Now if we depart from this chord a sensation of unrest is occasioned which can only subside by a progression to another triad or a return to the first.  With the development of our modern system of tonality we have come to think tonally; and a chord lying outside of the key in which a musical thought is conceived will carry with it a sense of confusion or mystery that our modern art of harmony and tone colour has made its own.  Thus, while any simple low chords accompanying the first notes of Raff’s “Im Walde” symphony, given by the horns and violins, would suggest gloom pierced by the gleams of light, the remoteness of the chords to the tonality of C major gives a suggestion of mystery; but as the harmony approaches the triad the mystery dissolves, letting in the gleam of sunlight suggested by the horn.

Goldmark’s overture to “Sakuntala” owes its subtle suggestion to much the same cause.  Weber made use of it in his “Freischuetz,” Wagner in his “Tarnhelm” motive, Mendelssohn in his “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Tchaikovsky in the opening of one of his symphonies.

In becoming common property, so to speak, this important element of musical utterance has been dragged through the mud; and modern composers, in their efforts to raise it above the commonplace, have gone to the very edge of what is physically bearable in the use of tone colour and combination.  While this is but natural, owing to the appropriation of some of the most poetic and suggestive tone colours for ignoble dance tunes and doggerel, it is to my mind a pity, for it is elevating what should be a means of adding power and intensity to musical speech to the importance of musical speech itself.  Possibly Strauss’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra” may be considered the apotheosis of this power of suggestion in tonal colour, and in it I believe we can see the tendency I allude to.  This work stuns by its glorious magnificence of tonal texture; the suggestion, in the opening measures, of the rising sun is a mighty example of the overwhelming power of tone colour.  The upward sweep of the music to the highest regions of light has much of splendour about it; and yet I remember once hearing in London, sung in the street at night, a song that seemed to me to contain a truer germ of music.

For want of a better word I will call it ideal suggestion.  It has to do with actual musical speech, and is difficult to define.  The possession of it makes a man a poet.  If we look for analogy, I may quote from Browning and Shakespeare.

Dearest, three months ago
When the mesmerizer, Snow,
With his hand’s first sweep
Put the earth to sleep.

BROWNING, A Lovers’ Quarrel.

        
                          Daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and takes
The winds of March with beauty; Violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes.

SHAKESPEARE, Winter’s Tale.