Music
is second only to fiction in the number of its unthinking votaries. A typical musical audience is a curious
study. It is composed of several varieties
of listeners. There is the purely
professional listener, the musician, who usually hears little besides the
modulations, the thematic development, the technical structure of the work
performed. As a rule, the aesthetic side
of musical art escapes him. The most
thorough ignorance of the nature and purpose of the art of music that I ever
met was at a convention of music teachers.
An Ideal Listener.
And yet
among musicians one does in the end find the most accomplished auditors, for
when the musician listens with intelligence, sympathy and insight, his trained
organs enable him to hear more and better than any other member of an
audience. Give me a man of lively
imagination, of poetic temperament and of generous disposition, who is also
acquainted with the technics of music, and I will show you an ideal listener.
But
this man is not typical. He is a rare
bird, and floats in a beautiful, impalpable ether of the mind, which seems to
the ordinary prosaic or uncomprehending hearer to be an elysium of mild
lunacy. Closest to him, perhaps, stands
the music critic, but he lacks one element of the musician’s nature. I am speaking now of the broad, vigorous
master, who is sure of himself and has no petty jealousy. The critic lacks his creative enthusiasm. The critic may rhapsodize over the beauty of
a new composition, but I fancy that he can never feel it in quite the same way
as a great composer would. Gounod’s ecstasies over “Don Giovanni” were a different sort from those of a critic.
The Musician Worshipper.
But a
competent critic at any rate listens intelligently, and in his appreciation of
the purely aesthetic side of musical art he far outranks the average
musician. These persons, however, are
but a minority of any audience at a musical performance. The majority consists of what, for lack of a
more precise appellation, we call music lovers.
Now, a music lover is or ought to be a person who loves music. The truth is that most of those who honor
themselves with this title are in truth nothing better than musician worshippers. Furthermore it is the performing musician,
not the composer, whom they worship.
The
most popular form of music is the opera.
Listen to the chatter between the acts at any operatic performance and
how much do you hear about the opera itself?
Little indeed, for the air is filled with praise or dispraise of
Nordica, Caruso, Fremstad or some other singer who has been captivating hearers
with tones. And how much understanding is disclosed in the comments made on
these artists? Since opera is the most
popular form of music, the public should be expert in the judgment of singing;
but precisely the contrary is the fact.
There is more ignorance of the art of song than of any other branch of
musical performance. The very worst
singing is applauded vociferously provided it be extremely loud or extremely
soft.
Two Styles of Music.
It is
unnecessary to go into details, for what has been said about the attitude of
the average hearer toward opera is applicable in some measure to his attitude
toward any other branch of musical performance.
The piano is found in almost every home, yet how few attendants at piano
recitals perceive what is really great in the pianist’s art, and how many are ready
to applaud what is purely superficial or actually meretricious! A masterly interpretation of a Beethoven
sonata goes for little, while a fast and highly-accentuated performance of a
Liszt rhapsody excites enthusiasm. Is it
not true that the typical audience silently breathes a sigh of relief when the
pianist gets through with the Bach and Beethoven numbers and comes to the
Chopin and Liszt?
My
honored comfrere, Mr. Finck, has staked out for himself the comforting ground
that this is because Chopin and Liszt are so much better than the others. But the dogged musicians and critics persist
in putting Bach and Beethoven in the supreme seats of honor among musical
masters. The real reason why the average
audience prefers Chopin and Liszt to Bach and Beethoven is that the former
composers give ample scope for the display of those brilliancies of style which
the unthinking hearer can easily discern, while the other two demand of player
and hearer alike emotional sympathy and intellectual insight. Even the mentality of Chopin and Liszt is
lost sight of by the typical concert-goer.
The scales, arpeggios and staccati are the things that really count.
The Sensuous in Music.
What
the great mass of so-called music lovers get out of music is that which lies
upon its surface. Those who have made a
study of the tonal art know that like all other arts it has three groups of
attributes: the sensuous, the emotional
and the intellectual. I have named these
in the order of their appeal to the perceptions. To the great mass of music lovers only the
sensuous element is discernible. A
pretty bit of melody, a graceful figure, a sonorous series of chords or a gorgeous
piece of instrumentation—these are all they get out of an overture or a
symphony. Listening to a singer or a
violinist, they hear nothing but tones.
They talk learnedly of Mme. Saccharini’s fine head tones and her weak
medium, or the admirable quality of M. Arco’s G string.
The Emotional in Music.
Next we
come to the emotionalists, who throb and pant under the influence of
music. Some of these do truly apprehend
the divine passion of noble composition or the inflaming eloquence of great
song or instrumental interpretation. But
many of them are little more than mere neurotics, whose systems respond with
spasms and physical ecstasies to the sensuous caress of wooing sound. They may be deeply and palpably stirred by
the music of Wagner or Beethoven without having the slightest notion what it is
that moves them or in what respect it claims adoration as the art of a master
mind.
The Intellectual in Music.
Those
who perceive the intellectual qualities of music are the only ones who may
pride themselves on understanding its greatness as an art. Not he who is touched only by the broad and
simple beauty and nobility of the leading themes of Beethoven’s symphonies or
Wagner’s dramas is the true appreciator of music, but he who follows those
ideas through their symmetrical and inexorable development into a vast and
highly-organized structure.
But let
me not be misunderstood. The
intellectual listener must not neglect the sensuous and emotional elements of
music, for those are the two potent forces which the brain of a composer guides
toward full and convincing expression.
The intellectual listener is he whom the process does not escape, and he
alone perceives the art of the artist.
For art, truly described, is method, and in music it is a method of
expression.
The
careless, unthinking auditor who is in the majority, does not perceive the
method. The building up of form in a
composition, the balance and symmetry of its design, the clearly-drawn plan of
a pianist’s interpretation or a singer’s reading of a song, escape his
notice. That which the artist, creative
or interpretative, has striven most earnestly to place before him he fails to
see, while he bestows his applause upon the means which the artist
employs. He sees the paint, but not the
picture. He joys in rhythm and rhyme and
neglects the poem. Thus it is that the
great mass of music lovers get out of music most of its sensuous beauty, a part
of its emotional power and very little of that intellectual majesty which makes
it the peer of all the other arts. That
devotees of the other arts regard music as their inferior is due to the
inability of the great body of music lovers to talk intelligently about music,
and they do not talk so because they do not think so.
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