homage only to the public scarcely needs an explanation. It is the
critic who stands between him and the public he would victimize. Much
of the disaffection between the concert-giver and the
concert-reviewer arises from the unwillingness of the latter to enlist
in a conspiracy to deceive and defraud the public. There is no need of
mincing phrases here. The critics of the newspaper press are besieged
daily with requests for notices of a complimentary character touching
persons who have no honest standing in art. They are fawned on,
truckled to, cajoled, subjected to the most seductive influences,
sometimes bribed with woman's smiles or manager's money--and why? To
win their influence in favor of good art, think you? No; to feed
vanity and greed. When a critic is found of sufficient self-respect
and character to resist all appeals and to be proof against all
temptations, who is quicker than the musician to cite against his
opinion the applause of the public over whose gullibility and
ignorance, perchance, he made merry with the critic while trying to
purchase his independence and honor?
[Sidenote: _The public an elemental force._]
[Sidenote: _Critic and public._]
[Sidenote: _Schumann and popular approval._]
It is only when musicians divide the question touching the rights and
merits of public and critic that they seem able to put a correct
estimate upon the value of popular approval. At the last the best of
them are willing, with Ferdinand Hiller, to look upon the public as an
elemental power like the weather, which must be taken as it chances to
come. With modern society resting upon the newspaper they might be
willing to view the critic in the same light; but this they will not
do so long as they adhere to the notion that criticism belongs of
right to the professional musician, and will eventually be handed over
to him. As for the critic, he may recognize the naturalness and
reasonableness of a final resort for judgment to the factor for whose
sake art is (_i.e._, the public), but he is not bound to admit its
unfailing righteousness. Upon him, so he be worthy of his office,
weighs the duty of first determining whether the appeal is taken from
a lofty purpose or a low one, and whether or not the favored tribunal
is worthy to try the case. Those who show a willingness to accept low
ideals cannot exact high ones. The influence of their applause is a
thousand-fold more injurious to art than the strictures of the most
acrid critic. A musician of Schumann's mental and moral stature could
recognize this and make it the basis of some of his most forcible
aphorisms:
"'It pleased,' or 'It did not please,' say the people; as if
there were no higher purpose than to please the people."
"The most difficult thing in the world to endure is the
applause of fools!"
[Sidenote: _Depreciation of the critic._]
[Sidenote: _Value of public opinion._]
The belief professed by many musicians--professed, not really
held--that the public can do no wrong, unquestionably grows out of a
depreciation of the critic rather than an appreciation of the critical
acumen of the masses. This depreciation is due more to the concrete
work of the critic (which is only too often deserving of condemnation)
than to a denial of the good offices of criticism. This much should be
said for the musician, who is more liable to be misunderstood and more
powerless against misrepresentation than any other artist. A line
should be drawn between mere expression of opinion and criticism. It
has been recognized for ages--you may find it plainly set forth in
Quintilian and Cicero--that in the long run the public are neither bad
judges nor good critics. The distinction suggests a thought about the
difference in value between a popular and a critical judgment. The
former is, in the nature of things, ill considered and fleeting. It is
the product of a momentary gratification or disappointment. In a much
greater degree than a judgment based on principle and precedent, such
as a critic's ought to be, it is a judgment swayed by that variable
thing called fashion--"_Qual piùm' al vento._"
[Sidenote: _Duties of the critic._]
[Sidenote: _The musician's duty toward the critic._]
But if this be so we ought plainly to understand the duties and
obligations of the critic; perhaps it is because there is much
misapprehension on this point that critics' writings have fallen under
their own condemnation. I conceive that the first, if not the sole,
office of the critic should be to guide public judgment. It is not for
him to instruct the musician in his art. If this were always borne in
mind by writers for the press it might help to soften the asperity
felt by the musician toward the critic; and possibly the musician
might then be persuaded to perform his first office toward the critic,
which is to hold up his hands while he labors to steady and dignify
public opinion. No true artist would give up years of honorable esteem
to be the object for a moment of feverish idolatry. The public are
fickle. "The garlands they twine," says Schumann, "they always pull to
pieces again to offer them in another form to the next comer who
chances to know how to amuse them better." Are such garlands worth the
sacrifice of artistic honor? If it were possible for the critic to
withhold them and offer instead a modest sprig of enduring bay, would
not the musician be his debtor?
[Sidenote: _The critic should steady public judgment._]
[Sidenote: _Taste and judgment must be achieved._]
Another thought. Conceding that the people are the elemental power
that Hiller says they are, who shall save them from the changeableness
and instability which they show with relation to music and her
votaries? Who shall bid the restless waves be still? We, in America,
are a new people, a vast hotch-potch of varied and contradictory
elements. We are engaged in conquering a continent; employed in a mad
scramble for material things; we give feverish hours to win the
comfort for our bodies that we take only seconds to enjoy; the moments
which we steal from our labors we give grudgingly to relaxation, and
that this relaxation may come quickly we ask that the agents which
produce it shall appeal violently to the faculties which are most
easily reached. Under these circumstances whence are to come the
intellectual poise, the refined taste, the quick and sure power of
analysis which must precede a correct estimate of the value of a
composition or its performance?
"A taste or judgment," said Shaftesbury, "does not come
ready formed with us into this world. Whatever principles or
materials of this kind we may possibly bring with us, a
legitimate and just taste can neither be begotten, made,
conceived, or produced without the antecedent labor and
pains of criticism."
[Sidenote: _Comparative qualifications of critic and public._]
Grant that this antecedent criticism is the province of the critic and
that he approaches even remotely a fulfilment of his mission in this
regard, and who shall venture to question the value and the need of
criticism to the promotion of public opinion? In this work the critic
has a great advantage over the musician. The musician appeals to the
public with volatile and elusive sounds. When he gets past the
tympanum of the ear he works upon the emotions and the fancy. The
public have no time to let him do more; for the rest they are willing
to refer him to the critic, whose business it is continually to hear
music for the purpose of forming opinions about it and expressing
them. The critic has both the time and the obligation to analyze the
reasons why and the extent to which the faculties are stirred into
activity. Is it not plain, therefore, that the critic ought to be
better able to distinguish the good from the bad, the true from the
false, the sound from the meretricious, than the unindividualized
multitude, who are already satisfied when they have felt the ticklings
of pleasure?
[Sidenote: _The critic's responsibilities._]
[Sidenote: _Toward the musician._]
[Sidenote: _Position and power of the newspaper._]
But when we place so great a mission as the education of public taste
before the critic, we saddle him with a vast responsibility which is
quite evenly divided between the musician and the public. The
responsibility toward the musician is not that which we are accustomed
to hear harped on by the aggrieved ones on the day after a concert. It
is toward the musician only as a representative of art, and his just
claims can have nothing of selfishness in them. The abnormal
sensitiveness of the musician to criticism, though it may excite his
commiseration and even honest pity, should never count with the critic
in the performance of a plain duty. This sensitiveness is the product
of a low state in music as well as criticism, and in the face of
improvement in the two fields it will either disappear or fall under a
killing condemnation. The power of the press will here work for good.
The newspaper now fills the place in the musician's economy which a
century ago was filled in Europe by the courts and nobility. Its
support, indirect as well as direct, replaces the patronage which
erstwhile came from these powerful ones. The evils which flow from the
changed conditions are different in extent but not in kind from the
old. Too frequently for the good of art that support is purchased by
the same crookings of "the pregnant hinges of the knee" that were once
the price of royal or noble condescension. If the tone of the press at
times becomes arrogant, it is from the same causes that raised the
voices and curled the lips of the petty dukes and princes, to flatter
whose vanity great artists used to labor.
[Sidenote: _The musician should help to elevate the standard of
criticism._]
[Sidenote: _A critic must not necessarily be a musician._]
[Sidenote: _Pedantry not wanted._]
The musician knows as well as anyone how impossible it is to escape
the press, and it is, therefore, his plain duty to seek to raise the
standard of its utterances by conceding the rights of the critic and
encouraging honesty, fearlessness, impartiality, intelligence, and
sympathy wherever he finds them. To this end he must cast away many
antiquated and foolish prejudices. He must learn to confess with
Wagner, the arch-enemy of criticism, that "blame is much more useful
to the artist than praise," and that "the musician who goes to
destruction because he is faulted, deserves destruction." He must stop
the contention that only a musician is entitled to criticise a
musician, and without abating one jot of his requirements as to
knowledge, sympathy, liberality, broad-mindedness, candor, and
incorruptibility on the part of the critic, he must quit the foolish
claim that to pronounce upon the excellence of a ragout one must be
able to cook it; if he will not go farther he must, at least, go with
the elder D'Israeli to the extent of saying that "the talent of
judgment may exist separately from the power of execution." One need
not be a composer, but one must be able to feel with a composer before
he can discuss his productions as they ought to be discussed. Not all
the writers for the press are able to do this; many depend upon
effrontery and a copious use of technical phrases to carry them
through. The musician, alas! encourages this method whenever he gets a
chance; nine times out of ten, when an opportunity to review a
composition falls to him, he approaches it on its technical side. Yet
music is of all the arts in the world the last that a mere pedant
should discuss.
But if not a mere pedant, then neither a mere sentimentalist.
[Sidenote: _Intelligence versus emotionalism._]
"If I had to choose between the merits of two classes of
hearers, one of whom had an intelligent appreciation of
music without feeling emotion; the other an emotional
feeling without an intelligent analysis, I should
unhesitatingly decide in favor of the intelligent
non-emotionalist. And for these reasons: The verdict of the
intelligent non-emotionalist would be valuable as far as it
goes, but that of the untrained emotionalist is not of the
smallest value; his blame and his praise are equally
unfounded and empty."
[Sidenote: _Personal equation._]
[Sidenote: _Exact criticism._]
So writes Dr. Stainer, and it is his emotionalist against whom I
uttered a warning in the introductory chapter of this book, when I
called him a rhapsodist and described his motive to be primarily a
desire to present himself as a person of unusually exquisite
sensibilities. Frequently the rhapsodic style is adopted to conceal a
want of knowledge, and, I fancy, sometimes also because ill-equipped
critics have persuaded themselves that criticism being worthless, what
the public need to read is a fantastic account of how music affects
them. Now, it is true that what is chiefly valuable in criticism is
what a man qualified to think and feel tells us he did think and feel
under the inspiration of a performance; but when carried too far, or
restricted too much, this conception of a critic's province lifts
personal equation into dangerous prominence in the critical activity,
and depreciates the elements of criticism, which are not matters of
opinion or taste at all, but questions of fact, as exactly
demonstrable as a problem in mathematics. In musical performance these
elements belong to the technics of the art. Granted that the critic
has a correct ear, a thing which he must have if he aspire to be a
critic at all, and the possession of which is as easily proved as that
of a dollar-bill in his pocket, the questions of justness of
intonation in a singer or instrumentalist, balance of tone in an
orchestra, correctness of phrasing, and many other things, are mere
determinations of fact; the faculties which recognize their existence
or discover their absence might exist in a person who is not "moved by
concord of sweet sounds" at all, and whose taste is of the lowest
type. It was the acoustician Euler, I believe, who said that he could
construct a sonata according to the laws of mathematics--figure one
out, that is.
[Sidenote: _The Rhapsodists._]
[Sidenote: _An English exemplar._]
Because music is in its nature such a mystery, because so little of
its philosophy, so little of its science is popularly known, there has
grown up the tribe of rhapsodical writers whose influence is most
pernicious. I have a case in mind at which I have already hinted in
this book--that of a certain English gentleman who has gained
considerable eminence because of the loveliness of the subject on
which he writes and his deftness in putting words together. On many
points he is qualified to speak, and on these he generally speaks
entertainingly. He frequently blunders in details, but it is only when
he writes in the manner exemplified in the following excerpt from his
book called "My Musical Memories," that he does mischief. The reverend
gentleman, talking about violins, has reached one that once belonged
to Ernst. This, he says, he sees occasionally, but he never hears it
more except
[Sidenote: _Ernst's violin._]
"In the night ... under the stars, when the moon is low and
I see the dark ridges of the clover hills, and rabbits and
hares, black against the paler sky, pausing to feed or
crouching to listen to the voices of the night....
"By the sea, when the cold mists rise, and hollow murmurs,
like the low wail of lost spirits, rush along the beach....
"In some still valley in the South, in midsummer. The
slate-colored moth on the rock flashes suddenly into crimson
and takes wing; the bright lizard darts timorously, and the
singing of the grasshopper--"
[Sidenote: _Mischievous writing._]
[Sidenote: _Musical sensibility and sanity._]
Well, the reader, if he has a liking for such things, may himself go
on for quantity. This is intended, I fancy, for poetical hyperbole,
but as a matter of fact it is something else, and worse. Mr. Haweis
does not hear Ernst's violin under any such improbable conditions; if
he thinks he does he is a proper subject for medical inquiry. Neither
does his effort at fine writing help us to appreciate the tone of the
instrument. He did not intend that it should, but he probably did
intend to make the reader marvel at the exquisite sensibility of his
soul to music. This is mischievous, for it tends to make the
injudicious think that they are lacking in musical appreciation,
unless they, too, can see visions and hear voices and dream fantastic
dreams when music is sounding. When such writing is popular it is
difficult to make men and women believe that they may be just as
susceptible to the influence of music as the child Mozart was to the
sound of a trumpet, yet listen to it without once feeling the need of
taking leave of their senses or wandering away from sanity. Moreover,
when Mr. Haweis says that he sees but does not hear Ernst's violin
more, he speaks most undeserved dispraise of one of the best violin
players alive, for Ernst's violin now belongs to and is played by Lady
Hallé--she that was Madame Norman-Neruda.
[Sidenote: _A place for rhapsody._]
[Sidenote: _Intelligent rhapsody._]
Is there, then, no place for rhapsodic writing in musical criticism?
Yes, decidedly. It may, indeed, at times be the best, because the
truest, writing. One would convey but a sorry idea of a composition
were he to confine himself to a technical description of it--the
number of its measures, its intervals, modulations, speed, and rhythm.
Such a description would only be comprehensible to the trained
musician, and to him would picture the body merely, not the soul. One
might as well hope to tell of the beauty of a statue by reciting its
dimensions. But knowledge as well as sympathy must speak out of the
words, so that they may realize Schumann's lovely conception when he
said that the best criticism is that which leaves after it an
impression on the reader like that which the music made on the hearer.
Read Dr. John Brown's account of one of Hallé's recitals, reprinted
from "The Scotsman," in the collection of essays entitled "Spare
Hours," if you would see how aptly a sweetly sane mind and a warm
heart can rhapsodize without the help of technical knowledge:
[Sidenote: _Dr. Brown and Beethoven._]
"Beethoven (Dr. Brown is speaking of the Sonata in D, op.
10, No. 3) begins with a trouble, a wandering and groping in
the dark, a strange emergence of order out of chaos, a wild,
rich confusion and misrule. Wilful and passionate, often
harsh, and, as it were, thick with gloom; then comes, as if
'it stole upon the air,' the burden of the theme, the still,
sad music--_Largo e mesto_--so human, so sorrowful, and yet
the sorrow overcome, not by gladness but by something
better, like the sea, after a dark night of tempest, falling
asleep in the young light of morning, and 'whispering how
meek and gentle it can be.' This likeness to the sea, its
immensity, its uncertainty, its wild, strong glory and play,
its peace, its solitude, its unsearchableness, its
prevailing sadness, comes more into our minds with this
great and deep master's works than any other."
That is Beethoven.
[Sidenote: _Apollo and the critic--a fable._]
[Sidenote: _The critic's duty to admire._]
[Sidenote: _A mediator between musician and public._]
[Sidenote: _Essential virtues._]
Once upon a time--it is an ancient fable--a critic picked out all the
faults of a great poet and presented them to Apollo. The god received
the gift graciously and set a bag of wheat before the critic with the
command that he separate the chaff from the kernels. The critic did
the work with alacrity, and turning to Apollo for his reward, received
the chaff. Nothing could show us more appositely than this what
criticism should not be. A critic's duty is to separate excellence
from defect, as Dr. Crotch says; to admire as well as to find fault.
In the proportion that defects are apparent he should increase his
efforts to discover beauties. Much flows out of this conception of his
duty. Holding it the critic will bring besides all needful knowledge a
fulness of love into his work. "Where sympathy is lacking, correct
judgment is also lacking," said Mendelssohn. The critic should be the
mediator between the musician and the public. For all new works he
should do what the symphonists of the Liszt school attempt to do by
means of programmes; he should excite curiosity, arouse interest, and
pave the way to popular comprehension. But for the old he should not
fail to encourage reverence and admiration. To do both these things he
must know his duty to the past, the present, and the future, and
adjust each duty to the other. Such adjustment is only possible if he
knows the music of the past and present, and is quick to perceive the
bent and outcome of novel strivings. He should be catholic in taste,
outspoken in judgment, unalterable in allegiance to his ideals,
unswervable in integrity.
PLATES
[Illustration: PLATE I
VIOLIN--(CLIFFORD SCHMIDT)]
[Illustration: PLATE II
VIOLONCELLO--(VICTOR HERBERT)]
[Illustration: PLATE III
PICCOLO FLUTE--(C. KURTH, JUN.)]
[Illustration: PLATE IV
OBOE--(JOSEPH ELLER)]
[Illustration: PLATE V
ENGLISH HORN--(JOSEPH ELLER)]
[Illustration: PLATE VI
BASSOON--(FEDOR BERNHARDI)]
[Illustration: PLATE VII
CLARINET--(HENRY KAISER)]
[Illustration: PLATE VIII
BASS CLARINET--(HENRY KAISER)]
[Illustration: PLATE IX
FRENCH HORN--(CARL PIEPER)]
[Illustration: PLATE X
TROMBONE--(J. PFEIFFENSCHNEIDER)]
[Illustration: PLATE XI
BASS TUBA--(ANTON REITER)]
[Illustration: PLATE XII
THE CONDUCTOR'S SCORE]
INDEX
Absolute music, 36
Academy of Music, New York, 203
Adagio, in symphony, 133
Addison, 205, 206, 208
Allegro, in symphony, 132
Allemande, 173, 174
Alto clarinet, 104
Alto, male, 260
Amadeo, 241
Ambros, August Wilhelm, 49
Antiphony, 267
Archilochus, 213
Aria, 235
Arioso, 235
Asaph, 115
Bach, C.P.E., 180, 185
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 69, 83, 148, 167, 169, 170, 171, 174, 176,
180, 181, 184, 192, 257, 259, 267, 268, 278, 281, 282, 283, 286,
287, 289;
his music, 281 _et seq._;
his technique as player, 180, 181, 184;
his choirs, 257, 259;
compared with Palestrina, 278;
"Magnificat," 283;
Mass in B minor, 283;
Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, 171;
Suites, 174, 176;
"St. Matthew Passion," 267, 278, 282, 286, 289;
Motet, "Sing ye to the Lord," 268;
"St. John Passion," 286
_Balancement_, 170
Balfe, 223
Ballade, 192
Ballet music, 152
_Balletto_, 173
Bass clarinet, 104
Bass trumpet, 81, 82
Basset horn, 82
Bassoon, 74, 82, 99, 101 _et seq._
Bastardella, La, 239
Bayreuth Festival orchestra, 81, 82
_Bebung_, 169, 170
Beethoven, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 44, 46, 47, 49, 53, 60,
62, 63, 70, 92, 94, 101, 102, 103, 106, 113, 120, 125, 131, 132,
133, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141, 146, 147, 151, 167, 182, 184, 186,
187, 193, 195, 196, 203, 208, 232, 292, 321, 322;
likenesses in his melodies, 33, 34;
unity in his works, 27, 28, 29;
his chamber music, 47;
his sonatas, 182;
his democracy, 46;
not always idiomatic, 193;
his pianoforte, 195;
his pedal effects, 196;
missal compositions, 292, 294;
his overtures, 147;
his free fantasias, 131;
his technique as a player, 186;
"Eroica" symphony, 100, 132, 136;
Fifth symphony, 28, 29, 30, 31, 92, 103, 120, 125, 133;
"Pastoral" symphony, 44, 49, 53, 62, 63, 94, 102, 132, 140, 141;
Seventh symphony, 31, 32, 132, 133;
Eighth symphony, 113;
Ninth symphony, 33, 34, 35, 94, 133, 136, 138, 305;
Sonata, op. 10, No. 3, 321;
Sonata, op. 31, No. 2, 29;
Sonata "Appassionata," 29, 30, 31;
Pianoforte concerto in G, 31;
Pianoforte concerto in E-flat, 146;
Violin concerto, 146;
"Becalmed at Sea," 60;
"Fidelio," 203, 208, 232;
Mass in D, 60, 292, 294;
Serenade, op. 8, 151
Bell chime, 74
Bellini, 203, 204, 242, 245;
"La Sonnambula," 204, 245;
"Norma," 242
Benedetti, 242
Berlin _Singakademie_, 262
Berlioz, 49, 80, 87, 89, 90, 94, 100, 102, 104, 113, 137, 138, 139,
294, 295;
"_L'idée fixe_," 137;
"Symphonie Fantastique," 137;
"Romeo and Juliet," 90, 94, 139;
Requiem, 113, 294, 295
Bizet, "Carmen," 238, 242
Boileau, 206
Bosio, 241
Boston Symphony Orchestra, 81, 82, 108
Bottesini, 94
Bourrée, 173