M. d'Indy has a sincere desire for the welfare of humanity, and he loves
the people; but he treats them with an affectionate kindness, at once
protective and tolerant; he regards them as children that must be
led.[166]
[Footnote 165: _Cours de Composition_, and _Tribune de Saint-Gervais_.]
[Footnote 166: _Cours de Composition_.]
The popular art that he extols is not an art belonging to the people,
but that of an aristocracy interested in the people. He wishes to
enlighten them, to mould them, to direct them, by means of art. Art is
the source of life; it is the spirit of progress; it gives the most
precious of possessions to the soul--liberty. And no one enjoys this
liberty more than the artist. In a lecture to the _Schola_ he said:
"What makes the name of 'artist' so splendid is that the artist is
free--absolutely free. Look about you, and tell me if from this
point of view there is any career finer than that of an artist who
is conscious of his mission? The Army? The Law? The University?
Politics?"
And then follows a rather cold appreciation of these different careers.
"There is no need to mention the excessive bureaucracy and
officialism which is the crying evil of this country. We find
everywhere submission to rules and servitude to the State. But what
government, pope, emperor, or president could oblige an artist to
think and write against his will? Liberty--that is the true wealth
and the most precious inheritance of the artist, the liberty to
think, and the liberty that no one has the power to take away from
us--that of doing our work according to the dictates of our
conscience."
Who does not feel the infectious warmth and beauty of these spirited
words? How this force of enthusiasm and sincerity must grip all young
and eager hearts. "There are two qualities," says M. d'Indy, on the last
page of _Cours de Composition_, "which a master should try to encourage
and develop in the spirit of the pupil, for without them science is
useless; these qualities are an unselfish love of art and enthusiasm for
good work." And these two virtues radiate from M. d'Indy's personality
as they do from his writings; that is his power.
But the best of his teaching lies in his life. One can never speak too
highly of his disinterested devotion for the good of art. As if it were
not enough to put all his might into his own creations, M. d'Indy gives
his time and the results of his study unsparingly to others. Franck gave
lessons in order to be able to live; M. d'Indy gives them for the
pleasure of instructing, and to serve his art and aid artists. He
directs schools, and accepts and almost seeks out the most thankless,
though the most necessary, kinds of teaching. Or he will apply himself
devoutly to the study of the past and the resuscitation of some old
master. And he seems to take so much pleasure in training young minds to
appreciate music, or in repairing the injustices of history to some fine
but forgotten musician, that he almost forgets about himself. To what
work or to what worker, worthy of interest, or seeming to be so, has he
ever refused his advice and help? I have known his kindness personally,
and I shall always be sincerely grateful for it.
His devotion and his faith have not been in vain. The name of M. d'Indy
will be associated in history, not only with fine works, but with great
works: with the _Société Nationale de Musique_, of which he is
president; with the _Schola Cantorum_, which he founded with Charles
Bordes, and which he directs; with the young French school of music, a
group of skilful artists and innovators, to whom he is a kind of elder
brother, giving them encouragement by his example and helping them
through the first hard years of struggle; and, lastly, with an awakening
of music in Europe, with a movement which, after the death of Wagner and
Franck, attracted the interest of the world by its revival of the art of
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. M. d'Indy has been the chief
representative of all this artistic evolution in France. By his deeds,
by his example, and by his spirit, he was among the first to stir up
interest in the musical education of France to-day. He has done more
for the advancement of our music than the entire official teaching of
the Conservatoires A day will come when, by the force of things and in
spite of all resistance, such a man will take the place that belongs to
him at the head of the organisation of music in France.
* * * * *
I have tried to unearth M. d'Indy's strongest characteristics, and I
think I have found them in his faith and in his activity, I am only too
aware of the pitfalls that have beset me in this attempt; it is always
difficult to criticise a man's personality, and it is most difficult
when he is alive and still in the midst of his development. Every man is
a mystery, not only to others, but to himself. There is something very
presumptuous about pretending to know anyone who does not quite know
himself. And yet one cannot live without forming opinions; it is a
necessity of life. The people we see and know (or say we know), our
friends, and those we love, are never what we think them. Often they are
not at all like the portrait we conjure up; for we walk among the
phantoms of our hearts. But still one must go on having opinions, and go
on constructing and creating things, if we do not want to become
impotent through inertia. Error is better than doubt, provided we err in
good faith; and the main thing is to speak out the thing that one really
feels and believes. I hope M. d'Indy will forgive me if I have gone far
wrong, and that he will see in these pages a sincere effort to
understand him and a keen sympathy with himself, and even with his
ideas, though I do not always share them. But I have always thought that
in life a man's opinions go for very little, and that the only thing
that matters is the man himself. Freedom of spirit is the greatest
happiness one can know; one must be sorry for those who have not got it.
And there is a secret pleasure in rendering homage to another's splendid
creed, even though it is one that we do not ourselves profess.
RICHARD STRAUSS
The composer of _Heldenleben_ is no longer unknown to Parisians. Every
year at Colonne's or Chevillard's we see his tall, thin silhouette
reappear in the conductor's desk. There he is with his abrupt and
imperious gestures, his wan and anxious face, his wonderfully clear
eyes, restless and penetrating at the same time, his mouth shaped like a
child's, a moustache so fair that it is nearly white, and curly hair
growing like a crown above his high round forehead.
I should like to try to sketch here the strange and arresting
personality of the man who in Germany is considered the inheritor of
Wagner's genius--the man who has had the audacity to write, after
Beethoven, an Heroic Symphony, and to imagine himself the hero.
* * * * *
Richard Strauss is thirty-four years old.[167] He was born in Munich on
11 June, 1864. His father, a well-known virtuoso, was first horn in the
Royal orchestra, and his mother was a daughter of the brewer Pschorr. He
was brought up among musical surroundings. At four years old he played
the piano, and at six he composed little dances, _Lieder_, sonatas, and
even overtures for the orchestra. Perhaps this extreme artistic
precocity has had something to do with the feverish character of his
talents, by keeping his nerves in a state of tension and unduly exciting
his mind. At school he composed choruses for some of Sophocles'
tragedies. In 1881, Hermann Levi had one of the young collegian's
symphonies performed by his orchestra. At the University he spent his
time in writing instrumental music. Then Bülow and Radecke made him play
in Berlin; and Bülow, who became very fond of him, had him brought to
Meiningen as _Musikdirector_. From 1886 to 1889 he held the same post at
the _Hoftheater_ in Munich. From 1889 to 1894 he was _Kapellmeister_ at
the _Hoftheater_ in Weimar. He returned to Munich in 1894 as
_Hofkapellmeister_, and in 1897 succeeded Hermann Levi. Finally, he left
Munich for Berlin, where at present he conducts the orchestra of the
Royal Opera.
[Footnote 167: This essay was written in 1899.]
Two things should be particularly noted in his life: the influence of
Alexander Ritter--to whom he has shown much gratitude--and his travels
in the south of Europe. He made Ritter's acquaintance in 1885. This
musician was a nephew of Wagner's, and died some years ago. His music is
practically unknown in France, though he wrote two well-known operas,
_Fauler Hans_ and _Wem die Krone_? and was the first composer, according
to Strauss, to introduce Wagnerian methods into the _Lied_. He is often
discussed in Bülow's and Liszt's letters. "Before I met him," says
Strauss, "I had been brought up on strictly classical lines; I had lived
entirely on Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and had just been studying
Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms. It is to Ritter alone I am
indebted for my knowledge of Liszt and Wagner; it was he who showed me
the importance of the writings and works of these two masters in the
history of art. It was he who by years of lessons and kindly counsel
made me a musician of the future (_Zukunftsmusiker_), and set my feet on
a road where now I can walk unaided and alone. It was he also who
initiated me in Schopenhauer's philosophy."
The second influence, that of the South, dates from April, 1886, and
seems to have left an indelible impression upon Strauss. He visited Rome
and Naples for the first time, and came back with a symphonic fantasia
called _Aus Italien_. In the spring of 1892, after a sharp attack of
pneumonia, he travelled for a year and a half in Greece, Egypt, and
Sicily. The tranquillity of these favoured countries filled him with
never-ending regret. The North has depressed him since then, "the
eternal grey of the North and its phantom shadows without a sun."[168]
When I saw him at Charlottenburg, one chilly April day, he told me with
a sigh that he could compose nothing in winter, and that he longed for
the warmth and light of Italy. His music is infected by that longing;
and it makes one feel how his spirit suffers in the gloom of Germany,
and ever yearns for the colours, the laughter, and the joy of the South.
[Footnote 168: Nietzsche.]
Like the musician that Nietzsche dreamed of,[169] he seems "to hear
ringing in his ears the prelude of a deeper, stronger music, perhaps a
more wayward and mysterious music; a music that is super-German, which,
unlike other music, would not die away, nor pale, nor grow dull beside
the blue and wanton sea and the clear Mediterranean sky; a music
super-European, which would hold its own even by the dark sunsets of the
desert; a music whose soul is akin to the palm trees; a music that knows
how to live and move among great beasts of prey, beautiful and solitary;
a music whose supreme charm is its ignorance of good and evil. Only from
time to time perhaps there would flit over it the longing of the sailor
for home, golden shadows, and gentle weaknesses; and towards it would
come flying from afar the thousand tints of the setting of a moral world
that men no longer understood; and to these belated fugitives it would
extend its hospitality and sympathy." But it is always the North, the
melancholy of the North, and "all the sadness of mankind," mental
anguish, the thought of death, and the tyranny of life, that come and
weigh down afresh his spirit hungering for light, and force it into
feverish speculation and bitter argument. Perhaps it is better so.
[Footnote 169: _Beyond Good and Evil_, 1886. I hope I may be excused for
introducing Nietzsche here, but his thoughts seem constantly to be
reflected in Strauss, and to throw much light on the soul of modern
Germany.]
* * * * *
Richard Strauss is both a poet and a musician. These two natures live
together in him, and each strives to get the better of the other. The
balance is not always well maintained; but when he does succeed in
keeping it by sheer force of will the union of these two talents,
directed to the same end, produces an effect more powerful than any
known since Wagner's time. Both natures have their source in a mind
filled with heroic thoughts--a rarer possession, I consider, than a
talent for either music or poetry. There are other great musicians in
Europe; but Strauss is something more than a great musician, for he is
able to create a hero.
When one talks of heroes one is thinking of drama. Dramatic art is
everywhere in Strauss's music, even in works that seem least adapted to
it, such as his _Lieder_ and compositions of pure music. It is most
evident in his symphonic poems, which are the most important part of his
work. These poems are: _Wanderers Sturmlied_ (1885), _Aus Italien_
(1886), _Macbeth_ (1887), _Don Juan_ (1888), _Tod und Verklärung_
(1889), _Guntram_ (1892-93), _Till Eulenspiegel_ (1894), _Also sprach
Zarathustra_ (1895), _Don Quixote_ (1897), and _Heldenleben_
(1898).[170]
[Footnote 170: This article was written in 1899. Since then the
_Sinfonia Domestica_, has been produced, and will be noticed in the
essay _French and German Music_.]
I shall not say much about the four first works, where the mind and
manner of the artist is taking shape. The _Wanderers Sturmlied_ (the
song of a traveller during a storm, op. 14) is a vocal sextette with an
orchestral accompaniment, whose subject is taken from a poem of
Goethe's. It was written before Strauss met Ritter, and its construction
is after the manner of Brahms, and shows a rather affected thought and
style. _Aus Italien_ (op. 16) is an exuberant picture of impressions of
his tour in Italy, of the ruins at Rome, the seashore at Sorrento, and
the life of the Italian people. _Macbeth_ (op. 23) gives us a rather
undistinguished series of musical interpretations of poetical subjects.
_Don Juan_ (op. 20) is much finer, and translates Lenau's poem into
music with bombastic vigour, showing us the hero who dreams of grasping
all the joy of the world, and how he fails, and dies after he has lost
faith in everything.
_Tod und Verklärung_ ("Death and Transfiguration," op. 24[171]) marks
considerable progress in Strauss's thought and style. It is still one of
the most stirring of Strauss's works, and the one that is conceived with
the most perfect unity. It was inspired by a poem of Alexander Ritter's,
and I will give you an idea of its subject.
[Footnote 171: Composed in 1889, and performed for the first time at
Eisenach in 1890.]
In a wretched room, lit only by a nightlight, a sick man lies in bed.
Death draws near him in the midst of awe-inspiring silence. The unhappy
man seems to wander in his mind at times, and to find comfort in past
memories. His life passes before his eyes: his innocent childhood, his
happy youth, the struggles of middle age, and his efforts to attain the
splendid goal of his desires, which always eludes him. He had been
striving all his life for this goal, and at last thought it was within
reach, when Death, in a voice of thunder, cries, suddenly, "Stop!" And
even now in his agony he struggles desperately, being set upon
realising his dream; but the hand of Death is crushing life out of his
body, and night is creeping on. Then resounds in the heavens the promise
of that happiness which he had vainly sought for on earth--Redemption
and Transfiguration.
Richard Strauss's friends protested vigorously against this orthodox
ending; and Seidl,[1] Jorisenne,[2] and Wilhelm Mauke[3] pretended that
the subject was something loftier, that it was the eternal struggle of
the soul against its lower self and its deliverance by means of art. I
shall not enter into that discussion, though I think that such a cold
and commonplace symbolism is much less interesting than the struggle
with death, which one feels in every note of the composition. It is a
classical work, comparatively speaking; broad and majestic and almost
like Beethoven in style. The realism of the subject in the
hallucinations of the dying man, the shiverings of fever, the throbbing
of the veins, and the despairing agony, is transfigured by the purity of
the form in which it is cast. It is realism after the manner of the
symphony in C minor, where Beethoven argues with Destiny. If all
suggestion of a programme is taken away, the symphony still remains
intelligible and impressive by its harmonious expression of feeling.
[1] _Richard Strauss, eine Charakterskizze_, 1896, Prague.]
[2] _R. Strauss, Essai critique et biologique_, 1898, Brussels.]
[3] _Der Musikführer: Tod und Verklärung_, Frankfort.]
Many German musicians think that Strauss has reached the highest point
of his work in _Tod und Verklärung_. But I am far from agreeing with
them, and believe myself that his art has developed enormously as the
result of it. It is true it is the summit of one period of his life,
containing the essence of all that is best in it; but _Heldenleben_
marks the second period, and is its corner-stone. How the force and
fulness of his feeling has grown since that first period! But he has
never re-found the delicate and melodious purity of soul and youthful
grace of his earlier work, which still shines out in _Guntram_, and is
then effaced.
* * * * *
Strauss has directed Wagner's dramas at Weimar since 1889. While
breathing their atmosphere he turned his attention to the theatre, and
wrote the libretto of his opera _Guntram_. Illness interrupted his work,
and he was in Egypt when he took it up again. The music of the first act
was written between December, 1892, and February, 1893, while travelling
between Cairo and Luxor; the second act was finished in June, 1893, in
Sicily; and the third act early in September, 1893, in Bavaria. There
is, however, no trace of an oriental atmosphere in this music. We find
rather the melodies of Italy, the reflection of a mellow light, and a
resigned calm. I feel in it the languid mind of the convalescent, almost
the heart of a young girl whose tears are ready to flow, though she is
smiling a little at her own sad dreams. It seems to me that Strauss must
have a secret affection for this work, which owes its inspiration to
the undefinable impressions of convalescence. His fever fell asleep in
it, and certain passages are full of the caressing touch of nature, and
recall Berlioz's _Les Troyens_. But too often the music is superficial
and conventional, and the tyranny of Wagner makes itself felt--a rare
enough occurrence in Strauss's other works. The poem is interesting;
Strauss has put much of himself into it, and one is conscious of the
crisis that unsettled his broad-minded but often self-satisfied and
inconsistent ideas.
Strauss had been reading an historical study of an order of
_Minnesänger_ and mystics, which was founded in Austria in the Middle
Ages to fight against the corruption of art, and to save souls by the
beauty of song. They called themselves _Streiter der Liebe_ ("Warriors
of Love"). Strauss, who was imbued at that time with neo-Christian ideas
and the influence of Wagner and Tolstoy, was carried away by the
subject, and took Guntram from the _Streiter der Liebe_, and made him
his hero.
The action takes place in the thirteenth century, in Germany. The first
act gives us a glade near a little lake. The country people are in
revolt against the nobles, and have just been repulsed. Guntram and his
master Friedhold distribute alms among them, and the band of defeated
men then take flight into the woods. Left alone, Guntram begins to muse
on the delights of springtime and the innocent awakening of Nature. But
the thought of the misery that its beauty hides weighs upon him. He
thinks of men's evil doing, of human suffering, and of civil war. He
gives thanks to Christ for having led him to this unhappy country,
kisses the cross, and decides to go to the court of the tyrant who is
the cause of all the trouble, and make known to him the Divine
revelation. At that moment Freihild appears. She is the wife of Duke
Robert, who is the cruellest of all the nobles, and she is horrified by
all that is happening around her; life seems hateful to her, and she
wishes to drown herself. But Guntram prevents her; and the pity that her
beauty and trouble had at first aroused changes unconsciously into love
when he recognises her as the beloved princess and sole benefactress of
the unhappy people. He tells her that God has sent him to her for her
salvation. Then he goes to the castle, where he believes himself to be
sent on the double mission of saving the people--and Freihild.
In the second act, the princes celebrate their victory in the Duke's
castle. After some pompous talk on the part of the official
_Minnesänger_, Guntram is invited to sing. Discouraged beforehand by the
wickedness of his audience, and feeling that he can sing to no purpose,
he hesitates and is on the point of leaving them. But Freihild's sadness
holds him back, and for her sake he sings. His song is at first calm and
measured, and expresses the melancholy that fills him in the midst of a
feast which celebrates triumphant power. He then loses himself in
dreams, and sees the gentle figure of Peace moving among the company. He
describes her lovingly and with youthful tenderness, which approaches
ecstasy as he draws a picture of the ideal life of humanity made free.
Then he paints War and Death, and the disorder and darkness that they
spread over the world. He addresses himself directly to the Prince; he
shows him his duty, and how the love of his people would be his
recompense; he threatens him with the hate of the unhappy who are driven
to despair; and, finally, he urges the nobles to rebuild the towns, to
liberate their prisoners, and to come to the aid of their subjects. His
song is ended amid the profound emotion of his audience. Duke Robert,
feeling the danger of these outspoken words, orders his men to seize the
singer; but the vassals side with Guntram. At this juncture news is
brought that the peasants have renewed the attack. Robert calls his men
to arms, but Guntram, who feels that he will be supported by those
around him, orders Robert's arrest. The Duke draws his sword, but
Guntram kills him. Then a sudden change comes over Guntram's spirit,
which is explained in the third act. In the scene that follows he speaks
no word, his sword falls from his hand, and he lets his enemies again
assume their authority over the crowd; he allows himself to be bound and
taken to prison, while the band of nobles noisily disperses to fight
against the rebels. But Freihild is full of an unaffected and almost
savage joy at her deliverance by Guntram's sword. Love for Guntram fills
her heart, and her one desire is to save him.
The third act takes place in the prison of the château; and it is a
surprising, uncertain, and very curious act. It is not a logical result
of the action that has preceded it. One feels a sudden commotion in the
poet's ideas, a crisis of feeling which disturbed him even as he wrote,
and a difficulty which he did not succeed in solving. The new light
towards which he was beginning to move appears very clearly. Strauss was
too advanced in the composition of his work to escape the neo-Christian
renouncement which had to finish the drama; he could only have avoided
that by completely remodelling his characters. So Guntram rejects
Freihild's love. He sees he has fallen, even as the others, under the
curse of sin. He had preached charity to others when he himself was full
of egoism; he had killed Robert rather to satisfy his instinctive and
animal jealousy than to deliver the people from a tyrant. So he
renounces his desires, and expiates the sin of being alive by retirement
from the world. But the interest of the act does not lie in this
anticipated _dénouement_, which since _Parsifal_ has become rather
common; it lies in another scene, which has evidently been inserted at
the last moment, and which is uncomfortably out of tune with the action,
though in a singularly grand way. This scene gives us a dialogue between
Guntram and his former companion, Friedhold.[172]
[Footnote 172: Some people have tried to see Alexander Ritter's thoughts
in Friedhold, as they have seen Strauss's thoughts in Guntram.]