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Title: Music and bad manners

Author: Carl Van Vechten

Release date: April 19, 2025 [eBook #75908]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1916

Credits: Carla Foust, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS ***





Music and Bad Manners




  _By THE SAME AUTHOR_


  MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR




  Music
  and Bad Manners

  _Carl Van Vechten_


  [Illustration]

  New York Alfred A. Knopf
  MCMXVI




  COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
  ALFRED A. KNOPF

  _All rights reserved_


  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




_To my Father_




Contents


                                        PAGE

  MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS                   11

  MUSIC FOR THE MOVIES                    43

  SPAIN AND MUSIC                         57

  SHALL WE REALIZE WAGNER’S IDEALS?      135

  THE BRIDGE BURNERS                     169

  A NEW PRINCIPLE IN MUSIC               217

  LEO ORNSTEIN                           229




Music and Bad Manners




Music and Bad Manners


Singers, musicians of all kinds, are notoriously bad mannered. The
storms of the Titan, Beethoven, the petty malevolences of Richard
Wagner, the weak sulkiness of Chopin (“Chopin in displeasure was
appalling,” writes George Sand, “and as with me he always controlled
himself it was as if he might die of suffocation”) have all been
recalled in their proper places in biographies and in fiction; but
no attempt has been made heretofore, so far as I am aware, to lump
similar anecdotes together under the somewhat castigating title I
have chosen to head this article. Nor is it alone the performer who
gives exhibitions of bad manners. (As a matter of fact, once an
artist reaches the platform he is on his mettle, at his best. At home
he--or she--may be ruthless in his passionate display of floods of
“temperament.” I have seen a soprano throw a pork roast on the floor
at dinner, the day before a performance of Wagner’s “consecrational
festival play,” with the shrill explanation, “Pork before _Parsifal_!”
On the street he may shatter the clouds with his lightnings--as,
indeed, Beethoven is said to have done--but on the stage he becomes,
as a rule, a superhuman being, an interpreter, a mere virtuoso. Of
course, there are exceptions.) Audiences, as well, may be relied upon
to behave badly on occasion. An auditor is not necessarily at his best
in the concert hall. He may have had a bad dinner, or quarrelled with
his wife before arriving. At any rate he has paid his money and it
might be expected that he would make some demonstration of disapproval
when he was displeased. The extraordinary thing is that he does not
do so oftener. On the whole it must be admitted that audiences remain
unduly calm at concerts, that they are unreasonably polite, indeed, to
offensively inadequate or downright bad interpretations. I have sat
through performances, for example, of the Russian Symphony Society in
New York when I wondered how my fellow-sufferers could display such
fortitude and patience. When _Prince Igor_ was first performed at the
Metropolitan Opera House the ballet, danced in defiance of all laws of
common sense or beauty, almost compelled me to throw the first stone.
The parable saved me. Still one doesn’t need to be without sin to sling
pebbles in an opera house. And it is a pleasure to remember that there
have been occasions when audiences did speak up!

In those immeasurably sad pages in which Henry Fothergill Chorley
describes the last London appearance of Giuditta Pasta, recalling
Pauline Viardot’s beautiful remark (she, like Rachel, was hearing the
great dramatic soprano for the first time), “It is like the _Cenacolo_
of Da Vinci at Milan--a wreck of a picture, but the picture is the
greatest picture in the world!” this great chronicler of the glories
of the opera stage recalls the attitude of the French actress: “There
were artists present, who had then, for the first time, to derive some
impression of a renowned artist--perhaps, with the natural feeling that
her reputation had been exaggerated.--Among these was Rachel--whose
bitter ridicule of the entire sad show made itself heard throughout the
whole theatre, and drew attention to the place where she sat--one might
even say, sarcastically enjoying the scene.”

Chorley’s description of an incident in the career of the dynamic Mme.
Mara, a favourite in Berlin from 1771 to 1780, makes far pleasanter
reading: “On leave of absence being denied to her when she wished
to recruit her strength by a visit to the Bohemian _baden_, the
songstress took the resolution of neglecting her professional duties,
in the hope of being allowed to depart as worthless. The Czarovitch,
Paul the First of Russia, happened about that time to pay a visit to
Berlin; and she was announced to appear in one of the grand parts. She
pretended illness. The King sent her word, in the morning of the day,
that she was to get well and sing her best. She became, of course,
worse--could not leave her bed. Two hours before the opera began, a
carriage, escorted by eight soldiers, was at her door, and the captain
of the company forced his way into her chamber, declaring that their
orders were to bring her to the theatre, dead or alive. ‘You cannot;
you see I am in bed.’ ‘That is of little consequence,’ said the
obdurate machine; ‘we will take you, bed and all.’ There was nothing
for it but to get up and go to the theatre; dress, and resolve to sing
without the slightest taste or skill. And this Mara did. She kept her
resolution for the whole of the first act, till a thought suddenly
seized her that she might be punishing herself in giving the Grand-Duke
of Russia a bad opinion of her powers. A _bravura_ came; and she burst
forth with all her brilliancy, in particular distinguishing herself by
a miraculous shake, which she sustained, and swelled, and diminished,
with such wonderful art as to call down more applause than ever.” This
was the same Mara who walked out of the orchestra at a performance of
_The Messiah_ at Oxford rather than stand during the singing of the
_Hallelujah Chorus_.

In that curious series of anecdotes which Berlioz collected under
the title, “Les Grotesques de la Musique,” I discovered an account
of a performance of a _Miserere_ of Mercadante at the church of San
Pietro in Naples, in the presence of a cardinal and his suite. The
cardinal several times expressed his pleasure, and the congregation at
two points, the _Redde Mihi_ and the _Benigne fac, Domine_, broke in
with applause and insisted upon repetitions! Berlioz also describes
a rehearsal of Grétry’s _La Rosière de Salency_ at the Odéon, when
that theatre was devoted to opera. The members of the orchestra were
overcome with a sense of the ridiculous nature of the music they were
performing and made strange sounds the while they played. The _chef
d’orchestre_ attempted to keep his face straight, and Berlioz thought
he was scandalized by the scene. A little later, however, he found
himself laughing harder than anybody else. The memory of this occasion
gave him the inspiration some time later of arranging a concert of
works of this order (in which, he assured himself, the music of the
masters abounded), without forewarning the public of his purpose.
He prepared the programme, including therein this same overture of
Grétry’s, then a celebrated English air _Arm, Ye Brave_, a “sonata
_diabolique_” for the violin, the quartet from a French opera in which
this passage occurred:

    “J’aime assez les Hollandaises,
    Les Persanes, les Anglaises,
    Mais je préfère des Françaises
    L’esprit, la grâce et la gaîté,”

an instrumental march, the finale of the first act of an opera, a fugue
on _Kyrie Eleison_ from a Requiem Mass in which the music suggested
anything but the words, variations for the bassoon on the melody of
_Au Clair de la Lune_, and a symphony. Unfortunately for the trial
of the experiment the rehearsal was never concluded. The executants
got no further than the third number before they became positively
hysterical. The public performance was never given, but Berlioz assures
us that the average symphony concert audience would have taken the
programme seriously and asked for more! It may be considered certain
that in his choice of pieces Berlioz was making game of some of his
contemporaries....

In all the literature on the subject of music there are no more
delightful volumes to be met with than those of J. B. Weckerlin, called
“Musiciana,” “Nouveau Musiciana,” and “Dernier Musiciana.” These books
are made up of anecdotes, personal and otherwise. From Bourdelot’s
“Histoire de la Musique” Weckerlin culled the following: “An equerry
of Madame la Dauphine asked two of the court musicians to his home at
Versailles for dinner one evening. They sang standing opposite the
mantelpiece, over which hung a great mirror which was broken in six
pieces by the force of tone; all the porcelain on the buffet resounded
and shook.” Weckerlin also recalls a caprice of Louis XI, who one day
commanded the Abbé de Baigne, who had already invented many musical
instruments, to devise a harmony out of pigs. The Abbé asked for some
money, which was grudgingly given, and constructed a pavilion covered
with velvet, under which he placed a number of pigs. Before this
pavilion he arranged a white table with a keyboard constructed in such
a fashion that the displacing of a key stuck a pig with a needle. The
sounds evoked were out of the ordinary, and it is recorded that the
king was highly diverted and asked for more. Auber’s enthusiasm for his
own music, usually concealed under an indifferent air, occasionally
expressed itself in strange fashion. Mme. Damoreau recounted to
Weckerlin how, when the composer completed an air in the middle of the
night, even at three or four o’clock in the morning, he rushed to her
apartment. Dragging a pianoforte to her bed, he insisted on playing the
new song over and over to her, while she sang it, meanwhile making the
changes suggested by this extraordinary performance.

More modern instances come to mind. Maria Gay is not above nose-blowing
and expectoration in her interpretation of Carmen, physical acts in the
public performance of which no Spanish cigarette girl would probably
be caught ashamed. Yet it may be doubted if they suit the music of
Bizet, or the Meilhac and Halévy version of Merimée’s creation.... A
story has been related to me--I do not vouch for the truth of it--that
during a certain performance of _Carmen_ at the Opéra-Comique in Paris
a new singer, at some stage in the proceedings, launched that dreadful
French word which Georges Feydeau so ingenuously allowed his heroine to
project into the second act of _La Dame de chez Maxim_, with a result
even more startling than that which attended Bernard Shaw’s excursion
into the realms of the expletive in his play, _Pygmalion_. It is
further related of this performance of _Carmen_, which is said to have
sadly disturbed the “traditions,” that in the excitement incident to
her début the lady positively refused to allow Don José to kill her.
Round and round the stage she ran while the perspiring tenor tried in
vain to catch her. At length, the music of the score being concluded,
the curtain fell on a Carmen still alive; the _salle_ was in an uproar.

I find I cannot include Chaliapine’s Basilio in my list of bad mannered
stage performances, although his trumpetings into his handkerchief
disturbed many of New York’s professional writers. _Il Barbiere_ is
a farcical piece, and the music of Rossini hints at the Rabelaisian
humours of the dirty Spanish priest. In any event, it was the finest
interpretation of the rôle that I have ever seen or heard and, with
the splendid ensemble (Mme. Sembrich was the Rosina, Mr. Bonci, the
count, and Mr. Campanari, the Figaro), the comedy went with such joyous
abandon (the first act finale to the accompaniment of roars of laughter
from the stalls) that I am inclined to believe the performance could
not be bettered in this generation.

The late Algernon St. John Brenon used to relate a history about Emma
Eames and a recalcitrant tenor. The opera was _Lohengrin_, I believe,
and the question at issue was the position of a certain couch. Mme.
Eames wished it placed here; the tenor there. As always happens
in arguments concerning a Wagnerian music-drama, at some point the
Bayreuth tradition was invoked, although I have forgotten whether that
tradition favoured the soprano or her opponent in this instance. In
any case, at the rehearsal the tenor seemed to have won the battle.
When at the performance he found the couch in the exact spot which
had been designated by the lady his indignation was all the greater
on this account. With as much regard for the action of the drama as
was consistent with so violent a gesture he gave the couch a violent
shove with his projected toe, with the intention of pushing it into his
chosen locality. He retired with a howl, nursing a wounded member. The
couch had been nailed to the floor!

It is related that Marie Delna was discovered washing dishes at an inn
in a small town near Paris. Her benefactors took her to the capital
and placed her in the Conservatoire. She always retained a certain
peasant obstinacy, and it is said that during the course of her
instruction when she was corrected she frequently replied, “Je m’en
vais.” Against this phrase argument was unavailing and Mme. Delna, as
a result, acquired a habit of having her own way. Her Orphée was (and
still is, I should think) one of the notable achievements of our epoch.
It must have equalled Pauline Viardot’s performance dramatically,
and transcended it vocally. After singing the part several hundred
times she naturally acquired certain habits and mannerisms, tricks
both of action and of voice. Still, it is said that when she came to
the Metropolitan Opera House she offered, at a rehearsal, to defer
to Mr. Toscanini’s ideas. He, the rumour goes, gave his approval to
her interpretation on this occasion. Not so at the performance. Those
who have heard it can never forget the majesty and beauty of this
characterization, as noble a piece of stage work as we have seen or
heard in our day. At her début in the part in New York Mme. Delna was
superb, vocally and dramatically. In the celebrated air, _Che faro
senza Euridice_, the singer followed the tradition, doubly established
by the example of Mme. Viardot in the great revival of the mid-century,
of singing the different stanzas of the air in different _tempi_. In
her slowest _adagio_ the conductor became impatient. He beat his stick
briskly across his desk and whipped up the orchestra. There was soon
a hiatus of two bars between singer and musicians. It was a terrible
moment, but the singer won the victory. She _turned her back on the
conductor_ and continued to sing in her own time. The organ tones
rolled out and presently the audience became aware of a junction
between the two great forces. Mr. Toscanini was vanquished, but he
never forgave her.

During the opera season of 1915-16, opera-goers were treated to a
diverting exhibition. Mme. Geraldine Farrar, just returned from a fling
at three five-reel cinema dramas, elected to instil a bit of moving
picture realism into _Carmen_. Fresh with the memory of her prolonged
and brutal scuffle in the factory scene as it was depicted on the
screen, Mme. Farrar attempted something like it in the opera, the first
act of which was enlivened with sundry blows and kicks. More serious
still were her alleged assaults on the tenor (Mr. Caruso) in the third
act which, it is said, resulted in his clutching her like a struggling
eel, to prevent her interference with his next note. There was even
a suggestion of disagreement in the curtain calls which ensued. All
these incidents of an enlivening evening were duly and impressively
chronicled in the daily press.

There is, of course, Vladimir de Pachmann. Everybody who has attended
his recitals has come under the spell of his beautiful tone and has
been annoyed by his bad manners. For, curiously enough, the two
qualities have become inseparable with him, especially in recent
years. Once in Chicago I saw the strange little pianist sit down
in front of his instrument, rise again, gesticulate, and leave the
stage. Returning with a stage-hand he pointed to his stool; it was
not satisfactory. A chair was brought in, tried, and found wanting;
more gesticulation--this time wilder. At length, after considerable
discussion between Mr. de Pachmann and the stage-hand, all in view
of the audience, it was decided that nothing would do but that some
one must fetch the artist’s own piano bench from his hotel, which,
fortunately, adjoined the concert hall. This was accomplished in the
course of time. In the interval the pianist did not leave the platform.
He sat at the back on the chair which had been offered him as a
substitute for the offending stool and entertained his audience with a
spectacular series of grimaces.

On another occasion this singular genius arrested his fingers in the
course of a performance of one of Chopin’s études. His ears were
enraptured, it would seem, by his own rendition of a certain run; over
and over again he played it, now faster, now more slowly; at times
almost slowly enough to give the student in the front row a glimpse
of the magic fingering. With a sudden change of manner he announced,
“This is the way Godowsky would play this scale”: great velocity but a
dry tone. Then, “And now Pachmann again!” The magic fingers stroked the
keys.

Even as an auditor de Pachmann sometimes exploits his eccentricities.
Josef Hofmann once told me the following story: De Pachmann was sitting
in the third row at a concert Rubinstein gave in his prime. De Pachmann
burst into hilarious laughter, rocking to and fro. Rubinstein was
playing beautifully and de Pachmann’s neighbour, annoyed, demanded why
he was laughing. De Pachmann could scarcely speak as he pointed to the
pianist on the stage and replied, “He used the fourth finger instead of
the third in that run. Isn’t it funny?”

I cannot take Vladimir de Pachmann to task for these amusing bad
manners! But they annoy the _bourgeois_. We should most of us be glad
to have Oscar Wilde brilliant at our dinner parties, even though he
ate peas with his knife; and Napoleon’s generalship would have been
as effective if he had been an omnivorous reader of the works of
Laura Jean Libbey. But one must not dwell too long on de Pachmann.
One might be tempted to devote an entire essay to the relation of his
eccentricities.

Another pianist, also a composer, claims attention: Alberto Savinio.
You may find a photolithograph of Savinio’s autograph manuscript of
_Bellovées Fatales, No. 12_, in that curious periodical entitled “291,”
the number for April, 1915. There is a programme, which reads as
follows:


LA PASSION DES ROTULES

  La Femme: Ah! Il m’a touché de sa jambe de caoutchouc! Ma-ma! Ma-ma!

  L’Homme: Tutto s’ha di rosa, Maria, per te....

  La Femme: Ma-ma! Ma-ma!

There are indications as to how the composer wishes his music to be
played, sometimes _glissando_ and sometimes “_avec des poings_.” The
rapid and tortuous passages between the black and white keys would
test the contortionistic qualities of any one’s fingers. Savinio,
it is said, at his appearances in Paris, actually played until his
fingers _bled_. When he had concluded, indeed, the ends of his fingers
were crushed and bruised and the keyboard was red with blood. Albert
Gleizes, quoted by Walter Conrad Arensberg, is my authority for this
bizarre history of music and bad manners. I have not seen (or heard)
Savinio perform. But when I told this tale to Leo Ornstein he assured
me that he frequently had had a similar experience.

Romain Rolland in “Jean-Christophe” relates an incident which is
especially interesting because it has a foundation in fact. Something
of the sort happened to Hugo Wolf when an orchestra performed his
_Penthesilea_ overture for the first time. It is a curious example of
bad manners in which both the performers and the audience join.

“At last it came to Christophe’s symphony.” (I am quoting from Gilbert
Cannan’s translation.) “He saw from the way the orchestra and the
people in the hall were looking at his box that they were aware of his
presence. He hid himself. He waited with the catch at his heart which
every musician feels at the moment when the conductor’s wand is raised
and the waters of the music gather in silence before bursting their
dam. He had never yet heard his work played. How would the creatures of
his dreams live? How would their voices sound? He felt their roaring
within him; and he leaned over the abyss of sounds waiting fearfully
for what should come forth.

“What did come forth was a nameless thing, a shapeless hotchpotch.
Instead of the bold columns which were to support the front of the
building the chords came crumbling down like a building in ruins; there
was nothing to be seen but the dust of mortar. For a moment Christophe
was not quite sure whether they were really playing his work. He cast
back for the train, the rhythm of his thoughts; he could not recognize
it; it went on babbling and hiccoughing like a drunken man clinging
close to the wall, and he was overcome with shame, as though he himself
had been seen in that condition. It was to no avail to think that he
had not written such stuff; when an idiotic interpreter destroys a
man’s thoughts he has always a moment of doubt when he asks himself
in consternation if he is himself responsible for it. The audience
never asks such a question; the audience believes in the interpreter,
in the singers, in the orchestra whom they are accustomed to hear, as
they believe in their newspaper; they cannot make a mistake; if they
say absurd things, it is the absurdity of the author. This audience
was the less inclined to doubt because it liked to believe. Christophe
tried to persuade himself that the _Kapellmeister_ was aware of the
hash and would stop the orchestra and begin again. The instruments were
not playing together. The horn had missed his beat and had come in a
bar too late; he went on for a few minutes and then stopped quietly
to clean his instrument. Certain passages for the oboe had absolutely
disappeared. It was impossible for the most skilled ear to pick up
the thread of the musical idea, or even to imagine there was one.
Fantastic instrumentations, humoristic sallies became grotesque through
the coarseness of the execution. It was lamentably stupid, the work of
an idiot, of a joker who knew nothing of music. Christophe tore his
hair. He tried to interrupt, but the friend who was with him held him
back, assuring him that the _Herr Kapellmeister_ must surely see the
faults of the execution and would put everything right--that Christophe
must not show himself and that if he made any remark it would have a
very bad effect. He made Christophe sit at the very back of the box.
Christophe obeyed, but he beat his head with his fists; and every fresh
monstrosity drew from him a groan of indignation and misery.

“‘The wretches! The wretches!...’

“He groaned and squeezed his hands tight to keep from crying out.

“Now mingled with the wrong notes there came up to him the muttering
of the audience, who were beginning to be restless. At first it was
only a tremor; but soon Christophe was left without a doubt; they were
laughing. The musicians of the orchestra had given the signal; some
of them did not conceal their hilarity. The audience, certain then
that the music was laughable, rocked with laughter. This merriment
became general; it increased at the return of a very rhythmical motif
with the double-basses accentuated in a burlesque fashion. Only the
_Kapellmeister_ went on through the uproar imperturbably beating time.

“At last they reached the end (the best things come to an end). It was
the turn of the audience. They exploded with delight, an explosion
which lasted for several minutes. Some hissed; others applauded
ironically; the wittiest of all shouted ‘Encore!’ A bass voice coming
from a stage box began to imitate the grotesque motif. Other jokers
followed suit and imitated it also. Some one shouted ‘Author!’ It was
long since these witty folk had been so highly entertained.

“When the tumult was calmed down a little the _Kapellmeister_, standing
quite impassive with his face turned towards the audience, though he
was pretending not to see it (the audience was still supposed to be
non-existent), made a sign to the audience that he was about to speak.
There was a cry of ‘Ssh,’ and silence. He waited a moment longer; then
(his voice was curt, cold, and cutting):

“‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I should certainly not have let _that_ be
played through to the end if I had not wished to make an example of
the gentleman who has dared to write offensively of the great Brahms.’

“That was all; jumping down from his stand he went out amid cheers from
the delighted audience. They tried to recall him; the applause went on
for a few minutes longer. But he did not return. The orchestra went
away. The audience decided to go too. The concert was over.

“It had been a good day.”

Von Bülow once stopped his orchestra at a public performance to
remonstrate with a lady with a fan in the front row of seats. “Madame,”
he said gravely, “I must beg you to cease fanning yourself in
three-four time while I am conducting in four-four time!”

Here are a few personal recollections of bad mannered audiences. A
performance of _The Magic Flute_ in Chicago comes to mind. Fritzi
Scheff, the Papagena, and Giuseppe Campanari, the Papageno, had
concluded their duet in the last act amidst a storm of applause, in
face of which the conductor sped on to the entrance of the Queen of the
Night. Mme. Sembrich entered and sang a part of her recitative unheard.
One could see, however, that her jaws opened and closed with the
mechanism incidental to tone-production. After a few bars she retired
defeated and the bad mannered audience continued to shout and applaud
until that unspeakable bit of nonsense which runs “Pa-pa-pa,” etc., was
repeated. Mme. Sembrich appeared no more that day.

Another stormy audience I encountered at a concert of the Colonne
Orchestra in Paris. Those who sit in the gallery at these concerts at
the Chatelet Theatre are notoriously opinionated. There the battles of
Richard Strauss and Debussy have been fought. The gallery crowd always
comes early because seats in the top of the house are unreserved. They
cost a franc or two; I forget exactly how much, but I have often sat
there. To pass the time until the concert begins, and also to show
their indifference to musical literature and the opinions of others,
the galleryites fashion a curious form of spill, with one end in a
point and the other feathered like an arrow, out of the pages of the
annotated programmes. These are then sent sailing, in most instances
with infinite dexterity and incredible velocity, over the heads of the
arriving audience. The objective point is the very centre of the back
cloth on the stage, a spot somewhat above the kettle-drum. A successful
shot always brings forth a round of applause. But this is (or was) an
episode incident to any Colonne concert. I am describing an occasion.

The concert took place during the season of poor Colonne’s final
illness (now he lies buried in that curiously remote avenue of
Père-Lachaise where repose the ashes of Oscar Wilde). Gabriel Pierné,
his successor, had already assumed the bâton, and he conducted the
concert in question. Anton Van Rooy was the soloist and he had chosen
to sing two very familiar (and very popular in Paris) Wagner excerpts,
Wotan’s Farewell from _Die Walküre_, and the air which celebrates the
evening star from _Tannhäuser_. (In this connection I might state that
in this same winter--1908-9--_Das Rheingold_ was given _in concert
form_--it had not yet been performed at the Opéra--on two consecutive
Sundays at the Lamoureux Concerts in the Salle Gaveau to _standing room
only_.) The concert proceeded in orderly fashion until Mr. Van Rooy
appeared; then the uproar began. The gallery hooted, and screamed,
and yelled. All the terrible noises which only a Paris crowd can
invent were hurled from the dark recesses of that gallery. The din was
appalling, terrifying. Mr. Van Rooy nervously fingered a sheet of music
he held in his hands. Undoubtedly visions of the first performance of
_Tannhäuser_ at the Paris Opéra passed through his mind. He may also
have considered the possibility of escaping to the Gare du Nord, with
the chance of catching a train for Germany before the mob could tear
him into bits. Mr. Pierné, who knew his Paris, faced the crowd, while
the audience below peered up and shuddered, with something of the
fright of the aristocrats during the first days of the Revolution. Then
he held up his hand and, in time, the modest gesture provoked a modicum
of silence. In that silence some one shrieked out the explanation:
“_Tannhäuser_ avant _Walküre_.” That was all. The gallery was not
satisfied with the order of the programme. The readjustment was quickly
made, the parts distributed to the orchestra, and Mr. Van Rooy sang
Wolfram’s air before Wotan’s. It may be said that never could he have
hoped for a more complete ovation, a more flattering reception than
that which the Parisian audience accorded him when he had finished. The
applause was veritably deafening.

I have related elsewhere at some length my experiences at the first
Paris performance of Igor Strawinsky’s ballet, _The Sacrifice to the
Spring_, an appeal to primitive emotion through a nerve-shattering use
of rhythm, staged in ultra-modern style by Waslav Nijinsky. Chords
and legs seemed disjointed. Flying arms synchronized marvellously
with screaming clarinets. But this first audience would not permit the
composer to be heard. Cat-calls and hisses succeeded the playing of
the first few bars, and then ensued a battery of screams, countered
by a foil of applause. We warred over art (some of us thought it was
and some thought it wasn’t). The opposition was bettered at times;
at any rate it was a more thrilling battle than Strauss conceived
between the Hero and his enemies in _Heldenleben_ and the celebrated
scenes from _Die Meistersinger_ and _The Rape of the Lock_ could not
stand the comparison. Some forty of the protestants were forced out
of the theatre but that did not quell the disturbance. The lights in
the auditorium were fully turned on but the noise continued and I
remember Mlle. Piltz executing her strange dance of religious hysteria
on a stage dimmed by the blazing light in the auditorium, seemingly to
the accompaniment of the disjointed ravings of a mob of angry men and
women. Little by little, at subsequent performances of the work the
audiences became more mannerly, and when it was given in concert in
Paris the following year it was received with applause.

Some of my readers may remember the demonstration directed (supposedly)
against American singers when the Metropolitan Opera Company invaded
Paris some years ago for a spring season. The opening opera was _Aïda_,
and all went well until the first scene of the second act, in which
the reclining Amneris chants her thoughts while her slaves dance. Here
the audience began to give signs of disapproval, which presently broke
out into open hissing, and finally into a real hullabaloo. Mme. Homer,
nothing daunted, continued to sing. She afterwards told me that she
had never sung with such force and intensity. And in a few moments she
broke the spell, and calmed the riot.

Arthur Nikisch once noted that players of the bassoon were more
sensitive than the other members of his orchestra; he found them
subject to quick fits of temper, and intolerant of criticism. He
attributed this to the delicate mechanism of the instrument which
required the nicest apportionment of breath. Clarinet players, he
discovered, were less sensitive. One could joke with them in reason;
while horn players were as tractable as Newfoundland dogs!--A case of a
sensitive pianist comes to mind, brought to bay by as rude an audience
as I can recall. Mr. Paderewski was playing Beethoven’s C sharp minor
sonata at one of these morning musicales arranged at the smart hotels
so that the very rich may see more intimately the well-known artists of
the concert and opera stage, when some women started to go out. In his
following number, Couperin’s _La Bandoline_, the interruption became
intolerable and he stopped playing. “Those who do not wish to hear me
will kindly leave the room immediately,” he said, “and those who wish
to remain will kindly take their seats.” The outflow continued, while
those who remained seated began to hiss. “I am astonished to find
people in New York leaving while an artist is playing,” the pianist
added. Then some one started to applaud; the applause deepened, and
finally Mr. Paderewski consented to play again and took his place on
the bench before his instrument.

The incident was the result of the pianist’s well-known aversion to
appearing in conjunction with other artists. He had finally agreed to
do so on this occasion provided he would be allowed to play after the
others had concluded their performances. There had been many recalls
for the singer and violinist who preceded him and it was well after
one o’clock (the concert had begun at eleven) before he walked on
the platform. Now one o’clock is a very late hour at a fashionable
morning musicale. Some of those present were doubtless hungry; others,
perhaps, had trains to catch; while there must have been a goodly
number who had heard all the music they wanted to hear that morning.
There was a very pretty ending to the incident. Once he had begun, Mr.
Paderewski played for an hour and twenty minutes, and the faithful
ones, who had remained seated, applauded so much when he finally rose
from the bench, even after he had added several numbers to the printed
programme, that the echoes of the clapping hands accompanied him to his
motor.

I have reserved for the last a description of a concert given at the
Dal Verme Theatre in Milan by the Italian Futurists. The account is
culled from the “Corriere della Sera” of that city, and the translation
is that which appeared in “International Music and Drama”:

“At the Dal Verme a Futurist concert of ‘intonarumori’ was to be held
last night, but instead of this there was an uproarious din intoned
both by the public and the Futurists which ended in a free-for-all
fight.

“In a speech which was listened to with sufficient attention,
Marinetti, the poet, announced that this was to be the first public
trial of a new device invented by Luigi Russelo, a Futurist painter.
This instrument is called the ‘noise-maker’ and its purpose is to
render a new kind of music. Modern life vibrates with all sorts of
noises; music therefore must render this sensation. This, in brief, is
the idea. In order to develop it Russelo had invented several types of
noise-makers, each of which renders a different sound.

“After Marinetti’s speech the curtain went up and the new orchestra
appeared in all its glory amidst the bellowings of the public. The
famous ‘noise-intonators’ proved to be made out of a sort of bass-drum
with an immense trumpet attached to it, the latter looking very much
like a gramaphone horn. Behind the instrument sat the players, whose
only function was to turn the crank rhythmically in order to create the
harmonic noise. They looked, while performing this agreeable task, like
a squad of knife-grinders. But it was impossible to hear the music. The
public was unconditionally intolerant. We only caught here and there a
faint buzz and growl. Then everything was drowned in the billowing seas
of howls, jeers, hisses, and cat-calls. What they were hissing at, it
being impossible to hear the music, was not quite clear. They hissed
just for the fun of it. It was a case of art for art’s sake. Painter
Russelo, however, continued undisturbed to direct his mighty battery
of musical howitzers and his professors kept on grinding their pieces
with a beautiful serenity of mind, all the while the tumult increasing
to redoubtable proportions. The consequence was that those who went
to the Dal Verme for the purpose of listening to Futurist music had
to give up all hopes and resign themselves to hear the bedlam of the
public.

“In vain did Marinetti attempt to speak, begging them to be quiet for
a while and assuring them that they would be allowed a whole carnival
of howls at the end of the concert--the public wanted to hiss and there
was no way to check it. But Russelo kept right on. He conducted with
imperturbable solemnity the three pieces we were supposed to hear: _The
Awakening of a Great City_, _A Dinner on a Kursaal Terrace_, and _A
Meet of Automobiles and Aeroplanes_. Nobody heard anything, but Russelo
rendered everything conscientiously. The only thing we were able to
find out about Futurist music is that the noise of the orchestra is by
no means too loud, or at least not louder than impromptu choruses.

“But the worst was reserved for the middle of the third piece. The
exchange of hot words and very old-fashioned courtesies had now become
ultra-vivacious and was being punctuated with several projectiles and
an occasional blow. At this point, Marinetti, Boccioni, Carra, and
other Futurists jumped into the pit and began to distribute all sorts
of blows to the infuriated spectators. The new Futurist style enables
us to synthesize the scene. Blows. Carbineers. Inspectors. Cushions and
chairs flying about. Howls. Public standing on chairs. Concert goes
on. More howls, shrieks, curses, and thunderous insults. Futurists are
led back to stage by gendarmes. Public slowly passes out. Marinetti
and followers pass out before public. Again howls, invectives,
guffaws, and fist blows. Piazza Cardusio. More blows. Galleria. Ditto.
Futurists enter Savini’s café while pugilistic matches go merrily on.
Mob attempts to storm stronghold. Iron gates close. Futurists are shut
in, in good condition, save few torn hats. Mob slowly calms down and
disperses. The end.”


_New York, May, 1916._




  Music for the Movies

  “_O Tempora! O Movies!_”

                     W. B. Chase.




Music for the Movies


Despite the fact that it would seem that the moving picture drama had
opened up new worlds to the modern musician, no important composer,
so far as I am aware, has as yet turned his attention to the writing
of music for the films. If the cinema drama is in its infancy, as
some would have us believe, then we may be sure that the time is not
far distant when moving picture scores will take their places on the
musicians’ book-shelves alongside those of operas, symphonies, masses,
and string quartets. In the meantime, entirely ignorant of the truth
(or oblivious to it, or merely helpless, as the case may be) that
writing music for moving pictures is a new art, which demands a new
point of view, the directors of the picture theatres are struggling
with the situation as best they may. Under the circumstances it is
remarkable, on the whole, how swiftly and how well the demand for music
with the silent drama has been met. Certainly the music is usually on
a level with (or of a better quality than) the type of entertainment
offered. But the directors have not definitely tackled the problem;
they still continue to try to force old wine into new bottles,
arranging and re-arranging melody and harmony which was contrived for
quite other occasions and purposes. Even when scores have been written
for pictures the result has not shown any imaginative advance over the
arranged score. It is strange, but it has occurred to no one that the
moving picture demands a _new_ kind of music.

The composers, I should imagine, are only waiting to be asked to write
it. Certainly none of them has ever shown any hesitancy about composing
incidental music for the spoken drama. Mendelssohn wrote strains for
_A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ which seemed pledged to immortality until
Granville Barker ignored them; the Wedding March is still in favour
in Kankakee and Keokuk. Beethoven illustrated Goethe’s _Egmont_; Sir
Arthur Sullivan penned a score for _The Tempest_; Schubert was inspired
to put down some of his most ravishing notes for a stupid play called
_Rosamunde_; Grieg’s _Peer Gynt_ music is more often performed than
the play. More recent instances of incidental music for dramas are
Saint-Saëns’s score for Brieux’s _La Foi_, Mascagni’s for _The Eternal
City_, and Richard Strauss’s for _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_. Is it
necessary to continue the list? I have only, after all, put down a few
of the obvious examples (passing by the thousands upon thousands of
scores devised by lesser composers for lesser plays) that would spring
at once to any musician’s mind. Of course it has usually been the
poetic drama (do we ever hear Shakespeare or Rostand without it?) which
has seemed to call for incidental music but it has accompanied (with
more or less disastrous consequences, to be sure) the unfolding of many
a “drawing-room” play; especially during the eighties.

When the first moving picture was exposed on the screen it seems to
have occurred to its projector at once that some kind of music must
accompany its unreeling. The silence evidently appalled him. A moving
picture is not unlike a ballet in that it depends entirely upon action
(it differs from a ballet in that the action is not necessarily
rhythmic)--and whoever heard of a ballet performed without music? Sound
certainly has its value in creating an atmosphere and in emphasizing
the “thrill” of the moving picture, especially when the sound is
selected and co-ordinated. It may also divert the attention. On the
whole, more photographed plays follow the general lines of _Lady
Windemere’s Fan_ or _Peg o’ My Heart_ than of poetic dramas such as
_Cymbeline_ or _La Samaritaine_. The problem here, however, is not
the same as in the spoken drama. For in motion pictures a poetic
play sheds its poetry and becomes, like its neighbour, a skeleton of
action. There is no conceivable distinction in the “movies” (beyond
one created by preference, or taste, or the quality of the performance
and the photography) between Dante’s _Inferno_ and a picture in which
the beloved Charles Chaplin looms large. The directors of the moving
picture companies have tried to meet this problem; that they have not
wholly succeeded so far is not entirely their fault.

It is no easy matter, for example, in a theatre in which the films are
changed daily (this is the general rule even in the larger houses), for
the musicians (or musician) to arrange a satisfactory accompaniment
for 5,000 feet of action which includes everything from an earthquake
in Cuba to a dinner in Park Lane, and it is scarcely possible, even if
the distributors be so inclined (as they frequently are nowadays) to
furnish a music score which will answer the purposes of the different
sized bands, ranging from a full orchestra to an upright piano, _solo_.
As for the pictures without pre-arranged scores, the orchestra leaders
and pianists must do the best they can with them.

In some houses there is an attitude of total disrespect paid towards
the picture by the _chef d’orchestre_. He arranges his musical
programme as if he were giving a concert, not at all with a view to
effectively accompanying the picture. In a theatre on Second Avenue
in New York, for example, I have heard an orchestra play the whole
of Beethoven’s First Symphony as an accompaniment to Irene Fenwick’s
performance of _The Woman Next Door_. As the symphony came to an
end before the picture it was supplemented by a Waldteufel waltz,
_Les Patineurs_. The result, in this instance, was not altogether
incongruous or even particularly displeasing, and it occurred to me
that if one had to listen to music while the third act of _Hedda
Gabler_ were being enacted one would prefer to hear something like
Boccherini’s celebrated minuet or a light Mozart dance rather than
anything ostensibly contrived to fit the situation. In the latter
instance the result would be sure to be unbearable bathos.

On the other hand there are certain players for pictures who remind one
by their methods of the anxiety of Richard Strauss to describe every
peacock and bean mentioned in any of his opera-books. If a garden is
exposed on the screen one hears _The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring_;
a love scene is the signal for _Un Peu d’Amour_; a cross or any
religious episode suggests _The Rosary_ to these ingenuous musicians;
Japan brings a touch of _Madame Butterfly_; a proposal of marriage,
_O Promise Me_; and a farewell, Tosti’s _Good-bye!_ This expedient of
appealing through the intellect to the emotions, it may be admitted,
has the stamp of approval of no less a composer than Richard Wagner.

Lacking the authority of real moving picture music (which a new
composer must rise to invent) the safest way (not necessarily the
_best_ way) is the middle course--one method for this, another for
that. One of the difficulties is to arrange a music score for a theatre
with a large orchestra, where the leader must plan his score--or have
it planned for him--for an entire picture before his orchestra can
play a note. Music cues must be definite: twenty bars of _Alexander’s
Ragtime Band_, seventeen of _The Ride of the Valkyries_, ten of _Vissi
d’Arte_, etc. An ingenious young man has discovered a way by which
music and action may be exactly synchronized. I feel the impulse to
quote extensively from the somewhat vivid report of his achievement,
published in one of the motion picture weekly journals: “Here was a
man-sized job--how to measure the action of the picture to the musical
score, so that they would both come out equal at every part of the
picture, and would be so exact that any orchestra might take the score
and follow the movement of the play with absolute correctness. It was
a question primarily of mathematics, but even so it was some time
before a system of computation was devised before the undertaking was
gotten down to a certainty. As an illustration, on the opening night of
one of the most notable photoplay productions now before the public,
the orchestra, notwithstanding a three weeks’ rehearsal, found at the
conclusion of the picture that it was a page and a half behind the
play’s action in the musical setting.” Then we learn that Frank Stadler
of New York “provided the remedy for this condition of affairs.” It
is impossible to resist the temptation to quote further from this
extremely racy account. “He remembered that Beethoven had overcome
the difficulty of proper timing for his sonatas by a mechanical
arrangement known as the metronome, invented by a friend of his. This
is an arrangement with a little bell attached which may be set for the
movement of the music and used as an exact guide to the right measure,
the bell giving warning at the expiration of each period so that the
leader knows whether he is in time or not.” Mr. Stadler then began the
measurement of a film with a metronome, a stenographer, and a watch.
He found that the film ran ten feet to every eight seconds and he set
the metronome for eight second periods accordingly. “The stenographer
made a note of the action of the picture each time the bell rang, with
the result that when the entire picture had been run Mr. Stadler had a
complete record of the production. All that was necessary then was to
select from the classics and the popular melodies the music which would
give a suitable atmosphere and a harmonious accompaniment to the theme
of the play, so synchronizing the music with the eight second periods
that every bar of it fitted the spirit of the many score of scenes of
the production.”

The single man orchestra, the player of the upright piano, need not
make so many preparatory gestures. He may with impunity, if he be of
an inventive turn of mind, or if his memory be good, improvise his
score as the picture unreels itself for the first time before what
may very well be his astonished vision; and, after that, he may vary
his accompaniment, as the shows of the day progress, improving it
here or there, or not, as the case may be, keeping generally as near
to his original performance as possible. Of course he puts a good
deal of reliance on rum-ti-tum shivery passages (known to orchestra
leaders as “_agits_”--an abbreviation of _agitato_; a page or two
of them is distributed to every member of a moving picture band) to
accompany moments of excitement. This music you will remember if you
have ever attended a performance of a Lincoln J. Carter melodrama in
which a train was wrecked, or a hero rescued from the teeth of a saw,
or a heroine pursued by bloodhounds. (Those were the good old days!)
Recently I heard a pianist in a moving picture house on Fourteenth
Street in New York eke out a half-hour with similar poundings on two
or three well used chords (well used even in the time of Hadyn). The
scenes represented the whole of a two-act opera, and the ambitious
pianist was trying to give his audience the effect of singers
(principals and chorus) and orchestra with his three chords. (Shades of
Arnold Schoenberg!)

A certain periodical devoted to the interests of the moving picture
trade, conducts a department as first aid to the musical conductors
and pianists who figure at these shows. In a recent number the editor
of this department gives it as his solemn opinion that musicians who
read fiction are the best equipped for picture playing. Then, with an
almost tragic parenthesis, he continues, “Reading fiction is the last
diversion that the average musician will follow. He feels that all
the necessary romance is to be found in his music.” Facts are dead,
says this editor in substance, but fiction is living and should make
you weep. When you cry, all that remains for you to do is to think of
a tune which will synchronize with the cause of your tears; this will
serve you later when a similar scene occurs in a film drama.

There is one tune which any capable moving picture pianist has found
will synchronize with any Keystone picture (for the benefit of the
uninitiated I may state that in the Keystone farces some one gets
kicked or knocked down or spat upon several times in almost every
scene). I do not know what the tune is, but wherever Keystone pictures
are shown, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Chicago, and
even New York, I have heard it. When a character falls into the water
(and at least ten of them invariably do) the pianist may vary the tune
by sitting on the piano or by upsetting a chair. In one theatre I have
known him to cause glass to be shattered behind the screen at a moment
when the picture exposed a similar scene. How Marinetti would like that!

However, the day of this sort of thing is rapidly approaching its
close, I venture to say. Some of the firms are already issuing arranged
music scores for their productions (one may note in passing the score
which accompanied Geraldine Farrar’s screen performance of _Carmen_,
largely selected from the music of Bizet’s opera, and Victor Herbert’s
original score for _The Fall of a Nation_, a score which does not take
full advantage of the new technique of the cinema drama). It will
not be long before an enterprising director engages an enterprising
musician to compose music for a picture. For the same reason that
d’Annunzio, very early in the career of the moving picture, wrote a
scenario for a film, I should not be surprised to learn that Richard
Strauss was under contract to construct an accompaniment to a screened
drama. It will be very loud music and it will require an orchestra of
143 men to interpret it and probably the composer himself will conduct
the first performance, and, later, excerpts will be given by the Boston
Symphony Orchestra and the critics will say, in spite of Philip Hale’s
diverting programme notes, that this music should never be played
except in conjunction with the picture for which it was written.
Mascagni is another composer who should find an excellent field for his
talent in writing tone-poems for pictures, although he would contrive
nothing more daring than a well-arranged series of illustrative
melodies.

But put Igor Strawinsky, or some other modern genius, to work on this
problem and see what happens! The musician of the future should revel
in the opportunity the moving picture gives him to create a new form.
This form differs from that of the incidental music for a play in that
the flow of tone may be continuous and because one never needs to
soften the accompaniment so that the voices may be heard; it differs
from the music for a ballet in that the scene shifts constantly,
and consequently the time signatures and the mood and the key must
be as constantly shifting. The swift flash from scene to scene, the
“cut-back,” the necessary rapidity of the action, all are adapted to
inspire the futurist composer to brilliant effort; a tinkle of this and
a smash of that, without “working-out” or development; illustration,
comment, piquant or serious, that’s what the new film music should
be. The ultimate moving picture score will be something more than
sentimental accompaniment.


_New York, November 10, 1915._




  Spain and Music

  “_Il faut méditerraniser la musique._”

                                       Nietzsche.




Spain and Music


It has seemed to me at times that Oscar Hammerstein was gifted with
almost prophetic vision. He it was who imagined the glory of Times
(erstwhile Longacre) Square. Theatre after theatre he fashioned in what
was then a barren district--and presently the crowds and the hotels
came. He foresaw that French opera, given in the French manner, would
be successful again in New York, and he upset the calculations of all
the wiseacres by making money even with _Pelléas et Mélisande_, that
esoteric collaboration of Belgian and French art, which in the latter
part of the season of 1907-8 attained a record of seven performances
at the Manhattan Opera House, all to audiences as vast and as devoted
as those which attend the sacred festivals of _Parsifal_ at Bayreuth.
And he had announced for presentation during the season of 1908-9
(and again the following season) a Spanish opera called _Dolores_.
If he had carried out his intention (why it was abandoned I have
never learned; the scenery and costumes were ready) he would have had
another honour thrust upon him, that of having been beforehand in the
production of modern Spanish opera in New York, an honour which, in
the circumstances, must go to Mr. Gatti-Casazza. (Strictly speaking,
_Goyescas_ was not the first Spanish opera to be given in New York,
although it was the first to be produced at the Metropolitan Opera
House. _Il Guarany_, by Antonio Carlos Gomez, a Portuguese born in
Brazil, was performed by the “Milan Grand Opera Company” during a three
weeks’ season at the Star Theatre in the fall of 1884. An air from
this opera is still in the répertoire of many sopranos. To go still
farther back, two of Manuel Garcia’s operas, sung of course in Italian,
_l’Amante Astuto_ and _La Figlia dell’Aria_, were performed at the Park
Theatre in 1825 with Maria Garcia--later to become the celebrated Mme.
Malibran--in the principal rôles. More recently an itinerant Italian
opéra-bouffe company, which gravitated from the Park Theatre--not the
same edifice that harboured Garcia’s company!--to various playhouses
on the Bowery, included three zarzuelas in its répertoire. One of
these, the popular _La Gran Via_, was announced for performance,
but my records are dumb on the subject and I am not certain that
it was actually given. There are probably other instances.) Mr.
Hammerstein had previously produced two operas _about_ Spain when he
opened his first Manhattan Opera House on the site now occupied by
Macy’s Department Store with Moszkowski’s _Boabdil_, quickly followed
by Beethoven’s _Fidelio_. The malagueña from _Boabdil_ is still a
favourite _morceau_ with restaurant orchestras, and I believe I have
heard the entire ballet suite performed by the Chicago Orchestra under
the direction of Theodore Thomas. New York’s real occupation by the
Spaniards, however, occurred after the close of Mr. Hammerstein’s
brilliant seasons, although the earlier vogue of Carmencita, whose
celebrated portrait by Sargent in the Luxembourg Gallery in Paris will
long preserve her fame, the interest in the highly-coloured paintings
by Sorolla and Zuloaga, many of which are still on exhibition in
private and public galleries in New York, the success here achieved, in
varying degrees, by such singing artists as Emilio de Gogorza, Andrea
de Segurola, and Lucrezia Bori, the performances of the piano works of
Albeniz, Turina, and Granados by such pianists as Ernest Schelling,
George Copeland, and Leo Ornstein, and the amazing Spanish dances of
Anna Pavlowa (who in attempting them was but following in the footsteps
of her great predecessors of the nineteenth century, Fanny Elssler and
Taglioni), all fanned the flames.

The winter of 1915-16 beheld the Spanish blaze. Enrique Granados,
one of the most distinguished of contemporary Spanish pianists and
composers, a man who took a keen interest in the survival, and
artistic use, of national forms, came to this country to assist at the
production of his opera _Goyescas_, sung in Spanish at the Metropolitan
Opera House for the first time anywhere, and was also heard several
times here in his interpretative capacity as a pianist; Pablo Casals,
the Spanish ’cellist, gave frequent exhibitions of his finished art,
as did Miguel Llobet, the guitar virtuoso; La Argentina (Señora Paz
of South America) exposed her ideas, somewhat classicized, of Spanish
dances; a Spanish soprano, Maria Barrientos, made her North American
début and justified, in some measure, the extravagant reports which
had been spread broadcast about her singing; and finally the decree
of Paris (still valid in spite of Paul Poiret’s reported absence
in the trenches) led all our womenfolk into the wearing of Spanish
garments, the hip-hoops of the Velasquez period, the lace flounces
of Goya’s Duchess of Alba, and the mantillas, the combs, and the
_accroche-coeurs_ of Spain, Spain, Spain.... In addition one must
mention Mme. Farrar’s brilliant success, deserved in some degree,
as Carmen, both in Bizet’s opera and in a moving picture drama;
Miss Theda Bara’s film appearance in the same part, made with more
atmospheric suggestion than Mme. Farrar’s, even if less effective as
an interpretation of the moods of the Spanish cigarette girl; Mr.
Charles Chaplin’s eccentric burlesque of the same play; the continued
presence in New York of Andrea de Segurola as an opera and concert
singer; Maria Gay, who gave some performances in _Carmen_ and other
operas; and Lucrezia Bori, although she was unable to sing during the
entire season owing to the unfortunate result of an operation on her
vocal cords; in Chicago, Miss Supervia appeared at the opera and Mme.
Koutznezoff, the Russian, danced Spanish dances; and at the New York
Winter Garden Isabel Rodriguez appeared in Spanish dances which quite
transcended the surroundings and made that stage as atmospheric, for
the few brief moments in which it was occupied by her really entrancing
beauty, as a _maison de danse_ in Seville. The tango, too, in somewhat
modified form, continued to interest “ballroom dancers,” danced to
music provided in many instances by Señor Valverde, an indefatigable
producer of popular tunes, some of which have a certain value as music
owing to their close allegiance to the folk-dances and songs of Spain.
In the art-world there was a noticeable revival of interest in Goya and
El Greco.

But if Mr. Gatti-Casazza, with the best intentions in the world,
should desire to take advantage of any of this _réclame_ by producing
a series of Spanish operas at the Metropolitan Opera House--say four
or five more--he would find himself in difficulty. Where are they?
Several of the operas of Isaac Albeniz have been performed in London,
and in Brussels at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, but would they be liked
here? There is Felipe Pedrell’s monumental work, the trilogy, _Los
Pireneos_, called by Edouard Lopez-Chavarri “the most important work
for the theatre written in Spain”; and there is the aforementioned
_Dolores_. For the rest, one would have to search about among the
zarzuelas; and would the Metropolitan Opera House be a suitable place
for the production of this form of opera? It is doubtful, indeed, if
the zarzuela could take root in any theatre in New York.

The truth is that in Spain Italian and German operas are much more
popular than Spanish, the zarzuela always excepted; and at Señor
Arbós’s series of concerts at the Royal Opera in Madrid one hears
more Bach and Beethoven than Albeniz and Pedrell. There is a growing
interest in music in Spain and there are indications that some day
her composers may again take an important place with the musicians
of other nationalities, a place they proudly held in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. However, no longer ago than 1894, we
find Louis Lombard writing in his “Observations of a Musician” that
harmony was not taught at the Conservatory of Malaga, and that at
the closing exercises of the Conservatory of Barcelona he had heard
a four-hand arrangement of the _Tannhäuser_ march performed on ten
pianos by forty hands! Havelock Ellis (“The Soul of Spain,” 1909)
affirms that a concert in Spain sets the audience to chattering. They
have a savage love of noise, the Spanish, he says, which incites them
to conversation. Albert Lavignac, in “Music and Musicians” (William
Marchant’s translation), says, “We have left in the shade the Spanish
school, which to say truth does not exist.” But if one reads what
Lavignac has to say about Moussorgsky, one is likely to give little
credence to such extravagant generalities as the one just quoted.
The Moussorgsky paragraph is a gem, and I am only too glad to insert
it here for the sake of those who have not seen it: “A charming and
fruitful melodist, who makes up for a lack of skill in harmonization
by a daring, which is sometimes of doubtful taste; has produced songs,
piano music in small amount, and an opera, _Boris Godunow_.” In the
report of the proceedings of the thirty-fourth session of the London
Musical Association (1907-8) Dr. Thomas Lea Southgate is quoted as
complaining to Sir George Grove because under “Schools of Composition”
in the old edition of Grove’s Dictionary the Spanish School was
dismissed in twenty lines. Sir George, he says, replied, “Well, I gave
it to Rockstro because nobody knows anything about Spanish music.”--The
bibliography of modern Spanish music is indeed indescribably meagre,
although a good deal has been written in and out of Spain about the
early religious composers of the Iberian peninsula.

These matters will be discussed in due course. In the meantime it
has afforded me some amusement to put together a list (which may be
of interest to both the casual reader and the student of music) of
compositions suggested by Spain to composers of other nationalities.
(This list is by no means complete. I have not attempted to include
in it works which are not more or less familiar to the public of the
present day; without boundaries it could easily be extended into a
small volume.) The répertoire of the concert room and the opera house
is streaked through and through with Spanish atmosphere and, on the
whole, I should say, the best Spanish music has not been written by
Spaniards, although most of it, like the best music written in Spain,
is based primarily on the rhythm of folk-tunes, dances and songs. Of
orchestral pieces I think I must put at the head of the list Chabrier’s
rhapsody, _España_, as colourful and rhythmic a combination of tone as
the auditor of a symphony concert is often bidden to hear. It depends
for its melody and rhythm on two Spanish dances, the jota, fast and
fiery, and the malagueña, slow and sensuous. These are true Spanish
tunes; Chabrier, according to report, invented only the rude theme
given to the trombones. The piece was originally written for piano, and
after Chabrier’s death was transformed (with other music by the same
composer) into a ballet, _España_, performed at the Paris Opera, 1911.
Waldteufel based one of his most popular waltzes on the theme of this
rhapsody. Chabrier’s _Habanera_ for the pianoforte (1885) was his last
musical reminiscence of his journey to Spain. It is French composers
generally who have achieved better effects with Spanish atmosphere
than men of other nations, and next to Chabrier’s music I should put
Debussy’s _Iberia_, the second of his _Images_ (1910). It contains
three movements designated respectively as “In the streets and roads,”
“The perfumes of the night,” and “The morning of a fête-day.” It is
indeed rather the smell and the look of Spain than the rhythm that this
music gives us, entirely impressionistic that it is, but rhythm is not
lacking, and such characteristic instruments as castanets, tambourines,
and xylophones are required by the score. “Perfumes of the night” comes
as near to suggesting odours to the nostrils as any music can--and not
all of them are pleasant odours. There is Rimsky-Korsakow’s _Capriccio
Espagnole_, with its _alborado_ or lusty morning serenade, its long
series of cadenzas (as cleverly written as those of _Scheherazade_ to
display the virtuosity of individual players in the orchestra; it is
noteworthy that this work is dedicated to the sixty-seven musicians
of the band at the Imperial Opera House of Petrograd and all of their
names are mentioned on the score) to suggest the vacillating music of
a gipsy encampment, and finally the wild fandango of the Asturias with
which the work comes to a brilliant conclusion. Engelbert Humperdinck
taught the theory of music in the Conservatory of Barcelona for two
years (1885-6), and one of the results was his _Maurische Rhapsodie_ in
three parts (1898-9), still occasionally performed by our orchestras.
Lalo wrote his _Symphonie Espagnole_ for violin and orchestra for the
great Spanish virtuoso, Pablo de Sarasate, but all our violinists
delight to perform it (although usually shorn of a movement or two).
Glinka wrote a _Jota Aragonese_ and _A Night in Madrid_; he gave a
Spanish theme to Balakirew which the latter utilized in his _Overture
on a theme of a Spanish March_. Liszt wrote a _Spanish Rhapsody_ for
pianoforte (arranged as a concert piece for piano and orchestra by
Busoni) in which he used the jota of Aragon as a theme for variations.
Rubinstein’s _Toreador and Andalusian_ and Moszkowski’s _Spanish
Dances_ (for four hands) are known to all amateur pianists as Hugo
Wolf’s _Spanisches Liederbuch_ and Robert Schumann’s _Spanisches
Liederspiel_, set to F. Giebel’s translations of popular Spanish
ballads, are known to all singers. I have heard a song of Saint-Saëns,
_Guitares et Mandolines_, charmingly sung by Greta Torpadie, in which
the instruments of the title, under the subtle fingers of that masterly
accompanist, Coenraad V. Bos, were cleverly imitated. And Debussy’s
_Mandoline_ and Delibes’s _Les Filles de Cadiz_ (which in this country
belongs both to Emma Calvé and Olive Fremstad) spring instantly to
mind. Ravel’s _Rapsodie Espagnole_ is as Spanish as music could be.
The Boston Symphony men have played it during the season just past.
Ravel based the habanera section of his _Rapsodie_ on one of his piano
pieces. But Richard Strauss’s two tone-poems on Spanish subjects, _Don
Juan_ and _Don Quixote_, have not a note of Spanish colouring, so far
as I can remember, from beginning to end. Svendsen’s symphonic poem,
_Zorahayda_, based on a passage in Washington Irving’s “Alhambra,”
is Spanish in theme and may be added to this list together with
Waldteufel’s _Estudiantina_ waltzes.

       *       *       *       *       *

Four modern operas stand out as Spanish in subject and atmosphere. I
would put at the top of the list Zandonai’s _Conchita_; the Italian
composer has caught on his musical palette and transferred to his tonal
canvas a deal of the lazy restless colour of the Iberian peninsula
in this little master-work. The feeling of the streets and patios is
admirably caught. My friend, Pitts Sanborn, said of it, after its
solitary performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York by
the Chicago Opera Company, “There is musical atmosphere of a rare
and penetrating kind; there is colour used with the discretion of a
master; there are intoxicating rhythms, and above the orchestra the
voices are heard in a truthful musical speech.... Ever since _Carmen_
it has been so easy to write Spanish music and achieve supremely
the banal. Here there is as little of the Spanish of convention as
in Debussy’s _Iberia_, but there is Spain.” This opera, based on
Pierre Louys’s sadic novel, “La Femme et le Pantin,” owed some of its
extraordinary impression of vitality to the vivid performance given of
the title-rôle by Tarquinia Tarquini. Raoul Laparra, born in Bordeaux,
but who has travelled much in Spain, has written two Spanish operas,
_La Habanera_ and _La Jota_, both named after popular Spanish dances
and both produced at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. I have heard _La
Habanera_ there and found the composer’s use of the dance as a pivot of
a tragedy very convincing. Nor shall I forget the first act-close, in
which a young man, seated on a wall facing the window of a house where
a most bloody murder has been committed, sings a wild Spanish ditty,
accompanying himself on the guitar, crossing and recrossing his legs in
complete abandonment to the rhythm, while in the house rises the wild
treble cry of a frightened child. I have not heard _La Jota_, nor have
I seen the score. I do not find Emile Vuillermoz enthusiastic in his
review (“S. I. M.,” May 15, 1911): “Une danse transforme le premier
acte en un kaléidoscope frénétique et le combat dans l’église doit
donner, au second, dans l’intention de l’auteur ‘une sensation à pic,
un peu comme celle d’un puits où grouillerait la besogne monstreuse
de larves humaines.’ A vrai dire ces deux tableaux de cinématographe
papillotant, corsés de cris, de hurlements et d’un nombre incalculable
de coups de feu constituent pour le spectateur une épreuve physiquement
douloureuse, une hallucination confuse et inquiétante, un cauchemar
assourdissant qui le conduisent irrésistiblement à l’hébétude et à
la migraine. Dans tout cet enfer que devient la musique?” Perhaps
opera-goers in general are not looking for thrills of this order; the
fact remains that _La Jota_ has had a modest career when compared with
_La Habanera_, which has even been performed in Boston. _Carmen_ is
essentially a French opera; the leading emotions of the characters
are expressed in an idiom as French as that of Gounod; yet the dances
and entr’actes are Spanish in colour. The story of Carmen’s entrance
song is worth retelling in Mr. Philip Hale’s words (“Boston Symphony
Orchestra Programme Notes”; 1914-15, P. 287): “Mme. Galli-Marié
disliked her entrance air, which was in 6-8 time with a chorus. She
wished something more audacious, a song in which she could bring into
play the whole battery of her _perversités artistiques_, to borrow
Charles Pigot’s phrase: ‘caressing tones and smiles, voluptuous
inflections, killing glances, disturbing gestures.’ During the
rehearsals Bizet made a dozen versions. The singer was satisfied
only with the thirteenth, the now familiar Habanera, based on an old
Spanish tune that had been used by Sebastian Yradier. This brought
Bizet into trouble, for Yradier’s publisher, Heugel, demanded that the
indebtedness should be acknowledged in Bizet’s score. Yradier made no
complaint, but to avoid a lawsuit or a scandal, Bizet gave consent, and
on the first page of the Habanera in the French edition of _Carmen_
this line is engraved: ‘Imitated from a Spanish song, the property of
the publishers of _Le Ménestrel_.’”

There are other operas the scenes of which are laid in Spain. Some of
them make an attempt at Spanish colouring, more do not. Massenet wrote
no less than five operas on Spanish subjects, _Le Cid_, _Cherubin_,
_Don César de Bazan_, _La Navarraise_ and _Don Quichotte_ (Cervantes’s
novel has frequently lured the composers of lyric dramas with its
story; Clément et Larousse give a long list of _Don Quixote_ operas,
but they do not include one by Manuel Garcia, which is mentioned in
John Towers’s compilation, “Dictionary-Catalogue of Operas.” However,
not a single one of these lyric dramas has held its place on the
stage). The Spanish dances in _Le Cid_ are frequently performed,
although the opera is not. The most famous of the set is called simply
_Aragonaise_; it is not a jota. _Pleurez, mes yeux_, the principal air
of the piece, can scarcely be called Spanish. There is a delightful
suggestion of the jota in _La Navarraise_. In _Don Quichotte_ la belle
Dulcinée sings one of her airs to her own guitar strummings, and much
was made of the fact, before the original production at Monte Carlo,
of Mme. Lucy Arbell’s lessons on that instrument. Mary Garden, who
had learned to dance for _Salome_, took no guitar lessons for _Don
Quichotte_. But is not the guitar an anachronism in this opera? In a
pamphlet by Señor Cecilio de Roda, issued during the celebration of
the tercentenary of the publication of Cervantes’s romance, taking
as its subject the musical references in the work, I find, “The harp
was the aristocratic instrument most favoured by women and it would
appear to be regarded in _Don Quixote_ as the feminine instrument
par excellence.” Was the guitar as we know it in existence at that
epoch? I think the _vihuela_ was the guitar of the period.... Maurice
Ravel wrote a Spanish opera, _L’heure Espagnole_ (one act, performed
at the Paris Opéra-Comique, 1911). Octave Séré (“Musiciens français
d’Aujourd’hui”) says of it: “Les principaux traits de son caractère
et l’influence du sol natal s’y combinent étrangement. De l’alliance
de la mer et du Pays Basque (Ravel was born in the Basses-Pyrénées,
near the sea) est née une musique à la fois fluide et nerveusement
rythmée, mobile, chatoyante, amie du pittoresque et dont le trait
net et précis est plus incisif que profond.” Hugo Wolf’s opera _Der
Corregidor_ is founded on the novel, “Il Sombrero de tres Picos,” of
the Spanish writer, Pedro de Alarcon (1833-91). His unfinished opera
_Manuel Venegas_ also has a Spanish subject, suggested by Alarcon’s
“El Nino de la Bola.” Other Spanish operas are Beethoven’s _Fidelio_,
Balfe’s _The Rose of Castille_, Verdi’s _Ernani_ and _Il Trovatore_,
Rossini’s _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_, Mozart’s _Don Giovanni_ and _Le
Nozze di Figaro_, Weber’s _Preciosa_ (really a play with incidental
music), Dargomijsky’s _The Stone Guest_ (Pushkin’s version of the Don
Juan story. This opera, by the way, was one of the many retouched and
completed by Rimsky-Korsakow), Reznicek’s _Donna Diana_--and Wagner’s
_Parsifal_! The American composer John Knowles Paine’s opera _Azara_,
dealing with a Moorish subject, has, I think, never been performed.


II

The early religious composers of Spain deserve a niche all to
themselves, be it ever so tiny, as in the present instance. There is,
to be sure, some doubt as to whether their inspiration was entirely
peninsular, or whether some of it was wafted from Flanders, and the
rest gleaned in Rome, for in their service to the church most of them
migrated to Italy and did their best work there. It is not the purpose
of the present chronicler to devote much space to these early men,
or to discuss in detail their music. There are no books in English
devoted to a study of Spanish music, and few in any language, but
what few exist take good care to relate at considerable length (some
of them with frequent musical quotation) the state of music in Spain
in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, the golden
period. To the reader who may wish to pursue this phase of our subject
I offer a small bibliography. There is first of all A. Soubies’s two
volumes, “Histoire de la Musique d’Espagne,” published in 1889. The
second volume takes us through the eighteenth century. The religious
and early secular composers are catalogued in these volumes, but there
is little attempt at detail, and he is a happy composer who is awarded
an entire page. Soubies does not find occasion to pause for more than a
paragraph on most of his subjects. Occasionally, however, he lightens
the plodding progress of the reader, as when he quotes Father Bermudo’s
“Declaracion de Instrumentos” (1548; the 1555 edition is in the Library
of Congress at Washington): “There are three kinds of instruments in
music. The first are called natural; these are men, of whom the song
is called _musical harmony_. Others are artificial and are played
by the touch--such as the harp, the _vihuela_ (the ancient guitar,
which resembles the lute), and others like them; the music of these
is called _artificial_ or rhythmic. The third species is pneumatique
and includes instruments such as the flute, the douçaine (a species of
oboe), and the organ.” There may be some to dispute this ingenious and
highly original classification. The best known, and perhaps the most
useful (because it is easily accessible) history of Spanish music is
that written by Mariano Soriano Fuertes, in four volumes: “Historia
de la Música Española desde la venida de los Fenicios hasta el año de
1850”; published in Barcelona and Madrid in 1855. There is further the
“Diccionario Tecnico, Historico, y Biografico de la Música,” by Jose
Parada y Barreto (Madrid, 1867). This, of course, is a general work on
music, but Spain gets her full due. For example, a page and a half is
devoted to Beethoven, and nine pages to Eslava. It is to this latter
composer to whom we must turn for the most complete and important
work on Spanish church music: “Lira Sacro-Hispana” (Madrid, 1869),
in ten volumes, with voluminous extracts from the composers’ works.
This collection of Spanish church music from the sixteenth century
through the eighteenth, with biographical notices of the composers is
out of print and rare (there is a copy in the Congressional Library
at Washington). As a complement to it I may mention Felipe Pedrell’s
“Hispaniae Schola Música Sacra,” begun in 1894, which has already
reached the proportions of Eslava’s work. Pedrell, who was the master
of Enrique Granados, has also issued a fine edition of the music of
Victoria.

The Spanish composers had their full share in the process of
crystallizing music into forms of permanent beauty during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Rockstro asserts that during the
early part of the sixteenth century nearly all the best composers for
the great Roman choirs were Spaniards. But their greatest achievement
was the foundation of the school of which Palestrina was the crown. On
the music of their own country their influence is less perceptible. I
think the name of Cristofero Morales (1512-53) is the first important
name in the history of Spanish music. He preceded Palestrina in Rome
and some of his masses and motets are still sung in the Papal chapel
there (and in other Roman Catholic edifices and by choral societies).
Francesco Guerrero (1528-99; these dates are approximate) was a pupil
of Morales. He wrote settings of the Passion choruses according to
St. Matthew and St. John and numerous masses and motets. Tomas Luis
de Victoria is, of course, the greatest figure in Spanish music, and
next to Palestrina (with whom he worked contemporaneously) the greatest
figure in sixteenth century music. Soubies writes: “One might say that
on his musical palette he has entirely at his disposition, in some
sort, the glowing colour of Zurbaran, the realistic and transparent
tones of Velasquez, the ideal shades of Juan de Juarez and Murillo. His
mysticism is that of Santa Theresa and San Juan de la Cruz.” The music
of Victoria is still very much alive and may be heard even in New York,
occasionally, through the medium of the Musical Art Society. Whether
it is performed in churches in America or not I do not know; the Roman
choirs still sing it....

The list might be extended indefinitely ... but the great names I
have given. There are Cabezon, whom Pedrell calls the “Spanish Bach,”
Navarro, Caseda, Comes, Ribera, Castillo, Lobo, Duron, Romero, Juarez.
On the whole I think these composers had more influence on Rome--the
Spanish nature is more reverent than the Italian--than on Spain. The
modern Spanish composers have learned more from the folk-song and dance
than they have from the church composers. However, there are voices
which dissent from this opinion. G. Tebaldini (“Rivista Musicale,” Vol.
IV, Pp. 267 and 494) says that Pedrell in his studies learned much
which he turned to account in the choral writing of his operas. And
Felipe Pedrell himself asserts that there is an unbroken chain between
the religious composers of the sixteenth century and the theatrical
composers of the seventeenth. We may follow him thus far without
believing that the theatrical composers of the seventeenth century had
too great an influence on the secular composers of the present day.


III

All the world dances in Spain, at least it would seem so, in reading
over the books of the Marco Polos who have made voyages of discovery
on the Iberian peninsula. Guitars seem to be as common there as
pea-shooters in New England, and strumming seems to set the feet
a-tapping and voices a-singing, what, they care not. (Havelock Ellis
says: “It is not always agreeable to the Spaniard to find that dancing
is regarded by the foreigner as a peculiar and important Spanish
institution. Even Valera, with his wide culture, could not escape
this feeling; in a review of a book about Spain by an American author
entitled ‘The Land of the Castanet’--a book which he recognized as full
of appreciation for Spain--Valera resented the title. It is, he says,
as though a book about the United States should be called ‘The Land of
Bacon.’”) Oriental colour is streaked through and through the melodies
and harmonies, many of which betray their Arabian origin; others are
_flamenco_, or gipsy. The dances, almost invariably accompanied by
song, are generally in 3-4 time or its variants such as 6-8 or 3-8;
the tango, of course, is in 2-4. But the dancers evolve the most
elaborate inter-rhythms out of these simple measures, creating thereby
a complexity of effect which defies any comprehensible notation on
paper. As it is on this _fioriture_, if I may be permitted to use the
word in this connection, of the dancer that the sophisticated composer
bases some of his most natural and national effects, I shall linger on
the subject. La Argentina has re-arranged many of the Spanish dances
for purposes of the concert stage, but in her translation she has
retained in a large measure this interesting complication of rhythm,
marking the irregularity of the beat, now with a singularly complicated
detonation of heel-tapping, now with a sudden bend of a knee, now with
the subtle quiver of an eyelash, now with a shower of castanet sparks
(an instrument which requires a hard tutelage for its complete mastery;
Richard Ford tells us that even the children in the streets of Spain
rap shells together, to become self-taught artists in the use of it).
Chabrier, in his visit to Spain with his wife in 1882, attempted to
note down some of these rhythmic variations achieved by the dancers
while the musicians strummed their guitars, and he was partially
successful. But all in all he only succeeded in giving in a single
measure each variation; he did not attempt to weave them into the
intricate pattern which the Spanish women contrive to make of them.

There is a singular similarity to be observed between this heel-tapping
and the complicated drum-tapping of the African negroes of certain
tribes. In his book “Afro-American Folksongs” H. E. Krehbiel thus
describes the musical accompaniment of the dances in the Dahoman
Village at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago: “These dances
were accompanied by choral song and the rhythmical and harmonious
beating of drums and bells, the song being in unison. The harmony was
a tonic major triad broken up rhythmically in a most intricate and
amazingly ingenious manner. The instruments were tuned with excellent
justness. The fundamental tone came from a drum made of a hollowed log
about three feet long with a single head, played by one who seemed
to be the leader of the band, though there was no giving of signals.
This drum was beaten with the palms of the hands. A variety of smaller
drums, some with one, some with two heads, were beaten variously with
sticks and fingers. The bells, four in number, were of iron and were
held mouth upward and struck with sticks. The players showed the most
remarkable rhythmical sense and skill that ever came under my notice.
Berlioz in his supremest effort with his army of drummers produced
nothing to compare in artistic interest with the harmonious drumming
of these savages. The fundamental effect was a combination of double
and triple time, the former kept by the singers, the latter by the
drummers, but it is impossible to convey the idea of the wealth of
detail achieved by the drummers by means of exchange of the rhythms,
syncopation of both simultaneously, and dynamic devices. Only by
making a score of the music could this have been done. I attempted to
make such a score by enlisting the help of the late John C. Filmore,
experienced in Indian music, but we were thwarted by the players
who, evidently divining our purpose when we took out our notebooks,
mischievously changed their manner of playing as soon as we touched
pencil to paper.”

The resemblance between negro and Spanish music is very noticeable. Mr.
Krehbiel says that in South America Spanish melody has been imposed
on negro rhythm. In the dances of the people of Spain, as Chabrier
points out, the melody is often practically nil; the effect is rhythmic
(an effect which is emphasized by the obvious harmonic and melodic
limitations of the guitar, which invariably accompanies all singers
and dancers). If there were a melody or if the guitarists played well
(which they usually do not) one could not distinguish its contours
what with the cries of Olè! and the heel-beats of the performers.
Spanish melodies, indeed, are often scraps of tunes, like the African
negro melodies. The habanera is a true African dance, taken to Spain
by way of Cuba, as Albert Friedenthal points out in his book, “Musik,
Tanz, und Dichtung bei den Kreolen Amerikas.” Whoever was responsible,
Arab, negro, or Moor (Havelock Ellis says that the dances of Spain
are closely allied with the ancient dances of Greece and Egypt), the
Spanish dances betray their oriental origin in their complexity of
rhythm (a complexity not at all obvious on the printed page, as so
much of it depends on dancer, guitarist, singer, and even public!),
and the _fioriture_ which decorate their melody when melody occurs.
While Spanish religious music is perhaps not distinctively Spanish, the
dances invariably display marked national characteristics; it is on
these, then (some in greater, some in less degree), that the composers
in and out of Spain have built their most atmospheric inspirations,
their best pictures of popular life in the Iberian peninsula. A good
deal of the interest of this music is due to the important part the
guitar plays in its construction; the modulations are often contrary
to all rules of harmony and (yet, some would say) the music seems
to be effervescent with variety and fire. Of the guitarists Richard
Ford (“Gatherings from Spain”) says: “The performers seldom are very
scientific musicians; they content themselves with striking the
chords, sweeping the whole hand over the strings, or flourishing,
and tapping the board with the thumb, at which they are very expert.
Occasionally in the towns there is some one who has attained more
power over this ungrateful instrument; but the attempt is a failure.
The guitar responds coldly to Italian words and elaborate melody,
which never come home to Spanish ears or hearts.” (An exception must
be made in the case of Miguel Llobet. I first heard him play at Pitts
Sanborn’s concert at the Punch and Judy Theatre (April 17, 1916) for
the benefit of Hospital 28 in Bourges, France, and he made a deep
impression on me. In one of his numbers, the _Spanish Fantasy_ of
Tárrega, he astounded and thrilled me. He seemed at all times to exceed
the capacity of his instrument, obtaining a variety of colour which
was truly amazing. In this particular number he not only plucked the
keyboard but the fingerboard as well, in intricate and rapid _tempo_;
seemingly two different kinds of instruments were playing. But at all
times he variated his tone; sometimes he made the instrument sound
almost as though it had been played by wind and not plucked. Especially
did I note a suggestion of the bagpipe. A true artist. None of the
music, the fantasy mentioned, a serenade of Albeniz, and a Menuet of
Tor, was particularly interesting, although the Fantasia contained
some fascinating references to folk-dance tunes. There is nothing
sensational about Llobet, a quiet prim sort of man; he sits quietly in
his chair and makes music. It might be a harp or a ’cello--no striving
for personal effect.)

The Spanish dances are infinite in number and for centuries back
they seem to form part and parcel of Spanish life. Discussion as to
how they are danced is a feature of the descriptions. No two authors
agree, it would seem; to a mere annotator the fact is evident that
they are danced differently on different occasions. It is obvious that
they are danced differently in different provinces. The Spaniards, as
Richard Ford points out, are not too willing to give information to
strangers, frequently because they themselves lack the knowledge. Their
statements are often misleading, sometimes intentionally so. They
do not understand the historical temperament. Until recently many of
the art treasures and archives of the peninsula were but poorly kept.
Those who lived in the shadow of the Alhambra admired only its shade.
It may be imagined that there has been even less interest displayed in
recording the folk-dances. “Dancing in Spain is now a matter which few
know anything about,” writes Havelock Ellis, “because every one takes
it for granted that he knows all about it; and any question on the
subject receives a very ready answer which is usually of questionable
correctness.” Of the music of the dances we have many records, and that
they are generally in 3-4 time or its variants we may be certain. As
to whether they are danced by two women, a woman and a man, or a woman
alone, the authorities do not always agree. The confusion is added to
by the oracular attitude of the scribes. It seems quite certain to me
that this procedure varies. That the animated picture almost invariably
possesses great fascination there are only too many witnesses to prove.
I myself can testify to the marvel of some of them, set to be sure in
strange frames, the Feria in Paris, for example; but even without the
surroundings, which Spanish dances demand, the diablerie, the shivering
intensity of these fleshly women, always wound tight with such
shawls as only the mistresses of kings might wear in other countries,
have drawn taut the _real thrill_. It is dancing which enlists the
co-operation not only of the feet and legs, but of the arms and, in
fact, the entire body.

The smart world in Spain to-day dances much as the smart world does
anywhere else, although it does not, I am told, hold a brief for our
tango, which Mr. Krehbiel suggests is a corruption of the original
African habanera. But in older days many of the dances, such as the
pavana, the sarabande, and the gallarda, were danced at the court and
were in favour with the nobility. (Although presumably of Italian
origin, the pavana and gallarda were more popular in Spain than in
Rome. Fuertes says that the sarabande was invented in the middle of
the sixteenth century by a dancer called Zarabanda who was a native of
either Seville or Guayaquil.) The pavana, an ancient dance of grave and
stately measure, was much in vogue in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. An explanation of its name is that the figures executed
by the dancers bore a resemblance to the semi-circular wheel-like
spreading of the tail of a peacock. The gallarda (French, gaillard) was
usually danced as a relief to the pavana (and indeed often follows it
in the dance-suites of the classical composers in which these forms all
figure). The jacara, or more properly xacara, of the sixteenth century,
was danced in accompaniment to a romantic, swashbuckling ditty. The
Spanish folias were a set of dances danced to a simple tune treated
in a variety of styles with very free accompaniment of castanets
and bursts of song. Corelli in Rome in 1700 published twenty-four
variations in this form, which have been played in our day by Fritz
Kreisler and other violinists.

The names of the modern Spanish dances are often confused in the
descriptions offered by observing travellers, for the reasons already
noted. Hundreds of these descriptions exist, and it is difficult to
choose the most telling of them. Gertrude Stein, who has spent the last
two years in Spain, has noted the rhythm of several of these dances
by the mingling of her original use of words with the ingratiating
medium of _vers libre_. She has succeeded, I think, better than some
musicians in suggesting the intricacies of the rhythm. I should like to
transcribe one of these attempts here, but that I have not the right to
do as I have only seen them in manuscript; they have not yet appeared
in print. These pieces are in a sense the thing itself--I shall have
to fall back on descriptions of the thing. The tirana, a dance common
to the province of Andalusia, is accompanied by song. It has a decided
rhythm, affording opportunities for grace and gesture, the women toying
with their aprons, the men flourishing hats and handkerchiefs. The
polo, or olè, is now a gipsy dance. Mr. Ellis asserts that it is a
corruption of the sarabande! He goes on to say, “The so-called gipsy
dances of Spain are Spanish dances which the Spaniards are tending to
relinquish but which the gipsies have taken up with energy and skill.”
(This theory might be warmly contested.) The bolero, a comparatively
modern dance, came to Spain through Italy. Mr. Philip Hale points out
the fact that the bolero and the cachucha (which, by the way, one
seldom hears of nowadays) were the popular Spanish dances when Mesdames
Faviani and Dolores Tesrai, and their followers, Mlle. Noblet and Fanny
Elssler, visited Paris. Fanny Elssler indeed is most frequently seen
pictured in Spanish costume, and the cachucha was danced by her as
often, I fancy, as Mme. Pavlowa dances _Le Cygne_ of Saint-Saëns. Anna
de Camargo, who acquired great fame as a dancer in France in the early
eighteenth century, was born in Brussels but was of Spanish descent.
She relied, however, on the Italian classic style for her success
rather than on national Spanish dances. The seguidilla is a gipsy
dance which has the same rhythm as the bolero but is more animated and
stirring. Examples of these dances, and of the jota, fandango, and
the sevillana, are to be met with in the compositions listed in the
first section of this article, in the appendices of Soriano Fuertes’s
“History of Spanish Music,” in Grove’s Dictionary, in the numbers of
“S. I. M.” in which the letters of Emmanuel Chabrier occur, and in
collections made by P. Lacome, published in Paris.

The jota is another dance in 3-4 time. Every province in Spain has its
own jota, but the most famous variations are those of Aragon, Valencia,
and Navarre. It is accompanied by the guitar, the _bandarria_ (similar
to the guitar), small drum, castanets, and triangle. Mr. Hale says
that its origin in the twelfth century is attributed to a Moor named
Alben Jot who fled from Valencia to Aragon. “The jota,” he continues,
“is danced not only at merrymakings but at certain religious festivals
and even in watching the dead. One called the ‘Natividad del Señor’
(nativity of our Lord) is danced on Christmas eve in Aragon, and is
accompanied by songs, and jotas are sung and danced at the crossroads,
invoking the favour of the Virgin, when the festival of Our Lady del
Pilar is celebrated at Saragossa.”

Havelock Ellis’s description of the jota is worth reproducing:
“The Aragonaise jota, the most important and typical dance outside
Andalusia, is danced by a man and a woman, and is a kind of combat
between them; most of the time they are facing each other, both using
castanets and advancing and retreating in an apparently aggressive
manner, the arms alternately slightly raised and lowered, and the legs,
with a seeming attempt to trip the partner, kicking out alternately
somewhat sidewise, as the body is rapidly supported first on one side
and then on the other. It is a monotonous dance, with immense rapidity
and vivacity in its monotony, but it has not the deliberate grace and
fascination, the happy audacities of Andalusian dancing. There is,
indeed, no faintest suggestion of voluptuousness in it, but it may
rather be said, in the words of a modern poet, Salvador Rueda, to have
in it ‘the sound of helmets and plumes and lances and banners, the
roaring of cannon, the neighing of horses, the shock of swords.’”

Chabrier, in his astounding and amusing letters from Spain, gives us
vivid pictures and interesting information. This one, written to his
friend, Edouard Moullé, from Granada, November 4, 1882, appeared in “S.
I. M.” April 15, 1911 (I have omitted the musical illustrations, which,
however, possess great value for the student): “In a month I must leave
adorable Spain ... and say good-bye to the Spaniards,--because, I say
this only to you, they are very nice, the little girls! I have not seen
a really ugly woman since I have been in Andalusia: I do not speak of
the feet, they are so small that I have never seen them; the hands are
tiny and well-kept and the arms of an exquisite contour; I speak only
of what one can see, but they show a good deal; add the arabesques, the
side-curls, and other ingenuities of the coiffure, the inevitable fan,
the flower and the comb in the hair, placed well behind, the shawl of
Chinese crêpe, with long fringe and embroidered in flowers, knotted
around the figure, the arm bare, and the eye protected by eyelashes
which are long enough to curl; the skin of dull white or orange colour,
according to the race, all this smiling, gesticulating, dancing,
drinking, and careless to the last degree....

“That is the Andalusian.

“Every evening we go with Alice to the café-concerts where the
malagueñas, the Soledas, the Sapateados, and the Peteneras are sung;
then the dances, absolutely Arab, to speak truth; if you could see
them wriggle, unjoint their hips, contortion, I believe you would not
try to get away!... At Malaga the dancing became so intense that I
was compelled to take my wife away; it wasn’t even amusing any more.
I can’t write about it, but I remember it and I will describe it to
you.--I have no need to tell you that I have noted down many things;
the tango, a kind of dance in which the women imitate the pitching of
a ship (_le tangage du navire_) is the only dance in 2 time; all the
others, all, are in 3-4 (Seville) or in 3-8 (Malaga and Cadiz);--in
the North it is different, there is some music in 5-8, very curious.
The 2-4 of the tango is always like the habanera; this is the picture:
one or two women dance, two silly men play it doesn’t matter what on
their guitars, and five or six women howl, with excruciating voices
and in triplet figures impossible to note down because they change
the air--every instant a new scrap of tune. They howl a series of
figurations with syllables, words, rising voices, clapping hands which
strike the six quavers, emphasizing the third and the sixth, cries of
Anda! Anda! La Salud! eso es la Maraquita! gracia, nationidad! Baila,
la chiquilla! Anda! Anda! Consuelo! Olè, la Lola, olè la Carmen! que
gracia! que elegancia! all that to excite the young dancer. It is
vertiginous--it is unspeakable!

“The Sevillana is another thing: it is in 3-4 time (and with
castanets).... All this becomes extraordinarily alluring with two
curls, a pair of castanets and a guitar. It is impossible to write down
the malagueña. It is a melopœia, however, which has a form and which
always ends on the dominant, to which the guitar furnishes 3-8 time,
and the spectator (when there is one) seated beside the guitarist,
holds a cane between his legs and beats the syncopated rhythm; the
dancers themselves instinctively syncopate the measures in a thousand
ways, striking with their heels an unbelievable number of rhythms....
It is all rhythm and dance: the airs scraped out by the guitarist
have no value; besides, they cannot be heard on account of the cries
of Anda! la chiquilla! que gracia! que elegancia! Anda! Olè! Olè! la
chiquirritita! and the more the cries the more the dancer laughs with
her mouth wide open, and turns her hips, and is mad with her body....”

As it is on these dances that composers invariably base their Spanish
music (not alone Albeniz, Chapí, Bretón, and Granados, but Chabrier,
Ravel, Laparra, and Bizet, as well) we may linger somewhat longer on
their delights. The following compelling description is from Richard
Ford’s highly readable “Gatherings from Spain”: “The dance which is
closely analogous to the _Ghowasee_ of the Egyptians, and the _Nautch_
of the Hindoos, is called the _Olè_ by Spaniards, the _Romalis_ by
their gipsies; the soul and essence of it consists in the expression of
a certain sentiment, one not indeed of a very sentimental or correct
character. The ladies, who seem to have no bones, resolve the problem
of perpetual motion, their feet having comparatively a sinecure, as the
whole person performs a pantomime, and trembles like an aspen leaf; the
flexible form and Terpsichore figure of a young Andalusian girl--be she
gipsy or not--is said, by the learned, to have been designed by nature
as the fit frame for her voluptuous imagination.

“Be that as it may, the scholar and classical commentator will every
moment quote Martial, etc., when he beholds the unchanged balancing of
hands, raised as if to catch showers of roses, the tapping of the feet,
and the serpentine quivering movements. A contagious excitement seizes
the spectators, who, like Orientals, beat time with their hands in
measured cadence, and at every pause applaud with cries and clappings.
The damsels, thus encouraged, continue in violent action until nature
is all but exhausted; then aniseed brandy, wine, and _alpisteras_ are
handed about, and the fête, carried on to early dawn, often concludes
in broken heads, which here are called ‘gipsy’s fare.’ These dances
appear, to a stranger from the chilly north, to be more marked by
energy than by grace, nor have the legs less to do than the body, hips,
and arms. The sight of this unchanged pastime of antiquity, which
excites the Spaniard to frenzy, rather disgusts an English spectator,
possibly from some national malorganization, for, as Molière says,
‘l’Angleterre a produit des grands hommes dans les sciences et les
beaux arts, mais pas un grand danseur--allez lire l’histoire.’” (A fact
as true in our day as it was in Molière’s.)

On certain days the sevillana is danced before the high altar of
the cathedral at Seville. The Reverend Henry Cart de Lafontaine
(“Proceedings of the Musical Association”; London, thirty-third
session, 1906-7) gives the following account of it, quoting a “French
author”: “While Louis XIII was reigning over France, the Pope heard
much talk of the Spanish dance called the ‘Sevillana.’ He wished to
satisfy himself, by actual eye-witness, as to the character of this
dance, and expressed his wish to a bishop of the diocese of Seville,
who every year visited Rome. Evil tongues make the bishop responsible
for the primary suggestion of the idea. Be that as it may, the bishop,
on his return to Seville, had twelve youths well instructed in all
the intricate measures of this Andalusian dance. He had to choose
youths, for how could he present maidens to the horrified glance of
the Holy Father? When his little troop was thoroughly schooled and
perfected, he took the party to Rome, and the audience was arranged.
The ‘Sevillana’ was danced in one of the rooms of the Vatican. The Pope
warmly complimented the young executants, who were dressed in beautiful
silk costumes of the period. The bishop humbly asked for permission to
perform this dance at certain fêtes in the cathedral church at Seville,
and further pleaded for a restriction of this privilege to that church
alone. The Pope, hoist by his own petard, did not like to refuse, but
granted the privilege with this restriction, that it should only last
so long as the costumes of the dancers were wearable. Needless to say,
these costumes are, therefore, objects of constant repair, but they are
supposed to retain their identity even to this day. And this is the
reason why the twelve boys who dance the ‘Sevillana’ before the high
altar in the cathedral on certain feast days are dressed in the costume
belonging to the reign of Louis XIII.”

This is a very pretty story, but it is not uncontradicted.... Has any
statement been made about Spanish dancing or music which has been
allowed to go uncontradicted? Look upon that picture and upon this: “As
far as it is possible to ascertain from records,” says Rhoda G. Edwards
in the “Musical Standard,” “this dance would seem always to have been
in use in Seville cathedral; when the town was taken from the Moors in
the thirteenth century it was undoubtedly an established custom and in
1428 we find the six boys recognized as an integral part of the chapter
by Pope Eugenius IV. The dance is known as the (_sic_) ‘Los Scises,’
or dance of the six boys who, with four others, dance it before the
high altar at Benediction on the three evenings before Lent and in
the octaves of Corpus Christi and La Purissima (the conception of Our
Lady). The dress of the boys is most picturesque, page costumes of the
time of Philip III being worn, blue for La Purissima and red satin
doublets slashed with blue for the other occasion; white hats with blue
and white feathers are also worn whilst dancing. The dance is usually
of twenty-five minutes’ duration and in form seems quite unique, not
resembling any of the other Spanish dance-forms, or in fact those of
any other country. The boys accompany the symphony on castanets and
sing a hymn in two parts whilst dancing.”

From another author we learn that religious dancing is to be seen
elsewhere in Spain than at Seville cathedral. At one time, it is said
to have been common. The pilgrims to the shrine of the Virgin at
Montserrat were wont to dance, and dancing took place in the churches
of Valencia, Toledo, and Jurez. Religious dancing continued to be
common, especially in Catalonia up to the seventeenth century. An
account of the dance in the Seville cathedral may be found in “Los
Españoles Pintados por si Mismos” (pages 287-91).

This very incomplete and rambling record of Spanish dancing should
include some mention of the fandango. The origin of the word is
obscure, but the dance is obviously one of the gayest and wildest of
the Spanish dances. Like the malagueña it is in 3-8 time, but it is
quite different in spirit from that sensuous form of terpsichorean
enjoyment. La Argentina informs me that “fandango” in Spanish suggests
very much what “bachanale” does in English or French. It is a very old
dance, and may be a survival of a Moorish dance, as Desrat suggests.
Mr. Philip Hale found the following account of it somewhere:

“Like an electric shock, the notes of the fandango animate all hearts.
Men and women, young and old, acknowledge the power of this air over
the ears and soul of every Spaniard. The young men spring to their
places, rattling castanets, or imitating their sound by snapping their
fingers. The girls are remarkable for the willowy languor and lightness
of their movements, the voluptuousness of their attitudes--beating the
exactest time with tapping heels. Partners tease and entreat and pursue
each other by turns. Suddenly the music stops, and each dancer shows
his skill by remaining absolutely motionless, bounding again in the
full life of the fandango as the orchestra strikes up. The sound of the
guitar, the violin, the rapid tic-tac of heels (_taconeos_), the crack
of fingers and castanets, the supple swaying of the dancers, fill the
spectators with ecstasy.

“The music whirls along in a rapid triple time. Spangles glitter; the
sharp clank of ivory and ebony castanets beats out the cadence of
strange, throbbing, deafening notes--assonances unknown to music,
but curiously characteristic, effective, and intoxicating. Amidst the
rustle of silks, smiles gleam over white teeth, dark eyes sparkle and
droop, and flash up again in flame. All is flutter and glitter, grace
and animation--quivering, sonorous, passionate, seductive. _Olè! Olè!_
Faces beam and burn. _Olè! Olè!_

“The bolero intoxicates, the fandango inflames.”

It can be well understood that the study of Spanish dancing and its
music must be carried on in Spain. Mr. Ellis tells us why: “Another
characteristic of Spanish dancing, and especially of the most typical
kind called flamenco, lies in its accompaniments, and particularly
in the fact that under proper conditions all the spectators are
themselves performers.... Thus it is that at the end of a dance an
absolute silence often falls, with no sound of applause: the relation
of performers and public has ceased to exist.... The finest Spanish
dancing is at once killed or degraded by the presence of an indifferent
or unsympathetic public, and that is probably why it cannot be
transplanted, but remains local.”

At the end of a dance an absolute silence often falls.... I am again
in an underground café in Amsterdam. It is the eve of the Queen’s
birthday, and the Dutch are celebrating. The low, smoke-wreathed room
is crowded with students, soldiers, and women. Now a weazened female
takes her place at the piano, on a slightly raised platform at one side
of the room. She begins to play. The dancing begins. It is not woman
with man; the dancing is informal. Some dance together, and some dance
alone; some sing the melody of the tune, others shriek, but all make
a noise. Faster and faster and louder and louder the music is pounded
out, and the dancing becomes wilder and wilder. A tray of glasses is
kicked from the upturned palm of a sweaty waiter. Waiter, broken glass,
dancer, all lie, a laughing heap, on the floor. A soldier and a woman
stand in opposite corners, facing the corners; then without turning,
they back towards the middle of the room at a furious pace; the
collision is appalling. Hand in hand the mad dancers encircle the room,
throwing confetti, beer, anything. A heavy stein crushes two teeth--the
wound bleeds--but the dancer does not stop. Noise and action and colour
all become synonymous. There is no escape from the force. I am dragged
into the circle. Suddenly the music stops. All the dancers stop. The
soldier no longer looks at the woman by his side; not a word is spoken.
People lumber towards chairs. The woman looks for a glass of water
to assuage the pain of her bleeding mouth. I think Jaques-Dalcroze is
right when he seeks to unite spectator and actor, drama and public.


IV

In the preceding section I may have too strongly insisted upon the
relation of the folk-song to the dance. It is true that the two are
seldom separated in performance (although not all songs are danced;
for example, the _cañas_ and _playeras_ of Andalusia). However, most
of the folk-songs of Spain are intended to be danced; they are built
on dance rhythms and they bear the names of dances. Thus the jota is
always danced to the same music, although the variations are great at
different times and in different provinces. It is, of course, when
the folk-songs are danced that they make their best effect, in the
polyrhythm achieved by the opposing rhythms of guitar-player, dancer,
and singer. When there is no dancer the defect is sometimes overcome by
some one tapping a stick on the ground in imitation of resounding heels.

Blind beggars have a habit of singing the songs, in certain provinces,
with a wealth of florid ornament, such ornament as is always
associated with oriental airs in performance, and this ornament still
plays a considerable rôle when the vocalist becomes an integral part
of the accompaniment for a dancer. Chabrier gives several examples of
it in one of his letters. In the circumstances it can readily be seen
that Spanish folk-songs written down are pretty bare recollections of
the real thing, and when sung by singers who have no knowledge of the
traditional manner of performing them they are likely to sound fairly
banal. The same thing might be said of the negro folk-songs of America,
or the folk-songs of Russia or Hungary, but with much less truth, for
the folk-songs of these countries usually possess a melodic interest
which is seldom inherent in the folk-songs of Spain. To make their
effect they must be performed by Spaniards, as nearly as possible after
the manner of the people. Indeed, their spirit and their polyrhythmic
effects are much more essential to their proper interpretation than
their melody, as many witnesses have pointed out.

Spanish music, indeed, much of it, is actually unpleasant to Western
ears; it lacks the sad monotony and the wailing intensity of true
oriental music; much of it is loud and blaring, like the hot sunglare
of the Iberian peninsula. However, many a Western or Northern European
has found pleasure in listening by the hour to the strains, which often
sound as if they were improvised, sung by some beggar or mountaineer.

The collections of these songs are not in any sense complete and few of
them attempt more than a collocation of the songs of one locality or
people. Deductions have been drawn. For example it is noted that the
Basque songs are irregular in melody and rhythm and are further marked
by unusual tempos, 5-8, or 7-4. In Aragon and Navarre the popular song
(and dance) is the jota; in Galicia, the seguidilla; the Catalonian
songs resemble the folk-tunes of Southern France. The Andalusian songs,
like the dances of that province, are the most beautiful of all, often
truly oriental in their rhythm and floridity. In Spain the gipsy has
become an integral part of the popular life, and it is difficult at
times to determine what is _flamenco_ and what is Spanish. However,
collections (few to be sure) have been attempted of gipsy songs.

Elsewhere in this rambling article I have touched on the _villancicos_
and the early song-writers. To do justice to these subjects would
require a good deal more space and a different intention. Those who
are interested in them may pursue these matters in Pedrell’s various
works. The most available collection of Spanish folk-tunes is that
issued by P. Lacome and J. Puig y Alsubide (Paris, 1872). There are
several collections of Basque songs; Demofilo’s “Coleccion de Cantos
Flamencos” (Seville, 1881), Cecilio Ocon’s collection of Andalusian
folk-songs, and F. Rodriguez Marin’s “Cantos Populares Españoles”
(Seville, 1882-3) may also be mentioned.


V

After the bullfight the most popular form of amusement in Spain is
the zarzuela, the only distinctive art-form which Spanish music has
evolved, but there has been no progress; the form has not changed,
except perhaps to degenerate, since its invention in the early
seventeenth century. Soriano Fuertes and other writers have devoted
pages to grieving because Spanish composers have not taken occasion to
make something grander and more important out of the zarzuela. The fact
remains that they have not, although, small and great alike, they have
all taken a hand at writing these entertainments. But as they found
the zarzuela, so they have left it. It must be conceded that the form
is quite distinct from that of opera and should not be confused with
it. And the Spaniards are probably right when they assert that the
zarzuela is the mother of the French opéra-bouffe. At least it must be
admitted that Offenbach and Lecocq and their precursors owe something
of the germ of their inspiration to the Spanish form. To-day the melody
chests of the zarzuela markets are plundered to find tunes for French
_revues_, and such popular airs as _La Paraguaya_ and _Y ... Como le
Vá?_ were originally danced and sung in Spanish theatres. The composer
of these airs, J. Valverde _fils_, indeed found the French market so
good that he migrated to Paris, and for some time has been writing
_musique mélangée ... une moitié de chaque nation_. So _La Rose de
Grenade_, composed for Paris, might have been written for Spain, with
slight melodic alterations and tauromachian allusions in the book.

The zarzuela is usually a one act piece (although sometimes it is
permitted to run into two or more acts) in which the music is freely
interrupted by spoken dialogue, and that in turn gives way to national
dances. Very often the entire score is danced as well as sung. The
subject is usually comic and often topical, although it may be serious,
poetic, or even tragic. The actors often introduce dialogue of
their own, “gagging” freely; sometimes they engage in long impromptu
conversations with members of the audience. They also embroider on the
music after the fashion of the great singers of the old Italian opera
(Dr. de Lafontaine asserts that Spanish audiences, even in cabarets,
demand embroidery of this sort). The music is spirited and lively,
and in the dances, Andalusian, _flamenco_, or Sevillan, as the case
may be, it attains its best results. H. V. Hamilton, in his essay on
the subject in Grove’s Dictionary, says, “The music is ... apt to be
vague in form when the national dance and folk-song forms are avoided.
The orchestration is a little blatant.” It will be seen that this
description suits Granados’s _Goyescas_ (the opera), which is on its
safest ground during the dances and becomes excessively vague at other
times; but _Goyescas_ is not a zarzuela, because there is no spoken
dialogue. Otherwise it bears the earmarks. A zarzuela stands somewhere
between a French _revue_ and opéra-comique. It is usually, however,
more informal in tone than the latter and often decidedly more serious
than the former. All the musicians in Spain since the form was invented
(excepting, of course, certain exclusively religious composers), and
most of the poets and playwrights, have contributed numerous examples.
Thus Calderon wrote the first zarzuela, and Lope de Vega contributed
words to entertainments much in the same order. In our day Spain’s
leading dramatist, Echegaray (died 1916), has written one of the most
popular zarzuelas, _Gigantes y Cabezudos_ (the music by Caballero).
The subject is the fiesta of Santa Maria del Pilar. It has had many a
long run and is often revived. Another very popular zarzuela, which
was almost, if not quite, heard in New York, is _La Gran Via_ (by
Valverde, _père_), which has been performed in London in extended
form. The principal theatres for the zarzuela in Madrid are (or were
until recently) that of the Calle de Jovellanos, called the Teatro de
Zarzuela, and the Apolo. Usually four separate zarzuelas are performed
in one evening before as many audiences.

_La Gran Via_, which in some respects may be considered a typical
zarzuela, consists of a string of dance tunes, with no more
homogeneity than their national significance would suggest. There is
an introduction and polka, a waltz, a tango, a jota, a mazurka, a
schottische, another waltz, and a two-step (_paso-doble_). The tunes
have little distinction; nor can the orchestration be considered
brilliant. There is a great deal of noise and variety of rhythm, and
when presented correctly the effect must be precisely that of one of
the dance-halls described by Chabrier. The zarzuela, to be enjoyed,
in fact, must be seen in Spain. Like Spanish dancing it requires a
special audience to bring out its best points. There must be a certain
electricity, at least an element of sympathy, to carry the thing
through successfully. Examination of the scores of zarzuelas (many
of them have been printed and some of them are to be seen in our
libraries) will convince any one that Mr. Ellis is speaking mildly
when he says that the Spaniards love noise. However, the combination
of this noise with beautiful women, dancing, elaborate rhythm, and a
shouting audience, seems to almost equal the café-concert dancing and
the tauromachian spectacles in Spanish popular affection. (Of course,
as I have suggested, there are zarzuelas more serious melodically and
dramatically; but as _La Gran Via_ is frequently mentioned by writers
as one of the most popular examples, it may be selected as typical of
the larger number of these entertainments.)

H. V. Hamilton says that the first performance of a zarzuela took
place in 1628 (Pedrell gives the date as October 29, 1629), during
the reign of Felipe IV, in the Palace of the Zarzuela (so-called
because it was surrounded by _zarzas_, brambles). It was called _El
Jardin de Falerina_; the text was by the great Calderon and the music
by Juan Risco, chapelmaster of the cathedral at Cordova, according to
Mr. Hamilton, who doubtless follows Soriano Fuertes on this detail.
Soubies, following the more modern studies of Pedrell, gives Jose Peyró
the credit. Pedrell, in his richly documented work, “Teatro Lírico
Española anterior al siglo XIX,” attributes the music of this zarzuela
to Peyró and gives an example of it. The first Spanish opera dates from
the same period, Lope de Vega’s _La Selva sin Amor_ (1629). As a matter
of fact, many of the plays of Calderon and Lope de Vega were performed
with music to heighten the effect of the declamation, and musical
curtain-raisers and interludes were performed before and in the midst
of all of them. Lana, Palomares, Benavente and Hidalgo were among the
musicians who contributed music to the theatre of this period. Hidalgo
wrote the music for Calderon’s zarzuela, _Ni Amor se Libre de Amor_. To
the same group belong Miguel Ferrer, Juan de Navas, Sebastien de Navas,
and Jéronimo de la Torre. (Examples of the music of these men may be
found in the aforementioned “Teatro Lírico.”) Until 1659 zarzuelas
were written by the best poets and composers and frequently performed
on royal birthdays, at royal marriages, and on many other occasions;
but after that date the art fell into a decline and seems to have
been in eclipse during the whole of the eighteenth century. According
to Soriano Fuertes the beginning of the reign of Felipe V marked the
introduction of Italian opera into Spain (more popular than Spanish
opera there to this day) and the decadence of nationalism (whole pages
of Fuertes read very much like the plaints of modern English composers
about the neglect of national composers in their country). In 1829
there was a revival of interest in Spanish music and a conservatory was
founded in Madrid. (For a discussion of this later period the reader
is referred to “La Opera Española en el Siglo XIX,” by Antonio Peña y
Goñi, 1881.) This interest has been fostered by Fuertes and Pedrell,
and the younger composers to-day are taking some account of it. There
is hope, indeed, that Spanish music may again take its place in the
world of art.

Of course, the zarzuela did not spring into being out of nowhere and
nothing, and the true origins are not entirely obscure. It is generally
agreed that a priest, Juan del Encina (born at Salamanca, 1468),
was the true founder of the secular theatre in Spain. His dramatic
compositions are in the nature of eclogues based on Virgilian models.
In all of these there is singing and in one a dance. Isabel la Católica
in the fifteenth century always had at her command a troop of musicians
and poets who comforted and consoled her in her chapel with motets
and _plegarias_ (French, _prière_), and in the royal apartments with
_canciones_ and _villancicos_. (_Canciones_ are songs inclining towards
the ballad-form. _Villancicos_ are songs in the old Spanish measure;
they receive their name from their rustic character, as supposedly they
were first composed by the _villanos_ or peasants for the nativity and
other festivals of the church.) “It is necessary to search for the true
origins of the Spanish musical spectacle,” states Soubies, “in the
_villancicos_ and _cantacillos_ which alternated with the dialogue in
the works of Juan del Encina and Lucas Fernandez, without forgetting
the _ensaladas_, the _jacaras_, etc., which served as intermezzi and
curtain-raisers.” These were sung before the curtain, before the
drama was performed (and during the intervals, with jokes added) by
women in court dress, and later created a form of their own (besides
contributing to the creation of the zarzuela), the _tonadilla_, which,
accompanied by a guitar or violin and interspersed with dances, was
very popular for a number of years. H. V. Hamilton is probably on
sound ground when he says, “That the first zarzuela was written with
an express desire for expansion and development is, however, not so
certain as that it was the result of a wish to inaugurate the new house
of entertainment with something entirely original and novel.”


VI

We have Richard Ford’s testimony that Spain was not very musical in his
day. The Reverend Henry Cart de Lafontaine says that the contemporary
musical services in the churches are not to be considered seriously
from an artistic point of view. Emmanuel Chabrier was impressed with
the fact that the music for dancing was almost entirely rhythmic in its
effect, strummed rudely on the guitar, the spectators meanwhile making
such a din that it was practically impossible to distinguish a melody,
had there been one. And all observers point at the Italian opera, which
is still the favourite opera in Spain (in Barcelona at the Liceo three
weeks of opera in Catalon is given after the regular season in Italian;
in Madrid at the Teatro Real the Spanish season is scattered through
the Italian), and at Señor Arbós’s concerts (the same Señor Arbós who
was once concert master of the Boston Symphony Orchestra), at which
Brandenburg concertos and Beethoven symphonies are more frequently
performed than works by Albeniz. Still there are, and have always been
during the course of the last century, Spanish composers, some of whom
have made a little noise in the outer world, although a good many have
been content to spend their artistic energy on the manufacture of
zarzuelas--in other words, to make a good deal of noise in Spain. In
most modern instances, however, there has been a revival of interest
in the national forms, and folk-song and folk-dance have contributed
their important share to the composers’ work. No one man has done more
to encourage this interest in nationalism than Felipe Pedrell, who may
be said to have begun in Spain the work which the “Five” accomplished
in Russia. Pedrell says in his “Handbook” (Barcelona, 1891; Heinrich
and Co.; French translation by Bertal; Paris, Fischbacher): “The
popular song, the voice of the people, the pure primitive inspiration
of the anonymous singer, passes through the alembic of contemporary art
and one obtains thereby its quintessence; the composer assimilates
it and then reveals it in the most delicate form that music alone is
capable of rendering form in its technical aspect, this thanks to the
extraordinary development of the technique of our art in this epoch.
The folk-song lends the accent, the background, and modern art lends
all that it possesses, its conventional symbolism and the richness of
form which is its patrimony. The frame is enlarged in such a fashion
that the _lied_ makes a corresponding development; could it be said
then that the national lyric drama is the same _lied_ expanded? Is
not the national lyric drama the product of the force of absorption
and creative power? Do we not see in it faithfully reflected not only
the artistic idiosyncrasy of each composer, but all the artistic
manifestations of the people?” There is always the search for new
composers in Spain and always the hope that a man may come who will
be acclaimed by the world. As a consequence, the younger composers
in Spain often receive more adulation than is their due. It must be
remembered that the most successful Spanish music is not serious, the
Spanish are more themselves in the lighter vein.

I hesitate for a moment on the name of Martin y Solar, born at
Valencia; died at St. Petersburg, 1806; called “The Italian” by the
Spaniards on account of his musical style, and “lo Spagnuolo” by the
Italians. Da Ponte wrote several opera-books for him, _l’Arbore di
Diana_, _la Cosa Rara_, and _La Capricciosa Corretta_ (a version of
_The Taming of the Shrew_) among others. It is to be seen that he is
without importance if considered as a composer distinctively Spanish
and I have made this slight reference to him solely to recount how
Mozart quoted an air from one of his operas in the supper scene of
_Don Giovanni_. At the time Martin y Solar was better liked in Vienna
than Mozart himself and the air in question was as well-known as say
Musetta’s waltz is known to us.

Juan Chrysostomo Arriaga, born in Bilbao 1808; died 1828 (these dates
are given in Grove: 1806-1826), is another matter. He might have become
better known had he lived longer. As it is, some of his music has been
performed in London and Paris, and perhaps in America, although I have
no record of it. He studied in Paris at the Conservatoire, under Fétis
for harmony, and Baillot for violin. Before he went to Paris even, as
a child, with no knowledge of the rules of harmony, he had written
an opera! Cherubini declared his fugue for eight voices on the words
in the Credo, “Et Vitam Venturi” a veritable chef d’œuvre, at least
there is a legend to this effect. In 1824 he wrote three quartets, an
overture, a symphony, a mass, and some French cantatas and romances.
Garcia considered his opera _Los Esclavas Felices_ so good that he
attempted, unsuccessfully, to secure for it a Paris hearing. It has
been performed in Bilbao, which city, I think, celebrated the centenary
of the composer’s birth.

Manuel Garcia is better known to us as a singer, an impresario, and a
father, than as a composer! Still he wrote a good deal of music (so
did Mme. Malibran; for a list of the diva’s compositions I must refer
the reader to Arthur Pougin’s biography). Fétis enumerates seventeen
Spanish, nineteen Italian, and seven French operas by Garcia. He had
works produced in Madrid, at the Opéra in Paris (_La mort du Tasse_
and _Florestan_), at the Italiens in Paris (_Fazzoletto_), at the
Opéra-Comique in Paris (_Deux Contrats_), and at many other theatres.
However, when all is said and done, Manuel Garcia’s reputation
still rests on his singing and his daughters. His compositions are
forgotten; nor was his music, much of it, probably, truly Spanish.
(However, I have heard a polo [serenade] from an opera called _El
Poeta Calculista_, which is so Spanish in accent and harmony--and so
beautiful--that it has found a place in a collection of folk-tunes!)

Miguel Hilarion Eslava (born in Burlada, October 21, 1807, died at
Madrid, July 23, 1878) is chiefly famous for his compilation, the
“Lira Sacra-Hispana,” mentioned heretofore. He also composed over 140
pieces of church music, masses, motets, songs, etc., after he had been
appointed chapelmaster of Queen Isabella in 1844, and several operas,
including _Il Solitario_, _La Tregua di Ptolemaide_, and _Pedro el
Cruél_. He also wrote several books of theory and composition: “Método
de Solfeo” (1846) and “Escuela de Armonía y Composición” in three parts
(harmony, composition, and melody). He edited (1855-6) the “Gaceta
Músical de Madrid.”

There is the celebrated virtuoso, Pablo de Sarasate, who wrote music,
but his memory is perhaps better preserved in Whistler’s diabolical
portrait than in his own compositions.

Felipe Pedrell (born February 19, 1841) is also perhaps more important
as a writer on musical subjects and for his influence on the younger
school of composers (he teaches in the conservatory of Barcelona, and
his attitude towards nationalism has already been discussed), than he
is as a composer. Still, Edouard Lopez-Chavarri does not hesitate to
pronounce his trilogy _Los Pireneos_ (Barcelona, 1902; the prologue
was performed in Venice in 1897) the most important work for the
theatre written in Spain. His first opera, _El Último Abencerrajo_, was
produced in Barcelona in 1874. Some of his other works are _Quasimodo_,
1875; _El Tasso a Ferrara_, _Cleopatra_, _Mazeppa_ (Madrid, 1881),
_Celestine_ (1904), and _La Matinada_ (1905). J. A. Fuller-Maitland
says that the influence of Wagner is traceable in all his stage work.
(Wagner is adored in Spain; _Parsifal_ was given eighteen times in one
month at the Liceo in Barcelona.) If this be true, his case will be
found to bear other resemblances to that of the Russian “Five,” who
found it difficult to exorcise all foreign influences in their pursuit
of nationalism.

He was made a member of the Spanish Academy in 1894 and shortly
thereafter became Professor of Musical History and Æsthetics at the
Royal Conservatory at Madrid. Besides his “Hispaniae Schola Musica
Sacra” he has written a number of other books, and translated Richter’s
treatise on Harmony into Spanish. He has made several excursions into
the history of folk-lore and the principal results are contained in
“Músicos Anónimos” and “Por nuestra Música.” Other works are “Teatro
Lírico Español anterior al siglo XIX,” “Lírica Nacionalizada,” “De
Música Religiosa,” “Músiquerias y mas Músiquesias.” One of his books,
“Músicos Contemporáneos y de Otros Tempos” (in the library of the
Hispanic Society of New York) is very catholic in its range of subject.
It includes essays on the _Don Quixote_ of Strauss, the _Boris Godunow_
of Moussorgsky, Smetana, Manuel Garcia, Edward Elgar, Jaques-Dalcroze,
Bruckner, Mahler, Albeniz, Palestrina, Busoni, and the tenth symphony
of Beethoven!

In John Towers’s extraordinary compilation, “Dictionary-Catalogue of
Operas,” it is stated that Manuel Fernandez Caballero (born in 1835)
wrote sixty-two operas, and the names of them are given. He was a
pupil of Fuertes (harmony) and Eslava (composition) at the Madrid
Conservatory and later became very popular as a writer of zarzuelas. I
have already mentioned his _Gigantes y Cabezudos_ for which Echegaray
furnished the libretto. Among his other works in this form are _Los
Dineros del Sacristan_, _Los Africanistas_ (Barcelona, 1894), _El Cabo
Primero_ (Barcelona, 1895), and _La Rueda de la Fortuna_ (Madrid, 1896).

At a concert given in the New York Hippodrome, April 3, 1911, Mme.
Tetrazzini sang a Spanish song, which was referred to the next day
by the reviewers of the “New York Times” and the “New York Globe.”
To say truth the soprano made a great effect with the song, although
it was written for a low voice. It was _Carceleras_, from Ruperto
Chapí’s zarzuela _Hija del Zebedeo_. Chapí was one of the most prolific
and popular composers of Spain during the last century. He produced
countless zarzuelas and nine children. He was born at Villena March
27, 1851, and he died March 25, 1909, a few months earlier than his
compatriot Isaac Albeniz. He was admitted to the conservatory of Madrid
in 1867 as a pupil of piano and harmony. In 1869 he obtained the first
prize for harmony and he continued to obtain prizes until in 1874 he
was sent to Rome by the Academy of Fine Arts. He remained for some
time in Italy and Paris. In 1875 the Teatro Real of Madrid played his
_La Hija de Jefté_ sent from Rome. The following is an incomplete
list of his operas and zarzuelas: _Via Libra_, _Los Gendarmes_, _El
Rey que Rabio_ (3 acts), _La Verbena de la Paloma_, _El Reclamo_, _La
Tempestad_, _La Bruja_, _La Leyenda del Monje_, _Las Campanados_,
_La Czarina_, _El Milagro de la Virgen_, _Roger de Flor_ (3 acts),
_Las Naves de Cortes, Circe_ (3 acts), _A qui Base Farsa un Hombre_,
_Juan Francisco_ (3 acts, 1905; rewritten and presented in 1908 as
_Entre Rocas_), _Los Madrileños_ (1908), _La Dama Roja_ (1 act, 1908),
_Hesperia_ (1908), _Las Calderas de Pedro Bolero_ (1909) and _Margarita
la Tornera_, presented just before his death without success.

His other works include an oratorio, _Los Angeles_, a symphonic poem,
_Escenas de Capa y Espada_, a symphony in D, _Moorish Fantasy_ for
orchestra, a serenade for orchestra, a trio for piano, violin and
’cello, songs, etc. Chapí was president of the Society of Authors and
Composers, and when he died the King and Queen of Spain sent a telegram
of condolence to his widow. There is a copy of his zarzuela, _Blasones
y Talegas_ in the New York Public Library.

I have already spoken of _Dolores_. It is one of a long series of
operas and zarzuelas written by Tomás Bretón y Hernandez (born at
Salamanca, December 29, 1850). First produced at Madrid, in 1895, it
has been sung with success in such distant capitals as Buenos Ayres and
Prague. I have been assured by a Spanish woman of impeccable taste that
_Dolores_ is charming, delightful in its fluent melody and its striking
rhythms, thoroughly Spanish in style, but certain to find favour in
America, if it were produced here. Our own Eleanora de Cisneros at
a Press Club Benefit in Barcelona appeared in Bretón’s zarzuela _La
Verbena de la Paloma_. Another of Bretón’s famous zarzuelas is _Los
Amantes de Ternel_ (Madrid, 1889). His works for the theatre further
include _Tabaré_, for which he wrote both words and music (Madrid,
1913); _Don Gil_ (Barcelona, 1914); _Garin_ (Barcelona, 1891); _Raquel_
(Madrid, 1900); _Guzman el Bueno_ (Madrid, 1876); _El Certamen de
Cremona_ (Madrid, 1906); _El Campanere de Begoña_ (Madrid, 1878); _El
Barberillo en Orán_; _Corona contra Corona_ (Madrid, 1879); _Les Amores
de un Príncipe_ (Madrid, 1881); _El Clavel Rojo_ (1899); _Covadonga_
(1901); and _El Domingo de Ramos_, words by Echegaray (Madrid, 1894).
His works for orchestra include: _En la Alhambra_, _Los Galeotes_, and
_Escenas Andaluzas_, a suite. He has written three string quartets,
a piano trio, a piano quintet, and an oratorio in two parts, _El
Apocalipsis_.

Bretón is largely self-taught, and there is a legend that he devoured
by himself Eslava’s “School of Composition.” He further wrote the music
and conducted for a circus for a period of years. In the late seventies
he conducted an orchestra, founding a new society, the Union Artistico
Musical, which is said to have been the beginning of the modern
movement in Spain. It may throw some light on Spanish musical taste at
this period to mention the fact that the performance of Saint-Saëns’s
_Danse macabre_ almost created a riot. Later Bretón travelled. He
appeared as conductor in London, Prague, and Buenos Ayres, among other
cities outside of Spain, and when Dr. Karl Muck left Prague for Berlin,
he was invited to succeed him in the Bohemian capital. In the contest
held by the periodical “Blanco y Negro” in 1913 to decide who was the
most popular writer, poet, painter, musician, sculptor, and toreador in
Spain, Bretón as musician got the most votes.... He is at present the
head of the Royal Conservatory in Madrid.

No Spanish composer (ancient or modern) is better known outside of
Spain than Isaac Albeniz (born May 29, 1861, at Comprodon; died at
Cambo, in the Pyrenees, May 25, 1909). His fame rests almost entirely
on twelve piano pieces (in four books) entitled collectively _Iberia_,
with which all concert-goers are familiar. They have been performed
here by Ernest Schelling, Leo Ornstein, and George Copeland, among
other virtuosi.... I think one or two of these pieces must be in the
répertoire of every modern pianist. Albeniz did not imbibe his musical
culture in Spain and to the day of his death he was more friendly with
the modern French group of composers than with those of his native
land. In his music he sees Spain with French eyes. He studied at
Paris with Marmontel; at Brussels with Louis Brassin; and at Weimar
with Liszt (he is mentioned in the long list of pupils in Huneker’s
biography of Liszt, but there is no further account of him in that
book); he studied composition with Jadassohn, Joseph Dupont, and F.
Kufferath. His symphonic poem, _Catalonia_, has been performed in Paris
by the Colonne Orchestra. I have no record of any American performance.
For a time he devoted himself to the piano. He was a virtuoso and he
has even played in London, but later in life he gave up this career for
composition. He wrote several operas and zarzuelas, among them a light
opera, _The Magic Opal_ (produced in London, 1893), _Enrico Clifford_
(Barcelona, 1894; later heard in London), _Pepita Jiminez_ (Barcelona,
1895; afterwards given at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels),
and _San Anton de la Florida_ (produced in Brussels as _l’Ermitage
Fleurie_). He left unfinished at his death another opera destined for
production in Brussels at the Monnaie, _Merlin l’Enchanteur_. None
of his operas, with the exception of _Pepita Jiminez_, which has been
performed, I am told, in all Spanish countries, achieved any particular
success, and it is _Iberia_ and a few other piano pieces which will
serve to keep his memory green.

Juan Bautista Pujol (1836-1898) gained considerable reputation in Spain
as a pianist and as a teacher of and composer for that instrument. He
also wrote a method for piano students entitled “Nuevo Mecanismo del
Piano.” His further claim to attention is due to the fact that he was
one of the teachers of Granados.

The names of Pahissa (both as conductor and composer; one of his
symphonic works is called _The Combat_), Garcia Robles, represented by
an _Epitalame_, and Gibert, with two _Marines_, occur on the programmes
of the two concerts devoted in the main to Spanish music, at the second
of which (Barcelona, 1910; conductor Franz Beidler) Granados’s _Dante_
was performed.

E. Fernandez Arbós (born in Madrid, December 25, 1863) is better
known as a conductor and violinist than as composer. Still, he has
written music, especially for his own instrument. He was a pupil of
both Vieuxtemps and Joachim; and he has travelled much, teaching at
the Hamburg Conservatory, and acting as concertmaster for the Boston
Symphony and the Glasgow Orchestras. He has been a professor at the
Madrid conservatory for some time, giving orchestral and chamber
music concerts, both there and in London. He has written at least one
light opera, presumably a zarzuela, _El Centro de la Tierra_ (Madrid;
December 22, 1895); three trios for piano and strings, songs, and an
orchestral suite.

I have already referred to the Valverdes, father and son. The father,
in collaboration with Federico Chueca, wrote _La Gran Via_. Many
another popular zarzuela is signed by him. The son has lived so long in
France that much of his music is cast in the style of the French music
hall; too it is in a popular vein. Still in his best tangos he strikes
a Spanish folk-note not to be despised. He wrote the music for the
play, _La Maison de Danse_, produced, with Polaire, at the Vaudeville
in Paris, and two of his operettas, _La Rose de Grenade_ and _l’Amour
en Espagne_, have been performed in Paris, not without success, I am
told by La Argentina, who danced in them. Other modern composers who
have been mentioned to me are Manuel de Falla, Joaquin Turina (George
Copeland has played his _A los Toros_), Usandihaga (who died in 1915),
the composer of _Los Golondrinos_, Oscar Erpla, Conrado del Campo, and
Enrique Morera.

Enrique Granados was perhaps the first of the important Spanish
composers to visit North America. His place in the list of modern
Iberian musicians is indubitably a high one; though it must not be
taken for granted that _all_ the best music of Spain crosses the
Pyrenees (for reasons already noted it is evident that some Spanish
music can never be heard to advantage outside of Spain), and it is
by no means to be taken for granted that Granados was a greater
musician than several who dwell in Barcelona and Madrid without
making excursions into the outer world. In his own country I am told
Granados was admired chiefly as a pianist, and his performances on
that instrument in New York stamped him as an original interpretative
artist, one capable of extracting the last tonal meaning out of his own
compositions for the pianoforte, which are his best work.

Shortly after his arrival in New York he stated to several reporters
that America knew nothing about Spanish music, and that Bizet’s
_Carmen_ was not in any sense Spanish. I hold no brief for _Carmen_
being Spanish but it is effective, and that _Goyescas_ as an opera is
not. In the first place, its muddy and blatant orchestration would
detract from its power to please (this opinion might conceivably be
altered were the opera given under Spanish conditions in Spain).
The manuscript score of _Goyescas_ now reposes in the Museum of the
Hispanic Society, in that interesting quarter of New York where the
apartment houses bear the names of Goya and Velasquez, and it is
interesting to note that it is a _piano_ score. What has become of the
orchestral partition and who was responsible for it I do not know. It
is certain, however, that the miniature charm of the _Goyescas_ becomes
more obvious in the piano version, performed by Ernest Schelling or
the composer himself, than in the opera house. The growth of the work
is interesting. Fragments of it took shape in the composer’s brain
and on paper seventeen years ago, the result of the study of Goya’s
paintings in the Prado. These fragments were moulded into a suite in
1909 and again into an opera in 1914 (or before then). F. Periquet,
the librettist, was asked to fit words to the score, a task which he
accomplished with difficulty. Spanish is not an easy tongue to sing.
To Mme. Barrientos this accounts for the comparatively small number of
Spanish operas. _Goyescas_, like many a zarzuela, lags when the dance
rhythms cease. I find little joy myself in listening to “La Maja y
el Ruiseñor”; in fact, the entire last scene sounds banal to my ears.
In the four volumes of Spanish dances which Granados wrote for piano
(published by the Sociedad Anónima Casa Dotesio in Barcelona) I console
myself for my lack of interest in _Goyescas_. These lovely dances
combine in their artistic form all the elements of the folk-dances as
I have described them. They bespeak a careful study and an intimate
knowledge of the originals. And any pianist, amateur or professional,
will take joy in playing them.

Enrique Granados y Campina was born July 27, 1867, at Lerida,
Catalonia. (He died March 24, 1916; a passenger on the _Sussex_,
torpedoed in the English Channel.) From 1884 to 1887 he studied
piano under Pujol and composition under Felipe Pedrell at the Madrid
Conservatory. That the latter was his master presupposed on his part
a valuable knowledge of the treasures of Spain’s past and that, I
think, we may safely allow him. There is, I am told, an interesting
combination of classicism and folk-lore in his work. At any rate,
Granados was a faithful disciple of Pedrell. In 1898 his zarzuela
_Maria del Carmen_ was produced in Madrid and has since been heard in
Valencia, Barcelona, and other Spanish cities. Five years later some
fragments of another opera, _Foletto_, were produced at Barcelona.
His third opera, _Liliana_, was produced at Barcelona in 1911. He
wrote numerous songs to texts by the poet, Apeles Mestres; Galician
songs, two symphonic poems, _La Nit del Mort_ and _Dante_ (performed
by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the first time in America at the
concerts of November 5 and 6, 1915); a piano trio, string quartet, and
various books of piano music (_Danzas Españolas_, _Valses Poéticos_,
_Bocetos_, _etc._).


_New York, March 20, 1916._




Shall We Realize Wagner’s Ideals?




Shall We Realize Wagner’s Ideals?


Historians of operatic phenomena have observed that fashions in music
change; the popular Donizetti and Bellini of one century are suffered
to exist during the next only for the sake of the opportunity they
afford to some brilliant songstress. New tastes arise, new styles
in music. Dukas’s generally unrelished (and occasionally highly
appreciated) _Ariane et Barbe-Bleue_ may not be powerful enough
to establish a place for itself in the répertoire, but its direct
influence on composers and its indirect influence on auditors make this
lyric drama highly important as an indication of the future of opera as
a fine art. Moussorgsky’s _Boris Godunow_, first given in this country
some forty years after its production in Russia, is another matter.
That score contains a real thrill in itself, a thrill which, once felt,
makes it difficult to feel the intensity of a Wagner drama again:
because Wagner is becoming just a little bit old-fashioned. _Lohengrin_
and _Tannhäuser_ are becoming a trifle shop-worn. They do not glitter
with the glory of a _Don Giovanni_ or the invincible splendour of an
_Armide_. There are parts of _Die Walküre_ which are growing old. Now
Wagner, in many ways the greatest figure as opera composer which the
world has yet produced, could hold his place in the singing theatres
for many decades to come if some proper effort were made to do justice
to his dramas, the justice which in a large measure has been done to
his music. This effort at present is not being made.

In the Metropolitan Opera House season of 1895-6, when Jean de Reszke
first sang Tristan in German, the opportunity seemed to be opened for
further breaks with what a Munich critic once dubbed “Die Bayreuther
Tradition oder Der missverstandene Wagner.” For up to that time, in
spite of some isolated examples, it had come to be considered, in
utter misunderstanding of Wagner’s own wishes and doctrines, as a
part of the technique of performing a Wagner music-drama to shriek,
howl, or bark the tones, rather than to sing them. There had been, I
have said, isolated examples of German singers, and artists of other
nationalities singing in German, who had _sung_ their phrases in these
lyric plays, but the appearance in the Wagner rôles, in German, of a
tenor whose previous appearances had been made largely in works in
French and Italian which demanded the use of what is called _bel canto_
(it means only _good singing_) brought about a controversy which even
yet is raging in some parts of the world. Should Wagner be sung, in the
manner of Jean de Reszke, or shouted in the traditional manner? Was it
possible to sing the music and make the effect the Master expected? In
answer it may be said that never in their history have _Siegfried_,
_Tristan und Isolde_, and _Lohengrin_ met with such success as when
Jean de Reszke and his famous associates appeared in them, and it may
also be said that since that time there has been a consistent effort on
the part of the management of the Metropolitan Opera House (and other
theatres as well) to provide artists for these dramas who could sing
them, and sing them as Italian operas are sung, an effort to which
opera directors have been spurred by a growing insistence on the part
of the public.

It was the first break with the Bayreuth bugbear, tradition, and it
might have been hoped that this tradition would be stifled in other
directions, with this successful precedent in mind; but such has not
been the case. As a result of this failure to follow up a beneficial
lead, in spite of orchestral performances which bring out the manifold
beauties of the scores and in spite of single impersonations of high
rank by eminent artists, we are beginning to see the Wagner dramas
falling into decline, long before the appointed time, because their
treatment has been held in the hands of Cosima Wagner, who--with the
best of intentions, of course--not only insists (at Bayreuth she is
mistress, and her influence on singers, conductors, stage directors and
scene painters throughout the world is very great) on the carrying out
of Wagner’s theories, as she understands them, and even when they are
only worthy of being ignored, but who also (whether rightly or wrongly)
is credited with a few traditions of her own. Wagner indeed invented
a new form of drama, but he did not have the time or means at his
disposal to develop an adequate technique for its performance.

We are all familiar with the Bayreuth version of Wotan in _Die Walküre_
which makes of that tragic father-figure a boisterous, silly old
scold (so good an artist as Carl Braun, whose Hagen portrait is a
masterpiece, has followed this tradition literally); we all know too
well the waking Brünnhilde who salutes the sun in the last act of
_Siegfried_ with gestures seemingly derived from the exercises of a
Swedish _turnverein_, following the harp arpeggios as best she may;
we remember how Wotan, seizing the sword from the dead Fasolt’s hand,
brandishes it to the tune of the sword _motiv_, indicating the coming
of the hero, Siegfried, as the gods walk over the rainbow bridge to
Walhalla at the end of _Das Rheingold_; we smile over the tame horse
which some chorus man, looking the while like a truck driver who is
not good to animals, holds for Brünnhilde while she sings her final
lament in _Götterdämmerung_; we laugh aloud when he assists her to lead
the unfiery steed, who walks as leisurely as a well-fed horse would
towards oats, into the burning pyre; we can still see the picture of
the three Rhine maidens, bobbing up and down jerkily behind a bit of
gauze, reminiscent of visions of mermaids at the Eden Musée; we all
have seen Tristan and Isolde, drunk with the love potion, swimming
(there is no other word to describe this effect) towards each other;
and no perfect Wagnerite can have forgotten the gods and the giants
standing about in the fourth scene of _Das Rheingold_ for all the world
as if they were the protagonists of a fantastic minstrel show. (At a
performance of _Parsifal_ in Chicago Vernon Stiles discovered while he
was on the stage that his suspenders, which held his tights in place,
had snapped. For a time he pressed his hands against his groin; this
method proving ineffectual, he finished the scene with his hands behind
his back, pressed firmly against his waist-line. As he left the stage,
at the conclusion of the act, breathing a sigh of relief, he met
Loomis Taylor, the stage director. “Did you think my new gesture was
due to nervousness?” he asked. “No,” answered Taylor, “I thought it was
Bayreuth tradition!”)

These are a few of the Bayreuth precepts which are followed. There
are others. There are indeed many others. We all know the tendency
of conductors who have been tried at Bayreuth, or who have come
under the influence of Cosima Wagner, to drag out the _tempi_ to an
exasperating degree. I have heard performances of _Lohengrin_ which
were dragged by the conductor some thirty minutes beyond the ordinary
time. (Again the Master is held responsible for this tradition, but
though all composers like to have their own music last in performance
as long as possible, the tradition, perhaps, is just as authentic as
the story that Richard Strauss, when conducting _Tristan und Isolde_
at the Prinz-Regenten-Theatre in Munich, saved twenty minutes on the
ordinary time it takes to perform the work in order to return as soon
as possible to an interrupted game of Skat.)

But it is not tradition alone that is killing the Wagner dramas. In
many instances and in most singing theatres silly traditions are aided
in their work of destruction by another factor in hasty production.
I am referring to the frequent liberties which have been taken with
the intentions of the author. For, when expediency is concerned, no
account is taken of tradition, and, curiously enough, expediency
breaks with those traditions which can least stand being tampered
with. The changes, in other words, have not been made for the sake of
improvement, but through carelessness, or to save time or money, or
for some other cognate reason. An example of this sort of thing is the
custom of giving the _Ring_ dramas as a cycle in a period extending
over four weeks, one drama a week. It is also customary at the
Metropolitan Opera House in New York to entrust the rôle of Brünnhilde,
or of Siegfried, to a different interpreter in each drama, so that the
Brünnhilde who wakes in _Siegfried_ is not at all the Brünnhilde who
goes to sleep in _Die Walküre_. Then, although Brünnhilde exploits a
horse in _Götterdämmerung_, she possesses none in _Die Walküre_; none
of the other valkyries has a horse; Fricka’s goats have been taken
away from her, and she walks to the mountain-top holding her skirts
from under her feet for all the world as a lady of fashion might
as she ascended from a garden into a ballroom. At the Metropolitan
Opera House, and at other theatres where I have seen the dramas, the
decorations of the scenes of Brünnhilde’s falling asleep and of her
awakening are quite different.

Naturally, ingenious explanations have been devised to fit these cases.
For instance, one is told that animals are _never_ at home on the
stage. This explanation suffices perhaps for the animals which do not
appear, but how about those which do? The vague phrase, “the exigencies
of the répertoire,” is mentioned as the reason for the extension of
the cycle over several weeks, that and the further excuse that the
system permits people from nearby towns to make weekly visits to the
metropolis. Of course, Wagner intended that each of the _Ring_ dramas
should follow its predecessor on succeeding days in a festival week. If
the _Ring_ were so given in New York every season with due preparation,
careful staging, and the best obtainable cast, the occasions would
draw audiences from all over America, as the festivals at Bayreuth and
Munich do indeed draw audiences from all over the world. Ingenuous
is the word which best describes the explanation for the change in
Brünnhildes; one is told that the out-of-town subscribers to the series
prefer to hear as many singers as possible. They wish to “compare”
Brünnhildes, so to speak. Perhaps the real reason for divergence
from common sense is the difficulty the director of the opera house
would have with certain sopranos if one were allowed the full set of
performances. As for the change in the setting of Brünnhilde’s rock it
is pure expediency, nothing else. In _Die Walküre_, in which, between
acts, there is plenty of time to change the scenery, a heavy built
promontory of rocks is required for the valkyrie brood to stand on. In
_Siegfried_ and _Götterdämmerung_, where the scenery must be shifted in
short order, this particular setting is utilized only for duets. The
heavier elements of the setting are no longer needed, and are dispensed
with.

The mechanical devices demanded by Wagner are generally complied
with in a stupidly clumsy manner. The first scene of _Das Rheingold_
is usually managed with some effect now, although the swimming of
the Rhine maidens, who are dressed in absurd long floating green
nightgowns, is carried through very badly and seemingly without an
idea that such things have been done a thousand times better in other
theatres; the changes of scene in _Das Rheingold_ are accomplished in
such a manner that one fears the escaping steam is damaging the gauze
curtains; the worm and the toad are silly contrivances; the effect of
the rainbow is never properly conveyed; the ride of the valkyries is
frankly evaded by most stage managers; the bird in _Siegfried_ flies
like a sickly crow; the final scene in _Götterdämmerung_ would bring a
laugh from a Bowery audience: some flat scenery flaps over, a number
of chorus ladies fall on their knees, there is much bulging about of a
canvas sea, and a few red lights appear in the sky; the transformation
scenes in _Parsifal_ are carried out with as little fidelity to
symbolism, or truth, or beauty; and the throwing of the lance in
_Parsifal_ is always seemingly a wire trick rather than a magical one.

The scenery for the Wagner dramas, in all the theatres where I have
seen and heard them, has been built (and a great deal of it in
recent years from new designs) with a seemingly absolute ignorance
or determined evasion of the fact that there are artists who are now
working in the theatre. In making this statement I can speak personally
of performances I have seen at the Metropolitan Opera House, New
York; the Auditorium, Chicago; Covent Garden Theatre, London; La
Scala, Milan; the Opéra, Paris; and the Prinz-Regenten-Theatre in
Munich. Are there theatres where the Wagner dramas are better given?
I do not think so. Compare the scenery of _Götterdämmerung_ at the
Metropolitan Opera House with that of _Boris Godunow_, and you will
see how little care is being taken of Wagner’s ideals. In the one case
the flimsiest sort of badly painted and badly lighted canvas, mingled
indiscriminately with plastic objects, boughs, branches, etc., placed
next to painted boughs and branches, an effect calculated to throw the
falsity of the whole scene into relief; in the other case, an example
of a scene-painter’s art wrought to give the highest effect to the
drama it decorates. Take the decoration of the hall of the Gibichs
in which long scenes are enacted in both the first and last acts
of _Götterdämmerung_. The Gibichs are a savage, warlike, sinister,
primitive race. Now it is not necessary that the setting in itself be
strong, but it must suggest strength to the spectator. There is no
need to bring stone blocks or wood blocks on the stage; the artist
may work in black velvet if he wishes (it was of this material that
Professor Roller contrived a dungeon cell in _Fidelio_ which seemed to
be built of stone ten feet thick). It will be admitted, I think, by any
one who has seen the setting in question that it is wholly inadequate
to express the meaning of the drama. The scenes could be sung with a
certain effect in a Christian Science temple, but no one will deny,
I should say, that the effect of the music may be greatly heightened
by proper attention to the stage decoration and the movement of
the characters in relation to the lighting and decoration. (I have
used the Metropolitan Opera House, in this instance, as a convenient
illustration; but the scenery there is no worse, on the whole, than it
is in many of the other theatres named.)

The secret at the bottom of the whole matter is that the directors of
the singing theatres wish to save themselves trouble. They will spend
neither money nor energy in righting this wrong. It is easier to trust
to tradition on the one hand and expediency on the other than it would
be to engage an expert (one not concerned with what had been done,
but one concerned with what to do) to produce the works. _Carmen_ was
losing its popularity in this country when Emma Calvé, who had broken
all the rules made for the part by Galli-Marié, enchanted opera-goers
with her fantastic conception of the gipsy girl. Bizet’s work had
dropped out of the répertoire again when Mme. Bressler-Gianoli arrived
and carried it triumphantly through nearly a score of performances
during the first season of Oscar Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera House.
Geraldine Farrar and Toscanini resuscitated the Spanish jade a third
time. An Olive Fremstad or a Lilli Lehmann or a Milka Ternina can
perform a like office for _Götterdämmerung_ or _Tristan und Isolde_;
but it is to a new producer, an Adolphe Appia or a Gordon Craig, that
the theatre director must look for the final salvation of Wagner,
through the complete realization of his own ideals. It must be obvious
to any one that the more completely the meaning of his plays is exposed
by the decoration, the lighting and the action, the greater the effect.

Adolphe Appia wrote a book called “Die Musik und die Inscenierung,”
which was published in German in 1899. (An earlier work, “La
mise-en-scène du drame Wagnerien,” appeared in Paris in 1893.) Since
then his career has been strangely obscure for one whose effect on
artists working at stage decoration has been greater than that of any
other single man. In the second edition of his book, “On the Art of the
Theatre,” Gordon Craig, in a footnote, speaks thus of Appia: “Appia,
_the foremost stage decorator of Europe_ (the italics are mine) is not
dead. I was told that he was no more with us, so, in the first edition
of this book, I included him among the shades. I first saw three
examples of his work in 1908, and I wrote a friend asking, ‘Where is
Appia and how can we meet?’ My friend replied, ‘Poor Appia died some
years ago.’ This winter (1912) I saw some of Appia’s designs in a
portfolio belonging to Prince Wolkonsky. They were divine; and I was
told that the designer was still living.”

Loomis Taylor, who, during the season of 1914-15, staged the Wagner
operas at the Metropolitan Opera House (and it was not his fault that
the staging was not improved; there is no stage director now working
who has more belief in and knowledge of the artists of the theatre than
Loomis Taylor) has written me, in response to a query, the following
regarding Appia: “Adolphe Appia, I think, is a French-Swiss; he is a
young man. The title of the book which made him famous, in its German
translation, is ‘Die Musik und die Inscenierung.’ It was translated
from the French by Princess Cantacuzène.... Five years ago I was told
by Mrs. Houston Stewart Chamberlain that Appia was slowly but surely
starving to death in some picturesque surroundings in Switzerland. I
then tried to get various people in Germany interested in him, also
proposing him to Hagemann as scenic artist for Mannheim. Two years
later, before his starving process had reached its conclusion, I heard
of him as collaborator with Jaques-Dalcroze at his temple of rhythm
on the banks of the Elbe, outside of Dresden, where, I think, up to
the outbreak of the war, Appia was doing very good work, but what has
become of him since I do not know.

“His book is very valuable; his suggestions go beyond the possibilities
of the average Hof theatre, while in Bayreuth they have a similar
effect to a drop of water upon a stone, sun-burned by the rays of
Cosima’s traditions. By being one of the first--if not _the_ first--to
put in writing the inconsistency of using painted perspective scenery
and painted shadows with human beings on the stage, Appia became the
fighter for plastic scenery. His sketch of the _Walküren_ rock is the
most beautiful scenic conception of Act III, _Die Walküre_, I know of
or could imagine. To my knowledge no theatre has ever produced anything
in conformity with Appia’s sketches.”

In a letter to me Hiram Kelly Moderwell, whose book, “The Theatre of
To-day,” is the best exposition yet published of the aims and results
of the artists who are working in the theatre, writes as follows in
regard to Appia: “Appia is now with Dalcroze at Hellerau and I believe
has designed and perhaps produced all the things that have been done
there in the last year or two. Previous to that I am almost certain he
had done no actual stage work. Nobody else would give him free rein.
But, as you know, he thought everything out carefully as though he
were doing the actual practical stage work.... By this time he has hit
his ‘third manner.’ It’s all cubes and parallelograms. It sounds like
hell on paper but Maurice Browne told me it is very fine stuff. Browne
says it is as much greater than Craig as Craig is greater than anybody
else. All the recent Hellerau plays are in this third manner. They are
lighted by Salzmann, indirect and diffused lighting, but not in the
Fortuny style. I imagine the Hellerau stuff is rather too precious to
go on the ordinary stage.”

Mr. Moderwell’s description of Appia’s book is so completely
illuminating that I feel I cannot do better than to quote the entire
passage from “The Theatre of To-day”: “Before his (Gordon Craig’s)
influence was felt, however, Adolphe Appia, probably the most powerful
theorist of the new movement, had written his remarkable book, ‘Die
Musik und die Inscenierung.’ In this, as an artist, he attempted to
deduce from the content of the Wagner music dramas the proper stage
settings for them. His conclusions anticipated much of the best work of
recent years and his theories have been put into practice in more or
less modified form on a great many stages--not so much (if at all) for
the Wagner dramas themselves, which are under a rigid tradition (the
‘what the Master wished’ myth), but for operas and the more lyric plays
where the producer has artistic ability and a free hand in applying it.

“Appia started with the principle that the setting should make the
actor the all-important fact on the stage. He saw the realistic
impossibility of the realistic setting, and destructively analyzed the
current modes of lighting and perspective effects. But, unlike the
members of the more conventional modern school, he insisted that the
stage is a three-dimension space and must be handled so as to make its
depth living. He felt a contradiction between the living actor and the
dead setting. He wished to bind them into one whole--the drama. How was
this to be done?

“Appia’s answer to this question is his chief claim to
greatness--genius almost. His answer was--‘By means of the lighting.’
He saw the deadliness of the contemporary methods of lighting, and
previsaged with a sort of inspiration the possibilities of new methods
which have since become common. This was at a time when he had at
his disposal none of the modern lighting systems. His foreseeing of
modern practice by means of rigid Teutonic logic in the service of the
artist’s intuition makes him one of the two or three foremost theorists
of the modern movement.

“The lighting, for Appia, is the spiritual core, the soul of the
drama. The whole action should be contained in it, somewhat as we feel
the physical body of a friend to be contained in his personality.
Appia’s second great principle is closely connected with this. While
the setting is obviously inanimate, the actor must in every way be
emphasized and made living. And this can be accomplished, he says,
only by a wise use of lighting, since it is the lights and shadows
on a human body which reveal to our eyes the fact that the body is
‘plastic’--that is, a flexible body of three dimensions. Appia would
make the setting suggest only the atmosphere, not the reality of the
thing it stands for, and would soften and beautify it with the lights.
The actor he would throw constantly into prominence while keeping him
always a part of the scene. All the elements and all the action of the
drama he would bind together by the lights and shadows.

“With the most minute care each detail of lighting, each position
of each character, in Appia’s productions is studied out so that
the dramatic meaning shall always be evident. Hence any setting of
his contains vastly more thought than is visible at a glance. It is
designed to serve for every exigency of the scene--so that a character
here shall be in full light at a certain point, while talking directly
to a character who must be quite in the dark, or that the light shall
just touch the fringe of one character’s robe as she dies, or that the
action shall all take place unimpeded, and so on. At the same time,
needless to say, Appia’s stage pictures are of the highest artistic
beauty.”[1]

In Appia’s design for the third act of _Die Walküre_, so
enthusiastically praised by Loomis Taylor, the rock of the valkyries
juts like a huge promontory of black across the front of the scene,
silhouetted against a clouded sky. So all the figures of the valkyries
stand high on the rock and are entirely silhouetted, while Sieglinde
below in front of the rock in the blackness, is hidden from the rage
of the approaching Wotan. Any one who has seen this scene as it is
ordinarily staged, without any reference to beauty or reason, will
appreciate even this meagre description of an artist’s intention,
which has not yet been carried out in any theatre with which I have
acquaintance.

Appia’s design for the first scene of _Parsifal_ discloses a group
of boughless, straight-stemmed pines, towering to heaven like the
cathedral group at Vallombrosa. Overhead the dense foliage hides the
forest paths from the sun. Light comes in through the centre at the
back, where there is a vista of plains across to the mountains, on
which one may imagine the castle of the Grail. He places a dynamic and
dramatic value on light which it is highly important to understand in
estimating his work. For example, his lighting of the second act of
_Tristan und Isolde_ culminates in a _pitch-dark_ stage during the
singing of the love-duet. This artist has designed the scenery for all
the _Ring_ and has indicated throughout what the lighting and action
shall be.

I do not know that Gordon Craig has turned his attention to any
particular Wagner drama, although he has made suggestions for several
of them, but he could, if he would, devise a mode of stage decoration
which would make the plays and their action as appealing in their
beauty as the music and the singing often now are. In his book, “On the
Art of the Theatre,” he has been explicit in his descriptions of his
designs for _Macbeth_, and the rugged strength and symbolism of his
settings and ideas for that tragedy proclaim perhaps his best right to
be a leader in the reformation of the Wagner dramas, although, even
then, it must be confessed that Craig is derived in many instances from
Appia, whom Craig himself hails as the foremost stage decorator of
Europe to-day.

Read Gordon Craig on _Macbeth_ and you will get an idea of how an
artist would go to work on _Tristan und Isolde_ or _Götterdämmerung_.
“I see two things, I see a lofty and steep rock, and I see the moist
cloud which envelops the head of this rock. That is to say, a place
for fierce and warlike men to inhabit, a place for phantoms to nest
in. Ultimately this moisture will destroy the rock; ultimately these
spirits will destroy the men. Now then, you are quick in your question
as to what actually to create for the eye. I answer as swiftly--place
there a rock! Let it mount high. Swiftly I tell you, convey the idea of
a mist which hangs at the head of this rock. Now, have I departed at
all for one-eighth of an inch from the vision which I saw in the mind’s
eye?

“But you ask me what form this rock shall take and what colour? What
are the lines which are the lofty lines, and which are to be seen in
any lofty cliff? Go to them, glance but a moment at them; now quickly
set them down on your paper; _the lines and their direction_, never
mind the cliff. Do not be afraid to let them go high; they cannot go
high enough; and remember that on a sheet of paper which is but two
inches square you can make a line which seems to tower miles in the
air, and you can do the same on your stage, for it is all a matter of
proportion and has nothing to do with actuality.

“You ask about the colours? What are the colours which Shakespeare has
indicated for us? Do not first look at Nature, but look at the play
of the poet. Two, one for the rock, the man; one for the mist, the
spirit. Now, quickly, take and accept this statement from me. Touch
not a single other colour, but only these two colours through your
whole progress of designing your scenes and your costumes, yet forget
not that each colour contains many variations. If you are timid for a
moment and mistrust yourself or what I tell, when the scene is finished
you will not see with your eye the effect you have seen with your
mind’s eye when looking at the picture which Shakespeare has indicated.”

The producers of the Wagner music dramas do not seem to have heard
of Adolphe Appia. Gordon Craig is a myth to them. Reinhardt does not
exist. Have they ever seen the name of Stanislawsky? Do they know
where his theatre is? Would they consider it sensible to spend three
years in mounting _Hamlet_? Is the name of Fokine known to them? of
Bakst? N. Roerich, Nathalie Gontcharova, Alexandre Benois, Theodore
Federowsky?... One could go on naming the artists of the theatre.
(Recently there have been evidences of an art movement in the theatre
in America. Joseph Urban, first in Boston with the Boston Opera
Company, and later in New York with various theatrical enterprises,
may be mentioned as an important figure in this movement. His settings
for _Monna Vanna_ were particularly beautiful and he really seems to
have revolutionized the staging of _revues_ and similar light musical
pieces. Robert Jones has done some very good work. I think he was
responsible for the imaginative staging [in Gordon Craig’s manner, to
be sure] of the inner scenes in the Shakespeare mask, _Caliban_. But I
would give the Washington Square Players credit for the most successful
experiments which have been made in New York. In every instance they
have attempted to suit the staging to the mood of the drama, and have
usually succeeded admirably, at slight expense. They have developed
a good deal of previously untried talent in this direction. Lee
Simonson, in particular, has achieved distinctive results. I have
seldom seen better work of its kind on the stage than his settings
for _The Magical City_, _Pierre Patelin_, and _The Seagull_. At the
Metropolitan Opera House no account seems to be taken of this art
movement, although during the season of 1915-16 in _The Taming of the
Shrew_ an attempt was made to emulate the very worst that has been done
in modern Germany.)

For several years the Russian Ballet, under the direction of Serge
de Diaghilew, has been presenting operas and ballets in the European
capitals, notably in London and Paris for long seasons each summer
(the Ballet has been seen in America since this article was written).
A number of artists and a number of stage directors have been working
together in staging these works, which, as a whole, may be conceded
to be the most completely satisfying productions which have been made
on the stage during the progress of this new movement in the theatre.
One or two of the German productions, or Gordon Craig’s _Hamlet_
in Stanislawsky’s theatre, may have surpassed them in the sterner
qualities of beauty, the serious truth of their art, but none has
surpassed them in brilliancy, in barbaric splendour, or in their almost
complete solution of the problems of mingling people with painted
scenery. The Russians have solved these problems by a skilful (and
passionately liberal) use of colour and light. The painted surfaces
are mostly flat, to be sure, and crudely painted, but the tones of
the canvas are so divinely contrived to mingle with the tones of the
costumes that the effect of an animated picture is arrived at with
seemingly very little pother. This method of staging is not, in most
instances, it must be admitted, adapted to the requirements of the
Wagner dramas. Bakst, I imagine, would find it difficult to cramp
his talents in the field of Wagnerism, though he should turn out a
very pretty edition of _Das Rheingold_. Roerich, on the other hand,
who designed the scenery and costumes for _Prince Igor_ as it was
presented in Paris and London in the summer of 1914, would find no
difficulty in staging _Götterdämmerung_. The problem is the same: to
convey an impression of barbarism and strength. One scene I remember in
Borodine’s opera in which an open window, exposing only a clear stretch
of sky--the rectangular opening occupied half of the wall at the back
of the room--was made to act the drama. A few red lights skilfully
played on the curtain representing the sky made it seem as if in truth
a city were burning and I thought how a similar simple contrivance
might make a more imaginative final scene for _Götterdämmerung_.

It is, however, in their handling of mechanical problems that the
Russians could assist the new producer of the Wagner dramas to his
greatest advantage. In Rimsky-Korsakow’s opera, _The Golden Cock_,
for instance, the bird of the title has several appearances to make.
Now there was no attempt made, in the Russians’ stage version of this
work, to have this bird jiggle along a supposedly invisible wire, in
reality quite visible, flapping his artificial wings and wiggling his
insecure feet, as in the usual productions of _Siegfried_. Instead the
bird was built solid like a bronze cock for a drawing-room table; he
did not flap his wings; his feet were motionless; when the action of
the drama demanded his presence he was let down on a wire; there was
no pretence of a lack of machinery. The effect, however, was vastly
more imaginative and diverting than that in _Siegfried_, because it was
more simple. In like manner King Dodon, in the same opera, mounted a
wooden horse on wheels to go to the wars, and the animals he captured
were also made of wood, studded with brilliant beads. In Richard
Strauss’s ballet, _The Legend of Joseph_, the figure of the guardian
angel was not let down on a wire from the flies as he might have been
in a Drury Lane pantomime; the naïve nature of the work was preserved
by his nonchalant entrance across the _loggia_ and down a flight of
steps, exactly the entrance of all the human characters of the ballet.
I do not mean to suggest that these particular expedients would fit
into the Wagner dramas so well as they do into works of a widely
different nature. They should, however, indicate to stage directors the
possibility of finding a method to suit the case in each instance. And
I do assert, without hope or fear of contradiction, that Brünnhilde
with a wooden horse would challenge less laughter than she does with
the sorry nags which are put at her disposal and which Siegfried later
takes down the river with him. It is only down the river that one
can sell such horses. As for the bird, there are bird trainers whose
business it is to teach pigeons to fly from pillar to post in the music
halls; their services might be contracted for to make that passage
in _Siegfried_ a little less distracting. The difficulties connected
with this particular mechanical episode (and a hundred others) might
be avoided by a different lighting of the scene. If the tree-tops of
the forest were submerged in the deepest shadows, as well they might
be, the flight of the bird on a wire might be accomplished with some
sort of illusion. But why should one see the bird at all? One hears it
constantly as it warbles advice to the hero.

The new Wagner producer must possess many qualities if he wishes to
place these works on a plane where they may continue to challenge the
admiration of the world. Wagner himself was more concerned with his
ideals than he was with their practical solution. Besides, it must be
admitted that taste in stage art and improvements in stage mechanism
have made great strides in the last decade. The plaster wall, for
instance, which has replaced in many foreign theatres the flapping,
swaying, wrinkled, painted canvas sky cyclorama (still in use at the
Metropolitan Opera House; a vast sum was paid for it a few years ago)
is a new invention and one which, when appropriately lighted, perfectly
counterfeits the appearance of the sky in its different moods. (So
far as I know the only theatre in New York with this apparatus is
the Neighborhood Playhouse on Grand Street.) In Houston Stewart
Chamberlain’s “Richard Wagner,” published in 1897, I find the following:

“Wagner foresaw that in the new drama the whole principle of the stage
scenery must undergo a complete alteration but did not particularize in
detail. The _Meister_ says that ‘music resolves the rigid immovable
groundwork of the scenery into a liquid, yielding, ethereal surface,
capable of receiving impressions’; but to prevent a painful conflict
between what is seen and what is heard, the stage picture, too, must
be relieved from the curse of rigidity which now rests upon it. The
only way of doing this is by managing the light in a manner which
its importance deserves, that its office may no longer be confined
to illuminating painted walls.... I am convinced that the next great
advance in the drama will be of this nature, in the art of the eye,
and not in music.” (The passage quoted further refers to Appia’s first
book, published in French. Chamberlain was a close friend of Appia and
“Die Musik und die Inscenierung” is dedicated to him.)

It must also be understood that Wagner in some instances, when the
right medium of his expression was clear to him, made concessions to
what he considered the unintelligence of the public. Wotan’s waving of
the sword is a case in point. The _motiv_ without the object he did
not think would carry out the effect he intended to convey, although
the absurdity of Wotan’s founding his new humanity on the power of the
degenerate giants must have been apparent to him. Sometimes the Master
changed his mind. Paris would have none of _Tannhäuser_ without a
ballet and so Wagner rewrote the first act and now the Paris version
of the opera is the accepted one. In any case it must be apparent that
what Wagner wanted was a fusion of the arts, and a completely artistic
one. So that if any one can think of a better way of presenting his
dramas than one based on the very halting staging which he himself
devised (with the limited means at his command) as perhaps the best
possible to exploit his ideals, that person should be hailed as
Wagner’s friend. It must be seen, at any current presentation of his
dramas, that his way, or Cosima’s, is not the best way. The single
performances which have made the deepest impression on the public have
deviated the farthest from tradition. Olive Fremstad’s Isolde was far
from traditional. Her very costume of deep green was a flaunt in the
face of Wagner’s conventionally white robed heroine. In the first
act, after taking the love potion, she did not indulge in any of the
swimming movements usually employed by sopranos to pass the time away
until the occasion came to sing again. She stood as a woman dazed,
passing her hands futilely before her eyes, and it was to be noted
that in some instances her action had its supplement in the action of
the tenor who was singing with her, although, in other instances, he
would continue to swim in the most highly approved Bayreuth fashion.
But Olive Fremstad, artist that she was, could not completely divorce
herself from tradition; in some cases she held to it against her
judgment. The stage directions for the second act of _Parsifal_, for
example, require Kundry to lie on her couch, tempting the hero, for
a very long time. Great as Fremstad’s Kundry was, it might have been
improved if she had allowed herself to move more freely along the
lines that her artistic conscience dictated. Her Elsa was a beautiful
example of the moulding of the traditional playing of a rôle into a
picturesque, imaginative figure, a feat similar to that which Mary
Garden accomplished in her delineation of Marguerite in _Faust_. Mme.
Fremstad always sang Brünnhilde in _Götterdämmerung_ throughout with
the fire of genius. This was surely some wild creature, a figure of
Greek tragedy, a Norse Elektra. The superb effect she wrought, at her
first performance in the rôle, with the scene of the spear, was never
tarnished in subsequent performances. The thrill was always there.

In face of acting and singing like that one can afford to ignore
Wagner’s theory about the wedding of the arts. A Fremstad or a Lehmann
can carry a Wagner drama to a triumphant conclusion with few, if
any, accessories, but great singing artists are rare; nor does a
performance of this kind meet the requirements of the Wagner ideal, in
which the picture, the word, and the tone shall all be a part of the
drama (_Wort-Tondrama_). Wagner invented a new form of stage art but
only in a small measure did he succeed in perfecting a method for its
successful presentation. The artist-producer must arise to repair this
deficiency, to become the dominating force in future performances, to
see that the scenes are painted in accordance with the principles of
beauty and dramatic fitness, to see that they are lighted to express
the secrets of the drama, as Appia says they should be, to see that
the action is sympathetic with the decoration, and that the decoration
never encumbers the action, that the lighting assists both. There never
has been a production of the _Ring_ which has in any sense realized its
true possibilities, the ideal of Wagner.


_June 24, 1915._


FOOTNOTES:

[1] For a further discussion of Appia’s work and its probable influence
on Gordon Craig, see an article “Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig” in my
book “Music After the Great War.”




  The Bridge Burners

  “_Zieh’hin! ich kann dich nicht halten!_”

                                Der Wanderer.




The Bridge Burners


I

It is from the enemy that one learns. Richelieu and other great men
have found it folly to listen to the advice of friends when rancour,
hatred, and jealousy inspired much more helpful suggestions. And it
occurred to me recently that the friends of modern music were doing
nothing by way of describing it. They are content to like it. I must
confess that I have been one of these. I have heard first performances
of works by Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy on occasions when
the programme notes gave one cause for dread. At these times I have
often been pleasurably excited and I have never lacked for at least a
measured form of enjoyment except when I found those gods growing a bit
old. The English critics were right when they labelled _The Legend of
Joseph_ Handelian. The latest recital of Leo Ornstein’s which I heard
made me realize that even the extreme modern music evidently protrudes
no great perplexities into my ears. They accept it all, a good deal of
it with avidity, some with the real tribute of astonishment which goes
only to genius.

On the whole, I think, I should have found it impossible to write
this article which, with a new light shining on my paper, is dancing
from under my darting typewriter keys, if I had not stumbled by
good luck into the camp of the enemy. For I find misunderstanding,
lack of sympathy, and enmity towards the new music to a certain
degree inspirational. These qualities, projected, have crystallized
impressions in my mind, which might, under other circumstances, have
remained vague and, in a sense, I think I may make bold to say, they
have made it possible for me to synthesize to a greater degree than has
hitherto been attempted, the various stimuli and progressive gestures
of modern music. I can more clearly say now _why_ I like it. (If I were
to tell others how to like it I should be forced to resort to a single
sentence: “Open your ears”.)

A good deal of this new insight has come to me through assiduous
perusal of Mr. Richard Aldrich’s comment on musical doings in the
columns of the “New York Times.” Mr. Aldrich, like many another,
has been bewildered and annoyed by a good deal of the modern music
played (Heaven knows that there is little enough modern music played
in New York. Up to date [April 16, 1916] there has been nothing of
Arnold Schoenberg performed this season later than his _Pelléas
und Mélisande_ and his _Kammersymphonie_; of Strawinsky--aside
from the three slight pieces for string quartet--nothing later than
_Petrouchka_. Such new works as John Alden Carpenter’s _Adventures in
a Perambulator_ and Enrique Granados’s _Goyescas_--as an opera--do not
seriously overtax the critical ear) but he has done more than some
others by way of expressing the causes of this bewilderment and this
annoyance. Some critics neglect the subject altogether but Mr. Aldrich
at least attempts to be explanatory. My first excerpt from his writings
is clipped from an article in the “New York Times” of December 5, 1915,
devoted to the string quartet music of Strawinsky, performed by the
Flonzaleys at Æolian Hall in New York on the evening of November 30:

“So far as this particular type of ‘futurist’ music is concerned it
seems to be conditioned on an accompaniment of something else to
explain it from beginning to end.”

Is this a reproach? The context would seem to indicate that it is.
If so it seems a late date in which to hurl anathema at programme
music. One would have fancied that that battle had already been fought
and won by Ernest Newman, Frederick Niecks, and Lawrence Gilman, to
name a few of the gladiators for the cause. Why Mr. Aldrich, having
swallowed whole, so to speak, the tendency of music during a century
of its development, should suddenly balk at music which requires
explanation I cannot imagine. However, this would seem to be the point
he makes in face of the fact that at least two-thirds of a symphony
society’s programme is made up of programme music. Berlioz said in the
preface to his _Symphonie Fantastique_, “The plan of an instrumental
drama, being without words, requires to be explained beforehand. The
programme (which is indispensable to the perfect comprehension of the
dramatic plan of the work) ought therefor to be considered in the
light of the spoken text of an opera, serving to ... indicate the
character and expression.” Ernest Newman built up an elaborate theory
on these two sentences, a theory fully expounded in an article called
“Programme Music” published in “Music Studies” (1905), and touched
on elsewhere in his work (at some length, of course, in his “Richard
Strauss.”) He brings out the facts. Representation of natural sounds,
emotions, and even objects--or attempts at it--in early music were not
rare. He cites the justly famous _Bible Sonatas_ of Kuhnau, Rameau’s
_Sighs_ and _Tender Plants_, Dittersdorf’s twelve programme symphonies
illustrating Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_, and John Sebastian Bach’s
_Capriccio on the Departure of my Dearly Beloved Brother_. Beethoven
wrote a _Pastoral Symphony_ in which he attempted to imitate the sound
of a brook and the call of a cuckoo. There is also a storm in this
symphony. The fact that Beethoven denied any intention of portraying
anything but “pure emotion” in this symphony is evasion and humbug as
Newman very clearly points out. From what do these emotions arise?
The answer is, From the contemplation of country scenes. The auditor
without a programme will not find the symphony so enjoyable as the
one who _knows_ what awakened the emotions in the composer. Beethoven
wrote a “battle” symphony too, a particularly bad one, I believe (I
have never seen it announced for performance). It is true, however,
that most of the composers of the “great” period were content to number
their symphonies and to call their piano pieces impromptus, sonatas,
valses, and nocturnes. Nous avons changé tout cela. Schumann was one
of the first of the composers of the nineteenth century to write music
with titles. In the _Carneval_, for example, each piece is explained
by its title. And explanations, or shadows of explanations (Cathedral,
Rhenish, Spring, etc.), hover about the four symphonies. Berlioz,
of course, carried the principle of programme music to a degree that
was considered absurd in his own time. He wrote symphonies like the
_Romeo and Juliet_ and the _Fantastique_ which had to be “explained
from beginning to end.” Liszt invented the symphonic poem and composed
pieces which are only to be listened to after one has read the poem or
seen the picture which they describe. Richard Strauss rounded out the
form and put the most elaborate naturalistic details into such works as
_Don Quixote_ and _Till Eulenspiegel_. Understanding of this music and
complete enjoyment of it rely in a large measure on the “explanation.”
The _Symphonia Domestica_ and _Heldenleben_ are extreme examples of
this sort of thing. What does Wagner’s whole system depend on but
“explanation”? How does one know that a certain sequence of notes
represents a sword? Because the composer tells us so. How does one
discover that another sequence of notes represents Alberich’s curse?
Through the same channel. Bernard Shaw says in _The Perfect Wagnerite_:
“To be able to follow the music of _The Ring_, all that is necessary
is to become familiar enough with the brief musical phrases out of
which it is built to recognize them and attach a certain definite
significance to them, exactly as any ordinary Englishman recognizes
and attaches a definite significance to the opening bars of _God Save
the Queen_.” Modern music is full of this sort of thing. It leans more
and more heavily on titles, on mimed drama, on “explanation.” Think of
almost all the music of Debussy, for example, _La Mer_, _l’Après-midi
d’un Faune_, _Iberia_, nearly all the piano music; Rimsky-Korsakow’s
_Scheherazade_, _Antar_, and _Sadko_ (the symphonic suite, not the
opera); Vincent d’Indy’s _Istar_; Borodine’s _Thamar_; Dukas’s
_l’Apprenti Sorcier_; Franck’s _Le Chasseur Maudit_ and _Les Eolides_;
Saint-Saëns’s _Phaëton_, _La Jeunesse d’Hercule_, and _Le Rouet
d’Omphale_; Busoni’s music for _Turandot_: the list is endless and it
is futile to continue it.

But, Mr. Aldrich would object, in most of these instances the music
stands by itself and it is possible to enjoy it without reference to
the titles. I contend that this is just as true of Strawinsky’s three
pieces for string quartet (of course one never will be sure because
Daniel Gregory Mason explained these pieces before they were played).
However Mr. Newman has already exploded a good many bombs about this
particular point and he has shown the fallacy of the theory. Mr.
Newman concedes that a work such as Tschaikowsky’s overture _Romeo
and Juliet_, would undoubtedly “give intense pleasure to any one who
listened to it as a piece of music, pure and simple. But I deny,”
he continues, “that this hearer would receive as much pleasure from
the work as I do. He might think the passage for muted strings, for
example, extremely beautiful, but he would not get from it such
delight as I, who not only feel all the _musical_ loveliness of the
melody and the harmonies and the tone colour, but see the lovers on
the balcony and breathe the very atmosphere of Shakespeare’s scene.
I am richer than my fellow by two or three emotions of this kind. My
nature is stirred on two or three sides instead of only one. I would
go further and say that not only does the auditor I have supposed
get less pleasure from the work than I, but he really does not hear
Tschaikowsky’s work at all. If the musician writes music to a play
and invents phrases to symbolize the characters and to picture the
events of the play, we are simply not listening to _his_ work at all
if we listen to it in ignorance of his poetical scheme. We may hear
the music but it is not the music he meant us to hear.” And Mr. Newman
goes on to berate Strauss for not providing programmes for some of his
tone-poems (programmes, however, which have always been provided by
somebody in authority at the eleventh hour). Niecks thinks that nearly
all music has an implied programme: “My opinion is that whenever the
composer ceases to write purely formal music he passes from the domain
of absolute music into that of programme music.” (“Programme Music in
the Last Four Centuries.”) But Niecks does not hold that explanation is
always necessary, even if there is a programme.

Under the circumstances it seems a bit thick to jump on Strawinsky for
writing music which has to be explained. Such pieces as _Fireworks_
or the _Scherzo Fantastique_ need no more extended explanation than
the titles give them. His three pieces for string quartet were listed
without programme at the Flonzaley concert and might have been played
that way, I think, without causing the heavens to fall. But Strawinsky
had told some one that their general title was _Grotesques_ and that
he had composed each of them with a programme in mind, which was
divulged. When the music was played, in the circumstances, what he
was driving at was as plain as A. B. C. There was no further demand
made on the auditor than that he prepare himself, as Schumann asked
auditors to prepare themselves to listen to the _Carneval_, by thinking
of the titles. In Strawinsky’s opera, _The Nightingale_, the text
of the opera serves as the programme. There are no representative
themes; there is no “working-out.” You are not required to remember
_leit-motive_ in order to familiarize your emotions with the proper
capers to cut at particular moments when these _motive_ are repeated.
You are asked simply to follow the course of the lyric drama with open
ears, open mind, and open heart. Albert Gleizes, the post-impressionist
painter, once told me that he considered the title an essential part
of a picture. “It is a _point de départ_,” he said. “In painting a
picture I always have some idea or object in mind in the beginning. In
my completed picture I may have wandered far away from this. Now the
title gives the spectator the advantage of starting where I started.”
A title to a musical composition gives an auditor a similar advantage.
No doubt Strawinsky’s _Fireworks_ would make a nice blaze without the
name but the title gives us a picture to begin with, just as Wagner
gives us scenery and text and action (to say nothing of a handbook of
representative themes) to explain the music of _Die Walküre_....

An important point has been overlooked by those who have watched
painting and music develop during the past century: while painting
has become less and less an attempt to represent nature, music has
more and more attempted concrete representation. There has seemed, at
times, to be an interchange in progress in the values of the arts.
(“He [Cézanne] is the first of the great painters to treat colour
deliberately as music; he tests all its harmonic resources,” Romain
Rolland.) Observers of matters æsthetic have frequently told us that
both of these arts were breaking with their old principles and going
on to something new but, it would seem, they have failed to grasp the
significance of the change. Music, as it drops its classic outline
and form, the _cliché_ of the studio and the academy, becomes more
and more like nature, because natural sounds are not co-ordinated
into symphonies with working-out sections and codas, first and second
subjects, etc., while in painting, in some of its later manifestations,
the resemblance to things seen has entirely disappeared. This fact, at
least one phase of it, was realized in concrete form by the futurists
in Italy who asserted that polyphony, fugue, etc., were contraptions of
a bygone age when the stage-coach was in vogue. Machinery has changed
the world. We are living in a dynasty of dynamics. A certain number
of futurists even give concerts of noise machines in which a definite
attempt is made to imitate the sounds of automobiles, aeroplanes, etc.
At a concert given at the Dal Verme in Milan, for example, the pieces
were called _The Awakening of a Great City_, _A Dinner on the Kursaal
Terrace_ (doubtless with an imitation of the guests eating soup), and
_A Meet of Automobiles and Aeroplanes_.

Picasso and Picabia have made us acquainted with a form of art which
in its vague realization of representative values becomes almost as
abstract an art as music was in the time of Beethoven, while such
musicians as Strauss, Debussy, and Strawinsky, have gradually widened
the boundaries which have confined music, and have made it at times
something very concrete. Debussy’s _La Mer_, for example, is a much
more definite picture (in leaning over the rail of the gallery of the
Salle Gaveau in Paris during a performance of this piece I actually
became sea-sick!) than Marcel Duchamp’s painting of the _Nu Descendant
l’Escalier_. So Strawinsky’s three pieces for string quartet represent
certain things in nature (the first a group of peasants playing strange
instruments on the steppes; the second sounds in a Cathedral heard by
a drowsy worshipper, the responses of the priest, chanted out of key,
the shrill antiphonal choruses; and the third a juggling Pierrot with
a soul-pain) much more definitely than Picasso’s latest _Nature Morte
dans un Jardin_.

“Now the law which has dominated painting for more than a century is
a more and more comprehensive assimilation of musical idiom. Even
Delacroix spoke of ‘the mysterious effects of line and colour which,
alas, only a few adepts feel--like interwoven themes in music ...’
and Baudelaire, in another connection, wrote, ‘Harmony, melody, and
counterpoint are to be found in colour.’ Ingres also remarked to his
disciples, ‘If I could make you all musicians you would be better
painters.’ Renoir, who journeyed to Sicily to paint Wagner’s portrait
and to translate _Tannhäuser_, is a musical enthusiast and his work
is music. Maurice Denis tells us that his pals at Julian’s Academy,
those who were to found synthesism with him, never tired of discussing
Lamoureux’s concerts, where they were enthusiastic habitués. Gaugin
announced that ‘painting is a musical phase.’ He speaks continually of
the music of a picture; when he wants to analyze his work he divides
it into the literary element, to which he attaches less importance,
and the musical element which he schemes first. Cézanne, whom Gaugin
compared to César Franck, said, ‘not model, but modulate.’ Metzinger
invokes the right of cubist painters to express all emotions as music
does, and one of the æstheticians of the new school writes: ‘The goal
of painting is perhaps a music of nature, visual music to which
traditional painting would have somewhat the status that sacred or
dramatic music has compared to concert music.’

“This, then, is the revolution in the art of line and colour which has
become aware of its intrinsic power, independent of any subject. In
truth, even among the Venetians, as has been well said, the subject
was ‘only the background upon which the painter relied to develop his
harmonies,’ but the mentality of spectators clings to this background
as to the libretto of an opera. At present, an end to librettos: Pure
music: those who wish to comprehend it must first of all master its
idiom, for ‘Colour is learned as music is.’” (Romain Rolland: “The
Unbroken Chain,” Lee Simonson’s translation.)

So far, in spite of the protestations of horror made by the
academicians, the pedants, and the Philistines, which would lead one
to suppose a state of complete chaos, there has not been a complete
abandonment of co-ordination, of selection, or of intention, in either
art. In fact, it seems to me, that the qualities of intention and
selection are more powerful adjuncts of the artist than they have
been for many generations. In painting colour and form are cunningly
contrived to give us an idea, if not a photograph, and in music
natural (as well as unnatural) sounds are still arranged, perhaps to a
more extreme extent than ever before.


II

I wonder if all the suggestion music gives us is associative. Sometimes
I think so. Was it Berlioz who remarked that the slightest quickening
of _tempo_ would transform the celebrated air in _Orphée_ from “_J’ai
perdu mon Euridice_” to “_J’ai trouvé mon Euridice_”? Rossini found an
overture which he had formerly used for a tragedy quite suitable for
_Il Barbiere di Siviglia_, and the interchangeable values which Handel
gave to secular and sacred tunes are familiar to all music students.
Are minor keys really sad? Are major keys always suggestive of joy? We
know that this is not true although one will be more sure of a ready
response of tears from a Western audience by resorting to a minor key.
In our music wedding marches are usually in the major and funeral
marches usually in the minor modes. But almost all Eastern music is in
a minor key, love songs and even cradle songs. Recall, or play over on
your piano, the Smyrnan lullaby (made familiar by Mme. Sembrich) which
occurs in the collection of Grecian and oriental melodies edited by
L. A. Bourgault-Ducoudray.... Even the composers who do not call their
pieces by name and who scorn the use of a programme, depend for some of
their most powerful effects on emotion created by association ... and
a new composer, be he indefatigable enough, can rouse new associations
in us.... Why if three or four composers would meet together and decide
that the use of a certain group of notes stood for the town pump, in
time it would be quite easy for other composers to use this phrase in
that connection _with no explanation whatever_.


III

“It is a mistake of much popular criticism,” says Walter Pater, in the
first two sentences of his essay on “The School of Giorgione,” “to
regard poetry, music, and painting--all the various products of art--as
but translations into different languages of one and the same fixed
quantity of imaginative thought, supplemented by certain technical
qualities of colour, in painting; of sound, in music; of rhythmical
words, in poetry. In this way, the sensuous element in art, and with
it almost everything in art that is essentially artistic, is made a
matter of indifference; and a clear apprehension of the opposite
principle--that the sensuous material of each art brings with it a
special phase or quality of beauty, untranslatable into the forms of
any other, an order of impressions distinct in kind--is the beginning
of all true æsthetic criticism.”

Strawinsky, in a sense, is quite done with programme music; at least
he says that this is so. “La musique est trop bête pour exprimer autre
chose que la musique” is his pregnant phrase, which I cannot quote
often enough. And in an interview with Stanley Wise, which appeared
in the columns of the “New York Tribune” he further says, “Programme
music ... has been obviously discontinued as being distinctly an
uncouth form which already has had its day; but music, nevertheless,
still drags out its life in accordance with these false notions and
conceptions. Without absolutely defying the programme, musicians still
draw upon sources foreign to their art.... The true inwardness of
music being purely acoustic, the art so expresses itself without being
concerned with feelings alien to its nature.... Music in the theatre
is still held in bondage to other elements. Wagner, in particular, is
responsible for this servitude in which music labours to-day.”

The greater part of Igor Strawinsky’s music, up to date, is written
to a programme, but these remarks of the composer should not be
incomprehensible on that account. Somewhat later than the performance
of the three pieces for string quartet, _The Firebird_ and _Petrouchka_
were performed in New York and were hailed by the critics, _en masse_,
as most delightful works. But the music depends for its success, they
said, on the stage action to explain it. I fancy this is true of many
operas which were written for the stage. _Siegfried_, as a whole, would
be pretty tiresome in concert form and so would _La Fille du Regiment_.
And read what Henry Fothergill Chorley has to say about the works of
Gluck (“Modern German Music”): “The most experienced and imaginative of
readers will derive from the closest perusal of the scores of Gluck’s
operas, feeble and distant impressions of their power and beauty.
The delicious charm of Mozart’s melody--the expressive nobility of
Handel’s ideas--may in some measure be comprehended by the student at
the pianoforte and the eye may assure the reader how masterly is the
symmetry of the vocal score with one,--how rich and complete is the
management of the instrumental score, with the other master. But this
is in no respect the case with _Alceste_, the two _Iphigénies_ and
_Armide_--it may be added, with almost any opera written according to
the canons of French taste. That which appears thin, bald, severe,
when it is merely perused, is filled up, brightens, enchants, excites,
and satisfies, when it is heard with action,--to a degree only to be
believed upon experience. Out of the theatre, three-fourths of Gluck’s
individual merit is lost. He wrote for the stage.” That all this is
true any one who, like me, has taken the trouble to study the scores of
the Gluck operas, which are infrequently performed, may have discovered
for himself. I have never heard _Alceste_ and that lyric drama, as a
result, has never sprung to me from the printed page as do the notes of
_Orphée_, _Armide_, and _Iphigénie en Tauride_. I am convinced of the
depth of expression contained in its pages; I am certain of its noble
power, but only because I have had a similar experience with other
Gluck music dramas, with which I have later become acquainted in the
theatre.

This theory in regard to _Petrouchka_ and _The Firebird_ may be easily
contradicted, however. One listener told me that she got the complete
picture of the Russian fair by closing her eyes; it was all in the
music. The action, as a matter of fact, she added, annoyed her. It is
quite certain that the music of either of these works is delightful
when played on the piano; an average roomful of people who like to
listen to music will be charmed with it. _The Sacrifice to the Spring_
was hissed intolerantly when it was performed as a ballet in Paris
but, later (April 5, 1914), when Pierre Monteux gave an orchestral
performance of the work at a concert it was applauded as violently.

Strawinsky has, it is true, worked away from _representation_ (in the
sense of copying nature or, like Wagner, relying on literary formulas
for his effects) in his music, but he has written very little that does
not depend on a programme, either expressed or implied. All songs of
course are “explained” by their lyrics. The _Scherzo Fantastique_ and
_Fireworks_ are programme music in the lighter sense, and naturally
the music of his ballets and his opera depends for its meaning on the
stage action. What Strawinsky means to do, I think--certainly what
he has done--is to avoid going outside his subject or requiring his
listener to do so. To understand the music of his opera you need never
have heard a real nightingale sing, for the bird does not sing at all
like a nightingale, a fact which was not understood by the critics
when the work was first produced, and in _The Sacrifice to the Spring_
you will find no attempt made to ape natural sounds, although there
was ample opportunity for doing so.... Another modern worker in tone,
Leo Ornstein, in the accompaniment to his cradle song (it is the same
_wiegenlied_ set by Richard Strauss, by the way) tries to give his
hearers the mother’s overtones, her thoughts about the child’s future,
etc.; the music, instead of attempting to express the exact meaning of
the poem, expresses _more_ than the poem.

And Mr. Ornstein once said to me, “What I try to do in composing
is to get underneath, to express the feeling underneath--not to be
photographic. I do not think it is art to reproduce a steam whistle but
it is art to give the feeling that the steam whistle gives us. That
can never be done by exact reproduction.... I should not like a steam
whistle introduced into the concert room” (I had shamelessly suggested
it) “... but great, smashing chords....”

Yet Mr. Ornstein in his _Impressions of the Thames_ is as near
actual representation as Whistler or Monet ... certainly a musical
impressionist.

Is anything true? I hope not. At dinner the other evening a lady
attempted to prove to me that there were standards by which beauty
could be judged and rules by which it could be constructed. She was
unsuccessful.


IV

It has occurred to me that Mr. Aldrich meant that he wanted the
juxtaposition of notes explained from beginning to end. Inspiration
is not always conscious ... one feels in the end whether such a
collocation is inevitable or not ... I wonder if Beethoven could have
explained one of his last quartets or piano sonatas. I doubt it. Of
course, on the other hand, Wagner explained and explained and explained.


V

I am afraid that this quality alone, the fact that the music needs
explanation, is not the rock on which Mr. Aldrich splits, so to speak.
He writes somewhere else in this same article: “All he asks of his
listeners is to forget all they know about string quartet music.” Now
this is really too much. That is exactly what Strawinsky does, and
why shouldn’t he? Has not every great composer done as much? To quote
Ernest Newman again (this time from his book “Richard Strauss”), “All
the music of the giants of the past expresses no more than a fragment
of what music can and some day will express. With each new generation
it must discover and reveal some new secret of the universe and of
man’s heart; and as the thing uttered varies, the way of uttering it
must vary also. There is only one rational definition of good ‘form’
in music--that which expresses most succinctly and most perfectly the
state of soul in which the idea originated; and as moods and ideas
change, so must forms.” “The true creator strives, in reality, after
_perfection_ only,” writes Busoni, in “A New Æsthetic of Music,” “and
through bringing this into harmony with _his own_ individuality, a new
law arises without premeditation.” The very greatness of Beethoven is
due to the fact that he made a perfect wedding of form and idea. His
forms (in which he broke with tradition in several important points)
were evolved out of his ideas. Now the very writers who give Beethoven
the credit for having accomplished this successful revolution and who
write enthusiastically of Gluck’s “reform of the opera,” object to any
contemporary instances of this spirit (Maurice Ravel “corrects” with
great care, I am told, the exercises of his pupils. “He who breaks
rules must first know them,” he says. And I have no disposition to
quarrel with this sort of reverence although I think it is sometimes
carried too far. However the critic attempts to “correct” the finished
pupil’s work, from the work of the past--a sad and impossible task).
Why in the name of goodness should not Strawinsky, or any other modern
composer, for that matter, be allowed to make us forget everything
we know about string quartets, if he is able? Some of us would be
grateful for the sensation. Leo Ornstein in a recent article said,
“The very first step which the composer must be given the privilege of
insisting upon is that his listeners should approach his work with no
preconceived notions of any kind; they must learn to allow absolute
and full freedom to their imaginations as it is only under such
circumstances that any new work can be understood and appreciated at
first. All preconceived theories must be abolished, and the new work
approached through no formulas.” And in the same article Mr. Ornstein
relates how, after he had played his _Wild Men’s Dance_ to Leschetizky
that worthy pedagogue murmured, amazed, “How in the world did you
get all those notes on paper!” That, unfortunately, concludes Mr.
Ornstein, is the attitude of the average listener to modern music. A
similar instance is related in the case of Strawinsky. He played some
measures of his ballet, _The Firebird_, on the piano to his master,
Rimsky-Korsakow, until the composer of _Scheherazade_ interposed, “Stop
playing that horrid thing; otherwise I might begin to enjoy it.” And
even the usually open-minded James Huneker says in his essay on Arnold
Schoenberg (“Ivory, Apes, and Peacocks”), “If such music-making is ever
to become accepted, then I long for Death the Releaser. More shocking
still would be the suspicion that in time I might be persuaded to like
this music, to embrace, after abhorring it.” These phrases of Huneker’s
remind me of a personal incident. My father has subscribed for the
“Atlantic Monthly” since the first issue and one of the earliest
memories of my childhood is connected with the inevitable copy which
always lay on the library table. On one occasion, contemplating it, I
burst into tears; nor could I be comforted. My explanation, between
sobs, was, “Some day I’ll grow up and like a magazine without pictures!
I can’t bear to think of it!” Well, there is many a man who weeps
because some day he may grow up to like music without melody! Music
_has_ changed; of that there can be no doubt. Don’t go to a concert
and expect to hear what you might have heard fifty years ago; don’t
expect _anything_ and don’t hate yourself if you happen to like what
you hear. Mr. George Moore’s evidence on this point of receptiveness
is enlightening (Mr. George Moore who spoke to me once of the “vulgar
noises made by the Russian Ballet”): “In _Petrouchka_ the orchestra all
began playing in different keys and when it came out into one key I was
quite dazed. I don’t know whether it is music but I rather liked it!”

Still another point is raised by Mr. Aldrich. I quote from the “New
York Times” of December 8, 1915; the reference is to the second string
quartet of David Stanley Smith, played by the Kneisel Quartet (the
italics are mine): “Mr. Smith does not hesitate at drastic dissonance
_when it results from the leading of his part writing_.” There at last
we have the real nigger in the woodpile. The relation between keys is
so remote, the tonalities are so inexplicable in a modern Strawinsky
or Schoenberg work that the brain, prepared with a list of scales,
refuses to take in the natural impression that the ear receives.
This sort of criticism reminds me of a line which is quoted from
some London journal by William Wallace in “The Threshold of Music,”
“The whole work is singularly lacking in contrapuntal interest and
depends solely for such effect as it achieves upon certain emotional
impressions of harmony and colour.” And, nearer home, I culled the
following from the “New York Sun” of December 12, 1915 (Mr. W. J.
Henderson’s column), “This is what is the matter with the futurists
or post-impressionists in music. They are tone colourists and that is
all.” (Amusingly enough Mr. Henderson begins his remarks by praising
Joseph Pennell for writing an article in which the post-impressionist
painters were given a drubbing; this article is treated with contumely
and scorn by the art critic of the “Sun” on the page opposite that on
which Mr. Henderson’s article appears.) In all these cases you find men
complaining because a composer has done exactly what he started out to
do. F. Balilla Pratella in one of his futurist manifestos discusses
this point (the translation is my own), “The fugue, a composition
based on counterpoint par excellence, is full of (such) artifices even
when it achieves its artistic balance in the works of the great German
Sebastian Bach. Soul, intellectuality, and instinct are here fused in a
given form, in a given manifestation of art, an art of its own times,
historical and strictly connected with the life, faith, and culture of
that particular period. Why then should we be compelled or asked to
live it over again at the distance of several centuries?” And later,
“We proclaim as an essential principle of our futurist revolution
that counterpoint and fugue, stupidly considered as one of the most
important branches of musical learning, are in our eyes only the ruins
of the old science of polyphony which extends from the Flemish school
to Bach. We replace them by harmonic polyphony, logical fusion of
counterpoint and harmony, which allows musicians to escape the needless
difficulty of dividing their efforts in two opposing cultures, one
dead and the other contemporary, and entirely irreconcilable, because
they are the fruits of two different sensibilities.” To quote Busoni;
again: “How important, indeed, are ‘Third,’ ‘Fifth,’ and ‘Octave’!
How strictly we divide ‘consonances’ from ‘dissonances’--_in a sphere
where no dissonances can possibly exist_!” When Bernard Shaw published
“The Perfect Wagnerite” he wrote for a public which still considered
Wagner a little in advance of the contemporary in music. What did he
say? “My second encouragement is addressed to modest citizens who may
suppose themselves to be disqualified from enjoying _The Ring_ by their
technical ignorance of music. They may dismiss all such misgivings
speedily and confidently. If the sound of music has any power to move
them they will find that Wagner exacts nothing further. There is
not a single bar of ‘classical music’ in _The Ring_--not a note in
it that has any other point than the single direct point of giving
musical expression to the drama. In classical music there are, as the
analytical programmes tell us, first subjects and second subjects,
free fantasias, recapitulations, and codas; there are fugues, with
counter-subjects, strettos, and pedal points; there are passacaglias on
ground basses, canons and hypodiapente, and other ingenuities, which
have, after all, stood or fallen by their prettiness as much as the
simplest folk-tune. Wagner is never driving at anything of this sort
any more than Shakespeare in his plays is driving at such ingenuities
of verse-making as sonnets, triolets, and the like. And this is why he
is so easy for the natural musician who has had no academic teaching.
The professors, when Wagner’s music is played to them, exclaim at
once, ‘What is this? Is it aria, or recitative? Is there no cabeletta
to it--not even a full close? Why was that discord not prepared; and
why does he not resolve it correctly? How dare he indulge in those
scandalous and illicit transitions into a key that has not one note in
common with the key he has just left? Listen to those false relations.
What does he want with six drums and eight horns when Mozart worked
miracles with two of each? The man is no musician.’ The layman neither
knows nor cares about any of these things. It is the adept musician
of the old school who has everything to unlearn; and I leave him,
unpitied, to his fate.” All Wagner asked his contemporaries to do, in
fact, was to forget all they knew about opera!


VI

This piling up of Shaw on Huneker, these dips into Newman and Niecks,
are beginning to be formidable, but one never knows what turn of the
road may lead the traveller to his promised land and it is better to
draw the map clearly even if there be a confusion of choices. And so,
just here, I beg leave to make a tiny digression, to point out that
the new music is not so terrible as all this explanation may have
made it seem to be. Granville Bantock talks learnedly of “horizontal
counterpoint” but his music is perfectly comprehensible. Schoenberg
writes of “passing notes,” says there is no such thing as consonance
and dissonance, and “I have not been able to discover any principles
of harmony. Sincerity, self-expression, is all that the artist needs,
and he should say only what he must say” but Mr. Huneker points out
that he has founded an order out of his chaos, “that his madness is
very methodical. For one thing he abuses the interval of the fourth and
he enjoys juggling with the chord of the ninth. Vagabond harmonies,
in which the remotest keys lovingly hold hands do not prevent the
sensation of a central tonality somewhere--in the cellar, on the
roof, in the gutter, up in the sky.” Percy Grainger says he dreams of
“beatless” music without rhythm--at least academically speaking--but
he certainly does not write it. F. Balilla Pratella writes pages
condemning dance rhythms and still more pages elaborating a new theory
for marking time (which, I admit, is absolutely incomprehensible to me)
and publishes them as a preface to his _Musica Futurista_ (Bologna,
1912), a composition for orchestra, which is written, in spite of the
theories, and the fantastic time signatures, in the most engaging
dance rhythms. Nor does his disregard for fugue go so far as to make
him unfriendly to scale; the whole-tone scale prevails in this work.
His dislike for polyphony seems more sincere; there is a great deal of
homophonous effect. Leo Ornstein has admitted to me that his “system”
would be fully understood in a decade or two. As for Strawinsky
... how the public joyfully and rapturously takes to its heart his
dissonances, and even asks for more!


VII

Vincent d’Indy, reported by Marcel Duchamp, said recently that the
philosophy of music is twenty years behind that of the other arts.


VIII

The fact that Schoenberg has written a handbook of theory, explaining,
after a fashion, his method of composition has misled some people.
“Schoenberg is a learned musician,” writes Mr. Aldrich (“New York
Times,” December 5, 1915), “and his music is built up by processes
derived from methods handed down to the present by the learned of
the past, however widely the results may depart from those hitherto
accepted.... There results what he chooses to consider ‘harmony,’ the
outcome of a deliberate system, about which he theorizes and _has
written a book_” (the italics again are mine). Against this train of
reasoning (further on in the same article it becomes evident that Mr.
Aldrich is annoyed with Strawinsky because he has not done likewise)
it is pleasant to place the following paragraph from Chorley’s “Modern
German Music”: “Mozart, it will be recollected, totally and (for him)
seriously, declined to criticize himself and confess his habits of
composition. Many men have produced great works of art who have never
cultivated æsthetic conversation: nay, more, who have shrunk with a
secretly entertained dislike from those indefatigable persons whose
fancy it is ‘to peep and botanize’ in every corner of faëry land. It
cannot be said that the analytical spirit of the circle of Weimar, when
Goethe was its master-spirit did any great things for Music.” Do not
misunderstand Strawinsky’s silence (which has only been relative, after
all). It is sometimes as well to compose as to theorize. Some of the
great composers have let us see into their workshops (not that they
have all consistently followed out their own theories) and others have
not. In one pregnant paragraph Strawinsky has expressed himself (he is
speaking of _The Nightingale_): “I want to suggest neither situations
nor emotions, but simply to manifest, to express them. I think there is
in what are called ‘impressionist’ methods” (“Mr. Strawinsky, on the
other hand, is a musical impressionist from the start”: R. A. again) “a
certain amount of hypocrisy, or at least a tendency towards vagueness
and ambiguity. That I shun above all things, and that, perhaps, is the
reason why my methods differ as much from those of the impressionists
as they differ from academic conventional methods. Though I often find
it extremely hard to do so, I always aim at straightforward expression
in its simplest form. I have no use for ‘working-out’ in dramatic or
lyric music. The one essential thing is to feel and to convey one’s
feelings.”

This idea of natural expression becomes associated in any great
composer’s mind with another idea, the horror of the _cliché_. Each new
giant desires to express himself without resorting to the thousand and
one formulas which have been more or less in use since the “golden age”
of music (whenever that was). Natural expression implies to a certain
extent the abandonment of the _cliché_, for, under this principle,
if a rule or a habit is weighed and found wanting it is immediately
discarded.

“Routine (_cliché_) is highly esteemed and frequently required; in
musical ‘officialdom’ it is a _sine qua non_,” writes Busoni. “That
routine in music should exist at all, and furthermore that it can
be nominated as a condition in the musician’s bond, is another
proof of the narrow confines of our musical art. Routine signifies
the acquisition of a modicum of experience and art craft, and their
application to all cases which may occur; hence, there must be an
astounding number of analogous cases. Now I like to imagine a species
of art-praxis wherein each case should be a new one, an exception.”
Even so early a composer (using early in a loose sense) as Schumann
found it unnecessary, at times, to close a piece with the tonic;
and many other composers have disregarded the rule since, leaving
the ear hanging in the air, so to speak. Is there any more reason
why all pieces should end on the tonic than that all books should
end happily or all pictures be painted in black and white? In music
which Mozart wrote at the age of four there are chords of the second
(and they occur in music before Mozart). In books of the period
you can read of the horror with which ears at the beginning of the
nineteenth century received consecutive fifths. Some of the modern
French composers have disposed of the _cliché_ of a symphony in four
movements. Chausson, Franck, and Dukas have written symphonies in
three parts. What composer (even the most academic) ever followed the
letter of a precept if he found a better way of expressing himself?
Moussorgsky avoided _cliché_ as he would have avoided the plague. He
took all the short cuts possible. There are no preambles and addendas,
or other doddering concessions to scientific art in his music dramas
and his songs. He gives the words their natural accent and the voice
its natural inflections. Death is not always rewarded with blows on
the big drum. The composer sometimes expresses the end, quite simply,
in silence. In all the arts the horror of _cliché_ asserts itself
so violently indeed that we find Robert Ross (“Masks and Phases”)
assailing Walter Pater for such a fall from grace as the use of the
phrase, “rebellious masses of black hair.” Of course some small souls
are so busy defying _cliché_, with no adequate reason for doing so,
that they make themselves ridiculous. And as an example of this
preoccupation I may tell an anecdote related to me by George Moore.
“For a time,” he said, “Augusta Holmès was interested in an opera she
was composing, _La Montagne Noire_, to the exclusion of all other
subjects in conversation. She talked about it constantly and always
brought one point forward: all the characters were to sing with their
backs to the audience. That was her novel idea. She did not seem to
realize that, in itself, the innovation would not serve to make her
opera interesting.” Strawinsky’s horror of _cliché_ is by no means
abnormal. He does not break rules merely for the pleasure of shocking
the pedants. In each instance he has developed, quite naturally and
inevitably, the form out of his material. In _Petrouchka_, a ballet
with a Russian country fair as its background, he has harped on the
folk-dance tunes, the hurdy-gurdy manner, and, as befits this work,
there is no great break with tradition, except in the orchestration.
_The Firebird_, too, in spite of its fantasy and brilliance, is
perfectly understandable in terms of the chromatic scale. In _The
Sacrifice to the Spring_, on the other hand, unhampered by the chains
which a “story-ballet” (the fable of these “pictures of pagan Russia”
is entirely negligible) inevitably imply, he has awakened primitive
emotions by the use of barbaric rhythm, without any special regard for
melody or harmony, using the words in their academic senses. There
is no attempt made to begin or end with major thirds. Strawinsky was
perhaps the first composer to see that melody is of no importance in a
ballet. _Fireworks_ is impressionistic but it is no more so (although
the result is arrived at by a wholly dissimilar method) than _La Mer_
of Debussy. But it is in his opera, _The Nightingale_, or his very
short pieces for string quartet, or his Japanese songs for voice and
small orchestra that the beast shows his fangs, so to speak. It is
in these pieces and in _The Sacrifice to the Spring_ that Strawinsky
has accomplished a process of elision, leaving out some of those
stupidities which have bored us at every concert of academic music
which we have attended. (You must realize how much your mind wanders
at a symphony concert. It is impossible to concentrate one’s complete
attention on the performance of a long work except at those times when
some new phrase or some new turn in the working-out of a theme strikes
the ear. There is so much of the music that is familiar, because it has
occurred in so much music before. If you hear tum-ti-tum you may be
certain it will be followed by ti-ti-ti and a good part of this sort
of thing falls on deaf ears.... There are those, I am forced to admit,
who can only concentrate on that which is perfectly familiar to them.)
As a matter of fact he gives our ears credit (by this time!) for the
ability to skip a few of the connecting links. Now this sort of elision
in painting has come to be the slogan of a school. Cézanne painted a
woman as he saw her; he made no attempt to explain her; that pleasure
he left for the spectator of his picture. He did not draw a fashion
plate. The successors of Cézanne (some of them) have gone much farther.
They draw us a few bones and expect us to reconstruct the woman, body
and soul, after the fashion of a professor of anatomy reconstructing an
ichthyosaurus. Strawinsky and some other modern musicians have gone as
far; they have left out the tum-ti-tums and twilly-wigs which connect
the pregnant phrases in their music.... This does not signify that they
do not _think_ them, sometimes, but it is not necessary for any one
with a receptive ear (not an _expectant_ ear, unless it be an ear which
expects to hear something pleasant!) to do so. In fact this kind of an
auditor appreciates these short cuts of composers, gives thanks to God
for them. Surprise is one of the keenest emotions that music has in its
power to give us (even Hadyn and Weber discovered that!). It is only
the pedants and the critics, who, after all, do not sit through all the
long symphonies, who are annoyed by these attempts at concentration and
condensation. (I say the pedants but I must include the Philistines.
It is really _cliché_ which makes certain music “popular.” The public
as a whole really prefers music based on _cliché_, with a melody in
which the end is foreordained almost from the first bar. Of course in
time public taste is changed.... The transition is slow ... but the
composer who follows public taste instead of leading it soon drops out
of hearing. The _cliché_ of to-day is not the _cliché_ of day before
yesterday. According to Philip Hale, Napoleon, then first consul [1800]
said to Luigi Cherubini, “I am very fond of Paisiello’s music; it is
gentle, peaceful. You have great talent, but your accompaniments are
too loud.” Cherubini replied, “Citizen Consul, I have conformed to the
taste of the French.” Napoleon persisted, “Your music is too loud;
let us talk of Paisiello’s which lulls me gently.” “I understand,”
answered Cherubini, “you prefer music that does not prevent you from
dreaming of affairs of state.”) Strawinsky, working gradually, not
with the intention to astonish but with no fear of doing so, dropping
superfluities, and all _cliché_ of the studio whatsoever, arrives
at a perfectly natural form of expression in his lyric drama, _The
Nightingale_, in which there is no working-out or development of
themes; the music is intended to comment upon, to fill with a bigger
meaning, the action as it proceeds, without resorting to tricks which
require mental effort on the part of the auditor. The composer does not
wish to burden him with any more mental effort than the mere listening
to the piece requires and he strikes to the soul with the poignancy of
his expression. (The foregoing may easily be misunderstood. It does not
mean necessarily that there is no polyphony, that there are no parts
leading hither and thither in the music of Strawinsky. It does not
mean that dissonance has become an end in itself with this composer.
It simply means that he has let his inspiration take the form natural
to it and has not tried to cramp his inspiration into proscribed
forms. There should be no more difficulty in understanding him than in
understanding Beethoven once one arrives at listening with unbiased
ears. The trouble is that too many of us have made up our minds not
to listen to anything which does not conform with our own precious
opinions.)

At the risk of being misunderstood by some and for the sake of making
myself clearer to others I hazard a frivolous figure. Say that
Wagner’s formula for composition be represented by some expression;
I will choose the simple proverb, “Make hay while the sun shines.”
Humperdinck is content to change a single detail of this formula. He
says, musically speaking, “Make _wheat_ while the sun shines.” Richard
Strauss makes a more complete inversion. His paraphrase would suggest
something like this, “Make brass while the band brays.” Strawinsky,
wearied of the whole business (as was Debussy before him; genius does
not paraphrase) uses only two words of the formula ... say “make” and
“sun.” Later even these are negligible, as each new composer makes his
own laws and his own formulas. The infinity of it! In time the work of
Strawinsky will establish a _cliché_ to be scorned by a new generation
(scorned in the sense that it will not be imitated, except by inferior
men).

That his music is vibrant and beautiful we may be sure and it has
happened that all of it has been appreciated by a very worth-while
public. He has done what Benedetto Croce in his valuable work,
“Æsthetic,” demands of the artist. He has expressed himself ... for
beauty is expression. “Artists,” says this writer, “while making a
verbal pretence of agreeing, or yielding a feigned obedience to them,
have always disregarded (these) _laws of styles_. Every true work of
art has violated some established class and upset the ideas of the
critics who have been obliged to enlarge the number of classes, until
finally even this enlargement has proved too narrow, owing to the
appearance of new works of art, which are naturally followed by new
scandals, new upsettings, and--new enlargements.”

“It must not be forgotten,” says Egon Wellesz (“Schoenberg and Beyond”
in “The Musical Quarterly,” Otto Kinkeldey’s translation), “that in art
there are no ‘eternal laws’ and rules. Each period of history has its
own art, and the art of each period has its own rules. There are times
of which one might say that every work which was not in accord with the
rules was bad or amateurish. These are the times in which fixed forms
exist, to which all artists hold fast, merely varying the content.
Then there are periods when artists break through and shatter the old
forms. The greatness of their thoughts can no longer be confined within
the old limits. (Think of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the Symphonie
Fantastique of Berlioz.) There arises a category of art works whose
power and beauty can be _felt_ only and not _understood_. For this
reason an audience that knows nothing of rules will enthuse over works
of this kind much sooner than the average musician who looks for the
rules and their observance.”

Remember that Hanslick called _Tristan und Isolde_ “an abomination of
sense and language” and Chorley wrote “I have never been so blanked,
pained, wearied, _insulted_ even (the word is not too strong), by a
work of pretension as by ... _Tannhäuser_....” “Fortunately,” I quote
Benedetto Croce again, “no arduous remarks are necessary to convince
ourself that pictures, poetry, and every work of art, produce no
effects save on souls prepared to receive them.”

The clock continues to make its hands go round, so fast indeed that
it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of its course. For
example, just before his death, John F. Runciman in “Another Ode to
Discord” (“The New Music Review,” April, 1916) seemed to present an
entirely new front. Here is a sample passage, “We have grown used to
dissonances and our ears no longer require the momentary rest afforded
by frequent concords; if a discord neither demands preparation nor
resolution, and if it sounds beautiful and is expressive, there is
no reason on earth why a piece of music should not consist wholly
of a series of discords.... From Monteverde to Scriabine the line
is unbroken, each successive generation growing bolder in attacking
dissonances and still bolder in the manner of quitting them. I heard
a gentleman give a recital of his own pianoforte works not long ago.
They seemed to consist entirely of minor seconds--B and C struck
together--and the effect to my mind was excruciatingly abominable.
But that is how Bach’s music, Beethoven’s, Wagner’s, struck their
contemporaries; and heaven knows what we shall get accustomed to in
time. One thing is certain--that the most daring modern spirit is only
following in the steps of the mightiest masters....”

We may be on the verge of a still greater revolution in art than any
through which we have yet passed; new banners may be unfurled, and new
strongholds captured. I admit that the idea gives me pleasure. Try to
admit as much to yourself. Go hear the new music; listen to it and see
if you can’t enjoy it. Perhaps you can’t. At any rate you will find in
time that you won’t listen to second-rate imitations of the giant works
of the past any longer. Your ears will make progress in spite of you
and I shouldn’t wonder at all if five years more would make Schoenberg
and Strawinsky and Ornstein a trifle old-fashioned.... The Austrian
already has a little of the academy dust upon him.


_New York, April 16, 1916._




A New Principle in Music




A New Principle in Music


Although Igor Strawinsky plainly proclaimed himself a genius in _The
Firebird_ (1909-10), it was in _Petrouchka_ (1910-11) that he began the
experiment which established a new principle in music. In these “scènes
burlesques” he discovered the advantages of a new use of the modern
orchestra, completely upsetting the old academic ideas about “balance
of tone,” and proving to his own satisfaction the value of “pure tone,”
in the same sense that the painter speaks of pure colour. And in this
work he broke away from the standards not only of Richard Strauss, the
Wagner follower, but also of such innovators as Modeste Moussorgsky and
Claude Debussy.

Strauss, following Wagner’s theory of the _leit-motiv_, rounded out
the form of the tone-poem, carried the principle of representation in
music a few steps farther than his master, gave new colours to old
instruments, and broadened the scope of the modern orchestra so that
it might include new ones (in one of his symphonies Gustav Mahler
was content with 150 men!). Moussorgsky (although his work preceded
that of Strauss, the general knowledge of it is modern), working
along entirely different lines, strove for truthful utterance and
achieved a mode of expression which usually seems inevitable. Debussy
endowed music with novel tints derived from the extensive, and almost
exclusive, use of what is called the whole-tone scale, and instead of
forcing his orchestra to make more noise he constantly repressed it (in
all of _Pelléas et Mélisande_ there is but one climax of sound and in
_l’Après-midi d’un Faune_ and his other orchestral works he is equally
continent in the use of dynamics).

Igor Strawinsky has not been deaf to the blandishments of these
composers. He has used the _leit-motiv_ (sparingly) in both _The
Firebird_ and _Petrouchka_. He abandoned it in _The Sacrifice to
the Spring_ (1913) and in _The Nightingale_ (1914). His powers of
representation are as great as those of Strauss; it is only necessary
to recall the music of the bird in _The Firebird_, his orchestral
piece, _Fireworks_, which received warm praise from a manufacturer of
pyrotechnics, and the street organ music in _Petrouchka_. Later he
conceived the mission of music to be something different. “La musique
est trop bête,” he said once ironically, “pour exprimer autre chose que
la musique.” In such an extraordinary work as _The Nightingale_ we find
him making little or no attempt at representation. The bird does not
sing like the little brown warbler; instead Strawinsky has endeavoured
to write music which would give the _feeling_ of the bird’s song and
the effect it made on the people in his lyric drama to the auditors
in the stalls of the opera house. As for Strauss’s use of orchestral
colour the German is the merest tyro when compared to the Russian.
There is some use of the whole-tone scale in _The Firebird_, and
elsewhere in Strawinsky, but it is not a predominant use of it. In this
“conte dansé” he also suggests the _Pelléas et Mélisande_ of Debussy
in his continent use of sound and the mystery and esotericism of his
effect. Strawinsky is more of an expert than Moussorgsky; he handles
his medium more freely (has any one ever handled it better?) but he
still preaches the older Russian doctrine of truth of expression, a
doctrine which implies the curt dismissal of all idea of padding.

But all these composers and their contemporaries, and the composers
who came before them, have one quality in common; they all use the
orchestra of their time, or a bigger one. Strauss, to be sure,
introduces a number of new instruments, but he still utilizes a vast
number of violins and violas massed against the other instruments,
diminishing in number according to the volume of sound each makes. He
divides his strings continually, of course; they do not all play alike
as the violins, say, in _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_, but they often all
play at once.

Strawinsky experimented at first with the full orchestra and he even
utilized it in such late works as _Petrouchka_ and _The Nightingale_.
However, in his search for “pure tone” he used it in a new way. In
_Petrouchka_, for example, infrequently you will hear more than _one
of each instrument at a time_ and frequently two, or at most three,
instruments playing simultaneously will be sufficient to give his idea
form. The entire second scene of this mimed drama, is written for solo
piano, occasionally combined with a single other instrument. At other
times in the action the bassoon or the cornet, even the triangle has
the stage. And when he wishes to achieve his most complete effects he
is careful not to use more than seven or eight instruments, and _only
one of each_.

He experimented still further with this principle in his Japanese
songs, for voice and small orchestra (1912). The words are by Akahito,
Mazatsumi, and Tsaraiuki. I have not heard these songs with orchestral
accompaniment (the piano transcription was made by the composer
himself) but I may take the judgment of those who have. I am told that
they are of an indescribable beauty, and instinct with a new colour,
a colour particularly adapted to the oriental naïveté of the lyrics.
The orchestra, to accompany a soprano, consists of two flutes (one
a little flute), two clarinets (the second a bass clarinet), piano
(an instrument which Strawinsky almost invariably includes in his
orchestration), two violins, viola and ’cello. This form of chamber
music, of course, is not rare. Chausson’s violin concerto, with chamber
orchestra, and Schoenberg’s _Pierrot Lunaire_ instantly come to mind,
but Strawinsky did not stop with chamber music. He applied his new
principle to the larger forms.

In his newest work, _The Village Weddings_, which I believe Serge
de Diaghilew hopes to produce, his principle has found its ultimate
expression, I am told by his friend, Ernest Ansermet, conductor of the
Russian Ballet in America and to whom Strawinsky dedicated his three
pieces for string quartet. The last note is dry on the score of this
work, and it is therefore quite possible to talk about it although no
part of it has yet been performed publicly. According to Mr. Ansermet
there is required an orchestra of forty-five men, each a virtuoso, _no
two of whom play the same instrument_ (to be sure there are two violins
but one invariably plays pizzicato, the other invariably bows). There
are novelties in the band but all the conventional instruments are
there including, you may be sure, a piano and an infinite variety
of woodwinds, which always play significant rôles in Strawinsky’s
orchestration. And Mr. Ansermet says that in this work Strawinsky
has achieved effects such as have only been dreamed of by composers
hitherto.... I can well believe him.

He has made another innovation, following, in this case, an idea
of Diaghilew’s. When that impresario determined on a production of
Rimsky-Korsakow’s opera, _The Golden Cock_, during the summer of
1914 he conceived a performance with two casts, one choregraphic
and the other vocal. Thus Mme. Dobrovolska sang the coloratura rôle
of the Queen of Shemakhan while Mme. Karsavina danced the part most
brilliantly on her toes; M. Petrov sang the rôle of King Dodon,
which was enacted by Adolf Bolm, etc. In order to accomplish this
feat Mr. Diaghilew was obliged to make the singers a part of the
decoration. Nathalie Gontcharova, who has been called in to assist
in the production of _The Village Weddings_, devised as part of her
stage setting two tiers of seats, one on either side of the stage,
extending into the flies after the fashion of similar benches used
at the performance of an oratorio. The singers (principals and chorus
together) clad in magenta gowns and caps, all precisely similar, sat
on these seats during the performance and, after a few seconds, they
became quite automatically a part of the decoration. The action took
place in the centre of the stage and the dancers not only mimed their
rôles but also opened and closed their mouths as if they were singing.
The effect was thoroughly diverting and more than one serious person
was heard to declare that the future of opera had been solved, although
Mme. Rimsky-Korsakow, as she had on a similar occasion when the Russian
Ballet had produced Fokine’s version of _Scheherazade_, protested.

Rimsky-Korsakow wrote his opera to be sung in the ordinary fashion,
and, in so far as this matters, it was perhaps a desecration to perform
it in any other manner. However, quite beyond the fact that very large
audiences were hugely delighted with _The Golden Cock_ in its new form,
these performances served to fire Strawinsky with the inspiration for
his new work. He intends _The Village Weddings_ to be given precisely
in this manner. It is an opera, the rôles of which are to be sung by
artists who sit still while the figures of the ballet will enact them.
The words, I am told, are entirely derived from Russian folk stories
and ballads, pieced together by the composer himself, and the action is
to be like that of a marionette show in which the characters are worked
by strings from above. It may also be stated on the same authority that
the music, while embracing new tone colours and dramatic effects, is as
tuneful as any yet set on paper by this extraordinary young man; the
songs have a true folk flavour. The whole, it is probable, will make
as enchanting a stage entertainment as any which this composer has yet
contrived.

It is not only folk-tunes but popular songs as well that fascinate Igor
Strawinsky. Ernest Ansermet collected literally hundreds of examples
of American ragtime songs and dances to take back to the composer,
and he pointed out to me how Strawinsky had used similar specimens
in the past. For example, the barrel organ solo in the first scene
of _Petrouchka_ is a popular French song of several seasons ago, _La
Jambe de Bois_ (a song now forbidden in Paris); the final wedding music
in _The Firebird_ is an _adagio_ version of a popular Russian song,
with indecent words. He sees beauty in these popular tunes, too much
beauty to be allowed to go to waste. In the same spirit he has taken
the melodies of two Lanner waltzes for the dance between the Ballerina
and the Moor in the third scene of _Petrouchka_. It would not surprise
me at all to discover _Hello Frisco_ bobbing up in one of his future
works. After all turn about is fair play; the popular composers have
dug gold mines out of the classics.

Consistent, certainly, is Strawinsky’s delight in clowns and music
halls--the burlesque and the eccentric. He has written a ballet for
four clowns, and Ansermet showed me one day an arrangement for four
hands of three pieces, for small orchestra, in _style music hall_,
dated 1914. We gave what we smilingly referred to as the “first
American audition” on the grand pianoforte in his hotel room. I
played the base, not a matter of any particular difficulty in the
first number, a polka, because the first bar was repeated to the
end. This polka, I found very amusing and we played it over several
times. The valse, which followed, reminded me of the Lanner number
in _Petrouchka_. The suite closed with a march, dedicated to Alfred
Casella.... The pieces would delight any audience, from that of the
Palace Theatre, to that of the concerts of the Symphony Society of New
York.


_New York, February 6, 1916._




Leo Ornstein

  “_the only true blue, genuine Futurist composer alive._”

                                         James Huneker.




Leo Ornstein


The amazing Leo Ornstein!... I should have written the amazing Leo
Ornsteins for “there are many of them and each one of them is one.”
Ornstein himself has a symbol for this diversity; some of his music he
signs “Vannin.” He has told me that the signature is automatic: when
Vannin writes he signs; when Ornstein writes _he_ signs. But it is
not alone in composing that there are many Ornsteins; there are many
pianists as well. One Ornstein paints his tones with a fine soft brush;
the other smears on his colours with a trowel. In his sentimental
treatment of triviality he has scarcely a competitor on the serious
concert stage (unless it be Fanny Bloomfield-Zeisler). Is this the
Caliban, one asks, who conceived and who executes _The Wild Men’s
Dance_? The softer Ornstein is less original than his comrade, more
imitative.... I have been told that Jews are always imitative in art,
that there are no great Jewish composers. Wagner? Well, Wagner was half
a Jew, perhaps. Certainly there is imitation in Ornstein, but so was
there in the young Beethoven, the young Debussy....

Recently I went to hear Ornstein play under a misconception. I thought
that he, with an announced violinist, was going to perform his
anarchistic sonata for violin and piano, opus 31. They did perform
one of his sonatas but it was an earlier opus, 26, I think. At times,
while I listened it seemed to me that nothing so beautiful had been
done in this form since César Franck’s sonata. The first movement had
a rhapsodic character that was absolutely successful in establishing a
mood. The music soared; it did not seem confined at all. It achieved
perfectly the effect of improvisation. The second part was even finer,
and the scherzo and finale only less good. But this was no new idiom. I
looked again and again at my programme; again and again at the man on
the piano stool. Was this not Harold Bauer playing Ravel?... One theme
struck me as astonishingly like Johnson’s air in the last act of _The
Girl of the Golden West_. There was a good use made of the whole-tone
scale and its attendant harmonies, which sounded strangely in our ears
a few seasons past, and a ravishing series of figurations and runs made
one remember that Debussy had described falling water in a similar
fashion.

This over the pianist became less himself--so far as I had become
acquainted with him to this time--than ever. He played a banal
barcarole of Rubinstein’s; to be sure he almost made it sound like an
interesting composition; he played a scherzino of his own that any one
from Schütt to Moszkowski might have signed; he played something of
Grieg’s which may have pleased Mr. Finck and two or three ladies in the
audience but which certainly left me cold; and he concluded this group
with a performance of Liszt’s arrangement of the waltz from Gounod’s
_Faust_. Thereupon there was so much applause that he came back and
played his scherzino again. His répertoire in this _genre_ was probably
too limited to admit of his adding a fresh number.... At this point I
arose and left the hall, more in wonder than in indignation.

Was this the musician who had been reviled and hissed? Was this the
pianist and composer whom Huneker had dubbed the only real futurist in
modern music? It was not the Ornstein I myself had heard a few weeks
previously striking the keyboards with his fists in the vociferous
measures of _The Wild Men’s Dance_; it was not the colour painter of
the two _Impressions of Notre Dame_; it was not the Ornstein who in
a dark corner of Pogliani’s glowed with glee over the possibility of
dividing and redividing the existing scale into eighth, sixteenth, and
twenty-fourth tones.... This was another Ornstein and in searching my
memory I discovered him to be the oldest Ornstein of all. I remembered
five years back when I was assistant to the musical critic of the “New
York Times” and had been sent to hear a boy prodigy play on a Sunday
evening at the New Amsterdam Theatre. Concerts by serious artists at
that period seldom took place outside of recognized concert halls, nor
did they occur on Sunday nights. But there was something about this
concert that impressed itself upon me and I wrote more than the usual
perfunctory notice on this occasion. Here is my account of what I think
must have been Leo Ornstein’s first public appearance (March 5, 1911),
dug from an old scrap book:

“The New Amsterdam Theatre is a strange place for a recital of
pianoforte music, but one was held there last evening, when Leo
Ornstein, the latest wunderkind to claim metropolitan attention,
appeared before a very large audience to contribute his interpretation
of a programme which would have tested any fully grown-up talent.

“It began with Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, included Beethoven’s
_Sonata Appassionata_, six Chopin numbers, and finally Rubinstein’s
D minor concerto, in which young Ornstein was assisted by the Volpe
Symphony Orchestra. To say that this boy has great talent would be to
mention the obvious, but to say that as yet he is ripe for such matters
as he undertook last night would be stretching the truth. It should be
stated, however, that his command of tone colour is already great and
that his technique is usually adequate for the demands which the music
made, although in some passages in the final movement of the Beethoven
sonata his strength seemed to desert him.”

I never even heard of Leo Ornstein again after this concert at the New
Amsterdam (his exploits in Europe escaped my eyes and ears) until he
gave the famous series of concerts at the Bandbox Theatre in January
and February of 1915, a series of concerts which really startled
musical New York and even aroused orchestral conductors, in some
measure, out of their lethargic method of programme-making. So far
as he was able Ornstein constructed his programmes entirely from the
“music of the future,” and patrons of piano recitals were astonished
to discover that a pianist could give four concerts without playing
any music by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, or
Schubert.... Since these occasions Ornstein has been considered the
high apostle of the new art in America, as the post-futurist composer,
and as a pianist of great technical powers and a luscious tone
quality (it does not seem strange that these attributes are somewhat
exaggerated in so young a man).

Nearly a year later (December 15, 1915, to be exact) Ornstein
gave another concert at the Cort Theatre in New York. Here are my
impressions of that occasion, noted down shortly after:

“Leo Ornstein, a few years ago a poor Russian Jew music student, is
rapidly by way of becoming an institution. His concerts are largely
attended and he is even taken seriously by the press, especially in
England.

“He slouched on the stage, stooping, in his usual listless manner, his
long arms hanging limp at his sides like those of a gorilla. His head
is beautiful, crowned with an overflowing crop of black hair, soulful
eyes, a fine mask. There are pauses without expression but sometimes,
notably when he plays _The Wild Men’s Dance_, his face lights up with a
sort of sardonic appreciation. He has discarded his sack cloth coat for
a velvet jacket of similar cut.

“He began with two lovely impressionistic things by Vannin (Sanborn
says that this is ‘programme for Ornstein’), _The Waltzers_ and
_Night_. A long sonata by Cyril Scott (almost entirely in the
whole-tone scale, sounding consequently like Debussy out of Bach,
for there was a fugue and a smell of the academy) followed. Ravel’s
_Oiseaux Tristes_ twittered their sorrows prettily in the treble, and a
sonatina by the same composer seemed negligible. Albeniz’s _Almeria_, a
section of the twelve-parted _Iberia_, was a Spanish picture of worth.
Ornstein followed with his own pieces, _Improvisata_, a vivid bit of
colour and rhythm, and _Impressions of the Thames_, in which an attempt
was made to picture the heavy smoking barges, the labours on the river,
the shrill sirens of the tugs. The limited (is it, I wonder?) medium
of the piano made all this sound rather Chinese. But some got the
picture. A few laughed. _The Wild Men’s Dance_ convulsed certain parts
of the audience. It always does (but this may well be hysteria); others
were struck with wonder by its thrill. Certainly a powerful massing of
notes, creating wild effects in tone, and a compelling rhythm. In the
_Fairy Pictures_ of Korngold, which closed the programme, Ornstein was
not at his best; nor, for that matter, was Korngold. They were written
when the composer was a very young boy and they are not particularly
original, spontaneous, or beautiful. The difficulties exist for the
player rather than for the hearer.... Ornstein did not bring out their
humour. Humour, as yet, is not an attribute of his playing. He has
always imparted to the piano a beautiful tone; his touch is almost as
fine as Pachmann’s. But his powers are ripening in every direction.
Formerly he dwelt too long on nuances, fussed too much with details.
His style is becoming broader. His technique has always been ample.
There is no doubt but that he will become a power in the music world.”

Some time later I met Leo Ornstein and we talked over a table. He is
fluid in conversation and while he talks he clasps and unclasps his
hands.... He referred to his début at the New Amsterdam. “My ambition
then was to play the concertos of Rubinstein and Tschaikowsky ... and
I satisfied it. Soon after that concert I went abroad.... Suddenly the
new thing came to me, and I began to write and play in the style which
has since become identified with my name. It was music that I felt and
I realized that I had become myself at last, although at first, to be
frank, it horrified me as much as it has since horrified others. Mind
you, when I took the leap I had never seen any music by Schoenberg
or Strawinsky. I was unaware that there was such a generality as
‘futurism.’

“I spent some time in Norway and Vienna, where I met Leschetitzky”
(this incident is referred to elsewhere in this volume) “and then I
went down to Paris. I was very poor.... I met Harold Bauer and one day
I went to play for him. We had a furious argument all day. He couldn’t
understand my music. But he asked me to come again the next day,
and I did. This time Walter Morse Rummel was there and he suggested
that Calvocoressi would be interested in me. So he gave me a note to
Calvocoressi.

“Calvocoressi is a Greek but he speaks all languages. He read my
note of introduction and asked me if I spoke French or English. We
spoke a little Russian together. Then he asked me to play. While I
played his eyes snapped and he uttered several sudden ejaculations.
‘Play that again,’ he said, when I had concluded one piece. Later
on he asked some of his friends to hear me.... At the time he was
giving a series of lectures on modern musicians, Strauss, Debussy,
Dukas, Ravel, Schoenberg, and Strawinsky, and he included _me_ in the
list! I illustrated two of his lectures and after I had concluded
my performance of the music of other composers he asked me to play
something of my own, which I did....” Ornstein looked amusingly
rueful. “The auditors were not actually rude. How could they be when
I followed Calvocoressi? But they giggled a little. Later on in London
they did more than giggle.

“I went to London because my means were getting low. I had almost no
money at all, as a matter of fact.... In London I found Calvocoressi’s
influence of great value (he had already written an article about me)
and some people at Oxford had heard me in Paris. These friends helped;
besides I played the Steinway piano and the Steinways finally gave me a
concert in Steinway Hall. At my first concert (this was in the spring
of 1914) I played music by other composers. At my second concert,
devoted to my own compositions, I might have played anything. I
couldn’t hear the piano myself. The crowd whistled and howled and even
threw handy missiles on the stage ... but that concert made me famous,”
Ornstein wound up with a smile.

He is a hard-working youth, serious, it would seem, to the heart. His
published music is numbered into the thirties and his répertoire is
extensive. He spends a great deal of time working hard on the music of
a bygone age, although he finds it no stimulation for this one, but to
be taken seriously as a pianist he is obliged to prove to melomaniacs
that he has the equipment to play the classic composers. Of all the
compositions that he learns, however, he complains of his own as the
most difficult to memorize; a glance at _The Wild Men’s Dance_ or more
particularly at a page of his second sonata for violin and piano will
convince any one of the truth of this assertion. The chords will prove
strangers to many a well-trained eye. I wonder if so uncannily gifted
a sight reader as Walter Damrosch, who can play an orchestral score on
the piano at sight, could read this music?

Of his principles of composition the boy says only that he writes what
he feels. He has no regard for the rules, although he has studied them
enough to break them thoroughly. He thinks there is an underlying basis
of theory for his method of composition, which may be formulated later.
It is not his purpose to formulate it. He is sincere in his art.

Once he said to me, “I hate cleverness. I don’t want to be clever. I
hate to be called clever. I am not clever. I don’t like clever people.
Art that is merely clever is not art at all.”

With Busoni and Schoenberg he believes that there are no discords, only
chords and chords ... and that there are many combinations of notes,
“millions of them” which have not yet been devised.

“When I feel that the existing enharmonic scale is limiting me I shall
write in quarter tones. In time I think the ear can be trained to
grasp eighth tones. Instruments only exist to perform music and new
instruments will be created to meet the new need. It can be met now on
the violin or in the voice. The piano, of course, is responsible for
the rigidity of the present scale.”

Ornstein never rewrites. If his inspiration does not come the first
time it never comes. He does not try to improve a failure. His method
is to write as much as he can spontaneously on one day, and to pick the
composition up where he left off on the next.

His opinions of other modern composers are interesting: he considers
Ravel greater than Debussy, and speaks with enthusiasm about _Daphnis
et Chloë_. He has played music by Satie in private but does not find
it “stimulating or interesting.” ... Schoenberg ... “the last of the
academics ... all brain, no spirit. His music is mathematical. He does
not feel it. Korngold’s pieces are pretty but he has done nothing
important. Scriabine was a great theorist who never achieved his goal.
He helped others on. But Strawinsky is the most stimulating and
interesting of all the modern composers. He feels what he writes.”

Most of Ornstein’s music is inspired by things about him, some of it by
abstract ideas. His social conscience is awake. He wanted to call _The
Wild Men’s Dance_, _Liberty_ (“I attempted to write music which would
dance itself, which did not require a dancer”), but finally decided
on the more symbolic title. “I am known as a musical anarch now,” he
explained to me, “I could not name a piece of music _Liberty_--at least
not _that_ piece--without associating myself in the public mind with a
certain social propaganda.” Just the same he means the propaganda. In
the _Dwarf Suite_ he gives us a picture of the lives of the struggling
Russian Jews. These dwarfs are symbols.... He is fond of abstract
titles. He often plays his _Three Moods_. “In Boston they did not like
my _Three Moods_. They found my _Anger_ too unrestrained; it was vulgar
to express oneself so freely.... But there is such a thing as anger.
Why should it not find artistic expression? Besides it is a very good
contrast to _Peace_ and _Joy_ which enclose it.” The _Impressions of
the Thames_ I have already referred to. With the two _Impressions of
Notre Dame_ it stands as his successful experiment with impressionism.
The _Notre Dame_ pictures include gargoyles and, of course, bells....
I have not heard the violin and piano sonata, opus 31. Nor can I play
it. Nor can I derive any very adequate idea of how it sounds from a
perusal of the score. Strange music this.... Some time ago some one
sent Ornstein the eight songs of Richard Strauss, Opus 49. The words
of three of these songs (_Wiegenliedchen_, _In Goldener Fülle_, and
_Waldseligkeit_) struck him and he made settings for them. Compare
them with Strauss and you will find the Bavarian’s music scented with
lavender. “In the _Wiegenliedchen_ Strauss gives you a picture of
the woman rocking the cradle for his accompaniment. I have tried to
go further, tried to express the feelings in the woman’s mind, her
hopes for the child when it is grown, her fears. I have tried to get
_underneath_.” But the _Berceuse_ in Ornstein’s _Nine Miniatures_ is
as simple an expression as the lover of Ethelbert Nevin’s style could
wish. Not all of Ornstein’s music is careless of tradition. He was
influenced in the beginning by many people. His _Russian Suite_ is very
pretty. Most of it is like Tschaikowsky. These suites will prove (if
any one wants it proved) that Ornstein can write conventional melody.

Ornstein has also written a composition for orchestra entitled _The
Faun_, which Henry Wood had in mind for performance before the war.
It has not yet been played and I humbly suggest it to our resident
conductors, together with Albeniz’s _Catalonia_, Schoenberg’s _Five
Pieces_, and Strawinsky’s _Sacrifice to the Spring_.

Leo Ornstein was born in 1895 at Krementchug, near Odessa. He is
consequently in his twenty-first year. He is already a remarkable
pianist, one of the very few who may be expected to achieve a position
in the front rank. His compositions have astonished the musical world.
Some of them have even pleased people. Whatever their ultimate value
they have certainly made it a deal easier for concert-goers to listen
to what are called “discords” with equanimity. His music is a modern
expression, untraditional, and full of a strange seething emotion; no
calculation here. And like the best painting and literature of the
epoch it vibrates with the unrest of the period which produced the
great war.


_June 14, 1916._


THE END




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Transcriber’s Note

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.

Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Hyphenation
was standardized.

Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following
changes:

  Page 44: “Greig’s _Peer Gynt_”         “Grieg’s _Peer Gynt_”
  Page 73: “_l’Heure Espagnole_”         “_L’heure Espagnole_”
  Page 77: “colour of Zurburan”          “colour of Zurbaran”
  Page 77: “Juan de Juares”              “Juan de Juarez”
  Page 84: “_Fantasy_ of Farrega”        “_Fantasy_ of Tárrega”
  Page 136: “oder Der misverstandene”    “oder Der missverstandene”
  Page 178: “is a _pointe de depart_”    “is a _point de départ_”






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