habit, appear
successively in the musical trappings of Othello, of Orpheus, of
Susanna, of Judas Maccabaeus, and of the Grisette? Shall we, by means of
this fusion, or this succession of musical incongruities, have got one
inch nearer to Cherubino? Shall we, in listening to the mere wordless
combination of sounds, be able to say, as we should with the book or the
actors before us, this is Cherubino? What, then, can music give us, with
all its powers of suggestion and feeling, if it cannot give us this?
It can give us one thing, not another: it can give us emotion, but it
cannot give us the individual whom the emotion possesses. With its
determined relations between the audible movement and the psychical
movement, it can give us only musical gesture, but never musical
portrait; the gesture of composure or of violence, the solemn tread of
self-possessed melody, the scuffling of frantically rushing up and down,
of throbbing, quivering, gasping, passion-broken musical phrases; it can
give us the rhythm which prances and tosses in victory, and the rhythm
which droops, and languishes, and barely drags itself along for utter
despair. All this it can give us, even as the painter can give the
ecstatic bound-forwards of Signorelli's "Calling of the Blessed," or
the weary, dreary enfolding in gloomy thought of Michael Angelo's
"Jeremiah:" this much, which we can only call gesture, and which
expresses only one thing, a mood. Let the hopeful heroes of Signorelli,
stretching forth impetuous arms towards Paradise, only lose sight of the
stately viol-playing angels who guide them, let them suddenly see above
them the awful sword of the corsleted Angel of Judgment, and they will
sink, and grovel, and writhe and their now up-turned faces will be
draggled in the dust; let the trumpet of warfare and triumph shrill in
the ear of Michael Angelo's "Jeremiah," and the dreary dream will be
shaken off; he will leap up, and the compressed hand-gagged mouth will
open with the yell of battle; let only the emotion change, and the whole
gesture, the attitude, plastic or musical, must change also; the already
existing, finite, definite work will no longer suffice; we must have a
new picture, or statue, or piece of music. And in these inexplicit arts
of mere suggestion, we cannot say, as in the explicit art of poetry,
this grovelling wretch is a proud and hopeful spirit; this violent
soldier is a vague dreamer; this Othello, who springs on Desdemona
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