Edmund Gosse and Hans Gadow

“ For even when they have suffered change or transformation in passing through a new environment the stamp of an individual or a period remains, whereas the folk-song of tradition is the work not of one age, but of many, not of the individual, but the collective mind. ”

“ His genius moved more easily in the field of abstract music. The forms of poetry were to him rather a hindrance than a help. His tendency is to press into his melodies more meaning than the words will bear. The very qualities in fact which make his instrumental melodies so inspiring tell against his songs. Though his stronger critical instinct kept him as a rule from the false accentuation which marred some of the work of Haydn and Mozart, yet, like them, he often failed to escape from the instrumentalist’s point of view, especially in the larger song-forms. ”

“ In all ages the Church has drawn largely from popular song for the melodies of its hymns. It is moreover in the highest degree improbable that the Church should have been able to evolve out of its inner consciousness, without pre-existing models, a melody—to take a single instance—like that of “Conditor alme siderum”—the survival of which in innumerable European folk-songs has already been alluded to. ”

“ We have left behind the pretty artificialities so dear to the 18th century, that play around fictitious shepherds and shepherdesses, and entered the field of deeper human feeling with the surrounding influences upon it of nature and romance. The new spirit of the age, represented in German poetry by the lyrics of Burger, Voss, Claudius and Holty, members of the famous Göttinger Hainbund, and more notably by those of Goethe and Schiller, communicates itself in Beethoven to song, which now assumes its rightful position of joint interpreter. ”

“ Hence in the modern school of song-writers, which finds its culmination in Debussy, the quality of unselfconsciousness is the one which seems most difficult for them to attain. In French art we are too often reminded how close the sublime is to the ridiculous, the dramatic to the theatrical, pathos to bathos, truth to paradox. ”

“ It is unsafe to infer, as some have done, from the custom, known in all ages, of dancing and singing at the same time, that song arose as a mere accessory to the dance. It is more probable that the dance has its origin in the mimetic actions, which are the natural accompaniment of rudimentary song. At the same time, no one will deny that races with ballads of their own early made use of them for the dance, and that, especially on the rhythmical side, melody owes to the dance an incalculable debt. ”

“ The larks and pipits never deliver their song so well as when seeking the upper air. Rooks rise one after the other to a great height and, turning on their back, wantonly precipitate themselves many yards towards the ground, while the solemn raven does not scorn a similar feat, and, with the tenderest of croaks, glides supinely alongside or in front of his mate. ”

“ Though the line of demarcation between the two cannot be definitely drawn, for they have acted and reacted upon each other ever since music existed as a cultivated art, yet it may reasonably be maintained that the folk-song, which lies at the base of all music, preserves, and has in all ages preserved, characteristics such as must always distinguish the rude and unconscious products of the human mind, working more by instinct than by method, from the polished and conscious products of the schools. ”

“ Unfortunately in presenting complexity of mood Schumann was not invariably careful to preserve structural solidity. Many later composers have followed the occasional looseness of design which is his fault, without approaching the beauty of spirit, in which he stands alone.
A bold experimenter in song was Franz Liszt, whose wayward genius, with its irrepressible bent towards the theatrical and melodramatic, was never at home within the limits of a short lyric. It is true that there is sincerity of feeling, if not of the deepest kind, in “Es muss ein Wunderbares sein” and “Über allen Gipfeln” ”

“ The accompaniment too takes its full share, illustrating each incident with exquisite fancy, delicacy and discretion—and all with no violence done to the form of the poem.
With Beethoven song was suddenly exalted to a place among the highest branches of composition. Taken in hand with the utmost seriousness by the greatest musician of the age and associated by him for the most part with lyrical poetry of a high order, it could at last raise its head, and, freed from the conventional formalities of the salon, look a larger world confidently in the face. ”

“ One fact emerges clearly from the study of folk-song arrangements, in Germany and elsewhere, that success depends upon qualities which are as rare as, and are seldom dissociated from, the power of original composition. Only a great composer can be a great arranger. ”

“ Rhythm in music, which has its origin and counterpart in the regular bodily movements involved in various departments of labour and in the dance, must, as has already been said, have always been an essential feature of popular melody, and it is reasonable to conclude from its absence in the plain-song, and indeed for many centuries in the compositions of musicians, which had the plain-song for their basis, that these hymns, which represented the popular part of the Church services, were also representative of the popular tastes of the time. ”

“ More exquisite declamation is hardly to be found in the whole range of song than in the subtly imaginative “Auftrag,” whilst for nobility of feeling, apart from technical excellencies of the highest order, the “Weihnachtslieder,” the “Brautlieder” and much of the sacred cycle “Vater Unser,” are hardly surpassed even by Schumann at his best, and point to Cornelius as one of the most beautiful and original spirits of the 19th century. ”

“ The peacock in pride spreads his train so as to show how nearly akin are the majestic and the ludicrous. The bower-bird, not content with its own splendour, builds an arcade, decked with bright feathers and shining shells, through and around which he paces with his gay companions. ”

“ Critics, who measure the advance of song by the increase in number of those that are durchcomponirt, and the decreasing output of those which have the same music to each stanza, are in danger of forgetting the best qualities both of music and of poetry. Formless music never interpreted a finely formed poem, and unless the durchcomponirtes Lied has more form instead of less than the strophic song, it is artistically valueless. ”

“ His tricks of style and procedure so quickly become familiar as to exhaust the patience even of the most sympathetic student. But the sincerity of his aims, the idealistic and supersensitive purity of his mind (which banished as far as possible even the dramatic element from his lyrics) , its receptiveness to the beauties of nature and all that is chaste, tender and refined in human character render his songs an important contribution to our knowledge of the intimate side of German feeling, and compensate in some degree for the lack of the larger qualities of style and imagination. ”

“ That perfect fusion between poetry and music, which since Schubert has increasingly been the ideal of German song, is realized in an exceptional manner when, with Cornelius as with Wagner, librettist and musician are one person. ”

“ In songs of a solemn or deeply emotional nature Beethoven is at his best, as in that cycle, to sacred words of Gellert, of which “Die Ehre Gottes aus der Natur” stands as a lasting monument of simple but expressive grandeur, in “Trocknet nicht,” in “Partenza,” “In questa tomba,” in the first of his four settings of Goethe’s “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt,” and more than all, in the cycle “An die feme Geliebte,” which represents a further stage reached in song on the road marked out by Mozart in “Das Veilchen.” ”

“ In the second sense of the word it must strictly be lyrical in its nature; but musicians and others frequently use the word in the wider sense of any short poem set to music. A “song,” as a form of poem, usually turns on some single thought or emotion, expressed subjectively in a number of stanzas or strophes. Almost every nation is in possession of an immense store of old simple ballads (q.v.) , which are the spontaneous outcome of the inspiration of the people (“folk-songs”) , and represent in a remarkable degree their tastes, feelings and aspirations ”

“ If a mode can be said to exist for a purpose, that purpose is melody: to apply to modal folk-melodies the canons laid down by composers with whom melody was a quantité négligeable is sheer perversity. Recent discoveries in the field of folk-song place us in a far better position for understanding the true nature of the modes than medieval composers: for in the folk-song their free development has not been hampered by restrictions, which were a necessary condition of polyphonic work. ”

“ No greater contrast can be imagined, and no instance can be cited which more completely points out the purpose which ' song ' fulfils in the economy of the bird, for if the nightingale's nest at this early time be destroyed or its contents removed, the cock speedily recovers his voice, and his favourite haunts again resound to his bewitching strains. ”

“ When the rest of Europe was content with the vapid outpourings of Italian and pseudo- Italian puerilities, an acute observer could have read the signs in Germany, from which the advent of a Schubert might have been foretold. The student therefore is more profitably employed in studying the phases of song-development in Germany than in any other country. German ideals and German methods of technique have permeated the best modern song-work of countries differing as widely in idiom as Russia, Norway, France and England. ”

“ The case of melody is strictly analogous to that of languages. As every country has its own store of folk-songs in which national characteristics find expression through idioms which differentiate its songs from those of other countries, it would be arbitrary to select the songs of one country rather than those of another for separate discussion.
The history of the art-song has now to be considered, of solo song, that is, with instrumental accompaniment as an essential part. ”

“ To accompany bodily movements (which by a natural law become rhythmical when often repeated) with music, vocal or instrumental, is an almost universal human instinct, whether to alleviate the burden or the monotony of labour, as in rowing, sowing, spinning, hammering and a score of other pursuits, or to promote pleasure and excitement, as in the dance. ”

“ Concentration of style and of thought have nowhere in the whole history of song been combined on a plane so high as that which is reached, with all perfection of melodic and harmonic beauty, in “Schwermuth,” “Der Tod das ist die kühle Nacht,” “Mit vierzig Jahren,” “Am Kirchhof,” “O wüsst’ich doch den Weg zurück” and the “Vier ernste Gesange,” which closed the list of his 197 songs. The alliance to song of so dangerous a companion as philosophy, or at any rate of thoughts which are philosophical rather than lyrical, proved no obstacle to Brahms’s equal success in the realm of romance. ”

“ It is this double repetition which from the point of view of dramatic sincerity forms so disturbing an element. But composers, as has been remarked, were too much occupied with exploring the formal possibilities of melody to establish a really intimate connexion between music and text (Monteverde being a notable exception) , a detailed interpretation of which lay outside their scheme of song. Elaboration of melody soon came to involve much repetition of words, and this was not felt as an absurdity so long as the music was broadly in accord with the atmosphere or situation required. ”

“ More remarkable still is a “Chanson de Table” of the 10th century, a really graceful melody, the quotation of which may serve to destroy the illusion that the major scale, so often described as modern, has any other claim to the title than the fact that it has been preserved by modern musicians, while others have been discarded.
In the same collection may be found, beside other historical songs, two odes of Boethius and two odes of Horace, set to music; [5] but whether the melodies given represent medieval music or Roman music, corrupted or not, it is. ”

“ In Wagner’s famous opera is given a very accurate and faithful picture of their methods and ideals. Their importance in the history of song consists not so much in actual work achieved as in the enthusiasm widely spread through their means in the class from which most of the great German composers were eventually to spring.
The real interest for the historian of song centres during this period not in the attempts of minstrels and burgher gilds to improve upon the folk-song, but in the folk-song itself. ”

“ For the purposes then of this article, art-song may be distinguished from folk-song by the fact that it is the work of trained musicians and is designed, at any rate after the close of the 16th century, for voice with instrumental accompaniment, whereas we shall restrict the term folk-song to such melodies as appear to have been the work of untutored minds, and to have arisen independently of any felt necessity for harmonic support. ”

“ The admiration expressed by Liszt and Wagner for the songs of Robert Franz, and the cordial welcome extended by Schumann to those which first made their appearance, have led to an undue estimate of their importance in many quarters. They are characterized by extreme delicacy both of feeling and of workmanship, but the ingenuity of his counterpoint, which he owed to his intimate knowledge of Bach and Handel, cannot conceal the frequent poverty of inspiration in his melodic phrases nor the absence of genuine constructive power. ”