The Why of Music: Dialogues in an Unexplored Region of Appreciation

316 Pages·1969·16.03 MB·English

by  Donald N. Ferguson

DONALD N. FERGUSON
THE
WHY
OF MUSIC ' Dialogues in an
o
Unexplored Region of Appreciation
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS / Minneapolis
© Copyright 1969 by the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America at the Lund Press, Inc., Minneapolis
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 69-15088
PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN, INDIA, AND PAKISTAN BY THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY
PRESS, LONDON, BOMBAY, AND KARACHI, AND IN CANADA BY THE COPP CLARK
PUBLISHING CO. LIMITED, TORONTO
PREFACES, like epilogues, are usually 'written after the book they
introduce has been -finished. Being usually the author's purview of
his finished effort, which always differs somewhat from his original
intent, they seem to me nearly identical and so to belong at the
end . . . Indeed, I am not sure whether what I have placed there is
Preface or Epilogue, and 1 have entitled it accordingly. If you read
it before you read the book you will see, perhaps more clearly than
if you begin at the beginning, the point toward which the rather
discursive conversations tend. If you read it again, as a kind of sum-
mary, it may serve to make that point sharper.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
A GLEAM IN THE EYE 3
'SOMETHING MORE" 17
THE MUSICAL IMAGE 31
HOW THE MUSICAL IMAGE IS PORTRAYED 45
HOW FORM CONTRIBUTES TO THE IMAGE 58
SOME HOWS AND WHYS OF MUSICAL COMPOSITION 75
SOME HOWS AND WHYS OF MUSICAL PERFORMANCE 87
STYLE AND TASTE 99
IMAGE AND STYLE IN BACH 114
CLASSICISM IN HAYDN AND MOZART 129
ROMANTICISM IN BEETHOVEN 147
BEETHOVEN • THE SECOND PERIOD 165
BEETHOVEN • THE THIRD PERIOD 183
VERBAL AND MUSICAL IMAGES IN THE SONG 197
THE MUSICAL IMAGE IN THE LEADING-MOTIVE 22O
TWO NEW QUESTIONERS 240
A COMMON MUSICAL IDIOM 254
WHAT MAKES GOOD MUSIC GREAT? 277
EPILOGUE, OR PREFACE? 290
INDEX 303
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The Why of Music
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A GLEAM IN THE EYE
WHENI was welve or so, a pianist of considerable
distinction gave a recital in our little town. Having
shown a decided interest in music and some knack
for the piano, I was taken to the concert. Next to me sat one of our promi-
nent "senior citizens" — a crusty old gentleman who had borne the rank
of Major in the Union Army. His presence at this entertainment, which
was for our community quite unusual, was due, we were sure, to a sense
of civic duty rather than to any native interest in music. He sat with deco-
rous inattention through the first group on the program (a Bach fugue
and a Beethoven sonata), adding merely a few perfunctory spats to the
generous applause. But the next group began with the Liszt arrangement
of Schubert's Hark, Hark! The Lark; and as it ended he turned to me
with an astonished gleam in his eye. "Pritti — ent it!" were his only
words, uttered in that accent which marked him for us Midwesterners
as a Down Easter; but the gleam, I will still swear, was one of genuine in-
terest.
I do not remember my own response. Some fifty years later, if I had
still been twelve, I should probably have said, "That sends me! "—a phrase
whose genuineness seems to me akin to that of the Major's gleam, and
which I find a heartening antidote for the pessimism nowadays frequent-
ly evoked by the spectacle of teen-age behavior.
Not only the Major and I but the whole audience —for the most part
musically illiterate — were "sent" by that charming little piece. Where
we were sent, none of us dreamed of inquiring. We knew we had been,
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