Musical variation

“ Music transports us to a different region. It imitates nothing. It uses pure sound, and sound of the most wholly artificial kind—so artificial that the musical sounds of one race are unmusical, and therefore unintelligible, to another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have to assume, in the first place, the correctness of their 'musical ear,' and in the second place, the possibility of expressing in European notation those delicate shades of pitch and time in which the characteristics of primitive music so essentially consist. ”

“ Primitive peoples frequently do sing and play, quite intentionally, tones out of conformity with scale tones of present-day concert music. Such tones cannot be represented by our musical notation without resort to special signs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This progress has gone on until the present time, when two particulars of our music are exactly recorded—the pitch and the rhythm. The exact relation of every tone to the key note is ascertainable from our musical notation, and the precise degree of rhythmic importance appertaining to each tone according to its place in measure and in the larger rhythms. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even the actual musical formulas, such as the entry of the voices in imitation, produce, in the right place, such a direct and vivid effect that they appear to have been invented for the special case. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When musical taste has passed from a sentimental intoxication with the sensuous beauty of the sounds themselves, the beauty we admire is primarily beauty of form or structure. The musical connoisseur likes to trace the recurrence of a theme in a symphony, its deviations and disappearances, its distribution in the various choirs of wood-wind, brass, and strings, its interweaving with other themes, its resilient, surprising, and apposite emergences, its pervasive penetration of the total scheme. ”

“ If now we set out to glance over the circumstances which have eventually brought about the present condition of music in America, we find that this history, taken in its largest outlines, has a threefold aspect, the features of which may be roughly termed appreciation, creation, and administration. The degree in which the new world has grasped and understood the facts of musical development in the old must constitute a chief factor in any consideration of its musical evolution, and this subject will naturally include a reference to musical culture in America. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Form is felt as an immediate joy. Structure it is which many critics have in mind when they speak of form, and it is the confusion between the two which makes such an antithesis of musical beauty and sensuous material possible. The real musical beauty, it is clear, is in the melodic idea; in the sequence of tones which are indissolubly one, which are felt together, one of which cannot exist without the other. Musical beauty is in the intrinsic musical form. And yet here, too, we must admit, that, in the last analysis, structure and form need not be different. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus music passed beyond the stage of working for itself as a development of musical forms or science of construction, and became more and more, in opera, the expression of individualities and moods. At the same time that this tendency was working for making the music more expressive, the necessity of pleasing the public tended also in the opposite direction of pleasing the hearer by means of agreeable combinations of tone-colors, delightful symmetries of tone-forms, and the like. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Song had its peculiar musical character, and the human voice, alone or in a chorus, might be regarded as the type of instrumental music, rendered more effective by the words which expressed the ideas and sentiments of such songs by harmonizing the various vocal instruments in accordance with their tones and varying timbre. Instrumental music, by the melodious harmony of artificial sounds, had however a vast field peculiar to itself, and an existence independent of the human voice. ”

“ It is only through such conflict that the profounder combinations and mysteries of music in which an independent necessity reposes, discovers their source and ground; and for the same reason it is only in such profounder harmonic progressions that the arresting moments of melody originate. A bold style of musical composition will consequently part company with a purely consonant progression. ”

“ Only when the ideas are no longer preconceived, when, in other words, a large body of music of all kinds will have brought a secure tradition into being, then the American musical profile will emerge and the question of American style or character assume meaning. ”

“ It presents all the characteristics we are accustomed to [pg 87] in freer musical forms: a flowing and distinctive melody, ease, clarity, and facility in the progression of the parts, inexhaustible variety of modulation, purest harmony, the exclusion of every jarring or unnecessary note, unity of form and variety of style, rhythm, and measure, and such superabundant animation that the hearer may well ask himself whether every note is not actually alive. ”