Scan 22
Musical Courier 1903-01-28: Vol 46 Iss 1192, 1903
24 lines. Read by computer on 22 September 2026. Printed page 23. See the scan on archive.org.
1accompanied, and only the singer of infallible ear will, in such a case, begin and end on the same key. Musicians who play stringed instruments, a violin player, for instance, will tune his violin by the piano, if there is one near him, whether he expects to play it with the piano or not. He uses the instrument of fixed tone for the sake of convenience and certainty. This would not be necessary, except in cases where the two instruments were to be played together, if his ear were absolutely reliable.
3In the case of a banjo, guitar or other stringed instrument used for accompanying the voice, where one instrument is to be used alone, it may be tuned with sufficient accuracy for practical purposes without the aid of a fixed tone; for the singer who has a reasonable good ear in music unconsciously modulates his voice to the instrument just as he unconsciously transposes a melody to bring it within the range of his voice; but of twenty persons attempting to tune as many stringed instruments without a common guide, scarcely two of them would get the same pitch. No one can play a stringed instrument who has not a reasonable good ear, and no one without such gift attempts it; so that even the amateurs who play stringed instruments for their own amusement could not be considered representative of the rank and file who attend public concerts. The majority of these are men and women who have no technical knowledge of music whatever, and could not tune a stringed instrument if their lives hung on the issue.
5If an air were written in a certain key, say A flat, and a singer, for reasons of her own, chose to sing it in the key of G, how many persons in the average audience would note the transposition? It is true that the inability to detect the change need not interfere in the least with a person's enjoyment of the air if it be well sung; but if one has previously heard the air in the original key and does not notice the transposition he is not capable of auricular analysis. If he cannot distinguish the key of an air given by the voice, or a single instrument, how shall he say with certainty of this or that theme, diversified by the complex and exhaustive treatment of a large orchestra, that it is in this or that key? It is a comparatively easy thing to analyze a composition looking at the score; but even this requires some training, and program notes, if they have a legitimate office, are for the help of those whose daily occupations are quite outside the world of music; who lack the training musicians and critics are supposed to receive; yet these are the people whom the critic of the Sun genially invites to furnish their own analyses.
7For whom then do the "programmatical" editors write? The "stories of the principal theme in D major, three-fourths time, allegro vivace, consists of a series of syncopated quarter notes," &c., which the critic views with scorn, are doubtless "cut and dried," and, like all purely technical details, tedious enough to those who are not in search of particular and exact information. It by no means follows that these details are equally familiar to all those who may be attending a concert, or that they are to be acquired by the spirit of divination. What does a person without technical education know about syncopation? He has heard, perhaps, that negro melodies owe their peculiar effects to syncopated rhythms; but it is hardly likely that this bit of information would enable him to seize a syncopated passage delivered by an orchestra. He might discover that it was not precisely like the passages preceding it without knowing in what the difference consisted.
9Syncopation depends not only on the temporary shifting of the accent but also to a great extent on our power to retain in the mind the feeling of the normal accent which falls on the first beat of the measure. There is accent in the ticking of a clock, and this accent falls on the first or second beat, according to the instant when the attention is fixed on the clock. We may sit in a room with a clock for hours without being conscious of the ticking at all, but the moment we begin to listen we are aware that every second tick is the stronger. As we listen we may throw the accent forward or back at will by a simple process of mental adjustment. In reading poetry, where the rhythm is not strongly marked, we sometimes make two or three attempts before we get precisely the right swing; two persons may read the same poem with a different rhythm, and some persons may read it without any. In the declamation of some professional elocutionists the most rhythmic poem becomes mere prose. Many professional musicians are very deficient in the sense of rhythm, and that quality of execution that some critics are fond of calling Zal is frequently due to nothing more than an exceptional feeling for rhythm. Now, the instant grasping of a syncopated passage depends on several things. First, clear cut execution on the part of the performer, or performers; then a strong sense of rhythm in the listener, and this is in most cases "the gift of fortune" and by no means common. It presupposes the ability to retain a consciousness of the normal accent while listening to the arbitrary accent; for it is the play of the misplaced accent against the natural accent that produces the effect of syncopation. The moment we escape the thrall of the normal accent the syncopation itself becomes normal and the peculiar effect is lost; so that a mere lapse of attention may produce an effect of syncopation or destroy it. It becomes finally a matter of mental adjustment, as in the case of the ticking of the clock, and we may by a simple mental process produce the effect at will.
11This being the case it is not so easy for a person of limited knowledge, whose opportunities for listening to an orchestra are more or less limited, to distinguish a syncopated passage in three-quarter time from a similar passage with the normal accent, coming in on the third beat of the measure after a long rest.
13There are many teachers of music in New York and elsewhere who could not accomplish unaided the analysis which to the critic of the Sun appears so simple. Among teachers as well as among critics things that are fundamental and of the first importance are often neglected for things non-essential, but showy and better calculated to catch the eyes and ears of the groundlings. The arithmetical tables are quite as dry, quite as destitute of novelty, perhaps, to the average student as the analysis of a musical composition is to the critic of the Sun, but they are a part, a very necessary part of every man's education, and they do not "come by nature." There are even directors of orchestras whose grasp of these matters is so feeble that it is often impossible for the trained ear and the alert mind to decide just what is being done. Then how is the uninitiated to grapple successfully at the same time with all the complex instrumental effects of modern composition; to note the varying shades of different keys, the methods and the effects of ingenious modulations, the changes of rhythm and tempi, the "dynamic nuance," with no guide but his ear and the erratic movements of a director's baton?
15The minute analysis of a composition is not absolutely essential to enjoyment of a certain kind. With a reasonably good ear and a temperament easily wrought upon, a man may surrender himself to a composition and get a great deal out of it without knowing what it is called, who wrote it, whether it is a symphony, a suite or a scene from an opera. In such a case he enjoys the music precisely as a child enjoys a wonder tale, wholly engrossed by the things that are doing, and not in the least disturbed by the slovenly diction or the geographical and historical discrepancies that may crop out on every page. The child would enjoy the tale quite as much if the diction were pure and the unities preserved, but no more; and if it came to a choice between a blood curdling narrative, written in a slovenly style, and a didactic tale, couched in the loftiest language, he would unhesitatingly choose the former.
17The scholar, on the contrary, would not read a page of the wonder tale in its slatternly garb, for to him the pleasure is not wholly in the thing done; quite half of it is in the manner of the doing; and he might derive much pleasure from the didactic tale because of the sheer beauty of the style; but it is only when he finds a pure and exalted style vivified by a powerful imagination that his pleasure is quite complete. By the same token the person of taste whose musical education has not been wholly neglected prefers a slight thing well done to a great thing butchered. He may prefer a ballad well written to the tinsel effects of light opera, even though themes from the old masters have been dragged in to give vitality to the latter. He prefers the themes of great masters in their original setting, because it is here only that he finds great matters greatly handled. There are those who contend that the pleasure to be derived from a knowledge and analysis of method is not wholly to be despised; but for the most part the critics and the majority of musicians appear to be arrayed on the other side of the proposition.
19The critic has all the leisure, all the opportunity for special study that is denied to the man of business, to the great majority of those who pay for tickets and therefore are the real support of musical organizations; yet the critic, by his own confession, cannot write intelligently of a composition until he has dug up a program. And he does not want analysis but a biography of the composer and such personal gossip concerning him as may be readily grasped without too great effort of the mind. He is probably the only person who reads program notes. The average concertgoer, as has been shown, has no time for them, and he can enjoy the concert without them; but enjoyment is not analysis; indeed many persons contend that the two are incompatible, and it is absurd to suggest that a person without special training should furnish his own analysis. He may get on very well without the analysis, but he cannot furnish it. As well expect a man who never studied geometry to demonstrate the "pons asinorum."
21The program that is stuffed with irrelevant matter is of no use to the layman, however valuable it may be to the critic. The function of the critic is not to display erudition but to furnish information to those who are in need of it and have no time to dig it up for themselves; and all information that does not apply strictly to the matter in hand is not a help but a hindrance. If one were called upon to teach a class in mathematics there would be nothing gained by reading to the class a treatise on English literature, however erudite, however interesting the treatise might be in itself. A treatise on the forms of French versification may furnish a marvelous display of erudition, may be an extremely fascinating thing in itself, without being of the least help to a person who is endeavoring to assimilate musical themes.
23If we do not care to know music intellectually; if we are to persist in regarding it simply as food for the emotions, let us have done with talking about it. A certain well known critic said recently in conversation with some friends: "A symphony appeals to us in precisely the same way as a dish of clam chowder. A man can no more explain why he likes one symphony better than another than he can explain why he prefers chowder made by a certain chef to chowder made by another." If this is true every man is by nature his own critic, and the occupation of the professional critic is gone. A man may take pepper in his chowder or he may take it without, and to expect him to explain the preference is mere impertinence. There is nothing more
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