happened that all of it has been appreciated by a very worth-while
public. He has done what Benedetto Croce in his valuable work,
“Æsthetic,” demands of the artist. He has expressed himself ... for
beauty is expression. “Artists,” says this writer, “while making a
verbal pretence of agreeing, or yielding a feigned obedience to them,
have always disregarded (these) _laws of styles_. Every true work of
art has violated some established class and upset the ideas of the
critics who have been obliged to enlarge the number of classes, until
finally even this enlargement has proved too narrow, owing to the
appearance of new works of art, which are naturally followed by new
scandals, new upsettings, and--new enlargements.”
“It must not be forgotten,” says Egon Wellesz (“Schoenberg and Beyond”
in “The Musical Quarterly,” Otto Kinkeldey’s translation), “that in art
there are no ‘eternal laws’ and rules. Each period of history has its
own art, and the art of each period has its own rules. There are times
of which one might say that every work which was not in accord with the
rules was bad or amateurish. These are the times in which fixed forms
exist, to which all artists hold fast, merely varying the content.
Then there are periods when artists break through and shatter the old
forms. The greatness of their thoughts can no longer be confined within
the old limits. (Think of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the Symphonie
Fantastique of Berlioz.) There arises a category of art works whose
power and beauty can be _felt_ only and not _understood_. For this
reason an audience that knows nothing of rules will enthuse over works
of this kind much sooner than the average musician who looks for the
rules and their observance.”
Remember that Hanslick called _Tristan und Isolde_ “an abomination of
sense and language” and Chorley wrote “I have never been so blanked,
pained, wearied, _insulted_ even (the word is not too strong), by a
work of pretension as by ... _Tannhäuser_....” “Fortunately,” I quote
Benedetto Croce again, “no arduous remarks are necessary to convince
ourself that pictures, poetry, and every work of art, produce no
effects save on souls prepared to receive them.”
The clock continues to make its hands go round, so fast indeed that
it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of its course. For
example, just before his death, John F. Runciman in “Another Ode to
Discord” (“The New Music Review,” April, 1916) seemed to present an
entirely new front. Here is a sample passage, “We have grown used to
dissonances and our ears no longer require the momentary rest afforded
by frequent concords; if a discord neither demands preparation nor
resolution, and if it sounds beautiful and is expressive, there is
no reason on earth why a piece of music should not consist wholly
of a series of discords.... From Monteverde to Scriabine the line
is unbroken, each successive generation growing bolder in attacking
dissonances and still bolder in the manner of quitting them. I heard
a gentleman give a recital of his own pianoforte works not long ago.
They seemed to consist entirely of minor seconds--B and C struck
together--and the effect to my mind was excruciatingly abominable.
But that is how Bach’s music, Beethoven’s, Wagner’s, struck their
contemporaries; and heaven knows what we shall get accustomed to in
time. One thing is certain--that the most daring modern spirit is only
following in the steps of the mightiest masters....”
We may be on the verge of a still greater revolution in art than any
through which we have yet passed; new banners may be unfurled, and new
strongholds captured. I admit that the idea gives me pleasure. Try to
admit as much to yourself. Go hear the new music; listen to it and see
if you can’t enjoy it. Perhaps you can’t. At any rate you will find in
time that you won’t listen to second-rate imitations of the giant works
of the past any longer. Your ears will make progress in spite of you
and I shouldn’t wonder at all if five years more would make Schoenberg
and Strawinsky and Ornstein a trifle old-fashioned.... The Austrian
already has a little of the academy dust upon him.
_New York, April 16, 1916._
A New Principle in Music
A New Principle in Music
Although Igor Strawinsky plainly proclaimed himself a genius in _The
Firebird_ (1909-10), it was in _Petrouchka_ (1910-11) that he began the
experiment which established a new principle in music. In these “scènes
burlesques” he discovered the advantages of a new use of the modern
orchestra, completely upsetting the old academic ideas about “balance
of tone,” and proving to his own satisfaction the value of “pure tone,”
in the same sense that the painter speaks of pure colour. And in this
work he broke away from the standards not only of Richard Strauss, the
Wagner follower, but also of such innovators as Modeste Moussorgsky and
Claude Debussy.
Strauss, following Wagner’s theory of the _leit-motiv_, rounded out
the form of the tone-poem, carried the principle of representation in
music a few steps farther than his master, gave new colours to old
instruments, and broadened the scope of the modern orchestra so that
it might include new ones (in one of his symphonies Gustav Mahler
was content with 150 men!). Moussorgsky (although his work preceded
that of Strauss, the general knowledge of it is modern), working
along entirely different lines, strove for truthful utterance and
achieved a mode of expression which usually seems inevitable. Debussy
endowed music with novel tints derived from the extensive, and almost
exclusive, use of what is called the whole-tone scale, and instead of
forcing his orchestra to make more noise he constantly repressed it (in
all of _Pelléas et Mélisande_ there is but one climax of sound and in
_l’Après-midi d’un Faune_ and his other orchestral works he is equally
continent in the use of dynamics).
Igor Strawinsky has not been deaf to the blandishments of these
composers. He has used the _leit-motiv_ (sparingly) in both _The
Firebird_ and _Petrouchka_. He abandoned it in _The Sacrifice to
the Spring_ (1913) and in _The Nightingale_ (1914). His powers of
representation are as great as those of Strauss; it is only necessary
to recall the music of the bird in _The Firebird_, his orchestral
piece, _Fireworks_, which received warm praise from a manufacturer of
pyrotechnics, and the street organ music in _Petrouchka_. Later he
conceived the mission of music to be something different. “La musique
est trop bête,” he said once ironically, “pour exprimer autre chose que
la musique.” In such an extraordinary work as _The Nightingale_ we find
him making little or no attempt at representation. The bird does not
sing like the little brown warbler; instead Strawinsky has endeavoured
to write music which would give the _feeling_ of the bird’s song and
the effect it made on the people in his lyric drama to the auditors
in the stalls of the opera house. As for Strauss’s use of orchestral
colour the German is the merest tyro when compared to the Russian.
There is some use of the whole-tone scale in _The Firebird_, and
elsewhere in Strawinsky, but it is not a predominant use of it. In this
“conte dansé” he also suggests the _Pelléas et Mélisande_ of Debussy
in his continent use of sound and the mystery and esotericism of his
effect. Strawinsky is more of an expert than Moussorgsky; he handles
his medium more freely (has any one ever handled it better?) but he
still preaches the older Russian doctrine of truth of expression, a
doctrine which implies the curt dismissal of all idea of padding.
But all these composers and their contemporaries, and the composers
who came before them, have one quality in common; they all use the
orchestra of their time, or a bigger one. Strauss, to be sure,
introduces a number of new instruments, but he still utilizes a vast
number of violins and violas massed against the other instruments,
diminishing in number according to the volume of sound each makes. He
divides his strings continually, of course; they do not all play alike
as the violins, say, in _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_, but they often all
play at once.
Strawinsky experimented at first with the full orchestra and he even
utilized it in such late works as _Petrouchka_ and _The Nightingale_.
However, in his search for “pure tone” he used it in a new way. In
_Petrouchka_, for example, infrequently you will hear more than _one
of each instrument at a time_ and frequently two, or at most three,
instruments playing simultaneously will be sufficient to give his idea
form. The entire second scene of this mimed drama, is written for solo
piano, occasionally combined with a single other instrument. At other
times in the action the bassoon or the cornet, even the triangle has
the stage. And when he wishes to achieve his most complete effects he
is careful not to use more than seven or eight instruments, and _only
one of each_.
He experimented still further with this principle in his Japanese
songs, for voice and small orchestra (1912). The words are by Akahito,
Mazatsumi, and Tsaraiuki. I have not heard these songs with orchestral
accompaniment (the piano transcription was made by the composer
himself) but I may take the judgment of those who have. I am told that
they are of an indescribable beauty, and instinct with a new colour,
a colour particularly adapted to the oriental naïveté of the lyrics.
The orchestra, to accompany a soprano, consists of two flutes (one
a little flute), two clarinets (the second a bass clarinet), piano
(an instrument which Strawinsky almost invariably includes in his
orchestration), two violins, viola and ’cello. This form of chamber
music, of course, is not rare. Chausson’s violin concerto, with chamber
orchestra, and Schoenberg’s _Pierrot Lunaire_ instantly come to mind,
but Strawinsky did not stop with chamber music. He applied his new
principle to the larger forms.
In his newest work, _The Village Weddings_, which I believe Serge
de Diaghilew hopes to produce, his principle has found its ultimate
expression, I am told by his friend, Ernest Ansermet, conductor of the
Russian Ballet in America and to whom Strawinsky dedicated his three
pieces for string quartet. The last note is dry on the score of this
work, and it is therefore quite possible to talk about it although no
part of it has yet been performed publicly. According to Mr. Ansermet
there is required an orchestra of forty-five men, each a virtuoso, _no
two of whom play the same instrument_ (to be sure there are two violins
but one invariably plays pizzicato, the other invariably bows). There
are novelties in the band but all the conventional instruments are
there including, you may be sure, a piano and an infinite variety
of woodwinds, which always play significant rôles in Strawinsky’s
orchestration. And Mr. Ansermet says that in this work Strawinsky
has achieved effects such as have only been dreamed of by composers
hitherto.... I can well believe him.
He has made another innovation, following, in this case, an idea
of Diaghilew’s. When that impresario determined on a production of
Rimsky-Korsakow’s opera, _The Golden Cock_, during the summer of
1914 he conceived a performance with two casts, one choregraphic
and the other vocal. Thus Mme. Dobrovolska sang the coloratura rôle
of the Queen of Shemakhan while Mme. Karsavina danced the part most
brilliantly on her toes; M. Petrov sang the rôle of King Dodon,
which was enacted by Adolf Bolm, etc. In order to accomplish this
feat Mr. Diaghilew was obliged to make the singers a part of the
decoration. Nathalie Gontcharova, who has been called in to assist
in the production of _The Village Weddings_, devised as part of her
stage setting two tiers of seats, one on either side of the stage,
extending into the flies after the fashion of similar benches used
at the performance of an oratorio. The singers (principals and chorus
together) clad in magenta gowns and caps, all precisely similar, sat
on these seats during the performance and, after a few seconds, they
became quite automatically a part of the decoration. The action took
place in the centre of the stage and the dancers not only mimed their
rôles but also opened and closed their mouths as if they were singing.
The effect was thoroughly diverting and more than one serious person
was heard to declare that the future of opera had been solved, although
Mme. Rimsky-Korsakow, as she had on a similar occasion when the Russian
Ballet had produced Fokine’s version of _Scheherazade_, protested.
Rimsky-Korsakow wrote his opera to be sung in the ordinary fashion,
and, in so far as this matters, it was perhaps a desecration to perform
it in any other manner. However, quite beyond the fact that very large
audiences were hugely delighted with _The Golden Cock_ in its new form,
these performances served to fire Strawinsky with the inspiration for
his new work. He intends _The Village Weddings_ to be given precisely
in this manner. It is an opera, the rôles of which are to be sung by
artists who sit still while the figures of the ballet will enact them.
The words, I am told, are entirely derived from Russian folk stories
and ballads, pieced together by the composer himself, and the action is
to be like that of a marionette show in which the characters are worked
by strings from above. It may also be stated on the same authority that
the music, while embracing new tone colours and dramatic effects, is as
tuneful as any yet set on paper by this extraordinary young man; the
songs have a true folk flavour. The whole, it is probable, will make
as enchanting a stage entertainment as any which this composer has yet
contrived.
It is not only folk-tunes but popular songs as well that fascinate Igor
Strawinsky. Ernest Ansermet collected literally hundreds of examples
of American ragtime songs and dances to take back to the composer,
and he pointed out to me how Strawinsky had used similar specimens
in the past. For example, the barrel organ solo in the first scene
of _Petrouchka_ is a popular French song of several seasons ago, _La
Jambe de Bois_ (a song now forbidden in Paris); the final wedding music
in _The Firebird_ is an _adagio_ version of a popular Russian song,
with indecent words. He sees beauty in these popular tunes, too much
beauty to be allowed to go to waste. In the same spirit he has taken
the melodies of two Lanner waltzes for the dance between the Ballerina
and the Moor in the third scene of _Petrouchka_. It would not surprise
me at all to discover _Hello Frisco_ bobbing up in one of his future
works. After all turn about is fair play; the popular composers have
dug gold mines out of the classics.
Consistent, certainly, is Strawinsky’s delight in clowns and music
halls--the burlesque and the eccentric. He has written a ballet for
four clowns, and Ansermet showed me one day an arrangement for four
hands of three pieces, for small orchestra, in _style music hall_,
dated 1914. We gave what we smilingly referred to as the “first
American audition” on the grand pianoforte in his hotel room. I
played the base, not a matter of any particular difficulty in the
first number, a polka, because the first bar was repeated to the
end. This polka, I found very amusing and we played it over several
times. The valse, which followed, reminded me of the Lanner number
in _Petrouchka_. The suite closed with a march, dedicated to Alfred
Casella.... The pieces would delight any audience, from that of the
Palace Theatre, to that of the concerts of the Symphony Society of New
York.
_New York, February 6, 1916._
Leo Ornstein
“_the only true blue, genuine Futurist composer alive._”
James Huneker.
Leo Ornstein
The amazing Leo Ornstein!... I should have written the amazing Leo
Ornsteins for “there are many of them and each one of them is one.”
Ornstein himself has a symbol for this diversity; some of his music he
signs “Vannin.” He has told me that the signature is automatic: when
Vannin writes he signs; when Ornstein writes _he_ signs. But it is
not alone in composing that there are many Ornsteins; there are many
pianists as well. One Ornstein paints his tones with a fine soft brush;
the other smears on his colours with a trowel. In his sentimental
treatment of triviality he has scarcely a competitor on the serious
concert stage (unless it be Fanny Bloomfield-Zeisler). Is this the
Caliban, one asks, who conceived and who executes _The Wild Men’s
Dance_? The softer Ornstein is less original than his comrade, more
imitative.... I have been told that Jews are always imitative in art,
that there are no great Jewish composers. Wagner? Well, Wagner was half
a Jew, perhaps. Certainly there is imitation in Ornstein, but so was
there in the young Beethoven, the young Debussy....
Recently I went to hear Ornstein play under a misconception. I thought
that he, with an announced violinist, was going to perform his
anarchistic sonata for violin and piano, opus 31. They did perform
one of his sonatas but it was an earlier opus, 26, I think. At times,
while I listened it seemed to me that nothing so beautiful had been
done in this form since César Franck’s sonata. The first movement had
a rhapsodic character that was absolutely successful in establishing a
mood. The music soared; it did not seem confined at all. It achieved
perfectly the effect of improvisation. The second part was even finer,
and the scherzo and finale only less good. But this was no new idiom. I
looked again and again at my programme; again and again at the man on
the piano stool. Was this not Harold Bauer playing Ravel?... One theme
struck me as astonishingly like Johnson’s air in the last act of _The
Girl of the Golden West_. There was a good use made of the whole-tone
scale and its attendant harmonies, which sounded strangely in our ears
a few seasons past, and a ravishing series of figurations and runs made
one remember that Debussy had described falling water in a similar
fashion.
This over the pianist became less himself--so far as I had become
acquainted with him to this time--than ever. He played a banal
barcarole of Rubinstein’s; to be sure he almost made it sound like an
interesting composition; he played a scherzino of his own that any one
from Schütt to Moszkowski might have signed; he played something of
Grieg’s which may have pleased Mr. Finck and two or three ladies in the
audience but which certainly left me cold; and he concluded this group
with a performance of Liszt’s arrangement of the waltz from Gounod’s
_Faust_. Thereupon there was so much applause that he came back and
played his scherzino again. His répertoire in this _genre_ was probably
too limited to admit of his adding a fresh number.... At this point I
arose and left the hall, more in wonder than in indignation.
Was this the musician who had been reviled and hissed? Was this the
pianist and composer whom Huneker had dubbed the only real futurist in
modern music? It was not the Ornstein I myself had heard a few weeks
previously striking the keyboards with his fists in the vociferous
measures of _The Wild Men’s Dance_; it was not the colour painter of
the two _Impressions of Notre Dame_; it was not the Ornstein who in
a dark corner of Pogliani’s glowed with glee over the possibility of
dividing and redividing the existing scale into eighth, sixteenth, and
twenty-fourth tones.... This was another Ornstein and in searching my
memory I discovered him to be the oldest Ornstein of all. I remembered
five years back when I was assistant to the musical critic of the “New
York Times” and had been sent to hear a boy prodigy play on a Sunday
evening at the New Amsterdam Theatre. Concerts by serious artists at
that period seldom took place outside of recognized concert halls, nor
did they occur on Sunday nights. But there was something about this
concert that impressed itself upon me and I wrote more than the usual
perfunctory notice on this occasion. Here is my account of what I think
must have been Leo Ornstein’s first public appearance (March 5, 1911),
dug from an old scrap book:
“The New Amsterdam Theatre is a strange place for a recital of
pianoforte music, but one was held there last evening, when Leo
Ornstein, the latest wunderkind to claim metropolitan attention,
appeared before a very large audience to contribute his interpretation
of a programme which would have tested any fully grown-up talent.
“It began with Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, included Beethoven’s
_Sonata Appassionata_, six Chopin numbers, and finally Rubinstein’s
D minor concerto, in which young Ornstein was assisted by the Volpe
Symphony Orchestra. To say that this boy has great talent would be to
mention the obvious, but to say that as yet he is ripe for such matters
as he undertook last night would be stretching the truth. It should be
stated, however, that his command of tone colour is already great and
that his technique is usually adequate for the demands which the music
made, although in some passages in the final movement of the Beethoven
sonata his strength seemed to desert him.”
I never even heard of Leo Ornstein again after this concert at the New
Amsterdam (his exploits in Europe escaped my eyes and ears) until he
gave the famous series of concerts at the Bandbox Theatre in January
and February of 1915, a series of concerts which really startled
musical New York and even aroused orchestral conductors, in some
measure, out of their lethargic method of programme-making. So far
as he was able Ornstein constructed his programmes entirely from the
“music of the future,” and patrons of piano recitals were astonished
to discover that a pianist could give four concerts without playing
any music by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, or
Schubert.... Since these occasions Ornstein has been considered the
high apostle of the new art in America, as the post-futurist composer,
and as a pianist of great technical powers and a luscious tone
quality (it does not seem strange that these attributes are somewhat
exaggerated in so young a man).
Nearly a year later (December 15, 1915, to be exact) Ornstein
gave another concert at the Cort Theatre in New York. Here are my
impressions of that occasion, noted down shortly after:
“Leo Ornstein, a few years ago a poor Russian Jew music student, is
rapidly by way of becoming an institution. His concerts are largely
attended and he is even taken seriously by the press, especially in
England.
“He slouched on the stage, stooping, in his usual listless manner, his
long arms hanging limp at his sides like those of a gorilla. His head
is beautiful, crowned with an overflowing crop of black hair, soulful
eyes, a fine mask. There are pauses without expression but sometimes,
notably when he plays _The Wild Men’s Dance_, his face lights up with a
sort of sardonic appreciation. He has discarded his sack cloth coat for
a velvet jacket of similar cut.