Sprach Zarathustra," where the woodwind instruments sound the chord of
B major against the softly plucked C of the strings; but we have to go
to the operas again to find it carried to its logical and sometimes
cruel extreme. There we find alien triads marching uneasily together
in double harness;[12] dominant sevenths similarly shackled;[13] and
strange passages in which the upper parts move naturally, but above
a dislocated bass.[14] Such procedures, which, it must always be
remembered, because of differences in tone quality between instruments
of different families, sound far less harsh in the orchestra than on
the piano, even if they are no less queer musically, can theoretically
be carried to any extent. How far Strauss sometimes carries them, a
single example must suffice to show.
[Illustration: =FIGURE IX.
Passage from "Elektra," vocal score, page 63.=]
Whether one "likes" such passages as this or not is of course a
question of taste. But one thing at least is certain: it will not do to
charge Strauss with mere musical anarchy in writing them--his work as a
whole shows too keen a sense of the traditional harmonic values. That
æsthetic insensibility, posing as "freedom from rules," "independence,"
"liberalism," and the like, to which in the minds of so many modern
composers all keys are the same, is happily not one of his failings.
That he has the keenest possible sense of the individual qualities
of the different keys, and of the structural importance of their
interrelationships, each one of his long series of symphonic poems
has by its masterly design shown afresh. How remarkable, for example,
is the antithesis of C, minor and major, and B, minor and major,
which is the constructive principle of "Also Sprach Zarathustra!"
How interesting is the choice of F major for the easy-going husband
in the "Symphonia Domestica," and of the keener, more brilliant B
major for the wife! And how this strong tonal sense not only guides
the design as a whole, but suggests endless charming and imaginative
details! At the end of the lullaby, in the same work, when the child
has fallen asleep and the music has sunk to a tranquil G minor chord,
this quietude is irradiated by a flash of B major and three notes of
the wife-theme,--the loving tenderness of the waking and watching
mother over the sleeping infant. Twice this happens, and each time the
somnolent G minor returns. Thus does genius use tonality.
Being thus brought back to consider how Strauss uses all the elements
of music, even this subtlest one of contrasting tonalities, in the
interest of characterization, we may ponder with profit one final
interpretation which might seem over-ingenious had we not the example
of Mr. Klatte to spur our critical imaginations. Why is it that we so
seldom hear the four tones of Till Eulenspiegel's main theme on any
other degrees of the scale than A, F, B, C? Why is it that, in spite
of the constant movement from key to key of the music, this theme is
hardly ever carried also into the new key?[15] Why does Strauss so
insist on this A, F, B, C, not only when the music is in F major, but
when, as at Till's anger, it is in D minor, when, as in the procession
of the burghers, it is in A minor, and when, just before the return of
the main theme, it is in C major? Why always A, F, B, C, whatever the
key? Is it not because Till, half-witted, perverse, self-imprisoned, is
not subject to social influences, and remains unplastically himself,
whatever his environment? To transpose a theme into the key prevailing
at the moment is to make order--but Till represents disorder....
Such at least is the ingenious explanation of a woman who understands
character as well as Strauss understands keys.
IV
All that we have been saying so far has concerned itself primarily
with Strauss's powers of observation and characterization; we have
noted how broad a field of human character he covers, and what
varied artistic resources he brings to its depiction; we have seen
how peculiarly fitted he is for this part of his work by his active
temperament, with its accompanying intellectual alertness and freedom
from self-consciousness. But we saw that the great dramatist needs
not only observation but sympathy, in order that his work may be as
moving as it is vivid; and in this power of emotion we may at first be
inclined to consider Strauss deficient. There is undoubtedly a popular
superstition which puts him among the intellectuals. The clean-cut
efficiency of his personality, his businesslike habits, his mordant
wit, both in words and in notes (was there ever anything so witty
as "Till Eulenspiegel"?), even questionably relevant details like
his exquisitely neat handwriting and his well-groomed and not in the
least long-haired appearance,--all these create the impression of a
personality by no means _schwärmerisch_, far removed indeed from the
rapt dreamer who is the school-girl's ideal composer.
There is perhaps a measure of truth in this picture. Many of Strauss's
most characteristic merits, as well as defects, may be traced to his
lack of the introspective tendency which has been so fundamental in
most of the other great German musicians, from Bach to Wagner, and
which is seen perhaps at its purest and best in Schumann. Strauss is at
the other pole from Schumann--and music is wide! Mr. Ernest Newman, in
the ablest studies of Strauss yet published in English,[16] points to
the internal evidence of this lack in his earliest and therefore least
sophisticated compositions. "The general impression one gets from all
these works," writes Mr. Newman, "is that of a head full to overflowing
with music, a temperament that is energetic and forthright rather than
warm ..., and a general lack not only of young mannish sentimentality,
but of sentiment. There is often a good deal of ardour in the writing,
but it is the ardour of the intellect rather than of the emotions." And
again: "Wherever the youthful Strauss has to sing rather than declaim,
when he has to be emotional rather than intellectual, as in his slow
movements, he almost invariably fails.... He feels it hard to squeeze
a tear out of his unclouded young eyes, to make those taut, whip-cord
young nerves of his quiver with emotion."[17]
Now, although Mr. Newman would not accept his own description of
Strauss the youth as a fair account of the mature composer, although,
indeed, he specifically insists, in a later passage, that Strauss's
musical imagination lost, at adolescence, its "first metallic
hardness" and "softened into something more purely emotional," yet
his vivid phrases seem to give us a picture of Strauss that is in
essentials as true at fifty as it was at fifteen. "A temperament
that is energetic and forthright rather than warm," "an ardour of
the intellect rather than of the emotions"--these are surely still
Straussian characteristics. And what is more they are characteristics
that, whatever their dangers, have exerted a splendid influence in
modern music. Schumann's was a noble introspection that no one who
knows it can help loving; but in natures less pure the introspective
habit of German romanticism has not always been so happy in its
effects. An unhealthy degree of self-contemplation tends to substitute
futile or morbid imaginings for the solid realities of life; the
over-introspective artist cuts himself off from a large arc of
experience and is prone to exaggerate the importance of the more
intimate sentiments, and when, as in German romanticism, such a
tendency is widespread, a whole school may become febrile and erotic.
The vapors of such confirmed sentimentalism can best be dispersed
by a ray of clear, cold intelligence, such as Shaw plays through
contemporary literature and Strauss through contemporary music.
"Cynicism," says Stevenson, "is the cold tub and bath towel of the
emotions, and absolutely necessary to life in cases of advanced
sensibility." Strauss has administered this tonic shock to us, immersed
as we were in the languors of the Wagnerian boudoir. He has rooted us
out of our agreeable reveries, sent us packing outdoors, and made us
gasp with the stinging impacts of crude existence and the tingling
lungfuls of fresh air. Is it not worth while, for this vigorous life,
to sacrifice a few subtle nuances of feeling?
If then we so emphasize his possession of the active rather than the
contemplative temperament, it is not to blame him for not being a
Schumann, but to render as precise as possible in our own minds the
notion of what it is to be a Strauss. If there is a point where blame
or regret must mingle with our appreciation, it will be likely to come
not at the preliminary determination of what his temperament is, but
at the further discovery of certain extremes to which he has allowed
his interest in externals to carry him, especially in his later work.
And here we must try to set right a misconception with which Mr. Newman
leaves the student of his essay on "Program Music."[18]
V
Mr. Newman, wishing to draw a reasoned distinction between
self-sufficing, or "pure," or "abstract" music--that is, music that
makes its appeal directly and without the aid of any verbal tag--and
"poetic" music, or, more specifically, music with a definite program
or title, adopts, seemingly without criticism, the popular notion that
the first is less "emotional" than the second, and supports it by
piling up epithets which beg the very question he is supposed to be
examining. It is easy to "damn a dog by giving him a bad name," and it
is easy to make music without program seem a dry and academic affair
by calling it "abstract note-spinning," "mathematical music," "mere
formal harmony," "embroidery," "juggling," "the arousing of pleasure in
beautiful forms"--much too easy for a man of Mr. Newman's penetration
and fair-mindedness.
One expects this kind of thing from inexperienced youths whose
enthusiasm has been inflamed by the gorgeous color and the easily
grasped "story" of such a work as, let us say, Tschaikowsky's "Romeo
and Juliet," who have not had time to live themselves into accord
with the profound emotional life of the great musical classics such
as Bach's fugues and Beethoven's symphonies; but from Mr. Newman such
superficialities, especially when they are associated, as these are,
with many penetrating and true observations, and an argument in the
main convincing, come as a surprise.
The central fallacy that vitiates Mr. Newman's conclusions lurks in his
assumption that "specific reference to actual life" necessarily means
greater emotion, and that the generality or "abstractness" of classic
music is a symptom of emotional deficiency. "In the old symphony or
sonata," says Mr. Newman, "a succession of notes, pleasing in itself
but not having specific reference to actual life--not attempting, that
is, to get at very close quarters with strong emotional or dramatic
expression, but influencing and affecting us mainly by reason of its
purely formal relations and by the purely physical pleasure inherent
in it as sound--was stated, varied, worked out, and combined with
other themes of the same order...." And again: "The opening phrase of
Beethoven's 8th Symphony refers to nothing at all external to itself;
it is what Herbert Spencer has called the music of pure exhilaration;
to appreciate it you have to think of nothing but itself; the pleasure
lies primarily in the way the notes are put together." To this a
footnote is appended: "There is emotion, of course, at the back of the
notes; the reader will not take me to mean that the pleasure is merely
physical, like a taste or an odour. But the emotive wave is relatively
small and very vague; it neither comes directly from nor suggests any
external existence." Once more, the assumption that degree of emotion
is in a direct ratio with externality of suggestion.
But as a matter of fact is not the exact opposite the truth? Are we
not most deeply moved when we are lifted clean out of the concrete and
carried up to the universal of which it is only an example? Is not the
general far more moving than the particular? Do we not feel external
details to be irrelevant and even annoyingly intrusive when we are
stirred to the recognition of inward truths, of spiritual realities?
No doubt program music owes to its reference to the particular story,
the well-known hero, the familiar book or picture, a certain vividness,
an immediateness of appeal even to the unmusical, a rich fund of
associations to draw upon; but even program music, surely, tends in
all its more powerful moments to penetrate below this comparatively
superficial layer of external facts to the profounder (and of
course vaguer) emotional strata of which they are, so to speak, the
outcroppings. It is odd how little difference there is between program
music and music, without the tag, in their more inspired moments; in
all symphonic poems it is the symphonic rather than the poetic element
that is chiefly responsible for the effect produced; and indeed,
increasingly realistic as Strauss has become in his later works, even
here the memorable moments are those of emotional fulfilment and
realization, in which we tacitly agree to let the program go hang.
Far from the "emotive wave" being proportional to the suggestion
of "external existence," then, one would say that it was rather
proportional to the realization of universal spiritual truth, and
that in systematically confronting us with ever more and more crassly
external existences Strauss has in his later works followed a practice
as questionable as the theory which supports it, and levied an ever
greater tax of boredom on our joy in the finer moments of his art.
Even in "Tod und Verklärung," which remains to this day, in the words
of M. Romain Rolland,[19] "one of the most moving works of Strauss,
and that which is constructed with the noblest unity," the repulsively
realistic details with which the gasping for breath of the dying man
is pictured consort but incongruously with the tender beauty of the
"childhood" passages and the broad grandeur of the "transfiguration."
The love of crass realism thus early revealed has grown apace, by
even steps, unfortunately, with the extraordinary powers upon which
it is parasitic. In the works conceived partially in a spirit of
comedy, to be sure, such as "Till Eulenspiegel" and "Don Quixote," it
finds a whimsical, witty expression for itself which not only seldom
strikes a false note, but is often exceedingly amusing. Till's charge
among the market-women's pots and pans, the bleating of the sheep in
"Don Quixote," even perhaps the baby's squalling in the "Symphonia
Domestica," are clever bits of side play, like the "business" of
an irrepressible comedian, which are not out of key with the main
substance of the music. But even here these realistic touches are
exuberances, and inessential; the essential thing in "Till," for
example, is the spirit of mischief and destruction that existed in the
human heart for centuries before the rascal Eulenspiegel was born, and
that respond in us to his pranks; and this essence Strauss expresses in
the purely musical parts of his work, and by means identical in kind
with those employed in a Beethoven scherzo.
And if realistic detail is in such instances subordinate to musical
expression it may in the treatment of more serious subjects become
positively inimical to it. Do we really care very much about supermen
and "convalescents" and the rival claims of Christianity and
neo-paganism when we are listening to "Also Sprach Zarathustra"? Does
not that everlasting C-G-C, with its insistence on an esoteric meaning
that we never knew or have forgotten, pester us unnecessarily? What
we remember in "Zarathustra" is much more likely to be the poignant
passion of the "Grablied," or the beautiful broad melody of the
violins, in B major, near the end, which bears no label at all save
the tempo mark "Langsam." Similarly, in the "Symphonia Domestica"
the family squabbles, growling father giving the réplique to bawling
infant, leave us skeptically detached or mildly amused. It is the
musical charm of the "easy-going" parts in F major, the cradle song,
above all the largely conceived slow movement with its wonderful
development of the husband's "dreamy" theme, that really stir us. As
for "Ein Heldenleben," what an unmitigated bore are those everlasting
Adversaries!
Thus in the later works Strauss's shortcomings on the subjective side,
his native tendency to concern himself more with concrete appearances
than with essential emotional truths, seem exaggerated to such a degree
as seriously to disturb the balance of his art. As he has interested
himself more and more in externals he has not entirely evaded the
danger of exalting the "program" at the expense of the "music," and his
work, for all its extraordinary brilliance, its virtuosity, its power,
has become over-emphatic, ill-balanced, hard in finish and theatrical
in emphasis. It is ultimately a spiritual defect that compels us to
withhold our full admiration from "Ein Heldenleben" or the "Domestica."
We admit their titanic power, their marvelous nervous vitality;
their technical temerities grow for the most part acceptable with
familiarity; it is their emotional unreality that disappoints us. This
charge of unreality, made against realism, may surprise us, may seem
to savor of paradox; but it is inevitable. For music, as we have been
told _ad nauseam_, but as we must never be allowed to forget, exists to
express feeling; the only truth essential to it is truth to emotion;
and therefore realism, looking as it does away from inward emotion to
external fact, ever tends toward musical unreality.
How shall we account for this progressive externalizing of Strauss's
musical interest? Is it all temperament? Has environment had anything
to do with it? Do those high-sounding but dubious things "modern German
materialism" and its accompanying æsthetic "decadence" bear in any way
upon the matter? These are questions too large for a humble annalist
of music to answer. M. Romain Rolland, however, in his essay on French
and German Music in "Musiciens d'aujourd'hui," has one suggestion
too relevant to be neglected here. "German music," says M. Rolland,
"loses from day to day its intimateness: there is some of it still in
Wolf, thanks to the exceptional misfortunes of his life; there is very
little of it in Mahler, despite his efforts to concentrate himself upon
himself; there is hardly any of it in Strauss, although he is the most
interesting of the three. They no longer have any depth. I have said
that I attribute this fact to the detestable influence of the theatre,
to which almost all these artists are attached, as Kapellmeisters,
directors of opera, etc. They owe to it the often melodramatic or at
least external character of their music--music on parade, thinking
constantly of effect."
One hesitates to accept so damning a charge as this against any artist,
especially against a musical artist, who above all others should
render sincere account of what is in his own heart rather than "give
the public what it wants." Yet there is only too much in the later
Strauss that it explains. How else shall we account for the exaggerated
emphasis, the over-elaboration of contrasts that seem at times almost
mechanical, and that suggest shrewd calculation of the crowd psychology
rather than free development of the musical thought? What else explains
so well the sensational elements so incredibly childish in an art so
mature as Strauss's: the ever-increasing noisiness, the introduction
of wind-machines, thunder-machines, and heaven knows what diabolic
engines; the appetite for novelty for novelty's sake? And is there not
a reflection of the "saponaceous influences of opera," as Sir Hubert
Parry so well calls them, in the cloying over-sweetness, the sensuous
luxury, of those peculiar passages, like the oboe solo in "Don Juan,"
the love music in "Ein Heldenleben," which form such conventional spots
in the otherwise vital tissue of the music? Surely the opera house, and
not the concert hall, is the place where such sybaritisms naturally
breed.
For one reason and another, then--temperament, environment, the
enervation of the operatic atmosphere with its constant quest of
"effect"--the fresh and vital elements in Strauss's art have not
entirely escaped contamination by more stale, conventional, and
specious ones. Particularly has he failed of his highest achievement
when desire for immediate appeal, the bias of an over-active mind,
or the fallacies of a one-sided æsthetic have led him too far from
the subjective emotion which is truly the soul of music. Yet when
all subtractions are made he must remain one of the great creative
musicians of his day. His surprising vigor and trenchancy of mind,
his wit, his sense of comedy (in the Meredithian use of the word),
his unerring eye for character, and, at his best, his sympathetic
interpretation of life and his broad grasp of its significance as a
whole, combine to produce a unique personality. Some of the eloquence
we find in the more pompous parts of "Zarathustra" or "Ein Heldenleben"
posterity will probably dismiss as bombast; but posterity will be
stupid indeed if it does not prize "Till Eulenspiegel" and "Don
Quixote" as master expressions of the spirit of comedy in music. "Till
Eulenspiegel" particularly is a well-nigh perfect blending of the
three qualities of the master dramatist we began by discussing. It
combines the observation of a Swift with the sympathetic imagination of
a Thackeray. Beneath its turbulent surface of fun is a deep sense of
pathos, of the fragmentariness and fleetingness of Till, for all his
pranks; so that to the sensitive it may easily bring tears as well as
smiles. Above all, it has that largeness of vision, rarest of artistic
qualities, which not only penetrates from appearance to feeling, but
grasps feeling in all its relations, presents a unified picture of
life, and purges the emotions as the Greek tragedy aimed to do. All is
suffused in beauty. The prologue: "Once upon a time there was a man,"
and the epilogue: "Thus it happened to Till Eulenspiegel," make a
complete cycle of the work, and remove its expression to a philosophic
or poetic plane high above mere crude realism. There are doubtless
more impressive single passages in later works, but it may be doubted
if anything Strauss has ever written is more perfect or more tender
than this wittiest of pieces, in which the wit is yet forgotten in the
beauty.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] See especially "The Romantic Composers."
[6] In the essays on these composers in "From Grieg to Brahms."
[7] The passage, page 13 of the two-hand piano arrangement, page 26 of
the orchestra score, is too long to quote here.
[8] Don Quixote, erläutert von Arthur Kahn, Der Musikführer no. 148,
Leipzig.
[9] The jump of the horns in the fourth measure illustrates another
obstacle to understanding that the inexperienced listener often meets
in Strauss. He is quite careless as to what register, high or low, the
"resolutions" of his dissonances occur in; they jump about from octave
to octave; and the hearer, to follow them, has to be equally agile.
[10] Essay on Chopin, in "The Romantic Composers."
[11] Vocal score, page 35.
[12] "Elektra," vocal score, page 21.
[13] _Ibid._ Page 23.
[14] _Ibid._ Page 20, the first line.
[15] It _is_ transposed into B flat in the episode wherein Till dons
the vestments of a priest.
[16] "Richard Strauss," in the Living Masters of Music Series, and
"Richard Strauss and the Music of the Future," in "Musical Studies."
[17] "Richard Strauss," pages 30-32.
[18] In "Musical Studies."
[19] "Musiciens d'aujourd'hui," page 123.
III
SIR EDWARD ELGAR
[Illustration: =EDWARD ELGAR=]
III
SIR EDWARD ELGAR