W. H. Hadow

“ If we look on music merely as a stimulus to our emotional nature, we are really disregarding all that makes it of permanent value as an art. We are lowering it to the level of sentimental romance or bloodthirsty melodrama. Grant that this form of indulgence is less gross than the direct gratification of the senses, it is not a whit more critical. While we are under its spell, we are as incapable of sane judgment as Rinaldo in Armida's garden; we have abrogated our manhood, we have drugged our reason, we are lying passive and inert at the mercy of an external will. ”

“ It is almost superfluous that one should commend the more technical beauties: the rounded symmetry of balance and design, the pellucid clearness of style, the sweetness and charm of melody, the marvellous cadences where chord melts into chord as colour melts into colour at the sunset. If it be the function of the artist that he be 'faithful to loveliness,' then here at least is a loyalty that has kept its faith unsullied. ”

“ This perfection of form was Chopin's ostensible ideal. No composer in the whole history of Music has laboured with a more earnest anxiety at accuracy of outline and artistic symmetry of detail. We have here 'no clattering of dishes at a royal banquet,' no casual indolence of accompaniment; no gap filled with unmeaning brilliance or idle commonplace: every effect is studied with deliberate purpose, and wrought to the highest degree of finish that it can bear. ”

“ His passion is so keen and vital, his melody so winning, his love of beauty so single-hearted, that to demand the sterner qualities is almost an act of ingratitude. He knows the full secret of that mysterious power—so easy to feel, so impossible to define—through which music fulfils its function of suggesting and typifying emotion. He can appeal to our sensuous nature with a mastery which is almost irresistible, and he never degrades the appeal into vulgarity or sensationalism. ”

“ In the first place, the distinction itself is of far less importance in music than in poetry; for music, as such, has no truth of life or nature to interpret. When we speak of a symphony as epic, we are merely using a convenient formula by which we may call attention to its breadth and scale; we do not imply that it has any story to tell, or any record of events to communicate. When we call an overture 'Tragic,' we mean that it can evoke certain undefined impressions of gloom and grandeur; we do not imply that it contains any outline of a plot or any suggestion of dramatis personæ. ”

“ There can be no doubt that Chopin's death-warrant had been signed, but it is equally sure that his sentence was one which could allow a long respite, and encourage the continued hope of deferment. Every man stands liable to an unread mandate of execution. Every man goes through the world, like Hernani, waiting for the summons of the fatal horn. Life, in all true reckoning, is counted not by years but by actions; and it is better to lavish the few decades of Schubert or Mozart than to hoard a long, inglorious cycle that has outworn its hopes and outlived its memories. ”

“ He always thought of himself as a national poet: 'I should like,' he told Hiller, 'to be to my people what Uhland is to the Germans.' No doubt the external qualities of his music are entirely his own: the richness of harmony, the complexity of figure, the delicate elaboration [152] of ornament; but the texture which these colour and adorn is essentially of native growth and native substance. In a word, he made precisely the right use of national materials, taking them as a basis, and developing them into fuller beauty by the force and brilliance of his own personal genius. ”

“ Considered merely as examples of fugue structure, Bach's compositions are not greater than those of a hundred kapellmeisters of his time: they owe their greatness to the purity of their themes, and to the unapproachable perfection of their harmony. But lay aside all questions of melody and harmony, everything, in short, which can be [46] classed under the head of style, and Beethoven's sonatas will still remain supreme in virtue of their structure. Fugue form is an artificial thing which a man can learn: sonata form is a living thing which a man must feel. ”

“ To recognise a melody as perfect is to feel, when we come to know it, that it could not possibly have been written in any other way: that its phraseology, whether simple or complex, whether obvious or recondite, is the necessary outgrowth of the thought which it embodies. Of course this law does not preclude the element of surprise, which is one legitimate factor of musical effect. The hearer, like the composer, may sometimes be 'stung with the splendour of a sudden thought' and roused into a moment of exquisite consciousness by an unexpected cadence or a new modulation. ”

“ Music, on the other hand, is simply the gradual mastery of a particular medium by the pure action of the human mind. Its actual method contains no concrete element at all, and in it, therefore, every generation must take its point of departure, not from the same universe which appealed to previous artists, but from the actual achievement which previous artists have handed down. The Greeks were as keenly alive to the beauty of music as to that of poetry: to us their poetry is a delight and their music a bewilderment. ”

“ The very complaints take a brighter tone when we realise their absolute trust, and their certain expectation of sympathy. It is as though Chopin shrank from the thought of his passion as a child shrinks from the darkness, and turned to take refuge in the strong arms that he knew were waiting to protect him. He was never self-reliant, never strong enough to face the world alone. ”

“ A recondite chord is of absolutely no value in itself; its whole worth depends on its purpose and its context. A fresh twist in the shape of a melody is only beautiful if the preceding curve leads up to it. For instance, we appear to be passing, at the present day, through a period of feverish activity in the invention of new cadences. Now a new cadence in the hands of a master like Brahms or Parry is a delight, for, with all its novelty, we feel that it is the logical outcome of the passage from which it springs. ”

“ Every normal and healthy instinct may have its artistic expression, no matter how slight or transitory its nature; it is the parodies, the simulations, the abnormal counterparts that afford no material to poet or musician. Schumann's nursery tunes are as delightful as the 'Child's Garden of Verses'; Mr Austin Dobson has not more skill in porcelain than Rameau or Scarlatti or Couperin. If we want romance, there is Chopin; if dance music, there is Strauss; if simple sentiment, there are the best of Mendelssohn's Lieder. ”

“ So in Music, the one function of this intuitive principle is the immediate apprehension of vitality in the best work. To one it may be the first hearing of a Beethoven symphony, to another it may be the Messiah, to another some complete and perfect Volkslied; but whatever the object, we cease to reason or criticise, and simply acknowledge it as divine, in virtue of a divine principle in ourselves. The work is a momentary scintillation from the great glowing fire of genius, and we can love it, because [12] the best faculty that we possess is a spark kindled by the same light. ”

“ They were men of undoubted gifts—rapid, facile and copious of production, well-read in the musical learning of their time, fluent of phrase, prompt of resource, skilful and dexterous in the treatment of their material; and yet, at the distance of a century, there is only one of the whole band who is anything more than a name to us. Even Dussek has but a fading reputation: his work is lost under the shadow of its own laurels: and for the rest, it is not once in a decade that some student takes down their dusty volumes from the shelf and marvels at the misapplied talent and the wasted ability. ”

“ His melody, taken by itself, is often as simple and ingenuous as a folk-song, but in polyphony, in thematic development, in all details of contrast and elaboration, his ideal is to organise the rudimentary life, and to advance it into a fuller and more adult maturity. Of course, it cannot be said that he is uniformly successful. He has little sense of economy, little of that fine reticence and control which underlies the most lavish moments of Brahms or Beethoven; his use of wealth is so prodigal that his generosity is sometimes left with inadequate resources. ”

“ Now it is sometimes maintained that the music of Brahms is deficient in emotional sensibility: that it is too sober, too self-controlled, too intellectual to be really artistic. The composer, like the poet, should be animated by a 'divine madness and enthusiasm;' he should leave to philosophy the more cautious attributes of deliberate thought; he has the free wind of heaven in his sails, and should run before it on a full tide, neither anxious for his safety nor careful of his direction. ”

“ Brahms, in like manner, may claim the counterpoint of Bach and the structure of Beethoven. And not only has he entered into the inheritance of these two composers; he has put their legacies to interest, and has enriched the world with an augmentation of their wealth. He is no mere Alexandrine, no grammarian poet, content to accumulate with a patient and laborious industry the gifts that have been lavished by a previous age; the artistic heritage is not won by right of labour, and its dynasty only falls to these who are born in the purple. Erudition, in short, may copy the work of Genius ”

“ It will thus be seen that the manner in which we are impressed by Music is enormously complex. First, there is the sensuous appeal, the different characteristics of timbre and tone, of rich harmony and full orchestration, of all those devices which are usually described in metaphors of taste and colour. Second, and inclusive of the first, is the emotional appeal, the exhilaration of rapid movement, the gravity of stately chords and broad diatonic melody, the restlessness of broken rhythm and frequent modulation, the shades of surprise which follow upon a sudden change or an unexpected crisis. ”

“ In the larger fields of epic and drama, the poet turns more directly to ourselves: he bids us approach, he confers with us, he interprets for our hearing some great truth of humanity, or some wise and searching judgment of life. But the lyric poet stands apart, careless of our presence, oblivious of our attention, pouring out his heart in a transport of purely personal joy or sorrow, singing because he must, and not because there are any to listen. ”

“ For, in the first place, every work of art is the outcome of its creator's personality, and depends, therefore, on the particular attributes of his character and temperament. Poetry, like the poet, is born, not made: painting, even if it borrow its model from nature, must find its power of vision in the soul of the artist: and music, in like manner, is worth nothing unless it arises from a true and spontaneous emotion. ”

“ He was standing at the verge of manhood: always nervous and impressionable, he was come to the time when strength is weakest and courage the most insecure: he had just passed through the bewilderment of his first great enterprise, and had emerged to breathe an atmosphere electric with change and heavy with disquietude. It is little wonder that he lost his true self, and strayed from his appointed course. He would have been more than human if he had not felt some stress of uncertainty, or followed his restless impulses in the absence of a surer guide. ”

“ For a time of political crisis not only brings out all that is best in a man, it also draws him nearer to his people, and makes him at once more desirous and more capable of serving as its true representative. And so it has been with Dvořák. If we compare his melody with that of Smetana, and with that of the Bohemian folk-songs, we shall find a notable resemblance of thought and feeling, they are all of one family, of one kindred, connected by a sympathy that the widest distinctions of treatment cannot annul. ”

“ If it present any passage of real interest, we owe it a corresponding debt of gratitude: if it counterbalance a fault of one kind by a beauty of another, then criticism should determine which of the two has the more important bearing on the case. But there can be no sound judgment without a code, and no code in music without a recognition and acknowledgment of its masterpieces. Thus the analysis of perfect art does not preclude us from the consideration of art that is imperfect, for it is only through the former that the latter is possible. ”