make so many preparatory gestures. He may with impunity, if he be of
an inventive turn of mind, or if his memory be good, improvise his
score as the picture unreels itself for the first time before what
may very well be his astonished vision; and, after that, he may vary
his accompaniment, as the shows of the day progress, improving it
here or there, or not, as the case may be, keeping generally as near
to his original performance as possible. Of course he puts a good
deal of reliance on rum-ti-tum shivery passages (known to orchestra
leaders as “_agits_”--an abbreviation of _agitato_; a page or two
of them is distributed to every member of a moving picture band) to
accompany moments of excitement. This music you will remember if you
have ever attended a performance of a Lincoln J. Carter melodrama in
which a train was wrecked, or a hero rescued from the teeth of a saw,
or a heroine pursued by bloodhounds. (Those were the good old days!)
Recently I heard a pianist in a moving picture house on Fourteenth
Street in New York eke out a half-hour with similar poundings on two
or three well used chords (well used even in the time of Hadyn). The
scenes represented the whole of a two-act opera, and the ambitious
pianist was trying to give his audience the effect of singers
(principals and chorus) and orchestra with his three chords. (Shades of
Arnold Schoenberg!)
A certain periodical devoted to the interests of the moving picture
trade, conducts a department as first aid to the musical conductors
and pianists who figure at these shows. In a recent number the editor
of this department gives it as his solemn opinion that musicians who
read fiction are the best equipped for picture playing. Then, with an
almost tragic parenthesis, he continues, “Reading fiction is the last
diversion that the average musician will follow. He feels that all
the necessary romance is to be found in his music.” Facts are dead,
says this editor in substance, but fiction is living and should make
you weep. When you cry, all that remains for you to do is to think of
a tune which will synchronize with the cause of your tears; this will
serve you later when a similar scene occurs in a film drama.
There is one tune which any capable moving picture pianist has found
will synchronize with any Keystone picture (for the benefit of the
uninitiated I may state that in the Keystone farces some one gets
kicked or knocked down or spat upon several times in almost every
scene). I do not know what the tune is, but wherever Keystone pictures
are shown, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Chicago, and
even New York, I have heard it. When a character falls into the water
(and at least ten of them invariably do) the pianist may vary the tune
by sitting on the piano or by upsetting a chair. In one theatre I have
known him to cause glass to be shattered behind the screen at a moment
when the picture exposed a similar scene. How Marinetti would like that!
However, the day of this sort of thing is rapidly approaching its
close, I venture to say. Some of the firms are already issuing arranged
music scores for their productions (one may note in passing the score
which accompanied Geraldine Farrar’s screen performance of _Carmen_,
largely selected from the music of Bizet’s opera, and Victor Herbert’s
original score for _The Fall of a Nation_, a score which does not take
full advantage of the new technique of the cinema drama). It will
not be long before an enterprising director engages an enterprising
musician to compose music for a picture. For the same reason that
d’Annunzio, very early in the career of the moving picture, wrote a
scenario for a film, I should not be surprised to learn that Richard
Strauss was under contract to construct an accompaniment to a screened
drama. It will be very loud music and it will require an orchestra of
143 men to interpret it and probably the composer himself will conduct
the first performance, and, later, excerpts will be given by the Boston
Symphony Orchestra and the critics will say, in spite of Philip Hale’s
diverting programme notes, that this music should never be played
except in conjunction with the picture for which it was written.
Mascagni is another composer who should find an excellent field for his
talent in writing tone-poems for pictures, although he would contrive
nothing more daring than a well-arranged series of illustrative
melodies.
But put Igor Strawinsky, or some other modern genius, to work on this
problem and see what happens! The musician of the future should revel
in the opportunity the moving picture gives him to create a new form.
This form differs from that of the incidental music for a play in that
the flow of tone may be continuous and because one never needs to
soften the accompaniment so that the voices may be heard; it differs
from the music for a ballet in that the scene shifts constantly,
and consequently the time signatures and the mood and the key must
be as constantly shifting. The swift flash from scene to scene, the
“cut-back,” the necessary rapidity of the action, all are adapted to
inspire the futurist composer to brilliant effort; a tinkle of this and
a smash of that, without “working-out” or development; illustration,
comment, piquant or serious, that’s what the new film music should
be. The ultimate moving picture score will be something more than
sentimental accompaniment.
_New York, November 10, 1915._
Spain and Music
“_Il faut méditerraniser la musique._”
Nietzsche.
Spain and Music
It has seemed to me at times that Oscar Hammerstein was gifted with
almost prophetic vision. He it was who imagined the glory of Times
(erstwhile Longacre) Square. Theatre after theatre he fashioned in what
was then a barren district--and presently the crowds and the hotels
came. He foresaw that French opera, given in the French manner, would
be successful again in New York, and he upset the calculations of all
the wiseacres by making money even with _Pelléas et Mélisande_, that
esoteric collaboration of Belgian and French art, which in the latter
part of the season of 1907-8 attained a record of seven performances
at the Manhattan Opera House, all to audiences as vast and as devoted
as those which attend the sacred festivals of _Parsifal_ at Bayreuth.
And he had announced for presentation during the season of 1908-9
(and again the following season) a Spanish opera called _Dolores_.
If he had carried out his intention (why it was abandoned I have
never learned; the scenery and costumes were ready) he would have had
another honour thrust upon him, that of having been beforehand in the
production of modern Spanish opera in New York, an honour which, in
the circumstances, must go to Mr. Gatti-Casazza. (Strictly speaking,
_Goyescas_ was not the first Spanish opera to be given in New York,
although it was the first to be produced at the Metropolitan Opera
House. _Il Guarany_, by Antonio Carlos Gomez, a Portuguese born in
Brazil, was performed by the “Milan Grand Opera Company” during a three
weeks’ season at the Star Theatre in the fall of 1884. An air from
this opera is still in the répertoire of many sopranos. To go still
farther back, two of Manuel Garcia’s operas, sung of course in Italian,
_l’Amante Astuto_ and _La Figlia dell’Aria_, were performed at the Park
Theatre in 1825 with Maria Garcia--later to become the celebrated Mme.
Malibran--in the principal rôles. More recently an itinerant Italian
opéra-bouffe company, which gravitated from the Park Theatre--not the
same edifice that harboured Garcia’s company!--to various playhouses
on the Bowery, included three zarzuelas in its répertoire. One of
these, the popular _La Gran Via_, was announced for performance,
but my records are dumb on the subject and I am not certain that
it was actually given. There are probably other instances.) Mr.
Hammerstein had previously produced two operas _about_ Spain when he
opened his first Manhattan Opera House on the site now occupied by
Macy’s Department Store with Moszkowski’s _Boabdil_, quickly followed
by Beethoven’s _Fidelio_. The malagueña from _Boabdil_ is still a
favourite _morceau_ with restaurant orchestras, and I believe I have
heard the entire ballet suite performed by the Chicago Orchestra under
the direction of Theodore Thomas. New York’s real occupation by the
Spaniards, however, occurred after the close of Mr. Hammerstein’s
brilliant seasons, although the earlier vogue of Carmencita, whose
celebrated portrait by Sargent in the Luxembourg Gallery in Paris will
long preserve her fame, the interest in the highly-coloured paintings
by Sorolla and Zuloaga, many of which are still on exhibition in
private and public galleries in New York, the success here achieved, in
varying degrees, by such singing artists as Emilio de Gogorza, Andrea
de Segurola, and Lucrezia Bori, the performances of the piano works of
Albeniz, Turina, and Granados by such pianists as Ernest Schelling,
George Copeland, and Leo Ornstein, and the amazing Spanish dances of
Anna Pavlowa (who in attempting them was but following in the footsteps
of her great predecessors of the nineteenth century, Fanny Elssler and
Taglioni), all fanned the flames.
The winter of 1915-16 beheld the Spanish blaze. Enrique Granados,
one of the most distinguished of contemporary Spanish pianists and
composers, a man who took a keen interest in the survival, and
artistic use, of national forms, came to this country to assist at the
production of his opera _Goyescas_, sung in Spanish at the Metropolitan
Opera House for the first time anywhere, and was also heard several
times here in his interpretative capacity as a pianist; Pablo Casals,
the Spanish ’cellist, gave frequent exhibitions of his finished art,
as did Miguel Llobet, the guitar virtuoso; La Argentina (Señora Paz
of South America) exposed her ideas, somewhat classicized, of Spanish
dances; a Spanish soprano, Maria Barrientos, made her North American
début and justified, in some measure, the extravagant reports which
had been spread broadcast about her singing; and finally the decree
of Paris (still valid in spite of Paul Poiret’s reported absence
in the trenches) led all our womenfolk into the wearing of Spanish
garments, the hip-hoops of the Velasquez period, the lace flounces
of Goya’s Duchess of Alba, and the mantillas, the combs, and the
_accroche-coeurs_ of Spain, Spain, Spain.... In addition one must
mention Mme. Farrar’s brilliant success, deserved in some degree,
as Carmen, both in Bizet’s opera and in a moving picture drama;
Miss Theda Bara’s film appearance in the same part, made with more
atmospheric suggestion than Mme. Farrar’s, even if less effective as
an interpretation of the moods of the Spanish cigarette girl; Mr.
Charles Chaplin’s eccentric burlesque of the same play; the continued
presence in New York of Andrea de Segurola as an opera and concert
singer; Maria Gay, who gave some performances in _Carmen_ and other
operas; and Lucrezia Bori, although she was unable to sing during the
entire season owing to the unfortunate result of an operation on her
vocal cords; in Chicago, Miss Supervia appeared at the opera and Mme.
Koutznezoff, the Russian, danced Spanish dances; and at the New York
Winter Garden Isabel Rodriguez appeared in Spanish dances which quite
transcended the surroundings and made that stage as atmospheric, for
the few brief moments in which it was occupied by her really entrancing
beauty, as a _maison de danse_ in Seville. The tango, too, in somewhat
modified form, continued to interest “ballroom dancers,” danced to
music provided in many instances by Señor Valverde, an indefatigable
producer of popular tunes, some of which have a certain value as music
owing to their close allegiance to the folk-dances and songs of Spain.
In the art-world there was a noticeable revival of interest in Goya and
El Greco.
But if Mr. Gatti-Casazza, with the best intentions in the world,
should desire to take advantage of any of this _réclame_ by producing
a series of Spanish operas at the Metropolitan Opera House--say four
or five more--he would find himself in difficulty. Where are they?
Several of the operas of Isaac Albeniz have been performed in London,
and in Brussels at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, but would they be liked
here? There is Felipe Pedrell’s monumental work, the trilogy, _Los
Pireneos_, called by Edouard Lopez-Chavarri “the most important work
for the theatre written in Spain”; and there is the aforementioned
_Dolores_. For the rest, one would have to search about among the
zarzuelas; and would the Metropolitan Opera House be a suitable place
for the production of this form of opera? It is doubtful, indeed, if
the zarzuela could take root in any theatre in New York.
The truth is that in Spain Italian and German operas are much more
popular than Spanish, the zarzuela always excepted; and at Señor
Arbós’s series of concerts at the Royal Opera in Madrid one hears
more Bach and Beethoven than Albeniz and Pedrell. There is a growing
interest in music in Spain and there are indications that some day
her composers may again take an important place with the musicians
of other nationalities, a place they proudly held in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. However, no longer ago than 1894, we
find Louis Lombard writing in his “Observations of a Musician” that
harmony was not taught at the Conservatory of Malaga, and that at
the closing exercises of the Conservatory of Barcelona he had heard
a four-hand arrangement of the _Tannhäuser_ march performed on ten
pianos by forty hands! Havelock Ellis (“The Soul of Spain,” 1909)
affirms that a concert in Spain sets the audience to chattering. They
have a savage love of noise, the Spanish, he says, which incites them
to conversation. Albert Lavignac, in “Music and Musicians” (William
Marchant’s translation), says, “We have left in the shade the Spanish
school, which to say truth does not exist.” But if one reads what
Lavignac has to say about Moussorgsky, one is likely to give little
credence to such extravagant generalities as the one just quoted.
The Moussorgsky paragraph is a gem, and I am only too glad to insert
it here for the sake of those who have not seen it: “A charming and
fruitful melodist, who makes up for a lack of skill in harmonization
by a daring, which is sometimes of doubtful taste; has produced songs,
piano music in small amount, and an opera, _Boris Godunow_.” In the
report of the proceedings of the thirty-fourth session of the London
Musical Association (1907-8) Dr. Thomas Lea Southgate is quoted as
complaining to Sir George Grove because under “Schools of Composition”
in the old edition of Grove’s Dictionary the Spanish School was
dismissed in twenty lines. Sir George, he says, replied, “Well, I gave
it to Rockstro because nobody knows anything about Spanish music.”--The
bibliography of modern Spanish music is indeed indescribably meagre,
although a good deal has been written in and out of Spain about the
early religious composers of the Iberian peninsula.
These matters will be discussed in due course. In the meantime it
has afforded me some amusement to put together a list (which may be
of interest to both the casual reader and the student of music) of
compositions suggested by Spain to composers of other nationalities.
(This list is by no means complete. I have not attempted to include
in it works which are not more or less familiar to the public of the
present day; without boundaries it could easily be extended into a
small volume.) The répertoire of the concert room and the opera house
is streaked through and through with Spanish atmosphere and, on the
whole, I should say, the best Spanish music has not been written by
Spaniards, although most of it, like the best music written in Spain,
is based primarily on the rhythm of folk-tunes, dances and songs. Of
orchestral pieces I think I must put at the head of the list Chabrier’s
rhapsody, _España_, as colourful and rhythmic a combination of tone as
the auditor of a symphony concert is often bidden to hear. It depends
for its melody and rhythm on two Spanish dances, the jota, fast and
fiery, and the malagueña, slow and sensuous. These are true Spanish
tunes; Chabrier, according to report, invented only the rude theme
given to the trombones. The piece was originally written for piano, and
after Chabrier’s death was transformed (with other music by the same
composer) into a ballet, _España_, performed at the Paris Opera, 1911.
Waldteufel based one of his most popular waltzes on the theme of this
rhapsody. Chabrier’s _Habanera_ for the pianoforte (1885) was his last
musical reminiscence of his journey to Spain. It is French composers
generally who have achieved better effects with Spanish atmosphere
than men of other nations, and next to Chabrier’s music I should put
Debussy’s _Iberia_, the second of his _Images_ (1910). It contains
three movements designated respectively as “In the streets and roads,”
“The perfumes of the night,” and “The morning of a fête-day.” It is
indeed rather the smell and the look of Spain than the rhythm that this
music gives us, entirely impressionistic that it is, but rhythm is not
lacking, and such characteristic instruments as castanets, tambourines,
and xylophones are required by the score. “Perfumes of the night” comes
as near to suggesting odours to the nostrils as any music can--and not
all of them are pleasant odours. There is Rimsky-Korsakow’s _Capriccio
Espagnole_, with its _alborado_ or lusty morning serenade, its long
series of cadenzas (as cleverly written as those of _Scheherazade_ to
display the virtuosity of individual players in the orchestra; it is
noteworthy that this work is dedicated to the sixty-seven musicians
of the band at the Imperial Opera House of Petrograd and all of their
names are mentioned on the score) to suggest the vacillating music of
a gipsy encampment, and finally the wild fandango of the Asturias with
which the work comes to a brilliant conclusion. Engelbert Humperdinck
taught the theory of music in the Conservatory of Barcelona for two
years (1885-6), and one of the results was his _Maurische Rhapsodie_ in
three parts (1898-9), still occasionally performed by our orchestras.
Lalo wrote his _Symphonie Espagnole_ for violin and orchestra for the
great Spanish virtuoso, Pablo de Sarasate, but all our violinists
delight to perform it (although usually shorn of a movement or two).
Glinka wrote a _Jota Aragonese_ and _A Night in Madrid_; he gave a
Spanish theme to Balakirew which the latter utilized in his _Overture
on a theme of a Spanish March_. Liszt wrote a _Spanish Rhapsody_ for
pianoforte (arranged as a concert piece for piano and orchestra by
Busoni) in which he used the jota of Aragon as a theme for variations.
Rubinstein’s _Toreador and Andalusian_ and Moszkowski’s _Spanish
Dances_ (for four hands) are known to all amateur pianists as Hugo
Wolf’s _Spanisches Liederbuch_ and Robert Schumann’s _Spanisches
Liederspiel_, set to F. Giebel’s translations of popular Spanish
ballads, are known to all singers. I have heard a song of Saint-Saëns,
_Guitares et Mandolines_, charmingly sung by Greta Torpadie, in which
the instruments of the title, under the subtle fingers of that masterly
accompanist, Coenraad V. Bos, were cleverly imitated. And Debussy’s
_Mandoline_ and Delibes’s _Les Filles de Cadiz_ (which in this country
belongs both to Emma Calvé and Olive Fremstad) spring instantly to
mind. Ravel’s _Rapsodie Espagnole_ is as Spanish as music could be.
The Boston Symphony men have played it during the season just past.
Ravel based the habanera section of his _Rapsodie_ on one of his piano
pieces. But Richard Strauss’s two tone-poems on Spanish subjects, _Don
Juan_ and _Don Quixote_, have not a note of Spanish colouring, so far
as I can remember, from beginning to end. Svendsen’s symphonic poem,
_Zorahayda_, based on a passage in Washington Irving’s “Alhambra,”
is Spanish in theme and may be added to this list together with
Waldteufel’s _Estudiantina_ waltzes.
* * * * *
Four modern operas stand out as Spanish in subject and atmosphere. I
would put at the top of the list Zandonai’s _Conchita_; the Italian
composer has caught on his musical palette and transferred to his tonal
canvas a deal of the lazy restless colour of the Iberian peninsula
in this little master-work. The feeling of the streets and patios is
admirably caught. My friend, Pitts Sanborn, said of it, after its
solitary performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York by
the Chicago Opera Company, “There is musical atmosphere of a rare
and penetrating kind; there is colour used with the discretion of a
master; there are intoxicating rhythms, and above the orchestra the
voices are heard in a truthful musical speech.... Ever since _Carmen_
it has been so easy to write Spanish music and achieve supremely
the banal. Here there is as little of the Spanish of convention as
in Debussy’s _Iberia_, but there is Spain.” This opera, based on
Pierre Louys’s sadic novel, “La Femme et le Pantin,” owed some of its
extraordinary impression of vitality to the vivid performance given of
the title-rôle by Tarquinia Tarquini. Raoul Laparra, born in Bordeaux,
but who has travelled much in Spain, has written two Spanish operas,
_La Habanera_ and _La Jota_, both named after popular Spanish dances
and both produced at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. I have heard _La
Habanera_ there and found the composer’s use of the dance as a pivot of
a tragedy very convincing. Nor shall I forget the first act-close, in
which a young man, seated on a wall facing the window of a house where
a most bloody murder has been committed, sings a wild Spanish ditty,
accompanying himself on the guitar, crossing and recrossing his legs in
complete abandonment to the rhythm, while in the house rises the wild
treble cry of a frightened child. I have not heard _La Jota_, nor have
I seen the score. I do not find Emile Vuillermoz enthusiastic in his
review (“S. I. M.,” May 15, 1911): “Une danse transforme le premier
acte en un kaléidoscope frénétique et le combat dans l’église doit
donner, au second, dans l’intention de l’auteur ‘une sensation à pic,
un peu comme celle d’un puits où grouillerait la besogne monstreuse
de larves humaines.’ A vrai dire ces deux tableaux de cinématographe
papillotant, corsés de cris, de hurlements et d’un nombre incalculable
de coups de feu constituent pour le spectateur une épreuve physiquement
douloureuse, une hallucination confuse et inquiétante, un cauchemar
assourdissant qui le conduisent irrésistiblement à l’hébétude et à
la migraine. Dans tout cet enfer que devient la musique?” Perhaps
opera-goers in general are not looking for thrills of this order; the
fact remains that _La Jota_ has had a modest career when compared with
_La Habanera_, which has even been performed in Boston. _Carmen_ is
essentially a French opera; the leading emotions of the characters
are expressed in an idiom as French as that of Gounod; yet the dances
and entr’actes are Spanish in colour. The story of Carmen’s entrance
song is worth retelling in Mr. Philip Hale’s words (“Boston Symphony
Orchestra Programme Notes”; 1914-15, P. 287): “Mme. Galli-Marié
disliked her entrance air, which was in 6-8 time with a chorus. She
wished something more audacious, a song in which she could bring into
play the whole battery of her _perversités artistiques_, to borrow
Charles Pigot’s phrase: ‘caressing tones and smiles, voluptuous
inflections, killing glances, disturbing gestures.’ During the
rehearsals Bizet made a dozen versions. The singer was satisfied
only with the thirteenth, the now familiar Habanera, based on an old
Spanish tune that had been used by Sebastian Yradier. This brought
Bizet into trouble, for Yradier’s publisher, Heugel, demanded that the
indebtedness should be acknowledged in Bizet’s score. Yradier made no
complaint, but to avoid a lawsuit or a scandal, Bizet gave consent, and
on the first page of the Habanera in the French edition of _Carmen_
this line is engraved: ‘Imitated from a Spanish song, the property of
the publishers of _Le Ménestrel_.’”