The Cold War between Apollonia and Dionysia
Dear Papa,
I cannot write poetry; I am not a poet. I cannot communicate with light and shadow; I am not a painter. I cannot even through movements and pantomimes reveal my feelings, my thoughts; I am not a dancer. I am a musician. Tomorrow at *13Cannabich’s, I shall play all my congratulations for your name and birthday on the Clavier.
And one tone after another, boasting amongst other things of illustrious genealogies and prowess in war (with words); supplicating deities, intoning the mysteries of love, as well as inducing buffalos to turn water wheels (with tones); and every stumbling step of the way till tomorrow their divine, fallible, inventive, intermittently rational voice of human beings has been contending with reason, with emotion, with both noble and nasty disposition, which words and which tones are the true and which are the false.
One certainty, words and tones together shared the same time-continuum with powerful effect. But the word-speakers held the word to be supreme and commanded the ordering of tones, while the tone-singers defiantly innovated and reordered their own tones as they dared.
From this endless struggle, the makers of tones, the shapers of words, the political moves of both as well as the under- and over-privileged audiences, have been, with unrestrained zeal, chipping and chopping away at the function and meaning of a growing body of tones and words defined as the art of music.
Igor Stravinsky stated in his Harvard lectures: “The poetics of the classical philosopher did not consist of lyrical dissertations about natural talent and about the essence of beauty.” He continued, “Aristotle’s poetics constantly suggests ideas regarding personal work arrangements of materials and structure.” The poetics of music is exactly what Stravinsky was going to talk about; that is to say that he would not use music as a pretext for pleasant fancies.
Since Stravinsky imposingly took care of the poetics of music, but generously avoided the seductive path of pleasant fancies, I, with proper regard for you, Stravinsky, and myself, shall steer clear of the techné of my craft. I do not promise to avoid the pleasant fancies if they help me in any way to clarify and expose some of the confusion generated in the heat of that endless conflict I might title, “The Cold War between Apollonia and Dionysia.” What you may ask, is that? Perhaps words on the objective and subjective elements in music will turn on a small light in the direction I hope to explore with you.
While the words “objective” and “subjective” possess semantic validity in the realm of philosophy, their application to the art of music has been most impressive. Reason and poetry both share the use of words. Tone shaping and emotional affect can share the same functioning in sound. The Encyclopedia Britannica holds Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) responsible for the modern belief that the followers of Apollo and Dionysius were inimical to each other. I think it valuable to list some associative terms that are generally linked with each deity:
Apollo: God of the Sun—motion—harmony—the golden mean—objective—scientific—dispassionate—pure—formal—stricter than free—traditional—proportional—consonant—law abiding—entertaining—classic—noninvolved—cool—impersonal—relaxed—mind oriented—music for its own sake—non dramatic—non programmatic—loyal to the text—artificial—reasonable—rational.
Dionysius: God of wine—of ecstasy—night—catharsis—subjective—orgiastic—passionate—uninhibited—improvisatory—informal—more free than strict—innovative—revolutionary—involved—personal—intense—hot—dramatic—dissonant—propagandistic—programmatic—expressionistic—romantic—baroque—sensual—decadent—chaotic—natural—irrational.
In Cratylus Socrates pointed to the fact that Apollo was the God of harmony; musicians and astronomers both affirmed that Apollo made all things move together. Flowers of Orpheus, the musician, during the sixth century, acknowledging allegiance to the god, Dionysius, in reality worshipped within the cults of Apollo as well, thus creating some of the early philosophical confusion over Apollonia and Dionysian distinctions. I tend to believe the Orphic movement was more Apollonian than Dionysian (its favored instrument, the Apolline lyre). Delphic prophecy was reasonable, not rapturous. Asceticism, not exhilaration were embodied in the rhythmic stresses of words and plucked strings. How very different from the character of the instrument of the true followers of Dionysius, the double-fluted Aulos regarded in sound and symbol as ecstatic, orgiastic and phallic. These two instruments, Lyre and Aulos have come to represent the conflict between sobriety and ecstasy, reason and unreason, objectivity and subjectivity.
The number of cultural and social influences that shape musical taste are far more mysterious than a simple intuition of what is good or bad, right or wrong, or a simple development of a plucked string or a windblown tube. Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) reported that Trobriand Island singers were no less successful with the ladies than their music. “For” say the Trobrianders, “the throat is a long passage like the vulva and the two will attract.”
“Greenlanders,” and I hesitate to add most rock singers of this world, while singing, bend their knees at regular intervals, at times step forwards or backwards, turn half around, twist and contort the body; Greenlanders, the upper half, Elvis Presleys, the groin. Apropos of Dionysian body movement, the Juilliard String Quartet once received the following letter:
Dear Sirs,
When Camilla d’Urso began the study of the violin, her father made her practice with her right heel on a fragile china saucer so she could learn to play without excess motion. I have seen Heifetz playing as beautifully as it is possible to play on the violin—with no squirming.
Gentlemen of the Juilliard Quartet, (excluding the cellist who plays with dignity), I doubt that your parents made you practice with your right heels on a basket of snakes. Some of us attend concerts to hear the music, objet to having our attention distracted from your accuracy in playing by all this swaying, wiggling, foot patting, head jerking and doing the Twist to Beethoven’s Quartets. PLEASE STOP IT! It is unmusical and unprofessional.
On the other hand, if you are so embarrassed by your musicianship, try baying like hounds in the rests. Then we will stay at home and you can draw perhaps some of the public that is flocking after the Beatles.
Yours in deep sorrow,
A Library of Congress Listener
While Chinese civilization had established a science of music millennia earlier than the Greeks, the physical system of musical tones and their properties are known to us today as having been established by Pythagoras. The followers of Pythagoras (including Euclid) sixth century B.C. were the Western World’s pioneers in establishing the mathematical relationships of the harmonic overtone series.
The Chinese had endowed musical tones with non-musical connotations. The tone called KUNG (C flat) was equated with “lovely winds murmur—wood—mercury—north—black; the tone SHANG (D flat)—spring—water—Jupiter—east—violet; CHIAO (E flat)—autumn—Earth—Saturn—center—yellow; CHIH (G flat)—winter—metal—Venus –west—white; and the tone, Yü– summer—Mars—fire—south—red.
The Pythagoreans paradoxically established the foundations of not only a science of tones, but a mystical, transcendental art form based on the emotional response to numerical relationships. From such thought and theory developed two rather playful characteristics of the art of music: a pure love of tone-ordering according to the rules of a game evolving out of the physical properties of sound: and the pure delight in the mastery of the physical properties and challenges of musical instruments (resulting in a class of professionals called virtuosi.)
Both Aristotle and Plato came to regard music and musicians with a most conservative and skeptical eye and ear. With their heightened sense of ethos and duty they could not view music as anything but a way to something higher in value: Aristotle always the observing analyst and scientist, Plato, distraught by the power of music to accomplish good or evil. Neither of them ever tired of reminding us that the professional musician or virtuoso was vulgar, while describing their performances as vain, glib, boorish and unmusical; maintaining that technical polish was of ascending importance. Here, now in the twentieth century, as a practicing composer-performer, I find myself completely beguiled by Aristotle’s disapproval of stress on style of delivery, or virtuosity for its own sake, on impressing the audience in a bid for applause instead of concentrating on the substance of the music, its truth and virtue. His three requirements for a good performance (right use of tone, understanding of harmony, right use of rhythm) are still valid today. Aristotle did shock Plato by writing: “Music for public performance should be no better than the type of audience which enjoys it.”
Timotheus of Athens, one of the avant-gardists upsetting the peaceful state of Plato and Aristotle has been quoted as saying, “I do not sing of the past;” “in novelty is power,” and “to hell with the old muse.” (Shades of Boulez shouting, “Schoenberg is dead.”) However, whether the defender of the faith or destroyer of rules, no one could fail to be touched by Socrates in the last Platonic essay that, “He (Socrates) could not understand the injunction he often received in his dreams to compose music, for he had always practiced philosophy and this was certainly the highest and best music.” There were a few early Greek philosophers who could live without music; among them Philodemus of Gadara, the Epicurean, ca. first century B.C. who added insult to injury when he said: “Music is irrational and cannot affect the soul or the emotions and is no more an expressive art than cookery.
The Romans, more preoccupied with government and things military considered music more of an addendum to the already developed Greek art. Greek musicians were so swelling the ranks of gigantic, Roman orchestras and choruses that Seneca the Younger (4BC-65AD) lamented there were often more performers on stage than spectators in the audience. Wealthy ladies competed with each other in patronizing special stables of virtuosi prodigies whose efforts to outplay each other in technical displays and sensational interpretations fed petty jealousies, enlarged the ranks of professional cliques and bribed contest judges: (activities as familiar to us as to Plato and Aristotle.)
The ferment and evolution in music, growing out of Hellenic artistic dynamics, by this moment in history had completed a full circle. While there may have occurred interesting and unique diversions at specific moments in musical history, the main stage of human involvement with the musical art seems to repeat itself over and over, the only new element being the names of places and the cast of participants in battle. Oh yes, I do admit to music-technological evolution but I believe that not unlike a mystical or sexual experience, the inner character, quality and depth of artistic experience has not changed significantly.
The early Christian attitude towards musical function, both objective and subjective, followed the predestined path of previous purgations, borrowing from the pornographic pagans as well as the heretical Hebrews; censoring the use and enjoyment of music for its own sake, considered by now, a Dionysian sin; (confessed St. Augustine, “When I am moved not by the singing but with the thing sung, I float between peril of pleasure and an approval custom”) altering and simplifying as did the inflexible, but inexhaustible Pope Gregory while collecting and codifying the Christian world’s liturgical music. However, pleasure and preoccupation with music presented the same difficulties as pleasure and preoccupation as sex. Authority may try very hard to direct, suppress or reshape such pleasure, but after the roar of battle subsides, the observation can be made that though many casualties resulted the original impulse that has run its course is still present and the power structure must either ignore it or join it. The powerful Christian hierarchy chose wisely to join it. After all, the options were not that inimitable to Church faith. The Christian God easily could embrace the extravagant praise of both a well-directed, Dionysian devotion or an ingenious Apollonian, polyphonic invention as well as any Greek deity could. And that which could not be embraced was wisely tolerated with eventual victory in mind. Thus, the young St. Francis and the many aberrant Abelards spent their early days very much in the tradition of the medieval jongleurs, minstrels, troubadours and minnesingers, making street music, conning the peasants of the countryside with musical theater, ghost composing the love songs of less creative knights in armor, all before accepting the vows of strict abstinence and pure thought.
The Council of Lyon in 1274 and the Papal Bull of Avignon in 1324, both said no! to the use of many-voiced polyphony in church. “Singers deprave the melodies with incessant running to and fro.” However, this did not prevent Guilliaume de Machaut (1300-1377) from describing music as a science that would have us laugh, sing and dance. Meanwhile, lesser fanatics attacked from both sides of the musical battlefield with ax and ink: the medieval church banning the major diatonic scale as modus lascivious and Calvin’s musical henchman. Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) allowing the great Zurich organ to be hacked to pieces while the organist stood by helpless and weeping.
Then, how ecumenical that Martin Luther (1483-1546), religious performer, played both the modern lyre and aulos (the lute and the flute). And, found joy in the simple folk song as well as more complex polyphony. “How strange and wonderful that one voice sings a simple melody, while three, four or five other voices are also sung. These voices play and sway in joyful exuberance around the tune and with varying art and tuneful sound, wondrously adorn and beautify it.”
Three music-craft evolutions became entangled in the greater Apollonia—Dionysian battle: the attitude towards rhythm and its notation which became a crucial rallying point of both forces for freedom and the forces for strict time; the fixing and tuning of tones which became a pawn of the forces for ever increasing chromaticism on one hand, and the forces for harmonic law and order as well as melodic simplicity; and finally, the mechanical measuring of rate of tempo or speed which became the battle cry of both attacking forces, slow, medium or fast, depending not only on one’s heartbeat but on whether one’s heartbeat remained loyal to Dionysian extremes of fast and slow or to Apollonian moderation of a golden mean.
At this point a brief overview of battle forces might be useful. Authorities controlling an ordered compliant music; a music that served and pleased but did not overexcite or challenge, indulge in excessive technique or emotion, remaining self-effacing and object oriented. All this comprised Apollonian territory. The theatrical, the self-indulgent virtuoso, the emotionally abandoned, perpetrator of extremes and intense involvement along with the subjectively committed musician and uncontrollable innovator; all inhabited Dionysian land. The masters of tonal (ordering) both in composition and the playing of instruments could join either side, depending on the moment and the personal inclination and indeed, in some cases like counter-intelligence, play both sides of the field. Andreas Vogelmaier (sixteenth century) recognized one of the hottest areas of philosophic unrest: “It seems as if theory and practice were ever to be at strife, for the man of science, who never hears music, and the musician who never reads books, must be equally averse to each other.” Kepler (1571 -1630), in the spirit of Pythagoras had composed musical tones to the related movement of planets.
Descartes (1596—1650), in the spirit of both Plato and Pythagoras and a confirmed Apollonian, attributed moral values to rhythm. He suggested the desirability of using rhythms which neither enervate nor overexcite the passions.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) in 1647 responded for the Dionysians with a new idealized view of musical history comparing childhood to the unadorned, simple melody of the Chinese, Hindus and Greeks; youth to the many voiced, anonymous, medieval, Christian praises of God; and manhood as the triumphant and final age of musical reason, individual genius and the drama of the whole life of mankind. For the skeptic who preferred to remain above the scene of battle, there was Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) whose only illusion to music was, “that it is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn and neither good nor bad to the deaf.” After 1700 the war raged on in two arenas. The conflict over the philosophy and function of music, and the conflict over the interpretation and response to that music.
While Baroque music may sound serene and familiar to us now, the complaint of Giovanni Artusi (1540-1613), then held, that it was bombastic, strident, cacophonous and much too bold in dissonance and chromaticisms. Shakespeare (1564-1616) in Much Ado About Nothing had prophetically sounded the Dionysian challenge a full century earlier: “Now divine air! Now is his soul ravished! Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies?” In 1607, the forlorn heroine’s musical lament in Monteverdi’s opera, “Arianne” caused listeners to melt in tears. Thirty thousand people crowded St. Peter’s Square in Venice to hear the great organ virtuoso, Frescobaldi (1583-1643) perform in a style “now languished, now lively, in accordance with the affections of music.” My daughter once wrote a paper titled “Social Economic Status of Musicians of the 18th Century,” which stated that: “musical distinctions and divisions did separate geographical areas, South Germany down through Italy where ecstatic church music, brilliant operas and violin virtuoso musicians dominated the scene; whereas to the North in Germany through England where instrumental and vocal music was less brilliant, more intimate and more serious.” In this irreverent age of reason, Swift, Sterne, Addison and others were quick to parody the serious Baroque and the unnatural opera. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was equating musical beauty with an unconscious counting of Pythagorean-based numbers. The two great English musical historians, Hawkins and Burney, both confirmed Apollonians; accounted music at best, an amusement. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) in France, Johann Adolf Scheibe (1708-1776) in Germany belittled the contrapuntal giants of the time, maintaining that it was much more difficult to write a simple, affecting melody than accomplish the most complex contrapuntal feat.
After Johann Sebastian Bach’s death in 1750, Baroque was dead and the Brandenburg concerti were sold as waste paper. The Apollonians were gathering force behind Rousseau stimulated inflected, Rococo, Gallant witty and amusing defense works of non-complicated, natural entertainment; the Dionysians were biding their time quietly building their strength in the constant commitment musicians made to the doctrine of affections which implied that the composer use as much as possible, musical materials that evoked a recognizable emotional response in the performer who in turn would translate this state of feeling to the listener. Words strategically placed in the score became a powerful tool for communicating to the performer, the composer’s intention. Italian instrumental prowess (not unlike today’s ubiquitous Coca Cola) spread the use of Italian words in preference to other languages throughout Europe. Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (1718-1795) compiled a list of words other than slow (adagio) and fast (presto) to program the performer’s mind; such as doloroso, languido, pomposo, maestoso, affetuoso, amoroso and mesto. All composers have since indulged.
Of course one can declare, “I am passionate while feeling no passion whatsoever or feeling passionate inside but in no way communicating the passion outside.” The same is valid for music. On a different level, the composer’s or performer’s choice of tempi and dynamics were directly related to the corresponding effect. Johann Joachim Quantz and Matteson, seventeenth century, attributed non-musical connotations to individual tones very similar to the Chinese and Greeks. Major keys were described as gay, fresh, and serious. Minor keys were sad, gentle, flattering. Both agreed that the key of E minor was especially sad, desperate and suffering. Chromatic and unusually related intervals, melodic or harmonic used at the right moment were a direct method in obtaining emotional affect. Irregularity of melodic line, rhythmic pulse and structural shape was another means of creating affect. Finally, the expanding use of an enlarged spectrum of tonal color and dynamic intensities which became very pronounced in the second half of the eighteenth century was at the very core of this most important doctrine of affections. [Haydn, Opus 20, Affetuoso]
While composers were committed to some phase of the Apollonian—Dionysian conflict, it was the performer of music who like the helpless but increasingly important chess pawn, not only was involved in battle but placed in the forefront of attack or defense, quick to be sacrificed or become the scapegoat for hero-composers of either side or the critics, both partisan and scavenger.
From the copious advice out of the mouths of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), Daniel Gottlob Türk (1756-1813), Georg Muffat (1653-1704), Leopold Mozart (1719-1787), and all the scriptural, ensuing performer-composers, Robert Schumann (1810-1856), Carl Czerny (1791-1857) etc, on how music should be played, we at least know the geography of the conflict and cannot cry that we weren’t forewarned when entering the battle arena. Rubato or strict time beating; intensity or relaxation; overall unity or unforgettable moment; extreme contrasts versus middle of the road homogeneity; all touched by how fast or loud or clear; this plethora of advice intending to lead the innocent through dangerous territories, hopefully avoiding a fatal ambush.
A contemporary story could illustrate the tradition. A young pianist was accepted for an audition by the great but puritanical conductor, George Szell in his hotel room. On his arrival the young man noted with alarm that there was no piano in the room. Szell reassured him that it would be sufficient for the young man to use the top of the table and to address it as if it were a keyboard, that he, George Szell could recognize the intentions of the young musician by the movement of his hands and fingers. With grave apprehensions, the young man placed himself at the table and began to ‘play’ the opening phrase of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. After a few bars he stopped but Maestro Szell motioned for him to continue. The young musician reached an irrevocable decision, he arose and said, “This is ridiculous” and proceeded to leave. Mr. Szell said, “Why are you so upset? I can tell quite well how you are interpreting the piece.” The young man replied, “That’s not the problem; if you must know, I don’t like the tone of your table!”
The earlier hero-composer musicians advised more soberly. Johann Joachim Quantz (1697-1773) spoke of repeating a section slightly quicker in order not to put the listener asleep. P.E. Bach also warned against, “indolent hands that put us to sleep.” Obviously, one of the sins of a too slow tempo was allowing the audience to take forty winks.
Werner Herzog (b. 1942) aptly writes about African music making: “The real art of master drumming does not consist merely in playing beautiful contrasting themes. A true master must time his utterances to replenish the listener’s physical and aesthetic energy at the right psychological moment.” Philipp E. Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Hector Berlioz, Felix Mendelssohn, Frederic Chopin, Johannes Brahms, Claude Debussy, Arturo Toscanini, Béla Bartók, and the Budapest String Quartet all described, loved and adhered to that elusive rubato which does not break up or arrest an underlying pulse. On the other hand, Thomas Mace (1613-1670) wrote of taking “liberty with time, sometimes faster, sometimes slower as we perceive the nature of the thing requires, “Thus the gauntlet is thrown down; are you a strict time or a free time musician? Certainly Beethoven, Wagner, Liszt, Dvořák, Mahler, Schoenberg, Nikisch, Furtwangler and the Juilliard Quartet favored more declamatory freedom from the tyranny of pulse.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) in his Dictionaire de Musique, 1775 had written: “The musician who renders only notes, keys, scales and intervals without comprehending the meaning, even if he is precise, is but a ‘note-gobbler.’
Türk illustrated the pitfalls of incorrect musical phrasing in 1789 by the shifting of a comma in the following sentence: “He lost his life (,) not (,) his property.” Anton Reichardt describes Niccolò Jommelli (1714-1774), the Italian violinist conducting the notorious crescendo of the Mannheim Orchestra thus: “The audience gradually rose from their seats. It was not until the following diminuendo that they realized they had almost ceased breathing.”
By the nineteenth century, the growth of commercial publishing houses and concert halls added a new dimension to the struggle. The defender of fidelity to the composer’s manuscript could stand between the two armed camps along with those Pythagoreans (science-sound-mystical connotation) whose allegiance shifted (sides) depending on the particular issue of the conflict, John Keats (1795-1821) aptly described this central ground when he wrote that genius possessed the capacity to “walk the empyrean and not be intoxicated.” Beethoven (1770-1827) reaffirmed that “music, verily is the mediator between the intellectual and sensuous life.” Haydn (1732-1809) was the first composer to notate as much as possible in the score to aid the performer to realize the proper effect in the music. To the publisher and performer he proclaims a new battle cry: “loyalty not only to notes, but tempi and even articulations in his compositions.” (Mozart quote)
The conquering hero of apotheosis, disrespector of traditional authorities and values, the great Dionysian breaking down the door of fate; this is the ever persisting picture of Beethoven. But like Haydn, he demanded absolute loyalty to the composer’s notated concept. It is well known that Beethoven expected the performers of his music to practice long and hard to achieve this ‘true’ interpretation of the score. The Englishman, Mr. Smart wrote that at an informal first performance of Beethoven’s Opus 132 string quartet the deaf composer grabbed the second violinist’s instrument to demonstrate when he observed that person not articulating certain notes as short as were notated. An excellent description of the composer—performer battle arena was written after the first performance of Opus 127. “Not enough room to sit down—the four quartet players had hardly room for their stands and chairs. They were some of the best virtuosi of Vienna. They had dedicated themselves to their difficult task with the whole enthusiasm of youth and had held seventeen rehearsals before they dared play the new enigmatic work.” (The Juilliard Quartet has spent over 500 hours preparing the Elliot Carter 3rd String Quartet.) “The difficulties and secrets of Beethoven’s last quartets seemed as insurmountable and inscrutable that only younger, enthusiastic men dared, play the new music while the older and more famous players thought it impossible to perform. The listeners were not permitted to take their task easily. It was decided to play the work twice.”
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) another unique hero in musical histories battlefield. Painfully honest and articulate, he joined Beethoven and the growing legion of musicians who accepted no less than absolute loyalty to the composer’s original intentions, but also demanded of the performer (and listener) a total involvement in the realization of the work. Verdi (1813-1901), who suffered the unceasing impulse of prima donnas and long-breathed tenors to rearrange the score to suit their own talents and egos, was despotic in his demand for unconditional surrender to the text of his music. Baritone Felice Varesi (1813-1889), refusing to repeat a scene as he had rehearsed it 150 times already, was told by Verdi: “You will put on your coat and rehearse it for the 151st time!”
There is a present day tendency to think of the nineteenth century as belonging to the spoils of Dionysia but the results of conflict were far from decisive and there were strong enclaves under the Apollonian flag. Certainly Goethe (1749-1832) who felt uncomfortable in Beethoven’s presence diplomatically represented the Apollonian forces when he observed that: “Music is something innate and internal, which needs little nourishment from without, and no experience drawn from life.” Perhaps the most renowned Apollonian of the 19th century was Felix Mendelssohn. His brilliant mind and urbane temperament became a rallying ground for objective music making at its best. He held high the banner of fluent tempos and strict time keeping. He once admonished a pupil: “Never sing a song as that one falls asleep, Madame, not even a lullaby.” (There is that musical fear of putting the listener to sleep reappearing.) Mendelssohnian style was such a rage in Paris that Berlioz wryly remarked that, “during exams at the conservatory, the pianoforte started playing Mendelssohn’s G Minor Concerto of its own accord at the approach of the pupil.”
Mendelssohn’s classic principles were destined to clash with Wagner’s highly emotional and declamatory concept of musical performance. They both attended a concert where the conductor took the ‘Tempi di Menuetto’ movement of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony almost as fast as the composer had indicated on Maelzel’s metronome. Wagner overheard Mendelssohn bravoing the tempo choice and wrote in his diary: “I thought I was looking into an abyss of superficiality, into complete emptiness.” For Wagner, a true, German adagio could never be played too slowly and all the fast, ‘superficial’ allegros were being perpetrated on his dear organ-German folk by guess who? Obviously, the descendants of those ancient, decadent, sneaky Dionysian Orientals masquerading as respectable German and French Jewish musicians.
It is a curious fact of history that Fredrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), a long time defender of Wagner’s aesthetic beliefs and the religion of Dionysia, later on, turned against and crucified Wagner as a false prophet, untrue to life.
Another warrior-hero fought valiantly against hypocritical elements in musical activity. “How I dislike quarreling about tempos,” wrote Robert Schumann; “an allegro played by one who is cold by nature always sounds lazier than a slower tempo by one of sanguine temperament.” And then there is the mysterious case of Frederic Chopin. Every contemporary account from the field of battle will resound with the mighty feats of improvising, dynamically thundering, orgiastic forays perpetrated by countless pianists battling in Chopin’s revered name. But back to the words of that master-warrior himself: “I could not have learned to play the piano in Germany. There, people complain that I perform too softly, too delicately. They are accustomed to the piano pounding of their own musicians.” Commenting on a Liszt performance, Chopin asked, “Must one always speak so declamatorily?”
On the other hand, the triumphs of a new breed of virtuoso-warrior was indeed heartening to the Dionysian that had never forgotten the humiliating defeats of earlier virtuosi at the hands of Greek philosophers and medieval popes.
There is a wonderful satire of Franz Liszt, “The conquered pianos lie scattered around him, broken strings float like trophies, wounded instruments flee in all directions, the audience look at one another in dumb surprise as after a sudden storm in a serene sky. And he, Prometheus, who with each note has forged a being, his head bent, smiles strangely before the crowd that applauds him wildly.”
While the portrait of Liszt is clear, there is one virtuoso-warrior whom I believe to be quite misunderstood. Unlike the “decadent virtuosi” of Hellenic times, Niccolò Paganini (1782-1810), for all his unique mastery of the instrument, brought a very special spirit to music best described by Clara Schumann: “In the adagio the artist seemed as if transformed by magic. No trace remained of the preceding tour-de-force. A soulful singer in legato style and of a tender simplicity, he drew forth celestial tones that came forth from the heart and penetrated the heart.”
As the fires of commercialism grew rampant, Hugo Wolf inhabiting a purer atmosphere of Dionysia attacked the Philistines in their acoustical coliseums: “Why in the name of heaven, must the scorching fire of enthusiasm always come out thru the hands and feet? Why must there be clapping and stomping? Do the public’s hands and feet constitute the moral lightening rod for the electrified soul? I say, that if when the last notes of a profound piece has barely ceased to resound, and you are again jolly and pleased and your babble and your criticizing and clap, that you have seen nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing, understood nothing, nothing, nothing—not a thing!”
On the sidelines of the main areas of conflict, the ethnic and nationalistic musician-soldiers held steadfast to humanistic and programmatic values. Smetana, approaching deafness said, “I do not wish to write a quartet in formal style, but wish to paint my life in music.”
What have the philosopher-warriors been up to during the 19th Century attainments of Dionysian ecstasy?
The great Apollonian White Knight Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) had thundered from the right: “Music was just enjoyment!” Hegal (1770-1831) the Dionysian Red Knight answered from the left: “In musical tones a whole scale of passions can echo and reverberate.”
Schopenhauer (1775-1860) in the center maintaining that music didn’t express any particular feeling but an abstraction of it. Kierkegaard could only send a love letter to Mozart in 1843: “I have you to thank that I did not die without having loved.”
But it was Eduard Hanslick, critic-philosopher-attacker of Wagner, defender of Brahms and Apollonia who issued the manifesto of objective interpretation drawing from Kant’s critique of pure reason: “Music,” Hanslick stated, “must consider only the art ‘object’ and not the perceived ‘subject.’ “The interpreter must think only in terms of sound. Music is to be played but not to be played with.”
To counteract the effect of so mighty a philosophical ally - the Dionysians brought forth their 19th century champion, Nietzsche who decreed that all ambiguity shall cease and there would be no further traffic between the two great powers. For Nietzsche, music was preeminently the art of emotion; but “it must be true to life!” It is no accident that he crucified Wagner as a false prophet—untrue to life.
By the end of the 19th Century—the armies of Dionysia were encircling the musical globe. Light-headed dancing to the tunes of Johann Strauss brought back deeply rooted memories of Corybantic mysteries and therapeutic curves.
Is it possible that Bach’s sober saraband was the same lascivious dance that inspired Spanish authorities in 1583 to punish all who danced it with 200 lashes?
Is it true that Queen Elizabeth I, age 56, danced every morning for physical fitness to the sprightly rhythms of the galliard?
Certainly the Dionysis-oriented Wagnerian-Mahlerites, commanding musical forces of thousands taking off into the heavenly space of eternal time, were justifiably arousing desperate defenders of the intimate, the supersensitive, the fragile microsound in musical art. Whether such defenders were makers of sound such as Debussy, musical nonsense such as Satie, or makers of critical words such as Shaw, fought side by side (creator and deflator) wresting the artistic prizes away from the apocalyptic expander of unbridled tonal ecstasy.
One composer-warrior seems to have fought this battle entirely within the confines of his own internal life.
Like the strange case of Chopin, Arnold Schoenberg in the 20th century is greatly misunderstood. His descent out of Wagner and Mahler in the light of early works such as Verklaete Nacht. and Gurre Lieder is indisputable. But as he progressed into the farther realms of Pythagorean tone order—he was and is still accused of treason to Dionysian, itself. Nothing could be more untrue.
If Schoenberg and his twelve tone technique was a Pythagorean father—Alban Berg was his Pythagorean son—who remained a steadfast mystic involved in the magical properties of numbers related to musical tones and structures. Schoenberg’s other great pupil, Anton Webern, embodied the tone spirit of the holy ghost.
He was the ideal, fragile world of microcosm. I think this quote of Confucius almost 2500 years earlier explains Webern’s ethos to me: “From the depth of sentiment comes the clarity of form and from the strength of the mood comes the spirituality of its atmosphere; the harmony of the spirit springs forth from the soul and finds expression or blossoms forth in the form of music”
The war of Apollonian and Dionysian will rage on, I’m afraid, as long as humans breathe.
Power centers will always react to what they perceive as threats to their control.
Decadent jazz performers were fined and imprisoned in the Soviet Union in 1928—banned from Ireland in 1934. Is the innovator in music castigated any less for his so called “decadent—formalism in the Soviet Union’s Central Committee resolution of 48 than the innovator who threatened anarchy in the ideal Greek state. And, now I would return to our master of the “poetics of music,” Stravinsky.
I will grant that of all the makers of sounds he is the greatest shaper of words that I know. Lucid, specific and insightful, he plays upon words when he sternly warns his interpreters that the subjective element in music be eliminated. He goes even further: “Most people like music because it gives them emotions such as joy, grief, sadness, an image of nature, a subject for daydreams or still better—oblivion from everyday life.” “People” he intones, “must learn to love music for its own sake.” [playing a Stravinsky work]
At this moment I expect some outraged policeman of historical propriety to pull out his badge and arrest me for taking you on this wild and speedy descent down the white water agitatos of musical history. I wouldn’t blame him.
But my secret goal has been to set the stage wherein as you leave here, your mind might carry on an internal dialogue both Dionysian and Apollonian as to what in reality do the elements of objectivity and subjectivity in music represent?
I hope your dialogue will keep asking, “Can there be a state of objectivity in music at all? My present belief is that music which requires sound to exist, ears to absorb and mind to react, objectivity cannot remain. It boils down to a matter of the degree of subjectivity.
Another part of your furtive dialogue would, hopefully deal with the term romantic as applied to musical expression. Sir Donald Tovey considered the word a nuisance, but I think that all great music must contain some degree of this kind of expression. When music or its performance is criticized for being too sentimental, too romantic or vulgar, I think it is the result of gross distortion by over emphasis on the materials of the composition.
Now, who is to be the arbiter of what is distortion? [Bernstein, Gould?]
Hero worship comes naturally to most children. As one grows older the band of heroes diminishes and the intensity of worship dissipates. Today my heroes are few, but one of them, Berlioz wrote down what is certainly my credo of performance: “The prevailing characteristics of my music are passionate expression, intense ardour, rhythmical animation, and unexpected turns. When I say passionate expression, I mean an expression determined on enforcing the inner meaning of its subject, even when the subject is the contrary of passion and when the feeling to be expressed is gentle and tender, or even profoundly calm.”