30 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



If music is not a language, why have some of even the greatest 

 composers occasionally given descriptive titles to their instrumental 

 compositions ? An answer to this question would be influenced by a 

 consideration of the period in which a composer lived. The dominat- 

 ing influences (in the classical period) of musical forms — especially 

 those of the sonata and symphony — did not encourage the use of titles. 

 In the succeeding romantic period the tendency to depart somewhat 

 from these strict forms accounts, at least partially, for the desire to 

 explain by a title the nature of a composition. Thus Liszt, instead 

 of symphonies, composed the symphonic-poems "Tasso," "Mazeppa," 

 etc. This tendency has been emphasized, especially by the ultra- 

 modern composers, to such an extent that we now witness attempts to 

 reproduce in the orchestra such subjects as "Don Quixote," Bockhn's 

 painting "The Isle of Death," and so on through a long list. This 

 has encouraged among a certain class of musical enthusiasts the 

 idea that somehow by a process of mysterious meditations one can 

 attain to an "understanding" of these compositions. It is well to 

 note in connection with the above reference to modern tendencies 

 the following from an article on Beethoven by Otto Jahn: 



Beethoven usually refrained from uttering words calculated to beguile people 

 into the belief that he who understands the title, understands also the composition. 

 His music says all he wished to say. 



Dannreuther, in Macmillan's Magazine, July, 1876, writes of the 

 last and greatest period of Beethoven's life as follows: 



He passes beyond the horizon of a mere singer and poet, and touches upon the 

 domain of the seer and prophet where, in unison with all genuine mystics and ethical 

 teachers, he delivers a message of love and resignation, identification with the 

 sufferings of all Uving creatures, deprecation of self, negation of personality, 

 release from the world. 



If this seems to lead us away from a reconciliation of those opposing 

 ideas which we have been considering, let us remember that it can only 

 be understood musically and hence illustrates the difiiculty of trans- 

 lating subjective musical phenomena into concepts of written language. 

 The music of Beethoven's last period in the language of music itself, 



