Scan 23
Musical Courier 1894-08-29: Vol 29 Iss 755, 1894
39 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. Printed page 24. See the scan on archive.org.
1Objective Expression in Music
2According to the Language of Instinct.
3[Translated from the French of M. Jules Combarien ("Revue Philosophique," February, 1889), by Percy Goetschius, Mus. Doc.]
4(Continued from last week.)
5THE most interesting employment of tone qualities, whether it be in vocal or instrumental music, is that of which the object is not a sort of repetition of natural sounds, but the imitation, by way of analogy, of the color of material things. We do not need to interrogate physicists to learn from them whether sound and color may be considered as more or less identical phenomena; the subject only interests us at present from an artistic standpoint, and, besides, the observation of instinctive speech suffices to illuminate this side of the question. It is certain that we are accustomed to adapt the timbre of our voice to the coloring of exterior objects. We do not speak of a beautiful summer day, all aglow with light, as we do of dull, rainy weather, or a dark night; we do not speak of a beautiful face, possessing all the freshness of youth and health, as we do of that of an invalid, emaciated, livid and dreadful.
6A short time ago I heard a painter express his opinion of various celebrated artists. In speaking of Ruben's coloring his eye brightened, a smile played upon his lips, and his face was the picture of joy; his words were articulated with great distinctness, with pure tone of voice, and a bright and lively enunciation. In speaking of Rembrandt, of his clare-obscur and his bituminous ground, the painter half closed his eyes as if experiencing spontaneously the impression of a dim light; he wrinkled his forehead and put on a more severe air; his voice became dull, muffled, at times deep and grumbling. In speaking of Corot and the hovering mists of his landscapes, the painter's whole physiognomy, and the voice itself assumed a remarkable fineness, coupled with a more deliberate utterance, an almost hesitating diction, and a quivered indication with the fingers.
7We recognize in the art of diction a few of these traits of expression established as rules. According to Legouvé, to whom we must constantly revert, because he is the inquiring representative of an art of transition, every reader who understands his business must "paint" in reciting; he must invest the words with all the prismatic colors, must use reds, violets, pearl-grays, pale-golds, all the "tones" of the palette of sound. And, in reality, words are capable of giving us these various impressions.
8The analogy between tone and color is not only attested by a multitude of popular and habitual idioms; we find it indicated every instant, in the poets, by images whose origin must be sought in the physiological phenomena of which I have just spoken. I open a volume of V. Hugo ("La Pitié supreme") and on the second line I read:
9A tumult wild, obscure, in keeping with the gloom.
10In the "Quatre vents de l'Esprit" (la Révolution) I read again:
11A hoarse roar, like the noise which might come
12From some enormous panoply of gloom;
13and the same assimilation in the "Légende des siècles" (Pleine Mer).
14A large proportion of expression in descriptive music is founded upon this analogy between sound and color.* This analogy, though doubtful in some points, appears certain to me in those which follow:
15We know that the tone qualities of various instruments in the high register are perceived by the ear with very great distinctness. Thus we never confound an acute tone of the flute with an acute tone of a trumpet or a stringed instrument. On the other hand, if we descend into the depths of the orchestra it becomes at times quite difficult to distinguish the diverse species of sound. One may already imitate certain wind instruments upon the violoncello, or certain low tones of the bassoon by corresponding tones upon the piano; the difference between the lowest tone of the double basses, which has forty-one vibrations, and that of great organs, with sixteen and a half, is almost entirely imperceptible. In a word, the instrumental field extends from a very bright region, where the tones can be very clearly distinguished from each other, to a sombre region, where they become more and more blended.
16From this it follows that the musician, in giving the equivalent of a very vivid and bright color, employs the high register of the tenor instruments, and for the equivalent of a dark color he uses the low register of the basses. The employment of forte or piano enables him to heighten the effect. Thus in "Rheingold," the "Rheingold" motive appears in company with a brilliant fanfare. Trumpet calls are commonly employed to represent the bright light of day. Among the many examples upon which I might rest my statement, I will cite the beautiful instrumental melody in "Sigurde," which illustrates these words of "Brünnhilde" (second tableau), "Hail, splendor of day!"
17In numerous passages in the prologue to the "Götterdämmerung," on the contrary, the employment of low registers for the impression of night is to be found. In the "Invocation of Nature," which is a nocturnal scene, Berlioz has assigned an extensive rôle to the double basses, with this direction: very broad and very sombre. An analogous procedure is adopted by Wagner at the beginning of the second act of "Lohengrin," to represent the darkness which envelops "Ortrud" and "Friedrich" on the steps of the chapel. In the majority of orchestral works we may moreover consider the basses as constituting the ground tint, against which the motives of the picture stand out in bright relief.
18Between these two extremes there are numerous intermediate shades. Has not a soft, veiled tone of the horn, like that which so admirably interrupts the pilgrims' prayer in the second scene of "Harold en Italie," an evident analogy with the tint of twilight? We will add that, saving a few exceptions, orchestral instruments form family groups in which the tone qualities present successive shades of the same tint. There is no isolation without proximate shades, which weaken or brighten the tint. They are classed as the tones of color are disposed upon a palette, passing from the brightest to the deepest. The very instruments of percussion themselves, whose employment for the sole purpose of marking the rhythm was such an irritation to Berlioz, have also their shades of expression. Each of these tone qualities has an extraordinary power of suggestion. It represents not only the distinctness or the intensity of a color, but also its harshness or its softness, its nobility or its triviality—perchance even some still more secret and special quality. Helmholtz has shown that the timbre results from the combination of a certain number of simple tones in progressive degrees of elevation, with a fundamental tone. But why is it that when a resonant body is struck certain harmonic overtones issue to the exclusion of others? That is evidently owing to the molecular constitution of the body which is set in vibration. From this it would seem to follow that the tone of tones expresses the concealed nature of objects, their secret life—in a word, the proprium quid which distinguishes one sort from another, in which case the study of musical expressiveness, from this side at least, must needs be confounded with ontology—if ontology exists.
19The preceding resources are multiplied infinitely by the arts of combination and of execution. Ch. Blanc relates that one day he admired, in the central cupola of the Luxembourg Library, the torso of a naked woman, painted by Delacroix, the rosy flesh color of which was of a delicious freshness. "You would be very much surprised," said a friend of the artist's to him, "if you knew what colors have produced this rosy flesh. They are tones which, viewed separately, would appear to you as dull as the mud on the street."
20How often the same phenomenon is produced in music! In a recent article Saint-Saëns, who is a good judge, said that at first sight Berlioz's manner of scoring the different parts of the orchestra appears absurd, at variance with all common usage and all probability; one would imagine that such an odd amalgamation never could "sound." But in the execution nothing could be more clear, more original, more luminous. How is such an effect produced by such means? It is the musician's secret, just as coloring is the secret of the painter. It has been questioned whether, upon hearing a chord struck, the ear apprehends the different tones of which it is constructed, or receives simply one impression of the whole. If the chord be struck on one and the same instrument, say the piano, the inquiry does not admit of a single doubt; but if it be produced by several orchestral instruments, in view of a certain color effect (which would be impossible upon any single instrument), the case seems to me altogether different. Here it would become impossible, as before Delacroix's cupola, to distinguish either the nature, or even the number, of its component members. The second measure of the prologue to "Tristan und Isolde" commences with a chord of four tones (F natural, B natural, D sharp, G sharp), for which Wagner uses the following instruments: Two oboes, two clarinets in A, an English horn, one first and one second bassoon, and one violoncello—in all eight instruments and five species of timbre.
21These various elements produce by their union an effect which none of them, taken separately, possesses. On close consideration it is no more than simply a peculiar position of the chord of the seventh of F minor, with enharmonic changes of A flat to G sharp and E flat to D sharp—rendered necessary by the resolution which is made into the dominant seventh chord of E. But, by the simultaneous emission of these tones, the ear is surprised and led astray. It is like a spot of rare color which baffles analysis. Are there four tones in this chord? Are there twenty?
22We know, finally, that the touch of the performer can vary the tone quality of the selfsame instrument in a very sensitive manner. There are a hundred ways of attacking a string with the bow, of striking a key with the finger, of puffing a breath of air into the channel of a flute or into the reed of an oboe. The resources of coloring in music are indeed as innumerable as in painting.
23III.
24I have been speaking of the descriptive mediums, by the aid of which the musician strives to grasp directly, and to reproduce certain qualities of objects. I must say a few words about another phase of description, which is purely symbolical.
25It is the most puerile part of music, if we examine it from the standpoint of exactness, but one of the most interesting at times, from a purely musical point of view. The musician often has to represent objects for which he has no precise model; he creates one, imaginary, most of the time false, from remote and complex analogies which his taste and imagination know how to turn to advantage, and which it would sometimes be impossible to analyze.
26At first he may in certain cases make use of equivalents, may convey an idea of actual dimension by a greater or lesser intensity of tone, may substitute rapidity of melodic movement for the conception of brightness of color, may replace the sensation of concrete beauty by that of consonance or well ordered rhythm. His artifices, in these several respects, are of infinite ingenuity and flexibility. He may also, by dint of greater boldness, treat his subject in a perfectly arbitrary manner, as will happen, for example, when he creates a local coloring.
27Local color is a complex question, which it is nevertheless easy to comprehend when one has obtained a clear idea of the various capacities of music; if the musician reproduces the melodies, the peculiar rhythms, the timbre of the instruments of certain countries, the local color reduces itself to a musical citation; if he endeavors to express the sentiment (gayety, melancholy, sadness, desolation, &c.) which, whether falsely or justly, is habitually associated with one's idea of this or that country, then it is reduced to a music of subjective expression; there might even be, theoretically, a third case, that in which use would be made of those directly descriptive means of which I have spoken above. But it is most frequently made up of arbitrary images, and consists in an association of ideas which the composer imposes upon us by an artifice which eludes our notice, and a clever deception.
28These images consist in the employment of certain exceptional instruments, and above all, in the alterations to which the tonality and the accustomed turn of a melody or a rhythm are subjected. This last resource is one of the simplest and most sure. Remove, for example, the half steps from the scale of C; you will obtain a tonality devoid of character, giving to the ear the impression of any tonality you will. The musical form being rendered thus indefinite, the hearer finds himself disturbed in his habits, thrown out of his element, quite ready to connect the language he hears with the image of an exotic object; the musician takes advantage of this indecision and, turning it to his account, leads the incredibly docile spirit wherever he likes. We but need to raise the fifth of the perfect chord one semitone, in order to obtain a deliciously perturbing harmonic color.
29Do not certain words of a more or less barbarian character, in poetry, appear to create the illusion of Indian, Carthaginian, or some other tinge? The proper names with which the pages of Leconte De Lisle's "Antique Poems" bristle are strange; that suffices the reader. The second "m" added by Flaubert to the name Salammbo is a clever hit of the colorist. And the circumflex accent placed above the "o" does not fail to contribute its value, as well. The limit which this peculiarity must never overstep can only be fixed by taste. Thus, in "Lakmé" (market scene), in the "Infancy of Christ" (scene of the soothsayers making their cabalistic signs), in the ballets of the "Trojans at Carthage," and in the magic invocations of the spirits of air, water and fire in "Esclarmonde," we find a local coloring, the secret of which need not be sought elsewhere.
30IV.
31Having reached the end of this analysis, it only remains for me to recapitulate the essential observations and deduce their consequences, directing an additional word to certain skeptics whom it is necessary to assure anew, if not convince.
32I believe I have demonstrated that music can reproduce:
331. The direction of an actual movement, its rapidity, its form, its rhythm, its total duration.
342. An indeterminable number of natural or artificial sounds of the exterior world, with all their varied grades.
353. The relative position of two immovable objects in space, or of two movements, and the variable distance which separates them.
364. The degree of brightness of colors, and a certain number of their specific qualities, up to an indefinable limit.
375. The size, great or small, of objects (by way of equivalence and analogy).
38If we reflect upon the advantage to be drawn from the simultaneous employment of different registers, as a means of indicating the situation of objects, we must acknowledge that music merits a place all by itself in the classification of the fine arts. It is something else than an art of time, inasmuch as it can represent things by a combined picture in which the relative positions are indicated; and it is not merely an art of space, since this combined picture is per-
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