MUSIC.

THE THRESHOLD OF MUSIC.

OF all the theories about the future of music, perhaps the most generally supported is that which, while admitting the possibility of great developments in technique and the

elaboration of harmony, contends that the best creative work has already been done ; that the difficulty of coining fresh

and original melodies is a matter of mathematical demonstra- tion; and that the scope of music is likely to be increasingly confined to the supplying of a picturesque or illustrative commentary. This view, though widely held, is, it is hardly necessary to explain, much more popular amongst writers on music than amongst composers. But it receives a good deal of indirect corroboration from the methods of those composers

who are regarded as most representative of the Zeitgeist in modern music. There is Strauss, for example, who cannot describe the domestic life of a young couple without adding four saxophones to his score. There is Debussy, whose subtle

impressionism defies analysis, but obliges admirers and detractors alike to insist on his capacity for creating an atmosphere, And there is Elgar, whose most notable quality is declared by so sympathetic a critic as Dr. Ernest Walker to be " picturesque emotionality." There are other critics who go much further in the way of disparaging the " uew paths," and talk sadly of decadence, Byzantinism, and anarchy.

But even setting downright pessimists aside, it must be admitted that modern tendencies excite more misgiving than enthusiasm amongst what we may call " Left-Centre " musicians. This being so, it is refreshing to find in Mr. Wallace* a writer who has not only a robust confidence in the future of music, but advances a number of novel and ingenious arguments to warrant our indulging in the Homeric vaunt :

ineig roe. rrari paw diseivoves et'f'o'ised' etym. Indeed, we are

not only greater than our fathers ; we are greater than our elder brothers : " We have the unimpeachable records of a faculty which cannot be exercised without a cerebral endow- ment immeasurably greater to-day than it was twenty years ago." This is the cheering side of Mr. 'Wallace's message. But there is another and humbling side as well. This same faculty "is an expression of mental energy which has put forth its

activities only within the last two hundred years Con- sidering, therefore, its incredibly long period of incubation, its slow development, its sudden rise, its continuation by leaps and bounds [Mr. Wallace declares in another passage that there has never been any retrogression in music], I feel that, however amazing its state is, we are merely on the threshold of an art which, sooner perhaps than we suspect, will attain undreamt-of

dimensions Those who regard the gift of music as a sacred trust, imposing obligations of conduct and of good life, can only hope that we are even now merely in an embryonic stage, and that its hour is not yet at hand I believe that, viewed in correlation with man's other faculties, music is still in its infancy, and that the utmost effort of the most notable composer of our own time, or of past time, will be but an iota in the inscription recording man's endeavour towards its accomplishment."

We have long been accustomed to hear music spoken of as the youngest of the arts, but no writer has ever insisted on its infantile, nay, embryonic, condition with greater energy and iteration than Mr. Wallace. Its progress, he admits, has been continuous, and of late years perfectly astounding, but none the less that progress is as nothing compared to the possibilities of future developments. Dr. Ernest Walker in his "History of Music in England" laid stress on the con- tinuous existence of musical activity in England for five

* The Threshold of Music : an Inquiry into the Development of the Music"! Sense. By William Wallace. London: Macmillan and Co. [5s. net.]

hundred years. The starting-point of modern music, accord- ing to other writers, is taken to be, in round numbers, the year 1600. Mr. Wallace, on the other hand, regards music, in so far as it really counts, as only two hundred years old. There is, however, this broad distinction between him and other writers, that for his purpose the aesthetics of the art are negligible. What really matters is the amount of cerebral activity that is displayed in the cultivation of music. The musical faculty, as he understands it, remained practically dormant till the Middle Ages. The music of the ancients, including the Greeks, is summarily dismissed because of the absence of any evidence that harmony entered into their system. Oriental music, though its scientific basis is sufficiently proved by such a treatise as that of the late Captain Day, is entirely excluded from his survey. This is logical enough, because its basis is melodic and rhythmical; and, so far as we can follow Mr. Wallace's argument, melody and rhythm minus harmony afford no adequate proof of the exercise of the musical faculty as conceived by him. Music, in other words, until consciously related by its makers with mental processes, and capable of being considered as an index of intellectuality and brain-power, remained in an inchoate and rudimentary condition.

The composers who have been conspicuous for melodic invention and preoccupation with form receive but scant recognition in Mr. Wallace's inquiry. Thus he excludes the great Elizabethan madrigal-writers entirely from his survey, presumably as anterior to the period in which the development of the musical faculty began in real earnest. The seraphic beauty of Palestrina leaves him cold, because Palestrina was fettered by formalism. Similarly the services rendered by Mozart and Haydn to the evolution of music are regarded by him as of a subsidiary order. " The mental development of Haydn and Mozart, judged by modern standards, was not a high one [Their] musical faculty was an entity circumscribed and out of touch with other planes of thought It was an artificial age and music was merely masquerade." His heroes—tried by the touchstone of cerebral activity— are Monteverde, Bacb, Beethoven, Berlioz, and Wagner. But their greatness, which he liberally admits, is after all relative. At best they can only be regarded as early pioneers, since music is still in its swaddling-clothes, while other arts, notably painting and sculpture, have attained finality. Indeed, Mr. Wallace insists so energetically on the fallacy of applying generalisations based on the other arts to the domain of music that it would clearly be an absurdity to treat Beethoven or Wagner as belonging to the same category as Pheidias or Michael Angelo. But Music, in his opinion, though the youngest, is not the Cinderella of the arts. We cannot institute comparisons, because we are not in pari materia. In justice to Mr. Wallace, it is only fair to state that

he admits the possibility of a decadence in music as swift as its rise:— "It may be that this faculty for music is an aberration, rising swiftly to maturity, expending its energies in a brief cycle of centuries, to fade away exhausted and disappear from man's knowledge or man's chronicles Or, on the other hand, may not this faculty be only the threshold which we are to cross on our way to a more spacious mansion ? Or, again, is this musical faculty part only of a larger sense which awaits development ? For, placing together for the moment the two aspects of music, its creation and its appreciation, is there not a third aspect yet to come into view, namely, the comprehension that is something deeper than appreciation, the discovery of its correlation with- other forces in life, its establishment upon an ethical basis ? "

This mood of misgiving is, however, only temporary. As he advances in his inquiry Mr. Wallace grows more and more confident that the future of music will confound the argu- ments of those unsympathetic men of science who find it lacking in purpose or utility, and will prove that it must be reckoned among the essentials of man's existence. The vagaries of musical heredity are a rather bard nut to crack,

but he holds that there is .a strong presumption that in time 4' the whole aspect of music will be changed, and that man 'will employ the musical sense as an everyday property whose origin is too remote to trace." And the " musical sense" as defined by Mr. Wallace is no small thing, but involves mental audition and other gifts at present shared only by a highly cultivated minority.

While Mr: Wallace clearly holds that music will be

increasingly concerned in the future with the struggle "to give definite expression to subconscious thought," it is on its ethical side that be anticipates its most momentous expansion. Here, however, he abstains from any precise forecast, content- ing himself with the peremptory declaration that "there is no man living who can speak of the ethical significance of music; nay, not even his children's grandchildren will have the faculty

to do so No one can arrive at the ethical signifi- cance' of any kind of music until all that we to-day call music has been swept out of existence. We are only paving the way : we are at the stage of the cave-dweller with his tusk of ivory scratched with his flint. When sound has been resolved into terms which, with our ever-progressing cerebral develop- ment, will convey a definite impression to the brain, and when that kind of music has entered into close and intimate associa- tion with reason—when, ages hence, this occurs, it will be time enough to talk of the ethical significance of music." It may be fairly urged that Mr. Wallace carries his identifica- tion of the musical faculty with cerebral activity to extreme lengths. The prospect of music that is all brain is not altogether inviting.

Mr. Wallace has given us a book bristling with dis- putable statements and large assumptions, but none the less suggestive and stimulating. His analysis of the musical psychology of Bach and Wagner is admirably done, and where he is in sympathy with his theme he writes with relevance as well as spirit. But the mention of theorists and formu- laries, and, above all, virtuosi, acts on him like a red rag on a bull. It is a pity that a writer who can express himself with such sobriety and detachment as a rule should disfigure a serious treatise by tirades against " the antics assumed by a clammy breed of youth, long-haired and bottle-shouldered for