MUSIC AS THE MEASURE OF THE ARTS Pater advances his theory in the essay on "The School of Giorgione" in the volume on The Renaissance. Each art, he states, has its own unique, distinctive quality which is untranslatable into any other art. This distinctive quality of each art is derived from its sensuous material, as sounds in music, colors in painting, rhythmical words in poetry. Pater does not maintain that the skillful handling of this sensuous material is all there is to art, but only that this material gives the art its peculiar flavor. The material imposes a responsibility upon the artist to be true to its inherent nature and not to force it into moulds for which it is intrinsically unsuited. A painting may be poetical, and a poem pictorial, but there is in the painting a true pictorial charm and in the poem a true poetical quality in which lies their essential artistic significance. But each art also steps over its own boundary lines into that of another art, "not indeed to supply the place of each other, but reciprocally to lend each other new forces." What these forces are that are obtained by one art from another Pater does not indicate. Nevertheless, the implication is that a painting does not lose by trespassing upon poetry nor a poem by stepping over into painting, but as a poem or a painting each has its untranslatable charm. A "tone poem," if great as an art work, is not such for its poetic quality, but for its music, nor is the greatness of a "musical poem" due to its music, but "comes of an inventive handling of rhythmical language--the element of song in the singing; . . ." But there is even a wider striving than that of each art to the condition of some other art, namely, the aspiring of all art "towards the principle of music; music being the typical, or ideally consummate art, the object of the great Andersstreben of all art, of all that is artistic, or partakes of artistic qualities." What is this artistic quality of music towards which all art aspires but only music fully attains? It is the complete identity of form and content. Nolde For while in all other works of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it. That the mere matter of a poem, for instance--its subject, its given incidents or situation; that the mere matter of a picture--the actual circumstances of an event, the actual topography of a landscape-should be nothing without the form, the spirit, of the handling; that this form, this mode of handling, should become an end in itself, should penetrate every part of the matter:--this is what all art constantly strives after, and achieves in different degrees. Now music achieves this end of all artistic striving to which the other arts only aspire and approximate because of its independence of subject-matter as compared with its sister arts. Music does not depend for its raw stuff on any material other than that of its own making, while painting begins with objects, and poetry works with words which are but symbols for meanings and objects, and both deal with definite subjects or situations or even with moral or political affairs. "In such instances it is easy enough for the understanding to distinguish between the matter and the form, however much the matter, the subject, the element which is addressed to the mere intelligence, has been penetrated by the informing, artistic spirit." But art is "always striving to be independent of mere intelligence, to become a matter of pure perception, to get rid of its responsibilities to its subject or material;" and it is music "which most completely realizes this artistic ideal, this perfect identification of form and matter. In its ideal, consummate moments, the end is not distinct from the means, the form from the matter, the subject from the expression; they inhere in and completely saturate each other; and to it, therefore, to the condition of its perfect moments, all the arts may be supposed constantly to tend and aspire."		Home The Nature and Objective of Aesthetics Art and the Artist The Art Work The Art Work in the Making The Creative Mind Art and the Artist Art and the Layman The Experience of Beauty Beauty in Music The Varieties of Musical Experience Principles of Evaluation The Beautiful in Music Music As the Measure of the Arts Painting Poetry