ill 



MUSIC 



239 



making of sound for the sake of its quality, quite apart from melody or harmony, that 

 is one of the most striking developments in recent music. It enormously extends the 

 range of music in the expression of emotion, and, in the establishment of what is called 

 " atmosphere," it carries the art as a means of human expression to lengths which have 

 never before been attained and which neither language, nor painting, nor any other 

 means of expression can find corresponding terms to describe. Music is getting farther 

 and farther away from the expressing of intellectual ideas, and is more and more dedi- 

 cated to the expressing of pure emotion. 



With the emancipation from form, and as a consequence of it, has come emancipa- 

 tion also from the old harmonic laws. The principles of thorough bass on which music 

 was written until the end of the nineteenth century are gradually being abandoned, and 

 the long reign of tonic and dominant harmony is coming to an end. And as the ear be- 

 comes educated to these new forms, one discovers that principles which seemed to be 

 immutable, like the laws of nature, may be abandoned not only without distress to the 

 musical sense, but with positive increase to its gratification. As an illustration take the 

 following close in the key of F major. 



& 



ffF 



i 



Up till quite recently no ear would have tolerated or found finality in anything but the 

 tonic chord of F. But the modern composer would, if it suited him, without any hesita- 

 tion write the passage thus, leaving the leading note unresolved: 



/T 



Anything more impossible under the old ideas than an unresolved leading note in the 

 final chord could not be imagined ; yet if the chord as it has been written here be held on 

 an organ or any other tone-sustaining instrument and listened to attentively, it will be 

 found that it comes to a quite natural close; that there is no essential unrest or desire for 

 completion ; and that as a final chord it has only a darker, more complex, more mysteri- 

 ous quality than a plain common sense chord of major. The truth is, that the modern 

 ear treats all notes as harmonies or overtones of some fundamental which is possibly not 

 physically heard; and that the increase in the harmonic range of modern music is simply 

 due to the fact that our ears have become educated to imagine and reconcile a far wider 

 series of these harmonics than were the ears of an earlier generation. 



Although, as has been said, the most immediate promising school of new composition 

 is the English, the work of this school is almost entirely confined to instrumental and 

 symphonic music which no modern school or opera has developed. The works of the 

 popular Italian ccmposers such as Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and Puccini make a great 

 appeal to the public which frequent fashionable opera houses; but so far as real artistic 

 progress is concerned they are almost negligible. Their appeal is spectacular and sensa- 

 tional rather than artistic. From every point of view .they are a retrogression from the 

 position attained by Wagner. The characteristics of the recent successes in this school 

 are absurdity of plot, crude delineation of character, and careful subordination to the 



