Two Tendencies in Modern Music: Tschaikowsky and Brahms

TSCHAIKOWSKY AND BRAHMS.

I.

WHEN musical criticism tries to explain or interpret the inner meaning, what may be called the emotional gist of music, it exposes itself to grave dangers. In the first place, it easily degenerates into glib and meaningless cant about “ the higher life ” and “ the harmony of the spheres.” The critic, once he admits metaphysic into his calculations, is apt to ignore technique, to forget that music is an art, and to lose himself in a maze of edifying platitude. On the other hand, if he escapes this pitfall, and sets himself soberly to examine the actual effects of music, he is now in danger of conceiving his task too ambitiously, and fancying that a commentary can be as eloquent as a creation. Not content to describe effects, he wishes to produce them. He mistakes his own use, which is, after all, not to fire the imagination, but to direct the attention. If, however, a musical critic, while treating his subject in a humane and untechnical spirit, avoids the visionary and the overexpressive, he does a work well worth doing; he helps intelligent laymen to penetrate the husk of music and get at its precious kernel.

Two tendencies in the music of our day — tendencies definite and strongly contrasted — seem susceptible of such treatment. To attempt a rough provisional definition, we may say that there is noticeable in modern music, first, an effort to express emotions more directly, more poignantly, and with less of the restraint imposed by non-emotional considerations than ever before. Music becomes, above all, the language of mood, an utterance passionate and wayward. But, secondly, this tendency is opposed by another, which seeks, not a more intense expression of feeling, but a more highly organized type of beauty. Music, it says, in order to progress, must seek no outer bond, no power dependent on association ; it must aim rather at a greater perfection, increasing differentiation of inner means and effects, a unity built upon wider variety, a symmetry more many-sided and complex. In brief, one ideal of music is emotional expression ; another is plastic beauty. Let us add at once that these are the ideals of the two greatest composers of our time, Tschaikowsky and Brahms, in whose works the two phases of art can be best exemplified and interpreted.

That both phases have their place and justification we hope to show as we go on. The undoubted greatness of both our composers, the undoubtedly deep appeal made by the work of both, must indeed convince us at once that there are reasons in the nature of things for their two kinds of power. Music, as a matter of fact, makes its appeal like the other arts, partly by expression, and partly through its formal or plastic beauty. On this double aspect of artistic appeal we must here linger a moment.

In all arts there is more or less conflict between beauty, the aim of the art as an art, and expression, its necessary condition as a human instrument. Beauty is the result of harmony with inner needs (the fundamental needs of the mind for clearness, proportion, symmetry, contrast, and so on) ; but expression, which necessitates relation with outer facts, too often throws out this harmony. Thus, for example, the poet, in order to express his thought, must often use words either harsh and discordant in themselves, or cheapened by vulgar associations; beauty becomes a victim on the altar of expression. Or again, the landscape painter has to choose whether he will represent a given tree in its actual position, thereby injuring the balance of his picture, or place it where beauty would have it, thereby abating the truth of his expression. Such dilemmas illustrate the conflict that always exists in the real world between inner need and outer fact. Stubborn maladjustments of material are ever hindering the representative artist in his pursuit of beauty.

Such maladjustments, however, are at their minimum in the art of music. The material it deals with is not objective, given as brute fact, alien to the mind, and therefore in defective harmony with it. For the hierarchy of tone, extending not in space and time, like the physical world of poetry, painting, and sculpture, but in pitch only, immaterial, with all its relations predetermined by the laws of the mind that creates it, — this hierarchy of tone is but an outward projection of the perceiving mind: here, therefore, subject and object are in preadjusted harmony. Stated in so abstract a form, the point is rather difficult; and, unhappily, the concrete facts involved, both acoustical and psychological, are complex and numerous: but if the reader will reflect that all the relations of harmony, melody, and rhythm — that is to say, all the relations of music — have been founded by the laws of the human mind, expressing themselves historically in the selection and disposal of the twelve tones of our scale, with such relations to each other as consonance, dissonance, and the like, he will get a general notion how musical material is ductile to the creative mind as no wholly external material can be.

Looked at in the light of this analysis, musical history is seen to be in large part the gradual and tentative establishment of inner principles of structure that to-day we accept almost as we accept the sun and moon, — as facts of nature. They were not facts of nature until human nature made them so. Each was the object of a long probation; it had to prove its validity before it could be incorporated in tradition. Few thoughts are more fascinating in their implications or can lead one further in fruitful study than this of the mind of man painfully finding itself, day by day making excursions into its own nature, and gradually placing in the light eternal facts that grew in the darkness. Could the major third be heard as a consonance? Could the natural tendency of a melody note to pass to its nearest neighbor be overcome by a momentum established in the opposite direction ? Was the memory span large enough to grasp relations of form broader than any heretofore used ? The answers to such questions, asked for the most part, of course, unconsciously or subconsciously, determined the present status and resources of music.

It is as a continuation of this work of the musicians of all time toward greater organization of their medium, with increased differentiation of parts and wealth of plastic beauty, that we must conceive the work of Brahms. Sebastian Bach, adopting an equally tempered scale, which opened up to him and his successors all the new wealth of unfettered modulation through twelve keys, was followed by Beethoven, who perfected the musical organism of interdependent and contrasting themes. Then Brahms, unmistakably a member of the same series, discovered new possibilities of key relationship as a means for organizing thought, magnified the formal scheme of Beethoven, and, most important of all, so developed the means for rhythmical evolution and variation of motifs as to attain a type of organic beauty quite unprecedented in its complexity and perfection. When Von Bülow devised his musical creed, of which the trinity was Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, he probably had in mind, however unconsciously, the creative trait that their work shares. They made not only their individual works of art; they made, or modified, the very material of art itself.

And this concern of theirs with the inner symmetry of the musical fabric stamped all their work with a quality for which critics have adopted the word “classic.” Whatever impression of particular feeling a classic work may make upon us, whatever its special burden of expression, we find always that this special expression comes to us with a peculiar dignity of effect, a largeness and grandeur of utterance, a purity reflected from the vehicle itself, which impresses us constantly and profoundly, and under which, so to speak, we find the more particular burden of the piece. A Bach fugue may be quick and light, like that in G major in the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavichord, or it may be solemn, grievous, and weighted with earnest meaning, like the B-flat minor fugue in the same book; Beethoven will follow up a slow movement of the sternest solemnity with a finale built on a rustic jig; Brahms will put the lightest, most gracious sentiment into a folk song like the “Tell me, O beauteous shepherdess, ” or fill a piece to the brim with stormy and turgid passion as he has done in part of his first Rhapsody. Yet in all these cases we feel that the sentiments we have named are of secondary importance; that the true character and value of the piece comes from the larger emotion that overlies them all, — the emotion we feel when we recognize pure beauty, when we see that the piece is well wrought and fair in proportion, full of that κοσμος, or order, which was the dearest of all qualities to the most artistic of all peoples.

Of this general emotion exhaling from any work of beauty, and always underlying the appeal of classic art, we shall have more to say after a while. For the present we must observe, first, that it proceeds from the prearranged harmony between subject and object which, as we have shown, happily exists to a peculiar degree in music ; but, secondly, that emotions themselves, nevertheless, the “ object ” of music, may take on an independence that shall break this harmony, in which event we shall find music at the same disadvantage as the other arts. For so soon as emotions are recognized as being expressed in music one may set one’s attention on these emotions for themselves, and one’s artistic aim may be, not to preserve the classic harmony between emotion and its expression, but rather to intensify the expression of the emotion at any cost. The conflict which exists for the painter between “truth to nature ” in the position of his tree and artistic felicity in the balance of his composition is now introduced for the musician as between exhaustiveness in expressing his emotion and inner beauty or concinnity in his tonal fabric. In any such dilemma, the Brahms type of composer prefers to sacrifice the first desideratum in favor of the second; but there is another type which gives its entire allegiance to emotional expression, and values music less for its formal beauty than for its dramatic power.

Of this type Tschaikowsky is a striking example. His ideals are not the classic ideals. He is a poet and humanist who, finding in music an eloquent voice for the ardent and noble emotion he wishes to express, seizes upon it without further reflection, and proceeds to use it for his purposes. In his hands it becomes, in truth, a wonderfully powerful and persuasive language. It is frenzied, it is yearning, it is gracious, it is despairing. Above and through all, it is always direct in its appeal, always the expression of a mood; always a language, in short, and never a form. It does not arouse in us the classic emotion, the happiness in pure beauty, but it says to us a thousand things that are moving, vital, tragic. It has stood at the parting of the ways, and, without knowing what it did, has sacrificed the perfect adjustment between the form and the content of music, in order to magnify and in a sense humanize the latter. And it has met with undoubted, if partial success. Whether it can ever justify itself, like classic music; whether it is in the same degree “conformable to the nature of things,” we shall see as we progress. At present it is chiefly important to note that Tschaikowsky stands for a definite attitude toward art, sharply contrasted with that of Brahms and the classicists. These we may imagine formulating their musical creed in the words of Keats : —

To which Tschaikowsky, a soul less at unity with itself, if not less noble, may retort with Browning: —

II.

But turning away from general principles for a little, it is time to show how their operation is observable in the works of our two composers. Our thesis, we must remember, is that Brahms is ever aiming at beautiful organization in his musical fabric, while Tschaikowsky strives rather for poignant emotional effectiveness. The contrast appears already when we compare two characteristic phrases, — such, for example, as the opening phrases of the well - known songs The Sapphic Ode and Nur Wer die Sehnsucht Kennt. Here we are dealing with elements, with irreducible units back of which we cannot go; for the phrase is in music what the simple sentence of noun and verb is in language, — it is the thought - germ, from which all higher forms are developed. Technically, the phrase is to be defined as a series of notes ending in a “cadence,” a device of which the reader need understand no more than that it clinches and completes the melodic sense much as a verb clinches and completes the grammatical sense. A phrase is thus the mould of a musical idea, and the smallest complete unit of musical thought. The initial phrase of the Brahms song contains a dozen notes, that of Tschaikowsky one less; they are thus nearly of the same size, and the time measure is the same: but here the similarity ceases. Their characteristic effects are entirely dissimilar. The first is an epitome of all the large dignity, the breadth, the calm and genial humanity, of the German composer; the second is instinct with the nervous emotion of the more expressive Slav. The first is deliberate, the second restless; the first fluent and gracious, the second angular and passionate. In a word, the varying traits of the two masters are here clearly present in the fundamental and primitive elements of their work. Cut off the smallest sample, each stuff is unmistakably itself.

Looking now a little more closely, we can see certain technical differences that are not unworthy of study. There is, for instance, a marked contrast in the harmonic bases of the two phrases. Brahms builds his sentence entirely on the most primitive of all chords, the tonic and dominant triads. Of the first nine notes, all but one brief passing-note belong to the tonic chord; the remaining three notes make up the familiar and universal “authentic cadence.” Tschaikowsky, on the other hand, begins with an extreme dissonance, changes harmony in each of his four measures, and ends with a formula of dubious cadential virtue, in an alien key. Again, the melodic lines are of different types, Brahms proceeding by simple leaps or by steps in the natural scale line, Tschaikowsky commencing with the downward leap of a seventh, and continuing after a somewhat serrated fashion until he gets to the last half of his phrase, which is quietly diatonic. Obviously, the two phrases are strikingly different both in harmonic basis and in melodic curve. And though examples selected like these to illustrate a special line of argument may well exaggerate the differences they reveal, yet no one familiar with the melodic methods of the two men can fail to see that such differences are indeed far-reaching and thoroughgoing, and must ultimately depend on deeply rooted psychic habits. We shall hope to show, as we go on, that they do indeed depend upon an impulsive appetite in Tschaikowsky for immediately impressive effects, and upon an instinctive sense in Brahms of the superior availability of simple, almost commonplace material for that many-sided and ingenious development to which he submitted his ideas in the effort to attain breadth, complexity of structure, and symmetry of form.

We may first, however, pause a moment to compare the status of the two composers at this initial stage of their creation. Idea for idea, phrase for phrase, Tschaikowsky has in some respects the advantage, — an advantage upon which depends much of that current popular criticism which is so dithyrambic in its praise of the Russian, and so sweeping in its condemnation of the “dryness ” and “pedantry ” of Brahms. As a matter of fact, the simplicity of Brahms is not always a source of strength. If at its best it is incomparably noble and elevated, at its less than best it is frequently bare, empty, and trite. As even Wordsworth can nod to the extent of writing Peter Bell, so even Brahms can give us pages of aridity like the opening of the Scherzo of the A-major Quartet, built on what an irreverent young musician called “one of Brahms’s scrapbasket themes.” To Brahms, we must remember, a theme is not so much a thought as a tonal pattern capable of interesting manipulation, and such capability does not at all involve intrinsic interest. The interest may well be all secondary and derivative; it may ensue only when the manipulator begins to use his skill; it may, as some one has cleverly said, “steam out of the materials.” And many a theme that thus begins to simmer with interest when Brahms fairly gets at work upon it is in its first estate entirely cold and lifeless. Again, even in his working out Brahms occasionally falls a victim to his own skill, and in building a structure of consummate polyphonic virtuosity quite forgets that art must please. A fair critic can hardly deny that the accusation of dryness so often heard against Brahms has some basis in fact.

Tschaikowsky’s themes, on the contrary, always the creatures of emotional impulse (except the themes of his early symphonies, which can hardly be the creatures of anything but intellectual chaos), have generally an appealing freshness and vitality. He seldom opens his mouth without saying something. Thus, the phrase we have been considering from the song Nur Wer die Sehnsucht Kennt immediately enlists the hearer’s interest, and wins him by its sincerity and abandon. The classicist, whose effects depend on his skill in ordering and combining, sinks whenever these means fail him into mere dullness. But the romanticist, who strives only to express himself, is always just as interesting as what he has to say. Indeed, one of the most admirable of Tschaikowsky’s qualities is the high intellectual self-respect that keeps him always loyal to the dictates of his imagination. His conception of music is that it should express poetic or impassioned states of mind, and he never puts ink on paper without at least attempting such expression. That he has amply succeeded we know. As standing proofs, we have the last three Symphonies, the E-flat minor String Quartet, the orchestral Suites, the Romeo and Juliet Overture, and other works of the greatest originality. In all these compositions we find the utmost frankness and directness; there is none of the occasional dryness of Brahms ; every note is vital with imaginative life.

One gets an interesting side light on Tschaikowsky’s sincerity in his artistic faith from his own criticism of Brahms. “There is something dry, cold, vague, and nebulous in the work of this master, ” he says, “ which is repellent to Russian hearts. . . . Hearing his music, we ask ourselves, Is Brahms deep, or does he only desire to have the semblance of depth in order to mask the poverty of his imagination ? This question is never satisfactorily answered.” “It is all very serious,” he continues, “very distinguished, apparently even original, but in spite of all this the chief thing is lacking, — beauty ! ” This one sine qua non of beauty, however his conception of it might differ from that of Brahms, Tschaikowsky never forgot to strive for. But to him it was not a matter of formal structure, the cumulative result of order and symmetry in the parts, but rather a sudden effluence of passion, a “fine, careless rapture, ” coming and going with the breath of inspiration, and not to be wrought or harnessed. To others art might be craftsmanship; to him it was an obsession, or it was nothing.

We pass now at once to the consideration of those larger cyclical forms produced by the evolution of the germinal phrases : here, as we should expect, where the element of craftsmanship becomes so much more important, Brahms has the advantage of Tschaikowsky. By virtue of the simplicity of his original themes, much more suited to manipulation than the other’s florid and characteristic ideas, as well as through his consummate mastery of technique, he attains a cumulative growth of interest and a homogeneity of effect which Tschaikowsky’s methods cannot give.

Let us take, for analysis, that wonderful masterpiece of musical architecture, that perfect monument of grace and strength, the first movement of the D-major Symphony, Opus 73. Here, as in the Sapphic Ode, the first phrase, germ of the most varied and extended organism, is founded entirely upon the tonic and dominant harmonies. In rhythm it is almost equally simple, consisting of a motif of one halfand one quarter - note, repeated twice, and of another motif of three quarter - notes cadencing into a half-note. We may call these motifs, to which we must refer again, A and B. Though only a systematic, detailed analysis of the movement could reveal the full scope of Brahms’s invention in dealing with these simple motifs, a briefer study will suffice to set before us his most salient devices and effects. The reader will forgive the necessary technical details, remembering that nothing is pedantic which enables us to trace the workings of the creative mind.

After the first announcement of his theme, Brahms works down into a subordinate idea entering at the fortyfourth measure. In calming down for this entrance he gives us a charming example of how he can make his motifs serve him. The three quarter - notes of motif B, without the final half-note, occur sporadically in measures thirtyfive and thirty-nine, and then, doubled into half-notes, the deliberateness of which effects a skillful retardation, they occur once more, just before the new theme, in measures forty-two and fortythree. This doubling up of time values, termed “augmentation,” is a favorite device with Brahms. After fifteen measures of his new theme he reverts to motif B (this time in its complete estate), tossing it from soprano to bass, and presently letting the soprano take it in “diminution,” the reverse of augmentation, while the bass executes a rhythmic variant of motif A. But Brahms has not yet by any means exhausted the potentialities of these three notes; before he gets very far into the development of his material he lets the trombones play tag with them. The first trombone gives them out in their normal position in the measure; before he is through, the second enters with them on beat three; and the third steps on his heels by blaring them out on beat two of the next measure. Just before the “return ” of his theme Brahms subjects motif A to a similar displacement, shortening it to two quarter-notes so that he can introduce it three times in two measures, with a very curious effect of contorted accentuation. With these examples of his three favorite methods of motival metamorphosis, augmentation, diminution, and displacement in the measure, we must rest content ; but any reader who will continue the research for himself will find many other interesting and beautiful devices. Our main effort here is to show how fertile is Brahms in evolving the novel from the simple, and how by so doing he weaves a fabric of quite inimitable homogeneity and richness. This movement, with its constantly ramifying melodic pattern, with its ceaseless germination of idea, beginning with the two simple motifs, and ending with the lovely coda in which they are wrought to their final adjustment, is a masterpiece of concinnity and organic beauty.

We find, then, that whatever may be the bareness of Brahms’s initial themes, his after treatment of them is for two reasons masterly: (1) because, owing partly to this very simplicity of his material, and partly to his enormous technical skill, he is able to make his themes evolve and develop as he proceeds; (2) because, by means of his ingenuity in the transformation of motifs, he is able to superimpose all needful variety of detail on a solid, constant basis. Whatever his diversities of rhythmical figure, his fundamental pulse persists throughout, binding every part to every other. His work is admirably coherent. These two qualities of growth and coherence are what make us consider Brahms so great a master of organic beauty.

Turning now to Tschaikowsky, we find an entirely different mode of procedure. For purposes of comparison, perhaps a fairer choice than the Pathétique would be the Fifth Symphony, in E minor, a highly characteristic work that is at the same time conceived within the conventional symphonic mould. What could be more charming, and yet more utterly polar to the Brahms style, than the tripping and piquant first theme, in syncopated rhythm, given out by the clarinets and bassoons against a steadily recurrent pulse in the strings ? The whole air of it is gracious, genial, and unpremeditated. Yet as it proceeds one begins to feel that, after all, perhaps it is too complete and delightful; that its primary individuality is so great that no features can be added. Like Athena, it came forth complete in the first place from the brain of Zeus, and now it can evolve no new lineaments. Accordingly, it receives but a perfunctory polyphonic treatment; and even when we reach the triple fortissimo, where it comes out in all the wind and upper strings, with an effective descending bass, we still find in it, one must fear, more smoke than fire. It cannot evolve, because it was full-fledged at the outset.

Tschaikowsky himself evidently shares our dissatisfaction, for he now quickly enters upon a new theme, a subsidiary in B minor. At this point, moreover, he begins to show himself weak in coherence. Coming shortly to where he sees the opportunity for a poignant phrase on the violins and ’celli, he gives the cue for a slower tempo, which, however, he immediately accelerates back into the original pulse; a little later comes a curious dialogue between wind and strings, marked Un pocchettino piu animato ; but hardly has he got into that before he is off again, this time on the beautiful and noble cantabile second theme, which he marks Molto piu tranquillo, and for which he even assigns a new metronome number. Each of these themes is delightful in itself: but the point to notice is that their variety is not superimposed upon unity; it is a variety without unity. In the last analysis, such variety is always inimical to any real homogeneity or coherence in the piece as a whole. One has only to apply the somewhat brutal test of playing the movement through with a metronome to find that its themes do not really belong together, in the sense that they combine to form a musical organism. They represent successive phases of mood, and have only the interconnection that comes from the train of thought that gave them birth. Any deeper bond of union, such as is secured by a common metrical basis, they lack.

That this crumbling of the structure, so to speak, is an inevitable result of Tschaikowsky’s attitude toward art we shall realize the moment we reflect that themes which are primarily the expressions of feeling must share all the diversity and waywardness of feeling. Each theme will be beautiful, because it is the effluence of a noble personality ; but all will be heterogeneous just in proportion to the many-sidedness of that personality. Here is the reason for the frequent cues of tempo; Tschaikowsky finishes with one mood and begins with another. And note further that so long as he stays in one mood his phrases are all alike; there is monotony of rhythm because the division is so regular, phrase answering phrase as in a wall paper figure answers figure. All the variety will come at the points of transition. Whereas with Brahms, on the contrary, all the variety is the product of varying metres, phrases of divers lengths, superimposed on one uniform time measure.

A good way to clarify this rather abstruse distinction will be by means of analogy with the metrics of verse. Tschaikowsky’s effect is comparable to that of a poet who should write half a dozen lines of iambic pentameter, then, say, a Spenserian stanza, and end with a sheaf of Alexandrines; maintaining rigidly the mould of each, and passing from one to the other by sudden transition. On the other hand, Brahms, like Milton in Paradise Lost or Keats in Endymion, chooses first a definite measure, and then seeks to vary it all he can by manifold minor displacements and adjustments within it. His augmentations and diminutions, his shiftings of a motif within the measure, his phrases of varying length, are similar in effect to the licenses of omission or interpolation of syllables, the momentary subordination of verse accent to word accent, that give the verse of Keats its marvelous music. Let the reader, turning back to the lines we have quoted from Endymion, note the feminine endings of the first two and the last, the dactylic opening of the third, the strong stress that begins the fifth, and the hovering of emphasis over the words “ sweet dreams: ” with all this variety there goes perfect unity, — each line has its five accents. “The poet,” says Mr. Gummere, in his Handbook of Poetics, “plans his verse as an architect plans a building, — with a general idea of the style and effect intended. The majority of his verses will convey the impression of a definite scheme. This scheme he may follow with great fidelity or with great license ; but he cannot in any case follow it absolutely. First, he will intentionally deviate from it, in order to give variety to his verse. . . . Secondly, he involuntarily deviates from the scheme by reason of the laws of language itself.” It is in precisely the same way that the skillful musician will constantly deviate from absolute regularity of rhythm, partly in order to attain variety, and partly constrained by his motifs, which are to him what words are to the poet. Says Mr. Gummere, later in his book: “It is the mutual relations of the metrical scheme and the word-groups which give character to rhythm. We have already noticed this strife between type and individual, between unity and variety, and the beauty which results when a true poet is in the question. ”

The reader will now understand more clearly, we trust, the justification a critic has in saying that Tschaikowsky gives us a variety without unity or coherence, and that Brahms, always superimposing the diversity of individual motifs on the uniformity of his typical measure, thus attains true organic structure.

III.

We have now traced, however inadequately, the technical differences that underlie the contrasts we started with between music which aims at beauty and music which aims at expression. The full and unrestrained expression of each emotion, we have discovered, throws out inevitably the harmony of the piece as a whole; we cannot have in one work the maximum of emotional expressiveness and the maximum of organic perfection. Tschaikowsky is liable to incoherence, Brahms to dryness.

We have, moreover, hinted our conviction that if the two qualities are indeed mutually exclusive, and if each composer must choose between them, the choice of Brahms seems the wiser, because the quality he seeks is more germane to the genius of music. What we have described as the “classic emotion, ” the product of a prearranged adjustment between the artistic form and the perceiving mind, is possible to music in a higher degree than to any other art, because the material of music is less external to the mind than any other material. Accordingly, that musician is the wisest who builds his effects on precisely this adjustment, who trusts more to the appeal of the classic emotion than to the mingled appeals of other fragmentary feelings, and who is strong enough to sacrifice a momentary eloquence for an abiding beauty. However we may be stirred by the Pathétique Symphony, whatever new vistas of tragic or noble feeling it may open to us, it can never satisfy us as the D-major Symphony of Brahms can satisfy. Satisfaction is an effect, in art as in life, that comes only from the sense of wholeness. The artist has to renounce beauties that conflict with his central, permeating beauty, just as the man has to renounce delights that conflict with his central ideal of happiness. And we have at least the analogy with the ethical sphere to support our belief that the integral conception of art is the higher, and that classicism is a saner artistic creed than romanticism. In the long run, the emotion that fills us when we hear a work of perfectly controlled and organized symmetry and loveliness, like the Fourth Symphony of Beethoven, the G-minor Organ Fugue of Bach, or the G-minor Piano Quartet of Brahms, is a more moving emotion than all the fine heats with which we listen to Wagner, Schumann, or Tschaikowsky.

If, however, we are now ready to admit that in any absolute estimate the classic must be assigned a higher place than the romantic, this is by no means to say that the romantic lacks justification or good reason for being. It is indeed essential to the progress of art. For consider: if, dominated by our wish to produce only classic works, which must deal with a thoroughly plastic medium, we were always to rest content with that material over which we had complete mastery, we should never advance toward new modes of thought, greater complexities of structure, deeper powers of expression. Throughout the history of music, men have ventured into the realm of the novel, to win a foothold there which either in them or in their successors became established, and served as a new platform for classical utterance. Such innovators are like pilgrims or crusaders, who discover new lands to be colonized by their more conservative brothers. Mr. W. H. Hadow, in his admirable essay on Brahms, points out the service of the romantic successors of Beethoven in “widening the range of emotional expression,” and so “affecting music from the standpoint of the idea.” He shows that the failure of such a romanticist as Schumann to couch his ideas in entirely adequate polyphony naturally followed from the novelty of those ideas, and their complexity of outline. He concludes that either “polyphony should grow obsolete, which the most unthinking audacity can hardly affirm,” or that “the extreme of romantic expression has lost in art what it has gained in poetry.” Finally, he defines Brahms as the reformer who, while in “full accord with the general conception of our age,” is able “to select from its entire range [of musical thought] those particular forms of phrase and melody which are most conspicuously plastic and malleable.” In other words, Brahms has stamped the romantic ideas of Schumann and his fellows with the organic beauty of classicism.

Our conclusion is inevitable. We must look upon Tschaikowsky as a new romanticist, opening up unexplored fields of emotional expression; “losing in art,” to be sure, “what he gains in poetry, ” but enriching the resources of music just as Schumann enriched them before him. Once looked at in this light, Tschaikowsky falls into his true place, and we see that his fresh and sincere expression is a real contribution to the development of art, awaiting only some future Brahms to assimilate and reconstitute it in those forms of inner harmony that can alone give music its highest eloquence.

Daniel Gregory Mason.