Pucell Ode and other Poems

	Page
Ode to Music	29
The Fair Brass	42
November	45
The South Wind	49
Winter Nightfall	53

 

 

The words of the Ode as here given differ slightly from those which appeared with Dr. Parry’s Cantata, sung at the Leeds Festival and at the Purcell Commemoration in London last year.

Since the poem was never perfected as a musical ode,—and I was not in every particular responsible for it,—I have tried to make it more presentable to readers, and in so doing have disregarded somewhat its original intention. But it must still ask indulgence, because it still betrays the liberties and restrictions which seemed to me proper in an attempt to meet the requirements of modern music.

It is a current idea that, by adopting a sort of declamatory treatment, it is possible to give to almost any poem a satisfactory musical setting;[1] whence it would follow that a non-literary form is a needless extravagance. From this general condemnation I wish to defend my poem, or rather my judgment, for I do not intend to discuss or defend my poem in detail, nor to try to explain what I hoped to accomplish when I engaged in the work; it is still further from my intention that anything which I shall say should be taken as applying to the music with which my ode was, far beyond its deserts, honored and beautified. But I am concerned in combating the general proposition that modern music, by virtue of a declamatory method, is able satisfactorily to interpret almost any kind of good poetry.

Such questions are generally left to the musician, and it should not be unwelcome to hear what may be said on the literary side. I shall therefore state what appear to me to be impediments in the way of this announced happy marriage of music and poetry, and enumerate some of the difficulties which, it seems to me, must especially beset the musician who would attempt to interpret pure literature by musical declamation.

First, the repetitions in music and poetry are incompatible. Though some simple forms dependent on repetition are common to both, yet the general laws are in the two arts contraries. In poetry repetition is avoided, in music it is looked for. A musical phrase has its force and significance increased by repetition, and is often in danger of losing its significance unless it be repeated; whereas such a repetition in poetry is likely to endanger the whole effect of the original statement. And when reiterations that can be compared occur in both, then the second occurrence will in music be generally the strongest, but in poetry the weakest; and the intensity of the repetitions goes on decreasing in music, and increasing for some time in poetry, till both become intolerable.

Secondly, the difficulty which this difference occasions is much increased by the method of declamatory exposition. Musical declamation must mean that the musical phrase is not chosen, as the earlier musicians might have chosen or invented it, chiefly for the sake of its own musical beauty, in correspondence with the mood[2] of the words, and merely fitting the syllables, but that it is invented also to follow the verbal phrase in correspondence with some notion of rhetorical utterance, or natural inflection of speech enforcing the sense, and in so far with lesser regard to its own purely musical value. Such a musical phrase will therefore, in proportion to its success, be more closely associated with the words, and cannot well be repeated unless the words are repeated, which the declamation forbids.

Thirdly, when a declamatory musical movement is once started, the musician has very few means of bringing it to a conclusion. There is the method of repetition, which does not suit the Ode,[3] and which on his own theory he is almost forbidden to use; and there is the method of rising to a climax, which is perhaps the most usual device: but few poems can offer occasion for the recurrence of climax, and its employment would break up an ode into artificial sections, which the poet must repudiate. In pure music the musician has invented many beautiful devices, but in choral music he has not yet shown, so far as I know, any power to match the poet’s liberty in this respect, whose resources are as various as numerous, and are comparable to the freedom and caprices of a dancer, who can at any moment surprise by a gesture, and be still.

Fourthly, the very rhythms of poetry and choral music are different in kind. The rhythms and balances of verse are unbarred, the rhythms of choral music are barred. Even the universally recognized fitness of the interpretation of a common measure in verse by the corresponding common measure in music depends much more on the power and satisfying completeness of the musical form in itself than on any right relation which obtains between words and music under these conditions. Where the poetry has a more elaborated rhythm there are two extremes, between which the musician’s manner of setting must lie. One extreme, the musical, is that he should disregard the poetic rhythm for the sake of new musical ideas, which must of course add beauty and not do violence to the words: the other is that he should follow the elaborate poetic rhythm as nearly as possible. The method of declamation takes this latter extreme; it forbids musical independence, and prefers to identify itself with the poetic rhythm, which in good poetry represents an ideal cadence of speech: but this interpretation is really a convention and a make-believe, and at best only an ingenious translation; and though it may often be desirable, and the occasion of true musical beauty, yet its exclusive use is an abnegation of musical spontaneity for the sake of a secondary, mediate form, conspicuously dependent on something extraneous, and giving prominence to ingenuity rather than to pure æsthetic beauty, so as to provoke criticism rather than unquestioning delight.

Fifthly, the most beautiful effects in poetry are obtained by suggestion. A certain disposition of ideas in words produces a whole result quite out of proportion to the parts; and if it is asked what music can do best, it is something in this same way of indefinite suggestion. Poetry is here the stronger, in that its suggestion is more definitely directed; Music is the stronger in the greater force of the emotion raised. It would seem, therefore, that music could have no more fit and congenial task than to heighten the emotion of some great poetic beauty, the direction of which is supplied by the words. But if it seeks to do this by a method of declamation, it makes this double mistake. First it tries to enforce the poetic means, which it may be assumed are already on full strain, and in exact balance, and will not bear the least disturbance; and secondly, it renounces its own highest power of stirring emotion, because that resides in pure musical beauty, and is dependent on its mysterious quality: for one may say that its power is in proportion to its remoteness from common direct understanding, and that just so far as its sounds are understood to mean something definite they lose their highest emotional power. It would follow from this that the best musical treatment of passages of great poetic beauty is not to declaim them, but, as it were, to woo them and court them and caress them, and deck them with fresh musical beauties, approaching them tenderly now on one side, now on another, and to keep a delicate reserve which shall leave their proper unity unmolested.

Sixthly, if this is true of the highest poetic beauty, how will the declamatory method fare when it has to deal with the commonplaces and bare or even ugly words which are the weaknesses and unkindnesses of language? Just when the poet must deplore that his material is not more musical, it cannot be the musician’s triumph to insist on the defect. The ordinary monosyllabic exclamations are a sufficient example; there is absolutely no declamatory rendering of these which is at all worthy of the emotion which they must often be employed to convey. What can be made of them by a purely musical treatment is seen in the long-drawn melodious sighs with which Carissimi or Purcell interpreted the Ohs and Ahs.

Seventhly, this leads to the more general remark that the inflections of all speech are much more limited in character, number, and scope than those of the trained singing voice. Whence it comes that the imitations of speech in declamatory music have a tendency to fall into a comparatively small number of forms, which, even when most skilfully disguised, are easily recognized by an attentive ear, and soon weary with their sameness. The basis of declamatory music is in fact no broader than that of the old recitativo secco, and it would seem unreasonable to hope that any ingenuity in the superstructure can long disguise this, or save itself ultimately from the same condemnation.

Eighthly, in consideration of the commonest difficulties which arise in setting to music words which have not been specially contrived for it, it appears that, compared with a more purely musical way, the declamatory method is absolutely at a disadvantage. It can do nothing with parentheses or dependent clauses. The weak polysyllables, which have fit place in the diction and rhythm of verse, may be helped out by convention or by pure musical distraction; but declamation can only make them ugly. And as those for their weakness of sound, so other words unable for their sense to bear the stress of singing,—such as metaphorical words of slight meaning, which in poetry contribute but a part of themselves to the main idea,—these declamation would make ridiculous. Nor, on the other hand, with the words and phrases which are generally held most suitable for music is the declamatory method any richer or happier: these are the well-sounding words of broad meaning and their common collocations, which require a fresh imagination to revivify them. But the musician was always at his ease with these words, because his music was free to adorn them with any quantity of enrichment; and this commanded the attention the more completely when the words required none. Now, if they are to be declaimed, they must return to their old prosaic nakedness; and since the attention is to be called to them, they will be even worse off than ever.

The above remarks are sufficient for my purpose; but so many negations may provoke the reader to look for some positive indication of the writer’s opinion as to what sort of words are best suited for music, and what sort of setting they should have. This question is far too wide to be treated summarily; and if it has not been given to me to assist in solving it practically, I cannot venture to meddle with it further. I had hoped, as a matter of fact, to contrive something; but it seems to me that the musician’s difficulty in advancing towards a solution is much increased by the necessity of pleasing large audiences. It is certain that the final appeal is not to the first hearing of any large audience in this country. What sort of music is really in request may be judged from the repertories of our military bands and the programmes of the Royal concerts. Even the highest class concerts I have seen interlarded with unworthy items, which were rapturously received by the fashionable hearers who did not recognize the trap.

and these were the stratagems to obtain his spoils.

It is possible enough that an audience may enjoy having commonplaces vociferated at them with orchestral accompaniment; but this is nothing. To the musician the poet will say that he is surprised to find a term which is considered a reproach in poetry esteemed as the expression of the best means of its interpretation. To call a poem declamatory or rhetorical is to condemn it; and music is naturally less rhetorical than speech; so that in a declamatory interpretation of poetry Music would seem to abnegate its own excellence for the sake of a quality foreign to itself and repudiated by the art which it is seeking to heighten.

He will not be satisfied by the assurance that the method will serve to introduce and explain poetry to some people who are generally indifferent to it; it will seem to him that the musician is laboring to introduce into pure vocal music the old dramatic crux,—that awkwardness from which it has, in its best forms, been beautifully free. Because in the musical drama that must be sung which should be spoken, why try to make that seem to be spoken which should be sung?

This analysis is taken from the concert programme:—

I. An invitation to Music to return to England: that is, in the sense that England should be again pre-eminent for music above other European nations, as she was in the sixteenth century. The three English graces are Liberty, Poetry, and Music.

II. Music invited in the name of Liberty: the idea associated with the forest.

III. Music invited in the name of Poetry: the idea of Poetry associated with pastoral scenes and husbandry.

IV. The Sea introduced as the type of Love; isolating our patriotism, and making our bond with the rest of the world.

V. The national intention gives way to wider human sympathies. Music here considered as the voice of Universal Love, calling and responding throughout the world. A national meaning also underlies, in respect of our world-wide colonization.

VI. Sorrow now invites Music; asserting her need to be the chiefest. The occasion being the celebration of Purcell’s genius, her complaint implies a call for some musical lament for his untimely death.

VII. Music replies with a DIRGE for the dead artist; offering no consolation beyond the expression of woe.

VIII. The chorus consoled, praise dead artists, and pronounce them happy and immortal.

IX. A picture of the ideal world of delight created by Art.

X. The invocation repeated, with the idea of responsibility of our colonization.

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ERRATA. (corrected in this etext.)

Page 40, second line from bottom, for “discontinue,” read “disentwine.”

Page 51, third line from top, for “thy,” read “the.”

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