Baroque

“ The reason why the authentic manner is baroque, even rococo, heavily encrusted with ornament, is a melancholy reason. (‘That was a gloomy reason,’ Mr. Arlen would say) . It is that there is a certain lack of body in sophistication. ”

“ We observe that everything that has farness, everything that contains a suggestion of unbounded and unbodied in it and might thereby bring space as Ent and divine into the felt Nature, 403is excluded and remains excluded from Classical myth; how should it surprise, then, if clouds and horizons, that are the very meaning and soul of Baroque landscapes, are totally wanting in the Classical backgroundless frescoes? ”

“ Daily--three times--music is called forth from the cathedral organ and harp, and one may hear music of every type, from the solemn, stately harmonies of the German choral, the crashing thunders of Bach's fugues and Passion music, to the light oratorios, and duets and solos of Pergolesi. ”

“ A poet tries his morning lay, to a continent's delight, and after years of joy and triumph it shall be revealed to him how the self-same music fell from long-silent lips in a land across the sea. The unaltered radiance of an inspiration streams yesterday on one, to-morrow on another, as moving sunshine visits the hundred panes of a cathedral window; and that elusive thing which we name the originality of any artist resembles little else but the kaleidoscopic newness of color thrown hourly along the aisles. ”

“ No one certainly ever enjoyed the pleasures of composition more intensely than I. If I left the woods, the solemn music of the waving branches, and the majestic temple of nature, I sought the vast halls of the Castle, and looked over wide, fertile England, spread beneath our regal mount, and listened the while to inspiring strains of music. At such times solemn harmonies or spirit-stirring airs gave wings to my lagging thoughts, permitting them, methought, to penetrate the last veil of nature and her God, and to display the highest beauty in visible expression to the understandings of men. ”

“ To take only one example—this, however, from Gothic art, which naturally yields the most remarkable— what exquisite poetry in the name of 'the rose window' or better still, 'the rose,' given to the rich circular aperture of stained glass, with its leaf-like compartments, in the transepts of a Gothic cathedral! Here indeed we may note an exception from that which usually finds place; for usually art borrows beauty from nature, and very faintly, if at all, reflects back beauty upon her. ”

“ I have heard wonderful music since I have been on the continent, and have received new ideas of the compass of the human voice, and its capacities for pathos and sweetness. But, after all the wonders of the opera, as it is learned to sing before kings and courts, the chanting of these priests transcended every conception in my mind of music. ”

“ Of palaces whose light glowed on our sail;
There we floated wrapped in wild perfume;
Then music burst upon us in a gale;
Grave, deep-toned trumpets and the lyre's long wail,
And farther, the faint sound of singing men. ”

“ Sculpture accentuates and enriches, painting adorns, works of literature are stored within it, poetry and the drama awake its echoes, while music thrills to its uttermost recesses, like the very spirit of life tingling through the body's fibres. ”

“ Music, as being one of the chief spells of this enchanted region, was an accomplishment required of all its ministrants; and the harp, the lyre, and the sacred flute, sounded nowhere so sweetly as that [pg 181] through these subterranean gardens. The chief object, indeed, in the education of the youth of the Temple, was to fit them, by every grace of art and nature, to give effect to the illusion of those shows and phantasms, in which the whole charm and secret of Initiation lay. ”

“ On raising the eyes beyond the façade to the pinnacles of the farthest spires, comprehending at a glance all that delicate harmony of line and color, one experiences a feeling of exquisite pleasure, as{106} when one listens to a strain of music which sweeps gradually upward from the expression of solemn prayer to an ecstasy of sublime inspiration. ”

“ The Architect admires its noble look, as it stands towering high in Cathedral, Church, or Concert Room, its case covered with carved work, and its pipes bright with gilding, be its style Gothic or Renaissance. Remember that an organ is built, other musical instruments are made. The Musician very likely cares not for its look, so long as the tone pleases him, and possibly knows little, and cares less, how the sound is produced. ”

“ The three arts, sculpture, music, and painting, [xiv] correspond, according to the author, to the three parts of human consciousness, the body—the soul—and the mind. Sculpture, the most material of the fine arts, best represents the beauty of form, and the properties of sense: Music explores and gives utterance to the deepest feelings of the human soul: but it is reserved for the most spiritual of the arts—Painting, to express all the mysteries of intelligence—all the divine symbolism in nature and in man. ”

“ I have heard things in music that no one has ever heard, notes that come up again and again as the harmony moves to the end of its story, sombre notes full of fate. I have seen people listening to music and their faces had no more expression than jugs; I have heard women talking of the opera, utterly unconscious of the story the music they were listening to was telling them. ”

“ The one sits in rapt delight through an evening of grand opera, reveling on the sunlit summits of harmony; the other can rise no higher in the scale of music than the raucous hand organ. The one finds keen delight among the masterpieces of art; the other finds his definition of art in the colored supplement. ”

“ What else is all this but old-fashioned Italian opera with a new name? What else but an inartistic mixture of Scribe libretto and Northern mythology? Music-drama—fudge! Making music that one can see is a death-blow to a lofty idealization of the art. ”

“ Oh, could she once hear the Miserere of Mozart, just to know what music was like! And the cathedrals, what were they? How wonderful they must be, with their forests of arches, many-colored as autumn-woods with painted glass, and the chants and anthems rolling down their long aisles! ”

“ As an institution of nature, music confines its effects to the senses, to the physical pleasure which results from melody, harmony, and rhythm. Such is usually the music of churches; such are the airs suited to dancing and songs. But as the essential part of a lyrical scene, aiming principally at imitation, music becomes one of the fine arts, and is capable of painting all pictures ”

“ It would be a mournful place if it were not that the Renaissance, flowering so graciously within these silent halls, has left a world of fantasy to people them, satyrs and fauns, and little laughing loves who make music with pipe and tabor, and dance along the chimneys of the Sala degli Angeli above the roses and carnations, tipped with gold, which bloom upon its panels. ”

“ The form of drama with music which we loosely call “opera” is such a curious mixture of many elements—some of them closely related, others nearly irreconcilable—that it is almost impossible to arrive at any definite idea of its artistic value. A great picture or piece of sculpture, a great book or a great symphony represents a perfectly clear evolution of a well-defined art. ”

“ And how much have we lost, toward a true appreciation of their dramatic art, by losing almost utterly not only the laws of their melody and harmony, but even the true metric time of their odes!—music and metre, which must have surely been as noble as their poetry, their sculpture, their architecture, possessed by the same exquisite sense of form and of proportion. ”

“ It is to the Catholic Church that modern art must look for the origin of its present development. To the monks of mediæval times must be ascribed the glory of the greatest achievements in Gothic architecture, the art of fresco-painting, and the foundations of modern music. ”

“ The theatre, where many arts are combined to produce a magical effect; where the most lofty and profound poetry has for its interpreter the most finished action, which is at once eloquence and an animated picture; while architecture contributes her splendid decorations, and painting her perspective illusions, and the aid of music is called in to attune the mind, or to heighten by its strains the emotions which already agitate it ”

“ This earliest inwardness of matter and inspiration of soul into it furnishes the medium for the mental inwardness—itself as yet indefinite,—and for the soul [180] into which mind concentrates itself; and finds utterance in its tones for the heart with its whole gamut of feelings and passions. Thus music forms the centre of the romantic arts, just as sculpture represents the central point between architecture and the arts of romantic subjectivity. ”

“ The century witnessed other great achievements—music in Germany, poetry in England, the novel in France, Russia and England—but these are like royal palaces, beautiful and complete, more likely now to decay than to grow. ”

“ Some day the world will awaken to the fact that there are other great arts besides architecture, painting, and sculpture; already there is a suspicion abroad that music, poetry, and the drama{266} are arts also and not merely vehicles for the expression of temperament, and there is even a preliminary waking of the subconsciousness which threatens to confess that ritual and ceremonial have been, and may be again, a great fine art in the same sense. ”

“ Our musical literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the glees, madrigals, rounds, and catches, requiring considerable skill, and familiarly performed formerly in the country houses and home circles of our gentry, and the noble church music of our cathedral choirs, bear witness to a high musical inspiration, and thorough musical training in their composers and executants. ”

“ But the real music for us comes through the eye. The rippling of waves, the tremulous vibration of leaf and blossom and twig, all these sights make for us a harmony perhaps as perfect as the most finished orchestra. ”

“ That awe-inspiring marvel of nature seemed to be defied and insulted by the joyous airs which the orchestra was playing, softly now, and by the fast-dying illuminations which crowned the main façade of the palace. Now and again the music and the candles seemed to make an effort to revive. Evidently some indefatigable dancers compelled the musicians to shake off their torpor. ”

“ All through the eighteenth century, when the Georges reigned, architecture slept its well-nigh dreamless sleep. But the new art of music grew with each succeeding year, while the men whose names will never die lived and wrote. ”

“ Coming to Art's two highest spheres,--music of sound and music of speech,--we find that Beethoven and Mozart, and Milton and Shakespeare, have written. But the symphony is sacred only because, and only so far as, it renders the joy or the sorrow which we have felt. ”

“ For all this, she still thrilled to the color, the music, the drama, which is Grand Opera.
“Some day,” she had a way of whispering to herself, “some happy day!” Yet that day seemed indistinct and far away. ”

“ The characteristics of the barocco are the reckless abuse of curves and extravagantly broken lines, of contorted columns, twisted tympanums and highly exaggerated ornaments; yet we must confess that many monuments of this period of art exhibit such exuberant life, such contrasts of relief and shadow, and such a wonderful combination of variety and solidity as cannot fail to please the many, even now, by the magnificence of their general effect. ”

“ The choir, which is Gothic, is decorated with turrets, spires, niche-work, figures, and foliage, forming one immense and delicately minute piece of workmanship that actually confounds the mind, and cannot now-a-days be understood. You are actually struck dumb in the presence of such stupendous efforts of art, and you interrogate yourself with anxiety, as to whether vitality is withdrawing itself more and more, every century, from the world. ”

“ Suppose it splendid; suppose it sublime,—a triumphal arch, an obelisk, a circus with a pedestal in the centre, a cathedral. No people is more illustrious, more noble, more magnificent, and more magnanimous than the English people. Couple these two ideas, England and Shakespeare, and make an edifice arise therefrom. Such a nation celebrating such a man, it will be superb. ”

“ It would lead us too far, if in the separate arts of architecture, music, and painting (for the moderns have never had a sculpture of their own) , we should endeavour to point out the distinctions which we have here announced, to show the contrast observable in the character of the same arts among the ancients and moderns, and at the same time to demonstrate the kindred aim of both. ”

“ The theatre felt the effect of the movement no less than architecture and sculpture. The love of show, of rich display, which obsessed the princely despots of the period, coupled with their ardor for the beauties of antiquity, found its expression in the classic tragedies, the comedies and pastoral plays which now taxed the talents of poets, of painters and of musicians. Far from being exclusive, these spectacles became the popular amusements in such centres as Rome, Urbino, Mantua, Venice and Ferrara. ”