The Czech Herbartism: The controversy between Smetana and Dvořák

As the discussion in the previous chapters has shown, Herbart‖s philosophical system had a strong influence on contemporary Czech intellectual life. Herbartism, particularly in the Czech Lands, became the dominant philosophy of the 19th century, representing the official philosophy of Prague University²⁶⁵ from 1832 until 1902 (the year of Durdík‖s death). To its main advocates there belonged Josef Durdík and Robert Zimmermann, who also had a remarkable influence on contemporary Czech musical climate, taking a stand for

264 Boethius‖s (c. 480–524) De institutione musica (“The Principles of Music”) divides music into the spheres of musica mundana (“cosmic” music or macrocosm), musica humana (harmonious relations in the soul and body of man, the “microcosmos”) and musica instrumentalis (audible music which exemplifies the order of the other musicas particularly in the acoustical ratios of musical intervals) (Grout 1981: 24).

265 Prague University (founded in 1348 by Charles IV, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia) was converted after the Thirty Years‖ War and the re-Catholicisation of the Czech Lands into German Charles-Ferdinand University (more precisely, after the Hussite wars only the arts faculty of the old Czech University existed). In 1882 the university was divided into two separate, independent universities, one functioning in Czech language and the other in German. The German university existed until the year 1945.

(Marek 1998: 199–200.)

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Dvořák‖s music and rejecting Smetana‖s music-dramatic art and his symphaty for Wagner.

Durdík‖s colleague Otakar Hostinský, who was also leaning on Herbartism, supported Smetana in his effort to reconcile Wagnerian art and formalist aesthetics. In addition to these academic personalities, Beckerman (1994: 17) lists Hanslick, Mukařovský, and Janáček among characters influenced by Herbartism in the Austrian cultural sphere.

Janáček became acquainted with this formalist trend in aesthetics mainly through Durdík and Zimmermann. These patterns and “forms” of thought gave him an impetus to his own identity as a theorist.

II.2.4.1 Josef Durdík as Janáček‖s scientific paragon

Josef Durdík (1837–1902), Professor of the Prague Czech University, was the most influential representative of Herbartism in the Czech cultural sphere. He endeavored to develop aesthetics as a systematic branch of science, following the example of natural science and Darwinism. As a first scientist he also started to create philosophical terminology in the Czech language. His main opus, Všeobecná Aesthetika (“General Aesthetics”, 1875), consists of two parts, one dealing mainly with poetics and language,²⁶⁶ the other with aesthetical forms,²⁶⁷ following the lead of Herbart and Zimmermann. As Pala (1963: 245) notes, Durdík‖s book is totally dependent on Zimmermann both on the level of contents and the concepts applied. Adopting the Herbartian, i.e., formalist, view on aesthetics meant also a certain aversion towards opera, and especially that of Wagner‖s art. Let us here repeat Zimmermann‖s words: “the opera is precisely not a work of a single art but of a joint action of all the arts” (Lippman 1994: 312). According to the formalist program, opera is simply not part of the aesthetics of pure music. Hence, it was also very clear for Durdík to show on who‖s side he stood in this question: he was a prominent supporter of Dvořák‖s music, and took a negative stand on Wagner and Smetana (Pečman 1978: 175–176; 1985: 161).

This dispute had also a remarkable influence on the young Janáček, who started to read Durdík‖s book²⁶⁸ intensively at the time he graduated as a teacher of music from the Brno Teachers‖ Training Institute, and became friends with Dvořák after coming to Prague. This might well explain the reason why Janáček in his student years did not show interest towards opera (see discussion in Chapter I.1.1.3 “Leipzig and Vienna”). Referring to Helfert, Pala (1963: 244)²⁶⁹ observes that when Janáček moved to study abroad, he already had, to a great extent, assimilated the orientation concerning aesthetic matters.

As Miloš Štědroň (1998: 232) remarks, the controversies Dvořák—Smetana and Brahms—Wagner were not, however, actual anymore after Janáček acquainted himself with Moravian tradition of folk music: all reminders of the interest on “the chromatic school” are nullified as the result of the work focused on folk music. According to Štědroň (ibid.), Dvořák speaks to Janáček more than Smetana for other reasons: it was easier for him to identify with Dvořák‖s social habitus and way of social elevation.

266 Část I. Poetika, jakožto aesthetika umění básnického.

267 Část II.Všeobečná Aesthetika a rozpravy filosofické.

268 See Chapter II.1.1 (“Janáček as a reader”).

269 Pala‖s article deals essentially with the role of the young Janáček as the critic of the Brno National Theater, opened in 1884, particularly as he appears in his Hudební listy (1884–88).

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Regardless of this change in Janáček‖s life, Durdík became a far-reaching paragon for his theoretical career. For Janáček he represented the exactitude of scientific research and the belief in the omnipotence of science. Štědroň (ibid.) assumes that by absorbing this attitude Janáček wanted to compensate for the lack of a university-level education in his own environment. This ambition for “scientificity” only gained new forms in the light of the investigations of Helmholtz and Wundt. The persuasion about the correctness of experimental knowledge and exact measurements was thus transformed also to the personality of Janáček the folklorist,²⁷⁰ which he naturally would not have become without his friendship with František Bartoš (Helfert 1949: 80; Štědroň 1998: 233).

The acquaintance with Moravian musical tradition and folk life represented a turning point in Janáček‖s ideological development. Fundamentalist formalism and classical ideals gain minor attention in Janáček‖s activities beginning from the 1880s. Helfert (1949: 80) remarks that the opera Šárka (1887) is the first sign of this change. It is as if a whole new world is opening to Janáček: the folk song tradition, demotic mode of speaking and rural culture as a whole including the characteristic environment, peasantry, country and nature, without idealizing embellishment (ibid.). Also, Janáček‖s childhood environment might have played its role in opening this direction. According to Helfert (ibid.), few Czech composers have grown with so close contact with country life and folk song as Janáček.

Helfert (ibid.) sees these elements as the beginning of the realism typical of Janáček.²⁷¹

II.2.4.2 Form and its components in Durdík‖s General Aesthetics

Durdík‖s book on aesthetics is a classic as it represents the first treatises on this topic in Czech language. In accordance with the general ideological and cultural climate, it expresses very clearly the philosophical soil on which it is anchored. According to Durdík, the aesthetical views of the “rival” party are just a mere unbridled delirium on contents and straying with the patterns of form. Strictly speaking, Durdík names Hegel and Schelling as representing the nonsense of the aesthetics of contents, and Herbart and Zimmermann as the ones representing the aesthetics of form. Durdík sees a direct connection with Herbart‖s research and the old tradition based on Plato‖s philosophy, which, as he particularly wants to point out, always had touched on questions of deepness and truth.²⁷² (Durdík 1875a: 8–9.)

II.2.4.2.1 The musicality of speech

Durdík considers speech akin to music, since it has musical elements. Even though speech conveys meanings, it involves also many other elements that deepen these meanings. The emphasis of a word (―důraz‖) is according to Durdík mere strengthening of the voice.

Additionally, the most important signifying element in the vocalizing of a word or

270 A “folklorist of a modern type”, as characterized by Miloš Štědroň (1998: 233).

271 This outlook has been, however, questioned by Fukač (1992), as discussed in Chapter I.1.1.

272 Na základě Platonských starých náhledů vyvinulo se vedle hlubších a vždy něco pravdy obsahujících pomyslův také nezřízené blouznění v obsahu a bloudění stran formy, aesthetické blabolení, jemuž nastala reakce v střízlivém věci milovném bádání Herbartově. Jako Vischer poetiku Hegelovu přijímá, tak zas na směru Herbartovském trvaje R. Zimmermann hlavních stránek téže nauky se stanoviska aesthetiky formové se dotknul, tak že v jeho knize též poetika obsažena jest.

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sentence is the use of a certain kind of color or tone, which can express joy, sorrow, gratitude and admiration, shame, dislike, anger, in brief passion or emotion. This use of the tone of voice serves as the effects of emphasis. Both in the emphasis of the word and in its accent or tone it is important to understand the advantage of the spoken language as compared with the written language. These often most important verbal meanings are not even manifest in the code of the written language, but instead come to the foreground only in speech, Durdík remarks. The differentiations of the durations of voice, the tempo of speech, the strengthening and diminishing of speech sounds, ascending and descending of intonation and the changes of its color, in other words, the progression of the voice, accent, emphasis and meaning [transmitting of emotions] evoke, according to Durdík, so-called “modulation” of speech.²⁷³ (Ibid. 505.)

As Pečman (1985: 163) and Kulka (1990: 62) mention, Durdík compared the sounds of speech and vocal actions to sounds produced by musical instruments. They quote Durdík‖s words in General Aesthetics (p. 239):

We know sufficiently well that a question, exclamation, laughter, etc. have their special tonal patterns which can be executed in music. Besides that, natural sounds such as a whoop, sigh, weeping, groaning, have a color which can also be produced by means of music. The instruments themselves . . . more or less suggest the human voice: so at some time the sound of a horn, at another time the touching tone of the violin seem to speak to us, due to their colors, i.e., their harmonic tones. Thus the colors and cadences of human speech offer us a large field in which the composer‖s task may indeed be that of faithful imitation.

According to Durdík the succession of vowels of different colors create a certain melody, and melody is singing. Indeed, all live speech makes an impression of a kind of singing on us. However, Durdík reminds us that in all cases where the musicality of speech is proposed, we should use the term in a diminished dimension—not even the lengths of the syllables are so strictly determined as in educated art song, so the statement should not be taken quite literally. However, these kind of intonations, melodic fragments and manifold tonal intervals can be heard very well in the living speech of the people, Durdík says. We can observe the change of the musical cadences in the speech of a compatriot, who has lived a long time abroad, and who didn‖t hear Czech spoken for a long time, when he is conveying foreign intonations into his maternal tong. (Durdík 1875a: 506.)

Durdík gives special emphasis to the Czech language in the awakening and revival of a nation that has been “stunned by a dreadful misfortune”. He addresses the fact that the prolific community of writers have exclaimed and still are exclaiming its indefatigable motto “And it still lives!” against authorities, who regarded or wished the Czech language to be dead, and against the advocates of the Veleslavian times,²⁷⁴ who along with their ideals wanted to stop or devitalize the development of the language. According to Durdík, this motto can be proved true also by everyday experience: by the young people on the streets

273 Rozdělování dob, trvot i rychlost řeči, sesilování a seslabování hlasu, stoupání i klesání tonu jakož i rozličné zabarvování jeho, čili kratším slovem p o s t u p, p ř í z v u k, d ů r a z i e m f a s e způsobují tak zvanou m o d u l a c i mluvy. The emphasis given to the last qualities or elements of speech are given by Durdík himself. It may well be that Durdík adopted the term “modulation” of speech from Helmholtz, who in his book speculates on the imitation of involuntary modulations of the voice as the first means of musical expression (cf. e.g., Helmholtz 1954: 370–371).

274 See Chapter II.1.3.1. (fn 49).

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and the old grandmother in the church, by the wide rank of peasantry and the fighting rows of labour, by all good working people, from whose womb everything that in its hard times was lost is born again. This experience from daily life convinces one that the Czech language is alive, Durdík exclaims. Despite the fact that this motto was often uttered in a political sense, Durdík wants to give it another meaning: in addition to the exterior token of a vital nation, the motto “Czech language is alive” conveys also the message about the internal life of the language (ibid. 543). Language is therefore a changing entity, Durdík adds.

Cultivating the Czech language had also its concrete level in Durdík‖s work. Namely, Durdík particularly attempted to create new aesthetical and philosophical terminology in Czech, which had its manifest and remarkable influence also on Janáček‖s beginnings as a theoretician and aesthetician.²⁷⁵

II.2.4.2.2 Aesthetics as a science on forms

In the second part of his General Aesthetics, Durdík endeavors to establish aesthetics as a scientific discipline that focuses on forms instead of contents. In his preface, Durdík introduces the main advocates of this direction in aesthetic investigation: first of all, Herbart and his “two most renowned fanciers from Prague, Eduard Hanslick and Robert Zimmermann”. Among the Czech scholars, he draws attention to F. Palacký, who tried to create the first systematic presentation of aesthetics, which he, however, had to leave unfinished due to his research work in history.²⁷⁶ (Durdík 1875b: ix–x.)

Durdík convinces his reader about the necessarity of a new scientific path in aesthetics.

With the analogy of the natural sciences and the old philosophy of nature, he postulates also other analogies or opposites that are based on a shift from mysthical or mythical knowledge to a proper science. Only modern and logical science can produce any reliable and relevant information on nature. This modern science does still keep its relations with philosophy, but that is a different thing, Durdík claims. According to Durdík, in the same way as theosophy, alchemy or astrology, the philosophy of nature does not any more offer us scientific validity. As astronomy emerged from astrology, or chemistry from alchemy, the systems based on ideological contents will be followed by a scientific, i.e., formal aesthetics. (Ibid. 115–116.)

Durdík (ibid. 678) claims that aesthetics based on contents could not finally agree on their main focus of research. Since the content was considered to represent something mystical, each thinker could charge it with different meanings and preferences (such as God, goodness, bliss, idea, etc.).²⁷⁷ These ideas contravened each other and prevented the accomplishment of a real and one science of beauty. Aesthetics research based on forms will clarify this situation. It will start a new time of unanimous scrutiny and scholarship.

Durdík (ibid. 117) refers to Friedrich Theodor Vischer, who gave up the Hegelian method

275 Pečman (1985: 166) notes that Durdík, for example, transformed the term tone in the Czech form

―zněna‖ (from the verb ―zníti‖, ―to sound‖). Janáček is as well known for his many Czech neologisms.

276 Geschichte Böhmens (five volumes, 1836–67; in Czech Dějiny národu českého v Čechách a v Moravě, 5 vol., 1848–76), see Chapter II.1.3.1.

277 V táboře obsahovém vládla konečně nesjednocenost zrovna v hlavní věci, totíž v otázce po obsahu; poněvadž byl rázu mystického, mohl jej každý myslitel naznačiti něčím jiným (Bůh, dobro, slast, idea a j.). (Durdík 1875b:

678.)

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and who did not any more use the word “idea” in his definition of beauty. According to Durdík, formal aesthetics emphasizes the indisputable fact that beauty consists in relationships that prevail between the parts of a unit or a whole, that is, in forms (ibid.

114).

Thus, the objective of aesthetics is to scrutinize the conditions of elementary aesthetic preferences. First and foremost, these conditions are based on certain forms. According to Durdik (ibid. 30), only forms are elementary and can please aesthetically.²⁷⁸ Consequently, it is crucial to understand how these forms influence us in the basic aesthetic experience. In the chapter dealing with the composites of beauty (§ 5. Složenost krása), Durdík says that a simple element alone cannot cause an aesthetic effect. Only with other elements the effect can be judged as aesthetically pleasing. Durdík reasons his argument by taking as an example a single simple sensation, such as a tone. We do not perceive a single tone as beautiful—only associated with other tones it can cause an impression of beauty. Similarly, a single line as such is aesthetically indifferent. Only with the association of other lines it helps to create an impression of an image, which is not aesthetically indifferent (ibid. 13–

15.) Accordingly, a single element alone does not evoke the impression of beauty. The beautiful object must always be composite. Therefore, only the relations of the mutual positions of the single elements can evoke the aesthetically pleasing whole (ibid. 21–22.)

According to Durdík, music is also the result of forms and thus has nothing to do with the aesthetics of contents. He refers to Herbart as the predecessor of Helmholtz and Hanslick: as Herbart has written about Haydn‖s works, music is only music and does not need to represent anything to be beautiful (Durdík 1875a: 41).

From the perspective of Janáček as a novice scholar, it is interesting to note the remarkable presence of references to Helmholtz‖s work in Durdík‖s General Aesthetics. In its index Helmholtz appears eight times (Durdík 1875b: 180, 215, 220, 222, 223, 240, 677, 678). Indeed, it is not difficult to see that, as Beckerman (1983: 397) puts it, excited by Durdík‖s references to Helmholtz, Janáček plunged into the Lehre von den Tonempfindungen, since it was the most important contemporary scientific treatment of musical phenomena. Of special interest regarding this impulse is Durdík‖s (1875b) note on page 215, where he emphasizes the importance of Helmholtz‖s Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen to everybody who wants to study the physiological foundations of music. Durdík ranks Helmholtz‖s investigations as the best approach to the scientific aesthetics on forms.²⁷⁹ He appraises the monumental progress in the special aesthetics of music in the most recent times. Its scientific results remarkably confirm formal aesthetics.

Durdík (1875b: 677–678) refers here to Helmholtz‖s concluding words, where “the great power of truth appears best”: “Helmholtz comes to the same statements that Herbart had already earlier expressed more generally, though from a totally different point of departure.”

In the last pages of his opus, Durdík seeks to outline a general system of forms and beauty. It is not surprising that these systems are to be found especially in reality (cf. the affiliation to Herbart‖s philosophy). Classified by the range of the particular systems, beauty can be found in nature, extending gradually to the whole cosmos. It can also exist in

278 Aesthetika vyšetřuje podmínky prosté záliby; podmínkami jsou v první řadě jisté formy. Jen formy se líbí aestheticky, jsou prostolibé. (§ 10. Úkol aesthetiky. [“The objective of aesthetics.”] Durdík 1875b: 30.)

279 . . . Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen, k němuž se každý obrať, kdo fysiologickou podlohu hudby zevrubněji poznati chce. Nemůžeť býti lepší průpravy pro vědeckou aesthetiku formy. (Footnote in Durdík 1875b:

215.)

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society and in sociological formations. Last but not least, it appears in art, being still part of reality (ibid. 681.) Although, as Durdík criticises, the opposite approach is popular, we always start from individual items, proceeding slowly from fragments towards the whole, never vice versa. Only from the small images can we create the large image, image of the whole. To this large image we then apply all the aesthetical forms and evaluate it more minutely according to the new substance. (Ibid. 442.) According to Durdík, the whole system can still be supported by new sentences and attributes. The system is ready, but open and capable of improvements and reforms. (Ibid. 678.)

society and in sociological formations. Last but not least, it appears in art, being still part of reality (ibid. 681.) Although, as Durdík criticises, the opposite approach is popular, we always start from individual items, proceeding slowly from fragments towards the whole, never vice versa. Only from the small images can we create the large image, image of the whole. To this large image we then apply all the aesthetical forms and evaluate it more minutely according to the new substance. (Ibid. 442.) According to Durdík, the whole system can still be supported by new sentences and attributes. The system is ready, but open and capable of improvements and reforms. (Ibid. 678.)