"MUSIC IN ITS ART-MYSTERIES.""
DR, WYLDE having, in the course of his varied experience as musician, conductor, doctor in music, Gresham Professor, observed that musical literature " consists chiefly of newspaper notices," which naturally " fail to impart any guidance to the art student in the resources of music as a science, or its intimate connection with the most sublime and abstract principles of Nature,"—has kindly undertaken to supply the deficiency so far as to provide the country with a horn-book and missal of " High Art " in its appli- cation to music and " the art-mysteries" of music. It will be observed that we have taken pains to print the title of Dr. Wylde's book, namely, " Music in its Art-Mysteries" in inverted commas, for fear lest any simple-minded reader should for a moment permit himself to imagine that such a title could by any chance be ours. The fact is, that even with the tongs of inverted commas, and at arm's length, with our garments tucked round us, we have some repugnance to picking it up. However, Dr. Wylde has no such qualms. Of " the. subtle nature of genius," of "the constitution of man," " history sacred and profane," of "Nature as the grand organ on which the hand of the Creator is the master musician," and in general, to sum up all in one, of " Music in its art mission," Dr. Wylde is ready to treat with pompous alacrity and mock- modest self-satisfaction. "It is not always the best, though it may be the boldest soldier, that enters first the breach of the be- leaguered city wall," says Dr. Wylde, with florid apology for offer- ing a text-book and breviary of the art mysteries of music. We have seen that illustration before, and if any one will take the trouble to peruse Dr. Wylde's mysteries, he will, we think, unless he happens to be very infatuated indeed, admit with us that they are of a very hackneyed and humdrum description.
Let us see what in one hundred and fifty pages are the mys- teries which our Mysterioso ' has been good enough to unveil for us. " Form " is the external arrangement in which the fundamen- tal principles of the science of music must appear, because the art of musical composition is, to some extent, necessarily an imitative one. Everything imitative involves form, therefore music involves
form. A profound " art-mystery," truly " Conceptions of the beautiful are only of use to the patient ' art-labourer." This appears to us true ; we mean that it does not seem to us new. "Birds do not sing, nor whispering winds discourse tunes.'' We should say, contrariwise,' whispering winds do not discourse tunes ; birds do sing. " Unity and propriety of form are two especial attributes of the beautiful." Cer- tainly; at least, we were taught so. "The ' song ' is the simplest and most ancient of musical forms." So common sense,
* Music in its Art-Mysteries. By Henry Wylde, Gresham Professor, Mus. Doc., London : Booth. meandering over the surface of things, would have thought. But •• " odiprofanum, et arceo,"—" fools forbear !"—itis an " art-mystery I" " Modern music has outstripped the elementary form of song.' We believe it has. "After the song form, that of the fugue is the, most ancient. ' The master worker in fugue was John Sebastian Bach.' The majority of Bach's fugues are masterpieces of ingenuity." Is it, indeed, possible? This is, indeed, an art- mystery! "Music, like motion, light, heat, and imponderable agen- cies of nature, is evolved from a careful and abstruse search into. some of the most sublime and authoritative of her laws." Worth knowing. If therefore a man happens to be cold and carefully searches his mind, he may hope to find his own fuel and warm himself by the heat his researckevolves. For our part, we have found it easier to buy coal. If .we could, " by abstruse re- search," " evolve music," that would be more than we could bug at a pinch. " As fugues followed songs, so motetts followed fugues." This is another art-mystery. But in the hand* of such a master it is, in fact, no mystery at all, for, to do him justice, Dr. Wylde shows the easy and natural transition from one form to another. " Conventionalism, especially in the musical art, depraves the taste and destroys with antagonistic: perversity the true and beautiful." The art-mystery here seems. to lie in the words " antagonistic perversity." What is " antago., ',lilac perversity ?" Dr. Wylde " declares that he is opposed to conventionalism in every form, as conventionalism is opposed to. truth and beauty." He is " opposed to it in architecture," " de- nounces it in sculpture," protests against it in painting, but " above all denounces it in music," But when we ask what con- ventionalism is, all we get seems to be that dance music is con- ventional unless written by Chopin and Mozart, and that the: system of equal temperament is a monster of conventionality. And then it has driven English genius out of the field of musical com- position. How, we might ask ? But perhaps that is an axts- mystery. "The truth is," says Dr. Wylde, "there is no demand- for English music." As little and as much, we suppose, as for- British port.
Dr. Wylde complains of the absence of musical education_ in England. He is himself a most conspicuous example of his• own theory. How a man rebuking a whole country, and setting himself up as a teacher from the heights of the Gresham Chair of Music can write such a farrago of empty sound, and string so many big words together without apparently being aware that be is writing conventional platitudes which leave us just where we were, we have some difficulty in understanding. Dr. Wylde has a name in London musical circles, otherwise it would be time.- lost indeed to read his book, much more to review it. When the country is musically educated, we trust it will be- impossible for Gresham Professors to delude themselves or any one else into the belief that art-mysteries can have any other meaning than the art-nonsense of ambitious scribes, too much engrossed in their own self-glorification to love Art in simplieity, for its own sake, and to call a rose a rose, a violet a violet, anct a fiddle a fiddle.
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