Musical measure

“ As rhythm is the heart pulsation of music, [69] it naturally took hold of the first singers of in any measure formulated melody, leading to swaying of the body, clapping of the hands, stamping of the feet, and quickly suggested the employment of other resonant means for marking its progress. Our drums were at first only hollow pieces of wood, our cymbals, triangle, and gong may have had double duties,—musical and culinary,—and our harp and piano were anticipated by single strings stretched to yield a sonorous tone regardless of pitch. ”

“ Next come six female musicians, four of whom are playing upon harps, while one is blowing a double-pipe and another is beating a small hand-drum covered only at the top. Close behind the instrumental performers are the singers, consisting of a chorus of females and children. They are clapping their hands in time with the music, and some of the musicians are dancing to the measure. ”

“ The result of this irregularity and false quantity is to destroy the rhythm to an extent that often makes it difficult to say whether the music is in duple or triple measure. The musical consequence is the breaking down of symmetrical form, and the tendency is to reduce the organised structure to its component parts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But since the seventeenth century our conception of music has gradually, from melodic, become harmonic; we hear vertically as well as horizontally; we hear the beauty of all chords as sounded together, and, unconsciously, we fill in the harmonies to every melody we hear. It would have been natural if the keyed instruments had adapted themselves to this altered musical conception, and had resigned the original conception of the scale to make way for harmonic conveniences. ”

“ By far the greater number of our rules of composition are not dictated by any physical law traceable in acoustics, but only by human taste, which is continually undergoing modifications in the course of time. Thus, most of our great composers have caused some alterations in our theory of music. It is not only possible, but probable, that in a hundred years' time we shall have admirable musical compositions very different in form and construction from our present ones. ”

“ Symmetry in music is much more exactly observed than in literary composition, even in verse, since music itself is a matter of time and vibration, and the proportionate and mathematical relation of parts belongs to the very essence of the art. Every musical form, therefore, whether large or small, consists essentially of one leading idea and of two or more subordinate ideas, brought in with whatever cleverness of treatment the composer may find convenient, and the whole turned over and diversified according to his fancy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Behind them one seems invariably to perceive some one sitting before a sheet of music paper and tampering with the art of music; seeking to discover what would result were he to accept as harmonic basis not the major triad but the minor ninth, to set two contradictory rhythms clashing, or to sharpen everything and maintain a geometric hardness of line. One always feels in them the intelligence setting forth deliberately to discover new musical form. ”

“ It appeared to me unnecessary to give definitions of musical terms made use of in the questions—such as interval, melody, harmony, etc.—which are to be found in every dictionary of the English language. Some terms, however, required an explanation to render them fully intelligible to those travellers who are but little acquainted with music. Of this kind are, for instance, the names of the different musical scales. The English missionaries, traders, merchants, consuls, and other residents in foreign countries, seldom possess any available knowledge of music. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When science comes and the nature of sound itself is understood as a property, instruments are invented and improved by the husbandry of mind until a great variety of musical instruments are developed; thus symphony grows from the soil of time. What, then, is symphony? It is a succession of melodies, every one of which is produced by a group of instruments, one of which may be that of the human voice. Now, as these instruments play in unison, one or another is selected to play the leading melody, and the other instruments are made to play subsidiary melodies in harmony with the leading melody. ”

“ With the musical sound given out by these vibrating strings must inevitably be mixed the dull and unmusical sound of the blow that set them vibrating. The trained ear will detect not only the thud of the hammer against the string, but that of the finger against the key, and that of the key itself upon its base. The study of touch and tone upon the piano is the study of the combination and the control of these two elements of sound, the one musical, the other unmusical. ”

“ In primitive states of music rhythmic sounds were heard, defined by the pulses but with little or no change of pitch, and sounds varying in pitch without regularity of impulse. A high degree of intellectuality was reached before our modern scales were evolved from long-continued attempts at making well-balanced successions of sounds. As musical art advanced rhythm and melodic expression became united. ”

“ An important principle of musical design is introduced to our notice by this little melody. It will be observed that it divides itself into three equal parts: the statement, measures 1-5; the contrast, measures 6-10; and the restatement, measures 11-15. (We may represent these by the letters A, B, and A.) Now these three parts, being of equal length and similar material, balance each other just as lines in poetry do. One makes us expect another, which, when it comes, fulfills our expectation. Thus we get the impression of regularity, order, symmetry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A harmonic form, like a metrical form, was always a cluster of tones that could be both associated and distinguished.
It was a long time before these two means of organizing sound were used in combination. Until the seventeenth century metrical form was chiefly used, quite naturally, to define the gesticulatory part of musical material, the product of active emotion, while harmonic form gave coherence to the vocal part, the product of contemplative or religious emotion. ”

“ The music pounds with the rhythm of engines, whirls and spirals like screws and fly-wheels, grinds and shrieks like laboring metal. The orchestra is transmuted to steel. Each movement of the ballet correlates the rhythms of machinery with the human rhythms which they prolong and repeat. ”

“ It is astonishing that in so complex and rapid a movement of the fingers the musical proportions can be preserved, and that throughout the difficult modulations on their various instruments the harmony is completed with so sweet a velocity, so unequal an equality, so discordant a concord, as if the chords sounded together fourths and fifths. ”

“ It has become a formidable engine of steel and gold, vibrant with mad and unexpected things. Patterns leap and tumble out of it. Violin music launches swiftly into space, trumpets run scales, the tempi move with the velocity of express trains. It has become a giant, terrible bird, the great auk of music, that seizes you in its talons and spirals into the empyrean. ”

“ Thus some of the qualities of programme music are found in absolute music, and vice versâ; there is no hard-and-fast line of division between the two. Even in the most mathematical music that ever pedant misconceived, a human accent will sometimes make itself heard; and even the most human music—the music that has its fount and origin and its final justification in the veracious expression of definite human feeling—must be bound together by some mathematical principle of form. But we all understand what we mean by the broad distinction of absolute and poetic music. ”

“ No one can ponder upon the above-mentioned harmonic foundation of the musical scale without conceiving a new idea of the beauty and significance of that glorious art and science which may be proved to be based upon laws decreed by the Almighty himself. The one consideration that, in all probability, no single musical sound comes to us alone, but each one is accompanied by its choir of ascending harmonic sequences, is sufficient to afford matter for many a wholesome and delightful meditation. ”

“ In this symphony, instruments speak a language whereof the world at no previous time had any knowledge; for here, with a hitherto unknown persistence, the purely musical expression enchains the hearer in an inconceivably varied mesh of nuances; rouses his inmost being to a degree unreachable by any other art ”

“ Music must be above all things melodiously beautiful. Our great composers bore this in mind, or acted upon it as a matter of course; hence the fascinating charms of their music. The euphony does not depend upon the consonant harmony prevailing in the composition; if this were the case, music would be the more euphonious the fewer dissonant chords it contains, and the major key would be more suitable for euphony than the minor key, since the major scale is founded upon the most simple relation of musical intervals yielding concords. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the other hand, the groups of metrical feet which constitute any one kind of verse are of a uniformity which for music on a large scale would be intolerable. Artistic music is soon compelled to draw upon infinite resources of its own, which preserve an appropriate accentuation of the sense and feeling, while obliterating or hugely exaggerating the poet’s rhythmic effects. Musical rhythm cannot be studied on a sound basis unless its radical divergences from speech rhythm are recognized from the outset. ”

“ As the pressure is increased, the air, passing through the holes, assumes a rhythmical beat, which soon becomes metamorphosed into musical notes. It is evident, therefore, that, by means of this instrument, the number of vibrations which produce a definite tone can be measured with absolute accuracy by any one who has an ear capable of appreciating a musical note. ”

“ When carefully scrutinized, the progress of music during the present century has been governed by certain leading principles which are not contradictory, although at first glance they might appear so. Since the time of the Netherlandish contrapuntists, the pri [Pg 499] mary impulse in musical creation has been the musical ideal—the creation of tonal fancies, novel, inspiring, musical, satisfactory. Out of this desire has arisen the entire fabric of fugue, sonata, symphony and the whole world of free music. ”