Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music Part 3

exhibits such a case of falling behind.

That some few have already felt how the intervals of the Series of Seven might be differently arranged (graduated) is manifested in isolated pa.s.sages by Liszt, and recently by Debussy and his following, and even by Richard Strauss. Strong impulse, longing, gifted instinct, all speak from these strains. Yet it does not appear to me that a conscious and orderly conception of this intensified means of expression had been formed by these composers.

I have made an attempt to exhaust the possibilities of the arrangement of degrees within the seven-tone scale; and succeeded, by raising and lowering the intervals, in establis.h.i.+ng _one hundred and thirteen different scales_. These 113 scales (within the octave _C-C_) comprise the greater part of our familiar twenty-four keys, and, furthermore, a series of new keys of peculiar character. But with these the mine is not exhausted, for we are at liberty to _transpose_ each one of these 113, besides the blending of two such keys in harmony and melody.

There is a significant difference between the sound of the scale _c-d?-e?-f?-g?-a?-b?-c_ when _c_ is taken as tonic, and the scale of _d?_ minor. By giving it the customary _C_-major triad as a fundamental harmony, a novel harmonic sensation is obtained. But now listen to this same scale supported alternately by the _A_-minor, _E?_-major, and _C_-major triads, and you cannot avoid a feeling of delightful surprise at the strangely unfamiliar euphony.

But how would a lawgiver cla.s.sify the tone-series _c-d?-e?-f?-g-a-b-c_, _c-d?-e?-f-g?-a-b-c_, _c-d-e?-f?-g?-a-b-c_, _c-d?-e-f-g?-a-b?-c_?--or these, forsooth: _c-d-e?-f?-g-a?-b-c_, _c-d-e?-f?-g?-a-b-c_, _c-d?-e?-f?-g?-a-b?-c_?

One cannot estimate at a glance what wealth of melodic and harmonic expression would thus be opened up to the hearing; but a great many novel possibilities may be accepted as certain, and are perceptible at a glance.

With this presentation, the unity of all keys may be considered as finally p.r.o.nounced and justified. A kaleidoscopic blending and interchanging of twelve semitones within the three-mirror tube of Taste, Emotion, and Intention--the essential feature of the harmony of to-day.

The harmony of _to-day_, and not for long; for all signs presage a revolution, and a next step toward that "eternal harmony." Let us once again call to mind, that in this latter the gradation of the octave is _infinite_, and let us strive to draw a little nearer to infinitude.

The tripart.i.te tone (third of a tone) has for some time been demanding admittance, and we have left the call unheeded. Whoever has experimented, like myself (in a modest way), with this interval, and introduced (either with voice or with violin) two equidistant intermediate tones between the extremes of a whole tone, schooling his ear and his precision of attack, will not have failed to discern that tripart.i.te tones are wholly independent intervals with a p.r.o.nounced character, and not to be confounded with ill-tuned semitones. They form a refinement in chromatics based, as at present appears, on the whole-tone scale. Were we to adopt them without further preparation, we should have to give up the semitones and lose our "minor third" and "perfect fifth;" and this loss would be felt more keenly than the relative gain of a system of eighteen one-third tones.

But there is no apparent reason for giving up the semitones for the sake of this new system. By retaining, for each whole tone, a semitone, we obtain a second series of whole tones lying a semitone higher than the original series. Then, by dividing this second series of whole tones into third-tones, each third-tone in the lower series will be matched by a semitone in the higher series.

Thus we have really arrived at a system of whole tones divided into sixths of a tone; and we may be sure that even sixth-tones will sometime be adopted into musical speech. But the tonal system above sketched must first of all train the hearing to thirds of a tone, without giving up the semitones.

To summarize: We may set up either two series of third-tones, with an interval of a semitone between the series; or, the usual semitonic series _thrice repeated_ at the interval of one-third of a tone.

Merely for the sake of distinction, let us call the first tone _C_, and the next third-tones _C?_, and _D?_; the first semitone (small) _c_, and its following thirds _c?_ and _d?_; the result is fully explained by the table below:

[Music]

A preliminary expedient for notation might be, to draw six lines for the staff, using the lines for the whole tones and the s.p.a.ces for the semitones:

[Music]

then indicating the third-tones by sharps and flats:

[Music]

The question of notation seems to me subordinate. On the other hand, the question is important and imperious, how and on what these tones are to be produced. Fortunately, while busied with this essay, I received from America direct and authentic intelligence which solves the problem in a simple manner. I refer to an invention by Dr. Thaddeus Cahill.[Q] He has constructed a comprehensive apparatus which makes it possible to transform an electric current into a fixed and mathematically exact number of vibrations. As pitch depends on the number of vibrations, and the apparatus may be "set" on any number desired, the infinite gradation of the octave may be accomplished by merely moving a lever corresponding to the pointer of a quadrant.

[Q] "New Music for an Old World." Dr. Thaddeus Cahill's Dynamophone, an extraordinary electrical invention for producing scientifically perfect music. Article in McClure's Magazine for July, 1906, by Ray Stannard Baker. Readers interested in the details of this invention are referred to the above-mentioned magazine article.

Only a long and careful series of experiments, and a continued training of the ear, can render this unfamiliar material approachable and plastic for the coming generation, and for Art.

And what a vista of fair hopes and dreamlike fancies is thus opened for them both! Who has not dreamt that he could float on air? and firmly believed his dream to be reality?--Let us take thought, how music may be restored to its primitive, natural essence; let us free it from architectonic, acoustic and esthetic dogmas; let it be pure invention and sentiment, in harmonies, in forms, in tone-colors (for invention and sentiment are not the prerogative of melody alone); let it follow the line of the rainbow and vie with the clouds in breaking sunbeams; _let Music be naught else than Nature mirrored by and reflected from the human breast_; for it is sounding air and floats above and beyond the air; within Man himself as universally and absolutely as in Creation entire; for it can gather together and disperse without losing in intensity.

IN his book "Beyond the Good and the Bad" (_Jenseits von Gut und Bose_) Nietzsche says: "With regard to German music I consider precaution necessary in various ways. a.s.suming that a person loves the South (as I love it) as a great training-school for health of soul and sense in their highest potency, as an uncontrollable flood and glamour of suns.h.i.+ne spreading over a race of independent and self-reliant beings;--well, such an one will learn to be more or less on his guard against German music, because, while spoiling his taste anew, it undermines his health.

"Such a Southlander (not by descent, but by belief) must, should he dream of the future of music, likewise dream of a redemption of music from the North, while in his ears there rings the prelude to a deeper, mightier, perchance a more evil and more mysterious music, a super-German music, which does not fade, wither and die away in view of the blue, sensuous sea and the splendor of Mediterranean skies, as all German music does;--a super-European music, that a.s.serts itself even amid the tawny sunsets of the desert, whose soul is allied with the palm-tree, and can consort and prowl with great, beautiful, lonely beasts of prey.

"I could imagine a music whose rarest charm should consist in its complete divorce from the Good and the Bad;--only that its surface might be ruffled, as it were, by a longing as of a sailor for home, by variable golden shadows and tender frailties:--an Art which should see fleeing toward it, from afar off, the hues of a peris.h.i.+ng moral world become wellnigh incomprehensible, and which should be hospitable and profound enough to harbor such belated fugitives."

And Tolstoi trans.m.u.tes a landscape-impression into a musical impression when he writes, in "Lucerne": "Neither on the lake, nor on the mountains, nor in the skies, a single straight line, a single unmixed color, a single point of repose;--everywhere movement, irregularity, caprice, variety, an incessant interplay of shades and lines, and in it all the reposefulness, softness, harmony and inevitableness of Beauty."

Will this music ever be attained?

"Not all reach Nirvana; but he who, gifted from the beginning, learns everything that one ought to learn, experiences all that one should experience, renounces what one should renounce, develops what one should develop, realizes what one should realize--he shall reach Nirvana."[R]

(Kern, _Geschichte des Buddhismus in Indien_.)

[R] As if antic.i.p.ating my thoughts, M. Vincent d'Indy has just written me: "... laissant de cote les contingences et les pet.i.tesses de la vie pour regarder constamment vers un ideal qu'on ne pourra jamais atteindre, mais dont il est permis de se rapprocher."

If Nirvana be the realm "beyond the Good and the Bad," _one_ way leading thither is here pointed out. A way to the very portal. To the bars that divide Man from Eternity--or that open to admit that which was temporal.

Beyond that portal sounds _music_. Not the strains of "musical art."[S]--It may be, that we must leave Earth to find that music. But only to the pilgrim who has succeeded on the way in freeing himself from earthly shackles, shall the bars open.

[S] I think I have read, somewhere, that Liszt confined his Dante Symphony to the two movements, _Inferno_ and _Purgatorio_, "because our tone-speech is inadequate to express the felicities of Paradise."

ADDENDA

FEELING--like honesty--is a moral point of honor, an attribute of whose possession no one will permit denial, which claims a place in life and art alike. But while, in life, a want of feeling may be forgiven to the possessor of a more brilliant attribute, such as bravery or impartial justice, in art feeling is held to be the highest moral qualification.

In music, however, feeling requires two consorts, taste and style. Now, in life, one encounters real taste as seldom as deep and true feeling; as for style, it is a province of art. What remains, is a species of pseudo-emotion which must be characterized as lachrymose hysteria or turgidity. And, above all, people insist upon having it plainly paraded before their eyes! It must be underscored, so that everybody shall stop, look, and listen. The audience sees it, greatly magnified, thrown on the screen, so that it dances before the vision in vague, importunate vastness; it is cried on the streets, to summon them that dwell remote from art; it is gilded, to make the dest.i.tute stare in amaze.

For in life, too, the _expressions_ of feeling, by mien and words, are oftenest employed; rarer, and more genuine, is that feeling which acts without talk; and most precious is the feeling which hides itself.

"Feeling" is generally understood to mean tenderness, pathos, and extravagance, of expression. But how much more does the marvelous flower "Emotion" enfold! Restraint and forbearance, renunciation, power, activity, patience, magnanimity, joyousness, and that all-controlling intelligence wherein feeling actually takes its rise.

It is not otherwise in Art, which holds the mirror up to Life; and still more outspokenly in Music, which repeats the emotions of Life--though for this, as I have said, taste and style must be added; Style, which distinguishes Art from Life.

What the amateur and the mediocre artist attempt to express, is feeling in little, in detail, for a short stretch.

Feeling on a grand scale is mistaken by the amateur, the semi-artist, the public (and the critics too, unhappily!), for a want of emotion, because they all are unable to hear the longer reaches as parts of a yet more extended whole. Feeling, therefore, is likewise economy.

Hence, I distinguish feeling as Taste, as Style, as Economy. Each a whole in itself, and each one-third of the Whole. Within and over them rules a subjective trinity: Temperament, Intelligence, and the instinct of Equipoise.

These six carry on a dance of such subtility in the choice of partners and intertwining of figures, in the bearing and the being borne, in advancing and curtesying, in motion and repose, that no loftier height of artistry is conceivable.

When the chords of the two triads are in perfect tune, Fantasy may--nay, must--a.s.sociate with Feeling; supported by the Six, she will not degenerate, and out of this combination of all the elements arises Individuality. The individuality catches, like a lens, the light-impressions, reflects them, according to its nature, as a negative, and the hearer perceives the true picture.