Beethoven and His ForerunnersMason, Daniel Gregory
History
Beethoven and His Forerunners
Mason, Daniel Gregory
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827; Music -- 18th century -- History and criticism; Music -- 19th century -- History and criticism
it seems scarcely credible that the one should have been the ancestor
of the other.”[2] Of the corresponding increase in coherence and
definiteness he writes as follows: “In music, progressive integration
is displayed in numerous ways. The simple cadence embracing but a
few notes, which in the chants of savages is monotonously repeated,
becomes, among civilized races, a long series of different musical
phrases combined into one whole; and so complete is the integration,
that the melody cannot be broken off in the middle, nor shorn of its
final note, without giving us a painful sense of incompleteness. When
to the air, a bass, a tenor, and an alto are added; and when to the
harmony of different voice-parts there is added an accompaniment; we
see exemplified integrations of another order, which grow gradually
more elaborate. And the process is carried a stage higher when these
complex solos, concerted pieces, choruses, and orchestral effects,
are combined into the vast ensemble of a musical drama; of which,
be it remembered, the artistic perfection largely consists in the
subordination of the particular effects to the total effect.”[3]
In innumerable ways, which these passages will perhaps suffice to
suggest, the material of music has undergone a continuous, orderly,
and progressive process of development, from its earliest days down to
our own. It has exemplified, in short, an evolution from “indefinite,
incoherent, homogeneity” to “definite, coherent, heterogeneity.”
Concomitantly with this special evolution of the sound-material
of music, moreover, has gone on a more general evolution of human
faculties, which has involved a gradual turning away of men’s attention
from comparatively low forms of musical effect to those higher forms
which require for their appreciation a good deal of concentration,
perception, and power of intellectual synthesis. What was the exclusive
concern of the earliest musicians became, as time went on, but a
factor in a more complex artistic enjoyment. In order to understand
this aspect of the matter clearly, we shall have to distinguish as
accurately as possible three kinds of musical effect, all indispensable
to music worthy of the name, yet not of equal dignity and value.
There is, in the first place, the direct sensuous effect of the sounds,
their deliciousness as sensations. Musical tones gratify the ear just
as light and color gratify the eye, agreeable tastes the palate,
aromatic odors the nose, and soft, warm surfaces the touch. A single
tone from a flute, a violin, or a horn, is as delightful as a patch of
pure color, white, red, or purple. To listen to music is, at least in
part, to bathe in a flood of exquisite aural sensation. This immediate
value for our sense of the “concord of sweet sounds” is a fundamental,
legitimate, and important one, to deny or disparage which is to confess
oneself insensitive or a prude. All music depends for a part of its
appeal on its primary sensuous quality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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