Musical Criticisms Part 4

[Sidenote: ="Eroica" Symphony.=

_February 1, 1900._]

The fact that the leading theme in the first movement of the "Eroica"

Symphony is taken note for note from Mozart's youthful operetta, "Bastien et Bastienne," is of no great importance. If an operetta contained something that could thus be caught up into the seventh heaven of art, its existence was thereby justified very much better than the existence of most other operettas. The notion of bringing a charge of plagiarism against Beethoven in reference to this theme is absurd beyond expression. There is, after all, nothing in the theme but a certain rhythmical arrangement of the common chord so simple that it might well have occurred to two composers independently. Whether it occurred independently to Beethoven or whether he heard Mozart's operetta at the Elector's Theatre in Bonn while he was a boy and unconsciously reproduced the theme, as is conjectured by Sir George Grove, is of no importance. With Mozart the theme is little more than a piece of chance pa.s.sage-work. It leads to nothing; whereas with Beethoven it leads to developments of extraordinary richness and significance, forming the most important element in a tone-picture that greatly surpa.s.ses in pa.s.sionate and incisive eloquence, in fulness of matter, varied interest, and plastic force anything that previously existed in the world of music. It would be hard to mention any other of Beethoven's themes from which results quite so tremendous have been obtained. It is repeated between thirty and forty times in the course of the movement, reappearing under an endless variety of forms, a.s.signed to all sorts of different instruments, changing in key, in tone-colouring, in loudness or softness of utterance, producing an infinite variety of effects in the harmony, combining in all sorts of unexpected ways with other themes, and on every reappearance taking on new value, bringing fresh revelation. To such great uses may an operetta tune come at last, if it happen to be laid hold of by a Beethoven with an imagination like a mighty smelting furnace, and a hand that can model like a great sculptor in bronze. In Dr. Richter's interpretation of the "Eroica," the most striking point is his treatment of the contrast between those musical elements symbolising phases of virile energy and the strains of consolation and reconciliation. Of the latter element a characteristic example is the heavenly duet for oboe and 'cello that occurs just after the terrific outburst of rage and defiance in the "working-out" section of the first movement. It is a crisis of beauty and grandeur to which, so far as we know, no other conductor can now do justice. But here, and throughout the mighty first movement, we were reminded that Dr.

Richter's pre-eminence is really more unquestionable in Beethoven than in any other music. His Wagner renderings are approached by others, but his Beethoven renderings are not even approached. To the n.o.ble and solemn strains of the Funeral March again complete justice was done; and the same may be said of the scherzo--a movement full of radiant mirth and containing in the trio the most beautiful horn music ever written--and of the finale in variation form.

[Sidenote: =Symphony No. 2 in D.=

_January 15, 1904._]

According to Mr. Felix Weingartner, the advance from Beethoven's No. 2 to his No. 3 Symphony is so great as to be without parallel in the history of art, and this we regard as sound doctrine. The No. 3--the "Eroica"--represents not merely a contribution of unparalleled brilliancy to the symphonic music of the period, but an immense enlargement of its previously known possibilities. Such a work naturally dwarfs all that has gone before in its own kind; but it is very desirable to avoid the mistake of certain commentators who, perceiving a great gulf between No. 2 and No. 3, declare the former to be an immature work, not thoroughly characteristic of Beethoven, but exhibiting him as a mere disciple of Haydn and Mozart. While listening yesterday to the wonderfully animated and expressive rendering one could scarcely fail to be struck by the fact that it is all intensely Beethovenish; that it goes beyond Mozart, quite as distinctly and persistently as Mozart in his superb G minor Symphony goes beyond Haydn. We need a revision of the current view in regard to these early Beethoven Symphonies. Only the first is immature. No. 2 is stamped with the true Beethoven individuality on every page, and is comparable with Mozart's G minor in the richness of its organisation and the potency of its charm. The enormous difference between No. 2 and No. 3 is not to be correctly indicated by calling the former immature. It is a difference that separates the Beethoven Symphonies from No. 2 to the end into two well-defined groups. As was long ago observed, the odd-number Symphonies, beginning with 3, are cast more or less in the heroic mould, while the intervening even-number Symphonies are much milder in character--creations of halcyon periods in which the composer would seem to have been storing up energy for the t.i.tanic labours of 3, 5, 7, and 9. Bearing this in mind, we have no difficulty in a.s.signing No. 2 to its proper place. It is to be grouped along with 4, 6, and 8, and it may thus be called the first of the "halcyon" Symphonies. Besides the general character of the music there is one very special reason for not accepting the view of No. 2 as an immature work. In the second subject of the Larghetto, we have a very beautiful and original musical idea, so thoroughly recognised by the composer as one of his best and most characteristic that he returned to it many years later when composing his last and greatest slow movement. Compare pp. 29 and 363 of Sir George Grove's "Beethoven and his Nine Symphonies," noticing in particular that the key-relation of the syncopated theme to the general scheme of the movement is the same in the two cases.

[Sidenote: ="Missa Solennis."=

_February 1, 1901._]

Until yesterday Beethoven's "Missa Solennis" had not been heard at these concerts, but it is not surprising that performances of such a work should be few and far between. It is, beyond question, the most austere of all musical works--a product of Beethoven's quite inexorable mood. At the period when it was written the composer had become a sort of suffering Prometheus. Even apart from his deafness, it is wonderful that Beethoven's persistent ill-fortune, his isolated and unhappy life, should not have discouraged him and checked the flow of his creative energy. But that the mightiest of his compositions should have been produced when he was stone-deaf--that is surely one of the most perfectly amazing among well-authenticated facts! So far as we know, there never was any other case in which deafness failed to cut a person off altogether from the world of music. With Beethoven it only brought a gradual change of style. As the charm that music has for the ear faded away he became more and more absorbed, aloof, austere, and spiritual.

The warm human feeling of his middle-period compositions gave way to a style of such unearthly grandeur and sublimity as are oppressive to ordinary mortals. Of that unearthly grandeur there is no more typical example than the "Missa Solennis." Not only in regard to the composition but even in regard to a performance the ordinary language of criticism is at fault. Who ever heard a "satisfactory" performance of the "Missa Solennis"? A spirit of sacrifice is demanded of the performers; for the music is written from beginning to end with an utter want of consideration for the weaknesses and limitations of the human voice. Of course that would be intolerable in an ordinary composer. Handel's combination of German structural solidity with Italian courtesy, sense of style, and delight in rich vocal rhetoric is the ideal thing. By comparison with the reasonable and tactful Handel, Beethoven is a kind of monster, from the singer's point of view, but a monster of such genius that his terrible requirements must occasionally be met.

The quartet was best in the astonishing "Dona n.o.bis pacem" section, where the composer seems to represent humanity as endeavouring to take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence, protesting against all the oppression that is done under the sun, and sending up to the throne of G.o.d so instant a clamour for the gift of peace as may be heard amid the very din of strife. For that prayer for peace sounds against the sullen rolling of drums and menacing clangour of trumpets, the voices having now a mighty unanimity, now the wail of this or that forlorn victim. One looks in vain through the temple of musical art for anything to match that tremendous conception marking the final phase of the "Missa Solennis."

[Sidenote: ="Fidelio."=

_October 28, 1904._]

A most strange and uncla.s.sifiable chamber in the palace of musical art is reserved for Beethoven's "Fidelio." A sort of despair is likely to come over one who attempts to state how Beethoven stands in relation to dramatic music. If one says that he was not a great dramatic composer, there arise the questions--Did he not make the Symphony a hundred times more dramatic than it ever was before? Did he not make music in a.s.sociation with Goethe's "Egmont" that seems to belong for evermore to that drama? Did he not individualise Leonora in music as well as Mozart had individualised the much less exalted characters of Donna Anna and Zerlina? Did he not achieve in his "Third Leonora" something that no one has ever equalled or can ever hope to equal in the domain of the dramatic overture? In fact he did all those things, and several more that can be cited in apparent refutation of the statement that he was not a great dramatic composer. And yet it is certain that he never composed dramatic music as one to the manner born--not with the unfailing adequateness to the theme of Gluck, the felicitous profusion of Mozart, the glowing picturesqueness of Weber. No; in the mighty river of Beethoven the symphonist's invention shrinks to a trickle in his one opera. The water is incomparably limpid, and blossoms of the rarest beauty and fragrance grow on the banks of the stream; but every page is stamped, as it were, with the admission that writing operas was not Beethoven's strong point: and beyond question he acted wisely in writing only one. How mighty is the change when he takes the symbols of his one musical drama and uses them for a monumental purpose, in the great "Leonora" Overture! Beethoven is Shakespearean in the range of his mind and in his att.i.tude towards life, which he always approaches on the purely human side, and without the preoccupations of the Court, the camp, the cloister, the academic grove, or the church. But he is not Shakespearean in his medium of expression, which is hard and unyielding--a kind of musical bronze or granite. Yet "Fidelio"--despite its jejune story, which suggests that Beethoven, having objected to Mozart's "Don Giovanni" as scandalous, felt it his duty to compose an opera on a subject that should be "strictly proper," and despite its thin vein of invention--inevitably retains its hold on the musical world. To call the success of it a _succes d'estime_ would be a misuse of words. It focuses a certain range of poetic ideas that nothing else of its kind touches, and stands--with its Wordsworthian simplicity and moral goodness--among other operas like a Sister Clare amid a group of fine ladies.

CHAPTER III.

BERLIOZ.

[Sidenote: ="Symphonie Fantastique."=

_November 1, 1901._]

The "Symphonie Fantastique" offers a more complete picture of the composer's musical personality than any other single work. As a specimen of youthful precocity it also stands alone. It was written at the age of twenty-six, when the composer was still a student at the Conservatoire, being persistently snubbed by a group of dons, who all--with the possible exception of Cherubini, the Princ.i.p.al--were utterly his inferiors in every kind of musical power, knowledge, and skill. The experience of Berlioz at the Conservatoire of Paris was very similar to Verdi's at a like inst.i.tution in Milan; but the marks of genius in work of the student period were far more distinct in Berlioz's than in Verdi's case. We have said that, as a work of precocious genius, the "Symphonie Fantastique" stands alone. No doubt other composers, such as Mozart and Schubert, had shown genius of a higher order at an even earlier age. But the "Symphonie Fantastique," as the work of a 'prentice-hand showing absolute mastery of the greatest and most complex resources, has no parallel. The great fact that has always to be remembered in regard to Berlioz is that he devoted himself with all the energy of an enormous and highly original talent to one particular task in music. That task was the winning of new material for the musical medium, and what Berlioz accomplished in the world of tone was very like what Christopher Columbus accomplished in the world of land and sea.

Berlioz too opened up a new hemisphere, and he did his work much more thoroughly than the great navigator. This mighty achievement secures for Berlioz a permanent place of the first importance in the musical hierarchy. But to be deterred by respect for his genius from admitting his faults is not the best way of using his magnificent legacy. Those faults are none the less monstrous for being inseparable from his individuality, and a thoroughly enlightened modern musician would probably find it very difficult to define the att.i.tude of his mind towards the works of Berlioz's art. In a sense, everything in the best of those works, among which the symphony played yesterday is unquestionably to be reckoned, is justified. When one finds an artist dealing with certain subjects as though to the manner born, and with enormous power and resource, one must not condemn him because those subjects are unpleasant or even horrible in the extreme. Such condemnation is not living and letting live. Artistic power is a.s.sociated with qualities of the highest and rarest that human nature produces, and it is always justified. The favourite subjects of Berlioz may well prove a stumbling-block. "Orgy" very nearly became in his hands a musical form. In at least three different works of his--"Symphonie Fantastique," "Harold in Italy," and "The d.a.m.nation of Faust"--we find a movement called by some such name, and, his appet.i.te for horrors not being satisfied with the "Witches' Sabbath" in the first of those three works, he gives us another movement representing a procession to the guillotine of a young man condemned for murdering his sweetheart. In close a.s.sociation with this love of the lurid, spectral, and ghastly is the bitterly ironical spirit which conceived an "Amen" chorus in mock ecclesiastical style to be sung over a dead rat, the guying of the composer's own love-theme with a jig-like variation on a specially ugly instrument (the E flat clarinet) introduced into the orchestra for that purpose, and the use of the stern and majestic Plain Song theme of the "Dies Irae" as a _cantus firmus_, to which the mocking laughter of witches (rushing past through the air in a huge weltering broomstick cavalcade) makes a kind of fantastic counterpoint. It is well to bear in mind that the same talent gave us such miraculous gossamer fancies as the "Queen Mab" Scherzo and the chorus of Sylphs and that most tenderly beautiful and vividly conceived idyll "L'Enfance du Christ."

For the "Symphonie Fantastique" the orchestra had to be considerably enlarged. In addition to all the usual instruments the score requires an E flat clarinet, two bells (G and C), a second harp, an extra kettledrum, and a second ba.s.s tuba. Everything had been rehea.r.s.ed with infinite care, and in all five movements the rendering was a display of virtuosity such as only a very rare combination of favourable circ.u.mstances would allow one to hear. No other composer displays a very powerful and skilful orchestra to quite such immense advantage. As Mr. Edward Dannreuther has finely and truly remarked--"With Berlioz the equation between a particular phrase and a particular instrument is invariably perfect." His violently wilful character manifests itself in the harmony. His fancies devour one another, like dragons of the prime, instead of progressing and developing in an orderly manner. But the marvellous beauty of the tone-colouring and aptness of the pa.s.sage-work never fail. The parts of the symphony most thoroughly enjoyed by the audience were, no doubt, the second movement in waltz rhythm (where the most wonderful use is made of the two harps and the wood-wind) and the march in the fourth movement, where the part symbolising the emotions of the mob rather than of the victim is very brilliant and telling, with suggestions of that Hungarian March which the composer afterwards made his own.

[Sidenote: ="Faust."=

_March 7, 1902._]

No more original or more enigmatic figure than Hector Berlioz was produced during the nineteenth century by the world of art--a word that may here be understood in its widest acceptation, and thus as including architectural, musical, graphic, plastic, and literary art. In one of the earliest _critiques_ on his "Faust," which was first performed at the Opera Comique in Paris in 1846, the opinion was expressed that he ought to have been a chemist, not a musician--a remark that gives extraordinary point to a piece of advice that Berlioz once gave to artists in general: "Always collect the stones that are thrown at you; they may help to build your monument." The remark that Berlioz ought to have been a chemist, originally intended as a sneer, is a perfect case in point. He _was_ a chemist, and it is his chief glory to have been that in the world of music. He tested, a.n.a.lysed, combined anew, and prodigiously enriched those elements of tone which are the material of the musical artist. Of course he was far more than chemist. He was also explorer, but always in search of material for his essentially chemical experiments in tone. One can scarcely wonder that "Faust" was a failure at first. Amongst the happy-go-lucky patchwork of the book is much evidence of that coa.r.s.e and satirical vein which was so strong in the composer. How could the public be expected to approve of an opera on the subject of Faust that had no love-song or truly lyrical utterance of any kind for the tenor hero, but, on the other hand, had a song about a flea and a rat's requiem, ending with an "Amen" chorus in mock ecclesiastical style, to say nothing of a scene in Pandemonium and an _orgie infernale_? Berlioz was a sort of a belated mediaeval. The very t.i.tle, "d.a.m.nation de Faust," is mediaeval. Shakespeare and the other poets of Renaissance and later times recognise the fate of a soul as a matter _sub judice_ till the end of the world. But Berlioz had no more scruple than Dante in antic.i.p.ating the Last Judgment. Mediaeval, too, is the coa.r.s.eness of the scene in Auerbach's cellar; and the _chanson gothique_, about the King of Thule, sounds as if it had come to the composer as a reminiscence from some previous state of existence, so marvellous is the power of the quaint and weird melody to transport the spirit back to a musty and hierarchic world with walled towns and narrow streets, with terrorism and torture-chambers, with crusades and knight-errantry, with impossible heights of holiness and unimaginable depths of diabolism. But not to any of the defects or qualities rooted in the composer's mediaevalism must we look for the popularity which the work acquired in this country some thirty-four years after the original production in Paris and has retained ever since. What the general public enjoys is the superb peasants' chorus near the beginning, the arrangement of the Racoczy March, which is the finest piece of military music in existence, the chorus and dance of sylphs, Margaret's Romance, and Mephistopheles' Serenade. Perhaps, too, a good many of them take a sort of unregenerate pleasure in the rat and flea songs, while at heart disapproving of such things, and of course they like the ballad of the King of Thule, because no one who is musical at all can entirely fail to perceive the charm of that wonderful melody. It appeals to plenty of listeners who have no idea that there is anything Gothic or mediaeval about it.

[Sidenote: =The Centenary Celebrations.=

_December 10, 1903._]

Berlioz was the Columbus of music; he discovered the New World. By his theory and practice of orchestration he so greatly enlarged and enriched the resources of tone that all contemporary and subsequent composers capable of understanding his message experienced an immense exhilaration--a sense that new and hitherto undreamed-of possibilities were opening out before them. The starting-point of his momentous voyages was the idea of what is called "programme music." Like Wagner, he perceived that after Beethoven symphonic music could do no more on the old lines, but that music might learn to characterise much more sharply than it had ever done before. His prodigious reform, enlargement, and enrichment of orchestration was entirely carried out under the influence of the desire for stronger and finer characterisation, for a more varied and interesting play of emotion and graphic suggestion. A good many musicians and music-lovers at the present day, recognising the enormous merit of Berlioz's achievement in orchestration, yet consider that, like Moses, he was not allowed to enter the promised land to which he had led his people; or, more literally, that Berlioz was not able to make really good use of his own discoveries, the importance of which is to be recognised in the music of Wagner, Dvorak, Tchakovsky, and others who learned from Berlioz, rather than in his own music. While admitting that later men, such as those mentioned, have used the Berlioz instrument to a more spiritual kind of purpose or with greater epic and dramatic significance, the open-minded music-lover can scarcely deny that the compositions of Berlioz, considered as absolute works of art, include a majestic array of masterpieces. Such things as the "Te Deum" and "Messe des Morts" bear, in their unparalleled vastness of conception, the stamp of an imagination comparable only to Michel Angelo's. They are mighty fragments of larger works never carried out--impossible to be carried out. The best-known work by Berlioz--and the most perfect, on the whole, of the extended works--is the "Faust," which must not be judged as an operatic version of Goethe's "Faust," but rather as a musical setting of the "Faust" story in the racy and drastic manner of the mediaeval puppet plays, Goethe's drama being only used in so far as it affords suggestions for scenes of the well-salted and drastic animation that Berlioz loved. Berlioz was a typical French Romantic. His music is absolutely wanting in the ethical element that is so strong in Bach and Beethoven. But he had a powerful and truly poetic sense of the wonderful, the beautiful, the weird, and the characteristic. Over and over again in his "Faust" he achieves typical excellence. That rapture of spring which is one of the great, imperishable poetic themes has nowhere in music been better rendered than in the first pages of "Faust"

(orchestra and tenor voice), and the ensuing peasant choruses are by far the best musical expression of that "sunburnt mirth" which outside the world of art is only possible under a southern sky. The Racoczy March as orchestrated by Berlioz is not only the finest piece of military music in the world but is an immeasureably long way ahead of the next best piece. The energy, gaiety, and tumultuous eloquence of the final section (altogether Berlioz's own, of course), give us the musical symbol of "La Gloire"--that important conception which has played a part in history for three centuries. The scene on the banks of the Elbe is woven of moonbeams and gossamer fancies that no other composer could have handled. The rhythm of the Mephisto serenade is too good for this world.

Here the composer succeeds in expressing the diabolical without any direct suggestion of malice--simply by creating the rhythm and accent of laughter too monstrously whole-hearted and full-blooded for a mere man.

Another miracle is the "Chanson Gothique" (about the King of Thule), which is, as it were, the distilled essence of all mediaeval romances about lovesick maidens looking forth from their cas.e.m.e.nts. In the latter part the composer falls a victim to his evil genius--the _macabre_,--and the terrible squint of the madman is perceptible in the "Ride to the Abyss" and the howling and gibbering of demons, which entirely lack the significance of the demons in "Gerontius," and simply show us the composer indulging his taste for the grotesque horrors of the old miracle plays. The latter part of the composition should not be taken too seriously. Even in the early part there is one example of the composer's peculiar fondness for guying the offices of religion. But this, too, should be lightly pa.s.sed over and forgiven in consideration of the feast that the work as a whole offers to the imagination and the bracing salt wind of the composer's manly and affirmative genius.

CHAPTER IV.

LISZT.

[Sidenote: ="Faust" Symphony.=

_November 21, 1902._]

The melancholy fact has to be recorded that the "Faust" Symphony fell flat on its first performance in Manchester. There seems to be something in our national temperament which makes it peculiarly difficult for us to penetrate the secret of Liszt and learn to understand his tone-language. In musical society on the Continent "not to like Liszt"

is regarded as a fixed characteristic of the Englishman, and those few Englishmen who have learned to like Liszt remember the gradual process by which their ears were opened, like the learning of a foreign language after one is grown up. Some composers have a manner of utterance that may be picked up half unconsciously; but for Britons, at any rate, Liszt's is not of that kind. Patience, persistent study, reflection, observation, comparison, besides an ear of some subtlety, are necessary for the understanding of it, and we have not the habit of taking music seriously (except in the abstract) or of giving it our whole attention.

So a thing like the "Faust" Symphony goes over our heads as if it were a poem in some foreign language of which we only apprehend the rhythm. It is a pity, for to those few who understand the poem is very great and splendid. Like some ghostly Ancient Mariner, the spirit of the master holds us "with his glittering eye," and speaks as one who is full of matter and wisdom and is a master of life. His story is that old one about Faust and Gretchen--not the Berlioz version ending with the d.a.m.nation of Faust, but the original Goethe version which deals with the working out of Faust's salvation (the difference between the two being really quite considerable),--and in the telling of this story he conveys lessons to the heart that are much too delicate for words. A good many composers have made "Faust" music of one kind or another. Spohr and Schumann, Berlioz and Boto, Wagner and Liszt, all paid their tribute to the inexhaustible interest of the theme, besides Gounod--most superficial and consequently best known of them all. Even in Gounod, however, there is a little genuine "Faust" music--a very little. It is to be found in the first few bars of the overture, in the Mephistopheles Serenade, and, perhaps one might add, in the song about the King of Thule, though Berlioz did that much better. Wagner's "Faust" Overture is quite a great composition, and it is nearest akin to Liszt's Symphony.

But it is much too one-sided to vie in interest with Liszt's tremendous composition, which seems to grasp the whole subject and tear the very heart out of it, with a kind of imaginative power suggesting Victor Hugo's, though the touch is more true. He begins with the solitary Faust in his study, plunged in gloomy meditation, every phase of which the music expounds (to him who listens closely enough)--intellectual pride, reduced to impotence in the endeavour to solve the "riddle of the painful earth"; the tranquillising of the spirit by mystical influences seeming to emanate from a higher world; then the reawakening of pain in the consciousness that had been hushed and charmed. Here the music, pa.s.sing up the chord with each note preceded by the semitone above, sounds like a series of broken sighs. And presently we encounter something quite new. A plaintive theme on the clarinet, answered by a single viola, symbolises the vision of feminine companionship. Hope reawakens, and the strength of Faust's nature a.s.serts itself in the splendid E major theme for full orchestra, destined to play the leading part throughout the work. The movement is long, thoughtful, and no less apt in invention than rich and glowing in tone-colour. In the second movement, headed "Gretchen," we encounter quite a different atmosphere.

It is a worthy counterpart to the Gretchen episode in Goethe's poem--no doubt the best picture of a girl, from the man's point of view, that exists in literature. Inexpressibly beautiful is the contrast between the fancy-free and the loving Gretchen. There is nothing in all music more rich and rapturous than the ensuing love-scene, which reminds one of the point in the first act of "Die Walkure" where the doors swing open and reveals to the enchanted gaze of the lovers the spring landscape bathed in moonlight. But Liszt is here more to the point than Wagner. Then comes Mephisto with his diabolical dance, turning everything into derision, till a light shines down from heaven, where the soul of Margaret appears among the angels, and the "spirit that denies," with his mask torn off, shrinks away, trembling and baffled.

Here the "chorus mysticus" gives utterance to the crowning idea of the "Faust" drama--"The woman-soul draweth us upward and on." Such a work as the "Faust" Symphony departs from the cla.s.sical model inasmuch as it is unified altogether by dramatic and characteristic and not at all by architectural principles. It may also be regarded as three character-sketches, which, with the help of some cross-reference, together tell a story. Any person well versed in modern music, on hearing this composition for the first time, cannot but be astonished at the number of ideas, afterwards used by other composers, that it contains. The most glaring case is the transformation music just before the entry of the "chorus mysticus," which has been conveyed bodily by Wagner, with only quite unimportant changes, into the third act of "Die Walkure," after the words--"So streif' ich dir die Gottheit ab." But dozens of other ideas in Wagner's "Tristan" and "Siegfried" and Strauss's "Till Eulenspiegel" one here finds in embryo.

[Sidenote: =Pianoforte Concerto in E Flat.=

_November 13, 1903._]

The att.i.tude of the musical public in this country towards Liszt is at the present day the most unsatisfactory and anomalous feature of the musical situation. It is not possible to name any individual who has done more than Liszt towards creating all that is best in the modern musical world. He created the pianoforte technique without which the later works of Beethoven could never have been performed, he inaugurated a new era of symphonic music by his invention of the Symphonic Poem, and he was the first to understand and interpret Wagner. But we persist in making our historic and traditional mistake. We do not appreciate the continuity of musical art, and we do not value the stimulating and school-forming influences. It is the same now as a hundred and fifty years ago, when we preferred Handel, who never influenced any other composer to good purpose, and who essentially represented the end of a development, to Bach, who is the greatest and most fruitful formative influence of any musical age, and who has powerfully influenced all subsequent composers of genius, except two or three of the Latin races.

In the early nineteenth century we made precisely the same mistake in regard to Mendelssohn and Schumann; now we are making it once more by preferring Tchakovsky to Strauss. But worse still is our mistake of refusing to listen to Liszt, without whom neither Tchakovsky nor Strauss could have existed as musical personages. Once more yesterday the superb Liszt Concerto in E flat was played and received with a kind of tolerance. Very fine playing, the audience seemed to think; but what a pity the composition was not something worth hearing! Yet it is quite the most brilliant and entertaining of Concertos. No person genuinely fond of music was ever known to approach it with an unprejudiced mind and not like it, and--what is more remarkable--the effect of the music on all those who study it with a view to playing it is so great that it invariably overcomes the ancient and deeply-rooted prejudice. But, for the general public, it is not a more notorious fact that Handel's "Messiah" is a great and admirable work than that the original compositions of Liszt are horrible. Consequently, when a work by Liszt is played they do not listen, but resign themselves to be bored; and so even a work like the E flat Concerto, which is quite popular in character and free from anything tormented or obscure, besides being the most brilliant pianoforte Concerto in existence, falls on listless ears and provokes only the half-hearted applause intended exclusively for the soloist.

CHAPTER V.

WAGNER.