Part 2

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.