Part 3

“The eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the chief means whereby the understanding may most fully and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the second inasmuch as it acquires its importance from the fact that it hears the things which the eye has seen. If you historians, or poets, or mathematicians had never seen things with your eyes you would be ill able to describe them in your writings. And if you, O poet, represent a story by depicting it with your pen, the painter with his brush will so render it as to be more easily satisfying and less tedious to understand. If you call painting ‘dumb poetry,’ then the painter may say of the poet that his art is ‘blind painting.’ Consider then which is the more grievous affliction, to be blind or be dumb! Although the poet has as wide a choice of subjects as the painter, his creations fail to afford as much satisfaction to mankind as do paintings, for while poetry attempts with words to represent forms, actions, and scenes, the painter employs the exact images of the forms in order to reproduce these forms. Consider, then, which is more fundamental to man, the name of man or his image? The name changes with change of country; the form is unchanged except by death.”

--Leonardo da Vinci, _Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books_, arranged by Edward McCurdy, pp. 156, 157.

“If the artist, out of ever-varying nature, can only make use of a single moment, and the painter especially can only use this moment from one point of view, whilst their works are intended to stand the test not only of a passing glance, but of long and repeated contemplation, it is clear that this moment, and the point from which this moment is viewed, cannot be chosen with too great a regard to results. Now that only is a happy choice which allows the imagination free scope. The longer we gaze, the more must our imagination add; and the more our imagination adds, the more we must believe we see. In the whole course of an emotion there is no moment which possesses this advantage so little as its highest stage. There is nothing beyond this; and the presentation of extremes to the eye clips the wings of fancy, prevents her from soaring beyond the impression of the senses, and compels her to occupy herself with weaker images; further than these she ventures not, but shrinks from the visible fulness of expression as her limit. Thus, if Laokoön sighs, the imagination can hear him shriek; but if he shrieks, it can neither rise a step higher above nor descend a step below this representation, without seeing him in a condition which, as it will be more endurable, becomes less interesting. It either hears him merely moaning, or sees him already dead.

“Furthermore, this single moment receives through art an unchangeable duration; therefore it must not express anything, of which we can think only as transitory. All appearances, to whose very being, according to our ideas, it is essential that they suddenly break forth and as suddenly vanish, that they can be what they are but for a moment,--all such appearances, be they pleasing or be they horrible, receive, through the prolongation which art gives them, such an unnatural character, that at every repeated glance the impression they make grows weaker and weaker, and at last fills us with dislike or disgust of the whole object.”

--Lessing, _Laokoön_, pp. 19, 20.

“It is neither charm nor is it dignity which speaks from the glorious face of the Juno Ludovici; it is neither of these, for it is both at once. While the female god challenges our veneration, the godlike woman at the same time kindles our love. But while in ecstacy we give ourselves up to the heavenly beauty, the heavenly self-repose awes us back. The whole form rests and dwells in itself--a fully complete creation in itself--and as if she were out of space, without advance or resistance; it shows no force contending with force, no opening through which time could break in. Irresistibly carried away and attracted by her womanly charm, kept off at a distance by her godly dignity, we also find ourselves at length in the state of the greatest repose, and the result is a wonderful impression, for which the understanding has no idea and language no name.”

--Schiller, _Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical_, p. 72.

“As practising myself the art of sculpture no less than that of painting, and doing both the one and the other in the same degree, it seems to me that without suspicion of unfairness I may venture to give an opinion as to which of the two is the more intellectual, and of the greater difficulty and perfection. In the first place sculpture is dependent on certain lights, namely those from above, while a picture carries everywhere with it its own light and shade; light and shade therefore are essential to sculpture. In this respect the sculptor is aided by the nature of the relief which produces these of its own accord, but the painter artificially creates them by his art in places where nature would normally do the like. The sculptor cannot render the difference in the varying natures of the colours of objects; painting does not fail to do so in any particular. The lines of perspective of sculptors do not seem in any way true; those of painters may appear to extend a hundred miles beyond the work itself.”

--Leonardo da Vinci, _Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books_, arranged by Edward McCurdy, pp. 160, 161.

“What the artist does or has done excites in us the mood in which he himself was when he did it. A free mood in the artist makes us free; a constrained one makes us uncomfortable. We usually find this freedom of the artist where he is fully equal to his subject. It is on this account we are so pleased with Dutch pictures; the artists painted the life around them, of which they were perfect masters. If we are to feel this freedom of mind in an actor, he must, by study, imagination, and natural disposition, be perfect master of his part, must have all bodily requisites at his command, and must be upheld by a certain youthful energy. But study is not enough without imagination, and study and imagination together are not enough without natural disposition. Women do the most through imagination and temperament.”

--Goethe, _Conversations with Eckermann and Soret_, pp. 417, 418.

“If you would have me speak only of panel painting I am content to give an opinion between it and sculpture by saying that painting is more beautiful, more imaginative, and richer in resource, while sculpture is more enduring, but excels in nothing else. Sculpture reveals what it is with little effort; painting seems a thing miraculous, making things intangible appear tangible, presenting in relief things which are flat, in distance things near at hand. In fact painting is adorned with infinite possibilities of which sculpture can make no use.”

--Leonardo da Vinci, _Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books_, arranged by Edward McCurdy, p. 162.

TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

1. What peculiar excellences has sculpture that are shown by no other art?

2. What special excellences has painting that are shown by no other art?

3. What cannot be directly or adequately expressed in sculpture? In painting?

4. Compare in conception, execution and associated emotions Andrea del Sarto’s and Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the _Last Supper_.

5. What effect has the color and texture of marble upon the emotions?

6. Analyze carefully the effect of Michael Angelo’s _Last Judgment_ upon your senses, intellect and emotions.

7. Compare carefully, in the effect upon the beholder, the _Venus de Milo_, Michael Angelo’s _Pietà_ (in St. Peter’s) and Chapu’s _Joan of Arc_.

8. Study the relation of significance to beauty in Raphael’s _Sistine Madonna_ and Millet’s _Sower_.

9. What is the significance for the function of sculpture and painting that in both arts form is statical and relatively permanent?

10. Study the respective effects of form and color in sculpture; in painting.

REFERENCES

Brown, _The Fine Arts_. Caffin, _How to Study Pictures_. Goethe, _Travels in Italy_. Holden, _Audiences_. Knight, _The Philosophy of the Beautiful_. LaFarge, _Considerations on Painting_. Leighton, _Addresses_. Lessing, _Laokoön_. Mach, _Greek Sculpture_. Noyes, _The Enjoyment of Art_. Palgrave, _Poetry Compared with the Other Fine Arts_. Parry, _The Ministry of Fine Art to the Happiness of Life_. Puffer, _The Psychology of Beauty_, chapter iv. Raymond, _Painting, Sculpture and Architecture as Representative Arts_. Ruskin, _Aratra Pentelici_; _Lectures on Art_; _Modern Painters_. Sturgis, _The Appreciation of Pictures_; _The Appreciation of Sculpture_. Van Dyke, _Art for Art’s Sake_; _How to Judge of a Picture_; _The Meaning of Pictures_; _Principles of Art_. Vinci, _Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books_; _Treatise on Painting_. Witt, _How to Look at Pictures_.

V. THE MEANING AND FUNCTION OF MUSIC

“Continue to translate yourself to the heaven of art; there is no more undisturbed, unmixed, purer happiness than may thus be attained.”

--Beethoven, in Kerst, _Beethoven: The Man and the Artist_, p. 12.

=The art of music.=--Music the most difficult of the arts to define in function and meaning, because the most subtle, seeming to produce its effects as by a miracle.

The relation of music to Nature. The sounds utilized in music all found in the natural world. Compare the effect of the wind sighing in the pine-trees; bird songs; the rhythmic beat of waves upon the shore. Yet music not often directly imitating nature as do sculpture and painting. Music resolving natural forms into their elements and then recombining these independently. Thus music accomplishing in time relations more what architecture does in space relations. Compare the use in architecture of forms given by Nature, as in the tree column or cave roof. Hence deep significance in the oft-repeated comparison of music and architecture. Architecture as “frozen music”; music as liquid architecture. Illustrate in _Notre Dame de Paris_; in Beethoven’s _Moonlight Sonata_.

=The appeal of architecture.=--The effect upon the beholder of the Greek temple at Pæstum. Sensuous delight in beautiful forms and colors; conception given; emotion aroused. Contrast a mediæval temple such as _Notre Dame_ or the cathedral at Milan. What is dominant and what subordinate in each work.

=The effect of music.=--The appeal in a relatively slight musical composition such as Schumann’s _Arabesque_ (Op. 18) or Chopin’s _Impromptu_ (Op. 29). Type of sensuous pleasure as compared with the other arts. The dynamic series of forms arousing a series of emotional states. The reflections associated with these states of feeling. Thus the two-fold contrast between music and the arts dealing with space relations: (1) What is dominant in the one, associated or subordinate in the other; (2) In the one form dynamic and evanescent, in the other statical and relatively permanent.

The direct intellectual element in analyzing the composition: compare the study of motives and harmony. Relation of this to the immediate response to the appeal of art. Intellectual analysis possible in relation to all the arts; yet while this may lead to deepened appreciation, standing somewhat aside from the response to the art itself.

Fuller illustration of the line of appeal of music in the best of Chopin’s _Nocturnes_ and the _Ninth Symphony_ of Beethoven. What is given in each of these works. The means by which the effect is attained.

=The unique sphere of music.=--Significance that music must be recreated every time it is enjoyed. Forms in music successive in a dynamic series, each element dying in the same moment in which it is created. Thus sublimation of form in music and the freeing of the content from sensuous association.

Possibility of expressing for the emotions what cannot be represented for the imagination. Note, possible to conceive God, an immaterial soul, a transcendent heaven; but impossible to carve or paint these. Power of music to express or awaken the emotions we associate with the conceptions of the transcendent, the supernatural and the divine. True sense in which music is the one art “capable of revealing the infinite.” Browning’s illustration of this in _Abt Vogler_.

Music as the most personal of the fine arts in expressing emotions no other art can adequately embody; at the same time music the most social of the fine arts in arousing the feelings that unite men, where intellectual opinions and convictions tend to separate them. Illustration in the _Ouverture to Tannhäuser_.

The obvious reason why it is so much more difficult to put music into intellectual terms than is true of the other arts. Various attempts to associate a definite series of intellectual conceptions with the sensuous and emotional appeal of music. Compare in naming compositions; in “program music”; in interpretations. Rigid limits to these attempts.

=Composite arts.=--The reasons why music lends itself so readily to combination with other arts. The song: its appeal as compared with music unassociated with words. Church music and its development.

The opera as a peculiarly characteristic composite modern art. Elements composing it; the question as to which should be central. The value of Wagner’s answer.

=The cultural value of music.=--Peculiar danger in music since it may arouse emotional sensibility without directing its expression. Plato’s view. The effect of merely sensuous music. The need to choose your companions wisely in hearing even great music.

Yet the danger in music merely the corollary of its peculiar strength and power. Supreme value of its refining and exalting influence. Its high significance for our time, indeed for the human spirit in all time.

ILLUSTRATIONS

“And indeed the greatness of the poet may be best measured by that concerning which he is silent, in order to let the unspeakable itself speak to us silently. It is only the musician who can bring this that is silent into clear expression; and the unerring form of _his_ loud-resounding silence is endless _melody_!”

--Wagner, in “The Music of the Future,” _Art Life and Theories_, p. 180.

“The more definitely a composer aims at making his music an expression of emotion, the more firmly must he fashion it according to the dictates of intellect, for were he to attempt emotional expression without preserving the supremacy of the reason in his work, he would speedily fall into formlessness, and instead of enlightening would merely bewilder his hearers. In all art creative, or interpretative, the emotion must be under the dominance of the reason, or else there is no method, and art without method is inconceivable.”

--Henderson, _What is Good Music_, p. 98.

“What _instrumental music_ is unable to achieve, lies also beyond the pale of _music proper_; for it alone is pure and self-subsistent music. No matter whether we regard vocal music as superior to, or more effective than instrumental music--an unscientific proceeding, by the way, which is generally the upshot of one-sided dilettantism--we can not help admitting that the term ‘music,’ in its true meaning, must exclude compositions in which words are set to music. In vocal or operatic music it is impossible to draw so nice a distinction between the effect of the music, and that of the words, that an exact definition of the share which each has had in the production of the whole becomes practicable. An enquiry into the subject of music must leave out even compositions with inscriptions, or so-called programme-music. Its union with poetry, though enhancing the power of music, does not widen its limits.”

--Hanslick, _The Beautiful in Music_, pp. 44, 45.

“How, ye formal philosophers, ye men of the ‘sounding arabesque,’ unto whom the spirit shows itself not, because ye do not believe in it, or search after it in the organic structure with the gross scalpel of the anatomist--know ye not that Goethe’s ‘disengaging one’s self from a mood,’ which he found in poetry, also applies to the musician--that every truly artistic tone-work is also an ‘occasional poem’? Surely, no musical thought has ever been generated with vital power in your soul, or, if you had one, it was a greenhouse plant. Otherwise you would know, that the artist hastens with everything that delights and pains him to his beloved art, and desires of it that it should preserve each mood for him in the sacred vessel of its beautiful form for all time.”

--Ambros, _The Boundaries of Music and Poetry_, p. 106.

“While _sound_ in _speech_ is but a sign, that is, a _means_ for the purpose of expressing something which is quite distinct from its medium; _sound_ in _music_ is the _end_, that is, the ultimate and absolute object in view. The intrinsic beauty of the musical forms in the latter case, and the exclusive dominion of thought over sound as a mere medium of expression, in the former, are so utterly distinct as to render the union of these two elements a logical impossibility.”

--Hanslick, _The Beautiful in Music_, p. 94.

“Let us establish first of all the fact that the _one true form of music is melody_; that without melody music is inconceivable, and that music and melody are inseparable. That a piece of music has _no_ melody, can therefore only mean that the musician has not attained to the real formation of an effective form, that can have a decisive influence upon the feelings; which simply shows the absence of talent in the composer.”

--Wagner, in “The Music of the Future,” _Art Life and Theories_, p. 175.

“In its _ideal_ feature music keeps within its natural boundaries, so long as it does not undertake to go beyond its expressional capacity--that is, so long as the poetical thought of the composer becomes intelligible from the moods called forth by his work and the train of ideas stimulated thereby, that is, from the composition itself, and so long as nothing foreign, not organically connected with the music itself, must be dragged in, in order to assist comprehension.”

--Ambros, _The Boundaries of Music and Poetry_, pp. 181, 182.

“It must be in music, that language intelligible to all men, that the great equalizing power is to be found, which, converting the language of ideas into the language of the feelings, would bring the deepest secrets of the artistic conception to general comprehension, especially if this comprehension can be made distinct through the plastic expression of dramatic representation,--can be given such a distinctness as up to this time painting alone has been able to claim as its peculiar influence.”

--Wagner, in “The Music of the Future,” _Art Life and Theories_, p. 141.

“In opera, willy-nilly, poetry must be the obedient daughter of music. Why do Italian operas please everywhere, even in Paris, as I have been a witness, despite the wretchedness of their librettos? Because in them music rules and compels us to forget everything else. All the more must an opera please in which the plot is well carried out, and the words are written simply for the sake of the music and not here and there to please some miserable rhyme, which, God knows, adds nothing to a theatrical representation but more often harms it. Verses are the most indispensable thing in music, but rhymes, for the sake of rhymes, the most injurious. Those who go to work so pedantically will assuredly come to grief along with the music. It were best if a good composer, who understands the stage, and is himself able to suggest something, and a clever poet could be united in one, like a phœnix.”

--Mozart, in Kerst, _Mozart: The Man and the Artist_, p. 28.

“That which so strongly attracted our great poets towards music was the fact that it was at the same time the purest form and the most sensuous realization of that form. The abstract arithmetical number, the mathematical figure, meets us here as a creation having an irresistible influence upon the emotions--that is, it appears as _melody_; and this can be as unerringly established, so as to produce sensuous effect, as the poetic diction of written language, on the contrary, is abandoned to every whim in the personal character of the person reciting it. What was not practically possible for Shakespeare--to be _himself_ the actor of each one of his rôles--is practicable for the musical composer, and this with great definiteness,--since he speaks to us directly through each one of the musicians who execute his works. In this case the transmigration of the poet’s soul into the body of the performer takes place according to the infallible laws of the most positive _technique_; and the composer who gives the correct measure for a technically right performance of his work, becomes completely one with the musician who performs it, to an extent that can at most only be affirmed of the constructive artist in regard to a work which he had himself produced in color or stone,--if, indeed, a transmigration of his soul into lifeless matter is a supposable case.”

--Wagner, in “The Purpose of the Opera,” _Art Life and Theories_, pp. 226, 227.

TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

1. What relation has the art of music to the sounds given in the natural world?

2. Choose two musical compositions you know well and analyze in detail the effect they produce upon you and the means by which the effect is produced.

3. What element in music corresponds in any degree to color in painting?

4. Compare carefully the art of music in dealing with time relations with architecture in dealing with space relations.

5. Compare what is dominant in the appeal of music with what is dominant in the appeal of sculpture and painting.

6. What results from the fact that in music form is dynamic and evanescent, while in sculpture and painting it is statical and relatively permanent?

7. What may be said to be the intellectual element in music?

8. Compare what is given in Gounod’s music to _Faust_ with what is given in a series of paintings dealing with the Faust story.

9. Is the effect good or bad of merely sensuously enjoying slight music?

10. Compare the cultural value of music with that of sculpture and painting.

REFERENCES

Ambros, _Boundaries of Music and Poetry_. Browning, _Abt Vogler_; _With Charles Avison_; _Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha_; _Saul_. Carpenter, _Angels’ Wings_. Davies, _The Musical Consciousness_. Dwight, _Intellectual Influence of Music_; _Music as a Means of Culture_. Eastman, _Musical Education and Musical Art_. Goddard, _Reflections upon Musical Art_. Gurney, _The Power of Sound_. Hanchett, _The Art of the Musician_. Hand, _Æsthetics of Musical Art_. Hanslick, _The Beautiful in Music_. Helmholtz, _On the Sensations of Tone_. Henderson, _What is Good Music?_ Holden, _Audiences_. Kerst, _Beethoven_; _Mozart_. Knight, _The Philosophy of the Beautiful_. Kobbé, _How to Appreciate Music_. Krehbiel, _How to Listen to Music_. Kufferath, _Rhythm, Melody and Harmony_. Lanier, _Music and Poetry_. Mathews, _How to Understand Music_; _Music: Its Ideals and Methods_. Norton, _The Intellectual Element in Music_. Palgrave, _Poetry Compared with the Other Fine Arts_. Parry, _The Evolution of the Art of Music_. Plato, _Republic_ (books II and III). Puffer, _The Psychology of Beauty_, chapter v. Raymond, _Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music_. Ritter, _Music in Its Relation to Intellectual Life_. Saint-Saëns, _The Nature and Object of Music_. Schopenhauer, _On the Metaphysics of Music_. Spencer, _The Origin and Function of Music_. Surette and Mason, _The Appreciation of Music_. Wagner, _Art Life and Theories of_; _Beethoven_.

VI. THE MEANING AND FUNCTION OF POETRY