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But to recall a melody at will with any particular tone-color, i.e., to imagine it as being played by a flute, or a violin, or a horn, is much less easy; and still more difficult is it to hear two or more notes at once in the mind, that is to recall harmonies. It is for this reason that people of primitive musical taste care only for operas which are full of "tunes."
There are singers whose control over the registers is so expert that, when they are called upon to follow a loud, singing, vibrant head tone with a pp effect on the same note, they can accomplish this by imperceptibly changing to falsetto. They can glide from head into falsetto and back again without a break and add the charm of varied tone-color to natural beauty of voice.
What the exploratory eye subsequently discovers, perhaps, is no more than our stout and comfortable old friend, the highly well-born hausfrau, Mme. C Dur with a vine leaf or two of C sharp minor or F major in her hair. The trick lies in the tone-color in the flabbergasting magic of the orchestration.
Now when you press the pedal of a pianoforte on striking a note you do not only prolong this note, but its vibrations arouse all the notes which correspond to its overtones, and the result is a rich deep tone-color of exquisite sensuous beauty and enchanting variableness.
The musician and poet make use of contrast, light and shade, gradation, antithesis, balance, accent, force by opposition, isolation and omission, rhythm, tone-color, climax, and above all unity and harmony.
This is closely connected with phrasing, and the phrase, which is the larger "thought word," should be studied as the communicating link between the articulation of the part and interpretation as it relates to literature itself. In connection with this comes the consideration of slides and the finer modulations of tone-color, movement, and cadence.
Yet the symphonies have certainly remained unchanged; only our ear has grown dull so far as comprehension of the tone-color of the string quartet is concerned. The same full orchestra, which in those works sounded so overpoweringly imposing seventy years ago, now sounds to us simply powerful.
The fundamental tone determines the pitch; the overtones determine the quality, tone-color, timbre, or physiognomy of the tone.
In the same way mere tone-color is not the substance of a musical composition. Beethoven's Eighth Symphony is just as great a work, in all its essentials, in a four-hand piano arrangement as in the original score. Every harmonic and melodic idea of the composer is there; one can trace just as clearly the subtle processes of his mind; every step in the working out of the materials is just as plain.
It is the power of articulating, of uniting poetry with music, definite words with indefinite tones. Every instrument, as I have just said, has a characteristic emotional tone-color. But the emotions expressed by them are vague and indefinite.
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