squalid beginnings of the new art and the glories of Bach and
Handel is almost as great as that between the monodists and
Palestrina, but it appeals far less to our sympathies, because it
seems like a contrast between noble sincerity and idle elegance.
The new art seems so easy-going and empty that it conceals
from us the necessity of the sympathetic historical insight for
which the painful experiments of the monodists almost seem to
cry aloud. And its boldest rhetorical experiments, such as the
fantasias of Philipp Emanuel Bach, show a security of harmony
which, together with the very vividness of their realization of
modern ideas, must appear to a modern listener more like the
hollow rhetoric of a decadent than the prophetic inspiration
of a pioneer. And, just as in the 17th century, so in the time
before Haydn and Mozart, the work that is most valuable artistically
tends to be that which is of less importance historically.
The cultivation of the shape of music at the expense of its texture
was destined to lead to greater things than polyphonic art had
ever dreamt of; but no living art could be achieved until the
texture was brought once more into vital, if subordinate, relation
to the shape. Thus, far more interesting artistically than the
epoch-making earlier pianoforte works of Philipp Emanuel Bach
are his historically less fruitful oratorios, and his symphonies,
and the rich polyphonic modifications of the new principles
in the best works of his elder brother Friedemann. Yet the transition-period
is hardly second in historic importance to that of
the 17th century; and we may gather from it even more direct
hints as to the meaning of the tendencies of our own day.
As in the 17th century, so in the 18th the composers and critics of Haydn’s youth, not knowing what to make of the new tendencies, and conscious rather of the difference between new and old ideas than of the true nature of either, took refuge in speculations about the emotional and external expression of music; and when artistic power and balance fail it is very convenient to go outside the limits of the art and explain failure away by external ideas. Fortunately the external ideas were capable of serious organic function through the medium of opera, and in that art-form music was passing out of the hands of Italians and assuming artistic and dramatic life under Gluck. The metaphysical and literary speculation which overwhelmed musical criticism at this time, and which produced paper warfares and musical party-feuds such as that between the Gluckists and the Piccinists, at all events had this advantage over the Wagnerian and anti-Wagnerian controversies of the last generation and the disputes about the legitimate function of instrumental music at the present day—that it was speculation applied exclusively to an art-form in which literary questions were directly concerned, an art-form which moreover had up to that time been the grave of all the music composers chose to put into it. But as soon as music once more attained to consistent principles all these discussions became but a memory. If Gluck’s music had not been more musical as well as more dramatic than Piccini’s, all its foreshadowing of Wagnerian principles would have availed it no more than it availed Monteverde.
When the new art found symphonic expression in Haydn and Mozart, it became music pure and simple, and yet had no more difficulty than painting or poetry in dealing with external ideas, when these were naturally brought into it by the human voice or the conditions of dramatic action. It had once more become an art which need reject or accept nothing on artificial or extraneous grounds. Beethoven soon showed how gigantic the scale and range of the sonata style could be, and how tremendous was its effect on the possibilities of vocal music, both dramatic and choral. No revolution was needed to accomplish this. The style was perfectly formed, and for the first and so far the only time in musical history a mature art of small range opened out into an equally perfect one of gigantic range, without a moment of decadence or destruction. The chief glory of the art that culminates in Beethoven is, of course, the instrumental music, all of which comes under the head of the sonata-forms (q.v.).
Meanwhile Mozart raised comic opera, both Italian and German, to a height which has never since been approached within the classical limits, and from which the operas of Rossini and his successors show a decadence so deplorable that if “classical music” means “high art” we must say that classical opera buffa begins and ends in Mozart. But Gluck, finding his dramatic ideas encouraged by the eminent theatrical sensibilities of the French, had already given French opera a stimulus towards the expression of tragic emotion which made the classics of the French operatic school well worthy to inspire Beethoven to his one noble operatic effort and Weber to the greatest works of his life. Cherubini, though no more a Frenchman than Gluck, was Gluck’s successor in the French classical school of dramatic music. His operas, like his church music, account for Beethoven’s touching estimation of him as the greatest composer of the time. In them his melodies, elsewhere curiously cold and prosaic, glow with the warmth of a true classic; and his tact in developing, accelerating and suspending a dramatic climax is second only to Mozart’s. Scarcely inferior to Cherubini in mastery and dignity, far more lovable in temperament, and weakened only by inequality of invention, Méhul deserves a far higher place in musical history than is generally accorded him. His most famous work, Joseph, is of more historical importance than his others, but it is by no means his best from a purely musical point of view, though its Biblical subject impelled Méhul to make extremely successful experiments in “local colour” which had probably considerable influence upon Weber, whose admiration of the work was boundless. One thing is certain, that the romantic opera of Weber owes much of its inspiration to the opéra comique of these masters.[1]
8. From Beethoven to Wagner.—After Beethoven comes what is commonly though vaguely described as the “romantic” movement. In its essentials it amounts to little more than this, that musicians found new and prouder titles for a very ancient and universal division of parties. The one party set up a convenient scheme of form based upon the average procedure of all the writers of sonatas except Haydn and Beethoven, which scheme they chose to call classical; while the other party devoted itself to the search for new materials and new means of expression. The classicists, if so they may be called, did not quite approve of Beethoven; and while there is much justification for the charge that has been brought against them of reducing the sonata-form to a kind of game, they have for that very reason no real claim to be considered inheritors of classical traditions. The true classical method is that in which matter and form are so united that it is impossible to say which is prior to the other. The pseudo-classics are the artists who set up a form conveniently like the average classical form, and fill it with something conveniently like the average classical matter, with just such difference as will seem like an advance in brilliance and range. The romanticists are the artists who realize such a difference between their matter and that of previous art as impels them to find new forms for it, or at all events to alter the old forms considerably. But if they are successful the difference between their work and that of the true classics becomes merely external; they are classics in a new art-form. As, however, this is as rare as true classical art is at the best of times, romanticism tends to mean little more than the difference between an unstable artist who cannot master his material and an artist who can, whether on the pseudo-classical or the true classical plane. The term “romantic opera” has helped us to regard Weber as a romanticist in that sphere, but when we call his instrumental works “romantic” the term ceases to have really valuable meaning. As applied to pieces like the Concertstück, the Invitation à la danse, and other pieces of which the external subject is known either from Weber’s letters or from the titles of the pieces themselves, the term means simply “programme-music” such as we have seen to be characteristic of any stage in which the art is imperfectly mastered. Weber’s programme-music shows no advance on Beethoven in the illustrative resources of the art; and the application of the term “romantic”
- ↑ We must remember in this connexion that the term opéra comique means simply opera with spoken dialogue, and has nothing to do with the comic idea.
