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| author | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-04-19 08:21:13 -0700 |
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| committer | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-04-19 08:21:13 -0700 |
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diff --git a/75908-h/75908-h.htm b/75908-h/75908-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3d6b5ae --- /dev/null +++ b/75908-h/75908-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6607 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + Music and Bad Manners | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} +table.autotable { border-collapse: collapse; } +table.autotable td { padding: 0.25em; } + +.tdl {text-align: left;} +.tdr {text-align: right;} + +.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; + text-indent: 0; +} /* page numbers */ + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +/* Images */ + +img { + max-width: 100%; + height: auto; +} +img.w100 {width: 100%;} + + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: 1px dashed;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + +/* Poetry */ +/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry */ +.poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;} +.poetry-container {text-align: center;} +.poetry {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} +.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} +.poetry .verse {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} + +.author { + text-align: right; + margin-right: 35% + } + +.x-ebookmaker body {margin: 0;} +.x-ebookmaker-drop {color: inherit;} + +.ph2, .ph3, .ph4 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-weight: bold; } +.ph2 { font-size: x-large; margin: .75em auto; } +.ph3 { font-size: large; margin: .83em auto; } +.ph4 { font-size: medium; margin: 1.12em auto; } + +p.hanging-indent1 { + padding-left: 2.25em; + text-indent: -2.25em; +} + + +.tnote {border: dashed 1px; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; +padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; padding-left: .5em; +padding-right: .5em;} + +/* Poetry indents */ +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3.0em;} + + +/* Illustration classes */ +.illowp100 {width: 100%;} + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75908 ***</div> + + + + +<div class="chapter"> +<h1>Music and Bad Manners</h1> +</div> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + + + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="ph2"> +<i>By THE SAME AUTHOR</i><br> +</p> +<p class="ph3"> +MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR<br> +</p> +</div> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + + + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="ph2"> +Music<br> +and Bad Manners<br> +<br> +<i>Carl Van Vechten</i><br> +</p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_logo" style="width: 12.5em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i_logo.jpg" alt="logo - Dog running"> +</figure> +<p class="ph3"> +New York Alfred A. Knopf<br> +MCMXVI<br> +</p> +</div> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="ph3"> +COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY<br> +ALFRED A. KNOPF</p> +<p class="ph4"> +<i>All rights reserved</i><br> +<br> +<br> +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br> +</p> +</div> + + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"> +<p class="ph2"><i>To my Father</i></p></div> + + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"><h2 class="nobreak" id="Contents">Contents</h2></div> + + + + +<table class="autotable"> +<tr> +<td></td> +<td class="tdr">PAGE</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Music and Bad Manners</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Music for the Movies</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Spain and Music</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Shall We Realize Wagner’s Ideals?</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Bridge Burners</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A New Principle in Music</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Leo Ornstein</span></td> +<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td> +</tr> +</table> + + + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"><h2 class="nobreak" id="Music_and_Bad_Manners">Music and Bad Manners</h2></div> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"><p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span></p> + + + +<p class="ph2">Music and Bad Manners</p></div> + + +<p>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 <i>Parsifal</i>!” 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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>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 <i>Prince Igor</i> 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!</p> + +<p>In those immeasurably sad pages in which +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>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 <i>Cenacolo</i> 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.”</p> + +<p>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 <i>baden</i>, the +songstress took the resolution of neglecting her +professional duties, in the hope of being allowed +to depart as worthless. The Czarovitch, Paul the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>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 <i>bravura</i> +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>of <i>The Messiah</i> at Oxford rather than +stand during the singing of the <i>Hallelujah Chorus</i>.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Miserere</i> 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 <i>Redde Mihi</i> and the <i>Benigne fac, +Domine</i>, broke in with applause and insisted upon +repetitions! Berlioz also describes a rehearsal of +Grétry’s <i>La Rosière de Salency</i> 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 <i>chef d’orchestre</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>overture of Grétry’s, then a celebrated English +air <i>Arm, Ye Brave</i>, a “sonata <i>diabolique</i>” for the +violin, the quartet from a French opera in which +this passage occurred:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"><div class="poetry"> +<div class="stanza"><div class="verse indent0">“J’aime assez les Hollandaises,</div> +<div class="verse indent0">Les Persanes, les Anglaises,</div> +<div class="verse indent0">Mais je préfère des Françaises</div> +<div class="verse indent0">L’esprit, la grâce et la gaîté,”</div></div> +</div></div> + +<p>an instrumental march, the finale of the first act +of an opera, a fugue on <i>Kyrie Eleison</i> from a +Requiem Mass in which the music suggested anything +but the words, variations for the bassoon on +the melody of <i>Au Clair de la Lune</i>, 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....</p> + +<p>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,” +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span>“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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Carmen</i> 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 <i>La Dame de chez Maxim</i>, with a result +even more startling than that which attended Bernard +Shaw’s excursion into the realms of the expletive +in his play, <i>Pygmalion</i>. It is further +related of this performance of <i>Carmen</i>, which is +said to have sadly disturbed the “traditions,” that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>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 <i>salle</i> was +in an uproar.</p> + +<p>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. <i>Il +Barbiere</i> 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.</p> + +<p>The late Algernon St. John Brenon used to relate +a history about Emma Eames and a recalcitrant +tenor. The opera was <i>Lohengrin</i>, I believe, +and the question at issue was the position of +a certain couch. Mme. Eames wished it placed +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>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!</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>(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, <i>Che +faro senza Euridice</i>, 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 +<i>tempi</i>. In her slowest <i>adagio</i> 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 <i>turned her +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>back on the conductor</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Carmen</i>. +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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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?”</p> + +<p>I cannot take Vladimir de Pachmann to task for +these amusing bad manners! But they annoy the +<i>bourgeois</i>. 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.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span></p> +<p>Another pianist, also a composer, claims attention: +Alberto Savinio. You may find a photolithograph +of Savinio’s autograph manuscript of +<i>Bellovées Fatales, No. 12</i>, in that curious periodical +entitled “291,” the number for April, 1915. +There is a programme, which reads as follows:</p> + + +<p class="center">LA PASSION DES ROTULES</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>La Femme: Ah! Il m’a touché de sa jambe +de caoutchouc! Ma-ma! Ma-ma!</p> + +<p>L’Homme: Tutto s’ha di rosa, Maria, +per te....</p> + +<p>La Femme: Ma-ma! Ma-ma!</p> +</div> + +<p>There are indications as to how the composer +wishes his music to be played, sometimes <i>glissando</i> +and sometimes “<i>avec des poings</i>.” 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 +<i>bled</i>. 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>that he frequently had had a similar experience.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Penthesilea</i> overture for the first +time. It is a curious example of bad manners in +which both the performers and the audience join.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>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 <i>Kapellmeister</i> +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>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 <i>Herr Kapellmeister</i> 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.</p> + +<p>“‘The wretches! The wretches!...’</p> + +<p>“He groaned and squeezed his hands tight to +keep from crying out.</p> + +<p>“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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>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 <i>Kapellmeister</i> went on through +the uproar imperturbably beating time.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“When the tumult was calmed down a little the +<i>Kapellmeister</i>, 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):</p> + +<p>“‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I should certainly not +have let <i>that</i> be played through to the end if I had +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span>not wished to make an example of the gentleman +who has dared to write offensively of the great +Brahms.’</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“It had been a good day.”</p> + +<p>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!”</p> + +<p>Here are a few personal recollections of bad +mannered audiences. A performance of <i>The +Magic Flute</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>Colonne concert. I am describing an occasion.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Die Walküre</i>, and the air which celebrates the evening +star from <i>Tannhäuser</i>. (In this connection +I might state that in this same winter—1908-9—<i>Das +Rheingold</i> was given <i>in concert form</i>—it +had not yet been performed at the Opéra—on +two consecutive Sundays at the Lamoureux Concerts +in the Salle Gaveau to <i>standing room +only</i>.) 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 <i>Tannhäuser</i> at +the Paris Opéra passed through his mind. He +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>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: +“<i>Tannhäuser</i> avant <i>Walküre</i>.” 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.</p> + +<p>I have related elsewhere at some length my experiences +at the first Paris performance of Igor +Strawinsky’s ballet, <i>The Sacrifice to the Spring</i>, +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>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 <i>Heldenleben</i> +and the celebrated scenes from <i>Die Meistersinger</i> +and <i>The Rape of the Lock</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Some of my readers may remember the demonstration +directed (supposedly) against American +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>singers when the Metropolitan Opera Company invaded +Paris some years ago for a spring season. +The opening opera was <i>Aïda</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span>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 <i>La Bandoline</i>, +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.</p> + +<p>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; +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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”:</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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’ +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>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.</p> + +<p>“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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>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.</p> + +<p>“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: <i>The Awakening of a Great +City</i>, <i>A Dinner on a Kursaal Terrace</i>, and <i>A Meet +of Automobiles and Aeroplanes</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>“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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span>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.”</p> + + +<p><i>New York, May, 1916.</i></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="Music_for_the_Movies">Music for the Movies</h2> +<p class="ph3">“<i>O Tempora! O Movies!</i>”<br> +</p> +<p class="author"> +W. B. Chase.<br> +</p> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span></p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[Pg 43]</span></p> + + + +<p class="ph2">Music for the Movies</p></div> + + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>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 <i>new</i> kind of +music.</p> + +<p>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 <i>A Midsummer Night’s +Dream</i> 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 <i>Egmont</i>; Sir Arthur +Sullivan penned a score for <i>The Tempest</i>; +Schubert was inspired to put down some of his +most ravishing notes for a stupid play called <i>Rosamunde</i>; +Grieg’s <i>Peer Gynt</i> music is more often +performed than the play. More recent instances +of incidental music for dramas are Saint-Saëns’s +score for Brieux’s <i>La Foi</i>, Mascagni’s for <i>The +Eternal City</i>, and Richard Strauss’s for <i>Le Bourgeois +Gentilhomme</i>. Is it necessary to continue +the list? I have only, after all, put down a few +of the obvious examples (passing by the thousands +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Lady Windemere’s Fan</i> or <i>Peg o’ My Heart</i> +than of poetic dramas such as <i>Cymbeline</i> or <i>La +Samaritaine</i>. The problem here, however, is not +the same as in the spoken drama. For in motion +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>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 <i>Inferno</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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, <i>solo</i>. As for the pictures without +pre-arranged scores, the orchestra leaders and pianists +must do the best they can with them.</p> + +<p>In some houses there is an attitude of total disrespect +paid towards the picture by the <i>chef d’orchestre</i>. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>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 <i>The Woman +Next Door</i>. As the symphony came to an end before +the picture it was supplemented by a Waldteufel +waltz, <i>Les Patineurs</i>. 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 <i>Hedda Gabler</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring</i>; a +love scene is the signal for <i>Un Peu d’Amour</i>; a +cross or any religious episode suggests <i>The Rosary</i> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>to these ingenuous musicians; Japan brings a +touch of <i>Madame Butterfly</i>; a proposal of marriage, +<i>O Promise Me</i>; and a farewell, Tosti’s <i>Good-bye!</i> +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.</p> + +<p>Lacking the authority of real moving picture +music (which a new composer must rise to invent) +the safest way (not necessarily the <i>best</i> 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 <i>Alexander’s Ragtime Band</i>, +seventeen of <i>The Ride of the Valkyries</i>, ten of <i>Vissi +d’Arte</i>, 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>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. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>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.”</p> + +<p>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 “<i>agits</i>”—an +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span>abbreviation of <i>agitato</i>; 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!)</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>However, the day of this sort of thing is rapidly +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span>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 <i>Carmen</i>, largely +selected from the music of Bizet’s opera, and Victor +Herbert’s original score for <i>The Fall of a Nation</i>, +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span>in writing tone-poems for pictures, although +he would contrive nothing more daring than a well-arranged +series of illustrative melodies.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<p><i>New York, November 10, 1915.</i></p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="Spain_and_Music">Spain and Music</h2> +<p class="ph3"> +“<i>Il faut méditerraniser la musique.</i>”</p> +<p class="author"> +Nietzsche.<br> +</p> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span></p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[Pg 57]</span></p> + + + +<p class="ph2">Spain and Music</p></div> + + +<p>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 +<i>Pelléas et Mélisande</i>, 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 <i>Parsifal</i> +at Bayreuth. And he had announced for presentation +during the season of 1908-9 (and again +the following season) a Spanish opera called +<i>Dolores</i>. 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span>the circumstances, must go to Mr. Gatti-Casazza. +(Strictly speaking, <i>Goyescas</i> 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. <i>Il Guarany</i>, 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, <i>l’Amante Astuto</i> and +<i>La Figlia dell’Aria</i>, 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 <i>La +Gran Via</i>, 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 <i>about</i> Spain +when he opened his first Manhattan Opera House +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span>on the site now occupied by Macy’s Department +Store with Moszkowski’s <i>Boabdil</i>, quickly followed +by Beethoven’s <i>Fidelio</i>. The malagueña +from <i>Boabdil</i> is still a favourite <i>morceau</i> 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.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span></p> +<p>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 <i>Goyescas</i>, 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 +<i>accroche-coeurs</i> of Spain, Spain, Spain.... In +addition one must mention Mme. Farrar’s brilliant +success, deserved in some degree, as Carmen, both +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span>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 <i>Carmen</i> 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 <i>maison de danse</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span>Spain. In the art-world there was a noticeable +revival of interest in Goya and El Greco.</p> + +<p>But if Mr. Gatti-Casazza, with the best intentions +in the world, should desire to take advantage +of any of this <i>réclame</i> 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, +<i>Los Pireneos</i>, called by Edouard Lopez-Chavarri +“the most important work for the theatre written +in Spain”; and there is the aforementioned <i>Dolores</i>. +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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>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 <i>Tannhäuser</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span>skill in harmonization by a daring, which is sometimes +of doubtful taste; has produced songs, +piano music in small amount, and an opera, <i>Boris +Godunow</i>.” 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span>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, +<i>España</i>, 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, <i>España</i>, performed at the +Paris Opera, 1911. Waldteufel based one of his +most popular waltzes on the theme of this rhapsody. +Chabrier’s <i>Habanera</i> 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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span>and next to Chabrier’s music I should put Debussy’s +<i>Iberia</i>, the second of his <i>Images</i> (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 +<i>Capriccio Espagnole</i>, with its <i>alborado</i> +or lusty morning serenade, its long series of +cadenzas (as cleverly written as those of <i>Scheherazade</i> +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span>of Barcelona for two years (1885-6), and +one of the results was his <i>Maurische Rhapsodie</i> +in three parts (1898-9), still occasionally performed +by our orchestras. Lalo wrote his <i>Symphonie +Espagnole</i> 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 <i>Jota Aragonese</i> and <i>A Night in Madrid</i>; +he gave a Spanish theme to Balakirew which the +latter utilized in his <i>Overture on a theme of a +Spanish March</i>. Liszt wrote a <i>Spanish Rhapsody</i> +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 <i>Toreador and Andalusian</i> +and Moszkowski’s <i>Spanish Dances</i> (for four +hands) are known to all amateur pianists as +Hugo Wolf’s <i>Spanisches Liederbuch</i> and Robert +Schumann’s <i>Spanisches Liederspiel</i>, set to F. +Giebel’s translations of popular Spanish ballads, +are known to all singers. I have heard a song +of Saint-Saëns, <i>Guitares et Mandolines</i>, 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 <i>Mandoline</i> and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span>Delibes’s <i>Les Filles de Cadiz</i> (which in this country +belongs both to Emma Calvé and Olive Fremstad) +spring instantly to mind. Ravel’s <i>Rapsodie +Espagnole</i> 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 <i>Rapsodie</i> on one of his piano pieces. +But Richard Strauss’s two tone-poems on Spanish +subjects, <i>Don Juan</i> and <i>Don Quixote</i>, have not a +note of Spanish colouring, so far as I can remember, +from beginning to end. Svendsen’s symphonic +poem, <i>Zorahayda</i>, based on a passage in +Washington Irving’s “Alhambra,” is Spanish in +theme and may be added to this list together with +Waldteufel’s <i>Estudiantina</i> waltzes.</p> + +<hr class="tb"> + +<p>Four modern operas stand out as Spanish in +subject and atmosphere. I would put at the top +of the list Zandonai’s <i>Conchita</i>; 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span>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 <i>Carmen</i> 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 <i>Iberia</i>, 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, <i>La Habanera</i> and <i>La +Jota</i>, both named after popular Spanish dances +and both produced at the Opéra-Comique in +Paris. I have heard <i>La Habanera</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>child. I have not heard <i>La Jota</i>, 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 <i>La Jota</i> has had a modest career when +compared with <i>La Habanera</i>, which has even been +performed in Boston. <i>Carmen</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span>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 <i>perversités artistiques</i>, +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 <i>Carmen</i> +this line is engraved: ‘Imitated from a Spanish +song, the property of the publishers of <i>Le Ménestrel</i>.’”</p> + +<p>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, +<i>Le Cid</i>, <i>Cherubin</i>, <i>Don César de Bazan</i>, <i>La Navarraise</i> +and <i>Don Quichotte</i> (Cervantes’s novel has +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span>frequently lured the composers of lyric dramas +with its story; Clément et Larousse give a long +list of <i>Don Quixote</i> 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 <i>Le Cid</i> are frequently performed, +although the opera is not. The most famous of +the set is called simply <i>Aragonaise</i>; it is not a jota. +<i>Pleurez, mes yeux</i>, the principal air of the piece, +can scarcely be called Spanish. There is a delightful +suggestion of the jota in <i>La Navarraise</i>. +In <i>Don Quichotte</i> 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 <i>Salome</i>, took no guitar lessons for +<i>Don Quichotte</i>. 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 <i>Don Quixote</i> as +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span>the feminine instrument par excellence.” Was +the guitar as we know it in existence at that +epoch? I think the <i>vihuela</i> was the guitar of the +period.... Maurice Ravel wrote a Spanish opera, +<i>L’heure Espagnole</i> (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 <i>Der Corregidor</i> is +founded on the novel, “Il Sombrero de tres Picos,” +of the Spanish writer, Pedro de Alarcon (1833-91). +His unfinished opera <i>Manuel Venegas</i> also +has a Spanish subject, suggested by Alarcon’s “El +Nino de la Bola.” Other Spanish operas are Beethoven’s +<i>Fidelio</i>, Balfe’s <i>The Rose of Castille</i>, Verdi’s +<i>Ernani</i> and <i>Il Trovatore</i>, Rossini’s <i>Il Barbiere +di Siviglia</i>, Mozart’s <i>Don Giovanni</i> and <i>Le Nozze +di Figaro</i>, Weber’s <i>Preciosa</i> (really a play with incidental +music), Dargomijsky’s <i>The Stone Guest</i> +(Pushkin’s version of the Don Juan story. This +opera, by the way, was one of the many retouched +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span>and completed by Rimsky-Korsakow), Reznicek’s +<i>Donna Diana</i>—and Wagner’s <i>Parsifal</i>! The +American composer John Knowles Paine’s opera +<i>Azara</i>, dealing with a Moorish subject, has, I +think, never been performed.</p> + + +<p class="ph3">II</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>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 <i>musical harmony</i>. Others +are artificial and are played by the touch—such +as the harp, the <i>vihuela</i> (the ancient guitar, which +resembles the lute), and others like them; the +music of these is called <i>artificial</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>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.</p> + +<p>The Spanish composers had their full share in +the process of crystallizing music into forms of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span>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....</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>century had too great an influence on the +secular composers of the present day.</p> + + +<p class="ph3">III</p> + +<p>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 +<i>flamenco</i>, or gipsy. The dances, almost invariably +accompanied by song, are generally in 3-4 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>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 <i>fioriture</i>, 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span>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.”</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>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 <i>fioriture</i> +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span>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 <i>Spanish Fantasy</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span>but the fingerboard as well, in intricate and rapid +<i>tempo</i>; 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.)</p> + +<p>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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span>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 <i>real thrill</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>vers libre</i>. 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span>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 <i>Le +Cygne</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>bandarria</i> (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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>the Virgin, when the festival of Our Lady del Pilar +is celebrated at Saragossa.”</p> + +<p>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.’”</p> + +<p>Chabrier, in his astounding and amusing letters +from Spain, gives us vivid pictures and interesting +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span>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....</p> + +<p>“That is the Andalusian.</p> + +<p>“Every evening we go with Alice to the café-concerts +where the malagueñas, the Soledas, the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>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 (<i>le tangage +du navire</i>) 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span>Lola, olè la Carmen! que gracia! que elegancia! all +that to excite the young dancer. It is vertiginous—it +is unspeakable!</p> + +<p>“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....”</p> + +<p>As it is on these dances that composers invariably +base their Spanish music (not alone Albeniz, +Chapí, Bretón, and Granados, but Chabrier, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span>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 +<i>Ghowasee</i> of the Egyptians, and the <i>Nautch</i> of +the Hindoos, is called the <i>Olè</i> by Spaniards, the +<i>Romalis</i> 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.</p> + +<p>“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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span>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 <i>alpisteras</i> 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.)</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span>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.”</p> + +<p>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 (<i>sic</i>) ‘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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span>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.”</p> + +<p>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).</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>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:</p> + +<p>“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 +(<i>taconeos</i>), the crack of fingers and castanets, +the supple swaying of the dancers, fill the spectators +with ecstasy.</p> + +<p>“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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span>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. <i>Olè! +Olè!</i> Faces beam and burn. <i>Olè! Olè!</i></p> + +<p>“The bolero intoxicates, the fandango inflames.”</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span>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.</p> + + +<p class="ph3">IV</p> + +<p>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 <i>cañas</i> and +<i>playeras</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Blind beggars have a habit of singing the songs, +in certain provinces, with a wealth of florid ornament, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>flamenco</i> and what is Spanish. However, +collections (few to be sure) have been attempted +of gipsy songs.</p> + +<p>Elsewhere in this rambling article I have +touched on the <i>villancicos</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span>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.</p> + + +<p class="ph3">V</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span>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 <i>revues</i>, and such popular +airs as <i>La Paraguaya</i> and <i>Y ... Como le Vá?</i> +were originally danced and sung in Spanish theatres. +The composer of these airs, J. Valverde +<i>fils</i>, indeed found the French market so good that +he migrated to Paris, and for some time has been +writing <i>musique mélangée ... une moitié de +chaque nation</i>. So <i>La Rose de Grenade</i>, composed +for Paris, might have been written for +Spain, with slight melodic alterations and tauromachian +allusions in the book.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span>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, <i>flamenco</i>, 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 <i>Goyescas</i> +(the opera), which is on its safest ground during +the dances and becomes excessively vague at other +times; but <i>Goyescas</i> is not a zarzuela, because +there is no spoken dialogue. Otherwise it bears +the earmarks. A zarzuela stands somewhere between +a French <i>revue</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span>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, +<i>Gigantes y Cabezudos</i> (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 <i>La Gran Via</i> +(by Valverde, <i>père</i>), 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.</p> + +<p><i>La Gran Via</i>, 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 (<i>paso-doble</i>). The tunes have little +distinction; nor can the orchestration be considered +brilliant. There is a great deal of noise and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span>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 <i>La Gran Via</i> 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.)</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span> +because it was surrounded by <i>zarzas</i>, +brambles). It was called <i>El Jardin de Falerina</i>; +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 <i>La Selva sin +Amor</i> (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, +<i>Ni Amor se Libre de Amor</i>. 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span>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 <i>plegarias</i> +(French, <i>prière</i>), and in the royal apartments +with <i>canciones</i> and <i>villancicos</i>. (<i>Canciones</i> are +songs inclining towards the ballad-form. <i>Villancicos</i> +are songs in the old Spanish measure; they +receive their name from their rustic character, as +supposedly they were first composed by the +<i>villanos</i> 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 <i>villancicos</i> and +<i>cantacillos</i> which alternated with the dialogue in +the works of Juan del Encina and Lucas Fernandez, +without forgetting the <i>ensaladas</i>, the <i>jacaras</i>, +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), +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span>the <i>tonadilla</i>, 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.”</p> + + +<p class="ph3">VI</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>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 <i>lied</i> makes a corresponding +development; could it be said then that the +national lyric drama is the same <i>lied</i> 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.</p> + +<p>I hesitate for a moment on the name of Martin +y Solar, born at Valencia; died at St. Petersburg, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span>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, <i>l’Arbore di Diana</i>, <i>la Cosa Rara</i>, +and <i>La Capricciosa Corretta</i> (a version of <i>The +Taming of the Shrew</i>) 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 <i>Don Giovanni</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span>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 <i>Los +Esclavas Felices</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 (<i>La mort du Tasse</i> +and <i>Florestan</i>), at the Italiens in Paris (<i>Fazzoletto</i>), +at the Opéra-Comique in Paris (<i>Deux +Contrats</i>), 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 <i>El Poeta Calculista</i>, which is so +Spanish in accent and harmony—and so beautiful—that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span>it has found a place in a collection +of folk-tunes!)</p> + +<p>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 <i>Il Solitario</i>, <i>La Tregua di +Ptolemaide</i>, and <i>Pedro el Cruél</i>. 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.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>does not hesitate to pronounce his trilogy <i>Los +Pireneos</i> (Barcelona, 1902; the prologue was performed +in Venice in 1897) the most important +work for the theatre written in Spain. His first +opera, <i>El Último Abencerrajo</i>, was produced in +Barcelona in 1874. Some of his other works are +<i>Quasimodo</i>, 1875; <i>El Tasso a Ferrara</i>, <i>Cleopatra</i>, +<i>Mazeppa</i> (Madrid, 1881), <i>Celestine</i> (1904), and +<i>La Matinada</i> (1905). J. A. Fuller-Maitland +says that the influence of Wagner is traceable in +all his stage work. (Wagner is adored in Spain; +<i>Parsifal</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.” +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>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 <i>Don Quixote</i> of Strauss, the <i>Boris Godunow</i> +of Moussorgsky, Smetana, Manuel Garcia, Edward +Elgar, Jaques-Dalcroze, Bruckner, Mahler, +Albeniz, Palestrina, Busoni, and the tenth symphony +of Beethoven!</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Gigantes y Cabezudos</i> for which Echegaray furnished +the libretto. Among his other works in +this form are <i>Los Dineros del Sacristan</i>, <i>Los +Africanistas</i> (Barcelona, 1894), <i>El Cabo Primero</i> +(Barcelona, 1895), and <i>La Rueda de la Fortuna</i> +(Madrid, 1896).</p> + +<p>At a concert given in the New York Hippodrome, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span>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 <i>Carceleras</i>, +from Ruperto Chapí’s zarzuela <i>Hija del +Zebedeo</i>. 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 <i>La +Hija de Jefté</i> sent from Rome. The following is +an incomplete list of his operas and zarzuelas: +<i>Via Libra</i>, <i>Los Gendarmes</i>, <i>El Rey que Rabio</i> (3 +acts), <i>La Verbena de la Paloma</i>, <i>El Reclamo</i>, <i>La +Tempestad</i>, <i>La Bruja</i>, <i>La Leyenda del Monje</i>, <i>Las +Campanados</i>, <i>La Czarina</i>, <i>El Milagro de la Virgen</i>, +<i>Roger de Flor</i> (3 acts), <i>Las Naves de Cortes, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>Circe</i> (3 acts), <i>A qui Base Farsa un Hombre</i>, +<i>Juan Francisco</i> (3 acts, 1905; rewritten and presented +in 1908 as <i>Entre Rocas</i>), <i>Los Madrileños</i> +(1908), <i>La Dama Roja</i> (1 act, 1908), <i>Hesperia</i> +(1908), <i>Las Calderas de Pedro Bolero</i> (1909) +and <i>Margarita la Tornera</i>, presented just before +his death without success.</p> + +<p>His other works include an oratorio, <i>Los +Angeles</i>, a symphonic poem, <i>Escenas de Capa y +Espada</i>, a symphony in D, <i>Moorish Fantasy</i> 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, <i>Blasones y Talegas</i> +in the New York Public Library.</p> + +<p>I have already spoken of <i>Dolores</i>. 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 <i>Dolores</i> is charming, delightful +in its fluent melody and its striking rhythms, thoroughly +Spanish in style, but certain to find favour +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>in America, if it were produced here. Our own +Eleanora de Cisneros at a Press Club Benefit in +Barcelona appeared in Bretón’s zarzuela <i>La Verbena +de la Paloma</i>. Another of Bretón’s famous +zarzuelas is <i>Los Amantes de Ternel</i> (Madrid, +1889). His works for the theatre further include +<i>Tabaré</i>, for which he wrote both words and music +(Madrid, 1913); <i>Don Gil</i> (Barcelona, 1914); +<i>Garin</i> (Barcelona, 1891); <i>Raquel</i> (Madrid, +1900); <i>Guzman el Bueno</i> (Madrid, 1876); <i>El +Certamen de Cremona</i> (Madrid, 1906); <i>El Campanere +de Begoña</i> (Madrid, 1878); <i>El Barberillo +en Orán</i>; <i>Corona contra Corona</i> (Madrid, 1879); +<i>Les Amores de un Príncipe</i> (Madrid, 1881); <i>El +Clavel Rojo</i> (1899); <i>Covadonga</i> (1901); and <i>El +Domingo de Ramos</i>, words by Echegaray (Madrid, +1894). His works for orchestra include: +<i>En la Alhambra</i>, <i>Los Galeotes</i>, and <i>Escenas Andaluzas</i>, +a suite. He has written three string +quartets, a piano trio, a piano quintet, and an +oratorio in two parts, <i>El Apocalipsis</i>.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span>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 <i>Danse macabre</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Iberia</i>, 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span>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, <i>Catalonia</i>, 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, <i>The Magic Opal</i> (produced +in London, 1893), <i>Enrico Clifford</i> (Barcelona, +1894; later heard in London), <i>Pepita +Jiminez</i> (Barcelona, 1895; afterwards given at +the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels), and <i>San +Anton de la Florida</i> (produced in Brussels as +<i>l’Ermitage Fleurie</i>). He left unfinished at his +death another opera destined for production in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span>Brussels at the Monnaie, <i>Merlin l’Enchanteur</i>. +None of his operas, with the exception of <i>Pepita +Jiminez</i>, which has been performed, I am told, in +all Spanish countries, achieved any particular +success, and it is <i>Iberia</i> and a few other piano +pieces which will serve to keep his memory green.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The names of Pahissa (both as conductor and +composer; one of his symphonic works is called +<i>The Combat</i>), Garcia Robles, represented by an +<i>Epitalame</i>, and Gibert, with two <i>Marines</i>, 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 +<i>Dante</i> was performed.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span>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, <i>El Centro de la Tierra</i> (Madrid; +December 22, 1895); three trios for piano +and strings, songs, and an orchestral suite.</p> + +<p>I have already referred to the Valverdes, father +and son. The father, in collaboration with Federico +Chueca, wrote <i>La Gran Via</i>. 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, <i>La Maison de +Danse</i>, produced, with Polaire, at the Vaudeville +in Paris, and two of his operettas, <i>La Rose de +Grenade</i> and <i>l’Amour en Espagne</i>, 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 <i>A los Toros</i>), Usandihaga +(who died in 1915), the composer of <i>Los Golondrinos</i>, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span>Oscar Erpla, Conrado del Campo, and Enrique +Morera.</p> + +<p>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 <i>all</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Shortly after his arrival in New York he stated +to several reporters that America knew nothing +about Spanish music, and that Bizet’s <i>Carmen</i> was +not in any sense Spanish. I hold no brief for +<i>Carmen</i> being Spanish but it is effective, and that +<i>Goyescas</i> as an opera is not. In the first place, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span>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 <i>Goyescas</i> 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 <i>piano</i> 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 <i>Goyescas</i> +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. <i>Goyescas</i>, like many +a zarzuela, lags when the dance rhythms cease. I +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span>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 <i>Goyescas</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>Enrique Granados y Campina was born July +27, 1867, at Lerida, Catalonia. (He died March +24, 1916; a passenger on the <i>Sussex</i>, 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 <i>Maria del Carmen</i> was produced +in Madrid and has since been heard in Valencia, +Barcelona, and other Spanish cities. Five +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span>years later some fragments of another opera, <i>Foletto</i>, +were produced at Barcelona. His third opera, +<i>Liliana</i>, was produced at Barcelona in 1911. +He wrote numerous songs to texts by the poet, +Apeles Mestres; Galician songs, two symphonic +poems, <i>La Nit del Mort</i> and <i>Dante</i> (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 (<i>Danzas Españolas</i>, <i>Valses +Poéticos</i>, <i>Bocetos</i>, <i>etc.</i>).</p> + + +<p><i>New York, March 20, 1916.</i></p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"><p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span></p> + + + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="Shall_We_Realize_Wagners_Ideals">Shall We Realize Wagner’s Ideals?</h2></div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span></p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[Pg 135]</span></p> + + + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="Shall_We_Realize_Wagners">Shall We Realize Wagner’s +Ideals?</h2></div> + + +<p>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) <i>Ariane et Barbe-Bleue</i> +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 <i>Boris Godunow</i>, 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. <i>Lohengrin</i> and <i>Tannhäuser</i> +are becoming a trifle shop-worn. They do not +glitter with the glory of a <i>Don Giovanni</i> or the +invincible splendour of an <i>Armide</i>. There are +parts of <i>Die Walküre</i> which are growing old. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>sung</i> +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 <i>bel canto</i> (it means only +<i>good singing</i>) brought about a controversy which +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span>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 <i>Siegfried</i>, +<i>Tristan und Isolde</i>, and <i>Lohengrin</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span>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.</p> + +<p>We are all familiar with the Bayreuth version +of Wotan in <i>Die Walküre</i> 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 <i>Siegfried</i> with gestures seemingly derived +from the exercises of a Swedish <i>turnverein</i>, +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 <i>motiv</i>, indicating the coming of the hero, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span>Siegfried, as the gods walk over the rainbow bridge +to Walhalla at the end of <i>Das Rheingold</i>; 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 <i>Götterdämmerung</i>; 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 +<i>Das Rheingold</i> for all the world as if they were the +protagonists of a fantastic minstrel show. (At +a performance of <i>Parsifal</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span>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!”)</p> + +<p>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 <i>tempi</i> to an exasperating degree. +I have heard performances of <i>Lohengrin</i> +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 <i>Tristan +und Isolde</i> 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.)</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span>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 <i>Ring</i> 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 <i>Siegfried</i> is not at all the Brünnhilde who +goes to sleep in <i>Die Walküre</i>. Then, although +Brünnhilde exploits a horse in <i>Götterdämmerung</i>, +she possesses none in <i>Die Walküre</i>; 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span>where I have seen the dramas, the decorations +of the scenes of Brünnhilde’s falling asleep and of +her awakening are quite different.</p> + +<p>Naturally, ingenious explanations have been devised +to fit these cases. For instance, one is told +that animals are <i>never</i> 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 <i>Ring</i> dramas should follow its predecessor +on succeeding days in a festival week. If +the <i>Ring</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span>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 <i>Die Walküre</i>, 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 +<i>Siegfried</i> and <i>Götterdämmerung</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>The mechanical devices demanded by Wagner +are generally complied with in a stupidly clumsy +manner. The first scene of <i>Das Rheingold</i> 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 <i>Das Rheingold</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span>properly conveyed; the ride of the valkyries is +frankly evaded by most stage managers; the bird +in <i>Siegfried</i> flies like a sickly crow; the final +scene in <i>Götterdämmerung</i> 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 <i>Parsifal</i> are carried out with as little +fidelity to symbolism, or truth, or beauty; and +the throwing of the lance in <i>Parsifal</i> is always +seemingly a wire trick rather than a magical one.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Götterdämmerung</i> +at the Metropolitan Opera House with +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span>that of <i>Boris Godunow</i>, 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 <i>Götterdämmerung</i>. +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 <i>Fidelio</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span>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.)</p> + +<p>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. <i>Carmen</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span>Milka Ternina can perform a like office for <i>Götterdämmerung</i> +or <i>Tristan und Isolde</i>; 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.</p> + +<p>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, +<i>the foremost stage decorator of Europe</i> (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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span>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.”</p> + +<p>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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span>Appia was doing very good work, but what has become +of him since I do not know.</p> + +<p>“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 <i>the</i> 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 <i>Walküren</i> rock is the most +beautiful scenic conception of Act III, <i>Die Walküre</i>, +I know of or could imagine. To my knowledge +no theatre has ever produced anything in conformity +with Appia’s sketches.”</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span>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.”</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span>(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.</p> + +<p>“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?</p> + +<p>“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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span>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.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span>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.”<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>In Appia’s design for the third act of <i>Die Walküre</i>, +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span>out in any theatre with which I have acquaintance.</p> + +<p>Appia’s design for the first scene of <i>Parsifal</i> +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 <i>Tristan und Isolde</i> culminates in a +<i>pitch-dark</i> stage during the singing of the love-duet. +This artist has designed the scenery for all +the <i>Ring</i> and has indicated throughout what the +lighting and action shall be.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Macbeth</i>, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span>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.</p> + +<p>Read Gordon Craig on <i>Macbeth</i> and you will +get an idea of how an artist would go to work on +<i>Tristan und Isolde</i> or <i>Götterdämmerung</i>. “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?</p> + +<p>“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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span>them; now quickly set them down on your paper; +<i>the lines and their direction</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span>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 <i>Hamlet</i>? 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 <i>Monna Vanna</i> were particularly beautiful and +he really seems to have revolutionized the staging +of <i>revues</i> 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, <i>Caliban</i>. 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. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span>Lee Simonson, in particular, has achieved distinctive +results. I have seldom seen better work of +its kind on the stage than his settings for <i>The +Magical City</i>, <i>Pierre Patelin</i>, and <i>The Seagull</i>. +At the Metropolitan Opera House no account +seems to be taken of this art movement, although +during the season of 1915-16 in <i>The Taming of +the Shrew</i> an attempt was made to emulate the +very worst that has been done in modern Germany.)</p> + +<p>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 <i>Hamlet</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span>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 <i>Das Rheingold</i>. Roerich, on the other +hand, who designed the scenery and costumes for +<i>Prince Igor</i> as it was presented in Paris and London +in the summer of 1914, would find no difficulty +in staging <i>Götterdämmerung</i>. 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span>and I thought how a similar simple contrivance +might make a more imaginative final scene for <i>Götterdämmerung</i>.</p> + +<p>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, <i>The +Golden Cock</i>, 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 <i>Siegfried</i>. 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 <i>Siegfried</i>, 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, <i>The +Legend of Joseph</i>, the figure of the guardian angel +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span>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 <i>loggia</i> 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 <i>Siegfried</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“Wagner foresaw that in the new drama the +whole principle of the stage scenery must undergo +a complete alteration but did not particularize in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span>detail. The <i>Meister</i> 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.)</p> + +<p>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 <i>motiv</i> +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span>changed his mind. Paris would have none of +<i>Tannhäuser</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span>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 <i>Parsifal</i>, 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 <i>Faust</i>. Mme. Fremstad always sang +Brünnhilde in <i>Götterdämmerung</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span>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 (<i>Wort-Tondrama</i>). +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 +<i>Ring</i> which has in any sense realized its true possibilities, +the ideal of Wagner.</p> + + +<p><i>June 24, 1915.</i></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> 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.”</p> + +</div></div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Bridge_Burners">The Bridge Burners</h2> +<p class="ph3"> +“<i>Zieh’hin! ich kann dich nicht halten!</i>”</p> +<p class="author"> +Der Wanderer.<br> +</p> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[Pg 169]</span></p> + + +<p class="ph2">The Bridge Burners</p></div> + + +<p class="ph3">I</p> + +<p>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 <i>The Legend of Joseph</i> +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.</p> + +<p>On the whole, I think, I should have found it impossible +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span>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 <i>why</i> +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”.)</p> + +<p>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 <i>Pelléas +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span>und Mélisande</i> and his <i>Kammersymphonie</i>; of +Strawinsky—aside from the three slight pieces +for string quartet—nothing later than <i>Petrouchka</i>. +Such new works as John Alden Carpenter’s +<i>Adventures in a Perambulator</i> and Enrique +Granados’s <i>Goyescas</i>—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:</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span>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 <i>Symphonie +Fantastique</i>, “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 <i>Bible +Sonatas</i> of Kuhnau, Rameau’s <i>Sighs</i> and <i>Tender +Plants</i>, Dittersdorf’s twelve programme symphonies +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span>illustrating Ovid’s <i>Metamorphoses</i>, and +John Sebastian Bach’s <i>Capriccio on the Departure +of my Dearly Beloved Brother</i>. Beethoven wrote +a <i>Pastoral Symphony</i> 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 <i>knows</i> 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 <i>Carneval</i>, for example, +each piece is explained by its title. And +explanations, or shadows of explanations (Cathedral, +Rhenish, Spring, etc.), hover about the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span>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 <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> and the <i>Fantastique</i> +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 <i>Don Quixote</i> and +<i>Till Eulenspiegel</i>. Understanding of this music +and complete enjoyment of it rely in a large measure +on the “explanation.” The <i>Symphonia Domestica</i> +and <i>Heldenleben</i> 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 <i>The Perfect +Wagnerite</i>: “To be able to follow the music of +<i>The Ring</i>, 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span>ordinary Englishman recognizes and attaches a +definite significance to the opening bars of <i>God +Save the Queen</i>.” 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, <i>La +Mer</i>, <i>l’Après-midi d’un Faune</i>, <i>Iberia</i>, nearly all +the piano music; Rimsky-Korsakow’s <i>Scheherazade</i>, +<i>Antar</i>, and <i>Sadko</i> (the symphonic suite, not +the opera); Vincent d’Indy’s <i>Istar</i>; Borodine’s +<i>Thamar</i>; Dukas’s <i>l’Apprenti Sorcier</i>; Franck’s <i>Le +Chasseur Maudit</i> and <i>Les Eolides</i>; Saint-Saëns’s +<i>Phaëton</i>, <i>La Jeunesse d’Hercule</i>, and <i>Le Rouet +d’Omphale</i>; Busoni’s music for <i>Turandot</i>: the list +is endless and it is futile to continue it.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, would undoubtedly “give +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span>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 <i>musical</i> +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 <i>his</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span>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.</p> + +<p>Under the circumstances it seems a bit thick to +jump on Strawinsky for writing music which has +to be explained. Such pieces as <i>Fireworks</i> or the +<i>Scherzo Fantastique</i> 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 <i>Grotesques</i> 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 <i>Carneval</i>, +by thinking of the titles. In Strawinsky’s +opera, <i>The Nightingale</i>, the text of the opera +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span>serves as the programme. There are no representative +themes; there is no “working-out.” +You are not required to remember <i>leit-motive</i> in +order to familiarize your emotions with the proper +capers to cut at particular moments when these +<i>motive</i> 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 <i>point de départ</i>,” 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 <i>Fireworks</i> 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 <i>Die Walküre</i>....</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span>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 <i>cliché</i> 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. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span>At a concert given at the Dal Verme in Milan, for +example, the pieces were called <i>The Awakening of +a Great City</i>, <i>A Dinner on the Kursaal Terrace</i> +(doubtless with an imitation of the guests eating +soup), and <i>A Meet of Automobiles and Aeroplanes</i>.</p> + +<p>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 <i>La +Mer</i>, 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 <i>Nu Descendant l’Escalier</i>. +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 <i>Nature Morte dans un Jardin</i>.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span></p> +<p>“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 <i>Tannhäuser</i>, 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span>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.’</p> + +<p>“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.)</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span>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.</p> + + +<p class="ph3">II</p> + +<p>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 +<i>tempo</i> would transform the celebrated air in <i>Orphée</i> +from “<i>J’ai perdu mon Euridice</i>” to “<i>J’ai trouvé +mon Euridice</i>”? Rossini found an overture +which he had formerly used for a tragedy quite +suitable for <i>Il Barbiere di Siviglia</i>, 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span>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 <i>with no explanation +whatever</i>.</p> + + +<p class="ph3">III</p> + +<p>“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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span>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.”</p> + +<p>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.”</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span></p> +<p>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, <i>The Firebird</i> and <i>Petrouchka</i> were performed +in New York and were hailed by the critics, +<i>en masse</i>, 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. <i>Siegfried</i>, +as a whole, would be pretty tiresome in concert +form and so would <i>La Fille du Regiment</i>. +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 <i>Alceste</i>, the two +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span><i>Iphigénies</i> and <i>Armide</i>—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 <i>Alceste</i> and that lyric +drama, as a result, has never sprung to me from +the printed page as do the notes of <i>Orphée</i>, <i>Armide</i>, +and <i>Iphigénie en Tauride</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>This theory in regard to <i>Petrouchka</i> and <i>The +Firebird</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span>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. <i>The Sacrifice to the Spring</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Strawinsky has, it is true, worked away from +<i>representation</i> (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 <i>Scherzo Fantastique</i> +and <i>Fireworks</i> 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 <i>The +Sacrifice to the Spring</i> you will find no attempt +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span>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 +<i>wiegenlied</i> 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 <i>more</i> than the +poem.</p> + +<p>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....”</p> + +<p>Yet Mr. Ornstein in his <i>Impressions of the +Thames</i> is as near actual representation as Whistler +or Monet ... certainly a musical impressionist.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span>judged and rules by which it could be constructed. +She was unsuccessful.</p> + + +<p class="ph3">IV</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<p class="ph3">V</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span>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 <i>perfection</i> +only,” writes Busoni, in “A New Æsthetic of +Music,” “and through bringing this into harmony +with <i>his own</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span>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 <i>Wild Men’s Dance</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span>related in the case of Strawinsky. He played +some measures of his ballet, <i>The Firebird</i>, on the +piano to his master, Rimsky-Korsakow, until the +composer of <i>Scheherazade</i> 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 <i>has</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span>ago; don’t expect <i>anything</i> 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 <i>Petrouchka</i> 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!”</p> + +<p>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 <i>when +it results from the leading of his part writing</i>.” +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span>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’—<i>in +a sphere where no dissonances can +possibly exist</i>!” 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 <i>The Ring</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span>will find that Wagner exacts nothing further. +There is not a single bar of ‘classical music’ in +<i>The Ring</i>—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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span>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!</p> + + +<p class="ph3">VI</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span>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 <i>Musica Futurista</i> +(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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span>Strawinsky ... how the public joyfully and rapturously +takes to its heart his dissonances, and +even asks for more!</p> + + +<p class="ph3">VII</p> + +<p>Vincent d’Indy, reported by Marcel Duchamp, +said recently that the philosophy of music is +twenty years behind that of the other arts.</p> + + +<p class="ph3">VIII</p> + +<p>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 <i>has written +a book</i>” (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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span>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 <i>The +Nightingale</i>): “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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span>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.”</p> + +<p>This idea of natural expression becomes associated +in any great composer’s mind with another +idea, the horror of the <i>cliché</i>. 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 +<i>cliché</i>, for, under this principle, if a rule or a +habit is weighed and found wanting it is immediately +discarded.</p> + +<p>“Routine (<i>cliché</i>) is highly esteemed and frequently +required; in musical ‘officialdom’ it is a +<i>sine qua non</i>,” writes Busoni. “That routine in +music should exist at all, and furthermore that +it can be nominated as a condition in the musician’s +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span>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 <i>cliché</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span>of expressing himself? Moussorgsky avoided +<i>cliché</i> 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 <i>cliché</i> 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 <i>cliché</i>, 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, <i>La Montagne Noire</i>, 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span>itself, the innovation would not serve to make +her opera interesting.” Strawinsky’s horror of +<i>cliché</i> 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 <i>Petrouchka</i>, 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. <i>The +Firebird</i>, too, in spite of its fantasy and brilliance, +is perfectly understandable in terms of the chromatic +scale. In <i>The Sacrifice to the Spring</i>, 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. <i>Fireworks</i> is +impressionistic but it is no more so (although the +result is arrived at by a wholly dissimilar method) +than <i>La Mer</i> of Debussy. But it is in his opera, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span><i>The Nightingale</i>, 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 +<i>The Sacrifice to the Spring</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span>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 <i>think</i> them, sometimes, +but it is not necessary for any one with a +receptive ear (not an <i>expectant</i> 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 +<i>cliché</i> which makes certain music “popular.” +The public as a whole really prefers music based +on <i>cliché</i>, with a melody in which the end is foreordained +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span>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 <i>cliché</i> of to-day is not the <i>cliché</i> 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 <i>cliché</i> of the studio whatsoever, arrives at a +perfectly natural form of expression in his lyric +drama, <i>The Nightingale</i>, 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span>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.)</p> + +<p>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 +<i>wheat</i> while the sun shines.” Richard Strauss +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span>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 <i>cliché</i> to be scorned +by a new generation (scorned in the sense that it +will not be imitated, except by inferior men).</p> + +<p>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) +<i>laws of styles</i>. 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span>followed by new scandals, new upsettings, +and—new enlargements.”</p> + +<p>“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 <i>felt</i> only and not +<i>understood</i>. 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.”</p> + +<p>Remember that Hanslick called <i>Tristan und +Isolde</i> “an abomination of sense and language” +and Chorley wrote “I have never been so blanked, +pained, wearied, <i>insulted</i> even (the word is not too +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span>strong), by a work of pretension as by ... +<i>Tannhäuser</i>....” “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.”</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span>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....”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<p><i>New York, April 16, 1916.</i></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span></p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span></p> +<div class="chapter"> + + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_New_Principle_in_Music">A New Principle in Music</h2></div> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span></p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217"></a>[Pg 217]</span></p> + + +<p class="ph2">A New Principle in Music</p></div> + + +<p>Although Igor Strawinsky plainly proclaimed +himself a genius in <i>The Firebird</i> +(1909-10), it was in <i>Petrouchka</i> (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.</p> + +<p>Strauss, following Wagner’s theory of the <i>leit-motiv</i>, +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), +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span>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 <i>Pelléas et Mélisande</i> there is +but one climax of sound and in <i>l’Après-midi d’un +Faune</i> and his other orchestral works he is equally +continent in the use of dynamics).</p> + +<p>Igor Strawinsky has not been deaf to the blandishments +of these composers. He has used the +<i>leit-motiv</i> (sparingly) in both <i>The Firebird</i> and +<i>Petrouchka</i>. He abandoned it in <i>The Sacrifice to +the Spring</i> (1913) and in <i>The Nightingale</i> (1914). +His powers of representation are as great as those +of Strauss; it is only necessary to recall the music +of the bird in <i>The Firebird</i>, his orchestral piece, +<i>Fireworks</i>, which received warm praise from a +manufacturer of pyrotechnics, and the street +organ music in <i>Petrouchka</i>. 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 <i>The +Nightingale</i> we find him making little or no attempt +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span>at representation. The bird does not sing +like the little brown warbler; instead Strawinsky +has endeavoured to write music which would give +the <i>feeling</i> 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 <i>The Firebird</i>, +and elsewhere in Strawinsky, but it is not a predominant +use of it. In this “conte dansé” he +also suggests the <i>Pelléas et Mélisande</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span>sound each makes. He divides his strings continually, +of course; they do not all play alike as +the violins, say, in <i>Il Barbiere di Siviglia</i>, but they +often all play at once.</p> + +<p>Strawinsky experimented at first with the full +orchestra and he even utilized it in such late works +as <i>Petrouchka</i> and <i>The Nightingale</i>. However, +in his search for “pure tone” he used it in a new +way. In <i>Petrouchka</i>, for example, infrequently +you will hear more than <i>one of each instrument +at a time</i> 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 <i>only one of each</i>.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span>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 +<i>Pierrot Lunaire</i> instantly come to mind, but +Strawinsky did not stop with chamber music. He +applied his new principle to the larger forms.</p> + +<p>In his newest work, <i>The Village Weddings</i>, 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, <i>no two of whom play the same +instrument</i> (to be sure there are two violins but +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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, <i>The Golden Cock</i>, 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 <i>The Village Weddings</i>, +devised as part of her stage setting two tiers of +seats, one on either side of the stage, extending +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span>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 <i>Scheherazade</i>, protested.</p> + +<p>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 <i>The Golden Cock</i> in its new form, +these performances served to fire Strawinsky with +the inspiration for his new work. He intends <i>The +Village Weddings</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Petrouchka</i> is a popular French song +of several seasons ago, <i>La Jambe de Bois</i> (a +song now forbidden in Paris); the final wedding +music in <i>The Firebird</i> is an <i>adagio</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span>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 <i>Petrouchka</i>. +It would not surprise me at all to discover <i>Hello +Frisco</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>style music hall</i>, 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 +<i>Petrouchka</i>. 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.</p> + + +<p><i>New York, February 6, 1916.</i></p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226"></a>[Pg 226]</span></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227"></a>[Pg 227]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="Leo_Ornstein">Leo Ornstein</h2> + +<p class="ph3"> +“<i>the only true blue, genuine Futurist composer alive.</i>”</p> +<p class="author"> +James Huneker.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228"></a>[Pg 228]</span></p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"> +<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229"></a>[Pg 229]</span> + + +<p class="ph2">Leo Ornstein</p></div> + + +<p>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 <i>he</i> 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 <i>The Wild Men’s +Dance</i>? 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....</p> + +<p>Recently I went to hear Ornstein play under a +misconception. I thought that he, with an announced +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span>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 <i>The Girl of the Golden West</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span>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 <i>Faust</i>. Thereupon there was +so much applause that he came back and played +his scherzino again. His répertoire in this <i>genre</i> +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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>The Wild Men’s Dance</i>; it was not the colour +painter of the two <i>Impressions of Notre Dame</i>; +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.... +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span>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:</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“It began with Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and +Fugue, included Beethoven’s <i>Sonata Appassionata</i>, +six Chopin numbers, and finally Rubinstein’s D +minor concerto, in which young Ornstein was assisted +by the Volpe Symphony Orchestra. To say +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span>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.”</p> + +<p>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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span>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).</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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 <i>The Wild Men’s Dance</i>, his face +lights up with a sort of sardonic appreciation. +He has discarded his sack cloth coat for a velvet +jacket of similar cut.</p> + +<p>“He began with two lovely impressionistic +things by Vannin (Sanborn says that this is ‘programme +for Ornstein’), <i>The Waltzers</i> and <i>Night</i>. +A long sonata by Cyril Scott (almost entirely in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span>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 +<i>Oiseaux Tristes</i> twittered their sorrows prettily in +the treble, and a sonatina by the same composer +seemed negligible. Albeniz’s <i>Almeria</i>, a section +of the twelve-parted <i>Iberia</i>, was a Spanish picture +of worth. Ornstein followed with his own pieces, +<i>Improvisata</i>, a vivid bit of colour and rhythm, and +<i>Impressions of the Thames</i>, 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. <i>The +Wild Men’s Dance</i> 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 <i>Fairy Pictures</i> 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.... +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span>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.”</p> + +<p>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.’</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span></p> +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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 +<i>me</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span>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.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span>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 <i>The +Wild Men’s Dance</i> 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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>With Busoni and Schoenberg he believes that +there are no discords, only chords and chords ... +and that there are many combinations of notes, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span>“millions of them” which have not yet been devised.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>His opinions of other modern composers are +interesting: he considers Ravel greater than Debussy, +and speaks with enthusiasm about <i>Daphnis +et Chloë</i>. 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. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span>But Strawinsky is the most stimulating and interesting +of all the modern composers. He feels what +he writes.”</p> + +<p>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 +<i>The Wild Men’s Dance</i>, <i>Liberty</i> (“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 <i>Liberty</i>—at least not <i>that</i> +piece—without associating myself in the public +mind with a certain social propaganda.” Just +the same he means the propaganda. In the <i>Dwarf +Suite</i> 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 <i>Three Moods</i>. “In Boston they did not +like my <i>Three Moods</i>. They found my <i>Anger</i> 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 <i>Peace</i> and <i>Joy</i> +which enclose it.” The <i>Impressions of the Thames</i> +I have already referred to. With the two <i>Impressions +of Notre Dame</i> it stands as his successful +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span>experiment with impressionism. The <i>Notre Dame</i> +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 (<i>Wiegenliedchen</i>, <i>In Goldener Fülle</i>, +and <i>Waldseligkeit</i>) 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 <i>Wiegenliedchen</i> 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 <i>underneath</i>.” But the +<i>Berceuse</i> in Ornstein’s <i>Nine Miniatures</i> 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 <i>Russian Suite</i> 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.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span></p> +<p>Ornstein has also written a composition for +orchestra entitled <i>The Faun</i>, 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 +<i>Catalonia</i>, Schoenberg’s <i>Five Pieces</i>, and Strawinsky’s +<i>Sacrifice to the Spring</i>.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<p><i>June 14, 1916.</i></p> + + +<p class="ph3">THE END</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_244"></a>[Pg 244]</span></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_245"></a>[Pg 245]</span></p> + + + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_logo_2" style="width: 12.5em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i_logo.jpg" alt="logo - Dog running"> +</figure> + + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Borzoi</span>” stands for the best in literature +in all its branches—drama and fiction, +poetry and art. “<span class="smcap">Borzoi</span>” also stands for +unusually pleasing book-making.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Borzoi</span> Books are good books and there +is one for every taste worthy of the name. +A few are briefly described on the next +page. Mr. Knopf will be glad to see that +you are notified regularly of new and forthcoming +<span class="smcap">Borzoi</span> Books if you will send him +your name and address for that purpose. +He will also see that your local dealer is +supplied.</p> + +<p class="ph3"> +<span class="smcap">Address</span> THE BORZOI<br> +220 <span class="smcap">West Forty-Second Street</span><br> +<span class="smcap">New York</span><br> +</p> +</div> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"><p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span></p> + +<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_logo_3" style="width: 12.5em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/i_logo.jpg" alt="logo - Dog running"> +</figure> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_New_Borzoi_Books"><span class="smcap">The New Borzoi Books</span> +<br> +<i>Published by</i> ALFRED A. KNOPF</h2></div> + + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="hanging-indent1">TALES OF THE PAMPAS By W. H. Hudson, author of “Green +Mansions.” Including what Edward Garnett calls “the finest short +story in English.” Three-color jacket. $1.25</p> +<p class="hanging-indent1"> +A DRAKE! BY GEORGE! By John Trevena. A perfectly +delightful tale of Devonshire, with plot and humor a-plenty. $1.50</p> +<p class="hanging-indent1"> +THE CRUSHED FLOWER From the Russian of Leonid Andreyev. +Three novelettes and some great short stories by this master. $1.50</p> +<p class="hanging-indent1"> +JOURNALISM VERSUS ART By Max Eastman. A brilliant +and searching analysis of what is wrong with our magazine writing and +illustrations. Many pictures of unusual interest. $1.00</p> +<p class="hanging-indent1"> +MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORY From the Russian of Alexander +Kornilov. The only work in English that comes right down to the +present day. Two volumes, boxed, per set. $5.00</p> +<p class="hanging-indent1"> +THE RUSSIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING From the Russian of +Alexandre Benois, with an introduction by Christian Brinton and thirty-two +full-page plates. The only survey in English. $3.00</p> +<p class="hanging-indent1"> +SUSSEX GORSE By Sheila Kaye-Smith. A wonderfully vigorous +and powerful novel of Sussex. A really masterly book. $1.50</p> +<p class="hanging-indent1"> +RUSSIA’S MESSAGE By William English Walling, with 31 illustrations. +A new and revised edition of this most important work. $2.00</p> +<p class="hanging-indent1"> +WAR From the Russian of Michael Artzibashef, author of “Sanine.” +A four-act play of unusual power and strength. $1.00</p> +<p class="hanging-indent1"> +MORAL From the German of Ludwig Thoma. A three-act comedy +that is unlike anything ever attempted in English. $1.00</p> +<p class="hanging-indent1"> +MOLOCH By Beulah Marie Dix. Probably the most thrilling play +ever written about war. $1.00</p> +<p class="hanging-indent1"> +THE INSPECTOR-GENERAL From the Russian of Nicolai +Gogol, author of “Taras Bulba.” The first adequate version in English +of this masterpiece of comedy. $1.00</p> +<p class="hanging-indent1"> +THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT A handsome holiday edition +of George Meredith’s Arabian Entertainment. With fifteen beautiful +plates and an introduction by George Eliot. Quarto. $5.00</p> +</div> + + +<p class="ph4"><i>All prices are net.</i></p> + +<p class="ph3">220 WEST FORTY-SECOND STREET, NEW YORK</p> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="chapter"> +<div class="tnote"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Note">Transcriber’s Note</h2> + +<p>New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.</p> +<p>Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Hyphenation was +standardized.</p> + +<p>Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following changes:</p> + + +<table class="autotable"> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Page_44">44</a>: “Greig’s <i>Peer Gynt</i>”</td> +<td class="tdl">“Grieg’s <i>Peer Gynt</i>”</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Page_73">73</a>: “<i>l’Heure Espagnole</i>”</td> +<td class="tdl">“<i>L’heure Espagnole</i>”</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Page_77">77</a>: “colour of Zurburan”</td> +<td class="tdl">“colour of Zurbaran”</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Page_77">77</a>: “Juan de Juares”</td> +<td class="tdl">“Juan de Juarez”</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Page_84">84</a>: “<i>Fantasy</i> of Farrega”</td> +<td class="tdl">“<i>Fantasy</i> of Tárrega”</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Page_136">136</a>: “oder Der misverstandene”</td> +<td class="tdl">“oder Der missverstandene”</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Page_178">178</a>: “is a <i>pointe de depart</i>”</td> +<td class="tdl">“is a <i>point de départ</i>”</td> +</tr> +</table> + + +</div> +</div> + + + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75908 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/75908-h/images/cover.jpg b/75908-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c150fc1 --- /dev/null +++ b/75908-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/75908-h/images/i_logo.jpg b/75908-h/images/i_logo.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5c207bc --- /dev/null +++ b/75908-h/images/i_logo.jpg |
