THE POST-CLASSICAL AND POETIC SCHOOLS OF MODERN GERMANY
The post-Beethovenian tendencies in the music of Germany
and their present-day significance; the problem of modern
symphonic form--The academic followers of Brahms: Bruch
and others--The modern 'poetic' school: Richard Strauss as
symphonic composer--Anton Bruckner, his life and works--Gustav
Mahler--Max Reger, and others.
I
No other European nation can show, within the last fifty years, so
great a variety of schools, and so great a variety of effort and
achievement within each school, as the German. The reason is that
the Germans were the only race that, by the middle of the nineteenth
century, had beaten out a musical language that was capable of
almost every kind of expression. Within the ample limits of that
language there was room for the realization of any spirit and any
form--post-classical or progressive, or a union of these two; poetic
or abstract; vocal or instrumental; symphonic or operatic. And in each
sphere the Germans developed both form and spirit to a point attained
by no other nation--in the opera of Wagner, the post-Beethovenian
symphony of Brahms and Bruckner, the symphonic poem of Strauss, the
song of Hugo Wolf; while within the separate orbit of each of these
leaders there moved a crowd of lesser but still goodly luminaries.
It is remarkable, too, that each period that seemed a climax of
development in this form or that proved to be only the starting-point
for a new departure. Beethoven's spirit realized itself afresh in
Wagner and Brahms, and in remoter but still easily traceable ways in
Liszt and Strauss; in the best of Strauss, again, we can see coursing
the sap of Wagner, but with a vitality that throws out unexpected,
new and individual shoots; Schubert and Schumann, each seemingly
so perfect, so complete in himself, blossom into a new and richer
lyrical life in the songs of Hugo Wolf. To make clear the nature and
the meaning of the modern German developments it will be necessary to
survey rapidly the conditions that led up to them.
Beethoven, especially in his later symphonies, sonatas and quartets,
had carried music to an intellectual and emotional height for a
parallel to which we have to go back a century, to the colossal work
of Bach. Beethoven bequeathed to music an enormous fund of expression
and a perfected instrument of expression. Both of these were waiting
for the new composers who could use them for the fertilization of
modern music. Wagner seized upon the fund rather than the instrument.
In place of the latter, though, indeed, with its assistance, he forged
a new instrument of his own; but the impulse to the forging of it,
and the strength for the forging of it, came to him in large measure
from the deep draughts he had drunk of Beethoven's spirit. Schumann
(the symphonic Schumann) and Brahms, on the other hand, were more
content with the instrument as Beethoven had left it; or, to vary the
illustration, they were satisfied, speaking broadly, to fill with more
or less derivative pictures of their own the frame that Beethoven had
bequeathed to them. But it was inevitable that a procedure of this kind
should lead here and there to the petrification of form into formalism,
both of idea and of design. For it is an error to suppose, as the
writers of text-books too often do, that 'form' is something that can
be conveyed by tuition or achieved by imitation. There is no such thing
as form apart from the idea; the form _is_ simply the idea made
visible and coherent. It is not the form that shapes the thought in the
truly great masters; rather is the form simply the expression of the
thought, as the form of a tree is the expression of the idea of a tree,
or the form of the human body the expression of the idea of man. The
post-classicists too often forgot that Beethoven's form and Beethoven's
thought are inseparable--that they are, in truth, in the profoundest
sense, merely different names for the same thing, the one totality
viewed from different standpoints, as we may speak for convenience
sake of the bodily man and the spiritual man, though, in truth, the
living man is one and indivisible; and the post-classicists, indeed,
from Brahms downwards, founded themselves upon the early or middle
Beethoven, or even his eighteenth-century predecessors, rather than
upon the Beethoven of the last works, with their incessant, titanic
struggle to open new roads into art and life. With all his greatness,
Brahms was not great enough to be to the symphony of his own day what
Beethoven was to the symphony of his. Brahms raises an excellent crop
from the delta fertilized by the waters of the great river as it
debouched into the unknown sea; but that was all. He himself added
nothing to the soil that could make it fertile enough to support yet
another generation. All the technical mastery of Brahms--and it is very
great indeed--cannot give to his symphonic music the thoroughly organic
air of Beethoven's, the same sense of the perfect, unanalyzable fusion
of form and matter.
[Illustration: Modern German Symphonists and Lyricists:]
Anton Bruckner Felix Draeseke
Hugo Wolf Gustav Mahler
While Brahms was developing the classical heritage in his own way,
Liszt and Wagner were boldly staking out claims on the future. With
each of these composers the aim was the same--to find a form and an
expression that, by their elasticity, would make music more equal to
the painting of human life in all its manifold variety. This effort
took two lines: the instrumental and the dramatic. Liszt, anticipated
to some extent by Berlioz, tried to adapt the essence of the symphonic
form to the new spirit. The problems he set himself have rarely been
successfully solved, even to the present day; they block the path
of every modern writer of symphonic poems, and of every writer of
symphonies the impulse behind which is more or less definitely poetic.
The mere fact of the incessant fluctuation of modern composers between
the two forms--the one-movement form of Liszt and the symphonic poem
in general, and the four-movement form of the poetic or partly poetic
symphony--shows that neither of them is of itself completely adequate.
For against each of them strict logic can urge some pointed objection.
The four-movement form, growing as it does out of the suite, is
and will always be more appropriate to what may be roughly called
'pattern-music' rather than to poetic music; for the mere number of the
movements, and the practically invariable order of their succession,
implies the forcing of the thought into a preconceived frame, rather
than the determining of the frame by the nature of the picture. The
one-movement form is in itself more logical, but it is always faced
by the problem of conciliating the natural evolution of a poetic idea
and the decorative evolution of a musical pattern; and the symphonic
poems in which this problem is satisfactorily solved might perhaps be
counted on the fingers of one hand. There is a point in Strauss's _Till
Eulenspiegel_, for example,
[Illustration: music score]
in which we feel acutely that the poetic--or shall we say the
novelistic?--scheme that has so far been followed line by line is being
put aside for the moment in order that the composer, having stated
his thematic material, may subject it, for purely musical reasons, to
something in the nature of the ordinary 'working-out.'
The four-movement form obviously allows greater scope to a composer
who has a great deal to say upon a fruitful subject, but it labors
under an equally obvious disability. The modern sense of psychological
unity demands that the symphony of to-day shall justify, in its own
being, the casting of it into this or that number of movements. Every
work of art must, if challenged, be able to give an answer to what
Wagner used to call the question 'Why?' 'Why,' we have a right to say
to the composer, 'have you chosen to give your work just this form
and these dimensions and no other?' It is because modern composers
cannot quite silence the voice that whispers to them that the
four-movement form is the form of the suite, in which the charm of
the music comes mainly from the delight of the purely musical faculty
with itself, rather than a form suited to a music that aims first of
all at expressing more definite feelings about life, that they try to
vivify the merely formal unity of the suite form with a psychological
unity--mainly by means of quasi-leit-motifs that reappear in each of
the movements.
But, though this system has given us some of our finest modern works of
the symphonic type, it has its limitations. If the composer does not
tell us the poetic meaning of his themes and all their reappearances,
these reappearances frequently puzzle rather than enlighten us: this is
notably the case with César Franck. If the composer works upon a single
leit-motif, it is, as a rule, of the 'Fate-and-humanity' type of the
Tschaikowsky symphony--a type that in the end becomes rather painfully
conventional. This simplicity of plan, however, has the advantage of
leaving the composer free to develop his musical material with the
minimum of disturbance from the poetic idea. On the other hand, if his
poetic scheme is at all copious or extensive, and he allows himself to
follow all the vicissitudes of it, he must either give us a written
clue to every page of his music--which he is generally unwilling
and frequently unable to do--or pay the penalty of our failing to
see in his music precisely what he intended to put there; for it is
as true now as when Wagner wrote, three-quarters of a century ago,
that purely instrumental music cannot permit itself such sudden and
frequent changes as dramatic music without running the risk of becoming
unintelligible. Always there arises within us, when the composer's
thought branches off at an angle that does not seem to us justified
by the inner logic of the music _quâ_ music, that awkward question,
"Why?" and to that question only the stage action, as Wagner says, or
a program, as most of us would say to-day, can supply a satisfactory
answer. This conflict between form and matter can be seen running
through almost all modern German instrumental music of the poetic
order; only the genius of Strauss has been able to resolve the antinomy
with some success. None of Beethoven's successors has been able, as he
was, to fill every bar of a symphonic composition with equal meaning,
or to convey, as he did in the third symphony, the fifth and the ninth,
the sense of a drama that is implicit in the music itself, and so
coherent, so perspicuous, that words cannot add anything to it in the
way of definiteness.
II
The symphonic work of Brahms (by which one means not merely the
symphonies but the overtures, the concertos, the chamber music and
the piano music) does, indeed, as we have seen, found itself on the
middle rather than the later Beethoven (whereas it was from the latest
Beethoven that Wagner drew _his_ chief nourishment); but in spite of
a certain timidity and a certain rigidity of form, Brahms's profound
nature and his consummate workmanship give his work an individuality
that enables him to stand by the side of Beethoven, though he never
reaches quite to Beethoven's height. The other exploiters of the
classical heritage have less individuality. They aim at breaking no new
ground; they are content to till afresh the soil that the classical
masters have fertilized for them.
Max Bruch may be taken as the type of a whole crowd of these
post-classical writers. Their virtues are those that are always
characteristic of the epigone. There is in art, as in the animal world,
a protective mimicry that enables certain weaker species to assume
at any rate the external markings of more vigorous organisms than
themselves. In music, minds of this order clothe themselves with the
qualities that lie on the surface of the great men's work. Their own
art is parasitic (one uses that term, of course, without any offensive
intention, with a biological, not a moral, implication). The parasitic
organism lives easily in virtue of the fact that the parent organism
undertakes all the labor of the chief vital functions. The epigone
manipulates again and again the forms of his great predecessors. The
substance he pours into these molds is hardly more his own. Yet work of
this kind can have undeniable charm; after all, it is better for a man
whose strength is not of the first order to live contentedly upon the
side of the great mountain than to court destruction by trying to scale
its dizziest peaks. The work of these epigones always has the balance
and the clarity that come from the complete absence of any sense of a
new problem to beat their heads against.
Max Bruch was born in 1838 and evinced the early precocity of genius;
he had a symphony performed in his native Cologne at the age of
fourteen. As a beneficiary of the Mozart Foundation he became a pupil
of Ferdinand Hiller in composition and of Carl Reinecke and Ferdinand
Breuning in piano. As executive musician he has had a brilliant career.
After teaching in Cologne he became successively musical director in
Coblentz, court kapellmeister in Sondershausen, chorus conductor in
Berlin (_Sternscher Gesangverein_), conductor of the Philharmonic
Society of Liverpool, England, and the _Orchesterverein_ of Breslau.
In 1891 he became head of the 'master school' of composition in the
Berlin Academy, was given the title of professor, received in 1893
the honorary degree of Doc. Mus. from Cambridge, and in 1898 became a
corresponding member of the French Academy of Fine Arts.
His most important creative work is unquestionably represented by
his large choral works with orchestra. Together with Georg Vierling
(1820-1901) he may be credited with the modern revival of the secular
cantata. _Frithjof_, op. 23 (1864), written during his stay in Mannheim
(1862-64), was the foundation-stone of his reputation, followed soon
after by the universally known 'Fair Ellen,' op. 25, and later by
_Odysseus_, op. 41 (1873), _Arminius_, op. 43, 'The Song of the Bell,'
op. 45, 'The Cross of Fire,' op. 52, all for mixed chorus. There
is a sacred oratorio, 'Moses,' op. 52, and a secular one 'Gustavus
Adolphus,' op. 73, and a large number of other choral works for mixed,
male and female chorus. His operas, 'Lorelei' (1863) and 'Hermione'
op. 40, had only a _succès d'estime_. The first violin concerto, in
G minor, op. 26, is perhaps Bruch's most famous composition, and a
grateful constituent of every violinist's repertoire. There are two
other violin concertos (both in D minor), opera 44 and 45, a Romance, a
Fantasia and other violin pieces with orchestra, also works for 'cello
and orchestra, including the well-known setting of _Kol Nidrei_.
Three symphonies (E-flat minor, F minor and E major), op. 28, 36 and
51; a few chamber music and piano pieces complete the catalogue of his
works. Bruch's idiom is frankly melodic, though his harmonic texture
is quite rich and his counterpoint varied. Formally he is conservative
and, all in all, he imposes no strain upon the listener's power of
comprehension. His music is solid and grateful, but not of striking
originality. Through his masters, Reinecke and Hiller, he represents
the Schumann-Mendelssohn tradition in a vigorous though inoffensive
eclecticism.
The leading members of this order of composers in the Germany of the
second half of the nineteenth century besides Bruch, were Hermann Goetz
(1840-1876; symphony in F major), Friedrich Gernsheim (born 1839;
four symphonies and much chamber music), Heinrich von Herzogenberg
(1843-1900; chamber music, church music, symphonies, etc.), Joseph
Rheinberger (1839-1901); Wilhelm Berger (1861-1911; works for choir and
orchestra, chamber music, two symphonies, etc.); and Georg Schumann
(1866; orchestral and choral works, chamber music, etc).
Goetz is best known for his work in the operatic field and may be more
appropriately treated in that connection (see p. 245). Gernsheim,
a native of Worms, was a student in the Leipzig conservatory and
broadened his education by a sojourn in Paris (from 1855). The
posts of musical director in Saarbrücken (1861), teacher of piano
and composition at the Cologne conservatory (1865), conductor of
the Maatschappig concerts in Rotterdam (1874) successively engaged
his activities. From 1890-97 he taught at the Stern conservatory in
Berlin and conducted the _Sternsche Gesangverein_ till 1904, besides
the _Eruditio musica_ of Rotterdam. In 1901 he became principal of
a master-school for composition. Since 1897 Gernsheim has been a
member of the senate of the Royal Academy. Similar to Bruch in his
tendencies, Gernsheim has composed, aside from the instrumental works
mentioned above, a number of choral works of which _Salamis_, _Odin's
Meeresritt_ (both for men's chorus, baritone and orchestra) and _Das
Grab im Busento_ (men's chorus and orchestra) are especially notable.
Overtures and a concerto each for piano, for violin, and for 'cello
must be added to complete the list of his works.
Heinrich von Herzogenberg, too, is chiefly identified with the revival
of choral song, especially of ecclesiastical character (a Requiem, op.
72; a mass, op. 87; _Totenfeier_, op. 80; 'The Birth of Christ,' op.
90; a Passion, op. 93, etc.). In this department Herzogenberg is the
successor to Friedrich Kiel.
Rheinberger occupies a peculiar position. He is a stanch adherent
to classical traditions and generally considered as an academic
composer. That his classicism was not inconsistent with a hankering
after the methods of the New German School, however, is shown in his
Wallenstein symphony (op. 10) and his 'Christophorus' (oratorio).
Having received his early training upon the organ, he has shown a
preponderant tendency toward organ music and ecclesiastical composition
in general. Nevertheless he has written, besides the works already
named, a symphonic fantasy, three overtures, and considerable piano and
chamber works. Eugen Schmitz[31] calls him a South German Raff, for
'as many-sided as Raff, he, in contrast to this master of North German
training, received his musical education in South Germany.' (Born in
Vaduz, in Lichtenstein, he continued his training in Feldkirch and
during 1851-54 at the Royal School of Music in Munich). In Munich he
became the centre of a veritable school of young composers, exerting
a very broad influence, first as teacher of theory and later royal
professor and inspector of the Royal School. Rheinberger also conducted
the performances of the Royal Chapel choir. He received the honorary
degree of Ph.D. from the University of Munich and became a member of
the Berlin Academy.
Riemann's judgment of his merit, voiced in the following sentences, may
be taken as just on the whole. He says: 'Rheinberger enjoyed a high
reputation as composer, in the vocal as well as in the instrumental
field. However, the contrapuntal mastery and the æsthetic instinct
evident in his workmanship cannot permanently hide his lack of really
warm-blooded emotion.' His organ works, of classic perfection, will
probably last the longest. His _Requiem_, _Stabat Mater_, and a
double-choir Mass stand at the head of his church compositions. He
also wrote an opera, _Die Sieben Raben_. Like Bruch's, his style is
eclectic, being a fusion of neo-classical and post-romantic influences.
Wilhelm Berger is a native of America (Boston, 1861), but was educated
in Berlin, where he was a pupil of Fr. Kiel at the Royal _Hochschule_.
Later he became teacher at the Klindworth-Scharwenka conservatory and
in 1903 succeeded Fritz Steinbach as conductor of the famous Meiningen
court orchestra. Some of his songs are widely known, but his choral
compositions (_Totentanz_, _Euphorin_, etc.) constitute his most
important work. Berger is a Brahms disciple without reserve, and so
are Hans Kössler (b. 1853, symphonic variations for orchestra, etc.),
Friedrich E. Koch (b. 1862, symphonic fugue in C minor, oratorio
_Von den Tageszeiten_, etc.), Gustav Schreck (b. 1849), and Max
Zenger (b. 1837). Georg Schumann, the last on our list of important
epigones, has had more hearings abroad than most of his contemporary
brothers-in-faith, especially with his oratorio 'Ruth' (1908), several
times performed by the New York Oratorio Society. As conductor of the
Berlin _Singakademie_ (since 1900), he has not lacked incentive to
choral writing, hence 'Amor and Psyche,' _Preis und Danklied_, etc. A
symphony in B, a serenade, op. 32, and other orchestral pieces as well
as chamber works have come from his pen, all in the Brahms idiom.
The names of the still smaller men are legion. Let us mention but a few
of them: Robert Radecke (1830-1911) wrote a symphony, overtures, and
choral songs; Johann Herbeck (1831-77), symphonies, etc.; Joseph Abert
(b. 1832), besides operas a symphony, a symphonic poem, 'Columbus,' and
overtures; Albert Becker (1834-99), a Mass in B minor, a prize-crowned
symphony, choral and chamber works; Franz Wüllner (1832-1902), chiefly
choral works; Heinrich Hofmann (1842-1902), besides the operas _Armin_
and _Ännchen von Tharau_, a symphony, orchestral suites, cantatas,
chamber music and piano music, much of it for four hands; and Franz
Ries (b. 1846), suites for violin and piano, string quartets, etc.
Georg Henschel is especially noted for his songs (see Vol. V); Hans
Huber, a German Swiss, for his 'Böcklin Symphony' and chamber music;
while the Germanized Poles Maurice Moszkowski (b. 1854) and the
brothers Scharwenka (Philipp and Xaver, b. 1850) claim attention with
pleasing and popular piano pieces. Needless to say, such a list as this
can never be complete.
III
Side by side with the neo-classical school, but always steadily
encroaching upon it, is the 'poetic' school that derives from Liszt and
Wagner. It is a truism of criticism that in musical history the big
men end periods rather than begin them. The composer who inaugurates
a movement appears to posterity as a fumbler rather than a master,
and even in his own day his methods and his ideals fail to command
general respect, so wide a gulf is there in them between intention and
achievement. It was so, for example, with Liszt and his immediate
school. But in the end there comes a man who, with a greater natural
genius than his predecessors, assimilates all they have to teach him
either imaginatively or formally, and brings to fulfillment what in
them was at its best never more than promise. The tentative work of
Liszt comes to full fruition in the work of Strauss. He has a richer
musical endowment than any of his predecessors in his own special
line, and a technical skill to which none of them could ever pretend.
Liszt had imagination, but he never succeeded in making a thoroughly
serviceable technique for himself, no doubt because his early career as
a pianist made it impossible for him to work seriously at composition
until comparatively late in life. Strauss is of the type of musician
who readily learns all that the pedagogues can teach him, and utilizes
the knowledge thus acquired as the basis for a new technique of his own.
Richard Strauss was born June 11, 1864, in Munich, the son of Franz
Strauss, a noted Waldhorn player (royal chamber musician). He studied
composition with the local court kapellmeister, W. Meyer, and as early
as 1881 gave striking evidence of his talent in a string quartet in
A minor (op. 2), which was played by the Walter quartet. A Symphony
in D minor, an overture in C minor and a suite for thirteen wind
instruments, op. 7, all performed in public, the last by the famous
'Meininger' orchestra, quickly spread his name among musicians and in
1885 he was engaged by Hans von Bülow as musical director to the ducal
court at Meiningen. Here Alexander Ritter is said to have influenced
him in the direction of ultra-modernity. After another year Strauss
returned to Munich as third royal kapellmeister; three years later
(1889) he became Lassen's associate as court conductor in Weimar; from
1894 to 1898 he was again in Munich, this time as court conductor,
and at the end of that period went to Berlin to occupy a similar
post at the Royal Prussian court. In 1904 he became general musical
director (_Generalmusikdirektor_). Since the appearance of his first
works mentioned above he has been almost incessantly occupied with
composition.
These early works and those immediately following give little hint
of the later Strauss, except for the characteristically hard-hitting
strength of it almost from the first. Works like the B minor piano
sonata (op. 5) and the 'cello sonata (op. 6), for example, have a
curious, cubbish demonstrativeness about them; but it is plain enough
already that the cub is of the great breed. With the exception of a
few songs, and a setting of Goethe's _Wanderers Sturmlied_ for chorus
and orchestra (op. 14), all his music until his twenty-second year was
in the traditional instrumental forms; it includes, besides the works
already mentioned, a string quartet (op. 2), a violin concerto (op.
8), a symphony (op. 12), a quartet for piano and strings (op. 13), a
_Burleske_ for piano and orchestra, and sundry smaller works for piano
solo, etc. According to his own account, he was first set upon the path
of poetic music by Alexander Ritter--a man of no great account as a
composer, but restlessly alive to the newest musical currents of his
time, and with the literary gift of rousing enthusiasm in others for
his own ideas. He was an ardent partisan of the 'New German' school of
Liszt and Wagner. Of his own essays in the operatic field only two saw
completion: _Der faule Hans_ (1885) and _Wem die Krone?_ (1890). They
were mildly successful in Munich and Weimar. Besides these he wrote
symphonic poems that at least partially bridge the gap between Liszt
and Strauss; 'Seraphic Phantasy,' 'Erotic Legend,' 'Olaf's Wedding
Procession,' and 'Emperor Rudolph's Ride to the Grave' are some of the
titles. Ritter was of Russian birth (Narva), but lived in Germany from
childhood (Dresden, Leipzig, Weimar, Würzberg, etc). He was a close
friend of Bülow and married Wagner's niece, Franziska Wagner.
[Illustration: Richard Strauss]
_After a crayon by Faragò (1905)_
The first-fruits of Ritter's influence upon Strauss were the symphonic
fantasia _Aus Italien_ (1886). The young revolutionary as yet moves
with a certain amount of circumspection. The new work is poetic,
programmatic, but it is cast in the conventional four-movement form,
the separate movements corresponding roughly to those of the ordinary
symphony. It is obviously a 'prentice work,’ but it is of significance
in Strauss's history for a warmth of emotion that had been only rarely
perceptible in his earlier music. Here and there it has the rude,
knockabout sort of energy that was noticeable in some of the earlier
works, and that in the later works was to degenerate into a mere noisy
slamming about of commonplaces; but it also shows much poetic feeling,
and in particular an ardent romantic appreciation of nature.
_Aus Italien_ was followed by a series of remarkable tone-poems--_Don
Juan_ (op. 20, 1888), _Macbeth_ (op. 23, written 1886-7 but not
published until after the _Don Juan_), _Till Eulenspiegels lustige
Streiche_ (op. 28, 1894-95), _Also sprach Zarathustra_ (op. 30,
1894-95), _Don Quixote_ (op. 39, 1897), _Ein Heldenleben_ (op.
40, 1898), and the _Symphonia Domestica_ (op. 53, 1903). With the
last-named work Strauss bade farewell to the concert room for many
years, the next stage of his development being worked out in the opera
house.
The forms, no less than the titles, of the orchestral works, reveal
the many-sidedness of Strauss's mind, the keenness of his interest in
life and literary art, the individuality of the point of view from
which he regards each of his subjects, and the peculiarly logical
medium he adopts for the expression of each of them. Bound up with this
adaptability are a certain restlessness that drives him on to abandon
every field in turn before he has developed all the possibilities of
it, and a certain anxiety to 'hit the public between the eyes' each
time that gives him now and then the appearance of exploiting new
sensations for new sensations' sake. It is perhaps not doing him any
injustice, for instance, to suppose that a very keen finger upon the
public pulse warned him that it would be unwise to bombard it with
another blood-and-lust drama of the type of _Salome_ and _Elektra_;
so, with an admirably sure instinct, he relaxes into the broad comedy
of _Der Rosenkavalier_. Feeling after this that the public wanted
something newer still, he tried, in _Ariadne auf Naxos_, to combine
drama and opera in the one work. Then, realizing from the Western
European successes of the Russians that ballet is likely to become the
order of the day, he tries his hand at a modified form of this in 'The
Legend of Joseph.'
What in the later works has become, however, almost as much a
commercial as an artistic impulse, was in the early years the genuine
quick-change of a very fertile, eager spirit, with extraordinary powers
of poetic and graphic expression in music. Strauss, like Wagner, is a
musical architect by instinct; he can plan big edifices and realize
them. The sureness of this instinct is incidentally shown by the varied
forms of these early and middle-period orchestral works of his. As we
have seen, the writer of symphonic poems is always confronted by the
serious problem of harmonizing a poetic with a musical development;
and in practice we find that, as a rule, either the following of the
literary idea destroys the purely musical logic of the work, or, in
his anxiety to preserve a formal logic in his music, the composer has
to impair the simplicity or the continuity of the poetic scheme, as
Strauss has had to do in the passage in _Till Eulenspiegel_, already
cited. But, on the whole, Strauss has come much nearer than any
other composer to solving the problem of combined poetic and musical
form in instrumental music. In _Macbeth_ he has 'internalized' the
dramatic action in a very remarkable way--a procedure he might have
adopted with advantage on other occasions. Here, where there was every
temptation to the superficially effective painting of externalities,
he has dissolved the pictorial and episodical into the psychological,
making Macbeth's own soul the centre of all the dramatic storm and
stress, and so allowing full scope for the purely expressive power of
music. In _Don Juan_ the form is rightly quasi-symphonic--a group of
workable main themes representing the hero, with a group of subsidiary
themes suggestive of the minor characters that cross his path and
the circumstances under which he meets with them. The tissue is not
woven throughout with absolute continuity, but the form as a whole is
lucid and coherent. The episodical adventures of _Till Eulenspiegel_
could find no better musical frame than the rondo form that Strauss
has chosen for them; while the variation form is most suited to the
figures, the adventures, and the psychology of Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza. In the _Symphonia Domestica_ the number and relationship of
the characters, and the incidents that make up the domestic day, are
best treated in a form that is virtually that of the ordinary symphony
compressed into a single movement. A similar congruity between form and
matter will be found in _Also sprach Zarathustra_ and _Ein Heldenleben_.
This fertility of form was only the outward and visible sign of an
extraordinary fertility of conception. No other composer, before or
since, has poured such a wealth of thinking into program music, created
so many poetic-musical types, or depicted their _milieu_ with such
graphic power. Each new work, dealing as it did with new characters
and new scenes, spontaneously found for itself a new idiom, melodic,
harmonic and rhythmic; in this unconscious transformation of his speech
in accordance with the inward vision Strauss resembles Wagner and Hugo
Wolf. The immense energy of the mind is shown not only in the range
and variety of its psychology, but physically, as it were, in the wide
trajectory of the melodies, the powerful gestures of the rhythms that
sometimes, indeed, become almost convulsive--and the long-breathed
phraseology of passages like the opening section of _Ein Heldenleben_.
It was perhaps inevitable that this extraordinary energy should
occasionally get out of hand and degenerate into a sort of
_Unbändigkeit_. Strauss is at once a man of genius and an irresponsible
street urchin. With all his gifts, something that goes to the making
of the artist of the very greatest kind is lacking in him. He has a
giant span of conception that is rare in music; but he seems to take a
pleasure in constructing gigantic edifices only to spoil them for the
admiring spectator by scrawling a fatuity or an obscenity across the
front of them. He can be, at times, unaccountably perverse, malicious,
childish towards his own creations. This element in him, or rather
the seeds from which it has developed, first become clearly visible
in _Till Eulenspiegel_. There, however, it remains pure _gaminerie_;
it does not clash with the nature of the subject, and the jovial,
youthful spirits and the happy inventiveness of the composer carry it
off. But afterwards it often assumes an unpleasant form. There are one
or two things in _Don Quixote_ that amuse us a little at first but
afterwards become rather tiresome, as over-insistence on the purely
physical grotesque always does in time. In _Ein Heldenleben_ a drama
that is mostly worked out on a high spiritual plane is vulgarized by
the crude physical horror of the brutal battle scene, and by the now
well-nigh pointless humor of the ugly 'Adversaries' section. There
are pettinesses and sillinesses in the _Symphonia Domestica_ that one
can hardly understand a man of Strauss's eminence troubling to put on
paper. Altogether, we may say of the Strauss of the instrumental works
alone--we can certainly say it of the later Strauss of the operas--that
he is, in Romain Rolland's phrase, a curious compound of 'mud, débris,
and genius.' Always he is a spirit at war with itself; sometimes he
seems cursed, like an obverse of Goethe's Mephistopheles, to will the
good and work the ill. But he has enriched program music with a large
fund of new ideas, and given it a new direction and a new technique. He
has established, more thoroughly than any other composer, the right of
poetic instrumental music to a place by the side of abstract music. He
has attempted things that were thought impossible in music, sometimes
failing, but more often than not succeeding extraordinarily.
His workmanship is equal to his invention; of him at any rate the
post-classicists can never say, as they said half a century ago of
Liszt and his school, that he writes literary music because he lacks
the self-discipline and the skill necessary for success in the abstract
forms. If anything his technique, especially his orchestral technique,
is too astounding; it tempts him to do amazing but unnecessary things
for the mere sake of doing them. But with all his faults he is a
colossus of sorts; he bestrides modern German music as Wagner did that
of half a century ago. In wealth and variety of emotion and in power of
graphic utterance his work as a whole is beyond comparison with that of
any other contemporary composer.
IV
The life of Strauss overlaps that of his great post-classical
antithesis Brahms by thirty-three years, and by thirty-six years that
of Anton Bruckner (1824-1896), a symphonist who is still little known,
and that for two reasons. In the first place, his works are as a rule
excessively long; in the second place, he had the misfortune to live
in Vienna, where the Brahms partisans were at one time all-powerful.
Some of them resented the pretensions of another symphonist to
comparison with their own idol, and by innuendo and neglect, rather
than by direct attack, they contrived to diffuse a legend that has
maintained itself almost down to our own day, that Bruckner was merely
an amiable old gentleman with a passion for writing symphonies, but
one who need not be taken too seriously. As a matter of fact, he was
a good deal more than that. There is no necessity to flaunt a defiant
Brucknerian banner in the face of the Brahmsians, but there is every
necessity to say that great as Brahms was he by no means exhausted
the possibilities of the modern symphony, and that several of the
possibilities that he left untouched were turned to excellent use by
Bruckner.
Bruckner's life was remarkably circumscribed and offers practically
no interest to a biographer. The son of a country schoolmaster in
Ansfelden, Upper Austria (where he was born Sept. 4, 1824), he
spent his early life following in his father's footsteps, first at
Windhag (near Freistadt), later at St. Florian, where he also filled
a temporary post as organist. By his own efforts he became highly
proficient on that instrument and in counterpoint. This fact and his
constant connection with the church influenced his creative work
strongly. In 1855 he became cathedral organist at Linz, meantime
studying counterpoint with Sechter in Vienna, where he later (1867)
became his master's successor as court organist. He also studied
composition with Otto Kitzler in 1861-63. Aside from his activities
as professor of organ, counterpoint and composition at the Vienna
Conservatory and as lecturer on music at the Vienna University, this
constitutes the outward record of his career. He died in Vienna, Oct.
11, 1896.
Similarly devoid of variety in their classification are his
compositions--besides his nine symphonies, upon which his reputation
rests, there are only three masses (D minor, 1864; E minor, 1869; F
minor, 1872) and a few more sacred works (including the '150th Psalm');
four compositions for men's chorus accompanied (_Germanenzug_ and
_Helgoland_, with orchestra; _Das hohe Lied_ and _Mitternacht_, with
piano); some others _a cappella_, and one string quartet. Mostly works
of large calibre and commensurately broad in conception.
The error is still frequently made--it was an error that did him
much harm in anti-Wagnerian Vienna during his lifetime--of regarding
Bruckner as one who tried to translate Wagner into terms of the
symphony. For Wagner, indeed, he had a passionate admiration; but his
own affinities as a composer with Wagner are so trifling as to be
negligible. The real heirs of Wagner are the men who, like Strauss,
aim at making purely instrumental music a vehicle for the expression
of definite poetic ideas--whose symphonic poems are really operas
without words, with the orchestra as the actors. Bruckner, even with
Liszt's example before him, passed the symphonic poem by on the other
side. His nine symphonies are almost as purely 'abstract' music as
those of Brahms; if one qualifies the comparison with an 'almost' it
is not because Bruckner worked upon anything even remotely resembling
a program, but because the rather sudden transitions here and there
in the symphonies, lacking as they do a strictly logical musical
connection, are apt to suggest that the composer had in his mind some
more or less definite extra-musical symbol. But this explanation of
the undeniable fact that there is more than one hiatus in the Bruckner
movements, though it is not an impossible one, is not the most probable
one in every case.
A certain disconnectedness was almost inevitable in such a symphonic
method as that of Bruckner. He had no appetite for the merely formal
'working-out' that Brahms could manipulate with such facility, but
frequently without convincing us that he is saying anything very
germane to his main topic. For a frank recognition of Brahms' general
mastery of form is not incompatible with an equally frank recognition
that too often formalism was master of him. The danger of a transmitted
classical technique in any art is that now and then it tempts its
practitioners to talk--and allows them to talk quite fluently--when
they have really nothing of vital importance to say. Take, as an
example, bars 58-73 of the first movement of Brahms' fourth symphony.
This passage is not merely dull; it is absolutely meaningless. It
carries the immediately preceding thought no further; it is no manner
of necessary preparation for the thought that comes immediately after.
It is 'padding' pure and simple; a mechanical manipulation of the clay
without any clear idea on the part of the potter as to what he wishes
to model. Brahms, in fact, knows, or half-knows, that he has travelled
as far as he can go along one road, and has a little time to wait
before etiquette permits him to proceed up another: so he marks time
with the best grace he can--or, to vary the illustration, having said
all he can think of in connection with A, and not being due just yet to
discuss B, he simply goes on talking until he can think of something to
say. Such a passage as this would have been impossible for Beethoven:
his rigorously logical mind would have rejected it as being a mere
inorganic patch upon the flesh of a living organism: he would never
have rested until he had re-established the momentarily interrupted
flow of vital blood between the severed parts.
For a mechanical technique such as Brahms uses here, Bruckner had no
liking, nor would it have been of much use in connection with ideas
like his. In his general attitude towards the symphony he reminds us
somewhat of Schubert. He does not start, as Brahms does, with a subject
that, however admirable it may be in itself, and however excellently
it may be adapted for the germination of fresh matter from it, has
obviously been chosen in some degree because of its 'workableness.'
With Bruckner, as with Schubert, the subject sings out at once simply
because it must. The composer is too full of the immediate warmth of
the idea to premeditate 'development' of it. So it inevitably comes
about that, with both Bruckner and Schubert, repetition takes, in some
degree, the place of development. Symphonic development, speaking
broadly, becomes technically easier in proportion as the thematic
matter to be manipulated is shorter; looking at the music for the
moment as a mere piece of tissue-weaving, it is evident that more
permutations and combinations can easily be made out of a theme like
that of the first subject of Beethoven's fifth symphony than out of the
main theme of Liszt's _Tasso_, or the Francesca theme in Tschaikowsky's
_Francesca da Rimini_. Wagner, with his keen symphonic sense, gradually
realized this; whereas the leit-motifs of his early works are, as
a rule, fairly lengthy melodies, those of his later works are of a
pregnant brevity. The reason for this change of style was that, as he
came to see more and more clearly the possibilities of a symphonic
development of the orchestral voice in opera, he saw also that the
interweaving of themes would be at once closer and more elastic if the
motifs themselves were made shorter.
This generic musical fact is the explanation of much of the formal
unsatisfactoriness of the average symphonic poem. If the object of the
poetic musician is to depict a character, he will need a fairly wide
sweep of melodic outline. We could not, for example, suggest Hamlet or
Faust in a theme so short and simple as that of the first subject of
the _Eroica_, or the first subject of the Second Symphony of Brahms--to
say nothing of the 'Fate' theme of Beethoven's Fifth. But the
wide-stretching poetic theme pays for its psychological suggestiveness
by sacrificing, in most cases, its 'workableness.' And composers have
only latterly learned how to overcome this disability by constructing
the big, character-drawing theme on a sort of fishing-rod principle,
with detachable parts. It takes Strauss nearly one hundred and twenty
bars in which to draw the full portrait of his hero in the splendid
opening section of _Ein Heldenleben_; but various pieces of the chief
theme can be used at will later so as to suggest some transformation
of mood in the hero, or some change in his circumstances. The curious
falling figure in the third bar of the work, for example, that at
first conveys an idea of headlong energy, afterwards becomes a roar of
pain and rage (full score, pp. 118 ff, and elsewhere). Had Liszt had
the imagination to hit upon such a device as this, and the technique
to manipulate it, he might have given to the 'development' of his
symphonic poems something of the organic life that Strauss has infused
into his.
Bruckner also lacked, in the main, this knowledge of how to work upon
sweeping ideas that were conceived primarily for purely expressive
rather than 'developmental' purposes, and at the same time to make
either the whole theme or various fragments of it plastic factors in
the evolution of an organically-knit texture. If Brahms would have been
none the worse for a little of that quality in Bruckner that made it
impossible for him to talk unless he had something to say, Bruckner
would have been all the better for a little of Brahms' gift of making
the most of whatever fragment of material he was using at the moment.
When Bruckner attempts 'development' in the scholastic sense, as in
bars 300 ff of the first movement of the third symphony, he is almost
always awkward and unconvincing. His logic--and a logic of his own he
certainly had--was less formal than poetic; as one gets to know the
symphonies better one is surprised to find emotional continuity coming
into many a passage that had previously appeared a trifle incoherent.
His musical logic is just the logic of any true and spontaneous thing
said simply, naturally and feelingly.
While it is true in one sense that Bruckner's methods and outlook
remained the same in each of his nine published symphonies (the ninth,
by the way, was left uncompleted at his death), in another sense it
puts a false complexion on the truth. We do not find in him any such
growth--discernible in the texture not less than in the manner--as
we do from the First Symphony to the Ninth of Beethoven, or from
the _Rienzi_ to the _Parsifal_ of Wagner. In externals, and to some
extent in essentials also, Bruckner's method and manner are the
same throughout his life--the wide-spun imaginative first movement,
the thoughtful _adagio_, the wild or merry _scherzo_, the rather
sprawling _finale_. But there was a real evolution of the intensive
kind; and in the last three symphonies in particular everything has
become enormously _vertieft_. In the ninth, Bruckner often attains to
a Beethovenian profundity and pregnancy. His greatest fault is his
inability to concentrate: his material is almost invariably excellent,
but he is too prodigal with it. He is not content with two or three
main ideas, that in themselves would constitute material enough for
a movement; to these he needs to add episodes of all kinds, until
the movement expands to a size that makes listening to it a physical
strain, and renders it difficult for the mind to grasp the true
proportions of it. This is generally the case with his first and last
movements; not even the titanic power of conception in movements like
the finale of his fifth and eighth symphonies, nor the extraordinary
technical mastery they show, can quite reconcile us to their length
and apparent diffuseness. His most expressive work is frequently to
be found in his adagios, though there, too, his method is at times so
leisurely that in spite of the fine quality of the material and the
depth of feeling in the music, it is sometimes hard to maintain one's
interest in it to the end. In his _scherzi_ he is more conciliatory to
the average listener. Here he is incontestably nearer to Beethoven than
Brahms ever came in movements of this type. In place of the charming
but rather irrelevant quasi-pastorals with which Brahms is content for
the scherzi of his symphonies, Bruckner writes movements overflowing
with vitality, a veritable riot of rhythmic energy. He will never be
popular in the concert room; his excessive length and his frequent
diffuseness are against that. But to musicians he will always be one of
the most interesting figures in nineteenth-century music--a composer
fertile in ideas of a noble kind, an imaginative artist with the power
of evoking moods of a refined and moving poetry. And certainly there
is no contrast more remarkable in the whole history of music than that
between the quiet, embarrassed, unlettered recluse that was the man
Bruckner, and the volcano of passion that was the musician. Undoubtedly
he has the great hand, and at times he can shake the world with it as
Beethoven did with his. His place is between Beethoven and Schubert:
with each of his hands he holds a hand of theirs.
V
The third big figure among the representatives of the modern 'poetic'
school is Gustav Mahler. Like the other two, he is of the 'southern
wing'; like Bruckner's, his training was Viennese. Born in Kalischt
(Bohemia), he went to the capital as a student in the university and
the conservatory. Already at twenty he began that brilliant career
as conductor which during his lifetime somewhat overshadowed his
recognition as a creative artist. His first post was at Hall (Upper
Austria), where he conducted a theatre orchestra; thence he
went to Laibach, Olmütz, Kassel (as _Vereinsdirigent_); thence to
Prague as conductor of the German National Theatre (1885). In 1886 he
substituted for Nikisch at the Leipzig opera; two years later he became
opera conductor in Budapest, 1891 in Hamburg, and 1897 returned to
Vienna, first as conductor, soon after to become director of the Royal
Opera, where he remained till 1907. During 1898-1900 he conducted the
Philharmonic concerts as well. In 1909 he came to New York as conductor
of the Philharmonic Society and remained till 1911, when failing
health, perhaps aggravated by uncongenial conditions, forced him to
resign. He died shortly after his return to Vienna, in the same year.
[Illustration: Max Reger]
_After a photograph from life_
While still in his youth Mahler wrote an opera, 'The Argonauts,'
besides songs and chamber music. A musical 'fairy play,' _Rübezahl_,
with text by himself, the _Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen_, and nine
symphonies, designed on a gigantic scale, constitute the bulk of his
mature works. Other songs, a choral work with orchestra (_Das klagende
Lied_), and the 'Humoresques' for orchestra nearly complete the list.
Bruckner left the problem of modern symphonic form unsolved. Brahms
partly solved it in one way, by following the classical tradition on
its more 'abstract' side; Strauss has partially solved it in another
way, by making the 'moments' of the musical evolution of a work tally
with those of a program. Mahler, on the other hand, aimed at a course
which was a sort of compromise between all the others. His nine
symphonies are neither abstract music nor program music in the ordinary
sense of the latter word; yet they are 'programmatic' in the broad
sense that in whole and in detail they are motived more or less by
definite concepts of man and his life in the world. Mahler faced more
clear-sightedly and consistently than any other composer of his day the
problem of the combination of the vocal and the symphonic form. That
this combination is full of as yet unrealized possibilities will be
doubted by no one familiar with the history of music since Beethoven.
In one shape or another the problem has confronted probably nine-tenths
of our modern composers. Wagner found one partial solution of it in his
symphonic dramas, in which the orchestra pours out an incessant flood
of eloquent music, the vague emotions of which are made definite for us
by the words and the stage action. The ordinary symphonic poem attempts
much the same thing by means of a printed program that is intended to
help the hearer to read into the generalized expression of the music a
certain particular application of each emotion; we may put it either
that the symphonic poem is the Wagnerian music drama without the stage
and the characters, or that the Wagnerian music drama is the symphonic
poem translated into visible action. But for the best part of a century
the imagination of composers has been haunted by the experiment made
by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony, of combining actual voices with
the ordinary symphonic form; it has always been felt that instrumental
music at its highest tension and utmost expression almost of necessity
calls out for completion in the human cry. Words are often necessary in
order at once to intensify and to elucidate the vague emotions to which
alone the instruments can give expression. It was the consciousness
of this that impelled Liszt to introduce the chorus at the end of his
'Dante' and 'Faust' symphonies.
To a mind like Mahler's, full of striving, of aspiration, of conscious
reflection upon the world, it was even more necessary that some
means should be found of giving definite direction to the indefinite
sequences of emotion of instrumental music. Almost from the beginning
he adopted the device of introducing a vocal element into his
symphonies. In the Second, a solo contralto sings, in the fourth
movement, some lines from the _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_--'O rosebud red!
Mankind lies in sorest need, in sorest pain! In heaven would I rather
be!... I am from God, and back to God again will go; God in His mercy
will grant me a light, will lighten me to eternal, blessed life'--while
the idea of resurrection that is the theme of the music of the fifth
movement is _precisé_ by a chorus singing Klopstock's ode, 'After brief
repose thou shalt arise from the dead, my dust; immortal life shall
be thine.' In the fourth movement of the third symphony--the 'Nature'
symphony--a contralto solo sings the moving lines, '_O Mensch, gieb
Acht!_' from Nietzsche's _Also sprach Zarathustra_; and in the sixth
movement the contralto and a female choir dialogue with each other in
some verses from _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_. Five stanzas from the same
poem are set as a soprano solo in the finale of the Fourth Symphony.
And in the First Symphony, though the voices are not actually used, the
composer, in the first and third movements, draws upon the themes of
certain of his own songs (_Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen_). In the
Eighth Symphony the intermixture of orchestra and voices is so close
that the title of 'symphonic cantata' would fit the work perhaps as
well as that of 'symphony with voices'; here the kernel of the music is
formed by the old Latin hymn _Veni, creator spiritus_ and some words
from the final scene of the second part of Goethe's _Faust_.
Mahler's use of the voice in the orchestra is, as will be seen,
something quite different from merely singing the 'program' of the
work instead of printing it. His aim is the suggestion of symbols
rather than the painting of realities. Even where, on the face of the
case, it looks at first as if his object had been a realistic one,
his intention was often less realistic than mystical. In the Seventh
Symphony, for instance, he introduces cowbells; we have it from his own
mouth that here his aim was not simply a piece of pastoral painting,
but the suggestion of 'the last distant greeting from earth that
reaches the wanderer on the loftiest heights.' 'When I conceive a big
musical painting,' he said once, 'I always come to a point at which I
must bring in speech as the bearer of my musical idea. So must it have
been with Beethoven when writing his Ninth Symphony, only that his
epoch could not provide him with the suitable materials--for at bottom
Schiller's poem is not capable of giving expression to the "unheard"
that was within the composer.' In this Mahler is no doubt right; the
modern composer has a wider range of poetry to draw upon for the
equivalent of his musical thought.
Mahler's form is in itself a beautiful and a rational one; and, as
with all other forms, the question is not so much the 'How' as the
'What' of the music. Mahler, perhaps, never fully realized the best
there was in him; fine as his music often is, it as often suggests
a mind that had not yet arrived at a true inner harmony. His mind
was always an arena in which dim, vast dreams of music of his own
struggled with impressions from other men's music that incessantly
thronged his brain as they must that of every busy conductor, and with
more or less vague, poetic, philosophical and humanitarian visions.
He never quite succeeded in making for himself an idiom unmistakably
and exclusively his own; all sorts of composers, from Beethoven and
Bruckner to Johann Strauss, seem to nod to each other across his
pages. As the Germans would say, his _Können_ was not always equal to
his _Wollen_. His feverish energy, his excitable imagination, and his
lack of concentration continually drove him to the writing of works
of excessive length, demanding unusually large forces; the Eighth
Symphony, for example, with its large orchestra, seven soloists, boys'
choir and two mixed choirs, calls for a _personnel_ of something like
one thousand. Yet he could be amazingly simple and direct at times, as
is shown by his lovely songs and by many a passage in the symphonies
that have a folk-song flavor. His individuality as a symphonist is
incontestable, and it is probable that as time goes on his reputation
will increase. Alone among modern German composers he is comparable to
Strauss for general vitality, ardor of conception, ambition of purpose,
and pregnancy of theme.
VI
In abstract music the biggest figure in the Germany of to-day is Max
Reger (born 1873)[32]--almost the only composer of our time who has
remained unaffected by the changes everywhere going on in European
music, though in his _Romantische Suite_ he coquets a little with
French impressionism. His output is enormous, and almost suggests
spawning rather than composition in the ordinary sense of the word. His
general idiom is founded mainly on Bach, with a slight indebtedness
to Brahms; for anything in the nature of program music he appears
to have no sympathy. The bulk of his work consists of organ music,
songs, and piano and chamber music. His facility is incredible. He
speaks a harmonic and contrapuntal language of exceptional richness;
but it must be said that very often his facility and the copiousness
of his vocabulary tempt him to over-write his subject; sometimes the
contrapuntal web is woven so thickly that no music can get through.
But every now and then this rather heavy-limbed genius achieves
a curious limpidity and grace, and a moving tenderness. If it be
undeniable that had Bach never lived a large part of Reger's music
would not have been written, it is equally undeniable that some of his
organ works are worthy to be signed by Bach himself.
It may be a significant fact, as well as helpful in assaying the value
of modern theoretical pedagogy, that Reger, super-technician that he
is, was taught composition, as Riemann's _Lexikon_ boasts, 'entirely
after the text-books and editions of H. Riemann.' 'And,' it goes on to
say, 'in addition, he studied for five years under Riemann's personal
direction.' Riemann, it must be borne in mind, is not a composer, but
a theoretician of extraordinary capacity. How little to the liking of
his master Reger's subsequent development has been may be seen from the
following quotation from the same article: 'Reger evinced already in
his (unpublished) first compositions a tendency to extreme complication
of facture and to an overloading of the technical apparatus, so that
his development ought to have been the opposite to that of Wagner, for
instance, i.e. a restriction of the imagination aiming at progressive
simplification. Instead of this he has allowed himself to be
influenced by those currents in an opposite direction, regarding which
contemporary criticism has lost all judgment. With full consciousness
he heaps up daring harmonies and arbitrary feats of modulation in a
manner which is positively intolerant to the listener[!]. Reger's
very strong melodic gifts could not under such conditions arrive at
a healthy development. Only when a definite form forces him into
particular tracks (variations, fugue, chorale transcription) are his
works unobjectionable; the wealth of his inventive power and his
eminently polyphonic nature enable him to be sufficiently original
and surprising even within such bounds. On the other hand, in simple
pieces of small dimensions, and in songs, his intentional avoidance of
natural simplicity is actually repugnant. His continuous prodigality of
the strongest means of expression soon surfeit one, and in the end this
excessive richness becomes a mere stereotyped mannerism.'
No doubt the learned doctor is somewhat pedantic, but curiously enough
the opinion of less conservative critics is not dissimilar. Dr. Walter
Niemann refers to Reger's condensed, harmonically overladen style
as a 'modern _barock_,' a 'degeneration of Brahmsian classicism.'
'Universally admired is Reger's astounding contrapuntal routine,'
he says, 'the routine that is most evident in the (now schematic,
stereotyped) construction of his fugues and double fugues; one also
generally admires his enormous constructive ability (_satztechnisches
Können_), the finished art of subtle detail which he exhibits most
charmingly in his smallest forms, the Sonatinas, the _Schlichte
Weisen_. But, leaving out all the hypocrisy of fashion, the
all-too-willing, unintelligent deification of the great name, all
musical cliquism and modernistic partisanship, the hearing of Reger's
music either leaves us inwardly unconcerned and even bores us, or it
strikes us as more or less repulsive. Details may well please us,
and we are often honestly prepared to praise a delicate mood, the
atmospheric coloring, the masterful construction. But, impartially, no
one will ever remark that Reger's art exerts heartfelt, profound or
ethical influences upon the listener.'[33]
The particular partisanship to which Niemann refers is one of the
outstanding features of contemporary German musical life. Reger has
enjoyed a truly extraordinary vogue in his own country. For that
reason we are devoting somewhat more space to him than we otherwise
should, for we do not acknowledge his right to contend with Strauss
for the mastery of his craft. We certainly do not share the opinion
of his partisans, who have pronounced him a reincarnated Bach, the
completer of Beethoven, the heir to Brahms' mantle and what not. Great
as is his ability, we share Niemann's view that 'his great power
lies not in invention but in transformation and after-creation' (_Um
und Nachschaffen_). Give him a good melody and he will embroider it,
metamorphose it, combine it with innumerable other elements in an
erudite--we had almost said inspired--manner; give him a cast-iron
form as a frame and he will fill it with the most richly colored,
tumultuously crowded canvas, but the style of his broideries will be
curiously similar and all too fiercely pondered, the colors of his
canvas will suggest the studio instead of the open air, the figures
will be abnormal, fantastic or pathetic to the point of morbidity--they
will not be images of nature.
Brahms is the prevailing influence in Reger, though in manner rather
than in spirit, the Bach polyphony and structure, the Liszt-Wagnerian
harmonic color, and the acute German romanticism notwithstanding. As
regards his symphonic and chamber works this is generally conceded and
needs no further comment.
Like Brahms, by the way, Reger approached the orchestra reluctantly;
sonatas for various instruments, chamber works in various combinations
preceded his first orchestral essay. The _Sinfonietta_ (op. 90), the
Serenade in G major (op. 95), the Hiller Variations (op. 100), the
Symphonic Prologue to a Tragedy (op. 108), were presumably harbingers
of a real symphony. Instead, however, there followed a _Konzert im
alten Stil_ (op. 123), a 'Romantic Suite' (op. 125) and a 'Ballet
Suite' (op. 130), again showing Reger's prediliction for the antique
forms; and a series of 'Tone Poems after Pictures by Böcklin' (op.
128),[34] which would indicate a turn toward the impressionistic
mood-painting of the ultra-modern wing of the 'poetic' school. His
violin concerto, in A minor (op. 101), and the piano concerto, in
F minor (op. 114), are, however, in effect symphonies with solo
instrument--again following Brahms' precept, but by a hopelessly thick
and involved orchestration, he precludes anything like the interesting
Brahmsian dialogue or discussion between the two elements.
Of the mass of Reger's chamber music we should mention the five sonatas
for violin and piano, besides four for violin alone (in the manner of
J. S. Bach), in which he shows his contrapuntal skill to particular
advantage; the three clarinet sonatas, notable for beautiful slow
movements and characteristic Reger scherzos (which are usually either
grotesque, boisterous or spookish); two trios, three string quartets,
a string quintet, 'cello sonatas, two suites for piano and violin (of
which the first, _Im alten Stil_, op. 93, is widely favored), and
numerous other pieces for violin, piano, etc. Reger has essayed choral
writing extensively, the _Gesang der Verklärten_ for five-part chorus
and large orchestra (op. 71), _Die Nonnen_ (op. 112), and several
series of 'Folk Songs' being but part of the output. The much-favored
organ compositions, chorale fantasias, preludes and fugues and in
various other forms sanctified by the great Bach, are too numerous
to mention and the songs (over 200 in number) will receive notice in
another chapter.
Of the minor composers who owe allegiance to the New German School
of Wagner and Liszt we may name first those of the immediate circle
at Weimar--Peter Cornelius, Hans von Bülow, Eduard Lassen, and Felix
Draeseke. Of these Bülow and Lassen have been mentioned in Chapter I.
Cornelius has already been remembered in connection with the later
romantic opera as having successfully applied Wagner's principles to
the lighter dramatic genre ('Barber of Bagdad'), and has received
further mention as a song-writer (see Vol. V, pp. 302ff). Here we may
pay him a brief tribute as the composer of beautiful choruses, in
which he shows the influence of the older masters of choral art. Thus
_Der Tod das ist die kühle Nacht_ recalls the gorgeous color of the
Renaissance Venetians. From 1852 on, when Cornelius joined the Liszt
circle, he was one of the chief standard-bearers of the New German
school.
Felix Draeseke's (born 1835) association with this group must be
qualified, for, though originally drawn to Weimar by his enthusiasm
for Liszt, he later deserted the ranks of the New Germans and devoted
himself to the cultivation of the classic forms. This reversion seems
to have been in the nature of a reform, for his early essays in
the freer modernistic manner are somewhat bizarre. In his harmonic
and orchestral style, however, he continued to adhere to the 'New
German' principles. In fact, he swung like a pendulum between the two
opposite poles of modern German music. His compositions include three
symphonies--G major, F major, and C minor ('Tragica')--an orchestral
serenade (op. 49); two symphonic preludes, a _Jubel-Overtüre_; three
string quartets and a number of other chamber works, a sonata and
other pieces for piano, as well as a number of large choral works (a
Mass, op. 60; a Requiem, op. 30; 'Song of Advent,' op. 60; a mystery,
_Christus_, consisting of a prelude and three oratorios; cantatas,
etc.); also several operas. Draeseke was a friend of Bülow. He taught
at the Lausanne conservatory in 1868-69 and later at the Dresden
conservatory. He is a royal Saxon professor, privy councillor, etc.
Another grand-ducal musical director at Weimar was August Klughardt
(1847-1902), who wrote five symphonies, a number of overtures,
orchestral suites, etc. Like Draeseke, he was influenced both by the
neo-classics and the 'New Germans.' Heinrich Porges (1837-1900), also
distinguished as a writer and conductor; Leopold Damrosch (1832-85),
who carried the Wagner-Liszt banner to America; Hans von Bronsart (b.
1828) and his wife Ingeborg, both pupils of Liszt and distinguished in
piano music (the former also for an orchestral fantasy and a choral
symphony, _In den Alpen_), should be mentioned as belonging to the same
group.
There are other names of real importance in absolute music; there are
Pfitzner, Thuille, Schillings, Klose and Kaskel, there are Bungert,
Weingartner, Goldmark and less significant names, but since these
have exercised their talents chiefly in the dramatic field we shall
defer our treatment of them to the following chapter. And, finally,
there is a host of followers of these, too numerous to be treated
as individuals and if individually distinguished too recent to have
judgment pronounced upon them. The most recent currents, too, shall
have attention in the next chapter.
E. N.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] New ed. of Naumann's _Musikgeschichte_, 1913.
[32] Reger is a native of Brand, in Bavaria, the son of a school
teacher, from whom he received his earliest musical training. In
addition to this he received instruction from the organist Lindner
in Weiden (where his father settled during Reger's infancy). After
his studies under Dr. Riemann (1890-95), he taught at the Wiesbaden
conservatory, and (after some years' residence in his home town and
in Munich) at the Royal Academy of Munich. In 1907 he became musical
director at the Leipzig University and teacher of composition in the
conservatory there, and in 1908 was made 'Royal Professor.' In 1908
he resigned his university post and in the same year was given the
honorary degree of doctor of philosophy by the University of Jena.
Later, until 1915, he conducted the Meiningen orchestra.
[33] Walter Niemann: _Die Musik seit Richard Wagner_, 1914.
[34] These include _Der geigende Eremit_; _Spiel der Wellen_; _Die
Toteninsel_ and _Bacchanal_.