Musical Thought and Action in the Old World

By Arthur Elson

A Compendium de descantu mensurabile, compilatum a fratre Petro dicto Palma ociosa, dating from the fourteenth century has been translated for the International Society Quarterly by Johannes Wolf. The examples of discant given are crude enough when compared with later standards, but still have a rugged melodiousness.

In those days music had its leaders and geniuses, no less than in later times. In England, where the Organum of Hucbald and the oblique motion of Guido were supplemented by freer contrary motion, there were composers in the twelfth century, though we have few relics of their work. After that came the unknown genius who wrote the fresh and inspired Six Men's Song, known as Sumer is icumen in. Then came a French school, probably developing from that of England. by the year 1325 we find Jean de Muris, writer of the Speculum Musicae, lamenting the "good old times", and stating that the Frenchmen of his day were not inspired like those of a preceding generation. All this, with the renewed primacy of England because of Dunstable's compositions, came some time before the Netherland schools were heard of at all. The latter then took two more centuries to develop, while the Italian contrapuntists did not really die out until will into the seventeenth century.

There are several morals to be drawn from these illuminating data. First, there are always with us men who lament the good old times, and claim that music is going to the dogs. but somehow music always manages to "come back". When the Netherland pioneers made it arbitrary and dull, Josquin and Di Lasso changed it into a more beautiful art, so that Luther said of Josquin, "He rules the notes, while others are ruled by them". Today many of our experimenting pioneers are "ruled by the notes", and use effects of modernism too much for their own sake, but the genius of the future will be one who uses much the same effects, but fuses inspiration into them in a greater degree than if found at present.

It seems also as if music always came back into general appreciation after sufficient time. It was wholly popular in the days of the Minnesingers and Troubadours, and again at the beginning of the homophonic period, in the seventeenth century. The nineteenth century, too, witnessed a period of general appreciation. Another such period will surely come when the radical modernism of the present has crystallized into something more definite than its present shape.

All these movements take time, so that we need not grow impatient and think that music has passed its prime if we are in one of the transition periods. In 1720 or so, Rameau, thinking all combinations of tone discovered, with nothing new to follow, said with decision, "Music is dead". but music has shown new signs of life since his day, and even his own old school compositions are not forgotten.

Concerning Prodigies

Willy Ferrero conducted in London recently, after winning laurels elsewhere, and he is not yet eight years old. He does not play or read music well, but seems to carry it in his head, as he practically memorizes the scores he directs.

The time is evidently at hand when infants will compose, orchestrate, and conduct their own cradle songs. But Willy, too, points a moral. His talent is recognized, but there are many children who are underestimated. If we talk only baby talk to children, whether in music or in life as a whole, they will be prevented by just so much from absorbing more mature ideas and expressions. The London Punch printed an anecdote which ran approximately thus: A child having been brought by railroad to visit its uncle, the latter asked, with kindly intent, "Did the little boy come on the choo-choo"? Thereupon the little boy replied, "Yes, uncle, we came on the train; the engine was a new one, with four driving wheels, two cylinders, and a link motion valve gear". Not all children are precocious, but all should be given the chance to absorb knowledge as rapidly as their natures will permit. In music there has been some recognition of this, showing itself in the excellence of many recent teaching pieces. But there is still room for a vast improvement in the quality of music sung in schools. This should always be made better than the average pupil can appreciate at first, and then, if he has it in him, he will rise to the higher level....