Popular music

“ The music itself may be very fine,—competent critics declare it is, and I have no doubt they are right; but I say, unhesitatingly, it is not music that addresses itself to popular tastes, or produces any feeling save that of weariness on nine-tenths of its hearers. ”

“ But small as they are, their playing is one of the wonders of the neighbourhood, and the delight of all who have had the good fortune to hear them. These diminutive artists execute classical music, as well as music of a lighter character, with a vigour and precision, and a finished taste and expression that are nearly incredible, and should be heard to be believed. ”

“ The fact of the matter is that popular music is usually built up on one of a few well-recognized formulæ. It does what you expect it to do. Not consciously, but by association, we have learned to accept certain “patterns” in music as we have learned to expect certain patterns in clothes. Since there is nothing essentially different in any of them, they are easy to learn and so—easy to get tired of. ”

“ Also the popular stories, of which a selection is given in the present work, testify to the universally-felt power of music. In many of the stories miraculous effects are ascribed to music. What stronger proof can be cited of its intense impression upon the human heart than the popularity of such conceptions traditionally preserved through centuries! ”

“ It is the same genius, so exquisitely mournful, tender, and glowing, too, with the finest enthusiasm, that makes their national music, in these respects, the finest in the world. It is the music of the harp ”

“ On the one side we have the claim that music is the all-sufficient law unto itself; that its appeal to sympathy is through the intrinsic sweetness of harmony and tune, and the intellect must be satisfied with what it may accidentally glean in this harvest-field; that, in the rapture experienced in the sensuous apperception of its beauty, lies the highest phase of art-sensibility. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Leaving this actual experience and its effects on the community, let us ask ourselves what this singing means to the individuals who do it. In the first place, it makes articulate something within them which never finds expression in words or acts. In the second place, it permits them to create beauty instead of standing outside it. Or, to speak still more definitely, it not only gives them an intimate familiarity with some great compositions, but it accustoms them to the technique by means of which music expresses itself. ”

“ As we appreciate it to-day, music lends itself readily to our definition of art. It is a personal expression—who, when listening to music which he enjoys, does not feel himself poured forth in the tones? It is social and public—what brings us together under the sway of a common emotion more effectively than concert or opera? ”

“ Are you not ashamed to tell me that in that art you do but utter the thoughts of others? You utter them in music; through the music you not only give to the thoughts a new character, but you make them reproductive of fresh thoughts in your audience. ”

“ If there was a true feeling for music, there would be more genius for that charming art, and there would be more composers of original airs, the number of which, in our country, is smaller than in any civilized nation in the world. ”

“ Let us suppose that considered under its most general aspect, the music—the good music—of this recent and contemporary period does not altogether satisfy us. Let us suppose that with its admirable qualities of nobility, style, sincerity, delicacy, expressive sublety, learned ingenuity, sound work, it yet does not appear up to now to realise the idea or the dream that we cherish of the true song of our race. ”

“ This article, then, expresses my conviction that the average American man or woman is potentially musical. I believe the world of music to be a true democracy. I am convinced that our chief need is to make music ourselves. ”

“ The charms of music consist in the union and harmony of its parts; and when executed by scienced performers, it swells into a melody that holds in spellbound admiration all the finer and more elevated feelings of the soul. But the path that leads to the summit where the flowery charms of this science are wafted on the breath of our most skilful performers, and fall on your ears with such pleasing accents, is winding, steep, and rugged ”

“ Their appreciation of nature, and their reverence, ambition, and pertinacity fitted them to become the especial guardians of the arts, and their comparative class equality enabled them to fulfil the requirements of my theory that music can only flourish in a widely diffused interest and knowledge. It must breathe a genial and suggestive atmosphere. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In such situations the musical appeal may lie for one person in the verbal message or the overt action and for another, purely in the musical appeal. Yet both words and action on the one hand and music on the other are enriched through the association. ”

“ The growth and ever-increasing popularity of the opera, the development of civilization, the increase of wealth and the population of new countries, have led not only to the highest{12} cultivation of the human voice, wherein music exerts its greatest power of fascination, but have brought forward hundreds of competitors for the artistic laurels which are the reward of those who reach the highest state of musical perfection. ”

“ The amount of music in a community and the public interest in its musical entertainments are among the most significant indices of its general culture and progressiveness. Where there is music there is life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus, beneath the roots of the drama, lay seeds of the historic novel, the romantic epic, which were to take its place to the reader, and for the scene, the oratorios, the opera, and ballet.
Music is the great art of the time. Its dominion is constantly widening, its powers are more profoundly recognized. In the forms it has already evolved, it is equal to representing any subject, can address the entire range of thoughts and emotions. ”

“ There could be no question as to the utter incongruity of any dramatic picture of ordinary events, or ordinary personages, finding expression in musical utterance. Genuine and profound art must always be consistent with itself, and what we recognize as general truth. Even characters set in the comparatively near hack-ground of history are too closely related to our own familiar surroundings of thought and mood to be regarded as artistically natural in the use of music as the organ of the every-day life of emotion and sentiment. ”

“ And if you say that the great masters did not write music suitable for little children, I reply that such music has nevertheless been produced by all races in their childhood, that it exists in profusion, that it is commonly known as “folk-song,” that it is the basis upon which much of the greatest music in the world rests, and, finally, that it is the natural and, indeed, the inevitable means of approach to such great music. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There{151} have been others who used the acted drama and the lyric, like Shakespeare; or words and music—”
“Let us see how your thesis works out with music,” says Mrs. Ogi.
Up to the end of the eighteenth century music has been either an adjunct of religious propaganda, or else a leisure-class plaything and decoration. The musicians are commanded to come and entertain their lords and masters, while the latter feast and dance and gossip. The musician as an artist, a lover of beauty for its own sake, exists at his own peril. ”

“ But this much is, I think, certain, that after a comparatively advanced standard of culture has once been attained, music is the readiest if not the only key which admits to the yet narrower circle of the highest imaginative thought. ”

“ I have seen rough low-class men and women leave their active games or the swing for which they had been waiting and cluster round the singer or musician begging for another and yet ‘another bit.’ What they like best is a song with a chorus, or historical songs where they can hear the words, and next to these solemn music on a harmonium or organ; but any music charms them, and the hostess who is either musical herself or who invites her musical friends to help her finds the task of entertaining much easier. ”

“ In spite of the peculiar position of America with regard to artistic individuality, then, we may be justified in treating the story of American creative musical art in the usual manner—beginning with folk-song. ”

“ Every character, male and female, is “passionately fond of music.” Which means? That the readers of this stuff consider a passionate love of music to be fashionable. It is so easy, you see, to possess it. There is no need to study either musical theory, practice, history, or biography. An inane expression of vacuous content when music is being rendered, a quantity of rhapsodical rubbish about Chopin and Beethoven without any knowledge of either, and behold! a lover of music. ”

“ Music extracts and embodies only the spirit of the doctrine, that inmost life of it which all feel, and miraculously revivifies and transfigures the cold statements of the understanding with the warm faith of feeling. In music there. is no controversy; in music there are no opinions: its springs are deeper than the foundations of any of these partition wails, and its breath floats undivided over all their heads. ”

“ Once we have understood what these means are, we can enquire to what extent they are employed in the music of various schools and epochs, and thus judge, with some chance of likelihood, whether the music which strikes us as serene and vigorous could have affected our ancestors as turbid and enervating.
'Tis a dull enough psychological examination; but one worth making, not merely for the sake of music itself, but because music, being the most emotional of all the arts, can serve to typify the good or mischief which all art may do, according to which of our emotions it fosters. ”

“ Of the influence,—whether salutary or injurious,—which music has upon the general character,—when cultivated, to great refinement, and so universally as almost to become a part of the habit of daily social life,—it is not, at present, the place to speak. But of its temporary influence, as a source of tranquillizing delight, there can be no doubt,—nor, perhaps too, of its occasional efficacy, in exciting emotions of a stronger kind, when peculiar circumstances may have predisposed to them in a very high degree. ”

“ By the 16th century music had grown so much that every sentiment of the human heart and every occupation of life had its own song: students, soldiers, pedlars, apprentices all had their songs. These are folk songs of Class A, because their composers forgot to leave their names and no musical archæologist has been able to dig them up. ”

“ They weave the pattern closer, seeking to express in paint a psychology that is only possible in literature. And they endeavour to imitate music with its haunting suggestiveness, its thematic vagueness, its rhythmic swiftness and splendour of tonalities. ”

“ Thus if, as we have endeavoured to show, it is the function of music to facilitate the development of this emotional language, we may regard music as an aid to the achievement of that higher happiness which it indistinctly shadows forth. Those vague feelings of unexperienced felicity which music arouses—those indefinite impressions of an unknown ideal life which it calls up, may be considered as a prophecy, to the fulfilment of which music is itself partly instrumental. ”

“ Happy they, whose full souls can lighten their secret burdens by the low musical plaint, understood only by those who have themselves loved and suffered! [Pg 257] Of how many tried and aching hearts has music been the eloquent voice? The ruffled brow grows smooth beneath its influence ”

“ This love of music for its cognitive value can be traced from the earliest musical achievements, as in the growing acquaintance with song, sight reading, qualifications for participation in music, and appreciation of art forms, throughout all stages in the musical development of the individual up to that of the highest interpreters and creators of music. ”

“ 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. ”