Studies in modern music, second series
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Title: Studies in modern music, second series
Frederick Chopin, Antonin Dvořák, Johannes Brahms
Author: W. H. Hadow
Release date: May 23, 2012 [eBook #39771]
Most recently updated: November 29, 2023
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN MODERN MUSIC, SECOND SERIES ***
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Henry Flower and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: Frederick Chopin.]
STUDIES
IN MODERN MUSIC
_SECOND SERIES_
_FREDERICK CHOPIN ANTONIN DVOŘÁK
JOHANNES BRAHMS_
BY
W. H. HADOW, M.A.
_Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford_
FIFTH EDITION
LONDON
SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED
38 Great Russell Street
1904
Dedicated to
C. F.
_CONTENTS_
OUTLINES OF MUSICAL FORM
CHAP. PAGE
I.--FACULTIES OF APPRECIATION, 3
II.--STYLE AND STRUCTURE, 26
III.--FUNCTION, 57
FREDERICK CHOPIN
I.--WARSAW, 79
II.--PARIS--AND AN EPISODE, 111
III.--A LYRIC POET, 147
ANTONIN DVOŘÁK
I.--DAYS OF PREPARATION, 173
II.--DURCH KAMPF ZU LICHT, 190
III.--NATIONAL AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS, 210
JOHANNES BRAHMS
I.--GROWTH, 229
II.--MATURITY, 250
III.--THE DIRECTION OF THE NEW PATHS, 274
INDEX,
_LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS_
PAGE
FREDERICK CHOPIN, _from a drawing by_ WINTERHALTER, _Frontispiece_
FREDERICK CHOPIN, _from a drawing made after death, by_ GRAEFLE, 144
ANTONIN DVOŘÁK, _from a photograph by_ DURAS, 190
JOHANNES BRAHMS, _from a photograph_, 250
_NOTE_
The following works have been consulted for the present volume:--
Dr Parry--'The Art of Music.'
Sir George Grove--'Dictionary of Music and Musicians,'
particularly Mr Fuller-Maitland's article
on Dvořák.
'Life of Chopin,' by Liszt.
'Life and Letters of Chopin,' by Moritz Karasowski.
'Life of Chopin,' by Professor Niecks.
'Chopin,' by Charles Willeby.
'Chopin and other Essays,' by Henry T. Finck.
'Les trois Romans de Chopin,' by Count Wodzinski.
'Musical Studies,' by Dr Hueffer.
George Sand--'Histoire de ma vie.'
George Sand--'Correspondance.'
George Sand--'Un Hiver à Majorque.'
George Sand--'Lucrezia Floriani.'
George Sand--'Elle et Lui.'
P. de Musset--'Lui et Elle.'
'George Sand,' by E. Caro.
'George Sand,' by Bertha Thomas.
'George Sand,' by Matthew Arnold.[1]
Sainte Beuve--'Portraits Contemporains.'
Delacroix--'Lettres.'
Heine--'Lutetia.'
Henry James--'French Poets and Novelists.'
E. Zola--'Documents Litteraires.'
'Journal des Goncourt.'
'Une Contemporaine,' by M. Brault.
'Antonin Dvořák,' by Dr Zubaty.
'Antonin Dvořák,' by H. E. Krehbiel. (Century, Sept. 1892.)
'Antonin Dvořák,' by J. J. Kral. (Music; Chicago; Oct. 1893.)
'Antonin Dvořák,' by Dr Stecker. (New Bohemian Encyclopædia.)
E. Chvala--'Ein Vierteljahrhundert Böhmischer Musik.'
'Johannes Brahms,' by Dr Deiters.
'Johannes Brahms,' by Bernhard Vogel.
'Johannes Brahms in seinen Werken,' by E. Krause.
J. A. Fuller-Maitland--'Masters of German Music.'
Dr Spitta--'Zur Musik.'
Dr Ehrlich--'Dreissig Jahre Künstlerleben.'
The writer wishes to express his most cordial thanks to Mr E. W.
Hennell, for permission to use the two portraits of Chopin; to Herr E.
Mandyczewski, Librarian of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde at Vienna,
for assistance in the study of newspaper records and other documents; to
Messrs Mourek Naprstek, and Zubaty, for aid and advice in the Libraries
at Prague; and to M. Subert, Director of the Czech National Theatre, for
permission to consult, in its Library, the scores of Dvořák's
Operas.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Originally published in the _Fortnightly Review_ for June 1877,
Reprinted in 'Mixed Essays.'
OUTLINES OF MUSICAL FORM
Non leve quiddam interest inter humanæ mentis idola et divinæ mentis
ideas; hoc est, inter placita quædam inania et veras signaturas atque
impressiones factas in creaturis, prout inveniuntur.--BACON.
I
FACULTIES OF APPRECIATION
It is only natural that a systematic induction should present itself
somewhat late in the history of Science. At first, when the world is
new, the process of exploration must necessarily be hazardous and
tentative: the discoverer must walk with uncertain steps, and must find
his way by the sole aid of his own personal qualities. Hence his method
is a part of himself, and can no more be communicated than keenness of
sight, or delicacy of touch, or rapidity of instinct; he reaches his
conclusions with only a half-consciousness of the road by which they
have been attained, and imparts his results more as separate individual
dogmas than as interdependent parts of an ordered and coherent scheme.
His followers, dazzled by the brilliance of his intellect, and
unprovided with any test for distinguishing between facts and fancies,
accept everything that he has said, and carry on the work, not by any
presumptuous attempt to map out the ground that he has already covered,
but by deducing further application of his laws and further development
of his principles. It may be that the route which he suggested was
purely conjectural; they follow it loyally in the full confidence that
it will bring them to the goal. It may be that some assertion was a mere
hypothesis--a rough and ready explanation which its propounder never
lived to correct; none the less, they take it as axiomatic, and force
the facts into compliance by some subtle and ingenious interpretation of
its terms. The master's word is paramount, and if he and Nature
disagree, it is so much the worse for Nature.
For a time, no doubt, there is a real value in this attitude of
subservience--this unquestioning acknowledgment of the prescriptive
rights of genius. In science, as in political history, it is good that
the earlier steps should be autocratic, and that men should not claim a
share in the constitution until they have in some measure qualified
themselves for its exercise. When the state is small, a posture of
constant criticism is dangerous; when the populace is ignorant, it will
pass no very reasonable judgments upon the code. But as the area widens,
and the mental activity increases, it becomes more and more impossible
to accept as law the untested utterances of an absolute monarch:
subjects begin to feel their power and to arrogate their due position;
they wish to understand the system which they obey, and, it may be, to
revise such of its injunctions as have grown outworn or obsolete, until
at last they find their champion, and some _Novum Organum_ appears as
the constituted representative of the popular voice. And so the story
passes into its third and final stage; the judge himself is tried before
a jury of the people at large, his enactments are criticised point by
point, and his administration remodelled upon a charter of liberty to
which all succeeding kings are amenable.
It is hardly necessary to say that such criticism, if it is to be of any
avail, must be moderate in tone and reverent in spirit. The inductive
method does not 'equalise all intellects'; there will still be contrasts
of hill and valley in the levels of the human mind; there will still be
peaks of genius standing, remote and solitary, above the snow line. But
it is equally certain that criticism is idle unless it be entirely
honest and fearless. When it is uncertain, it should confess its
uncertainty without reserve; when it is opposed by some consensus of
great names, it should be prepared to acknowledge itself in the wrong,
and should keep an open mind for conviction; but in no case should it
insult with an unthinking assent any scientific law of which it
understands neither the principles nor the application. Of course, not
all men have time or inclination or capacity for all topics; some things
must necessarily be left on one side in the press and hurry of life; but
if we are interested in a subject, we are bound to take some measure of
the responsibility which that interest entails. It is a poor occupation
to look upon the conflicts of thought with an aimless _dilettante_
wonder, and bear no hand, even in our own field, to maintain the cause
with which we profess ourselves in sympathy.
There have been some attempts to bar this rule with an exception.
Science, we are told, is concrete, systematic, rational; a proper field
for the exercise of analytic judgment and critical examination; but in
art, as in Religion, there is a mystery into which it is impious to
penetrate. The great doctrines of the Church should be exempt from
criticism, because it is not given to man to comprehend them; the
principles of art should be accepted in silence by a public which knows
nothing of the inspiration from which they come. This dogma is probably
the most dangerous half-truth that has ever helped to retard the
progress of mankind. It is, of course, beyond all question that behind
art, as behind Religion, there lies the unfathomable mystery of life:
that, in estimating both, there is a point at which reason ends and
faith begins; but it is equally sure that, before that point is reached,
there is a wide and fruitful field for critical activity. Science itself
has its mystery--its limit of explanation; yet no one regards Darwin
as a traitor to biology, or Newton as a profane violator of the
mathematics. It was no unchristian authority who bade us 'give a reason
for the faith that is in us'; it is no inartistic teacher who tells us
that the springs of true appreciation must flow from ourselves. And
more: it is because Religion has been regarded as only a mystery that it
has so often withered into a dead superstition: it is because art has
been so regarded that generation after generation has stultified itself
by false judgment. Grant that the production of a work of art demands
certain qualities which are beyond the reach of analysis, it still
remains true that the work itself can be fairly criticised if only we
will find our standpoint. Prometheus may have stolen his fire from
Heaven, yet, before we accept it at his hands, we should know something
of its attributes, and form some measure of its value. Above all, we
should have some means of distinguishing the true spark kindled at a
divine flame, from the wandering marshlights that gleam and flicker with
the phosphorescence of corruption.
It is not from the great artists that one hears this plea for the
mystery of their calling. Homer, Dante, Shakespear wrote to be
understood, they did not wrap up their meaning in recondite phrase and
elaborate symbolism. Raphael sent his drawings to Dürer, not to exhibit
their intricacy of conception, but 'to shew their handiwork.' Beethoven,
on his deathbed, can trust the popular verdict, and know that his new
quartett 'will please some day.' And it is idle to say that these men
undervalued the religion in which they held the priesthood. Only they
knew that its Theology was on broad, simple lines, that its gospel
consisted of truths which could find a ready echo in the heart of the
world; that its temple was one in which the humblest worshipper could
find his appointed place. It is the sciolist, the _dilettante_, the
half-educated amateur, who professes this Gnosticism of art, and
replaces the teaching of the Church by some mystic subtleties of Æons
and Pleroma.
We of the general public are in a great measure responsible for the
existence of this heresy. The seed has no doubt been sown by the
arrogance of the minor artist, but it has found a fostering soil in our
own cowardice and our own indolence. We may set on one side those men
who are altogether outside the influence of any given art, men who have
no feeling at all for music or for painting or for literature: they, at
any rate, maintain the honest doubt in which lives more faith than in
half the creeds, and, whatever their position, they lie wholly outside
the limit of our present purpose. It is the rest of us that are really
to blame, we who profess to care for painting or music, and yet lack the
courage to express our own likes and dislikes, who wait timidly for some
authoritative opinion, that we may gain the credit of agreeing with it,
if it is right, and, if it is wrong, may divert from ourselves the
responsibility of the error. No doubt this attitude has found some
degree of excuse. Artists, like other enthusiasts, are apt to
Rush on a benighted man,
And give him two black eyes for being blind;
nor does anyone like to be called blockhead, even by the representative
of an opposing party. But we may reflect that free judgment is our best
remedy against the intolerance of partisan spirit, and that, whatever be
the issue, we are bound in common fairness and honesty to think for
ourselves. Of all diseases to which the appreciation of art is liable,
hypocrisy is the most fatal and the most insidious.
More particularly is this true of music, the whole criterion of which
is, in a sense, subjective. That is to say, in music we have no external
standard of comparison, such as exists in the representative arts; we
must draw all our rules of guidance partly from the constitution of our
own mind, and partly from the established practice of the great masters.
If the two conflict, we must weigh the evidence before summing up on
the one side or on the other. It may be that a work is great, but not
great for us, that it makes its appeal to some psychological feature or
faculty in which we are deficient. In that case, we must rest content to
be out of sympathy with it, unless, indeed, we can train ourselves to a
wider and more catholic admiration. And this we are most likely to
attain if we analyse the cause and material of our enjoyment, if we find
out, first, what are the elements in our nature to which music attaches
itself, and, second, what are the factors in musical composition to
which our nature, as a whole, most readily responds. Here, then, are two
questions for the inductive method to consider: the first a matter of
pure psychology, the second a matter of pure æsthetics. Of course, the
two questions are complementary: indeed, they may almost be regarded as
two aspects of the same problem: but it will be convenient to take them
separately, and to illustrate each by the other. The reader may be
warned at the outset that there is not going to be any attempt at
exhaustive analysis. Æsthetics, even more than ethics, are 'too complex
to admit of accuracy'; and, in dealing with the conditions of beauty, we
must be content to leave much to individual judgment and individual
perception.
First, then, for the psychological side. We may well begin by accepting
the ordinary tripartite division of human nature which has passed
current ever since the time of Aristotle. Apart from the broad fact of
life which is common to the whole organic world, the faculties of man
may be classified under the three heads of sensation, which he
undoubtedly shares with the other animals, emotion, which he shares with
them in a higher and more developed degree, and reason, which, so far
as our present knowledge attests, he possesses as a sole and special
prerogative. There is no need to enter here into any vexed questions of
limit and demarcation. A philosophy of evolution may some day show that
all human faculties spring from a common source: it has not yet done so;
and whether it succeed or fail, the fact remains that in our present
condition the three classes are different both in property and in
function. Emotion may be partly dependent on the nervous system, but it
cannot be summed up in terms of nervous energy: still less can the work
of the mind be resolved into formulæ of chemical change and molecular
movement. The spiritual principle in man is no more to be confounded
with the brain which it employs as its instrument, than the sculptor
with his mallet and chisel, or the violinist with his Stradivarius.
Further, the rational principle may itself be regarded as twofold. On
the lower side there is a discursive intellect, which weighs evidence
and compares the reports of the senses, which is logical, inferential,
ratiocinative: on the higher side there is faculty of pure intuition,
whence come our axioms, our great Religious truths, our first principles
of art and science. Here again we must wait to determine whether this
distinction be one of aspect or faculty, until we are certain that we
know the meaning of the two terms: at present it is only necessary to
note that the distinction is recognised as real by psychologists, no
less diverse in aim than Aristotle and Hegel. Faith to the Theologian is
the exercise of the intuitive reason on divine things. Thought to the
metaphysician is the faculty behind inference with which Being itself
is correlative. But there is no need to call further testimony. It is
enough to say in plain words, that if we know conclusions which we can
prove, we must have some faculty of knowledge which deals with proof: if
we know axiomatic laws which we cannot prove, we must have some faculty
of knowledge which is independent of proof. We know that two straight
lines cannot enclose a space: we know that the angles at the base of an
isosceles triangle are equal to one another. In these two facts of
knowledge the two aspects of reason are exhibited in their simplest
exercise.
Now, with this spiritual principle of intuition we have, for the
present, nothing further to do. As it is the highest faculty in us, so
it is the least capable of analysis; we cannot define it or describe it,
or say more than that we are conscious of its existence. 'Everyone,'
said Gautier, 'has his measure of inspiration,' and the words, apart
from the tone of mockery in which they were uttered, are literally true.
Everybody is, at some time or another, affected beyond the reach of
words by some great display of beauty or majesty or heroism; and at such
moments we feel a true inspiration which is none the less real for being
inarticulate. So in Music, the one function of this intuitive principle
is the immediate apprehension of vitality in the best work. To one it
may be the first hearing of a Beethoven symphony, to another it may be
the _Messiah_, to another some complete and perfect Volkslied; but
whatever the object, we cease to reason or criticise, and simply
acknowledge it as divine, in virtue of a divine principle in ourselves.
The work is a momentary scintillation from the great glowing fire of
genius, and we can love it, because the best faculty that we possess is
a spark kindled by the same light. Not that in admiring we claim
equality. We are dumb poets, 'wanting the accomplishment of verse,'
lacking the gift of articulation, which implies a clearer vision and a
closer communion with the ideal. But to admire at all, in this true
sense of enthusiasm and self-abandonment, is only possible when the
highest chord of our nature is struck. Man is never lifted nearer to
Heaven than when he bows himself to worship.
Such moments of inspired admiration are of rare occurrence. But it is
impossible to mistake them; impossible to confuse them with the
careless, unthinking enjoyment of the senses, in which so much of our
musical appreciation is supposed to consist. Between the spontaneous
reverence for a masterpiece, and the unintelligent pleasure in mere
sound, there is as wide a difference as between the two loves of Plato's
fable and Titian's picture: the one is a daughter of Urania, the other
of mortal parentage and of mortal passion. In our impulse towards
beauty, as in all other affections of our nature, the two extreme
points lie outside the limits of the discursive reason, and it is
with the intervening space that rational analysis can be most
profitably occupied. In other words, there is a whole realm of artistic
appreciation in which we can resolve our pleasure into its constituent
factors, and discover not only what it is that we enjoy, but how our
capacity for enjoyment is originated and developed. And as almost all
errors of musical judgment spring from carelessness of observation, such
analysis will not only possess a scientific interest, it will also
supply us with some criterion for estimating the value of separate
styles and distinguishing the false and ephemeral from the true and
abiding. In a previous essay some attempt was made to sketch roughly and
imperfectly the four great corner-stones on which this method should
rest: the law of vitality, the law of labour, the law of proportion, and
the law of fitness to the matter in hand. It now remains to build upon
this foundation, to trace out in some degree the application of these
laws, and to discover, if discovery is possible, the _axiomata media_
which these wider generalisations include.
The mode, then, in which we are ordinarily influenced by Music may be
roughly classified under three main types of affection. First, there is
the purely physical, the effect of bodily pleasure or pain, which is
produced on the nervous system by a concurrence or succession of air
vibrations, and is analogous to those impressions of the palate, which
are translated into taste, or those movements of the optic nerve, which
are translated into colour. Secondly, there is the semi-physical, in
which, for the mere corporeal excitation of the senses, we have that
subtler and more sublimated form of influence which it is usual to
comprise under the name of emotion. Here we may find analogy with the
vague, half-conscious feeling of melancholy which we experience in
reading Shelley's _Stanzas written in Dejection_, or the throb of
courage and hopefulness which, without any thought of the artistic value
of the poem, stirs in our heart as an answer to Browning's _Prospice_.
Not, of course, that our appreciation of these two works is merely
emotional; to say this would be to deny their position as products of
art; but it has its emotional side, of which we are all conscious in a
greater or less degree. It is a commonplace of criticism that verse
which is religious or patriotic is often estimated entirely out of
relation to its artistic worth; and that a poor poem may strike a
responsive chord in our nature which leads us to give it an altogether
factitious importance. And this error of judgment is due not to the
spiritual part of our nature, for that takes artistic form for granted,
and rises above it, but to an emotional sympathy with the tenour of the
poem which blinds us for the moment to its literary imperfection. So in
Music, it does not follow that because we feel ourselves stirred by a
certain combination of notes, we are therefore in the presence of a real
masterpiece. The passage in question may strike us because it is great,
but it may equally do so because we are unintelligent; and though in
either case our attitude has its noble aspect, for all genuine
admiration is good up to its limits, yet it is a matter of some moment
whether we are burning our incense before a true or a false shrine.
There is no small difference between being stimulated by some prophetic
utterance, and finding our consolation in the sound 'of that blessed
word Mesopotamia.'
Third, and most vital of the three, is the rational or logical side,
through which we appraise an artistic work, not by any test of sensuous
pleasure or emotional stimulus, but by some definite and intelligible
scheme of æsthetic laws. To this belongs our appreciation of style, our
appreciation of structure, all that we really imply in the word
'criticism.' By this we estimate everything in art, of which the
estimation can be reduced to laws, everything that is not confined to a
bare statement of personal likes and dislikes. In the two previous forms
of affection we are merely passive, the recipients of some mechanical
or semi-mechanical impact from outside; in this alone we aid the
composer by our own judgment, and respond to his call with a sane and
intelligent answer. Grant that the application of logic to art has
special and serious dangers, that to its misuse we owe all the pedantry
and all the intolerance by which the history of criticism has so often
been defaced; it still remains true that the method, if rightly
exercised, is the one condition of any sound and scientific analysis.
Grant that the highest art and the highest appreciation are both, in a
sense, spontaneous, it will be found that they have not disregarded
reason, but absorbed it. To touch the most purely spiritual part of
man's nature is, _ipso facto_, to have removed furthest from the purely
animal; and it is no very extreme paradox to hold that, if a limit be
transcended, it must first have been traversed. So the greatest
masterpieces in Music will be found to contain sensuous, emotional and
rational factors, and something beside, some divine element of life by
which they are animated and inspired. The fourth of these we shall never
be able to analyse, but we may, at least, devote a little attention to
the organic chemistry of the others.
The sensation of sound is, on its material side, an affection of the
auric nerve, under stimulus of regular and periodic air vibrations. The
physical pleasure which results from it is entirely dependent on
the degree of stimulation, and is therefore conditioned by two
variables--the manner of vibration in the air waves, and the particular
receptivity of the nerve. It will be convenient, for the sake of
clearness, to take these two separately.
The simplest air vibrations may differ from each other in three ways.
By their rapidity is determined the pitch of the sound, that is, its
distinction of high and low; by their size, the volume of the sound,
that is, its distinction of loud and soft; and by their shape, the
_timbre_ of the sound, that is, the peculiar quality which distinguishes
the 'voices' of the different musical instruments. It does not appear
that the pleasurableness of the result is seriously affected by the
first two of these, provided that they fall within the limits of clear
sensation. No doubt there are at the extreme ends of the gamut notes
which we cannot detect without some difficulty, but between them the
differences of pitch are recognised by everyone as plain facts, which
have little or nothing to do with the agreeableness of the tone. Again,
when we are standing near the organ, on which some follower of Master
Hugues is 'blaring out the Mode Palestrina,' our ear may be overcharged
with sound, but in that case we can no more be said to hear the music
than the eye can be said to see when it is dazzled with a sudden
splendour of light. Differences of _timbre_, on the contrary, do seem to
imply distinctions of pleasurableness or the reverse. Almost all people
of imperfect musical cultivation have their favourite instruments; one
enjoys the violin, but cares nothing for the piano; another remains in
frozen indifference until he is melted by the human voice; another finds
all music comprised in the invigorating skirl of the bagpipes. It must
be remembered that such influences are wholly physical. They have
nothing to do with artistic appreciation in the proper sense of the
term; they are as purely sensuous as our delight in the colour of a
flower or the taste of a dish.
Now, the immediate effect of music upon the nervous system is
incontestable. It has often been noticed in animals other than man; it
is a matter of common observation in children; it has been made the
basis of a proposal to use the art as a medicinal agency.[2] And as no
two sets of nerves are exactly alike, it follows that in no two
organisms will the same effect be produced. If the temperament be highly
strung, and if there be no intellectual enjoyment of the art to divert
attention, the nerve may be over-stimulated, and the result will be a
feeling of pain. As the nerve strengthens, it will grow more tolerant;
as education advances, the mind will be occupied with new interests.
Questions of form and style will assert their pre-eminence over
questions of tone. In a word, body will
Get its sop and hold its noise,
And leave soul free a little.
Théophile Gautier honestly defined music as 'le plus désagréable de tous
les sons.' Charles Lamb rushed from the opera-house to solace his
sufferings amid the rattle of the cab wheels. And equally the child
Chopin cried with pain at the first sound of the pianoforte, and the
child Mozart fainted under the intolerable blare of the trumpet. In all
these cases the explanation is the same--a nerve too delicate to endure
the stimulus, and an absence of any counteracting influence that could
inhibit the sensation.
It is thus wholly erroneous to suppose that there is a gulf fixed
between the man who 'has no ear' and the trained musician: on the
contrary, the two extremes shade into each other by a thousand
varieties of gradation. And this is particularly true of these complex
impressions which result from several notes combined in harmony. The
stimulus which we receive from a chord is, for obvious reasons, more
vehement and acute than that which we receive from any of its
constituent notes taken separately; and hence it is in our appreciation
of harmonies, more than in any other form of musical effect, that the
sensuous side of the art becomes apparent. Now, there is not a single
chord in common use at the present day which has not been at some time
condemned as a dissonance. The major third was once held to be a
discord; so, later, was the dominant seventh; so, within living memory,
was the so-called dominant thirteenth. Fifty years ago Chopin's harmony
was 'unendurable;' thirty years ago the world accepted Chopin, but
shrank in terror from Wagner and Brahms; now, we accept all three, but
shake our heads over Goldmark. And the inference to which all this
points is, that the terms 'concord' and 'discord' are wholly relative to
the ear of the listener. The distinction between them is not to be
explained on any mathematical basis, or by any _a priori_ law of
acoustics; it is altogether a question of psychology.
At the same time, it may be held, fairly enough, that a composer is
bound to write in a manner intelligible to his generation. Volapuk may
be the language of the future, but a poet who, at the present day,
should publish his epic in that tongue, has only himself to thank if he
find no readers. True, but the composer, like the poet, is himself a
part of his generation, and, if he write simply and naturally, may be
trusted not to pass out of touch with contemporary thought. He is a
leader, but it is no part of a leader's business to lose sight of his
army. And in Music, it is not the sensuous question which matters, but
the intellectual; not the fact of concord or discord, but the way in
which they are employed. We still find Monteverde harsh and the Prince
of Venosa crude, not because they use sharp dissonances and extreme
modulations, but because they fail to justify them on any artistic
grounds. They are in this matter children playing with edged tools. So,
at the present day, a composer who should end a piece on a minor second
would be deliberately violating the established language of the time;
and would be reprehensible, not because a minor second is ugly--for it
will be a concord some day--but because, in the existing state of Music,
it could not be naturally placed at the close of a cadence. Imagine
Handel's face on being shown a song which finished on a dominant seventh
out of the key. And, having imagined it, turn to Schumann's _Im
wunderschönen Monat Mai_.
Again, supposing that a generation has mainly agreed to find the climax
of sensuous pleasure in certain chords--the augmented sixth, the
diminished seventh and the like--it by no means follows that a
composition is delightful because it contains those particular effects.
Everything depends on their relation to their context, or the standpoint
from which they are introduced, on the general style of the passage in
which they appear. Any amateur purveyor of hymn tunes and waltzes can
learn to write them; the difficulty is to present them fitly and
properly, and to place them, as points of colour, where they will
harmonise with the complete scheme of the work. Even more recondite
effects, like the wonderful 'voca me cum benedictis' in Dvořák's
_Requiem_, are _quâ_ sensuous of secondary value. Their true importance
lies in their intellectual side, in their function of exhibiting new key
relationships or new methods of resolution. And if a chord does not
fulfil some such duty, if it does not justify itself by bearing some
definite organic part in the total plan, then it is not art but
confectionery. Hearers, whose only delight in music arises from the
perception of 'sweet' harmonies, are on a par with the schoolboy in
Leech's picture, who suggests that the claret would be improved by a
little sugar.
From this two conclusions would seem to follow. First, that Music can
never be adequately criticised on sensuous grounds, partly because the
receptivity of the nerve differs in different temperaments, partly
because even where there is an agreement the sensuous side is wholly
subordinate to the intellectual. Secondly, as a corollary from this, any
musician who deliberately aims at sensuous effects alone, _ipso facto_,
commits artistic suicide. He can be beaten on his own ground by the
great masters, and he leaves untouched the whole of that field to the
occupation of which they owe their greatness. Finally, it may be added,
that sense notoriously grows tired, while mental activity endures. We
very soon weary of the average drawing-room ballad, even if it gave us
some animal pleasure at the first hearing: but we return again and again
to the fugue of Bach or the sonata of Beethoven, because there we find
the permanent expression of mind and intelligence. And thus the musical
critic may virtually disregard the element of sensation, or at most may
allude to it only so far as to show that it is, in Aristotle's phrase,
'obedient to reason.'
Music affects our emotional nature in two ways: partly through the
nervous system, partly through the ordinary law of association. It is a
commonplace of psychology that our emotions are largely conditioned by
physical states in the body,[3] and to this rule music assuredly offers
no exception. Under certain circumstances, a current of energy, after
passing from the ear to the brain, is transmuted into the nervous
movements which constitute the material cause of the simple feelings,
and thus we are roused or exhilarated or depressed by means as
mechanical as those of any agency in external nature. Here, again, as in
sensation itself, much depends upon the receptivity of the nerve. One
hearer may be thrown into agitation by an impulse which leaves another
comparatively cold, a strong temperament may be vehemently excited by
conditions under which a weaker organism is stunned or paralysed. But
all who are in any degree susceptible of the influence of music, have
experienced some measure of this emotional stimulus, poured into the
brain through sensation, and then sublimated in a physical alembic.
Among the most conspicuous existing causes may be noted the rapid
tremolo of the strings, as in the death song at the end of _Tristan_,
the beat of a recurring figure, as in the 'Ride to the Abyss' of
Berlioz' _Faust_, the reiteration of high notes on the violin, as in
much of Dvořák's chamber music, and the restlessness of frequent
modulation or uncertain tonality. Any reader who is at the pains to
analyse the effect produced upon him by these means of musical
expression, will probably agree that they rouse first a particular kind
of stimulus in the sense, and then, without any conscious intervention
on his own part, a corresponding state of emotional feeling.
Far more important is the influence of association. There is no reason
_in rerum naturâ_ why the minor mode should be sad, but our first
ancestors noticed that a cry sank in tone as the power of its utterance
failed, and hence established a connection between depression of note
and waning strength. So began an association of ideas to which, by
transmission and inheritance, the pathos of our minor keys is mainly
due. Again, the bass naturally suggests gravity and earnestness, because
that is the case with the speaking voice. 'No man of real dignity,' says
Aristotle, 'could ever be shrill of speech;' and similarly, when we look
for serious or dignified music, we expect to find some prominence given
to its lower register. Much, too, of this association is due to the
motions of our ordinary life: the force that strikes like a blow in the
first phrase of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the agitation so often
expressed by rapid and irregular movement; the broken voices at the end
of the Funeral March in the _Eroica_; and others of similar kind. Of
course music cannot define any specific emotional state: it is far too
vague and indeterminate to be regarded as an articulate language; but it
undoubtedly can suggest and adumbrate general types of emotion, either
by producing their sensuous conditions, or by presenting some form of
phrase which we can connect by association with our own experience.
But it is not in this emotional influence that the truest laws of
musical criticism are to be sought. Its criterion is nobler than that
of sense, partly because it deals with an aspect of our nature which is
less animal, partly because it implies a greater degree of skill in the
artist; but it is too personal and intimate to afford a satisfactory
basis for discussion, and taken by itself, it offers little or no
opportunity for the exercise of the higher faculties. In the _Journal
des Goncourt_, there is a well-known passage describing the effect of
music on a roomful of highly-strung and unintelligent listeners. The
picture is not a little degrading to our humanity: nervous emotion
trembling on the verge of hysteria, sentiment that has passed out of
rational control, an intoxication of feeling morbid in itself and
dangerous in its inevitable reaction. The case may be extreme, the
account may be rhetorically exaggerated, but it contains a salutary
truth. If we look on music merely as a stimulus to our emotional nature,
we are really disregarding all that makes it of permanent value as an
art. We are lowering it to the level of sentimental romance or
bloodthirsty melodrama. Grant that this form of indulgence is less gross
than the direct gratification of the senses, it is not a whit more
critical. While we are under its spell, we are as incapable of sane
judgment as Rinaldo in Armida's garden; we have abrogated our manhood,
we have drugged our reason, we are lying passive and inert at the mercy
of an external will.
It is hardly necessary to point out that this state of mere recipience
is altogether different from artistic appreciation. Art is not more a
riot of the passions than it is a debauch of the senses: it contains, no
doubt, sensuous and emotional elements, the importance of which there is
no need to undervalue, but it is only artistic if it subordinate them
to the paramount claims of reason. Even the purest and noblest emotions
do not constitute a sufficient response. We are only in a position to
criticise when we have passed through the emotional stage and emerged
into the intellectual region beyond. To judge a composition simply from
the manner in which it works upon our feelings, is no better than
judging a picture or a poem merely from our sympathy with its subject.
To this conclusion two possible objections may be urged: first, that it
takes an 'ascetic' view of art; second, that it places the criterion in
a mere subservience to abstract and mechanical laws. Both of these rest
on a misunderstanding of the position. True art is neither ascetic nor
intemperate: it implies a full command of the sensuous and emotional
factors in beauty, but it knows how to employ them. Its object is to
make the whole work beautiful, not to elaborate this or that aspect at
the expense of the rest; and such an object can only be achieved in
virtue of certain intellectual principles. Beethoven's harmony is not
less exquisite, or his passion less true and vital because he regards
the requirements of style and structure as paramount. On the contrary,
the sensuous and emotional beauties of his work are themselves enhanced
by the unerring skill with which he places his effects and contrasts his
colours. Again, whatever their intellectual laws may be they are not
mechanical. They afford no excuse for _kapellmeistermusik_, no
justification for cold accuracy and dull correctness: so far from
precluding genius, they presuppose it. They are not grammatical
conventions which can be learned from text-books, they are the direct
and spontaneous outcome of the human reason. Thus, in order to
ascertain them, we must begin by discovering what is the broadest
principle of formal beauty which can be deduced from the laws of mind,
and use it as a provisional hypothesis with which to approach our
problem. We shall then see how far this principle finds actual
embodiment in the works of the great composers, and if there are
exceptions or divergences, how far they can be explained. If our
original hypothesis is confirmed by experience, we may reasonably
conclude that it is true; if not, we must recognise that we are on the
wrong line, and we must retrace our steps. In musical criticism, as in
every other form of scientific investigation, it is not the function of
man to anticipate facts, but to interpret them.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] See an interesting essay in Dr Frank's _Satyræ Medicæ_. See also
Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, II. ii. 6, 3.
[3] On this point, see Professor James' _Principles of Psychology_,
chap. xxv.
II
STYLE AND STRUCTURE
'It may be shown,' says Mr Herbert Spencer,[4] 'that Music is but an
idealisation of the natural language of emotion, and that, consequently,
Music must be good or bad according as it conforms to the laws of this
natural language. The various inflections of voice which accompany
feelings of different kinds and intensities, are the germs out of which
Music is developed. It is demonstrable that these inflections and
cadences are not accidental or arbitrary: but that they are determined
by certain general principles of vital action; and that their
expressiveness depends on this. Whence it follows that musical phrases,
and the melodies built on them, can be effective only when they are in
harmony with these general principles. It is difficult here properly to
illustrate this position. But perhaps it will suffice to instance the
swarms of worthless ballads that infest drawing-rooms, as compositions
which science would forbid. They sin against science by setting to music
ideas that are not emotional enough to prompt musical expression: and
they also sin against science by using musical phrases that have no
relation to the ideas expressed, even when these are emotional. They are
bad because they are untrue. And to say they are untrue is to say they
are unscientific.'
In these words we may find a starting-point for sound criticism. If a
musical composition is to make any bid for the rank of classic it must,
as a primary essential, be genuine in feeling: by which we mean, that it
must not only be original, though originality is implied and included,
but that, in Wordsworth's fine phrase, it must be inevitable. To
recognise a melody as perfect is to feel, when we come to know it, that
it could not possibly have been written in any other way: that its
phraseology, whether simple or complex, whether obvious or recondite, is
the necessary outgrowth of the thought which it embodies. Of course this
law does not preclude the element of surprise, which is one legitimate
factor of musical effect. The hearer, like the composer, may sometimes
be 'stung with the splendour of a sudden thought' and roused into a
moment of exquisite consciousness by an unexpected cadence or a new
modulation. But if the surprise be more than temporary, it is
inartistic. Before we reach the conclusion of the work, we must be
convinced that the effect in question bears some vital and organic part
in the total structure: that it is, in short, a prediction which is
justified by a future fulfilment. And, in that case, we end by
acknowledging that it was not an isolated and deliberate attempt to stir
our wonder, but part of an established plan which only astonished us at
the moment because we were unable to foresee its issue.
It is obvious that in the drama or the novel we are but little impressed
by devices which we can detect as artificial. A writer who lets us see
that he 'wants to make our flesh creep,' has forearmed us already
against all his terrors: a playwright who tells us at the outset that he
is going to persecute his heroine, simply fills us with an idle
curiosity as to the precise form which the persecution will take. There
can be no illusion where there is no appearance of spontaneity: no art
when there is no concealment of artifice. Victor Hugo can move us
intensely; Scribe cannot move us at all: for the former, with all his
vehemence and exaggeration, is speaking out of the abundance of the
heart, and the latter is merely using the stage as a chess-board for the
elaboration of ingenious problems. So it is in Music. Meyerbeer is one
of the 'cleverest' of musicians: brilliant, ready, resourceful,
courageous enough to rob the grave of its horror and the Church of its
majesty, if only he may rouse his audience to a higher strain of
attention. Yet we are no more stirred by Meyerbeer than we are by Monk
Lewis. The music is drowned by the soliloquies of the composer, who
looks on from his box and wonders whether this scene is sufficiently
terrible, whether that situation contains the requisite amount of
pathos; and whether the effects, which have been so carefully calculated
and so precisely measured, have after all proved to be a profitable
investment.
But there are lower depths than this. It is not long since an eminent
composer of sentimental ballads was obliging enough to communicate to
the magazines a complete recipe of his method. It is hardly worth while
to give the details, but attention may be called to the singularly naïve
confession with which the disclosure ended:--that for a song to be truly
successful 'its melody must always remind the audience of something that
they have heard before.' Surely there has never been so complete an
instance of artistic falsehood gibbeted by its own perpetrator. Poe, no
doubt may be quoted as a parallel, but not with justice. The famous
essay on the Raven is clearly an afterthought: a critical puzzle
designed to mystify a credulous public. One might as well believe that
Burger's _Lenore_ was written by rule and measure, or that Berlioz
planned his _Marche au Supplice_ with a diagram of the procession at his
side.
Such examples of artistic failure are not always ignoble. It is quite
possible that a man may be preoccupied with some scientific aspect of
his art, that he may write not from the overmastering desire to express
some beautiful thought, but from a deliberate wish to solve some
difficult problem or transcend some technical limit. In such a case he
will produce work which, though not valuable as an artistic achievement,
is yet interesting as a study. He may show us some new method of
resolving a discord, some new cadence for the conclusion of a phrase,
some new shape which the melodic curve can legitimately assume: and
thus, though he devote himself to a side issue, though his work will be
purely formal and academic, he may yet claim an honourable place, not
indeed among the poets of Music, but among its verse-writers. Of this
type we have a conspicuous instance in Sir George Macfarren. He is
essentially a musical grammarian, engaged all his life long in settling
the doctrine of the enclitic de, wide of knowledge, sincere of purpose,
and almost entirely devoid of spontaneity. Consequently there is not, in
all his composition, a single page which is without interest to the
student of harmony, and there is hardly one which can put forward any
claim to rank as a living product of art. And this is not because he
has regarded the intellectual aspect of Music as paramount,--for to do
this is a necessary condition of good work,--but because he has
emphasised the wrong intellectual aspect, because he has confused
grammar with style. The great masters--Bach, Beethoven, Brahms--are
every whit as correct as Macfarren, and every whit as ingenious, but to
them correctness and ingenuity are subordinate, almost incidental: to
him they appear to be the main object and aim of composition.
Secondly, the feeling must not only be inevitable, it must be worth
expressing. 'The maiden,' says Ruskin, 'may sing her lost love, but the
miser may not sing his lost money-bags.' Now it is obvious that worth is
a relative term. We do not want gravity in a ballroom or solemnity in a
comic opera. There is plenty of space in Music for lightness, and
delicacy, and simplicity and humour, provided that they recognise their
proper limits and are devoted to their proper themes. But there is no
room for forms of expression which are silly or superficial or vulgar.
We are not really moved by the sorrows of a little tin soldier, or the
flirtations of a man and a maid under an umbrella. We do not really weep
over the chorister boy who becomes an angel, or the carol singer (with
organ obbligato) who dies in a snow-drift through half-a-dozen stanzas
of imperfect verse. It is with very alien jaws that we laugh at the
tedious horse-play and cheap catch-words of our 'humorous' songs. It is
with very little fascination that we watch the posturing of our
hoydenish polkas or our ill-bred slangy waltzes. And our aversion is not
due to any pedantic insistence on the dignity of the art. Music has a
perfect right, _desipere in loco_, but it ought to choose its place
with opportunity, and regulate its folly by some laws of good behaviour.
The limit for music, in short, is much the same as the limit for poetry.
There is probably no generic type of emotion which the poet would
dismiss as unworthy of treatment, but under each genus there are certain
specific forms which he would naturally leave untouched as perversions,
or degradations. Every normal and healthy instinct may have its artistic
expression, no matter how slight or transitory its nature; it is the
parodies, the simulations, the abnormal counterparts that afford no
material to poet or musician. Schumann's nursery tunes are as delightful
as the 'Child's Garden of Verses'; Mr Austin Dobson has not more skill
in porcelain than Rameau or Scarlatti or Couperin. If we want romance,
there is Chopin; if dance music, there is Strauss; if simple sentiment,
there are the best of Mendelssohn's _Lieder_. Above all, if we must sing
something which our audience can follow without thought and at a single
hearing, let us discard our second-rate librettists and second-hand
composers, and let us turn back to the national songs which have sprung
from the very heart of our people. We shall not thereby aid in
conferring royalties on writers who had far better be following some
other profession: but we shall at least help to purify the atmosphere of
contemporary art. There is no more melancholy spectacle of human
infirmity than a so-called 'Ballad Concert' of the present day: unless
it be the amateur reproductions, where all the faults of a bad system
are faithfully copied, and the unconscious burlesque of feeling is
itself unconsciously burlesqued.
All music, then, which is worthy of serious regard must be the
spontaneous outcome of a natural and healthy emotion. But this is
clearly not the last word in the matter: if it were, we should be
threatened with the _reductio ad absurdum_, that all genuine music is of
equal value. Nor can the distinction be entirely explained by the fact
that some emotional states are deeper and more serious than others: for,
in the first place, such a classification of our feelings is almost
impossible; and, in the second, even if it were effected, it would carry
us but a little way towards a solution. The emotional basis of
Beethoven's Eighth Symphony is lighter than that of Berlioz' _Symphonie
Fantastique_, but Beethoven's is undoubtedly the greater work. We have,
in short, the whole question of formal beauty to discuss, the whole
analysis of those intellectual laws on which it has been already
suggested that artistic perfection ultimately depends. It must be
remembered that music is not only the expression, but the idealisation
of feeling, and that its true worth will be largely conditioned by the
qualities of abstract beauty which such an idealisation implies.
These qualities may roughly be classified under the two heads of style
and structure. By structure in music is meant the general distribution
of ideas in a work or movement: the contrast and recurrence of themes,
the organisation of the key system, the whole architectural plan which
aims at the establishment of coherence and stability. By style is meant
the due arrangement of the phraseology; the right melodic curve, the
proper degree of richness and transparency in the harmonisation, the
feeling for the special capacities of the different voices or
instruments. No doubt the two cannot be sharply separated: they are in
a great measure interdependent, and are more or less determined by the
same ultimate principles. But as complementary aspects they may at any
rate be logically distinguished, and in some cases may even suggest
different lines of criticism. In some early sonata movements, for
instance, the structure is coherent, but the phraseology deficient in
force and contrast. In some works of our romantic period the phraseology
is admirable, but the importance of key-relationship almost entirely
disregarded. It is much the same with a play or a novel; the story
cannot be perfectly told unless the characters are perfectly drawn; we
may even add, unless the author has entire command of the right word and
the telling phrase. But short of this ideal proportion the balance may
swing to the side of plot or to the side of characterisation, to
boldness of invention or delicacy of treatment. It is only in the
greatest work that the form is, on both sides, entirely satisfying.
Now, the highest type of formal perfection which our minds are capable
of conceiving, is that of unity in diversity. The discovery of this
principle in Nature, as a whole, was the main problem of Greek
philosophy; its discovery in different departments of Nature is the
entire problem of modern science. Knowledge is the unification of
isolated facts under a single law: truth, which is the correlative
of knowledge, finds its climax in the existence of law and the
inter-relation of facts. More especially is this the case with that
particular form of unification which we call organic; that in which the
details are absolutely diverse in character, but all play interdependent
parts in one single economy. The organism is not only our supreme
example of physical structure, it is the type of all human society and
all natural order.
Again, our great evolutionist philosopher has told us that an organism
must possess three main attributes. First, it must be definite, clear in
outline, complete in substance, and filling with unbroken continuity the
fixed limits by which it is circumscribed. Secondly, it must be
heterogeneous: composed, that is, of a plurality of parts, each of which
has its own special function, and no two of which are interchangeable.
Thirdly, it must be coherent: holding this plurality in exact balance
and equipoise, so that each part, incapable by itself of maintaining the
whole body, is yet essential to the due health and efficiency of the
others. Illustrations of this principle are the primary facts of
biology. They may be traced in steady gradation from the earliest and
most rudimentary forms of animal life until they culminate in the
ordered complexity of the human frame. And a line of similar development
runs through all political history, from the primitive tribe to the
communities of our present civilisation.
_Mutatis mutandis_, this scientific ideal is also the ideal of art. When
we speak of a great picture, a great poem, a great novel, we mean one
that groups its diverse elements round a central principle, one in
which variety is never chaotic and unity never monotonous; one
in which every stroke tells and every touch is essential. No doubt,
in the representative arts, this principle is qualified by other
considerations,--poetry has to criticise life, painting has to represent
nature; but in both the element of formal perfection is of vital
importance, and in both formal perfection means perfection of organism.
A bad composition in pictorial art means one in which some detail can be
obliterated without loss to the whole. A bad composition in literature
means one which contains superfluous digressions and 'passages that lead
to nothing.' Virgil is the great epic artist, Sophocles the great artist
in drama, for precisely the same reasons that teach us to see
extravagance in Wiertz' scenes from the _Iliad_, or make us laugh, not
without pity, at Nat Lee's Bedlam Tragedy 'in Twenty-five Acts and some
Odd Scenes.' Again the flexibility of fine verse simply means the
organic inter-relation of different metrical devices. If we examine a
dozen lines of Shakespear, or Milton, or Keats, or Tennyson, we shall
recognise that their beauty of sound depends partly on the harmonious
juxtaposition of words, each of which finds its natural complement in
the rest, partly on the varieties of stress which balance and compensate
one another throughout the whole. Take away the variety, and we get
verse like that of Hoole's _Tasso_. Take away the compensation, and we
get the misshapen prose of Byron's _Deformed Transformed_.
Lastly, among all arts, it is to Music that the law of organic
proportion most intimately applies. In Painting and Literature, an
emotional state gives rise to a thought which gives rise to an
appropriate form of expression: in Music, the state of emotion gives
rise to a melody which is thought and form in one. While, therefore,
with the representative arts, we can sometimes criticise the idea and
the expression as two separate factors, with Music it is only in the
expression that the idea can be ascertained. Again, the musician has a
far more opulent command of formal resource than his brother artists.
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. Hence we may naturally expect
that, in their highest development, the style and structure of Music
should present the most complete examples of artistic organism: that
they should be, as Mr Pater has described them, the perfect type to
which it is the glory of other arts to conform.
Before we proceed to test this hypothesis by reference to the practice
of the great masters, there is one preliminary consideration on which it
is advisable to lay some emphasis. Music assumes so many forms, and is
devoted to so many purposes, that it would be idle to expect the same
kind of organic perfection in all. The melodies of the dance and the
ballad are, for obvious reasons, compelled to a certain uniformity of
rhythm and stanza; and it is impossible that they should exhibit the
same diversity as a work which is not bound by their restrictions.
Again, a continuously recurrent figure may be used with admirable effect
in a short pianoforte piece, or in the accompaniment of a song, though
it would grow monotonous and wearisome if maintained through the whole
length of a symphonic movement. In Music as in Poetry, the heterogeneity
of a work will be in great measure conditioned by its extent and scale;
only, as no composition is large enough to justify incoherence, so none
is small enough to dispense with diversity altogether. Look at Heine's
_Du bist wie eine Blume_ simply as a matter of phrase and versification.
The unity of the lyric is beyond all question, but we may note how the
extra syllables come pressing into the more impassioned stanza, and how
the style of the whole is perfected by the exquisite inversion in the
last line.
[Illustration: EXAMPLES]
It is precisely the same with a lyric tune like 'Barbara Allen.'[5] Here
the stanza is prescribed by the exigencies of the ballad-form, in which
the alternate strains answer each other perforce. But it is worth
remarking, that although there is little variety in the rhythmic figure,
there is almost perfect organisation in the notes that constitute the
melodic curve. It is not too much to say that after the first phrase
every detail in the tune is inevitable, made requisite either by some
preceding gap which the ear desires to fill, or by some swing of metre
which the mind desires to balance. Another and more highly organised
instance may be found in the great tune from the finale of the Ninth
Symphony.[6] Here the curve is as broad and simple as that of a
Volkslied, filling its limit with entire and satisfying completeness,
while the rhythm is perhaps the most marvellous example in Music of
organic effect produced from the plainest and most elementary materials.
In the first part only two rhythmic figures are employed, one of which
is a bare statement of the tempo, while the other differs from it only
by a dotted note, yet they are so presented that there is no sense of
monotony in the stanza. The first two strains of the second part present
a new set of figures, of which each is developed out of its predecessor,
while the last two complete the unity of the tune as a whole, by
recalling the first stanza and recapitulating its close. Still more, in
cases where there is no external requisition of metre, shall we find the
unity of the melodic organism qualified by the diversity of its parts.
In the first movement of Mozart's G Minor Quintett, there is an
admirable instance;[7] the first two bars balance in rhythm, but differ
in curve and harmony; the third intervenes with a new figure in strong
contrast; and the fourth closes the half-stanza by recalling the second.
Then comes the most beautiful point of style in the whole tune. The
figure of the third bar, which, hitherto, has only been used for
contrast (like the third line of the Omar Khayyam stanza in verse), is
answered and compensated by the fifth bar, which itself leads directly
into the cadence-phrase. And thus every part is made vital, and
differences themselves co-ordinated into uniformity of result. Finally,
as a climax, we may take two more examples from Beethoven: the melody on
which is founded the slow movement of the Pathétique,[8] and the opening
theme of the Violoncello Sonata in A.[9] The former contains six
different rhythmic figures in eight bars, the latter is composed of
disparate elements, no two of which bear any resemblance to each other;
and yet both alike are complete melodic stanzas, as definite and
coherent in their total effect as any dance-tune of Strauss, or any
ballad-tune of Schumann. It is impossible for the organisation of melody
to be carried to a higher pitch. Unity may be easily enough attained by
an exact balance of similar phrases, but only a master can produce it
from the interplay of factors so diverse and so incongruous.
The earliest known method of harmonising a melody was a continuous
series of consecutive intervals, produced when the same passage is sung
simultaneously by two voices of different pitch. Here we have the first
protoplasmic germ of this particular musical device, absolutely
homogeneous in style, and therefore inartistic. Art in harmony began
with organisation; that is, with the discovery that unity of effect
might be combined with individuality in the part writing: that each
voice might have a separate character, each chord be determined by some
intelligible law of sequence, and yet the whole be developed into a
coherent system. So rose the old counterpoint of Lassus and Palestrina,
bound by certain conventional restrictions, but, within their limits, as
highly organised as genius could make it: so in course of time grew the
freer polyphony of Bach and Brahms and Wagner, which stands to the
earlier method as the Romance languages to Latin. Thus there are two
main tests of good harmony,--first, whether each part taken by itself is
interesting; second, whether each chord can be explained and justified
by its context. For instance, the setting of the words 'Und seinem
Heil'gen Geist' from the chorale in the _Lobgesang_ is badly harmonised;
the last chord is simply out of balance, and it is only necessary to
open any page of Bach to see the contrast. Of course, in song and drama,
and, to a certain extent, even in sonata and symphony, it may be
necessary to break the law of organism in some particular detail in
order to obtain a special poetic effect. But in that case the passage in
question must be regarded as a factor in the total result: the principle
of criticism is not altered, but only applied to a wider area. And, at
any rate, on all occasions where drama is out of place, and purity of
tone the first requisite, the rule of organisation in harmony may be
taken as paramount. There is no need to multiply instances; two lie
ready to hand in our collection of _Hymns Ancient and Modern_. The
second tune assigned in that volume to the 'Litany of the Incarnate
Word' is a compendium of almost every fault of style which harmony can
commit: the setting of 'Nun danket alle Gott' is as near perfection as
it is possible for our system to attain.
So far we have considered musical style in relation to isolated strains
or melodies: and thus have led up to the more important question of its
nature in the range of a continuous composition. It is obviously easier
to write a good sentence than a good paragraph or chapter, even though
all three are amenable to the same laws: and we can find many an artist
who, like Horace's coppersmith, has skill enough in details, but remains
Infelix operis summâ, quia ponere totum
Nescit.
Indeed, the preservation of balance and unity in a large work is an
achievement that requires high gifts cultivated by long and patient
training: every cadence gives a hostage to fortune, every phrase offers
a pledge that must ultimately be redeemed. It is not surprising that
composers have often been too fully preoccupied with the elaboration of
single points to notice the due inter-relation of parts by which style
in the whole is constituted.
For instance, there can be no question of Grieg's genius. His lyric
pieces for the pianoforte are almost uniformly charming: his songs are
among the greatest possessions of the art. But as soon as Grieg
attempts to fill a larger canvas, his imperfections of style begin to
appear, and the work becomes either incoherent, as in the String
Quartett, or monotonous, as in the first two numbers of the incidental
music to _Peer Gynt_. Gounod, again, has some admirable qualities, but
among them is not included any great gift for uniformity, beyond the
limits of a Berceuse or a Serenade. The 'Calf of Gold' song in _Faust_
opens with a magnificent phrase, and then degenerates into an
anti-climax of pure irrelevance. The choruses in the _Redemption_ and
the _Mors et Vita_ set out, for the most part, with a pompous fugue
exposition, and discard counterpoint at the moment when its difficulties
begin. Grant that the change of manner is due to deliberate choice and
not to deficiency in technical skill; no plea of purpose can palliate
the error. It would be just as reasonable for a dramatist to write the
first act of his tragedy in Elizabethan English and drop to the
nineteenth century for the other four.
We shall find a more interesting example if we compare the two versions
of Brahms' B major Trio. In the first, possibly misled by an apparent
analogy from Beethoven,[10] Brahms allowed himself to spoil the opening
movement with an incident of sheer incongruity: in the second he has
completely rewritten the passage and reduced it to entire harmony with
its surroundings. Not that the latter version is deficient in contrast,
but it makes contrast subservient to coherence. And it is certainly a
striking fact that the great master should have recalled his early work
in order to correct the one offence against organism of style, which it
may be held to contain.
But we need look no further than Beethoven if we wish to see this
principle in its most perfect embodiment. The opening movements of the
two Sonatas, which he has numbered as Op. 27, stand on the outside verge
of organic style: the former contains the maximum of diversity without
being indefinite; the latter the maximum of unity without being
monotonous: and between their bounds lie all those marvellous examples
of contrast and antithesis, of variation and development, of firm
outline and steadfast plan, which have placed his work as far beyond
rivalry as that of Angelo or Shakespear. See how the stormy opening of
the _Waldstein_ is soothed and quieted by the melody of the second
subject: how the bleak majesty of the first theme in the _Appassionata_
finds its complement in the warm, rich tune that enters upon the change
of key. Look at the balance of phrase in the first Rasoumoffsky
Quartett, in the fifth Symphony, in the _Emperor_ Concerto. But indeed
the fact is too patent to need illustration, even if the selection of
instances were possible. One might as well try to pick out examples of
Milton's dignity and Goethe's wisdom, or direct attention to evidences
of skill in Titian and Velasquez. Even the few imperfections may readily
be condoned. The finale of the first Sonata is a legacy from an alien
system: that of the _Eroica_ an obvious experiment, that of the Sonata
in A major an instance of the curious devotion to counterpoint which
Beethoven specially manifested at the end of his career. And it should
be noted that his comparative failures are always steps in a new
direction, and are almost always followed by some conspicuous victory on
the same lines. In any case, they may be counted on the fingers of a
single hand. There is certainly no musician, there is probably no
artist, whose work as a whole is so varied and yet so masterly.
* * * * *
A complete discussion of musical structure would involve a history of
the art from the year 1600. It must therefore suffice for the present
purpose to note the main stages of development, and to analyse the chief
types, first as they appear in single movements, then as they are
combined into the complex organisms of sonata and symphony. Before the
Florentine revolution there was virtually no such thing as a system of
key-relationship, no recognition of the important effects of contrast
which may be produced in a work by the alternation of different tonics.
Music during the Ecclesiastical period was entirely homogeneous
in structure, bound within the limits of the mode, or, at most,
transcending them for a moment of tentative audacity wholly different
from the firm definite scheme of modern modulation. When the change
came, it was only natural that the first consequence should be a period
of chaos. The lay-brothers who had broken loose from the monastery went
roaming about the world with no settled plan or direction, turning along
any path which promised adventure, and ending their journey wherever
they happened to stop at nightfall. The Moresca in Monteverde's
_Orfeo_[11] is a good example of the reaction against uniformity. It can
hardly be described without anachronism in our modern terminology, but,
if the attempt must be made, we may analyse it as a single melodic
phrase, beginning on dominant harmony and ending on tonic, repeated four
times in four different keys. In other words, it is as deficient in
structural coherence as the preceding method in structural diversity.
But as our scale came into established use, and brought with it
an intelligible system of related tonic notes, the value of key
distribution began _pari passu_ to be recognised. Men refused any longer
to acquiesce in mere indefiniteness or mere monotony, and set themselves
to find some means of organising the form of composition by combining
different tonal centres into a coherent system. Scientific composers,
loyal to the traditions of counterpoint, endeavoured to solve their
problem by the elaboration of the fugue in which unity of style is
secured by the recurrent subject, and diversity of structure by the free
modulation. This form, which may be said to start with the Gabrielis,
and to culminate in Sebastian Bach, is of the highest interest to
musicians as an attempt to make style and structure play into each
other's hands: the former possessing too little diversity, the latter
too little coherence to stand as separate organisms. But as it is
factitious in its origin, so it is liable to become rigid and mechanical
in its results; an exercise of barren ingenuity, not a warm vital
expression of true emotion. Bach no doubt could breathe poetry into it,
as Corneille could fill with his splendid rhetoric the hard outlines of
the classical drama, but both results are great in spite of their form,
not in consequence of it. Considered merely as examples of fugue
structure, Bach's compositions are not greater than those of a hundred
kapellmeisters of his time: they owe their greatness to the purity of
their themes, and to the unapproachable perfection of their harmony. But
lay aside all questions of melody and harmony, everything, in short,
which can be classed under the head of style, and Beethoven's sonatas
will still remain supreme in virtue of their structure. Fugue form is an
artificial thing which a man can learn: sonata form is a living thing
which a man must feel.
Hence it is interesting to notice that all the forms most intimately
associated with the sonata may be directly traced to one primitive type
of Volkslied.[12] The simplest possible contrast of key which man can
adopt without falling into incoherence, is that of a melody in three
strains: the first asserting the tonic, the second leading to some
related key, the third repeating the tonic in order to complete the
outline. Now, if we imagine the first strain given in duplicate, so as
to suit the requirements of a four-line stanza of verse, we shall find
ourselves with a melodic form of which 'The Bluebells of Scotland' and
'The Vicar of Bray' may be taken as familiar examples. It is probable
that the immediate reiteration of the first phrase is a concession to
the poet rather than a point of musical structure: in any case, the
essential element of the form is to be found in the three clauses,
assertion, contrast, and reassertion. 'Of this simple type,' says Dr
Parry, 'there are literally thousands of examples.' It is, indeed, the
most natural form of melodic sentence which the popular songs of any
nation can assume: it is the living germ from which all our most complex
musical organisms are developed.
At the outset there are two possible lines of evolution. First, the
clause of contrast and the clause of reassertion may be repeated
alternately so as to extend the number of strains to five or seven, or
whatever is required by the exigencies of the words. Thus we get the
primitive type of rondo, which may be illustrated by Burns' 'John
Hielandman,' or by the Skye Boat Song, or by our well-known hymn for
Palm Sunday. A further stage of development is reached when the number
of clauses is fixed at five: and when the fourth, instead of being an
exact repetition of the second, affords a change of contrast by
presenting a new episode in a new key. This gives us the rondo form as
used by Rameau and Purcell, Haydn and Mozart, and occasionally Beethoven
himself. We need only compare the exquisite song, 'I attempt from Love's
sickness to fly,' with the Adagio of the Sonata Pathétique to see that
in point of structure they are identical. No doubt there were some
experiments on the way. Haydn tried the form as a vehicle of variations;
Mozart opened a new path in his Piano Sonata in A minor: but all these
were only variants of the established type which either left its
structure unaltered, or remained as exceptions. It was not until the
time of Beethoven that the rondo passed into its third stage of
development, and even with him the earlier form is of not infrequent
occurrence.[13]
Secondly, the number of clauses may be restricted to the original three,
and each strain by itself organised into a higher degree of diversity.
In its simplest form, which may be exemplified by the minuets of many
early sonatas, the first strain ends with a full close in the tonic, and
thus, while it fulfils the function of asserting its key, does so at the
expense of complete detachment from the second. Hence it is a step
towards organisation if the first strain is made to end with a half
close, or even to modulate to the key from which the second is going to
start. If this is so, the cadence of the third clause will have to be
modified--since the tune must end with a full close in the key in which
it began--and thus a new element of diversity is introduced into the
work as a whole. Of this stage an instance may be found in the Minuet of
Haydn's Piano Sonata in D (No. 6), where the first strain is divided
into two sub-clauses, one in the tonic, the other in the dominant, and
the third strain transposes the latter back and presents both of them in
the same key. Here another point offers itself for consideration. If the
clause of assertion has been allowed to modulate, and still more, if it
has been allowed to dwell upon a key other than the tonic of the piece,
it is obvious that the clause of contrast must be allowed still freer
modulation--otherwise its purpose will remain unaccomplished. And by
this time our clauses have grown in size and extent until it is not
appropriate to call them clauses any longer. They have become sentences,
or even paragraphs, each with its own subdivisions, its own structural
character, and its own function in the general economy of the whole
movement. For instance, in the Minuet of Mozart's Piano Sonata in A
major, the first part consists of a 10-bar tune in A followed by an
8-bar tune in E: the second begins in B minor, drops to A minor, and
then passes through an augmented sixth to the dominant of A, while the
third brings the work to a logical conclusion by repeating the two
sections of the first in the tonic key.[14]
In its present stage of development the form is admirably suited to the
short lyric movements in which it usually appears. Taken by itself it
typifies the classical minuet, the air for variations, and the majority
of such pianoforte pieces as the Kinderscenen and the Poetische
Tonbilder. Extended by the addition of a second example, and completed
by a restatement of the first, it gives us the minuet and trio of our
sonatas and the common structure of the march and the polonaise. But, as
the form grows in bulk and importance, as it discovers new functions and
adapts itself to a new environment, so it will naturally submit to
certain changes of organism. The two sections of which the first part is
composed, appear at present in a direct juxtaposition which will seem
crude and disconnected if the movement be increased to a larger size:
and it will therefore be advisable to join them by a link of modulation
that shall carry the ear gradually over the change of key. Again, the
sections of contrast in the second part have hitherto fulfilled their
purpose by a complete digression, not only presenting new keys but using
them to exhibit new material; and it is obvious that, after the limit of
a few bars, such a digression will be fatal to the unity of the work as
a whole. Now the variety of key in this part is, as we have already
seen, a structural necessity: and thus the readiest means of unification
will be attained if we minimise the novelty of material, and use the
sections of contrast, either wholly or mainly, to express phrases and
themes that have been already stated in the first part of the
composition. Lastly, we may notice that the third part ends by repeating
in the tonic precisely the same melodic cadence which the first part
ended by asserting in the dominant; and it will sometimes happen, that
the clause which served admirably as the finish of a paragraph may
appear abrupt or inconclusive as the finish of a chapter. In such cases
the composer can extend his third part by the addition of an epilogue or
coda, completing and rounding off the outline, which would otherwise be
left imperfect. It must be remembered that, as a point of structure, the
existence of the coda is optional. The composer may wish, for certain
reasons of style, to make the first part of his work conclusive, or the
last inconclusive: and in either event the need of an epilogue
disappears. But, as a general rule, it may be said that the more highly
organised the movement the more it will require the employment of this
particular device. Continuity is best secured if all the parts of the
work be made interdependent, and in that case it is only by a coda that
any real climax of phraseology can be attained.
One more detail and the organism is complete. Among the many experiments
in structure which mark the course of musical evolution, one of the most
important is the so-called French Overture. The main feature of this
form, which may be readily illustrated by the Overture to the _Messiah_,
was its habit of prefacing the chief division with an introduction or
prologue in slower tempo; and this device has been adopted by the great
cyclic composers, and especially by Beethoven, in order to prepare the
hearer for movements of unusual importance or solemnity. Like the coda,
the introduction is optional in its use: depending not on the structure
of the work, but on the manner of its thought and the style of its
expression. In Beethoven we find three principal types: the first merely
calling attention to the key of the piece, either by directly asserting
it, as in the Piano Sonata in F sharp major, or by rousing expectation,
as in the third Rasoumoffsky Quartett, the second containing in addition
some melodic phrase which is to be employed in the succeeding movement,
as in the Sonata Pathétique or the Piano Trio in E flat; and the third,
as in the A major Symphony, foreshadowing the key-system, not only of
the opening allegro, but of the whole work. It is hardly fantastic to
compare the respective prologues of _Henry VIII._, of _Pericles_, and of
_Romeo and Juliet_.
This, then, is the highest type of structural development to which Music
has yet arrived. The three clauses of the primitive ballad-tune have
grown into three cantos, all different in character and function, all
working together in the maintenance of a single economy. The first,
technically known as the Exposition, presents two subjects or
paragraphs, diverse in key, and connected by a short episodical link of
modulation: the second, technically known as the Development Section,
consists of a fantasia on themes or phrases of the first, with such
freedom of key as the composer chooses to adopt: the third, technically
known as the Recapitulation, repeats the two subjects with any minimum
of change that may be implied in the transposition of the second to the
tonic key. Finally, if the style of the movement require it, the whole
may be introduced by a Prologue and summed up by an Epilogue.[15] It is
hardly necessary to point out that the principle of perfect symmetry
embodied in this form is precisely the same as that on which is
constructed a great drama or a great novel. At the outset our attention
is divided between two main centres of interest; as the work proceeds
the plan is complicated by the introduction of new centres; at its close
the complications are cleared away and the interests identified. For
instance, the _Alcestis_ of Euripides opens with the bare contrast of
life and death, continues with those of youth and age, of mourning and
hospitality, of vacillating weakness and genial strength, and finally
returns to its two first themes, and unifies them by restoring its
heroine from the grave. But the parallel is hardly a matter for further
illustration. The exact balance and proportion of the structure will
best be exhibited if we epitomise its three parts under their
appropriate abstract names:--duality for the first, plurality for the
second, unity for the third.
Omitting a few rare exceptions, such as the Finale of the Hammerclavier
Sonata, we may say that all movements in so-called Classical form
represent some definite stage in this line of evolution. No doubt
experiments were tried by Schumann and Chopin and other composers of the
Romantic School, but even these are not so much new discoveries as
variants of the established type, sometimes due to carelessness or
indifference, and sometimes to deliberate plan. It must be remembered
that the generation which succeeded Beethoven paid much less attention
to structure than to expression. The essays of Berlioz and Schumann,
admirable in most respects, are almost entirely silent on the subject of
musical form, and their work, considered from this standpoint, is not an
advance but a retreat. Schumann, of course, was far the greater of the
two; yet even with him we feel that deliberation has not always brought
counsel. The introduction to his A minor Quartett, and still more the
first movement of his C major Symphony, are really steps away from
organism, condoned in part by undeniable beauties of style, but at the
same time needing condonation as structural errors. Even in the shorter
narrative forms of ballade and impromptu, of fantasia and novellette,
the same rule holds good. Their structure will be found satisfactory in
proportion as it is organic, it will be found organic in proportion as
it conforms to this law of natural development.
There remains a word to be said about the combination of different
numbers or movements into a continuous work. The complete sonata-form,
like the Trilogies or Tetralogies of the classical drama, is a complex
organism of which each part is itself organic, a corporate body composed
of separate but interdependent members. Hence we should naturally expect
that in the earliest examples there would be a comparative homogeneity
of melodic style and key system, and that this homogeneity would be
gradually differentiated as the form advanced towards perfection. This
is precisely what has happened. In the first pianoforte sonata of Haydn
all the movements are in the same key, as they were in the suites and
partitas of a previous age; then, by steps which are readily traceable,
the form progressed and developed until it reached its structural climax
in Brahms. So also with the style of the work as a whole, by which is
meant the selection of different organic types in its constituent
members. Out of all possible alternatives--the minuet, the rondo, the
air with variations, the fully-developed 'ternary' form--it is clearly
the composer's business to choose specimens which will afford the most
complete contrast and yet combine into the most organic unity. The
gradual application of this rule is simply another name for the growth
of the sonata form. One has only to compare Haydn's first quartett with
one of the Rasoumoffskys to see the advance; one has only to compare the
_Eroica_ Symphony with Chopin's B-flat minor Sonata to see the
retrogression. In this, as in other respects, Brahms has restored the
balance and has adapted the traditions of Beethoven to the language of
the present day.
Enough has been said to show that this principle of organic growth not
only explains the style and structure of all great Music, but answers to
a fundamental need in human nature. Its laws are not mere grammatical
rules, framed in one generation to be broken in the next; it makes no
transitory appeal to faculties that change with every mood and every
condition: if there be anything permanent and abiding in the mind of
man, it is here that it will find its counterpart. Not, of course, that
the present stage of development is to be regarded as final: there is
probably no such thing as finality in any art. But progress is not
change, it is a kind of change, and one which, from its very nature,
points to a fixed ideal. We, with our limited capacities of knowledge,
and our limited appreciation of beauty, may still be far behind the
position that is to be occupied in future ages. But, unless the teaching
of History be wholly false, we may predict with some security the
direction in which that position will lie. It is as inconceivable in
art as it is in physical nature, that the process of organic evolution
should revert or turn aside. No doubt there will be further modification
of detail--some 'Shakspearian convention' abandoned, some scheme of
artistic composition revised; but every step that brings greater freedom
will bring greater responsibility, and will shift the issue from
artificial laws to the great code of human intelligence. We cannot
suppose that the generations which look back upon our own masters will
ever rest satisfied with incoherence or shapelessness or monotony. There
will be new methods in the days to come, but the principles of art will
remain unaltered.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] _On Education_, pp. 41-42.
[5] _See_ Example A.
[6] _See_ Example B.
[7] _See_ Example C.
[8] _See_ Example D.
[9] _See_ Example E.
[10] Finale of the A major Sonata, Op. 101.
[11] Quoted in Grove's _Dictionary_, Vol. ii. p. 501.
[12] The term sonata is here employed in the sense which it has borne
since the time of Haydn. If it is widened so as to include composers of
the 17th and early 18th century, we must start from two primitive types
in place of one.
[13] The development may be illustrated if we take alphabetical letters
to represent the clauses. The primitive ballad form is A B A: each verse
being a unit, and therefore the whole song inorganic. The primitive
rondo form is A B A B A B A, etc., the whole song being a unit, and
therefore slightly organised. The form of Purcell's song is A B A C A,
and therefore the most highly organised of the three.
[14] The analysis of the Mozart Minuet may be tabulated as follows:--
FIRST PART. | SECOND PART. | THIRD PART.
| |
(_a_) Melody in A | (_a_) New episode | (_a_) Repetition of
major. | in B minor. | first melody in
(_b_) Melody in E | (_b_) The same | A major.
major. | repeated in A | (_b_) Repetition of
| minor. | second melody
| (_c_) New cadence- | in A major.
| phrase to |
| dominant of A. |
[15] As a simple instance of the form, we may take the first movement of
Beethoven's Piano Sonata in G major, Op. 14, No. 3:--
_Prologue_|_First Canto_ |_Second Canto_ |_Third Canto_ |_Epilogue_
_or_ | _or_ |_or_ |_or_ |_or Coda._
_Intro- |_Exposition._ |_Development_ |_Re-_ |
_duction._| |_Section._ |_capitulation._ |
| | | |
None |(_a_) First |(_a_) Treatment|(_a_) First |Final
| Subject in | of First | Subject in G |reminiscence
| G major | Subject, G | major (bars |of First
| (bars 1-8). | minor to | 124-131). |Subject
|(_b_) Transition| B flat major |(_b_) Transition|(bars
| modulating |(bars 64-73). | extended so as | 187-199).
| to D major |(_b_) Treatment| to lead back |
| (bars 9-25). | of Second | to G major |
|(_c_) Second | Subject in B | (bars 132-151).|
| Subject, | flat major |(_c_) Second |
| consisting of | (bars 74-80). | Subject in G |
| four sections,|(_c_) Treatment| maj. |
| in D major | of First | 152-186). |
| (bars 26-63). | Subject in A | |
| | minor, F | |
| | flat, G minor | |
| | and E flat | |
| |(bars 81-106). | |
| |(_d_) New | |
| | Episode on | |
| | dominant pedal| |
| | of G, and | |
| | anticipation | |
| | of First | |
| | Subject | |
| |(bars 107-123).| |
III
FUNCTION
A character in one of Mr Sturgis' delightful comedies propounds a recipe
for beauty, and is met by the criticism that he has omitted one
important element--the beauty itself. Some such objection may perhaps be
brought against the analysis of the preceding chapter. It may be said
that Music cannot be appraised in terms of law and method, that
scientific theories can tell us nothing about inspiration, and that
without inspiration art degenerates into a soulless and mechanical
exercise. No discussion of balance and design, of diversity and
coherence will ever explain why we are stirred to the depths of our
being by the love-duet in _Tristan_, or the slow movement in the _Fifth
Symphony_, or the _Missa Papæ Marcelli_. No account of proportion in
phraseology or system in key-relationship can answer the question why we
find Grieg piquant, or Schumann vigorous, or Chopin graceful. In short,
our _Ars Poetica_ is a mere _Gradus ad Parnassum_, containing, it may
be, some hints for versification, but leaving the essentials of artistic
conception entirely untouched.
This objection is only of force if it confines itself to the bare
truism, that inspiration is not a matter which we can define. It breaks
down if it goes on to infer that inspiration is not a matter which we
can detect. For the artistic organism, which has hitherto been under
consideration, necessarily requires life as its formative condition; and
any attempt to produce it artificially must result either in total
failure or in the mere copy of some existing scheme. Our academic
composers who publish music on the ground that they have studied
counterpoint, are, as a rule, only tolerable where they are imitative:
as soon as they try to devise a new melody or elaborate a new cadence
they are almost certain to become trivial or vulgar. Indeed, it would
seem to be shown by experience that Music has no chance of surviving
unless it arise spontaneously from a healthy state of emotion, and that,
if it does so arise, it will naturally manifest itself, to a greater or
less degree, in an organic shape. We may, therefore, fairly conclude
that perfection of musical form, in its widest and deepest sense, is a
mark or sign of genuineness in musical feeling, and that analysis,
though it can never tell us whence inspiration comes, may at least
direct us where we can look for it.
But as yet the analysis itself is incomplete. It has attempted to
describe what Music is, not what Music does: in other words, it has
investigated the problem of structure, but not that of function. There
remains, therefore, the further question of the object for which the art
exists, the place that it occupies in our æsthetic life, and the
particular means of action by which its purpose is fulfilled. Some hints
towards an answer have already been suggested: the sensuous pleasure
communicated to the nervous system by certain air-vibrations: the
emotional impulses which can be aroused by sense or association, or
both: and the intellectual satisfaction which naturally answers to the
spectacle of organic balance and symmetry. It follows, then, to arrange
these premises, and to carry them, as far as possible, to their logical
conclusion.
Now, the general function of music may be stated in a single word--to be
beautiful. It is the one art in which no human being can raise the false
issue of a direct ethical influence. It allows absolutely no scope for
the confusion of thought, which, on one side, brought _Madame Bovary_
into the law-courts, and, on the other, has taught the British public to
regard as a great religious teacher the ingenious gentleman who
illustrated the _Contes Drolatiques_. Of course, all contemplation of
pure beauty is ennobling, and in this sense music may have the same
indirect moral bearing as a flower or a sunset or a Greek statue. But of
immediate moral bearing it has none. It means nothing, it teaches
nothing, it enforces no rule of life, and prescribes no system of
conduct. All attempts to make it descriptive have ended in disaster: all
attempts to confine it to mere emotional excitement have ended in
degradation. Grant that nations and individuals of imperfect musical
experience have not advanced beyond the emotional aspect: that Plato had
to prohibit certain modes as intemperate, that governments have had to
prohibit certain melodies as dangerous. In almost all such cases it will
be found that the music in question is vocal, and that more than half
the stimulus is due to its words or its topic. Considered in and by
itself, the ultimate aim and purpose of the art is to present the
highest attainable degree of pure beauty in sound.
For the fulfilment of this purpose, the first and most obvious requisite
is an entire command over materials and method. Nothing is more ugly
than palpable failure: nothing more likely to destroy confidence than an
appearance of uncertainty or vacillation. In many of our so-called
popular song-tunes, we can lay our finger on some place where the
composer was in evident difficulty: where he inserts an awkward or
irrelevant phrase, because, like an unskilful chess-player, he can only
extricate himself by breaking his design. Again, in ill-written harmony,
we shall often find poor or hollow chords inserted, not because the
composer wanted them, but because he could find no other way of
resolving their predecessors. Of course, it will sometimes happen that a
great, though imperfect master will stray from his appointed domain, and
wander for a moment in unfamiliar territory. The fugue in Dvořák's
Requiem is conspicuously unsuccessful, but it need not affect our
estimate of the '_Dies Iræ_' or the '_Recordare Jesu pie_.' We only feel
it a pity that the artist who can do such magnificent work in his own
style, should be forced by convention into a manner for which he has no
aptitude. In structure the first movement of Chopin's Pianoforte Trio is
as badly drawn as some of the later Correggios: but the error, though
more fundamental than that of Dvořák, only circumscribes the master's
province, without overrunning it. We remember the circumstances under
which the Trio was written, and turn aside to the Études and the
Nocturnes. One genuine success in art is enough to outweigh a thousand
failures: but the difference between failure and success remains
unimpaired.
At the same time, it is most important that we should recognise the
necessary limitations to which musical expression is subject. It is idle
for us to go about lamenting, like the fool in Rabelais, that 'there is
no better bread than that which can be made with wheat.' Our scale is
notoriously a rough approximation in which only certain types of melodic
curve are possible. Our harmony is often reduced to a choice between two
incompatible alternatives: the striking chord required by the context,
or the smooth progression required by the parts. In such cases the test
lies ready to hand. Is the material difficult? Let us see how the great
masters have treated it. Are the options mutually exclusive? Let us see
which of them makes for organism of structure and general effectiveness
of function. We have no right to pass final criticism on any detail of a
work until we have heard the whole: and even then our judgment must
depend on some knowledge of precedents and parallels. The chief danger
of 'a little learning' is its predisposition to intolerance.
If unskilfulness be the death of style, cleverness is among the
most insidious of its diseases. Nothing in all literature is more
exasperating than that 'cult of the unusual word' which arises now
and again as a periodic fashion. Whether it take the form of the
sham-antiquarianism which has been happily nicknamed from Wardour
Street, or of an ostentatious acquaintance with the by-ways of the
dictionary, or of the unsynonymous synonyms of the country journalist,
it is in equal measure the sign-manual of euphuism and affectation. No
doubt the unusual word may have a perfectly legitimate employment. It
may carry a metaphor, it may complete a rhythm, it may make a point of
colour: and in all such instances it is justified by the purpose that it
achieves. But if it is merely unusual, it had far better be left out
altogether. We do not think very highly of a verse-writer who invariably
says 'quaff' instead of 'drink,' because 'quaff' is poetical and 'drink'
is commonplace.
The same is true of musical euphuism. A recondite chord is of absolutely
no value in itself; its whole worth depends on its purpose and its
context. A fresh twist in the shape of a melody is only beautiful if the
preceding curve leads up to it. For instance, we appear to be passing,
at the present day, through a period of feverish activity in the
invention of new cadences. Now a new cadence in the hands of a master
like Brahms or Parry is a delight, for, with all its novelty, we feel
that it is the logical outcome of the passage from which it springs. It
is only necessary to quote the close of the first stanza in the
_Schicksalslied_ or of the 'Sacrificial Chorus' in _Judith_, or the
brilliant practical joke of the 'Æschylus Motif' in the _Frogs_. Again,
the new cadences of Grieg and Dvořák are always charming, because
they are in exact harmony with the chromatic style which is natural to
those two writers. But when inferior composers attempt the same thing,
they only produce results which are crude and incongruous, or, at worst,
make their exit on a mechanical epigram, in which the head of one
platitude is appended to the tail of another. Indeed, self-consciousness
is only a more subtle form of unskilfulness. The 'clever' artist is like
the enchanter's servant in the old story, possessing just enough magic
to raise the spirit, but not enough to keep it under control.
It now follows to consider more directly the manner in which the
influence of Music is exercised. And first, we may notice that the art,
as appealing primarily to the ear, necessarily involves a fixed
continuity in time, and so, in a sense, is always throwing our attention
forward to its issue. The conditions under which we apprehend a picture,
and those under which we apprehend a melody, are entirely different; the
former enables us to follow the constituent parts in any order we
choose, the latter binds us to a settled and irreversible sequence.
Indeed, so firmly is this law established, that we are notoriously
incapable of recalling the most familiar tune backwards, and are even in
some straits to recognise a fugue-subject when it appears 'cancrizans,'
as it does, for instance, in the Finale of the Hammerclavier Sonata.
Hence a great part of the effect of Music is prospective, and depends
upon the particular way in which it rouses and satisfies an attitude of
expectation.
This method may roughly be classified under three heads. First, the
Music may give us precisely what we should naturally anticipate; in
other words, it may suggest some coming resolution or cadence, and
proceed to it at once without interruption. Everyone remembers the
æsthetic damsels, in Mr Du Maurier's picture, who 'never listen to
Mendelssohn, because there are no wrong notes.' They were unconsciously
enunciating an important piece of scientific criticism. For Mendelssohn
never disappoints, and never surprises; his style flows on as placidly
as a level stream in a pastoral country, and the hearer floats down it
with no effort of intelligence, with no expectation of adventure,
knowing that even beyond the distant bend there will be the same
overhanging willows, and the same intervals of sunny meadow, and the
same rippled reflections of an April sky. Hence, of all composers,
Mendelssohn appeals most intimately to audiences that are untrained or
inexperienced; and hence, also, critics, who are anxious to acquire a
cheap reputation, usually begin by expressing contempt for him. The best
of his lighter work is as charming as that of Miss Austen; and it is
only now and then that we feel inclined to say--as Charlotte Brontë said
after reading _Emma_--'I don't want my blood curdled, but I like it
stirred.'
Secondly, the Music may directly contradict our anticipation by
diverting an apparently straightforward passage into an unforeseen
channel. Under this head come all effects of surprise, all sudden
modulations, all unusual cadences and unexpected turns of phrase. An
amusing instance is the change from A minor to D flat major in the 'Pro
Peccatis' of Rossini's _Stabat Mater_, which is almost as irresistible
as a joke from Aristophanes: a far more august and magnificent example
is the great Neapolitan sixth, which, in the first movement of
Beethoven's A major Symphony, comes just before the cadence phrase in
the exposition. Indeed, the device may be used for purposes of humour,
as it is in Mr Aldrich's delightful story of Marjory Daw, or for
purposes of romance, as it is by Victor Hugo in 'Le Roi s'amuse.' The
finale of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony contains a distinct effect of
comedy in the unexpected C sharp, which persistently intrudes itself
among other people's keys, until at last it worries the orchestra into
accepting it. On the other hand, the slow movement of Dvořák's
F-minor Trio notably exemplifies the romantic use. No one who has ever
heard it can forget the last page: the innocent diatonic opening of the
melody, and the abrupt, bewildering change which follows in its second
bar. It is obvious that the sense of incongruity, which stimulates all
astonishment, may, under different conditions, arouse either laughter or
apprehension: and both these effects lie well within the range of
musical art. They form, in fact, two of the most important emotional
types which it has the power of adumbrating: not, of course, by
depicting any humorous scene or suggesting any particular terror, but by
administering the appropriate kind of nervous shock. Grant that if a man
knows nothing at all about music, he will form no expectations, and
consequently will never be either astonished or amused. It does not
follow that his limitations are representative of the human race. One
might as well argue that there is no fun in a French comedy, because
none was detected by Mr Anstey's British audience.
Thirdly, the music may baffle anticipation by suggesting alternatives
and throwing us in doubt as to the selection that it is going to make.
After a little experience, we come to learn that there are certain
typical shapes of melodic stanza, certain common devices of modulation,
certain forms of cadence which are in ordinary use. Hence, when
we listen to a new work, we frame a half-conscious forecast of
probabilities, and the composer, if he has the skill, may stimulate our
minds by offering two or three possible issues and defying us to
determine which he means ultimately to accept. This is the highest form
which the prospective effect in Music can assume, and is roughly
parallel to ingenuity of plot in narrative or dramatic literature. For
example, a common type of four-line stanza in music opens with a
clear-cut phrase, then repeats it a degree higher or a degree lower in
the scale, then goes on to the clause of contrast, and finally returns
to the original key. So when we hear the central tune in Chopin's F
minor Fantasia, and find that its first two strains exactly correspond
to this pattern, we feel that we know already how it is going to
proceed, and settle ourselves to watch our expectations fulfilled. But
Chopin knows better, and gives us a third strain which, instead of
embodying the clause of contrast, consists of another repetition of the
same phrase, a tone lower still. By this time we begin to wonder whether
the tune is going to be entirely homogeneous in style, and whether, in
the one strain that is left to complete the stanza it can possibly get
back without awkwardness to the key from which it has strayed. Both
these doubts are solved in the most masterly fashion by the concluding
line, which not only carries the modulation with consummate ease, but
completes the organic outline of the melody with the daintiest delicacy
and finish. Again, in Grieg's F major Violin Sonata, the principal theme
of the middle movement seems to get into inextricable difficulties of
phraseology, and we listen to it with the same apprehensive interest
with which we look on at the imbroglio in _Evan Harrington_. But at
precisely the right moment there appears a new cadence, which would
never have occurred to anyone but Grieg, and the difficulties are
cleared away as if by magic. It is hardly necessary to point out
that Bach and Beethoven are equally rich in this kind of musical
resourcefulness. The harmonic progressions of the one, the melodic form
of the other, constantly suggest a balance of alternative issues, and
as constantly make the selection which the hearer finally acknowledges
as the best.
The same rule holds good in the matter of key distribution. When the
sonata form was young, the key of its second subject was fixed by an
almost unalterable convention: if the movement was in a major mode, it
was the dominant, if in a minor mode, it was the relative major. Hence
the audiences of Haydn and Mozart always expected the same key system,
and were hardly ever disappointed. But Beethoven, from the outset of his
career, broke through this traditional arrangement, and so began by
surprising his hearers, and ended by making their intelligence
co-operate with his own. Take, for instance, the first movement of the
Hammerclavier Sonata. The first subject is in B flat, and the transition
after modulating to its dominant F, proceeds with a vehement and
emphatic assertion of the new key, as though Beethoven intended to
revert to the customary usage, which, it must be remembered, he often
follows. But the very emphasis makes the hearer suspicious. It is not in
Beethoven's manner to underline his keys with so much flourish and
ostentation: perhaps, after all, appearances are deceitful, and he is
only throwing us off the scent. Then our uncertainty is artfully
intensified by an interpolation of the opening theme, which, at this
stage of the movement, is the last thing in the world that we expect;
and immediately after it comes a modulation to G major, and a
presentation of the second subject in that key. The anticipation of this
event is an exercise of critical sagacity not dissimilar to that
afforded by a novel of Balzac or a play of Shakespear. In the famous
scene of Madame Marneffe's confession, we are half-cheated into
believing that the woman's repentance is real, though we know that its
reality is rendered impossible by all laws of characterisation. When
Lear decides between his three daughters, we feel that Cordelia's
coldness of manner has raised a false issue which the subsequent
development of the drama will correct. In short, the true function of
structure, whether it be in literature or in music, is to set before us
two competing impulses and bid us reflect upon them.
But it may be urged that a musical composition can only surprise or
baffle on the first occasion: after that we remember what is coming, and
can foretell the end as readily as the composer himself. This view pays
an undeserved compliment to the capacities of human nature. The average
listener does not really hear a work of any complexity the first time
that it is performed in his presence: he apprehends more or less of it
according to the degree of his ability or experience, but there will
certainly be effects that escape his notice, and, if the composition be
truly organic, those effects will be vital to the appreciation of the
whole. Indeed, we have here one of the most obvious tests of a great
work. We grow tired of a trivial melody or a shallow fantasia, for it
tells us its whole secret at a single hearing: but we may spend our
lives over Bach's Fugues or Beethoven's Symphonies without ever hoping
to exhaust their limitless reserve. Again, we are not such creatures of
pure logic that an effect once produced in us is incapable of
repetition. We may know our Shakespear by heart, and yet be moved by the
humour of Falstaff and the pathos of Imogen, by the subtle questionings
of Hamlet and the frenzied self-accusations of Othello. So in listening
to great Music we often allow ourselves to be carried away by the
impulse of the moment: we forget that we know what is going to happen,
or expect it in a new mood and from a new standpoint. There are many
avenues by which the sense of novelty can be approached, and among them
not the least important is that of our own imagination. No doubt this
influence would be seriously impaired if we were to hear the same
passage day after day and hour after hour, but this, of course, we are
never called upon to do. With the present range and variety of our
musical literature, an effect that is genuinely striking may be weakened
by familiarity, but can hardly be ever wholly obliterated.
It will thus be seen that the manner in which we are impressed by Music
is enormously complex. First, there is the sensuous appeal, the
different characteristics of _timbre_ and tone, of rich harmony and full
orchestration, of all those devices which are usually described in
metaphors of taste and colour. Second, and inclusive of the first, is
the emotional appeal, the exhilaration of rapid movement, the gravity of
stately chords and broad diatonic melody, the restlessness of broken
rhythm and frequent modulation, the shades of surprise which follow upon
a sudden change or an unexpected crisis. Third, and inclusive of the
other two, is the intellectual appeal, the exhibition of balance and
symmetry in the management of these several effects, the definiteness of
plan and design, the vitality and proportion of organic growth. If to
these be added the two supreme requirements of originality in the
composer and of fitness to the occasion of display, we shall have at
any rate a rough criterion for determining work that, in the truest
sense of the term, is classic. In thus summing-up results, it is almost
a presumption for any writer to suggest illustrations: but if it be
permissible to point to masterpieces, in which these principles are
embodied with absolute and unfaltering perfection, we may select, as
typical instances, the choral numbers from Bach's B minor Mass, the
Seventh Symphony of Beethoven, and Brahms' _Schicksalslied_.
Before leaving this subject, of which, indeed, only the outer courts
have been trodden, there are three objections which it may be advisable
to meet. The first would discard the whole analysis as a piece of _a
priori_ inference. As a matter of fact, it would say, the hearer does
not trouble himself about these elaborate questions, he does not follow
the subtleties of style or the coherence of key-system, he does not
anticipate the course which a passage is going to adopt, he simply
listens to the music, and enjoys it, because he finds it pleasant. It is
idle to suppose that a man cannot admire Beethoven without being
prepared to pass an examination in the technicalities of abstract
science. This objection is wholly beside the mark. Men reasoned
correctly long before Aristotle invented the syllogism, but none the
less his theory of the syllogism is an analysis of correct reasoning. In
like manner the unscientific hearer may be totally unconscious of the
causes which underlie his enjoyment, and yet the causes themselves be
both operative and capable of analysis. The laws of musical philosophy,
like those of physiological science, are not artificial subtleties: they
are an attempt to explain the ordinary conditions of health, and every
man who has the taste to prefer one tune to another must necessarily
have made reference, however unconscious, to some principles of
discrimination. Indeed this argument from ignorance has already been
anticipated in a parallel form. '_Voici quarante ans que je dis de la
prose_,' says M. Jourdain, '_sans que j'en susse rien_.'
The second objection is of more interest. Grant, it may be said, that
our analysis enables us in some measure to explain the supreme
masterpieces of Music, there will still remain a wide range of lower
achievements with which it would appear wholly inadequate to deal. If a
composition is weak in structure or careless in style, it has failed to
satisfy our test, but we have no right to infer that it is without
value. On the contrary, an imperfect work may often survive in spite of
its imperfections, and may counterbalance its worst errors by some
attractiveness of charm or some inherent vitality of thought. In _Jane
Eyre_ are faults which would have killed a novel of less genius, but the
reviewers who condemned it are now only remembered as carping and
illiberal pedants. Shelley may be 'ineffectual,' and Keats 'immature,'
but the most adverse critic can no longer deny the beauty that they have
added to English literature. And in like manner we shall find musical
compositions which fall short of the highest level, which fail to attain
the most satisfying completeness of organic form, and which yet deliver
a message that is well worth the hearing. There is a broad expanse
between the summit of Olympus, where the gods have their habitation, and
the low-lying meadows and valleys of our ordinary life.
In such a case we can only judge fairly by a careful balance of merits
and defects, and, above all, by a careful revision of our standpoint in
relation to both. It may be that the structure which we regard as
inorganic is really a new type of organism, a further development along
the line which we have already traced. It may be that the style which
appears careless, has really some subtle method which we are as yet too
clumsy to detect. And even if we are honestly unable to convince
ourselves of error, even if our certitude only grows and gathers as we
study the passage afresh, it by no means follows that the fault which we
have noted is a final ground for condemnation. There can be no
perfection without entire control of resource, but control is
notoriously difficult in proportion to the variety and novelty of the
emotional expression. Hence the more complex and striking the ideas
which a composer wishes to embody, the harder he will find it to present
them in a supreme artistic form. In Schumann, to take the highest
example at once, we sometimes seem to find a great thought struggling
with an intractable medium: we feel rather than hear what it is that he
wishes to express, we apprehend his meaning from broken phrases and
incomplete suggestions. Compare his symphonies with those of Beethoven,
and you see the baffled Titanic strength beside the serene unerring
mastery of the divine hand. Yet, if it be failure, it is noble failure,
better by far than the elaboration of smooth commonplaces and finished
platitudes. It is not carelessness but preoccupation, not unskilfulness
but audacity, not scantiness of resource but prodigality of expenditure.
Schumann's music is always manly, forcible, genuine, and it is no
serious dispraise to say that in the larger forms he is a less perfect
artist than he is in his lyrics.
Here, then, we may see the solution of the present problem. All music
which appeals to us as true has for us a certain measure of value. It is
only conceit and dishonesty, and self-conscious artifice, that merit
absolute and unqualified reprobation: for the rest we may appraise our
work partly in reference to its particular purpose, partly by an
estimate of the success with which its object is attained. If it present
any passage of real interest, we owe it a corresponding debt of
gratitude: if it counterbalance a fault of one kind by a beauty of
another, then criticism should determine which of the two has the more
important bearing on the case. But there can be no sound judgment
without a code, and no code in music without a recognition and
acknowledgment of its masterpieces. Thus the analysis of perfect art
does not preclude us from the consideration of art that is imperfect,
for it is only through the former that the latter is possible.
In the third place, there may be enthusiasts who are still inclined to
cry, with Gebir,--
'Is this the mighty ocean, is this all?'
Are we to hold seriously that Music can be explained by any system of
laws and regulations, that its influence upon us can be classified under
heads and reduced to scientific maxims? Is it not rather degrading to
analyse the divine art into tricks of surprise and devices of rhetoric,
into this kind of figure and that kind of modulation, into a nice
adjustment of curve and harmony and cadence? Where is the 'fine
careless rapture' of the artist? Where is the inspiration of the poet?
Surely it is better that we should ignorantly worship than that we
should be turning Apollo into a sophist and setting the Muses to keep
school.
Part of this objection has already been met. The true sphere of analysis
is not life but the living body, not inspiration but the form in which
it is manifested. And herein we may contend that there is a right as
well as a wrong use of law. Some rules of Music are purely transitory in
their nature, and can therefore only afford an imperfect basis for
judgment even in the generation that accepts them. The prohibitions of
the old counterpoint, for instance, were in many cases merely
conventional limits, determined by the particular characteristics of the
human voice; they are therefore no longer binding on our instrumental
composers. The restrictions of early harmony were merely retrospective
inferences from the actual practice of past compositions: they had no
logical validity, and therefore became obsolete. But the laws which here
present themselves as a part of the artistic code have a double claim on
our acceptance: first, that they are, as a matter of fact, embodied in
the greatest works of the greatest masters; and second, that they draw
their origin from the fundamental attributes of our human nature. For
the essential qualities which underlie the artistic character have
altered very little since the earliest authentic record of its history.
Revolutions have come and gone, fashions have arisen and have passed
away, yet the work that made Athens beautiful is still our type and
climax of perfect achievement. Literature has been shaken by the clash
of contending parties, it has submitted to new dynasties and new
leaders, yet the great principles of its constitution are the same now
as in the time of the _Odyssey_. And Music, though it has grown more
slowly and deliberately than the representative arts, may still be shown
to have sprung from the same source, and to have followed an even more
continuous line of evolution. If, then, we can analyse the conditions
that have made that evolution possible, we are not degrading Art into a
mere ingenious mechanism, but explaining the necessary laws of its life
and progress.
* * * * *
Finally, it must be remembered that if excellence in musical art be
difficult to formulate, it is not, for that reason, difficult to
apprehend. The beauty of a great masterpiece rises from the supreme and
consummate expression of characteristics, which, in a greater or less
degree, are common to all normal humanity. No doubt, in different races,
there are differences of convention, as there are of scale and
instrument and musical language, but convention in itself is always
negative, and its sole force is the establishment of temporary
limitations. Within their widening scope the whole range of the art
gradually extends; within them lie its wonders of purity and sublimity,
its treasures of pathos and humour, its contrasts of wise reticence and
opulent display. And for the proper appreciation of these gifts, there
are no strange or recondite qualities demanded, only receptivity of ear,
only sanity of emotion, only patience that is willing to observe, and
courage that is ready to speak its mind. The rest is a matter of
training and experience: training by which we rouse our faculties to a
higher stage of development, experience by which we learn to equip our
criticism with new facts and new relations. In Music it is essentially
true that 'admiration grows as knowledge grows': it is equally true that
knowledge itself lies open to the attainment of all honest endeavour.
FREDERICK CHOPIN
Like a poet, hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.
I
WARSAW
We are more accustomed in literature than in music to find immortality
conferred on artists whose total quantity of production is slight or
incomplete. Sappho lives in a few lyrics, Villon in a few ballades,
Persius is a great satirist with some six hundred lines of verse,
Merimée a great novelist with a slender handful of short stories. In all
such cases we accept perfection of finish, individuality of note,
concentration of effort, as more than compensating for the narrow limits
within which the writer has thought fit to be confined: and we even
impute it as a virtue that he has not changed the gold of his thought
into the more diffuse silver of a meaner standard. But in music, as a
rule, our judgment is affected by other considerations. For some reason
the composer has generally been more lavish than his brother artists: he
has worked more rapidly, perhaps more continuously, and has gained, in
proportion, a larger abundance to bestow. Six weeks sufficed Mozart for
his three greatest symphonies: Handel wrote the _Messiah_ in less than
a month: Schubert created nine of his songs in a single day: and it is
therefore little wonder if we have learned to expect some opulence of
achievement in our musicians, or even to estimate them, as an innkeeper
discriminates his guests, by the amount of their baggage and the number
of their retinue.
We shall find an interesting commentary on this view if we turn to the
programme of a famous concert, given at Warsaw on February 24, 1818. The
principal work performed was a pianoforte concerto which served to bring
two names, those of its composer and its interpreter, into a forcible
and prominent contrast. The one was a master of established reputation
and acknowledged authority, the Hofkapellmeister at Vienna, the friend
of Beethoven, the musician whose operas were applauded in every capital,
whose symphonies were set in the balance against Haydn's, whose
quartetts were declared by dispassionate judges to be the equal of
Mozart's. The other was planting his first footsteps in a byway of the
art which he was to tread for thirty years with little deviation,
satisfied to pluck a posy of flowers from the hedgerow, and lay it down
as his offering at the journey's end. The one covered the whole field of
composition, and, at the end of his career, could number a list of works
which outmatches the industry of almost all his contemporaries. The
other, cut short by an early death, has left us a few thin volumes,
curiously uniform in style, and restricted, with scarcely an exception,
to the limits of a single instrument. Yet the one is as completely
forgotten as though he had never lived, while the other has passed into
the company of the immortals. To our ears the name of Adalbert Gyrowetz
is of the most forlorn unfamiliarity, it has become 'fantastic,
unsubstantial--like Henry Pimpernel and old John Naps of Greece'; but no
vicissitude of fortune, no changing fashion of art, can ever obliterate
from our memory the image of Frederick Chopin.
It must, however, be added, that Chopin's slenderness of accomplishment
in no way indicated any poverty of invention. His work was not, as is
sometimes said of Gray's, the laborious tillage of a light soil; rather
it was like that Japanese gardening, which intensifies the beauty of a
single blossom by cutting off all the rest. The true reason, indeed, is
to be found in a point of character, '_Il avait l'esprit écorché vif_,'
said the comrade who knew him best, and in these words may be found the
whole explanation, both of his life and of his artistic career.
Delicate, sensitive, fastidious, he would shrink from committing himself
to a decision, lest it should fall short of the highest that he knew.
Rapid and brilliant in improvisation, he would spend weeks in writing
and rewriting a single page. A pianist of rare and exquisite gifts, he
would often feel paralysed by the mere sight of a public audience.
Generous, affectionate, and enthusiastic, he was yet too earnest to be
forbearing, too susceptible to be tolerant, too exacting to show
indulgence, and the same acute criticism with which he visited the
actions of others, he applied in an equal measure to his own.
Hence there is a special danger in estimating him from a British
standpoint. Our bluff, sturdy manhood has little in common with the
keenness and mobility which mark one side of the artistic temperament,
and we have never been very successful at comprehending alien characters
or alien nationalities. True, we have advanced beyond the stage of
unreasoning hostility towards the stranger who presumes to be more
impressionable than ourselves, but for the most part we have only
substituted a half-contemptuous compassion which is equally galling, and
almost equally unintelligent. A past generation looked on Shelley and
wondered that the fires of Heaven delayed their falling; the present age
insults Heine with forgiveness, in consideration of the purgatory of his
later years; and in like manner, when we hear of Chopin, we think, 'Poor
fellow! he was consumptive,' and prepare ourselves to condone the
irregularities of his life by some rough and ready diagnosis of physical
disease. It seldom occurs to us to reflect that the problem may be too
complex for so easy a solution, and that, before it can be solved at
all, it must at least be stated correctly. As a matter of fact, Chopin's
life was singularly blameless, and, until its close, singularly free
from the material conditions of trouble. No doubt there is a deep pathos
in the record of a death which seems to us premature: no doubt the
pathos is intensified by the spectacle of failing strength and
encroaching sickness; but it is an entirely false application of
perspective to let our view of the end obliterate our view of the whole.
And there is otherwise little hardship in the case. The feeble health
was compensated, at least in part, by friendship, by affection, and by
fame such as few musicians have enjoyed in their lifetime. It is not
history to draw fancy pictures of a querulous invalid, a continuous
burden to himself and to all who cared for him; still less to fill page
after page with unsubstantiated rumours of ill-usage and neglect.
Chopin's relation to his friends was neither that of tyrant nor that of
victim, and his career, if, like every other, it was traversed by heavy
clouds, at least had its bursts of sunshine and its long days of genial
warmth.
He was born on 1st March 1809,[16] at the little village of Zelazowa
Wola, near Warsaw. His father, Nicholas Chopin, was a French _émigré_,
possibly with Polish blood in his veins, who, after sundry vicissitudes,
had settled down as tutor in the family of Countess Skarbek, and had
there met and married a Polish lady called Justina Krzyzanowska.
Frederick, the only son, was the third of four children, and so was
privileged to pass his earliest years in the Oriental despotism of a
nursery peopled by admiring sisters.
In 1810 Nicholas Chopin carried off his household to the Capital, where
he had been appointed Professor of French at the new Lyceum. At first
there seems to have been some stress of poverty: salaries were low, life
was unsettled; no one knew what quarter of Europe would next be set
ablaze by the indomitable activity of Napoleon. However, in 1814, the
Congress of Vienna established a kingdom of Poland, shorn, no doubt, of
its border territories, and held in check by the suzerainty of Russia,
but still governed by a Pole as viceroy, and recognising Polish as its
official language. This was far from meeting the wishes of the
'patriotic party,' which looked to France as its ally and to the Emperor
as its protector, but at least it ensured some measure of independence,
and, after the next year, a certain prospect of peace and tranquillity.
As might be expected, the change of political condition produced an
immediate effect on the national temper. Warsaw, which, in 1812, was one
of the most miserable of cities, began in 1815 to recover the signs of
material prosperity. Trade was developed, schools were opened, the great
houses welcomed back their exiles, and the country at large shook off
its dream of disquietude and set its face hopefully to the future. Only
in secret rose an occasional murmur that Russia was an alien power, that
the days of Suvorov had not passed out of memory, that the Viceroy was a
mere puppet in the hands of the Emperor Alexander, and that the new
Commander-in-Chief was a truculent savage who needed all the eloquence
of his Polish wife to keep him from open oppression. Apart from these
scattered voices of discontent, there can be no doubt that the nation
rejoiced at its deliverance from German officialism, and, with
characteristic buoyancy, resumed the business of life, and not a little
of its brilliance.
Naturally, the Chopins bore their part in the general advance.
Even while the fate of Poland was still in the balance, two fresh
appointments had been added to the Professorship at the Lyceum, and the
gradual restoration of the great families opened the way for a private
school, over which no one was so capable of presiding as Count
Skarbek's old tutor. This enlargement of means was the only thing
wanted to make Chopin's childhood a period of almost ideal happiness.
His parents seem to have been altogether worthy of the affection which
he lavished on them: the father kindly, honourable, upright, firm in the
government of his family, and unwearied in the administration of its
resources; the mother bright, active and tender-hearted, full of
folklore and household recipes, sincere in religion, charitable in
conduct, gentle and courteous in speech. Then the house was visited by
all manner of interesting people--poets, professors, politicians,--who
would talk to Nicholas Chopin about his old home in half-Polish
Lorraine, where men still spoke of the good Duke Stanislaus, or would
exchange memories of the war and hopes for the new _régime_. And for the
more important aspects of life there could be no better companions than
the three sisters--Louisa, who knew everything in the lesson-books;
Isabella, who was practical, and could always find things when they were
lost; and Emily, the best of playfellows, who told the most delightful
stories, and had a special talent for making believe. Almost every
birthday there were theatricals, almost every evening there was music
for who would listen--all around was a world of flowers and sunshine, of
pleasant looks and pleasant voices, of 'short task and merry holiday.'
It is a poignant contrast to turn to the four children, less fortunate
but not less gifted, who during these same years were writing their
journals and acting their solitary plays in the bleak parsonage at
Haworth.
Very little can be ascertained about Chopin's musical education. We know
that his pianoforte teacher was a Bohemian called Adalbert Zywny, and
that he learned harmony and counterpoint from Elsner, but we have
scarcely any information as to the extent and value of the lessons. It
is certain that in after life his system of fingering was entirely
original and unorthodox, from which we may conjecture that Zywny never
really taught him to play a scale--and indeed there is some tradition
that the Professor was a violinist who only took to the piano as a
second string, and who allowed the boy to spend most of his time in
improvisation. Elsner was a good-tempered, easy-going old kapellmeister,
who did his pupil the greatest service by teaching him to love Bach, and
then allowed him to go his own way without further supervision. The
works which Chopin published during his student period have little or no
scope for counterpoint, but they show beyond controversy that he and his
master were equally indifferent to what is known as classical structure.
On the other hand, his sense of harmony was always admirable, and there
can be no doubt that he owed much of its development to the wise care,
and still wiser reticence, with which the laws and prohibitions were
explained to him. Again, Liszt is probably right in drawing special
attention to the moral value of Elsner's teaching. With a conscientious
pupil the method of encouragement is the easiest possible way to
inculcate a feeling of responsibility, and the most successful teacher
is he who knows how to train mediocrity and to leave genius a free hand.
It should be added that Chopin's relation to his two masters was always
cordial and affectionate. As late as 1835, we find him docketing a
letter from Zywny, a curious, formal, kindly note, full of good wishes
and fine language, while to Elsner he always looked with a boy's
hero-worship, as to a mentor whose advice was never to be neglected, and
whose praise was the highest of commendations.
We may well understand that, as a pupil, he was best left alone. His
precocity was something phenomenal, even in the decade which saw
Mendelssohn at Weimar and Liszt at Paris: before he was eight years old
he was a pianist of established reputation; before he was nine he played
one of Gyrowetz' pianoforte concertos at a charity concert; at ten he
ventured into the presence of the Grand Duke Constantine, and offered
that awful potentate a military march for use among the troops. Of
course, every one petted and caressed him, and called him the young
Mozart. Countesses and princesses danced to his mazurkas, or sat by the
piano while he improvised: Royalty itself sent down a great glittering
clattering chariot, and galloped him off to play at the Belvidere: from
end to end of the brilliant, light-hearted, pleasure-loving city he
moved at his ease, like the young Prince Charming in a fairy tale, sure
of a welcome, sure of applause, and accepting all that society offered
with a child's careless enjoyment.
An atmosphere so heavy with adulation might well have poisoned a nature
less lovable or less simple-hearted. But its only effect on Chopin was
to increase still further his natural refinement of manner and to
accentuate his intolerance of anything like rudeness or vulgarity. There
does not seem to have been a trace of vanity in his constitution. He
played 'as the linnets sing,' without effort, without premeditation, and
without any apparent idea that his performance was out of the common. At
his _début_, in the charity concert of 1818, the only feature which
struck him as exciting any admiration was his lace collar; the watch
given him two years later by Catalani only appealed to him as a new toy
of unusual splendour: in all the record of his childhood there is not a
single indication of petulance or conceit. We can easily reconstruct his
portrait:--a little, frail, delicate elf of a boy, with fair hair and a
prominent nose, the face redeemed from ugliness by the wonderful brown
eyes and the quick intelligence of expression; a temperament which was
keen, nervous and changeable, a character rapid and alert, bubbling over
with effervescent spirits, playful, affectionate, and sensitive. He was
already an accomplished actor and a born mimic, full of odd sayings
and harmless mischief, clever and imaginative, utterly devoid of
self-consciousness or affectation. His one defect was his want of a
boy's adventurousness, and his disinclination to out-door sports and
exercises. We can hardly imagine his tearing his clothes or getting his
feet wet. But we must remember that this disability is not always to be
regarded as an unpardonable sin, and that, ever since the days of
Euripides, there has been a feud between the poet and the athlete. Had
Chopin been more robust, he would doubtless have taken life with
the greater equanimity--and we should have lost one of the most
characteristic figures in the history of Music.
Unfortunately many of the anecdotes which are current about his boyhood
bear the clear impress of mythology. The utmost we can say of them is,
that they appear to contain some elements of truth which have
been overlaid by enthusiastic biographers until they are almost
unrecognisable. We can well believe for instance, that he once
made an April fool of an irascible landowner by sending him a sham
business-letter in Yiddish; but M. Karasowski, who tells the story,
ruins it by gravely adding that the child played his trick with the
deliberate moral purpose of curing his neighbour's temper; and, worse
still, that the sermon was successful. Again, it is quite possible that
on one insubordinate afternoon, when the pupils had proved too many
for the usher, Chopin appeared on the scene and kept them quiet
by improvising romances; but then we are further told that his
representation of night, on the pianoforte, was so realistic that it
sent all the boys to sleep. No doubt these embellishments are innocuous
enough, though they add nothing which it is of any moment to preserve,
but the uncritical fancy which accepts them as historical, offers but an
ominous prospect for the discussion of the later life. That the record
of Chopin's manhood is still a fruitful theme for controversy is mainly
owing to the fact that it has been treated by writers who, for the most
part, show a lamentable disregard of the value of evidence.
In 1824, Chopin was promoted from his father's preparatory school to the
fourth class of the Warsaw Lyceum. There he worked hard, rose rapidly,
won two or three prizes, and gained the esteem and respect of his
school-fellows by developing a remarkable talent for caricature. It must
have been an agonising moment when the director confiscated a sheet of
paper containing an unflattering portrait of himself, and it says
something for the young scapegrace, that the sketch was returned with no
heavier rebuke than a sardonic comment on the excellence of the
likeness. The first holidays were spent on a friend's estate in
Szafarnia, from which the boy issued to his parents a periodical
journal, after the model of the _Warsaw Courier_, and even got one of
the daughters of the house to give it an amateur imprimatur, in
imitation of the official censorship. The same year witnessed, at
some family festival, the production of a new comedy, written in
collaboration by Frederick Chopin, aged fifteen, and Emily Chopin, aged
eleven. And all this time the dramatist, artist, journalist, and student
of Polish history is writing his harmony exercises, playing his
Kalkbrenner concertos, composing songs, devising variations, and
generally progressing in music as though he had no other occupation to
distract him. Grant that the comedy has no great literary value, and
that the _Ranz des Vaches_ variations are slight and childish, it still
remains a marvel that one small head should have exhibited such restless
and versatile ability. To find a parallel, we must go back to the golden
age of Leonardo and the two Cellini, when all arts lay open and the
common lands of knowledge had not yet been enclosed.
Up to 1825 Nicholas Chopin does not seem to have had any idea of making
his son a professional musician. The first essays had been so many in
number, and so various in impulse, that they might well account for some
feeling of uncertainty, but by the end of 1824 the boy's activity had
begun to take a more settled direction, and the events of the next year
are mainly musical. First, there were two concerts, on March 27 and June
10, at the former of which Chopin was set to improvise on an instrument
with the amazing name of Æolopantaleon, then the Emperor Alexander, who
had come down to Warsaw to open the Parliamentary Session, sent for the
young genius, heard him play, and dismissed him with some august
compliments and a diamond ring; while, finally, this approbation of men
and gods was succeeded by the Horatian climax of publication. The Rondo
in C minor, which was printed this year as Op. 1, is a singular example
of Chopin's strength and weakness in composition. The themes are clear,
pleasant and melodious, contrasted with great skill, and admirably
suited to the pianoforte; but the form is redundant and ill-balanced,
the exposition unduly prolonged, and the subsequent treatment hurried
and inadequate. No doubt, a concert rondo should not be criticised with
the same severity as the rondo movement of a sonata; yet even with all
laxity of concession, we can find passages and even pages, through which
Elsner ought to have drawn his pencil. That Chopin should have written
them is no crime; youth is expected to be extravagant; but his master
might have remembered that an artist who, in the phrase of Cherubini,
'puts too much cloth into his coat,' spoils the result, in addition to
wasting the material.
The only other compositions which can be assigned to this year with any
certainty are the two Mazurkas in G and B flat, which appear among the
posthumous work in Breitkopf and Härtel's Edition. Indeed, it is pretty
certain that Chopin was still attempting to do too many things at once.
By the beginning of 1826 he had shown unmistakable signs of overwork,
and in the next holidays he was ordered off to try the whey cure at Bad
Reinerz in Prussian Silesia. His experiences of the place are recorded
in a letter to his school-fellow Wilhelm Kolberg, and consist mainly of
approval of the scenery, criticisms of the visitors, and caricatures of
the local band. The only incident, was a concert which he organised for
the benefit of two orphans, the death of whose mother had left them
without money enough to return home. For the rest he drank his whey,
took sedate walks with his mother and sisters, and even succeeded in
persuading himself that he was growing 'stout and lazy.'
The journey home was broken by two or three visits, of which the most
important was a short stay at Antonin, the country residence of Prince
Radziwill. The Prince was an enthusiastic patron of music, an able and
meritorious composer, a good singer and violoncellist, and a pleasant
cultivated man, who seemed to have been cast by Fate for the part of
Mæcenas. Apparently he had met Chopin in Warsaw, and shared the interest
which all Polish society felt in its new genius. Liszt asserts that he
paid for the boy's education, but the statement, which is intrinsically
improbable, is categorically denied by Fontana, while the still wilder
report that he defrayed the expenses of Chopin's Italian tour, is best
answered by the fact that Chopin never set foot inside Italy in his
life. However, the tie of hospitality is not likely to have been
weakened by the absence of a monetary basis, and the friendship between
host and guest was quite as cordial as though they had been debtor and
creditor.
Once back in Warsaw, Chopin set himself to prepare for his final
examination at the Lyceum, which he passed with something less than his
usual distinction, in 1827. The cause of this comparative failure is not
hard to divine, for although the compositions of the winter are few and
unimportant, there can be no doubt that Chopin was devoting himself
more and more to music, and allowing other interests to sink into the
background. And there was another reason. On April 10, his sister Emily,
the closest and dearest of all his companions, died of pulmonary
disease. She had accompanied her brother to Reinerz, in the hope of
checking a malady which medical skill is almost powerless to cure, she
had returned with some alleviation of suffering and some hopes of
reprieve--and then came the end. We may readily imagine the effect which
her death must have produced on the sensitive, affectionate boy from
whom, through all her short life, she had been inseparable. It was his
first great sorrow, and he was never of a nature to take his sorrows
lightly.
As soon as his work set him free, he tried to find solace in some short,
fitful periods of travel, and paid a visit to his godmother's house in
Posen, and a second to the brother of his old head-master, who was
occupying some official post at Danzic. All the winter was spent at
home, sketching, revising, polishing, and preparing his compositions for
the publisher. By the autumn of the next year he had completed two or
three Polonaises,[17] a Nocturne, a Piano Sonata, a brilliant Rondo for
two pianos, the first movement of the G minor Trio, and, more important
than all, the variations on _La ci darem_, which were published in 1830
as Op. 2. It was this last-named work which evoked Schumann's first
critical essay, and introduced the world at large to Florestan and
Eusebius. Sixty years have passed since the essay was printed, and we
are in no mind to question its decision. 'Hats off, gentlemen, a
genius,' is the only judgment which sums up that wonderful combination
of grace and audacity, of delicacy and vigour, of technical display and
poetic invention.
The course of the year's work was interrupted by a notable episode. One
day at the beginning of September, Dr Jarocki, the zoology professor,
came up to call; announced that he had been invited to attend a
scientific congress at Berlin, and offered to take Chopin with him as
travelling companion. The proposal was readily accepted. Nicholas
Chopin, who had by this time entirely acquiesced in his son's choice of
a career, was beginning to doubt whether a sufficiently wide field of
action and opportunity could be obtained at Warsaw: and, in any case, it
was advisable that the young man should see something of the world
before he settled down to the duties of his profession. Frederick, too,
was overjoyed at the prospect. He cared little for congresses and
nothing at all for science, he refused his ticket of admission to the
meetings, on the ground that he did not want to pose as 'Saul among the
prophets,' but the chances of increasing his musical experience were far
too precious to be lost. By the middle of the month he was established
at the Hotel Kronprinz, hearing _Fernando Cortez_ at the Opera,
revelling in Handel's _St Cæcilia_ at the Singakademie, spending his
days in the music library at Schlesinger's, and only idle when some
enthusiastic scientist carried him off to spend a reluctant hour in the
Zoological Museum.
Three of his letters, preserved by M. Karasowski, give us an amusing
picture of his impressions. We can see him, shrinking with suppressed
impatience, while the interminable dinner goes on, and Professor Lehmann
rests an academic hand on his plate in order to converse across him with
Professor Jarocki: we can see him at the Singakademie looking with
awe-stricken eyes at Mendelssohn and Spontini, or burning with shame to
discover that he has mistaken Alexander von Humboldt for a footman: we
can see him making stealthy caricatures and carefully adding the names
of the originals, 'in case they should prove to be celebrities.'
Everything is noted with a good-natured criticism, the humours of the
journey, the cleanliness and order of the streets, the bad taste of the
ladies' dresses, and the great final banquet, at which all the sciences
sat round the table singing convivial songs, while counterpoint, in the
person of Zelter, stood behind a golden goblet and beat time.
It is unlikely that Chopin completed any musical work at Berlin. The
first we hear of his Fantasia on Polish airs is that he played it at a
little post town on the way home, while the diligence was changing
horses, but it is more probable that he composed it earlier in the year
than that he found time for it amid all the rush of new interests and
new distractions. The real value of his visit was that it supplied the
need, which every composer feels, of an occasional period of pure
receptiveness. Not that the music heard presents itself in any way as a
model for imitation: a man may be stimulated to write a string quartett
by a course of opera, or be moved to song by a series of symphonies: but
the very fact of production involves a certain wear and tear which is
often most easily repaired from outside. And so it is not surprising
that, when Chopin returned home, after stopping a couple of days at
Posen, and paying his respects to Prince Radziwill, he at once finished
his Pianoforte Trio and wrote the Krakowiak, which is the most carefully
scored of all his orchestral compositions. His parents gave him a little
back room, furnished with a piano and an old writing-desk, and there he
sat and elaborated his phrases, complaining piteously when his solitude
was invaded by inopportune visitors or unwelcome invitations. Society is
the most delightful of patrons, until a man realises that he has his
work to do. After that it tends to become something of a tyrant.
In the early part of 1829 Warsaw was visited successively by Hummel and
Paganini. For the latter Chopin felt little more than the common
admiration, the former he had long regarded as a special tutelary
genius, whose exquisite precision of style was at once his ambition and
his despair. He was far too modest to recognise the limitations of his
hero, and the deeper and truer note which his own temperament was
capable of sounding: as yet, if we except the great variations of the
preceding year, he had attempted little more than the mastery of exact
expression, and in this he regarded Hummel as the best of types with the
same loyalty with which he had accepted Elsner as the best of teachers.
We have no record of the interview between the two artists. We only know
that they met, that they made a good impression on each other, and that
their subsequent intercourse bears witness to much cordiality on the
elder side, and to an unquestioning and unbroken hero-worship on the
younger.
It is possible that this glimpse of the ideal served to bring into
sharper relief the narrowness of the Warsaw horizon. In any case, as the
summer approached, Chopin grew restless and began to pine for a larger
atmosphere and more congenial surroundings. Naturally, his first thought
was of Vienna. He had already sent three or four of his manuscripts to
try their fortune with Haslinger: and as no answer had come, he found a
reasonable excuse for going to attack the publisher in person. He
therefore started from home about the middle of July, spent a few
days in Cracow, and a few more in Polish Switzerland and Galicia,
and finally arrived at his destination on the 31st. Haslinger
received him courteously enough, promised to print the _La ci darem_
Variations, and strongly urged him to give a concert in order to
familiarise the Viennese public with his manner of composition. It is
characteristic that this obvious suggestion appeared to Chopin to be
wholly impracticable. That he should venture to play in a city which
had heard Mozart and Beethoven; that he, a mere provincial, should
expect an audience in the metropolis of the musical world; the bare
idea seemed an act of presumption beside which the challenge of
Marsyas faded into insignificance: and it was only after continued
pressure and reiterated encouragement that he finally nerved himself
to the attempt. Acquiescence once extorted the arrangements went
on smoothly; Würfel got out the bills, Count Gallenberg lent the
Kärnthnerthor Theatre, and on August 11--a memorable date in musical
history--Chopin made his _début_ before a foreign public.
Of course there was the usual disaster at rehearsal. Like all young
composers, Chopin insisted on copying his own band parts, and the result
was that the Krakowiak had to be cut out of the programme, and the
concert marred by an apology. However, the evening made amends. The
audience was not numerous, but it was cordial and appreciative;
applauded the variations so lustily, that the _tuttis_ were inaudible,
and finally 'began a regular dance in the back benches,' when Chopin
replaced his rondo with an improvisation. The only adverse criticism,
from stalls to gallery, was an expression of disappointment, on the part
of some unknown lady, that 'the lad had so little presence.' No doubt,
like the wife of Charles Lamb's friend, she 'had expected to see a tall,
fine, officer-looking man,' who would look well in uniform.
Fortified by his success, Chopin gave a second concert on August 18, at
which the Krakowiak was produced, and the variations were repeated. This
time the audience was larger, and the reception still more encouraging.
Several of the musical notabilities of Vienna came to offer their
applause--Gyrowetz, with the queer, wrinkled face and the kindly eyes,
that belied the querulous mouth; Lachner, young, ardent and restless;
Schuppanzigh, still chuckling at Beethoven's jests on his corpulence;
Czerny, all high forehead, big spectacles and bland expression.
Everybody was warm and friendly, full of congratulations on the triumph
which, as the manager was careful to explain, 'could not be due to the
ballet, because that had been given before,' and Chopin soon found
himself arguing with a press of people who wanted him to fix the date
for his third appearance. But on this point he was obdurate. He had
only given his second concert lest the Warsaw public should think that
he was dissatisfied with the first. The Viennese had been very kind, but
he was quite sure that they had seen enough of him for one visit. He was
full of gratitude, he had enjoyed himself immensely, but the fact was
that he had made up his mind to start for Prague the next day, and he
could not alter his arrangements. And so, in spite of all entreaties, he
left Vienna on the evening of August 19, without even waiting for the
newspaper reports of his two recitals.
It is interesting to compare his letters with the various notices and
critiques that appeared after his departure. 'I was not hissed,'
he writes on August 12, 'so don't be anxious about my artistic
reputation.... My friends swear that they heard nothing but praise, and
that, until the spontaneous outburst of applause, not one of them
clapped or uttered a bravo.... I am curious to hear what Herr Elsner
will say to all this. Perhaps he disapproves of my playing at all. But I
was so besieged on all sides that I had no escape, and I don't seem to
have committed a blunder by my performance.' And again, on August 19,
'My reception yesterday was still more hearty. I know I have pleased the
ladies and the musicians. Only the thorough Germans seem to have been
dissatisfied.... When I told the manager that I hoped to come back to
Vienna for the purpose of improving myself, he answered that for such a
reason I should never need to come, since I had nothing more to learn.
Of course these are mere compliments; still, one does not listen to them
unwillingly. At any rate, for the future, I shall not be regarded as a
student. Blahetka tells me that he wonders at my learning it all in
Warsaw. I answered that from Zywny and Elsner even the greatest donkey
must gain something.' In all this there is a tone of simple, unconscious
modesty which is very pleasant to notice. There are not many men in
Chopin's position who would have taken their first triumph so easily,
and still fewer who would have been at the pains to disclaim the
assistance of a _claque_.
On the other hand, the newspapers speak with a much firmer tone. The
_Wiener Theaterzeitung_ noted a touch of genius in the compositions,
and gave special praise to the clearness and delicacy of their
interpretation. 'He plays very quietly,' it said, 'with little emphasis,
and with none of that rhetorical _aplomb_ which is considered by
virtuosos as indispensable.... He was recognised as an artist of whom
the best may be expected as soon as he has heard more.... He knows how
to please, although, in his case, the desire to make good music
predominates noticeably over the desire to give pleasure.' Such
commendation from the acknowledged leader of Viennese criticism at once
set the tone to the minor journals; and the whole city swelled its
voice into a full chorus of approval. Even the distant _Allgemeine
Musikalische Zeitung_ caught an echo of the enthusiasm, and hailed
Chopin as a 'brilliant meteor,' who had 'appeared on the horizon without
any previous blast of trumpets.'
From Vienna he went on to Prague, where he met Pixis, Klengel and some
other celebrities; and from Prague to Teplitz, where he spent an evening
at Prince Clary's, and electrified the company by his improvisations.
The westernmost point of his travel was Dresden. As a devoted admirer of
_Der Freischütz_, he naturally felt an interest in the city where Weber
had been kapellmeister, and he bore with him letters of introduction
which would ensure his admission into the centre of its artistic
society. It is probably in consequence of his admiration for Weber that
he writes rather cavalierly about his interview with Morlacchi. Musical
enmities have a way of lasting, and Chopin was always more vehement in
the quarrels of his heroes than he was in his own. For the rest, he paid
his tribute of homage to the Gallery, stayed to see a performance of
_Faust_ at the theatre, and then hurried homeward to supplement his
letter with the thousand details that are always lost between pen and
paper. Indeed, there was plenty to relate. He had left Warsaw with a
reputation little wider than the limits of his native province: now,
after two eventful months, he was returning to match the wreath of
welcome with the laurels of a victorious campaign.
A few short weeks and the conqueror is in the dust. Nothing in all
Chopin's life is more striking than the sudden and entire change which
followed as a reaction from the excitements of the summer. His letters
grew morbid, anxious, irritable; the clear-cut sentences wander off into
vagueness and incoherence; the rapid judgment becomes hesitating and
irresolute. Through all this dark time there runs the golden thread of
an ideal friendship; but it is knotted and entwined with a love-story
that can only seem to us singularly unreal and purposeless. Many of its
details are absolutely unknown, but there is little need that we should
know them. We are only concerned with its effect on Chopin's character;
with the presage through which it may lead us to a better and fuller
comprehension of his subsequent life. And herein the story, imperfect
though it be, may serve us as a true guide. The two tragic episodes of
Chopin's career, for all their unlikeness, have their explanation in a
single point of temperament: the weakness which, in later years, lost
the comradeship of George Sand, was but another form of that nervous
sensibility which now called up, for its torment, the shadowy and
fugitive vision of Constance Gladkowska.
Even at the outset there is no tone of hopefulness. 'I have, perhaps to
my misfortune, already found my ideal,' he writes to his friend
Woyciechowski; and a little later, 'It is bitter to have no one with
whom one can share joy or sorrow, to feel one's heart oppressed, and to
be unable to express one's complaints to any human soul.' All this
time--it is a grotesque touch which somehow adds to the pathos--he had
never spoken to her, and had only seen her occasionally as she was
taking her lessons at the Conservatorium. At least six months had
elapsed before he made her acquaintance, and even then we have no record
of intimacy, no interchange of letters, no word of lover's vows; nothing
but idle conjecture and a few wild confessions of doubt and despair.
Warsaw had become intolerable to him. Come what may, he will not spend
another winter at home. He will go to Berlin, to Vienna, to Paris, to
Italy; anywhere to escape. And then comes a revulsion, and he fancies
himself dying in a foreign land, with the unconcerned physician and the
paid servants waiting beside his deathbed. Plans are made only to be
reversed; projects are formed only to be abandoned; and every change is
made the occasion for some fresh complaint, or some new exhibition of a
self-inflicted wound.
This is not the manner of true passion. It is not love which degrades a
chivalrous nature, which torments generosity with suspicion, and turns
activity into a feverish impatience. Grant that the noblest character
has its ignoble aspect; its concealed depths which an unforeseen storm
may sometimes lash to the surface; yet we cannot look upon a current
which is wholly turbid, and characterise it by the highest name in all
man's vocabulary. Grant that every lover has his moments of unreason,
fits of groundless ill-temper, of disproportionate remorse, of jealousy
that is roused by a look and quieted by a word, yet we are here bidden
to mistake the accidents for the substance, and to describe as love a
shadow which is cast from no sun. The truth is that Chopin's passion was
not a cause, but a symptom; not a power which influenced his life, but a
direction of hectic energy that must itself be traced back to a remoter
source. He was standing at the verge of manhood: always nervous and
impressionable, he was come to the time when strength is weakest and
courage the most insecure: he had just passed through the bewilderment
of his first great enterprise, and had emerged to breathe an atmosphere
electric with change and heavy with disquietude. It is little wonder
that he lost his true self, and strayed from his appointed course. He
would have been more than human if he had not felt some stress of
uncertainty, or followed his restless impulses in the absence of a surer
guide.
Yet the affection which is lacking to his romance is poured, in full and
continuous profusion, upon his friend. 'You do not require my portrait,'
he writes to Woyciecowski in November; 'I am always with you, and shall
never forget you to the end of my life.' And later, 'You have no idea
how much I love you. What would I not give to embrace you once again.'
He suggests that they should travel abroad together, and then, by a
refinement of sensibility, adds that it would be more delightful if they
started separately, 'and met somewhere by chance.' All the compositions
are discussed with entire frankness, all the plans submitted for advice
and counsel; even omens and presentiments are called in and made to bear
their witness to community of purpose. The very complaints take a
brighter tone when we realise their absolute trust, and their certain
expectation of sympathy. It is as though Chopin shrank from the thought
of his passion as a child shrinks from the darkness, and turned to take
refuge in the strong arms that he knew were waiting to protect him. He
was never self-reliant, never strong enough to face the world alone.
Now, in the time of his trouble, he looked to his friend for comfort,
just as, ten years before, he would have taken some boyish sorrow to his
mother.
It must not be supposed that this period of mental depression is
entirely occupied with lamentations. Troilus may be 'weaker than a
woman's tear' when he thinks of Cressida, yet he still has hours in
which he can shake off his lethargy and take his place in the field or
the council chamber; and even we must add, hours when he can find solace
in the company of the white-armed Helen. Indeed, in spite of his
troubles, Chopin seems to have been fairly busy during the autumn
of 1829. By October 3, the 'Adagio' of his F minor Concerto was
completed;[18] by October 20, the Finale had been sketched, and at least
one of the Études written: then came a week's visit to Prince Radziwill,
from whose house we hear something of a new Polonaise for Violoncello,
and something, also, about the beauty and intelligence of Princess
Wanda. 'I should like her to practise my work,' writes this distracted
lover; 'it would be delightful to have the privilege of placing her
pretty fingers upon the keys.'
The winter was spent quietly at home. Chopin finished his Concerto,
showed it to Elsner for approval, and then set about looking for some
opportunity of performance. It was a long time since he had played in
public at Warsaw, and the newspaper notices from Vienna had aroused
fresh interest which he thought it advisable to satisfy. So in March
1830 he gave two concerts, both of which were conspicuously successful.
At the first, indeed, there was some complaint that he did not play loud
enough; but, on hearing it, he sent to Vienna for one of Graff's pianos,
and disarmed even this effort of criticism at the second. It is
noticeable, as an indication of musical taste in 1830, that at both
concerts the F minor Concerto was divided, the Allegro given by itself
as a separate piece, and the Adagio and Rondo following later in the
programme. We may remember that even in Paris it was the fashion of the
time to give Beethoven's symphonies piecemeal, and to intersperse the
movements with _bravura_ songs and _divertimenti_ for the French horn.
It seems unlikely that a stage manager would ever present one of
Shakespear's plays with portions of the _School for Scandal_ between the
acts; but music has always lagged behind the other arts in its
appreciation of structure, and if Berlioz could mishandle Beethoven, we
need not be surprised at Chopin's tearing his own work in pieces for
fear that the audience should suspect it of continuity. In any case, he
seems to have lost nothing by the sacrifice, for the house was crowded,
the applause vehement, and the receipts, after all expenses had been
paid, amounted to the respectable figure of 5000 florins.
Summer came, with its presage of revolution. The great wave rolling
eastward from Paris did not break on Warsaw until November; but as early
as May there were signs on the horizon, and a murmur of expectation in
the air. The Diet, which had not met for five years, was suddenly
convened; the irregularities of the Russian administration were more
freely criticised: and although the Czar had prohibited the publication
of debates, there still remained sufficient means to show the people at
large that its discontent was finding official utterance. Naturally this
assemblage of senators gathered after it all the pomp and circumstance
of Polish society. As the months wore on, the city filled with a crowd
of nobles, and, while the halls of audience were busy with political
intrigue, the ballrooms opened their doors to a music that seemed to
have caught some echo from the night before Waterloo. War was almost
certainly imminent; but until it came the hours uplifted their burden of
song and dance, lest the silence should crave too ominously for the
sound of cannon.
To Chopin, patriot as he was, the musical aspect of the season seems to
have been the most important. Possibly in his seclusion rumours of wars
found no space to enter: at any rate, there is no hint in his letters
that he foresaw the storm, or that he was seriously occupied with
anything more public than his _soirées_ and his concerts. There was,
indeed, plenty to hear and plenty to enjoy. Some of the greatest artists
in Europe presented themselves at Warsaw:--Mdlle. de Belleville,
immortalised by the praise of Schumann; Lipinski, the famous violinist;
Henrietta Sontag, the acknowledged rival of Catalani and Pasta. Of all
these Chopin writes with his usual generous appreciation, unaffectedly
delighted with their successes, and 'not at all surprised' that he is
not asked to play at a Court party when they are present. Then followed
Constance Gladkowska's _début_ as an operatic singer, and the lover is
divided between his pleasure in her triumph and his reawakened
consciousness of a hopeless passion. Once more the old irresolution
returns; he decides to go, but cannot tear himself away; he waits on
aimlessly, wondering from day to day whether the morrow will bring
counsel, despising himself for his chain, yet not strong enough to break
it. The suspense was beginning to tell upon his health. Heller, who
passed through Warsaw in 1830, speaks of him as pale and hollow-eyed,
little more than a shadow of his former, brighter self. And yet it is
uncertain whether he had spent an hour with 'his Constantia' since his
return from Antonin, nearly a year before; while it is quite clear, from
his own letters, that during all that time he had never visited her.[19]
Surely it is one of the most inexplicable of dramas. The whole period
which it occupies is of less than two years: eighteen months have
elapsed, and we have not yet seen the heroine. We only guess at her
darkly from the hero's soliloquies, or the rare secrets which he
commends to the bosom of his confidant. We are in the fourth act, and
have advanced to no further situation than was disclosed in the opening
scene. It is true that for a few weeks in the autumn of 1830 the two
actors are brought into a closer relationship: that she sang for him at
his concert in October, and that she gave him a ring on his departure
from Warsaw: but then, just as we are beginning to attain to some
comprehension of the plot, the curtain falls, and there has been neither
recognition nor catastrophe. Nor is the epilogue any less inconclusive.
The farewell gift, which should have been the beginning of a more
intimate romance, is virtually the end of the whole story. After Chopin
had left his home, he seems to have held no further communication, other
than indirect, with the woman whom he believed himself to love; in a few
months her name has dropped out of his letters: and when she married,
about a year later, he is said to have heard the news with a momentary
outburst of brief anger, and then to have dismissed it from his
recollection. And even during the days of his thraldom, he can forget
his troubles whenever he is interested in his work. It is only when he
is wearied or overwrought that the image of his love recurs, with its
invariable train of forebodings and regrets: forebodings that he will
find inaccessible a height which he never tries to climb: regrets for
lost opportunities which he has never attempted to seize. As to her own
attitude in the matter, we are even more at fault. We have no means of
determining to what extent she looked with favour upon his suit, or to
what extent she even trusted in its sincerity. We have no right to
impute blame to her: we have no standpoint for imputation. All we can
say is, that if Chopin's passion had been wholly visionary, this is the
way in which it would have expressed itself. Of the joy, the hope, the
impetus of true love there is not one recorded word: his highest point
of stimulation is the desire to 'tell his piano' of the sorrow that she
has brought him: his brightest hope of communion with her is that when
he dies his ashes may be spread out under her feet.
It is pleasanter to look upon the more active side of Chopin's last
summer in Warsaw. In spite of the social distractions which the season
inevitably brought in its retinue, he worked away steadily at his E
minor Concerto, finished it by the middle of August, and produced it,
with his usual good fortune, at his third and last concert, on October
11. In addition, he composed what he modestly calls 'a few insignificant
pieces,' and sketched or projected some works of larger scale--a
concerto for two pianos, a polonaise with orchestra, and the like.
Whether these ever came into complete existence is a matter of dispute:
here, as elsewhere, the record of Chopin's life is too broken and
imperfect to admit any tone of certainty: but, in either event, they
testify to some acceptance of the 'beatitude of labour.' The results of
a man's effort are a free gift to succeeding generations; it is in the
effort itself that he finds his own reward.
As the winter approached, plans for departure grew more definite and
more concrete. Chopin had cried 'Wolf' so often that his friends might
well be excused for doubting the reality of his intentions, but this
time it appeared that he was actually in earnest, and at the beginning
of November he started. Even now he had no very clear idea of his
destination. It was to be Vienna first, so much was certain, but after
Vienna it might be Berlin, where Prince Radziwill could ensure him
introductions, or it might be Italy, where he could bear his credentials
to royalty at Milan, or it might be Paris, which was then the goal of
almost every artist in Europe. 'I am going out into the wide world,' he
writes, with a touch of knight-errantry foreign to his usual nature.
Curiously enough, he seems to have had from the beginning a presentiment
that he would never return to Poland; and when, at the first stage from
Warsaw, Elsner met him with the pupils of the Conservatorium, and
presented him with a silver cup full of Polish earth, the strange little
ceremonial must have added force and ratification to his thought.
Moreover, the presentiment came true. The nineteen years of life which
remained to him only widened his separation from his native country; his
exile, though voluntary, proved to be none the less irrevocable; and as
the towers of Warsaw sank behind him on the horizon, there faded with
them all but the memory of a home which he was never to see again.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] So says Karasowski, who was intimately acquainted with the Chopins,
and was entrusted by them with the materials for an authoritative
biography. The monument in the Holy Cross Church at Warsaw gives March
2, 1809, as the date. Liszt and Fétis both give 1810. It is a salient
instance of the carelessness with which the records of Chopin's life
have been treated.
[17] The Polonaise in B flat minor, 'Adieu an Wilhelm Kolberg,' appears
to have been written on Chopin's departure for Reinerz in 1826. But
Fontana calls the three, which were published posthumously as Op. 71,
'les trois premières Polonaises.' Two of them were composed in 1827-8
and the third in 1829.
[18] Not the E minor Concerto, as M. Karasowski asserts. The fact is put
beyond dispute by a letter of May 15, 1830, in which Chopin says that
the Adagio of the latter work is still unfinished. Both movements, by
the way, are marked _Larghetto_ in the score.
[19] See the letter of Sept. 4, 1830, quoted by Professor Niecks.
II
PARIS--AND AN EPISODE
After the good leisurely fashion of the time, Chopin took nearly four
weeks over his journey to Vienna. His first halting-place was Kalisz,
where he was joined by his friend Woyciecowski, and thence the two
travelled together through Breslau, Dresden and Prague, enjoying to the
full that highest of human pleasures which is constituted by a clear
road, brisk horses, and a single companion. The incidents, as recorded
in his letters, are not of any great importance--impressions of the
theatre at Breslau, renewal of old acquaintanceships at Dresden, and so
forth--but the letters themselves are interesting, as showing how
entirely he had recovered his spirits under the change of scene and
circumstance. Everything is delightful, everybody is cordial, all
prospects of the future career are painted in rose-colour, and the
darkest moments of uncertainty are caused by his terror at the sight of
the Saxon ladies, in their panoply of knitting-needles, or by the
temptation, which he is at some pains to resist, of 'kicking out the
bottom' from his first sedan chair. In a character so transparent, even
these evanescent bubbles of humour acquire a certain significance. For
the moment, Chopin's tone is equally free from regret or apprehension;
for the moment, this exile from his country has succeeded in escaping
from his recent self.
And yet, it was a bold challenge to fortune. On the one side, a world
which is usually too busy to occupy itself with new aspirants, which
grants no favour that cannot be claimed as a right, and is even less
ready to show mercy to the conquered than to offer its applause to the
conqueror: on the other, a boy of twenty-one, with delicate and
fastidious appetites, with no experience of privation, no conception of
the value of money, no settled habits of prudence or circumspection,
equipped, it is true, with a flashing weapon of genius, but singularly
ill provided with the ordinary armour of defence. It would have been no
wonder if he had thought the bastions impregnable and the towers
impossible to scale: if he had looked upon the camp life as coarse and
uncouth, if he had found its discipline intolerable, its hardships
degrading, and its pleasures typified by the rude laughter and
boisterous jests of the canteen. Small wonder, either, if his comrades
had set him down as a carpet-knight; an exquisite, better skilled to pay
compliments to the women than to bear his part among the men; a dandy,
whose chief care was the set of his clothes and the fragrance of his
violets; a precisian, who was altogether devoid of redeeming vices; an
idealist, who spent his days in pursuit of the unattainable, instead of
taking life as it came, and letting ready action compensate for
defective strategy. And in such an estimate there would have been a
certain measure of truth. If, in order to be a good man, it is first
necessary to be a good animal, we may admit at once that Chopin's
virility was imperfect. There is no doubt that, to the end of his life,
he was characterised by a super-sensitive refinement, which, fifty years
ago, would have been described as feminine. But now, at the outset of
his career, it is well to notice that he was by no means unprovided with
the means of success. He was already one of the best pianists in Europe.
He had discovered a secret of musical expression more readily understood
and appreciated than that of any contemporary composer, with the
exception of Mendelssohn. He was gifted with a great charm of manner,
and an unusual power of making friends. And when it is added that he was
only once in any great stress of poverty, it will be seen that his
equipment was less incomplete than is generally imagined. After all, the
dandies have played their part in history. Claverhouse was a dandy;
Lovelace was a dandy; Sir Philip Sydney himself was censured by Milton
for being 'vain and amatorious': and if a man can be something of a fop,
and yet bear himself gallantly in the battle of arms, how much more
shall he do so in the battle of life.
At the same time, we must confess that, in his first encounter with
destiny, the hero was visited with a signal defeat. Before he had been a
week in Vienna, news came that Warsaw had risen in revolt against the
Russians; there was word of riot in the streets, of danger to the house;
and Chopin, after a few hours of irresolution, started off to follow his
friend Woyciecowski, who had gone at once to join the insurgents. On the
way his determination broke down: his presence could avail nothing; it
would only add to the disquietude of his parents; he had better wait for
further tidings, for some message or injunction which would relieve him
from taking the initiative. Without further thought he changed his
plans, and returned to Vienna, waiting there in a transport of grief and
anxiety for the letters which a man of prompter courage would have
forestalled. As the days wore on, the bulletins grew more reassuring;
for a time, at any rate, the cloud of peril rolled away from the city:
the Poles had an army of 60,000 men in the field, and, in spite of the
enormous forces of the Emperor Nicholas, were confident of success.
Still Chopin lingered on, ready to start at the lightest summons, but
not strong enough to take the first step of his own motion, until the
noise of battle had passed to the Russian frontier, and he could write
once more about his life and his surroundings.
Apparently the outlook was less encouraging than it had been in 1828.
Vienna, since the death of Schubert, was passing through a period of
musical inactivity, and the prospects of concert-giving were not very
bright. Managers who had been ready enough to welcome Chopin when he
played gratuitously, began to hang back now that he demanded payment;
and the public, after its golden age of the classics, professed itself
satisfied with the _kapellmeistermusik_ of Seyfried, and the dance-tunes
of Strauss and Lanner. During the whole six months of Chopin's stay in
the Austrian capital, he only gave one concert, and that, as we learn
from M. Karasowski, was thinly attended and poorly paid. For the
rest, his letters contain little more than the diary of a casual
visitor:--operas at the Kärnthnerthor Theatre, dinners with his friend
Dr Malfatti, a few criticisms of Thalberg, a few words of enthusiasm
for Slavik; the whole lightened, every now and again, by some amusing
story or some half-dozen lines of quaint description. His tone changes
with every varying mood: at one moment he breaks into passionate regret
that he is still absent from his home: at another he speaks of himself
as enjoying his enforced idleness, as wonderfully restored in health,
and as finding many acquaintances and much pleasant companionship. But
it is clear that, whatever his temper, he was in no way to replenish his
resources or advance his existing reputation.
By the middle of 1831 he had made up his mind to proceed to Paris. To
return home would be merely to confess himself beaten: Italy was put out
of the question by its political troubles; Berlin, with all its
opportunities, was hardly the ideal residence for a Polish artist. All
reasons pointed to the land with which he was in the closest sympathy:
the land which had given birth to his father, which had been the ally of
his nation, which had always shown its warmest hospitality to his
countrymen. Accordingly he started on July 20, travelled slowly through
Munich and Stuttgart, and finally arrived at his destination about the
end of the autumn. His two halting-places are both of some moment in the
history of his life. At Munich he gave his last public concert to a
German-speaking audience, playing his E minor Concerto and his Fantasia
on Polish Airs: at Stuttgart he heard the news that Warsaw had been
captured by the Russians, and that the hopes of the revolution were
lying under the ruin of its walls. Fortunately his parents were safe.
There was no personal anxiety to embitter his grief at the national
disaster. But, none the less, the blow sank deep, and left a scar which
lasted indelibly. With all his weakness, Chopin had an intense love for
his country, and the dirge[20] in which he mourned her downfall remains
as one of the truest and saddest utterances of despairing patriotism.
So ends a year which, on its artistic side, is little more than a line
of cleavage between the two main divisions of the story. Before it,
Chopin is a boy, studying with his masters, secure under the protection
of his home, and looking with expectant eyes upon a great world of which
he hardly knows the outskirts: after it, he is a man, holding his fate
in his own hands, living in a foreign city, surrounded with new hopes,
new occupations, and new friendships. As Warsaw in the first period, so
Paris in the second is the centre on which every aspect of the life is
focussed. Poland has played her part--she has ceased to be counted among
the nations: for the future, it is French blood that claims its kindred,
and French loyalty that offers its allegiance.
And, indeed, Chopin could have chosen no city which would give him less
feeling of transference. He found Paris full of a cordial sympathy with
everything Polish: dramas, founded on the insurrection, drawing crowds
to the theatres; cries of '_Vive les Polonais_' echoing in the streets;
ovations to General Ramorino, who had taken arms against Russia, and had
not despaired of the Republic. A few letters of introduction served to
open the doors of artistic society: Paër, Baillot, even Cherubini
offered a kindly welcome to the newcomer: Hiller and Franchomme were
soon among his fast friends: and the early days were passed in a rush of
concert and opera, in admiration of the fine Conservatoire Orchestra, or
in open-eyed wonder at the roulades of Pasta and Malibran.
A short time after his arrival, he went to call upon Kalkbrenner, in
hopes that the great teacher would consent to give him lessons.
Kalkbrenner heard him play, approved, noted some deviations from the
established method, and offered to take him as a pupil if he would
promise to serve a full apprenticeship of three years. The condition was
somewhat prohibitive, for Chopin had his own way to make, and his own
living to earn; but with characteristic docility he undertook to
consider the proposal, and wrote off at once to Elsner for advice. The
old master's answer was, on the whole, dissuasive. It was unadvisable,
he said, that Chopin should restrict himself too closely to the piano:
there were other forms of the art--quartetts, symphonies, and, above
all, operas--which might establish his name on a more lasting
foundation. Besides, a too continuous adherence to one method, however
perfect, would tend to destroy individuality of touch and substitute a
mere mechanical proficiency for the freedom of original thought. A
genius 'should be allowed to follow his own path and make his own
discoveries.' So, fortunately for Music, Chopin decided to decline the
offer; though the cordiality of his relation with Kalkbrenner is
testified by many passages of intimacy, and by the dedication of the E
minor Concerto. There can be no doubt that the proposal was made in good
faith, and that it was rejected with some hesitation. The only matters
of comment are the modesty with which Chopin suggested a new period of
studentship, and the grounds on which Elsner recommended him to dismiss
the idea.
Early in 1832 Chopin made his first appearance before a Parisian public.
The concert, organised for the benefit of the Polish refugees, was no
great financial success, but it served to bring into notice the second
concerto and some of the early mazurkas and nocturnes. One of the most
interesting features in the programme was an enormous work of
Kalkbrenner's for six pianofortes, played by the composer and Chopin in
_concertino_, together with Hiller, Osborne, Stamaty and Sowinski as
accompanists: a disposition of forces which plainly indicates that the
newcomer was already recognised as a leader by some of the best
executants in Paris. We may add that, artistically speaking, the _début_
was a veritable triumph. The audience applauded heartily, Mendelssohn
offered his warmest congratulations, even Fétis grew genial and
appreciative; and when, at a charity concert in March, Chopin succeeded
in scoring a second victory, it is little wonder that he found his
position established beyond dispute. He might well write to his friends
at home,--'_Me voilà lancé._' The society of Paris lionised him with the
same fervour as the society of Warsaw: evening after evening was
occupied with visitors or filled with invitations: pupils began to
present themselves; concert managers solicited his services; and before
long he shared with Liszt the honour of being the most fashionable
musician of the day. 'I move in the highest circles,' he writes, 'and I
don't know how I got there. But you are credited with more talent if
you have been heard at a _soirée_ of the English or Austrian Ambassador.
Among the Paris artists I enjoy general esteem and friendship; men of
reputation dedicate their compositions to me even before I have paid
them the same compliment. Pupils from the Conservatoire--even private
pupils of Moscheles, Herz and Kalkbrenner--come to me to take lessons.
Really, if I were more silly than I am, I might imagine myself a
finished artist; but I feel daily how much I have still to learn. Don't
imagine that I am making a fortune: my carriage and my white gloves eat
up most of the earnings. However, I am a revolutionary, and so don't
care for money.'[21] Clearly, we are some way from the timid,
apprehensive stranger, doubtful of his direction, uncertain of his
future, who entered Paris a year before, with his country's sorrow still
heavy upon his heart.
This fresh impulse of activity bore ample fruit, also, in composition.
During the winter of 1832 were published the first two sets of Mazurkas;
next year followed the first three Nocturnes, the first set of
Études,[22] and the Variations on Herold's _Je vends des Scapulaires_,
graceful embroideries of an exceedingly poor texture: while in 1834 came
three more Nocturnes, another set of Mazurkas, a _Grande Valse
Brilliante_ (Op. 18), and a Bolero. Besides these, Chopin arranged with
Schlesinger for the publication of some of his existing manuscripts: the
Pianoforte Trio, the Concerto in E minor, the Fantasia on Polish Airs,
and the Krakowiak. Their success was almost instantaneous. No doubt
there were a few dissentient voices: Field, the great burly Englishman,
laid aside his pipe to growl out that his new rival had '_un talent de
chambre de malade_:' Rellstab, the editor of the Berlin _Iris_,
practised a few of the vitriolic epigrams which he was afterwards going
to launch at Schumann: but beyond these there was very little doubt
expressed by any musician who read the works, and none at all by any who
heard their composer play them.
In the spring of 1834, Chopin took a holiday and went off with Hiller to
attend the Niederrheinische Musikfest at Aix-la-Chapelle. We have a very
pleasant account of this expedition: the two friends met Mendelssohn,
shared a box with him, and returned, after the Festival, to his new home
in Dusseldorf, where they drank coffee and played skittles, and
banqueted on music to their hearts' content. There is a characteristic
picture, too, of an evening at Schadow's: the room full of eager,
talkative art students, Hiller and Mendelssohn occasionally quieting the
hubbub with a Fantasia or a Capriccio, Chopin sitting silent and unknown
in a remote corner until he was forced to 'drop his disguise' and take
his place at the piano. 'After that,' says Hiller, 'they looked at him
with altogether different eyes.'
Back in Paris, he resumed his teaching, and completed his second set of
Études, published later as Op. 25. During the winter season he appeared
four times in public, once for Berlioz at the Conservatoire, twice in
Pleyel's rooms, and once at a great charity concert in the Italian
Opera-house. But it is clear that he was growing disinclined to face
what he calls the 'intimidation' of the crowd. He rarely did himself
full justice on the platform: he was at his happiest in some friend's
room, where he could pour out his fancies to the dim twilight, and
forget the few motionless figures that were listening at his side. 'More
than three,' said Charles Lamb, 'and it degenerates into an audience.'
Chopin was more liberal in fixing his limit, but he understood the
degeneration. All the best accounts which we have received of his
playing come from those who heard him _en petit comité_--Heine, George
Sand, Delacroix--and it is significant that, after his appearance at the
Théâtre Italien, he allowed nearly four years to pass before emerging
again from his seclusion. It does not appear that this distaste for the
multitude in any way embittered him. It is an excess of eloquence to
describe his preference for the drawing-room as 'a malignant cancer,'
which 'cruelly tortured and slowly consumed his life.'[23] He was in no
lack of money, or of friends, or of reputation, and he was the last man
in the world to--
Beg of Hob and Dick
Their needless vouches,
or trouble himself because some upstart tribune could surpass him in
popularity.
In the summer and autumn of 1835, Chopin left Paris for a more extended
tour. He began with Carlsbad, where his father was staying under
doctor's orders, and after a short stay there proceeded to Dresden,
where he met his old schoolfellows the Wodzinskis, and took the
opportunity to fall in love with their sister Marie. We have very little
certain knowledge about this new romance. There were a few pleasant
days together, a Valse,[24] improvised at the moment of parting, and
sent afterwards from Paris, 'pour Mademoiselle Marie,' and a later
interview at Marienbad in 1836, where, we are told, Chopin offered
marriage and was refused. But it seems clear that he only saw her upon
these two occasions, and that his rejection, if it ever occurred,
produced no very serious effect on his spirits. There were a great many
harmless flirtations during his Paris life: flowers that sprang up in a
light soil and withered under the next day's sun, and it is possible
that this was only a growth of the same garden, somewhat deeper in root,
and somewhat more ample in blossom. After all, Chopin was little more
than a boy,--Polish, artistic, impressionable, fond by preference of the
society of women: it is no matter for surprise if, in the intervals of
being the Shelley of music, he found some pleasure in posing as its Tom
Moore.
From Dresden he went on to Leipsic, and there made the acquaintance of
Schumann and the Wiecks. It was nothing less than a meeting of the
Davidsbund: Florestan, Chiarina and Félix Meritis gathered round him at
the pian
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