In October 1866, Brahms made a short concert-tour in German Switzerland, with Joachim for companion. The pair visited Schaffhausen, Winterthur, and Zurich, playing everywhere to enthusiastic audiences, but meeting with no adventure worth recording. The days of flat pianos and officious superintendents had long gone by, and in the path of two such artists there were no longer any obstacles to r.e.t.a.r.d progress, or arouse reminiscence. At the end of November they separated; Joachim to fulfil an engagement in Paris; Brahms to return for the usual winter season in Vienna, where, in January 1867, h.e.l.lmesberger led the first performance of the G major Sestett. It is no discredit either to composer or to audience that the new work was received with more astonishment than delight. The extremely elaborate polyphony, which is one of its distinguishing attributes, is probably too intricate to be comprehended by anyone at a single presentation, and we may infer that the public actually did not hear the melodies for the simple reason of their abundance. The complaint of tunelessness which has been brought against every great composer in turn, usually emanates from a criticism that cannot see the wood for the trees, and on this occasion it may be noted that Vienna saved its repute by wisely reserving judgment; and that Brahms" only repartee was to publish forthwith a delightful set of four-hand waltzes, in which the top part had the tune and the other parts had the accompaniment, and everybody was satisfied.
In March and April, he gave a couple of pianoforte recitals, at which, as usual, his own works were very spa.r.s.ely represented. It was at the former of them, by the way, that he brought out his Paganini Variations, and, on being enthusiastically recalled, played the Finale of Beethoven"s third Rasoumoffsky Quartett as an encore. Towards the end of April came two concerts at Pesth, and in the early summer appeared a fine set of part-songs for male voices, usually known by the t.i.tle of Soldatenlieder. But the great musical achievement of the year was the German Requiem, of which the original six numbers, written, it is said, as a monument for the Austrio-Prussian War, seem to have been completed by November. A seventh movement, the exquisite soprano solo, with choral interludes, was inserted next year in commemoration of a more intimate and personal sorrow.
As a preliminary, the first half of the Requiem was given at a Gesellschaft concert on December 1, and at once visited with a storm of Theological criticism. It was not a Requiem, said the purists; it was not even ecclesiastical in tone; it was a sacred cantata, far less suited to the church than to the concert-room. Even its defenders looked upon it with some misgiving, and could only plead that it was "confessionslos aber nicht religionslos." Now and then the controversy diverged as on a side issue to consider the music and discuss its relation to Bach and Beethoven, but, for the most part, critics seem to have been occupied in pointing out the impropriety of the name, and raising the equally important objection that there is nothing distinctively "German" in the sentiment of the words. However, the world soon had an opportunity of judging the matter from a more appropriate standpoint. On Good Friday, 1868, the entire six numbers were performed in the Great Church at Bremen, to an audience of over two thousand people, including Joachim, Dietrich, Max Bruch and Madame Schumann.
Representative musicians came from Austria, from Germany, from Switzerland, from England itself, and the impression that they carried away with them has steadily gathered and developed into a reverence that is almost too deep for praise. Grant that there are some genuine lovers of Music who find the Requiem an unequal composition, which only means that to them it makes an unequal appeal; the fact remains that there is nothing in the whole work, unless it be the difficulty of execution, against which any objective criticism can be directed. "You cannot touch them," said Heine of some disputed pa.s.sages in Faust, "it is the finger of Goethe." And as the faults are imaginary, so the beauties are incontestable. If there be any man who can listen unmoved to the majestic funeral march, to the serene and perfect melody of the fourth chorus, to the two great fugues, which may almost be said to succeed where Beethoven has failed, then he can only conclude that he stands as yet outside the precincts of the art. It is no more a matter for controversy than are the poetic merits of the Antigone or the Inferno.
We are not here dealing with a product of the second order, in which blemishes are to be condoned and qualities set in ant.i.thesis, and the whole appraised by a nice adjustment of the balance. To find a defect here, is to criticise our own judgment, and to stigmatise as imperfect not the voice that speaks but the ear that listens.
The summer of 1868 was spent at Bonn, partly in preparing the German Requiem for the press, partly in strenuous composition. The only other works published during this year, were five volumes of songs (Op. 43 and Ops. 46 to 49),[54] but it seems pretty certain that Rinaldo and the Rhapsodie from Goethe"s Harzreise were written at the same time, and we may probably add the first set of Liebeslieder Waltzes for pianoforte duet, with vocal accompaniment, which appeared early in 1869. Of the songs, it is only necessary to say, that they include Von ewiger Liebe, Botschaft, Herbstgefuhl, An ein Veilchen, and the Wiegenlied; the two cantatas have long established their position as the finest male-voice choruses in existence; and the Liebeslieder, though naturally conceived in a lighter mood, are as dainty as Strauss and as melodious as Schubert. Finally, there is some slight internal evidence for a.s.signing to 1868, at least one of the two string quartetts which were printed a few years later as Op. 51. In any case, whether this a.s.signment be correct or not, the year"s record is one which would do honour to any artist in musical history.
After this period of vigorous activity there followed two years of almost entire repose. In 1869, a couple of concert tours were projected--one in Holland and one in Russia, but the plans were abandoned almost as soon as conceived, and meanwhile the only fresh publications were the first two books of Hungarian dances, which, by an odd irony of fate, have come to be more intimately a.s.sociated with Brahms" name than almost any of his own compositions. It is no longer requisite to point out that the melodies of all the dances are of national origin; one alone (the graceful little Csardas, in A major) being traditional, and the rest, written by Rizner, Keler Bela, and other "popular" Hungarian composers. But it is worth noting, as an ill.u.s.tration of critical method, that more than one journal of the time disregarded the specific announcement on the t.i.tle-page, and accused Brahms of plagiarising the tunes which he only claimed to have arranged in duet form. Of course, the accusation broke down, but equally, of course, it ought never to have been made.
It may be remembered that, in 1859, Brahms had emerged from his second period of studentship with a Pianoforte Concerto in D minor, which at the time was received with considerable disfavour by its Leipsic audience. The work had been printed in 1861, and had slept ever since on the shelves of Rieter-Biedermann, waiting in patience until the public was ready to appreciate it. Now it seemed as though the hour had come.
The world was wiser by the experience of a dozen years; the composer was no longer a _debutant_ to be sacrificed on the altar of critical conservatism; Vienna had shown herself disposed to listen with sympathy and intelligence. Accordingly the work was recalled from its obscurity, presented at a Philharmonic concert on January 20, 1871, and, it is pleasant to add, received with acclamation. No doubt the critics repeated their old joke, that it was a "symphony with pianoforte obbligato," but the attention with which it was heard, and the applause with which it was welcomed, gave sufficient evidence that the interval of education had not been fruitless. "It is," says Dr Helm, writing to the _Academy_, "the most original production of its composer, except the Requiem, and the most genial composition of its kind since the days of Beethoven." Perhaps "genial" is not precisely the epithet that we should most naturally employ, but when a victory is announced it is ungracious to carp at the terms of the bulletin.
In 1871 appeared two new works of considerable importance. First came the Triumphlied, written to commemorate the victories of the Franco-Prussian war, and produced, together with the Requiem, at a solemn Good-Friday service in Bremen Cathedral; then, a few months later, there followed at Carlsruhe, what is perhaps the most widely-loved of all Brahms" compositions, the exquisite and flawless setting of Holderlein"s Schicksalslied. It was only natural that the former should rouse some criticism in the French papers, which were still chafing at the foolish humours of _Eine Kapitulation_. The shout of victory however n.o.ble and dignified its expression, is always a little discordant to the vanquished and we may almost sympathise with the _Gazette Musicale_, which ended its review by remarking, in a tone of grave irony, "Et M. Brahms, l"auteur du Triumphlied, est ne a Vienne, pres Sadowa."
Of the Schicksalslied, it is hard to speak without incurring some charge of extravagance. Perfection is a word of such serious meaning, and of such loose and careless employment, that a writer may well hesitate to apply it, even if there be no lighter one that is adequate to the case.
Yet, on the other hand, it is difficult to see how, in the present instance, any hesitation is possible. The work deals with the most tremendous of all contrasts:--the pure, untroubled serenity of Heaven, the agonies and failures of a baffled humanity, the message of peace, tender, pitying, consolatory, which returns at last to veil the wreck of man"s broken aspirations; and to say that the treatment is worthy of such a theme, is to announce a masterpiece that has as little to fear from our criticism as it has to gain from our praise. It is almost superfluous that one should commend the more technical beauties: the rounded symmetry of balance and design, the pellucid clearness of style, the sweetness and charm of melody, the marvellous cadences where chord melts into chord as colour melts into colour at the sunset. If it be the function of the artist that he be "faithful to loveliness," then here at least is a loyalty that has kept its faith unsullied.
After such a climax, it was almost inevitable that there should follow a period of reaction, and in 1872 no new compositions made their appearance. As a subsidiary cause we may note that, in the summer of this year, Brahms accepted the important post of conductor to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. His tenure of office, which lasted until 1875, is marked by the very noticeable frequence of Handel"s name in the programmes of the Society. It has become so much the fashion to regard our admiration for Handel as a peculiarly British error, that we may well feel some relief at finding it shared by the greatest and most essentially German of recent musicians. _Saul_, _Solomon_, _Alexander"s Feast_, the _Dettingen Te Deum_, and the Organ Concerto in D minor, were all presented in the course of the next two seasons,--a remarkable record, if we remember that a season consisted of six concerts, and that the range of selection extended from Johann Rudolph Ahle to Rubinstein and Goldmark.
Once established in his new position, Brahms found no further difficulty in reconciling its duties with the needs of his own productive activity.
During the years 1873-5 he poured out a continuous stream of new works, including not only many songs, duets, and choruses, but the _Neue Liebeslieder_, the fine set of orchestral variations on a Theme of Haydn, and the Pianoforte Quartett in C minor, which, although it suffers from an almost inevitable comparison, may yet be said to contain two of the most delightful melodies that its composer has ever written.
It was in this last work that some candid friend pointed out an obvious structural resemblance to the Finale of Mendelssohn"s C minor Trio, and was met with the placid, if somewhat direct rejoinder, "Das sieht jeder Narr." Brahms does not belong to the artistic type that can be readily stirred by an accusation of plagiarism.
Such an accusation, however, was shortly to be repeated in more vehement terms. At the beginning of November 1876, the Symphony in C minor was played (from MSS.) at Carlsruhe, and at once attracted a great deal of attention, not only because it was the composer"s first work in this form, but for the less satisfactory reason that its Finale is based on a melody curiously similar to that of Beethoven"s "Freude." To make matters worse, an enthusiastic Hamburg admirer labelled the new composition "A Tenth Symphony," and so emphasised the resemblance in a manner which would have been hardly possible to an open antagonism. The artistic importance of this question will be considered later: at present it is enough to note, that the resemblance undoubtedly exists, and that it holds a prominent place in almost all the contemporary criticisms. Yet, on the whole, the Symphony was favourably received. The first movement aroused some controversy:--"We cannot make head or tail of it," said a Munich correspondent, "so we suppose that it is a Symphonic Poem;"--but the Andante, the Allegretto, and even the offending Finale, appear to have met with a due share of popular favour.
It must be remembered that the opening Allegro is essentially tragic in character, and that, with the general public, tragedy takes longer than comedy to win its way.
As the publication of the Requiem had been followed immediately by a great outburst of choral works, so that of the first Symphony stimulated Brahms to further attempts in the great epic forms of the orchestra. In December 1877, the D major Symphony was produced by Richter at a Philharmonic concert in Vienna, and in 1878, after a short holiday tour in Italy, Brahms completed the triptych with his superb Violin Concerto, second only, in the record of musical art, to that of Beethoven. The _debut_ of this last composition, which took place on January 14, 1879, was characterised by a very unusual mark of respect and interest. Not only was it received with a veritable ovation--when Joachim is playing Brahms that is only to be expected--but at the close of the concert a large part of the audience remained in the hall, and const.i.tuted itself into an impromptu debating society to discuss its impressions. This forms a remarkable contrast to the panic flight which usually follows on the first moment of liberation, and must be taken as the sign and witness of a more than superficial enthusiasm. Men may applaud from good-nature, from impulse, from a desire to be in the fashion; but something stronger than this is required to keep them in their seats after the performance is over.
Meantime works of less long a breath were appearing in their usual copious abundance. In 1876 came the bright genial Quartett in B flat, then followed a series of songs, duets and pianoforte pieces, then a couple of motets for mixed chorus and orchestra. In November 1879 the Violin Sonata in G was given for the first time at a h.e.l.lmesberger Concert, and succeeded almost immediately by the two well-known Rhapsodies for piano solo, and the second set of Hungarian dances. Of course, fertility is not in itself a mark of genius--otherwise Raff would be the greatest composer of the century--but at least it gives additional opportunity for the marks of genius to appear. And it may be added that, even in the periods of most rapid production, Brahms hardly ever shows any signs of haste. If he escapes the self-torture which drove Chopin day after day to the revision of a single page, it is not because his ideal is lower, but because his judgment is more robust.
In 1880 he accepted the degree of Doctor in Philosophy, offered him by the University of Breslau, and at once set himself, during a summer stay at Ischl, to write his thesis. A ceremonial of so solemn and academic a character naturally demanded an unusual display of learning. Symphonies were too trivial, oratorios were too slight, even an eight-part _a capella_ chorus in octuple counterpoint was hardly adequate to the dignity of the occasion. Something must be done to mark the doctorate with all the awe and reverence due to the Philosophic Chair. So Brahms selected a handful of the more convivial student songs--"Was kommt dort von der Hoh"," "Gaudeamus igitur," and the like--and worked them into a concert overture, which remains one of the most amusing pieces of pure comedy in the whole range of music. It was an audacious experiment, and one which could only have succeeded in Germany. Not even Brahms could offer, as a Doctor"s exercise at Oxford or Cambridge, a work based on the melodies with which our own studious youth beguiles its leisure moments.
Two other compositions appear to have been written at Ischl during the same summer--the Tragic Overture and the Pianoforte Trio in C major. Of these the Trio remained for some time in abeyance; the Overture, together with its "Academic" companion, was produced at Breslau on January 4, 1881, and repeated at Leipsic on January 13. It is equally intelligible that the lighter mood should have won a more immediate sympathy, and that a mature decision should have reversed the verdict.
In the Academic Overture men met old friends, cracked old jokes, recalled old memories of the Kneipe, and so rather put themselves out of court for dispa.s.sionate criticism: the Tragic brought them nothing but a cheerless vision of crumbling steeps and mysterious shadows, of dark recesses and haunted glades, of
"Moonlit battlements and towers decayed by time,"
through all of which we can fancy Vetter Michel pa.s.sing with his coat tightly b.u.t.toned and his hat pressed over his brows, only anxious to escape as soon as possible from the enchanted spot, and return to warmth and light and good fellowship. At the same time, the Tragic Overture strikes a deeper note, and though it is not more masterly in structure, is certainly more poetic in conception. Besides, it owed no fact.i.tious interest to the particular circ.u.mstances of its first appearance, and so, having been treated from the beginning on its own merits, it is the more likely to endure.
Other events of 1881 may be dismissed in a few words. At the end of January the London Philharmonic endeavoured to secure Brahms as conductor for its coming season; but the offer, like all subsequent invitations from this country, was immediately declined. "Je ne veux pas faire le spectacle," is the reason which was once given as the ground of refusal; and, though we may feel a little mortified at the implication, it is difficult to deny the uncomplimentary truth that it contains. We have not yet learned to treat genius frankly, and either starve it with censure or smother it with an irrational excess of enthusiasm. And further, Brahms was much occupied during the summer, partly in preparing his two overtures for the press, partly in completing the Nanie and the new Pianoforte Concerto in B flat. During the autumn came a concert tour of unusual extent, in which the last-named work was produced at Buda-Pesth, and repeated at Meiningen, Stuttgart, Basle, Zurich, and ultimately at Vienna. By this time it had become an article of faith, that Brahms" concerti showed no claim to their specific t.i.tle; and, as the jest of "Symphony with pianoforte obbligato" had fulfilled its purpose, the critics struck out a fresh line, and described the new work as "chamber music on a larger canvas." However, the Viennese public was as indifferent to names as Juliet herself, and received the music with a cordiality that took no thought of problems in scientific cla.s.sification.
The publications of 1882 consist of four volumes of songs, which range in character from the humour of the Vergebliches Standchen to the poetry, as pure and contemplative as Wordsworth, of Feldeinsamkeit and Sommerabend. After the Vienna season Brahms took his usual holiday at Ischl, and there composed the String Quintett in F and the Gesang der Parzen, both of which were printed in the succeeding year. But the next real landmark was the third Symphony produced at Vienna in the winter of 1883, and repeated at once in almost every great musical centre in Germany. It is perhaps the finest, certainly the clearest, of all Brahms" instrumental compositions for orchestra--forcible and vigorous in movement, delightful in melody, and, of course, faultless in construction. "Now at last," said a member of the Viennese audience, "I can understand Brahms at a first hearing": and, indeed, it must be a cloudy twilight in which so exact a hand cannot be readily deciphered.
In strong contrast is the fourth Symphony in E minor, which followed after another period of song-writing. On grounds of true artistic value, it is almost equal to its predecessor; but it deals with more recondite themes, it traces more involved issues, and it has consequently been treated with some of that irrational impatience which is the common fate of prophets who speak in parables. When it was presented at Leipsic in 1886, the critics protested against it as wholly unintelligible; and when Reinecke repeated it at the beginning of the next year, the audience trooped out after the third movement and left the finale to be played to empty benches. It may be remembered that the subscribers to _Fraser"s Magazine_ once threatened to withdraw their patronage unless the editor discontinued a farrago of exasperating nonsense called by the unmeaning name of _Sartor Resartus_.
In 1887 Brahms was created a Knight of the German order, "pour le merite," in company with Professor Treitschke, Gustav Freitag, and Verdi. He had already received the order of "Arts and Sciences" from the King of Bavaria; and, two years later, he was admitted by the Emperor of Austria to the order of St Leopold--the first civilian, it is said, on whom that distinction has been conferred. Meantime, he brought his list of works past its hundredth opus number--that goal which Schubert was so pathetically anxious to reach--with the "Cello Sonata in F, the Violin Sonata in A, the double Concerto and the C minor Pianoforte Trio. The first of these, which was produced by Hausmann in November 1886, at once aroused a very curious outburst of structural criticism. It was said, and the statement is still repeated, that Brahms had been guilty of a dangerous and radical innovation in choosing for his slow movement a key removed by only one semitone from that of the work as a whole. The choice was too near in pitch, it was too remote in signature, it broke the harmonic unity of the composition by a contrast of colour which was in itself glaring and extreme. But of attacks on Brahms, as of attacks on a very different master, we may generally say, "ca porte malheur."
The so-called "innovation," authoritatively condemned as without parallel in musical literature, may be found in one of Haydn"s pianoforte sonatas, and can hardly, therefore, be criticised at the present day as hazardous and revolutionary. Whether the contrast be here successful or not is a matter on which opinions may conceivably differ, though, after any serious study of the opening movement, they are likely to concur; but it is surely unfair to accuse Brahms of violating the cla.s.sical tradition, unless, indeed, there be a sense in which any stage of evolution may be said to violate its forerunner.
In the summer of 1889 Brahms was presented with the freedom of the city of Hamburg, a gift which affected him more deeply than any splendour of royal or academic distinction. With its acceptance his public life may be said to close. He was now fifty-seven; he had spent nearly forty years of strenuous and honourable work; his dislike of notoriety grew naturally keener with advancing age; he had no longer any office or appointment to call him from his beloved seclusion. The occurrences of the next seven years may be summed up in a few rare concert-tours or holiday visits. For the rest he lived among his books; reading, editing, annotating until the creative moment came, and the world was made richer by a new masterpiece. Within this period he produced about a score of compositions: an exquisite violin sonata in D minor; a second string quintett, even sweeter and more melodious than the first; two volumes of motets, strong, stately and dignified; two concerted works for clarinet, of which one at least may rank among the chief glories of musical art, and a whole underwood of songs and pianoforte pieces, that grow and blossom in the shadow of the larger forest. But even the records of achievement become more spa.r.s.e as the years decline. The evening was at hand, and the day"s work drawing to its close.
It was in the summer of 1896 that he printed his last composition, the Vier ernste Gesange. For some little time his health had been giving cause for anxiety. In the autumn his doctors sent him to Carlsbad in hope of a cure; then in the early winter appeared symptoms of some cancerous growth, and the only hope left was for the alleviation of pain. Yet a few more months he lingered, bearing his death sentence with the same unselfish fort.i.tude that had marked his life, until on April 3, 1897, the end came and the sufferings were over. With him pa.s.sed away one of the n.o.blest figures in all musical history: a great man, generous and upright, without envy, without arrogance, free from all taint of the meaner emotions, wholly single-hearted in the service of his ideal. The happiness which eludes all conscious human pursuit came to him unasked and unsought; the rewards that he would never stretch a hand to seize offered themselves for his acceptance. His life was secure from sordid anxieties, unvexed by the contests and intrigues that have so often marred an artistic reputation, rich in the love of friends and the priceless gift of genius. It is not for him that we should mourn, now that in the fulness of years and honours he has laid his books aside and turned to sleep.
FOOTNOTES:
[53] Shortened from an article in the issue for November 21, 1862.
[54] To them should be added the last three books of Romances from Tieck"s Magelone, which were not printed until 1868, though they were almost certainly written some considerable time earlier.
III
THE DIRECTION OF THE NEW PATHS
As Music is the most abstract of the arts, so it is also the most continuous. In each successive generation the Poet and the Painter are confronted by approximately the same facts of nature and life: the truth of representation which forms an essential part of their work is relative to an external model which is comparatively unchanging. Thus, in a certain degree, every age of representative art stands on a level with its predecessors, and however much it is influenced by traditions of style, is even more affected by its direct relation to physical realities. Music, on the other hand, is simply the gradual mastery of a particular medium by the pure action of the human mind. Its actual method contains no concrete element at all, and in it, therefore, every generation must take its point of departure, not from the same universe which appealed to previous artists, but from the actual achievement which previous artists have handed down. The Greeks were as keenly alive to the beauty of music as to that of poetry: to us their poetry is a delight and their music a bewilderment. To the Italians of the great artistic period, the charm of music was as vivid as that of painting; to us their painting is almost a finality, and their music, even in Palestrina, but the supreme expression of a transitory phase. And this is not because music is in any sense the youngest of the arts: for such a theory is refuted by the most casual survey of human history. The real reason would seem to be, that in the representative arts we have a series of comparatively independent periods, each manifesting afresh the att.i.tude of an artistic mind to a fixed world of nature: whereas, in music, the periods are stages of a continuous evolution, and the whole environment of the artist is summed up in the inheritance that he derives from the past.
This distinction must, of course, be stated not as absolute, but as relative. For, in the first place, every work of art is the outcome of its creator"s personality, and depends, therefore, on the particular attributes of his character and temperament. Poetry, like the poet, is born, not made: painting, even if it borrow its model from nature, must find its power of vision in the soul of the artist: and music, in like manner, is worth nothing unless it arises from a true and spontaneous emotion. The gift of melody, the sense of ideal beauty, the capacity for genuine and n.o.ble feeling, are qualities which cannot be learned or communicated: they const.i.tute the life of the art, and external forces can only influence its training. Further, it is idle to speak of the "representative" artists as unaffected by the general course of aesthetic history. Only, it is here contended, that their debt to the past is appreciably less than that of the musician, because their debt to the present is appreciably greater.
It is impossible, then, to estimate a composer without special reference to his historical conditions. For the whole of his work consists in expressing thought, which he originates through a medium which he inherits, and, to gauge his success, we must know how the art stood before it pa.s.sed into his hands, and to what extent he has enriched or augmented its resources. There are, therefore, two questions, and only two, to which musical criticism can address itself: first, whether the feeling implied by the work is one that commands our sympathy: second, whether in expressing it the artist has a.s.similated all that is best in a previous tradition, and has himself advanced that tradition towards a fuller and more perfect development. And, as the former of these questions is the more difficult of the two, we may perhaps defer it until the latter has received some share of consideration.
Now, the primary fact in music is the simple melodic phrase: the spontaneous, almost unconscious, utterance of an emotional state that is too vivid for ordinary speech. At first, this music is entirely artless, for art only begins when the medium is recognised as possessing an intrinsic interest; then there gradually arises an attempt to make the phrases more coherent, and so more expressive, until the first landmark is reached in the establishment of a definite scale-system like that of Greece. Thus Greek music may be taken as the lowest stage of organisation in the European history of the art. It was not unscientific, for it had the modes, with their elaborate subtleties of diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic, but we may search its records in vain for any distinctive recognition of musical form. Its effect, to judge from the allusions in Plato and Aristotle, seems to have been wholly emotional, and its intellectual basis was not artistic but mathematical in character.
The Greek modes were revised by Claudius Ptolemy, and on the basis of his revisions was established the system of the mediaeval church. In it the claims of the medium began to receive further attention, and the next step was the gradual elaboration of counterpoint, that is, the combination of simultaneous voice parts, each independent, but all conducing to a result of uniform and coherent texture. Starting from the crude origins of descant and faux-bourdon, the new method steadily grew and developed, through Dunstable, Dufay, Josquin, and a host of other great writers, until it reached the second universal landmark in the magnificent climax of Palestrina. If the ecclesiastical modes had been final, music would never have advanced beyond the "Missa Papae Marcelli,"
and the "aeterna Christi Munera."
But the modes were not final. For certain scientific reasons, into which it is here needless to enter, they were incapable either of a common tonality or of a coherent system of modulation. Hence, while the organisation of harmony could be carried by the ecclesiastical composers to a high degree of perfection, the organisation of key lay outside their horizon altogether. And while they were busy, like the schoolmen, in "applying a method received on authority to a matter received on authority," the unrecognised popular musicians, who had never heard of Ptolemy, and cared nothing about counterpoint, were writing tunes in which our modern scale-system begins to make a tentative and hesitating appearance. It is not too much to say that the dances collected in Arbeau"s Orchesographie come nearer to our sense of tonality than all the ma.s.ses and madrigals that contemporary learning could produce. In a word, the growth of harmony belongs to the Church, the growth of key to the people.
Then came the most important dynamic change in all musical history: the Florentine revolution of 1600. Its ostensible object was frankly dramatic--the revival of Greek tragedy under such altered conditions as were implied by the change of language and civilisation: its real importance was that it destroyed the convention of the modes, and called tonality from the country fair to the theatre and the concert-room. For a while, no doubt, the dramatic ideal overpowered everything else, and even the Church left off writing ma.s.ses and took to oratorios instead; but when pure music rea.s.serted itself, it found an entirely new set of problems waiting for solution. Harmony had to be organised, not on the basis of the mode, but on the basis of the modern scale, and thus had to take into account a question of key-relationship which had never fallen within the scope of the ecclesiastical period. And hence followed a line of development beginning about the time of the younger Gabrieli, and pa.s.sing through the great choral composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until the third landmark of our musical history was attained in the person of John Sebastian Bach. His polyphony, as applied to the emotional expression of his time, is simply the best of which the art of music is capable. Given the phrases which he employed as subjects, the human mind cannot conceive their being treated with a more complete harmonic perfection.
Meantime, ever since the floodgates had been opened by the audacious hand of Florentine amateurs, another and more copious stream of tendency had been flowing along a separate channel. The new tonality had not only made a great difference in the harmonic aspect of music, it had virtually opened a new field by suggesting the first possibilities of form and structure. Composers began gradually to see that the equalisation of the scales afforded the material for a more perfect and coherent system of design: modulation became a reality, and with it the recognition of different tonics in successive paragraphs or cantos of the composition. They therefore took the simplest effects of contrast, as presented by the dances and Volkslieder of the people, and proceeded to develop them into a fuller diversity of organisation. At first, no doubt, they went on something of a wrong tack: the structural problem received a divided attention, for polyphony was still regarded as paramount, but yet in the chamber music of Corelli and Vivaldi, and in the harpsichord pieces of Scarlatti, Couperin and Rameau may be traced a continuous effort not only to make the form distinct, but to make it in some degree progressive. And on the death of Bach, when polyphony had reached a point from which it seemed impossible to advance, music turned almost entirely to questions of structure, and for the next two generations set itself deliberately to perfect the outline of the sonata, the quartett, and the symphony. This helps to explain the fact, otherwise inexplicable, that Bach"s influence on the latter half of the eighteenth century was practically non-existent. Partly, of course, we may account for it by remembering that musical art pa.s.sed, for a time, into another country, but it is a still stronger reason that composition was occupied with another set of problems. The organisation of harmony is that of simultaneous strains; the organisation of key is that of successive pa.s.sages; and it is obvious that the perfection of the one will afford but little a.s.sistance to the development of the other. And so the line of structural evolution pa.s.sed through Haydn and Mozart, until, in the work of Beethoven, it also attained a temporary climax and culmination. With him, then, the treatment of the musical medium may be held to have reached its fourth princ.i.p.al landmark.
After Beethoven came the Romantic School, the historical importance of which can roughly be epitomised under two heads. First, it widened the range of emotional expression, and so affected music from the standpoint of the idea. Secondly, it returned to Bach, and adapted his polyphonic system to the requirements of the new musical language. But as its artistic strength was its reverence for Bach, so its artistic weakness was its neglect of Beethoven. On the polyphonic side it maintained the old traditions, and even, in some respects, advanced upon them, since the more "romantic" the idea to be expressed, the more difficult is pure polyphony in its expression. But, on the structural side, it was distinctly retrograde, and either confined itself to the smaller and more rudimentary forms, or, when it attempted those of a larger scope, treated them with something of negligence and preoccupation. Berlioz no doubt took Beethoven for his master, but it was as a poet, not as a musician. And the other great masters of the school, for all their genius and their earnestness and their love of beauty, are yet, in questions of form, but the minor Socratics of our nineteenth century music, carrying on, each from his own standpoint, some one part of the previous tradition, but neither interpreting nor advancing its full and entire content.
A special word may be said on the relation of Wagner to this general course of musical development. As a dramatist, he stands in some degree aloof: his art is a different art, his methods are different methods, his ancestry may be traced to Shakespear and aeschylus as readily as to Bach and Palestrina. The explanation of his work is always the dramatic explanation: his structure is determined not by principles of pure music, but by the exigencies of the scene. Hence, apart from such a secondary point as orchestration, it is only in his splendid, reckless, audacious polyphony that he has really enlarged the treatment of musical technique. His most enthusiastic followers claim for him that he has "killed the symphony," a statement which, though it is radically untrue, is enough to dissociate him from an art that recognises the symphony as its crowning achievement. The drama of the future will accept him as one of its greatest potentates: the music of the future will see in him the lord of a single province, whose government has in one respect a.s.sisted the consolidation of the others.
What, then, is required to sum up the tendencies of the present age, and to bring Music to the fifth landmark in its history. Surely a composer, who, while he maintains and develops the harmonic traditions of the Romantic School, shall even more devote himself to the restoration and evolution of musical structure: who shall take up the cla.s.sical form where Beethoven left it; who shall aid to free it from the conventions which that greatest of all masters did not wholly succeed in loosening; who shall carry it to a further stage and raise it to a fuller organisation. And such a composer has appeared. So far as concerns the technical problem of composition--and it must be remembered that this is at present the only topic under discussion--the work of Brahms is the actual crown and climax of our present Musical art. He is in exact and literal truth "der der kommen musste:" the man for whom Music has been waiting. In him converge all previous streams of tendency, not as into a pool, stagnant, pa.s.sive, and motionless, but as into a n.o.ble river that receives its tributary waters and bears them onward in larger and statelier volume.
Tintoret claimed "the drawing of Michael Angelo and the colouring of t.i.tian": Brahms, in like manner, may claim the counterpoint of Bach and the structure of Beethoven. And not only has he entered into the inheritance of these two composers; he has put their legacies to interest, and has enriched the world with an augmentation of their wealth. He is no mere Alexandrine, no grammarian poet, content to acc.u.mulate with a patient and laborious industry the gifts that have been lavished by a previous age; the artistic heritage is not won by right of labour, and its dynasty only falls to these who are born in the purple. Erudition, in short, may copy the work of Genius; but Genius alone can develop it.
Are we to say, then, that Brahms is a more consummate master of his medium than Bach or Beethoven? By no means; but, in consequence of their work, his medium is more plastic than theirs. For certain historical reasons, with which the question of personal capacity has nothing to do, the key-system of Bach is rudimentary beside that of Beethoven, and the polyphony of Beethoven less perfect, perhaps, than that of Bach. To Brahms we may apply Dryden"s famous epigram, in which the force of Nature "to make a third has joined the other two." By his education he learned to a.s.similate their separate methods; by his position, in the later days of Romance, he found a new emotional language in established use; by his own genius he has made the forms wider and more flexible, and has shown once more that they are not artificial devices, but the organic embodiment of artistic life.
It follows, then, to maintain this statement with a few words of commentary and ill.u.s.tration. And, first, we may take the polyphonic problem, not only because it has some chronological priority, but because the system which it implies is more limited and more readily exhaustible. Now the essential value of Bach"s work in this respect is that, in addition to "writing free and characteristic parts for the several voices in combination," he "made the harmonies, which were the sum of the combined counterpoints, move so as to ill.u.s.trate the principles of harmonic form, and thus give to the hearer the sense of orderliness and design, as well as the sense of contrapuntal complexity,"[55] and since there are no other aims to which polyphonic writing can be directed, it would seem as though Bach"s achievement were final, as though it left nothing for future generations to add. But a somewhat closer reflection will show that there are at least two points in which a possibility of progress may be admitted.
One is the immense growth of Instrumental Music, which has virtually brought with it a new material for treatment. Bach"s part-writing is generally vocal in basis, the work of an organist who feels the presence of his choir and his congregation; even his concerti are not far removed from the canzonas which were specified as "buone da cantare e suonare."
But after him came a generation of composers who recognised and brought into fuller use the peculiar character and flexibility of the strings, and thus opened out a new region, which it has been one of the privileges of Brahms to explore. Thus while, in his organ compositions, in his motetts, in the choruses of the Requiem, Brahms has closely followed the methods of Bach (though even here he solves one or two problems which were left untouched by the earlier master), in such examples as the two string Sestetts and the Symphony in E minor, he adapts those methods to a material which he had inherited from a later ancestry. And here it may be noticed that his simplest accompaniments are always characteristic. Even the arpeggio figure, which is usually the easiest and most careless of all harmonic devices acquires in him a special significance and import.