1915] on Music and Poetry 525 



musical rhythm upon a famihar verbal rhythm confuses the issue. 

 This does not mean that the music must slavishly reproduce the bare 

 verbal rhythm, for it may enhance it ; nor does it preclude the 

 most subtle interplay of two or more rhythms, for they may be 

 implied in the poem. But it is an unwritten law of both arts that a 

 superfluous word or note is a wrong word or note, and a law that 

 holds in each art obviously holds in both. A superfluous rhythm is 

 a wrong rhythm. In metre and accent poetry already possesses its 

 inherent rhythm and emphasis, and the song fares badly whose 

 composer is deaf to this. In inflection and quality (in other words, in 

 melody and harmony) music can expand poetic significances, the 

 singing voice far outstripping the speaking voice, provided expansion 

 never obliterates or distorts the inner beauty of the words them- 

 selves — provided, in other words, that it is never irrelevant. Music 

 can only be irrelevant when the poem already is as vital as the hearer 

 can bear and when its mental appeal is complete. This seems to be 

 the case in the Tennyson stanza just quoted. Dean Beeching goes 

 so far as to say some poems are so complete that they make their best 

 impression on the wiitten page in silence. Words, on the other hand, 

 are irrelevant in sonata or symphony when music is not only as vital 

 by itself as we can bear, but when its conformation or structure fulfils 

 our mental attention — when, in fact, the listener is as busy as he 

 can be enjoying the purely musical experiences. These are the 

 occasions upon which, if explanatory words are needed to hitch us 

 on to the energies of music, a composer fights shy of having them 

 sung, and so writes what is called programme-music. Perhaps all 

 abstract music is programme-music, only that each hearer can have a 

 wide field for his own programme. Between the two extremes, and close 

 to their edges, there are two kinds of vocal music — one in which the 

 poetic interest is so great that the musical share is just reduced to a 

 minimum, as in dry recitative ; the other, in which the musical 

 interest is so great that the verbal contribution is reduced to one single 

 utterance, such as the word Sanctus, or Hallelujah, or Amen. There 

 is striking testimony to the natural human need of human interest in 

 the quaint foreign comment on our English Festivals : " Ah, you 

 Enghsh, I know your Music Festivals. It was Hallelujah, Amen, for 

 four days ! " Between the two border regions the divergences of the 

 two arts can be made to complement each other, they can play into each 

 other's hands ; and when they do it well the experience can be perfect. 



The remaining illustrations may be said to lie in this mid-region. 

 They will be sung through without comment or interruption, and the 

 listener is asked to set his mind chiefly upon the factor of adjust me?it 

 as between the vital and formal appeal. Ideally they should approach 

 one as a whole, simultaneously, indistinguishably fulfilling both 

 needs ; and only a certain sense of amplitude and of complete satis- 

 faction testifies that they are both working. This should be felt pre- 

 eminently in such ballads as the " Seven Virgins." (The illustration was 



Vol. XXL (Xo. 109) 2 ^ 



