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terested bystander. The scenic background of the play is not presented in order that we decide whether we want to spend our next vacation there. The interior decoration of the rooms is not exhibited as a display for a department store. The men and women who carry out the action of the plot must not be people whom we may meet tomorrow on the street. All the threads of the play must be knotted together in the play itself and none should be connected with our outside interests. A good photoplay must be isolated and complete in itself like a beautiful melody. It is not an advertisement for the newest fashions.

Unity
of

characters

This unity of action involves unity of characters. It has too often been maintained by those who theorize on the photoplay that the development of character is the special task of the drama, while the photoplay, which lacks words, must be satisfied with types. Probably this is only a reflection of the crude state which most photoplays of today have not outgrown. Internally, there is no reason why the means of the photoplay should not allow a rather subtle depicting of complex character. But the chief demand is that the characters remain consistent, that the action be developed according to inner necessity and that the characters themselves be in harmony with the central idea of the plot. However, as soon as we insist on unity we have no right to think only of the action which gives the content of the play. We cannot make light of the form. As in music the melody and Unity

rhythms belong together, as in painting not of forms every color combination suits every subject, and as in poetry not every stanza would agree with every idea, so the photoplay must bring action and pictorial expression into perfect harmony. But this demand repeats itself in every single picture. We take it for granted that the painter balances perfectly the forms in his painting, groups them so that an internal symmetry can be felt and that the lines and curves and colors blend into a unity. Every single picture of the sixteen thousand which are shown to us in one reel ought to be treated

with this respect of the pictorial artist for the unity of the forms.

The photoplay shows us a significant conflict of human actions in moving pictures which, freed from the physical forms of space, time, and causality, are adjusted to the free play of our mental experiences and which reach complete isolation from the practical world through the perfect unity of plot and pictorial appearance.

THE SYMPHONY

By THOMAS WHITNEY SURETTE

I. WHAT IS A SYMPHONY?

In the first chapter I discussed the nature of music itself in order that I might clear away certain popular misconceptions about it and arrive at some estimate of what it really is. In the intervening chapters I have dealt with various phases of music: I have discussed it in connection with words or action, as a sociological force, and as a matter of pedagogy, and in so doing I have had to take into consideration all sorts of non-musical factors. Now the symphony is "pure music," so called; it exists as a separate and distinct thing whose only purpose is to be beautiful and true to life. Furtherfore it has always been largely independent of its audience. The opera has been subject to the vagaries of singers, to the demands of the audience for fine costumes and scenery; the symphony, on the contrary, has grown naturally and freely, being hindered only by the slow development of instruments and of the technique

The symphony as pure music

From Music and Life, by Thomas Whitney Surette, 1917. Reprinted by permission of and special arrangement with the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Company. Mr. Surette has long been prominent as a lecturer and as a director and composer of music. Among his publications is The Development of Symphonic Music.

"The general principle underlying the shape of most instrumental works is this: (a) Statement of idea; (b) Contrast; (c) Restatement. And on such lines are constructed all kinds of musical creations, from the tiniest pianoforte piece to the mightiest orchestral symphony. . . This 'ternary,' or three-part form, in which the last section is based on the same ideas as the first, is, in a very great majority of cases, the principle of construction upon which a movement is built. It underlies the greater number of movements of all Sonatas, Symphonies, and Chamber works, and though its variations and details may be as diversified as are the blendings of orchestral instruments, the procedure is generally the same.

"Another form, more popular in the past than it is today, is the 'Rondo,' an extension of the above plan. It may be summarized as follows:Statement; Period of Contrast; Restatement; Period of Contrast; Restatement. From the fact that the original idea comes 'round again' so many times, we get the derivation of the term. If the hearer can, in addition to these two basic types, follow the construction of a set of variations upon a given theme, he will be equipped for listening to most Sonata or Symphony movements.

"The 'Statement' portion is usually itself divided into two sets of themes,

of playing them. Nearly every great symphony has persisted in the face of the opposition of the public and of many of the critics; the gibes hurled at the First Symphony of Brahms were as bitter as those hurled at the Second Symphony of Beethoven. In discussing, therefore, what is undoubtedly the greatest of musical forms, I desire first to state as nearly as may be what, in its essence, it is.

A symphony is, of course, like other music in being an arrangement of rhythmic figures, of melodies (usually called "themes") and of harmonies. But before describing it as such-before dealing with its materials, its form, its history, and its place in the art of music-I wish to treat it solely as a thing of beauty expressed in terms of sound. Many people seem to think music an art dealing with objects or with ideas. Some, never having become sensitized to it in childhood, look upon it as of no importance whatever. A large number have tried to perform it on an instrument and have failed. Others have succeeded at the price of thinking of it only in terms of technique. A certain happy few, some of whom can perform it, and some of whom cannot, are satisfied to take it as it is and be stimulated by it. These are the true musicians and we should all aspire to join their happy company.

the first is the key of the movement, and the second in a nearly related key." One hears the 'Restatement' "when, after a period of unrest and rhythmic and melodic disturbance, the chief ideas, possibly much metamorphosed but all tending to gravitate now round the initial key of the movement, are once more placed before him. In most composers since Beethoven (and occasionally before him) an important summing up, or Coda as it is called, if often attached to this form.

"Works of large scope generally contain several movements, each of which may be constructed on the 'Ternary' or 'Rondo' plan, and each complete in itself. The older form of Sonata or Symphony contains three movements :-(a) A Quick Movement (Allegro); (b) A Slow Movement; (c) A Quick Movement (often a Rondo). . . .

"From very early days a fourth movement was soon added to this outline: at first (with Haydn) it was a Minuet and Trio, and was placed third in the scheme; with Beethoven, and almost all subsequent composers except occasionally Brahms, a quick vivacious movement called the "Scherzo" now finds regular place, and comes either between the first (allegro) and the slow movement, or between the slow movement and the Finale." On Listening to Music, by E. Markham Lee, (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., London), pp. 36-39.—Editor.

What we call a symphony is merely a series of ordered sounds produced by means of instruments of various kinds. It is sound and nothing else. Our programme books tell us about "first themes" and "second themes," and we make what effort we can to patch together the various brilliant textures of symphonic music into a coherent pattern, but the music we seek lies behind these outward manifestations as, in a lesser sense, the significance of a great poem lies behind the actual words. So it is with all the greatest art, whatever the medium may be. The chief difference between a symphony and any other form of artistic expression-such as a novel, a play, a painting, or a piece of sculpture—is that a symphony is not a record of something else; it is not a picture of something else; it is itself only. And it is this quality or property of being itself that gives to all pure music its remarkable power. Any intelligent person, on being shown a diagram or plan of a symphonic movement, could be made to understand how and why the material was so disposed, for that disposition is dictated to the composer by the nature of sound and by the limitations. and capacities of human beings, and it conforms to certain principles which operate everywhere; but that understanding would not reveal the symphony to him.

of music

There is in every one of us a region of sensibility in which mind and emotion are blended and from The appeal which the imagination acts, and it is to this sensibility that music appeals. Now, the imagination, which we believe to be the highest function of human beings, cannot act from the mind alone. Mathematics, for example, does not lie entirely in the domain of the mind, and the same thing may be said of any other department of science. The chief value of scientific studies in school and university lies in the stimulation of the student's imagination rather than in the acquisition of scientific facts. Now, we cannot conceive any act of the imagination whatever that does not glow with the radiance of emotion, so that music, in appealing to the whole being, is not so completely isolated as is generally supposed. But the simultaneous appeal of music to the mind and the feelings has led to much confusion on the

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