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Tous les autres exemplaires originaux sont filmte en commenpant par la premiere page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par la derniire page qui comporte une telle empreinte. Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la derniira image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symboie — ^ signifie "A SUIVRE ", le symbols V signifie "FIN". Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre film6s d des taux de reduction diff^rents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul cliche, il est filmi A partir de I'angle supirieur gauche, de gauche A droits, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images nicessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mtthode. 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 IP Music and the Comrade Arts ; Their Relation I By H. A. Clarke, Mus. Doc. Professor of Music in the University of Pennsylvania Silver, Burdett and Company, Publishers Boston New York Chicago Copyright, i8gg By Silver, Burdett and Company University of Reg/na ■•"" " ""•'•»*■■«*■ PREFACE. In this small book the aim of the writer was to present, in a clear concise form, the mutual relations and inter dependencies of the various Arts, and their relation to Science. The writer had two objects in view : first, to point out that though Art is based on Science, its manifestations, in its higher forms, are not subject to scientific laws, but to (Esthetic laws, which psychology, when far enough advanced, may succeed in formulating; second, that the unifying principle of the Arts is^Form. H. A, CLARKE. Philadelphia, Pa., August, 1899. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. The Relations between Art AND Science .... 7 II. The Relation between Music AND THE OTHER ArTS . . 29 III. The Place of Art in Educa- tion 51 IV. The Relation between Art AND Religion .... 70 V. The Power of Art to Express Thought and Emotion . . 88 VI. Vocal AND Instrumental Music, 106 Music and the Comrade Arts: Their Relation. CHAPTER I. THE RELATIONS BETWEEN ART AND SCIENCE. THE artist or teacher who confines his attention to the province of the art he practices or teaches is sure to miss seeing that art in its true proportions and in its relations to the sister arts, and, in- deed, to all the other interests and efforts 7 8 Music and the Comrade Arts. I ^ that make up the sum of human knowl- edge. Nor can he who is ignorant or un- mindful of these relations be said to know his own art. There is a natural tendency in all of us to magnify our office, which is right and proper so long as we do not go to the extreme of holding it as the one thing in the world that is worthy of at- tention, or of depreciating the work of our fellows. All things in the universe exist in mutual interdependence. It is only by studying each thing in its relation to all the rest that a true conception can be gained of its place and office in the affairs of life. In the study of the Fine Arts, namely, Poetry, Painting, Sculpture, Music, and Architecture, we will consider, first, the relations between Art and Science as of prime importance. It is the province of Science to treat of that which may be known, measured, or weighed; of those Art and Science. operations and sequences in the world of matter which we call— for want of a bet- ter name— the laws of nature. Science, in other words, deals only with tangible qualities. Its appeal is made solely to the intellect. Even though the term, ** scientific imagination," has been used by one of the greatest of modern scientific men, it is an imagination so chastened and curbed by stern facts and rigorous logic as to bear about the same relation to the imagination of the poet or musician that the tamed lightning of the telegraph system does to the free bolts of Heaven. Art, on the other hand, deals only with intangible qualities— qualities that may be neither measured nor weighed— the operation of which is subject to a far higher, because a spiritual, law. Art oc- cupies a region midway between Science and Moral Law. It may be said, once for all, that Moral Law is, or ought to be, m lo Music and the Comrade Arts. 1 the supreme arbiter in the mental hier- archy, controlling both intellect and emotion. Art, being rooted in the ma- terial world, has necessarily its scientific aspect; but, as its fruits are borne high into a spiritual atmosphere, its chief re- lations are with Moral Law. Still, be- ing human and not divine, it rests with the cultivator whether it diffuse fragrance or poison in the moral atmosphere; it being unfortunately true that the most precious of blessings may be degraded into the most virulent of evils. There is another very important dis- tinction between Science and Art. In Science, results may be foreseen and fore- told with absolute accuracy ; as when the astronomer, after long pondering on the motions of the planets, said that by pointing a telescope at a certain part of the sky, a new planet would be seen; or when the chemist, after long study Art and Science. II of the atomic constitution of metalloids, prophesied the discovery of a number yet unknown — a prophecy which after- discovery confirmed. In Art, on the other hand, the results can never be foreseen, and no direct con- nection can be traced between the cause and the effect ; indeed, the effect is often out of all proportion to the cause. You listen to a succession of sounds, and they simply weary you ; you listen to another series, differing in no material way from the first, and your pulse quickens, the deepest springs of emotion are stirred — the soldier will rush undaunted to certain death, the martyr go with a smile into the flame. How and why is this ? Some claim that it is owing to the arous- ing of vague associations. This may be true as far as it goes, but it goes a very short way. Whence does the succession of sounds get the power so to awaken ii 12 Music and the Comrade Arts. associations ? What is the nexus between them ? On this side Art touches the in- finite in man with a power second only to Religion. Bearing this distinction always in mind, let us try to discover what the relation is between Science and each of the Arts. We will begin with Poetry, which is probably the oldest of the sisterhood. To what science is it related, and how ? Among the many wonderful discoveries of the present century, not the least won- derful is the discovery and formulation of the laws of language. The changes that words undergo, the inflections they as- sume, and the forms their combinations take are all found to be the results of inflexible laws, working through long pe- riods of time. The law which, at any given time, gov- erns the idiom of a language — called the grammar of a language—is a scientific law K> Art and Science. 13 that has binding force on the poet, even although we admit the numerous depar- tures from it found in the great poets. We are justified in calling grammar a scientific law, in spite of the seemingly capricious forms which language takes, because philology, although not yet as exact as astronomy or inorganic chemis- try, — nor ever likely to be, owing to the multitude of factors with which it has to deal, — has still advanced far enough to enable us to state with precision the forms which a given word or grammatical con- struction will take in a given language. It must never be forgotten, however, that Art is for the most part entirely un- conscious of any relation to Science. No amount of philologic knowledge will en- able one to write poetry, nor will igno- rance of this knowledge disqualify one who is gifted with the poetic faculty. Yet the poet will gain, not lose, by being ac- 14 Music and the Comrade Arts. quainted with philology, because no know- ledge, if it be true, is ever wasted; and philology may make words disclose new beauties of which he had no suspicion. Turn next to Painting. In its scientific aspect it is dependent on the laws of light, or optics ; on the laws of chemistry, which supply it with pigments; and on the laws of mathematics, which treat of perspective, the form of shadows, angles of vision, and so on. The painter may be ignorant of optics and chemistry, but he must be familiar with the laws of per- spective. Painting has therefore a more direct dependence on Science than poetry, since poetry may work in entire ignorance of Science, whereas painting cannot. To the sculptor one branch of scientific knowledge is absolutely essential ; that is, anatomy. This science is also of great use to the painter, but with him it is chiefly restricted to the surface. The Art and Science. 15 sculptor, however, must be as familiar with anatomy as the physiologist ; indeed, even more so, since the physiologist is satisfied with determining th.^ function of an organ, while the sculptor must know, in addition, the action of the organ in the performance of its function. We come now to the art in which Science plays a larger part than in any other; namely. Architecture. Without constantly leaning on Science, architec- ture would be impossible. The scientific problems with which it has to deal are infinite and of great complexity. All these problems must be solved, and, in addition, architecture must satisfy all the conditions of the purpose for which the building is designed, — questions of strength, of material, strain, lighting, heating, economy of space, and a thou- sand others must all be solved before it can make any claim to being a fine art. 1 6 Music and the Comrade Arts. IS Hampered as the architect is by these things, and still more by the peremptory consideration of cost, it is not to be won- dered at that the results of his work so often fall short of being ** things of beauty. Architecture would gain by frankly ad- mitting that, for many of its purposes, the idea of beauty should be completely eliminated. The requisites of the factory and machine shop are strength, stability, and plenty of light. The very plainness of these hom of labor gives them a dig- nity that is utterly destroyed by any at- tempts at cheap ornamentation. From this severe simplicity there might come a gradual ascent, if we remember always that beauty in architecture depends altogether on harmonious design, not on ornament, until we reach the great public buildings : the Capitols, public libraries, and so on. These buildings should be such as to Art and Science. 17 »'i mark the place which the nation has reached in the evolution of civilization; they should be symbols of the wealth, power, refinement, and liberality of a people who would testify to future gen- erations, by these structures, their pride in and love for their country. Last of all we turn to our own art. Music. It will be necessary to enter into the relation between Music and Science somewhat more fully than we have into the relations of the other arts to Science, there being a widespread but erroneous impression on the subject, voiced in the term, " scientific music *'; which, in the mouths of those who use it, generally means music they do not like. There is also an impression that Music is a sort of offshoot of mathematics, — than which I think there could be no greater mistake. Mathematics is the most exact — indeed the only exact science. Its laws are im- 1 *: 1 8 Music and the Comrade Arts. Fy: mutable. The relations of time, space, and number appeal only to the intellect, and are powerless to touch the emotions, in spite of the assertion of an enthusiastic mathematician, that a certain equation was like the ** language of a seraph." Music, on the other hand, is like the wind which " bloweth where it listeth " ; and so difficult is it to reduce its motions to laws, or to frame a satisfactory theory of music, that it is a common complaint of students that the ** rules of music con- sist chiefly of exceptions." Now there is a science of sound — acous- tics ; sound being a physical phenomenon, its laws may be investigated and ascer- tained like those of any other physical phenomenon. But the science of acous- tics bears just the same relation to music that philology does to poetry. Let us briefly consider the relation between acoustics and music. From acoustics we Art and Science. 19 learn the nature of sound, and the dis- tinction between musical and non-musical sound— that is, sound fit or unfit for the musician's purposes; we further learn the numerical ratios of the vibrations which produce sounds of different pitch and the sounds which result from the division of the vibrating body into aliquot parts ; also much about the conditions upon which the quality of sounds depends. We learn, too, of the major chord, and of the chord of the 7th. But^Sind this is a very large but — the scale that Science gives us is not the scale we use. So of the intervals Science gives us, with the exception of the octave ; so of the major chord, and of the chord of the 7th. As to the minor chord, Science has only an hypothesis to offer. The scale of Science is obtained by the division of a string into aliquot parts; the scale of modern music, by the division of the octave empirically 20 Music and the Comrade Arts. v 1 1 1 into twelve equal parts. True, there is a very close correspondence between the scales obtained in these two ways, and it maj/ be that it is this close correspondence which makes our musical scale agreeable ; but this is open to question when we re- member that millions of people find a totally different scale agreeable. Now the most distinguishing charac- teristic of music is melody; that is, a rhythmic arrangement of sounds of differ- ent pitch, all bearing a certain relation to one sound, called the key-note. All the mathematical and acoustical lore in the world would not endow their possessor with the ability to write one phrase of the Last Rose of Summer ; even as a ** speaking acquaintance " with all the languages of men since the dispersion at Babel would not enable one to write " Hark ! the lark at heaven's gate sings, And Phoebus 'gins arise." il. Art and Science. 21 The science of sound treats only of the material out of which music is made, and can give no hint of how to use it; just as the chemist can produce every shade and tint of color, but can give no aid to the painter in their use. The science of sound has aided music in another way. It has immensely improved all our musical instruments — except the violin family. We build better pianos now than were built at the beginning of the century. Yet we do not — in spite of scientific advance — write such music for them as Mozart and Beethoven wrote. Haydn or Mozart would be filled with amazement at hearing the Boston Sym- phony Orchestra. Such precision, such shading, such easy mastery of technical difficulties were not dreamed of in their day. Yet their symphonies still hold the foremost rank, though they never heard of Helmholtz or Koenig. All these gains, w rfs 22 Music and the Comrade Arts. ■^ \ great as they are, are merely material, and can receive value only from the genius of those who can make of them means for the expression of thought, feeling, and emotion ; things that may not be weighed, measured, or numbered, whose seat is in that mysterious realm of being with which man was endowed when made in the image of his Creator. Human thought and speech have always recognized the fact that great works of art originate in a sphere far re- moved from the material. The poet, the painter, the musician, has in all languages been called inspired — as though he wrought under the influence of some power outside of himself. The old Hebrew in his simple faith, which was perhaps nearer the truth than we so- phisticated moderns believe, spoke of all such work as the inspiration of God. There is another part of Art to which Art and Science. 23 the term Science is often, but wrongly, applied; that is, the technical manipula- tion of the material with which the artist works when moulding it into art forms. The poet must master the various metres used in the language he writes, its variety of stanzas, its forms of verse, — as lyric poems, odes, sonnets, epics, etc. But these are not based on scientific laws; nature had nothing to do with the making of them. They are but artifices, whose only reason for existing is that they have proved agreeable to the ears or eyes of those whose ability and invention first made them current. If they were scien- tific they would be unchangeable; but they change with the literary or artistic fashions of the times. The painter and the sculptor must pass laborious years in attaining the mastery of the technique of their arts before the hand will obey the mind, giving a free M : IT fi :i i 24 Music and the Comrade Arts. sweep to the pencil or brush on the can- vas, or that curious play of the thumb with which the sculptor evokes the lifelike face from the lump of lifeless clay. In our own art, Music, there is a larger amount of technicality or artifice than in any other. It is to this that many per- sons, some of whom ought to know bet- ter, refer when they speak of ** scientific music " ; or vent the foolish opinion that there is something akin to mathematics in music. Does experience prove that mathematicians are musically inclined as a rule, or musicians mathematically inclined ? I venture the assertion that there is nothing so rare as to find these mental endowments combined in the same person. If even the closest-textured, dryest fugue is mathematical in any just sense of the word, it ought to be possible to express it in algebraic symbols. If this can be done, it ought to be possible U^ Art and Science. «5 to state a motive by a + x — y, or some such cabalistic signs ; then to give it to a mathematician or a Babbage machine, and have a Beethoven symphony turned out. It may be that this notion about mathe- matics and music is a vague echo from the disputes of the Pythagoreans and Aris- toxenians, — a dispute which was revived in the Middle Ages, and fought with all the pedantries and personalities which characterized the polemics of that period. The upholders of the Pythagorean side of the controversy contended that the arithmetical ratios of sounds and their resemblance to the relations between cer- tain mathematical forms constituted the true art of music ; while the followers of Aristoxenus maintained what their oppo- nents considered the foolish, frivolous idea that the chief end of music was to be heard. The artifices of music are many, but [•. i Is M il 26 Music and the Comrade Arts. i / / / the most important may be ranged under three heads : Harmony — which treats of the combinations and successions of sound ; Counterpoint — which treats of in- dependent movements of parts or voices ; Form — which treats of the order and suc- cession of theme^. The rules that embody what may be learned of these things are not in any sense scientific. They have varied, and they may vary ; they are merely the ex- pression, at any given period in the his- tory of the art, of what those engaged in it consider the best way to use its material. To sum up, Science deals with the ma- terial. Upon this as a deep, firm founda- tion must all Art rest. Art must have a body, a means of manifesting itself. This it constructs for itself, not by means of scientific laws, but by aesthetic rules, which, like all expedients, are subject to change and decay. But this body of Art, Art and Science. 27 its technicalities, is a lifeless body until it is vivified by the spirit which comes from above. This spirit is not of it, but through it. Prisoned as we are in a ma- terial world, the soul within us cannot communicate with other souls except through the material. It is the error of materialism to identify the soul with the media through which it works ; whereas, be the poem, the picture, the symphony, never so perfect, it falls far short of ex- pressing the ideal that lay in the mind of its author. If the soul or spirit, or what- ever name we choose to give it, were but the result or outcome of a ** fortuitous concourse of atoms," it is certain that this dissatisfaction with our achievement could never come, for no stream can rise higher than its source. But in this very inability to realize our ideals we should find encouragement to persevere, not only in Art but in things of much greater mo- J^ I SI: -( f i 'I I 28 Music and the Comrade Arts. ment, — in right living, and in the effort to lighten the burden of other lives, a func- tion which no art can perform so success- fully as our own art of music, taking rank, as it does, only below religion. P / CHAPTER II. THE RELATION BETWEEN MUSIC AND THE OTHER ARTS. HAVING considered the relations be- tween Art and Science, it seems appropriate that we should next take up the relations that exist among the arts, especially the relation that Music bears to the other arts. It is only by looking at the art of music in this way that a true conception of its position and claims can be reached, and an intelligent defence of these claims can be urged. The first point to be considered in such a compari- son is, the nature and limitations of the material with which the given art works ; 29 1 i >fi ^ 30 Music and the Comrade Arts. next, the subject-matter with which it deals; then, the forms into which the nature of the material has compelled it to cast the subject-matter; and lastly, the nature of the appeal which it makes to the mind. First, as to the material. The most striking characteristic of the Fine Arts is the apparent poverty and simplicity of the material with which they work their most wonderful effects, — words, pigments, sounds, clay. The commonest things in life supply all the needs of the artist. Yet,, with these slight materials, he is able to raise the mind from the contemplation of the actual to the ideal ; to play, as on some delicate instrument, upon the pro- foundest emotions ; to lead captive and to sport at will with all the changing moods of the mind. The material of Poetry is spoken lan- guage; its subject-matter those experi- i4! Music and the Other Arts. 31 ences and observations of all past and present generations which are embalmed in language. In addition to these, a pro- phetic power gives the poet ability to forecast the thoughts and ways of future generations. These experiences and ob- servations the poet so handles as to reveal deep, unexpected relationships and mean- ings, invisible to the ordinary eye, the profound truth of which the poet's lan- guage flashes on the mind with the vivid- ness of lightning. It is difficult to furnish any fixed defini- tion of poetry. There is a gradual ascent from the baldest prose to the loftiest poetry. Poetry must be rhythmic, yet prose is often rhythmic; and lines of faultless rhythm are too often far from being poetry. The following lines, for example, are unobjectionable so far as rhythm is considered; they state a momentous fact; yet the most chari- r n I \ i vm^ 32 Music and the Comrade Arts. table interpretation could not call them poetry. " The world will disappear some day, And nothing will remain. The land, the sea, will pass away. And ne'er be seen again." Compare that stanza with the following lines, in which the same momentous fact is stated, but with a difference : « r The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant fa^ded, Leave not a wrack behind." A volume of commentary could not ex- haust the meaning of these words, which seem to unfold before the mind's eye a vast panorama of ail the pomp, pride, and power of the world hasting to the '* inevitable hour " of nothingness. For a vivid illustration of the poet's power of Music and the Other Arts. 33 I •' bringing into close relationship things that to the ordinary mind have nothing in common, read Browning's poem on A Toccata of Galuppts, In this quaint music the poet's eye sees, as in the magic crystal of the wizard, the whole life of Venice, with its intrigues and vanities, reflected. The subject-matter of Painting is form and color. Being limited to a flat sur- face, the painter is compelled to express in two dimensions the forms which in the material world have three dimensions. This he does by applying to them the laws of perspective. But, as all these laws may be fulfilled as completely in a pen- or pencil-drawing as in a painting, the painter may say with some justice that color is of greater moment to him than form or drawing — although it is almost valueless without the latter. Just as in Poetry the poet has the whole experience 3 fl I m ( \M !(^ u ' li 34 Music and the Comrade Arts. and observation of the race to draw upon, so, in Painting, the painter has the whole visible creation to draw upon for his pic- tures. But, if he be a painter worthy of the name, he looks on the visible creation with far different eyes from those of ordi- nary mortals. As the poet sees hidden re- lations in ideas, so the painter sees in form and color hidden relations to which ordi- nary vision is blind. A celebrated painter used to say, " Leaves may be green, but trees never are," To the ordinary ob- server this may sound absurd, but care- fully examine a landscape under the guidance of an artist and the statement will be found to be true. Distance, light, shade, atmosphere, so modify the masses of foliage that grays and purples actually predominate over the greens. Still, as perfect command of language and versification will not make a poet, so perfect command of the technic of form Music and the Other Arts. 35 and color will not make a painter. There must needs be that mysterious thing we call genius, which no one has defined and no one ever will define. It belongs not to the things that may be weighed, measured, or numbered ; yet its strange power may be felt by even the dullest. It " Cometh not by observation " ; no one can say of it, *' Lo! here, or lo! there " ; even to its fortunate possessor it is often unknown. Through some impulse, he knows not what, he does his work, and awakes some morning to find himself fa- mous ; while the world takes his work to its heart and forever holds it as one of its most cherished possessions. Some thirty or forty centuries ago an unknown Eastern poet summed up the monotheistic conception of the relations between man and his Creator; and the story of Job remains for all time the most perfect and the loftiest expression of these M [.I /? Pl : ii^i m 'i 36 Music and the Comrade Arts. conceptions. About the same time a wandering Greek poet summed up the Aryan, polytheistic conception of the re- lations between man, the universe, and his fellow-man ; and the Iliad lives to this day, although the conceptions on which it was founded have vanished. The genius of these two poets " mirrored the universe" as it existed for them; their work was not " make believe " or " art for art's sake," but was wrought from their profoundest convictions ; therefore it endures. We have no means of judging of the excellence of the paintings of the old- world artists, but it is safe to assume that it did not reach the high plane that was occupied by their sculpture and architecture. The story of the rival painters, one of whom painted a bunch of grapes so well as to deceive the birds, and was himself deceived by the curtain Music and the Other Arts. 37 painted by his rival, is not calculated to give us an exalted opinion of the way in which the Greeks looked upon the paint- er's art. It is to the Italy of the four- teenth and fifteenth centuries that we must look for the culmination of this art. Like the poets just mentioned, these painters put great thoughts and sincere beliefs into their pictures with directness and simplicity, and thereby fixed the standards of excellence in Painting for all time. The art of Sculpture deals only with form, and, in its highest manifestation, only with the human form. It is in some respects the most limited of the Fine Arts ; but as it concentrates attention on form, to the exclusion of all other con- siderations, it is the most exacting of the visual arts in its demand for absolute truth in the forms it represents. The great period of Sculpture occurred at a * ',■[ Ill I I : ! 38 Music and the Comrade Arts. time when there was every opportunity for studying the forms of the most beau- tiful race that ever existed. The games of the stadium, the exercises of the gym- nasium, furnished a daily school in which were trained a people who summed up all their ideals of beauty in the perfect human form. But, as in Poetry and Painting, so in Sculpture there must be the ** informing" light of genius, else it is dead and worthless. A life-cast of a face will reproduce every smallest feature with a fidelity beyond the reach of the artist, yet we regard it with little or no interest; while the first rough impres- sion in clay of the same face, by an artist, will possess some quality which appeals at once to the imagination. It is as though the cast gave only the features, while the artist's work pictured the soul in the features. Turn now to our own art, Music. Its f I Music and the Other Arts. 39 material is that intangible thing we call sound. To speak more exactly, sound is not a ** thing," but is simply a mode of motion — so insubstantial is the material of music. As to its subject-matter, who will pretend to say what it is ? Who will give even a satisfactory definition of mu- sic except on the physical side ? To say that music is the combination and succession of sounds of varying pitch and quality is as inadequate as to say that In Memoriam is a succession and com- bination of the letters of the alphabet. One of the most philosophic of modern writers has defined music as '* idealized motion." This has some appearance of truth, yet it is hard to conceive of any re- lation between '* motion," however much idealized, and the rush of " thoughts that lie too deep for tears," which music can evoke. All other arts find both their material \i ^ ii! I I 40 Music and the Comrade Arts. and their subject-matter ready at hand. But although nature is full of sounds, not one of these natural sounds, save his own voice, is available for the musical use of man. To supply this need, he in- vented the pipe, the reed, the string. Then he had to reduce these sounds to order and system, in modes and scales; then to discover, after long experiment- ing, how to combine these sounds, and to make the combinations succeed one another agreeably; last of all, to invent the forms in which to mould his sound constructions. To what end ? What do they mean ? The mystery of music is insoluble. Hear what Browning, the greatest of modern poets, — indeed, the only great poet who has written under- standingly of music, — says, in the words he puts into the mouth of Abt Vogler, as he sitT absorbed in revery after extem- porizing on his organ : Music and the Other Arts. 41 " . . . Had I painted the whole, Why, then it had stood to see, nor the pro- cess so wonderworth ; Had I written the same, made verse — still, effect proceeds from cause : Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told. % ■I But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can. Existent behind all laws, that made them — and lo ! they are : And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man. That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star ; Coi sider it well : each tone of our scale in itself is naught ; It is everywhere in the world — loud, soft, and all is said ; Give it to me to use ! I mix it with two in my thought And, there ! Ye have heard and seen, con- sider and bow the head." It is only when this last stage is reached, viz., the development of Form, M '■ 't w\ ■. I I I i( 42 Music and the Comrade Arts. that any definite relation may be perceived between Music and the other arts. If there is any one principle that underlies all the arts it is that proportion between the parts, that due subjection of subsidi- ary themes to the principal theme, that freedom from diffuseness, which charac- terizes in the most striking way every great work of art. Hence the term ** Com- position " is used in all the arts to signify the way in which the artist presents his subject. Every work of art has certain necessary limitations. The great poem of human action and passion began with the crea- tion of man, and goes on forever. It is only here and there that the poet can dip into the mighty river and snatch some spoil from oblivion. So from sunrise to sunset, through change of seasons, the sun spreads an endless, ever-changing picture before the painter's eye, while his Music and the Other Arts. 43 rapid pencil can hardly seize one feature before it vanishes. Hence in compari- son with what is possible in art, what is accomplished is almost nothing. There- fore, to avoid being lost in the infinite variety of nature, the artist has devised forms in which to present his work, that it may have the quality of completeness. The arrangement or determination of this form is called — as just remarked — the composition. A Shakesperian drama, for example, is not biographical ; it does not give the life- history of its chief character, but only one point in that life, — what may be called the crisis of that life. The composition of the play is such, that every subsidiary character and event is so contrived as to throw into strongest relief the fate of the chief actors, and to contribute in due de- gree to the shaping of that fate. So in the Idyls of the King, — although loosely V ■i u I i •'\ 1 r 44 Music and the Comrade Arts. strung together, — we see the doom that is to overtake the "blameless king"; and each successive Idyl seems to deepen the gloom in which the fair promise of the Round Table ends. Composition in painting presents one of the most difficult problems the artist has to solve. He must so arrange his groups, his lights and shadows, his scheme of color, that there shall be no jarring note in his work. His picture must be domi- nated by one main idea ; yet this domina- tion must not be so complete as to cause the rest of the picture to fall out of sight. Da Vinci's celebrated picture of the Last Supper is often quoted as a masterly example of composition. At the first glance there appears to be an unstudied arrangement of the group, but closer at- tention reveals the fact that the heads of the disciples are grouped in threes, and the grouping is so contrived as to throw the Music and the Other Arts. 45 figure of the Savior into striking promi- nence, and that of Judas into deep shade. If composition is difficult in Painting it is a hundredfold more so in Sculpture, confined as Sculpture is to a single theme, and that theme the human body ; which, while it may assume a great many poses, has but a limited number that possess the element of beauty. In portrait statuary the composition is especially difficult, for the artist must so pose the subject as to avoid the commonplace without verging on the theatric. In a certain city, which shall be nameless, there are two full-length statues of a much esteemed citizen, long since departed, which illustrate the two extremes: one looks as though he had been ** straked ** for burial when he sat for the portrait ; the other is very much alive, but with that accentuation or ex- aggeration in the pose that we are ac- customed to see on the stage (where it is ' I \ ^i^ II f I i. ■I I 'i \' 46 Music and the Comrade Arts. absolutely necessary), and to which we apply the epithet " stagey." In Music the term *' composition " has a twofold meaning. In its primary sense it means the invention of a melody, or the fitting of this melody with harmonic or contrapuntal accompaniment. In its larger sense its meaning is analogous to that which it bears in the other arts. In this sense it means the order, the key re- lation, succession, contrast, and develop- ment of the themes that make up the content of an extended movement. When these conditions are fulfilled we get the same impression of completeness, balance, and coherence that we get from the well composed drama, picture, or statue. We thus find that all the arts, although start- ing from different points, dealing with dissimilar materials, and differing totally in subject-matter, meet at last on this common ground of /arm or composition. Music and the Other Arts. 47 ,} In Painting, the forms are infinite in number — every field and grove, every chance group of people, offering fresh possibilities. Poetry has many forms and an inherent capability for the development of new ones. But in Music the forms are very few and of singular rigidity. As yet, all attempts to develop or invent new forms have been unsuccessful. United as are the arts by this physical bond, as it might be called, of form or composition, they are still more closely drawn together by a deeper, more im- portant principle, one which may be felt but cannot be described ; namely, artistic truth. It is on this principle that the permanence of any work of art depends. Sooner or later the world recognizes the truth of a work of art if it possesses any ; although it frequently happens that great artists, like prophets, speak to future generations. Time is the sole test of this I s i7?= 1 1 /I 48 Music and the Comrade Arts. rt il; m I Ml I artistic truth. Time, that should be rep- resented with a sieve rather than a scythe, winnows out, slowly but surely, the chaff that makes so large a part of all human effort, carefully saving the few precious grains. Time eliminates the personal equation from the artist's work, thus dis- tinguishing what is accidental or charac- teristic of his age from what is essential, which belongs to all ages. The creative artist is rarely, if ever, conscious of the manner in which this principle works in guiding him. Nor is he always sure that he hears its warnings aright. False sentiment, exaggeration, or the glitter that simulates gold occasion- ally ensnare the greatest. Yet withal, every great work of art calls out an ele- vation of soul, a belief in truth and good- ness, that stamps it as an emanation from the source of all truth and goodness. Thus, also, every great work gives con- I ..J 1 f Music and the Other Arts. 49 elusive proofs that, among the aids to the education of the race, none are entitled to rank higher than the Fine Arts, when pursued with due subjection to the higher considerations of the Moral Law. "Art for art's sake," to which I re- cently alluded, is a phrase current in many quarters, and held by many to embody the ** whole duty " of the artist. But, as it teaches the exaltation of Art at the ex- pense of things of greater moment, the tendency of this teaching is surely mis- chievous. Substitute ** Art for human- ity's sake " ; then Art becomes a precious boon to the world, while in the former case it is apt to result in that state of soul portrayed by Tennyson in the Palace of Arty that selfish indifference to all claims, human or divine, that finds ex- pression in the words : " I take possession of Man's mind and deed. I care not what the sects may brawl. \ \ H '• r ■ I y>s •i u ' I m iq^! 50 Music and the Comrade Arts. I sit as God holding no form of Creed But contemplating all." In that Book which is the storehouse whence all wisdom is drawn, there are two sayings which may direct us with un- failing certainty in our attitude towards Art, as towards all other things. The first is, " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might " ; in this is inculcated the earnestness and diligence that our duty to the world demands. The other is, ** Do all things to the glory of God." 1 CHAPTER III. THE PLACE OF ART IN EDUCATION. THE first thing necessary in attempt- ing to determine the place of Art in education is, a clear conception of what education means. Education is often confounded with training; but properly considered, training, however necessary and indispensable it may be, is a process much inferior to education. Training deals with the specialty which is meant to be the life-work of the recipient. Edu- cation is meant to make the life itself one worth living. Special training may, and too often does, exist side by side with the narrowest, meanest conception of what 51 [ 52 Music and the Comrade Arts. life ought to be. The specialist ever has a tendency to grow into the belief that his specialty is the one thing in the uni- verse to which all other things are second- ary. I am afraid that the common report that we musicians are inclined to think thus of music has a good deal of truth be- hind it. But the mere gathering of knowledge is only a small part of education. Educa- tion does not come from without, but from within. It is but another name for wisdom ; its highest manifestation 'u that power of dispassionate, unprejudiced thinking which, seeing all things in their true relations, enables its possessor to rightly adjust his life to the moral, men- tal, and physical laws that make up his environment. These adjustments, even of the wisest, always fall far short of com- pleteness, for the reason that universal knowledge is an absolute requisite to per- Art in Education. 53 feet wisdom ; yet even as knowledge may exist without wisdom, so wisdom may exist without knowledge. The most un- lettered man, who orders his life accord- ing to his light, may be the possessor of a wisdom far surpassing that of the most learned savant who sets at defiance the plain laws of right conduct and moral living. But as the chief object of educa- tion is to enable us to form more and more correct conceptions of the duties that our environment devolves on us, it is evident that the wisdom of the edu- cated man must lea more valuable pos- session to the world than that of the illiterate man. The wisdom of the one may suffice for his own guidance; that of the other becomes a guide for others to follow. It is the business of training to seize on whatever special aptitude the individual may possess and make of it the tool !: 54 Music and the Comrade Arts. ) i\^ m > ', h^ 1. 1 ri i 4 ;i wherewith he can do his share of the world's work. But if education does not proceed step by step with this training, the man becomes merged in the tool, and fatally misses the highest uses of life ; low, sordid aims gradually drive out every generous, lofty aspiration, and the life that was given to be a ItgAt becomes the mere fuel that drives the machine, until its cranks and wheels are stopped by death. A scheme of education, to be valuable, must take into account the whole of the complex nature of the human animal, moral, mental, emotional, and physical. There is not one of these qualities that has not, at some period of the world's history, been considered as the onfy basis on which to build up education. Nor has there ever been a system of education based on one, to the exclusion of the others, that has not proven a failure. Art in Education. 55 Even morals, undoubtedly the most im- portant department, will not serve alone as a basis for education. The most hope- ful sign of the new pfdagogy is, that it thoroughly recognizes this complexity, and bases its whole system of procedure on this recognition. Granting this, the next step is to inquire, to which of these attributes — moral, mental, emotional, or physical — does Art make its special ap- peal ? I say special appeal because there is no such thing as an appeal to one of them to the total exclusion of the others. The human mind, with all its diversity of endowment, is a unit; it cannot be touched at one point without giving a response from all in greater or less degree ; still, each department responds in a special degree to special stimuli. Without ques- tion Art makes its first appeal to the emotional nature; next, to the mental; in lesser degree to the moral (all Art I'l 1 i i.' ] if 1 i ! I! 56 Music and the Comrade Arts. is, abstractedly considered, simply un- moral); and least of all to the physical. Looking at a great painting, the first im- pulse is to accept and admire, to sympa- thize with the artist. Then the critical faculties are aroused. We ask w/ijy has he done so and so, and look to see /low. Then, if the picture be of a kind to have any moral bearing, this phase of it de- mands our attention. The physical effects are slight and obscure, but none the less real; the quickening of the pulse, the sudden tension of the nerves, may not be noticed, but the physiologist knows they are there. It is well known that the emotions are the most rebellious part of our mental make-up ; the most difficult to bring under the control of the will. That being so, it would appear that this was the place where education should make its first at- tack. Here again has modern pedagogy if Art in Education. 57 displayed its wisdom. Time was, when educators looked on the emotions as dan- gerous wild animals, to be crushed or de- stroyed at all hazards ; with the inevitable result that, like a pent-up torrent, they broke loose and swept away every men- tal, moral, and physical barrier. Just here we are confronted by a question of fundamental importance. What must be the character of an art to make of it a suitable means to train and develop the emotions, without destroying the balance between them and the moral and mental faculties ? It is hardly necessary to say that everything that is obnoxious to pure morality should be rigorously excluded. It is one of the saddest facts in the history of the arts that there is not one of them that has not been ...ade a pander to vice — Poetry, Painting, and Sculpture by direct incentive, and Music by being forced into connection with evil words II i 1 f i\ i 11:; I 58 Music and the Comrade Arts. and actions. It is this that has made so many of the wisest and purest of men decry the study and the practice of Art in any form; forgetting or ignoring the other fact, that the love for Art is one of the deepest of human instincts, and that the part of true wisdom is to rescue it from base associations and make it what it ought to be, — the purest of pleasures and the most winning of instructors. Next in importance to the moral, comes the mental aspect of Art. It is quite pos- sible for Art to be unexceptionable as to morals, and yet utterly wanting in intel- lectual qualities. Such a form of art is called sensuous, and it is one of the most dangerous forms. Appealing as it does to the emotions, while the moral and in- tellectual faculties are untouched, it works like an insidious poison ; exalting emotion until it overrides both the moral and men- tal faculties. The art that rises above Art in Education. 59 this must be such as to demand an active, not a passive, receptivity. The mind must be aroused by it to observe the ** why " and the ** how," not in the tech- nical sense, but in accordance with that deeper principle of which I have spoken. It must look for the artistic truth, as re- vealed in the form, in the self-restraint, in the avoidance of false sentiment or meretricious display ; above all in the evi- dence that serious thinking was brought to the making of the work. Technical training is not by any means essential to the right apprehension of a work of art in this sense. There are multitudes who cannot write a verse, or draw an outline, or compose one bar of music, who are keenly alive to the highest excellences of a poem, a picture, or a symphony. These are they who are edu- cated in Art. Although the emotions are the paths 1 I \{\ 4, Til! 60 Music and the Comrade Arts. through which the Arts enter our con- sciousness, they also affect all the other mental attributes, though in very differ- ent degree. Poetry, dealing as it does with the experiences of the race, makes the strongest appeal to the moral sense ; so much so that its emotional and in- tellectual aspects are often forgotten in the strength of this appeal. Then, as Poetry works with language, it can give a precision and definiteness to its concep- tions that are entirely wanting in the other arts. It is this which makes poetry the most potent vehicle in the world for con- veying moral instruction. It has been the means of the loftiest teaching, from the utterances of prophets and psalmists to the simple rhymes that are among the chief agencies for training the moral facul- ties of little children. It is just at this point that Music steps in as an aid to moral culture. In itself, '>: Art in Education. 6i music is neither moral nor immoral ; it is only by association that it becomes so. But with its well-known power for inten- sifying and heightening the effect of whatever may be linked to it, and espe- cially of the words to which it may be joined, music may be made a powerful aid to moral training. I suppose there is nothing that clings with such tenacity to the memory, even in extreme old age, as the songs learned in childhood. Who then can tell what good or evil results may follow, according as these songs are good or evil ! These words grow to be a part of a child's nature, consciously or unconsciously influencing the whole after life. Hence if there is any one thing that demands the watchful care of those who have in charge the musical training of children, it is that the words sung shall be such that chey may leave no shadow of evil effect. This is the only way to i\ I .^1 III , 62 Music and the Comrade Arts. stem the tide of vulgarity in the shape of variety theatre songs that are constantly being poured out and caught up by chil- dren ; too often with the direct encourage- ment of foolish elders, who find something ** smart " in hearing the nasty, slangy words from the mouths of children inno- cent of their meaning. Painting makes a very strong appeal to the emotions, and an almost equally strong appeal to the intellect. As the moral quality, apart from the choice of a subject, is entirely absent, the critical faculty is left unimpeded in its action. Visual impressions are the most sharply defined of all our impressions ; hence the easiest to correct, provided the eye has been taught to see correctly — a point to which I will advert shortly. We may, therefore, safely conclude that the chief function of Art in education is to train the emotions in accordance with Art in Education. 63 the dictates of the intellect, but, above all, in subjection to the moral law and the will. The will is the supreme arbiter in the concourse of mental faculties. If the education of the emotions has been such that they look to the intellect for guid- ance ; if the education of the intellect has been such that it looks to the moral law for guidance ; and if the will has learned to merge itself in the** Eternal Will," the result will be in the highest sense an edu- cated life, — a life, as nearly as human imperfection will allow, in harmonious adjustment with its environment. Hitherto we have been considering the place of Art in education in a general way. It will be well to adduce some con- siderations of its value as a means of training. Not that amount of training which is necessary to make the specialist, but that which is sufficient to give the recipient an insight into its aims and T i I- m I 11 li ; L 112 64 Music and the Comrade Arts. methods, and serve the purposes of mental training. To train and develop the mind no study is comparable to literature, yet he who is educated only in literature has but a partial, one-sided training, and is shut out from many pleasant fields bright with the flowers of human effort. It has be- come too much the fashion in our hurried, grasping modern life to decry all kinds of study that do not bear directly upon in- creasing the efficiency of the individual in the struggle for wealth, place, or power. Especially has the scorn of many been directed against the study of the world's great literatures. It is a sufficient answer to these objections to read over the roll of the great names of those who have changed the course of events and molded the history of the world, yet who derived their sole training from the study of literature. It has been well said, Art in Education. 65 that there is no estimating the power of a true thought. It may take it centuries to bear fruit, but it is sure to come to its full and complete fruition, which no entrenchments of error can finally retard. In the three all-important departments of human life, three peoples have each con- tributed a thought that has borne and will forever bear fruit. To the Hebrew the world owes the conception of pure re- ligion ; to the Greek, the development of the intellect ; to the Roman, the concep- tion of law and civil polity. Although these three nationalities passed away long ago, there is not a civilization to-day, worthy of the name, that does not owe its existence to the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Roman ; none that does not draw its perennial inspiration from the litera- tures of these three great peoples. Turn now to the pictorial art. What purpose does it serve as a means of 5 66 Music and the Comrade Arts. il training ? One, certainly, of supreme importance. It teaches us to see. It is wonderful how little and how superficially we see. How many are there who could draw, with any approach to correctness, a human ear ? Yet we see ears almost every moment of our waking lives. A curious illustration of the lack of seeing aright appeared at the Centennial Expo- sition. There was a finely carved ox- head, some six inches long ; the lips were slightly parted, and the front of the upper jaw v^^s full of teeth I Again, how many people can draw from memory the outline of a leaf? — no matter how often they have seen it. Surely if seeing aright is so rare in such familiar cases, it must be almost totally wanting when unfamiliar objects are in question ; and no further argument is needed to prove the use of elemen^^^- training in drawing. Here, to^ m .^ pedagogy displays its wisdom. I h ./e I Art in Education. visited during the past two or three years many public schools in several cities, and have always been pleased to see simple outline drawings of leaves, flowers, fruits, and other familiar objects, decorating the walls of the class rooms. Last of all, let us inquire whether Music furnishes any useful kind of training. We have not far to seek. There is perhaps no other study that produces such a state of mental alertness as singing or playing in concert. One may see it evidenced whenever music is being made, from the serious attention of the trained artists in a great orchestra, to the bright, eager faces of a primary school class. Quick- ness, watchfulness, and concentration are surely qualities worth cultivating. Another useful quality developed by the study of music is concerted action. The necessity of forgetting self for the sake of the result sought, of submission to 68 Music and the Comrade Arts. Vi- I I 1 authority, when the authority is exercised for our good, is one of the h-^rdest lessons in life to learn ; yet music pleasantly and persuasively insists on it, making a pleas- ure out of duty. It would be easy to advance still other claims for music as a means of training, but it might lessen the effect of those already presented. There are still further ways in which music has advantages not possessed by the other arts. It is, for instance, the social art, par excellence, the art for the people. Great paintings require long purses and rich galleries, but a company of a hun- dred or two hundred Pennsylvania coal- miners can get together and make the lofty choruses of Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn their own. These discursive remarks about Art and education are meant to apply altogether to the education of children. Although education goes on as long as I'fe lasts, Art in Education. 69 the Art education of adults is more likely to be a special training in one art than a general survey of all. It may seem to some that the views here given are too advanced to apply to the education of children. But it should never be forgot- ten that the best is none too good where the training of children is concerned ; also that simpHcity is not inconsistent with the greatest art,— is, indeed, one of its characteristics. Even if some of the things presented to the child are beyond his comprehension, we cannot tell what thinking processes, that adults cannot fathom, may be set agoing in the little brain. \i lu I I i Hi i* n 'f ^ :./i£?^ H K ^JV^>^, Hi^^ CHAPTER IV. THE RELATION BETWEEN ART AND RELIGION. THE discussion of this subject in any- thing like an adequate manner would far exceed our present limits. I shall therefore have tc content myself with giving you a sketch merely; my main object being to inquire as to the advant- ages of this connection, both to Art and to Religion. To prevent misconception, let me say that I here use the word Religion in its generic sense; that is, as including all the beliefs or quasi-beliefs which men may profess. In every stage of civilization we find 70 Art and Religion. 71 Art and Religion closely united. In the earlier stages of Art this is preeminently true. The shapes of pottery, the colors and patterns of its decoration, the pat- terns woven into wearing materials, are all symbolic of some religious or quasi-religi- ous ideas. The development of Architec- ture owes more to the religious idea than to any of the more practical needs of man- kind. Men were satisfied to live in tents or in booths, or in very plain houses, as long as their gods and goddesses were housed in magnificent temples. Assum- ing, as seems probable, that Poetry was the first art to come into existence, and that it originated in the rude chant, recit- ing the deeds of the ancestors of the tribe, we have at the same time the beginning of Art and of one of the most wide-spread of savage religions, viz., ancestor wor- ship. In conjunction with this ancestral worship we often find a deification of 72 Music and the Comrade Arts. natural phenomena. Sun, wind, rain, and so on, become objects of worship. As another step in advance, we find abstract qualities in the form of deities, — Hope, Fear, Love, Hate, and so on. The chant, originally the story of the prowess of some warrior ancestor, takes a milder form, becoming a hymn in praise of the deified force or abstract quality. It often rises to forms and expressions of rare beauty, as though the author got occa- sional glimpses of the great truth, that behind all these forces there exists a Power who has set them in motion and controls them. This outline of the development of Religion is in accord with that generally given by anthropologists, and is founded on the assumption that man is physically, mentally, and morally the result of a pro- cess of evolution. Still, the fact that religious conceptions appear purer the Art and Religion. 73 farther back we go, — for instance, in such old-world creeds as the Egyptian and the Assyrian, and in the Vedic hymns, — would seem to make the contrary assumption more probable, at least as far as Religion is concerned. This would lend color to the theory that Religion was the result of a primitive revelation which has been gradu- ally forgotten and debased with foreign admixture. All the greatest poetry of antiquity is essentially religious poetry; that is, its main theme is the relation of man to the universe, to his God or gods, and to his fellow-men. The Iliad, the Odyssey y the great tragedies of the Greek stage, are all meant to teach right living and the certainty of punishment follow- ing evil-doing. These great truths they inculcate with a purity and loftiness sec- ond only to that of the Bible. It is only in the Bible, however, that we find poetry used as the vehicle for teaching a religion 'f I 74 Music and the Comrade Arts. that is never marred by the cruelty, coarseness, or puerility so often found in the greatest of the heathen writers. We have very little knowledge of the practice of Painting among the ancients, or of the estimation in which this art was held by them. Doubtless the repre- sentation of objects by outlines was one of the earliest attempts at art. Witness that drawing of a mammoth, made (pos- sibly with a sharp flake of flint) on a piece of his tusk, found in a bone cave in France. But in all likelihood the first use of drawing was to preserve a record of important events ; for these pictorial out- lines were soon conventionalized into syl- lables, then into alphabets. The oldest paintings extant are those found on the walls of temples and tombs in Egypt. With few exceptions these paintings represent either wars or banquets, or are curiously minute pictures of the daily avo- Art and Religion. 75 cations of the people. One of the few religious themes pictured is the judgment of the souls of the dead by Osiris. In- teresting as these pictures are historically, they have very little merit as works of art, because the rules of drawing and coloring seem to have crystallized at a very early period of Egyptian history into stiff, formal conventions. On the other hand, the art of Sculpture has played a part of great prominence in nearly every ancient religion. There seems to be a strange inherent tendency in man to worship the " work of his own hands." It has been accounted for on the theory that the idol was at first merely a visible symbol of the deity, probably like the Teraphim that Rachel carried away from her father Laban. But it is more likely to be an outgrowth of that curious mental attitude of the savage which results in fetichism, a belief ^ ^; i' 1 > !) > \ i 1 V^W\ ■ J I : I 76 Music and the Comrade Arts. ! that the god or spirit does inhabit the idol. Be this as it may, the worship is transferred with fatal facility from the thing symbolized to the symbol. Among savages, and among many of the nations of antiquity, ugliness seems to have been the chief requisite in an idol. But the art-loving Greeks went to the other ex- treme, making the perfection of the human form and face the ntost fitting representative of their deities. The art of Sculpture reached its perfection in the '* age of Pericles," when, as was said by a visitor to Athens, there were ** more gods and goddesses than men in the streets of Athens.** It seems like a confirmation of the fetichistic origin of idols when we recall that the ** great Diana of the Eph- esians '* was a shapeless monstrosity, and the original Aphrodite a rude, conical mass of stone. There are two significant observations ^ f Art and Religion. n on the history of Art, the truth of which is confirmed by all national annals : First, each art, Music excepted, has reached its highest phase of development when it has been the highest expression of the re- ligious belief of a people. Second, na- tional decline has always accompanied and followed the blossoming of Art. History confirms this by showing that the nations of the old world that were the conquering peoples were never at the same time the artistic peoples. These two statements taken together furnish much matter for serious reflection. The explanation is this : Religion means duty, right living, noble action — as much to the heathen as to the Christian; not aesthetic raptures nor excited emotions that expire with the cause that gave them birth. " Plain living and high thinking " characterized the Medo-Persians when they swept the foul Assyrian Empire out \ .) ■ /l|^: I' ? \ \ I 1^ 'j( ' ■ ! K 78 Music and the Comrade Arts. of existence ; and the Greeks, when they beat back theoe same Persians, become corrupt through their Assyrian con- quests. It was the virtue (virtus) of the Romans, their religion, their lofty ideas of duty and patriotism that enabled them to conquer the world. In short, it is the idea a people form of right living that is the essence of their religion, not the number of gods and goddesses they pro- fess to worship. It is to the same truth that St. Paul gives expression when he refers to those who " being without the law, yet do by nature the things of the law." When Art becomes the highest expres- sion of Religion, it is a sure sign that all which made the Religion valuable has evaporated. With the fall of the Roman Empire ancient civilization came to an end and modern history began, bringing with it a Art and Religion. 79 new force to act on the world, — the force of Christianity. Christianity came off the victor in its contest with heathenism, but suffered more from its victory than it ever did from its defeats. Ease and affluence wrought the same deadly work in it that they had wrought in Persia, Greece, and Rome; and had it not been that Chris- tianity had in it a principle of h'fe unknown to these ancient civilizations, it would have shared the same fate. When Christianity was poor and op- pressed it knew little and cared less about Art. Nothing can seem more devoid of Art than the early Christian hymns, when compared with the dainty, fantastic me- tres of Greek and Latin poetry. The few pictorial symbols which the Christians used were of the simplest, the most elabor- ate being rude drawings of the Good Shep- herd with a lamb on his shoulders or in his arms, many of which are to be found ^: n '• i ' II '• 1 ( I 80 Music and the Comrade Arts. in the Catacombs. With the access of power and wealth a great change came. The first art to receive the impulse was Architecture. True to that instinct which makes man build temples for Him " Who dwelleth not in temples made with hands," stupendous cathedrals and churches began to spring up. New schools of architecture were invented, until the numerous constructions erected for the religion founded by fishermen, taxgatherers, and tentmakers far out- shone the costliest of heathen temples. But, in proportion as the ideals of architecture were perfected, the ideals of Christianity declined; until the awful climax was reached when the greatest of cathedrals was built by funds raised by peddling ** indulgences " all over Europe. St. Peter's stands to this day a monument of the genius of Angelo, and not less a monument of the evil case in which ii f ' I ■f ii Art and Religion. 8i Christianity was when the strong wind of the Reformation blew away the mists and miasms that had settled on it. The art of Painting was the next to arrive at its full perfection under the fos- tering care of Religion. We can hardly realize with what force the pictured repre- sentation of Biblical themes must have appealed to the beholders in an unlet- tered age. As the painters advanced in skill and knowledge these great altar- pieces and frescos grew more and more lifelike and impressive; until this phase of religious art culminated in the great Italian schools of the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries. It needs but a glance at history to dis- cover what was the manner of life lived in Europe at the very time when the great painters were painting their Madon- nas, crucifixions, annunciations, and all that long list of Biblical pictures which ^; ;; I ! 82 Music and the Comrade Arts. i J II. It k l\ ' \i Hi remain to this day the admiration and despair of modern artists. Church digni- tarias and nobles vied with each other in doing honor to the painters and sculptors who wrought these ideal saints, angels, and martyrs. But this was the age of the Borgias, the Sforzas, the Innocents; the age when deeds were done and lives lived chat might have filled Nero and Tiberius with envy. The art of Music was soon recognized by the Church as one of the most power- ful aids *n the great ceremonies of public Worship, and was sedulously cultivated. Music owes a great debt to the Church. For nearly twelve centuries there is not a name to be found among those who re- duced the practice of music to an intelli- gible system, apart from the studious monks and other churchmen who devoted their lives to its study. Their labors de- veloped a kind of music that culminated Art and Religion. 83 in the works of Palestrina. It differed es- sentially from our modern music, which began with Bach and Handel, although sporadic indications of its advent were not wanting before the appearance of these masters. The discovery that music was a means of expressing thought and emotion which might be molded into great " art forms ** is the contribution of the modern world to the sisterhood of the arts. In comparison with it, all that was called music from the beginning of time sinks into insignificance. The great works which saw the light in the eighteenth century and in the first half of the nine- teenth, mark the point when the tide of musical evolution reached its flood. I do not wish to be understood as denying all merit to older church music; far from it. It possessed a solidity and holcm -ity that made it peculiarly appropriate to religious I, . > I '» i I J 84 Music and the Comrade Arts. J u« I \ \h m ceremonies. Only as a perfected ** art form " do I claim superiority for modern music. Although all the arts owe much to the fostering care of the Church, Music is the only one that has in any great degree repaid the debt. Religion could get on very well without Architecture, Sculpture, or Painting ; but, from the time when its Founder sang a hymn with His disciples at the close of the Last Supper, up to the present day. Music has been the most powerful aid tc Christianity, In every occasion of sorrowing or rejoicing, Music has its share in endless variety, from the simplest children*s hymn to the Passion Music of T^ach. A general survey of the history of Art in its relation to Religion might seem to justify the opinion that it would have been better for Religion if they had always remained apart ; but this hasty decision is (H Art and Religion. 85 surely erroneous. The love of beauty in form, color, or sound is one of the deepest sentiments implanted in the human mind. It is one that man, in whatever condition of savagery or civilization, is unwearied in his efforts to gratify. This gratification is innocent so long as it is not secured at the expense of weightier matters. It is more than innocent, it is useful in the highest degree, if so pursued as to promote the soul's growth in these weightier matters. There are two curious facts concerning the relation of Music to Religion. One is, that during the long period in which the other arts were being perfected, aestheti- cally as well as technically, it was only the technical part of Music that grew. The other is, that though the gradual de- clension of religious ideals did not affect the aesthetic development of the other arts, it did affect that of Music. The plain severity of the old modes proving V V I t > I 86 Music and the Comrade Arts. t Hi I .^ - a' 6'f hi '•i i^ . distasteful, popular songs were taken as the themes for church compositions. It would seem as though the art of Music, lying, as it does, nearer to Religion than any other art, was bound to suffer deteri- oration when the religious ideal was de- based. This fact may serve as a warning to us, to be pondered in relation to the vexed question of church music — a ques- tion, no solution of which can be reached that will be accepted universally. But char- ity compels the belief that all music may find its appropriate use in church, provided always that artistic display, or frivolity, or mere prettiness is carefully eschewed. A ** gospel hymn " may mean jjjt as much to one person as a chorus by Handel or a service by Barnby does to pnother. There is room for both forms of music if only the exponent of the one does not try to constrain the advocate of the other to his way of thinking. 1 Art and Religion. 87 Protestant Christianity long looked ask- ance on the arts of Painting and Sculp- ture, and rigorously excluded them from its churches ; perhaps this was originally the wisest course in view of the tendency to image worship. Nor did Protestantism for a long period cultivate Architecture or even Music very enthusiastically. This, too, may not be a matter for great regret. For, if Ruskin speaks from true observa- tion when he says that he ** never knew any one thoroughly in earnest in religion who ever cared a button about art,'* this very indifference to Art might be closely connected with the mighty aggressiveness of historic Protestantism. But we should be sorry to believe that now, at least, there are not thousands with minds well balanced enough to appreciate Art at its full value without detriment to their religion. '>0 f ■A \ 1 I I } CHAPTER V. I 111 li I J-* n THE POWER OF ART TO EXPRESS THOUGHT AND EMOTION. HAVING treated in the preceding chap- ters of the relations of the Arts to Science, to each other, and to Religion, I shall attempt in this chapter to give some account of the power of Art to express thought and emotion. It will be at once evident that the Arts possess this power in widely different degrees ; some appeal- ing more to thought than to emotion ; and some, the reverse. Several meanings are attached to the term " expression '* in its application to Art. It is often said of an art work that 88 Power of Art. 89 it is expressive of the time in which it was produced, or that it reflects the spirit of the age. Thus it is easy to decide whether a work belongs to the fifteenth century or to the nineteenth, not only from its technic, but also from an inde- finable character that we at once recog- nize as the outcome of a different manner of thought, or different ideals, from those with which we are now familiar. The art of Music furnishes the most striking illus- tration of this difference, owing to the rapidity of its development after its true basis was discovered. The music of the end of the last century might be separated by a thousand years from that of the end of the present century, so strong a con- trast does it offer in every respect. A work of art is often said to be ex- pressive of national character; that is, it possesses certain qualities, also difficult to define, yet easily recognizable, which p \ I i 90 Music and the Comrade Arts. I i '? I 1 ■ r II enable us to say that it is German, French, Italian, etc. Of this kind of ex- pression Music gives us a curious illustra- tion. The distinctive characters of modern German, French, and Italian music are so strongly marked as to be easily recognized by those little skilled in Music. Yet, three centuries ago, it was impossible to tell from the character of a piece of music the nationality of the writer. English, Italian, and Belgian madrigals were as like one another as if all were the work of one writer. A work of art may also be expressive of the individuality of its author. Thus, while we recognize the music of Mozart and Beethoven as German, we also recog- nize the individuality of each composer, so strongly marked in his music that the veriest tyro in music will hardly mistake one for the other. But all these kinds of expression are of An Power of Art. 91 comparatively little importance. They are what logicians call the " accidents." The important kinds of expression are the expression of thought and the expression of emotion. By expression of thought, we mean the following qualities, which we recognize in a work of art: First, the knowledge which the artist possesses of his material ; second, the ability he displays in controlling his material ; third, and most important of all, his choice of the best means for the presentation of his ideas. Music furnishes innum- erable examples of this felicitous use of material and means : for instance, the startling pizzicato of the violas in the overture to the Midsummer Night's Dream; the use made of the drum at the close of the scherzo of the Fifth Sym- phony ; and that glorious example in the Hymn of Praise, when, at the close of that troubled solo, " We called through the ^'\ ) > *> 92 Music and the Comrade Arts. f ¥ ■ < I' li s ) \ \ [I lii darkness, * Watchman ! will the night soon pass ? * " a soprano ^inaccompanied sings, after a pause, ** The night is de)^>arting." These are all very simple things, yet it is just in this use of simple means that genius manifests itself. Take an example in Painting. How much would the Dres- den Madonna lose if those two baby cherubs at the bottom of the picture were left out : — the one with folded arms, the other with chin resting on the palm of his hand; both looking up with a strange mixture of infantile and angelic wonder at that other Child whose face looks as if it already saw the long path of woe before it? The expression of thought is so blended with that of emotion that it is not possible to disentangle them. Each needs the other for its highest manifestations. By expression of emotion we mean the power, infused by the artist into his work, X\ I i t i V Power of Art. 93 of awakening that state of feeling which is the complement of his design ; or, in other V. ords, of arousing sympathy with his ideal. Poetry possesses this great advantage over the other arts, that it can appeal at the same time and with equal force to either thought or emotion, or to both. Owing to the fact that it deals with the thought, feeling, and observation of the race, Poetry speaks to universal experi- ence with a precision and definiteness that no other art possesses. It is the poet's privilege to see farther and deeper into the relations of things than ordinary mortals; and to express these relations in such forceful terms that they stamp them- selves forever on the memory of the race. The power of expression in Painting is much more limited than that of Poetry. But within these limits its precision is far greater, for visual objects are the clearest l: I <' h IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 Sf'Ja 1.1 11.25 ^ ?!2.8 |25 ■^ lii 12.2 aiuu 0^ /ar >/w r ^ j^ .> -v*. ^-^ V o 7 Hiotographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14S80 (7I6)S73-4S03 li ^' It ' !i PV .11 I .1 94 Music and the Comrade Arts. and sharpest presented to the mind. Thus, the most exquisite and eloquent description of a landscape will leave a very hazy idea of it in our minds ; while a rapid pencil sketch by an artist will put us in possession of every salient point at a glance. The expression of historical painting, or of painting representing ac- tion, endurance, or any easily recognized motive, speaks for itself. But a more subtle expression may exist in landscape painting. This may give rise to feelings of gayety, or sadness, or longing, or a multitude of hardly definable emotions. It is this quality which distinguishes the landscape of the artist from that of the clever but uninspired draughtsman. The draughtsman's drawing may be techni- cally the more correct, but the work of the artist has always over it the glamour of ** the light that never was on sea or land." A level plain with a 1 1 ■: V. Power of Art. 95 few trees, by Corot, will fill the beholder with tender melancholy; a hillside with sheep and cattle, by Troyon, with a feel- ing of quiet contentment, and gladness, and visions of rural felicity. On the other hand, what can exceed the sparkle and gayety of a landscape by Watteau ; even if the fine ladies and gentlemen, masquerading as arcadian shepherds and shepherdesses, were left out ? Sculpture is still more limited than Painting in its expression, being restricted in its choice of themes to portraiture and allegory. Yet this very restriction de- mands from it an intensity and exactness far beyond that required of Painting. Hence a perfect piece of sculpture is, judged from the purely artistic stand- point, the most perfect example of *' fine art" in the world. The indescribable beauty of the works that have come down to us from the great Greek sculptors are ■ H i I, 'I • 'I li V • - il I !: 96 Music and the Comrade Arts. of such ideal perfection that they seem to be realizations of the ** Divine Idea" never attained in the living form. In Architecture, so many and such diverse elements enter into the production of a perfect whole that it is very difficult to disentangle them sufficiently to say with certainty upon what the expression of Architecture depends. It is only after it has fulfilled all conditions of strength, adaptability, and so forth, that it begins to be beautiful. The expression of Archi- tecture may be roughly divided into two kinds: one of lightness and buoyancy combined with stability; the other of weight and strength, yet without dul- ness. Magnitude has much to do with the expression of Architecture, so much so that even ugliness on a large scale may be impressive. St. Peter's in Rome re- duced to the tenth part of its present dimensions would lose all its grandeur. Power of Art. 97 Possibly the very foundation of beauty in Architecture lies here, — that it gives to large constructions complex forms which we unconsciously compare with the amor- phous masses in which Nature piles the same materials; also giving to these forms a permanence which outlasts cen- turies of change. Antiquity and historical association sway the judgment powerfully in esti- mating the merits of architecture. It is very doubtful if a perfect reproduction of the Parthenon on one of our city streets would rouse us to enthusiasm. But let us view it where it has stood for more than two thousand years, looking down on that sea which " once resounded with the world's debate,'* and call to mind the world-moving events of which it has been a witness, from the time when it was the symbol of the most perfect in- tellectual and artistic culture the world > i ill i I I (II 98 Music and the Comrade Arts. has ever known. There it stood when Greece declined and the spear of Ath- ene promachos was lowered before the Roman Eagles. The great apostle of the Gentiles stood before it when he reasoned ineffectually with the frivolous Athenians. It saw the fierce wave of the followers of Mahomet ; and it still stands, a witness to the last despoiling of unhappy Greece. Such thoughts and emotions must powerfully affect the beholder and unconsciously influence his judgment. There is no form of art in which the power of expression is so completely out of all proportion to the means as in music. The material of music, as already pointed out, is sound; varied as to pitch and quality, and subjected to a few simple combinations. First among its means of expression ranks the rate of motion, called by musicians the tempo. The character or expression of a melody may be completely Power of Art. 99 changed by changing its rate of motion ; for example, that wailing melody in the trio of Chopin's funeral march was appro- priated some years since by a comic-song writer, and set to some vulgar " con- cert hall *' words, with an Allegro instead of the original adagio movement. The metamorphosis is so complete that it is hardly possible to recognize the melody. There is a mythical story to the effect that when Queen Mary was led to execu- tion, her vindictive enemy, Elizabeth, gave command that the musicians should play the " rogues* march." But the leader of the band, who felt some sym- pathy for the unfortunate Mary, made his musicians play it very slowly, thus changing it from a rollicking tune to a melancholy dirge. Next to rate of movement, as a means of expression, comes force, or variation in the loudness or softness of the sound. s I n tf lOO Music and the Comrade Arts. i' I Mr ■I i All the mechanical means of producing expression, indicated by the terms accent, legato, staccato, rubato, ritenuto, etc., are merely various applications of these two means. But, although we may specify in exact detail the technical means by which music gains expression, we are as far as ever from solving the problem of the power of music to express or excite emotion. The problem is, in fact, insoluble in the present state of psychological knowledge. All shades and varieties of emotion are said to be modifications and blendings of the feelings of joy or sorrow, pleasure or pain. Poetry reaches these springs of emotion by presenting definite images to the mind ; Painting and Sculpture, by presenting definite images to the eye. Music seems to go deeper than they do, because it makes its appeal to the emo- tions without the need of any concrete Power of Art. lOI intermediary symbols. For example, in Tennyson's exquisite lyric, Tears y Idle Tears J the poet by calling up several men- tal pictures gives vivid expression to that vague feeling of regret, half painful, half pleasant, which is caused by '* looking on the happy autumn fields,*' ** and thinking of the days that are no more. ' * The beauty and the glory of spring and summer are gone, and winter is coming with the *' Death of the year.** Then the picture of a ship, " That sinks with all we love ** below the far horizon, gives a more intense and personal interest, which culminates in the stanza, one of the most perfect in the English language, that pic- tures one dying at the early dawn of a fair summer morning, hearing for the last time the " earliest pipe of half-awakened birds," while to his fading eyes the ** casement slowly grows a glimmering square,** and he feels that, forevermore, his only part i' I02 Music and the Comrade Arts. i " In all the pomp that fills The circuit of the summer hills, Is — that his grave is green." It is hardly possible that language could give a more vivid expression to that vague sadness, " Wild with all regret," than is given in this short lyric. Yet this same emotion may be excited in even intenser degree by Music; as, for exam- ple, by the slow movement of Beethoven's Fi/tk Symphony, The poem is limited by its definiteness. The expression of the music is limitless because of its indefi- niteness. One deals with a few striking manifestations of the emotion ; the other, with the emotion itself. But it should never be forgotten that it is only in the widest, most general sense that music ex- presses emotion. The hearer gets from music only what his musical intelligence fits him to receive. Without a language, Music yet speaks Power of Art. 103 to every hearer in terms which he alone can interpret; hence the danger of at- tempting to " read into " music a definite meaning. A hundred people may listen to, and equally enjoy, a symphony ; and yet no two among them be affected by it in the same way. If it has a ** motto " or " signpost," like the poor painter's ** this is a horse," some among the num- ber will imagine that the music and the motto agree. But those who are gifted with the true musical instinct forget, if the music is good, all about the motto, and judge the music on its own merits. Composers would do well to accept as an axiom, ** Good music needs no motto, and bad music is not helped by one." This ignis fatuus of definite expression in music has proved a stumbling-block to even the greatest composers. The com- poser of the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies also wrote the Pastoral Symphony ^ with % i I I04 Music and the Comrade Arts. t B H' its bird-songs and thunder-storm, which remove it at once from the class of great art works to the same category as Stei- belt's Storm Rondo, The Battle of Prague , and that other ** storm " piece which is a great favorite with many organists, in which thunder is imitated ** to the life " by putting down several pedals together. Of course, anything done by Beethoven must be better than the same kind of thing done by another; but at the same time imitative music is a thing Beethoven should not have done. It seems like a lame conclusion to an investigation into the power of music for expression, to say that it has no definite expression ; but if the truth of this con- clusion were as clear to composers as it ought to be, it would be the means of keeping them from falling into many lapses from the standard of true art. And, better still, it would serve as a Power of Art. 105 guide to their efforts, directing them to the true sources of musical expression, — noble, beautiful melody, perfect form, and the careful avoidance of even the least suspicion of the bizarre, meretricious, or commonplace. I I I''-* I i- ^ I 'Ki CHAPTER VI. VOCAL AND INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. WIDELY separated as vocal and in- strumental music now are in their chief characteristics, this difference is of comparatively recent origin. For a long period of time the instrumental was sub- servient entirely, or nearly so, to the vocal ; serving merely as an accompaniment. For several reasons, vocal music had the start of instrumental in the race. First, be- cause the voice is nature's instrument, and its use in song is almost as natural as in speech. Second, because there is an innate tendency to give rhythmic expres- sion to intense or exalted emotion; and io6 Vocal and Instrumental Music. 107 rhythmic utterance easily glides into melodic. Hence the conditions from the beginning were favorable to the earlier development of vocal music. In early times the poet and musician were always united in the same indi- vidual. Tradition represents Homer as wandering through Greece, reciting or chanting the Iliad and Odyssey to the ac- companiment of a lyre. This union of poet and musician lasted for many cen- turies. We meet with it again in the stories of Saxon and Celtic harpers, who were the chroniclers, in verse, of the his- tory of their times ; again in the trouba- dours and minnesingers, who, discarding, for the greater part, the themes of war and arms, sang of love and beauty, to the accompaniment of many now-forgotten instruments. But as all progress means the specialization of function, the time came when the poet and the musician \ I • (. ; M' i ) i \^ 1 08 Music and the Comrade Arts. were no longer united in the same person. And, strange to say, the separation seems to have gone on with ever-accelerating speed, until it is now a rare thing to find a poet who knows anything about music ; and, I regret to say, no rarity to find musicians who are ignorant of the rules of poetic metres, judging by the havoc they often make of them when putting music to words. When the poet separated from the musician, the latter performed, for a long time, the functions of singer and player; either as the retainer of some noble verse- maker, or as a wandering minstrel. The next step in differentiation separated the singer from the player. In this case, also, the divergence has rapidly widened until in too many instances vocalists and instrumentalists have come to look upon each other as natural enemies. These different steps in the progress of i ' Vocal and Instrumental Music. 109 Music have taken place very slowly. The art of Music, like the century-plant, grew a leaf at a time, for many years, until, hav- ing stored up all its material, it suddenly bloomed, a little more than a hundred years since, — and the world beheld the birth of a new** fine art." Both vocal and instrumental music have, in their progress, gone through a process of further subdivision. Vocal music began as a rude chant with very little pretension to melody. Then the music gained a rhythm independent of the words ; probably from the dance. Then musical learning, which for many years was devoted only to church music, was applied to secular music, and resulted in the production of the madrigal, chanson, etc. But as yet there was nothing in the character of these secular compositions to distinguish them from the church compositions. A sixteenth-century madrigal and motet 7 I lo Music and the Comrade Arts. ii h iii 1 : ■' I i ( hi I ' might change words and no one could discover it by any inappropriateness in the character of the music. Many of the most admired of the German chorals, tunes that seem to breathe the very spirit of piety, were originally secular songs. So a further subdivision was neces- sary, into sacred and secular. The sacred music was already well established, but the secular had not as yet discovered its own charactr^r. This discovery was made by the invention of the opera. It was found that music possessed a dramatic power hitherto unsuspected; and from this time secular music was free to pursue its own path. It is matter for great regret that these paths have not always been kept severely apart. In the dra- matic style the ** art " will obtrude itself at the expense of the religious interest, and the performance of a fine choir be- comes simply an aesthetic affair. ^ Vocal and Instrumental Music, iii This confusion between sacred and dramatic music 's responsible for many of the monstrosities we hear in ** Choirs and places where they sing." Even in Palestrina's time they took secular songs as themes for masses. Red Roses and AdieUy My Loves were two favorites. Shakespeare tells of Puritans ** singing psalms to hornpipes." And we have often heard JesuSy Lover of My Soul sung to When the Swallows Homeward Fly, This practice is frequently defended by the foolish saying that " the devil should not have all the good music "; a saying containing two fallacies — one, that all music which is not sacred music must of necessity belong to his satanic majesty; the other, that the term " good " can be applied to any of his property. In the course of its development, vocal music has devoted itself at one time to quality of tone, at another to facility of h ( I ' t,l /.I n 112 Music and the Comrade Arts. if u ■■ii i ill' ! M t II ■i! 1 execution ; in both these aims it has worked wonders. It has, with few ex- ceptions, never devoted itself to distinct- ness of enunciation. While this may sound uncomplimentary to many singers, yet I venture to say that one will hear better, clearer enunciation at the perform- ance of a well trained troupe of *' min- strels ** than one is likely to hear at concert, opera, or church. The minstrels know that their success depends mainly on their words being understood. All the possibilities of bravura singing were exhausted by the singers of the last part of the eighteenth century. Some of the examples of their powers in this re- spect, to be found in the writings of Por- pora, are almost enough to make one doubt whether those songs were ever sung. Since then a better taste has pre- vailed, and it is now universally recognized that breadth, simplicity, and a ** canti- ■r*- I Vocal and Instrumental Music. 113 lene *' style are the things to be sought in vocal music. There are several reasons why instru- mental music was so far behind vocal, in its development: the inferiority of the instruments, the meagre skill of the play- ers, and, more than anything else, the fact that the musical world had not yet discovered that music might have a mean- ing entirely independent of that gained by being associated with words. Before this fact could be recognized, it was ne- cessary that the stiff, cumbrous scales of the church system should be supplanted by a more flexible system. This came about when the art of tempering the scale was discovered. The earliest attempts at instrumental music were dance tunes. Then the mad- rigals, etc. , written for voices, were played (without voices) on the " viols." Then the dance tunes were lengthened, and 8 ft/1 1 14 Music and the Comrade Arts. several were collected into what were called * * lessons, " or * * suites. * ' Then the sonata form was invented, and after some experimentation settled into the form as we now have it. The existence of instrumental music once established, there went on, along with the musical development just sketched, the study of the capabilities and tone qualities of each instrument, with the object of finding out the most effective way of treating each. Thus the complexity of instrumental music began to increase. Instrumental music was free to expand in another way, being no long- er subject to the limitations of vocal music in compass or to the susceptibility of the performers to fatigue. A compass of about four octaves includes all that the human voice is capable of, while the orchestra has about double this compass. The throat and chest soon tire; the fin- ■ Vocal and Instrumental Music. 115 gers of the pianist or violinist are tireless. Fine voices, such as great singers must possess, are the rarest things in the world. Therefore their possessors are all soloists. On the other hand, it is comparatively easy to gather a company of trained in- strumentalists. The chorus, which affords by far the most impressive way in which the voice may be used, is always composed, even under the most favorable circumstances, of more or less untrained singers, and in- cludes many inferior voices. Perhaps the world will never have a chance to hear the effects a chorus might produce if all the sopranos were Melbas, the altos, Carys, and the tenors and basses, De Reszkes, all trained to the perfection of a great orchestra, and — more Utopian still — all willing, as the artists of a great orchestra are, to submit loyally to the control of a great leader. ii6 Music and the Comrade Arts. Each kind of music — vocal and instru- mental — has its special advantages and disadvantages. The special advantage of vocal music is that, calling in the aid of language, it is enabled to express with precision all shades and varieties of emo- tion, words and music aiding each other. On the other hand, its disadvantages are : its limited compass, its lack of tone color, and the limitation of its expression to that of the words which accompany it. The advantages of instrumental music are : its practically unlimited compass, its exhaustless variety of tone color, and its freedom from limitation by the union with language. It possesses a much greater range of expression, greater be- cause of its very indefiniteness. In addition, the executive powers of the instrumentalist are far in advance of those of the vocalist ; and the character of each instrument has developed a mode of treat- Vocal and Instrumental Music. 117 ment appropriate to each. So strongly marked has this become that, to the mu- sician, the words " horn passage,*' "oboe passage, * ' " piano passage, * ' etc. , convey a distinct impression of the character of the passage signified. But it is to instrumen- tal music, above all, that the large com- plex ** forms ** belong — the sonata, in all its varieties, from the piano sonata to the orchestral symphony, — art forms in which we have what may be called a logical development of a few simple melodic propositions. There will always be a difference of opinion as to which is the greater, vocal or instrumental music. It is a question that must be settled by each one's per- sonal preferences. While it is true that the scope of instrumental music is greater, there is yet a something in the quality of the human voice, when at its best, that, even apart from the words sung, rouses a ii8 Music and the Comrade Arts. i> h s It I response in us which is beyond the reach of the instrument. We can give no higher praise to the instrumentalist than to say *' he makes his instrument sing *' ; recognizing in the saying that the nearer the approach to the voice the greater the beauty of the performance. Vocal and instrumental music have reacted on each other in several ways, but the debt of the instrumental to the vocal music is much the greater. In addi- tion to teaching the instrument to ''sing," the voice has taught it to " phrase. '* Phras- ing, which in its origin was a necessity in vocal music, on account of the breath- ing, was soon developed into an art for the enhancing of the expression. The instrumentalist soon found that by apply- ing this art to his performance he might greatly augment its effectiveness. The debt of vocal to instrumental music is very small, confined chiefly to the bor- ' "i ^ Vocal and Instrumental Music. 119 ? ^ rowing of certain instrumental passages, such as extended arpeggios, and leaps of intervals that were at one time thought impossible to voices. In fact, the con- stant hearing of difificult melodic and har- monic successions in instrumental music has, unconsciously to themselves, made the singing of such passages easy even to ordinary singers. The total emancipation of instrumental from vocal music has brough*- up an im- portant question : What should be their relative positions when united ? Which one should be subordinate ? Or, should they be on a perfect equality ? The terms of this union have changed ma- terially during the last century. In Handel's time the old subserviency of the instruments still obtained in great degree. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, — each mark a distinct step in the advance of the instrumental part of the combina- I20 Music and the Comrade Arts. 1 tion. But with all these great writers there is constantly evinced a determina- tion that if either one is to predominate it shall be the voice, never the instrument at the expense of the voice. Hence, al- though we find in these writers infinite variety and beauty in the accompani- ments, their whole purpose is to add to the interest of the vocal part. But *' since these fathers fell asleep," there has grown up a school that seeks to exalt the instrument at the expense of the voice, working on the theory that to the instrument belongs the task of inter- preting the deeper meanings of the words, which the voice declaims as a sort of commentary on the instrumental part — as it were — to let the hearer know what the *' music '* is supposed to mean. This view of the relations between the voice and the instrument has developed in Germany into a curious, mongrel sort of Vocal and Instrumental Music. 121 performance, — the accompanying of a recitation by an instrumental '* commen- tary.*' Some of the foremost composers have written these hybrid affairs. These accompanied recitations are, for several reasons, a complete reductio ad absurdum of this theory. In attempting to recite with music, the reciter is almost certain to fall into a ** singsong " monotone that is sure to be out of tune with the music. Again, musical sounds make themselves heard with much greater ease than spoken sounds; therefore the recitation must be very loud, or the music so soft that it loses all character. Finally, " speaking " and *' music " are mutually destructive; they appeal to different departments of the mind, and it is impossible to carry on successfully at the same time two entirely unrelated mental operations. The manner of combining voices and instruments in vogue during the great 122 Music and the Comrade Arts. r ' period of composition should surely be recognized as the right one. The orches- tra is a huge instrument of unlimited power. The voice is a tender instrument of limited power, quite unfit to cope with its mighty companion, but possessing an exquisite beauty of its own, to enhance which should be the sole object of the orchestra when they are conjoined. There is nothing more painful than to watch the efforts of a fine singer to make head- way against the overwhelming sound billows of an orchestra, let loose by some frantic seeker after ** effects.'* There is nothing more agreeable than to listen to the same voice when every word, note, and phrase is enhanced by well-designed accompaniment. The voice is then like the fine golden line which may sometimes be seen in the mazes of an arabesque. Without the background of tracery the gold line would be meaningless; without Vocal and Instrumental Music. 123 the line, the tracery would be meaning- less; but their union in due proportion means a perfect work of art. This tendency to over-elaboration of the accompaniment is equally visible in the modern songs with piano accompani- ment, which are often so difficult as to require a virtuoso for their proper per- formance. Without doubt the older forms of accompaniment, such as the ** Alberti bass,*' are worn out and thread- bare. Still that is no reason why the composers should rush to the other ex- treme — as though they wished to do everything in their power to distract the attention of the listener from the voice to the piano. The songs of Schubert are the most perfect examples of a just balance between voice and piano. The accom- paniment always " means something," yet never overrides the melody, but rather sets it oif to the greatest advan- i m 124 Music and the Comrade Arts. I i) / I tage. The instruments have ** ample scope and verge enough ** in those great sound forms, of which I have spoken, without trying to seize the domain of the voice. As the order of evolution is an upward tendency, and as in Music the last step was the evolution of these large forms of instrumental music, we are surely justified in calling them the highest development of the art of Music. They are the one contribution of the modern world to Art. Poet, painter, sculptor, architect, per- fected their art long ago. But the per- fecting of the art of Music was the work of three men (the greatest of whom died a little more than seventy years ago): Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. I do not wish to be understood as exalting instru- mental music at the expense of vocal. There are no degrees in perfection, al- though ** one star differeth from another Vocal and Instrumental Music. 125 in glory." The lily is as perfect as the oak ; the song, in its degree, as fine as the symphony: the symphony is like the architecture which builds stupendous temples ; the song, like that which builds for domestic uses. It is only on stated occasions that we visit the temples, but we live in the houses. The few may rise to the comprehension of the symphony, but all may take the song to their hearts. I wish to add a few words about the singers and players. As the art of phras- ing is the most essential element in per- formance, and as it had its origin in singing, it needs no argument to prove the necessity to all instrumentalists of a knowledge of singing; not simply the reading at sight of a vocal part, but a knowledge of the management of the voice. The pianist who knows how to sing will sing on the piano, with an ex- pression far beyond that which results w 126 Music and the Comrade Arts. ! ^ r 1\ u II ! 1 from mechanically following the indica- tions on the music, or the carefully iterated directions of a teacher. There are numberless shadings in force, accent, and tempo that it is not possible to indi- cate on the score without overloading it with directions. These things the trained singer does, guided by the meaning of the words, and transfers them to the piano or violin with infinite gain in the effect. If players should learn to sing, singers should also learn to play. It is a com- mon reproach that singers have very little idea of time. Many of them have an idea that it is the duty of the accompan- ist, even of the orchestra, to follow them in all their vagaries. Nothing will cure this notion like 1 arning an instrument and playing in concert with other instru- ments. Many singers imagine that their disregard of time adds to the expression ' Vocal and Instrumental Music. 127 of their singing; but any experienced orchestra player will testify that the greater the singers the easier it is to accompany them. Artists do not base their idea of expression on the notion that one bar may have three beats, another five, and an occasional bar be left out altogether. If they do make a change in the rate of movement it is done at a place and in a way that at once commends itself to the accompanist as appropriate, and he has no difficulty in following. I remarked some time ago that the at- titude of singer and accompanist towards each other was often that of natural enemies. Each is determined that the other shall not have his own way. The singer wants the accompanist to be a willing slave, the accompanist wants the singer to have some regard to the differ- ence between a whole and a half note. 1 r >n I ul ! It m 128 Music and the Comrade Arts. The result is that the song is a struggle, at the close of which each blames the other for its shortcomings. If singers would learn to play they would soon dis- cover that an accompaniment is an essen- tial part of the song. They would learn that the accompanist, who is generally a musician, — for it requires a musician to be an accompanist, — is likely to have some justification for the disdain in which he holds the musical acquirements of the ordinary singer. Good musical work in any department necessitates a knowledge of every other department. It is a fatal mistake to neglect or underrate one, because you have made a specialty of another. There- fore, while opportunity affords, gain some knowledge of every department of the art ; thus only may you attain a thorough mastery of the one you have chosen as the special field of your efforts. Arts. Tuggle, les the singers )on dis- 1 essen- Id learn erally a cian to have 1 which s of the irtment y other take to se you There- in some of the lorough osen as