Musical Criticisms Part 9

_March 18, 1902._]

Richard Strauss's song "Sehnsucht," raises a good many interesting questions, such as whether it is not, after all, on harmony rather than on tone-colouring that the essential quality of Strauss's music depends; whether the eminent South German composer would have found it necessary to be so persistently galvanic in his procedure had he not addressed a musical generation that is too fond of taking opium with Tchakovsky; whether it is with Eulenspieglish intent that he sets so many unsophisticated love-song texts to music that betrays contempt of mere lyrism, or whether he genuinely misunderstands the trend of his own talent. Thus one might continue indefinitely; for it is the regular effect of Strauss's music to crook the listener's mind into one huge note of interrogation. One further and more important question must, however, be added. Is it Strauss's deliberate intention to abolish rhythm? Would he add to the well-known saying, "_Am Anfang war der Rhythmus_" the rider "_aber jetzt nicht mehr_?" The over-strongly salted and too highly flavoured "Sehnsucht" was admirably sung, and the fascination of it, not unmixed with horror, was such that it had to be repeated. Nothing about Strauss is more disquieting than his after-effect on the musical palate. Whether one likes his style or not, any other sounds are tame by contrast with it, and a naf and mild composer such as Grieg (the Hans Andersen of music) seems almost bread-and-b.u.t.ter.

[Sidenote: ="Faust Symphonie,"

Dusseldorf.=

_May 23, 1902._]

The many violent anti-Lisztians in England should be particularly careful just now to keep their powder dry. They are going to have great trouble with this Eulenspiegelisch Mr. Strauss. A considerable group of English visitors heard his interpretation of the "Faust Symphonie" on Monday evening, and they are not likely to forget it. Strauss does not belong to the small group of international conductors who can travel from place to place, commanding success everywhere and in music of every style. He has not studied conductor's deportment carefully enough to be generally pleasing to the public. At the same time, his demonic talent comes out clearly enough in his conducting when he has to deal with some work that makes a special appeal to his sympathies. It seems to be his mission to justify Liszt after decades of misunderstanding and detraction. His rendering of the "Faust Symphonie" was simply a gigantic success. The stress and anguish of the first movement, the wonderful sweetness and charm of the Gretchen music, the almost incredible incisiveness and pregnancy of the characteristic music in the Mephistopheles section of the finale, and the unparalleled grandeur of the concluding idea, where the mask is torn from the face of the "spirit that denies" and the "chorus mysticus" enters with the final stanza, leading up to the crowning idea of the whole drama, "Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan"--these beauties and splendours of the composition were revealed with the infallible touch of a master into whose flesh and blood it long ago pa.s.sed: and the audience, including even the English visitors, felt it. The "Faust Symphonie" declares the composer to be, in his att.i.tude towards art and life, akin to Hugo, Delacroix, and the other great French Romantics, and the result of that att.i.tude seems more completely happy in music than in painting or literature. It makes one look back with envious longing to the freshness and abounding vitality of those fellows who found such huge relish in the great, broad, fundamental human themes, and resources so vast in the treatment of them. It also provokes bewildered reflections on the complex and enigmatic personality of the composer, who, for all his religious orthodoxy, was a more tremendous revolutionary in art than Wagner, and was, in fact, the originator of certain particularly fruitful Wagnerian ideas. All this and much more is to be learned from the Liszt interpretations of Strauss--a sphinx-like person who, as his abnormally big head sways on the top of his tall and bulky figure, to the accompaniment of fantastic gestures, works up his audience into a sort of phosph.o.r.escent fever, here and there provoking a process of sharp self-examination.

[Sidenote: ="Tod und Verklarung."=

_October 17, 1902._]

It is difficult to make out the prevalent state of mind in this country in regard to Richard Strauss--Richard II., as he is often called in Germany. Of course the upholders of a turnip-headed orthodoxy will not hear of him, any more than they would hear of Richard I. a quarter of a century ago, and he seems to have an irritating effect on all critics, except a certain very small minority in whose temperament there is something giving them the key to some part, at any rate, of Strauss's genius. What irritates the critics is simply the difficulty of finding a formula for Strauss. He has the annoying impertinence not to fit into any of their pigeon-holes. He is enigmatic, Sphinx-like, a complex personality not to be conveniently catalogued. That complex personality we are not here proposing to a.n.a.lyse, but on one point we venture to state a definite opinion. Those who a.s.sert that Strauss is a mere eccentric will sooner or later find themselves in the wrong. He has in a few cases played tricks on the public, but he is nevertheless a master-composer, in the full and simple sense of those words--a master-composer just as Mozart was. In "Tod und Verklarung" we find him in a mood of absolute seriousness. The theme is a death-bed scene, the phantasmagoria of a sick brain during the last moments of earthly consciousness, the final struggle with death, and then a wonderful suggestion of reawakening to immortality. The composition is thus, as a German critic has pointed out, the counterpart of Elgar's "Gerontius,"

so far as the subject is concerned; but in no other respect have the two works any similarity. The qualities with which Strauss's name is most commonly a.s.sociated--audacious and grotesque realism, gorgeous, intoxicating orchestral figuration and colouring--are here completely in abeyance. In the mood of the opening section there is kinship with the third act of "Tristan"--the same hush and oppression of the sick man's lair,--but not in the musical treatment, which with Strauss has much more reference to external detail (_e.g._, the ticking of the clock) than with Wagner. The introductory notes are full of weird power, and they lead on to some exquisitely pathetic "Seelenmalerei." In the ensuing agitato section any listener acquainted with other Symphonic Poems by the same composer--earlier or later--is likely to be surprised at his comparative moderation and restraint in depicting the terrors of the struggle with death. It cannot be denied that Strauss is greatly preoccupied with such ideas. He has set the very article of death to music on at least four different occasions ("Tod und Verklarung," "Don Juan," "Till," and "Don Quixote"). The hanging of "Till" is inconceivably drastic in its realism, and the last sigh of Don Quixote is the most unearthly thing in all music. Don Juan's death is purely _macabre_; but in "Tod und Verklarung" a certain suggestion of the _macabre_ gives way to something very different--the suggestion of the soul rising to immortality; and thus is initiated the final section, dominated by the n.o.ble and beautiful "transfiguration" theme. Those of the composer's admirers who "always thought he was a heathen Chinee" may here find matter for searchings of heart. For the thing is too well done not to have been sincerely felt.

[Sidenote: ="Zarathustra."=

_January 29, 1904._]

"Also sprach Zarathustra" ("Thus spake Zarathustra") is the first work in Strauss's most advanced manner. It is scored for the following enormous orchestra:--One piccolo and three flutes; three oboes and one cor anglais; one clarinet in E flat, two clarinets in B flat, and one ba.s.s clarinet in B flat; three ba.s.soons and one contraf.a.gotto; six horns in F, four trumpets in C, three trombones, and two ba.s.s tubas; kettle drums, ba.s.s drum, cymbals, triangle, and glockenspiel; a bell in E; organ, two harps, and the usual bow instruments; and the demands on the _technique_ of the performers are as exceptional as the number of instruments employed. It is as striking an example of Dr. Richter's energy that he should not have shrunk from the task of interpreting so vast and bewildering a score, as it is of his openness of mind that at his age he should have cared to bring forward the most typically advanced and modern of compositions--for that we take Strauss's "Zarathustra" to be in respect both of subject and treatment. We doubt whether another living musician of anything like Dr. Richter's age possesses in the same degree that youthful elasticity which can do full justice to the works of a younger generation. Moreover, he is not in any special sense a Straussian. He simply knows, as everyone conversant with the musical affairs of the present day knows, that Strauss is a composer of very great and commanding talent, and he thinks that in such a musical centre as Manchester his more important works ought to be known. So, in spite of a rather discouraging att.i.tude on the part of the public and an amount of extra trouble that can scarcely be reckoned up, he gives one of them from time to time. It is not Lancashire any more than it is London that, among British musical centres, has displayed the readiest appreciation of Strauss--the great and typical modern. It is the part of the country served by the Scottish Orchestra, where "Tod und Verklarung" has before now been chosen for performance at a _plebiscite_ concert. This seems very natural, for "Tod und Verklarung" is the clearest, simplest, and least heterodox of Strauss's orchestral works, and much easier to understand at a first hearing than Beethoven's C minor Symphony. It has, in fact, been recognised as a cla.s.sic nearly everywhere, though here it still lies under suspicion of being a mere piece of eccentricity. We can only hope that after hearing "Zarathustra"--which certainly is rather a large order--some of our conscientious objectors may reconsider their position. The extraordinary thing is that it was better received than the far more generally comprehensible "Tod und Verklarung." This was no doubt, in part, due to sheer astonishment, but also, we believe, to the perception that whatever else there may be in the work there is a certain grandeur of perception. It is scarcely possible to listen in a state of complete indifference to the opening tone-picture of sunrise, with its great booming nature ground-tone, that recalls the Introduction to Wagner's "Rheingold," and the ringing trumpet harmonies following the three notes of the soulless nature theme. The plan of the tone-poem that gradually unfolds is one of the clearest. It is on the same plan as the discourse of St. Francis on "La Joie Parfaite," quoted by Sabatier from the "Fioretti," where the holy man, the better to impress upon Brother Leo wherein perfect joy consists, first enumerates a series of things in which it does not consist, and then, having disposed of the erroneous opinions corresponding to various stages of the upward path towards true wisdom, tells us at last what perfect joy is. The wisdom of Zarathustra is, of course, very different from the wisdom of St. Francis, but his method of inculcating it is the same. He, too, has mortified the flesh with the "Hinterweltler" (perhaps "other-worldlings" is the nearest English equivalent), and thrown himself for a change into the vortex of exciting pleasures--the "Freuden und Leidenschaften" he calls them, as who should say the "fruitions and pa.s.sions of youth." It is characteristic that he puts the religion first and the exciting pleasures afterwards. He also "did eagerly frequent doctor and saint and heard great argument," that experience being symbolised by Strauss's "Fugue of Science." But none of these things, he gives us to understand, by emphatic use of the "disgust" theme, is the pearl of great price, or perfect joy, or anything of the sort. The penultimate part of the tone-poem deals with the conversion of Zarathustra into a dancing philosopher--his learning of the great lesson that one must "get rid of heaviness"; and here, of course, the musician is very thoroughly in his element. Very remarkable and surprising is the conclusion. Strauss has declared that the whole composition is simply his homage to the genius of Nietzsche, but it is impossible to resist the impression that in the manner of the ending he has endeavoured to suggest an improvement on Nietzsche--and he might well be pleased with himself, and so a little overbearing, after producing that "Tanzlied" (a sort of waltz for demiG.o.ds or "Uebermenschen"), which he has done much better than any other composer that ever lived could have done it. He ends with a night picture in B major against the final notes of which the persistent nature theme in C major once more rea.s.serts itself as a pizzicato ba.s.s;--in words, "but you have left the riddle of the painful earth just as much unsolved as it was before, for all your wisdom." Whether that ending is more to the point than Nietzsche's own or not, it is really wonderful that musical notes can be made to speak so plainly, and even to say something quite important.

[Sidenote: ="Ein Heldenleben,"

Liverpool Orchestral Soc.=

_Feb. 8, 1904._]

We have here to deal with the latest phase of Strauss, and to arrive at anything like a true estimate of "Heldenleben" we have to remember that Strauss is a reformer and the recognised leader of a party which, whether we like it or not, has played and is playing a great part in the world of music. The central principle of the Strauss school rests upon the perfectly correct observation that the general development of music during the last two centuries shows continual progress towards greater articulateness, and that there is no reason for regarding that progress as having reached its final stage with Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner.

Brahms and the neo-cla.s.sicists were on a wrong track, they consider, and it is the mission of Strauss and his connection to bring the art back into the paths of true progress. This indicates the sense in which Strauss is called a reformer. It is the usual fate of reformers to overshoot the mark; Mr. Weingartner thinks that Strauss has done so very seriously in his last three Symphonic Poems--"Zarathustra," "Don Quixote," and "Heldenleben,"--and I am constrained to give in my adherence to Mr. Weingartner's view. In each of the three works named there is much that only genius could have produced, but also something that is alien to genius. The perpetration of deliberate cacophony for a symbolical purpose we first encounter in "Zarathustra," where it is done in a tentative and restrained manner and on a very small scale. In "Don Quixote" the same procedure is used on a larger scale and with much greater boldness, and in "Heldenleben" it has given rise, in the "battle" section, to an extended movement that I can only call an atrocity. That section displays the composer in a mood of unparalleled extravagance. Taking harmony in the most extended sense that is possible, it still remains a thing outside the limits of which Strauss's battle-picture lies. It therefore fails altogether, I suggest, to carry on the progress of music towards greater articulateness. It is not music, and does nothing whatever for music. It is a monstrous excrescence and blemish--a product of musical insanity, bearing no trace whatever of that genius which produced the lovely and perfect "Tod und Verklarung" and the superbly racy and pithy orchestral Scherzo "Till Eulenspiegel."

The expression of such views carries with it the terrible consequence of being identified with "The Adversaries," whom Strauss, disarming criticism by a novel method, symbolises in the awful strains quoted as examples 4 and 5 in Mr. Newman's programme. But one must testify according to one's convictions, and I confess that I cannot be reconciled to section 4 of "Heldenleben," and find in section 5 a considerable element of merely curious mystification. The principle of "horizontal listening," which the whole-hog-going Straussians recommend, does not help me. Horizontal listening becomes, beneath the murderous cacophony of that battle section, simply supine listening.

In other parts of the work there is much that is thoroughly worthy of Strauss. Perhaps the most attractive thing of all is the violin solo representing the feminine element in the hero's life-experience. The wayward emotion of that part is rendered by the composer with a truly magical touch that shows with what wonderful freshness he conceives the task of such character-delineation in tones. How different from Chopin's princesses is the Straussian lady! How infinitely more subtle, varied, interesting, and psychologically true! The hero, too, is powerfully sketched, though throughout the section specially devoted to him one is conscious of the gigantic rather than the heroic. Most of the thematic invention is telling--perhaps more so than in "Zarathustra,"--and the "Seelenmalerei" in the love music and afterwards in the renunciation music is all very finely done. Even the drastic musical satire of the "Adversaries" is acceptable enough in its earlier phases. It is the polyphony in the sections of storm and stress that goes wrong. The subject of the work as a whole has the merit of general intelligibleness. But the composer identifies the hero much too insistently with himself; nor does he maintain the consistency of tone that is proper to a work of art. If sections 3, 4, 5 and 6 carried out the promise of sections 1 and 2 we should have a sort of gigantic Gulliverian humoresque. But with section 3 a new atmosphere is conjured up, and henceforth the work gravitates backwards and forwards between two irreconcilable elements--the one drastic, sarcastic, and cataplastic, the other at first subtle, sinuous, and soulful, and afterwards turning towards a mood of religious exaltation and austere contemplation.

[Sidenote: =Quartet in C Minor.=

_March 10, 1904._]

The case of Strauss is certainly an awkward one for the believers in the neo-cla.s.sicism of Brahms. In such works as the Quartet, op. 13, and the violin Sonata, op. 18, written twenty or more years ago, he declares himself an absolute Brahmsian, worshipping before all things the well-constructed musical sentence, using the extended harmonies and profuse figuration of the modern technique to express emotions that have but little individuality and are merely typical of the thorough-going German sentimentalist. Indeed, he here shows himself a better Brahmsian than Brahms, avoiding all his model's worst faults, such as his groping and fumbling, his muttering and whining, and only sentimentalising in quite a healthy sort of way and with a flow so abundant and easy that to find fault would seem intolerant. Yet, with all these wonderful qualifications for a great Brahmsian career, Strauss would have none of it, except during his most youthful period. For many years now he has been displaying utter contempt of the well-constructed musical sentence; also of German sentimentalism and of all the other traditional subjects of musical eloquence. As an orchestral composer, he has pursued a path of adventurous hardihood scarcely paralleled in the history of art, and he looks back to his Brahmsian chamber-music as belonging to a fledgeling state of his talent. As it is not open to the Brahmsians to say that those early works prove Strauss's incompetence as a composer of the orthodox kind, the only thing left for them to say is that the chamber-music is much the best of his whole output. Sooner or later we shall doubtless begin to hear that, and in the meantime those who like the early works can play them or listen to them with the comforting a.s.surance that the composer would not object, inasmuch as he has himself quite recently taken part in public performances of them. The Quartet--which Dr. Brodsky and his usual a.s.sociates, a.s.sisted by Mr.

Isidor Cohn, played yesterday--might rank as the mature work of anyone but Strauss. It is youthful, relatively to the composer, in the emotional basis of the music; but not in the workmanship, and least of all in the invention, which has all the pith and weight commonly telling of ripe experience. In short, it is an extremely good Quartet of the orthodox kind--one may even say, one of the best existing works for pianoforte and three bow instruments. The Andante is not quite such a marvel as the slow movement of the violin Sonata, but it is very nearly as good in invention and quite as good in its adaptation to the medium--that is, to the particular group of instruments. The Scherzo is as pithy as the Andante is glowingly sentimental, and the framing-in movements are magnificently done. Thoroughly adequate was the rendering of this immensely interesting composition. The tempo in the Scherzo was faster than the composer's own; but, as it is not possible for him to keep up the technique of a solo pianist, he may possibly avoid a very rapid tempo for that reason. Mr. Cohn brought out all the pa.s.sage work clearly enough, though the rapid tempo caused a certain dryness in the string tone. The other movements were satisfactory from every point of view. It is interesting to note in this Quartet an early example of Strauss's tendency to a.s.sociate a certain mood with a certain key. A contrasting section with an easier flow he a.s.signs to B major, and throughout the recurrences the original key a.s.signment is preserved in a manner very unlike the procedure of the older composers. Throughout the work the connection between tonality and emotional import is preserved in detail, and we here note a further development of the principle which prompted Beethoven to throw his prevalently dark and mysterious Symphony of Fate into C minor and his Rhythmic or Dancing Symphony into A major, but which, from him, met with no more than a very broad kind of recognition.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAMBER MUSIC.

[Sidenote: =Dvorak

Quintet in A Major.=

_February 2, 1897._]

Music for pianoforte, combined with two or more bow instruments, is usually const.i.tuted on anything but democratic principles, the percussion instrument standing to the others in very much the same relation as Jupiter to his satellites. But the splendid quintet by Dvorak given last night forms an honourable exception to this principle, the Bohemian composer's well-known preference for bow instruments having apparently counteracted the usual tendency to make the pianoforte part too prominent. Throughout the quintet there is an endless wealth and fertility of beautiful ideas. The opening allegro is based on two main elements which form an effective contrast, the one moving prevalently in syncopated double time, and the other approaching the character of a tarantelle. The pianoforte part is sometimes of independent interest, and sometimes consists of beautiful accompanying pa.s.sages constructed from chords in extended position. The second movement bears the name "Dumka," which, we believe, was first used as the name of a musical movement by Dvorak, or at any rate first became familiar to the world in general through his works. It is derived from a Slavonic root meaning "to think," and may be taken as something like the equivalent of "meditation." There are several peculiarly interesting and charming movements in the works of the Bohemian composer bearing this name, and that which occurs in the quintet is one of the best. It is in the relative minor of the opening key, and exhibits the composer as a poet of the same sort as Burns--at once st.u.r.dy in bearing and delicate in feeling. Here and there the pianoforte part conveys a suggestion of Chopin; but the courtly sentiment of Chopin is soon merged in a broader and more full-blooded vein of feeling. The thematic material is remarkably varied and episodic, while the Scherzo--called, as in other Bohemian compositions "Furiant"--is compact and free from any trace of the rambling tendency. The finale is dominated by a dance theme in double time of enormous energy and vivacity.

[Sidenote: =Dvorak

Quartet, Op. 96.=

_December 6, 1900._]

The Op. 96 Quartet might almost as well be called "From the New World"

as the Symphony. Whether it was written during the composer's stay in America we do not know, but it is certainly an outcome of his American experiences no less than the "New World" symphony. All the themes of both those works are idealised Negro or Red Indian melodies, and though the results may not be in the Quartet quite so wonderfully felicitous as in the Symphony, they are fine enough to make it a most interesting feature in the music of the wonderful Bohemian composer's American period. That music has taught some of us a rather important lesson. The value of folk-melody has long been recognised, but until these works by Dvorak became known it was pretty generally thought that Negro tunes formed an exception to the principle that all sincere, unsophisticated, and original musical utterance has artistic value. Dvorak has taught us the danger of regarding any natural thing as common or unclean. He has shown that Negro melody may give rise to beautiful works of art no less than Irish, Hungarian, or Scandinavian melody. Dvorak is the most impossible to cla.s.sify of all composers. He is naf and yet a master of complex and ingenious design; a scorner of scholastic device and at the same time a successful worker in the cla.s.sical forms; the most original of the composers who became known during the latter half of the 19th century, yet suspected, on occasion, of the most barefaced plagiarism.

It is hard to say whether his absolute musical invention, his skill, taste, and resource in laying out for single stringed instruments, or his ear for orchestral colouring is the most remarkable faculty. He is the musician who seems to have learned but little from text-books and professors, and yet, by a continual series of miracles, he avoids all the pitfalls that beset the path of the unlearned composer. He is never at a loss--never does anything feeble or ineffective,--but again and again overwhelms and delights us with his inexhaustible flow of racy and full-blooded melody and with his splendid handling of whatever instrument, or group of instruments, he may choose to handle.

[Sidenote: =Beethoven

Razoumoffsky Quartet, No. 3.=

_December 5, 1901._]

The third Razoumoffsky Quartet stands among Beethoven's chamber compositions very much as the C minor Symphony among his orchestral works. To define the qualities in virtue of which these two cognate works appeal so very strongly and directly to the imagination is a matter of great difficulty. They belong to the same period; and, utterly dissimilar as they are in form and detail, they are akin to one another in spirit. Both reveal the composer during that short but golden prime of his artistic life when he had done with technical experiments; and when that austere indifference to mere sensuous beauty of sound, which in course of time his deafness inevitably brought, had not yet begun.

Hence these works, though they fall far short of the exaltation, intensity, and rugged grandeur of many third-manner compositions, are more perfectly balanced. They are also entirely free from certain perverse--one may almost say misanthropic--elements which are a stumbling-block in much of Beethoven's music. Such is the felicity of the invention that each new thematic element strikes the ear like a sort of revelation. Nowhere is there an overlong development or anything that bewilders or alienates. The Andante quasi Allegretto of the Quartet reveals the composer in an extremely rare mood. The delicate romance of it recalls the slow movement of the Schumann Quintet, however much more profound Beethoven may be. The harmony is full of dreamlike beauty, and here and there accents of extraordinarily eloquent appeal give that impression (so frequent with Wagner) of music trembling on the verge of articulate speech. A case in point is the recurring G flat in the viola part in bars 8, 9, and 10 after the second repeat. The pizzicato ba.s.s is another feature that irresistibly arrests attention. The unparalleled delights of this enchanting work were brought home to the audience by a performance which was not only masterly but was stamped by peculiar felicity. Everything in the marvellous Allegretto was thrown into a kind of delicate relief, and the fugal finale was given with the utmost animation and perfection of detail.

[Sidenote: =Bach

Concerto in D Minor.=

_January 15, 1903._]

The a.s.sociation of Lady Halle and Dr. Brodsky in Bach's Concerto for two violins yesterday brought together by far the largest audience ever yet seen at these concerts. The D minor, with two solo parts, is doubtless the finest on the whole of Bach's violin Concertos. The Largo, cast in a mould that the composer used more than once, obviously takes the first place among movements of the kind, in virtue of stately magnificence paired with a certain royal mildness and amiability of expression. Other examples may be deeper or more poignant in feeling, but none other is so richly and perfectly organised in structure or so sweetly benign in expression. The two solo instruments are treated by the composer on a footing of absolute equality, and the manner in which his intentions were yesterday realised by the two masterly performers was above praise.

Why (one is likely to ask on hearing such a performance) did a composer, who could make a couple of instruments sing so sweetly and graciously and in a manner so perfectly adapted to their proper genius, very frequently force the singing voice to follow a crabbed line, instrumental rather than vocal in character? In the more vivacious movements preceding and following the Largo nothing could have been finer than the delicate interplay of the two well-matched solo parts, and the whole composition lost little or nothing by the rendering of the accompaniment on a pianoforte instead of the small orchestra for which it was originally scored. As pianoforte accompanist Miss Olga Neruda showed unfailing discretion, and so contributed not a little to the exquisite impression produced by the whole work.

[Sidenote: =Beethoven