to-day are devotees of Brahms and Wagner, and everything of theirs seems
good to them; they have no discrimination, and, while they applaud
Wagner and encore Brahms, they are, in their hearts, not only frivolous,
but sentimental and gross. The most striking thing about this public is
their cult of power since Wagner's death. When listening to the end of
_Die Meistersinger_ I felt how the haughty music of the great march
reflected the spirit of this military nation of shop-keepers, bursting
with rude health and complacent pride.
The most remarkable thing of all is that German artists are gradually
losing the power of understanding their own splendid classics and, in
particular, Beethoven. Strauss, who is very shrewd and knows exactly his
own limitations, does not willingly enter Beethoven's domain, though he
feels his spirit in a much more living way than any of the other German
_Kapellmeister_. At the Strasburg festival he contented himself with
conducting, besides his own symphony, the _Oberon Overture_ and a Mozart
concerto. These performances were interesting; a personality like his
is so curious that it is quite amusing to find it coming out in the
works he conducts. But how Mozart's features took on an offhand and
impatient air; and how the rhythms were accentuated at the expense of
the melodic grace. In this case, however, Strauss was dealing with a
concerto, where a certain liberty of interpretation is allowed. But
Mahler, who was less discreet, ventured upon conducting the whole of the
Beethoven concert. And what can be said of that evening? I will not
speak of the _Concerto for pianoforte, in G major_, which Busoni played
with a brilliant and superficial execution that took away all breadth
from the work; it is enough to note that his interpretation was
enthusiastically received by the public. German artists were not
responsible for that performance; but they were responsible for that
fine cycle of _Lieder, An die entfernte Geliebte_, which was bellowed by
a Berlin tenor at the top of his voice, and for the _Choral Symphony_,
which was, for me, an unspeakable performance. I could never have
believed that a German orchestra conducted by the chief _Kapellmeister_
of Austria could have committed such misdeeds. The time was incredible:
the scherzo had no life in it; the adagio was taken in hot haste without
leaving a moment for dreams; and there were pauses in the finale which
destroyed the development of the theme and broke the thread of its
thought. The different parts of the orchestra fell over one another, and
the whole was uncertain and lacking in balance. I once severely
criticised the neo-classic stiffness of Weingartner; but I should have
appreciated his healthy equilibrium and his effort to be exact after
hearing this neurasthenic rendering of Beethoven. No; we can no longer
hear Beethoven and Mozart in Germany to-day, we can only hear Mahler and
Strauss. Well, let it be so. We will resign ourselves. The past is past.
Let us leave Beethoven and Mozart, and speak of Mahler and Strauss.
* * * * *
Gustav Mahler is forty-six years old.[193] He is a kind of legendary
type of German musician, rather like Schubert, and half-way between a
school-master and a clergyman. He has a long, clean-shaven face, a
pointed skull covered with untidy hair, a bald forehead, a prominent
nose, eyes that blink behind his glasses, a large mouth and thin lips,
hollow cheeks, a rather tired and sarcastic expression, and a general
air of asceticism. He is excessively nervous, and silhouette caricatures
of him, representing him as a cat in convulsions in the conductor's
desk, are very popular in Germany.
[Footnote 193: This essay was written in 1905.]
He was born at Kalischt in Bohemia, and became a pupil of Anton
Bruckner at Vienna, and afterwards _Hofoperndirecktor_ ("Director of the
Opera") there. I hope one day to study this artist's work in greater
detail, for he is second only to Strauss as a composer in Germany, and
the principal musician of South Germany.
His most important work is a suite of symphonies; and it was the fifth
symphony of this suite that he conducted at the Strasburg festival. The
first symphony, called _Titan_, was composed in 1894. The construction
of the whole is on a massive and gigantic scale; and the melodies on
which these works are built up are like rough-hewn blocks of not very
good quality, but imposing by reason of their size, and by the obstinate
repetition of their rhythmic design, which is maintained as if it were
an obsession. This heaping-up of music both crude and learned in style,
with harmonies that are sometimes clumsy and sometimes delicate, is
worth considering on account of its bulk. The orchestration is heavy and
noisy; and the brass dominates and roughly gilds the rather sombre
colouring of the great edifice. The underlying idea of the composition
is neo-classic, and rather spongy and diffuse. Its harmonic structure is
composite: we get the style of Bach, Schubert, and Mendelssohn fighting
that of Wagner and Bruckner; and, by a decided liking for canon form, it
even recalls some of Franck's work. The whole is like a showy and
expensive collection of bric-à-brac.
The chief characteristic of these symphonies is, generally speaking, the
use of choral singing with the orchestra. "When I conceive a great
musical painting (_ein grosses musikalisches Gemälde_)," says Mahler,
"there always comes a moment when I feel forced to employ speech (_das
Wort_) as an aid to the realisation of my musical conception."
Mahler has got some striking effects from this combination of voices and
instruments, and he did well to seek inspiration in this direction from
Beethoven and Liszt. It is incredible that the nineteenth century should
have put this combination to so little use; for I think the gain may be
poetical as well as musical.
In the _Second Symphony in C minor_, the first three parts are purely
instrumental; but in the fourth part the voice of a contralto is heard
singing these sad and simple words:
"_Der Mensch liegt in grösster Noth!
Der Mensch liegt in grösster Pein!
Je lieber möcht ich im Himmel sein_!"[194]
The soul strives to reach God with the passionate cry:
"_Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott_."[195]
Then there is a symphonic episode (_Der Rufer in der Wüste_), and we
hear "the voice of one crying in the wilderness" in fierce and anguished
tones. There is an apocalyptic finale where the choir sing Klopstock's
beautiful ode on the promise of the Resurrection:
"_Aufersteh'n, ja, aufersteh'n wirst du, mein Staub, nach
kurzer Ruh_!"[196]
The law is proclaimed with:
"_Was entstanden ist, dass mus vergehen,
Was vergangen, auferstehen_!"[197]
[Footnote 194: Man lies in greatest misery; Man lies in greatest pain; I
would I were in Heaven!]
[Footnote 195: I come from God, and shall to God return.]
[Footnote 196: Thou wilt rise again, thou wilt rise again, O my dust,
after a little rest.]
[Footnote 197: What is born must pass away; What has passed away must
rise again.]
And all the orchestra, the choirs, and the organ, join in the hymn of
Eternal Life.
In the _Third Symphony_, known as _Ein Sommermorgentraum_ ("A Summer
Morning's Dream"), the first and the last parts are for the orchestra
alone; the fourth part contains some of the best of Mahler's music, and
is an admirable setting of Nietzsche's words:
"_O Mensch! O Mensch! Gib Acht! gib Acht!
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht_?"[198]
[Footnote 198:
O Man! O Man! Have care! Have care!
What says dark midnight?
The fifth part is a gay and stirring chorus founded on a popular legend.
In the _Fourth Symphony in G major_, the last part alone is sung, and is
of an almost humorous character, being a sort of childish description of
the joys of Paradise.
In spite of appearances, Mahler refuses to connect these choral
symphonies with programme-music. Without doubt he is right, if he means
that his music has its own value outside any sort of programme; but
there is no doubt that it is always the expression of a definite
_Stimmung_, of a conscious mood; and the fact is, whether he likes it or
not, that _Stimmung_ gives an interest to his music far beyond that of
the music itself. His personality seems to me far more interesting than
his art.
This is often the case with artists in Germany; Hugo Wolf is another
example of it. Mahler's case is really rather curious. When one studies
his works one feels convinced that he is one of those rare types in
modern Germany--an egoist who feels with sincerity. Perhaps his emotions
and his ideas do not succeed in expressing themselves in a really
sincere and personal way; for they reach us through a cloud of
reminiscences and an atmosphere of classicism. I cannot help thinking
that Mahler's position as director of the Opera, and his consequent
saturation in the music that his calling condemns him to study, is the
cause of this. There is nothing more fatal to a creative spirit than too
much reading, above all when it does not read of its own free will, but
is forced to absorb an excessive amount of nourishment, the larger part
of which is indigestible. In vain may Mahler try to defend the sanctuary
of his mind; it is violated by foreign ideas coming from all parts, and
instead of being able to drive them away, his conscience, as conductor
of the orchestra, obliges him to receive them and almost embrace them.
With his feverish activity, and burdened as he is with heavy tasks, he
works unceasingly and has no time to dream. Mahler will only be Mahler
when he is able to leave his administrative work, shut up his scores,
retire within himself, and wait patiently until he has become himself
again--if it is not too late.
His _Fifth Symphony_, which he conducted at Strasburg, convinced me,
more than all his other works, of the urgent necessity of adopting this
course. In this composition he has not allowed himself the use of the
choruses, which were one of the chief attractions of his preceding
symphonies. He wished to prove that he could write pure music, and to
make his claim surer he refused to have any explanation of his
composition published in the concert programme, as the other composers
in the festival had done; he wished it, therefore, to be judged from a
strictly musical point of view. It was a dangerous ordeal for him.
Though I wished very much to admire the work of a composer whom I held
in such esteem, I felt it did not come out very well from the test. To
begin with, this symphony is excessively long--it lasts an hour and a
half--though there is no apparent justification for its proportions. It
aims at being colossal, and mainly achieves emptiness. The _motifs_ are
more than familiar. After a funeral march of commonplace character and
boisterous movement, where Beethoven seems to be taking lessons from
Mendelssohn, there comes a scherzo, or rather a Viennese waltz, where
Chabrier gives old Bach a helping hand. The adagietto has a rather sweet
sentimentality. The rondo at the end is presented rather like an idea of
Franck's, and is the best part of the composition; it is carried out in
a spirit of mad intoxication and a chorale rises up from it with
crashing joy; but the effect of the whole is lost in repetitions that
choke it and make it heavy. Through all the work runs a mixture of
pedantic stiffness and incoherence; it moves along in a desultory way,
and suffers from abrupt checks in the course of its development and from
superfluous ideas that break in for no reason at all, with the result
that the whole hangs fire.
Above all, I fear Mahler has been sadly hypnotised by ideas about
power--ideas that are getting to the head of all German artists to-day.
He seems to have an undecided mind, and to combine sadness and irony
with weakness and impatience, to be a Viennese musician striving after
Wagnerian grandeur. No one expresses the grace of _Ländler_ and dainty
waltzes and mournful reveries better than he; and perhaps no one is
nearer the secret of Schubert's moving and voluptuous melancholy; and it
is Schubert he recalls at times, both in his good qualities and certain
of his faults. But he wants to be Beethoven or Wagner. And he is wrong;
for he lacks their balance and gigantic force. One saw that only too
well when he was conducting the _Choral Symphony_.
But whatever he may be, or whatever disappointment he may have brought
me at Strasburg, I will never allow myself to speak lightly or
scoffingly of him. I am confident that a musician with so lofty an aim
will one day create a work worthy of himself.
* * * * *
Richard Strauss is a complete contrast to Mahler. He has always the air
of a heedless and discontented child. Tall and slim, rather elegant and
supercilious, he seems to be of a more refined race than most other
German artists of to-day. Scornful, _blasé_ with success, and very
exacting, his bearing towards other musicians has nothing of Mahler's
winning modesty. He is not less nervous than Mahler, and while he is
conducting the orchestra he seems to indulge in a frenzied dance which
follows the smallest details of his music--music that is as agitated as
limpid water into which a stone has been flung. But he has a great
advantage over Mahler; he knows how to rest after his labours. Both
excitable and sleepy by nature, his highly-strung nerves are
counterbalanced by his indolence, and there is in the depths of him a
Bavarian love of luxury. I am quite sure that when his hours of intense
living are over, after he has spent an excessive amount of energy, he
has hours when he is only partially alive. One then sees his eyes with a
vague and sleepy look in them; and he is like old Rameau, who used to
walk about for hours as if he were an automaton, seeing nothing and
thinking of nothing.
At Strasburg Strauss conducted his _Sinfonia Domestica_, whose programme
seems boldly to defy reason, and even good taste. In the symphony he
pictures himself with his wife and his boy (_"Meiner lieben Frau und
unserm Jungen gewidmet"_). "I do not see," said Strauss, "why I should
not compose a symphony about myself; I find myself quite as interesting
as Napoleon or Alexander." Some people have replied that everybody else
might not share his interest. But I shall not use that argument; it is
quite possible for an artist of Strauss's worth to keep us entertained.
What grates upon me more is the way in which he speaks of himself. The
disproportion between his subject and the means he has of expressing it
is too strong. Above all, I do not like this display of the inner and
secret self. There is a want of reticence in this _Sinfonia Domestica_.
The fireside, the sitting-room, and the bedchamber, are open to
all-comers. Is this the family feeling of Germany to-day? I admit that
the first time I heard the work it jarred upon me for purely moral
reasons, in spite of the liking I have for its composer. But afterwards
I altered my first opinion, and found the music admirable. Do you know
the programme?
The first part shows you three people: a man, a woman, and a child. The
man is represented by three themes: a _motif_ full of spirit and humour,
a thoughtful _motif_, and a _motif_ expressing eager and enthusiastic
action. The woman has only two themes: one expressing caprice, and the
other love and tenderness. The child has a single _motif_, which is
quiet, innocent, and not very defined in character; its real value is
not shown until it is developed.... Which of the two parents is he like?
The family sit round him and discuss him. "He is just like his father"
(_Ganz der Papa_), say the aunts. "He is the image of his mother" (_Ganz
die Mama_), say the uncles.
The second part of the symphony is a scherzo which represents the child
at play; there are terribly noisy games, games of Herculean gaiety, and
you can hear the parents talking all over the house. How far we seem
from Schumann's good little children and their simple-hearted families!
At last the child is put to bed; they rock him to sleep, and the clock
strikes seven. Night comes. There are dreams and some uneasy sleep. Then
a love scene.... The clock strikes seven in the morning. Everybody wakes
up, and there is a merry discussion. We hear a double fugue in which the
theme of the man and the theme of the woman contradict each other with
exasperating and ludicrous obstinacy; and the man has the last word.
Finally there is the apotheosis of the child and family life.
Such a programme serves rather to lead the listener astray than to guide
him. It spoils the idea of the work by emphasising its anecdotal and
rather comic side. For without doubt the comic side is there, and
Strauss has warned us in vain that he did not wish to make an amusing
picture of married life, but to praise the sacredness of marriage and
parenthood; but he possesses such a strong vein of humour that it cannot
help getting the better of him. There is nothing really grave or
religious about the music, except when he is speaking of the child; and
then the rough merriment of the man grows gentle, and the irritating
coquetry of the woman becomes exquisitely tender. Otherwise Strauss's
satire and love of jesting get the upper hand, and reach an almost epic
gaiety and strength.
But one must forget this unwise programme, which borders on bad taste
and at times on something even worse. When one has succeeded in
forgetting it one discovers a well-proportioned symphony in four
parts--Allegro, Scherzo, Adagio, and Finale in fugue form--and one of
the finest works in contemporary music. It has the passionate
exuberance of Strauss's preceding symphony, _Heldenleben_, but it is
superior in artistic construction; one may even say that it is Strauss's
most perfect work since _Tod und Verklärung_ ("Death and
Transfiguration"), with a richness of colouring and technical skill that
_Tod und Verklärung_ did not possess. One is dazzled by the beauty of an
orchestration which is light and pliant, and capable of expressing
delicate shades of feeling; and this struck me the more after the solid
massiveness of Mahler's orchestration, which is like heavy unleavened
bread. With Strauss everything is full of life and sinew, and there is
nothing wasted. Possibly the first setting-out of his themes has rather
too schematic a character; and perhaps the melodic utterance is rather
restricted and not very lofty; but it is very personal, and one finds it
impossible to disassociate his personality from these vigorous themes
that burn with youthful ardour, and cut the air like arrows, and twist
themselves in freakish arabesques. In the adagio depicting night, there
is, though in very bad taste, much seriousness and reverie and stirring
emotion. The fugue at the end is of astonishing sprightliness; and is a
mixture of colossal jesting and heroic pastoral poetry worthy of
Beethoven, whose style it recalls in the breadth of its development. The
final apotheosis is filled with life; its joy makes the heart beat. The
most extravagant harmonic effects and the most abominable discords are
softened and almost disappear in the wonderful combination of _timbres_.
It is the work of a strong and sensual artist, the true heir of the
Wagner of the _Meistersinger_.
* * * * *
Upon the whole, these works make one see that, in spite of their
apparent audacity, Strauss and Mahler are beginning to make a
surreptitious retreat from their early standpoint, and are abandoning
the symphony with a programme. Strauss's last work will lose nothing by
calling itself quite simply _Sinfonia Domestica_, without adding any
further information. It is a true symphony; and the same may be said of
Mahler's composition. But Strauss and Mahler are already reforming
themselves, and are coming back to the model of the classic symphony.
But there are more important conclusions to be drawn from a hearing of
this kind. The first is that Strauss's talent is becoming more and more
exceptional in the music of his country. With all his faults, which are
considerable, Strauss stands alone in his warmth of imagination, in his
unquenchable spontaneity and perpetual youth. And his knowledge and his
art are growing every day in the midst of other German art which is
growing old. German music in general is showing some grave symptoms. I
will not dwell on its neurasthenia, for it is passing through a crisis
which will teach it wisdom; but I fear, nevertheless, that this
excessive nervous excitement will be followed by torpor. What is really
disquieting is that, in spite of all the talent that still abounds,
Germany is fast losing her chief musical endowments. Her melodic charm
has nearly disappeared. One could search the music of Strauss, Mahler,
or Hugo Wolf, without finding a melody of any real value, or of any true
originality, outside its application to a text, or a literary idea, and
its harmonic development. And besides that, German music is daily losing
its intimate spirit; there are still traces of this spirit in Wolf,
thanks to his exceptionally unhappy life; but there is very little of it
in Mahler, in spite of all his efforts to concentrate his mind on
himself; and there is hardly any at all in Strauss, although he is the
most interesting of the three composers. German musicians have no longer
any depth.
I have said that I attribute this fact to the detestable influence of
the theatre, to which nearly all these artists are attached as
_Kapellmeister_, or directors of opera. To this they owe the
melodramatic character of their music, even though it is on the surface
only--music written for show, and aiming chiefly at effect.
More baneful even than the influence of the theatre is the influence of
success. These musicians have nowadays too many facilities for having
their music played. A work is played almost before it is finished, and
the musician has no time to live with his work in solitude and silence.
Besides this, the works of the chief German musicians are supported by
tremendous booming of some kind or another: by their _Musikfeste_, by
their critics, their press, and their "Musical Guides" (_Musikführer_),
which are apologetic explanations of their works, scattered abroad in
millions to set the fashion for the sheep-like public. And with all this
a musician grows soon contented with himself, and comes to believe any
favourable opinion about his work. What a difference from Beethoven,
who, all his life, was hammering out the same subjects, and putting his
melodies on the anvil twenty times before they reached their final form.
That is where Mahler is so lacking. His subjects are a rather vulgarised
edition of some of Beethoven's ideas in their unfinished state. But
Mahler gets no further than the rough sketch.
And, lastly, I want to speak of the greatest danger of all that menaces
music in Germany; _there is too much music in Germany_. This is not a
paradox. There is no worse misfortune for art than a super-abundance of
it. The music is drowning the musicians. Festival succeeds festival: the
day after the Strasburg festival there was to be a Bach festival at
Eisenach; and then, at the end of the week, a Beethoven festival at
Bonn. Such a plethora of concerts, theatres, choral societies, and
chamber-music societies, absorbs the whole life of the musician. When
has he time to be alone to listen to the music that sings within him?
This senseless flood of music invades the sanctuaries of his soul,
weakens its power, and destroys its sacred solitude and the treasures of
its thought.
You must not think that this excess of music existed in the old days in
Germany. In the time of the great classic masters, Germany had hardly
any institutions for the giving of regular concerts, and choral
performances were hardly known. In the Vienna of Mozart and Beethoven
there was only a single association that gave concerts, and no
_Chorvereine_ at all, and it was the same with other towns in Germany.
Does the wonderful spread of musical culture in Germany during the last
century correspond with its artistic creation? I do not think so; and
one feels the inequality between the two more every day.
Do you remember Goethe's ballad of _Der Zauberlehrling_ (_L'Apprenti
Sorcier_) which Dukas so cleverly made into music? There, in the absence
of his master, an apprentice set working some magic spells, and so
opened sluice-gates that no one could shut; and the house was flooded.
This is what Germany has done. She has let loose a flood of music, and
is about to be drowned in it.
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
PELLÉAS ET MÉLISANDE