Hubert Parry

“ Genuine beauty in subjects may go far to atone for deficiency and irrelevancy in the development, but at best it is only a partial atonement, and those only are genuine masterpieces in which the form, be it ever so original, is just as clear and convincing in the end as the ideas of which it is the outcome.
The whole process of the development of the Sonata as an art-form, from its crudest beginnings to its highest culmination, took nearly two hundred years ”

“ As a rule, great masters appear to hit upon such germinal principles in the process of composition, without exactly formulating them in so many equivalent terms; and those who come after note the facts and apply them as useful resources, or sometimes as invaluable starting-points of fresh lines of development. It is a noticeable fact that Beethoven only seldom indicated a programme, and it is extremely rare in him to find even the dimmest suggestions of realism. In fact, as must be true of all the highest music, a work of his is not representative of a story, but of a mental process. ”

“ As should be obvious from the above survey of the process of sonata development, the absolute mastery of the structural outlines, the sureness of foot of the strong man moving, unaided, but direct in his path, amidst the conflicting suggestions of his inspiration, is indispensable to the achievement of great and genuine sonatas. The more elaborate the art of expression becomes, the more difficult the success. Beethoven probably stood just at the point where the extremest elaboration and the most perfect mastery of combination on a large scale were possible. ”

“ There is no such thing as leaping across a chasm on to a new continent, neither is there any gulf fixed anywhere, but continuity and inevitable antecedents to every consequent; the roots of the greatest masterpieces of modern times lie obscurely hidden in the wild dances and barbarous howlings of the remotest ancestors of the race, who began to take pleasure in rhythm and sound, and every step was into the unknown, or it may be better said not only unknown but non-existent till made by mental effort. ”

“ In most of the Sonatas for violin and clavier, the slow movement is a tower of strength, and strikes a point of rich and complex emotional expression which music reached for the first time in Bach's imagination. His favourite way of formulating a movement of this sort, was to develop the whole accompaniment consistently on a concise and strongly-marked figure, which by repetition in different conditions formed a bond of connection throughout the whole ”

“ At all events, Mozart was gifted with an extraordinary and hitherto unsurpassed instinct for formal perfection, and his highest achievements lie not more in the tunes which have so captivated the world, than in the perfect symmetry of his best works. ”

“ Beethoven's period was much more like ours than that of Haydn and Mozart, but yet it is not so like that a work expressed entirely in his manner would not be an anachronism. Each successive generation takes some colour from the combination of work and changes in all previous generations ”

“ The origin and reason of existence of abstract music are, at least on one side, intellectual; and though up to a certain point the process of development tended to reduce the intellectual effort by making the structural outlines as clear and certain as possible, when these were decisively settled the current naturally set in the direction of complication. The inevitable process of cumulating one device of art upon another is shown in the free range of modulation and harmony, and in the increasing variety and richness of detail both in the subjects and in the subordinate parts of works. ”

“ In abstract music, balance, proportion, equality in the range of emotional and structural elements, are some of the most important conditions. Not that there is to be equal intensity all through, but that the salient and subordinate parts shall be fairly proportionate; and this cannot be tested or stated by formulas of science, but only by cultivated artistic instinct. In music the art of expressing an idea within the limits and after the manner necessary for abstract music had to be discovered. ”

“ Music was too much dependent upon the narrow limits of the taste of polite circles, and the field of appeal to emotion was not free. But when at last the natural man threw off the incubus that had so long oppressed him, the spiritual uprising and the broadening of life brought a new kind of vigour into art and literature. Beethoven was the first great composer to whom the limitless field of unconventionalised human emotion was opened, and his disposition was ready for the opportunity. ”

“ There is always more fun and gaiety in his music than pensiveness or serious reflection. But in developing the technical part of expression, in proportioning the means to the end, and in organising the forces of the orchestra, what he did was of the utmost importance. It is, however, impossible to apportion the value of the work of the two masters. Haydn did a great deal of important and substantial work before Mozart came into prominence in the same field. But after the first great mark had been made by the Paris Symphony, Mozart seemed to rush to his culmination ”

“ Thus the interest of the development of instrumental movements in modern symphonies and sonatas is frequently enhanced by the way in which the subjects are varied when they are reintroduced according to the usual principles of structure; in operas and similar works ever since Mozart's time characteristic features are made all the more appropriate by adapting them to different situations; and it is even possible that after all its long history the Variation still affords one of the most favourable opportunities for the exercise of their genius by composers of the future. ”

“ The working out of the Andante cantabile and the persistent drum rhythm are also striking points. In the 2nd Symphony the dimensions of the Introduction are unusual, and the character of all the latter part and the freedom of the transitions in it are decisive marks of his tendencies. The Slow movement has also a warmth and sense of genuine sympathy which is new; the Scherzo, though as yet short, has a totally new character about it, and the abrupt sforzandos and short striking figures and still more the coda, of the Finale, are quite his own. ”

“ It is not likely that many will be able to follow Brahms in his severe and uncompromising methods; but he himself has shown more than any one how elastic the old principles may yet be made without departing from the genuine type of abstract instrumental music; and that when there is room for individual expression there is still good work to be done, though we can hardly hope that even the greatest composers of the future will surpass the symphonic triumphs of the past, whatever they may do in other fields of composition. ”

“ The alternation is like the recurrence of subject and countersubject in the former, wandering hazily in and out, and forwards and backwards, between nearly allied keys, as would be the case in a fugue. But the subjects are not presented in single parts or fugally answered. They enter and re-enter for the most part as concrete lumps of harmony, the harmonic accompaniment of the melody being taken as part of the idea; and this is essentially a quality of sonata-form. ”

“ A sonata of the former's in E♭ shows a less certain hand in the treatment of form, but at times extraordinary gleams of musically poetic feeling. Points in the Adagio are not unworthy of kinship with Beethoven. It contains broad and daring effects of modulation, and noble richness of sentiment and expression, which, by the side of the obvious tendencies of music in these days, is really astonishing. The first and last movements are in binary form of the old type, and contain some happy and musical strokes, though not so remarkable as the contents of the slow movement. ”

“ VARIATIONS. In the days when modern music was struggling in the earliest stages of its development, when most of the forms of art which are familiar in the present day were either unknown or in their crudest state of infancy, composers who aimed at making works of any size laboured under great disadvantages. They were as fully conscious as composers are now of the necessity of some system of structure or principle of art to unify the whole of each work, and to carry on the interest from moment to moment ”

“ The next symphony, which is also the next opus-number, is the popular 'Pastoral,' probably written in 1808, the second of Beethoven's which has a definitely stated idea as the basis of its inspiration, and the first in which a programme is suggested for each individual movement; though Beethoven is careful to explain that it is 'mehr Empfindung als Malerei.' Any account of this happy inspiration is clearly superfluous. The situations and scenes which it brings to the mind are familiar, and not likely to be less beloved as the world grows older. ”

“ He seems to have set himself to prove that the old principles of form are still capable of serving as the basis of works which should be thoroughly original both in general character and in detail and development, without either falling back on the device of programme, or abrogating or making any positive change in the principles, or abandoning the loftiness of style which befits the highest form of art ”

“ To call a great work by the name of a great man was quite a different thing from calling it by the name of a crowned ruler. However, the point remains the same, that the work was written with a definite purpose and under the inspiration of a special subject, and one upon which Beethoven himself assuredly had a very decided opinion. ”

“ Fair examples of the successful disregard of form in favour of programme or a dramatic conception can hardly be found; in fact, in the best examples extant, programme is no more than the addition of a name or a story to an otherwise regular formal sonata; but on the other hand there is plenty of justification of the finest kind for abstract works in free and more original forms, and it rests with composers to justify themselves by their works, rather than for reasoning to decide finally where the limit shall be. ”

“ Similarly, in the treatment of the orchestra, such a thing as filling up is avoided to the utmost possible; and in order to escape the over-complexity of detail so unsuitable to the symphonic form of art, the forces of the orchestra are grouped in masses in the principal characteristic figures, in such a way that the whole texture is endowed with vitality. The impression so conveyed to some is that the orchestration is not at such a high level of perfection as the other elements of art ”

“ The slow movement has beautiful independent figures and phrases for the wind instruments, so interwoven with the body of the movement that they supply necessary elements of colour and fulness of harmony, without appearing either as definite solos or as meaningless holding notes. The fresh and merry last movement has much the same characteristics as the first in the matter of instrumental utterance, and in its working-out section all the forces have, if anything, even more independent work of their own to do, while still supplying their appropriate ingredients to the sum total of sound. ”

“ The cause of the falling off in vigour, depth of feeling, and technical resource from the standard of Handel and Bach, is obvious enough in other departments; since men were thrown back as they had been after Palestrina's time, through having to cope with new forms of art. In the case of variations—by this time an old and established form—the cause of such falling off is not easy to see; but in reality variations were just as amenable to unfavourable influences as the rest of instrumental music, since composers began to try to treat them in the same style as their sonata movements. ”

“ This is not to say that structure is ignored, but that the utmost expansion and liberty is admitted in the expression of the vital parts which can be made consistent with perfect balance in the unfolding of the whole; and this obviously depends upon the powers of the composer. Under such circumstances he can only be guided by the highest development of instinct, for the process of balance and distribution becomes so complicated that it is almost out of the reach of conscious analysis, much more of the dictation of science. ”

“ It begins to come into notice about the same time as that form of composition, soon after the era of the most marked revolution in music, which began at the end of the sixteenth century; when a band of enthusiasts, led by visionary ideals, unconsciously sowed the seed of true modern music in an attempt to wrest the monopoly of the art in its highest forms from the predominant influence of the church, and to make it serve for the expression of human feelings of more comprehensive range. ”