Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music

In the so-called “Champagne Aria” in Don Giovanni there lies more “depth” than in many a funeral march or nocturne: – Depth of feeling also shows in not wasting it on subordinate or unimportant matters.

ROUTINE

Routine is highly esteemed and frequently required; in musical “officialdom” it is a sine qua non. That routine in music should exist at all, and, furthermore, that it can be nominated as a condition in the musician's bond, is another proof of the narrow confines of our musical art. Routine signifies the acquisition of a modicum of experience and artcraft, and their application to all cases which may occur; hence, there must be an astounding number of analogous cases. Now, I like to imagine a species of art-praxis wherein each case should be a new one, an exception! How helpless and impotent would the army of practical musicians stand before it! – in the end they would surely beat a retreat, and disappear. Routine transforms the temple of art into a factory. It destroys creativeness. For creation means, the bringing form out of the void; whereas routine flourishes on imitation. It is “poetry made to order.” It rules because it suits the generality: In the theatre, in the orchestra, in virtuosi, in instruction. One longs to exclaim, “Avoid routine! Let each beginning be, as had none been before! Know nothing, but rather think and feel! For, behold, the myriad strains that once shall sound have existed since the beginning, ready, afloat in the æther, and together with them other myriads that shall never be heard. Only stretch forth your hands, and ye shall grasp a blossom, a breath of the sea-breeze, a sunbeam; avoid routine, for it strives to grasp only that wherewith your four walls are filled, and the same over and over again; the spirit of ease so infects you, that you will scarcely leave your armchairs, and will lay hold only of what is nearest to hand. And myriad strains are there since the beginning, still waiting for manifestation!”

** *

“It is my misfortune, to possess no routine,” Wagner once wrote Liszt, when the composition of “Tristan” was making no progress. Thus Wagner deceived himself, and wore a mask for others. He had too much routine, and his composing-machinery was thrown out of gear, just when a tangle formed in the mesh which only inspiration could unloose. True, Wagner found the clew when he succeeded in throwing off routine; but had he really never possessed it, he would have declared the fact without bitterness. And, after all, this sentence in Wagner's letter expresses the true artist-contempt for routine, inasmuch as he waives all claim to a qualification which he thinks meanly of, and takes care that others may not invest him with it. This self-praise he utters with a mien of ironic desperation. He is, in very truth, unhappy that composition is at a standstill, but finds rich consolation in the consciousness that his genius is above the cheap expedients of routine; at the same time, with an air of modesty, he sorrowfully confesses that he has not acquired a training belonging to the craft.

The sentence is a masterpiece of the native cunning of the instinct of self-preservation; but equally proves – and that is our point – the pettiness of routine in creative work.

RESPECT THE PIANOFORTE!

Respect the Pianoforte! Its disadvantages are evident, decided, and unquestionable: The lack of sustained tone, and the pitiless, unyielding adjustment of the inalterable semitonic scale.

But its advantages and prerogatives approach the marvelous.

It gives a single man command over something complete; in its potentialities from softest to loudest in one and the same register it excels all other instruments. The trumpet can blare, but not sigh; contrariwise the flute; the pianoforte can do both. Its range embraces the highest and deepest practicable tones. Respect the Pianoforte!

Let doubters consider how the pianoforte was esteemed by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, who dedicated their choicest thoughts to it.

And the pianoforte has one possession wholly peculiar to itself, an inimitable device, a photograph of the sky, a ray of moonlight – the Pedal.

The effects of the pedal are unexhausted, because they have remained even to this day the drudges of a narrow-souled and senseless harmonic theory; the treatment accorded them is like trying to mould air or water into geometric forms. Beethoven, who incontestably achieved the greatest progress on and for the pianoforte, divined the mysteries of the pedal, and to him we owe the first liberties.

The pedal is in ill-repute. For this, absurd irregularities must bear the blame. Let us experiment with sensible irregularities.

L'ENVOI

I felt … that the book I shall write will be neither in English nor in Latin; and this for the one reason … namely, that the language in which it may be given me not only to write, but also to think, will not be Latin, or English, or Italian, or Spanish, but a language not even one of whose words I know, a language in which dumb things speak to me, and in which, it may be, I shall at last have to respond in my grave to an Unknown Judge.”

(Von Hofmannsthal: A letter.)

1

None the less, in these arts, taste and individuality can and will unceasingly find refreshment and rejuvenation.

2

Tradition is a plaster mask taken from life, which, in the course of many years, and after passing through the hands of innumerable artisans, leaves its resemblance to the original largely a matter of imagination.

3

“Die Ur-Musik,” is the author's happy phrase. But as this music never has been, our English terms like “primitive,” “original,” etc., would involve a non sequitur which is avoided, at least, by “infinite.”

4

In the recitatives of his Passions we hear “human speech”; not “correct declamation.”

5

As characteristic traits of Beethoven's individuality I would mention the poetic fire, the strong human feeling (whence springs his revolutionary temper), and a portent of modern nervousness. These traits are certainly opposed to those of a “classic.” Moreover, Beethoven is no “master,” as the term applies to Mozart or the later Wagner, just because his art foreshadows a greater, as yet incomplete. (Compare the section next-following.)

6

“Together with the problem, it gives us the solution,” as I once said of Mozart.

7

“… Beethoven, dont les esquisses thématiques ou élémentaires sont innombrables, mais qui, sitôt les thèmes trouvés, semble par cela même en avoir établi tout le développement …” [Vincent d'Indy, in “César Franck.”]

8

How strongly notation influences style in music, and fetters imagination, how “form” grew up out of it and from form arose “conventionalism” in expression, is shown very convincingly and avenges itself in tragic wise in E. T. A. Hoffmann, who occurs to me here as a typical example.

This remarkable man's mental conceptions, lost in visionary moods and revelling in transcendentalism, as his writings set forth in oft inimitable fashion, must naturally – so one would infer – have found in the dreamlike and transcendental art of tones a language and mode of expression peculiarly congenial.

The veil of mysticism, the secret harmonies of Nature, the thrill of the supernatural, the twilight vagueness of the borderland of dreams, everything, in fact, which he so effectively limned with the precision of words– all this, one would suppose, he could have interpreted to fullest effect by the aid of music. And yet, comparing Hoffmann's best musical work with the weakest of his literary productions, you will discover to your sorrow how a conventional system of measures, periods and keys – whereto the hackneyed opera-style of the time adds its share – could turn a poet into a Philistine. But that his fancy cherished another ideal of music, we learn from many, and frequently admirable, observations of Hoffmann the littérateur.

9

The author probably had in mind the languages of southern Europe; the word is employed in English, and in the tongues of the Scandinavian group, with precisely the same meaning as in German.

10

The only kind of people one might properly call musical, are the singers; for they themselves can sound. Similarly, a clown who by some trick produces tones when he is touched, might be called a pseudo-musical person.

11

“But these pieces are so musical,” a violinist once remarked to me of a four-hand worklet which I had characterized as trivial.

12

“My dog is very musical,” I have heard said in all seriousness. Should the dog take precedence of Berlioz?

13

Such has been my own fate.

14

With a friend I once indulged in such trifling in order to ascertain how many commonly known compositions were written according to the scheme of the second theme in the Adagio of the Ninth Symphony. In a few moments we had collected some fifteen analogues of the most different kinds, among them specimens of the lowest type of art. And Beethoven himself: – Is the theme of the Finale in the “Fifth” any other than the one wherewith the “Second” introduces its Allegro? – or than the principal theme of the Third Piano Concerto, only in minor?

15

“The equal temperament of 12 degrees, which was discussed theoretically as early as about 1500, but not established as a principle until shortly before 1700 (by Andreas Werkmeister), divides the octave into twelve equal portions (semitones, hence ‘twelve-semitone system’) through which mean values are obtained; no interval is perfectly pure, but all are fairly serviceable.” (Riemann, “Musik-Lexikon.”) Thus, through Andreas Werkmeister, this master-workman in art, we have gained the “twelve-semitone” system with intervals which are all impure, but fairly serviceable. But what is “pure,” and what “impure”? We hear a piano “gone out of tune,” and whose intervals may thus have become “pure, but unserviceable,” and it sounds impure to us. The diplomatic “Twelve-semitone system” is an invention mothered by necessity; yet none the less do we sedulously guard its imperfections.

16

It is termed “The Science of Harmony.”

17

“New Music for an Old World.” Dr. Thaddeus Cahill's Dynamophone, an extraordinary electrical invention for producing scientifically perfect music. Article in McClure's Magazine for July, 1906, by Ray Stannard Baker. Readers interested in the details of this invention are referred to the above-mentioned magazine article.

18

As if anticipating my thoughts, M. Vincent d'Indy has just written me: “… laissant de côté les contingences et les petitesses de la vie pour regarder constamment vers un idéal qu'on ne pourra jamais atteindre, mais dont il est permis de se rapprocher.”

19

I think I have read, somewhere, that Liszt confined his Dante Symphony to the two movements, Inferno and Purgatorio, “because our tone-speech is inadequate to express the felicities of Paradise.”