Stephen Austen Pearce

“ A complete history of music would be a history of the world, so intimately is it found connected with the language, habits, poetry, religion, and life of the various nations. Our form of the art is alone adapted to our wants; and when we consider its enhanced powers, its modern counterpoint and harmony, we are at a loss to understand how Oriental music, with its greater limitations, could exercise so powerful a sway over its hearers. ”

“ We are, therefore, rapidly forming complex psychologic systems, side by side with our technical systems, which to the ancients would prove as strange and unaccountable as some of theirs do to us; or even still more strange, for the want of sympathy would not be entirely due to difference of musical temperament of scales, or to mere remoteness of period and nation, but to the use of harmony and simultaneous melodies that render our music bewilderingly complex in its structure to those nations who do not employ polyphony. ”

“ The joys and sorrows, aspirations and emotions of an age are sounded forth in its music; therefore that of the past is chiefly valuable as a contribution to historic national psychology. Let us so live that our own music, as a reflex image of ourselves, may attest our progress, not only in the physical sciences, but in nobleness of soul and all true worthiness. ”

“ The difficulties to be overcome in forming an adequate conception of the music of other peoples are, therefore, great. If, after persistent effort or even a life-long devotion to performance and composition, we find perplexing mysteries at every turn, we may naturally anticipate encountering inscrutable enigmas in the endeavor to comprehend the true nature of the forms of art specially adapted to the necessities of races so far removed in time and place, thought and feeling, as the ancient Orientals. ”

“ It is true that performers who have practiced long together, who sympathize with one another and with the aims of the composer, and who are deeply imbued with the spirit of his work, give artistically good renderings. The soul-state recorded by the composer is impressed upon the auditors. This is the purport of the music, and nothing more seems desired. It transcends all formal, cold measurements. If the performers tried to be true to these, the gist of the story, as it were, would be lost in the telling. ”

“ The works of these later writers rise to loftier heights and sink to deeper depths, reveling in a larger scale of human passion than those of their predecessors. Here aspirations, longings, strivings, are portrayed with a vividness that mirrors the spirit of the age. ”

“ Music appears as something quite apart, as though it held aloof from the realities of daily life. Yet, on closer inspection, it is seen to be connected so closely with art and life as to make its classification difficult. ”

“ It is sufficient to say that the necessity of accurate definition was universally desired in the earliest ages of which we have any record by peoples who did not employ harmony. But our own use of chords makes questions of intonation much more intricate. We not only require a song or melody, but several songs or melodies to be given simultaneously, as in the ordinary church quartet or fugal chorus, where each singer demands the right to be provided with some important subject-matter, worthy the delivery of a feeling, acting, willing spirit—some "part" which fully occupies him. ”

“ For we not only speak of major modes as bright and genial, and minor modes as sorrowful and depressed, irrespective of the music to be cast in these modes—and also regard our sharp keys as brilliant, and flat keys as calm and soothing, irrespective also of the music to be rendered in them, and although we are perfectly certain of the fact that mathematically they present no variation—but we notice that the notes in any one key have each their special signification. ”

“ The American grand piano-forte is, however, the greatest triumph of inventive genius and skill, aided by modern physical science; and this fact being acknowledged in all parts of the civilized world, foreign trade has been introduced to such an extent as to make the industry one of the largest in the United States. All the makers here daily strive for preeminence, and endeavor to surpass one another in the superior excellences of the smallest details, if not in the novelty and value, of their own respective inventions. ”

“ Only by passing on and on, from chord to chord in ever-changing forms, from sweetest consonance to most brilliant dissonance, from exciting successions and combinations to calming ones, is harmonic texture provided for musical compositions. Sometimes, also, the melody remains unchanged when the harmonies are greatly altered, so that its expression may be varied, as the features of the same countenance may express varied emotions, and yet be always recognized. ”

“ We, who are always ready to invent theories for the explanation of phenomena, find ourselves extremely perplexed in accounting for various musical facts that at first sight seem simple and easily understood. If, therefore, we are unable to explain our music to ourselves, and the ancients could not explain their music to themselves, it should not cause surprise if we fail to comprehend their music. ”

“ If we compare the vibrations of the violin, set up by the comparatively gentle friction of the bow, with those of a piano-forte sound-board, violently trembling in response to strong percussive accents, and the multitudinous and continuous vibrations of long, thick metallic strings, it is at once evident that they are of a more extraordinary nature. ”

“ Modern compositions are the natural expression of our time. Even the music of Mozart and Haydn seems to be truly Arcadian, compared with that of Beethoven and Schumann. It is comparatively artless, cheerful, and free from sighs. ”

“ It is only safe to say that a piano-forte is never better than when it first leaves the hands of its maker. Like a young, impressionable being, it may then be made to suit special tastes and requirements. ”

“ It would be more philosophical to assume that an art practiced throughout the Orient by all classes of persons, in all times, would, if seriously studied, present many aspects worthy of deep reflection. However little we may be able to sympathize with Chinese, Hindoos, Persians, and other peoples in their artistic aspirations, we should not be tempted to provoke a smile at their expense, but approach the study of their music with the greatest respect. ”

“ But here, at the end of our series, we find an instrument, the bagpipe, that figures in Chinese myths. However little we may relish the quality of the tone of this instrument, when it is badly played, and at only a short distance from us, we must give it the highest place in the scheme, and admire the skill displayed in its formation.
The real worth of Oriental music is not to be learned from routine practical musicians, who rarely know anything of the underlying principles of their art, but must be gained by a patient study of ancient writings, in which the respective theories are recorded. ”

“ INNUMERABLE questions arise in the mind whenever that mysterious art, called music, occupies our thoughts—questions respecting its source, its course or development in various epochs, its laws, object, action, limitations, and influence. These are not easily answered satisfactorily, and appear to have been as great problems to the ancients as they are to ourselves. For, attempting to penetrate the thick mists that veiled their past, they failed to discover the origin of any one musical instrument ”

“ One maker prides himself on the magnitude and power of his instruments, and their fitness to be employed with the orchestra in large halls; another on the delicacy and extreme purity of the tone, which he deems can only be attained from instruments intended for the drawing-room or halls of moderate size; a third may try to obtain a "traveling-power," which quality is so markedly deficient in many upright pianos and in free-reed organs, as compared with grand piano-fortes and pipe-organs, that always sound better when at some distance. ”

“ They do not even remove difficulties to be overcome at the very outset. The musician is invited to attempt the impossible, namely, to make equal things that are unequal—to make the melodic scale agree with the harmonic scale, their proportions being dissimilar. He is compelled to make compromises, either acknowledged and defined, as in the systems of tuning piano-fortes, or unacknowledged and undefined, as in performances on violins. ”

“ These minute shades of difference—these slight variations or modifications of quality of tone, power of tone, pitch, speed, etc.—when not exaggerated, but determined with an art-concealing art, are found to be true to Nature, and find their justification, not as exceptions to general rules, but as exemplifications of the highest principles. The refined perceptions of piano-forte finishers have led them to the fact that the highest notes of the instrument should be tuned slightly sharper than perfect, or each note will appear to be flat, when compared with the octave below. ”

“ Oriental music has, for ages, shed a benignant and salutary influance on the hearts, minds, and senses of millions of persons, and still is a source of gratification to more than half the population of the globe. ”

“ Music and its instruments were commonly believed in the East to be gifts from Heaven, and therefore its cultivation and their preservation became religious duties. The Orientals took no credit to themselves for inventing the various extraordinary instruments with which they performed their wonder-working melodies, and, as will be presently shown, no modern nation has yet invented a really new one; for all those we employ are either enlarged or simplified forms of prototypes that were in use at the earliest times of which we have any record, and are really prehistoric. ”

“ An elaborate characterization of even one isolated interval—say of the sweet-sighing-sadness of the sixth sound of the Æolian harp, the dominant seventh of nature—could be no more intelligible to one who had never experienced the combination than the sweetness of honey be made known to one who had never tasted it. ”

“ The solid and highly-compound tones of the organ, sustained with equal energy, caused the imperfections of the concords to be markedly apparent. They could not be ignored, as when occurring with the evanescent tone of a piano-forte. The super-harmonics, or summation-tones, disagreeing with each other, developed, in common with difference-tones, a mass of attendant dissonances, which even the employment of a double foundation (sixteen-feet manual stops) and powerful pedal-organ, etc., could barely hide. ”

“ Even the music of the modern occupants of the East is so strange and foreign to our wants and inclinations, that many persons speak of it with disrespect; and travelers and generally well-informed artists, judging of its merits by the casual performances of poor peripatetic musicians, are frequently led to the belief that it is unworthy special regard. ”

“ But by far the most extraordinary fact, with reference to the final adjustment of the piano-forte, is the general acceptation of its particular "temperament" for all instruments having twelve notes to each octave. Whatever other temperament may be chosen for such instruments, only one simple, natural diatonic scale can be properly rendered. With this arrangement, called the "equal temperament," not a single chord is correctly tuned. ”

“ He will not be content with a mere accompaniment to some leading part. The harmonizing of these several melodies, that they may at every instant make recognized and well-proportioned combinations called chords, constitutes the modern science of harmony. This science is based upon the comparatively recent discoveries that Nature herself supplies a full chord, or cortége of harmonic sounds, to attend every single note, and others also to attend a union of two notes, and so on. ”

“ The modern pagan nations, even those competent to produce perfect concords, refuse to adopt them; and therefore our modern harmony still remains either unknown or unappreciated outside Christendom. It may be that we are generally regarded in the East as Western barbarians. The Chinese, for instance, smile at the piano-forte as an ingeniously contrived arrangement for enabling the performer to produce many different sounds at once as required by Western harmony ”

“ For, although it is said, "Human nature is the same in all ages," the tonal art, which appeals to every individual's own inner nature so very directly and intimately, reveals strongly marked differences among men. ”

“ In a satiric papyrus, now at Turin, Rameses III, as a lion, is playing chess with a favorite, figuring as a gazelle; and in another papyrus in the same collection these characters reappear playing respectively a lyre and harp, a crocodile is performing on a nofre and a slave on the double pipes. Music occupied a much more important place in the religion and daily life of Eastern peoples than it does among ourselves, where it is often regarded as an ordinary amusement or diversion, and unworthy any higher function. ”

“ The pipes of a Chinese organ are rendered dumb by a hole bored near the foot of each one, and which the player stops with his finger when the pipe is required to sound its note. Acousticians fail to comprehend this; and, although enormously large church organs are built by ourselves, we do not really know the motion of the vibrating column of air in any one pipe, the wind with which it is supplied not entering it. ”

“ By the equal distribution of the many kinds of apotomes, found on calculating intervals from the scale given by Nature's super-harmonics, they are subsequently practically disregarded—treated as non-existent—and thus elaborate modulatory harmonies are rendered comparatively easy to construct; and the human ear being less able to detect imperfections in dissonances than in consonances, composers have gradually employed, with increasing freedom, dissonances of the most unusual and startling kind. ”