Daniel Gregory Mason

“ Just as a novelist develops his characters by letting their fundamental peculiarities manifest themselves in all sorts of ways and among all kinds of circumstances, meanwhile paying but scant attention to their more accidental or superficial traits, so the composer of a sonata seizes upon whatever is individual in his themes—a strong rhythm, a peculiar turn of phrase, a striking bit of harmony—and repeats and insists upon it tirelessly, with whatever variation of minor details his ingenuity may suggest. ”

“ Listening to modern music is like reading a series of short sentences, each clearly and definitely ended by its own full stop. Listening to the old polyphony is more like reading one of those long and involved sentences of De Quincey or Walter Pater, in which the clauses are intricately interwoven and mutually dependent, so that we can get the sense only by a long-sustained effort of attention. ”

“ Never before had music been so untrammeled, so free. The medium itself—harmony, melody, rhythm—had become more plastic, and the old incubus of tradition had been thrown off. Not only that, but the various elements in composition were fused for the first time in Beethoven's music. Polyphony [190] takes its place as a means and not an end; pure melody—even folk-melody—becomes a part of the larger scheme in which its beauty is set off against contrasting elements—and is thereby enhanced; rhythm becomes a means of expression in itself, and not merely a vehicle ”

“ For a trained ear there is no keener pleasure than following the windings of a well written fugue. It is, at the same time, true that a fugue presents especial difficulties to the ear, because of its intricately interwoven melodies. In a folk-song there is not only but one melody, with nothing to distract the attention from it, but it is composed in definite phrases of equal length, like the lines in poetry, with a pause at the end of each, in which the mind of the listener can take breath, so to speak, and rest a moment before renewing attention. ”

“ The first movement of that sonata does not differ materially in form from the first movement of Mozart's G-minor Symphony, discussed in Chapter IX, yet Beethoven takes us into a new world, far removed from that world of pure impersonal beauty in which Mozart dwelt. Beethoven is the man struggling, fighting, working out his own individuality, learning through bitter experience; Mozart is the artist not so much turning his own experience into music, as creating outside himself imperishable works of an almost superhuman beauty. ”

“ While this movement does not reach the heights of lyric beauty attained by Mozart in the Andante which we shall analyze in a moment, it is, nevertheless, a thoroughly interesting and really beautiful piece of music. Our attention is constantly enlisted by fresh glimpses of the theme, or by new harmonies; the ornamentation all grows naturally out of the structure and is not laid on for its own sake, and the melody itself is expressive and tender. ”

“ Of the thousands of people who consider themselves lovers of music, it is surprising how few have any real appreciation of it. It is safe to say that out of any score of persons gathered to hear music, whether it be hymn, song, oratorio, opera, or symphony, ten are not listening at all, but are looking at the others, or at the performers, or at the scenery or programme, or are lost in their own thoughts. ”

“ The architect, having chosen a certain kind of column, say, for his building, must not place next to it another style of column, from a different country and period, or his building will become a mess, a medley, a nightmare; but neither must he make his entire building one long colonnade of exactly similar columns, for then it would be hopelessly dull. In short, every artist has to solve in his own way the problem of combining unity of general impression with variety of detail. Without either one of these essentials, no art can be beautiful. ”

“ Let us put ourselves now in the place of a composer who has thought of certain motives, and who wishes to make them into a complete piece of music. What shall we [7] do next with these scraps of melody, attractive but fragmentary? Now, one thing we can see at once from our knowledge of arts other than music. We must somehow or other keep repeating our central ideas, or our piece will wander off into mazes and fail to have any unity or intelligibility; yet we must also vary these repetitions, or they will become monotonous, and the finished piece will have no variety or sustained interest. ”

“ In the long process of development which songs and dances thus undergo at the hands of composers, they of course lose to some extent their contrasting characters, until in modern music the dance and the song elements are as inextricably interwoven as the warp and the woof of a well-made fabric.
As imitation is only slightly available in homophonic music, the unity so vital to all art is attained in dances chiefly by transpositions of motives, often in systematic "sequences," by more or less exact balance of phrases, and by restatement after contrast. ”

“ Can we not, arousing ourselves from our drowsy reverie, follow with active co-operation and vivid pleasure each tone and phrase of the music, for itself alone?
One thing is sure: Unless we can do so, we shall miss the keenest enjoyment that music has to offer. For this enjoyment is not passive, but active. It is not enough to place ourselves in a room where music is going on; we must by concentrated attention; absorb and mentally digest it. Without the help of the alert mind, the ear can no more hear than the eye can see. ”

“ If we compare it with Mozart's first movement themes we realize at once that it deals with things that music had never attempted to express before. The second theme is not by any means a fine melody, being made up of a constantly reiterated phrase, but it has an appealing beauty of its own that we would not exchange for perfection. Occasionally the terrible asserts itself, as in those ominous chords with empty fifths in the coda (measures 481-482) , while the whole movement seems to have been struck off at white heat. ”

“ In no other way can the lover of music penetrate its mysteries.
Knowledge of musical technicalities, on the other hand, is not necessary to appreciation, any more than knowledge of the nature of pigments or the laws of perspective is necessary to the appreciation of a picture. Such technical knowledge we may dispense with, if only we are willing to work for our musical pleasure by giving active attention, and if we have some guidance as to what to listen for among so many and such at first confusing impressions. ”

“ All these threads were gathered together by Beethoven, and woven into the complex fabric of his music. Great men are usually born at just the right moment, and Beethoven was no exception to the rule; for he found the art at just the point where a master spirit was needed to take its various elements and fuse them. ”

“ Five more are basking in the sound as a dog basks in the sun—enjoying it in a sleepy, languid way, but not actively following it at all. For them music is, as a noted critic has said, "a drowsy reverie, relieved by nervous thrills." Then there are one or two to whom the music is bringing pictures or stories: visions of trees, cascades, mountains, and rivers fill their minds, or they dream of princesses in old castles, set free from magic slumber by brave heroes from afar. ”

“ The great object of musical analysis must always be to concentrate the attention of the music-lover, to focus his mind as well as his ears on the melodies, and their developments, which he hears, and so eventually to increase his pleasure in music, and to help him to substitute for that "drowsy reverie, relieved by nervous thrills," an active, joyful, vigorous co-operation with composers, through which alone he can truly appreciate their art. ”

“ Harmonic design, on the other hand—the setting of one key or series of keys against another—is often only dimly recognized, if at all, although it is of the greatest importance in all modern music. In sonata-form the harmonic plan (described above by the terms Duality, Plurality and Unity) adds an important element since it unifies the last section by stating both first and second theme in the same key. And in the middle, or development section, the freedom of harmonic progression—the multitude of keys—gives great variety and enables the composer freely to indulge his fancy. ”

“ Indeed, he is not appreciated now, for a man can be appreciated only by his equals. But we have at last got an inkling of the treasure that still lies hidden away in Bach; and while Handel and the other idols of the age sound daily more thin and archaic, Bach grows ever richer as the understanding we bring to him increases, and still holds out his promise of novel and perennial artistic delights. ”

“ The ideal of all this progress was unity and variety; in other words, composers felt the desire to expand their powers of expression and saw that this expansion must in the nature of things conform to certain æsthetic principles and obey certain laws. Mere luxuriance of speech without order or system means confusion; but order and system without living feeling means aridity. These two elements must go hand in hand, and in the music of masters like Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms they do. ”

“ There is just the contrast here that there is between a poor speaker, who keeps repeating the same word or phrase with futile emphasis, and the man of real eloquence, who follows a train of thought no less closely, but manages constantly to cast his ideas in new phraseology and fresh figures of speech, so that the variety of what he says is quite as striking as its fundamental unity. ”

“ His sense of musical structure, of that combining of themes in long movements which is akin to the architect's combination of pillars, arches, windows, buttresses and colonnades in great buildings, became so powerful and unerring that he created works of vaster proportions and more subtle symmetry than had ever been dreamed of before—so great and complex that they could be followed only by the highly trained ear and mind. ”

“ Without imagination in the beholder a picture by Botticelli, for example, is a curiosity rather than a work of art. Its strange allegory, its quaint idea of landscape, its figures with their unusual posing—all these are beautiful or merely curious according as we look at them. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
The repetition at a higher pitch of the main motive in measures 3-4 is highly poignant; and throughout the expression is intensified by the use of rich and often complex harmony, as particularly in the last four measures of all. ”

“ Can we not, you and I, join the ranks of these true lovers of music? Can we not learn to free our minds of all side issues as we listen—to forget audience, performers, and scene, to forget princesses and heroes, to forget everything except this unique experience that is unfolding itself before our ears? ”

“ In 1791, when Mozart died, and when Haydn made his first journey to London to produce his Salomon symphonies, Ludwig van Beethoven, born in 1770, was just entering on his young manhood.
In order to understand the character and work of Beethoven, it is necessary constantly to bear in mind the two-sided [162] truth that the greatest men are those who combine the utmost receptivity and teachableness with a perfect self-dependence and fearless initiative. Beethoven, who is equally remarkable for both, could never have done what he did had he lacked either. ”

“ Here we have the virility of Beethoven's style admirably illustrated; no time is given to platitudes, no single measure wanders away from the chief issues. At times this first motive is extended into a succession of loud chords from the full orchestra; again the prevailing two-measure rhythm is interrupted by a measure of silence that shifts the accents dramatically from one place to another, dislocating the whole passage. [42] This intensity of utterance—each phrase hammered home—gives to the whole work a quite unique place among symphonies. ”

“ The similarity to the style of Haydn and Mozart is most striking. Not only do we find the general types of structure developed by them applied with great fidelity, but there are many details of style, such as the accompaniment figures and the ornamentation, which recall them. Yet the strings, so to speak, are all tightened, there is not a trace of flabbiness or diffuseness, everything irrelevant is omitted, and the style is at once more varied and more unified than theirs. The vigor and individuality of all the themes is consummate ”

“ And it is this sense of proportion, this wideness of vision, that makes Beethoven's music so universal. For in the last analysis the effect of any work of art depends on the artist's sense of values; a fine situation in a novel is all the finer for being set against a proper background; a tragedy must have moments of relief; beauty alone, whether in a painting or a piece of music, soon palls upon us ”