Notes on Music and Opera

8/2/2019 Notes on Music and Opera

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NOTES ON MUSICAND OPERA

Opera consists of significant situations in arti-ficially arranged sequence.GOETHE

Singing is near miraculous because it is themastering of what is otherwise a pure instrumentof egotism: the human l1oice.

HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL

What is music about? What, as Plato would say, does itimitate? Our experience of Time in its twofold aspect, naturalor organic repetition, and historical novelty created by choice.And the full development of music as an art depends upon arecognition that these two aspects are different and that choice,being an experience confined to man, is more significant thanrepetition. A succession of two musical notes is an act ofchoice; the first causes the second, not in the scientific senseof making it occur necessarily, but in the historical sense ofprovoking it, of providing it with a motive for occurring. A


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Homage to Igor Stravinskysuccessful melody is a self-determined history; it is freelywhat it intends to be, yet is a meaningful whole, not anarbitrary succession of notes.Music as an art, i.e., music that has come to a conscious reali-zation of its true nature, is confined to Western civilizationalone and only to the last four or five hundred years at that.The music of all other cultures and epochs bears the samerelation to Western music that magical verbal formulas bearto the art of poetry. A primitive magic spell may be poetrybut it does not know that it is, nor intend to be. So, in allbut Western music, history is only implicit; what it thinksit is doing is furnishing verses or movements with a repetitiveaccompaniment. Only in the West has chant become song.Lacking a historical consciousness, the Greeks, in their theoriesof music, tried to relate it to Pure Being, but the becomingimplicit in music betrays itself in their theories of harmony inwhich mathematics becomes numerology and one chord isintrinsically "better" than another.

Western music declared its consciousness of itself whenit adopted time signatures, barring and the metronome beat.Without a strictly natural or cyclical time, purined from everytrace of historical singularity, as a framework within whichto occur, the irreversible historicity of the notes themselveswould he impossible.In primitive proto-music, the percussion instruments whichbest imitate recurrent rhythms and, being incapable of melody,can least imitate novelty, play the greatest role.The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex,the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.Music cannot imitate nature: a musical storm always soundslike the wrath of Zeus.A verbal art l ike poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Musicis immediate, it goes on to become. But both are active, bothinsist on stopping or going on. The medium of passive reflec-tion is painting, of passive immediacy the cinema, for the


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Notes on Music and Operavisual world is an immediately given world where Fate ismistress and it is impossible to tell the difference between achosen movement and an involuntary reflex. Freedom ofchoice lies, not in the world we see, but in our freedom toturn our eyes in this direction, or that, or to close them alto-gether.

Because music expresses the opposite experience of purevolition and subjectivity (the fact that we cannot shut ourears a t will allows music to assert that we cannot not choose),film music is not music but a technique for preventing usfrom using our ears to hear extraneous noises and it is badfilm music if we become consciously aware of its existence.Man's musical imagination seems to be derived almost ex-clusively from his primary experiences-his direct experienceof his own body, its tensions and rhythms, and his directexperience of desiring and choosing-and to have very lit tleto do with the experiences of the outside world brought tohim through his senses. The possibility of making music, thatis, depends primarily, not upon man's possession of an audi-tory organ, the ear, but upon his possession of a sound-pro-ducing instrument, the vocal cords. If the ear were primary,music would have begun as program pastoral symphonies.In the case of the visual arts, on the other hand, it is a visualorgan, the eye, which is primary for, without it, the experi-ences which stimulate the hand into becoming an expressiveinstrument could not exist.The difference is demonstrated by the difference in oursensation of motion in musical space and visual space.An increase in the tension of the vocal cords is conceivedin musical space as a going uup ," a relaxation as a going'''down.'' But in visual space it is the bottom of the picture(which is also the foreground) which is felt as the regionof greatest pressure and, as the eye rises up the picture, itfeels an increasing sense of lightness and freedom.The association of tension in hearing with up and seeingwith down seems to correspond to the difference between ourexperience of the force of gravity in our own bodies and our


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Homage to Igor Stravinskyexperience of it in other bodies. The weight of our own bodiesis felt as inherent in us, as a personal wish to fall down, sothat rising upward is an effort to overcome the desire forrest in ourselves. But the weight (and proximity) of otherobjects is felt as weighing down on us; they are "on top" ofus and rising means getting away from their restrictive pres-sure.All of us have learned to talk, most of us, even, could be taughtto speak verse tolerably well, but very few have learned orcould ever be taught to sing. In any village twenty peoplecould get together and give a performance of Hamlet which,however imperfect, would convey enough of the play's great-ness to be worth attending, but if they were to attempt asimilar perfonnance of Don Giovanni, they would soon dis-cover that there was no question of a good or a bad perform-ance because they could not sing the notes at all. Of anactor, even in a poetic drama, when we say that his perform-ance is good, we mean that he simulates by art, that is,consciously, the way in which the character he is playingwould, in real life, behave by nature, that is, unconsciously.But for a singer, as for a ballet dancer, there is no questionof simulation, of singing the composer's notes Hnaturally";his behavior is unabashedly and triumphantly art from be-ginning to end. The paradox implicit in all drama, namely,that emotions and situations which in real life would he sador painful are on the stage a source of pleasure becomes, inopera, quite explicit. The singer may be playing the role ofa deserted bride who is about to kill herself, but we feelquite certain as we listen that not only we, but also she, ishaving a wonderful time. In a sense, there can be no tragicopera because whatever errors the characters make and what-ever they suffer, they are doing exactly what they wish. Hencethe feeling that opera seria should not employ a contemporarysubject, but confine itself to mythical situations, that is,situations which, as human beings, we are all of us necessarilyin and must, therefore, accept, however tragic they may be.A contemporary tragic situation like that in Menotti's The


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Notes on Music and OperaConsul is too actual, that is, too clearly a situation some peopleare in and others, including the audience, are not in, for thelatter to forget this and see it as a symbol of, say, man'sexistential estrangement. Consequently the pleasure we andthe singers are obviously enjoying strikes the conscience asfrivolous.On the other hand, its pure artifice renders opera the idealdramatic medium for a tragic myth. I once went in thesame week to a performance of Tristan und Isolde and ashowing of L'Eternal Retour) Jean Cocteau's movie versionof the same story. During the fonner, two souls, weighingover two hundred pounds apiece, were transfigured by a trans-cendent power; in the latter, a handsome boy met a beautifulgirl and they had an affair. This loss of value was due not toany lack of skill on Cocteau's part but to the nature of thecinema as a medium. Had he used a fat middle-aged couplethe effect would have been ridiculous because the snatchesof language which are all the movie permits have not sufficientpower to transcend their physical appearance. Yet if the loversare young and beautiful, the cause of their love looks "natural,"a consequence of their beauty, and the whole meaning of themyth is gone.

The man who wrote the Eighth Symphony has aright to rebuke the man who put his rapture of elation,tenderness, and nobility into the mouths of a drunkenlibertine, a silly peasant girl, and a conventional finelady, instead of confessing them to himself, glorying inthem, and uttering them without motley as the uni-versal inheritance. (BERNARD SHAW.)Shaw, and Beethoven, are both wrong, I believe, and

Mozart r ight. Feelings of joy, tenderness and nobility are notconfined to unoble" characters but are experienced by every-body, by the most conventional, most stupid, most depraved.It is one of the glories of opera that it can demonstrate thisand to the shame of the spoken drama that it cannot. Becausewe use language in everyday life, our style and vocabulary


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47 ] Homage to Igor Stravinskybecome identified with our social character as others see us,and in a play, even a verse play, there are narrow limits tothe range in speech possible for any character beyond whichthe playwright cannot go without making the characterincredible. But precisely because we do not communicate bysinging, a song can be out of place hut not out of character;it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beauti-fully as that a clever person should do so.If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in par-ticular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted inthe fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon havingthem at whatever cost to ourselves. Opera, therefore, cannotpresent character in the novelist's sense of the word, namely,people who are potentially good and bad, active' and passive,for music is immediate actuality and neither potentiality norpassivity can live in its presence. This is something a librettistmust never forget. Mozart is a greater composer than Rossinibut the Figaro of the Marriage is less satisfying, to my mind,than the Figaro of the Barber and the fault, is, I think, DaPonte's. His Figaro is too interesting a character to be com-pletely translatable into music, so that co-present with theFigaro who is singing, one is conscious of a Figaro who is notsinging but thinking to himself. The barber of Seville, on theother hand, who is not a person but a musical busybody, goesinto song exactly with nothing over.Again, I find La Boheme inferior to T not becauseits music is inferior, but because the characters, Mimi in par-

ticular, are too passive; there is an awkward gap between theresolution with which they sing and the irresolution withwhich they act.The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g.,

Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Briinnhilde,is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being.In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.In recompense for this lack of psychological complexity,however, music can do what words cannot, present the im-mediate and simultaneous relation of these states to eachother. The crowning glory of opera is the big ensemble.


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Notes on Music and Opera [ 47 1The chorus can play two roles in opera and two only, thatof the mob and that of the fai thful, sorrowing or rejoicingcommunity. A little of this goes a long way. Opera is notoratorio.Drama is based on the Mistake .. I think someone is my friendwhen he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a womanwhen in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chamber-maid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that thiswell-dressed young man is rich when he is really a pennilessadventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result willfollow when in fact it results in something very different. Allgood drama has two movements, first the making of the mis-take, then the discovery that it was a mistake.In composing his plot, the librettist has to conform to thislaw but, in comparison to the dramatist, he is more limitedin the kinds of mistake he can use. The dramatist, for instance,procures some of his finest effects from showing how peopledeceive themselves. Self-deception is impossible in opera be-cause music is immediate, not reflective; whatever is sung isthe case. At most, self-deception can be suggested by havingthe orchestral accompaniment at variance with the singer,e.g., the jolly tripping notes which accompany Germont 'sapproach to Violetta's deathbed in La but unlessemployed very sparingly such devices cause confusion ratherthan insight.

Again, while in the spoken drama the discovery of themistake can be a slow process and often, indeed, the moregradual it is the greater the dramatic interest, in a libretto thedrama of recognition must be tropically abrupt, for musiccannot exist in an atmosphere of uncertainty; song cannotwalk, it can only jump.On the other hand, the librettist need never bother hishead, as the dramatist must, about probability- A crediblesituation in opera means a situation in which it is crediblethat someone should sing. A good libretto plot is a melodramain both the strict and the conventional sense of the word; itoffers as many opportunities as possible for the characters tobe swept off their feet by placing them in situations which


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472 ] Homage to Igor Stravinskyare too tragic or too fantastic for "words." No good opera plotcan be sensible for people do not sing when they are feelingsensible.The theory of "music-drama" presupposes a libretto inwhich there is not one sensible moment or one sensible re-mark: this is not only very difficult to manage, though Wag-ner managed it, but also extremely exhausting on bothsingers and the audience, neither of whom may relax for aninstant.In a libretto where there are any sensible passages, i.e.,conversation not song, the theory becomes absurd. If, forfurthering the action, it becomes necessary for one characterto say to another "Run upstairs and fetch me a handkerchief,"then there is nothing in the words, apart from their rhythm,to make one musical setting more apt than another. Whereverthe choice of notes is arbitrary, the only solution is a con-vention, e.g_, recitativo secco.In opera the orchestra is addressed to the singers, not to theaudience. An opera-lover will put up with and even enjoyan orchestral interlude on condition that he knows the singerscannot sing just now because they are tired or the scene-shifters are at work, but any use of the orchestra by itselfwhich is not filling in time is, for him, wasting it. LeonoraIII is a fine piece to listen to in the concert hal l, but in theopera house, when it is played between scenes one and twoof the second act of Fidelio;, it becomes twelve minutes ofacute boredom.If the librettist is a practicing poet, the most difficult problem,the place where he is most likely to go astray, is the composi-tion of the verse. Poetry is in its essence an act of re:B.ection,of refusing to be content with the interjections of immediateemotion in order to understand the nature of what is felt.Since music is in essence immediate, it follows that the wordsof a song cannot be poetry. Here one should draw a distinctionbetween lyric and song proper. A lyric is a poem intended tobe chanted. In a chant the music is subordinate to the wordswhich limit the range and tempo of the notes. In song, the


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Notes on Music and Opera [ 473notes must be free to be whatever they choose and the wordsmust be able to do what they are told.The verses of Ah non credea in La Sonnambula, though oflittle interest to read, do exactly what they should: suggestto Bellini one of the most beautiful melodies ever written and

then leave him completely free to write it. The verses whichtl1.e librettist writes are not addressed to the public but arereally a private letter to the composer. They have theirmoment of glory, the moment in which they suggest to hima certain melody; on,ce that is over, they are as expendableas infantry to a Chinese general: they must efface themselvesand cease to care what happens to them.There have been several composers, Campion, Hugo Wolf,Benjamin Britten, for example, whose musical imaginationhas been stimulated by poetry of a high order. The questionremains, however, whether the listener hears the sung wordsas words in a poem, or, as I am inclined to believe, only assung syllables. A Cambridge psychologist, P. E. Vernon, onceperformed the experiment of having a Campion song sungwith nonsense verses of equivalent syllabic value substitutedfor the original; only six per cent of his test audience noticedthat something was wrong. It is precisely because I believethat, in listening to song (as distinct from chant), we hear,not words, but syllables, that I am not generally in favor ofthe performances of operas in translation. Wagner or Straussin English sounds intolerable, and would still sound so if thepoetic merits of the translation were greater than those of theoriginal, because the new syllables have no apt relation tothe pitch and tempo of the notes with which they are asso-ciated. The poetic value of the words may provoke a com-poser's imagination, but it is their syllabic values whichdetermine the kind of vocal line he writes. In song, poetryis expendable, syllables are not."'History," said Stephen Dedalus, His the nightmare fromwhich I must awake." The rapidity of historical change andthe apparent powerlessness of the individual to affect Col-lective History has led in literature to a retreat from history.


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474 ] Homage to Igor StravinskyInstead of tracing the history of an individual who is born,grows old and dies, many modern novelists and short storywriters, beginning with Poe, have devoted their attentionto timeless passionate moments in a life, to states of being.It seems to me that, in some modern music, I can detect thesame trend, a trend towards composing a static kind ofmusic in which there is no marked difference between itsbeginning, its middle and its end, a music which soundsremarkably like primitive proto-music. It is not for me tocriticize a composer who writes such music. One can say,however, that he will never be able to write an opera. But,probably, he won't want to.The golden age of opera, from Mozart to Verdi, coincidedwith the golden age of liberal humanism, of unquestioningbelief in freedom and progress. If good operas are rarer today,this may be because, not only have we learned that we areless free than nineteenth-century humanism imagined, butalso have become less certain that freedom is an unequivocalblessing, that the free are necessarily the good. To say thatoperas are more difficult to write does not mean that they areimpossible. That would only follow if we should cease tobelieve in free will and personality altogether. Every high Caccurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irre-sponsible puppets of fate or chance.

Notes on Music and Opera

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