Chopin and Other Musical Essays by Henry Theophilus Finck
page 66 of 195 (33%)
page 66 of 195 (33%)
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the harmonies which accompany it." And again he says, "You must not
rest until you are able to understand music on paper." I remember that, as a small boy, I used to wonder at my father, who often sat in a corner all the evening looking over the score of an opera or symphony. And I was very much surprised at the time when he informed me that this simple reading of the score gave him almost as vivid a pleasure as if he heard it with full orchestra. This power of hearing music with the eyes, as it were, is common to all thorough musicians, and is, of course, most highly developed in the great composers. Schumann even alludes to the opinion, which some one had expressed, that a thorough musician ought to be able, on listening for the first time to a complicated orchestral piece, to _see_ it bodily as a score before his eyes. He adds, however, that this is the greatest feat that could be imagined; and I, for my part, doubt whether even the marvellously comprehensive mind of a musical genius would be able to accomplish it. These facts illustrate the manner in which composers, being virtuosi of the musical imagination, are able to elaborate mentally, and keep in the memory, a complete operatic or symphonic score, just as, for example, Alexander Dumas, when he wished to write a new novel, used to hire a yacht and sail on Southern waters for several days, lying on his back--which, by the way, is an excellent method of starting a train of thought--and thus arranging all the details of the plot in his mind. The exact way in which _original_ ideas come into the mind is, of course, a mystery in music as in literature. Every genius passes through a period of apprenticeship, in which he _assimilates_ the discoveries of his predecessors, reminiscences of which make up the |
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