With his purpose firmly fixed in his mind he started for New York,
which was then fast becoming the musical and literary centre of the country.
For three months and more he gave himself unstintedly to the work
of perfecting himself in playing the flute, and attended regularly
the great concerts then being given by Theodore Thomas.
It was an opportune time. The day of the Italian opera,
for which Lanier did not care, was past, and orchestral music
was beginning its triumphant career in this country. These were months, then,
of education in the very music for which Lanier had yearned.
He at once attracted musical critics and made a stir
in some of the churches and concert-rooms of the city.
He had brought along with him two of his own compositions,
"Swamp Robin" and "Blackbirds"; and there were some who did not hesitate
to prophesy a brilliant career for him as "the greatest flute-player
in the world." Lanier did not rely on inspiration, however,
nor was he satisfied with the applause of popular audiences;
he knew that his course must be one of "straightforward behavior
and hard work and steady improvement." He would be satisfied
only with the judgment of Thomas or Dr. Leopold Damrosch,
then conductor of the Philharmonic Society.
On his way to New York he had stopped at Baltimore, and on the advice
of his friend Henry Wysham had played for Asger Hamerik,
who was at that time making efforts to have the Peabody Institute
establish an orchestra. Hamerik was so attracted by Lanier's playing,
both of masterpieces and of his own compositions, that he invited him
to become first flute in the prospective orchestra. With even
this promise in view, Lanier had written to his wife: "It is therefore
a POSSIBILITY . . . that I may be first flute in the Peabody Orchestra,
on a salary of $120 a month, which, with five flute scholars,
would grow to $200 a month, and so . . . we might dwell in the beautiful city,
among the great libraries, and midst of the music, the religion,
and the art that we love -- and I could write my books and be the man
I wish to be."* Hamerik did succeed in getting the orchestra established
and Lanier accepted the position -- for far less money, however.
Lanier settled in Baltimore, in December, and at once attracted the attention
of the patrons of the orchestra. In the Baltimore "Sun" of December 8, 1873,
his playing was mentioned as one of the features of the opening
symphony concert. In the same paper of January 25 occurs this note:
"Lanier and Stubbs could not have acquitted themselves better,
nor done more justice to their very difficult parts."
And so throughout the winter there is contemporary evidence
that this "raw provincial, without practice and guiltless of instruction,"
was holding his own with the finely trained Germans and Danes
of Hamerik's Orchestra.
--
* `Letters', p. 75.
--
The fact is, Lanier was a musical genius. In playing the flute
he combined deftness of hand and quick intuitiveness of soul.
The director of the Peabody Orchestra, who had been a pupil of Von Buelow,
and was a composer of distinction, has left the most authoritative account
of Lanier as a performer: --
"To him as a child in his cradle Music was given, the heavenly gift
to feel and to express himself in tones. His human nature
was like an enchanted instrument, a magic flute, or the lyre of Apollo,
needing but a breath or a touch to send its beauty out into the world.
It was indeed irresistible that he should turn with those poetical feelings
which transcend language to the penetrating gentleness of the flute,
or the infinite passion of the violin; for there was an agreement,
a spiritual correspondence between his nature and theirs,
so that they mutually absorbed and expressed each other.
In his hands the flute no longer remained a mere material instrument,
but was transformed into a voice that set heavenly harmonies into vibration.
Its tones developed colors, warmth, and a low sweetness of unspeakable poetry;
they were not only true and pure, but poetic, allegoric as it were,
suggestive of the depths and heights of being and of the delights
which the earthly ear never hears and the earthly eye never sees. No doubt
his firm faith in these lofty idealities gave him the power to present them
to our imaginations, and thus by the aid of the higher language of Music
to inspire others with that sense of beauty in which he constantly dwelt.
His conception of music was not reached by an analytic study of note by note,
but was intuitive and spontaneous; like a woman's reason:
he felt it so, because he felt it so, and his delicate perception
required no more logical form of reasoning. His playing appealed alike
to the musically learned and to the unlearned -- for he would
magnetize the listener; but the artist felt in his performance
the superiority of the momentary living inspiration
to all the rules and shifts of mere technical scholarship.
His art was not only the art of art, but an art above art.
I will never forget the impression he made on me when he played
the flute concerta of Emil Hartmann at a Peabody symphony concert, in 1878, --
his tall, handsome, manly presence, his flute breathing noble sorrows,
noble joys, the orchestra softly responding. The audience was spellbound.
Such distinction, such refinement! He stood, the master, the genius!"*
--
* Quoted in Ward's Introduction to `Poems'.
--
He made the same impression on every other artist he ever played for.
Badger called his flute-playing "astonishing"; Wehner, the first flute
in Thomas's Orchestra, sought every opportunity to play with him.
Theodore Thomas planned to have him in his orchestra at the time
when Lanier's health failed in 1876; Dr. Damrosch said he played "Wind-Song"
like an artist, -- that "he was greatly astonished and pleased
with the poetry of the piece and the enthusiasm of its rendering."
His own compositions, too, appealed to men. At times the "fury of creation"
was upon him. During the first winter in Baltimore he wrote a midge dance,
the origin of which he thus gives in a letter to his wife:
"I am copying off -- in order to try the publishers therewith --
a `Danse des Moucherons' (midge dance), which I have written
for flute and piano, and which I think enough of to let go forward as Op. 1.
Dost thou remember one morning last summer, Charley and I were walking
in the upper part of the yard, before breakfast, and saw a swarm of gnats,
of whose strange evolutions we did relate to thee a marvelous tale?
I have put the grave oaks, the quiet shade, the sudden sunlight,
the fantastic, contrariwise, and ever-shifting midge movements,
the sweet hills afar off, . . . all in the piece, and thus -I- like it;
but I know not if others will, I have not played it for anybody."*
--
* `Letters', p. 98.
--
During this winter and the succeeding one Lanier gave
almost his entire time to music. He practiced assiduously,
took every opportunity to play with the best musicians,
-- both those of his own orchestra and of Theodore Thomas's, -- and often
spent evenings with three or four of the choicest spirits he could command.
Hamerik was of special inspiration to him, bringing to him as he did
much of the spirit of music that prevailed in German cities.
Lanier studied the technique of the flute, mastering his new silver Boehm,
which "begins to feel me," he writes. "How much I have learned
in the last two months!" he exclaims. "I am not yet an artist, though,
on the flute. The technique of the instrument has many depths
which I had not thought of before, and I would not call myself a virtuoso
within a year." He suffers agony because he does not attain
a point in harmony which the audience did not notice. Writing of
the temptation of flute soloists, he once said: "They have rarely been able
to resist the fatal facility of the instrument, and have usually
addressed themselves to winning the applause of concert audiences
by the execution of those brilliant but utterly trifling and inane variations
which constitute the great body of existing solos for the flute."*
He fretted because "the flute had been the black beast in the orchestra."
With his mastery of its technique and his own marvelous ability
to bring new results from it, he looked forward to the time
when it would have a far more important place therein.
--
* `Music and Poetry', p. 38.
--
Lanier played not only for the Peabody Orchestra, but for
the Germania Maennerchor Orchestra, -- one of the many companies of Germans
who did so much to develop music in different parts of the country, --
the Concordia Theatre, charity concerts, churches, and in private homes.
He was very popular in Baltimore. Most of the musicians were Germans,
but Lanier was an American and a Southerner, who had graces of manner
and goodness of soul. He was a close friend of the Baltimore musicians,
such as Madame Falk-Auerbach, a pupil of Rossini's and a teacher
in the Conservatory of Music, "a woman who plays Beethoven
with the large conception of a man, and yet nurses her children all day
with a noble simplicity of devotion such as I have rarely seen,"
said Lanier. Outside of musical circles he had access
to the homes of the most prominent people of Baltimore,
in which he frequently played the flute or piano, while members of the family
accompanied him. "Memory pictures," says one of his admirers,
"that frail, slender figure at the piano, touching with white, shapely hands
the chords of Chopin's `Nocturne'." "He was a frequent visitor to our house,"
says another, "and would often play for us on his beautiful silver flute.
The image of him standing in his rapt passion, while he poured forth
the entrancing sound, I remember most distinctly."
And while he grew in his mastery of the flute he grew, too, in discriminating
study of the orchestra. His first interpretations of orchestral music
are rather impulsive -- he goes off into raptures without restraint,
even when the occasion is not really of the highest sort.
It is altogether unfair to him to confuse his earlier with his later letters.
As in every other respect, Lanier was growing in intellectual power.
"I am beginning," he writes, "in the midst of the stormy glories
of the orchestra, to feel my heart sure, and my soul discriminating.
Not less do I thrill to ride upon the great surges; but I am growing
calm enough to see the star that should light the musician, and presently
my hand will be firm enough to hold the helm and guide the ship that way.
NOW I am very quiet; I am waiting."* And again, after he has heard
Thomas's Orchestra; "I can preserve my internal dignity in great measure,
free from the dreadful distractions of solicitude, and thus my soul revels
in the midst of the heaven of these great symphonic works
with almost unobstructed freedom."**
--
* `Letters', p. 91.
** `Letters', p. 110.
--
One of the plans proposed by Lanier for helping people to understand better
the meaning of orchestral music should be mentioned in this connection.
He was always anxious to take every one with him into his kingdom of beauty.
He proposed that, for people living in cities of from three
to twenty thousand inhabitants, there should be organized "a Nonette Club,
consisting of himself for flute, oboe, clarionet, bassoon, and French horn,
and a string quartette. This club would travel through the smaller cities,
performing original compositions as well as excerpts from
the greatest symphonic orchestral works, and thus educating the masses
to an understanding of orchestral tonal color, and the relations,
in an analytical form, which the wood wind instruments
bore to the stringed family. . . . It was his purpose,
after each movement of a composition, to lecture on the same,
with special reference to the function performed by each instrument,
and in the formation of harmonious tonal color."*
--
* Letter from Mr. F. H. Gottlieb to the author.
--
While Lanier was giving his time to the perfection of his flute-playing and to
the study of the orchestra, he became interested in the science of music.
Helmholtz's recent discoveries in acoustics inspired him to make research
in that direction. He ransacked the Peabody Library for books on the subject,
many of them yet not unpacked.
While few people ever appreciated more the art of music and its spiritual
message to men, he realized that there was a science of music as well,
"embodying a great number of classified facts, and presenting a great number
of scientific laws which are as thoroughly recognized among musicians
as are the laws of any other sciences among their professors.
There is a science of harmony, a science of composition,
a science of orchestration, a science of performance
upon stringed instruments, a science of performance upon wind instruments,
a science of vocalization; not a branch of the art of music
but has its own analogous body of classified facts and general laws.
Music is so much a science that a man may be a thorough musician
who has never written a tune and who cannot play upon any instrument."*
Some of these investigations he afterwards used to good effect
in his "Science of English Verse".
--
* `Music and Poetry', p. 50.
--
Furthermore, Lanier became interested in the history of music.
In his valuable monograph on "Music in Shakespeare's Time"*
he shows a minute knowledge of Elizabethan music, -- madrigals, dances,
catches, and other forms of instrumental and vocal music.
He took great delight in following out through Shakespeare's plays
the dramatist's knowledge and appreciation of the art of music.
Indeed, all the people of that time were "enthusiastic lovers of the art.
There were professorships of music in the universities,
and multitudes of teachers of it among the people. The monarch, the lord,
the gentleman, the merchant, the artisan, the rustic clown,
all ranks and conditions of society, from highest to lowest,
cultivated the practice of singing or of playing upon
some of the numerous instruments of the time." For the class
to which he was then lecturing in the Peabody Institute
he was able to point out and illustrate various forms of music
and to give biographical sketches of the English musicians
of Shakespeare's age.
--
* `Shakspere and His Forerunners', vol. ii, p. 1.
--
Lanier was most of all interested, however, in the development
of modern music, and especially in orchestral music. He underrated
some of the classical composers, notably Mozart. He was familiar
with the biographies of Chopin, Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner.
He left behind a translation of Wagner's "Rheingold".
His poems on Beethoven and Wagner indicate his appreciation of their music,
while his essays "From Bacon to Beethoven" and "The Modern Orchestra"
show minute knowledge of their work and of the significance of the orchestra
in modern life. A better description of Theodore Thomas
as the leader of an orchestra has not been written than Lanier's: --
"To see Thomas lead . . . is music itself! His baton is alive,
full of grace, of symmetry; he maketh no gestures, he readeth his score
almost without looking at it, he seeth everybody, heareth everything,
warneth every man, encourageth every instrument, quietly, firmly, marvelously.
Not the slightest shade of nonsense, not the faintest spark of affectation,
not the minutest grain of EFFECT is in him. He taketh the orchestra
in his hand as if it were a pen, -- and writeth with it."*
--
* `Letters', p. 92.
--
If Lanier had been only a successful virtuoso with the flute,
the tradition of his playing would have lingered in the minds
of at least two generations. Through the reminiscences of college mates,
of soldiers and of frequenters of the Peabody concerts,
the memory of this genius with the flute would have remained
like that of some troubadour of the Middle Ages. It is unfortunate
that he left no compositions to indicate a musical power
sufficient to give him a place in the history of American music.
It cannot be controverted, however, that he is the one man of letters
in America who has had an adequate appreciation of the value of music
in the culture of the modern world. To him music was a culture study
as much as the study of literature. It was an education to him
to hear the adequate representation of modern orchestral works.
Hamerik's plan of giving separate nights to the music of various nationalities
was calculated to emphasize this phase of musical culture.
To Lanier, who had never traveled abroad and who did not have time
to read the literatures of foreign nations, such musical programmes
had the effect of enabling him to divine the places and the life
from which the music had come. "I am just come from Venice," he says,
"and have strolled home through the moonlight, singing serenades. . . .
I have been playing `Stradella' and I am full of gondellieds, of serenades,
of balconies with white arms leaning over the balustrades thereof,
of gleaming waters, of lithe figures in black velvet,
of stinging sweet coquetries, of diamonds, daggers, and desperadoes. . . .
I cannot tell the intense delight which these lovely conceptions of Flotow
gave me. The man has put Venice, lovely, romantic, wicked-sweet Venice,
into music, and the melodies breathe out an eloquence that is at once
sentimental and powerful, at once languid and thrilling."*
--
* `Letters', p. 98.
--
A description of the "Hunt of Henry IV" shows how Lanier
associated nature, music, and poetry with each other. He was
an ardent advocate of "programme-music". He saw music as he heard poetry.
He felt the musical effects in poetry and the poetical effects in music:
"Then, the `Hunt of Henry IV'! . . . It openeth with
a grave and courteous invitation, as of a cavalier riding by some dainty lady,
through the green aisles of the deep woods, to the hunt, --
a lovely, romantic melody, the first violins discoursing the man's words,
the first flute replying for the lady. Presently a fanfare; a sweet horn
replies out of the far woods; then the meeting of the gay cavaliers;
then the start, the dogs are unleashed, one hound gives tongue,
another joins, the stag is seen -- hey, gentlemen! away they all fly
through the sweet leaves, by the great oaks and beeches,
all a-dash among the brambles, till presently, bang! goeth a pistol
(it was my veritable old revolver loaded with blank cartridge
for the occasion, the revolver that hath lain so many nights under my head),
fired by `Tympani' (as we call him, the same being a nervous little Frenchman
who playeth our drums), and then the stag dieth in a celestial concord
of flutes, oboes, and violins. Oh, how far off my soul was
in this thrilling moment! It was in a rare, sweet glen in Tennessee;
the sun was rising over a wilderness of mountains, I was standing
(how well I remember the spot!) alone in the dewy grass,
wild with rapture and with expectation. Yonder came, gracefully walking,
a lovely fawn. I looked into its liquid eyes, hesitated, prayed,
gulped a sigh, then overcame with the savage hunter's instinct, fired;
the fawn leaped convulsively a few yards, I ran to it, found it lying
on its side, and received into my agonized and remorseful heart
the reproaches of its most tender, dying gaze. But luckily
I had not the right to linger over this sad scene; the conductor's baton
shook away the dying pause; on all sides shouts and fanfares and gallopings
`to the death', to which the first flute had to reply in time,
recalled me to my work, and I came through brilliantly."*
--
* `Letters', p. 85.
--
Because of its culture value, Lanier believed that music should have its place
in every college and university. As far back as 1867 -- in "Tiger Lilies" --
he had advocated the appointment of professors of music in American colleges
of equal dignity with other specialists. He himself hoped that he might
be appointed to such a chair, first in the College of Music in New York
and later in Johns Hopkins University. It is easy to conceive
that he might have become an expert teacher in the science of music,
but it is more probable that if he had held a chair in an academic institution
he would have forwarded the work that has now become
a distinct feature of all the larger universities. He would have made
an excellent "literary" teacher of music, interesting men
in the biographies of great musicians, and interpreting for them
the mysteries of orchestra and opera. He conceived of music
as one of the humanities, and would have agreed with President Eliot
that "music is a culture study, if there is one in the world."
In his life it took the place that travel and many literatures held
in the lives of Longfellow and Lowell. He believed with Theodore Thomas
that Beethoven's music is "something more than mere pleasure;
it is education, thought, emotion, love, and hope."
Furthermore, Lanier believed in the religious value of music;
it was a "gospel whereof the people are in great need, --
a later revelation of all gospels in one." "Music," he says,
"is to be the Church of the future, wherein all creeds will unite
like the tones in a chord." He was one of "those fervent souls
who fare easily by this road to the Lord." Haydn's inscription, "Laus Deo",
was in Lanier's mind whenever he listened to great music;
for it tended to "help the emotions of man across the immensity of the known
into the boundaries of the Unknown." He would have composers
to be ministers of religion. He could not understand
the indifference of some leaders of orchestras, who could be satisfied
with appealing to the aesthetic emotions of an audience,
while they might "set the hearts of fifteen hundred people afire."
The final meaning of music to him was that it created within man
"a great, pure, unanalyzable yearning after God."
Holding this exalted view of music, he believed that its future was immense
and that in America its triumphs were to be greater than
they had been elsewhere. At a time when musical culture was rare
in this country, he looked forward with hope and expectation to the time
when America would become a patron of the best music. "When Americans,"
he said, "shall have learned the supreme value and glory of the orchestra,
. . . then I look to see America the home of the orchestra,
and to hear everywhere the profound messages of Beethoven and Bach to men."
And again: "All the signs of the times seem to point to this country as
the scene of the future development of music. . . . It only needs direction,
artistic atmosphere, and technique in order to fill the land
with such orchestras as the world has never heard. When our so-called
conservatories and music schools, instead of straining every nerve
to outdo each other in turning out hosts of bad piano-players,
shall address themselves earnestly to the education of performers
upon all the orchestral instruments; when our people
shall have become aware of the height and glory of the orchestra,
as the only instrument for the deepest adorations in man; . . .
when our young women shall ask themselves for any serious reason
why they should all, with one accord, devote themselves to the piano
instead of to the flute, the violin, the hautboy, the harp, the viola,
the violoncello, the horn instruments which pertain to women
fully as much as to men, and some of which actually belong by nature
to those supple, tactile, delicate, firm, passionate, and tender fingers
with which the woman is endowed; when our young men shall have discovered
that the orchestral player can so exercise his office
as to make it of far more dignity and worth than any political place
in the gift of the people, and that the business of making orchestral music
may one day become far higher in nobility than the ignoble
sentinelship over one's pocket to which most lawyers are reduced,
or the melancholy slaveries of the shop and the counting-room
and the like `business' which is now paramount in esteem;
when -- I will not say when we have a new music to perform,
but when we shall have played Beethoven's symphonies as they should be played,
and shall have revealed to us all the might, all the faith, all the religion,
the tenderness, the heavenly invitation, the subtle excursions
down into the heart of man, the brotherhood, the freedom, the exaltation,
the whisperings of sorrow unto sorrow, the messages of God
which these immortal and yet unmeasured compositions embody,"*
then will America give to music the place it deserves.
Music will be one of the redeemers of the people from crass commercialism.
--
* An uncollected essay by Lanier, "Mazzini on Music", `The Independent',
June 27, 1878.
--
While Lanier held before the American people the vision
of what they might accomplish in music, he held up to musicians
the high ideal of what they should be. In the essay just quoted,
he indorses the saying of Mazzini's that "musicians may become
a priesthood and ministry of moral regeneration. . . . Why rest contented
with stringing notes together -- mere trouveres of a day --
when it remains with you to consecrate yourselves, even on earth,
to a mission such as in the popular belief only God's angels know?"
With his high ideal of what a musician should be, he could not but be
disgusted at times with the Bohemianism of the men who played with him,
and with the loose moral life of many more eminent musicians.
"Ah, these heathenish Germans!" he exclaims, as he sees some of the orchestra
at a church service making fun of the communion service: "Double-bass was
a big fellow, with a black mustache, to whom life was all a joke,
which he expressed by a comical smile, and Viola was a young Hercules,
so full of beer that he dreamed himself in heaven, and Oboe was a young sprig,
just out from Munich, with a complexion of milk and roses, like a girl's,
and miraculously bright spectacles on his pale blue eyes,
and there they sat -- Oboe and Viola and Double-bass -- and ogled each other,
and raised their brows, and snickered behind the columns,
without a suspicion of interest either in the music or the service.
Dash these fellows, they are utterly given over to heathenism, prejudice,
and beer."*
--
* `Letters', p. 88.
--
The best expression of his ideal of what a great composer should be,
is in a letter written to his wife just after he had read
the life of Robert Schumann: --
New York, Sunday, October 18, 1874.
I have been in my room all day; and have just concluded
a half-dozen delicious hours, during which I have been devouring,
with a hungry ferocity of rapture which I know not how to express,
"The Life of Robert Schumann", by his pupil, von Wasielewski.
This pupil, I am sure, did not fully comprehend his great master.
I think the key to Schumann's whole character, with all
its labyrinthine and often disappointing peculiarities, is this: That he had
no mode of self-expression, or, I should rather say, of self-expansion,
besides the musical mode. This may seem a strange remark to make of him
who was the founder and prolific editor of a great musical journal,
and who perhaps exceeded any musician of his time in general culture.
But I do not mean that he was confined to music for self-expression,
though indeed, the sort of critical writing which Schumann did so much of
is not at all like poetry in its tranquillizing effects upon
the soul of the writer. What I do mean is that his sympathies
were not BIG enough, he did not go through the awful struggle of genius,
and lash and storm and beat about until his soul was grown large enough
to embrace the whole of life and the All of things, that is,
large enough to appreciate (if even without understanding)
the magnificent designs of God, and tall enough to stand in the trough
of the awful cross-waves of circumstance and look over their heights
along the whole sea of God's manifold acts, and deep enough to admit the peace
that passeth understanding. This is, indeed, the fault of all German culture,
and the weakness of all German genius. A great artist should have
the sensibility and expressive genius of Schumann, the calm grandeur of Lee,
and the human breadth of Shakespeare, all in one.
Now in this particular, of being open, unprejudiced, and unenvious,
Schumann soars far above his brother Germans; he valiantly defended
our dear Chopin, and other young musicians who were struggling to make head
against the abominable pettiness of German prejudice. But, withal,
I cannot find that his life was great, as a whole; I cannot see him
caring for his land, for the poor, for religion, for humanity;
he was always a restless soul; and the ceaseless wear of incompleteness
finally killed, as a maniac, him whom a broader Love might have kept alive
as a glorious artist to this day.
The truth is, the world does not require enough at the hands of genius.
Under the special plea of greater sensibilities, and of consequent
greater temptations, it excuses its gifted ones, and even sometimes makes
"a law of their weakness". But this is wrong: the sensibility of genius
is just as much greater to high emotions as to low ones;
and whilst it subjects to stronger temptations, it at the same time interposes
-- if it WILL -- stronger considerations for resistance.
These are scarcely fair things to be saying APROPOS of Robert Schumann;
for I do not think he was ever guilty of any excesses of genius --
as they are called: I only mean them to apply to the UNREST of his life.
And yet, for all I have said, how his music does burn in my soul!
It stretches me upon the very rack of delight; I know no musician
that fills me so full of heavenly anguish, and if I had to give up
all the writers of music save one, my one should be Robert Schumann.
-- Some of his experiences cover some of my own as aptly
as one half of an oyster shell does the other half.*
--
* `Letters', p. 103.
--