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Literary Theories About Program Music
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The year 1935, celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Bach, that great writer of a type of “program” music that for years was never suspected of being such, is an opportune time for a closer study of attempts made by literary men at criticizing and evaluating program music. Even for the great Bach there were no real “program notes” to suggest the attempts to portray definite stories and incidents in his organ chorales until Albert Schweitzer unearthed his clearcut attempts at writing program music, or music based upon facts or with a story. Bach seemed to feel that the music should actually tell the story without further use of words than those of the simple chorale tune he was developing.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1937
References
page 581 note 1 For a full study of the musical ability of American romantic writers to be discussed in this paper, see the author's doctoral dissertation Music and Literature in American Romanticism (Chapel Hill, 1929).
page 581 note 2 Arthur W. Poister, “Plea for the Study of ‘Organ Bach’ by the Serious Organist,” The Diapason (October, 1935), pp. 20–21.
page 581 note 3 Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (New York, 1927), pp. 257–258.
page 581 note 4 Encyclopedia Britannica, 13th edition, “Greek Music.”
page 581 note 5 F. A. Wright, The Arts in Greece (London, 1923), p. 48.
page 581 note 6 Wright, op. cit., p. 51.
page 581 note 7 Wright, op. cit., p. 50.
page 581 note 8 S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, with a critical text and translation of the Poetics (London, 1923), p. 130.
page 581 note 9 Wright, op. cit., p. 51.
page 581 note 10 For an extended discussion of these points, see the author's dissertation, op. cit., pp. 16–19.
page 581 note 11 Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th edition, xviii, 563.
page 581 note 12 Albert Schweitzer, Johann Sebastian Bach, translated by Ernest Newman (London, 1911), ii, 40–74.
page 581 note 13 Grove's Dictionary of Music, i, 197.
page 581 note 14 Encyclopedia Britannica, ii, 621.—-The thirteenth-edition article makes no such statement, and there the article is signed.
page 581 note 15 E. T. A. Hoffmann, Sämtliche Werke, edited by Rudolph Franke (Munich and Leipzig, 1924), ii, 46.
page 581 note 16 Grove, op. cit., i, 182.
page 581 note 17 Grove, op. cit., iv, 674,
page 581 note 18 Edgar Istel, Die Blütezeit der musikalischen Romantik in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1920), p. 71.
page 581 note 19 Istel, quoting Hoffmann in Die Blütezeit der musikalischen Romantik in Deutschland. (Leipzig, 1909), p. 8.
page 581 note 20 Hoffmann, op. cit., ii, 46.
page 581 note 21 Rudolph Haym, Die Romantische Schule (Berlin, 1914), p. 122; also, Henri Lichtenberger, Germany and its Evolution in Modern Times (London, 1913), p. 387.
page 581 note 22 See my Music and Literature in American Romanticism, pp. 48–50.
page 581 note 23 Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th edition, xvin, 564.
page 581 note 24 Wilibald Nagel, “Ueber das Romantische in der deutschen Musik” Jahrbuch der Musik (Leipzig, 1905), p. 23.
page 581 note 25 The basis of this criticism lies in Hoffmann, op. cit., ii, 46–56, and in an unpublished MS. by Arthur Ware Locke, Music and Romanticism.
page 581 note 26 Ernst Glöckner, Studien zur romantischen Psychologie der Musik (München, 1909), p. 27.—For fuller treatment of German musical theories see my doctoral dissertation, passim chapter i.
page 581 note 27 Schopenhauer, Gesammelte Werke (Leipzig, 1877), Book iii, 330–342.
In order to discover the availability of the German musical aesthetics in America before 1845, I have traced the writings of German romanticists as they appear in this country before 1845. There were no book translations before 1845 of the writers on music subjects noted by Frederick Morgan in his German Literature in Translation (Madison, 1913). In 1840 the Democratic Review heads a poem with a short translation from Wackenroder (p. 32). Scott Holland, in German Literature in American Magazines prior to 1846 lists several translations of Hoffmann. In 1842 Graham's Magazine included in the same issue Hoffmann's “Ritter Gluck” translated by W. W. Story, and Poe's “Masque of the Red Death.” Hoffmann's story is based on the knight who was unable to bear music. This theme is similar to the theme in Poe's “Fall of the House of Usher.” In 1845 Littell's Living Age reviewed a book containing a story of Hoffmann's, not concerned with music. In 1847 the Athenaeum and the Daguerreotype printed five-page reviews of Hoffmann's stories as published in French, giving excerpts from Hoffmann and comments upon his musical purity and influence upon Weber's “Der Freischutz.” And finally Hale's Today printed a translation of Der Dopelganger, a story without musical significance. None of these show direct influence upon American writers. Importations of English versions have never been traced.
page 581 note 28 For a study of this consult the introductory chapter of my dissertation.
page 581 note 29 “Mr. Addison had no relish for music, and is never so much out of the way as when he talks about it.” Cited by Oswald Doughty in The English Lyric in the Age of Reason (London, 1922), p. 38.
page 581 note 30 Spectator Papers, number 416.
page 581 note 31 James Harris, Three Treatises (London, 1744), p. 932.
page 581 note 32 Arthur Ware Locke, Music and the Romantic Movement in France (London, 1921), p. 21. Two other satisfactory books on the French romanticists and music are: Musique et Litterature (Paris, 1923) by Coeuroy, and Sensibilité Musicale et Romantisme (Paris, 1925) by Baldensperger.
page 581 note 33 Locke, op. cit., p. 26.
page 581 note 34 James Huneker, Overtones a Book of Temperaments (New York, 1904), p. 187.
page 581 note 35 Locke, op. cit., p. 27.
page 581 note 36 Locke, op. cit., p. 26.
page 581 note 37 Edward Waldo Emerson, Emerson Waldo Forbes, editors, Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston and New York, 1909), x, 201.
page 581 note 38 William Gardiner, The Music of Nature (London, 1832; Boston, 1838).
page 581 note 39 James Kirk Pauling, Works (New York, no date), i, 208.
page 581 note 40 Paulding, op. cit., i, 215.
page 581 note 41 George Willis Cooke, John Sullivan Dwight (Boston, 1898), p. 59.
page 581 note 42 Address before the Harvard Musical Association, 1841. Dwight assisted Mrs. Eliza Lee in translating and publishing Richter's biography, according to Cooke, op. cit., p. 72.
page 581 note 43 Address before the Harvard Musical Association, 1842.
page 581 note 44 Address before the Harvard Musical Association, 1845.
page 581 note 45 Writings of Henry Thoreau (Boston, 1905), xviii, 357.
page 581 note 46 Thoreau, op. cit., xi, 65.
page 581 note 47 Emerson's Complete Works (London, 1849), i, 39.
page 581 note 48 Emerson, op. cit., ii, 327.
page 581 note 49 Emerson, op. cit., i, 49.
page 581 note 50 Emerson, op. cit., ii, 334.
page 581 note 51 E. C. Stedman and G. E. Woodbury, editors of The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (1914), xvi, 29.
page 581 note 52 Poe, op. cit., x, 41.
page 581 note 53 Poe, op. cit., xiv, 90.
page 581 note 54 Poe, op. cit., xvi, 29.
page 581 note 55 Sidney Lanier, Letters of Sidney Lanier, selected from his correspondence 1866–81 (New York, 1899), p. 85.
page 581 note 56 Sidney Lanier, Music and Poetry (New York, 1898), pp. 3–4.
page 581 note 57 Lanier, op. cit., p. 7.
page 581 note 58 Lanier, op. cit., p. 10.
page 581 note 59 Lanier, op. cit., p. 10 ff. One should note in this connection the similar reasoning of Poe in the “Poetic Principle” in discussing song writing.
page 581 note 60 Schopenhauer, op. cit., iii, 339.