Compositor

“ The singer chosen—usually by the composer himself—to “create” a rôle, i.e., to interpret for the first time some part in a new opera, generally studies it with the composer, or under his direct supervision, and thus learns, directly or indirectly, his ideas as to the meaning, style of execution, tempi, etc., of the music. Very often during rehearsals, when the composer begins really to hear his own work, he makes modifications in certain passages, alterations of the words or suppressions of the notes that are either ineffective, or lie awkwardly for the voice. ”

“ In their still world of dreams, what miracles did the power of art work out from their intense conceptions what skilful choice and marshalling of means for producing their intended effects ! and what patient and intense labor at composition !
The lives of these men are like insulated points in history, only to be well comprehended by those who are somewhat similarly organized. But their influence is wider than we can imagine. A great musical composer is a central power, who radiates a finer sense of beauty, by little and little, into the outmost and least-delicately organized souls. ”

“ In a cultivated realization of the beauty of a great musical masterwork, these perceptions of technical skill on the part of the composer no doubt enter to some degree, but they are always more or less in the background, and form a part of the actual pleasure of hearing the symphony or the sonata scarcely more than the capital initials and punctuation marks enter into the enjoyment of a poem. ”

“ Rightly to apprehend the sense of the words and to give it, by means of the music, a deeper, nobler expression—to transfigure it, as it were—is, according to this style, the purpose of the composer, who commonly has only the slightest reference to the peculiar qualities of the voice and the fitness of the composition to be sung. ”

“ Students of piano, violin or other instruments need to know how the great composers lived their lives. In every musical career described in this book, from the old masters represented by Bach and Beethoven to the musical prophets of our own day, there is a wealth of inspiration and practical guidance for the artist in any field. Through their struggles, sorrows and triumphs, divine melody and harmony came into being, which will bless the world for all time to come. ”

“ A clear knowledge of how music reached its present state is not to be had by studying books, biographical and critical; the works of the composers must be examined, played and sung, compared, analyzed as to methods of construction (Form) and expression (Melody, Harmony and Rhythm) , so that the student may appreciate the change from simple, elementary processes to the free, polyphonic style found in the complex modern piano and orchestral scores. Reference is made to representative [Pg vi] compositions by classical and modern composers, which are part of the average teaching repertoire. ”

“ Few composers have been more inventive. No composer has ever scattered abroad ideas with more liberal hand. Compositions like the B-minor piano-sonata, the tone-poem "Mazeppa," the "Dante" symphony, whatever their artistic value, fairly teem with original themes of a high order, are like treasure houses in which gold ornaments lie negligently strewn in piles. Indeed, your inventive power supplied not only your own compositions with material, but those of your son-in-law, Richard Wagner, as well. ”

“ Contrasts of timbre and tone are at least as various as contrasts of colour: the complexity of musical rhythm is far beyond anything that language can achieve; while, in the devices of harmony, and still more of polyphony and counterpoint, the composer occupies a position which is virtually unique in human experience. ”

“ The divine composer, summoning instrument after instrument into his harmony, climbed with his theme from those which offered but a single note to those that exhaust the complexity of thought and feeling, to combine them into expression, kindling through hints, phrases, sudden concords, mustering consents of many wills, releases of each one's felicity into comradeship, till the sweet tumult becomes his champion, and bursts into an acclaim of a whole world. ”

“ Their highest aspirations extended no farther than the enrichment of a given Melody with such Harmonies as they were able to improvise at a moment's notice: whereas Composition, properly so called, depends, for its existence, upon the invention—or, at least, the selection—of a definite musical idea, which the genius of the Composer presents, now in one form, and now in another, until the exhaustive discussion of its various aspects produces a work of Art, as consistent, in its integrity, as the conduct of a Scholastic Thesis, or a Dramatic Poem. ”

“ It will now have become clear, what according to the view of music that I have endeavoured to explain, is the task of a song composer. He has far more to do than to express again in tones the feeling of the song. He has to furnish a composition that, in the first place, has life; and, in the domain of art, to have life is to have beauty. ”

“ Every composer can recall certain impressions which time does not obliterate. The spirit of music spake, and his voice was the creative word which suddenly awakened the kindred spirit slumbering in the breast of the artist; then the latter rose like a sun which can nevermore set. Thus it is unquestionably true that all melodies which, stirred up in this way, proceed from the depths of the composer's being, seem to us to belong to the singer alone who fanned the first spark within us. We hear her voice and record only what she has sung. ”

“ The Imaginative Composer's idea is frequently even more 'romantic'—using the word in its every-day sense—than that of his brother Artist. But, it is not treated in the same way. The Romantic Composer paints his picture with the richest colours his orchestral palette can command; horrifies us with the depth of his sombre shadows; enthrals our senses with his most delicious fancies; excites us to delirium with a crash of Trumpets; or drives us to despair with the roll of a muffled Drum. ”

“ Certain modulations, passages, and rhythmical combinations occurring in our musical compositions may be regarded as common property; but how surprisingly original and fresh do they often appear to us through the new way in which they are employed by composers in connection with other ideas! Now, a composer who has the power to construct very beautiful works of art in a certain form, by inventing ideas and by showing in a new light ideas not invented by him, deserves to be regarded as a great composer. ”

“ To call this a tune would be straining language, but none the less if a composer be possessed of what we call genius, such phrases will (as this does) produce on the mind of the listener an effect in all respects as vivid as that which the most fully developed melody produces under other musical conditions. The idea of a true composer is strong, and therefore it succeeds. ”

“ Never at a loss for an idea, invariably correct and often imaginative, going from a piano concerto to an opera, and from a cantata to a symphonic poem with disconcerting ease, composing rapidly, yet never exhibiting any trace of slovenly workmanship, finding time in the meanwhile to distinguish himself as organist and pianist, and to wield the pen of the critic, the astonishing capabilities of this wonderfully gifted musician may be put down as absolutely unique. ”

“ Instruments alone cannot make music, any more than a steam derrick can build a bridge. If we wish to seize the true spirit of the modern musical art, we must, after all, leave orchestra, and piano, and sensuous value behind, and ascertain to what use composers have turned all these resources, and to what manner of expression, embodied in what kind of forms, they have been spurred by the romantic spirit. ”

“ The art of the musician is shown as an intelligent presentation of sounds and rhythms and inspirations into works displaying beauty or expressing emotion. It is by the handling of the materials of music that the composer proves the beauty of his vision. ”

“ Every composer, as well as every player, founds his art and his science on what his predecessors have already done; adding to that the inventions of his own talent. By these natural steps in advance, it is evident that the compositions of the present distinguished pianists are in many respects much more difficult than those of times gone by; and that whoever desires to study them must already possess great knowledge of music, and a very considerable degree of execution. ”

“ The former constitutes, so to speak, the theme, the truth, or motive of the artistic conception, which the composer seizes under his inspiration. When he goes to communicate the expression of this musical truth or melody through the instrument he at once and instinctively avails himself of the chords which, by way of accompaniment, emphasize the musical truth which his soul utters through the instrument, according to the peculiar nature or form of the latter. These chords of the accompaniment are not the leading motive or truth of his theme, but they are equally true with it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If, then, we would justly value the half dozen [Pg 6] composers who have done most for music in our day, we must add to our understanding of them as persons a knowledge of the general development in which they play a part; we must gain some sense of that great process of musical growth from which they inherit their resources, to which they make their various contributions, and in relation to which alone they can be fairly compared and appreciated. ”

“ You who are learning the pianoforte have perhaps been told the meaning of a theme of music—the first idea of the composer who follows it throughout the piece from one end to the other, embroidering on it, as on a bit of canvas, a thousand variations melting one into another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The two solo instruments are treated by the composer on a footing of absolute equality, and the manner in which his intentions were yesterday realised by the two masterly performers was above praise. Why (one is likely to ask on hearing such a performance) did a composer, who could make a couple of instruments [147] sing so sweetly and graciously and in a manner so perfectly adapted to their proper genius, very frequently force the singing voice to follow a crabbed line, instrumental rather than vocal in character? ”

“ Above us we have a violinist, below us is another, next to us a singing-master, who gives lessons, and, in the room opposite, a hautboy-player. This is famous for a composer—it inspires so many fine thoughts. ”

“ The great interpreters of instrumental music are those who can most nearly enter into the composer's ideals, or can even improve upon them, and who are able to give a delicacy or force of accentuation or phrasing which it is outside of the possibility of notation to express.... The days of cold, classical performance of great works are practically over. The executant or conductor now seeks to stir the deeper emotions of his audience, and to do so he must pay homage to the artist who conceived the work, by interpreting it with enthusiasm and warmth. ”

“ But when we have the songs, the five or six hundred of them, the operas and other vocal works, in which music is so lovely in and of itself, yet at the same time so descriptive, so loyal to the changing moods of the text, we necessarily interpret the instrumental music in the same light, especially when we know that there are no distinct periods in the short life of this composer concerning which different principles can be predicated. ”

“ The composer has musical symbols corresponding to ideas, feelings, moods, aspects of nature or personality, religious conceptions or aspirations, animated scenes of popular life, phases of local and national custom, exhortations of the angels, suggestions of the devil, mystical rapture, rebellious despair; and he uses those symbols in the manner of a language. There is no mechanical work, no carrying out of architectural schemes with lifeless material. Everything in the score is vivified by the idea. The composition heard to-day consists of the first and second parts of the projected oratorio. ”

“ We not only need the programme—the statement of the literary or pictorial subject of the composition—but this is at once answerable for half our pleasure and a justification of certain peculiarities of form which the music may now safely assume. If the shape and colour of the themes of a piece of music, the order of their occurrence, and the variations they undergo, are all determined by the composer having a certain picture in his mind, it is surely necessary for us to be told what that picture is. ”

“ More penetration of character may be assumed where the composer even in instrumental music is equally attentive to both aspects of composition; in other words, the expression of a content, if necessarily less defined than in our previous mode, no less than its musical structure, by which means it will be in his power at one time to emphasize the melody, at another the depth and colour of the harmony, or finally to fuse each with the other. ”