Opera and Human Emotions

In this paper I intend to treat opera, not as a disease (as some people would have it), but as a symptom. In the history of music, opera is indicative of an attitude which has become so prevalent since the production of the first opera in Florence around 1600 that most people today are inclined to judge all music in operatic terms. The attitude I am referring to can best be diagnosed by its concern with “expression,” “communication,” “emotion,” and the like. These terms are, of course, appropriate to music. The point I wish to make, however, is that the concept of music as communication is at best one-sided and limited; and that it is matched by another concept of opposite character which follows an older tradition and which, moreover, seems to come closer to the root of the art. Both concepts must be considered for a full understanding of the function of music. If I shall appear to favor the nonoperatic side, as it were, I am today primarily motivated by a desire to restore a balance that may have been disturbed by preceding presentations as well as by the general prejudices of the last few centuries.

I have labeled the operatic attitude as symptomatic of “music as communication.” The opposite attitude is more difficult to describe in one word. In default of anything better, I shall follow a suggestion made by the composer Ernst Levy in using the term “music as monument.” Try to take this word literally without entanglement in specific associations. “Monument” evokes the idea of something serving as a reminder of a human accomplishment, something enduring as a record of a creative achievement,