submitting it to a historical test. There
+is, too, another well-known classification
+of artistic experience under the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span>
+adjectives “Dionysiac” and “Apollinian.”
+The latter coincides, if I understand
+it aright, more or less with
+what I have called the “intellectual”
+appreciation of music; but the “Dionysiac”
+view of music seems to require
+more searching analysis. It is clear
+that the Dionysiac view of music must
+be very much the older, as well as the
+commoner, of the two. The remoteness
+of Greek art of all kinds has
+caused most people to regard it in a
+very chilly light, although modern
+archæology has gone some way towards
+correcting this view. But it is
+highly probable that even to the more
+intellectual of Greek music-lovers
+music (using the word in our normal
+sense) was more frankly a matter of
+physical sensation than cultivated musicians,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span>
+at any rate in England, would
+willingly admit it to be for themselves.
+It was pre-eminently vocal,
+and as the Greeks were a Mediterranean
+people with a very clear and concrete
+outlook on life, its appeal to
+them might be more reasonably compared
+with that of opera to South Italians.
+To people vividly conscious of
+all physical things singing naturally
+implies intensification of the personality—including
+the physical personality—of
+the singer. This will account
+for Plato’s intimate conjunction of
+music with bodily conditions and his
+consequent apprehension of its possible
+danger to morals. Evidently, too,
+the associational appeal of music was
+then already recognized and deliberately
+exploited by composers, though<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span>
+here it is difficult to separate clearly
+musical from purely rhythmical and
+poetical associations.</p>
+
+<p>The Romans seem to have regarded
+music merely as an amusement.
+There are plenty of people in all
+countries to-day, even in Germany itself,
+who take the Roman view of music.
+It does not necessarily preclude
+the view of music as an art by those
+who practise it for the mere amusement
+of others, although it tends to
+lower standards because it inevitably
+encourages commercialism. Among
+the early Christians we at once perceive
+a return to the fear of music as
+a dangerous thing. It could only be
+tolerated as the “handmaid of the
+Church”; but though that doctrine is
+still being preached, musicians have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span>
+rebelled more and more resolutely
+against the acceptance of the ancillary
+position. St. Augustine’s famous description
+of the effect that music had
+on him shows how apprehensive he
+was lest music should become a more
+potent influence than dogma. Others,
+less sensitively susceptible to the voice
+of music than Augustine, speak of it
+as a thing purely subservient. The
+most illuminating phrase is that of St.
+Basil who compares the use of music
+in association with doctrine to the
+physician’s use of honey to disguise
+the unpleasant taste of his medicines.
+Yet it is clear that during the first
+thousand years of the Christian era
+there was developed in the shadow of
+the Church an art of music which
+was highly sophisticated and self-conscious.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span>
+The ecclesiastical view of music
+had at least this to be said for it,
+that it caused music to be written
+down. It had for ritual reasons to be
+definitely fixed in an authoritative record,
+whereas the music of the profane
+world, composed for the delight of
+the moment, was not recorded and
+has therefore been lost for ever.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="V">V</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The mediaeval development of musical
+notation has an important bearing
+on the history of music as an art.
+It brought music into direct contact
+with the graphic arts and must have
+helped to suggest that the melodies
+written in a book were no less beautiful
+and no less permanent than the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span>
+pictures which illustrated the text. The
+monks who invented notation in order
+to preserve liturgical music intact and
+uncorrupted from the vain errors of
+sinful man did as a matter of fact
+thereby provide him with the means
+of developing his error scientifically.
+It occurred to someone that secular
+music could be recorded in notes as
+well as sacred. The alphabet ceased
+to be practically a monopoly of the
+Church. The social status of the musician
+rose as soon as notation made it
+clear that the composition of a piece
+of music could be a thing apart from
+its performance. When music can be
+read from notes its hearers inevitably
+begin to realize that the individual
+performer has no exclusive property
+in it. His voice may have lost none of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span>
+its thrill, but the listener knows now
+that interpretation is not the same
+thing as spontaneous creation. If a
+song or a dance tune is thought worth
+the trouble of writing out, it means
+that it is held to be worth preserving.
+The musician who made it begins to
+take rank with the learned clerk instead
+of being classed with tumblers
+and acrobats, rogues and vagabonds.
+The cultured amateur makes his appearance
+in the ages of chivalry.</p>
+
+<p>Music, considered as a fine art, belongs
+to the privileged classes alone.
+No doubt the illiterate people had
+their songs and dances, but the ordered
+progress of musical development
+was of necessity carried on mainly
+by those who could read and write.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span>
+It is in this period that the musical
+styles of East and West are sharply
+differentiated by the discovery of the
+principle of harmony. Harmony, the
+simultaneous sounding of two or more
+different notes, is so indispensable a
+part of music to-day that many people
+find it almost impossible to conceive
+of an art of music based on melody
+alone. The most unlearned are so accustomed
+to the sounds of harmonic
+music that although their natural instinct
+inclines them first towards pure
+melody it may be doubted whether
+they can recall an ordinary tune without
+at least some vague half-conscious
+recollection of a harmonic basis to it.
+This suspicion is confirmed by the fact
+that many tunes have become widely<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span>
+popular in which the melody has at
+moments no significance apart from
+the underlying harmonies.</p>
+
+<p>The early history of harmonic experiment
+is still a matter of controversy;
+but whether it came from the
+Netherlands, from England or from
+Scandinavia, it undoubtedly originated
+in the North of Europe, and for several
+generations the chief focus of
+musical development was centred in
+Flanders. This geographical factor
+has its significance. Melodic music is
+individualistic, harmony is co-operative.
+When two voices sing different
+notes simultaneously in a piece of music,
+they are obliged to show a certain
+consideration for one another. In the
+first place they must not try to shout
+each other down. Secondly, they must<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span>
+agree to accept some common system
+of rhythm and pace, if there is to be
+ordered principle of consonance between
+them. And if their music is to
+be pleasing in its general effect, they
+must accommodate their voices one to
+the other so that they blend agreeably.
+Each of these points involves a certain
+self-sacrifice and subordination
+of the individual to the community
+which is fundamentally irksome to the
+Mediterranean temperament. The
+distinction between composer and performer
+becomes sharper than ever.
+The history of musical composition
+from the time of <i lang="la">Sumer is icumen in</i>
+(1260) to that of Josquin des Prés (c.
+1445–1521) shows the persistent effort
+of musicians to curb the recalcitrant
+independence of the individual<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span>
+parts in the interests of harmony and
+order. The writing down of music no
+doubt helped considerably towards
+this. The tradition of extemporary
+singing, even in harmony, was kept up
+for a very long time, but it is obvious
+that awkwardnesses which might be
+overlooked at a single <em>impromptu</em>
+performance would be submitted to
+criticism and correction when they had
+been set down on paper. The Netherland
+school of the fifteenth century
+devoted much study to intricate technical
+devices, and we see here the most
+conspicuous example in early times of
+music in which emotion is completely
+sacrificed to mechanical ingenuity. It
+need hardly be said that this elaborate
+art was employed exclusively in the
+service of the Church. The extreme<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span>
+examples of it can hardly have afforded
+any listener the opportunity of
+enjoying the sensuous pleasure of
+sound, either in single voices or in the
+combinations of its harmony. Nor can
+we imagine that it was a type of music
+which evoked associative images. A
+product of the intellect it certainly
+was; but Apollo must have been as
+little responsible for its inspiration as
+Dionysus. It was discipline; and at
+any rate its poverty of melodic invention,
+its passionless indifference to sensuous
+beauty and its rigid obedience to
+rule may have represented the three
+monastic virtues.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="VI">VI</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Yet some of the very composers<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span>
+who devoted their time to the solution,
+or construction, of such futile
+puzzles were themselves pioneers of
+what we can call modern, as opposed
+to mediaeval, music. With Josquin the
+Renaissance in music may be said to
+begin. His sense of harmony might be
+compared with the dawning sense of
+perspective in painting. The true history
+of the part played by music during
+the Renaissance has yet to be written.
+Here only a few salient points
+can be touched upon. The invention
+of printing brought music within the
+reach of a far wider circle. The cultivated
+amateur comes more and more
+into notice. The leaders of music in
+the earlier period were still the Netherlanders.
+They overran Italy and
+came into contact with Italian poets.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span>
+The offspring of this union was the
+madrigal. The output of secular music
+from the presses of Italy was enormous,
+and it was soon imitated in other
+countries. Music was still to a large
+extent under the patronage of princes,
+but instead of being a rare luxury for
+the enhancement of courtly splendour
+it became a universal ornament and
+pleasure of all cultured society. This
+is especially observable in Elizabethan
+England. What is important to realize
+about the secular music of the sixteenth
+century is that music was no
+longer the monopoly of a close corporation
+of professional musicians in
+which the distinction between composer
+and performer was very indefinite;
+it was written very largely with
+full consciousness of the enjoyment<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span>
+which ordinary people could derive
+from the actual practice of it. As music
+becomes more and more one of the
+normal delights of cultured life, it
+becomes less and less of a mystery and
+more of a conscious art. Josquin and
+his school had laid the firm foundations
+of the classical language of music.
+If we take a long view of the history
+of the art from ancient times to
+the present day, concentrating our attention
+mainly on secular music, which
+obviously expresses the genuine musical
+feelings of mankind, rather than
+on church music, which in spite of
+the natural impulse of composers has
+always been subject to anti-artistic
+restrictions of style, we shall be convinced
+that the revolution associated
+with the name of Monteverdi and the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span>
+beginnings of opera was a small matter
+compared with the establishment
+of the harmonic system a century and
+a half earlier.</p>
+
+<p>The ecclesiastical composers had
+undoubtedly made important contributions
+to technique. For one thing,
+the mere length of the works required
+gave them space in which to work out
+their technical devices completely.
+Secular music, with its swifter interplay
+of emotion, required a more compressed
+style, an art of vivid suggestion
+rather than of exhaustive discussion.
+From the beginning of the sixteenth
+century onwards music moves
+gradually faster and faster. Its development
+assumes in the listener a
+knowledge of what has gone before.
+Madrigals were arranged for the lute,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span>
+just as nowadays operas are arranged
+for the pianoforte. A good deal had
+to be left out in the process of arrangement,
+but some acquaintance
+with the original might reasonably be
+presupposed. Music thus develops as
+an art of associative suggestion. Naturalism
+plays its part, probably under
+the influence of naturalistic painting.
+Often enough the results are ridiculous,
+but the general effect, viewed at
+the distance of time, was to enrich the
+musical language. The intimate association
+of music with poetry sometimes
+led the musician into dangerous
+paths. An interesting contrast is exhibited
+by Byrd and Marenzio. The
+Italian is vividly descriptive and illustrative;
+only his strong sense of key
+prevents his work from becoming<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span>
+fragmentary and disjointed as he follows
+every suggestion of his poet.
+Byrd is never literary; he is perhaps
+the greatest pure musician of the
+whole age. He represents the perfect
+Apollinian type, Marenzio the Dionysiac,
+and it is odd to find the Mediterranean
+romantic and the Northerner
+classical.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="VII">VII</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The appetite for music increases in
+the seventeenth century and the development
+of musical drama brings
+the commercial aspect into prominence.
+It is the age of the theatrical
+and rhetorical style. It is an age of
+speed. There was little music printed,
+but much circulated in manuscript.
+This does not mean that the general<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span>
+output was less than before. The
+manuscripts are much more easily legible
+than the printing from type; only
+engraving, rarely practised outside
+England, can rival them. It is the century
+of “figured bass,” a system of
+notation which enabled a composer to
+write down a mere outline of his accompaniments,
+leaving them to be
+filled up <em>extempore</em> by the player. It
+saved time in composition, time in
+writing out; copying by hand took less
+time than type-setting, and there was
+no need to multiply copies to any
+great extent. By the time that the
+copyist has made one the composer has
+produced another work, and his public
+want the very latest. One of the things
+that strikes us in the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries is the incredible<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span>
+fertility of composers. Operas, cantatas,
+quartets or symphonies—it is
+nothing unusual to find composers
+reckoning them in hundreds. And we
+cannot dismiss this copious output with
+contempt. It is easy enough to say
+that one work sounds very much like
+another, and that even the greatest
+men have their moments of dullness;
+but even for people who have not specialized
+in antiquarian studies there is
+a vast quantity of this music which
+still seems to have power to stir the
+emotions. It must have been composed
+in a hurry, performed in a hurry and
+thrown away in a hurry; it is a marvel
+that at this distance of time we can
+still feel that even if we do not want
+to hear it often we are still glad to
+hear it once.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span></p>
+
+<p>The agitated rhetoric of the seventeenth
+century becomes in the eighteenth
+a convention of grandiloquence.
+The intellectual basis of the classical
+key-system proves to be a foundation
+upon which structures of extraordinary
+massiveness and dignity can be
+reared. The immense productivity of
+the age was only made possible by the
+frank acceptance of convention, even
+in the case of those rare composers like
+Domenico Scarlatti and Haydn who
+systematically made fun of it. This
+acceptance of convention was stabilized
+by the fact that there had been
+time for the long accumulation of tradition.
+The constant demand for new
+music was in no way inconsistent with
+the preservation of tradition; it was
+preserved not so much by the practical<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span>
+revival of old music as by the absorption
+of its style into what was contemporary.
+It is significant that the eighteenth
+century marked the beginning
+of the study of musical history.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII">VIII</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It is during the eighteenth century
+that the classical symphony becomes a
+power that could seriously threaten
+the supremacy of vocal and dramatic
+music. The chief centres of symphonic
+activity are those places where northern
+and southern musical culture met—Vienna,
+Mannheim, and in a lesser
+degree Paris. It was in the north that
+the preparatory work had been done
+long before, in the music meetings at
+Oxford and in the <i lang="de">Collegium musicum</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span>
+of German universities. That
+movement towards instrumental music
+was largely due to the amateurs.
+It must not be forgotten that the orchestra
+of Prince Esterhazy for which
+Haydn composed symphonies was
+made up mainly from the domestic
+servants of the household. The Conservatoire
+at Vienna was founded by
+amateurs in order to provide them
+with help in their own private performances.
+The symphony, along with
+the string quartet and the sonata for
+harpsichord or pianoforte, was the
+means of transferring the musical expression
+of the Italian opera to the
+homes of people who had no opportunity
+of entering an Italian theatre.
+The operatic aria became idealized
+and transfigured in the process just as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span>
+a hundred years later the operatic
+melodies of Bellini were transfigured
+in Chopin’s nocturnes. The spiritual
+result may be looked at in two ways,
+according to our temperament and
+our point of view. We may say that
+this transference conveys music to a
+higher æsthetic plane in that it removes
+it from the direct contact with
+physical human personality to a region
+of suggestion, association and
+evocation. Or we may say that in losing
+this direct contact we are losing
+touch with reality, that we are sentimentalizing
+the art until we prefer
+pretence to truth. It is at this stage of
+musical history that the fundamental
+æsthetic problem becomes acute, although
+it must have existed for centuries
+beforehand. That the problem<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span>
+was felt to be acute at the moment is
+shown by the appearance in 1750 of
+Baumgarten’s <cite>Æsthetik</cite>, which was
+the starting-point of modern æsthetic
+philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>It has often been said that in the
+eighteenth century the musician had
+no other function than to accompany
+the clatter of dishes at princely dinner-tables.
+Even if this were strictly true
+one might at least reply that in this
+respect the aristocracy of the eighteenth
+century did more for the art
+of music than their descendants. The
+music of that period may have been
+conventional, courtly and designed to
+give pleasure; but if so, its freedom
+from emptiness, vulgarity and triviality
+is astonishing. Church and State<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span>
+may have deliberately encouraged the
+“light-hearted gaiety of the Viennese”
+in order to distract their thoughts
+from the more serious problems of
+politics; but music in those days was
+at any rate still an art, not a mere commercial
+product. At the same time the
+printing presses were active. A symphony
+might have been composed for
+the entertainment of a prince, but as
+soon as it was printed it became accessible
+to audiences outside the aristocratic
+circle. It was an age of “sensibility”;
+fine feelings, sighs and tears
+were all the fashion. Music begins—we
+can see it in Couperin, in Boccherini,
+in Mozart too—to display the quality
+of refinement, a quality which in a
+later generation was to have a disastrous<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span>
+effect on the vitality of the art.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="IX">IX</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The outstanding characteristic of
+the nineteenth century is its moral
+fervour. The religious preoccupation
+of Victorian England is only a small
+part of this age of aspiration. In most
+countries of Europe philosophy, science,
+literature, art, and social life
+bear witness to the ethical passion,
+even in the cases of the most indignant
+revolt against it. It dominates music
+from the time of Beethoven onwards;
+and even now it is not entirely extinct
+in the musical world. The spirit of the
+French Revolution transformed the
+musician from a lackey to a prophet.
+Mozart was cut off just as he had recorded<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span>
+his vision of the new age in
+<cite>The Magic Flute</cite>. Beethoven proclaims
+it in the <cite>Choral Fantasia</cite> and
+illuminates it still more intensely in
+<cite>Fidelio</cite>, in the <cite>Choral Symphony</cite>, the
+<cite>Missa Solemnis</cite> and the last quartets.
+One cannot class Beethoven with the
+Romantics any more than Kant or
+Goethe. Romanticism stood not for
+enlightenment but for the reaction
+against it. The Romantics were like
+men who after an earthquake return
+to the ruins of their city to see what
+they can recover from them. It was
+not always their own property that
+they recovered. The aristocrats had
+lost their material privilege, but they
+were still determined to remain a class
+apart. The Catholic revival, on the
+Continent even more than in England,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span>
+was the assertion of aristocracy
+as a moral principle. It affected music
+apart from the music that was definitely
+liturgical because it brought
+about a revival of interest in Palestrina
+comparable to the revival of interest
+in Dante. The emancipation of
+the artist from feudal servitude encouraged
+him to assume something of
+the privilege of the aristocracy. The
+typical figure of this movement is Paganini,
+from whom are descended
+Liszt and a multitude of minor musicians
+who made it their life-work to
+play the prophet in public. The mechanical
+developments of the new century
+contributed to the development
+of the new outlook on music. As travelling
+became easier and music-printing
+cheaper concerts increased in number<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span>
+and increasing newspapers gave
+them increasing publicity. “<i lang="de">Seid umschlungen,
+Millionen!</i>” sang Beethoven,
+and the millions were embraced,
+though perhaps not quite in the way
+in which Schiller and he had intended.</p>
+
+<p>The modern musician is often
+tempted to see nothing in the art of
+the past century but pretentiousness.
+It is not altogether just to accuse the
+century of megalomania. Isolated musicians,
+such as Liszt, Berlioz and
+Wagner, were certainly possessed with
+the idea of their own greatness. One
+might say the same of Beethoven
+himself; but in Beethoven’s case the
+consciousness of his own greatness
+was inseparable from a deep feeling
+of humility and an overwhelming
+sense of duty. Beethoven was no respecter<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span>
+of persons, but he had the
+philosopher’s intuition of his relation
+to humanity and of humanity’s relation
+to the universe. Undoubtedly
+many artists of the nineteenth century
+were stimulated by his example to attempt
+works on a needlessly colossal
+scale, especially in Germany, where
+metaphysical studies have always influenced
+a circle that extended far beyond
+the professed philosophers. An
+ethical view of music became more
+and more strongly marked in Germany;
+during the latter half of the
+century it made itself felt in England,
+and to a slighter extent even in France.
+By the end of the century there was
+a very definite tendency to regard
+music as a form of free religious worship,
+expressing and stimulating mystical<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span>
+experience for temperaments
+which could no longer be satisfied by
+dogmatic theology.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="X">X</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It is at all times difficult to draw a
+line between religious exaltation and
+rhetorical pretentiousness. A consideration
+of the technical means of expression
+in music may help us to clear
+our minds. Since the middle of the
+fifteenth century music has exhibited
+a perpetual struggle between counterpoint
+and harmony, between what are
+sometimes called the horizontal and
+vertical tendencies of the art. The
+horizontal conception of music is, as
+all musicians know, the primary musical
+instinct to sing and to elaborate<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span>
+the art by the combination of voices
+each singing its own independently
+expressive line and achieving further
+emotional force by the ordered clash
+of dissonance. The vertical conception
+cannot really be separated entirely
+from the horizontal, for it has grown
+out of it. It derives its emotional
+force from the assumption of periodic
+stresses, and the study of harmony is
+therefore inseparable from that of
+rhythm. It is regular rhythm which
+gives different kinds of chords their
+æsthetic and the quasi-logical values.</p>
+
+<p>Melody represents individuality
+and counterpoint the interaction and
+conflict of individualities. Harmony
+represents the community as a whole
+under the direction of the mind which
+has created the music. It is therefore<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span>
+natural that as music comes to be associated
+with communal feeling on a
+large scale, with such ideas, for instance,
+as the universal brotherhood of
+man, it should tend to become more
+and more predominantly vertical in
+method. The ordinary music-lover can
+realize this from his recollections of
+Bach and Handel. Bach’s music is
+mainly horizontal in tendency. It is
+music for small groups of performers,
+seldom suited to interpretation by
+large bodies. Handel’s music, in which
+the vertical method is far more conspicuous,
+gains rather than loses by
+the multiplication of voices and instruments,
+and for this reason Handel
+is to most Englishmen the ideal composer
+for occasions of national ceremony.
+The emotional effect is intensified<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span>
+by the actual increase of sound
+and along with this by the rhythmical
+unanimity of the chorus or orchestra.
+The ordinary man seems to be curiously
+susceptible to emotion at the
+sight of several hundred people doing
+exactly the same thing at one moment,
+as in military and gymnastic displays,
+even though the movements executed
+may be not in the least interesting in
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The communal feeling which is at
+the back of most of the music of the
+nineteenth century finds its technical
+expression in blocks of chords and in
+strongly accentuated rhythms. A typical
+example is the theme which opens
+the <em>finale</em> of Beethoven’s C minor
+symphony. <cite>Lohengrin</cite> and <cite>Elijah</cite> are
+full of instances. In some cases the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span>
+impression may be no more than momentary,
+a mere two or three chords,
+but the trick makes its effect. It becomes
+too obviously a trick in the
+hands of Liszt. As a pianist he could
+not help being attracted by it. The
+mechanism of the pianoforte suits full
+chords better than the complication of
+counterpoint, and the percussive action
+of itself exaggerates rhythmical
+stresses. It was the ideal instrument
+for Liszt’s grand heroic manner.</p>
+
+<p>The pianoforte was the amateur’s
+instrument as well as the <em>virtuoso’s</em>.
+The nineteenth century is the age of
+the amateur pianist. Music became the
+pleasure of the rising middle class, for
+whose domestic consumption an endless
+flood of polite and agreeable
+music was printed after the examples<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span>
+set by Mendelssohn and Schumann.
+Whatever the present age may think
+of those two composers it can safely
+be said that no musicians have ever
+been regarded by the general musical
+public with so widespread and so
+heartfelt an affection. Whoever easily
+recalls the lines</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">As for some dear familiar strain</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Untir’d we ask, and ask again.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Ever, in its melodious store,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Finding a spell unheard before—</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noi">must surely connect them in immediate
+memory with the <cite>Scenes of Childhood</cite>
+or the <cite>Songs without Words</cite>.</p>
+
+<p>It used often to be said of Mendelssohn
+that “he had nothing to say, but
+said it like a gentleman.” To that I
+may add the observation of one of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span>
+my own teachers: “When Mendelssohn
+couldn’t think of anything else
+to say, he said his prayers.” Is it surprising
+that the England of Thackeray
+adored him? To Mendelssohn
+and Schumann we owe the fashion of
+what used to be called “characteristic
+pieces”—quasi-pictorial exploitations
+of certain idioms which at once established
+themselves as universally recognizable
+conventions both of technique
+and of sentiment—all those
+“hunting songs,” “spinning songs,”
+barcarolles, cradle songs, wedding
+marches and funeral marches. At this
+distance of time they may have the
+charm of old-world refinement. But
+considered historically, what they
+brought into music was a multitude
+of insincere <em>clichés</em>. Mendelssohn and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span>
+Schumann are themselves remembered
+for their very genuine merits.
+The style which they represented was
+absorbed into the work of followers
+whom it is equally impossible to forget
+as well as into that of the innumerable
+hundreds of purely commercial
+composers. Romantic <em>cliché</em> reached
+its apotheosis in the symphonic monstrosities
+of Gustav Mahler. But
+between Mendelssohn and Mahler
+there came others—worthy in some
+ways of our deepest and sincerest
+respect—who from their own high
+seriousness became victims of the impressive
+platitude. Ethical fervour
+led them only too fatally into reverent
+pomposity.</p>
+
+<p>All this false sentiment was diffused
+universally by the pianoforte; not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span>
+merely by the enormous multiplication
+of instruments and of performers
+thereon, but by the intrinsic acoustical
+character of the instrument itself. For
+the sound of the pianoforte cannot
+press onwards like that of the voice,
+the wind instrument or the violin.
+That is why “horizontal” music is in
+reality impossible to it; the most it
+can do is to recall the memory of
+something heard before. It can do this
+with extraordinary subtlety. The sudden
+impact of the hammer on the
+string gives it even in its most delicate
+moments a far clearer articulation than
+the voice or the singing instruments.
+Its whole art is an art of evasion,
+illusion and association. It was the
+ideal instrument for the romantic
+temperament. It suggested melody, it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span>
+intensified harmony; it falsified the
+values of both.</p>
+
+<p>The pianoforte naturally attracted
+intelligent musicians of all grades because
+it seemed to place the whole
+of music within the grasp of two
+hands. Singing came to be regarded
+as something almost vulgar, the more
+so since nature has not always distributed
+voices and brains in equal proportions.
+As the ethical view of music
+deepened, musicians of serious intention
+turned more to the stringed instruments
+than to the human voice.
+The instruments could do so much
+more, they could run about faster,
+they had in practice a cleaner accuracy
+of intonation and a more extended
+compass. It was easy to forget that
+after all they were nothing more than<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span>
+instruments, and indeed the very fact
+that they were instruments seemed to
+give them a magical character that appealed
+mysteriously to the romantic
+mind.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XI">XI</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Professor Weissmann has well
+pointed out that in the romantic days
+the orchestra dominated music because
+it was made to represent the unseen
+supernatural forces against which
+mere humanity struggled in vain.
+And the orchestra appealed to many
+sides of human temperament. It was
+the appropriate instrument of an age
+of machinery, and mechanical invention
+rapidly increased its powers. It
+appealed to the megalomania of certain
+types of genius, as well as to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span>
+philosophical worshipper of the infinite.
+It appealed to the plain man by
+its discipline, by its presentation of a
+number of nameless individuals doing
+the same thing at the same moment,
+and in later days—now, perhaps, more
+than ever before—by the sight of this
+huge force controlled and directed by
+the apparent inspiration of the <em>virtuoso</em>
+conductor.</p>
+
+<p>The great singers, the few who
+have reached the highest summits of
+fame, have always wielded an incomparable
+power over their hearers. But
+that very element of personality which
+gives the supreme singer his greatness
+distracts the listener on any level but
+the highest. Personality is a capricious
+thing, and in singing, more than in
+any other form of music, the listener’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span>
+judgment is liable to be distorted by
+temperamental considerations which
+have nothing to do with art. In the
+case of the instrumentalist they can be
+more easily set aside. Personality is
+what human nature values more than
+anything else in the artist. We see it
+at its plainest when a singer faces an
+unsophisticated public; when the public
+is less simple-minded and inexperienced,
+when the music put before it
+is less direct and immediate in its expression,
+the judgment of personality
+may be misleading, and may easily
+mislead artistic judgment. A vigorous
+personality may delude the public into
+accepting bad music as good; certain
+types of music, on the other hand,
+may falsify the judgment of personality.
+These statements represent<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span>
+merely the obvious extremes; what
+must be remembered is that this interaction
+may vary subtly from moment
+to moment even during the
+course of one piece of music.</p>
+
+<p>The multiform appeal of orchestral
+music bewilders even those who deliberately
+listen to it in an analytical
+frame of mind. The difficulty is complicated
+by the luxuriant growth, during
+the last hundred years, of what
+is called “programme-music”—music
+that sets out to describe or illustrate
+some idea that can be expressed, and
+often better expressed, in a literary
+or pictorial form. To dissect out and
+trace the history of all the means of
+emotional stimulus in such modern
+orchestral music as has become generally
+popular—such names as Wagner,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span>
+Tchaikovsky, Richard Strauss,
+Elgar and Scriabin will give a sufficient
+idea of the category—would require
+a whole volume of highly technical
+analysis. Fortunately there are many
+music-lovers who have heard enough
+music to grasp intuitively, if vaguely,
+certain principles, conventions and
+technical methods which they are unable
+to describe in words. They will
+recognize how “picturesqueness” is
+achieved by the exploitation of conventional
+idioms: how these idioms
+evoke associations not merely with
+things outside music, but far more
+widely with the recollection of music
+of past generations as familiar to them
+as it was to the composer who exploits
+it. They will recognize conventions of
+sound without sense—strings of notes<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span>
+that perhaps once had musical value
+but have now become mere formulæ,
+rushing winds and roaring waves “full
+of sound and fury, and signifying
+nothing.” They would have learned
+also, one hopes, to mistrust the composers
+who delude their audiences,
+perhaps delude themselves too, with
+a shimmering veil of indeterminate
+harmonies, and to mistrust no less
+those who with an aggressive air of
+sincerity and directness assume the
+solemn pose of mystery and chivalry.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XII">XII</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Those who live on the outskirts of
+the world of music may say that they
+cannot get as much of it as they desire;
+those who are in the midst of it are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span>
+painfully aware that they cannot escape
+the overwhelming flood. The
+commercialization of music has led
+to overproduction. This is apparent
+enough in England, where commercialization
+has fostered the spawning
+of a thoroughly degraded type; in
+Germany the over-production has
+been a greater danger because the vast
+complexity of the musical industry
+has encouraged respectable mediocrity.
+It is not to be wondered that plenty
+of musicians would be glad to make
+a clean sweep of all the music of the
+past and start fresh from the beginning.
+We cannot; it is a hopeless delusion.
+Even if we could make the
+clean sweep, we are still men of the
+twentieth century; we cannot return,
+for just one aspect of our lives and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span>
+that perhaps the most direct and immediate,
+to primitive savagery. Civilization
+has forced us to remember
+what we ought in the nature of things
+to have forgotten. Commercialism
+has always been only too glad to throw
+dust in our eyes with the pretence of
+culture. We tell people that they
+ought to know and love their musical
+classics. Being out of copyright, they
+can be reprinted cheaply. Teachers
+find it least troublesome to teach what
+they have always taught; concert-givers
+play what they have always
+played—it is the safest thing and requires
+the least rehearsal and study.
+The casual listener loves the “dear
+familiar strain.” It is not as if people
+knew their classics intimately in a
+scholarly way. And the scholar is easily<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span>
+tempted into false judgments
+under the itch for research. Old music
+has its interest for the musical anatomist,
+but from an artistic point of
+view most of it is much better forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>There are some who sadly deplore
+the popularization of the classics on
+the ground that they risk being desecrated.
+Why not? If some unlettered
+person goes into a cinema, hears
+a fragment of the <cite>Unfinished Symphony</cite>
+for the first time and receives
+a new thrill, surely it is all to the
+good, at any rate for him. If others
+feel that the vulgar associations of the
+cinema have destroyed the music’s
+beauty for them, let them have done
+with it, throw it away as a worn-out
+thing and turn to something else. We<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span>
+may reasonably say that people who
+are the prey of their unwilling associations,
+unable to view a work of art
+with detachment, do not deserve to
+experience artistic enjoyment; but at
+the same time we should do well to
+admit frankly that music which cannot
+survive momentary degradation (and
+all things connected with music are
+and must be merely momentary) is
+not worth preserving and reproducing.
+When we consider the innermost nature
+of music it is surprising that any
+of it should survive for more than a
+generation. Some has survived for
+less, some for far more; but that is no
+reason why it should survive for
+ever. Occasionally some work of a remoter
+age is exhumed and seems to
+have a new significance for us after<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span>
+having been forgotten for centuries.
+But its significance is what our own
+age puts into it. That is one of the
+advantages of dealing in the art of
+the past; we can do what we like with
+it. The art of the present, if it has any
+vitality, compels us to submit our
+minds to itself.</p>
+
+<p>The present age revolts from the
+music of the past century because of
+its insincerity and pretentiousness.
+Musicians of the older generation will
+repudiate this charge with indignation.
+The criticism is indeed a very
+summary one, and the man of to-day,
+if pressed with cross-questioning, may
+probably be induced to admit a good
+many single exceptions to his universal
+condemnation. But technical analysis
+will show that there is a sounder<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span>
+basis for modern criticism than mere
+caprice of youthful iconoclasm. The
+wealth of harmonic resource which
+the nineteenth century built up was
+derived, as has been shown, to a large
+extent from associations, some extra-musical,
+some intra-musical, some derived
+from literary or pictorial ideas,
+some depending on recollections of
+previous music. These two categories
+interact on each other again and again,
+so that it is not easy to separate them
+out clearly. Like a system of monetary
+wealth, the wealth of western
+music has become largely a paper
+currency and with the realization of
+this fact values have in many cases
+become suddenly depreciated. It may
+be urged that music as an art has derived
+enormous benefit from the tendency<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span>
+to widen the scope of its
+significance, from its closer alliance
+with other intellectual activities and
+from the deepening conviction of its
+ethical influence. Is it not childish, it
+may be asked, for us deliberately to
+throw away all that we have gained
+and revert to a condition of music in
+which it shall be at best a mere entertainment
+or possibly no more than a
+physiological stimulus of dangerous
+passions?</p>
+
+<p>The lofty idealism of Beethoven
+and certain of those who came after
+him, both composers and interpreters,
+is a thing which we cannot possibly
+deny or ignore; but we may justly
+question whether the artistic expression
+of it is still convincing to modern
+ears. That noble and visionary idealism,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span>
+in its ardent insistence on the
+spiritual, tended more and more to
+suggest that the reality of music lay
+not so much in the actual sounds
+perceived by the physical ear as in the
+relations between them, in sounds—or
+rather in relations between sounds—never
+actually heard at all, but induced
+in the perceptive faculty by
+association. The works of Beethoven’s
+third period often seem to lead us
+into a metaphysical labyrinth. But
+philosophical language is apt to degenerate
+into a jargon, and philosophical
+music, when it is the product of
+lesser minds than Beethoven’s, into
+platitudinous rigmarole.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle, we take it, is dee.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span></p>
+
+<p>Swinburne’s parody has its musical
+application too. The classical key-system
+of Rameau and Bach established
+a tradition that was academic
+in the most honourable sense of the
+word. It won too much respect. It
+had the symmetrical logic of the
+heroic couplet in poetry. We can see
+how in literature the austere reverence
+for the great academic tradition inevitably
+petrifies poetry into what discreet
+reviewers call “scholarly verse.”
+Music followed an analogous course.
+By the irony of fate the music of the
+last century, when it was designed to
+edify, has become vapid and tedious;
+what has survived, quaintly artificial
+though its freshness may be, is the
+music that was made only for ephemeral<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span>
+entertainment. <cite>La Belle Hélène</cite>
+has outlived <cite>Les Béatitudes</cite>.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIII">XIII</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It is quite untrue to say that the
+music of to-day is predominantly
+frivolous. The modern composer
+might well reply that even for those
+who cling to the ideals of the past
+there are plenty of old-world frivolities
+that have triumphed over their
+contemporary solemnities. The devotees
+of Haydn, Mozart and Cimarosa
+easily forget that all these three wrote
+music of deeply serious character and
+that it was chiefly their serious music
+which won the respect of their own
+audiences. There is not even anything
+new in the modern composer’s occasional<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span>
+habit of making a fool of his
+critics. But the jokes of the old composers,
+like those of Aristophanes,
+often require the elucidation of
+learned commentators, whereas in our
+own day the newspapers provide
+the needful commentary, sometimes
+before the musician makes his joke.
+The “verbal hæmorrhage”—as it has
+been appropriately called—of musical
+journalism is responsible for most of
+the deliberate silliness recently perpetrated
+by composers, who in these days
+are fully alive to the value of publicity.
+Music of this type is as ephemeral
+as the criticism which it is designed
+to provoke. At the same time it is
+perfectly reasonable that modern
+composers should occupy themselves
+in an artistic spirit with modern dance-forms.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span>
+They may well take their place
+in musical history just as the waltz,
+the minuet, the pavan and the galliard
+have done.</p>
+
+<p>Weakness of inspiration is more
+evident in the tendency to play modern
+tricks with old forms and old
+styles. The sham antique suite of
+nineteenth-century drawing-room music
+is one of the products of the past
+which are now beneath even ridicule;
+the contemporary practice of taking a
+theme which suggests some commonplace
+of Bach or Haydn and treating
+it to a development which suggests an
+orchestra of amateurs reading at sight
+from badly copied parts may fulfil
+some useful function in making the
+idolatry of the classics ridiculous, but
+as contributing to the expression of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span>
+contemporary thought its value is
+purely negative. There is enough criticism
+of music already without that
+which is written in notes. It is natural
+enough that young composers should
+wish to shock the respectable and it
+is very good for the respectable to be
+shocked. Music which is intentionally
+destructive may help to clear the
+ground and sweep away some of the
+romantic rubbish that still encumbers
+the minds of us who listen. But the
+composers must be careful not to
+forget that the listeners will be only
+too glad to return to the fleshpots of
+sentimentality if the prophets of the
+new generation can give them nothing
+but emetics with which to assuage their
+hunger.</p>
+
+<p>A characteristic of modern music<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span>
+which often baffles the listener of an
+older generation is its abruptness.
+There are various causes which contribute
+to this. Abruptness of expression
+is characteristic of our time; it is the
+mark of our speech as well as of our
+music. Abruptness is often deliberately
+assumed by composers as a protest—perhaps
+superfluous—against the
+ceremonial formalities of the older
+music. It is sometimes even a new
+form of sentimentalism, a cult of the
+mysteriously fragmentary, a continuation
+of the example set once or twice
+by Schumann. And in very many cases
+it is due to the examples of the painters,
+who have little scruples about
+exhibiting sketches which are studies
+of particular technical problems. A
+great deal of modern music is sketchy<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span>
+for the simple reason that a great
+many new technical problems have
+arisen and it is both interesting and
+necessary to make studies of them in
+isolation. The publication of such
+studies may often help other people
+to understand what the artist is trying
+to achieve, whether in paint or in
+sounds. It is the museum habit and
+the astuteness of the picture-dealer
+which have combined to make the
+public attribute to these things an
+exaggerated value, for financial values
+easily become confused with moral
+ones. In the case of musical studies
+of this type it is perhaps more often
+the composer who attaches the exaggerated
+value and the public that is
+disappointed at not obtaining it.</p>
+
+<p>The most frequent accusation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span>
+brought against modern music is that
+it is devoid of melody. It is an accusation
+which has been made for at least
+a hundred years. When it is made
+to-day the modern musician may point
+out that many of the most advanced
+teachers of composition insist on their
+pupils practising the composition of
+real independent melodies, that is, of
+melodies which do not depend on an
+implied harmony. The ordinary lover
+of melody is hardly capable of realizing
+what this means, and the most
+gifted pupils generally find it an
+unexpectedly severe discipline. What
+the plain man understands by a tune
+is a melody in simple and obvious
+rhythm; and he is by now so accustomed
+to the classical key-system that
+its conventional stresses automatically<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span>
+suggest—even if only half consciously—the
+conventional harmonic relations,
+with the result that he is quite
+willing to accept as a tune a succession
+of notes which in reality is often
+meaningless when considered as a
+pure melody. Our popular hymn-books
+will provide plenty of examples.
+The rejection of the classical
+key-system makes this type of melody
+impossible, and one of the chief
+reasons why the present age has
+rejected the classical key-system is
+because it is seeking new and more
+supple rhythms for its melodic line.</p>
+
+<p>Another favourite accusation, expressed
+in different ways by different
+people, and to most people curiously
+difficult of expression, may be generally
+formulated by saying that modern<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span>
+music is devoid of feeling, or even
+that it stimulates and appeals to feelings
+which are unpleasant or even
+morally repugnant. My attempt to
+put this charge into a few words is
+unreasonable, I admit, but I think it
+more or less represents the attitude
+of a large number of people whose
+conduct is guided more frequently
+by good feeling than by conscious
+reasoning. Such people feel instinctively
+that music, more than anything
+else, is or ought to be a matter of
+instinctive feeling. As music-lovers,
+they are exactly the people who are
+most completely under the spell of
+association. But as I have already
+attempted to show, it is just this
+tyranny of association against which
+the leaders of new movements most<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span>
+energetically rebel. In time they or
+their successors will accumulate a new
+store of associations; for the present
+they are compelled and indeed anxious
+to do without them altogether. If the
+older listeners persist in attaching
+unpleasant associations to the new
+music, it is the listeners’ own fault;
+it is they who by force of habit provide
+those associations out of their
+own good feeling.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XIV">XIV</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It is by no means the first time that
+musicians have tried to “return to
+nature,” but the difficulty of going
+back to a state of primitive savagery
+presumably becomes greater as civilization
+becomes more elaborate. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span>
+enthronement of idiocy may for a
+moment be amusing but it soon becomes
+tiresome; these two favourite
+epithets of musical journalism are not
+without their appropriateness. Nevertheless
+it is only common sense frankly
+to face the fact that music is made
+up in the first instance of physical
+sounds. The metaphysical attitude
+towards music has given us the last
+quartets of Beethoven, but in the general
+practice of music it has done much
+to lower our standards of performance,
+especially in the matter of singing;
+indeed among singers who have
+deservedly obtained a reputation for
+high musicianship and intelligence
+those purely vocal qualities on which
+the emotional power of the voice
+in the first instance depends are in all<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span>
+countries only too often conspicuous
+by their absence. Instrumental music
+has been affected hardly less.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult for the musician who
+has been trained on the classical
+system to adapt himself to this new
+point of view. He feels inevitably
+that he is being asked to lower his
+intellectual standards. He has built
+them up by the application of a lifetime;
+they have brought him his most
+precious experiences and he feels that
+to desert them is an act of disloyalty
+to his most cherished ideals. It is one
+of the consolations of increasing years
+that our intellectual appreciations are
+deepened; at any rate we like to think
+so. But we have regretfully to admit
+that increasing years are apt to bring
+a blunted sense of emotional values.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span>
+Our direct impressions are less vivid,
+our capacity for enthusiasm shrinks.
+Before it is altogether too late, before
+we lose all sensitive response to the
+stimulus of musical sound, it may
+perhaps be wise to relax our austerity
+of principle and allow ourselves to
+enjoy the primary pleasure of sound
+as we once did naked and unashamed.
+It might yet be the beginning of a
+genuinely new and delightful experience
+if we would risk the adventure.</p>
+
+<p>All art, after all, is an adventure.
+In the art of the past the things which
+directly move our æsthetic emotions
+are the moments of adventure, the
+moments at which we join the artist
+in perceiving intuitively and directly
+something which we know to be
+artistically true and beautiful although<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span>
+it is not consistent with the conventional
+principles on which the art is
+based. As culture ripens and art becomes
+a recognized and definite part
+of our spiritual life, conventions are
+codified and systematized. In music
+the classical key system provides us
+with an obvious example. We acquire
+the habit of applying our intellectual
+and reasoning faculties to it. But our
+æsthetic emotions are not stirred until
+we are thrown into contact with the
+irrational. The irrational in this case
+does not imply utter intellectual chaos
+and anarchy any more than it does
+in mathematics or metaphysics. The
+mathematician perceives a new truth
+intuitively by an act of imagination,
+but it is of no use to him until he
+can prove it by reason; yet reason is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span>
+of no use to him unless he has creative
+imagination as well. This imaginative
+plunge into the irrational is what produces
+a number of common and elementary
+physical pleasures, such as
+the child’s first attempt to walk and
+such diversions as swimming, riding a
+bicycle and flying, although all these
+processes very soon become rational
+and indeed automatic. We have analogous
+adventures in the world of art
+from the beginning. We may say that
+music is to speech as swimming is to
+walking. The mind very soon regularizes
+the new experiences, but the
+fascination of the arts is that they are
+always offering us the chance of
+further ones. We do not enjoy music
+as an art until we have learned to
+appreciate it rationally; but at the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span>
+same time it cannot give us a real
+æsthetic emotion unless it confronts us
+forcibly with a further irrational
+element.</p>
+
+<p>It is this irrational reaction which
+causes us still to be stirred by the
+music of the past. We listen to a
+quartet of Mozart; we recognize a
+familiar convention, we are easily set
+back into a past cultural period in
+which Mozart’s language was the
+language of the day. We understand
+every phrase, and we may even run
+the risk of being bored. Suddenly
+Mozart does something which the
+average music-maker of his day would
+not have done; we are thrown off our
+rational balance, we have to apprehend
+directly and intuitively. Our
+minds have to make some unfamiliar<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span>
+movement just as our bodies may in
+certain circumstances have to make
+some movement incompatible with
+normal equilibrium. In the case of
+bodily movements practical experience
+and a knowledge of mathematics may
+subsequently show that this unfamiliar
+movement is really just as reasonable
+as walking. Something of the
+same kind happens in our artistic experience
+too. Even Mozart may cease
+to interest us. The once unfamiliar
+experience becomes automatic, the new
+harmony becomes a <em>cliché</em>.</p>
+
+<p>There need not really be anything
+so very terrifying about the abandonment
+of the classical system. After all,
+we can always go back to it when we
+feel inclined, just as we may take
+up Dante and return to mediaeval astronomy.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span>
+The lurking fear which
+besets us is perhaps that if we abandoned
+ourselves to the artistic adventure
+of modern music we might find,
+not merely that we did not particularly
+enjoy it, but that somehow it
+had made it impossible for us to go
+back wholeheartedly to the music of
+our youth. It is impossible. Everybody
+has to ask himself the question
+and answer it for himself honestly—am
+I ready and keen to face fresh
+intellectual adventures? As age increases,
+increasing vanity has to be
+taken into account. We elderly people
+are easily prone to deceive ourselves
+and to think that we can convince
+others of the doctrine that connoisseurship
+is an adequate substitute for
+direct enjoyment.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XV">XV</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Some of the composers of the
+present day appear to be pursuing
+adventure in a definitely intellectual
+spirit comparable almost to that of
+the mediaeval Netherlanders. Their
+admirers often seem to be somewhat
+at a loss to expound their music to
+the uninitiated. They draw our attention
+to various technical ingenuities
+and they insist, no doubt justly, on
+the entire sincerity of the composers.
+As regards sincerity, it is a virtue with
+which art has no concern. As regards
+technical ingenuities, we have learned
+too many lessons from the past. There
+are many devices which look quite
+amusing on paper, but which in practical
+performance pass unnoticed. To<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span>
+this the composer may reasonably
+reply that the perception and enjoyment
+of technical ingenuities in performance
+is a matter of practice and
+experience; there is no reason why he
+should compose music for fools. Ingenuity
+is by no means a quality to
+be despised; there are innumerable
+moments in the works of Purcell,
+Bach and Mozart at which technical
+ingenuity has brought about some
+peculiarly poignant expression of
+beauty. Constructive skill—and this
+is what is really meant by the musician’s
+technical word <em>form</em>—is what
+makes music an art; and constructive
+skill has to be attained by study and
+experiment. It is desirable too that
+listeners should be trained in its appreciation,
+not so much by books and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span>
+lectures as by the actual experience of
+hearing.</p>
+
+<p>The composers to whom I have
+alluded assume in their hearers a long
+experience of music in general and
+also something of that habit of mind
+previously mentioned which tends to
+regard music less as a series of actual
+sounds than as a series of relations
+between sounds. It may be called a
+mathematical conception of music,
+and, like mathematics, it soon comes
+to deal with irrational quantities. It
+is an interesting question how far the
+human mind can advance in this direction.
+To certain temperaments music
+of this type is definitely repulsive;
+but they often feel no less repulsion
+towards mathematics and philosophy,
+studies which have been closely associated<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span>
+with music from very early
+times. We must however beware of
+being misled by superficial criticism
+into supposing that the understanding
+of such musical complexities requires
+a practical knowledge of mathematical
+or philosophical technicalities. In the
+scientific study of musical æsthetics
+there ultimately arise problems which
+bring all three branches of learning
+into contact; but in common practice
+they do not affect either the composer
+or the listener. There are writers on
+music who make use of a philosophical
+jargon to conceal their incapacity for
+clear thinking; but the truly philosophical
+habit of mind aims, if but
+with rare success, at lucidity.</p>
+
+<p>The practical value of this “mathematical”
+system of composition lies<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span>
+not so much in its employment of
+technical devices which were practised
+some five hundred years ago, as in its
+new method of handling them. It was
+a great moment in the history of music
+when someone first discovered that
+two different tunes could be sung
+simultaneously and thereby produce
+harmony. The artistic result of this
+proceeding depended on two factors
+which had to be brought into relation—the
+interest of each tune considered
+by itself, that is, the driving
+force which made it perceptible as a
+continuous tune, and, secondly, the
+satisfaction derived from the consonance
+of the two voices where it
+happened to occur. At one period the
+interest of the tune predominated, at
+another it was sacrificed to the interest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span>
+of consonance. Both interests are however
+subject to changes of value in
+the course of time. It is clear enough
+that such composers as Purcell, Bach
+and Mozart were deeply interested in
+the problem of exploiting these two
+interests, and of finding out how far
+the driving force of a tune could induce
+the listener to put up with dissonant
+harmony. We can see now, at
+this distance of time, that they positively
+increased the value of the harmonic
+interest by the way in which
+they deliberately tortured the ear of
+the sensitive listener of their own
+time. Our ears have become not less
+but more sensitive to dissonance, more
+able at any rate to discriminate between
+varieties of it. But, as I have
+already indicated, this preoccupation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span>
+with harmony and with relations
+between sounds has led to an indifference
+towards the actual sounds themselves,
+and the loss of interest in the
+actual sounds has certainly brought
+with it a diminished appreciation of
+melody. This is clear, not from the
+complaints directed against the unmelodiousness
+of modern music, but
+from the common inability to appreciate
+the emotional force of melody as
+it was conceived by composers of two
+hundred years ago and more, composers
+who undoubtedly were intensely
+preoccupied with pure melodic expression.</p>
+
+<p>Certain modern composers are
+devoting themselves to the same fundamental
+problem that interested
+Purcell, Bach and Mozart—how far<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span>
+the inherent force of melody can
+carry the listener over the obstacles
+of dissonance. It is not for me to
+attempt to measure the force of the
+actual melodies which they write. This
+force, too, is curiously complicated by
+problems involving various qualities
+of sound. The harshness of a dissonance
+may be mitigated or aggravated
+according to the instruments which
+produce it, and modern musicians are
+devoting much care to the minuter
+shades of what are sometimes called
+“colour-values.” The name is misleading,
+like all expressions which
+tempt the reader to apply to music the
+critical methods appropriate to painting.
+It has been suggested that music
+is now moving towards a phase in
+which “colour-values” will be the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span>
+principal means of expression. The experiment
+may be tried, and it may well
+contribute something useful towards
+the stock of artistic material. What
+this movement really signifies is
+nothing more than a subtilization of
+already recognized harmonic values,
+for from the point of view of acoustics
+it is impossible to draw any clear
+distinction between what is perceived
+as a “tone-colour” and what is perceived
+as a “chord.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="XVI">XVI</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The mechanical inventions of recent
+years have provided us with increased
+facilities for the diffusion of music.
+The present era may come to be
+regarded as similar in historical importance<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span>
+to those which first benefited
+by the invention of the stave and by
+the invention of music-printing. To
+some extent these changes represent
+merely the adaptation of practical
+conditions to the increase in population.
+But whereas the invention of the
+stave and the invention of music-printing
+must in all probability have
+increased the number of persons who
+could read music at sight, the modern
+reproductive machinery cannot do
+more than increase the number of
+those who confine themselves to listening.
+It remains to be seen what proportion
+of those who acquire the habit
+of listening will be stimulated to
+learn something of the art of performing.
+We hear much of the enthusiasm
+for music amongst “the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span>
+masses.” Apparently they are now
+singing Bach, whereas their grandparents
+sang Handel; does it make
+much difference?</p>
+
+<p>It is said that modern music has
+lost contact with “the people.” Had
+it ever any contact with them, if by
+“the people” is meant those whose
+musical education is not more than
+elementary? By all means let us do
+our utmost to raise the standard of
+musical education in all classes of
+society; but we cannot get away from
+the fact that at all periods of musical
+history the music which really made
+that history was in its own day the
+possession only of a limited circle of
+highly cultivated enthusiasts. This is
+inevitable. The moment we recognize
+music to be an art and not merely the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span>
+instrument of magic we have to apply
+our intellectual faculties to the understanding
+of it. Architects and painters
+complain bitterly enough of the public’s
+unwillingness to meet them halfway.
+For the musician the case is still
+worse; the practical difficulty of
+grasping a piece of music in the transitory
+moment of performance is one
+reason, and another is the intensity
+with which musical sounds act upon
+human emotions. It is small wonder if
+large numbers of people still regard
+music as almost magical.</p>
+
+<p>It is the remnant of these primitive
+beliefs which leads so many serious-minded
+and otherwise reasonable
+persons to take an apprehensive view
+of modern music, even though they
+may consider themselves more enlightened<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span>
+than those who view the
+music of all ages with moral apprehension.
+The danger, if it exists now,
+has always existed; people have
+always feared that which they do not
+understand.</p>
+
+<p>“It is difficult,” says Dr. Burney
+of Plato, “to refrain from numbering
+this philosopher, together with Aristotle,
+Aristoxenus and Plutarch,
+though such illustrious characters,
+and, in other particulars, such excellent
+writers, among the musical
+Grumblers and <i>Croakers</i> of antiquity.
+They all equally lament the loss of
+good music, without considering that
+every age had, probably, done the
+same, whether right or wrong, from
+the beginning of the world; always
+throwing musical perfection into times<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span>
+remote from their own, as a thing
+never to be known but by tradition.
+The Golden Age had not its name
+from those who lived in it.”</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap">
+<div class="tnote">
+<p class="noi tntitle">Transcriber’s Notes:</p>
+
+<p class="smfont">A List of Chapters has been provided for the convenience of the
+   reader, and is granted to the public domain.</p>
+
+<p class="smfont">Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.</p>
+
+<p class="smfont">Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.</p>
+
+<p class="smfont">Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76559 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
+
diff --git a/76559-h/images/cover.jpg b/76559-h/images/cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc73034
--- /dev/null
+++ b/76559-h/images/cover.jpg
diff --git a/76559-h/images/cover_sm.jpg b/76559-h/images/cover_sm.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..208062a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/76559-h/images/cover_sm.jpg
diff --git a/76559-h/images/logo.jpg b/76559-h/images/logo.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fafc376
--- /dev/null
+++ b/76559-h/images/logo.jpg
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..33a51f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #76559
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76559)