II
I wonder if all the suggestion music gives us is associative. Sometimes I think so. Was it Berlioz who remarked that the slightest quickening of tempo would transform the celebrated air in Orphée from “J’ai perdu mon Euridice” to “J’ai trouvé mon Euridice”? Rossini found an overture which he had formerly used for a tragedy quite suitable for Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and the interchangeable values which Handel gave to secular and sacred tunes are familiar to all music students. Are minor keys really sad? Are major keys always suggestive of joy? We know that this is not true although one will be more sure of a ready response of tears from a Western audience by resorting to a minor key. In our music wedding marches are usually in the major and funeral marches usually in the minor modes. But almost all Eastern music is in a minor key, love songs and even cradle songs. Recall, or play over on your piano, the Smyrnan lullaby (made familiar by Mme. Sembrich) which occurs in the collection of Grecian and oriental melodies edited by L. A. Bourgault-Ducoudray.... Even the composers who do not call their pieces by name and who scorn the use of a programme, depend for some of their most powerful effects on emotion created by association... and a new composer, be he indefatigable enough, can rouse new associations in us.... Why if three or four composers would meet together and decide that the use of a certain group of notes stood for the town pump, in time it would be quite easy for other composers to use this phrase in that connection with no explanation whatever.