The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1914-02-01
Reflections Suggested by Public Per-
Torrance of Quartet by Arnold
Sclocnberg-- MARY Garden to Sing in
First Production of MassenetS Don
Quichotte " Next Tuesday


view lie declared that perfect in
dependence of part writing. said To he
Schoenberes aim. could be attained 10y
causing four voices to sing four dii-
foreut tunes at once. hu, that this would
no; make music lie asserted that com
plete liberty Of form could be gained by
abolishing form entirely. but that this
would mean also the destruction of all
art. There il No such Thing as art with
out form. which IL the embodiment Of
, design
/ The SthOrnberg quartet. which was so
| splend.dly played by the flonzaley
organization ON Monday evening, has
| taken no great or AT any rate radical.
| liberties with musical form. Ii has not
even done anything very novel in its
Encouragement of the sonata form. for
the notifications ii displays were long
ago introduced in their embryonic state
in Schumann's II minor symphony and
developed To their logical conclusion
even in such a long forgotten work as
the first piano concerto of D'Albert.
No idea of constituting Independence
, NJ part writing in the anarChistic
fashion indicated in the Tribuns's com
/ m.nt seems To have entered the mind
Of Schoenberc. He plainly tried TO
establish thematic INTERPOLATION
among his voices. but those modern
extremists are Cantering along the road
which Berioz saw himself travelling
with dignity in the COS. He said
that musicians had arrived at the con-
cusion that anything which sounded
well was good and he specified 'har-
mony, melody and modulation.'
What these modcrns are doing is an
attempt AT discovering some method OF
bringing new melodic idom into the
domain Of music. and this they seem To
believe can be done only 10y building an
entirely different harmonic basis for the
art II IL not possible to discuss the
science of harmony In "A newspaper ar
ticle Nor can the subject he made COM
prehcnslble To the lay reader. II is
topic FOR the trained musician. But
perhaps some superficial congratulations
can he offered SO as To throw a little
light on the matter.
Every music lover has heard scale,
ana there can hardly be an ear to which
the succession of tones in the scale Of
is not familiar. This IL a major
scale" All major scales are identical;
their only difference is in pitch. The
scale Of G is the same as the scale Of
g. only it begins with another pitch.
Out Of the tones OF scales melodies
are constructed. Now avoiding the
subject of primitive music. let us be
content with taking note of the fact
that for at least a thousand years Eu-
ropean music has employed harmony,
which means the sounding together Of
tones in what are known as accords
or chords.
4 li.. -. ..att "A
with "A harmonic basis. even the Gre
eorian chant, which discards part
writing We think in terms of the
major scale, with the minor scale as its
chief subsidiary, and still other scales,
as eXotlcs imported for special pur-
poses. We think tunes with their har-
monies, and these harmonies are an in
teeral part of the character OF the
tunes,
The simplest modulations in harmony
are those effected by the employment
~ closely related jor chords. More
complex meditation is made by using
less closely related chords and still
more complex by shifts to chords
whose relations are very remote. Away
back IN the sixteenth century COM
poser named Cyprian di Rore discov-
cred that new tricks could be done by
using "chromatic" modulatlons and ever
since then other composers have been
working at these and their combinat ion
with the other kind.
The chromatlc scale H. the inclusive
scale Of music II IL the utterance In
succession of ali the semtones in the
gamut, whereas the ma jor scale omlts
all but TWO. Now what the extreme mod
ernists are apparently trying tn do Is TO
create a melodic speech Of which the
fundamental shall not be the plain but
the Chromatc scale
Just as the older masters started wit h
the common scale and It's harmonies az
their foundation and developed their
structures by excursions into foreign
tonaitieS, utilizing literally the chro-
mates, so these new masters seem to
wish to start with the chromatic and
wander into regions where no rules de-
rived from scale forms can be applied
They wish to introduce in their mu-
steal developments harmones composed
OF chords which have no organic entity
that Is to say chords which are not
chords, but consist Of utterly unrelated
tones or groups sounded together and
arbitrarily called chords.
These are the elements Of this modern
music which make il sound So painful To
oar ears We are continually told by