"The greatest Masterpieces in Music will be found to contain sensuous, emotional, and rational factors, and something beside: some divine element of life by which they are animated and inspired"W. H. Hadow
"The greatest Masterpieces in Music will be found to contain sensuous, emotional, and rational factors, and something beside: some divine element of life by which they are animated and inspired"W. H. Hadow
It may be interesting for a little space to consider the conditions under which Inspiration operates, for, like any other faculty, it is subject to the control of law. We have already emphasised the universality of vibration and the call of like to like, but the theme will bear some further elaboration.
We adventure into the study of sound and its laws and we find that all sounds are propagated by means of waves. These proceed in circular fashion, as do the ripples upon the still surface of a lake into which a stone has been thrown. Further, these waves are of differing rates. Middle C, on the piano, for instance, is made by waves that reach us at the rate of about 256 per second. As sound travels roughly at 1,100 feet to the second, it is clear that the wave of this note is something over four feet from crest to crest. The wave of a note an octave higher would be double the rate and half the length. In addition to this there may be big waves and little waves travelling at the same rate, and also the actual shape of the waves may differ very widely. Thus waves have points of similarity and yet their infinite variety, as do human beings.
This variety in the shape of the waves results in the difference in timbre between various tones. Nobody could fail to distinguish between the sound of a note played on a penny whistle and the same note given out on a violin or a cornet: yet the actual rate of wave would be the same in each case. The reason is that no tone is a pure fundamental tone, there are always super-added a number of other tones, termed the overtones. These are, to the original tone, exactly what the flavouring is to the pudding. You have your fundamental tone and you can add your overtones to taste: you can flavour with the penny whistle, the violin, or the cornet timbre to suit yourself. But according to the flavouring, so is the shape of the wave. Isolated fundamental tones are apt to be colourless and monotonous, like the diapason work on an organ. The organist is able to flavour his fundamental tone at will, by the stops he draws to add to it: he has a special supply of "mixtures" which sound truly dreadful and impossible by themselves, but these in combination with the fundamental go to the making of a successful timbre. Carrots, by themselves, are not a Christmas diet, but we understand that they go to improve the flavour of the festive pudding.
In some such way as this thoughts are tuned, and from the thoughts we think, the desires we entertain, and the aspirations which fill our souls, the timbre of our life is determined. No one is fundamentally and wholly good or bad, we have all of us our overtones, and some of us have very curious mixtures which go to make us what we are. But just as the gramophone will take in all the wonderful complexity of sound waves which are sent out by a whole orchestra of instruments, and will combine these into one wavy line on the record—a kind of compound wave containing "all the elements so mixed"—so also it is with ourselves. All the thought elements are so mixed in us that as we go through life we vibrate to a note that is unique, compounded as it is of all those inner thoughts and emotions that are so exclusively our own. To those who sound the same note, or one that is in harmony, we are akin. We meet them for the first time, and in a moment we have known them for years, perhaps always: we play unison or harmony in our sympathetic attunement. On the other hand, sounding our persistent middle C on our little journey, perhaps we come up against an equally insistent C sharp: excellent notes, each of them—yet there promises but doubtful harmony. Keep to your own key, and be happy.
Whatever note we sing is an invisible, and yet most potent, influence in our lives. We may deem that our thoughts do not matter overmuch, and that it is only deeds that count. Heresy and mistake. Thoughts make us or mar us. Sympathy ensures that we are surrounded and encompassed by that which we ourselves attract. There is a law of consonance, and we are responsible for things in a way that but few realise. This note we sing, this mirror of our personality, this invisible force attracts our friends: change the note—the personality—and we inevitably alter the friendships which were determined thereby. This same note selects the clothes we wear, the things we eat, it chooses the books we read and the avocations we pursue. It is reflected in the pictures on our walls, and in the furniture which decorates our rooms. It determines the prospects which are before us, just as it has attracted the appropriate difficulties and trials that we have left behind. It marries us, and eventually it buries us. Sometimes our overtones of desires or greed inter us long before our lease of life is due to expire. But perhaps most important of all, it determines and selects the Inspiration we are able to receive.
Thoughts of every kind beat upon our minds, as the waves lap the seashore, but we are only able to respond to those that call and awaken some sympathetic answer within us. The heart that is pure can live in an ocean of impurity, and yet remain unsullied: but the character with anger implanted within will find that anger blazing out in echo and answer to a hundred provocations a day. Hatred means nothing, in temptation or response, to a heart overflowing with love. Thus this attunement is at once an avenue for our assault, or our sure shield of defence, according as its note determines. A low tone is an ever-present danger, and a high one a permanent safeguard.
Inspiration is therefore only possible to us at our own level, and unless we are mentally attuned to a high note the inspiration itself will reach no lofty measure. It is true that a mood of exaltation, of earnest prayer or aspiration, may enable us to catch a glimpse of the higher vision, but under these circumstances it is apt to be elusive and fragmentary. The condition of any permanent influx is that the attunement should be habitually and continuously lofty. When this condition is at length reached we are not so very far from that "prayer without ceasing," which most truly means "the practice of the presence of God."
The avenue of inspiration is the subconscious part of the mind, that part of us which in fact constitutes the greater self. In ordinary life this department of mind is more or less shielded by the consciousness. It would retain the permanent impress of every idea it came across, were it not that the consciousness off-hand and summarily rejects a number of impressions which might otherwise prove detrimental. One man calls another a fool, but this one knows very well that he is nothing of the kind, and so the idea carries very little weight in its record on the subconscious. On the other hand, if there were no protective mechanism of this nature, the subconscious might very well accept the statement and believe that its owner certainly was the fool he had been dubbed. The effect, therefore, of consciousness is thus to limit and reduce this sensitiveness and susceptibility of the subconscious part of mind.
As the consciousness passes out of action, as in dream states, brown studies, and in the induced sleep of hypnosis, this sensitiveness and activity of the subconscious gradually emerges. The normal sleep, or as Iamblichus calls it—"The night-time of the body"—is, to continue his remark, "the day-time of the soul." Thus it is so often in the Bible stories that we find the phrase—"The Lord—or the Angel of the Lord—appeared, in a dream." These waves of thought and Inspiration are continually lapping the margin of our subconscious selves, both by day and by night, leaving the dream-traces of their impress as the ripple leaves its marks upon the sand. It is the connection between this under-mind and the consciousness that is so frequently at fault, so that we remain unaware of the tidings. Usually the consciousness is kept so busily engaged that it never has a minute to itself, and so peace, quiet, and receptivity are unknown. The subconscious tries hard to get in its modest word occasionally and edgeways, but the consciousness rarely stops talking: the whole business is one-sided. Plenty of material goes from the consciousness to the subconscious, but comparatively little is able to come in the reverse direction.
This, of course, is a distorted method of existing: there should ever be in the mind a process corresponding to the in-breathing and out-breathing of the lungs. The active and acquisitive consciousness procures the mental food: the subconscious stores this up, assimilates it, and turns it into a kind of inner mentor or conscience which in due course issues its orders and offers its advice. But just as we are said to stifle the "still, small voice," so also do we strangle our possible inventions and discoveries, and so do we cause our inspirations to remain still-born. This is the price we pay for our mad rush after the things that do not matter. We have said that no aspirant ever lacks a teacher, but we would further say that when a person is content to make use of the subconscious powers he possesses, he will find that the knowledge and the inspiration he earnestly seeks will be granted him. "With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the heart of things."[10]The acorn is already in the garden of the mind, we need only to provide the requisite conditions for growth, and the oak tree will then follow as a matter of course.
Things grow and fashion themselves in this under-mind, as the novelist and dramatist will testify. The artist finds his picture forming itself before his inner vision, and so the musician hears his composition. "It comes," they say: so does the oak. But like the oak it can only come when conditions allow, and one of the main conditions is that the consciousness should not rule the roost, and hold sway and dominance to the exclusion and smothering of the still, small voice. "Be still, and know."
Many things and conditions clog communication from the under-mind to the consciousness. The well-being of the body is of the utmost importance: a clogged and constipated body is no medium for inspiration. High living kills the genius of inspiration, and masterpieces are more often produced in the garret than where luxury rules. Success is an even greater test of true genius than is poverty. A bilious attack will put a stop to the most perfervid outpourings of genius, and a common cold in the nose will play havoc with a work of Art. An unstable temperament will have its moments of exaltation and its hours of despair: this is sensitiveness uncontrolled. Sensitiveness is indeed the stock-in-trade of all who work in the temple of Art, but unless it be controlled by reins of more than ordinary strength it is a very doubtful blessing. We must ever be able to keep our souls in tune so that they afford no echo to the undesirable. Indulgence of the body in any form hampers its work as an instrument of the spirit, while self-discipline (tho' by no means to the verge of asceticism) increases its sensitiveness, and occasional quiet periods afford the opportunity for the subconscious treasures to reveal themselves.
On the mental side, selfishness is one of the most complete and effectual deadeners of inspiration. The delicate intimations of finer things can make no impression on a hide-bound mind. As Trine somewhere puts it—"The man who is always thinking of himself generally looks as if he were thinking of something disagreeable." The self-centred mind is a mind closed to other things, and to this extent it is nearly always unbalanced and distorted. Under these conditions such inspiration as it may receive is liable to be of an uncouth and bizarre nature. Hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness tune the mind to very undesirable levels, and at this level it will come in touch with the whole body of similar undesirable thought that is circulating around it. It both gives out and receives. Such a mind is indeed doing active work in the world, but in the wrong direction. Nevertheless, the individual who sets himself to work positively and constructively to utilise inspiration, as it assuredly may be used, is in some degree helping his generation and becoming a prophet, and maybe a saviour.
THE INTERPRETER
"I like joy, for it is life. I preach joy, for it alone gives the power of creating useful and lasting work"Jaques Dalcroze
There are, roughly speaking, three classes of interpreters in Music: performers or executants, composers, and teachers. The function of each of these is, by a special sensitiveness, to apprehend the message of spirit, and then, by their own technique and in their own particular way, to pass it on for the benefit of others. In the body the nervous system, which is the link between spirit and matter, serves somewhat the same purpose. Spirit is too tenuous to be able to act directly upon the comparatively inert matter of the body, but through the medium of the brain and nervous system it makes contact with spirit at the one end, and at the other the nerves control the muscular system, which effects the necessary and desired movements. Thus the spirit in music is sensed by the artist in solitude and communion, and is given out by him to the multitude in public.
The artist thus necessarily has two sides to his work, the inner and the outer, the artistic and the technical. No amount of technique alone will ever make an artist, nor will artistic or spiritual perception by itself enable the message to secure adequate treatment. Both sides are indispensable. But there has been far too much worship of mere technique in Music, until at times even the fact that there has been any message at all has been overlooked. In times, happily now gone by, a simple melody which perhaps by itself might have conveyed a homely message, has been smothered under showers of variations, decked out in wearisome arpeggios, and entangled in meaningless scales, until it has reminded one of nothing so much as a vulgar and greatly over-dressed woman: and yet this has been looked upon as music. Technique is indeed necessary, but only as a means to an end. Directly it begins to obscure the meaning, or is developed for its own sake without reference to its task, it is missing the mark. It puts itself on a par with the stupidity that leads a man to undertake to play the piano for twenty-four hours without stopping.
So many hours' scales per diem would be warranted to drive the spirit of music to distraction: the utmost perfection in scales does not of necessity lead to any illuminating message. It cannot be too strongly urged that the feeling and the emotion are the real things, and that the object of technique is simply that these may be expressed in the best and most intelligible manner. Indeed the artist himself is secondary in importance to the message, it is the spirit that works in and through him that must ever come first. The true artist never seeks to obtrude, or to make his own personality the first thing. He will, of course, endeavour to make his technique fully equal to all demands that can be made of him, but he will realise that he is doing his work in trust. "No MAN ever did any great work yet: he became a free channel through which the eternal powers moved."[11]In thus working the artist shines, as does the electric bulb, by reason of the unlimited power which according to his own measure may flow through him: and this limitless power may be relied upon to secure its own effect, if only the steward be faithful.
Contrast the work done in this spirit with that accomplished under the stimulus of financial gain, or for the end of mere selfish display. The latter is a species of artistic prostitution. Superficially the performances may seem something alike, the difference may be intangible, but it exists and is real. Time is ever the winnower. Things always prove their survival value, that is to say the real things last, while the shams are sooner or later extinguished. It is necessary, no doubt, to make a living, no one will be so foolish as to overlook this elementary fact: but the mere aim of making a living only too often obscures the actual meaning of life. Balanced and informed views of life work, through a law of consonance, to ensure a corresponding equilibrium in the outer circumstances: in other words, if we seek first the inner Kingdom, all these things, financial means and so forth, will be added. But there are thousands who drive for the financial and other incidental ends, and as a matter of fact miss the Kingdom entirely. To find the personal centre of gravity in the world is to master life, to fail to find it is to be mastered by life.
A performance that has self as its central motive can never ring true or achieve any lasting success. Inferior music may be decked out by a capable performer to sound impressive or pretentious, or be invested with a glamour which is largely fictitious, but this surely amounts to false pretences. It is simply a method of misleading the public. Such a performer has misconceived his function, which should be to act as interpreter, guide, philosopher, and friend to those who follow his efforts. What is to be said to the singer of royalty ballads? Here is a vocalist who receives, maybe, two or three guineas for each dozen times he sings particular songs, the publisher of the song in question being his paymaster. Of this type of song a contemporary Musical Journal states:—"Every serious musician knows it, and, scenting the boredom, tries to avoid it. It is highly sentimental, it moves within a limited scope, emotionally and technically, and it deals with a few well-worn subjects. Gardens, spring, sunshine, flowers—these are favourite themes. If only, the singer tells us, he could have a cottage on the hillside, with honeysuckle round the door (this appears to be of great importance), heaven would indeed be there." These MAY be compositions of artistic worth, in which case financial gain and true musical interest consort together: but on the other hand they may NOT. Which, then, is to receive the first consideration? Is the artist to refuse the guineas because the ballad possesses no intrinsic worth, or is he to pocket the cash and deck out with all the devices of his Art the twopenny-ha'penny shop-tune, and make it sound something like the real thing? No doubt under these circumstances the song may achieve a certain measure of appreciation. Some of the audience will buy it, and only when they come to try it at home will they realise what feeble stuff it truly is. The artist has been paid to betray those who trusted in him and followed his taste. In this he may have been eminently successful, but what is the value of such success? And what of Art—and Music?
Wherein is the particular glory of a top note, or the specific value of a compass that extends a note-and-a-half beyond that of anyone else? Why should it be considered meritorious to be able to bang louder or to scramble more quickly over the keys than one's competitors? Yet we have certainly met singers and players who gloried in such accomplishments. A performer may also know every device and trick of the trade, he may be well aware of what will go down with his audience, he may play up to all their little foibles and weaknesses and give them exactly what they want: we can indeed scarcely quarrel with this. But so many are apparently content to allow the matter to remain on this lowly level. A singer who is thus able to play upon his audience and hold them in his grip can surely also lead them up to the appreciation of better things.
An audience is normally receptive and impressionable, they come expecting to receive satisfaction and enjoyment for the money they have expended in the purchase of a ticket, or because they have some other interest in the proceedings. Presumably if they were not interested they would not be there. This element of expectation stimulates their receptivity, and aids the performer in his work of giving out. Whatever the audience receives, by the mere fact of its making some impression on the delicate nerve-stuff of the brain, is retained and becomes actually a part of them. Thus the artist is definitely building the minds of his audience: he is forming their taste, and giving them that material in mind which will enable them to enjoy and understand music the better for the future. He is passing on the message according to his ability. Therefore that individual who is merely seeking for compass, technique, press notices, or his fee, shows that he has not appreciated the elements of his task. Being thus in search of all the things that really do not matter, he is putting himself into a position that will ensure him a more or less comfortable mediocrity, provide he is lucky enough to escape actual failure.
We call to mind a press criticism that appeared in a first-class London daily newspaper, with reference to a singer quite unknown to fame. It stated that "every note was pure joy." Could one say anything finer than this, and would not anything added to it but serve to spoil it? It epitomises what we have here been endeavouring to express. There could be no "pure joy" apart from spirit, and in giving this forth in song the singer achieved the aim of Art. This joy would become part of the life of those who heard her, because it can never be too clearly understood that we are built of our memories, and though we seem to forget, yet these memories are absolute. So the joy that the singer gave out went to gladden the world, and that which she gave, paradoxically enough, remained with her. That which we express, by the record of that expression we tend to become.
Herein the personality of the interpreter counts for much. The music, it is true, carries its own meaning and message, but this is reinforced by the mediumship and the imagination of the performer. "Imagination is the life of art. Why so many performers give such little pleasure and leave the audience coldly critical is simply because their imagination is of the feeblest."[12]Necessarily there is always a certain coloration from the mind which transmits the message, just as the tones of two violins though played by the same hand might be different. Moreover, as a resonant instrument would amplify the sound and an inferior one would hamper it, so a greater artist would interpret a message to more effect than one less capable. The gramophone will give us the actual notes of the singer, but it depends upon ourselves as to whether we catch the real thing or not. What is actually there is the shell: there is no personality unless we ourselves build up that personality of the singer in our imagination. We must supply that which the machine lacks, or else perforce go without. When the artist is present in person we need no effort of the imagination, and though the machine can give us a personal rendering it can never offer us the personality. In much the same way the mechanical piano-player may give So-and-so's exact rendering if only we follow the requisite directions, but it is impossible for it to be the same. Two things seem alike, but one is stuffed, and the other hollow.
Personality, then, must always be a vital factor since it colours and vitalises, as well as reinforces the meaning of the music. Spirit is a fact, but a beautiful personality will invest it with all the glamour of romance. The emotion may be "pure joy" but it needs a warm heart to give it out to full effect to a coldish world. Consequently, for the beauty to shine through, the artist's personality must be finely wrought. A selfish soul might sing a love-song, but a woman would not be taken in by it—unless she thought twice: it would not ring true enough. Beauty lies in the heart of all worthy music, so the artist who studies it and lives in its atmosphere gradually builds that beauty into the life and the character: the mere expression henceforth makes it part of him through memory. So, beautiful thoughts are needful food to the mind of the artist, and no amount of cleverness in the simulation of this or that emotion will ever enable the same effect to be produced, as when beauty is reinforced by beauty. Personality counts beyond all calculation.
The music that is written shows whether its composer was an artist or a mechanic in music. "The spirit of anything which a man makes, or does, is his nature expressed in those things, and the fineness or poorness of his work and actions depends upon the way in which he feels or thinks."[13]The academic writer, steeped in his contrapuntal devices and harmonic progressions, so intent upon the orthodox resolution of his discords, is apt to produce excellent dry bones without the informing spirit. We have even heard it stated that no music publisher would deign to consider for publication a song manuscript with Mus. Doc. on the title page. Yet Parry's books of "English Lyrics" stand as permanent testimony that scholarly music may also contain the emotional and spiritual elements to infuse it with abundant life: the pity is that the combination is none too frequent. "A vast proportion of what is printed and sold as music... is meaningless, and therefore worthless."[14]Such music as is composed, or selected, for popular consumption is frankly written for this purpose of pot-boiling, and as such it settles its own fate. We need waste no tears upon it. Nor need we devote much consideration to the sentimental ballads issued by the hundred, for "if music has no further function than to appeal to the emotions, then it is nothing better than melodious nonsense."[15]Of the dance and other miscellaneous music issued broadcast some, no doubt, is genuine music, but the greater part of it is avowedly commercial in tone and intention: in any spiritual scale its weight is of the lightest.
The interpreter who works in collaboration with others, the choral singer or the orchestral performer, should be bound by the same canons of Art as the soloist. A chorus does not merely consist of a certain number of voices, any more than eleven football players constitute a team. Even the footballers must have their technique and must play with their heads as well as their feet: but to ensure success they must individually have subordinated their personal interests to that of the team, they must play in the spirit of the game. Equally so a choral singer must first have the vocal ability, then the intelligence, and furthermore the spiritual vision. His individual aims must also be subordinated in "team play," so that collectively, as individually in the case of the soloist, the purport of the music may find its due expression.
The one point to be emphasised is that, in whatever capacity the exponent and interpreter of Art be concerned, the paramount consideration must be the transmission of the artistic impulse. People do not send telegrams flying about the country except for the purpose of conveying a message: in the absence of a message there is, naturally, no telegram. It would be a step in the right direction if it were generally recognised that Art-work should be based upon somewhat the same substantial and bed-rock foundation.
THE TEACHER
"The teachers of this country have its future in their hands"William James
Ideas on the subject of the teaching of Music are changing at such a rapid rate to-day that the position of the teacher as an interpreter may well receive some consideration. The study of psychology and the many new discoveries in the realm of mind bid fair to revolutionise our conception of teaching: the old standards are fast becoming obsolete. Once the idea of education was more or less to get something into the pupil, the newer ideal is to get something out: instead of compression or repression the process is now regarded as one of expression. We aim at developing the latent faculties and exploiting the hidden resources of the mind. It is assumed that the various qualities and abilities are embodied in mind, just as the possibilities of the oak were implanted in the acorn: it is the function of the teacher to ensure the requisite conditions under which these qualities may come to fruition.
From this it is clear that the modern teacher is more occupied in teaching the pupil than the subject. The old method of grinding in scales, scales, and yet more scales until those scales had become second nature is recognised as being worse than merely futile. What can it profit a pupil if he gain the whole world of scales and lose his artistic soul? So also with other points, the centre of attention is transferred from the subject to the pupil. Furthermore, the wise teacher recognises that as music is a part of life, so the understanding of music should lead to a larger comprehension of life. There are no watertight compartments in our lives, everything is acted upon and reacts: all life is of a piece, and nothing comes out of the mind in exactly the same condition as it entered. Things become transformed and assimilated in the process of mental digestion. Consequently the discerning teacher knows that he is working in terms of life through the agency of the music. He is helping to modify, form, or transform the mind of the pupil through his memories, he is moulding his character: and his character weighs in the eternal scales. The teaching thus stands on a base that is wider than life itself, and such a teacher is invested with a dignity and worth that can never attach to the time-server or the crammer.
The Royal Academy of Music gives the Licentiate diploma for (a) teachers and (b) performers: this is a technical distinction without any real difference. It is the function of both alike to reveal and to pass on a message of spirit. The performer passes it on to an audience of many, and the teacher to a little audience of one. Teachers are "artists to whom the most priceless material has been committed."[16]There is an idea abroad that those who are not clever enough to perform can always take to teaching, but this is of course a lamentable perversion of the truth. There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit, and certainly as high a degree of spiritual perception is necessary for the teacher as for the executive artist. The teacher has merely chosen a different technique for its expression. Not so many years ago the teaching profession was known as "the refuge of the destitute," but we are changing all that with the revaluation of values which is being forced upon us by the logic of events. In course of time the old type of teacher must become as extinct as the dodo.
Effective teaching can never be done to pattern, for the simple reason that pupils are not machines or blocks of wood and cannot be turned out to sample. Every pupil is unique: he is the inheritor of a spirit which is peculiarly his own, and of a body in its endowments and proportions unlike that of anyone else, and in his nervous system he possesses special pre-dispositions and "potentially linked paths" which provide him with particular adaptabilities and traits. Were the teacher to treat every pupil alike, his scheme would probably truly fit none of them: but as a matter of fact each one of them calls for insight and special treatment. So the teacher learns from every pupil, and the experience garnered from contact with the many phases of human nature renders his judgment the surer and his sympathy the more sound. But this, quite obviously, is mind-moulding and character-building, with the emphasis laid upon the teaching of the pupil rather than the subject.
The three generally accepted divisions of mind are (a) intellect; (b) feelings; and (c) will; and in these directions the teaching of music should have far-reaching effects upon the culture and the outlook. Observation is the root of all mental growth: it supplies the mind with the necessary food for development and expansion, and according to the range and definiteness of the evidence supplied by the senses, so is the foundation laid for a good memory and a lively quality of imagination. The earliest lessons will thus be a stimulus to mental growth: the pupil will learn to take in by the eye and the ear, and what he takes in will enable him to understand and to appreciate more and yet more. He will be taught that everything in music means something, and even exercises will be invested with a meaning and a purpose of their own. Purely mechanical work has gone, never, we may hope, to return: and meaningless music is discarded in favour of that which expresses something. It may illustrate a mood or an emotion, a scene, an action, or a fairy tale—it matters not what so long as it possesses a meaning to lend it point and purpose. So right from the beginning the action of the pupil will be the expression of the emotions and ideas that hold sway in his mind.
In this connection we may quote an actual instance. A teacher writes:—"A young pupil (age 14) came for a lesson, playing Farjeon's 'Prelude and Pavane.' She had learnt the 'Prelude,' and had had one lesson, a fortnight before, on the 'Pavane.' We went through the technique, and I told her a little about the 'Pavane'—when it was danced, the derivation of the name, and so on. When she played it, she played it very, very slowly, but quite correctly and finished in detail. I asked her if she liked it quite as slowly as that, and she replied that she thought 'the Court ladies with their long dresses would not be able to dance any quicker' and that it 'sounded grander very slowly.' So I left it." This, we may add, is an illustration of method quoted by a teacher in a diploma Examination paper, but it aptly shows the new spirit. The teacher had no mind to force her own views upon the pupil. Had she insisted that the dance should be played more quickly, she might have spoiled the child's mental picture and destroyed her interest in the piece. The incident also points the way in which the pupil's observation, imagination, and powers of deduction were being stimulated, so that, as we have been endeavouring to show, the music—of value for its own sake—was also ministering to the larger end of life-growth.
The world of affairs and the world of education see to it that our intellect and will are duly and properly brushed up, they exact their penalties in default from the stupid and the invertebrate, but the feeling and emotional side of the nature is too often ignored. It is left to develop by chance instead of being nurtured by design. As a consequence a vast amount of distorted feeling exists in the world, and a very great deal of emotion is repressed. Music is at once a means of cultivating the rightful feelings towards life, and an outlet for the repressed emotions. The interpreter recognises that his true function is to serve his day and his generation, and so he places this ideal of Service in the forefront of his vision. If he substitute Selfishness he is permanently wrongly adjusted to life, and nothing can go truly right with him. He is off the lines of his spiritual evolution, and Nature will take pains to impress the fact upon him: she has her larger vision to which he must, willy-nilly, conform. The teacher, in handing on the torch, will thus be able at the very outset to point to this ideal of Service, exemplified in finding out the beauty or the meaning of the music, and in passing it on for the benefit of others in song or sound.
Repressed emotions are now recognised as a potent source of trouble, both mental and physical. In the adolescent stage of youth vital forces surge through the body, they are perhaps indefinable but they are none the less potent. "The emotions are there, and it is for us to find the way in which we can best turn them upward: the time has passed when we need or can deny their existence, or their expression."[17]These emotions cannot be permanently repressed, they are too deeply embedded in the self: they may find an outlet in the amours of youth, or in some other way. But music offers a means and a channel through which these emotions may flow in useful direction, and this is a most valuable service. Failing legitimate expression they not infrequently find an inappropriate or distorted outlet. There is discord within, and it is far better that the discord should be resolved harmoniously rather than ill, or not at all. The study of music at this period may thus result in marked benefit to the physical health in a perfectly natural manner: for to forbid any expression to these emotions would be much as if we forbade a canary to sing or a lambkin to jump. If they can be reflected in "pure joy" in song we may indeed be sure that the outlet they are finding is a happy one. The subject is a very important one, but it leads us far afield from the present scheme. The reader who is interested may find further treatment of this topic in the present writer's "The Hidden Self, and its Mental Processes."
The modern teacher has progressed beyond the stage of imposing his own standard of judgment upon the pupil. By introducing the element of musical appreciation and making the pupil familiar with a wide range of musical ideas, he will gradually build up his power of discrimination and judgment and his standard of taste. These are no fixed things, but will grow as the experience of the pupil himself grows. As his sympathy and insight also increase, so will his knowledge of the good and evil of music progress. This is a vastly different process to any arbitrary enforcement of "this is good and that is bad" standards, and indeed it is but a poor compliment to any teacher when we find pupil after pupil a more or less complete imitation of the same original.
One thing that is conspicuously lacking in the world to-day is the ability to be one's self. Suggestion and habit are ever at work to kill originality and to stifle self-reliance and initiative. Thousands can copy, few can invent. The reason may be that only the few are able and willing to go to the fountain-head of spirit, where there is the infinite variety of universal thought to be their inspiration. The many are content to live their teachers' ideas over and over again, building their lives and abilities on quite ordinary models in a quite ordinary way. In music we already possess far too many "dittos," ditto programmes, ditto compositions, ditto renderings, and ditto ideals. Praise the Lord for originality wherever it may be found. The conventional goes round and round in a circle, like a puppy after its own tail: but originality rises at each revolution and so reaches on and up, in progress like a spiral. So to-day the teacher fosters originality, shaping it with kindly criticism or helpful suggestion, but never damning it with a fatal "don't." Education's maxim to-day is "Do; but do better next time."
In this larger view of teaching, the technique, though not despised and rejected, is relegated to its proper place in the scheme of things. The cult of the head and the heart predominates, and the whole course of the instruction is an integral part of the training for life. If it be true that we are making "houses built without hands, for our souls to live in," then music is determining no small part of the architecture for the student who follows the gleam. The inspired teacher (and, without the vision, teaching must ever be the veriest drudgery) is engaged upon one of the noblest of tasks as well as one of the most responsible. We may even hope that one day the world will awaken to this fact. Incidentally teachers themselves, by thinking more nobly of their tasks, can do much to dignify their calling. They are truly in the van of progress, and "with the power of the Spirit almost untried and the possibilities of Prayer as little known, with the inheritance of Love still unclaimed and the ocean of Truth yet unexplored, life is full of an immensity of purpose."[18]
THE SOUL OF SONG
"All the hearts of men were softenedBy the pathos of his music:For he sang of peace and freedom,Sang of beauty, love, and longing:Sang of death, and life undyingIn the Islands of the Blessed,In the Kingdom of Ponemah,In the land of the Hereafter."Longfellow
"All the hearts of men were softenedBy the pathos of his music:For he sang of peace and freedom,Sang of beauty, love, and longing:Sang of death, and life undyingIn the Islands of the Blessed,In the Kingdom of Ponemah,In the land of the Hereafter."Longfellow
The power to sing is innate in practically everybody, and the number of people who are actually incapable of any musical expression through the voice is really very small. Suggestion plays an important part in this matter, for there are few children having mothers or nurses who sing to them who fail to pick up and imitate that singing. The reason is fairly clear, because every idea in mind tends to pass into action unless something intervenes to stop it: consequently the child having the idea of singing in mind, simply from having heard others sing, has the initial impulse to song. As he gradually acquires the control and co-ordination of his faculties, song will follow as a matter of course. On the other hand if the child never hears anyone sing, from where is the motor impulse to come?
Those good people who boast that they cannot sing have very often, by the simple denial of their ability, ensured a kind of mental atrophy in the function. It is quite a usual thing for us to fasten unnecessary limitations upon ourselves by refusing to believe in our own powers, and most of us have a large stock of very real inhibitions, which prevent us from doing things otherwise well within our capacity. If we do not believe we can do a thing, as a rule we do not try: or if we try, it is in a half-hearted, beaten-before-we-start kind of fashion. Thus we find that as a matter of experience things generally do turn out for us according to our belief. It is in this spirit that a man professes himself unable to tell the difference between the National Anthem and "Pop goes the Weasel." There are cases, of course, where the individual may be able to distinguish the tunes mentally, and yet may be unable to sing them correctly, or even to vary the tones of the voice according to the desired pattern: in this case the fault probably lies in a lack of the power of co-ordinating the various activities. The necessary associations between the hearing centres and the motor centres for the control of voice have not been built up. But they can be so built, and then the inability to sing vanishes. A person who can speak has the necessary machinery for song, and to say that one has "no voice" is mostly nonsense.
Many people possess quite good voices until they learn singing. Their natural aptitude, which so largely depends upon the models they may have had for imitation in the earliest days, is possibly quite excellent. Then comes the Voice Specialist on the scene with his pet theories for improving upon Nature, and he gets busy. He may have his ideas upon "breaks," registers, and a thousand other details. Perhaps he has written a book on the way in which Nature has made a botch of the voice, creating it in a number of sections like a fishing rod, specially to provide an interesting and lucrative profession for the voice trainer. On the other hand he may be wise enough to thank Heaven when he finds a good natural voice, and leave it alone. Voices when naturally used have beauty, ease, compass, and an even tone without break throughout: this, we assert, in spite of the fact that many a famous contralto possesses apparently two voices, so marked is the break. There is a technical alteration of the working of the vocal chords at a certain pitch, but with a rightly-used voice this is automatic and unfelt: the whole body is full of such wonderful adjustments. To be called upon to deal consciously with such details is generally proof that they have gone wrong. Your attention to your digestion is enforced by dyspepsia: nobody notices a perfectly acting digestion.
Some voices are expressive and carry emotion easily, while others are hard and inelastic. Some correspondence in the temperament will nearly always be found. Therefore the teacher who works at the voice (which is a means of expression of the temperament) without touching the inner characteristics, is like the man who tries to make an ill-regulated clock keep time by altering the hands. Lack of tone colour is not to be cured by cultivating a number of different sizes and shapes for the mouth and a selection of assorted smiles for the features. If a person feels sad, he will talk sadly. Carrying the same principle into song, we find that a voice naturally shows the timbre appropriate to the mood. Therefore in order to ensure proper tone colour the prime requisite is imagination and the ability vividly to call up and experience the various emotions. It will be evident that we are endeavouring to impart into vocal work precisely those same principles which we assert to be fundamental to the whole of music, namely—the importance of the idea as behind, distinct from, and manifested through, the technical means. The vocal machinery must necessarily be in first-class order, but the influence of the mind upon the body is so intimate and so extraordinary that even technical acquirement hangs to no small extent upon mental working.
Seeing that song, then, is to be the vehicle for emotion, even though that emotion be so tenuous as almost to defy verbal expression, for the most part we ally words and music. The timbre of a voice, singing tones without words, might carry a message to the sensitive, just as the inflection of a voice may be exquisite joy or suffering to a lover: but it would be insufficient to move the average hearer to any response. The reason is that there is always a dual process at work in mind: there is the sense-perception of the actual sound, and a brain-recognition of its meaning. This latter must be supplied by the hearer himself from his own imagination or experience. The non-musical multitude has neither, and is therefore unable to complete this second process of recognition. Thus the hearer hears, but does not understand. It is probably for some such reason as this that we resort to words to make the message clear. Herein lies the importance of the words themselves, and of the diction of the singer.
Quite notoriously, many singers entirely fail to make their words intelligible to the listener, and in the majority of cases this is due to insufficient stressing of the consonants. Vowel tones carry, while consonants do not. If we want to shout to anyone we call out "Hi" or "Hey": never by any chance do we try to reach them with a "P-p-p-p-p" or a "T-t-t-t-t," and for precisely this reason. If, therefore, a singer wishes his words to carry to the end of the hall he must needs exaggerate his consonants to allow for this loss in transit: the vowels will look after themselves. Then, although the balance of the words as they are uttered may be a trifle distorted, they will nevertheless reach the hearers in due proportion. Comfort in listening is greatly increased when this sense-perception is clear and unambiguous, and the brain-recognition is easy by reason of a certain familiarity. When the sense-perception is blurred, as in faulty diction, extra work is thrown on to the brain: listening then becomes a strain, and the brain is fatigued with supplying the details which it supposes the singer to have intended. The listener has, as it were, to put in his consonants for him, to dot his "i's" and cross his "t's."
Some singers distort their vowel sounds almost beyond recognition, and many pupils seem to be definitely taught to adopt the habit. Then "and" becomes "awnd," and the various words take on new disguises after the reputed Oxford model of "He that hath yaws to yaw, let him yaw." Singing is but glorified speech, it is not a thing apart, neither is there one language of the speaker and another of the vocalist. This distortion may be due to affectation or to ignorance, but in either case we could well do without it. In cases where the actual production of the voice is mechanically stiff, rigid, and therefore distorted, it is not likely that we can secure a free and flexible musical elocution. We do occasionally meet singers whose diction is delightful to hear because of its absolute freedom and complete naturalness, but these only serve to heighten by their excellence the shortcomings of the many.
Consideration of the manner in which the words are put forth leads us to the matter of the words themselves. It is difficult to find even a modicum of meaning, to say nothing of spirit, in much of the verse that achieves musical setting to-day. A critic in a London Daily some time back inquired if all our native poets were paralysed, the query being suggested by an examination of a representative batch of songs. But the poet is hardly to blame for the present state of affairs. In the wedding of words and music, the usual routine is for the author of the lyric to submit his effort to the composer for his consideration. The composer will neither select nor waste his time in setting the better class of verse because, as he says, the publishers will not look at it. The publishers will not print and issue it because, so they say, the public will not purchase it. The public might very well retort that they get precious little chance to listen to it, since royalty ballads come first: nor to come in contact with it, for the ordinary dealer does not stock it. There, then, is the vicious circle quite complete. But the poets are not paralysed, they are merely inarticulate by reason of this commercialisation of Art. At the best of times the average lyric author has a difficult and somewhat heart-breaking task to dispose of his wares, and we need not further harrow his artistic soul by suggestions of literary impotence.
It must, however, be admitted that on the whole there is an extraordinary poverty and bareness of idea and inspiration in the general run of songs: neither Nature nor Love are themes that can ever be finally exhausted while human nature remains as it is, but the treatment can be so stereotyped that it eventually wears threadbare. It is possible to become thoroughly weary of roses and gardens, and gardens of roses, gardens without roses, and gardens where we hope there will be roses. It is such a pity, too, that there are so few rhymes to "love." Yet even in dissatisfaction there exists the element of progress: if we are bored with the present style we shall demand something better, and the demand will create the supply. But to swing from bareness and boredom to the other extreme of abstruseness and complexity is no remedy: in these latter qualities there exists no special compensating virtue. Listening to a song as it is sung is very different to reading the verse at leisure. The sense of the song must be caught as it flies, the verse can be read and re-read if necessary, until its meaning be clear. It is no progress, therefore, to worship the turgid and obscure, whether in words or music, or both. We may pretend that we appreciate things because we cannot understand them, but that is only a concession to convention and a convenient way of smothering artistic conscience.
Of late an outcry has arisen, on the part of wise men in exalted station, about "beastly tunes," but surely if a tune can attain sufficient popularity to earn the picturesque adjectives of the academic, there must be some element in it which has escaped the attention of its detractors. The Southern Syncopated Orchestra, which played for some lengthy period in London a little while back, showed that popular music might yet be extremely clever and artistic in scope and performance. There were high-brow musicians who would not even go to listen to such, but preferred to condemn it unheard: the loss was emphatically that of the high-brows. Humour abounded in this little band of performers on such a strange array of instruments, and it appeared as if the players enjoyed their work no less, at any rate, than their audience. Yet their programme was full of "tunes." Is any tune in itself "beastly"? Or is it that the brain-recognition, to which we have alluded, decks out the tune in sordid or sweet trappings according to its own nature? We certainly know that in other directions we are apt to see things according to the colour of our own mental vision.
These tunes, however, that have become so popular, have the three essentials of music strongly marked: they have decided rhythm, attractive melody, and harmony at times quite good. Are we to try and attract the multitude to music by muddling up or emasculating rhythm, or by eschewing melody and banishing anything that intrigues the ear, and by supplying an harmonic scheme that awakens no brain-recognition and cannot in consequence be understood? Well, the conventional suburbanite may gush over such indeterminate and invertebrate music, saying, "Yes, isn't it just too lovely," but the rough and tumble individuals who make up most of the world will plump for the "tune" every time. Give him what he wants, and then induce him to want something better, but avoid the mistake of trying to turn him into a musical vegetarian while his meat-eating appetite has no liking for the diet.
The incongruity of some of the songs we hear sung is truly appalling: we find a charming maid, love for whom might honour any man yet born, singing "Less than the dust,... even less am I," and so on. Lies, all lies, even though she lie melodically with charm and with apparent conviction. We have passionate love-songs sung by guileless individuals who would be inexpressibly shocked if you explained to them the meaning of the sentiment to which they had been giving utterance. There are operatic scenas, dealing with abduction and all sorts of uncomfortable situations, and again youngsters declaim of their somewhat indecorous emotions with gusto and—let us hope—a sublime insensibility of all that they imply. They are warbling words to music, but they are not singing, for the meaning is not there. The fault, of course, lies in the traditional idea that all aspiring vocalists must learn certain things, just as that all pianists should go through a corresponding round of instrumental compositions. Why should they? Many of these classical examples that we accept as the right things to sing or play are hopelessly antiquated and out of date: they would not stand a chance as new compositions to-day. Antiquity itself is only a recommendation if we are collectors of curios. The literature of Art is far too comprehensive for anyone to study it all, we can but touch a fragment of the whole: why, then, should that fragment be determined by tradition and custom alone? Will anybody's clothes fit me: am I not likely to secure a better fit by being measured for my own? And why should not the same consideration apply to my mental outfit? It is the same desperate fear of originality and initiative, coupled with a certain unwillingness to take individual responsibility: it is the "ditto" idea again, and yet a writer has said "imitation is suicide." Let music be studied historically and in its development, by all means, this indeed is necessary: but to spend hours and hours learning to play or sing something just because "everybody does it" is the sheerest waste of time, unless the music so played or sung still bears a living message for the performer.
Protest might also be registered against the unadulterated rubbish that is put forward as a translation when a song or operatic excerpt of foreign origin is rendered in English. Of grand opera even theDaily Telegraphis moved to say that "the translations are in most cases literary nightmares." Mere baldness might be excused, and even doggerel overlooked, but one has only to turn to almost any of the current standard translations of foreign songs to see that the matter is worse than this. To expect a student to get up and participate in this verbal foolishness and ineptitude, by endeavouring to express as genuine the balderdash that poses as sentiment and sense, is an insult to his or her intelligence.
Finally there remains the "graveyard" school of composition. Here we have the author or composer, or both of them, seeing the world much worse than it is, and think that they do Art a service by putting their realistic conceptions on permanent record. We would join issue with all the various methods—song, literature, drama, and painting—of giving the unpleasant a wider and more effective publicity. The suggestive nature of all of these negative things cannot be overlooked, and should not be underestimated. The Biblical advice is to the point: "Whatsoever things are true, lovely, and of good report: think on these." The graveyard and realistic schools reverse this sage precept, saying, in effect, "Whatsoever things are nasty, unwholesome, and disagreeable—make the most of them: they will always appeal to a certain section whose minds are correspondingly unpleasant." We prefer the "pure joy" gospel, as being nearer the truth: for spirit is ever pointing the vision upward to what we may become, instead of allowing it to grovel around in the very unpleasant circumstances in which some people are liable to find themselves. The outward vision is transient, the inner vision can build eternal realities. "Are we to beg and cringe and hang on the outer edge of life,—we who should walk grandly? Is it for man to tremble and quake—man who in his spiritual capacity becomes the interpreter of God's message,—the focus of Divine Light?"[19]
MUSIC AND EDUCATION