Part 10

The finale is a piece of writing extraordinary for the manifold resources developed out of the original theme, for the bold ingenuity of its polyphonic and rhythmic combinations, and for the variety of its emotional content. Its main theme comes from the original motive by _inversion_ (Figure XXIX, _a_), and derives a certain amplitude from its three half-note rhythm proceeding deliberately against the more agitated two-four of other parts (especially the viola, at first, with a persistent figure taken also from the theme). Its second theme also traces its ancestry back to the first movement, but in a more elusive way; a comparison of Figure XXIX, _b_, with Figure XXVIII, _c_, will reveal the connection. The elaboration of these themes, and of the quaint staccato bridge passage between them, leads to most unexpected combinations. The fugato of the first movement reappears, but now _inverted_ (Figure XXIX, _c_). At the top of page 58 we find the main theme in the second violin answered canonically by the viola, while the first violin sustains, high above, the original motive. Finally, after the themes have met all manner of vicissitudes and wandered through all sorts of keys, the original motive in its most conclusive form brings the final cadence in E major.

IV

A last illustration, in some ways the most striking of all, of d'Indy's conviction that emotional expressiveness is the criterion of the value of all artistic processes, is afforded by his attitude toward the peculiar idiom that has been developed by Debussy, Ravel, and others, and particularly toward the system of harmony based on the "whole-tone scale." His standpoint here is that of the open-minded and curious artist toward processes that may have new possibilities, saved from faddishness by a thorough familiarity with traditional resources and an indifference to novelty for mere novelty's sake. He has thus won the distinction of being blamed by the academic for "queerness," harshness, and obscurity, at the same time that he is patronized as reactionary by the "ultras."

The evidence of his works is that he makes free use of the whole-tone scale, as of all other technical elements, so far as it lends itself to the expression he has in mind, but no farther. There are already traces of it in certain passages of the early Clarinet Trio (1887) where he wishes to give a sense of groping uncertainty. In "Fervaal" (1895) its peculiar coloring is skilfully used in a number of passages, as, for example, that of the two bucklers, and its vigor and brilliancy, which so commended it to Moussorgsky in "Boris Godunoff," are exploited in the passage before the apparition of the cloud figures (see Figure XXX, _a_). In "Istar" a similar use is made of it for the calls which announce Istar's arrival at the different doors; to it is due a large measure of the mystical expression of the B flat Symphony, especially of the opening bass motive (Figure XXX, _b_) founded on the tritone which used to be regarded as "_diabolus in musica_," while the middle section of the scherzo draws upon its power of suspending the sense and piquing the musical curiosity (Figure XXX, _c_); in the opening of the piano sonata splendid use is made of its clangorous sonorities.

But d'Indy is too sound an artist to lend himself to the abuse of any process, however fashionable, and he has the good sense to recognize the dangers of the whole-tone scale. In none of his critical writings has he expressed himself more courageously and at the same time more fairly, than in an article on "Good Sense"[53] in which he takes up this much-disputed matter.

"In the nineteenth century," he says, "some Russian composers, in the interest of certain special effects, employed the scale of whole tones, which one may name atonal because it suppresses all possibility of modulation. In the twentieth century Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel elaborated these methods, making often very ingenious applications of them; but they made the mistake (one must dare to speak the truth of those one esteems) of erecting processes into principles, or at least of letting them be so erected by their muftis, so that the formula now established by fashion is: 'Outside of harmonic sensation and the titillation of orchestral timbres there is no salvation.'

"This formula is dangerous, because far from constituting an advance it results in a retrogression of our art, and leads us backward by a hundred years. What these prophets try to establish is the rule of sense to the exclusion of sentiment, it is the supremacy of sensation over the equilibrium of the heart and the intelligence. This sensualist movement is neither new nor original. About a hundred years ago a similar aberration of good sense tried to poison our music. At the epoch of the Rossinis and the Donizettis the sensualist formula was 'All for and by melody!' To-day it is 'All for and by harmony!' I should say however that, of the two maladies, the second is less grave, for nothing is more ephemeral than new harmonies, if they do not take their point of departure from the two other elements of music: melody and rhythm.... In order that harmony should be durable, it must constitute, not mere glistening surface, mere tapestry, but rather the clothing of the living and acting being which is the _rhythmed melody_. The costume, in this case, may safely pass out of style--the human person, if it is well constituted, will endure.

"The scale of whole tones is far from being an improvement on our traditional occidental scale, since it suppresses all tonality and hence all modulation. Now, change of tonal place by modulation is one of the most precious elements of expression. To deprive oneself of it systematically is therefore a retrogression toward the barbaric monotony of past ages.

"What, then, does good sense demand? It demands very simple things--that the young composer should begin by learning his art, and should not allow himself to be hypnotized by a process that happens to be in fashion, employed fruitfully, to be sure, by certain natures, but not constituting in itself the whole of musical art.

"All processes are good, on condition that they never become the principal end, and are regarded only as means to make MUSIC."

The candor, courage, and penetration of such criticism as this, shown, though seldom in quite such measure, in every critical page that d'Indy has written, and the uncompromising nature of his views, not always free from narrowness, have of course made him many enemies. Probably no man in modern music is better loved or better hated. The devotion of his whole life to art, with a modesty, a suppression of self, a really religious enthusiasm rare in musicians, has naturally turned the love of his pupils and disciples into something that is almost worship; and this has in turn naturally enough irritated, sometimes to exasperation, those who vent their disgust of artistic idolatries on the often innocent idol, or who feel keenly, in a hero, the limitations of which no human being is free, or who find especially antipathetic, in M. d'Indy's case, certain temperamental leanings which he could not overcome if he would, such as those to conservatism, aristocracy, and even chauvinism in social relations, and to the strictest Roman Catholicism in religion.

Indeed, regarded simply as an intellect, d'Indy is something of a paradox, moments of the most penetrative insight alternating unaccountably in him with fits of prejudice or narrowness that suggest the existence upon his mental retina of incurable blind spots. What could be more illuminating in their unconventionality than such judgments as these, for example:--Of Schumann: "A genius in short and simple works, he finds himself lost when he has to build a musical monument. He then lets himself be guided by sentiment alone, and in spite of his often very fine ideas he can only _improvise_ works of limited range, hasty fruits of an art not sufficiently conscious." Of Mendelssohn:--"Always skilful in appropriating the knowledge of others, the Jews are seldom, true artists by nature." Of Grieg: "His short inspiration and his absolute ignorance of composition render him entirely inept in the construction of symphonic works; he produces then only hybrid assemblages of short fragments, unskilfully welded together or simply juxtaposed, without appearance of order or unity either in conception or in execution."[54] But the fastidiousness already verging here on the finical seems always to be in danger, in dealing with subjects on which he has active prejudices, such as Jews, Protestants, free thinkers, and modern Germans, of overshooting its mark, losing the sense of proportion, and becoming narrowly sectarian. Someone once said of him that he had the spirit of the mediæval religious fanatics, and had he lived in the Middle Ages would have been burned at the stake for his convictions, or would have burned others, as the case might be, with equal ardor.

One thus catches sometimes a note of intolerance, almost of superstition, even in some of his most valid judgments, putting one a little on guard, perhaps rather by what is omitted or implied than by what is actually said. Thus Bach is great, "not because of, but in spite of, the dogmatic and withering spirit of the Reformation,"[55] and Franck's comment on Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," that it was "_très amusant_," is commended as one of the finest criticisms, "coming from the mouth of the believing French musician, that could be made of the heavy and undigested critique of the German philosopher."[56] Again "The present-day symphonists of Germany seem totally incapable of making anything great: they content themselves with making it big, which is not quite the same thing." They are charged with "total absence of artistic taste, misunderstanding of all proportion and of all tonal order."[57] They are "almost devoid of musical taste; they cannot distinguish good music from bad; the opinion of a German on a musical work has no importance."[58] The sympathy of the judicial with these pronouncements wanes as they increase in animus; the justice of the first, to which any thoughtful musician could hardly take exception, is obscured by the evident exaggeration of the last; and musical criticism too evidently loses itself in chauvinism.

We need not concern ourselves here to estimate the exact proportion between wisdom and prejudice in d'Indy's writings; the materials for a judgment have been admirably set forth in Rolland's essay, and each reader may judge for himself. The aim of these citations is rather to illustrate the temperament of their author, and to show that in the last analysis, even though these writings make up perhaps the finest body of musical criticism produced by a creative musician since Schumann, that temperament is after all originative rather than judicial. Much light as there is in it, there is even more heat. D'Indy is a crusader of beauty; the shining spear is his natural weapon; and when he takes to the clerk's ink-horn and balance sheet it is always with a sort of youthful impatience. He is essentially a poet, a maker; it is in his music that he finds his truest self. Indeed, he is too many-sided to be quite justly appreciated by his contemporaries; the poet has too much disappeared for us behind the teacher, the scholar, the critic, the philosopher, the devotee. On the occasion of the revival of "Fervaal" in 1913, M. Vuillermoz published an imaginary talk of this composite d'Indy to his adoring pupils, asking them not to idealize him, to let him remain human, to see in him the simple human lover, like his Fervaal, which he felt himself to be. It is time, for our own sakes, that we paid more attention than we do to this human lover that finds supreme expression in the Symphony in B flat, in "Istar," in the E major Quartet, in the "Jour d'Été à la Montagne." He it is who speaks to the young men, to his fellow lovers of immortal beauty, to the future. For, as one of his most understanding critics, Louis Laloy, has written of him: "Emotion is queen, and science is her servant." If d'Indy has studied as few modern musicians have studied, if he has drawn on the past for his ample means, it has been only in order to take more beauty with him, and to enable us to take it, into the future; and for all his intellectual power he has never forgotten that "Only the heart can engender beauty."

FOOTNOTES:

[32] Musiciens d'aujourd'hui; Romain Rolland.

[33] _Harmonie et Melodie._ C. Saint-Saëns.

[34] _César Franck_, by Vincent d'Indy.

[35] Inquest on the influence of Germany, especially of Wagner, on French music, January, 1903.

[36] "Revue Politique et Littéraire" (_Revue Bleue_), March 26, 1904.

[37] _Revue Musicale S. I. M._, February 15, 1913.

[38] _Cours de Composition Musicale_, Book I, page 123.

[39] _Cours_, I, 27.

[40] See the present writer's paper on "The Tyranny of the Bar-line," New Music Review, December, 1909.

[41] _Cours_, I, 217.

[42] _Cours_, I, 40.

[43] Compare what is said of Debussy, for example, above, page 143.

[44] _Cours_, I, 91 and 116.

[45] _Cours_, Book I, pp. 126 and 132; Book II, Part I, p. 245.

[46] _Cours_, Book II, Part I, pp. 454, 452.

[47] _Cours_, II, I, 165.

[48] Compare, also, the theme of the Piano Sonata, in E minor, beginning with the note B, with the same theme altered, "_Mutatum_," in E major, beginning with G sharp.

[49] See for instance the "Poème des Montagnes," opus 15, for piano, and the Symphony on a Mountain Theme, opus 25, for piano and orchestra.

[50] Note the progress from the dark key of C minor to the bright B major in "Dawn," reversed in "Evening," as another instance of the expressive use of modulation.

[51] The references are to the pocket edition of the score, published by Durand.

[52] _Cours de composition musicale_, Book II, Part I, pp. 241-242.

[53] "Le Bon Sens," _Revue Musicale_, S. I. M., November, 1912.

[54] _Cours_, Book I, Part II, pp. 406, 411, 419.

[55] _Tribune de Saint-Gervais_, March, 1899.

[56] "Life of Franck," French edition, page 40.

[57] _Cours_, Book II, Part I, 487.

[58] _Revue Musicale_, December 1, 1906, quoted.

VI

MUSIC IN AMERICA

VI

MUSIC IN AMERICA

I

In the discussions of "American music" that go on perennially in our newspapers and journals, now waxing in a wave of patriotic enthusiasm, now waning as popular attention is turned to something else, in war time much stimulated by an enhanced consciousness of nationality (unless indeed they are totally elbowed aside to make room for more immediate subjects), a sharp cleavage will usually be observed between those whose interest is primarily in the music for itself, wherever it comes from, and those in whom artistic considerations give way before patriotic ardor, and propaganda usurp the place of discrimination. One group, in uttering the challenging phrase, "American music," places the stress instinctively on the noun and regards the adjective as only qualification; the other, in its preoccupation with "American," seems to take "music" rather for granted. Unfortunately the former group constitutes so small a minority, and expresses itself so soberly, that its wholesome insistence on the quality of the article itself is likely to be quite drowned out by the bawling of the advertisers, with their insistent slogan "Made in America." All the advantages of numbers, organization, and easy appeal to the man in the street are theirs. Even if we ignore those venal music journals which make a system of exploiting the patriotism of the undiscriminating for purely pecuniary purposes, there remain enough enthusiasts and propagandists, indisposed or unable to appraise quality for themselves, to create by their "booming" methods a formidable confusion in our standards of taste. Inasmuch, therefore, as we are condemned, for our sins, to be not only producers but consumers of this "American music," it behooves us to make careful inspection of the claims for it so extravagantly put forth, and to assure ourselves that we are getting something besides labels for our money.

What, then, is the precise value we ought justly to ascribe to that word "American" as applied to music, and wherein have those we may call champions of the adjective been inclined to exaggerate it? If we analyze their attitude, we shall find them the prey of two fallacies which constantly falsify their conclusions, and make them dangerous guides for those who have at heart the real interests of music in America. The first of these fallacies is that which confuses quantity with quality, and supposes that artistic excellence can be decided by vote of the majority. The second is that which identifies racial character with local idioms and tricks of speech rather than with a certain emotional and spiritual temper. Both lead straight to the oft-repeated conclusion that "ragtime" is the necessary basis of our native musical art.

Listen, for example, to one of the most persistent, courageous, and often interesting advocates of ragtime, Mr. H. K. Moderwell. "I can't help feeling," says Mr. Moderwell,[59] "that a person who doesn't open his heart to ragtime somehow isn't human. Nine out of ten musicians, if caught unawares, will like this music until they remember that they shouldn't. What does this mean? Does it mean that ragtime is 'all very well in its place'? Rather that these musicians don't consider that place _theirs_. But that place, remember, is in the affections of some 10,000,000 or more Americans. Conservative estimates show that there are at least 50,000,000 copies of popular music sold in this country yearly and a goodly portion of it is in ragtime.... You may take it as certain that if many millions of people persist in liking something that has not been recognized by the schools, there is vitality in that thing." No doubt there is, just as by the same argument there is vitality in chewing gum and the comic supplements. The question is, of course, what sort of vitality? Yet if you raise this question of quality, you are immediately charged with being a "highbrow," "a person," in Professor Brander Matthews's already classic definition, "educated beyond his intelligence,"--a charge from which any sane man naturally shrinks. "The best American music is that which the greatest number of Americans like; the greatest number of Americans like ragtime; therefore ragtime is the best American music." This is a specious syllogism, which you may oppose only at the risk of being thought a highbrow and a snob.

Suppose, for instance, that you really do not happen to care for chewing gum, that just as a matter of fact, of personal taste, and not through any principles or sense of superiority to your fellows you prefer other forms of nutriment or exercise. You confess this peculiarity. Can you not hear the reproachful reply? "I can't help feeling that a person who doesn't open his heart to chewing gum somehow isn't human. Nine out of ten travelers on the subway, if caught unawares [with gum disguised as bonbons, let us say] will like it until they remember that they shouldn't. What does this mean? Does it mean that chewing gum is 'all very well in its place'? Rather that these punctilious people don't consider that place _theirs_. But that place, remember, is in the affections of some 10,000,000 or more Americans. The annual output of the chief chewing gum manufacturers"--etc., etc. Thus are you voted down if you happen to be in the minority. It does you no good to protest that you are really quite sincere and without desire to _épater le bourgeois_; that you can't help preferring Mr. Howells's novels to Mr. Robert W. Chambers's, Mr. Ben Foster's landscapes to Mr. Christy's magazine girls, Mr. Irwin's "Nautical Lays of a Landsman" to the comic supplements, and MacDowell's "To a Wild Rose" to "Everybody's Doing It." If you stray from the herd you must be sick. If you vote for the losers you must be a snob.

Such charges are the more dangerous in that they sometimes contain a half-truth. There is a kind of person, the simon-pure snob, who casts his vote for the loser just because he is a loser, because he is unpopular, who prides himself on his "exclusiveness," "excluding himself," as Thoreau penetratively says, "from all that is worth while." His is a sort of inverted numericalism, based on quantity just as essentially as the crude gospel of the "10,000,000 or more Americans," but on quantity negative and vanishing towards the zero of perfect distinction. It is from his kind that are recruited the faddists, those who "dote on Debussy," the devotees of folk-songs not for their human beauty but as curious specimens, those who invent all sorts of queer connections between music and painting or poetry, and indeed seem to find in it anything and everything but simple human feeling. It is not from these that we shall get any help towards the truth about ragtime. Indeed, they seem because of their unsympathetic attitude toward the spirit of music--its emotional expression--and their preoccupation with the letter of it, to be especially susceptible to the second fallacy of which we spoke--that of identifying racial quality with mere idiom rather than with fundamental temper.

Mr. Moderwell shall be spokesman of this view also. "You can't tell an American composer's 'art-song,'" he says, "from any mediocre art-song the world over.... You can distinguish American ragtime from the popular music of any nation and any age." Let us agree heartily that the mediocre "art-song" (horrid name for a desolating thing) is probably no better and no worse in our own than in other countries. Does this not seem an insufficient warrant for the excellence of types of art that can be more easily told apart? For purposes of labeling specimens earmarks are an advantage, but hardly for appraising modes of expression. If the important matter in American music is not its expression of the American temper, but the peculiar technical feature, the special kind of syncopation we call the "rag rhythm," then the important matter in Hungarian music is not its fire but its "sharp fourth step." Beethoven ceases to be Teutonic when he uses Irish cadences in his Seventh Symphony, and Chopin is Polish only in his mazurkas and polonaises. Of course this will not do; and Mr. Moderwell, to do him justice, after remarking that "ragtime is not merely syncopation--it is a certain sort of syncopation," adds "But of course this definition is not enough. Ragtime has its flavor that no definition can imprison." Our ultimate question is, then, not how many people like ragtime, or how few like it, or how easily can its idiom be told from other idioms, but how expressive is it of the American temper, how full an artistic utterance can it give of the best and widest American natures? This is a question not of quantity but of quality: of the quality of ragtime, the quality of America, and the adequacy of the one to the other.

II

Suppose, bearing in mind Mr. Moderwell's warning against snobbery, that "A Russian folk-song was no less scorned in the court of Catherine the Great than a ragtime song in our music studios to-day," we examine in some detail a typical example of ragtime such as "The Memphis Blues," of which he assures us that "In sheer melodic beauty, in the vividness of its characterization, in the deftness of its polyphony and structure, this song deserves to rank among the best of our time."[60] Here are the opening strains of it.