in intensity as the motif proceeds, and whether this increase is rapid or gradual. It will also be relevant to consider the way that a specific motif representing one sentiment is transformed into the representation of another, and to become aware of the methods of transformation. Naming the sentiments evoked is problematic not only because the evocation clearly defined by the music may be only coarsely and doubtfully translatable into language but also because the representation of sentiment, as the history of music proceeds, often becomes more unstable and dynamic, and, in addition, a motif may carry a different affective meaning depending upon its position in the musical form. In the simplest case, a motif repeated does not have exactly the same meaning the second time, and this will even slightly alter the significance of the first appearance in the listener’s memory. At the heart of the discussion is the radical change in the means of representation of sentiment throughout history. To take one example, the power of Wagner’s music in the representation of erotic passion has been observed (with admiration or horror) from the first appearance of Tristan, but given the example of the duets of Guglielmo and Dorabella in Così fan tutte and of Don Giovanni and Zerlina in Don Giovanni, a lover of Mozart is not disposed to believe that Mozart did not do equally well. Nevertheless, as powerful as it may be, a love duet by Mozart can only last a few minutes, and drawing it out for threequarters of an hour was beyond the musical techniques available to him. Of course, Mozart’s eroticism is rather different from Wagner’s, if no less salacious. It might be reasonably claimed, I suppose, that an erotic sentiment evoked so succinctly and economically is not the same as one that can build up over a long stretch of time, but this, while undoubtedly true, only goes to show the superficiality of trying to deal with the subject simply by putting a name to the emotion illustrated. In opera, of course, a sentiment is given an identity tag by the libretto, but it is a fallacy of opera criticism to consider the
literary text as primary and the music as an illustration or enhancement of the text. By the end of the eighteenth century, after the radical development of operatic style, the more interesting musical theorists, like Wilhelm Heinse, would claim that the music was primary and the words illustrated the music. However, a more sensible approach assumes music and text as an indissoluble whole that must be understood together in a reciprocal relationship. The
At the heart of any discussion of the representation of sentiment in music is the question: “How did the eighteenthcentury listener learn to comprehend this complex system?” The answer is certainly not by studying the theory of music. The system was learned the way children learn language, by listening to their parents and to their older siblings and friends, not by studying grammar and syntax. text is primary only in the sense that it was written first—and sometimes not even that was true, as composers often demanded words for previously composed vocal lines, and also ordered exactly the kind of text that they needed for the music they had in mind. With pure instrumental music, believing that the naming of the sentiment portrayed is an adequate account of the significance of the music only transfers to the instrumental field the difficulties and ambiguities of operatic criticism. In eighteenth-century music, with which we shall begin our discussion, it must be understood from the outset that affective meaning is created by the relation of consonance and dissonance: these
terms do not indicate pleasant and unpleasant musical noises, but are part of the grammar of eighteenth-century tonality. A dissonance is not an ugly sound (some dissonances will seem exquisitely beautiful to any listener) but an interval or chord that must be resolved into a consonance—the basic consonance being the chord of the tonic triad, whose most important intervals are the octave and the fifth (slightly less fundamental are the third and its inversion the sixth, also components of the triad), because they must be present or at least implicit in the last chord of a piece of tonal music of the eighteenth century. Dissonance establishes an increase in tension, and consonance a release. Strictly viewed, everything in a tonal piece is more or less dissonant except for the tonic triad with which the work must end…. We may even conclude that eighteenthcentury tonality was actually more complex than nineteenth-century, as harmonic dissonance was defined more strictly and elaborately. Both were more complex than the neo-tonal music of recent decades, in which any conception of dissonance between harmonic areas has disappeared. The tonal aspect largely consists of an understandable delight in using perfect triads, and all large-scale richness of expressive tension has been drained away, the rich subtlety of eighteenth-century tonality now only a distant memory. At the heart of any discussion of the representation of sentiment in music is the question: “How did the eighteenthcentury listener learn to comprehend this complex system?” The answer is certainly not by studying the theory of music. The system was learned the way children learn language, by listening to their parents and to their older siblings and friends, not by studying grammar and syntax. It is true that a comprehension of how literary style works may benefit from a study of rhetoric, but there is a very high level of understanding our literary culture that can be attained without discussing metaphor, simile, oxymoron or syzygy, and so forth, and we can be deeply affected by our reading without any of that, in much the same
From Music and Sentiment, by Charles Rosen, published by Yale University Press in June 2010. Reproduced by permission. americanorchestras.org
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