Part 12

Far worse, however, are those "improvements" of folk-song which consist in a general prettifying of its homely simplicity with all the refinements and luxuries of sophisticated musical technique--as if a country maiden should conceal her healthy color under layers of rouge. Strange that composers skilful enough to use them should not recognize the inappropriateness of Wagnerian chromatics and Debussyan whole-tone scale harmonies, to say nothing of all sorts of rich dissonantal trappings, to tunes as diatonic as "God Save the King" and as square cut as the "Hymn of Joy." One would think that the sense of humor, which revels in incongruity in music as in other things, would keep them from doing it and us from taking it so seriously. It would be invidious to name examples, but they can be discovered by the discerning; for not even the negro complexion is proof against this brand of talcum powder.

The kind of change that is both legitimate and necessary may perhaps be best suggested by another example, "Deep River." Here we have, in the first phrase, that free and firm molding of rhythmic pattern which is often so surprising in these songs, so that we might look far in the best composers without finding its peer in deliberate, calm beauty. But just as our hearts are responding to the wave of emotion thus generated it strikes, so to speak, a dead wall, falls shattered, and has to begin over again, without being able to recover the lost momentum. The imagination is vital as far as it goes, but its span is short, it lacks sustained power and cumulative force. What is needed in the composer who would deal with such material, then, in addition to a tact that enters into its spirit, is a synthetic imagination capable of rounding out its incompleteness, of tracing the whole of the curve it suggests, of developing into full life what it presents only as a germ.

Deep river, my home is over Jordan, Deep river, Lord I want to cross over in to camp ground.

How difficult such a truly creative treatment is, only those fully know who have tried it; how rare, musical literature testifies. To add a measure to a folk-song is almost like adding a cubit to one's stature, and for the same reason--that addition is not what is requisite, but organic growth. That it is possible we see in Brahms's masterly treatment of German student songs in his "Academic Festival Overture"; that it can be applied to negro melodies we have been shown especially by Dvořák. In his "New World" symphony and his "American" Quartet and Quintet he assimilated a peculiar idiom so perfectly that there is not a note, even in the highly complex harmonies toward the end of the symphony, that does not take its place in the scheme unobtrusively. While the harmonic idiom preponderantly of simple triads dictated by the material is maintained with an unerring sense of style, these commonest of all chords are so deftly managed that they never become commonplace. The twin pitfalls of platitude and sophistication are avoided with equal success. The same felicity is attained in the construction. However brief the themes, they do not sound trivial or unconvincing, because we feel they have reached their natural growth. Above all, the same sympathy and power that are shown in these technical matters so control the conception as a whole that these works form a true idealization of negro feeling, in its moods both of half-barbaric dance and of naïvely pathetic sentiment.

Dvořák's example suffices by itself, then, to show that the negro music, in the hands of a master, is capable of two of the three qualities we demanded of any folk-song--idiomatic distinctiveness and capacity for organized beauty. Does he also demonstrate in it the third--adequacy to interpret the American temper? Something closely kindred to that temper and easily endeared to it there certainly is in the restless rhythmic energy, the unceasing motion and quick changes of these scherzos, the vigor and dispatch of these allegro movements. Like similar syncopations and other rhythmic peculiarities that we find in those of our composers who have more than their share of our national nervous energy, such as Chadwick and Whiting, the negro rhythms have a crispness and buoyancy that is somehow appropriate to our clear skies and self-helpful society. They give at least a far fairer portrait of us than the caricature of ragtime. In its more sentimental moods, too, negro music has an unsophistication, an unreserved naïveté, that reminds us of similar traits in the traditional conception of our fellow countrymen. It thus seems to express more of our national temperament, and to leave less of it unexpressed than would on the whole any other body of folk-song.

Yet the very attempt to formulate these considerations forces us to realize how hopelessly inadequate they are as an account of the possibilities of America in music. The picture they give of the national type may do something like justice to it as it existed in earlier times and simpler surroundings, as it appears, for instance, in the pages of Mark Twain or Bret Harte, and as it is symbolised in the person of Uncle Sam; but the modern American is a being quite other, far more complex, far more cosmopolitan, the American not of nineteenth century New England but of the twentieth century "melting pot." He is wholly incommensurate not only with negro music or any folk music, but with even individual composers like Dvořák in whom emotion far outruns intellectual subtlety. No folk music, let us repeat, no individual composer, no school of composers, can "express" America. The age of such simplicities is past, if it ever existed. Whether we like it or not, we have to take our age and our country as they are; they are an age of rapidly accelerating intercommunication of all peoples and a country in which the internationalism that thus slowly results is being hastened by actual admixture on a heretofore unprecedented scale. Such a condition doubtless has its bad as well as its good aspects; but if those who bemoan our "featureless cosmopolitanism" and advocate an impossible parochialism as the only remedy would try rather to see how a wider outlook and a larger sympathy may deepen our art and make it more truly human by laying less stress on local, national, or even racial types, and more on the untrammeled expression of the greatest possible variety of individuals, music would fare better. "National literature:" wrote Goethe to Eckerman in 1827, "the term has no longer much meaning to-day; the time for universal literature is come, and each ought to work to hasten its advent." Signs are not wanting that the condition thus discerned by the wisest men a century ago is now gradually getting itself acknowledged in general practice.

V

If we accept, in the light of the foregoing considerations, the ideal of enlightened eclecticism, not only for our own music here in America but measurably for all modern music, since it is all subject to the internationalization so characteristic of our time, the chief undertaking that remains to us will be an attempt to define the position of the American composer in relation to such eclecticism, the advantages and disadvantages of his situation, the pitfalls he must avoid, and the opportunities he should embrace. From this point of view it will be seen that the enthusiasts of nationalism, in advising our composer to confine himself to Indian, Negro, or ragtime material, in adjuring him not to listen to the siren voice of Europe, are not merely misleading but cheating him. They are asking him to throw away his birthright of wide cosmopolitan influence for a mess of purely parochial pottage. They are bewailing the lack in America of just those geographical and racial boundary lines that split up Europe into a series of more or less petty and hostile camps. They are inviting us to descend from the point of vantage good fortune has given us, a little removed both in space and in time from the thick of the battle.

For it is indeed the peculiar good fortune of the young American composer that he finds spread out before him, as the models through the study of which he is to acquire an important part of his technical equipment and of his general attitude towards art, the masterpieces of the various European countries, among which he may pick and choose as his individual taste directs, and without being hampered by those annoying racial and national jealousies from which the most intelligent European cannot quite free himself. What he may acquire of the special virtue of each school--the delicacy and distinction of the French, the solid structural power of the German, the suave and rich coloring of the Russian, the austere dignity of the English--is limited, not by the accident of birth, but only by his own assimilative power. No element in his complex nature need be starved for want of its proper food. He is placed in the midst of the stream of world influences to make of himself what he will and can.

Is it not inconceivable that one thus privileged to speak, within the measure of his ability, a world language should ever content himself with a Negro or Indian dialect? It would be so perhaps did we not consider that, in order to speak the world language of cosmopolitan music as it exists to-day, one must spend years in laborious discipline and in obscurity, while any tyro can make a certain effect and gain a certain prominence by stammering in an idiom strongly enough tinctured with local color. Vanity is the immemorial enemy of art; if the itch to be conspicuous once infect him, the artist forgets all those subtle adaptations, those difficult reconcilements, which were formerly his passion, and makes a crude effect that appeals much more to the primitive minds of the masses. And this he may do quite unconsciously and in the sincere belief that he is pursuing the highest ideals. In the presence of the immediate good, of recognition and acclaim, it is pitifully easy to forget the remote better, the broader, finer, subtler beauty that is not yet understood.

But if the picturesque, the quaint, the piquant, is by nature more quick to appeal than the beautiful, it is also more short-lived. For this reason those writers in all ages and countries who depend largely on local color are promptly acclaimed and soon forgotten, while those who aim at the more universal human qualities win gradually a place that proves permanent. Bret Harte was doubtless considered more "American" by his own generation than Emerson. Shakespeare is far less English than Defoe, Dante is not so notably Italian, or Goethe so notably German, as are many lesser men. Or, to come back to music, where are now the Russian "nationalists" who excluded Tschaikowsky the "cosmopolite" from their magic circle? For a while we listened to their melancholy Russian cadences with fascinated interest, in spite of their crude harmonization, their incoherent form, their lack of instinct for style, because we were pleased with the novelty. Now the novelty has worn off, and for human nature's daily food we find Tschaikowsky, who made the most of his opportunities, rose above a narrow exclusiveness, and assimilated power wherever he found it, far preferable.

The true difficulty of the American composer's position, then, is to be found, not in the poverty of the native folk-song, but in the confusing variety of the foreign influences in which he is so rich. He has suffered and is still suffering from an embarrassment of riches, from a mental indigestion. His cosmopolitanism is indeed too often "featureless," and his readiness to be influenced an evidence of weakness rather than strength, a flat rather than a broad eclecticism. His technique is miscellaneous, his style without distinction, his art as a whole lacks individuality. This featurelessness is the typical defect of American compositions of the present generation, perhaps--typical in spite of some notable exceptions. The technical deficiencies of our pioneer forefathers are more and more becoming things of the past; free intercourse with Europe and the wholesale importation of skilled European musicians have refined away the crudities with surprising rapidity; there are among us to-day musical workmen whose skill in symphony, chamber music, and opera will compare favorably with that of Europeans. Where we still fail is in that subtle, indefinable, and indispensable touch of personal distinction which may be recognized in artists so diverse, both individually and racially, as Strauss, d'Indy, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Paderewski, Sibelius, Elgar. What is the secret of this distinction?

We may get a clue to the right answer by considering a peculiar case, an exceptional case, among ourselves--the exception that proves the rule--the case of MacDowell. The supreme place he undoubtedly holds among our composers is due precisely to this quality of personal distinction, of individuality, to the fact that his music, in spite of the pronounced Grieg and Raff elements in it, does not sound quite like that of any one else. Technically MacDowell has grave deficiencies; his harmonic system is singularly limited, mannered, and monotonous; his polyphony is weak; his "drawing," as a painter would say, is often halting and awkward. His range of expression, moreover, is not wide, and within it he frequently cloys by an over-sweet sentimentalism. But MacDowell is sincere, and he is always himself. There are no unfused elements in his style, no outstanding features, that we feel to have been borrowed and not assimilated. His style is very narrow, but it is his own. And the result is that, although we shall soon forget some of our composers who are far cleverer than he, we shall not forget MacDowell.

The enemies of eclecticism have thus expressed a half-truth, we begin to see, when they call it flabby. Only too easily does it become so. As dangerous as it is desirable, it will contribute to the formation of an artist only when it is controlled by an instinctive sense of how much one can assimilate, and the courage to reject the rest. And here we come to one of those peculiar difficulties of the position in which the American composer finds himself. It is hard for him, recognizing, as his natural alertness of perception and his detached point of view enable him to do, the merits of many different European aims and methods, and, mainly sensitive as he must be to his own shortcomings in respect to any of them--it is hard for him to distinguish between those that he can possibly assimilate to his own uses and those that must remain alien to him; and it is doubly hard to let the latter alone, voluntarily restricting his field in order that he may be the master of it. Yet these selections, these sacrifices, are at the very foundation of artistic personality. It is no more possible for a human being to be, let us say, at once as subtle as Debussy and as gorgeous as Strauss than it is to be in two places at once. Which will you do without? But the young American composer is at once too timid and too ambitious to do without anything; in the attempt to be everywhere at the same time he cuts himself up into little pieces that end by being nowhere.

The frank and courageous acceptance of limitations is, in truth, the first step toward artistic individuality; a man can never be an individual, as the very derivation of the word may remind him, so long as he remains divided, spread out very wide and very thin, unwilling to take sides, but only when he concentrates himself, is loyal to one cause, grows out from one nucleus. What this nucleus shall be, indeed, differs according to circumstances. For the European musician it is to some extent decided beforehand, by the conditions of birth, of national and racial allegiance. The American, as we said, to begin with is freer in this respect; but we may now add that he is no less bound to find a cause, a unifying center, if he would get beyond mere clever imitation and become a genuine person. He must love his cause so singly that he will cleave to it, and forsake all else. Now what is this cause for the American composer but the utmost musical beauty that he, as an individual man with his own qualities and defects, is capable of understanding and striving towards? And what is the "all else" that he must forsake, save those types of musical beauty which, whatever may be their intrinsic worth, do not come home to him, do not arouse a sympathetic vibration in him, leave him cold? He must take sides. He must be, not a philosopher, but a partisan. He must have good hearty enthusiasms, and good hearty prejudices. Only so can he be an individual.

It matters not one jot, provided this course of personal loyalty to a cause be steadfastly pursued, what the special characteristics of style of the music may be to which one gives one's devotion. Let A give his life to studying the delicate color scheme of the French "ultra-moderns"; let B find his joy in a polyphony based on Bach's; let C develop lovingly the cadences or rhythms of Negro and Indian tunes; all three will be good musicians, all three good Americans--for, after all, American music is only music. The man who is neither good musician nor good American is the botcher, the dilettante, the clever amateur--he who is too lazy to learn his business, too pretentious to limit his claims, too busy talking about art to study it. Such babblers have always been, and always will be, naturally, far more numerous than the efficient workers; and they will doubtless continue to fill the newspapers and magazines with their silly superficialities, and do their utmost to confuse the public into forgetting that sincerity and skill are the only things that can ever be justly demanded of an artist.

VI

In demanding skill and sincerity of our composers, however, we are requiring of them, as a little analysis will suffice to show, labors and sacrifices of which only the rarest natures are capable; and it may well be that the unsatisfactory character of composition in America is due far more to the rarity of men able or willing to undertake such labors and endure such sacrifices than to the difficulties of the æsthetic problems we have so far been considering. Let us, then, in closing, try to suggest answers to the purely practical questions: Is there anything about our social and economic system that lays especial burdens on creative artists? If there is, is there any hope of correcting it? Whether it may be corrected or not, may our composers, through candid recognition of it, be saved from dissipation of energy and helped to concentrate their efforts on objects most likely to be achieved, and most worth achieving? We shall answer all these questions affirmatively.

First we must note that the amount and intensity of mental application involved in composition is something of which the layman has little idea. The technique to be mastered by the composer is singularly difficult; the tonal material he works in is subtle and intangible; its relationships, harmonic, rhythmic, melodic, polyphonic, which he must learn not only to understand but to manipulate, are of an indescribable complexity; and he achieves command of all these fundamental or grammatical means of his art only to face the far subtler distinctions of structure and style on a wise apprehension of which depends his artistic individuality. Moreover, if he would take advantage of the wide and unbiased view of European music which we have seen to be a special privilege of the intelligent American, he must do far more than hear or read the chief works of many masters; he must know them in and out, must learn to breathe the peculiar atmosphere of each,--must, in short, live with them. And more than that, for after analysis comes synthesis, after assimilation, creation; and as the one requires laborious, minute, detailed study, the other requires a wide margin of leisure in which the mind can forget all these details, empty itself of all irrelevance, and prepare to receive whatever thoughts may visit it. Here is more time needed, in great spaces. This is a full and varied way of living, indeed, that we are sketching; and we have not yet made out how the artist is to live at all. How is he to get money to support himself?

Not, certainly, from his compositions. They will do well if they bring him enough to pay for ink and paper; they will surely not pay for their own copying. "A man," says Mr. Graham Wallas,[67] "who gives the best strength of each day to dreaming about the nature of God or the State, or the shape of the earth, or the relation of the sides of a triangle to its hypotenuse, produces nothing which at the end of the day he can easily sell. Since the actual process of inference is unconscious, and his voluntary control over it indirect and uncertain, he is not even sure that he will produce any result at all, whether salable or unsalable, by months of effort. How then shall he live?" If this is the situation of the creative thinker in science, what shall we say of that of the creative thinker in art? As we have seen in discussing the relations of democracy and music, the class which in the eighteenth century bought the wares of the composer finds its analogue, under our capitalistic industrial system, in the frivolous plutocracy, who demand of music curiosities, novelties, and entertainment. The vast mass of listeners emerging from below, on the other hand, of crude and childlike taste, prefer stories (program music), day-dreaming, and sensationalism to beauty. Confronted by these two classes, the composer will find his sincerity likely to cost him dear. If he is really sincere, if he is trying to write music that presents the kind of beauty that he hears, and that no one else has heard in just that way before, he will find himself enjoying it in a minority of one. Yet the alternative, to prostitute himself and "give the public what it wants," is even worse; and when the public says to him, in the words of Mozart's publisher, "Write in a more easy, popular style, or I will not print a note or give you a kreuzer," his answer can be no other than Mozart's: "Then, my good sir, I have only to resign myself and die of hunger."