French music

“ Let us suppose that considered under its most general aspect, the music—the good music—of this recent and contemporary period does not altogether satisfy us. Let us suppose that with its admirable qualities of nobility, style, sincerity, delicacy, expressive sublety, learned ingenuity, sound work, it yet does not appear up to now to realise the idea or the dream that we cherish of the true song of our race. ”

“ Lastly we shall note the touch of two great forces upon music, two forces mysteriously intertwined, the French Revolution and the Romantic Movement. Music will break from the control of rich nobles and make itself dear to the hearts of the common people who inherit the earth. It will learn to speak of intimate mysteries and intensely personal emotion. Composers will rebel from dependence upon a patronizing class and seek judgment and reward from a free public. ”

“ In reading the lives of these great musical composers, we can trace the gradual development of music from its earliest days as an art and as a science. Unlike the other arts which have flourished, decayed, and had rebirth, music, as we now understand it, sprang into being out of the ferment of the Renaissance, and therefore is the youngest of the arts—a modern growth belonging particularly to the later phases of civilisation. ”

“ Music without emotion is, to be sure, like "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal" and dies in short order. On the other hand, music which is a mere display of crude emotion soon palls. The works of modern French composers deserve enthusiastic study for their charm, their finish and their refined emotional power. ”

“ The half century which has seen the birth of the generation which is at present our pride, in succession to that whose most illustrious representatives I have named, cannot fail to have been French in music. ”

“ One would have thought that the vast liberation of nervous energy effected by the Revolution and the Napoleonic period would have been too great to be confined to literature and the plastic arts—that a really French school of music would have arisen, interwoven with the past and the present of French history and social life, and as typical of contemporary French culture in its own way as the poetry, drama, and painting of the time were in theirs. ”

“ They are musically inspired by sentiments and ideas which our composers would, I think, consider incapable of translation into music. We Frenchmen are disposed to believe that music can only express the soul's expansive states—love, enthusiasm, avowed hate, grief, hope, meditation. We believe that song can only well forth from a soul entirely given up to what it feels, and pouring itself forth in song. ”

“ In music, sentiment is neglected, for the luxury of harmony, and for difficult movement which surprises in its execution. In taste properly so called, poignant sauces with complicated mixtures of different favours, prevail among people of condition. The French, accustomed to the artificial red on their women’s cheeks, think the modest colouring of nature displayed on a fine face altogether insipid.
The same tendency appears in the progress of the arts among the ancients. ”

“ The music of the people has a cast of vulgarity about it, like our own, that of itself denotes a want of feeling for the art. Even the French, by no means a people of poetical tastes, are greatly their superiors in music. ”

“ The organ compositions of the modern French school are characterized by grace, refinement and originality, coupled with a certain dignity and elegance. They combine free harmonic treatment and modern polyphony, together with certain ornate characteristics, growing out of the elaborate ceremonial music of the Latin Church, and bringing into play all the resources of tone color and expressive treatment of the modern instrument. ”

“ The French have therefore no national music, except a few meagre chansons, and their only idea of musical excellence is either rapidity or loudness of execution. You perceive the effect of this want of enthusiasm even in the streets,—they have neither barrel-organs nor blind fiddlers as with us, who are willing to pay for the encouragement of the arts, however indifferently we may practise them; nor does the national spirit break out from every strolling party or village group, as it is said to do in Italy. ”

“ The instinct for expression in music works so far in all [Pg 55] races alike. But whereas those races whose music we are discussing were content with the harsh or dry sounds of the primitive instruments we have mentioned, the races of Europe have been impelled by the desire for ever richer and more flexible tone to develop and improve these instruments. Of the clumsy, hoarse viol they have made the perfect violin; of the hunting horn the mellow French horn of the orchestra; of the tremulous clavichord and spinet the powerful pianoforte. Music has become an art of sound. ”

“ The quality or timbre of musical sounds, both vocal and instrumental, is then referred to, and the methods of investigating the vibrations are given, as well as the laws of harmonics and chords. Finally, Italian and German music are compared. The influence of Paris on music, though the French have never been creators, is defined as insisting on the creation of a type of music which should contain the good points of the German and Italian schools without their exaggeration. ”

“ The worst consequence was that a destructive doubt of the aptitude of Frenchmen for music entered the mind of the French themselves, and largely tended to drive them into excesses of imitation, to lead astray the musicians of our country and weaken in our music the sap and flavour of its native growth. ”

“ That music, by and of itself, cannot express the intellectual element in the beautiful dream-images of art with precision, is a palpable truth. Yet, by its imperial dominion over the sphere of emotion and sentiment, the connection of the latter with complicated mental phenomena is made to bring into the domain of tone vague and shifting fancies and pictures. ”

“ The French Chanson has never yielded place to the methods which distinguish the modern art-song. The French language has certain qualities which seem to call for a treatment that centres the attention in the voice part rather than on the song as a whole, according to the German idea. Yet French composers have produced and still make most beautiful and charming songs which unmistakably embody the national characteristics, clearness, polish and an effective singing melody. The old English Ballads are pieces of narrative verse ”

“ But it is abundantly clear that it is precisely those who have at their command a stock of the most extended, varied and richly shaded impressions, who have needed to wield the richest musical language and the resources of the most powerful and subtle technique. ”

“ The musical world of Paris was the most critical and contentious of any capital in Europe,{58} and the advent of a foreign operatic troupe or a new composer was invariably the sign for the amateurs of music to range themselves into hostile camps and to discuss the merits and demerits of the innovation with as much warmth as, in the present day, rival schools of politicians might debate a question of international importance. ”

“ It is evident, we trust, from the foregoing somewhat condensed estimates that the modern French school is very much alive, that it has to its credit numerous distinct achievements and that it contains the promise of still further growth. The French nature, which is highly emotional and yet, at its best, always controlled [304] by a regard for fitness and clarity of thought, is particularly suited to express itself worthily in music, for in no other form of artistic endeavor is this balance more requisite. ”

“ Thus there will be provided a sufficiently consecutive view of our national music from the time of Louis XIV. to our own day. But my aim, let me repeat, is to act as critic rather than historian, and to guide, as far as in me lies, public taste in a certain direction. ”

“ Now, when music is “mastered and murdered” in almost every house throughout the length and breadth of the land, there can be no doubt that compilations of this kind must be welcome to a very large number—we will not say of musical students, but of lovers of music. ”

“ The study of masterpieces and analysis of his own inspirations confirmed him in this idea. The invention of music is above all else an invention of harmony. To imagine a musical utterance is to imagine a sequence, a linked chain of chords embracing a certain expressive sense. The other portions of musical invention, that is to say melody and the interplay of concerted parts, are virtually included in these ”

“ How much further music can be made to assimilate to the other arts in directness of mental suggestion, by wedding to it the noblest forms of poetry, and making each the complement of the other, is the knotty problem which underlies the great art-controversy about which this article concerns itself. On the one side we have the claim that music is the all-sufficient law unto itself; that its appeal to sympathy is through the intrinsic [Pg 134] sweetness of harmony and tune, and the intellect must be satisfied with what it may accidentally glean in this harvest-field ”

“ One knows that for several years the young French school has been making efforts to deliver our music from German models, to create a language of recitative that shall belong to France and that the leitmotif will not overwhelm; a more exact and less heavy language, which in expressing the freedom of modern thought will not have to seek the help of the classical or Wagnerian forms. ”

“ Encore and mise-en-scène are only two of a dozen or a score of French words not infrequently used in English and misused by being charged with meanings not strictly in accord with French usage. 'Levee' is one; the French say lever. Nom de plume is another; the French say nom de guerre. Musicale also is rarely, if ever, to be found in French, at least I believe it to be the custom in Paris to call an 'evening with music' a soirée musicale. If musicale is too serviceable to demand banishment, why should it not drop the e and become musical? ”

“ But if the average music-lover will become familiar with the French and English Suites, with the48 Preludes and Fugues of the Well-tempered Clavichord, with some of the Violin Sonatas, he will find for his imagination and mental machinery a food which, once enjoyed, becomes indispensable. For his music has that greatest of qualities in art as in human relationships—it wears well and lasts. ”

“ It is by far the most elaborate piece of ancient part music which has come down to us from times so remote. It indicates conclusively that early in the thirteenth century, when the composers of the old French school were struggling with the beginnings of canonic imitation, confining their work to ecclesiastical tonality, English musicians had arrived at a better art and a true feeling for the major scale and key. ”

“ And weave for God the garment thou seest him by”—
so the highest art is that which best embodies the immortal thought of the universe as reflected in the mirror of man’s consciousness; that music, as speaking the most spiritual language of any of the art-family, is burdened with the most pressing responsibility as the interpreter between the finite and the infinite ”

“ Not less intelligent and earnest is the Schola Cantorum of Paris, which is exerting a strong influence upon church music in the French capital and thence throughout the world by means of musical performances, editions of musical works, lectures, and publications of books and essays. ”

“ As late as 1835 a French writer of the history of music expressed profound regret that he had been unable to determine when music was invented, or to discover the inventor's name. It was his opinion that musical man had profited largely from the voices of the feathered tribes. ”

“ And so it is in poetry also: all this love of curious French metres like the Ballade, the Villanelle, the Rondel; all this increased value laid on elaborate alliterations, and on curious words and refrains, such as you will find in Dante Rossetti and Swinburne, is merely the attempt to perfect flute and viol and trumpet through which the spirit of the age and the lips of the poet may blow the music of their many messages.
And so it has been with this romantic movement of ours: ”

“ I observe that there is a good deal of German music on the programme, which is rather more to my taste than Italian or French. It is introspective, and I want to introspect. ”

“ Thus from the definite number of twenty-four notes, varied in different degrees, by sharps, flats, semi-tones, &c., are produced all that is so magical, enthusiastic, and transporting in the empire of omnipotent music. Like as the alphabetic characters may be varied into myriads of forms suitable to every multifarious species of conversation or composition; in a word, a few musical notes in the hands of a master may be made by his skill to produce, from agreeable interchanges of time, harmony, &c., every variety of musical sentiment which can affect the human soul. ”

“ But there is, I claim, a deeper interest and a higher pleasure to be derived from seeking, beneath the smoothly flowing harmonies and graceful, rippling embellishment, for the allegorical significance or suggestion mirrored in their clear depths, as scenes and faces are reflected in the tranquil stream, and which are rarely, if ever, wanting in the true art work.
The “theme and variations” in music, which owes its origin to the first crude attempts of early composers to elongate and develop a musical idea into a symmetrical art form, corresponds to a very early phase of another art. ”