Part 4 (1/2)
One thing is certain, and this hardly need a.s.sure my musical readers, the old tonal order has changed for ever; there are plenty of signs in the musical firmament to prove this. Moussorgsky preceded Debussy in his use of whole-tone harmonies, and a contemporary of Debussy, and an equally gifted musician, Martin Loeffler, was experimenting before Debussy himself in a dark but delectable harmonic region. The tyranny of the diatonic and chromatic scales, the tiresome revolutions of the major and minor modes, the critical Canutes who sit at the seaside and say to the modern waves: Thus far and no farther; and then hastily abandon their chairs and rush to safety else be overwhelmed, all these things are of the past, whether in music, art, literature, and--let Nietzsche speak--in ethics. Even philosophy has become a plaything, and logic ”a dodge,” as Professor Jowett puts it. Every stronghold is being a.s.sailed, from the ”divine” rights of property to the common chord of C major. With Schoenberg, freedom in modulation is not only permissible, but is an iron rule; he is obsessed by the theory of overtones, and his music is not only horizontally and vertically planned, but, so I pretend to hear, also in a circular fas.h.i.+on. There is no such thing as consonance or dissonance, only imperfect training of the ear (I am quoting from his Harmony, certainly a bible for musical supermen). He says: ”Harmonie fremde Tone gibt es also nicht”--and a sly dig at the old-timers--”sondern nur dem Harmoniesystem fremde.” After carefully listening I noted that he too has his mannerisms, that in his chaos there is a certain order, 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. The inner ear tells you that the D-minor quartet is really thought, though not altogether played, in that key. As for form, you must not expect it from a man who declares: ”I decide my form during composition only through feeling.” Every chord is the outcome of an emotion, the emotion aroused by the poem or idea which gives birth to the composition. Such antique things as the cyclic form or community of themes are not to be expected in Schoenberg's bright lexicon of anarchy. He boils down the cla.s.sic form to one movement and, so it seemed to my hearing, he begins developing his idea as soon as it is announced.
Such polyphony, such interweaving of voices--eleven and twelve and fifteen are a matter of course--as would make envious the old tonal weavers of the Netherlands! There is, literally, no waste ornament or filling in his scores; every theme, every subsidiary figure, is set spinning so that you dream of fireworks spouting in every direction, only the fire is vitriolic and burns the tympani of the ears.
Seriously, like all complex effects, the Schoenberg scores soon become legible if scrutinised without prejudice. The string s.e.xtet, if compared to the later music, is sunny and Mozartian in its melodic and harmonic simplicity. They tell me that Schoenberg once wrote freely in the normal manner, but finding that he could not attract attention he deliberately set himself to make abnormal music. I don't know how true this may be; the same sort of thing was said of Mallarme and Paul Cezanne and Richard Strauss, and was absolutely without foundation.
Schoenberg is an autodidact, the lessons in composition from Alexander von Zemlinsky not affecting his future path-breaking propensities. His mission is to free harmony from all rules. A man doesn't hit on such combinations, especially in his acrid instrumentation, without heroic labour. His knowledge must be enormous, for his scores are as logical as a highly wrought mosaic; that is, logical, if you grant him his premises. He is perverse and he wills his music, but he is a master in delineating certain moods, though the means he employs revolt our ears. To call him ”crazy,” is merely amusing. No man is less crazy, few men are so conscious of what they are doing, and few modern composers boast such a faculty of attention. Concentration is the key-note of his work; concentration--or condensation formal, concentration of thematic material--to the vanis.h.i.+ng-point; and conciseness in treatment, although every license is allowed in modulation.
Every composer has his aura; the aura of Arnold Schoenberg is, for me, the aura of subtle ugliness, of hatred and contempt, of cruelty, and of the mystic grandiose. He is never petty. He sins in the grand manner of Nietzsche's Superman, and he has the courage of his chromatics. 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.
As for Schoenberg, the painter--he paints, too!--I won't take even the guarded praise of such an accomplished artist as Kandinsky as sufficient evidence. I've not seen any of the composer's ”purple cows,” and hope I never shall see them. His black-and-white reproductions look pretty bad, and not nearly as original as his music. The portrait of a lady (who seems to be listening to Schoenbergian harmonies) hasn't much colour, a critic tells us, only a sickly rose in her dress. He also paints grey-green landscapes and visions, the latter dug up from the abysmal depths of his subconsciousness. Schoenberg is, at least, the object of considerable curiosity. What he will do next no man may say; but at least it won't be like the work of any one else. The only distinct reminiscence of an older composer that I could discover in his Pierrot was Richard Wagner (toujours Wagner, whether Franck or Humperdinck or Strauss or Debussy), and of him, the first page of the Introduction to the last act of Tristan und Isolde, more the mood than the actual themes.
Schoenberg is always atmospheric. So is a tornado. He is the poet whose flowers are evil; he is the spirit that denies; never a realist, like Strauss, ingeniously imitating natural sounds, he may be truthfully described as a musical symbolist.
II
MUSIC OF TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW
Despite the fact that he played the flute and ranked Rossini above Wagner, Arthur Schopenhauer said some notable things about music. ”Art is ever on the quest,” is a wise observation of his, ”a quest, and a divine adventure”; though this restless search for the new often ends in plain reaction, progress may be crab-wise and still be progress. I fear that ”progress” as usually understood is a glittering ”general idea” that blinds us to the truth. Reform in art is not like reform in politics; you can't reform the St. Matthew Pa.s.sion or the Fifth Symphony. Is Parsifal a reformation of Gluck? This talk of reform is only confusing the historic with the aesthetic. Art is a tricksy quant.i.ty and like quicksilver is ever mobile. As in all genuine revolutions the personal equation counts the heaviest, so in dealing with the conditions of music at the present time one must study the temperament of our music-makers and let prophecy sulk in its tent as it may.
If Ruskin had written music-criticism, he might have amplified the meaning of his once-famous phrase, the ”pathetic fallacy,” for I consider it a pathetic fallacy--though not in the Ruskinian sense--in criticism to be over-shadowed by the fear that, because some of our critical predecessors misjudged Wagner or Manet or Ibsen, we should be too merciful in criticising our contemporaries. Here is the ”pathos of distance” run to sentimental seed. The music of to-day may be the music of to-morrow, but if it is not, what then? It may satisfy the emotional needs of the moment, yet to-morrow be a stale formula. But what does that prove? Though Bach and Beethoven built their work on the bases of eternity (employing this tremendous term in a limited sense), one may nevertheless enjoy the men whose music is of slighter texture and ”modern.” Nor is this a plea for mediocrity. Mediocrity we shall always have with us: mediocrity is mankind in the normal, and normal man demands of art what he can read without running, hear without thinking. Every century produces artists who are forgotten in a generation, though they fill the eye and the ear for a time with their clever production. This has led to another general idea, that of transition, of intermediate types. After critical perspective has been attained, it may be seen that the majority of composers fall into this category not a consoling notion, but an unavoidable. Richard Wagner has his epigones; the same is the case with Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven.
Mendelssohn was a delightful feminine variation on Bach, and after Schumann came Brahms.
The Wagner-Liszt tradition of music-drama, so-called, and the symphonic poem have been continued with personal modifications by Richard Strauss; Max Reger has pinned his faith to Brahms and absolute music, though not without a marked individual variation. In considering his Sinfonietta, the Serenade, the Hiller Variations, the Prologue to a Tragedy, the l.u.s.tspiel Overture, the two concertos respectively for pianoforte and violin, we are struck not as much by the easy handling of old forms, as by the stark emotional content of these compositions. Reger began as a Brahmsianer, but he has not thus far succeeded in fusing form and theme as wonderfully as did his master. There is a Dionysian strain in his music that too often is in jarring discord with the intellectual structure of his work. But there is no denying that Max Reger is the one man in Germany to-day who is looked upon as the inevitable rival of Richard Strauss. Their disparate tendencies bring to the lips the old query, Under which king? Some think that Arnold Schoenberg may be a possible antagonist in the future, but for the present it is Reger and Strauss, and no third in opposition.
The Strauss problem is a serious one. In America much criticism of his performances has contrived to evade the real issue. He has been called hard names because he is money-loving, or because he has not followed in the steps of Beethoven, because of a thousand and one things of no actual critical value. That he is easily the greatest technical master of his art now living there can be no question. And he has wound up a peg or two the emotional intensity of music. Whether this striving after nerve-shattering combinations is a dangerous tendency is quite beside the mark. Let us register the fact. Beginning in the path made by Brahms, he soon came under the influence of Liszt, and we were given a chaplet of tone-poems, sheer programme-music, but cast in a bigger and more flexible mould than the thrice-familiar Liszt pattern.
Whatever fate is reserved for Death and Transfiguration, Till Eulenspiegel, Also Sprach Zarathustra, Hero's Life, and Don Quixote, there is no denying their significance during the last decade of the nineteenth century. For me it seemed a decided step backward when Strauss entered the operatic field. One so conspicuously rich in the gift of music-making (for the t.i.tles of his symphonies never prevented us from enjoying their colouring and eloquence) might have avoided the more facile triumphs of the stage. However, Elektra needs no apology, and the joyous Rosenkavalier is a distinct addition to the repertory of high-cla.s.s musical comedy. Strauss is an experimenter and no doubt a man for whom the visible box-office exists, to parody a saying of Gautier's. But we must judge him by his own highest standard, the standard of Elektra, Don Quixote, and Till Eulenspiegel, not to mention the beautiful songs. Ariadne on Naxos was a not particularly successful experiment, and what the Alp Symphony will prove to be we may only surmise. Probably this versatile tone-poet has said his best.
He is not a second Richard Wagner, not yet has he the charm of the Lizst personality, but he bulks too large in contemporary history to be called a decadent, although in the precise meaning of the word, without its stupid misinterpretation, he is a decadent inasmuch as he dwells with emphasis on the technique of his composition, sacrificing the whole for the page, putting the phrase above the page, and the single note in equal compet.i.tion with the phrase. In a word, Richard Strauss is a romantic, and flies the red flag of his faith. He has not followed the advice of Paul Verlaine in taking eloquence by the neck and wringing it. He is nothing if not eloquent and expressive, magnifying his Bavarian song-birds to the size of Alpine eagles. The newer choir has avoided the very things in which Strauss has excelled, for that way lie repet.i.tion and satiety. [Since writing the above, Strauss has given the world his ballet The Legend of Joseph, in which he has said nothing novel, but has with his customary skill mixed anew the old compound of glittering colours and sultry, exotic harmonies.]
However, Strauss is not the only member of the post-Wagnerian group, but he is the chief one who has kept his individual head above water in the welter and chaos of the school. Where are Cyrill Kistner, Hans Sommer, August Bungert, and the others? Humperdinck is a mediocrity, even more so than Puccini. And what of the ba.n.a.lities of Bruckner? His Wagnerian cloak is a world too large for his trifling themes.
Siegfried Wagner does not count, and for anything novel we are forced to turn our eyes and ears toward the direction of France. After Berlioz, a small fry, indeed, yet not without interest. The visit made by Claude Debussy to Russia in 1879 and during his formative period had consequences. He absorbed Moussorgsky, and built upon him, and he had Wagner at his finger-ends; like Charpentier he cannot keep Wagner out of his scores; the Bayreuth composer is the King Charles's head in his ma.n.u.script. Tristan und Isolde in particular must have haunted the composers of Louise, and Pelleas et Melisande. The Julien of Charpentier is on a lower literary and musical level than Louise, which, all said and done, has in certain episodes a picturesque charm; the new work is replete with bad symbolism and worse music-spinning.
Debussy has at least a novel, though somewhat monotonous, manner. He is ”precious,” and in ideas as constipated as Mallarme, whose Afternoon of a Faun he so adequately set. Nevertheless, there is, at times, magic in his music. It is the magic of suggestiveness, of the hinted mystery which only Huysmans's superior persons scattered throughout the universe may guess. After Debussy comes Dukas, Ravel, Florent Schmitt, Rogier-Duca.s.se, men who seem to have caught anew the spirit of the eighteenth-century music and given it to us not through the poetic haze of Debussy, but in gleaming, brilliant phrases. There is promise in Schmitt. As to Vincent d'Indy, you differ with his scheme, yet he is a master, as was Cesar Franck a master, as are masters the two followers of D'Indy, Albert Roussel and Theodat de Severac. Personally I admire Paul Dukas, though without any warrant whatever for placing him on the same plane with Claude Debussy, who, after all, has added a novel nuance to art. But they are all makers of anxious mosaics; never do they carve the block; exquisite miniaturists, yet lack the big brush work and epical sweep of the preceding generation. Above all, the entire school is minus virility; its music is of the distaff, and has not the masculine ring of crossed swords.
It is hardly necessary to consider here the fantastic fas.h.i.+onings of Erik Satie, the ”newest” French composer. He seems to have out-Schoenberged Schoenberg in his little piano pieces bearing the alluring t.i.tles of Embryons desseches, preludes and pastorales. Apart from the extravagant t.i.tles, the music itself is ludicrous qua music, but not without subtle irony. That trio of Chopin's Funeral March played in C and declared as a citation from the celebrated mazurka of Schubert does touch the rib risible. There are neither time signature nor bars. All is gentle chaos and is devoted to the celebration, in tone, of certain sea-plants and creatures. This sounds like Futurism or the pa.s.sionate patterns of the Cubists, but I a.s.sure you I've seen and tried to play the piano music of Satie. That he is an arch-humbug I shall neither maintain nor deny. After Schoenberg anything is possible in this vale of agonising dissonance. I recall with positive satisfaction a tiny composition for piano by Rebikoff, which he calls a setting of The Devil's Daughters, a mural design by Franz von Stuck of Munich. To be sure, the ba.s.s is in C and the treble in D flat, nevertheless the effect is almost piquant. The humour of the new composers is melancholy in its originality, but Gauguin has said that in art one must be either a plagiarist or a revolutionist. Satie is hardly a plagiarist, though the value of his revolution is doubtful.
The influence of Verdi has been supreme among the Verdists of young Italy, though not one has proved knee-high to a gra.s.shopper when compared with the composer of that incomparable Falstaffo. Ponchielli played his part, and under his guidance such dissimilar talents as Puccini, Mascagni, and Leoncavallo were fostered. Puccini stopped with La Boheme, all the rest is repet.i.tion and not altogether admirable repet.i.tion. That he has been the hero of many phonographs has nothing to do with his intrinsic merits. Cleverness is his predominating vice, and a marked predilection for time-serving; that is, he, like the excellent musical journalist that he is, feels the public pulse, spreads his sails to the breeze of popular favour, and while he is never as ba.n.a.l as Humperdinck or Leoncavallo, he exhibits this quality in suffusion. Above all, he is not original. If Mascagni had only followed the example of Single-Speech Hamilton, he would have spared himself many mortifications and his admirers much boredom. The new men, such as Wolf-Ferrari, Montemezzi, Giordano, and numerous others are eclectics; they belong to any country, and their musical cosmopolitanism, while affording agreeable specimens, may be dismissed with the comment that their art lacks p.r.o.nounced personal profile.
This does not mean that L'Amore dei Tre Re is less delightful. The same may be said of Ludwig Thuille and also of the Neo-Belgian group.
Sibelius, the Finn, is a composer with a marked temperament. Among the English Delius shows strongest. He is more personal and more original than Elgar. Not one of these can tie the shoe-strings of Peter Cornelius, the composer of short masterpieces, The Barber of Bagdad--the original, not the bedevilled version of Mottl.
In Germany there is an active group of young men: Ernest Boehe, Walter Braunfels, Max Schillings, Hans Pfitzner, F. Klose, Karl Ehrenberg, Dohnany--born Hungarian--H. G. Noren. The list is long. Fresh, agreeable, and indicative of a high order of talent is a new opera by Franz Schreker, Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin (1913). Schreker's earlier opera, Der ferne Klang, I missed, but I enjoyed the later composition, charged as it is with fantasy, atmosphere, bold climaxes, and framing a legendary libretto. The influence of Debussy is marked.
Curiously enough, the Russian Moussorgsky, whose work was neglected during his lifetime, has proved to be a precursor to latter-day music.
He was not affected in his development by Franz Liszt, whose influence on Tschaikovsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakof, Glazounof--he less than the others--was considerable. Like Dostoevsky, Moussorgsky is _ur_-Russian, not a polished production of Western culture, as are Turgenieff, Tschaikovsky, Tolstoy, or Rubinstein. He is not a romantic, this Russian bear; the entire modern school is at one in their rejection of romantic moods and att.i.tudes. Now, music is pre-eminently a romantic art. I once called it a species of emotional mathematics, yet so vast is its kingdom that it may contain the sentimentalities of Mendelssohn, the Old World romance of Schumann, the sublimated poetry of Chopin, and the thunderous epical accents of Beethoven.
Moussorgsky I have styled a ”primitive,” and I fancy it is as good an ascription as another. He is certainly as primitive as Paul Gauguin, who accomplished the difficult feat of shedding his Parisian skin as an artist and reappearing as a modified Tahitian savage. But I suspect there was a profounder sincerity in the case of the Muscovite.