The Challenge of Listening [Reprint 2022 ed.] 9781978810679

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The Challenge of Listening

BY THE SAME AUTHORS

Discovering Music Music in History

COPYRIGHT I 9 4 3 B Y T H E TRUSTEES OF RUTGERS COLLEGE IN N E W JERSEY

Printed in the United States of America 2-43

T I T L E PAGE DESIGNED B Y STEFAN SALTER

TO THE MEMORY OF

GEORGE FISHER PUBLISHER AND ARDENT FRIEND OF AMERICAN MUSIC

Contents I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX

i The Why and Wherefore 11 "One Man in His Time Flays Many Farts" 21 Style and How to Recognize It What Can the Listener Demand of the Composer? 36 The Significance of the Interpreter 5° 66 The Orchestral Kingdom The Conductor: Master and Servant 88 The Question of Opera: A Magnificent Fatuity? 107 Music and the Dance 132 Virtuosos: The Pianist 146 Virtuosos: String Players 170 Virtuosos: The Players of the Wood Winds and Brasses 191 The Charm of Chamber Music 204 Then Let the Pealing Organ Blow 218 Of Singers and Singing 229 Choirs and Places Where They Sing 254 Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 271 Modern Mechanisms 278 The Tribunal of Criticism 290

The Challenge of Listening

CHAPTER

I

The Why and Wherefore In the Space that Music gives, the spirit breathes and man goes on to greater deeds.

N

o ONE FAMILIAR with the situation in this country at the beginning of the Second World W a r needs to be told that at this time the United States was well on its way toward becoming a musical nation. Many reasons have been advanced for the tremendous upswing of interest in good music that marked the decades between the World Wars; certainly the very fact that so much good music, in such excellent form, became suddenly available to so many people had a great deal to do with this development of interest. Musical experiences were formerly considered the privilege of a limited class of people—those who were able to attend concerts and operas, or who were fortunate enough to be able to interpret music themselves or have someone else interpret it for them. Suddenly these experiences became easily available to all sorts and conditions of men. Without any more effort than that necessary to procure the common requirements of present-day l i f e water and electricity-by the simple turning of a knob, music today is at the disposal of everyone interested enough to want to listen. This circumstance has provided a most satisfying enrichment of experience for those to whom music is one of those indispensable factors in life which they feel has a quality of i

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The Challenge of Listening

permanence and reality that does not belong to the rest of their experiences—something without which their life would be worth very little. Another result has been the creation of an entirely new and very enthusiastic group of music-lovers, people for whom good music formerly never meant anything at all, simply because they were not aware of its existence. Given a certain native capacity and a lively and persevering curiosity, it has become entirely possible for anyone to become musical in the real sense of the term—that is, one who is fond of, and intelligently appreciative of, the art. Theoretically, at least, it would seem inevitable that a genuinely musical nation must evolve out of such circumstances, for a nation is after all simply an aggregation of its individuals. But there are inherent dangers in such a situation that must be realized and met before those of us fortunate enough to live in the United States become a musically intelligent people. The very presence of so much music, the fact that we can get it so freely whenever we want it, may—and often doesact as a deterrent from our putting any effort into listening to it. It goes without saying that unless we do make an effort we get nothing: this is as true of art as it is of life. Neither music nor any of the other artistic experiences which can be of such great help in making life full and rich will mean anything to the individual unless he is able to learn how to make them a part of himself, with an active rather than merely a passive state of mind. There are manifest ways of doing this: by evaluating such experiences and judging their quality, by knowing what it was their creators meant them to express, by being able to appraise something of the technical processes by which they were brought into being. All of the arts can mean much to the sensitive individual after he has had some guidance in making their multitudinous and bewildering experiences his own. Then there are the dangers of developing poor taste. How

The Why and Wherefore

3

can the neophyte, inexperienced in listening, with little or no technical background, make any real judgement about the quality of the tremendous amount of music he hears today? With so much music of so many sorts available in actual performance, on records, and over the air, who is he to say whether the rendition he hears is good, fair, or poor, according to the best traditions of the art? The tendency of the present is to rely almost entirely upon professional help and advice in matters of artistic guidance. Just as a man turns to his physician for help when in doubt about his health, to his lawyer when in trouble, or to his professional baseball team when in need of excitement or amusement, so he turns naturally to his newspaper or literary-journal critic when in doubt about matters pertaining to his esthetic experience. In all these he seeks professional standards, rarely deeming his own capabilities a trustworthy means of judgement. If he reads that exemplary American newspaper, The New York Times, he will turn to what Mr. Downes had to say regarding last night's concert, the music and the way in which it was performed; or Mr. Atkinson about the new play and the actors in it; Mr. Jewell will be consulted about the pictures in an exhibition recently opened, just as naturally as Mr. Chamberlain or one of his assistants will be regarding the important items in the publishers' new book lists. Whatever art he is interested in, the average man is likely—and very rightly so—to depend upon the leads of these experts in shaping his own opinions; and the carefully thought out and well written criticism can help him greatly in seeing, hearing, and understanding things which otherwise might pass him by, unnoticed. But it is not wise to depend entirely upon the judgement of professional critics; for, as one of these critics has remarked, until criticism is written by machinery, or according to the dictates of some department of state (which may only be

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The Challenge of Listening

another way of saying the same thing), it must disclose as much of the critic as of the thing he is discussing. Reaction to art cannot but be personal and individualistic. "Human beings," said Brooks Atkinson, dramatic critic of The Neiv York Times, "are strange creatures, compounded of many varieties of heritage and experience; and when seated shoulder to shoulder in the presence of the same work of art their responses are infinitely complex. They do not understand the same things, nor believe the same things. Their emotional responses are entirely individual. Being of a continuously mutable nervous temperament, their mood changes as capriciously as the weather. In extreme cases criticism is only a gymnasium in which artful acrobats perform stunts selected to show off their individual skill." Then, too, entire dependence upon a critic's judgement precludes the self-development which can give so much wider interest and greater point to artistic experience. It is through learning to appraise and to appreciate art that we develop our mental and spiritual faculties, just as it is by participating in exercise that we develop our bodies. "Everyman his own critic" is by no means an ideal impossible of attainment in some degree, a degree that depends, of course, upon the natural ability and the cultural background of the individual listener. Without laying claim to more skill than he can win through his own efforts, the layman has at his disposal definite means of extending his artistic knowledge and developing his sensibility. In acquiring such means he will not only add power unto himself, and give himself a justifiable sense of modest pride in personal achievement, but also, in becoming a sounder judge, he will be able to use the time that he has for listening to music, reading, etc., to the best possible advantage. In brief, in learning to appreciate—to size up, to judge as fully as possible, the music we hear, the books we read, the pictures

The Why and Wherefore

5

or architecture we see—we are able to equip ourselves so that we receive the fullest possible enjoyment from them. There are certain general principles of appraisal which naturally underlie all varieties of artistic experience. A symphony can be judged on the same basis as a picture—for its balance, proportion, unity and coherence of ideas. A well constructed piece of music, no matter what its form, must, like a good poem, book or play, have a definite scheme of contrast, relief, gradual intensification of interest, and culmination in a climax. But music, it is always necessary to remember, is unique in that it cannot establish a direct contact between creator and partaker, as do the other arts, but must constantly be passed through a third personality, that of the interpreter, who offers the hearer his conception of what the composer had in mind when he wrote his music—a re-creation, if the performer be happily inspired and adequately equipped; something very far from it, if he be not. In learning to listen to music, the devotee of that art will find that he must concern himself with three quite different fields: that of the creator; that which has to do with its transmission or interpretation; and that dealing with its reception or hearing. In other words, music is in reality an esthetic experience which is the result of three distinctive elements; it originates in one individual, is transmitted by another, and is received by a third. The composer undergoes some sort of experience—he feels something deeply, conceives some imaginative idea, has an impulse or craving to communicate that which he feels to be of utmost importance to his fellow-man, or is inspired by some tremendous concept. Through the peculiar powers of his genius he is able to transform this experience into a medium of physical sounds. These organized sounds, symbolized by that system of musical hieroglyphics that we call its notation, are conveyed by the interpreter—the singer or player—to the mind of the listener, who in turn recreates them

6

The Challenge of Listening

to suit his own image. Thus we have one of those marvelous transformations of energy from one medium to another that are occasionally to be found in nature. Just as coal is burned in order to form steam, which in turn is converted into electrical energy; or, as physical sound produced in front of a microphone is transformed into electrical waves, which are again retransformed into sound waves by a radio receiver; so, music, which exists first in the mind of the composer not as actual sound but as an image, an idea, a thought, or an emotion, is conveyed by the singer or the pianist, the orchestra or the choir to the listener, who reabsorbs this musical medium into his own experience as his own image, idea, thought, or emotion. Certainly this is the most wondrous of all transformations from mind to matter, this process by which physical vibrations are transformed into a world of imaginative concepts which do not in the least suggest these sound vibrations at all. These, then, are the three different phases or levels that have to be considered in learning to listen to music: that of the composer in the first instance, who creates the musical message; that of the interpreter who desires to convey it to the audience through the form given it in a musical medium; and finally that of the listener, who must interpret the musical message conveyed by the interpreter's rendition, and make it part of his own experience. There are other ways of his receiving such a musical message: through mentally reading the musical notation left by the composer, or reconstructing it from memory. But most of us have to depend upon actual hearing to receive the full import of the composer's message. In all these processes of transformation of energy, it is inevitable that a great deal of the initial efficiency is lost. Engineers figure that in transforming coal to steam and then changing this into electrical energy, there is a loss of efficiency of over fifty per cent. A surprising amount of the initial effectiveness disappears when radio music is transmitted from

The Why and Wherefore

7

sender to listener because of inadequacy in sending, the inefficiency of the medium, and especially the shortcomings of the receiver. So too the effectiveness of what we hear in music depends a great deal upon what originates at the sending end —upon what the composer has to say, and how he says it. It is also obvious that the adequacy or inadequacy of the communicative medium—the interpreter—has much to do with the quality of what we receive. But we are apt to forget that the shortcomings of the receiver—the limitations of the listenerare the cause of many of the difficulties in listening to music. What we actually get from music depends upon what we can bring to it, upon our natural aptitudes, our musical skills, our general backgrounds, our peculiar temperaments. Here is the real challenge in learning to listen to good music, that of keeping this efficiency loss at a minimum. This book has been written to make the relationships of composer, interpreter and listener as vital and fruitful as possible, and thus help to increase efficiency in the communication of the musical message. Avoiding the generalities and rather highflown imageries which are so easy to indulge when writing about music, which of all the arts has the least connection with reality and whose greatest glories comprise concepts quite beyond the powers of the other arts to express, it treats of the problems involved in composing, interpreting and in listening to music. It explains how these problems have developed, why there are certain definite bases for musical judgements, tells what these are, and translates them into untechnical terms for any music-lover to make his own. This book is intended for the general listener who wishes to develop his taste in music along the lines most congenial to his particular interests and temperament. It is planned for the kind of person who, realizing the stimulus which comes from discussing music and those who perform it, recognizes that his interest and pleasure will be increased in proportion to his

8

The Challenge of Listening

development in knowledge and insight; in all human concerns it is agreed that the onlooker sees and enjoys more of the game if he knows something of its fine points. In it the authors have shown that there is a layman's technique of listening, and that by developing this, the person who is not a performer can enlarge his powers of receptivity, stimulate his critical faculties, and both widen and deepen his enjoyment of good music. In this age of excellent radio programs, fine phonograph recordings, and outstanding concerts, there is no reason w h y every man should not become his own music critic, in the measure of his natural powers of appreciation, his interest, and the time he cares to devote to his development. In order to be of the greatest help to the reader, a method of procedure has been adopted that follows logical principles. The problems of the listener are first briefly considered, since it is necessary to understand them before we can try to realize the difficulties involved in creating and in interpreting music. The hearing of music is a response to a stimulus, and what that response will be depends upon what sort of a man the listener is. This is what Walt Whitman meant when he said that music is what we hear when we are "reminded by the instruments." The problems of the composer are treated next, in the sense that they affect the listener. T h e interpreter and his problems are considered last—the acts of performance and the effect they have upon what is being communicated to the listener. Because of its subtlety, this is one of the most important questions connected with listening to music, this conditioning of all the music we hear by the performer's ability and judgement and personality; since it is so important and because it has not been treated in detail from the viewpoint of the average listener, a great deal of space is given to it in this book. The principal types of musical composition are taken in turn, the music that has been written for orchestra, for per-

The Why and Wherefore

9

formance in opera and in connection with the dance, for piano, for chamber-music combinations, for organ, for voice and choir. After a short historical account of the development of a style of writing appropriate for each, specific problems of technique and interpretation are considered. What is good piano playing, and why is it good? Is the conductor of a great orchestra the servant or the master of his players? What are the special problems which beset the interpreter and conductor of operatic music? W h y is chamber-music, comparatively speaking, unpopular? What are the standards of good singing, and why are they so neglected today? Has the organ any importance as a solo instrument outside the services of the church? Such questions are of vital importance to critical listening; their answers will be found in the chapters devoted to the problems of interpretation. Brief but comprehensive lists of characteristic compositions, arranged in order of historical development, have been added to many of the chapters, the works chosen being those that are likely to be easily available in recorded form or over the radio. Thus the amateur may gradually add to his listening repertoire, and perhaps to his library of scores and records, good and interesting examples of typical works written for a great variety of instruments and voices, beginning wherever he may feel most attracted. Of course, no one could possibly pretend that there is anything like a set of fool-proof rules that will enable a person, with or without practice, infallibly to detect masterpieces or recognize master performers. N o such rules exist, or could exist. For, quite beyond the necessary understanding and ability to analyze and judge, there is in great music something that can only be measured and weighed by the extent to which life has been experienced, an unanalyzable something that gives a refreshment, a secret joy, a holy peace. This something, call it what we will, is what makes music alive, what

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The Challenge of Listening

gives it spark, daemonic quality; it can be sensed only by those ready to receive it and training can only help those who listen to become attuned so that they may recognize it. It is this which makes great art an experience that is entirely beyond the limitations of ordinary daily life. But there are definite ways by which faculties of judgement may be sharpened and powerls of understanding developed. Without some such guidance, the amateur listener is liable to waste both time and energy, and go the long way round to attain an end which could have been reached much more directly with the aid of a little understanding help. It would be folly to assume that those to whom this book is addressed are necessarily musical performers or are acquainted with the mysteries of musical composition. But it is naturally presumed that they combine with their enthusiasm a certain experience as active listeners. T o acquire any facility in musical performance means application, some native faculty, and the expenditure of a fair amount of time; the discerning listener realizes that the same requirements hold if he is to get the most out of the music he hears. As Somerset Maugham puts it, why should we think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for careless passers-by to pick up idly? In order to recognize it, we must be able to repeat, at least to some extent, the experiences of the artist who created it. This book has been designed to help the listener do so.

CHAPTER

11 One

II

Man in His Time Plays Many Parts"

T

HE INTERACTING TRINITY of factors—creator, interpreter and listener—necessary to the experiencing of music has been briefly described. The musical medium originates in the mind of the creator, is transformed by him into purely objective terms of physical sound that are communicated by the interpreter to the listener, who re-transforms them into his own experience; this method provided by nature for changing one form of energy into another is progressively adapted to each medium. What we call the musical experience of the composer is thus carried over by means of the physical sound produced by instrument or voice into the musical experience of the listener, something like this:

The Experience of Music COMPOSER

Feeling* Emotion* Mood* Passion* Images Ideas Ideals

INTERPRETER

LISTENER

"Feeling Emotion Sound waves which and Mood changed into are organized into then Passion the medium known become Images as music Ideas Ideals

Experiences of his own, not necessarily those of the composer.

* Psychologists have striven to show how we may distinguish between these states of consciousness; in general, they say, feeling is more elementary, the state of mind in itself, while emotion is a complex of feeling and sensation, something related to certain feelings of bodily changes. Passion suggests powerful emotion. One writer puts it this w a y : "If there is concentration of quality but no great massiveness or intensity, we call it II

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The Challenge of Listening

It is obvious, as has already been pointed out, that what the hearer responds to in this physical medium brought to him by the performer depends to a large extent upon what he is himself. A traveler, eager to know the particular qualities of a country he visits, will find there what he himself is able to take there: "to bring back the wealth of the Indies, we must take out the wealth of the Indies." That which an observer brings to a picture conditions very largely what he is able to see in it. The vibrations of light reflected from a landscape are transformed in our brains into mental experiences of color, shape and form; but what the landscape means to us in beauty or ugliness depends, to a great degree, upon our own characteristics and backgrounds. In music there can be nothing of a "one-to-one" relationship between what is communicated by the creator to the interpreter, or by the interpreter to the listener. Music as written, performed and experienced may be quite separate entities; what it means to each member of the interacting trinity necessary to its experiencing depends upon the quality of that person. T o illustrate by a simple example: it is entirely possible for such a symphony as Beethoven's Fifth, created originally perhaps as a manifestation of the composer's discontent with his times, out of a vague desire on his part for a higher beauty, a more ideal happiness, a painful aspiration for the infinite, to be interpreted by such a conductor as Weingartner in terms of pure musical beauty and architectonics, and to be experienced by an audience as a "Victory Symphony" symbolic of the triumph of the cause of right over wrong. A listener may, and often does, interject a great deal more into the music he hears than was originally intended by sensuous feeling. Absorption in the violet of a night sky would be sensuous feeling. The spell of a soft evening saturating thought, movement, and utterance would be a mood. A surge of passion such as inspired Shelley's 'Swiftly walk o'er the western wave, Spirit of Night' would be an emotion." —S. C. Pepper, Aesthetic Quality ( N e w York: Scribners).

"One Man in His Time Plays Many Parts"

13'

the composer or suggested by the interpreter. Even such a simple "composition" as a series of drum beats, which their savage composers and interpreters probably intended for the communication of tribal war signals, may have a kind of voluptuous significance to modern ears. This being the case, it is necessary that the listener recognizes himself as a factor of utmost importance in the significance of the music he hears. What is the characteristic message which he, being the person he is, with his individual temperament and particular background, is likely to receive from music? What are the factors—psychological, physical and esthetic—that are inclined to condition his listening? If he will carefully examine himself and his natural method of approaching music, he will find that he falls into one of several large groups. He may like to listen passively to music, satisfied to have it flow over his consciousness like some gracious, warming, permeating influence; for him it provides largely an emotional stimulus or relief, or, on demand, excitement, romance, or perhaps only entertainment. His response to music is one of sensuous perception; out of it he weaves romantic day dreams and constructs a distinctive world of his own; music provides him with welcome deliverance from boredom, filling his leisure hours with romantic relief. Or the listener may find that he falls naturally into that group which responds actively to music, literally going out more than half way to grasp its content, to realize its backgrounds and to sense its relationships. He is anxious to learn how to judge its particular qualities and savor its distinctive substance. Such a listener approaches music with an idea of trying to "understand" it, to make it an essential part of his intellectual life, to speculate upon the materials of which it is composed, rather than merely to indulge in the luxuriant and realistic imagery it can call forth.

14 The Challenge of Listening A third listener may find that his natural approach to music is more sentimental. Music does not mean a great deal to him aside from the sentiments it recalls. He responds to a song, or to a piece of instrumental music because it recalls to his mind some particular association: his pleasure arises not from the music itself, but from that which it recalls. The soldier far from home hearing a hymn tune which he had often sung in happier times is moved, not because of any ability it may have to stimulate imagery or give sensuous pleasure; certainly not because of any essential artistic quality of the melody or the words associated with it. The tears come into his eyes because of the sentimental associations which flood his mind, and so he listens again and again with obvious pleasure to what is oftentimes essentially cheap ar.d commonplace. A fourth is the motor or constructive type of listener, whose response to music is through action. He is stimulated to learn to play some instrument or to sing, to dance or to march, perhaps to hum melodies or tap rhythms, usually much to the discomfort of his fellow-listeners. It does not make a great deal of difference to him whether he plays well, or whether he is able to interpret the beauty which the composer has put into the music; he is satisfied in being able to do something in music. He naturally becomes interested in all the physical problems of interpretation and goes to hear this pianist because of the tremendous facility of his playing, or that singer because of his particular method of voice production. What the artists sing or play is of little consequence, so long as it is difficult. To such a listener Koussevitzky is a great conductor not because he is able to strike deep into the significance of what he is interpreting, but because of the superb technical finish and tonal sheen of an orchestra playing under his direction. All this is but another way of saying that a person's innate attitude toward music is either emotional, intellectual, senti-

"One Man in His Time Plays Many Parts"

15

mental or motile. The intelligent listener is the one who realizes that these, and various other approaches to music exist, oftentimes in the same person; and he will strive to cultivate those which he lacks without trying to overemphasize any one of them. He has always to remember that music is essentially a language of the emotions, an inexplicable means of communication between composer and listener, enabling both to live, for at least a moment, in the same world of tonal experience. Its power extends far beyond the world of sensory impressions and ordinary concepts, into another, almost limitless universe made up of the associations of memory, the contingencies of imagination, the poignancies of feeling. A great symphony holds the affections of generations of listeners, not only because of the tonal beauty of its fabric and the sense of communication it can give with the great spirit of the one who wrote it, but also because of the imaginative provocations it is able to arouse in their minds. Above all others, music is the art which, as Prall says in his Aesthetic Judgement, "expresses the will and the passions of human beings, feelings and emotions being its burden in a variety and precision not possible to words." But he must also realize that there can be other basic factors that can give listening pleasure. Chief among these is an intellectual understanding of the art as it exists in its own right and expresses something that can be said solely in its own terms. This means that for many people music has no connection with anything outside itself, and no existence apart from its own specific language. Its subject matter is sound arranged according to certain thematic patterns; its content is made up entirely of these patterns put together to form a structural whole. This type of listener thinks of music as being its own meaning, a meaning expressed in terms of a tone-rhythmic structure, and not acquired through associations outside itself.

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The Challenge of Listening

Some become aware of such purely musical values only after considerable study and analysis; and it is the attainment that comes as the result of this intellectual effort that gives satisfaction to these listeners. They learn intuitively to recognize the beauty of those principal structural patterns that have been found by experience to provide the best solutions to the problems of musical design; they are able to analyze the technical reasons for music's great power; they can, at least to their own satisfaction, see the relationship between structural cause and tonal effect, and comprehend the compositional problems that are solved by all the creators of great music. To try and deny a listener any pleasure that can be derived from sentimental association would be as foolish as it would be impossible. For some of our keenest pleasure comes in this way—the thrill that we get from such simple tunes as Anme Laurie, or Way Down Upon the Snvanee River, from MacDowell's lovely little piano pieces, from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture. We all of us have particular pieces of music that are forever bound in our memory with some unforgettable emotional experience; to hear the music again is to re-experience, to some degree at least, the emotion. The important thing is that we recognize this reaction for what it is, and do not let it overcolor our judgement. There are probably many listeners who can never hear such an old Moody and Sankey hymn as Dare to be a Daniel, without having it recall certain youthful memories, such happy memories that they are entirely unfitted to criticize the music. They simply refuse to try; but in turning such a Nelsonic blind eye, they are perfectly aware that they are not in any way disposing of the question, "What is the musical quality of this music?" Most of us cherish some triviality of this kind, in literature and music; something which, while it will not stand critical examination, holds emotional associations; for when we first

"One Man in His Time Plays Many Parts"

17

knew that particular piece, or read that particular book, we thought it wonderful, largely because we did not know any better. There are some who plead that since this is so, people should never be shown any better, but should be left in the enjoyment of any kind of art or music that they happen to like. This attitude brings us to the brink of a pedagogical sea on which we are too timid to embark. Our purpose in mentioning it here is simply to draw attention to the fact that just as a child may take to this or that piece of music or poetry, irrespective of its value, so may the adult. There are some listeners, by reason of childhood training, who do not need to go through all the stages of development in taste; unfortunately most of us do not begin life at the apex of appreciative understanding, or anywhere near it. We go through certain mild passions, usually for strongly emotional, dramatic or opulently colored music. It does not follow that all such music will be discarded; the best of it will be worked into our musical life. But most people begin with a rather narrow appreciative scope, and a great deal of the challenge in listening for them lies in widening it. Music would not be the art it is without the motile listener whose spontaneous response to its stimulus is through 6ome sort of interest in action. One of the greatest resources of a musical nation is that large body of amateur players and singers, humble artists who have no higher aspiration insofar as art is concerned than just to "make music." Realizing that it is not possible for everybody to become skilled practitioners of music, they take great pleasure in developing such talent as they have by steady exercise, by constant daily practice, adding line upon line, precedent upon precedent, learning to make correct deductions from evidence, to build up truth and cast aside error. In the process they acquire not only some degree of proficiency in the interpretation of music, but, if they keep their ears open, a larger understanding of, and

18

The Challenge of Listening

feeling for, beauty. They become absorbed in technical problems and take great joy in seeing how great artists solve them. Many, provided that they can realize that theirs is not the only approach to music, make most appreciative and understanding listeners. Their ideal, like that of all other listeners, should be the development of themselves as fully as possible—they should strive to know all about music, to feel all that there is in it, as well as to be able to play it effectively. It is agreed, then, that there are several sorts of listeners. The emotional listener, obviously, has the easiest time, in that he can, as it were, lie back, let the music flow over him and take in such general impressions as it leaves. These may be quite deep and exciting, but they are mostly created without any great activity on his part. Those who seek something more than emotional impressions, who either distrust such impressions or do not readily invent them, or for various reasons wish to attend more closely to the complex life of sounds than to the emotions they arouse, will have a harder time of it. Indeed, it is difficult to explain to a tyro in listening just how he can take in all of music's complexities at once. Any experienced musician can well remember the time when it seemed frankly impossible that this could be done, so numerous and swiftly passing are the details of a composition, and so many are the branches of musical knowledge involved in grasping them. Yet like all complex operations of the mind, even such incomprehensible ones as the simultaneous playing of twenty chess matches, these processes can be developed. And, if the brain for chess seems perhaps born rather than made, it is helpful to remember that even genius has to learn the rudiments: the young Roscius, considered one of the greatest of all child prodigies of the stage, had to be taught how to stand and what to do with his hands. If in this book we seem to explain a good deal of such ele-

"One Man in His Time Flays Many Parts"

19

mentary technique it is because we know from experience that the listener who gets some insight into the fascination of forming musical judgements is bound to enjoy using his new faculties every bit as much as he enjoys letting music work upon his spirit. One of the greatest problems of the listener is that of developing the whole individual: the cool head, the warm heart and the active physique form a great combination! Philip Vernon, an investigator of the psychology of musical processes, has drawn from experiment certain deductions regarding listeners in general. He says that music affects people in the following different ways; not all of the results are true of all listeners, but everyone seems to react in several of these ways: 1. For some people musical sounds stimulate physical energy of some sort, soothe or excite us. 2. Musical sounds may set the mind wandering freely, often in ways that have little to do with music. 3. Music produces emotional reactions, a sort of dramatic day dreaming, as we may have called it. 4. Music makes us immediately breathe in time to a sound pattern, twitch an arm, tap a foot or tighten our vocal cords in sympathy with those of the performer. 5. Some persons associate music with colors, designs, and goodness knows what else. Color association, though devoid of any scientific foundation, seems very common: some very sensitive listeners speak of the "color" of a part of a composition as being bright red or deep blue. Of course, there can be no agreement on this. 6. Among those who have studied music the reaction in listening is to try and observe its form, listen to its orchestration, notice how it is woven, and in general to add any such analytical interests to these they share with the non-technical listener. 7. There arc many who are mostly concerned with the

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The Challenge of Listening

attractions (or distractions) of the performers, their personality, gestures, style, etc.; or they are preoccupied with such ideas as whether they are listening with the right or wrong companions, in suitable or unsuitable surroundings; and all the tremendous trifles of health, disposition, how they are feeling at the time, etc. The listener may like to classify his own natural reactions to music according to this seven-type scale of Vernon's. In order that he may do so, we conclude this chapter with a choice of a few pieces of widely differing character. Listen to them and see whether the strongest reactions experienced are the same in all the pieces, or whether certain types of reaction are more highly stimulated in some pieces than in others. In listening, does the music chiefly 1. Calm or excite you? 2. Set your mind wandering without any particular direction? 3. Produce emotional reactions; set you day-dreaming; suggest scenes? 4. Affect your nervous system so as to produce physical effects? 5. Call up colors or abstract designs? 6. Set you thinking of it technically—of its construction? 7. Interest you principally on account of the performers or the effectiveness of its performance? LIST OF

J.

MUSIC

S . BACH: Organ Toccata and Fugue in D minor (perhaps in Stokowski's orchestral version) M O Z A R T : Symphony in G minor, K. No. 5 5 0 BERLIOZ: Symphony Fantastique STRAVINSKY: Symphony of Psalms

CHAPTER

III

Style and How to Recognize It

H

of his innate approach to music, the listener should start to investigate the possibilities of developing himself so that he becomes as sensitive a receptor as possible of the musical message which the composer would bring to him. This is an enormously involved and complex process, one that may well occupy the rest of his life. There are various ways of going about it. The musical analyst would say that the best method is through learning to recognize the different structural elements of a composition and to realize how, out of them, the composer makes his music. This is important and helps to develop a concrete tonal imagery so that we can learn to hear music through our creative imagination, through our "mind's ear," as the psychologist says. But this is only one aspect of the problem and neglects entirely the broadening of the listener's power to interpret and to relive the musical message that is trying to get through to him. In order to do this he must learn something of the composer's personality, of the period in which he worked, of what his music stands for. In a word, he must learn to recognize musical style. AVING DECIDED THE CHARACTER

A well-known writer on esthetics calls style the natural, characteristic action of a work of art—of its medium, form and content fused into a complex artistic organism. W e may define style more simply by saying that it implies those char21

22

The Challenge of

Listening

acteristics of artistic expression that are peculiar to a particular person or a certain period—the personal and distinctive mode of execution that marks off the work of an artist or period from that of all other artists or periods. Those who are at all familiar with poetic style will recognize immediately that these lines belong to the eighteenth century because of the peculiar type of expression and the general character of the ideas that are conveyed; if they are conversant with the poetic works of that period, they will be able to spot them as having been written by William Collins (1721-1759). They are, as we say, in his style: ODE TO EVENING Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn. As oft he rises, ''midst the twilight path Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum: Now teach me, maid composed, To breathe some soften'd strain, Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale, May not unseemly with its stillness suit, As, musing slow, I hail Thy genial loved return! A person familiar with pictures can, in the same way, immediately recognize a picture by Van Gogh; it could have been painted by no other artist because of its individual way of using materials, the violence of its conception, the brilliance of its color. So, too, a composer's musical personality may be observed

Style and How to Recognize It

23

in many things—the way in which he uses the instrument for which he is writing, the distinctive weave of his musical fabric, and, most subtle of all, his individual use of form, the personal way in which he builds his musical structure. All these influence what he had to say and, added to what he was as an individual, give the listener a very definite hint of what to expect in the music he wrote. A composer's style will be strongly influenced by his period; for no one who has read history doubts that all civilization at any period is pretty much of a piece, and that contemporary social and economic ideals, architecture, painting and music, all exhibit the same general characteristics. So if we know something of the social and economic history of a period we will be better equipped to understand the style of its music and literature. History tells us that the middle of the eighteenth century in Germany saw a definite change in social and political outlook. The earlier part was largely dominated by the tastes of the many small ducal courts that thrived in such centers as Weimar, Cothen, Eisenach; the later years of the century acquired their tone more from the people themselves, who were taking the power more and more into their own hands. The historians have called this a change from absolutism to burgherdom: what interests us as music lovers is the difference in style between the music of the earlier part of the century, music that was largely influenced by the wealth, power and ideals of the princes, and the more human, personal idiom of the later period. We find that the music of men like Bach, Handel, and Telemann, who worked in the first half of the century, possesses a certain dignity and pomp, a strongly baroque quality that is quite in keeping with the ideals of that time. But in the works of Haydn and Mozart, who composed toward the end of the century, influenced though these men were by the courts for which they wrote, there is a strong humanism, a warmth of personal expression

24

The Challenge of

Listening

that strangely foreshadowed the romantic style that was to flourish so luxuriantly during the next hundred years. A composer like Stravinsky, on the other hand, could belong to no other period than the twentieth century, with his insistence that music (and by implication the other arts) has nothing whatever to do with the expression of emotion. It is only within recent years the esthetic principle has been held that a work of art is worth looking at or listening to largely because it presents some sort of compositional organization of elements; and that connotations of any sort, sentimental, documentary, political, sexual, or religious, do not have any part in it whatever. Stravinsky's style is certainly characteristic of this principle. Then there are plenty of mechanical matters to be considered in this question of style. One does not need a great deal of musical experience to observe the wide difference between the orchestration of the two giants of the latter half of the nineteenth century, Wagner and Brahms. Noting the characteristics of each will help the listener to make one clear distinction between the styles of these two outstanding composers. There is style, too, in the use of chords and harmonic progressions. The harmony of the English composer, Delius, is unmistakable and could never be confused with that of his compatriot and contemporary, Elgar. In the larger elements of form, individuality is very noticeable: no one has handled the Rondo form as Richard Strauss did in Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Franks, or the Variation form as he did in Don Quixote. Sibelius uses varieties of Sonata (First Movement) form which no other composer has even considered. Another element of style is technique—the general manner in which a composer uses materials in his constructive processes. This is easy enough to illustrate: Wagner's use of the leitmotif (a short, pregnant phrase standing for persons or ideas in his music dramas) shows how out of a tiny seed grows

Style and How to Recognize It

25

the mighty tree of his style; Franck's peculiar method of using chromatic harmony (built up out of half-steps); Debussy's employment of harmonic overtones (a good example is his Submerged Cathedral), developing Chopin's less obvious use of the same device; Scriabin's building his exotic works largely out of one synthetic chord; Schumann's repetition of a shortbreathed space pattern in what one soon comes to believe is a helpless fashion (yet he wrote much fine music; we must beware of damning a composer for his defects, without knowing all his virtues). A composer's technique should not be obtruded; it must be used as a means and not an end. There are some compositions, for example, in which one feels that although the work as a whole is sincere, there are places where the composer gives himself over to a display of technique, often for the sake of the performer. This is likely to spoil the balance of the work. The most common example of this is the cadenza, that display of performing technique which older composers of the concerto allowed the performer to introduce near the end of a movement, usually leaving the material to the performer's invention. To be sure, there are some fine cadenzas; but the principle of leaving them to the performer's choice gave opportunity for much useless, virtuoso-display-type of music. Sometimes technical considerations cause inspiration to be clouded by perspiration. This is likely to happen in those composers who overwork detail: Max Reger, in most of his work, is a good example. In composers not possessing Reger's great skill, the music becomes completely pedantic—"midnight oil music." Again a composer may overdevelop a fine technique, as many feel that Tchaikovsky did in his Fourth Symphony, which in places degenerates into noisy, almost hysterical, bombast. Technique must be acquired; hard work and long study in time give freedom and ease in the manipulation of tools and

26

The Challenge of Listening

material, but such effort should not show. Beethoven is a notable example of the painstaking composer who rewrote his ideas again and again until they were shaped to his liking. There is a story of one of his manuscripts being found with a number of pieces of paper, in one place, pasted over each other. A student of his methods of composing had the curiosity to soak them all off, and found that the composer, after trying sixteen different versions of his theme, had in the end come back to the form with which he began. His labor was not wasted: it just happened that the original idea, in this instance, could not be improved upon; but part of the peculiar quality of Beethoven's greatness consisted in his not being satisfied with ideas as they first presented themselves, but in trying to make them still finer. Yet whatever his labor and pains and changes of mind during the writing of a work, the composer's finished music should show no more signs of painful effort than does the exhibition of an expert tennis player, a swimming champion, or a chess master. Beethoven's never does; on the other hand, as he himself pointed out, Tchaikovsky's seams, where he* had trouble in joining the various parts of his composition, often show plainly enough. Fitness of material to purpose is another element of style that requires the precious gift of imagination. Two familiar stories about the irascible Turner illustrate this well. "What do you mix your paints with?" someone asked this painter, whose wonderful sunsets so startled their beholders. "Brains, ma'am!" was the reply. And when a would-be critic protested that she had never seen such sunsets as Turner painted, the artist replied, "Perhaps not, Madame; but don't you wish you had?" The manner in which such a composer as Sibelius seems to create his melodies fully clothed orchestrally, and not as if they were first conceived and afterward fitted with

Style and How to Recognize It

27

orchestral color, is a striking instance of the fitness of means to purpose. The shape and phrasing of these melodies, as well as their orchestration, are so unified that we feel that neither element could exist without the other. Another example of the fitting of musical means to purpose is Chopin's piano music, which was created for that instrument—and, we are inclined to add, the piano seems to have been created for it. There is a striking difference between the string quartets written by a Mozart or Haydn, born masters of the medium, and those of Tchaikovsky, who, though he could on occasion feel its nature, was likely to write for this instrumental ensemble as if he were thinking in terms of the orchestra. As the listener extends his experience, he will observe many instances of both fitness and unfitness of purpose, in varying degrees, among different composers. He should constantly be listening for them. Economy of means, while not an absolute essential of style, is a frequent element. A good style of writing never makes use of more material than it needs; now and again a first-rate composer may feel the need of "letting off steam," but in general he avoids exaggeration of expressive means. Such composers as Mozart and Debussy demonstrate to the finest degree this art of economy in material. Their every note tells, because it is rightly, responsibly, placed in position. Nature can be, and often is, wasteful; good art, never. In order to make this treatment of the recognition of style in music as concrete and practical as possible, we are including here some suggestions of typical examples produced during the three most important centuries of the art's development. This is, of course, not meant to be an exhaustive or exclusive list. It has been chosen merely to show some of the great peaks of achievement. All the musical examples are obtainable on phonograph records, and most of them can readily be heard at concerts or on the radio.

28

The Challenge of Listening

Sixteenth Century GIOVANNI PIERLUIGI PALESTRINA

(I525-1594)

Hodie Christus Natus Est Benedictus Palestrina may well be called the first great master of musical composition, and so is an ideal composer with which to start any study of musical styles. His music, which was adapted from, and is the culmination of, the Flemish contrapuntal school (flourishing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries) is characterized by the weaving together of strands of melody. It is highly spiritual, impersonal, full of the mystic adoration so suitable for the liturgical worship of the Catholic Church. Indeed, it can hardly be thought of outside this particular environment. The round date of these examples is 1575. Perhaps the closest analogy that could be drawn between this music and the other arts of the time is that it suggests tapestry weaving, an art which flourished so strongly in the country in which this contrapuntal style of music had its birth that the very word for these tapestries, Arras, was the name of the city of their greatest production. In these great wall coverings the separate threads were manipulated in such a way as to form a gorgeous decorative scheme, full of warmth and color. And, as a historian of music has remarked, one could not hope to find a better definition of polyphonic music than that it is a tonal tapestry, a weaving together of a number of melodies into a definite tonal design.

Late Seventeenth—Early Eighteenth Centuries JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

(1685-1750)

Toccata, and Fugue in D minor Slow Movement from Two Violin Concerto

Style and Haw to Recognize It G E O R G FRIEDRICH H A N D E L

29

(1685-1759)

Chorus from The Messiah—Glory to God Suite from The Water Music Although it is impossible to pin down a great composer to one single style, here is music that is generally characteristic of the Baroque epoch. Bach, like Palestrina, was a contrapuntist; his weaving can be grandly impressive, massive and overpowering, as in this fugue, or gentle and unobtrusive as in the beautiful movement from the concerto. Handel is contrapuntal also, because that element was part of the broad general style of the age; but he is often "harmonic": that is, he lets a theme dominate in the top part, and accompanies it by chordal harmonies in the other parts. That is the chief reason why, on the whole, most people take to him more quickly than to Bach. This chorus shows both contrapuntal and harmonic elements; it begins in broad harmony, changes to counterpoint at "Goodwill towards men," goes back to harmonic style at the return of "Glory to God," and alternates thus throughout. After Handel's time, though counterpoint is still an important ingredient, harmonic styles predominate. The most striking parallel to this music is the architecture of the period, a buoyant and richly magnificent expression of contemporary ideals. In such buildings as the great Italian and German churches we find the exact counterparts of this music: their imposing magnificence is made up of a wealth of carefully executed and marvelously balanced detail; there are majestic rhythms and pompous details, the whole effect piling up and up to a tremendous and monumental climax. Could there be any better description of the music here cited? Late Eighteenth Century F R A N Z JOSEF H A Y D N

(1732-1809)

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