Realism in Abstract Music

Author(s): Norman Cazden

Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 1955), pp. 17-38
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/730732
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REALISM IN ABSTRACT MUSIC
BY NORMANCAZDEN
IN an earlier study' I have stated that "reference to the real
world is present in all music ". This reference is what I term
realismin music. Viewed in this comprehensive sense, the connection
of the art of music with reality is intrinsic and inter-permeated, and
it ought not to be confused with the external or interpretative
" meanings " that overlay some kinds of music. Realism in music
is not at all the same thing as naturalism,which is the direct imitation
of sounds as they occur in nature. The fact that naturalism can be
handled in a very " realistic " fashion is a problem largely of words,
and on that account we should not confuse realism with naturalism.
Neither is realism in music the same thing as pictorialism, whereby
some representation of non-musical ideas is accomplished by means
of an intellectual analogy, such as the rise of a melodic line to a
text that tells of souls going up to Heaven. Finally, the arbitrary
attachment to some musical figure of whatever it is declared to
represent, like the Leitmotiv that " identifies " a ring or a sword,
does not constitute the proper means by which music reflects
the world about us. Imitation, symbolism or synthetic " descrip-
tions " are at best only accessory or marginal devices in the art of
music, not its true mode of being.
Realism in music is the reference of the art to the real world,
and primarily to the human world. It provides the directly
intelligible content of music, and it is achieved by processes peculiar
to the musical medium. " Realism in music is the totality of concrete
referenceto the commonexperienceof human beings as embodiedin all the
formal elementsof musicalart."
When music is dissected or " analysed " from a formal stand-
point, the concept " form " is given a very restricted range, and the
analysis is devoted to description of certain mechanical aspects of the
shapings or orderings of sounds in a given composition. Full
consideration of even the formal aspects of music is thus neglected,
and the "forms" that have been extracted from their concrete
service are then declared self-sufficient and empty of real content.
The aesthetic standpoint of" pure music ", or formalism, thus rests
on a limited and circular way of reasoning. It is limited to a con-
sideration of a few externals, and it is circular in assuming what it
sets out to prove.
1 ' Towards a Theory of Realism in Music ', Jour. Aesth. & Art Grit., X (I95I), pp.
I35-151.
I7
MUSIC AND LETTERS

Further, the method of formal analysis also relies on an assump-

tion of the aesthetic superiority of any music in which formal
"purity " predominates or can be demonstrated. All examples of
music that have texts, or that are tied up with dance, or ceremonial,
or any other usual human activity giving rise to music are declared
lacking in this " purity " or abstraction, and hence not truly music
at all. Thus a special aesthetic category is reserved for "pure
music " and for those who cherish it, and admission to it is made
dependent upon a supposed remoteness from mundane things.
Music that meets the requirement is termed pure, or absolute, or
abstract, and is hailed as an instance of the ultimate goal of art.
Curiously enough, this " abstract " music can be " understood"
only by a favoured few, who have presumably an inborn grasp of
its nature and a bent for analytical listening on a level not attainable
by the mass. The common run of " music lovers " who wish to
partake of the exalted life of the spirit may gain a reserved entry by
subjecting themselves to the study of "music appreciation ".
This study is made to consist in an introduction to the approved
literature of " pure music ", a properly intoned commentary upon
its sheer formal beauty, a learning of names and of an extensive
jargon to be used in describing this music, and a ritual of formal
" analysis ". By dint of repetition this ritual produces in the novice
a heady sense of elevation and makes him a steady purchaser of
recordings, though he is quietly convinced all the time that the
highest rank of " appreciation " is for ever closed to him, since it is
accessible only to those born with special insight.
Clearly the objective of this traditional " music appreciation
is the instilling of a particular aesthetic viewpoint, supposedly
indulged in by a "superior" type. The whole procedure is a
transparent reflection of obsolete social distinctions. It includes the
usual attempts at " buying in " to the status of the established old
families by moneyed newcomers, and the assiduous propaganda
among the commoners as to the high taste of their betters and of
their own destined and inescapable inferiority. Steeped in these
notions, we see the doctrine of " abstract " music arising from
social myth and not from musical fact. It is in both respects narrow
and unproductive, and it cannot stand up under investigation.
The indications thus are that even in terms of its stated objectives
the formal analysis of " pure" music plainly fails. It fails in
technical matters of analysis, it fails to make clear the nature of
music and it fails as a criterion for the understanding and the
evaluation of great works of art.
Moreover, these failures are not defects of application or of
REALISM IN ABSTRACT MUSIC I9

reasoned efforts. It is simply that the concept of a pure, absolute or

abstract art of music is an illusion. The great classic works of
instrumental music are not so rootless: they are highly realistic and
they overflow with significant human content. It is a content readily
grasped by everyone, once the misleading precepts of "music
appreciation" are laid aside. And it is precisely to these works
that narrow formal analysis does not apply, for the perspectives of
their realistic content invariably shatter the constructions of abstract
"form ".
In my previous discussion I have dealt with the concept of
realism in music by examining its relation to naturalism, pictorialism
and other such principles, and by tracing its manifestations in a
musical work with a " programme ". My objective was to clarify
and to differentiate the concept, to show its proper ramifications as
against the usual spurning of" programme music " by the formalists,
and thus to rectify some of the criteria of artistic judgment of music,
even judgment of a particular work. But, taking up both the
general question of realism and its bearings on numerous other
problems in the aesthetics of music, I found it impossible to give
attention also to the specific action of realism in " abstract " music.
This application of the theory becomes my task here.
Let us take note first of the range of musical works which may be
covered under the terms " pure ", " absolute " or "abstract " music.
In discussions from the viewpoint of formalism we are tempted to
believe that this range comprises a general type of music that may
exist at any time and under any conditions, or at least whenever
there are signs of a highly developed musical art. Actually in this
view the presence of abstract music is itself taken as the only valid
sign of a highly developed art. But in fact there is nothing at all
general about where and when and under what conditions we find
pure or absolute or abstract musical works; on the contrary, it can
be stated flatly that such works occur solely in a particular period of
history and in a particular culture area.
" Abstract " music in practice means the instrumental concert
music of west-central Europe during the eighteenth and especially
the nineteenth centuries, with a certain inevitable spilling over into
nearby regions or into colonies, and into the following century. It is
not the least indication of a myopia compounded with arrogance that
the chief doctrinaires of formalism in the aesthetics of music deal
exclusively with this limited range of music, yet invariably formulate
their assertions as general theoretical principles, and even avow the
eternal and universal validity of any number of purely local
mannerisms.
20 MUSIC AND LETTERS

Thus, nowhere in his famous volume2 does Hanslick mention

the music of even nearby England or Spain, or of the Balkan,
Scandinavian or Slavonic countries-surely an indication of a
confined viewpoint. Neither does he tell of " the beautiful " prior
to the year 1700. His scant references to non-European music are
infused, like much of the " high " thought of his day and clime,
with a disagreeable prejudice equalled only by uncritical ignorance.
But these great gaps do not deter the aesthetician and his devoted
academic followers from propounding big "universal" and
" eternal " truths about pure form in music. To-day the pretence
that we can consider the aesthetics of music in general when all
instances are drawn from one restricted kind of music is so naive that
only the small minds of the " profound " German tradition will be
caught so engaged.
We find, in fact, that all treatments of pure or absolute or abstract
music are indeed limited precisely to the two centuries or so of
European " art" music. These notions are never discussed in
regard to Balinese gamelan music, or to the rhythm of a Haitian
juba, or to the plan of the Indian dldpa, and we seek vainly for
examples in the 'Fitzwilliam Virginal Book' or in Frescobaldi's
'Fiori musicali '. No, " pure " music turns out to mean the sonata,
the symphony,the string quartetand perhaps thefugue.
Having observed this matter of setting, we ought first to investi-
gate the particular conditions out of which these types of music
arose and the part which they played in people's lives, before we
draw any conclusions about abstraction, purity or eternal and
universal values in music. I submit, indeed, that however worthy
the individual " classics " remain as great achievements of musical
art, their values are not due to a transcending of worldly conditions,
but precisely to their fulfilment of these conditions, which unfor-
tunately their proud inheritors have mistaken for the only possible
ones.
"Abstract " music is supposed to be free from attachment to any
specific function of the art. On a sort of lower plane of existence, it
is thought, there are to be found many " practical " uses of music,
which are by that token invariably " lowbrow " and lacking in
artistic aim or worth. The dance number, the drinking-song and
even the accompaniment to worship are all music that " merely"
serves a purpose, and hence they are supposed to be declassed,
incapable of profundity or development. It may, of course, occur
to us that social differences and not aesthetic values underlie the
2 Eduard
Hanslick, 'Vom Musikalisch-Schonen ' (Vienna, I854). In English:
'On the Beautiful in Music', trans. from the 7th German edition (189I) by Gustav
Cohen (London, I891).
REALISM IN ABSTRACT MUSIC 2I

pose of superiority which regards everything that "serves" as

lowly. But upon closer examination we discover that abstract music
also serves, if not necessarily a higher ideal, then at least a higher
social circle. The constant and unmistakably realistic reference
pervading all " abstract " or " pure " music is its place in the social
function called a concert.
For the sonata and the symphony and the string quartet, and
perhaps the fugue, are all instances of instrumental music intended for
performance at a public concert, specifically at the kind of public
concert developed in European culture in recent times. This
concert music emerged from its earlier service of entertaining the
nobility in their lavish homes. The entertainment was composed
for them of polite and stereotyped reminiscences of hunts, operatic
extravagances, military marches, minuets, pastoral masques and
stylized love lyrics, all of which were tacked together into serenades,
divertimentos, notturnos and even symphonies. These things were
taken over by those who regard themselves humourlessly as the
" general public ". They were transformed into an art of more
appropriate sentiment, if less refined display, and addressed to a
grasping audience chosen, characteristically, no longer by family
gentility or cultivated deportment, but solely by the measure of
payment for tickets. It is easy to understand why more recent
generations who are still inveterate concert-goers passively take these
things for granted and at the same time ignore their causes. It is
not so easy to suggest why the rest of the populace, not to say the
rest of the troubled world, ought to accede to standards formed in
these surroundings.
Abstract music is not, therefore, the ideal condition of music in
general, nor is it automatically a superior type of music. This
music has a function and performs it, if necessary, at the expense of
any and all aesthetic standards. It is hardly needful to repeat here
the various and glaring ills of overdone virtuosity that are encouraged
in the concert-hall. " Pure " or abstract form, reduced from poetry
to fact, means very simply the form found suitable and acceptable
for the presentation of instrumental concert music of a certain
period, however readily this is mistaken by its patrons for the whole
of the art. The " prestige of good music " is conferred upon it quite
deliberately and for self-serving purposes, and our understanding
of this is not helped by the acquiescence of the presumably inde-
pendent " critic ", who in fact exists only as an accessory to the very
same services.
Not only is abstract concert music a special variety, rather than
the whole of art, however, but in its own terms it too is unable to
22 MUSIC AND LETTERS

escape a real reference, not merely to its own conditions of use, but
also to the historical pre-conditions out of which it arose. Even
within the framework of concert music the origins of" abstract " or
" pure " form reveal, to any who do not deliberately deafen them-
selves, that their features are formed both from older and from
concurrent types of non-concert music. All the associations of these
older types become embedded in the " abstract " forms themselves,
though in the process the form-images are also idealized, generalized,
expanded and transformed to fit their new use. A comparison of a
true dance minuet, as in Mozart's 'Don Giovanni', with the
symphonic minuet shows how this process operates.
We may distinguish five principal sources for the formal and also
for the realistic qualities of abstract instrumental concert music. The
first of these is vocal music. Much abstract music is born in the
direct or indirect imitation or transfer of musical treatments which
occur in well-known vocal types, and they bear the indelible
imprint of vocal writing, even of " heightened speech ". It is no
accident that the melodic " themes " in this music are so often cast
in a limited vocal range, moving by small steps to a climax that
would be quite ineffectual for the more agile instruments, and
exhibiting a phrasing, rhythm, placement of emphasis and recog-
nizable inflection that can only suggest singing, and even particular
manners of singing.
Among the " abstract " instrumental types originating in vocal
music are the slow-style fugue growing out of the motet and early
ricercar,the aria-like slow " movement ", the "song without words"
or other " lyrical piece ", and also sections of works in the manner
of recitatives, chorales, lullabies, operatic duets, barcarolles and
choruses. We should also include here the use of actual known
tunes, or their imitations, such as those used for variations, and we
ought to observe that the earliest kind of sonata was rightly called a
canzonada suonare.
A second major source for " abstract " instrumental music is the
technical manipulation of the instrument. There was a rapid
development of new instruments, and of new uses and treatments of
familiar instruments, during the period when concert music
flourished. New incentives, also, drove players towards professional
achievement and specialization in performance on these instruments.
And so much of the music necessarily reflected the study, the
repetition, the application, the exploration and the solution of
endless technical problems of performance. The performer tended
to dwell on these technical problems and to rehearse them con-
stantly. He also enjoyed showing off his accomplishments, perhaps
REALISM IN ABSTRACT MUSIC 23

even more than the musical values of what he played, especially

because his fame and his livelihood came to depend almost entirely
on his success in technical display.
Direct results of this aspect of composition are found in the
toccata, the study (and its frank derivative the " concert study "),
the invention, the prelude, the perpetuummobile, the virtuoso con-
certo and the ornamental type of variations. Technical manipula-
tion is also the basis of the passage and the cadenza in " abstract"
sonatas and quartets.
A third origin of " abstract" music, perhaps the most evident
and yet the least mentioned, is music for the dance. Instrumental
music in general has never been far from its service as accompani-
ment to the dance. Indeed, save for those works or portions of
works which come distinctly from a florid vocal cantillation, we may
establish that the rhythm and metre of instrumental concert music
is necessarily dance-like, and it is one of the peculiarly arduous
conventions of the concert-hall that members of the audience, and
indeed everyone but the conductor, must suppress any urge
engendered by the music to tap their feet, sway their bodies or clap
their hands.
More specifically, large sections, movements or entire works of
"abstract " concert music are based on known dance types, and
thus they convey all the connotations or realistic references of those
dance types. Often these dance types are specified, as minuet,
rondo, gavotte, sarabande, waltz, which makes us wonder at the
obtuseness of those formal analysts who blithely manage to ignore
the impress of the dance on the " form " and character of the music.
But quite as often the specific dance type is not identified, and our
usual study of musical " form " does not enter into the qualities and
the peculiar rhythms and motion of the most common dances, and
does not promote their ready recognition. Yet these qualities and
rhythms are so prominent that only obstinate evasion in analytical
procedures can fail to discover them. Familiar social dances pre-
dominate in concert performances, but stage dance or ballet treat-
ments may also be found. All the movements of Beethoven's
seventh Symphony are based on dances, and there is nothing at all
abstract about the work.
A fourth source for " abstract" music is composition, literally
the organization of musical materials. It has been thought that
here, at least, we have a process registering the free and capricious
flight of the composer's imagination from all mundane ties. Closer
examination reveals that the procedures of composition in abstract
music are in fact severely conditioned by its origins and by its
24 MUSIC AND LETTERS

concert function. Experimentation in the " composing " of musical

materials and in the potentials of " development" are actually of
the same order as the performer's manipulation of figures, even
though these have been regarded as the focus of purely formal
analysis and hence by attribution as the sole end of the composer.
It has been overlooked that the material to be developed consists
of melodies, motifs, progressions and figures which already have an
imagery full upon them; that the processes of treatment and develop-
ment are highly conventionalized and carry instant and detailed
associations with previous experience with concert music, and to an
extent with the cliches of opera; and that the framework of musical
elements, tonality, harmony, polyphony, scale forms, normal
sonority values, patternings and phrase treatments is entirely
familiar and suggestive of a particular mode of making music.
Even the specific occasions for " development ", not to say the
methods, are fixed by convention. They do not result from
irresponsible intuition, but constitute true explorative tools. Tor
overlook the stereotypes of improvisation is easy for the formalists,
the first order of men to have forgotten how to improvise. But we
ought not to ignore everything that is known about the working
methods of composers, which are far from mysterious, or everything
taught in composition courses.
" Composition " development in concert music is found in the
fantasia, the rhapsody, the ballade, the fugue, but also in sections.
called introductions, transitions, developments, in codas and
extensions, as well as in many variation procedures. To recognize
" composition " as a specific source of" abstract " music is to remove
the mystical blinds from about the workshop of the composer and
to lead us to an examination of the real roots of imaginative develop-
ment in concert music. Formal analysis of these developments does
nothing more than register some external facts, when we are in
need of accounting for these facts. And we ought by this time to be
done with the question-begging "exposures" of subconscious
Urlinien or other mysterious modes of thinking ascribed to
thoroughly uncomplicated composers. A close study of the real
references shown in development techniques can bring us closer to,
an understanding and valuation of the human sources of great works.
of art.
The final and composite setting of " abstract" concert music
lies in other known and specific social functions of music, especially
the dramatic, the ceremonial and the occasional or practical.
Formal analysis provides no inkling that music other than " pure "
concert music is worthy of consideration and study, and it leaves.
REALISM IN ABSTRACT MUSIC 25

little if any suggestion that this concert music largely consists in

recollection, juxtaposition and idealization of well-recognized
images derived from innumerable familiar and conversational uses
of music. Yet, historically speaking, music played at concerts
undeniably began as a pot-pourriof musical genres designed for some
other use. The sinfonia, to mention a single obvious case, meant an
introduction to a dramatic work, opera or cantata that exhibited
contrasting human characters or ways of action, which the formalists
now call " themes ".
The "numbers " at a concert or a recital, and also portions
and sections of these " numbers ", are jumbles of half-nostalgic
reminders of every possible species of musical experience from
outside the concert-hall. Theatre music, opera, religious or other
institutional ritual, signal and fanfare music, street-cries, group-
adherence music such as patriotic and student songs, music of work
rhythms and antiphonies, camp-fire music, dinner music, narrative
ballad music, " background " music, gondola music, pastoral and
masque and charade music, circus and fair and carnival music,
evening entertainment music-the list is endless, and " abstract "
concert music imitates and derives from all these varieties. To
pretend otherwise is to make ourselves deaf and to forget that we live
in a real world, that we do not bring new-born innocent ears to
every repetition of an " abstract " work and that the art of music
was fortunately not invented by and for asthetes, but that even the
aesthetes are with us as a burden of a particular level and way of
social living.
In " pure " concert music we do not often find the functional
sources of works or movements identified by name. It is customary
to label a march as such, but not to point out the fanfare or fife-
and-drum origins of many of its figures. Reticence about these
matters on the part of composers is due partly to a desire to avoid
too narrow a frame of possible utilization and partly to their failure
to foresee that later generations of listeners, grossly misdirected by
the experts, might become so obtuse about ordinary and obvious
matters that they would have to be told. The first of these impulses
we see in the practice of the older sonata da chiesa, which might
contain the same kind of sarabanda or siciliano movement that
belonged to the sonatada camera,but instead of bearing a dance title
is inscribed merely adagio or moderato,so that the movement should
not seem inappropriate for the stated occasion. And in respect of
the second, should Bach have announced that the opening of the
" Gloria " in the B minor Mass is based on a passepied? The fact
was obvious and needless to elucidate, either for himself or for his
26 MUSIC AND LETTERS

audience, although the modern audience has been well taught to

overlook it. In the same way Mozart does not need to tell us that
the phrases of the minuet in his " Haffner" Symphony present
alternately the characters of pompous aristocratic gentlemen and of
graceful aristocratic ladies, almost in the acts of strutting and
curtsying, as though in operatic staging. Only the academicians
engaged in formal analysis, and their partners the aestheticians of
( pure " rootless music, can fail to observe this realistic quality and
content. To everyone else it is immediately and refreshingly
evident.
Functional associations as covered especially in this last,
miscellaneous category, are also largely present in concert music
during sections rather than in complete works, for it is their juxta-
position and elevation to a total, idealized setting that becomes the
main focus of concert listening. And these associations need never
be overtly verbal, for it is the nature of realism in music that they
are conveyed directly through the medium of musical forms and
hence require no verbal translation. The successful merchant who
has bought his wife a ticket for a performance such as was once
open only to the nobility wants not only the prestige of presence,
but also a running reminder of all the kinds of music he has heard
in less proud surroundings, uplifted and built up into a commentary
on his mode of living and a flattery of his less exalted tastes.
So it is in combination that the realistic images are usually
found. Sometimes the reference is so brief as to provide only a
fleeting suggestion, as for example the unmistakable style of the
unison men's chorus for a rapid phrase (bars 33-36) immediately
after the first statement of the prestissimo of Beethoven's Sonata,
Op. 0o9. Often the definite reliance on "outside" experiences
which the concert audience shares with the composer is made
evident, as in the overdone operatic antics of the scherzo-trio in
Schumann's Sonata, Op. i . It is these direct and internalreferences
to experience with musical forms, rather than the more trivial non-
musical suggestions of attached " interpretative " meanings, which
bring about the realism of abstract music.
The chief result, and doubtless the principal intent too, of
formalist aesthetics is to cover over these essential sources of
realistic imagery in concert music by a mystical doctrine of abstrac-
tion and a jargon devoted to mechanical dissection of surface
"forms " from which all imagery has been expunged. So inured
are we to this procedure that we still think of a musical " theme " as
a series of notes or even as their dead paper notations, and not as a
musical image. We are taught to observe whether it is first played
REALISM IN ABSTRACT MUSIC 27

by the violins, but not what kind of musical experience it conveys.

In this way the living, human sources of " abstract " or " pure "
works of art are obscured, and the constant and firm realism of
great works in the literature of music are " interpreted out " and
nullified.
To the eternal perplexity of earnest music lovers the integral
values of music seem always to have been disengaged and thrown
away by the experts before they make their initial contact as
listeners. Then they wonder uncomfortably, even while dutifully
repeating the dry terms of form-descriptions, why the substance of
the art seems not to lie in the remaining shell. Is it so strange that
they begin to doubt their ability ever to understand music, which is
of all the arts the most accessible ?
It is difficult to describe in words the detailed content and
treatment of realistic images in a given example of " abstract "
music. The difficulty lies in the inadequacies of words, not in the
problems of the music. For our grasp of real reference in music
is instantaneous and direct, and consists in a rapidly shifting,
flowing and also simultaneous juxtaposition of musical images
derived and developed from the endlessly varied functions of music
in human living. But in following the details of this process in
words, our descriptions are necessarily slow to catch up. They are
not equal to the vividness and to the constant flux, they require us
to go off on detours and into backlogs of historical information in
order to explain minor points. During the necessary stages of the
process our grasp of the overall imagery, which in the music is
immediate and plain, becomes diffuse in putting the elements
together verbally. Also, we are poorly prepared for the task by the
usual techniques developed for the study of music, for these techniques
reflect a philosophy that carefully circles round the fringes of the
real content.
Yet descriptions of realism in abstract music are by no means so
difficult as are the more usual "analyses ", and they become
infinitely more satisfying as well as more suggestive of the pro-
found resources of great art. Eventually we find no satisfaction in
methods that succeed only in translating into technical terms what
every musician reads at once in the notes. Formal analysis, with no
vital end in view but an inane admiration for sheer mechanics in
musical composition, provides us with no means of handling or even
discovering musical imagery, and with none of the roots of this
imagery, for these roots are in human activity and not in mystical
principles of disembodied "form ". The traditional techniques of
"form" analysis, "style" analysis, "harmonic" analysis and
XXXVI C
28 MUSIC AND LETTERS

considerations of instrumental timbres and their combinations

have succeeded only in stating some of the how of musical com-
position. They have been singularly inadequate for showing what
is composed, and why. Thus the usual concept of " analysis " can
only result in the helpless comment " isn't it marvellous? " when its
task is over. Ironically but inevitably the idealized " perfection"
of empty form, if it exists at all outside books, is approached in
decidedly poor and unimaginative music. The fetish of musical
" form " has blunted our search for the real sources of musical
imagery, which lie in the history and in the human values and the
social uses of the art.
In leaving behind these narrow procedures and in tracing the
realistic content of a given musical work, we are faced with a need
for going back over much of the setting of such works that ought to
have been made obvious to us long ago. We also require an
orientation and even a supply of properly analytic terms, since
those at our disposal are far from sharply outlined. Hence our
study of a specific example may tend to be cumbersome, and it must
continually refer us back to matters that we should have been able
to take for granted. Nevertheless, the surest way to demonstrate
what exactly is meant by realism in abstract music is to select
fairly some well-known example of such music, and to show pre-
cisely wherein lies the common, communicative content of its formal
elements.
Now the pure and absolute beauty of abstract music is usually
considered to have reached its ultimate formal perfection in the
works of Mozart. True, it is hastily forgotten that Mozart indulged
a strong inclination for opera, in which moreover not only dramatic
meaning but even rational and humanistic philosophy is evident.
It is also hastily overlooked that most of Mozart's instrumental
works were written on commission for known occasions, and were
conditioned by the tastes as well as by the stated requirements of his
patrons. Still, a high proportion of Mozart's output is in the
" abstract " instrumental medium of the symphony, the concerto,
the quartet and the sonata.
Among the best known of Mozart's compositions is the easy little
piano sonata in C major (K. 545). Since this work is unpre-
tentious and " obvious ", readily available and yet belongs to the
composer's mature period, we will take it as typical and apt for the
purposes of content analysis.
The first thing we hear in this C major Sonata is a 4-bar melody
made up of two balanced units. This melody is exceedingly simple,
and yet it manages to provide a great deal in the way of familiar
REALISM IN ABSTRACT MUSIC 29

associations. First, its range and contour are exactly those of an

expressive vocal aria. Secondly, it provides a setting of " normal-
ity " and an almost conversational directness while rapidly estab-
lishing the key, the tempo, the phrase-pattern and the dynamics by
most common means. Thirdly, it sets up a reasoned melodic
juxtaposition and a harmonic and rhythmic balance; yet there are
sufficient contrasts, a lack of congruence in the two subsidiary
phrases and an immediate widely curving span to serve well as an
initial broaching of matter for thoughtful elaboration. The start is
on the accent, as is frequent in Mozart melodies, while the tonic
ending is sufficiently incomplete to lead us on into the following
passage-work.
There is no text to tell us that the topic under discussion is, let
us say, whether women are true or fickle, and we cannot therefore
say that some such verbal "programme" for the music is at all
valid. But we can surely state that the quality or attitude of the
melody would conform quite well to just such a text. Conversely,
when Ferrando and Guglielmo attach just this text to a similar
melodic phrase in ' Cosi fan tutte' (Act I, No. 3, bars 34 if.) the
words seem a highly exact rendering of what was already implicit
in the music. And this is the full significance of musical realism,
wherein a musical image supplies the totality of connotationsthrough its
form, while if words are present they serve merely to specify and fix
certaindenotationsthat are only potential in the music. The dramatic
text of an opera is not communicably present in its music, but the
real impulse and content of the music already makes that text
potential and valid, as much in a sonata by Mozart as in an opera,
for the order of thinking is the same.3
Further, with regard to this opening melodic phrase, the nature
of the accompaniment should not escape us, precisely because it is
deliberately kept in the background. This accompaniment is of
the routine " Alberti bass " pattern that merely follows the pro-
gression of simple harmonies by breaking them into groups of notes
sounded singly. But the musical substance of this disarmingly
simple procedure is far greater than we are inclined to judge.
How does it happen, for instance, that a " line " full of skips, of
exactly the same order as the skips in the expressive upper melody,
should seem so placid and unmelodic? How does it draw so little
attention to itself, despite its greater number of notes and its impor-
tant service in establishing the harmonies and their rhythmic flux?
And why did Mozart use so conventional a pattern ?
3
Cf. Edgar Wind,' The Critical Nature of a Work of Art ' in ' Music and Criticism ',
ed. by Richard F. French (Harvard University Press, 1948), pp. 64-65.
30 MUSIC AND LETTERS

These things are not accidents. The effect of a broken harmonic

accompaniment was the standard method of orchestral support for
the operatic aria, and the particular figure used here was also a
widely-known and ordinary transference of such support to the
keyboard. Absolute monotony of the pattern and of its rhythm or,
more exactly, momentum are essential to the background quality,
since our attention cannot remain fixed on an unvarying pattern,
nor on the substitution of aimless steady movement for rhythm.
For visual reasons alone, in comparable situations, we observe the
singer on the stage, not the violas and cellos in the pit going through
their routine motions. Yet enough of the accompaniment filters
through in our listening, as well as in the consciousness of the
player of the Sonata, to provide us with the conventionally imagined
sustaining of harmonies on a non-sustaining instrument, with the
irregular change of harmonies in accordance with the expression and
with a quiet tempo of motion. Such supreme simplicity is an
achievement, neither primitive nor trivial in musical conception,
as even a brief survey of the historical growth of accompaniment
texture in eighteenth-century music makes evident.
Following the initial phrase is a chain of passage-work scales,
wholly proper to a piece surely conceived as material for a piano
pupil. Formal analysis runs into difficulties here. The passage-
work begins on the sub-dominant harmony and stresses that area
of the key throughout, despite the " rule " of moving towards the
dominant area at this stage of the " form ". The passagework does
not dissolve the opening idea by using portions of that idea, but by
means of wholly routine piano " exercises ". More significantly, the
first subject was only a single phrase, and the length of the " inci-
dental" passage overbalances it, while its rhythm of harmonic
changes is more widely varied and positive.
But in terms of real content all these things become relatively
unimportant, while the main outlines are easily understood. Not
only are the runs proper to the piano sonata as technical mani-
pulation, they are also the normal " movement" images for staged
action between sung phrases or preparatory to an entry. That
explains why the passage ends with typical formality on a cadence
whose origin is a combination of emphatic announcement prior to
speech by a personage, a semi-fanfare of added wind parts and a
" vamp till ready " alternation of principal chords.
Thus, in the brief span of twelve bars of music the full associations
of the operatic overture are provided, together with their perform-
ance in a version reduced for the keyboard, and we have only to
compare this work with Mozart's actual overtures to note how alike
REALISM IN ABSTRACT MUSIC 3I

they are. In writing this Sonata the composer cannot have been
thinking abstractly of formal patterns of notes, otherwise it would
be miraculous that he hit upon just the kind of passage-work that
fits in with operatic conventions. His thought-process had to begin
with the familiar images of musical drama and the usual forms of
their renderings in keyboard compositions.
This judgment is here confirmed by the second subject that
follows. Only as a contrast in dramatic character can we explain
the nature of this brief new phrase. The two-bar melody, with its
exact repetition, has a more rapid motion than the opening, super-
imposed on a slower rate of change of basic harmony. But the
syncopated rhythm and the breathless pause provide the cues for
an agitation that is already evident in the heightened range, a
purely vocal effect since the shift of a few steps has little expressive
meaning on the piano. The agitation is principally supplied,
however, by the accompaniment figure, which is once again of
disarming insignificance after a momentary shock.
This figure, another of the common stock of the period, is in
double time compared with the opening, tremulous in pattern even
in its regularity, first slower and then much faster in its changes of
harmony; and it begins with an off-key, accented chromatic bit
that has as much impact in its context to-day as it must have had for
Mozart's hearers, though it also resolves in a reasonable fashion,
still maintaining an undercurrent of tension. We can hardly doubt
that this second subject is a bold portrayal of the other character in a
drama, and we can even recognize to an extent the kind of character
it is. For example, we find none of the lyrical or the "feminine"
qualities supposed to pertain to second subjects. And what can
formal analysis tell us about that?
The short and fragmentary statement of this agitated phrase is
strung into a more extended passage of pianistic figurations, made
up of regular alternations of dissonant and consonant moments, in
sequences of broken chord patterns. A gradual descent makes the
approach to the new key-centre of G somewhat less than emphatic,
and this result is confirmed by placing the tonic harmony in the
weakest rhythmical position. Of melody there is only an outline
or " structure ", that is, none at all, for two semi-sustained lines are
heard to fall alternately and in regular pace. Another 4-bar group
prepares the cadence, again with emphasis on an initial sub-
dominant, tied in with a gesturing rise which combines a slower
vocal-type line with a mannered string-orchestra method of orna-
mentation. The cadence itself is pushed over into the following
strong accent, and the accompaniment along with the final pro-
32 MUSIC AND LETTERS

longed trill belong to a tutti close. Two additional single-bar

codetta cadences complete the section, in the manner of the ritornello
or interlude passage for full orchestra in a dramatic aria, followed by
some routine " finish " chords to fill out the phrase.
At this highly conventional "first close" the movement is
stopped, and the whole exposition is repeated literally. Thus we
remain with the total picture of a miniature dramatic scene, with a
quick outlining of its characters and sufficient passage-work to keep
them moving. The dimensions are small, brought down from the
full stage to the tapestried music-room, but from the tinkling piano
are evoked all the associations of full-fledged opera.
The development section characteristically portrays dramatic
action, but without reference to the small-scale personalities who
were introduced. The static orchestral ritornello becomes the
source of motion and of shifting emotional states by means of a
change to the minor mode and to less stable harmonic progressions.
It is interrupted by alternating and mirrored scale passages which
lead off into new keys. Pianistic figures take up the burden of the
drama, as would the orchestra when the singers are acting on the
stage. The solidity of the images is clear and their development
handling and juxtaposition are properly and simply dramatized,
without pretence.
After thirteen bars the play returns us to the opening idea. But,
alas for the predictions of purely " abstract" analysis of form, the
first melody character has wandered off into an unexpected part of
the stage and refuses to return to his initial position. The formal
return comes in the wrong key, in F major instead of in C. What is
more, the statement is beyond question complete and deliberate,
normal in its action as in the later logical reaction, and a good
portion of the following passage-work continues as if all were well.
Only later is this stubborn departure taken in hand, during the
routine passages that are so frequently dismissed as mere " transi-
tional matter" without further examination, and the previous
preparatory music brought back. Nothing in the precepts of
"abstract " sonata form can account for Mozart's departure from
the " rule " in this return, yet in terms of the miniature drama in
which characters have no time to grow but can be viewed in different
postures and can react to each other's movements, the transposition
of this opening melody seems quite reasonable, and it certainly
worries nobody but the form-analysts.
With the first subject lifted up into a new key, the second is now
dropped down to the main key, and its whole train of events follows
in almost literal transposition. Rationality and satisfactory balance
REALISM IN ABSTRACT MUSIC 33

are thus achieved, in action as well as in form. For a moment the

more emphatic diminished-seventh harmony introduced before the
cadence suggests that the agitated character still has potentials of
movement, but we are put at ease by a more decisive registration of
the final chords.
The rational and classic balance that the formalists find in
Mozart, which they present as the essence of " pure " musical
beauty, is certainly evident in this movement, perhaps in even more
profound ways and in more subtle details than the usual analytical
techniques can show. But this rationality and balance are by no
means abstract in nature, and they do not emerge from pure
principles of formal beauty. Neither do they descend mysteriously
from the stratosphere, nor burst forth from the unconscious impera-
tive of unfathomable genius. For the efficacy of sober reason and its
balancing humanism were the actual, pervasive and forward-
looking perspectives of eighteenth-century thought. They appeared
as humane truths held to be self-evident, and Sarastro speaks to us
in a sonata just as plainly as in ' The Magic Flute '.
" Classic" formality and well-trimmed, polite substitutes for
emotion were the approved manners for supplying refined pastimes
for an aristocracy that had outworn its welcome and merely marked
time while it consumed society's wealth. The sonata had to fit
unobstrusively into this setting, in order to satisfy the patroness.
It could not yet expand to the sweeping proportions of full-blown
drama and major conflict, with personal interests directly involved,
as in the mature works of Beethoven, for this music had as yet little
service beyond the tea-table circle. Yet, even in this environment
and at some remove, the delicate C major Sonata already contains
an implied seriousness of characterization, a hint of far-flung
development and an emotional scope ranging far beyond the
attained capacities of its themes or of the light-headed young piano
pupil for whom the work was evidently written. If this is not
therefore a " great " work by Mozart, it still transcends by far the
little purposes it had of necessity to serve, and also the more extended
but indolent pieces of Mozart's minor contemporaries.
The slow movement of the Sonata is a proper operatic aria,
though a short one. It opens with a lyrical line of a distinctly
vocal cast, overlayed here and there with ornaments resembling a
parallel obbligato part for violin, and accompanied by the routine
Alberti bass patterns. The contrasting "B" section moves con-
ventionally to the dominant, and in its more actively changing
harmonies supports the more impassioned expression proper to the
higher range and accumulated motion. The shortened return
34 MUSIC AND LETTERS

produces a two-part balance and retains the earlier ornamental

variation. Stereotyped appoggiaturebelonging to the bel canto aria
are used profusely and weak-beat (" feminine ") cadence cliches
occur in all the phrases. Judicious chromatics, raised "leading"
auxiliaries and a few well-placed diminished-seventh chords are
introduced in an almost off-hand fashion, as though following a
pre-arranged conventional pattern. Mozart seems to have fallen
into the very procedures of which the formalists accuse him, and in
the process he would seem reduced almost to the correct dullness of
which Clementi was sometimes capable.
But the abbreviated aria gives way rather abruptly to a new
interlude, starting in G minor. The innocuous melodic line is
turned more forcibly upward, the phrase contour is stretched to
larger dimensions, the motion of chords and bass line is activated
and an unexpectedly intense climax is reached in a framework of
chromatic harmonies and an expansive climb. The newly drama-
tized material is made up of just what we have already heard and
accepted as polite filling.
This bursting of bonds is nevertheless well controlled and momen-
tary, and the movement soon relaxes into another affirmation of the
quiet opening. An Abgesang coda phrase is attached to the melody
in true operatic fashion, attaining a secondary climax, and then the
whole is tied up neatly with quiet repetitions of the cadence chords.
Just as in the first movement, the material in the Andante is
relatively slight, though well characterized, but the intervening
development is not the neat and pat commentary that belongs to
the formula. In the one case the dramatic development by-passes
the two characters and overshadows them, and the next time the
innocent tune is swept up into a driving emotional upheaval. Thus,
beneath the " classic " surface of well-kept formal gardens, there
seethes in Mozart's music a torrent of human passion in which we
find caught up the moving impulses even of the small souls with whom
he had to deal in his little pieces.
The final rondo is a light dance, built on a tiny and obvious
canon figure, with the second portion of each pair of opening phrases
set like a change in instrumental scoring. The first episode hardly
brings about a change of key in simple chords, when we find it
again devoted to the first dance figure. The regularity is diverted
by a re-transition, more fitting for a larger work, after which the
opening phrases return. A comparison with folk dances of the
period reveals the modulation and the re-transition passage as the
only symptoms of idealization or " highbrow " modification of an
essentially popular style.
REALISM IN ABSTRACT MUSIC 35

At this point occurs one of those troublesome hybrid forms that

plague the academicians. The new episode is, first, all out of
proportion in length to the other material. It is, secondly, not
formed of new, contrasting material at all, but is a development of
the opening dance phrase. Hence it should occur in a sonata-form
movement, but Mozart has marked this unmistakably 'Rondo',
as though to try our academic patience. Thirdly, this episode itself
is a very condensed but complete and balanced sonata form, in
twenty short bars, followed by a brief modulation. Finally, the
dramatic intensity of the section is once again all out of keeping with
the substance of the initial material, and if we observe merely the
mechanical outlines of the motifs rather than their potential imagery,
there is no accounting for this section at all, any more than for the
developments in the preceding movements.
The final recurrence of the dance theme is followed by a repeated
closing phrase akin to the first episode, once again suggesting a
" recapitulation " treatment out of turn. Then the movement
winds up with some full-bodied fanfares to let us know the end is here.
Thus, to review it briefly, the " abstract " music of the C major
Sonata may be very concretely characterized, throughitsformal qualities,
in terms of musical realism. On the other hand no purely formal
exposition can account either for the nature of the musical images
used or for what happens to them. There is nothing " pure " or
" absolute " about any of these musical procedures, and a setting
forth of the external plan of motifs and patterns tells us nothing
whatever of the underlying unity and construction of the work, not
to mention the significant content whose very presence formal
analysis denies.
The three movements of the Sonata are respectively a dramatic
scene, an aria and a dance. All are appropriate to Mozartian
opera. The first two unmistakably derive from vocal types of a
highly specific convention, and all the movements make full use of
orchestral effects in so far as these can be rendered on the keyboard.
Still, the work fits the piano well, it is functional in that direct sense,
and it is fairly easy to play and thus practical, save for some tough
moments in the last movement. It also utilizes familiar keyboard
patterns and makes good practice and good self-entertainment.
The interpretations here given of details in the C major Sonata
should serve, on examination, to relate the formal qualities of the
music to their real reference. Nowhere do I suggest a hidden
" programme " in the naive nineteenth-century sense or a verbal
" meaning " that ought to be translated out of the work during
listening. No, the musical content is not well rendered in words
36 MUSIC AND LETTERS

at all, for it lies in the instantaneousconnotationsgrown upon the musical

forms themselves,taking the term "forms " in a more than usually
inclusive sense.
The controlling principle, even in " abstract " music, or rather
especially in " abstract " music, is the development of realistic
musical images. And musical images may be defined as recog-
nizable motifs, patterns, formations, orderings of notes, which have
arisen in certain conditions of musical activity, in certain functions
of music in the social life of real human beings. Musical imagery
thus combines the shape with its referent, not in symbolic or denota-
tive fashion as do words, but by means of direct association with the
whole of our concrete experience with music.
All this is but a way of saying that the works of men bear indelibly
the mark of the men who made them and the purposes for which
they were made. If we try to ignore the realism of music, the
reference of the " form " images to their content, we find that on
abstractly formal grounds alone we can never account for even the
technical procedures of the " purest " music. Whenever we are
given formal precepts in the abstract, we are led to expect a symmetry
of a mechanical and outwardly ingenious or involuted order.
Then, taking the C major Sonata for a moment, why should Mozart,
on purely formal grounds, have " answered " or balanced the first
two bars of the opening melodic phrase as he did ? The second pair
of bars might have been made up of an exact inversion of the
melodic pattern, or an interchanged position of dominant and tonic
harmonies, or a reverse of the pattern, or a literal sequence. What
more fertile treatments could inhere entirely in the abstracted
"form" of the little phrase? But as soon as we consider these
things, we observe that Mozart, who has always been belittledas the
purest " of the " abstract " composers of brainlessly balanced
"absolute " music, does not waste thought on such non-musical
toyings with notes. His two-bar answer presupposes a primary
concern with eloquent gesture and inflection of the voice, and this
leads him to a less symmetrical but larger tonal framework, and he
draws the whole phrase towards an open-ended building of the
initial image. The process is far easier to follow in the music than
in its verbal description, because this process is natural and proper
to the art of music; it arises from the real imagery that makes up
the formed substance of note-groups.
On listening to Mozart's "abstract" music to-day, we are
bound to lose a certain amount of its initial imagery. Already most
present-day listeners receive their musical experience at third
hand, through recordings and not through their own performance.
REALISM IN ABSTRACT MUSIC 37

'Thereby they lose the tactile contact, and even the visual contact,
with the act of making music, to say nothing of the accumulated
experience which alone puts some life into such things as scale
passages. In this respect our choice of a well-known student piece
brings our analysis closer home than would be the case with much
instrumental music.
Further, the full social and historical setting of Mozart's music is
not available to the present-day audience; it must be recaptured
largely through wide readings and imaginative skill. The operas
and concerts of Mozart's contemporaries and immediate pre-
decessors supplied a store of conventions and associations which
were significant in their own day to his audiences, but these
,conventions and associations are not so readily construed to-day,
even with the best will. We no longer live Mozart's musical images.
On the other hand Mozart had no call to write for posterity, such
writing being the unrewarded illusion of a later and more self-
,conscious age. Hence he could not have considered providing us
with the picturesque tourist guides so readily obtained for the
musical merchandise of a century later.
Finally, the genres or functional types of late eighteenth-century
music in Vienna are neither universal nor eternal, but highly
specific, and while much of their flavour remains, large segments
have become for us vague, general and identified by dating rather
than by vibrant imagery. Thus we can usually spot a dance image
in Mozart's music, when we are not distracted from it by tales of
" pure " disembodied form, but we cannot always identify the type
of dance, unless intellectually, nor is its feeling close to us visually or
kinasthetically, so that the audible realism is less distinct than it
should be. In similar fashion the music of worship or of Masonic
ritual of Mozart's time and locale is no longer with us, so that such
.associations as remain in his instrumental compositions are largely lost.
If, therefore, the musical imagery of Mozart is still strikingly
plain and infinitely varied, and its interpretation remarkably direct
and economical and lovely, once we free ourselves of the rather
useless search for a verification of" pure forms ", this can be due only
to a richness and to a dexterity of thought that bespeaks a realistic
bent and an insight into human character and into the life around
him, and also a quick and sure grasp of every species of form-content
used for communication in his day.
It is time that the problem of significant content in music were
brought to a new level of discussion. The controversies of the late
nineteenth century over " pure " music and " programme " music
have shown themselves to be ultimately shallow, though each
38 MUSIC AND LETTERS

position conveyed something of the truth within the narrow frame of

music made for the concert market. The formalists are right to hold
that any musical meaning must be contained in its form. They
are wrong in defining form in a narrow, unphilosophical way;
and in mistaking what the content is for the way it is presented. The
verbose interpreters of " programmes " are right to hold that all
music must have a content that transcends its sounding medium;
they are wrong in defining this content in a narrow, unhistorical
way, and in separatingwhat the contentis from the way it is presented.
For the art of music is unique in its inseparable integration of
form and content. Its meaning does lie in its form, but it is not the
same thing as the external mechanics of the form. The meaning is
also different from the form, but it cannot be set apart from the
way in which it is conveyed.
Realism in music consists in the reference of musical images to
the human world in which these images arise. The image is at
once form and meaning, shape and substance, manner and matter.
Realism in abstract music, or more exactly in the instrumental
concert music of European culture of the past two centuries or so,
arises in the formation of concrete musical images through experi-
ence, at first with non-concert functions of music and then with its
own ingrown media. The high artistic aims evident during the
mature period of this music, and the comprehensive range of
associations made possible by its initially select and well-to-do
audience, determine the power and also the character of the
resulting works of art. The rich content of this instrumental music,
as well as the emotional import of its flood of realizations, needed
little comment in the eighteenth century, since its sources in experi-
ence with the social functions of daily musical activities were very
close. Only when the initial impulse was diverted into the com-
mercial enterprise of the later nineteenth-century concert were the
desiccated images and their imported substitute-wares handed over
the stage-apron, as over a counter, packaged as "forms" into
which music was poured.
It would be too little to say that there is realism in abstract
music. For the full flowering of musical realism is to be found in the
great classics of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
instrumental concert music. For this music proceeded from a society
that was passing through unprecedented expansion, both of re-
sources and of humanist vision and had attained the highest level
of technology, trade, national culture and social progress prior to
their disappointing results and decline in the later nineteenth century
and their catastrophic fall in our own era.