For Every Music Lover / A Series of Practical Essays on Music

Listen

. Listening to music is an art of high degree. Many derive exquisite enjoyment from it, for music is pot

y, must be aroused from the written, or printed page to living tone by the hand or voice of the interpreter, and but a fragment at a time can be made perceptible to the listener's ear. Like a panorama, it comes and goes before the imagination, its kaleidoscopic tints and forms now sharply co

to rest, or awakening longing and aspiration, joy and sadness, according to the nature of the music and the hearer's mood. Some even take pleasure in

satisfaction from the ability to follow, even anticipate, the composer's intention, now finding our expectations fulfilled, now being agreeably disappointed. Failure to catch the opening phrase and preliminary rhythms of the composition makes it impossible to appreciate t

was with him, he would, as soon as the theme was heard, whisper what devices and developments he thought should be introduced. If the composer had conformed to his idea of constructi

or the first time. The best listener beyond the pale of genius will at times feel as one astray in a labyrinth of beauty to which for the moment no clue appears. A single representation will rarely suffice t

music could afford. At the same time, an acquaintance with the materials and elements of which the art is composed and with the laws that govern them, is essential to enable even one who has heard much to gain the complete enjoyment that comes from understan

al life. Behind the Divine Art, as behind Religion, lies the inscrutable mystery of Life, and in both there is a Holy of Holies only the consecrated may enter. Befor

on of counterpoint was recently called for, and no one present could give an intelligent answer. This led to a discussion of musical questions which resulted in the disclosure that not one of the company could define melody, harmony or rhythm, or had the slightest c

m. By the musical builders of the past they have been carefully considered, mathematically calculated, and have finally resolved themselves into a recognized scale, composed of tones

ne rises in proportion with the rapidity of the vibrations that produce it. Tones may be perceived by the human ear ranging from about sixteen vibrations in a second to nearly forty thousand, more than eleven octaves. Only about

nds, heard one at a time, and selected from a defined, accepted series, not taken at random from a heterogeneous store. Harmony is a combination of well-ordered sounds

ones without harmonious and rhythmic regulation would be felt to lack something. Melody has been designated the golden thread running through the maze of tone, by which the ear is guided an

s continually affording new means of development. All the intervals and chords used in music had to be discovered, one by one. It often took more than a century to bring into a general use a chord effect introduc

s the ebb and flow of nature had its rhythm. On this elementary rhythm, the one model music finds in nature, th

ods, or sentences, all of which are judiciously repeated and varied, and deri

n E flat in a half note, form a text, as of Fate knocking at the door, which, when developed, leads to tremendous conflict ending in victory. Those notes that repeat and modify the motive and are combined under one slur constitute

sible by four. There are exceptions, as in "God Save the King," our "Ameri

to the tonic or key chord. Very often the first part of a melody will end on a note of the dominant chord, from wh

xteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the masters of counterpoint shaped the musical materials in use to-day. So anxious were they to attain perfection of form they often lost sigh

s reached in the symphony. Melody reigns supreme in monophonic music. Both the canon and the fugue form a commonwealth, in which all voices are rated alike. Viewed rightly, this suits the

style, rich in design, and independent in its individuality. Counterpoint, said a critic in the London Musical News, shows the student how to make a harmonic phrase like a well-shaped tree, of whi

life, progress in music comes through the continual conflict between the conservative and the radical forces. A position viewed as hazardous and unsuitable in one age, becomes the accepted position of the next, and those who have been denounced as musical heretics come to be regarded as musical he

cular laws that condition its nature. Hence it requires one kind of treatment at one stage, another at another, both being perfectly right and true in relation to their proper period. But there are behind these special rules certain psychological laws which seem, so far as we can understand them, to be coe

rudimentary knowledge of musical construction from the simplest ballad to the most complex symphony. Having this knowledge it will be pos

ar the best continually. The assertion is often heard that a person must be educated up to an enjoyment of high class m

l composition. We must take something to it, in order to receive something from it. Beyond knowledge comes the intuitive feeling which is enriched by knowl