Part 8

The two æsthetic qualities requisite for success in painting are obviously a sense of form, and a sense of colour; without a natural appreciation of the beauty inhering in each of these, the highest technical skill, however valuable, does not suffice. After what you have heard about Greek architecture and sculpture, I need not say another word to show that in the sense of form the Greeks were supreme and unapproachable. But what about their sense of colour? On this the evidence is not so clear and has given rise to divers interpretations. First of all, the Homeric poets, in their vivid pictures of old Greek life, are singularly vague and confused in their words for colour, so much so that people used to imagine that the poet, because he was blind, or the poets, because they were primitive, had no distinct colour-sense. I remember this latter view being pressed upon me by Mr. Gladstone in conversation, together with the reply he had from Charles Darwin, which he gave me to read, that as even insects are guided by a very clear sense of colour, it was absurd to say that the most primitive men should not possess it. This argument seamed both to him and to me hardly conclusive, for the faculties which are now human need not have developed at the same rate from lower forms, or kept abreast of one another in acuteness. Thus human development might not require an acute sense of colour, while that of the insect made it essential, and so lower forms of life might be infinitely more developed in some respects than those far higher in the general condition of their senses and their intelligence. I therefore took another line in my objection: that we know the Egyptians, centuries before the oldest date allowed for Homer, had at least ten distinct names for colour. And this was not because they felt the difference more distinctly, but because in their arts and crafts they produced the varied shades, and therefore found names for them. Even nowadays, it is not the poet, or even the artist, that invents names for subtle shades of colours, but the milliner or the modiste. When I was young, there were two shades of grey known in the phraseology of these people--one as _gris de souris_, the other as _gris de souris poursuivie_. This is but a more minute subdivision of our sensations of colour invented by those that produce it for trade purposes. The want of names for colours is therefore not confined to the Greeks. More important is the fact that their early painters are known to have used but a few and primary colours, and also the further fact that their temples, which they always coloured (and, to my mind, rightly) for effect, were adorned on a simple and primitive plan,--red, blue, white, yellow, being, so far as I know, the colours generally used.

Now these facts seem to me to harmonise with the small development of a sense of the picturesque in landscape, which is characteristic of the Greeks. The principles of reproducing perspective with lines and colours on a flat surface were indeed discovered in the fifth century B.C., by a certain Agatharchus, whose book on shade painting seems, however, to have been a work on scene-painting, as an aid to producing illusions on the stage. Nor does the idea of representing external nature seem to have been a want felt by Greek artists, seeing that they had adopted the very peculiar device of representing mountains and rivers by figures of the gods and nymphs which inhabited them and in which they were personified. The heads of the horses rising from the sea represented on the Parthenon the advent of the day. The graceful figures of nymphs on the pediments of the great temple at Olympia represented the scenery in which the action was laid. Looking down the whole history of Greek painting, from the rude frescoes at Tiryns to the decorations of houses at Pompeii, I cannot find that landscape as such ever occupied Greek artists, and here therefore we have one of the very few departments in which the modern world may boast itself independent of its almost universal teacher.

It is not so in the case of portrait-painting, and painting of scenes in mythical or in real life, for here even the faint echoes of Greek genius affected powerfully the artists of the Renaissance. In this field, however, the influence of Hellenistic sculpture and of relief work was so combined with that of the few specimens of actual painting from Herculaneum, Pompeii, and other sites, that the separate effect of Greek painting on the modern artists is not so easily appreciated. The mythical subjects at all events were told and glorified in countless epigrams of the Anthology, and as soon as this collection became known and popular, it was sure to dominate the fancy of sentimental artists like Botticelli. But if the direct influence of Greek on modern painting was baulked for want of models, the indirect effect of Greek art on the best of modern painters is very great. Consider for a moment the two most refined of modern English painters, the late Lord Leighton, and the still living and working Sir Edward Alma-Tadema. The latter generally calls his subjects Roman, but anyone that knows what the elegances of Roman life owe to the Greeks, sees at once that the whole spirit of the artist, and of the subjects he delights in, is Greek. The case is still more undisguised with Leighton. All his most striking pictures are from Greek life or from Greek legend; his whole conception of beauty is derived from the same models, and I well remember, when I used to visit him in his delightful studio in Kensington, seeing it all set round with copies of Greek sculpture, and his fervid utterance that to these unapproachable models he owed all his art.

In the absence of the actual paintings, great use has been made of the scenes painted on Greek vases of the best period, some of which attain to quite a high level, and we cannot but feel with Sir Alma-Tadema that from this source he has drawn not a few of his ideas. Surely the products that inspired Keats with his exquisite Ode make clear to us how the fruitfulness of Greek genius is not dead or even exhausted, but still kindles a pure light in modern minds sensitive enough to catch the flame.

It is to be observed, before we pass on to another subject, that the art of painting among the Greeks began, and long remained, a branch of decoration, and was therefore subsidiary to architecture, or stately furniture, or fine pottery. The fashion of producing easel pictures painted for their own sake, readily movable and therefore displayed in galleries, as well as upon the walls of palaces, only came in with the decadence or at least the full ripeness of other arts. The products of the painter were akin to those of the epigrammatist, whose elegance may well be called by a poorer word--_finish_--and is to us rather the exhibition of great cleverness than the outcome of genius. It was the day also of social decadence, when the mere artist became the idol of society, and could parade his conceit and his vulgarity without fear of censure from patrons who only valued him as the ephemeral fashion. The gossip we hear about the old painters often exhibits this painfully modern triviality.

I now turn to the topic of music, in interest second to none, but one in which I must endeavour to make my discussion intelligible to those who have only a practical knowledge of this subject. In most histories of Greek art, music is simply omitted; in the special works upon it, there is much that is not only so difficult, but so dry and technical that the average student of Greek life can hardly be expected to approach it.

As regards existing specimens, we are just as miserably provided as we are in the case of painting. We have recovered a few scraps of the musical notation accompanying poetical words; and as we understand this notation, it is an easy task to reproduce the so-called melody. We have also a scrap or two in the notation of instrumental music (apparently an accompaniment), a notation, strange to say, differing from the oral. But here the melody is missing. And let me tell you at once that no living musician could attempt to supply it with the smallest verisimilitude. The same is the case with our texts of melody. There was a much lauded hymn found a few years ago on the wall of one of the houses uncovered at Delphi. In some places the surface of the stone was broken; so that there were gaps here and there of a bar or two in the music. No living musician who knows his business would undertake to supply any one of these gaps.[30] Were it a modern composition, we could with certainty offer two or three alternatives, and we could exclude a vast number of restorations as absolutely impossible. Such is not the case with the Greek specimens we know, neither do they appeal to our modern taste. To say that these specimens, when played for us, are hideous, is merely the expression of that violated taste. There are many, perhaps even some in this audience, who would say the same thing of the plain song which the present Pope has ordered to be used in Roman Catholic churches to the exclusion of more modern music.

The real conclusion is that so far Greek music is to us unintelligible; and yet in all the other arts nothing is more intelligible to modern minds than the products of Greek taste which are our best and clearest models. Is it that a highly artistic nation may be wanting in one particular department? We have before us the case of the modern Japanese, whose artistic work in most directions is of great excellence and fully appreciated by the world, but who confess (at least I have heard one most intelligent native confess) that their music is far below the level of European compositions. But here we probably start from a difference of scale, whereas the Greek scales (or at least the diatonic) are the parents of all modern European scales.

And now that you have before you the actual problem raised by the extant remnants of Greek music, let us turn to the Greeks themselves, and see what light their writings throw upon the matter. In the first place music was not only popular but universal among the Greeks. Those who did not cultivate it were worse than Shakspere’s “man that has not music in his soul.” All Greek poetry, even the epic of Homer, was recited musically; the lyric poets were as much musicians as poets; great tragedians composed the music for their choral odes, and indeed a Greek tragedy when performed must have far more resembled an Italian opera than a play in our sense. This is the combination which Richard Wagner strove to realise. But to be gifted in two directions of art is indeed very rare. The music of Æschylus and Sophocles was probably as inferior to their text as Wagner’s text is inferior to his music. All Greek educators imply that every boy can learn music; we never hear a word about want of ear, a want of musical faculty. This was to me in former years a great puzzle, for, like all of you, I was brought up in a society where a few had gifts for music, and the remainder were incapable of singing in time or in tune, or of learning to play an instrument with intelligence--and so we drifted away from the older fashion of making at least every girl play or sing as an inevitable infliction on society, and now only those who show a keen desire for it spend their time at music. But in the new schools, where choirs are taught on the tonic _sol-fa_ system, I am informed by the most competent teachers that an inability to appreciate music, or to sing in tune, is quite rare, and that the great body of our children can be taught to make and to appreciate good music. If this be so, the Greeks were again right, and we in our older generation less wise than they.

In their opinion, this general possibility of learning music was a necessary condition of another settled conviction among educators, which is foreign to us--I mean the conviction that the practice of music has a direct and powerful effect upon the morals of average men. On this point the Greek educators were very explicit, and it is of great practical importance to us nowadays to consider what they say. It was not at all identical with a very widespread belief among modern parents that the pursuit of music generally is a refined pleasure, and will save the young from some lower or more mischievous recreation. That view was quite familiar to the Greeks. But their distinctive theory was this: that the performing or hearing of certain kinds of music had a direct effect, either moral or immoral, upon the mind, and that therefore wise educators must encourage the right sort of music only, and banish the rest from their pupils. I know very well that there were stray voices, especially from the Epicurean philosophers, saying that this is all nonsense, that music can have no such effect, and that the only moral or immoral part of the performance lies in the words.[31] But this only shows that the opinion of the vast majority and of the wisest men was not adopted without criticism, and without the other side of the question being clearly before them. The modern world is under mental conditions such as the Epicureans. We have generally assumed that music as such had no influence in moulding morals. We feel that it may be so in the accessories--that the constant singing of love duets and the associating with theatrical company may do harm and the associating with serious musicians may do good--but modern people seem hardly to dream that music such as Wagner’s, apart from the words, may have a direct effect upon morals. And yet it is here that we might have incurred a great and honourable debt to the Greeks, and have used their wisdom to save our youth from serious danger. This is a conviction of mine, not of to-day or yesterday, but of forty years’ standing, derived indeed from the suggestions of Plato, but verified by frequent contact with music and musicians. I will here give you one striking illustration. Anyone at first hearing of Wagner’s _Tristan und Isolde_ would perceive that it was a most immoral subject, expressed in highly emotional music. It is an artistic glorification of adultery, palliated by the old and vulgar excuse of a magical love-potion. All this is so obvious that I wonder sober people would not keep their children from witnessing the work just as they endeavour to keep them from reading immoral novels. To me it seemed even worse, for I could not but perceive, and had often and long since asserted, that the composer himself wrote the music under the influence of some such moral aberration, and that, apart from the words, it was intended to express his criminal longings and disappointments. It is only a year or two since the correspondence of a lady, published after her death, showed that this anticipation was literally true, that these phrases of love-sickness were actually composed and sent to her because she had awakened in him a passion which she was not wicked enough to satisfy.

I know there are people who think transcendent genius such as that of Napoleon, or, in his way, of Wagner, affords a justification, or at least an excuse, for such lawlessness. And you have heard much talk about the _Superman_, whose main attribute seems to me _infra_ human, when the rights of others are concerned. To me the veritable Superman is not the slave of his own passions, who satisfies them at the expense of others, but the master of himself, who, because he is pure, feels and helps the weakness of his neighbours. Not Sir Lancelot but Sir Galahad is the ideal of chivalry. Of the one,

“His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true”;

but of the other,

“My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure!”

Perhaps, during this digression, the objection may have been rising in your minds that if Greek music was so universally believed to have a moral or immoral influence, this was because it differed wholly in quality from that which we pursue, and that therefore an inference from one to the other is very hazardous. This is supported by the fact already adduced, that the actual remains of Greek music, though legible and intelligible in the literal sense, have no power whatever to speak to our musical emotions. We must therefore turn back from practice to theory and prove to you that, in spite of these difficulties, Greek music was distinctly the source and forerunner of our own. And I may say by way of preface to this part of my discourse that the simplicity of music, far from being a cause of its lesser emotional effect, may be the very reason why the great mass of people feel it more deeply. The intricacy and difficulty of our modern music tend to estrange it from the feelings of the larger public and to confine its influence to the special class of trained musicians. The Greeks left us no practical work on music, no criticism of existing compositions, no comparison of the effects produced on audiences by this or that artist, by this or that kind of instrument. We find only obvious generalities, such as the flute being more exciting than the harp. There is indeed one passage where Plato goes deeper and inveighs against purely instrumental music as more exciting and therefore possibly more mischievous than vocal music with an accompaniment, showing that he did not lay the stress of the emotion upon the words. Those who have gone deeply into modern music will agree with him; they feel that the emotions produced by a symphony of Beethoven are more subtle, and, because more subtle, deeper and more lasting than those produced by any vocal music, unless it be eight-part music, which approaches the richness of an orchestra.

But this suggestive remark is quite an exception. The extant musical tracts are wholly theoretical, and are concerned with the scientific basis of music, not its application to practice. And the first problem to which they applied themselves, which they solved, and have handed down to us, their heirs in art, is the determination of the proper scale or scales in which music should be composed. This was no easy thing to do, and if you take the trouble to hear the music of any people who have not adopted the Greek solution, or one like it, you will at once perceive the difference. I well remember persuading, with great difficulty, a band of gipsies, in Hungary, to play for me not the music of the Hungarians, for which they are so celebrated, but some of their own Oriental stuff, which they play among themselves in private. I found it wholly unintelligible on account of the scale, which seemed to have thirteen or fourteen notes within the octave. All this the Greeks had contemplated, and in some of their early scales they used quarter-tones and intervals strange and disagreeable to us. But, after much hesitation, they fixed upon the diatonic scale, which became the basis of their music, and in due time of ours. The varieties of this scale which they used were far greater than ours. We are contented with the variation of major and minor, and repeat the same intervals in the same order with a mere difference of pitch, very slightly modified by the temperament of our tuning. The Greeks thought the position of the two semitones far more important, and considered that the quality of the scale, quite apart from pitch, was produced by the variety in the placing of these intervals. But I must repeat that our extant treatises are so absolutely scientific and not practical that it would be impossible to attempt an analysis of them in a popular lecture. The discovery of the scientific basis of concord or harmony and its difference from discord had been made very early by the Pythagoreans, and I have often thought that their famous theory that numerical relations were the key of the universe was much stimulated and fortified by finding that octaves, fifths, and fourths, which are recognised by the ear as concords, can be produced by stopping a vibrating string at the points dividing it into portions represented by 1:2, 2:3, and 3:4. They did not acknowledge our favorite major ⅓ as a concord, the proportion being more complex, _viz._ 4:5 or 5:6; and indeed if the major ⅓ on our instruments be tuned to its full height of two full tones, it sounds sharp and very disagreeable. In this as in most detail we can follow and understand the Greek theory. When Aristotle tells us that the middle note of the scale is that to which the melody always returns, he is evidently speaking of the unaccompanied melody, and there are scores of our melodies that move up and down round this keynote, which may in these cases well represent the central note of the scale.

It is not possible for me to delay longer on this topic. I therefore sum up the result thus: the Greeks had a music to some extent homogeneous with ours; they attributed to its varieties great and direct effects on the morals of men. Seeing that in all their other arts they were so singularly modern and reasonable, it is surely well worth the careful consideration of educators whether similar effects be not latent in our music, _e.g._ whether the study of Handel, Corelli, Palestrina, may not have a strengthening effect on the mind, whereas the study of Chopin, of Verdi, even of Beethoven, with all the vague _Weltschmerz_ which they contain, the unsatisfied longings, the unreasoning discontent, the suspended harmony, may not contribute directly to the vices of modern society, vices not unknown in the fashionable cities of this Commonwealth.

We now turn to the subject of household furniture and decoration, in which you will find that there are many and the best of our ideas borrowed from the Greeks.

We have not had the good fortune to unearth a Greek town of the best epoch from under lava or from beneath the débris of an earthquake. But it is likely that even if the ruins of Antioch were cleared of the great rocks that tumbled down upon it, in the many earthquakes of the early centuries of our era, some splendid houses might be discovered. So far, however, I do not know that, except at Delos, we have been able to find clear evidences that the wall decorations and the furniture of a Greek house were the same in kind as those which a century and a half of excavation has brought up from the dead in Pompeii and Herculaneum. These towns, as well as Naples, which was well known to Cicero as an essentially Greek town, were in close proximity to Puteoli, which again was for several centuries the great port for all Alexandrian luxuries since the second Ptolemy had made friends with the Romans. Through Puteoli, then, Greek artists and Greek designs made their way to that coast, and even the worship of Isis, and the frequent use of the ibis and the crocodile in their designs, show that the Hellenistic artists had felt the influence of native Egyptian work, just as the workman of the French “Empire” felt the breath of old Egypt, when Napoleon’s Commission brought out its splendid work on that mysterious country.

Although, therefore, all the little texts scrawled upon the walls by children are in Latin, I take it the furniture and decoration of the smart houses or villas uncovered are in Greek style, and may thus give us some suggestion of the inside of a Greek house. And let me add at once, that the discoveries of such ruins and remains at Rome in the time of the Renaissance moulded all the taste of that age, and produced house decoration, in direct imitation of the antique, which has been copied down to the present day.