like bad music, then say so frankly. Show yourselves, see yourselves as you
are. Kid your souls of the loathsome burden of all your compromise and
equivocation. Wash it in pure water. How long is it since you have seen.
yourselves in a mirror? I will show you yourselves. Composers, _virtuosi_,
conductors, singers, and you, dear public. You shall for once know
yourselves.... Be what you like: but, for any sake, be true! Be true even
though art and artists--and I myself--have to suffer for it! If art and
truth cannot live together, then let art disappear. Truth is life. Lies are
death."
Naturally, this youthful, wild outburst, which was all of a piece, and in
very bad taste, produced an outcry. And yet, as everybody was attacked and
nobody in particular, its pertinency was not recognized. Every one is, or
believes himself to be, or says that he is the best friend of truth: there
was therefore no danger of the conclusions of the article being attacked.
Only people were shocked by its general tone: everybody agreed that it
was hardly proper, especially from an artist in a semi-official position.
A few musicians began to be uneasy and protested bitterly: they saw that
Christophe would not stop at that. Others thought themselves more clever
and congratulated Christophe on his courage: they were no less uneasy about
his next articles.
Both tactics produced the same result. Christophe had plunged: nothing
could stop him: and as he had promised, everybody was passed in survey,
composers and interpreters alike.
The first victims were the _Kapellmeisters_. Christophe did not confine
himself to general remarks on the art of conducting an orchestra. He
mentioned his colleagues of his own town and the neighboring towns by name:
or if he did not name them his allusions were so transparent that nobody
could be mistaken. Everybody recognized the apathetic conductor of the
Court, Alois von Werner, a cautious old man, laden with honors, who was
afraid of everything, dodged everything, was too timid to make a remark to
his musicians and meekly followed whatever they chose to do,--who never
risked anything on his programme that had not been consecrated by twenty
years of success, or, at least, guaranteed by the official stamp of some
academic dignity. Christophe ironically applauded his boldness: he
congratulated him on having discovered Gade, Dvorak, or Tschaikowsky: he
waxed enthusiastic over his unfailing correctness, his metronomic equality,
the always _fein-nuanciert_ (finely shaded) playing of his orchestra:
he proposed to orchestrate the _École de la Vélocité_ of Czerny for his
next concert, and implored him not to try himself so much, not to give
rein to his passions, to look after his precious health.--Or he cried
out indignantly upon the way in which he had conducted the _Eroica_ of
Beethoven:
"A cannon! A cannon! Mow me down these people!... But have you then no idea
of the conflict, the fight between human stupidity and human ferocity,--and
the strength which tramples them underfoot with a glad shout of
laughter?--How could you know it? It is you against whom it fights! You
expend all the heroism that is in you in listening or in playing the
_Eroica_ of Beethoven without a yawn--(for it bores you.... Confess that it
bores you to death!)--or in risking a draught as you stand with bare head
and bowed back to let some Serene Highness pass."
He could not be sarcastic enough about the pontiffs of the Conservatories
who interpreted the great men of the past as "classics."
"Classical! That word expresses everything. Free passion, arranged and
expurgated for the use of schools! Life, that vast plain swept by the
winds,--inclosed within the four walls of a school playground! The fierce,
proud beat of a heart in anguish, reduced to the tic-tacs of a four-tune
pendulum, which goes its jolly way, hobbling and imperturbably leaning on
the crutch of time!... To enjoy the Ocean you need to put it in a bowl with
goldfish. You only understand life when you have killed it."
If he was not kind to the "bird-stuffers" as he called them, he was even
less kind to the ringmen of the orchestra, the illustrious _Kapellmeisters_
who toured the country to show off their flourishes and their dainty hands,
those who exercised their virtuosity at the expense of the masters, tried
hard to make the most familiar works unrecognizable, and turned somersaults
through the hoop of the _Symphony in C minor_. He made them appear as old
coquettes, _prima donnas_ of the orchestra, gipsies, and rope-dancers.
The _virtuosi_ naturally provided him with splendid material. He declared
himself incompetent when he had to criticise their conjuring performances.
He said that such mechanical exercises belonged to the School of Arts and
Crafts, and that not musical criticism but charts registering the duration,
and number of the notes, and the energy expended, could decide the merit of
such labors. Sometimes he would set at naught some famous piano _virtuoso_
who during a two hours' concert had surmounted the formidable difficulties,
with a smile on his lips and his hair hanging down into his eyes--of
executing a childish _andante_ of Mozart.--He did not ignore the pleasure
of overcoming difficulties. He had tasted it himself: it was one of the
joys of life to him. But only to see the most material aspect of it,
and to reduce all the heroism of art to that, seemed to him grotesque
and degrading. He could not forgive the "lions" or "panthers" of the
piano.--But he was not very indulgent either towards the town pedants,
famous in Germany, who, while they are rightly anxious not to alter the
text of the masters, carefully suppress every flight of thought, and, like
E. d'Albert and H. von Bülow, seem to be giving a lesson in diction when
they are rendering a passionate sonata.
The singers had their turn. Christophe was full to the brim of things to
say about their barbarous heaviness and their provincial affectations. It
was not only because of his recent misadventures with the enraged lady, but
because of all the torture he had suffered during so many performances. It
was difficult to know which had suffered most, ears or eyes. And Christophe
had not enough standards of comparison to be able to have any idea of the
ugliness of the setting, the hideous costumes, the screaming colors. He was
only shocked by the vulgarity of the people, their gestures and attitudes,
their unnatural playing, the inability of the actors to take on other souls
than their own, and by the stupefying indifference with which they passed
from one rôle to another, provided they were written more or less in
the same register. Matrons of opulent flesh, hearty and buxom, appeared
alternately as Ysolde and Carmen. Amfortas played Figaro.--But what most
offended Christophe was the ugliness of the singing, especially in the
classical works in which the beauty of melody is essential. No one in
Germany could sing the perfect music of the eighteenth century: no one
would take the trouble. The clear, pure style of Gluck and Mozart which,
like that of Goethe, seems to be bathed in the light of Italy--the style
which begins to change and to become vibrant and dazzling with Weber--the
style ridiculed by the ponderous caricatures of the author of
_Crociato_--had been killed by the triumph of Wagner. The wild flight of
the Valkyries with their strident cries had passed over the Grecian sky.
The heavy clouds of Odin dimmed the light. No one now thought of singing
music: they sang poems. Ugliness and carelessness of detail, even false
notes were let pass under pretext that only the whole, only the thought
behind it mattered....
"Thought! Let us talk of that. As if you understood it!... But whether or
no you do understand it, I pray you respect the form that thought has
chosen for itself. Above all, let music be and remain music!"
And the great concern of German artists with expression and profundity of
thought was, according to Christophe, a good joke. Expression? Thought?
Yes, they introduced them into everything--everything impartially. They
would have found thought in a skein of wool just as much--neither more nor
less--as in a statue of Michael Angelo. They played anything, anybody's
music with exactly the same energy. For most of them the great thing in
music--so he declared--was the volume of sound, just a musical noise. The
pleasure of singing so potent in Germany was in some sort a pleasure of
vocal gymnastics. It was just a matter of being inflated with air and
then letting it go vigorously, powerfully, for a long time together and
rhythmically.--And by way of compliment he accorded a certain great singer
a certificate of good health. He was not content with flaying the artists.
He strode over the footlights and trounced the public for coming, gaping,
to such performances. The public was staggered and did not know whether
it ought to laugh or be angry. They had every right to cry out upon his
injustice: they had taken care not to be mixed up in any artistic conflict:
they stood aside prudently from any burning question: and to avoid making
any mistake they applauded everything! And now Christophe declared that
it was a crime to applaud!... To applaud bad works?--That would have been
enough! But Christophe went further: he stormed at them for applauding
great works:
"Humbugs!" he said. "You would have us believe that you have as much
enthusiasm as that?... Oh! Come! Spare yourselves the trouble! You only
prove exactly the opposite of what you are trying to prove. Applaud if you
like those works and passages which in some measure deserve applause.
Applaud those loud final movements which are written, as Mozart said, 'for
long ears.' Applaud as much as you like, then: your braying is anticipated:
it is part of the concert.--But after the _Missa Solemnis_ of Beethoven!...
Poor wretches!... It is the Last Judgment. You have just seen the maddening
_Gloria_ pass like a storm over the ocean. You have seen the waterspout of
an athletic and tremendous well, which stops, breaks, reaches up to the
clouds clinging by its two hands above the abyss, then plunging once more
into space in full swing. The squall shrieks and whirls along. And when
the hurricane is at its height there is a sudden modulation, a radiance of
sound which cleaves the darkness of the sky and falls upon the livid sea
like a patch of light. It is the end: the furious flight of the destroying
angel stops short, its wings transfixed by these flashes of lightning.
Around you all is buzzing and quivering. The eye gazes fixedly forward in
stupor. The heart beats, breathing stops, the limbs are paralyzed.... And
hardly has the last note sounded than already you are gay and merry. You
shout, you laugh, you criticise, you applaud.... But you have seen nothing,
heard nothing, felt nothing, understood nothing, nothing, nothing,
absolutely nothing! The sufferings of an artist are a show to you. You
think the tears of agony of a Beethoven are finely painted. You would cry
'Encore' to the Crucifixion. A great soul struggles all its life long in
sorrow to divert your idleness for an hour!..."
So, without knowing it, he confirmed Goethe's great words: but he had not
yet attained his lofty serenity:
"The people make a sport of the sublime. If they could see it as it is,
they would be unable to bear its aspect."
If he had only stopped at that!--But, whirled along by his enthusiasm, he
swept past the public and plunged like a cannon ball into the sanctuary,
the tabernacle, the inviolable refuge of mediocrity: Criticism. He
bombarded his colleagues. One of them had taken upon himself to attack
the most gifted of living composers, the most advanced representative of
the new school, Hassler, the writer of programme symphonies, extravagant
in truth, but full of genius. Christophe who--as perhaps will be
remembered--had been presented to him when he was a child, had always had a
secret tenderness for him in his gratitude for the enthusiasm and emotion
that he had had then. To see a stupid critic, whose ignorance he knew,
instructing a man of that caliber, calling him to order, and reminding him
of set principles, infuriated him:
"Order! Order!" he cried. "You do not know any order but that of the
police. Genius is not to be dragged along the beaten track. It creates
order, and makes its will a law."
After this arrogant declaration he took the unlucky critic, considered all
the idiocies he had written for some time past, and administered
correction.
All the critics felt the affront. Up to that time they had stood aside
from the conflict. They did not care to risk a rebuff: they knew
Christophe, they knew his efficiency, and they knew also that he was not
long-suffering. Certain of them had discreetly expressed their regret that
so gifted a composer should dabble in a profession not his own. Whatever
might be their opinion (when they had one), and however hurt they might be
by Christophe, they respected in him their own privilege of being able to
criticise everything without being criticised themselves. But when they saw
Christophe rudely break the tacit convention which bound them, they saw in
him an enemy of public order. With one consent it seemed revolting to them
that a very young man should take upon himself to show scant respect for
the national glories: and they began a furious campaign against him. They
did not write long articles or consecutive arguments--(they were unwilling
to venture upon such ground with an adversary better armed than themselves:
although a journalist has the special faculty of being able to discuss
without taking his adversary's arguments into consideration, and even
without having read them)--but long experience had taught them that, as the
reader of a paper always agrees with it, even to appear to argue was to
weaken its credit with him: it was necessary to affirm, or better still,
to deny--(negation is twice as powerful as affirmation: it is a direct
consequence of the law of gravity: it is much easier to drop a stone than
to throw it up).--They adopted, therefore, a system of little notes,
perfidious, ironic, injurious, which were repeated day by day, in an easily
accessible position, with unwearying assiduity. They held the insolent
Christophe up to ridicule, though they never mentioned him by name, but
always transparently alluded to him. They twisted his words to make them
look absurd: they told anecdotes about him, true for the most part, though
the rest were a tissue of lies, nicely calculated to set him at loggerheads
with the whole town, and, worse still, with the Court: even his physical
appearance, his features, his manner of dressing, were attacked and
caricatured in a way that by dint of repetition came to be like him.
* * * * *
It would have mattered little to Christophe's friends if their Review had
not also come in for blows in the battle. In truth, it served rather as an
advertisement: there was no desire to commit the Review to the quarrel:
rather the attempt was made to cut Christophe off from it: there was
astonishment that it should so compromise its good name, and they were
given to understand that if they did not take care steps would be taken,
however unpleasant it might be, to make the whole editorial staff
responsible. There were signs of attack, gentle enough, upon Adolf Mai and
Mannheim, which stirred up the wasps' nest. Mannheim only laughed at it: he
thought that it would infuriate his father, his uncles, cousins, and his
innumerable family, who took upon themselves to watch everything he did and
to be scandalized by it. But Adolf Mai took it very seriously and blamed
Christophe for compromising the Review. Christophe sent him packing. The
others who had not been attacked found it rather amusing that Mai, who was
apt to pontificate over them, should be their scapegoat. Waldhaus was
secretly delighted: he said that there was never a fight without a few
heads being broken. Naturally he took good care that it should not be his
own: he thought he was sheltered from onslaught by the position of his
family; and his relatives: and he saw no harm in the Jews, his allies,
being mauled a little. Ehrenfeld and Goldenring, who were so far untouched,
would not have been worried by attack: they could reply. But what did touch
them on the raw was that Christophe should go on persistently putting them
in the wrong with their friends, and especially their women friends. They
had laughed loudly at the first articles and thought them good fun: they
admired Christophe's vigorous window-smashing: they thought they had only
to give the word to check his combativeness, or at least to turn his attack
from men and women whom they might mention.--But no. Christophe would
listen to nothing: he paid no heed to any remark and went on like a madman.
If they let him go on there would be no living in the place. Already their
young women friends, furious and in tears, had come and made scenes at
the offices of the Review. They brought all their diplomacy to bear on
Christophe to persuade him at least to moderate certain of his criticisms:
Christophe changed nothing. They lost their tempers: Christophe lost his,
but he changed nothing. Waldhaus was amused by the unhappiness of his
friends, which in no wise touched him, and took Christophe's part to
annoy them. Perhaps also he was more capable than they of appreciating
Christophe's extravagance, who with head down hurled himself upon
everything without keeping any line of retreat, or preparing any refuge for
the future. As for Mannheim he was royally amused by the farce: it seemed
to him a good joke to have introduced this madman among these correct
people, and he rocked with laughter both at the blows which Christophe
dealt and at those which he received. Although under his sister's influence
he was beginning to think that Christophe was decidedly a little cracked,
he only liked him the more for it--(it was necessary for him to find those
who were in sympathy with him a little absurd).--And so he joined Waldhaus
in supporting Christophe against the others.
As he was not wanting in practical sense, in spite of all his efforts to
pretend to the contrary, he thought very justly that it would be to his
friend's advantage to ally himself with the cause of the most advanced
musical party in the country.
As in most German towns, there was in the town a _Wagner-Verein_, which
represented new ideas against the conservative element.--In truth, there
was no great risk in defending Wagner when his fame was acknowledged
everywhere and his works included in the repertory of every Opera House
in Germany. And yet his victory was rather won by force than by universal
accord, and at heart the majority were obstinately conservative, especially
in the small towns such as this which have been rather left outside the
great modern movements and are rather proud of their ancient fame. More
than anywhere else there reigned the distrust, so innate in the German
people, of anything new, the sort of laziness in feeling anything true or
powerful which has not been pondered and digested by several generations.
It was apparent in the reluctance with which--if not the works of Wagner
which are beyond discussion--every new work inspired by the Wagnerian
spirit was accepted. And so the _Wagner-Vereine_ would have had a useful
task to fulfil if they had set themselves to defend all the young and
original forces in art. Sometimes they did so, and Bruckner or Hugo Wolf
found in some of them their best allies. But too often the egoism of
the master weighed upon his disciples: and just as Bayreuth serves only
monstrously to glorify one man, the _offshoots_ of Bayreuth were little
churches in which Mass was eternally sung in honor of the one God. At
the most the faithful disciples were admitted to the side chapels, the
disciples who applied the hallowed doctrines to the letter, and, prostrate
in the dust, adored the only Divinity with His many faces: music, poetry,
drama, and metaphysics.
The _Wagner-Verein_ of the town was in exactly this case.--However, they
went through the form of activity: they were always trying to enroll young
men of talent who looked as though they might be useful to it: and they had
long had their eyes on Christophe. They had discreetly made advances to
him, of which Christophe had not taken any notice, because he felt no need
of being associated with anybody: he could not understand the necessity
which drove his compatriots always to be banding themselves together in
groups, being unable to do anything alone: neither to sing, nor to walk,
nor to drink. He was averse to all _Vereinswesen_. But on the whole he was
more kindly disposed to the _Wagner-Verein_ than to any other _Verein_: at
least they did provide an excuse for fine concerts: and although he did
not share all the Wagnerian ideas on art, he was much nearer them than
to those of any other group in music. He could he thought find common
ground with a party which was as unjust as himself towards Brahms and
the "Brahmins." So he let himself be put up for it. Mannheim introduced
him: he knew everybody. Without being a musician he was a member of the
_Wagner-Verein_.--The managing committee had followed the campaign which
Christophe was conducting in the Review. His slaughter in the opposing camp
had seemed to them to give signs of a strong grip which it would be as well
to have in their service. Christophe had also let fly certain disrespectful
remarks about the sacred fetish: but they had preferred to close their eyes
to that: and perhaps his attacks, not yet very offensive, had not been
without their influence, unconsciously, in making them so eager to enroll
Christophe before he had time to deliver himself manfully. They came and
very amiably asked his permission to play some of his compositions at one
of the approaching concerts of the Association. Christophe was flattered,
and accepted: he went to the _Wagner-Verein_, and, urged by Mannheim, he
was made a member.
At that time there were at the head of the _Wagner-Verein_ two men, of whom
one enjoyed a certain notoriety as a writer, and the other as a conductor.
Both had a Mohammedan belief in Wagner. The first, Josias Kling, had
compiled a Wagner Dictionary--_Wagner Lexikon_--which made it possible in a
moment to know the master's thoughts _de omni re scibili_: it had been his
life's work. He was capable of reciting whole chapters of it at table, as
the French provincials used to troll the songs of the Maid. He used also
to publish in the _Bayreuther Blätter_ articles on Wagner and the Aryan
Spirit. Of course, Wagner was to him the type of the pure Aryan, of whom
the German race had remained the last inviolable refuge against the
corrupting influences of Latin Semitism, especially the French. He declared
that the impure French spirit was finally destroyed, though he did not
desist from attacking it bitterly day by day as though the eternal enemy
were still a menace. He would only acknowledge one great man in France:
the Count of Gobineau. Kling was a little man, very little, and he used to
blush like a girl.--The other pillar of the _Wagner-Verein_, Erich Lauber,
had been manager of a chemical works until four years before: then he had
given up everything to become a conductor. He had succeeded by force of
will, and because he was very rich. He was a Bayreuth fanatic: it was said
that he had gone there on foot, from Munich, wearing pilgrim's sandals. It
was a strange thing that a man who had read much, traveled much, practised
divers professions, and in everything displayed an energetic personality,
should have become in music a sheep of Panurge: all his originality was
expended in his being a little more stupid than the others. He was not
sure enough of himself in music to trust to his own personal feelings,
and so he slavishly followed the interpretations of Wagner given by the
_Kapellmeisters_, and the licensees of Bayreuth. He desired to reproduce
even to the smallest detail the setting and the variegated costumes which
delighted the puerile and barbarous taste of the little Court of Wahnfried.
He was like the fanatical admirer of Michael Angelo who used to reproduce
in his copies even the cracks in the wall of the moldy patches which had
themselves been hallowed by their appearance in the hallowed pictures.