Greatness in Art--Arse (sp) Magna--by Jeffrey Freed
I shall limit my comments to music, especially Western
classical music, and specifically “absolute” (non-program) music, which is the
only art that I have studied to any degree, although I suspect my views might
pertain to other art forms. I admit my
musical education is spotty, and is informed more by passion than by rigor. These are my personal views, informed most
importantly by Aaron Copeland’s How to Listen to Music, an adult
education course at
First, there is no universal standard for greatness, but neither do we have to be strict relativists. For a given set of values, some works may satisfy more than others. Obviously, my values are the ones that are relevant to this essay. I value absolute music more than program music, ballet music, or opera. The musical art, to me, is greatest when it stands alone, by and for itself only. This is not to say, however, that music refers to nothing beyond itself.
Goodness versus
Greatness
Greatness is what most interests me in music. Much popular music is good: It is beautiful, pleasing, moving, inspired. Greatness, while including goodness, further implies ambition, monumentality, and full development of all possibilities and potentialities. It strives for the ultimate, the largest, the most, but in the sense of genuine power and sincerity, rather than bombast and sentimentality. Great music can be grand, but much grand music is not great.
It is quite possible to describe the components of greatness in a musical work. It exists in two major forms: 1) Technical and purely musical, and 2) emotional and spiritual. In the technical and purely musical aspect of greatness, complexity is a prerequisite. Perhaps the music sounds simple, and that can be a virtue because it enhances clarity and is a factor in the perception of beauty, but underneath there is the necessarily complex substructure that enables all of the possibilities of greatness. So there is likely to be an apparent contradiction between surface simplicity and deep complexity. Complexity can exist in all of the elements of music (and in their interplay): Rhythm, harmony, melody (including motives), texture, and tone color. Complexity can exist in the local and global organization of the piece.
Among the other principles of greatness, there is self-reference in a piece of music which contributes to the unity of a large piece, as well as references to the tradition, period, and style in which the work takes its place. References can involve literal quotation, quotation involving transformation using all of the techniques and principles of variation, or allusion in melody, harmony, rhythm, or mood.
Everything that happens in a great piece of music is there by necessity: Each moment and each gesture moves the piece forward emotionally and dramatically, and it relates to or comments upon what has gone before, what is to come, or to the style and period in which it exists.
Another key principle is the creation of an expectation followed by the violation of that expectation: A great piece of music leads the listener down a path, and then suddenly leaves the path to find a more interesting, more compelling one which after the fact sounds inevitable and right. I learned of this all-important principle from a lecture by Lukas Foss. A great work can create and violate expectations in any and all dimensions of the music: Rhythm, harmony, melody, style, period, organization, and emotional and dramatic movement.
Coherence is another principle of greatness, and is achieved by self-reference, intensive development of a small number of motives, and logical emotional and dramatic development. The basic material of the piece is scant, but the elaboration creates a massive edifice in which the basic material is always evident. The emotional and dramatic development should be critically and specifically supported and intensified by the technical development, as occurs in first movement of Beethoven’s Op. 131 as the fugue subject enters in cannon in diminution (cello) at the exact moment of the emotional and dramatic climax.
Economy is another principle of greatness. In a great work there should be nothing that is not there for a reason. More than that, the entire massive edifice should be built out of the smallest number of the simplest components (such as motives). This is discussed more below.
Related to the concept of economy is the power of constrained conditions. In a fugue, for example, the freedom of the composer is tightly limited in certain ways, and his or her ingenuity and demonstrated freedom within the constraints of form, style, and tradition is a mark of greatness—another apparent contradiction. I have read that Bach in particular developed his style and creativity by employing this approach, but all great composers express this tension between the limitations of form and style and their creative expression within those constraints.
Counterpoint is a particularly powerful manifestation of constrained conditions and complexity, and always focuses my attention because it is difficult to grasp. Great composers use it intensively. It deserves special mention as something more than a device or texture, because it embodies so many of the values that contribute to musical greatness. The same is true of the principle of variation (see below).
Development is mentioned above in regard to the motivic germs from which the piece is constructed, and as a means of achieving coherence. Yet development is also operative in harmony, rhythm, texture, tone color, and all the other elements of music. Greatness in music is partly achieved through complex development of all these elements in conformity with the above-mentioned principles of economy, coherence, logical and dramatic necessity, ingenuity within constraints, integration, setting up and violating expectations in a way that seems right, and so forth. This is relevant to all musical forms, but finds particular expression in the form of theme and variations. Development has its analogue in fiction, where there is character development which in turn drives the plot. Listening to great music without an awareness of development is like listening to a poem in an unfamiliar language: Most of it is missed, however pleasing the sound.
Much has been made of contrast in music. I note that there is great music that eschews contrast to focus on one mood or feeling, and employs similarly restricted means. But most music does employ contrast and this is a pleasing feature. However, I think of it as arising out of development, which is of more fundamental importance. There are other features that I love that are not of primary importance. There is the contrived feeling of improvisation present in some pieces, or the feeling that the composer himself is not sure what will happen next, or the insertion of something totally incongruous that “shouldn’t” be there by reason but which works at other levels (such as the little Hungarian cadenza in one of the late string quartets of Beethoven).
Spiritual and
Emotional Greatness
In the section above, I discussed coherence as a component of technical and purely musical greatness. However, I feel that coherence is a component of spiritual and emotional greatness as well. To the sensibility of a mathematician, a proof can be elegant, and this formal elegance carries an emotional charge due to recognition of beauty, symmetry, inevitability, economy, coherence, and power. In other words, the raw material is just enough and of just the right kind, and the power of formal processes applied repetitively and creatively is sufficient to create a powerful river of logic that carries you inevitably to its conclusion. New discoveries in one area of mathematics can reveal hidden connections to other areas and can illuminate them. In physics, it is well known that there are twenty fundamental values, including the mass, spin, and charge of each particle, which if they differed even slightly, would not allow the formation of the universe as we know it, and would have precluded life. From physics arises all of chemistry; and from chemistry, biology; and from biology, mind; and from mind, culture, including art, science, and religion. So the entire natural world can be understood as a vast formal system employing just a few elementary particles and forces, just a few entities and a few rules, which combine and recombine, always building complexity by stages that are comprehensible. There seems to be a vast intelligence at work, but these phenomena can also be understood in terms of self-organizing phenomena acted on by mutation and natural selection. I personally believe that these interpretations are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but that is beside the point of this essay. By comprehending, appreciating, and expressing, even at an unconscious level, the power, beauty, and wonder of the formal system of the natural world as revealed by mathematics and science (and also by mystical religion, which existed even in ancient times), the great composer is re-enacting and illuminating the fundamental creative processes and principles of the universe. It’s a tall claim, but I believe it to be true, and it is part of my experience of music. The emotion it evokes in me is awe and gratitude, and is accompanied by piloerection.
We want a great work of art not to be sentimental or trite or formulaic in the evocation of emotion, but direct and sincere. A good example is the first movement of Brahms’ Op. 8, which for me is the purest expression of young romantic love in music. The emotion should be fully portrayed in all its complexity and changeability. Even inconsistencies should be there, if appropriate. Furthermore, we want spiritualized emotion, if appropriate—e.g., not only sorrow but sorrow transformed into compassion, purified of all bitterness (as in the Clarinet Quintet of Brahms), and the gratitude and joy of convalescence purified of resistance to pain or to anything (as in the Heiliger Dankgesang of Beethoven’s Op. 132). Sometimes the transformation itself is portrayed (as when, in the last movement of Brahms’ First Symphony, the theme of infinite pain and desolation that opens the movement is transformed into the serene and confident march). There is even music that (arguably) presents an actual epiphany. I’m thinking of the second movement of Brahms’ German Requiem, where the text reads “All flesh is as the grass” while the orchestra keeps a steady throbbing heart beat, conveying the composer’s experience of the universal process from which all apparently individual, apparently impermanent lives apparently arise and to which they all apparently return, eternally (while recognizing that, on another level, there can never be any separation at all). In the case of Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet, I had not known that sorrow transformed into compassion and purified of all bitterness from my own experience when I first heard that piece, yet now I can name it. The music pointed me toward an experience I did not yet know, and confirmed it for me when I later experienced it. So, great music is also that which you can appreciate better with time and your own spiritual and emotional growth, and can be a foundation and compass for some who are destined for a spiritual life. For me, it is a direct connection to one who has a vastly greater intelligence and spirit than I do, and I recognize the Divine as well as the human in that one: Universal truth and human passion together.
Vitality
I had not thought of vitality as a separate attribute of
greatness until a very recent performance of the Sibelius
Violin Concerto. In this performance, it
seemed to me, the piece was born, lived, and struggled. At the end, it died. Although I could clearly remember it, I also
knew that it was dead and I would not be seeing it again. This is not the prosaic recognition that each
performance is unique. Rather, this
performance expressed an integrity, overall rhythm, and vitality that
convincingly evoked an individual life in all its triumph and tragedy. Another thing I noticed about this piece that
I have not noticed in any other piece of music, although I’m sure I will find
it now that it has come to my awareness, is Sibelius’
use of incomplete or “wrong” harmonies followed by powerful functional harmony
and cadences. The measured inconsistency
in the use of harmony intensifies the sweetness and power of the more fully
harmonized parts.
Journey as a Metaphor
Another way to think of music is that it describes an heroic journey, an odyssey. You know what I mean. It’s a metaphor for the spiritual path and for a human life.
Naiveté versus
Sentimentality
We want art that sounds naïve and unselfconscious, but which
actually is conscious of its own internal life as well as the eras and styles
of the arts. The point is not to force novelty,
but to use novelty with integrity in context.
A composer must use tools that the listener can comprehend (such as
melody, harmony, and imitation). If he or
she forsakes too many of these handles that the listener needs to use to apprehend
the music, the music becomes more of a puzzle and an intellectual exercise. Unfamiliarity can be acceptable, but the
artist needs to accommodate natural human perceptual abilities and not ask the
listener to do the impossible.
Conclusion
Great music, then, is marked by both classical and romantic virtues. It is both Apollonian (celebrating reason) and Dionysian (celebrating emotion). It is both formal (and thus restricted) and free. It is both simple and complex. It is both familiar and fresh. It harmonizes, so to speak, all these opposites. It presents a deep experience, comprehension, and appreciation of universal formal, emotional, and spiritual truth. Because a great work of art is so complex, one can always find more to appreciate in it, and can sometimes find major revelations of personal relevance. The means by which this is accomplished include economy of material, intensive formal and dramatic development, large and small scale integration on a formal level as well as integration of form with feeling and with the dramatic development, the generation of expectation and the frustration of expectation in a surprising but inevitable-seeming and right-feeling way, the paradoxical generation of freedom within constraint as an expression of great imagination, and full use of all the elements of music (rhythm, harmony, melody, texture, timbre, structure, style, period, form, emotion, self-reference and reference to period and style). It should be clear that the more educated a listener is, the more he or she can appreciate a great work, and knowing the repertoire, the piece (in detail), the principles of musical composition, and the principles of musical greatness are essential. Listening is then an active, participatory process in which the listener brings knowledge-based expectations to compare with what’s happening in terms of themes and thematic transformation and variation, key areas and modulation, structure, allusion, and the other elements of music. The educated listener is always searching for new connections and new meanings—and this is necessary not because the composer is trying to obfuscate but rather because that is how musical meaning is conveyed. Nevertheless, some music can be appreciated on some levels by a novice listener, while remaining deeply satisfying to the expert, but I would not deny greatness merely because a work lacked surface appeal.
I have not discussed the value of innovation. Although I value radical innovation that still produces great art (as defined above), I believe that all new art is a development of prior art, and if new art is great, it acknowledges that debt (e.g., Bartok’s use of polyphony). Also, smaller-scale innovations always mark the work of great composers, even traditionalists such as Bach and Brahms). I learned that Bach rarely solved a problem the same way twice, and that Brahms extended the practice of motivic development and even harmony while at the same time trying to, in a sense, turn back the clock. I certainly would not deny greatness merely because a work or composer is anachronistic. Indeed, at the beginning of the 21st century, nobody knows the direction in which music can or will develop in the future, but there seems to be nothing compelling on the horizon. In such a situation, but also in any situation, I honor today’s gifted composers who are writing in the manner of the old masters. Perhaps their historic significance is slight, but their work can still be great.
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