Ysaye and Busoni.February 6, 1902.
February 6, 1902.
If another and older master of the violin is commonly described—as it were,emeritus—as greatest living violinist, it is unquestionably to Mr. Ysaye that the title belongs in its full sense. Unparalleled warmth, richness, and bouquet of tone, added to sovereign mastery of technique and a marvellous temperament, full of fiery energy and yet apparently incapable of exaggeration—such are the most obvious qualities of Mr. Ysaye's art. He is not a genuine classic, like Joachim. Bach and Beethoven he plays in virtue of infallible artisticsavoir vivre; but he is obviously in fuller sympathy with a Sonata or Concerto by Saint-Saëns, a Suite by Vieuxtemps, or a Fantasia by Wiéniawski. Yet that artisticsavoir vivreis so complete that it is nearly always impossible to find specific fault with his renderings of the classics. This was the case yesterday in the Bach Sonata, which headed the programme. Each of the four movements declared the mastery of the string player, no less than of the pianist, Mr. Busoni—real kindred spirits of Bach and Beethoven. The Vieuxtemps Suite, too, was given with such beauty of tone that the superficiality of the composition was entirely disguised, the slow movement sounding almost as though Bach had written it. In theconcluding sonata—a late work by Saint-Saëns—it is scarcely necessary to say that the violin-playing was perfect. Perhaps some of the listeners remembered a performance by the same violinist of Saint-Saëns's Third Concerto at a Hallé Concert not long ago. Again yesterday we were treated to such playing as bewilders the senses and seemed to place the transcendental cleverness of the French composer on a level with the real imaginative power of greater men. Mr. Ysaye was extremely well disposed—in fact, quite at his best—and was rapturously applauded. As an extra piece he gave Beethoven's Romance in G, the rendering being above criticism.
Utterly dissimilar as Messrs. Ysaye and Busoni are in temperament and artistic character, they meet as master musicians, and the association is in the highest degree interesting. The one is all sense and the other all spirit, and one feels that only the immensely high accomplishment of both makes the association possible. Mr. Busoni's solo was that most capricious and austere Sonata, Beethoven's 109th work. It was all incomparably well rendered, and the Variations in the last movement, which ultimately spin themselves into a kind of Fantasia, were a prodigious revelation of technical power. It is long since such a pianoforte performance has been heard in this city—a performance stamped by austere beauty and lofty ideality, and free from all earthly elements. What other pianist at the present day, we venture to ask, could give us such a thing?
Kubelik.November 5, 1902.
November 5, 1902.
Popularity such as Mr. Jan Kubelik, the young Bohemian violinist, at present enjoys makes it very difficult to criticise his performance. He has not to meet the same conditions as other violinists. Thousands of persons who care little or nothing for music attend his recitals merely because he is a recognised society pet, and he commands a fee that makes it impossible for orchestral societies to engage him. The restrictions imposed by this state of things are obvious. He can only play with pianoforte accompaniment, or with none at all; he is obliged to adhere almost entirely to music that is light in style and of only secondary artistic worth, and during a certain proportion of each recital he has to give himself up entirely to sensationalism. Thus, after hearing him play through three complete recital programmes, we do not feel qualified to express more than a very fragmentary opinion upon his art. That he has all the ordinary technique of the instrument at his fingers' ends is a notorious fact. His tone is never remarkable for volume, but often for sweetness. His truth of intonation in the midst of intricate passage-work is remarkable, and gives the sense of hearing a rare kind of satisfaction. His memory seems to be entirely trustworthy, and his manner is free from affectation; but as to his musical conception, we can only say that it is quite adequate to the interpretation of such a charming piece of light, racy, and popular music as Grieg's third Sonata. The one scrap of Bach that he played yesterday—the unaccompanied Prelude in E major—was notspecially well done, and how he plays Beethoven, Mozart, or any of the great masters we do not know at all. His mostrecherchéseffects of tone Mr. Kubelik seems to hold in reserve for the encore pieces. In the allegretto movement of the Grieg Sonata—a most tenderly homesick and lovesick little northern Romance—he did not let his violin sing with all the sweetness of which it is capable, as was afterwards shown in the arrangement of Schubert's "Ave Maria" and in an unpublished Serenade by the performer's friend and compatriot Drdla—both played as extra pieces at the end of the recital. Virtuoso music, in the rendering of which Mr. Kubelik is well known to be a great expert, was represented in yesterday's recital by the following pieces:—Wieniawski's Fantasia on Themes from Gounod's "Faust," Paganini's caprice "I Palpiti," Bazzini's "Ronde des Lutins," the last-named played among the encore pieces. We do not, as a rule, care for the Fantasia on operatic airs, but Wieniawski's "Faust" Fantasia is written with such wonderful ingenuity and musical skill that it cannot be placed in the same category with the mere strings of tunes with perfunctory accompaniments and connecting sections that such pieces usually are. The Variation on the waltz theme, with the melody in harmonics and the rushing accompaniment figure in the ordinary tone of the instrument, is a marvel of successful audacity. It so happens, too, that the rendering of this almost impossible Variation was the most brilliant thing in yesterday's recital.
Kreisler.November 6, 1902.
November 6, 1902.
We live in an age that seems likely to be known in the future as the period of star violinists. It is curious to note how the musical world illustrates the saying "It never rains but it pours." At one period we have a long string of pianistic infant prodigies. Hoffmann, Hegner, Hambourg—they come rapidly to the front, one after another, growing ever younger and younger, and nearly always beginning with "h." Next we break into the period of youthful violinists, beginning with "k." Kubelik, Kocian, Kreisler come tumbling over each other's heel, each one causing embarrassment to the critics for lack of any stronger terms of commendation than were bestowed upon the last. It is true the string players are not of such tender years as were the pianists on their first appearance. The youngest of the violin prodigies was Bronislav Hubermann, who not many years ago shook his elf-locks at the Philharmonic Society of Vienna and more nearly succeeded in turning the heads of that august, formidable, and severely critical body than might have been thought possible. For the present we are mainly concerned with Mr. Kreisler, who is not so desperately youthful, but is a mature and military-looking man, though he is commonly reckoned among the players of the new school, or the rising generation. His programme yesterday was open to some of the same objections as Mr. Kubelik's on Tuesday evening. It included nothing from the major prophets of music, the most important piece being Tartini's "Trillo del Diavolo" Sonata—no doubt one of the bestexamples of that school which grew up in Italy soon after the perfecting of the violin at the end of the seventeenth century. In a well-contrasted style was the only other piece in more than one movement that he played, namely, Vieuxtemps' second Concerto. In the rendering of these pieces one noted a peculiarly incisive manner of giving full value to all the detail of the figuration, and also a singing tone of rich and strangely penetrating quality. Mr. Kreisler's style is in sharp contrast with Mr. Kubelik's. Instead of caressing the instrument and coaxing the tone out of it, he wrestles with it and plucks out the heart of its mystery. Nor does he seem to care for the sputtering Paganinities so dear to the heart of Mr. Kubelik. His pieces in the second part of the programme were a rather Mozartian Larghetto from a Sonata by Nardini (an eighteenth-century Italian); a "Tambourin" by Leclair (an eighteenth-century Frenchman), much modernised in the arrangement; a bagatelle called "L'Abeille," by Franz Schubert of Dresden—not, of course, the famous Schubert, but a violinist who died some twenty-five years ago; an arrangement by Marcello Rossi of the "Song without Words" in F, by Tchaïkovsky; and, finally, the Allegretto grazioso from the same Nardini Sonata, played as an encore piece. "L'Abeille"—a clever show-piece in perpetual motion triplets, played with a mute on the bridge—was encored and repeated.
Mr. J. A. Fuller Maitland's English Music in the 19th century.May 20, 1902.
May 20, 1902.
As applied to Parry, Stanford, or Mackenzie, we are instructed, the reproach of being "academic" has absolutely no aptness whatever. These worthy dons are creative artists of the highest possible order, to be classed with Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner, and it thus appears that about the middle of the century British music arose like the lark, soaring at once to the topmost airs of the welkin; that to find a parallel for the revelation of genius during the fifty ensuing British years one has to range over two German centuries! Not even Beethoven is to be excepted from the list of things that were matched by our professorial larks, swans, giants, heroes, angels, and demigods! Now all this represents a rather deplorable state of things. Why is it—I cannot help asking once more—that at the present time in this country so much worse nonsense is written about music than about drama, literature, or any other kindred subject? A great stir was recently made by the production of "Paolo and Francesca," yet no admirer of Mr. Stephen Phillips has thought itnecessary to call him the equal of Shakespeare. There is certainly this excuse for Mr. Fuller Maitland, that in the London press of recent years much extravagance of the opposite kind has appeared—excessive and, in a few cases, positively brutal detraction of Parry and Stanford and their school—and perhaps the chief blame for the hysterical nonsense of supporters lies within certain opponents who have attacked without regard either for the facts of the case or even for common decency. In any case a state of things has been brought about in which one party howls "Incompetent humbug!" while the other shrieks "Genius of the highest order!"
In the meantime what about the truth and the critical currency? And is it not a pity that Mr. Fuller Maitland should have missed the opportunity afforded to him by the writing of this history to put off controversial frenzy and return to a more judicial spirit? We that have to do with the musical world are all perfectly well aware—whether we describe Parry and Stanford as "academic" or protest against that epithet—that they are men of high distinction who have played a leading and brilliant part in the English musical revival and generally have deserved well of the musical republic. For my part, while fully recognising their eminence both in talent and character, I am of opinion that their claims to regard as absolute creative artists are habitually overstated by their supporters in the press. The appearance of Parry created a considerable stir. His imposing grasp of choral polyphony was something new in English music. His great intelligence, his wide sympathy and geniality, hisvirility and industry—all these qualities united to arouse enthusiastic hopes. But, as Mr. Fuller Maitland writes on page 185, "with the passage of years the group of composers will fall into truer and truer perspective." There has already been a considerable passage of years since those first compositions, but the early enthusiastic estimate has not been justified. Outside the circle of his pupils and personal friends no one now seems to care very much for his music. Here in the North of England concert societies find that the public admiration of it is a rapidly vanishing quantity. Three years ago his "Job" and "Blest Pair of Sirens" were given here, but ever since that occasion his name has been something of a terror to our concert societies. A frequent experience in regard to Parry's music is that, whereas a first hearing impresses in virtue of massiveness and energy or of striking and unconventional dramatic touches, second and subsequent hearings are discouraging. "Job" is the most favourable case among the choral and orchestral works that I have heard. It is thoroughly artistic in conception and unconventional in treatment. Moreover, the lyrical interlude of the shepherd-boy's song helps along the early part very happily, and Mr. Plunket Greene is always eloquent in the "Lamentations." Nevertheless, I found the second hearing a sad experience. Now the impression that there is something wrong with Parry's music—notwithstanding all the learning, resource, wide sympathies, intelligence, and so forth that it shows—is undoubtedly a very general one. To find any person not personally attached to the composer taking up one of his works, great orsmall, is exceedingly rare. The composer's personal popularity is great, but outside the charmed circle no one seems ready to spend a shilling in hearing his stuff or to risk a shilling in giving it. Mr. Fuller Maitland says that the provincial choral societies are faithful to Parry, and this may be true in some cases. To a society in the habit of occupying themselves with the cantatas of Dr. Gaul I could imagine Parry would seem the seventh heaven of art. But in the great centres or in any place where there are ardent souls not to be deceived as to what is genuine in music a revival of interest in Parry seems to me very improbable.
At his worst,e.g., in "King Saul," he appeals; at his best,e.g., in the "Soldier's Tent" (song with orchestral accompaniment), he almost persuades. But the horrors of the empty tone masses hurled at one's head in the "Saul" choruses, or of the purple patches of Wagnerian orchestration associated with inept vocal phrases in the principal monologue of the same oratorio—those horrors are so very genuine, whereas the charm of such a song as the "Soldier's Tent," where the composer keeps comparatively well to the point and scores with comparative aptness, is still somewhat doubtful. A remark of Mr. Fuller Maitland's helps me to a possible explanation of the something wrong. He commends the "delicate humour" of "When icicles hang by the wall" in Parry's English Lyrics. Now I have certainly never heard that song, but I must have read it somewhere, for I distinctly remember the humorous and expressive accompaniment at the words "coughing drowns the parson's saw." Italso comes back to me that other passages, such as all that eight-part counterpoint at the end of "Blest Pair of Sirens," look exceedingly well on paper. Possibly, then, the key to the mystery is that Parry's music is analogous to those plays which read well but act badly. Perhaps the way to enjoy it is to read it and admire the fertility of device while taking great care never to hear it, and so escape the consciousness of the fact that the actual wine of that music as it flows forth is not quite the genuine thing; that, notwithstanding notable fulness of body, the quality is gritty, the flavour somewhat acrid and inky, the bouquet artificial and multifariously compounded.
The root of the mischief I take to be that the composer—for all his great and imposing powers, his fine taste, his profound and varied learning—is wanting in sureness of touch and consequently in the ability to establish that correspondence between form and idea without which a work of art cannot properly be said to exist. Mr. Fuller Maitland claims for Parry and his group that they "have far more extensive resources in the different styles of music" than, for example, the modern Russians, and this brings us back to the point of the reproach conveyed in the epithet "academic." To musicians bent on the holding of official posts and on success in a worldly career it is of the first importance to "show extensive resources in the different styles of music," and in the large body of Parry's compositions I find far more evidence of desire to show such extensive resources than of the artistic impulse to make music that is absolutely genuine. Sullivan, with his much lower aims and ideals, is for me abetter balanced personality and a truer artist. Much of his music in the comic operas is quite to the point. The outward form corresponds to the inward idea in a certain absolute and final manner which there is no mistaking. Hence the clearness of Sullivan's musical individuality or physiognomy. He was not intent on showing resources, but on modelling his material into conformity with his idea, and, because at his best he had the power of doing that, his physiognomy is clear to us and his art vital. It thus appears that such commercialism as Sullivan's does less mischief than such academic tendencies as Parry's.
In Stanford's case I have often protested against the indiscriminate use of the epithet "academic." It seems to me that his compositions on Irish subjects require to be considered quite apart from all the rest. However deplorable may be that Brahmsian vein running through a great mass of his non-Irish music, he really does in his "Phaudrig," "Shamus," and Irish Symphony and in many of his Irish songs entirely escape from his common-room and give us open-air music. No doubt, as Mr. Fuller Maitland very justly points out, the humour of the Dogberry scenes in Stanford's latest opera is admirable. Those are the scenes in which the composer has followed the model of Verdi's "Falstaff" most closely. Elsewhere he has undertaken to be more original and has not prospered so well. The music of the love scenes is terrible. All that twisted, clever stuff can never have any but a chilling, afflicting, alienating effect on a soul in which any spark is left either of youthfulness or of sympathy with youth. Stanford's musicalcleverness, exceeding that of any other mortal except Camille Saint-Saëns, has been his bane. His sense of humour, too, is perversely adjusted. In connection with any but an Irish subject it is always liable to mislead him, and I have little doubt that it is the humourist quite as much as the don in him which nowadays makes it impossible for him to treat a love-passage in any but a chilly, clever, allusive, intelligible-only-to-the-initiated style. He was a very different man in 1881 when his "Bower of Roses by Bendeemer's Stream" was first heard. Not that he has even now lost his faculty of lyrical tenderness altogether. If the sentiment be associated with an infant, or penetrated with a sense of the weird and uncanny, or intermingled with (Irish) patriotic feeling, he can still find the symbol, as his quite recent music to Moira O'Neill's "Songs from the Glens of Antrim" abundantly proves. But the note of warmth and simplicity proper to youthful romance he seems to have lost. A peculiar case among Stanford's compositions is represented by the Irish Symphony, concerning which Mr. Fuller Maitland has nothing to say. Here, notwithstanding the Irish subject, the gown shows through to some slight extent in one place, namely, the development section of the first movement. The conventional critic finds fault with the scherzo in the form of an Irish jig as unsymphonic, as it undoubtedly is. But there would be more sense in suggesting that the composer should have made up his mind to be thoroughly unsymphonic throughout the work, bringing his first movement into harmony with the fine sennachee's improvisation that standssecond, the magnificent racy jig, and the buoyant finale. We should thus have had an Irish Rhapsody in four movements without any defect. Even now the one touch of the composer's evil genius that comes out in the first movement is too slight to spoil the work, which has been a joy for a long time, and does not seem to lose its charm. It thus seems to me that Stanford is far too good a man for an "academic," though I cannot deny that the epithet is actually justified by more than half the entire body of his published works.
After all it was scarcely likely that the sudden efflorescence of English music, ensuing upon a long period of sterility, would lead at once to fruit of complete maturity. We have now reached the second generation since the revival, and it would be a pity if our best men at the present day were nowise in advance of the leaders who came forward thirty years ago.
Centenary Article.January 1, 1901.
January 1, 1901.
At the dawn of the nineteenth century music was at a low ebb in this country. Purcell had been dead more than a hundred years, and Handel about forty years. The spirit of Puritanism had killed the madrigal-singing of Shakespearean England and suppressed every other manifestation of the popular musical genius. Charles II. had come back from his long residence abroad with a contempt for English music, both sacred and secular, which, as Pepys's Diary shows, he did not hesitate to express in public, and thus the merry-makings of the Restoration brought no revival ofthe national art. Nor was it likely that the situation, as regards Court influence, should be improved by the House of Hanover—at the time of their accession a race of aliens having no sympathy with the national development of the art. Characteristic of the view that cultivated Englishmen took of music about the middle of the eighteenth century is a letter of Lord Chesterfield's,[3]written when his son was staying at Venice, to warn him against all the "singing, piping, and fiddling" of Italy. He gives the young man to understand that it is unbecoming in a gentleman to take part in such things, though he may pay a fiddler to play to him. Elsewhere, too, Lord Chesterfield is even more crushing. He lays stress on the inevitable connection between music and low company. The Venice letter was written in 1749—six years after the first performance of the "Messiah" in London and ten years before Handel's death. Perhaps, therefore, the Chesterfield view of music was at that time exceptional. But it must have become more prevalent in the ensuing half-century, and the view of music as an inferior art, represented in its extreme form by Lord Chesterfield, is far from being extinct at the present day. At the same time, fully to account for the low level of musical taste in the England of 1801, due allowance must be made for the comparative neglect of all but political and military affairs caused by the tremendous agitations of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars.
In the first year of the nineteenth century beganthe triumphant career of John Braham, the first of the three great English tenor singers who successively adorned the ensuing hundred years. Braham was a good singer, but perhaps the most deplorable composer that ever successfully foisted his rubbish on a tasteless public. His "Death of Nelson" persists to the present day, for the justification of those who share Lord Chesterfield's musical opinions, and even that unpardonable mixture of sentimental slip-slop and half-hearted cock-a-doodle-doo seems to have been a comparatively favourable example of the compositions with which Braham regaled the London public during the early years of the century. The scene of his first triumphs was Covent Garden Theatre, where he was accustomed to appear in composite operatic entertainments, his own part being almost invariably written by himself. A few years after the Londondébutof Braham the penny-whistle melodies of Sir Henry Bishop sufficed to make him the most popular composer of the day. In 1810, when Bishop became director at Covent Garden, none of the institutions that have played an important part in the musical progress of the century as yet existed in this country. It is true the Festival of the Three Choirs had been held regularly for a very long time already. But there was no Philharmonic Society, no genuine opera, no Saturday and Monday popular concerts of chamber-music, no Academy or College of Music, no Crystal Palace or Hallé orchestra. The great choral associations, independent of Cathedral authorities, had not yet been formed, and England was far too much isolated from the rest of the world in regard to musical affairs.
It is curious to note how precisely the downfall of Napoleon corresponds with the beginning of better things in the English musical world. Leipsic was fought in 1813, and earlier in that year—as though with a premonition that an era was at hand in which it would be possible to cultivate the arts of peace—a group of musicians assembled in London to discuss the formation of a Philharmonic Society. The event is of striking significance. Hitherto music had flourished only under the patronage of Lords Temporal and Spiritual; but thesouffleof the French Revolution had passed over the world, and it was time for music—which had put off the courtly periwig and the courtly graces, and had attained in Beethoven to the purely human standpoint—to be established on a broader basis. Let us give the worthy Bishop his due. A well-meaning person, if a trivial composer, he helped to found the London Philharmonic Society, which was the first society in Europe, and in the world, consciously formed for the furtherance of musical art and for no other purpose.
Glancing now at musical activity in other countries, we find attention necessarily concentrated in the first instance upon the heroic figure of Beethoven, who in this year (1813) had already given to the world his Eroica, C minor, Pastoral, and Seventh Symphonies, besides his Violin Concerto, Razoumoffsky Quartets, Waldstein and Appassionata Sonatas, his one opera "Fidelio," together with the third "Leonora" overture, and many other works of towering genius. As yet, however, the real significance of Beethoven was undreamed-of in the philosophy of mankind in general, if dimly suspected by a few enlightenedpersons, mostly resident in Vienna. Mozart had died before the dawn of the century, and Haydn soon after it, having demonstrated the incomparable excellence of that Viennese school (founded on the teachings of Fux's "Gradus ad Parnassum"), which had early attracted Beethoven—a Rhinelander by birth—within its charmed circle, and held him there for life. In the first year of the London Philharmonic Society's activity the music of those three—Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven—formed the staple of the concert programmes. In the second year the first performance in England of the Eroica was given. Other works of the highest importance by the same master soon followed, and in 1817 an unsuccessful attempt was made to induce Beethoven to come to England himself and conduct compositions of his own for the Society. In this manner connection was established between this country and the great central stream of musical life and energy at that time.
Beethoven was the colossus who bridged over the gulf between the two great countries of Classicism and Romance. Of the Romantic composers, Weber—the founder of German National Opera—was the earliest born. His music was first heard in England during the twenties, the opera "Oberon" being brought out at Covent Garden under his own direction. Another great Romantic composer born before the close of the eighteenth century was Schubert—a wonderful but most unfortunate man of genius, destined to meet with scarcely any recognition during his lifetime. At a much later period he was discovered and introduced to this country by Sir George Grove. Thereal seed-time of the Romantic School, however, was the period from 1803 to 1813, which saw the birth of Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Verdi, and Wagner (of all except Berlioz between 1809 and 1813). It is curious that all the stars destined to dominate the musical firmament of the period following Beethoven's death should thus have risen above the horizon within the short period of ten years, and all but one within a period of five years. Every one of them, except Schumann, came sooner or later to our hospitable shores and played a more or less important part in that process by which we have gradually learned to discard Lord Chesterfield's maxim about having nothing to do with fiddling ourselves, while laying more and more to heart his other maxim about paying fiddlers to play to us.
Even more important than these flying visits of master composers from abroad, for their influence on the formation of taste, were the more regular visits of distinguished Continental performers, some of whom, indeed, not only came regularly but came to stay. Of these the most important were Mr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Hallé, who in 1857 founded the Manchester concerts that still bear his name; Mr. August Manns, who became conductor at the Crystal Palace in 1855; and Dr. Richter, who has been our regular visitor since 1877 and is now, to the great credit of the Hallé Committee and their supporters, living in our midst. Scarcely less important among such foreign influences making for the welfare of musical art in this country is the violin-playing of Dr. Joachim, who has been our constant visitor ever since 1844.
Pursuing the signs of awakening musical life inthe second and ensuing decades of the century, we note the foundation of the Royal Academy of Music in 1823, and of the Sacred Harmonic Society in 1832. That Society, now defunct, was originally founded with the idea of replacing an older institution called the "Antient Concerts," which had come to grief through depending too much on aristocratic patronage. The Sacred Harmonic Society did good work by performing Handel's "Israel in Egypt," "Dettingen Te Deum," and other works, besides the "Messiah." They also did something to make Mozart's church music known in London, though with little encouragement from the public, and they rendered a service to art by insisting on complete performances instead of the scraps and tit-bits from oratorios that were popular at that day. Soon after the founding of the Sacred Harmonic Society, that is about the beginning of the Victorian era, came the palmy days of Italian opera in London. But though the expensive warblings of Grisi, Lablache, and Rubini were no doubt found highly exhilarating by the privileged few who could afford to hear them, it is doubtful whether they did anything for the development of the national taste, except, perhaps, by firing the ambition of Sims Reeves.
Great as is the value of such fine stimulating influences—the visits of distinguished players, singers, composers, and conductors, and performances of master works by musical societies,—they are not enough to leaven the mass of the people without systematic educational endeavour. Reference has been made to the founding of the Royal Academy of Music. Sixty years later the Royal College was instituted, with a view to bringingeducational opportunities more into conformity with the wants of the time. Among the work done for the improvement of musical education during the intervening period Mr. John Hullah's is worthy of specially honourable mention. After studying popular musical education in France, and especially the Orphéon movement, Mr. Hullah began classes at Exeter Hall for the musical instruction of schoolmasters, and thus originated the vast development of musical training in English elementary schools. In opposition to Mr. Hullah's principles, Mr. John Curwen in 1853 founded the Tonic Sol-fa Association, which has since spread its branches all over England. There is supposed to be some sort of connection between staff notation and Church principles, tonic sol-fa and Dissent. Some day, it may be hoped, the history of choral singing in England will be written with the care that the subject deserves. It remains to this day the principal contribution of this country to musical art in modern times. Theoretical mastership originated with the Germans, refined and exact orchestral playing with the French, and brilliant solo singing with the Italians, but it has been reserved for this country to perfect the art of choral singing. Certain persons, more patriotic than truthful, try to make out that the English are best in everything, but this claim in regard to choral singing bears investigation.
Next to the absolute contempt and neglect of music from which we began to emerge early in the century, our greatest misfortune has been a tendency to prefer composers representing the end of some artistic development while rejecting the turbid and formally imperfect but inspiring initiators.Thus, in one age we worship Handel—a mighty musical architect, but one who never did and never could inspire anyone—while we detest Bach, the most powerful of all inspiring, stimulating, school-forming influences. In another age we make a somewhat similar mistake in regard to Mendelssohn and Schumann, and it is even possible to recognise the same unfortunate tendency at the present day in the public attitude towards Richard Strauss and Tchaïkovsky respectively, the former a rugged composer teeming with ideas and varied suggestions, the other a remarkable painter in tones but peculiarly restricted in the range of his ideas and emotions, taking care never to suggest anything, but only to attempt what he can render with symmetrical completeness. It is impossible not to regret that we should thus continually prefer composers who lead to nothing, though that is just what might be expected as a result of Lord Chesterfield's principles.
With regard to the extraordinary Mendelssohnian taste of the British public which placed the accomplished fair-weather composer on a much higher pinnacle here than he ever occupied in his own country, there is even now one important question that has not yet been, and probably never will be, settled. That Mendelssohn was long absurdly overrated is certain; but the question is—Had there been no Mendelssohn, would our choirs and public taken to better stuff, or would they simply have concerned themselves so much the less with any sort of music? Possibly the Mendelssohn craze was a necessary evil, supplying the requisite spoon-meat for a period of musical infancy. It is, however, associated with much humiliation. Themain current of musical life and energy since Beethoven's time has lain in the field of dramatic composition, and from that main current we remained excluded for a most unconscionable time. The case became a painful one, only to be met by such sapient observations as that of the late Mr. Hueffer that "the British public likes the dramatic stage and likes serious music, but does not like the two things in combination." The real champion of the Wagnerian art in this country was Dr. Richter, who, by the performance of extracts at his orchestral concerts, gradually opened the ears of the public and brought home the music to their hearts. In that task he was well supported by Mr. Manns at the Crystal Palace and by Sir Charles Hallé in the Manchester neighbourhood. Hence the fact that though the two impresarios who gave performances of the great "Ring" drama in London in the eighties incurred grievous loss, Mr. Schultz Curtius gave it in the nineties and prospered, and that the voice of senseless detraction is mute, except in the case of one or two incorrigible old mandarins who cannot escape from the fixed idea that life consists in the correspondence of an organism with the environment of its great-grandfather.
The best of the English Cathedral composers was Samuel Sebastian Wesley, whose enthusiasm for Bach, antedating the movement initiated by Mendelssohn, has scarcely met with sufficient acknowledgement. Soon after the middle of the century a group of British composers with a wider than the purely ecclesiastical scope began to appear. Sullivan, Mackenzie, Parry, Cowen, and Stanford all learned their art in Germany, andcame back to their native country to practise it. All of them have written oratorios, but without lasting success except in the case of Sullivan's "Golden Legend." Dr. Cowen's Scandinavian and Professor Stanford's Irish Symphonies have done something to win esteem for English music in other countries. But the great achievement of British music during the past fifty years has been the Gilbertian operas, in which Sir Arthur Sullivan matched with a perfect musical counterpart the kind of libretto furnished by W. S. Gilbert, an original type of comic opera being thus created. Among younger composers, Mr. Hamish M'Cunn made a reputation with his "Land of the Mountain and the Flood" overture that he failed to confirm. Mr. Coleridge-Taylor has had a very rapid success with his "Hiawatha" music, whether of a more lasting kind remains to be proved. By far the most remarkable British composer of recently made reputation is Dr. Edward Elgar. Mr. Otto Lessmann, editor of the "Allgemeine Musikzeitung" and the most distinguished musical critic of Germany at the present day, wrote thus (after hearing "The Dream of Gerontius" at Birmingham last October): "If I am not mistaken, the coming man of the English musical world has already appeared, an artist who has shaken off the bonds of conventional form and opened his mind and heart to those great gifts which the masters of the expiring century have left as an inheritance to the future—Edward Elgar, composer of the one great religious choral work brought to a first hearing at the Birmingham Festival, namely 'The Dream of Gerontius.'"
Progress has been very much more rapid duringthe last twenty-five years than in any other period of the century. Indeed, so wonderfully has been the revolution in public taste effected by improved educational opportunities and the more artistic and expressive style of singing and playing introduced by the Wagnerian school, that musical art now finds itself in a completely new atmosphere, and hope leaps out, probably asking too much of the immediate future. The great lesson that requires to be brought home at the present time to all concerned, directly or indirectly, with musical affairs is that music is one of the fine arts, that it is subject to the laws of art and no others. This seems a painfully obvious principle when stated, but how rarely does anyone act on it! We find any number of persons pursuing music as a sport, others as a business, others as a mild discipline for children—a kind of drill,—others again as a learned subject, but very few as an art. The first result of mastering this lesson would be the shaking off of fixed ideas, such as that every composer must play the organ and write church music. Chopin wrote nothing but pianoforte pieces, yet his fame is undying, and much more is heard of his music now—fifty years after his death—than ever before, while plenty of composers whose works include voluminous compositions for choir and orchestra are absolutely forgotten in their own lifetime. The real artist is distinguished from other men above all by being enamoured of perfection. He finds what he can do and rests satisfied with doing that, whether it be a great thing or a small, whether it be one thing or many.
The genius of musical interpretation is a phenomenon of modern times. Beethoven marks the end of that great symphonic period which begins with Haydn, and though seventy years before the production of Beethoven's greatest symphony, Joseph Haydn had been drilling the little Esterhazy orchestra and trying to secure satisfactory performances, yet to the end of Beethoven's time the most important orchestras were usually filled up with amateurs for those special occasions on which a symphony was to be performed. It seems certain that the notion of a rendering actually corresponding to a symphonic composer's ideal intentions never dawned on musicians as a practical possibility till long after the greatest of symphonic composers was dead and buried.
Beethoven, no less than Sebastian Bach, often wrote for the future—not even for the next generation, but for the distant future. And Mendelssohn, who re-discovered Sebastian Bach and did so much to stir up the lethargy of his musical contemporaries and re-awaken interest inthe great works of the past—did not Mendelssohn announce, as a general principle for the guidance of conductors, that they should beware of slowtempi, and take everything at a good pace, so that the faults of phrasing might not be too obvious?
The very terms in which the recommendation was couched show that Mendelssohn was not unconscious of the faults that marred the best orchestral playing of his time; but being of a mild, easy-going disposition, he was not the man to expect impossibilities—such is the ordinary musician's term for any exertion a little out of his ordinary routine. It was reserved for a more masterful mind to expect impossibilities, and to obtain them.
When the works of Wagner began to attract attention, consternation fell on all the old-fashioned conductors of Germany, the "Pig-tails" as Wagner never wearied of calling them. Life was not worth living, they felt, if they had to deal with such scores, and then lamentations were reinforced by the bandsmen, who found that countless passages written by Wagner were impossible of performance.
But it so happened, as if by a special Providence, that along with Wagner certain performing musicians, who were not so easily frightened, had been ripening towards their life's task. From Liszt and Von Bülow presently came demonstrations of the fact that Wagner's music was not so impossible as at first thought to be, though requiring a method of interpretation different from that of the "Pig-tails." In 1869 appeared Wagner's pamphlet "On Conducting," just three years after his first meeting with Hans Richter,and, whatever may be thought of the style of that pamphlet, it is beyond question that it marks the beginning of a new era in the history of orchestral music. Besides Richter, all modern conductors of world-wide reputation—Bülow, Levi, Seidl, Weingartner and Richard Strauss—were found in the same school. They learned from Wagner how to play Beethoven, and their method has revolutionised the musical world.
Now that Bülow is gone, the acknowledged leader and master of them all is Hans Richter, the incarnate genius of musical interpretation.
To Richter's influence and example, far more than to anything else that could be named, is due that prodigious improvement in the standard of orchestral performance all over the world, which is the most notable feature in the history of music during the past thirty years. Principally owing to Richter's matchless combination of artistic enthusiasm, practical mastery, and genial good sense, we now hear things that musical prophets and wise men, such as Beethoven desired to hear and had not heard.
Hans Richter belongs to a German family of musicians. He was born at Raab, in Hungary, in 1843, and, after a good musical grounding, entered the Conservatorium at Vienna in 1859. He chose the horn as his principal instrument, but his gift for playing musical instruments was so prodigiously strong that in the course of a few years he acquired the technical control of all the more important instruments in the orchestra, besides pianoforte and organ.
One of the earliest appointments that he held was that of principal horn-player at the ImperialOpera in Vienna. After quitting the Conservatorium he continued his studies under Sechter, the celebrated contrapuntist, and thus when the great opportunity of his life came he approached his task with magnificent and perhaps unparalleled resources, in respect of practical and theoretical knowledge. The opportunity came in 1866—Wagner, then living in Switzerland, wanted a competent musician to help him in preparing the score of "Meistersinger" for the press.
To Vienna, then, as now, the metropolis of the musical world, he forwarded the request that such a musician should be found and despatched to him at Triebschen, near Lucerne. The choice fell on Richter, and thus the two great men, the exact complements of each other as regards their artistic power became acquainted. Richter took up his residence in Wagner's house; the great composer, who possessed a Napoleonic eye for talent, at once appreciated the immense powers of his youthful colleague, and an alliance sprang up between the two men which only terminated at Wagner's death.
Trial performances with orchestras brought together from the musicians of Zürich and Lucerne quickly convinced the Wagnerian circle of Richter's genius for selecting, training and conducting an orchestra, while the preparation of the "Meistersinger" score was carried out to the composer's complete satisfaction. Those who examined the fair copy of Richter's handwriting which was on view at the Musical and Theatrical Exhibition of 1892 in Vienna can testify to the marvellous neatness as well as to the technical correctness and good style of Richter's manuscript.It should be remembered, too, that the score of "Meistersinger" was at that time by far the most intricate in existence, and is even now only surpassed in elaborate complexity by "Tristan."
But not only with the preparation of the score was Richter concerned. Long before Wagner had put the final touches to "Meistersinger," Richter had taken the solo and choral parts to Munich, and had there personally trained the singers who were to take part in the first production. The style was so new and so perplexing to the musicians of the day that Richter encountered apparently insuperable obstacles at every turn. Nevertheless, everything was carried through to a brilliantly successful issue, and the first performance of "Meistersinger," which took place at Munich in June, 1868, was really the first great triumph of the Wagnerian cause. Though Bülow was at the conductor's desk, it is unquestionable that the labour of Hercules, which was necessary to bring the work to a first hearing, was performed in the main by Richter.
At the sixth performance the representative of Kothner fell ill, and, at the last moment, Richter stepped into the breach, donned the costume of Kothner, and sang and acted the part with great success. No wonder a distinguished critic should have said that Wagner's "Meistersinger" has become part of Richter's flesh and blood.
He prepared the score; he trained all the singers and players for the first performance; he has conducted countless brilliant representations of the entire work, and on one occasion, at any rate, he enacted one of the characters. The qualitiesexhibited by Richter in connection with the production of "Meistersinger" caused him to be appointed fellow-director with Bülow at the Royal Opera in Munich, and when Bülow resigned in the following year Richter stood alone in that post.
The impatience of the King of Bavaria to have Wagner's immense "Nibelung" trilogy performed was the cause of a premature attempt to present "Rheingold" before the extraordinarymise-en-scènerequired by that work was ready. Rather than take part in an unworthy rendering, Richter tendered his resignation and quitted the brilliant post to which he had been so recently appointed. Thus early did Richter show the stuff of which he was made. He had absolutely nothing else in view. He simply had to look about for employment, and we next find him in Paris, working in combination with Pasdeloup, who was engaged in a scheme for bringing out "Rienzi" at the Théatre Lyrique. The scheme came to nothing, but the authorities of the Théatre de la Monnaie in Brussels, who had heard of Richter's fame, invited him to come and superintend the first production of "Lohengrin" in French which they were preparing.
With "Lohengrin" in Brussels he was no less successful than with "Meistersinger" in Munich. Though at first everyone found the music "impossible," on March 21st, 1870 a magnificent performance was achieved. As an example of the difficulties with which Richter had to contend in preparing for that performance, it may be mentioned that he found the choral singers at the theatre incapable of rendering their parts, and had to teach them, note by note, like children.Yet in the public performance there was no trace of these miseries, everything went with freedom and spontaneity, and ever since the first production under Richter "Lohengrin" has been a great feature of the Brussels repertory.
After fulfilling his engagement in Brussels, Richter returned to Triebschen, near Lucerne, where he found Wagner just finishing that colossal work, the "Ring of the Nibelung." It seems almost incredible that in addition to their gigantic labours in bringing what was almost a new art into existence, these remarkable men should have found means at this period of devoting much time to the study of Beethoven's string quartets. Richter took part regularly in the quartet playing, and he considers these hours during which he was initiated by Wagner into the deepest mysteries of Beethoven's art among the most valuable of his experiences. In the same year, 1870, Wagner finished his "Siegfried Idyll," a lovelyaubadethat was written in honour of his infant son's birthday. Richter had been entrusted with the task of getting together a small orchestra in Lucerne, and of rehearsing the new work with them. On the appointed day the musicians assembled on the steps of the villa at Triebschen and performed the piece under Richter's direction to the delight of the Wagner household, among whom the "Siegfried Idyll" is generally known as the "Treppenmusik" (from "Treppe," a stair or flight of steps).
The following year Richter accepted an invitation to Buda-Pesth, and there he remained until, in 1875, he was appointed conductor at the Imperial Opera in Vienna, a post that he still(in 1897) holds. Thus the Austrian Capital became for the second time his home and the centre of his activity, and, indeed, those who know him well, know that in spite of all cosmopolitan experiences, Richter is "ein echter Wiener"—a true child of Vienna.
The next "labour of Hercules" was the bringing out of Wagner's trilogy, the "Ring of the "Nibelungs" with which the Bayreuth theatre was inaugurated in 1876. During the rehearsals Wagner sat on the stage directing the actors and Richter stood at the conductor's desk.
Now that the work has become familiar we have lost all standard for estimating the task which Richter undertook and once more carried through to a brilliantly successful conclusion.
That vast scene which occupies four evenings in performance he seemed to have at his fingers' ends. Such was the impression made by Richter upon all who were concerned, either actively, or merely as spectators and listeners, in the inaugural Festival of 1876 at Bayreuth that they recognised him as a new phenomenon in the world of art.
The period of modern orchestral conducting may be said to date from that occasion. It was then brought home to everyone that conducting was a great art worthy of independent cultivation. The public began to take an interest in the style of different conductors, and to show some sensitiveness as regards interpretations of the great masters. The era of the "Pig-tails" had come to an end.
In 1877 Richter came with Wagner to London, and ever since that year the "Richter Concerts" have been a regular institution in this country.In Vienna, the city of his adoption, he is conductor, not only at the opera, but also of the Philharmonic Concerts, and latterly of the music in the Imperial Chapel.
Of late years Richter has conceived a certain dislike to the theatre, where he finds his work beset with small worries. He is coming to regard the concert-hall more and more as his special sphere of activity. Upon Richter's art as a conductor a good-sized book might be written. Here I can attempt no more than to enumerate a few of his qualities:—Practical knowledge of the technique belonging to all the more important instruments; mastery of musical theory in all its branches; an unerring rhythmical sense; judgment and insight with regard to every possible musical style, enabling him always to find the right tempo for any movement or section of a movement (the most important and most difficult thing for a conductor); mastery of the principles discovered by Wagner respecting orchestral dynamics, such as the necessity of equably sustained tone without crescendo or diminuendo, as a basis to start upon the conditions determining proper balance of strings and wind, the nature of a round-tonedpianodelivery (to be studied from first-rate singers), the manner of producing long crescendos and diminuendos, also of producing a truepianoand a trueforte(Wagner having pointed out that old-fashioned orchestras never played anything but mezzo-forte); mastery of Wagner's system of phrasing, his far-reaching investigations with regard tocantabilepassages, his treatment offermate, his distinction between the naïfallegroand the poeticallegro; mastery and practicalrealisation of all Wagner's other ideas concerning musical interpretation or public performances, a subject in which Wagner took a far more deep, expert and fruitful interest than any other of the great composers.
Finally, Richter is distinguished from most other conductors by his personal behaviour at the conductor's desk. He is free from antics; every movement has significance and every attitude has dignity.