ON MUSIC AND MUSICAL CRITICISM.

(Concluded.)

ἀλόγῳ πάθει τὴν ἄλογον συνασκεῖν αἴσθησιν.

THOSE who are at one with me in regarding pleasure as the present criterion of music's value may now be willing to go on and consider the question, whose pleasure? and this brings me to the most important part of my subject. Both surface and depth have to be considered in our measurement, for it seems as impossible to deny the epithet good to the music which gives some degree of durable enjoyment to large numbers of human beings as to that which gives a greater degree of more durable enjoyment to a smaller number. I hope the words I have used will at once exclude the idea of the trifling strains, the hack-work of bandmasters and dance-writers, which are so common in theatres and places of public entertainment, and which may often be said not to awaken one spark of interest in any single listener: that music is popular which arrests the people's attention and compels their recognition, not that whose greatest success is momentarily to tickle their ears. Now it may seem that the definition of good as what gives some degree of durable pleasure contains nothing new or peculiar, and might be safely applied to all manner of other things besides music. This is true, but the novelty and peculiarity lie in the legitimate results of its application to music. In the estimation of other arts, as the world now stands, such a definition applies so obviously only to the few that we scarcely stop to think about it: in music our census will extend to every nook and corner of the land. Music is emphatically the people's art. Some of the reasons for this are in obvious connection with much that has been already said, and some still await discussion. If we were asked à priori to imagine the characteristics of a 'people's art,' we should require (1) that some elementary instinct for it should be deeply ingrained in the human organism, so that it should be capable of profoundly stirring the most diverse natures; (2) that it should be independent of logical processes and ranges of ideas beyond the ken of the vulgar and uneducated; (3) that it should be capable of extremely definite representation in memory (because the majority have no time or opportunity

for perpetual fresh presentations); and (4) that it should admit of wide, rapid, and gratuitous diffusion. It is surely matter of congratulation that every one of these requirements is satisfied completely by melody. The third and fourth are of course intimately connected; for the power of a melody to get into the air and traverse a country and a continent in a few months depends on its being definitely remembered. To the ordinary eye many lines in a picture or building might be just different without affecting the individuality of the work: whereas the ear will not suffer the alteration of a note in a beloved melody, and it may be safely affirmed that no one ever possessed so definite an idea of any visible object, at which he was not absolutely gazing, as hundreds of thousands can summon up at any moment of their lives in the case of musical productions. The very word Volkslied bears witness to this definite knowledge, and to the power of transmission from individual to individual and from generation to generation which it implies.

There is little fear that through a recognition of its ideal (and in great measure actual) extent the musical world will be divided against itself. The influence of an educated minority must always be sufficiently strong: would that it were always rightly used! The fact that an army of executants stands between the creative artist and his public subjects music in one way to a special disadvantage; for among these, in addition to many who merely crave for the excitement of novelties and the satisfaction of conquering difficulties, there are always some, possessed of cleverness and dexterity but lacking simplicity and reverence, who rank talent above genius, who eagerly welcome opportunities of personal display, and who lead away audiences capable of enjoying beautiful music into applauding mere show. We may hope, however, that these cases will become rarer, and that the love of the art has its roots too deep to be permanently distorted or coerced. The people get few chances, but their instinct, healthy even where lacking refinement, has served and will serve as a sound basis for high and rapid development. Their verdicts do not extend beyond the comparatively narrow limits of their comprehension; but the comprehension is most genuine, and their positive judgments have been again and again confirmed and eventually taken up into the accepted body of opinion. Music does not stand more apart in its cosmopolitan character than in the excellence of its popular results. The beauty of the Volkslieds of the European nations has been and still is universally acknowledged by the best musicians, and many of these (as opposed to most early efforts of other arts) may be fairly called perfect. Persons who are beyond the reach of any cultivation are at all events safe from false and superficial cultivation, and in the present day the difference between music for healthy enjoyment and music for accomplishment and display is pointed by the difference between such fine melodies as the Marseil

laise, the March of the Men of Harlech, and the Blue Danube, which are played and whistled in so many streets, and the feebly pretty tunes and feebly ugly variations which are sung and played in so many drawing-rooms.

But, it will be objected, there are also bad and vulgar tunes which obtain the run of the streets. Doubtless: I admit of course a great deal of low taste in music both in and out of the streets, using the word low in complete conformity to my own definition, as implying a feeble and transient enjoyment of things which are seen, as a pure matter of experience, not to appeal to those accustomed to a greater and more permanent enjoyment. But I would observe that the people have to take what they can get, and that the repertory of tunes open to the poorer classes in England is extremely limited; if they catch up clap-trap, it is because they cannot pick and choose, and are at the mercy of barrel-organs: would that they got more chances, and that one had not to walk through miles and miles of London park on sunny Sunday afternoons without encountering a single band! All musicians must know the sensation of being haunted even by tunes which they absolutely dislike; and though I do not pretend that street-boys dislike the bad tunes they mechanically whistle, I am quite convinced, from my own experience of village-children and from the accounts of friends in many parts of the country, that they would sing and whistle good tunes (and do, when they get the chance of knowing them) infinitely more con amore. If I seem to attach supreme importance to children, it is because the organism is apt to become set and unreceptive after a certain age; but Welsh mines and Yorkshire factories could give a good account of the people's art, whose truest home is 'in among the throngs of men.'

I suppose that everybody who is much interested in a subject, and on the look-out for scraps of evidence about it, is occasionally startled by finding that these go for the most part quite unobserved, and that what he thought commonplaces are received as paradoxes. Now at this very moment a house-painter is humming sotto voce Mendelssohn's Wedding March outside my door, a baker's boy in the street is whistling La ci darem, and a German band a little farther on has just been playing the march from Scipio, to the obvious edification of surrounding nursery-maids; yet I believe that at all events the first two facts would have gone unobserved even by many of those who know the tunes. I would not say with Schumann that the voices of the Graces cannot be heard by reason of the multitude of fugues;' there is no incompatibility between the two things, and I have no objection to ninety-and-nine just persons singing fugues in ninety-and-nine parts (if they can get them written), provided they will allow me to believe that when a street-boy is whistling a beautiful melody in perfect tune and time, keeping step and swinging his basket in rhythm, he is not doing so in sheer

vacuity and vulgarity, but with bonâ fide artistic enjoyment. Nor has the fact that such performances are often displeasing and worrying to others, owing to the great imperfection of the instrument, any bearing on the feeling in the performer which underlies this very feeble means of expression; it is music's misfortune to be overheard, but it is certainly the good fortune of the human race that they possess by nature the means, however imperfect, of reproducing musical emotions for themselves. I can hardly imagine a greater happiness than to have made a really first-rate Volkslied, when I think of the number of hearts a man may so reach; and the supremely beautiful 'second subject' in the first movement of Beethoven's violin-concerto, a Volkslied if ever there was one, is a greater possession for mankind than all the elaborate development of that supremely beautiful work. I have found people occasionally agree when the thing is put in this way, but then they hear perhaps that very tune hummed in the street and don't notice it.

It may be well to remark that in proportion to the lack of direct moral and intellectual stimulation in the subject-matter of an art, the duty of not allowing enjoyment of it to sink into mere personal gratification seems to need enforcement. Many of those who have easy opportunities for enjoying Art are apt to nurse themselves with the belief that they are doing something worthy and admirable in so enjoying it. But what is the legitimate recreation of busy people may be the self-indulgence of idle ones. The fashionable air which is thrown over many art-gatherings has a specially dangerous tendency; and the art where this is most prominent happens to be the very one where philanthropy has the amplest field. To appreciate even simple work in the arts which extract relations and harmonies from the external universe of facts and things, requires mental education as well as artistic perception: some knowledge of the nature and significance of the subject-matter must underlie appreciation of the representation. But music speaks directly, and demands no such external preparation: nor is anything but good cheap concerts, with frequent repetitions of the same works, needed for the C Minor Symphony to become to the many what the Genius of the Vatican is to the few. There is a deliberateness in the indulgence of systematic concert-going which seems to demand as a counterpoise the recognition of this fact: for though we may feast in company, there are many who starve outside and who could be easily fed.

I am anxious not to overstate my case. What one may perceive by keeping one's ears open is to be regarded not as a satisfactory and complete result, but only as a certain indication of what might be. Good music seems to make its way like water wherever channels are open for it; and if I have seemed chiefly to confine myself to simple melodies, it is only because circumstances, not necessity, have hitherto limited the people's chances to these. Wagner is perfectly VOL. V.-No. 28.

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right in fathering the greatest works of Beethoven on the dancemelody; these works differ enormously among themselves in the amount of the distinctly popular element, but it is certainly a fair way of expressing the same thing to say that a person who appreciates Strauss's waltzes may as a rule be led by very easy stages to appreciate, not indeed the Posthumous quartetts or the first and last movements of the Eroica, but the overtures, for example, of the Nozze and Leonora, and (I will add) of Tannhäuser, and large portions of most of the great symphonies. Some proof of this may be seen at the autumn promenade concerts at Covent Garden, for society is certainly not divided musically into strata distinguishable by an entrance-fee of a shilling. In connection with Wagner's remark it is interesting to notice an indication of the superiority of the people, at least as regards the fundamental instinct of rhythm, in the truly marvellous contrast between the waltzing seen in any common dancing-garden, or on the deck of a German steamer, and that common in more fashionable quarters. It is not surprising that the couples of the upper classes should find it impossible to dance up to the time at which their waltzes are frequently played; but why, instead of checking the music, invent the fiction of dancing halftime,' unless through a failure to perceive that to spread three steps rhythmically over two bars of waltz-measure is a feat only comparable to the squaring of the circle?

Melody of a direct kind, however, is so obviously and necessarily the primary popular element in music, while on the other hand the melodies in the greatest instrumental works are often to the untrained ear so interrupted and covered as only occasionally and transiently to arrest the attention, that though I would always have the latter represented, and so train more and more ears, I cannot but wish measures were taken in England to introduce some of the greatest vocal melodies oftener and in a more imposing manner. Voices capable of filling vast buildings satisfactorily are very limited both in number and power of work: but why should not many glorious tunes be arranged for orchestras, which waste so much time and strength on mere displays of showy sound? By such an adaptation the tunes may gain even in beauty as much as they lose, and may gain indefinitely in the numbers they appeal to. I shall never forget the overpowering effect of Schubert's Ave Maria, played by wind-instruments and accompanied by strings, as I heard it in Dresden, at one of the ordinary nightly Gewerbehaus concerts. Do the conductors of English popular concerts know the feeling in the air when a multitude is stirred? If so, I should have thought that, were it only to enjoy the sense of blissful expansion in swaying the beats and pulses of that wonderful life, a sense as of controlling the powers of an invisible world, they would open more freely the treasures which lie ready to their hand.