STUDIES OF SOME MODERN COMPOSERS AND THEIR ART BY DANIEL GREGORY MASON New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1921 All rights reserved Copyright, 1902, by T HE O UTLOOK C OMPANY Published November, 1902. I INTRODUCTION THE APPRECIATION OF MUSIC However interesting may be the study of an art through the personalities of the artists who have produced it, and such study, since art is a mode of human expression, is indeed essential, it must be supplemented by at least some general knowledge of the long cont

If we wish to get an idea of primeval music, to see from what impulses it took rise, we have only to study the musical activities of children and savages, in whom we have primeval man made contemporary, the remote past brought conveniently into the present to be observed. When we make such a study we find that both children and savages express their feelings by gestures and cries, that under the sway of emotion they either dance or sing. To them quiet, silent feeling is impossible. Are they joyf

At this point, however, it is important not to go too fast. These crude gestures and cries by which primeval man expressed his feelings, though they were the germs out of which music grew, were as yet no more music, which is not only expressive sound, but formed, articulate sound, than an infant's cooings are speech. So far they were mere ebullitions, purposeless and formless; before they could become communicative they must become definite, they must take on some organic structure. Now gestures

Form in music, however, notwithstanding its origin as a means of defining those emotional expressions which without it would have remained vague, unimitable, and immemorable, is much more than a means of definition. At first practiced as a means to an end, it soon became an end in itself. For the perception of relations, the mental activity which groups impressions, is not merely useful; it is profoundly, indescribably delightful. Calling the mind into activity just as sensation calls the senses

The principles we now have before us, interesting as they are in themselves, must finally vindicate their worth by helping us to form sound opinions of musical tendencies and of individual composers; they must provide a corrective for the whims and freaks of prejudice, and a basis for that intelligent and systematic criticism which takes account both of a man's qualities and of his defects before assigning him his place in the general artistic movement. With them in mind, we should be able to av

It remains, now that we have traced the bearing of our general principles on musical taste, to point out briefly how they afford also criteria for judging composers themselves, and how, thus judged, the six composers we are to study fall into perspective. Our principles, in a word, will now enable us to supplement our later studies of these composers in isolation with a somewhat rough but still helpful sense of their interrelationship. We must relate them to the general evolution of which they a

II EDVARD GRIEG To the musical amateur no contemporary composer is better known than Grieg. Every school-girl plays his piano pieces, young violinists study his delightfully melodious sonatas, and few concert pieces are more widely loved than the Peer Gynt Suite. Yet from professional musicians Grieg does not meet with such favor. Many speak of him patronizingly, some scornfully. «Grieg?» they say. «Oh, yes, very charming, but—» and the sentence ends with a shrug. The reason for this discrepancy

III ANTONIN DVOŘÁK On an October evening in 1892 there was given in New York City a «Grand Concert» in exploitation of the «Eminent Composer and Director of the National Conservatory of Music of America,» Dr. Antonin Dvořák. There was an orchestra of eighty, a chorus of three hundred, and an audience of several thousand; the ceremonies, partly hospitable and partly patriotic, included an oration, the presentation of a silver wreath, and the singing of «America» by the assembled multitude. Outwar

V CÉSAR FRANCK When we turn from the brilliant Parisian we have been studying to that obscure and saintly man, César Franck, the only French contemporary of Saint-Saëns who is worthy to be ranked with him as a great composer, we can hardly believe ourselves in the same country or epoch. It is as if we were suddenly transported from modern Paris into some mediæval monastery, to which the noise of the world never penetrates, where nothing breaks the silence save the songs of worship and the deep n

VI PETER ILYITCH TSCHAÏKOWSKY One of the constant temptations of the biographer is that of seizing on some salient trait in his subject, magnifying it beyond all relation to others which supplement or modify it, and portraying an eccentric rather than a rounded personality, a monster rather than a man. Human nature is complex, many-sided, even self-contradictory to any but the most penetrative view; and so slender are the resources of literature for dealing with such a paradox as a man, that wri

VII JOHANNES BRAHMS Of all the figures of modern music, brilliant and varied as they are, impressing one with the many-sidedness and wide scope of the art, there is perhaps only one, that of Johannes Brahms, which conveys the sense of satisfying poise, self-control and sanity. Others excel him in particular qualities. Grieg is more delicate and intimate, Dvořák warmer and clearer in color; Saint-Saëns is more meteoric, Franck more recondite and subtle, and Tschaïkowsky more impassioned; but Brah

VIII EPILOGUE: THE MEANING OF MUSIC In the foregoing studies we have been considering, first, certain fundamental principles of musical effect in the light of which alone all special contributions to music, however various, can be understood, and second, the particular contributions of half a dozen of our contemporary composers, in which we have seen those principles exemplified. We have assumed, all along, that music is of undeniable interest to us, that it has something to say, that it is of s