HOW TO LISTEN TO MUSIC, 7TH ED. ***
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Linda Cantoni, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
HOW TO LISTEN TO MUSIC
HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS TO UNTAUGHT LOVERS OF THE ART
BY
HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL
_Author of "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama," "Notes on the Cultivation of Choral Music," "The Philharmonic Society of New York," etc._
_SEVENTH EDITION_
NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1897
COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
TROW DIRECTORY PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK
* * * * *
TO
W.J. HENDERSON
WHO HAS HELPED ME TO RESPECT MUSICAL CRITICISM
* * * * *
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The author is beholden to the Messrs. Harper & Brothers for permission to use a small portion of the material in Chapter I., the greater part of Chapter IV., and the Plates which were printed originally in one of their publications; also to the publishers of "The Looker-On" for the privilege of reprinting a portion of an essay written for them entitled "Singers, Then and Now."
CONTENTS
[Sidenote: CHAP. I.]
_Introduction_
Purpose and scope of this book--Not written for professional musicians, but for untaught lovers of the art--neither for careless seekers after diversion unless they be willing to accept a higher conception of what "entertainment" means--The capacity properly to listen to music as a touchstone of musical talent--It is rarely found in popular concert-rooms--Travellers who do not see and listeners who do not hear--Music is of all the arts that which is practised most and thought about least--Popular ignorance of the art caused by the lack of an object for comparison--How simple terms are confounded by literary men--Blunders by Tennyson, Lamb, Coleridge, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, F. Hopkinson Smith, Brander Matthews, and others--A warning against pedants and rhapsodists. _Page 3_
[Sidenote: CHAP. II.]
_Recognition of Musical Elements_
The dual nature of music--Sense-perception, fancy, and imagination--Recognition of Design as Form in its primary stages--The crude materials of music--The co-ordination of tones--Rudimentary analysis of Form--Comparison, as in other arts, not possible--Recognition of the fundamental elements--Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm--The value of memory--The need of an intermediary--Familiar music best liked--Interrelation of the elements--Repetition the fundamental principle of Form--Motives, Phrases, and Periods--A Creole folk-tune analyzed--Repetition at the base of poetic forms--Refrain and Parallelism--Key-relationship as a bond of union--Symphonic unity illustrated in examples from Beethoven--The C minor symphony and "Appassionata" sonata--The Concerto in G major--The Seventh and Ninth symphonies. _Page 15_
[Sidenote: CHAP. III.]
_The Content and Kinds of Music_
How far it is necessary for the listener to go into musical philosophy--Intelligent hearing not conditioned upon it--Man's individual relationship to the art--Musicians proceed on the theory that feelings are the content of music--The search for pictures and stories condemned--How composers hear and judge--Definitions of the capacity of music by Wagner, Hauptmann, and Mendelssohn--An utterance by Herbert Spencer--Music as a language--Absolute music and Programme music--The content of all true art works--Chamber music--Meaning and origin of the term--Haydn the servant of a Prince--The characteristics of Chamber music--Pure thought, lofty imagination, and deep learning--Its chastity--Sympathy between performers and listeners essential to its enjoyment--A correct definition of Programme music--Programme music defended--The value of titles and superscriptions--Judgment upon it must, however, go to the music, not the commentary--Subjects that are unfit for music--Kinds of Programme music--Imitative music--How the music of birds has been utilized--The cuckoo of nature and Beethoven's cuckoo--Cock and hen in a seventeenth century composition--Rameau's pullet--The German quail--Music that is descriptive by suggestion--External and internal attributes--Fancy and Imagination--Harmony and the major and minor mode--Association of ideas--Movement delineated--Handel's frogs--Water in the "Hebrides" overture and "Ocean" symphony--Height and depth illustrated by acute and grave tones--Beethoven's illustration of distance--His rule enforced--Classical and Romantic music--Genesis of the terms--What they mean in literature--Archbishop Trench on classical books--The author's definitions of both terms in music--Classicism as the conservative principle, Romanticism as the progressive, regenerative, and creative--A contest which stimulates life. _Page 36_
YOU ARE READING
