Music and Bad Manners
_By THE SAME AUTHOR_
MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR
Music
and Bad Manners
_Carl Van Vechten_
[Illustration]
New York Alfred A. Knopf
MCMXVI
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_To my Father_
Contents
PAGE
MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS 11
MUSIC FOR THE MOVIES 43
SPAIN AND MUSIC 57
SHALL WE REALIZE WAGNER’S IDEALS? 135
THE BRIDGE BURNERS 169
A NEW PRINCIPLE IN MUSIC 217
LEO ORNSTEIN 229
Music and Bad Manners
Music and Bad Manners
Singers, musicians of all kinds, are notoriously bad mannered. The
storms of the Titan, Beethoven, the petty malevolences of Richard
Wagner, the weak sulkiness of Chopin (“Chopin in displeasure was
appalling,” writes George Sand, “and as with me he always controlled
himself it was as if he might die of suffocation”) have all been
recalled in their proper places in biographies and in fiction; but
no attempt has been made heretofore, so far as I am aware, to lump
similar anecdotes together under the somewhat castigating title I
have chosen to head this article. Nor is it alone the performer who
gives exhibitions of bad manners. (As a matter of fact, once an
artist reaches the platform he is on his mettle, at his best. At home
he--or she--may be ruthless in his passionate display of floods of
“temperament.” I have seen a soprano throw a pork roast on the floor
at dinner, the day before a performance of Wagner’s “consecrational
festival play,” with the shrill explanation, “Pork before _Parsifal_!”
On the street he may shatter the clouds with his lightnings--as,
indeed, Beethoven is said to have done--but on the stage he becomes,
as a rule, a superhuman being, an interpreter, a mere virtuoso. Of
course, there are exceptions.) Audiences, as well, may be relied upon
to behave badly on occasion. An auditor is not necessarily at his best
in the concert hall. He may have had a bad dinner, or quarrelled with
his wife before arriving. At any rate he has paid his money and it
might be expected that he would make some demonstration of disapproval
when he was displeased. The extraordinary thing is that he does not
do so oftener. On the whole it must be admitted that audiences remain
unduly calm at concerts, that they are unreasonably polite, indeed, to
offensively inadequate or downright bad interpretations. I have sat
through performances, for example, of the Russian Symphony Society in
New York when I wondered how my fellow-sufferers could display such
fortitude and patience. When _Prince Igor_ was first performed at the
Metropolitan Opera House the ballet, danced in defiance of all laws of
common sense or beauty, almost compelled me to throw the first stone.
The parable saved me. Still one doesn’t need to be without sin to sling
pebbles in an opera house. And it is a pleasure to remember that there
have been occasions when audiences did speak up!
In those immeasurably sad pages in which Henry Fothergill Chorley
describes the last London appearance of Giuditta Pasta, recalling
Pauline Viardot’s beautiful remark (she, like Rachel, was hearing the
great dramatic soprano for the first time), “It is like the _Cenacolo_
of Da Vinci at Milan--a wreck of a picture, but the picture is the
greatest picture in the world!” this great chronicler of the glories
of the opera stage recalls the attitude of the French actress: “There
were artists present, who had then, for the first time, to derive some
impression of a renowned artist--perhaps, with the natural feeling that
her reputation had been exaggerated.--Among these was Rachel--whose
bitter ridicule of the entire sad show made itself heard throughout the
whole theatre, and drew attention to the place where she sat--one might
even say, sarcastically enjoying the scene.”
Chorley’s description of an incident in the career of the dynamic Mme.
Mara, a favourite in Berlin from 1771 to 1780, makes far pleasanter
reading: “On leave of absence being denied to her when she wished
to recruit her strength by a visit to the Bohemian _baden_, the
songstress took the resolution of neglecting her professional duties,
in the hope of being allowed to depart as worthless. The Czarovitch,
Paul the First of Russia, happened about that time to pay a visit to
Berlin; and she was announced to appear in one of the grand parts. She
pretended illness. The King sent her word, in the morning of the day,
that she was to get well and sing her best. She became, of course,
worse--could not leave her bed. Two hours before the opera began, a
carriage, escorted by eight soldiers, was at her door, and the captain
of the company forced his way into her chamber, declaring that their
orders were to bring her to the theatre, dead or alive. ‘You cannot;
you see I am in bed.’ ‘That is of little consequence,’ said the
obdurate machine; ‘we will take you, bed and all.’ There was nothing
for it but to get up and go to the theatre; dress, and resolve to sing
without the slightest taste or skill. And this Mara did. She kept her
resolution for the whole of the first act, till a thought suddenly
seized her that she might be punishing herself in giving the Grand-Duke
of Russia a bad opinion of her powers. A _bravura_ came; and she burst
forth with all her brilliancy, in particular distinguishing herself by
a miraculous shake, which she sustained, and swelled, and diminished,
with such wonderful art as to call down more applause than ever.” This
was the same Mara who walked out of the orchestra at a performance of
_The Messiah_ at Oxford rather than stand during the singing of the
_Hallelujah Chorus_.
In that curious series of anecdotes which Berlioz collected under
the title, “Les Grotesques de la Musique,” I discovered an account
of a performance of a _Miserere_ of Mercadante at the church of San
Pietro in Naples, in the presence of a cardinal and his suite. The
cardinal several times expressed his pleasure, and the congregation at
two points, the _Redde Mihi_ and the _Benigne fac, Domine_, broke in
with applause and insisted upon repetitions! Berlioz also describes
a rehearsal of Grétry’s _La Rosière de Salency_ at the Odéon, when
that theatre was devoted to opera. The members of the orchestra were
overcome with a sense of the ridiculous nature of the music they were
performing and made strange sounds the while they played. The _chef
d’orchestre_ attempted to keep his face straight, and Berlioz thought
he was scandalized by the scene. A little later, however, he found
himself laughing harder than anybody else. The memory of this occasion
gave him the inspiration some time later of arranging a concert of
works of this order (in which, he assured himself, the music of the
masters abounded), without forewarning the public of his purpose.
He prepared the programme, including therein this same overture of
Grétry’s, then a celebrated English air _Arm, Ye Brave_, a “sonata
_diabolique_” for the violin, the quartet from a French opera in which
this passage occurred:
“J’aime assez les Hollandaises,
Les Persanes, les Anglaises,
Mais je préfère des Françaises
L’esprit, la grâce et la gaîté,”
an instrumental march, the finale of the first act of an opera, a fugue
on _Kyrie Eleison_ from a Requiem Mass in which the music suggested
anything but the words, variations for the bassoon on the melody of
_Au Clair de la Lune_, and a symphony. Unfortunately for the trial
of the experiment the rehearsal was never concluded. The executants
got no further than the third number before they became positively
hysterical. The public performance was never given, but Berlioz assures
us that the average symphony concert audience would have taken the
programme seriously and asked for more! It may be considered certain
that in his choice of pieces Berlioz was making game of some of his
contemporaries....
In all the literature on the subject of music there are no more
delightful volumes to be met with than those of J. B. Weckerlin, called
“Musiciana,” “Nouveau Musiciana,” and “Dernier Musiciana.” These books
are made up of anecdotes, personal and otherwise. From Bourdelot’s
“Histoire de la Musique” Weckerlin culled the following: “An equerry
of Madame la Dauphine asked two of the court musicians to his home at
Versailles for dinner one evening. They sang standing opposite the
mantelpiece, over which hung a great mirror which was broken in six
pieces by the force of tone; all the porcelain on the buffet resounded
and shook.” Weckerlin also recalls a caprice of Louis XI, who one day
commanded the Abbé de Baigne, who had already invented many musical
instruments, to devise a harmony out of pigs. The Abbé asked for some
money, which was grudgingly given, and constructed a pavilion covered
with velvet, under which he placed a number of pigs. Before this
pavilion he arranged a white table with a keyboard constructed in such
a fashion that the displacing of a key stuck a pig with a needle. The
sounds evoked were out of the ordinary, and it is recorded that the
king was highly diverted and asked for more. Auber’s enthusiasm for his
own music, usually concealed under an indifferent air, occasionally
expressed itself in strange fashion. Mme. Damoreau recounted to
Weckerlin how, when the composer completed an air in the middle of the
night, even at three or four o’clock in the morning, he rushed to her
apartment. Dragging a pianoforte to her bed, he insisted on playing the
new song over and over to her, while she sang it, meanwhile making the
changes suggested by this extraordinary performance.
More modern instances come to mind. Maria Gay is not above nose-blowing
and expectoration in her interpretation of Carmen, physical acts in the
public performance of which no Spanish cigarette girl would probably
be caught ashamed. Yet it may be doubted if they suit the music of
Bizet, or the Meilhac and Halévy version of Merimée’s creation.... A
story has been related to me--I do not vouch for the truth of it--that
during a certain performance of _Carmen_ at the Opéra-Comique in Paris
a new singer, at some stage in the proceedings, launched that dreadful
French word which Georges Feydeau so ingenuously allowed his heroine to
project into the second act of _La Dame de chez Maxim_, with a result
even more startling than that which attended Bernard Shaw’s excursion
into the realms of the expletive in his play, _Pygmalion_. It is
further related of this performance of _Carmen_, which is said to have
sadly disturbed the “traditions,” that in the excitement incident to
her début the lady positively refused to allow Don José to kill her.
Round and round the stage she ran while the perspiring tenor tried in
vain to catch her. At length, the music of the score being concluded,
the curtain fell on a Carmen still alive; the _salle_ was in an uproar.
I find I cannot include Chaliapine’s Basilio in my list of bad mannered
stage performances, although his trumpetings into his handkerchief
disturbed many of New York’s professional writers. _Il Barbiere_ is
a farcical piece, and the music of Rossini hints at the Rabelaisian
humours of the dirty Spanish priest. In any event, it was the finest
interpretation of the rôle that I have ever seen or heard and, with
the splendid ensemble (Mme. Sembrich was the Rosina, Mr. Bonci, the
count, and Mr. Campanari, the Figaro), the comedy went with such joyous
abandon (the first act finale to the accompaniment of roars of laughter
from the stalls) that I am inclined to believe the performance could
not be bettered in this generation.
The late Algernon St. John Brenon used to relate a history about Emma
Eames and a recalcitrant tenor. The opera was _Lohengrin_, I believe,
and the question at issue was the position of a certain couch. Mme.
Eames wished it placed here; the tenor there. As always happens
in arguments concerning a Wagnerian music-drama, at some point the
Bayreuth tradition was invoked, although I have forgotten whether that
tradition favoured the soprano or her opponent in this instance. In
any case, at the rehearsal the tenor seemed to have won the battle.
When at the performance he found the couch in the exact spot which
had been designated by the lady his indignation was all the greater
on this account. With as much regard for the action of the drama as
was consistent with so violent a gesture he gave the couch a violent
shove with his projected toe, with the intention of pushing it into his
chosen locality. He retired with a howl, nursing a wounded member. The
couch had been nailed to the floor!
It is related that Marie Delna was discovered washing dishes at an inn
in a small town near Paris. Her benefactors took her to the capital
and placed her in the Conservatoire. She always retained a certain
peasant obstinacy, and it is said that during the course of her
instruction when she was corrected she frequently replied, “Je m’en
vais.” Against this phrase argument was unavailing and Mme. Delna, as
a result, acquired a habit of having her own way. Her Orphée was (and
still is, I should think) one of the notable achievements of our epoch.
It must have equalled Pauline Viardot’s performance dramatically,
and transcended it vocally. After singing the part several hundred
times she naturally acquired certain habits and mannerisms, tricks
both of action and of voice. Still, it is said that when she came to
the Metropolitan Opera House she offered, at a rehearsal, to defer
to Mr. Toscanini’s ideas. He, the rumour goes, gave his approval to
her interpretation on this occasion. Not so at the performance. Those
who have heard it can never forget the majesty and beauty of this
characterization, as noble a piece of stage work as we have seen or
heard in our day. At her début in the part in New York Mme. Delna was
superb, vocally and dramatically. In the celebrated air, _Che faro
senza Euridice_, the singer followed the tradition, doubly established
by the example of Mme. Viardot in the great revival of the mid-century,
of singing the different stanzas of the air in different _tempi_. In
her slowest _adagio_ the conductor became impatient. He beat his stick
briskly across his desk and whipped up the orchestra. There was soon
a hiatus of two bars between singer and musicians. It was a terrible
moment, but the singer won the victory. She _turned her back on the
conductor_ and continued to sing in her own time. The organ tones
rolled out and presently the audience became aware of a junction
between the two great forces. Mr. Toscanini was vanquished, but he
never forgave her.
During the opera season of 1915-16, opera-goers were treated to a
diverting exhibition. Mme. Geraldine Farrar, just returned from a fling
at three five-reel cinema dramas, elected to instil a bit of moving
picture realism into _Carmen_. Fresh with the memory of her prolonged
and brutal scuffle in the factory scene as it was depicted on the
screen, Mme. Farrar attempted something like it in the opera, the first
act of which was enlivened with sundry blows and kicks. More serious
still were her alleged assaults on the tenor (Mr. Caruso) in the third
act which, it is said, resulted in his clutching her like a struggling
eel, to prevent her interference with his next note. There was even
a suggestion of disagreement in the curtain calls which ensued. All
these incidents of an enlivening evening were duly and impressively
chronicled in the daily press.
There is, of course, Vladimir de Pachmann. Everybody who has attended
his recitals has come under the spell of his beautiful tone and has
been annoyed by his bad manners. For, curiously enough, the two
qualities have become inseparable with him, especially in recent
years. Once in Chicago I saw the strange little pianist sit down
in front of his instrument, rise again, gesticulate, and leave the
stage. Returning with a stage-hand he pointed to his stool; it was
not satisfactory. A chair was brought in, tried, and found wanting;
more gesticulation--this time wilder. At length, after considerable
discussion between Mr. de Pachmann and the stage-hand, all in view
of the audience, it was decided that nothing would do but that some
one must fetch the artist’s own piano bench from his hotel, which,
fortunately, adjoined the concert hall. This was accomplished in the
course of time. In the interval the pianist did not leave the platform.
He sat at the back on the chair which had been offered him as a
substitute for the offending stool and entertained his audience with a
spectacular series of grimaces.
On another occasion this singular genius arrested his fingers in the
course of a performance of one of Chopin’s études. His ears were
enraptured, it would seem, by his own rendition of a certain run; over
and over again he played it, now faster, now more slowly; at times
almost slowly enough to give the student in the front row a glimpse
of the magic fingering. With a sudden change of manner he announced,
“This is the way Godowsky would play this scale”: great velocity but a
dry tone. Then, “And now Pachmann again!” The magic fingers stroked the
keys.
Even as an auditor de Pachmann sometimes exploits his eccentricities.
Josef Hofmann once told me the following story: De Pachmann was sitting
in the third row at a concert Rubinstein gave in his prime. De Pachmann
burst into hilarious laughter, rocking to and fro. Rubinstein was
playing beautifully and de Pachmann’s neighbour, annoyed, demanded why
he was laughing. De Pachmann could scarcely speak as he pointed to the
pianist on the stage and replied, “He used the fourth finger instead of
the third in that run. Isn’t it funny?”
I cannot take Vladimir de Pachmann to task for these amusing bad
manners! But they annoy the _bourgeois_. We should most of us be glad
to have Oscar Wilde brilliant at our dinner parties, even though he
ate peas with his knife; and Napoleon’s generalship would have been
as effective if he had been an omnivorous reader of the works of
Laura Jean Libbey. But one must not dwell too long on de Pachmann.
One might be tempted to devote an entire essay to the relation of his
eccentricities.
Another pianist, also a composer, claims attention: Alberto Savinio.
You may find a photolithograph of Savinio’s autograph manuscript of
_Bellovées Fatales, No. 12_, in that curious periodical entitled “291,”
the number for April, 1915. There is a programme, which reads as
follows:
LA PASSION DES ROTULES
La Femme: Ah! Il m’a touché de sa jambe de caoutchouc! Ma-ma! Ma-ma!
L’Homme: Tutto s’ha di rosa, Maria, per te....
La Femme: Ma-ma! Ma-ma!
There are indications as to how the composer wishes his music to be
played, sometimes _glissando_ and sometimes “_avec des poings_.” The
rapid and tortuous passages between the black and white keys would
test the contortionistic qualities of any one’s fingers. Savinio,
it is said, at his appearances in Paris, actually played until his
fingers _bled_. When he had concluded, indeed, the ends of his fingers
were crushed and bruised and the keyboard was red with blood. Albert
Gleizes, quoted by Walter Conrad Arensberg, is my authority for this
bizarre history of music and bad manners. I have not seen (or heard)
Savinio perform. But when I told this tale to Leo Ornstein he assured
me that he frequently had had a similar experience.
Romain Rolland in “Jean-Christophe” relates an incident which is
especially interesting because it has a foundation in fact. Something
of the sort happened to Hugo Wolf when an orchestra performed his
_Penthesilea_ overture for the first time. It is a curious example of
bad manners in which both the performers and the audience join.
“At last it came to Christophe’s symphony.” (I am quoting from Gilbert
Cannan’s translation.) “He saw from the way the orchestra and the
people in the hall were looking at his box that they were aware of his
presence. He hid himself. He waited with the catch at his heart which
every musician feels at the moment when the conductor’s wand is raised
and the waters of the music gather in silence before bursting their
dam. He had never yet heard his work played. How would the creatures of
his dreams live? How would their voices sound? He felt their roaring
within him; and he leaned over the abyss of sounds waiting fearfully
for what should come forth.
“What did come forth was a nameless thing, a shapeless hotchpotch.
Instead of the bold columns which were to support the front of the
building the chords came crumbling down like a building in ruins; there
was nothing to be seen but the dust of mortar. For a moment Christophe
was not quite sure whether they were really playing his work. He cast
back for the train, the rhythm of his thoughts; he could not recognize
it; it went on babbling and hiccoughing like a drunken man clinging
close to the wall, and he was overcome with shame, as though he himself
had been seen in that condition. It was to no avail to think that he
had not written such stuff; when an idiotic interpreter destroys a
man’s thoughts he has always a moment of doubt when he asks himself
in consternation if he is himself responsible for it. The audience
never asks such a question; the audience believes in the interpreter,
in the singers, in the orchestra whom they are accustomed to hear, as
they believe in their newspaper; they cannot make a mistake; if they
say absurd things, it is the absurdity of the author. This audience
was the less inclined to doubt because it liked to believe. Christophe
tried to persuade himself that the _Kapellmeister_ was aware of the
hash and would stop the orchestra and begin again. The instruments were
not playing together. The horn had missed his beat and had come in a
bar too late; he went on for a few minutes and then stopped quietly
to clean his instrument. Certain passages for the oboe had absolutely
disappeared. It was impossible for the most skilled ear to pick up
the thread of the musical idea, or even to imagine there was one.
Fantastic instrumentations, humoristic sallies became grotesque through
the coarseness of the execution. It was lamentably stupid, the work of
an idiot, of a joker who knew nothing of music. Christophe tore his
hair. He tried to interrupt, but the friend who was with him held him
back, assuring him that the _Herr Kapellmeister_ must surely see the
faults of the execution and would put everything right--that Christophe
must not show himself and that if he made any remark it would have a
very bad effect. He made Christophe sit at the very back of the box.
Christophe obeyed, but he beat his head with his fists; and every fresh
monstrosity drew from him a groan of indignation and misery.
“‘The wretches! The wretches!...’
“He groaned and squeezed his hands tight to keep from crying out.
“Now mingled with the wrong notes there came up to him the muttering
of the audience, who were beginning to be restless. At first it was
only a tremor; but soon Christophe was left without a doubt; they were
laughing. The musicians of the orchestra had given the signal; some
of them did not conceal their hilarity. The audience, certain then
that the music was laughable, rocked with laughter. This merriment
became general; it increased at the return of a very rhythmical motif
with the double-basses accentuated in a burlesque fashion. Only the
_Kapellmeister_ went on through the uproar imperturbably beating time.
“At last they reached the end (the best things come to an end). It was
the turn of the audience. They exploded with delight, an explosion
which lasted for several minutes. Some hissed; others applauded
ironically; the wittiest of all shouted ‘Encore!’ A bass voice coming
from a stage box began to imitate the grotesque motif. Other jokers
followed suit and imitated it also. Some one shouted ‘Author!’ It was
long since these witty folk had been so highly entertained.
“When the tumult was calmed down a little the _Kapellmeister_, standing
quite impassive with his face turned towards the audience, though he
was pretending not to see it (the audience was still supposed to be
non-existent), made a sign to the audience that he was about to speak.
There was a cry of ‘Ssh,’ and silence. He waited a moment longer; then
(his voice was curt, cold, and cutting):
“‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I should certainly not have let _that_ be
played through to the end if I had not wished to make an example of
the gentleman who has dared to write offensively of the great Brahms.’
“That was all; jumping down from his stand he went out amid cheers from
the delighted audience. They tried to recall him; the applause went on
for a few minutes longer. But he did not return. The orchestra went
away. The audience decided to go too. The concert was over.
“It had been a good day.”
Von Bülow once stopped his orchestra at a public performance to
remonstrate with a lady with a fan in the front row of seats. “Madame,”
he said gravely, “I must beg you to cease fanning yourself in
three-four time while I am conducting in four-four time!”
Here are a few personal recollections of bad mannered audiences. A
performance of _The Magic Flute_ in Chicago comes to mind. Fritzi
Scheff, the Papagena, and Giuseppe Campanari, the Papageno, had
concluded their duet in the last act amidst a storm of applause, in
face of which the conductor sped on to the entrance of the Queen of the
Night. Mme. Sembrich entered and sang a part of her recitative unheard.
One could see, however, that her jaws opened and closed with the
mechanism incidental to tone-production. After a few bars she retired
defeated and the bad mannered audience continued to shout and applaud
until that unspeakable bit of nonsense which runs “Pa-pa-pa,” etc., was
repeated. Mme. Sembrich appeared no more that day.
Another stormy audience I encountered at a concert of the Colonne
Orchestra in Paris. Those who sit in the gallery at these concerts at
the Chatelet Theatre are notoriously opinionated. There the battles of
Richard Strauss and Debussy have been fought. The gallery crowd always
comes early because seats in the top of the house are unreserved. They
cost a franc or two; I forget exactly how much, but I have often sat
there. To pass the time until the concert begins, and also to show
their indifference to musical literature and the opinions of others,
the galleryites fashion a curious form of spill, with one end in a
point and the other feathered like an arrow, out of the pages of the
annotated programmes. These are then sent sailing, in most instances
with infinite dexterity and incredible velocity, over the heads of the
arriving audience. The objective point is the very centre of the back
cloth on the stage, a spot somewhat above the kettle-drum. A successful
shot always brings forth a round of applause. But this is (or was) an
episode incident to any Colonne concert. I am describing an occasion.
The concert took place during the season of poor Colonne’s final
illness (now he lies buried in that curiously remote avenue of
Père-Lachaise where repose the ashes of Oscar Wilde). Gabriel Pierné,
his successor, had already assumed the bâton, and he conducted the
concert in question. Anton Van Rooy was the soloist and he had chosen
to sing two very familiar (and very popular in Paris) Wagner excerpts,
Wotan’s Farewell from _Die Walküre_, and the air which celebrates the
evening star from _Tannhäuser_. (In this connection I might state that
in this same winter--1908-9--_Das Rheingold_ was given _in concert
form_--it had not yet been performed at the Opéra--on two consecutive
Sundays at the Lamoureux Concerts in the Salle Gaveau to _standing room
only_.) The concert proceeded in orderly fashion until Mr. Van Rooy
appeared; then the uproar began. The gallery hooted, and screamed,
and yelled. All the terrible noises which only a Paris crowd can
invent were hurled from the dark recesses of that gallery. The din was
appalling, terrifying. Mr. Van Rooy nervously fingered a sheet of music
he held in his hands. Undoubtedly visions of the first performance of
_Tannhäuser_ at the Paris Opéra passed through his mind. He may also
have considered the possibility of escaping to the Gare du Nord, with
the chance of catching a train for Germany before the mob could tear
him into bits. Mr. Pierné, who knew his Paris, faced the crowd, while
the audience below peered up and shuddered, with something of the
fright of the aristocrats during the first days of the Revolution. Then
he held up his hand and, in time, the modest gesture provoked a modicum
of silence. In that silence some one shrieked out the explanation:
“_Tannhäuser_ avant _Walküre_.” That was all. The gallery was not
satisfied with the order of the programme. The readjustment was quickly
made, the parts distributed to the orchestra, and Mr. Van Rooy sang
Wolfram’s air before Wotan’s. It may be said that never could he have
hoped for a more complete ovation, a more flattering reception than
that which the Parisian audience accorded him when he had finished. The
applause was veritably deafening.
I have related elsewhere at some length my experiences at the first
Paris performance of Igor Strawinsky’s ballet, _The Sacrifice to the
Spring_, an appeal to primitive emotion through a nerve-shattering use
of rhythm, staged in ultra-modern style by Waslav Nijinsky. Chords
and legs seemed disjointed. Flying arms synchronized marvellously
with screaming clarinets. But this first audience would not permit the
composer to be heard. Cat-calls and hisses succeeded the playing of
the first few bars, and then ensued a battery of screams, countered
by a foil of applause. We warred over art (some of us thought it was
and some thought it wasn’t). The opposition was bettered at times;
at any rate it was a more thrilling battle than Strauss conceived
between the Hero and his enemies in _Heldenleben_ and the celebrated
scenes from _Die Meistersinger_ and _The Rape of the Lock_ could not
stand the comparison. Some forty of the protestants were forced out
of the theatre but that did not quell the disturbance. The lights in
the auditorium were fully turned on but the noise continued and I
remember Mlle. Piltz executing her strange dance of religious hysteria
on a stage dimmed by the blazing light in the auditorium, seemingly to
the accompaniment of the disjointed ravings of a mob of angry men and
women. Little by little, at subsequent performances of the work the
audiences became more mannerly, and when it was given in concert in
Paris the following year it was received with applause.
Some of my readers may remember the demonstration directed (supposedly)
against American singers when the Metropolitan Opera Company invaded
Paris some years ago for a spring season. The opening opera was _Aïda_,
and all went well until the first scene of the second act, in which
the reclining Amneris chants her thoughts while her slaves dance. Here
the audience began to give signs of disapproval, which presently broke
out into open hissing, and finally into a real hullabaloo. Mme. Homer,
nothing daunted, continued to sing. She afterwards told me that she
had never sung with such force and intensity. And in a few moments she
broke the spell, and calmed the riot.
Arthur Nikisch once noted that players of the bassoon were more
sensitive than the other members of his orchestra; he found them
subject to quick fits of temper, and intolerant of criticism. He
attributed this to the delicate mechanism of the instrument which
required the nicest apportionment of breath. Clarinet players, he
discovered, were less sensitive. One could joke with them in reason;
while horn players were as tractable as Newfoundland dogs!--A case of a
sensitive pianist comes to mind, brought to bay by as rude an audience
as I can recall. Mr. Paderewski was playing Beethoven’s C sharp minor
sonata at one of these morning musicales arranged at the smart hotels
so that the very rich may see more intimately the well-known artists of
the concert and opera stage, when some women started to go out. In his
following number, Couperin’s _La Bandoline_, the interruption became
intolerable and he stopped playing. “Those who do not wish to hear me
will kindly leave the room immediately,” he said, “and those who wish
to remain will kindly take their seats.” The outflow continued, while
those who remained seated began to hiss. “I am astonished to find
people in New York leaving while an artist is playing,” the pianist
added. Then some one started to applaud; the applause deepened, and
finally Mr. Paderewski consented to play again and took his place on
the bench before his instrument.
The incident was the result of the pianist’s well-known aversion to
appearing in conjunction with other artists. He had finally agreed to
do so on this occasion provided he would be allowed to play after the
others had concluded their performances. There had been many recalls
for the singer and violinist who preceded him and it was well after
one o’clock (the concert had begun at eleven) before he walked on
the platform. Now one o’clock is a very late hour at a fashionable
morning musicale. Some of those present were doubtless hungry; others,
perhaps, had trains to catch; while there must have been a goodly
number who had heard all the music they wanted to hear that morning.
There was a very pretty ending to the incident. Once he had begun, Mr.
Paderewski played for an hour and twenty minutes, and the faithful
ones, who had remained seated, applauded so much when he finally rose
from the bench, even after he had added several numbers to the printed
programme, that the echoes of the clapping hands accompanied him to his
motor.
I have reserved for the last a description of a concert given at the
Dal Verme Theatre in Milan by the Italian Futurists. The account is
culled from the “Corriere della Sera” of that city, and the translation
is that which appeared in “International Music and Drama”:
“At the Dal Verme a Futurist concert of ‘intonarumori’ was to be held
last night, but instead of this there was an uproarious din intoned
both by the public and the Futurists which ended in a free-for-all
fight.
“In a speech which was listened to with sufficient attention,
Marinetti, the poet, announced that this was to be the first public
trial of a new device invented by Luigi Russelo, a Futurist painter.
This instrument is called the ‘noise-maker’ and its purpose is to
render a new kind of music. Modern life vibrates with all sorts of
noises; music therefore must render this sensation. This, in brief, is
the idea. In order to develop it Russelo had invented several types of
noise-makers, each of which renders a different sound.
“After Marinetti’s speech the curtain went up and the new orchestra
appeared in all its glory amidst the bellowings of the public. The
famous ‘noise-intonators’ proved to be made out of a sort of bass-drum
with an immense trumpet attached to it, the latter looking very much
like a gramaphone horn. Behind the instrument sat the players, whose
only function was to turn the crank rhythmically in order to create the
harmonic noise. They looked, while performing this agreeable task, like
a squad of knife-grinders. But it was impossible to hear the music. The
public was unconditionally intolerant. We only caught here and there a
faint buzz and growl. Then everything was drowned in the billowing seas
of howls, jeers, hisses, and cat-calls. What they were hissing at, it
being impossible to hear the music, was not quite clear. They hissed
just for the fun of it. It was a case of art for art’s sake. Painter
Russelo, however, continued undisturbed to direct his mighty battery
of musical howitzers and his professors kept on grinding their pieces
with a beautiful serenity of mind, all the while the tumult increasing
to redoubtable proportions. The consequence was that those who went
to the Dal Verme for the purpose of listening to Futurist music had
to give up all hopes and resign themselves to hear the bedlam of the
public.
“In vain did Marinetti attempt to speak, begging them to be quiet for
a while and assuring them that they would be allowed a whole carnival
of howls at the end of the concert--the public wanted to hiss and there
was no way to check it. But Russelo kept right on. He conducted with
imperturbable solemnity the three pieces we were supposed to hear: _The
Awakening of a Great City_, _A Dinner on a Kursaal Terrace_, and _A
Meet of Automobiles and Aeroplanes_. Nobody heard anything, but Russelo
rendered everything conscientiously. The only thing we were able to
find out about Futurist music is that the noise of the orchestra is by
no means too loud, or at least not louder than impromptu choruses.
“But the worst was reserved for the middle of the third piece. The
exchange of hot words and very old-fashioned courtesies had now become
ultra-vivacious and was being punctuated with several projectiles and
an occasional blow. At this point, Marinetti, Boccioni, Carra, and
other Futurists jumped into the pit and began to distribute all sorts
of blows to the infuriated spectators. The new Futurist style enables
us to synthesize the scene. Blows. Carbineers. Inspectors. Cushions and
chairs flying about. Howls. Public standing on chairs. Concert goes
on. More howls, shrieks, curses, and thunderous insults. Futurists are
led back to stage by gendarmes. Public slowly passes out. Marinetti
and followers pass out before public. Again howls, invectives,
guffaws, and fist blows. Piazza Cardusio. More blows. Galleria. Ditto.
Futurists enter Savini’s café while pugilistic matches go merrily on.
Mob attempts to storm stronghold. Iron gates close. Futurists are shut
in, in good condition, save few torn hats. Mob slowly calms down and
disperses. The end.”
_New York, May, 1916._
Music for the Movies
“_O Tempora! O Movies!_”
W. B. Chase.
Music for the Movies
Despite the fact that it would seem that the moving picture drama had
opened up new worlds to the modern musician, no important composer,
so far as I am aware, has as yet turned his attention to the writing
of music for the films. If the cinema drama is in its infancy, as
some would have us believe, then we may be sure that the time is not
far distant when moving picture scores will take their places on the
musicians’ book-shelves alongside those of operas, symphonies, masses,
and string quartets. In the meantime, entirely ignorant of the truth
(or oblivious to it, or merely helpless, as the case may be) that
writing music for moving pictures is a new art, which demands a new
point of view, the directors of the picture theatres are struggling
with the situation as best they may. Under the circumstances it is
remarkable, on the whole, how swiftly and how well the demand for music
with the silent drama has been met. Certainly the music is usually on
a level with (or of a better quality than) the type of entertainment
offered. But the directors have not definitely tackled the problem;
they still continue to try to force old wine into new bottles,
arranging and re-arranging melody and harmony which was contrived for
quite other occasions and purposes. Even when scores have been written
for pictures the result has not shown any imaginative advance over the
arranged score. It is strange, but it has occurred to no one that the
moving picture demands a _new_ kind of music.
The composers, I should imagine, are only waiting to be asked to write
it. Certainly none of them has ever shown any hesitancy about composing
incidental music for the spoken drama. Mendelssohn wrote strains for
_A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ which seemed pledged to immortality until
Granville Barker ignored them; the Wedding March is still in favour
in Kankakee and Keokuk. Beethoven illustrated Goethe’s _Egmont_; Sir
Arthur Sullivan penned a score for _The Tempest_; Schubert was inspired
to put down some of his most ravishing notes for a stupid play called
_Rosamunde_; Grieg’s _Peer Gynt_ music is more often performed than
the play. More recent instances of incidental music for dramas are
Saint-Saëns’s score for Brieux’s _La Foi_, Mascagni’s for _The Eternal
City_, and Richard Strauss’s for _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_. Is it
necessary to continue the list? I have only, after all, put down a few
of the obvious examples (passing by the thousands upon thousands of
scores devised by lesser composers for lesser plays) that would spring
at once to any musician’s mind. Of course it has usually been the
poetic drama (do we ever hear Shakespeare or Rostand without it?) which
has seemed to call for incidental music but it has accompanied (with
more or less disastrous consequences, to be sure) the unfolding of many
a “drawing-room” play; especially during the eighties.
When the first moving picture was exposed on the screen it seems to
have occurred to its projector at once that some kind of music must
accompany its unreeling. The silence evidently appalled him. A moving
picture is not unlike a ballet in that it depends entirely upon action
(it differs from a ballet in that the action is not necessarily
rhythmic)--and whoever heard of a ballet performed without music? Sound
certainly has its value in creating an atmosphere and in emphasizing
the “thrill” of the moving picture, especially when the sound is
selected and co-ordinated. It may also divert the attention. On the
whole, more photographed plays follow the general lines of _Lady
Windemere’s Fan_ or _Peg o’ My Heart_ than of poetic dramas such as
_Cymbeline_ or _La Samaritaine_. The problem here, however, is not
the same as in the spoken drama. For in motion pictures a poetic
play sheds its poetry and becomes, like its neighbour, a skeleton of
action. There is no conceivable distinction in the “movies” (beyond
one created by preference, or taste, or the quality of the performance
and the photography) between Dante’s _Inferno_ and a picture in which
the beloved Charles Chaplin looms large. The directors of the moving
picture companies have tried to meet this problem; that they have not
wholly succeeded so far is not entirely their fault.
It is no easy matter, for example, in a theatre in which the films are
changed daily (this is the general rule even in the larger houses), for
the musicians (or musician) to arrange a satisfactory accompaniment
for 5,000 feet of action which includes everything from an earthquake
in Cuba to a dinner in Park Lane, and it is scarcely possible, even if
the distributors be so inclined (as they frequently are nowadays) to
furnish a music score which will answer the purposes of the different
sized bands, ranging from a full orchestra to an upright piano, _solo_.
As for the pictures without pre-arranged scores, the orchestra leaders
and pianists must do the best they can with them.
In some houses there is an attitude of total disrespect paid towards
the picture by the _chef d’orchestre_. He arranges his musical
programme as if he were giving a concert, not at all with a view to
effectively accompanying the picture. In a theatre on Second Avenue
in New York, for example, I have heard an orchestra play the whole
of Beethoven’s First Symphony as an accompaniment to Irene Fenwick’s
performance of _The Woman Next Door_. As the symphony came to an
end before the picture it was supplemented by a Waldteufel waltz,
_Les Patineurs_. The result, in this instance, was not altogether
incongruous or even particularly displeasing, and it occurred to me
that if one had to listen to music while the third act of _Hedda
Gabler_ were being enacted one would prefer to hear something like
Boccherini’s celebrated minuet or a light Mozart dance rather than
anything ostensibly contrived to fit the situation. In the latter
instance the result would be sure to be unbearable bathos.
On the other hand there are certain players for pictures who remind one
by their methods of the anxiety of Richard Strauss to describe every
peacock and bean mentioned in any of his opera-books. If a garden is
exposed on the screen one hears _The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring_;
a love scene is the signal for _Un Peu d’Amour_; a cross or any
religious episode suggests _The Rosary_ to these ingenuous musicians;
Japan brings a touch of _Madame Butterfly_; a proposal of marriage,
_O Promise Me_; and a farewell, Tosti’s _Good-bye!_ This expedient of
appealing through the intellect to the emotions, it may be admitted,
has the stamp of approval of no less a composer than Richard Wagner.
Lacking the authority of real moving picture music (which a new
composer must rise to invent) the safest way (not necessarily the
_best_ way) is the middle course--one method for this, another for
that. One of the difficulties is to arrange a music score for a theatre
with a large orchestra, where the leader must plan his score--or have
it planned for him--for an entire picture before his orchestra can
play a note. Music cues must be definite: twenty bars of _Alexander’s
Ragtime Band_, seventeen of _The Ride of the Valkyries_, ten of _Vissi
d’Arte_, etc. An ingenious young man has discovered a way by which
music and action may be exactly synchronized. I feel the impulse to
quote extensively from the somewhat vivid report of his achievement,
published in one of the motion picture weekly journals: “Here was a
man-sized job--how to measure the action of the picture to the musical
score, so that they would both come out equal at every part of the
picture, and would be so exact that any orchestra might take the score
and follow the movement of the play with absolute correctness. It was
a question primarily of mathematics, but even so it was some time
before a system of computation was devised before the undertaking was
gotten down to a certainty. As an illustration, on the opening night of
one of the most notable photoplay productions now before the public,
the orchestra, notwithstanding a three weeks’ rehearsal, found at the
conclusion of the picture that it was a page and a half behind the
play’s action in the musical setting.” Then we learn that Frank Stadler
of New York “provided the remedy for this condition of affairs.” It
is impossible to resist the temptation to quote further from this
extremely racy account. “He remembered that Beethoven had overcome
the difficulty of proper timing for his sonatas by a mechanical
arrangement known as the metronome, invented by a friend of his. This
is an arrangement with a little bell attached which may be set for the
movement of the music and used as an exact guide to the right measure,
the bell giving warning at the expiration of each period so that the
leader knows whether he is in time or not.” Mr. Stadler then began the
measurement of a film with a metronome, a stenographer, and a watch.
He found that the film ran ten feet to every eight seconds and he set
the metronome for eight second periods accordingly. “The stenographer
made a note of the action of the picture each time the bell rang, with
the result that when the entire picture had been run Mr. Stadler had a
complete record of the production. All that was necessary then was to
select from the classics and the popular melodies the music which would
give a suitable atmosphere and a harmonious accompaniment to the theme
of the play, so synchronizing the music with the eight second periods
that every bar of it fitted the spirit of the many score of scenes of
the production.”