Walter Raymond Spalding Quotes

One of the peculiar characteristics of music is that it is both the most natural and least artificial of the arts, and as well the most complicated and subtle.

[M]usic requires active coöperation by the hearer.

A glance at the score shows how sadly the pedagogue might go astray in judgment of the work, without a hearing of it, and furthermore, the imagination of the hearer must be in sympathy with the imagination of the composer, if he would know full enjoyment: for this symphonic poem provokes swooning thoughts, such as come to the partakers of leaves and flowers of hemp; there are the stupefying perfumes of charred frankincense and grated sandal-root.

Music is of such power and glory that we should be ready to devote to its study as much time as to a foreign language.

It may be granted that Debussy's melodic line is very fluid and elastic, like Wagner's "continuous melody," not definitely sectionalized by balanced phrases or set cadences. But it surely has its own right to existence—music being pre-eminently the art of freedom—and let us remember that Nature herself has melting outlines, shadowy vistas and subtle rhythms. Debussy, in fact, is the poet of the "indefinite" and the "suggestive" and his music has had great influence in freeing expression from scholastic bond.

[T]he firmness of structure inherent in the canonic form is perfectly compatible with genuine freedom and poetry of inspiration.

Schumann claimed that his object in writing music was to influence the imagination of the listeners that they could go on dreaming for themselves.

The G minor Symphony is universally acknowledged to be the highest achievement of 18th century instrumental music and is also premonitory of that subjective spirit peculiar to the 19th century. It will remain immortal so long as human beings are capable of being touched by sincere revelation of emotion combined with a perfection of utterance which seems fairly Divine. This delicate treatment and this exquisite finish are two prominent characteristics of Mozart's style. Truly the Symphony is the quintessence of Mozart in terms of sound and rhythm, and we need but to listen to his message and receive it with grateful appreciation. ... The first movement begins at once with a gracefully poised theme sung by the violins, a theme which may be likened in its outlines to the purity of a Greek statue. The entrancing effect of this melody cannot be realized except on the orchestra, for it seems to float on the gently pulsating chords of the violas like a beautiful flower.

The Development, beginning in measure 132, is a striking example of how difficult it was—even for an exponent of freedom in musical expression like Schumann—to break loose from the shackles of arbitrary form.

Just as poetry and prose are a series of stanzas or sentence, so a musical composition is a succession of definitely organized portions of thought and emotion, in terms of rhythm and sound. In the heart of a composition, to be sure, we often find a great freedom in the phraseology, comparible to blank verse or to a rhapsodic kind of prose.

[A] knowledge of Bach is the beginning of musical wisdom.

[T]he rhythm of music, akin to the human heart-beat and to the ceaseless change and motion, which is the basic fact in all life, apeals at once to our own physical vitality.

Thus a very etherial, magical quality of tone is produced, especially in the upper ranges of the instrument.

In general, Chopin's style is homophonic—wondrous lyric melodies which seem to float on waves of richly colored sound. But there is also much subtly used polyphony, i. e., delightful phrases in inner voices and imitative effects between the different parts.

The sensational style of Prometheus is augmented by the use of a color machine which flashes upon a screen hues supposed to supplement the various moods of the music. How many of these experiments will be incorporated into the accepted idiom of music, time alone will tell; but they prove conclusively that modern music is thoroughly awake and is proving true to that spirit of freedom which is the breath of its being.