Music master

“ From grief at the early loss of a master, whose cultivation, self-discipline, and endeavours after the good and the beautiful had exercised a truly beneficial influence over the art of our age, our grave talk turned to the more particular consideration of music in itself, and to the great masters of the past! ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is the case with music. Symmetry and flow of imagination are presupposed. Hence, whatever analyses may be made in the class as a part of the operation of studying these different master-works, the end to be sought by the student is the enjoyment of the work as music; to take an active and lively pleasure in the melody; to feel the harmony and the rhythm; to enjoy the contrast of the different moods, and so on. Every piece in the entire list is a voice in which the composer speaks to us, and the question is not the How, but the What. ”

“ Yes, this prayer of the little children who are only learning how to play the first notes of life’s music, turns to the great Master musician who knows it all and who loves to bring a melody out of every instrument that He has made ”

“ Of all the fine arts, music is that which has most influence on the passions, and which the legislator ought the most to encourage. A musical composition of an intellectual character, if the work of a master, never fails to touch the feelings ”

“ The performers may complain of the demands made upon them, but they realize that the page before them bears the impress of a master of instrumentation whose music is written with special regard for the very instrument they are playing,—can and must therefore be played. ”

“ Moreover it is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied." ”

“ The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius. ”

“ Here, too, the music-masters frequently gave their lessons, whether in singing or on the lyre, which practice explains the anecdote of the musician, who, hearing the crowd applaud one of his scholars, gave him a box on the ear, observing, “Had you played well these blockheads would not have praised you.” ”

“ Many men of brilliant musical genius and of remarkable industry and perseverance were born; and, with new conceptions of the scope and capabilities of the divine art, they penetrated its innermost depths, and brought to the ears of the music-loving world new and enrapturing forms of harmony. Among these great masters, leaving out those already mentioned, were Handel, Henry Purcell, Bach, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Spontini. ”

“ Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master! ”

“ It is our purpose in general to treat the scientific rather than the artistic side of conducting, and we are taking for granted, therefore, that the reader is endowed with musical feeling at least in a fair degree, and has acquired the rudiments of musical scholarship as the result of an extensive study of piano, organ, singing, ear-training, music history, harmony, et cetera, and especially by attentive listening to a very large amount of good music with score in hand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Music resembles poetry, in each Are nameless graces which no methods teach, And which a master-hand alone can reach. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And from a certain standpoint—that of the school-trained musician—it is perhaps the ‘greatest’ vocal music. But remember that the standpoint of the school-trained musician is only one standpoint. The conscious composer has chosen to look at his musical materials in a certain way and to judge the result accordingly. ”

“ How unreliable, therefore, must be the notations of many travellers who know but little of music! Still, the student of National Music, by careful attention and comparison, is gradually [Pg 229] enabled to discern what is genuine, and valuable for his purpose. He knows that if there prevails a certain peculiarity in the scale on which the tunes collected are founded, the cause may be owing to want of musical experience in the person who wrote the tunes down, or to an individual whim of the performer by whom they were sung or played to the writer of the notation. ”

“ To produce perfect music, we must have soprano, alto, tenor and bass to carry all the parts. The tenor and soprano would furnish us a very poor concert, and the alto and bass alone would produce rather monotonous music. But we have studied harmony in music until we have evoked divine results, and our achievements in harmony of colors has beautified the world with transcendent art. ”

“ As soon as we pass beyond the short roll of the great masters in instrumental music of the first class, we immediately come upon a large circle of composers of such cleverness that they have just missed becoming enrolled in the higher list, and perhaps some of them will, later on, be included among the immortals. ”

“ From this double bondage to the rhythmic-melodic powers of human expressive movements and to the thought content of language, musical art finally frees itself. While the musical instrument was at first a means designed to assist man in his endeavour to give direct expression to his emotions, man's activity in the case of 'absolute music' becomes limited to the mastery of the instrument itself. ”

“ Borrowing as by right from all the arts, and pressing into its service all that has been won in the region of form and colour to enforce its own message of the spirit, it is nevertheless inevitable that to music it must remain the heaviest debtor, for its chosen vehicle of rhythmic language approaches most nearly to the abstract instrument of the musician. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There has been no attempt to cover the immense field of executive music, but only to call attention to the lives of those musical celebrities who are universally recognized as occupying the most exalted places in the arts of violin and pianoforte playing; who stand forth as landmarks in the history of music. ”

“ It is considered proper to say, also,—a caution which perhaps may not be necessary,—that I shall here make mention by name of none but persons of scientific musical culture; of none but those who read the printed music page, and can give its contents life and expression, generally, too, with a fine degree of excellence, either with voice or instrument; and who evince by their studies and performances the true artistic spirit. The singer or player "by ear" merely, however well favored by nature, will not be mentioned. ”

“ There is a third motive of composition which also has had a large place in the development of instrumental music—viz., the Expression of the Individual Mood of the Composer; and the further we come down in the history of music, the more unrestricted we find the operation of this motive.
In the order of development, the purely musical is entitled to the first place; and it has also been the principal moving cause in the development of the art of music, from its universality—its power to act upon all grades of musical consciousness according to the ability of the individual musician. ”

“ I say this from the conviction, many times confirmed, that, as an average, by very far the best practical musicians, those I mean whose musical readiness gives them the air of having music as an instinct or of second nature, those who are ever prompt with their talent to produce or to perform without preparation at the requirement of the moment; those whose ears are quick, whose wits are sharp, and whose utmost ability is ever at their fingers' ends—are they who have passed their art infancy in one of our ecclesiastical arenas for constant practice. ”

“ The musician, on the contrary, it is true, does not abstract from all and every content, but finds the same in a text, which he sets to music, or with absolute freedom gives musical utterance to some definite mood in the form of a theme, which he proceeds to elaborate. ”

“ Not only has the increasing complexity of life broadened the musician's personal outlook, professional or unprofessional: it has also modified, whether for better or for worse, the outlook of the music itself. We may conveniently divide all music into two great classes: 'absolute' music, in which the composer appeals to the listener through the direct medium of the pure sound and that alone ”

“ 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. ”

“ Well, no one, I think, will question the existence in us, at the present day, of something that may well be called, in general terms, the musical faculty. For the musician as we now know him—and, indeed, have known him for [199] some centuries—music is a means of emotional expression that can function without the aid of poetry or even of speech. ”

“ Thus it was that at that time the most profound comprehension of the true inward life of music dawned and brightened in the masters' pious hearts, and their inimitable, immortal compositions streamed from their souls in holy inspiration. ”

“ This entire expression of musical masterworks belongs to the unconscious operation of mind, and the hearer who occupies himself with the effort to recognize all the various devices and artifices of the composer, and to follow the form as such, or who occupies himself mainly with the idea of the story which the composer is trying to tell, puts himself in a wrong attitude for deriving the most complete gratification from the work. ”

“ They may give dazzling performances of works bristling with technical difficulties, yet make a sad failure of some slow, tender movement that calls for musicianly understanding and delicate treatment. The truth is, the requirements for an artistic accompanist, or for artistic concerted work, are the same as for an artistic soloist: well directed musical aptitude, love of art, an ear attuned to listening and large experience in sight-reading. ”

“ Add to these influences, already sufficiently diversified, that of a succession of brilliant virtuosi upon the leading instruments, whereby the resources of all the effective musical apparatuses were more fully explored and illustrated, with the final result of affording the poetic composer additional means of bringing his ideas to a more effective expression [Pg 262] —and we have the general features of a period in music so luxuriant that in it we might easily lose ourselves; nor can we easily form a clear idea of the entire movement as the expression of a single underlying spiritual impulse. ”

“ Sensual and intellectual perceptions must actively exist, he feels, before they can be expressed by means of an instrument. It is a mistake to presume that manual practice can call them into being, or to disregard the supremacy of the tone-sense. He considers the [Pg 50] human voice the primitive educational instrument of music and believes the reasonable order of musical education to be: hearing, singing, performing. ”

“ When a musical student begins to think of music as a literature and to inquire about individualities of style and musical expression, it is necessary for him to come as soon as possible to the fountainheads of this literature in the works of a few great masters who have set the pace and established the limits for all the rest. In the line of purely instrumental music this has been done by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner. ”