WHAT IS MUSIC?

Otago Witness, Issue 3662, 20 May 1924, Page 66

WHAT IS MUSIC?

By

Sophie Hall.

(For Tin: Witness.) Music is an image of the will : it is an expression of the deeoest relation with the visible and invisible world which the soul of man is capable of experiencing—these, relations, which are inexpressible in more concrete manifestations, are expressible in music. To quote Carlyle’s forcible words:— “Music is well said to be the speech of Ange.s; in fact nothing among the utterances allowed to mankind is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the Infinite, rve look for moments across the cloudy elements, into the Eternal .Sea of Light.” Music, like light, is no concrete object, but a fleeting impression recorded in various ways through the mind of the individual receiver. Music and light qxist in time, no f >n space, and both are vibration interpreted differently. In the other arts, painting and sculpture, it is not possible to create a work in either of these mediums without a subject taken from life—for however imaginative the work may be. it must depict something. In poetry the same limitations exist—it must deal in human life with a. certain definiteness. However, it is nearer to music in that it, like music, exists in the element of time, whereas painting and sculpture exist in space. Music does not deal with objects: it cannot portray a ship or a star for instance. It may seem to float or to flash for a moment, but it does not describe or set forth. The one distinguishing quality of music is this : if finds its perfection in itself without relation to other objects, it is non-definitive—it does not use symbols of something else: it cannot be translated into other terms. The first element in music is vibration ; sound waves in some ordered sequence—si.ent until they strike our ears —are formed by our ingenuity, and sense of order, into patterns of beauty. Thev exist in time, not in soace. They are motion. And these vibrations are the very substance of all life. The vibration, or motion of stars in their courses, of the pulse-beats of the heart, of the mysterious communications from the nerves to the brain, of light, of heat, of colour. The plastic a.rts are static, i.e. immovable. Sculpture is motion caught in a moment of perfection. Music is motion always in perfection. This rhythm exists also in literature and the other arts. The composition in a great painting is a rhythm, but it is, as in sculpture, motion caught .in a moment of perfection. Some of the poets use it in long swelling undulations, and some of o-ur greatest specimens of literature would be nothing without it. But in music, rhythm is a. physical moving property: rhythm in being, not rhythm caught in a poise, and the- possibilities of rhythm in music far exceeds those in poetry—in fact are unparalleled in any ether art. Another element in music is melody. Melody is a sequence of single sounds curved to some line of beauty; and it imp.ies some sense of design. Otherwise it would be a series of incoherent sounds. Now in this design rhythm plays a leading part, and the themes having the most perfect balance of rhythms are the most interesting. Melody, being design, gives evidence of the personality of its Creator. For example, Schubert, like Aeats, represents the type of pure lyric utterance that is song form. Bach, on the contrary, is essentially a thinker, and his melodies are full of vigorous and diversified rhythms. Folk song was the beginning of what we call ‘‘melody,” and the best specimens of folk songs are quite as perfect within their small range as are the greatest works of the masters. Now, when we remember that these melodies were the spontaneous utterance of simple untaught people, who, in forming them, depended almost entirelv on in” stinct, we realise how intimate a medium music is for the expression of feeling. People who could neither read nor write, and who had little knowledge or experience of artistic objects, could, nevertheless, create perfect works of beauty in the medium of sound. We now come to harmony, which is an adjunct to the other two elements of music (rhythm and melcdv). Harmony is in music something of what colour is in painting. As contrasted with the long line of melody and the regular impulses in time of rhythm, harmony deals in masses. Melody carries the mind from one point to another. Harmony strikes simultaneously and produces an immediate sensation. Gretry says:-—‘‘A sensative musician will find all colours in the harmony of sound. The solemn or minor keys will affect his ear in the same wa- that eloomv colours affect his eye, and the sharp keys will seem like bright and glaring colours. Between these two extremes and by combining two or more tones, or colours, together one may fin! all the other colours, which are contained in music, just as they are in pinting, and which belong to the expression of different emotions and different characters.” The pleasing effect cf harmony upon us is supposed to be due to some underlying physical correspondence, within ourselves, to combinations of sounds (or we could say colours) that spring direct from Nature. Human beings are gradually assimilating new combinations of sounds, and this is the cause of the trend that modern music is taking in making dissonances, or discordant colouring, play such a prominent part. The two elements in music which serve the purpose of colour are the orchestral timbre or tone colour, and the beautiful chromatic harmony or colouring which is known as the “C arom” of the Greeks, the coloured note of the Middle Ages.

Now we have spoken of rhythm, melody, and harmony—there follows order and torm. When a composer creates a sonata or symphony, he must so dispose his material—rhythms, melodies, and harmonies—so as to give the work perfect coherence. The most common form in music is threefold. It is found in folk-songs, marches, nocturnes, minuets, and so forth, and —expanded to huge dimensions—in symphonic movements, in folk-songs this farm consists in repeating a first phrase after a second contrasting one. In minuets, romances, nocturnes and the like, each part is a complete melody in itself. In symphonic movements the first part (except in such notable exceptions as the first movement of Beethoven’s “Eroica”) contains all the thematic material, the second contains the “development” of the material stated in the first, and the third part re-states the rust with such changes as will give it new sigmncance. Pa.ra.lels of this order are found in literature for it is the order of life and nature. It is youth, manhood, and old age. It is sunrise, noon and sunset. It is spring, summer and winter. Our life consists of thought, feeliim and action. Art iis only life in terms of beauty, and human life is only nature expressing itself in terms of man and woman. This then is the t-hino- we call music, rhythm, melody, and harmony arranged in forms of beauty existing in time. It creates a world of its own, fictitious, fabulous, and irrelevant—a world of sound, evanescent yet indestructible. Music deals first, and above all, with feeling or emotion. Music is the most intense and potent medium for the expression of the emotions —joy, sorrow, despair, rage, gladness, sadness, failure, disappointment, etc. The greatest virtue of music lies not only in its artistic perfection, but in the power which it gives to create a world, not based on the outward and visible, but on that invisible realm of thought, feeling and aspiration which is our real world. Surette says: —“If there is any one certain fact, it is that from ear'iiest times until now, man has continually sought some escape from reality, some' building up of a perfect world of ideal beauty, which should quieten his eternal dissatisfaction with the imperfections and inconsistencies of his own life.” So he has tried to paint this nerfection on canvas, idealising life and nature in a satisfying form of beauty, cir he has carved a physical perfection in marble to deify himself and give himself a place in nature; or he has built u-> for himself a world of magical words in which all his noblest dreams strive for expression. Everywhere and always he has had his dream, which has saved him from all else failed, and the noblest of his dreamers have been those whose imaginations have gone beyond the limitations of the actual, and brought it into relation with the unknown. Now music, obeying the great Laws that underlie all life and to which all the arts are subject, dealing with that larger part of man’s being which lies hidden beneath both his acts and his thoughts—that which Carlyle calls “the deep fathomless domain of the unconscious”—music is the one perfect medium for this dream of humanity, in its expression of human emotions it enjoys the great advantage of entire irrelevance—it does not have to develop a character or person, but onl an attribute of quality. It builds for us an immaterial world, a world of imagination, not made of objects, or theories, cr dogmas, or philosophies, but of pure spirit, a means of escape from the thralldom of everyday. Who has not built “castles in the air?” The ones that are built to music and inspired by music are superlative in every respect and last the longest, for they last for ever. The soul of man craves for beauty—beauty with harmony. Beauty is the lodastone by which .all life and art is tested. No character is strong until it attains a harmony within itself. No game can he perfectly plaved unless the physical motions are timed to beauty. All forms of artistic expression require that we shall see the object not as fact alone, but as fact in some form of beauty. The purpose cf painting and sculpture is not to present objects as objects, but to set them forth in such harmonious perfection of line and colour and rhythms, as will reveal their deepest significance. Beauty is truth, truth, beauty—music is the purest form of beauty. To quote Surette again:—“Pure music at its highest- is the will of man made manifest, and one doubts if that will becomes fully manifest in any other of his creations—literature, painting, sculpture, etc. Music compasses all his actions, all his thoughts, all his feelings, it translates his dreams, it satisfies his curiosities, it justifies his pride (as he himself never does), it makes him the god he would be.” To understand music one must study the music of the vreat masters or listen to the strains of these composers, just in the same manner that the best preparation for a degree in any profession is a course in the classics. Now there is only one way of being literary, and that is to love good literature. and to read it—read it in privacy. You need silence and retirement so as to feel the perspective of knowledge, so that your mind may wander through whatever courses open to it, for the great fundamental principal of education is that one really educates oneself hv the gradual enlargement of one’s own perceptions by coming in contact with greater minds in the realms of art, literature, science, and music. Again to be artistic, to understand the great works of art, one must be alone in one’s study of them. How imnossible it is to look at pictures with other people, the mind and the imagination demand freedom to wander at will, to ponder and speculate, to learn from the picture something that cannot be shared with anyone else. So with music, being musical does not necessarily lie in performing musi-c; it is rather a state of being which every individual who can hear is entitled bv nature to attain to, in a , greater or lass degree. To understand,

to enjoy, to gain from music, one must learn to listen, when the opportunity is afforded. It is of course impossible to hear orchestral music, or, for instance, any of Beethoven’s symphonies except with some hundreds of other people. Nevertheless, you are yourself alone, and bv yourself you must solve the mystery. Never can one feel so isolated, as when, sitting among a crowd, a piece of fine music begins. Never is your individuality so precious to you as then. Straight to your soul come those sounds, bringing to the foremost the diviner part of you, separating it from the lower, singling out what is commonly inarticulate, and fanning into life again that divine spark which may have been smothered, but which never wholly dies. As you listen you have lived a thousand fives, dream after dream has dissolved itself in your consciousness. Each moment has been a complete and perfect existence in itself. We may be transported in spirit to woodlands and green fields under sunny skies, where we stand enchanted, listening to the tuneful intonations of the birds, to the far off laughter of the hills, to the lament of the sea in the distance, watching the while elfin creatures dancing timidly through the wild blossoms. Or it is moonlight, and one listens to the whispering and sighing of the leaves in the autumn wind. Now a succession of deep harmonic progressions in a brilliant major key, and we find ourselves in lofty marble palaces where we see, with the old enchantment of music, stately and beautiful lords and ladies treading a dainty measure; myriads and marvellous shades and colours of tapestry, velvet, silk, and lace enrapture our vision, while luxurious flowers of every hue and scent seem to intoxicate our senses. There is a pause—the brilliant colouring dies out—a minor chord and a few wailing notes, and we aTe in a lowly garret, where a tired but happy mother rocks a cradle and sings her baby to sleep ; while her thoughts wander away to the great heights of purity, truth, and love, which she would have her little one reach, on the oath of life before him. Now a minor key sounds plaintive harmonies to which perhaps our heartstrings are tuned, and which vibrate from sorrow and griefs that may have befallen us. Or it may be to a soft summer night the voice of this minor chord may bring us, when vague regrets and half tender and sad thoughts return to remind us of dear ones, whose memories rise and pass, undimmed by intervening clouds of sorrow and disappointment; phantoms of dead joys and shadowy suggestions of “might, have been” ; or it may be a mood of life’s sunset hour coloured bv the pathetic glories of the dying day. Back again to a brilliant major key, and the full orchestra takes up the theme : it is to-morrow with us, pLanning joyishlv, looking forward. breathless to scale the mountainous heights of our ambitions—everywhere scarlet, purple, and gold, laughter and gladness, and so we are carried away on the sea of our emotions, uplifted upward and onward. “Oh music 1 thy celestial claim Is still resistless, still the same And faithful as the mighty sea To the pale star that o'er its realm presides The spell bound tides Of human passion rise and fall for thee.”