IX
We cannot close even a brief essay without some reference to the effect of some other mechanical devices, such as the gramophone, the piano-player, and wireless, and a note on that all important subject, commercial art.
The appreciation of no art shows such great possibilities of expansion in the near future as music. During the last few years it has been released from its most irksome bonds and is now just beginning to stretch its limbs. For technique has been the curse of music, and now it is becoming possible to gain enjoyment without exercising one’s executive and interpretive powers.
Musicians are of two classes—executive and appreciative—those who perform and those who listen. True enjoyment of music belongs to the latter, just as true enjoyment of books, of pictures, of plays is the reward of the reader and the spectator—not of the writer, the painter,the actor, or the composer.Theirjoy is of another order—it is the joy of creation.
Without the assistance of modern mechanical aids the music-lover had either to listen to the music-making of his friends or of players at a concert, or he had to attempt to interpret for himself. The first was inconvenient and unsatisfactory. The selection of music was not his own but that of others; the time and place were not of his choosing. The alternative was even worse, since his appreciation was limited by his interpretive powers and marred by his deficiencies. The owner of a modern player-piano has the whole world of piano-music and a wealth of arrangements at his command. Even the lover of orchestral, instrumental, or vocal music has access, through the gramophone and the wireless, to a passable substitute for the real thing.
What effect will this have upon pianoforte music? In the first place, we shall gradually rid ourselves of misplaced pride in the amateur’s very limited technical powers. We shall no longer praise So and So for being able to play Chopin’sStudiesafter a fashion, but shallconsider him either a fool for wasting his time trying when he could much more easily enjoy Cortot’s performance of them, or sympathize with the poverty that prevents his purchasing this mechanical aid. Secondly, we shall not waste time and kill natural love of music by the dreary routine of “teaching the piano.” Instead, we shall teach appreciation. If all the energy spent in acquiring a very inadequate technique were diverted to the real business of appreciation, we should be a more musical nation. Thirdly, we shall cease to tolerate the incompetent player now so often foisted upon us or even sought for want of any better, and the ostentatious “virtuoso” executant.
Before very long the piano-player will cost no more than an ordinary piano; in fact the ordinary instrument will no longer be manufactured. In our schools “piano-playing” will be erased from the curriculum and classes in appreciation substituted.
But what about non-pianoforte music? There is a big difference. While the piano-player produces exactly the same kind of musical tone as the hand-played instrument, the gramophone, or the wireless,does not reproduce at all exactly the timbre, quality or volume of the instruments recorded. It provides not the real thing but a substitute, which, though excellent, can never be entirely satisfactory. We do not care to assert dogmatically what science will or will not make possible in the future; at least, however, it is extremely doubtful that a mechanical violin as adequate as the mechanical piano will ever be invented. Wind instruments depend less upon human manipulation—the organ, for instance, is nothing but an imperfect essay in this direction. This is but idle speculation, however. As a practical proposition we may say that the perfect mechanical reproduction of music will be confined to the pianoforte.
So we are left with these problems. Shall we be tempted to seek the shadow and lose the substance—listen in often, but never attend an orchestral or chamber concert or a violin or vocal recital? The chances are that we shall, unless opportunities to enjoy the latter are greater than at present. Considerable loss would result. The ears of the next generation would become attuned to a diminishedvariety of tonal experiences, for one thing. For another, the psychological, even physical effects of large gradations in the volume of tone, such as can be experienced only in the concert-room, should not willingly be relinquished. And, again, it is not by any means the same thing to listen to music in the company of others, in the atmosphere of the concert-room, as it is to enjoy music in solitude. We may sometimes prefer the latter, but that fact does not remove the difference.
The second problem is that, though there is little physical or moral good to be found in solo instrumental playing, such gooddoesresult from singing and partaking in concerted music. There is no good reason why we should play the piano—rather than listen to it; but there are many reasons why we should sing or play in chamber or orchestral music. By all means let us listen to more music of all kinds; increased facilities for listening should not, however, decrease our desire to perform when performance can benefit us.
Taking all these considerations together we may assume:
(1) that pianoforteplayingwill declinethough much more pianoforte music will be enjoyed.
(2) that much of the practical energy now devoted to the pianoforte will be directed to the study of other instruments.
(3) that, unless our musical life is to increase in volume but diminish in quality, more and not less concert-going and concerted instrumental playing and choral singing must be provided.
Books, music, pictures, sculpture, however, minister to only a small part of the artistic needs of the community. By far the most widespread, though not necessarily the most valuable, art-products are those which we may describe as commercial, or industrial, or, better, “applied” art. Only a minority, even in this age, concern themselves with the first-named, but we all wear clothes, use furniture, live, work, play, and worship in buildings, eat and drink out of vessels, and so on, through every one of our daily occupations. Into each of these art can, does, and must enter. We may wear clothes to keep us warm, but they must be either ugly or otherwise—their existence implies artistic properties, negative or positive. If they are ugly, we cannot avoid their ugliness,though it may dull our appreciative faculties. Of course this is true of all things. Every object, every occurrence almost, has its artistic aspect. With every manufactured article, every human production, however, this artistic quality is within our control. When we make a cup, a hat, or a church, we can make it as beautiful or as ugly as we like, subject to certain limitations, some of them real, some imaginary. But we must be sufficiently interested in its artistic value. It will seldom exist spontaneously, without conscious effort.
That is, of course, the first and most powerful limitation.Often we don’t care.And so long as we don’t care we shall receive only according to our deserts. For the second limitation is that manufactured goods are intended primarily for utility, and the incentive for their production is profit. So long as we are content to take the ugly but useful, so long as our artistic discrimination does not give added commercial value to the beautiful, we can have no right to expect the manufacturer to bother. He is not an apostle of art, but a business-man. If we show him, as a business-man, that we desire a well-proportionedjug and will refuse to buy a clumsy one, he will, acting on business principles, supply the saleable article. So far the remedy is in our own hands. Thirdly, many manufacturers have an unjustifiably low opinion of public taste, and honestly believe that the majority like tawdry things when, in truth, they accept them for want of anything better or because they are cheaper.
Fourthly, however,whenthere is sufficient desire for the beautiful it need not cost any more, butuntilthere is, itwill, since, it will be produced in response to a minority demand. This is a much more serious limitation than it should be, for several reasons.
(1) Popular taste has, since the initiation of the industrial era, steadily improved, but the artistic standard of manufacturers is at least a stage behind. There are at least two causes for this: (a) the manufacturer can judge popular taste only by experiment, and this is, on the average, bound to involve expense, and (b) when the machinery and processes of manufacture are well established and smoothly running, changes must entail extra costs and reorganization, rangingfrom the installation of fresh plant to the employment of new designs. For this reason alone the more artistic article must cost more, excepting in those industries (such as the manufacture of dress-material) where change and fashion are normal conditions. In other industries where the product is less subject to variation (e.g. pottery—a firm could produce and sell exactly the same cups and saucers for an unlimited period), the extra cost is necessarily more to be expected.
(2) The manufacturer may, and alas too often does, appreciate the commercial value of beauty andtradesupon it. That is to say, he manufactures ugly wall-paper and pleasant wall-paper, at practically the same cost. Hecouldbe content to make the normal profit from both, but he realizes that many people don’t want to disfigure their walls and will pay more for a pleasing design. He makes them do so, since this behaviour is profitable to him. In this he cannot be censured—rather should we praise him for not doing it more often. Nevertheless, such action will be a drag upon artistic progress, and if it can be prevented at all even the manufacturer in the long run will benefit.Let all who can afford the more beautiful production purchase it, but let them pay the extra price under protest. The manufacturer must be made to realize that it is anti-social to make a profit out of beauty, when by so doing he condemns the less fortunate man to suffer the ugly. As the business-man is at heart as much interested as any other person in the welfare of his fellow-men, this might have some influence. And an independent inquiry (conducted by, say, a group of art-students or a University) might achieve a little. They would try to show us—if they could—why a fabric which is disfigured by a vile design can be cheaper than a plain unprinted cloth, why there is truth in the saying we all hear frequently, “Oh, yes, you all admire the plain, simple costume or frock, but it’s so much more expensive, you know,” and the like.
Fifthly, industrial designers have not received due recognition and are not well organized in relation to the industries. The designer is not always as well acquainted with the special qualities and limitations of the material to which his designs are to be applied as he might be; the manufacturer does not oftenenough realize the importance of the designer; and the young artist is apt to despise design—naturally, because personal public recognition is never awarded to the designer—and the best men prefer more pretentious if more precarious fields. These shortcomings would, however, be removed as a matter of course were the other limitations to be removed.
Great improvements in industrial art cannot, however, be expected until the general education and artistic appreciation of the public has developed. Applied art will always move more slowly than fine art, since the utility-factor will ever bring about a conflict of expediency versus ideals.
Architecture presents special difficulties, because it is at once aggressive and unavoidable, and because it depends upon environment. In other words, though we may, if we can afford, eschew the ugly pot, tawdry furniture, and (so far at least as our indoor life is concerned) garish clothing, we cannot avoid buildings. They form a large part of our environment and influence our mental and bodily health. Those who live in dirty, flat-fronted, unbroken streets have to resistactively their environment if they would avoid dirty, drab, monotonous lives. Those who daily traverse roads consisting of disorderly jumbles of architectural misfits lose the sense of serenity, order, and fitness they might gain in happier surroundings. The second of the points mentioned before is that no building can be judged apart from its surroundings. An essential of every work of art is that its parts shall form a well-balanced whole, each detail being subordinated to the general effect, which must convey a sense of completeness. Now, until recently we have (with occasional exceptions) failed to realize that the unit of architecture, so far as outward appearance is concerned, is not the individual building but the whole street, everything, in fact, which is in view from any one point. No one would suggest that the wall of a picture-gallery was artistic because the individual pictures were good, and yet, although much more care and artistry is devoted to hanging pictures than is spent in arranging the contiguity of buildings, we seem to be quite satisfied with haphazard town-planning. Yet all who sorrow at the wilful waste anddestruction of the beautiful must lament when they see, as they must often do, noble and beautiful edifices or the simple but refined works of architects, who as a rule devote more love and receive less incentive than any other art workers, ruined by their surroundings.
But how, one may ask, can this be avoided? Adjoining plots of land may belong to different owners, contiguous buildings are built for different purposes, by those with much or little to spend, designed by different architects—how can one expect them to conform to one artistic scheme? Perhaps that is too much to expect. Can we even ask that they should not be violently opposed to one another, not mutually destructive? Yes. But this can be secured in only one way. Local authorities must be given, or must take upon themselves, the duty of controlling building operations in all public places. They would not, and could not, be arbitrary: they would need to consider many difficulties, and they could not rightly impose any restrictions which would make the construction of suitable premises impossible within the reasonable means of those for whom they werebeing built. All they could undertake would be to co-ordinate proposed work, to advise, and to prohibit flagrant affronts to public good taste. Let a local committee composed of the best architects and the hardest-headed business-men in the town, with a disinterested man of taste—a parson, a farmer, a writer—as chairman, be formed. Much good could be done in this way.
In domestic architecture we cannot expect much attention to be given to artistic matters in these days when it is difficult to obtain a sufficiency of houses of any kind. Nevertheless, there is one suggestion with great practical possibilities. It is that of the novelist Mr. J. J. Connington, who proposes that instead of standardization of design small parts capable of being erected in a large number of ways should be standardized. The readers who are interested are referred toNordenholt’s Millionfor further particulars of this most interesting idea.