Chapter XXVII: Introduction (5)

[Footnote 412: Both Mendelssohn and Schumann deplored the fact that they could get no really good libretto and would unquestionably not have received all the statements here without considerable qualification. Hegel appears to be too dominated by the character of Italian opera. German opera as further developed by Wagner and even in the hands of Beethoven and Glück and Weber makes a very different demand. It is unquestionably true that there must be a certain reciprocity of quality between the two. But some of the finest music has been written for some of the finest poetical language, namely that of our Bible. Composers like Bach, Handel, and S. S. Wesley insisted on having the very best form of their religious ideas they could obtain.]

[Footnote 413: Lit., "Within the purely musical realm of tones." Hegel's strictures would only apply to the most formal kind of exercises or studies. It would really be a misnomer to say that Chopin's studies for the piano or Spohr's or even Kreutzer's exercises for the violin wholly come under it.]

[Footnote 414: It is on this ground that Aristotle calls music the most imitative art. They represent emotions directly without the mediatory office of Nature's objectivity (_vide_ "Three Lectures on Aesthetic," by Bernard Bosanquet, p. 53).]

[Footnote 415: It is more subjective because the content is more ideal, and more closely related to the artist's personal qualities.]

[Footnote 416: More definite than feeling and soul-life is from tone.]

[Footnote 417: That is, vanishes with the evanescence of the music.]

[Footnote 418: _Die Geschicklichkeit eines virtuosen Machwerks. Machwerk_ is used, of course, in a depreciating sense. The contrast is between it and a truly inspired composition.]

[Footnote 419: Lit., "Of the business on hand."]

[Footnote 420: _Gleichgültig._ I am not sure whether Hegel means fortuitous in the sense that Nature in its abstraction is such, or purely objective, _i.e._, no self-reflection, probably the latter. They are "dead elements."]

[Footnote 421: That is, spatial externality.]

[Footnote 422: The meaning appears to me that apart from conscious life which can contrast the fleeting moments of Time with its permanent self-identity the process is without meaning--there is no process, it is a παντά ρεῖ with no differentiation.]

[Footnote 423: It cancels itself in so far as it makes itself an object. The dialectical movement of self-consciousness is here viewed in the bare form of its original abstraction.]

[Footnote 424: _Das Ich als solches._]

[Footnote 425: _Abgeschmackte._ Not so much bad taste here as false judgment.]

[Footnote 426: _Auffasst._ Hegel would appear to mean the intelligent hearer rather than the composer, though the word would refer to either. Even then it is not clear why music should not be said to exist by its mere performance. But, of course, such presupposes the human executant, and this is possibly what Hegel intends to imply.]

[Footnote 427: _Nüancirt._ Made subject to the nuances or modifications introduced into such relations.]

[Footnote 428: _Verstand_ as contrasted with _Vernunft._ The analytical faculty of science.]

[Footnote 429: That is, the quantitative basis.]

[Footnote 430: _Die haltungslose Dauer._ That is, a duration that is unbroken by arresting points in its progress.]

[Footnote 431: That is, self-conscious, synthetic unity holding the temporal process in relation to itself. It thus becomes not merely a _werden_ but a _für sich seyn._ In contrast to the purely abstract process the self is _das Bei sich selbstseyende_ _i.e._, that which persists along with itself. This totality or aggregate of particulars Hegel calls _Sammlung._ The analysis is really an analysis of the form of conscious experience.]

[Footnote 432: This is the converse case of a series of definite points of contrast, but unrelated by any integrating principle. I admit frankly that I am not sure I have wholly seized the meaning in these difficult paragraphs. I have adhered in my translation, therefore, as closely as possible to the original.]

[Footnote 433: _Markirte._]

[Footnote 434: _Herrschende Regel._]

[Footnote 435: Because their orbits are elliptical and motion is accelerated as they approach the focus.]

[Footnote 436: _Verlebendigung._]

[Footnote 437: He means of a specific collection of words, sentences.]

[Footnote 438: _Perioden._]

[Footnote 439: _Umschwung._ Perhaps all that is meant is the return to the previous level, as we should speak of the rise and fall of voices.]

[Footnote 440: _Ein Körper._]

[Footnote 441: _Seiner zeitlichen Gestalt._]

[Footnote 442: _Gezwungene._ I presume the meaning is that the oscillations are effected by a curved form of musical instrument.]

[Footnote 443: I am not sure there is not a certain confusion here. Our text, at any rate, when speaking of wind instruments, refers to the column of air as the medium of sound, but in the case of stringed instruments draws attention rather to the thing which creates the waves of vibration, the string itself. The nature of the timbre of an instrument is no doubt an important one, but it may be questioned whether this distinction between line or column and surface is very satisfactory or sufficient.]

[Footnote 444: _Jenem linearen Tönen._ The expression appears to me not very easy to interpret even from Hegel's own point of view. In what sense can you call a musical tone linear? The theory here stated, though ingenious enough, appears to me to miss the fundamental question, what actually constitutes the timbre of an instrument, in its assertion, for instance, of distantly related harmonies or non-assertion of such. Even assuming that the form of the instrument, or the part of it set into vibration, may partially explain this, it is obvious, I think, that Hegel's manner of stating it is open to considerable criticism.]

[Footnote 445: _Die näher abgeschlossene Bestimmtheit._ The meaning seems to be that definition of them in which they stand out with most distinctness from others.]

[Footnote 446: The comparison is unfortunate--in two respects. Violet is a cardinal colour, and the theory of Goethe to which it refers is, of course, untenable.]

[Footnote 447: The true scientific reason why octaves resemble each other so much more closely than two notes at any other interval is that the upper of two notes at an octave's distance is the first "upper-partial" tone of the lower, and all its harmonies are also harmonies of the lower note; the compound tone, for there is no entirely simple tone, of the higher note contains no new sound, which is not in the compound tone of the lower. This is not the case with two notes at any other interval.]

[Footnote 448: _Ihre besonderen Seiten._ I presume this means what is immediately called below the several intervals between note and note.]

[Footnote 449: There is really a distinction between the consonance of the dominant and a major or minor third.]

[Footnote 450: That is, the third is only third in relation to the key-note, or the leading-note only as the note previous to the octave.]

[Footnote 451: Three notes are really essential to any true chord.]

[Footnote 452: The mediant lies about midway between the tonic and dominant as the third of the scale. The researches of Helmholtz prove that the distinction between consonant or semi-consonant and dissonant intervals is not arbitrary, but the result of the nature of the intervals themselves. A musical tone is mostly a compound one, containing, besides its principal tone, other tones with fixed relations to the lowest note, called harmonics, or "upper partials." Helmholtz has shown that when two of the earlier-produced and stronger of these upper partial tones coincide in two notes sounded together, the resulting tone is pure, free, that is, from the inequalities known as "beats" (Prout, "Harmony," 10th ed., pp. 21, 22).]

[Footnote 453: As, of course, in the scale, notes independent of each other.]

[Footnote 454: _Schärfe._]

[Footnote 455: The reader of Browning will recall how the poet in his "Abt Vogler" exclaims "Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?" or speaks of blunting the minor into the ninth where the musician "stands on alien ground, surveying awhile the heights."]

[Footnote 456: This extreme emphasis on melody must be read as further explained lower down of melody in the wider sense. Even as thus qualified it is rather an overstatement. It may be questioned whether in the mind of a musician of genius the freedom of harmonic progression is of a different quality to that of melodic. It may _appear_ no doubt less spontaneous. But it is the task of the great artist to overcome that appearance in one case as much as in the other.]

[Footnote 457: It may be doubted how far such a statement is true of many chord progressions in modern music. It seems to me that this notion of harmony as _für sich_ having no musical significance is, to say the least, very misleading.]

[Footnote 458: This really is the point. Inspired harmony in its progression unfolds what is really a tissue of melodic threads. The complex musical structure of a Brahms symphony is a good example.]

[Footnote 459: Lit., "the free self-subsistency (_Beisichseyn_) of subjective life."]

[Footnote 460: Hegel puts it the other way. What he means is that in the medium of music we neither apprehend objects of sense nor ideas as we receive them in imagination or thought.]

[Footnote 461: Hegel throughout uses the term _Innerlichkeit._ That which is the Inmost is, in fact, the ideal. It is the _raison d'être_ and the notion itself.]

[Footnote 462: He means at the point proposed by the dramatic theme. Hegel's words are literally "it subdues the subject (_i.e._, of consciousness) referably to its simple concentration (_i.e._, on the subject at hand)."]

[Footnote 463: The above distinction is hardly consonant with that of customary parlance. We should rather say that the melody of the song gave an utterance to the words, and the instrumentation was, for the very reason that it was more independent, more directly an accompaniment. But the point emphasized here seems to be the closeness of the association. In this aspect, no doubt, the music actually sung is more an accompaniment to the intelligible content. As a rule accompaniment is generally used as the accompaniment of a song or choral writing, and Hegel himself uses it in this sense previously.]

[Footnote 464: A general truth, no doubt. But not without qualification if we consider the works and indeed the execution of such giants as Bach and Handel.]

[Footnote 465: That is, particularity due to the idiosyncrasies of the artist, and merely personal to him. But the statement applies to classic art more strictly than modern.]

[Footnote 466: That is, music as an accompaniment.]

[Footnote 467: _Gediegenheit._ Something that rings true as a whole, not a thing of patches.]

[Footnote 468: The music of Mendelssohn and others in this direction will raise a doubt in some whether Hegel does not rather overstate his case here.]

[Footnote 469: _Besonderung._ The relative isolation that is effected by marked assertion.]

[Footnote 470: Throughout this discussion the personal bias of Hegel for the Italian opera is obvious. In the light of the actual knowledge of his day the wonder is that his own tastes permitted his being even as fair as he is. It may be doubted whether he had any strong sense for orchestral or chamber music at all. His reflections must be read throughout with this reservation.]

[Footnote 471: Or, as Hegel more technically calls it, and I have above translated it, "subjectivity."]

[Footnote 472: That is, dependent on living beings for its presentation in every case.]

[Footnote 473: The execution of Paganini is, of course, the classic example. But all cadenzas executed by a great artist, even though carefully studied, express something of the spirit.]

[Footnote 474: Hegel means that such music expresses not so much rational freedom as the fundamental independence of the self-conscious principle.]

[Footnote 475: By _dürftiger Kopf_ I understand Hegel to mean the headstrong charlatan as contrasted with the virtuoso who is also a trained musician. Paganini had a vein of both in his composition. The epithet _dürftig_, lit., thirsty, is, however, not very clear, and in so far as it is, the emphasis would not be so much on quackery as absence of all training.]

END OF VOL. III