Part 1 (2/2)

Nothing tickles the vanity of the groundlings like this sort of verbal fireworks ”It leaves so ination,” says the stout man with the twenty-two collar and the nuination--Oh, Lord! Liszt, nothing daunted because he couldn't shake out an honest throw of a tune from his technical dice-box, built histhat in this matter he derived froal treatment; Liszt's, for symphonic The parallel is not fair

Besides, Daddy Liszt had no melodic invention Bach had Witness his chorals, his masses, his oratorios! But the Berlioz ball had to be kept a-rolling; the formula was too easy; so Liszt na-collars on his harmonies--and yet no one whistled after them Is it any wonder?

Tchaikovsky studied Liszt with one eye; the other he kept on Bellini and the Italians What ht have happened if he had been one-eyed I cannot pretend to say In love with lush, sensuous eous pyrotechnical effects in Berlioz and Liszt and the poan study too late and being too lazy to work hard, ave strained, fantastic naless and pretty--and, as he was short-winded contrapuntally, he wrote his so-called instrumental poems shorter than Liszt's He had no synified themes, and when the development section came he plastered on more sentimental melodies His sentiment is hectic, is unhealthy, is morbid Tchaikovsky either raves or whines like the people in a Russian novel I think the felloas a bit touched in the upper story; that is, I did until I heard the compositions of R Strauss, of Munich What misfit music for such a joyous naay, refined, witty, sparkling, and spontaneous in ive er the wheezings, gaspings, and short-breathed phrases of Liszt; no longer the evil sensuality, loose construction, formlessness, and drunken peasant dances of Tchaikovsky; but a blending of Wagner, Brahms, Liszt--and the classics Oh, Strauss, Richard, knows his business! He is a skilled writer He has his chas are soies of orchestral music that I speak of No sane man ever erected such a mad architectural scheme He should be penned behind the bars of his own ly noises He writes to distracting lengths; and, worst of all, his haret to call his monstrosities fanciful names If it isn't _Don Juan_, it is _Don Quixote_--have you heard the latter? [O shades of Mozart!]

This giving his so-called compositions literary titles is the plaster for our broken heads--and ear-drums So much for your three favorite latter-day composers

Now for ue, song, sonata, symphony, quartet, oratorio, opera [who has improved on Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert? Nae of today being higher”?

How higher? You o to concerts, o! Do they? I doubt it Of what use huge places of worshi+p when the true Gods of art are no longer worshi+ped?

Nuht I contend that there has been no great music made since the death of Beethoven; that thesocieties, and concerts are no true sign that genuine culture is being achieved The tradition of the classics is lost; we care not for the trueis a fashi+onable fad People go because they think they should There wasand sincere, in the Old St Thomaskirche in Leipsic where Bach played than in all your modern symphony and oratorio ain!

Dussek Villa-on-Wissahickon, Near Manayunk, Pa

II

OLD FOGY GOES ABROAD

Before I went to Bayreuth I had always believed that soic spell rested upon the Franconian hills like a musical benison; some mystery of art, atmosphere, and individuality evoked by the place, the tradition, the people How sadly I was disappointed I propose to tell you, prefacing all by re that in Philadelphia, dear old, dusty Philadelphia, situated near the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill, I have listened to better representations of the _Ring_ and _Die Meistersinger_

It is just thirty years since I last visited Germany Before the Franco-Prussian War there was an air of sweetness, hoering conqueror, the arrogant Berliner type of all that is unpleasant, _enuousness, the _nave_ quality that made dear the art of the Fatherland, has disappeared In its place is smartness, flippancy, cynicism, unbelief, and the critical faculty developed to the pathological point I thought of Schubert, and sighed in the presence of all this wit and savage huerly dispute Wagner's _ were not only sneered at, but, to be quite frank with you, dissipated into thin, metaphysical smoke

In 1869 I fancied Reinecke a decent composer, Schopenhauer remarkable, if somewhat bitter in his philosophic attitude towards life Reinecke is now a host, a respectable memory of Leipsic, whilst Schopenhauer has been brutally elbowed out of his niche by his forarden I sought I found groups of youngheatedly about Nietzsche, and the Over-Man, the _Uebermensch_, to be quite German I had, in the innocence of ner's favorite philosopher Mustering up ave speech to arrulous old man who hates to be put on the shelf before he is quite disabled

_Ach!_ but I caught it, _ach!_ but I was pulverized and left speechless by these devotees of the Haner was a fairly good h no inventor of thee of harmony, above all, his _constructive_ poere his best recommendations As for his abilities as a drae, his theories as to the syntheses of the arts silly and impracticable, while his Schopenhauerishts that were slowly but none the less surely strangling his e of heart ca of the Bayreuth theories was exploded moonshi+ne, I was curtly reain, always this confounded Nietzsche, who, , yet contrives to hypnotize the younger generation with his crazy doctrines of force, of the great Blond Barbarian, of the Will to Destroy--infinitely more vicious than the Will to Live--and the inherent iner's , praying for thethat this poisonous nonsense will not reach us in America But it will

The char

A stranger is ”spotted” at once and he is the prey of the townspeople

Beer, carriages, food, pictures,is cheap I've been all over, saw Wagner's tomb, looked at the outside of _Wahnfried_ and the inside of the theater I have seen Siegfried Wagner--who can't conduct one-quarter as well as our own Walter Da up and down the streets, a tin demi-God, a reduced octavo edition of his father bound in cheap calf Worse still, I have heard the young hty Bayreuth orchestra in leash, and with painful results Not one firgioed, and as for cliarden, which was once Angers, co there in discordant harmony Now it is overrun by Cook's tourists in bicycle costuner has grown gray and the _Ring_ sounded antique toinfluences ofby ancient Teutons--for the most part--was to blame for this Certainly when Walhall had succumbed to the fla waters of the treacherous Rhine, I felt that the end of the universe was at hand and it ith a sob I saw outside in the soft, suallantly in the blue, the fullin the world at that azed at it long and fondly, for it recalled the romance of my student years, my love of Schumann's poetic music and other illusions of a vanished past In a word, I had again surrendered to the sentiht, and with my heart full I descended from the terrace, walked slowly down the arbored avenue to Saarden and there sat, mused and--smoked my Yankee pipe I realize that I asters provide for the superannuated and those who disagree with theotten the performances They were, as I declared at the outset, far fro Rosa Sucher, who visited us so fellow from over the hills somewhere He was sad Ernst Kraus, an old acquaintance, was a fafried_ Demeter Popovici you remember with Damrosch, also Hans Greuer Van Rooy's _Wotan_ was supreme It was the one pleasant memory of Bayreuth, that and the er_, while Demuth was an excellent _Hans Sachs_ The _Brunnhilde_ was Ellen Gulbranson, a Scandinavian She was an heroic icicle that Wagner hidalene_ in _Meistersinger_, was sirotesque Van Rooy's _Walther_ I nerromance, and, to my surprise, went to sleep over the _terease was ed Richter than a caveful of spry Siegfried Wagners!

I shan't bother you any hosts--the very trees on the terrace whisper the na the establish--and so Bayreuth is deteriorating I saw her, Liszt's daughter, von Bulow, and Wagner's wife--or rather --and her gaunt frahost fro old and weary, and astride of it just now is the pessiuised as a herculean boy, is deceiving his worshi+ppers with the belief that he is young and a preacher of the joyful doctrines of youth Be not deceived, he is but another veiled prophet Hisskeleton, his words are bitter with death and deceit

I stopped over at Nure and at a chas, _Die Forelle_--and although I am no trout fisher, the sweet, boyish loquacity, the pure lad and I wept

III