Despite the fact that he played the flute and ranked Rossini above
Wagner, Arthur Schopenhauer said some notable things about music. "Art
is ever on the quest," is a wise observation of his, "a quest, and a
divine adventure"; though this restless search for the new often ends
in plain reaction, progress may be crab-wise and still be progress. I
fear that "progress" as usually understood is a glittering "general
idea" that blinds us to the truth. Reform in art is not like reform in
politics; you can't reform the St. Matthew Passion or the Fifth
Symphony. Is Parsifal a reformation of Gluck? This talk of reform is
only confusing the historic with the aesthetic. Art is a tricksy
quantity and like quicksilver is ever mobile. As in all genuine
revolutions the personal equation counts the heaviest, so in dealing
with the conditions of music at the present time one must study the
temperament of our music-makers and let prophecy sulk in its tent as
it may.
If Ruskin had written music-criticism, he might have amplified the
meaning of his once-famous phrase, the "pathetic fallacy," for I
consider it a pathetic fallacy--though not in the Ruskinian sense--in
criticism to be over-shadowed by the fear that, because some of our
critical predecessors misjudged Wagner or Manet or Ibsen, we should be
too merciful in criticising our contemporaries. Here is the "pathos of
distance" run to sentimental seed. The music of to-day may be the
music of to-morrow, but if it is not, what then? It may satisfy the
emotional needs of the moment, yet to-morrow be a stale formula. But
what does that prove? Though Bach and Beethoven built their work on
the bases of eternity (employing this tremendous term in a limited
sense), one may nevertheless enjoy the men whose music is of slighter
texture and "modern." Nor is this a plea for mediocrity. Mediocrity we
shall always have with us: mediocrity is mankind in the normal, and
normal man demands of art what he can read without running, hear
without thinking. Every century produces artists who are forgotten in
a generation, though they fill the eye and the ear for a time with
their clever production. This has led to another general idea, that of
transition, of intermediate types. After critical perspective has been
attained, it may be seen that the majority of composers fall into this
category not a consoling notion, but an unavoidable. Richard Wagner
has his epigones; the same is the case with Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven.
Mendelssohn was a delightful feminine variation on Bach, and after
Schumann came Brahms.
The Wagner-Liszt tradition of music-drama, so-called, and the
symphonic poem have been continued with personal modifications by
Richard Strauss; Max Reger has pinned his faith to Brahms and absolute
music, though not without a marked individual variation. In
considering his Sinfonietta, the Serenade, the Hiller Variations, the
Prologue to a Tragedy, the Lustspiel Overture, the two concertos
respectively for pianoforte and violin, we are struck not as much by
the easy handling of old forms, as by the stark emotional content of
these compositions. Reger began as a Brahmsianer, but he has not thus
far succeeded in fusing form and theme as wonderfully as did his
master. There is a Dionysian strain in his music that too often is in
jarring discord with the intellectual structure of his work. But there
is no denying that Max Reger is the one man in Germany to-day who is
looked upon as the inevitable rival of Richard Strauss. Their
disparate tendencies bring to the lips the old query, Under which
king? Some think that Arnold Schoenberg may be a possible antagonist
in the future, but for the present it is Reger and Strauss, and no
third in opposition.
The Strauss problem is a serious one. In America much criticism of his
performances has contrived to evade the real issue. He has been called
hard names because he is money-loving, or because he has not followed
in the steps of Beethoven, because of a thousand and one things of no
actual critical value. That he is easily the greatest technical master
of his art now living there can be no question. And he has wound up a
peg or two the emotional intensity of music. Whether this striving
after nerve-shattering combinations is a dangerous tendency is quite
beside the mark. Let us register the fact. Beginning in the path made
by Brahms, he soon came under the influence of Liszt, and we were
given a chaplet of tone-poems, sheer programme-music, but cast in a
bigger and more flexible mould than the thrice-familiar Liszt pattern.
Whatever fate is reserved for Death and Transfiguration, Till
Eulenspiegel, Also Sprach Zarathustra, Hero's Life, and Don Quixote,
there is no denying their significance during the last decade of the
nineteenth century. For me it seemed a decided step backward when
Strauss entered the operatic field. One so conspicuously rich in the
gift of music-making (for the titles of his symphonies never prevented
us from enjoying their colouring and eloquence) might have avoided the
more facile triumphs of the stage. However, Elektra needs no apology,
and the joyous Rosenkavalier is a distinct addition to the repertory
of high-class musical comedy. Strauss is an experimenter and no doubt
a man for whom the visible box-office exists, to parody a saying of
Gautier's. But we must judge him by his own highest standard, the
standard of Elektra, Don Quixote, and Till Eulenspiegel, not to
mention the beautiful songs. Ariadne on Naxos was a not particularly
successful experiment, and what the Alp Symphony will prove to be we
may only surmise. Probably this versatile tone-poet has said his best.
He is not a second Richard Wagner, not yet has he the charm of the
Lizst personality, but he bulks too large in contemporary history to
be called a decadent, although in the precise meaning of the word,
without its stupid misinterpretation, he is a decadent inasmuch as he
dwells with emphasis on the technique of his composition, sacrificing
the whole for the page, putting the phrase above the page, and the
single note in equal competition with the phrase. In a word, Richard
Strauss is a romantic, and flies the red flag of his faith. He has not
followed the advice of Paul Verlaine in taking eloquence by the neck
and wringing it. He is nothing if not eloquent and expressive,
magnifying his Bavarian song-birds to the size of Alpine eagles. The
newer choir has avoided the very things in which Strauss has excelled,
for that way lie repetition and satiety. [Since writing the above,
Strauss has given the world his ballet The Legend of Joseph, in which
he has said nothing novel, but has with his customary skill mixed anew
the old compound of glittering colours and sultry, exotic harmonies.]
* * * * *
However, Strauss is not the only member of the post-Wagnerian group,
but he is the chief one who has kept his individual head above water
in the welter and chaos of the school. Where are Cyrill Kistner, Hans
Sommer, August Bungert, and the others? Humperdinck is a mediocrity,
even more so than Puccini. And what of the banalities of Bruckner? His
Wagnerian cloak is a world too large for his trifling themes.
Siegfried Wagner does not count, and for anything novel we are forced
to turn our eyes and ears toward the direction of France. After
Berlioz, a small fry, indeed, yet not without interest. The visit made
by Claude Debussy to Russia in 1879 and during his formative period
had consequences. He absorbed Moussorgsky, and built upon him, and he
had Wagner at his finger-ends; like Charpentier he cannot keep Wagner
out of his scores; the Bayreuth composer is the King Charles's head in
his manuscript. Tristan und Isolde in particular must have haunted the
composers of Louise, and Pelleas et Melisande. The Julien of
Charpentier is on a lower literary and musical level than Louise,
which, all said and done, has in certain episodes a picturesque charm;
the new work is replete with bad symbolism and worse music-spinning.
Debussy has at least a novel, though somewhat monotonous, manner. He
is "precious," and in ideas as constipated as Mallarme, whose
Afternoon of a Faun he so adequately set. Nevertheless, there is, at
times, magic in his music. It is the magic of suggestiveness, of the
hinted mystery which only Huysmans's superior persons scattered
throughout the universe may guess. After Debussy comes Dukas, Ravel,
Florent Schmitt, Rogier-Ducasse, men who seem to have caught anew the
spirit of the eighteenth-century music and given it to us not through
the poetic haze of Debussy, but in gleaming, brilliant phrases. There
is promise in Schmitt. As to Vincent d'Indy, you differ with his
scheme, yet he is a master, as was Cesar Franck a master, as are
masters the two followers of D'Indy, Albert Roussel and Theodat de
Severac. Personally I admire Paul Dukas, though without any warrant
whatever for placing him on the same plane with Claude Debussy, who,
after all, has added a novel nuance to art. But they are all makers of
anxious mosaics; never do they carve the block; exquisite
miniaturists, yet lack the big brush work and epical sweep of the
preceding generation. Above all, the entire school is minus virility;
its music is of the distaff, and has not the masculine ring of crossed
swords.
It is hardly necessary to consider here the fantastic fashionings of
Erik Satie, the "newest" French composer. He seems to have
out-Schoenberged Schoenberg in his little piano pieces bearing the
alluring titles of Embryons desseches, preludes and pastorales. Apart
from the extravagant titles, the music itself is ludicrous qua music,
but not without subtle irony. That trio of Chopin's Funeral March
played in C and declared as a citation from the celebrated mazurka of
Schubert does touch the rib risible. There are neither time signature
nor bars. All is gentle chaos and is devoted to the celebration, in
tone, of certain sea-plants and creatures. This sounds like Futurism
or the passionate patterns of the Cubists, but I assure you I've seen
and tried to play the piano music of Satie. That he is an arch-humbug
I shall neither maintain nor deny. After Schoenberg anything is
possible in this vale of agonising dissonance. I recall with positive
satisfaction a tiny composition for piano by Rebikoff, which he calls
a setting of The Devil's Daughters, a mural design by Franz von Stuck
of Munich. To be sure, the bass is in C and the treble in D flat,
nevertheless the effect is almost piquant. The humour of the new
composers is melancholy in its originality, but Gauguin has said that
in art one must be either a plagiarist or a revolutionist. Satie is
hardly a plagiarist, though the value of his revolution is doubtful.
The influence of Verdi has been supreme among the Verdists of young
Italy, though not one has proved knee-high to a grasshopper when
compared with the composer of that incomparable Falstaffo. Ponchielli
played his part, and under his guidance such dissimilar talents as
Puccini, Mascagni, and Leoncavallo were fostered. Puccini stopped with
La Boheme, all the rest is repetition and not altogether admirable
repetition. That he has been the hero of many phonographs has nothing
to do with his intrinsic merits. Cleverness is his predominating
vice, and a marked predilection for time-serving; that is, he, like
the excellent musical journalist that he is, feels the public pulse,
spreads his sails to the breeze of popular favour, and while he is
never as banal as Humperdinck or Leoncavallo, he exhibits this quality
in suffusion. Above all, he is not original. If Mascagni had only
followed the example of Single-Speech Hamilton, he would have spared
himself many mortifications and his admirers much boredom. The new
men, such as Wolf-Ferrari, Montemezzi, Giordano, and numerous others
are eclectics; they belong to any country, and their musical
cosmopolitanism, while affording agreeable specimens, may be dismissed
with the comment that their art lacks pronounced personal profile.
This does not mean that L'Amore dei Tre Re is less delightful. The
same may be said of Ludwig Thuille and also of the Neo-Belgian group.
Sibelius, the Finn, is a composer with a marked temperament. Among the
English Delius shows strongest. He is more personal and more original
than Elgar. Not one of these can tie the shoe-strings of Peter
Cornelius, the composer of short masterpieces, The Barber of
Bagdad--the original, not the bedevilled version of Mottl.
In Germany there is an active group of young men: Ernest Boehe, Walter
Braunfels, Max Schillings, Hans Pfitzner, F. Klose, Karl Ehrenberg,
Dohnany--born Hungarian--H. G. Noren. The list is long. Fresh,
agreeable, and indicative of a high order of talent is a new opera by
Franz Schreker, Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin (1913). Schreker's
earlier opera, Der ferne Klang, I missed, but I enjoyed the later
composition, charged as it is with fantasy, atmosphere, bold climaxes,
and framing a legendary libretto. The influence of Debussy is marked.
Curiously enough, the Russian Moussorgsky, whose work was neglected
during his lifetime, has proved to be a precursor to latter-day music.
He was not affected in his development by Franz Liszt, whose influence
on Tschaikovsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakof, Glazounof--he less than the
others--was considerable. Like Dostoievsky, Moussorgsky is
_ur_-Russian, not a polished production of Western culture, as are
Turgenieff, Tschaikovsky, Tolstoy, or Rubinstein. He is not a
romantic, this Russian bear; the entire modern school is at one in
their rejection of romantic moods and attitudes. Now, music is
pre-eminently a romantic art. I once called it a species of emotional
mathematics, yet so vast is its kingdom that it may contain the
sentimentalities of Mendelssohn, the Old World romance of Schumann,
the sublimated poetry of Chopin, and the thunderous epical accents of
Beethoven.
Moussorgsky I have styled a "primitive," and I fancy it is as good an
ascription as another. He is certainly as primitive as Paul Gauguin,
who accomplished the difficult feat of shedding his Parisian skin as
an artist and reappearing as a modified Tahitian savage. But I
suspect there was a profounder sincerity in the case of the Muscovite.
Little need now to sing the praises of Boris Godunoff, though not
having seen and heard Ohaliapine, New York is yet to receive the
fullest and sharpest impression of the role notwithstanding the
sympathetic reading of Arturo Toscanini. Khovanchtchina is even more
rugged, more Russian. Hearing it after Tschaikovsky's charming, but
weak, setting of Eugen Onegin, the forthright and characteristic
qualities of Moussorgsky are set in higher relief. All the old
rhetoric goes by the board, and sentiment, in our sense of the word,
is not drawn upon too heavily. Stravinsky is a new man not to be
slighted, nor are Kodaly and Bartok. I mention only the names of those
composers with whose music I am fairly familiar. Probably Stravinsky
and his musical fireworks will be called a Futurist, whatever that
portentous title may mean. However, the music of Tschaikovsky,
Rimsky-Korsakof, Rachmaninof, and the others is no longer
revolutionary, but may be considered as evolutionary. Again the theory
of transitional periods and types comes into play, but I notice this
theory has been applied only to minor masters, never to creators. We
don't call Bach or Handel or Mozart or Beethoven intermediate types.
Perhaps some day Wagner will seem as original to posterity as
Beethoven does to our generation. Wasn't it George Saintsbury who once
remarked that all discussion of contemporaries is conversation, not
criticism? If this be the case, then it is suicidal for a critic to
pass judgment upon the music-making of his day, a fact obviously at
variance with daily practice. Yet it is a dictum not to be altogether
contravened. For instance, my first impressions of Schoenberg were
neither flattering to his composition nor to my indifferent critical
acumen. If I had begun by listening to the comparatively mellifluous
D-minor string quartet, played by the Flonzaley Quartet, as did my New
York colleagues, instead of undergoing the terrifying aural tortures
of Lieder des Pierrot Lunaire, I might have been as amiable as the
critics. The string sextet has been received here with critical
cordiality. Its beauties were exposed by the Kneisel Quartet. But
circumstances were otherwise, and it was later that I heard the two
string quartets--the latter in F-sharp minor (by courtesy, this
tonality), with voices at the close--the astounding Gurrelieder and
the piano pieces. The orchestral poem of Pelleas et Melisande I have
yet to enjoy or execrate; there seems to be no middle term for
Schoenberg's amazing art. If I say I hate or like it that is only a
personal expression, not a criticism standing foursquare. I fear I
subscribe to the truth of Mr. Saintsbury's epigram.
It may be considered singular that the most original "new" music hails
from Austria, not Germany. No doubt that Strauss is the protagonist of
the romantics, dating from Liszt and Wagner; and that Max Reger is
the protagonist of the modern classicists, counting Brahms as their
fount (did you ever read what Wagner, almost a septuagenarian, wrote
of Brahms: "Der juedische Czardas-Aufspieler"?). But they are no longer
proclaimed by those ultramoderns who dare to call Strauss an
intermediate type. So rapidly doth music speed down the grooves of
time. From Vienna comes Schoenberg; in Vienna lives and composes the
youthful Erich Korngold, whose earlier music seems to well as if from
some mountain spring, although with all its spontaneity it has no
affinity with Mozart. It is distinctively "modern," employing the
resources of the "new" harmonic displacements and the multicoloured
modern orchestral apparatus. Korngold is so receptive that he reveals
just now the joint influences of Strauss and Schoenberg. Yet I think
the path lies straight before this young genius, a straight and
shining path.
The little Erich Korngold--in reality a plump, good-looking
boy--presents few problems for the critic. I know his piano music,
replete with youthful charm, and I heard his overture produced by the
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (the fifth concert of the season) under
the leadership of Arthur Nikisch. Whether or not the youth is helped
by his teacher, as some say, there can be no doubt as to his
precocious talent. His facility in composition is Mozartian. Nothing
laboured, all as spontaneous as Schoenberg is calculating. He scores
conventionally, that is, latter-day commonplaces are the rule in his
disposition and treatment of the instrumental army. Like Mozart, he is
melodious, easy to follow, and, like Mozart, he begins by building on
his immediate predecessor, in his case Strauss. Debussy is not absent,
nor is Fritz Delius.
I heard not a little of Der Rosenkavalier. But who would suspect a lad
of such a formal sense--even if it is only imitative--of such clear
development, such climaxes, and such a capital coda! The chief test of
the music--would you listen to it if you did not know who composed
it?--is met. The overture is entertaining, if not very original. Truly
a wonder child.
Hugo Wolf was a song writer who perilously grazed genius, but he
rotted before he was ripe. Need we consider the respective positions
of Bruckner or Mahler, one all prodigality and diffuseness, the other
largely cerebral? And Mahler without Bruckner would hardly have been
possible. Those huge tonal edifices, skyscrapers in bulk, soon prove
barren to the spirit. A mountain in parturition with a mouse! Nor need
we dwell upon the ecstatic Scriabine who mimicked Chopin so deftly in
his piano pieces, "going" Liszt and Strauss one better--or ten, if you
will--and spilt his soul in swooning, roseate vibrations. Withal, a
man of ability and vast ambitions. (He died in 1915.)
More than two years ago I heard in Vienna Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, a
setting to a dramatic legend by Jens Peter Jacobsen. This choral and
orchestral work was composed in 1902, but it sounds newer than the
quartets or the sextet. In magnitude it beats Berlioz. It demands five
solo singers, a dramatic reader, three choral bodies, and an orchestra
of one hundred and forty, in which figure eight flutes, seven
clarinets, six horns, four Wagner tubas. Little wonder the impression
was a stupendous one. There were episodes of great beauty, dramatic
moments, and appalling climaxes. As Schoenberg has decided both in his
teaching and practice that there are no unrelated harmonies, cacophony
was not absent. Another thing: this composer has temperament. He is
cerebral, as few before him, yet in this work the bigness of the
design did not detract from the emotional quality. I confess I did not
understand at one hearing the curious dislocated harmonies and
splintered themes--melodies they are not--in the Pierrot Lunaire. I
have been informed that the ear should play a secondary role in this
"new" music; no longer through the porches of the ear must filter
plangent tones, wooing the tympanum with ravishing accords. It is now
the "inner ear," which is symbolic of a higher type of musical art. A
complete disassociation of ideas, harmonies, rhythmic life,
architectonic is demanded. To quote an admirer of the Vienna
revolutionist: "The entire man in you must be made over before you
can divine Schoenberg's art." Perhaps his aesthetik embraces what the
metaphysicians call the Langley-James hypothesis; fear, anxiety, pain
are the "content," and his hearers actually suffer as are supposed to
suffer his characters or moods or ideas. The old order has changed,
changed very much, yet I dimly feel that if this art is to endure it
contains, perhaps in precipitation, the elements without which no
music is permanent. But his elliptical patterns are interesting, above
all bold. There is no such thing as absolute originality. Even the
individual Schoenberg, the fabricator of nervous noises, leans heavily
on Wagner. Wagner is the fountainhead of the new school, let them mock
his romanticism as they may.
Is all this to be the music of to-morrow? Frankly, I don't know, and
I'm sure Schoenberg doesn't know. He is said to be guided by his
daimon, as was Socrates; let us hope that familiar may prompt him to
more comprehensible utterances. But he must be counted with nowadays.
He is significant of the reaction against formal or romantic beauty. I
said the same more than a decade ago of Debussy. Again the critical
watchmen in the high towers are signalling Schoenberg's movements, not
without dismay. Cheer up, brethren! Preserve an open mind. It is too
soon to beat reactionary bosoms, crying aloud, Nunc dimittis! Remember
the monstrous fuss made over the methods of Richard Strauss and
Claude Debussy. I shouldn't be surprised if ten years hence Arnold
Schoenberg proves quite as conventional a member of musical society as
those other two "anarchs of art."