Music as a Realistic Art Author(s): Michel Butor and Donald Schier Reviewed work(s): Source: Perspectives of New Music,

Vol. 20, No. 1/2 (Autumn, 1981 - Summer, 1982), pp. 448463 Published by: Perspectives of New Music Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/942423 . Accessed: 26/10/2012 03:25
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Perspectives of New Music is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Perspectives of New Music.

http://www.jstor.org

Music as a Realistic Art Michel Butor Translatedby Donald Schier 1. Entrance "Surelyyou're not going to try to defend programmusic to us!" someonecried. It is a fact that there exists today, even among sensitive persons, a terribly deep-rooted prejudice,which however concerns not only music but also the plastic arts and literature(you know it: art for art's sake and all the critical balderdashthat goes with it), and which is perhaps particularlyannoying in connection with music becausesome people have the impression that there, at least, they will not be bothered by political, philosophical or ethical implications etc., whereas in other domainsit is firmlyestablished, except for a few who are blind or hypocritical,that there is no meaninglesspainting or poetry, or art without a precise historicalsituation. This failureto recognizethe representational capabilities of music, to which French musical criticism owes much of its confusion, its obscurity, and the capricious flimsiness of its judgmentswhich must constantly be correctedfromone year to the next, almostfromone month to the next (recall,for example, what was said just recently about the last works of Igor the stupid condemnationsof Bela Bart6k) Stravinsky,remember -this failureis closely related to a certain conception of reality whose insufficiencyhas been constantly pointed out by modern thought in all its forms for more than a century, and it is also related to that falsely scientific and materialisticpetrification which has been shown by Marxist criticism to correspondto a particularmoment in the triumphof the bourgeoisie. This conceptionwhich makesmusic literallyinexplicable, and therefore the last bastion for the believers in art for art's sake, is based upon the absolute identificationof the real with the visible, as if we had no other senses.

449

Since sound is in its origin a warning, a sign, any conception of reality which includes it necessarilyabolishesthe absolute distinction between nature and language and hence between matterand thought; thus everythingis susceptibleand capable of interpretation,nothing is sheltered from daylight or fromthe intelligence. That is why I declare music is a realistic art, and assert that it teaches us, even in its highest and apparently most detached forms,somethingabout the world; that is why I claim musicalgrammar is a grammar of reality, that melodiestransform life. First let us clear away some underbrush. Igor Stravinsky,in a moment of distraction,ventured to declare that "music, by its nature, was incapableof expressing that the whole body of his works contradicts anything,"a remark completely,but which is perfectlyexplicableif we know how to situate it in his musicaldevelopment. It is not too much to say that people havejumpedon that remark! How they have profited from it! Particularlyis that true of those who professed the of, greatest scorn for, and showed the deepest incomprehension this composer's works. What a weapon he provided against himself; how thoroughly people felt themselves authorized by that statement to makeno furthereffort to understand! In the case of musical compositions remote from us in time and especially fromwidely differingcivilizations it is often hardto determinewhether they are happy or sad;yet they move us anyway. All music includesa considerable part of convention, and consequently the inexperienced listener, faced with some exotic melody, Gregorianperhaps,if he is not familiar with it, or Japanese,understands only a fraction of it; it is as though he were looking at a black-and-whitereproductionof a painting. The fact that he admiresit does not meanthat the colors are not essential to the original;the fact that he is incapableof recognizing the light-heartedness of a Japanese melody in no way denies the expressiveness of that melody for those who are accustomed to its musical language. Even a man who knows nothing about classicalArabic can be enchanted by a sampleof its calligraphy,but he is like the visitor to a museumwho is able to contemplateonly the shadows of the statues.

450

2. Quotation In Gambara,Balzacestablishesthis parallel: In most composers,wild and loosely-plannedorchestral effect; parts are interwoven only to producea momentary they do not always contribute to the composition as a whole by the regularityof their develoment. In the case of Beethoven, the effects are, as it were, allocated in advance. Like different regiments which contribute by regular maneuvers to the winning of the battle, the different sections of the orchestra in Beethoven's symphonies follow the orders given in the general interest and are subordinated to admirably conceivedplans. There is a parity in this respect with genius in another art. In the magnificenthistorical compositions of Walter Scott, the character furthest from the action turns out to be attached to the denouement by threads woven into the very fabricof the plot. In Massimila Doni he minutely analyzedRossini'sMose can be which ought to be revivedif only so that the commentary judged in detail.1 In that opera a French physician plays the role of the stupid fop, well-bred but insensitive, terrified at the idea that music might lead him to jump his intellectual tracks, and who prefers to avoid any interpretation of it, even a private one, considering musical art a simple and pointless game, a hodgepodge of sonoritiestickling the ear as a ragoutpleasesthe tongue this is a kind of voluntary but which is not spokenof afterwards; blindness which Balzacconnects with a reduced and superficial interpretationof the great philosophicalexpressionsof the rise of the bourgeoisie, the Encyclopediein France and British empiricism: said he, "in explainingthe masterpiece which, "Madame," thanks to you, I shall return to hear again tomorrow, in interpretingboth its meansand its effects, you have often spoken of the color of the music and of what it painted; but as a man of science and a materialist,I confess that I am always disgusted by the claim of certain enthusiasts that music paints with sound. Would it not be the same

451

thing if the admirersof Raphael claimed that he sang with his colors?" We are only too used to a kind of artistic criticismwhich, instead of studying its subjects, is content with lyricalexclamations and vaguely musicalmetaphors. "In the languageof music,"the duchessreplied,"painting means to awaken certain memories in our hearts by meansof sound or to call up certain imagesto our minds, and these memories,these images,have their colors, they are sad or happy. You are quibbling about words, that's all. According to Capraja2 (a theoretician and defenderof the "roulade,"of pure tone) each instrument has its purpose and speaks to certain ideas, as each color correspondsin us to a certain feeling. When you look at golden arabesqueson a blue background, do you have the same thoughts as would be suggested to you by red arabesqueson a black or green In neither case are there faces, nor are there background? any feelings expressed (faceshere meanshumanfacesand "feelingsexpressed" means those which are "painted"on the face or conveyed by poses), it is done through pure art (i.e., through the simple relationships of forms and colors, all immediate representation being excluded; implication:that the artist succeeds in touching us, in informingus about a certain areaof reality), and yet no soul will remain unmoved upon looking at them. Has not the oboe the power to awakenin all minds countrifiedimages, as do most of the wind instruments? Have not the brasses a mysterious warlike quality, do they not call up in us lively and even furioussensations? The strings, whose substance is taken from living creation, do they not affect the most delicate fibers of our being? Do they not go straight to the depths of the heart? When I spoke to you of the sombercolors, of the coldness of the notes used in the introduction to Mose, was I not at least as right as critics who talk to us about

452

the coloring of such and such a writer? Do you not recognize the nervous style, the pale style, the lively style, the colorful style? Art paints with words, with sounds, with colors, with lines, with forms;though the means are various the effects are the same. An Italian architect will give you the samesensationas that excited in us by the introductionto Mose by takingus along dark paths, their walls high, overgrown and humid, and then makingus come suddenlyupon a valley filled with water, flowers, buildings, and flooded with sunlight." of musicwith architecIn speakingof the correspondence San of I the basilica recall need Marco; and to move ture, once when I was travelingin Holland, the outdoors, I remember wonder I felt on a Sunday morning, in the little town of Zutphen, famous for its ancient bells: each bell-tower had its which was endlesslyrepeated; own qualityand a melodicformula and still were dissomewhat in all merged yet all were tune, changed tinguishablefromeachother;their dynamicrelationships and were inverted depending upon where I was, in such a way that a stroll in the streets created inventions and variationsand the whole town was turned into a prodigiousinstrumentupon which the walker improvisedas he moved along. Massimila Doni continues: "Since in its utterance any instrument makes use of duration, breath, or the human hand, it is superior in expressiveness to color, which is fixed, and to words, which have limits. Musical language is indefinite, it contains everything, it can express everything." 3. Grammar It is, I think, obvious to everybody that music is a language,but one of the principalreasonsfor the obscurity and impotenceof currentmusicalcriticism,the root of the prejudice which tends to makeof musican absolutelyisolatedand therefore uninterpretable language, results from the fact that music is considered as being on the same plane as articulate speech, as though there were English, German, French, Music, etc. The

453

mere statement of this thesis in its crudest form is enough to demonstrateits absurdity.The text of a Germanor Englishsong may be translated into French, and it can be sung to the same notes, even though they suit the new text less well; these various languages form a group which have a certain kind of translatablerelationship,quite aside frommusic. But the idea of the absolute isolation of the musical languageis opposed by an even more obvious objection:which is the possibilities it has for literal imitation, for transcription, to which articulate possibilitiesfarricherthan the onomatopoeia speech is limited. Such transcriptions,of which we have manyexamplesthat of voice production in Monteverdi (or of the echo)-have acquiredan enormousrangewith the greaterflexibilityof recent musical discourse (machine noises in Varese, bird songs in Messiaen). Transcriptionis used in a very classic way to "illustrate" certain words in a sung text, the musicalformthen appearingas an indubitabletranslationof the words (the curve accompanying the word Regenbogen (rainbow) in the PassionAccordingto St. Johnof JohannSebastianBach, or the noises commentingon the passage"the veil of the temple was rent in twain, from the top to the bottom, the earth did quakeand the rocksrent",or again the twelve strokesof the bell suggestedby the word Mitternacht (midnight) in the second cantata of Weber). Certainlythis word for word translationwhich occasionoccurs is only a specialcase in a much moregeneralfigurative ally it can be done phraseforphrase,episodeforepisode, relationship: text for text, with all the amplificationsor reductions desired, but as long as we limit ourselves to this conception of two translations parallelformsof discourse,resemblingthe interlinear which we needed so badly when we were parsingour Latin, we shall miss the real originalityof musicallanguage,and hence we shall often find ourselvesup againsta wall; we shall be unableto understand the necessary relationship which exists between these special cases of word for word translationand the deeper connection between music and words. Balzac gives a very valuable hint when he suggests that this connection may be likened to that between container and

454

thing contained. It is obvious that we can appreciatea song, a cantata, an opera, sung in a languagewhich we do not know, even though the text, which is unknown to us, is the veritable origin of the music, and that historicallyit is with the text that the composerbegan, for his inspirationwas based upon it; and that whatever knowledge we may get of it will clarifythe music for us and, farfromleadingus away fromit, will add a greatdeal to the music. If I listen to a Schubert song without knowing GermanI find the music marvelous,yet as a general rule I shall be may entirely unable to give even an approximatesummaryof the poem upon which it is based; but when I have grasped the meaningof the poem I shall understandthe musicmuch better, I shall be able to see how it fits the words, and how that congruence is inherent in the structure of the song, which I shall then realize I had "heard" only in part. for our is the well known fact that discussion Important the words, whose exact understanding is so useful for our appreciationof the music, may turn out to be, in themselves, very mediocrein literaryquality. It is certainly better that the in itself, but if it is not, it can become text should be remarkable words take so through the musical treatment. The "ordinary" on a new meaningas a result of their situation in the total sound language. Old Boileau himself That "word,"so sublime in Racine or Baudelaire,is the same one we use every day, but in their writings it takes on splendorowing to the "spot"in which it is placed. It is easy to see how the grammatical relationshipswhich link such a word to a preceding one, or to a following one, or which connect one clause with another, can be "included"in the relationshipsof musicaldiscourse.The fixed poetic formsof the grammar our older prosodyprovidean obvious intermediary: of a sonnet is understood by us only against a backgroundof rhythmicrelationships;the words summoneach other up or are bound together by their sonorities, thanks to that structural principle which was rhyme, and which in music is more generalized as repetition, variationand development.
... of a well-placed word could teach the force.3

455

Thus in a melody, whether accompanied or not, the relationshipsin the strict sense of the term are only grammatical one aspect, a particularcase, a definition on a given plane, of much richer syntacticalrelationships.We come to see what the instrumentsplay, how the notes which they producechangethe functions of those which are sung, how they alter the space in which the word is pronouncedand so change its properties. musicis anteriorto spokenlanguage, Phenomenologically, was a vehicle for meaningbeforespeech and still is, a fact which makesspeech possible, even if we have a tendency to forget its origin. There can be no pronunciationof a word unless there is first awarenessand masteryof a pitch, of a certain rhythm, and the establishmentand controlof both continuity and distinctness of tone quality. Thus from the very beginning spoken language appearsas a special case of musical structure. Music digs out a bed for the text; it preparesand formsthat space in which the text itself can be presentedand moreand morepreciselydefined. The structural patterns which instruments, together with melodic and rhythmic figures, must impose on the timespan of the piece also permit the voice to be heard,and allow the various tone-colors, melismasand neumes to take on a precise meaning, which, in musical illustration, i.e., onomatopoeia,is directly imposed, whereas in ordinary language this occurs of an educationaltradition, and therethrough the intermediary fore operates across an enormoushistorical time-spanwhich is, for the most part, obscure to us. The fact that even the most prosaic spoken language is always founded upon a musical structure, and one which is always much less simple than it first appears (French, for example,which might seem to an inattentive listener to have as its melodic pattern only an oscillation around a certain pitch which is peculiar to each speaker, in fact possesses a whole system of intonations which organizethe words into sentences, the acquisitionof which is one of the principaldifficultieswhich our languagehas for a foreigner)permits it to intervenejust as it is at certain moments in even highly elaboratedmusicalworks, The Magic Flute, for example, and also permits the elaboration of a whole series of intermediaries between itself and the structures usually uttered by instruments, the Sprachgesang of

456

Schonbergand all the examplesof recitativewhether in Mozart, Monteverdi, or Debussy. Since the voice can be treated like an instrument,words and sentences materializein the course of that treatment. We thus witness the birth of articulatespeech, we graspthe process of its symbiosiswith music. The Quartetwith Sopranoof Schonberg and the Gesang der Junglingeof Stockhausengive us this words very valuableinstance:without any breakunderstandable flow fromthe instrumentaldiscourse(in the one case electronic, in the other, strings) and seem to the listener like its necessary embodiment. The structural pattern of musical space in which the words are to be embeddedmay take a much longer time than in speech itself; a given melody may require a long prelude; but even so this well-prepared ground may not "reveal"the text which it was supposed to enrich. If I hold that singing tells us more about the nature of music than instrumentalperformance, it is not that I consider the latter chronologicallyposterior or inferior;I am only saying that it is easier to understandmusic if we do not forget that it might be a setting for a text, that such indeed is its aim, that instrumentalmusic awaits the still nonexistent word which it makespossible. is it not inevitablethat Since music is its "precondition," in can structures certain complex appear spoken languageonly aftermusicallanguagehas to a certainextent madethem familiar? of narrative,is not music the cavern If the novel is the laboratory in which may be forged the weapons and instrumentsof a new literature, the plowing of the ground where that harvest can mature? The example of opera renders obvious the fact that it is music which permits words to be heard, and hence to be intelligible. Because Mozart's musical technique allows him to superimposeupon each other, without confusion, two or three voices or more,these voices can simultaneously pronouncewords we distinctly hear;otherwise we would perceiveonly a confused murmurin which all the words would cancel each other out. Wherethe ear is concerned,verbalpolyphonynecessarily presupposes musicalpolyphony.

457

4. Colors Between these two extremes of musical meaningfulness, i.e., the relationshipbetween words and music, on the one hand "illustration"or onomatopoeia,that is to say the reproduction and integration of natural (or artificial) sound, of a sound immediatelyrecognizable,so that the musicalformulais itself a word or more than a word, a "natural"word (the sound of and on the thunder, bird song, the barrelorgan in Petrouchka) other hand, the framing,the syntacticalsituation, the establishment of an area of sound having certain properties in which words will have their placeand hence a specialmeaning; between these extremes there exists a whole series of intermediariesin the discussionof which historicalconsiderationcannot fail to be increasinglyimportant. The prepared space cannot remain indifferent to the meaning of the words which will appear in it; in certain cases one of its regionsmayexceed the word itself in evocativepower; but most often the music will adapt to the words by meansof a certain "color," to return to Balzac's term, which has the advantage of being habitually used in the severest musical techniques. If spoken language is a very specialized case of certain regions of the musical domain, how did it happen that the domainas a whole did not undergoa similarevolution?If words gradually take on a whole superstructure of meanings, why should the same thing not be true, to a lesser degree, of other sounds? Colors a) Psychological It is well known that different sounds have different effects on the organism:the middle rangeof audible frequencies is immediately agreeable; the top and bottom of the range produce painful sensations until one has learned to connect them to other sounds in a form whose intensity allows us to replace that pain by a higher pleasure; that certain regular rhythms uplift and stimulate, that an irregular rhythm depresses...

458

It may be supposed for the sake of argument that the psychological effect of sounds is the same for all men, and consequently that certain kinds of music are suited to certain texts and not to others. b) FunctionalColors But at once we must recognize that different men hear the same musical sounds with differentears, that these sounds take on differentcolors for them, that they produce a different effect. In the varioussocieties musicalinstrumentshave usually had a very specialized use, some being reserved for religious ceremonies, others for war, others for the dance. Their tonecolors are thus associatedwith differentcircumstancesor areas of life, which are not necessarily the same for two different societies. Rhythms also, melodic formulas,etc., all the elements of musical discourse are necessarily colored by the uses made of them; only by learning these habitual uses can we come to perceive the way an exotic music fits the words, or hear it as they do for whom it was composed. c) Modal Colors That specialization is very considerably developed in sophisticated compositions. The different modes undoubtedly have slightly differentphysiologicalproperties,but they acquire an extremely varied coloration according to the use which is madeof them in this or that circumstance,and dependingon the well-known, the familiartunes, which are based upon them. Here again true appreciation of works produced in a given context can exist only in so faras we are capableof appreciating these subtleties. We all know how highly the theory of modal colors was developed in ancient music, in Gregorianchant, and in certain oriental musicaltheories. Passage from one mode to another sets up a contrast between their colors;this is traditionallycalled chromaticism.

459

d) Tonal Colors In order to understandwhat classical writers call tonal colors, it is indispensableto go back to the origin of the idea of tonality, that is to say, beforewhat is called equal temperament. There is no great differencebetween a piece played on the piano in C majorand its transpositioninto C-sharpmajor.For anyone not having absolute pitch or whose ear is not specially trained, both will produceexactly the sameeffect. For the performer, on the other hand, the two pieces will have an entirely different color, because the tonality of C major is the basis of all the others, the first one learned on the piano, whereas C-sharp major is filled with sharps, with black keys, is a difficult and distant key, and especially because it is the equivalent for the piano of another key, D-flat major, which, however, for the violin or for the voice is entirely distinct, the differencebeing perfectly audible on each note, etc. To the classical notions of the distances between pitch, tone-color, duration, etc. must be added the idea of tonal distance, i.e., the greateror lesser degreeof facility there may be in passing from one tonality to another, in modulating, in the number of sharps or flats which define these tonalities, the greateror lesser influenceof equal temperament. Colors e) Geographical Since the evolution of musical languagedid not occur in the same way in different civilizations or even in different countries-in a given country such and such a scale became fixed, such and such a system of modes, such and such a vocabularyof rhythmicaland melodicalformulas,accents, etc., all differingfromour own-it is possible to imitate the musical color of a people, to play with it, at first by the simpletechnique of contrast (Polish coloring in the First BrandenburgConcerto, or Russian coloring in Beethoven's Seventh Quartet) then later by settling into it and exploring it (Polish coloring in Chopin, Hungarian in Liszt, Spanish in Chabrier, Debussy, Ravel, De Falla, etc.). This use of geographicalcoloring requires first the integration into the tonal systems of formulaswhich are foreignto

460

it, but little by little the coherence natural to these other systems resists this integration, with the result that tonality loses its dominance and this leads to works of increasingly complex structure in which tonal relationshipsare occasionally suspended in favor of purely modal organizingprinciples, harmony meanwhilesystematicallydevelopingat a certain distance fromwhere it would be in a classicaltonality. Bart6k, for example, deliberately swathing his music in Hungarian(or Rumanian)coloring did his best not to let it be absorbedby Western music, but to take it to a point of systematization and elaborationsuch that it could be put on the same level, instituting in that "color" a veritable harmony, thus richness achievingwithin classicaltonality worksof a comparable its classical the West that and harmonic and complexity, showing system of music had to be taken simply as a special case among many other organizingprinciples capable of being used for the same ends. f) HistoricalColors The counter-shock of this utilization of geographical coloringsby which it was revealedthat classicalWestern music was simply one musical domain among others had for Igor Stravinskyconsequenceswhose importancewe are still farfrom having realized. At the beginning of his career he appearedin the West as a marvelous specialist in "Russian color," which and primitive Rusbecame Russian folk color with Petrouchka, sian with The Rite of Spring. During his stay in Switzerland he tried his hand at Western folk coloring, that of the Canton of Vaud, whose characteristicshe succeeded in using admirably. Critical misunderstanding began with Mavra, a work in which he treated the comic opera of the last century exactly as and at the time he had treated Russianfolklorein The Fire-Bird, this was felt to be a deep insult. Fromthen on he tried systematicallyto adaptfor his own purposes the colors of certain composers, to write Bach or Tschaikowskyas Debussy wrote Spanishor Italianor English. Just as a given classical sonata is in C major,or a given so a given work of Stravinskyis rondo of Haydn in "Hungarian,"

461

"Beethovenian."But also, as in classical sonatas the tonality changes, so it is possible to modulate from one exotic color to another, or fromone historicalcolor to another. When Beethoven wrote the third movement of the Fifteenth Quartet, "Holy Song of Thanksgivingof a Convalescent to the Deity in the Lydian Mode," he adopted a specifically religious and archaic coloration which changes, returns, fades away, to the point that we are afloat on a history of music. Similarly Mozart deliberately made use of reminiscences of Handel or quoted himselfin Don Giovanni. So in Stravinsky pastiche and quotation play a fundamental part; in his work a "Beethovenian"phrase suddenly revealspossibilities of transpositionto the style of Debussy. By the systematic use of historical coloring he has endowed contemporarymusic with a new representationaldimension. His most characteristicwork in this respect is The Rake'sProgress where, within a generalizedMozartiancoloring, ironic modulations bring up suggestions of Verdi, Gluck, Gounod, etc. But in The Rake's Progressthe controlling form, the generalsystem within which these modulationscome into play, was situated in the past, and could not absorb,except ironically, more modern musical colorings. Stravinskythus found himself faced with the absolute necessity of inventing a higher kind of within which he might makeuse of all the historical organization and geographicalcolors he had so patiently learnedto manipulate. Stravinsky'sadoption of the twelve-tone system after The he found there, Rake'sProgressis thus entirely understandable; at least in outline, that "generalization" of musical ideas which was indispensableto him. It is also understandablethat he was able to absorbthe teaching of Schonbergonly afterhe had made a successful demonstration of the use of historical and local colorings and also when he was able to hear twelve-tone works whose individual clarity was equivalent to that of classical works, the Quartet op. 22 of Webern in particular,or Webern's cantatas. Sch6nberg'sconsiderableoutput is always organizednot independentlyof tonality, but by a constant refusalof it; tonality continually solicits him and returns to haunt him, and it is to this that his work owes a greatpart of its pathetic quality, for all

462

his phrases constantly suggest others of which they are merely shadows and from which they turn aside at the last moment. They are sketches which are continually reworked. This use of the tone row to avoid tonality did not permit the methodicalestablishmentof its tonal formulas amongexisting ones. So the twelve-tone system seemed to Stravinskymerely another historical color among many and not a means of reconciling them. It is Webern's interpretation of the twelve-tone system as a generalizationof the concept of tonality, which implies the inevitable consequence that the twelve-tone row is itself only one of the types of possible rows, that it is only the C major of serial coloring, which led the composer of Agon to adopt it. 5. Envoi Thus contemporary music has ready to hand devices possessingan unheard-ofpower to convey meaning;slowly their possibilities are being explored;up to this moment, contraryto what is usually said, contemporarycomposershave been rather timorous about it, and that certainly not through excess of theory, but through a certain lack of boldness in theory which for some time preventedthe very best mindsfromunderstanding great contemporarycomposers.That day is past; it can be said that today new music is bursting out, forcingopen the doors, to absorb the formsof popularmusic. I see by the programof the "Domainemusical"that jazz musicianstook part in a concert. Nobody can deny the immediateappealof Threnior of Gruppen. I catch myself silently hummingStockhausenand others; soon I shall hear the hummingtoo. Poetry is not a luxury, painting is not a luxury. No, musicis certainlynot the pastimeof the idle, of "amateurs,"-get that out of your head. Music is indispensable to our life, to everybody'slife, and we have never needed it so badly.

NOTES 1. Gambaraand MassimilaDoni are relatively short fictional works in Balzac'sLa Comediehumaine.Paolo Gambara is a talented theorist of music who lacks creative discipline. Reduced to singing for pennies in the street, he is befriended by the Prince de Varese and his wife, the former Massimila Doni.
2. Capraja, also a character in La Comedie humaine, (Massimila Doni) is a

fanatical music lover.

3. Butor here cites a tag from Boileau's Art poe'tiqueof 1674 (Chant I, line 133). I have quoted the Soame-Dryden translation.