The Why of Music : Dialogues in an Unexplored Region of Appreciation PDF
Preview The Why of Music : Dialogues in an Unexplored Region of Appreciation
DONALD N. FERGUSON THE WHY OF MUSIC ' Dialogues in an o Unexplored Region of Appreciation UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS / Minneapolis © Copyright 1969 by the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America at the Lund Press, Inc., Minneapolis Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 69-15088 PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN, INDIA, AND PAKISTAN BY THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, LONDON, BOMBAY, AND KARACHI, AND IN CANADA BY THE COPP CLARK PUBLISHING CO. LIMITED, TORONTO PREFACES, like epilogues, are usually 'written after the book they introduce has been -finished. Being usually the author's purview of his finished effort, which always differs somewhat from his original intent, they seem to me nearly identical and so to belong at the end . . . Indeed, I am not sure whether what I have placed there is Preface or Epilogue, and 1 have entitled it accordingly. If you read it before you read the book you will see, perhaps more clearly than if you begin at the beginning, the point toward which the rather discursive conversations tend. If you read it again, as a kind of sum- mary, it may serve to make that point sharper. This page intentionally left blank TABLE OF CONTENTS A GLEAM IN THE EYE 3 'SOMETHING MORE" 17 THE MUSICAL IMAGE 31 HOW THE MUSICAL IMAGE IS PORTRAYED 45 HOW FORM CONTRIBUTES TO THE IMAGE 58 SOME HOWS AND WHYS OF MUSICAL COMPOSITION 75 SOME HOWS AND WHYS OF MUSICAL PERFORMANCE 87 STYLE AND TASTE 99 IMAGE AND STYLE IN BACH 114 CLASSICISM IN HAYDN AND MOZART 129 ROMANTICISM IN BEETHOVEN 147 BEETHOVEN • THE SECOND PERIOD 165 BEETHOVEN • THE THIRD PERIOD 183 VERBAL AND MUSICAL IMAGES IN THE SONG 197 THE MUSICAL IMAGE IN THE LEADING-MOTIVE 22O TWO NEW QUESTIONERS 240 A COMMON MUSICAL IDIOM 254 WHAT MAKES GOOD MUSIC GREAT? 277 EPILOGUE, OR PREFACE? 290 INDEX 303 This page intentionally left blank The Why of Music This page intentionally left blank A GLEAM IN THE EYE WHENI was welve or so, a pianist of considerable distinction gave a recital in our little town. Having shown a decided interest in music and some knack for the piano, I was taken to the concert. Next to me sat one of our promi- nent "senior citizens" — a crusty old gentleman who had borne the rank of Major in the Union Army. His presence at this entertainment, which was for our community quite unusual, was due, we were sure, to a sense of civic duty rather than to any native interest in music. He sat with deco- rous inattention through the first group on the program (a Bach fugue and a Beethoven sonata), adding merely a few perfunctory spats to the generous applause. But the next group began with the Liszt arrangement of Schubert's Hark, Hark! The Lark; and as it ended he turned to me with an astonished gleam in his eye. "Pritti — ent it!" were his only words, uttered in that accent which marked him for us Midwesterners as a Down Easter; but the gleam, I will still swear, was one of genuine in- terest. I do not remember my own response. Some fifty years later, if I had still been twelve, I should probably have said, "That sends me! "—a phrase whose genuineness seems to me akin to that of the Major's gleam, and which I find a heartening antidote for the pessimism nowadays frequent- ly evoked by the spectacle of teen-age behavior. Not only the Major and I but the whole audience —for the most part musically illiterate — were "sent" by that charming little piece. Where we were sent, none of us dreamed of inquiring. We knew we had been, 3
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