MUSIC IN THE 19th CENTURY.
[Sidenote: =Mr. J. A. Fuller Maitland's English Music in the 19th
century.=
_May 20, 1902._]
As applied to Parry, Stanford, or Mackenzie, we are instructed, the
reproach of being "academic" has absolutely no aptness whatever. These
worthy dons are creative artists of the highest possible order, to be
classed with Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner, and it thus appears that about
the middle of the century British music arose like the lark, soaring at
once to the topmost airs of the welkin; that to find a parallel for the
revelation of genius during the fifty ensuing British years one has to
range over two German centuries! Not even Beethoven is to be excepted
from the list of things that were matched by our professorial larks,
swans, giants, heroes, angels, and demigods! Now all this represents a
rather deplorable state of things. Why is it--I cannot help asking once
more--that at the present time in this country so much worse nonsense is
written about music than about drama, literature, or any other kindred
subject? A great stir was recently made by the production of "Paolo and
Francesca," yet no admirer of Mr. Stephen Phillips has thought it
necessary to call him the equal of Shakespeare. There is certainly this
excuse for Mr. Fuller Maitland, that in the London press of recent years
much extravagance of the opposite kind has appeared--excessive and, in a
few cases, positively brutal detraction of Parry and Stanford and their
school--and perhaps the chief blame for the hysterical nonsense of
supporters lies within certain opponents who have attacked without
regard either for the facts of the case or even for common decency. In
any case a state of things has been brought about in which one party
howls "Incompetent humbug!" while the other shrieks "Genius of the
highest order!"
In the meantime what about the truth and the critical currency? And is
it not a pity that Mr. Fuller Maitland should have missed the
opportunity afforded to him by the writing of this history to put off
controversial frenzy and return to a more judicial spirit? We that have
to do with the musical world are all perfectly well aware--whether we
describe Parry and Stanford as "academic" or protest against that
epithet--that they are men of high distinction who have played a leading
and brilliant part in the English musical revival and generally have
deserved well of the musical republic. For my part, while fully
recognising their eminence both in talent and character, I am of opinion
that their claims to regard as absolute creative artists are habitually
overstated by their supporters in the press. The appearance of Parry
created a considerable stir. His imposing grasp of choral polyphony was
something new in English music. His great intelligence, his wide
sympathy and geniality, his virility and industry--all these qualities
united to arouse enthusiastic hopes. But, as Mr. Fuller Maitland writes
on page 185, "with the passage of years the group of composers will fall
into truer and truer perspective." There has already been a considerable
passage of years since those first compositions, but the early
enthusiastic estimate has not been justified. Outside the circle of his
pupils and personal friends no one now seems to care very much for his
music. Here in the North of England concert societies find that the
public admiration of it is a rapidly vanishing quantity. Three years ago
his "Job" and "Blest Pair of Sirens" were given here, but ever since
that occasion his name has been something of a terror to our concert
societies. A frequent experience in regard to Parry's music is that,
whereas a first hearing impresses in virtue of massiveness and energy or
of striking and unconventional dramatic touches, second and subsequent
hearings are discouraging. "Job" is the most favourable case among the
choral and orchestral works that I have heard. It is thoroughly artistic
in conception and unconventional in treatment. Moreover, the lyrical
interlude of the shepherd-boy's song helps along the early part very
happily, and Mr. Plunket Greene is always eloquent in the
"Lamentations." Nevertheless, I found the second hearing a sad
experience. Now the impression that there is something wrong with
Parry's music--notwithstanding all the learning, resource, wide
sympathies, intelligence, and so forth that it shows--is undoubtedly a
very general one. To find any person not personally attached to the
composer taking up one of his works, great or small, is exceedingly
rare. The composer's personal popularity is great, but outside the
charmed circle no one seems ready to spend a shilling in hearing his
stuff or to risk a shilling in giving it. Mr. Fuller Maitland says that
the provincial choral societies are faithful to Parry, and this may be
true in some cases. To a society in the habit of occupying themselves
with the cantatas of Dr. Gaul I could imagine Parry would seem the
seventh heaven of art. But in the great centres or in any place where
there are ardent souls not to be deceived as to what is genuine in music
a revival of interest in Parry seems to me very improbable.
At his worst, _e.g._, in "King Saul," he appeals; at his best, _e.g._,
in the "Soldier's Tent" (song with orchestral accompaniment), he almost
persuades. But the horrors of the empty tone masses hurled at one's head
in the "Saul" choruses, or of the purple patches of Wagnerian
orchestration associated with inept vocal phrases in the principal
monologue of the same oratorio--those horrors are so very genuine,
whereas the charm of such a song as the "Soldier's Tent," where the
composer keeps comparatively well to the point and scores with
comparative aptness, is still somewhat doubtful. A remark of Mr. Fuller
Maitland's helps me to a possible explanation of the something wrong. He
commends the "delicate humour" of "When icicles hang by the wall" in
Parry's English Lyrics. Now I have certainly never heard that song, but
I must have read it somewhere, for I distinctly remember the humorous
and expressive accompaniment at the words "coughing drowns the parson's
saw." It also comes back to me that other passages, such as all that
eight-part counterpoint at the end of "Blest Pair of Sirens," look
exceedingly well on paper. Possibly, then, the key to the mystery is
that Parry's music is analogous to those plays which read well but act
badly. Perhaps the way to enjoy it is to read it and admire the
fertility of device while taking great care never to hear it, and so
escape the consciousness of the fact that the actual wine of that music
as it flows forth is not quite the genuine thing; that, notwithstanding
notable fulness of body, the quality is gritty, the flavour somewhat
acrid and inky, the bouquet artificial and multifariously compounded.
The root of the mischief I take to be that the composer--for all his
great and imposing powers, his fine taste, his profound and varied
learning--is wanting in sureness of touch and consequently in the
ability to establish that correspondence between form and idea without
which a work of art cannot properly be said to exist. Mr. Fuller
Maitland claims for Parry and his group that they "have far more
extensive resources in the different styles of music" than, for example,
the modern Russians, and this brings us back to the point of the
reproach conveyed in the epithet "academic." To musicians bent on the
holding of official posts and on success in a worldly career it is of
the first importance to "show extensive resources in the different
styles of music," and in the large body of Parry's compositions I find
far more evidence of desire to show such extensive resources than of the
artistic impulse to make music that is absolutely genuine. Sullivan,
with his much lower aims and ideals, is for me a better balanced
personality and a truer artist. Much of his music in the comic operas is
quite to the point. The outward form corresponds to the inward idea in a
certain absolute and final manner which there is no mistaking. Hence the
clearness of Sullivan's musical individuality or physiognomy. He was not
intent on showing resources, but on modelling his material into
conformity with his idea, and, because at his best he had the power of
doing that, his physiognomy is clear to us and his art vital. It thus
appears that such commercialism as Sullivan's does less mischief than
such academic tendencies as Parry's.
In Stanford's case I have often protested against the indiscriminate use
of the epithet "academic." It seems to me that his compositions on Irish
subjects require to be considered quite apart from all the rest. However
deplorable may be that Brahmsian vein running through a great mass of
his non-Irish music, he really does in his "Phaudrig," "Shamus," and
Irish Symphony and in many of his Irish songs entirely escape from his
common-room and give us open-air music. No doubt, as Mr. Fuller Maitland
very justly points out, the humour of the Dogberry scenes in Stanford's
latest opera is admirable. Those are the scenes in which the composer
has followed the model of Verdi's "Falstaff" most closely. Elsewhere he
has undertaken to be more original and has not prospered so well. The
music of the love scenes is terrible. All that twisted, clever stuff can
never have any but a chilling, afflicting, alienating effect on a soul
in which any spark is left either of youthfulness or of sympathy with
youth. Stanford's musical cleverness, exceeding that of any other
mortal except Camille Saint-Saëns, has been his bane. His sense of
humour, too, is perversely adjusted. In connection with any but an Irish
subject it is always liable to mislead him, and I have little doubt that
it is the humourist quite as much as the don in him which nowadays makes
it impossible for him to treat a love-passage in any but a chilly,
clever, allusive, intelligible-only-to-the-initiated style. He was a
very different man in 1881 when his "Bower of Roses by Bendeemer's
Stream" was first heard. Not that he has even now lost his faculty of
lyrical tenderness altogether. If the sentiment be associated with an
infant, or penetrated with a sense of the weird and uncanny, or
intermingled with (Irish) patriotic feeling, he can still find the
symbol, as his quite recent music to Moira O'Neill's "Songs from the
Glens of Antrim" abundantly proves. But the note of warmth and
simplicity proper to youthful romance he seems to have lost. A peculiar
case among Stanford's compositions is represented by the Irish Symphony,
concerning which Mr. Fuller Maitland has nothing to say. Here,
notwithstanding the Irish subject, the gown shows through to some slight
extent in one place, namely, the development section of the first
movement. The conventional critic finds fault with the scherzo in the
form of an Irish jig as unsymphonic, as it undoubtedly is. But there
would be more sense in suggesting that the composer should have made up
his mind to be thoroughly unsymphonic throughout the work, bringing his
first movement into harmony with the fine sennachee's improvisation that
stands second, the magnificent racy jig, and the buoyant finale. We
should thus have had an Irish Rhapsody in four movements without any
defect. Even now the one touch of the composer's evil genius that comes
out in the first movement is too slight to spoil the work, which has
been a joy for a long time, and does not seem to lose its charm. It thus
seems to me that Stanford is far too good a man for an "academic,"
though I cannot deny that the epithet is actually justified by more than
half the entire body of his published works.
After all it was scarcely likely that the sudden efflorescence of
English music, ensuing upon a long period of sterility, would lead at
once to fruit of complete maturity. We have now reached the second
generation since the revival, and it would be a pity if our best men at
the present day were nowise in advance of the leaders who came forward
thirty years ago.
[Sidenote: =Centenary Article.=
_January 1, 1901._]
At the dawn of the nineteenth century music was at a low ebb in this
country. Purcell had been dead more than a hundred years, and Handel
about forty years. The spirit of Puritanism had killed the
madrigal-singing of Shakespearean England and suppressed every other
manifestation of the popular musical genius. Charles II. had come back
from his long residence abroad with a contempt for English music, both
sacred and secular, which, as Pepys's Diary shows, he did not hesitate
to express in public, and thus the merry-makings of the Restoration
brought no revival of the national art. Nor was it likely that the
situation, as regards Court influence, should be improved by the House
of Hanover--at the time of their accession a race of aliens having no
sympathy with the national development of the art. Characteristic of the
view that cultivated Englishmen took of music about the middle of the
eighteenth century is a letter of Lord Chesterfield's,[3] written when
his son was staying at Venice, to warn him against all the "singing,
piping, and fiddling" of Italy. He gives the young man to understand
that it is unbecoming in a gentleman to take part in such things, though
he may pay a fiddler to play to him. Elsewhere, too, Lord Chesterfield
is even more crushing. He lays stress on the inevitable connection
between music and low company. The Venice letter was written in
1749--six years after the first performance of the "Messiah" in London
and ten years before Handel's death. Perhaps, therefore, the
Chesterfield view of music was at that time exceptional. But it must
have become more prevalent in the ensuing half-century, and the view of
music as an inferior art, represented in its extreme form by Lord
Chesterfield, is far from being extinct at the present day. At the same
time, fully to account for the low level of musical taste in the England
of 1801, due allowance must be made for the comparative neglect of all
but political and military affairs caused by the tremendous agitations
of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars.
[3] "A taste of sculpture and painting is in my mind as becoming, as a
taste of fiddling and piping is unbecoming, a man of fashion."
In the first year of the nineteenth century began the triumphant career
of John Braham, the first of the three great English tenor singers who
successively adorned the ensuing hundred years. Braham was a good
singer, but perhaps the most deplorable composer that ever successfully
foisted his rubbish on a tasteless public. His "Death of Nelson"
persists to the present day, for the justification of those who share
Lord Chesterfield's musical opinions, and even that unpardonable mixture
of sentimental slip-slop and half-hearted cock-a-doodle-doo seems to
have been a comparatively favourable example of the compositions with
which Braham regaled the London public during the early years of the
century. The scene of his first triumphs was Covent Garden Theatre,
where he was accustomed to appear in composite operatic entertainments,
his own part being almost invariably written by himself. A few years
after the London _début_ of Braham the penny-whistle melodies of Sir
Henry Bishop sufficed to make him the most popular composer of the day.
In 1810, when Bishop became director at Covent Garden, none of the
institutions that have played an important part in the musical progress
of the century as yet existed in this country. It is true the Festival
of the Three Choirs had been held regularly for a very long time
already. But there was no Philharmonic Society, no genuine opera, no
Saturday and Monday popular concerts of chamber-music, no Academy or
College of Music, no Crystal Palace or Hallé orchestra. The great choral
associations, independent of Cathedral authorities, had not yet been
formed, and England was far too much isolated from the rest of the world
in regard to musical affairs.
It is curious to note how precisely the downfall of Napoleon corresponds
with the beginning of better things in the English musical world.
Leipsic was fought in 1813, and earlier in that year--as though with a
premonition that an era was at hand in which it would be possible to
cultivate the arts of peace--a group of musicians assembled in London to
discuss the formation of a Philharmonic Society. The event is of
striking significance. Hitherto music had flourished only under the
patronage of Lords Temporal and Spiritual; but the _souffle_ of the
French Revolution had passed over the world, and it was time for
music--which had put off the courtly periwig and the courtly graces, and
had attained in Beethoven to the purely human standpoint--to be
established on a broader basis. Let us give the worthy Bishop his due. A
well-meaning person, if a trivial composer, he helped to found the
London Philharmonic Society, which was the first society in Europe, and
in the world, consciously formed for the furtherance of musical art and
for no other purpose.
Glancing now at musical activity in other countries, we find attention
necessarily concentrated in the first instance upon the heroic figure of
Beethoven, who in this year (1813) had already given to the world his
Eroica, C minor, Pastoral, and Seventh Symphonies, besides his Violin
Concerto, Razoumoffsky Quartets, Waldstein and Appassionata Sonatas, his
one opera "Fidelio," together with the third "Leonora" overture, and
many other works of towering genius. As yet, however, the real
significance of Beethoven was undreamed-of in the philosophy of mankind
in general, if dimly suspected by a few enlightened persons, mostly
resident in Vienna. Mozart had died before the dawn of the century, and
Haydn soon after it, having demonstrated the incomparable excellence of
that Viennese school (founded on the teachings of Fux's "Gradus ad
Parnassum"), which had early attracted Beethoven--a Rhinelander by
birth--within its charmed circle, and held him there for life. In the
first year of the London Philharmonic Society's activity the music of
those three--Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven--formed the staple of the concert
programmes. In the second year the first performance in England of the
Eroica was given. Other works of the highest importance by the same
master soon followed, and in 1817 an unsuccessful attempt was made to
induce Beethoven to come to England himself and conduct compositions of
his own for the Society. In this manner connection was established
between this country and the great central stream of musical life and
energy at that time.
Beethoven was the colossus who bridged over the gulf between the two
great countries of Classicism and Romance. Of the Romantic composers,
Weber--the founder of German National Opera--was the earliest born. His
music was first heard in England during the twenties, the opera "Oberon"
being brought out at Covent Garden under his own direction. Another
great Romantic composer born before the close of the eighteenth century
was Schubert--a wonderful but most unfortunate man of genius, destined
to meet with scarcely any recognition during his lifetime. At a much
later period he was discovered and introduced to this country by Sir
George Grove. The real seed-time of the Romantic School, however, was
the period from 1803 to 1813, which saw the birth of Berlioz,
Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Verdi, and Wagner (of all except
Berlioz between 1809 and 1813). It is curious that all the stars
destined to dominate the musical firmament of the period following
Beethoven's death should thus have risen above the horizon within the
short period of ten years, and all but one within a period of five
years. Every one of them, except Schumann, came sooner or later to our
hospitable shores and played a more or less important part in that
process by which we have gradually learned to discard Lord
Chesterfield's maxim about having nothing to do with fiddling ourselves,
while laying more and more to heart his other maxim about paying
fiddlers to play to us.
Even more important than these flying visits of master composers from
abroad, for their influence on the formation of taste, were the more
regular visits of distinguished Continental performers, some of whom,
indeed, not only came regularly but came to stay. Of these the most
important were Mr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Hallé, who in 1857 founded
the Manchester concerts that still bear his name; Mr. August Manns, who
became conductor at the Crystal Palace in 1855; and Dr. Richter, who has
been our regular visitor since 1877 and is now, to the great credit of
the Hallé Committee and their supporters, living in our midst. Scarcely
less important among such foreign influences making for the welfare of
musical art in this country is the violin-playing of Dr. Joachim, who
has been our constant visitor ever since 1844.
Pursuing the signs of awakening musical life in the second and ensuing
decades of the century, we note the foundation of the Royal Academy of
Music in 1823, and of the Sacred Harmonic Society in 1832. That Society,
now defunct, was originally founded with the idea of replacing an older
institution called the "Antient Concerts," which had come to grief
through depending too much on aristocratic patronage. The Sacred
Harmonic Society did good work by performing Handel's "Israel in Egypt,"
"Dettingen Te Deum," and other works, besides the "Messiah." They also
did something to make Mozart's church music known in London, though with
little encouragement from the public, and they rendered a service to art
by insisting on complete performances instead of the scraps and tit-bits
from oratorios that were popular at that day. Soon after the founding of
the Sacred Harmonic Society, that is about the beginning of the
Victorian era, came the palmy days of Italian opera in London. But
though the expensive warblings of Grisi, Lablache, and Rubini were no
doubt found highly exhilarating by the privileged few who could afford
to hear them, it is doubtful whether they did anything for the
development of the national taste, except, perhaps, by firing the
ambition of Sims Reeves.
Great as is the value of such fine stimulating influences--the visits of
distinguished players, singers, composers, and conductors, and
performances of master works by musical societies,--they are not enough
to leaven the mass of the people without systematic educational
endeavour. Reference has been made to the founding of the Royal Academy
of Music. Sixty years later the Royal College was instituted, with a
view to bringing educational opportunities more into conformity with
the wants of the time. Among the work done for the improvement of
musical education during the intervening period Mr. John Hullah's is
worthy of specially honourable mention. After studying popular musical
education in France, and especially the Orphéon movement, Mr. Hullah
began classes at Exeter Hall for the musical instruction of
schoolmasters, and thus originated the vast development of musical
training in English elementary schools. In opposition to Mr. Hullah's
principles, Mr. John Curwen in 1853 founded the Tonic Sol-fa
Association, which has since spread its branches all over England. There
is supposed to be some sort of connection between staff notation and
Church principles, tonic sol-fa and Dissent. Some day, it may be hoped,
the history of choral singing in England will be written with the care
that the subject deserves. It remains to this day the principal
contribution of this country to musical art in modern times. Theoretical
mastership originated with the Germans, refined and exact orchestral
playing with the French, and brilliant solo singing with the Italians,
but it has been reserved for this country to perfect the art of choral
singing. Certain persons, more patriotic than truthful, try to make out
that the English are best in everything, but this claim in regard to
choral singing bears investigation.
Next to the absolute contempt and neglect of music from which we began
to emerge early in the century, our greatest misfortune has been a
tendency to prefer composers representing the end of some artistic
development while rejecting the turbid and formally imperfect but
inspiring initiators. Thus, in one age we worship Handel--a mighty
musical architect, but one who never did and never could inspire
anyone--while we detest Bach, the most powerful of all inspiring,
stimulating, school-forming influences. In another age we make a
somewhat similar mistake in regard to Mendelssohn and Schumann, and it
is even possible to recognise the same unfortunate tendency at the
present day in the public attitude towards Richard Strauss and
Tchaïkovsky respectively, the former a rugged composer teeming with
ideas and varied suggestions, the other a remarkable painter in tones
but peculiarly restricted in the range of his ideas and emotions, taking
care never to suggest anything, but only to attempt what he can render
with symmetrical completeness. It is impossible not to regret that we
should thus continually prefer composers who lead to nothing, though
that is just what might be expected as a result of Lord Chesterfield's
principles.
With regard to the extraordinary Mendelssohnian taste of the British
public which placed the accomplished fair-weather composer on a much
higher pinnacle here than he ever occupied in his own country, there is
even now one important question that has not yet been, and probably
never will be, settled. That Mendelssohn was long absurdly overrated is
certain; but the question is--Had there been no Mendelssohn, would our
choirs and public taken to better stuff, or would they simply have
concerned themselves so much the less with any sort of music? Possibly
the Mendelssohn craze was a necessary evil, supplying the requisite
spoon-meat for a period of musical infancy. It is, however, associated
with much humiliation. The main current of musical life and energy
since Beethoven's time has lain in the field of dramatic composition,
and from that main current we remained excluded for a most
unconscionable time. The case became a painful one, only to be met by
such sapient observations as that of the late Mr. Hueffer that "the
British public likes the dramatic stage and likes serious music, but
does not like the two things in combination." The real champion of the
Wagnerian art in this country was Dr. Richter, who, by the performance
of extracts at his orchestral concerts, gradually opened the ears of the
public and brought home the music to their hearts. In that task he was
well supported by Mr. Manns at the Crystal Palace and by Sir Charles
Hallé in the Manchester neighbourhood. Hence the fact that though the
two impresarios who gave performances of the great "Ring" drama in
London in the eighties incurred grievous loss, Mr. Schultz Curtius gave
it in the nineties and prospered, and that the voice of senseless
detraction is mute, except in the case of one or two incorrigible old
mandarins who cannot escape from the fixed idea that life consists in
the correspondence of an organism with the environment of its
great-grandfather.
The best of the English Cathedral composers was Samuel Sebastian Wesley,
whose enthusiasm for Bach, antedating the movement initiated by
Mendelssohn, has scarcely met with sufficient acknowledgement. Soon
after the middle of the century a group of British composers with a
wider than the purely ecclesiastical scope began to appear. Sullivan,
Mackenzie, Parry, Cowen, and Stanford all learned their art in Germany,
and came back to their native country to practise it. All of them have
written oratorios, but without lasting success except in the case of
Sullivan's "Golden Legend." Dr. Cowen's Scandinavian and Professor
Stanford's Irish Symphonies have done something to win esteem for
English music in other countries. But the great achievement of British
music during the past fifty years has been the Gilbertian operas, in
which Sir Arthur Sullivan matched with a perfect musical counterpart the
kind of libretto furnished by W. S. Gilbert, an original type of comic
opera being thus created. Among younger composers, Mr. Hamish M'Cunn
made a reputation with his "Land of the Mountain and the Flood" overture
that he failed to confirm. Mr. Coleridge-Taylor has had a very rapid
success with his "Hiawatha" music, whether of a more lasting kind
remains to be proved. By far the most remarkable British composer of
recently made reputation is Dr. Edward Elgar. Mr. Otto Lessmann, editor
of the "Allgemeine Musikzeitung" and the most distinguished musical
critic of Germany at the present day, wrote thus (after hearing "The
Dream of Gerontius" at Birmingham last October): "If I am not mistaken,
the coming man of the English musical world has already appeared, an
artist who has shaken off the bonds of conventional form and opened his
mind and heart to those great gifts which the masters of the expiring
century have left as an inheritance to the future--Edward Elgar,
composer of the one great religious choral work brought to a first
hearing at the Birmingham Festival, namely 'The Dream of Gerontius.'"
Progress has been very much more rapid during the last twenty-five
years than in any other period of the century. Indeed, so wonderfully
has been the revolution in public taste effected by improved educational
opportunities and the more artistic and expressive style of singing and
playing introduced by the Wagnerian school, that musical art now finds
itself in a completely new atmosphere, and hope leaps out, probably
asking too much of the immediate future. The great lesson that requires
to be brought home at the present time to all concerned, directly or
indirectly, with musical affairs is that music is one of the fine arts,
that it is subject to the laws of art and no others. This seems a
painfully obvious principle when stated, but how rarely does anyone act
on it! We find any number of persons pursuing music as a sport, others
as a business, others as a mild discipline for children--a kind of
drill,--others again as a learned subject, but very few as an art. The
first result of mastering this lesson would be the shaking off of fixed
ideas, such as that every composer must play the organ and write church
music. Chopin wrote nothing but pianoforte pieces, yet his fame is
undying, and much more is heard of his music now--fifty years after his
death--than ever before, while plenty of composers whose works include
voluminous compositions for choir and orchestra are absolutely forgotten
in their own lifetime. The real artist is distinguished from other men
above all by being enamoured of perfection. He finds what he can do and
rests satisfied with doing that, whether it be a great thing or a small,
whether it be one thing or many.