Chapter III: National and Personal Characteristics

The statical conditions which aid in the formation of character may roughly be classified under three principal heads. First, there is the broad general basis of humanity, the common foundation of thought and feeling which enables us to sympathise, in some measure, with distant lands and remote ages. Secondly, there is the individual element, the particular blend of personal characteristics, the special idiosyncrasy that marks the difference between one man and his fellow. Third, and intermediate between the other two, is the debt that we owe to our nation the long inheritance that our forefathers have accumulated, that has been put to interest from the beginning of our race, and augmented by every occurrence in our history. And since art is essentially the outcome of character, it would seem to follow, that the artist should display in his work some trace of these three conditions, that his manner should be affected by causes which belong partly to mankind at large, partly to his own temper and circumstances, partly to the distinctive attributes of his people.

The first two of these have never been called in question. All criticism admits that art is at once human and personal, that its aim is to particularise, through the medium of the artist, some ideal or truth which is universal in its ultimate essence. But the admission of the national element has been so strenuously attacked, that a few words may perhaps be offered in its defence; and there could be no more fitting occasion than the study of a composer whose best work has been devoted to the service of a national movement. Hence, before beginning any detailed investigation of Dvořák's method, it will be advisable to consider, first, what is precisely implied in the statement that he was influenced by the character of his country, and secondly, whether this influence was a source of strength or of weakness?

Now the differences by which national temperaments are distinguished appear to be such palpable facts, that it is hardly worth while to assert their existence. In conversation, in travel, in all intercourse we are constantly being reminded that Europe is divided by frontier lines, drawn, no doubt, over the surface of a common earth, but for all that, setting up barriers which are not solely geographical. There is some intermixture of races, but it only bars the rule with a rare exception. There is a growing development of breadth and sympathy, but it only teaches us that the foreign standpoint is as good as our own, not that it is the same. The human mind, says Bacon, is a broken and distorted mirror which can but reflect a part of the truth, and assuredly the part reflected by any individual mind is in great measure determined by national and social conditions.

Again the poet, though he be the spokesman of the whole world, is in a more intimate degree the spokesman of his own country. He has a particular set of traditions for background, he has a particular language for vehicle, and both of these give shape and colour to the abstract ideas which it is his function to express. Wordsworth, for example, is as purely English as Victor Hugo is French or Goethe German; each is the embodiment of a national spirit, each make a closer appeal to his compatriots than to the wisest and most liberal criticism across the border. And this does not depend upon the mere difficulty of translation, it is not a question of grammar and dictionary, rather it is the point of view which seems strange to a foreign reader, which requires some readjustment before the true focus can be obtained. Nor is the discrepancy less in the minuter points of rhythm and versification. The assonances of Calderon are perfectly satisfying to a Spanish ear; to us they have simply the effect of a false rhyme. Alfred de Musset threw French literature into a ferment by ending an Alexandrine with the words 'tu es;' we pass over the line without noting anything unusual in its cadence. In a word, apart from Heine, we shall hardly find an instance of great poetry which is not saturated with a national atmosphere, and even Heine is an exception easily explained, and more easily overstated.

The rule is equally applicable to painting. When Mr Whistler tells us that 'there is no such thing as English art,' and that 'we might as well talk of English mathematics,' we can only suppose that he is experimenting in paradox, at least we may wait for conviction until we have found the counterparts of Reynolds and Gainsborough, of Morland and Constable. The last of these, indeed, may be taken as a crucial case. There can be no doubt that the Barbizon School was influenced by his method and example, that in some degree it shared his aim and followed his style, yet Constable is as English as the 'Excursion,' Millet as French as the 'Feuilles d'Automne.' The distinctions may be more subtle than those of language, but they are not more unreal. The lines of demarcation may be obscured by imitators and copyists, but they still exist for those who make their art a reality. Even community of school or subject will do very little to obliterate the inherent differences of temper; a man may find his teacher in Paris and his model in Rome, and learn after all that 'cælum non animum mutat.'

Here an objection occurs. Grant, it will be said, that the representative arts are in some way affected by the _entourage_ of the artist, we cannot therefore infer that the same will hold good of music. They are comparatively material and concrete, they depict the actual, they stand in direct relation to an external world, but in music we are dealing with pure abstract form, and the laws of form are universal. Hence the composer is not bound by national limitations; he stands above them, 'he alone with the stars;' he is the citizen of an ideal kingdom where there is one common language and one common scheme of life. To this it is an obvious answer, that music idealises the natural language of emotion, and that if the emotional temper differs in separate countries, the music must differ also. The abstract element is the paramount need of balance and symmetry, but there are a thousand ways in which this requirement can be fulfilled, and the method selected by any school or country will depend upon its own predilections and its own character. And if the music be true and vital, it will always be found to embody some phase of the national temperament, it will speak with a tone and cadence that are unlike those of neighbouring lands, it will express shades and nuances of feeling which are in some way special to the country that has given it birth.

There is little likelihood that we shall ever be able to reduce these distinctions to phrase and formula, but we may readily observe them by a comparison of the Volkslieder that obtain among the different races of Europe. Here we shall find the national idioms in their simplest and most unsophisticated expression, the direct primary utterance of the same ideas, which attain a fuller and more developed beauty at the hands of the great composers. Of course, as the music of a country progresses, it will advance farther and farther from the Volkslied, it will grow richer and more complex, it will treat its material by methods which the artist has inherited, not so much from his nation as from his predecessors in the art. Yet it still remains true, that the line of ancestry is continuous, that the course of genealogy may be traced, and that the masterpiece, with all its finish and civilisation, is of the same flesh and blood as its humbler compatriot. Again, there are cases where a composer has naturalised himself in a new home, and has become, in a sense, bilingual; in all these it will be found that the language of his birth holds the predominance, and that his new acquirement is only an added grace. Brahms, for instance, does not treat the Hungarian idiom in the same way as Liszt, or even as Schubert, he employs it with extraordinary ease and mastery, but he never lets us forget that he is a German.

We may conclude, then, that a composer of genius, if he write simply and naturally, will express his own character, and in so doing will express that of his country as well. More particularly will this be true if he appear during the stir and stress of a patriotic movement, if he be occupied in constructing a system for the guidance and direction of his successors. For a time of political crisis not only brings out all that is best in a man, it also draws him nearer to his people, and makes him at once more desirous and more capable of serving as its true representative. And so it has been with Dvořák. If we compare his melody with that of Smetana, and with that of the Bohemian folk-songs, we shall find a notable resemblance of thought and feeling, they are all of one family, of one kindred, connected by a sympathy that the widest distinctions of treatment cannot annul. No doubt Smetana is often content to reproduce the methods of the folk-song, while in Dvořák the curves are made richer, and the designs more complex and beautiful, still the emotional basis of the one is that of the other, and the distinctions between them depend partly on the personal element, partly on the accident of historical position. Smetana came first into the field; it was his work to gather the stones and to lay the foundation. Dvořák followed him, and began, with the same materials, to raise a superstructure.

Hence it is not a little significant that his few misadventures have always marked some momentary defection from the national cause. The first version of 'King and Collier' has long passed beyond the reach of criticism, but at least we know that it was written in imitation of Wagner, and that it was unsuccessful. The 149th Psalm is merely a careful and conscientious expression of German method, and has hardly a greater value than that which belongs to an Academic exercise. The Oratorio of St Ludmila is a concession to the supposed requirements of English taste, and in the record of its composer's works it has almost dropped out of account. And if we turn for contrast to such achievements as the Pianoforte Quintett, or the Spectre's Bride, or the D minor Symphony, we are at once struck, not only with the difference of result, but with the total difference of character. Here Dvořák is delivering his own message in his own words, here he attains a native eloquence that can readily compel our attention. It is surely no extreme inference that we should here recognise some connection of cause and effect.

At the same time we must remember that the racial element is only one among formative conditions, and that it is itself a factor in personal idiosyncrasy. 'Just what constitutes special power and genius in a man,' says Matthew Arnold, 'seems often to be his blending with the basis of a national temperament some additional gift or grace not proper to that temperament.' And of this we may find a ready illustration in Dvořák's treatment of the scale, an illustration of double interest, partly because it shows one of the most distinctive attributes in his music, partly because even here he stands in direct relation to an ethnological background. We have already seen that the scale now in use among western nations was set in course by the Florentine revolution of 1600, and that it spread from Florence to Paris, and from Paris to Leipsic, until it was finally established by Sebastian Bach. Hence the music of Italy, France, and Germany grew with its growth, developed with its development, and constructed by its means a common body of system and tradition. With all their divergencies of emotional impulse, the composers of these three countries have this formal point of union, that they accepted the diatonic scale as their unit, and treated the chromatic rather as an appenage and an extension. From this followed an important consequence. For, in the first place, a settled scale is not only a vehicle for melody, it is also a means of modulation, and this latter function comes more into evidence as music becomes more complex and the need of modulation increases. And, in the second place, it is an essential characteristic of the diatonic scale, that some of its notes should be more nearly related than others, and that composers who found their work upon it should therefore acknowledge some modulations as comparatively easy and natural, some as comparatively remote and recondite. Of course, as time goes on, we become familiarised with effects that once appeared violent and extreme, yet even now we recognise certain relative limitations. Alfio's song in _Cavalleria_, for example, gives us merely the impression of deliberate defiance, it is not construction but demolition, not freedom but revolt.

For obvious historical reasons the growth of this scale system left Bohemia altogether untouched. She did not enter the field until this part of the work was completed, she bore no share in the traditions which its gradual evolutions had established in neighbouring lands. When therefore she came to the making of her own music, she could look upon this scheme from outside, she could treat it dispassionately, she could take it without any of the limitations that had hitherto marked its course. And in doing so, she produced a result to which the whole history of music affords no exact parallel. Dvořák is the one solitary instance of a composer who adopts the chromatic scale as unit, who regards all notes as equally related. His method is totally different from that of chromatic writers like Grieg and Chopin, for Grieg uses the effects as isolated points of colour, and Chopin embroiders them, mainly as appoggiaturas, on a basis of diatonic harmony. His 'equal temperament' is totally different from that of Bach, for Bach only showed that all the keys could be employed, not that they could be arranged in any chance order or sequence. But to Dvořák the chromatic passages are part of the essential texture, and the most extreme modulations follow as simply and easily as the most obvious. In a word, his work, from this standpoint, is truly a _nuova musica_, developed, like all new departures, from the consequences of past achievement, but none the less turning the stream of tendency into a fresh direction.

It may at once be admitted that from this cause the music of Dvořák loses something of strength and massiveness: that it is Corinthian rather than Doric. But, at the same time, it compensates, at any rate in part, by a certain opulence, a certain splendour and luxury to which few other musicians have attained: and, beside this, its very strangeness constitutes an additional claim upon our interest. We rather lose our bearings when, in the second of the Legenden, we find a phrase which has its treble in G and its tenor in D flat; or when, as in the fifth number of the Spectre's Bride, the music passes from one remote key to another with a continuous and facile display of resource that is apparently inexhaustible. Often, too, the devices outmatch the utmost capacity of our recognised symbols. Mendelssohn's famous crux of 'Fes moll' would be plain sailing to a composer who, in his third Pianoforte Trio, writes passages in D flat minor, and B double-flat major, and other keys of a signature equally undecipherable. And though these matters may seem trivial enough when they are submitted to the indignity of our musical nomenclature, we should yet remember that there is nothing trivial in the habit of mind which they imply. It is to them and to their like that we owe all the warmth of colour, all the richness of tone, all the marvellous effects of surprise and crisis that are so eminently characteristic of Dvořák in his best mood. To an imagination so vivid as his, the possession of an extended scale was a priceless opportunity; and he has used it to fill his work with incident and adventure as varied and brilliant as were ever lavished by the hand of Scott or Dumas.

His treatment of the classical forms is much influenced for good by his long and patient study of Beethoven. In the more highly-organised types he certainly falls short of his great master: he lacks the perfect balance that marks the first movement of the Appassionata or the A major Symphony; as we should naturally expect, he tends rather to restlessness of tonality and to a page overcrowded with accessory keys. But, in spite of this, his instinct for structure is real and genuine; it ranks higher than that of Chopin--far higher than that of Liszt or Berlioz; and his outline, though not always in complete symmetry, is firmly drawn and filled with interesting detail. Some of his larger forms are pure experiments in construction: such, for instance, as the opening movement of the Violin Concerto, the Finale of the G major Symphony, and the Scherzo Capriccioso for orchestra: sometimes he founds an entire number on a single melodic phrase, as in the slow movement of the Second Pianoforte Trio: more often, as in the F major Symphony and the String Sestett, he takes the established type and modifies it in some important particular. But whatever the result, his structure always gives us the impression of thought and design. He has his own method, and even when he fails of conviction, he can generally command respect.

The two forms in which he is most successful are the two most usually associated with his name--the Dumka and the Furiant. Both of these are real accessions to musical literature: not because they are new in conception, for, like all other structures, they descend in direct evolution from the folk-song, but because they have developed the primitive type in a new way, and have enriched the existing stock with a strain of collateral relationship. The Furiant is one of the national dances of Bohemia, and is frequently employed by Dvořák as a representative of the scherzo. In adopting it he has, to a great extent, altered its character; he has enlarged its range, quickened its tempo, and replaced, with a more vigorous gaiety and _abandon_, its original tone of half-humorous assurance. If we compare the example in the A major Quintett with the traditional melody--either as it appears among the Volkslieder, or, as it is used by Smetana in the Bartered Bride--we shall see at once that Dvořák has done more than borrow from the existing resources of his countrymen; that, as a matter of fact, he has taken nothing but the mould, and has used it for the casting of an entirely different metal. Even more distinctive is his treatment of the Dumka or 'Elegy,' a complex form which, like a sonnet-sequence, holds in combination a series of separate poems. It is here, indeed, that he has brought his constructive power to its highest attainment. The whole scheme is of great interest and value: varied without digression, uniform without monotony, flexible enough to answer all moods and engage all sympathies. The stanzas admit a sharper contrast than is possible to the subjects of a 'sonata movement': the key system, though it would be impracticable on a larger scale, is admirably suited to these brief moments of concentration: the recurrent themes maintain the organism in proper balance and equipoise. There is little need to speculate on the ancestry of the form, though it is worth noting, that a simple instance occurs in the Serenade trio of Beethoven: whatever its origin, it acquires in the hands of Dvořák a special significance which is quite enough to place it among the most notable of his gifts. For illustration, we may turn to the slow movement of the Pianoforte Quintett, or to that of the Third Symphony, or to the six Elegies that have recently been published for pianoforte trio. They are all beautiful, they are all characteristic, and they fill their canvas with a most ingenious diversity of design.

This feeling for colour and movement, which appears partly in his rhythms, partly in his use of the scale, partly in his preference for lyric and elegiac forms, may also account in some measure for his unquestioned and supreme mastery of orchestration. Here at least there is no counterchange of victory and defeat, no loss in one direction to balance gain in another; here at least every achievement is a triumph and every work a masterpiece. Nor has he alone the lesser gift of writing brilliant dialogue for his instrument, of making each stand out salient and expressive against a background of lower tone; he is even more successful in those combinations of _timbre_ which harmonise the separate voices and give to the full chord its peculiar richness and euphony. When we think of his scoring, it is not to recall a horn passage in one work or a flute solo in another--plenty of these could be found, and in a master of less capacity they would be well worth recording--but it is rather the marvellous interplay and texture of the whole that remains in our memory and compels our admiration. Look, for example, at the Husitska Overture, or the third Slavonic Rhapsody, or the slow movement of the Symphony in D minor. Hardly in all musical literature are the orchestral forces treated with such a warmth of imagination or such unerring certainty of judgment.

Hence it is not surprising that a great part of his finest work should be instrumental, and that even his masterpieces of Hymn and Cantata should be written, more or less, upon instrumental lines. He is always rather hampered than aided by the collaboration of the poet; his chromatic style is better suited to strings and wind than to the peculiar limitations of the human voice; his vigorous rhythms are in some degree impeded by the slower articulation of the words; his sense of form finds its most natural expression in symphonic and concerted music. Again, so far as the distinction is applicable at the present day, he belongs rather to the classical than to the romantic school; he is more concerned with producing the highest beauty of sound than with following, through all its phases, the emotional import of a poem. His operas are for the most part essentially undramatic, and if they hold the stage, will survive as displays of pure melody. His great choral compositions--the Stabat Mater, the Spectre's Bride, the Requiem--stand in a loose relation to the texts on which they are founded; embodying, no doubt, the general tendency of thought, but always acknowledging the melodic requirements as paramount. Even his songs offer no exception to the rule. It is true that, after the Zigeunerlieder, they undergo a remarkable change in treatment and elaboration, but although they lose the shape of the ballad, they are never out of touch with its character. Nothing, in short, is further from Dvořák's ideal than the imposition of a programme. He is essentially what the Germans would call an 'absolute musician;' content to express the broad general types of feeling, and, within their limits, wholly engaged with the special service of his art.

This statement requires a word of qualification. The great masters of pure classical style,--Haydn, for example, and Mozart, and Beethoven, have, as their predominant gift, the sense of outline, and their sense of colour, however keen and vivid, is always kept in subservience to the requisitions of design. As a natural consequence, they are supreme in the string quartett, which, among all types of composition, demands purity of line as its first essential. But with Dvořák, the relation of these attributes is reversed, in him the sense of colour preponderates, and the demands of pure outline, though never disregarded, are nevertheless relegated to the second place. Thus, in his music for strings alone, the Sestett in A, the Quintett in G minor, the four Quartetts, we feel that he is chafing at the restraints of monochrome, that he wants the whole palette, that he is always held in check by the absence of orchestral resources. The result is not that he writes orchestral music for the strings; he is too true an artist to fall into this error; but that he writes string music under difficulties, that he foregoes all the better part of his equipment, that he is accomplishing a task in which his special gifts have little opportunity of display. No doubt these works contain passages and even numbers of great beauty, but as a whole they do not bear comparison with the Violin Concerto or the Symphonies, or the Carnaval Overture. Here Dvořák obtains his contrast of tone, here he has the whole gamut of colour at his command, here he can win the full measure of success from which he is in part precluded by a severer method. Yet it would be wrong to class him, for this reason, among the romantic composers. He shares with them one of the most important of their qualities, but he uses it for the furtherance of an end that is different from theirs. The fundamental distinction is one of ideals, and in ideal Dvořák is on the side of the classics.

Hence there is no inconsistency in estimating him by the classical standard. For music is not to be summed up in terms of national language or personal idiosyncrasy; these are but the necessary conditions through which is embodied the abstract universal of form. Thus, although a man can only take rank as an artist if he express his own character and that of his people, he is only a great artist in so far as he expresses them in the best possible way. The first spontaneous conception of melody springs from the emotional temperament of the composer, and so marks him at once as a member of his particular nation, its treatment is derived from the intellectual laws of proportion and balance, and so belongs to the general evolution of the art. This distinction appears very clearly in Dvořák's work. His melody, taken by itself, is often as simple and ingenuous as a folk-song, but in polyphony, in thematic development, in all details of contrast and elaboration, his ideal is to organise the rudimentary life, and to advance it into a fuller and more adult maturity. Of course, it cannot be said that he is uniformly successful. He has little sense of economy, little of that fine reticence and control which underlies the most lavish moments of Brahms or Beethoven; his use of wealth is so prodigal that his generosity is sometimes left with inadequate resources. The stream is so rapid that it has not always time for depth, the eloquence so prompt and unfailing that it does not always stop to select the best word. But, for all this, he is a great genius, true in thought, fertile in imagination, warm and sympathetic in temper of mind. He has borne his part in a national cause, and has thereby won for himself a triumph that will endure. He has enriched his people, and, in so doing, has augmented the treasury of the whole world.

JOHANNES BRAHMS.

The greatest genius is the most indebted man. A poet is no
rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says
everything, saying at last something good; but a heart in unison
with his time and country. There is nothing whimsical and fantastic
in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the
weightiest convictions, and pointed with the most determined aim
which any man or class knows of in his time.--EMERSON.