GERMAN OPERA AFTER WAGNER AND MODERN GERMAN SONG
The Wagnerian after-current: Cyrill Kistler; August Bungert,
Goldmark, etc.; Max Schillings, Eugen d'Albert--The successful
post-Wagnerians in the lighter genre: Götz, Cornelius, and
Wolf; Engelbert Humperdinck's fairy opera; Ludwig Thuille;
Hans Pfitzner; the _Volksoper_--Richard Strauss as musical
dramatist--Hugo Wolf and the modern song; other contemporary
German lyricists--The younger men: Klose, Hausegger, Schönberg,
Korngold.
I
It was only to be expected that the titanic personality of Wagner
should drag a number of smaller men after it, both in his own day and
later, by the sheer force of attraction of a great body for small
ones. In one of his essays Matthew Arnold characterizes the test of
the quality of a critic as the power 'to ascertain the master current
in the literature of an epoch, and to distinguish this from all the
minor currents.' This sensitiveness to master currents, however,
that is so essential to criticism, is generally a source of danger
to the secondary creative minds; it is apt to tempt them to follow
blindly in the wake of the master spirit, instead of trying to
find salvation on a road of their own. In the third quarter of the
nineteenth century it was indubitably true that the master current in
music was that set going by Wagner; but it was equally true that any
other mariner who should venture upon that stream was pretty certain
to be swamped by Wagner's backwash. So it has proved: with the sole
exception of Humperdinck's _Hänsel und Gretel_, no operatic work of the
late nineteenth century that openly claimed kinship with Wagner has
exhibited any staying power, while the more durable success has been
reserved for works like Cornelius' _Barbier von Bagdad_ and Götz's _Der
Widerspenstigen Zähmung_, that frankly recognized the impossibility of
any smaller man than Wagner continuing Wagner's work.
As was inevitable, the more self-conscious of the post-Wagnerians
fastened for imitation upon what they thought to be the essential
Wagner, but that a later day can see was the inessential. To them
Wagner was the re-creator of the world of the German saga. Posterity
has learned that with Wagner, as with all great creators, the matter
is of much less account than his way of dealing with the matter. It
is not the body of religious and cosmological beliefs underlying the
Greek drama that makes the Greek dramatists what they are to us to-day.
Their very conception of the governance of the universe is a thing
that we find it hard to enter into even by an effort of the historical
imagination; nevertheless these men are more vital to us than many of
the problem-play writers of our own epoch, simply because the emotional
stuff in which they deal is of the eternal kind, and they have dealt
with it along lines that are independent of the mere thought of their
own age. Similarly, what is most vital for us in Wagner now is not his
myths, his problems of the will, his conception of love, of redemption,
of renunciation, or the verse forms into which he threw his ideas, but
the depth of his passion, the truth of his portraiture, the beauty and
eloquence of his speech. The real Wagner, in truth, was the Wagner
that no one could hope to imitate. But the generation that grew up in
his mighty shadow imagined that all it had to do was to re-exploit the
mere externalities of his work. Like him, it would delve into German
myths or German folk-lore for its subjects; like him, it would adopt an
alliterative mode of poetic diction; like him, it would treat the less
intense moments of drama in a quasi-recitative that was supposed to be
an intensification of the intervals and accents of ordinary speech. But
all these things in themselves were merely the clothes without the man;
and not one of Wagner's immediate successors showed himself big enough
to wear his mantle. Many of these works written in a conspicuously
Wagnerian spirit have still considerable interest for the student of
musical history--the _Kunihild_ (1848), for example, of Cyrill Kistler
(1848-1907)--but not enough vitality to preserve for them a permanent
place in the theatre repertory. (The same composer's _Baldur's Tod_,
written in the 'eighties, was not performed till 1905 in Düsseldorf.)
The big Homeric tetralogy of August Bungert, _Odysseus Heimkehr_
(1896), _Kirke_ (1898), _Nausikaa_ (1900-01), and _Odysseus Tod_
(1903), is an attempt to do for the Greek myths what Wagner did for the
Teutonic. (The composer is said to be engaged upon a second tetralogy
of the same order, bearing the general title of 'Ilias.') How seriously
one section of the German musical public took these colossal plans was
shown by the proposal to erect a 'Festspielhaus' on the Rhine that
should be to Bungert music-drama what Bayreuth is to the Wagnerian.
After a fair amount of success in the years immediately following their
production, however, Bungert's operas have fallen out of the repertory.
His talent is indeed lyrical rather than dramatic. Bungert was born in
Mülheim (Ruhr) in 1846 and studied at the Cologne Conservatory and in
Paris. He became musical director in Kreuznach (1869) and has since
lived chiefly in Karlsruhe and Berlin. Besides the 'tetralogy' he wrote
a comic opera, _Die Studenten von Salamanka_ (1884), and some symphonic
and chamber works. His songs (including Carmen Sylva's 'Songs of a
Queen') have probably more permanent value than the rest of his work.
The opera has in fact tempted many of the German lyricists to try to
exceed their powers. Hans Sommer (born 1837), who has produced a
number of songs of fine feeling and perspicuous workmanship, attempted
a Wagnerian flight in his opera _Loreley_ (1891), in which the
treatment is a little too heavy for the subject. Like so many of his
contemporaries, he frequently suffers for the sins of his librettists.
Felix Draeseke (b. 1835) has hovered uncertainly between Schumannesque
and Wagnerian ideals; his most successful opera is _Herrat_ (1892).[35]
Adalbert von Goldschmidt (1848-1906) aimed, as others of his kind did,
at continuing the Wagner tradition not only in the musical but in
the poetic line. He was his own librettist in the opera _Helianthus_
(1884); but in the music of both this and the later opera _Gaea_ (1889)
the Wagnerian influence is obvious. Carl Goldmark (1830-1915) brought
the best musical qualities of a mind that was eclectic both by heredity
and environment to bear upon the very successful operas _Die Königin
von Saba_ (1875), _Merlin_ (1886), and _Das Heimchen am Herd_ (1896),
founded on Dickens's 'Cricket on the Hearth.'
Though a native of Hungary (Keszthely, 1830), Goldmark received a
thoroughly German training in Vienna, where he studied the violin with
Jansa. He entered the conservatory in 1847 and, since that institution
was closed the following year, he continued his studies by himself.
In 1865 he aroused attention with his overture _Sakuntala_, which is
still in the orchestral répertoire. Happily guided by an artistic
instinct, he hit upon a vein which his talent especially fitted him to
exploit, namely, the painting of vivid oriental color. His first opera,
'The Queen of Sheba,' produced in Vienna in 1875, following the same
tendency with equal success, has preserved its popularity till to-day.
The chronological order of his other operas is as follows:
_Merlin_ (Vienna, 1886, and revised for Frankfort, 1904); 'The
Cricket on the Hearth' (1896); 'The Prisoner of War' (1899); _Götz
von Berlichingen_ (1902); and 'A Winter's Tale' (1908). His symphonic
works include, besides the _Sakuntala_ overture, an orchestral suite
(symphony) 'The Rustic Wedding,' a symphony in E-flat, the overtures
'Penthesilea,' 'In Spring,' 'Prometheus Bound,' 'Sappho,' and 'In
Italy'; a symphonic poem 'Zrínyi' (1903), two violin concertos, a piano
quintet, a string quartet, a suite for piano and violin, pianoforte and
choral works.
An apt criticism of Goldmark's style is given by Eugen Schmitz in the
revision of Naumann's _Musikgeschichte_: 'In any case, we know of
no second composer of the present time who can paint the exoticism
and _fata morgana_ of the Orient and the tropics, the sultriness and
the effects of a climate that arouses devouring passions, as well
as the peculiarity and special nature of the inhabitants, in such
characteristic and glowing tone-colors as Goldmark has succeeded
in doing. Herein, however, lies not only his strength but also his
weakness; for he is exclusively a musical colorist, a colorist _à la_
Makart, who sacrifices drawing and perspective for the sake of color.
Which means, translated into musical terms: a composer whose melodic
invention and thematic development does not stand in a proportionate
relationship to the intoxicating magic of tone-color combinations that
he employs. Moreover, his coloring is already beginning to fade beside
the corresponding achievements of the most modern composers of to-day.'
A number of minor talents have from time to time obtained a momentary
or a local success, without in the end doing anything to sustain the
hope that something really vital might be expected of them; of works
of this order we may mention the _Urvasi_ (1886), _Der Evangelimann_
(1894), _Don Quixote_ (1898), and _Kuhreigen_ (1911) of Wilhelm
Kienzl (1857);[36] _Die Versunkene Glocke_ and _Faust_ of Heinrich
Zöllner (1854); the _Ingwelde_ (1894), _Der Pfeifertag_ (1899), and
_Moloch_ (1906) of Max Schillings (born 1868); the _Sakuntala_ (1884),
_Malawika_ (1886), _Genesius_ (1893), and _Orestes_[37] (1902) of
Felix Weingartner (born 1863). In these and some dozen or two of other
modern Germans, composition is an act of the will rather than of the
imagination. The generous eclecticism and superficial effectiveness of
the _Tiefland_ (1903) of Eugen d'Albert (born 1864) have won for it
exceptional popularity.
The classification of Schillings as a 'minor talent' would probably not
meet with the approval of many critics and musicians in Germany, where
his influence is considerable. Schillings is one of the ramparts of the
progressive musical citadel of Munich, the centre from which the Reger,
Pfitzner and Thuille strands radiate. If aristocracy and nobility
are the outstanding characteristics of his highly individual muse,
a corresponding exclusiveness, coldness and artificiality accompany
them. His perfection is that of the marble, finely chiselled, hard and
polished. His music is a personal expression, but his personality is
one that never experienced the depths of human suffering. Schillings
was born in the Rhineland (Düren) in 1868 and finished his studies in
Munich. There he became 'royal professor' in 1903 and later he went
to Stuttgart as general musical director in connection with the court
theatre. Besides his operas he wrote the symphonic prologue 'Œdipus'
(1900), music for the 'Orestes' of Æschylus (1900) and for Goethe's
'Faust' (Part I). Of non-dramatic works there are two 'fantasies,'
_Meergruss_ and _Seemorgen_; _Ein Zwiegespräch_ for small orchestra,
solo violin and solo 'cello, a hymn-rhapsody, _Dem Verklärten_ (after
Schiller) for mixed chorus, baritone and orchestra (op. 21, 1905),
_Glockenlieder_ for tenor and orchestra, some chamber music and about
forty songs. Especially successful are his three 'melodramatic'
works, i.e. music to accompany recitation, of which the setting of
Wildenbruch's _Hexenlied_ is best known.
Weingartner and d'Albert, too, are considerable figures in contemporary
German music, though their records as executive artists may outlive
their reputations as composers, the first being a brilliant and
authoritative conductor, the latter a pianist of extraordinary
calibre. Besides the operas mentioned above Weingartner has written
the symphonic poems 'King Lear' and 'The Regions of the Blest,' two
symphonies, three string quartets and a piano sextet (op. 20), songs
and piano pieces. He has also distinguished himself as a critic
and author of valuable books of a practical and æsthetic nature.
D'Albert's evolution from pianist to composer was accomplished in the
usual manner, by way of the piano concerto. He wrote two of them (op.
2 and 12), then a 'cello concerto (op. 20), and promptly embarked
upon a symphonic career with two overtures ('Esther' and 'Hyperion')
and the symphony in F. Then came chamber music, songs and various
other forms. His piano arrangements of Bach's organ works are justly
popular. His first opera was _Der Rubin_ (1893), then came _Ghismonda_
(1895), _Gernot_ (1897), _Die Abreise_ (1898), all of good Wagnerian
extraction; then _Kain_ and _Der Improvisator_ (1900), showing
evidences of an individual style, and, finally, _Tiefland_ (1903),
the one really successful opera of d'Albert, which seems to have
become permanent in the German répertoire. _Flauto solo_ (1905) and
_Tragaldabas_ (1907) have not made a great stir. D'Albert is of Scotch
birth (Glasgow, 1864), though his father was a native of Germany.
II
On the whole, German opera of the more ambitious kind cannot be said
to have produced much that is likely to be durable between Wagner and
Strauss. The indubitable master works have been for the most part
in the lighter genres--the delightful _Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung_
(1874) of Hermann Götz (1840-1876), the _Barbier von Bagdad_ (1858)
of Peter Cornelius (1824-1874) (a gem of grace and humor), and the
_Hänsel und Gretel_ (1893) of Engelbert Humperdinck, in which the
Wagnerian polyphony is applied with the happiest effect to a style that
is the purest distillation of the German folk-spirit. Of Cornelius's
work we have spoken elsewhere (Vol. II, pp. 380f), of Humperdinck we
shall have something to say presently. Here let us dwell for a moment
on Götz. His one finished opera (a second, _Francesca da Rimini_, he
did not live to finish) has been called a 'little _Meistersinger_.'
Whether applied with justice or not, this epithet indicates the work's
spiritual relationship. Yet, Wagnerian that he is, this classification
must be made with reserve. A close friend of Brahms, he was certainly
influenced by that master--in a measure he combines the rich and varied
texture of Brahms' chamber music with the symphonic style of the
_Meistersinger_. Niemann points out other influences. 'He takes Jensen
by the left hand, Cornelius by the right; like both of these, he is
lyrist and worker in detail without a real dramatic vein and a model of
the idealistic German master of an older time.' _Der Widerspenstigen
Zähmung_ was first heard in 1874 in Mannheim and achieved wide
popularity. It is based on Shakespeare ('Taming of the Shrew'), and
an English text was used in England. Götz was born in Königsberg and
died near Zürich. He was a pupil of Köhler, Stern, Bülow and Ulrich,
and was organist in Winterthur from 1867 to 1870, when failing health
forced him into retirement.
Hugo Wolf's[38] _Der Corregidor_ (1896) is, in its endless flow of
melody and its sustained vitality of characterization, perhaps the
nearest approach in modern music to the _Meistersinger_; for some
reason or other, however, a work that is a pure delight in the home
does not seem able to maintain itself on the stage. A second opera of
Wolf's, _Manuel Venegas_, in which we can trace the same extraordinary
simplification and clarification of style that is evident in his
latest songs, remained only a fragment at his death. The successes,
not less than the failures, of these and other men showed clearly that
the further they got from the main Wagnerian stream the safer they
were. Cornelius, though living in Wagner's immediate environment and
cherishing a passionate admiration for the great man, knew well that
his own salvation lay in trying to write as if Wagner had never lived.
The _Barbier von Bagdad_ was written some years before the composition
of the _Meistersinger_ had begun; if Cornelius went anywhere for a
model for his own work it was to the _Benvenuto Cellini_ of Berlioz. He
knew the danger he was in during the composition of his second opera,
_Der Cid_, and strove desperately to shut out Wagner from his mind at
that time; he did not want, as he put it, simply to hatch Wagnerian
eggs. If _Der Cid_ (1865) fails, it is not because of any Wagnerian
influence, but because Cornelius's genius was of too light a tissue for
so big a stage subject. Nevertheless, if he does not wholly fill the
dramatic frame, he comes very near doing so; it is no small dramatic
gift that is shown in such passages as the _Trauermarsch_ in the second
scene of the first act and the subsequent monologue of Chimene, in
Chimene's scena in the second scene of the second act, and in most
of the choral writing. A third opera, _Gunlöd_, was orchestrated by
Lassen and Hoffbauer and produced seventeen years after Cornelius's
death.
[Illustration: Modern German Musical Dramatists:]
Ludwig Thuille Hans Pfitzner
Engelbert Humperdinck Karl Goldmark
Humperdinck seems destined to go down to posterity as the composer of
one work. His _Hänsel und Gretel_ owes its incomparable charm not to
the Wagnerianisms of it, which lie only on the surface, but to its
expressing once for all the very soul of a certain order of German
folk-song and German _Kindlichkeit_. His later works--_Die sieben
Geislein_ (1897), _Dornröschen_ (1902), and the comic opera _Die
Heirat wider Willen_ (1905), though containing much beautiful music,
have on the whole failed to convince the world that Humperdinck has
any new chapter to add to German opera. For this his librettists must
perhaps share the blame with him. _Die Königskinder_ (1898), which
was originally a melodrama, was recast as an opera in 1908 and, at
least in America, was more successful. Besides these Humperdinck wrote
incidental music for Aristophanes' _Lysistrata_, Shakespeare's 'A
Winter's Tale' and 'Tempest.' Two choral ballads preceded the operas
and a 'Moorish Rhapsody' (1898) was composed for the Leeds Festival.
Humperdinck was born in Siegburg (Rhineland), studied at the Cologne
Conservatory, also in Munich and in Italy. He taught for a time in
Barcelona (Spain) and in Frankfort (Hoch Conservatory), and in 1900
became head of a master school of composition in Berlin with the title
of royal professor and member of the senate of the Academy of Arts.
A worthy companion to _Hänsel und Gretel_ is the _Lobetanz_ (1898)
of Ludwig Thuille (1861-1907). Thuille's touch is lighter than
Humperdinck's. Thuille was a highly esteemed artist, especially among
the Munich circle of musicians. He is the only one of the group of
important composers settled there since Rheinberger's demise that may
be said to have founded a 'school.' He is the heir and successor of
Rheinberger and by virtue of his pedagogic talent the master of all
the younger South German moderns. Though _Lobetanz_ (which was preceded
by _Theuerdank_, 1897, and _Gugeline_, 1901) is the best known of his
works, the chamber music of his later period has probably the most
permanent value.[39] Thuille was born in Bozen (Tyrol) and died in
Munich, where he was professor at the Royal Academy of Music.
Some success has been won by the _Donna Anna_ (1895) of E. N. von
Reznicek (born 1860), a showy work compact of many styles--grand
opera, operetta, the early Verdi, _Tannhäuser_, and the Spanish
'national' idiom all jostling each other's elbows. There is little
real differentiation of character; such differentiation as there is is
only in musical externals--in costume rather than in psychology. In
Germany a certain following is much devoted to Hans Pfitzner, whose
opera _Der arme Heinrich_ was produced in 1895, and his _Die Rose vom
Liebesgarten_ in 1901. Pfitzner is a musician of more earnestness than
inspiration. He is technically well equipped, and all that he does
indicates refinement and intelligence; but he lacks the imagination
that fuses into new life whatever material it touches. (He has also
written some fairly expressive songs and a small amount of chamber
music.) Pfitzner, like Alex. Ritter, is of Russian birth, being
born (of German parents) in Moscow in 1869. His father and the Hoch
Conservatory in Frankfurt were the sources of his musical education.
Since 1892 he has taught and conducted in various places (Coblentz,
Mainz, Berlin, Munich). In 1908 he became municipal musical director
and director of the conservatory at Strassburg. Besides the two operas
he has written music for Ibsen's play, 'The Festival of Solhaug'
(1889), also for Kleist's _Kätchen von Heilbronn_ (1908) and Ilse von
Stach's _Christelflein_. An orchestral Scherzo (1888), several choral
works and vocal works with orchestra complete the list of his works
besides those mentioned above.
For the sake of completeness, brief mention must here be made of the
German _Volksoper_, a comparatively unambitious genre in which much
good work has been done. Among its best products in recent years are
the quick-witted _Versiegelt_ (1908) of Leo Blech (born 1871), and the
_Barbarina_ of Otto Neitzel (born 1852).
III
The biggest figure in modern German operatic music, as in instrumental
music, is Richard Strauss. It was perhaps inevitable that this should
be so. The more massive German opera after Wagner was almost bound
to find what further development was possible to it in the Wagnerian
semi-symphonic form; the difficulty was to find a composer capable
of handling it. This form was simply the expression of a spirit that
had come down to German music from Beethoven, and that had to work
itself out to the full before the next great development--whatever
that may prove to be--could be possible; it is the same spirit that
is visible, in different but still related shapes, in the symphonic
tissue of the Wagnerian orchestra, the symphonic poems of Liszt, the
symphonies of Brahms, the pianoforte accompaniments of Wolf and Marx
and their fellows, and the copious and vivid orchestral speech of
Strauss. It is a method that is perhaps only thoroughly efficacious for
composers whose heredity and environment make the further working out
of the German tradition their most natural form of musical thinking.
That it is not the form best suited to peoples to whom this tradition
is not part of their blood and being is shown by the dramatic
poignancy attained by such widely different dramatic methods as those
of Moussorgsky, Puccini, and Debussy. But when a race has, in the
course of generations, made for itself an instrument so magnificent
in its power and scope, and one so peculiarly its own, as the German
quasi-symphonic form, it is the most natural thing in the world that
virtually all the best of its thinking should be done by its aid. It
was therefore perhaps not an accident, but the logical outcome of the
whole previous development of German music, that the mind that was to
dominate the German opera of our own day should be the mind that had
already proved itself to be the most fertile, original, and audacious
in the field of instrumental music. But it was a law for Strauss,
no less than for his smaller contemporaries, that if he was to be
something more than a mere _nach-Wagnerianer_ he must do his work
outside not only the ground Wagner had occupied, but outside the ground
still covered by his gigantic shadow.
It was well within that shadow, however, that Strauss's first
dramatic attempt was made. It is not so much that the musical style
of _Guntram_ (1892-93) is now and then reminiscent of _Tannhäuser_,
of _Lohengrin_ or of _Parsifal_, while one of the themes has actually
stepped straight out of the pages of _Tristan_. A composer can often
indicate unmistakably his musical paternity and yet give us the clear
impression that he has a genuine personality and style of his own. As
a matter of fact, the general style of _Guntram_ is unquestionably
Strauss, and no one else. Where the Wagnerian influence is most evident
is in the mental world in which the opera is set. The story, it is
true--the text, by the way, is Strauss's own--is not drawn from the
world of saga; but the general conception of an order of knights, the
object of whose brotherhood is to bind all humanity in bonds of love,
is obviously a last watering-down of that doctrine of redemption by
love that played so large a part in the intellectual life of Wagner.
It is possible that this peculiar mentality of _Guntram_ was the
aftermath of a breakdown in Strauss's health in 1892. The work has
a high-mindedness, a spiritual fervor, an ethos that has never been
particularly prominent in Strauss's work as a whole, and that has
become more and more infrequent in it as he has grown older. _Guntram_
is a convalescent's work, written in the mood of exalted idealism that
convalescence so often brings with it in men of complex nature. But
whatever be the physical or psychological explanation of the origin
of _Guntram_, there is no doubt that the music lives in a finer,
purer atmosphere than that of Strauss's work as a whole; and for this
reason alone it will perhaps inspire respect even when its purely
musical qualities may have become outmoded. The musical method of it
contains in embryo all the later Strauss. The orchestral tissue has
not, of course, the extraordinary exuberance of diction and of color
of his subsequent operas, but the affiliation with Wagner is quite
evident. There is a certain melodic angularity here and there, and a
tendency to get harmonic point by mere audacious and self-conscious
singularity--both defects being characteristic of a powerful and
eager young brain possessed with ideals of expression that it is not
yet capable of realizing. The general idiom is in the main that of
_Tod und Verklärung_ and _Don Juan_. It is worth noting that already
in Strauss's first opera we perceive that failure to vivify all the
characters equally that is so pronounced in the later works. It is one
of the signs that, great as he is, he is not of the same great breed as
Wagner.
By the time he came to write his second opera, _Feuersnot_ (1900-01),
Strauss had passed through all the main stages of his development
as an orchestral composer; in _Till Eulenspiegel_, _Also sprach
Zarathustra, Don Quixote_, and _Ein Heldenleben_ he had come to
thorough consciousness of himself, and attained an extraordinary
facility of technique. Under these circumstances one would have
expected _Feuersnot_ to be a rather better work than it actually is.
One's early enthusiasm for it becomes dissipated somewhat in the course
of years--no doubt because as we look back upon it each of its faults
has to bear not only its own burden, but the burden of all the faults
of the same kind that have been piled up by Strauss in his later
works. The passion of the love music, for instance, has more than a
touch of commonplace in it now--as of a Teutonic Leoncavallo--our eyes
having been opened by _Elektra_ and 'The Legend of Joseph' to the
pit of banality that always yawns at Strauss's elbow, and into which
he finds it harder and harder to keep from slipping. We see Strauss
experimenting here with the dance rhythms that he has so successfully
exploited in _Der Rosenkavalier_; but to some of these also time has
given a slightly vulgar air. But a great deal of the opera still
retains its charm; some portions of it are a very happy distillation
from the spirit of German popular music, and the music of the children
will probably never lose its freshness. On the whole, the opera is the
least significant of all Strauss's work of this class. It is clear that
his long association with the concert room had made an instrumental
rather than a vocal composer of him; much of the writing for the voice
is awkward and inexpressive.
In the _Symphonia Domestica_ (1903) were to be distinguished the first
unmistakable signs of a certain falling off in Strauss's inspiration,
a certain coarsening of the thought and a tendency to be too easily
satisfied with the first idea that came into his head. These symptoms
have become more and more evident in all the operas that have followed
this last of the big instrumental works, though it has to be admitted
that Strauss shows an extraordinary dexterity in covering up his weak
places. Wagner's enemies, adapting an old gibe to him, used to say
that his music consisted of some fine moments and some bad quarters of
an hour. That was not true of Wagner, but it is becoming increasingly
true of the later Strauss. For a while the quality of the really
inspired moments was so superb as to more than compensate us for the
disappointment of the moments that were obviously less inspired; but as
time has gone on the inspired moments have become extremely rare and
the others regrettably plentiful. We are probably not yet in a position
to estimate justly the ultimate place of Strauss in the history of the
opera. No composer has ever presented us with a problem precisely like
his. The magnificent things in his work are of a kind that make us at
first believe they will succeed in saving the weaker portions from the
shipwreck that, on the merits of these alone, would seem to be their
fate. Then, as each new work deepens the conviction that Strauss is the
most sadly-flawed genius in the history of music, as he passes from
banality to banality, each of them worse than any of its predecessors,
we find ourselves, when we turn back to the earlier works, less
disposed than before to look tolerantly on what is weakest in them.
What will be the final outcome of it all--whether the halo round his
head will ultimately blind us to the mud about his feet, or whether the
mud will end by submerging the halo, no one can at present say. The
Richard Strauss of to-day is an insoluble mystery.
Something excessive or unruly appears to be inseparable from everything
he does. A consistent development is impossible for him; he oscillates
violently like some sensitive electrical instrument in a storm.
But, while only partisanship could blind anyone to the too palpable
evidences of degeneration that his genius shows at many points, it is
beyond question that in the best of his later stage works he dwarfs
every other composer of his day. We may like or dislike the subject of
_Salome_, according to our temperament; how far the question of ethics
ought to be allowed to determine our attitude to an art work is a point
on which it is perhaps hopeless to expect agreement. For the present
writer the point is one of no importance, because the whole discussion
seems to him to arise out of a confusion of the distinctive spheres of
life and art. A Salome in life would be a dangerous and objectionable
person, but then so would an Iago; and, as no one calls Shakespeare a
monster of iniquity because he has drawn Iago with zest, one can see
no particular justice in calling Strauss's mind a morbid one because
it has been interested in the psychology of a pervert like Salome.
One is driven to the conclusion that the root of the whole outcry is
to be found in the prejudice many people have against too close an
analysis of the psychology of sex, especially in its more perverted
manifestations. One can respect that prejudice without sharing it; but
one is bound to say it unfits the victim of it for appreciation of
_Salome_ as a work of art. The opera as a whole is not a masterpiece.
It lives only in virtue of its great moments; and Strauss has not been
more successful here than elsewhere in breathing life into every one of
his characters. Herod and Herodias have no real musical physiognomy;
we could not, that is to say, visualize them from their music alone
as we can visualize a Hagen, a Mime, or even a David. But Salome
is characterized with extraordinary subtlety. Music is here put to
psychological uses undreamt of even by Wagner. The strange thing is
that, in spite of himself, the artist in Strauss has risen above the
subject. Wilde's Salome is a lifeless thing, a mere figure in some
stiffly-woven tapestry. Strauss pours so full a flood of emotion over
her that the music leaves us a final sensation, not of cold horror but
of sadness and pity.
He similarly humanizes the central character of his next opera,
_Elektra_ (1907), making of her one of the great tragic figures of the
stage; and he throws an antique dignity round the gloomy figure of the
fate-bearing Orestes. But, as with _Salome_, the opera as a whole is
not a great work. It contains a good deal of merely sham music, such as
that of the opening scene--music in which Strauss simply talks volubly
and noisily to hide the fact that he has nothing to say; and there is
much commonplace music, such as that of the outburst of Chrysothemis to
Elektra, and most of that of the final duet of the pair. One is left
in the end with a feeling of blank amazement that the mind that could
produce such great music as that of the opening invocation of Agamemnon
by Elektra, that of the entry of Orestes, and that of the recognition
of brother and sister, could be so lacking in self-criticism as to
place side by side with these such banalities as are to be met with
elsewhere in the opera. The only conclusion the close student of
Strauss could come to after _Elektra_ was that the commonplace that
was not far from some of his finest conceptions from the first was now
becoming fatally easy to him.
_Der Rosenkavalier_ (1913) confirmed this impression. Its waltzes
have earned for it a world-wide popularity. They are charming
enough, but there are no doubt a hundred men in Europe who could
have written these. What no other living composer could have written
is the music--so wise, so human--of the scene between Octavian and
the Marschallin at the end of the first act, the music of the entry
of the Rosenkavalier in the second act, and the great trio in the
third, that can look the _Meistersinger_ quintet in the face and not
be ashamed. But again and again in the _Rosenkavalier_ we meet with
music that is the merest mechanical product of an energetic brain
working without inspiration--the bulk of the music of the third act,
for instance, as far as the trio. And once more Strauss shows, by his
quite indefinite portraiture of Faninal and Sophia, that his powers of
musical characterization are limited to the leading personages of his
works. Since _Der Rosenkavalier_ the general quality of his thinking
has obviously deteriorated. There are very few pages of _Ariadne auf
Naxos_ that are above the level of the ordinary German kapellmeister,
while that of the mimodrama, 'The Legend of Joseph,' is the most
pretentiously commonplace that Strauss has ever produced. If his
career were to end now, the best epitaph we could find for him would
be Bülow's remark _à propos_ of Mendelssohn: 'He began as a genius and
ended as a talent.' Strauss's ten years in the theatre have undoubtedly
done him much harm; they have especially made him careless as to the
quality of much of his music, knowing as he does that the excitement
of the action and the general illusion of the theatre may be trusted
to keep the spectator occupied. But one may perhaps venture to predict
that unless he returns to the concert room for a while, and forgets
there a great deal of what he has learned in the theatre, he will not
easily recover the position he has latterly lost.
Less well-known names in contemporary German opera, some of which,
however, are too important to be omitted, are Ignaz Brüll (1846-1907),
a Viennese whose dialogue opera _Das goldene Kreuz_ (1875) is still
in the German répertoire;[40] Edmund Kretschmer (b. 1830) with _Die
Folkunger_ (1874), on a Scandinavian subject treated in the earlier
Wagnerian style, and _Heinrich der Löwe_ (1877); and Franz von Holstein
(b. 1826) with _Die Heideschacht_, etc. Karl Reinthaler (1822-96) and
Karl Grammann (1842-97) also wrote operas successful in their time,
as did also Hiller, Wüerst, Reinecke, Dietrich, Abert, Rheinberger,
and H. Hofmann, who are mentioned elsewhere. Siegfried Wagner (b.
1869), son of the great master and a pupil of Humperdinck, should
not be overlooked. His talent is unpretentious, with a decided bent
for 'folkish' melody, and an excellent technical equipment. In _Der
Bärenhäuter_ (1899) he follows the fashion for fairy-opera; his four
other operas (from _Der Kobold_ to _Sternengebot_, 1904) lean toward
the popular _Spieloper_, with a tinge of romanticism.
Klose's 'dramatic symphony' _Ilsebill_ (1903) really belongs to the
genus fairy-opera. While Karl von Kaskel's (b. 1860) two charming
works, _Die Bettlerin vom Pont des Arts_ and _Dusle und Babell_, are to
be classified as _Spielopern_.
IV
As in the case of most other musical genres, Germany in the second half
of the nineteenth century seemed to have made the province of the song
peculiarly its own. For well over a hundred years it has never been
without a great lyrist. Schubert gave the German lyric wings. Schumann
poured into it the full, rich flood of German romanticism in its
sincerest days. Robert Franz cultivated a relatively simple song-form,
the texture of which is not always as elastic as one could wish it
to be; but he, too, was a man of pure and honest spirit, who sang of
nothing that he had not deeply felt. Liszt first brought the song into
some sort of relation with the new ideals of operatic and instrumental
music associated with his name and that of Wagner; and in spite of his
effusiveness of sentiment and his diffusiveness of style he produced
some notable lyrics. In a song like _Es war ein König in Thule_, for
example, a new principle of unification can be seen at work, one
germinal theme being used for the construction of the whole song, which
might almost be an excerpt from a later Wagnerian opera. But the
lyrical history of the latter half of the nineteenth century is really
summed up in the achievements of two men--Brahms and Hugo Wolf.[41]
Hugo Wolf, the foremost master of modern song, was born in
Windischgrätz (Lower Styria), Austria, March 13, 1860, and died in
an insane asylum in Vienna, February 22, 1903, the victim of a fatal
brain disease, which afflicted him during the last six years of his
tragic existence. Thus his effective life was practically reduced
to thirty-seven years--not much longer a span than that other great
lyricist, Franz Schubert. Little can be said of this brief career,
impeded as it was by untoward circumstances and jealous opposition.
To these conditions Wolf opposed a heroic fortitude and a passionate
devotion to his art, which he practiced with uncompromising sincerity
and religious assiduity. During long periods of work he remained in
seclusion, maintaining a feverish activity and shutting himself off
from outside influences. From 1875 on he lived almost continually in
Vienna, where he studied for a short time in the conservatory. His
only considerable absence he spent as conductor in Salzburg (1881).
In Vienna he taught and for some years (till 1887) wrote criticisms
for the _Salonblatt_. These articles have recently been collected and
published. They reflect the writer's high idealism; his intolerance
of all artistic inferiority and mediocrity show him to have been as
valiant as an upholder of standards as he was discriminating in the
judgment of æsthetic values, though his attack upon Brahms placed him
into a somewhat ridiculous light with a large part of the musical
public.
Thus he eked out an existence; any considerable recognition as a
composer he did not achieve during his lifetime. None of his works was
published till 1888, when his fifty-three Möricke songs (written within
three months) appeared. The Eichendorff cycle (twenty songs) came next,
and then the _Spanisches Liederbuch_ (consisting of thirty-four secular
and ten sacred songs), all written during 1889-90. Six songs for female
voice after poems by Gottfried Keller, the _Italienisches Liederbuch_
(forty-six poems by Paul Heyse, published in two parts) were composed
during 1890-91 and in 1896 and the three poems by Michelangelo were set
in 1897. Meantime there also came from his pen a hymn, _Christnacht_,
for soli, chorus and orchestra (1891), incidental music for Ibsen's
'Festival of Solhaug' (1892), and in 1895 he wrote his _Corregidor_
(already mentioned) within a few months. Other songs, some dating
from his youth, were also published, as well as several choruses and
chorus arrangements of songs. A string quartet in D minor (1879-80);
a symphonic poem for full orchestra, _Penthesilea_ (1883); and the
charming 'Italian Serenade' for small orchestra (also arranged for
string quartet by the composer) constitute his instrumental works--a
small but choice aggregation.
Wolf was to the smaller field of the song what Wagner was to the
larger field of opera. That characterization of him must not be
misunderstood, as is often done, to mean that he simply took over
the methods of Wagnerian musical drama--especially the principle of
the leit-motif--and applied them to the song. He benefited by those
methods, as virtually every modern composer has done; but he never
applied them in the merely conscious and imitative way that the
'post-Wagnerians' did, for instance, in the opera. Wolf would have
been a great lyrist had he been born in the eighteenth century, the
sixteenth, or the twelfth; but it was his rare good fortune--the
fortune that was denied to Schubert--to live in an epoch that could
provide him with a lyrical instrument capable of responding to every
impulse of his imagination. His was a truly exceptional brain, that
could probably never have come to its full fruition in any age but the
one he happened to be born into. He had not only the vision of new
things to be done in music, as Liszt and Berlioz and others have had
before and since, but the power, which Liszt and Berlioz had not, to
make for himself a vocabulary that was copious enough, and a technique
that was strong and elastic enough, to permit the easy expression
of everything he felt. It is another of the many points in which he
resembles Wagner; with the minimum of school training in his earliest
days he made for himself a technical instrument that was purely his
own--one that, when he had thoroughly mastered it, never failed
him, and that was capable of steady growth and infinitely delicate
adaptation to the work of the moment.
He draws, as Wagner did, a line of demarcation between an old world
of feeling and a new one. As Wagner peopled the stage with more types
than Weber, and saw more profoundly into the psychology of characters
of every kind, so Wolf enlarged the world of previous and contemporary
lyrists and intensified the whole mental and emotional life of the
lyrical form. Too much stress need not be laid on the mere fact that
he insisted on better 'declamation' than was generally regarded as
sufficient in the song--on a shaping of the melody that would permit
of the just accentuation of every word and syllable. This in itself
could be done, and indeed has been done, by many composers who have not
thereby succeeded in persuading the world that they are of the breed
of Wolf. The extraordinary thing with him was that this respect for
verbal values was consistent with the unimpeded flow of an expressive
vocal line and an equally expressive pianoforte tissue. The basis of
his manner is the utilizing of a quasi-symphonic form for the song. He
marks the end of monody in the lyric as Wagner marks the end of monody
in the opera. With Wagner the orchestra was not a mere accompanying
instrument, a 'big guitar,' but a many-voiced protagonist in the drama
itself. When the simple-minded hearer of half a century ago complained
that there was no melody in Wagner, he only meant that the melody was
not where he could distinguish it most easily--at the top. As a matter
of fact, Wagner was giving him at least three times as much melody as
the best of the Italian opera writers, for in the _Meistersinger_ or
_Tristan_ it is not only the actors who are singing but the orchestra,
and not only the orchestra as a whole but the separate instruments of
it. When the average man complained that Wagner was starving him of
melody, it was like a man drowning in a pond fifty feet deep crying out
that there was not water enough in the neighborhood for him to wash in.
Wolf, too, fills the instrumental part of his songs with as rich a life
as the vocal part. But he does even more amazing feats in the way of
co-operation between the two factors than Wagner did. Independent as
the piano part seemingly is, developing as if it had nothing to think
of but its own symphonic course, it never distracts Wolf's attention
from the vocal melody, which is handled with astonishing ease and
freedom. Not only does each phase of the poem enter just where the most
point can be given to it both poetically and declamatorily, without any
regard for the mere four-square of the ordinary line or bar-divisions,
but each significant word receives its appropriate accent, melodic rise
or fall, or fleck of color. In the _Die ihr schwebet um diese Palmen_,
for example, the expressive minor sixth of the voice part on the word
_Qual_, seems to be there by a special dispensation of Providence.
We know that the interval is one that is characteristic of the main
accompaniment-figure of the song--it has appeared, indeed, as early
as the second bar, and has been frequently repeated since--that it is
almost inevitable that now and then it should occur in the voice, and,
as a matter of fact, it has already occurred more than once there--at
the _schwebet_ and _Palmen_ of the first line, for example, and later
at the first syllable of _Himmel_ in the line _Der Himmelsknabe duldet
Beschwerde_. Yet we know very well that it is not a musical accident,
but a stroke of psychological genius, that brings just this interval
in on the word _Qual_ in the lines _Ach nur im Schlaf ihm leise
gesänftigt die Qual zerrinnt_, the interval indeed being in essence
just what it has been all along, but receiving now a new and more
poignant meaning by the way it is approached. We know very well that
no other song-writer but Wolf would have had the instinct to perceive,
in the midst of the flow of the accompaniment to what seems its own
predestined goal, the expressive psychological possibilities of that
particular note at that particular moment in that particular line. His
songs teem with felicities of this kind; they represent the employment
of one of Wagner's most characteristic instruments for uses more subtle
even than he ever dreamt of.
Yet--and the point needs insisting upon, as it is still the subject of
some misunderstanding--this quick and delicate adaptation of melodic
and harmonic and rhythmic values to the necessities of the poem are not
the result of a mere calculated policy of 'follow the words.' The song
has not been shaped simply to permit of this coincidence of verbal and
musical values, nor have these been consciously worked into the general
tissue of the song after this has been developed on other lines. They
represent the spontaneous utterance of a mind to which all the factors
of the song were present in equal proportions from the first bar to the
last. Wolf made no sketches for his songs; the great majority of them
were written at a single sitting; the subject possessed him and made
its own language.
His independence, his originality, his seminal force for the future
of music, are all best shown by comparing him with Brahms. No one,
of course, will question the greatness of Brahms as a lyrist. But a
comparison with Wolf at once throws the former's limitations into a
very strong light. Wolf was much more the man of the new time than his
great contemporary. Brahms was the continuer and completer of Schumann,
the last voice that the older romantic movement found for itself.
By nature, training, and personal associations he was ill fitted to
assimilate the new life that Wagner was pouring into the music of his
day. Wolf from the first made a clean departure from both the matter
and the manner of Brahms--a cleaner departure, indeed, than Wagner at
first made from the romanticism of his contemporaries, for the kinship
between the early Wagner and the Schumann of the songs is unmistakable.
Wolf's thinking left the mental world of Brahms completely on one side;
his music is free, for instance, from those touches of sugariness and
of the _larmoyant_ that can be so frequently detected even in the
rugged Brahms, as in all the lyrists who took their stimulus from
romanticism. Brahms' lyric types--his maidens, his students, his
philosophers, his nature-lovers--are those of Germany in a particular
historical phase of her art, literature, and life. With Wolf the lyric
steps into a wider field. His psychological range is much broader than
that of Brahms. He creates more types of character and sets them in
a more varied _milieu_. With Brahms the same personages recur time
after time in his songs, expressing themselves in much the same way.
Even an unsympathetic student of Wolf would have to admit that no two
of the personages he draws are the same. The characters of Brahms are
mostly of the same household, with the same heredity, the same physical
appearance, the same mental characteristics, even the same gait. The
man who lies brooding in the summer fields in _Feldeinsamkeit_ is
brother of the man who loves the maiden of _Wir wandelten_, and first
cousin of the girl who dies to the strains of _Immer leise wird mein
Schlummer_. They all feel deeply but a little sentimentally; they are
all extremely introspective; all speak with a certain slow seriousness
and move about with a certain cumbersomeness. Wolf's men and women are
infinitely varied, both in the mass and in detail; that is to say, not
only is his crowd made up of many diverse types, but each type--the
lovers, the thinkers, the penitents, and so on--is full of an inner
diversity.
Wolf surpasses Brahms again in everything that pertains to the
technical handling of the songs. Without wishing to make out that
Brahms was anything but the great singer he undoubtedly was, it must be
said frankly that he is too content to work within a frame that he has
found to be of convenient size, shape, and color, instead of letting
his picture determine the frame. The quaint accusation is sometimes
brought against Wolf that he is more of an instrumental writer than
a singer, the pianoforte parts of his songs being self-subsistent
compositions. A devil's advocate might argue with much more force
that it was Brahms who, in his songs, thought primarily in terms of
instrumental phrases even for his voices. It is his intentness upon the
beauty of an abstract melodic line that makes him pause illogically as
he does after me _Königin_ in the first line of _Wie bist du, meine
Königin_, thus making a bad break in the poetical sense of the words,
which is not really complete until the second line is heard, the _Wie
bist du_ not referring, as many thousands of people imagine, to the
_Königin_, but to the _durch sanfte Güte wonnevoll_ in the next line.
In other songs, such as _An die Nachtigall_, Brahms yields at the very
beginning to the fascination of what is unquestionably in itself a
beautiful phrase, without regard to the fact that it will get him into
difficulties both of psychology and of 'declamation' as the song goes
on, owing to his applying the same kind of musical line-ending to
poetical line-endings that vary in meaning each time. Wolf never makes
a primitive blunder of this kind. He sees the poem as a whole before he
begins to set it; if he adopts at the commencement a figure that is to
run through the whole song, it is a figure that can readily be applied
to each phase of it without doing psychological violence to any. If at
any point its application involves a falsity, it would be temporarily
discarded. Brahms, again, is almost as much addicted to _clichés_
as Schubert, and with less excuse--the _cliché_ of syncopation for
syncopation's sake; for example, the _cliché_ of a harmonic darkening
of the second or third stanza of a poem, and so on. From limitations
of this sort Wolf is free; his harmonic and rhythmic idioms are as
varied as his melodic. The great variety of his songs makes it almost
impossible to cite a few of them as representative of the whole.
V
For Wolf the song was the supreme form of expression. In the case of
Strauss the song is only an overflow from the concert and operatic
works. In spite of the great beauty of some of his songs, such as the
_Ständchen_ and _Seitdem dein Aug_, we are probably justified in saying
that is not a lyrist _pur sang_. A large number of his songs have
obviously been turned out for pot-boiling purposes. Certain undoubted
successes in the smaller forms notwithstanding, it remains true that he
is at his best when he has plenty of space to work in, and, above all,
when he can rely on the backing of the orchestra, as in the splendid
_Pilgers Morgenlied_, and the 'Hymnus.' As a rule, he fails to achieve
Wolf's happy balance between the vocal part and the accompaniment; very
often his songs are simply piano pieces with a voice part added as
skillfully as may be, which means sometimes not skillfully at all.
Among Max Reger's numerous songs are some of great beauty. He is
sometimes rather too copious to be a thoroughly successful lyrist;
both the piano and the vocal ideas are now and then in danger of being
drowned in the flood of notes he pours about them. But when he has
seen his picture clearly and expressed it simply and directly, his
songs--the _Wiegenlied_ and _Allein_, for example, to mention two of
widely differing genres--are among the richest and most beautiful of
our time. Mahler poured some of the very best, because the simplest
and truest, of himself into such songs as the _Kindertodtenlieder_,
the four _Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen_, _Ich atmet einen linden
Duft_, and _Mitternacht_ (from the four Rückert lyrics), and certain
of the settings of the songs from _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_. But the
list of good, and even very good, song-composers in the Germany of the
latter half of the nineteenth century is almost endless; it seems,
indeed, as if there were at least one good song in the blood of every
modern German, just as there was at least one good lyric or sonnet in
the blood of every Elizabethan poet. From Cornelius to Erich Wolff the
stream has never stopped.
In virtually all these men except Erich Wolff, however, the stream has
been, as with Strauss, a side branch of their main activity. It was
only to be expected that the next powerful impulse after Hugo Wolf
would come from a composer who, like him, gave to the songs the best of
his mental energies. Joseph Marx resembles Wolf superficially in just
the way that Wolf superficially resembles Wagner--in the elaboration
and expressiveness of what must still be called, for convenience
sake, the accompaniment to his voice parts. But, while it would be
premature as yet to see in Marx another Wolf, it is certain that we
have in him a lyrist of considerable individuality. He has managed to
utilize the Wolfian technique and the Wolfian heritage of emotion,
as Wolf utilized those of Wagner, without copying them; they have
become new things in his hands. He has also drawn, as Wolf did, upon
quite a new range of poetic theme. He is not so keenly interested as
Wolf in the outer world. Wolf, like Goethe, had the eye of a painter
as well as the intuition of a poet, and his music is peculiarly rich
not only in more or less avowed pictorialism, but in a sort of veiled
pictorialism--a pictorialism at one remove, as it were--that conveys
a subtle suggestion of the movement or color of some concrete thing
without forcing the symbol for it too obtrusively upon our ear.
(Excellent examples are the suggestion of gently drooping boughs and
softly falling leaves in _Anakreons Grab_, and, in another style,
the unbroken thirds from first to last of _Nun wandre, Maria_, so
charmingly suggestive of the side-by-side journeying of Joseph and
Mary.) Marx's music offers us hardly a recognizable example of this
pictorialism; his most ambitious effort has been in the _Regen_ (a
German version of Verlaine's _Il pleure dans mon cœur_), which is one
of the least successful of his lyrics. Like Wolf, he has called in a
new harmonic idiom to express new poetic conceptions or new shades of
old ones; but he is apt to become the slave of his own manner, which
Wolf never did. His intellectual range, though not equal to that of his
great predecessor, is still a fairly wide one--from the luxuriance of
the splendid _Barcarolle_ to the philosophical warmth of _Der Rauch_,
from the bizarrerie of the _Valse de Chopin_ to the humor of _Warnung_,
from the earnest introspectiveness of _Wie einst, Hat dich die Liebe
berührt_, the _Japanesisches Regenlied_ and _Ein junger Dichter_ to the
sunny vigor of the _Sommerlied_.
Among the rest of the numerous composers--Humperdinck, Henning von
Koss, Hans Sommer (a personality of much charm and some power), Eugen
d'Albert, Weingartner, Bungert, Jean Louis Nicodé (b. 1853), and
others--each of whom has enriched German music with some delightful
songs--a special word may be said with regard to two of them--Theodor
Streicher (born 1814) and Erich W. Wolff (died 1913). Streicher follows
too faithfully at times in the footprints of the poet--which is only
another way of saying that the musician in him is not always strong
enough to assert his rights. His work varies greatly in quality. Some
of it is finely imaginative and organically shaped; the rest of it is
a rather formless and expressionless series of quasi-illustrations of
a poetic idea line by line. He frequently aims at the humorous, the
realistic or the sententious in a way that a composer with more of the
real root of music in him would see to be a mere temptation to the art
to overstrain itself. But, though he is perhaps not more than half a
musician--the other half being poet, prosist, moralist, or what we
will--that half has produced some good songs, such as the _Fonte des
Amores_, _Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam_, the _Lied des jungen Reiters_,
_Maria sass am Wege_, the _Nachtlied des Zarathustra_, and the
_Weinschröterlied_. Erich Wolff was never more than a minor composer,
but that he had the genuine lyrical gift is shown by such songs as _Du
bist so jung_, _Sieh, wo du bist ist Frühling_, _Einen Sommer lang_,
and others. He is particularly charming when, as in _Fitzebue_, _Frisch
vom Storch_ and _Christkindleins Wiegenlied_, he exploits the childlike
vein that comes so easily to most Germans, and that has found its most
delightful modern expression in _Hänsel and Gretel_.
VI
A survey of German music at the present day leads to the conclusion
that, for the moment at any rate, it has come to the end of its
resources. All the great traditions have exhausted themselves. Strauss
has apparently said all he has to say of value (though, of course, he
may yet recover himself). Of this he himself seems uneasily conscious.
His later works exhibit both a tendency to revert to a Mozartian
simplicity (as in the final stages of _Ariadne auf Naxos_, the duet
_Ist ein Traum, kann nicht wirklich sein_ in _Der Rosenkavalier_,
and elsewhere), and here and there, as in 'The Legend of Joseph,' a
desire to coquet with the exoticisms of France and the East. All these
later works suggest that Strauss has partly lost faith in the German
tradition, without having yet found a new faith to take its place. Max
Reger is content to sit in the centre of his own web, spinning for
ever the same music out of the depths of his Teutonic consciousness.
In opera, in the song, in the symphony, in program music, in chamber
music, Germany is apparently doing little more at present than mark
time. Nevertheless there are undoubtedly germinating forces which will
come to fruition before long. Perhaps the men now creating will be the
instruments of the new voice, perhaps their pupils. One or two of the
younger generation, at any rate, have done things that may justly claim
our attention. One fact may be noticed in this connection: that the
supremacy seems to have shifted definitely from the North to the South.
Munich and Vienna are, indeed, the new centres, in place of Leipzig and
Berlin.
Thuille's successor as teacher of composition in the Munich Academy
of Tonal Art, Friedrich Klose (b. 1862), is, as a pupil of Bruckner,
particularly qualified to represent the South-German branch of the New
German school. His single dramatic work, _Ilsebill_, did not succeed
in establishing him among the successful post-Wagnerians. Walter
Niemann[42] speaks of it as showing that his real strength lies in the
direction of symphonic composition and music for the Catholic Church,
and continues: 'His three-movement symphonic poem _Das Leben ein Traum_
(1899), with organ, women's chorus, declamation and wind instruments,
and in a less degree his _Elfenreigen_, already proved this. Through
him Hector Berlioz enters modern Munich by the hand of Liszt, Wagner,
and Bruckner, and particularly Berlioz the forest romanticist of the
"Dance of the Sylphs" and "Queen Mab." Again and again Klose returns
to church music--with the D minor Mass, the prelude and double fugue
for organ, lastly, with _Die Wallfahrt nach Kevlaar_. * * * If his
striving after new forms, the searching in other directions after the
dramatic element which was denied him in the ordinary sense, savors of
a strongly experimental character, his music itself is all the less
problematic. It is honest through and through, warm-blooded, felt and
natural.' The quiet breadth of his themes, the deep glow of his color
reveals the pupil of Bruckner. His manner of development in sequences,
approaching the 'endless melody,' betrays the disciple of Wagner. A
_Festzug_ for orchestra, _Vidi aquam_ for chorus, orchestra, and organ,
and an 'Elegy' for violin and piano are also among his works.
Siegmund von Hausegger (b. 1872), son of the distinguished critic
and conductor Friedrich von Hausegger, though he began his creative
activity in the dramatic field (with _Helfrid_, performed in 1893
in Graz, and _Zinnober_, 1888, in Munich), has earned his chief
distinction with the symphonic poems _Barbarossa_ (1902) and _Wieland
der Schmied_ (1904). In these he remains true to the Wagnerian
formula, while in his songs he upholds the gospel of Hugo Wolf. A
youthful _Dyonysische Phantasie_ (1899), which preceded these works,
is characterized by Niemann as 'showing the line of development in
the direction of a "kapellmeister music" in Strauss' style.' Since
then there have come from his pen a number of fine choruses with
orchestra, some for men's voices, others mixed. Hausegger was a pupil
of his father, of Degner, and of Pohlig (in piano) and has achieved
a high standing as conductor, first at the Graz opera, 1896-97, then
of the Kaim concerts in Munich (from 1899) and the Museum concerts in
Frankfort.
A new impulse may one day be given to German music by the remarkable
boy, Erich Korngold (born 1897), who, while quite a child, showed an
amazing mastery of harmonic expression and of general technique, and a
not less amazing depth of thought. It remains to be seen whether, as he
grows to manhood, he will develop a personality wholly his own (there
are many signs of this already), or whether he will merely relapse into
a skilled manipulator of the great traditions of his race. But it is
vain to try to forecast the future of music in Germany or in any other
country. Much music will continue to be written that owes whatever
virtues it may possess merely to a competent exploitation of the racial
heritage. Of this type a fair sample is the _Deutsche Messe_ of Otto
Taubmann (born 1859). On the other hand, something may come of the
revolt against tradition that is now being led by Arnold Schönberg (b.
1874).
This composer seemed destined, in his earlier works, to carry still
a stage further the great line of German music; the mind that could
produce the beautiful sextet _Verklärte Nacht_ and the splendid
_Gurrelieder_ at the age of twenty-five or so seemed certain of a
harmonious development, bringing more and more of its own to build with
upon the permanent German foundation.
Thanks to this complete change of manner, he has become one of the
'sensations' of modern music. And it is still an open question whether
these later works have a real musical value, or whether they are only
fruitless experiments with the impossible. There are many who say
that this later Schönberg is a deliberate 'freak.' He found himself
overwhelmed, they say, with the competition in modern music, unable
to make his name known outside of Vienna among the mass of first- and
second-rate talents that were flooding the concert halls; he found
also a public somewhat weary with surplus music and ready to respond
to novelty in any form. What more natural, then, than that he should
devise works different from anything existing, and gain preëminence by
the ugliness of his music when he could not by its beauty? This theory
might be more tenable if Schönberg were a third-rate talent. But there
can be no question of his great ability as shown in his 'early manner.'
This manner, based on Wagner and Strauss, was one of great energy
and complexity. It combined the resounding crash of great Wagnerian
harmonies with the sensuous beauty that has always been associated
with the music of Vienna. The score of the _Gurrelieder_ is one of the
most complex in existence. But the complexity does not extend to the
harmonic idiom. In this Schönberg was traditional, though by no means
conventional.
But there came a time in his development when he began restlessly
searching for new forms of expression. This he found in a type of
writing which completely rejects the old harmonic system consecrated
by Bach. The composer concentrates his attention on the interweaving
of the polyphonic voices, unconcerned, apparently, whether or not
they 'make harmony.' Considered purely as a polyphonic writer in
this manner he must be allowed to be masterly. His power of logical
theme-development in a purely abstract way is second only to that of
Reger among the moderns. But when this mode of writing is turned to
impressionistic purposes the result is far more questionable. Up to the
present time the musical world has by no means decided whether or not
this is 'music' at all. It is at least probable that its value lies
chiefly in its experimental fruitfulness. Music since Wagner has been
tending steadily toward a negation of the harmonic principles of the
classics, and there was apparently needed someone who--for the sake of
experiment at least--would overturn these principles altogether and see
what could be developed out of a purely empirical system.
The music of the early Schönberg--the Schönberg who literally lived and
starved in a Viennese cellar--is stimulating in the highest degree.
The early songs[43] strike a heroic note; they sing with a declamatory
melody, sometimes rising into inspired lyricism, which seems to say
that Olympus is speaking. The accompaniment is invariably pregnant
with energetic comment. But the _Gurrelieder_ is the work on which
Schönberg spent most of his early years. These 'songs' are in reality
a long cantata for soli, chorus and orchestra. The text, taken from
the Danish, tells of King Waldemar, who journeyed to Gurre and there
found his bride Tove. They lived in bliss for a time, but then Tove
died and Waldemar cursed God. Tove's voice called to him from the
song of a bird, and he gathered his warriors together and as armed
skeletons they dashed every night among the woods of Gurre, pursuing
their deathly, accursed chase. Tired out with his immense labor, and
despairing of ever securing production for his work, Schönberg laid
aside the _Gurrelieder_ before it was finished. Some years later, when
he had begun to make a little reputation by his later compositions, his
publisher urged him to finish the work, promising a public performance
with all the paraphernalia required by the score. This included a
huge chorus and an orchestra probably larger than any other that a
musician has ever demanded. The performance was given in Vienna and
established Schönberg's European fame. The unity of the work is marred
by the fact that the last quarter of it is written in the composer's
'second manner.' But the great portions of the _Gurrelieder_ must
certainly rank among the noblest products of modern music. The end of
the first part, in which Waldemar chides God for being a bad king, in
that he takes the last penny from a poor subject--this scene throbs
with a Shakespearean dignity and power. Tove's funeral march and the
scene in which the dead queen speaks from the song of the bird, are
no less inspired. Finally, the work has a text as beautiful as any
which a modern composer has found. The other great work of the early
period is the sextet, _Verklärte Nacht_, performed in America by the
Kneisel Quartet. This takes as a 'scenario' a poem by Richard Dehmel,
telling how the night was 'transfigured' by the sacrifice of a husband
in allowing his wife freedom in her love. The spiritual story of the
poem is closely followed by the music, though there is no pretense of
a close 'argument' or 'program.' The voices of the various characters
are represented by the various solo instruments. Yet this is no mere
program music. Judged for itself alone it proves a work of the highest
beauty, one of the finest things in modern chamber music.
The 'Pelléas and Mélisande' is one of the transition works, but
partakes rather of the character of the 'second manner.' The greatest
work of this period, however, is the first string quartet, performed
in America by the Flonzaley Quartet in the winter of 1913-14. This is
'absolute' music of the purest kind. It does not follow the sonata
form, and its various movements are intermingled (split up, as it
were, and shaken together), but it shows a strict cogency of structure
and firm sustaining of the mood. The 'second manner' is marked by
a mingling, but not a fusing, of the early and later styles. In the
first quartet the first fifty bars or so are in the severe later
style, in which the polyphony is complexly carried out without regard
to the harmonic implications. In these measures Schönberg shows his
great technical skill in the interweaving of voices and the economic
development of themes. The largo which comes towards the end of the
work is a passage of magical beauty.
In the last period come the _Kammersymphonie_, the second quartet, the
two sets of 'Short Piano Pieces,' the 'Five Orchestral Pieces,' and
the _Pierrot_ melodrame. The _Kammersymphonie_ is in one movement. The
music is lively and the counterpoint complex but clear. The quartet
carries out consistently the absolute non-harmonic polyphony attempted
in the first, but, lacking the poetical passages of the early work,
it has found a stony road to recognition. _Pierrot_ has been heard in
two or three European cities and has been voted 'incomprehensible.'
The 'Five Orchestral Pieces,' performed in America by the Chicago
Orchestra, carry to the extreme Schönberg's unamiable impressionism.
In them one seeks in vain for any unity or meaning (beauty, in the
old sense, being here quite out of the question). They have, however,
a certain unity in the type of materials used and developed in each,
though their architecture remains a mystery. The 'Short Piano Pieces'
(the earlier ones come, in point of time, in the middle period) have
been much admired by the pianist Busoni, who has made a 'concert
arrangement' of them, and published them with a preface of his own.
Busoni claims that they have discovered new timbres of the piano, and
evoke in the ear a subtle response of a sort too delicate to have been
called forth by the old type of harmony. In general they are like the
Orchestral Pieces in character, seeming always to seek the _outré_
at the expense of the beautiful. Many profess to find a deep and
subtle beauty in these pieces. But if the empirical harmony which they
cultivate has any validity it must attain that validity by empirical
means. It is certain that our ears do not enjoy this music, as they are
at present constituted. But it is possible that as they hear more of
it they may discover in it new values not to be explained by the old
principles. But this leads us into the physics of musical æsthetics,
which is beyond the scope of this chapter. It should be noted, however,
that one of the by-products of such a crisis as this in which Schönberg
is playing such an important part, is the stimulation it gives to
musical theory. If Schönberg succeeds in gaining a permanent place
in music with his 'third manner,' it is certain that all our musical
æsthetics hitherto must be reconstructed.
In closing our cursory review, we may admit that German music can
afford to shed--may, indeed, be compelled in its own interest to
shed--many of the mental characteristics and the technical processes
that have made it what it is. There is an end to all things; and there
comes a time in the history of an art when it is the part of wisdom
to recognize that, as Nietzsche says, only where there are graves are
there resurrections. The time is ripe for the next great man.
E. N.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Other operas by Draeseke are _Gudrun_ (1884) and _Sigurd_
(fragments performed in 1867). _Bertrand de Born_ (three acts),
_Fischer und Karif_ (one act), and _Merlin_ were not published.
Draeseke's symphonic works are more important. (See p. 236.)
[36] Wilhelm Kienzl, b. Upper Austria in 1857, studied in Graz, Prague,
Leipzig, and Vienna. He visited Wagner in Bayreuth and became conductor
of the opera in Amsterdam (1883), at Krefeld, at Frankfort (1889), and
at the Munich _Hofoper_ (to 1893).
[37] _Orestes_ is a trilogy based on Æschylus and consisting of: I,
_Agamemnon_; II, _Das Totenopfer_; III, _Die Erinyen_.
[38] For biographical details, see below (p. 258).
[39] His sextet for piano and wind instruments in B major (op. 6) in
classic style, but of brilliant originality, first made his name known.
In the later works he sacrificed some of the emotionalism, the lyric
freshness and warmth of color of the southern lyricist for the sake of
modernity. This is noticeable in his piano quintet in E-flat, op. 20;
his 'cello sonata, op. 22; and his violin sonata, op. 30. There are
also a 'Romantic Overture' and _Traumsommernacht_ for orchestra, and an
organ sonata.
[40] _Das goldene Kreuz_ is a charming aftergrowth of the German comic
opera of the Lortzing type with a touch of Viennese sentimentality.
Others by the same composer are _Der Landfriede_, _Bianca_, _Das
steinerne Herz_, _Schach dem König_, _etc._
[41] The work of Brahms as a whole has been treated in another portion
of this work (Vol. II, Chap. XV). It will, however, be necessary to say
a few words with regard to him in this section, in order to bring the
essential nature of Wolf's achievement into a clearer light.
[42] _Die Musik seit Richard Wagner_, 1914.
[43] See Volume V, pp. 342 ff.