[Sidenote: _Jenny Lind._]
[Sidenote: _Lilli Lehmann._]
Nearly all of these singers, even those still living and remembered by
the younger generation of to-day, exploited their gifts in the operas
of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, the early Verdi, and Meyerbeer. Grisi
was acclaimed a great dramatic singer, and it is told of her that once
in "Norma" she frightened the tenor who sang the part of _Pollio_ by
the fury of her acting. But measured by the standards of to-day, say
that set by Calvé's _Carmen_, it must have been a simple age that
could be impressed by the tragic power of anyone acting the part of
Bellini's Druidical priestess. The surmise is strengthened by the
circumstance that Madame Grisi created a sensation in "Il Trovatore"
by showing signs of agitation in the tower scene, walking about the
stage during _Manrico's_ "_Ah! che la morte ognora_," as if she would
fain discover the part of the castle where her lover was imprisoned.
The chief charm of Jenny Lind in the memory of the older generation is
the pathos with which she sang simple songs. Mendelssohn esteemed her
greatly as a woman and artist, but he is quoted as once remarking to
Chorley: "I cannot think why she always prefers to be in a bad
theatre." Moscheles, recording his impressions of her in Meyerbeer's
"Camp of Silesia" (now "L'Étoile du Nord"), reached the climax of his
praise in the words: "Her song with the two concertante flutes is
perhaps the most incredible feat in the way of bravura singing that
can possibly be heard." She was credited, too, with fine powers as an
actress; and that she possessed them can easily be believed, for few
of the singers whom I have mentioned had so early and intimate an
association with the theatre as she. Her repugnance to it in later
life she attributed to a prejudice inherited from her mother. A vastly
different heritage is disclosed by Madame Lehmann's devotion to the
drama, a devotion almost akin to religion. I have known her to go into
the scene-room of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and search
for mimic stumps and rocks with which to fit out a scene in
"Siegfried," in which she was not even to appear. That, like her
super-human work at rehearsals, was "for the good of the cause," as
she expressed it.
[Sidenote: _Sontag._]
Most amiable are the memories that cluster around the name of Sontag,
whose career came to a grievous close by her sudden death in Mexico in
1854. She was a German, and the early part of her artistic life was
influenced by German ideals, but it is said that only in the music of
Mozart and Weber, which aroused in her strong national emotion, did
she sing dramatically. For the rest she used her light voice, which
had an extraordinary range, brilliancy, and flexibility, very much as
Patti and Melba use their voices to-day--in mere unfeeling vocal
display.
"She had an extensive soprano voice," says Hogarth; "not
remarkable for power, but clear, brilliant, and singularly
flexible; a quality which seems to have led her (unlike most
German singers in general) to cultivate the most florid
style, and even to follow the bad example set by Catalani,
of seeking to convert her voice into an instrument, and to
astonish the public by executing the violin variations on
Rode's air and other things of that stamp."
[Sidenote: _La Grange._]
[Sidenote: _Piccolomini._]
[Sidenote: _Adelina Patti._]
[Sidenote: _Gerster._]
[Sidenote: _Lucca and Nilsson._]
[Sidenote: _Sembrich._]
Madame La Grange had a voice of wide compass, which enabled her to
sing contralto rôles as well as soprano, but I have never heard her
dramatic powers praised. As for Piccolomini, read of her where you
will, you shall find that she was "charming." She was lovely to look
upon, and her acting in soubrette parts was fascinating. Until Melba
came Patti was for thirty years peerless as a mere vocalist. She
belongs, as did Piccolomini and Sontag, to the comic _genre_; so did
Sembrich and Gerster, the latter of whom never knew it. I well
remember how indignant she became on one occasion, in her first
American season, at a criticism which I wrote of her _Amina_ in "La
Sonnambula," a performance which remains among my loveliest and most
fragrant recollections. I had made use of Catalani's remark concerning
Sontag: "_Son genre est petit, mais elle est unique dans son genre_,"
and applied it to her style. She almost flew into a passion. "_Mon
genre est grand!_" said she, over and over again, while Dr. Gardini,
her husband, tried to pacify her. "Come to see my _Marguerite_ next
season." Now, Gounod's _Marguerite_ does not quite belong to the
heroic rôles, though we can all remember how Lucca thrilled us by her
intensity of action as well as of song, and how Madame Nilsson sent
the blood out of our cheeks, though she did stride through the opera
like a combination of the _grande dame_ and Ary Scheffer's spirituelle
pictures; but such as it is, Madame Gerster achieved a success of
interest only, and that because of her strivings for originality.
Sembrich and Gerster, when they were first heard in New York, had as
much execution as Melba or Nilsson; but their voices had less
emotional power than that of the latter, and less beauty than that of
the former--beauty of the kind that might be called classic, since it
is in no way dependent on feeling.
[Sidenote: _Melba and Eames._]
[Sidenote: _Calvé._]
[Sidenote: _Dramatic singers._]
[Sidenote: _Jean de Reszke._]
[Sidenote: _Edouard de Reszke and Plançon._]
Patti, Lucca, Nilsson, and Gerster sang in the operas in which Melba
and Eames sing to-day, and though the standard of judgment has been
changed in the last twenty-five years by the growth of German ideals,
I can find no growth of potency in the performances of the
representative women of Italian and French opera, except in the case
of Madame Calvé. For the development of dramatic ideals we must look
to the singers of German affiliations or antecedents, Mesdames
Materna, Lehmann, Sucher, and Nordica. As for the men of yesterday and
to-day, no lover, I am sure, of the real lyric drama would give the
declamatory warmth and gracefulness of pose and action which mark the
performances of M. Jean de Reszke for a hundred of the high notes of
Mario (for one of which, we are told, he was wont to reserve his
powers all evening), were they never so lovely. Neither does the
fine, resonant, equable voice of Edouard de Reszke or the finished
style of Plançon leave us with curious longings touching the voices
and manners of Lablache and Formes. Other times, other manners, in
music as in everything else. The great singers of to-day are those who
appeal to the taste of to-day, and that taste differs, as the clothes
which we wear differ, from the style in vogue in the days of our
ancestors.
[Sidenote: _Wagner's operas._]
[Sidenote: _Wagner's lyric dramas._]
[Sidenote: _His theories._]
[Sidenote: _The mission of music._]
[Sidenote: _Distinctions abolished._]
[Sidenote: _The typical phrases._]
[Sidenote: _Characteristics of some motives._]
A great deal of confusion has crept into the public mind concerning
Wagner and his works by the failure to differentiate between his
earlier and later creations. No injustice is done the composer by
looking upon his "Flying Dutchman," "Tannhäuser," and "Lohengrin" as
operas. We find the dramatic element lifted into noble prominence in
"Tannhäuser," and admirable freedom in the handling of the musical
factors in "Lohengrin," but they must, nevertheless, be listened to as
one would listen to the operas of Weber, Marschner, or Meyerbeer.
They are, in fact, much nearer to the conventional operatic type than
to the works which came after them, and were called _Musikdramen_.
"Music drama" is an awkward phrase, and I have taken the liberty of
substituting "lyric drama" for it, and as such I shall designate
"Tristan und Isolde," "Die Meistersinger," "Der Ring des Nibelungen,"
and "Parsifal." In these works Wagner exemplified his reformatory
ideas and accomplished a regeneration of the lyric drama, as we found
it embodied in principle in the Greek tragedy and the _Dramma per
musica_ of the Florentine scholars. Wagner's starting-point is, that
in the opera music had usurped a place which did not belong to it.[G]
It was designed to be a means and had become an end. In the drama he
found a combination of poetry, music, pantomime, and scenery, and he
held that these factors ought to co-operate on a basis of mutual
dependence, the inspiration of all being dramatic expression. Music,
therefore, ought to be subordinate to the text in which the dramatic
idea is expressed, and simply serve to raise it to a higher power by
giving it greater emotional life. So, also, it ought to vivify
pantomime and accompany the stage pictures. In order that it might do
all this, it had to be relieved of the shackles of formalism; only
thus could it move with the same freedom as the other elements
consorted with it in the drama. Therefore, the distinctions between
recitative and aria were abolished, and an "endless melody" took the
place of both. An exalted form of speech is borne along on a flood of
orchestral music, which, quite as much as song, action, and scenery
concerns itself with the exposition of the drama. That it may do this
the agencies, spiritual as well as material, which are instrumental in
the development of the play, are identified with certain melodic
phrases, out of which the musical fabric is woven. These phrases are
the much mooted, much misunderstood "leading motives"--typical phrases
I call them. Wagner has tried to make them reflect the character or
nature of the agencies with which he has associated them, and
therefore we find the giants in the Niblung tetralogy symbolized in
heavy, slowly moving, cumbersome phrases; the dwarfs have two phrases,
one suggesting their occupation as smiths, by its hammering rhythm,
and the other their intellectual habits, by its suggestion of brooding
contemplativeness. I cannot go through the catalogue of the typical
phrases which enter into the musical structure of the works which I
have called lyric dramas as contra-distinguished from operas. They
should, of course, be known to the student of Wagner, for thereby will
he be helped to understand the poet-composer's purposes, but I would
fain repeat the warning which I uttered twice in my "Studies in the
Wagnerian Drama:"
[Sidenote: _The phrases should be studied._]
"It cannot be too forcibly urged that if we confine our
study of Wagner to the forms and names of the phrases out of
which he constructs his musical fabric, we shall, at the
last, have enriched our minds with a thematic catalogue
and--nothing else. We shall remain guiltless of knowledge
unless we learn something of the nature of those phrases by
noting the attributes which lend them propriety and fitness,
and can recognize, measurably at least, the reasons for
their introduction and development. Those attributes give
character and mood to the music constructed out of the
phrases. If we are able to feel the mood, we need not care
how the phrases which produce it have been labelled. If we
do not feel the mood, we may memorize the whole thematic
catalogue of Wolzogen and have our labor for our pains. It
would be better to know nothing about the phrases, and
content one's self with simple sensuous enjoyment than to
spend one's time answering the baldest of all the riddles of
Wagner's orchestra--'What am I playing now?'
[Sidenote: _The question of effectiveness._]
"The ultimate question concerning the correctness or
effectiveness of Wagner's system of composition must, of
course, be answered along with the question: 'Does the
composition, as a whole, touch the emotions, quicken the
fancy, fire the imagination?' If it does these things, we
may, to a great extent, if we wish, get along without the
intellectual processes of reflection and comparison which
are conditioned upon a recognition of the themes and their
uses. But if we put aside this intellectual activity, we
shall deprive ourselves, among other things, of the
pleasures which it is the province of memory to give; and
the exercise of memory is called for by music much more
urgently than by any other art, because of its volatile
nature and the rôle which repetition plays in it."
FOOTNOTES:
[E] "But no real student can have studied the score deeply, or
listened discriminatingly to a good performance, without discovering
that there is a tremendous chasm between the conventional aims of the
Italian poet in the book of the opera and the work which emerged from
the composer's profound imagination. Da Ponte contemplated a _dramma
giocoso_; Mozart humored him until his imagination came within the
shadow cast before by the catastrophe, and then he transformed the
poet's comedy into a tragedy of crushing power. The climax of Da
Ponte's ideal is reached in a picture of the dissolute _Don_ wrestling
in idle desperation with a host of spectacular devils, and finally
disappearing through a trap, while fire bursts out on all sides, the
thunders roll, and _Leporello_ gazes on the scene, crouched in a comic
attitude of terror, under the table. Such a picture satisfied the
tastes of the public of his time, and that public found nothing
incongruous in a return to the scene immediately afterward of all the
characters save the reprobate, who had gone to his reward, to hear a
description of the catastrophe from the buffoon under the table, and
platitudinously to moralize that the perfidious wretch, having been
stored away safely in the realm of Pluto and Proserpine, nothing
remained for them to do except to raise their voices in the words of
the "old song,"
_"Questo è il fin di chi fa mal:
E dei perfidi la morte
Alla vita è sempre ugual."_
"New York Musical Season, 1889-90."
[F] "Review of the New York Musical Season, 1889-90," p. 75.
[G] See "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama," chapter I.
VIII
_Choirs and Choral Music_
[Sidenote: _Choirs a touchstone of culture._]
[Sidenote: _The value of choir singing._]
No one would go far astray who should estimate the extent and
sincerity of a community's musical culture by the number of its chorus
singers. Some years ago it was said that over three hundred cities and
towns in Germany contained singing societies and orchestras devoted to
the cultivation of choral music. In the United States, where there are
comparatively a small number of instrumental musicians, there has been
a wonderful development of singing societies within the last
generation, and it is to this fact largely that the notable growth in
the country's knowledge and appreciation of high-class music is due.
No amount of mere hearing and study can compare in influence with
participation in musical performance. Music is an art which rests on
love. It is beautiful sound vitalized by feeling, and it can only be
grasped fully through man's emotional nature. There is no quicker or
surer way to get to the heart of a composition than by performing it,
and since participation in chorus singing is of necessity unselfish
and creative of sympathy, there is no better medium of musical culture
than membership in a choir. It was because he realized this that
Schumann gave the advice to all students of music: "Sing diligently in
choirs; especially the middle voices, for this will make you musical."
[Sidenote: _Singing societies and orchestras._]
[Sidenote: _Neither numbers nor wealth necessary._]
There is no community so small or so ill-conditioned that it cannot
maintain a singing society. Before a city can give sustenance to even
a small body of instrumentalists it must be large enough and rich
enough to maintain a theatre from which those instrumentalists can
derive their support. There can be no dependence upon amateurs, for
people do not study the oboe, bassoon, trombone, or double-bass for
amusement. Amateur violinists and amateur flautists there are in
plenty, but not amateur clarinetists and French-horn players; but if
the love for music exists in a community, a dozen families shall
suffice to maintain a choral club. Large numbers are therefore not
essential; neither is wealth. Some of the largest and finest choirs in
the world flourish among the Welsh miners in the United States and
Wales, fostered by a native love for the art and the national
institution called Eisteddfod.
[Sidenote: _Lines of choral culture in the United States._]
The lines on which choral culture has proceeded in the United States
are two, of which the more valuable, from an artistic point of view,
is that of the oratorio, which went out from New England. The other
originated in the German cultivation of the _Männergesang_, the
importance of which is felt more in the extent of the culture,
prompted as it is largely by social considerations, than in the music
sung, which is of necessity of a lower grade than that composed for
mixed voices. It is chiefly in the impulse which German _Männergesang_
carried into all the corners of the land, and especially the impetus
which the festivals of the German singers gave to the sections in
which they have been held for half a century, that this form of
culture is interesting.
[Sidenote: _Church and oratorio._]
[Sidenote: _Secular choirs._]
The cultivation of oratorio music sprang naturally from the Church,
and though it is now chiefly in the hands of secular societies, the
biblical origin of the vast majority of the texts used in the works
which are performed, and more especially the regular performances of
Handel's "Messiah" in the Christmastide, have left the notion, more or
less distinct, in the public mind, that oratorios are religious
functions. Nevertheless (or perhaps because of this fact) the most
successful choral concerts in the United States are those given by
oratorio societies. The cultivation of choral music which is secular
in character is chiefly in the hands of small organizations, whose
concerts are of a semi-private nature and are enjoyed by the associate
members and invited guests. This circumstance is deserving of notice
as a characteristic feature of choral music in America, though it has
no particular bearing upon this study, which must concern itself with
choral organizations, choral music, and choral performances in
general.
[Sidenote: _Amateur choirs originated in the United States._]
[Sidenote: _The size of old choirs._]
Organizations of the kind in view differ from instrumental in being
composed of amateurs; and amateur choir-singing is no older anywhere
than in the United States. Two centuries ago and more the singing of
catches and glees was a common amusement among the gentler classes in
England, but the performances of the larger forms of choral music were
in the hands of professional choristers who were connected with
churches, theatres, schools, and other public institutions. Naturally,
then, the choral bodies were small. Choirs of hundreds and thousands,
such as take part in the festivals of to-day, are a product of a later
time.
[Sidenote: _Handel's choirs._]
"When Bach and Handel wrote their Passions, Church Cantatas,
and Oratorios, they could only dream of such majestic
performances as those works receive now; and it is one of
the miracles of art that they should have written in so
masterly a manner for forces that they could never hope to
control. Who would think, when listening to the 'Hallelujah'
of 'The Messiah,' or the great double choruses of 'Israel in
Egypt,' in which the voice of the composer is 'as the voice
of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and
as the voice of many thunderings, saying, "Alleluia, for the
Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!"' that these colossal
compositions were never heard by Handel from any chorus
larger than the most modest of our church choirs? At the
last performance of 'The Messiah' at which Handel was
advertised to appear (it was for the benefit of his favorite
charity, the Foundling Hospital, on May 3, 1759--he died
before the time, however), the singers, including
principals, numbered twenty-three, while the
instrumentalists numbered thirty-three. At the first great
Handel Commemoration, in Westminster Abbey, in 1784, the
choir numbered two hundred and seventy-five, the band two
hundred and fifty; and this was the most numerous force ever
gathered together for a single performance in England up to
that time.
[Sidenote: _Choirs a century ago._]
[Sidenote: _Bach's choir._]
"In 1791 the Commemoration was celebrated by a choir of five
hundred and a band of three hundred and seventy-five. In
May, 1786, Johann Adam Hiller, one of Bach's successors as
cantor of the St. Thomas School in Leipsic, directed what
was termed a _Massenaufführung_ of 'The Messiah,' in the
Domkirche, in Berlin. His 'masses' consisted of one hundred
and eighteen singers and one hundred and eighty-six
instrumentalists. In Handel's operas, and sometimes even in
his oratorios, the _tutti_ meant, in his time, little more
than a union of all the solo singers; and even Bach's
Passion music and church cantatas, which seem as much
designed for numbers as the double choruses of 'Israel,'
were rendered in the St. Thomas Church by a ludicrously
small choir. Of this fact a record is preserved in the
archives of Leipsic. In August, 1730, Bach submitted to the
authorities a plan for a church choir of the pupils in his
care. In this plan his singers numbered twelve, there being
one principal and two ripienists in each voice; with
characteristic modesty he barely suggests a preference for
sixteen. The circumstance that in the same document he asked
for at least eighteen instrumentalists (two more if flutes
were used), taken in connection with the figures given
relative to the 'Messiah' performances, gives an insight
into the relations between the vocal and the instrumental
parts of a choral performance in those days."[H]
[Sidenote: _Proportion of voices and instruments._]
This relation has been more than reversed since then, the orchestras
at modern oratorio performances seldom being one-fifth as large as the
choir. This difference, however, is due largely to the changed
character of modern music, that of to-day treating the instruments as
independent agents of expression instead of using them chiefly to
support the voices and add sonority to the tonal mass, as was done by
Handel and most of the composers of his day.
[Sidenote: _Glee unions and male choirs._]
I omit from consideration the Glee Unions of England, and the
quartets, which correspond to them, in this country. They are not
cultivators of choral music, and the music which they sing is an
insignificant factor in culture. The male choirs, too, need not detain
us long, since it may be said without injustice that their mission is
more social than artistic. In these choirs the subdivision into parts
is, as a rule, into two tenor voices, first and second, and two bass,
first and second. In the glee unions, the effect of whose singing is
fairly well imitated by the college clubs of the United States
(pitiful things, indeed, from an artistic point of view), there is a
survival of an old element in the male alto singing above the melody
voice, generally in a painful falsetto. This abomination is unknown to
the German part-songs for men's voices, which are written normally,
but are in the long run monotonous in color for want of the variety in
timbre and register which the female voices contribute in a mixed
choir.
[Sidenote: _Women's choirs._]
There are choirs also composed exclusively of women, but they are
even more unsatisfactory than the male choirs, for the reason that the
absence of the bass voice leaves their harmony without sufficient
foundation. Generally, music for these choirs is written for three
parts, two sopranos and contralto, with the result that it hovers,
suspended like Mahomet's coffin, between heaven and earth. When a
fourth part is added it is a second contralto, which is generally
carried down to the tones that are hollow and unnatural.
[Sidenote: _Boys' choirs._]