THE ART OF MUSIC
The Art of Music
A Comprehensive Library of Information
for Music Lovers and Musicians
Editor-in-Chief
DANIEL GREGORY MASON
Columbia University
Associate Editors
EDWARD B. HILL LELAND HALL
Harvard University Past Professor, Univ. of Wisconsin
Managing Editor
CESAR SAERCHINGER
Modern Music Society of New York
In Fourteen Volumes
Profusely Illustrated
FACULT^SKMUSIC
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
/- g- (oQ.
NEW YORK
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC
Vs. *
^
/oo
V,3
'////
!i Music
ive History <
Music
rs:
EDWAR 1 \GAME HILL
AN
m, Eugluxl
lT>
YOI\
NATIONAL SO( OF
Garden Concert
Painting by Antoine Watteau
THE ART OF MUSIC: VOLUME THREE
Modern Music
Being Book Three of
A Narrative History of
Music
Department Editors:
EDWARD BURLINGAME HILL
AND
ERNEST NEWMAN
Music Critic, 'Daily Post,' Birmingham, England
Author of 'Gluck and the Opera,' 'Hugo Wolf,' 'Richard Strauss,' etc.
Introduction by
EDWARD BURLINGAME HILL
Instructor in Musical History, Harvard University
Formerly Music Critic, 'Boston Evening Transcript*
Editor. 'Musical World,' etc.
NEW YORK
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC
Copyright, 1915, by
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC, Inc.
(All Rights Reserved]
MODERN MUSIC
INTRODUCTION
THE direct sources of modern music are to be found
in the works of Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner.
This assertion savors of truism, but, since the achieve-
ment of these four masters in the enlargement of har-
monic idiom, in diversity of formal evolution, and in
intrinsic novelty and profundity of musical sentiment
and emotion remains so unalterably the point of de-
parture in modern music, reiteration is unavoidable
and essential. It were idle to deny that various figures
in musical history have shown prophetic glimpses of
the future. Monteverdi's taste for unprepared disso-
nance and instinct for graphic instrumental effect; the
extraordinary anticipation of Liszt's treatment of the
diminished seventh chord, and the enharmonic modu-
lations to be found in the music of Sebastian Bach, the
presages of later German romanticism discoverable in
the works of his ill-fated son Wilhelm Friedemann, con-
stitute convincing details. The romantic ambitions of
Lesueur as to program-music found their reflection in
the superheated imagination of Berlioz, and the music-
drama of Wagner derives as conclusively from Fidelio
as from the more conclusively romantic antecedents of
Euryanthe. But, despite their illuminating quality,
these casual outcroppings of modernity do not reverse
the axiomatic statement made above.
The trend of modern music, then, may be traced first
along the path of the pervasive domination of Wagner;
vii
MODERN MUSIC
second, the lesser but no less tenacious influence of
Liszt; it includes the rise of nationalistic schools, the
gradual infiltration of eclecticism leading at last to re-
cent quasi-anarchic efforts to expand the technical ele-
ments of music.
If the critics of the late nineteenth and the twentieth
centuries have successfully exposed not only the aes-
thetic flaws in Wagner's theory of the music-drama,
but also his own obvious departures in practice from
pre-conceived convictions, as well as the futility of
much of his polemic and philosophical writings, Euro-
pean composers of opera, almost without exception,
save in Russia, have frankly adopted his methods in
whole or in part. Bruckner, Bungert, d' Albert, Schil-
lings, Pfitzner, Goldmark, Humperdinck, Weingartner,
and Richard Strauss in Germany; Saint-Saens (in vary-
ing degree), Chabrier, Lalo, Massenet (temporarily),
Bruneau and Charpentier (slightly), dlndy, Chausson,
and Dukas in France; Verdi (more remotely), Puccini,
and possibly Wolf -Ferrari in Italy; Holbrooke in Eng-
land, are among the more conspicuous whose obliga-
tion to Wagner is frankly perceptible. In Germany
the most prominent contributors to dramatic literature,
aside from Cornelius, with Der Barbier von Bagdad, and
Goetz with Der Widerspenstigen Zahmung, have been
Goldmark, Humperdinck, and Richard Strauss. The
latter, with an incredibly complex system of leading
motives, an elaborately contrapuntal connotation of
dramatic situations, aided by an intensely psycho-
logical orchestral descriptiveness, has reached the
summit of post-Wagnerian drama. His later dra-
matic experiments a ruthless adaptation of Moliere's
Bourgeois gentilhomme, containing the one-act opera
Ariadne auf Naxos, and the ballet 'The Legend of
Joseph' are distinctly less representative examples of
viii
INTRODUCTION
his dramatic resourcefulness. In France, the Wagner-
ian influence is typified in such works as Chabrier's
Gwendoline, d'Indy's Fervaal, and to a lesser extent
Ghausson's Le Roi Arthus. Bruneau's realistic operas
and Charpentier's sociological Louise belong, first of
all, to the characteristically French lyric drama in
which the Wagnerian element is relatively unim-
portant. In Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande, Dukas'
Ariane et Barbe-bleue, Ravel's LHeure espagnole, and
Faure's Penelope, we find a virtually independent con-
ception of opera which may be almost described as
anti- Wagnerian. In Italy, the later Verdi shows an
independent solution of dramatic problems, although
conscious of the work of Wagner. Puccini is the suc-
cessor of Verdi, rather than the follower of Wagner,
although his use of motives and treatment of the or-
chestra shows at least an unconcious assimilation of
Wagnerian practice, Mascagni and Leoncavallo are vir-
tually negligible except for their early successes, and
one or two other works. Younger composers like
Montemezzi and Zadonai are beginning to claim atten-
tion, but Wolf -Ferrari, combining Italian instinct with
German training, seems on the way to attain a renas-
cence of the opera buffet, provided that he is not again
tempted by the sensational type represented by 'The
Jewels of the Madonna-' Opera in England has re-
mained an exotic, save for the operettas of Sullivan,
despite the efforts of British composers to vitalize it.
Holbrooke's attempt to produce an English trilogy
seems fated to join previous failures, notwithstanding
his virtuosity and his dramatic earnestness. Russian
composers for the stage have steadily resisted the in-
vasion of Wagnerian methods. Adhering, first of all,
to the tenets of Dargomijsky, individuals have gradu-
ally adopted their own standpoint. The most charac-
teristic works are Borodine's Prince Igor, Rimsky-Kor-
sakoff's Sniegourutchka, Sadko, Mlada, Le Coq d'Or,
ix
MODERN MUSIC
and Moussorgsky's Boris Godoiinoff and Khouants-
china.
In the field of orchestral composition, the acceptance
of Wagner's procedure in orchestration is even more
universal than his dramatic following. If his system
follows logically from the adoption of valve horns and
valve trumpets, the enlargement of wind instrument
groups and the subdivision of the strings, its far-reach-
ing application is still a matter of amazement to the
analyst. Even if it be granted that Wagner himself
predaciously absorbed individual methods of treat-
ment from Weber, Meyerbeer, Berlioz, and Liszt, the
ultimate originality of his idiom justified his manifold
obligations. German composers, except among the fol-
lowers of Brahms, appropriated his extension of or-
chestral effect as a matter of course, the most notable
being Bruckner, Goldmark, Humperdinck, Mahler, and
Strauss. If the two latter in turn can claim original
idioms of their own, the antecedents of their styles are
none the less evident. French composers from Saint-
Saens to Dukas have made varying concessions to his
persuasive sonorities; even the stanch Rimsky-Korsa-
koff fell before the seduction of Wagnerian amplitude
and variety of color. Glazounoff, Taneieff, Scriabine,
and other Russians followed suit. Among English com-
posers, Elgar and Bantock fell instinctively into line,
followed in some degree by William Wallace and Fred-
erick Delius. If Holbrooke is more directly a disciple
of Richard Strauss, that fact in itself denotes an uncon-
scious acknowledgment to Wagner.
If Liszt has had a less all-embracing reaction upon
modern composers, his sphere of influence has been
marked and widely extended. To begin with, his har-
monic style has been the subject of imitation second
only to Wagner up to the advent of Richard Strauss
and Debussy. His invention of the structurally elastic
symphonic poem remains the sole original contribution
x
INTRODUCTION
in point of form which the nineteenth century can
claim. For even the cyclic sonata form of Franck is
but a modification of the academic type, and was fore-
shadowed by Beethoven and Schumann. The vast evo-
lution of structural freedom, the infinite ramifications
of subtle and dramatic program-music, and the result-
ant additions of the most stimulating character to mod-
ern musical literature rest upon the courageous initia-
tive of Liszt. In France, Saint-Saens' pioneer examples,
though somewhat slight in substance, prepared the way
for Cesar Franck's Les Bolides and Le Chasseur maudit,
Duparc's Lenore, d'Indy's La foret enchantee, the pro-
grammistic Istar variations, Jour d'ete a la Montagne,
Dukas' L'Apprenti-sorcier, Debussy's Prelude a I'Apres-
midi d'un faune and the Nocturnes (programmistic if
impressionistic) , Florent Schmitts' Tragedie de Salome,
and Roussel's Evocations- In Germany, Richard
Strauss' epoch-making series of tone-poems, from Mac-
beth to Also sprach Zarathustra, combine descriptive
aptitude and orchestral brilliance with a masterly
manipulation of formal elements. Weingartner's Die
Gefllde der Seligen and Reger's Bocklin symphonic
poems may be added to the list. In Russia, Balakireff's
Thamar, Borodine's 'Sketch from Central Asia,' Rim-
sky-Korsakoff's Scheherezade (although a suite), Gla-
zounoff's Stenka Razine and other less vital works,
Rachmaninoff's 'Isle of the Dead,' Scriabine's 'Poem of
Ecstasy' and 'Poem of Fire' mark the path of evolution.
Smetana's series of six symphonic poems entitled 'My
Home' result directly from the stimulus of Liszt. In
Finland, Sibelius' tone-poems on national legendary
subjects take a high rank for their poetic and dramatic
qualities. If in England, Bantock's 'Dante and Bea-
trice,' 'Fifine at the Fair' and other works, Holbrooke's
'Queen Mab,' Wallace's 'Francois Villon,' Delius' 'Paris'
and Elgar's 'Falstaff ' exhibit differing degrees of merit,
the example of Liszt is still inspiriting. Moreover, the
xi
MODERN MUSIC
Lisztian treatment of the orchestra, emphasizing as it
does a felicitous employment of instruments of percus-
sion, has proved a remarkable liberating force, espe-
cially in Russia and France. Liszt's piano idiom has
been assimilated even more widely than in the case of
the symphonic poem and orchestral style. Smetana,
Saint-Saens, Balakireff, and Liapounoff occur at once
as salient instances.
The contributory reaction of Berlioz and Chopin
upon modern music has been relatively less direct, if
still apparent. It was exerted first in fertile suggestions
to Wagner and Liszt at a susceptible and formative
stage in their careers. Both have played some part in
the awakening of Russian musical consciousness, Ber-
lioz through his revolutionary orchestral style and
programmistic audacity, Chopin through his insinuat-
ing pianistic idiom, which we find strongly reflected in
the earlier works of Scriabine. Some heritage of Ber-
lioz can undoubtedly be traced in the music of Gustav
Mahler, although expressed in a speech quite alien to
that of the French pioneer of realism.
It may be remarked in passing that the influence of
Brahms has been intensive rather than expansive. This
statement is entirely compatible with a just appraisal of
the worth and profundity of his music, nor can it in
any way be interpreted as a detraction of his unassail-
able position. But in consideration of the absence of
the coloristic and extreme subjective elements in
Brahms' style, and in view of its conserving and re-
actionary force, the great symphonist cannot be re-
garded as specifically modernistic. Still, with his ex-
traordinary cohesiveness of form and vital rhythmic
progress, both in symphonic writing, chamber music
and piano pieces, Brahms has affected Reger, Weingart-
ner and Max Bruch in Germany, but also Glazounoff,
Rachmaninoff, Medtner, Parry, and others outside
of it.
xii
INTRODUCTION
With the four symphonies of Brahms the long evo-
lution of the classic form in Germany has apparently
come to an end with an involuntary recognition that
little more could be attained upon conventional lines.
The symphonies of Bruckner emphasize this realiza-
tion. Following in Wagner's orchestral footsteps, both
their structure and their ideas are of unequal value, in
which separate movements not infrequently rise to
sublimity of expression and dramatic fervor. While
opinion is still divided as to the merit of Mahler's ten
symphonies, they represent isolated instances of pow-
erfully conceived and tenaciously executed works
whose orchestral eloquence is in singularly apt con-
formity with their substance. After a precocious and
conservative symphony, composed at the age of nine-
teen, which pleased Brahms, Richard Strauss waited
twenty years before attempting in the Symphonia Do-
mestica so elastic a form as almost to escape classifica-
tion in this type. Despite much foolish controversy
over the programmistic features of this work, its bril-
liant musical substance, its fundamental and logical
coherence, and the remarkable plastic coordination of
its themes constitute it a unique experiment in free
symphonic structure. In France, the symphony has
evolved a type somewhat apart from the Teutonic
example, although an outcome of it, namely, the
cyclical, in which its themes are derived from gen-
erative phrases. After three innocuous specimens (one
unpublished) Saint-Saens' third symphony shows many
of the attributes of classicality. Cesar Franck's sym-
phony in D minor embodies most of his best qualities,
together with much structural originality. Lalo's more
fragile work in G minor displays a workmanship and
individuality which entitles it to record. Chausson's
Symphony in B-flat, despite its kinship with Franck,
possesses a significance quite beyond its actual recogni-
tion. D'Indy, after composing an excellent cyclic work
xiii
MODERN MUSIC
upon a French folk-song, produced his instrumental
masterpiece with a second in B-flat, which for logical
structure and fusion of classic elements with modern-
istic sentiment deserves to be classed as one of the
finest of its time. If Russian symphony composers
have not as a whole reached as high a mark as in the
freer and more imaginative forms, nevertheless Rim-
sky-Korsakoff, Borodine, Balakireff, Glazounoff, Rach-
maninoff, and Taneieff have displayed sympathy with
classic ideals, and have achieved excellent if not sur-
passing results within these limits. The symphonies of
Parry, Cowen and others in England have enlarged
little upon the conventional scope. Elgar raised high
hopes with his first symphony in A-flat, but speedily dis-
missed them with his second in E-flat. Sibelius, in Fin-
land, having given proof of his uncommon creative
force and delineative imagination in his tone-poems,
has also exhibited unusual originality and vitality in
his four symphonies. The last of these virtually departs
from a genuine symphonic form, but its novelty alike in
ideas and treatment suggests that he, too, demands
greater elasticity of resource. For the problem of com-
bining the native style and technical requirements of
the symphony with modern sentiment is one of increas-
ing difficulty.
The field of piano music, chamber works, songs and
choral works is of too wide a range for detailed indi-
cation of achievement. The piano music of Balakireff,
Liapounoff, Rachmaninoff, Scriabine, of Grieg, of
Franck, Debussy, Dukas, and Ravel, of Cyril Scott and
others merits a high place. The chamber music of
Smetana, Dvorak, Grieg (despite its shortcomings),
Franck, d'Indy, Faure, Ravel, of Wolf, Strauss and
Reger deserves an equal record. The songs of Wolf
and Strauss, of Duparc, Faure and Debussy, of Mous-
sorgsky, of Sibelius; the choral works of Franck, dTndy,
Pierne, Schmitt, of Delius, Bantock, Elgar and other
xiv
INTRODUCTION
Englishmen are conspicuous for technical and expres-
sive mastery.
II
Apart from the general assimilation of the innovat-
ing features due to Wagner and Liszt, the most striking
factor in musical evolution of the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries has been the rise of nationalistic
schools of composition. These have deliberately cul-
tivated the use of native folk-song and dance-rhythms,
and in the case of operas and symphonic poems have
frequently drawn upon national legend for subjects.
One of the earliest of these groups was the Bohemian,
whose leader, Smetana, already mentioned in connec-
tion with the symphonic poem, chamber and piano
music, also won a distinguished place by his vivacious
comic opera 'The Bartered Bride,' known abroad chiefly
by its inimitable overture. If Dvorak promised to be a
worthy disciple of a greatly talented pioneer, his abili-
ties were diffused by falling a victim to commissions
from English choral societies, and in endeavoring to
emulate Brahms. In reality he was most significant
when unconscious, as in the Slavic Dances and his naive
and charming Suite, op. 39, although his symphony
'From the New World' and certain chamber works
based upon negro themes are as enduring as anything
he composed. Hampered by a truly Schubertian lack
of self-criticism, his path toward oblivion has been has-
tened by this fatal defect, although his national flavor
and piquant orchestral color deserve a juster fate-
In the Scandinavian countries Grieg, and, to a lesser
degree, Nordraak, as well as Svendsen and Sinding
tempered nationality with German culture. Grieg, the
more dominant personality, was a born poet, and im-
parted a truly national fervor to his songs and piano
pieces. In the sonata form he was pathetically inept,
despite the former popularity of his chamber works and
xv
MODERN MUSIC
piano concerto. Certain mannerisms in abuse of se-
quence, and a too persistent cultivation of small forms,
have caused his works to lose ground rapidly; never-
theless Grieg has given a poetic and nationalistic savor
to his best music that makes it impossible to overlook
its value.
A coterie of accomplished and versatile musicians
which yields to none for intrinsic charm, vitality, and
poetic spontaneity is that of the so-called Neo-Russians,
self-styled 'the Invincible Band.' Resenting Rubin-
stein's almost total surrender to Teutonic standards,
and scorning Tschaikowsky as representing a pitiable
compromise between Russian and German standpoints,
they revolted against conventional technique with as
great pertinacity as did Galileo, Peri, Caccini, and
Monteverdi in the late sixteenth century. Their aesthetic
foster-father, Balakireff, for a time dominated the
studies and even supervised the composition of the
members Borodine, Cui, Moussorgsky, and Rimsky-
Korsakoff. Ultimately, each followed his own path,
though not without a certain community of ideal. Aim-
ing to continue the work of Glinka and Dargomijsky,
both in opera and instrumental music, they wished to
use folk-songs for themes and to utilize national leg-
ends or fairy stories. But they could not resist the
alien form of the symphonic poem, and with it the
orchestra of Liszt, and, while they opposed the Wag-
nerian dramatic forms, one at least, Rimsky-Korsakoff,
could not withstand the palpable advantages of the
Wagnerian orchestra. Their works combined the ele-
ments of western and oriental Russia, adhered largely
to folk-song or elements of its style, and in the opera
embodied folk-dances, semi-Pagan worship and cere-
monial with striking nationalistic effect. Many of their
orchestral pieces have taken place in the international
repertory of orchestras; of the operas a smaller num-
ber have penetrated to European theatres. While the
xvi
INTRODUCTION
nationalistic operas of Rimsky-Korsakoff are little
known beyond Russia, they show his talent in a broadly
humanistic and epic standpoint, hardly hinted at in
his orchestral works. Moussorgsky's Boris Godoun-
off, one of the finest operas since Wagner, claims at-
tention from the fact that it attains dramatic vitality
from a standpoint diametrically opposed to Wagner.
The influence of Boris Godounoff is palpable as form-
ing the subtle dramatic idiom of Pelleas et Melisande.
Glazounoff, Taneieff, and Gliere represent the cos-
mopolitan element among Russian composers of to-
day. Of these Glazounoff is the most notable. His
early symphonic poem, Stenka Razine, gave promise
of an original and brilliant career, but instead he has
become steadily more reactionary. Among his eight
symphonies there is scarcely one that is preeminent
from beginning to end. His ballets, Raymonda, 'The
Seasons,' and 'Love's Ruses,' have been surpassed by
younger men. His violin concerto is among his most
able works- A master of technique and structure and
a remarkably erudite figure, his lack of progressiveness
has been against him. A younger composer, Tcherep-
nine, is known for his skillful ballets, 'Narcissus,' Tan
and Echo,' and 'The Pavilion of Armida,' which incline,
nevertheless, towards the conventional. Rachmaninoff
is also of reactionary tendencies, although his piano
concertos and his fine symphonic poem, 'The Isle of
the Dead,' have shown his distinction.
The rise of the modern French school, largely owing
to a patriotic reaction after the Franco-Prussian war
and the liberal policies of the National Society, has
brought about one of the most fertile movements in
modern music. The transition from the operas of
Gounod, Thomas, Rizet, and the early Massenet to those
of Ghabrier, Lalo, d'Indy, Rruneau, Gharpentier, De-
bussy, Dukas, Ravel, and Faure is remarkable for its
concentrated progress in dramatic truthfulness. Sim-
xvii
MODERN MUSIC
ilarly, beginning with the eclectic and facile Saint-
Saens, the more romantic and fearless Lalo, and the
mystic Franck, through the audacious Ghabrier and
the suave and poetic Faure, including the serious and
devoted followers of Franck, d'Indy, Duparc, de Cas-
tillon, Chausson, and Lekeu, the versatile Dukas, to
the epoch-making Debussy with the younger men
like Ravel, Schmitt and Roussel, French instrumen-
tal music has developed, on the one hand, a fer-
vently classic spirit despite its modernism and, on
the other, an impressionistic exoticism which is without
parallel in modern music. Aside from a vitally new
harmonic idiom, which in Debussy reaches its greatest
originality despite d'Indy, Faure, and the later develop-
ments of Ravel, the attainment of racially distinct
dramatic style in such works as Debussy's Pelleas et
Melisande, Dukas' Ariane et Barbe-bleue, Ravel's
L'Heure espagnole, and Faure's Penelope is one of
the crowning achievements of this group. Further-
more, following the examples of the younger Russians,
the ballets of Jeux and Khamma by Debussy, La Peri
by Dukas, La Tragedie de Salome by Florent Schmitt,
Le Festin de I'Arraignee by Roussel, Orphee by Roger-
Ducasse, and, most significant of all, Daphnis et Chloe
by Maurice Ravel, have given a remarkable impetus
to a genuine choreographic revival.
There has been no nationalistic development in Eng-
land comparable to that in other countries, although
there has been no lack of serious and sustained effort
to be both modern and individual. The most important
of Rritish composers is undoubtedly Elgar, who has* at-
tained something like independence with his brilliant
and well-made orchestral works, and more especially
for his oratorio 'The Dream of Gerontius.' If Elgar
only carried on further a systematized use of the lead-
ing motive as suggested by Liszt in his oratorios, it was
done with a dramatic resource and eloquence which
xviii
INTRODUCTION
made the method his own. Bantock, gifted with an
orchestral perception above the average, showing a
natural aptitude for exoticism, achieved a successful
fusion of eclectic elements with individuality in his
three-part setting of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Other choral works and orchestral pieces have met
with a more uncertain reception. William Wallace has
been conspicuous for his imaginative symphonic
poems, and the insight of his essays on music. Fred-
erick Delius, partly German, has maintained a per-
sonal and somewhat detached individuality in orches-
tral, choral and dramatic works of distinctive value.
Josef Holbrooke has been mentioned already for his
unusual mastery of orchestral technique, and his cour-
ageous and ambitious attempts in opera. Many
younger composers are striving to be personal and in-
dependent, though involuntarily affected by one or an-
other of existent currents in modern music. Of these
Cyril Scott attempts a praiseworthy modernistic and
impressionistic sentiment, in which he leans heavily on
Debussy's harmonic innovations. Thus, while English
composers have been active, they have fallen to the
ready temptations of eclecticism, a growing force in
music of to-day, and in consequence their art has not
the same measure of nationalistic import as in Russia,
France, and Germany.
Ill
In the meantime, as the musical world has moved
forward in respect to structure from the symphony to
the symphonic poem, followed by its logical sequence
the tone-poem, in which the elements of various forms
have been incorporated, so has there been progress
and even revolution in the technical material of music
itself. Dargomijsky was probably the pioneer in using
the whole-tone scale, as may be seen in the third act
of his opera 'The Stone Guest,' composed in 1869.
xix
MODERN MUSIC
Rimsky-Korsakorf elaborated on his foundation as early
as 1880 in his opera Sniegourutchka. Moussorgsky
showed unusually individual harmonic tendencies, as
the first edition of Boris Godounoff before the revisions
and alterations by Rimsky-Korsakoff clearly demon-
strate. After casual experiments by Chabrier, d'Indy,
and Faure, Debussy founded an original harmonic sys-
tem, in which modified modal harmony, a remarkable
extension of whole-tone scale chords, the free use of
ninths, elevenths and thirteenths are the chief ingredi-
ents. Dukas has imitated Debussy to some extent,
Ravel owes much to him; both have developed inde-
pendently, Ravel in particular has approached if not
crossed the boundaries of poly-harmony. Scriabine,
following the natural harmonic heritage of the Rus-
sians, has evolved an idiom of his own possessing con-
siderable novelty but disfigured by monotony, in that
it consists chiefly of transpositions of the thirteenth-
chord with the alteration of various constituent inter-
vals. What he might not have accomplished can only
be conjectured, since his career has been terminated
by his sudden death. Although Richard Strauss has
greatly enlarged modern harmonic resource, his re-
sults must be regarded on the whole as a by-product
of his contrapuntal virtuosity. In his treatise on har-
mony Schonberg refers to his 'discovery' of the whole-
tone scale long after both Russians and French had
used it, but it is noteworthy that Schonberg arrived at
the conception of this scale and its chords with an abso-
lute and unplagiaristic independence.
The most recent developments affecting the technical
character of music are poly-harmony, or simultaneous
use of chords in different keys, and free dissonant
counterpoint. Striking instances of the former type
of anarchic experiment may be found in the mu-
sic of Igor Stravinsky, whose reputation has been made
by the fantastic imagination and the dramatic sincerity
xx
INTRODUCTION
of his ballets 'The Bird of Fire,' Petrouchka, The Cere-
monial of Spring,' and 'The Nightingale.' In these he
has mingled Russian and French elements, fusing them
into a highly personal and extremely dissonant style,
which in its pungent freedom and ingenious mosaic of
tonalities is both highly diverting and poignantly ex-
pressive. Stravinsky is one of the most daring innova-
tors of to-day, and both his dramatic vitality and the
audacity of his musical conceptions mark him as a
notable figure from whom much may be expected.
If Maurice Ravel, as shown in his ballet Daphnis et
Chloe, was a pioneer in poly-harmony, Alfred Casella,
of Italian parentage but of French education, has gone
considerably further. Similar tendencies may be found
in the music of Bartok, Kodaly and other Hungarians.
It seemed formerly that Strauss had pushed the dis-
sonant contrapuntal style as far as it could go, but his
style is virtually conventional beside that of the later
Schonberg. Schonberg has already passed through
several evolutionary stages, but his mature idiom ab-
jures tonality to an incredible extent, and he forces the
procedures of free counterpoint to such audacious dis-
regard of even unconventional euphony that few can
compass his musical message. Time may prove, how-
ever, that tonality is a needless convention, and it is
possible to declare that there is nothing illogical in his
contrapuntal system. It lies in the extravagant exten-
sion of principles of dissonance which have already
been accepted. It is indubitable that Schonberg suc-
ceeds in expressing moods previously unknown to mu-
sical literature, and it is conceivable that music may
encompass unheard-of developments in this direction,
just as poly-harmony has already proved extremely
fruitful.
The developments of poly-harmony and dissonant
contrapuntal style prophesy the near inadequacy of
our present musical scale. Busoni and others have
xxi
MODERN MUSIC
long since advocated a piano in which the sharps and
flats should have separate keys. As music advanced
from the modes to the major and minor keys, and
finally to the chromatic scale, so the necessity for a
new scale may constitute logically the next momentous
problem in musical art.
Within recent years, the barriers of nationalism have
become relaxed. An almost involuntary interchange of
idioms has caused music to take on an international
character despite a certain maintenance of racial traits.
Eclecticism is becoming to a certain extent universal.
Achievement is too easily communicable from one
country to another. In some respects music was more
interesting when it was more parochial. To prophesy
that music is near to anarchy is to convict one's self of
approaching senility, for the ferment of the revolu-
tionary element has always existed in art. Since the
time of Wagner and Liszt, however, musical develop-
ment has proceeded with such extreme rapidity as to
endanger the endurance of our traditional material.
Poly-harmony, dissonant counterpoint and the agita-
tion for a new scale are suspicious indications. Disre-
garding the future, however, let us realize that the
diversity and complexity of modern music is enthral-
ling, and that most of us can readily endure it as it
now is for a little longer.
EDWARD BURLINGAME HILL.
May, 1915.
xxn
CONTENTS OF VOLUME THREE
PAGE
Introduction by Edward Burlingame Hill . vii
CHAPTER
I. BY- AND AFTER-CURRENTS OF THE ROMANTIC MOVE-
MENT 1
Introductory; the term 'modern' The 'old-romantic*
tradition and the 'New German' school The followers of
Mendelssohn : Lachner, F. Killer, Rietz, etc. ; Carl Reinecke
Disciples of Schumann: Robert Volkmann; Bargiel, Kirch-
ner and others; the Berlin circle; the musical genre artists:
Henselt, Heller, etc. (pianoforte) ; Jensen, Lassen, Abt, etc.
(song) The comic opera and operetta: Lortzing, Johann
Strauss, etc. French eclecticism in symphonic and operatic
composition: Massenet Saint-Saens, Lalo, Godard, etc.
II. THE RUSSIAN ROMANTICISTS 37
Romantic Nationalism in Russian Music Pathfinders;
Cavos and Verstovsky Milhail Ivanovitch Glinka; Alex-
ander Sergeyevitch Dargomijsky Neo-Romanticism in Rus-
sian music; Anton Rubinstein Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky.
III. THE Music OF MODERN SCANDINAVIA .... 59
The rise of national schools in the nineteenth century
Growth of national expression in Scandinavian lands
Music in modern Denmark Sweden and her music The
Norwegian composers; Edvard Grieg Sinding and other
Norwegians The Finnish Renaissance: Sibelius and others.
IV. THE RUSSIAN NATIONALISTS 107
The founders of the 'Neo-Russian' nationalistic school:
Balakireff; Borodine Moussorgsky Rimsky-Korsakoff, his
life and works Cesar Cui and other nationalists, Naprav-
nik, and others.
V. THE Music OF CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA . . ' . .137
The border nationalists; Alexander Glazounoff, Liadoff,
Liapounoff, etc. The renaissance of Russian church music;
xxiii
CONTENTS OF VOLUME THREE
CHAPTER PAGE
Kastalsky and Gretchaninoff The new eclectics: Arensky,
Taneiff, Ippolitoff-Ivanoff, Gliere, Rachmaninoff and others
Scriabine and the radical foreign influence; Igor Stravin-
sky.
VI. MUSICAL DEVELOPMENT IN BOHEMIA AND HUNGARY 165
Characteristics of Czech music; Friedrich Smetana An-
tonin Dvorak Zdenko Fibich and others; Joseph Suk and
Viteslav Novak Historical sketch of musical endeavor in
Hungary 5don Mihalovich, Count Zichy and Jeno Hubay
Dohnanyi and Moor; 'Young Hungary': Weiner, Bela Bar-
t6k and others.
VII. THE POST-CLASSICAL AND POETIC SCHOOLS OF MOD-
ERN GERMANY 201
The post-Beethovenian tendencies in the music of Ger-
many and their present-day significance; the problem of
modern symphonic form The academic followers of
Brahms: Bruch and others The modern 'poetic' school:
Richard Strauss as symphonic composer Anton Bruckner,
his life and works Gustav Mahler Max Reger Draeseke
and others.
VIII. GERMAN OPERA AFTER WAGNER AND MODERN GER-
MAN SONG ... 238
The Wagnerian after-current: Cyrill Kistler; August
Bungert, Goldmark, etc.; Max Schillings, Eugen d'Albert
The successful post-Wagnerians in the lighter genre: Gotz,
Cornelius and Wolf; Engelbert Humperdinck and fairy
opera; Ludwig Thuille; Hans Pfltzner; the Volksoper
Richard Strauss as musical dramatist Hugo Wolf and the
modern song; other contemporary German lyricists The
younger men: Klose, Hausegger, Schonberg, Korngold.
IX. THE FOLLOWERS OF CESAR FRANCK 277
The foundations of modern French nationalism: Ber-
lioz; the operatic masters: Saint-Saens, Lalo, Franck, etc.;
conditions favoring native art development The pioneers
of ultra-modernism: Emanuel Chabrier and Gabriel FaurS
Vincent d'Indy: his instrumental and his dramatic
works Other pupils of Franck: Ernest Chausson; Henri
Duparc; Alexis de Castillon; Guy Ropartz.
X. DEBUSSY AND THE ULTRA-MODERNISTS . . . .317
Impressionism in Music Claude Debussy, the pioneer
of the 'atmospheric' school; his career, his works and his
influence Maurice Ravel, his life and work Alfred
Bruneau; Gustave Charpentier Paul Dukas Miscellany;
Albert Roussel and Florent Schmitt.
xxiv
CONTENTS OF VOLUME THREE
CHAPTER PAGE
XI. THE OPERATIC SEQUEL TO VERDI 366
The musical traditions of modern Italy Verdi's heirs:
Boito, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Puccini, Wolf-Ferrari, Fran-
chetti, Gordano, Oreflce, Mancinelli New paths; Monte-
mezzi, Zandonai and de Sabbata.
XII. THE RENAISSANCE OF INSTRUMENTAL Music IN
ITALY 385
Martucci and Sgambati The symphonic composers:
Zandonai, de Sabbata, Alfano, Marinuzzi, Sinigaglia, Man-
cinelli, Floridia; the piano and violin composers: Franco
da Venezia, Paolo Frontini, Mario Tarenghi; Rosario Sca-
lero, Leone Sinigaglia; composers for the organ The song
writers: art songs; ballads.
XIII. THE ENGLISH MUSICAL RENAISSANCE .... 409
Social considerations; analogy between English and
American conditions The German influence and its re-
sults: Sterndale Bennett and others; the first group of in-
dependents: Sullivan, Mackenzie, Parry, Goring Thomas,
Cowen, Stanford and Elgar The second group: Delius and
Bantock; McCunn and German; Smyth, Davies, Wallace
and others, D. F. Tovey; musico-literary workers, musical
comedy writers The third group : Vaughan Williams, Cole-
ridge-Taylor and W. Y. Hurlstone; Holbrooke, Grainger,
Scott, etc.; Frank Bridge and others; organ music, chamber
music, songs.
LITERATURE FOR VOLS. I, II AND III ...... 445
INDEX FOR VOLS. I, II AND III . .491
xxv
ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOLUME THREE
The Garden Concert; painting by Watteau (in colors)
Frontispiece
FACING
French Eclectics (Lalo, Massenet, Saint-Saens, Godard) . 30
Russian Romanticists (Glinka, Dargomijsky, Rubinstein,
Tschaikowsky) 48
Edvard Grieg 90
Jean Sibelius 104
Neo-Russian Composers (Moussorgsky, Balakireff, Boro-
dine, Rimsky-Korsakoff) 122
Contemporary Russian Composers (Rachmaninoff, Gla-
zounoff, Rebikoff, Gliere) 150
Bohemian Composers (Smetana, Dvorak, Fibich, Zuk) . 178
Hungarian Composers (Count Zichy, Jeno Hubay, Don-
ahnyi, Moor) 192
Richard Strauss 214
Modern German Symphonic and Lyric Composers (Mah-
ler, Bruckner, Draeseke, Wolf) 202
Max Reger , 226
Modern German Musical Dramatists (Humperdinck,
Thuille, Pfitzner, Goldmark) 246
Modern French Composers (Chabrier, d'Indy, Charpen-
tier, Ravel) 298
Claude Debussy 334
Contemporary Italian Composers (Mascagni, Wolf-Fer-
rari, Puccini, Zandonai) 372
Modern British Composers (Bantock, Sullivan, Parry,
Elgar) 424
xxvii
MODERN MUSIC
CHAPTER I
BY- AND AFTER-CURRENTS OF THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
Introductory; the term 'modern* The 'old-romantic' tradition and the
'New German' school The followers of Mendelssohn: Lachner, F. Killer,
Rietz, etc. ; Carl Reinecke Disciples of Schumann : Robert Volkmann ; Bar-
giel, Kirchner and others; the Berlin circle; the musical genre artists:
Henselt, Heller, etc. (pianoforte) ; Jensen, Lassen, Abt, etc. (song) The
comic opera and operetta: Lortzing, Johann Strauss, and others French
eclecticism in symphonic and operatic composition: Massenet Saint-Saens,
Lalo, Godard, etc.
THE term 'Modern Music,' which forms the title of this
volume, is subject to several interpretations. Just as in
the preceding volume we were obliged to qualify our
use of the words 'classic' and 'romantic,' partly because
all such nomenclature is more or less arbitrary, partly
because of the fusion of styles and dove-tailing of pe-
riods which may be observed in the history of any art,
so it now becomes necessary to define the word 'mod-
ern' in its present application.
Now 'modern' may mean merely new or up-to-date.
And in that sense it may indicate any degree of new-
ness: it may include the last twenty-five years or the
last century, or it may be made to apply to contempo-
raneous works only. But in another sense that gen-
erally accepted in connection with music it means 'ad-
vanced,' progressive, or unprecedented in any other
period. Here, too, we may understand varying degrees
of modernity. The devotees of the most recent develop-
ment, impatient of the usual broad application of the
term, have dubbed their school the 'futurist.' In fact,
any of these characterizations, whether in a time sense
1
MODERN MUSIC
or a quality sense, are merely relative. Wagner's dis-
ciples, disdainful of the romanticists, called his music
the 'music of the future.' Now, alas, critics classify
him as a romantic composer ! Bach, on the other hand,
long popularly regarded as an archaic bugaboo, is
now frequently characterized as a veritable modern.
'How modern that is !' we exclaim time and again, while
listening to an organ toccata or fugue arranged by
Busoni! Beethoven, the great classic, is in his later
period certainly more 'modern' than many a romanti-
cist Mendelssohn, for instance, or even Berlioz though
only in a harmonic sense, for he had not the command
of orchestral color that the great and turbulent French-
men made accessible to the world.
The newness of the music is thus seen to have little
to do with its modernity. Even the word 'contempo-
rary' gives us no definite clue, for there are men living
to-day like Saint-Saens whose music is hardly mod-
ern when compared to that of a Wolf, dead these
twelve years, or his own late countrymen Chabrier and
Faure not to speak of the recently departed Scriabine
with his clavier a lumiere.
But it is quite impossible to include in such a volume
as this only the true moderns in the aesthetic sense.
We should have to go back to Beethoven with his
famous chord comprising every degree of the diatonic
scale (in the Ninth Symphony), or at least to Chopin,
according to one interpretation. According to another
we should have to exclude Brahms and all his neo-
classical followers who content themselves with com-
posing in the time-honored forms. (Since there will
always be composers who prefer to devote themselves
to the preservation and continuation of formal tradi-
tion, this 'classical' drift will, as Walter Niemann re-
marks, be a 'modernism' of all times.) Brahms has, as
a matter of fact, been disposed of in the preceding vol-
ume, but the inclusion in the present volume of men
2
THE TERM 'MODERN'
%
like Volkmann, Lachner, etc., some of whom were born
long before Brahms, calls for an apology. It is merely
a matter of convenience, just as the treatment of men
like Glinka and Gade in connection with the national-
istic developments of the later nineteenth century is
merely an expedient. Such chronological liberties are
the historian's license. We have, to conclude, simply
taken the word modern in its widest and loosest sense,
both as regards time and quality, and we shall let the
text explain to what degree a composer justifies his
position in the volume. We may say at the outset that
all the men reviewed in the present chapter would
have been included in Volume II but for lack of space.
In Volume II the two great movements known as the
classic and the romantic have been fairly brought to a
close. Brahms and Franck on the one side, Wagner
and Liszt on the other, may be considered to have con-
cluded the romantic period as definitely as Beethoven
concluded the classic. Like him, too, they not only sur-
veyed but staked out the path of the future. But no
great art movement is ever fully concluded. (It has
been said by aesthetic philosophers that we are still in
the era of the Renaissance.) Just as in the days of Beet-
hoven there lived the Cherubinis, the dementis, the
Schuberts (as regards the symphony at least) who trod
in the great man's footsteps or explored important by-
paths, in some respects supplemented and completed
his work; so there are by- and after-currents of the
Romantic Movement which also cannot be ignored.
They are represented by men like Lachner, Ferdinand
Hiller, Reinecke and Volkmann in Germany; by Saint-
Saens, Massenet and Lalo in France; Gade in Den-
mark.* Some of their analogous predecessors have all
but passed from memory, perhaps their own works
will soon disappear from the current repertoire. Es-
* The last-named is treated with his compatriots in a succeeding chap-
ter.
MODERN MUSIC
pecially in the case of the Germans (whose country has
certainly suffered the strain of over-cultivation and
over-production, and which has produced in this age
the particular brand known as 'kapellmeister music')
is this likely. But it must be borne in mind that these
composers had command of technical resources far be-
yond the ken of their elder brothers; also that, by virtue
of the more subjective qualities characteristic of the
music of their period, as well as the vastly broadened
musical culture of this later day, they were able to
appeal more readily to a very wide audience..
The historical value of these men lies in their exploi-
tation of these same technical resources. They thor-
oughly grasped the formulae of their models; what the
pioneers had to hew out by force, these followers ac-
quired with ease. They worked diligently within these
limits, exhausting the possibilities of the prescribed
area and proving the ground, so to speak, so that new-
comers might tread upon it with confidence. They
were not as uncompromising, perhaps, as the pioneers
and high-priests themselves and therefore fused styles
that others thought irreconcilable. What seemed icon-
oclastic became commonplace in their hands. Thus
their eclecticism opened the way for new originalities;
their very conservatism induced progress.
I
Germany, it will be remembered, was, during Wag-
ner's lifetime, divided into two camps: the classic-
romantic Mendelssohn-Schumann school which later
rallied about the person of Brahms, on the one hand,
and the Wagner-Liszt, sometimes called the late-roman-
tic or 'New German' school, on the other. The adhe-
rents of the former are those whom we have called the
poets, the latter the painters, in music; terms applying
rather to the manner than to the matter, since the
'painters,' for another reason namely, because they
4
ROMANTIC TRADITION NEW GERMAN SCHOOL
believed that a poetic idea should form the basis of the
music and determine its forms might with equal rights
call themselves 'poets.' And, indeed, their followers,
the 'New Germans,' among whom we reckon Mahler
and Strauss, constitute what in a later chapter we have
called the 'poetic' school of contemporary Germany.
Few musicians accepted Wagner's gospel in his life-
time. Raff and other Liszt disciples, the Weimar group,
in other words, were virtually the only ones. A host,
however, worshipped the names of Mendelssohn and
Schumann. They gathered in Leipzig, their citadel,
where Mendelssohn reorganized the Gewandhaus con-
certs in 1835,* and founded the Royal Conservatory in
1843, and in the Rhine cities, where Schumann's influ-
ence was greatest. These men flourished during the
very time that Wagner was the great question of the
day. While preaching the gospel of romanticism, they
also upheld the great classic traditions. The advent of
Rrahms, indeed, brought a revival of pure classic feel-
ing. This persists even to-day in the works of men
whose romantic inspirations, akin to Mendelssohn,
Schumann, and Chopin, find expression in forms of
classic cast.
Roth Schumann and Wagner were reformers inter-
ested in the broadening of musical culture, the improve-
ment of taste, and the establishment of a standard of
artistic propriety Wagner on the stage, Schumann in
the concert room. The former was successful, the latter
* The Gewandhaus Concerts properly date from 1763, when regular per-
formances began under J. A. Hiller, though not given in the building known
as the Gewandhaus until 1781. At that time the present system of govern-
ment by a board of directors began. The conductors during the first sev-
enty years were, from 1763: J. A. Hiller (d. 1804) ; from 1785, J. G. Schicht
(d. 1823) ; from 1810, Christian Schulz (d. 1827) ; and from 1827, Christian
August Pohlenz (d. 1843). The standard of excellence was already famous.
But in 1835 Mendelssohn brought new eclat and enterprise, especially as he
soon had the invaluable help of the violinist David. The list of conductors
has been from 1835 : Mendelssohn (d. 1847) ; from 1843, Ferdinand Hiller
(d. 1885); from 1844, Gade (d. 1890) ; from 1848, Julius Rietz (d. 1877) ;
from 1860, Reinecke; and from 1895, Arthur Nikisch. Pratt, 'The History
of Music.'
5
MODERN MUSIC
only partially so. For, while the standards of the con-
cert room are much higher to-day than they were in
Schumann's day, musical taste in the home, which
should be guided by these standards, has, if anything,
deteriorated. The reason for this lies primarily in one
of the inevitable developments of musical romanticism
itself the genre tendency; secondarily, in the fact that,
while the Wagnerians were propagandists, writers of
copious polemics and agitators, the classic romanticists
were purely professional musicians who disdained to
write, preferring deeds to words (and incidentally do-
ing far too much), or else, like Hiller, were feuilleton-
ists, pleasant gossips about their art and nothing more.
The development of the small forms, the miniature,
the genre in short, and the corresponding decay of the
larger forms was perhaps the most outstanding result of
the romantic movement. Wagner alone, the dramatic
romanticist, continued to paint large canvases, frescoes
in vivid colors. The 'poetic' romanticists were of a lyric
turn, and required compact and intimate forms of ex-
pression. They had created the song, they had built
up a new piano literature out of small pieces, minia-
tures like Schubert's 'Musical Moments,' Schumann's
'Fantasy Pieces,' Mendelssohn's 'Songs without Words,'
Field's 'Nocturnes,' Chopin's Dances, Preludes, and
Etudes. Franz, Jensen, Lassen, and others continued
the song; Brahms, with his Intermezzi; Henselt, Heller,
and Kirchner, with his piano miniatures, the piano
piece. The first degenerated into Abt, Curschmann, and
worse, the second into the type of thing of which 'The
Last Hope' and 'The Maiden's Prayer' were the ultimate
manifestations. Sentiment ran over in small gushes
and drippings, even the piano study was made the ve-
hicle for a sigh. The sonata of a former day became a
sonatina or an 'impromptu' of one kind or another.
The parallel thing now happened in other fields.
The concert overture of Mendelssohn had in a measure
6
ROMANTIC TRADITION NEW GERMAN SCHOOL
displaced the symphony. What has been called the
'genre symphony' of Mendelssohn, Schumann, et al.
was also in the direction of minimization. Even Brahms
in his gigantic works emphasizes the tendency by the
intermezzo character of his slow movements, by the
orchestral filigree partaking of the chamber music
style. Now came the revival of the orchestral suite by
Lachner and Raff, the sinfonietta, and the serenade for
small orchestra. Again we sense the same trend in the
appearance of the choral ballad and in the tremendous
output of small dramatic cantatas for mixed or men's
voices.
In France, instrumental literature during the nine-
teenth century had been largely tributary to that of
Germany, just as its opera earlier in the century was
of Italian stock. Rut the development of the 'grand'
opera of Meyerbeer, on the one hand, and the opera
comique, on the other, had produced a truly Gallic form
of expression, of which the romanticism of the century
made use. Gounod and his colleagues of the lyric
drama; Bizet, the genius of his generation, with his
sparkling rhythms, his fine tunes and his orchestral
freshness; Delibes and David with their oriental color,
compounded a new French idiom which already found
a quasi-symphonic expression in the L'Arlesienne suites
of Rizet. Berlioz stands as a colossus among his gen-
eration and to this day has perhaps not been quite as-
similated by his countrymen. The Germans have
profited from his orchestral reforms at least as much as
the French. But he gave the one tremendous impetus
to symphonic composition, stimulated interest in Beet-
hoven and Weber and so pointed the way for his
younger compatriots. Already he speaks of Saint-
Saens as an accomplished musician.
Saint-Saens is, indeed, the next great exponent of the
classic tradition as well as the earliest disciple of the
late romantic school of Liszt and Wagner in France.
7
MODERN MUSIC
Beside him, Massenet, no less great as technician, forms
the transition to modernism on the operatic side, while
Lalo and Godard devote themselves to both depart-
ments. Cesar Franck, the Belgian, stands aloof in his
ascetic isolation as the real creator of the modern
French idiom.
II
We shall now consider some of these 'transition' com-
posers in detail; first the Germans, then the French.
Certain attributes they all have in common. Most of
them lived long and prospered, enjoying a wide influ-
ence or popularity in their day; Lachner and Reinecke
both came near to ninety; Volkmann near eighty; Saint-
Saens is still hale at eighty. All of them were highly
productive: Hiller, Reinecke, Raff, and Lachner sur-
passed 200 in their opus-numbers; Saint-Saens has gone
well over a hundred; and Massenet has written no less
than twenty-three operas alone. Nearly all of them
were either virtuosos or conductors: Hiller, Reinecke,
Saint-Saens, Biilow, Henselt, Heller were brilliant pian-
ists; Lachner, Saint-Saens, and Widor also organists;
Godard a violinist. The first four of these were emi-
nent conductors. Most of them were pedagogues be-
sides; some, such as Reinecke, Hiller, Jadassohn, Rietz,
and Massenet, among the most eminent of their genera-
tion.
Franz Lachner is the oldest of them. He was born,
1803, in Rain (Upper Bavaria), and died, 1890, in Mu-
nich. Thus he came near filling out four-score and ten,
antedating Wagner by ten years and surviving him by
seven. His career came into actual collision with that
of the Bayreuth master too, since the latter's coming
to Munich as the favorite of the newly ascended King
Ludwig II forced Lachner from his autocratic position
as general musical director.
Many forces must have reacted upon an artist whose
8
THE FOLLOWERS OF MENDELSSOHN
life thus spans the ages. He was a friend of Schubert
in Vienna, where he became organist in 1824, and is
said to have found favor even with Beethoven. Sechter
and Abbe Stadler gave him the benefit of their learn-
ing. After holding various conductor's posts in Vienna
and in Mannheim he finally found his way to Munich,
where he had already brought out his D minor sym-
phony with success. As court kapellmeister he con-
ducted the opera, the church performances of the royal
chapel choir and the concerts of the Academy, mean-
while creating a long series of successful works, nearly
all of which exhibit his astounding contrapuntal skill.
His seven orchestral suites, a form which he and Raff re-
vived, occupy a special place in orchestral literature,
as a sort of direct continuation of Bach's and Handel's
instrumental works. They are veritable treasure stores
of contrapuntal art. Perhaps another generation will
appreciate them better; to-day they have fallen into
neglect. This is even more true of his eight sympho-
nies, four operas, two oratorios, etc. Of his chamber
music (piano quartets, string quartets, quintets, sextets,
nonet for wind, etc.), his piano pieces and songs, influ-
enced by Schubert, some few numbers have survived.
Most prominent in Mendelssohn's immediate train is
Ferdinand Hiller. His junior only by two years (he
was born Oct. 24, 1811, in Frankfurt), he followed
closely in the footsteps of that master. Like him, he
came of Jewish and well-to-do parents; like him, he had
the advantage of an early training, a broad culture
and wide travel. A pupil of Hummel and a brilliant
pianist, he was presented to Beethoven in Vienna; in
Paris he hobnobbed with Cherubini, Rossini, Chopin,
Liszt, Meyerbeer and Berlioz, taught and concertized;
in Milan he produced an opera (Romilda) by the aid
of Rossini. Mendelssohn, already his friend, brought
out his oratorio 'Jerusalem Destroyed' at the Gewand-
haus in 1840, and in 1843-44 (after a sojourn in Rome)
9
MODERN MUSIC
he himself directed the Gewandhaus concerts made fa-
mous by Mendelssohn. Shortly after, he inaugurated a
series of subscription concerts in Dresden, also con-
ducting a chorus, and there brought out two operas
(Traum in der Christnacht, 1845, and Konradin, 1847).
Finally he did for Cologne what Mendelssohn had done
for Leipzig by organizing the conservatory and the Ge-
wandhaus concerts: he established the Cologne con-
servatory (1850) and became conductor of the Konzert-
gesellschaft and the Konzertchor, both of which par-
ticipated in the famous Gurzenich concerts and the
Rhenish music festivals. The eminence of his position
may be deduced from the fact that in 1851-52 he was
asked to direct the Italian opera in Paris. As teacher
and pianist he was no less renowned. For that reason
alone history cannot ignore him.
As a composer Hiller illustrates what we have said
of the degeneration of the early romantic school into
musical genre, though as a contemporary of Mendels-
sohn he must be reckoned as a by- rather than a post-
romantic. He commanded only the small forms, in
which, however, he displayed great technical finish,
polished grace and a 'clever pedantry.' In short piano
pieces, Reveries (of which he wrote four series), im-
promptus, rondos, marches, waltzes, variations, and
etudes he was especially happy. An F-sharp major
piano concerto, sonatas and suites, as well as his cham-
ber works (violin and 'cello sonatas, trios, quartets,
etc.), are grateful and pleasing in their impeccable
smoothness. Rut his six operas, two oratorios, three
symphonies and other large works have gone the way
of oblivion. His numerous overtures, cantatas, choral
ballads, vocal quartets, duets and songs stamp him as
a real, miniature-loving romantic. In productivity, too,
he remains true to the breed; his opus numbers exceed
two hundred. Hiller died in Cologne in 1885.
Another friend of Mendelssohn was Julius Rietz*
10
THE FOLLOWERS OF MENDELSSOHN
(1812-77), whose brother Eduard, the violinist, had
been the friend of the greater master's youth. He, too,
after conducting in Diisseldorf, came to the Leipzig
Gewandhaus as Gade's successor in 1848, took Mendels-
sohn's place as municipal musical director and taught
at the conservatory until he became court kapellmeister
and head of the conservatory in Dresden. His editorial
work, the complete editions of the works of Bach, Han-
del, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Mozart, published
by the house of Breitkopf and Hartel, are important.
His compositions are wholly influenced by Mendels-
sohn.
Among the few who actually had the benefit of Men-
delssohn's personal tuition is Richard Wiierst (1824-
81), whose activities were, however, centred in Ber-
lin, where he was musical director from 1874, royal
professor from 1877, and a member of the Academy.
His second symphony (op. 21) was prize-crowned in
Cologne and his cantata, Der Wasserneck, is a grate-
ful composition for mixed chorus. Several of his songs
also have become popular.
Karl Reinecke is less exclusive in his influence. He
divides his allegiance at least equally between Men-
delssohn and Schumann. He is the example par excel-
lence of the professional musician, the cobbler who
sticks to his last. He did not, like Hiller, indulge in
literary chit-chat about his art, confining himself to
writings of pedagogical import. He learned his craft
from his father, an excellent musician and drill-master,
and never had to go outside his home for direct in-
struction. Thus he became an accomplished pianist
(unrivalled at least in one department Mozart), at
nineteen appeared as virtuoso in Sweden and Denmark,
and in 1846-48 was court pianist to King Christian VIII.
After spending some time in Paris he joined Killer's
teaching staff in Cologne conservatory, then held con-
ductor's posts in Barmen and Breslau, and finally
11
MODERN MUSIC
(1860) occupied Mendelssohn's place at the Gewand-
haus in Leipzig. There, when the new building was
dedicated in 1884, his bust in marble was placed beside
those of Mendelssohn and Schumann, and not till 1885
was he dethroned from his seat of authority with the
advent of Nikisch. At the conservatory, too, his activity
was continuous from 1860 on as instructor in piano
and free composition. From 1897 to his retirement in
1902 he was director of studies.
Reinecke was born in 1824 at Altona, near Hamburg,
and enjoyed the characteristic longevity of the 'transi-
tion' composers, living well into the neighborhood of
ninety. In fecundity he surpasses even Hiller, for his
works number well-nigh three hundred. Besides Men-
delssohnian perfection, well-rounded classic form and
fine organization in workmanship, flavored with a
touch of Schumannesque subjectivity, Reinecke shows
traces of more advanced influences. The idioms of
Brahms and even the 'New Germans' crept into his
work as time went on. Of course, since Reinecke was
a famous pedagogue, his piano compositions (sonatas
for two and four hands, sonatinas, fantasy pieces, ca-
prices, and many other small forms) enjoyed a great
reputation as teaching material, which somewhat over-
shadowed their undoubted intrinsic value as music.
His four piano concertos are no longer heard, nor are
those for violin, for 'cello, and for harp. But his cham-
ber music the department where thorough musician-
ship counts for most is no doubt the most staple item
in his catalogue. There are a quintet, a quartet, seven
trios, besides three 'cello sonatas, four violin sonatas,
and a fantasy for violin and piano, also a sonata for
flute. His most popular and perhaps his best work are
the Kinderlieder, 'of classic importance in every sense,
easily understood by children and not without interest
for adults.' * Again it is the miniature form that pre-
*Naumann: Musikgeschichte, new ed. by E. Schmitz, 1913.
12
DISCIPLES OF SCHUMANN
vails. Similarly in the orchestral field, the overtures
(Dame Kobold, Aladin, Friedensfeier, Festou.vertti.re,
In memoriam) and the serenade for string orchestra
have outlasted the three symphonies, while the operas
('King Manfred,' 1867, three others, and the singspiel
'An Adventure of Handel'), as well as an oratorio,
masses, etc., have already faded from memory, though
the smaller choral works, with orchestra and otherwise
(including the Fairy Poems for women's voices and
the cycle Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe), still maintain
themselves in the repertoire of German societies.
Salomon Jadassohn (1831-1902) was still more of a
pedagogue and less of a composer. Yet he wrote copi-
ously, over one hundred works being published. It is
to be noted that he was a pupil of Liszt as well as
Moritz Hauptmann, but he gravitated to Leipzig and
lived there from 1852 on. He has a particular fondness
for the canon form and makes his chief mark in or-
chestral and chamber music. But his teaching manuals
on harmony and counterpoint are his real monument.
Ill
Undoubtedly the most important contemporary of
Brahms, following in tracks of Schumann, was Bobert
Volkmann. His acquaintance with Schumann was the
predominating stimulus of his artistic career, and, since
Brahms is too big and independent a genius to deserve
the epithet, Volkmann may count as the Diisseldorf
master's chief epigone. He was but five years younger
than Schumann, being born April 6, 1815, at Lom-
matzsch in Saxony, the son of a cantor, who instructed
him in piano and organ playing. He studied theory
with Anacker in Freiberg and K. F. Becker in Leipzig.
He taught in Prague (1839) and Budapest (1842), lived
in Vienna 1854-58, and again in Prague, where he was
13
MODERN MUSIC
professor of harmony and counterpoint at the National
Academy of Music, and died in 1893.
His first published work, the 'Fantasy Pictures' for
piano, appeared in 1839 in Leipzig. Unlike most other
composers of this group, he managed to give his larger
forms a permanent value; his two symphonies, in B
major (op. 44) and D minor (op. 53) respectively, are
still frequently played. Especially the last contains
matter that is imbued with real feeling and effectively
handled. His three serenades for string orchestra
(opera 62, 63, and 69, the last with 'cello obbligato)
are no less pleasing, and, in spite of the tribute which
Volkmann pays to Schumann in all his works, even
original. Of other instrumental music there are two
overtures, the piano trio in B minor, which first made
Volkmann's name more widely known, together with
two string quartets in A minor and G minor, one other
trio and four more quartets, a 'cello concerto, a ro-
mance each for 'cello and violin (with piano), a Kon-
zertstiick for piano and a number of small works for
piano as well as for violin and piano. Among his
vocal compositions two masses for men's voices and
a number of secular pieces for solo voice with orchestral
accompaniment are the most important.
Woldemar Bargiel (1828-97), Theodor Kirchner
(1824-1903), Karl Gradener (1812-83), and Albert Die-
trich (b. 1829) are all disciples of Schumann. The first,
a stepbrother of Clara Schumann, is perhaps the most
important. He worked chiefly with the orchestra and
chamber combinations, his overture to 'Medea' and his
trios being most noteworthy, but he contributed to choral
and solo song literature as well. Kirchner is known
for his finely emotional piano miniatures (some ac-
companied by string instruments) as well as for cham-
ber music and songs. Gradener, too, composed in all
these forms, and Dietrich, who was court kapellmeister
in Oldenburg and was in close personal touch with
14
THE BERLIN CIRCLE
Schumann in Diisseldorf, left symphonies, overtures,
chamber music and songs altogether in the spirit of
the great arch-romantic.
The composers so far discussed constitute what is
sometimes called the Leipzig circle. While they can
not in any sense be considered as radicals, and, indeed,
were frequently attacked as conservative or academic
by the followers of the more radical wing which made
its headquarters at Weimar, they appear distinctly pro-
gressive when compared with the ultra-conservative
group of composers centred in Berlin, who made it
their particular duty to uphold tradition and to apply
their energies to the creation of choral music of rather
antique type. 'It may be that the attitude of certain
Berlin masters,' says Pratt,* 'like Grell, Dehn, and Kiel,
serve a useful purpose as a counterpoise to the im-
pulsive swing of style away from the traditions of the
old vocal counterpoint. They certainly helped to keep
musical education from forgetting solid structure in
composition amid its desires to exploit impressionistic
and sensational devices. Probably this reactionary
influence did good in the end, though its intolerant
narrowness exasperated the many who were eagerly
searching out new paths. It at least resulted in making
Berlin a centre for choral music of a severe type, for
able teachers of the art of singing, for musical theory
and for scholarly investigators of musical history.' It
may be added that the Royal Academy was the strong-
hold of this extreme 'right wing,' and that the chief
institutions which helped to uphold old vocal tradi-
tions were the Singakademie, the Domchor, the Institut
ftir Kirchenmusik (later merged into the Hochschule
fur Musik). The Conservatory, founded in 1850 by
Marx, Kullak, and Stern, and the Neue Akademie der
Tonkunst, established in 1855 by Theodor Kullak, also
acquired considerable importance.
* Waldo Selden Pratt: 'The History of Music,' New York, 1908.
15
MODERN MUSIC
Eduard August Grell (1800-86) gave proof of his
contrapuntal genius in a series of sacred works in-
cluding a sixteen-part mass, an oratorio, and a Te
Deum, besides many songs and motets. He assisted
Rungenhagen in conducting the Singakademie from
1832, becoming sole conductor and teacher of composi-
tion at the Academy in 1851, and was a musician of
very wide influence. Siegfried Dehn (1799-1858) is
chiefly important as teacher of a number of the com-
posers mentioned in this chapter and as the author of
treatises. Friedrich Kiel (1821-85), whose requiem in
F minor has been called among all later works of this
class the most worthy successor of those of Mozart and
Cherubini, has also written a Missa Solemnis, an ora-
torio Christus, and another Requiem (A minor)
works which attest above all the writer's polyphonic
skill, and which prove the appropriateness of applying
such a style to modern works of devotional character.
Kiel's Stabat mater, Te Deum, 130th Psalm and two-
part motets for women's voices, as well as his chamber
music and piano pieces, are all worthy of consideration.
Karl Friedrich Rungenhagen (d. 1851) and August Wil-
helm Bach (d. 1869), both noted as composers of choral
music, may complete our review of the 'Berlin circle.'
There remain to be mentioned those specialists who
are concerned almost exclusively with the two most
characteristic mediums of the romantic genre the
piano piece and the song. Schumann and Chopin had
brought the miniature piano composition to its highest
plane of expression and the most advanced technical
standard, which even the dramatic imagination and the
virtuoso brilliance of Liszt could not surpass. They
and such milder romanticists as Mendelssohn and John
Field had brought this class of music within the reach
of amateurs, Schumann even within that of the child.
Brahms, with no thought of the dilettante, had intensi-
fied this form of expression, making a corresponding
16
THE MUSICAL GENRE ARTISTS
demand upon technical ability. It remained for men
like Adolf Henselt, Stephen Heller, and Theodor Kullak
to popularize the new pianistic idiom, as Clementini,
Hummel, and Moscheles had popularized that of the
classics. These are the real workers in genre, mono-
chrome genre, with their pictorial description, their
somewhat bourgeois romanticism and sometimes maud-
lin sentimentality. Even their etudes are cast in an
easy lyrical vein which was made to convey the pretty
sentiment.
Henselt (1814-89) was an eminent pianist, born in
Silesia, pupil of Hummel and Sechter in Vienna. After
1838 he lived in St. Petersburg. Pieces like the Poeme
damour and the 'Spring Song' are comparable to Men-
delssohn's 'Songs without Words,' but they are more
richly embroidered and of a fuller sonority. His F
minor concerto is justly famous. Stephen Heller (1814-
88) was also famous as a concert pianist. Of his com-
positions, to the number of 150, all for his own instru-
ment, many are truly and warmly poetic in content.
Though lacking Schumann's passion and Chopin's har-
monic genius, he surpasses Mendelssohn in the original-
ity and individuality of his ideas. In a number of his
things, probably pot-boilers, he leans dangerously to
the salon type of composition, with which many of his
immediate followers flooded the market. We are all
familiar with the album-leaf, fly-leaf, mood-picture,
fairy and flower piece variety of piano literature, as
well as the pseudo-nature study, the travel picture in
which the Rhine and its castles and Loreley, the Alps
and its cowbells, Venice with its barcarolles and Naples
with its tarantellas figure so conspicuously.
Kullak (1818-82), already mentioned as the founder
of the Neue Akademie of Berlin and famous both as
pianist and teacher, wrote some 130 works, most of
which is in the salon type or in the form of brilliant
fantasias and paraphrases, less important, perhaps,
17
MODERN MUSIC
than his etudes ('School of Octave Playing,' etc.). The
piano technicians Henri Hertz (1803-88), Sigismund
Thalberg (1812-71), Karl Klindworth (b. 1830), Karl
Tausig (1841-71), Nicolai Rubinstein (1835-81), brother
of Anton and founder of the Moscow conservatory, and
Hans von Billow, of whom we shall speak later, might
all be mentioned in this connection, though their work
as virtuosi, teachers, and editors is of greater moment
than their efforts as original composers.
The song engaged the exclusive activity of number-
less composers of this period, and perhaps to a great
extent with as untoward results as the piano piece.
But there are, on the other hand, men like Eduard Las-
sen (1830-1904), Adolf Jensen (1837-79), and Wilhelm
Taubert (1811-91) whose work, in part at least, will
take a place beside that of the great romantics. Robert
Franz, by far the most important of these, has been
treated in Volume II (p. 289) . Taubert is to-day chiefly
known for his 'Children's Songs,' full of ingenuous
charm and sincere feeling. It should not be forgotten,
however, that their composer wrote a half dozen operas,
incidental music for Euripides' 'Medea' and Shake-
speare's 'Tempest,' as well as symphonies, overtures,
chamber, piano and choral works. Berlin, his birth-
place, remained his headquarters. Here he conducted
the court concerts, the opera and the Singakademie,
and was the president of the musical section in the
Senate of the Royal Academy.
Adolf Jensen, in Hugo Riemann's judgment, is much
more than Franz entitled to the lyric mantle of Schu-
mann. His songs, appearing in modest series bearing
no special title, have in them much real poetic imagina-
tion. They are unmistakably influenced by Wagner.
Books 4, 6, and 22, as well as the two cycles Dolorosa
and Erotikon, are picked by Naumann as especially
noteworthy. The popular Lehn' deine Wang is most
frequently sung, but is one of the less meritorious of
18
MINOR SONG WRITERS
Jensen's songs. The composer has also been success-
ful with pianoforte works, his sonata op. 25 and the
pieces of opera 37, 38, and 42 being worthy essays along
the lines of Schumann. An eminently aristocratic char-
acter and a profound subjective expression are their
distinguishing features, together with the soft beauty
of their melodic line. Jensen was a native of Konigs-
berg (1837), and spent some years in Russia in order to
earn sufficient money to live near Schumann in Diissel-
dorf, but the tragic end of the latter frustrated this
plan. Hence he followed a call to conduct the theatre
orchestra in Posen, later going to Copenhagen, Konigs-
berg, Berlin, Dresden, and Graz. He died in Baden-
Baden in 1879.
Lassen, another song-writer of distinction, came more
definitely under the Liszt influence and will therefore
be treated with the 'New Germans' in another section.
The degeneration of the song, corresponding to that
of the small piano forms, is to be noted in the produc-
tions of such men as Franz Abt (1819-85) and Karl
Friedrich Curschmann (1804-41). Abt is among song-
writers the typical Spiessbiirger, the middle-class Phi-
listine dear to the Mdnnerchor member's heart. His
songs are of that popular melodiousness which at its
best flavors of the folk-song and at its worst of the
music hall. Of the. former variety are 'Wenn die
Schwalben heimwdrts ziehn' and 'Gate Nacht, mem
herziges Kind.' All of Abt's songs and vocal quartets
are of the more or less saccharine sentimentality which
for a time was such an appealing factor in American
popular music. Indeed, when Abt visited the United
States in 1872 he was received with extraordinary ac-
claim.
Curschmann's songs are perhaps slightly superior in
musical value, and at one time were equally popular,
but they are not as near to becoming folk-songs as are
some of Abt's. Many others might be mentioned among
19
MODERN MUSIC
the perveyors of this sentimental stuff. If, as Naumann
says, Taubert and his kind are the musical bourgeoisie,
these are the small middle class. Arno Kleffel (b. 1840),
Louis Ehlert (1825-84), Heinrich Hofmann (1842-1902),
Alexander von Fielitz (b. 1860) may be regarded as
standing on the border line of the two provinces.
Much more worthy, from a purely musical stand-
point, are the frank expressions of good humor and
hilarity, the light rhythmic sing-song of the comic opera
and the operetta represented by Lortzing and Johann
Strauss (Jr.), respectively. Albert Lortzing (1801-51)
revived or perpetuated in a new (and more engaging)
form the singspiel of J. A. Hiller and Dittersdorf, the
genre which, as we remember, had its origin in the bal-
lad operas of eighteenth-century England. For all his
lightheartedness and ingenuousness, and despite his in-
debtedness to Italy and the opera comique, Lortzing be-
longs to the Romantic movement. Bie is of that opinion
and says of him: 'He was at bottom a tender and
lightly sentimental nature running over with music and
winning his popularity in the genre of the bourgeois
song and the heart-quality chorus.' Born as the son
of an actor, travelling around from theatre to theatre,
learning to play various instruments, appearing in
juvenile roles, becoming actor, singer and conductor by
turns, Lortzing fairly absorbed the ingredients that go to
make the successful provider of light amusement. Suc-
cessful he was only in an artistic sense economically
always 'down on his luck.' He began to compose early
and turned out operas by the dozen, all dialogue operas
or singspiele, writing (or adapting) both words and
music. Not till 1835 did he make a hit with Die
beiden Schiitzen. Zar und Zimmermann, Der Wild-
schtitz, Undine (a romantic fairy opera), and Der Waf-
fenschmied are the most successful of his works, and
still live as vigorous an existence in Germany as the
Gilbert and Sullivan operas do in England. He became
20
THE COMIC OPERA AND OPERETTA
more and more popular as time went on, for he had
no successful imitator. No one after him managed to
write such dear old songs, such funny ensembles, and
such touching scenes of every-day life. No one, in short,
could make people laugh and cry by turns with such
perfect musical art. He is a classic, as classic in his
form as Dittersdorf ; but, as Bie says, Mozart, Schubert,
and Weber had lived, and, for Lortzing, not in vain.
In this department, too, we must record a degenera-
tion. It was accomplished notably by Victor Nessler
(1841-90), whose Trompeter von Sakkingen still haunts
the German opera houses, while its most popular num-
ber, Behtit dich Gott, is still a leading 'cornet solo,'
zither selection, and hurdy-gurdy favorite.
Johann Strauss (1825-1899) * might be denied a place
in many a serious history. But let us not forget that a
large part of the public, when you say 'Strauss,' still
think of him instead of Richard! And neither let us
forget Brahms' remark about the 'Blue Danube' waltz
that he wished he might have written so beautiful a
melody was quite sincere. The 'Blue Danube' has
become the second Austrian national anthem or at
least the leading Viennese folk-song. 'Artist's Life,'
'Viennese Blood,' 'Bei uns z'Haus,' 'Man lebt nur einmaV
(out of which Taussig made one of the most brilliant of
concert pieces) these waltzes are hardly less beloved
of the popular heart and feet unspoiled by one-step or
tango. In his operettas, too, whose style is similar to
that of Offenbach and Lecocq (see II, p. 392 ff) , Strauss
remains the 'waltz king' : the pages of Die Fledermaus
('The Bat'), The Gypsy Baron,' and 'The Queen's Lace
Handkerchief teem with fascinating waltz rhythms.
Strauss is as inimitable in his way as Lortzing was in
his to date he has no serious rival, unless it be the
* Strauss' father, Johann, Sr. (1804-1849), was, with his waltzes and
the wonderful travelling orchestra that played them, as much the hero of
the day as his son. The son first established an orchestra of his own, but
after his father's death succeeded him as leader of the older organization.
21
MODERN MUSIC
composer of Rosenkavalier himself. Karl Millocker *
(1842-99) with the 'Beggar Student' and Franz von
Suppe (1819-1895) with Das Mddchen vom Lande,
Flotte Bursche, etc., come nearest to him in reputation.
The latter should be remembered for more serious work
as well, and the still popular 'Poet and Peasant' over-
ture. He was the teacher of the American Reginald
de Koven.
V
If Leipzig represents the centre, and Berlin the right
wing, the group of Liszt disciples gathered together in
Weimar must be taken as the 'left' of the roman-
tic schools. Out of this wing has grown the new Ger-
man school which is still in the heyday of its glory and
among whose adherents may be reckoned most of the
contemporary German composers. We have men-
tioned in this chapter only two of the older disciples of
this branch, namely Raff (who has already been noticed
in Vol. II), and Lassen, who is most widely known as
a song-writer. The rest we defer to a later chapter.
Joseph Joachim Raff was born at Lachen, on Zurich
lake, in 1822. The son of an organist, he first became
an elementary teacher. His first encouragement came
from Mendelssohn, but his hope to be able to study
with that master was never realized. Biilow and Liszt
were also helpful to him, but many disappointments
beset his path. He followed Liszt to Weimar in 1850,
became a collaborator on the Neue Zeitschrift fur Mu-
sik, and championed Wagner in a brochure entitled
'The Wagner Question' (1854). In the course of his
sixty years (he died in Frankfurt in 1882) he turned
out what is perhaps the largest number of works on
record. His opus numbers go far beyond 200 even
the indefatigable Riemann does not attempt a complete
summary of them. There are 11 symphonies, 3 orches-
* Karl Millocker, b. Vienna, 1842 ; d. 1899, Baden, near Vienna.
22
THE 'NEW ROMANTICS'
tral suites, 5 overtures and orchestral works; concertos,
sonatas, etc., for various instruments; 8 string quartets,
a string sextet and an octet, piano trios, quartets, and
every kind of smaller form imaginable. The piano
pieces flavor in many cases of the salon. The songs,
duets, vocal quartets and choruses are chiefly remark-
able for their great number. His opera 'King Alfred'
never got beyond Weimar, while some of his six others
(comic, lyric, and grand) were not even performed.
Out of all this mass only the Wald and Leonore sym-
phonies have stood the test of time, and even these are
rapidly fading.
Yet Raff was in some ways an important man. His
extraordinary and extremely fruitful talent was sub-
jected to the changing influences of the neo-classic and
the late romantic school. If the Mendelssohnian model
led him to emphasize the formalistic elements in his
work, he soon realized that perfect form was only a
means and not an end. That emotion, mood, and ex-
pression were not to be subordinated to it he learned
from Liszt. Hence his works, descriptive in character
as their titles imply, show the conflict between form and
content which had already become a problem with
Berlioz. His symphonies, now purely descriptive (a de-
velopment starting with the pastoral symphony of Beet-
hoven), now dramatic (with Berlioz's Fantastique as
the model), are mildly programmistic and colorful, but
have neither the sweep of imagination of Berlioz nor
the daring brilliance of Liszt.
At any rate Raff had considerable influence upon
others Edward MacDowell among them. He 'proved,'
as it were, the methods of the new German school along
mediocre lines. He w r as a pioneer and not a mere camp
follower as most of his contemporaries.
Hans von Billow's (1830-94) importance as pianist,
conductor, and editor overshadows his claim as a crea-
tive musician. As such he has left music for Shake-
23
MODERN MUSIC
speare's 'Julius Caesar,' a symphonic mood-picture 'Nir-
vana,' an orchestral ballad 'The Singer's Curse,' and
copious piano works. Their style is what may be ex-
pected from their creator's close associations with Liszt
and Wagner, which are too well known for comment.
He became Liszt's pupil in 1853 (marrying his daughter
Cosima in 1857) * and was Wagner's staunchest cham-
pion as early as 1849. In his later years he gave evi-
dence of a broad catholicity and progressive spirit by
making propaganda for Brahms and propitiating the
youthful Richard Strauss. In his various executive
activities he accomplished miracles for the cause of
musical culture, and as conductor of the Meiningen and
the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra laid the foundation
of the contemporary conductor's art.
Eduard Lassen (1830-1904), who, through Liszt's in-
fluence, was made musical director at the Weimar
court in 1858, becoming Hofkapellmeister in 1861, is
chiefly known for his pleasing songs. His early train-
ing was received at the Conservatory, where he won the
prix de Rome in 1851. The fact that his songs betray at
times an almost Gallic grace is therefore not surprising.
He wrote, besides two operas (Frauenlob and Le Cap-
tif), music for Hebbel's Nibelungen (11 'character
pieces' for orchestra) , for Sophokles' 'CEdipus Colonos,'
and for Goethe's 'Faust'; also symphonies, overtures,
cantatas, etc.
C. S.
VI
Turning to France, we have as the leading 'transi-
tion' composers Massenet, Saint-Saens, and Lalo, three
musicians strangely difficult to classify. They remain
on the margin of all the turbulent movements in mod-
ern musical evolution. Each pursued his own way and
* He was divorced from her in 1869 and she became the wife of Richard
Wagner in the following year.
24
FRENCH ECLECTICISM
the only point of contact between the three, outside of
their uniformly friendly relations, is their individual
isolation. Each might have turned to the other for
sympathy in his loneliness. No doubt the spoiled and
successful Massenet, the skeptical and mocking Saint-
Saens, and the noble and sensitive Lalo must have felt
alone in the attacks or indifference of their fellow ar-
tists. Yet, aloof as they were, each in his way has been
an important influence on French music. Massenet by
the essentially French character of his melody, Saint-
Saens by his eminently Latin sense of form, and Lalo
by the picturesque fondness for piquant rhythms, have
each woven themselves into the very texture of modern
French music, Saint-Saens and Lalo in particular be-
ing propagandists for the new and vital growth of the
symphonic forms in Paris during the last three decades.
If there is less of the spectacular and the intense in
their productions, there are qualities that make for a
certain recognition and popularity over a relatively
longer space of time. There is nothing enigmatic or
revolutionary with either. Each expressed himself with
varying degrees of sincerity in an idiom which, without
pointing to the future, is nevertheless of the time in
which it was written. If there are retrogressive quali-
ties in Saint-Saens, it must not be forgotten that he is
one of the significant exponents of the symphonic poem.
If Massenet attempted no revolutionary harmonic pro-
cedure, he nevertheless made a certain type of lyric
opera all his own. If Lalo was content to compose in
the conventional form known as symphony, concerto,
quartet, etc., he none the less endowed them with a
quality immediately personal and not present hereto-
fore in these forms. They are all intimately related
to French music as it has been and as it will be.
'I was born,' wrote Jules-fimile-Frederic Massenet
(1842-1912) in an article appearing in 'Scribner's Maga-
zine,' 'to the sound of hammers of bronze.' With this
25
MODERN MUSIC
stentorian statement, which would have better served
to inaugurate the biography of a Berlioz or a Benve-
nuto Cellini, Massenet tells us the bare facts of a more
or less colorless life. With the exception of a few hard
years during his apprenticeship at the Conservatoire,
Massenet remains for well over a quarter of a century
the idol, or rather the spoiled child, of the Parisian
public. His reputation abroad is considerably less, the
role of his elegant or superficial art being taken in Ger-
many and America by Sig. Puccini. Nevertheless, even
to the American public, little interested in the refined
neuroticism of this child of the Second Empire, Mas-
senet is not devoid of a certain charm.
To obtain an adequate idea of his importance among
the group of composers of the late nineteenth century
it is necessary to close one's ears against the railing of
the snobbish elite. There is much in Massenet to criti-
cize. If one thinks merely of the spirit which actuates
his productions, one is very apt to be condemnatory.
When one considers, however, a fluid and elegant tech-
nique such as was his, an amazing power of production
that recalls the prolific masters of the Renaissance, and
a power not only to please but even to dictate to the
fickle operatic tastes of a quarter-century, one must stop
one's criticism to murmur one's admiration. Massenet
has probably never been justly appraised. Among his
compatriots the critics allied with the young school are
so vituperative as to render their opinions valueless.
His admirers show an equal lack of proportion, being
ofttimes friends rather than well equipped critics. Any
just observer of musical history, however, must stop
to consider the qualities of a man that could retain his
hold upon the sympathies of a public rather distin-
guished for the fickleness and injustice of its tastes. To
find the work that best exemplifies the Massenetian
qualities among an opus that includes twenty-four
operas, seven orchestral suites, innumerable songs,
26
FRENCH ECLECTICISM
some chamber music, and some incidental music for
various popular productions, is not easy.
Let us pass his operas in rapid review. The first
dramatic work of any importance is Le Roi de Lahore,
given for the first time in April, 1877. In this opera, as
in Herodiade, which followed it four years later, there
is much that has become permanently fixed in the con-
cert repertoire. It is doubtful whether either will ever
regain its place in the theatre. With Manon, however,
an opera comique in five acts, Massenet inaugurates a
success that was to be undimmed until his death in
1912. Manon, since its production in 1884, has enjoyed
a remarkable career of more than 1,200 productions in
Paris. It is typical, as regards the text, of the successful
libretto that the composer of Werther, of Le Jongleur
de Notre Dame, and Thais was to employ. Massenet
in his attitude toward adaptable literary material may
be said to have had his ear to the ground. It is not sur-
prising, therefore, that the passionate novelette of the
Abbe Prevost should have attracted him, and in Manon
one may observe the characteristics of the Massenetian
heroine that were to make him so popular among the
sensitive, subtle, spoiled, and restless women of our
time. One enthusiastic biographer asserts that Mas-
senet has taken one masterpiece to make another. Al-
though one must acknowledge the undoubted charm of
this fragile little opera, one cannot consider it on the
same intellectual plane as that sincere epic of a young
sentimentalist of the late eighteenth century. Through-
out the five acts are scenes or parts of scenes that show
Massenet at his best. Technically speaking, however,
the work is often inferior to the one or two little mas-
terpieces composed later on. In it a certain crudity
and hesitation of technique are often apparent. The
casual mingling of musical declamation with spoken
dialogue is often unsatisfactory if not absolutely dis-
tasteful. It is in the splendid love-scene of Saint Sulpice
27
MODERN MUSIC
that the composer first gives a revelation of his remark-
able powers as a musico-dramatic artist.
In 1892 at Vienna was presented a work that Mas-
senet was never to surpass: Werther. This work has
never attained the popularity of Manon, but it is in-
finitely superior in every detail. In it Massenet has
achieved an elastic musical declamation that is almost
unique in the history of opera. Throughout, with ab-
solute deference to the principles of diction, the solo
voice sings a sort of melodic recitative skillfully ac-
companied by a transparent yet marvellously colored
orchestra. The comparative lack of success of Werther
is no doubt due to the sentimentalization of a tale
already morbid when fresh from the pen of Goethe.
Naturally in adapting it to the stage, and especially to
the French stage, the idyllic charm of Goethe's extraor-
dinary tale has been lost. Also, the glamour of its
quasi-autobiographical connection with a great poet
has entirely vanished. With all these qualifications,
one must nevertheless if his opinion be not too influ-
enced by musical snobbishness acknowledge Werther
to be a lyric work of the greatest importance.
There is only one other work that could add to Mas-
senet's reputation or show another facet of his genius,
Le Jongleur de Notre Dame. This work, founded upon
a legend of the Middle Ages adapted with taste and dis-
cretion by Maurice Lena of the University of Paris, is
a treasure among short operas. The skeptical box-
holder of the theatre rejoices in the fact that there is
no woman's role. The three brief acts centre about the
routine of a monastery and the apparition of the Virgin.
Massenet has treated this innocent historiette with a
tenderness and care that belie the casual overproduc-
tion that characterized his career.
After Le Jongleur one is face to face with a sad suc-
cession of hastily composed, often mediocre, stage
pieces. Upon the occasion of the presentation of the
28
JULES MASSENET
posthumous opera Cleopatra at Monte Carlo in 1914,
friendly critics pointed to the renewal of Massenet's ge-
nius. An examination of Cleopatra, however, reveals a
deplorable use of conventional procedures with certain
disagreeable mannerisms of the composer at their
worst. Panurge, presented in 1913, is a better work.
No doubt in composing it Massenet wished to achieve
a French Meister singer. He has fallen far short of this
and one is forced to confess that the Gallic cock crows
in a shrill and fragile falsetto.
Among Massenet's orchestral suites, it would be un-
just to omit mention of the Scenes Alsaciennes. Also
one can separate from the quantity of stage music com-
posed for various dramatic pieces Les Erynnies, com-
posed for the drama of Leconte de Lisle. An examina-
tion of the cantatas, 'Eve' in particular, is interesting as
evidence of Massenet's extraordinary virtuosity.
So much for the actual works. When one considers
the influence of Massenet upon the new musical school
that sprang up in France after Franck, one can hardly
exaggerate it. Among his pupils are many of the dis-
tinguished young musical Nihilists of to-day, for, if we
admit the meretricious aims of Massenet in contempo-
rary music, it is impossible not to admit, too, that he
possessed one of the most certain techniques for the
stage since Rameau. Absolutely conversant with the
exactions of dramatic composition, one might say that
in each bar of music he was haunted by the foot-lights.
Musically speaking, the modelling of the Massenetian
melody is characterized by an elegance that is sickly
and cloying. Towards the end of his career there was
no need to subject his music to the polishing that other
composers find necessary. His mannerisms resolved
themselves into tricks. The effect of these tricks was
so certain as to enable this skillful juggler to intersperse
pages of absolutely meaningless filling. In one depart-
ment of technique, however, one can think of little but
29
MODERN MUSIC
praise that is Massenet's clear and sonorous orchestra-
tion. He is one of the shining examples of that economy
of resources to be observed in present-day French com-
posers. His orchestra is that of the classics, and yet he
seems to endow it with possibilities for color and dra-
matic expression unknown in France, at least in the
domain of theatrical composition, before his appear-
ance.
His dominant fault is a nervous and ever-present de-
sire to please at all costs. He had an uncanny power
of estimating the receptivity of audiences and was care-
ful not to go beyond well-defined limits. In Esclar-
monde there is a timid attempt to acclimate the pro-
cedures of Richard Wagner to the stage of the Opera
Comique. We cannot share the enthusiasm of some of
Massenet's critics for this empty and inflated imitation.
It is not good Massenet, and it is poor Wagnerism, for
the real Massenet, say what you will, is the Massenet
of a few scenes of Manon, of the delicate moonlight
reverie of Werther, and the cloying Meditation from
Thais. The mistake of critics in appraising a composer
like Massenet is that they assume that there is a plati-
num bar to standardize musical ideals. Massenet set
himself to do something. He wanted to please.
Haunted by the sufferings of his student life at the Con-
servatoire, he wanted to be successful; he was emi-
nently so. If his means of obtaining this success seem
questionable to those of us who believe in a continu-
ous evolution of art, when we are confronted with the
industry, the achievement, and the' mastery of technical
resources that are to be observed in Massenet, we must
unwillingly acclaim him a genius.
We have already referred to Massenet's prodigious
output. Besides his 23 operas his works include 4 ora-
torios and biblical dramas, his incidental music to any
number of plays, his suites, overtures, chamber music,
piano pieces and four volumes of songs, as well as a
30
French Eclectics:
fidouard Lalo
Camille Saint-Saens
Benjamin Godard
Jules Massenet
SAINT-SAENS AND OTHERS
capella choruses. Massenet was a native of Montaud,
near St. Etienne (Loire), studied at the Conservatoire
with Laurent (piano), Reber (harmony), and Ambroise
Thomas (composition). He captured the prix de
Rome in 1863 with the cantata David Rizzio.
VII
Charles-Camille Saint-Saens was born October 9th,
1835, in Paris. He lives to-day (1915) in possession of
all his powers as an artist and a witty pamphleteer.
In some respects Saint-Saens may be dubbed a musical
Voltaire. A master of all the forms peculiar to sym-
phonic music, he has never succeeded in endowing his
work with any quality save clarity and brilliance. One
would almost think at times that he deliberately stifled
emotional elements in himself of which he disapproved.
There is scarcely any department of music for which he
has not written. Symphonies, chamber music, songs,
operas and a ballet, and all this in quantity. Saint-
Saens, too, has undeniably lofty musical standards. Pro-
lific, like Massenet, too prolific, in fact, for the subtle,
sensitive taste of our time, Saint-Saens seems rather to
defy the public than to make any effort to please. His
skill as a technician and his extraordinary abilities as a
virtuoso have won him immediate recognition with mu-
sicians. In examining the whole of his work, there are
only four orchestral pieces which have enduring quali-
ties. These are the four symphonic poems in which
Saint-Saens pays an eloquent tribute to the form es-
poused by his friend Franz Liszt. Of these, the finest
is Phaeton. Strange to say, the best known of this
tetralogy of masterpieces is not the best. Reside the
magnificently picturesque Phaeton the Danse macabre
seems a drab and inelegant humoresque. After Phae-
ton, Le Rouet d'Omphale must be given the place of dis-
tinction in the long list of Saint-Saens's compositions.
31
MODERN MUSIC
In it the composer has given us a witty delineation of
the irresistible powers of seduction of a truly feminine
woman. The delicate orchestral texture entirely made
up of crystalline timbres marks Saint-Saens as one of
the surest and most skillful manipulators of the mod-
ern orchestra since Wagner. As is characteristic of
many French composers, there is a remarkable econ-
omy of means. Small aggregations of instruments
achieve brilliant and compelling sonorities.
In the operatic field, Saint-Saens is not happy. Here
all of his reactionary neo-classicism found its full vent,
and we are shocked to see a musician of Saint-Saens's
taste and intelligence employing the pompous conven-
tionalities of the opera of 1850. 'Samson and Delilah,'
however, has found its way into the repertoire no doubt
on account of its fluent melodic structure and its agree-
able exoticism. No matter what his technical excel-
lences, one is conscious, with Saint-Saens, of a certain
sterility. Sometimes his music is so imitative of the
classics as to be absolutely devoid of any reason for
being. Bach and Mendelssohn are his great influences
and Liszt and Berlioz have had a great part in the for-
mation of his orchestral technique. M. Schure remarks
aptly : 'One notices with him a subtle and lively imagi-
nation, a constant aspiration to strength, to nobility, to
majesty. From his quartets and his symphonies are
to be detached grandiose moments and rockets of emo-
tion which disappear too quickly. But it would be im-
possible to find the individuality which asserts itself in
the ensemble of his works. One does not feel there the
torment of a soul or the pursuit of an ideal. It is the
Proteus, multiform and polyphonic, of music. Try to
seize him, and he changes into a siren. Are you under
the charm? He undergoes a change into a mocking
bird. You believe that you have got him at last, then
he climbs into the clouds like a hypogriff. His own
nature is best discerned in certain witty fantasies of
32
SAINT-SAENS AND OTHERS
a skeptical and mordant character, like the Danse ma-
cabre and the Rouet d'Omphale.' When one considers
that Saint-Saens has been before the public ever since
the sixties, a period in which musical evolution has
undergone the most rapid and surprising changes, it
is not strange that he eludes characterization. He is a
musician who has, as Mr. Schure so aptly says, refused
to set himself the narrow and rocky path of an ideal.
He has consistently avoided extremes. Side by side
with Saint-Saens the modernist, the champion of the
symphonic poem, is Saint-Saens the anti-Wagnerian.
He is one of the great pillars, however, in the remark-
able edifice of French symphonic music.
With Romain Bussine, in 1872, Saint-Saens founded
the Societe Nationale, an organization which was to
have the most far-reaching influence on the develop-
ment of French music. Like Lalo, Saint-Saens worked
for a sort of protective tariff to keep French symphonic
music from being overwhelmed by the more experi-
enced Teuton neighbors. As a pamphleteer and propa-
gandist, Saint-Saens is full of verve and always has the
last word. He was one of the first to appreciate Wag-
ner, but later, feeling that the popularity of the master
of Rayreuth might overwhelm young French composers,
he withdrew his sympathetic allegiance.
Edouard-Victor-Antoine Lalo was born in Lille in
1822. This modest, aristocratic, and noble-minded mu-
sician has scarcely enjoyed his just due even in this
late day. He died, exhausted, in 1892. His whole
artistic career was ill-fated. His opera, Le Roi d'Ys, and
his ballet Namouna were both indifferently successful
if not absolute failures. It is doubtful if Lalo ever re-
covered from the disappointment and overwork that
attended the composition and production of Namouna.
Without hesitation we should characterize these two
works as his most important. There is an excellent
symphony in G minor, a concerto for 'cello, the Sym-
33
MODERN MUSIC
phonic Espagnole for violin and orchestra, and a con-
certo for piano, all of an equally lofty musical texture.
It is difficult to class Lalo with any group of musicians.
He was mildly influenced by Wagner, as were all young
musicians of his time, and yet Le Roi d'Ys is absolutely
his own. Lalo came of Spanish parentage. It is prob-
able that a certain sort of atavism is responsible for the
constant suggestion of the subtle monotony of Spanish
rhythms in his music. He is too distinct a Latin to be
overwhelmed by Wagner.
It is very probable that Lalo will never be genuinely
popular. The Symphonic Espagnole is in the repertoire
of every virtuoso violinist. The same may be said of
the concerto for 'cello, and yet it is doubtful if the lay-
man of symphonic concerts would complain were he
never again to hear anything of Lalo. This is due to a
certain aristocratic aloofness, and emotional reserve,
and an ever-present sense of proportion dear only to the
elite.
Lalo's influence was not in itself far-reaching. A sin-
cere, splendidly developed artist, he had none of the
qualities that make disciples. As one of a group of
musicians, however, that were to play an important
role in saving French music from foreign domination
and in finding an idiom characteristic and worthy of a
country possessed of the artistic traditions of France,
Lalo cannot be overestimated. As a member of the
Armingaud quartet he worked fervently to create a
taste for symphonic music. His own dignified sym-
phonic productions supplemented this necessary work
of propaganda, for it must not be forgotten that for
almost a century before the advent of Cesar Franck
there was no French symphonic music. The French
genius, insofar as it expressed itself in music at all,
turned rather to the historical opera so pompously
fashioned, or the witty and amusing opera comique.
Lalo must be considered with Saint-Saens and Franck
34
SAINT-SAENS AND OTHERS
as one of the pioneers in making a regenerate Parisian
taste. His life is colorless and offers little to the critic
in interpretation of his musical ideals. Lalo composed
silently, with conviction, and without self-conscious-
ness. He was singularly without theories. Concrete
technical problems absorbed him, and in the refinement
and nobility of his music is to be found the most elo-
quent essay upon the role of an artist who seeks sincere
self-expression rather than general recognition.
As a leaven to the frivolous musical tastes prevalent
in the French capital before the last three decades Lalo
has played his part nobly. He will always be admired
by all sincere musicians. His art is complete, devoid of
mannerisms, plastically perfect, and yet without the
semblance of dryness. In his symphony one will ob-
serve an unerring sense of form, an exquisite clarity of
orchestration, and a happy choice of ideas suitable for
development. Le Roi d'Ys is scarcely a masterpiece.
The text is constructed from a pretty folk-story, is not
very dramatic and occasionally gives one the impres-
sion of amateurishness and puerility. The music is ex-
quisite and makes one regret that Lalo could not have
found other and more suitable vehicles for his dra-
matic genius. Namouna is a sparkling, colorful ballet.
When it was revived some years ago, a more propitious
public enthusiastically revised the adverse verdict of
1882.
Little may be said of Benjamin Godard (1849-95)
except that he wrote much, too much perhaps, in nearly
all forms: symphonies (with characteristic titles, such
as the 'Gothic,' 'Oriental,' Symphonic legendaire) , con-
certos for violin and for piano, orchestral suites, dra-
matic overture, symphony, a lyric scene, chamber mu-
sic, piano pieces, over a hundred songs, etc. Few of
these are heard nowadays, even in France perhaps.
Neither are his operas, Pedro de Zalamea (1884), Joce-
lyn (1888), Dante et Beatrice (1890), Ray Bias (1891),
35
MODERN MUSIC
La Vivandiere (1895), and Les Guelfes (1902). Jocelyn
and, indeed, its composer are perpetuated by the
charmingly sentimental Berceuse, beloved of amateur
violinists. Godard studied composition with Reber and
violin with Vieuxtemps at the Conservatoire. He won
the grand prix for composition awarded by the city of
Paris with the dramatic symphony 'Tasso.' This, like
the Symphonic legendaire, employs a chorus and solo
voices in combination with the orchestra.
Two composers, noted especially for their organ
works, should be mentioned in conclusion: Alexandre
Guilmant (born 1837) and Charles-Marie Widor (born
1845). Both made world- wide reputations as virtuosos
upon the organ, the former in the Trinite, the latter in
St. Sulpice in Paris. Guilmant has travelled over the
world and received the world's plaudits; Widor has
remained in Paris while droves of pupils from all over
the globe have gone back to their homes and have
spread his fame. Both have composed copiously for the
organ, Guilmant more exclusively so, also editing and
arranging a great deal for his instrument. Widor has
written two symphonies, choral works, chamber music,
and piano pieces, songs, etc., even a ballet, La Kor-
rigane, two grand operas, Nerto and Les Pecheurs de
St. Jean, a comic opera and a pantomime, Jeanne d'Arc.
He is Cesar Franck's successor as professor of organ
at the Conservatoire, and since 1891 has taken Dubois'
place in the chair of composition.
C. C.
36
CHAPTER II
THE RUSSIAN ROMANTICISTS
Romantic Nationalism in Russian Music; Pathfinders; Cavoss and Ver-
stovsky Milhail Ivanovitch Glinka; Alexander Sergeyevitch Dargomijsky
Neo-Romanticism in Russian Music; Anton Rubinstein Peter Ilyitch Tschai-
kowsky.
RUSSIAN music as a whole is a true mirror of Slavic
racial character, life, passion, gloom, struggle, despair,
and agony. One can almost see in its turbulent-lugu-
brious or buoyant-hilarious chords the rich colors of
the Byzantine style, the half Oriental atmosphere that
surrounds everything with a romantic halo gloomy
prisons, wild mountains, wide steppes, luxurious pal-
aces and churches, idyllic villages and the lonely penal
colonies of Siberia. It really visualizes the life of the
empire of the Czar with a marvellous power. With its
short history and the unique position that it occupies
among the world's classics, it depicts the true type of
a Slav, the melancholy, simple and hospitable moujik,
with more fullness of color and virility than, for in-
stance, the German or Italian compositions depict the
representative types of those nations. In order to
understand the reason of this peculiar difference be-
tween Russian and West European music it is neces-
sary to understand the social and psychological ele-
ments upon which it is built.
While the West European composers founded their
creations upon the traditions of the masters, Russian
music grew out of the very heart, the joys and the sor-
37
MODERN MUSIC
rows of the common people. All the Russian com-
posers of the early nationalistic era were men of active
life, who became musicians only on the urgency of their
inspiration. Glinka, for instance, was a functionary in
the Ministry of Finance, Dargomijsky was a clerk in
the Treasury Department, Moussorgsky was an army
officer, Rimsky-Korsakoff an officer of the navy, Boro-
dine was a celebrated inventor and scholar. Academic
musicians are wont to find the stamp of amateurishness
on most of the Russian classic music. To this Stassoff,
the celebrated Russian critic, replied: 'If that is the
case, our composers are only to be congratulated, for
they have not considered the form, the objective issues,
but the spirit, the subjective value of their inspirations.
We may be uneven and amateurish as nature and hu-
man life are, but, thank Heaven, we are not artificial
and sophisticated !'
Be it a song, instrumental composition, or opera,
everything in Russian music breathes the ethno-
graphic and social-psychologic peculiarities of the race,
which is semi-Oriental in its foundations. Nationalism
in music has been the watchword of most of the Rus-
sian composers since the very start. But, besides, there
has been a strong tendency to subjective individualism,
that often expresses itself in a wealth of sad nuances.
This has been to a great extent the reason that foreign-
ers consider melancholy the predominant racial qual-
ity, a view not just to Russian music as a whole, which
is far too vigorous and healthy a growth to remain
continuously under the sway of one emotional influ-
ence. To a foreign, especially an Anglo-Saxon ear Rus-
sian music may sound sometimes too realistic, some-
times too monotonous and sad without any obvious
reason. It has been declared by foreign academicians
lacking in cohesion, technique, and convincing unity.
However, this is not a defect of Russian art, but a"
characteristic trait of its racial soul. Every Russian
38
PATHFINDERS OF RUSSIAN MUSIC
artist, be he a composer, writer, or painter, in avoiding
artificiality puts into his creation all the idiomatic pe-
culiarities of his race without polishing out of it the
vigor of 'naturalness.' Russian music, more than any
other Russian art, expresses in all its archaic lines, soft
shades, and polyphonic harmonies the peculiar temper-
ament of the nation, which is just as restless and un-
balanced as its life.
The fundamental purpose of the pathfinders of Rus-
sian music was to create beauties that emanated, not
from a certain class or school, but directly from the
soul of the masses. Their ideal was to create life from
life. In order to accomplish their tasks they went back
to melodic traditions of early mediaeval music, to the
folk-songs, the mythological chants and the folk dances.
Since the Russian people are extremely musical, folk-
song is a great factor in the nation's life and evolution.
Music accompanies moujiks from the cradle to the
grave and plays a leading role in their social ceremo-
nies. Though profound melancholy seems to be the
dominant note, yet along with the gloom are also reck-
less hilarity and boisterous humor, which often whirl
one off one's feet, as, notably, in Glinka's Kamarins-
kaya. The phenomenon is startling, for music of the
deepest melancholy swings unexpectedly to buoyant
humor and exultant joy. This is explained by the fact
that the average Russian is extremely emotional and
consequently dramatic in his artistic expression. Very
characteristic is a passage of Leo Tolstoy on Russian
folk-song in which he writes :
'It is both sad and joyous, on a quiet summer evening,
to hear the sweeping song of the peasants. In it is
yearning without end, without hope, also power in-
visible, the fateful stamp of destiny, and the faith in
preordination, one of the fundamental principles of our
race, which explains much that in Russian life seems
incomprehensible.'
39
MODERN MUSIC
The early Russian composers thus became creators
in touch with the common people, the very opposite
of the composers of German and Latin races, who
created only for the salons of aristocracy. The latter
were and remained strangers to the people among
whom they lived. Everything they composed was
strictly academic and expressed all the sentimentality
and stateliness of the nobility. Although geniuses of
great technique, in racial color, emotional quickness
and spontaneity they remain behind the Russians.
In spite of the fact that all the early Russian com-
posers were descendants of aristocracy, they remained
in their feelings and in their themes, like Gogol, Dos-
toievsky, and Turgenieff in fiction, true portrayers of
the common people's life. There has never been an
aristocratic opera, a nobility music and salon influence
noticeable in Russian musical development. This may
be due to the fact that the Russian aristocracy is not
a privileged superior class of the autocratic regime, as
is that of Germany, Austria, Italy, and England, but
merely an intellectual, more advanced element of the
country. Thanks to Czar Feodor, the father of Peter
the Great, who destroyed all the pedigrees, patents
and papers of the nobility, saying that he did not want
to see their snobbery and intrigue in his empire, there
are no family documents in Russia which go back
beyond the reign of Czar Feodor. There is no doubt
that this autocratic proceeding has been beneficial to
Russian art, particularly to music, in having made it
democratic in its very foundations.
Though music has been cultivated in Russia since
the time of Peter the Great, the origin of the true na-
tionalistic school belongs to the Napoleonic era, the
reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I. Cosmopolitan
that he was, Peter the Great disliked everything na-
tional, and invited Italian musicians to form a school
of systematic musical education in his empire. But
40
CAVOS AND VERSTOVSKY
Catherine II became deeply interested in encouraging
native music and herself took an active part in the
work. Between her political schemings and romantic
affairs, she took time to write librettos, to invite musi-
cians to her palace and to instruct them how to use the
themes of the folk plays, fairy tales, and choral dances
for a new Russian stage music. It is said that sixty new
operas were written during her reign and produced on
the stage of the newly-founded municipal opera house.
One of them, 'Annette,' is quoted as the first wholly
Russian opera, in librettist, theme, and composer.
A very conspicuous figure of the pre-nationalistic
period of Russian musical history is G. Cavos (1776-
1840), an Italian by birth, but a Slav in his work. He
wrote songs, instrumental music and operas, more or
less in Italian style but employing both Russian text
and theme. His opera, 'Ivan Sussanin,' was considered
a sensational novelty and the composer was hailed as a
great genius of the country. But his works died as
soon as they had loomed up under the protection of
the court and nothing of his compositions has sur-
vived.
Close upon Cavoss followed Verstovsky, whose op-
eras 'Tomb of Askold' and 'Pan Tvardovsky' were
produced in Moscow when Napoleon invaded Russia
in 1812. The first was built upon an old Slavic saga
in which Askold, the hero, and his brother, Dir, play
the same roles as do Hengist and Horsa in Saxon chron-
icles. The other was founded upon an old Polish story
of adventure somewhat resembling the Faust legend.
Besides the operas Verstovsky composed a large num-
ber of songs, ballads, and dances. By birth a Pole and
by education an Italian, his compositions resemble in
many ways those of Rubinstein.
Russian musical conditions in the first half of the
past century were very much like those in America at
present. Besides Cavoss and Verstovsky there had
41
MODERN MUSIC
been and were a number of more or less conspicuous
imitators of the Italian school. Their works were as
little Russian in character as Puccini's 'Girl of the
Golden West' is American. But the advent of Mozart,
Beethoven, and Schubert in Germany made a deep im-
pression upon the music-loving Russians. The men
upon whom the romantic German music made the
strongest impression were Glinka and Dargomijsky,
both inclined toward romantic ideals and themes.
Their first striking move was to rebel against the Ital-
ian influences. 'Russia, like Germany, shall have its
own music independent of all academic schools and
foreign flavors, and it shall be a music of the masses.
Music is more vigorous and more individual when it
is national. We like individuality in life and literature,
as in all arts and politics. Why should the world not
cling more to the racial than to the cosmopolitan ideal?
The tendency of Italian music is cosmopolitan. I be-
lieve that the tempo of music must correspond to the
tempo of life. Our duty is to speak for all the nation.'
Thus Glinka wrote at the critical moment.
II
Naturally Glinka's first attempts were ridiculed by
contemporary salon critics and concert habitues, who
looked at him as a 'moujik-maniac' and na'ive dilet-
tante. His attempt at something truly national in char-
acter was considered plebeian and undignified for a
nobleman. But, encouraged by Shukovsky, the famous
poet of that time and the tutor of the heir-apparent,
later Czar Alexander II, Glinka published in 1833 the
first volume of his songs and ballads, based purely on
themes of folk-songs. As he was merely a functionary
of the Ministry of Finance, without any systematic
musical training and had no professional prestige, his
work was ignored by the press, while society merely
42
MILHAIL IVANOVITCH GLINKA
made fun of him and his songs. It was evident that he
could not get any hearing in this way.
Shukovsky, whose apartment at the palace was a
rendezvous of artists and reformers of that time, sug-
gested to Glinka that he compose an opera out of the
rich material in his unpublished ballads, songs, and
instrumental sketches, and he on his part would take
care that it should be produced on the imperial stage.
Shukovsky even outlined a libretto on an historical
subject similar to that used by Gavoss and suggested
to name it 'A Death for the Czar.' Baron Rosen, the
poetic private secretary of the Czarevitch, wrote the
libretto under the supervision of Shukovsky and Glinka
named it 'A Life for the Czar.' This was the first dis-
tinctly national Russian opera that stands apart from
the Italian and German style. Instead of effective airs
and elaborate orchestration Glinka emphasized the
use of choruses and spectacular scenic methods, which
are more natural to Russian life than the former.
When the opera was produced in 1837 for the first time
in St. Petersburg the people went wild about it and
the young composer was hailed as a great aesthetic re-
former. The czar appointed him to act as a conductor
of the court choir, the famous pridvornaya kapella.
The phenomenal success embittered the professional
musicians of Russia and they began to fight the com-
poser with redoubled vigor.
Fortunately the czar, and especially Shukovsky,
were on the side of Glinka, so that all the intrigues of
his enemies failed. Meanwhile he had composed several
songs and a large number of ballads and orchestral
pieces, of which Kamarinskaya and the 'Spanish Over-
ture' are the most known. Glinka's songs and instru-
mental pieces are full of melody and color, and they
are still sung and played in Russia, but the best he has
created are his two operas. In 1842 he finished his
second opera, 'Russian and Lindmilla,' which, though
43
MODERN MUSIC
more poetic and melodious than 'A Life for the Czar,
failed to arouse the enthusiasm which had greeted his
first opera. The reason for that may have been that it
was distinctly democratic and not historical, and his-
torical pieces were a fad of that time.
Milhail Ivanovitch Glinka was born in 1804, in the
province of Smolensk, and his father, a wealthy noble-
man, sent him at the age of thirteen to be educated in
an aristocratic college in St. Petersburg. The young
man was intended for the civil service of the govern-
ment, but he loved music so passionately that he ne-
glected his other studies and took lessons in piano and
the theory of composition from various teachers of the
capital until he was about to be expelled from the
school. Graduated in 1824, he tried to get a position
in the treasury department, but, failing in this, con-
tinued to study music till he secured it. Beethoven,
Weber, and Schubert made a lasting impression upon
his mind and he never ceased to worship them, though
he never imitated them. Byron, Goethe, and Pushkin
were the poets that inspired him most of all, and he
used to say if he could be in his native music what
those men had been in their native poetry he would die
a happy man.
With all his lack of technical skill, Glinka remains
the founder of the nationalistic school of music
of his native land. In spite of his many shortcom-
ings he is natural and superior to the opera composers
of his time in Italy and Germany. As all Russians have
inborn love of song and as that is expressed in mani-
fold ways in their actual life more than in the life of
any other nation, Glinka's main idea was to found the
Russian opera on combined passages of realistic musi-
cal life, giving them a dramatic character. To empha-
size this he made use of picturesque stage glitter and
spectacular scenic effects. This betrays itself forcibly in
the vivid colors that outline the semi-Oriental archi-
44
ALEXANDER SERGEYEVITCH DARGOMIJSKY
lecture of a cathedral, palace, public building or cot-
tage, or in the picturesque costumes for marriage,
for burial and for the various other social and official
ceremonies characteristic of Russia.
In his private life Glinka was just as unfortunate as
Tschaikowsky. The girl he had begun to love passion-
ately married a man of more promising social career.
He married a woman whom he did not love and they
were divorced after some scandal and difficulty. Then
the woman whom he had first loved and who was
married to a prominent army officer changed her
mind and eloped with Glinka. In order to avoid a
public scandal the czar forced the composer to relin-
quish the woman of his choice. Glinka obeyed and fell
into a mood of melancholy which undermined his
health little by little until he died in Berlin in 1857.
But, strange to say, the private life of Glinka did
not affect his compositions, for there is nothing ex-
tremely melancholy or sentimentally sad in his music.
An air of sentimental romanticism emanates from his
numerous ballads, songs, and instrumental works.
Like the rest of his contemporaries he is lyric, full of
color and sentiment in his minor works. One and all
are distinctly national.
Together with Glinka, Dargomijsky undertook to
carry the idea of nationalism in music into practice, in
spite of all the objections of contemporaries. They
met frequently and became close friends. Their as-
pirations were the same, though Glinka was socially
prominent by reason of his official position, and Dar-
gomijsky was a mere clerk in the treasury department
and composed chiefly for his own pleasure. It was
much more difficult for him than for Glinka to obtain
social recognition, though the majority of his works
are far more national and artistic than Glinka's. His
songs stand close to the heart of the moujik. 'Glinka
is an artist of the nobility, I am of the peasants,' was
45
MODERN MUSIC
the way Dargomijsky defined the difference between
Glinka and himself.
Born on February 2, 1813, in the province of Tula,
Alexander Sergey evitch Dargomijsky was the son of
a postal official, who lost his position and property in
Moscow when Napoleon occupied that city. The boy
grew up in great poverty and the only education he
received was that given by his parents. At the age
of twenty he made a trip to St. Petersburg and man-
aged to get the position of clerk in the treasury de-
partment. Here he continued his studies in music,
which had been near his heart since early childhood.
After a few years of strenuous work he realized that
it was more important for him to collect and study
folk-music than to acquire the technique and theory
of the art of music, and with this in view he under-
took excursions to the villages during the summer va-
cation, collecting folk-songs, attending festivals and
social ceremonies of the peasants. In this way he
stored up a huge material and knowledge for his indi-
vidual work. His first attempt was a series of songs
and ballads. In 1842 Dargomijsky resigned his official
position to devote his time exclusively to music. His
first opera, 'Esmeralda,' had a great success in Moscow
and gave him some prestige and courage to undertake
the composition of his second opera, 'The Triumph of
Bacchus,' which, however, was a failure.
Dargomijsky's masterpiece is and remains his opera
Russalka ('The Nymph'), which is composed to a li-
bretto based upon a poem of Pushkin. It takes a lis-
tener to the picturesque and romantic banks of the
Dnieper River, where the heroine, Natasha, the daugh-
ter of a miller, is deserted by a princely lover. In
despair she flings herself into the river and is at once
surrounded by a throng of the russalkas the nymphs,
with whom Russian imagination has populated every
brook, lake, and river. She herself becomes a nymph
46
NEO-ROMANTIGISM IN RUSSIAN MUSIC
and eventually succeeds in enticing her false lover to
her arms beneath the water.
Dargomij sky's last opera, 'The Marble Guest,' for the
libretto of which he used the poetic drama of Pushkin,
based on the legend of Don Juan, was produced only
after his death in 1872. It differs from his previous
operas by the predominance of recitative, concerted
pieces being almost banished. Like Glinka, he was not
over-prolific in his compositions. Besides the four
operas he wrote only five or six orchestral pieces, some
thirty songs and ballads and a few dances. Tschaikow-
sky complained bitterly that he was too lazy, although
he admitted that Dargomijsky was greatly hampered
by lack of systematic musical education.
Like Glinka, Dargomijsky was unhappy in his pri-
vate life. The woman whom he loved so deeply was
the wife of another man, and the one who loved him
found no response on his part. He was relieved of his
worries for daily bread after his Russalka made a suc-
cess on the stage. His apartment was the real rendez-
vous of the group of young Russian nationalistic com-
posers who surpassed him by far in their works, such
as Borodine, Moussorgsky, Balakireff, Cesar Cui, Rim-
sky-Korsakoff, and Seroff. Dargomijsky died in 1869.
Ill
At the same time that the Balakireff group of Russian
nationalists began its work in St. Petersburg a roman-
tic temple was founded by Rubinstein. Among the
masters of Russian music he occupies an interesting
place, being, as it were, a link between the lyric Orien-
tal and the nationalistic Slav. In many ways he was a
phenomenal figure. Though he laid the corner-stone of
the modern Russian musical pedagogic system and was
a dominant authority of his time, he never caught the
true national spirit of Russia and by no means all his
47
MODERN MUSIC
talented pupils became his followers. He died a man
disappointed in his ideals and ambitions. 'All I care
about after my death is that men shall remember me by
this conservatory; let them say, this was Anton Rubin-
stein's work,' he said, pointing to the Imperial Conserv-
atory in St. Petersburg,* of which he had been not only
the founder but the director for many years.
During all his influential life Rubinstein was bitterly
opposed to the Russian nationalistic school of music,
at the head of which stood Balakiretf , Moussorgsky, and
Rimsky-Korsakoff . He referred to them as to dabblers
and eccentric amateurs. Even toward his pupil, Tschai-
kowsky, he assumed a condescending attitude. His
veneration of the classics was almost fanatical. In the
genius of his contemporaries he had no faith. He truly
believed that music ended with Chopin. Even Wagner
and Liszt were small figures in his eyes. To the realis-
tic style initiated by Rerlioz and the music dramas of
Wagner he was indifferent. His aspirations were for
the highest type of pure music, but he lacked the ability
to transform his own ideals into something real. Lyric
romanticism was all he cared for. The slightest inno-
vation in form, all attempts at realism in music, up-
set his aesthetic measuring scale. Rut, despite his de-
ficiencies and faults, he deserves more credit from
posterity than it seems willing to accede to him. Saint-
Saens has said: 'I have heard Rubinstein's music
reproached for its structure, its large plan, its vast
stretches, its carelessness in detail. The public taste
to-day calls for complications without end, arabesques,
and incessant modulations; but this is a fashion and
nothing more. It seems to me that his fruitfulness,
grand character and personality suffice to class Rubin-
stein among the greatest musicians of all times.'
The outspoken romanticism of Rubinstein's works
is in a sense akin to the spirit of Ryron's poems. There
* Established by the Imperial Musical Society in 1862.
48
Russian' Romanticists :
Mikhail Glinka
Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky
Alexander Dargomijsky
Anton Rubinstein
about a"'
this conser
's work
atory in St.
the
Di
oppose*
at tl
Rimskv-Koi
ration oi
and Liszt v
tic style initin
. e music, but he lacked the ability
Th<
'
ANTON RUBINSTEIN
is a passionate sweetness in his melodies that one finds
rarely in composers of his type. But in giving over-
much attention to objective form, he often missed sub-
jective warmth, especially in his operas and his larger
instrumental works. He achieved the greatest success
in his songs of Oriental character, from which there
breathes the spirit of a heavy tropic night. But in these
his best moments he remains exotic and inexplicable to
our Occidental ears.
Romantic as his music was the course of Rubin-
stein's life. He himself, according to Rimsky-Korsa-
koff, blamed the romantic incidents of his life for his
shortcomings. 'I was spoiled by the flattery of high
society, which I received during my first concert tour
as a boy of thirteen,' Rubinstein told his brother com-
poser. It made me conceited and fanatical. The mis-
ery that I endured later wasted the best creative years
of my life, and the sudden success which followed
my acquaintance with the Grand Duchess Helen [the
sister of the Czar, who loved him] killed my aspira-
tions for the higher work by making me unexpectedly
the dictator of Russian musical education. If I had
worked up step by step by my own efforts I would
have reached the goal of my ambition.' At any rate
the unusual career of Rubinstein explains the psycho-
logical side of his achievements and disappointments.
Born in 1829 in the village of Vichvatinetz, in the
Province of Podolia, in southwestern Russia, he began
to study the piano at the age of eight in Moscow. His
teacher, Alexander Villoing, at once realized that his
pupil was a genius and for five years spent his best
efforts upon him. When the boy was thirteen his
teacher undertook a concert tour with him, first
through Russia, later abroad. Rubinstein was a pian-
istic marvel and was received everywhere with the
greatest enthusiasm. Chopin and Liszt declared him
a 'wonder child.' After three years of touring he set-
49
MODERN MUSIC
tied in Paris, lived in princely style and spent all the
money he had earned. Feeling the pinch of poverty,
he went to Vienna to secure the influence of Liszt, who
advised him to go to Berlin and gave him letters of
introduction. There he found the city in a state of
revolution and abandoned by society. In despair and
almost starving, Rubinstein pushed on to St. Peters-
burg, where the once celebrated prodigy began to earn
his living with piano lessons at fifty cents until by a
mere chance he secured the position of pianist in the
court choir. At this time he composed his first opera,
Dimitry Donskoi, which was performed with some
success.
Rubinstein now undertook another trip to Liszt, at
Weimar, and there he met the Grand Duchess Helen,
who at once invited the young pianist to be her guest in
Italy. This was the beginning of his career. In 1856
Rubinstein composed some of his songs and piano
pieces and soon after this the Imperial Conservatory
of Music was founded in St. Petersburg and Moscow
with the Grand Duchess as patroness. In 1862 Rubin-
stein became the director of the conservatory in St.
Petersburg and held the position until 1867 and later
from 1887 to 1891. In 1865 he married and made his
residence at Peterhof, where he lived in close touch
with Russian society. During this period of power and
comfort Rubinstein composed his sonatas, symphonies,
operas, and piano pieces, few of which are ever per-
formed nowadays.
Rubinstein's orchestral and operatic works occupy a
place between Schumann and Meyerbeer. His most
popular orchestral compositions are 'Faust,' 'Ivan IV,'
'Don Quixote,' and his Second Symphony, 'Ocean.'
The other five symphonies are rather stately, cold tone
pictures without any definite foundation. More known,
and even frequently performed, are his chamber music
pieces, the 'cello sonata in D major, and the trio in B
50
ANTON RUBINSTEIN
major. Of his operas and oratorios only one work, 'The
Demon,' has survived in the classic Russian repertoire.
The rest are long forgotten. Of longer life than Rubin-
stein's orchestral and operatic compositions are his
piano pieces, especially his barcarolles, preludes,
etudes, and dances. All of his larger piano pieces are,
like his orchestral works, prolix, diffuse and full of
unassimilated ideas. Through all his compositions
there blows a breath of Oriental romanticism, some-
thing that reminds one of the 'Thousand and One
Nights.' A peculiar sweetness and brilliancy of har-
mony distinguish his style, but these particular quali-
ties make Rubinstein unpopular in our realistic age.
It is true that his piano pieces have little that is indi-
vidual, but they are graceful and aristocratic. To an
ear attuned to modern impressionism they are nothing
but graceful, warmly colored salon pieces devoid of
arresting features. But whatever may be the fate of
Rubinstein's instrumental music, he was a composer of
excellent songs, which will be sung as long as man
lives. They are the very crown of his creations. From
among his numerous ballads and songs 'The Asra,'
The Dream,' 'Night,' etc., are especially enchanting.
In them he stands unmatched by any composer of his
time. The number of his works surpasses one hun-
dred; there are ten string quartets, three quintets,
five concertos, three sonatas for violin and piano, two
for 'cello and piano, two for violin and orchestra.
According to Russian critical opinion he was an imi-
tator of Mendelssohn and Schumann. But the fact is
he suffered from the overwhelming influence of the
German classics, whom he did not assimilate thor-
oughly, and from being one of the greatest of piano vir-
tuosi of his age, which absorbed most of his attention
and time. It is not unnatural that a great executive
artist should acquire the forms of those composers
whose works he performs most. In following these
51
MODERN MUSIC
models Rubinstein simply demonstrated a psychological
rule.
Rubinstein's main importance in Russian music re-
sides in the fact that he laid the foundation of a na-
tion-wide musical education, so that now the national
and local governments are back of a serious aesthetic
culture. Resides having been twice a director of the
Imperial Conservatory of Music in St. Petersburg, he
was from time to time a director of the Imperial Mu-
sical Society and conductor of the St. Petersburg sym-
phony concerts. He died in 1894 in Peterhof and is
buried in the graveyard of Alexandro-Nevsky monas-
tery, near to his rivals, Ralakireff, Rorodine, and Mous-
sorgsky.
IV
An artist of the same school as Rubinstein, yet en-
tirely different in works and spirit, was Peter Ilyitch
Tschaikowsky. Rubinstein was a creative virtuoso,
Tschaikowsky was a creative genius. They took the
same general direction in form and themes, but other-
wise a wide abyss separated these two unique spirits of
Russian music. Tschaikowsky had Rubinstein's pas-
sion and technical skill, the same lyric style, and, like
him, adhered to West European form, but in his essen-
tials he remains a Russian of the most classic tenden-
cies; his language is that of an emotional Slav. His
music glows with the peculiar fire that burned in his
soul; rapture and agony, gloom and gayety seem in a
perpetual struggle for expression. With all its nation-
alistic riches there is nothing in Tschaikowsky's tonal
structures that resembles those of his contemporaries.
He is a romantic poet of classic pattern, yet wholly a
Russian. He is altogether introspective, sentimentally
subjective, and ecclesiastically fanatic. With all his
Slavic pathos and subjective vigor Tschaikowsky builds
his tone-temples in Gothic style, which he never leaves.
52
PETER ILYITGH TSCHAIKOWSKY
That is very largely the reason why his music is so
phenomenally popular abroad, while his contempora.-
ries have, despite their originality and greatness, re-
mained in his shadow.
Tschaikowsky's compositions are as strange as his
inner self. His likening his artistic expressions to a
violent contest between a beast and a god no doubt had
its psychological reason. That there is much mystery
in his life and its relation to his art is apparent from
the following passage with which Kashkin, his biog-
rapher, closes his book,* 'I have finished my reminis-
cences. Of course, they might be supplemented by ac-
counts of a few more events, but I shall add nothing at
present, and perhaps I shall never do so. One docu-
ment I shall leave in a sealed packet, and if thirty
years hence it still has interest for the world the seal
may be broken; this packet I shall leave in the care of
Moscow University. It will contain the history of one
episode in Tschaikowsky's life upon which I have
barely touched in my book.'
That seal is still unbroken. All we can guess of
the nature of the secret is that it involves a tragedy of
romantic character. We shall get a closer idea of the
great composer when we consider a few characteristic
episodes of his private life in connection with his ca-
reer as a musician. Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky was
born in 1840, in the province of Viatka, where his
father was the general manager of Kamsko-Botkin's
Mills. He showed already in his early youth a great
liking for music and poetry, but the wish of his parents
was that he should make his career as an official of
the government. With this in view he was educated
in the aristocratic law school in St. Petersburg. Gradu-
ated in 1859, he became an officer in the department of
the Ministry of Justice. While he was a student in fhe
law school he kept up his studies of music by taking
* Kashkin: 'Life of Tschaikowsky' (in Russian).
53
MODERN MUSIC
lessons from F. D. Becker and K. I. Karel and did not
give them up even when he became an active func-
tionary with less leisure than before. The desire for
a thorough musical education gave him no peace until
he entered the newly founded Conservatory of Music,
where Rubinstein and Zarembi became his teachers.
Though regularly the course was longer, Tschaikowsky
was graduated after three years of study, in 1866, and
at once was invited to become a professor of harmony
in the Imperial Conservatory of Music in Moscow.
During the first years of his life as a teacher Tschai-
kowsky composed some smaller instrumental and vocal
pieces, which were performed with marked success,
partly by his pupils, partly by touring musical artists.
His first large compositions were the First Symphony,
which he composed in 1868, and his opera Voyevoda,
which he wrote a year later. Both these compositions
were less successful than his earlier ones. Never-
theless the disappointment did not discourage the
young composer, for he proceeded to compose new
operas, 'Undine,' Opritchnik, and 'Vakula the Smith,'
besides some music for orchestra. In 1873 he com-
posed the ballet 'Snow Maiden,' and then followed in
succession his Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies.
Assured of a pension of three thousand rubles
($1,500) a year and an extra income from the royalty
of his published music, Tschaikowsky resigned his teach-
ing post and devoted all his time to composition. His
Fourth Symphony had to some extent satisfied his am-
bition as a symphonic composer, since it had been
received enthusiastically by the public in both Moscow
and St. Petersburg; he now threw all his efforts into
opera. In 1878 he finished his Evhgeny Onegin, his
greatest opera, besides his two ballets.
In spite of his stormy private life and various ro-
mantic conflicts Tschaikowsky was a prolific worker.
Besides the above-mentioned operas he wrote six sym-
54
PETER ILYITCH TSCHAIKOWSKY
phonies, of which the last two have gained world-wide
fame, three ballets, the overtures 'Romeo and Juliet,'
'The Tempest,' 'Hamlet,' and '1812,' the 'Italian Caprice,'
and the symphonic poem 'Manfred.' Besides these he
wrote two concertos for piano and orchestra, one con-
certo for violin, three quartets, one trio, over a hundred
songs, some thirty smaller instrumental pieces and a
series of excellent church music. They vary in their
character and quality. Some of them are truly great
and majestic, while others are of mediocre merit.
Opritchnik, Mazeppa, Tcharodeiki, and Jeanne d'Arc
are dramatic operas, while Evhgeny Onegin, Pique
Dame, and Yolanta are of outspoken lyric type. Tscher-
evitschki and 'Vakula the Smith' are his two comic
operas.
Though Tschaikowsky's ambition was to excel in
opera, his symphonic compositions represent the best
he has written, especially his Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth
Symphonies, 'The Tempest,' the Marche Slav, 'Man-
fred,' his piano concerto in B-flat minor, and his three
ballets, 'Snow Maiden,' 'Sleeping Beauty,' and 'Swan
Lake.' He is a perfect master of counterpoint and
graceful melodies. How well he mastered his technique
is proven by the careful modelling of his themes and
figures. But in opera his grasp is behind those of his
rivals. There is too much of the West European polish
and sentimentality, and too little of the elemental vigor
and grandeur of a Russian dramatist.
To the period of Tschaikowsky's last years as a
teacher in Moscow, especially from 1875 to 1885, be-
long the mysterious romantic troubles which presum-
ably became the foundation of his creative despair, the
pessimism which has made him the Schopenhauer of
sound. Here may lie the secret of all the turbulent emo-
tionalism from which emanated those tragic chords,
all the wild musical images, that incessant melancholy
strain which characterize his works. In 1877 he mar-
55
MODERN MUSIC
ried Antony Ivanovna Millukova, but their married life
was of short duration. There are many strange stories
as to his despair on account of an unhappy love.
Tschaikowsky was an affectionate friend of a Mme.
von Meek, with whom he was in perpetual correspond-
ence and who gave him material aid in carrying out
his artistic ambitions, though he had never met her.
Why he did not is a mystery. It is said that he con-
templated suicide upon many occasions. He told his
friend Kashkin that twice he had gone up to his knees
in the Moscow River with the idea of drowning him-
self, but that the effect of the cold water sobered him.
When his wildest emotions seized him he would rush
out and sit in the snow, if it was winter, or stand in the
river until numb with the cold. This cured him tem-
porarily, but he insisted that he remained a soul-sick
man. 'I am putting all my virtue and wickedness, pas-
sion and agony into the piece I am writing,' he wrote
to a friend while composing his Symphonie Pathetique.
In 1890 Tschaikowsky celebrated the twenty-fifth an-
niversary of his musical activity and was honored with
the degree of Doctor of Music by Cambridge University.
He made a tour of America, of which he spoke in high
terms as a country of new beauties and new life. One
of his remarks is characteristic. 'The rush and roar of
that wild freedom of America still haunts me. It is
like fifty orchestras combined. Although you do not
see any Indians running about the streets of New
York, yet their spirit has put a stamp on its whole life.
It is in tjie everlasting activity and the stoic attitude
toward what we call fate.'
One of the peculiar traits of Tschaikowsky was his
indifference to his creations after they had been pro-
duced. He even disliked to hear them and always
found fault with his early compositions, especially with
his operas; yet he did not know how he could have
improved them. Exceptions, however, were his Fourth
56
PETER ILYITGH TSGHAIKOWSKY
and Sixth Symphonies, his 'Eugen Onegin,' Serenade
Melancholique, his Concerto in D, and a few other
compositions. While working upon his favorite opera
he was also engaged upon his Fourth Symphony. When
'Eugen Onegin' was first performed in Moscow, Tschai-
kowsky whispered to Rubinstein, who was next to him
in the audience: 'This and the Fourth Symphony are
the decisive works of my career. If they fail I am a
failure.'
Tschaikowsky died suddenly, October 25, 1893, in
St. Petersburg of cholera, as it was said officially.
But according to men who knew him intimately he
poisoned himself. This, we may be sure, is one of the
secrets sealed by Kashkin.
Tschaikowsky was one of the greatest masters of
the orchestra the world has seen. In effects of striking
brilliance and of sombreness he is equally successful,
and it is no doubt in a great measure on account of
this Slavic splendor that his orchestral works have
won the public. Yet he is far more than a colorist.
His mastery over orchestral polyphony is supreme.
There is always movement in his music, a rising and
falling of all the parts, a complicated interweaving,
never with the loss of sonority and richness. He is a
great harmonist as well and an irresistible melodist.
His rhythms are full of life, whether they are march,
waltz or barbarous wild dances. The movement in
five-four time in the Sixth Symphony is in itself a mas-
terpiece and has stimulated countless efforts in the
directions to which it pointed. It must be admitted
that melody, harmony, and rhythm, all bear the stamp
of the Slavic temperament, and, in so far as they are
Slavic or racial, they are vigorous and healthy; but
often Tschaikowsky becomes morbidly subjective, is
obviously not master of his mood, but slave to it.
Hence, after frequent hearings, there comes a
weight upon the listener, an intangible oppression
57
MODERN MUSIC
which he would be glad to avoid, but which cannot be
shaken off. One detects the line of the individual and
forgets the splendor of the race.
Yet through Tschaikowsky the glories of Russian
music were revealed to the general public. He occu-
pies a double position, as a Russian and as a strange
individuality, whose influence has been pronounced
upon modern music. The Russian composers unques-
tionably hold a conspicuous place among those com-
posers who have been specially gifted to hear new pos-
sibilities of orchestral sound and to add to the splen-
dor of orchestral music. Many of them denied Wag-
ner. The question of how far the peculiar powers of
the orchestra have been developed by them independ-
ently of Wagner, with results in many ways similar,
may become the source of much speculation. It is
quite possible that, thanks to their own racial sensitive-
ness, they have devised a brilliant orchestration similar
but unrelated to Wagner.
I. N.
58
CHAPTER III
THE MUSIC OF MODERN SCANDINAVIA
The Rise of national schools in the nineteenth century Growth of
national expression in Scandinavian lands Music in modern Denmark
Sweden and her Music The Norwegian composers; Edvard Grieg Sinding
and other Norwegians The Finnish Renaissance: Sibelius and others.
THE most striking characteristic of the music of the
nineteenth century has doubtless been its astonishing
enrichment in technical means. Its next most striking
characteristic is easily its growth in national expres-
sion. National art-music in the modern sense was al-
most unknown before the nineteenth century. The
nearest thing to it was a 'Turkish march' in a Mozart
operetta or sonata, or an 'allemand' or 'schottisch' in a
French suite. The national differences in eighteenth
century music were differences of school, not of na-
tionality. It is true that Italian music usually tended
to lyricism, French to dexterity of form, and German
to technical solidity; it is true further that these quali-
ties corresponded in a rough way to the characteristics
of the respective nations. But all three used one and
the same musical system; they differed not so much in
their music as in the way they treated their music.
In the nineteenth century the national feeling found
expression as it never had before. The causes of this
were numerous, but the most important were two of a
political nature: First, the spread of the principles of
the French Revolution made democracy a far more
general fact than it had ever been before; political
authority and moral influence shifted more and more
from the rulers to the people and the character of the
59
MODERN MUSIC
ordinary men and women became more and more the
character of the nation. Second, the resistance called
forth by Napoleon's wars of aggression aroused na-
tional consciousness as it had never been aroused be-
fore. Napoleon, with a solid national consciousness
behind him, was invincible until he found a national
consciousness opposed to him in Spain in 1809, in
Russia in 1812, and in Germany in 1813. Only the sense
of nationality had been able to preserve nations; and
it was the sense of nationality that thereafter continued
to maintain them.
To these two political causes we may perhaps add a
third cause one of a technical-musical character.
With the early Beethoven the old classical system of
music had reached its apogee. When this was once
complete and firmly implanted in people's conscious-
ness contrasting sorts of music could be clearly apper-
ceived. Once the logical course of classical develop-
ment was finished, men's minds were free to look else-
where for beauties of another sort. So when a political
interest in the common people led men to investigate
the people's folk-songs, musical consciousness was at
the same time prepared to appreciate the striking dif-
ferences between art-music and folk-music.
Now all the national music of the nineteenth century
is based in a very real sense on the folk-music of the
people. The music of the eighteenth century could not
be truly national, because it was supported chiefly by
the aristocracy, and an art will inevitably tend to ex-
press the character of the people who pay its bills. The
differences between the aristocracy of one nation and
that of another are largely superficial. The court of
Louis XV was distinguished from that of Frederick the
Great chiefly by the cut of the courtiers' clothes. But
the France of 1813 was distinguished from the Ger-
many of 1813 by the mould of the national soul. And
the national soul can be seen very imperfectly in the
60
NATIONAL EXPRESSION IN SCANDINAVIA
official art of a nation; it must be sought for in the
popular art in the myths, the fairy tales, the ballads,
and the folk-songs. So when the newly awakened na-
tional consciousness began to demand musical expres-
sion, it inevitably sought its materials in the music of
the people.
I
In the eighteenth century this popular music was
thought too crude to be of artistic value. The snob-
bishness of political life was reflected in the prevailing
attitude toward art. Because the people's melodies
were different from the accepted music they were held
to be wrong. Or rather, one may say that cultivated
people hardly dreamed of their existence. Gradually,
in the latter half of the eighteenth century, scholars
became aware of the value of popular art. Herder was
the first important man to discover it in Germany, and
he passed his appreciation of it on to Goethe. By the
opening of the nineteenth century the appreciation of
folk-art was well under way. Collections of folk-songs
and folk-poetry were appearing, and their high artistic
value was being recognized. With the first decade of
the century the impulse reached the Scandinavian
lands, and their national existence in art began.
These countries had of course been free from the im-
mediate turmoil of the Napoleonic wars. They had
suffered, as all Europe had suffered, but they had not
been obliged to defend their nationality with their
blood. Denmark and Norway-Sweden had been for
centuries substantially independent, and Finland, which
had been in loose subjugation alternately to Sweden
and Russia, was practically independent for some time
until a political pact between Napoleon and the Czar
Alexander made her a grand duchy of Russia; but even
as a part of the Russian Empire she suffered no viola-
tion of her national individuality until late in the
61
MODERN MUSIC
nineteenth century. Political independence and geo-
graphical isolation had left the northern nations
somewhat turgid and provincial. Their artistic life had
been largely borrowed. The various courts had their
choirs and kapellmeisters, usually imported from Ger-
many. Native composers were infrequent; composi-
tion was largely in the hands of second-rate musicians
from Germany who had migrated that they might be
larger fish in a smaller puddle. And the composition
was, of course, entirely in the foreign style. Stockholm
and Copenhagen had their opera in the latter half of
the eighteenth century, but the works performed were
chiefly French and Italian. These imported works set
the standard for most of the native musical composi-
tion. Toward the end of the eighteenth century Ger-
man influence began to predominate, especially in Den-
mark, where the German Singspiel took root and en-
joyed a long and prosperous career. The German in-
fluence was* much more proper to the Scandinavian
lands than that of France or Italy, but it had not the
slightest relation to a national art. Danish stories oc-
casionally appeared in the subject matter, but the mu-
sic was substantially that of Reichardt and Zelter in
Germany. In Sweden the course of events was the
same. Occasionally national subject matter appeared
in operatic librettos, but in the music never. Sweden,
which up to the beginning of the nineteenth century
continued to be a force in European political affairs,
had naturally enjoyed a considerable degree of inter-
course with other nations, and was all the more in-
fluenced by them in her art. Norway and Finland,
however, were completely isolated, and received their
musical ministrations not at second hand but at third.
In all these countries there was a considerable degree
of musical life (choirs, orchestras, and dramatic
works), but this was almost wholly confined to the
large cities. Yet all these nations had the possibilities
62
NATIONAL EXPRESSION IN SCANDINAVIA
of a rich artistic life in national traditions, in folk-
song, and in a common sensitiveness of the racial soul.
All four nations are distinctly musical, and in Denmark
and Finland especially the solo or four-part song was
cultivated lovingly in the home and in the smaller com-
munities.
From their isolation and provincialism the Scandi-
navian countries were awakened, not by direct, but by
reflex impulse. The vigorous national life of other
European lands gradually stimulated a sympathetic
movement in the two Scandinavian peninsulas. Den-
mark saw its first good collection of folk-songs in 1812-
14, Sweden in 1814-16. In 1842 came A. P. Berggreen's
famous collection of Danish songs, and about the same
time the 540 Norse folk-songs and dances gathered and
edited by Ludwig Lindeman. Doubtless this interest
had some political significance. But far more impor-
tant than these was the appearance in 1835 of the first
portion of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic,
which has since taken its place beside the Iliad and the
Nibelungenlied as one of the greatest epics of all time.
This remarkable poem seems to have been genuinely
popular in origin. It remained in the mouths and
hearts of the people throughout the centuries, almost
unknown to the scholars. A Finnish physician, Elias
Lonnrot, made it his life work to collect and piece to-
gether the fragments of the great poem. In 1835 he
published thirty-five runes, and in 1849 a new edition
containing fifty all taken down directly from the
peasants' lips. This work had a decided political sig-
nificance. It intensified and solidified the national con-
sciousness, tending to counterbalance the influence of
the Swedish language, which until then had been un-
questionedly that of the cultivated classes; later it
formed a buffer to the Russian language which the
Czar attempted to force upon the Finns by imperial
edict. It served to arouse the national feeling to such
63
MODERN MUSIC
a pitch that Finland has in recent years been the chief
thorn in the Czar's side. And this fact, as we shall see,
helped to give the Finnish music of the last three de-
cades its intense national character.
The distinctly national movement in Scandinavian
countries began, as we have said, in the first decade of
the nineteenth century. Its growth thereafter was
steady and uninterrupted and was aided by the gener-
ous spread of choral and symphonic music. In the first
stage the music written was based chiefly on German
models, but it was written more and more by native
Scandinavians. In the second stage (roughly the sec-
ond third of the century) the native composers wrote
music that was based on the national folk-music, but
timidly and vaguely. In the third stage, the folk-tunes
were frankly utilized, the national scales and rhythms
were deliberately and continuously called into service,
and the whole musical output given a character homo-
geneously and distinctively national. It was in this
stage that the Scandinavian music became known to
the world at large. Grieg, a man of the highest talent,
possibly of genius, made himself one of the best loved
composers of the nineteenth century, and awakened a
widespread taste for the exotic. Together with Tschai-
kowsky the Russian he made nationalism in music a
world-wide triumph. After his success it was no longer
counted against a composer that he spoke in a strange
tongue. The very strangeness of the tongue became a
source of interest; and if there was added thereto a
strong and beautiful musical message the new com-
poser usually had easy sailing. The outward success of
Grieg doubtless stimulated musical endeavor in Scan-
dinavian lands, and enabled the world at large to be-
come familiar with many minor talents whose reputa-
tions could otherwise not have passed beyond their
national borders. Finally, there has arisen in Finland
the greatest and most individual of all Scandinavian
64
NATIONAL EXPRESSION IN SCANDINAVIA
composers, and one of the most powerful writers of
music in the modern world Jean Sibelius. In him the
most intense nationalism speaks with a universal voice.
The folk-music which made this Scandinavian na-
tionalism possible is rich and extensive. Apparently it
is of rather recent growth, but this fact is offset by the
isolation of the countries in which it developed. It is
of pure Germanic stock (with the exception of certain
Eastern influences in the music of Finland) . Yet it has
a marked individuality, a perfume of its own. This
is the more remarkable as we discover that in external
qualities it exhibits only slight differences from the Ger-
man folk-song. The individuality is not obvious, as
with the Russian or Hungarian folk-music, but subtly
resident in a multitude of details which escape analy-
sis. Not only is the Scandinavian music clearly dis-
tinct from that of the other Germanic lands, but the
music of each of the four countries is subtly distin-
guished from that of all the others. The Danish is most
like the ordinary German folk-song with which we are
familiar. It is not rich in extent or variety of mood.
Its chief qualities are a discreet playfulness and a
gentle melancholy. In formal structure it is good but
not distinguished. It is predominantly vocal; in old
and characteristic dances Denmark is lacking. The
Swedish folk-music is in every way richer. It does not
attain to the extremes of animal and spiritual expres-
sion, like the Russian, but within its fairly broad limits
it can show every variety of feeling. Even in its live-
liest moments it reveals something of the predominant
northern melancholy, but the dances, which are nu-
merous and spirited, reveal a buoyant health. The thin
veil of melancholy which has been so often noticed is
not nearly so prominent as a certain refined sensuality.
Sweden, more than any of the other Scandinavian
lands, has known periods of cosmopolitan luxury. She
has become a citizen of the world, with something of
65
MODERN MUSIC
the man-of-the-world's self-indulgence and self-con-
sciousness. So her folk-songs frequently reveal an ex-
quisite sense of form which seems French rather than
Germanic.
The Norse folk-song naturally shows a close relation-
ship with that of Sweden, but in every point of differ-
ence it tends straight away from the German. Norway
has for centuries been a primitive country in its ma-
terial conditions; a country of tiny villages, of valleys
for months isolated one from the other; a country of
pioneer virtues and individualistic values. Large cit-
ies are few; the ordinary machinery of civilization is
even yet limited. The economic activities are still in
great measure primitive, and much of the work is out
of doors, as in shipping, fishing and pasturing. The
scenery is among the grandest in the world. So it is
not surprising that the Norwegian folk-music is vigor-
ous and sometimes a little crude, and that it reveals
an intense feeling for nature. The people are deeply
religious and filled with the stern Protestant sense of a
personal relation with God. The tender and mystic
aspects of the music are less easy to account for; many
of the songs are an intimate revelation of subtle mood,
and others show a tonal vagueness which in modern
times is called 'impressionistic.' More than the Swe-
dish songs they are spontaneous and poetic. If they re-
flect nature it is in her personal aspect. They show not
so much the Norwegian mountains as the fog which
covers the mountains. They sing not so much the old
Vikings as the quiet people who have settled down
to fishing and trading when their wanderings are over.
They reveal not the face of nature, but her bosom on
which lonely men may rest.
The Finnish music is of a mixed stock. Primarily
it is an adaptation of the Swedish, and the greater
number of Finnish songs are externally of Swedish
mould. But Lapland has also contributed her child-
66
NATIONAL EXPRESSION IN SCANDINAVIA
like melodies. The true Finnish music, however, is
that drawn from the legendary sources of the original
race. The melodies of the old runes retain their primi-
tive aspects, and are unlike those of any other nation.
They are doubtless the very melodies to which the
Kalevala was originally sung. Externally monotonous
and heavy, they reveal strange beauties on closer ex-
amination. They are distinguished by many repeti-
tions of the same note, by irregular or ill-defined
metre, and by a long and sinuous melodic line. An-
other typical sort of melody is the 'horn-call,' devel-
oped from the original blasts of the hunting-horn. The
theme of the trio of the scherzo of Sibelius' second
symphony is typical of the rune melody. Finally the
Russian influence may be felt in many of the older
Finnish tunes in uncertain tonality and a peculiar use
of the minor. This mixture of musical forces is indic-
ative of the ethnological and social mixture which is
the Finnish race. The Finns are primarily a Mongo-
lian people. From the Laplanders to the north they
received what that simple people had to give. For cen-
turies they were under the domination of Sweden;
Swedish was the language of their literature and their
cultured conversation, and Swedish was their official
civilization. A considerable accession of Swedish im-
migrants and infusion of Swedish blood left their af-
fairs in the control of Germanic influences. (It is on
this account that the Finnish is included in a chapter
on Scandinavian music.) Finally, a nearness to Rus-
sia and an intermittent subjugation to the Czardom
brought into their midst Russian influences which were
assimilated flexibly but incompletely. In the late nine-
teenth century Finland experienced a renaissance of
national feeling. The genuine Finnish language gained
the uppermost, and provided a rallying point for the
resistance to the Czar's attempted Russianization of his
duchy. Finnish traditions displaced those of the Vik-
67
MODERN MUSIC
ings. And Finland began to stand forth as an oriental
nation with a heroic background. Therefore, though
her music developed largely out of Germanic mate-
rials, it has become, under Sibelius (himself of Teu-
tonic blood), a thing apart.
The use of folk-music on the part of the Scandina-
vian composers seems to have been less deliberate and
conscious than in the case of the 'neo-Russian' nation-
alists.* In the earliest composers who can be regarded
as national it is scarcely to be noticed. For some years
after Danish music began to have a national character
the actual presence of folk-elements was to be detected
only on close examination. Such a careful writer as
Mr. Finck indignantly denies that Grieg made any de-
liberate use of folk-music. In his view the melodies of
the people are so inferior to those of Grieg that to sug-
gest the latter's indebtedness is something in the nature
of blasphemy. Nevertheless, in the process of national-
izing the northern music the patriotic composers in-
troduced the spirit and the technical materials of
the folk-music into conscious works of art. Just what
the process was is hardly to be known, even by the
composers themselves. We know that Grieg was an
ardent nationalist and studied and admired the folk-
songs. To what extent he imitated or borrowed folk-
melodies for his compositions is not of first importance.
Probably, with the best of the nationalists, the process
was one of saturating themselves in the music of their
native land and then composing personally, and from
the heart. At all events, it is certain that the influence
of any folk-music, deeply studied, is too pervasive for
a sensitive composer to escape.
Since the first third of the nineteenth century the
Scandinavian composers have been heavily influenced
by the prevailing German musical forces. German
musicians were frequent visitors or sojourners in Scan-
* See Chapter IV.
68
NATIONAL EXPRESSION IN SCANDINAVIA
dinavian cities, and the musicians of the northern
lands sought their education almost exclusively in Ger-
many. Hence Scandinavian music has reflected
closely the changes of fashion that prevailed to the
south.. Mendelssohn and Schumann (through the work
of Gade) were the first dominating influences. Chopin
influenced their style of pianistic writing, and Wagner
and Liszt in due time influenced their harmonic pro-
cedure. Music dramas were written quite in the Wag-
nerian style, and a minor impulse toward programme
music came from Berlioz and Liszt. In the art of in-
strumentation Wagner and Strauss received instant
recognition and imitation an imitation which soon be-
came a schooling and developed into a pronounced
native art. Even Brahms had his share in the work,
primarily in the shorter piano pieces which have been
so distinctive a part of the Scandinavian musical out-
put, and latterly in the 'absolute' polyphonic work of
Alfven, Stenhammar and Norman.
But though all these strands are distinctly discernible,
that which gives the Scandinavian tonal art a right
to a separate existence is a contribution of its own.
In the larger and more ambitious forms the Scandina-
vian composers have usually not been at their best or
most distinctive. It is the smaller forms songs, piano
pieces, orchestral pictures, etc. which have carried
the music of the Northland throughout Europe and
America. In these we best see the distinguishing Scan-
dinavian traits. First there is an impressionism, a
dexterity in the creation of specific mood or atmos-
phere, which preceeded the recent craze for these quali-
ties. The music of Grieg, simple as it seems to us now,
was in its time a sort of gospel of what could be done
with music on the intimate or pictorial sides. Vague-
ness, mystery, poetry spoke to us out of this music of
the north. Next there was a feeling for nature, for
pictorial values, for delineative music in its more ro-
69
MODERN MUSIC
mantic terms, which had not been found in the more
strenuous program music of the Germans. The
'Sunrise' of Grieg's 'Peer Gynt Suite' attuned many
thousands of ears to the beauty of natural scenery as
depicted in music. Finally there was a feeling for
tonal qualities as such, which the modern French school
has developed to an almost unbelievable extent. The
tone of the piano became an intimate part of the poetry
of northern piano pieces. Further, the school of Grieg
has shown an astonishing talent in the handling of or-
chestral color. Brilliant and poetic instrumentation
has been one of the chief glories of the northern school.
It was the romantic impulse that was behind all the
best work, and accordingly the formal element does
not bulk large in Scandinavian music. But there is
often a wonderful finesse, polish and dexterity which
reveals an exquisite sense of structure and workman-
ship, especially in the smaller forms. Vocal music,
especially before the opening of the twentieth century,
flourished, and the songs of certain northern composers
have taken their place beside the best beloved lyric
works of Germany. Finally, there are brilliant excep-
tions to the statement that the best northern work has
been achieved in the smaller forms; the concertos of
Grieg, the symphonic pieces of Sinding, and the sym-
phonies and tone-poems of Sibelius, strike an epic note
in modern music.
II
The early history of Danish music is that of any royal
court of post-Renaissance times. Foreign composers
and performers were invited to the capital, and when
the lower classes had been unusually well drained of
their earnings history recorded a 'brilliant musical
age.' In the eighteenth century there was a royal
opera, performing French and Italian pieces. From
time to time various choral or instrumental societies
70
MUSIC IN MODERN DENMARK
were founded. In the conventional sense the musical
life of Copenhagen was flourishing. But in all this
there was no trace of national Danish music.
The first composer who may be called truly national
began working after a thorough Germanizing of the
country's musical taste had taken place. This man
was Johann Peter Emilius Hartmann (1805-1900) . His
extensive work was hardly known outside the limits
of his native land. The few examples which were
played in Germany were speedily forgotten. But he
gradually came to be recognized as the great national
composer of Denmark. Though a large part of his
student years was spent in his native land, he was at
first under the influence of the fashionable composers
of the time, such as Marschner, Spontini, Spohr and
Auber. But, though not a student of Danish folk-songs,
he gradually came to feel the individuality of the na-
tional music, and in 1832 made himself a national
spokesman with his melodrame 'The Golden Horns,' to.
Oehlenschlager's text. His opera, 'Little Christine,' to
Andersen's story, performed in 1846, was thoroughly
national and popular in spirit. His output was aston-
ishingly large and varied. He wrote for nearly every
established form, symphonies, overtures, songs, choral
pieces, religious and secular, sonatas as well as short
romantic pieces for the piano, works for organ and
violin, ballets, and picturesque orchestral poems. His
nationalism does not appear consistently in his work;
he seems to have made it no creed; perhaps he only
imitated it from Weber and Chopin. But when he
chose to work with national materials he came nearer
to the popular spirit than any other composer of the
time, barring the two or three great ones of whom
Weber is the type. His facility was great, his themes
pregnant and arresting. He revealed an energetic struc-
tural power, and together with fine polyphonic ability
a mastery of romantic suggestion in the style of Men-
71
MODERN MUSIC
delssohn. But it is chiefly by his native feeling for the
folk-style that he established himself as the first Scan-
dinavian nationalist in music. Grieg wrote of him:
'The dreams of our younger generation of northern men
were his from the time he reached maturity. The best
and deepest thoughts which moved a later generation
of more or less important spirits were spoken first in
him, and found their first echo in us.'
But it was Niels W. Gade (1817-1890) who repre-
sented the Danish school in the eyes of the outside
world. This was due chiefly to his strategic position as
friend of Mendelssohn and, after Mendelssohn's death,
director of the Gewandhaus orchestra in Leipzig. At
bottom he was thoroughly a German of the conserva-
tive romantic school. His excellence in the eyes of the
time consisted in his ability at writing Mendelssohn's
style of music with almost Mendelssohn's charm and
finish. But he was also the Dane, and in subtle wise
he managed to impregnate his music with Danish mu-
sical feeling. His eight symphonies had a high stand-
ing in his day, the first and last being typically na-
tional in character, serving, in fact, as a sort of propa-
ganda for the national school that was to come. But
Gade was more thoroughly national in some of his
choral ballads and dramatic cantatas, such as 'Cala-
mus,' 'The Erlking's Daughter,' 'The Stream,' and
others; and especially in his orchestral suite, 'A Sum-
mer Day in the Country,' and his suite for string or-
chestra, Holbergiana. His personality was not so vig-;
orous as that of Hartmann; his culture was more con-
servative and classical; the shadow of Mendelssohn
prevented the more aggressive national utterance that
might have been desired. But what he did he did well,
and his immense influence on the future of Scandina-
vian music was established through his masterful fus-
ing of the best German classic manner of the time with
popular national materials.
72
MUSIC IN MODERN DENMARK
Among the Danish composers of the same time we
may mention Emil Hartmann (1836-1898), son of the
great Hartmann, prolific composer of orchestral pieces,
chamber music, and operas of professedly national
character; Peter A. Heise (1830-1870), composer of
songs to some of the best national lyric poetry of the
time; and August Winding (1835-1899), composer of
piano, orchestral and chamber music in which national
color and folk humor were discreetly brought to the
foreground.
In recent times the Danish school, of the four Scan-
dinavian branches, has been least national in intent.
Foreign gods have exercised their sway in one fashion
or another. Nor can we say that the absolute value of
the more recent works is distinguished. Among the
half dozen Danish composers who have attained to
eminence there is none who can be considered the
equal of either Gade or Hartmann in personal ability.
Much of the best efforts of the younger men has gone
to larger forms, in which either their creative inspira-
tion or their formal mastery has proved insufficient.
Among them there are four of marked ability : August
Enna, in opera; Asger Hamerik, in symphonic music;
P. E. Lange-Miiller, in lyric and piano works; and Carl
Nielsen, in chamber music.
August Enna (born 1860) is the most prolific and suc-
cessful of Denmark's opera composers. Chiefly self-
taught, but mainly German in his influences, he has
written some ten operas in which one influence or style
after another is evident. 'Cleopatra,' after Rider
Haggard's story, is ambitious and theatric, but it re-
veals, alongside of frank Wagnerism, the ghost of
Meyerbeer and of Italian opera of the 'transition pe-
riod' of the 'eighties. 'Aucassin and Nicolette' attempts
the quaint and naive style which is supposed to com-
port with the late Middle Ages; it has a distinction of
its own, but too often it is mere conventional romantic
73
MODERN MUSIC
opera. The fairy operas after Andersen 'The Little
Match Girl' and 'The Princess of the Peapod' are in
more congenial style, but lack the necessary consistent
manner of light fantasy. The truth is that Enna, with
marked abilities, is limited to the expression of tender
sentiment, gentle melancholy, and personal, intimate
moods. His invention is happy, though uneven; his use
of the orchestra colorful but not always in taste. He
lacks the ability to conceive and carry out a large work
in a consistent and elevated manner. He fails in that
ultimate test of the thorough workman the ability to
execute a whole work in a consistent and homogeneous
style. The trouble is not with his operatic instinct,
which is sufficiently vivid; nor with his melodic inven-
tion as such, for this is often fresh and charming. But
his musicianship and his inspiration have not proven
equal to the task he has set himself.
Asger Hamerik (born 1843) has undertaken an
equally big task in the field of symphonic music. He
plans on a large scale, but it can hardly be said that he
thinks likewise. We may note a 'Poetic' symphony, a
'Tragic' symphony, a 'Lyric' symphony, a 'Majestic'
symphony, and a choral symphony, among several
others. Of his two operas, one, 'The Vendetta,' received
a performance in Milan. There is considerable choral
and chamber music, and in particular a 'Northern' or-
chestral suite by which his artistic personality may be
best known. But he has at bottom little of the national
feeling. He is facilely eclectic, but with no individual
or consistent binding principle. He has a romanticism
that recalls Dvorak's graceful, mildly sensuous, pleas-
ing rather than inspiring; he has further a marked gift
as an instrumental colorist. But his harmony is con-
ventional, and his thematic ideas are usually undis-
tinguished. Finally, his structural power is not suffi-
cient to raise his musical material to a high artistic
plane. Hamerik is out of the main line of Scandina-
74
MUSIC IN MODERN DENMARK
vian national music, but has not been able to make a
place for himself in music universal.
Much more to the purpose in intent and achievement
is P. E. Lange-Miiller (born 1850) . He reveals a grace-
ful sense of form and a sincere emotional feeling in
his smaller works for piano and voice. His harmony is
conservative and sometimes disappointing; but when-
ever he strikes the tender mood of folk-music he saves
himself with a touch of poetry. But he is rather a fol-
lower of the old school of German romanticism than
of Scandinavian nationalism. The four-act opera,
Frau Jeanna, is content with an unobtrusive lyric style,
but the lyricism is not exalted enough to sustain such a
large-scale work. The melodrama Middelalderlig, of
more recent date, shows much poetic color but a funda-
mental lack of invention. In the larger works he is at
his best in the fairy-comedy, 'Once upon a Time.' His
symphony 'In Autumn,' his orchestral suite, 'Alham-
bra,' and 'Niels Ebbesen' for chorus, have met with in-
different success. Lange-Miiller is primarily a lyric
composer for voice and piano, and in this field he
shows a sort of grace and tenderness which we shall
meet with frequently in recent Swedish music.
A sincere and able, yet austere, composer is Carl
Nielsen (born 1865). His music is, with that of the
Swede Alfven, less programmistic and more 'absolute'
than we shall meet with in any other distinguished
Scandinavian musician of modern times. The na-
tional element in his work is almost nil. A master of
counterpoint, and a vigorous innovator in the modern
Russian style, he commands respect rather than love.
His output includes more than half a dozen sympho-
nies, a number of works for string quartet and violin,
some large compositions for chorus and orchestra, and
a four-act opera, 'Saul and David.' It is by this that
he is best known. This is a work to command respect-
ful attention from musicians, but hardly enthusiastic
75
MODERN MUSIC
applause from ordinary audiences. The writing shows
great musical knowledge, careful and ample ability in
counterpoint and in modulation of the complex mod-
ern sort, a certain unity of style, and a command of
special emotional color. But the work is perhaps
rather that of the symphonist than of the operatic poet.
His instrumentation, unlike his harmony, is conserva-
tive. His workmanship is thorough, and his musician-
ship wide and soundly based.
Among the minor names there are several who de-
serve mention for one reason or another. Ludolf Niel-
sen (born 1876) is a thorough classicist at heart, though
he has become known in Germany through his sym-
phonic poems 'In Memoriam,' Fra Bjaergene, and 'Sum-
mer Night Moods.' He is more than usually talented,
but very conservative in his style. His themes are in-
teresting though not striking, and his product is suffi-
ciently inspired with human feeling to be preserved
from pedantry. Hakon Borresen (born 1876) has dis-
tinguished himself with many songs which preserve the
national tradition established for Norway by Grieg
and Sinding. His chamber music has revealed har-
monic invention and tender coloring which show him
to be one of the chosen of the younger Danish com-
posers. Finally, we may mention Otto Mailing (born
1848), an able writer for organ and string quartet; Vic-
tor Bendix (born 1851), well known in Denmark for a
number of symphonies which combine delicate poetry
with structural beauty; Ludvig Schytte (born 1848),
prolific writer of piano pieces, and Cornelius Rubner,
who commands respect for solidly classic workmanship.
These latter men are of the old school. Of the younger
generation in Denmark we are hardly justified in hop-
ing for works of great distinction, unless a possible
exception may be made in the case of Borreson. For,
speaking broadly, the national impulse has departed
from Danish composition.
76
SWEDEN AND HER MUSIC
III
Though Scandinavian art was first brought to the
attention of the world at large through the Norwegians
(Grieg in music and Ibsen in literature), Sweden has
in more recent years held her share of international
attention. After Ibsen the Swede Strindberg was per-
haps the most talked-of dramatist in Europe. Still
more recently the novels of Selma Lagerlof and the
sociological writings of Ellen Key have been widely
translated and read, not only in European lands, but
in America also. Strindberg was a supreme artist, a
personality of an intensity equalling Nietzsche and of a
spiritual variety suggesting that of Goethe. The strain
of violent morbidity in his Weltanschauung was a
purely personal and not at all a national matter. As
executive artist he showed an almost classic balance
and control. Selma Lagerlof is sane and finely poised,
and Ellen Key has by her moderation and her clearness
of intellectual vision made herself a leader in a depart-
ment of modern sociological study which more than
any other is apt to be treated sentimentally and hys-
terically. Poise and artistic control are, in fact, to be
noticed generally in modern Swedish art, and espe-
cially in music. The cosmopolitan character of Swe-
dish political history is here seen in its results. Some-
one has called Stockholm 'the Paris of the north.' The
epithet is just: grace, conscious artistry, sensuous self-
indulgence, are to be found in Swedish music in a de-
gree that contrasts markedly with the militant self-
expression of the Norwegian school. Without losing its
national qualities the art of modern Sweden has spoken
the easy language of the European Capitals.
Sweden's story is like Denmark's: first a thorough
Germanization of her music, then a gradual growth of
the national tone. This tone grew in every case out of
77
MODERN MUSIC
the early German romanticism. The first great Swedish
composer and the earliest romanticist was Franz Ber-
wald (1796-1868). His position in Sweden is somewhat
analogous to that held in Denmark by Hartmann. His
output was large, and in the largest forms. He under-
took symphonic works which until his time had been
neglected in his native land. Without being known
much outside Sweden he gained a place in the hearts
of his countrymen which he has held ever since. His
most popular work was his Symphonic Serieuse in G
minor, composed in 1843, sincere, poetic and musi-
cianly. The influence of Schumann is predominant. A
considerable quantity of symphonic and chamber mu-
sic, reflecting chiefly Beethoven and Mendelssohn,
gained him a position as the foremost symphonic writer
of his time. An early violin concerto, composed in
1820, reveals him as a sincere student of Beethoven,
youthful, romantic and progressive. Out of half a
dozen operas we may mention Estrella de Soria, a ro-
mantic work of large proportions, built on the Parisian
model (though showing the homely influence of Weber)
with hunting chorus, grand ballet, and all. That he
was not unconscious of his nationality is proved by the
names of some of his choral compositions, such as
Gustav Adolph bei Lutzen, The Victory of Karl XII at
Narwa,' and the Nordische Phantasiebilder. A 'sym-
phonic poem,' En landtlig Brollopfest, makes extensive
use of Swedish melodies, but the style is not a national
one, and the themes are merely utilized without being
developed. As a highly trained and spontaneous
worker in the early romantic style Berwald performed
a great service in awakening musical consciousness in
his native land. But here ends his national signifi-
cance.
Berwald's tendency was represented in the following
generation by Albert Rubenson (1826-1901), a less tal-
ented but very able composer. He came from the Leip-
78
SWEDEN AND HER MUSIC
zig school and was thoroughly Germanized, but like
Berwald devoted some attention to Swedish subjects.
Ludwig Normann (1831-1885) anticipated the modern
Swedish composers in his preference for the smaller
forms. In his piano music he is tender and idyllic, de-
lighting in detail and suggestive device, something of a
poet and tone-painter. Mendelssohn is the chief in-
fluence in his piano work. Though this is thin in style,
it is rich in charming melody and is carried out with
a fine polish. In his larger works, such as the sym-
phony in E-flat major (1840), he is still the melodist;
his writing is fresh and even original, but his scoring
is without distinction. His romantic overtures are in
the Mendelssohnian manner, with romantic color in
the fashion of the time.
One of the most talented of the early Swedish com-
posers was Ivan Hallstrom (1826-1901), who may be
said to have been the first truly national composer of
his land. He appreciated the artistic possibilities of
the national folk-song and made its use in his music a
chief tenet in his artistic creed. This was preeminently
true in his operas such as Den Bergtagna, Die Gno-
menbraut, Der Viking, and Neaga. The last-named is
a romantic work teeming with color and poetry, with
traces of Wagnerian influence, but with much vigor,
beauty and depth. Some of these works have been
favorably received in Germany, but they are not suffi-
ciently personal and dramatic to justify a long life.
The Swedish folk-song was carried into symphonic and
chamber music by J. Adolph Hagg (born 1850), a dis-
ciple of Gade and an able and fruitful composer of
symphonies and sonatas, and romantic pieces for piano,
which are filled with romantic and local color.
But the early musical generation, of which Hallstrom
may be considered one of the last, was more distinctive
and national in its songs than in its instrumental
works. The first half of the nineteenth century may be
79
MODERN MUSIC
called the golden age of the Swedish Lied. It was a
time of choral societies, some of which became famous
throughout the continent. Otto Lindblad (1809-1864)
was a leader and prolific composer for such societies.
It is to his credit to have composed the official national
song of Sweden. But the great lyric genius of Sweden
was Adolph Fr. Lindblad (1801-1879), who is com-
monly called 'the Swedish Schubert.' His genius was
tender and elegiac, responding sensitively to the colors
of nature, and, thanks to tlie art of Jenny Lind, it be-
came familiar to concert-goers in many lands.
Swedish music of modern times has maintained a
wide variety of forms and styles. The national feeling
is still strong, though some of the ablest work is being
done in an 'absolute' idiom. On the whole the recent
Swedish school is best represented to the outside world'
by Petersen-Berger with his short and graceful piano
pieces, and by Sjogren with his songs. In opera Swe-
den has approached an international standing, but has
not quite attained it. Her opera is represented at its
best by Andreas Hallen (born 1846), who used na-
tional tone-material with Wagnerian technique. Like
most other northern musicians of his time he went to
Leipzig for his training and sought in Germany for
his beacon lights. After returning to his native land he
became indispensable in its musical life, serving as di-
rector of the Stockholm Philharmonic Society and of
the Stockholm opera. Besides songs and choral works
he wrote a number of symphonic pieces of a high or-
der, filled with Swedish melody and Swedish color.
The Swedish Rhapsodies opus 23, based entirely upon
well-known national songs, are of a solid technique
and agreeable variety; the themes themselves are little
developed, but by their scoring and their juxtaposition
they become fused into an admirable whole. The
Sommersaga, opus 36, lacks specific Swedish color, but
is an attractive and able work in the older romantic
80
SWEDEN AND HER MUSIC
style. The Toteninsel, opus 45, is an ambitious sym-
phonic poem. The themes are arresting, the develop-
ment powerful, and the harmony energetic, but the
work lacks the dithyrambic quality demanded of tone-
poems in recent times, and hence seems outmoded. In
'The Music of the Spheres,' dating from 1909, we dis-
cover an admirable adaptation and fusion of modern
harmonic technique, but the ideas and the construction
speak of a bygone age. In all these works Hallen was
mainly under the influence of Liszt. In the operas, on
which his reputation chiefly rests, he was at first wholly
Wagnerian. His first work for the stage, 'Harald the
Viking,' though presumably Swedish, is utterly Wag-
nerian in treatment. Were it not that Wagnerian imi-
tation cannot be truly creative, this work would surely
take a high rank, for it is powerful, dramatic, and ad-
mirably scored. The national tone becomes more
marked in the later operas Hexf alien (1896), Walde-
marskatten (1899) and Waldborgsmdssa (1901). The
Wagnerian leit-motif and Wagnerian harmony are
still present, but the Swedish material has suitably
modified the general style. In Waldemarskatten, which
is of a light romantic tone, one even feels that the com-
poser has despaired of being successful in the highest
musical forms and has made a compromise in the di-
rection of easy popularity. But the work is filled with
beautiful passages. In the spots where Hallen imitates
folk-song or folk-dance, he is fresh and inspiring. His
musical treatment is never highly personal; on the
other hand he shows most valuable qualities vigor,
passion, folk-feeling, and above all dramatic sense.
His scoring, too, is rich and colorful.
.Perhaps the best known and most typical of the mod-
ern Swedes is Emil Sjogren (born 1853), the undisputed
master of the modern Swedish art-song. No other com-
poser of his land is so individual as he. No other is
more specifically Swedish, in perfumed grace and sen-
81
MODERN MUSIC
suous tendernesss. Yet he is by no means a salon com-
poser. His work is energetic, showing at times even a
touch of the noble and heroic. His nationalism does
not consist so much in his use of actual Swedish ma-
terial as in his finely racial manner of treatment. In
his short piano pieces cycles, novelettes, landscape
pictures, etc. he has impregnated the salon manner of
a Mendelssohn with something of the color and per-
sonal feeling of a Grieg. His choral works are highly
prized in Sweden. His work in the classical forms,
chiefly for violin and piano, are conservative in form
and (until recently) in harmony. But it is in his songs
that Sjogren has expressed himself most perfectly.
These are very numerous and show a wide range of
emotional expression. Beyond a doubt they are thor-
oughly successful only in the tenderer and intimate
moods. They reveal a psychological power recalling
that of Schumann, and an impressionistic harmonic
perfume similar to that in Grieg's best work. In the
brief strophe form Sjogren shows himself master of
the exquisite form which distinguishes the Swedish
folk-song. In his early period his accompaniment fol-
lowed closely the regular voice-part, and his harmony,
while always personal, was simple. A middle period
shows a perfect blending of voice and piano, with free-
dom and variety in each, much pianistic resourceful-
ness, and a remarkable melodic gift. Since this period
his harmony has undergone a striking change. He has
evidently sat at the feet of the modern French masters,
and has adopted an idiom which is complex and diffi-
cult. He has managed to keep it original and personal,
but it is to be doubted whether the recent songs will
ever hold a permanent place beside the lovely ones of
the middle period.
Of almost equal personal distinction and importance
is Wilhelm Petersen-Berger (born 1867), a master of
romantic piano music in the smaller forms, and a na-
82
SWEDEN AND HER MUSIC
tional voice to his native land. His work is varied.
There is chamber music such as the E minor violin
sonata. There is a 'Banner Symphony' (1904) and one
entitled Sonnenfdrd (1910). There are male choruses,
such as En Fjallfdrd, and orchestral works such as the
'May Carnival in Stockholm,' together with at least four
operas Sveagaldrar (1897), Das Gliick 1902), Ran
(1903) and Ami jot (1907). Finally there are the piano
pieces, a rich and varied list ranging all the way from
the simplest of 'parlor melodies' to large tone poems
and concert works. Some of the piano pieces bear such
titles as 'To the Roses,' 'Summer Song,' and 'Lawn Ten-
nis.' Others are ambitiously named 'Northern Rhap-
sody' (with orchestra) and 'Swedish Summer.' With
some of these works Petersen-Rerger takes a place be-
side the ablest and most poetic modern writers for the
pianoforte. Landscape, story and mood are here ex-
pressed, with a technique ranging from that of Schu-
mann's 'Children's Pieces' all the way to the modern
idiom of Ravel. If some of the pieces seem cheap and
sentimental let it be remembered that they are replac-
ing much less attractive things written by third rate
men, and are helping to raise the taste of the 'ordinary
music-lover' as Mendelssohn's 'Songs without Words'
did half a century before. His melody is truly lyric
and his harmony truly impressionistic. His genius for
the piano is proved by his ability to get full and color-
ful effects out of a style of writing which on paper looks
thin. Though sentimentality abounds, the spirit is fun-
damentally vigorous and healthy and at times ap-
proaches something like tragic dignity. The 'Northern
Rhapsody' is a wholly admirable treatment of folk-
tunes on a large scale and with the idiom of pianistic
virtuosity. The songs are often charming, though on
the whole less satisfactory than the piano pieces. When
he writes simply he shows almost flawless taste and
artistic selection. When he aims at the mood of high
83
MODERN MUSIC
tragedy, as in the songs from Nietzsche, he is sometimes
unexpectedly successful. The Nietzsche songs, radical
in technique, are moving and impressive. In his large
works Petersen-Berger is not so successful. His Son-
nenfdrd symphony is lyric, rather than orchestral. It
is lacking in structural power, and in the broad spir-
itual sweep which such a large-scale work must have.
But here again his charming melody almost saves the
day. The opera Ami jot can hardly be called a success;
it is long and ambitious, but thinly written, undra-
matic, and not very pleasing.
In direct contrast to Petersen-Berger is Hugo Alfven
(born 1872), Sweden's most important contrapuntist.
In him the national influence is reduced to a minimum,
though it is sometimes to be noticed in a certain manner
of forming themes and moulding cadences. Swedish
color is, however, noticeable in certain works specifi-
cally national. The Midsommarvaka is built upon Swe-
dish tunes, organized and developed in the spirit of the
classic composers. The whole spirit is intellectual and
technical, but this has its agreeable side in the com-
poser's ability to build up long sustained passages.
The 'Upsala Rhapsody,' opus 24, is merely an excuse
for the technical manipulation of a collection of rather
cheap melodies. The symphonies are more able and
even less interesting. The solidity and complexity of
the polyphonic style excite admiration, but the themes
are without distinction and the total effect is pedantic.
In his songs, however, Alfven gives us a surprise. His
power of development here becomes something like
poetic greatness, especially where the form is free
enough to give the work a symphonic character. The
voice part is unconventional, declamatory and impres-
sive, and the accompaniment varied and impressive.
Altogether, these songs are among the most admirable
which modern Scandinavian has given us.
Among the other able composers of modern Sweden
84
SWEDEN AND HER MUSIC
we should mention Tor Aulin (born 1866), who has
consecrated his lyric and poetic talent chiefly to the
violin; Erik Akerberg (born 1860), whose classical pre-
dilections have led him to choral and symphonic work;
and Wilhelm Stenhammar (born 1871). The last is one
of the ablest of modern Swedish composers, a man
whose talents have by no means been adequately recog-
nized, and a genius, perhaps, who is destined to out-
strip his better-known contemporaries. The list of his
works includes two operas, Tirflng (1898) and 'The
Feast at Solhaug' (the libretto from Ibsen's play) ; string
quartets, sonatas and concertos for piano and violin;
large choral works, songs, and ballads with orchestral
accompaniment. The piano concerto, opus 23, ranks
with Grieg's finest orchestral works. The themes, not
always remarkable, are lifted into the extraordinary by
Stenhammar's brilliant handling of them. The A minor
quartet, opus 25, shows great beauty of simple material,
and an intellectual and technical dominance which lift
it quite above the usual Swedish chamber music. The
sonata for violin and piano, opus 19, is a fine work,
simple, fresh, original and charming. In much of the
instrumental music the idiom is advanced, with the
emphasis thrown on the voice leading rather than on
the harmony; but it cannot easily be referred to a single
school, for it is always personal and individually ex-
pressive. When we come to a work like Midvinter,
opus 24, a tone poem for large orchestra, we are at the
summit of modern Scandinavian romantic writing.
This work is a masterpiece. The themes, says the com-
poser in a note, were taken down by ear from the fid-
dler Hinns Andersen, except for one, a traditional
Christmas hymn which is sung by a chorus obbligato.
The counterpoint in this work is masterly, the animal
vigor overwhelming. At no point is the composer
found wanting in structural power or invention. On
the whole, no modern Scandinavian composer, unless
85
MODERN MUSIC
it be Sinding, approaches Stenhammar in the fusing of
fresh poetry with strong intellectual and technical con-
trol. But not only has he written some of Scandina-
via's finest chamber and symphonic music; he has writ-
ten also at least one opera which stands out from
among its contemporaries as genius stands out from
imitation. This is 'The Feast at Solhaug,' opus 6, dated
1896, and performed at the Berlin Royal Opera House
in 1905. This work is utterly lyrical and utterly na-
tional; it is doubtful if there is a more thoroughly Swe-
dish work in the whole list of modern Scandinavian
music. In the vulgar sense it is not dramatic; it has
little concern for square-cornered emotions and start-
ling confrontations. Its melody, which is astonishingly
abundant, is always spontaneous and always expres-
sive. The discreetly managed accompaniment is un-
failingly resourceful in supplying color and emotional
expression. We can say without hesitation that there
has been no more beautiful dramatic work in the whole
history of Scandinavian opera.
IV
Norway, as it seems, has always teen a nation of
great individuals. In her early history she was as iso-
lated socially as she was geographically. Though nomi-
nally a part of the Swedish Empire, she always main-
tained a large measure of independence, and strength-
ened the barrier of high mountains with a more im-
passable barrier of neighborhood jealousy. Life was
difficult among the mountains and fjords, and each
man was obliged to depend upon his own courage and
energy. Luxury was unknown. Even civilization was
primitive. Hence, when Norway began to attain ar-
tistic expression in the nineteenth century she was as
provincial as a little village in the middle west of
America. But her life, while simple, was intense, and
86
THE NORWEGIAN COMPOSERS
the narrowness of the spiritual environment fostered a
broad culture of the soul. Norway became a nation of
laborers, of poets, of thinkers, and of religious seers.
The very friction that opposed the current made it give
out more light.
Ibsen, the first supreme genius of Norway in the arts,
wrote equally from Norway's traditional past and from
Norway's circumscribed present. Out of the combina-
tion of the two he created 'Brand,' one of the noblest
poetic tragedies of modern times. His later social
dramas, as we know, altered the theatre of the whole
world. Beside Ibsen was Bjornson, only second to him
in poetry and drama. And it was during Ibsen's early
years that Norway began to attain self-expression in
music. The first composer of national significance was
Waldemar Thrane (1790-1828), composer of overtures,
cantatas, and dances, and of the music to Bjerragaard's
'Adventure in the Mountains.' But the fame of Norway
was first carried outside the peninsula by Ole Bull
(1810-1880), the virtuoso violinist who, after touring
through all the capitals of Europe, settled down in
Pennsylvania as the founder of a Norwegian colony.
His compositions for the violin had an influence out of
all proportion to their inherent value. He was a ro-
mantic voice out of the north to thousands who had
never thought of music except in terms of Mendelssohn
and Handel. His Fantasies and Caprices for the violin
were filled with national melodies and national color.
He was an ardent patriot, and through his national
theatre in Bergen, no less than through his music and
playing, awakened his countrymen to artistic self -con-
sciousness.
Of far wider power as a composer was Halfdan
Kjerulf (1815-1863), a composer of songs which stand
among the best in spontaneity and delicate charm. His
charming piano pieces in the small forms were filled
with romantic color. In his many songs, simple, yet
87
MODERN MUSIC
varied and original, he showed a power of evoking
emotional response that forces one to compare his tal-
ent with that of Schubert. With him we should men-
tion E. Neupert (1842-1888), who carried the romanti-
cism of Weber and Mendelssohn into Norway, in a long
and varied list of chamber and orchestral music; M. A.
Udbye (1820-1889), composer of Norway's first opera
Fredkulla; and O. Winter-Hjelm (born 1837), who was
a generous composer of songs, choral and orchestral
pieces in the conservative romantic style of Germany.
Johann D. Behrens (1820-1890) proved himself a valu-
able conductor and composer for Norway's unbeliev-
ably numerous male singing societies.
But the greatest composer of the older romantic pe-
riod was Johan Svendsen (born 1840) . He was solidly
grounded in the methods and ideals of Schumann,
Mendelssohn, Gade and even Brahms, and remained
always true to their vision. A specific national com-
poser he was not, but with discreet coloring he treated
national subjects in such works as the 'Norwegian
Rhapsody,' the 'Northern Carnival,' the legend for or-
chestra Zorahayde, and the prelude to Bjornson's Si-
gurd Slembe. In the classical forms he wrote two sym-
phonies and a number of string quartets of marked
value. As a colorist he must be highly ranked. But
his color is not so much that of nationality as that of
romanticism in the conventional sense. His virtues
were the romantic virtues of sensuous beauty, discreet
eloquence, and somewhat self-conscious emotion. But
Norway found her true national propagandist in Rich-
ard Nordraak (1842-1866). This man, who died at the
age of twenty-four, was a remarkably talented musi-
cian, and an unrestrained enthusiast for the integrity
of his native land, both in politics and in art. It is said
that his meeting with Grieg in Copenhagen in 1864, and
their later friendly intercourse, determined the lat-
ter to the strenuously national aspirations which he
88
EDVARD GRIEG
later carried to such brilliant fruition. The funeral
march which Grieg inscribed to him after his death is
one of his deepest and most moving works. Nord-
raak's few compositions incidental music to two of
Bjornson's plays, piano pieces and songs show his
effort after purely national coloring, but have other-
wise no very high value.
The great apostle of Norwegian nationalism was of
course Grieg. His place among the composers of whom
we are now speaking was partly that of good angel and
partly that of press agent. The other Scandinavian
composers have basked to a great extent in the light
which he shed, have taken their inspiration from him,
and have learned invaluable lessons in the art of mu-
sical picture painting. He was by no means merely a
nationalist. Besides acquainting the world with the
beautiful peculiarities of Norwegian folk-song and with
the fancied beauties of northern scenery, he showed
composers in every part of the world how to use
the melodic peculiarities of these songs to build up a
strange and enchanting harmony, capable of calling
forth mysterious pictures of the earth and sea and their
superhuman inhabitants. Grieg was the first popular
impressionist. He helped to shift the emphasis from
the technical and emotional aspects of music to its
specific pictorial and sensuous aspects. And he pre-
pared the world at large for the idea of musical na-
tionalism, which has become one of the two most strik-
ing facts of present-day music.
When we say that Grieg was the first popular impres-
sionist we do not mean that he was more able or origi-
nal than certain others who were working with the
same tendencies at the same time. His popularity re-
sulted to a great extent from the form and manner in
which he worked. His piano music was admirably
suited to making a popular appeal. It was often short
and easy; it was nearly always melodious and clear.
89
MODERN MUSIC
Its picturesque titles suggested a reason for its unusual
turns of harmony and phrase. It was never so radical
in its originality as to leave the mind bewildered.
Hence Grieg became extremely popular among ama-
teurs and casual music-lovers. His piano pieces be-
came Hausmusik as those of Mendelssohn had been a
generation before. The 'impressionistic' effect was usu-
ally produced by simple means a slight alteration of
the familiar form of cadence, a gentle blurring of the
major and minor modes, an extended use of secondary
sevenths and other orthodox dissonances. These inter-
ested the musical amateur without repelling him, and,
when listened to in association with the picturesque
titles, suggested all sorts of delightful sensuous things,
such as the mist on the mountains, the sunlight over the
fjords, or the heavy green of the seaside pines. This
musical style of Grieg's was expertly managed; it was
unquestionably individual and was matured to a point
where it showed no relapses to the style out of which
it had developed. As an orchestral colorist Grieg was
talented and original, but by no means revolutionary.
He chose timbres with a nice sense of their picturesque
values, but in orchestration he is not a long step ahead
of the Mendelssohn of the overtures.
Edvard Hagerup Grieg, the son of Alexander Grieg,
was born in Bergen, Norway, in 1843. He was de-
scended from Alexander Greig (the spelling of the
name was changed later to accommodate the Nor-
wegian pronunciation), a merchant of Aberdeen, who
emigrated from Scotland to Norway soon after the
battle of Culloden, in 1746. His father and his grand-
father before him served as British consul at Bergen.
His mother was a daughter of Edvard Hagerup, for
many years the mayor of Bergen, the second city of
Norway. It was from her that Grieg inherited both his
predisposition for music and his intensely patriotic na-
ture. She was a loyal daughter of Norway and was
90
Edvard Grieg at the Piano
After a photograph from life
major and hiiu
" j
e it sh
EDVARD GRIEG
possessed of no small musical talent, which her fam-
ily was glad to cultivate, sending her to Hamburg in
her girlhood for lessons in singing and pianoforte
playing. These she supplemented later by further
musical studies in London, and she acquired sufficient
skill to enable her to appear acceptably as a soloist at
orchestral concerts in Bergen. It was a home sur-
charged with a musical atmosphere into which Edvard
Grieg was born; and his mother must have dreamed
of making him a musician, for she began to give him
pianoforte lessons when he was only six years old.
Though he disliked school (he appears to have been a
typical youngster in his predilection for truancy), the
boy made commendable progress in his music and
even tried his hand at little compositions of his own;
but before his fifteenth year there was no serious
thought of a musical career for him. In that year Ole
Bull, the celebrated violinist, visited his father's house,
and, having heard the lad play some of his youthful
pieces, prevailed upon his parents to send him to Leip-
zig that he might become a professional musician. It
was all arranged very quickly one summer afternoon;
the fond parents needed little coaxing, and to the boy
'it seemed the most natural thing in the world.' Matric-
ulated at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1858, young Grieg
at first made slow progress. He studied harmony and
counterpoint under Hauptmann and Richter, composi-
tion under Rietz and Reinecke, and pianoforte playing
under Wenzel and Moscheles. At the conservatory at
that time were five English students, among them Ar-
thur Sullivan, J. F. Barnett, and Edward Dannreuther,
who subsequently became leaders in the musical life
of London; and their unstinting toil and patience in
drudgery inspired the young Norwegian to greater con-
centration of effort than his frail physique could stand.
Under the strain he broke down completely. An at-
tack of pleurisy destroyed his left lung and thus his
91
MODERN MUSIC
health was permanently impaired. He was taken
home to Norway, where it was necessary for him to re-
main the greater part of a year to recuperate. But as
soon as he was able he returned to Leipzig; he was
graduated with honors in 1862.
At Leipzig Grieg came strongly under the sway of
Mendelssohn and Schumann. He did not escape from
that influence when he went to Copenhagen in 1863 to
study composition informally with Niels Gade. While
Grieg always held Gade in high esteem, the two musi-
cians really had little in common, and the slight in-
fluence of the Dane was speedily superseded by that of
Nordraak, with whom Grieg now came in contact.
Nordraak was ambitious to produce a genuinely na-
tional Norwegian music, and, brief as their friendship
was, it served to set Grieg, whose talents lay in the
same direction, on the right path. Now fairly launched
upon the career of a piano virtuoso and composer, he
became a 'determined adversary of the effeminate Scan-
dinavianism which was a mixture of Gade and Men-
delssohn,' and with enthusiasm entered upon the work
of developing independently in artistic forms the mu-
sical idioms of his people. In 1867 Grieg was married
to Nina Hagerup, his cousin, who had inspired and who
continued to inspire many of his best songs, and whose
singing of them helped to spread her husband's fame
in many European cities. In 1867 also he founded in
Christiania a musical union of the followers of the new
Norse school, which he continued to conduct for thir-
teen years.
Besides the giving of concerts in the chief Scan-
dinavian and German cities and making an artistic
pilgrimage to Italy Grieg at this period was increas-
ingly industrious in composition. He was remark-
ably active for a semi-invalid. He had found him-
self; and he continued to develop his creative powers
in the production of music that was not only nationally
92
EDVARD GRIEG
idiomatic, but thoroughly suffused with the real spirit
of his land and his people. In 1868 Liszt happened
upon his first violin sonata (opus 8) and forthwith
sent him a cordial letter of commendation and en-
couragement, inviting him to Weimar. This letter was
instrumental in inducing the Norwegian government to
grant him a sum of money that enabled him to go
again to Rome in 1870. There he met Liszt and the
two musicians at once became firm friends. At their
second meeting Liszt played from the manuscript
Grieg's piano concerto (opus 16), and when he had
finished said: 'Keep steadily on; I tell you you have the
capability, and do not let them intimidate you!' The
big, great-hearted Liszt feared that the frail little man
from the far north might be in danger of intimidation;
but his spirit was brave enough at all times though
he wrote to his parents : 'This final admonition was of
tremendous importance to me; there was something in
it that seemed to give it an air of sanctification.'
Thenceforward the recognition of his genius steadily
increased. In 1872 he was appointed a member of the
Swedish Academy of Music; in 1883 a corresponding
member of the Musical Academy at Leyden; in 1890 of
the French Academy of Fine Arts. In 1893 the Uni-
versity of Cambridge conferred on him the doctorate
in music, at the same time that it honored by the be-
stowal of this degree Tschaikowsky, Saint-Saens, Boito,
and Max Rruch. Except when on concert tours his
later years were spent chiefly at his beautiful country
home, the villa Troldhaugen near Bergen, and there
he died on September 4, 1907, after an almost constant
fight with death for more than forty-five years.
Hans von Biilow called Grieg the Chopin of the
North, and the convenience of the sobriquet helped
to give it a wider popular acceptance than it deserved,
for in truth the basis for such a comparison is rather
slight. Undoubtedly Chopin's bold new harmony was
93
MODERN MUSIC
one of the sub-conscious forces that helped to shape
Grieg's musical genius. His mother had appreciated
and delighted in Chopin's music at a time when it was
little understood and much underrated; and from
childhood Chopin was Grieg's best-loved composer.
In his student days he was deeply moved by the 'in-
tense minor mood of the Slavic folk-music in Chopin's
harmonies and the sadness over the unhappy fate of his
native land in his melodies.' It is certain that there
is a certain kinship in the musical styles of the two
men, in their refinement, in the kind and even the de-
gree of originality with which each has enriched his
art, in many of their aims and methods. While Grieg
never attained to the heights of Chopin in his piano-
forte music, he surpassed his Polish predecessor in
the ability to handle other instruments as well as in his
songs, of which he published no fewer than one hun-
dred and twenty-five.
These songs we hold to constitute Grieg's loftiest
achievement; and in all his music he is first of all the
singer amazingly fertile in easily comprehensible and
alluring melodies. He patterned these original melo-
dies after the folk-songs of that Northland he loved so
ardently, just as he often employed the rhythms of its
folk-dances; and by these means he imparted to his
work a fascinating touch of strangeness and succeeded
in evoking as if by magic the moods of the land and
the people from which he sprang. On the wings of his
music we are carried to the land of the fjords; we
breathe its inspiriting air, and our blood dances and
sings with its lusty yet often melancholy sons and
daughters. Much as there is of Norway in his composi-
tions, there is still more of Grieg. His melodies are his
own and more enchanting than the folk-songs which
provided their patterns; and as a harmonist he is both
bold and skillful.
Grieg's place, as may be gathered from what has al-
94
EDVARD GRIEG
ready been said, is in the small group of the world's
greatest lyricists. He wrote no operas and he composed
no great symphonies. His physical infirmity militated
against the sustained effort necessary for the creation of
works in these kinds; but it is also plain from the work
he did when at his best that his inclination and his
powers led him into other fields. He possessed the
dramatic qualities and ability only slightly, the epic
still less, though it cannot be denied that in moments
of rare exaltation he was 'a poet of the tragic, of the
largely passionate and elemental.' His nearest ap-
proach to symphonic breadth is to be found in his
pianoforte concerto, which Dr. Niemann pronounces
the most beautiful work of its kind since Schumann,
his sonatas for violin and pianoforte, his string quar-
tet and his 'Peer Gynt' music. Yet these beautiful and
stirring compositions are, after all, only lyrics of a
larger growth. Grieg himself knew well his powers
and his limitations, and he was as modest as he was
candid when he wrote: 'Artists like Bach and Bee-
thoven erected churches and temples on the heights.
I wanted, as Ibsen expresses it in one of his last dramas,
to build dwellings for men in which they might feel at
home and happy. In other words, I have recorded the
folk-music of my land. In style and form I have re-
mained a German romanticist of the Schumann school;
but at the same time I have dipped from the rich
treasures of native folk-song and sought to create a
national art out of this hitherto unexploited expression
of the folk-soul of Norway.' The spirit of the man re-
calls the pretty little quatrain of Thomas Bailey Aldrich :
'I would be the lyric,
Ever on the lip,
Rather than the epic
Memory lets slip.'
And this is not to disparage pure and simple song.
95
MODERN MUSIC
It is enough for Edvard Grieg's lasting fame that he
did have in rare abundance the pure lyric quality
that close and delicate touch upon the heart strings
which makes them vibrate in sympathy with all the
little importances and importunities of individual hu-
man life.
The one Norwegian composer, besides Grieg, who has
attained an international position, is Christian Sinding
(born 1856) . He is consciously and genuinely national,
but in almost every other way is a complement and
contrast to the other northern master. Where Grieg is
best in the idyllic, Sinding is best in the heroic. Sind-
ing is apt to be trivial where Grieg is at his best
namely, in the smaller forms. On the other hand,
Sinding is noble and inspiring in works too long for
Grieg to sustain. In Sinding the Wagnerian influence
is marked and inescapable. He, like Grieg, is most at
home when working with native material the sharp
rhythms, short periods and angular line of the Nor-
wegian folk-song but he develops it objectively where
Grieg developed it intensively. Sinding need not work
from the pictorial; Grieg was obliged to. Sinding's
speech is much more cosmopolitan, his harmony less
pronounced, his form more conventional. At times he
attains a high level of emotional expression. On the
other hand, he has written much, and his reputation
has suffered thereby. Frequently he is uninspired.
But the sustained magnificence of his orchestral and
chamber music has done much to offset the prevailing
idea that the northern composers could work only in
the parlor or genre style. He sounds the epic and
heroic note too often and with too much inspiration to
permit us to question the greatness of his art.
He has worked in most of the established forms. His
96
SINDING AND OTHER NORWEGIANS
D minor symphony, opus 21, is one of the noblest in all
Scandinavian music. His symphonic poem, 'Perpetual
Motion,' with its inexhaustible energy and its glittering
orchestral color, takes a high rank in modern orches-
tral music. His chamber music quartets, quintets,
trios, violin sonatas, etc. is distinguished by melodic
inspiration, vigorous counterpoint, and sustained struc-
tural power. His piano concerto and two violin con-
certos, and his grandiose E-flat minor variations for
two pianos, have taken a firm place in concert pro-
grammes. As a piano composer in the smaller forms
he is of course less personal, less distinguished, than
Grieg. But every piano student knows his Friihlings-
rauschen and Marche Grotesque. As a song composer
he may justly be ranked second to Grieg in all the
Scandinavian lands. His power and sincerity in the
shorter strophic song is astonishing; his strophes have
the cogency and finish of the Swedish folk-song com-
bined with the intensity and sincerity of the Norwegian.
In his longer songs he is noble and dramatic; he is a
master of poignant emotional expression and of sus-
tained and mounting energy. Two of his familiar
songs 'The Mother' and 'A Bird Cried' are master-
pieces of the first rank. Sinding's harmony is vigor-
ous. An 'impressionist' in the modern sense of the term
he is not. He loves the use of marked dissonance for
specific effect; his harmonic style is broad, solidly
based, square-cornered. It is regrettable, perhaps, that
he did not work more in opera ; his only dramatic work,
'The Holy Mountain,' was performed in Germany early
in 1914. But this fact doubtless furnishes us the reason,
for Norway does not offer a career for an opera com-
poser, who must depend for his success on great wealth
and large cities. As it is, Sinding has made a high,
perhaps a permanent, place for himself in chamber and
orchestral music.
Johan Selmer (born 1844) has taken a place as the
97
MODERN MUSIC
most radical of the 'new romanticists' in Norway. His
work is extensive and varied, and is most impressive
in the larger forms. He has written a series of sym-
phonic poems, several large choral works, many part
songs and ballads, and the usual quota of Lieder. His
chief influences were Wagner, Liszt, and Berlioz. He
can hardly be called a nationalist in music, for his work
shows little northern feeling except where he makes
use of specific Norwegian tunes; indeed he seems
equally willing to get his local color from Turkey or
Italy. His work is thoroughly disappointing; model-
ling himself on the giants, he has been obliged to make
himself a gigantic mask of paper. Neither his melodic
inspiration, his structural power, nor his technical
learning was equal to the task he set himself. His chief
orchestral work, 'Prometheus,' opus 50, is ridiculously
inadequate to its grandiose subject. His Finnlandischer
Festklang is the most ordinary sort of rhapsody on bor-
rowed material. Of his other works we need only say
that they reveal abundantly the effect of large ambi-
tions on a little man. Along with Selmer we may men-
tion three opera composers of Norway, none sufficiently
distinguished to carry his name beyond the national
border: Johannes Haarklou (born 1847), Gath. Elling
(born 1858) and Ole Olsen (born 1850). The last,
though yet 'unproduced' as a dramatic composer, de-
serves to be better known than he is. His symphonic
and piano music is pleasing without being distin-
guished; but the operas Lajla and Hans Unversagt are
charmingly colorful and melodic, revealing musical
scholarship and fine emotional expression. Finally we
may mention Johann Halvorsen (born 1864), a fol-
lower of Grieg and an able composer for violin and
male chorus.
One of the most promising of the younger Norwe-
gians was Sigurd Lie (1871-1904), whose early death cut
off a career which bade fair to be internationally dis-
98
SINDING AND OTHER NORWEGIANS
tinguished. Surely he would have been one of the most
national of Norwegian composers. His list of works,
brief because of ill health, includes a symphony in A
minor, a symphonic march, an oriental suite for or-
chestra, a piano quintet, a goodly list of short piano
pieces, and many songs and choral works. He used the
Norwegian folk-song intensively, combining its spirit
with that of the old ecclesiastical tone. He was a true
poet of music; his moods were usually mystic, gray and
religious, and his effects, even in simple piano pieces,
were obtained with astonishing sureness. His har-
mony, though not radical, was personal and highly ex-
pressive. His songs, much sung in his native land, re-
veal a genius for precise and poignant expression.
One of the most popular of Norway's living compos-
ers for the piano is Half dan Gleve (born 1879), writer
of numerous works of which those in the large forms
are most important. Gleve is cosmopolitan, enam-
ored of large effects, and of dazzling virtuosity. His
technique is varied and exceedingly sure, but he lacks
the appealing loveliness which has brought reputation
to the works of so many of his countrymen. More
popular is Agathe Backer-Grondahl (born 1847), in-
dustrious writer of piano pieces in the smaller forms.
Outwardly a classicist, she has drunk of the lore of
Grieg and has achieved charming and able works, dis-
tinguished by delicate feeling and care for detail. Her
children's songs are altogether delightful. But when
she attempts longer works her inspiration is apt to fail
her.
Perhaps the most original and personal composer
after Grieg and Sinding is Gerhard Schjelderup (born
1859), a tone poet of much technical ability and genu-
ine national feeling. His songs and ballads are very fine,
striking the heroic note with sincerity and conviction.
In his simple songs and piano pieces, Schjelderup's
innate feeling for the folk-tone makes him utterly suc-
99
MODERN MUSIC
cessful. In his operas, 'Norwegian Wedding,' *Beyond
Sun and Moon,' 'A People in Distress,' and his inci-
dental music, he lacks the dramatic and structural
power for long sustained passages; but his genius for
expressive simplicity has filled these works with
beauties. Schjelderup's symphonies and chamber music
have made a place for themselves in European concert
halls equally by their freshness of feeling and by their
excellence of technique.
VI
Finland's music, centred in its capital Helsingfors,
was from the first under German domination. The na-
tional spirit, as we have seen, grew up under the in-
spiration of the Kalevala, then newly made known to
literature. The first national composer of note was
Frederick Pacius (1809-1891), born in Hamburg, but
regarded as the founder of the national Finnish school.
He was under the Mendelssohnian domination, but
gave no little national color to his music and helped
to centre the growing national consciousness. Besides
symphonies, a violin concerto and male choruses, he
wrote an opera 'King Karl's Hunt,' and several Sing-
spiele which contained national flavor without any spe-
cific national material. To Pacius Finland owes her
official national anthem. Other Finnish composers of
note were Karl Collan (1828-1871), F. von Schantz
(1835-1865) and G. G. Wasenus. The Wagnerian in-
fluence first penetrated the land of lakes in the works
of Martin Wegelius (1846-1906), able composer of op-
eras, piano and orchestral music, and choral works.
But the first specific national tendency in Finnish music
is due to Robert Kajanus (born 1856), who achieved the
freshness and primitive force of the national folk-
song in works of Wagnerian power and scope. Be-
sides his piano and lyric pieces we possess several
100
THE FINNISH RENAISSANCE
symphonic poems of his including Aino and Kullervo
all markedly national in feeling.
Among the modern Finnish composers of second rank
Armas Jarnefelt (born 1869) is distinguished. In or-
chestral suites, symphonic poems (for example, the
Heimatklang), overtures, choral works, piano pieces,
and songs, he has shown spontaneity and technical
learning. Poetic feeling and sensitive coloring are
marked in his work. Much the same can be said of
Erik Melartin (born 1875), except that his genius is
more specifically lyric. His songs reflect the energy
and freshness of a race just coming to consciousness.
His smaller piano pieces show somewhat the salon
influence of Sweden, but in all we feel that the artist
is speaking. Ernst Mielck (1877-1899) had made a
place for himself with his symphony and other or-
chestral works when death cut short his career. Oscar
Merikanto (born 1868) has written, besides one opera,
many songs and piano pieces, most of them conven-
tional and undistinguished, and Selim Palmgren (born
1878) has already attained a wide reputation.
In Sibelius we meet one of the most powerful com-
posers in modern music. Masterpiece after master-
piece has come from his pen, and the works which
fall short of distinction are few indeed. He is at once
the most national and the most personal composer
in the whole history of Scandinavian music. His style
is like no one else's; his themes, his mode of develop-
ment, his harmonic 'atmosphere,' and his orchestral
coloring are quite his own. But his materials are,
with hardly an exception, drawn from the literature
and folk-lore of the Finnish nation; his melodies,
when not closely allied to the folk-melodies of his land,
are so true to their spirit that they evoke instant re-
sponse in his countrymen's hearts; and the moods and
emotions which he expresses are those that are rooted
deepest in the Finnish character. This powerful na-
101
MODERN MUSIC
tional tradition and feeling of which he is the spokes-
man he has vitalized with a creative energy which is
equalled only by the few greatest composers of the
world to-day. He has touched no department of music
which he has not enriched with powerful and original
works. As an innovator, pure and simple, he seems
likely to prove one of the most productive forces in
modern music. No deeper, more moving voice has ever
come out of the north; only in modern Russia can any-
thing so distinctly national and so supremely beautiful
be found.
Jean Sibelius was born in Finland in 1865 and at
first studied for the law. Shifting to music, he entered
the conservatory at Helsingfors and worked under
Wegelius. Later he studied in Berlin and thereafter
went to Vienna. Here, under Goldmark, he developed
his taste for powerful instrumental color, and under
Robert Fuchs his concern for finely wrought detail.
But even in his early works there was little of the Ger-
man influence to be traced beyond thorough workman-
ship. With his symphonic poem, En Saga, opus 9, he
became recognized as a national composer. The Finns,
longing for self-expression, looked to him eagerly.
They had, as Dr. Niemann * has put it, been made silent
heroes by their struggles with forest, plain, cataract
and sea, and by the bitter recent political conflict with
Russia. And, as always happens in such cases, they
sought to give expression to their suppressed national
ideals in art. Sibelius's symphonic poem, Finlandia,
is a thinly veiled revoluntionary document and his
great male chorus, 'The Song of the Athenians' (words
by the Finnish poet Rydberg), gave verbal expression
to the thoughts of the patriots of the nation. The
former piece has explicitly been banned in Finland by
Russian edict because of its inflammatory influence on
the people. But all this has not made Sibelius a politi-
* Walter Niemann: Die Musik Skandinaviens.
102
JEAN SIBELIUS
cal figure such as Wagner became in 1848. He has
worked industriously and copiously at his music,
watching it go round the civilized world, keeping him-
self aloof the while from outward turmoil, though his
personal sympathies are known to be strongly nation-
alistic.
It was the symphonic poems which first made Sibe-
lius a world-figure. These include a tetralogy, Lemmin-
kainen, consisting of 'Lemminkainen and the Village
Maidens,' The River of Tuonela,' 'The Swan of Tuo-
nela,' and 'Lemminkainen's Home-faring'; Finlandm,
En Saga, 'Spring Song,' and the more recent 'Spirits of
the Ocean' and 'Pohjola's Daughter.' The Lemmin-
kainen series is based on the Kalevala tale, which nar-
rates the adventures of the hero Lemminkainen, his
departure to the river of death (Tuonela), his death
there, and the magic by which his mother charmed his
dismembered limbs to come together and the man to
come to life. Of the four separate works which make
up the series 'The Swan of Tuonela' is the most popu-
lar. It was in this that Sibelius's original mastery of
orchestral tone was first made known to foreign audi-
ences. With its enchanting theme sung by the English
horn it weaves a long, slow spell of the utmost beauty.
Finlandia tells of the struggles of a submerged nation;
the early parts of the work are filled with passionate
excitement and military bustle; then there emerges the
motive of all this struggle a majestic chorale melody,
scored with the strings in all their resonance," a song
at once of battle and of devotion, a melody for whose
equal we must go to Beethoven and Wagner. En Saga,
the earliest of the great nationalistic works, is without
a definite program, but is dramatic in the highest de-
gree. It is a masterpiece of free form, with its long,
swelling climaxes and passionate adagios, surrounded
by a haze of shimmering tone-color, as though the bard
were singing his story among the fogs of the northern
103
MODERN MUSIC
cliffs. The national character of these works is quite
as marked in their themes as in their subject-matter.
Sibelius is fond of the strange rhythms of the old
times 3/4, 7/4, 2/2, or 3/2 time. His accent is almost
crudely exaggerated. His original themes are so true
to the national character that they seem made of one
piece with the folk-tunes. The mood of these works
is rarely gay; the animation is primitive and savage.
The prevailing spirit is one of loneliness and gloom.
In the symphonic poems, which grow increasingly free
in harmony, we see in all its glory the orchestral scor-
ing which is one of Sibelius's chief claims to fame. It
is no mere virtuoso brilliancy, as is often the case with
Rimsky-Korsakoff. It is always an accentuation of the
character of the music with the character of the tone
of the instrument chosen. It is color from a heavy
palette, chosen chiefly from the deeper shades, showing
its contrast in modulation of tones rather than high
lights, yet kept always free of the turgid and muddy.
The same qualities are shown in the four sympho-
nies. Of these the last is a thing of revolutionary im-
port a daring work whose full meaning to the future
of music has not begun to be appreciated. The other
three are perhaps less symphonies than symphonic
rhapsodies. They seem to imply a program, being
filled with episodes, dramatic, epic, and lyrical, inter-
spersed with recitative and legend-like passages. But,
however free the form, the architecture is cogent. In
his development work Sibelius is always masterly.
Some of the passages, like the main theme of the first
movement of the first symphony, or the slow move-
ment from the same, are amazing in their imaginative
power and beauty. The fourth symphony is a work
apart. In the first and second movements the har-
mony is quite as radical as anything in modern Ger-
man or French music. It is, in fact, hardly harmony
at all, but the free interplay of monophonic voices.
104
Jean Sibelius
After a photo from life (1913)
Sibelius is fond oi
f_> / A >-;
piece with the foil
is rarely gay; t<
The prevailing sp i
is no it;
Ril:
char.
of the instrument
palette, chosen t
in modulation
.
hown in
luti
pow
JEAN SIBELIUS
From this method, which at the present moment is
almost Sibelius's private property, the composer ex-
tracts a quality of poetry which is impressive in its
suggestions of great things beyond.
Some of Sibelius's best music has been written to
accompany dramatic performances. That for Adolph
Paul's play, 'King Christian II,' has been widely played
as an orchestral suite. The introduction is especially
fine. The warm and sweetly melancholy nocturne, the
'Elegy' for strings, and the profoundly moving Dance
of Death are all movements of rare beauty. The
lovely Valse Triste, a mimic drama in itself, written
for Jarnefelt's play, Kuolema, has carried his reputa-
tion far and wide, as the C sharp minor prelude car-
ried Rachmaninoff's, or the 'Melody in F' Rubinstein's.
There are, further, two orchestral suites from the ac-
companying music to Maeterlinck's 'Pelleas and Meli-
sande,' and Procope's 'Belshazzar's Feast.' For orches-
tra we may further mention the Karelia Overture, the
Scenes historiques, the Dance-Intermezzo, Tan and
Echo,' the melancholy waltzes to accompany Strind-
berg's 'Snowwhite,' the two canzonettas for small or-
chestras, the Romance in C major for string orchestra,
the short symphonic poem, 'The Dryads,' and the Fu-
neral march.
The violin concerto, one of the most difficult of the
kind in existence, has already gained its place among
the standard concert pieces for the instrument. It
shows deep feeling and national color, especially in
the rhythmically vigorous finale. The string quartet,
Voces Intimse, opus 56, is a masterly work in a re-
served style. The first three movements are said to
have as a sort of program certain chapters from Swe-
denborg. The piano music is generally on a lower
plane. To a great extent it recalls Schumann and
Tschaikowsky; in such works as the Char act erstiicke,
opera 5, 24, 41, and 58, in the sonatina, opus 67, and
105
MODERN MUSIC
in the rondinos, opus 68, we find little that can be called
original. But we must remember that in these pieces
Sibelius was writing music to appeal to the people,
and has succeeded to a remarkable degree in raising
the general standard of taste in his native land. For
his most personal piano work we must look to his
transcriptions of Finnish tunes, especially 'The Fratri-
cide' and 'Evening Gomes.'
In his songs for solo voice Sibelius has achieved re-
markable things. The remarkable 'Autumn Evening'
is a sort of free recitative, always verging on melody,
accompanied by suggestive descriptive figures in the
piano part. Here we see in germ one of his most im-
portant contributions to modern music an emphasis
on expressive monody. The ballad, Des Fahrmanns
Braut, which has been arranged for orchestral accom-
paniment, is weaker musically, but shows the same
genius for expressive melodic recitative. And not the
least important and characteristic part of Sibelius's
work has been in the form of male choruses. Of these
we may mention 'The Origin of Fire' and 'The Im-
prisoned Queen,' both with orchestral accompaniment,
and, above all, the magnificent 'Song of the Athenians,'
which has come to have a national significance among
the Finns. As we look over this remarkable list of
works, from the great symphonic forms down to brief
songs, and note the quantity of germinal originality
they contain, their high poetry, their universal beauty
and intense national expression, we must adjudge Si-
belius to be a master with a creative vitality which can-
not be matched by more than half a dozen composers
writing to-day.
H. K. M.
106
CHAPTER IV
THE RUSSIAN NATIONALISTS
The founders of the 'Neo-Russian' Nationalistic School: Balakireff;
Borodine Moussorgsky Rimsky-Korsakoff, his life and works Csar Cui
and other nationalists, Napravnik, etc.
The most significant phase in the history of Russian
music is that which represents the activity of the Bala-
kireff group and the founders of the St. Petersburg
Free School of Music. This belongs to the middle of
the past century, when the seed sown by Glinka, Dar-
gomijsky and partly by Rortniansky began to bear its
first fruits. Up to that time the question of Russian
national music had not been aroused. The country
was dominated either by German or the Italian musical
ideals. Art, particularly music, was in every direction
aristocratic, academic, and pedantically ecclesiastic.
The ruling class was foreign to the core and followed
literally the timely aesthetic fads of other countries.
The idea that there could be any art in the life of a
moujik was ridiculed and flatly denied. O, Boje soh-
rani! a patron of music would exclaim at any attempts
at a national music.
To the middle class and the common people the
admission to high-class musical performances and the
opera was legally denied. The concerts of the Imperial
Musical Society and the performances of the Imperial
Opera were meant only for the elite, and the direction
of those institutions was in the hands of bureaucratic
foreigners. It was at a critical moment that Balakireff,
107
MODERN MUSIC
who had come as a young lawyer from Nijny Novgo-
rod to St. Petersburg, laid the foundation of the Free
School of Music. This institution was meant to train
young Russians, to arouse in them an enthusiasm for
the possibilities latent in their native music, and at the
same time to arrange free concerts for the people
and perform the works of those native composers who
were turned away by the existing organizations.
Founded by Balakireff, the composer, Lomakin, the
talented choirmaster, and Stassoff, the celebrated critic,
the free school became the institution of Borodine,
Moussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakoff. Balakireff, Boro-
dine and Moussorgsky can be considered as the real
founders of the Russian 'realistic' school of music, if
not the pioneers of a new musical art movement alto-
gether. Upon their principles and examples rest the
original vigor and the subjective glamour of all subse-
quent Russian music. The vague initiative given by
Glinka and Dargomijsky underwent a thorough process
of reconstruction at the hands of these three reformers;
the stamp set by them upon the Russian music is as
unique and as lasting as the semi-oriental spirit that
permeates Russian life and character with its exotic
magic.
The ideal of building up an art out of national ma-
terial seemed to hang in the air, for this was the time
of a great national awakening in Russia. Gogol, Ler-
montoff, Pushkin, Dostoievsky, and Turgenieff in
poetry and fiction, Griboiedoff and Ostrovsky in the
drama, Stassoff, Hertzen, and Mihailovsky in critical
literature, and the revolutionary movement of the so-
called narodno-volts in politics were all symptoms of
a vigorous reform period. It should be noted that in
this great and far-reaching movement the Russian
church, with all its seeming supremacy, exercised but
little influence over matters of art and literature.
While the church in Western Europe was aristo-
108
FOUNDERS OF THE NEO-RUSSIAN SCHOOL
cratic in its institutions, in Russia it remained through-
out the centuries democratic. A Russian clergyman has
remained nothing but a more or less refined moujik,
a man who lives the life of the common people and
associates with the people. As such he has never been
antagonistic to the spirit of the common people, as
far as their aesthetic tendencies and traditions are con-
cerned. He has never tried to make art an issue of
the church. Music, less than any other of the arts, has
never been influenced in any way by ecclesiastical
interests. No instrumental music of any kind has ever
been performed in Russian churches. Hence, unlike
those of Western Europe, Russian composers never
came under the sway of the church. The western
church was, as we have seen, originally opposed to the
influence of folk music. In Russia, on the other hand,
it favored any assertion of the people's individuality.
It was, therefore, unlike the aristocratic classes, sympa-
thetic to such a work as that which the Free School
of Music made the object of its existence.
Refore treating the works of the three great Russian
reformers individually we may remark that none of
them made music his sole profession. Balakireff was
sufficiently well off to devote himself to his art without
thought of material gain. Borodine earned his living
as a scholar and pedagogue, and so maintained his in-
dependence as a composer. Moussorgsky alone felt
the pinch of poverty; his official duties were strenuous
and left him little leisure for composition. Yet, like
his colleagues, he never compromised with public taste.
The real initiator of this new movement, Mily Alek-
seyevitch Ralakireff, was born at Nijny Novgorod in
1837. He studied law at the University of Kazan,
though music was his hobby from early childhood on.
His musical ideals were Mozart, Beethoven, and Berlioz.
During one of his summer vacations Balakireff met in
the country near Nijny Novogorod a certain Mr. Ouli-
109
MODERN MUSIC
bitcheff, a retired diplomat and friend of Glinka, an
accomplished musician himself and thoroughly famil-
iar with the classic composers of every country. It was
he who converted Balakireff to the idea that Russia
should have its own music, and that the lines to be fol-
lowed should be those indicated by Glinka. With an
introduction to that apostle of nationalism Balakireff
journeyed to St. Petersburg in 1855. He found the city
under the spell of German and Italian music, and the
masses limited to the musical enjoyment to be derived
from military bands and boulevard artists. With all
the youthful energy at his command Balakireff set him-
self to combat the foreign influence and advance na-
tionalistic ideas of music.
Balakireff was an artist such as perhaps only Russia
can produce. Without really systematic study he was
an accomplished musician theoretically and practi-
cally. No existing method could measure up to his
ideas of musical study. He had mastered the classics
and made their technique his. own; his contemporaries
he approached in a critical spirit, appropriating what
was good and rejecting what he considered wrong. His
watchword was individual liberty. 'I believe in the
subjective, not in the objective power of music,' he
said to his pupils. 'Objective music may strike us with
its brilliancy, but its achievement remains the handi-
work of a mediocre talent. Mediocre or merely tal-
ented musicians are eager to produce effects, but the
ideal of a genius is to reproduce his very self, in uni-
son with the object of his art. There is no doubt that
art requires technique, but it must be absolutely uncon-
scious and individual. . . . Often the greatest pieces
of art are rather rude technically, but they grip the
soul and command attention for intrinsic values. This
is apparent in the works of Michelangelo, of Shake-
speare, of Turgenieff, and of Mozart. The beauty that
fascinates us most is that which is most individual,
110
BALAKIREFF
I regard technique as a necessary but subservient ele-
ment. It may, however, become dangerous and kill
individuality as it has done with those favorites of our
public, whose virtuosity I despise more than mere
crudities.'
The man who launched such a theory at a time when
the rest of the world was merged in admiration of
Wagner and his technique was an interesting combi-
nation of a scholar, poet, revolutionist, and agitator.
Wagner, Rubinstein, and Tschaikowsky were techni-
cians in his eyes, whose creative power moved merely
in the old-fashioned channels of classicism. Of the
rest of his contemporaries Liszt was the only genius
worthy of attention. Between Balakireff, Rubinstein,
and Tschaikowsky there was continual strife.* Rubin-
stein headed the newly founded Imperial Conservatory,
Balakireff his Free School of Music. On Rubinstein's
side were the members of high society, the music critics
and the bureaucratic power. Balakireff and his group
of young composers were outcasts. Music critics and
public opinion stamped him a conceited dilettante,
only a handful of intellectuals subscribed to his creed.
Balakireff's first composition was a fantasia on Rus-
sian themes for piano and orchestra, which he after-
ward rearranged for an orchestral overture. In 1861
he composed the music to 'King Lear,' which is his
* It is rather interesting that, in spite of Balakireff's opposition to
Tschaikowsky's music, they remained good friends throughout their life.
Tschaikowsky even tried to follow Balakireff's method in his symphonic
poem 'Fatum,' which he dedicated to his friend. As the composition did
not please Balakireff, though he performed it for the first time, Tschai-
kowsky destroyed it later and it was never published or performed again.
This is what Balakireff wrote to Tschaikowsky after his attempt at modern
composition: 'You are too little acquainted with modern music. You
will never learn freedom of form from the classic composers. They can
only give you what you already knew when you sat at the student's
benches. 5 As irritable as Tschaikowsky was in such critical matters, he
never took the expression of Balakireff in an offended spirit. How highly
Tschaikowsky appreciated Balakireff is evident from his letter to Mme.
von Meek: 'Balakireff's songs are actually little masterpieces and I am
passionately fond of them. There was a time when I could not listen to
his "Selim's Song" without tears in my eyes.*
Ill
MODERN MUSIC
only work of a dramatic character. An opera, 'The
Golden Bird,' which he commenced some years later,
was never completed. One of the most significant of
BalakirefFs early works is the symphonic poem 'Rus-
sia,' commemorating the thousandth anniversary of
the inauguration of the Russian empire by Rurik.
That his own works are rather limited in number is
explained by the fact that he spent most of his best
years in organizing his campaign and in criticising the
compositions of his followers. ' The symphonic poem
'Tamara,' some twenty songs and ballades, 'Islamey,' an
oriental fantasy for piano, which was one of the most
cherished numbers in Liszt's repertoire, and his sym-
phonic poem 'Bohemia' represent the best fruits of his
genius. His First and Second Symphonies are very
beautiful, original and Russian in feeling, but they
have somehow remained behind his above-mentioned
works. Very fiery and popular are his two concertos,
the Spanish Overture and a number of dances. 'Ta-
mara' is a real gem of oriental wickedness and fasci-
nation.
In 1869 Balakireff was appointed conductor of the
Imperial Musical Society and later of the court choir.
In 1874 he retired from the directorship of the Free
School of Music and the post was taken over by Rim-
sky-Korsakoff. From this time until his death Bala-
kireff lived in seclusion in his comfortable home in St.
Petersburg and avoided society. He died in 1910, hav-
ing outlived all his contemporaries and many of his
pupils. The last period of his life was overshadowed
by a strange mystic obsession which caused him to
destroy many of his compositions.
An artist of wholly different cast was Alexander
Porphyrievitch Borodine. While Balakireff was the
positive type of an active man, a born organ-
izer and agitator, Borodine was a dreamer and ten-
der-souled poet, the true Bohemian of his time. He
112
BORODINE
was a most remarkable combination of very unusual
abilities: Borodine the surgeon and doctor enjoyed a
nation-wide reputation; Borodine the chemist made
many valuable discoveries and wrote treatises which
were recognized universally as remarkable contribu-
tions to science; Borodine the philanthropist and edu-
cator was tireless from early morning till night; Boro-
dine the flutist, violinist, and pianist rivalled the best
virtuosi of his time; and Borodine the composer was,
according to Liszt, one of the most gifted orchestral
masters of the nineteenth century.
Here is what Borodine writes of his visit to the hero
of Weimar in 1877: 'Scarcely had I sent my card in
when there arose before me, as though out of the
ground, a long black frock-coat, and long white hair.
"You have written a fine symphony," he began in a
resonant voice. "I am delighted to see you. Only two
days ago I played your symphony to the grand duke,
who was wholly charmed with it. The first movement
is perfect. Your andante is a masterpiece. The scher-
zo is enchanting, and then, this passage is wonderful
great!" This was his Second Symphony, which
Felix Weingartner has called one of the most beautiful
orchestral works ever written.
Under what circumstances he produced his enchant-
ing beauties is best evidenced from one of his letters to
his wife in 1873: 'Thursday I gave two lectures for
women [on surgery], received clothes sent from the
institution, had a letter from Butleroff to take dinner
with him and then to attend the meeting of the chem-
ists. I brought there all my material and gave an ac-
count of my experiments. Then, Mendeleyev [the
famous chemist] took me to his house. I worked this
morning as usual, took dinner with Miety at Sorokina.
Then Raida and Kleopatra called on me to request
space for a sick man in the hospital.'
Who would believe that a man of such a versatile
113
MODERN MUSIC
nature was at the same time one of the finest composers
and musicians of his generation? In another letter to
his wife he writes how he rushes madly from his lab-
oratory to his musical study, sits furiously at the piano
and starts to pour out the musical ideas that have
haunted him day and night. His friends thought he
would never be able to continue such a triple life for
any length of time and urged him to devote himself
merely to music. But to him this change of thought
and work seemed a recreation and he lived in this very
turmoil until he died.
Borodine was born in St. Petersburg in 1834. His
father was Prince Gedeanoff, a descendant of the he-
reditary rulers of the kingdom of Imeretia in the Cau-
casus, and his mother, Mme. Kleineke, the widow of an
army doctor in Narva. Borodine's oriental tendency
can be traced back through his family. His national-
ism was truly spontaneous and genuine, in spite of the
fact that, unlike his colleagues, Balakireff and Mous-
sorgsky, he never had an opportunity to come in con-
tact with the peasantry. Borodine's nationalism is a
product of heredity and owes nothing to environment.
Having studied medicine in the famous Military
Surgery School in St. Petersburg, Borodine became a
professor in the same institution after a short practice
as a surgeon in various hospitals of the capital. He
was, even as a student in college, an accomplished vh>
tuoso in music. At the age of eighteen he had com-
posed a concerto for violin and piano. But his real
musical creative activity started when he met Bala-
kireff and the members of his circle, to whom he was
introduced by Moussorgsky, then a young officer of the
guard in the military hospital. Though filled with
Balakireff 's ideals, Borodine was not close to his teach-
er. BalakirefFs ideas were grand in outline, but rather
rough in detail; Borodine's preferences were toward re-
finement in detail and melodic form. Though the opera
114
BORODINE
'Prince Igor' may be considered Borodine's master-
piece, he has enriched Russian musical literature by
exquisite examples of orchestral composition of which
his Second Symphony and the symphonic poem 'In
Steppes of Central Asia' are the best chamber music,
songs and dances. Borodine's orchestral compositions
excel in richness of coloring and in the dramatic vigor
of his melodies. Withal he has an almost mathemati-
cal mastery of form and style.
From all his works emanates a distinctly lyric Slavic-
Oriental glow of sound brilliant, passionate, gay, and
painful in turns. In the words of a modern Russian
composer, *it is individually descriptive and extremely
modern so modern that the audiences of to-day will
not be able to grasp all its intrinsic beauties.'
In 'Prince Igor' Borodine has produced a work that
has nothing in common with either Italian or German
operas. He employs a libretto of legendary character,
such as Wagner used for his operas, but in construction
and style he follows the very opposite direction of the
German master. The dramatic plot is almost lacking
in the conventional sense, but the interest of the audi-
ence is kept in suspense by means of a unique musical
beauty, by stage effects and the dramatic truth that
shows itself in every detail of the action.
As compared with Balakireff and Moussorgsky, Boro-
dine was an aristocratic figure in thought and inclina-
tion. He was more chivalrous and lyric in his style and
more imaginative in his form, therefore less dramatic
and less elemental. Borodine's great significance for
Russian music lies in his individual form of melodic
thought and the relation of that thought to human
life. His realism verged on the point of impressionistic
symbolism, in which he surpassed both Balakireff and
Moussorgsky. He gave to Russian music new forms of
romantic realism, forms that have been used and per-
fected by the composers who have followed him. Un-
115
MODERN MUSIC
like Balakireff and Moussorgsky, Borodine was married
and lived a happy family life. He died suddenly at a
costume-ball in St. Petersburg in 1887.
II
Of all artists one of the most fought and ridiculed,
the least recognized and a figure almost ignored, yet
doubtless the greatest personality in Russian musi-
cal history, was Modest Petrovitch Moussorgsky. It has
remained for the present generation, especially for
men like Rimsky-Korsakoff, Claude Debussy, Richard
Strauss, and Hugo Wolf, to appreciate this most orig-
inal musical genius of the last century. Rubinstein and
Tschaikowsky spoke of Moussorgsky as of a talented
musical heretic, regarding his compositions as the re-
sult of accidental inspiration, crude in their workman-
ship and primitive in their form. Though his name
was known through Russia to some extent, especially
after Rimsky-Korsakoff had secured for him some pro-
fessional success, he remained always a minor char-
acter. This lasted until the beginning of this century,
when a celebrated foreign composer came out -publicly
and said: 'What Shakespeare did in dramatic poetry
Moussorgsky accomplished in vocal music. The
Shakespearian breadth and power of his compositions
are so original that he is still too great to be appre-
ciated, even in this generation. A century may pass
before he will be fully understood by composers and
music lovers generally. His misfortune was that he
composed music two hundred years ahead of his time.'
After this the whole atmosphere changed. A cult of
Moussorgsky was started at home and abroad. The
public began to dig out the tragic chapters of his life
little by little and the neglected genius of Moussorgsky
loomed up to an extraordinary height, as is usually the
case when the sentiments of the public are stirred.
116
MOUSSORGSKY
However, this cult of Moussorgsky is merely a timely
fad and adds nothing to his real greatness.
After the composer had met bitter opposition where
he had expected enthusiastic appreciation he wrote to
Balakireff: 'I do not consider music an abstract ele-
ment of our aesthetic emotions, but a living art, which,
going hand in hand with poetry and drama, shall ex-
press the very soul of human life and feeling. The
academic composers and the people who have grown
to love the musical classics take my works for eccentric
and amateurish. This is all because I lack the high
academic air and do not follow the conventional way.
But why should I imitate others when there is so much
within myself that is my own? My idea is that every
tone should express a word. Music to me is speech
without words.'
Moussorgsky's music reminds us so much of the
poetry of Walt Whitman that we cannot but regard
these two geniuses of two different worlds as intimately
related to each other.
'Composers! mighty maestros!
And you sweet singers of old lands, Soprani,
tenori, bassi!
To you a new bard caroling in the west
Obeissant sends his love.'
Like Whitman, Moussorgsky broke loose from the
conventional rhythm and verse. Most of his compo-
sitions are set to his own words and librettos, in a
kind of poetic prose. He said plainly that he never
cared for verse for his compositions, but merely for a
dramatic story to carry a certain thought. 'Thoughts
and words fascinate me more than rhythm and poetic
technique,' he used to say. Every piece of his work
bears the stamp of his individuality; every chord of
his music breathes power and inspiration. It was not
a notion to be original that actuated him, but the
117
MODERN MUSIC
irresistible necessity to pour out what came to life in
his creative soul and temperament. In his autobiog-
raphy Moussorgsky writes characteristically:
*By virtue of his views and music and of the nature
of his compositions Moussorgsky stands apart from all
existing types of musicians. The creed of his artistic
faith is as follows: Art is a means of human inter-
course and not in itself an end. The whole of his
creative activity was dictated by this guiding principle.
Convinced that human speech is strictly governed by
musical laws, Moussorgsky considered that the musical
reproductions, not of isolated manifestations of sensi-
bility, but of articulate humanity as a whole, is the
function of his art. He holds that in the domain of
the musical art reformers such as Palestrina, Bach,
Berlioz, Gluck, Beethoven, and Liszt have created cer-
tain artistic laws; but he does not consider these laws
as immutable, holding them to be strictly subject to
conditions of evolution and progress no less than the
whole world of thought.'
Moussorgsky's life was no less unique than his
thoughts and works. He was born in 1831 in the village
of Kareva in the province of Pskoff, the son of a retired
judicial functionary. He inherited the gift of music
from his mother and from his father the gift of poetry.
At the age of ten he was sent to a military school in
St. Petersburg, where he remained until 1856, when he
became an officer of the Preobrajensky Guard Regi-
ment in St. Petersburg. A handsome young man of
chivalrous manners, he became the romantic hero of the
beau monde of St. Petersburg. His musical studies, be-
gun in the college, were taken up more systematically
and energetically after he became an officer. As a
sentinel in the military hospital he met Borodine, the
surgeon, and the two passionate lovers of music soon
grew to be intimate friends. It was through Borodine
that he heard of Balakireff, in whose Free School of
118
MOUSSORGSKY
Music he at once became a student. Already in 1858
he composed his first orchestral work, 'Scherzo,' which
was performed two years later by Balakireff's orches-
tra.
In 1859 Moussorgsky resigned from the army with
the idea of living for his music alone, but, lacking a
systematic musical education, he found himself an
outcast. He was treated as a dilettante by the profes-
sional musicians and the patrons of music, and this
closed the way to earning a living by his art and getting
his compositions published or produced. The situa-
tion made him desperate and he was glad to accept a
clerkship, first in the Department of Finance, later in
the office of the Imperial Comptroller. The salary was
small and the work hard; he could only compose dur-
ing the evenings and on festival days. This made him
bitter about his future. It is rather strange that even
Balakireff did not wholly understand Moussorgsky's
genius when he joined the circle, for Rimsky-Korsakoff
writes in his memoirs that Moussorgsky was always
treated as the least talented of all. This was on account
of the peculiarly passive frame of mind into which the
composer had fallen after leaving the army. He even
changed in his appearance and manners. The once
handsome, chivalrous young social hero was suddenly
transformed into a dreamy vagabond, who cared noth-
ing for manners and appearances.
Moussorgsky's masterpieces are his three song cycles
of about twenty numbers each, his few orchestral com-
positions and his two operas, Boris Godounoff and
Khovanstchina. There is hardly a work by another
composer which has upon the listener such a ghastly,
hypnotic effect as some of these works of Moussorgsky.
Every chord of them is like a gripping, invisible finger.
His cycle of 'Death Dances,' of which Trepak is the
most popular, are knocks at the very gates of death,
written in the weird rhythms of old Russian peasant
119
MODERN MUSIC
dances. In this work he makes the listener realize the
indifference of nature to human fate. 'Snow fields in
silence so cold is the night! And the icy north wind
is wailing, brokenly sobbing, as though a ghastly dirge.
Over the graves it is chanting. Lo ! O behold. Through
the night a strange pair approaches; death holds an
old peasant in his clutches.' Thus sings the composer
in the epilogue. The starved peasant is frozen under
the snow. But then the sun shines warmer; spring
comes into the land. The icy fields change into flour-
ishing meadows, the lark soars to the sky and nature
continues its everlasting alternate play as if individual
joys and sorrows never existed.
The descriptive power of Moussorgsky's vocal com-
positions is marvellously realistic, and of this his songs
of the second and third active period of his life, such
as 'Peasant Cradle Song,' 'Children Songs,' 'Serenade,'
and Polkovodets, give the best illustration. In the
first named composition not only does he visualize the
rocking of the cradle, accompanied by a sweet melody,
but he also draws, with a remarkable power, the in-
terior of a peasant's hut, the mother bending with ten-
derness over her child; her sigh and dreaming of his
future; the child's breathing and the ticking of a primi-
tive old watch on the wall. One can almost see the
details of an idyllic lonely Russian village. But Mous-
sorgsky is not only powerful in his gloomy and melan-
choly tone pictures, in which he depicts the hopeless
situation of the Russian people in their struggle for
freedom; he is also great in his humorous, gay songs.
Hopak, Pirushki, Po Griby, and the 'Children Songs'
are full of exultant humor, naughtiness or joy. How
well he could make music a satire is proved by
'Classic,' 'Raek,' and others, in which pedantic academ-
icism is caricatured in ironic chords. Moussorgsky's
musical activity may be divided into three periods:
First, from 1858 until 1865, when, more or less under
120
MOUSSORGSKY
the influence of Dargomijsky, he composed 'Edip,'
'Saul,' Saldmmbo, 'Intermezzo,' 'Prelude,' and 'Menu-
ette'; second, from 1865 until 1875, when he was inde-
pendent and wrote the 'Death Dances,' 'Children Songs,'
Boris Godounoff, Khovanstchina, etc.; and the third,
during which he composed the 'Song of Mephisto.' The
works of his second period are overwhelming in their
elemental power and boldness of treatment. In them
he surpasses all Russian composers up to his time.
Boris Godounoff, finished in 1870, was performed
four years later in the Imperial Opera House. The
libretto of this opera he took from the poetic drama of
Pushkin, but he changed it, eliminating much and
adding new scenes here and there, so that as a whole
it is his own creation. In this work Moussorgsky went
against the foreign classic opera in conception as well
as in construction. It is a typically Russian musical
drama, with all the richness of Slavic colors, true By-
zantine atmosphere and characters of the medieval
ages. Based on Russian history of about the middle
of the seventeenth century, when an adventurous re-
gent ascends the throne and when the court is full of
intrigues, its theme stands apart from all other operas.
The music is more or less, like many of Moussorgsky's
songs, written in imitation of the old folk-songs, folk
dances, ceremonial chants, and festival tunes. Foreign
critics have considered the opera as a piece constructed
of folk melodies. But this is not the case. There is
not a single folk melody in Boris Godounoff, every
phrase is the original creation of Moussorgsky.
Although there is nothing in the symphonic develop-
ment of Boris Godounoff which approaches the com-
plexities of Wagnerian music drama, the leading mo-
tives are quite definitely associated with the characters
and emotions of the drama. Noteworthy features in
the realm of musical suggestion are those of the music
accompanying the hallucinations of Boris, where Mous-
121
MODERN MUSIC
sorgsky forsakes the conventional custom of employ-
ing the heavy brass and reproduces the frenzy in musi-
cal terms by means of downward chromatic passage
played tremolo by strings an effect which succeeds
because it has a far more direct appeal to the nerves
of the listener than the more abstract commentary of
the German operatic masters.
Moussorgsky's second opera, 'Khovanstchina, which
was finished by Rimsky-Korsakoff after the death of
the composer, is in its subject and broad style far su-
perior to 'Roris,' especially because of its more power-
ful symbolism and exalted pathos. Rut the music,
particularly in the last unfinished acts, lacks the orig-
inality and grip of his early opera. If he had been
able to work out this opera under more favorable cir-
cumstances it would have caught more faithfully the
psychology of a nation's life and history in a nutshell
of music than anything written before or later for the
stage. Moussorgsky also wrote a comic opera, 'The
Fair at Sorotchinsk,' which was partly orchestrated and
finished by Sahnovsky and Liadoff and performed for
the first time in the Spring of 1914.
Moussorgsky's perpetual misery, overwork, and the
thought that his compositions would be hardly under-
stood and recognized during his lifetime made him so
gloomy and desperate that he drifted away from Rala-
kireff's circle. For some time he lived at the country
place of his brother, and when he returned to St.
Petersburg he tried to overcome the haunting thoughts,
but in vain. He began to avoid all society and every-
thing conventional. In the meanwhile his Boris God-
ounoff had been given with great success on the stage.
Yet the academic circles would not recognize him in
spite of this public success. The man's pride was
touched and he felt unhappy about everything he had
done. His only contentment he found in playing his
works for himself and in associating with the common
122
Russian Nationalists:
Modest Moussorgsky
Alexander Borodine
Mily Balakireff
Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakott
RIMSKY-KORSAKOFF
people in dram shops, which he visited with dire re-
sults. Shunning every intelligent circle and society, he
grew melancholy, and his mental and physical health
was seriously affected.
In 1868 Moussorgsky began to write an opera to the
libretto of Gogol's drama 'Marriage.' This, however,
he never finished. He wrote quite a number of power-
ful orchestral works of which his 'Intermezzo,' 'Prel-
ude,' and Menuette Monstre are the most typical of
all. Having composed several piano pieces and or-
chestral works with little satisfaction to himself, he
decided to devote himself only to vocal music. The
period from 1865 to 1875 was the most productive
part of his life. During these ten years he composed
his 'Hamlet' songs, ballads, romances, and operas,
every one of which is more or less original and hypno-
tizing in its own way.
Moussorgsky's letters to his brother throw a remark-
able light on his unique nature and the change that
took place in his mind in regard to his social environ-
ment. They are partly ironic, bitter expressions upon
modern civilization and its wrong standards. Mous-
sorgsky died in 1881 in the Nicholaevsky Military Hos-
pital at the age of forty-two and asked the nurse that
instead of a mass in church his 'Death Dance' be played
for him by a few of his admirers.
Ill
The most widely known of the 6 neo-Russian' group,
outside of Russia, was Nicholas Andreievich Rimsky-
Korsakoff. This man, the most prolific and the most
expert of the group, proved himself in some ways one
of the supreme masters of modern music. His com-
mand over harmonic color-painting and his astonishing
mastery over all details of modern orchestration have
made him a teacher to the composers of all nations.
123
MODERN MUSIC
Rimsky-Korsakoff was born March 18, 1844, at
Tikvin in the department of Novgorod. On his
father's estate he received all the advantages of a child-
hood in the open air, and of the best education avail-
able. From the four musicians who furnished music
for the family dances he received his first initiation
into the art of his later years. When he was six he
received his first piano lessons, and when he was nine
he was already composing pieces of his own. But it
was in the family tradition that the sons should enter
the navy, so when he was but twelve years of age the
boy went to the St. Petersburg Naval School and en-
tered the long required course. He did not, however,
give up his music during this period; he worked hard
at the piano and the 'cello, also receiving lessons in
composition from Kanille. But music was compara-
tively meaningless in his life until, in 1861, he met
Balakireff, who had recently come to the capital to
undertake the musical spiritualization of his country.
Under Balakireff he worked for about a year, and dur-
ing this time came into close contact with the other
members of the famous circle. The contact was pro-
foundly stimulating. 'They aired their opinions and
criticized the giants of the past,' says Mrs. Newmarch,*
'with a frankness and freedom that was probably very
naive, and certainly scandalized their academic elders.
They adored Glinka; regarded Haydn and Mozart as
old-fashioned; admired Beethoven's latest quartets;
thought Bach of whom they could have known little
beyond the "Well Tempered Clavier" a mathemati-
cian rather than a musician; they were enthusiastic
over Berlioz, while, as yet, Liszt had not begun to in-
fluence them very greatly.' Of these days the composer
has written, 'I drank in all these ideas, although I really
had no grounds for accepting them, for I had only
heard fragments of many of the foreign works under
* 'The Russian Opera.'
124
RIMSKY-KORSAKOFF
discussion, and afterwards I retailed them to my com-
rades at the naval school who were interested in music
as being my own convictions.' *
Then, while Rimsky-Korsakoff's technique was still
being molded, while his ideals were unprecise and his
appreciations fluid, he was called away on a long cruise
on the ship Almaz a cruise which was to last for
three years and take him around the world. But with
the huge energy for which Russians are so notable, he
decided to add music to his regular official duties. He
arranged that he was to send to Ralakireff from time to
time the things he would write on shipboard, and was
to receive extended criticisms in return, to be picked
up at the harbors at which his ship should stop. Thus
he would maintain his active pupilship. The work
which he managed to accomplish on shipboard is as-
tonishing. Rut Rimsky-Korsakoff was endowed with
a capacity for orderly and methodical work which en-
abled him in later life to discharge all sorts of onerous
artistic burdens and keep his creative output undi-
minished in quantity. When he returned from the
cruise in 1865 he brought with him his Symphony No.
1, in E minor, the first symphony to be written by a
Russian. It was performed under Ralakireff's direc-
tion at one of the concerts of the Free School of Music
and made a favorable impression. For the next few
years the composer's life was chiefly centred in St.
Petersburg, and his association with the Ralakireff
group was once more resumed. In this period, too, be-
gan his close friendship with Moussorgsky, which con-
tinued until the latter's death. After composing the
first Russian symphony he produced the first Russian
symphonic poem in Sadko, opus 5, which revealed his
marked power of musical narration and scene-paint-
ing. Directly he followed with the 'Fantasy on Serbian
Tunes,' opus 6, which gave the first signs of his later
* 'Reminiscences.'
125
MODERN MUSIC
brilliancy in orchestration. This work attracted the
attention of Tschaikowsky, who became his ardent sup-
porter and continued as a personal friend in spite of
the fact that the ideals of the two composers were so
disparate that close association was impossible. In
1870 Rimsky-Korsakoff began his first opera, Pskovi-
tianka ('The Maid of PskofF), which was performed
early in 1873 and was well received. Soon afterwards
he completed his 'Second Symphony,' which is in
reality rather a symphonic poem the Antar, op. 9.
This may be taken as closing one period of his crea-
tive activity. He had entered music with all the lively
nationalistic ideals of the Balakireff group, and with its
naivete as to musical technique. Like his associates,
he had written chiefly in an intuitional fashion. But
in 1871 he accepted an invitation to teach at the St.
Petersburg Conservatory of Music. And he has re-
corded that in attempting to teach the theory of music
he became convinced that it was first necessary for him
to learn it. He became profoundly dissatisfied with
his musical achievement and set out deliberately to
acquire an exhaustive knowledge of musical technique
by means of hard work. During one summer he wrote
innumerable exercises in counterpoint and sixty-four
fugues, ten of which he sent to Tschaikowsky for in-
spection. From this severe period of self-tuition he
emerged with a command of conventional musical
means unsurpassed in Russia, but without any essen-
tial loss either to his individuality or to his nationalism.
By some, Rimsky-KorsakofFs recognition of his need
for further technical learning has been accepted as a
recantation of his nationalistic principles. But it was
not this in reality, for his later operas are all drawn
from national sources and the folk-song continues to
occupy a prominent place among them. The enthusi-
asm for classical learning may have changed his
standards somewhat; many critics feel that the re-
126
RIMSKY-KORSAKOFF
vision to which he later submitted the Moussorgsky
opera scores reveals a pedantic cast of mind, a failure
to appreciate the original genius of his friend. But,
on the other hand, his severe training gave him that
fluent technique which enabled him to accomplish such
a great amount of work on such a high plane of work-
manship.
In point of fact, Rimsky-Korsakoff 'recanted' noth-
ing. His ideals and his fundamental musical method
had been formed in his early youth. Balakireff's en-
thusiasm for folk-song never left him. The influence
of the early ocean cruise was in his work to the end.
Among all musicians Rimsky-Korsakoff is perhaps the
greatest describer of the sea. The effect of lonely days
and nights out in the midst of the swelling ocean, at a
time when his adolescent senses were still deeply im-
pressionable this we can trace again and again in his
later music. 'What a thing to be thankful for is the
naval profession !' he wrote in a letter to Gui during the
first voyage.* 'How glorious, how agreeable, how ele-
vating! Picture yourself sailing across the North Sea.
The sky is gray, murky, and colorless; the wind
screeches through the rigging; the ship pitches so that
you can hardly keep your legs; you are constantly be-
sprinkled with spray and sometimes washed from head
to foot by a wave; you feel chilly and rather sick.
Oh, a sailor's life is really jolly!' We see here the
effect of the out-of-door activity on the young artist
that awakening of sensibilities to the external life of
nature, rather than the introspection of the thinker
who spends his time solely in the study of his art. It
was this voyage, surely, that chiefly helped to make
Rimsky-Korsakoff so objective in his music. He loves
to describe the form and color of nature rather than
the experiences of the soul. He paints for us the life
of the senses. We recall the young naval officer in the
* Quoted by Mrs. Newmarch, op. cit.
127
MODERN MUSIC
mighty swell of the ocean in Scheherezade. We cannot
doubt the effect of this early influence toward making
Rimsky-Korsakoff the great story-teller of modern
music.
His later life was an extremely active one. He re-
tained his position at the conservatory for many years,
and numbered among his pupils some of the most tal-
ented composers in modern Russian music among
them Liadoff, Arensky, Ippolitoff-Ivanoff, Gretchan-
inoff, Tcherepnine, and Stravinsky. He was an en-
thusiastic collector of national folk-tunes. He revised,
completed, arranged, or orchestrated many large
works, including operas by Moussorgsky, Borodine, and
Glinka. He served for many years as conductor of
the concerts of the Free School, succeeding Balakireff,
and for a time was assistant director of the music at
the Imperial Chapel. A perquisite post as inspector
of naval bands, given him in 1873, enabled him to de-
vote his time to music; for many years he remained
officially a servant of the government. After 1889 and
up to the time of his death in 1908 he wrote twelve
operas, and at one period was looked to to provide
one dramatic work each year for one or another of
the great lyric theatres of Russia. Once or twice he
was publicly at odds with officialdom, at one time going
so far as to resign his professorship in the conserva-
tory. But on the whole he was a figure of whom Rus-
sia, both popular and official, was proud. His books
on theory and orchestration have long been standard.
Rimsky-Korsakoff 's works, in addition to the fifteen
operas already mentioned, include three symphonies
(one of them the Antar), a 'Sinfonietta on Russian
Themes,' several symphonic poems, including the 'sym-
phony' Scheherezade, the Sadko, and the 'Symphonic
Tale' founded on the prologue to Pushkin's 'Russian and
Liudmilla'; several large orchestral works, including
the famous 'Spanish Caprice,' the 'Fantasia on Serbian
128
RIMSKY-KORSAKOFF
Themes,' and the 'Easter Overture'; a fine piano con-
certo and a violin fantasia; some church music, a
limited amount of piano music and many songs.
Rimsky-KorsakofFs operas are the staple of the Rus-
sian opera houses. They are not works of such genius
as those of Moussorgsky and Borodine, but, taken to-
gether, they reveal a creative genius of a high order.
In general their style is lyric rather than declamatory,
but in this respect Rimsky-Korsakoff applied a wide
variety of means to his special problems. Some, like
his first, 'The Maid of Pskoff,' follow loosely the prin-
ciples laid down by Dargomijsky in 'The Stone Guest,'
in which the libretto is regarded as a spoken text to
be followed with great literalness by the music. Others,
like Snegourotchka, are almost purely lyric in charac-
ter. Yet another, 'Mozart and Salieri,' is written in the
style of the eighteenth century. But in one way or an-
other the national feeling is in all of them, and folk-
tunes are introduced freely with more or less literal-
ness. Though Rimsky-Korsakoff could occasionally
reach heights of emotional intensity (as in the last
scene of 'The Maid of Pskoff'), his genius is more
properly lyrical and picturesque. The songs and pic-
tures of Snegourotchka and Sadko, in which a huge
variety of resource is brought to achieve vividness and
brilliancy of effect, are the work of a rich imagina-
tion. The melody is supple and varied, the harmony
extremely expressive and colorful, but neither is so
original as with Moussorgsky. The orchestration, how-
ever, never fails to be masterful in the highest degree.
This suits admirably the legendary and picturesque
subjects which Rimsky-Korsakoff invariably chose.
With only one or two exceptions, his operas have held
the stage steadily in Russia, and two or three of them
have become familiar, by frequent performances, to
foreign audiences.
Among Rimsky-Korsakoff's other works the 'Spanish
129
MODERN MUSIC
Caprice' and the Scheherezade symphony have become
classics of the concert room. The former is a virtuoso
piece in brilliantly colored orchestration. The other
is one of the most successful musical stories ever told.
In these pieces he is working in his own field, that of
national or oriental color, made vivid by every device
of the modern musician. When he is composing in the
more 'absolute' or classical forms, as in the 'Belaieff
Quartet,' or the piano concerto, his inspiration seems
to wane. Mention should be made of the songs, which
include some of the most perfect in Russian literature,
though in many the slender melody is weighted down
by the richness of the accompaniment. Finally, we
should not forget Rimsky-KorsakofFs great service to
Russian church music, which will be referred to later.
From this brief outline we can see how great was
the variety of his activities. Very little that he did was
undistinguished. When he was at his best, in the
exploitation of the resources of the modern orchestra,
in painting natural scenery, the sea or the woods, in
narrating a story of fairies or heroes, he was in the
very front rank of composers of the nineteenth cen-
tury.
In comparison with Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff
was a conservative. He inclined toward the sensuous
and regular melody of Borodine, which was always
somewhat Italian. His harmony was far from revolu-
tionary. He can show us no pages like that wonderful
page of Moussorgsky's, introducing the Kremlin scene
in Boris Godounoff, where the light of the rising sun
is painted striking the towers of the ancient churches
a page which has become historic in connection with
modern French impressionism. On the whole, indeed,
he seems rather timid about venturing off the beaten
path. His harmonic heterodoxies, where they occur,
are introduced discreetly, obtaining their effect rather
by their appropriateness than by their originality. Nor
130
CfiSAR GUI AND OTHER NATIONALISTS
was Rimsky-Korsakoff so instinctive a nationalist as
either Ralakireff or Moussorgsky. In a great quantity
of his music we find nothing to mark it as Russian.
Rut when we listen to the music of Rimsky-Korsakoff
we feel that it is daring, novel, and exotic. The strik-
ing difference between this music seen and heard is
due chiefly to the orchestration, which so glitters with
strange colors that we forget how orthodox the musi-
cal writing generally is. Ry tone coloring the composer
gives it qualities of pictorial suggestiveness and Orien-
tal strangeness which is quite lacking in the piano
score. Sometimes he even covers up musical poverty
by his magnificent scoring; the 'Spanish Rhapsody,' for
instance, is a work of little inherent originality, but is
maintained on our concert programs because of its
inexpressible brilliancy of orchestration. If, on the
whole, we find Rimsky-Korsakoff's music thin, we must
give due credit to the style which enabled the composer
to write a great quantity of music with easy facility,
while his taste kept him almost always above the level
of banality.
IV
The fifth and last member of the nationalist group
was Cesar Cui, the least distinctive and least important
of the five. He occupied a somewhat anomalous posi-
tion in the movement. The son of a Frenchman, he be-
came an enthusiastic nationalist, being the first of
Balakireff's important converts. As a teacher in the
Government Engineering School in St. Petersburg he
had little time for active composition, but exerted great
energy in defending the nationalist group in the press
and in pamphlets. In all Russia, with the single excep-
tion of Vladimir Stassoff, there was no more vigorous
and overbearing apologist of the Russian school of
composition. Yet his own music is hardly tinged with
Russian elements, being a compound of Schumann and
131
MODERN MUSIC
of some of the most superficial of the French com-
posers, notably Auber. Though he was undoubtedly a
musician of considerable learning and much talent, he
has left nothing of much creative vigor.
His father came to Russia with Napoleon's army, was
wounded at Smolensk, and later became a teacher of
French in a private school at Vilna, near Poland. Here,
on January 18, 1835, Cesar Antonovich Cui was born.
He received fairly good instruction in piano and violin
in his early years, and at the age of fifteen was sent
to the School of Military Engineering at St. Petersburg.
Here, in a seven years' course, he distinguished himself
so that he was made sub-professor in the school, and
later became a specialist in military fortifications.
(The present czar was at one time his pupil.) All his
life he gave distinguished service in this capacity, and
during the war that is going on at this writing, though
he is past eighty years of age, he is taking a prominent
part in the military defense of Russia.
It was in 1856, when he was twenty-one years old,
that he was introduced to Balakireff. He immediately
became fired with the latter's enthusiasm for a Russian
school of music. But his first works show no signs of
it. Some early piano pieces are written entirely in the
style of Schumann, and his first dramatic work, an
operetta called 'The Mandarin's Son,' is a weak piece
in the manner of Auber. His first important opera,
"The Prisoner of the Caucasus,' finished about this time
though not performed until twenty years later, shows
some originality and an attempt at local color. Early
in the 'sixties Cui was at work on his opera 'William
Ratcliff,' which established his reputation. It was per-
formed in the year 1869 at the Imperial Theatre, St.
Petersburg, and though coldly received at the time was
revived with considerable success many years later in
Moscow. But Cui's chief influence on the music of his
time was exerted through his newspaper articles, which
132
CESAR GUI AND OTHER NATIONALISTS
stoutly championed the 'Big Five.' In these he showed
himself an able, but a somewhat dogmatic, commenta-
tor. He held his ground successfully until the music
of the new school had ceased to depend on the written
word for its prestige. His pamphlet, 'Music in Russia,'
was the chief source of knowledge of Russian com-
posers to the outside world for many years. Cui fur-
ther helped the cause among foreign lands through the
performances of his operas in Relgium and Paris. In
fact, two of his later operas, 'The Filibusterer' and
M'selle Fifi, were composed to French texts. The opera
'Angelo,' performed in 1876 and in some ways his
strongest work, was also drawn from a French source
a play by Victor Hugo. When we have mentioned
'The Saracen,' founded upon a work of Dumas, and
'The Feast in Plague Time,' based on Pushkin, we have
named all his works for the stage. In these the dra-
matic element is always subordinate to the lyrical.
The harmony, though often meticulous, is rarely strong
or original, and in general the style is thin and conven-
tional. But Gui had a rich fund of melody, and in a
few scenes, as in the love episodes in 'The Saracen,'
he succeeded to a notable degree in the expression of
emotion. But it is in Cui's songs and small pieces for
violin and piano that he shows his talent most mark-
edly. Here his French feeling for nicety of form and
delicacy of effect revealed itself at its best. We feel
that the pieces were written by some lesser Schumann,
but we admire the taste and judgment displayed in
their execution. Further, we must admire Cui's con-
fining himself to his own style of music. His enthusi-
asm for and appreciation of the neo-Russian composers
is unquestionable, and he might have produced much
flamboyant nonsense in trying to make their style his
own. As it is he has played an important part in the
development of Russian music, and displayed abilities
which are by no means to be overlooked.
133
MODERN MUSIC
Before leaving the Russian nationalists we should
mention several composers of their generation who
were not definitely allied with them or with their
school, but still demand mention in any history of Rus-
sian music. Edward Franzovitch Napravnik was born
August 12, 1839, in Bohemia, and moved to St. Peters-
burg in 1861. He had received his musical education
in his native country and in Paris, where he studied
organ and piano, and later taught. In St. Petersburg
he took charge of Prince Youssipoff's private orchestra,
and thereafter became intimately associated with the
musical life of his adoptive country and worked inde-
fatigably for its improvement and independence. In
1863 he was appointed organist to the Imperial thea-
tres, and assistant to the conductor. At the time of the
latter's illness in 1869 he was appointed conductor,
and this post he held for nearly half a century. He
found Russian operatic life under the complete domi-
nance of the Italian influence and made every effort to
shift the centre of gravity toward native work. His
productions of Glinka's, Tschaikowsky's, and Rimsky-
KorsakofFs operas were notable. He was always dis-
tinctly hospitable to native work, and the subsequent
triumph of Russian musical expression was due in no
small degree to his faith and energy. He further built
up the opera orchestra in St. Petersburg until it be-
came one of the best in all Europe, and restored to
the opera house its old brilliancy of performance. He
was also an able and frequent conductor of orchestral
concerts in the capital. His compositions, though many
and varied, show chiefly French and Wagnerian influ-
ence, and are not highly important. He has written
four symphonies, among them one with a program
taken from Lermontoff; several symphonic poems, of
which 'The Orient' is most important; three string
quartets and a quintet, two piano trios, a piano quartet,
a sonata for violin and piano, two suites for 'cello and
134
NAPRAVNIK AND OTHERS
piano, a piano concerto; fantasias on Russian themes
for piano and violin, all with orchestral accompani-
ment; a suite for violin and numerous vocal and
instrumental pieces in the smaller forms.
His operas, though they were never very popular,
are perhaps the most important part of his work. The
first, The Citizens of Nijny-Novgorod,' was produced
at the Imperial Opera House in 1868. It is somewhat
in the style of Glinka, but is generally thin and unin-
spired except in the choral parts, which make effective
use of the old church modes. 'Harold,' produced in
1886, is more Wagnerian in form and dispenses with
the effects which helped the former work to its popu-
larity. Doubrovsky, produced in 1895, is Napravnik's
most popular work; in it the lyric quality is again most
prominent, and the parts are written with expert skill
for the singers. His last opera, Francesco, da Rimini,
founded on Stephen Phillips' play, was first presented
in 1902. It is musically the most able of his works,
though highly reminiscent of the later Wagner. The
music of the love scenes is touching and expressive.
On the whole, we find Napravnik's influence on Rus-
sian music to be notable and salutary, and his original
composition, though not inspired, sincere and work-
manlike.
Paul Ivanovich Blaramberg (b. 1841), the son of a dis-
tinguished general of French extraction, came early
under the influence of the Balakireflf circle. But a
number of years spent in foreign countries impressed
other influences on his style, so that his music vacil-
lated from one manner to another without striking any
distinctive note. Blaramberg was long active as a
teacher of theory in the school of the Philharmonic
Society in Moscow. His works include a fantasia, 'The
Dragon Flies,' for solo, chorus, and orchestra; a musi-
cal sketch, 'On the Volga,' for male chorus and orches-
tra; 'The Dying Gladiator,' a symphonic poem; a sym-
135
MODERN MUSIC
phony in B minor; a sinfonietta; a number of songs;
and five operas. His first opera, 'The Mummers,'
founded on a comedy by Ostrovsky, is a mingling of
many styles, from the dramatic declamation of Dar-
gomijsky to the musical patter of opera buffa. 'The
Roussalka Maiden' contains many pages of marked
lyric beauty, and 'Mary of Burgundy' attains some mu-
sical force in the 'grand manner.' The last opera, 'The
Wave,' contains a number of pleasing melodies and
not a little effective 'oriental color.'
J. N. Melgounoff (1846-1893) was a theorist rather
than a composer and had some part in the nationalistic
movement through his close and scientific study of
folk-songs at a time when the cult of folk-song was
chiefly sentimental. A. Alpheraky (born 1846) was
also a specialist in folk-song, particularly those of the
Ukrane, where he was born. He composed a num-
ber of songs, as well as piano pieces, in which the
national feeling is evident. N. V. Lissenko (born 1842)
was the author of a number of operas popular in the
Malo-Russian provinces. He was a pupil of Rimsky-
Korsakoff and set music to several texts drawn from
Gogol.
I.N.
136
CHAPTER V
THE MUSIC OF CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA
The border nationalists: Alexander Glazounoff, Liadoff, Liapounoff,
etc. The renaissance of Russian church music: Kastalsky and Gretcha-
ninoff The new eclectics: Arensky, Taneieff, Ippolitoff-Ivanoff, Gliere,
Rachmaninoff and others Scriabine and the radical foreign influence;
Igor Stravinsky.
THE influence of the 'neo-Russian' group did not
continue in any direct line. There is to-day no one
representing the tendency in all its purity. But there
are a number of composers, originally pupils or satel-
lites of the Balakireff circle, who have carried some-
thing of the nationalistic tendency into their style.
Chief of these, perhaps, is Alexander Constantinovich
Glazounoff, one of the most facile and brilliant of con-
temporary Russian writers for the orchestra. His early
career was brilliant in the extreme. He was born in
St. Petersburg on August 10, 1865, of an old and well-
known family of publishers. In his childhood he re-
ceived excellent musical education and showed pre-
cocious talents. At the age of fifteen he attracted the
notice and received the advice of Balakireff, who urged
further study, and two years later his first symphony
was performed at a concert of the Free School. In
the following year he entered the university, continu-
ing the lessons he had begun under Rimsky-Korsakoff.
The first symphony attracted the attention of Liszt, who
conducted it in 1884 at Weimar, and to whom a second
symphony, finished in 1886, was dedicated. Smaller
works written at this time show vivid pictorial and na-
137
MODERN MUSIC
tional tendencies. In 1889 Glazounoff conducted a con-
cert of Russian works, including his own, at the Paris
exposition, and was honored by the performance of a
new symphonic poem of his Stenka Razin in Berlin.
The following years brought more narrative or pic-
torial works the orchestral fantasias 'The Forest' and
'The Sea,' the symphonic sketch 'A Slavonic Festival,'
an 'Oriental Rhapsody,' a symphonic tableau, 'The
Kremlin,' and the ballet 'Raymonda.'
The last, which was finished in 1897, may be taken
as marking the end of GlazounofFs period of youthful
romanticism. His work thereafter was less bound to
story or picture, more self-contained and notable for
architectural development. There are seven sympho-
nies already to be recorded, together with a violin con-
certo of the utmost brilliancy, though of classical de-
sign. Among the other works of the later period should
be mentioned the Symphonic Prologue 'In Memory of
Gogol,' a Finnish fantasia, performed at Helsingfors
in 1910; the symphonic suite, 'The Middle Ages'; and
another ballet, 'The Seasons.' There is also not a little
chamber music distinguished in form and execution,
and a quantity of songs of facile and graceful quality.
Glazounoff is now director of the St. Petersburg Con-
servatory.
Obviously his early ideals were much influenced by
Rimsky-Korsakoff and by Balakireff, from whom he
gained his first distinguished encouragement. He re-
sponded to the romantic appeal of mediaeval and na-
tional fairy stories. He felt the grandeur of the sea
and the poetry of heroic legends. Thus in Stenka
Razin he tells of the Cossack brigand whose death was
foretold by his captive Persian princess and who sacri-
ficed her in expiation of his sins to the river Volga.
But it is evident that this romantic influence was not
lasting. What he chiefly learned from Rimsky-Korsa-
koff was not the picturing of nature or of legendary
138
THE BORDER NATIONALISTS
beings, but the manipulation of the orchestra with
the utmost of brilliancy. In his later works this be-
comes only technical virtuosity, dazzling but somewhat
empty. His travels in foreign lands impressed foreign
ideals upon him. When we have given due credit to
his thoroughness of workmanship, his sensitive regard
for form and balance, the pregnant beauty of many of
his themes, we still feel that he is only a sublimated
salon composer.
Anatol Constantino vich Liadoff is another of Rimsky-
KorsakofFs pupils who has shown little enthusiasm for
a distinctly nationalistic music. He was born in St.
Petersburg on April 29, 1855, of a musical family,
both his father and his uncle being members of the
artistic staff of the opera. He entered the violin class
of the conservatory and was chosen for Rimsky-Korsa-
koff's class in composition. His graduation cantata was
so fine that he was invited to become a teacher, and
has remained with the institution ever since. In 1893
he was appointed with Liapounoff to undertake the col-
lection of Russian folk-songs initiated by the Imperial
Geographical Society. His genius has shown itself
chiefly in the smaller forms, in which he has produced
pieces for the piano distinguished for perfection of
form. His songs, especially those for children, have
had a wide popularity. There are a certain number of
genre pieces for the piano (e. g., 'In the Steppes,' opus
23) and numerous pieces in the well known smaller
forms, such as preludes, etudes, and dances. The sym-
phonic scherzo, Baba Yaga, telling of the pranks of an
old witch of children's folk-lore, is one of his ablest
works. We should also mention the orchestral legend,
entitled 'The Enchanted Lake,' opus 62; the 'Amazon's
Dance,' opus 65; and the 'Last Scene from Schiller's
"Bride of Messina," ' opus 28, for mixed chorus and
orchestra.
Serge Mikhailovich Liapounoff was born on Novem-
139
MODERN MUSIC
her 18, 1859, at Yaroslav, and studied at the Imperial
School of Music at Nijny-Novgorod and at the Moscow
Conservatory. Later he came under the influence of
Balakireff, who conducted the first performance of his
'Concert Overture.' For some years he was assistant
conductor at the Imperial Chapel at St. Petersburg.
He is best known by his piano pieces, chiefly the fine
Concerto in E flat minor, and the tremendously diffi-
cult Etudes. His numerous lighter pieces for piano,
among which are the Divertissements, opus 35, have
become exceedingly popular. His songs show a strong
national or oriental influence. His orchestral compo-
sitions include a symphony, opus 12, the 'Solemn Over-
ture on a Russian Theme,' opus 7, and a symphonic
poem, opus 37. Mention should also be made of his
rhapsody on Ukranian airs for piano and orchestra,
which is a further proof of his sensitive feeling for folk-
song.
Vasili Sergeievich Kallinikoff, born in 1866 in the
department of Orloff, was at the time of his death in
1900 one of the most promising of the then younger
Russian composers. He studied for eight years in the
school of the Moscow Philharmonic Society, and upon
his graduation became assistant conductor of the Mos-
cow Private Opera. The oncoming of consumption,
however, forced him to take up his residence in the
Caucasus. His most extraordinary work was the first
symphony, in the key of G minor, which was finished in
1895 and went begging for performance until it was
given several years later in Kieff. Since then it has
figured as one of the most popular of Russian orches-
tral works. The second symphony, in A major, is less
distinguished. His other orchestral works, showing
great talent and considerable national feeling, include
two 'symphonic scenes,' 'The Nymphs' and 'The
Cedars,' and the incidental music to Alexander Tol-
stoy's play, 'Czar Boris,' written for its performance at
140
THE BORDER NATIONALISTS
the Moscow Art Theatre in 1899. There is also a can-
tata, Ivan Damaskin, and a ballad, Roussalka, for
solo, chorus and orchestra. Kallinikoff also left some
songs, chamber music and piano pieces. A marked
originality is revealed in his best work, but it was still
immature when his final illness put an end to creative
activity.
A. Spendiaroff is loosely associated with the neo-
nationalists and has acquired some little popularity
with his orchestral works, 'The Three Palms' and the
'Caucasian Sketches.' He shows a marked talent of a
pictorial order, and felicity in the invention of ex-
pressive melody. But his technique is that of an age
past, his method rings always true to the conventional,
and his musical content sounds all too reminiscent.
Ossip Ivanovich Wihtol, born in 1863 at Volnar, near
the Baltic Sea, has gained a distinctive position for him-
self as a worker with Lettish themes. He was educated
at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and studied com-
position under Rimsky-Korsakoff. Until 1908 he was a
teacher of theory in this institution. His best works
are those which are connected with Lettish folk-music,
notably the Symphonic Tableau, opus 4; the Orches-
tral Suite, opus 29; and the Fantasia for violin, opus
42. We should also mention the 'Dramatic Overture'
and the Spriditis overture, the piano sonata, a string
quartet, and a number of songs and choruses some
a cappella and some with orchestral accompaniment.
II
We have spoken several times of the absence of a
true 'national school' of Russian composition in present
times. But this statement must be amended. There is
one school which represents in great purity the cult of
the national and has achieved notable results in its
work. This is the school of musicians who have under-
141
MODERN MUSIC
taken to build up a pure ritual music for the Russian
church. This group is purely national in character.
It is the most intense contemporary expression of the
'Slavophile' ideal in recent times. The neo-Russian
group of Balakireff was, it is true, only loosely con-
nected with the Slavophile or nationalistic political
movement of its time, but its relation to the 'Western'
tendency of Tschaikowsky and Rubinstein is analogous
with that of the novelist Dostoievsky to Turgenieff. The
renaissance of Russian church music probably has a
certain political significance, for church and state have
been traditionally close to one another in the land of
the czar. The Eastern church, like that of Rome, suf-
fered from the musical sentimentalism of the nine-
teenth century and received a vast accretion of 'sacred'
music which was flowery, thin, and utterly unsacred in
spirit. And like the Roman church it made strenuous
efforts to effect a reform, choosing as its basis the tra-
ditional ecclesiastical modes. These, in the Eastern
church, are as rich and impressive as the Gregorian
modes of Rome. The first definite step was the estab-
lishment, in 1889, of the Synodical School of Church
Singing in Moscow, under the direction of C. V. Smo-
lenski. It was only a preparatory step, for, under the
advice of Tschaikowsky and Taneieff, it concentrated
first upon the education of a number of singers thor-
oughly grounded in musical art and theory. In 1898
the school was enlarged and reformed, becoming a reg-
ular academy with a nine-year course and offering a
thorough training in every branch of musical art, from
sight reading up to composition. New methods of
teaching, introduced in 1897, brought the choral work
up to an unprecedented pitch of excellence, and a visit
of the school choir to Vienna in 1899 left a profound im-
pression upon the outside world. The school instituted,
in addition to its regular theoretical studies, a course in
the history of church music and its use in contrapuntal
142
RENAISSANCE OF RUSSIAN CHURCH MUSIC
forms, and thus began the training of its own line of
church composers, of whom the most able is to-day
P. G. Chesnikoff. V. C. Orloif, who notably raised the
standard of singing in the Metropolitan choir in St.
Petersburg, is now director of the school, and with the
help of the choral director, A. D. Kastalsky, has brought
it to astonishing efficiency.
Kastalsky and Gretchaninoff have attained their emi-
nence as composers chiefly through their work in the
renaissance of church music. The former was born in
1856, received a regular preparatory school course, and
studied music in the Moscow Conservatory. In 1887 he
became teacher of piano at the Synodical school, and
later of theory. He has composed much for the ritual,
basing his work on the old church melodies and de-
veloping a style which is personal, yet in the highest
degree religious and impressive. His position in Rus-
sian ecclesiastical music is now supreme. Rut in prais-
ing his work we should not forget to mention that of
his predecessors, who did much to preserve a decent
appropriateness for Russian church music in the dark
days. Following the great Rortniansky came G. F.
Lyvovsky (1830-1894), who was educated in the im-
perial choir and was later director of the Metropolitan
choir in St. Petersburg. He was a man of much talent,
and, feeling the approach of the new attitude toward
sacred music, showed in his work the transition from
the old to the new. Other notable church composers,
both in the old and the new style, were A. A. Archangel-
sky (born 1846), Taneieff, Arensky, and Rimsky-Korsa-
koff.
Rut Gretchaninoff, though he has by no means given
himself solely to the composition of sacred music, has
brought the greatest genius to bear on it. He is no
mere routineer and theorist. Some of his works for
the ritual will stand as among the most perfect speci-
mens of sacred music the world over. Combined with
143
MODERN MUSIC
the greatest simplicity of method is an exhaustive tech-
nical knowledge and a poetical feeling for the noble
and profound. It is he who has put into tones the
supreme poetry of worship. The profound impressive-
ness of this new sacred music in performance is in
part due to the traditional Eastern practice of singing
the ritual unaccompanied. This a cappella tradition
has disciplined a generation of choirs to an accuracy of
intonation which is impossible where singers can de-
pend upon the support of an organ. Further, there is
the marvellous Russian bass voice, sometimes going as
low as B-flat or A, which furnishes a 'pedal' support to
the choir and makes an accompanying instrument quite
superfluous. The newer church composers have not
been slow in taking advantage of the striking musical
opportunities offered by this peculiar Slavic voice. As
a result of all these influences, the musical renaissance
of the Eastern church has been far more successful
than the parallel awakening in the Roman, and has
produced a music and a tradition of church singing in-
comparable in the world to-day for nobility and purity.
Alexander Tikhonovich Gretchaninoff was born on
October 13, 1864, in Moscow, studied piano in the Mos-
cow conservatory and went in 1890 to St. Petersburg to
enjoy the advantages of Rimsky-Korsakoff's teaching.
He early gained a prize with a string quartet, and be-
came known in foreign countries by his songs and
chamber music. His style, outside of his church music,
is not especially national. He is inclined to the lyrical,
preferring Borodine to Moussorgsky, and throughout
his secular work shows German influence. His sym-
phony in G minor, op. 6, gained for him general rec-
ognition in Russia, and the symphony op. 27 justified
the great hope felt for his talent. Gretchaninoff has
been active in dramatic music. He has written inci-
dental music to Ostrovsky's 'The Snow Maiden' and to
two of the plays which go to form Alexander Tolstoy's
144
RENAISSANCE OF RUSSIAN CHURCH MUSIC
trilogy on the times of Boris Godounoff. His two op-
eras, Dobrinya Nikitich and 'Sister Beatrice,' are dis-
tinguished by great melodic impressiveness and in gen-
eral by a lyrical style which derives from Rimsky-
Korsakoff and Borodine. The latter opera, founded on
Maeterlinck's play, met with disfavor at the hands of
the Russian clergy, because of its representation of the
Virgin on the stage, and was withdrawn after four
performances.
A number of minor composers may also be grouped
under the general head of nationalists. Most promi-
nent of these is Nikolai Alexandrovich Sokoloff, who
was born in St. Petersburg in 1859 and studied compo-
sition in the St. Petersburg Conservatory under Rimsky-
Korsakoff. His chamber music comprises three quar-
tets, a string quintet, and a serenade. For orchestra
he has written incidental music to Shakespeare's 'A
Winter's Tale' for performance at the Alexandrinsky
Theatre in St. Petersburg; a dramatic poem after Tol-
stoy's 'Don Juan'; a ballet, 'The Wild Swans'; and an
elegy and serenade for strings. There are numerous
small pieces for piano and violin, and choruses both for
mixed voices and for men's voices alone. A. Amani
(1875-1904) was also a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakoff and
in his piano and chamber music took for his inspira-
tion the poetry of the Orient and the melody of folk-
song. F. Blumenfeld (born 1863) has distinguished
himself as conductor at the Imperial Opera, St. Peters-
burg, and has written, besides the 'Allegro Concerto'
for piano and orchestra and the symphony in C, many
songs and smaller piano pieces which place him with
the newer 'nationalists.' A. A. Iljinsky (born 1859) has
composed an opera on Pushkin's 'Fountain of the Bak-
tchisserai,' a symphonic scherzo, and an overture to
Tolstoy's Tsar Feodor, besides much chamber and
piano music. G. A. Kazachenko (born 1858) has writ-
ten an opera, 'Prince Serebreny,' which was performed
145
MODERN MUSIC
in St. Petersburg in 1892, and is now chorus-master at
the Imperial Opera. A. Kopyloff (born 1854) has writ-
ten much orchestral music, including a symphony in
C major, a scherzo for orchestra, and a concert over-
ture, also chamber music, including an effective quar-
tet in G major, op. 15. N. V. Stcherbacheff (born 1853)
is associated with the younger nationalists and has
composed much for piano and voice, in addition to a
serenade and two 'Idylls' for orchestra. Finally, B.
Zolotareif has distinguished himself in chamber music
and in song-writing, and has shown great ability in his
Fete Villageoise, op. 24, his 'Hebrew Rhapsody,' op. 7,
and his Symphony, op. 8.
Ill
We now come to a group of composers who have
been little influenced by the Russian folk-song. They
all trace their artistic paternity in one way or another
to Tschaikowsky. They are men who have used their
native talent in a scholarly and sincere way, and have
attained to great popularity in their native land and
even outside of it, but they seem likely not to retain
this popularity long. (This judgment may, however,
be premature in the case of Gliere.) It is not, of course,
their denial of nationalism which has placed them in
the second class. But their loyalty to the past does not
seem to be coupled with a sufficiently powerful crea-
tive faculty to make secure their hold upon the public.
Anton Stephanovich Arensky was one of the most
popular composers in Russia. This reputation was
gained in part by his piano pieces, which made
rather too great an effort toward the superficially pleas-
ing and have now almost passed out of sight. His am-
bitious operas, too, have failed to hold the stage, but
his chamber music shows him at his best. He was
the son of a physician and was born at Nijny-Novgorod
146
THE NEW ECLECTICS OF RUSSIA
on July 31, 1861. His early evinced musical talent was
carefully nurtured in his home, and when he was still
young he was sent to St. Petersburg to study under
Zikke. Later he worked under Rimsky-Korsakoff at
the Conservatory, and gained that institution's gold
medal for composition. His first symphony and his
piano concerto were both given public performance
soon after his graduation in 1882, and Arensky was ap-
pointed professor of harmony and counterpoint at the
Moscow Conservatory. In 1888 he became conductor
of the concerts of the Russian Choral Society in Mos-
cow, and in 1895 moved to St. Petersburg to accept the
position of director of the Imperial Chapel choir, to
which he had been appointed on the recommendation
of Balakireff. He died in 1906 and it was generally
felt that the death had prevented the composition of
what would have been his best works. Early in his
career he gained the active sympathy and encourage-
ment of Tschaikowsky, who influenced him strongly in
a personal way. His talent was essentially conserva-
tive, and his scholarly cast of mind is shown in his
published 'method,' which he illustrated with 1,000
musical examples, and in his book on musical forms.
His best works date from the Moscow period, since
bad health decreased his creative vigor in his later
years. Some of his smaller works may be placed beside
the best of Tschaikowsky. Most popular outside of
Russia have been the two string quartets, his trio in D
minor, and his piano quintet in D major, op. 51. Of
his two symphonies, the first, written in his boyhood,
is quite the best. The. piano fantasia on Russian
themes, the violin concerto, and the cantata, 'The Foun-
tain of Baktchissarai,' are among his best known works.
His first opera, The Dream on the River Volga,' was
written to a libretto which Tschaikowsky had aban-
doned and passed on to him 'with his blessing.' He
aimed at dramatic force and truthfulness, but his talent
147
MODERN MUSIC
was essentially lyrical, and he proved to be at his best
in his clear and graceful ariosos. His later operas,
'Raphael' and 'Nal and Damayanti' (each in one act),
show an advance in musical power, though the method
still continues conservative. Arensky's ballet, 'A Night
in Egypt,' was produced in 1899. His last work, com-
posed on his deathbed, was the incidental music com-
posed for the performance of 'The Tempest' at the
Moscow Art Theatre. Some of these numbers are
among the best things he ever wrote.
Sergei Ivanovich Taneieff is a conservative both in
mind and in heart, and may be considered the only real
pupil of Tschaikowsky. He was born of a rich and
noble family in Vladimir on November 13, 1856, and af
the age of ten entered the then newly opened Moscow
Conservatory, where he studied the piano under Nicho-
las Rubinstein. Under Tschaikowsky he worked at
theory and composition. In 1875 he graduated with
highest honors and with a gold medal for his playing,
which was characterized by purity and strength of
touch, grace and ease of execution, maturity of intel-
lect, self-control, and a calm objective style of inter-
pretation. These qualities may well be considered typi-
cal of his compositions. After a long Russian tour with
Auer, the violinist, Taneieff succeeded Tschaikowsky
as professor of orchestration at the Moscow Conserva-
tory. In 1885 he became director of the institution,
but soon retired to devote himself wholly to composi-
tion. Though he is an admirable pianist, he seldom
appears in public.
His compositions, though not numerous, are all
marked by sincerity and thoroughness of workman-
ship. Some of them have been compared to those of
Brahms. His work is essentially that of a scholar,
and makes little appeal to the emotions. His mastery
of form is marked. The most ambitious of his works is
the 'trilogy' (in reality a three-act opera) based on
148
THE NEW ECLECTICS OF RUSSIA
the ^Eschylus 'Oresteia.' This, though never popular
in Russia because of its severity of style, compels ad-
miration for its nobleness of concept and its scholarly
execution. The overture and last entr'acte are still
frequently performed in Russia. In general the style is
Wagnerian, and the leit-motif is used freely, though
not to excess. A cantata for solo, chorus, and orches-
tra the Ivan Damaskin is one of the finest works
of its kind in Russian music. Taneieff has also written
three symphonies and an overture on Russian themes.
But his most distinctive work is perhaps to be found
in his eight string quartets (of which the third is the
most popular), in his two string quintets, and his quar-
tet with piano. There are also a number of male cho-
ruses and smaller piano works.
A much more likable, though no less conservative,
figure is Michael Mikhaelovich Ippolitoff-Ivanoff. He
was born of a working class family near St. Petersburg
on November 15, 1859, and managed to get to the St.
Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied for six
years under Rimsky-Korsakoff . In 1882 he went to
Tiflis, where he remained a number of years as direc-
tor of the local music school, as conductor of the con-
certs of the Imperial Musical Society, and for a time as
director of the government theatre. In 1893 he came to
Moscow to teach harmony, instrumentation and free
composition at the Conservatory, to the directorship of
which he succeeded in 1906. But perhaps his greatest
influence on Russian musical life was exerted by him
in his position as director of the Moscow Private Opera,
which he assumed in 1899, and which he helped to build
up to its high artistic standard. His reputation in for-
eign lands rests chiefly on his string quartet, opus 13,
and his orchestral suite, 'Caucasian Sketches,' opus 10.
(A second Caucasian suite appeared in 1906 and has
had much success.) The list of his works also includes
notably a Sinfonietta and a piano quartet; three can-
149
MODERN MUSIC
tatas; Iberia, for orchestra; and the 'Armenian Rhap-
sody,' op. 48. In many of these works, as in his songs,
he is frequently displaying his penchant for Oriental,
Hebrew, and Caucasian music, which he has studied
with a poet's love and appreciation. In his two operas,
'Ruth' and 'Assya,' these qualities are also apparent.
The notable qualities of his music are its freedom from
artificiality, its warmth of expression, and its consistent
thoroughness of workmanship. But it is perhaps as an
organizer and director that he has performed his chief
service to Russian music.
One of the most promising of the younger conserva-
tive Russians is Reinhold Gliere, who is now director
of the Conservatory at Kieff and conductor of the Kieff
Symphony concerts. He has in these positions been a
dominant factor in the provincial, as opposed to the
metropolitan, musical life of Russia, and has by his
energy and progressiveness raised Kieff to a position
in some ways rivalling the capital. He was born at
Kieff on January 11, 1875, and was educated at Moscow,
where he studied with Taneieff and Ippolitoff-Ivanoff .
Though he was thus under conservative influences, he
showed in his earliest compositions a feeling for the
national musical sources which forbade critics to class-
ify him as a cosmopolitan.
His first string quartet, in A (op. 2), showed na-
tional material treated with something of western soft-
ness, and his many small pieces for string or wind in-
struments often make use of folk-like melodies. It is
in his piano pieces that he shows himself weakest, and
these have contributed to an under-appreciation of
him in his own as well as in foreign lands. Some of
his works (especially the later ones) are thoroughly
national in character. Thus his recently finished opera
'Awakened' is built entirely on folk-material, and
comes with revolutionary directness straight from the
iheart of the people. His symphonic poem, 'The Sirens,'
150
Contemporary Russian Composers:
Alexander Glazounoff
Vladimir Rebikoff
Reinhold Gliere
Serge Rachmaninoff
THE NEW ECLECTICS OF RUSSIA
showed French influence, but was hardly a successful
synthesis. His first symphony, in E flat, op. 8, re-
vealed great promise, and his string quartets have
drawn the attention of music-lovers in foreign lands.
It is in his symphonic work that Gliere shows his
greatest ability. His orchestral writing burns with the
heat that is traditional in Russian music, and his hand-
ling of his themes, in development and contrapuntal
treatment, is sometimes masterly. By far his greatest
work is his third symphony, Ilia Mourometz, which is
in reality a long and extremely ambitious symphonic
poem. It tells the tale of the great hero, Ilia, of the
Novgorod cycle of legends, who sat motionless in his
chair for thirty years until some holy pilgrims came
and urged him to arise and become a hero. Then he
went forth, conquering giants and pagans, until he was
finally turned to stone in the Holy Mountains. In this
work the themes, most of which are national in charac-
ter, and some of which seem taken directly from the
people, are in the highest degree pregnant and expres-
sive. They are used cyclically in all four movements,
and are developed at great length and with great com-
plexity. The harmonic idiom is chromatic, not exactly
radical but yet personal and creative. If we except cer-
tain cliche passages which are unworthy of so fine a
work, we must adjudge the symphony from beginning
to end a masterpiece. Something of this mastery of
the heroic mood is also to be seen in Gliere's numer-
ous songs. Though most of them are conventional in
their harmonic scheme, they reveal great poetry and
expressive power. With but one exception Gliere
seems to be the greatest of the conservatives of modern
Russia.
This exception is Serge Vassilievich Rachmaninoff,
whose reputation, now extended to all parts of the civ-
ilized world, is by no means beyond his deserts. He
was born on March 20, 1873, in the department of Nov-
151
MODERN MUSIC
gorod, of a landed family of prominence. At the age
of nine he went to St. Petersburg to study music, but
three years later transferred to Moscow, where he
worked under Taneieff and Arensky. He graduated
from the Moscow Conservatory in 1892 with high hon-
ors, and his one-act opera, Aleko, written for gradua-
tion, was promptly performed at the Grand Theatre
and made a deep impression. Two short periods of
his later life were spent in the conducting of opera in
Moscow, but the most of his time he has spent in com-
position. He is a pianist of rare abilities, and has
played his own music much on tours. For some years
he resided in Dresden.
Rachmaninoff's early fame is due to the sensational
popularity of his C-sharp minor prelude for piano, a
fine work of heroic import, holding immense promise
for the future. While much of his later composition
has been somewhat conventional in style, Rachmanin-
off at his best has justified the promise. The magnifi-
cent E minor symphony ranks among the best works
of its kind in all modern music. Scarcely inferior to
it is the symphonic poem, 'The Island of the Dead,' sug-
gested by Arnold Rocklin's picture. Two later operas
have proved very impressive. The first, 'The Covetous
Knight,' is founded on a tale of Pushkin, and follows
the complete original text with literal exactness, achiev-
ing an impressive dramatic declamation which seems
always on the verge of melody, and entwines itself
with the masterly psychological music of the orchestra.
Francesca da Rimini is more lyrical, and shows much
passion and power in its love scenes.
Rachmaninoff's only chamber music is an 'elegiac
trio' in memory of Tschaikowsky and a couple of so-
natas. A large choral work, 'Spring,' has attained great
popularity in Russia, and a recent one, founded on
Edgar Allan Poe's poem, 'The Bells,' is said to reveal
abilities of the highest order. For piano there are
152
THE NEW ECLECTICS OF RUSSIA
many pieces notably the various groups of preludes,
some hardly inferior to the famous one in C-sharp
minor; a set of variations on a theme of Chopin; six
pieces for four hands, op. 11; two suites for two pianos,
op. 5 and op. 17; and two superb concertos for piano
and orchestra, of which the second, op. 18, is the more
popular. His minor piano pieces are among the most
vigorous and finely executed in modern piano litera-
ture. His songs are of wide variety, especially in re-
gard to national feeling; in some, as, for instance,
'The Harvest Fields,' he is almost on a plane with Mous-
sorgsky. We should mention also two works for or-
chestra, a 'Gypsy Caprice' and a fantasia, 'The Cliff.'
Rachmaninoff's music is justly to be called conserva-
tive and even academic in its later phase. But this must
not be taken to imply that it is cold or unpoetic. No
modern Russian composer can better strike the tone of
high and heroic poetry. Rachmaninoff has taken the
technique of the West, especially of modern Germany,
and the spirit if not the letter of the tunes of his own
lands and fused them into a music of his own, which,
at once complex and direct, stirs the heart and inflames
the blood. His orchestral palette is powerful and in-
clined to be heavy. His contrapuntal style is complex
and masterful. His melody is free and impressive. He
is by all odds the greatest of the modern Russian eclec-
tics.
A number of other composers, loosely connected
with the 'Western' tradition of Tschaikowsky, should
here be mentioned. Some of these are young men who
may as yet have given no adequate evidence of their
real ability. But all of them are able musicians with
some solid achievement to their credit. A. N. Korest-
schenko (born 1870) won the gold medal at the Moscow
Conservatory for piano and theory after studying under
Taneieff and Arensky, and is now professor of har-
mony at that institution. His most important work in-
153
MODERN MUSIC
eludes three operas, a ballet 'The Magic Mirror,' and
a number of orchestral works, notably the 'Lyric Sym-
phony,' a 'Festival Prologue,' the Georgian and Ar-
menian Songs with orchestra, and the usual proportion
of songs and piano pieces. Nicholas Nicholaievich
Tcherepnine was born in 1873 and studied for the law,
but changed to the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where
he energetically studied composition under Rimsky-
Korsakoff . His style is eclectic and flexible. His name
is best known through his two ballets, Narcisse and
Le Pavilon d'Armide, but his overture to Rostand's
Princesse Lointaine, his 'Dramatic Fantasia,' op. 17,
and his orchestral sketch from 'Macbeth,' give further
evidence of marked powers. His songs and duets have
had great popularity, and his pianoforte concerto is
frequently played. He has also been active as a com-
poser of choral music, accompanied and a cappella.
Maximilian Steinberg, born in 1883 and trained
under Rimsky-Korsakoff and Glazounoff, has worked
chiefly in an academic way and has shown marked
technical mastery, especially in his quartet, op. 5, and
his second symphony in B minor. Nicholas Medtner,
who is of German parentage, shows the same respect
for classical procedure, together with an abundance
of inspiration and enthusiasm. He was born in Mos-
cow on December 24, 1879, and carried off the gold
medal at the Conservatory in 1900. Since then he has
been active chiefly as a composer, and has to his credit
a number of very fine piano sonatas, as well as con-
siderable chamber music. Attention has recently been
attracted to his songs, which combine great technical
resource with a fresh poetical feeling for the texts.
There is nothing of the nationalistic about his work.
The same, however, cannot quite be said for George
Catoire (born Moscow, 1861), who, though educated
in Berlin, has shown a feeling for things Slavic in his
symphonic poem, Mzyri, and in his cantata, Russalka.
154
SCRIABINE AND RADICAL FOREIGN INFLUENCE
Among his other large works are a symphony in C mi-
nor, a piano concerto, and considerable chamber music.
J. Krysjanowsky is another modern eclectic, known
chiefly by his sonata for piano and violin, which, though
able, shows little poetical inspiration.
Let us complete this section of the history with a
passing mention of certain minor composers of local
importance. A. von Borchmann has shown a solid mu-
sical ability and a strong classical tendency in his
string quartet, op. 3. J. I. Bleichmann (1868-1909) was
the composer of many popular piano and violin pieces,
of an orchestral work, several sonatas, and a sacred
choral work, 'Sebastian the Martyr.' A. Goedicke has
composed two symphonies, a dramatic overture, a
piano trio, a sonata for piano and violin and another
for piano alone, and numerous smaller pieces. W.
Malichevsky is an able composer of great promise and
has written three symphonies, three quartets and a vio-
lin sonata. M. Ostroglazoff is an 'eclectic' whose true
powers are as yet undetermined. W. Pogojeff is fairly
well known because of his able chamber music and
piano pieces. S. Prokofieff (born 1891) is an able and
classically minded pupil of Gliere and Liadoff, and
Selinoff (born 1875) has carried his early German
training into the writing of symphonic poems. We
should also make mention of E. Esposito, an able and
charming composer of operetta.
IV
Of radical Russian composers two have in recent
years become internationally famous. Alexander
Scriabine is notable for his highly developed harmonic
method, which makes sensible subjective states of emo-
tion hardly possible to music hitherto. And Igor Stra-
vinsky has in his ballets carried free counterpoint and
a resultant revolutionary harmony to an extreme al-
155
MODERN MUSIC
most undreamed of in the whole world of music. How
much there is of mere sensation in these two musicians
is at this time hard to determine. The question will be
determined in part not only by the extent to which they
retain a hold over their audiences, but also by the ex-
tent to which the new paths which they are opening
prove fruitful to later followers. If one may judge
by appearances at this writing, it would seem that
Scriabine, who was essentially a theorist and a mystic,
had little to give the world beyond a reworking of the
chromatic style of Wagner's 'Tristan' a style seem-
ingly inadequate to the intimate subjective message
he would have it bear. Stravinsky, on the other hand,
though still crude, seems to be at the threshold of a new
and remarkable musical development. In addition to
these new men we find in Russia a number who may
justly be called radicals, being influenced by the radi-
cals of other lands, chiefly France. No creative ability
of the first order has as yet been discovered among
these minor men.
Alexander Scriabine was born in Moscow on Decem-
ber 25, 1871. He was destined by his family for a ca-
reer in the army, but his leaning toward music deter-
mined him to quit the cadet corps and become a stu-
dent in the Moscow Conservatory. Here he studied
piano with Saf onoff and composition with Taneieff . He
graduated in 1892, taking a gold medal and setting out
to conquer Europe as a concert performer. In 1898 he
returned to the Moscow Conservatory to teach, but in
1903 resigned, determining to devote all his time to
composition. Since then he has lived in Paris, Buda-
pest, Berlin, and Switzerland. In 1906-07 he made a
brief visit to the United States, appearing as a pianist.
He died, dreaming great dreams for the future, in 1915.
His compositions have been numerous and have shown
a steady advance from the melodious and conventional
style of his early piano works to the intense harmonic
156
SCRIABINE AND RADICAL FOREIGN INFLUENCE
sensualism of his later orchestral pieces. The first
piano works were characterized by Cui as 'stolen from
Chopin's trousseau.' This is not unjust, although the
works show a certain technical originality in the inven-
tion of figures. The first symphony is written in solid
and conservative style, with a due element of Wag-
nerian influence, and a choral finale in praise of art
speaking for its composer's good intentions. The sec-
ond symphony shows a development of technical skill
and an enlarging of emotional range, but gives few
hints of the later style. The smaller music of this pe-
riod as, for instance, the Mazurkas, op. 25, the Fan-
tasia, and the Preludes, op. 35 also show progress
chiefly on the technical side. The 'Satanic Poem' for
piano, op. 34, points to Liszt as its source.
It is the third symphony in C, entitled 'The Divine
Poem,' which first gives distinct evidence of change.
This work, composed in 1905, undertakes to depict the
inner struggles of the artist in his process of creation,
and reveals the subjective trend of its composer's grow-
ing imagination. Its three movements are entitled re-
spectively, 'Struggles,' 'Sensual Pleasures,' and 'Divine
Activity.' Here the emotional element is well to the
fore. The first movement is stirring and dramatic,
the second languorous and rich, the third bold and
brilliant. The orchestra employed is large and the
technique complex. Other ambitious works of the ear-
lier period are the concerto in F-sharp minor, op. 20,
a work of no outstanding importance, and the 'Reverie'
for orchestra, op. 24, which is distinctly weak. But
by the time we have reached the 'Poem of Ecstasy,'
composed in 1908, we have the composer in all his long-
sought individuality. The harmonic system is vague
to the ear, and weighs terribly on the senses. There is
evidence of some esoteric striving. One feels that
'more is meant than meets the ear.' It is in a single
movement, but in three sections, and these are entitled,
157
MODERN MUSIC
respectively, 'His Soul in the Orgy of Love,' 'The Reali-
zation of a Fantastic Dream,' and 'The Glory of His
Own Art.' The orchestration is rich in the extreme and
the development of the motives shows a mature musi-
cal power. The effect on the nerves and senses is un-
deniably powerful. But withal it remains vague as a
work of art; it is obviously meant to convey an impres-
sion, but the definite impression, like the 'program,'
is withheld, and perhaps it is as well so.
But it is the 'Prometheus,' subtitled 'Poem of Fire'
(composed 1911, op. 60), which shows Scriabine at his
most ambitious. The work is written in the general
style of the 'Poem of Ecstasy,' but the style, like the
themes, is more highly developed. And there is super-
added the color-symbolism which has helped to give
the work something of its sensational fame. The music
is meant to tell of the coming of 'fire' that is, of the
creative principle to man, and the orchestra describes
(one might better say 'experiences') the various forces
bearing upon incomplete man (represented by the
piano, which serves as a member of the orchestral
body), until the creative principle comes and makes
complete him who accepts it. But in addition to the
tones Scriabine has devised a parallel manipulation of
colors, on a color machine partly of his own invention,
and has 'scored' the 'chords' as he imagines them to
suit the music. 'The light keyboard,' says a commenta-
tor, 'traverses one octave with all the chromatic inter-
vals, and each key projects electrically a given color.
These are used in combination, and a "part" for this
instrument stands at the head of the score. The ar-
rangement of colors is as follows: G, red; G, rosy-
orange; D, yellow; A, green; E and B, pearly blue and
the shimmer of moonshine; F sharp, bright blue; D-flat,
violet; A-flat, purple; E-flat and B-flat, steely with the
glint of metal; F, dark red.' The first performance of
the work, with the color machine used as the composer
158
SGRIABINE AND RADICAL FOREIGN INFLUENCE
planned, was that of the Russian Symphony Orchestra
of New York, in March, 1915. It can hardly be said
that the experiment was convincing to many in the au-
dience, but it seems altogether possible that some sort
of union of the arts of pure color and pure tone in
an expressive mission may be fruitful for the future.
In a posthumous work entitled 'Mystery,' Scriabine
intended to use every means possible, including per-
fume and the dance, to produce a supreme emotional
effect on the audience. We should also mention the ten
piano sonatas, of which the seventh and ninth are the
best, which show their composer's musical develop-
ment with great completeness, but suffer in the later
examples from a harmonic monotony. This seemed to
be Scriabine's besetting sin. It seems doubtful whether
his harmonic method, as he developed it, is flexible
enough for the continued strain to which he put it.
For in truth it is not a daring or extremely original
system, however impressive it may sound in the com-
mentator's notes. If we may sum the matter up in a
slang phrase we might say that Scriabine's harmony
'listens' better than it sounds.
The influence of the French 'impressionists' on Rus-
sian composers is represented at its best in the work
of such men as Vassilenko and Rebikoff . The Russians
have ever been citizens of the world and have been
quick to imitate and learn from their western neigh-
bors. Rut in the past century they have also been
quick to assimilate and to give back something new
from their own individuality. This may be the destined
course of the French influence on Slavic musicians.
Sergius Vassilenko was born in Moscow in 1872, en-
tered the Conservatory in 1896, and was awarded the
gold medal for a cantata written after five years' work
under Taneieff and Ippolitoff-Ivanoff. His early work
was much under the influence of the Russian nation-
alists, and his epic poem for orchestra, op. 4, illustrates
159
MODERN MUSIC
a taste for mediaeval poetry which he supported out of
his profound knowledge of modal and church music.
But his larger works after this were chiefly French in
style. These include the two 'poems' for bass voice
and orchestra, 'The Whirlpool' and 'The Widow'; a
symphonic poem, 'The Garden of Death,' based on
Oscar Wilde, and the orchestral suite Ail Soleil, by
which he is chiefly known in foreign lands.
Feodor Akimenko, though less wholly French in his
manner, may be ranked among those who chiefly speak
of Paris in their music. He was born at Kharkoff on
February 8, 1876, was educated in the Imperial Chapel
in St. Petersburg, and later was instructed in one or
another branch of music by Liadoff, Balakireff, and
Rimsky-Korsakoff. The influence of these masters is
evident in his work, however much he may have ab-
sorbed a French idiom. His is 'a fundamentally Sla-
vonic personality,' says one commentator,* 'which in-
clines toward dreaminess more than toward sensuality
or the picturesque. His music resembles the French
only in suppleness of rhythms and elaborateness of
harmonies.' His early works, which are more thor-
oughly Russian in method, include many songs and
piano pieces, three choruses for mixed voices, a 'lyric
poem' for orchestra, a string trio and a piano and vio-
lin sonata. After his journey to Paris his style changed
notably. From this later period we may mention such
works for the piano as the Recits d'une dme reveuse,
Uranie, Pages d'une poesie fantastique, etc. His latest
compositions include a Sonata Fantastique and an
opera, 'The Queen of the Alps.'
Another composer of much originality and of sub-
jective tendencies is Vladimir Rebikoff, who was born
on May 16, 1866, at Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia. Even in
his piano pieces he has attempted to mirror psychologi-
cal states. But this attempt is carried much further in
* Ivan Narodny in 'Musical America,' August, 1914.
160
IGOR STRAVINSKY
his operas. 'The Christmas Tree,' in one act, attempts
to contrast the feelings of the rich and the poor, and
it was successful enough in its artistic purpose to gain
much popularity with its Moscow public. Rebikoff has
written two other 'psychological' operas 'Thea,' op.
34, and 'The Woman and the Dagger,' op. 41 not to
mention his early 'The Storm,' produced in 1894. In
his 'melo-mimics,' or pantomimic scenes with closely
allied musical accompaniment, Rebikoff has created a
small art form all his own.
M. Gniessin is one of the most talented of the younger
Russians who have shown marked foreign influence
in this case German. His important works include a
'Symphonic Fragment' after Shelley, op. 4; a Sonata-
ballad in C-sharp minor for piano and 'cello, op. 7;
a symphonic poem, Vrubel; and a number of admi-
rable songs. W. G. Karatigin is known as the editor of
Moussorgsky's posthumous works and composer of
some carefully developed music. Among the remain-
ing young composers of this group we need only men-
tion the names of Kousmin, Yanowsky, Olenin and
Tchesnikoff.
There remains Igor Stravinsky, perhaps the greatest
of all the younger Russian composers in the pregnancy
of his musical style. He is regarded as a true repre-
sentative of nationalism in its 'second stage,' for, though
his work bears little external resemblance to that of
Moussorgsky, for instance, its style is indigenous to
Russia and its thematic material is closely connected
with the Russian folk-song. Stravinsky was born at
Oranienbaum on June 5, 1882, the son of Feodor Stra-
vinsky, a celebrated singer of the Imperial Theatre in
St. Petersburg. Though his precocious talent for music
was recognized and was fostered in piano lessons under
Rubinstein, he received a classical education and was
destined for the law. It was not until he met Rimsky-
Korsakoff at Heidelberg in 1902 that is, at the age of
161
MODERN MUSIC
twenty that he turned definitely and finally to music.
He began work with Rimsky-Korsakoff and learned
something about brilliancy in orchestration. But his
ideals were too radical always to suit his master. The
latter is said to have exclaimed on hearing his pupil
play 'The Fire Bird' : 'Stop playing that horrible stuff
or I shall begin to like it.'
Stravinsky's first important work was his symphony
in E-flat major, composed in 1906, and still in manu-
script. Then came 'Faun and Shepherdess,' a suite for
voice and piano, and, in 1908, the Scherzo Fantastique
for orchestra. His elegy on the death of Rimsky-Korsa-
koff, his four piano studies, and a few of his songs,
written about this time, hold a hint of the changed style
that was to come.
Here begins the list of Stravinsky's important compo-
sitions. 'Fireworks,' for orchestra, was written purely
as a technical tour de force. Music in the higher sense
it is not, but it reveals immense technical resource in
scoring and in the invention of suggestive devices.
Pin wheels, sky rockets and exploding bombs among
other things are 'pictured' in this orchestral riot of
tone. In 1909 came the ballet 'The Nightingale,' which
has recently been rewritten, partly in the composer's
later style, and arranged as an opera. This led him to
his first successful ballet. But before entering consid-
ering the three works which have chiefly brought him
his fame let us refer to some of the later songs, e. g.,
'The Cloister' and 'The Song of the Dew,' which are
masterful pieces in the ultra-modern manner, and to
the 'Astral Cantata,' which has not yet been published
at this writing.
Stravinsky's fame in foreign lands (which is doubt-
less almost equal to that in his own, a strange thing in
Russian music) rests almost entirely on the three bal-
lets which were mounted and danced by DiaghilefFs
company of dancers, drawn largely from the Imperial
162
IGOR STRAVINSKY
Opera House, in St. Petersburg, who for several seasons
made wonderfully successful tours in the European
capitals. It must be understood that this institution,
the so-called 'Russian ballet,' was in no wise official.
It represented the 'extreme left wing' of Russian art in
regard to music, dancing, and scene painting. It was
altogether too radical to be received hospitably in the
official opera house. But it proved to be one of the
most brilliant artistic achievements of recent times, and
on it floated the fame of Igor Stravinsky.
His first ballet, 'The Fire Bird,' was produced in
Paris in 1910. It tells a long and richly colored story of
the rescue of a beautiful maiden from the snares of a
wicked magician. The music is by no means 'radical,'
but it shows immense talent in expressive melody, col-
orful harmony, in precise expression of mood, in the
suggestion of pictures, and in a certain elaborate and
free polyphony which is one of Stravinsky's chief
glories. It is a work irresistible alike to the casual lis-
tener and to the technical musician. The next ballet
was 'Petrouchka,' produced in 1911. This is a fanciful
tale of Petrouchka, the Russian Pierrot, and his un-
happy love for another doll. The little man finds a
rival in a terrible blackamoor, and in the end is most
foully murdered, spilling 'his vital sawdust' upon the
toy-shop floor. The characters are richly varied, and
the carnival music is telling in the extreme. Stravin-
sky's musical characterization and picturing here is
masterly. But his greatest achievement is his preserva-
tion of the tone of burlesque throughout bouncing and
joyous, yet kindly and refined.
In this work we notice much of the harmonic daring
which is so startling in his third ballet, 'The Consecra-
tion of Spring.' Here is an elaborate dance in two
scenes, setting forth presumably the mystic rites by
which the pre-historic Slavic peoples lured spring,
with its fruitful blessings, into their midst. The char-
163
MODERN MUSIC
acter of the music and of the libretto is determined by
the peculiar theory of the dance on which the ballet is
founded. We cannot here go into this matter. Suffice
it to say that the dancing does not pretend to be 'primi-
tive' in an ethnological sense, though its angular move-
ments continually recall the crudities of pre-historic
art. The music is quite terrifying at first hearing. But
a second hearing, or a hasty examination of the score,
will convince one that it is executed with profound
musicianship and a sure understanding of the effects
to be obtained. Briefly, we may describe the musical
style as a free use of telling themes, largely national in
character, contrapuntally combined with such freedom
that harmony, in the classical sense, quite ceases to
exist. Because of the musical mastership displayed in
the writing we can be sure that this is not a 'freak' or a
blind alley experiment. Whether the tendency repre-
sents a complete denial of harmonic relations, with the
attention centred wholly on the polyphonic interweav-
ing, or whether it is preparing the way for a new har-
mony in which the second (major or minor) will be re-
garded as a consonant interval, we cannot at this time
say. But Stravinsky's well-proved ability, and his evi-
dent knowledge of what he is about, are at least pre-
sumptive evidence that our enjoyment of this new style
will increase with our understanding of it.
Certainly men like Scriabine and Stravinsky prove
that Russian music has not been a mere burst of genius,
destined to become embalmed in academicism or
wafted on lyrical breezes into the salons. Probably no
nation in Europe to-day possesses a greater number of
thoroughly able composers than Russia. The Slav
seems to be no whit behind his brothers either in po-
etic inspiration or in technical progress. Perhaps it is
a new generation, that has just begun its work a gen-
eration destined to achievements as fine as those of the
glorious 'Big Five.' H. K. M.
164
CHAPTER VI
MUSICAL DEVELOPMENT IN BOHEMIA AND HUNGARY
Characteristics of Czech music; Friedrich Smetana Antonin Dvorak
Zdenko Fibich and others; Joseph Suk and Viteslav Novak historical
sketch of musical endeavor in Hungary Odon Mihalovics, Count Zichy and
Jeno Hubay Dohnanyi and Moor; 'Young Hungary': Weiner, Bela Bartok,
and others.
ALL that is best in the music of Bohemia is fully rep-
resented in the compositions of her two greatest sons,
Friedrich Smetana (1824-1884) and Antonin Dvorak
(1841-1904). As Louis XIV said that he was the state,
so it may almost be said that, musically speaking, these
two men are Bohemia. And yet, paradoxical as it may
seem, they can be really understood only when studied
in relation to their national background, when con-
sidered the spokesmen of an otherwise voiceless but
richly endowed race. This is the paradox, indeed, of
all so-called 'national' composers. From one point of
view they are personally unimportant; their eloquence
is that of the race that speaks through them; and we
listen to them less as men of a general humanity than
as a special sort of men from a particular spot of
earth. Thus Mr. W. H. Hadow, in his admirable essay
on Dvorak,* does not hesitate to say of the eighteenth
century Bohemian musicians, Mysliveczek, Beicha, and
Dussek, all of whom lived abroad: 'We may find in
their denial of their country a conclusive reason for
their ultimate failure.' Shift the standpoint a little,
* 'Studies in Modern Music/ by W. H. Hadow, Second Series.
165
MODERN MUSIC
however, and it is obvious that something more is nec-
essary for a Bohemian musician than to live at home
and to incorporate the national melodies, or even ex-
press the national temperament, in his compositions.
He must, that is, have gone to school to the best masters
of the music of the whole world not literally, of
course, but by study of their works; he must thus have
become a past master of his craft; above all, he must
be a great individual, whatever his country, a man of
broad sympathy, warm heart, and keen intelligence.
'Theme,' wrote one who realized this on the occasion
of Dvorak's death,* 'is not the main thing in any art;
the part that counts is the manner of handling the
theme. When books are good enough they are litera-
ture, and when music is good enough it is music.
Whether it be "national" or not matters not a jot.' Both
of the truths that oppose each other to form this para-
dox are repeatedly exemplified in the history of music
in Bohemia.
The Czechs, or Bohemians, like other Slavic peoples,
are extremely gifted in music by nature; but, while
their cousins, the Russians, exemplify this gift largely in
songs of a melancholy cast, they are, on the contrary,
gay and sociable, and rejoice above all in dancing.
They are said to have no less than forty native dances.
Of these the most famous is the polka, improvised in
1830 by a Bohemian farm girl, and quickly dissemi-
nated over the whole world. The wild 'furiant' and the
meditative poetic 'dumka' have been happily used by
Smetana, Dvorak, and others. Still other dances bear
such unpronounceable names as the beseda, the dudik,
the hulan, the kozak, the sedldk, the trinozka. They
are accompanied by the national instrument, the
'dudy,' a sort of bagpipe. 'On the whole,' says Mr.
Waldo S. Pratt, f 'Bohemian . . . music shows a fond-
* The Musical Courier, New York, May 4, 1904.
t 'History of Music.'
166
CHARACTERISTICS OF CZECH MUSIC
ness for noisy and hilarious forms whose origin is in
ardent social merrymaking, or for somewhat grandiose
and sumptuous effects, such as imply a half-barbaric
notion of splendor. In these respects the eastern music
stands in contrast with the much more personal and
subjective musical poesy to which northern composers
have tended.' This characterization, it is interesting to
note, would apply as well to the music of Smetana and
Dvorak, in which the kind of thoughtfulness we find
in Schumann is almost always wanting, as to the folk-
music of their country.
The songs, if naturally less boisterous than the
dances, are animated, forthright, and cheerful, rather
than profound. They are usually in major rather than
in minor, and vigorous though graceful in rhythm. As
in the spoken language the accent is almost always
put on the first word or syllable, the music usually be-
gins, too, with an accented note. Another peculiarity
that may be traceable to the language is that the
phrases are very apt to have an uneven number of ac-
cents, such as three or five, instead of the two or four to
which we are accustomed. This gives them, for our
ears, an indescribable piquant charm. On the other
hand, as Bohemia is the most western of Slav coun-
tries, and consequently the nearest to the seats of mu-
sical culture in Germany, its songs show in the regu-
larity of their structure and sometimes in considerably
extended development of the musical thought, a su-
periority over those of more remote and inaccessible
lands. Music has been taught, too, for many genera-
tions in the Bohemian schools as carefully as 'the three
R's,' and it is usual for the village school teachers to
act also as organists, choir- and bandmasters. The Bo-
hemian common people seem really to love music.
It has been truly said : 'If a Bohemian school of music
can now be said to exist, it is as much due to the peas-
167
MODERN MUSIC
ant as to the conscious efforts of Bendl, Smetana, Fi-
bich, A. Stradal, and Dvorak.' *
As in Poland, Russia, Italy, and other countries, how-
ever, music suffered long in Bohemia from political
oppressions and from lack of leadership. In the seven-
teenth century, after the Thirty Years' War, Bohemia,
in spite of her proud past, found herself enslaved, in-
tellectually as well as politically. Her music was over-
laid and smothered by fashions imported from Ger-
many, France, and Italy, and her gifted musicians, as
Mr. Hadow points out, emigrated thither. During the
eighteenth century her Germanization was almost com-
plete, and even the Czech language seemed in danger
of dying out. George Benda (1721-1795) wrote four-
teen operas for the German stage; Anton Reicha (1770-
1836) settled in Paris as a teacher; J. L. Dussek (1761-
1812) , best known of all, was a cosmopolitan musician,
more German than Czech.
Then, early in the nineteenth century, began a grad-
ual reassertion, timid and halting at first, of the na-
tional individuality. Kalliwoda, Kittl, Dionys Weber,
and others tried to restore the prestige of the folk-
songs; Tomaczek founded instrumental works upon
them; Skroup made in 1826 a collection of them. This
Frantisek Skroup (1801-1862) deserves as much as any
single musician to be considered the pioneer of the
Czech renaissanace. Conductor of the Bohemian Thea-
tre at Prague, he composed the first typically national
operas, performed in 1825 and later, and the most uni-
versally loved of Bohemian songs, 'Where is My Home?'
His life spans the whole period of gestation of the
movement, for it was in 1862, the year of his death, that
it reached tangible fruition in the founding of the na-
tional opera house, the 'Interimstheater,' at Prague.
Two years before this, in October, 1860, the gift of
* Mrs. Edmond Wodehouse ; article, 'Song,' in Grove's Dictionary of
Music.
168
FRIEDRIGH SMETANA
political liberty had been granted Bohemia by Austrian
imperial diploma. In May, 1861, Smetana, most gifted
of native musicians, had returned from a long sojourn
in Sweden. Thus the national music now found itself
for the first time with an abiding place, liberty, and a
great leader.
Friedrich Smetana, born at Leitomischl, Bohemia,
March 2, 1824, showed pronounced musical talent from
the first, and was highly successful as a boy pianist.
His father, however, averse to his becoming a profes-
sional musician, refused to support him when in his
nineteenth year he went to Prague to study. The se-
vere struggle with poverty and even hunger which he
had at this time, together with his close application to
the theory of music, may have had something to do
with the nervous and mental troubles which later over-
took him. His need of study was great, for his musical
experience had hitherto been chiefly of the national
dances and other popular pieces. In 1848, looking over
a manuscript composition of six years before, he noted
on its title page that it had been 'written in the utter
darkness of mental musical education,' and was pre-
served as 'a curiosity of natural composition' only at
the request of 'the owner' that is, his friend Katharina
Kolar, who in 1849 became his wife. He settled for a
time in Prague as a teacher, and even opened a school
of his own; but musical conditions in Bohemia were
at that time so primitive that in 1857 he accepted an
appointment as director of a choral and orchestral so-
ciety at Gothenburg in Sweden.
During his residence abroad he composed, in addi-
tion to many piano pieces and small works, three sym-
phonic poems in which are to be found much of the
spontaneity and buoyancy of thought and the brilliancy
of orchestral coloring of his later works of this type.
These are 'Richard III' (1858), 'Wallensteins Lager'
(1859), and 'Hakon Jarl' (1861). Nevertheless he had
169
MODERN MUSIC
not yet really found his place. In 1859 his wife died,
and the following year he married Barbara Ferdinandi,
a Bohemian. It was partly due to her homesickness,
partly to the projected erection of the Interimstheater,
that he decided to return to Prague in 1861. He was
then nearly forty, but his lifework was still ahead of
him. He entered with enthusiasm into the national
movement. He established with Ferdinand Heller a
music school, through which he secured an ample liv-
ing. He was one of the founders of a singing society,
and also of a general society for the development of
Bohemian arts. Above all, he began the long series of
operas written for the new national opera house with
'The Brandenbergers in Bohemia,' composed in 1863,
and 'The Bartered Bride' (1866). Later came Dalibor
(1868), Libusa, composed in 1872 but not performed
until 1881, Die beiden Witwen (1873-74), Der Kuss
(1876), Das Geheimnis (1878), and Die Teufelsmauer
(1882).
The most famous of Smetana's operas, 'The Bartered
Bride,' performed for the first time at Prague, in 1866,
became only gradually known outside Bohemia, but is
now a favorite all over the world. It is a story of vil-
lage life, full of intrigue, love, and drollery. To this
spirited and amusing story Smetana has set equally
amusing and spirited music. From the whirling violin
figures of the overture to the final chord the good hu-
mor remains unquenchable. In the polka closing Act I
and the furiant opening Act II is village merriment of
the most contagious kind; in the march of the showman
and his troupe, in the third act, orchestrated for drums,
cymbals, trumpet, and piccolo, is humor of the broad-
est; and in Wenzel's stammering song, opening the
same act, is characterization of a more subtle kind, in
which humor and real feeling are blended as only a
master can blend them. There are, too, many passages
of simple tenderness, notably Marie's air and the duet
170
FRIEDRICH SMETANA
of the lovers in the first scene, and their terzet with
Kezal in the last, in which is revealed the composer's
unfailing fund of lyrical melody. 'This opera,' says
Mr. Philip Hale,* 'was a step in a new direction, for
it united the richness of melody, as seen in Mozart's
operas, with a new and modern comprehension of the
purpose of operatic composition, the accuracy of char-
acterization, the wish to be realistic.' We may note,
furthermore, how free is this realism of Smetana's
from the brutality of some more modern operas on
similar subjects, such as those of Mascagni, Leonca-
vallo, and Puccini. The village life depicted in 'The
Bartered Bride' is never repulsive; it is not even tragic;
it is simply pathetic, comic, and endlessly appealing.
The simplicity of the musical idiom is notable. Not
only does the composer incorporate folk-tunes bodily
when it suits his purpose, as in the case of the polka and
furiant already mentioned, but the melodies he invents
himself are often equally simple, even naive, and har-
monized with a similar artlessness. The haunting re-
frain of the love duet might be sung by village serena-
ders. Yet this simplicity is the simplicity of distinction,
not that of commonplaceness. There is ; a purity, a
chivalric tenderness about it that can never be counter-
feited by mediocrity, and that is in many of Smetana's
tunes, as it is in Schubert's and in Mozart's. It is a
very cheap form of snobbism that criticises such art as
this for its lack of the complexities of the German mu-
sic-drama or symphony. Smetana himself said: 'As
Wagner writes, we cannot compose' he might have
added 'and would not.' 'To us,' says Mr. Hadow,
speaking of the Bohemian composers in general, 'to us,
who look upon Prague from the standpoints of Dres-
den or Vienna, the music of these men may seem un-
duly artless and immature: with Wagner on the one
side, with Brahms on the other, we have little time to
* 'Famous Composers and Their Works,' New Series, Vol. I, p. 178.
171
MODERN MUSIC
bestow on tentative efforts and incomplete production.
Some day we shall learn that we are in error. The
"Bartered Bride" is an achievement that would do
credit to any nation in Europe.'
One effect of the great success of his opera was that
Smetana was appointed conductor of the opera house.
A few years later, in 1873, he also became director of
the opera school connected with it, and one of the two
conductors of the concerts of the Philharmonic So-
ciety at Prague. All these promising new activities,
however, were suddenly arrested by a terrible affliction,
perhaps the worst that can happen to a musician deaf-
ness. On the score of the Vysehrad, composed in 1874,
the first of the series of six symphonic poems which
bears the general title 'My Country' and constitutes
his masterpiece in pure orchestral music, is the note,
'In a condition of ear-suffering.' The second, Vltava,
composed later in the same year, bears the inscription,
'In complete deafness.' It was indeed in 1874 that he
was obliged to give up all conducting. Part of a letter
which he wrote some years later is worth quoting, both
for the particulars it gives as to his trouble, and for
the fine spirit of manly endurance it reveals, recalling
vividly the similar spirit displayed by Beethoven in his
famous letter to his brothers. 'The loud buzzing and
roaring in the head,' he says, 'as though I were standing
under a great waterfall, remains to-day, and continues
day and night without any interruption, louder when
my mind is employed actively, and weaker when I am
in a calmer condition of mind. When I compose the
buzzing is noisier. I hear absolutely nothing, not even
my own voice. Shrill tones, as the cry of a child or
the barking of a dog, 1 hear very well, just as I do loud
whistling, and yet, I cannot determine what the noise
is, or where it comes from. Conversation with me is
impossible. I hear my own piano playing only in fancy,
not in reality. I cannot hear the playing of anybody
172
FRIEDRIGH SMETANA
else, not even the performance of a full orchestra in
opera or in concert. I do not think that it is possible
for me to improve. I have no pain in the ear, and the
physicians agree that my disease is none of the familiar
diseases of the ear, but something else, perhaps a par-
alysis of the nerves and the labyrinth. And so I am
completely determined to endure my sad fate in a
manly and calm way as long as I live.'
Aside from its deep musical beauty, a peculiar inter-
est attaches to the string quartet entitled by Smetana
Aus meinen Leben ('From My Life') because of the ac-
count it gives in tones of his great affliction. The auto-
biographical character is maintained throughout. The
first movement, in E minor, allegro vivo appassionato,
with its constant turbulence and restless aspiration,
depicts, according to the composer, his 'predisposition
toward romanticism.' The second, quasi polka, 'bears
me,' he says, 'back to the joyance of my youth, when as
composer I overwhelmed the world with dance tunes
and was known as a passionate dancer.' The largo
sostenato, the third movement, perhaps musically the
finest of all, is built on two exceedingly earnest and
noble melodies which are worked out with elaborate
and most felicitous embroidering detail. They tell of
the composer's love for his wife and his happy mar-
riage. Of all the movements the finale is the most
dramatic. Indeed, it is one of the most dramatic pieces
in all chamber music. It opens in E major, Vivace, for-
tissimo an indescribable bustle of happy folk themes
jostling each other. A buoyant secondary melody is a
little quieter but still full of childlike joy. These two
themes alternate in rondo fashion, are developed with
never-flagging energy, and suggest the composer's joy
in his native folk-music and its use in his art. At the
height of the jollity there is a sudden pause, a sinister
tremolo of the middle strings, and the first violin sounds
a long high E, shrill, piercing, insistent. 'It is,' says
173
MODERN MUSIC
Smetana, 'the harmful piping of the highest tone in my
ear that in 1878 announced my deafness.' * All the
bustle dies away, we hear reminiscences, full now of a
tragic meaning, of the themes of the first movement,
and the music dies out with a mournful murmuring of
the viola and a few pizzicato chords.
If the string quartet is thus intimately personal in a
high degree, the series of orchestral tone-poems, 'My
Country,' dedicated to the city of Prague, is national in
scope. Number I, Vysehrad, depicts the ancient fort-
ress, once a scene of glory, and its melancholy decline
into ruin and decay. In Number II, Vltava or 'The
Moldau,' the most popular of all, we hear the two tiny
rivulets which, rising in the mountain, flow down and
unite to form the mighty river Moldau. 'Sarka,' the
third (1875), refers to a valley north of the capital,
which was named for the noblest of mythical Bohe-
mian amazons. 'From Bohemia's Fields and Groves,'
Number IV (1875), is built on several intensely Czechic
tunes, and reaches a dizzying climax on a most de-
lightful polka theme. In 'Tabor,' Number V (1878), is
introduced the favorite war-chorale of the Taborites.
The last of the series, Blanik (1879), pictures the
mountain on which the Hussite warriors sleep until
they shall have to fight again for their country. The
orchestration of the whole series is as brilliant as the
themes are spirited and attractive, and they are uni-
versal favorites in the concert hall.
Smetana wrote a good deal of choral and piano mu-
sic, as well as other orchestral works; but it is by 'My
Country,' the quartet, and 'The Bartered Bride' that he
will continue to be known. Fortunately for him, his
greatness was recognized during his lifetime; he was
idolized by his countrymen; and he knew the pleasure
of public triumphs at the fiftieth anniversary, in 1880,
* Actually, it was not E, but the chord of the sixth of A-flat, in high
position, that constantly rang in Smetana's ear.
174
ANTONIN DVORAK
of his first appearance as a pianist, at the opening of
the new national theatre in 1881, and on other occa-
sions. But when his sixtieth birthday, March 2, 1884,
was honored by a national festival, he was unable to
be present for a tragic reason. His nerves had been
troubling him for some time. When Die Teufelsmauer
was coldly received in 1882 he said, 'I am, then, at last
too old, and I ought not to write anything more, be-
cause nobody wishes to hear from me.' Later he com-
plained, 'I feel myself tired out, sleepy, and I fear that
the quickness of musical thoughts has gone from me.*
Gradually he lost his memory and his power to read.
He was not permitted by the doctors to compose or
even to think music. Only a few weeks before his
sixtieth birthday he had to be put in an asylum, and
there, without regaining his mind, he died, May 12,
1884.
II
Untoward as was Smetana's personal fate, he was
fortunate artistically in having at hand a younger
contemporary of genius equal and similar to his to
whom he could pass on the torch he had lighted. His
friend and protege, Antonin Dvorak, at this time forty-
two years old, had not only felt his direct influence
during formative years, but resembled him in tempera-
ment and in artistic ideals to a degree remarkable even
for fellow citizens of a small country like Bohemia.
Both were impulsive, impressionable, unreflective in
temper; both found in the strong dance rhythms and
the simple yet poignant melodies of the people their
natural expression; in both the classic qualities reti-
cence, restraint, balance were acquired rather than
instinctive. In Dvorak, however, there was an even
greater richness and sensuous warmth than in the older
man, and his music is thus, in the memorable phrase
of Mr. Hadow, 'more Corinthian than, Doric,' has 'a
175
MODERN MUSIC
certain opulence, a certain splendor and luxury to
which few other musicians have attained.'
Antonin Dvorak, born in 1841, eldest of eight chil-
dren of the village butcher in Nelahozeves on the Mol-
dau, knew poverty and music from his earliest days.
At fourteen he could sing and play the violin, the piano,
and the organ. A year later came his first appearance
as an orchestral composer. Planning to persuade his
reluctant father by practical demonstration that he
was destined to write music, he prepared for the village
band an original polka, with infinite pains, but alas ! in
ignorance that the brass instruments do not play the
exact notes written. He wrote what he wanted to hear,
but what he heard might well have induced him to
resign himself to butchery. That it did not, that he
still held out against parental opposition and was
finally allowed to go to Prague, is an evidence of that
tenacity which was in the essence of his character. At
Prague he entered the Organ School, played in churches
and restaurants, and earned about nine dollars a
month, on which he lived. An occasional concert he
managed to hear by hiding behind the kettledrums of
a friendly player, but classical music he met for the
first time when, already twenty-one, he borrowed some
scores of Beethoven and Mendelssohn from Smetana.
Symphonic composition he acquired laboriously and
with surprising skill; the polka and the furiant were
in his blood.
He now spent about ten years composing industri-
ously, in poverty and complete obscurity. In 1871
came the long-awaited chance to emerge, in the shape
of an invitation to write an opera for the national
theatre. In writing this his first opera, 'The King and
the Collier' (Prague, 1874), he allowed himself to be
misled by his curious facility in imitating other styles
than his own. Mr. Hadow tells the story at length.
The point of it is that Dvorak, acting on a momentary
176
ANTONIN DVORAK
enthusiasm for Wagner, which his music shows that
he afterwards outgrew, committed the surprising folly
of giving his countrymen, at the very moment when
they were initiating a successful campaign for native
art, a Wagnerian music-drama under the guise of Czech
operetta! It was only a momentary aberration, but it
is worth mentioning because it illustrates a child-like
uncriticalness which was as much a part of Dvorak as
his freshness of feeling, his love of color, and his per-
sistence. Soon realizing his error he rewrote the music
in a more appropriate style. It then appeared that
the libretto, too, was wrong. Anyone else would have
given the matter up in disgust; but Dvorak had the
book also rewritten, and in this third version his work
won him his first operatic success.*
Soon he began to be known outside Bohemia. In
1875 he received a grant from the Austrian Ministry of
Education, on the strength of a symphony and an opera
submitted. Two years later, offering to the same body
his Moravian duets and some of his recent chamber
music, he was fortunate enough to have them exam-
ined by Brahms, one of the committee. Brahms cor-
dially recommended his work to Simrock, the great
Berlin music publishing house, with the result that his
compositions began to be widely disseminated and he
was commissioned to write a set of characteristic na-
tional dances. The result of this commission was the
first set of Slavonic Dances, opus 46, later supplemented
by eight more, opus 72. These dances are as charac-
teristic as any of Dvorak's Works. Their melodic and
rhythmic animation is indescribable; while the basis is
national folk-song the themes are imaginatively treated
and led through many distant keys with the happy
inconsequence peculiar to Dvorak; and the whole is
* His operas are: Der Konig und der Kohler (1874), Die Dickschadel
(1882), Wanda (1876), Der Bauer ein Schelm (1877), Dimitrije (1882),
Jacobin (1889), Der Teufel und die wilde Kdthe (1899), Roussalka (1901),
Armida (1904).
177
MODERN MUSIC
orchestrated with the richness, variety, and delicacy
that make him one of the greatest orchestral masters of
all time. The same qualities are found in the beautiful
Slavonic Rhapsodies, the overtures Mein Heim and
Husitska, both based on Czechish melodies, and, mixed
with more classic elements, in the two sets of sym-
phonic variations and the five symphonies.
In the choral field Dvorak is best known by his ad-
mirable Stabat Mater (1883), written in a pure classical
style, as if based on the best Italian models, and of
large inspiration. There are also an oratorio 'St. Lud-
mila' (1886), more conventional, a requiem mass, and
several cantatas. Of many sets of beautiful solo songs,
special mention may be made of the Gypsy Songs, opus
55, 1m Volkston, opus 73, and the 'Love Songs,' opus
83. The duets, 'Echos of Moravia,' are fine. There is
much piano music, too, but charming as are the 'Hu-
moresques,' opus 101, the 'Poetic Mood-Pictures,' opus
85, and some others, it may be said that Dvorak is less
at home with the piano than with other instruments.
On the other hand, one might with reason place his
chamber music even higher than his orchestral work,
for it is as admirably suited to its medium, and its
soberer palette restrains his almost barbaric love of
color. His pianoforte quintet in A major, opus 81,
with its broadly conceived allegro, its tender andante,
founded on the elegiac dumka of his country, and its
immensely spirited scherzo and finale, is surely one of
the finest quintets written since Schumann immortal-
ized the combination. As for his string quartets, they
must equally take their place in the front rank of
modern chamber music, beside the quartets of Brahms,
Franck, Tschaikowsky, and d'Indy. The last two, opera
105 and 106, are perhaps the best. Those who charge
Dvorak with 'lack of depth' would do well to penetrate
a little more deeply themselves into such things as the
Lento e molto cantabile of the former.
178
Bohemian Composers
Antonin Dvofak
Zdenko Fibich
Friedrich Smetana
Joseph Suk
oo
Ot>. 1 11
mil*
with
ANTONIN DVORAK
A special niche among the works of this wondrously
fertile mind must be reserved for the so-called Ameri-
can works, written during his sojourn in New York in
the early nineties. These are the Quartet, opus 96, the
Quintet, opus 97, and the famous symphony, 'From the
New World,' opus 95. The importance of the negro
element in these works has perhaps been exaggerated.
It is true that we find in them the rhythmic snap of
rag-time, the melancholy crooning cadences of the 'spir-
ituals,' and even the scale of five notes ('pentatonic
scale') . It is even true that there is a more or less close
resemblance between some of their themes and certain
well-known songs, as, for instance, between the second
theme of the first movement of the symphony and
'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,' or between the scherzo
of the Quintet and 'Old Man Moses, He Sells Roses.'
But, after all, the treatment is more important than
the theme; and it is because Dvorak is a great musician
that the pathos of the largo in the symphony moves
us as it does, and that he can make us as merry with a
bit of rag-time as with a furiant. He was one of the
musicians most richly endowed by nature, and one
who knew nothing of national boundaries; he was,
indeed, a veritable Schubert in fertility and spontaneity.
And, as it was said of Schubert that he 'could set a
wall-advertisement to music,' so it might be said of
Dvorak that he could have made even Indian tunes in-
teresting had he tried. It is pleasant to add that he
got universal love in response to this more than Midas-
like transmuting power of his, and that the poor Bo-
hemian boy, after becoming rich and famous, died full
of honors, but as simple at heart as ever, in 1904. He
was described in an obituary notice as Tan Antonin of
the sturdy little figure, the jovial smile, the kindly
heart, and the school-girl modesty.'
Of other Bohemian composers contemporary with or
earlier than Dvorak none are of sufficient importance
179
MODERN MUSIC
to require more than briefest mention. These are: Jo-
seph Nesvadba (1824-1876), who wrote Bohemian songs
and choral works; Franz Skuhersky (1830-1892), who
wrote Czech operas, chamber music, and theoretical
works; Menzel Theodor Bradsky (1833-1881), who
wrote both German and Czech operas; Joseph Roz-
kosny (born 1833), who wrote Czech operas, masses,
songs, and instrumental music; and Wilhelm Blodek
(1834-1874), who wrote Czech operas and instrumental
music. A somewhat more important figure is that of
Karl Bendl (1838-1897), composer of Czech operas and
ballets, who was conductor of the chief choral society
in Prague, influential in the Interimstheater, and who
'jointly with Smetana and Dvorak enjoys the distinc-
tion of winning general recognition for Czech musical
art.' His operas Lejla, Bretislav and Jitka, Cernahorei,
Karel Streta, and Dite Tabora are all on the standing
repertory of the National Theatre at Prague.
Adalbert Hrimaly (1842-1908), who wrote Czech op-
eras, and whose 'Enchanted Prince' (1870) has proved
a lasting success, deserves mention in this place.
Ill
Between Smetana and Dvorak and the contemporary
Bohemians stands Zdenko Fibich, a most prolific com-
poser, well known in Bohemia but little heard of out-
side it. Fibich was born at Leborschitz in Bohemia,
December 21, 1850. Studying at Prague and later at
the Leipzig Conservatory, he became in 1876 assistant
conductor of the National Theatre in Prague, and in
1878 director of the Russian Church choir. He is said
to have written over seven hundred works, but they are
more facile than profound. Of his many Czechish
operas the most successful was 'Sarka' (1898). He
was much interested in the musical form known as
'melodrama' (not to be confused with the stage melo-
180
FIBICH AND OTHERS
drama). It is a recited action accompanied by music;
classic examples are Schumann's 'Manfred' and Bizet's
L'Arlesienne. Fibich wrote six melodramas, three
'scenic melodramas,' and a melodramatic trilogy, Hip-
podamia (text by Brchliky, 1891). His orchestral
works include several symphonic poems, two sympho-
nies, and several overtures, of which 'A Night on Karl-
stein' is well known. He also wrote chamber music,
songs and choruses, piano pieces, and a method for
pianoforte. He died in 1900.
A number of minor composers, contemporaries of
Fibich, are only of local importance for their Czechish
operas, produced in Prague. Such are Heinrich von
Kaan-Albest (born 1852), director of the Prague Con-
servatory in 1907; Vasa Suk (born 1861), composer of
the opera Der Waldkonig (1900) ; Karl Navratil (born
1867), who writes symphonic poems and chamber mu-
sic; and Karl Kovafovic (born 1862), conductor of the
Royal Bohemian Landes and National-Theater. This
theatre was erected in 1883, by subscription from
Czechs in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, northern Hun-
gary, even the colony in America. The Austrian gov-
ernment is said to be not very favorable to it, vetoing
the posting of placards announcing performances in
Austrian watering places. The subsidy is raised by
the country of Bohemia, not by the government. In
August, 1903, a cycle of operas was given here, includ-
ing Fibich's 'The Fall of Arcana,' Kovaf ovic's Tetes de
chien, Nedbal's Le Gros Jean* Dvorak's Roussalka
and several operas of Smetana.
A better known composer of Czechish operas is Emil
Nikolaus von Reznicek, who was, however, born not in
Bohemia but at Vienna, May 4, 1861. His comic opera
Donna Diana, produced in 1894 at Prague, made so
great a success that in a short time it was heard in
* Oscar Nedbal (born 1874), pupil of Dvofak, conductor, and viola of
the well-known Bohemian Quartet.
181
MODERN MUSIC
forty-three European opera-houses. Other operas by
him are Die Jungfraii von Orleans (1887), Satanella
(1888), Emmerich fortunat (1889), and Till Eulen-
spiegel (1901), on the subject made famous by
Strauss's witty symphonic poem. For orchestra he has
written a Tragic Symphony,' an 'Ironic Symphony,' an
'Idyllic Overture,' a 'Comedy Overture,' two symphonic
suites, etc., while a string quartet was played by the
Dessau Quartet at Berlin in 1906.
Fibich's pupil O. Ostrcil, whose contrapuntal skill
and brilliant orchestration testify to his ability, has
written the operas 'Kunal's Eyes,' 'The Fall of Wlasta,'
and 'Buds' (Knospen), also an Impromptu and a Suite
for orchestra. Of the pupils of Dvorak Rudolf Karel
has written a symphony in E-flat minor and Jugend, a
symphonic poem in which he pictures the struggles of a
youth of genius; and Alois Reiser is known as the com-
poser of an opera, Gobi, showing melodic and harmonic
originality without exaggeration, and of a trio, a 'cello
concerto, and solo pieces for violin in which his na-
tionality is reflected. Other contemporaries are Ottokar
Jeremias (symphonies, overtures, and chamber music)
and his brother Jaroslav Jeremias, a follower in his
two operas of modern French tendencies; K. Kricka,
W. Stepan, J. Maxner, B. Novotny, and others.
Without doubt the two most important living Bo-
hemian composers are Joseph Suk and Viteslav Novak.
Suk, who was born at Kfecovic, January 4, 1874, be-
came a pupil of Dvorak at the Prague Conservatory in
1888, and later married his daughter. He is second
violin of the Bohemian Quartet. Among his works may
be mentioned a 'Dramatic Overture,' an overture to
'A Winter's Tale,' a Symphony in E, a suite entitled 'A
Fairy Tale,' a piano quartet, a piano quintet, and two
string quartets. The symphony (in E major, op. 14,
published in Berlin) has charm and is most skillfully
written, especially for the strings, like everything by
182
SUK AND NOVAK
this violinist-composer, but is somewhat prolix and
student-like, revealing Dvorak in many places, and in
the finale containing a theme too obviously suggested
by the overture to Smetana's 'The Bartered Bride.' 'A
Fairy Tale,' op. 16, sonorously and brilliantly scored, is
of programmistic character, especially the fourth move-
ment. Both of these orchestral works introduce a
number of folk-themes. This is also the case in an
early string quartet, op. 11 (1896), in B-flat major, the
finale of which is built on a polka tune in six-bar
phrases.
If one were to judge him by these things one would
say that Suk was a skillful violinist who thoroughly
understood how to write for his instrument, that he
had caught much of the charm of Bohemian folk-mel-
ody and especially of Dvorak's way of treating it, but
that his musical expression was neither very far-reach-
ing nor very original. He may have felt this himself,
for in his second quartet, op. 31, published in 1911, he
has thrown over his earlier style completely, and
adopted a so-called 'modern idiom.' The work is
played in one movement, without pauses. It is full of
changes of tempo and of key, extremely complicated in
harmony, frightfully difficult for the players as regards
intonation, and difficult for the listeners, too, from its
spasmodic and constantly changing character. So far
as one can tell about such a work from reading the
score, it would seem as if the composer had abandoned
his natural speech here without gaining real eloquence
in exchange. Whether he be misguided or not, how-
ever, there can be no doubt of his marked natural tal-
ent for the same kind of impulsive, fresh musical ex-
pression we find in Smetana and Dvorak.
The music of Novak, on the other hand, if less im-
mediately ingratiating, is much more thoughtful. The
influence of Dvorak is less felt in it than those of
Schumann and Brahms. Although the Bohemian and
183
MODERN MUSIC
also the allied Moravian and Hungarian-Slovak folk-
melodies are to some extent drawn upon for material,
the treatment is more intellectual than popular, rhyth-
mic subtleties abound, and the types of construction
are often highly complex and ingenious, there being
considerable use of those cyclic transformations of a
single theme throughout a long composition to which
Cesar Franck and his school attribute so high a value.
It is worth noting that Novak, who was born December
5, 1870, at Kamenitz, Bohemia, is a man of general as
well as technical education, having attended the Bo-
hemian University and the Conservatory of Music at
Prague. He has continued to live in Prague as a music
teacher, several times receiving a state grant for com-
position. Among his works are an Overture to a Mo-
ravian Popular Drama, op. 18, the symphonic poems
'On the Lofty Tatra,' op. 26, and 'Eternal Longing,' op.
33, a 'Slovak Suite,' op. 32, two piano trios, two string
quartets, a piano quartet, a piano quintet, and a piano
sonata.
In his early compositions Novak shows the influence
of the German romantic school, as in the trio, op. 1,
with its somewhat pompous main theme and its con-
trasting theme for 'cello solo, verging dangerously upon
the sentimental. The piano quartet, op. 7 (1900), on a
striking and even noble theme, suffers from Brahmsian
mannerisms of style and a treatment at times drily
academic. On the other hand, the piano quintet, op.
12 (published in 1904, but doubtless written much
earlier) , on a plaintively poetic folk-theme in A minor,
and the first string quartet, op. 22 (1902), show clearly
the more native influence of his master Dvorak. He
thus shows the impressionability of all really highly-
endowed minds, and in his mature works writes with
as much flexibility as authority. The Trio quasi una
Ballata, op. 27 (1903), and the second string quartet,
op. 35 (1906), are masterpieces.
184
SUK AND NOVAK
The trio is dramatic and powerful in expression,
original in style and structure. It begins, andante
tragico, with a fine bold melody, of folk character, in
D minor, given out by the violin, and later powerfully
developed by the piano. A secondary section in D-flat,
also somewhat 'folkish,' immediately follows, without
break. Next, again without pause, comes a 'quasi
scherzo, allegro burlesca' in G minor, the 'trio' of which
is ingeniously derived from the main theme of the
work. Recitative-like passages in the strings and ca-
denzas for the piano then lead back to the original
andante theme, worked out in combination with sub-
sidiary matter and bringing the whole to an impressive
soft close.
The string quartet in D major is equally original,
though different in mood. Dramatic declamation here
gives place to a meditative thoughtfulness especially
suited to the four strings. There are but two move-
ments. The first is a fugue, largo misterioso, on a de-
liberate, impressive theme, in the mood of the later
Beethoven a fugue admirably fresh and spontaneous,
with the accepted 'inversions' of the theme and so on,
to be sure, but coming less as academic prescriptions
than as natural flowerings of the thought. The second
movement, Fantasia, is composite, containing first sug-
gestions of the root theme (of the fugue), introducing
a sort of sonata-exposition in which the same fugue
then figures as first subject and a new melody as sec-
ond; then, instead of a development, a scherzo section,
derived again from the root theme; then the recapitu-
lation of the two themes, completing the suggested so-
nata; and finally, a literal repetition of the last three
pages of the fugue movement, thus binding the two
parts into unity. The scheme of construction is thus as
original as the music itself is impressive and beautiful.
If Novak can avoid the pitfall of over-intellectualism
peculiar to his temperament, he may easily become one
185
MODERN MUSIC
of the most vital forces in contemporary European
music.
D. G. M.
IV
It may appear surprising at first that Hungary, a
thousand-year-old nation, has not until our own day
achieved an independent cultural existence, and more
especially an individual musical art. For we know
that the Magyar race is inherently musical and recent
researches have unearthed unsuspected treasures of
folk-song as ancient as they are characteristic. There
has indeed been for some time a recognized Hungarian
'flavor' utilized in the manner of an exotic by various
composers, notably Brahms and Liszt, and the dance
rhythms so utilized have proved no less fascinating
than those of the Slavs, for instance. But native Hun-
garian composers have not until recently developed
these artistic germs with sufficient ability to arouse the
attention of the musical world.
When we consider the political condition of Hungary
during its long history, however, we no longer wonder
at the dearth of national culture. Twice the country
was utterly desolated, for ages the people possessed no
political independence, no constitution, and did not
use their own language indeed their native tongue
was suppressed by a tyrannical government until late
in the nineteenth century. With the recrudescence of
national independence there came, as elsewhere, a re-
vival of nationalistic culture, and it is nothing short
of remarkable that within hardly more than a genera-
tion Hungary has raised itself, in music especially, to
a point where its own sons are capable of brilliant
and characteristically native achievement. At any rate
it argues eloquently for the profound musical and po-
etic instincts which were latent in the race.
A brief historical review of early musical endeavor
186
EARLY MUSICAL ENDEAVOR IN HUNGARY
in Hungary may not be without value as an introduc-
tion to our treatment of its modern composers. When
the Hungarians first occupied their present country
(A. D. 896) they found no music whatever in their new
home. The musical instinct born in them, however,
was very strong, for they sang when praying, when pre-
paring for war, at burials and festivals, and their first
Christian king, Stephan I (997-1038), founded a school
where singing was taught. In fact, the po^wer of music
was respected so much that early musicians were called
hegedos, a word not derived from the Hungarian
hegedti (violin), but from heged 'having healed the
wounds.' In the fourteenth century, when the first gyp-
sies migrated to Hungary, they found there a people
whose music was already so highly developed that the
newcomers themselves learned their melodies from
them. It was through the songs of the Hungarians that
the gypsies became famous, and we have to bear in
mind that the great merit of the gypsies was not in
creating melodies, but in making them popularly
known from generation to generation.
Under the reign of the great national king, Mathias I
(1458-1490), music flourished and was even highly
cherished. The king, who made Hungary one of the
greatest powers of Europe in that period, possessed an
organ with silver pipes, and an orchestra. He also had
in his service numerous court singers, who sang of the
heroic deeds of national heroes. That musicians were
highly esteemed there we infer from the fact that such
musicians as Adrian Willaert and Thomas Stolzer were
in the service of King Louis II (1516-1526). After the
battle of Mohacs (1526) the whole country was brought
under the yoke of the Turks, and almost every trace
of the high culture of the Hungarians was destroyed,
so that we possess nothing of the musical treasures of
this period. Collections of religious chants (from the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) show that sacred
187
MODERN MUSIC
music exerted a notable influence upon Hungarian folk-
music. The folk element, however, was already very
strong at the time of Sebastian Tinody (1510-1554),
whose historical songs displayed genuine and pure
Hungarian qualities. Not before the middle of the six-
teenth century was the character of Hungarian music
reflected outside of Hungary at first in pieces called
Passamezzo and Ongaro, published in various German
and Italian collections.
In tracing the further development of Hungarian
music we find that in the latter part of the seventeenth
century some stage productions included songs. At
about the same time the Rakoczyan era of national
struggles brought forth many beautiful and impressive
melodies. These treasures were of no small influence
upon the evolution of national music, brought into still
greater prominence by musicians whom we may call
the real originators of the Hungarian idiom. They
were Lavotta (1764-1820), Csermak (1771-1822), and
Bihari (1769-1827). Lavotta's compositions were gen-
uinely characteristic Hungarian products, showing
mastery of invention and skill in handling the national
rhythms. He possessed a vivid fancy and a wealth of
ideas, but no technique. While his most important
work had the promising title of 'The Siege of Sziget-
var,' * it was composed for a solo violin without ac-
companiment and its musical ideas were not over eight
to sixteen measures in length. Lavotta's other com-
positions, such as his 'Serenade,' f in modern arrange-
ments are extremely effective. Some of his 'folk-songs'
will live forever.
Lavotta's pupil, the Bohemian Csermak, produced
some characteristic dances. He, too, lacked solidity of
structure. The compositions of the brilliant gypsy
* It consisted of the following movements : 'The Council,' 'The Siege,'
'The Last Farewell,' 'The Prayer' and 'The Attack.'
t Arranged for string quartet by Klin Laszlo, published by Rozsavolgyi
in Budapest.
188
EARLY MUSICAL ENDEAVOR IN HUNGARY
violinist, Rihari (some of which are preserved in vari-
ous transcriptions), are the most valuable examples of
old national Hungarian music. The famous Rakoczy
march, as we know it through the transcriptions of
Liszt and Rerlioz, is his work, being a remodelled ver-
sion of the original, plaintive Rakoczy song composed
about 1675 by M. Barna.
Summing up, we may distinguish the following six
periods in the history of Hungarian music from its be-
ginning : the age of the Pagan Hungarians, those whose
songs were so persistent that three centuries after the
introduction of Christianity the Councils found it nec-
essary to suppress them; the period from the rise of
Christianity to the fifteenth century, when as elsewhere
music was wholly in the service of the church, while
secular music was cultivated only by wandering min-
strels; the three centuries following, when the grow-
ing influence of the gypsies is most powerfully felt,
when Lutheran and Calvinistic churches spread among
the people, and when the folk-songs alive in the mouths
of the people to-day were born; the eighteenth century,
when Hungarian national music became more inde-
pendent and individual, Hungarian rhythms especially
became strongly pronounced, and the fundamental
principles of absolute music were laid down; and the
first half of the nineteenth century, which produced
the first masters. The last of the six periods is that of
the contemporary composers and of 'young Hungary.'
In a few words we have endeavored to give a sketch
of the first four divisions. The transition to the next-r-
the period of the first masters may be marked by the
first opera with a Hungarian libretto. This was 'Duke
Pikko and Tuttka Perzsi,' performed in 1793 under
Lavotta. The work was without any significance what-
soever. The first noteworthy attempt in the direction
of national grand opera was 'Rela's Flight' by Ruzicska
(1833). That composer preferred the forms of the light
189
MODERN MUSIC
and popular Hungarian folk-songs to a more serious
vein. He should be given credit for his ambitious
attempt to create a truly national historical opera,
Hungarian both in music and in text. He was followed
by Franz Erkel (1810-1893), whose operas, with subjects
taken from Hungarian history, are still played to-day.
His music was genuinely Hungarian in character and
had absolute value. The overture to his Hunyady
Ldszlo, with its classical form and poetic content, was
made popular in Europe through the efforts of Liszt.
Erkel was careful in selecting his dramatic subjects,
drawing freely upon Hungarian history. The subject
of his most successful work, Bank-Ban, has also in-
spired the mediaeval German poet Hans Sachs, the emi-
nent Austrian dramatist Grillparzer, and the Hunga-
rian Josef Katona, whose tragedy of the same title rep-
resents the best in Hungarian dramatic literature. Con-
temporary with Erkel but of much less significance
was M. Mosonyi (1814-1870), who preserved the Hun-
garian character in his operas and orchestral composi-
tions as well as in his piano pieces. His 'Studies' were
highly esteemed by Wagner.
The further development of Hungarian culture and
music in the nineteenth century closely reflects the in-
fluence of the French, Germans, and Italians, although
the national ambition of the Hungarians to remodel the
foreign examples according to their own genius is evi-
dent. It is upon this principle that Hungary to-day
produces musical works of absolute merit.
The most significant representatives of modern Hun-
garian music are odon Mihalovich, Count Geza Zichy,
and Jeno Hubay. The compositions of these men
should be considered first as works of absolute merit,
regardless of their nationality; second, for the Hunga-
190
MIHALOVICS, ZICHY, HUBAY
rian national elements which they unconsciously dis-
play; and, finally, as noble, though not completely suc-
cessful, attempts to apply these elements and character-
istics to serious modern forms. Though much preoc-
cupied with this problem, they cannot be criticized for
the lack of strong individuality, since their personali-
ties almost always overshadow the Hungarian qualities
in their works, which, however, are still sufficiently
prominent to typify them as Hungarian composers.
Each of the three received his training under the most
eminent foreign masters, by which fact they were pecu-
liarly fitted to become the teachers of 'young Hungary,'
and incidentally the real founders of the modern Hun-
garian school.
The oldest of the three, Mihalovich, was born in 1842.
He studied with Hauptmann in Leipzig, with Bulow in
Munich, and was in personal touch with Liszt and
Wagner. In his position as the director of the Hunga-
rian Royal National Academy of Music in Budapest he
exercises a strong and salutary influence upon present
Hungarian musical life. It is due to his efforts that this
unique school maintains an extraordinarily high stand-
ard. As a composer he is versatile and prolific. He
has successfully applied his talent to every form from
song to grand opera ('Hagbart and Signe,' 'Toldi's
Love,' 'Eliana,' and Wieland der Schmied, upon the
libretto planned by Wagner). He has written a Sym-
phony in D and several symphonic poems ('Sello,'
Tan's Death,' 'The Ship of Ghosts,' 'Hero and Leander,'
Ronde da Sabbat, etc.). He is a master of orchestra-
tion and displays superior craftsmanship in working
out his thematic material. His style shows a fusion
of Wagnerian elements and of the principles of nine-
teenth-century program music with Hungarian national
characteristics. His musical ideas are usually lofty and
of refined taste.
Count Geza Zichy (born 1849) is an aristocrat in the
191
MODERN MUSIC
best sense of the word. The qualities of the man of
noble birth and high rank (he is a privy councillor to
the king, a member of the House of Lords, the presi-
dent of the National Music Conservatory, etc.), the
fine sensibility of a man endowed with talent and
trained under the best masters (he studied with and
was a friend of Liszt and Volkmann) are reflected in his
works as a poet, an author, a virtuoso, and a composer.
A man of wealth, he employs his means in the realiza-
tion of high artistic ideals. When as a lad of fourteen
he lost his right arm he experienced the lesson of
physical and spiritual suffering and grew up to be a
man of unusually intense energy.* Instead of giving
up his favorite art of piano playing he developed him-
self into the greatest of left-arm virtuosos. His re-
markable playing, besides displaying an almost in-
credible technique, reflects the feelings of a truly poetic
soul. 'His playing is remarkable in every respect, since
it is gentle and full of soul, of enthusiasm, and of in-
comparable bravour,' wrote Fetis,f and Hanslick re-
marked 'there are many who can play, a few who can
charm, but only Zichy can bewitch with his playing.'
It is characteristic of him as a man and as an artist that
he never accepts any fee for playing; he plays only
for charity. 'I am happy,' he wrote to a critic, 'to be
in the service of the poor and of the unfortunate and to
earn bread for them through my hard work.'
Count Zichy's compositions for the piano for the
left hand alone (etudes, a sonata, a serenade, arrange-
ments of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, etc.)
are unique in pianoforte literature. The climax of his
achievement in this field is his Concerto in E-flat. It
is distinguished by an energetic first movement, by a
* It is touching to read in his brilliantly written autobiography (3 vol-
umes, 1910), where, as if he had foreseen the terrible present war, he re-
marks: 'If God will help me, I will write a book for men with one arm,
and the book will be published in five languages!'
t In Biographic universelle des musiciens, p. 687.
192
Hungarian Composers
Count G6za Zichy
Ernst von Dohnahnyi
Jeno Hubay
Emanuel Moor
MIHALOVIGS, ZIGHY, HUBAY
deeply felt second movement cast in a Hungarian folk-
mood, by the brilliancy of the finale, and, above all,
by its terrific technical demands upon the left hand.
In dramatic music Count Zichy began his activity
with the opera Alar, upon a Hungarian subject. This
was followed by the more successful 'Master Roland,'
in which he makes use of a radically modern idiom.
The work lacks the usual characteristics of Hungarian
music. All his libretti were written by himself. Stimu-
lated by Wagner's idea that 'through music dance and
poetry are reconciled,' he undertook to write a poetic
'dance-poem' (ballet) or melodrama entitled Gemma.
In this dramatic (speaking) actors played the chief
roles, while the action was supported by recitation,
mimicry, dance and symphonic music. This novel un-
dertaking proved a failure and Zichy later rewrote the
whole piece as a regular pantomime.
The most ambitious work is his trilogy comprising
Franz Rdkoczy II, Nemo, and Rodosto, and dealing
with the life of the historical Franz Rakoczy (1676-
1735), 'the great hero and great character, the loyal,
the most chivalrous, the noblest son of Hungary.' Zichy
made a deep study of the Rakoczyan era and the libret-
tos themselves as pure dramas are of considerable lit-
erary value. With respect to their historical truth the
author remarked: 'After two years' study of this age
the figure of the great hero became more and more
vivid before my eyes and so I wrote the libretto of my
trilogy or rather I copied it, since the life of Rakoczy
was itself induced by fate.'
Into the music of the trilogy there are woven numer-
ous themes dating from the Rakoczyan period. The
problem of applying the stylistic elements of national
Hungarian music to modern forms, rhythms and har-
mony, however, proved a difficult one; Zichy's solution
is a worthy attempt, but nevertheless only partially suc-
cessful. Aside from this special purpose the work fas-
193
MODERN MUSIC
cinates by its melodic warmth, its rhythmic energy,
and its masterful workmanship. It is safe to say that
Zichy's Rakoczy trilogy represents a new phase in the
history of national Hungarian grand opera.
Of the three contemporary Hungarian composers
Hubay's name is the best known internationally.* His
career as a brilliant violinist (he frequently played
with Liszt) ; the fact that he was Wieniawsky's and
Vieuxtemps's successor at the Brussels Conservatory;
the success of his quartet (with Servais as 'cellist), all
helped to direct general attention to him. Both Mas-
senet and Saint-Saens were much interested in him.
When as a young man of twenty-seven he was called
home by the Hungarian government, his fame was al-
ready well established. Later he continued playing
in the musical centres of Europe and added to his
fame, and when he began to publish (and play) his
violin compositions he achieved such a sweeping suc-
cess that he is still popularly regarded as a composer
of well-known violin pieces, to the detriment of the
reputation of his other works.
This very attitude of the general public is the highest
praise for Hubay's violin compositions. Indeed, their
poetic charm, their effectiveness and singularly idio-
matic style stamp him as a genuinely inspired poet of
the instrument. In violin literature he occupies per-
haps the most nearly analogous place to that of Chopin
in piano music. His deeply-felt tone-pictures, his
'Csarda (tavern) Scenes,' in which he preserved many
a treasure of Hungarian folk-song, those magnificent
illustrations of Sirva vigad a magyar, those rapturous
Hungarian rhapsodies for the violin, are surely not of
less value than many of Liszt's finest piano composi-
tions.
The facts that Hubay's name is chiefly associated with
* Jeno Hubay, born in 1858 in Budapest, son of Carl Huber, professor
of violin at the National Academy of Music and conductor of the National
Theatre in Budapest.
194
DOHNANYI AND MOOR
his standard violin compositions and that his reputa-
tion is mainly that of a great violin pedagogue were
obstacles to the popularity of his other works. Yet
his creative activity has been most varied : he has writ-
ten songs, sonatas, concertos, symphonies, and seven
operas. One of these operas, 'The Violin Maker of
Cremona' (libretto by Coppee), was successfully per-
formed in seventy European theatres. The music of
the 'Violin Maker' is characterized by refined elegance,
genuine passion, and the nobility of its ideas. The re-
mark of a Hungarian critic that Hubay's music im-
presses one 'as if he had composed it with silk gloves
on his hands' may be accepted as real praise, for Hu-
bay's technical mastery is applied with uniformly
exquisite taste. He especially shows his superior mu-
sicianship in the operas Alienor, 'Two Little Wooden
Shoes,' 'A Night of Love,' 'Venus of Milo,' and in the
two Hungarian operas, 'The Village Rover' and 'La-
votta's Love,' the first based on a Hungarian peasant
play, the second on the life of the composer Lavotta.
Hubay's two essays in the field of national grand
opera are sincere products of his artistic conviction
conscious manifestations of a national ambition; he
can, therefore, not be accused of trying to hide a lack
of original invention behind a cloak of folk-music.
VI
Between Mihalovich, Zichy, Hubay, and the repre-
sentatives of 'young Hungary' there are composers of
note who are not young enough to be classified as such
nor old enough to be called masters, if we apply the
term to artistic stature rather than actual age. This
applies especially to Ernst von Dohnanyi (born 1877),
a former pupil of the Hungarian Academy and of
d' Albert and at present a professor at the royal Hoch-
schule in Berlin. Virility, vehement pathos, enthusiasm,
195
MODERN MUSIC
and brilliant sonority are the outstanding qualities of
Dohnanyi's music. His best works are perhaps in the
field of chamber music: the beautiful string quartet in
D-flat, the 'Trio Serenade,' full of caprice and coquetry,
the violin sonata in C-sharp minor, a work of fine in-
spiration, are of solid merit. His four 'Rhapsodies'
well known to pianists are interesting. One of them
reveals the author's nationality, while another one re-
echoes his honored ideal, Brahms. His effective and
brilliant piano concerto, too, speaks here and there
in Brahmsian phraseology. Although he reflects slight
special influences in places (as that of Mahler in his
Suite), his style is eclectic and expresses at the same
time a strong individuality. In works of larger form he
has tried his hand at a symphony (D minor), excelling
in beautiful harmonies, and a comic opera, Tante Si-
monia, containing a characteristic overture in which
the jovial character of the comedy is successfully re-
flected. This, like his pantomime, 'The Veil of the
Pierette,' reveals him as a musical dramatist, with a
special gift for effective orchestration. Dohnanyi's sub-
stantial accomplishments already make it unnecessary
to predict for him a place in musical history.
Undoubtedly the hyper-critical and unreceptive atti-
tude of modern critics is responsible for the lack of
popularity of certain composers. It would seem that
Emanuel Moor is one of these. Moor is a tremendously
prolific composer. He has written no less than five
hundred songs, seven symphonies, three operas, six
concertos, and a mass of chamber music. Many of these
have real merit; also, they do not lack exponents and
interpreters (witness Marteau, Ysaye, Casals, Bauer,
the Flonzalay Quartet). Still, they have not been able
to gain a general appreciation. Time only will assign
a proper place to their creator. Here, also, should be
mentioned the name of J. Bloch, a successful composer
of numerous violin pieces.
196
YOUNG HUNGARY
National qualities are displayed to telling advantage
in the 'Aphorisms on Hungarian Folk-songs,' by the
brilliant Liszt pupil A. Szendi. In fact, the 'Aphor-
isms' (difficult piano pieces) have perhaps more Hun-
garian color than the Rhapsodies of Liszt. Szendi is
also the author of some good chamber music and of
an opera, 'Maria,' which he wrote together with Szaba-
dos. 'Maria' is built upon Wagnerian principles. The
subject of this ambitious opera is the struggle between
the Christian and Pagan Hungarians in the twelfth
century. The music, in which Hungarian elements also
have a prominent place, is of exquisite workmanship.
While Dohnanyi and Moor are not living in Hungary,
Szendi, Bloch, and the brilliant group referred to as
'young Hungary' develop their growing talents within
the borders of their native land.
On the whole, the characteristics of the present prod-
ucts of the young Hungarian school are above all in-
dividual; but there is also a strong tendency toward
ultra-modernism, and, finally, a certain fragrance of
the Hungarian soil, a quality that one may feel but
can not analyze. The aim of the school is no less than
the creation of a new national style, which they en-
deavor to reach by different ways. Brilliance and ro-
bust individualism characterize every one of these dis-
ciples, mostly of Hungarian education. This is espe-
cially true of Leo Weiner (born 1885), whose very first
attempt in the field of composition attested a consider-
able technique. If Weiner's first composition took his
master (Hans Koessler '*) by surprise, a later one, which
he wrote for the final student's concert of his class, fell
little short of being a sensation for musical Europe.
This, his last student work a 'Serenade' spread his
fame through the continent. It was performed in al-
most every musical centre of Europe. In it the com-
* Composer and head of the theory department of the Royal Hungarian
Academy.
197
MODERN MUSIC
poser displays a really individual style of his own. It
is full of ideas garbed in brilliant orchestration and
glows with the fire of enthusiasm. Weiner's ingenious
harmonic sense and ability is as astonishing for his
age as his fine architectural sense. In his other works
a quartet in E, a trio in G minor, a sonata for violin
and piano in D (a valuable addition to the list of
modern sonatas) the harmony, while sonorous and
pure, is quite simple, though his modulations often act
as surprises. In form he never abandons logical pro-
gression and artistic unity, since he never loses the gen-
eral outline of his movements. It is true that one may
find dull moments in Weiner, yet of what composer is
that not true? Weiner is less successful where he at-
tempts to produce Hungarian color, but as dignified
examples of music produced for its own sake his works
are likely to persist.
One of the chief representatives of musical ultra-
modernism in Hungary is Bela Bartok, a remarkable
individuality whose modernism has probably reached
its own limits. According to his principles, applied in
his compositions, every kind of key-relationship is pos-
sible. Thus he combines a melody E major with a
motive A-flat major. His waltz, 'My Sweetheart is
Dancing,' is astonishingly grotesque and novel in its
pianistic effects. It will hardly fail to make a listener
smile or laugh perhaps by direct intention of the com-
poser. Bartok's colleague in the field of grotesque but
effective dissonances is F. Kodaly, with whom he under-
took the notable task of collecting Hungarian folk-
songs in their genuine natural form. With these
true and unalloyed Hungarian melodies the two 'futur-
ists' proved that the genuine Hungarian folk-song dif-
fered essentially from those known generally under
that name. Bartok's and Kodaly's folk-melodies are
not built on the Hungarian scale, which is of gypsy
invention. They display primitive qualities and pre-
198
YOUNG HUNGARY
serve even the influence of the ancient church modes.
They have a great variety of constantly changing
rhythm and metre, and a distinct feature is the frequent
return of characteristic formulas, also the employment
of a peculiar pentatonic scale. Whatever may be his
merits as a composer, Bela Bartok's work as a scholar
in Hungarian music is of unquestioned historical
importance.
Another young composer whose works are frequently
played in foreign countries (also in America) is E.
Lendway, likewise a pupil of Koessler. His Symphony
has sterling qualities. He has, however, produced
works of greater significance in chamber music, in
piano music, and songs. Especially worthy of men-
tion is a 'Suite' for female voices a cappella. Old Japa-
nese poems supply the text. These he has set to music
of genuine poetic finesse, delicate and finely emo-
tional. The whole gives a series of impressive tone-
pictures, reflecting a fascinating exotic atmosphere.
As a testimony of Lendway's technical skill it has been
pointed out that he has produced Japanese 'color' with-
out using the Japanese scale. True to his modernist
propensities, he makes free use of the whole-tone scale,
but with a more specific effect than is usually done.
His latest and most ambitious work is an opera, 'Elga,'
after Gerhart Hauptmann's drama.
Other young Hungarians have attracted international
attention in the field of opera. E. Abranyi's 'Paolo
and Francesca' and 'Monna Vanna' (after Maeterlinck)
have a dramatic power that is promising. He is at his
best in fantastic tone-painting, and remarkable for har-
monic invention and skill in orchestration. A charm-
ing children's opera, 'Cinderella,' is by A. Buttykay,
whose more ambitious symphonic works make him an
estimable member of the young Hungarian group.
Some chamber music works of ultra-modern tenden-
cies and a Symphonic Suite of ingenious orchestration
199
MODERN MUSIC
by Radnai raise expectations of still better things to
come.
Justice can hardly be done by merely mentioning the
names of such men as Chovan, Gobbi, Farkas, Rekai,
Koenig, Siklos, etc., all of whom are engaged in meri-
torious creative work. Of no less importance are those
who work in the field of musicography and criticism.
'The Theory of Hungarian Music/ by Geza Molnar, and
'The Evolution of the Hungarian Folk-song,' by Fabo,
as well as shorter essays by A. Kern, P. Kacsoh, etc., are
of especially high value. In conclusion we may say
that even a slight study of contemporary Hungarian
music will convince one that the musical life of the
Hungary of to-day adequately reflects the tendency of
the age, and that the country has definitely entered
the rank of the truly musical nations.
E. K.
200
CHAPTER VII
THE POST-CLASSICAL AND POETIC SCHOOLS OF MODERN
GERMANY
The post-Beethovenian tendencies in the music of Germany and their
present-day significance; the problem of modern symphonic form The
academic followers of Brahms: Bruch and others The modern 'poetic'
school: Richard Strauss as symphonic composer Anton Bruckner, his life
and works Gustav Mahler Max Reger, and others.
No other European nation can show, within the last
fifty years, so great a variety of schools, and so great
a variety of effort and achievement within each school,
as the German. The reason is that the Germans were the
only race that, by the middle of the nineteenth century,
had beaten out a musical language that was capable of
almost every kind of expression. Within the ample
limits of that language there was room for the realiza-
tion of any spirit and any form post-classical or pro-
gressive, or a union of these two; poetic or abstract;
vocal or instrumental; symphonic or operatic. And in
each sphere the Germans developed both form and
spirit to a point attained by no other nation in the
opera of Wagner, the post-Beethovenian symphony of
Brahms and Bruckner, the symphonic poem of Strauss,
the song of Hugo Wolf; while within the separate or-
bit of each of these leaders there moved a crowd of
lesser but still goodly luminaries. It is remarkable, too,
that each period that seemed a climax of development
in this form or that proved to be only the starting-
point for a new departure. Beethoven's spirit realized
201
MODERN MUSIC
itself afresh in Wagner and Brahms, and in remoter but
still easily traceable ways in Liszt and Strauss; in the
best of Strauss, again, we can see coursing the sap of
Wagner, but with a vitality that throws out unexpected,
new and individual shoots; Schubert and Schumann,
each seemingly so perfect, so complete in himself, blos-
som into a new and richer lyrical life in the songs of
Hugo Wolf. To make clear the nature and the mean-
ing of the modern German developments it will be nec-
essary to survey rapidly the conditions that led up to
them.
Beethoven, especially in his later symphonies, sona-
tas and quartets, had carried music to an intellectual
and emotional height for a parallel to which we have to
go back a century, to the colossal work of Bach. Beet-
hoven bequeathed to music an enormous fund of ex-
pression and a perfected instrument of expression.
Both of these were waiting for the new composers who
could use them for the fertilization of modern music.
Wagner seized upon the fund rather than the instru-
ment. In place of the latter, though, indeed, with its
assistance, he forged a new instrument of his own; but
the impulse to the forging of it, and the strength for the
forging of it, came to him in large measure from the
deep draughts he had drunk of Beethoven's spirit.
Schumann (the symphonic Schumann) and Brahms,
on the other hand, were more content with the instru-
ment as Beethoven had left it; or, to vary the illustra-
tion, they were satisfied, speaking broadly, to fill with
more or less derivative pictures of their own the frame
that Beethoven had bequeathed to them. But it was in-
evitable that a procedure of this kind should lead here
and there to the petrification of form into formalism,
both of idea and of design. For it is an error to sup-
pose, as the writers of text-books too often do, that
'form' is something that can be conveyed by tuition or
achieved by imitation. There is no such thing as form
202
Modern German Symphonists and Lyricists:
Anton Bruckner Felix Draeseke
Hugo Wolf Gustav Mahler
of Straus
but ^
each
sold
Hug
and
go back a <
uon ai
Both of thes
coui'
;, with iU
;i: bu
-jCffAr .'*
m ^
POST-BEETHOVENIAN TENDENCIES
apart from the idea; the form is simply the idea made
visible and coherent. It is not the form that shapes
the thought in the truly great masters; rather is the
form simply the expression of the thought, as the form
of a tree is the expression of the idea of a tree, or the
form of the human body the expression of the idea
of man. The post-classicists too often forgot that Beet-
hoven's form and Beethoven's thought are inseparable
that they are, in truth, in the profoundest sense,
merely different names for the same thing, the one
totality viewed from different standpoints, as we may
speak for convenience sake of the bodily man and
the spiritual man, though, in truth, the living man is
one and indivisible; and the post-classicists, indeed,
from Brahms downwards, founded themselves upon
the early or middle Beethoven, or even his eighteenth-
century predecessors, rather than upon the Beethoven
of the last works, with their incessant, titanic struggle
to open new roads into art and life. With all his great-
ness, Brahms was- not great enough to be to the sym-
phony of his own day what Beethoven was to the sym-
phony of his. Brahms raises an excellent crop from
the delta fertilized by the waters of the great river as
it debouched into the unknown sea; but that was all.
He himself added nothing to the soil that could make
it fertile enough to support yet another generation.
All the technical mastery of Brahms and it is very
great indeed cannot give to his symphonic music the
thoroughly organic air of Beethoven's, the same sense
of the perfect, unanalyzable fusion of form and matter.
While Brahms was developing the classical heritage
in his own way, Liszt and Wagner were boldly staking
out claims on the future. With each of these composers
the aim was the same to find a form and an expres-
sion that, by their elasticity, would make music more
equal to the painting of human life in all its manifold
Variety. This effort took two lines: the instrumental
203
MODERN MUSIC
and the dramatic. Liszt, anticipated to some extent by
Berlioz, tried to adapt the essence of the symphonic
form to the new spirit. The problems he set himself
have rarely been successfully solved, even to the pres-
ent day; they block the path of every modern writer
of symphonic poems, and of every writer of sympho-
nies the impulse behind which is more or less definitely
poetic.
The mere fact of the incessant fluctuation of modern
composers between the two forms the one-movement
form of Liszt and the symphonic poem in general, and
the four-movements form of the poetic or partly poetic
symphony shows that neither of them is of itself
completely adequate. For against each of them strict
logic can urge some pointed objection. The four-move-
ments form, growing as it does out of the suite, is and
will always be more appropriate to what may be
roughly called 'pattern-music' rather than to poetic
music; for the mere number of the movements, and
the practically invariable order of their succession,
implies the forcing of the thought into a preconceived
frame, rather than the determining of the frame by
the nature of the picture. The one-movement form is
in itself more logical, but it is always faced by the prob-
lem of conciliating the natural evolution of a poetic
idea and the decorative evolution of a musical pattern;
and the symphonic poems in which this problem is sat-
isfactorily solved might perhaps be counted on the fin-
gers of one hand. There is a point in Strauss's Till
Eulenspiegel, for example,
poco'rtt.
204
THE PROBLEM OF MODERN SYMPHONIC FORM
in which we feel acutely that the poetic or shall we
say the novelistic? scheme that has so far been fol-
lowed line by line is being put aside for the moment in
order that the composer, having stated his thematic
material, may subject it, for purely musical reasons,
to something in the nature of the ordinary 'working-
out.'
The four-movements form obviously allows greater
scope to a composer who has a great deal to say upon
a fruitful subject, but it labors under an equally obvi-
ous disability. The modern sense of psychological unity
demands that the symphony of to-day shall justify, in
its own being, the casting of it into this or that number
of movements. Every work of art must, if challenged,
be able to give an answer to what Wagner used to call
the question 'Why?' 'Why,' we have a right to say to
the composer, 'have you chosen to give your work just
this form and these dimensions and no other?' It is
because modern composers cannot quite silence the
voice that whispers to them that the four-movements
form is the form of the suite, in which the charm of
the music comes mainly from the delight of the purely
musical faculty with itself, rather than a form suited
to a music that aims first of all at expressing more
definite feelings about life, that they try to vivify the
merely formal unity of the suite form with a psycho-
logical unity mainly by means of quasi-leit-motifs
that reappear in each of the movements.
But, though this system has given us some of our
finest modern works of the symphonic type, it has its
limitations. If the composer does not tell us the poetic
meaning of his themes and all their reappearances,
these reappearances frequently puzzle rather than en-
lighten us : this is notably the case with Cesar Franck.
If the composer works upon a single leit-motif, it is, as
a rule, of the Tate-and-humanity' type of the Tschai-
kowsky symphony a type that in the end becomes
205
MODERN MUSIC
rather painfully conventional. This simplicity of plan,
however, has the advantage of leaving the composer
free to develop his musical material with the minimum
of disturbance from the poetic idea. On the other
hand, if his poetic scheme is at all copious or extensive,
and he allows himself to follow all the vicissitudes of
it, he must either give us a written clue to every page
of his music which he is generally unwilling and fre-
quently unable to do or pay the penalty of our failing
to see in his music precisely what he intended to put
there; for it is as true now as when Wagner wrote,
three-quarters of a century ago, that purely instrumen-
tal music cannot permit itself such sudden and fre-
quent changes as dramatic music without running the
risk of becoming unintelligible. Always there arises
within us, when the composer's thought branches off
at an angle that does not seem to us justified by the
inner logic of the music qua music, that awkward ques-
tion, "Why?" and to that question only the stage action,
as Wagner says, or a program, as most of us would
say to-day, can supply a satisfactory answer. This con-
flict between form and matter can be seen running
through almost all modern German instrumental music
of the poetic order; only the genius of Strauss has been
able to resolve the antinomy with some success. None
of Beethoven's successors has been able, as he was, to
fill every bar of a symphonic composition with equal
meaning, or to convey, as he did in the third symphony,
the fifth and the ninth, the sense of a drama that is
implicit in the music itself, and so coherent, so per-
spicuous, that words cannot add anything to it in the
way of definiteness.
II
The symphonic work of Brahms (by which one
means not merely the symphonies but the overtures,
the concertos, the chamber music and the piano music)
206
THE ACADEMIC FOLLOWERS OF BRAHMS
does, indeed, as we have seen, found itself on the mid-
dle rather than the later Beethoven (whereas it was
from the latest Beethoven that Wagner drew his chief
nourishment) ; but in spite of a certain timidity and a
certain rigidity of form, Brahms's profound nature and
his consummate workmanship give his work an indi-
viduality that enables him to stand by the side of Beet-
hoven, though he never reaches quite to Beethoven's
height. The other exploiters of the classical heritage
have less individuality. They aim at breaking no new
ground; they are content to till afresh the soil that
the classical masters have fertilized for them.
Max Bruch may be taken as the type of a whole
crowd of these post-classical writers. Their virtues are
those that are always characteristic of the epigone.
There is in art, as in the animal world, a protective
mimicry that enables certain weaker species to assume
at any rate the external markings of more vigorous
organisms than themselves. In music, minds of this
order clothe themselves with the qualities that lie on
the surface of the great men's work. Their own art
is parasitic (one uses that term, of course, without any
offensive intention, with a biological, not a moral, impli-
cation). The parasitic organism lives easily in virtue
of the fact that the parent organism undertakes all the
labor of the chief vital functions. The epigone manip-
ulates again and again the forms of his great predeces-
sors. The substance he pours into these molds is
hardly more his own. Yet work of this kind can have
undeniable charm; after all, it is better for a man
whose strength is not of the first order to live con-
tentedly upon the side of the great mountain than to
court destruction by trying to scale its dizziest peaks.
The work of these epigones always has the balance
and the clarity that come from the complete absence of
any sense of a new problem to beat their heads against.
Max Bruch was born in 1838 and evinced the early
207
MODERN MUSIC
precocity of genius; he had a symphony performed in
his native Cologne at the age of fourteen. As a benefi-
ciary of the Mozart Foundation he became a pupil of
Ferdinand Hiller in composition and of Carl Reinecke
and Ferdinand Breuning in piano. As executive musi-
cian he has had a brilliant career. After teaching in
Cologne he became successively musical director in
Coblentz, court kapellmeister in Sondershausen, chorus
conductor in Berlin (Sternscher Gesangverein) , conduc-
tor of the Philharmonic Society of Liverpool, England,
and the Orchesterverein of Breslau. In 1891 he became
head of the 'master school' of composition in the Ber-
lin Academy, was given the title of professor, received
in 1893 the honorary degree of Doc. Mus. from Cam-
bridge, and in 1898 became a corresponding member
of the French Academy of Fine Arts.
His most important creative work is unquestionably
represented by his large choral works with orchestra.
Together with Georg Vierling (1820-1901) he may be
credited with the modern revival of the secular cantata.
Frithjof, op. 23 (1864) , written during his stay in Mann-
heim (1862-64), was the foundation-stone of his repu-
tation, followed soon after by the universally known
'Fair Ellen,' op. 25, and later by Odysseus, op. 41 (1873),
Arminius, op. 43, 'The Song of the Bell,' op. 45, 'The
Cross of Fire,' op. 52, all for mixed chorus. There is a
sacred oratorio, 'Moses,' op. 52, and a secular one 'Gus-
tavus Adolphus,' op. 73, and a large number of other
choral works for mixed, male and female chorus. His
operas, 'Lorelei' (1863) and 'Hermione' op. 40, had only
a succes I'estime. The first violin concerto, in G minor,
op. 26, is perhaps Bruch's most famous composition,
and a grateful constituent of every violinist's repertoire.
There are two other violin concertos (both in D minor),
opera 44 and 45, a Romance, a Fantasia and other violin
pieces with orchestra, also works for 'cello and orches-
tra, including the well-known setting of Kol Nidrei.
208
BRUCH AND OTHERS
Three symphonies (E-flat minor, F minor and E major),
op. 28, 36 and 51; a few chamber music and piano
pieces complete the catalogue of his works. Bruch's
idiom is frankly melodic, though his harmonic texture
is quite rich and his counterpoint varied. Formally
he is conservative and, all in all, he imposes no strain
upon the listener's power of comprehension. His music
is solid and grateful, but not of striking originality.
Through his masters, Reinecke and Hiller, he represents
the Schumann-Mendelssohn tradition in a vigorous
though inoffensive eclecticism.
The leading members of this order of composers in
the Germany of the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury besides Bruch, were Hermann Goetz (1840-1876;
symphony in F major), Friedrich Gernsheim (born
1839; four symphonies and much chamber music),
Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843-1900; chamber mu-
sic, church music, symphonies, etc.), Joseph Rhein-
berger (1839-1901); Wilhelm Berger (1861-1911; works
for choir and orchestra, chamber music, two sympho-
nies, etc.) ; and Georg Schumann (1866; orchestral and
choral works, chamber music, etc).
Goetz is best known for his work in the operatic field
and may be more appropriately treated in that connec-
tion (see p. 245). Gernsheim, a native of Worms, was
a student in the Leipzig conservatory and broadened
his education by a sojourn in Paris (from 1855). The
posts of musical director in Saarbrucken (1861), teacher
of piano and composition at the Cologne conservatory
(1865), conductor of the Maatschappig concerts in Rot-
terdam (1874) successively engaged his activities. From
1890-97 he taught at the Stern conservatory in Berlin
and conducted the Sternsche Gesangverein till 1904,
besides the Eruditio musica of Rotterdam. In 1901 he
became principal of a master-school for composition.
Since 1897 Gernsheim has been a member of the senate
of the Royal Academy. Similar to Bruch in his ten-
209
MODERN MUSIC
dencies, Gernsheim has composed, aside from the in-
strumental works mentioned above, a number of choral
works of which Salamis, Odin's Meeresritt (both for
men's chorus, baritone and orchestra) and Das Grab im
Basento (men's chorus and orchestra) are especially
notable. Overtures and a concerto each for piano, for
violin, and for 'cello must be added to complete the
list of his works.
Heinrich von Herzogenberg, too, is chiefly identified
with the revival of choral song, especially of ecclesias-
tical character (a Requiem, op. 72; a mass, op. 87; To-
tenfeier, op. 80; 'The Birth of Christ,' op. 90; a Passion,
op. 93, etc.). In this department Herzogenberg is the
successor to Friedrich Kiel.
Rheiriberger occupies a peculiar position. He is a
stanch adherent to classical traditions and generally
considered as an academic composer. That his classi-
cism was not inconsistent with a hankering after the
methods of the New German School, however, is shown
in his Wallenstein symphony (op. 10) and his 'Christo-
phorus' (oratorio) . Having received his early training
upon the organ, he has shown a preponderant tendency
toward organ music and ecclesiactical composition in
general. Nevertheless he has written, besides the works
already named, a symphonic fantasy, three overtures,
and considerable piano and chamber works. Eugen
Schmitz * calls him a South German Raff, for 'as many-
sided as Raff, he, in contrast to this master of North
German training, received his musical education in
South Germany.' (Rorn in Vaduz, in Lichtenstein, he
continued his training in Feldkirch and during 1851-54
at the Royal School of Music in Munich). In Munich
he became the centre of a veritable school of young
composers, exerting a very broad influence, first as
teacher of theory and later royal professor and inspec-
tor of the Royal School. Rheinberger also conducted
* New ed. of Naumann's Musikgeschichte, 1913.
210
BRUCH AND OTHERS
the performances of the Royal Chapel choir. He re-
ceived the honorary degree of Ph.D. from the University
of Munich and became a member of the Berlin Acad-
emy.
Riemann's judgment of his merit, voiced in the fol-
lowing sentences, may be taken as just on the whole.
He says: 'Rheinberger enjoyed a high reputation as
composer, in the vocal as well as in the instrumental
field. However, the contrapuntal mastery and the aes-
thetic instinct evident in his workmanship cannot per-
manently hide his lack of really warm-blooded emo-
tion.' His organ works, of classic perfection, will prob-
ably last the longest. His Requiem, Stabat Mater, and a
double-choir Mass stand at the head of his church com-
positions. He also wrote an opera, Die Sieben Raben.
Like Bruch's, his style is eclectic, being a fusion of neo-
classical and post-romantic influences.
Wilhelm Berger is a native of America (Boston,
1861), but was educated in Berlin, where he was a pupil
of Fr. Kiel at the Royal Hochschule. Later he became
teacher at the Klindworth-Scharwenka conservatory
and in 1903 succeeded Fritz Steinbach as conductor of
the famous Meiningen court orchestra. Some of his
songs are widely known, but his choral compositions
(Totentanz, Euphorin, etc.) constitute his most im-
portant work. Berger is a Brahms disciple without
Deserve, and so are Hans Kossler (b. 1853, symphonic
variations for orchestra, etc.), Friedrich E. Koch (b.
1862, symphonic fugue in C minor, oratorio Von den
Tageszeiten, etc.), Gustav Schreck (b. 1849), and
Max Zenger (b. 1837). Georg Schumann, the last on
our list of important epigones, has had more hearings
abroad than most of his contemporary brothers-in-
faith, especially with his oratorio 'Ruth' (1908), sev-
eral times performed by the New York Oratorio So-
ciety. As conductor of the Berlin Singakademie (since
1900), he has not lacked incentive to choral writing,
211
MODERN MUSIC
hence 'Amor and Psyche,' Preis and Danklied, etc. A
symphony in B, a serenade, op. 32, and other orchestral
pieces as well as chamber works have come from his
pen, all in the Brahms idiom.
The names of the still smaller men are legion. Let
us mention but a few of them : Robert Radecke (1830-
1911) wrote a symphony, overtures, and choral songs;
Johann Herb eck (1831-77), symphonies, etc.; Joseph
Abert (b. 1832), besides operas a symphony, a sym-
phonic poem, 'Columbus,' and overtures; Albert Becker
(1834-99), a Mass in B minor, a prize-crowned sym-
phony, choral and chamber works; Franz Wiillner
(1832-1902), chiefly choral works; Heinrich Hofmann
(1842-1902), besides the operas Armin and Annchen von
Tharau, a symphony, orchestral suites, cantatas, cham-
ber music and piano music, much of it for four hands;
and Franz Ries (b. 1846), suites for violin and piano,
string quartets, etc. Georg Henschel is especially noted
for his songs (see Vol. V); Hans Huber, a German
Swiss, for his 'Bocklin Symphony' and chamber music;
while the Germanized Poles Maurice Moszkowski (b.
1854) and the brothers Scharwenka (Philipp and Xaver,
b. 1850) claim attention with pleasing and popular
piano pieces. Needless to say, such a list as this can
never be complete.
Ill
Side by side with the neo-classical school, but always
steadily encroaching upon it, is the 'poetic' school that
derives from Liszt and Wagner. It is a truism of
criticism that in musical history the big men end pe-
riods rather than begin them. The composer who in-
augurates a movement appears to posterity as a fum-
bler rather than a master, and even in his own day his
methods and his ideals fail to command general re-
spect, so wide a gulf is there in them between intention
and achievement. It was so, for example, with Liszt
212
THE MODERN POETIC SCHOOL
and his immediate school. But in the end there comes
a man who, with a greater natural genius than his
predecessors, assimilates all they have to teach him
either imaginatively or formally, and brings to fulfill-
ment what in them was at its best never more than
promise. The tentative work of Liszt comes to full
fruition in the work of Strauss. He has a richer musi-
cal endowment than any of his predecessors in his own
special line, and a technical skill to which none of
them could ever pretend. Liszt had imagination, but
he never succeeded in making a thoroughly service-
able technique for himself, no doubt because his early
career as a pianist made it impossible for him to work
seriously at composition until comparatively late in life.
Strauss is of the type of musician who readily learns all
that the pedagogues can teach him, and utilizes the
knowledge thus acquired as the basis for a new tech-
nique of his own.
Richard Strauss was born June 11, 1864, In Munich,
the son of Franz Strauss, a noted Waldhorn player
(royal chamber musician) . He studied composition with
the local court kapellmeister, W. Meyer, and as early
as 1881 gave striking evidence of his talent in a string
quartet in A minor (op. 2), which was played by the
Walter quartet. A Symphony in D minor, an overture
in C minor and a suite for thirteen wind instruments,
op. 7, all performed in public, the last by the famous
'Meininger' orchestra, quickly spread his name among
musicians and in 1885 he was engaged by Hans von
Biilow as musical director to the ducal court at Meinin-
gen. Here Alexander Ritter is said to have influenced
him in the direction of ultra-modernity. After another
year Strauss returned to Munich as third royal kapell-
meister; three years later (1889) he became Lassen's as-
sociate as court conductor in Weimar; from 1894 to
1898 he was again in Munich, this time as court con-
ductor, and at the end of that period went to Berlin to
213
MODERN MUSIC
occupy a similar post at the Royal Prussian court. In
1904 he became general musical director (Generalmu-
si kdirekt or) . Since the appearance of his first works
mentioned above he has been almost incessantly oc-
cupied with composition.
These early works and those immediately following
give little hint of the later Strauss, except for the char-
acteristically hard-hitting strength of it almost from
the first. Works like the R minor piano sonata (op. 5)
and the 'cello sonata (op. 6), for example, have a curi-
ous, cubbish demonstrativeness about them; but it is
plain enough already that the cub is of the great breed.
With the exception of a few songs, and a setting of
Goethe's Wanderers Sturmlied for chorus and orches-
tra (op. 14), all his music until his twenty-second year
was in the traditional instrumental forms; it includes,
besides the works already mentioned, a string quartet
(op. 2), a violin concerto (op. 8), a symphony (op. 12),
a quartet for piano and strings (op. 13), a Burleske
for piano and orchestra, and sundry smaller works
for piano solo, etc. According to his own account, he
was first set upon the path of poetic music by Alexan-
der Ritter a man of no great account as a composer,
but restlessly alive to the newest musical currents of
his time, and with the literary gift of rousing enthusi-
asm in others for his own ideas. He was an ardent
partisan of the 'New German' school of Liszt and Wag-
ner. Of his own essays in the operatic field only two
saw completion : Der faule Hans (1885) and Wem die
Krone? (1890) . They were mildly successful in Munich
and Weimar. Resides these he wrote symphonic poems
that at least partially bridge the gap between Liszt
and Strauss; 'Seraphic Phantasy,' 'Erotic Legend,'
'Olaf's Wedding Procession,' and ' Emperor Rudolph's
Ride to the Grave' are some of the titles. Ritter was
of Russian birth (Narva), but lived in Germany from
childhood (Dresden, Leipzig, Weimar, Wiirzberg, etc).
214
Richard Strauss
After a crayon by Faragd (i905)
THE MODERN POETIC SCHOOL
He was a close friend of Btilow and married Wagner's
niece, Franziska Wagner.
The first-fruits of Ritter's influence upon Strauss were
the symphonic fantasia Aus Italien (1886). The young
revolutionary as yet moves with a certain amount of
circumspection. The new work is poetic, program-
matic, but it is cast in the conventional four-move-
ments form, the separate movements corresponding
roughly to those of the ordinary symphony. It is obvi-
ously a 'prentice work; but it is of significance in
Strauss's history for a warmth of emotion that had been
only rarely perceptible in his earlier music. Here and
there it has the rude, knockabout sort of energy that
was noticeable in some of the earlier works, and that
in the later works was to degenerate into a mere noisy
slamming about of commonplaces; but it also shows
much poetic feeling, and in particular an ardent ro-
mantic appreciation of nature.
Aus Italien was followed by a series of remarkable
tone-poems Don Juan (op. 20, 1888), Macbeth (op.
23, written 1886-7 but not published until after the Don
Juan), Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (op. 28, 1894-
95), Also sprach Zarathustra (op. 30, 1894-95), Don
Quixote (op. 39, 1897), Bin Heldenleben (op. 40, 1898),
and the Symphonia Domestica (op. 53, 1903). With
the last-named work Strauss bade farewell to the con-
cert room for many years, the next stage of his develop-
ment being worked out in the opera house.
The forms, no less than the titles, of the orchestral
works, reveal the many-sidedness of Strauss's mind, the
keenness of his interest in life and literary art, the in-
dividuality of the point of view from which he regards
each of his subjects, and the peculiarly logical medium
he adopts for the expression of each of them. Bound
up with this adaptability are a certain restlessness that
drives him on to abandon every field in turn before
he has developed all the possibilities of it, and a cer-
215
MODERN MUSIC
tain anxiety to 'hit the public between the eyes' each
time that gives him now and then the appearance of
exploiting new sensations for new sensations' sake.
It is perhaps not doing him any injustice, for instance,
to suppose that a very keen finger upon the public pulse
warned him that it would be unwise to bombard it
with another blood-and-lust drama of the type of Sa-
lome and Elekira; so, with an admirably sure instinct,
he relaxes into the broad comedy of Der Rosenkavalier.
Feeling after this that the public wanted something
newer still, he tried, in Ariadne auf Naxos, to combine
drama and opera in the one work. Then, realizing
from the Western European successes of the Russians
that ballet is likely to become the order of the day,
he tries his hand at a modified form of this in 'The
Legend of Joseph.'
What in the later works has become, however, al-
most as much a commercial as an artistic impulse, was
in the early years the genuine quick-change of a very
fertile, eager spirit, with extraordinary powers of poetic
and graphic expression in music. Strauss, like Wagner,
is a musical architect by instinct; he can plan big edi-
fices and realize them. The sureness of this instinct is
incidentally shown by the varied forms of these early
and middle-period orchestral works of his. As we
have seen, the writer of symphonic poems is always
confronted by the serious problem of harmonizing a
poetic with a musical development; and in practice we
find that, as a rule, either the following of the literary
idea destroys the purely musical logic of the work, or,
in his anxiety to preserve a formal logic in his music,
the composer has to impair the simplicity or the con-
tinuity of the poetic scheme, as Strauss has had to do
in the passage in Till Eulenspiegel, already cited. But,
on the whole, Strauss has come much nearer than any
other composer to solving the problem of combined
poetic and musical form in instrumental music. In
216
RICHARD STRAUSS AS SYMPHONIC COMPOSER
Macbeth he has 'internalized' the dramatic action in a
very remarkable way a procedure he might have
adopted with advantage on other occasions. Here,
where there was every temptation to the superficially
effective painting of externalities, he has dissolved the
pictorial and episodical into the psychological, making
Macbeth's own soul the centre of all the dramatic storm
and stress, and so allowing full scope for the purely
expressive power of music. In Don Juan the form is
rightly quasi-symphonic a group of workable main
themes representing the hero, with a group of subsid-
iary themes suggestive of the minor characters that
cross his path and the circumstances under which he
meets with them. The tissue is not woven throughout
with absolute continuity, but the form as a whole is
lucid and coherent. The episodical adventures of Till
Eulenspiegel could find no better musical frame than
the rondo form that Strauss has chosen for them; while
the variation form is most suited to the figures, the
adventures, and the psychology of Don Quixote and
Sancho Panza. In the Symphonia Domestica the num-
ber and relationship of the characters, and the incidents
that make up the domestic day, are best treated in a
form that is virtually that of the ordinary symphony
compressed into a single movement. A similar con-
gruity between form and matter will be found in Also
sprach Zarathustra and Bin Heldenleben.
This fertility of form was only the outward and visi-
ble sign of an extraordinary fertility of conception. No
other composer, before or since, has poured such a
wealth of thinking into program music, created so
many poetic-musical types, or depicted their milieu
with such graphic power. Each new work, dealing as
it did with new characters and new scenes, spontane-
ously found for itself a new idiom, melodic, harmonic
and rhythmic; in this unconscious transformation of
his speech in accordance with the inward vision Strauss
217
MODERN MUSIC
resembles Wagner and Hugo Wolf. The immense en-
ergy of the mind is shown not only in the range and
variety of its psychology, but physically, as it were, in
the wide trajectory of the melodies, the powerful ges-
tures of the rhythms that sometimes, indeed, become
almost convulsive and the long-breathed phraseology
of passages like the opening section of Ein Heldenleben.
It was perhaps inevitable that this extraordinary en-
ergy should occasionally get out of hand and degener-
ate into a sort of Unbandigkeit. Strauss is at once a
man of genius and an irresponsible street urchin.
With all his gifts, something that goes to the making
of the artist of the very greatest kind is lacking in him.
He has a giant span of conception that is rare in music;
but he seems to take a pleaure in constructing gigantic
edifices only to spoil them for the admiring spectator
by scrawling a fatuity or an obscenity across the front
of them. He can be, at times, unaccountably perverse,
malicious, childish towards his own creations. This ele-
ment in him, or rather the seeds from which it has
developed, first become clearly visible in Till Eulen-
spiegeL There, however, it remains pure gaminerie;
it does not clash with the nature of the subject, and
the jovial, youthful spirits and the happy inventiveness
of the composer carry it off. But afterwards it often
assumes an unpleasant form. There are one or two
things in Don Quixote that amuse us a little at first
but afterwards become rather tiresome, as over-insis-
tence on the purely physical grotesque always does in
time. In Ein Heldenleben a drama that is mostly
worked out on a high spiritual plane is vulgarized by
the crude physical horror of the brutal battle scene,
and by the now well-nigh pointless humor of the ugly
'Adversaries' section. There are pettinesses and silli-
nesses in the Symphonia Domestica that one can hardly
understand a man of Strauss's eminence troubling to
put on paper. Altogether, we may say of the Strauss of
218
ANTON BRUCKNER
the instrumental works alone we can certainly say it
of the later Strauss of the operas that he is, in Remain
Rolland's phrase, a curious compound of 'mud, debris,
and genius.' Always he is a spirit at war with itself;
sometimes he seems cursed, like an obverse of Goethe's
Mephistopheles, to will the good and work the ill. But
he has enriched program music with a large fund of
new ideas, and given it a new direction and a new
technique. He has established, more thoroughly than
any other composer, the right of poetic instrumental
music to a place by the side of abstract music. He has
attempted things that were thought impossible in mu-
sic, sometimes failing, but more often than not suc-
ceeding extraordinarily.
His workmanship is equal to his invention; of him
at any rate the post-classicists can never say, as they
said half a century ago of Liszt and his school, that he
writes literary music because he lacks the self-disci-
pline and the skill necessary for success in the abstract
forms. If anything his technique, especially his or-
chestral technique, is too astounding; it tempts him to
do amazing but unnecessary things for the mere sake
of doing them. But with all his faults he is a colossus
of sorts; he bestrides modern German music as Wag-
ner did that of half a century ago. In wealth and
variety of emotion and in power of graphic utterance
his work as a whole is beyond comparison with that
of any other contemporary composer.
IV
The life of Strauss overlaps that of his great post-
classical antithesis Brahms by thirty-three years, and by
thirty-six years that of Anton Bruckner (1824-1896), a
symphonist who is still little known, and that for two
reasons. In the first place, his works are as a rule ex-
cessively long; in the second place, he had the misfor-
219
MODERN MUSIC
tune to live in Vienna, where the Brahms partisans
were at one time all-powerful. Some of them resented
the pretensions of another symphonist to comparison
with their own idol, and by innuendo and neglect,
rather than by direct attack, they contrived to diffuse
a legend that has maintained itself almost down to our
own day, that Bruckner was merely an amiable old
gentleman with a passion for writing symphonies, but
one who need not be taken too seriously. As a matter
of fact, he was a good deal more than that. There is
no necessity to flaunt a defiant Brucknerian banner in
the face of the Brahmsians, but there is every necessity
to say that great as Brahms was he by no means ex-
hausted the possibilities of the modern symphony, and
that several of the possibilities that he left untouched
were turned to excellent use by Bruckner.
Bruckner's life was remarkably circumscribed and
offers practically no interest to a biographer. The son
of a country schoolmaster in Ansfelden, Upper Austria
(where he was born Sept. 4, 1824), he spent his early
life following in his father's footsteps, first at Windhag
(near Freistadt), later at St. Florian, where he also
filled a temporary post as organist. By his own efforts
he became highly proficient on that instrument and
in counterpoint. This fact and his constant connection
with the church influenced his creative work strongly.
In 1855 he became cathedral organist at Linz, mean-
time studying counterpoint with Sechter in Vienna,
where he later (1867) became his master's successor as
court organist. He also studied composition with Otto
Kitzler in 1861-63. Aside from his activities as profes-
sor of organ, counterpoint and composition at the
Vienna Conservatory and as lecturer on music at the
Vienna University, this constitutes the outward record
of his career. He died in Vienna, Oct. 11, 1896.
Similarly devoid of variety in their classification are
his compositions besides his nine symphonies, upon
220
ANTON BRUCKNER
which his reputation rests, there are only three masses
(D minor, 1864; E minor, 1869; F minor, 1872) and a
few more sacred works (including the '150th Psalm') ;
four compositions for men's chorus accompanied (Ger-
manenzag and Helgoland, with orchestra; Das hohe
Lied and Mitternacht, with piano) ; some others a cap-
pella, and one string quartet. Mostly works of large
calibre and commensurately broad in conception.
The error is still frequently made it was an error
that did him much harm in anti-Wagnerian Vienna
during his lifetime of regarding Rruckner as one who
tried to translate Wagner into terms of the symphony.
For Wagner, indeed, he had a passionate admiration;
but his own affinities as a composer with Wagner are
so trifling as to be negligible. The real heirs of Wag-
ner are the men who, like Strauss, aim at making
purely instrumental music a vehicle for the expression
of definite poetic ideas whose symphonic poems are
really operas without words, with the orchestra as the
actors. Bruckner, even with Liszt's example before
him, passed the symphonic poem by on the other side.
His nine symphonies are almost as purely 'abstract'
music as those of Brahms; if one qualifies the com-
parison with an 'almost' it is not because Bruckner
worked upon anything even remotely resembling a
program, but because the rather sudden transitions
here and there in the symphonies, lacking as they do
a strictly logical musical connection, are apt to suggest
that the composer had in his mind some more or less
definite extra-musical symbol. But this explanation of
the undeniable fact that there is more than one hiatus
in the Bruckner movements, though it is not an impos-
sible one, is not the most probable one in every case.
A certain disconnectedness was almost inevitable in
such a symphonic method as that of Bruckner. He had
no appetite for the merely formal 'working-out' that
Brahms could manipulate with such facility, but fre-
221
MODERN MUSIC
quently without convincing us that he is saying any-
thing very germane to his main topic. For a frank
recognition of Brahms' general mastery of form is not
incompatible with an equally frank recognition that
too often formalism was master of him. The danger
of a transmitted classical technique in any art is
that now and then it tempts its practitioners to talk
and allows them to talk quite fluently when they have
really nothing of vital importance to say. Take, as an
example, bars 58-73 of the first movement of Brahms'
fourth symphony. This passage is not merely dull; it
is absolutely meaningless. It carries the immediately
preceding thought no further; it is no manner of neces-
sary preparation for the thought that comes immedi-
ately after. It is 'padding' pure and simple; a mechani-
cal manipulation of the clay without any clear idea on
the part of the potter as to what he wishes to model.
Brahms, in fact, knows, or half-knows, that he has
travelled as far as he can go along one road, and has
a little time to wait before etiquette permits him to
proceed up another: so he marks time with the best
grace he can or, to vary the illustration, having said
all he can think of in connection with A, and not being
due just yet. to discuss B, he simply goes on talking
until he can think of something to say. Such a passage
as this would have been impossible for Beethoven : his
rigorously logical mind would have rejected it as being
a mere inorganic patch upon the flesh of a living or-
ganism: he would never have rested until he had re-
established the momentarily interrupted flow of vital
blood between the severed parts.
For a mechanical technique such as Brahms uses
here, Bruckner had no liking, nor would it have been
of much use in connection with ideas like his. In his
general attitude towards the symphony he reminds us
somewhat of Schubert. He does not start, as Brahms
does, with a subject that, however admirable it may be
222
ANTON BRUCKNER
in itself, and however excellently it may be adapted
for the germination of fresh matter from it, has obvi-
ously been chosen in some degree because of its 'work-
ableness.' With Rruckner, as with Schubert, the sub-
ject sings out at once simply because it must. The com-
poser is too full of the immediate warmth of the idea
to premeditate 'development' of it. So it inevitably
comes about that, with both Rruckner and Schubert,
repetition takes, in some degree, the place of develop-
ment- Symphonic development, speaking broadly, be-
comes technically easier in proportion as the thematic
matter to be manipulated is shorter; looking at the mu-
sic for the moment as a mere piece of tissue-weaving,
it is evident that more permutations and combinations
can easily be made out of a theme like that of the first
subject of Reethoven's fifth symphony than out of the
main theme of Liszt's Tasso, or the Francesca theme in
Tschaikowsky's Francesca da Rimini. Wagner, with
his keen symphonic sense, gradually realized this;
whereas the leit-motifs of his early works are, as a rule,
fairly lengthy melodies, those of his later works are
of a pregnant brevity. The reason for this change of
style was that, as he came to see more and more clearly
the possibilities of a symphonic development of the
orchestral voice in opera, he saw also that the inter-
weaving of themes would be at once closer and more
elastic if the motifs themselves were made shorter.
This generic musical fact is the explanation of much
of the formal unsatisfactoriness of the average sym-
phonic poem. If the object of the poetic musician is
to depict a character, he will need a fairly wide sweep
of melodic outline. We could not, for example, sug-
gest Hamlet or Faust in a theme so short and simple
as that of the first subject of the Eroica, or the first
subject of the Second Symphony of Rrahms to say
nothing of the 'Fate' theme of Reethoven's Fifth. Rut
the wide-stretching poetic theme pays for its psycho-
223
MODERN MUSIC
logical suggestiveness by sacrificing, in most cases, its
'workableness.' And composers have only latterly
learned how to overcome this disability by constructing
the big, character-drawing theme on a sort of fishing-
rod principle, with detachable parts. It takes Strauss
nearly one hundred and twenty bars in which to draw
the full portrait of his hero in the splendid opening
section of Bin Heldenleben; but various pieces of the
chief theme can be used at will later so as to suggest
some transformation of mood in the hero, or some
change in his circumstances. The curious falling figure
in the third bar of the work, for example, that at first
conveys an idea of headlong energy, afterwards be-
comes a roar of pain and rage (full score, pp. 118 ff, and
elsewhere) . Had Liszt had the imagination to hit upon
such a device as this, and the technique to manipulate
it, he might have given to the 'development' of his
symphonic poems something of the organic life that
Strauss has infused into his.
Bruckner also lacked, in the main, this knowledge
of how to work upon sweeping ideas that were con-
ceived primarily for purely expressive rather than 'de-
velopmental' purposes, and at the same time to make
either the whole theme or various fragments of it plas-
tic factors in the evolution of an organically-knit tex-
ture. If Brahms would have been none the worse for
a little of that quality in Bruckner that made it im-
possible for him to talk unless he had something to say,
Bruckner would have been all the better for a little
of Brahms' gift of making the most of whatever frag-
ment of material he was using at the moment. When
Bruckner attempts 'development' in the scholastic
sense, as in bars 300 ff of the first movement of the
third symphony, he is almost always awkward and un-
convincing. His logic and a logic of his own he cer-
tainly had was less formal than poetic; as one gets to
know the symphonies better one is surprised to find
224
ANTON BRUCKNER
emotional continuity coming into many a passage that
had previously appeared a trifle incoherent. His mu-
sical logic is just the logic of any true and spontaneous
thing said simply, naturally and feelingly.
While it is true in one sense that Bruckner's methods
and outlook remained the same in each of his nine
published symphonies (the ninth, by the way, was left
uncompleted at his death), in another sense it puts a
false complexion on the truth. We do not find in him
any such growth discernible in the texture not less
than in the manner as we do from the First Symphony
to the Ninth of Beethoven, or from the Rienzi to the
Parsifal of Wagner. In externals, and to some extent
in essentials also, Bruckner's method and manner are
the same throughout his life the wide-spun imagina-
tive first movement, the thoughtful adagio, the wild or
merry scherzo, the rather sprawling finale. But there
was a real evolution of the intensive kind; and in the
last three symphonies in particular everything has be-
come enormously vertieft. In the ninth, Bruckner often
attains to a Beethovenian profundity and pregnancy.
His greatest fault is his inability to concentrate: his
material is almost invariably excellent, but he is too
prodigal with it. He is not content with two or three
main ideas, that in themselves would constitute mate-
rial enough for a movement; to these he must needs
add episodes of all kinds, until the movement expands
to a size that makes listening to it a physical strain, and
renders it difficult for the mind to grasp the true pro-
portions of it. This is generally the case with his first
and last movements; not even the titanic power of con-
ception in movements like the finale of his fifth and
eighth symphonies, nor the extraordinary technical
mastery they show, can quite reconcile us to their
length and apparent diffuseness. His most expressive
work is frequently to be found in his adagios, though
there, too, his method is at times so leisurely that in
225
MODERN MUSIC
spite of the fine quality of the material and the depth
of feeling in the music, it is sometimes hard to maintain
one's interest in it to the end- In his scherzi he is more
conciliatory to the average listener. Here he is incon-
testably nearer to Beethoven than Brahms ever came
in movements of this type. In place of the charming
but rather irrelevant quasi-pastorals with which
Brahms is content for the scherzi of his symphonies,
Bruckner writes movements overflowing with vitality,
a veritable riot of rhythmic energy. He will never be
popular in the concert room; his excessive length and
his frequent diffuseness are against that. But to musi-
cians he will always be one of the most interesting
figures in nineteenth-century music a composer fertile
in ideas of a noble kind, an imaginative artist with the
power of evoking moods of a refined and moving
poetry. And certainly there is no contrast more re-
markable in the whole history of music than that be-
tween the quiet, embarrassed, unlettered recluse that
was the man Bruckner, and the volcano of passion that
was the musician. Undoubtedly he has the great hand,
and at times he can shake the world with it as Beet-
hoven did with his. His place is between Beethoven
and Schubert: with each of his hands he holds a hand
of theirs.
The third big figure among the representatives of
the modern 'poetic' school is Gustav Mahler. Like the
other two, he is of the 'southern wing'; like Bruckner's,
his training was Viennese. Born in Kalischt (Bohe-
mia), he went to the capital as a student in the uni-
versity and the conservatory. Already at twenty he
began that brilliant career as conductor which during
his lifetime somewhat overshadowed his recognition
as a creative artist. His first post was at Hall (Upper
Austria), where he conducted a theatre orchestra;
226
Max Reger
After a photograph from life
GUSTAV MAHLER
thence he went to Laibach, Olmutz, Kassel (as Vereins-
dirigent) ; thence to Prague as conductor of the Ger-
man National Theatre (1885). In 1886 he substituted for
Nikisch at the Leipzig opera; two years later he became
opera conductor in Budapest, 1891 in Hamburg, and
1897 returned to Vienna, first as conductor, soon after
to become director of the Royal Opera, where he re-
mained till 1907. During 1898-1900 he conducted the
Philharmonic concerts as well. In 1909 he came to
New York as conductor of the Philharmonic Society
and remained till 1911, when failing health, perhaps
aggravated by uncongenial conditions, forced him to re-
sign. He died shortly after his return to Vienna, in the
same year.
While still in his youth Mahler wrote an opera, 'The
Argonauts,' besides songs and chamber music. A mu-
sical 'fairy play,' Riibezahl, with text by himself, the
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, and nine symphonies,
designed on a gigantic scale, constitute the bulk of his
mature works. Other songs, a choral work with or-
chestra (Das klagende Lied), and the 'Humoresques'
for orchestra nearly complete the list.
Bruckner left the problem of modern symphonic
form unsolved. Brahms partly solved it in one way,
by following the classical tradition on its more 'ab-
stract' side; Strauss has partially solved it in another
way, by making the 'moments' of the musical evolution
of a work tally with those of a program. Mahler, on
the other hand, aimed at a course which was a sort
of compromise between all the others. His nine sym-
phonies are neither abstract music nor program music
in the ordinary sense of the latter word; yet they are
'programmatic' in the broad sense that in whole and
in detail they are motived more or less by definite
concepts of man and his life in the world. Mahler
faced more clear-sightedly and consistently than any
other composer of his day the problem of the combina-
227
MODERN MUSIC
tion of the vocal and the symphonic form. That this
combination is full of as yet unrealized possibilities
will be doubted by no one familiar with the history of
music since Beethoven. In one shape or another the
problem has confronted probably nine-tenths of our
modern composers. Wagner found one partial solu-
tion of it in his symphonic dramas, in which the or-
chestra pours out an incessant flood of eloquent music,
the vague emotions of which are made definite for us
by the words and the stage action. The ordinary sym-
phonic poem attempts much the same thing by means
of a printed program that is intended to help the hearer
to read into the generalized expression of the music
a certain particular application of each emotion; we
may put it either that the symphonic poem is the Wag-
nerian music drama without the stage and the charac-
ters, or that the Wagnerian music drama is the sym-
phonic poem translated into visible action. But for
the best part of a century the imagination of composers
has been haunted by the experiment made by Beet-
hoven in his Ninth Symphony, of combining actual
voices with the ordinary symphonic form; it has always
been felt that instrumental music at its highest tension
and utmost expression almost of necessity calls out for
completion in the human cry. Words are often neces-
sary in order at once to intensify and to elucidate the
vague emotions to which alone the instruments can
give expression. It was the consciousness of this that
impelled Liszt to introduce the chorus at the end of
his 'Dante' and 'Faust' symphonies.
To a mind like Mahler's, full of striving, of aspira-
tion, of conscious reflection upon the world, it was even
more necessary that some means should be found of
giving definite direction to the indefinite sequences of
emotion of instrumental music. Almost from the be-
ginning he adopted the device of introducing a vocal
element into his symphonies. In the Second, a solo
228
GUSTAV MAHLER
contralto sings, in the fourth movement, some lines
from the Des Knaben Wunderhorn 'O rosebud red!
Mankind lies in sorest need, in sorest pain ! In heaven
would I rather be! ... I am from God, and back to
God again will go; God in His mercy will grant me a
light, will lighten me to eternal, blessed life' while
the idea of resurrection that is the theme of the music
of the fifth movement is precise by a chorus singing
Klopstock's ode, 'After brief repose thou shalt arise
from the dead, my dust; immortal life shall be thine.'
In the fourth movement of the third symphony the
'Nature' symphony a contralto solo sings the moving
lines, 'O Mensch, gieb Acht!' from Nietzsche's Also
sprach Zarathustra; and in the sixth movement the con-
tralto and a female choir dialogue with each other in
some verses from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Five
stanzas from the same poem are set as a soprano solo
in the finale of the Fourth Symphony. And in the First
Symphony, though the voices are not actually used, the
composer, in the first and third movements, draws
upon the themes of certain of his own songs (Lieder
eines fahrenden Gesellen). In the Eighth Symphony
the intermixture of orchestra and voices is so close
that the title of 'symphonic cantata' would fit the work
perhaps as well as that of 'symphony with voices';
here the kernel of the music is formed by the old Latin
hymn Veni, creator spiritus and some words from the
final scene of the second part of Goethe's Faust-
Mahler's use of the voice in the orchestra is, as will
be seen, something quite different from merely singing
the 'program' of the work instead of printing it. His
aim is the suggestion of symbols rather than the paint-
ing of realities. Even where, on the face of the case, it
looks at first as if his object had been a realistic one,
his intention was often less realistic than mystical.
In the Seventh Symphony, for instance, he introduces
cowbells; we have it from his own mouth that here
229
MODERN MUSIC
his a'im was not simply a piece of pastoral painting,
but the suggestion of 'the last distant greeting from
earth that reaches the wanderer on the loftiest heights.'
'When I conceive a big musical painting,' he said once,
'I always come to a point at which I must bring in
speech as the bearer of my musical idea. So must it
have been with Beethoven when writing his Ninth Sym-
phony, only that his epoch could not provide him with
the suitable materials for at bottom Schiller's poem is
not capable of giving expression to the "unheard" that
was within the composer.' In this Mahler is no doubt
right; the modern composer has a wider range of
poetry to draw upon for the equivalent of his musical
thought.
Mahler's form is in itself a beautiful and a rational
one; and, as with all other forms, the question is not
so much the 'How' as the 'What' of the music. Mahler,
perhaps, never fully realized the best there was in
him; fine as his music often is, it as often suggests a
mind that had not yet arrived at a true inner harmony.
His mind was always an arena in which dim, vast
dreams of music of his own struggled with impressions
from other men's music that incessantly thronged his
brain as they must that of every busy conductor, and
with more or less vague, poetic, philosophical and hu-
manitarian visions. He never quite succeeded in mak-
ing for himself an idiom unmistakably and exclusively
his own; all sorts of composers, from Beethoven and
Bruckner to Johann Strauss, seem to nod to each other
across his pages. As the Germans would say, his
Konnen was not always equal to his Wollen. His
feverish energy, his excitable imagination, and his lack
of concentration continually drove him to the writing
of works of excessive length, demanding unusually
large forces; the Eighth Symphony, for example, with
its large orchestra, seven soloists, boys' choir and two
mixed choirs, calls for a personnel of something like
230
MAX REGER
one thousand. Yet he could be amazingly simple and
direct at times, as is shown by his lovely songs and
by many a passage in the symphonies that have a folk-
song flavor. His individuality as a symphonist is in-
contestable, and it is probable that as time goes on
his reputation will increase. Alone among modern
German composers he is comparable to Strauss for gen-
eral vitality, ardor of conception, ambition of purpose,
and pregnancy of theme.
VI
In abstract music the biggest figure in the Germany
of to-day is Max Reger (born 1873) * almost the only
composer of our time who has remained unaffected
by the changes everywhere going on in European mu-
sic, though in his Romantische Suite he coquets a little
with French impressionism. His output is enormous,
and almost suggests spawning rather than composition
in the ordinary sense of the word. His general idiom
is founded mainly on Bach, with a slight indebtedness
to Brahms; for anything in the nature of program mu-
sic he appears to have no sympathy. The bulk of his
work consists of organ music, songs, and piano and
chamber music. His facility is incredible. He speaks
a harmonic and contrapuntal language of exceptional
richness; but it must be said that very often his facility
and the copiousness of his vocabulary tempt him to
over- write his subject; sometimes the contrapuntal
* Reger is a native of Brand, in Bavaria, the son of a school teacher,
from whom he received his earliest musical training. In addition to this
he received instruction from the organist Lindner in Weiden (where his
father settled during Reger's infancy). After his studies under Dr. Rie-
mann (1890-95), he taught at the Wiesbaden conservatory, and (after
some years' residence in his home town and in Munich) at the Royal
Academy of Munich. In 1907 he became musical director at the Leipzig
University and teacher of composition in the conservatory there, and in
1908 was made 'Royal Professor.' In 1908 he resigned his university
post and in the same year was given the honorary degree of doctor of
philosophy by the University of Jena. Later, until 1915, he conducted the
Meiningen orchestra.
231
MODERN MUSIC
web is woven so thickly that no music can get through.
But every now and then this rather heavy-limbed genius
achieves a curious limpidity and grace, and a moving
tenderness. If it be undeniable that had Bach never
lived a large part of Beger's music would not have
been written, it is equally undeniable that some of his
organ works are worthy to be signed by Bach himself.
It may be a significant fact, as well as helpful in
assaying the value of modern theoretical pedagogy,
that Beger, super-technician that he is, was taught com-
position, as Biemann's Lexikon boasts, 'entirely after
the text-books and editions of H. Biemann.' 'And,' it
goes on to say, 'in addition, he studied for five years
under Biemann's personal direction.' Biemann, it must
be borne in mind, is not a composer, but a theoretician
of extraordinary capacity. How little to the liking of
his master Beger's subsequent development has been
may be seen from the following quotation from the
same article: 'Beger evinced already in his (unpub-
lished) first compositions a tendency to extreme com-
plication of facture and to an overloading of the tech-
nical apparatus, so that his development ought to have
been the opposite to that of Wagner, for instance, i.e.
a restriction of the imagination aiming at progressive
simplification. Instead of this he has allowed himself
to be influenced by those currents in an opposite direc-
tion, regarding which contemporary criticism has
lost all judgment. With full consciousness he heaps up
daring harmonies and arbitrary feats of modulation in
a manner which is positively intolerant to the lis-
tener [!]. Beger's very strong melodic gifts could not
under such conditions arrive at a healthy development.
Only when a definite form forces him into particular
tracks (variations, fugue, chorale transcription) are his
works unobjectionable; the wealth of his inventive
power and his eminently polyphonic nature enable him
to be sufficiently original and surprising even within
232
MAX REGER
such bounds. On the other hand, in simple pieces of
small dimensions, and in songs, his intentional avoid-
ance of natural simplicity is actually repugnant. His
continuous prodigality of the strongest means of ex-
pression soon surfeit one, and in the end this excessive
richness becomes a mere stereotyped mannerism.'
No doubt the learned doctor is somewhat pedantic,
but curiously enough the opinion of less conserva-
tive critics is not dissimilar. Dr. Walter Niemann
refers to Reger's condensed, harmonically overladen
style as a 'modern barock,' a 'degeneration of Brahms-
ian classicism.' 'Universally admired is Reger's as-
tounding contrapuntal routine,' he says, 'the routine
that is most evident in the (now schematic, stereotyped)
construction of his fugues and double fugues; one also
generally admires his enormous constructive ability
(satztechnisches Konnen), the finished art of subtle
detail which he exhibits most charmingly in his smallest
forms, the Sonatinas, the Schlichte Weisen. But, leav-
ing out all the hypocrisy of fashion, the all-too-willing,
unintelligent deification of the great name, all musical
cliquism and modernistic partisanship, the hearing of
Reger's music either leaves us inwardly unconcerned
and even bores us, or it strikes us as more or less re-
pulsive. Details may well please us, and we are often
honestly prepared to praise a delicate mood, the at-
mospheric coloring, the masterful construction. But,
impartially, no one will ever remark that Reger's art
exerts heartfelt, profound or ethical influences upon
the listener.' *
The particular partisanship to which Niemann refers
is one of the outstanding features of contemporary
German musical life. Reger has enjoyed a truly ex-
traordinary vogue in his own country. For that reason
we are devoting somewhat more space to him than
we otherwise should, for we do not acknowledge his
* Walter Niemann: Die Musik seit Richard Wagner, 1914.
233
MODERN MUSIC
right to contend with Strauss for the mastery of his
craft. We certainly do not share the opinion of his
partisans, who have pronounced him a reincarnated
Bach, the completer of Beethoven, the heir to Brahms'
mantle and what not. Great as is his ability, we share
Niemann's view that 'his great power lies not in inven-
tion but in transformation and after-creation' (Urn and
Nachschaffen). Give him a good melody and he will
embroider it, metamorphose it, combine it with in-
numerable other elements in an erudite we had almost
said inspired manner; give him a cast-iron form as a
frame and he will fill it with the most richly colored,
tumultuously crowded canvas, but the style of his
broideries will be curiously similar and all too fiercely
pondered, the colors of his canvas will suggest the stu-
dio instead of the open air, the figures will be abnormal,
fantastic or pathetic to the point of morbidity they
will not be images of nature.
Brahms is the prevailing influence in Reger, though
in manner rather than in spirit, the Bach polyphony
and structure, the Liszt-Wagnerian harmonic color,
and the acute German romanticism notwithstanding.
As regards his symphonic and chamber works this is
generally conceded and needs no further comment.
Like Brahms, by the way, Reger approached the or-
chestra reluctantly; sonatas for various instruments,
chamber works in various combinations preceded his
first orchestral essay. The Sinfonietta (op. 90) , the Ser-
enade in G major (op. 95), the Hiller Variations (op.
100), the Symphonic Prologue to a Tragedy (op. 108),
were presumably harbingers of a real symphony. In-
stead, however, there followed a Konzert im alien Slil
(op. 123), a 'Romantic Suite' (op. 125) and a 'Ballet
Suite' (op. 130) , again showing Reger's predeliction for
the antique forms; and a series of 'Tone Poems after
Pictures by Bocklin' (op. 128),* which would indicate
* These include Der geigende Eremit; Spiel der Wellen; Die Toteninsel
and Bacchanal.
234
MAX REGER
a turn toward the impressionistic mood-painting of the
ultra-modern wing of the 'poetic' school. His violin
concerto, in A minor (op. 101), and the piano concerto,
in F minor (op. 114), are, however, in effect symphonies
with solo instrument again following Rrahms' precept,
but by a hopelessly thick and involved orchestration,
he precludes anything like the interesting Rrahmsian
dialogue or discussion between the two elements.
Of the mass of Reger's chamber music we should
mention the five sonatas for violin and piano, besides
four for violin alone (in the manner of J. S. Bach) , in
which he shows his contrapuntal skill to particular ad-
vantage; the three clarinet sonatas, notable for beauti-
ful slow movements and characteristic Reger scherzos
(which are usually either grotesque, boisterous or
spookish) ; two trios, three string quartets, a string
quintet, 'cello sonatas, two suites for piano and violin
(of which the first, 1m alien Stil, op. 93, is widely
favored), and numerous other pieces for violin, piano,
etc. Reger has essayed choral writing extensively, the
Gesang der Verkldrten for five-part chorus and large
orchestra (op. 71), Die Nonnen (op. 112), and several
series of 'Folk Songs' being but part of the output.
The much-favored organ compositions, chorale fanta-
sias, preludes and fugues and in various other forms
sanctified by the great Rach, are too numerous to men-
tion and the songs (over 200 in number) will receive
notice in another chapter.
Of the minor composers who owe allegiance to the
New German School of Wagner and Liszt we may name
first those of the immediate circle at Weimar Peter
Cornelius, Hans von Billow, Eduard Lassen, and Felix
Draeseke. Of these Bulow and Lassen have been men-
tioned in Chapter I. Cornelius has already been re-
membered in connection with the later romantic opera
as having successfully applied Wagner's principles to
the lighter dramatic genre ('Barber of Bagdad'), and
235
MODERN MUSIC
has received further mention as a song-writer (see Vol.
V, pp. 302ff ) . Here we may pay him a brief tribute as
the composer of beautiful choruses, in which he shows
the influence of the older masters of choral art. Thus
Der Tod das ist die kiihle Nacht recalls the gorgeous
color of the Renaissance Venetians. From 1852 on,
when Cornelius joined the Liszt circle, he was one
of the chief standard-bearers of the New German
school.
Felix Draeseke's (born 1835) association with this
group must be qualified, for, though originally drawn
to Weimar by his enthusiasm for Liszt, he later de-
serted the ranks of the New Germans and devoted
himself to the cultivation of the classic forms. This
reversion seems to have been in the nature of a reform,
for his early essays in the freer modernistic manner
are somewhat bizarre. In his harmonic and orchestral
style, however, he continued to adhere to the 'New
German' principles. In fact, he swung like a pendulum
between the two opposite poles of modern German mu-
sic. His compositions include three symphonies G
major, F major, and C minor ('Tragica') an orchestral
serenade (op. 49) ; two symphonic preludes, a Jubel-
Overtiire; three string quartets and a number of other
chamber works, a sonata and other pieces for piano, as
well as a number of large choral works (a Mass, op. 60;
a Requiem, op. 30; 'Song of Advent,' op. 60; a mystery,
Christus, consisting of a prelude and three oratorios;
cantatas, etc.) ; also several operas. Draeseke was a
friend of Biilow. He taught at the Lausanne conserva-
tory in 1868-69 and later at the Dresden conservatory.
He is a royal Saxon professor, privy councillor, etc.
Another grand-ducal musical director at Weimar was
August Klughardt (1847-1902), who wrote five sympho-
nies, a number of overtures, orchestral suites, etc. Like
Draeseke, he was influenced both by the neo-classics
and the 'New Germans.' Heinrich Forges (1837-1900),
236
MAX REGER
also distinguished as a writer and conductor; Leopold
Damrosch (1832-85), who carried the Wagner-Liszt
banner to America; Hans von Bronsart (b. 1828) and
his wife Ingeborg, both pupils of Liszt and distinguished
in piano music (the former also for an orchestral fan-
tasy and a choral symphony, In den Alpen), should be
mentioned as belonging to the same group.
There are other jiames of real importance in absolute
music; there are Pfitzner, Thuille, Schillings, Klose and
Kaskel, there are Bungert, Weingartner, Goldmark
and less significant names, but since these have exer-
cised their talents chiefly in the dramatic field we shall
defer our treatment of them to the following chapter.
And, finally, there is a host of followers of these, too
numerous to be treated as individuals and if individ-
ually distinguished too recent to have judgment pro-
nounced upon them. The most recent currents, too, shall
have attention in the next chapter.
E. N.
237
CHAPTER VIII
GERMAN OPERA AFTER WAGNER AND MODERN GERMAN SONG
The Wagnerian after-current: Cyrill Kistler; August Bungert, Goldmark,
etc.; Max Schillings, Eugeii d' Albert The successful post-Wagnerians
in the lighter genre: Gotz, Cornelius, and Wolf; Engelbert Humperdinck's
fairy opera; Ludwig Thuille; Hans Pfltzner; the Volksoper Richard
Strauss as musical dramatist Hugo Wolf and the modern song; other
contemporary German lyricists The younger men: Klose, Hausegger, Schon-
berg, Korngold.
IT was only to be expected that the titanic personality
of Wagner should drag a number of smaller men after
it, both in his own day and later, by the sheer force
of attraction of a great body for small ones. In one of
his essays Matthew Arnold characterizes the test of
the quality of a critic as the power 'to ascertain the
master current in the literature of an epoch, and to
distinguish this from all the minor currents.' This
sensitiveness to master currents, however, that is so
essential to criticism, is generally a source of danger
to the secondary creative minds; it is apt to tempt
them to follow blindly in the wake of the master spirit,
instead of trying to find salvation on a road of their
own. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century
it was indubitably true that the master current in mu-
sic was that set going by Wagner; but it was equally
true that any other mariner who should venture upon
that stream was pretty certain to be swamped by Wag-
ner's backwash. So it has proved: with the sole ex-
ception of Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, no oper-
atic work of the late nineteenth century that openly
claimed kinship with Wagner has exhibited any stay-
238
THE WAGNERIAN AFTER-CURRENT
ing power, while the more durable success has been
reserved for works like Cornelius' Barbier von Bagdad
and Gotz's Der Wider spenstigen Zdhmung, that frankly
recognized the impossibility of any smaller man than
Wagner continuing Wagner's work.
As was inevitable, the more self-conscious of the
post-Wagnerians fastened for imitation upon what they
thought to be the essential Wagner, but that a later
day can see was the inessential. To them Wagner was
the re-creator of the world of the German saga. Pos-
terity has learned that with Wagner, as with all great
creators, the matter is of much less account than his
way of dealing with the matter. It is not the body of
religious and cosmological beliefs underlying the Greek
drama that makes the Greek dramatists what they are
to us to-day. Their very conception of the governance
of the universe is a thing that we find it hard to enter
into even by an effort of the historical imagination;
nevertheless these men are more vital to us than many
of the problem-play writers of our own epoch, simply
because the emotional stuff in which they deal is of the
eternal kind, and .they have dealt with it along lines
that are independent of the mere thought of their own
age. Similarly, what is most vital for us in Wagner
now is not his myths, his problems of the will, his con-
ception of love, of redemption, of renunciation, or the
verse forms into which he threw his ideas, but the depth
of his passion, the truth of his portraiture, the beauty
and eloquence of his speech. The real Wagner, in
truth, was the Wagner that no one could hope to imi-
tate. But the generation that grew up in his mighty
shadow imagined that all it had to do was to re-exploit
the mere externalities of his work. Like him, it would
delve into German myths or German folk-lore for its
subjects; like him, it would adopt an alliterative mode
of poetic diction; like him, it would treat the less in-
tense moments of drama in a quasi-recitative that was
239
MODERN MUSIC
supposed to be an intensification of the intervals and
accents of ordinary speech. But all these things in
themselves were merely the clothes without the man;
and not one of Wagner's immediate successors showed
himself big enough to wear his mantle. Many of these
works written in a conspicuously Wagnerian spirit have
still considerable interest for the student of musical
history the Kunihild (1848), for example, of Cyrill
Kistler (1848-1907) but not enough vitality to preserve
for them a permanent place in the theatre repertory.
(The same composer's Baldur's Tod, written in the
'eighties, was not performed till 1905 in Diisseldorf.)
The big Homeric tetralogy of August Bungert, Odysseus
Heimkehr (1896), Kirke (1898), Nausikaa (1900-01),
and Odysseus Tod (1903), is an attempt to do for the
Greek myths what Wagner did for the Teutonic. (The
composer is said to be engaged upon a second tetralogy
of the same order, bearing the general title of 'Ilias.')
How seriously one section of the German musical public
took these colossal plans was shown by the proposal
to erect a 'Festspielhaus' on the Rhine that should be to
Bungert music-drama what Bayreuth is to the Wagne-
rian. After a fair amount of success in the years im-
mediately following their production, however, Bun-
gert's operas have fallen out of the repertory. His tal-
ent is indeed lyrical rather than dramatic. Bungert
was born in Mulheim (Ruhr) in 1846 and studied at
the Cologne Conservatory and in Paris. He became
musical director in Kreuznach (1869) and has since
lived chiefly in Karlsruhe and Berlin. Besides the *tet-
ralogy' he wrote a comic opera, Die Studenten von
Salamanka (1884), and some symphonic and chamber
works. His songs (including Carmen Sylva's 'Songs of
a Queen') have probably more permanent value than
the rest of his work.
The opera has in fact tempted many of the German
lyricists to try to exceed their powers. Hans Sommer
240
THE WAGNERIAN AFTER-CURRENT
(born 1837), who has produced a number of songs of
fine feeling and perspicuous workmanship, attempted
a Wagnerian flight in his opera Loreley (1891), in
which the treatment is a little too heavy for the sub-
ject. Like so many of his contemporaries, he frequently
suffers for the sins of his librettists. Felix Draeseke
(b. 1835) has hovered uncertainly between Schumann-
esque and Wagnerian ideals; his most successful opera
is Herrat (1892).* Adalbert von Goldschmidt (1848-
1906) aimed, as others of his kind did, at continuing
the Wagner tradition not only in the musical but in
the poetic line. He was his own librettist in the opera
Helianthus (1884) ; but in the music of both this and
the later opera Gaea (1889) the Wagnerian influence
is obvious. Carl Goldmark (1830-1915) brought the best
musical qualities of a mind that was eclectic both by
heredity and environment to bear upon the very suc-
cessful operas Die Konigin von Saba (1875), Merlin
(1886), and Das Heimchen am Herd (1896), founded
on Dickens's 'Cricket on the Hearth.'
Though a native of Hungary (Keszthely, 1830), Gold-
mark received a thoroughly German training in Vienna,
where he studied the violin with Jansa. He entered the
conservatory in 1847 and, since that institution was
closed the following year, he continued his studies by
himself. In 1865 he aroused attention with his over-
ture Sakuntala, which is still in the orchestral reper-
toire. Happily guided by an artistic instinct, he hit
upon a vein which his talent especially fitted him to
exploit, namely, the painting of vivid oriental color.
His first opera, 'The Queen of Sheba,' produced in
Vienna in 1875, following the same tendency with equal
success, has preserved its popularity till to-day. The
chronological order of his other operas is as follows:
* Other operas by Draeseke are Gudrun (1884) and Sigurd (fragments
performed in 1867). Bertrand de Born (three acts), Fischer und Karif (one
act), and Merlin were not published. Draeseke's symphonic works are more
important. (See p. 236.)
241
MODERN MUSIC
Merlin (Vienna, 1886, and revised for Frankfort, 1904) ;
'The Cricket on the Hearth' (1896) ; 'The Prisoner of
War' (1899); Gotz von Berlichingen (1902); and 'A
Winter's Tale' (1908). His symphonic works include,
besides the Sakuntala overture, an orchestral suite
(symphony) 'The Rustic Wedding,' a symphony in E-
flat, the overtures 'Penthesilea,' 'In Spring,' 'Prometheus
Bound,' 'Sappho,' and 'In Italy'; a symphonic poem
'Zrinyi' (1903), two violin concertos, a piano quintet, a
string quartet, a suite for piano and violin, pianoforte
and choral works.
An apt criticism of Goldmark's style is given by
Eugen Schmitz in the revision of Naumann's Musik-
geschichte: 'In any case, we know of no second com-
poser of the present time who can paint the exoticism
and fata morgana of the Orient and the tropics, the sul-
triness and the effects of a climate that arouses devour-
ing passions, as well as the peculiarity and special na-
ture of the inhabitants, in such characteristic and glow-
ing tone-colors as Goldmark has succeeded in doing.
Herein, however, lies not only his strength but also his
weakness; for he is exclusively a musical colorist, a
colorist a la Makart, who sacrifices drawing and per-
spective for the sake of color. Which means, translated
into musical terms: a composer whose melodic inven-
tion and thematic development does not stand in a pro-
portionate relationship to the intoxicating magic of
tone-color combinations that he employs. Moreover, his
coloring is already beginning to fade beside the cor-
responding achievements of the most modern com-
posers of to-day.'
A number of minor talents have from time to time
obtained a momentary or a local success, without in
the end doing anything to sustain the hope that some-
thing really vital might be expected of them; of works
of this order we may mention the Urvasi (1886), Der
Evangelimann (1894), Don Quixote (1898), and Kuh-
242
THE WAGNERIAN AFTER-CURRENT
reigen (1911) of Wilhelm Kienzl (1857);* Die Versun-
kene Glocke and Faust of Heinrich Zollner (1854) ; the
Ingwelde (1894), Der Pfeifertag (1899), and Moloch
(1906) of Max Schillings (born 1868) ; the Sakuntala
(l884) 9 Malawika (1886), Genesius (1893), and Orestes f
(1902) of Felix Weingartner (born 1863). In these
and some dozen or two of other modern Germans, com-
position is an act of the will rather than of the imagina-
tion. The generous eclecticism and superficial effec-
tiveness of the Tiefland (1903) of Eugen d' Albert (born
1864) have won for it exceptional popularity.
The classification of Schillings as a 'minor talent'
would probably not meet with the approval of many
critics and musicians in Germany, where his influence
is considerable. Schillings is one of the ramparts of
the progressive musical citadel of Munich, the centre
from which the Reger, Pfitzner and Thuille strands
radiate. If aristocracy and nobility are the outstanding
characteristics of his highly individual muse, a corre-
sponding exclusiveness, coldness and artificiality ac-
company them. His perfection is that of the marble,
finely chiselled, hard and polished. His music is a per-
sonal expression, but his personality is one that never
experienced the depths of human suffering. Schillings
was born in the Rhineland (Diiren) in 1868 and finished
his studies in Munich. There he became 'royal pro-
fessor' in 1903 and later he went to Stuttgart as general
musical director in connection with the court theatre.
Besides his operas he wrote the symphonic prologue
'CEdipus' (1900), music for the 'Orestes' of ^Eschylus
(1900) and for Goethe's 'Faust' (Part I). Of non-
dramatic works there are two 'fantasies,' Meergruss
* Wil 
