"Fidelio."October 28, 1904.
October 28, 1904.
A most strange and unclassifiable 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 association 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 attitude 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 asuccès d'estimewould 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.
"Symphonie Fantastique."November 1, 1901.
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 Principal—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 institution 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 beremembered 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 attitude 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 associated 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 "TheDamnation of Faust"—we find a movement called by some such name, and, his appetite 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 association 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 Iræ" as acantus 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 bass tuba. Everything had been rehearsed with infinite care, and in all five movements the rendering was a display of virtuosity such as only a very rare combination of favourable circumstances would allow one to hear. No other composer displays avery 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 passage-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.
"Faust."March 7, 1902.
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 earliestcritiqueson his "Faust," which was first performed at the Opéra 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 advicethat 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. Hewasa chemist, and it is his chief glory to have been that in the world of music. He tested, analysed, 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 coarse 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 anorgie infernale? Berlioz was a sort of a belated mediæval. The very title, "Damnation de Faust," is mediæval. Shakespeare and the other poets of Renaissance and later times recognise the fate of a soul as a mattersub judicetill the end of the world. But Berlioz had no more scruple than Dante in anticipating the Last Judgment. Mediæval, too, is the coarseness of the scene in Auerbach's cellar; and thechanson gothique, about the King of Thule, sounds as if it had come to the composer as a reminiscence from some previousstate 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 mediævalism 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 Rácoczy 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 mediæval about it.
The Centenary Celebrations.December 10, 1903.
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 animmense 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, Dvoràk, Tchaïkovsky, 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 oflarger 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 mediæval 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 Rácoczy 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 couldhave 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 mediæval romances about lovesick maidens looking forth from their casements. In the latter part the composer falls a victim to his evil genius—themacabre,—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 passed 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.
"Faust" Symphony.November 21, 1902.
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 whichwe 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 Damnation 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 Boïto, 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 listensclosely 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, passing 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 asserts 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 Walküre" 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 thatdenies," 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 classical 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 Walküre," 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.
Pianoforte Concerto in E Flat.November 13, 1903.
November 13, 1903.
The attitude 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 withoutwhich 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 Tchaïkovsky to Strauss. But worse still is our mistake of refusing to listen to Liszt, without whom neither Tchaïkovsky 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 anddeeply-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.
"Faust in Solitude."February 15, 1900.
February 15, 1900.
Musical biography teaches that a hard struggle, not only for recognition but for existence, is the normal experience of a great composer. A few great players and singers make fortunes, but great composers never, and most of them have had to endure stress of poverty to the end of their lives. Yet it may be doubted whether any other great composer ever sounded the depths of human misery, as Wagner did during that first visit to Paris, undertaken in the hope of making his fortune at the Grand Opera. It is generally supposed that genius is conscious of its own powers and works on with serene confidence in the future. But, unfortunately, there is also such a thing as conceit—that is, the illusory consciousness of powers that do not exist; and a man of genius who, without private means, had thrown up his employment and taken himself and his wife on a long journey to a foreign country in order to win recognition in "la ville Lumière" must, in the course of three fruitless years, have felt something worse than misgiving. That Wagner did so feel is a matter not of speculation but of history. He has describedhow, when meditating the subject of the "Flying Dutchman," he sent for a pianoforte to see whether, after the mean drudgery and abject misery of those years, "he was still a musician." Wagner was not an ordinary man. Everything about him was on a grander scale—his folly and rashness no less than his talent. Though more sensitive than others to the most trifling discomfort, he showed, under an accumulation of miseries that would simply have crushed almost anyone else, a stupendous energy and reaction. He had failed to get his "Rienzi" performed in Paris. For three years he had continued his fruitless endeavours to obtain a hearing at the opera; and a crisis of frightful despondency ensued, when, to ruin and beggary and the sense of having made a fool of himself, was added an attack of a painful skin disease which tormented him at intervals all his life. Now it was precisely at that crisis that he wrote the "Faust" Overture—his masterpiece in the strict sense of the term; that is, the first work of his mastership or mature power. Thus, instead of being crushed, Wagner is suddenly found drawing upon the reserve force of his genius to produce a work that stands very nearly on a level with Beethoven's third "Leonora" Overture. For the Faust Overture is a tone-picture of the utmost energy, nobility, and beauty, utterly defying comparison with any other except Beethoven, and attaining to a kind of demonic eloquence that Wagner himself never found again, till quite late in life, during the "Ring of the Nibelung" period.
The "Nibelung" Dramas.May 11, 1903.
May 11, 1903.
Whatever may have happened in former years, it was scarcely possible to leave the theatre after the "Götterdämmerung" performance on Saturday with any disposition to satirise the management for the failure of the stage effects in the final scene. In the course of the week Wagner's greatest work had been presented with considerably brighter intelligence and more adequate resource than ever before in this country, and it was piteous that there should be a slight humiliation at the end. It may be doubted, indeed, whether the "Ring" in its entirety has ever been better done, for the amazing excellence of the orchestral performance was to some considerable extent matched by the singers, and the dramatic realisation of the composer's intentions was good everywhere except in certain parts of the prologue, and showed positive genius at certain points in each of the main dramas forming the trilogy. The general impression was thus one of a great task nobly carried out, and the concluding fizzle, however tiresome and distressing to the stage managers, could but seem a trifling matter to any appreciative spectator. It is a terrible business, thatfinaleof "Götterdämmerung." Conceived in a mood of frenzied protest, it bears a peculiar stamp of extravagance and violence. It shows Wagner as an Anarchist of the Bakounine type, undertaking, as it were, to "grasp this sorry scheme of things entire" and "shatter it to bits" on the off-chance that Nature might afterwards "remould it nearer to the heart's desire." A lifetime of noble endeavour and great achievement,with scarcely any response from the world but the crackling of thorns under a pot, had produced in Wagner such bitterness of spirit as little men are saved from by their natural limitations, and it is that bitterness of spirit which finds expression in the smashing and burning and drowning of the "Götterdämmerung"finale. Heroes and demigods, renouncing a hopeless conflict with the ugliness and meanness of the world, involve heaven and earth in one red ruin. Such is the significance of a tableau not worth a tithe of the time, trouble, and expense devoted to it.
By engaging Dr. Richter for the 1903 production the Covent Garden authorities made it clear that this time the nonsense of star performers who make cuts for their own convenience and sacrifice the composer's intentions to a performer's conceit would not be tolerated; and at the same time they gave the public the only possible guarantee for adequate rehearsal. For that privilege London has had to wait twenty-seven years since the original production in Bayreuth, though "Die Walküre" and "Siegfried" were long ago taken up into the ordinary Covent Garden repertory. There can be little doubt that "Rhinegold" is in all important respects the most difficult part of the "Ring" to make effective. Epic rather than dramatic in character, it presents to the actor an unfamiliar kind of task. He finds himself representing some creature that is scarcely individualised at all, and taking part in the interplay of elemental forces rather than of human passions. This goes far towards accounting for the fact that last week the "Rhinegold" performance fell very far below the level of all therest. The representative of Alberic in the first scene seemed to take very little interest in the love-making with the Rhine maidens. He had apparently adopted the guide-book view of the dwarf as a creature merely of greed and hate, and had overlooked the "fruitful impulse"—to borrow Mr. Bernard Shaw's expression—which drives Alberic towards the Rhine maidens; for his acting was quite feeble and pointless, nor was it possible for him to carry out the stage directions that require Alberic to climb over the rock-work and rush after the Rhine maidens with the "nimbleness of a Cobold," the rock-work being much too insecure and the Rhine maidens too restricted in their movements. In that first scene the rise of the curtain reveals something like the glazed side of a huge aquarium tank, and it was apparently to the general effect of the picture as first displayed that all the attention of the scenic artists had been given. Nibelheim, with the clanking sounds of the Nibelungs at their smiths' work, was fairly well rendered, but here again Alberic's part was ineffectively done, and there was far too much fairy-tale prettiness and variety in the aspect of his crowd of slaves. At Bayreuth these victims of sweating and improper labour conditions are represented with horrifying truth as a huddled crowd of little earth-men, driven hither and thither by the cursing and lashing of their master, and, instead of being to some slight extent adorned and differentiated, uniformly grimy and abject. Stage prettiness was never more out of place than in the Covent Garden presentation of the scene. The setting was best in the final scene, where the Gods march over the rainbow bridge into Valhalla.In the rainbow there was a curious predominance of "greenery-yallery" tints to the exclusion of the primary colours, but it took its place well enough in a fairly effective stage picture with a prehistoric building on the heights to the left. Here the only point of inferiority to the Bayreuth presentation was in the meteorological background. After the magnificent orchestrated thunderstorm the sky is supposed to clear and the Gods to enter their new abode amid the glow of a most radiant sunset. But the secrets of atmospheric effect and cloud pageantry seem to remain for the present exclusively in the hands of Bayreuth and Munich, and these things, though they belong to the framework rather than the essential drama, seem to have loomed large in Wagner's imagination when he conceived the "Ring," and so to have a certain importance.
In strong contrast with the embarrassment and falling back on the mere picturesque of the "Rhinegold" presentation was the rendering of "Die Walküre" on Wednesday. A dramatic interpretation of Wagner at all comparable to the musical interpretation which we derive from the Liszt-Bülow-Richter tradition is not for the present, or for some time to come, to be expected. But, making allowance for the difference in standard between the musical and scenic arts, which is simply a phenomenon of our time, one may well be thankful for such a rendering of the music's proper scenic background and framework as was given at Covent Garden on all but the first of the four evenings in the production of thepresent year. In the opening act of "Die Walküre" the setting was adequate, and a strikingly well-balanced performance was given by Mr. Van Dyck (Siegmund), Mr. Klöpfer (Hunding), and Mme. Bolska (Sieglinda). At the end of the only scene in which the three figure together Sieglinda, dismissed by her husband, stands at the door of the bedroom; Siegmund, who has told his story, sits on the further side of the stage, the central place being occupied by the beetle-browed Hunding. It is a moment big with fate in Wagner's peculiar manner. Nothing certain is known or decided, but glances full of inquiry and rapturous or sinister surmise pass between the three, whose variously coloured kinds of suspense the music interprets. Here theensemblewas truly admirable, the stress and peculiar atmosphere of that moment big with fate being successfully caught. Throughout the act Mr. Van Dyck's suppleness and resource were finely exemplified, the sombre figure of Mr. Klöpfer's Hunding contrasting effectively, while Mme. Bolska did much by intelligent acting and good singing to compensate for a certain lack of personal adaptation to the part.
The majestic Wotan of Mr. Van Rooy was much in evidence throughout the rest of the drama. A rare loftiness of conception stamps nearly all that Mr. Van Rooy does. On the other hand, he is somewhat wanting in suppleness, here and there, sacrificing theensembleto some extent to his own rigorous and ultra-heroic impersonation. This is particularly noticeable in softer scenes, such as the leave-taking with Brynhild. Only in scenes where Wotan is wrathful or oppressed by the "toovast orb of his fate" does Mr. Van Rooy succeed completely. His finest moment is in the muster of the Valkyries, where those terrible warrior maidens hold converse in music as wild and tumultuous as goes up from some great parliament of birds, till Wotan stamps with his foot, and the whole covey of them rush for their horses and go wheeling and galloping away into the clouds.
To the Brynhild of Miss Ternina it is not easy to do justice. No doubt a specialist in voice-training might have some objection to raise against the manner in which this or that note was produced, and as to her impersonation in the earlier scenes, where Brynhild brandishes her spear and sings "Ho-yo-to-ho," the doubt might be raised whether it is rugged enough. But on the whole this artist seems to present a case of almost providential adaptation to the task of impersonating Wagner's greatest heroine. From whatever point of view her impersonation be regarded, it seems better than one could reasonably expect. A most richly endowed and harmonious personality is the basis of it. Fully matching Mr. Van Rooy in breadth and dignity of conception, she greatly surpasses her distinguished colleague in tact and cleverness, whether the matter in hand be the management of draperies, the humouring of a horse, or any such secondary matter upon which the proper development of a stage picture may depend. Vocally, too, Miss Ternina is fully equal to the tremendous task, and her Brynhild is thus a truly wonderful revelation of Wagner's art at its best. For Brynhild is beyond all question Wagner'sfinest individual creation. In a series of matchless scenes he shows us the development of the warrior-maid into a perfect woman, every phase of that development being touched with a kind of demonic power that makes it impossible for anyone altogether to miss the point. In the second act of "Walküre" Brynhild comes forth on to the crags in her shining armour, with helm and shield and corselet of steel. In the leave-taking with her obdurate father, who, against his better judgment, has given way to the counsels of Fricka—that Mrs. Grundy of Valhalla,—the insignia of her Valkyriehood begin to fall off, in anticipation of the humanising process that is to be completed when Siegfried, in the ensuing drama, removes the steel corselet for the bridal feast. Before our eyes, therefore, and step by step Brynhild is transformed, making the heroic life visible and rhythmic for us at every moment. She is the vessel into which Wagner has poured the very finest vintage of his genius. No blackguardly characteristics of theUebermensch, such as develop so very freely in the Siegfried of "Götterdämmerung," are allowed to deform the figure and melody of the superb heroine, who to the end glows with intense and untainted life. Adequately to render such a conception—adequately both for our eyes and ears—is no small achievement, and it is Miss Ternina's achievement which well deserves to be reckoned, along with Dr. Richter's orchestral interpretation, among the glories of the present production.
"Siegfried is a revelation of sensuous life in its natural and joyous fulness. No historical dressobscures his form, nor are his movements obstructed by any force external to himself. The error and confusion arising from the wild play of passion rage around him and involve him in destruction. But till that destruction is compassed nothing in Siegfried's environment can arrest his own impulse. Not even in presence of death does he allow himself to be swayed by any other influence than the restless stream of life flowing within himself. Fear, envy, and vindictiveness are alike alien to his nature, and so, too, is any desire for love arising from reflection. His every movement is determined by the direct flow of vital force swelling the veins and muscles of his body to rapturous fulfilment of their functions."
Such, according to his creator, is that central hero of the "Nibelung" dramas whom critics still for the most part hopelessly misunderstand, though the best of the actors who have to represent him seem long ago to have mastered his secret. It is a familiar fact that the cultivated instinct of a good actor will often go right where all current criticism goes wrong, and no figure of the world's drama, ancient or modern, exhibits the point in a more remarkable manner than Siegfried. To any actor, indeed, with the necessary personal and vocal endowment the part may well make a strong appeal. It is devoid of all subtlety, simply requiring him to know his words and his notes and not to allow the native hue of his resolution to be sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. Mr. Kraus, the Siegfried of the Covent Garden performances, did well in most essential respects.
But much more remarkable than any particular impersonation was the catching of the proper toneand atmosphere in nearly every important scene of the three main dramas. The glowing forge in the depths of the primeval forest at the opening of "Siegfried," the play of the sunlight through the moving branches that so terrifies the dwarf accustomed to a subterranean environment, the highly realistic smith's work—all these accessories in the picture of the godlike youth were well done, and the peculiar early morning exhilaration of that first act was quite successfully realised. So, too, were the fairy-tale terrors of the dragon's cave and the leafy splendours of the glade in which Siegfried holds converse with the birds. Where there is room for improvement in the Covent Garden staging of these dramas is, above all, in the meteorological background of "Rhinegold" and "Götterdämmerung"; secondly, in the "Ride of the Valkyries," which has not hitherto been done in a sufficiently spirited manner anywhere but in Paris; thirdly, in the final scene of conflagration and ruin. At present the final scene is much too elaborately done. All that smashing and falling of timber is a mistake. A chaotic design painted on a sheet of canvas can be let down at the right moment with better effect to the eyes of the spectators, in addition to the immense advantage of producing no noise or dust, costing little, and being completely under control.[1]The present method of rendering the scene is too costly, too noisy, and too dangerous. The Valhalla building should be recognisably the same as in the final scene of "Rhinegold."
Never have the musical splendours of the "Ring" been revealed to British audiences as in the past three weeks. The windy and cloudy eloquence of the "Walküre" music and the heroic pathos of Brynhild's leave-taking have long been pretty thoroughly appreciated, but not so the songs of the forge in "Siegfried," where Wagner throws an almost fabulous kind of energy into the picture of the typical young man singing at his work, summing up all that is finest in that enthusiasm of labour which is perhaps the best part of our inheritance from the nineteenth century. These songs were, in the recent production, allowed to develop without cuts or distortion. The brawny rhythm, the iron clangour, the fizz and tumult of the instrumentation—all these things came out as never before at a performance in this country. So, too, with the long love duet of Siegfried and Brynhild and the ravishing trio of the Rhine Maidens in the last act of "Götterdämmerung." But, apart from such dazzling moments, the performances were in their completeness and sustained excellence an extraordinary revelation of the composer's power in the use of musical symbolism. Just before the rise of the curtain on the first act of "Siegfried" one hears that whine or snarl of the Nibelung dwarf, entering on the minor ninth along with the hammering theme. It sounds merely comical and trivial. But just as a personal fault, first observed as something funny, may in the experience of life or study of history be found developing into a source of appalling mischief, so, as these dramas progress, do we find the symbol of Nibelung hatred developing from a comical snarl into thosemonstrous and multitudinous yells that rend the welkin and dismay the soul amid the gathering horror of the "Götterdämmerung" tragedy. Persons who are in the habit of chattering about theLeitmotivas though it were a nostrum might with advantage take note of a few such points. The symbols of Nibelung hatred are not more effective nor anywise better done than the other symbols in the "Ring," but they are shorter and more peculiarly orchestrated, and so easier to follow.
As to Dr. Richter's interpretation of these gigantic scores perhaps enough has been said. The modern executive musician can approach no greater task than that in the performance of which the foundation of Dr. Richter's reputation was laid when the work was heard for the first time twenty-seven years ago in the composer's presence, and we have been fortunate in hearing his authoritative rendering once more. If Wotan had understood his business anything like as well as Dr. Richter, Valhalla would never have come to grief.
The Bayreuth Festival.July 23, 1904.
July 23, 1904.
Apart from the Wagner Theatre and the undertakings connected therewith, Bayreuth is a decayed "Residenzstadt," with an "Old Castle" of the fifteenth century, a "New Castle" of the eighteenth, and other not very carefully preserved relics of the Court which Franconian Margraves long kept here. Of country residences and "pleasaunces" too, designed in the over-fantasticmanner of the South German potentate, there is more than one in the neighbourhood, and no doubt such things help to create an atmosphere that is favourable to artistic enjoyment. The smoke of modern industrial enterprise is not unknown here, but in the fulfilment of the part of its destiny which is connected with Wagnerian drama Bayreuth is aided by the leafy dells and dingles and the stately avenues of the Hofgarten, if not by the fantastic waterworks of the "Eremitage."
The Festival, which stands as a concrete symbol of Wagner's artistic mission, is just now at the zenith of its prosperity. It is twenty-eight years since the theatre was opened and twenty-one since Wagner's death, and the only thing which Bayreuth now fears is American piracy. One kind of calumny after another has been silenced, and in years past the institution seems to have done nothing but gain in solidity and dignity. It has formed an international public with a somewhat higher average of intelligence than is to be found anywhere else; and if there are certain weak and wrong-headed elements in the internal organisation, they are not so bad as to ruin the combined result of the brilliant and exceptional talent with which nearly every department—musical, dramatic, scenic, architectural, mechanical, and administrative—is worked. One might make a long list of the points in which the Wagner Theatre is somewhat better than any other of the kind. For example, the situation and approaches are more agreeable, the exits and entrances are more convenient, the ventilation is much more satisfactory, the acoustic is much finer, the distractions during the performance are fewer in consequenceof specially good arrangements, structural and other, and by reason of the early start and long intervals the audience is less fatigued; the stage machinery works better, and the discipline behind the scenes is more thorough. The orchestra, besides being more advantageously placed, is larger, and has a higher average of executive ability. Apart, therefore, from the special Wagnerian enthusiasm, there is much to attract persons who take any kind of interest in musical drama, and as a matter of fact the audience commonly includes dozens of well-known musicians from different parts of the world whose own tendencies are anything but Wagnerian.