Rise of Music in Italy and Germany.

not represent to him the something beyond that he covets and cannot obtain.

Such is the typical personage who was the direct and indirect outcome of the French Revolution, and whom M. Taine described so finely seven years ago in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, reminding his audience that the ills of this ruling character had been called the maladie du siècle-a malady that existed in its greatest strength nearly fifty years ago, and one that has not yet been extinguished by the encroachments of the positive spirit, with all its apparent coldness and gloomy impassibility. The traces of this "malady" are to be seen in the large development of philosophic, lyrical and sad-toned poetry in England, France and Germany, in large alteration and enrichment of the languages, in the invention of new characters and new orders of composition, in the style and sentiments of all the great modern writers, from Chateaubriand to Balzac, from Goethe to Heine, from Cowper to Byron, from Alfieri to Leopardi. In the arts of design you may see analogous symptoms-a style that is feverish, without repose, or laboriously archæological, a striving after dramatic effect, psychological expression, or local exactness: one notes, too, how often artistic procedure is ruined by confusion of methods; how an infinite amount of talent, played upon by new emotions, has opened up new paths; and how, in the midst of all this, a profound sentiment for out-of-door nature has sustained an original and complete landscape art, as a kind of reaction following sedentary habits.

It was not, however, in poetry, philosophic, dramatic, or lyric, nor in painting or sculpture, that the most extraordinary development took place, but in music, and that with an almost unparalleled vigour and rapidity. That development is one of the most noteworthy features of our age, and connects itself intimately with the modern spirit that we have referred to above.

Modern music, as might be well expected, took its rise in the two countries where people sing naturally, Italy and Germany. In Italy, it was hatching, so to speak, during a century and a half, from Palestrina to Pergolesi, discovering its procedures, and groping after its resources: then, all of a sudden, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, at the very time when Italian painting ended, the nestling of 150 years spread its wings, and Scarlatti, Marcello, and Handel arose, and furnished in their operas those innumerable sentimental tendernesses and trills for the delectation of the degenerate and voluptuous society of the day. It was then

that grave and ponderous Germany, arriving later at the consciousness of herself, manifested the grandeur and severity of her religious sentiment, the depth of her science, and the vague melancholy of her instincts, in the ecclesiastical music of her Sebastian Bach;-and this before she attained to the evangelical epic of her Klopstock. Whether in Italy or in Germany, it was then that began the reign of expression of sentiment; and between the two, half German and half Italian, Austria struck a balance of the diverse spirits in the production of Haydn, Gluck, and Mozart. And music became cosmopolitan and universal at the approach of that great tempestuous spiritual struggle that underlay the French Revolution, just as painting had done before under the shock of that wide mental renovation which we call the Renaissance. There is nothing surprising in this apparition of modern music, for it corresponds with the apparition of a new genius, -that of the reigning character in the contemporary drama already described, that ardent, restless soul painted so vividly by M. Taine. It was to that soul that Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Weber spoke; for him that Meyerbeer, Berlioz, and Verdi tried to write later on; and it is to his extreme and refined sensibility, his measureless and indeterminate aspirations, that music addresses itself, an office for which music is eminently fit, and which no other art could so completely fill. For, on the one hand, music is founded more or less remotely on the imitation of the human cry, the complete natural expression of passion, claiming our involuntary sympathy; and thus the quivering delicacy of the whole nervous system finds in music its excitation, its echo, and its occupation: while on the other hand, the technique of music resting on relations of sound that imitate no living thing, and which seem, especially in instrumental music, like the dreams of an incorporate soul,-this art is better fitted than any other for the expression of floating thoughts, formless visions, aimless and limitless desires, and all the gigantic trouble of a restless heart that aspires universally and attaches itself to nothing.

This is why, simultaneously with the agitations, hopes, and dissatisfactions of modern democracy, music has passed the bounds of its native lands to spread its marvellous influence throughout Europe and America. This is why the most complicated symphonies attract crowds in that France whose national music has scarcely yet passed beyond the standard of songs and ballads, although M. Gounod and other French musicians have made exquisite contributions to the German school of music; and this is why the opera and other

Music Longest Growing of all the Arts.

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musical entertainments have become a distinctly national feature in the life of the practical democrats of America; while we English also, in our degree, and with our accustomed slowness, are getting more and more disposed to find music a necessary institution, and an immense boon and benefit.

To those who are familiar with M. Taine's brilliant and fascinating books, it will be evident that we have been adopting some of his views and illustrations. There are, however, things in connection with the slow development of music which it was not in M. Taine's programme to touch upon at all; and we are bound to state that he is in no way responsible for what we have to say in further explanation. on this subject. We have seen that music, born almost as soon as poetry, has been for ages arrested in its development: we have examined the nature of the social medium in which it spread its wings for sudden and soaring flight; and a little further examination will suffice to show us why things could not have been otherwise with the growth of this glorious art. As we have already noted, the most elementary forms of music and poetry come into being, as no other arts do, without any extraneous apparatus whatever; and in order to see why the later-born arts attained their highest perfections long before music did, we must examine the relationship of the various arts to the agents between artist and public.

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The initial oral poetry and vocal music are equally free from the need of any medial agency whatever, as they are independent of any instruments unprovided by nature. Indeed, as regards poetry, it is in its very nature oral, and we know one distinguished poet who holds to this day that the printing system is a mistake, and professes that he can always utter poetry better than he can write it. There is a great deal of truth (partial truth) in this view; and it is likely that oral poetry might have reached a far greater development than it actually did (great as that was), and that much idiomatic simplicity would have been more strictly preserved, had not writing, and afterwards printing, come upon the scene. But it may be fairly doubted whether poetry, remaining oral, could ever have followed any subtle course involving close thought, in the absence of its industrial agent, printing; and it is difficult to imagine an unwritten dramatic literature so composite and splendid as the Elizabethan. Similarly, music, so long as it confined itself to vocal operations, might have attained a high excellence without extraneous aid; but it is not possible to conceive even a distant approach to modern music, until civilisation had enabled nature to call

in the assistance of manufacturing ingenuity for the production of instruments. Thus a highly developed form of music cannot dispense with agents; and the brain that originates the composition cannot effectually address the public except through agents of two classes,-industrial for the manufacture of instruments, and artistic for the performance of works. Now such a dependence upon medial agency is not to be observed in connection with any other art. It is true that in the drama, perhaps the highest form that poetry has reached, an analogous artistic agency to that needed by music has taken an important position; but the importance of acting, as an adjunct and interpreter of the dramatic poet's art, is but a feeble parallel to the necessity of performance as an interpreter of the composer's production. It cannot be doubted that Shakespeare exercises a far greater influence, now that performances of his works are witnessed by comparatively few, than he did when the stage was his staple medium of public appeal. Admitting, therefore, that the glory of poetry culminated in the drama, in Shakespeare's hands, we are still free to think that it might equally have done so without the stage; for, while the essence of musical influence and enjoyment lies in the hearing of performances, and not in the highly technical feat of reading scores, the essence of the great dramatic influence lies in contact with human actions, passions, and emotions, and the apprehension of wise and noble utterances; and it is far easier to construct in imagination the entire dramatic spectacle, than it is to imagine a symphony from the score. The mere fact that the symbols of caligraphy and typography are infinitely freer from technicality than the symbols of written or printed music, that the one set of symbols represent words that are the common property and currency of a nation, while the other set of symbols stand for sounds that have no definite meaning whatever, however much they play upon the emotions and delight the whole soul,-the mere fact that such is the case constitutes an enormous difference between the relationship of a printed play to an acted one, on the one hand, and of a score to a performed symphony on the other. To take up a play and, while reading it, see in the mind's eye all the actions and variations of expressions, hear with the mind's hearing all the changes of voice and gradations of tone, is simply a matter for which the ordinary imagination may be qualified without special education; whereas to take up a score, and hear the symphony with the mind's hearing, is only the result of a very high degree

Agents between Artist and Public.

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of technical education. We do not, moreover, conceive that, even in an ideal general education of the most Utopian character, the reading of complex scores could be fairly included among the qualifications aimed at; and it seems to us that modern music must ever remain, in its very nature, more dependent on medial agency than dramatic or any other poetry.

This radical dependence is, at all events, sufficient explanation for the extremely slow growth of music as compared with poetry, without going into the nature of the respective agents required by those two arts. But when we come to consider the rapid growth of the later arts-painting, sculpture, and architecture, the question becomes more complex, and more strictly sociological than æsthetic. Certainly, as we have seen, the initial barbarisms of painting must have demanded some slight industrial civilisation, to say nothing of the immense industrial advance implied in any high order of painting: a further growth of industry would be needed before sculpture could either begin or become great ; and, ere the arts could absorb into their composite fabric, under the head of architecture, the shelter-building instincts common to man and many of the lower animals, industry must be enormously spread in area, and highly organised.

But let us note the sort of agency on which painting, sculpture, and architecture have depended, and still depend. Painting must at a very early stage have become dependent on the producers of its materials; and now painters have the misfortune to be more or less dependent on the medium of dealers and exhibition authorities; the former men of no artistic reputation; the latter, men who may or may not be qualified for their posts. On this medium, sculptors also depend more or less; and the industrial connections of sculpture are more complicated than those of painting, inasmuch as for sculptors to quarry and transport (for example) their own marble, and to manufacture their own tools, would be too flagrant a waste of good labour for any organised society. Architecture is still further dependent on commerce and industry, for it implies either capitalists or wealthy governments, and very extensive organised and supervised labour; so that it is by far the least independent of all the arts.

Now, though music is in its start infinitely less dependent than architecture is, it is easy to see how, in the race of development, the more dependent and material art overtook and outstripped the more ethereal and independent, simply through the difference in the sort of agency on which each depended. Beside the fact that, in the high civilisations of