Musical transposition

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Among the few accidentals introduced into the older Part-books, we rarely find a Natural. Composers limited themselves to the use of the Sharp and Flat, in order to remove a trifling difficulty connected with the process of Transposition. It constantly happens, that, for the convenience of particular Singers, pieces, originally written in transposed Modes, are restored, in performance, to their natural pitch. ”

“ To state it still more unmistakably, we have to trace in the operations of the seventeenth century the origin of dramatic song, the beginnings of free instrumental music, the discovery of the art of voice training and the formation of what is called the "old Italian school of singing," and the operation of the representative element in music, together with the new forms created through its entrance into art.
The musical movement of this century in its entirety was a part of the general operation of mind, which was now of great amplitude and spontaneity. ”

“ Composers of genius are also inveterate strivers after perfection, are continually occupied in polishing and revising their music. And not all the modifications they make, or sanction, are recorded in the printed versions. For many are the outcome of after-thoughts, of ideas suggested during the process of what I have called transmuting musical hieroglyphics into sound. Such modifications, usually decided upon in the course of a rehearsal—I am now considering particularly operatic works—are frequently jotted down, a mere scanty memorandum, on the singer’s part or the conductor’s score. ”

“ We are, therefore, rapidly forming complex psychologic systems, side by side with our technical systems, which to the ancients would prove as strange and unaccountable as some of theirs do to us; or even still more strange, for the want of sympathy would not be entirely due to difference of musical temperament of scales, or to mere remoteness of period and nation, but to the use of harmony and simultaneous melodies that render our music bewilderingly complex in its structure to those nations who do not employ polyphony. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It may, at a first glance, appear singular that nations have not generally such traditional records respecting the originators of their vocal music as they have respecting the invention of their musical instruments. The cause is however explicable; to sing is as natural to man as to speak, and uncivilised nations are not likely to speculate whether singing has ever been invented. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ New melodic combinations spring from their interweaving, out of which new forms of musical expression emerge. If more parts are interwoven in the same free and independent manner, the apparatus of language is correspondingly enlarged, and becomes practically inexhaustible if, in addition, varieties of form and rhythm are introduced. Hence harmony becomes no longer a mere accompaniment of melody, but rather a potent agency for augmenting the richness and expressiveness of musical conversation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Incidentally, through readjustment of dynamic force, the viola gained individuality, and the strings were enabled to stand out in relief against the wind.
The general tendency of the era was one of universal musical progress in specialized instrumental writing. Homogeneity yielded to systematic harmonic progressions and well defined rhythm. Upon this basis, a unification of the dance movement, polyphony, and thematic treatment was effected in the following century. ”

“ Scientists teach us that certain sounds are adapted to conjunctive use as chords because of the mathematical relation existing between the vibrations, of which they are the audible results. They go on from this beginning through the gamut of musical learning, and close without having given us a key to interpretation; so music is, and must remain, an untranslatable language of the [190] soul, producing effects and inducing emotions, using the intellect as a medium only. ”

“ This is what makes modern harmony seem so much more difficult than it really is, for when the music comes to be heard, these formidable-looking intervals resolve themselves into something quite natural and generally not difficult of apprehension by a musical ear. Unfortunately we are compelled to learn music through the medium of a keyed instrument, generally through the most unmusical of instruments, the piano, and we learn theory largely through the eye and the reason instead of through the ear. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the absence from the ancient treatises of any but the most vague and obscure allusions to the production of accordant tones, and the conclusive evidence in respect to the general lack of freedom and development in musical art, is proof positive that, whatever concords of sounds may have been occasionally produced, nothing comparable to our present contrapuntal and harmonic system existed. ”

“ Recourse to discord will always be demanded in music; but it is a question as to what extent aperiodic sounds or noises are necessary. We have learned to accept the hisses, scratches, rattles, thuds, and bangs of countless varieties in musical tone. Some such accretions are present in the tone production of every instrument now in use. They have arisen as impediments in construction, but have come to be accepted as characteristics of the instrument and therefore have added greatly to the individuality of each instrument. ”

“ In a true polyphony not only has every tone of the leading voice a melodic character, but all the tones which sound together with it are themselves elements of other and independently moving melodies. Polyphony comprehends the most recondite elements of musical theory, but its essence consists of one leading concept—that of canonic imitation. The simplest form of this is furnished by that musical [Pg 150] construction known as "round," in which one voice leads off with a phrase, and immediately a second voice begins with the same melodic idea at the same pitch, and follows after. ”

“ Harmony arranges musical sounds with reference to their union, and is regulated by artistic and æsthetic rules and requirements. It has endless modes of transforming, inverting and intensifying its materials, thus continually affording new means of development. All the intervals and chords used in music had to be discovered, one by one. It often took more than a century to bring into a general use a chord effect introduced by some adventuresome spirit. ”

“ It is now safe to predict that the future instrument maker will be able to produce any sound now known in nature or in art that may possibly have musical significance. We already have at hand the means by which any such sound can be adequately defined, described, specified, measured, analyzed, and reconstructed. And there is reason to think that with the conquest of new and marvelous resources for musical media, musical composition will move with strides in step with instrument building. ”

“ Musical progress would seem to have taken a peculiar direction when a voice need be raised in defense of the old art of pure singing. Several famous writers on musical subjects would have us believe that the love of vocal melody is outgrown by one who reaches the heights of musical [Pg 368] development. This may be true; but if so, the world has not yet progressed so far. Music without melody may some day be written. But Mozart knew naught of it, nor Beethoven, nor Wagner. Melody is still beautiful, and never more lovely than when artistically sung by a beautiful voice. ”

“ Musical execution is only then art, only then infects, when the sound is neither higher nor lower than it should be, that is, when exactly the infinitely small center of the required note is taken; when that note is continued exactly as long as is needed; and when the strength of the sound is neither more nor less than is required. The slightest deviation of pitch in either direction, the slightest increase or decrease in time, or the slightest strengthening or weakening of the sound beyond what is needed, destroys the perfection and, consequently, the infectiousness of the work. ”

“ Instead of regarding our Tonal System as exhibiting the highest degree of perfection attainable, and of repudiating musical conceptions which reveal another foundation, as our musicians are apt to do, it would be more wise in them to study the various systems on which the music of different nations is founded, to acquaint themselves especially with the characteristics of the various scales, and, by adopting them on proper occasions, to produce new effects more refreshing than the hackneyed phrases and modulations which usually pervade their works. ”

“ It is difficult to realize what extraordinary enrichment in musical resources may spring up under the impetus of new instrumental resources. There will be new treatments of scales and intervals, since the pitch control will be far more flexible than it has been. Perhaps one of the largest innovations will be in the freer use of intonation not built on any particular scale but soaring with the greatest freedom on an instrument as we now hear it, for example, in the singing of Negro spirituals. ”

“ It will be observed that certain questions pre-suppose a somewhat advanced state of civilization—as, for instance, those referring to musical notation, instruction, literature, etc. There are several extra-European nations—as the Japanese, Chinese, Hindus, etc.—which have advanced so far in the cultivation of music as to render these questions necessary; and it would be very desirable to possess more detailed information concerning the method pursued by these [Pg 25] nations in the cultivation of the art than is at present available. ”

“ The invention and perfection of musical instruments are coincident with the rise and progress of the system of melody known as “modern music,” the organ and piano holding the mastery. To these are due, in great measure, the universal cultivation of the modern tonality, and the consequent loss of appreciation of the tonality of the ecclesiastical modes. ”