Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music.

by Ferruccio Busoni.

SKETCH OF A NEW ESTHETIC OF MUSIC

"What seek you? Say! And what do you expect?"-- "I know not what; the Unknown I would have!

What's known to me, is endless; I would go Beyond the end: The last word still is wanting."

["_Der machtige Zauberer._"]

LOOSELY joined together as regards literary form, the following notes are, in reality, the outcome of convictions long held and slowly matured.

In them a problem of the first magnitude is formulated with apparent simplicity, without giving the key to its final solution; for the problem cannot be solved for generations--if at all.

But it involves an innumerable series of lesser problems, which I present to the consideration of those whom they may concern. For it is a long time since any one has devoted himself to earnest musical research.

It is true, that admirable works of genius arise in every period, and I have always taken my stand in the front rank of those who joyfully acclaimed the pa.s.sing standard-bearers; and still it seems to me that of all these beautiful paths leading so far afield--none lead _upward_.

_The spirit of an art-work, the measure of emotion, of humanity, that is in it--these remain unchanged in value through changing years; the form which these three a.s.sumed, the manner of their expression, and the flavor of the epoch which gave them birth, are transient, and age rapidly._

Spirit and emotion retain their essence, in the art-work as in man himself; we admire technical achievements, yet they are outstripped, or cloy the taste and are discarded.

Its ephemeral qualities give a work the stamp of "modernity;" its unchangeable essence hinders it from becoming "obsolete." Among both "modern" and "old" works we find good and bad, genuine and spurious.

There is nothing properly modern--only things which have come into being earlier or later; longer in bloom, or sooner withered. The Modern and the Old have always been.

Art-forms are the more lasting, the more closely they adhere to the nature of their individual species of art, the purer they keep their essential means and ends.

Sculpture relinquishes the expression of the human pupil, and effects of color; painting degenerates, when it forsakes the flat surface in depiction and takes on complexity in theatrical decoration or panoramic portrayal.

Architecture has its fundamental form, growth from below upward, prescribed by static necessity; window and roof necessarily provide the intermediate and finishing configuration; these are eternal and inviolable requirements of the art.

Poetry commands the abstract thought, which it clothes in words. More independent than the others, it reaches the furthest bounds.

_But all arts, resources and forms ever aim at the one end, namely, the imitation of nature and the interpretation of human feelings._

Architecture, sculpture, poetry and painting are old and mature arts; their conceptions are established and their objects a.s.sured; they have found the way through uncounted centuries, and, like the planets, describe their regular orbits.[A]

[A] None the less, in these arts, taste and individuality can and will unceasingly find refreshment and rejuvenation.

Music, compared with them, is a child that has learned to walk, but must still be led. It is a virgin art, without experience in life and suffering.

It is all unconscious as yet of what garb is becoming, of its own advantages, its unawakened capacities. And again, it is a child-marvel that is already able to dispense much of beauty, that has already brought joy to many, and whose gifts are commonly held to have attained full maturity.

Music as an art, our so-called occidental music, is hardly four hundred years old; its state is one of development, perhaps the very first stage of a development beyond present conception, and we--we talk of "cla.s.sics" and "hallowed traditions"! And we have talked of them for a long time![B]

[B] Tradition is a plaster mask taken from life, which, in the course of many years, and after pa.s.sing through the hands of innumerable artisans, leaves its resemblance to the original largely a matter of imagination.

We have formulated rules, stated principles, laid down laws;--we apply laws made for maturity to a child that knows nothing of responsibility!

Young as it is, this child, we already recognize that it possesses one radiant attribute which signalizes it beyond all its elder sisters. And the lawgivers will not see this marvelous attribute, lest their laws should be thrown to the winds. This child--it _floats on air_! It touches not the earth with its feet. It knows no law of gravitation. It is wellnigh incorporeal. Its material is transparent. It is sonorous air. It is almost Nature herself. It is--free.

But freedom is something that mankind have never wholly comprehended, never realized to the full. They can neither recognize nor acknowledge it.

They disavow the mission of this child; they hang weights upon it. This buoyant creature must walk decently, like anybody else. It may scarcely be allowed to leap--when it were its joy to follow the line of the rainbow, and to break sunbeams with the clouds.

Music was born free; and to win freedom is its destiny. It will become the most complete of all reflexes of Nature by reason of its untrammeled immateriality. Even the poetic word ranks lower in point of incorporealness. It can gather together and disperse, can be motionless repose or wildest tempestuosity; it has the extremest heights perceptible to man--what other art has these?--and its emotion seizes the human heart with that intensity which is independent of the "idea."

It realizes a temperament, _without_ describing it, with the mobility of the soul, with the swiftness of consecutive moments; and this, where painter or sculptor can represent only one side or one moment, and the poet tardily _communicates_ a temperament and its manifestations by words.

Therefore, representation and description are not the nature of music; herewith we declare the invalidity of program-music, and arrive at the question: What are the aims of music?

ABSOLUTE Music! What the lawgivers mean by this, is perhaps remotest of all from the Absolute in music. "Absolute music" is a form-play without poetic program, in which the form is intended to have the leading part.

But Form, in itself, is the opposite pole of absolute music, on which was bestowed the divine prerogative of buoyancy, of freedom from the limitations of matter. In a picture, the ill.u.s.tration of a sunset ends with the frame; the limitless natural phenomenon is enclosed in quadrilateral bounds; the cloud-form chosen for depiction remains unchanging for ever. Music can grow brighter or darker, shift hither or yon, and finally fade away like the sunset glow itself; and instinct leads the creative musician to employ the tones that press the same key within the human breast, and awaken the same response, as the processes in Nature.

Per contra, "absolute music" is something very sober, which reminds one of music-desks in orderly rows, of the relation of Tonic to Dominant, of Developments and Codas.

Methinks I hear the second violin struggling, a fourth below, to emulate the more dexterous first, and contending in needless contest merely to arrive at the starting-point. This sort of music ought rather to be called the "architectonic," or "symmetric," or "sectional," and derives from the circ.u.mstance that certain composers poured _their_ spirit and _their_ emotion into just this mould as lying nearest them or their time. Our lawgivers have identified the spirit and emotion, the individuality of these composers and their time, with "symmetric"

music, and finally, being powerless to recreate either the spirit, or the emotion, or the time, have retained the Form as a symbol, and made it into a fetish, a religion. The composers sought and found this form as the aptest vehicle for communicating _their_ ideas; their souls took flight--and the lawgivers discover and cherish the garments Euphorion left behind on earth.

A lucky find! 'Twas now or never; The flame is gone, it's true--however, No need to pity mankind now.

Enough is left for many a poet's tiring, Or to breed envy high and low; And though I have no talents here for hiring, I'll hire the robe out, anyhow.

Is it not singular, to demand of a composer originality in all things, and to forbid it as regards form? No wonder that, once he becomes original, he is accused of "formlessness." Mozart! the seeker and the finder, the great man with the childlike heart--it is he we marvel at, to whom we are devoted; but not his Tonic and Dominant, his Developments and Codas.

Such l.u.s.t of liberation filled Beethoven, the romantic revolutionary, that he ascended one short step on the way leading music back to its loftier self:--a short step in the great task, a wide step in his own path. He did not quite reach absolute music, but in certain moments he divined it, as in the introduction to the fugue of the Sonata for Hammerclavier. Indeed, all composers have drawn nearest the true nature of music in preparatory and intermediary pa.s.sages (preludes and transitions), where they felt at liberty to disregard symmetrical proportions, and unconsciously drew free breath. Even a Schumann (of so much lower stature) is seized, in such pa.s.sages, by some feeling of the boundlessness of this pan-art (recall the transition to the last movement of the D-minor Symphony); and the same may be a.s.serted of Brahms in the introduction to the Finale of his First Symphony.

But, the moment they cross the threshold of the _Princ.i.p.al Subject_, their att.i.tude becomes stiff and conventional, like that of a man entering some bureau of high officialdom.

Next to Beethoven, Bach bears closest affinity to "infinite music."[C]

His Organ Fantasias (but not the Fugues) have indubitably a strong dash of what might be overwritten "Man and Nature."[D] In him it appears most ingenuous because he had no reverence for his predecessors (although he esteemed and made use of them), and because the still novel acquisition of equal temperament opened a vista of--for the time being--endless new possibilities.