SENT FREE. Complete Catalogues containing Portraits of American and Foreign Composers, No. 1 Piano, No. 2 Vocal, No. 3a Anthems and Partsongs, Mixed Voices, No. 3b Women's Voices, No. 3c Men's Voices, No. 4 Violin, No. 5 Organ. SCOTT, C. P.-Father. Take My Hand (S: A. Bass) .10 .10 .15 .12 SUMMARY OF CONTENTS only a pale light is thrown out by the fire on the hearth; the listener's heart beats with a secret terror," etc., etc. These metaphors, as Mr. Boschot remarks, now seem old-fashioned and absurd. Are they more ridiculous or incongruous than those used to-day by æsthetes and even writers on musical history? Mr. Boschot finds that the only difference is this: the ancient incongruity is no longer in fashion. "A work of art has not true existence except through the sensation, through the cerebral or cerebro-spinal excitement which it provokes. When we read these articles of flamboyant romanticism in which Berlioz attempted to translate his emotions into words, some of us smile and assume an air of superiority. We now have a more minute and exact knowledge of Beethoven and his music than that enjoyed by Berlioz, but we owe Berlioz hearty thanks for his enthusiasm and also for his clairvoyance, tumultuous as it was. We must admit that we content ourselves with metaphors as bad as his." to seeing it in programme books and in short lives of Beethoven. The saying is a dogma: but did Beethoven ever say it? And if he said it, was it not to get rid of Schindler, who was too curious about "philosophy" in music? As Mr. Boschot maliciously remarks, metaphors used in describing music must be vague, and the best are those that are incomprehensible without appearing to be so. Abstract words that are momentarily in fashion should also be used. "For example, since Schopenhauer and. Nietzsche, the word 'will' has become a magic word. Since 1830 the word 'poem' is not less so. If any one should say to us, the symphony in C-minor is "The Poem of the Will",' we should find it admirable. It says nothing and yet it seems to say everything." But Berlioz in his metaphors used precise images. If he evoked a castle dear to Sir Walter Scott, he went into details. When an image is no longer in fashion, it is mere bric-a-brac and we refuse to employ it in the expression of our emotion. Yet Berlioz made these images live at the time, so intense was his emotion. N° O ONE, concludes Mr. Boschot, not even Berlioz, not even Wagner, can "speak with words" of the emotion excited by music that is purely musical or absolute. A fugue of Bach can move the hearer by the sole power of its beauty or grandeur, but how is this emotion to be translated, except by playing the music to those who can be moved by it and will have, each, an individual emotion? No wonder that Berlioz himself often complained as a critic of his task; that he found it a boresome and thankless labor to describe year after year "concerts of the same high character with programmes including the same masterpieces performed with the same perfection by the same executants"; that he found himself at a loss for expressions of praise; that he complained of being obliged to attend concerts by the mediocre singers and players who were applauded by society and gave concerts at the end of a season so that their patrons and patronesses could express thanks for past favors in salons by buying tickets for a public performance. No wonder that he dreaded the epidemic of virtuosos. See how he disposed of one in an article that is not familiar to even those steeped in Berlioziana: "Alexandre Batta, the violoncellist, invariably inspires passion in women of thirty years. He tells to them (on his instrument) the Ave Maria, and each one adding mentally Gratia plena, supposes that the celebrated song of Schubert is only an excuse for a mysterious declaration addressed to her. He sings 'Une fièvre brûlante' and all the melancholy minstrel. Marguerites bend their blonde heads toward the When the 'Romanesca' comes, this dance tune of the sixteenth century, they take pains to grow pale, to sigh, to raise toward heaven their tearful eyes; then pretty things are said about St. Cecilia, the middle ages, the cathedrals, love, faith, hope, and the piece is redemanded with a faint voice, and the virtuoso, awaking the next morning, receives this mystic declaration couched in various forms: 'I have understood you.' They say that at Batta's, last Tuesday, the intelligence of the women of thirty years was most remarkable." E HAVE HEARD much of late con Wcerning the "heroic" side of Chopin's music. There are some who insist strenuously that this music is never feminine and never morbid if it be only interpreted in the true "heroic" spirit. Thunderous pianists are therefore applauded by them when a waltz, etude, prelude, what-you-will of Chopin is played with fingers of steel with titanic force. "Where's your de Pachmann, now?" Chopin's music is now often played in small concert halls as though it had been written expressly for a huge room and for a modern and gigantic pianoforte built to vie with the fullest modern orchestra. There is a passage in one of Berlioz's reviews that bears on this point: "To be able to appreciate him (Chopin) wholly, I think it is necessary to hear him when you are near him, in the salon rather than in the theatre. Unfortunately scarcely any one besides Chopin himself can play this music and give it the character of something unexpected, unforseen, which is one of its chief charms. His performance is veined with a thousand nuances in the movement. He holds the secrets of these nuances, which cannot be pointed out. There are incredible details in his mazurkas, and he has found how to make them doubly interesting by playing them with the utmost degree of gentleness, with a superlative softness. The hammers just graze the strings, so that the hearer is tempted to draw near to the instrument and strain his ear as though he were at a concert of sylphs and will o' the wisps." But the testimony of those contemporaneous with Chopin is openly flouted. Chopin, the lovers of the heroic say, was weak-lunged, and he himself played as a sick man. His music proves that he wrote the most important works in a brave and tempestuous spirit. And so farewell to the vaporous charm, the twilight mystery, the pleasing melancholy, the mutterings of hopelessness, the plaintive cry! When Henry Clay was a popular idol in this country, so that his portrait was seen on the backs of clothes brushes; when political interest was intensely personal, but not inseparably connected with business advantage, an old war horse returned to his village in Vermont from a political convention where the platform had been fiercely discussed and altered so that its authors could not have recognized it. Squire Dickinson was asked whether this platform suited him. "Not wholly; but we pruned it of its original and inherent qualities." N JOT LONG AGO an excellent pianist, visiting this country, took delight in introducing unfamiliar pieces by Debussy and Ravel. One afternoon he played poetically the Fantastic Pieces of Schumann, and as the room was small and the listeners at their ease and in sympathy, the performance gave unalloyed delight. Beautiful music beautifully played! Praised by some, although the rapt attention was the highest praise, he said: "The pianists who brought out music by Schumann and Chopin were more fortunate than we are to-day, when there are no such novelties." Yet the piano music of both Schumann and Chopin was for a long time caviare to the general. Is it not possible that fifty years from now pianists looking about for something new will envy their predecessors in 1908? of unfortunate critics been more fatiguing rude, difficult, discouraging, detestable, foolish, useless. There is a rain of album pieces, an avalanche of romances, a torrent of airs with variations, a cataclysm of fantasias, a waterspout of concertos, cavatinas, dramatic scenes, comic duets, soporific adagios, diabolical invocations, classic sonatas, romantic rondos, fantastic, frenetic, fanatical." The fantasias, comic duets and romantic rondos seldom afflict the critic of to-day, but he is obliged to hear symphonic poems without end, music that is intended to be the transliteration of a painting, statue, drama, book into tones. Mr. Joseph Holbrooke stated last season that music can describe nothing; it can only suggest, "and that is a vast difference to all hearers." The music critic of the Pall Mall Gazette was thereupon moved to say that there should be a reaction now in favor of "the older ideas embodied in what is called absolute music. The tone-poem, however definitely it seeks to illustrate some literary subject, must always be judged finally as music; no amount of pictorial expression can take away from the ultimate appeal to a criticism based on the absolute value of the music. itself, apart from such expression; though there is not the slightest reason, of course, why a composer should not be definitely inspired by a literary idea, or why he should not tell us what it is." T HERE ARE MANY concerts that do not deserve critical attention. Some are practically exhibitions of pupils; others are given merely for the sake of the advertisement in order to keep or gain pupils, or in the hope that there will be pleasant notices in the newspapers, which will more than repay the sum spent for the announcements in the columns of advertisements. A contributor to the Türmer insists that concert giving in the large cities of Germany is now merely a business speculation. Singers are at the mercy of teachers, who wish to exploit them, and they are the prey of agents. He suggests that "the present over-production in concert halls should be checked by means of a strike of the critics," OW BERLIOZ fretted as a critic, com- for, as he says, "the critic has a higher, more pelled to hear all sorts of concerts! important important task than to write testimonials for "Never," he once wrote, "has the task performers." HOW opera. Has not the critic a duty to the public? of “irrelevancy" might be brought against any There is always a certain curiosity about a performance, whether the singer or pianist be a local light or a visitor. The curious look to the critic for an article, if only to disagree with him and berate him. It is often said that the composition is of more importance than the performance of it. This sounds reasonable. The performance, however, may be so poor, so unintelligent, that gross injury is done to the composer. Or a performance may be so brilliant that it gives the work itself a fictitious and momentary value. Should not the performance in either case be analysed? Suppose a singer of reputation brings out anywhere from three to a dozen new or unfamiliar songs? (We do not refer now to prima donnas. They love the old songs, words and tunes which they learned long ago.) Should the singer's interpretation be passed by with a few sentences of conventional praise; here a line in appreciation of the "purity of tone-production," and there a word for her "sympathetic voice"? The great majority of the audience will know and judge the song only by the interpretation. How many songs have been killed locally for a season by a singer who was 'carefully coached" in them! The late Alexander Wilhelm Gottschalg was a good and kindly man who adored Liszt, and as he was an organist he persuaded Liszt to write strange music for the organ, and he himself adapted for the organ pieces by Liszt that were inherently unsuited to that instrument. Τ HEY STILL PRODUCE "Lucia di Lammermoor" in London for the glory of a prima donna. Each time the opera is performed, there is complaint against its "insincerity," against the "extraordinarily irrelevant character" of the music. These complainers are without a sense of perspective. They are ignorant of the history of opera. "Lucia" was no more insincere in 1835 than "Tristan and Isolde" was in 1859. Donizetti wrote honestly and to the best of his ability according to the formulas of his period, though he was accused of innovations on account of his use of the brass in the last act. Wagner ended his opera in 1859 and warred against the formulas. The one composer was sincere in his orthodoxy; the other in his heterodoxy. The charge Was Moussorgsky an enthusiastic amateur, or merely a man of musical ideas who was too arrogant, or too lazy, or too fond of strong waters, to learn thoroughly his trade so that he could express himself effectively and with the pleasing and convincing assurance of ease? There has been a brave attempt to put him in the temple of the immortals. Mr. Henry J. Wood of London, who married a Russian woman, as an orchestral conductor has brought out many Russian compositions. Mme. Marie Olénine d'Alheim has sung Moussorgsky's songs in Paris and is the author of "Le Legs de Moussorgski" (sic) published recently by Rey, a small volume illustrated with four portraits. French music-journals for three or four years have said much about his "irregular but indisputable genius." Pierre d'Alheim's life of Moussorgsky was published in Paris some years ago. It is an ill-arranged, scrappy volume, with pages of fervent eulogy, with much that is superfluous, a book that is characterized first of all by omissions that annoy lovers of facts and definite information. Lo and behold, a life of Moussorgsky by M. D. Calvocoressi, a serious man, who makes analytical sketches of laborious compositions, is included in that admirable series of biographies "Les Maitres de la Musique" published by Félix Alcon, Paris, and we find Moussorgsky thus standing by the side of Palestrina, Franck, Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Rameau, Smetana, Grétry, Orlando de Lassus, Wagner, Brahms, Handel, Haydn, Berlioz, Liszt, Gluck, whose lives have been carefully written for this series, or will be in due time. Unfortunately we have not seen Mr. Calvocoressi's life of Moussorgsky, nor have we heard much of the Russian's music, and this is perhaps more unfortunate. We know a few of his songs and piano pieces and his orchestral piece "Night on Bald Mountain." But hearing this music, do we not also often hear Rimsky-Korsakoff's idea of how Moussorgsky should have written it? For Rimsky-Korsakoff has more than once brought Moussorgsky's disorder into order; he has tinkered the dead man's instrumentation; he has sobered some of his more extravagant pages, cleaned them, clothed them, and made them presentable. |