Musical movement

“ Yet we shall find that each act of the drama has a clear and symmetrical musical shape, and that although this form is prescribed by the emotional movement, it is none the less grounded upon the fundamental laws of musical form. ”

“ Skill in production is part of it, but not all, for the same elements: colour, light, sound, movement, can be combined into other forms which lack that particular air of urbanity, of well-being, of rich contentment and interest which is the special atmosphere of musical shows. ”

“ Yet now a human hand has gathered us from moor and mountain and lonely fell, and side by side we lie and give out music to the hand that strikes us. Thus we, who had lain for centuries unconscious that there was a note of music in our hearts, answer one another in melodious tones, and combine in rich chords, just because we have been brought together. Union makes us musical," said the Rocks. ”

“ Moreover, the discipline of music is diffused through all the acts of our life. For when we keep the commandments of God, and observe His law, it is certain that our words and acts are associated by musical rhythm with the virtues of harmony. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Once more, the question—How is the expressiveness of music to be otherwise accounted for? may be supplemented by the question—How is the genesis of music to be otherwise accounted for? That music is a product of civilization is manifest; for though savages have their dance-chants, these are of a kind scarcely to be dignified by the title musical: at most, they supply but the vaguest rudiment of music, properly so called. And if music has been by slow steps developed in the course of civilization, it must have been developed out of something. ”

“ If your delineation be authentically musical, musical not in word only, but in heart and substance, in all the thoughts and utterances of it, in the whole conception of it, then it will be poetical; if not, not.—Musical: how much lies in that! A musical thought is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated into the inmost heart of the thing; detected the inmost mystery of it, namely the melody that lies hidden in it; the inward harmony of coherence which is its soul, whereby it exists, and has a right to be, here in this world. All inmost things, we may say, are melodious ”

“ Every living leaf of mine had melody, and all together made a stream of many-voiced music; whilst around me were countless living trees like myself, who woke at every dawn to a chorus in the morning breeze. But since the axe was laid at our roots, all the music has gone from our branches. We are useful still, they say, in the gallant ship, and our country mentions us with honour even in death; but the music has gone from us with life for ever, and we can only groan and creak in the storms. Life made us musical," said the Oak-beam.
What makes creatures musical? ”

“ And so in the nineteenth century men came to feel that beautiful music cannot be merely contemplated and admired, but must be lived with and felt. Accordingly composers of this period emphasized continually the sensuous in their music, developing orchestral colors, dazzling masses of tone, intense harmonies and biting dissonances, delicate half-lights of modulation, and the [Pg 221] deep magic of human song. The change in attitude from music as a thing to be admired to music as a thing to be felt is perhaps the chief musical fact of the early nineteenth century. ”

“ For when the musical meaning is specialized through the emotions that are the burden of the song, it necessarily loses the power which it would otherwise have of expressing one's own inner life—once more, what it gains in definiteness it loses in scope. It no longer possesses the unique function of the musical. ”

“ During those eleven Christian centuries, from the latter part of the fourth century, when the corner-stone for our musical system was laid, until the wonderful exploration period of the fifteenth was well advanced, the masters of music were absorbed in controlling the elements of their art. Since then event has crowded upon event with rapidly increasing ratio. During the past two centuries the progress of the art has been like a tale in fairyland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Indeed, it would seem that the time has not yet come for attempts to be made to improve upon the works of those great musical luminaries; for they have left too much that is deep, classical, charmingly beautiful, and soul-satisfying. The musical world has paused, not caring to go farther, to conscientiously study their noble creations, so fruitful in the delights, the soul-elevating influences, which they afford. ”

“ In reading the lives of these great musical composers, we can trace the gradual development of music from its earliest days as an art and as a science. Unlike the other arts which have flourished, decayed, and had rebirth, music, as we now understand it, sprang into being out of the ferment of the Renaissance, and therefore is the youngest of the arts—a modern growth belonging particularly to the later phases of civilisation. ”

“ As the vocal aria was the result of the simple folk-song combined with the intense craving of song's master molders for individual expression, so instrumental music striving to walk alone, without support from words, gained vital elements through the discovery that various phases of mental disposition might be indicated by alternating dance tunes differing in rhythm and movement, according to Nature's own law of contrasts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many more examples from nations in different stages of civilization could be cited evidencing the remarkable variety and instability of musical taste. Much of our own music, which about a century ago was greatly admired, appears [Pg 240] now unimpressive; and great masters who introduce important innovations are sure at first not to be understood by the majority of musical people. ”

“ It is then the less surprising, though it is surprising still, that they were contented in their music to gratify their sense of melody and rhythm, without exploring the mines of musical enjoyment which have been opened to modern audiences by the discoverers of counterpoint and harmony. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These principles, universally recognized as governing in the other fine arts, are equally valid in music. As will be seen later, all musical progress has been toward their more complete attainment and their due co-ordination into a single satisfactory whole. Every musical form that has ever been created is an effort to solve this problem ”

“ The aspect of importance here, in short, is the varied motion of the music simply, the ups and downs of the harmony or melody, the stream of sound through its degrees of opposition, preponderance, emphasis, acuteness or vivacity, the elaboration of a melodic phrase in every respect that is suitable to the means of musical art, the musician-like fusion of all the instruments as one ensemble of tone, or in their succession, alternation, and emphatic display of themselves and each other. ”

“ Alighting on nearby trees, they sing with a hearty vengeance, bursting out without any puttering prelude in gloriously glad concert, hundreds or thousands of exulting voices with sweet gurgling _baumpalees_ mingled with chippy vibrant and exploding globules of musical notes, making a most enthusiastic, indescribable joy-song, a combination unlike anything to be heard elsewhere in the bird kingdom; something like bagpipes, flutes, violins, pianos, and human-like voices all bursting and bubbling at once. ”

“ We referred at some length, in the chapter on "The Dance and Its Development," to this germination of musical thought as of the greatest importance in composition. The reader will readily understand that the highest form of an art like music, in which the element of time enters as a vital matter—in which the message of the composer comes to us in successive sounds—must depend on something more than the beauty of its several and successive melodies. ”

“ To the lawgivers, the signs themselves are the most important matter, and are continually growing in their estimation; the new art of music is derived from the old signs—and these now stand for musical art itself. ”

“ But at moments I do appreciate music as pure musical form, as sounds combined according to the laws of a mysterious necessity, as pure art with a tremendous significance of its own and no relation whatever to the significance of life; and in those moments I lose myself in that infinitely sublime state of mind to which pure visual form transports me. How inferior is my normal state of mind at a concert. Tired or perplexed, I let slip my sense of form, my aesthetic emotion collapses, and I begin weaving into the harmonies, that I cannot grasp, the ideas of life. ”

“ Therefore, concludes the syllogism, it matters nothing as to the character of the libretto or poem to whose words the music is arranged, so long as the dramatic framework suffices as a support for the flowery festoons of song, which drape its ugliness and beguile attention by the fascinations of bloom and grace. On the other hand, the apostles of the new musical philosophy insist that art is something more than a vehicle for the mere sense of the beautiful, an exquisite provocation wherewith to startle the sense of a selfish, epicurean pleasure ”

“ It matters little from what point we view the tendency of musical art as it is disclosed to our vision through its most potent manifestations. We are driven inward upon the central and all-important question, How far can music go in the direction of depicting things which lie outside itself? Is it to convert itself into a language, or shall it sink into a kind of rapt mysticism which shall be accepted in a vague way as a species of philosophic speculation? ”

“ It was important to give a definite description of it, for it seems in this connection above all else necessary to furnish the details and essentials of a music, which, in [60] contrast with our European musical creations in their accepted forms, is a world in itself, in harmony, rhythm, melody and instrumentation, and one which we recognize as wonderfully fanciful and rich in color and yet full of the germs of life. ”

“ It is, of course, obvious that our analysis has confined itself to the barest elements of the musical experience. Our music to-day, with its many-voiced harmonies, with its procession of chords instead of single tones, with its modulation into related keys, has an infinite wealth and complexity defying description. A large part of the astonishing effect of music is derived from the fact that in a brief space we seem to hear and absorb so much: the careers of multitudinous lives compressed into an instant. ”

“ I have little doubt, therefore, that they will soon find that “music is so combined with things sacred and important, as well as with our pleasures, that it seems necessary to our existence:” they will then quickly become friends to organs, and next to operas. ”

“ 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. ”