Romantic Music Article Leading To Gounod 746271

Unity and Ensemble: Contrasting Ideals in Romantic Music
Author(s): Brian Primmer

Source: 19th-Century Music , Autumn, 1982, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Autumn, 1982), pp. 97-140
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/746271
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Unity and Ensemble
Contrasting Ideals in Romantic Music
BRIAN PRIMMER
"It needs courage to be a romantic because

across the
it Romantic years with irresistible
involves taking risks."' So wrote Stendhal in drawing
c1lat, his sympathetic echoes from many
essay Racine et Shakespeare; and no thoughtful one ever minds but especially from those who
penned a truer phrase. Taking risks, however, lived on the eastern side of the Rhine. In Ger-
seems to be a matter of individual choice at many the ecstasies of Sturm und Drang had em-
heart, rather than a group activity. So it is not
phasized the importance and significance of per-
surprising that the cult of individuality should
sonal experience, barbing general certainty with
have become one of the strongest planks in the knots of individual doubt, and calling into ques-
true Romantic platform. tion the very foundations of knowledge and of
"I am made unlike anyone I have ever met;rational
I skill. Men literally went mad pursuing
will even venture to say that I am like no one self-awareness
in and seeking some conviction on
the whole world. I may be no better, but at least
which they could reshape their lives. But always
I am different."2 The implications of these asser-
they were driven back to Self, to what they in-
tive phrases from the opening paragraphs wardly of experienced as primary and what they
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions resounded also felt or hoped to be eternal.
Only the individual is of interest.
0148-2076/82/030097 + 44$00.50 C 1981 by The Regents of Nothing outside of you matters, but solely you your-
the University of California. self.
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It is just his individuality that is the primary undertakenand
by human spirits in the West and, as
CENTURY eternal element in man. To make a cult of the forma-
MUSIC such, did mean taking risks. Whatever else Ro-
tion and development of this individuality would be a
mantic artists may have lacked, the true origi-
kind of divine egotism.3
nals among them rarely lost their individual
courage or their nerve when faced with crisis.
Considered as "the primary and eternal ele- Horrified at times they may have been; but
ment in man," individuality and its many over- paralyzed-hardly ever. And even then but
tones came to usurp the place in men's esteem momentarily, and not sufficiently to lose their
previously held by Reason. From the moment of self-awareness or their ultimate control. For in-
its proclamation the way was cleared for fairy- dividuality is disciplined and firmly based on
tale, for myth and monster to resume their an- feeling. Egotism, on the other hand, is wild and
cient power over human kind: and once the uni- leads directly to self-indulgent sentiment.
versal significance of the Ring's symbolic figures It is just this trait of courageous and person-
could take its place in what Bismarck was to call ally disciplined individuality which makes true
"the logic of events," the work of Sigmund Freud Romanticism so difficult to comprehend, so easy
was inescapable, that of Jung and Adler inevita- to misconstrue: for it throws the very concept
ble. Increasingly as time went by the word "anal- into doubt. In a telling way every Romantic artist
ysis" grew needful of the prefix "psycho-"; for was forced to be his own creature. Lacking much
individual consciousness grew daily more self- centrally accepted authority, each was driven to
conscious and men were fractured within them- become his own God, his own priest and his own
selves as well as alienated from one another. law-giver. Attempts to see them otherwise can
Although following tradition Goya named his lead to the fundamental and yet familiar error of
composition Capricho, the deaf, isolated, and viewing Romanticism everywhere and at all
sickened painter was being no more than accu- times as an entity. To consider Romanticism a
rate when, in 1799, he prophesied the monstrous concrete international or even supranationalpe-
apparitions which might emanate from the pres- riod, gives it a largely spurious unity; for Roman-
ent sleep of Reason. ticism is as many-faceted as is any other area of
The phrase "divine egotism" also had its ownpsychological activity. Bearing in mind therefore
significance for, at one and the same time, it the frequency with which the sea and its attend-
looked backward to the concept of genius so ant moods appear as metaphors or symbols in
powerful in the times of Sturm und Drang and contemporary works, we would do better to con-
foward to the generally numinous suffusion of ceive of Romanticism as a kind of complex fluc-
the high Romantic years. It gave to the extremi- tuation in the soul, a prolonged eddying in each
ties of egotism a sanction which could be di- affected human consciousness, a recurrent ebb-
vinely justified and which, unfortunately for Ro- ing and flowing of personal energies and skills
manticism as a whole, has led to much confusion across a continental field which, on the surface,
in the public's minds. For individuality is not the may seem to be opposed to one another or even
same as egotism, as I hope we shall discover in mutually exclusive. With Romanticism, how-
this present quest; and far from being a species ever, everything is possible-even Classicism of
of insanity, a kind of foul disease from which the a kind; and we should be wary of the slick defi-
healthful spirits of the Classics stand immune, nition which, while seeking to stabilize, in ac-
Romanticism is a sort of comprehensive balance tual fact destroys. All students of Romanticism
overall, though one achieved with difficulty and should heed Braque's timely warning and refrain
with forces more disparate than before. Infusing from allowing tidy definitions of phenomena to
tragedy with comedy and darkness with a myr- replace descriptions of phenomenal experience
iad shades of glowing light, it attempts to recon- itself.
cile art with life itself, to give free play to That we have long had a dim awareness of its
imagination and yet to discipline that freedom essentially fluid and indefinable nature is shown
through imagination's formal shaping hand. by our constant use in opposition of such phrases
This was perhaps the most challenging task ever as Classical period and Romantic movement,
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BRIAN
while our frequent need to employ these phrases seems to me, therefore, that Romanticism needs
PRIMMER
as a pair indicates a layer of more profound sig- the framework of conventions drawn up by UnityClas-
and
Ensemble
nificance which is not so often probed. For al- sicism if it is to know itself, to profit by that
though it is true that the work and works of each knowledge and then expand. The difficulty, of
artist in the Romantic whirlpool must be seen as course, is to adapt, to become sufficiently flexi-
separate entities, there is a point beyond which ble to make expansion possible. And here the
separateness and individuality cannot go with- organic models embraced by German artists
out becoming self-destructive. No man, no after Goethe were invaluable. They proved far
work, no tendency is an island in itself. Each is superior to the mainly mechanistic ones pre-
part of a general main even in Romantic times. served in France, allowing German music quite
And paradoxical though it may seem, individu- literally to evolve throughout the nineteenth
ality is effective only within the resonance of century and enabling it to keep in step with con-
tradition. The trouble with traditions is, of temporary thinking in the natural sciences.
course, that they may too easily become oppres- Being inherently flexible, they enabled German
sive, and harden into routine-like conventions. composers to emerge from their background
Of all possible traditions in the western world, rather than position themselves defiantly
that which is most firmly based on Classical against it.
authority is most likely to become tyrannical, If there are two single words which encapsu-
for it carries within itself the near-divine impri- late the qualitative difference between French
matur of the Ancients. It has stood the test of and German artists in the Romantic years they
long times past, and may very well be thought to are salience and solitariness. Whereas men like
do so for all times to come. Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, and
This seems to me to have been the fundamen- even Schoenberg were salient individuals, able
tal difficulty in France where, far from joining in to work within a recognizable but continually
the biological enthusiasms of nineteenth-cen- developing tradition, those such as Berlioz, the
tury Germany, both those who ruled and those young Hugo, de Vigny and Baudelaire were
who were ruled by them clung tenaciously to forced to become solitary egotists. They stood
inherited national authoritarian and even mech- out against the backcloth of conventions which
anistic models. Despite the fashions of the day- was French artistic life and protested their differ-
fashions which stemmed largely from abroad ence with a vehemence which seems exagger-
and which did little more than agitate the sur- ated from any other point of view. They acted
faces of French artistic life-the old notions con- out their Romanticism on the stage of history
tinued to offer a degree of certainty in an increas- publicly, whereas their colleagues from across
ingly unsettled world. In the search for order in the Rhine experienced it in private. All of them
politics, life, and art, old Reason seemed to needed courage, as Stendhal pointed out. But the
vouchsafe a surer way than new enthusiasm, quality of the risks they severally had to take
especially in a society as centrally directed as differed utterly, and was directly related to the
that in France. On a personal level this would distinct national traditions which had nurtured
seem to have been Berlioz's chief problem, for them.
example. For in him, and to a greater extent than With these observations beneath my intel-
in any of his musical contemporaries, a modern lectual feet, so to speak, I feel somewhat more
spirit fought courageously with an ancient cast secure in offering this essay on one aspect of
of mind. But because of the force of inherited creative originality at the time. It seeks to clarify
traditions-his own as well as other people's- the different backgrounds from which individ-
his Romantic spirit finally lost out to Classical ual musicians in Germany and France grew no-
convention. table in Romantic times, to examine the aes-
Even so, it is hard, particularly in the light thetic
of and intellectual contexts in which their
present-day experience, to disagree with Val6ry working lives were set, and so to bring to light
when he says that an artist "can constructthose in general assumptions which, precisely be-
orderly fashion only by means of convention."cause It they were assumptions, were assumed un-
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19TH
CENTURY
consciously. By doing this it hopes to about
give this
a difference there is a long-phrased con-
MUSIC sistency which makes apparent mockery of our
firmer and more rational ground to what, regard-
less of degrees of so-called literacy, we all convenient
know divisions into periods and styles; and
instantly from personal experience and listen-that in this very difference and its overtones lies
ing-that German Romantic music sounds much of the value, the enjoyment, and the indi-
quite different from Romantic French;vidual thatsignificance of each.
For all their common debt to Rousseau and to throughout the eighteenth century-is revealed
the times of Sturm und Drang, Romantic atti-by the shape and emphasis of the critical articles
tudes in France took on a quite different coloring
it continued to evoke during the nineteenth. As
from those we find in Germany. This was nota general rule consideration of the text took prec-
only because French Romanticism was manifest edence over any assessment of the score; and this
at a later date than was its German counterpart, well-trodden formula held good throughout the
but also because of the quite distinct traditionsRomantic years. In the prior position which they
which environed each. The hold over French ar- accord to the names of the librettists, the follow-
tistic and intellectual life exerted by Neo-Clas- ing selected headings, taken from reviews of op-
sical values had achieved its firmest grasp in eras produced in Paris during the decade from
Tragedie, its musical embodiment in Tragedie 1828 to 1837, are typical of the general layout of
lyrique. To a Frenchman music meant first and contemporary criticism.
foremost opera-and French opera at that. From
the time of its foundation, when Lully had stud- LA MUETTE DE PORTICI, op6ra en cinq actes de
ied the vocal modulations of the actors at the MM SCRIBE et GERMAIN DELAVIGNE, musique
de M. AUBER
The6itre frangais, French opera and, by transfer- Le Globe, 5 March 1828
ence, French music in general, had been con-
structed on a literary and declamatory basis
Robert le Diable, op6ra en cinq actes, paroles de MM
rather than a purely musical one. The continu-Scribe et Germain Delavigne, musique de M. Meyer-
Beer
ing strength of this essentially Baroque tradition
Gazette de France, 23 November 1831
throughout the eighteenth century and into the
post-Revolutionary years is attested quite LA PRISON d'EDIMBOURG. Op6ra en trois actes,
clearly by Gr6try's remarks upon the trainingparoles de MM SCRIBE et PLANARD, musique de
CARAFA
proper to a composer who wished to write mov-
La Revue Musicale, 27 July 1833
ingly for the human voice.
La Esmeralda, opera en 4 actes: paroles de M. Victor
Yes, it is at the Theatre frangais, from the lips of the
Hugo, musique de Mademoiselle Louise Bertin
great actors, that declamation, accompanied by the-
Revue et Gazette Musicale, 20 November 1836
atrical illusions, gives us the ineffaceable impressions
which the best-analyzed precepts will never replace.
Stradella, op6ra en cinq actes, paroles de MM Emile
It is there that the musician learns to interrogate
Deschamps et Emilion Paccini, musique de M. Nied-
the passions, to sound the depths of the human heart,
ermeyer
to get a clear idea of all the impulses of the soul. It is
Journal des DBbats, 5 March 1837
in that school that he learns to recognize and to repro-
duce their true accents, to mark their nuances and
their limits.4 As the critic of the Journal des Dibats wrote
on December 9th 1824, after the premibre of
Robin des bois at the Oddon, "first we shall
The consequent relative importance of the
concern ourselves with the words and then come
text and music in French opera-a subject whose
niceties had occupied the Parisian journals on to the music." No wonder that Stendhal, a
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BRIAN
fervent disciple of the Italian school and of its teenth-century work in the balances of the past.
PRIMMER
king, Rossini, should write somewhat sourly: In essence there is nothing at all to choose be-
Unity and
Ensemble
"Who indeed, unless it were a French critic, tween Boisselot's concluding observations and
would dream of judging an opera by the words? "5 Beaumarchais's generalizations upon the desid-
That such emphasis upon the nature and the erata for good opera which that author had pub-
quality of the text reflected a general attitude lished in his preface to Tarare some fifty years
among the opera-going public also is demon- before.
strated by Boisselot's review of the first perfor-
mance of Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini. As he There is too much music in dramatic music. To adopt
the crude maxim of the justly celebrated Chevalier
pointed out, it was the freedom and newness of our opera puzza di musica: it stinks of music.
Gluck,
the words rather than the unaccustomed sound I conclude that music in an opera should be like po-
of the music-for which in general he had muchetry-only another means of embellishing speech and
praise-which most offended public taste, andone which must not be used to excess.8
which had turned the occasion into "a very

stormy one": "the public, accustomed to certain A similar conception governed other genres
forms in the words of an opera, was shocked by also, and this is implied by the following remark,
the new and free behavior of the libretto.... from an account of a concert given by Liszt and
rightly or wrongly it expressed its discontentNourrit at Lyons in 1837. The poet's name pre-
over some words and scenes in the literary part cedes that of the composer:
of Benvenuto Cellini."6 Another critic, after
Fully to appreciate the pathetic, terrifying, and fan-
gently chiding the composer for a certain inci-
tastical qualities of the Erlking, one must hear this
dence of undeniable eccentricity in his music,
celebrated ballad by Goethe and Schubert (my ital-
ics) performed by Listz (sic) and Adolphe Nourrit.9
concluded his compte rendu by throwing the
blame for the general turbulence not onto the
composer's shoulders but firmly onto those ofAs Stendhal again remarked, albeit in another
his librettists. context, such an attitude was characteristic not
only of the French school but also of the old
The real culprits in this matter are the librettists: it is school: "Representatives of the old school give
evident that the composer has been forced into many
eccentricities by the bizarre and incoherent nature of
all their attention to the words of a song, and
none of it to the tune to which those words are
the poem, by the chaos of the action and the strange-
ness of the style .... Isn't there a case here for suing sung; the emotional content, for them, lies in
Messrs de Wailly and Barbier for damages with costs the text, and not in the music."' It was the old
on behalf of the composer and the actors? Poetry school, then, which continued to oversee the
should stand to music as drawing does to a painting.
The most brilliant display of color will not correct
canons of French musical judgement in the
faults of composition and of form (my italics).7 nineteenth century, just as it had done in the
eighteenth or, indeed, in the seventeenth centu-
These two closing sentences illustrate more ries, from the glorious literary triumphs of
clearly than could volumes of extended argu- which times its mandate initially had sprung.
ment not only the tension between verbal and It was not literary academicism alone, how-
musical values which was inherent in the Gal- ever, which conferred such overwhelming im-
lic-as it is in any other-approach to opera, butportance upon the verbal ingredient of vocal mu-
also the solution which that nation's particularsic in France, but a continuing and immanent
muse embraced. To distinguish line from colorbelief in the potentialities of reason and design,
in this way; to relate music first to drawing and
best displayed to date in words. The hallmark of
then to painting rather than to a much more humanity was language, and this distinguished
man from all other kinds of creature on the earth.
generalized poetical feeling; to make discrete
the "faults of composition and of form," and to Given both sufficient time and an adequate in-
consider the text as the fundamental ingredient tellectual vocabulary, all problems and in every
of an operatic score-all this was to weigh a nine-
sphere would show themselves to be but prob-
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19TH
CENTURY
lems of syntax at heart. Either meaning was formed along these lines might in-
composition
MUSIC deedmean-
quantifiable in words or else it was no true be self-supporting, but it never could be
ing at all. Thus all questions which could be put
wholly self-sufficient. Finally, and with no dam-
could be answered. Conversely, any questions
age to its own integrity as an expressive disci-
which could not be answered could notpline be put.
either, any such piece could be interpreted
No doubt it was this basic assumption which lay
as narrational, dramatic, tragic or even, best of
behind Gautier's reported opinion that "any
all, theatrical.
man who is baffled by an idea, be it never so
As a consequence of this peculiar aesthetical
subtle and unexpected, is no writer. The inex- French ears were at last free to enjoy
casuistry
pressible does not exist (my italics).""the Such an
symphonies of Haydn and Mozart without
attitude, so different from that then current in
reserve. Although in the long run these forms
Germany, where music flourished precisely were stillbe-thought to be less expressive than op-
cause of the challenge issued to it by the era, their orchestration techniques and general
verbally
inexpressible, was to have strong andtexturesat times might reasonably be described as dia-
even disastrous effects upon all aspects loguees:
of French and this word, with its overtones of
social intercourse and humanized involvement,
musical life in the middle years of the nineteenth
century. became a much-used term in French music crit-
In accordance with this tradition, purely icism. in-
The peculiar rapport which music was
strumental music had provoked general known
distrust
to create between composer, performer
in France throughout the eighteenth century and listener
be-could now be viewed as an extension
cause of its overt divorce from words. Lack of of the rational, predictable and formal qualities
any literary element, and the consequent ten- of any verbal language into a broader field of
dency which this lack encouraged for music to feeling and response. As Lamartine observed in
pursue a self-sufficient course, was held to "de-his Cours Familier, music was become "the lit-
humanize" the art and so to render it meaning-erature of the heart and of the senses."'3 Even so,
Beethoven's instrumental works were still sus-
less. The necessary verbal connection between
music and reason having been undone, the resultpect to many at first hearing, for they appeared
seemed to be a medium of "ungovernable insta-to seek to introduce into France Germanisms
bility." If it was to be allowed any kind of recog-which could only be described as dur. In the end,
nition at all, music as such needed a rational however, even these were "humanized"; and the
model on which to frame itself. Luckily the highJournal des Debats could say approvingly on 1
ideal of language itself lay to hand. "Melody is June 1827:
made up of sounds, of phrases and of periods, just
as poetry and eloquence are made up of words, ofThe symphonies of Beethoven demonstrate the fusion
of all the powers of music. They are animated conver-
phrases and of sentences," observed an anony-
sations (my italics) in which all the instruments take
mous writer in the Mercure de France in 1813; an active part. ... One enjoys the diversity of accent
"consequently it is susceptible of some kind of and character, the admirable artifice with which the
contrasts are prepared, and the sense of surprise cre-
reasoning.""2
Because it was a rational concept, the pro-ated when a motive which one had thought to be
exhausted returns in order to play its part in the al-
motion of poetic and eloquent language as a basic
ready rich tableau.
model for instrumental music had inherent
qualities which could not fail to recommend it
The operatic, plastic, literary, visual, and
to Gallic sensibilities. In the first place, although
generally reasonable overtones of these remarks
it lacked the specificities of any particular are extraordinarily revealing. Exactly ten years
words, it was entirely reasonable as a system. In
later, in 1837, much the same interpretation of
the second, certain attendant subconcepts such
Beethoven's orchestral textures was given by
as dialogue, declamation, discourse and conver-
Balzac in his strange novel Gambara.
sation could be extended to cover music without
in any way foreshortening their own integrity as His works are especially remarkable by the simplicity
rational procedures in art. Thirdly, a musical of their outline and the way in which this is adhered
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to. In most composers the instrumentation goes wild If, for sake of argument, music had to be de-BRIAN
and the orchestral effects are designed merely to pro- PRIMMER
scribed as a language at all, then it had to be as aUnity and
duce a momentary effect; they do not invariably sus-
tain the architecture of the piece by their regular or- comprehensive language of the soul. Whereas inEnsemble
dering. But in Beethoven the effects are, as it were, France music tuned man to man in social har-
plotted in advance.... This corresponds exactly to mony, to German ears it breathed of the divine,
the ways of a genius in another genre: in the magnifi- and led each individual soul toward the infinite
cent historical novels of Walter Scott a character who
along a path of personal experience.
may seem most extraneous to the action appears at a
given moment, for reasons woven into the texture of
Music speaks the most universal of languages, that
the plot, and participates in the denouement.'4
through which the soul finds itself inspired in a free,
indefinite manner and yet feels itself at home."
The respect for clear simplicity of outline
consistently adhered to; for disciplined orches- Viewed thus, words by comparison with
tral effects which sustain the architectural
notes were essentially mundane. No matter how
whole; for ordered pre-vision which allows noth-powerful might be their impact on the mind or
ing to occur by accident; for what, in other words
even on the heart, they remained an intellectual
we may call art-or, if we care to, science-im-
projection of men's feelings, an earth-bound
presses me profoundly as I read these lines.alloy compounded in human thoughtfulness.
French attitudes to music seem plotted at a tan-
Utterly dependent upon the objects which pro-
gent to those we find in Germany, where any voked them, words were a kind of public com-
obvious purity of rational approach tends to promise
be between objective idea and objectified
obscured by billowing clouds of mysticism. Nei-meaning, and were therefore proportionately
ther is a false approach to music, but both areless spontaneous, personal, intimate and revel-
quite distinct from one another, and each creates
atory than notes.
its own peculiar sound. Clear simplicity of state-
ment has always been among the chief ambi-
The musician has a language of feeling independent
of all external objects; in verbal language, on the con-
tions of Gallic minds, and clarte was, and is, and
will remain a common term in their aesthetical trary, the expression of feeling always depends on its
connection with the idea.'8
vocabulary for as long as the rational foundation
of their thought endures. As Debussy was to
Such being their nature and their origin,
write much later in the century, "clarity of
words could give but a second hand report upon
expression, precision and concentration of form experience. Mere shadows in the cave of intellec-
are qualities peculiar to the French genius."'is5 tion, their failure to slake the German thirst for
Although we may not now assent to the chauvin-
simultaneity made of them a vehicle for passion
istic overtones of this remark, we should take its far inferior to notes.
central point to mind as well as to heart.
Speech reckons and names and describes (feeling's)
changes in a foreign material ... music streams it out
before us as it is in itself. 19
In Germany, on the other hand, music and its
relationship with words was viewed in a quite
different light. There music was valued sui ge- Above all words were external, and thus less than
neris, for its indefinite qualities, for its lack of adequate for those whose sensibility was pro-
found.
corporeal firmness, for its ability to move out
beyond the confines of verbal concreteness and
A deep temperament seeks ... a higher expression
so to clear a path into the mysterious and bound- than can be given to it by mere words, proper only to
less realms of purified experience. our circumscribed earthly air.20
Music discloses to man an unknown realm, a world

In music, on the contrary, with its "dark, invisi-
that has nothing in common with the external sensual
world that surrounds him, a world in which he leaves ble workmanship," soul could speak to soul di-
behind him all definite feelings to surrender himself rect or, even more important perhaps, commune
to an inexpressible longing.'6 more deeply with itself.
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19TH In the mirror of tones the human heart learns to The
knowexact lineaments of this "specific na-
CENTURY
MUSIC
itself.21 ture," however, remained a mystery defying ac-
curate analysis, and emanating from no one
In the end even poets and those whose lives
knew precisely where. Thus the best approach
were dedicated to the expression of feeling
in words to music was through poetry or raptur-
through "mere words" were prepared to admit
ous metaphor, an approach which gave to music
the priority and thereby the supreme immediacy
and to the language used by its interpreters a
of music. Moreover, music preceded not only
words but also the ideas to which these words
radiant buoyancy both individualistic and di-
vine. "0 Music," Jean Paul intoned, "thou who
gave shape. Thus, because it lay beyond the
bringest past and future so near our wounds with
bounds of rational thought, music came very
their flying flames, art thou the evening breeze
near to being itself perception.
from this life or the morning air of the life to
The perception with me is at first without a clear andcome? "25
definite object; this forms itself later. A certain mu- Or, as Robert Schumann put it, less flamboy-
sical mood of mine precedes (my italics), and onlyantly, "Music is the orphan whose father and
after this does the poetical idea follow .. .22 mother no one can determine. And it may well
be that precisely in this mystery lies the source
In view of all this it is not surprising to dis-
of its beauty."26
cover that most German Romantics held purely
Despite the orphic mystery of its origins,
instrumental music in greater veneration than
however, all were generally agreed upon its char-
any other genre. In moving away from the ideal
acter and earthly function. Music was the es-
of the voice and toward that of the instrument,
sence of pure feeling made manifest in notes, and
the nineteenth century parted from its predeces-
its overlapping waves of sound carried the lis-
sors, and Germany grew noticeably separate
from France.
tener "forward into the spirit-world of the infi-
nite." Well might Hoffmann cry out as he heard
If it is true that in every art there is a genre which besthis ghostly Donna Anna sing to the strains of an
represents its characteristic essence, then in the case aethereal accompaniment: "Open out, oh dis-
of music that genre would certainly be instrumental tant, unknown realms of spirit! Open, miracu-
music.... in instrumental works music attains its
lous land of Djinns, where inexpressible, heav-
highest significance and is brought to its most perfect
development.23 enly pain, akin to unutterable joy, brings to the
enchanted soul raptures beyond all earthly
However great the power wielded over them promises!"27
by operas like Der Freischiitz-which, by 1842,This "beautiful infinite," this "beauty with-
had received over two hundred performancesout in bounds,"'28 was the secret place of Romanti-
Berlin alone-its source for German musicians cism itself. It was to be approached only through
lay in the score and not the text. The reign ofa special kind of personal experience, through
instrumental genres was now supreme. And, asthat "infinite longing which is the essence of
E. T. A. Hoffmann wrote in his essay on Beetho-Romanticism," 29 and which ultimately music
ven's instrumental works, to German mindsalone-the one true solvent of both Time and
great composers in this medium, composersSpace-could create. The true musician's aim,
such as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven pos-therefore, whether he were composer, performer
sessed "a more profound, more intimate recog-or just mere listener, was so to lose himself in
nition of music's specific nature" than did thosethe sonorous work at hand that he could "sur-
who worked with voices. "When we speak ofround mankind in luminous, sparkling circles
music as an independent art, should we not al-and, enkindling its imagination, its innermost
ways restrict our meaning to instrumental mu- soul ... bear it in rapid flight into the faraway
sic, which, scorning every aid, every admixturespirit realm of sound."po
of another art (the art of poetry), gives pure Two protestations of human love, made by
expression to music's specific nature, recogniz-two quite different women, each nurtured in her
able in this form alone? "24 nation's own distinctive cultural environment,
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seem to me to sum up the substance of this rietta Vogel seals her pact of mutual suicide withBRIAN
PRIMMER
chapter perfectly. For France, Baudelaire's ficti- Heinrich von Kleist in November 1811 with a Unity and
Ensemble
tious barrister's wife says to her husband in what letter whose first and equally significant phrase
the author describes significantly as "a moment is: "O Heinrich, my sweet music ...,"32 No
of enthusiastic gratitude": "0, Poet! I love phrases of my own invention could point the
you!"3' For Germany, on the other hand, Hen- difference better.
II
"The representation of the Infinite in finite thedral of art was built by his exalted spirit."35
terms"33 had been the definition of Beauty And more than a decade later still, Robert Schu-
vouchsafed to his hearers by Schelling during a mann speaking through the mouth of Karl Voigt
course of lectures on the Philosophy of Art given described his reaction to a performance of the
at Jena during the winter of 1802-03, and re- Ninth Symphony by Beethoven in words which
peated at Wiirzburg some two years later. He had seem to betray the direct influence of Von
no doubt been thinking primarily of the plastic deutscher Baukunst: "I am the blind man who
arts and particularly of Gothic architecture, then is standing before the Strasbourg Cathedral, who
coming to be regarded by German Romantics as hears its bells but cannot see the entrance."36
essentially their own native, national and pecu- Goethe's almost more than metaphorical at-
liar style. tribution of the characteristics of living tissue to
The consecration of Gothic style to Roman- an apparently inanimate and complex Gothic
tic sensibilities, and its alliance with burgeoning structure was perhaps the first clear and outward
German nationalism, stemmed from a remark- manifestation of that belief in the correspon-
able essay on Strasbourg Cathedral published by dence of the immanent laws of Nature and of Art
Goethe in 1772, and entitled Von deutscher Bau- to which he subscribed throughout the rest of
kunst. In it Goethe hymns the minster's facade his life. Rousseau's call for a return to Nature
in terms of a biological vitality which, following had concentrated men's thoughts primarily
his example, all critics of the arts in Germany upon her outward show. Now Goethe led them
were soon to make the chief source of their own to ponder over the mysteries of her inner work-
ings. And music was seen to take its language
poetic imagery and metaphor. Having likened its
multifarious but harmonizing details to those from within the very heart of natural man and to
which made up "the trees of God," he extolled beholden to no external model whatsoever. As
the building as it gleamed toward him in the Novalis put it, "The musician takes the essence
fragrant morning light for its "great harmonious of his art out of himself-and not the slightest
masses alive in their countless tiny details, as in suspicion of imitation can befall him."37
the works of eternal nature, down to the smallest Thus it was that not only Nature, but also the
fibre, all form, and all contributing to the very nature of Nature, came to be under his clos-
whole."34 Some idea of the importance of the est scrutiny. Upon examination, however, the
insights contained within this slim volume and apparently simple and untutored whole was
of their significance and general influence dur- found to be the fruit of a multitudinous and vi-
ing the Romantic years can be caught in the brant complexity rivaling in its technical sophis-
echoes they evoked in the course of two articles tication the most minutely detailed works of
written more than a generation after its first men. Henceforth the methods of German art
appearance. "Sebastian Bach's individuality were to be inspired by those of this inner Nature.
was, in its own strength, intrinsically Romantic To her organic processes all art-works were re-
and was of true German basis," Carl Maria von ferred until what at first had been little more
Weber wrote in 1818. "His style was one of gran- than a highly illuminating metaphor, an appro-
deur, nobility and power.... A true Gothic ca- priate tool for criticism and philosophy, a clari-
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19TH
CENTURY
iousness
fying insight for the poetically inclined and sen-Nature was a unity, a wholeness, a rev-
MUSIC sitive, came to be thought of as the Truthelation of ultimate meaning and significance so
itself.
overwhelming in its impact on the human spirit
In Professor Abrams's apt words,the regulative
had become the constitutive. The deep that centuries of rational invention were seen to
excite-
ment and the sense of numinous wonderment wither at the opening of a rose. She provided not
which this insight vouchsafed to contemporaryonly an ideal to reverence but also-and for mu-
German sensibilities even now irradiates the sic this was far more important-an example to
follow.
words through which the young Goethe cele-
brated it: "As I have looked upon nature so do I And here is the crux of the matter. For, in
now look upon art.""38 passing through the stage of external imitative-
Such a vision was infectious. But for Roman- ness (no matter how subtilized or made poetical)
tics in Germany the vision alone was not and into the very web of Nature's unfolding pro-
enough. For them organicism had to be a teleo- cesses-a journey which the later and still basi-
logical experience: it had to have a purpose, and cally mimetic French Romantics never really
to move toward an end which had been implicit completed-Romantics in Germany believed
from the start. Herein lies the source of that vein themselves to have discovered not only an infal-
of animism which fed the heart of German Ro- lible method whereby what Goethe had once
mantic sensibility with a feverish and ever- described as "the monstrous chasm"43 separat-
quickening pulsation. Hence also arose that ing Nature from Art could be overpassed, but
stream of religious and often specifically Chris- also the secret of Life itself. They had made avail-
tian feeling which suffused so much contempo- able to tutored talent that which previously had
rary writing in the land. From here, finally, been the exclusive property of natural genius.
stemmed the belief, enunciated by Robert Schu- Knowledge now could harness instinct to its
mann, that the laws of morality and those of Art ends, and investigative scholarship and learning
were identical.39 Thus it became possible to flourished as perhaps they never had before.
speak of the seed yearning for its bloom; of the Moreover the necessary "outside aid"44 to which
acorn striving after its oak; or of the cathedral Goethe had referred in one of his aphorisms was
aspiring toward its God. Moreover, if this sense shown to be external only in the most superficial
of "infinite longing"40 were in truth the essence sense. By looking more deeply into that Nature
of Romanticism, then the organic or "yearning" of which he was himself but a significant part,
methods of Nature were themselves Romantic. man perceived more clearly the essence of his
Under these terms she could with accuracy beindividual soul. Thus the apparently disparate
described as "the supreme artist."41 At her feet strands of God, Man, Nature, and Art were
the human artist, whatever his chosen medium, woven together into a living symphony of hu-
could sit in a kind of symbiotic pupilship, not in man experience and feeling, and any manifesta-
order to trace the lineaments of her seen and tion of one was thought to be a true though par-
outward features, but slowly to comprehend the tial expression of them all.
dark and secret processes through which she rec- No art was more susceptible to this mode of
onciled discordant elements and made them thinking than was music, with its intangible
move in one society. progression through the continuum of Time, its
The lessons which Nature taught were thoseuniversal relevance and affectiveness, and its in-
of slow development and growth. For her, Time herent capacity for thematic development and
was a continuum through which to unfold pur-general tonal drive. Like Goethe's reaction to
posively-"everything is at the same time Strasbourg Cathedral, Schumann's recognition
means and end"42-and her workings could bemore than half a century later of the organic
discovered as much in the distant past as in thecharacter of Beethoven's symphonic music
immediate present or the longed-for future. At found perfect expression in the metaphor of the
every passing moment, therefore, the present giant tree. With this image before him he felt
bound prophecy to history. Despite her multifar-able to make meaningful comment upon the
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four overtures to Fidelio-Leonore nos. 1, 2, and the longing spirit then weeps the more vehemently BRIAN
PRIMMER
3, and that to the opera itself-which he had and can control itself no longer and calls amid the
Unity and
music in sobbing rapture: Truly, all that you name, I Ensemble
heard performed consecutively in Leipzig under lack.49
Mendelssohn's direction. "Such is the great
four-overture work. Formed after the manner of
In the words of E. T. A. Hoffmann, once again,
Nature we first find in it the roots from which, music had become "the most romantic of all the
in the second, the giant trunk arises, stretching arts-one might almost say, the only genuinely
its arms right and left, and finally completed by romantic one-for its sole subject is the infi-
its leafy crown."'45 nite."50
It can surely be no accident that at almost the
same time as Goethe's Von deutscher Baukunst
was first published, the sonata principle began If Romanticism in Germany was a special kind
to mature and to set out upon its own course of of personal feeling best expressed through mu-
evolution in the so-called Sturm und Drangsic, in France it was more of an individual atti-
works of Joseph Haydn. In these prophetic works tude most forcefully outlined in words and often
the emotionalism of the empfindsamer Stil, as accompanied by gestures. The most potent and
seen particularly in the keyboard works ofremembered outbursts of Romantic truculence
C. P. E. Bach, came to inform the structural re- in France took place in public-on the stage, in
lationships implicit in the sonata principle and the journals, or through the idiosyncratic ex-
was in its turn disciplined by them. Thus the ploits of its colourful devotees. When Victor
strands of the additive past were drawn together Hugo proclaimed all systems to be false-"Tous
in the organic present and, through a natural les syst mes sont faux; le g6nie seul est vrai"51-
process of evolution, were enabled to move tohis challenge was as much political as artistic,
ward a bright and promising future. More subtly social as much as literary. Rousseau's assertion
and more powerfully than was possible in Gothic of his own essential differentness had been
architecture, or in any other concrete art, everytinged with a rebelliousness against the status
constituent detail in a musical work, every line,quo which was not entirely appropriate abroad,
chord, and tonal change was seen, heard, butwhere lack of similarly oppressive centraliza-
above all felt to be "at the same time means and tion allowed some flexibility of thought and ac-
end."46 "In this," wrote Weber, "lies the great,tion to individual men. Decades had passed since
mysterious secret of music, a secret to be felt but its initial proclamation, adding to the intensities
not to be expressed."47 of Sturm und Drang, had helped to stir the hearts
Perhaps unknowingly, at first, Goethe and of German thinkers to a closer examination of
the increasing number of those who thought like their selves and a subsequent identification of
him had taken the one step necessary to confertheir internal modes of thought with the se-
upon music the then enviable title of "most ro-creted ways of Nature. At home, however, it was
mantic of all the arts."48 Henceforth music was different. With each succeeding year in France
to be the chief pathway into the mysterious the hold of traditional values had tightened its
realms of self-knowledge, toward a truer under- grip upon the Gallic muse and preached the gen-
standing of the universe and of mankind's situ- eral dangers of too great an emphasis on individ-
ation within it. To each human soul the sounds ual action. The Revolution and the Empire
of music bore messages from the infinite, nowmight have simplified behavior in their different
made manifest in audible feeling, and dared to ways, but they had in no way freed the creative
name that mercurial essence which even the spirit. Rather had they turned it more directly
most poetically-employed words could barely
toward the interests of the State and concen-
indicate. trated men's minds more narrowly upon its out-
ward show and forms.
In man there is a great desire, never fulfilled .... But
this desire, to which nothing can give a name, our Nothing demonstrates more clearly the
songs and harmonies name it to the human spirit- strongly rational and traditional elements in the
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19TH
CENTURY
Revolution of 1789 than the terms employed situations
by that, once triumphant, revolutions
MUSIC its apologists in their pronouncements upon needthe
stability and order to at least as great a
nature and the function of music. Not until the degree as did the systems which provoked them.
advent of the Russian Soviets are we to hear like Thus rigidity, censorship, and state control may
things again. continue to ordain the paths of thought and art
on both sides of the political and social chasm.
At last music has returned to her original purpose-- To the French Revolution, therefore, as to any
that of celebrating splendid achievements; of being other, command of the arts and all their media
the principal ornament at our festivals; of giving them was essential to its own existence; and at the
a more august and solemn character; of uniting citi-
zens to one another by religiously patriotic songs; of
behest of the Committee of Public Safety its
arousing sweet and virtuous feelings through the history and its achievements were to be en-
charms of melody; and of making their hearts as har- shrined in verse and song.
monious as its own chords.52
The Committee of Public Safety summons poets to
The assumption that music was no more celebrate the chief events of the Revolution, to com-
pose patriotic hymns and poems ... to publicize the
than an ornament to be applied to national heroic actions of the soldiers of Liberty, the coura-
festivals, and the continued use of decorous geous and devoted characteristics of republicans and
eighteenth-century phrases such as "sweet and the victories carried off by French armies.55
virtuous feelings," "charms of melody," and
"hearts as harmonious as its own chords," betray The kind of music which should be used in
more tellingly than could any more prosaic def- these celebratory songs was not difficult to
inition that the immanent assumptions of the name. The reform operas of Gluck had provided
time concerning music and its use were those of an example of affective simplicity which was at
the past-both recent and remote. The feeling one and the same time "natural" and primitif,
for Antiquity and for the authority which it en- and replete with moral force. As such it became
shrined was everywhere, and men drew frequent the ideal stylistic model for composers of the
parallels between themselves and those of an- day. A contemporary propagandist puts it em-
cient times. Some, such as the leader of the phatically enough: "In due turn the friends of
primitifs, when not giving rapt attention to Liberty will make use of music: it will then em-
Etruscan vases, walked the streets attired as ploy the manly accents to which Gluck has ac-
Agammemnon or his peers. But most were quite customed it ... civic songs will teach the people
content with lesser roles and, according to that they have a native land."56
D6lecluze, women strolled in the public parks Because of their august and solemn character
"dressed in the Greek manner [and] displayed these patriotic civic songs were most frequently
the grace and beauty of their forms to public called hymns. Dedicated to concepts such as
admiration," or, if they were men, wrestled na- Liberty, addressed to rational deities like the Su-
ked on the banks of the Seine.53 Even as late as ?reme Being, or commemorating great days in
1840 the ethos of Antiquity had not entirely the Revolutionary calendar, they were a pecu-
evaporated, and Richard Wagner could report in liarly apt expression of the times and, because of
the Gazette Musicale that he had "once heard a the model upon which they were constructed, of
German poet maintain that despite everything the hallowed national prejudice in music also.
the French are the Greeks of our age, and that According to the same propagandist, "The Rev-
there is something Athenian about the Parisiansolution has created a new genre which we should
since it is they who have the keenest sense ofcall hymnlike in order to preserve the august
form."54 character which it must needs possess. This
Unfortunately this sense of form slides easily genre we propose to consecrate exclusively to
into codes of formalism; and no time is morenational music."57s
open to this shift than is the aftermath of revo- As one would expect, this official sanction-
lution. It is one of the drawbacks of all such ing of a specific and austerely conceived musical
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style had considerable implications for the tra- tion upon the stage of the Opera. If it were successful
BRIAN
PRIMMER
ditionally sensitive area of the relationship be- it would be both an example and a stimulus through-
Unity and
tween music and words. It was all very well for out the communes of the Republic.61 Ensemble
Bary to rhapsodize over the sisterhood of poetry

Throughout all that has been said so far runs
and music,58 and to exhort the poet to embrace
his colleague in mutual love for a higher cause, a single idle fixe, one to which Ducis made spe-
but Lebrun was still furious at the treatment cific reference in the passage quoted above and
one which appears again and again in the jour-
meted out to his verses by the composers who
nalism of the day-and that is spectacle, the
had chosen-or who had been chosen by Revo-
general notion of which had always been a gov-
lutionary lot-to set them. "Because it was not
erning one in French drama, lyrical or otherwise.
susceptible to hymn-like treatment I wrote an
The tendency of French intellectuals to sub-
Ode on Harvest-home. The whole of my com-
sume every facet of life under a few comprehen-
position has been mutilated by music andin the
sive general notions has already been instanced
interests ofm usic (my italics)."59 Predictably the
in their extension of the concept of language to
journals joined in the fray and, in a Revolution-
cover the art of music. No concept was more
ary setting, produced once more all those argu-
ubiquitous than that of spectacle; and Emile
ments which had served them so well during the
days of the ancien regime. Concerning Lesueur's Deschamps's definition of grand opera is as ap-
plicable to the great Revolutionary Fetes and
setting of Esmenard's poem in his Chant du 1er
subsequent Imperial reviews as it is to La Muette
vendemiaire an IX, the editorial board of La De-
de Portici, to Les Huguenots, or even to Les Troy-
cade thundered: "He has cut up all the lines
upsetting their order to an extent one can ens. "A French Grand Opera is something com-
plex and multiple. Fine music needs a good poem
scarcely credit. A composer should set verses to
which in turn requires effective scenery and
music, not break them up, parcel them out and
beautiful costumes, which in turn demand also
so make bad prose out of them (my italics)."60
a production wherein imagination and accuracy
With this picture before us it needs no great combine."62
critical acumen to observe that the old operatic
Nothing was ever more multiple and com-
battles had been transferred to the public place
plex, more full of appropriate music and words,
and that fundamentally nothing at all had
given more effective scenery and costumes or
changed. Indeed, through its identification with
produced with greater imagination and respect
the highest purposes and functions of music in
the centralized State, the concept of Gluckian for local colour than the Fete de l'Etre Supreme.
Le Moniteur described one such festival in its
opera received a considerable boost from these
issue for 19 Prairial An 2. "When the men, to-
Revolutionary festivals and hymns. By keeping
gether with their sons, had sung a verse, all the
it in the public eye and exalting it to the private
people repeated the refrain ... after which the
mind they helped to make it a vital influence on
women, accompanied by their daughters, sang a
Berlioz and all later generations of French musi-
cians. That the national inclination toward the second verse."63 The climax to this antiphonal
procedure came with the final refrain, and it was
traditional genre of opera would not be fore-
performed with resources which perhaps not
sworn, even in Revolutionary times, is shown by
even a Meyerbeer would have demanded nor a
the comments of Ducis, who hoped that his Fete
Berlioz been able to control without some diffi-
des Epoux might pursue a dual existence-first
culty.
as an ethical example and a moral stimulus
throughout the land and then as an operatic spec- ... the trumpets having given the signal, the crowd
tacle in Paris. with a great upsurge joined its 30,000 voices to those
of the musicians and the Delegates against a back-
Some of my friends believe that with scenery and ground of 200 beating drums: and as the formidable
ballet, with all the appurtenances of a great spectacle, discharge of artillery set the echoes flying, it embodied
and with music composed by an able man, this hymn the national vengeance by announcing to Republicans
might make up a short act and be amenable to produc- that the glorious day was come.64
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19TH
CENTURY
although
It is no wonder, then, that in the end the Revo- stylistic mannerisms may change,
MUSIC lution itself came to be spoken of as a lyric basic
drama techniques do not. Thus in the words of
conceived on the most spectacular andone lavish
contemporary critic, the principal charac-
scale: "The Revolution may perhaps be teristics likenedof modern music were what they had
to a great lyric drama with words by always Marie-been- "to vary its appearance at each
Joseph Ch6nier, music by Gossec, and scenery passing moment, to conjoin loud with soft, con-
by David."65 tinuous with detached, pompous articulation
The consistent and continuing operatic style with tender, all within one piece. Thus consid-
of public life and behavior in France was asserted ered ... its whole power depends upon rapid
many years later by one of Sainte-Beuve's for- transformations."67
eign friends. While that great critic was prepar- Such characteristic contrasts and powerful
ing his review of Flaubert's novel Salammb6, transitions, such stunningly contrived illusions
this friend was heard to observe: "Have you not and expressly calculated gestures, are frequently
noticed that there is always something operatic to be heard in Berlioz's music, and such a com-
in everything the French do, even those who bination of theatrical effects was noted by Alfred
pride themselves on realism? The stage effects de Vigny in 1837 when he confided his opinion
are there, and also the wings ..."66 Such a re- of the Grande Messe des Morts to his Poet's
mark would not have rung true of organic and Journal: "The music was beautiful and bizarre,
increasingly symphonic Germany where social, savage, convulsive and full of colour. Berlioz be-
political, and artistic centralization was rela- gins a harmony and then cuts it in two with
tively unknown and where official art, in the unexpected dissonances which he has expressly
French sense of this term at least, was almost calculated."68 Three years later Richard Wagner
inconceivable. spoke of Auber's La Muette de Portici in a similar
This basically spectacular approach to mu- vein, finding in its welter of contrasting emo-
tions and sounds "a perfect expression of the
sic, in what amounted to a largely operatic social
setting, affected not only the general esteem in
recent history of the French nation": "Its power
which the art was held but also the particular to take by storm, its welter of emotions and
way in which its works were put together. Once passions depicted in glowing colors and satu-
music generally had been conceived of as a lan-rated with characteristic melodies, gracious yet
guage, the rational techniques of good dramatic powerful, charming yet heroic-is not all this a
writing might logically be applied to it. Of allperfect expression of the recent history of the
such literary doctrines and dramatic techniques French nation?"69
none was more important than that of con- When we compare all these sentiments and
trastes, oppositions, combinaisons, et effets; opinions, these rationalizations and pronounce-
and I do not think it is too much to claim that ments on music's aims and nature with Mme de
the deliberate collision of contrasts and opposi- Stjiel's assertion that contemporary literature
tions, so deployed as to produce amazing effects should attempt to "paint heroes with their
through startlingly varied and unexpected com- weaknesses, virtues with indiscretions, com-
binations, remained the very foundation of Gal- mon daily events beside the most sublime situ-
lic music in the nineteenth century. Extended ations of human life,"70 the parallel is obvious-
now beyond the operatic milieu to cover all more immediately obvious, perhaps, than that
branches of the musical art, and making full use drawn above between Goethe's biological rhap-
of every subtlety of timbre and nuance which the sody on Strasbourg Minster and Schumann's
times had to command, it was among the chief poetic interpretation of Beethoven's Ninth Sym-
vehicles of musical Romanticism in the land.
phony. The transference of values and tech-
That at heart it was an operatic and Baroque
niques from literature to music seems indubita-
ble. In the words of Chateaubriand the best
approach confirms rather than weakens the gen-
eral tenor of my argument; for it seems to be onemodern music created a "pathetic drama" re-
gardless of its genre; and when we listen to the
of the chief lessons we learn from history that,
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orchestral works of Berlioz and recall, perhaps worse than appreciate his position as a French- BRIAN
PRIMMER
with amused tolerance, that he saw himself as man before we pronounce upon his possible "de- Unity and
Beethoven's successor in this field, we might do fects" as a symphonist. Ensemble
III
If metaphor in Germany was largely biological, cept of more generalized genius had fostered the
that in France was often decked out in military personal intensities of Sturm und Drang in Ger-
terms or dramatized in those of elemental force many, helping to clear a path for full Romanti-
and cataclysm. In Napoleon-or, more accu- cism, so in France Romantic attitudes were
rately perhaps, in the idea of that Napoleon bathed in a radiance of remembered glory and
who had once described himself as a "volcano" culminated in the overwhelming image of Na-
which the Romantic generation formed-an-poleon. In his peculiar embodiment of genius-
tique ideals of glory and of heroism were com-made even more compelling, I suspect, by his
bined with those of genius. In the early nine-eventual defeat, exile, and lonely death-Ro-
teenth century the concept of that opera which
mantic artists discerned not only a vision to in-
had dominated France since Lully's time allied
spire their own conceptions of the hero and his
itself to Empire and imperial display. The spec-fate at bourgeois hands, but also a symbol
tacles to which they were accustomed on thethrough which the elemental pressures in their
stage flowed over into life, and Frenchmen found souls might be both realized and released. This
themselves involved in a living drama even moreimage of the Bonaparte hovers over Romanti-
arresting than that of the Revolution itself. cism I in France as an eagle soars above its moun-
often wonder if the popularity which Shake-tain-tops-another figure of speech which fre-
speare now enjoyed in France was not, at least inquently appears in contemporary literature-
part, encouraged by that poet's consciousness of and artists felt at one with him in their defiance
the stagelike qualities of the world and public of mediocrity. What personal experience had
life. For every man now had a real part to play, been to Germany, this image of daemonic energy
and the scenario provided by the imperial libret- now became for France-a spur to set the spirit
tists exceeded in theatrical effectiveness all pre-free from the aesthetic trammels of the past; a
vious combinings of contrasted opposites. If the spark to set alight the fuse of vengeance on the
concept of natural organic processes gave Ger- philistines; an upsurge of explosive power whose
many a path across the monstrous chasm sepa- aptest metaphor from Nature was "volcano." As
rating art from life, the notion of imperial societyEmperor he may have brought disaster on his
and its pursuit of glory did much the same fornation, but as symbol Napoleon gave French Ro-
France. manticism focus.
But however that may be, from the time of Evidence of his impact on Hugo's "young,
Hugo onward the effective legacy of Empire lay stem, vigorous generation"71 is discovered
in language, and in the state of mind which its everywhere, from the biographical pages of Sten-
imaginative use betrayed. The pride of contem- dhal who, in 1823, could adequately describe
porary Frenchmen in their imperial heritage is Rossini only in terms of imperial reincarnation,
obvious, and finds expression in nearly every-to those of Balzac's novels. He saw even Beetho-
thing they wrote-in their criticism of the arts ven's orchestral effects "like the disposition of
as well as in their social commentary. In a way regiments
it in a plan of battle."72
is an updating of the Golden Age syndrome, a
Napoleon is dead; but a new conqueror has already
gloss upon ideas of noble savageness and child-shown himself to the world; and from Moscow to
like innocence: Rousseau "revolutionized" and Naples, from London to Vienna, from Paris to Cal-
made imperial, if you will. And just as the con- cutta, his name is constantly on every tongue.73
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19TH
CENTURY
As for Th6ophile Gautier, his Histoire du As I have suggested at the end of section II,
Romantisme is alive with similes and meta- metaphor and even language itself are little more
MUSIC
than symptoms of tradition and experience at
phors fired in the crucible of gloire. In his pages
young Romantics "rally to the trumpet call heart.
of The absolute need for language which
seems inherent in the Gallic sensibility, and
Hernani," "valiantly defend the trenches against
which to Berlioz's mind was felt even by music
the incursions of the Classics" or, imagining Vic-
tor Hugo decked out in the accoutrements when
of it wished to be conceptually explicit, is
Empire, cherish their vision of him as "hand-
more fundamental than the relative necessity to
make a proper use of it as occasion may demand.
some, young and smiling, radiating genius and
bathing all around him with an overglow For
ofthe latter indicates a basic commitment to
glory."74 ideals of precision, definition, and exactitude
The language Berlioz employs in his writings which is not a necessary fellow of the former. It
is a culmination of these strands, now suffused is possible to use verbal languagefaute demieux,
with military terms and now mixed character- as an inferior alternative to music or to any other
istically with references to ancient figures and mode of spiritual expression, to recognize its
events, shot through with Shakespeare and with reasonable limits as well as to rejoice in its po-
images of battle or the sea, and colored with tints etical abilities. Roughly speaking, this was the
of violence, eruption, and display. In Berlioz's situation in which German Romantics found
spectacular verbal style remembrance of heroic themselves. They used verbal language when
glory is entwined with a consciousness of ele- they had to, and in those areas of thought and
mental force which, in a combination of typi- expression to which it was appropriate. How-
cally contrasting adjectives, produces an almost ever, the "typically French" attitude, as de-
literally shattering effect. Like his music, which scribed by Delacroix, was different: "Chenavard
operates along similar lines, his prose is typical has the typically French mind which needs ideas
not only of himself but also of his nation and his which can be expressed in words; when it comes
times. Thus to his mind his music has caught on to ideas which language is incapable of describ-
with the English "like a match to a powder- ing, he banishes them from the realm of art."77
train" or, having won great victories abroad, As a consequence of this need for ideas,
must now "pursue the enemy and not fall asleep words, and concrete images, for what an opera
at Capua."75 As a conductor he feels himself to critic in the Journal des Debats once called
be like a general marshalling his forces, while "known and verified miracles upon the stage,"78
the orchestra itself is imaged as an army in the there is a more pronouncedly tangible, tactual,
fullest panoply of war. The expressive power external, and "real" quality about French art in-
contained within the orchestra, considered as a cluding music-and certainly including the mu-
single instrument, was always in the vanguard sic of Berlioz--than there is about that of any
of his mind; and when he came to describe this other western European nation. In every sphere
power in his book on orchestration the words he French artists shared a concern for appearances
used were of heroic force, Napoleonic in their which gave their works an edge their foreign
vision of elemental energy and cataclysm. colleagues preferred to blunt. For them appear-
ance was nothing less than essence itself made
Its repose would be majestic like the slumber of the manifest or, bearing in mind their peculiar and
ocean; its agitations would recall the tempest of the
tropics; its explosions, the outbursts of volcanos; esoteric rationalizing of instrumental genres at
therein would be heard the plaints, the murmurs, the the turn of the century, essence "humanized"
mysterious sounds of primeval forests; the clamors, and made acceptable to men. In the words of
the prayers, the songs of triumph or of mourning of a Charles Baudelaire, "the framework, so to speak,
people with expansive soul, ardent heart, and fiery is the most important surety of the mysterious
passions; its silence would inspire awe by its solemni-
ty; and the most intractable constitutions would life that informs works of the spirit."79 "Surety"
shudder to behold its crescendo spread roaringly- and "framework" are rational and tangible
like a stupendous conflagration.76 terms, and these words or their equivalents be-
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BRIAN
came a guarantee of genuineness in art as firm in sitifs, was really no more than a well-timed and PRIMMER
their appeal to Frenchmen as "organic" was to well-informed opportunism on the part of Unity and
Charles X's Prime Minister. He knew his elec- Ensemble
Germans. And although writers on both sides of
the Rhine continued to use "feeling" as their torate as well as Meyerbeer knew his audience,
common measure of artistic authenticity, the and played upon its prejudices similarly.
word as used in France carried a much more Here we have come to that parting of the ways
sharply focused resonance than that we hear in which isolated French Romantic artists from the
Germany. It is far more conscious of its tactile society in which they lived but whose basic ra-
roots in Paris than in Heidelberg or Jena, in tional ideals they, as Frenchmen, ultimately and
Leipzig or Berlin. The same applies to "taste"; unfortunately shared. In the make-up of behav-
and not infrequently the columns of French mu- ior nurture is at least as important as nature; and
sic criticism drew analogies with food. the tension which French Romantic artists felt
within their breasts-a tension whose opposing
Art is to musical or poetic ideas as alcohol is to fruits-
it conserves them.
poles were tradition and modernity or, put some-
what differently and perhaps a shade more accu-
Clear, warm and strong, such are the qualities of cof- rately, endemic culture and infectious "barba-
fee: such also are the qualities of good opera.80 rism" from abroad-generated that earnest and
ironic attitude with which they now were forced
This literal-mindedness, this practical ap- to threaten the Establishment, and to which
proach to problems of creation and presentation Baudelaire drew attention.83 The truculence we
in the arts, this need to quantify experience in see in French Romantic attitudes is the trucu-
terms of concrete images and familiar, mundane lence of those who "kick against the pricks,"
things and then to judge their value by their feel, whose sensibilities may be profound, inclined to
their taste, their look, was a direct result of that metaphor, and open to influences from outside,
respect for imperious rationality which seems to but whose inherent culture is sharp-faceted,
be coexistent with the Gallic muse and which, more literal and enclosed. In the "boring" years
later in the century, would lead artists to describe which followed Waterloo the volcanic forces
the real in Realism, fix impressions in Impres- which had once unleashed the glorious dogs of
sionism or, finally, take refuge in a wide, chro- imperial war and conquest were diverted into
matic sensualism. I find it intriguing to observe frenzied streams of greed, harried ever onward
this line of development by which warm sen- by the rabid hounds of acquisitive commercial-
suality is the logical culmination of cool reason; ism. The hero now appeared as entrepreneur, and
or, to put it rather more obviously, how at the the sign of modern genius was a calculating op-
last sense becomes embodied in the senses. portunism which found its chief ideals in real
It is no accident, therefore, that local color- things and had no use for miracles in art or
the bringing together of verifiable characteris-thought which were not already known and
tics of an age or place in sensible ensemble--which had not before been verified upon the
should have been described by Constant as "the stage of life. Thus it was at the material and
basis of all truth,"81 and should have formed soliteral-minded acquisitiveness of this now-
important an element in French art during thegrown-inglorious society which Romantic art-
nineteenth century. Nor was it chance aloneists railed. It was a shallow generation which, in
which made amassing objets d'art and bric-a-Musset's words, "possessed only a passion for
brac (in themselves significant contemporarygold, for stock-jobbing, and for eating; with no
coinings) so widespread an obsession during the taste but that for bric-a-brac."84 It was an age
Romantic years. Th6ophile Gautier was but whoseidde fixe was commercialism-"the rabid
voicing a general sentiment when he proclaimeddog which has bitten our infected century," ac-
himself to be a man for whom the visible world cording to Henri de Latouche."8 It was a society
existed;82 while the apparently cynical advice which acquired art as well as "men, ideas and
"enrichissez-vous," which so dismayed the sen- things," and one which therefore made of music
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CENTURY
from
a commodity, an object as objective as any tangible appearances and into the very
objet
MUSIC d'art. heart of things through human feeling. The mys-
With feeling thus degraded into sentiment,terious pathway led forever inwards, in Novalis'
words;90 and the true reality of all that could be
and true originality of action replaced by predict-
able rearrangements of "known and verified mir-or felt, or heard lay within each individ-
touched,
acles" in every sphere, the accepted sign of ualartis-
soul and not out in the world. Ideals were
tic value was popular success, and the only transcendental,
safe not mundane; and even though
musical investment was the work and person of pathway led directly to mysticism, it
this inner
the already known composer. "The bestwould music eventually rise up through the clouds to
truth. Inward too lay knowledge-not knowl-
is that which pleases the public," pronounced
the Revue Musicale in 1827: "the administra-
edge in the superficial sense which words de-
scribed, and named, and reckoned out in speech,
tion of the Opera should concern itself only with
those whose reputation is made."'86 but knowledge in its fullest sense of universal,
Based on varieties of personal and largely absolute, and infinite. Of all the arts music knew
physiological frisson which were generated bythis knowledge best, and streamed it out before
the undeniable realities of "prestigious execu- the listening soul as it was essentially.91 For mu-
tion," the framework of a piece was no longersicians took the essence of their art from within
themselves, and could in no way be accused of
surety of any inner mystery or worth, but only of
itself. The value of this framework was intrinsic. imitation.92 Frameworks, thus, in Germany,
Art, like meaning heretofore, must now be quan- were of secondary value, the by-products and not
tifiable or else be considered as no worthwhile the guarantees of substance, and not so much
art at all; and those who kept the ledgers weredid not any more as could not, now or at any
the philistines, the crowd, the bourgeoisie andtime, act as sureties of inner worth and mystery.
nouveau riche, for whose use the new term chic This deep distrust of concrete actuality re-
was coined, and for whom the ultimate fear was vealed itself most clearly in the Germans' atti-
that of being bored. tude to statuary which, because of its "sharp,
closed outlines," excluded of necessity "every-
The first condition of theatrical music is to please a
public of whom ninety-nine per cent have no knowl- thing romantic," according to Jean Paul. Signifi-
edge whatsoever of the rules of composition. ... it cantly
is enough in our present comparative con-
text, for him even painting could attain full
possible that this is very clever, very beautiful, but
this individuality appears to me as strangeness; yourRomantic feeling only when it omitted human
rhythm, your dissonances and your part-writing seem
figures and turned its eye on landscape, as in
to me bizarre. I yawn when I hear them.s7
Claude. Reverence for human nature, therefore,
It was a situation which caused Berlioz to lament was but a step toward Romanticism whose es-
in the columns of the Gazette Musicale, and to sence truly lay in natura naturans.
observe regretfully that the art of his time had
been "reduced to the proportions of a greedy A statue, through its sharp, closed outlines, excludes
everything romantic; painting begins to approach it
speculation"88 dominated by the mob. It was this more closely through its groups of human figures and,
situation which, finally, had turned Hugo's without them, attains it in landscapes, for example in
"young, stern and vigorous generation" into the those of Claude.93
"earnest, ironical and threatening generation"
of Baudelaire.89 The profound liaison between Romanticism
and natura naturans which suffused most Ger-
man minds is implied in Uhland's words quoted
The German approach to experience and to art below, and finds musical expression, for exam-
was literally opposite to that adopted by the ple, in the forested locations of Der Freischiitz or
French. Closely following upon the private rap- the generally natural environment of the Ring.
tures of their Sturm und Drang, their apprehen- In Nature also was the seat of holiness and of
sion of the secret ways of Nature had led away God, and all the threads of true Romantic feeling
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came together at the junction of those paths- events, seems to me quite crucial if we wouldBRIAN
PRIMMER
Heidegger's clearing in a later age-which led understand in full and thereby "tolerate," to useUnity and
Ensemble
forever inward through the forests of the soul. Mme de Stall's phrase, the sensible difference
between German art and French, and especially
It is not in cold, marble statues, in deaf and mute between their musics. For it forms the very heart
temples that the God of the Germans lives and
breathes, but in the fresh and murmuring forests.94
of this inquiry and illuminates more clearly than
does any other single term the essential nature
of that difference between the sounds of French
Because, therefore, artistic nourishment was
and German scores which we recognize imme-
drawn up plant-like from roots embedded in a
diately on hearing.
ground of personal experience-not gathered in
the bloom and slowly filtered downwards-the
only possible guarantee of substance was itself.
According to Mme de Stael, who was a consid-
And as so often was the case, Goethe summed
erable musician in her own way as well as being
up the Germanic view, in the course of a conver-
a seminal figure in contemporary French litera-
sation with Eckermann on 14 February 1831:
ture, and the chief transmitter of German
"Musical talent may well be the first to show
thought to France, beauty in art should be con-
itself, because music is something altogether
sidered "not as the junction with and imitation
innate and internal which does not need much
of that which Nature herself does better, but as
nourishment from outside or any experience of
the realized image of that which is conjured up
life.",95
by our souls""99 (my italics). Although this defi-
"Experience of life"-so important to French
nition shows a departure from traditional theo-
artists who constantly were called upon by jour-
nalists to "live in the midst of commotion and
ries of imitation in music-theories whereby
music was expected to imitate "the tones, ac-
activity,"96 to join the turmoil in the city streets
cents, sighs and inflections of the voice" as well
or "reflect ... the emotions of a progressive
humanity""97-was not thought necessary toas "all those sounds by which nature herself
expresses her sentiments and passions," to quote
musical creation in Germany. Musicians there
the Abbe du Bos'0--it represents no more than
needed quiet, not commotion; time to ruminate
a subtilized approach to the principle of mime-
upon the natural mysteries of their art, not space
sis, not in any way its abandonment. Despite the
for frenzied action in the social field; and their
fact that mimesis now has been internalized, and
art for them did not so much reflect the emotions
often is suffused with tearful sentiment, the
of humanity at large as embody from the outset
principle itself has lost none of its old command,
the personal feelings of individual artists, ex-
as her final phrase reveals. For in this phrase we
press them in their purest forms and point them
in their true direction of the infinite. The con-
seem to have outlined a three-fold relationship
between a stimulus, a response to that stimulus,
trast between these two conceptions was clearly
and an image of that response. If I understand her
pointed out by Wagner in 1841, in the columns
rightly, the artist first experiences direct; and
of the Dresden Abendzeitung:
then responds to that experience through a men-
tal image; and finally realizes the image of that
The tendency of the French is directed outwards in a
response through all the appropriate disciplines
search for common points of contact in extremes. A
German prefers to withdraw from social life in order of his particular medium. The art-work, there-
to seek the sources of his inspiration inside himself, fore, should continue to stand at one remove
whereas the Frenchman looks for inspiration to the from personal experience, as it always had in
remotest reaches of society.98 "Classical" times, and the artist's initial spon-
taneity of feeling must be cautioned by the inter-
The concept of reflection, of holding up a vention of a realizable image. It is the picture of
mirror to the face of public life and catching in this image which then finally is offered to the
its surface the glitter of dramatic contrasts and public as the work. The strongly Platonic strain
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CENTURY
Mme de Sta6l's view of feeling's ultimate
in this is obvious, as is its prophecy of C6zanne's
MUSIC "logical vision"''1 and the consequent birth of
relationship to art was a consistently held thread
Cubism; and the "poetry" of art in nineteenth-
in the fabric of French theorizing throughout the
century France, a quality to which many con-
nineteenth century: and many statements by
temporary writers constantly refer, retainsFrenchan artists confirm it. According to Baude-
inner consciousness of that word's originallaire, for instance, Les Fleurs du Mal was created
meaning. in alternating moods of angry inspiration and
In general, therefore, French artists, patient
as dis-discipline'05--moods which were them-
tinct from those in Germany, are still veryselves
mucha living demonstration of the law of con-
the "makers" of things through images, trastes,
what- oppositions, combinaisons, et effets-
while his awareness of the dangers of what he
ever the medium of their artistry. Even Stendhal,
who was by no means an unequivocal admirer called of"excessive sensibility of heart" (in other
Mme de Stahl's way of writing, seems towords be in-the kind of sensibility which could lead to
fected with the theories she propounds. sentimentalized
For it effusion and nostalgia) were
was his "considered opinion" that music givencould
in the pages of L'Artiste in 1859.
only appeal to the spirit of man "by conjuring up
... the feelings that flow from the heart are not nec-
a pattern of imaginative imagery, which essarily
in some propitious to poetic creation. Excessive sen-
way corresponds to the passions by which the of heart may even be harmful in this context.
sibility
listener is already swayed."'102 Imaginative sensibility is different in nature; it knows
This assessment of the way in which how music to select, judge, compare, eschew some things,
seek out others, all with speed and spontaneity.'06
operates-by reinforcing rather than by gener-
ating moods-carried in its last few words an too, maintained that whoever wanted
Val6ry,
to write his dream had to be completely
implication of a power to stimulate the memory
which led, quite logically, to over-sentimental-
awake,107 while Magnard warned that art should
ized effusion and nostalgia. "Nothing retraces
never be confused with the feelings, or even the
the past like music,"'03 wrote Mme de thoughts,
Stael, a which had engendered it.'08 Perhaps
sentiment which was echoed frequently Andr6 by Gide put it best of all, however, when,
echoing
many writers of her day and also by those of later ancient views, he asserted that "the
times. It is one which displays a view of music's
most beautiful things are those which madness
role in life diametrically opposed to that es-and reason writes."'09 The ability to se-
inspires
poused in Germany. For most Frenchmen music
lect, to judge, to compare, to eschew some things
is an awkward art which, because of its "ungov-
and to seek out others, an ability to which as we
ernable instability,"'104 must either be subdued
have seen Baudelaire attached such great impor-
by rational criticism at every stage, or else
tance,beis essentially a rational ability, an overtly
accepted openly as an element of physical de-
critical approach to matters of the feelings and
light in sensualism. Inferior to Reasonthe
andheart
to which Stendhal saw as the traditional
words, the strong emotive powers of music
and find
therefore the only possible way for French-
their proper place enhancing and supporting
men to approach the "Temple of the Arts."'11
"real" things-accompanying the human voicewent even further and labelled it an in-
Gr6try
in opera or in song, coloring the backgroundstinct:to
"I followed my instinct which... even in
the enjoyment of its pleasures likes to light its
social activity or to personal feeling, or inducing
physical sensations and reactions in the waysensi-
with the torch of reason.''111
tive. Effectively, therefore, the concept of musicI am not, of course, suggesting that German
as an agrement- to be applied to national"inwardness"-so
festi- often underlined by the sty-
listic direction innig in Schumann's songs-pre-
vals in disrupted times, or used as an embellish-
ment of speech and feeling generally-survived vented any critical assessment or reaction on the
unscathed in essence into the nineteenth cen- artist's part during the actualprocess of creation.
tury. Like mimesis, it had become extended andI am suggesting, however, that the emphasis
had grown subtle with the years, but fundamen-placed by Germans on music's immediacy, and
tally it had not lost its hold. on the "speed and spontaneity" with which it
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BRIAN
transmuted feeling into art, altered the balance bracing passion itself (which was the German
PRIMMER
between the elements of conscious criticism, way), the territory of music was able to march
Unity and
Ensemble
and inspired creativity in favor of profoundly with that of economics and commercialism,
personal emotion, and could not therefore fail to where the concept of possessing property was
be audible in their scores. all-important and pervasive. By that special kind
In this context I find it most instructive to
of casuistry which had first transformed them
compare Mme de Sta6l's view of art with Schu- into elements of language, the elements of music
mann's view of criticism, for the two are notsui generis might now be seen as real proper-
dissimilar and seem to lend considerable supportties-to be acquired, arranged, deployed, and dis-
to Stendhal's comment on the essentially ra- ciplined like stocks or shares, like objets d'art
tional nature of creative processes in France. For and bric-ai-brac, like things.
Schumann, "the highest form of criticism is that In a society whose general values were as
which reflects most closely the impression objectified as this, where art was seen as "life
made by the stimulating original itself."'12 Here addressing life,""3 or where the significantly
reflection is the critic's charge; and he reacts topaired "matters of art and public building" were
his emotional impression of the artistic stimu- considered as "the only things which have gen-
lus as Mine de Stael's artist reflected his ownuine value,"114 it seems altogether reasonable
mental image of emotional experience. that eventually a composer should attempt to
Now I do not wish to press the point too far, write pieces "in the shape of a pear," or treat
for there are subtle differences within this com- music, albeit jokingly, as "furniture" for an ex-
parison which defy the power of words to expli- hibition-hall.15 The Gallic traditions of titles,
cate. But there is sufficient similarity between programs, and descriptive essays to, for, or in
them to encourage me to ponder and also, per- notes, are events which fit appropriately into
haps, to indicate the general area in which the that frighteningly logical sequence of whose par-
answer to my initial query lies. For although, as allel political and military march the Prussian
I have suggested earlier, art created along the Chancellor was conscious. The whole tendency
lines adumbrated by Mme de Stael must remain of art and thought in nineteenth-century France
essentially mimetic in the end, it need no longer seems directed outward in the direction of that
be so in the strictly naturalistic sense. This relax- scientific Impressionism which Gauguin finally
ation in the theory of mimesis, this extension of dismissed as "a purely superficial art, full of af-
that theory to cover abstract mental images as fectations and purely material.""16 Even Berlioz,
well as concrete phenomena, helped to confirm the greatest musician of his race, spoke of la
the popular position which music was now com- musique in terms of the generation of images,
ing to occupy in France's "Temple of the Arts," and considered ma musique to be "defaced"
and to accommodate it thoroughly to Gallic sen- when incompetent conductors and performers
sibilities. Without in any way surrendering to mishandled the "expressly calculated" contours
those monstrous apparitions which might issue of his scores.
from the sleep of Reason, music could now be How different is all this from Schumann's
treated as a language of the soul, different in both view, to whom Weber's instruments in Eu-
scale and practice perhaps from that which was ryanthe spoke "from the innermost depths" of
used in Germany, but sufficiently influenced by their hearts,117 and whose advice to young pian-
German thought to qualify as Romanticism, at ists approaching his own Album for the Young
least in part. Modelled still upon the example of was to let their music come from out their inner
human nature and largely eschewing that of na- selves, to "feel" it deep within them so that they
tura naturans, it bore the standards of traditional might make others feel it also."18 The inescapa-
French ideals of Reason into the hearts of its ble conclusion to this inward-leading German
nineteenth-century scores. Because Frenchmen path was not sound but quietness. And it is not
generally were interested in the "properties" ofsurprising to discover that Schumann himself,
the mind, and still found the passions more easythe greatest critic of his art and times, who man-
to deploy and countenance in art than all-em- aged words with a skill equally as telling perhaps
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19TH
CENTURY A i ?
MUSIC
p p ritard. . . . .
SExample 1-" I I
I I Example I
as that with which heIf handled

there isnotes, should i
one passage h
proclaimed that "the which, beyond all othe
best discourse on musi
silence.""9 In this opinion,
chantmentone in
bywhich
"growingI th
through the "attenuat
I hear the consummating overtones of Roma
ticism itself, he was source, surely
but echoing it thought
the is the f
his literary hero Jeanby Robert
Paul who, Schumann
in his Vorsch h
In the completely orig
der Aesthetik, had observed:
ploys, and in its delicat
Everything in his [Ossian's] poem is music, but it
the very essence of Rom
distant and hence a doubled music, grown faint
moment in the air,
endless space like an echo that enchants, notand t
thro
its crudely faithful to hear more of
reproduction clearly, fa
a sound,
through its mortalized.
attenuating mitigation of it.120
IV
Exactly how is this instrumental

recurrent melody, because of its presumed of t
tendency
French to objectify original
experience association with madewords in song, was
manifes
notes? How does it affect
thought to preserve the at least
aural
a near-connection
impressi
with Reason, In
created by their scores? even when
what words themselves
particular were e
ment of composition absent.
is it truly "realized"?
I think it was an English critic
But logical or not, French who onc
composers from
opined that melody Gr6try
mightto Gounod, from be Couperin to Duparc,
regarded as
from Berlioz to In
surface-show of harmony. Faur6,our
Poulenc, present
and Messiaen con
this opinion seemshavemost apposite.
given their minds and hearts to drawingFor out look
through the pages ofexquisite
Frenchlines, lines about which there criticism,
music is always
a sense of the recherche and of the carefully write
through those of musically-responsive
sought after, of the sensitively
generally, not only is m6lodie a wordconsidered andwhich f
quently appears, butthealso
most fastidiously
it is executed.
one To this all else
whose expr
sive superiority ishaspresumed
been deemed subservient and has become,
almost with
question. On in a literalit
reflection as well as in a metaphorical
seems logical sense, enou
that sensibilities as linguistically inclined
accompaniment.
those brought up inIn France,
general, the sentimentor must beotherwise
in the melody; the dee
influenced by French thought, should
spirit, the gestures, the expression must be distributed emph
size the linear aspects
throughof experience and so a
the accompaniment.'2'
proach their musicMelody similarly-that
alone counts in music.... Melody, always is, thro
melody. Equally logical is
melody... that the
is the process
unique secret of our art.'22 by wh
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It was not only composers and musicians ion which Chopin partly shared and one which BRIAN
PRIMMER
who thought thus, however. Philosophers and he relayed to Delacroix in the course of a conver-
Unity and
Ensemble
poets, aestheticians and novelists, critics, essay- sation not long before his death.124 But the sim-
ists and the like, all joined in the celebration ple feelings of the heart, those feelings which
of melody's superior expressive and emotive were the essence of Romanticism in France,
powers. Nor is this surprising: for in a land so were best communicated through unsophisti-
naturally inclined to literature as France musi- cated melodic lines. These, seizing upon the very
cians had to follow their artistic peers in essence of sentiment itself, brought with them
other disciplines, not lead the way in thought. intimations of immortality and echoes of infi-
And whatever formal systems composers might nitely distant worlds. "Melody seizes upon feel-
enunciate through prefaces to scores or pro- ing and isolates it; whether it concentrates feel-
grams in their works, these rested of necessity ing or deploys it, melody draws out its supreme
upon a firm bed of rational thought laid down accent."'25
initially by litterateurs. At one time in his life G6rard de Nerval,
For Beethoven's contemporary Chateau- brought up partly on the popular songs which his
briand, for instance, as for our own contempo- father used to sing, seemed prepared to exchange
rary Messiaen, the origin of music lay in song all the artful complexities of Rossini, Mozart,
and stemmed directly from the sanctified ex- and Weber for one such simple air:
ample of angelic choirs who, presumably, per-
Il est un air pour qui je donnerais
formed pure monody. Music as a complex skill,
Tout Rossini, tout Mozart, tout Weber
however, as a human concept or an art-espe- Un air tres vieux, languissant et funebre,
cially in its instrumental guise-was deduced by Qui pour moi seul a des charmes secrets.'26
thought and application from intellectual prem-
ises alone. It was a child of earth and of earth- In later years he concentrated upon the vocal
bound beings and not the daughter of the skies.inflections of strange southern tongues, and saw
As such, therefore, it was by nature inferior toin the thematic physiognomy of Liszt's Prome-
song; and the purest of all earthly music wastheus a successful solution to the formidable
confined in ancient plainsong chants and simplechallenges of that composer's expressive and for-
country airs. mal problems.
The more open-minded Senancour, on the
Listz [sic] in taking on this task has tried to overcome
other hand, believed that all the sounds of Na- a difficulty of the fiercest sort. He needed to discover
ture gelled into one great singing line, and looked
a musical style appropriate to so strange an undertak-
forward eagerly to the day when the art of humaning for which there was, so to speak, neither prepared
soil nor established framework. He had to achieve an
music, old as well as new, would at last be lost to
ordered unity in the midst of a great diversity of mo-
hearing in the multifarious reverberations of
tives, without in any way cutting himself off from old-
natural sound. Until that day came, however, the
style majesty and flexibility; to give movement and
simplest tunes were best: for complex harmony passion to symbolic characters; to give life and body
and intense intellectual effort-whether on the to abstract ideas; to formulate, in addition, deep and
part of the composer or on that of the listener--violent passions without the interest which is always
seemed to defeat all expressive spontaneity andaroused by a succession of [dramatic] events. By the
striking beauty and the undeniable attractiveness of
emotive force. "I very much enjoy two or more his melodies he has escaped the conflicting dangers
voices in unison; the melody retains all its power
of his task ... (my italics).'27
and simplicity," wrote Senancour. "As for clever
harmony, its delights are foreign to me. Knowing To the brothers Deschamps Chopin was not
the supreme harmonist of his day, as Anglo-
nothing about music I fail to enjoy that part of it
which is little more than art or problem."'123 Saxon critics are wont to see him now, but the
For the eternally childlike Alfred de Musset,"king of melody," whose powerful art had
melody gave wings to words. As an art-and hereawoken feeling in the virgin heart of childhood
he followed Chateaubriand-music might be
"before another kind of love could heat the
likened to the processes of pure thought, an opin-
blood."'28 When discussing Chopin's manner of
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19TH
CENTURY
composition and performance, therefore,of it them.
was The chief recipient of this distrust was
MUSIC upon the peculiarly personal singing and harmony.
me- Because of its vertical aspect and in-
lodic quality of his art that Emil focusedherenthisdensity, its long-range influence over de-
velopment
attention: "[Chopin] electrified his audience by and form, and its seemingly neces-
saryby
the originality and the coloring of his style, connection with tonal procedures which
the freshness of those melodies which he alone were best deployed through instrumental and
can play upon his instrument, by his ingenious symphonic fields, harmony was thought both to
grace and his exquisite freshness."'29 complicate the musical experience per se and to
For Theophile Gautier, so catholic and yet so undermine its expressive power and emotive
inconsistent in his tastes, the power of Italian force. Harmonic thought deprived melody of lin-
opera could always overcome the more theatri- ear and expressive freedom, making rigid with
cal attractions of even so stagey and Gallicized a convention what should have been as pliable as
composer as Meyerbeer. And it could do so be- instinct itself. It replaced sentiment with
cause "despite her carelessness, her facile ba- thought, and spontaneity with calculation,
nality, her repetitiveness, her tendency to ex- while for Gallic charm it substituted a Germanic
travagant improvization, Italy will be for a long ponderousness which could only be described
time to come the queen of melody as she is of as dur. It was altogether too prejudicial, too pe-
painting"'13 (my italics). As he pointed out later dantic, and too scientific for that pleasing gra-
in the same review, "thought is good but passion ciousness of effect which even so expert and
is better," for one "comes with application and finely chiselled a composer as Debussy was later
to claim as the constant and humble aim of
the other stems from God." In his ears, as in those
of his fellow-countrymen, passion's metier, the music. 132
metier of that which came from God, was mel- In the first quarter of the nineteenth century
ody. All other elements in a musical score, par- no one was stronger in his aversion to the com-
ticularly those which, like harmony, involved plexities of harmony, and to the opportunities it
great thought and application, were little more afforded for foolish pedantry to run riot in sound,
than artful monuments raised by human clever- than Stendhal. "Harmony requires scientific
ness. They lacked the spontaneity and the fresh- knowledge. This requirement in itself has
ness of true sentiment directly realized in line. proved fatal, for it has provided a heaven-sent
Even Berlioz's great contemporary and ac- excuse for all manner of fools and pedants to
quaintance, Honor6 de Balzac, who had such a meddle in the art of music."133 The strength of
taste for music and who submitted himself so this aversion can be assessed by the fact that not
willingly to Strunz's teaching before he wrote even his own hero, Rossini, was exempt from
his music-centered novels Gambara and Massi- censure when his biographer felt that he had
milla Doni, found in vocal roulade and melodic strayed too far from the path of melodic simplic-
ornament "the highest expression of the art of ity and textural clarity. As he saw it, Rossini had
music." For him the vocal melisma and melodic led his generally clear-cut and exquisite art into
ornament was "the only point remaining to thewhat could only be described as a "harsh wilder-
friends of pure music, to the lovers of nakedness" by plunging "deeper and deeper into Ger-
art."131 Thus did vocal and musical virtuosityman-style harmony." 134 The very words which
join hands with bourgeois realism and find, in Stendhal uses in this condemnation unwittingly
betray his distrust of "depth" in the German
the brittle and salient brilliances of melodic
lines superbly etched and executed, a perfect
sense of the term. Conversely, they imply a pref-
bridge between their society and art. erence for surfaces, a recognition of the impor-
tance of artistic frameworks which, in a musical
score, are most clearly to be realized and heard
It is only logical that concentration upon me- in melody.
lodic line should have brought in its train not The pivotal figure in this essentially Franco-
just a lack of emphasis upon other elements in German conflict was Mme de Stael. Although
she was friendly with many German artists and
the art of composition, but also a strong distrust
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became the chief transmitter of their sensibili- BRIAN
nakedness of melodic line found open support in
PRIMMER
ties into France, the cast of her mind was senti- the numerous comptes rendus which appeared
Unity and
Ensemble
mental rather than profound, while her profes- almost daily in the Parisian press. It was not only
sional interests were literary and not musical. In the power of melody itself, however, which oc-
music she was hardly more than a gifted ama- cupied the attention of the critics, but the rela-
teur, a status frequently confirmed in her novels tionship which they believed ought to obtain
by the behavior of their heroines. These pale and between it and its musical backing, between the
failing ladies use music as accompaniment to an vocal line or the instrumental melody and what
emotional self-indulgence and abuse which even the greatest among them continued to call
stronger spirits such as Stendhal found both dis- the accompaniment. In its account of the first
tasteful and embarrassing. In Mme de Sta6l's performance of Mozart's Don Juan, for instance,
own hands, as in those of her fictional characters, published on 19 September 1805, the Journal des
music became very much of a background art, an Debats described the difference between French
efficacious rune through which to conjure up and German musical tastes and practices in
nostalgia, a sweet solution of sonority in which terms of a conflict between orchestral accom-
to bathe the diaphanous images emanating from paniment and vocal melody which it believed to
her fanciful and frequently weeping soul. Music exist within Mozart's work.
created a subtle and pervasive atmosphere
which, because it was emotionally self-indul- If Germany has given us the music of this drama,
gent rather than imaginatively re-creative, re- France has furnished it with the subject and its prin-
moved from everyone all need for "scientific cipal situations; but the Germans have spoiled our
knowledge" or for "too much thought."135 The Moliere; let us hope that they will not accuse us of
one essential element, and one which could be having spoiled their Mozart! In the pathetic sections
the broad harmonic traits have been little appreciated
cultivated by all, was "heart." For in Romanti- generally; the light, gracious and playful airs, the
cized France, and especially in its attitude to small duets and cavatinas have charmed everyone. Is
music, mind was heart and heart was all, as Sen- it the fault of the actors or of the public, or may it not
ancour observed. be even that of the composer himself if that part of the
music which ought to have been the most admirable
Of all the arts music was quite literally the has been the least admired?
most heartfelt. And of all its elements the one
I believe that above all else one must lay the blame
which seized most obviously upon the feelingon the great density of the accompaniments which
heart was melody. Thus, despite her Germancrush the melodic line and which overpower even
sympathies and interests, Mme de Sta6l wasMme Armand's voice. We have too little knowledge-
or rather we have too much taste-to put up with this
more deeply moved by simple tunes than she
complication of parts. We like what is simple, natural,
was by what she called "ingenious combina-and song-like, and all that is truly good and beautiful
tions" of notes in harmony.136 Wherever shein music. Instrumental progress has been fatal to mel-
ody, and our orchestras kill our operas. Some believe
went in her years of exile it was tunes like those
sung by Venetian gondoliers, or airs such as werethat this plethora of harmony nourishes and fortifies
musical compositions: on the contrary, it drives them
piped to her by Bohemian shepherd-boys that berserk with a vain bombast which is worse than
gave her the keenest pleasure. Although, andfeebleness. Perhaps the virtuosi who make up our
somewhat grudgingly, she would occasionallyOp6ra orchestra (without doubt the first in Europe)
admit the possible emotive powers of chordal could obviate this grave shortcoming by using all their
combinations, the quintessence of musical feel- skill in making themselves as little heard as possible.
ing remained concentrated in melodic line.
Through the affective powers of sinuous melodyI know of no other paragraphs in contemporary
hearts reached out to hearts spontaneously with-criticism which encapsulate so neatly the per-
out the need to "ruminate too deeply" on what ennial ideals of French musicians-traditional
they did, or "give too much thought" to exactly even in Romantic times: nor of any which illu-
how they did it. minate more clearly the deep distrust of har-
This concern on the part of artists and intel- mony and instruments endemic to the Gallic
lectuals generally for the clarity, simplicity, andmuse.
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19TH
taken fresh wing. It is not that this great composer
Despite his orchestral brilliance and despite
CENTURY
MUSIC also the large instrumental forces whichneglected
he de- melodic design, but rather that he rarely
conditioned it to the natural instrument for which a
manded in his works, even Meyerbeer was
lyric composer ought always to write, to that organ to
praised by the critic of Le Moniteur Universel fornothing can compare-the human voice. De-
which
making his orchestra play discreetly and spite
for all
notthe respect and admiration which this cele-
allowing it to overpower the vocal line. "His
brated German composer inspires, one must admit
thatand
style is distinguished by simplicity, verve in his works he rarely maintained that indispen-
sable distinction between vocal and instrumental
strength. In him the expression of ideas is never
melody. 139
suffocated beneath a frivolous luxuriousness. In
the accompaniments his orchestra sings with
According to our author a new dawn had bro-
discretion, if you will pardon the phrase: it is the
ken upon the world of music with Rossini's ap-
only one which seems fully to convey my mean-
pearance upon the scene. Never for a moment
ing." 37 And it was the apparent lack of just this
abandoning the true aim of all the arts, which
kind of orchestral discretion on Beethoven's part
still was "to increase the sum of earthly happi-
which led Henri Blaze de Bury to describe even
ness and joy,"140 Rossini outshone all his prede-
so great a work as Fidelio as "no more than an
cessors. In his works melody reigned supreme,
instrumental work, an imposing and moving
even when it was shared out among the most
symphony which treats the human voices as
unlikely instruments of the orchestra in the
extra instruments, in which tenor, soprano, bass
manner of a human conversation. Significantly,
and baritone play the part of oboe, clarinet, trom-
his very modulations were dictated by the con-
bone and ophecleide, in a tumultuous whirlpool
of the most formidable orchestra without ever tours of the vocal lines, upon which they threw
new and meaningful light. Although he had ex-
being able to lift themselves free or float easily
above it."138 tended the gambit of the orchestral parts even
beyond those trodden by his German predeces-
What Beethoven appeared to lack, however,
sors, he had done it primarily through the me-
Rossini possessed in more than sufficient meas-
dium of melody, and so had guaranteed for ever
ure. The whole of Rossini's considerable repu-the translucent excellence of his scores: "from
tation in France was based upon his ability tohis orchestra he created a world wherein diver-
subordinate orchestral accompaniment to vocal
sity was subject to unity ... and, where others
melody, and so to juggle the various ingredients
would have created chaos, he gave the rule to
of the operatic genre that the clarity and apparent
melody which seized hold of the most unlikely
simplicity of the whole were never sacrificed to
instruments and clearly communicated itself to
a fundamentally German-style harmonic heav- the listener.'141
iness. According to most French critics of the
Even Schubert's lieder which, significantly
day this last had been the one great flaw in
for us in the present context, were designated
Mozart's operas; and since his death, and largely
because of the unfortunate influence of Beetho- melodies by the critics of the day, were judged in
general by the standards of behavior expected
ven's symphonic music, orchestral writing had
threatened to overwhelm the whole balance of from the Gallic muse. Writing in the Revue et
Gazette Musicale on 15 January 1837, Ernest
voice and orchestra in both the composition and
Legouv6 was forced to point out that despite his
the performance of operas.
manifold genius, of which he, the author, stood
in awe, Schubert also had his faults, the chief of
That state of musical art at the time of Rossini's ap-
which appeared to be melodic instability.
pearance can be outlined in a few words. The Italian
school, always subservient to melody, displayed but a
slightly complex harmony in either its vocal or its His melodic phrase is sometimes so vague that one
cannot get hold of it, or so capricious that it shines
instrumental sections. For its part the German school
continued to sacrifice vocal melody to orchestrallike a ray which vanishes instantly so that one cannot
combinations and to a harmonic predominance tell whence it came or whither it went. I would re-
which, since the time of Mozart's compositions, hasproach him also for his love of the unexpected, which
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BRIAN
employs over-brusque modulations in such a way that oz's cri de coeur of the previous year when he hadPRIMMER
the melody is wholly broken up like a bird whose wing complained in characteristic terms of the flood Unity and
has snapped. of musical rubbish which was then overwhelm- Ensemble
ing the Parisian scene.

In this passage Legouve leaves the reader in no
doubt that, for him, the superior element in a Never, it seems to me, has Paris been so occupied with
song is the vocal line, the melody, and that any music; never, in consequence, has the task of the
"over-brusque" modulation which drew atten- unfortunate critic seemed so arduous, so tiring, so
tion away from this and threw it onto the accom- difficult, so discouraging, so detestable, nor more stu-
pid and useless. It rains albums, an avalanche of ro-
paniment was reprehensible, even if it had been
mances, a torrent of varied airs, a cataclysm of fanta-
conceived by genius. sies, a waterspout of concertos, cavatinas, dramatic
Two years previously the arch-critic F6tis had scenes, duos comiques, classic sonatas and romantic
said much the same thing when writing of Schu- rondos, fantasies frenetic, fanatical and fluoridic (I
bert's Die Junge Nonne. What mattered to him refer to the corrosive chemical) ... There is too much
to do; it is all superficial.'43
was neither the expressiveness of the whole-
indeed, his closing remarks seem to imply a cer-
In its turn this echoed the words of a writer in
tain reserve about expressiveness in general-
L'Artiste who, some six years previously, had
nor the poetic and organic unity of the song, but
the dominating contour of the vocal line. He complained that each year over-active musi-
cians launched upon the world "an elegant or
resented the equal partnership between singer
graceful album of romances" which, for the rest
and keyboard (which he termed the "orchestra")
and which was so fundamental a characteristic of the twelve-month period, "caused the echoes
of the mature German lied. to fly in our salons."'44
In all of these ephemeral compositions, so
It is certainly not without merit; however, its weakest different in origin, in method, in intention and
feature seems to me to be its melody. All the compos- design from the contemporaneous German lied,
er's attention is focused on the portrayal of the storm the emphasis lay upon the affective power of the
by the orchestra, and the voice appears only as a sort vocal line in which, as Reicha had observed, the
of recitative with little effectiveness. A songlike
sentiment of music's language lay enshrined.'45
phrase that ends each strophe of the romance is prac-
tically the sole melody to be found, and even this However dramatic or poignant might be the key-
phrase is more remarkable for its expressiveness than board ingredient of a romance, however sombre
for the novelty of its form.'42 might be the drama conjured up by its "tempes-
tuous murmurings," whatever technical chal-
F6tis's nomination of Schubert's lied as alenges it might issue to the performer, and de-
romance betrays an inability to escape from spite the quasi-orchestral figurations which it
those tradition-rooted canons of classification,
frequently employed, the accompaniment oc-
judgement, and evaluation which he exhibited cupied a position in the general hierarchy of both
continually throughout his career. The French composition and performance wholly subordi-
romance was frequently melodie at its lowest nate to that of the "simple melody" above. At
level of attainment, and could in no way be con-
the most its purpose was illustrative-which il-
sidered comparable with the German lied. Aslustration
a could be either literal or emotional
genre it achieved the height of its success during
according to the nature of the words and the bent
the final years of the Restoration, and through-
of the particular composer. Through it, and in
out the subsequent reign of Louis-Philippe. accordance with the well-known views of Gr6-
Everyone sang romances and almost everyone
try, the spirit, the gestures and the general emo-
seemed to write them~-to the consternation of tional chiaroscuro of the texts were to be distrib-
the Gazette Musicale which, on 21 February uted and relayed. It was, in other words, an
1839, attacked the "mania" for composition accompaniment in the strictest possible sense of
which appeared to have overtaken the town. that term, one background element in a gener-
This denunciation was but a reflection of Berli- ally theatrical ensemble which achieved its
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19TH
CENTURY
most arresting effects through the combination
between the subtle linear and rhythmic inflec-
MUSIC of varied contrasts and oppositions. tions of most French music and that of eastern
And as with all French music, almost Europe,
regard- a general likeness which can only ade-
less of its genre, the fundamental guidelines
quately be spoken of in terms of family resem-
were laid down by the conventions of verbal
blances. It is not surprising that so many refugees
prosody, while the overall manner in which the lands should finally have been dom-
from eastern
music should be sung was that of impassioned
iciled in France. Apart from any obvious political
declamation on the stage. or social sympathies which might have existed
between
Whatever the words, the tune should wholly identify
them and their adopted home, deeper
itself with them: their proper declamation must at work, forces which prepared the
forces were
way for
determine the melody and the composer should use Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, and
all his talent in following them exclusively whilst
which helped to turn Debussy's ear apprecia-
bearing in mind the subject, the expressiontively
and the
toward the timbres and patterns of the
prosody. 146
Orient. There was throughout the nineteenth
century a noticeable eastward inclination in the
The effect upon French music-making generally French, one which helped to form a bastion of
of this concentration on melodic lines has been like-minded spirits against the threat from Ger-
both crucial and manifold. In the first place, and many, and one which was manifest in many dif-
regardless of historical period, the principle of ferent fields. But whether it took a form political,
ornamentation has become an integral and not a imperialist, or artistic, its roots lay in a common
superficial element in its works. This becomes taste for patterning which, in music, was most
apparent immediately one performs a section of easily expressed through the linear and formal
any ordre by Couperin, for instance, and per- refinements of rhythmically vital melody.
forms it "straight." To omit the mordents, turns, The specific coloring of these melodies was
and trills in Bach leaves the substance of his
also crucial to French composers, and this ac-
counts for that finesse of timbre and nuance
musical thought relatively untouched. But to
treat the clavicinistes likewise does irreparablewhich has for so long been a distinctive charac-
teristic of their scores. The craft of instrumen-
harm to the very nature of their work. With later
tation goes hand in hand with that of melody,
works as well, works in which the ornamenting
principle has become thoroughly assimilated
and it is no accident that men like Berlioz (or
Rimsky-Korsakov in pattern-loving Russia)
into the written line, the decorative inflections
of any composer's melodies-terms which are should have published treatises on the subject,
pejorative only in a German-based vocabulary- nor that most German composers, except Ger-
cannot be separated out from the "real" tune by man opera composers, should have appeared less
any but the most myopic of confined and cabined immediately concerned with it.
critics. We may say, therefore, that at every pe- In the second place, such a refined melodic
riod of its history the spirit of ornamentation art
is must of necessity affect its accompanying
necessary to French music and not optional. harmony. And if, as Anglo-Saxon critics often
Without it their compositions would lose all
state, French composers seem to harmonize
sense of authenticity and artistic rightness, all
downward from melodic lines rather than up-
ward from their basses, it is only to be expected
feeling of individuality and sense of contact with
their Gallic heritage. In other words, all valuethat the resultant chordal sequences should
and delightfulness. sometimes embarrass and even outrage the tra-
As a result French style, even in Romantic ditional German academic harmonist, who
works, demands from the performer, and from works the other way. The freedom of melodic
movement which French musicians fought so
the listener too, a standard of professional skill
and critical judgement which exceeds that re- valiantly to maintain in a period of harmonic
dominance injected into the bloodstream of
quired by any other style in westernm Europe. I say
their chordal thinking an analogous fluidity
western Europe here advisedly: for there obtains
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which made prediction near-impossible. More- which, above all else, refused to descend to theBRIAN
PRIMMER
over, it promoted a search for illustrative har- level of the crowd.147 Unity and
The tension in this situation is obvious. For Ensemble
monic piquancy in an instrumental context
which bore more than a casual affinity with the no matter how Romanticized their sensibilities
might become, and regardless of their inner urge
art of affective word setting characteristic of late
Renaissance and Baroque madrigals. Contrary to to admit "barbaric" influences from abroad, the
their German colleagues, French composers true French artists of the day had to conserve
spotlighted the saucy attitudes of harmonic de- tradition as well as overturn convention, resist
tail and left the less spectacular movements of the mob as well as attack the Establishment and,
tonal purposes in the shade. At best this illumi- finally, to denounce the present while execrating
nated their melodies and idles fixes with nu- the immediate past. In their spirits the standard
ances of coloring which can only be compared canons of their great Classical heritage fought
with Monet's views of Rouen minster under tenaciously to maintain hegemony over the col-
many changing lights. At worst it produced such orful banners of Romantic infiltration. And, in
a wayward-seeming combination of harmonic end, these won; but only at considerable cost,
the
contrasts and chordal oppositions that the over- and only with ineffaceable effects upon their
all effect was one of sheer vulgarity often under-scores.
lined by noise. The cult of circuses and simu- In the third place, and consequent upon
lated eruptions of Vesuvius, of low-grade farce other two, French approaches to musical
and garishly colored clubs which formed so were necessarily different from those we
prominent a part of Paris nightlife throughout Germany. With melody subservient to no
the nineteenth century, found its musical equiv- of prosody, and harmony colorfully illum
alent in the multicolored scores of Meyerbeer, linear
or shapes, French formal procedure
in the sham oriental lushness of F6licien David.
less organic and more repetitive than t
If, paradoxically, we seem to hear more of lands where the sonata principle held s
"art" and artifice in France than in Romantic seems to be a fact of music history that,
Germany, and find this difficult to reconcile melody rules, extension rather than de
with the flood of musical rubbish which caused ment is the formal norm. Repetition, tran
Berlioz such despair, it is because the best French tion, and reharmonization now become
composers recognized the depths of that vulgar- basic procedures, and these are sharpened
ity into which the cult of Romantic feeling sophisticated hands to yield all manne
might seduce them, and knew the ease with rhythmic subtleties and linear transform
which theatrical effectiveness could tumble All praise therefore to Liszt-in essence a
Francophile composer-for developing t
over into slapstick comedy or farce. In reaction
technical skill and professional nicety assumed
tion of the symphonic poem and for pro
a place of paramount importance in their aes-in his technique of thematic metamorp
French and other non-Germanic comp
thetic reasoning, and produced in both their
work and attitude an aristocratic and Byronic
with a working alternative to the sym
distaste for the obvious which threw up a barri-
Words are often stronger and more powerfu
cade against the onslaughts of the mob. In the
even the wisest may appreciate; and, after
Romantic years, therefore, as in the centuries
hoven, the very thought of "symphony"
terror in musicians' hearts. This was nowhere
which had preceded them, the best French music
was exclusive-a point which Berlioz never more so than in France. Whenever men like Ber-
ceased to labor in his writings-and made de- lioz or Gounod sat down to write a symphony
mands upon the listener as well as the performer the strains inherent in the undertaking were ob-
which only a selected few were able to fulfill. In vious for all to hear.
the words of Th6ophile Gautier, music was a It was not that they could not do it, but that
"hieroglyphic art," one which was not to be they could not do it in the German way. Not, that
understood without considerable effort and one is, unless they were content to plagiarize. And
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19TH
even then the results were often hybrid and sat the French theater was notorious. There is no
CENTURY
uncomfortably upon the listener's ear. Gounod's doubt that even in orchestral and instrumental
MUSIC
Symphony in Eb provides an excellent example works, opera and not symphony was the French
of this mongrel type: for only when it settles composer's guiding star, and that whatever he
unashamedly for a native ballet-music style-as wrote, his aim remained immediate effective-
in the second subject of the first movement, for ness rather than eventual truth. In other words
instance-or follows the example of Mendels- he preferred theater over drama.
sohn's delicately evocative pictorialism, can it Perhaps we should not expect to be as pro-
take its ease and let us take ours too. The five- foundly stirred by Berlioz as we are by Brahms,
movement mold in which several of these sym- nor attempt to glean from Gounod's Sapho the
phonies or extended works are cast-the Sym- kind of cosmic parable we may deduce from Wag-
phonie fantastique is an excellent example ner's Ring. But who is to say that we shall obtain
here-can perhaps best be viewed as a reflection a less true insight into the mysteries of experi-
of the five-act form of tragedie, a subtle proof of ence and life from Messiaen's Catalogue des
French music's continuing dependence on the Oiseaux than from Schumann's Second Sym-
word. And the programmatic details, which phony, or derive a smaller degree of spiritual
translate so uncomfortably into sound, mirror uplift from the delicate ironies of Satie than we
those colorful tableaux on the stage for which may from the searing agonies of Mahler?
While even the greatest and most renowned of characteristics of German art from early times
French musicians were thus entranced by mel- to the present day, and helps to distinguish it
ody and by the expressive possibilities of line, clearly from art produced in France, where aes-
German composers became immersed in har- thetic theory appears securely grounded in be-
mony-and not in the narrow sense alone. To havior, and for which the word "ethical" seems
them the concept of harmony was as much a to be an apt description.
matter of extended formal relationships as it was With the example of Goethe before them,
of immediate chordal combinations. And the German thinkers and aestheticians of the nine-
control of evolving masses rather than the teenth century were consumed with the idea of
sculpting of plastic lines became the chief preoc- natural, organic form, and rejected all other
cupation of their days. schemes as mechanical and in some way, there-
It was this feeling for overall harmonious re- fore, as ungenuine.
lationships which, in 1835, led Schumann to
Form is mechanical when it is imparted to any mate-
observe that "In music everything is dependent
rial through an external force, merely as an accidental
upon the relationship of the individual part to addition, without reference to its character.... Or-
the whole. This applies to the individual com- ganic form, on the contrary, is innate; it unfolds itself
position, whether large or small."'148 And it was from within, and reaches its determination simulta-
his own deep consciousness of the rapport exist- neously with the fullest development of the seed....
In the fine arts, just as in the province of nature-the
ing between the laws of art and those of morality
supreme artist-all genuine forms are organic (my
which caused him immediately to add "and this italics).s50
applies also to the artist's whole life." As Flores-
tan observed in his Journal of Poetry and As a consequence of this mode of thinking
Thought, "I do not love the men whose lives are they became increasingly unable to divorce art
not in harmony with their works."'49 This suf- from inner life, the essence of which for them
fusion of art with a religious-based or even secu- was best expressed through music. This compul-
lar moral atmosphere is one of the strongest sion to be organic in method and moral in pur-
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BRIAN
pose led composers generally to prefer tonal ar- hension and broad generalities of emotion and
PRIMMER
gument to melodic assertion, mass to line, and experience. Unity and
Ensemble
thematic development to any kind of melodic From this point of view tunes, with their
variation or subtlety of accompaniment. Indeed, seemingly inbuilt tendency to shape themselves
the very idea of accompaniment as such (so in regular periods, were analogous to concrete
prominent in the thinking of the French) seems facts and specific details. They were the "nouns"
rarely to have crossed their minds: for they spoke of music, if you like, and as such could hardly
always in terms of equally-balanced relation- play the part of seeds in the growth of symphonic
ships-tonal, formal, harmonic or textural. To trees. For German composers, therefore, the tex-
them deployment of keys suggested a formal turally pregnant and potentially active theme
scheme, any chord implied a possible context was much more promising and "genuine" than
within that scheme, and variety of texturing even the most perfectly-chiselled melody. It was
foretold all kinds of structural interplay. Even precisely this aspect of Beethoven's Trios, op. 70,
those dramatic contrasts which, in French which made so strong an appeal to Hoffmann in
hands, created additive ensemble of the most 1813: "A simple but fruitful theme, songlike,
theatrically effective kind, were seen by them susceptible to the most varied contrapuntal
from an organic point of view. Nothing was val- treatments, curtailments, and so forth, forms
ued for itself alone, but solely for its contribution the basis of each movement; all remaining sub-
to the whole. sidiary themes and figures are intimately related
to the main idea in such a way that the details all
The greatest effects and beauties proceed solely from
interweave, arranging themselves among the in-
the manner of their disposition and combination; de-
tached from their context, they nearly always lose struments in highest unity."'53
their whole character, often, indeed, bearing witness It was not only to the individual and separate
seemingly against themselves in that, thus considered movements of a work that this desire for organic
apart, they become well-nigh meaningless. Only very unity applied, however, for the whole composi-
rarely can even the liveliest description make fully
tion had to be coherent in such a way that every
intelligible their true, organically connected coexist-
ence with the remainder.'51 constituent detail, no matter how small, was felt
to contribute to the whole and, eventually, to
If you look at it properly, you will see that this colossal root itself in one basic seed or vitally imaginative
work is based on a foundation of deep and definite conception. Speaking of C. G. Muiller's Third
thought, the development of which makes every bar a
Symphony, for instance, Schumann praised the
necessity, whether beautiful or in itself ugly, con-
nected or disconnected, conceivable or, in itself, in- slow movement for leaving the hearer in a state
conceivable and only to be understood by the con- of anticipation, with a feeling that there was
text. 152 "something more to come"; and Schumann
praised this situation as "a dramatic advance
Seeking harmonious and organic unity over the movements of other symphonies, par-
rather than effective ensemble, therefore, they ticularly of the old school, where the four parts
found their perfect tool in the sonata principle. are rounded off inwardly as well as out-
And, just as analogous ways of thought had led wardly."'54 In this feeling of incompleteness-in-
German authors to embrace the novel as their itself, and in the sense of anticipation which it
major genre, so the instrumental symphony and engendered, Mfiller had caught the very essence
its attendant or derivative schemes became the of the times. It was human yearning symbolized
highest expression of the national ideal in music.in ordered sound and, because of this, his sym-
Both symphony and novel were, so to speak,phony represented a definite advance over those
"slices" of revealed inner life and psychological of "the old school."
activity. But whereas the novel could really deal Hence arose all those continuous or near-
only with specific facts and manifested details,one-movement extended works in which a har-
the gradual evolution of symphonic thought car-monically-conceived theme worked itself out
ried the listener into realms of universal appre-across a wide tonal field in a variety of closely
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19TH interwoven textures and related schemes. tions set between God and Nature, Man and Art,
CENTURY
MUSIC Hence, also, sprang the innumerable musical
and Art and God's Morality.
reminiscences and subtle thematic cross-refer- Thirty-seven years before Schumann wrote
ences within and between distinct movements the article in which these observations were
of a work which was so characteristic a tech- made, Friederich Schlegel had praised Goethe's
nique of the day. Hence, finally, grew the concept Wilhelm Meister in terms which carry a remark-
of Wagnerian leitmotiv which, refined into a dis- ably similar resonance: "The inherent drive of
ciplined technique and matured into an ana- this thoroughly organized and organizing work
logue for natural evolution, could extend acrossto form itself into one whole expresses itself in
four successive evenings and gather the multi-the larger as in the smaller combinations. No
tudinous aspects of the Ring into one glorious pause is fortuitous and insignificant, and ...
organic whole. everything is at the same time means and
end.""56 And twenty-six years before this, as we
To gather three parts into a whole is, I believe, the
have seen, Goethe himself had summed up his
intention of sonata, concerto and symphony compos-
ers. With the older composers it was done more for-impression of Strasbourg Cathedral as "an
mally, or more pro forma, the emphasis being on ex-impression of oneness, wholeness and greatness
ternal physiognomy and tonality; the younger ... an impression which, because it consisted of
composers broadened the individual parts into sub- a thousand harmonizing details, I could savor
sections and discovered a new middle movement, the
and enjoy, but by no means understand."157 In
scherzo. One was no longer satisfied to restrict an idea
and its development to a single movement. One hid his impression of unity or oneness; in his use of
it, in other guises and fragmentations, in the followingthe word "harmonizing"; and in his implied rec-
movements. In short, one wanted to introduce histor-ognition that scientific analysis and precise de-
ical interest ... and, as the times grew more poetic, scription could never vouchsafe a full under-
dramatic interest, too. Even more recently the ten-
standing of any psychological experience which
dency has been to draw the movements themselves
more closely together, and to bind them by instanta- a human being might both "savor and enjoy"-
neous transitions from one to the other.ss55 that there was in other words still "something
more to come"-Goethe came near to delineat-
Schumann's introduction into this context of ing the very essence of Romanticism itself.
the notion of historical interest-a notion at Henceforth no German writer could escape the
which he beseeched his interlocutor not to iridescence of his vision, nor remain unaffected
laugh-conveys in a single phrase that feeling by the beauty of his insight. Speaking specifi-
for the potential comprehensiveness of organic cally of German opera, Weber said that his coun-
method which characterized contemporary Ger- trymen desired "... an art work complete in
man thinking, and which contrasts dramatically itself, in which the partial contributions of the
with those ideas of historical accuracy and sci- related and collaborating arts blend together, dis-
entific verisimilitude so beloved of the French. appear, and, in disappearing, somehow form a
French ideas resulted in an impassioned search new world."158
for the specificities of local color, scientifically This widespread desire for unity, for har-
rendered into art: whereas for Schumann "his- mony, and for what perhaps we should call the
torical" meant not a direct imitation of outward suprarational rather than the irrational element
things culled from an age and clime remote from in experience and art, helps to account for the
contemporary life, but references, either direct fundamental stability of the national musical
or oblique, to musical ideas previously current language and accent from the time of Haydn's
in the work itself. This was both more "musical" maturity to the high days of Wagnerism-a point
in the narrow sense of the term and more "har- which is too infrequently made in the textbooks
monious" in the widest sense possible. Thus any most commonly to hand. Unlike its counterpart
extended composition should itself be a para- in France, Romanticism in Germany was not so
digm of natural organic development and much a fight against the dogmatic stance of an
growth, a celebration of the harmonious propor- entrenched, centralized, and authoritarian Clas-
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sicism as it was an extension of already-proven lated in a private world of hallowed schemes andBRIAN
PRIMMER
organic methods into ever widening fields of ac- performing liturgies of exclusive rites in whichUnity and
tion for increasingly subtle and expressive ends. only the initiated could partake? No! The prob- Ensemble
Between past, present, and future no great chasm lem was not what to say, for the substance of
seemed to yawn; instead there was a natural their thought was the chief cause of contempo-
progression and growth from one point of devel- rary strain and tension, but how to say it, how to
opment to the next. Nothing was ever really express, control, and discipline their expanding
"realized" at all. Everything was always in the consciousness so that society should not be to-
process of becoming. tally overwhelmed, and the arts fragmented and
From this point of view even the progress of destroyed.
German music itself throughout these years Wagner was not entirely off the mark when,
could legitimately be described as organic, for it pursuing his particular conception of Gesamt-
seemed to form a harmonious whole in which kunstwerk and admitting his enormous debt to
the "inner parts" were proportioned to theirBeethoven, he cleared the ground on which his
outer contours like the core of an oak tree to its disciples would proclaim that his way was the
leafy crown. In German eyes, therefore, music true way for music to develop in the future. For
could indeed be seen as inherently romantic; and musicians in Germany, Beethoven marked the
Schumann could with honesty declare that he point of no return. His effect on their thinking
found it difficult to imagine how this "essen- and experience was equivalent to that of the Rev-
tially romantic art" could ever form "a distinctly olution on their colleagues in France. This is a
romantic school within itself."'59 significant equivalence when seen in the light of
our original question about the differences in
sound-quality between their respective scores:
The problems faced by Romantic composers in for French composers had no figure comparable
Germany were not really those of vocabulary at with Beethoven in their musical Pantheon, only
all, but mainly those of large-scale harmony or a host of distinguished litterateurs, dramatists,
form. Again, this is a point which is not suffi- and musical tragedians whose thought had
ciently stressed by most analytical critics, or by helped to provoke a social and political upheaval
the general run of writers on nineteenth-century with aesthetic overtones. In a nation that be-
music. Indeed, one often wonders if they realize lieved that art was generated primarily by art
it at all: for, far from being a time in which formal such a situation was intolerable. It helps to ac-
considerations were pushed to one side in favor count for the extremes of behavior, both social
of a loosely-defined and sentimentalized expres- and artistic, to which so many French Romanti-
siveness, as many of these writers would seem cists were driven. For Romanticists they were,
to suggest, the Romantic years were years during rather than genuine Romantics in the German
which such problems occupied the very center mold; and their attempts to pour the old wine of
of the stage. At a time of crisis in the European mnlodie into contemporary formal bottles
conscience, when notions of social reform and which had been largely fashioned abroad, pro-
political reformulation were daily in the air; at a voked a crisis in musical technique from which,
time when the rapport between art and life was because of their established symphonic and in-
thought to be so close that men sought psycho- strumental tradition and the culminating figure
logical rejuvenation and social insight in and of Beethoven, German composers were more
from the arts; at a time when Mazzini could easily able to escape.
appeal to music to develop a social and a political References to form, to the formal problems
conscience as well as an artistic one;160 and at a posed by heightened consciousness and to the
time when repression alternated with revolu- need for large-scale reformation of past artistic
tion, communist faced capitalist and socialist schemes, abound in German nineteenth-cen-
squared up to conservative on every side, how tury writings upon music. Even so pedantic a
could the arts and artists stand aloof, encapsu- figure as Hauptmann was forced to admit that,
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19TH
after the works of Beethoven, form was no longer weaker spirits to embrace a career of desperate
CENTURY
MUSIC a constant but a variable quantity. He had to plagiarism.
agree that in the attempt to control this variable-
We find many too close imitations but very, very sel-
ness even the greatest of men might falter on
dom... any true maintenance or mastery of this sub-
occasion: "Form varies considerably from time lime form in which, bound in a spiritual union, con-
to time. Before the days of Beethoven, very indif- tinually changing ideas succeed one another. The
ferent composers were much more certain of great number of recent symphonies drop into the o-
their construction than far greater men have verture style, especially in their first movements;
slow movements are there because slow movements
been since."'161 If there was a decline in the aver-
are required; the scherzos have nothing of the scherzo
age standard of musical composition during the about them save the name; the last movements com-
Romantic years-and, when one considers the pletely forget what the former ones contained.'64
high technical quality of much that was written
by second-rank composers in the preceding pe- In its progress through the late eighteenth
riod, such a conclusion seems inevitable-the and early nineteenth centuries, therefore, music
reason lay mainly here, in the area of construc- may be said to have shed a great deal of its formal
tion and artistic syntax. To possess a heightened and emotional innocence. And Romanticism,
consciousness and a rich vocabulary but to have which broadly speaking may be described as an
no certain grasp of grammatical construction or organic emotional variation played upon a pre-
linguistic limits-in other words, not to know pared Classical ground, became not so much the
how to put imaginative thought to good artistic great age of illusion as a time for profound de-
use-is an almost sure recipe for failure in any spair. Hence the frenetic quality beneath which
undertaking. It is analogous to being possessed so much of its poorer music reels, and the occa-
by great religious feeling while having no spe- sional hysteria of some of even its greatest mu-
cific faith, a situation in which, significantly, sical manifestations.
many Romantic artists seemed to find them- Broadly speaking, the situation in Germany
selves. was analogous to that in France, where, as we
It was for this reason then that Schumann have seen, an equally strong national tradition
expressed misgivings about contemporary man- conditioned the whole Romantic attitude and
ifestations of the sonata principle, and wondered where, in reaction, a riot of sentimental effusion
whether it had anything more to say. "A few fine had led to a wealth of formal ineptitude. But the
works in this style have since appeared and may similarity should not be pressed too far. Because
yet be made public; but, on the whole, it looks as of its operatic and theatrical traditions, France
if this form had run its course. This is as it should had never fully fallen under the spell of the so-
be, for we cannot repeat the same forms for cen- nata principle, and the formal problems faced by
turies, and ought rather to think about creating its composers continued to be posed in terms of
something new."'62 So magnificent and so over- melody and solved in terms of increasingly col-
whelming was the inheritance bequeathed by orful treatments of melodic line. That this had
Beethoven, however, that to all who lacked true profound effects upon the tonal and harmonic
genius, the creation of new formal schemes and physiognomy of French music goes without say-
the uncovering of fresh formalizing insights had ing. But the impetus behind these effects came
become well-nigh impossible. Mere talent was from a position diametrically opposite to that in
caught in the amber of routine, and had no idea which most German musicians found them-
on how it might break free: "We Germans ... are selves. In Germany the sonata principle began
not poor in quartets; but very few among us have with the deployment of tonalities, and thence
known how to augment the existing capital."'63 moved on to fashion its thematic material ac-
And the price extorted from mere talent for this cording to the dictates of a tonally-engendered
lack of true creative imagination was reckoned harmony. In attempting to adapt the tonal, har-
up in terms of an increasing and often inhibiting monic, and motivic patterns of behavior estab-
self-consciousness which forced many of the lished by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven to the
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expressive requirements of the new age, Roman- Two contrasted remarks by two eminent mu- BRIAN
PRIMMER
tic composers in Germany were forced to probe sicians illustrate exactly this division. The firstUnity and
more deeply than ever before into what Schu- comes from an article by Reicha, published inEnsemble
mann called "the mysteries of harmony," and to the Journal des Arts for 1813, the second from
seek expressive subtlety in a chromatic coloring the collection of aphorisms with which Schu-
of masses which, if not deftly handled, could mann prefaced his Album for the Young.
seriously undermine those proportions of over-
all form which they, like he, so highly val- [Melody is] the language of feeling.166
ued."The endeavour to interest as a harmonist, We have learned to express the more delicate nuances
even in small details, may become very danger- of feeling by penetrating more deeply into the myster-
ous," Schumann warned in one of his reviews. ies of harmony.'67
"All the enharmonic art of Spohr is nothing be-
side Handel's freely flowing triads. Therefore a Just as organicism alone was not enough for
composer must, above all things, guard himself the German sensibility, just as it had to be suf-
against an overemphasis on harmony; such an fused by a conscious teleology, so mere penetra-
overladen chromatic maze in the middle voices tion of the mysteries of harmony was felt to be
can be dangerous even to the instrumental insufficient for the composition of expressive
parts.,,165 works of music. Once secured, the mysteries of
Despite being caught between the Scylla of harmony had to be manipulated in such a way
unharmonious proportion and the Charybdis of that the human soul was transported to those
Romantic sentiment, however, German com- distant realms of feeling which it was music's
posers of the day never lost their faith in the function to explore. Lacking this quality of imag-
ultimately superior expressive powers of chordal inative judgement-what Coleridge had called
harmony. Nor did they cease to exploit to the full in a memorable phrase the "shaping spirit of
its deep emotive strength. Thus, to the many Imagination"168-those technically competent
other confrontations and oppositions which af- and academically astute composers whom Sten-
flicted Europe at that time must be added that of dhal had dismissed as "fools and pedants" could
French melody and German harmony. These indeed be accused of "meddling in the art of
now faced one another, militantly, across the music."169
Rhine, and the words which each army's camp-
That composer alone has truly mastered the secrets of
following critics hurled across its strongly-flow- harmony who knows how, by their means, to work
ing waters were often insulting and condemna- upon the human soul.. ."170
tory in the extreme. Both German harmony and
French melody saw the expression of human In other words the crowning secret of harmonic
feeling as their chief raison d'etre, but both were aptitude was neither emotional surrender nor
conditioned by, and still confined within, the technical display, but imaginative control, artis-
distinct technical and philosophical traditions tic discipline. The true master of harmony was
which had nurtured and sustained them through he who had passed through the doors of harmo-
the centuries. However, the great advantage of niousness, and who in consequence possessed
organic notions was that, by definition, they pro- what Hauptmann termed "that instinct for ar-
moted growth. Thus Goethe's insight had pro- rangement-that feeling for form which should
vided German composers with a way out of their be proof against a torrent of sentiment."'17
formal impasse, a viable path by which the mon- From all this two interrelated and interde-
strous chasm separating Art from Nature could pendent points seem to emerge. In the first place
be safely overpassed. For the French, unfortu- we are returned to that concept of musical archi-
nately, no such route lay open. The idle fixe of tecture, to that impression of "one-ness, whole-
melody cooled into that aesthetic star which ness and greatness" which had so caught the
shone immovably in the static hierarchy of their imagination of the young Goethe as he stood
still additive and Cartesian universe. before the mass of Strasbourg Minster and
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19TH
CENTURY
which, coinciding so aptly with his insight and into
of tragedie lyrique, then Tristan and Isolde
MUSIC organic method and its immanent rapport wouldwithnever have celebrated their passionate ag-
the processes of art, had guided the wholeony in music whose cast and texture is the apoth-
future
direction of cultural development in Germany. eosis of the whole symphonic tradition. It is dif-
In the second place, we are made to understand ficult to escape the conclusion, therefore, that
that, in Germany-as indeed in France, although the secret of musical Romanticism in Germany
for different reasons-no "torrent of sentiment," lies somewhere within or about its extension of
however deeply felt, was a necessary guarantee Classical practice; that it was more a matter of
of excellence in art. It was a lesson of which the syntax at heart than a question of basic vocabu-
more extreme varieties of Romantic sensibility lary; that German Romanticism in music was
stood in urgent need. For, with their firm belief primarily a matter of style; and that that style
in the unlimited expressive powers of chordal was the natural and organic development of the
harmony, German composers of talent, as dis- style which had preceded it.
tinct from those of genius, ran the risk of sacri- If this is so, then the answer to Schumann's
ficing a noble and clear grasp of architectural heart felt query "Who can meet the require-
balance at the feet of those ephemeral delights ments of the profoundly intensified present?"174
which rose like a cloud of incense from the must be phrased as much in terms of knowledge
chordal sequences of sensuous chromatic har- and of education as it is in those of feeling or of
mony. The linear vulgarity of the French rom- sentiment. While it is true that he emphasized
ance was matched, on the other side of the Rhine, the inadequacy in art of intelligence alone, it is
by the titillating thrills of chromatic mass. also true that Schumann expected any artist wor-
Against such a sacrifice Schumann warned in thyanof the name to achieve complete control of
article on Hiller's Etudes, op. 15, in 1835: "The his medium-to match his Spirit with his sense
most insignificant person can be complete ofasForm: "art is served only by the masterly.
long as he acts within the boundaries of his own Whoever cannot supply this everywhere and at
all times has no claim to be called a true art-
abilities and accomplishments; but even the
ist."'75 To be able to supply the masterly at any
most beautiful attributes can be obscured, inval-
given moment and to know exactly the right
idated, or nullified if that utterly essential factor
time at which any particular means should be
of proportion is ignored or violated."'172 Ulti-
employed, is more likely to be the product of
mately, therefore, in Schumann's mind, all was
skill and application than the spontaneous out-
reduced to a matter of proportion, to a question
come of revelation-even with those consumed
of equilibrium in which structure was suffused
with feeling and sentiment enhanced by form. by an extreme attack of Romantic fervor. Thus a
As he summed the matter up in his remarkable particular course of academic study and training
essay on Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique-still
was essential to the would-be composer if feeling
a major article in the canon of European criti-
were ever to receive the gift of tongues in music.
cism-"Form is the vessel of the Spirit."'73 To extend Schumann's own phrase, Form is the
necessary vehicle of the Spirit. And, because the
methods of artistic creation in the Romantic
If one were asked to say precisely how this years
dif- were still basically those which had been
fered from the immanent ideal of Classicism, employed by the artists of the immediate past,
the ingredients of the course to be followed in
however, the answer would be difficult to phrase.
For it seems to be the case, as I have alreadythe new age would show no fundamental change
indicated, that in Germany Classicism was not from those involved before.
so much the antagonist of Romanticism as its The basis of this course of training was the
necessary precondition. Without Haydn and traditional German one of the written exercise,
Mozart, Schubert and Schumann would have of harmony and counterpoint, and with no more
been inconceivable. If Beethoven had never time than was essential devoted to the beguiling
been, we should not now know our Brahms. Had art of improvization. This last, as Schumann
Wagner been nurtured solely on a diet of Gluckpointed out, might weaken the student's grasp
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of formal principles, of architectural harmony, each organic detail aided the vital balance of the BRIAN
PRIMMER
and lead him to waste his time in the pursuit of whole, structures whose expressive power was Unity and
shadowy musical pictorialism: "beware of los- greater than the sum of their individual har- Ensemble
ing yourself too often in a talent that will lead monic parts, structures which, taken in their
you to waste strength and time on shadowy pic- unity, revealed "the nation's deep artistic
tures. You will only obtain mastery of form and intuition"'80 in every movement, phrase, and
the power of clear construction by firm strokes bar.
of the pen. Therefore, write more often than you Even some French critics were driven to ad-
improvize."'176 mit the truth of this general view, and on occa-
Throughout his writings, but particularly in sion to praise it. In his extended article on Mey-
his aphoristic preface to the Album for the erbeer, published in the Revue de Paris for 1831,
Young, Schumann emphasized the importance Joseph D'Ortigue lauded the composer of Robert
to the aspiring musician of a thorough grounding le diable for bringing together and unifying-by
in the laws of musical harmony and of counter- which term he meant gathering together within
point. Like so many exponents of his own tradi- one framework: in other words ensemble-the
tion he advised all students to come to grips with Italian, French and German traditions in music.
music's inner parts, in every sense of the term. Italy he designated the land of pure melodic in-
For such knowledge was a sure pathway toward vention, and France the home of general artistic
the goal of true musicality, and it could not be combination. But Germany possessed the su-
entered upon too soon. "Learn the fundamental preme power of overall musical conception, a
laws of harmony at an early age,"'77 he urges. power which he could not too highly praise, and
And even more significantly, "Regularly sing in one which was the secret envy of every other
choruses, especially the middle voices. This will land. It was an architectural rather than a deco-
make you musical."'78 rative power, one whose roots lay not in melodic
This was an opinion with which the young detail but in harmonious proportion. Treating
Wagner found himself in full agreement. In his human nature as but an element in Nature uni-
1840 article on "German Music," Wagner set versal, it was worthy of being described as a truly
forth to outline the difference between the musi- creative power; and its greatest fruits were not
cal characteristics of the leading European na- those of the opera house but the symphonic glo-
tions. Whereas for him the Italian was "a singer" ries of the concert hall and chamber.
and the Frenchman "a virtuoso," the German
As for Germany, it adds to the genius for invention
was "a musician." With this primary and abso- and to that for combination another genius which I
lutely fundamental distinction in his mind, he shall call that of conception; and here I do not intend
went on to elaborate the exact significance of the only the ability to produce good tunes, good melodic
term "musician" in his chosen context, and he ideas, but also of co-ordinating the constituent details
of a composition on a vast scale, with perfectly har-
left his readers in no doubt about its general
monious proportions between them: a plan which, by
superiority over the other two. Such a man was its profundity and its simplicity, demonstrates at one
not a "feeler" only, but also a thinker, not just a and the same time, that the composer has delved into
doer, but one who understood his art as well: his heart and into the sanctuary of Nature. Only a plan
"one must bear in mind just what is meant when conceived along these lines deserves the name of cre-
ation. Such are the plans of Weber's overtures and
one speaks of a German musician ... usually he
those of the quartets, quintets [sic], and symphonies
is also a composer, and not a mere empiricist of Beethoven. 181
either, but thoroughly grounded in harmony and
counterpoint."'79 A profound knowledge and It is important that none of this should lead
understanding of the "mysteries of harmony," us to suppose for a single instant that German
therefore, both structural and chordal, was the composers remained wholly indifferent to the
distinguishing mark of every German musician expressive powers of melody. Such a supposition
worthy of the name. By its means the greatest would be untenable in view of the inspired tra-
among them could create musical structures of dition of the lied and of Schumann's particular
truly Gothic proportions, structures in which position within it. Even in his instrumental and
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19TH
CENTURY
keyboard works the prevailing atmosphere Whatever
cre- beauty might inform a tuneful
MUSIC ated by Schumann's often stepwise lines piece
is was
lyri-wholly concentrated in its melodic
cal. As he expressed it in a review of Mendels- line. It therefore lacked proportion; and the opin-
sohn's Six Preludes and Fugues, op. 35, it Stendhal,
ion of was who saw all music in terms of a
just this element of melodiousness which pictorial technique in which the foreground
gave
to contemporary compositions "the should more be re-
emphasized and the background kept
fined sweetness characteristic of modern mu- discreet, was anathema by their reckoning.
sic.'"'12 But lyrical is not necessarily tuneful; and
... in the domain of art generally, all the really superb
tune is but a subdivision of the general class
effects are produced through one medium of extreme
named melody. This distinction was recognizedbeauty, and not by a whole series of manifestations
by the more sensitive men of the day because it in separate media, each one in itself of mediocre
was the source of many of their formal difficul-beauty.184
ties. The contrast between tune and melody is
perhaps directly analogous to the tension which Nor could anything less sympathetic to their
obtains between melody and the sonata princi-ideas be imagined than Gabriel Lemoyne's view
of the relative importance of singer and accom-
ple. Significantly, it reflects the antagonism be-
tween amateur and professional, between fa- panist, a view stated explicitly and amusingly in
cility and mastery, between vocal music and his instructions to the pianist about to perform
l'Harmonica in 1807: "This accompaniment
instrumental, of which contemporary critics
were so aware. must be played so lightly that its notes are
scarcely audible.""18
"Melody" is the amateur's warcry, and certainly
Even when speakingmu-specifically of the lied,
sic without melody is not music. Therefore you must
Schumann was unable to regard the vocal line as
understand what amateurs mean by this word: any-
thing easily, rhythmically pleasing. the
Butsupremely
there important
are mel- element of the genre.
odies of a very different type; at whatever page you pares, a powerful
It was at best but primus inter
open Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc., ingredient
theyindeed,
will but one which contributed to
appear
to you in a thousand different guises. If you
a greater study
musical wholethese
whose dominating force
you will soon tire of the monotony of modem Italian
was harmony.
opera melodies.'83
Paralleling the development of poetry, the Franz Schu-
Although Schumann was less than
bert epoch just
has already in
been followed by a new one
applying it to, for instance, all of
whichBellini's
has utilized thework,
improvements of the simulta-
"anything easily, rhythmicallyneously
pleasing" was a of accompaniment,
developed instrument
passably accurate description of the
thepiano... The voice alone
average cannot reproduce every-
type
of tune which flourished so abundantly during together with the
thing or produce every effect;
expression of the whole the finer details of the poem
the Romantic years. By Schumann's
should also be ideal,
emphasized; F6-
and all is well so long as
tis's notion of the squarely-fashioned tune
the vocal line stood
is not sacrificed.'86
thoroughly condemned. Because of their insist-
ence upon the superiority of melody But perhaps
in all his things
most telling comment on the
musical, most French musicians could be relative powers of melody and harmony was con-
classed as amateurs, and this despite the fact that tained in his analogy between music and the
their amateurism was of a peculiarly profes- game of chess: "Music resembles chess. The
sional kind. Although tune made up in adroit- queen (melody) has the greatest power, but the
ness and grace what it lacked in profundity and king (harmony) decides the game."'87
significance, to German ears the debt was irre- Thus, the ability of Bach and other German
deemable. The settlement lacked that very sub- composers to express the inner meaning of a
stance which was the essential characteristic of chorale text not through the melody alone, but
music in their eyes. To Schumann, and to thosethrough what Wagner called their "rich and pow-
who shared his views, tune alone was a superfi- erful harmonies,"'88 received its Romantic
cial and sensual phenomenon, the surface of har-transfiguration in the keyboard constituent of
mony perhaps, but never the decider of the game. the lied. All Schumann's songs confirm this pro-
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cess of development, for in them poetry and mu- ternal proportions were harmonious and whose BRIAN
PRIMMER
sic find their perfect consummation in the equal formal growth was conditioned by a developing Unity and
environment like that of the "trees of God." It Ensemble
partnership of a singer with his pianist. This
"one-ness" of impression, to borrow Goethe's was "born in a region lying deeper than the vocal
phrase, contrasts sharply with that "two-ness" chords: in the musical heart of a German genius
of effect which informs the French operatic aria where everything is music."190 It came from the
and romance. Both French and German writers center of things, from the heart, from those mid-
of the time agreed that accompaniment was es- dle voices in choruses which he had recom-
sential to the complete meaning of a song, but mended all aspiring young musicians to per-
each differed from the other in assessing the rel-form. But first and foremost it was musical, and
ative importance of the parts. In the romance thein this quality lay its only claim to melodious-
piano part was illustrative of detail, either phys-ness.
ical or emotional, and because these details
changed from verse to verse, from line to line orI say again that not all that is easy to sing cons
even from word to word, the result was always a melody! There is a difference between melod
melodies. Who possesses melody also possesses
additive ensemble and never organic unity. In a
odies, but the reverse is not always true. The
true lied, however, voice and keyboard inter-sings his melodies to himself; melody, howeve
twined in an open-ended dialogue which caught developed later in life. The first two chords of
the essence of the poetic theme entire. And thehoven's Eroica, for instance, contain more m
song was never completely sung until the fingersthan ten melodies by Bellini.'19
had at last released the keys. The prelude and the
postlude of a lied were integral parts of the whole Like harmony and harmonies, therefore
artistic conception. No German critic would the distinction of which that between m
have referred to them as "ritornelli," as did theand melodies is directly analogous, the abil
critic of France Musicale when writing of Schu- create true melody was the product of pr
bert's Death and the Maiden in March 1838. sional skill and mastery. It was the daught
The kind of line which Schumann could dig-Time, the fruit of learning and the final ac
nify as melody, then, is clearly indicated by himment of study. It could never be confused
in the second part of his aphorism on the ama- tune. How different is all this from that de
teur's war-cry. It was that of Bach, of Mozart, and tion of the "song of feeling" which Thi
of Beethoven, a line which, in his own words,gave in his singing manual Du Chant. Publ
could adopt "a thousand different guises" and soin 1813, it describes not the fruit of organ
avoid monotony. No doubt these guises were the sical growth, but the outcome of careful ar
same as those which had struck Hoffmann in the accumulation-
Beethoven trios, "varied contrapuntal treat-
ments, curtailments and so forth."'89 Whatever ... a natural, simple song, well adapted to the sense of
his own practice may have been at times, there- the words, to their expression and their prosody, of
which grace is the chief merit and which, in accor-
fore, Schumann's ideal melody seems to have dance with the words, and with an appropriate variety
been the formally pregnant theme. It was a of vehemence, should be sad, delicate, naive, tender,
theme of architectural promise whose own in- or melancholy.192
VI
Drawing together the various strands of thought can these two concepts be confused and thought
which have run through the preceding sections, to be synonymous. For whereas unity implies
they seem to knot themselves about two funda- a fusion, a wholeness whose quintessence is
mental and contrasting concepts, unity and en- greater than, and qualitatively different from,
semble. Only upon the most superficial level the mere sum of its individual parts, en-
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19TH
CENTURY
semble signifies a gathering togetherdium)
of sep-acceptable. Inviting us to join it in its
MUSIC arate elements whose distinct integrities re-
search, it lies open more to moral than to purely
main unsullied by their mutual contact and interpretation; and somehow we come
aesthetic
association. to be absorbed in it, as human beings as well as
The qualitative essence of ensemble results
musicians, as it eventually will be itself absorbed
into the boundless Infinite. Such a work is appre-
entirely from the clash and interplay of disparate
ciably teleological, seeming to fulfill a purpose
ideas which in themselves remain largely idles
fixes, and in the affective interaction of near-
greater than its own, losing its concentration on
immediate sensation in its fascination with ul-
adjacent or contiguous donnees, all working
within the discipline of a confining framework.timate experience and attempting to achieve
this end through processes which are directly
There is, in consequence, an appreciable tension
between the various elements of ensemble,analogous
and to those of Nature or of life. Like
between them and the bounding frame which, these, therefore, it is best discussed in biological
apart from any intrinsic merit which thisterms, last in organic metaphors and naturalistic im-
may hold per se, concentrates the minds ofages. art-Such anthropomorphism applied to any
ists and percipients alike upon constituentart, de-however, dissolves the clear-cut boundaries
between it and life. For just as all the elements
tails. It is in the interaction of these very details
that the source of our enjoyment lies. Thus as a separate work are thought to fuse into a
within
percipients we are called upon first to register
single entity, so now is art itself-of which this
the finesse with which each of these is molded,work, this medium, too, is but a single strand-
then to assess the sensitivity with which all of part of life. Effectively life and art be-
deemed
them are deployed, and finally to judge ofcome theidentified: and both are heard as leitmotivs
success with which every facet is held in placein the supreme Gesamtkunstwerk conceived by
throughout a comprehensive, balanced equilib- God.
rium. Any work constructed in accordance with As we have seen throughout the body of this
the notion of ensemble is, in a very real sense,
essay,anunity is essentially a Germanic ideal in art
objet d'art. It is art for art's own sake, andfrom
must about the middle of the eighteenth century
be treated so. More amenable to aesthetic con- onwards, while France prefers ensemble even in
templation than susceptible of emotional in- Romantic times. Now it is just this last which
volvement, more theatrical than dramatic andmakes me wonder if the full Romantic tide can
therefore, I suppose, more likely to inform an ever really inundate the soul of France at all. For
opera than a symphony, it is comparable with although French artists can easily master its
the scientific models to which it runs so clearly many outward attitudes-a mastery to which
parallel, and is best spoken of in terms of struc-the strong theatrical tradition of their State gives
tured elegance and line. Being fundamentally a both encouragement and support, and which in-
decorative approach to art, it lies open to thecludes vehement lip-service to the idea of it as
immanent threat of formalism, and remains at well-the mysterious inner processes which
all times quite distinct from Nature or from life.seem essential to this way of treating things ap-
These it may reflect, as the mirror does the lamp, pear to elude them. Their work is not organic in
or run beside, as in some witty parody of Carte-the German sense but cumulative, with all the
sian dualism. But it can in no way be identified delight in detail, in technical facility and virtu-
with them. osity of presentation which that word implies.
Now none of this is really so with unity. Nothing shows this up more clearly than the
Fused into an essence which is far greater than opposed evaluations of sensational immediacy
the sum of its constituent parts, a work con- which one finds on the different sides of the
Rhine. In French scores every note, phrase, or
ceived according to the high ideal of unity seems
chord tends to have a physiological integrity
part of something larger than itself. It aims be-
yond, toward a dream, a vision, or ideal, which which it neither possesses nor needs in those by
makes its own ultimate insufficiency as individ- composers of the German school. These last are
ual work (or even as narrowly autonomous me- so taken up with the evolutionary progress of
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their material as a whole that they have no ears if you will allow the analogy, poetry in notes as BRIAN
PRIMMER
to dwell upon the purely individual impact of distinct from prose. By this I do not mean poetry Unity and
Ensemble
each contributory detail. It is the structural func- in the later and more flaccid sense but, as I
tion of any part which concerns them most, and pointed out in section III, in that of its Greek
not its separate personality. The threefold sen- original-in the sense of being "that which is
suous delight in sonority, clarity, and elegance made." Logically, therefore, those who made it
which informs most French scores-regardless can indeed be signalled poets: and their chief
of the century, style, or genre in which they were concern is casting images in notes.
composed-has no apparent parallel on the far Quite the opposite, it seems to me, may be
side of the Rhine. There all is interfused, rumi- said of German scores. The very nature of their
native and purposeful, moving toward Nirvana thematic material, the absolute necessity for
in an ecstasy of Becoming which can only be them to develop in what contemporary critics
termed near-mystical. Here, on the other hand, called "organic" ways, their explicit purposive-
all is interlocked, of immediate effect and self- ness and comprehensive intent and their relative
explanatory, vibrant in its own dovetailed integ- unconcern with concrete images in notes, create
rity and wit, and caught up in a rapture of sheer a quality which, in keeping with my present
Being which is little short of absolute. metaphor, is better designated prose-like than
Now the irony of this last statement strikes poetic.
me hard: for it seems to suggest that what I take A modem writer who has made considerable
to be the less musically-inclined of these two play with this idea in the field of literature is
nations, France, is in fact the fount of purity in Sartre. In What is Literature? he distinguishes
sound, while Germany, the much more deeply between poetry and prose along lines which run
musical on nearly every count, seems somehow directly parallel with those drawn out above-
to adulterate its scores with resonances which though without their national overtones. When
reach far beyond their notes and set up echoes mentioning music itself he reveals his own in-
through the universe. trinsic French-ness, it seems to me, by equating
Yet ironical though this statement may the composer with the poet precisely because
seem, I find it generally confirmed by all mythe musician is a man who "dwells upon" indi-
listening as well as by my reading. There is whatvidual sounds, as a poet dwells upon separate
I can only describe as a greater degree of self- words, or a painter upon distinct colors. And this
possession about the sound of French music than seems to me to be the point: for poets, he says,
there is about that which comes from Germany, "are men who refuse to utilize language. They
more consciousness of music as an art practised have chosen the poetic attitude, which considers
by men and less apprehension of it as an elemen-words as things and not as signs."
tal force working through them. It is impression- It is in the almost complete lack of any sense
istic rather than expressionistic, real rather thanof the ontologically significative about their
ideal, tactile rather than intangible. More an-scores; in the near-complete refusal of French
cient than modem, more pagan than Christian, composers to utilize their language in their
more worldly-wise than mystical, it prefers to works; and in the way in which they dwell so
bathe in delicate human sentiment than serve as expressively upon each note, or chord, or phrase
a sounding-board for messages from the Infinite. that I find the chief source of that difference
As an art of nuance and finesse and never one of between the sound of their works and that of
passionate argument or truly extra-musical hy- their colleagues from across the Rhine-which
pothesis-and this despite its largely superflu- it was my purpose to
ous programs, titles, and literary addenda-it is, illuminate-to lie.
137

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19TH PRINCIPAL SOURCES
CENTURY
MUSIC
ABRAMS M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (New York, 1963).
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BARZUN Jacques Barzun, The Pleasures of Music (New York, 195 1).
BAUDELAIRE Charles Baudelaire, Selected Writings on Art and Artists, ed. P. E. Charvet (London
BELLAIGUE Camille Bellaigue, "Balzac et la Musique," Revue des Deux Mondes 94 (1924), 682
BERLIOZ Hector Berlioz, A Treatise on Modern Instrumentation, trans. Mary Cowden Clark
BERNAC Pierre Bernac, The Interpretation of French Song (New York, 1978).
BLAZE DE BURY Henri Blaze de Bury, Musiciens Contemporains (Paris, 1856).
BRION Marcel Brion, L'Allemagne Romantique (Paris, 1962).
CHIPP Herschel B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Arts (Berkeley, 1968).
DELACROIX Eughne Delacroix, Journal, ed. Andre Joubin (Paris, 1932).
DESCHAMPS Emile Deschamps, Emile Deschamps Dilettante: Relations d'un Porte Romantique, ed. Henri Girard (Paris,
1921).
EITNER Lorenz Eitner, Neoclassicism and Romanticism, 1750--1850, 2 vols. (New Jersey, 1970).
EVANS Raymond L. Evans, Les Romantiques Frangais etla Musique (Paris, 1934).
FLAUBERT Gustave Flaubert, Salammb6, ed. F. C. Green (London, 1969).
FURST Lilian Furst, Romanticism in Perspective (New York, 1969).
GAUTIER Theophile Gautier, Histoire du Romantisme (Paris, 1927).
GIRARD Henri Girard, Emile Deschamps et la Musique (Paris, 1921).
GOETHE Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe: Conversations and Encounters, trans. and ed. David Luke and Robert
Pick (London, 1966).
GOUGELOT Henri Gougelot, La Romance Frangais sous la Revolution et l'Empire (Paris, 1937).
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NOSKE Frits Noske, French Song from Berlioz to Duparc (New York, 1970).
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1967).
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(New York, 1947).
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WAGNER Richard Wagner, Wagner Writes from Paris, ed. and trans. Robert Jacobs and Geoffrey Skelton (London, 1973).
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2Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, trans. (1813)
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3Novalis, Bliitenstaub 59; Fichte, Wissenschaftslehre (In-
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6Boisselot, Revue et Gazette Musicale 37 (9/16/1838).
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8Beaumarchais, Tarare, Preface (BARZUN, 231). 22Schiller (PRESS, 100).
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780-81). 85PERRIS, 59. PRIMMER
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57Leclerc, "Essai" (LA LAURENCIE, 223). "sSatie, Trois Morceaux en forme de poire (1903).
58II Pierre (Paris, 1904) (GUICHARD, 23). "6Diverses choses (1896-97) (CHIPP, 65).
59GUICHARD, 24. 117/Weber's Euryanthe" (SCHUMANN 1947, 106).
60GUICHARD, 25. 1"sAphorisms (op. 68) (SCHUMANN 1947, 36).
61GUICHARD, 21. "9"Chopin's Second Piano Concerto" (SCHUMANN 1947,
62GIRARD, 36. 130).
"6Le Moniteur, 19 prairial, an II (LA LAURENCIE, 224-25). 120STRUNK, 747.
6Le Moniteur, 19 prairial, an II (LA LAURENCIE, 225). 121Gretry, M moires (1791) (STRUNK, 725).
65A. Challamel (GUICHARD, 16). '22GOUNOD, 218.
66La Constitutionnel (12/15/1862) (FLAUBERT, 294). 123BALDENSPERGER, 86.
6711De l'objet de la Musique," Mercure de France (1779) (LA 124DELACROIX, I, pp. 283-84.
LAURENCIE, 201). 125Alfred de Musset, Les Debuts de Mlle Garcia (EVANS, 26).
68Alfred de Vigny, Journal d'un PoBte, ed. Fernand Balden- 126Gerard de Nerval, Odelettes Rythmiques et Lyriques-
sperger (London, 1928), p. 121. Fantaisie (EVANS, 27).
69"11On German Music" (WAGNER, 49). 127Gerard de Nerval, La Presse (9/18/1850) (EVANS, 29).
70FURST, 75. 128Antoni Deschamps (EVANS, 35).
71Cromwell, Preface (HALSTEAD, 118). '29Emile Deschamps, Lettres surla Musique (5/15/1835) (Ev-
72Gambara (BARZUN, 112). ANS, 36).
73STENDHAL, 3. '30Theophile Gautier, "La Cenerentola aux Italiens," La
74GAUTIER, I, p. 13. Presse, November 1839 (EVANS, 47).
75Letter to Auguste Morel (2/12/1848); letter to Joseph d'Or- '31Masimilla Doni (BELLAIGUE, 693-94).
tigue (3/15/1848) in Correspondance gendrale d'Hector Ber- '32BERNAC, 32.
lioz, ed. Pierre Citron (Paris, 1978), III, pp. 517 and 528. 133STENDHAL, 128.
76BERLIOZ, 244. 134STENDHAL, 171.
77Journal (5/19/1853) (EITNER II, p. 110). '35Mme de Stael, Del'Allemagne (EVANS, 7).
78Journal des Debats (12/9/1824) (LA LAURENCIE, 248). '36Ibid.
79"Further notes on Edgar Poe" (BAUDELAIRE, 202). a'37Moniteur Universel (11/24/1831), p. 2216.
8soLeguov6, Revue et Gazette Musicale (1/15/1837), p. 27; '38BLAZE DE BURY, 80-81.
Journal des Dibats (12/9/1824).
'39G. Imbert de Laphalhque, Revue de Paris 7 (1829), 184.
s'Reflexions surla tragddie (FURST, 76). '4Ibid., p. 109ff.
82Journal des Concourts (5/1/1857). '41Ibid., p. 186.
83"Of M. Horace Vernet" (in "The Salon of 1846") (BAUDE- 142F~tis, Socikth des Concerts (p. 27) (NOSKE, 32).
LAIRE, 89). '3Berlioz, Gazette Musicale 4 (1838) (PERRIS, 98-99).
139

193.219.130.250 on Sat, 26 Dec 2020 15:47:20 UTC
19TH '44L'Artiste (1832) (GUICHARD, 43). '68Coleridge, "Dejection: An Ode," in Poems and Prose, ed.
CENTURY 145Reicha, Journal des Arts 240 (1813) (GOUGELOT,Kathleen 43). Raine (London, 1957), p. 96.
MUSIC
146Thiebault, Du Chant (1813) (GOUGELOT, 203). 169STENDHAL, 128.
147Gautier, "Romeo et Juliette," La Presse (12/11/1839) 170Hoffmann, "Beethoven's Instrumental Music" (STRUNK,
(EVANS, 43). 779).
148"Joseph Christoph Kessler" (1835) (SCHUMANN '71 HAUPTMANN, II, p. 27.
1965, 41). 172SCHUMANN 1965, 40.
149SCHUMANN 1947, 39. 173SCHUMANN 1947, 164.
o50A. W. Schlegel, On Dramatic Art and Literature (1808) 174SCHUMANN 1965, 40.
(ABRAMS, 213). 175"Kalkbrenner: Etudes op. 145" (1839) (SCHUMANN 1965,
s'1Weber, "On Undine" (STRUNK, 802). 153).
152HAUPTMANN, I, p. 30. 176Aphorisms (op. 68) (SCHUMANN 1947, 36).
153"Beethoven's Instrumental Music" (STRUNK, 779). '77Ibid., p. 30.
154SCHUMANN 1965, 55. 178Ibid., p. 34.
5511"Two Sonatas by Carl Loewe" (1835) (SCHUMANN 1965, '79WAGNER, 39.
45-46). '18WAGNER, 43.
'56F. Schlegel, Uber Goethe's Meister (ABRAMS, 208). '81D'Ortigue, Revue de Paris (1831 ).
157GOETHE, 82. 182SCHUMANN 1965, 124.
5811On Undine" (STRUNK, 803). '83SCHUMANN 1947, 36.
'59Aphorisms (op. 68) (SCHUMANN 1947, 44). 184STENDHAL, 123.
160Philosophy of Music (1836) (BARZUN, 298). 185LEMOYNE, L'Harmonica (1807) (GOUGELOT, 295).
161Letter to Spohr (2/16/1844). '86SCHUMANN 1947, 75.
162"Piano Sonatas" (1839) (SCHUMANN 1947, 65). 's7SCHUMANN 1947, 40.
'63"Quartets" (1842) (SCHUMANN 1947, 69). s88"German Music" (WAGNER, 43).
164"Symphonies" (SCHUMANN 1947, 62). s89"Beethoven's Instrumental Music" (STRUNK, 779).
165SCHUMANN 1947, 79-80. '90SCHUMANN 1947, 236.
166GOUGELOT, 183. '91SCHUMANN 1947, 236.
167SCHUMANN 1947, 45. 192GOUGELOT, 183.
140

193.219.130.250 on Sat, 26 Dec 2020 15:47:20 UTC

Romantic Music Article Leading To Gounod 746271

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Unity and Ensemble: Contrasting Ideals in Romantic Music

Author(s): Brian Primmer

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/746271

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"It needs courage to be a romantic because

Only the individual is of interest.

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which had turned the occasion into "a very

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Music discloses to man an unknown realm, a world

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Bary to rhapsodize over the sisterhood of poetry

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as that with which heIf handled

Exactly how is this instrumental

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ing the Parisian scene.

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'Stendhal, Racine et Shakespeare, ed. Bernard Drenner

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