CHAPTER NINE:
THE RULES OF ARCHITECTURAL POLITENESS.
It was Goethe, I
believe, who called Gothic architecture "a petrified religion." I cannot but
regard the perfection of domestic architecture as an embodied courtesy.
[1]
..the resources of an artist are required
to give an artistic and poignant expression even of rudeness.
Montgomery Schuyler, “The Chicago Renascence,” (Mumford 1972)
Introduction
The
previous chapter was an attempt to relate Garbett's aesthetics of architectural
expression to its use in society. This chapter, the last in the section dealing
with the first chapter of Garbett's Treatise,
starts off with an analysis of the formal rules for an architectural
politeness. The difficulties of prescribing architectural forms for an
architectural politeness necessarily lead to a negative discussion about those
things that expressly do not
constitute such a politeness. Having thus arrived at the problem of ornament we
pass on naturally to a concern with the exact status of architecture as a fine
art and so to the mechanics of Garbett's aesthetics of architectural expression
and its relation to associationism.
The place of politeness in Garbett's
system
Architectural
politeness occupies a meta-level in Garbett's theory, representing the point at
which the aesthetics of general morality fuses with normative discourse. The
problem for Garbett was that the concept of architectural politeness could not
be translated into a body of prescriptions without immediately undermining the
concept. Architectural politeness could only translate into an attitude
informed by a specific moral doctrine.
That moral attitude then enabled the artist to apply certain forms and
arrangements in certain situations.
Precisely because politeness is
responsible for setting the attitude of the architect with regard to his
undertaking, it is placed first and foremost in Garbett's hierarchical
subdivision of the aims and requirements of architecture. This needs to be
explained, as politeness would naturally seem to fit within the concept of
architectural expression, which is much higher up the scale of Garbett's chain
of beauty. After all, the evaluation of a building must explore a wide spectrum
of human experience before it can be designated polite. All sorts of little
signs become relevant: the marks of a building's history; the remnants of its
previous owner(s); the building's relation to its immediate geographical and
temporal environment as well as the environment's effect on the building. All
these criteria and many more besides, manipulate the building's effect on the
beholder.
The ability of a building to be
polite also carries worrying implications with regard to Garbett's obvious
desire for a rigid, objective aesthetics. One implication of this is that it is
no longer possible to institute rigid aesthetic categories where
disinterestedness, or purely formal qualities can be untangled from the web of
psychological corruptions. Nor can it be clear where architecture becomes a
distinct entity, separate from other forms of human activity or experience. The
architect, the owner and the spectator become novelists, constantly writing and
re-writing the building. The architect is only the first and, in many cases,
most helpless participant in a game of complete
the story. He merely sets the scene which is subsequently judged according
to the sophistication of the emotional response extracted from the person
reading the building and filling out the burgeoning plot.
Garbett's use of such eminently
subjective concepts as politeness, expression and poetry made the perception of
architecture as phenomenologically complex and involved as literary criticism.
Because of the fact that the whole range of human experience had to be dragged
into any aesthetic judgement with regard to a building's expression, the
formulation of an objective normative tradition was made practically
impossible.
Natural versus artificial politeness: the
calculated lie
The
possibility of affecting
consideration in architecture by way of a predetermined language of polite
forms, forces the anthroponomical analogy on which the possibility of
architectural expression rests, deeper into the moral maze of human behaviour.
Everything that is conventionalised is liable to the disingenuous. For this
reason Garbett had to make a distinction between a natural and an artificial
politeness. In order to remain logically consistent, architecture was being
forced to participate in yet another characteristic of intelligent and moral
life: it could lie.
A positively false and predatory generosity, for instance, could be
imagined to look something like the house of sweets and biscuits which,
appearing so innocent and delectable, tempted Hansel and Gretel to eat from it
only to find it was a horrible trap set by the pædophagous owner. The castle or
keep in Garbett's metaphorical world has already been identified as the
architectural equivalent of the selfish oyster.
[2]
The dangers of a conventionalised
language of architectural politeness is perhaps best illustrated by Garbett's
rather unkind but not untypical treatment of the Spanish, who, because of their
conventions of politeness had supposedly forced their buildings to exude a
degenerate form of flattery and ostentation. The inhabitants of the East were similarly seen as good examples of
what a strict adherence to a single language of forms can do. Their steadfast adherence to forms whose original intention
is forgotten, caused their architecture to sink
into meaninglessness and stagnation.
[3]
What Garbett did not realise is
that, on his premises, the distinction between a natural- and an artificial
politeness could only be established a
posteriori. Who
could possibly discern, without being first prepared, the difference in meaning
between a parrot's party phrase, uttered without intending to signify anything
except the parrot's ability to imitate, and the same phrase uttered by its
teacher? Artificiality of expression can only be established when the architect
or owner has been discovered to have been calculating and deliberately deceptive
or merely unthinking and perfunctory.
[4]
This means that some lies always remain unnoticed and some truths will be seen
as lies. Architectural behaviour is now almost identical with human behaviour
where a good liar is often rewarded.
The rules for an architectural politeness
Fortunately
Garbett never even attempted to formulate a specific language of forms which he
thought would achieve an absolute validity in terms of being architecturally polite. That would
have trivialised the concept beyond endurance. Politeness cannot be related to
a straightforward and fixed language of forms. It cannot be a style of
architecture.
The problems such a language would
encounter are at once made clear by a simple example. In a situation where, for
instance, there are two thick walls which are identical in every material
respect except in function and context, it is nevertheless possible to
designate the one as rude and the other polite. The motive behind their
thickness qualifies each wall as either selfish or generous. Das Ding an sich is inert. Garbett would
probably have accused the thick walls of an evil baron's keep or of a usurer's
stronghold as selfish and mercenary. The thick walls of a Gothic church would
probably have constituted a polite and generous indication of a sacrificial
attitude in the devout.
He gives a number of examples of
buildings and architects whom he considers to be polite. One such example is
Palladio:
In a building entirely
plain, in the strictest sense of the word, i.e. without any feature, or any
moulding, cutting, or shaping, not required by its utilitarian purposes,
courtesy might seem to many the only architectural merit we could expect. But
some of the buildings of this kind by Palladio (stables, out-houses, &c.),
and a few by other masters, demonstrate clearly that not only may rudeness be
avoided, but positive beauty created, in such buildings, without the
introduction of any decorative feature, but by a studious collation of whatever
will display design, order, and congruity, in the relative dimensions and
arrangement of the necessary or useful features.
[5]
Historical
buildings should only ever be used for analysis and the extrapolation of causal
principles. Though Garbett recommends the study of Palladio he does not
recommend a new wave of palladianism. Instead the passage is interesting in its
introduction of an architectural axiom, namely the opposition between the naked
requirement and the suggestion. Palladio's genius lay in being able to
supplement the naked requirement of a building by applying forms which could
suggest the relative value of each element in a building. That idea represents
an attempt to translate Garbett's always rather unsatisfactory demand for
thought and consideration into concrete rules.
Politeness must consist of a
sophisticated framework of appropriate responses to a continually varying configuration
of circumstances. Even so there are certain constants to be observed in polite
buildings.
The all important question: How do I
build politely? becomes problematic within this context. Greenough correctly
deduced Garbett's only available answer: You cannot build politely unless you
yourself become polite. Nothing can stand in
the stead of an honest intention:
It must be observed,
writes Garbett, that the tribes of the savage
nations always exhibit this natural politeness. Let them be ever so rude in
construction or in decoration, or in both, they are never rude in expression;
never do they seem made for self alone, like the oyster, shut up in the
narrowness of its shell, pushing forth excrescences wherever its internal
purposes suggest, without appearing to know there is a world outside. On the
contrary, the rudest huts present on their exterior some evidence of unnecessary
design, some regularity or symmetry not required by their internal purposes,
and this stamps them as Architecture. It shows an aim beyond convenience and
stability; it shows the spectator that he, even he, has been cared for as well
as the owner, and the structure belongs not altogether to a man, but in some
sort also to humanity...as in the models from which these children of nature
learnt their art, there is nothing made for itself.... The name Architecture,
therefore, (...) must apply to these huts and wigwams, as well as to those
buildings which conform to all the rules of a systemised etiquette, invaluable
to those who can use it aright, but utterly incapable of standing in the stead
of an honest intention and desire to be what you would appear.[6]
Apart
from reminding us that benevolence is an agent of civilisation and not an
effect of it (so that, in contradistinction to Quatremère de Quincy, even savages are able to exhibit
politeness) this passage shows us that the basis for an architectural
politeness resides in two constants from which a normative theory can depart.
The first is the moral intention of the architect and the patron. The second is
the need for a particular etiquette to make those intentions understood by
onlookers and to ensure that those intentions are taken in the correct spirit. Certain
forms of politeness can be suitable only in specific situations, at specific
levels of civilisation.
The theorist has to resort to the
anthroponomical analogy, analysing the axioms guiding human action and seeking
to translate those actions into propitious architectural gestures. This aspect
is significant to Garbett's whole approach to architectural theory.
Garbett's theory of politeness was a
preliminary stage in the switch from a conventional, model- or style-based
normative theory to a grammatical or axiomatic approach. Garbett expressly did
not reveal a finished model for architects to copy. That is because he realised
that such a model would immediately start to undermine itself precisely because
it would allow the dislocation between intention and form. Through easy misuse,
such a model would be quickly hollowed out to become an instance of rudeness.
Garbett's principles of unity amidst variety, contrast versus gradation, and
the hierarchical subordination of forms represented important attempts to
formulate mathematical or grammatical axioms for architecture which were
supposed to precede the formation of any architectural style. Garbett tried to
construct an Architectural langue, a
grammar of architectural composition. That langue rejects the parole, that is the Greek, gothic and
renaissance trappings which can be transplanted. Instead historical styles must
do service as material through which it is possible to form an understanding of
that underlying grammar.
Ornament and the inversion of the chain of
beauty
If
politeness could be described as an attitude showing a sensitivity to the
propriety of forms and materials with reference to certain situations, it was
essential for Garbett to concentrate on pointing out those things which
expressly did not automatically constitute architecturally polite behaviour.
One of these, which has already been discussed , was the mere copying of forms
which, in their particular context, could be designated as polite. Another
concerned the super-addition of ornament to a building. Being in fact one of
the main causes of architecture's disease in nineteenth century England, the
application of ornament to buildings could hardly be considered polite
behaviour:
Ornament
and decoration can never give or increase
the expression of unselfishness; while it may often give that of ostentation, a
particular form of selfishness.
And
again:
You cannot hide by
ornament the want of art..
[7]
In
Garbett's world ornament was seen as but the sacrifice of money, not of time
and thought. And if any miserable witling dared to come up with popular
pedantries such the one winging about time being money, Garbett had his
well-rehearsed reply ready:
...yes, but the converse is not true, money
is not time, still less is it
thought. [8]
Moreover, as the
ornaments are generally of the most mean and poverty-stricken description, they
excite the idea, not merely of ostentation, but of the most offensive kind of
ostentation -that of a proud beggar.
[9]
Because of its
mechanised production, ornament could no longer be considered a sacrifice: it
was just as costly to produce something without ornament as it was to produce
something with. This had already been pointed out by Ruskin.
[10]
As beauty was the result of an accumulation of causes, ornament, though
not essential to architectural beauty, could only help.
[11] Garbett's
concept of architectural perfection can be seen as pyramidal and accumulative.
Ornament was considered by him to be a low
beauty. It could not do much to improve a building. Strangely enough, if
ornament was to be in a position to add something to a building, then the whole
superstructure of architectural perfection had to be inverted. All the higher
qualities of architecture had to be in place before any ornament could be allowed to add to a building's charms.
In order therefore, to make sure
that ornament was contributing to a building's beauty rather than detracting
from it, Garbett devised a test: the vulgarity test. It goes as follows: Remove
from the design of a building all ornament, all fritter, and see if in its naked state it still excites our
admiration.
[12] If not, all the ornament in the world will not improve it, it will only,
writes Garbett quoting Milizia, dazzle the vulgar.
[13]
If, on the other hand,
Garbett writes, the bare carcass remains
beautiful, though stripped of all its finery, all that finery may be restored,
and none of it will be added in vain provided it be consistent with itself and
with the character of the building, properly placed, and consistent everywhere
with its situation.[14]
Here
we see that Garbett's chain of values had to be inverted for normative
purposes. The real summit, as in the chain of being, is in fact the point of
origin and perfection; the point from which creation emanates. Only the architecturally
complete building is allowed to wear ornament with impunity.
Garbett continues the passage by
contradicting one of Ruskin's slogans:
It is one of the
affectations of architects to speak of overcharged ornaments. Ornament cannot be
overcharged if it be good, and is always overcharged when it is bad.
[15]
On
the contrary, writes Garbett, even good ornament can be misplaced. But Ruskin
is quick to reply in his "Answer to Mr. Garbett" appended to the
first edition of the Stones of Venice,
that misplacement is naturally included in the meaning of badness.
Paragone: expression in architecture,
music and gastronomy
Ornament
is by no means the highest beauty or
merit at which [architecture] should aim. If architecture did not aim
higher it would not belong among the fine arts. The mere fact of an art being intended to please, is not
sufficient to place it in this rank. If it were, cookery would have to be
placed among the fine arts.[16]
The
time had come to refine his own remarkably inclusive conception of
architecture; to make it dislocate itself form all sorts of socially polluting
associations. But Garbett did not want to submit to Ruskin's definition of
architecture as an act of (intellectual) decoration. Instead he turned to James
Fergusson's classification of the arts as published in his Historical Inquiry into the True Principles of Beauty in Art, More
Especially with Reference to Architecture, of 1849. [17]
The primary purpose of the only
volume of Fergusson's Historical Inquiry to have been published was not normative. That part was planned for a second
volume which never appeared. The objective of the first volume was to establish
a metaphysical basis for the arts, for architecture in particular, and to fit
the arts into the great (Protestant) scheme of things. Fergusson's ambition was
to re-evaluate man's knowledge in relation to a contemporary understanding of
universe and human civilisation in the manner of Francis Bacon.
[18]
Fergusson wanted to establish the relative worth of each human activity by performing
a new classification of natures and essences. The arts of man were thus divided
into three categories representing a
specific merit or excellence. There were technical merits, the lowest of the three, followed by aesthetic- and crowned by phonetic merits.
According to Garbett's reading of Fergusson's essay, technic related to
mechanical excellence and finish.
[19]
Aesthetic to the power of pleasing. This included the whole province of beauty in the ordinary sense which appeared to refer to beauty as a form of sensory
pleasure rather than as an emotive and more complex response.
[20]
The last category was the phonetic merit, which referred to the speaking arts,
or those which are capable of expressing
a meaning, or, in fact serving the purpose of language.[21]
Every art was allocated twelve points by Fergusson. These were
subsequently distributed according to their relative merits, thus dividing each
art not according to a qualitative- but according to a quantitative
difference.
[22]
The following,
writes Garbett, are a few specimens
selected from this curious table:
Technic Aesthetic
Phonetic
portion portion portion
Gastronomy.......... 7 5 0
Jewellery........... 7 4 1
Architecture (Greek) 4 4 4
Music (Vocal)....... 2 6 4
Historical Painting. 3 3 6
Drama............... 2 2 8
Poetry.............. 0 2 10
Eloquence........... 0 1 11
He
continued by quoting Fergusson: "Thus,"
adds he, "I conceive a perfect object of gastronomy to consist of 7 or 8 parts
of plain hunger satisfying food, and 4 or 5 of palatable ingredients.."[23]
Architecture was able to distinguish
itself through the equal distribution of its merits. It must be kept in mind
however, that this equal distribution concerned only its highest productions, such as the Parthenon. In other words
architecture could distinguish itself from gastronomy in degree only. Whatever
the system's virtues or short-comings, to Garbett it was necessary to qualify the difference between
architecture and gastronomy, not quantify
it.
[24]
There had to be a real, metaphysical difference between the two arts which
could in turn justify their social difference.
The part of Fergusson's taxonomy
which tried to refine the differences between the arts by converting their merits
to a rank on a social ladder of value was not quoted by Garbett. He took the
difference in value between architecture and gastronomy as a given and did not
want to draw attention to the fact the difference in Fergusson's system between
the creations of a good cook and the Parthenon only amounted to a miserly six
points on a scale of 35! Brunelleschi's Pazzi chapel might on that basis have
conceivably equalled the score of a summer pudding!
The objectivity of Fergusson's
judgement went unquestioned. Garbett was not aware that Fergusson's system
revealed only his personal tastes, infected as they were with the cultural
norms of the time. Nor was Fergusson himself aware of this. Neither of them at
least considered that to be a weakness in the system. This would certainly
account for Fergusson's rather embarrassing evaluation of eloquence when seen
in relation to his own prose: according to his system, the art of eloquence
could boast of no technical merits whatsoever!
All that Garbett objected to was that
the system was not felt to be refined enough. Fergusson did admittedly think it
risky to put gastronomy on the same level
as architecture. He rightly feared that it might expose his whole system to
ridicule. But if the equality of gastronomy and architecture was considered
risky to Fergusson, it was anathema to Garbett. The comparison persuaded
Garbett that Fergusson's classification had to be altered to rescue architecture from this low company, by showing that it is
capable of attaining some end which gastronomy cannot reach.[25]
Fergusson, as later became clear,
would have liked to develop the analogy between gastronomy and architecture
through the medium of taste, which, with
a hindsight untroubled by desires for relative superiority, appears self-evident
and very useful.
[26]
Garbett, on the other hand, was troubled by such desires. He wanted to show how
the architect is superior to the
picture-frame maker or the cook.[27]
The difficulty with Fergusson's
system, Garbett argued, was that the author did not distinguish between
expression and the power of actual speech. The category of the Aesthetic in
Fergusson's system stands for beautiful
without expression, while Phonetics was meant to relate art to meaning, that is,
narrative meaning: a phonetic art serves the purposes of
language.
[28] Architecture could never be phonetic unless it adopted a phonetic
language of some sort, either in the form of sculptural decoration or in the
form of hieroglyphics, lettering or heraldic devices.
[29]
Without the use of these a building could not narrate. Architecture, by itself
therefore, could not be considered a phonetic art, it could not tell a tale.
This inability was something it shared with instrumental music. For that reason
Garbett wanted to introduce a fourth category which would mediate between a
disinterested pleasure, "a mere
aesthetic beauty," without expression and a phonetic or narrative art
which can describe and assert.[30]
That fourth category was to be expression.
[31] Expression,
Garbett wrote, differed from a language in that its vocabulary is limited to
the emotions it can evoke. It cannot tell a tale, but it can enhance a tale's
emotional charge; it is a meta-language which is able to supplement the actual
narration by putting it into a context, a setting. That is how scenery,
climate, smells, architecture and music tend to function in novels and theatre.
Music and architecture could in this respect be put on the same par:
..having about the same compass of expression,
capable of conveying the same variety of emotions, and with the same
distinctness, provided we cultivate both with the same purity.[32]
and: An overture without words can
express nothing more than a building without phonetic sculpture or painting.[33]
Other
arts which shared this fourth category without having the ability to be
phonetic as well were landscape gardening and landscape painting, portraiture,
whether in paint or in stone, and the idealisation of single figures.
It was the absence of an ability to
express emotion which prevented the arts of cookery and perfumery from
encroaching on the status of architecture:
A flavour or smell
cannot be solemn or cheerful, grand or elegiac. Though Burke thought there ought
to be such a thing as a sublime odour, he never pretended to have smelt
one.
[34]
...it is this quality -expression-,
and not mere aesthetic (or unqualified) beauty, which entitles the work
possessing it to a place among the fine arts.
[35]
The
moment Garbett denied cookery, perfumery and ornament the power to express
emotions he was forced to make a further distinction, set up yet another
culturally determined opposition. But that is the subject of the next chapter.
2.
The
fact that both the keep and the oyster have a legitimate need to protect
themselves in a potentially hostile environment seems to have been ignored in
Garbett's translation of nature's language of symbols.
5.
Treatise, pp. 14-15 The passage is an
interesting anticipation of the Modern Movement with its concentration on the handling
of spaces and masses, the arrangement of elementary shapes and the
criminalisation of ornament. Garbett takes a different road altogether from the
one paved by Ruskin. The latter took architecture to refer, quite exclusively,
to the stone surface and not the division of space. Ruskin's definition of
architecture was later confirmed and sharpened in his preface to the second
edition of The Seven Lamps, p. 15 f.
13.
Treatise, p. 16: E dunque evidente che con tutta la profusione degli ornati più ricchi
non dedotti da necessità nè da utile, un edifizio mal inteso sara più brutto
come più s'imbruttisce la brutta donna che più si adorna. F. Milizia (1781)
On Francesco Milizia see O'Neal (1954) pp. 12-15; Brües (1961) pp. 69-113;
Rykwert (1981) p. 65-69; Prozzillo (1971); Kruft (1985) p. 228-232. Milizia's Principi d'Architettura civile, Finale
1781, 3 vols. (later editions: Bassano 1785; 1804; 1813; 1825; and Milan 1832)
were not as generally available as his Memorie
which had been translated by Mrs. Edward Cresy into English.
17.
For a brief and dismissive treatment of Fergusson's system of
classification see Pevsner (1972) p. 239-240. Worse is Maurice Craig (1968)
Much better but necessarily geared towards the American reception of his thinking
is Robert Winter (1958) 25-30. The most recent studies on Fergusson are Kohane
(1993) and Raub (1993).
18.
Fergusson An Historical Inquiry
into the True Principles of Beauty, Part II, Section I. Divisions of
Science, pp. 15 ff. He mentions Bacon's
De Augmento Scientiarum, lib. ii; The impotence of Aristotle and Plato;
D'Alembert [note: Melanges, tom i. p. 239. Amsterdam, 1767.]: the French Encyclopaedists attempted to
complete the classification of Bacon. But no polishing or improving can ever
make a pyramid placed on it's apex a stable building; their additions only
served to render more apparent the defects which the simplicity of the original
had prevented many from observing. Bentham's Chrestomathia, London 1816 and Ampere's Essai sur la philosophie des Sciences, Paris 1838-43 calling them
artificial; Great praise is reserved for Vincent of Beauvais: Long anterior to any of these systems -in
the depths of the middle ages- the Monkish Encyclopaedists hit on a
classification, which, with a little industry rightly applied, might long
before this have been made perfect. The best and completest specimen of it that
I know of, is found in the Speculum Majus of Vincent de Beauvais, [note:
Speculum Quadruplex, 7 vols. fol. Argentinae, 1473. See also Daunou, Hist Litt.
de la France, vol. xviii] the friend and preceptor of Louis the Saint. In the
true theological spirit of that age, the system was founded on the Bible; and
taking the first chapter of Genesis as their guide, they classified human
knowledge according to the succession in which things are represented to have
been created in the six days which are there allotted to the task. And as Moses
in describing them had followed the reasonable and apparent importance of the
objects, he very nearly laid the ground of a perfect system; the one great
difficulty being the intervention of the creation of the sun and moon between
that of the mineral and vegetable kingdoms and that of the animals. The spirit
of that age would, probably, scarcely have admitted of the rectification of
this anomaly in classification; but otherwise the system is so nearly a correct
natural one, that had the philosophers of the period only persevered in
improving it, correcting its error, and avoiding the unnecessary repetitions
into which it sometimes falls, before two centuries had passed over it must
have become so perfect that every additional advance in science would have
served only to consolidate and complete it; and long before this the
classification of human knowledge would have been as perfect as that of any
individual science now is. He also has great praise for Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences,
vol ii. p. 281, et passim.; Auguste Comte's Philosophie
Positive, vol. i. Introduction and Coleridge's Encyclopaedia Metropolitana. On Fergusson's sources see Raub
(1993)
20.
Treatise, p. 18 ff. Actually this was
called cal-aesthetic by Fergusson, who used the word aesthetic to denote
everything to do with the senses.
22.
Garbett did not mention the subsequent system of points by which a
hierarchy of arts ranging from ventilation to eloquence was made possible.
Technic merits counted for just one, while the marks in the aesthetic column
had to be multiplied by two and the ones in the phonetic column by three. In
this way Eloquence, a purely phonetic art, with just one mark allocated to the
aesthetic column and apparently requiring no technical tools, scores highest
with 35 points while heating and ventilation, the mirror images of eloquence,
having been allocated 11 marks for technical requirements, one for aesthetic
(Fergusson's meaning of the term) and none for phonetic qualities, scores only
13. Fergusson (1849) p. 140.
23.
Treatise, p. 20, cf. Fergusson's
actual table and its explanation in Fergusson (1849) pp. 140-3.
24.
The comparison with Roger de Piles table appended to his Peinture par Principes (1708) is
unavoidable. De Piles tried to establish the relative worth of each painter
according to a system of marks evaluating their composition, use of line and
colour and expression. cf. Barasch (1985) p. 341. Barasch calls this tendency
typical of academic thought. That explains the phenomenon only if one sees
academism as an attempt to deny the subjective element in judgement, to achieve
as Santayana calls it an objectified beauty which can thus be adequately
quantified.
28.
Treatise, p. 18-19. whereas, he
writes, its common acceptation is closer to artistic and its etymological
derivation comes from sensuous, or relating to the senses. In fact that
etymological derivation was precisely the one used by Fergusson who used the
word cal-aesthetic to denote beauty in art. To prevent confusion, I use the
word aesthetics in the sense given to it by C.S. Peirce, that is as a name for
the normative discipline which concerns itself with the description of
qualities. Peirce (1960) V. §122 ff., esp. § 127. The phrase beauty without
expression would thus appear to be a primitive version of Kant's criterion of
disinterestedness in aesthetic judgements of taste, as any kind of expression
automatically must relate the object to the subject's desires and thus promote
interest.
29.
every one perceives the
difference of expression between festive and plaintive, martial and sacred
music; nearly everyone is affected with the precise emotion which the notes are
intended to convey. But that is all, - they have expression, but no meaning...
They [masters and enthusiasts in the art] tell us (and I believe with perfect
honesty), that they can understand the interpretation of a piece of music, the
occasion for which it was composed, the scene it describes, the story it tells.
Well let them prove it. Some Germans have lately attempted to do so, (See the
Athenaeum for 1848, p. 1216) and have thereby at once proved their honesty, and
exposed their complete delusion; for different enthusiasts have found the most
amusingly different scenes or stories in the same notes, and no two give the
same version. (...) An overture without words can express nothing more than a
building without phonetic sculpture and painting. I should think that music and
architecture might probably be placed exactly on a par in this respect, -
capable of conveying the same variety of emotions. In: Treatise, p. 21-22.
31.
In fact Garbett's distinction between the phonetic or speech and the
expressive or emotive in his critique of Fergusson's classification of the arts
was probably suggested to him by Alison's use of association in the latter's
explanation of the mechanics of expression. cf. Alison, Op. Cit., Essay I, Chap. 1.
34.