Musical criticism

“ Certain it is that some men who write about music for the newspapers believe, or affect to believe, that criticism is worthless, and [Pg 298] I shall not escape the charge of inconsistency, if, after I have condemned the blunders of literary men, who are laymen in music, and separated the majority of professional writers on the art into pedants and rhapsodists, I nevertheless venture to discuss the nature and value of musical criticism. ”

“ From the endless controversies about Realism, Idealism, and Impressionism, with which the criticism of other arts have been encumbered, musical criticism is thus happily free: while the immense changes which have revolutionized both the artistic methods and the material resources of the musician—changes without a parallel either in literature, in painting, in sculpture, or even in architecture—have hindered the growth of an orthodox tradition. Music thus occupies in some respects a place apart: but its theoretic importance cannot on that account be ignored. ”

“ In this connection, the subject of musical criticism naturally obtrudes itself, and it may at once be said that one of the most satisfactory features in modern musical life is its general fairness, and the entire absence of savagery that was so prominent a feature in it in days of not long ago. ”

“ And while we are upon this matter of song, we take the liberty of suggesting, in behalf of plain-spoken, and simple-minded people, that musical criticism is nowadays arraying itself in a great brocade of words, of which the fustian only is clear to common readers. ”

“ Musical Criticism.—There are two kinds of people who ought to give their opinions about music; those who know enough about it to give an opinion which is really valuable, and those who simply say what they like and what they don’t like, and no more. ”

“ As every scientific discovery and invention gradually becomes common-sense knowledge when popularly known, so artistic judgment tends to crystallize into common-sense feeling. (6) Musical criticism may be chastized and chastened into balanced and critical judgment, relatively free from emotional explosions. ”

“ The principles we now have before us, interesting as they are in themselves, must finally vindicate their worth by helping us to form [Pg 31] sound opinions of musical tendencies and of individual composers; they must provide a corrective for the whims and freaks of prejudice, and a basis for that intelligent and systematic criticism which takes account both of a man's qualities and of his defects before assigning him his place in the general artistic movement. ”

“ The bases for musical praise and blame are notoriously inadequate, be they meaningless approval, empty flattery, or censorious criticism. A general attitude of spontaneous approval without knowing or giving reasons among listeners in general is praiseworthy as an expression of good will; but for serious purposes we must question the competence of the listener for the response manifested. ”

“ In this way is rendered possible that pretentious kind of dilettante criticism which is so common in musical matters, and which is often positively injurious, as substituting a factitious public opinion for one that is genuine. ”

“ It is evident that our discussion of music criticism in the United States has dealt primarily with its relation to the general subject of our musical development. The music itself and the composers and their ideas remain to be discussed. ”

“ The news which reaches me from time to time about musical matters in America is generally favorable to the cause of the progress of contemporaneous Art which I hold it an honor to serve and to sustain. It seems that, among you, the cavillings and blunders and stupidities of a criticism adulterated by ignorance, envy and venality exercise less influence than in the old continent. ”

“ Regarded from a purely musical standpoint, the Rhapsodies have occasioned much controversy and considerable adverse criticism on the part of certain musicians who pride themselves on their loyalty to conservative traditions. They have been decried as trivial, superficial, and sensational; as lacking in depth and dignity, in symmetry of form and nobility of sentiment. These critics seem to forget that the object of all art is primarily, not instruction or elevation, or even abstract beauty, but expression. ”

“ We all know that one style is appropriate to engraving, another to oil-painting, and still another to pastel work; we recognize that the prose-writer and the versifier must use different vocabularies. Musical critics, however, whether from ignorance or from a disposition to involve their subject in an impenetrable haze of sentiment, have for the most part left us undisturbed to the enjoyment of our primitive notion that music, as a product of pure "inspiration," remains unmodified by such practical considerations as what voices can best sing, or instruments best play. ”

“ As I have tried to show in another essay in this volume, the people who despise programme music as a derogation from the high nature and pure origin of the art are labouring under a delusion. Music, they say, ought to be able to stand alone, in splendid isolation as it were; and they regard it as a sign of musical weakness when a [263] composer, associating himself with the literary element of poetry, "calls in to his aid a foreign art," as they express it. ”

“ He it was who stifled music with the curse of professionalism; so that now, like shivering shop-boys paying gate-money to watch games they cannot play, we sit mute in our stalls listening to the paid performer. But for the musician, music might have been universal. The human voice is still the finest instrument that we possess. We have allowed it to rust, the better to hear clever manipulators blow through tubes and twang wires. The musical world might have been a literal expression. Civilisation has contracted it to designate a coterie. ”

“ Hence it requires one kind of treatment at one stage, another at another, both being perfectly right and true in relation to their proper period. But there are behind these special rules certain psychological laws which seem, so far as we can understand them, to be coeval with humanity itself; and these form the permanent code by which music is to be judged. The reason why, in past ages, the critics have been so often and so disastrously at fault is that they have mistaken the transitory for the permanent, the rules of musical science for the laws of musical philosophy. ”

“ That is the whole mystery of what conservative critics decry as the destruction of form in music. It is not destruction, but change. When you destroy form you destroy music, for the musical essence can manifest itself only through form. ”

“ I have spoken of certain social conditions which affect music unfavorably. There has been always a certain outcry against music because of its supposed emotionalism. The eye of cold intelligence, seeing the music-lover enthralled by a symphony, raises its lid in icy contempt for such a creature of feeling. The sociologist, observing musical performers, wonders why music seems to affect the appearance and the conduct of some of them so unfavorably. ”

“ Here is seen, it must be admitted, what appears very much like genius in the melody-making power. Something it is, undoubtedly, that shows an innate comprehension, power in expression, and love of harmony, in a degree that is simply intense. The history of the colored race in this country establishes the fact, too, that no system of cruelty, however great or long inflicted, can destroy that sympathy with musical sounds that is born with the soul. ”

“ Therefore, although each art has its incommunicable element, its untranslatable order of impressions, its unique mode of reaching the ‘imaginative reason,’ yet the arts may be represented as continually struggling after the law or principle of music, to a condition which music alone completely realises. ”

“ In judging of pieces adapted to music, we should be lenient on the subject of the thoughts, if the design and story have variety enough to afford a basis for a corresponding variety of musical ideas. The most common expression of any passion may be tolerated, when the music, not the poetry, is to form the embellishment. Who cares for the story—the plot—in listening to the Italian opera? Nay, more—are not the finest and most beautiful pieces of that class of music, vulgar and weak as poetical compositions? Is not the musical composer the genius of the piece? ”

“ Where he falls below the highest standard is in his inability to give his ideas proper treatment, in his lack of the sense of proportion, in his deficiency in the architectonic side of music—to sum him up in a word, in his provinciality. If we take all the circumstances in which he worked into consideration the wonder is, not that he accomplished so little, but that he accomplished so much." In his time there were no recognized musical standards to work by. Every man thought for himself, wrote for himself, and judged for himself. ”

“ We have come to see that this great mass of traditional music—only in part, of course, the outpouring of sheer genius, but at its worst sincere—is, with its appeal alike to the child and the adult, either in years or in musical culture, the most perfect educational weapon yet devised with which to combat all the forces that make for musical degradation. ”

“ But, as always happens, the men of taste, the musicians, entirely failed to rate these works at their true value; they regarded them as unimportant entertainments, and they would have blushed to place them in the same rank as the musical tragedies. Constantly, in history, this unintelligent hierarchy of styles has caused indifferent works in a noble style to be prized more highly than admirable works in a less exalted style. ”

“ We only affected to love music. It was intellectual, spiritual, in all respects creditable to our moral nature, to be able to appreciate Mozart and Beethoven, and so we set up for connoisseurs, and martyrised ourselves that Europe might think us musical. Is there more truth in this theory than the other? Hypocrisy is not generally so lasting as the musical fervour has proved itself to be. A fashion is the affair of a season ”

“ But, unfortunately, program music not merely bores the music-lover; it does him a positive injury, which criticism ought, so far as it can, to mitigate. By its false emphasis it distracts attention from what music can do supremely to what it can only botch and bungle, brings true masterpieces into discredit with hearers not sensitive or disciplined enough to appreciate them, and plunges the simple into a hopeless æsthetic quagmire. ”

“ Every impulse has two aspects: attraction and repulsion. All of us love music in some degree; all of us hate some music; and most of us in the economy of nature are comparatively indifferent and extravagantly wasteful to the role that music might play in our lives. Hatred and indifference to music are important realities in life worthy of serious consideration; but our topic restricts us to the positive side of musical response, the love of music.
THE MUSICAL MEDIUM Organic response. ”

“ Realizing as we must that all this ferment of suggestion-seeking has undoubtedly vivified and enriched musical development in not a few aspects, we may nevertheless feel, and feel profoundly, that there is a cardinal weakness inherent in it. A composer may so easily be tempted to forget that it is after all by his music, and by his music alone, that he stands or falls. If he asks too much extra-musical sympathy from the listener, he defeats his own end. ”

“ The best of the newer work shows a loftiness of ideals, a breadth of outlook, a definiteness of purpose, a freshness of color, a sense of the beautiful and an esprit which argue strongly for the future honor of American music. The chief danger which threatens the American composer is the tendency to accept and conform to the standards of the centres of conventional and fashionable musical culture, especially in unsubstantial modern aspects, and to fail to study out the real nature and musical needs of the American people. ”

“ There is no magic about the community chorus that can suddenly change bad taste to good. Too often we seem here, as in all other activities for popularizing music, to oscillate helplessly between two evils. On the one hand is the crudity of actual taste: the majority prefer ragtime and the musical comedies to folk-songs or the simple classics. On the other hand is the apathy that comes of prescriptions from outsiders: musical activity that is not spontaneous is sterile. ”

“ We will only add that, if the probability of these corollaries be admitted, then music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts—as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare. And thus, even leaving out of view the immediate gratifications it is hourly giving, we cannot too much applaud that musical culture which is becoming one of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of our age. ”

“ It is difficult to calculate the extent of your loss. Musicians succeed musicians; they being dead may yet speak. [xcii] But the critic's words are ephemeral; they remain in the files of the newspapers. For musicians there are schools; but what school is there for critics? In music we need guides, men with a wide horizon, a general culture, men unfettered by musical faction, with definite ideals, with command of the English tongue, of courage and of true instinct. Such an one, I take it, was Mr. Arthur Johnstone. ”

“ 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 ”