Album

“ In desiring the autograph of a literary lady, do not expect her to write in your album “a piece of poetry.” Be satisfied with her signature only. There is a spice of meanness in requesting from her, as a gift, any portion of her stock in trade. As well might you ask Mr. Stewart, or Mr. Levy, to present you with an embroidered collar, or a pair of gloves. For the same reason, never request an artist to “draw something” in your album. It is only amateur poets, and amateur artists, that can afford to write and draw in albums. ”

“ The cards on which designs have been drawn are in great request, so that the pleasure of the entertainment does not end with the mere exhibition. An album filled with picked designs, showing different harmonies and executed in inks of various colours, is a formidable rival to the choicest results of the amateur photographer’s skill. ”

“ Musical eras and stylistic movements are arranged to tell particular histories the works of a particular artist are construed as tracing a stylistic journey, the life story of an artist is invoked to give greater understanding to this or that album, as in 'that's his divorce album or 'all her records have been crap since she went to rehab.' In each instance, musical works are woven into a constructed narrative in order to make sense of the history of popular music or of particular repertoires. ”

“ As one who cons at evening o'er an album all alone, And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known, So I turn the leaves of fancy till, in shadowy design, I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine. ”

“ Live long upon the mind; the faithful sight
Engraves the knowledge with a beam of light."
The projectors respectfully beg that, in consideration of the work having been produced, regardless of pains or expense, and under great difficulties, as regards shortcomings, the public will be lenient and the critics merciful ; and trusting that it may meet with approval, the "Lucknow Album" is sent forth to meet its fate. ”

“ The outstanding reason for his preference for writing albums of short pieces (partly due, no doubt, to lack of time for more extended work) was that he loved to seize a passing impression or inspiration and to express it in music before it faded from his mind. Nearly all his small pieces are musical photographs of the fancies of an impressionable and sensitive imagination. ”

“ It seemed as if every eye in the assembly was fixed on the calm, noble face of the venerated artist; as if every heart beat with love for him; as if all feared to break the spell of hushed and holy silence. Then came, like a succession of heavenly melodies, the music of the “Creation,” and the listeners felt as if transported back to the infancy of the world.
At the words, “Let there be light, and there was light,” when all the instruments were united in one full burst of gorgeous harmony, emotion seemed to shake the whole frame of the aged artist. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Soft as a whisper, clear and distinct, it grew, wave upon wave, into a grand volume of harmony, that was not loud, though it seemed as if it reached beyond the church-walls and floated on through endless space. Was it, then, music from that land where the crystal air breathes a perpetual melody? The people by one impulse sprang to their feet, and turned with awe-stricken faces toward the gallery. Grander, more majestic, it swelled into a glad chorus, whose gloria, inspired with praise, rose up into heaven. ”

“ A piece of music must express a human desire, a belief, or an emotion, otherwise it is but empty sound.
These three attributes—symmetry, [197] color, and sentiment—are at the command of all talented musicians, but the all-pervading individuality that so adjusts form, so arranges color, and gives such adequate expression to each shade of feeling as to create natural but unique tone pictures, is possessed by few composers of any given generation. ”

“ From time to time a great artist interests himself in designing and decorating a piano, but the rank and file, when they decide to build an extraordinary piano, achieve lumpy masses of wood covered with impossible nymphs and too-realistic flowers, pianos suggestive of thin and sentimental tunes, but never of music. ”

“ Old rubbish bears germs of new creations; released from the heavy burden of the words, the light play of the voices in the clavier-pieces introduces a fresh, youthful life that is full of promise for the future.
The isolation of the voice and of the instrument, the sensuous delight in sound, demands a chamber-music and a chamber-style. Chamber-music demands the Maecenas of the great house, and the wealthy amateur, who is so powerful a factor in every advance of art. ”

“ Thought, emotion, all that we call the spiritual side of music, expresses itself not through sonorous or harmonic effects, primarily sensuous in appeal, but through melody and rhythm and their interplay and elaboration in so-called thematic development. In truly great music we remember, not such and such a bit of tone-color, not this or that sonority, but the soaring or tender curve of the themes, their logical yet ever new unfolding, their embodiment, in the whole composition, of richest variety with completest final unity. ”

“ With the exception of added cadenzas in some concertos, it is not now considered good taste to embellish a composition—even the simplest melody, by the addition of anything to the written notes. The modern artist, especially the instrumentalist, must content himself with his individual treatment of what is before him, depending solely on this, and the beauty of the composition for his effect. ”

“ But the finest music in the room is that which streams out to the ear of the spirit in many an exquisite strain from the hanging shelf of books on the opposite wall. Every volume there is an instrument which some melodist of the mind created and set vibrating with music, as a flower shakes out its perfume or a star shakes out its light. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are something like 600 of these songs from his pen, and 100 such was his fluent versatility of production, that he is known to have completed seven of these inimitable musical gems in one day. His instrumental compositions, whether for orchestra or piano, though far less numerous, are for the most part equally able and effective, and deserve a much more frequent hearing in the concert-room than they at present receive, displaying, as they do, to the full, his inventive spontaneity, his inexhaustible fund of fresh, original melody, and the peculiar, tender, poetic grace of his style. ”

“ Music, using sound for its material, is a pattern-weaving in tones. The power of music to satisfy and delight resides in the sensuous value of its material and in the character of its pattern as form, the balance and contrast of tonal relations, the folding and unfolding of themes, their development and progress to the final compelling unity-in-variety which constitutes its form and which in its own inherent and self-sufficing way is made the expression of the composer's emotion and musical idea. ”

“ Seventeen figures are embraced in the group, and upon every countenance is deeply impressed a sense of the power of music when pathetically rendered. The look is earnest and enwrapt, as if there were no other moment than the present, or that all else by the sweet strains were banished from the thoughts. At the instrument, seated low, is the inspired poet and musician, with his face averted from the keys, as if drinking in with spiritual waves of melody the same entrancement that his guests enjoy. ”

“ In the long evolution from the simple to the complex which music shares with everything else we know we may observe two different methods of tone-combination which, working together, have given us the elaborate texture of the modern art. That especially suited to melodic instruments, like those used in the orchestra or the chorus, puts melodies together as an engraver puts together lines, each remaining distinct, standing off clearly from the others, representing a different musical thought, and yet all agreeing, or, as we say, harmonizing. ”

“ Edgard Varèse, who initiated a move towards timbre and texture as the chief articulators of structure; the pioneers of musique concrète and electronic composition such as Pierre Henry, Pierre Shaeffer, John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, where harmony and rhythm are often subordinated to the phenomena of sound-as-itself, and minimalists La Monte Young, Steve Reich, Terry Riley and Philip Glass. I am not suggesting that rock music is 'behind, and 'catching up to' art music, or that art music is the sole bastion of innovation. Pop and rock have always had their own possibilities and effects. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They become as wild flowers plucked to languish indoors, as seaweeds taken from their natural setting of liquid coolness. Or again, the particular expressions of music may be compared to the strings of an instrument, of which the sounding board is plastic beauty; without its sympathetic reinforcement the strings, strike them as we may, give forth a scarcely audible murmur; with it, there is [Pg 39] clear and powerful sonority. So the most ingenious music is dull and dead if it lack the vitality of organic form, but if it be beautiful it will make its way directly to the heart. ”

“ The quartet thus fulfils the two essential conditions of dramatic music, and reveals itself as a consistent and harmonious piece of work, the separate motifs of which are beautiful and expressive, while the interest is kept alive by alternation and climax, and a vivid dramatic picture is produced by the artistic treatment of musical forms. The grouping of the voices in manifold variety of combination displays, as if on a ground plan, a symmetrical, well-disposed musical edifice. ”

“ It presents all the characteristics we are accustomed to [pg 87] in freer musical forms: a flowing and distinctive melody, ease, clarity, and facility in the progression of the parts, inexhaustible variety of modulation, purest harmony, the exclusion of every jarring or unnecessary note, unity of form and variety of style, rhythm, and measure, and such superabundant animation that the hearer may well ask himself whether every note is not actually alive. ”

“ The piano vibrated, the stools creaked, the candles danced in their sockets, and every one sat mute while the four white hands chased one another up and down the keys, and the two fine faces beamed with such ecstacy that we almost expected to see instrument and performers disappear in a musical whirlwind. ”

“ A few choice pictures hang on the walls: but here, there, and everywhere are to be found the emblems and accessories of the musical art,—a piano-forte, on the back part of which are great piles of music, and in which are the latest and choicest publications; a number of music-stands; several of the viol family hanging on the walls, or placed in their boxes on the floor; two or three varieties of the clarinet; a cornet, a guitar, a flute, &c. In fact, there is music, music everywhere, and enough instruments to form at any time an orchestra of at least a dozen performers ”

“ This was the leader of my orchestra, and the whole country was alive with musicians, each one giving out his own notes without any regard for the others, but apparently the score had been written for them all, since the innumerable strains made one divine harmony. From the full-orbed song from the maple by my window, down to the faintest chirp and twitter, there was no discord; while from the fields beyond the village the whistle of the meadow-larks was so mellowed and softened by distance as to incline one to wonder whether their notes were real or mere ideals of sound. ”

“ The works are treated in the order of their opus number, and every single composition is dealt with exhaustively. No other work with such a wealth of detail exists in any language. The whole, being adequately indexed, forms a complete reference book for pianist, student and concert-goer, and may be described as monumental.
Of the CHAMBER AND ORCHESTRAL music, a minute analysis reaching to the rhythmical significance of each bar is given.
The analytical accounts of the PIANO works are each subdivided under the headings: Key; Time and Extent; Thematic Material; Melody; Harmony; Rhythm ”

“ Means of Expression.—One more phase must be mentioned here, the means used to present to others the thoughts or feelings of the composer, that is, the human voice and its artistic use, instruments of various kinds, their primitive forms and gradual development, their use singly and in combination with other instruments. This phase is peculiarly associated with modern music; for it was not until the art had freed itself from the fetters imposed by vocal music, that absolute music, availing itself of perfected instruments, came into its own. ”