Musical theme

“ In short, melody is the surface of music.
We may here define a few technicalities which may be said to come more definitely under the head of melody than any other; but see also Harmony and Rhythm.
1. A theme is a melody, not necessarily or even usually complete, except when designed for a set of variations (q.v.) , but of sufficient independent coherence to be, so to speak, an intelligible musical sentence. Thus a fugue-subject is a theme, and the first and second subjects in sonata form are more or less complex groups of themes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Music, using sound for its material, is a pattern-weaving in tones. The power of music to satisfy and delight resides in the sensuous value of its material and in the character of its pattern as form, the balance and contrast of tonal relations, the folding and unfolding of themes, their development and progress to the final compelling unity-in-variety which constitutes its form and which in its own inherent and self-sufficing way is made the expression of the composer's emotion and musical idea. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Music and life.—Having a sensory foundation capable of reacting to the best music, this man opens wide the portals of his world for the reception of the orchestra, the concert, the opera, and the choir, and his spirit revels in the “concord of sweet sounds.” Through the toil of the day he anticipates the music of the evening, and the next day he goes to his work buoyant and rejuvenated by reason of the musical refreshment. He has music in anticipation and music in retrospect, and thus his world is regaled with harmony. ”

“ Incapable of feeling the austere emotions of art, I begin to read into the musical forms human emotions of terror and mystery, love and hate, and spend the minutes, pleasantly enough, in a world of turbid and inferior feeling. At such times, were the grossest pieces of onomatopoeic representation—the song of a bird, the galloping of horses, the cries of children, or the laughing of demons—to be introduced into the symphony, I should not be offended. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ No other art is able to inflict such merciless suffering! Under the name of music we are afflicted with every variety of noise, including the hand organ, the bagpipes, the German band, the man who toots the cornet in the street, the harp man, the lady who has seen better days and who sings before our house in the evening, the active piano-organ invented by a heartless genius, the musical box and all its amazing progenies, the gramophone and the pianola. ”

“ For here we have scores of melodies which, although cast in scales long since discarded by the art-musician, nevertheless throb with the pulse of life and make a strong appeal to modern musical taste and feeling. ”

“ I can no longer separate myself from it, but with impetuous rapture I must reproduce it in all modulations, and, in the final moment, I triumph over the musical idea—and that, you see, is a symphony! Yes, music is truly the mediator between the spiritual and the sensuous world. ”

“ And if such feeling-tones exist independently from harmony it is evident that they would enter into every melody in addition to the strictly musical feelings of harmony and that they deserve consideration as a factor of music. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It must be shaped, and strung, and kept carefully in tune; no easy matter in surroundings little suited to delicate instruments and delicate music. Possessing it, we possess, in the only true sense of possession, the whole world. For going along our way, whether rough or even, there are formed within us, singing the beauty and wonder of what is or what should be, mysterious sequences and harmonies of notes, new every time, answering to the primæval everlasting affinities between ourselves and all things; our souls becoming musical under the touch of the universe. ”

“ This second and higher "soul" significance shows itself in the emotional appeal of the music, in the feelings it provokes and the mood it engenders. Here sound speaks in parables with an outer story and an inner meaning. The non-musical person hears sounds, but the musical mind hears sense. Whether the tidings be of sweetness, affection, or delight, of strength, vigour, or energy, of sorrow or regret, there is all the difference in the world between the outward comprehension and the inner interpretation. The formal part of the music is the frame, but the emotion supplies the picture within. ”

“ The second cause for the concreteness of the musical experience I take to be certain emotions and feelings which are aroused by association, not with the rhythmic elements of music alone, but with the tone-color, intensity, and melody also. There is a human quality, a poignancy and intimacy, about much music, which can be understood only through its analogy with the sounds of the human voice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ I have carried through life, without any sort of musical gift, and with a very imperfect apprehension of tonality, harmony, and the refinements and complexities of musical expression, this keen sensibility to the emotional effect of certain lovely rhythms and simple curves of notes. ”

“ Its tones of melody and harmony require only to be heard in order to awaken in the breast emotions the most delightful. And yet who can speak at all of an agency so charming in other than words of warmest praise? Again: if music be a thing of such consummate beauty, what else can be done but to tender an offering of praise, and even of gratitude, to those, who, by the invention of most pleasing combinations of tones, melodies, and harmonies, or by great skill in vocal or instrumental performance, so signally help us to the fullest understanding and enjoyment of it? ”

“ We in some sort listen to such music as we do to the pleasing murmur of a neighbouring brook, the whisper of the passing breeze, or the distant warblings of the lark and nightingale; and if agreeable natural voices have the power of soothing the contemplative mind, without interrupting its contemplations, simple musical effusions must assuredly have that power in a superior degree. ”

“ In both cases the immediate appeal is to the feelings and the imagination, without recourse to intervening 283 imagery borrowed from external nature. Both embody the cry of one soul to another, and they are not widely divergent in quality or effect. Language at its highest is almost song, and music at its best is idealized declamation. All good poetry must be musical. It should, as we say, sing itself; and all good music must be poetical, conveying a distinctly poetic impression.
To me every poem presupposes a possible musical setting, and every worthy composition, a possible poetic text. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Inasmuch as, therefore, musical expression has for its content the inward life itself, the ideal significance of fact and emotion, and a tone-world which, at least in art, does not proceed to spatial configuration, and in its sensuous existence is wholly evanescent, it follows that music directly penetrates with its movements to the ideal habitat of all the fluctuations of soul-life. ”

“ Music proper. Sounds may be woven into beautiful patterns. This is music. We admire the melodic progressions, the rhythmic patterns, the harmonic structure, and the qualitative modulations in the flow of beautiful sounds. Harmony, balance, symmetry, contrast and fusions become embodied in musical form. Here the object of our affections is the artistic creation. The place of the musician is quite analogous to the astronomer's feeling of the sublime as he looks into the heavens in the light of his knowledge of the nature and movement of heavenly bodies. ”

“ The great charm of these singers will, however, remain in the reproduction of the melodies of an era that has gone, happily never to return,—melodies which were the natural expression of the fancies and sympathies of an emotional race, and which no musical culture or refinement can ever render with the sweet simplicity and charming grace that flow from the lips of those to whom they are the native music. ”

“ MUSIC.— Music is, of and in itself, not so significant for our inner world, nor so profoundly exciting, that it can be said to count as the immediate language of feeling; but its primeval union with poetry has deposited so much symbolism into rhythmic movement, into the varying strength and volume of musical sounds, that we now suppose it to speak directly to the inner world and to come from the inner world. Dramatic music becomes possible only when the tonal art has conquered an enormous domain of symbolic means, through song, opera and a hundred experiments in tone-painting. ”

“ With few exceptions music has been for some centuries the art which has devoted itself not to the reproduction of natural phenomena, but rather to the expression of the artist's soul, in musical sound. ”

“ An unusually emotional nature being thus the general characteristic of musical composers, we have in it just the agency required for the development of recitative and song. Any cause of excitement will generate just those exaggerations which we have found to distinguish the lower vocal music from emotional speech, and the higher vocal music from the lower. ”

“ It is not agreed as to whether birds can appreciate music. They respond to it, and even imitate it, as in the case of the mocking bird, but we cannot be sure that their singing is for “pure joy,” or for the love of the melody rendered. With the majority of men we know that musical tones arranged in melody or harmony act as original satisfiers, by and in themselves. “Music hath power to soothe the savage breast.” ”