Part 16

At the same time we must remember that the racial element is only one among formative conditions, and that it is itself a factor in personal idiosyncrasy. 'Just what constitutes special power and genius in a man,' says Matthew Arnold, 'seems often to be his blending with the basis of a national temperament some additional gift or grace not proper to that temperament.' And of this we may find a ready illustration in Dvořák's treatment of the scale, an illustration of double interest, partly because it shows one of the most distinctive attributes in his music, partly because even here he stands in direct relation to an ethnological background. We have already seen that the scale now in use among western nations was set in course by the Florentine revolution of 1600, and that it spread from Florence to Paris, and from Paris to Leipsic, until it was finally established by Sebastian Bach. Hence the music of Italy, France, and Germany grew with its growth, developed with its development, and constructed by its means a common body of system and tradition. With all their divergencies of emotional impulse, the composers of these three countries have this formal point of union, that they accepted the diatonic scale as their unit, and treated the chromatic rather as an appenage and an extension. From this followed an important consequence. For, in the first place, a settled scale is not only a vehicle for melody, it is also a means of modulation, and this latter function comes more into evidence as music becomes more complex and the need of modulation increases. And, in the second place, it is an essential characteristic of the diatonic scale, that some of its notes should be more nearly related than others, and that composers who found their work upon it should therefore acknowledge some modulations as comparatively easy and natural, some as comparatively remote and recondite. Of course, as time goes on, we become familiarised with effects that once appeared violent and extreme, yet even now we recognise certain relative limitations. Alfio's song in _Cavalleria_, for example, gives us merely the impression of deliberate defiance, it is not construction but demolition, not freedom but revolt.

For obvious historical reasons the growth of this scale system left Bohemia altogether untouched. She did not enter the field until this part of the work was completed, she bore no share in the traditions which its gradual evolutions had established in neighbouring lands. When therefore she came to the making of her own music, she could look upon this scheme from outside, she could treat it dispassionately, she could take it without any of the limitations that had hitherto marked its course. And in doing so, she produced a result to which the whole history of music affords no exact parallel. Dvořák is the one solitary instance of a composer who adopts the chromatic scale as unit, who regards all notes as equally related. His method is totally different from that of chromatic writers like Grieg and Chopin, for Grieg uses the effects as isolated points of colour, and Chopin embroiders them, mainly as appoggiaturas, on a basis of diatonic harmony. His 'equal temperament' is totally different from that of Bach, for Bach only showed that all the keys could be employed, not that they could be arranged in any chance order or sequence. But to Dvořák the chromatic passages are part of the essential texture, and the most extreme modulations follow as simply and easily as the most obvious. In a word, his work, from this standpoint, is truly a _nuova musica_, developed, like all new departures, from the consequences of past achievement, but none the less turning the stream of tendency into a fresh direction.

It may at once be admitted that from this cause the music of Dvořák loses something of strength and massiveness: that it is Corinthian rather than Doric. But, at the same time, it compensates, at any rate in part, by a certain opulence, a certain splendour and luxury to which few other musicians have attained: and, beside this, its very strangeness constitutes an additional claim upon our interest. We rather lose our bearings when, in the second of the Legenden, we find a phrase which has its treble in G and its tenor in D flat; or when, as in the fifth number of the Spectre's Bride, the music passes from one remote key to another with a continuous and facile display of resource that is apparently inexhaustible. Often, too, the devices outmatch the utmost capacity of our recognised symbols. Mendelssohn's famous crux of 'Fes moll' would be plain sailing to a composer who, in his third Pianoforte Trio, writes passages in D flat minor, and B double-flat major, and other keys of a signature equally undecipherable. And though these matters may seem trivial enough when they are submitted to the indignity of our musical nomenclature, we should yet remember that there is nothing trivial in the habit of mind which they imply. It is to them and to their like that we owe all the warmth of colour, all the richness of tone, all the marvellous effects of surprise and crisis that are so eminently characteristic of Dvořák in his best mood. To an imagination so vivid as his, the possession of an extended scale was a priceless opportunity; and he has used it to fill his work with incident and adventure as varied and brilliant as were ever lavished by the hand of Scott or Dumas.

His treatment of the classical forms is much influenced for good by his long and patient study of Beethoven. In the more highly-organised types he certainly falls short of his great master: he lacks the perfect balance that marks the first movement of the Appassionata or the A major Symphony; as we should naturally expect, he tends rather to restlessness of tonality and to a page overcrowded with accessory keys. But, in spite of this, his instinct for structure is real and genuine; it ranks higher than that of Chopin--far higher than that of Liszt or Berlioz; and his outline, though not always in complete symmetry, is firmly drawn and filled with interesting detail. Some of his larger forms are pure experiments in construction: such, for instance, as the opening movement of the Violin Concerto, the Finale of the G major Symphony, and the Scherzo Capriccioso for orchestra: sometimes he founds an entire number on a single melodic phrase, as in the slow movement of the Second Pianoforte Trio: more often, as in the F major Symphony and the String Sestett, he takes the established type and modifies it in some important particular. But whatever the result, his structure always gives us the impression of thought and design. He has his own method, and even when he fails of conviction, he can generally command respect.

The two forms in which he is most successful are the two most usually associated with his name--the Dumka and the Furiant. Both of these are real accessions to musical literature: not because they are new in conception, for, like all other structures, they descend in direct evolution from the folk-song, but because they have developed the primitive type in a new way, and have enriched the existing stock with a strain of collateral relationship. The Furiant is one of the national dances of Bohemia, and is frequently employed by Dvořák as a representative of the scherzo. In adopting it he has, to a great extent, altered its character; he has enlarged its range, quickened its tempo, and replaced, with a more vigorous gaiety and _abandon_, its original tone of half-humorous assurance. If we compare the example in the A major Quintett with the traditional melody--either as it appears among the Volkslieder, or, as it is used by Smetana in the Bartered Bride--we shall see at once that Dvořák has done more than borrow from the existing resources of his countrymen; that, as a matter of fact, he has taken nothing but the mould, and has used it for the casting of an entirely different metal. Even more distinctive is his treatment of the Dumka or 'Elegy,' a complex form which, like a sonnet-sequence, holds in combination a series of separate poems. It is here, indeed, that he has brought his constructive power to its highest attainment. The whole scheme is of great interest and value: varied without digression, uniform without monotony, flexible enough to answer all moods and engage all sympathies. The stanzas admit a sharper contrast than is possible to the subjects of a 'sonata movement': the key system, though it would be impracticable on a larger scale, is admirably suited to these brief moments of concentration: the recurrent themes maintain the organism in proper balance and equipoise. There is little need to speculate on the ancestry of the form, though it is worth noting, that a simple instance occurs in the Serenade trio of Beethoven: whatever its origin, it acquires in the hands of Dvořák a special significance which is quite enough to place it among the most notable of his gifts. For illustration, we may turn to the slow movement of the Pianoforte Quintett, or to that of the Third Symphony, or to the six Elegies that have recently been published for pianoforte trio. They are all beautiful, they are all characteristic, and they fill their canvas with a most ingenious diversity of design.

This feeling for colour and movement, which appears partly in his rhythms, partly in his use of the scale, partly in his preference for lyric and elegiac forms, may also account in some measure for his unquestioned and supreme mastery of orchestration. Here at least there is no counterchange of victory and defeat, no loss in one direction to balance gain in another; here at least every achievement is a triumph and every work a masterpiece. Nor has he alone the lesser gift of writing brilliant dialogue for his instrument, of making each stand out salient and expressive against a background of lower tone; he is even more successful in those combinations of _timbre_ which harmonise the separate voices and give to the full chord its peculiar richness and euphony. When we think of his scoring, it is not to recall a horn passage in one work or a flute solo in another--plenty of these could be found, and in a master of less capacity they would be well worth recording--but it is rather the marvellous interplay and texture of the whole that remains in our memory and compels our admiration. Look, for example, at the Husitska Overture, or the third Slavonic Rhapsody, or the slow movement of the Symphony in D minor. Hardly in all musical literature are the orchestral forces treated with such a warmth of imagination or such unerring certainty of judgment.

Hence it is not surprising that a great part of his finest work should be instrumental, and that even his masterpieces of Hymn and Cantata should be written, more or less, upon instrumental lines. He is always rather hampered than aided by the collaboration of the poet; his chromatic style is better suited to strings and wind than to the peculiar limitations of the human voice; his vigorous rhythms are in some degree impeded by the slower articulation of the words; his sense of form finds its most natural expression in symphonic and concerted music. Again, so far as the distinction is applicable at the present day, he belongs rather to the classical than to the romantic school; he is more concerned with producing the highest beauty of sound than with following, through all its phases, the emotional import of a poem. His operas are for the most part essentially undramatic, and if they hold the stage, will survive as displays of pure melody. His great choral compositions--the Stabat Mater, the Spectre's Bride, the Requiem--stand in a loose relation to the texts on which they are founded; embodying, no doubt, the general tendency of thought, but always acknowledging the melodic requirements as paramount. Even his songs offer no exception to the rule. It is true that, after the Zigeunerlieder, they undergo a remarkable change in treatment and elaboration, but although they lose the shape of the ballad, they are never out of touch with its character. Nothing, in short, is further from Dvořák's ideal than the imposition of a programme. He is essentially what the Germans would call an 'absolute musician;' content to express the broad general types of feeling, and, within their limits, wholly engaged with the special service of his art.

This statement requires a word of qualification. The great masters of pure classical style,--Haydn, for example, and Mozart, and Beethoven, have, as their predominant gift, the sense of outline, and their sense of colour, however keen and vivid, is always kept in subservience to the requisitions of design. As a natural consequence, they are supreme in the string quartett, which, among all types of composition, demands purity of line as its first essential. But with Dvořák, the relation of these attributes is reversed, in him the sense of colour preponderates, and the demands of pure outline, though never disregarded, are nevertheless relegated to the second place. Thus, in his music for strings alone, the Sestett in A, the Quintett in G minor, the four Quartetts, we feel that he is chafing at the restraints of monochrome, that he wants the whole palette, that he is always held in check by the absence of orchestral resources. The result is not that he writes orchestral music for the strings; he is too true an artist to fall into this error; but that he writes string music under difficulties, that he foregoes all the better part of his equipment, that he is accomplishing a task in which his special gifts have little opportunity of display. No doubt these works contain passages and even numbers of great beauty, but as a whole they do not bear comparison with the Violin Concerto or the Symphonies, or the Carnaval Overture. Here Dvořák obtains his contrast of tone, here he has the whole gamut of colour at his command, here he can win the full measure of success from which he is in part precluded by a severer method. Yet it would be wrong to class him, for this reason, among the romantic composers. He shares with them one of the most important of their qualities, but he uses it for the furtherance of an end that is different from theirs. The fundamental distinction is one of ideals, and in ideal Dvořák is on the side of the classics.

Hence there is no inconsistency in estimating him by the classical standard. For music is not to be summed up in terms of national language or personal idiosyncrasy; these are but the necessary conditions through which is embodied the abstract universal of form. Thus, although a man can only take rank as an artist if he express his own character and that of his people, he is only a great artist in so far as he expresses them in the best possible way. The first spontaneous conception of melody springs from the emotional temperament of the composer, and so marks him at once as a member of his particular nation, its treatment is derived from the intellectual laws of proportion and balance, and so belongs to the general evolution of the art. This distinction appears very clearly in Dvořák's work. His melody, taken by itself, is often as simple and ingenuous as a folk-song, but in polyphony, in thematic development, in all details of contrast and elaboration, his ideal is to organise the rudimentary life, and to advance it into a fuller and more adult maturity. Of course, it cannot be said that he is uniformly successful. He has little sense of economy, little of that fine reticence and control which underlies the most lavish moments of Brahms or Beethoven; his use of wealth is so prodigal that his generosity is sometimes left with inadequate resources. The stream is so rapid that it has not always time for depth, the eloquence so prompt and unfailing that it does not always stop to select the best word. But, for all this, he is a great genius, true in thought, fertile in imagination, warm and sympathetic in temper of mind. He has borne his part in a national cause, and has thereby won for himself a triumph that will endure. He has enriched his people, and, in so doing, has augmented the treasury of the whole world.

JOHANNES BRAHMS.

The greatest genius is the most indebted man. A poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says everything, saying at last something good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. There is nothing whimsical and fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his time.--EMERSON.

I

GROWTH

Among the many types of character which are developed by the pursuit of an artistic profession, two stand out salient and extreme:--the artist militant and the artist contemplative. The former looks upon life as a crusade; he proclaims his doctrines to the sound of the trumpet and proves them at the point of the sword: he treats every critic as a traitor, and every adversary as a Paynim and a miscreant: he invades all lands, he challenges all strongholds: he shakes the round earth with the noise of conflict and the shock of contending creeds. The latter is of a far different temper. To him the service of his cause is occupation enough: he is content to produce the best that he knows, and cares little or nothing that others should accept his standpoint: if the work be good he will let it take its chance of appreciation; if men choose to fight about its merits, he will watch the struggle from his study window as a matter in which he has no personal concern. Nothing is farther from his thought than the establishment of a school or the leadership of a party: like Plato's philosopher, he finds his reward in the pleasures of wisdom, and can leave the pleasures of victory to his self-constituted followers.

Yet the second is not less sure of immortality than the first. For a time, no doubt, the din of battle may drown the quieter accents of the recluse, and the pageantry of war distract attention from the shady groves and alleys of Academe. The world attaches itself more readily to persons than to ideas, and rather resents the imputation that it knows nothing of its greatest men. But there is an inherent vitality in the best work which can no more be starved by neglect than it can be crushed by antagonism. Sooner or later the campaign is brought to a successful issue, and the general returns in triumph through the city gates. Sooner or later the silent truths find voice and audience, and disciples come flocking to the feet of the secluded teacher. Wagner, in a word, has cut his way to fame; Brahms has waited until it set out to seek him.

A life so placid and equable affords of necessity but little material to the biographer. True, there is some record of the early years, some reminiscence of studentship or of the first attempts to formulate and deliver an artistic message, but, the power of utterance once admitted, there is little further to narrate beyond the successive occasions of its exercise. Here, then, is a case in which criticism may concentrate itself from the outset upon the direct development of the artistic gift. The career of a great man is only interesting in so far as it gives fresh insight into his power, or throws fresh light on the influences that have moulded his character: it is with his work that we are primarily concerned, and, except in relation to this, all details of personal joy and sorrow may be dismissed as irrelevant. Incidents of struggle and mastery, alternations of success and defeat, are worth noting when they occur, since they leave their mark for good or ill on the environment, through which the art itself is affected. But where they are absent we stand face to face with the object of our search, and may contemplate it, not as embodied in circumstance, but as manifested in its own pure nature. And further, the unbroken quietude in which Brahms spent his last thirty-five years may itself suggest a standpoint from which his work can be estimated. He was the deepest thinker in the musical history of our generation, and he had no time to bestow on questions of recognition or reward.

Like his two great forerunners, he was the son of a musician, and was brought up from earliest years to the practice of his art. His father, Johann Jacob Brahms, was a contrabassist in the Hamburg Theatre, who, after having fulfilled the office of Meister der Stadtmusik in his native town of Heide, had come to try his fortunes in the orchestra where Handel had once played second violin. Of his mother nothing is recorded, except that she was a native of Hamburg, and that her maiden name was Johanna Nissen. Shortly after his marriage, Johann Brahms settled down in the Anselar Platz, and there, on May 7th 1833, Johannes was born.

It soon appeared that the boy was possessed of unusual capacity. He learned everything that his father could teach him, he read everything that he could lay his hands on; he practiced with an undeviating enthusiasm, he covered reams of paper with counterpoint exercises and variations. At an early age he was sent for further instruction to a worthy kapellmeister named Kossel, and in 1845, having left his master behind him, he was transferred to Eduard Marxsen of Altona, a composer of considerable merit, whose name has been handed down to us by Schumann's articles in the _Neue Zeitschrift_. There can be no doubt that this was a well-directed choice. In addition to the thorough knowledge of Bach, which had by this time become a staple of musical education in Germany, Marxsen impressed on his pupil the paramount importance of a critical study of Beethoven, and thus laid the foundation of a broader eclecticism than had been attainable by the composers of any previous age. And, as every artist is in some degree influenced by the masterpieces from which he takes his point of departure, it is obvious that the more comprehensive a system of training, the more perfect will be the balance and unity of the ensuing work. Something, of course, must be allowed for temperament and predilection; no course of academic rule would have taught Chopin to write a symphony or make a contrapuntist of Berlioz; but given a mind that is wide enough to be in sympathy with divers methods, we can hardly over-estimate the value of a wise and many-sided _régime_. It is, then, a matter of no small moment that Brahms in his early studies should have followed the historical development of the art: first, the volkslieder and dances which represent its simplest and most unsophisticated utterance; then the choral writing, in which polyphony is brought to its highest perfection; lastly, the culminating majesty of structure which Beethoven has raised as an imperishable monument. To us at the present day it may seem the most trivial of commonplaces, that a student in music should pay equal attention to all the supreme types of his art; it was not a commonplace half a century ago. And the proof, if proof were needed, is that all the composers of the Romantic period exhibit some imperfection of method: all, no doubt, playing a definite and valuable part in the advancement of their cause, but all leaving untouched some one point of vital importance in the heritage of previous achievement. In saying this, it is not, of course, necessary to set the genius of Brahms in the balance against that of Schumann or Chopin. 'Non facultatum inducitur comparatio sed viæ.' But the fact remains, that there are in the earlier Masters certain traces of weakness from which the later is wholly free; and of this fact one reason may be found in a contrast between the system of Marxsen and the system of Kuntzsch and Elsner.