then new to me. Liszt had been his god, but Godowsky was now his living
deity. He had studied, mastered, and memorized all those transcendental
variations on Chopin studies, the most significant variations since the
Brahms, a Paganini scaling of the heights of Parnassus; and I heard for
the first time the paraphrase of Weber’s Invitation to the Valse, a
much more viable arrangement than Tausig’s; also thrice as difficult.
However, technique, as sheer technique, does not enter into the musical
zone of Godowsky. He has restored polyphony to its central position,
thus bettering in that respect Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt. I have
called attention elsewhere to Godowsky’s solo sonata, which evokes
images of Chopin and Brahms and Liszt—only in the scherzo. Instead of
exhuming such an “ungrateful,” unpianistic composition as Tschaikovsky’s
Sonata in G, pianists of caliber might more profitably introduce the
Godowsky work. He is too modest or else too indifferent to put it on
his programme. It “lies” so well for the keyboard, yet there is no
denying its difficulties, chiefly polyphonic; the patterns are intricate,
though free from the clogging effects of the Brahms sonatas. De Pachmann
delighted his two auditors from 10 P. M. to 3 A. M. It is safe to wager
that the old Carrollton never heard such music-making before or since.
When he left, happy over his triumph—I was actually flabbergasted by
the new music—he whispered: “Hein! What you think! You think I can play
this wonderful music? You are mistaken. Wait till you hear Leopold
Godowsky play. We are all children, all woodchoppers, compared with him!”
Curiously enough, the last is the identical phrase uttered by Anton
Rubinstein in regard to Franz Liszt. Perhaps it was a quotation, but De
Pachmann meant it. It was the sincerest sentiment I had heard from his
often insincere lips. We were all three surprised to find a score of
people camping out on the curved stairway and passages, the idealist,
a colored lad who ran the elevator, having succumbed to sleep. This
impromptu Godowsky recital by a marvellous pianist, for De Pachmann was a
marvel in his time, must have made a grand hit with my neighbors. It did
with me, and when Godowsky returned to New York—I had last heard him in
the middle nineties of the previous century—I lost no time in hearing him
play in his inimitable manner those same works. A pianist who can win the
heartiest admiration of such contemporaries as De Pachmann and Joseffy
and Josef Hofmann—I could adduce many other names—must be a unique
artist. And that Godowsky is.
When he isn’t teaching or playing with orchestra or in recitals Mr.
Godowsky spends his leisure in pedagogic work. There is a wide-spreading
education scheme which has St. Louis as headquarters, the name of which
I’ve forgotten, though the name doesn’t much matter, as musicians the
country over know it. For this Mr. Godowsky is editing the classics
and romantics of piano literature. He is also composing the most
charming music imaginable for the earlier and middle grades of students;
music that has genuine musical values, with technical. Imagination
and instruction blended. Pegasus harnessed to the humbler draught
horse. If you think of Schumann’s various albums for the young you may
surmise the spirit of the Godowsky curriculum. I have been reading
through his Miniatures for four-hands (Carl Fischer, New York), three
suites, twelve numbers in all, in which the treble is for the pupil of
extreme simplicity yet demanding attention to the melodic line, and
amply developing the rhythmic sense. With their fanciful titles, tiny
mood-pictures, these Miniatures are bound to attract all teachers of the
instrument. Leopold Godowsky is a master pedagogue, as well as a master
of masters among virtuosi. He belongs to the race of such giants as
Paganini, Liszt, Tausig—and he is “different.”
CONTEMPORARY BRAN
Yesterday was housecleaning in my office, which I need hardly tell you is
situated under my hat. The principal débris to be removed and dumped into
the waste-paper basket were letters addressed to this department. Their
number was appalling, the accumulation of weeks, as the music editor
has little time for answering letters. A dozen concerts a day, opera
almost every night, do not make for the life tranquil. Now, letters,
anonymous or signed, are always interesting, especially those in the
first category. Praise and blame run neck and neck; cinquante-cinquante,
in classic parlance. Occasionally abusive missives arrive, breathing
fire and fury, and these are of psychologic import. You ask yourself
why? And lose yourself in an interesting labyrinth of speculation. The
small boy who chalks naughty words or figures on wall spaces during the
spring of the year testifies to the rising sap of the budding season;
it is an outlet for his nascent emotions. Presumably this is the case
with those whose handwriting reveals their uneasy sex. But why do they
select the present incumbent of this chair of criticism? William James,
when he dissected Dr. Nordau, twenty-five years ago, pointed out as a
major symptom of the too critical Max what is called by psychiatrists
coprolalia, or a tendency to indulge in vulgar, abusive language. When
certain inhibitions of polite society are removed the patient indulges
in vile speech, and writes nasty and usually anonymous letters for
reasons only known to himself or herself. Writers of anonymous letters
are described as cowardly, but this is only half the truth; they are also
sick-brained, suffering from mild hysteria, and as soon as they transfer
to paper the expression of their petty spite are temporarily relieved;
there is “a load off their minds,” as they put it.
This doesn’t mean that all anonymous letters are abusive; some of
them are pleasant reading. A blushing maiden records her admiration.
A “violinist” tells me that I have overpraised Raoul Vidas, although
I was not at the concert in question, Sunday being my day of respite
from the boiler shop; now and again pertinent criticism is received,
but, whether signed or unsigned, all these communications only prove
that their recipient’s casual writing is closely read, and that is a
minor consolation. Then there are the letters asking for advice, and
these contain harder nuts to crack. Why warn a young man or woman that
musical criticism as a profession is a delusion and a snare? Neither
one will believe you. Why suggest to an ambitious young composer that
any other avocation will bring him, if not happiness, then, at least,
bread and butter? But the stone hankers after the star, and who shall
mock its aspiration? How often have we felt like crying aloud: “Hats
on, gentleman, this is not a genius!” reversing the historic utterance
of Robert Schumann. A critic should be clairvoyant, but sometimes he is
not. And little wonder. Paste passes for diamonds, skim-milk masquerades
as cream. But it is always well to face the rising, not the setting
sun. Write only for young; the old will not heed you, being weary of
the pother of life and art. To the young belongs the future. Hurrah for
Ornstein and Prokofieff, or the ideals they represent! Progress always
traverses a circle, it is more imaginary than real, but we must have
the illusion of progress, else spiritually decay. Without vision people
perish. Nice copybook axioms, paste them in your bonnet.
In Emile Hennequin’s La Critique Scientifique—introduced to English
readers by John Mackinnon Robertson in his New Essays Towards a Critical
Method—the brilliant Frenchman, unhappily dead before his time, advanced
the idea that every critic should, in the preface of his book, set forth
not only his qualifications, but also his prejudices, his limitations.
This procedure might shed a dry light on what follows, although it
would seem unnecessary, as all these virtues and defects are implicit
in the critics’ work. However, Mr. Robertson has elaborated the theory
and frankly exposes himself. I am minded of this by a signed letter,
evidently written by a gentleman, which came to this department shortly
after a notice had appeared criticising the Oratorio Society. The critic,
it seems, must have been in a disgruntled humor when he declared that the
oratorio form was as obsolete as the mastodon, or some other prehistoric
monster; perhaps he meant hippopotamus. The writer of the communication
protests, and logically, against sending a man to criticise choral
singing when he is not in sympathy with such. Other people, numerous
people, find in oratorio the musical staff of life. Why, then, trample on
their feelings? The answer is an unqualified assent to the argument. As
I signed the criticism in question, and as I was bored to death at the
time, there is nothing left for me but to apologize—also put on paper my
objections, thus following the advice of the distinguished French critic.
And I fear I shall make out a poor case for the defense.
In the first place, on the night of the Oratorio concert, our oratorio
editor, yielding to a perfectly human impulse—about the fourth time
in his life—accompanied the sporting editor to a marvellous wrestling
match between El Greco, the Terrible Greek (his real name is said to be
Theototocopulous), and Goya, better known as the Man-Strangler. Which one
first went to the mat on that tremendous occasion need not concern us
now; suffice to say that I was butchered to make the oratorio editor’s
holiday. Why do I dislike oratorio? I meekly retort—I don’t. I love it,
and my correspondent is right when he asserts that the form has served
as a vehicle for most masterly music. Think of Bach, Handel, Mendelssohn.
I know it. I have heard and loved choral singing for a half century.
Masterpieces never weary, but, as Arthur Symons says, books about books
soon pass away, and there are some of us who prefer to read than “see”
Hamlet, although I agree with Brander Matthews that the only test of
a play is “the fire of the footlights.” In a word, public performance
may rob the masterpiece of its original grandeur—and we must predicate
grandeur for the B minor Mass, for the Messiah, for Elijah. This sounds
as if I were about to lay the blame on the particular performance of
the Oratorio Society—a cowardly evasion of my duty. On the contrary, I
confess that with the exception of the inevitable limitations of amateur
singing—Signor Setti choruses are not plentiful—I had never heard the
Oratorio Society sing with such refreshing vigor as the week before last.
Remember, too, that I heard the society under Leopold Damrosch, when it
sang The Damnation of Faust at the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, and
young Walter conducted a chorus in the wings.
You will ask, You love the noble music in this form, why write
deprecatingly of it? Because it is my unshakable conviction that such
music does not belong in the concert room, but in a church. After hearing
the Passion music in Bach’s old St. Thomas’s Church, or the Brahms
Requiem in a historical church, the anomaly of singers in festive array
singing in concert halls is too much for my sense of eternal fitness.
Yes, critics have “nerves,” and it needs a remarkable interpretation of
the Messiah or kindred compositions to stir me. I am only answering for
myself—qui s’excuse, s’accuse?—and do not presume to gainsay the feelings
of pious folk who regard the Messiah as a sacred function. But for those
who tell me that the mock-turtle Christianity of Parsifal is “sacred” I
merely retort: “A fig for the mystic capon.” Naturally, a concert room
better serves the practical purpose of singing organizations here than
the house of God; yet I prefer the church, for the spectacle of five
hundred humans, with their mouths wide open bawling the text—would it not
distract one? Sacred fiddlesticks! you exclaim when a tenor, faultlessly
clad, arises and solemnly intones, “And Jesus said,” the remainder of
the speech being uttered by some one else. Æsthetically, oratorio has
not a leg to stand on. It is neither fish nor flesh. How dull was Samson
et Dalila till sung in costume and before the footlights! And it is not
by any means very dramatic. Still, to many who do not visit the opera
for religious reasons, oratorio is a species of emotional outlet. It is
a half-way house, a compromise—you may enjoy both drama and religion.
Another thing—I am weary of the music, as I weary when I see Hamlet
or hear the Fifth Symphony, or look at the Dresden Madonna. I am not
apologizing for this weakness, only trying to explain its genesis.
William Gillette has written about the “first-time” element in acting;
or why an actor must ceaselessly renew the freshness of his original
inspiration. Would that some sympathetic writer deigned to take up the
cudgels for the ear-sick music critic. It is difficult, nay, impossible,
to recapture that first rapture when Tristan, or the C minor Symphony, or
Hamlet, swam into our ken. That is why I did not “react” the other night
at the Oratorio Society, and why, as my critique was reprehensible, I am
now making a clean breast of the matter and crying: Peccavi!
And here is my old friend Frank Sealey mildly complaining that it was
not his fault that his electric organ “ciphered” for a bar during the
evening. As I have literally sat at Brother Sealey’s feet for nearly
thirty years—since the opening of Carnegie Hall—it is not necessary to
assure him that I never doubted that it was the fault of the organ,
not his. He is a rock of certitude on the organ bench. But I did enjoy
Wolf-Ferrari’s Vita Nuova, a beautifully fashioned score, too sweetly
sentimental in spots for the austere and lovely sonnets of the deathless
Dante; nevertheless, a tour de force, happily illustrating my primal
contention that the oratorio form is as obsolescent as the epic; the
spirit, I mean, rather than the form, for the bony framework is there,
but the age of piety, the profound piety that prompted the composition
of such glorious music as Bach’s or Handel’s, has quite vanished, to
be replaced by machine-made music, the “movies,” and other stimulating
arts. Contemporary bran is filling, but it nourishes not the soul. Need
I add, when the Oratorio Society sings the Messiah at Christmas-tide,
that the regular oratorio editor, a singularly pious person, will report
the annual occurrence! That night, perhaps, I shall enjoy the brutal
but diverting spectacle of a wrestling match. It all depends on the
amiability of the sporting editor.
A MOOD REACTIONARY
I consider such phrases as the “progress of art,” the “improvement of
art,” and “higher average of art” as distinctly harmful and misleading.
How can art improve? Is art a something, an organism that is capable of
growing into a fat maturity? If this be so, then, by the same token, it
can become a doddering, senile thing, and finally die and be buried with
the honors due its useful career. It was Henrik Ibsen who asserted that
the vital values of a truth lasted at the longest about twenty years;
after that the particular truth rolled into error. Now, isn’t this
quibble concerning “artistic improvement” as fallacious as the vicious
circle of the dramatist from the Land of the Midnight Whiskers—or is it
the Land of the Midnight Bun? Contrariwise, Bach would be dead, Mozart
moribund, Beethoven in middle-aged decay. Instead, what is the musical
health of these three composers? Have we a gayer, blither, more youthful
scapegrace writing to-day than Mozart? Is there a man among the moderns
more virile, passionate, profound, or noble than Beethoven? And Bach
is the boy of the trinity. The Well-Tempered Clavichord is the Book of
Eternal Wisdom. In it may be found the past, present, future of music. It
is the Fountain of Eternal Youth.
As a matter of cold fact, it is your modern who is ancient; the ancients
were younger. Recall the Greeks and their naïve joy in creation. In
sorrow the twentieth-century man brings forth his art. His music betrays
it. It is sad, complicated, hysterical, morbid. No need to mention
Chopin, who was neurotic—an empty medical phrase—nor Schumann, who
carried in him the seeds of madness; nor Wagner, who was a typical
decadent on an epical scale. Sufficient for the argument to adduce the
names of Berlioz, Liszt, Tschaikovsky, and Richard Strauss. Some Sunday
when the weather is wretched, when icicles hang by the wall, and “ways be
foul” and “foul is fair and fair is foul,” I shall tell you what I think
of the “blond barbarian” who sets to music crazy philosophies, bloody
legends, sublime tommyrot, and the pictures and poems of his friend. At
present I am not in the humor nor have I the space. Good white paper is
become a luxury, like freedom of speechlessness and other indelicacies of
the national cuisine.
As I understand the jargon of criticism, Berlioz is the father
of modern instrumentation. That is, he says nothing original or
significant in his music, but he says it magnificently. A purple,
pompous rhetorician, a Chateaubriand of the orchestra. His style covers
a multitude of musical—or unmusical—defects with the flamboyant cloak
of chromatic charity. He pins haughty, poetic, high-sounding labels
to his compositions, and, like Charles Lamb, we sit open-mouthed at
concerts trying to fill in his big, sonorous, empty frame with an
adequate picture. Your picture is not the same as mine. I swear that the
young man who sits next to me, with a silly chin, goggle eyes, and a
cocoanut-shaped head, sees as in a flattering mirror, the idealized image
of a strong-jawed, ox-eyed, classic-browed youth, a mixture of Napoleon
and Byron. I loathe the music that makes its chief appeal to the egotism
of mankind, all the while slyly insinuating that it only addresses the
imagination. Yes, the imagination of your own splendid ego in a white
waistcoat driving a new model car through the White Light district on an
immoral afternoon in the puberty of spring.
Let us pass to the Hungarian piano virtuoso, who posed as a great
composer. That he lent his hard cash and musical themes to his precious
son-in-law, Richard Wagner, is undeniable. Liszt admits it himself.
But, then, beggars must not be choosers, and Liszt gave Wagner mighty
poor stuff at times. We believe that Wagner liked far better the solid
shekels than the notes of hand. Liszt would have had little to say if
Berlioz had not preceded him. The idea struck him, for he was a master
of musical snippets, that Berlioz was too long-winded—both in brass
and wood—that his so-called symphonies were neither fish, nor form,
nor good red tunes. What ho! cried Master Franz, I’ll give them a dose
homœopathic. He did, and he named his prescription Symphonic Poem, or,
if you will, Poème Symphonique, which is not the same thing. Nothing so
tickles the vanity like this sort of verbal fireworks. “It leaves so
much to the imagination,” murmurs the fat man with a 22-collar and a No.
6 hat. It does. And his kind of imagination—good Lord! Liszt, nothing
daunted because he couldn’t shake out an honest throw of a tune from his
technical dice-box, proceeded to build his noise on so-called themes,
claiming that in this method he derived from Bach. Not so. Bach’s themes
are subjects for fugal treatment, Liszt’s are used symphonically. The
parallel is uncritical. Besides, Daddy Liszt had no melodic invention.
Bach had, and in abundance; witness his chorals, masses, oratorios,
preludes, suites, fugues. However, the Berlioz ball had to be kept
a-rolling; the formula was easy. Liszt named his poems, named his very
notes, put dog-collars on his harmonies—yet no one whistled after them.
Whoever whistled a Liszt tune?
Tschaikovsky kept one eye on Liszt and Berlioz, the other on Bellini
and Gounod. What would have happened if he had been one-eyed I cannot
pretend to say. In love with lush, sensual melody, infatuated with the
gorgeous pyrotechnical effects of Berlioz and Liszt, also the pomposities
of Meyerbeer, this Russian, who began too late in his studies, succeeded
in manufacturing a number of ineffectual works. On them he bestowed
strained, fantastic titles, empty, meaningless, pretty, and as he was
contrapuntally short-winded, he made his so-called tone-poems shorter
than Liszt’s. He had little aptitude for the symphonic form, and his
development section is always his weak point. Too much Italian sentiment,
and a sentiment that is often hectic and morbid. He raves or whines
like the people in Russian fiction. I think he was touched in the upper
story, that is, till I heard the compositions of R. Strauss of Munich.
What misfit music for such a joyous name, a name evocative of all that
is gay, witty, sparkling, spontaneous in music. After Mozart, give me
Strauss—Johann, not Richard.
No longer the wheezings, gaspings, short-breathed phrases of Liszt.
No longer the sensuality, loose construction, formlessness and vodka
besotted peasant dances of Tschaikovsky, but a blending of Wagner,
Brahms, Liszt—and the classics. Richard Ostrich knows his little affair.
He is clever, he is skilled. He has his chamber-music moments, his lyric
outbursts. His early songs are singable. It is his vile, perverse orgies
of orchestral noises that wound my ears. No normal man ever erected such
mad architectural tonal schemes. He should be penned behind the bars of
his own mad music. He lacks melody. He dotes on ugliness. He suffers
from the uglification complex. He writes to distracting, unheavenly
lengths, worst of all, his harmonies are hideous. But he doesn’t forget
to call his monstrosities fanciful names. If it isn’t Don Juan—shades of
Mozart—it is Don Quixote—shades of Cervantes. This literary title humbug
serves as the plaster for our broken heads and split ear-drums. Berlioz,
Tschaikovsky and R. Strauss are not for all time.
The truth is that musical art has gone far afield from the main travelled
road, has been led into blind alleys and dark forests. If this art has
made no “progress in fugue, song, sonata, symphony, string quartet,
oratorio, opera,” who has “improved” on Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart,
Gluck, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin? Name, name, I ask. What’s
the use of talking about the “higher average of to-day?” How much higher?
You mean that more people go to concerts, more people enjoy music, than
fifty or a hundred years ago. Do they? I doubt it. Of what use all our
huge temples of worship if the true gods of art no longer be worshipped
therein? Numbers prove nothing. Majorities are not always in the
right. There has been no great original music composed since the death
of Beethoven, for, strictly speaking, the music-drama of Wagner is a
synthesis of the arts, and, despite his individual genius, in union there
is death—in the case of the Seven Arts. United we fall, divided we stand!
The multiplication of orchestras, opera-houses, singing societies, and
concerts are not indicative that general culture is achieved. Quality,
not quantity, should be the shibboleth. The tradition of the classics
is fading, soon it shall vanish. We care little for the masters. Modern
music worship is a fashionable fad. People go to listen because they
think it the mode. Alack and alas! that is not the true spirit in which
to approach the Holy of Holies, Bach, Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven.
Oremus!
MUSICAL “POTTERISM”
Potterism is a clever, amusing satire on the British philistine which
has had considerable vogue in London and New York. It was written by
Rose Macaulay, who is said to have a dozen novels to her credit. The
lady has evidently read Shaw profitably; that is, Nietzsche strained
through the Shaw sieve, for G. B. S. never had an original idea. She
defines Potterism as a frame of mind, not a set of opinions. Potterism
is only a new word for an old thing—cant, or, as we say, humbug, and, on
its more serious side, hypocrisy. Smug self-satisfaction is its keynote.
Will Irwin in a flash of divination defined the particular quality
as “highbrow,” a species of sterile intellectualism which irritates
sensible people because of the lofty, condescending attitude assumed
by certain persons who, terribly at ease in Zion, are seemingly in the
secret councils of the Almighty. Don Marquis daily tilts at æsthetic
sham in his stimulating Sun Dial column, and Gelett Burgess, the author
of the deathless Purple Cow, long ago hit out at the Potterism of his
time. Potterism, like the rich, is always with us. We are all of us
more or less Potterites. Dickens painted the tribe, beginning with Mrs.
Leo Hunter, not forgetting Podsnappery. Thackeray’s scimitar prose
cut through snobbish pretenses, while a French philosopher, Jules de
Gautier, in his Bovaryisme, has demonstrated that we are victims of the
world illusion—to pretend to be otherwise than we are. It is a law of
life, a superstition, this game of self-illuding, and superstition is the
cement of civilization.