Part 11 (2/2)
Wagner is the one creator of an art-form who also seems destined to remain its greatest exponent. Other creators of art-forms have been mere pioneers, leaving to those who have come after them the development and rounding out of what with them were experiments. The story of the sonata form may be said to have begun with Philipp Emanuel Bach and to have been ”continued in our next” to Beethoven, with ”supplements” ever since. The music-drama had its tentative beginnings in ”The Flying Dutchman,” its consummation in ”Parsifal.”
The years from 1843 to 1882 lay between, but the music-drama was guided ever by the same hand, the master hand of Richard Wagner. No, it would be self-defeating folly to make Wagner appear less in order to have Strauss appear more.
Originator of the Tone Poem.
Nor does Richard Strauss require such tactics. He has made three excursions into music-drama and he may make others. But his fame, at present, rests mainly upon what he has accomplished as an instrumental composer, and in the self-created realm of the Tone Poem. Tone poem is a new term in music. It stands for something that outstrips the symphonic poem of Liszt, something larger both in its boundaries and in its intellectual and musical scope. Strauss does not limit himself by the word symphonic. He leaves himself free to give full range to his ideas. A composer of ”program music,” his works are so stupendous in scope that the word symphonic would have hampered him. His ”Also Sprach Zarathustra” (”Thus Spake Zarathustra”) and ”Ein Heldenleben”
(”A Hero's Life”) are not symphonic poems, but tone poems of enormous proportions. These, his last two instrumental productions, together with the growing familiarity of the musical public with his beautiful and eloquent songs, established his reputation in this country.
To-day, a Strauss work on a program means as much to the musically elect as a Wagner work meant a quarter of a century ago. In fact, to advanced musicians, to those who are not content to rest upon what has been achieved, but are ready to welcome further serious effort, Strauss's works form the latest great utterance in music. Let me repeat verbatim a conversation that occurred on a recent rainy night, the date of an important concert.
He: ”Are you going to the concert to-night?”
She: (_Looking out and seeing that it still is raining hard_) ”Do they play anything by Richard Strauss?”
He: ”Not to-night.”
She: ”Then I'm not going.”
This woman could meet the most enthusiastic admirer of Beethoven or Wagner on his own ground. But when she heard ”Ein Heldenleben” under Emil Paur's baton at a concert of the New York Philharmonic Society, she heard what she had been waiting twenty years for--something new in music that also was something great; something that was not merely an imitation of what she had heard a hundred times before, but something which pointed the way to untraveled paths. It always is woman who throws the first rose at the feet of genius.
Not a Juggler with the Orchestra.
One first looks at Richard Strauss in mere amazement at the size of what he has produced. ”Thus Spake Zarathustra” lasts thirty-three minutes, ”A Hero's Life” forty-five--considerable lengths for orchestral works. This initial sense of ”bigness,” as such, having worn off, one becomes aware of marvellous tone combinations and orchestral effects. Listening again, one discovers that these daring instrumental combinations have not been entered into merely for the sake of juggling with the orchestra, but because the composer, being a modern of moderns, has the most modern message in music to deliver, and, in order to deliver it, has developed the modern orchestra to a state of efficiency and versatility of tonal expression beyond any of his predecessors. Richard Strauss scores, in the most casual manner, an octave higher than Beethoven dared go with the violins. Except in the ”Egmont” overture, Beethoven did not carry the violins higher than F above the staff. What should have been higher he wrote an octave lower. All the strings in the Richard Strauss orchestra are scored correspondingly high. But this is not done as a mere fad. What Richard Strauss accomplishes with the strings is not merely queer or bizarre. What he seeks and obtains is genuine original musical effects. Often the highest register is used by him in a few of the strings only, because, for certain polyphonic effects--the weaving and interweaving of various themes--he divides and subdivides all the strings into numerous groups. For the same reason, he has regularly added four or five hitherto rarely used instruments to the woodwind and scores, regularly, for eight horns, besides employing from four to five trumpets.
While he has increased the technical difficulties of every instrument, what he requires of them is not impossible. He does, indeed, call for first-rate artists in his orchestra; but so did Wagner as compared with Beethoven. He knows every instrument thoroughly, for he has taken lessons on all; and, therefore, when he is striving for new instrumental effects he is not putting problems which cannot be legitimately solved. His ”Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks” makes, possibly, the greatest demand of all his works on an orchestra. But, if properly played, it is one of the most bizarre and amusing scherzos in the repertoire. In his ”Don Quixote,” he has gone outside the list of orchestral instruments; and in the scene where _Don Quixote_ has his tilt with the windmill, he has introduced a regular theatrical wind-machine. And why not? The effect to be produced justifies the means. There is an _a capella_ chorus by Strauss for sixteen voices.
These are not divided into two double quartets, or into four quartets, but the composition actually is scored in sixteen parts. He shrinks from no musical problem.
Not Mere Bulk and Noise.
When ”A Hero's Life” was produced in New York it was given at a public rehearsal and concert of the Philharmonic. It made such a profound impression--it was recognized as music, not as mere bulk and noise--that it had to be repeated at a following public rehearsal and concert, thus having the honor of four consecutive performances by the same society in one season. Previous performances of Strauss's works, mainly by the Chicago Orchestra, under Thomas, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, had begun to direct public attention to this composer. But the ”Heldenleben” performances by the Philharmonic created something of a sensation. They made the ”hit” to which the public unconsciously had been working up for several seasons. Large as are the dimensions of ”A Hero's Life,” Richard Strauss had chosen a subject that made a very direct appeal. Despite its wealth of polyphony and theme combination, the score told, without a word of synopsis, a clear intelligible story of a hero's material victory, followed by a greater moral one. It placed the public on a human, familiar footing with a composer whom previously they had regarded with more awe than interest. Here was music interesting as mere music, but all the more interesting because it had an intellectual message to convey.
Life and Truth.
What is the difference between cla.s.sical and modern music? Write a chapter or a book on it, and the difference still remains just this: Cla.s.sical music is the expression of beauty; modern music the expression of life and truth. Modern music seems entering upon a new era with Strauss, which does not necessarily exclude beauty. It is beginning to ill.u.s.trate itself, so to speak, like the author-artist who can both write and draw. To-day, music not only expresses truth, but represents it pictorially. How long will the time be in coming when a composer will wave his baton, the orchestra strike a chord--and we be not only listeners but also beholders, hearing the chord, and seeing at the same time its image floating above the orchestra?
In his ”Melomaniacs,” the most remarkable collection of musical stories I have read, Mr. Huneker has a tale called ”A Piper of Dreams,” the most advanced piece of musical fiction I know of. This piper of dreams produces music which is _seen_. ”Do you know why you like it?” Mr. Huneker asked me, when I told him how intensely I admired the story. ”Because,” he continued, ”the hero of the story is a Richard Strauss.”
Of course, this brilliantly written story was a daring incursion into a seemingly impossible future. Yet it points a tendency. When shall we have music that can be seen? Considering how closely related are the laws of acoustics and optics, is a ”Piper of Dreams” so visionary? Who knows but that the music of the future may be visible sound--the work of a piper of dreams? Sometimes, when listening to Strauss, I think Mr. Huneker's _Piper_ is tuning up.
Richard Strauss's tone poems are large in plan. In fact they are colossal. They show him to be a man of great intellectual activity, as well as an inspired composer. The latter, of course, is the test by which a musical work stands or falls. No matter how intellectually it is planned, if it is inadequate musically it fails. But if it is musically inspired, it gains vastly in effect when it rests on a brain basis.
Literally Tone Dramas.
That Richard Strauss is the most significant figure in the musical world to-day seems to me too patent to admit of discussion. The only question to be considered is, how has he become so? The question is best answered by showing what a Richard Strauss tone poem is. Take ”Thus Spake Zarathustra” and ”A Hero's Life.” Without going into an elaborate discussion I must insist that, to consider Richard Strauss as in any way a development from Berlioz or Liszt, shows a deplorable unfamiliarity with his works. Berlioz wrote program music. Liszt wrote program music. Richard Strauss writes program music. But this point of resemblance is wholly superficial. Berlioz admittedly strove to adhere to the orthodox symphonic form. Liszt aptly named his own productions ”symphonic poems.” They are much freer in form than Berlioz's, and possibly pointed the way to the Richard Strauss tone poem. But when we examine the musical kernel, the difference at once is apparent.
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