Western classical music

“ These people were in social scale so low that they had practically no music of their own. They have therefore readily taken to western music. And it is astonishing to hear how well they sing our western tunes, and even render solos and quartettes at public European functions in a way that calls forth hearty encores. ”

“ Melodies of Europe awaken within us feelings we can utter, sensations familiar as mother-speech, inherited from all the generations behind us. But how explain the emotion evoked by a primitive chant totally unlike anything in Western melody,—impossible even to write in those tones which are the ideographs of our music-tongue? ”

“ Here, in chamber-music, Western art as a whole reaches its highest point. Here our prime symbol of endless space is expressed as completely as the Spearman of Polycletus expresses that of intense bodiliness. When one of those ineffably yearning violin-melodies wanders through the spaces expanded around it by the orchestration of Tartini or Nardini, Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven, we know ourselves in the presence of an art beside which that of the Acropolis is alone worthy to be set. ”

“ Here the contrast of Western music with Greek plastic has reached its maximum. Everything merges in bodiless infinity, no longer even does a linear melody wrestle itself clear of the vague tone-masses that in strange surgings challenge an imaginary space. The motive comes up out of dark terrible deeps. It is flooded for an instant by a flash of hard bright sun. ”

“ The work of such reformers as William Billings in the eighteenth century and Lowell Mason in the nineteenth, the first concerts of the Handel and Haydn Society, the influx of the German culture shifting all American music upon new foundations, are all landmarks which show how rapid and thorough has been our advance in musical scholarship and taste, but which also remind us how little of our achievement has been really indigenous. ”

“ The revolution in musical taste and practice which occurred early in the seventeenth century—a revolution so complete that it metamorphosed the whole conception of the nature and purpose of music—swept all musical production off into new directions, and the complex austere art of the mediaeval Church was forgotten under the fascination of the new Italian melody and the vivid rhythm and tone-color of the orchestra. Since then the tide of invention has never paused long enough to enable the world at large to turn its thought to the forsaken treasures of the past. ”

“ It may be that I have failed to express my idea, but it is certain, nevertheless, that every time I listen to Western music I think within myself—"it is romantic, it is exquisitely romantic indeed." It practically translates the various experiences of human life into musical notes. It cannot be denied that there are attempts in our music towards the achievement of the same thing, but they have not yet ripened into robust fruition. ”

“ By virtue of the new powers revealed to them, composers would now strive to enter all the secret precincts of the soul and give a voice to every emotion, simple or complex, called forth by solitary meditation or by situations of dramatic stress and conflict. Music, like painting and poetry, should now occupy the whole world of human experience. The stupendous achievements of the tonal art of the past two centuries are the outcome of this revolutionary impulse. ”

“ In music it does not seem necessary to surmise that the classical gamut must be the last word of melodic thought. The barrier between East and West in regard to musical expression—a barrier as yet so firm as to make us feel that “never the twain can meet”—is precisely of this nature. ”

“ IV The corresponding stage of Western art occupies the three centuries 1500-1800, between the end of late Gothic and the decay of Rococo which marks the end of the great Faustian style. In this period, conformably to the persistent growth into consciousness of the will to spatial transcendence, it is instrumental music that develops into the ruling art. At the beginning, in the 17th Century, music uses the characteristic tone-colours of the instruments, and the contrasts of strings and wind, human voices and instrumental voices, as means wherewith to paint. ”

“ The development of Russian music consists of a continuous struggle between the ideas of the composers of Western Europe and the peculiar genius of national music. Almost every Russian composer shows traces of such a struggle. And it is when the national spirit dominates over the foreign, that the musical art of the country rises to its sublimest heights. ”

“ Indeed, classical music is a universal language. Whether the musicians speak English, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, or Hebrew, all recognize the same notes. Whatever cultural tradition is evoked by its cords and rhythms, classical music stirs emotions we all share. Among the many music lovers gathered to enjoy a performance, each individual listener feels the powerful dynamism of music's resonant voice. ”

“ The writer who would trace the history of the modern musical mass has a task very different from that which meets the historian of the mediaeval period. In the latter case, as has already been shown, generalization is comparatively easy, for we deal with music in which differences of nationality and individual style hardly appear. ”

“ Even during that era of slaughter and misery when the French kingship was striding to supremacy over the bodies of the great vassals, and struggling with England for very existence in the One Hundred Years’ War, the art of music steadily advanced, and the royal and ducal chapels flourished. Amid such conditions and under such patronage accomplished musicians were nurtured in France and the Low Countries, and thence they went forth to teach all Europe the noble art of counterpoint. ”

“ The enthusiasm for the antique, which gave a definite direction to the revival of learning and the new ambitions in painting and sculpture, could have little practical value in musical invention, since the ancient music, which would otherwise have been chosen as a guide, had been completely lost. The craving for a style of solo singing suited to dramatic purposes tried to find satisfaction by means that were childishly insufficient. ”

“ And, apart from all this half-unconsciously wrought music, we have been shown the value of the bypaths in art, of the work of the great men of the younger races like the Scandinavians and the Czechs and most of all the Russians, who do not speak the older classical tongues but have, all the same, abundance to say that is well worth the whole world's hearing. It is to our immense gain that we have now come, far more than ever before, to realize that in the house of music there are many mansions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When we consider, in the light of our present experience, how large a range of emotion that naturally utters itself in tone was left unrepresented through this lack of a proper secular art of music, we can understand the urgency of the demand which, at the close of the sixteenth century, broke down the barriers that hemmed in the currents of musical production and swept music out into the vast area of universal human interests. ”

“ The musical revolution of the seventeenth century involved [180] the development of an art of solo singing and its supremacy over the chorus, the substitution of the modern major and minor transposing scales for the Gregorian modal system, a homophonic method of harmony for the mediaeval polyphony, accompanied music for the a capella, secular and dramatic for religious music, the rise of instrumental music as an independent art, the transfer of patronage from the Church to the aristocracy and ultimately to the common people. ”

“ When Classical man turns to artistic expressions of his form-feeling, he tries with marble and bronze to give the dancing or the wrestling human form that pose and attitude in which surfaces and contours have all attainable proportion and meaning. But the true artist of the West shuts his eyes and loses himself in the realm of bodiless music, in which harmony and polyphony bring him to images of utter “beyondness” that transcend all possibilities of visual definition. ”

“ Although encompassing non-Western and folk music, New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (which is the principal component of Grove Music Online) emphasizes the European art tradition in Western music, with more than half of the approximately 29,000 entries devoted to composers and the rest to performers of international achievement, writers about music, other persons of importance in musical history, terminology, genres and forms, instruments, places with a significant musical tradition, institutions and organizations, concepts, and countries. ”

“ Although it includes both non-Western and popular music, Harvard Dictionary emphasizes Western art music in entries on terms, concepts, instruments, genres, national and ethnic traditions, styles, major works, and movements. It excludes separate entries on composers and musicians. Many of the longer articles are signed and conclude with a selective bibliography. ”

“ Models must be found, but in the nature of the case the art can never go outside of itself for its suggestion. And although Christian music must be a development and not [40] the sudden product of an exceptional inspiration, yet we must not suppose that the early Church was compelled to work out its melodies from those crude elements in which anthropology discovers the first stage of musical progress in primitive man. ”

“ This advance of the conception of racialism has widened and intensified music in not a few ways. It has brought to our knowledge many splendid melodies, infinitely varied in design and emotional range, and, at their best, inspirations that the greatest composers would have been proud to sign. And, mixed as are the feelings with which we must contemplate the general course of our own musical history, we can anyhow boast of some of the finest folk-tunes in existence in these relics of the old world on its last western fringes, in Ireland and the Hebrides. ”

“ For now the orchestra and the Kapellmeister have come into being and the further development of music is instrumental. With the invention of printing and the influence of the Italian Renaissance with its humanistic and pseudo-classical ideals the dissolution is completed. Poems are no longer sung but only read, while instrumental music follows its own paths alone.
In the Middle Ages instrumental music can scarcely be said to have existed as an art. ”

“ The new music will not come from England, certainly not from America, not from France, nor from Germany, but from the land of the steppes—a gradual return to that orientalism in style which may be one of the gifts of culture, which an invasion from the Far East may impose on us some time in the next century. ”

“ It will be observed that certain questions pre-suppose a somewhat advanced state of civilization—as, for instance, those referring to musical notation, instruction, literature, etc. There are several extra-European nations—as the Japanese, Chinese, Hindus, etc.—which have advanced so far in the cultivation of music as to render these questions necessary; and it would be very desirable to possess more detailed information concerning the method pursued by these [Pg 25] nations in the cultivation of the art than is at present available. ”

“ When discussing this matter with an acquaintance once he said to ms, There ought to be something in all good music which any cultured ear and mind can artistically appreciate.' He was of course referring to the best examples of either western or eastern music and to cultured minds on both sides of the world. The question naturally arises here as to whether it is possible for any one to appreciate the music of the other side without some special education of the musical faculty. ”

“ The ear, the voice, the fancy teeming with combinations, the imagination fervent with picture and emotion, that came from Caucasus, and which we have preserved unpolluted, have endowed us with almost the exclusive privilege of Music; that science of harmonious sounds, which the ancients recognised as most divine, and deified in the person of their most beautiful creation. I speak not of the past; though, were I to enter into the history of the lords of melody, you would find it the annals of Hebrew genius. But at this moment even, musical Europe is ours. ”

“ The monks, who had hitherto jealously guarded the secret of the manipulation of the keys, began to teach others, and thus came into existence that body of organists and composers who for many centuries upheld the standard of English music, and who, until the days of the Reformation, kept England in the forefront of musical art. ”

“ This featurelessness is the typical defect of American compositions of the present generation, perhaps—typical in spite of some notable exceptions. The technical deficiencies of our pioneer forefathers are more and more becoming things of the past; free intercourse with Europe and the wholesale importation of skilled European musicians have refined away the crudities with surprising rapidity; there are among us to-day musical workmen whose skill in symphony, chamber music, and opera will compare favorably with that of Europeans. ”

“ Every nation finds out for itself a national melody; and we may say of it, as of religion, no place has been discovered without music. A people, likewise, as their language improves, will introduce a music into their poetry, which is simply (that is to say, the numerical part of poetry, which must be distinguished from the imaginary) the transferring the time of melody into speaking. What then have the Greeks or Romans to do with our music? It is plain that our admiration of their verse is mere pedantry, because we could not adopt it. ”