How to Listen to Music, 7th ed

The fundamental principle of Form is repetition of melodies, which are to music what ideas are to poetry. Melodies themselves are made by repetition of smaller fractions called motives (a term borrowed from the fine arts), phrases, and periods, which derive their individuality from their rhythmical or intervallic characteristics. Melodies are not all of the simple kind which the musically illiterate, or the musically ill-trained, recognize as "tunes," but they all have a symmetrical organization. The dissection of a simple folk-tune may serve to make this plain and also indicate to the untrained how a single feature may be taken as a mark of identification and a holding-point for the memory. Here is the melody of a Creole song called sometimes Pov' piti Lolotte, sometimes Pov' piti Momzelle Zizi, in the patois of Louisiana and Martinique:

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It will be as apparent to the eye of one who cannot read music as it will to his ear when he hears this melody played, that it is built up of two groups of notes only. These groups are marked off by the heavy lines across the staff called bars, whose purpose it is to indicate rhythmical subdivisions in music. The second, third, fifth, sixth, and seventh of these groups are repetitions merely of the first group, which is the germ of the melody, but on different degrees of the scale; the fourth and eighth groups are identical and are an appendage hitched to the first group for the purpose of bringing it to a close, supplying a resting-point craved by man's innate sense of symmetry. Musicians call such groups cadences. A musical analyst would call each group a motive, and say that each successive two groups, beginning with the first, constitute a phrase, each two phrases a period, and the two periods a melody. We have therefore in this innocent Creole tune eight motives, four phrases, and two periods; yet its material is summed up in two groups, one of seven notes, one of five, which only need to be identified and remembered to enable a listener to recognize something of the design of a composer if he were to put the melody to the highest purposes that melody can be put in the art of musical composition.

Repetition is the constructive principle which was employed by the folk-musician in creating this melody; and repetition is the fundamental principle in all musical construction. It will suffice for many merely to be reminded of this to appreciate the fact that while the exercise of memory is a most necessary activity in listening to music, it lies in music to make that exercise easy. There is repetition of motives, phrases, and periods in melody; repetition of melodies in parts; and repetition of parts in the wholes of the larger forms.

The beginnings of poetic forms are also found in repetition; in primitive poetry it is exemplified in the refrain or burden, in the highly developed poetry of the Hebrews in parallelism. The Psalmist wrote:

Here is a period of two members, the latter repeating the thought of the former. A musical analyst might find in it an admirable analogue for the first period of a simple melody. He would divide it into four motives: "Rebuke me not | in thy wrath | neither chasten me | in thy hot displeasure," and point out as intimate a relationship between them as exists in the Creole tune. The bond of union between the motives of the melody as well as that in the poetry illustrates a principle of beauty which is the most important element in musical design after repetition, which is its necessary vehicle. It is because this principle guides the repetition of the tone-groups that together they form a melody that is perfect, satisfying, and reposeful. It is the principle of key-relationship, to discuss which fully would carry me farther into musical science than I am permitted to go. Let this suffice: A harmony is latent in each group, and the sequence of groups is such a sequence as the experience of ages has demonstrated to be most agreeable to the ear.

In the case of the Creole melody the listener is helped to a quick appreciation of its form by the distinct physiognomy which rhythm has stamped upon it; and it is by noting such a characteristic that the memory can best be aided in its work of identification. It is not necessary for a listener to follow all the processes of a composer in order to enjoy his music, but if he cultivates the habit of following the principal themes through a work of the higher class he will not only enjoy the pleasures of memory but will frequently get a glimpse into the composer's purposes which will stimulate his imagination and mightily increase his enjoyment. There is nothing can guide him more surely to a recognition of the principle of unity, which makes a symphony to be an organic whole instead of a group of pieces which are only externally related. The greatest exemplar of this principle is Beethoven; and his music is the best in which to study it for the reason that he so frequently employs material signs for the spiritual bond. So forcibly has this been impressed upon me at times that I am almost willing to believe that a keen analytical student of his music might arrange his greater works into groups of such as were in process of composition at the same time without reference to his personal history. Take the principal theme of the C minor Symphony for example:

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This simple, but marvellously pregnant, motive is not only the kernel of the first movement, it is the fundamental thought of the whole symphony. We hear its persistent beat in the scherzo as well:

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and also in the last movement:

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More than this, we find the motive haunting the first movement of the pianoforte sonata in F minor, op. 57, known as the "Sonata Appassionata," now gloomily, almost morosely, proclamative in the bass, now interrogative in the treble:

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Schindler relates that when once he asked Beethoven to tell him what the F minor and the D minor (Op. 31, No. 2) sonatas meant, he received for an answer only the enigmatical remark: "Read Shakespeare's 'Tempest.'" Many a student and commentator has since read the "Tempest" in the hope of finding a clew to the emotional contents which Beethoven believed to be in the two works, so singularly associated, only to find himself baffled. It is a fancy, which rests perhaps too much on outward things, but still one full of suggestion, that had Beethoven said: "Hear my C minor Symphony," he would have given a better starting-point to the imagination of those who are seeking to know what the F minor sonata means. Most obviously it means music, but it means music that is an expression of one of those psychological struggles which Beethoven felt called upon more and more to delineate as he was more and more shut out from the companionship of the external world. Such struggles are in the truest sense of the word tempests. The motive, which, according to the story, Beethoven himself said indicates, in the symphony, the rappings of Fate at the door of human existence, is common to two works which are also related in their spiritual contents. Singularly enough, too, in both cases the struggle which is begun in the first movement and continued in the third, is interrupted by a period of calm reassuring, soul-fortifying aspiration, which in the symphony as well as in the sonata takes the form of a theme with variations. Here, then, the recognition of a simple rhythmical figure has helped us to an appreciation of the spiritual unity of the parts of a symphony, and provided a commentary on the poetical contents of a sonata. But the lesson is not yet exhausted. Again do we find the rhythm coloring the first movement of the pianoforte concerto in G major:

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Symphony, concerto, and sonata, as the sketch-books of the master show, were in process of creation at the same time.

Thus far we have been helped in identifying a melody and studying relationships by the rhythmical structure of a single motive. The demonstration might be extended on the same line into Beethoven's symphony in A major, in which the external sign of the poetical idea which underlies the whole work is also rhythmic-so markedly so that Wagner characterized it most happily and truthfully when he said that it was "the apotheosis of the dance." Here it is the dactyl, , which in one variation, or another, clings to us almost as persistently as in Hood's "Bridge of Sighs:"

We hear it lightly tripping in the first movement:

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gentle, sedate, tender, measured, through its combination with a...