How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. | Page 6

musical material.]
Without discrimination it is impossible to recognize even the crude
materials of music, for the first step is already a co-ordination of those
materials. A tone becomes musical material only by association with
another tone. We might hear it alone, study its quality, and determine
its degree of acuteness or gravity (its pitch, as musicians say), but it can
never become music so long as it remains isolated. When we recognize
that it bears certain relationships with other tones in respect of time or
tune (to use simple terms), it has become for us musical material. We
do not need to philosophize about the nature of those relationships, but
we must recognize their existence.
[Sidenote: The beginnings of Form.]
Thus much we might hear if we were to let music go through our heads
like water through a sieve. Yet the step from that degree of
discrimination to a rudimentary analysis of Form is exceedingly short,

and requires little more than a willingness to concentrate the attention
and exercise the memory. Everyone is willing to do that much while
looking at a picture. Who would look at a painting and rest satisfied
with the impression made upon the sense of sight by the colors merely?
No one, surely. Yet so soon as we look, so as to discriminate between
the outlines, to observe the relationship of figure to figure, we are
indulging in intellectual exercise. If this be a condition precedent to the
enjoyment of a picture (and it plainly is), how much more so is it in the
case of music, which is intangible and evanescent, which cannot pause
a moment for our contemplation without ceasing to be?
[Sidenote: Comparison with a model not possible.]
There is another reason why we must exercise intelligence in listening,
to which I have already alluded in the first chapter. Our appreciation of
beauty in the plastic arts is helped by the circumstance that the critical
activity is largely a matter of comparison. Is the picture or the statue a
good copy of the object sought to be represented? Such comparison
fails us utterly in music, which copies nothing that is tangibly present
in the external world.
[Sidenote: What degree of knowledge is necessary?]
[Sidenote: The Elements.]
[Sidenote: Value of memory.]
It is then necessary to associate the intellect with sense perception in
listening to music. How far is it essential that the intellectual process
shall go? This book being for the untrained, the question might be put
thus: With how little knowledge of the science can an intelligent
listener get along? We are concerned only with his enjoyment of music
or, better, with an effort to increase it without asking him to become a
musician. If he is fond of the art it is more than likely that the capacity
to discriminate sufficiently to recognize the elements out of which
music is made has come to him intuitively. Does he recognize that
musical tones are related to each other in respect of time and pitch?
Then it shall not be difficult for him to recognize the three elements on

which music rests--Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm. Can he recognize
them with sufficient distinctness to seize upon their manifestations
while music is sounding? Then memory shall come to the aid of
discrimination, and he shall be able to appreciate enough of design to
point the way to a true and lofty appreciation of the beautiful in music.
The value of memory is for obvious reasons very great in musical
enjoyment. The picture remains upon the wall, the book upon the
library shelf. If we have failed to grasp a detail at the first glance or
reading, we need but turn again to the picture or open the book anew.
We may see the picture in a changed light, or read the poem in a
different mood, but the outlines, colors, ideas are fixed for frequent and
patient perusal. Music goes out of existence with every performance,
and must be recreated at every hearing.
[Sidenote: An intermediary necessary.]
Not only that, but in the case of all, so far as some forms are concerned,
and of all who are not practitioners in others, it is necessary that there
shall be an intermediary between the composer and the listener. The
written or printed notes are not music; they are only signs which
indicate to the performer what to do to call tones into existence such as
the composer had combined into an art-work in his mind. The broadly
trained musician can read the symbols; they stir his imagination, and he
hears the music in his imagination as the composer heard it. But the
untaught music-lover alone can get nothing from the printed page; he
must needs wait till some one else shall again waken for him