The Psychology of Beauty by Ethel D. Puffer (good non fiction books to read TXT) 📕

fitted for this. The attention sweeps down from the high side to the low, from which it returns through some backward suggestion of lines or interest in the objects of the high side. Action and reaction—movement and return of attention—is inevitable under the conditions of this type; and this it is which allows the free play,—which, indeed, CONSTITUTES and expresses the activity belonging to the subject, just as the fixation of the pyramid constitutes the quietude of the religious picture. Thus it is that the diagonal composition is particularly suited to portray scenes of grandeur, and to induce a feeling of awe in the spectator, because only here can the eye rove in one large sweep from side to side of the picture, recalled by the mass and interest of the side from which it moves. The swing of the pendulum is here widest, so to speak, and all the feeling-tones which belong to wide, free movement are called into play. If, at the same time, the element of the deep vista is introduced, we have the extreme of concentration combined with the extreme of movement; and the result is a picture in the “grand style”

—comparable to high tragedy—in which all the feeling-tones which wait on motor impulses are, as it were, while yet in the same reciprocal relation, tuned to the highest pitch. Such a picture is the “Finding of the Ring,” Paris Bordone, in the Venice Academy. All the mass and the interest and the suggestion of the downward lines and of the magnificent perspective toward the left, and the effect of the whole space composition is of superb largeness of life and feeling. Compare Titian’s “Presentation of the Virgin,” also the two great compositions by Veronese, “Martyrdom of St. Mark,” etc., in the Doge’s Palace, Venice, and “Esther before Ahaseurus,” in the Uffizi, Florence.

In these last two, the mass, direction of interest, movement, and attention are toward the left, while all the lines tend diagonally to the right, where a vista is also suggested,—the diagonal making a V just at the end. Here, too, the effect is of magnificence and vigor.

 

If, then, the pyramid belongs to contemplation, the diagonal to action, what ca be said of landscape? It is without action, it is true, and yet does not express that positive quality, that WILL not to act, of the rapt contemplation. The landscape uncomposed is negative, and it demands unity. Its type of composition, then, must give it something positive besides unity. It lacks both concentration and action; but it can gain them both from a space composition which shall combine unity with a tendency to movement. And this is given by the diagonal and V-shaped type. This type merely allows free play to the natural tendency of the “active” picture; but it constrains the neutral, inanimate landscape. The shape itself imparts motion to the picture: the sweep of line, the concentration of the vista, the unifying power of the inverted triangle between two masses, act, as it were, externally to the suggestion of the object itself. There is always enough quiet in a landscape,—

the overwhelming suggestion of the horizontal suffices for that; it is movement that is needed for richness of effect, and, as I have shown, no type imparts the feeling of movement so strongly as the diagonal and V-shaped type of composition.

Landscapes need energy to produce “stimulation,” not repression, and so the diagonal type is proportionately more numerous.

 

The rigid square is found only at an early stage in the development of composition. Moreover, all the examples are “story” pictures, for the most part scenes from the lives of the saints, etc. Many of them are double-centre,—square, that is, with a slight break in the middle, the grouping purely logical, to bring out the relations of the characters. Thus, in the “Dream of Saint Martin,” Simone Martini, a fresco at Assisi, the saint lies straight across the picture with his head in one corner. Behind him on one side stand the Christ and angels, grouped closely together, their heads on the same level. These are all, of course, in one sense symmetrical,—

in the weight of interest, at least,—but they are completely amorphous from an aesthetic point of view. The forms, that is, do not count at all,—only the meanings. The story is told by a clear separation of the parts, and as, in most stories, there are two principal actors, it merely happens that they fall into the two sides of the picture. On the other hand, a rigid geometrical symmetry is also characteristic of early composition, and these two facts seem to contradict each other. But it is to be noted, first, that the rigid geometrical symmetry belongs only to the “Madonna Enthroned,” and general “Adoration” pieces; and secondly, that this very rigidity of symmetry in details can coexist with variations which destroy balance. Thus, in a “Madonna Enthroned” of Giotto, where absolute symmetry in detail is kept, the Child sits far out on the right knee of the Madonna.

 

It would seem that the symmetry of these early pictures was not dictated by a conscious demand for symmetrical arrangement, or rather for real balance, else such failures would hardly occur.

The presence of geometrical symmetry is more easily explained as the product, in large part, of technical conditions: of the fact that these pictures were painted as altar-pieces to fill a space definitely symmetrical in character—often, indeed, with architectural elements intruding into it. We may even connect the Madonna pictures with the temple images of the classic period, to explain why it was natural to paint the object of worship seated exactly facing the worshiper. Thus we may separate the two classes of pictures, the one giving an object of worship, and thus taking naturally, as has been said, the pyramidal, symmetrical shape, and being moulded to symmetry by all other suggestions of technique; the other aiming at nothing except logical clearness. This antithesis of the symbol and the story has a most interesting parallel in the two great classes of primitive art—the one symbolic, merely suggestive, shaped by the space it had to fill, and so degenerating into the slavishly symmetrical; the other descriptive, “story-telling,” and without a trace of space composition. On neither side is there evidence of direct aesthetic feeling. Only in the course of artistic development do we find the rigid, yet often unbalanced, symmetry relaxing into a free substitutional symmetry, and the formless narrative crystallizing into a really unified and balanced space-form. The two antitheses approach each other in the “balance” of the masterpieces of civilized art—in which, for the first time, a real feeling for space composition makes itself felt.

V THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC V THE BEAUTY OF MUSIC I

THERE is a story, in Max Muller’s amusing reminiscences, of how Mendelssohn and David once played, in his hearing, Beethoven’s later sonatas for piano and violin, and of how they shrugged their shoulders, and opined the old man had not been quite himself when he wrote them. In the history of music it seems to be a rule almost without exceptions, that the works of genius are greeted with contumely. The same is no doubt true, though to a much less degree, of other arts, but in music it seems that the critics proposed also excellent reasons for their vehemence.

And it is instructive to observe that the objections, and the reasons for the objections, recur, after the original object of wrath has passed into acceptance, nay, into dominance of the musical world. One may also descry one basic controversy running through all these utterances, even when not explicitly set forth.

 

It was made a reproach to Beethoven, as it has been made a reproach to Richard Strauss, that he sacrificed the beauty of form to expression; and it was rejoined, perhaps less in the old time than now, that expression was itself the end and meaning of music. Now the works of genius, as we have seen, after all take care of themselves. But it is of greatest significance for the theory of music, as of all art, that in the circle of the years, the same contrasting views, grown to ever sharper opposition, still greet the appearance of new work. It was with Wagner, as all the world knows, that the question came first to complete formulation. His invention of the music-drama rested on his famous theory of music as the heightened medium of expression, glorified speech, which accordingly demands freedom to follow all the varying nuances of feeling and emotion. Music has always been called the language of the emotions, but Wagner based his views not only on the popular notion, but on the metaphysical theories of Schopenhauer; in particular, on the view that music is the objectification of the will. Herbert Spencer followed with the thesis that music has its essential source in the cadences of emotional speech. In opposition primarily to Wagner, the so-called formalists were represented by Hanslick, who wrote his well-known “The Beautiful in Music”

to show that though music ha a limited capacity of expression, its aim is formal or logical perfection alone. The expressionist school could not contradict the undoubted fact that chords and intervals which are harmonious show certain definite physical and mathematical relationships, that, in other words, our musical preferences appear to be closely related to, if not determined by, these relationships. Thus each school seemed to be backed by science. The emotional-speech theory has been held in a vague way, indeed, by most of those theorists whose natural conservatism would have drawn them in the other direction, and is doubtless responsible for the attempts at mediation, first made by Ambros,<1> and now met in almost all musical literature. Music may be, and is, expressive, it is said, so long as each detail allows itself to be entirely derived from and justified by the mere formal element. The “centre of gravity” lies in the formal relations.

 

<1> The Boundaries of Music and Poetry.

 

To this, after all, Hanslick himself might subscribe. Other writers seek to balance form and expression, insisting on “the dual nature of music,” while resting ultimately on the emotional-speech theory. “The most universal composers, recognizing the interdependence of the two elements, produce the highest type of pure music, music in which beauty is based upon expression, and expression transfigured by beauty.”<1>

 

<1> D.G. Mason, From Grieg to Brahms, 1902, p. 30.

 

This usual type of reconciliation, however, is a perfectly mechanical binding together of two possibly conflicting aesthetic demands. The question is of the essential nature of music, not whether music may be, but whether it must be, expressive; not whether is has expressive power, but whether it is, in its essence, expression,—a question which is only obscured by insisting on the interdependence of the two elements. If music has its essential source in the cadences of speech, then it must develop and must be judged accordingly.

Herbert Spencer is perfectly logical in saying “It may be shown that music is but an idealization of the natural language of emotion, and that, consequently, music must be good or bad according as it conforms to the laws of this natural language.”<1> But what, then, of music which, according to Ambros, is justified by its formal relations?

Is music good because it is very expressive, and bad because it is too little expressive? or is its goodness and badness independent of its expressiveness? Such a question is not to be answered by recognizing two kinds of goodness. Only by an attempt to decide the fundamental nature of the musical experience, and an adjustment of the other factors in strict subordination to it, can the general principle be settled.

 

<1> On Educaiton, p. 41.

 

The excuse for this artificial yoking together of two opposing principles is apparent when it is seen