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Page 12
The weaving together of these elements into one art-fabric has
been the ideal of all poets from Homer to Wagner. The Greeks
idealized their dances; that is to say, they made their dances
fit their declamation. In the last two centuries, and especially
in the middle of the nineteenth, we have danced our highest
flights of impassioned speech. For what is the symphony, sonata,
etc., but a remnant of the dance form? The choric dances of
Stesichorus and Pindar came strangely near our modern forms,
but it was because the form fitted the poem. In our modern
days, we too often, Procrustes-like, make our ideas to fit the
forms. We put our guest, the poetic thought, that comes to us
like a homing bird from out the mystery of the blue sky--we
put this confiding stranger straightway into that iron bed,
the "sonata form," or perhaps even the third rondo form,
for we have quite an assortment. Should the idea survive
and grow too large for the bed, and if we have learned to
love it too much to cut off its feet and thus _make_ it fit
(as did that old robber of Attica), why we run the risk of
having some critic wise in his theoretical knowledge, say,
as was and is said of Chopin, "He is weak in sonata form!"
There are two ways of looking at music: first, as impassioned
speech, the nearest psychologically-complete utterance of
emotion known to man; second, as the dance, comprising as it
does all that appeals to our nature. And there is much that is
lovely in this idea of nature--for do not the seasons dance,
and is it not in that ancient measure we have already spoken of,
the trochaic? Long Winter comes with heavy foot, and Spring is
the light-footed. Again, Summer is long, and Autumn short and
cheery; and so our phrase begins again and again. We all know
with what periodicity everything in nature dances, and how the
smallest flower is a marvel of recurring rhymes and rhythms,
with perfume for a melody. How Shakespeare's Beatrice charms us
when she says, "There a star danced, and under that was I born."
And yet man is not part of Nature. Even in the depths of the
primeval forest, that poor savage, whom we found listening
fearfully to the sound of his drum, knew better. Mankind lives
in isolation, and Nature is a thing for him to conquer. For
Nature is a thing that exists, while man _thinks_. Nature is
that which passively lives while man actively wills. It is the
strain of Nature in man that gave him the dance, and it is his
godlike fight against Nature that gave him impassioned speech;
beauty of form and motion on one side, all that is divine in man
on the other; on one side materialism, on the other idealism.
We have traced the origin of the drum, pipe, and the voice in
music. It still remains for us to speak of the lyre and the
lute, the ancestors of our modern stringed instruments. The
relative antiquity of the lyre and the lute as compared with
the harp has been much discussed, the main contention against
the lyre being that it is a more artificial instrument than
the harp; the harp was played with the fingers alone, while the
lyre was played with a plectrum (a small piece of metal, wood,
or ivory). Perhaps it would be safer to take the lute as the
earliest form of the stringed instrument, for, from the very
first, we find two species of instruments with strings, one
played with the fingers, the prototype of our modern harps,
banjos, guitars, etc., the other played with the plectrum,
the ancestor of all our modern stringed instruments played by
means of bows and hammers, such as violins, pianos, etc.
However this may be, one thing is certain, the possession of
these instruments implies already a considerable measure of
culture, for they were not haphazard things. They were made for
a purpose, were invented to fill a gap in the ever-increasing
needs of expression. In Homer we find a description of the
making of a lyre by Hermes, how this making of a lyre from the
shell of a tortoise that happened to pass before the entrance to
the grotto of his mother, Ma�a, was his first exploit; and that
he made it to accompany his song in praise of his father Zeus.
We must accept this explanation of the origin of the lyre,
namely, that it was deliberately invented to accompany the
voice. For the lyre in its primitive state was never a solo
instrument; the tone was weak and its powers of expression
were exceedingly limited. On the other hand, it furnished an
excellent background for the voice and, which was still more
to the point, the singer could accompany himself. The drum
had too vague a pitch, and the flute or pipe necessitated
another performer, besides having too much similarity of tone
to the voice to give sufficient contrast. Granted then that the
lyre was invented to accompany the voice, and without wasting
time with surmises as to whether the first idea of stringed
instruments was received from the twanging of a bowstring
or the finding of a tortoise shell with the half-dessicated
tendons of the animal still stretching across it, let us find
when the instrument was seemingly first used.
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