Chapter 4 No.4

There may be an analogy-and on first sight it seems that there must be-between both the state and power of artistic perceptions and the law of perpetual change, that ever-flowing stream partly biological, partly cosmic, ever going on in ourselves, in nature, in all life. This may account for the difficulty of identifying desired qualities with the perceptions of them in expression. Many things are constantly coming into being, while others are constantly going out-one part of the same thing is coming in while another part is going out of existence.

Perhaps this is why the above conformity in art (a conformity which we seem naturally to look for) appears at times so unrealizable, if not impossible. It will be assumed, to make this theory clearer, that the "flow" or "change" does not go on in the art-product itself. As a matter of fact it probably does, to a certain extent-a picture, or a song, may gain or lose in value beyond what the painter or composer knew, by the progress and higher development in all art. Keats may be only partially true when he says that "A work of beauty is a joy forever"-a thing that is beautiful to ME, is a joy to ME, as long as it remains beautiful to ME-and if it remains so as long as I live, it is so forever, that is, forever to ME. If he had put it this way, he would have been tiresome, inartistic, but perhaps truer. So we will assume here that this change only goes on in man and nature; and that this eternal process in mankind is paralleled in some way during each temporary, personal life.

A young man, two generations ago, found an identity with his ideals, in Rossini; when an older man in Wagner. A young man, one generation ago, found his in Wagner, but when older in Cesar Franck or Brahms. Some may say that this change may not be general, universal, or natural, and that it may be due to a certain kind of education, or to a certain inherited or contracted prejudice. We cannot deny or affirm this, absolutely, nor will we try to even qualitatively-except to say that it will be generally admitted that Rossini, today, does not appeal to this generation, as he did to that of our fathers. As far as prejudice or undue influence is concerned, and as an illustration in point, the following may be cited to show that training may have but little effect in this connection, at least not as much as usually supposed-for we believe this experience to be, to a certain extent, normal, or at least, not uncommon. A man remembers, when he was a boy of about fifteen years, hearing his music-teacher (and father) who had just returned from a performance of Siegfried say with a look of anxious surprise that "somehow or other he felt ashamed of enjoying the music as he did," for beneath it all he was conscious of an undercurrent of "make-believe"-the bravery was make-believe, the love was make-believe, the passion, the virtue, all make-believe, as was the dragon-P. T. Barnum would have been brave enough to have gone out and captured a live one! But, that same boy at twenty-five was listening to Wagner with enthusiasm, his reality was real enough to inspire a devotion. The "Preis-Lied," for instance, stirred him deeply. But when he became middle-aged-and long before the Hohenzollern hog-marched into Belgium-this music had become cloying, the melodies threadbare-a sense of something commonplace-yes-of make-believe came. These feelings were fought against for association's sake, and because of gratitude for bygone pleasures-but the former beauty and nobility were not there, and in their place stood irritating intervals of descending fourths and fifths. Those once transcendent progressions, luxuriant suggestions of Debussy chords of the 9th, 11th, etc., were becoming slimy. An unearned exultation-a sentimentality deadening something within hides around in the music. Wagner seems less and less to measure up to the substance and reality of Cesar Franck, Brahms, d'Indy, or even Elgar (with all his tiresomeness), the wholesomeness, manliness, humility, and deep spiritual, possibly religious feeling of these men seem missing and not made up for by his (Wagner's) manner and eloquence, even if greater than theirs (which is very doubtful).

From the above we would try to prove that as this stream of change flows towards the eventual ocean of mankind's perfection, the art-works in which we identify our higher ideals come by this process to be identified with the lower ideals of those who embark after us when the stream has grown in depth. If we stop with the above experience, our theory of the effect of man's changing nature, as thus explaining artistic progress, is perhaps sustained. Thus would we show that the perpetual flow of the life stream is affected by and affects each individual riverbed of the universal watersheds. Thus would we prove that the Wagner period was normal, because we intuitively recognized whatever identity we were looking for at a certain period in our life, and the fact that it was so made the Franck period possible and then normal at a later period in our life. Thus would we assume that this is as it should be, and that it is not Wagner's content or substance or his lack of virtue, that something in us has made us flow past him and not he past us. But something blocks our theory! Something makes our hypotheses seem purely speculative if not useless. It is men like Bach and Beethoven.

Is it not a matter nowadays of common impression or general opinion (for the law of averages plays strongly in any theory relating to human attributes) that the world's attitude towards the substance and quality and spirit of these two men, or other men of like character, if there be such, has not been affected by the flowing stream that has changed us? But if by the measure of this public opinion, as well as it can be measured, Bach and Beethoven are being flowed past-not as fast perhaps as Wagner is, but if they are being passed at all from this deeper viewpoint, then this "change" theory holds.

Here we shall have to assume, for we haven't proved it, that artistic intuitions can sense in music a weakening of moral strength and vitality, and that it is sensed in relation to Wagner and not sensed in relation to Bach and Beethoven. If, in this common opinion, there is a particle of change toward the latter's art, our theory stands-mind you, this admits a change in the manner, form, external expression, etc., but not in substance. If there is no change here towards the substance of these two men, our theory not only falls but its failure superimposes or allows us to presume a fundamental duality in music, and in all art for that matter.

Does the progress of intrinsic beauty or truth (we assume there is such a thing) have its exposures as well as its discoveries? Does the non-acceptance of the foregoing theory mean that Wagner's substance and reality are lower and his manner higher; that his beauty was not intrinsic; that he was more interested in the repose of pride than in the truth of humility? It appears that he chose the representative instead of the spirit itself,-that he chose consciously or unconsciously, it matters not,-the lower set of values in this dualism. These are severe accusations to bring-especially when a man is a little down as Wagner is today. But these convictions were present some time before he was banished from the Metropolitan. Wagner seems to take Hugo's place in Faguet's criticism of de Vigny that, "The staging to him (Hugo) was the important thing-not the conception-that in de Vigny, the artist was inferior to the poet"; finally that Hugo and so Wagner have a certain pauvrete de fond. Thus would we ungenerously make Wagner prove our sum! But it is a sum that won't prove! The theory at its best does little more than suggest something, which if it is true at all, is a platitude, viz.: that progressive growth in all life makes it more and more possible for men to separate, in an art-work, moral weakness from artistic strength.