Chapter XX: Love and Electioneering (5)

These are but specimen illustrations of the pleasure and exhilaration which come to those who "go-a-fishing" for salmon. But the pastime holds its votaries for other reasons than the mere excitement it affords them. A diversion which reaches only to the material of our natures can never acquire a permanent place in the affections of men of thoughtful habit. It is proof, therefore, of the satisfying and elevating character of the gentle art, that its disciples never weary of the pleasure it affords them. Indeed, the most enthusiastic anglers, and those who best illustrate its refining and invigorating influence, are those who have passed into "the sere and yellow leaf" with rod and reel as their inseparable companions. Like the virtues, it grows by what it feeds upon; and as the sun becomes more and more attractive in its mellow beauty, as it silently and gently sinks from view, so do the pleasures of angling become increasingly fascinating to its happy votaries as they near the gateway of their final rest. Ah! unhappy they who, in making haste to be rich, fail to avail themselves of the opportunity which angling affords to garner up such pleasant memories as would cast perennial rays of refreshing sunshine upon the too often sombre pathway of old age!

GEORGE DAWSON.

EXECUTIVE PATRONAGE AND CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

Late writers on the English Constitution draw a contrast rather unfavorable to us between their Parliamentary and our Presidential Government. Our Executive is a fixture for four years and reeligible. He is responsible, and not shielded by any such legal fiction as "The king can do no wrong." In Great Britain, the cabinet, selected from the legislature, is the real executive body. "In its origin it belongs to the legislative part of the State; in its functions it belongs to the executive part." By a conventional code, the ministry or "the Government" can be changed by a vote of want of confidence, or by a defeat of the ministry in the House of Commons on a governmental measure. Our Cabinet holds a subordinate position. The Constitution contemplates, but does not define, "executive departments." Seven have been established by law, some of which have been divided into inferior departments called bureaus. The Cabinet is the political family of the President. The "heads of departments" are his constitutional advisers, and aid in the execution of his high functions. They are not held responsible for good government, are not liable to votes of censure for their policy, although for convenience sake, a kind of semi-official connection subsists betwixt them and the Federal Legislature.

The "principal officer in each of the executive departments" has a staff of subordinates. The various officers of the United States constitute the machinery of government, and the appointment of a large proportion of them is vested in the President. These various civil officers, so appointed, are for the execution of public business. The conduct of public business and the care of the public interests are, under the President's supervision and control, largely committed to these functionaries. With the growth of the country in territorial area, population, and wealth, the enormous increase of taxation and expenditures and the assumption by the Federal Government of State duties and prerogatives, the number of officials has increased to 100,000. The civil list in 1859 numbered 44,527; in 1875, 94,119. The rolls show a larger list of paid dependents since the war than there was during the war. All these officers hold their places by the tenure of the President's will. They are to be found in every neighborhood in the Union, and constitute a large army, dangerous to the welfare and perpetuity of the republic.

The theory is that all public offices are for administrative efficiency and the public weal. Up to the beginning of General Jackson's term of office, there had been, during the forty years of his six predecessors, 112 removals of such officers as required for their appointment "the advice and consent of the Senate." These few removals were not made from caprice, or to punish enemies, or to reward partisans, but for cause and by strict rule. The power of removal was exerted so exceptionally, only for just and salutary purposes, and was never used as an instrument of party success. Public policy dictated its exercise. Offices were not regarded as the private property of the President, or as the perquisites of a party, but as trusts for the general good.

General Jackson's accession to the Presidency began a revolution. Differences of opinion were punished by removal from office, and partisanship was rewarded with places of profit. His successors have adhered too closely to a precedent which has almost solidified into a party law, or a principle of American politics. No party can claim exemption from the sin of using the civil list for party ends. The Whig, Democratic, and Republican parties, in the distribution of "patronage," in Federal, State, and municipal governments, are alike obnoxious to censure. The poison has infiltrated every vein and artery of the body politic. Every branch of federal and of State service has suffered from the vicious maxim that offices are spoils to be divided among the victors in a party contest. Too often the condition precedent to appointment is unquestioning submission to party decrees, indiscriminate support of party candidates and party measures. The right to remove incumbents is now a conceded Presidential prerogative, acquiesced in by all parties.

The power of removal, under the influence of a false political philosophy, has been perverted into the duty of removal so as to give the offices to the winning party. A new President of different politics from his predecessor is expected to make sweeping changes, amounting even to a "total administrative cataclysm." The appointment of a political antagonist excites surprise, and requires an explanation or apology. Experience of the working of an office, ability, honesty, fitness, are not conclusive. "Off with his head," is the remorseless decree when a place is needed for a partisan. Each incoming administration is bedeviled by hordes of applicants, as greedy as the daughters of the horseleech. The plagues of Egypt scarcely symbolize the number and clamorousness of the mendicants. General Harrison, honest old man, in one month fell a victim to the tormentors, and General Taylor's death was probably hastened by a similar infliction.

Executive patronage is dependent on the revenue and expenditures of the Government and on the number of persons employed by the Government, or who receive money from the public treasury. To appoint and remove at will is a dangerous prerogative, royal in its proportions. Some of the ablest statesmen and constitutional lawyers have denied the right of the President to remove without cause, especially in such appointments as required the concurrence of the Senate.[3] The practice of the Government seems to have settled the question differently. Conceding _pro hoe vice_ the constitutionality, the evils, as illustrated in our history, are none the less great.

[3] Reports to the Senate in 1825, 1835, and 1844, contain able
discussions of "Executive Patronage."

I. There has been a reversal of the theory of our institutions in respect to officers. In 1835 Mr. Webster said in the United States Senate:

Government is an agency created for the good of the people, and
every person in office is an agent and servant of the people.
Offices are created not for the benefit of those who are to fill
them, but for the public convenience; and they ought to be no more
in number, nor should higher salaries be attached to them, than the
public service requires. The difficulty in practice is to prevent a
direct reversal of all this; to prevent public offices from being
considered as intended for the use and emolument of those who can
obtain them. There is a headlong tendency to this.... There is
another, and perhaps a greatly more mischievous result, from
extensive patronage in the hands of a single magistrate, and that
is, that men in office have begun to think themselves mere agents
and servants of the appointing power, and not agents of the
Government or the country.

Offices are looked upon as the prey of political parties, as spoils to be distributed. The well-being of the country, with appointer and appointees, becomes a secondary consideration. Office-holders, holding by the "tenure of partisan zeal and service" are regarded as receiving pap from the party, and therefore under special obligations to make sacrifices for its success. Hence federal officers, holding their places for the benefit of the party, are assessed for contributions for electioneering purposes and the recalcitrants are dismissed or tabooed. This system is unfavorable to manly independence. Fearing removal, incumbents become parasites, with chameleon facility adapting the complexion of their politics to the color of the appointing power. Government becomes also an almoner to bestow charities. Pensioning, never justifiable except in special exigencies, becomes the rule. Some apprehension of the evils of governmental allowances without an equivalent possibly induced Dr. Johnson, in the first edition of his dictionary, to define "Pensioner, a slave of the State, hired by a stipend to obey his master."

II. Government becomes a kind of close corporation for the benefit of the party in power. Party adherents, pets, favorites, get the dividends; civil service thus affording, as Mr. Bright phrased it for England, "a system of out-door relief to the poorer saplings of aristocracy." As a necessary consequence, patriotism and attachment to principles among those corporators become feebler, and servility to party stronger.

III. The Government suffers in its administration. In appointments other tests than the Jeffersonian, "Is he honest, is he faithful, is he capable?" are applied. The right to employment should grow solely out of superior capacity and attainments. Official patronage is a trust for promoting the general welfare. The present system, forgetful of general interests, instead of securing the best men, often gets instead the incapable. A good official system is hardly possible with constant changes in the _personnel_. If continuance in office be dependent on other considerations than discharge of duties, a stimulus to diligence and fidelity is taken away. The best motive for learning a task thoroughly should be furnished. Not unfrequently one defeated in his aspirations for Congress receives a Federal appointment. A popular condemnation becomes a stepping stone to a higher position. What should be regarded as a rebuke is made a plea for promotion.

IV. The tendency of the abuse of Executive patronage is to make those in the civil service mere placemen and mere tools or willing servitors of the President. To quote again from Mr. Webster:

A competition ensues, not of patriotic labors, not of rough and
severe toils for the public good, not of manliness, independence,
and public spirit, but of complaisance, of indiscriminate support
of executive measures, of pliant subserviency and gross adulation.

By personal effort, by money contributions, through the press, in nominating assemblies, at the polls, office-holders work for him in whom they have their official being. An incumbent of the Presidency, a candidate for reelection, has a large number of men and their families interested in his success, and swayed by the temptation of interest to secure his renomination and reelection; add to these the hungry expectants, whose eyes and hopes are fixed on Washington, and it can be seen that the power and the practice of giving offices to partisans operate on the fears of all who are in and the hopes of those who wish to get in. The Executive himself is armed with undue influence and power and subjected to a temptation to dishonesty if he covets a reelection. The "spoils" in the hands of a President, granted or withdrawn at pleasure, give fearful odds in a popular or party contest. Our Presidential elections are pervaded by an element not favorable to fairness or purity. A dangerous mass of private and personal interest is thrown into the scale, and selfishness usurps the place of patriotism and a sense of public duty.

V. Distribution of so many and such valuable offices as party rewards degrades parties from organizations upon principle, for patriotic political ends, to mere combinations for expediency and for personal ends. Because of the power and patronage of the President; and the centralizing effects of federal legislation, all State and local elections are subordinate to the quadrennial agitation for the highest federal officer. So ramifying is this federal influence, the election of a constable in Montana is decided by his relation to a "national" party. State and county officers are nominated upon "national" platforms, and support of Hayes or Tilden determines governors, Congressmen, judges, superintendents of education, mayors, sheriffs, policemen. Local interests are subordinated to the Presidential struggle. The attention and ability of the people of a State are diverted from State development to national concerns, or rather to the question, who is to be empowered to bestow Executive patronage? In the mind of the masses the President is the government. A Presidential election has ceased to be a contest of ideas, or to decide a political policy. It is a gigantic party struggle. Overwhelming importance attaches to it, because the victor has a cornucopia of "patronage bribery" to give to whom he likes. In other days, the canvass which preceded elections was educatory. Able men, on opposite sides, face to face, discussed grave questions of constitutional law or federal policy. In the nullification controversy of South Carolina there was a war of giants. The speeches of O'Neal, Harper, Johnston, Hamilton, Hayne, Preston, McCuffie, and Calhoun were such masterly expositions of the relations of the States to the general Government as would have done credit to Edmund Burke. In other contests, North and South, were discussions by our ablest statesmen of fundamental principles of higher abstractions. In the last contest much of the "stump" speaking was the veriest twaddle, an appeal to prejudice, and hate, and sectionalism, full of scurrility, personality, and vulgar anecdote. The press, so essential to free institutions, partakes of the degeneracy, and thus politics is degraded from a noble science to a disgusting scramble for spoils.

VI. Treating the civil service as legitimate rewards for partisan zeal diminishes official responsibility, lowers the standard of official integrity, and stimulates corruption by augmenting the means of corruption. The rapid growth of patronage, far beyond what is required for efficiency of administration, is readily suggestive of evil. A spirit of subserviency is not favorable to the growth of the highest qualities. Ceasing to regard office as a trust for the public good, the holder loses a strong motive for integrity. Favoring servility, or sycophancy, to conciliate superiors, very easily loosens the restraints of conscience. Vigorous attachment to principles yields to devotion to party. Public morals are corrupted by false maxims, by increase of temptation, by loss of patriotism. Places are multiplied for partisans. Contracts are let to partisans. Frauds, the logical consequence of lowering office to be mere pay for party services, are covered up, or palliated, to prevent damage to "the party."

If these evils be not greatly exaggerated, reform seems an imperative necessity. It is hard to correct governmental abuses. Society is prone to run in ruts. To suggest the supernumerariness of an office, or a reduction of salaries, raises a howl among the _ins_ as if the liberties of the country were imperilled. Those useful legislators, like George W. Jones of Tennessee, and Holman of Indiana, who watch for abuses and scent afar a "ring," are always unpopular. It is needful to get back to first principles and to indoctrinate the public anew with correct notions as to the object of an office and the duties of a public officer. The Koran says: "A ruler who appoints any man to an office when there is in his dominions another man better qualified for it sins against God and against the State." To dismiss a faithful and capable incumbent to gratify party resentment, or to gratify a friend, is utterly in disharmony with the purpose of administrative machinery. Our Government is an agency for the public weal. It is not in an antagonistic position to "the people of the United States," but their servant to accomplish their legal will and to promote their prosperity. People were not created for offices, but offices for the people. As soon as the public service ceases to be subserved the offices should at once cease. While the office is necessary, and the incumbent discharges its duties satisfactorily, there should be no needless change. A citizen accepting a public trust, and doing his duty faithfully, should be allowed to enjoy his manhood and be protected from the exactions of a superior power. If, as has been asserted, "no vacancies" greet the eyes of applicants for places in Washington, it is a hopeful sign and most praiseworthy.

When vacancies do occur, or new offices are created, some competition among the candidates for employment would ensure more efficient service. Superiority of parts or attainments is a better qualification for bureau or clerical duties than activity in a ward meeting. Men of the best energy and capacity are not likely to be obtained by an arbitrary partition of places among the districts whose representatives sustain the Administration. England has reached the competitive test by slow steps. Employees in the several departments were, for a long time, clerks to the minister, and were paid out of the fees received from those who had business with the department. The sale of offices and exaction of fees occasioned serious abuses. By several acts of Parliament in this century, a civil service has been established, a public status assigned to clerks, and their salaries are now paid out of the public exchequer. By the test of competitive examinations, and by placing on a better basis the relation betwixt public servants and the nation, the service has been much improved.

The application of some competitive test for certain grades of office might be supplemented by requiring the President, in all cases of nominations to the Senate to fill vacancies, to state the reasons for removal, if any had been made. Laws might be passed modifying the absoluteness of the right of removal. In 1789, in a discussion in the House of Representatives, Mr. Madison said:

To displace a man from office whose merits require that he should
be continued in it would be an act of maladministration, and the
wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject the President
to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.

The Constitution of the Confederate States had this provision:

The principal officer in each of the executive departments, and all
persons connected with the diplomatic service, may be removed from
office at the pleasure of the President. All other civil officers
of the executive departments may be removed at any time by the
President, or other appointing power, when their services are
unnecessary, or for dishonesty, incapacity, inefficiency,
misconduct, or neglect of duty; and when so removed, the removal
shall be reported to the Senate, together with the reasons
therefor.

A further provision forbade the President to reappoint to the same office, during the recess, any person who had been rejected by the Senate.

To make the President ineligible, as was done in the Confederate States Constitution, and as President Hayes recommends, would take from the Executive the temptation to use the appointing power to receive a renomination or reelection. As the term of a Chief Magistrate draws near its end, and he becomes more deeply interested in being his own successor, he may make his appointments and direct his administration to increase popularity and accomplish his own ambitious ends. He might look to party management, and ward meetings, and manipulated caucuses, rather than to the general welfare. The evil of re-eligibility is increased by the failure of our electoral colleges to effect what was designed. These colleges have no independence, and most mechanically register the decrees of caucuses. What was intended to be a check on party has become its pliant instrument.

As essential to reduction of Executive patronage, and disarming the President of the dangerous influence and power growing out of it, there should be a persevering and a large reduction of federal expenditures. General Jackson, in 1836, truly said, "No political maxim is better established than that which tells us that an improvident expenditure of the public money is the parent of profligacy, and that no people can hope to perpetuate their liberties who long acquiesce in a policy which taxes them for objects not necessary to the legitimate and real wants of their government." Large revenue and expenditure give an excuse if they do not make the necessity for increasing the number of persons employed by the government. With expenditure comes an army of agents, contractors, officers interested in keeping up extravagance and multiplying officials. Patronage flows from the fountain of public income. To reduce patronage and ensure honest government, it is indispensable that the Government should extort no more money from the people than is needful for a just and economical administration. Our governments, federal, State, and municipal, need to be taught, by constitutional limitation and a sound public opinion, that a citizen's property is his as against every demand, except for a just, honest, and economical administration of the government.

As helping reform and growing out of it, a reorganization of parties is needed. The present parties have "played out." Parties are essential in republics, but they should represent intelligent patriotism, be organized on practical, living issues, and be vitalized by principles. Who is wise enough to tell what differentiates the Republican and the Democratic parties? What distinctive principles divide them? Who can "locate" the parties on such questions as tariff, currency, expenditure, civil service reform, character of the government, boundary between reserved and delegated powers? Issues like secession and slavery, no longer disputed or doubted, should have no influence in forming or keeping alive parties. Obsolete shibboleths should not alienate those who are otherwise agreed. A party not crystallizing around vital issues, not having "the dignity of contention" for principles, becomes a machine to put up A or put down B. The _ins_ and the _outs_ make now the two centres of the dividing parties, which have become cliques and cabals controlled by caucuses.

This is a most opportune season for reorganization of political parties, and a readjustment on broad and living issues. It is wrong to be carrying about the dead corpse of the past. A new generation has grown up since 1860. The spirit of the age is not what it was two decades since. The young men know next to nothing of Whiggery and Democracy. To make secession, or slavery, or the "bloody shirt" a rallying cry, is as absurd as to exhume the embargo or the alien and sedition laws. The inertia of society is great, and men cohere from traditions of the past. The reform bill of 1832 was long delayed in England, in its practical results, because the statesmen of 1832 continued in public life. So now effete parties are kept alive for partisan or patriotic ends by those who seem not to have realized that we are living in a new America.

It seems a plain duty to gather up what survives of our constitutional federal republic, of the labors of the past, and with a catholic spirit to combine for reformation of abuses, for national conciliation, for purifying parties, for saving the republic. A party equally of order and of progress, in favor of retrenchment, economy, low taxes, sound currency, civil service reform, preservation of State and of federal honor, strict adherence to the Constitution, keeping federal and State governments within their separate and defined spheres of action, while encountering the hostility of extremists, would rally to its support enough of intelligence and patriotism to repress sectionalism and hate, and bring our lately discordant States into a fraternal union, based on fixed law, mutual toleration and respect, and exact justice.

J. L. M. CURRY.

THREE PERIODS OF MODERN MUSIC.

In "Punch's Almanack" for this year is an illustration, in three compartments, of the subject "Music at Home." The first is called "Drawing-room Music of the Past." A young lady sits at one of those little spindle-legged piano-fortes, hardly larger than a large washstand, and somewhat shaped like one, with which our grandmothers and great grandmothers, and the men who composed music for them, were not only satisfied, but delighted. Her hands are moving, light and level, over the little key-board, and the dainty turn of her head shows that she is captivated by the sounds that she is eliciting. Around her is gathered a family group of some dozen people, old and young, from the grandfather to the little grandchild who sits upon a hassock at her lovely mother's knee. They are all entranced by the music. Plainly there is not a sound in the room but that which is produced by the fair performer. The souls of all that company are enchained; their hearts if not their eyes are brimming with emotion. A spell of tenderness and grace has been cast upon them; and they have given themselves up to him who has woven it. The faces of all are lightly tinged with sadness, but it is an elevated and elevating sadness; a sadness that is mingled with a joy silent, deep, and strong, a joy far above hilarity. The most impressive figure of the group is the grandfather, who sits with his arm lying listlessly across the instrument and his head slightly bowed, as, we may be sure, he is carried back by the sweet strains to a time when one who does not appear in the group was by his side in all the charms of early womanhood. The composition is so touching, so filled with purest, sweetest sentiment, that it is impossible to look at it long without being moved almost to tears by the tender and serene pathos with which it is pervaded. The legend tells us that the music which has wrought this spell is "A Melody by Mozart."

In the second compartment of the triptique, which is labelled "Drawing-room Music of the Present," a young lady also sits at a piano-forte. It is a grand, a very grand piano-forte; a tremendous institution, the invisible end of which stretches far into infinitude. Plainly it is one of those awful instruments which have received a gold medal at all the expositions. The lid is propped up so that it looks like a gigantic trap set to catch some gigantic bird or vermin. The performer's shoulders and arms, which emerge in a somewhat alarming manner from their scanty covering, are in violent agitation. Her hands are flung into the air as they poise for an instant over the upper part of the long key-board, ready to pounce down upon the shuddering notes below, and from the great gaping instrument a flock of startled and affrighted quavers, semiquavers, and demisemiquavers is pouring out pell-mell over the assembled hearers. Hearers! No. The great drawing-room is filled with a crowd of people who have evidently been bidden to listen to the music. But they are undergoing it with stolid indifference as they talk or try to talk, either almost shouting or whispering into each other's deafened ears and bewildered brains. The only person who takes any interest in the performance is the performer herself. The motive power here is "A brilliant fantasia for the piano by Signor Rumblestominski."

The third compartment is entitled "Drawing-room music of the Future." Here five performers are laboring at and around the piano-forte, the top of which has been taken off. They are all men; tough-brained-looking fellows: one a violinist, one a violoncellist; two are at the key-board, and one stands music in hand and mouth wide open. They are toiling as if at day's work by the piece; and all are singing. They are engaged upon "Twenty-four consecutive interdependent Logarithmic studies for Violin and Violoncello, with Double Differential and Integral accompaniment for the Piano-forte, supplemented by Unisonal Descriptive and Corroborative vocal exposition in five modern languages." They have evidently got well into harness, and have dragged their hearers some distance over their rugged road, which is a "hard road to travel." The mass of the assembled company are rushing madly for the door. On an ottoman in the foreground sit five victims, four young ladies and a bald-headed old gentleman, who are all fast asleep. At one side a determined fellow sits with his elbows on his knees grasping his head with both hands, resolved to endure unto the end. Not even in the faces of the performers is there the slightest manifestation of the soothing, the elevating, or even the pleasurably exciting influence which belongs peculiarly to music. With dogged determination they are working out a knotty intellectual problem. They do not exhibit even the tickled vanity of musical virtuosity; they are there--to use a cant phrase of musical criticism--to "interpret" what the composer has with infinite toil and trouble put upon paper; and very tough work they find it; somewhat like reading mathematics written in the Basque language. And their souls are unmoved. The musical sounds go through their ears straight to their brains, leaving their hearts untouched. They are engaged in an intellectual process.

Of these designs, the last two, although they are laughable caricatures, express with very little exaggeration (allowing for the notes made visible in the second) the character, the quality, and the effect of certain schools of musical composition. The first is not a caricature, as any one will see; but although it is quite the contrary, it is not on the other hand idealized. It merely represents with skilful touch and felicitous arrangement what might have actually occurred and what doubtless did many times occur in drawing-rooms at the end of the last century and the first years of this; indeed, what might happen and even does happen now. There has been a change in costume and in manners; but there is none in the effect upon musical souls of a melody by Mozart.

And these designs illustrate three periods in modern music: two through which it has passed and one upon which it seems now to be entering. By modern music I mean music since the days of Palestrina. What was written before that time, nearly or remotely, although it may have historical importance and interest, is of little or no value as music. Indeed, it hardly is music as we know and feel it. Not that I would imply that Palestrina invented modern music, or even that he alone of contemporary composers was a gifted and accomplished master of his art. Roland de Lattre, called Orlandus Lassus, chief of the Gallo-Belgic school, might dispute the palm with him.[4] But this conceded, it remains that in Orlandus Lassus we have the best product of the ancient school, adhering to the ancient style and bringing it to its highest perfection; while in Palestrina we have the beginning of the modern school and style, the distinctive trait of which may broadly be said to be the use of melody and harmony of independent value under constant governance of the principle of tonality. Before the time of Palestrina--say A.D. 1550, he having been born about 1524 and having died about 1594, which year closed the life of Orlandus Lassus, who was born in 1520--before that time music was polyphonic. But it was not merely, as that term implies, many-voiced, or in several parts; for that it is now; but the parts moved without any aesthetic relation to each other, and with the same independence of the aesthetic effect of the whole. Their progression was according to certain rules; but these conformed to, the object of the composer seemed to be to make his work as intricate as possible. Certain figures--for they could hardly be called melodies--one or two or three or more--were repeated again and again and again by the various voices, each one going or seeming to go its own way, entirely regardless of the others--regardless of anything except the rules of the counterpoint of the day. The combining result was a tangled skein of sound which could be unravelled only as it had been put together, by rule. Instead of an emotional expression it was an intellectual puzzle in sound. Moreover the whole composition was without any bond of unity; it was, so to speak, and in its effect it was really, in no particular key.

[4] For an able setting forth of the claims of Orlandus Lassus,
see Frederic Louis Ritter's excellent "History of Music," First
Series, published by Oliver Ditson & Co.

Upon music in this condition there came about three hundred years ago a great change. Polyphonetic writing gave way, gradually but with some rapidity, to the movement of parts in a harmony of independent absolute beauty--that is, beauty, in the simple succession of its chords--and to the union with this harmony of a leading melody, also valuable for its independent, absolute beauty. Thus came into being what I have heretofore called "absolute music," which has been known to the world only about three hundred years, and in its full and complete development only about one hundred and fifty. At the same time, with this use of harmony and melody of absolute beauty and value, came in a great controlling principle or law, upon the operation and influence of which, in fact, the aesthetic effect of the new music chiefly if not entirely depended. This law or principle was tonality. I have been told that in a publication which I have never seen--although most probably it has been sent to me, to go, with the greater part of the printed matter and not a few of the letters that I receive, unread into my waste-basket--I have been held up as a dreadful example of musical incompetence on the ground that I cannot "appreciate Wagner's magnificent [or splendid, or something of that sort] tonality." Of course it cuts me to the heart to show that my criticaster was thoroughly ignorant of the very meaning of the word that he used--a word which is the name of a principle of paramount importance and significance in the art of music, which, I believe, he in some sort professes. But the demands of truth are inexorable.

Tonality is something which cannot be magnificent or splendid; nor can it be attributed to a composer as being in the slightest degree a claim to admiration. Indeed, one composer can hardly possess it in a greater degree than another; and the writer of an ephemeral ballad, or of "Thou, thou reignest in this bosom," has it, although not more largely, with stronger manifestation than Mozart or Beethoven. And yet it so happens that Wagner is in his later works _less_ governed by the law of tonality than any other known composer of the day.

Tonality is simply the relation of a musical phrase, or air, or longer composition, to a keynote or tonic chord. To this tonic chord the harmonies of the composition must bear a close and constantly felt relationship. The harmony almost always opens with this chord, and continually recurs to it; and either in its simple form or in some of its inversions, it, its dominant and subdominant, are the perceptibly ruling harmonies of the composition; and upon this tonic chord the composition always ends. That is tonality; nothing more nor less; and to the influence of this principle of tonality is due the distinctive character of modern music. Strange as it will probably seem to most amateurs, news as we have already seen it is to one professor, it was not until after Palestrina's time that the law of tonality asserted itself in music, and that compositions were clearly written with any tonic, that is, manifestly and strikingly in any particular key.[5] But it so happens that Wagner's method of composition has actually led him somewhat away from this principle of tonality. Any musical person will see that in recitative there is much less relation of harmony to the tonic than in airs or in choruses; and Wagner's prolonged, almost endless recitatives are wearisome partly from the very fact that we are so long at sea drifting hither and thither without the rudder of tonality. But what did this matter to the criticaster? He had heard the word tonality, and it was a round, mouth-filling word, somewhat new withal, and therefore good for use against an ignoramus. Perhaps he thought it meant sonority or something of the kind; or he connected it with that lovely phrase "tone-poem." Well, in any case, it has served his purpose astonishingly.

[5] It is not necessary that I should give authority for this to
any competent person who is acquainted with the music of the
ancient composers; but whoever chooses to do so may find the
subject fully discussed in Helmholtz's great work, _passim_.

After the introduction of the principle of tonality music developed with remarkable rapidity. In one hundred and fifty years it made more progress toward an ideal beauty and as a means of emotional expression than it had made in the thousands of years that had passed since the first note was sung. For by this principle of tonality, melody and harmony as we know them became possible. All that went before was either the vague, formless, unsymmetrical production of popular mood and fancy, or the dry formula-work of musical pedants. And yet within a century we have such a result as Stradella's divine _Aria di chiesa Se i miei sospiri_, which, whether for its melody, its harmony, or its emotional expression, intense yet kept within the bounds of a lofty and almost serene dignity, is unsurpassed by any vocal work which has been since produced. It has been said by some that this air was not written by Stradella. M. Fetis, however, does not doubt it; and the result of the discussion is that it is assigned to the great Italian singer. The story of his having saved his life by singing it--two assassins who followed him into a cathedral to put him to death for having robbed a nobleman of his beautiful mistress having been disarmed and sent off repentant by the charm of his voice and of the music--is probably known to many of my readers. Did any of them ever hear in a composition by Wagner or Liszt, or any of that crew, a melody of which it could be believed or for a moment supposed that it would produce such an effect, even if it were sung by a seraph?

It was not, however, until the first quarter of the last century that what is in a large sense the modern school of music came to full growth. Then appeared Bach and Handel. They came suddenly; as suddenly as Marlow and Shakespeare into the field of dramatic poetry, as suddenly as Raphael and Titian into that of painting. Not indeed without roots in the past and a growth from them, but with a marvellously quick and strong development, and an unfolding of flower and fruit that seemed as if it were--as indeed it was--the blooming of a century plant. And as is ever the case in art, the utmost limit of attainment seems to have been reached at the first bound. What was dramatic poetry before the half century which began with Marlow and Shakespeare? What was painting before the like period of its glory? And what have either been since? This position may be claimed for Handel, with the fullest recognition of the genius of Mozart (Haydn, great, enchanting, truly inspired as he was, is yet out of the question), and even of the almost awful genius of Beethoven. But when we remember that the Hallelujah Chorus, _Lascia chio pianza_, the renowned _Largo_ in G so grandly performed by Mr. Thomas's orchestra at his last subscription concert, are from the same hand, and that these are only examples (which I cite because they are so well known) of a creative power which seems to have been equally great and various in its manifestations--when we take into consideration the healthiness, the virility of Handel's tone of thought, there being, I believe, in all his known works, not a single passage marked by morbid feeling or even exaggerated sentiment, although of intensest feeling there is overpowering expression, as for example in the _Largo_ just referred to, and when we give due weight to the copiousness of his production, he being the most voluminous of all the great composers, if we measure his works by their quantity and not by their numbers, in which an oratorio or an opera would count only one, we can hardly hesitate, except in favor of Beethoven, in reckoning him as the greatest creative mind in music. And as to Beethoven, deeply as he sunk his shaft into the profound of human emotion, mightily as he moves us, deftly as he expresses even the lighter moods of feeling (rarely, however, without some passing touch which, if pushed a little further, might become almost fierceness), is there not sometimes, and perhaps more than sometimes, a morbidness, noble, magnificent, but still morbidness, in his moods? We are overwhelmed by the grandeur, and are swallowed up in the gloom of his graver compositions; but when we emerge are we in as healthy a state of mind as that in which we find ourselves after listening to Handel or reading Shakespeare--even if we read such tragedies as "Hamlet," "Othello," and "King Lear"? Then, too, it must be remembered how carefully Beethoven nursed his genius; how regardless he was of every consideration except the expression of his own thought; and how comparatively limited was his productiveness, or certainly his production.

As to his moodiness, it must, on the other hand, be considered that it is the peculiar function of music to express moods. Man's soul is stirred by emotions which cannot be given utterance in words, and which would remain unexpressed but for music, which to the musically organized is a means of communication and of sympathy. There is a question at least whether an art whose function it is to give expression to inward feeling too subtle for words, an expression which is above all words, which gives form to the formless and utterance to the unspeakable, is not rightfully and of necessity at times morbid and moody; whether if it were not so it would not fail in doing that which is the very reason of its being. The supremacy lies between Handel and Beethoven; and we shall find ourselves inclined to assign it now to one and now to the other, according to the mood in which we are, which will depend greatly on which of the two we have just heard.

And yet, as to pure music, irrespective of psychological significance--that is, the expression of an ideal of beauty in musical form--Mozart stands first among all composers. Another mind so fertile in thoughts of the finest and highest kind of beauty is unknown in the history of any art, Shakespeare being of course always excepted. Writing, like Shakespeare, always for money, and not hesitating to put his hand to any task that would bring him a return, driven by sharp necessity almost to the prostitution of his genius, driven in his boyhood, by an exacting father, to write as an infant prodigy for the support of the family, dying at the early, and, as far as the mind is concerned, the immature, age of thirty-seven, he left behind him, in the mass of his compositions, much that was hastily produced merely to meet the needs of the moment. And yet in it all what transcendent beauty of form! He had rarely even a fitting occasion for the exercise of his faculties. Rarely is he not superior to the subject which he undertakes to illustrate. Like Shakespeare, he throws away beautiful thoughts upon mean and trivial subjects. Contrary to the supposition of the Roman Pope, with Mozart it was the jug that was begun to be made and the vase that issued from his hand.[6] "Don Giovanni" his greatest or at least his richest work, is full of examples of this incongruity between the occasion and the production. In a previous paper I pointed out an example in the _andante_ of Leporello's catalogue song. Another is the trio in masks. Only elsewhere in his own works can be found examples of an equally enchanting beauty of musical form. In its thought, and in the elevation and finish of that thought, it reaches the highest attainable pitch of perfection. This single trio is of more worth than all that many composers of repute have written in all their lives. For example: If it were a question between the destruction of this brief passage and all of Mendelsohn's compositions, the trio should be preserved without a moment's hesitation. Just as the Madonna Sixtina is worth ten times over all the canvases of Giulio Romano; and as a single mutilated figure of the frieze of the Parthenon, or the Venus of Milo, outweighs all the perfect marbles of Canova and of Thorwaldsen. Such is the transcendent value of the supreme in art.

[6] Amphora cepit Institui, currente rota cur urceus exit?--_Hor.
Ad Pisones._

In all the works of the great composers of the modern school--the only real school--of music, from Bach to Beethoven, including Haydn, there is a supreme dominant feeling for beauty of form, shown chiefly in melody, but hardly less apparent in harmony. Indeed, without this feeling they would not have been great. The rule is absolute: no form, no art; for art is proportion, symmetry. Melody is a series of musical proportions; like a series of arches the lines of which are harmonious. These melodic ideas they elaborated with the utmost care. It is generally supposed that ideas in art come spontaneously; and of all this might seem truest of musical ideas, which are not, like those expressed in language, in painting, in sculpture, or in architecture, required to conform themselves to a type or a purpose. They do come indeed to the musical artist, but not spontaneously in the form in which he presents them. They would not come up if they were not in the soil; but the soil must be cultivated and the growth must be pruned and trained into seeming naturalness and spontaneousness of beauty. Milton's lines--

Where the bright seraphim in burning row
Their loud, uplifted angel trumpets blow--

seem like a splendid spontaneous outburst of poetical expression. But we know that their splendor and their spontaneous seeming is the result of elaboration, of erasure, of interlineation, of recasting. The thought we may believe came in a moment, but it was worked with consummate care and art into the form in which the poet gave it to the world. So it is even with melody, the most spontaneous-seeming part of music. We may be sure that even Mozart, most fertile of all composers in melody, the greatest master of instrumentation, elaborated his themes and his treatment of them, if not on paper, at least in his mind before he put his conceptions into score. And the reason, the occasion for this elaboration was the desired attainment of the highest possible perfection of form. I need hardly say to any musician that I am not speaking of technical form, either of harmonic progression or of the cast of a composition, as for example the sonata form, the symphonic form, the dramatic form, but of the form of intrinsic absolute value which appeals to the general craving for and appreciation of beauty. This beauty of form cannot be disregarded in any art without failure to attain the highest place in the world's estimation, no matter how marvellous and admirable the powers displayed in another direction. For lack of this excellence Rembrandt can never take the highest place, but must be content with the admiration of those who can appreciate his mastery of manipulation, a technical excellence. Of all great painters, Turner is most imperfect in this respect. But Turner can hardly be said to have dealt with form at all. Hence a certain weakness amid all his glory. He painted distance, light. Among painters he is the king of space, the prince of the powers of the air.

Absolutely essential as beauty of form is in music, the reason of it, unlike that of the same quality in other arts, is beyond our apprehension. I at least find it so. I have heard it, and seen it upon paper, and considered it all my life. I have taken it in at eye and ear together. I have read and have pondered; but I never have been able to detect musical genius in its working, as I have, or have fancied that I have, done in other arts. I can find no reason for the existence of this beauty except that it is beautiful. I can see clearly, and I have sometimes thought that I could with some satisfactory approach to clearness tell in words, what the composer has done; but the how, and above all the why, is as much hidden from me as it was from him. For that it was unknown to him I am sure, not because I could not discover it, but from the very nature of the case.

Beauty of form in music is absolute, independent, self-existent. This is true of all natural beauty. There is no obligation upon beauty as there is, for instance, upon mathematical truth or moral goodness. But in all imitative art there is an obligation of conformity at least to an ideal type of what is represented. But music the moment it becomes imitative becomes ridiculous; it steps out of the proper limits of the art. For example, Haydn's "cheerful roaring lion" and "flexible tiger" in the "Creation." But it should be remembered that what is imitative and false in that aspect may have an essential beauty given by the genius of the composer. For example, the second and the fourth movements of the "Pastoral Symphony," and Haydn's own illustration of the passage, "softly purling glides through silent glades the limpid brook," in Raphael's song, "Rolling in foaming billows."

Music in its higher forms--I will not say its highest, but those which bring it within the pale of consideration in aesthetics--is without relations of any kind, except those which it bears to the soul of the composer and to that of the hearer. Even words are only the occasion of it, the suggestion. An embroidery of music with words is like the semi-pictorial explanatory addition to the Egyptian temples. The hieroglyphics tell us the story indeed, but if we are near enough to distinguish them, they only mar the effect of the architecture. So if in song the words are for any reason sufficiently salient to attract attention to themselves, they mar the music. In sacred music innumerable foolish and canting verses have become associated with fervor of feeling and sublimity of aspiration because of the music of which they have been made the vehicle. We do not really think of the words. And so in "Don Giovanni," in "Fidelio," we overlook the childishness of the poetry, if it must be called poetry, and regard it only as affording suggestions and occasions for the music.