Rachmaninoff

It was in an interview given at the beginning of his recent American

tour that M. Sergei Rachmaninoff styled himself a "musical

evolutionist." The phrase, doubtless uttered half in jest, is scarcely

nice. It is one of those terms that are so loose that they are well-nigh

meaningless. Nevertheless, there was significance in M. Rachmaninoff's

use of it. For he employed it as an apology for his work. His music is

evidently wanting in boldness. On the whole it is cautious and

traditional. Even those who are not professionally on the side of the

musical anarchs find it somewhat unventuresome, too smooth and soft and

elegantly elegiac, too dull. And in substituting for revolutionism a

formula for musical progress less suggestive of violent change, more

suggestive of a process like the tranquil, gradual and orderly unfolding

of bud into blossom, was not M. Rachmaninoff very lightly and cleverly

discrediting the apparently revolutionary work of certain of his

fellows, and seeking to reveal a hitherto unsuspected solidity in his

own?

However, it is questionable whether he was successful, whether the

implications of the phrase do quite manage to manoeuver his work into

genuine importance. No doubt, music does not invariably reform itself

through the process we call revolutionary. It is a commonplace that

there have been many composers of primary rank who have originated no

new syntax, no new system of chords and key-relationships. It is said

that J. S. Bach himself did not invent a single harmony. There have been

composers of genius who have done little to enlarge the physical

boundaries of their art, have accepted the grammar of music from others,

and have rounded an epoch instead of initiating a new one. Nevertheless,

M. Rachmaninoff cannot quite be included in their company. There is as

great a difference between him and composers of this somewhat

conservative type as there is between him and the radical sort. For

though the recomposition of music does not necessarily consist in the

establishment of a new system, and can be fairly complete without it, it

does consist in the impregnation of tone with new character and virtue.

Doubtless, M. Rachmaninoff is an accomplished and charming workman. He

is almost uniformly suave and dexterous. The instances when he writes

badly are not frequent. The C-sharp minor Prélude is, after all,

something of a sport. No doubt, there are times, as in so many of the

passages of the new version of his first piano concerto, when he seeks

to dazzle with the opulence and clangor and glare of tones. However, as

a rule, he writes politely. If the second concerto is a trifle too soft

and elegiac and sweet, a little too much like a mournful banqueting on

jam and honey, it is still most deftly and ingratiatingly made. On the

whole, even though his music touches us only superficially it rarely

fails to awaken some gratitude for its elegance. But there is an

essential that his music wants. It wants the imprint of a decided and

important individuality. In all the elaborate score of "The Island of

the Dead," in the very one of M. Rachmaninoff's works that is generally

deemed his best, there are few accents that are either very large or

very poignant or very noble. The music lacks distinction, lacks

vitality. The style is strangely soft and unrefreshing. Emotion is

communicated, no doubt. But it is emotion of a second or even third

order. Nor is the music of M. Rachmaninoff ever quite completely

new-minted. Has it a melodic line quite properly its own? One doubts it.

Many of the melodies of M. Rachmaninoff have a Mendelssohnian cast, for

all their Russian sheen. Others are of the sort of sweet, spiritless

silken tune generally characteristic of the Russian salon school. Nor

can one discover in this music a distinctly original sense of either

rhythm of harmony or tone-color. The E-minor Symphony, for all its

competence and smoothness, is full of the color and quality and

atmosphere of Tchaikowsky. It is Tchaikowsky without the hysteria,

perhaps, but also without the energy. In all the music of M.

Rachmaninoff there is something strangely twice-told. From it there

flows the sadness distilled by all things that are a little useless.

There are to be found in every picture gallery canvases attributed, not

to any single painter, but to an atelier, to the school of some great

master. One finds charming pieces among them. Nor are they invariably

the work of pupils who painted under the direction of some famous man.

Quite as often they are the handiwork of artists who appeared

independent enough to their patrons and to themselves. Their names and

their persons were familiar to those who ordered pictures from them. It

is only that in the course of time their names have come to be

forgotten. For there is in their canvases little trace of the substance

that causes people to cherish an individuality, and makes a name to be

remembered. Other personalities have transpired through their

brush-strokes, and have made it evident that behind the man who held the

brush in his hand there was another who directed the strokes--the man

upon whom the artist had modeled himself, the personality he preferred

to his own. It is this reflectiveness that has caused the attribution of

the work to ateliers.

And had M. Rachmaninoff instead of being a musician been a painter,

would not a like destiny await his compositions? For do they not proceed

from the point of departure of the entire brilliant school of

piano-compositions? Are they not a sort of throwback to the salon

school, the school of velocity, of effect, of whatever Rubinstein and

Liszt could desire? Are not the piano-pieces of M. Rachmaninoff the

result of a relationship to the instrument that is fast becoming

outmoded? There was some slight justification for the pompous and empty

work of his models. The concerti, the often flashy and tinselly

pianoforte compositions of Liszt and Rubinstein were the immediate and

surface result of that deeper sense of the instrument which arrived

during the nineteenth century, and intoxicated folk with the piano

timbres, and made them eager to hear its many voices in no matter how

crude a form. A whole school of facile virtuosi arose in response to the

demand. Since then, however, we have gotten a subtler sense of the

instrument. We no longer require so insensitive a display. And together

with those rather gross piano-works the piece _par excellence_

characteristic of the period, the brilliant piano-concerto with its

prancing instrument embedded in the pomp and clangor and ululation of

the band, has lost in favor steadily. The modern men no longer write

concerti. When they introduce a pianoforte into the orchestra, they

either, like Brahms, treat it as the premier instrument, and write

symphonies, or, like Scriabine and Strawinsky, reduce it to the common

level. But M. Rachmaninoff has not participated in this change of

attitude. He is still content with music that toys with the pianoforte.

And he writes concerti of the old type. He writes pieces full of the old

astounding musical dislocation. Phrases of an apparent intensity and

lyricism are negated by frivolous and tinkling passage-work. Take away

the sound and fury signifying nothing from the third concerto, and what

is left? There was a day, perhaps, when such work served. But another

has succeeded to it. And so M. Rachmaninoff comes amongst us like a very

charming and amiable ghost.

For that, however, let us not fail to be duly grateful. Let us not fail

to give thanks for the fact that setting forever is the conception of

music as an after-dinner cordial, a box of assorted bonbons,

bric-à-brac, a titillation, a tepid bath, a performance that amuses and

caresses and whiles away a half-hour, an enchantment for boarding-school

misses, an opportunity for virtuosi to glorify themselves.

One of the curious things about M. Rachmaninoff's season is the fact

that it has not only brought him into prominence amongst us, but that it

has brought into relief other composers through him. It has brought into

relief the entire group of Russian musicians to which he belongs. It has

evaluated the pretensions of the two conflicting schools of Russian

music nicely. The school of which M. Rachmaninoff is perhaps the chief

living representative, and which was represented at various times by

Rubinstein and Tchaikowsky and Arensky, is usually dubbed "universal"

by its partisans. It is supposed to have its traditions in general

European music, and to be a continuation of the art of the romanticists,

in particular of the art of Chopin and Schumann. But for the men of the

opposing faction, the men who accepted only the Russian folk-song as

their touchstone, and sought in their work to find a modern equivalent

for it, the music of this school was alien and sophisticated, as

sophisticated as the pseudo-French culture of the Petrograd

drawing-rooms. For them, the music of Tchaikowsky, even, was the result

of the manipulation of themes of Slavic color according to formulas

abstracted from classical music. Without regard, however, for any

question of musical theory; apart from all question of the value for us

of the science of the classical masters, one finds oneself of this

opinion. For the music brought forward by the visit of the composer who

is at present in this country as envoy of his school, convinces us that

the work of the men of his party, elegant and brilliant as it often is,

is the work of men essentially unresponsive to the appeal of their

compatriots. For them, as it is for every Russian musician, Russia was

without their windows, appealing dumbly for expression of its wild,

ungoverned energy, its misery, its rich and childish laughter, its deep,

great Christianity. It wanted a music that would have the accents of its

rude, large-hearted speech, and that would, like its speech, express

its essential reactions, its consciousness. And some men there were,

Moussorgsky and Borodin, who were quick enough of imagination to become

the instruments of their folk and respond to its need. And so, when we

would hear Russian speech, we go to them as we go to Dostoievsky and to

Tolstoy. It is in "Boris" and "Prince Igor" as richly as it is in any

work. But the men of the other school did not hear the appeal. They sat

in their luxurious and Parisian houses behind closed windows.