How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. / Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art

n of Music

ture o

and the evolutionary processes which its history discloses (a record of which is preserved in its nomenclature), are to be understood, it is essential that this duality be kept in view. There is something so potent and elemental in the appeal which music makes that it is possible to derive pleasure from even an unwilling hearing or

f intellige

n, and to achieve such recognition there must be intelligent hearing in the first instance. For the purposes of this study, design may be held to be Form in its primary stages, the recognition of which is possible to eve

musical

e might hear it alone, study its quality, and determine its degree of acuteness or gravity (its pitch, as musicians say), but it can never become music so long as it remains isolated. When we recognize that it bears certain re

innings

Everyone is willing to do that much while looking at a picture. Who would look at a painting and rest satisfied with the impression made upon the sense of sight by the colors merely? No one, surely. Yet so soon as we look, so as to discriminate between the outlines, to observe the relationship of

ith a model

in the plastic arts is helped by the circumstance that the critical activity is largely a matter of comparison. Is the picture or the statue a good cop

of knowledge

Elem

of m

e elements out of which music is made has come to him intuitively. Does he recognize that musical tones are related to each other in respect of time and pitch? Then it shall not be difficult for him to recognize the three elements on which music rests-Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm. Can he recognize them with sufficient distinctness to seize upon their manifestations while music is sounding? Then memory shall come to the aid of discrimination, and he shall be able to appreciate enough of design to point the way to a true and lofty appreciation

mediary

ted notes are not music; they are only signs which indicate to the performer what to do to call tones into existence such as the composer had combined into an art-work in his mind. The broadly trained musician can read the symbols; t

voice that

lue of

ration. New compositions are slowly received; they make their way to popular appreciation only by repeated performances; the people like best the songs as well as the symphonies which they know. The quicker, theref

armony, a

siveness

hin itself the essence of both its companions. A succession of tones without harmonic regulation is not a perfect element in music; neither is a succession of tones which have harmonic regulation but are void of rhythm. The beauty and expressiveness, especially the emotionality, of a mus

eti

dy ana

their rhythmical or intervallic characteristics. Melodies are not all of the simple kind which the musically illiterate, or the musically ill-trained, recognize as "tunes," but they all have a symmetrical organization. The dissection of a simple folk-tune may serve to make this plai

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hrases, an

melody, but on different degrees of the scale; the fourth and eighth groups are identical and are an appendage hitched to the first group for the purpose of bringing it to a close, supplying a resting-point craved by man's innate sense of symmetry. Musicians call such groups cadences. A musical analyst would call each group a motive, and say that each successive two groups, beginning with the first, constitute a phrase, each two phrases

tion i

will suffice for many merely to be reminded of this to appreciate the fact that while the exercise of memory is a most necessary activity in listening to music, it lies in music to

ion in

itive poetry it is exemplified in the refrain or burden, in the high

uke me not i

n me in thy ho

elati

exists in the Creole tune. The bond of union between the motives of the melody as well as that in the poetry illustrates a principle of beauty which is the most important element in musical design after repetition, which is its necessary vehicle. It is because this principle guides the repetition of the tone-groups that together they form a melody

thmical

nciple

her class he will not only enjoy the pleasures of memory but will frequently get a glimpse into the composer's purposes which will stimulate his imagination and mightily increase his enjoyment. There is nothing can guide him more surely to a recognition of the principle of unity, which makes a symphony to be an organic whole instead of a group of pieces which are only externally related. The greatest exemplar of this principle is Beethoven; and his musi

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cal motiv

rnel of the first movement, it is the fundamental thought of the

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n the last

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rte sonata in F minor, op. 57, known as the "Sonata Appassionata," now gloomi

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ps in Beeth

phony and "Appa

's G majo

ng-point to the imagination of those who are seeking to know what the F minor sonata means. Most obviously it means music, but it means music that is an expression of one of those psychological struggles which Beethoven felt called upon more and more to delineate as he was more and more shut out from the companionship of the external world. Such struggles are in the truest sense of the word tempests. The motive, which, according to the story, Beethoven himself said indicates, in the symphony, the rappings of Fate at the door of human existence, is common to two works which are also related in their spiritual conte

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sketch-books of the master show, were i

enth Sy

hoven's symphony in A major, in which the external sign of the poetical idea which underlies the whole work is also rhythmic-so markedly so that Wagner characterized it most happily and trut

re unfo

of b

impor

o her

dactyli

ly tripping in t

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en View

red, through its combination

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y, jocosely happ

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ke in t

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en subjected to trochaic a

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ic charac

ctly as rhythmic. There is no more perfect illustration of this than that afforded by B

s begin-how very simple it is; the plain diatonic scale, not a single chr

n Beethoven's

ect of the first movement and the choral melody is a "thematic reference of the most striking importance,

cutive notes, and that in no less than four of them the notes should run up a portion of the scale an

c like

es at hap-hazard; he would be open to the charge, however, if the resemblances which I have pointed out in the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, a

first m

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the s

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oral m

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n and

s thematic material and its simpler relationships will lead, to so much knowledge of For