Music from the sociological point of view

Music from the sociological point of view
Camille Bellaigue

Translated by Bayron Pascal

Under this title: Art from the sociological point of view, a thinker and a writer whose cannot quite mourn the loss, Guyau, once left a beautiful book, but an incomplete book. A great topic is addressed only in part, and almost only literature is seen from the point of view of announced. Thus the book somewhat betrays his title and the expectation of the reader. What did Guyau for literary art, the temptation came to try it for art, or rather one of the arts, music, and seek what there are sociological or social in nature, its history and its effects. So little that is our study, it is to the young master disappeared we take in not only the idea, but the elements. It is on its own Fund, according to him, and according to him, we've been working, without wishing nothing to check the General principles of what he's done in the particular order of the music.

I - The conception of art

"The conception of art, wrote Guyau, the conception of art, like all others, shall make a more and more important to human solidarity, mutual communication of consciences, to sympathy all together physical and mental makes that the. individual life and collective life tend to blend. Like morality, art's last result to remove the individual to himself and to identify it with all. »

This is the starting point and the theme to develop. One thing is certain: as well as philosophy and science to create the community of ideas and morality of wills, art, like religion which it looks like in this, art establishes the community of sentiments. It therefore has a wonderful power to unify, and, so to speak, to socialize; for us it is nothing as special as individual sensitivity. By it even more by the intelligence we differ from each other. by each of us is the most intractable and the most irreconcilable. And because we don't have anything as personal as our sensitivity, we do think anything either too valuable. She is us at this point, it seems something even greater than us, and my love, very well said Guyau, "my love is more alive and more real than myself." Also is this sensitivity that men are wont to make the biggest sacrifices, and up to life. It is sensitivity, I take the word in the highest, most noble sense, - sensitivity literature of intelligence, that martyrdom is heroic effort. The reasons for the big hearts are generally those that reason does not know. Yes dies for his faith died perhaps not so much for what it contains belief and certainty, for what it contains of love. But what are we talking about dying? Humanity lives even more, I hear the higher life, by the sentiments shared by common ideas. For some men, and all men, it matters less to think that feel similarly. know the same things is not enough: we must love them. The solution of the social problem would be in the fraternity not spirits, but souls, and if one has just reported the bankruptcy of science, is that science, which brings together us by intelligence, is powerless to link only two of us by the heart.

So art is a sociological agent incomparable, or comparable to the one religion, because it acts like she on sensitivity. So beauty can be, more than the truth, creative unanimity. We take the crowd and we drive by the passions even better than by ideas, by emotion rather than by the evidence. What mathematical demonstration will excite enthusiasm raises a symphony or just licking of a human voice in a House? What scientist was never hailed as a tenor? It even happens that science borrows some words which she likes to adorn themselves with aesthetics. We say that the solution to a problem is "elegant", and Guyau offers us as a 'beautiful' show ' of intelligence following a direction, proposing a goal, making effort to get there, removing obstacles; a will, and, what is more, will human, with which we sympathize, we like wrestling, the efforts, the triumph. There is something exciting and passionate in a suite of arguments leading to a truth discovered, and it is this side that it is aesthetic. »

Art is a fact or an essentially sociological phenomenon, because it is essentially a phenomenon or a fact of sensitivity. «Important, used to say an old and gentle guardian of our childhood, the important thing is to get lost from view.» She was right. This is important, and in all things. It is the last word in aesthetics as bion of morality; It is the supreme beauty and the supreme benefit of engineering as well as virtue. It must be that the artist be lost from view, or rather looks for others; that he considers himself; belonging to them as being created, and creator especially, for their benefit and their joy. Thus occurs this Guyau's definition of art: "The extension of society through the feeling." So art becomes charity. So the order of beauty is consistent with good order, as has fixed the divine law. "Love God with all your heart... Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment is bigger than that one. ' Purposing to make us love even more than understand together, art established your his way the rule, on the same precept of the spirit, of the precept of the feeling of the precept of love.

II

The music is more sociological arts.

It is firstly because the sound is the social agent by excellence. "Friendly and social instincts are at the bottom of all the enjoyments of the ear. To be alive, the greatest charm of sound, it is essentially expressive. It makes him share the joys and especially the suffering of other beings subsist... The pain that expresses itself through the voice moves us in general more morally than that expressed by the features of the face or gestures [1]. "This social value of sound, the nature and art also bear witness. More than the movement more than the light, the sound reveals and expresses it. The deaf are usually more sad than the blind, if the hearing is even more necessary than the view to the perception of the outdoor life. Under the bright desert sun appears dead because there is still no doubt, but mostly because he is silent, and on the threshold of "infinite spaces", Pascal is frightened of their darkness, but their silence. The real order to the aesthetic, we will recognize that music is the quintessential evocation or the representation of life. Never the Orpheus of marble bed sink as many tears as Orpheus singing, and under the ceiling of the Sistine choir or in front of the tomb of Medici, Beethoven, sonatas and symphonies, Beethoven would perhaps dare to tell us: "see if this pain even is. equal to my pain! "What joy also never was equal to his joy! Will hear the finale of the heroic Symphony or c minor, and tell your Tower of what picture of Rubens, albeit the most exalted, the most triumphant, overflows such rejoicing.

This ability to create life and here cause our sympathy, the music the must to his analogies with the language. Music, we noticed, "collected to accentuate it and enrich it excessively, the realistic part of the instinctive language [2]." She remained and still also language: sensitivity and not the mind; language natural, not manufactured nor agreed, more like, more adequate than the language of words to the felt lie that he expresses. On the original community and the subsequent separation of one and the other, on the rights of the music stay, to become more and more a language, and what language! Wagner left pages that cannot be too often come back. "Outcome, said, a meaning from the words natural, personal and sensitive, the literary language of the man grew in a more abstract direction, and finally the words retained more than a conventional meaning; feeling lost any participation in the intelligence of the words, as the order and connection of these eventually depend on, in a way exclusive and absolute rules that he had to learn. In their necessarily parallel develope, customs and language were at the same time subject to the conventions which the laws were more intelligible to the natural feeling, and could not be understood by reflection, that the received in the form of maxims taught. Since the modern languages of Europe, separated into different branches, followed with a more determined purely conventional development trend, music grew on his side and came to power expression that there was still no idea. Looks like under the pressure of the civilized conventions, human feeling is is exalted and sought an outcome that allowed him to follow the language that its own laws and to express themselves in a way that was intelligible, with a freedom and a full independence of the logical laws of thought... The modern development of music responded to a deeply felt need of humanity, and despite the darkness of their language according to the laws of logic, it is necessarily understand human with a victorious power that these same laws don't know not [3]. »

Thus affecting sensitivity, these are reports of sensitivity that music will always establish. Let's not claim for it. If we train him outside his area, she would find musicians even for swept it. We know the word of Grétry. One of his friends claimed that music can express everything. "I will remain in right, replied the author of Richard the Lion heart, if you can order your dinner with live music in the restaurant where we enter." Grétry was right: music does not tell everything, and it will never ask for bread in music. But man does not live by bread alone, and here is the necessary counterpart of the anecdote of Grétry. Beethoven, say, went to see one day a mother whose son had died. She came to meet him; but he, turning away, went to the piano without Word say. He played for a long time, and when he had finished, still silent, he went out. The music had done so far here its highest social mission: better that would do the very language she had sympathized, perhaps comforted.

Between men and between man and animal, between the animals themselves, music reports, enough waves without doubt, that only yet it is able to create. The animal perceives of the language as the musical elements: the stamp, the height, the intensity of the sound. Intonation and not the meaning of our speeches, affectionate or severe, him glad or saddens him. It does not obey the word, but to the voice. To the instruments themselves, the animals are not insensitive. The charmer snake look, perhaps understand what that sigh the flute Reed, and the Bugle sounding the charge made to beat in unison, the heart of the horse and the rider. The ranz of cows is the best-known, but not the only example of the sociological effect of music on animals. When the Bull of the circus has stubbornly refused the fight, we send to him oxen wearing a Bell around the neck, and the Bell, even better than the sight of his companions, the Bell by the memory and the hope of the prairie, draws out of the enclosure The animal who did not die. Finally, between the Shepherd and his flock who would doubt that music creates mysterious links? Interpreter of sympathy el of mutual tenderness, without the flock, or maybe the Shepherd know hear, she says the humble life lived together against the common mother's womb. Between man and the lower creatures, between this master and these servants, it establishes or restore reports bienveillans, almost brotherly. Extends the reign of charity and love, and a Francis, the saint who bought out the Lambs and called his brothers, the soul can sing sometimes on the lips of a shepherd.

We communicate through music, I would almost say we communions with nature itself. Nature is the great musician, and watch it without listening to him, could only point understand all. If the echo is no longer the voice of the nymph crying the beautiful young man she loved and who loved than himself, he is still a voice yet: that of the Woods, rocks, waters, all these great things, silent, we would be foreign, but that we become friends when we talk to them and we meet. Yes, its harmonies as well as performances by nature is associated with and mixes a little of his dark soul our soul.

O waves, you know some dismal stories!

...

You tell amount the tides,

And that makes you desperate voices

Have you at night when you come to us.

There is no need to be a poet to feel the wind moans, that source laughs or cries, and when Ms. de Sévigné was called the Nightingale a sheet who sings, she knew well that we sometimes wonder if these are leaves who sing, or birds. There is a page where I found an admirable example of sympathy, universal solidarity that can create music in the Artois. It's the night, on the edge of a pond of Camargue. On the shoulder of Balthazar, Fred comes long rest its poor already more than half-lost head. The old man and the child suffered, wept together. They go; We hear there invisible shepherds call their animals; the scene remains empty and the Orchestra alone puts a chill on the reeds. Then everything wraps of melancholy. Nothing at all until these patres, these herds that we have not, up to the pond, to the immense plain, all sad is a shared sadness, and some agreements are sufficient to establish between men, animals and things even, unanimity of anxiety and pain.

The sociological nature of the music still appears elsewhere, and in particular in this indisputable fact, that music is folk art among all. There is a popular music, while a painting, a sculpture, a popular architecture, do not exist. Music is the only art in which participates, to some extent, the impersonal genius and anonymous soul of the crowd. What for? Because the happy formula of Emile Hennequin, "the perception of the sentiments in their auditory mode is more common than in their optical mode." More common, because it is easier and more accessible to all. Who knows, said Musset citing music,

Who knows what a child can hear and can say

In your divine sighs born of the air he breathes!

He was right, and to do musical work, it sometimes only takes a breath, breathed by a chest of child.

The music also is the only art that is associated, or likely to be, most of the acts of our collective or social life. The music follows us from birth to death. She sings near the cradle; She still sings in front of the grave. We know how she mingles religion and war, dancing and banquets, all solemnities, and parties. There will be songs from table; He had previously "songs of bed. At the most basic, but to the most essential of social relations, - it's love I mean - the music remains point foreign. Far from scaring the amans, it intoxicates them more. They know it well, and that's why they often call it. «If music be the food of love, play always, give - me in with excess...» Yet this air, it had such a dying fall! Oh! happened to my ear like the gentle South wind that defiles on a bench of violets, stealing and giving both perfumes. "So to speak, I was going to say so sings Orsino, the handsome prince enamoured, in the night of the Kings of Shakspeare.

The life of the humble even more than adults, the music is United. It's the cobbler, and not financial, who "sang from morning until evening", and of all those who work and who toil, the music always was the companion and the comforter. She chairs, she helps the rough days, to that of the worker as to that of the peasant. All work of the Earth is accomplished by singing. Plowing and sowing songs, songs of picking and harvest, beautiful and free "songs to great wind! Songs of the washerwomen and the spinners, the spinning wheel songs, songs of the plagues beating the area and beat the dance of the dust of gold; songs of the pickers who trample the grapes, you my music social par excellence of primitive humanity and the large Holy labors. While you go up to the land, others, you are the same, rising waters. As the farmer on the cart, the sinner or the gondolier bends by singing on the oars, and the same streams are melodious. On the other side of the seas, to the distant, fabulous or wild shores, thousands of voices rise again; and in front of the mosques of Stamboul or under the Palm trees of the Nile, the soul of the ignored multitudes of the mysterious East, sighing in the cantilena of the muezzin or the camel driver. Between the exotic chants and ours, there are sometimes unexpected encounters; It happens that the bagpipe to Brittany, the flute of Cairo and the Andalusian guitar sing in ways that resemble strangely. Do not be surprised. Admire rather how workers or what performer of international unanimity can be music, music particularly popular, since it is need of countless systems of words, sometimes a system of sounds to translate some of Basic, but universal, sentiments of humanity.

Sound forms created by the genius of all, the individual genius in turn seizes. He appropriates them, in fact the basis and background of his works, his masterpieces sometimes. If deeply that we search in the past of music, we run the popular song. As wrote a master in this matter, the popular song is the "substratum on which the successive layers of music have accumulated since its first training until the more advanced epochs [4].» The popular melody is everywhere. From the middle age can be found in the songs of the Latin Church, and outside of the Church it represents the only form of poetry and music then known at this time. The popular song the art of the trouvères was released. That's also what was born later the vocal polyphony of the 15th and 16th centuries. On reasons or only on popular intonations, the great masters of the counterpoint, the Prez, the Roland de Lassus, Josquin, the Palestrina were building their architectures, and Mr. Tiersot assures us that, since Dufay to Carissimi, the only theme of the armed man inspired nineteen masses and two songs. When the polyphonic musical art returned to Monody, the popular element remained no stranger to this vicissitude. If later it weakens in our opera of the 17th century, it reappears in the century following in the Opéra-Comique. Outside France, he doesn't either. Bach called a thousand ways - all admirable - chorales of the Lutheran liturgy. However chorales are closely related to the song; many of them are just secular tunes of the 16th century, that, changing rhythm, emphasis, and associated pious words, have found their final form. Master of Chapel of prince Esterhazy, whose home of Eisenstadt was not far from the country of Croatian language, Haydn did not fail to introduce in his works more than a melody of this country. Even one of them, somewhat modified, became the famous Austrian anthem [5]. Hungarian melodies also appear in many Symphony of the master. Mozart's the Magic Flute (especially for the role of Papageno) was inspired by the Viennese music, and Beethoven, some quartets, made use of Russian themes. The role of the ranz, or rather of the cows in the Guillaume Tell of Rossini ranz, is considerably more than we don't usually think [6]. At least we all know which party of the Reformation Symphony Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer of the Huguenots took the Chorale of Luther: Eine feste Burg. Weber and Schubert were great musicians of the people; larger than Wagner. Today it is popular art, in the noblest sense of the word, that represents a master like Mr. Grieg, and usage of the national themes remained since Glinka one of the principles the constans and the most prolific of the Russian school.

Thus, throughout history, side by side and sometimes intersect the individual genius and genius of the crowd. One lends to another what he has more simple, more real, more pure. He entrusted his thoughts still ill-defined, vague passions, desires and dreams. He brings his humble joys and dark pains. These primitive and sacred materials, the genius, the personal genius, made upper and final artwork. He chooses and develops; He ordered and he organized; It is instinct to consciousness and strengthens the feeling by reason. In a nutshell it makes the hundredfold what he received, and by this communication constant, by this perpetual exchange of services and benefits, sociological ideal is realized, because the solidarity between the elite and the number, between great men and humanity. Often called the music an art society, and, for being vulgar, the expression is no less significant. More than other arts, music is a cause or a pretext of association. The Corps, bands, give evidence, sometimes, alas! too bright. We meet more readily and in greater numbers to hear music to consider paintings, marbles, or buildings. Festivals of music, and to the Parthenon, there is the Hermes of Praxiteles or the Madonna of Saint Sixtus, the crowds will point, as well as to the Bayreuth theatre, on a pilgrimage. Is not in front of the statues, but around the military orchestras, to press the public of our gardens, and for the Sunday concerts the Louvre is more and more abandoned. By asking everyone to be silent to listen, the music asking everyone to choke on his lips and even his heart any discordant, intrusive, or only foreign voices. She wants that in it and by it all may be more than one. I know too that she rarely gets this unit, getting almost never silence. But it's his right, of his nature to claim it, and its total action, its full effect is only at this price. Music, almost all music at least, is made to be heard, and, in his empty theater, the young and dark King even high dignity art whereby it agreed that its proud and lonely tribute. There are more, and every musical genre includes, command even a particular kind of audience. There is a kind of correlation and necessary proportion between the number of those who play and the number of those who listen, and perhaps it would not be impossible to make a comparative study of the Quartet, of the Symphony from the sociological point of view, and the opera.

Finally music, or more precisely a musical work, is, more than any work of art, a thing, you could say a collective and social being. The only terms of musical language: agreement, harmony, to testify first. That's not all: music, as well as architecture, consists of elements that are United by a mathematical rigor reports; But while architecture sets or the groups thus formed are inanimate and dumb, music they move, they speak, or rather they sing, having thus twice a life twice missing the most admirable order of marble or the stone. All music is therefore living socially. A melody, even isolated, is multiple in that sense, it is constituted by periods, members of sentence which are repeated or similar. As soon as the harmony is in addition to the melody and accompanies him, a new solidarity is established and more many reactions occur. Who so, listening to the adagio of the Beethoven Sonata in c sharp minor, has not felt how sweet girlfriend and consoling arpeggios envelop the song sorry? What is the fugue, otherwise a strict mode, the most rigorous even, of the association between the elements or human beings sound? The variation is another, more free and with more variety. A day that chance had put under our eyes and our fingers some Handel variations and Schumann symphonic studies, the opposition of the two works, to the point of view that concerns us, we appeared and knocked us. One and the other are anything other than a varied theme. Just what is a varied theme? It's the evolution of forms or rather multiple and changing forces, under the influence and as under the authority of a superior and constant force; It's a kind of economy, living hierarchy; It's a certain system of relationships between the number and the unit, between an individual and a group. However, in the work of Handel and in that of Schumann, these reports are governed by absolutely opposite laws. Very quiet, very wise, the theme of Handel is simply followed by five "double", as we used to say. They said well, because such variations are hardly in a digital increase, in the steady progression, and two by two, to values more faster. Also no change of measure or rhythm; any conflict avoided, all absent passion. Still more voices, but none ever does deviate doesn't stray, don't contradict or disagrees. Throughout the agreement and unanimous consent, everywhere finally the image of a company polite, happy, that is sufficient to maintain discipline and order, the memory or the only shadow of the theme accepted by all and everyone obeyed. For Schumann, on the contrary, what do we see? Firstly a theme more bitter, and despite this less decisive, darker and less firm at the time. We feel now that he does not bring peace, but war; that it comes to divide, not unite. Already the first symphonic study announces a next revolt. And this revolt broke out beautifully in the second study, where I don't know what shy, solitary souls protest and refuse to submit, or only to join. Each variation now frees itself and gets carried away, rune by fantasy and caprice, the other by selfishness and pride. So the idea, which should order, is slave and sometimes victim. It ignores her, it distorts her, we're going almost up to him to violence. And this "beautiful mess" probably "is an effect of art", a sublime art and which we are today most affected, more moved than to that of Handel. It is the disorder yet. Instead of the hierarchy, it is independence, almost anarchy. It is in any case a social representation and a sociological ideal in absolute opposition to one as earlier we tried to define.

Three elements or three factors, said Guyau, are the social character of the aesthetic emotion. It seems that all three coexist also in the emotion of the music and also give this character.

The first element is the recognition of objects by hi memory. No art, more music, does provide in mind this satisfaction and enjoyment to the sensitivity. Music, in general, we are nothing, then and constantly she represents us. "It is softer, like the chorus of old men to Perdican, it is sweeter to find what you love to kiss a newborn." In music we do find that what we love; everything constantly reappears and the law of return is the universal law. This return, if the work is beautiful, will never be a repeat, much less a setback: a progress on the contrary and an increase, a promotion of the form or the musical idea to a life more rich and more high. There will be back however, and in a Bach fugue, in a Symphony of Beethoven, in the final pages of a Valkyrie or a Parsifal, is no beauty more than a philosopher called, I think, and that a musician could also call the beauty of the newfound identity.

Guyau, the aesthetic emotion is from social again because it makes us sympathize with the author of the work. Gold with no artist, poet and especially the speaker except, we sympathize as with the musician. With no other we link one easier, a close company. More than the painter, sculptor or architect, we find the musician in his work; It tells us and gives us, and the musical style as much as literary style we can say that he is the same man. Through music, the personality of the musician asserts no unless she communicates, and the genius of Mozart or Beethoven is that there are more individual and more general both. In the sonata and the Symphony, it is the voice of the musician who speaks to us. That voice, that strikes our ears, find it us impossible to believe extinct, dead, while we know numb and icy hand who painted this painting, carved the marble or drew up the plan of this building. So, it seems that in music, being, similar or superior to us humans live now and really close to us. It is he who calls us and draws us behind his work; It is to him that takes us to him that we attached a sympathy and tenderness, life, and personal life, can only inspire to life.

Finally the aesthetic emotion is social because it makes us sympathize with the beings represented by the artist. -But music is therefore able to represent human beings? For vocal music, this is no doubt. 11 is certain that music theatre, or singing is only, creative souls, and that the characters of an opera, provided that this opera is a great musician, exist by the sounds. By the sounds more than by words, and the heroes of Wagner himself, so great poet he has sometimes been, it's always the musical life which prevails. In the last scene of the Valkyrie, for example, you could remove with least damage to the dramatic and moral beauty, what not obviously lyrics? Elsewhere, at the edge of art, imagine saying, instead of singing, the Voi che sapete Cherub. What will become the reverie, languor and excitement? Instead, he sings without saying anything, and feeling, character, life, little or nothing is lost.

As instrumental music, it is true that it does not represent human beings individual, with any particular feeling. But, more widely effective, and regaining in extended this what loses precision, she represents the feeling itself, impersonal and so to speak in itself. something which in the order of sensitivity, is that the general idea is in the order of reason. And by this correspondence one can understand what sociological perspective, the greatness of pure music. It was excellently said: 'Tis by the General ideas that we communicate with each other, and in this sense, admittedly they are the link of society. Our specific ideas divide us; our general ideas connect us and bring us together... Our specific ideas, it's us, that's what there is more individual and therefore more eccentric in us; but our general ideas, that's what is really human in us and therefore it is in us that there really social [7]. "This is no less true of the general sentiments than general ideas. As these bring together us by the spirit, these bring together us by the heart. However, express or represent the general sentiments, this is the fact and the object of instrumental music. What is the joy or pain that sings a final, an adagio of Beethoven? It's none or rather it is all pain and all joy; It is yours, and it's also mine, that we shared, that yesterday you felt and that I will have tomorrow. Thus the masterpieces of pure music, even more than others, are made of what brings us and not of what divides us. they don't contain anything individual and therefore selfish; they are wide, they are deep, and it is in them that humanity, the humanity looks, recognizes and delves.

III - The sociological spirit of music

Nature, or better the sociological spirit music, such that we have to analyze it, appears at all times and at all the eddies of the story. It probably varies and metamorphoses; Here we see spread and there shrink society music sets and represents at the same time. Inside this spirit remains, and various States of music through the ages are just various manifestations. Ancient Monody, plainchant and polyphony from the middle ages to Palestrina; Melody of the great Italian centuries; Symphony and modern symphonic drama, it should be to consider each of these genres or these categories as an expression of a certain relationship between certain music and some company.

We know how the music was in ancient society. Attend all ceremonies and to all religious or civil holidays, national or private, it was similarly to the theatrical performances. She competed again, with poetry and dance, or rather the orchestique to a higher art form: the choral lyric, which our oratorios and cantatas our offer only an imperfect image and as a mangled debris. If high was self-esteem where the Greece held music, that "the muse of Pindar, wrote Mr Gevaert, celebrated without the victory of a flute player, waive Midas of Agrigento [8].» Musical art was then, as it looks today, recognized of public utility. He had a role in education and into the State. Some exercises of gymnastics and music at a time, to which young people were required was referred as the gymnopédies. The nomenclature and the ethos of modes show enough the sociological nature of early music. Each mode clung closely to the nature of the people whom he was named; each was only the expression and as a musical collective and social soul sign. We called them, said of Aristide Quintilien, principles of morals, (Greek) [9]. Various principles of various manners also. Where the distinctions that traditionally made between philosophers and legislators. We must remember the so well-known passage of the Republic where Plato, after having set aside education soft harmonies and plaintive, unworthy to form the guardians of the State, only allows Dorian and Phrygian, harmonies that it generates an ideal that can be well call sociological, since it is both that of the Warrior, the magistrate, the same priest, in a word of the citizen? Make men and 'citizens' (the term keeps coming back), that is the mission August Aristote also assigns to the music. Long before the development of Hellenic philosophy, a Thaletas institutions were used as elements in the legislation of a Lycurgus, and Pindar invoked Apollo ", which introduced into the heart the quiet love of law [10]."

By grace, or the miracle of engineering, this art, largely social and popular, was nonetheless a delicate and subtle art. The music of the Greeks consisted in what Mr Gevaert [11] said: ' a melodic, simple drawing of contours and expression, indicating the general feeling by some exquisite features of extreme simplicity and accompanied by a small number of intervals. harmonics. "Probably for musicians that we have become, this would be nothing; This was enough for them to them, and to them all. He did not then masterpiece too rare, too refined for the crowd, because the crowd was an elite, and this whole people seemed.

Then, when everything was changed, the sky, the Earth and man.

then Christianity collected greco-latine melody; He made the music of its churches, and in the catacombs of all, later in the basilicas, later finally under the arches Romanesque and then Gothic, crowds of middle age, countless and suffering, redirent with one voice - and what other voices! -the songs than the less dark skies under a happy elite had sung.

Less sociological maybe the homophony of the plainsong, vocal polyphony of the Gallo-Belgians and Italians was otherwise; She also existed by the people and for him. The popular element pervades more and more music. Until the reforms of the Council of Trent, the liturgical offices commonly singing on dance themes, war, if not of love or cabaret. Profane music, too, is inspired by the people; It is to him that in the 16th century she asked the truth and the life. Our Clément Jannequin strives to reproduce the cries of Paris; it mimics the cackle of the gossips, the roar of the battle or the sound of hunting. In Germany, Eckard represents the tumult of the Piazza San Marco, and the Italian Strigio composed: "The chatter of women at the laundry", cicalamento delle gives al bucato [12].

Not only by the themes it borrows and the subjects that she treats, but by its constitution and its nature, music of this era is deeply sociological. As we noticed one day here even about Palestrina [13], vocal polyphony was not an individual, still less selfish art, but instead a truly Catholic, that is, universal art and somehow unanimous. While other music - naturally except plainchant - seems to admit with the solo, with the rule of a party or a voice, such and such personal and privileged of thought, the Palestinian art interpretation doesn't tolerate any distinction or prerogative. In him everything is common, no voice doesn't dominate or not despise others. pride and literally disappear, and that's how - if we are allowed to quote us ourselves, - "palestrinienne polyphony is one of the most admirable expressions by the music, not only of faith, but of charity."

Then the Renaissance came. She came late to the music and the other arts, but she showed no different. The principle of the association and of the number, she substituted everywhere the principle of individualism, and the music that long, as well as human, existed only in the collective form, reappeared in the form particular and individual. The first Recitative, and then, and above all, the melody, as created and restored again by the Italian genius, pulled away from vocal counterpoint; but, in the pride of her beauty re-conquered, it turned away from the crowd that once she had loved so much, and the most popular of the arts became the most aristocratic and the more worldly [14]. The lyrical drama was born in the 17th century in Florence, in the living room of Giovanni Bardi, count of Vernio, and long, not only in Italy but in France, in Germany, he felt to his origins. This was the golden age of opera-concert, Cantata, gender the better made to charm a company selected, and 'everybody' rather than the multitude. Music academies flourished by the entire peninsula. In the Palace of large Italian families opened private theatres. The most famous were that of the Farnese, we see still in Parma, and in Rome of the Barberini. Of the latter, the regular librettist was cardinal Rospigliosi, future Pope Clement IX; the Mazzocchi, the Marazzoli were musicians. Elsewhere, at the cardinal Corsini, we represented the Aretusa of Vitali in front of cardinal Borghese and nine other Cardinals. "This beautiful show of princes, very well said Mr. Romain Rolland [15], had indeed a defect of nature: it was exclusively princely; his aristocratic perfection away of the common life, and of the popular soul. "This art closed, who spoke to a small audience, was also that an interpretation somehow individual. Poorly sociological to this point of view yet, he favored the reign and soon the tyranny of virtuosity, and it eventually became a form, fatal of all, not only the personality, but virtually aesthetic selfishness. The situation of a virtuoso, such that for example was a Loreto Vittori, was extraordinary. This illustrious singer, who was also, composer contemporaries reported wonders. Entered initially in the service of Cosimo II, he was abducted him by cardinal Ludovisi. It only suggested to characters of elite; private sessions were held at the Barberini, the Aldobrandini, the Ubaldi. Soon the fame of the artist spread. Pope Urban VIII claimed it in its Chapel and named him Knight. "His admirable art, wrote Mr. Romain Rolland, threw the public in transport that we have difficulty in design. Erythroeus, who became his biographer and his apologist, said that when Vittori sang, many people were forced to suddenly open their clothes to breathe, suffoquées emotion. Such was his popularity in Rome, that the nobles and Cardinals were once driven out of one of its representations by the people, who burst into the Palace of the Jesuits. His concerts became small fields of battle. When the people had managed to get inside, he grouped around the Palace to try to grab a few accents of representation. »

Is not only of the show or concert hall, is art itself that the people then were banned. It was banned everywhere. In Germany, the popular and national engineering seemed to recede before the invasion of the aristocratic Italian genius. Music, or at least the Opera, there was hardly an article of import. And then the thirty years war had been too rough. "We wrote a German of today, we had to fight too hard with the necessities of life, and the ruling classes of our people... had become so foreign to the masses, these centuries could not have the slightest part in the culture, taste, aesthetic satisfactions of the upper classes, separated from them by an impassable abyss [16]. "However for the masses, for these miserable crowds, to the worst days of their misery, a comforter was born. It was not contemporaneous with the long war, this admirable Heinrich Schütz, including a masterpiece at least, the Symphonia sacra: Venite ad me omnes which laboratis! is a masterpiece of tenderness and infinite pity? But when he came home, his own, alas! could not know him: they suffered too, times were too painful, and this great voice arose in a desert and among the ruins.

It took a century for under the strong hands of Handel and Bach's music is beautifully Besant. The Italian principle of individualism opposed, in the first fugue, meanwhile that it was in the Symphony, the German principle of plurality. In Bach and Handel, the finest pages are perhaps the most representative of the number and the multitude. We see enough, if you think about it, and we insist, that there are sociological, universal and unanimous in the Hallelujah of the Messiah, for example, in this song or rather this cry of joy burst from all sides and as in the four corners of the world. And when the double choruses of Bach, four-part, deployed through space the prodigious device their polyphony; When are built in front of us, similar to giant cathedrals who will build before our eyes, the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Credo of the mass in b minor or the epilogue of the Passion according to St. Matthew, then, oh! then recognize that all prayer and all piety, all joy and any sentence, faith, hope and all love are contained in these pages, and that there is no masterpieces sovereign than those who are, so to speak, capable of any humanity.

His turn was it not widely human, the Haydn of the seasons, the smiling and sometimes sublime master? He would live in the pay of the princes, he was of the people and do not forget it. One of the first, he took by the hand the German muse to drive out of the sanctuary, where Bach had kept her locked up. He showed her the fields, meadows, Woods, and of the Sacred Virgin he made friends with the peasants he loved himself: hunters, farmers and winemakers. This isn't everything, and by Haydn, the sociological ideal music was changed. The fugue, this strict form of the association, he replaced the more liberal form of the Symphony, and as it is the precursor to Beethoven: Beethoven more that of Mozart, because Mozart was virtually not announced nor followed. Mozart is a miraculous and solitary flower. His soul is not the symphonialis anima of middle age. Whether a wedding or air of Don Juan, Suzanne on the chestnut appeal or complaint of Doña Elvira in her balcony; the largo of the Clarinet Quintet or the smiling beginning of the Symphony in g minor, any melody Mozart seems less confidante or the interpreter of a crowd, an elite, of a being, a single, and who would be exquisite. The genius of Mozart was for gasoline, instead of the number, the unit, and it's that maybe he deserved to be called the most divine.

Beethoven instead is sublime by plurality. Of Beethoven's Symphony is the most magnificent representation, the richer as the most harmonious, the freer and more settled at the same time that music never gave universal life. The ideal of Beethoven almost always has something of sociological or social; the beauty supreme and like the back of his work is a huge sympathy. Living, he was accused of Misanthropy, of lonely and fierce pride. Dead, it was justified. We knew that he sought solitude to hide as a shame the infirmity that him despaired. "O you!" He wrote in the painful "Heiligenstadt testament", o you who believe me full of bile and hatred, you who make me misanthrope, how you accuse me unfairly! You do not know the secret reasons that give me these unfortunate appearances. My heart and my mind me had tilted the kindness from my most tender years... Come into the world with a fiery soul, a sensitive temperament, and made in a word for the company's relationships, I was forced early to lock me up in isolation, to spend my life in solitude and retirement... It is no longer possible to the unfortunate to distract in the society of men, to take part in their conversations high to their epanchemens. Only one! always alone! unless there is a compelling need don't force me out of my isolation, I spend my life in solitude as an outcast, and if chance led me among men, immediately I feel before a lethal anxiety by thinking that I expose myself to reveal the sec interests of my deafness... O my God! Your gaze from above penetrates into the depths of my soul; you know my heart and you know, is it not, that he breathes that men love and the desire for good [17]. »

Even more than the "Heiligenstadt testament" the whole works of Beethoven breathes this desire and this love. Outwardly separated from humanity, Beethoven has recreated humanity inside of himself, and participating in some sort of divine omnipotence, he participated also in the goodness. To understand the works of Beethoven, it must be interpreted widely. For example, the heroic Symphony. No doubt it was dedicated to the glory of a hero, and on the first page we know that Beethoven had included the name of Bonaparte. It is also known that by learning the coronation of the Emperor, he erased the name for him disgraced. Picking up his masterpiece to a single hero, that now he deemed most worthy, he handed it back at all. to the heroic humanity he reported his sublime tribute, a moment lost. This was the true vocation of the Symphony. It goes beyond indeed and overflows a topic or a model unique, it was one of the greatest among men. Warrior without doubt, she is not only war. Certainly it is the musical epic of those "who have travelled the world less by their not just by their victories. It is also for those who cross him "by their victories less than by their benefits [18].» As I say, the heroic Symphony still has something more general: it celebrates and glorifies the more humble, more obscure and all domestic victories. Well what's big, of what is beautiful in the order of the will and the awareness is foreign to him. And that we would not pretend that hear him thus is lower it and reduce it; It is dilate her instead, and raise it above the specific and personal meanings, until the meaning or the total representation of the universal morality.

If the Beethoven of the heroic Symphony sympathizes with all humanity, that of the pastoral Symphony sympathize with the whole nature. It tells that the master, one day (it was in 1823), led his friend Schindler around Vienna, into a Valley removed. If sitting in the shade near a stream, he asked sadly to his companion if the birds were singing, because for a long time he couldn't hear them. "This is where, he said, I once wrote the Scene at the edge of the brook; the Orioles, quail, nightingales and cuckoos it were composed with me [19]. "And as Schindler was watching that the oriole plays no role in the pastoral Symphony, the master took from his pocket his notebook, and noting an arpeggio that flies away at some point of the rocket sound Orchestra, he went to the bird which was the bird so that no voice was forgotten or unknown in the concert where all voices had sung.

So Beethoven is inspired by the nature. But we must add: of any kind. As the heroic Symphony is not the poem of a single hero, the pastoral Symphony is not that of a single landscape. She either has anything narrow or particular, in short nothing local. Beethoven instead composed with the less rare elements: with the the most familiar aspects that can make things; with the sensations and the more general sentiments they can arouse. Pleasant impressions arriving at the campaign, - Scene the Brook - storm. This is, as they say, the nature of everyone, and the word to be vulgar, isn't less deep. Yes, the nature of everyone, and every country, and every day; the only one with which to communicate or share the great spirit who, in humanity or out of humanity, don't ever conceived anything without extending to the universal and infinite.

In this United if largely friendly, sympathy could only widen until the end. And the end it was the mass in d, this was the Symphony with chorus, two sociological works by excellence, both works where is carried out beyond themselves somehow, and the genius of Beethoven and his love for mankind.

The Kyrie of the mass is admirable in this respect; admirable of fullness and unanimity. But more admirable still and perhaps unparalleled in the whole work of Beethoven seems certain episode of the Agnus Dei. At the top of the last piece of the mass we read these words: Bitte United innern und Frieden opportunity. Prayer for inner and outer peace. In an andante that would less uniform, I dare say less dragging, this prayer first develops at length. Pacem, pacem, pacem, tell and retell the voice to satiety, as to extract the precious gift from the divine weariness. But suddenly everything changes: pace, extent, tone. We hear rumors deaf and the call of Bugles. The Orchestra is moved, shuddered, and on his quivering the three voices of Alto, tenor and soprano, throw in turn to the Lamb of God an appalled adjuration. This is just a shout, but sublime: the cry of every creature who steps back and fainting before the horror, appeared suddenly, war; the war there sound "hideous trumpets." And it is also the cry of Beethoven himself, of Beethoven that were not. Today no doubt as in the days old already, of the heroic, he still lead warriors in combat; but does Heaven ever such days would come back. Without to disavow the heroism, beg the horror, and now is no longer the glory, is peace, asking God for men, for all men, this great soul on them gentle and cried.

It is peace, and tomorrow it will be joy.

"O joy, beautiful spark of divinity, daughter of the heavenly Elysée; full of a sacred drunkenness we enter your sanctuary. A mysterious power finally brings together those whom the world and rank separated; in the soothing shadow of your wings all men become brothers. All people drinking joy, drinking in nature; the good and the pained now follow a road of flowers. That millions of people, that the world is confused in a same embrace [20]. »

This is the theme of the last piece of the last Symphony. That's the Novissima verba of Beethoven. No doubt - although the right to be disputed by certain school, - it is permissible to prefer to the finale of the Symphony with chorus such or such other among the major finals of the master: of the Eroica, pastoral, in the or of the c minor Symphony. We can admire it one any of these more accurate proportions, a perfection as it more perfect, more measure with no less than greatness, perhaps even the expression of joy also unanimous, but brighter and more enthusiastic. It is at least nobody who sees in the finale of the Ninth Symphony a sublime manifestation of feeling or social love. This grand design, the Symphony - I mean here the principle or the Symphonic mode - uses everything she has resources, and seems even to multiply them. She was never more the Symphony, which is a richer competition, and constantly increased, elements, forms and sound forces. After having recalled the reasons for the preceding pieces as to make subordinate them to the theme final and sovereign, the Orchestra presents this short theme. Then he begins to support it, to enrich, but soberly, even basic harmonies. The voice then intervene and give the signal of an evolution whose general meaning, the scale and the last term is quite known. We know, from one end of the finale, the progress and the growing outpouring of joy. We also know what joy: Joy soon turned; first inner and serious, then overflowing outside, bright here in war bands, indeed hymns sacred; communicative, contagious joy that wins gradually, rises from treetops to treetops, until in infinity of happiness every creature, all things even as destroyed and damaged.

As I say, annihilated! This isn't to nothing, it is to be; is not to abolish, but to the development of life, and eternal life, that Beethoven wanted to invite and lead humanity. Despite certain traditions and legends, commentators such as Nohl, and after him Victor Wilder, we like to see in the Schiller ode, and especially in the finale of Beethoven, an ode to joy rather than freedom. It may be that Schiller, for fear of censorship, wrote Freude, while he had thought Freiheit; but it's well Freude, joy, that sings Beethoven. Joy is greater than freedom itself, - I mean our human freedom, - as it must survive. Joy is our last end, because one day, and for ever, we will be more free, but we will be happy. Understood thus, Beethoven thought rises and expands again; her dream or his hope, does not stop at the Earth, and the company designed by his genius is more of the subsist, but of the elect; either time, but in eternity.

Beethoven to us - it of up to Wagner I mean - the evolution of the idea or sociological ideal is not interrupted. At the aristocratic opera in Italy, the Germany finally opposed his first masterpiece national and popular, the Freischütz. The cantatas of court and salon, to the noble recitatives, vocalizing virtuosos replied the German lied, and the grand master was Schubert estimated point unworthy of his genius small and humble: the herdsman, the Hunter, "the beautiful Miller's wife", the spinner to the r Woid, the postboy sounding of the Horn and the fisherman of trout water.

Without ever becoming a popular genre, the great french opera, la Muette to the African, granted in his masterpieces something the crowd. The number increased characters staged; concerned with the general sentiments and passions of the multitude, the Rossini, the Halévy, the Meyerbeer gave more importance to choirs, ensembles, and Guillaume Tell or Jewish, the Huguenots or the Prophet, the beauties that we could call sociological were perhaps not the lesser beauties.

Out of the theatre and in the order of pure music has operated similar alterations. Complex engineering of a Berlioz immeasurably enriched the Orchestra, organ of the Symphony. Either he created new stamps by virtually changing the laws of relationship between instrumental families. either he increased - in sometimes exorbitant proportions - the numerical value of sound units, Berlioz appeared as one of the two great masters modern, by which on the individual principle, the collective principle would prevail.

Of these two masters, the second was Richard Wagner. It carried the Symphony at the theatre. In his works, and even more in its aesthetics, Wagner is flattered to be the more sociological musicians. Same here, one of his deep commentators did see [21]. Art, according to Wagner, is sociological first in this sense, that it is or should be a combination of all the arts. Poetry, painting, architecture, the plastic (this animated sculpture) must compete with the music, to the realization of the Wagnerian, and this artwork is not certainly the only music that this man was great.

"What there is of purely human." In other words that there are more general, more independent of any accident and any characteristic, any contingency and any formula historical or local, "which expresses the essence of humanity as such." that alone is for Wagner element and material of art. Therefore the Wagnerian opera could not necessarily be as legendary or mythical. Also was it not another thing, and this is, in the art of Wagner, the first effect of the theory on practice, of the doctrinal Sociology on the sociology of work. But there are still others, and which occurred either in the order of poetry or Poetics, but in the same music, the only music. The more that any other, Wagner's music is sociological meaning, more than any other it for principle. Wagner hit patterns or laws, obeyed to him, of the musical representation of human beings and things. It has dispossessed the unit now sovereign, singing for the benefit of the instrumental plurality, and this plurality, he multiplied the elements to infinity. Renewing the conditions of life somehow, he wanted it lead either to a single force, but a competition of forces. Cannot remind the profound lyrics of Amiel about it: "the works of Wagner, he wrote in 18S 7, are rather symphonic dramas of operas. The voice is reduced to the rank of instrument, set level with the violins, timpani and oboe, and treated instrumentally. Man loses its top position, and the center of gravity through the baton of the conductor. It is depersonalized music, neo-hegelienne music, the music crowd, instead of individual music. In this case it is well the music of the future, the music of Socialist democracy, replacing the aristocratic, heroic and subjective art. »

The half-German thinker admirably understood the musician from Germany. Wagner's music is what said Amiel: music-crowd. And this crowd is a collection of infinitesimally small. In every work of music today, in any masterpiece, detail is replacing more broad generalizations of the past. Nothing is related more to great simple causes, took individual and sovereign parties, but to countless and almost imperceptible elements. How not to feel here, between the various manifestations of thought and life, deep and mysterious harmonies? They escaped point once to one of our masters, pondering a few months ago on a large burial. "It would be absurd, wrote here Mr de Vogue after the death of Pastor, it would be absurd to claim that the pastorienne doctrine provides support to our political and social systems, to democracy, to universal suffrage; or even to socialism envisioned as the association of the small interests who gang up to live at the expense of a great body... It is no less true that man, always uncertain and worried about the value of its frail buildings, their looking for a boss in the eternal model, in nature; It is encouraged and reassured when this wise nature shows him, or heard her show, performed in the eternal work of intentions similar to those he is trying to achieve in his ephemeral work. The pastorienne doctrine announced one of these compliances. She noted the law of numbers, she discovered the sources of life and the causes of death in countless beings very weak who become all-potent by their meeting, that triumph more robust bodies. She delivers this discovery at a time when our societies are themselves a work commissioned by the same findings. Who wouldn't want to reflect on that concurrency [27]? »

And we, in turn, on socialism, or the sociology of Wagnerian art, over this period, the last far, a development that we have tried to follow, we do not want other conclusion than these big words. As the doctrine of Pastor, and at the same time, the doctrine Wagner Announces one of these compliances that reported our eminent collaborator. She also discovers in the number, in the infinitely small, the sources of life, of aesthetic life - until another doctrine reveals the causes of death. She also gives us his discovery at the time where are fulfilled in our societies of the alterations ordered by the same findings. This new concurrency still more than the other it would be absurd to abuse, but nobody, and we ask no more, don't refuse to think.

IV - The influence and the role of the music or its benefits 

After studying nature and summarized the history of the music from the sociological point of view, it should be, and we will end up there, to consider, in this point of view yet, influence and role, duties  somehow and the benefits.

«All disorders, all the wars in the world are to learn not music...» Is war not from a lack of union between men? And if all men knew the music, even just not here the way to agree together and see universal peace in the world? "So spoke to Mr. Jordan his master of music, and no doubt he was believe. But two centuries later, of another master of music was to speak roughly the same language. Wagner is hardly made his art a less high idea; It was not for him to lower ambitions. He just hoped, all alleged, all promise, and all. Everything, down to the solution of the riddle of the world, until the answer to the eternal and universal, why. With Schopenhauer and according to him, Wagner held the artistic knowledge to the highest degree, for the superior mode of knowledge, the only one where the human spirit can reach to the essence of things and understand. He proclaimed that life cannot be 'manageable' for man, in a society that "art is the highest service [28]." His fondest dream was to restore the art-life reports that had created the ancient civilization and our civilization was destroyed or at least altered. This chimerical restoration he did not see or did not see obstacles. Do not confess, however, that the condition of humanity is renewed; that time is no longer the happy, smart, elites served by thousands of slaves; that the Greeks were a small people of artists, that the Germans, the Italians, the French, are no longer and can no longer be today. The idea, just and beautiful in itself, the origin and the destination of the art, Wagner eventually ask for more that she can make. He felt sometimes at the bottom, everything inside of himself, and his exaggeration it seems to see the suites when he writes: "the breast of the German people are out Goethe and Schiller, Mozart and Beethoven, it brings much too easily the big number. the mediocre to imagine that these minds are part of their number, and to suggest to the mass of the people, a demagogic pleased, that she is herself Goethe and Schiller, Mozart and Beethoven. "- At the right time! But who so object so with infinitely reason Mr. Nordau, who therefore has not only left but made believe that the mass of the people, if it isn't Wagner himself, stating it was "efficient force of the artwork, the artist of the future." And as for this other Wagnerian aesthetic reform theory to someday get the universal happiness, is possible to highlight with more meaning and irony that Mr. Nordau still exorbitant claims: "what manifest to him (Wagner) the. corruption of society and the untenable nature of all the States of things? In what one plays with hopping ariettas operas and ballets to be represented. And how humanity must achieve salvation? By running the musical drama of the future. »

Smile, but with melancholy, as smiling too sweet dreams. Alas! do not promise, even less promising the crowd a State, a social life that the art would be the highest function. This life, humanity never not going to spend it. It is possible that artistic knowledge is the superior mode of knowledge, but this superiority how many of us ever will be? "Serene temples" of the poet, the scientist, the artist, who will make our common home? Here again we could call Wagner Wagner, and his female visions to saddened foresight. He wrote not in Opera and drama: "no one can be also convinced myself of this truth, that the realization of the drama as I see it depends on conditions that make it currently impossible, not only to me, but to a will and some apt. worship infinitely superior to mine. It depends of a social State, and as a result of a collective collaboration that are exact-mount the opposite of what we now [29]. "- We will never have anything else? It is allowed to do him point say. And when even the aesthetic ideal of Wagner fully would come true one day, we keep the right to ask again if that day would be the first of the universal bliss.

These generous doctrines and these grandiose imaginings, there are least retain a principle: that of the obligation, the social duty of the art. The art will never be everything for the people; but it can and must be something more there that it became. In the order of joy or just aesthetic life, there are few chosen; that at least there are many are called. A young priest said generously year last to young listeners: 'there's so much social wounds that require hands, even in the hands of writers and artists, to heal them... "And he added:"by multiplying the beauty, by giving to the world of the humble sense of sincere beauty, you will have made the most exquisite and perhaps the most useful charities [30]. "As we have seen, the musical beauty is more sociological than any other, more than any other it can be charitable. Everywhere she is and for all. For the first child. That one hand be made to music in education of the people. Open competition a few months ago by the general correspondence of primary education, gave to excellens results, and it is a small masterpiece of sociological art, the collection, crowned in this contest, popular songs Schools of Messrs. Maurice Bouchor and Julien iiersot [31]. Church overhauling school, it would be important that the child of the people sing. He once sang, and for musical culture - I mean the crowd - masteries had done what ever Conservatory again. Think, that before the Revolution the France there had been four hundred degrees, i.e. twelve or fifteen thousand musicians, including five thousand children choir. What really democratic Government will reorganize as useful associations, trade unions also kind? Then home of the people' was the House of God. What lessons, what examples of fraternal solidarity, of true unanimity, gave the same things! That life should be harmonious in this Church of St. - Savior of Aix, where the most humble servants were musicians, where, when ringing the bells, the organ could play in the tone where they sounded [32]. And the virtue of social and charitable music, what more on learning than this one? The children of the master of Rouen had never license to be heard outside. One day yet it happened that some bailli of Evreux was a cruel loss, which he was very grieved. The feast of all Saints Day being come, just as the bailiff was sick in his home, was allowed the children to sing in front of him, and "If doulcement sang, reports the Chronicle, that him dolent bailiff in ist all comforted [33].»

No education will never be worth that of master's degrees, to prepare the people for joys that more searching it and let him make more familiar and easy. There are works of assistance by the work; there works of assistance by the beauty. Panem and circenses. The day where, in a circus, an excellent musician, who was a man of heart, directed the first 'popular concert', he did more than many Economist, more than such policy, for the happiness of the humble and small. His initiative and his example we see today the salutary effects. It is said of the old Haydn, that Sunday he liked to gather peasants for them to enjoy a good meal and good music. He called this his days of magnificence. Enter, on Sunday also, the Lamoureux concert, or rather the column together, remained the most popular. Go sit at the top, all the way up to 'paradise' - the word is just because it of that are the happiest, - see them listen, understand, cheer, and say if for the people who for six days work and worth, music is not yet now t of the seventh day a day of magnificence.

These days perhaps the people knows best what we enjoy and enjoy. The real and, as they say, the 'good' audience, the unanimous, that music brings in attention and common emotion, is not one of mundane representations, but popular representations. Behind a humble listener, ignorant, almost a worker, which I was the neighbor year last to the concert of the Chatelet. We were playing the Berlioz Romeo: serene night. -The garden of the Capulets silent and deserted. Do you remember the admirable page? The first agreements amounted, beautiful flottans agreements. I heard a strange voice trembling a little, read next to me these two words of the program: 'Serene night.' I looked at the man and nothing to see as he listened, I felt that in his groin and in his blood, perhaps burned by the laborious vigils, spread the freshness and serenity of the night. Leaving that day of the Châtelet, I dream about what might be in the ideal sense of the word, charity concerts: concerts, really, for the poor, their presence and their honor. instead of money alms, alms of beauty. And I was wondering if it would be impossible to discover them, not even for an hour, deep conformities between art and life, their life to them, between the beautiful works and the great duties or the great virtues. The most divine words, albeit of the Sermon on the mount, I saw, for precisely those to whom it was preached, the possibility of a musical exegesis. Yes, the music even all bliss them would be announced. The simple happy, tell them Haydn. Happy, would sing them Mozart, blessed are those who have a pure heart. And, heroic and painful voice. Beethoven cry them: Blessed are those who suffer persecution for justice. But first, and to introduce, it is a song, a wonderful call, I'd like them to hear: that of an old German master, this Heinrich Schütz above we quoted. Venite ad me omnes which laboratis. This is perhaps the oldest, at least one of the most emouvans sociological music masterpieces. Here, for the first time, and for ever, it seems that the genius of a man is related to all men by the divine promise of consolation and comfort, and that's only the Christ, but the music itself, which has said to all those who are in  worth it, to all those who bend with the burdens: "Come to me and I will give you rest."

She will do more that relieve them: she will also teach them. The people examples in music, as well as an interest of sympathy, of conduct. She will reveal her necessary reports, which are the eternal laws. But all music will be capable, worthy to give the crowd these high and salutary lessons? Not without doubt. All work, all same masterpiece isn't good for everyone, and the more popular today great musicians, who in our century has made the most noise, isn't perhaps, sociological viewpoint, one that will have made the most good. At least he is good. Of the works of Wagner, he is, as Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, some pages of the tetralogy, masters singers or Parsifal, that the people will know, don't ever admire too. There are others that would almost to hide him or ban him, as these dangerous methods that Plato well-nigh of his Republic. These works defended, or reserved, the first might be Tristan and Yseult. We relisions recently in the triumph of the death of Mr. Gabriel of Annunzio the very powerful, very disturbing analysis, and never what the Wagnerian drama is pernicious to anti-social especially, was more clear to us. The Wagner of Tristan is not distorted, vitiated the principle or force social by excellence, love, giving him for end and ideal, instead of life, death? The novelist of Italy is not mistaken, predispose him that secret affinities to taste better than anyone these strange and unhealthy beauty. As soon as the prelude to Tristan, d'Annunzio M. recognizes "the insatiable desire exalted to the intoxication of destruction." And further, who will accuse him of slander Yseult or only to ignore her, when he writes: «the power of destruction manifested in women magician against the man she was elected, she was doomed to death...» The passion put in it a homicide will, wake up in the roots of his being an instinct to be hostile, a need of dissolution and annihilation. She is exasperated to look in it and around it a devastating power that would hit and destroy without leaving traces. "When Isolde, in the second Act, extinguished and tramples the torch, with a fierce joy, and joy his heart leaped ahead of love and the approach of death. "She offered her life and glue from the chosen one to the fatal night;" She was entering the shadow forever with him. "Literary criticism, we may say, or literary and poet, which escapes the music. Wait: this is going straight to the music, to the background of music and to the home of evil. This is the duo of the second Act: "in the impetuosity of chromatic progressions there was the crazy pursuit of property that eluded to any socket, although it resplendît very close." In change lie of tone, rhythm and measure, in the succession of the syncopations there was a search without respite, he had a lust without limits, there was the long torment of desire always disappointed and never turned off... The frightening virtue of the potion was operating on the soul and the flesh of the two lovers already devoted to death. Nothing could extinguish or soften this fatal passion, nothing except death. They had tried in vain all caresses; they had collected in vain all their forces to unite in supreme embrace... Their bodily substance, their living personality, such was the obstacle. And a secret hatred was born in one and in the other, a need to destroy, annihilate, a need to die and a need to die. »

Death! Always and everywhere the death! In opera as in the novel, she alone who triumphs. Any activity, any personality destroyed, all fruitless effort, any vain struggle, and any impossible victory; Finally, all being engulfed, damaged in nothingness, that is the ideal of the poet and musician of Tristan, and so never maybe Wagner has not produced anything more powerful, perhaps produced he never nothing more contrary to the destination or the popular mission and sociological art. "I wish, wrote Gounod to Pope Léon XIII by dedicating his oratorio of JAWS and Vita, I wish my humble work to be of some value to life in my brothers and myself, increased ad incrementum vitae in fratribusmeis and in meipso." At the right time. These wise and almost Holy words. They teach that there is no works socially beneficial and beautiful than the invigorating works, those by which increases life and not death.

As well, to be and above all to remain the guide, the master par excellence of the crowd, Wagner maybe it has too flattered and served too. His genius gave too much to the multitude. In its colossal polyphony, he increasingly sacrificed the individual to the number, he, without control or counterweight, established sovereignty. It was push us - and what terrible hand! -the side where we are looking at a slope where, if we can still be saved, it is time that other hands come hold us. Remember the expressions or Amiel definitions: "depersonalized music, music-crowd." It was as much avertissemens. It is not good anywhere, was - it music, dominates and reigns alone. for the number itself that is dangerous and eventually be fatal. That's why the art of Wagner, more sociological than anything is by intention or claim, much less by the effect and benefit. The sociological ideal isn't in the music of Wagner, because she has compromised the balance between the two principles also required of all social life: collective and the personal principle.

This balance, and as a result this ideal, where so will we find? What master, by the completion of this study, we say to the crowd: go to him, because he has the words of eternal life? Is the master of the nine symphonies, it is Beethoven we can say. From the point of view where we we are placed, it's him like always seems great. He is not above social teaching as his; no more admirable model than his art, in the perfect harmony between the individual and the number, you could almost say between the crowd rights and duties. Yes, all work of Beethoven is a unique company because it's a unique hierarchy. Bossuet says: "If there is art to govern well, there also well obey." He spoke of master science by which a single command; but also of another junior science who teaches subjects to visit worthy instruments of the highest line. "It is, he adds, these two sciences report which has the body of a State by the correspondence of the head and members." This correspondence and this report, this economy and this proportion, this balance between the leader and the members, between the command and obedience, a Sonata or a Symphony of Beethoven is the representation and image. No one has created more forms, or individual, and more individual strengths, as Beethoven; that these forces are indeed melodies, rhythms, or notes only. But these individualities are selfish or tyrannical; they are liberal and beneficent. What for example is a theme like that of the first piece of the heroic? What's doing something else that suggest a goal, an upper end to the effort of this association is the Symphony! To this end, under the direction and authority of the sovereign theme, all elements will tend together. If a few votes, some parts away, they will be soon brought to it. Might be expected, you wish to return, but it will never be in vain. By freedom, fantasy or whim, - remember the false start of the Horn in the first piece of the heroic, - everything may seem lost; everything will be saved on the contrary, as the caprice will be always happy, obedient fantasy and freedom disciplined and subject.

To understand what force, what social virtue sometimes has in Beethoven a note, yes a note only, listen to the introduction of the Symphony in the. Ten measures before the start of the perennial, the dominant, mi, unexpectedly detaches from the whole. Twice first it causes the e major agreement, thus creating a first association. But it does take long to dissolve. During six measures then the mi resonates solitaire, and because these measures are slow, the tonal impression of mi is diminishing by degrees and fades. Note however persists; at different heights, stamped by various sounds, she echoes to herself. We know now what it will give, what sound system he pleases to base. Suddenly, repeated, and more strongly, she wraps an unexpected harmony. It creates a new aggregation: after mid approval, the agreement of the. But this second agreement as well as to the first, she still presides, command, and is the same unit as two groups successively already conducted and depended.

What made a note here, it would be easy to show how elsewhere, everywhere else in Beethoven, a rhythm, is a melody. Thus each of the works of Beethoven is one and many at the same time. Everything is personal. everything is mutual too. That's why Beethoven is the master of the masters. It proclaims and it applies also the two equal laws of higher social life. By him we can learn, as Bossuet, with whom and under which we live. He offers us the double ideal of a universal solidarity and a sovereign authority.

Which infringe the sociological music virtue, while the work of a musician such lessons emerge? We therefore have to bless the music because it moves, because it console; still necessary because she teaches, because it breaks out to the souls and spirits. That all those she loves, whom she has marked on the forehead, strive to burst the spirit as the soul of crowds. "Comforter, consoling!" shouted once the hero of a novel by George Sand. Under the title no less sacred educator, should perhaps be to rely on it today. Those who suffer are by her less miserable, but that the mob, the lost by it also become wiser; that Apollo, as in the time of Pindar, pour more in the hearts of the peaceful love of the law. "Aesthetics," said admirably Flaubert, is a higher justice." Yes, the art, and especially music, gives us lessons of justice as well as charity. It's the ideal beyond superior justice that realize the genius of Beethoven, because that is the ideal of the order of the hierarchy, a society better than ours, where conciliee the antinomy - alas! Perhaps irreconcilable among men --between the principle of the number and that of the individual.

I remember that one day, a wonderful day of last fall, I was walking in the Normandy countryside. At the turn of a dark alley found a vast horizon. Woods, Woods of sight filled it all integer. From the other side of the plain began their dark expanse, and there, - so far as it seemed at the end of the Earth - there still their bluish peaks merged with sky. But a little in front of the first line of greenery, a couple large beech trees stood alone. Distinguished from the countless crowd, they were not foreign. They seemed rather his elect, his protectors and its rulers. Thus, in the harmonious landscape, the singular beauty and the collective beauty related one to the other and agreed together. I had reread the morning even a Symphony of Beethoven, and I believed then enter a deep line between nature and art. At the end of this reading and before this show, I understand, me too, how the genius of man can find in creating the model or the divine patron of his works and in society, as in a Symphony, or in a landscape, is not that the forest ACC the trees, or trees that he cannot see the forest.