Interpreters and interpretations

\ '. ! * ' '

iii' ,Mi

IW ^ linji hni' 1 ' 1

I: 1 ' , ;

iisiiill

«s«iwas».' ** ssT^IP^** I&* osis&m

;!,Vj;-,::;Wiii'i:if.!:!!}i':V: 1 i'Mi:!';i-!i!i!; M ,!-;:

;©v;ivi,?«'.ii;;«#i^.i , 1 i'-!!

iffillflli

',',:. n:- -,;,■■

3ti)aca, New fork

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE

SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND

THE GIFT OF

HENRY W. SAGE

1691

MUSIC

ML 60.V21l6 e " Un,Ver " ,y Ubrary

3 1924 021 800 242

The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021800242

Interpreters and
Interpretations

By THE SAME AUTHOR

MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS
MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR

Interpreters and
Interpretations

Carl Van Vechte

n

New York Alfred A. Knopf

MCMXVII

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF '"•

PuUlihid Otuttr. 1917

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To

the unforgetable interpreter of
Ariel . . Zelima . , . Louka .... Wendla
My Wife

CONTENTS

Interpreters

81 Olive Fremstad 11

Geraldine Farrar 39
' Mary Garden 59
1 Feodor Chaliapine 97

Mariette Mazarin 117

Yvette Guilbert 135

Waslav Nijinsky 149

Interpretations

The Problem of Style in the Production of

Opera 177
Notes on the Armide of Gluck 223
Erik Satie 243

The Great American Composer 269
The Importance of Electrical Picture Concerts

287
Modern Musical Fiction 299
Why Music Is Unpopular 357

Several of these essays have appeared in cur-
rent periodicals and thanks are due to the editors
of "The Bellman," "The Musical Quarterly,"
" The Seven Arts," and " Vanity Fair " for per-
mission to republish them. However all of these
have been considerably altered and expanded.

Olive Fremstad

C'est que le Beau est la seule chose qui soit im-
mortelle, et qu'aussi longtemps qu'il Teste un vestige
de sa manifestation materielle, son immortalite sub-
siste. Le Beau est repandu partout, il s'etend mime
jusque sur la mort. Mais il ne rayonne nulle fart
avec autant d'intensite que dans I'individualite hu-
mainej c'est la qu'il parte le plus a I'intelligence, et
c'est pour cela que, pour ma part, je prefirerai tou-
jours une grande puissance musicale servie par une
•voix defectueuse, a une voix belle et bete, une voix
dont la beaute n'est que materielle."

Ivan Turgeniev to Mme. Viardot.

Olive Fremstad

THE career of Olive Fremstad has entailed
continuous struggle: a struggle in the be-
ginning with poverty, a struggle with a
refractory voice, and a struggle with her own
overpowering and dominating temperament. Am-
bition has steered her course. After she had made
a notable name for herself through her inter-
pretations of contralto roles, she determined to
sing soprano parts, and did so, largely by an
effort of will. She is always dissatisfied with her
characterizations; she is always studying ways
and means of improving them. It is not easy for
her to mould a figure ; it is, on the contrary, very
difficult. One would suppose that her magnetism
and force would carry her through an opera with-
out any great amount of preparation. Such is
not the case. There is no other singer before the
public so little at her ease in any impromptu per-
formance. Recently, when she returned to the
New York stage with an itinerant opera company
to sing in an ill-rehearsed performance of Tosca,
she all but lost her grip. She was not herself and
she did not convince. New costumes, which hin-
dered her movements, and a Scarpia with whom
she was unfamiliar, were responsible in a measure
[11]

Interpreters

for her failure to assume her customary authority.
If you have seen and heard Olive Fremstad in
the scene of the spear in Gdtterdammerwng, you
will find it difficult to believe that what I say is
true, that work and not plenary inspiration is re-
sponsible for the effect. To be sure, the inspira-
tion has its place in the final result. Once she is
certain of her ground, words, music, tone-colour,
gesture, and action, she inflames the whole mag-
nificently with her magnetism. This magnetism is
instinctive, a part of herself ; the rest is not. She
brings about the detail with diligent drudgery,
and without that her performances would go for
nought. The singer pays for this intense con-
centration. In " Tower of Ivory " Mrs. Ather-
ton says that all Wagnerian singers must pay
heavily. Probably all good ones must. Charles
Henry Melzer has related somewhere that he first
saw Mme. Fremstad on the stage at Covent Gar-
den, where between her scenes in some Wagner
music drama, lost in her role, utterly oblivious
of stage hands or fellow-artists, she paced up and
down in the wings. At the moment he decided
that she was a great interpretative artist, and
he had never heard her sing. When she is sing-
ing a role she will not allow herself to be inter-
rupted; she holds no receptions between scenes.
[12]

Olive Fremstad

" Come back after the opera," she says to her
friends, and frequently then she is too tired to
see any one. She often drives home alone, a prey
to quivering nerves which keep her eyeballs roll-
ing in ceaseless torture — sleepless.

Nothing about the preparation of an opera is
easy for Olive Fremstad; the thought, the idea,
does not register immediately in her brain. But
once she has achieved complete understanding of
a role and thoroughly mastered its music, the
fire of her personality enables her easily to set a
standard. Is there another singer who can stand
on the same heights with Mme. Fremstad as Isolde,
Venus, Elsa, Sieglinde, Kundry, Armide, Briinn-
hilde in Gotterdammerung, or Salome? And are
not these the most difficult and trying roles in the
repertoire of the lyric stage to-day?

In one of her impatient moods — and they oc-
cur frequently — the singer once complained of
this fact. " How easy it is," she said, " for those
who make their successes as Marguerite and Mimi.
... I should like to sing those roles. . . ." But
the remark was made under a misconception of
her own personality. Mme. Fremstad would find
Mimi and Marguerite much more difficult to com-
pass than Isolde and Kundry. She is by nature
Northern and heroic, and her physique is suited
[13]

Interpreters

to the goddesses and heroines of the Norse myths
(it is a significant fact that she has never at-
tempted to sing Eva or Senta). Occasionally, as
in Salome, she has been able to exploit success-
fully another side of her talent, but in the render-
ing of the grand, the noble, and the heroic, she
has no equal on our stage. Yet her Tosca always
lacked nobility. There was something in the
music which never brought the quality out.

In such a part as Selika she seemed lost
(wasted, too, it may be added), although the en-
trance of the proud African girl was made with
some effect, and the death scene was carried
through with beauty of purpose. But has any
one ever characterized Selika? Her Santuzza,
one of the two roles which she has sung in Paris,
must be considered a failure when judged by the
side of such a performance as that given by Emma
Calv4 — and who would judge Olive Fremstad
by any but the highest standards? The Swedish
singer's Santuzza was as elemental, in its way, as
that of the Frenchwoman, but its implications
were too tragic, too massive in their noble beauty,
for the correct interpretation of a sordid melo-
drama. It was as though some one had engaged
the Victory of Samothrace to enact the part.
Munich adored the Fremstad Carmen (was it not
[14]

Olive Fremstad

her characterization of the Bizet heroine which
caused Heinrich Conried to engage her for Amer-
ica?) and Franz von Stuck painted her twice in
the role. Even in New York she was appreciated
in the part. The critics awarded her fervent
adulation, but she never stirred the public pulse.
The principal fault of this very Northern Carmen
was her lack of humour, a quality the singer her-
self is deficient in. For a season or two in Amer-
ica Mme. Fremstad appeared in the role, singing
it, indeed, in San Francisco the night of the mem-
orable earthquake, and then it disappeared from
her repertoire. Maria Gay was the next Metro-
politan Carmen, but it was Geraldine Farrar who
made the opera again as popular as it had been
in Emma Calve's day.

Mme. Fremstad is one of those rare singers on
the lyric stage who is able to suggest the meaning
of the dramatic situation through the colour of
her voice. This tone-colour she achieves stroke
by stroke, devoting many days to the study of im-
portant phrases. To go over in detail the in-
stances in which she has developed effects through
the use of tone-colour would make it necessary
to review, note by note, the operas in which she
has appeared. I have no such intention. It
may be sufficient to recall to the reader — who,
[15 1

Interpreters

in remembering, may recapture the thrill — the
effect she produces with the poignant lines begin-
ning Amour, puissant amour at the close of
the third act of Armide, the dull, spent quality of
the voice emitted over the words Ich habe demen
Mund gekiisst from the final scene of Salome,
and the subtle, dreamy rapture of the Liebestod
in Tristan und Isolde. Has any one else achieved
this effect? She once told me that Titian's As-
sumption of the Virgin was her inspiration for
her conception of this scene.

Luscious in quality, Mme. Fremstad's voice is
not altogether a tractable organ, but she has
forced it to do her bidding. A critic long ago
pointed out that another singer would not be
likely to emerge with credit through the use of
Mme. Fremstad's vocal method. It is full of ex-
pediences. Oftener thap most singers, too, she
has been in " bad voice." And her difficulties
have been increased by her determination to be-
come a soprano, difficulties she has surmounted
brilliantly. In other periods we learn that sing-
ers did not limit their ranges by the quality of
their voices. In our day singers have specialized
in high or low roles. Many contraltos, however,
have chafed under the restrictions which com-
posers have compelled them to accept. Almost
[16]

Olive Fremstad

all of them have attempted now and again to sing
soprano roles. Only in the case of Edyth Walker,
however, do we find an analogy to the case of
Olive Fremstad. Both of these singers have at-
tained high artistic ideals in both ranges. Mag-
nificent as Brangaene, Amneris, and Ortrud, the
Swedish singer later presented unrivalled charac-
terizations of Isolde, Armide, and Brunnhilde.

The high tessitura of the music allotted to the
Siegfried Brunnhilde is a strain for most singers.
Mme. Nordica once declared that this Brunnhilde
was the most difficult of the three. Without hav-
ing sung a note in the early evening, she must
awake in the third act, about ten-thirty or eleven,
to begin almost immediately the melismatic duet
which concludes the music drama. Mme. Frem-
stad, by the use of many expediences, such as pro-
nouncing Siegfried as if it were spelled Seigfried
when the first syllable fell on a high note, was
able to get through with this part without pro-
jecting a sense of effort, unless it was on the high
C at the conclusion, a note of which she frequently
allowed the tenor to remain in undisputed posses-
sion. But the fierce joy and spirited abandon
she put into the acting of the role, the passion
with which she infused her singing, carried her
victoriously past the dangerous places, often more
[17]

Interpreters

victoriouslj than some other singer, who could
produce high notes more easily, but whose stage
resources were more limited.

I do not think Mme. Fremstad has trained her
voice to any high degree of flexibility. She can
sing the drinking song from Lucrezia Borgia and
Delibes's Les Filles de Cadiz with irresistible ef-
fect, a good part of which, however, is produced
by her personality and manner, qualities which
carry her far on the concert stage, although for
some esoteric reason they have never inveigled the
general public into an enthusiastic surrender to
her charm. I have often heard her sing Swedish
songs in her native tongue (sometimes to her own
accompaniment) so enchantingly, with such ap-
peal in her manner, and such velvet tones in her
voice, that those who heard her with me not only
burst into applause but also into exclamations of
surprise and delight. Nevertheless, in her con-
certs, or in opera, although her admirers are per-
haps stronger in their loyalty than those of any
other singer, she has never possessed the greatest
drawing power. This is one of the secrets of the
stage; it cannot be solved. It would seem that
the art of Mme. Fremstad was more homely, more
human in song, grander and more noble in opera,
than that of Mme. Tetrazzini, but the public as a
[18]

Olive Fremstad

whole prefers to hear the latter, just as it has
gone in larger numbers to see the acting of Miss
Garden or Mme. Farrar. Why this is so I can-
not pretend to explain.

Mme. Fremstad has appeared in pretty nearly
all of the important, and many of the lesser, Wag-
ner roles. She has never sung Senta, and she
once told me that she had no desire to do so, nor
has she been heard as Freia or Eva. But she has
sung Ortrud and Elsa, Venus and Elizabeth,
Adriano in Rienzi, Kundry, Isolde and Brangaene,
Fricka, Erda, Waltraute, Sieglinde, one of the
Rhine maidens (perhaps two), and all three
Brunnhildes. In most of these characterizations
she has succeeded in making a deep impression.
I have never seen her Ortrud, but I have been in-
formed that it was a truly remarkable impersona-
tion. Her Elsa was the finest I have ever seen.
To Ternina's poetic interpretation she added her
own greater grace and charm, and a lovelier qual-
ity of voice. If, on occasion, the music of the
second act proved too high for her, who could
sing the music of the dream with such poetic ex-
pression? — or the love music in the last act? —
as beautiful an impersonation, and of the same
kind, as Mary Garden's Melisande.

Her Venus was another story. She yearned
[19]

Interpreters

for years to sing Elizabeth, and when she had
satisfied this ambition, she could be persuaded
only with difficulty to appear as the goddess. She
told me once that she would like to sing both roles
in a single evening — a possible feat, as the two
characters never appear together; Rita Fornia,
I believe, accomplished the dual impersonation on
one occasion at the behest of Colonel Savage.
She had in mind a heroine with a dual nature, sa-
cred and profane love so to speak, and Tann-
hauser at the mercy of this gemini-born wight.
She never was permitted to try this experiment
at the Metropolitan, but during her last season
there she appeared as Elizabeth. Montreal, and
perhaps Brooklyn, had seen this impersonation
before it was vouchsafed New York. Mme. Frem-
stad never succeeded in being very convincing in
this role. I do not exactly understand why, as its
possibilities seem to lie within her limitations.
Nor did she sing the music well. On the other
hand, her abundantly beautiful and voluptuous
Venus, a splendid, towering, blonde figure, shim-
mering in flesh-coloured garments, was one of her
astoundingly accurate characterizations. At the
opposite pole to her Sieglinde it was equally a
masterpiece of interpretative art, like Duse's Ca-
mille " positively enthralling as an exhibition of
[20]

Olive Fremstad

the gymnastics of perfect suppleness and grace."
In both these instances she was inspired perhaps
to realize something a little more wonderful than
the composer himself had dreamed of. The depth
and subtlety and refinement of intense passion
were in this Venus — there was no suggestion here
of what Sidney Homer once referred to as Mme.
Homer's platonic Venus!

Her Sieglinde is firmly intrenched in many of
our memories, the best loved of her Wagnerian
women and enchantresses. Will there rise an-
other singing actress in our generation to make
us forget it? I do not think so. Her melting
womanliness in the first act, ending with her com-
plete surrender to Siegmund, her pathetic fatigue
in the second act (do you not still see the har-
assed, shuddering figure stumbling into view and
falling voiceless to sleep at the knees of her
brother-lover?) remain in the memory like pic-
tures in the great galleries. And how easily in
the last act, in her single phrase, by her passion-
ate suggestion of the realization of motherhood,
did she wrest the scene from her fellow-artists, no
matter who they might be, making such an effect
before she fled into the forest depths, that what
followed often seemed but anticlimax.

Mme. Fremstad never sang the three Briinn-
[21]

Interpreters

hildes in sequence at the Metropolitan Opera
House (of late years no soprano has done so),
but she was called upon at various times to sing
them all separately. Undoubtedly it was as the
Briinnhilde in Gotterdammerung that she made
the most lasting impression. The scene of the
oath on the spear she carried into the realms
of Greek tragedy. Did Rachel touch greater
heights? Was the French Jewess more electric?
The whole performance displayed magnificent
proportions, attaining a superb stature in the
immolation scene. In scenes of this nature,
scenes hovering between life and death, the elo-
quent grandeur of Mme. Fremstad's style might
be observed in its complete flowering. Isolde
over the body of Tristan, Briinnhilde over the
body of Tristan, exhibited no mincing pathos ; the
mood established was one of lofty calm. Great
artists realize that this is the true expression of
overwhelming emotion. In this connection it
seems pertinent and interesting to recall a notable
passage in a letter from Ivan Turgeniev to Pau-
line Viardot : —

" You speak to me also about Romeo, the third

act; you have the goodness to ask me for some

remarks on Romeo. What could I tell you

that you have not already known and felt in ad-

[22]

Olive Fremstad

vance? The more I reflect on the scene of the
third act the more it seems to me that there is
only one manner of interpreting it — yours.
One can imagine nothing more horrible than find-
ing oneself before the corpse of all that one loves ;
but the despair that seizes you then ought to be so
terrible that, if it is not held and frozen by the
resolution of suicide, or by another grand senti-
ment, art can no longer render it. Broken cries,
sobs, fainting fits, these are nature, but they are
not art. The spectator himself will not be moved
by that poignant and profound emotion which you
stir so easily. Whereas by the manner in which
you wish to do Romeo (as I understand what you
have written me) you will produce on your
auditor an ineffaceable effect. I remember the fine
and just observation that you once made on the
agitated and restrained little gestures that Rachel
made, at the same time maintaining an atti-
tude of calm nobility; with her, perhaps, that
was only technique; but in general it is the
calm arising from a strong conviction or from
a profound emotion, that is to say the calm
which envelopes the desperate transports of pas-
sion from all sides, which communicates to them
that purity of line, that ideal and real beauty, the
true, the only beauty of art. And, what proves
[ 23 ]

I nterpreters

the truth of this remark, is that life itself — on
rare occasions, it is true, at those times when it
disengages itself from all that is accidental or
commonplace — raises itself to the same kind of
beauty. The greatest griefs, as you have said
in your letter, are the calmest; and, one could
add, the calmest are the most beautiful. But it is
necessary to know how to unite the two extremes,
unless one would appear cold. It is easier not to
attain perfection, easier to rest in the middle of
one's journey, the more so because the greater
number of spectators demand nothing else, or
rather are not accustomed to anything else, but
you are what you are only because of this noble
ambition to do your best, . . ."

In the complex role of Kundry Mme. Fremstad
has had no rival. The wild witch of the first act,
the enchantress of the second, the repentant
Magdalene of the third, all were imaginatively im-
personated by this wonderful woman. Certain
actors drop their characterizations as soon as the
dialogue passes on to another; such as these fail
in Parsifal, for Kundry, on the stage for the en-
tire third act, has only one word to sing; in the
first act she has but few more. Colossally allur-
ing in the second act, in which she symbolized the
essence of the " eternal feminine," Mm<\ Fremstad
[24]

Olive Fremstad

projected the first and third act Kundry into the
minds and hearts of her audience.

Well-trained in Bayreuth tradition, this singer
was no believer in it ; she saw no reason for cling-
ing to outworn ideals simply because they pre-
vailed at the Master's own theatre. However,
she did not see how an individual could break with
tradition in these works without destroying their
effect. The break must come from the stage
director.

" If Wagner were alive today," she once said
to me, " I don't believe that he would sanction a
lot of the silly ' business ' that is insisted upon
everywhere because it is the law at Bayreuth.
Wagner was constantly changing everything.
When he produced his music dramas they were so
entirely new in conception and in staging that
they demanded experimentation in many direc-
tions. Doubtless certain traditions were founded
on the interpretations of certain singers — who
probably could not have followed other lines of
action, which Wagner might have preferred, so
successfully.

" The two scenes which I have particularly in

mind are those of the first act of Tanrihauser and

the second act of Parsifal. Both of these scenes,

it seems to me, should be arranged with the most

[25]

Interpreters

undreamed of beauty in colour and effect. Venus
should not pose for a long time in a stiff attitude
on an uncomfortable couch. I don't object to
the couch, but it should be made more alluring.

" The same objection holds in the second act of
Parsifal, where Kundry is required to fascinate
Parsifal, although she is not given an opportunity
of moving from one position for nearly twenty
minutes. When Klingsor calls Kundry from be-
low in the first scene of that act, she comes against
her will, and I think she should arise gasping and
shuddering. I try to give that effect in my voice
when I sing the music, but, following Bayreuth, I
am standing, motionless, with a veil over my head,
so that my face cannot be seen for some time be-
fore I sing.

" One singer can do nothing against the mass
of tradition. If I changed and the others did
not, the effect would be inartistic. But if some
stage jnanager would have the daring to break
away, to strive for something better in these mat-
ters, how I would love to work with that man ! "

Departing from the Wagnerian repertoire,
Mme. Fremstad has made notable successes in two
roles, Salome and Armide. That she should be
able to do justice to the latter is more astonish-
ing than that she should emerge triumphant from
[26]

Olive Fremstad

the Wilde-Strauss collaboration. Armide, al-
most the oldest opera to hold the stage today, is
still the French classic model, and it demands in
performance adherence to the French grand style,
a style implying devotion to the highest artistic
ideals. Mme. Fremstad's artistic ideals are per-
haps on a higher plane than those of the Paris
Conservatoire or the Comedie Francaise, but it
does not follow that she would succeed in moulding
them to fit a school of opera with which, to this
point, she had been totally unfamiliar. So far as
I know, the only other opera Mme. Fremstad had
ever sung in French is Carmen, an experience
which could not be considered as the training for
a suitable delineation of the heroine of Gluck's
beautiful lyric drama. Still Mme. Fremstad
compassed the breach. How, I cannot pretend to
say. No less an authority than Victor Maurel
pronounced it a triumph of the French classic
style.

The moods of Quinault's heroine, of course, suit
this singing actress, and she brought to them all
her most effectual enchantments, including a series
of truly seducing costumes. The imperious un-
rest of the first act, the triumph of love over hate
in the second, the invocation to La Haine in the
third, and the final scene of despair in the fifth, all

Interpreters

were depicted with poignant and moving power,
and always with fidelity to the style of the piece*
She set her own pace in the finale of the first
act. The wounded warrior returns to tell how a
single combatant has delivered all his prisoners.
Armide's half-spoken guess, del! c'est Renaud!
which she would like to have denied, was uttered in
a tone which definitely stimulated the spectator
to prepare for the conflict which followed, the con-
flict in Armide's own breast, between her love for
Renaud as a man, and her hatred of him as an
enemy. I do not remember to have seen anything
on the stage more profound in its implied psy-
chology than her acting of the scene beginning
Enfin il est en ma puissance, in which she stays
her hand with dagger uplifted to kill the enemy-
hero, and finally completely conquered by the
darts of Love, transports him with her through
the air to her own fair gardens.

The singer told me that she went to work on
this opera with fear in her heart. " I don't know
how I dared do it. I suppose it is because I had
the simplicity to believe, with the Germans, that
Kundry is the top of everything, and I had sung
Kundry. As a matter of fact my leaning toward
the classic school dates very far back. My father
was a strange man, of evangelical tendencies. He
[28]

Olive Fremstad

wrote a hymn-book, which is still in use in Scan-
dinavia, and he had a beautiful natural voice.
People often came for miles — simple country
people, understand — to hear him sing. My
father knew the classic composers and he taught
me their songs.

" This training came back to me when I took up
the study of Armide. It was in May that Mr.
Gatti-Casazza asked me if I would sing the work,
which, till then, I had never heard. I took the
book with me to the mountains and studied — not
a note of the music at first, for music is very easy
for me anyway ; I can always learn that in a short
time — but the text. For six weeks I read and
re-read the text, always the difficult part for me
in learning a new opera, without looking at the
music. I found the text of Armide particularly
difficult because it was in old French, and because
it was in verse.

" I worked over it for six weeks, as I tell you,
until I had mastered its beauties as well as I could,
and then I opened the music score. Here I encoun-
tered a dreadful obstacle. Accustomed to Wag-
ner's harmonies, I was puzzled by the French
style. I did not see how the music could be sung
to the text with dramatic effect. I attended sev-
eral performances of the work at the Paris Opera,
[29]

I nterpreters

but the interpretation there did not assist me in
solving the problem. I tried every phrase in fifty
different ways in an attempt to arrive at my end,
and suddenly, and unexpectedly, I found myself
in complete understanding; the exquisite refine-
ment and nobility of the music, the repression, the
classic line, all suggested to me the superb, eternal
beauty of a Greek temple. Surely this is music
that will outlive Wagner !

" Once I understood, it was easy to put my
conception on the stage. There is no such thing
as genius in singing ; at least one cannot depend
on genius alone to carry one through an opera.
I must know exactly how I am going to sing each
phrase before I go upon the stage. Nothing
must be left to chance. In studying Armide I
had sketches sent to me of every scene, and with
these I worked until I knew every movement I
should make, where I should stand, and when I
should walk. Look at my score — at all these
minute diagrams and directions. . . ."

Armide was not a popular success in New York,
and after one or two performances in its second
season at the Metropolitan Opera House it was
withdrawn. With the reasons for the failure of
this opera to interest the general public Mme.
Fremstad, it may well be imagined, had nothing to
[30]

Olive Fremstad

do. Her part in it, on the contrary, contributed
to what success the work had. New York opera-
goers have never manifested any particular re-
gard for classic opera in any tongue; Fidelio or
Don Giovanni have never been popular here.
Then, although Caruso sang the music of Renaud
with a style and beauty of phrasing unusual even
for him, his appearance in the part was unfor-
tunate. It was impossible to visualize the chev-
alier of the romantic story. The second tenor
role, which is very important, was intrusted to
an incompetent singer, and the charming role of
the Naiad was very inadequately rendered; but
the principal fault of the interpretation was due
to a misconception regarding the relative impor-
tance of the ballet. There are dances in every
act of Armide; there is no lovelier music of its kind
extant than that which Gluck has devoted to his
dancers in this opera. Appreciating this fact,
Mr. Toscanini refused to part with a note of it,
and his delivery of the delightful tunes would have
made up a pleasant half-hour in a concert-room.
Unfortunately the management did not supple-
ment his efforts by providing a suitable group
of dancers. This failure was all but incomprehen-
sible considering the fact that Anna Pavlowa was
a member of the Metropolitan company that sea-
[311

I nterp reters

son. Had she appeared in Artnide, its fate in
New York, where it was performed for the first
time one hundred and thirty-three years after its
original production in Paris, might have been far
different. It may have been impossible for Mr.
Gatti-Casazza to obtain the co-operation of the
dancer. Times change. In 1833 Taglioni, then
at the height of her powers, danced in London
the comparatively insignificant parts of the Swiss
peasant in Guillaume Tell and the ghostly abbess
in Robert le Diable. This was the season in
which she introduced La Sylphide to English
theatre-goers.

The history of Richard Strauss's Salome in New
York has been told so often that it seems quite
unnecessary to repeat it here. There must be
few indeed of those who will read these lines who
do not know how the music drama received only
one public performance at the Metropolitan
Opera House before it was withdrawn at the
request of certain directors. At that one per-
formance Olive Fremstad sang the role of Salome.
She was also heard at the private dress rehearsal
— before an auditorium completely filled with in-
vited guests — and she has sung the part three
times in Paris. The singer threw herself into its
preparation with her usual energy, and developed
[32]

Olive Fremstad

an extraordinary characterization. There was
but one flaw, the substitution of a professional
dancer for the Dance of the Seven Veils. At this
time it had occurred to nobody that the singer
who impersonated Salome could dance. How
could any one sing the music of the tremendous
finale after getting thoroughly out of breath in
the terpsichorean exhibition before Herod? The
expedient of a substitute was resorted to at the
original performance in Dresden, and Olive Frem-
stad did not disturb this tradition. She allowed
Bianca Froehlich to take off the seven veils, a feat
which was accomplished much more delicately at
the performance than it had been at the dress
rehearsal. In Paris a farce resulted from the
custom when Mme. Trouhanova not only insisted
on wearing a different costume from the Salome
whose image she was supposed to be, but also took
curtain calls. I think it was Gemma Belincioni,
the Italian, who first conceived the idea of Salome
dancing her own dance. She was followed by
Mary Garden, who discovered what every one
should have noticed in the beginning, that the
composer has given the singer a long rest after the
pantomimic episode.

Aside from this disturbance to the symmetry of
the performance, Olive Fremstad was magnificent,
[33 ]

I nterp reters

Her entrance was that of a splendid leopard,
standing poised on velvet paws on the terrace, and
then creeping slowly down the staircase. Her
scene with Jochanaan was in truth like the storm-
ing of a fortress, and the scene with the Tetrarch
was clearly realized. But it was in the closing
scene of the drama that Mme. Fremstad, like the
poet and the composer, achieved her most effective
results. I cannot yet recall her as she crept from
side to side of the well in which Jochanaan was
confined, waiting for the slave to ascend with the
severed head, without that shudder of fascination
caused by the glimmering eyes of a monster ser-
pent, or the sleek terribleness of a Bengal tiger.
And at the end she suggested, as perhaps it has
never before been suggested on the stage, the
dregs of love, the refuse of gorged passion.

Singers who " create " parts in great lyric
dramas have a great advantage over those who
succeed them. Mary Shaw once pointed out to
me the probability that Janet Achurch and Eliza-
beth Robins only won enthusiastic commendation
from Bernard Shaw because they were appearing
in the Ibsen plays which he was seeing for the
first time. He attributed a good part of his
pleasure to the interpretations of these ladies.
However, he was never satisfied with their per-
[34]

Olive Fremstad

formances in plays with which he was more
familiar and he never again found anyone entirely
to suit him in the Ibsen dramas. Albert Niemann
was one of the first tenors to sing Wagner roles
and there are those alive who will tell you that
he was one of the great artists, but it is perhaps
because they heard him first in lyric dramas of
such vitality that they confused singer and role.
Beatty-Kingston, who heard him in 1866, said (in
" Music and Manners ") that he had torn his
voice " to tatters by persistent shoutings at the
top of its upper register, and undermined it by
excessive worship at the shrines of Bacchus and
the Paphian goddess. . . . His ' production ' was
characterized by a huskiness and scratchiness in-
finitely distressing to listen to. . . ." No allow-
ances of this sort need be made for the deep im-
pression made by Olive Fremstad. At the Metro-
politan Opera House she followed a line of well-
beloved and regal interpreters of the Wagner
roles. Both Lilli Lehmann and Milka Ternina
had honoured this stage and Lillian Nordica pre-
ceded Mme. Fremstad as Kundry there. In her
career at the Metropolitan, indeed, Mme. Frem-
stad sang only three operas at their first perform-
ances there, Salome, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, and
Armide. In her other roles she was forced to
[35]

I nterp reters

stand comparison with a number of great artists.
That she won admiration in them under the cir-
cumstances is the more fine an achievement.

I like to think, sometimes, that Olive Fremstad is
the reincarnation of Guiditta Pasta, that cele-
brated Italian singer of the early nineteenth cen-
tury, who paced triumphantly through the humbler
tragedies of Norma and Semir •amide. She too
worked hard to gain her ends, and she gained them
for a time magnificently. Henry Fothergill Chor-
ley celebrates her art with an enthusiasm that is
rare in his pages, and I like to think that he would
write similar lines of eulogy about Olive Fremstad
could he be called from the grave to do so. There
is something of the mystic in all great singers,
something incomprehensible, inexplicable, but in
the truly great, the Mme. Pastas and the Mme.
Fremstads, this quality outstrips all others. It
is predominant. And just in proportion as this
mysticism triumphs, so too their art becomes
triumphant, and flames on the ramparts, a living
witness before mankind to the power of the un-
seen.

August 17, 1916.

[36]

Geraldine Farrar

Mme. Farrar's insignia

Geraldine Farrar

THE autobiography of Geraldine Farrar is a
most disappointing document; it explains
nothing, it offers the reader no new insights.
Given the brains of the writer and the inex-
haustibility of the subject, the result is unac-
countable. Any opera-goer who has followed the
career of this singer with even indifferent atten-
tion will find it difficult to discover any revelation
of personality or artistry in the book. Geraldine
Farrar has always been a self-willed young woman
with a plangent ambition and a belief in her own
future which has been proved justifiable by the
chronological unfolding of her stage career.
These qualities are displayed over and over again
in the book, together with a certain number of
facts about her early life, teachers, and so on.
Of that part of her personal experience which
would really interest the public she gives a singu-
larly glossed account. Very little attention is
paid to composers; none at all to operas, if one
may except such meagre descriptions as that ac-
corded to Jtdien, " a hodge-podge of operatic
efforts that brought little satisfaction to anybody
concerned in it." There are few illuminating
anecdotes; no space is devoted to an account of
[39 J

I nterpreters

how Mme. Farrar composes her roles. She likes
this one; she is indifferent to that; she detests a
third; but reasons for these prejudices are rarely
given. There is little manifestation of that
analytic mind with which Mme. Farrar credits
herself. There are sketchy references to other
singers, usually highly eulogistic, but where did
Mme. Farrar hear that remarkable performance of
Carmen in which both Saleza and Jean de Reszke
appeared? For my part, the most interesting
lines in the book are those which close the thir-
teenth chapter : " I cannot say that I am much
in sympathy with the vague outlines of the modern
French lyric heroines ; Melisande and Ariane, I
think, can be better intrusted to artists of a less
positive type."

Notwithstanding the fact that she has written a
rather dull book, Geraldine Farrar is one of the
few really vivid personalities of the contemporary
lyric stage. To a great slice of the public she is
an idol in the sense that Rachel and Jenny Lind
were idols. She has frequently extracted warm
praise even from the cold-water taps of discrimi-
nating and ordinarily unsympathetic critics.
Acting in opera she considers of greater impor-
tance than singing. She once told me that she
ruthlessly sacrificed tone whenever it seemed to
[40]

Geraldine Farrar

interfere with dramatic effect. As an actress she
has suffered from an excess of zeal, and an im-
patience of discipline. She composes her parts
with some care, but frequently overlays her origi-
nal conception with extravagant detail, added
spontaneously at a performance, if her feelings
so dictate.

This lawlessness sometimes leads her astray.
It is an unsafe method to follow. Actors who feel
the most themselves, unless the feeling is ex-
pressed in support of carefully thought-out
effects, often leave their auditors cold. It is in-
teresting to recall that Mme. Malibran, who may
have excelled Mme. Farrar as a singer, had a
similar passion for impromptu stage "business."
She refused to give her fellow-artists any idea of
how she would carry a part through, and as she
allowed her feelings full sway in the matter mis-
understandings frequently arose. In acting
Desdemona to the Otello of the tenor, Donzelli,
for example, she would not determine beforehand
the exact point at which he was to seize her. Fre-
quently she gave him a long chase and on one oc-
casion in his pursuit he stumbled and cut himself
on his unsheathed dagger. Often it has seemed
that Mme. Farrar deliberately chose certain stage
" business " with an eye to astounding, and not
[41]

I nterpreters

with any particular care for the general round-
ness of her operatic performance. It must also
be taken into consideration that no two of Mme.
Farrar's impersonations of any one role are ex-
actly similar, and that he who may have seen her
give a magnificent performance is not too safe in
recommending his meticulous neighbour to go to
the next. Sometimes she is " modern " and
" American " in the deprecatory sense of these
words ; in some of her parts she exudes no atmos-
pheric suggestion. There are no overtones. The
spectator sees exactly what is before his eyes on
these occasions; there is no stimulation for the
imagination to proceed further. At other times,
as in her characterization of the Goosegirl in
KonigsMnder, it would seem that she had ex-
tracted the last poetic meaning out of the words
and music, and had succeeded in making her audi-
ence feel, not merely everything that the composer
and librettist intended, but a great deal more.

At times she is a very good singer. Curiously
enough, it is classic music that she usually sings
best. I have heard her sing Zerlina in
Don Giovanni in a manner almost worthy of her
teacher, Lilli Lehmann. There is no mention of
this role in her book; nor of another in which
she was equally successful, Rosaura in Le Donne
[42]

Geraldine Farrar

Curiose, beautifully sung from beginning to end.
Mme. Farrar is musical (some singers are not;
Mme. Nordica was not, for example), and I have
witnessed two manifestations of this quality. On
one occasion she played for me on the piano a
good portion of the first act of ' Ariane et Barbe-
Bleue, and played it brilliantly, no mean achieve-
ment. Another time I stood talking with her and
her good friend, Josephine Jacoby, in the wings
during the last act of a performance of Madama
Butterfly at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
There was no air of preoccupation on her part, no
sense on ours that she was following the orchestra.
I became so interested in our conversation, for
Mme. Farrar invariably talks well, that I did not
even hear the orchestra. But her mind was quite
capable of taking care of two things at once.
She interrupted a sentence to sing her phrase off
stage, and then smilingly continued the conver-
sation. I shall never forget this moment. To
me it signified in an instant what Mme. Farrar has
taken the pains to explain in pages of her auto-
biography and which is all summed up in her own
comment, written at the time on the programme of
the concert of her Boston debut, May 26, 1896:
"This is what I made my debut in, very calm and
sedate, not the least nervous."
[43]

I nterpreters

But Mme. Farrar's vocal method is not God-
given, although her voice and her assurance may
be, and she sometimes has trouble in producing
her upper tones. Instead of opening like a fan,
her high voice is frequently pinched, and she has
difficulty in singing above the staff. I have never
heard her sing Butterfly's entrance with correct
intonation, although I have heard her in the part
many times. Her Carmen, on the whole, is a
most successful performance vocally, and so is (or
was) her Elizabeth, especially in the second act.
The tessitura of Butterfly is very high, and the
role is a strain for her. She has frequently said
that she finds it easier to sing any two other roles
in her repertoire, and refuses to appear »for two
days before or after a performance of this Puccini
opera.

Mme. Farrar is a fine linguist. She speaks and
sings French like a Frenchwoman (I have expert
testimony on this point), German like a German,
and Italian like an Italian; her enunciation of
English is also very clear (she has never sung in
opera in English, but has often sung English
songs in concert). Her enunciation of Maeter-
linck's text in Ariane et Barbe-Bleue was a joy,
about the only one she contributed to this per-
formance. And in Konigskinder and he Donne
[44]

Geraldine Farrar

Curiose she was equally distinct. In fact there is
never any difficulty about following the text of
an opera when Geraldine Farrar is singing.

The roles in which Mme. Farrar achieves her
best results, according to my taste, are Manon, the
Goosegirl, Margherita (in Mefistofele), Elizabeth,
Rosaura, Suzanna, and Violetta. Cio-Cio-San, of
course, is her most popular creation, and it de-
serves to some extent the applause of the
populace, although I do not think it should be
put in the above list. It is certainly not to be
considered on the same plane vocally. Other
roles in which she is partially successful are
Juliette and Marguerite (in Gounod's Faust). I
think her Ariane is commonly adjudged a failure.
In Mddame Sans-Gene she is often comic, but she
does not suggest a bourgeoise Frenchwoman; in
the court scenes she is more like a graceful woman
trying to be awkward than an awkward woman
trying to be graceful. Her Tosca is lacking in
dignity; it is too petulant a performance, too
small in conception. In failing to find adequate
pleasure in her Carmen I am not echoing popular
opinion.

I do not think Mme. Farrar has appeared in
La Traviata more than two or three times at the
Metropolitan Opera House, although she has
[45]

I nterpreters

probably sung Violetta often in Berlin. On the
occasion of Mme. Sembrich's farewell to the
American opera stage she appeared as Flora
Bervoise as a compliment to the older singer. In
her biography she says that Sarah Bernhardt
gave her the inspiration for the composition of
the heroine of Verdi's opera. It would be in-
teresting to have more details on this point ; they
are not forthcoming. Of course there have been
many Violettas who have sung the music of the
first act more brilliantly than Mme. Farrar; in
the later acts she often sang beautifully, and her
acting was highly expressive and unconventional.
She considered the role from the point of view
of make-up. Has any one else done this? Vio-
letta was a popular cocotte; consequently, she
must have been beautiful. But she was a con-
sumptive; consequently, she must have been pale.
In the third act Mme. Farrar achieved a very fine
dramatic effect with her costume and make-up.
Her face was painted a ghastly white, a fact
emphasized by her carmined lips and her black
hair. She wore pale yellow and carried an enor-
mous black fan, behind which she pathetically hid
her face to cough. She introduced novelty into
the part at the very beginning of the opera. Un-
like most Violettas, she did not make an entrance,
[46]

Geraldine Farrar

but sat with her back to the audience, receiving
her guests, when the curtain rose.

It has seemed strange to me that the profes-
sional reviewers should have attributed the added
notes of realism in Mme. Farrar's second edition
of Carmen to her appearances in the moving-
picture drama. The tendencies displayed in her
second year in the part were in no wise, to my
mind, a result of her cinema experiences. In fact,
the New York critics should have remembered that
when Mme. Farrar made her debut at the Metro-
politan Opera House in the role of Juliette, they
had rebuked her for these very qualities. She
had indulged in a little extra realism in the bed-
room and balcony scenes of Gounod's opera, of
the sort with which Miss Nethersole created ten-
minute furores in her performances of Carmen
and Sapho. Again, as Marguerite in Faust (her
Margherita in Mefistofele was a particularly re-
pressed and dreamy representation of the Ger-
man maiden, one instinct with the highest dra-
matic and vocal values in the prison scene) , she de-
vised " business " calculated to startle, dancing
the jewel song, and singing the first stanza of the
Roi de Thule air from the cottage, whither she
had repaired to fetch her spindle of flax — this
last detail seemed to me a very good one. In
[47]

Interpreters

early representations of Madama Butterfly and
La Bdheme her death scenes were fraught with
an intense realism which fitted ill with the spirit of
the music. I remember one occasion in which Cio-
Cio-San knocked over the rocking-chair in her
death struggles, which often embraced the range
of the Metropolitan stage.

These points have all been urged against her at
the proper times,, and there seemed small occasion
for attributing her extra activities in the first act
of Bizet's opera, in which the cigarette girl en-
gaged in a prolonged scuffle with her rival in the
factory, or her more recent whistling of the
seguidilla, to her moving-picture experiences.
No, Mme. Farrar is overzealous with her public.
She once told me that at every performance she
cut herself open with a knife and gave herself to
the audience. This intensity, taken together with
her obviously unusual talent and her personal at-
tractiveness, is what has made her a more than
ordinary success on our stage. It is at once her
greatest virtue and her greatest fault, artistically
speaking. Properly manacled, this quality would
make her one of the finest, instead of merely one
of the most popular, artists now before the pub-
lic. But I cannot see how the cinema can be
blamed.

[48]

Geraldine Farrar

When I first saw the Carmen of Mme. Farrar,
her second or third appearance in the part, I was
perplexed to find an excuse for its almost unani-
mous acclamation, and I sought in my mind for
extraneous reasons. There was, for example, the
conducting of the score by Mr. Toscanini, but
that, like Mme. Farrar's interpretation of the
Spanish gypsy, never found exceptional favour
in my ears. Mr. Caruso's appearance in the
opera could not be taken into consideration, be-
cause he had frequently sung in it before at the
Metropolitan Opera House without awakening
any great amount of enthusiasm. In fact, ex-
cept as Des Grieux, this Italian tenor has never
been popularly accepted in French opera in New
York. But Carmen had long been out of the
repertoire, and Carmen is an opera people like to
hear. The magic of the names of Caruso, Farrar,
and Toscanini may have lured auditors and critics
into imagining they had heard a more effective
performance than was vouchsafed them. Person-
ally I could not compare the revival favourably
with the wonderful Manhattan Opera House
Carmen, which at its best enlisted the services of
Mme. Bressler-Gianoli, the best Carmen save one
that I have ever heard, Charles Dalmores, Maurice
Renaud, Pauline Donalda, Charles Gilibert,
[49]

Interpreters

Emma Trentini, and Daddi ; Cleof onte Campanini
conducting.

At first, to be sure, there was no offensive over-
laying of detail in Mme. Farrar's interpretation.
It was not cautiously traditional, but there was
no evidence that the singer was striving to stray
from the sure paths. The music lies well in Mme.
Farrar's voice, better than that of any other part
I have heard her sing, unless it be Charlotte in
Werther, and the music, all of it, went well, in-
cluding the habanera, the seguidilla, the quintet,
and the marvellous Out, je t'aime, Escamillo of the
last act. Her well-planned, lively dance after the
gypsy song at the beginning of the second act
drew a burst of applause for music usually per-
mitted to go unrewarded. Her exit in the first
act was effective, and her scene with Jose in the
second act was excellently carried through. The
card scene, as she acted it, meant very little. No
strain was put upon the nerves. There was little
suggestion here. The entrance of Escamillo and
Carmen in an old victoria in the last act was a
stroke of genius on somebody's part. I wonder
if this was Mme. Farrar's idea.

But somehow, during this performance, one
didn't feel there. It was no more the banks of
the Guadalquiver than it was the banks of the
[50]

Geraldine Farrar

Hudson. Carmen as transcribed by Bizet and
Meilhac and Halevy becomes indisputably Erench
in certain particulars; to say that the heroine
should be Spanish is not to understand the truth ;
Maria Gay's interpretation has taught us that, if
nothing else has. But atmosphere is demanded,
and that Mme. Farrar did not give us, at least she
did not give it to me. In the beginning the in-
terpretation made on me the effect of routine, —
the sort of performance one can see in any first-
rate European opera house, — and later, when
the realistic bits were added, the distortion
offended me, for French opera always demands a
certain elegance of its interpreters ; a quality
which Mme. Farrar has exposed to us in two other
French roles.

Her Manon is really an adorable creature. I
have never seen Mary Garden in this part, but I
have seen many French singers, and to me Mme.
Farrar transcends them all. A very beautiful
and moving performance she gives, quite in keep-
ing with the atmosphere of the opera. Her adieu
to the little table and her farewell to Des Grieux
in the desert always start a lump in my throat.

Her Charlotte (a role, I believe, cordially de-
tested by Mme. Farrar, and one which she refuses
to sing) is to me an even more moving conception.
[51]

Interp reters

This sentimental opera of Massenet's has never
been appreciated in America at its true value, al-
though it is one of the most frequently repre-
sented works at the Paris Opera-Comique. When
it was first introduced here by Emma Eames and
Jean de Rezske, it found little favour, and later
Mme. Farrar and Edmond Clement were unable to
arouse interest in it (it was in Werther, at the
New Theatre, that Alma Gluck made her operatic
debut, in the role of Sophie). But Geraldine
Farrar as the hesitating heroine of the tragic and
sentimental romance made the part very real, as
real in its way as Henry James's " Portrait of a
Lady," and as moving. The whole third act she
carried through in an amazingly pathetic key,
and she always sang Les Larmes as if her heart
were really breaking.

What a charming figure she was in Wolf-
Ferrari's pretty operas, he Donne Curiose and
Suzannen's Geheimness! And she sang the lovely
measures with the Mozartean purity which at her
best she had learned from Lilli Lehmann. Her
Zerlina and her Cherubino were delightful imper-
sonations, invested with vast roguery, although
in both parts she was a trifle self-conscious,
especially in her assumption of awkwardness.
Her Elizabeth, sung in New York but seldom,
[52]

Geraldine Farrar

though she has recently appeared in this role with
the Chicago Opera Company, was noble in con-
ception and execution, and her Goosegirl one of
the most fascinating pictures in the operatic gal-
lery of our generation. Her Mignon was success-
ful in a measure, perhaps not an entirely credible
figure. Her Nedda was very good.

Her Louise in Julien was so fine dramatically,
especially in the Montmartre episode, as to make
one wish that she could sing the real Louise in
the opera of that name. Once, however, at a per-
formance of Charpentier's earlier work at the
Manhattan Opera House, she told me that she
would never, never do so. She has been known
to change her mind. Her Ariane, I think, was
her most complete failure. It is a part which re-
quires plasticity and nobility of gesture and in-
terpretation of a kind with which her style is
utterly at variance. And yet I doubt if Mme.
Farrar had ever sung a part to which she had
given more consideration. It was for this opera,
in fact, that she worked out a special method of
vocal speech, half-sung, half-spoken, which en-
abled her to deliver the text more clearly.

Whether Mme. Farrar will undergo further
artistic development I very much doubt. She
tells us in her autobiography that she can study
[53]

Interpreters

nothing in any systematic way, and it is only
through very sincere study and submission to
well-intended restraint that she might develop still
further into the artist who might conceivably
leave a more considerable imprint on the music
drama of her time. It is to be doubted if Mme.
Farrar cares for these supreme laurels; her suc-
cess with her public — which is pretty much all
the public — is so complete in its way that she
may be entirely satisfied with that by no means to
be despised triumph. Once (in 1910) she gave
an indication to me that this might be so, in the
following words :

" Emma Calve was frequently harshly criti-
cized, but when she sang the opera house was
crowded. It was because she gave her personal-
ity to the public. Very frequently there are sing-
ers who give most excellent interpretations, who
are highly praised, and whom nobody goes to see.
Now in the last analysis there are two things which
I do. I try to be true to myself and my own con-
ception of the dramatic fitness of things on the
stage, and I try to please my audiences. To do
that you must mercilessly reveal your personality.
There is no other way. In my humble way I am
an actress who happens to be appearing in opera.
.1 sacrifice tonal beauty to dramatic fitness every
[54]

Geraldine Farrar

time I think it is necessary for an effect, and I
shall continue to do it. I leave mere singing to
the warblers. I am more interested in acting
myself."

There is much that is sound sense in these re-
marks, but it is a pity that Mme. Farrar carries
her theories out literally. To me, and to many
another, there is something a little sad in the ac-
ceptance of easily won victory. If she would,
Mme. Farrar might improve her singing and act-
ing in certain roles in which she has already ap-
peared, and she might enlarge her repertoire to
include more of the roles which have a deeper sig-
nificance in operatic and musical history. At
present her activity is too consistent to allow time
for much reflection. It would afford me the
greatest pleasure to learn that this singer had
decided to retire for a few months to devote her-
self to study and introspection, So that she might
return to the stage with a new and brighter fire
and a more lasting message.

Farrar fara — forse.

July U, 1916.

[55]

Mary Garden

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose."

Gertrude Stein.

Mary Garden

THE influence of Ibsen on our stage has been
most subtle. The dramas of the sly Nor-
wegian are infrequently performed, but al-
most all the plays of the epoch bear his mark.
And he has done away with the actor, for now-
adays emotions are considered rude on the stage.
Our best playwrights have striven for an intellec-
tual monotone. So it happens that for the Henry
Irvings, the Sarah Bernhardts, and the Edwin
Booths of a younger generation we must turn to
the operatic stage, and there we find them: Mau-
rice Renaud, Olive Fremstad — and Mary Garden.
There is nothing casual about the art of Mary
Garden. Her achievements on the lyric stage are
not the result of happy accident. Each detail of
her impersonations, indeed, is a carefully studied
and selected effect, chosen after a review of pos-
sible alternatives. Occasionally, after a trial,
Miss Garden even rejects the instinctive. This
does not mean that there is no feeling behind her
performances. The deep burning flame of poetic
imagination illuminates and warms into life the
conception wrought in the study chamber. Noth-
ing is left to chance, and it is seldom, and always
for some good reason, that this artist permits
[59]

I nterpreters

herself to alter particulars of a characterization
during the course of a representation.

I have watched her many times in the same role
without detecting any great variance in the ar-
rangement of details, and almost as many times I
have been blinded by the force of her magnetic im-
aginative power, without which no interpreter can
hope to become an artist. This, it seems to me,
is the highest form of stage art; certainly it is
the form which on the whole is the most successful
in exposing the intention of author and composer,
although occasionally a Geraldine Farrar or a
Salvini will make it apparent that the inspiration
of the moment also has its value. However, I can-
not believe that the true artist often experiments
in public. He conceives in seclusion and exposes
his conception, completely realized, breathed into,
so to speak, on the stage. When he first studies
a character it is his duty to feel the emotions of
that character, and later he must project these
across the footlights into the hearts of his audi-
ence ; but he cannot be expected to feel these emo-
tions every night. He must remember how he felt
them before. And sometimes even this ideal in-
terpreter makes mistakes. Neither instinct nor
intelligence — not even genius — can compass
every range.

[60]

Mary Garden

Miss Garden's career has been closely identified
with the French lyric stage and, in at least two
operas, she has been the principal interpreter —
and a material factor in their success — of works
which have left their mark on the epoch, stepping-
stones in the musical brook. The roles in which
she has most nearly approached the ideal are per-
haps Melisande, Jean (Le Jongleur de Notre
Dame), Sapho, Thais, Louise, Marguerite (in
Gounod's Faust), Chrysis (in Aphrodite), and
Monna Vanna. I cannot speak personally of her
Tosca, her Orlanda, her Manon, her Vio-
letta, or her Cherubin (in Massenet's opera of the
same name). I do not care for her Carmen as a
whole, and to my mind her interpretation of Sa-
lome lacks the inevitable quality which stamped
Olive Fremstad's performance. In certain re-
spects she realizes the characters and sings the
music of Juliet and Ophelie, but this is vieux jeu
for her, and I do not think she has effaced the
memory of Emma Eames in the one and Emma
Calve in the other of these roles. She was some-
what vague and not altogether satisfactory (this
may be ascribed to the paltriness of the parts) as
Prince Charmant in CendrUlon, la belle Dulcinee in
Don Quichotte, and Griselidis. On the other hand,
in Natoma — her only appearance thus far in
£61]

I nterpreters

opera in English — she made a much more impor-
tant contribution to the lyric stage than either
author or composer.

Mary Garden was born in Scotland, but her fam-
ily came to this country when she was very young,
and she grew up in the vicinity of Chicago. She
may therefore be adjudged at least as much an
American singer as Olive Fremstad. She studied
in France, however, and this fortuitous circum-
stance accounts for the fact that all her great
roles are French, and for the most part modern
French. Her two Italian roles, Violetta and
Tosca, she sings in French, although I believe she
has made attempts to sing Puccini's opera in the
original tongue. Her other ventures afield have
included Salome, sung in French, and Natoma,
sung in English. Her pronunciation of French on
the stage has always aroused comment, some of it
jocular. Her accent is strongly American, a mat-
ter which her very clear enunciation does not leave
in doubt. However, it is a question in my mind
if Miss Garden did not weigh well the charm of
this accent and its probable effect on French audi-
tors. You will remember that Helena Modjeska
spoke English with a decided accent, as do Fritzi
Scheff, Alia Nazimova, and Mitzi Hajos in our
own day ; you may also realize that to the public,
" [68]

Mary Garden

which includes yourself, this is no inconsiderable
part of their charm. Parisians do not take pleas-
ure in hearing their language spoken by a Ger-
man, but they have never had any objection —
quite the contrary — to an English or American
accent on their stage, although I do not believe this
general preference has ever been allowed to affect
performances at the Comedie Francaise, except
when V Anglais tel qu'on le parle is on the affiches.
At least it is certain that Miss Garden speaks
French quite as easily as — perhaps more easily
than — she does English, and many of the eccen-
tricities of her stage speech are not noticeable in
private life.

Many of the great artists of the theatre have
owed their first opportunity to an accident ; it was
so with Mary Garden. She once told me the story
herself and I may be allowed to repeat it in her
own words, as I put them down shortly after :

" I became friends with Sybil Sanderson, who
was singing in Paris then, and one day when I was
at her house Albert Carre, the director of the
Opera-Comique, came to call. I was sitting by
the window as he entered, and he said to Sybil,
' That woman has a profile ; she would make a
charming Louise.' Charpentier's opera, I should
explain, had not yet been produced. ' She has a
[63]

Interpreters

voice, too,' Sybil added. Well, M. Carre took me
to the theatre and listened while I sang airs from
Traviata and Manon. Then he gave me the par-
tition of Louise and told me to go home and study
it. I had the role in my head in fifteen days.
This was in March, and M. Carre engaged me to
sing at his theatre beginning in October. . . . One
spring day, however, when I was feeling particu-
larly depressed over the death of a dog that had
been run over by an omnibus, M. Carre came to
me in great excitement; Mme. Rioton, the singer
cast for the part, was ill, and he asked me if I
thought I could sing Louise. I said ' Certainly,'
in the same tone with which I would have accepted
an invitation to dinner. It was only bluff; I had
never rehearsed the part with orchestra, but it
was my chance, and I was determined to take ad-
vantage of it. Besides, I had studied the music
so carefully that I could have sung it note for note
if the orchestra had played The Star-Spangled
Banner simultaneously.

" Evening came and found me in the theatre.
Mme. Rioton had recovered sufficiently to sing ; she
appeared during the first two acts, and then suc-
cumbed immediately before the air, Depuis le Jour,
which opens the third act. I was in my dressing-
room when M. Carre sent for me. He told me that
[64]

Mary Garden

an announcement had been made before the curtain
that I would be substituted for Mme. Rioton. I
learned afterwards that Andre Messager, who was
directing the orchestra, had strongly advised
against taking this step ; he thought the experiment
was too dangerous, and urged that the people in
the house should be given their money back. The
audience, you may be sure, was none too pleased
at the prospect of having to listen to a Mile. Gar-
den of whom they had never heard. Will you
believe me when I tell you that I was never less
nervous? ... I must have succeeded, for I sang
Louise over two hundred times at the Opera-
Comique after that. The year was 1900, and I
had made my debut on Friday, April 13 ! "

I have no contemporary criticisms of this event
at hand, but one of my most valued souvenirs is a
photograph of the charming interpreter as she
appeared in the role of Louise at the beginning of
her career. However, in one of Gauthier-Villars's
compilations of his musical criticisms, which he
signed " L'Ouvreuse " (" La Ronde des
Blanches "), I discovered the following, dated Feb-
ruary 21, 1901, a detail of a review of Gabriel
Pierne's opera, La Fille de Tdbarvn: " Mile. Gar-
den a une aimable figure, une voix aimable, et un
petit reste d'accent exotique, aimable aussi."
[65]

Interpreters

Of the composer of Louise Miss Garden had
many interesting things to say in after years:
" The opera is an expression of Charpentier's own
life," she told me one day. " It is the opera of
Montmartre, and he was the King of Montmartre,
a real bohemian, to whom money and fame meant
nothing. He was satisfied if he had enough to
pay consommations for himself and his friends at
the Rat Mort. He had won the Prix de 'Rome
before Louise was produced, but he remained poor.
He lived in a dirty little garret up on the butte,
and while he was writing this realistic picture of
his own life he was slowly starving to death.
Andre Messager knew him and tried to give him
money, but he wouldn't accept it. He was very
proud. Messager was obliged to carry up milk
in bottles, with a loaf of bread, and say that he
wanted to lunch with him, in order to get Char-
pentier to take nourishment.

" Meanwhile, little by little, Louise was being
slowly written. . . . Part of it he wrote in the
Rat Mort, part in his own little room, and part of
it in the Moulin de la Galette, one of the gayest
of the Montmartre dance halls. High up on the
butie the gaunt windmill sign waves its arms;
from the garden you can see all Paris. It is the
view that you get in the third act of Louise. . . .
[66]

Mary Garden

The production of his opera brought Charpentier
nearly half a million francs, but he spent it all on
the working-girls of Montmartre. He even es-
tablished a conservatory, so that those with talent
might study without paying. And his mother,
whom he adored, had everything she wanted until
she died. . . . He always wore the artist costume,
corduroy trousers, blouse, and flowing tie, even
when he came to the Opera-Comique in the evening.
Money did not change his habits. His kingdom
extended over all Paris after the production of
Louise, but he still preferred his old friends in
Montmartre to the new ones his success had made
for him, and he dissipated his strength and talent.
He was an adorable man ; he would give his last sou
to any one who asked for it !

" To celebrate the fiftieth performance of Lou-
ise, M. Carre gave a dinner in July, 1900. Most
appropriately he did not choose the Cafe Anglais
or the Cafe de Paris for this occasion, but Char-
pentier's own beloved Moulin de la Galette. It was
at this dinner that the composer gave the first sign
of his physical decline. He had scarcely seated
himself at the table, surrounded by the great men
and women of Paris, before he fainted. . . ."

The subsequent history of this composer of the
lower world we all know too well ; how he journeyed
[ 67 ]

Interpreters

south and lived in obscurity for years, years which
were embellished with sundry rumours relating to
future works, rumours which were finally crowned
by the production of Julien at the Opera-Comique
— and subsequently at the Metropolitan Opera
House in New York. The failure of this opera
was abysmal.

Louise is a role which Miss Garden has sung
very frequently in America, and, as she may be
said to have contributed to Charpentier's fame
and popularity in Paris, she did as much for him
here. This was the second part in which she ap-
peared in New York. The dynamics of the role
are finely wrought out, deeply felt ; the characteri-
zation is extraordinarily keen, although after the
first act it never touches the heart. The singing-
actress conceives the character of the sewing-girl
as hard and brittle, and she does not play it for
sympathy. She acts the final scene with the fa-
ther with the brilliant polish of a diamond cut in
Amsterdam, and with heartless brutality. Stroke
after stroke she devotes to a ruthless exposure of
what she evidently considers to be the nature of
this futile drab. It is the scene in the play which
evidently interests her most, and it is the scene to
which she has given her most careful attention.
In the first act, to be sure, she is gamine and ador-
[681

Mary Garden

able in her scenes with her father, and touchingly
poignant in the despairing cry which closes the act,
Paris! In the next two acts she wisely sub-
merges herself in the general effect. She allows
the sewing-girls to make the most of their scene,
and, after she has sung Depuis le Jour, she gives
the third act wholly into the keeping of the ballet,
and the interpreters of Julien and the mother.

There are other ways of singing and acting this
r61e. Others have sung and acted it, others will
sing and act it, effectively. The abandoned (al-
most aggressive) perversity of Miss Garden's per-
formance has perhaps not been equalled, but this
role does not belong to her as completely as do
Thais and Melisande; no other interpreters will
satisfy any one who has seen her in these two
parts. _

Miss Garden made her American debut in Mas-
senet's opera, Thais, written, by the way, for Sybil
Sanderson. The date was November 25, 1907.
Previous to this time Miss Garden had never sung
this opera in Paris, but she had appeared in it
during a summer season at one of the French
watering places. Since that night, nearly ten
years ago, however, it has become the most stable
feature of her repertoire. She has sung it fre-
quently in Paris, and during the long tours under-
[ 69 ]

Interpreters

taken by the Chicago Opera Company this senti-
mental tale of the Alexandrian courtesan and the
hermit of the desert has startled the inhabitants of
hamlets in Iowa and California. It is a very bril-
liant scenic show, and is utterly successful as a
vehicle for the exploitation of the charms of a
fragrant personality. Miss Garden has found the
part grateful ; her very lovely figure is particularly
well suited to the allurements of Grecian drapery,
and the unwinding of her charms at the close of
the first act is an event calculated to stir the slug-
gish blood of a hardened theatre-goer, let alone
that of a Nebraska farmer. The play becomes
the more vivid as it is obvious that the retiary
meshes with which she ensnares Athanael are
strong enough to entangle any of us. Thais-be-
come-nun — Evelyn Innes should have sung this
character before she became Sister Teresa — is in
violent contrast to these opening scenes, but the
acts in the desert, as the Alexandrian strumpet
wilts before the aroused passion of the monk, are
carried through with equal skill by this artist who
is an adept in her means of expression and ex-
pressiveness.

The opera is sentimental, theatrical, and over its
falsely constructed drama — a perversion of Ana-
tole France's psychological tale — Massenet has
[70]

Mary Garden

overlaid as banal a coverlet of music as could well
be devised by an eminent composer. " The bad
fairies have given him [Massenet] only one gift,"
writes Pierre Lalo, ". . . the desire to please."
It cannot be said that Miss Garden allows the
music to affect her interpretation. She sings
some of it, particularly her part in the duet in
the desert, with considerable charm and warmth
of tone. I have never cared very much for her
singing of the mirror air, although she is dra-
matically admirable at this point; on the other
hand, I have found her rendering of the fare-
well to Eros most pathetic in its tenderness. At
times she has attacked the high notes, which fall
in unison with the exposure of her attractions,
with brilliancy; at other times she has avoided
them altogether (it must be remembered that
Miss Sanderson, for whom this opera was written,
had a voice like the Tour Eiffel; she sang to G
above the staff). But the general tone of her in-
terpretation has not been weakened by the weak-
ness of the music or by her inability to sing a good
deal of it. Quite the contrary. I am sure she
sings the part with more steadiness of tone than
Milka Ternina ever commanded for Tosca, and
her performance is equally unforgettable.

After the production of Louise, Miss Garden's
[71]

Interpreters

name became almost legendary in Paris, and many
are the histories of her subsequent career there.
Parisians and foreign visitors alike flocked to the
Opera-Comique to see her in the series of delight-
ful roles which she assumed — Orlanda, Manon,
Chrysis, Violetta . . . and Melisande. It was
during the summer of 1907 that I first heard her
there in two of the parts most closely identified
with her name, Chrysis and Melisande.

Camille Erlanger's Aphrodite, considered as a
work of art, is fairly meretricious. As a theatri-
cal entertainment it offers many elements of en-
joyment. Based on the very popular novel of
Pierre Louys — at one time forbidden circulation
in America by Anthony Comstock — it winds its
pernicious way through a tale of prostitution,
murder, theft, sexual inversion, drunkenness, sac-
rilege, and crucifixion, and concludes, quite sim-
ply, in a cemetery. The music is appallingly
banal, and has never succeeded in doing anything
else but annoy me when I have thought of it at
all. It never assists in creating an atmosphere;
it bears no relation to stage picture, characters, or
situation. Both gesture and colour are more im-
portant factors in the consideration of the pleas-
urable elements of this piece than the weak trickle
of its sickly melodic flow.
[72]

Mary Garden

For the most part, at a performance, one does
not listen to the music. Nevertheless, Aphrodite
calls one again and again. Its success in Paris
was simply phenomenal, and the opera is still in
the repertoire of the Opera-Comique. This suc-
cess was due in a measure to the undoubted
" punch " of the story, in a measure to the orgy
which M. Carre had contrived to embellish the third
act, culminating in the really imaginative dancing
of the beautiful Regina Badet and the horrible
scene of the crucifixion of the negro slave; but,
more than anything else, it was due to the rarely
compelling performance of Mary Garden as the
courtesan who consented to exchange her body for
the privilege of seeing her lover commit theft, sac-
rilege, and murder. In her bold entrance, flaunt-
ing her long lemon scarf, wound round her body
like a Nautch girl's sari, which illy concealed her
fine movements, she at once gave the picture, not
alone of the cocotte of the period but of a whole
life, a whole atmosphere, and this she maintained
throughout the disclosure of the tableaux. In the
prison scene she attained heights of tragic acting
which I do not think even she has surpassed else-
where. The pathos of her farewell to her two lit-
tle Lesbian friends, and the gesture with which
she drained the poison cup, linger in the memory,
[73]

Interpreters

refusing to give up their places to less potent
details.

I first heard Debussy's lyric drama, PelUas et
Melisande, at the Opera-Comique, with Miss Gar-
den as the principal interpreter. It is generally
considered the greatest achievement of her mimic
art. Somehow by those means at the command
of a fine artist, she subdued her very definite per-
sonality and moulded it into the vague and subtle
personage created by Maurice Maeterlinck. Even
great artists grasp at straws for assistance, arid it
is "interesting to know that to Miss Garden a wig is
the all important thing. " Once I have donned the
wig of a character, I am that character," she told
me once. "It would be difficult for me to go on the
stage in my own hair." Nevertheless, I believe she
has occasionally inconsistently done so as Louise.

In Miss Garden's score of Pelleas Debussy has
written, "In the future, others may sing Melisande,
but you alone will remain the woman and the artist
I had hardly dared hope for." It must be remem-
bered, however, that composers are notoriously
fickle ; that they prefer having their operas given
in any form rather than not at all; that ink is
cheap and musicians prolific in sentiments. In
how many Manon scores did Massenet write his
tender eternal finalities? Perhaps little Maggie
[74]

Mary Garden

Teyte, who imitated Mary Garden's Melisande as
Elsie Janis imitates Sarah Bernhardt, cherishes a
dedicated score now. Memory tells me I have seen
such a score, but memory is sometimes a false
jade.

In her faded mediaeval gowns, with her long
plaits of golden hair, — in the first scene she wore
it loose, — Mary Garden became at once in the
spectator's mind the princess of enchanted castles,
the cvmophanou g_heroine of a fterie, the dream of
a poet's tale. In gesture and in musical speech,
in tone-colour, she was faithful to the first won-
derful impression of the eye. There has been in
our day no more perfect example of characteriza-
tion offered on the lyric stage than Mary Garden's
lovely Melisande. . . . Ne me touchez pas! became
the cry of a terrified child, a real protestation of
innocence. Je ne suis pas heureuse lei, was ut-
tered with a pathos of expression which drove its
helplessness into our hearts. The scene at the
fountain with Pelleas, in which Melisande loses her
ring, was played with such delicate shading, such
poetic imagination, that one could almost crown
the interpreter as the creator, and the death
scene was permeated with a fragile, simple beauty
as compelling as that which Carpaccio put into
his picture of Santa Ursula, a picture indeed which
[75]

I nterp reters

Miss Garden's performance brought to mind more
than once. If she sought inspiration from the art
of the painter for her delineation, it was not to
Rossetti and Burne-Jones that she went. Rather
did she gather some of the soft bloom from the
paintings of Bellini, Carpaccio, Giotto, Cimabue
. . . especially Botticelli; had not the spirit and
the mood of the two frescos from the Villa Lemmi in
the Louvre come to life in this gentle representa-
tion ?

Before she appeared as Melisande in New York,
Miss Garden was a little doubtful of the probable
reception of the play here. She was surprised and
delighted with the result, for the drama was pre-
sented in the late season of 1907-08 at the Man-
hattan Opera House no less than seven times to
very large audiences. The singer talked to me be-
fore the event : " It took us four years to estab-
lish Pelleas et Melisande in the repertoire of the
Opera-Comique. At first the public listened with
disfavour or indecision, and performances could
only be given once in two weeks. As a contrast I
might mention the immediate success of Aphrodite,
which I sang three or four times a week until fifty
representations had been achieved, without appear-
ing in another role. Pelleas was a different matter.
The mystic beauty of the poet's mood and the rev-
[76]

Mary Garden

olutionary procedures of the musician were not
calculated to touch the great public at once. In-
deed, we had to teach our audiences to enjoy it.
Americans who, I am told, are fond of Maeter-
linck, may appreciate its very manifest beauty
at first hearing, but they didn't in Paris.
At the early representations, individuals whistled
and made cat-calls. One night three young men
in the first row of the orchestra whistled through
an entire scene. I don't believe those young
men will ever forget the way I looked at them.
. . . But after each performance it was the
same: the applause drowned out the hisses. The
balconies and galleries were the first to catch
the spirit of the piece, and gradually it grew
in public favour, and became a success, that
is, comparatively speaking. Pelleas et Melisande,
like many another work of true beauty, ap-
peals to a limited public and, consequently, the
number of performances has always been limited,
and perhaps always will be. I do not anticipate
that it will crowd from popular favour such operas
as Werther, La Vie de Boheme and Carmen, each
of which is included in practically every week's
repertoire at the Opera-Comique.

" We interpreters of Debussy's lyric drama were
naturally very proud, because we felt that we were
[77]

I nterpreters

assisting in the making of musical history. Mae-
terlinck, by the way, has never seen the opera. He
wished his wife, Georgette Leblanc, to ' create ' the
role of Melisande, but Debussy and Carre had
chosen me, and the poet did not have his way. He
wrote an open letter to the newspapers of Paris in
which he frankly expressed his hope that the work
would fail. Later, when composers approached
him in regard to setting his dramas to music, he
made it a condition that his wife should sing them.
She did appear as Ariane, you will remember, but
Lucienne Breval first sang Monna Vanna, and
Maeterlinck's wrath again vented itself in pronun-
ciamentos."

Miss Garden spoke of the settings. " The
decor should be dark and sombre. M rs « Camp-
bell set the play in the Renaissance period, an
epoch flooded with light and charm. I think she
was wrong. Absolute latitude is permitted the
stage director, as Maeterlinck has made no re-
strictions in the book. The director of the
Opera at Brussels followed Mrs. Campbell's ex-
ample, and when I appeared in the work there
I felt that I was singing a different drama."

One afternoon in the autumn of 1908, when
I was Paris correspondent of the " New York
Times," I received the following telegram from
[78]

Mary Garden

Miss Garden : " Venez ce soir a, 5% chez Mile.
Chasles 112 Boulevard Malesherbes me voir en
Salome." It was late in the day when the mes-
sage came to me, and I had made other plans, but
you may be sure I put them all aside. A petit-
bleu or two disposed of my engagements, and I
took a fiacre in the blue twilight of the Paris aft-
ernoon for the salle de danse of Mile. Chasles.
On my way I recollected how some time previously
Miss Garden had informed me of her intention of
interpreting the Dance of the Seven Veils herself,
and how she had attempted to gain the co-opera-
tion of Maraquita, the ballet mistress of the
Opera-Comique, a plan which she was forced to
abandon, owing to some rapidly revolving wheels
of operatic intrigue. So the new Salome went to
Mile. Chasles, who sixteen years ago was delight-
ing the patrons of the Opera-Comique with her
charming dancing. She it was who, materially
assisted by Miss Garden herself, arranged the
dance, dramatically significant in gesture and
step, which the singer performed at the climax of
Richard Strauss's music drama.

Mile. Chasles's salle de danse I discovered to be
a large square room ; the floor had a rake like that
of the Opera stage in Paris. There were foot-
lights, and seats in front of them for spectators.
[79]

I nterpreters

The walls were hung with curious old prints and
engravings of famous dancers, Mile. Salle, La Ca-
margo, Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi, and Cerito.

This final rehearsal — before the rehearsals in
New York which preceded her first appearance in
the part anywhere at the Manhattan Opera House
— was witnessed by Andre Messager, who in-
tended to mount Salome at the Paris Opera the
following season, Mile. Chasles, an accompanist, a
maid, a hair-dresser, and myself. I noted that
Miss Garden's costume differed in a marked de-
gree from those her predecessors had worn. For
the entrance of Salome she had provided a mantle
of bright orange shimmering stuff, embroidered
with startling azure and emerald flowers and
sparkling with spangles. Under this she wore a
close-fitting garment of netted gold, with de-
signs in rubies and rhinestones, which fell from
somewhere above the waistline to her ankles. This
garment was also removed for the dance, and Miss
Garden emerged in a narrow strip of flesh-coloured
tulle. Her arms, shoulders, and legs were bare.
She wore a red wig, the hair falling nearly to her
waist (later she changed this detail and wore the
cropped wig which became identified with her im-
personation of the part). Two jewels, an emer-
ald on one little finger, a ruby on the other, com-
[80] '

Mary Garden

pleted her decoration. The seven veils were of
soft, clinging tulle.
^'Swathed in these veils, she began the dance at
the back of the small stage. Only her eyes were
visible. Terrible, slow . . . she undulated for-
ward, swaying gracefully, and dropped the first
veil. What followed was supposed to be the un-
doing of the jaded Herod. I was moved by this
spectacle at the time, and subsequently this pan-
tomimic dance was generally referred to as the cul-
__jainating moment in her impersonation of Salome.
On this occasion, I remember, she proved to us
that the exertion had not fatigued her, by singing
the final scene of the music drama, while Andre
Messager played the accompaniment on the piano.
I did not see Mary Garden's impetuous and
highly curious interpretation of the strange east-
ern princess until a full year later, as I remained
in Paris during the extent of the New York opera
season. The following autumn, however, I heard
Salome in its second season at the Manhattan
Opera House — and I was disappointed. Ner-
vous curiosity seemed to be the consistent note of
this hectic interpretation. The singer was never
still ; her use of gesture was untiring. To any one
who had not seen her in other parts, the actress
must have seemed utterly lacking in repose. This
[81]

I nterpreters

was simply her means, however, of suggesting the
intense nervous perversity of Salome. Mary Gar-
den could not have seen Nijinsky in Scheherazade
at this period, and yet the performances were
astonishingly similar in intention. But the
Strauss music and the Wilde drama demand a
more voluptuous and sensual treatment, it would
seem to me, than the suggestion of monkey-love
which absolutely suited Nijinsky's part. How-
ever, the general opinion (as often happens) ran
counter to mine, and, aside from the reservation
that Miss Garden's voice was unable to cope with
the music, the critics, on the whole, gave her credit
for an interesting performance. Indeed, in this
music drama she made one of the great popular
successes of her career, a career which has
been singularly full of appreciated achieve-
ments.

Chicago saw Mary Garden in Salome a year
later, and Chicago gasped, as New York had
gasped when the drama was performed at the Met-
ropolitan Opera House. The police — no less an
authority — put a ban on future performances
at the Auditorium. Miss Garden was not pleased,
and she expressed her displeasure in the frankest
terms. I received at that time a series of char-
acteristic telegrams. One of them read : " My
[82]

Mary Garden

art is going through the torture of slow death.
Oh Paris, splendeur de mes desirs ! "

It was with the (then) Philadelphia-Chicago
Opera Company that Miss Garden made her first
experiment with opera in English, earning thereby
the everlasting gratitude and admiration —
which she already possessed in no small measure
— of Charles Henry Meltzer. She was not san-
guine before the event. In January, 1911, she
said to me : " No, malgre Tito Ricordi, NO ! I
don't believe in opera in English, I never have be-
lieved in it, and I don't think I ever shall believe
in it. Of course I'm willing to be convinced. You
see, in the first place, I think all music dramas
should be sung in the languages in which they are
written; well, that makes it impossible to sing
anything in the current repertoire in English,
doesn't it? The only hope for opera in English,
so far as I can see it, lies in America or England
producing a race of composers, and they haven't
it in them. It isn't in the blood. Composition
needs Latin blood, or something akin to it; the
Anglo-Saxon or the American can't write music,
great music, at least not yet. ... I doubt if any
of us alive to-day will live to hear a great work
written to a libretto in our own language.

" Now I am going to sing Victor Herbert's
[ 83 1

Interpreters

Natoma, in spite of what I have just told you,
because I don't want to have it said that I have
done anything to hinder what is now generally
known as ' the cause.' For the first time a work
by a composer who may be regarded as American
is to be given a chance with the best singers, with
a great orchestra, and a great conductor, in the
leading opera house in America — perhaps the
leading opera house anywhere. It seems to me
that every one who can should put his shoulder
to this kind of wheel and set it moving. I shall
be better pleased than anybody else if Natoma
proves a success and paves the way for the suc-
cessful production of other American lyric
dramas. Of course Natoma cannot be regarded
as ' grand opera.' It is not music, like Tristan,
for instance. It is more in the style of the lighter
operas which are given in Paris, but it possesses
much melodic charm and it may please the public.
I shall sing it and I shall try to do it just as well
as I have tried to do Salome and Thais and Meli-
sande."

She kept her word, and out of the hodge-podge
of an opera book which stands unrivalled for its
stiltedness of speech, she succeeded in creating
one of her most notable characters. She threw
vanity aside in making up for the role, painting
[84]

Mary Garden

her face and body a dark brown; she wore two
long straight braids of hair, depending on either
side from the part in the middle of her forehead.
Her garment was of buckskin, and moccasins cov-
ered her feet. She crept rather than walked.
The story, as might be imagined, was one of love
and self-sacrifice, touching here and there on the
preserves of L'Africaine and Ldkme, the whole
concluding with the voluntary immersion of Na-
toma in a convent. Fortunately, the writer of the
book remembered that Miss Garden had danced in
Salome and he introduced a similar pantomimic
episode in Natoma, a dagger dance, which was one
of the interesting points in the action. The music
suited her voice; she delivered a good deal of it
almost parlando, and the vapid speeches of Mr.
Redding tripped so audibly off her tongue that
their banality became painfully apparent.

The story has often been related how Massenet,
piqued by the frequently repeated assertion that
his muse was only at his command when he de-
picted female frailty, determined to write an opera
in which only one woman was to appear, and she
was to be both mute and a virgin ! Le Jongleur
de Notre Dame, perhaps the most poetically con-
ceived of Massenet's lyric dramas, was the result
of this decision. Until Mr. Hammerstein made
[85]

I nterp rete r s

up his mind to produce the opera, the role of Jean
had invariably been sung by a man. Mr. Ham-
merstein thought that Americans would prefer a
woman in the part. He easily enlisted the inter-
est of Miss Garden in this scheme, and Massenet,
it is said, consented to make certain changes in
the score. The taste of the experiment was
doubtful, but it was one for which there had been
much precedent. Nor is it necessary to linger on
Sarah Bernhardt's assumption of the roles of
Hamlet, Shylock, and the Due de Reichstadt. In
the "golden period of song," Orfeo was not the
only man's part sung by a woman. Mme. Pasta
frequently appeared as Romeo in Zingarelli's opera
and as Tancredi, and she also sang Otello on one
occasion when Henrietta Sontag was the Desde-
mona. The role of Orfeo, I believe, was written
originally for a castrato, and later, when the work
was refurbished for production at what was then
the Paris Opera, Gluck allotted the role to a tenor.
Now it is sung by a woman as invariably as are
Stephano in Romeo et Juliette and Siebel in Faust.
There is really more excuse for the masquerade of
sex in Massenet's opera. The timid, pathetic
little juggler, ridiculous in his inefficiency, is a
part for which tenors, as they exist to-day, seem
manifestly unsuited. And certainly no tenor
[ 86 ]

Mary Garden

could hope to make the appeal in the part that
Mary Garden did. In the second act she found
it difficult to entirely conceal the suggestion of
her sex under the monk's robe, but the sad little
figure of the first act and the adorable juggler of
the last, performing his imbecile tricks before Our
Lady's altar, were triumphant details of an ar-
tistic impersonation; on the whole, one of Miss
Garden's most moving performances.

Miss Garden has sung Faust many times. Are
there many sopranos who have not, whatever the
general nature of their repertoires? She is very
lovely in the role of Marguerite. I have indicated
elsewhere her skill in endowing the part with po-
etry and imaginative force without making ducks
and drakes of the traditions. In the garden
scene she gave an exhibition of her power to paint
a fanciful fresco on a wall already surcharged
with colour, a charming, wistful picture. I have
never seen any one else so effective in the church
and prison scenes ; no one else, it seems to me, has
so tenderly conceived the plight of the simple
German girl. The opera of RomSo et Juliette
does not admit of such serious dramatic treatment,
and Thomas's Hamlet, as a play, is absolutely
ridiculous. After the mad scene, for example, the
stage directions read that the ballet "waltzes
[87]

I nterpreters

sadly away." I saw Mary Garden play Ophelie
once at the Paris Opera, and I must admit that I
was amused; I think she was amused too! I was
equally amused some years later when I heard
Titta Ruffo sing the opera. I am afraid I can-
not take Hamlet as a lyric drama seriously.

In Paris, Violetta is one of Miss Garden's pop-
ular roles. When she came to America she fan-
cied she might sing the part here. " Did you
ever see a thin Violetta? " she asked the reporters.
But so far she has not appeared in La Traviata
on this side of the Atlantic, although Robert Hich-
ens wrote me that he had recently heard her in
this opera at the Paris Opera-Comique. He
added that her impersonation was most interest-
ing.

To me one of the most truly fascinating of
Miss Garden's characterizations was her Fanny
Legrand in Daudet's play, made into an opera
by Massenet. Sapho, as a lyric drama, did not
have a success in New York. I think only three
performances were given at the Manhattan Opera
House. The professional writers, with one excep-
tion, found nothing to praise in Miss Garden's re-
markable impersonation of Fanny. And yet, as I
have said, it seemed to me one of the most moving
of her interpretations. In the opening scenes she
[88]

Mary Garden

was the trollop, no less, that Fanny was. The
pregnant line of the first act: Artiste? . . .
Non. . . . Tant mieux. J'ai contre tout artiste
rune haine implacable! was spoken in a manner
which bared the woman's heart to the sophisti-
cated. The scene in which she sang the song of
the Magali (the Provencal melody which Mistral
immortalized in a poem, which Gounod introduced
into MireUle, and which found its way, inexplic-
ably, into the ballet of Berlioz's Les Troyens a
Carthage), playing her own accompaniment, to
Jean, was really too wonderful a caricature of the
harlot. Abel Faivre and Paul Guillaume have
done no better. The scene in which Fanny re-
viles her former associates for telling Jean the
truth about her past life was revolting in its real-
ism.

If Miss Garden spared no details in making us
acquainted with Fanny's vulgarity, she was
equally fair to her in other respects. She seemed
to be continually guiding the spectator with com-
ment something like this : " See how this woman
can suffer, and she is a woman, like any other
woman." How small the means, the effect con-
sidered, by which she produced the pathos of the
last scene. At the one performance I saw half the
people in the audience were in tears. There was
[89]

I nterpreters

a dismaying display of handkerchiefs. Sapho sat
"in the window, smoking a cigarette, surveying the
room in which she had been happy with Jean, and
preparing to say good-by. In the earlier scenes
her cigarette had aided her in making vulgar ges-
tures. Now she relied on it to tell the pitiful tale
of the woman's loneliness. How she clung to that
cigarette, how she sipped comfort from it, and how
tiny it was! Mary Garden's Sapho, which may
never be seen on the stage again (Massenet's music
is perhaps his weakest effort), was an extraordi-
nary piece of stage art. That alone would have
proclaimed her an interpreter of genius.

George Moore, somewhere, evolves a fantastic
theory that a writer's name may have determined
his talent : " Dickens — a mean name, a name
without atmosphere, a black out-of-elbows, back-
stairs name, a name good enough for loud comedy
and louder pathos. John Milton — a splendid
name for a Puritan poet. Algernon Charles
Swinburne — only a name for a reed through
which every wind blows music. . . . Now it is a
fact that we find no fine names among novelists.
We find only colourless names, dry-as-dust names,
or vulgar names, round names like pot-hats, those
names like mackintoshes, names that are squashy
as goloshes. We have charged Scott with a lack
[ 90 ]

Mary Garden

of personal passion, but could personal passion"
dwell in such a jog-trot name — a round-fiiced
name, a snub-nosed, spectacled, pot-bellied name,
a placid, beneficent, worthy old bachelor name, a
name that evokes all conventional ideas and form*-
ulas, a Grub Street name, a nerveless name, an
arm-chair name, an old oak and Abbotsford name?
And Thackeray's name is a poor one — the sylla-
bles clatter like plates. ' We shall want the car-
riage at half-past two, Thackeray.' Dickens is
\ surely a- name for a page boy. George Eliot's
real name, Marian Evans, is a chaw-bacon, thick-
loined name." So far as I know Mr. Moore has
not expanded his theory to include a discussion of
acrobats, revivalists, necromancers, free versifiers,
camel drivers, paying tellers, painters, pugilists,
architects, and opera singers. Many of the lat-
ter have taken no chances with their own names.
Both Pauline and Maria Garcia adopted the
names of their husbands. Garcia possibly sug-
gests a warrior, but do Malibran and Viardot
make us think of music? Nellie Melba's name
evokes an image of a cold marble slab but if she
had retained her original name of Mitchell it
would have been no better . . . Marcella Sem-
brich, a name made famous by the genius and in-
defatigable labour of its bearer, surely not a good
[91]

Interpreters

name for an operatic soprano. Her own name,
Kochanska, sounds Polish and patriotic . . . Luisa
Tetrazzini, a silly, fussy name . . . Emma Calve
. . . Since Madame Bovary the name Emma sug-
gests a solid bourgeois foundation, a country fam-
ily. . . . Emma Eames, a chilly name ... a
wind from the East ! Was it Philip Hale who re-
marked that she sang Who is Sylvia? as if the
woman were not on her calling list? . . . Lillian
Nordica, an evasion. Lillian Norton is a sturdy
work-a-day name, suggesting a premonition of a
thousand piano rehearsals for Isolde . . . Jo-
hanna Gadski, a coughing raucous name . . .
Geraldine Farrar, tomboyish and impertinent,
Melrose with a French sauce . . . Edyth Walker,
a militant suffragette name . . . Surely Lucrezia
Bori and Maria Barrientos are ill-made names for
singers . . . Adelina Patti — a patty-cake, pat-
ty-cake, baker's man, sort of a name . . . Alboni,
strong-hearted . . . Scalchi . . . ugh! Further
evidence could be brought forward to prove that
singers succeed in spite of their names rather than
because of' them . . . until we reach the name of
Mary Garden. . . . The subtle fragrance of this
name has found its way into many hearts. Since
Nell Gwyn no such scented cognomen, redolent of
cuckoo's boots, London pride, blood-red poppies,
[92]

Mary Garden

purple fox-gloves, lemon stocks, and vermillion
zinnias, has blown its delightful odour across our
scene. . . . Delightful and adorable Mary Gar-
den, the fragile Thais, pathetic Jean . . . unfor-
gettable Melisande. . . .

October 10, 1916.

[93]

Feodor Chaliapine

' Do I contradict myself f
Very well, then, J contradict myself;"

Walt Whitman.

./

Feodor Chaliapine

FEODOR CHALIAPINE, the Russian bass
singer, appeared in New York at the
Metropolitan Opera House, then under the
direction of Heinrich Conned, during the season
of 1907-08. He made his American debut on
Wednesday evening, November 20, 1907, when he
impersonated the title part of Boito's opera,
Meflstofele. He was heard here altogether seven
times in this role; six times as Basilio in II Bar-
bier e di Siviglia; three times as Mephistopheles in
Gounod's Faust; three times as Leporello in Don
Giovanni; and at several Sunday night concerts.
He also appeared with the Metropolitan Opera
Company in Philadelphia, and possibly elsewhere.
I first met this remarkable artist in the dining-
room of the Hotel Savoy on a rainy Sunday after-
noon, soon after his arrival in America. His per-
sonality made a profound impression on me, as
may be gathered from some lines from an article I
wrote which appeared the next morning in the
" New York Times. " : " The newest operatic
acquisition to arrive in New York is neither a
prima donna soprano, nor an Italian tenor with a
high C, but a big, broad-shouldered boy, with a
kindly smile and a deep bass voice, . . . thirty-
[97]

I nterpreters

four years old. ... 'I spik English,' were his
first words. 'How do you do? et puis good-by,
et puis I drrrink, you drrink, he drrrrinks, et puis
I love you!* . . . Mr. Chaliapine looked like a
great big boy, a sophomore in college, who played
football." (Pitts Sanborn soon afterwards
felicitously referred to him as ce doux giant, a
name often applied to Turgeniev.)

I have given the extent of the Russian's English
vocabulary at this time, and I soon discovered
that it was not accident which had caused him first
to learn to conjugate the verb "to drink"; an-
other English verb he learned very quickly was
" to eat." Some time later, after his New York
debut, I sought him out again to urge him to
give a synopsis of his original conception for a
performance of Gounod's Faust. The interview
which ensued was the longest I have ever had with
any one. It began at eleven o'clock in the morn-
ing and lasted until a like hour in the evening, —
it might have lasted much longer, — and during
this whole time we sat at table in Mr. Chalia-
pine's own chamber at the Brevoort, whither he
had repaired to escape steam heat, while he con-
sumed vast quantities of food and drink. I re-
member a detail of six plates of onion soup. I
have never seen any one else eat so much or so
[98]

Feodor Chaliapine

continuously, or with so little lethargic effect.
Indeed, intemperance seemed only to make him
more light-hearted, ebullient, and Brobdingna-
gian. Late in the afternoon he placed his own
record of the Marseillaise in the victrola, and
then amused himself (and me) by singing the
song in unison with the record, in an attempt to
drown out the mechanical sound. He succeeded.
The effect in this moderately small hotel room can
only be faintly conceived.

Exuberant is the word which best describes
Chaliapine off the stage. I remember another
occasion a year later when I met him, just re-
turned from South America, on the Boulevard in
Paris. He grasped my hand warmly and begged
me to come to see his zoo. He had, in fact, trans-
formed the salle de bam in his suite at the Grand
Hotel into a menagerie. There were two
monkeys, a cockatoo, and many other birds of
brilliant plumage, while two large alligators dozed
in the tub.

My third interview with this singer took place
a day or so before he returned to Europe. He
had been roughly handled by the New York
critics, treatment, it is said, which met with the
approval of Heinrich Conried, who had no desire
to retain in his company a bass who demanded six-
[99]

I nterpreters

teen hundred dollars a night, a high salary for a
soprano or a tenor. Stung by this defeat — en-
tirely imaginary, by the way, as his audiences here
were as large and enthusiastic as they are any-
where — the only one, in fact, which he has suf-
fered in his career up to date, Chaliapine was ex-
tremely frank in his attitude. . My interview,
published on the first page of the " New York
Times," created a small sensation in operatic
circles. The meat of it follows. Chaliapine is
speaking :

" Criticism in New York is not profound. It
is the most difficult thing in the world to be a good
critical writer. I am a singer, but the critic has
no right to regard me merely as a singer. He
must observe my acting, my make-up, everything.
And he must understand and know about these
things.

" Opera is not a fixed art. It is not like
music, poetry, sculpture, painting, or architec-
ture, but a combination of all of these. And the
critic who goes to the opera should have studied
all these arts. While a study of these arts is
essential, there is something else that the critic
cannot get by study, and that is the soul to under-
stand. That he must be born with.

" I am not a professional critic, but I could be.
[1001

Feodor Chaliapine

I have associated with musicians, painters, and
writers, and I know something of all these arts.
As a consequence when I read a criticism, I see
immediately what is true and what is false. Very
often I think a man's tongue is his worst enemy.
However, sometimes a man keeps quiet to conceal
his mental weakness. We have a Russian proverb
which says, ' Keep quiet ; don't tease the geese.'
You can't judge of a man's intelligence until he
begins to talk or write.

" I have been sometimes adversely criticized
during the course of my artistic life. The most
profound of these criticisms have taught me to
correct my faults., But I have learned nothing
from the criticisms I have received in New York.
After searching my inner consciousness, I find
they are not based on a true understanding of my
artistic purposes. For instance, the critics
found my Don Basilio a dirty, repulsive creature.
One man even said that I was offensive to another
singer on the stage! Don Basilio is a Spanish
priest; it is a type I know well. He is not like
the modern American priest, clean and well-
groomed ; he is dirty and unkempt ; he is a beast,
and that is what I make him, a comic beast, but
the critics would prefer a softer version. ... It
is unfair, indeed, to judge me at all on the parts I
[101]

I nterpreters

have sung here, outside of Mefistofele, for most
of my best roles are in Russian operas, which are
not in the repertoire of the Metropolitan Opera
House.

" The contemporary direction of this theatre
believes in tradition. It is afraid of anything
new. There is no movement. It has not the
courage to produce novelties, and the artists are
prevented from giving original conceptions of old
roles.

" New York is a vast seething inferno of busi-
ness. Nothing but business! The men are so
tired when they get through work that they want
recreation and sleep. They don't want to study.
They don't want to be thrilled or aroused. They
are content to listen forever to Faust and Lucia.

" In Europe it is different. There you will find
the desire for novelty in the theatre. There is a
keen interest in the production of a new work. It
is all right to enjoy the old things, but one should
see life. The audience at the Metropolitan Opera
House reminds me of a family that lives in the
country and won't travel. It is satisfied with the
same view of the same garden forever. . . ."

Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapine was born Feb-
ruary 13 (February 1, old style), 1873, in Kazan;
he is of peasant descent. It is said that he is al-
[102]

Feodor Chaliapine

most entirely self-educated, both musically and in-
tellectually. He worked for a time in a shoe-
maker's shop, sang in the archbishop's choir and,
at the age of seventeen, joined a local operetta
company. He seems to have had difficulty in col-
lecting a salary from this latter organization, and
often worked as a railway porter in order to keep
alive. Later he joined a travelling theatrical
troupe, which visited the Caucasus. In 1892,
Oussatov, a singer, heard Chaliapine in Tiflis,
gave him some lessons, and got him an engage-
ment.

He made his debut in opera in Glinka's A Life
for the Czar (according to Mrs. Newmarch; my
notes tell me that it was Gounod's Faust). He
sang at the Summer and Fanaevsky theatres in
Petrograd in 1894 ; and the following year he was
engaged at the Maryinsky Theatre, but the
directors did not seem to realize that they had
captured one of the great figures of the contem-
porary lyric stage, and he was not permitted to
sing very often. In 1896, Mamantov, lawyer and
millionaire, paid the fine which released the bass
from the Imperial Opera House, and invited him
to join the Private Opera Company in Moscow,
where Chaliapine immediately proved his worth.
He became the idol of the public, and it was not
[103]

I nterpreters

unusual for those who admired striking imper-
sonations on the stage to journey from Petrograd
to see and hear him. In 1899 he was engaged to
sing at the Imperial Opera in Moscow at sixty
thousand roubles a year. Since then he has ap-
peared in various European capitals, and in
North and South America. He has sung in
Milan, Paris, London, Monte Carlo, and Buenos
Aires. During a visit to Milan he married, and
at the time of his New York engagement his fam-
ily included five children. The number may have
increased.

Chaliapine's repertoire is extensive but, on the
whole, it is a strange repertoire to western Europe
and America, consisting, as it does, almost en-
tirely of Russian operas. In Milan, New York,
and Monte Carlo, where he has appeared with
Italian and French companies, his most famous
role is Mefistofele. Leporello he sang for the first
time in New York. Basilio and Mephistopheles
in Faust he has probably enacted as often in Rus-
sia as elsewhere. He " created " the title part of
Massenet's Don Quichotte at Monte Carlo (Vanni
Marcoux sang the role later in Paris). With the
Russian Opera Company, organized in connection
with the Russian Ballet by Serge de Diaghilew,
Chaliapine has sung in London, Paris, and other
[ 104 ]

Feodor Chaliapine

European capitals in Moussorgsky's Boris Godu-
now and Khovanchina, Rimsky-Korsakow's Ivan
the Terrible (originally called The Maid of
Pskov), and Borodine's Prince Igor, in which he
appeared both as Prince Galitzky and as the Tar-
tar Chieftain. His repertoire further includes
Rubinstein's Demon, Rimsky-Korsakow's Mozart
and Salieri (the role of Salieri), Glinka's A Life
for the Czar, Dargomij sky's The Roussalka,
Rachmaninow's Aleko, and Gretchaninow's Doibry-
nia Nikitich. This list is by no means complete.

I first saw Chaliapine on the stage in New York,
where his original ideas and tremendously vital
personality ran counter to every tradition of the
Metropolitan Opera House. The professional
writers about the opera, as a whole, would have
none of him. Even his magnificently pictorial
Mefistofele was condemned, and I think Pitts San-
born was the only man in a critic's chair — I was
a reporter at this period and had no opportunity
for expressing my opinions in print — who ap-
preciated his Basilio at its true value, and II
Barbiere is Sanborn's favourite opera. His ac-
count of the proceedings makes good reading at
this date. I quote from the " New York Globe,"
December 13, 1907:

" The performance that was in open defiance of
[105 j

I nterpreters

traditions, that was glaringly and recklessly un-
orthodox, that set at naught the accepted canons
of good taste, but which justified itself by its
overwhelming and all-conquering good humour,
was the Basilio of Mr. Chaliapine. With his
great natural stature increased by art to Brob-
dingnagian proportions, a face that had gazed
on the vodka at its blackest, and a cassock that
may be seen but not described, he presented a
figure that might have been imagined by the Eng-
lish Swift or the French Rabelais. It was no
voice or singing that made the audience re-demand
the ' Calumny Song.' It was the compelling
drollery of those comedy hands. You may be
assured, persuaded, convinced that you want your
Rossini straight or not at all. But when you see
the Chaliapine Basilio you'll do as the rest do —
roar. It is as sensational in its way as the
Chaliapine Mephisto."

It was hard to reconcile Chaliapine's concep-
tion of Mephistopheles with the Gounod music,
and I do not think the Russian himself had any
illusions about his performance of Leporello. It
was not his type of part, and he was as good in it,
probably, as Olive Fremstad would be as Nedda.
Even great artists have their limitations, perhaps
more of them than the lesser people. But his
[ 106 ]

Feodor Chaliapine

Mefistofele, to my way of thinking, — and the
anxious reader who has not seen this impersona-
tion may be assured that I am far from being
alone in it, — was and is a masterpiece of stage-
craft. However, opinions differ. Under the al-
luring title, "Devils Polite and Rude," W. J.
Henderson, in the " New York Sun," Sunday,
November 24, 1907, after Chaliapine's first ap-
pearance here in Boito's opera, took his fling at
the Russian bass (was it Mr. Henderson or an-
other who later referred to Chaliapine as "a 1 cos-
sack with a cold"?): "He makes of the fiend
a demoniac personage, a seething cauldron of
rabid passions. He is continually snarling and
barking. He poses in writhing attitudes of agon-
ized impotence. He strides and gestures, grim-
aces and roars. All this appears to superficial
observers to, be tremendously dramatic. And it
is, as noted, not without its significance. Per-
haps it may be only a personal fancy, yet the
present writer much prefers a devil who is a gen-
tleman. . . . But one thing more remains to be
said about the first display of Mr. Chaliapine's
powers. How long did he study the art of sing-
ing? Surely not many years. Such an uneven
and uncertain emission of tone is seldom heard
even on the Metropolitan Opera House stage,
[107]

I nterpreters

where there is a wondrous quantity of poorly
grounded singing. The splendid song, Son lo
Spirito Che Nega, was not sung at all in the
strict interpretation of the word. It was de-
livered, to be sure, but in a rough and barbaric
style. Some of the tones disappeared somewhere
in the rear spaces of the basso's capacious throat,
while others were projected into the auditorium
like stones from a catapult. There was much
strenuosity and little art in the performance.
And it was much the same with the rest of the
singing of the role."

Chaliapine calls himself " the enemy of tradi-
tion." When he was singing at the Opera in
Petrograd in 1896 he found that every detail of
every characterization was prescribed. He was
directed to make his entrances in a certain way;
he was ordered to stand in a certain place on the
stage. Whenever he attempted an innovation the
stage director said, " Don't do that." Young
singer though he was, he rebelled and asked,
" Why not? " And the reply always came, " You
must follow the tradition of the part. Monsieur
Chose and Signor Cosi have always done thus and
so, and you must do likewise." " But I feel dif-
ferently about the role," protested the bass. How-
ever, it was not until he went to Moscow that he
[ 108 ]

Feodor Chaliapine

was permitted to break with tradition. From that
time on he began to elaborate his characterizations,
assisted, he admits, by Russian painters who gave
him his first ideas about costumes and make-up.
He once told me that his interpretation of a part
was never twice the same. He does not study his
roles in solitude, poring over a score, as many
artists do. Rather, ideas come to him when he
eats or drinks, or even when he is on the stage.
He depends to an unsafe degree — unsafe for
other singers who may be misled by his success —
on inspiration to carry him through, once he begins
to sing. "When I sing a character I am that
character ; I am no longer Chaliapine. So what-
ever I do must be in keeping with what the char-
acter would do." This is true to so great an ex-
tent that you may take it for granted, when you
see Chaliapine in a new role, that he will envelop
the character with atmosphere from his first en-
trance, perhaps even without the aid of a single
gesture. His entrance on horseback in Ivan the
Terrible is a case in point. Before he has sung
a note he has projected the personality of the cruel
czar into the auditorium.

" As an actor," writes Mrs. Newmarch in " The
Russian Opera," " his greatest quality appears to
me to be his extraordinary gift of identification
[109]

Interpreters

with the character he is representing. Shaliapin
(so does Mrs. Newmarch phonetically transpose
his name into Roman letters) does not merely
throw himself into the part, to use a phrase com-
monly applied to the histrionic art. He seems to
disappear, to empty himself of all personality, that
Boris Godounov or Ivan the Terrible may be re-
incarnated for us. While working out his own
conception of a part, unmoved by convention or
opinion, Shaliapin neglects no accessory study that
can heighten the realism of his interpretation. It
is impossible to see him as Ivan the Terrible, or
Boris, without realizing that he is steeped in the
history of those periods, which live again at his
will. In the same way he has studied the master-
pieces of Russian art to good purpose, as all must
agree who have compared the scene of Ivan's fren-
zied grief over the corpse of Olga, in the last scene
of Rimsky-Korsakow's opera, with Repin's terrible
picture of the Tsar, clasping in his arms the body
of the son whom he has just killed in a fit of insane
anger. The agonizing remorse and piteous senile
grief have been transformed from Repin's canvas
to Shaliapin's living picture, without the revolting
suggestion of the shambles which mars the paint-
er's work. Sometimes, too, Shaliapin will take a
hint from the living model. His dignified make-up
[HO]

Feodor Chaliapine

as the Old Believer Dositheus, in Moussorgsky's
Khovanst china, owes not a little to the personality
of Vladimir Stassov."

Chaliapine, it seems to me, has realized more
completely than any other contemporary singer the
opportunities afforded for the presentation of
character on the lyric stage. In costume,
make-up, gesture, the simulation of emotion, he is
a consummate and painstaking artist. As I have
suggested, he has limitations. Who, indeed, has
not? Grandeur, nobility, impressiveness, and, by
inversion, sordidness, bestiality, and awkward ugli-
ness fall easily within his ken. The murder-
haunted Boris Godunow is perhaps his most over-
powering creation. From first to last it is a
masterpiece of scenic art ; those who have seen him
in this part will not be satisfied with substitutes.
His Ivan is almost equally great. His Dositheus,
head of the Old Believers in Khovanchma, is a sin-
cere and effective characterization along entirely
different lines. Although this character, in a
sense, dominates Moussorgsky's great opera, there
is little opportunity for the display of histrionism
which Boris presents to the singing actor. By al-
most insignificant details of make-up and gesture
the bass creates before your eyes a living, breath-
ing man, a man of fire and faith. No one would

[ in ]

I nterpreters

recognize in this kind old creature, terrible, to be
sure, in his stern piety, the nude Mefistofele sur-
veying the pranks of the motley rabble in the
Brocken scene of Boito's opera, a flamboyant ex-
posure of personality to be compared with Mary
Garden's Thais, Act I.

As the Tartar chieftain in Prince Igor, he has
but few lines to sing, but his gestures during the
performance of the ballet, which he has arranged
for his guest, in fact his actions throughout the
single act in which this character appears, are
stamped on the memory as definitely as a figure
in a Persian miniature. And the noble scorn
with which, as Prince Galitzky, he bows to the stir-
rup of Prince Igor at the close of the prologue
to this opera, still remains a fixed picture in my
mind. There is also the pathetic Don Quichotte
of Massenet's poorest opera. All great portraits
these, to which I must add the funny, dirty, expec-
torating Spanish priest of II Barbiere.

Chaliapine is the possessor of a noble voice
which sometimes he uses by main strength. He has
never learned to sing, in the conventional meaning
of the phrase. He must have been singing for
some time before he studied at all, and at Tiflis
he does not seem to have spent many months on
his voice. In the circumstances it is an extremely
[ 112 ]

Feodor Chaliapine

tractable organ, at least always capable of doing
his bidding, dramatically speaking. Indeed, there
are many who consider him a great artist in his
manipulation of it. Mrs. Newmarch quotes Her-
bert Heyner on this point:

" His diction floats on a beautiful cantilena,
particularly in his mezzo-voce singing, which —
though one would hardly expect it from a singer
endowed with such a noble bass voice — is one of
the most telling features of his performance.
There is never any striving after vocal effects, and
his voice is always subservient to the words. . . .
The atmosphere and tone-colour which Shalia-
pin imparts to his singing are of such remarkable
quality that one feels his interpretation of Schu-
bert's Doppelganger must of necessity be a
thing of genius, unapproachable by other contem-
porary singers. . . . his method is based upon a
thoroughly sound breath control, which produces
such splendid cantabile results. Every student
should listen to this great singer, and profit by his
art."

My intention in placing before the eyes of my
readers such contradictory accounts as may be
found in this article has not been altogether in-
genuous. The fact of the matter is that opinions
differ on every matter of art, and on no point are

[ H3 ]

I nterpreters

they so various as on that which refers to inter-
pretation. It may further be urged that the per-
sonality of Chaliapine is so marked and his method
so direct that the variations of opinion are nat-
urally expressed in somewhat violent language.

For those, accustomed to the occidental operatic
repertoire, who find it hard to understand how a
bass could acquire such prominence, it may be ex-
plained that deep voices are both common and
very popular in Russia. They may be heard in
any Greek church, sustaining organ points a full
octave below the notes to which our basses descend
with trepidation. As a consequence, many of the
Russian operas contain bass roles of the first im-
portance. In both of Moussorgsky's familiar
operas, for example, the leading part is destined
for a bass voice.

July 18, 1916.

[114]

Mariette Mazarin

Mariette Mazarin

SOMETIMES the cause of an intense impres-
sion in the theatre apparently disappears,
leaving " not a rack behind," beyond the
trenchant memory of a few precious moments, in-
clining one to the belief that the whole adventure
has been a dream, a particularly vivid dream, and
that the characters therein have returned to such
places in space as are assigned to dream person-
ages by the makers of men. This reflection comes
to me as, sitting before my typewriter, I attempt
to recapture the spirit of the performances of
Richard Strauss's music drama Elektra at Oscar
Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera House in New
York. The work remains, if not in the repertoire
of any opera house in my vicinity, at least deeply
imbedded in my eardrum and, if need be, at any
time I can pore again over the score, which is
always near at hand. But of the whereabouts of
Mariette Mazarin, the remarkable artist who con-
tributed her genius to the interpretation of the
crazed Greek princess, I know nothing. As she
came to us unheralded, so she went away, after we
who had seen her had enshrined her, tardily to be
sure, in that small, slow-growing circle of those
who have achieved eminence on the lyric stage.
[117]

I nterpreters

Before the beginning of the opera season of
1909-10, Mariette Mazarin was not even a name
in New York. Even during a good part of that
season she was recognized only as an able routine
singer. She made her debut here in Aida and she
sang Carmen and Louise without creating a fu-
rore, almost, indeed, without arousing attention of
any kind, good or bad criticism. Had there been
no production of Elektra she would have passed
into that long list of forgotten singers who appear
here in leading roles for a few months or a few
years and who, when their time is up, vanish, never
to be regretted, extolled, or recalled in the memory
again. For the disclosure of Mme. Mazarin's
true powers an unusual vehicle was required.
Elektra gave her her opportunity, and proved her
one of the exceptional artists of the stage.

I do not know many of the facts of Mariette
Mazarin's career. She studied at the Paris Con-
servatoire; Leloir, of the Comedie Francaise, was
her professor of acting. She made her debut at
the Paris Opera as Aida; later she sang Louise
and Carmen at the Opera-Comique. After that
she seems to have been a leading figure at the
Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels, where she ap-
peared in Alceste, Armide, Iphigenie en Tawride
and IphigSnie en Avlide, even Orphee, the great
[1181

Mariette Mazarin

Gluck repertoire. She has also sung Salome, the
three Briinnhildes, Elsa in Lohengrin, Elizabeth
in Tannhauser, in Berlioz's Prise de Troie, La
Damnation de Faust, Les Huguenots, Griselidis,
Thais, II Trovatore, Tosca, Manon Lescaut, Cav-
alleria Rusticana, Herodiade, Le Cid, and Sal-
ammbo. She has been heard at Nice, and prob-
ably on many another provincial French stage.
At one time she was the wife of Leon Rothier,
the French bass, who has been a member of the
Metropolitan Opera Company for several seasons.
Away from the theatre I remember her as a tall
woman, rather awkward, but quick in gesture.
Her hair was dark, and her eyes were dark and
piercing. Her face was all angles ; her features
were sharp, and when conversing with her one
could not but be struck with a certain eerie qual-
ity which seemed to give mystic colour to her ex-
pression. She was badly dressed, both from an
aesthetic and a fashionable point of view. In a
group of women you would pick her out to be a
doctor, a lawyer, an intellectuelle. When I talked
with her, impression followed impression — always
I felt her intelligence, the play of her intellect upon
the surfaces of her art, but always, too, I felt
how narrow a chance had cast her lot upon the
stage, how she easily might have been something
[119]

Interpreters

else than a singing actress, how magnificently ac-
cidental her career was!

She was, it would seem, an unusually gifted mu-
sician — at least for a singer, — with a physique
and a nervous energy which enabled her to per-
form miracles. For instance, on one occasion she
astonished even Oscar Hammerstein by replacing
Lina Cavalieri as Salome in Herodiade, a role she
had not previously sung for five years, at an hour's
notice on the evening of an afternoon on which
she had appeared as Elektra. On another occa-
sion, when Mary Garden was ill she sang Louise
with only a short forewarning. She told me that
she had learned the music of Elektra between
January 1, 1910, and the night of the first per-
formance, January 81. She also told me that
without any special effort on her part she had as-
similated the music of the other two important
feminine roles in the opera, Chrysothemis and Kly-
taemnestra, and was quite prepared to sing them.
Mme. Mazarin's vocal organ, it must be admitted,
was not of a very pleasant quality at all times, al-
though she employed it with variety and usually
with taste. There was a good deal of subtle
charm in her middle voice, but her upper voice was
shrill and sometimes, when emitted forcefully, be-
came in effect a shriek. Faulty intonation often
[120]

Mariette Mazarin

played havoc with her musical interpretation, but
do we not read that the great Mme. Pasta seldom
sang an opera through without many similar slips
from the pitch? Aida, of course, displayed the
worst side of her talents. Her Carmen, it seemed
to me, was in some ways a very remarkable per-
formance; she appeared, in this role, to be pos-
sessed by a certain diablerie, a power of evil,
which distinguished her from other Carmens, but
this characterization created little comment or in-
terest in New York. In Louise, especially in the
third act, she betrayed an enmity for the pitch,
but in the last act she was magnificent as an ac-
tress. In Santuzza she exploited her capacity for
unreined intensity of expression. I have never
seen her as Salome (in Richard Strauss's opera;
her Massenetic Salome was disclosed to us in
New York), but I have a photograph of her
in the role which might serve as an illustration
for the " Mephistophela " of Catulle Mendes. I
can imagine no more sinister and depraved an ex-
pression, combined with such potent sexual at-
traction. It is a remarkable photograph, evok-
ing as it does a succession of lustful ladies, and it
is quite unpublishable. If she carried these quali-
ties into her performance of the work, and there
is every reason to believe that she did, the even-
[ 121 ]

I ntef preters

ings on which she sang Salome must have been
very terrible for her auditors, hours in which the
Aristotle theory of Katharsis must have been am-
ply proven.

Elehtra was well advertised in New York.
Oscar Hammerstein is as able a showman as the
late P. T. Barnum, and he has devoted his talents
to higher aims. Without his co-operation, I think
it is likely that America would now be a trifle
above Australia in its operatic experience. It is
from Oscar Hammerstein that New York learned
that all the great singers of the world were not
singing at the Metropolitan Opera House, a mat-
ter which had been considered axiomatic before
the redoubtable Oscar introduced us to Alessandro
Bonci, Maurice Renaud, Charles Dahnores, Mary
Garden, Luisa Tetrazzini, and others. With his
productions of Pelleas et Melisande, Louise,
Thais, and other works new to us, he spurred the
rival house to an activity which has been main-
tained ever since to a greater or less degree. New
operas are now the order of the day — even with
the Chicago and the Boston companies — rather
than the exception. And without this impre-
sario's courage and determination I do not think
New York would have heard Elehtra, at least not
before its uncorked essence had quite disappeared.
[122]

Mariette Mazarin

Lover of opera that he indubitably is, Oscar Ham-
merstein is by nature a showman, and he under-
stands the psychology of the mob. Looking
about for a sensation to stir the slow pulse of the
New York opera-goer, he saw nothing on the hori-
zon more likely to effect his purpose than Elektra.
Salome, spurned by the Metropolitan Opera Com-
pany, had been taken to his heart the year before
and, with Mary Garden's valuable assistance, he
had found the biblical jade extremely efficacious
in drawing shekels to his doors. He hoped to
accomplish similar results with EleJctra. . . .

One of the penalties an inventor of harmonies
pays is that his inventions become shopworn. A
certain terrible atmosphere, a suggestion of vague
dread, of horror, of rank incest, of vile murder, of
sordid shame, was conveyed in Elektra by Richard
Strauss through the adroit use of what we call
discords, for want of a better name. Discord at
one time was defined as a combination of sounds
that would eternally affront the musical ear. We
know better now. Discord is simply the word to
describe a never-before or seldom-used chord.
Such a juxtaposition of notes naturally startles
when it is first heard, but it is a mistake to pre-
sume that the effect is unpleasant, even in the be-
ginning.

[ 123 ]

I nterp reters

Now it was by the use of sounds cunningly con-
trived to displease the ear that Strauss built up
his atmosphere of ugliness in Elektra. When it
was first performed, the scenes in which the half-
mad Greek girl stalked the palace courtyard, and
the queen with the blood-stained hands related her
dreams, literally reeked with musical frightfulness.
I have never seen or heard another music drama
which so completely bowled over its first audiences,
whether they were street-car conductors or mu-
sical pedants. These scenes even inspired a fa-
mous passage in " Jean-Christophe " (I quote from
the translation of Gilbert Cannon) : " Agamem-
non was neurasthenic and Achilles impotent ; they
lamented their condition at length and, naturally,
their outcries produced no change. The energy
of the drama was concentrated in the role of Iphi-
genia — a nervous, hysterical, and pedantic Iphi-
genia, who lectured the hero, declaimed furiously,
laid bare for the audience her Nietzschian pessim-
ism and, glutted with death, cut her throat,
shrieking with laughter."

But will Elektra have the same effect on future
audiences? I do not think so. Its terror has, in
a measure, been dissipated. Schoenberg, Straw-
insky, and Ornstein have employed its discords —
and many newer ones — for pleasanter purposes,
[124«]

Mariette Mazarin

and our ears are becoming accustomed to these
assaults on the casual harmony of our forefathers.
Elektra will retain its place as a forerunner, and
inevitably it will eventually be considered the most
important of Strauss's operatic works, but it can
never be listened to again in that same spirit of
horror and repentance, with that feeling of utter
repugnance, which it found easy to awaken in
1910. Perhaps all of us were a little better for
the experience.

An attendant at the opening ceremonies in New
York can scarcely forget them. Cast under the
spell by the early entrance of Elektra, wild-eyed
and menacing, across the terrace of the courtyard
of Agamemnon's palace, he must have remained
with staring eyes and wide-flung ears, straining
for the remainder of the evening to catch the mes-
sage of this tale of triumphant and utterly holy
revenge. The key of von Hofmannsthal's fine play
was lost to some reviewers, as it was to Romain
Rolland in the passage quoted above, who only
saw in the drama a perversion of the Greek idea of
Nemesis. That there was something very much
finer in the theme, it was left for Bernard Shaw
to discover- To him Elektra expressed the re-
generation of a race, the destruction of vice, ig-
norance, and poverty. The play was replete in
[125]

I nterp reters

his mind with sociological and political implica-
tions, and, as his views in the matter exactly coin-
cide with my own, I cannot do better than to quote
a few lines from them, including, as they do, his
interesting prophecies regarding the possibility
of war between England and Germany, unfortun-
ately unfulfilled. Strauss could not quite prevent
the war with his Elektra. Here is the passage:

" What Hofmannsthal and Strauss have done is
to take Klytaemnestra and iEgisthus, and by iden-
tifying them with everything evil and cruel, with
all that needs must hate the highest when it sees
it, with hideous domination and coercion of the
higher by the baser, with the murderous rage in
which the lust for a lifetime of orgiastic pleasure
turns on its slaves in the torture of its disap-
pointment, and the sleepless horror and misery of
its neurasthenia, to so rouse in us an overwhelm-
ing flood of wrath against it and a ruthless resolu-
tion to destroy it that Elektra's vengeance be-
comes holy to us, and we come to understand how
even the gentlest of us could wield the ax of Or-
estes or twist our firm fingers in the black hair of
Klytaemnestra to drag back her head and leave her
throat open to the stroke.

" This was a task hardly possible to an ancient
Greek, and not easy even for us, who are face to
[126]

Mariette Mazarin

face with the America of the Thaw case and the
European plutocracy of which that case was only
a trifling symptom, and that is the task that Hof-
mannsthal and Strauss have achieved. Not even
in the third scene of Das Rheingold or in the
Klingsor scene in Parsifal is there such an atmos-
phere of malignant, cancerous evil as we get here
and that the power with which it is done is not
the power of the evil itself, but of the passion that
detests and must and finally can destroy that evil
is what makes the work great and makes us re-
joice in its horror.

"Whoever understands this, however vaguely,
will understand Strauss's music. I have often
said, when asked to state the case against the
fools and the money changers who are trying to
drive us into a war with Germany, that the case
consists of the single word ' Beethoven.' To-day
I should say with equal confidence ' Strauss.' In
this music drama Strauss has done for us with
utterly satisfying force what all the noblest pow-
ers of life within us are clamouring to have said
in protest against and defiance of the omnipresent
villainies of our civilization, and this is the highest
achievement of the highest art."

Mme. Mazarin was the torch-bearer in New
York of this magnificent creation. She is, indeed,
[127 J

Interpreters

the only singer who has ever appeared in the role
in America, and I have never heard Elektra in
Europe. However, those who have seen other in-
terpreters of the role assure me that Mme. Maz-
arin so far outdistanced them as to make compar-
ison impossible. This, in spite of the fact that
Elektra in French necessarily lost something of its
crude force, and through its mild-mannered con-
ductor at the Manhattan Opera House, who
seemed afraid to make a noise, a great deal more.
I did not make any notes about this performance
at the time, but now, seven years later, it is very
vivid to me, an unforgettable impression. Of
how many nights in the theatre can I say as much?
Diabolical ecstasy was the keynote of Mme.
Mazarin's interpretation, gradually developing
into utter frenzy. She afterwards assured me
that a visit to a madhouse had given her the in-
spiration for the gestures and steps of Elektra in
the terrible dance in which she celebrates Orestes's
bloody but righteous deed. The plane of hysteria
upon which this singer carried her heroine by her
pure nervous force, indeed reduced many of us in
the audience to a similar state. The conventional
operatic mode was abandoned; even the grand
manner of the theatre was flung aside ; with a wide
sweep of the imagination, the singer cast the mem-
[128]

Mariette Mazarin

ory of all such baggage from her, and proceeded
along vividly direct lines to make her impres-
sion.

The first glimpse of the half-mad princess,
creeping dirty and ragged, to the accompaniment
of cracking whips, across the terraced courtyard
of the palace, was indeed not calculated to stir
tears in the eyes. The picture was vile and re-
pugnant; so perhaps was the appeal to the sister
whose only wish was to bear a child, but Mme.
Mazarin had her design; her measurements were
well taken. In the wild cry to Agamemnon, the
dignity and pathos of the character were estab-
lished, and these qualities were later emphasized in
the scene of her meeting with Orestes, beautiful
pages in von Hofmannsthal's play and Strauss's
score. And in the dance of the poor demented
creature at the»close the full beauty and power and
meaning of the. drama were disclosed in a few incis-
ive strokes. Elektra's mind had indeed given way
under the strain of her sufferings, brought about
by her long waiting for vengeance, but it had
given way under the light of holy triumph.
Such indeed were the fundamentals of this tre-
mendously moving characterization, a character-
ization which one must place, perforce, in that
great memory gallery where hang the Melisande of
[ 129 1

I nterpreters

Mary Garden, the Isolde of Olive Fremstad, and
the Boris Godunow of Feodor Chaliapine.

It was not alone in her acting that Mme. Maz-
arin walked on the heights. I know of no other
singer with the force or vocal equipment for this
difficult role. At the time this music drama was
produced its intervals were considered in the guise
of unrelated notes. It was the cry that the voice
parts were written without reference to the orches-
tral score, and that these wandered up and down
without regard for the limitations of a singer.
Since Elektra was first performed we have trav-
elled far, and now that we have heard The Night-
ingale of Strawinsky, for instance, perusal of
Strauss's score shows us a perfectly ordered and
understandable series of notes. Even now, how-
ever, there are few of our singers who could cope
with the music of Elektra without devoting a good
many months to its study, and more time to the
physical exercise needful to equip one with the
force necessary to carry through the undertaking.
Mme. Mazarin never faltered. She sang the notes
with astonishing accuracy ; nay, more, with potent
vocal colour. Never did the orchestral flood o'er-
top her flow of sound. With consummate skill
she realized the composer's intentions as com-
pletely as she had those of the poet.
[130 ]

Mariette Mazarin

Those who were present at the first American
performance of this work will long bear the occa-
sion in mind. The outburst of applause which
followed the close of the play was almost hysterical
in quality, and after a number of recalls Mme.
Mazarin fainted before the curtain. Many in the
audience remained long enough to receive the re-
assuring news that she had recovered. As a re-
porter of musical doings on the " New York
Times," I sought information as to her condition
at the dressing-room of the artist. Somewhere
between the auditorium and the stage, in a pass-
ageway, I encountered Mrs. Patrick Campbell,
who, a short time before, had appeared at the Gar-
den Theatre in Arthur Symons's translation of
von Hofmannsthal's drama. Although we had
never met before, in the excitement of the moment
we became engaged in conversation, and I volun-
teered to escort her to Mme. Mazarin's room,
where she attempted to express her enthusiasm.
Then I asked her if she would like to meet Mr.
Hammerstein, and she replied that it was her
great desire at this moment to meet the impresario
and to thank him for the indelible impression this
evening in the theatre had given her. I led her to
the corner of the stage where he sat, in his high
hat, smoking his cigar, and I presented her to him.
[131]

I nterpreters

" But Mrs. Campbell was introduced to me only
three minutes ago," he said. She stammered her
acknowledgment of the fact. " It's true," she
said. " I have been so completely carried out of
myself that I had forgotten ! "

August 22, 1916.

[132]

Yvette Guilbert

" She sings of life, and mirth and all that moves
Man's fancy in the carnival of loves;
And a chill shiver takes me as she sings
The pity of unpitied human things."

Arthur Symons.

Yvette Guilbert

THE natural evolution of Gordon Craig's
theory of the stage finally brought him to •
the point where he would dispense altogether
with the play and the actor. The artist-producer
would stand alone. Yvette Guilbert has accom-
plished this very feat, and accomplished it without
the aid of super-marionettes. She still uses songs
as her medium, but she has very largely discarded
the authors and composers of these songs, re-
creating them with her own charm and wit and
personality and brain. A song as Yvette Guilbert
sings it exists only for a brief moment. It does
not exist on paper, as you will discover if you
seek out the printed version, and it certainly does
not exist in the performance of any one else. Not
that most of her songs are not worthy material,
chosen as they are from the store-houses of a na-
tion's treasures, but that her interpretations are
so individual, so charged with deep personal feel-
ing, so emended, so added to, so embellished with
grunts, shrieks, squeaks, trills, spoken words, ex-
tra bars, or even added lines to the text; so per-
formed that their performance itself constitutes a
veritable (and, unfortunately, an extremely per-
ishable) work of art. Sometimes, indeed, it has
[135]

I nterpreters

seemed to me that the genius of this remarkable
Frenchwoman could express itself directly, with-
out depending upon songs.

She could have given no more complete demon-
stration of the inimitability of this genius than by
her recent determination to lecture on the art of
interpreting songs. Never has Yvette been more
fascinating, never more authoritative than during
those three afternoons at Maxine Elliott's Thea-
tre, devoted ostensibly to the dissection of her
method, but before she had unpacked a single in-
strument it must have been perfectly obvious to
every auditor in the hall that she was taking great
pains to explain just how impossible it would be
for any one to follow in her footsteps, for any one
to imitate her astonishing career. With evident
candour and a multiplicity of detail she told the
story of how she had built up her art. She told
how she studied the words of her songs, how she
planned them, what a large part the plasticity
of her body played in their interpretation, and
when she was done all she had said only went to
prove that there is but one Yvette Guilbert.

She stripped all pretence from her vocal method,

explained how she sang now in her throat, now

falsetto. " When I wish to make a certain sound

for a certain effect I practise by myself until I

[136]

Yvette Guilbert

succeed in making it. That is my vocal method.
I never had a teacher. I would not trust my voice
to a teacher ! " Her method of learning to breathe
was a practical one. She took the refrain of a lit-
tle French song to work upon. She made herself
learn to sing the separate phrases of this song
without breathing ; then two phrases together, etc.,
until she could sing the refrain straight through
without taking a breath. Ratan Devi has told me
that Indian singers, who never study vocalization
in the sense that we do, are adepts in the art of
breathing. "They breathe naturally and with no
difficulty because it never occurs to them to distort
a phrase by interrupting it for breath. They
have respect for the phrase and sing it through.
When you study with an occidental music teacher
you will find that he will mark little Vs on the
page indicating where the pupil may take breath
until he can capture the length of the phrase.
This method would be incomprehensible to a Hin-
doostanee or to any oriental." The wonderful
breath control of Hebrew cantors who sing long
and florid phrases without interruption is another
case of the same kind.

Mme. Guilbert finds her effects everywhere, in
nature, in art, in literature. When she was com-
posing her interpretation of La Soularde she
[ 137 ]

Interpreters

searched in vain for the cry of the thoughtless
children as they stone the poor drunken hag, until
she discovered it, quite by accident one evening at
the Comedie Francaise, in the shriek of Mounet-
Sully in Oedipe-Roi. In studying the Voyage a
BetJdeem, one of the most popular songs of her
repertoire, she felt the need of breaking the monot-
ony of the stanzas. It was her own idea to inter-
polate the watchman's cry of the hours, and to add
the jubilant coda, II est nS, le divim enfant, ex-
tracted from another song of the same period.
With Guilbert nothing is left to chance. Do you
remember one of her most celebrated chansons,
Notre Petite Compagne of Jules Laforgue, which
she sings so strikingly to a Waldteufel waltz,

Je suis la femme,
On me connait.

Her interpretation belies the lines. She has con-
trived to put all the mystery of the sphynx into
her rendering of them. How has she done this?
By means of the cigarette which she smokes
throughout the song. She has confessed as much.
Always on the lookout for material which will as-
sist her in perfecting her art she has observed
that when a woman smokes a cigarette her expres-
sion becomes inscrutable. Her effects are cumu-
[138 ]

Yvette Guilbert

lative, built up out of an inexhaustible fund of de-
tail. In those songs in which she professes to do
the least she is really doing the most. Have you
heard her sing Le Lien Serre and witnessed the
impression she produces ^by sewing, a piece of ac-
tion not indicated in the text of the song? Have
you heard her sing L'Hotel Numero 3, one of the
repertoire of the gants noirs and the old days of
the Divan Japonais? In this song she does not
move her body ; she scarcely makes a gesture, and
yet her crisp manner of utterance, her subtle em-
phasis, her angular pose, are all that are needed to
expose the humour of the ditty. Much the same
comment could be made in regard to her interpre-
tation of Le Jeune Homme Triste. The apache
songs, on the contrary, are replete with gesture.
Do you remember the splendid apache saluting his
head before he goes to the guillotine? Again
Yvette has given away her secret: "Naturally I
have deep feelings. To be an artist one must feel
intensely, but I find that it is sometimes well to give
these feelings a spur. In this instance I have sewn
weights into the lining of the cap of the apache.
When I drop the cap it falls with a thud and I am
reminded instinctively of the fall of the knife of
the guillotine. This trick always furnishes me
with the thrill I need and I can never sing the
[139]

Interpreters

last lines without tears in my eyes and voice."
It seems ungracious to speak of Yvette Guilbert
as a great artist. She is so much less than that
and so much more. She has dedicated her auto-
biography to God and it is certain that she be-
lieves her genius to be a holy thing. No one else
on the stage to-day has worked so faithfully, or
so long, no one else has so completely fulfilled her
obligations to her art, and certainly no one else is
so nearly human. She compasses the chasm be-
tween the artist and the public with ease. She is
even able to do this in America, speaking a for-
eign tongue, for it has only been recently that she
has learned to speak English freely and she rarely
sings in our language. Her versatility, it seems
to me, is limitless; she expresses the whole world
in terms of her own personality. She never lacks
for a method of expression for the effect she de-
sires to give, and she gives all, heart and brains
alike. Now she is raucous, now tender ; have you
ever seen so sweet a smile ; have you ever observed
so coarse a mien? She can run the gamut from
a sleek priest to a child (as in C'est le Mai), from
a jealous husband to a guilty wife (he Jaloux et
la Menteuse), from an apache (Ma Tete) to a
charming old lady (Lisette).

It is easy to liken the art of this marvellous
[1401

Yvette Guilbert

woman to something concrete, to the drawings of
Toulouse-Lautrec or Steinlein, the posters of
Cheret . . . and there is indeed a suggestion of
these men in the work of Yvette Guilbert. The
same broad lines are there, the same ample style,
the same complete effect, but there is more. In
certain phases of her talent, the gamine, the
apache, the gavroche, she reflects the spirit of the
inspiration which kindled these painters into crea-
tion, but in other phases, of which Lisette, Les
Cloches de Nantes, La Passion, or Le Cycle du
Vin are the expression, you may more readily com-
pare her style with that of Watteau, Eugene Car-
riere, Felicien Rops, or Boucher. . . . She takes
us by the hand through the centuries, offering us
the results of a vast amount of study, a vast
amount of erudition, and a vast amount of work.
In so many fine strokes she evokes an epoch. She
has studied the distinction between a curtsey which
proceeds the recital of a fable of La Fontaine and
a poem of Francis Jammes. She has closely scru-
tinized pictures in neglected corridors of the
Louvre to learn the manner in which a cavalier
lifts his hat in various periods. There are those
who complain that she emphasizes the dramatic
side of the old French songs, which possibly sur-
vive more clearly under more naive treatment.
[ 141 j

I nterp r eter s

Her justification in this instance is the complete
success of her method. The songs serve her pur-
pose, even supposing she does not serve theirs.
But a more valid cause for grievance can be urged
against her. Unfortunately and ill-advisedly she
has occasionally carried something of the scientific
into an otherwise delightful matinee, importing a
lecturer, like Jean Beck of Bryn Mawr, to analyze
and describe the music of the middle ages, or even
becoming pedantic and professorial herself ; some-
times Yvette preaches or, still worse, permits some
one else, dancer, violinist, or singer to usurp her
place on the platform. These interruptions are
sorry moments indeed but such lapses are forgiven
with an almost divine graciousness when Yvette in-
terprets another song. Then the dull or scholarly
interpolations are forgotten.

I cannot, indeed, know where to begin to praise
her or where to stop. My feelings for her per-
formances (which I have seen and heard whenever
I have been able during the past twelve years in
Chicago, New York, London, and Paris) are un-
equivocal. There are moments when I am certain
that her rendering of La Passion is her supreme
achievement and there are moments when I prefer
to see her as the unrestrained purveyor of the
art of the chansonniers of Montmartre — unre-
in 42 ]

Yvette Guilbert

strained, I say, and yet it is evident to me that
she has refined her interpretations of these songs,
revived twenty-five years after she first sang them,
bestowed on them a spirit which originally she
could not give them. From the beginning Ma
Tete, La Sovlarde, La Glii, La Pierreuse, and the
others were drawn as graphically as the pictures
of Steinlein, but age has softened her interpreta-
tion of them. What formerly was striking has
now become beautiful, what was always astonish-
ing has become a masterpiece of artistic expres-
sion. Once, indeed, these pictures were sharply
etched, but latterly they have been lithographed,
drawn softly on stone. ... I have said that I do
not know in what song, in what mood, I prefer
Yvette Guilbert. I can never be certain but if I
were asked to choose a programme I think I should
include in it C'est le Mai, La Legende de St. Nico-
las, Le Rot a Fait Battre Tambour, Les Cloches
de Nantes, Le Cycle du Vin, Le Lien Serve, La
Glu, Lisette, La Femme, Que V Amour Cause de
Peine, and Oh, how many others !

All art must be beautiful, says Mme. Guilbert,
and she has realized the meaning of what might
have been merely a phrase ; no matter how sordid
or trivial her subject she has contrived to make of
it something beautiful. She is not, therefore, a
[143]

I nterp reters

realist in any literal signification of the word (al-
though I doubt if any actress on the stage can
evoke more sense of character than she) because
she always smiles and laughs and weeps with the
women she represents ; she sympathizes with them,
she humanizes them, where another interpreter
would coldly present them for an audience to take
or to leave, exposing them to cruel inspection.
Even in her interpretation of heartless women it is
always to our sense of humour that she appeals,
while in her rendering of Ma Tete and La Pier-
reuse she strikes directly at our hearts. Zola once
told Mme. Guilbert that the apaches were the log-
ical descendants of the old chevaliers of France.
" They are the only men we have now who will
fight over a woman ! " he said. When you hear
Mme. Guilbert call " Pi-ouit! " you will readily
perceive that she understands what Zola meant.

Wonderful Yvette, who has embodied so many
pleasant images in the theatre, who has expressed
to the world so much of the soul of France, so
much of the soul of art itself, but, above all, so
much of the soul of humanity. It is not alone
General Booth who has made friends of " drabs
from the alley-ways and drug fiends pale — Minds
still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail! Vermin-
eaten saints with mouldy breath, unwashed legions
[144]

Yvette Guilbert

with the ways of death " : these are all friends of
Yvette Guilbert too. And when Balzac wrote the
concluding paragraph of " Massimila Doni " he
may have foreseen the later application of the
lines. . . . Surely " the peris, nymphs, fairies,
sylphs of the olden time, the muses of Greece, the
marble Virgins of the Certosa of Pavia, the Day
and Night of Michael Angelo, the little angels that
Bellini first drew at the foot of church paintings,
and to whom Raphael gave such divine form at the
foot of the Vierge au donataire, and of the Ma-
donna freezing at Dresden ; Orcagna's captivating
maidens in the Church of Or San Michele at Flor-
ence, the heavenly choirs on the tombs of St. Se-
bald at Nuremberg, several Virgins in the Duomo
at Milan, the hordes of a hundred Gothic cathe-
drals, the whole nation of figures who break their
forms to come to you, all-embracing artists — "
surely, surely, all these hover over Yvette Guil-
bert.

April 16, 1917.

[145]

Waslav Nijinsky

A thing of beauty is a boy forever."

Allen Norton.

Waslav Nijinsky

SERGE DE DIAGHILEW brought the dregs
of the Russian Ballet to New York and,
after a first greedy gulp, inspired by curi-
osity to get a taste of this highly advertised bev-
erage, the public drank none too greedily. The
scenery and the costumes, designed by Bakst,
Roerich, Benois, and Larionow, and the music of
Rimsky-Korsakow, Tcherepnine, Schumann, Boro-
dine, Balakirew, and Strawinsky — especially
Strawinsky — afrived. It was to be deplored,
however, that Bakst had seen fit to replace the
original decor of Scheherazade by a new setting
in rawer colours, in which the flaming orange
fairly burned into the ultramarine and green
(readers of " A Rebours " will remember that des
Esseintes designed a room something like this).
A few of the dancers came, but of the best not a
single one. Nor was Fokine, the dancer-producer,
who devised the choregraphy for The Firebird,
Cleopdtre, and Petrouchka, among the number, al-
though his presence had been announced and ex-
pected. To those enthusiasts, and they included
practically every one who had seen the Ballet in its
greater glory, who had prepared their friends for
an overwhemingly brilliant spectacle, over-using
[149]

I nterpreters

the phrase, " a perfect union of the arts," the early
performances in January, 1916, at the Century
Theatre were a great disappointment. Often
had we urged that the individual played but a small
part in this new and gorgeous entertainment, but
now we were forced to admit that the ultimate
glamour was lacking in the ensemble, which was
obviously no longer the glad, gay entity it once
had been.

The picture was still there, the music (not al-
ways too well played) but the interpretation was
mediocre. The agile Miassine could scarcely be
called either a great dancer or a great mime. He
had been chosen by Diaghilew for the role of
Joseph in Richard Strauss's version of the Po-
tiphar legend but, during the course of a London
season carried through without the co-operation
of Nijinsky, this was the only part allotted to
him. In New York he interpreted, not without
humour and with some technical skill, the inciden-
tal divertissement from Rimsky-Korsakow's opera,
The Snow-Maiden, against a vivid background by
Larionow. The uninspired choregraphy of this
ballet was also ascribed to Miassine by the pro-
gramme, although probably in no comminatory
spirit. In the small role of Eusebius in Carneoal
[ 150 ]

Waslav Nijinsky

and in the negligible part of the Prince in The
Firebird he was entirely satisfactory, but it was
impertinent of the direction to assume that he
would prove an adequate substitute for Nijinsky
in roles to which that dancer had formerly applied
his extremely finished art.

Adolf Bolm contributed his portraits of the
Moor in PetroucJika, of Pierrot in Carneval, and
of the Chief Warrior in the dances from Prince
Igor. These three roles completely express the
possibilities of Bolm as a dancer or an actor, and
sharply define his limitations. His other parts,
Dakon in Daphnis et Chlo'e — Sadko, the Prince in
Thamar, Amoun in Cleopdtre, the Slave in Sche-
herazade, and Pierrot in Papillons, are only varia-
tions on the three afore-mentioned themes. His
friends often confuse his vitality and abundant
energy with a sense of characterization and a skill
as a dancer which he does not possess. For the
most part he is content to express himself by
stamping his heels and gnashing his teeth, and
when, as in CISopdtre, he attempts to convey a
more subtle meaning to his general gesture, he is
not very successful. Bolm is an interesting and
useful member of the organization, but he could not
make or unmake a season ; nor could Gavrilow, who
[151]

I nterpreters

is really a fine dancer in his limited way, although
he is unfortunately lacking in magnetism and any
power of characterization.

But it was on the distaff side of the cast that
the Ballet seemed -pitifully undistinguished, even
to those who did not remember the early Paris sea-
sons when the roster included the names of Anna
Pavlowa, Tamara Karsavina, Caterina Gheltzer,
and Ida Rubinstein. The leading feminine dancer
of the troupe when it gave its first exhibitions in
New York was Xenia Maclezova, who had not, so
far as my memory serves, danced in any London
or Paris season of the Ballet (except for one gala
performance at the Paris Opera which preceded the
American tour), unless in some very menial ca-
pacity. This dancer, like so many others, had
the technic of her art at her toes' ends. Sarah
Bernhardt once told a reporter that the acquire-
ment of technic never did any harm to an artist,
and if one were not an artist it was not a bad thing
to have. I have forgotten how many times Mile.
Maclezova could pirouette without touching the
toe in the air to the floor, but it was some pro-
digious number. She was past mistress of the
entrechat and other mysteries of the ballet acad-
emy. Here, however, her knowledge of her art
seemed to end, in the subjugation of its very mech-
[152]

Waslav Nijinsky

anism. She was very nearly lacking in those quali-
ties of grace, poetry, and imagination with which
great artists are freely endowed, and although-
she could not actually have been a woman of more
than average weight, she often conveyed to the
spectator an impression of heaviness. In such a
work as The Firebird she really offended the eye.
Far from interpreting the ballet, she gave you an
idea of how it should not be done.

Her season with the Russians was terminated in
very short order, and Lydia Lopoukova, who hap-
pened to be in America, and who, indeed, had al-
ready been engaged for certain roles, was rushed
into her vacant slippers. Now Mme. Lopoukova
had charm as a dancer, whatever her deficiencies
in technic. In certain parts, notably as Colom-
bine in Carneval, she assumed a roguish demeanor
which was very fetching. As La Ballerine in Pe-
trouchka, too, she met all the requirements of the
action. But in Le Spectre de la Rose, Les Sylph-
ides, The Firebird, and La Princesse Enchantee,
she floundered hopelessly out of her element.

Tchernicheva, one of the lesser but more stead-
fast luminaries of the Ballet, in the roles for which
3he was cast, the principal Nymph in L'AprSs-midi
d'wn Faune, Echo in Narcisse, and the Princess in
The Firebird, more than fulfilled her obligations to
[153]

I nterp reters

the ensemble, but her opportunities in these mimic
plays were not of sufficient importance to enable
her to carry the brunt of the performances on her
lovely shoulders. Flore Revalles was drafted, I
understand, from a French opera company. I
have been told that she sings — Tosca is one of her
roles — as well as she dances. That may very
well be. To impressionable spectators she seemed
a real femme fatale. Her Cleopatre suggested to
me a Parisian cocotte much more than an Egyp-
tian queen. It would be blasphemy to compare
her with Ida Rubinstein in this role — Ida Rubin-
stein, who was true Aubrey Beardsley ! In Thamar
and Zobeide, both to a great extent dancing roles,
Mile. Revalles, both as dancer and actress, was but
a frail substitute for Karsavina.

The remainder of the company was adequate,
but not large, and the ensemble was by no means
as brilliant as those who had seen the Ballet in
London or Paris might have expected. Nor in
the absence of Fokine, that master of detail, were
performances sufficiently rehearsed. There was,
of course, explanation in plenty for this disinte-
gration. Gradually, indeed, the Ballet as it had
existed in Europe had suffered a change. Only a
miracle and a fortune combined would have suf-
ficed to hold the original company intact. It was
[154 ]

Waslav Nijinsky

not held intact, and the war made further inroads
on its integrity. Then, for the trip to America
many of the dancers probably were inclined to de-
mand double pay. Undoubtedly, Serge de Diag-
hilew had many more troubles than those which
were celebrated in the public prints, and it must
be admitted that, even with his weaker company,
he gave us finer exhibitions of stage art than had
previously been even the exception here.

In the circumstances, however, certain pieces,
which were originally produced when the com-
pany was in the flush of its first glory, should never
have been presented here at all. It was not the
part of reason, for example, to pitchfork on the
Century stage an indifferent performance of Le
Pavilion d'Armide, in which Nijinsky once dis-
ported himself as the favourite slave, and which, as
a matter of fact, requires a company of virtuosi
to make it a passable diversion. Cleopatre, in its
original form with Nijinsky, Fokine, Pavlowa,
Ida Rubinstein, and others, hit all who saw it
square between the eyes. The absurdly expur-
gated edition, with its inadequate cast, offered to
New York, was but the palest shadow of the sen-
suous entertainment that had aroused all Paris,
from the Batignolles to the Bastille. The music,
the setting, the costumes — what else was left to
[155]

I nterpreters

celebrate? The altered choregraphy, the deplor-
able interpretation, drew tears of rage from at
least one pair of eyes. It was quite incompre-
hensible also why The Firebird, which depends on
the grace and poetical imagination of the filmiest
and most fairy-like actress-dancer, should have
found a place in the repertoire. It is the dancing
equivalent of a coloratura soprano role in opera.
Thankful, however, for the great joy of having re-
heard Strawinsky's wonderful score, I am willing
to overlook this tactical error.

All things considered, it is small wonder that a
large slice of the paying population of New York
tired of the Ballet in short order. One reason
for this cessation of interest was the constant rep-
etition of ballets. In London and Paris the sea-
sons as a rule have been shorter, and on certain
evenings of the week opera has taken the place of
the dance. It has been rare indeed that a single
work has been repeated more than three or four
times during an engagement. I have not found it
stupid to listen to and look at perhaps fifteen per-
formances of varying degrees of merit of Pet-
rouchka, Scheherazade, Carneval, and the dances
from Prince Igor; I would rather see the Russian
Ballet repeatedly, even as it existed in America,
than four thousand five hundred and six Broad-
[156]

Waslav Nijinsky

way plays or seventy-three operas at the Metro-
politan once, but I dare say I may look upon my-
self as an exception.

At any rate, when the company entered upon a
four weeks' engagement at the Metropolitan Opera
House, included in the regular subscription sea-
son of opera, the subscribers groaned; many of
them groaned aloud, and wrote letters to the man-
agement and to the newspapers. To be sure, dur-
ing the tour which had followed the engagement
at the Century the repertoire had been increased,
but the company remained the same — until the
coming of Waslav Nijinsky.

When America was first notified of the impend-
ing visit of the Russian Ballet it was also promised
that Waslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina
would head the organization. It was no fault of
the American direction or of Serge de Diaghilew
that they did not do so. Various excuses were
advanced for the failure of Karsavina to forsake
her family in Russia and to undertake the journey
to the United States but, whatever the cause, there
seems to remain no doubt that she refused to come.
As for Nijinsky, he, with his wife, had been a
prisoner in an Austrian detention camp since the
beginning of the war. Wheels were set grinding
but wheels grind slowly in an epoch of interna-
[157]

Interpreters

tional bloodshed, and it was not until March, 1916,
that the Austrian ambassador at Washington was
able to announce that Nijinsky had been set
free.

I do not believe the coming to this country of
any other celebrated person had been more widely
advertised, although P. T. Barnum may have gone
further in describing the charitable and vocal
qualities of Jenny Lind. Nijinsky had been ex-
travagantly praised, not only by the official press
representatives but also by eminent critics and pri-
vate persons, in adjectives which seemed to pre-
clude any possibility of his living up to them. I
myself had been among the paean singers. I had
thrust " half-man, half-god " into print. " A
flame!" cried some one. Another, "A jet of
water from a fountain ! " Such men in the street
as had taken the trouble to consider the subject at
all very likely expected the arrival of some stupen-
dous and immortal monstrosity, a gravity-defying
being with sixteen feet (at least), who bounded like
a rubber ball, never touching the solid stage except
at the beginning and end of the evening's perform-
ance.

Nijinsky arrived in April. Almost immediately
he gave vent to one of those expressions of temper-
ament often associated with interpretative genius,

[ 158 ]

Waslav Nijinsky

the kind of thing I have described at some length
in " Music and Bad Manners." He was not at all
pleased with the Ballet as he found it. Inter-
viewed, he expressed his displeasure in the news-
papers. The managers of the organization wisely
remained silent, and a controversy was avoided,
but the public had received a suggestion of petu-
lancy which could not contribute to the popularity
of t}»e new dancer.

^^Nijinsky danced for the first time in New York
on the afternoon of April 12, at the Metropolitan
Opera House. The pieces in which he appeared
on that day were Le Spectre de la Rose and Pet-
rouchka. Some of us feared that eighteen months
in a detention camp would have stamped their
mark on the dancer. As a matter of fact his con-
nection with the Russian Ballet had been severed
in 1913, a year before the war began. I can say
for myself that I was probably a good deal more
nervous than Nijinsky on the occasion of his first
appearance in America. It would have been a
cruel disappointment to me to have discovered
that his art had perished during the intervening
three years since I had last seen him. My fears
were soon dissipated. A few seconds after he as
the Rose Ghost had bounded through the window,
it was evident that he was in possession of all his
[159]

Interpreters

powers; nay, more, that he had added to the re-
finement and polish of his style. I had called Ni-
jinsky's dancing perfection in years gone by, be-
cause it so far surpassed that of his nearest rival ;
now he had surpassed himself. True artists, in-
deed, have a habit of accomplishing this ie&l.lr'
may call to your attention the careers aKjlive
Fremstad, Yvette Guilbert, and Marje^Tempest.
Later I learned that this first impression might
bejrefied on. Nijinsky, in sooth, has now no rivals
upon the stage. One can only compare him with
himself !

The Weber-Gautier dance-poem, from the very
beginning until the end, when he leaps out of the
window of the girl's chamber into the night, affords
this great actor-dancer one of his most grateful
opportunities. It is in this very part, perhaps,
which requires almost unceasing exertion for
nearly twelve minutes, that Nijinsky's powers of
co-ordination, mental, imaginative, muscular, are
best displayed. His dancing is accomplished in
that flowing line, without a break between poses
and gestures, which is the despair of all novices and
almost all other virtuosi. After a particularly
difficult leap or toss of the legs or arms, it is a
marvel to observe how, without an instant's pause
to regain his poise, he rhythmically glides into the
[160]

Waslav Nijinsky

succeeding gesture. His dancing has the un-
broken quality of music, the balance of great paint-
ing, the meaning of fine literature, and the emotion
inherent in all these arts. There is something of
transmutation in his performances; he becomes
an alembic, transforming movement into a finely
wrought and beautiful work of art. The danc-
ing of Nijinsky is first an imaginative triumph,
and the spectator, perhaps, should not be inter-
ested in further dissection of it, but a more inti-
mate observer must realize that behind this the
effect produced depends on his supreme command
of his muscles. It is not alone the final informing
and magnetized imaginative quality that most
other dancers lack; it is also just this muscular
co-ordination. Observe Gavrilow in the piece
under discussion, in which he gives a good imita-
tion of Nijinsky's general style, and you will see
that he is unable to maintain this rhythmic con-
tinuity^---- ft. i Ml/ L

/Nijinsky's achievements become all the more
remarkable when one remembers that he is work-
ing with an imperfect physical medium. Away
from the scene he is an insignificant figure, short
and ineffective in appearance. Aside from the
pert expression of his eyes, he is like a dozen other
young Russians. Put him unintroduced into a
[161]

Interpreters

drawing-room with Jacques Copeau, Orchidae,
Doris Keane, Bill Haywood, Edna Kenton, the
Baroness de Meyer, Paulet Thevenaz, the Mar-
chesa Casati, Marcel Duchamp, Cathleen Nesbitt,
H. G. Wells, Anna Pavlowa, Rudyard Chenne-
viere, Vladimir Rebikow, Henrie Waste, and Isa-
dora Duncan, and he probably would pass entirely
unnoticed. On the stage it may be observed that
the muscles of his legs are overdeveloped and his
ankles are too large; that is, if you are in the
mood for picking flaws, which most of us are not in
the presence of Nijinsky in action. Here, how-
ever, stricture halts confounded; his head is set
on his shoulders in a manner to give satisfaction
.to a great sculptor, and his toyso, with its slender
I waist line, is quite beautifulV^On the stage, Nijin-
I sky makes of himself what he will. He can look
' tall or short, magnificent or ugly, fascinating or
repulsive. Like so many interpretative artists,
he remoulds himself for his public appearances. It
is under the electric light in front of the painted
canvas that he becomes a personality, and that
^ personality is governed only by the scenario of the
ballet he is representing.^/^ (*A>..{ ,",

From the day of Nijinsky's arrival, the ensemble
of the Ballet improved; somewhat of the sponta-
neity of the European performances was regained ;
[ 162 ]

Waslav Nijinsky

a good deal of the glamour was recaptured; the
loose lines were gathered taut, and the choregra-
phy of Fokine (Nijinsky is a director as well as a
dancer) was restored to some of its former power.
He has appeared in nine roles in New York during
the two short seasons in which he has been seen
with the Russian Ballet here : the Slave in Scheher-
azade, Petrouchka, the Rose Ghost, the Faun, the
Harlequin in Carneval, Narcisse, Till Eulenspiegel,
and the principal male roles of La Princesse En-
chantee and Les Sylphides. To enjoy the art of
Nijinsky completely, to fully appreciate his genius,
it is necessary not only to see him in a variety of
parts, but also to see him in the same role many
times.

Study the detail of his performance in Scheher-
azade, for example. Its precision alone is note-
worthy. Indeed, precision is a quality we see ex-
posed so seldom in the theatre that when we find
it we are almost inclined to hail it as genius. The
role of the Slave in this ballet is perhaps Nijin-
sky's scenic masterpiece — exotic eroticism ex-
pressed in so high a key that its very existence
seems incredible on our puritanic stage, and yet
with such great art (the artist always expresses
himself with beauty) that the intention is softened
by the execution. Before the arrival of this dan-

Interpreters

cer, Scheherazade had become a police court scan-
dal. There had been talk of a " Jim Crow " per-
formance in which the blacks were to be separated
from the whites in the harem, and I am told that
our provincial police magistrates even wanted to
replace the " mattresses " — so were the divans of
the sultanas described in court — by rocking
chairs ! But to the considerably more vivid Sche-
herazade of Nijinsky no exception was taken.
This strange, curious, head-wagging, simian crea-
ture, scarce human, wriggled through the play,
leaving a long streak of lust and terror in his wake.
Never did Nijinsky as the Negro Slave touch the
Sultana, but his subtle and sensuous fingers flut-
tered close to her flesh, clinging once or twice
questioningly to a depending tassel. Pierced by
the javelins of the Sultan's men, the Slave's death
struggle might have been revolting and gruesome.
Instead, Nijinsky carried the eye rapidly upward
with his tapering feet as they balanced for the
briefest part of a second straight high in the air,
only to fall inert with so brilliantly quick a move-
ment that the jesthetic effect grappled successfully
with the feeling of disgust which might have been
aroused. This was acting, this was characteriza-
tion, so completely merged in rhythm that the re-
sult became a perfect whole, and not a combina-
[ 164 ]

Waslav Nijinsky

tion of several intentions, as so often results from
the work of an actor-dancer. Jf

The heart-breaking Petrouchka, the roguish
Harlequin, the Chopiniac of Les Sylphides, — all
were offered to our view; and Narcisse, in which
Nijinsky not only did some very beautiful dancing,
but posed (as the Greek youth admired himself
in the mirror of the pool) with such utter and ar-
resting grace that even here he awakened a defi-
nite thrill. In La Princesse Enchantee he merely
danced, but how he danced ! Do you who saw him
still remember those flickering fingers and toes?
" He winketh with his eyes, he speaketh with his
feet, he teacheth with his fingers," is written in the
Book of Proverbs, and the writer might have had
in mind Nijinsky in La Princesse Enchant ie. All
these parts were differentiated, all completely real-
ized, in the threefold intricacy of this baffling art,
which perhaps is not an art at all until it is so real-
ized, when its plastic, rhythmic, and histrionic ele-
ments become an entity.

After a summer in Spain and Switzerland, with-
out Nijinsky, the Russian Ballet returned to
America for a second season, opening at the Man-
hattan Opera House October 16, 1916. It is al-
ways a delight to hear and see performances in this
theatre, and it was found that the brilliance of the
[ 165 ]

I nterp reters

Ballet was much enhanced by its new frame. The
season, however, opened with a disappointment.
It had been announced that Nijinsky would dance
on the first night his choregraphic version of Rich-
ard Strauss's tone-poem, Till Eulenspiegel. It is
not the first time that a press agent has enacted
the role of Cassandra. While rehearsing the new
work, Nijinsky twisted his ankle, and during the
first week of the engagement he did not appear at
all. This was doubly unfortunate, because the
company was weaker than it had been the previous
season, lacking both Miassine and Tchernicheva.
The only novelty (for America) produced during
the first week was an arrangement of the divertis-
sement from Rimsky-'Korsakow's opera, S'adko,
which had already been given a few times in Paris
and London by the Ballet, never with conspicuous
success. The second week of the season, Nijinsky
returned to appear in three roles, the Faun, Till
Eulenspiegel, and the Slave in Scheherazade. Of
his performance to Debussy's lovely music I have
written elsewhere ; nor did this new vision cause me
to revise my opinions.

Till Eulenspiegel is the only new ballet the Rus-
sians have produced in America. (Soleil de Nuit
was prepared in Europe, and performed once at
the Paris Opera before it was seen in New York.
[ 166 ]

Waslav Nijinsky

Besides, it was an arrangement of dances from an
opera which is frequently given in Russia and
which has heen presented at the Opera-Comique in
Paris.) The chef d'orchestre, Pierre Monteux,
refused to direct performances of this work, on
the ground that the composer was not only a Ger-
man, but a very much alive and active German
patriot. On the occasions, therefore, that Till
was performed in New York, the orchestra strug-
gled along under the baton of Dr. Anselm Goetzl.
In selecting this work and in his arrangement of
the action Nijinsky was moved, no doubt, by con-
sideration for the limitations of the company as
it existed, — from which he was able to secure the
effects he desired. The scenery and costumes by
Robert E. Jones, of New York, were decidedly di-
verting — the best work this talented young man
has done, I think. Over a deep, spreading back-
ground of ultramarine, the crazy turrets of me-
diaeval castles leaned dizzily to and fro. The cos-
tumes were exaggerations of the exaggerated
fashions of the Middle Ages. Mr. Jones added
feet of stature to the already elongated peaked
headdresses of the period. The trains of the vel-
vet robes, which might have extended three yards,
were allowed to trail the full depth of the Manhat-
tan Opera House stage. The colours were oranges,
[167]

I nterp reter s

reds, greens, and blues, those indeed of Bakst's
Scheherazade, but so differently disposed that they
made an entirely dissimilar impression. The effect
reminded one spectator of a Spanish omelet.

In arranging the scenario, Nijinsky followed in
almost every detail Wilhelm Klatte's description
of the meaning of the music, which is printed in
programme books whenever the tone-poem is per-
formed, without Strauss's authority, but sometimes
with his sanction. Nijinsky was quite justified in
altering the end of the work, which hangs the
rogue-hero, into another practical joke. His ver-
sion of this episode fits the music and, in the orig-
inal Till Eulenspiegel stories, Till is not hanged,
but dies in bed. The keynote of Nijinsky's inter-
pretation was gaiety. He was as utterly picar-
esque as the work itself ; he reincarnated the spirit
of Gil Bias ; indeed, a new quality crept into stage
expression through this characterization. Mar-
garet Wycherly, one of the most active admirers
of the dancer, told me after the first performance
that she felt that he had for the first time leaped
into the hearts of the great American public, whose
appreciation of his subtler art as expressed in
Narcisse, Petrouchka, and even Scheherazade, had
been more moderate. There were those who pro-
tested that this was not the Till of the German
[168]

Waslav Nijinsky

legends, but any actor who attempts to give form
to a folk or historical character, or even a char-
acter derived from fiction, is forced to run counter
to many an observer's preconceived ideas.

" It is an error to believe that pantomime is
merely a way of doing without words," writes Ar-
thur Symons, " that it is merely the equivalent of
words. Pantomime is thinking overheard. It be-
gins and ends before words have formed them-
selves, in a deeper consciousness than that of
speech. And it addresses itself, by the artful lim-
itations of its craft, to universal human expe-
rience, knowing that the moment it departs from
those broad lines it will become unintelligible. It
risks existence on its own perfection, as the rope-
dancer does, to whom a false step means a down-
fall. And it appeals democratically to people of
all nations. . . . And pantomime has that mystery
which is one of the requirements of true art. To
watch it is like dreaming. How silently, in
dreams, one gathers the unheard sounds of words
from the lips that do but make pretence of saying
them ! And does not every one know that terrify-
ing impossibility of speaking which fastens one to
the ground for the eternity of a second, in what
is the new, perhaps truer, computation of time in
dreams? Something like that sense of suspense
[169]

I nterpreters

seems to hang over the silent actors in pantomime,
giving them a nervous exaltation, which has its
subtle, immediate effect upon us, in tragic and
comic situation. The silence becomes an atmos-
phere, and with a very curious power of giving
distinction to form and motion. I do not see why
people should ever break silence on the stage ex-
cept to speak poetry. Here, in pantomime, you
have a gracious, expressive silence, beauty of ges-
ture, a perfectly discreet appeal to the emotions,
a transposition of the world into an elegant ac-
cepted convention."

Arthur Symons wrote these words before he had
seen the Russian Ballet, before the Russian Ballet,
as we know it, existed, indeed, before Nijinsky
had begun to dance in public, and he felt that the
addition of poetry and music to pantomime — the
Wagner music-drama in other words — brought
about a perfect combination of the arts. Never-
theless, there is an obvious application of his re-
marks to the present instance. There is, indeed,
the quality of a dream about the characters Ni-
jinsky presents to us. I remember once, at
a performance of the Russian Ballet, I sat in a
box next to a most intelligent man, a writer him-
self ; I was meeting him for the first time, and he
was seeing the Ballet for the first time. Before the
[170]

Waslav Nijinsky

curtain rose he had told me that dancing and
pantomime were very pretty to look at, but that he
found no stimulation in watching them, no mental
and spiritual exaltation, such as might follow a
performance of Hamlet. Having seen Nijinsky, I
could not agree with him — and this indifferent ob-
server became that evening himself a fervent disci-
ple of the Ballet. For Nijinsky gave him, he
found, just what his ideal performance of Shake-
speare's play might have given him, a basis for
dreams, for thinking, for poetry. The ennobling
effect of all great and perfect art, after the pri-
mary emotion, seems to be to set our minds wander-
ing in a thousand channels, to suggest new outlets.
Pater's experience before the Monna Lisa is only
unique in its intense and direct expression.

No writer, no musician, no painter, can feel
deep emotion before a work of art without ex-
pressing it in some way, although the expression
may be a thousand leagues removed from the in-
spiration. And how few of us can view the art of
Nijinsky without emotion! To the painter he
gives a new sense of proportion, to the musician
a new sense of rhythm, while to the writer he must j
perforce immediately suggest new words; better!
still, new meanings for old words. Dance, panto-4
mime, acting, harmony, all these divest themselvesf
[171]

I nterpreters

of their worn-out accoutrements and appear, as if
clothed by magic, in garments of unheard-of nov-
elty ; hue, texture, cut, and workmanship are all a
surprise to us. We look enraptured, we go away
enthralled, and perhaps even unconsciously a new
quality creeps into our own work. It is the same
glamour cast over us by contemplation of the
Campo Santo at Pisa, or the Roman Theatre at
Orange, or the Cathedral at Chartres, — the in-
spiration for one of the most word- jewelled books
in any language — or the New York sky line at
twilight as one sails away into the harbour, or a
great iron crane which lifts tons of alien matter in
its gaping maw. Great music can give us this feel-
ing, the symphonies of Beethoven, Mozart's Don
Giovanni, Schubert's C Major Symphony, or C£-
sar Franck's D Minor, The Sacrifice to the Spring
of Strawinsky, L'Apres-midi d'un Fauneoi De-
bussy, Chabrier's Rhapsody, Espana; great inter-
pretative musicians can give it to us, Ysaye at his
best, Paderewski, Marcella Sembrich in song re-
cital; but how few artists on the stage suggest
even as much as the often paltry lines of the au-
thor, the often banal music of the composer!
There is an au dela to all great interpretative art,
something that remains after story, words, pic-
ture, and gesture have faded vaguely into that
[ 172 ]

Waslav Nijinsky

storeroom in our memories where are concealed
these lovely ghosts of ephemeral beauty, and the
artist who is able to give us this is blessed even
beyond his knowledge, for to him has been vouch-
safed the sacred kiss of the gods. This quality
cannot be acquired, it cannot even be described,
but it can be felt. With its beneficent aid the in-
terpreter not only contributes to our pleasure, he
broadens our horizon, adds to our knowledge and

Zacity for feeling.
is I read over these notes I realize that I have
been able to discover flaws in the art of this
young man. It s eems to me that in his rfonaen
TriP>KnTTi hejjjajaaafihjg pe rfection. What he at-
tempts to do, he always does perfectly. Can one
say as much for any other interpreter ? But it is
a difficult matter to give the spirit of Nijinsky, to
describe his art on paper, to capture the abun-
dant grace, the measureless poetry, the infinite illu-
sion of his captivating motion in ink. Who can
hope to do it? Future generations must take our
word for his greatness. We can do little more
than call it that. I shall have served my purpose
if I have succeeded in this humble article in bring-
ing back to those who have seen him a flashing
glimpse of the imaginative actuality. /
January 16, 1917. /

[ 173 1 '

The Problem of Style

in the Production of

Opera

" Take care of the sense and the sounds will take
care of themselves."

The Duchess in " Alice in Wonderland."

The Problem of Style

in the Production

of Opera

WHEN some one, not reckoning the cost
to my reason, casually informed me
that Maria was to be produced with
new scenery at the Metropolitan Opera House
during the season of 1915-16 I literally foamed
at the mouth. Marta, the last opera in the world
to need scenery at all, to be mounted freshly, while
Gotterdammerung and Die Walkiire, so far as
stage decoration was concerned, remained a dis-
grace to the institution. Marta is a product of
one of the " great periods of song." Its protag-
onists are given many an opportunity to warble
prettily and this warbling can be accomplished to
the best effect on a stage of the epoch of its birth,
that is a stage with an apron which projects into
the orchestra so that when the diva sings she is
surrounded by her auditors on three sides. Foot-
lights, preferably gas ones, crystal chandeliers
for the salon scenes, sliding " flats," and battered
" sky-borders " in narrow strips for the exterior
scenes, all belong to this period of opera. The
soprano, the tenor, and the other singers should
[ 177 J

Interp retations

advance to that point of the apron nearest the
audience to deliver the roulades, trills, and other
florid investiture of the music . . . and we would
be transported back to the great days of Catalani,
Persiani, Cinti-Damoureau, Malibran, Jenny Lind,
and Sontag . . . But alas, in spite of the fact that
operas written for apron stages are still frequently
performed, aprons have gone out. The New York
Hippodrome boasts an apron but Marta could not
conceivably be sung there (speaking from my own
point of view ; from the point of view of an impres-
sario almost any opera can be performed almost
anywhere).

Marta, La Sonnambula, Lucia, Rigoletto, La
Traviata would all benefit by a revival of treat-
ment; on the other hand the operas of Mozart
would be improved by new decoration, in the ro-
coco style to be sure, and to effect the frequent
changes of scene expeditiously the use of a revolv-
ing stage is advisable, but these modernites might
easily be combined with the advantage of an apron
stage. Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni
would both be more effective if they were sung on
a stage with an apron. So would II Barbiere di
Siviglia. Compare the effect of Una voce poco fa
sung at the left stage centre in the " realistic "
modern manner and on an apron stage and you
[178]

The Problem of Style

will understand why there were queens of song in
1840 and why there are none to-day. You will un-
derstand why men and women alike showered their
favourites with bouquets of gardenias and violets,
why they pelted them with bracelets and brooches.
Do you suppose that Jenny Lind could repeat her
success at Castle Garden in the Metropolitan
Opera House ? Do you fancy that Mme. Malibran
could hope for much attention under present day
conditions? With all due appreciation of the
greatness of Mme. Melba and Mme. Sembrich, with
reverence and respect for their triumphs, it must
be admitted that these singers were products of
that school which best flourishes on the apron
stage and these triumphs, at least so far as out-
ward manifestations go, might have been trebled
if the ladies had had the opportunities of their
luckier sisters, born a half century or so earlier.
The modern opera stage and the modern opera
have produced the singing actress, Mary Gar-
den, Olive Fremstad, and Geraldine Farrar.
Here are ladies who achieve some of their best mo-
ments through the appeal to the eye. They are
the inevitable complement of operas like Louise,
Cavalleria Rusticana, Elektra, Salome, and .' . .
Madama Butterfly, operas in which the " fourth
wall " convention of Ibsen is more or less ob-
[179]

Interp retations

served. But these works form a very small part
of the modern repertoire, which includes operas in
all musical styles, the books of which demand
great variety in stage decoration, different kinds
of singers, different kinds of acting, and different
types of stages. There are operas suitable for
the apron stage and the conventions of the For-
ties ; there are the Wagner music dramas, an in-
vention of their composer, which require no end
of special attention; there are symbolic lyric
plays like Pelleas et Melisande and Ariane et
Barbe-Bleue; there are musical comedies like Die
Meistersinger and The Bartered Bride; there are
children's plays like Hansel und Gretel and Cen-
drillon; there are operas-bouffes like La Fille de
Madame Angot and operas-comiques like Manon
and Fra Diavolo; there are operas sung in Ger-
man, French, and Italian (occasionally in English
and Spanish, and Russian and Bohemian operas
sung in any tongue at all) ; there are operas which
are all music and other operas which are all drama :
all these are presented (some thirty-three of them
during a season) on one stage, by one company (to
be sure concessions are made to languages [neces-
sarily ; this is no managerial virtue] and Germans
are usually engaged for the Wagner music dramas)
[180]

The Problem of Style

in more or less the same general manner. That is
why the production of opera, no matter how badly
done, is difficult, and seldom lucrative. There are
remedies. They would involve the limitation of
the repertoire (the best possible remedy, although
one not complete in itself), the utilization of two
or more theatres (this method is in vogue in Paris,
Munich, and a few other cities), or the possible
adaptation of the stage to emergencies. In addi-
tion, in order to give creditable performances of
thirty-three operas, a very large company would
be required and a different director for every three
works, for you cannot expect one man, looking
after the decoration, the lights, and the action, to
produce more than three operas during one season
with any degree of artistic success. Of course
only a few of the operas in the repertoire of the
Metropolitan Opera House each season are new.
But old works cannot be reproduced without a
good deal of attention.

Just by way of making my point clearer I have
compiled a list of the operas sung at the Metro-
politan Opera House during the season of 1914-15,
which on the whole may be taken to be fairly rep-
resentative, although it does not include many of
the earlier operas often given such as Orfeo, Ar-
[181]

Interp retations

mide, Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro, Lucia, La
Sonnambula, and II Barbiere di Siviglia. Here is
the list :

Die Zauberflote 1791 . . German

Fidelio 1805 . . German

Ewryanthe 1823 . . German

Leg Huguenots (sung in Italian) . .1836. .French

Tannhauser 1845 . . German

Lohengrin 1850. .German

II Trovatore 1853. .Italian

La Traviata *. 1853. .Italian

Un Ballo in Maschera 1859 . . Italian

Tristan und Isolde 1865 . . German

Die Meistersinger 1868. .German

Das Rheingold 1869 . . German

Die Walkiire 1870 . . German

Aida 1871 . . Italian

Boris Godwnow (sung in Italian) . . 1874. .Russian

Carmen 1875 . . French

La Gioconda 1876 . . Italian

Siegfried 1876 . . German

Gbtterdammerung 1876 . . German

Parsifal . .*. 1882. .German

Manon 1884. .French

Cavalleria Rusticana 1890. .Italian

Pagliacci 1892. .Italian

Manon Lescaut 1893. .Italian

[182 ]

The Problem of Style

Hansel und Gretel 1893 . . German

La Boherne 1896. .Italian

Iris 1898. .Italian

Tosca 1900. .Italian

Madama Butterfly .1904. .Italian

L'Oracolo 1905 . . Italian

Der Rosenkavalier 1911 . . German

L'Amore dei Tre Re 1913 . . Italian

Mme. Sans-Gene 1915 . . Italian

The dates refer to the original productions, not,
of course, necessarily in New York. Aside from
the contradictions indicated by dates and lan-
guages there are many others which cannot be
suggested so formally. There is no account taken,
in the list, for example, of the differences in styles
of works of the same period and in the same lan-
guage. Hansel und Gretel and Der Rosenkava-
lier are German operas of the same epoch and yet
they demand very different treatment in stage dec-
oration, in song, and in action. The same prin-
ciple holds good in relation to L'Amore dei Tre Re
and Mme. Sans-Gene, La Boherne and Pagliacci.
To make my point still sharper I have prepared a
list of thirty-three plays of many dates and many
languages. Now in the theatre there is no musical
accompaniment to a drama to prepare, no singing
to be done, and yet I do not think it would be pos-
[ 183 ]

Interp retations

sible for a company, even as large as that of the
Metropolitan Opera House, to give creditable per-
formances of all these plays in the languages in
which they were written at one theatre in one sea-
son. Miss Grace George recently succeeded in
presenting, with some degree of thoroughness, five
plays in a single season at the Playhouse in New
York. These plays, however, were all modern
comedies which did not differ markedly in style and
which presented no great problems for the stage
decorators . . . and they were all in English.
Even so, in spite of the fact that the members of
her company had been trained in pieces of this
general style she found it necessary to make addi-
tions and subtractions for every change of bill.
And I do not think that Miss Grace George, David
Belasco, George Tyler, Arthur Hopkins, Rudolf
Christians, Jacques Copeau, and the Washington
Square Players together could render a satisfac-
tory account of the following list (in the original
languages) in one season at a single theatre :

William Tell
Le Barbier de Seville
La Locandiera
The Lady of Lyons
Caste

The Second Mrs. Tanqueray
[184]

The Problem of Style

Jim the Penman

Nobody's Widow

La Dame aux Cameliag

Francesca da Rimini

The Seagull •

Arms and the Man

Hehnath

Hannele

Faust

The Colleen Bawn

Charley's Aunt

L'Aiglon

Le Voleur

The School for Scandal

Jungfrau von Orleans

Maria Stuart

The Easiest Way

Man and Superman

As You Like It

The Taming of the Shrew

Hamlet

Macbeth

La Course du Flambeau

Les Affaires Sont les Affaires

The New York Idea

Divorcons

La Tosca

[185]

Interpretations

There are theatres in Europe which attempt as
long a list as this, notably some of the state the-
atres of Germany and the Comedie Francaise in
Paris. However, in these instances certain dis-
tinctions are to be observed: (1) the entire rep-
ertoire is played in one language; (2) the major-
ity of plays in the repertoire are written in that
language; (3) the actors have been trained to
be versatile and to readily suit themselves to new
parts; (4s) the greater number of plays at insti-
tutions of this character are not any too well per-
formed or produced. He is a great director, for
example, who can get equally fine results with The
Seagull, in which a greater part of the play de-
pends upon overtones, subconscious values, and
Jim the Penman, in which a greater part of the
play depends upon undertones (Curse yous hissed
between the teeth) , overconscious values.

I do not think a course of training will help out
the operatic impresario. The father of a man I
knew in college once insisted that his son skin a
pig. " You never know when experience of this
sort may come in handy," was the old man's expla-
nation. So far as I know it never has. Gordon
Craig advises every young man to learn how to
design costumes and how to stage a play so that
when he is put in charge of a theatre he will know
[1861

The Problem of Style

what to do. Yet even Gordon Craig would not, I
think, be able to make appropriate decorations and
arrange suitable and unconventional action for all
the plays and operas I have mentioned. Further
it is Craig's idea that the author should be his
own costumier, stage decorator, and stage di-
rector (Craig's final decision to do away with the
actor we must perforce ignore), a theory all very
well for live authors but what about dead ones?
Composers of opera are frequently dead. An-
other question arises : should the composer or his
librettist be considered the author? . . . After all
the role of the impresario is to mould the forces
under him together, to arrange about payments
and the collections of moneys, to see that the box
office receipts do not run too far below the ex-
penses of the theatre, and to humour recalcitrant
sopranos. I have known many operatic impre-
sarios. Andre Messager, once at the head of the
Paris Opera, is a composer of pretty, light operas ;
he is also a conductor. Andreas Dippel, who has
headed both the Metropolitan and the Chicago
Opera Companies, was at one time a tenor whose
principal asset was an elastic repertoire which
made it possible for him to replace any other tenor
at twenty-four minutes' notice in almost any oper-
atic role in almost any operatic language.
[187]

Interp retations

Neither of these men was a brilliant success as an
impresario although both of them probably knew
a good deal about what they wanted to accomplish.
Henry Russell, once a music teacher, gave America
some of the most interesting performances of
operas it has had. He is particularly to be
thanked for having brought Joseph Urban to us.
Oscar Hammerstein was a cigar-maker (he is still
on days when he is bored) ; Giulio Gatti-Casazza
was a naval engineer; Heinrich Conried was an
actor; Maurice Grau . . . Col. Mapleson . . .
the list of impresarios is as long as one cares to
make it . . . Oscar Hammerstein has an extraor-
dinary flair for the production of opera, mostly
the result of an inordinate and inexplicable fond-
ness for this form of music. He has frequently
been able to do what men of more experience (in
this direction) and better taste have failed in do-
ing. His productions of French opera, while of-
ten execrable so far as stage decoration was con-
cerned, were the best that have been given in New
York. Louise, Pelleas et Melisande, Thais, Sapho,
Le Jongleur de Notre Dame, Les Contes d'Hoff-
inaim, and Carmen all had spirit, atmosphere, and
effective interpretation at the Manhattan Opera
House. This was because the impresario en-
gaged his singers with a view to their appearances
[188]

The Problem of Style

in certain operas and then encouraged them to do
their best by sitting in the " first entrance " on
his own stage. Maurice Grau is principally fa-
mous for having developed the " star " system.
When he found a singer who could draw money in
a certain opera she was exploited in that opera
until the last drop of interest had been extracted
from the public purse. When single stars waned
he offered them in galaxies at bargain rates and
so sated the public with vocal splendours in Les
Huguenots and one or two other works that it took
a decade or two to convince us afterwards that
operas are just as good when they are presented
by mediocre talent. Heinrich Conried did not at-
tempt to destroy the star system immediately but
he was German and economical and, little by little,
he brought about a change. Like all Germans in
charge of theatres he was very thorough, almost
finickal. His taste was not of the best, at least
in stage decoration. He inherited many of the
Grau stars and he provided many more, notably
Enrico Caruso. He entered into negotiations
with Maurice Renaud and Luisa Tetrazzini ; but it
was left to Mr. Hammerstein to bring these artists
to New York. His production of Parsifal was,
according to the German traditions, very fine. He
did noteworthy feats with Hansel und Gretel and
[ 189 ]

I nterp retations

Salome. But he is principally to be remembered
for what he did to improve the chorus and orches-
tra. He provided a German chorus, indeed, which
came to be one of the glories of the institution.
Most of the Grau stars and some of the Conried
luminaries were fading when Mr. Gatti-Casazza
came into office. He has endeavoured, sometimes
with success, to supply that lack. Aided by able
lieutenants he has put the Opera House on a pay-
ing basis. He inherited a fine orchestra and cho-
rus and he brought forward a genius as conductor,
Arturo Toscanini. He has been professedly an
enemy to modern tendencies in stage decoration,
and only once, when the investiture of Boris Godvr
now was bought outright from the Russian com-
pany which produced it in Paris, has he given us a
taste of the best in the new art. As for stage di-
rection operas are produced according to tradi-
tion (the tradition of the house itself) at the Met-
ropolitan Opera House. In the end, of course,
this means dependence on an appalling amount of
routine. Occasionally there are brilliant individ-
ual performances. The ensemble, chorus, orches-
tra, etc., are invariably good, musically speaking.
The stage management is very old-fashioned and is
not calculated to bring out the best in the operas
presented ... In one sense, ill one very real
[190]

The Problem of Style

sense, Mr. Gatti-Casazza has done our public a
service in producing such operas (some of them
for the first time here) as The Bartered Bride, Fir
delio, Armide, Orfeo, Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, Die
Zauberflote, Le Nozze di Figaro, Euryanthe, Iphi-
genie en Tauride, Boris Godunow, Prince Igor and
Der Rosenkavalier, but it cannot be said in any of
these instances (with the possible exceptions of
The Bartered Bride, Boris Godunow, and, to a
certain extent, Orfeo) that the works have been
presented with full regard for their style. There
were extraordinary features about the production
of Armide, the impersonation of Olive Fremstad,
the singing of Mr. Caruso, and the conducting of
Mr. Toscanini, but the scenery was hopeless frip-
pery, the stage direction sloppy, and the impor-
tant ballets were massacred while Anna Pavlowa,
a member of the company at the time, danced Au-
tumn bacchanals and gave imitations of dying
swans after performances of Madama Butterfly!
She was not called in to enliven the dances of Ar-
mide. Ariane et Barbe-Bleue was badly miscast.
One can think of no other role in which Mme. Far-
rar has so completely failed; the settings lacked
atmosphere ; the lighting in the second act was in
direct defiance of the explicit directions of the
author. When Ariane liberates Blue Beard's
[ 191 ]

Interp retations

wives from their cellar prison they are supposed
to glimpse the brilliant sunglare from their cave of
darkness. But it was found prettier to begin the
scene with a moonlight effect, and shortly after, as
the lights grew brighter, the bells pealed the noon-
day hour! However Mr. Toscanini's orchestra
was at its best in its performance of this lyric
drama. One would scarcely know where to begin
to find fault with the production of Prince Igor.
Continually it seemed to give a wrong impression
of the opera to the spectator and auditor.
Neither scenery, action, nor vocal interpretation
were appropriate.

There is certainly any amount of time and money
spent on new productions at the Metropolitan,
although it cannot be said that they are spent to
advantage. New and elaborate scenery of the
most approved Metropolitan style is supplied for
each new opera. For example, regard the deco-
rations for IphigSnie en Tauride, in which we find
the barbarian, Thoas, worshipping in a temple
which seems to have been designed by the latest
architect from Athens, and such a temple ! Every
detail of the columns, including the shadows of the
flutings, is carefully presented to the eye, as are
the bas-reliefs. These details, however, are
painted in perspective on flat pieces of canvas.
[192]

The Problem of Style

Now two columns, a flight of steps, a marble altar,
and a back sky cloth are all the scenery one needs
for this opera. The costumes, too, are such as
to cause the eye to wither from sheer dread and
the stage action, particularly that of the ballet,
is devised to remind one that the best Black Crook
traditions still persist. . . . Any means of stage
treatment justifies its existence if it succeeds in es-
tablishing the mood or the atmosphere of an opera.
But do not the contemporary means at the Metro-
politan establish pretty much the same atmos-
phere for Trovatore and Tristan und Isolde, for
IpMgenie en Tauride and Aida?

It is only by specialization (or the expenditure
of terrifying sums of money) that opera can be
given in an artistic and (let me add) wholly effect-
ive manner. No one would fancy asking the same
interpreter to sing both Manon and Isolde and yet
equally stupid mistakes are made because the com-
pany is lacking in some particular personality or
other. To be well given Manon and Trovatore
should be performed by two entirely different casts ;
so should Tristan and Trovatore. But the mat-
ter does not end here. If it did we should have
less to complain about, because some account is
taken of a singer's adaptability for different roles,
although I have heard performances of Faust in
[ 193 ]

Interp retations

New York, to mention a familiar opera (I might
have said Ariane et Barbe-Bleue or Prince Igor)
which might have been improved upon even in Ger-
many. ( The management must not be given credit
for this distinction, however. It is rare that a
singer sings many roles well in several languages.
Mme. Sembrich and Jean de Reszke are two ex-
ceptions to this rule whose names occur to me.
Olive Fremstad succeeded in compassing the style
of Armide after she had made a notable career in
the Wagner music dramas ; she did not, on the con-
trary, add to her reputation by her interpretations
of Selika and Santuzza. . , . . It is necessary for
the direction to select a separate German company
because the French and Italian singers do not, as
a rule, sing German. [Many German singers,
Mme. Gadski, for example, have a large Italian
repertoire. Miss Destinn, who is a Bohemian, is
one of the great Italian singers of this period of
operatic art.] In the old days when French and
Italian opera were in their glory here, the German
works were sung in Italian . . . and in another
day, the heyday of German opera, the rep-
ertoire was sung in German.) However, the
greater stumbling block is the matter of produc-
tion. Hardly four operas in this list can be found
which require the same type of stage decoration;
[ 194 ]

The Problem of Style

many would be improved if they were to be given on
a stage of a different kind or size; all of them
would make more effect if some account were taken
of their style. Of course, something ought to be
done merely to avoid monotony if for no other
reason. How tiresome it is to watch the charac-
ters in Manon, Tosca, and Siegfried making ex-
actly the same stupid stereotyped operatic ges-
tures! What a bore to observe the same brush
strokes and colours in the scenery.

Of the three French words in this list two could
be sung with better effect in a small theatre, Car-
men and Manon. They both belong to the classi-
fication known as opera-comique. They demand
of their interpreters a special style in acting and
singing, a style never perfectly realized by other
than French singers, or singers trained in the
French style. Mr. Caruso is not such a singer
(although no French tenor could have given more
heavenly utterance to the beautiful melodies of
Armide). Jean de Reszke was; Sybil Sanderson
was; Clotilde Bressler-Gianoli was; Emma Calve
is ; Mary Garden is. Curiously enough Geraldine
Farrar is in certain roles, and it must not be for-
gotten that she received a good part of her train-
ing in Paris. Lucien Muratore, Jeanne Mau-
bourg, Maurice Renaud, Edmond Clement, are all
[ 195 ]

Interpretations

singers trained in the French style and when a
French opera is sung with such singers in the cast
one is sure of the result . . . The other French
opera in the list, Les Huguenots, is not opera-
comique. It is " grand opera " and for its proper
interpretation it requires a semblance of the French
grand manner. Several of the singers I have just
mentioned can counterfeit it excellently. . . .
Meyerbeer's masterpiece, however, is not Italian
opera and singing it in Italian will not make it so.
Let us consider the staging of these works.
Carmen is an opera often acted in the extreme
" realistic " manner, and yet Carmen's escape over
the bridge at the end of the first act is managed in
such a fashion (invariably) that the credulity of
the spectator is imposed upon. This must be the
fault of the arrangement of the setting or of the
stage management. The present decoration (and
such others as I have seen there) for the last act
of Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera House is
ridiculous. The observer is obliged to ignore the
obvious possibility that Carmen could escape from
her maddened persecutor in nearly every direc-
tion. Exits on all sides but no place for Carmen
to go ! At the Opera-Comique in Paris the bull-
ring is placed at the back of the stage, the door in
the centre. Shops with arcades, very much like
[196]

The Problem of Style

those of the Rue Royale in Paris, hem in the sides
of the stage. The only entrances to the scene are
from the gate of the bull-ring and from the street
which runs parallel with the footlights at the front
of the stage. Sometime during her scene with
Jose Carmen attempts to re-enter the ring but
discovers that the gate has been locked. As she
turns up the narrow impasse she looks from right
to left. There is no way of escape . . . and when
Jose finally stabs her she is attempting to climb
the gate into the ring. I do not believe that at-
tention to such details mars the production of a
drama. If I were engaging an artist to paint
scenery for a play it seems to me that I would
expect him to think of them. It is incredible but
ordinarily no one at the Metropolitan Opera
House ever does think of them. The scenic artist
for Carmen should consider the aspects of the
drama from every possible point of view. Then
he should try to give his scenery intention. The
decorations, mostly sunny exteriors, should blaze
with colour. Joseph Urban might do something
right here if he hasn't already . . . But I would
not ask Joseph Urban to paint Manon. The same
artist might conceivably paint the settings (which
should be charmingly rococo) for Manon, Der
Roserikavalier, and Le Nozze di Figaro, although
[197]

Interp retations

it would take a versatile director to stage all these
works. I think Robert Locher would do the paint-
ing for them very nicely. He would make just the
right distinctions in colour and line between the
boudoirs of Manon, the Countess, and the
Marschallin ... It is all very well for Gordon
Craig to say that the decorator, the actor, and
the director are all working for their own ends
and not for the play. It is all very well for him
to insist that all these faculties be invested in one
person. The question is, when Don Giovanni or
Rienzi or Werther is concerned, who is that per-
son? We must content ourselves, I think, until
the republic of Utopia, or Gordon Craig's ideal
theatre, is established, with a stage director who
supervises all the details in an attempt to produce
unity. In other words the different toilers in the
theatre must work together for a common end, per-
fection. The Washington Square Players, in
some of their productions, are well on the way
towards this goal.

The works of Wagner demand a manner of
treatment all their own. The Master thought they
required a theatre to themselves and I am not
sure that he wasn't right. It is certain that he
invented a new form of drama, but it is equally
certain that many composers since his time have
[198]

The Problem of Style

written works in this form. There are a few
other operas which might conceivably be presented
in a Wagner Theatre, if it were not too large,
Aida, Les Huguenots, La Gioconda . . . certain
works of Gluck, Armide, for example. I have writ-
ten out elsewhere a few of my ideas concerning the
staging of the Wagner music dramas and I have
referred at some length to Adolphe Appia's book
on the subject. Until Appia's theories, and his
lovely designs for stage settings, have been tested
on our stage it seems unnecessary to search
farther. Appia has taken the pains to indicate
not only the lighting ("Apollo was not only the
god of music, he was also the god of light ") of
the scenes but also the position and often the ges-
tures of the characters in their relation to the
decoration and the lighting. He saw clearly
enough that Wagner had invented a form of drama
which he himself did not know how to produce
with the means at hand. Now in this matter the
directors of the Metropolitan Opera House have
been blameless, or blind. They have followed, at
a respectable distance to be sure, but at consider-
able expense, the best European productions of
the Wagner plays . . . but there has never been
a production of the Wagnerian works anywhere
which realized the ideals of the Master, although
[199]

Interpretations

in Germany the principle of the exclusion of late
comers and the use of a sunken orchestra pit cer-
tainly improve matters.

It is conceivable, of course, that operas like
Aida, II Trovatore, Les Huguenots, and Gotter-
dammerung might be given satisfactory perform-
ances on the same stage but if they were included in
a single season they demand a triple series of in-
terpreters and different stage directors. I should
like to hear Trovatore sung with the melodramatic
intensity that the music suggests, but there is no
Tamagno to-day, and no rendering of Di Quella
Pira has ever frozen my blood, or made every
separate hair stand on end, as it should. For
Meyerbeer's opera we must search the great French
manner in acting and singing, and a refinement of
gesture in the interpreters which is not a require-
ment for a performance of Verdi's opera. The
scenery for both these works is negligible (al-
though there is no particular reason why it should
not be pleasant to look upon). I mean that any
flapping canvas will do if the proper tentings and
palaces are painted thereon . . . but good scen-
ery in modern Russian style is essential to a per-
fect performance of Boris Godunow.

Fidelio, Die Zauberflote, and Euryanihe are all
German operas and they all were originally pro-
[200]

The Problem of Style

duced within a period of thirty-two years. Nev-
ertheless if the same man paints the scenery for
all these plays he must be an artist of exceptional
talent. The sombre decoration of Fidelio must be
a sounding board for Beethoven's noble music, a
background for the noble passions of his protag-
onists . . . Bakst should be the next designer
for a production of Mozart's fantastic holiday ma-
sonic play and I am not sure that Florenz Zieg-
feld should not stage it. At any rate the opera
should be put on, in certain of the scenes, in romp-
ing merry mood; these episodes should offer the
greatest possible contrast to the serious scenes in
which Sarastro figures. Euryanthe leads us into
romantic Germany and for both stage decorator
and stage director a new problem is posed . . .
problems entirely apart from those of vocal styles.
It is a clever and accomplished singer who can
enact both Pamina and Leonora, who can sing both
Ach, ich fiihl's, es ist entschwwnden and Abscheu-
licher with equal success.

I have indicated, briefly, some of the reasons why
we do not see (and hear) satisfactory perform-
ances of opera. There are others. In an opera
house, first of all, there' is tradition, which is fol-
lowed by certain stage directors when it does not
interfere with expedience. In the end this min-
[201 ]

Interp retations

gling of tradition with expedience makes a new
tradition which is established for a particular the-
atre. Operas like Madama Butterfly and Aida
which are presented year after year, are given
without orchestral rehearsals, the manner of the
house is so well established in regard to them. But
there are those who always fight against tradition
(I may mention Geraldine Farrar and Feodor
Chaliapine) and who frequently make changes in
their individual performances. So frequently we
see members of the same cast playing in different
styles against scenery which has nothing to do with
the purpose of the opera (which reminds you of all
the other scenery you have ever seen in the same
house), and with a stage manager who is glad
enough to get the opera on without a break-down.
Lyric dramas — at least those in the repertoire —
are frequently produced after a single piano re-
hearsal by singers who have never appeared to-
gether before and who may never appear together
again. In a sense they are all familiar with the
stage routine, although they may differ in detail,
but in no instance (at least at the Metropolitan
Opera House) unless a new work is under consid-
eration, is the action, the lighting, and the scenic
investiture studied from beginning to end in an
attempt to make a perfect whole of it. Nor would
[202]

The Problem of Style

it be possible, under conditions as they exist, to
do so even if the director of the theatre so desired.
There is no time. The ordinary rehearsals in an
opera house consume all the extra moments and
the flesh and blood and breath control of the men
of the orchestra will not permit them to rehearse
every day and play every evening. How would it
be possible to devote a week to the preparation of
11 Trovatore? And yet if it could be done it would
be found that the result would repay those who had
done it. None of us has ever heard a good per-
formance of this opera, one- of Verdi's best, al-
though we have frequently seen pains expended,
even if wrongly, on Aida, Otello, and Falstaff.

Extraordinary conductors like Arturo Tosca-
nini and Arthur Nikisch, brilliant singing actors
like Olive Fremstad and Feodor Chaliapine, scene
painters like Bakst and Roerich, stage directors
like Appia and Stanislawsky all exist in the world
but they do not exist in combina'tion. Sometimes
a great conductor can lift a performance to such
heights that details — important details, at that
— are forgotten in the ensuing pleasure ; some-
times a single singer, Mary Garden in Pelleas et
Melisande or Marcella Sembrich in La Trawata
(no longer, alas !) can make us forget that we are
in the theatre at all and we overlook the shabby,
[ 203 ]

Interp retations

inadequate, or utterly wrong scenery, the weakness
of the supporting cast, the shiftless stage direction,
and the mixture of styles. There are few of us,
however, who can say that we have seen a dozen
really remarkable performances of opera, consid-
ering all the composer's and librettist's intentions.
Aside from the scenery the performance of II Bar-
biere di Siviglia at the Metropolitan Opera House
with Mme. Sembrich, and Messrs. Bonci, Chalia-
pine, and Campanari lives in the memory ; Serge de
Diaghilew's company has given adequate vocal and
histrionic support to the genius of Feodor Chalia-
pine and the scenery of Bakst and Fedorowsky in
La Khovanchina and Boris Godunow; and the Rus-
sian production of Rimsky-Korsakow's opera, The
Golden Cock, in London and Paris, in which the
characters were impersonated by dancers while the
music was rendered by singers, was a delightfully
successful experiment. There have been wonder-
ful performances, in recent years, of Tristan und
Isolde and Gdtterddmmerung at the Metropolitan
Opera House, conducted by Gustav Mahler and
Arturo Toscanini, in which Mme. Fremstad ap-
peared, but the tenors in every instance, to say
nothing of other members of the cast, have been
unsatisfactory, and the stage decoration has been
shabby and the lighting ineffective. . . . Pellias
[204]

The Problem of Style

et Melisande, as produced at the Paris Opera-Com-
ique, approached perfection, although the orches-
tra might have been improved and the scenes
painted with a more cymaphonous effect. The
lighting was good. The New York decoration
for this play was even less appropriate but the
orchestra here was better.

In Munich (and similar attempts at restoration
are made in other German capitals) we have the
delightful performances of Mozart operas during
a festival week at the tiny Residenz Theater. The
small auditorium brings the players into close inti-
macy with the public ; a revolving stage shifts the
succession of scenes swiftly towards the finales ;
and the conductor presides at a harpsichord over
a miniature orchestra. Wagner's dramas are
given as well as he knew (and Cosima knows) how
at the Prinzregenten Theatre in Munich and at the
festival theatre in Bayreuth ... I believe that
better singing actors and modern taste applied to
the stage could improve even these institutions,
however, better though they may be than the best
we have in America. At least there is an attempt
made to do honour to the works. At the Scala in
Milan and at some other Italian theatres the rep-
ertoire of a season is limited, say to eight operas.
This allows the director to engage his company
[205]

Interpretations

for the season with regard for the demands of these
special works and it also permits his subordinates
ample time for the necessary rehearsals.

There have been few attempts made at " styliza-
tion " in the production of opera, aside from the
productions of the Russians, and a few productions
in Germany (I do not know if Ludwig Sievert's
scenic inventions for Parsifal were ever produced
at the Freiburg Municipal Theatre for which they
were destined in 1914), although, even in New
York, such attempts are common enough in the
theatre (the productions at the Century [made by
Joseph Urban], the Comedy [where the Washing-
ton Square Players are installed] and the Neigh-
bourhood Playhouse are invariably interesting).
Louis Sherwin has recently told us in a brilliant
article that the best modern staging in New York
is to be seen in musical comedy. In 1913 Jaques-
Dalcroze gave performances of Gluck's Orfeo in
the great hall of his School of Eurythmics at Hel-
lerau. In the representation of this piece no divi-
sion was made between stage and auditorium
(Adolphe Appia was one of the producers and at
present he is entirely concerned with this problem,
how to unite spectator and actor). Players and
spectators were in the same light, a diffused light
resembling daylight without visible sun, a system
[ 206 ]

The Problem of Style

invented by A. von Salzmann. "This effect," ac-
cording to a description by Frank E. Washburn
Freund, " was obtained by means of innumerable
but invisible electric lights placed behind the trans-
parent covering of the wall, so that the hall seemed
to glow with light instead of being lit from an ex-
ternal source. The stage itself — in so far as it
can be called a stage — consisted merely of a plat-
form divided into three parts and connected by a
flight of steps, which lent themselves splendidly to
effective groupings and processions. On this plat-
form simple pieces of furniture necessary to the
action were placed, such as the funeral urn. All
realistic decoration was thus avoided, and even the
surroundings were merely indicated; for example,
the impression of a wood was suggested by long
stripes, the vertical lines of which created in the
mind of the audience an impression of trees, and
tuned their thoughts to the right rhythm." It
may be added that Jaques-Dalcroze placed his
singers in the orchestra so that the characters on
the stage merely enacted their parts. Appia was
not at all satisfied with this production, in which
he worked with two other men. The lighting (for
which von Salzmann was entirely responsible) es-
pecially disturbed him. Of course shadows were
impossible. It may further be urged against it
[ 207 ]

Interpretations

that the auditors, many of them in shirt waist and
skirt, which is the indispensable uniform of a Ger-
man woman, must have been sadly out of the pic-
ture of which they formed a part. The experiment
was interesting but it proved to be only an experi-
ment.

Meyerhold in his book, "The Theatre," thus de-
scribes his production of Orfeo at the Imperial
Opera in Petrograd : "We divided the stage into
two strictly separated parts : the front part, where
there was no painting and where everything was ar-
ranged with textiles ; and the back part, given over
to the dominion of painting. Special importance
was given to places which determined the level;
for the connecting passages between the two deter-
mined the positions and path of motion of the var-
ious characters. Thus, in the second scene, the
path of Orpheus to Hades lies from an enormous
height downward, while on both sides, in front,
there are two large rocky projections. With such
an arrangement, the figure of Orpheus does not
mingle with the mass of the Furies, but domi-
nates them. The positions of the two large rocky
projections on both sides of the stage make it im-
possible to mass the chorus and ballet in any other
way than in the form of two groups extending up-
wards from the two side-scenes. Thus the action
[208]

The Problem of Style

of Orpheus is not broken up in a series of episodes ;
rather, these are synthetically expressed in two
struggling movements: the movement of Orpheus
rushing downward, on one hand ; and on the other,
the movement of the Furies, which at first meet
Orpheus sternly, but finally make peace with him.
Here the location of the groups is strictly deter-
mined by the distribution of the raised surfaces,
which were worked out by the artist and manager.

" The chorus in Elysium was removed behind the
side-scenes. That allowed us to do away with the
usual discord between the chorus and ballet, which
as yet do not blend on the stage. If the chorus
had been left on the stage it would have been no-
ticed at once that one group was singing while
the other was dancing, whereas the homogeneous
character of the group in Elysium (the Happy
Shades) demands that the plastic expression be of
one kind.

" In the second scene of the third act, Love, who
has just brought Eurydice back to life, leads her
and Orpheus to the fore-stage in front of the pro-
scenium arch while pronouncing the last phrase of
his recitative. When Orpheus, Eurydice, and
Love, step forward the landscape behind them is
covered by the dropping of the main curtain, and
the actors sing the concluding trio as though it
[209]

Interpretations

were a concert number. During the singing of
the trio, the scene is changed."

There is a remedy for conditions as they exist in
New York — in fact there are several but they are
expensive and drastic. It is possible that in time
the Metropolitan Opera House may outlive its use-
fulness and be replaced. Until that time arrives
it may be suggested that a smaller theatre might
be provided for certain works that would be more
effective in a less ample auditorium. Then possi-
bly such singers as Mabel Garrison, whose lovely
voice was heard to advantage in Albert Reiss's spe-
cial production of Mozart's Schauspieldirector at
the Empire Theatre (October, 1916), might have
their opportunity. The repertoire of the parent
house might in itself be limited. Do you not imag-
ine that the subscribers would prefer hearing a
stirring performance twice to a spiritless repre-
sentation once. If the repertoire comprised twelve
operas these would suffice for a subscription season
of twenty-four weeks, each opera to be given twice
to each set of subscribers. Limitation of the rep-
ertoire seems one of the essential remedies. Com-
bine as you will you cannot select perfect casts
out of a possible hundred singers for as eclectic a
series of operas as that which comprises the usual
repertoire of the Metropolitan Opera House, es-
[210]

The Problem of Style

pecially to-day when fine acting is as necessary to
the production of an opera as fine singing. In
some operas it is more necessary, and it must not
be overlooked that some of the most famous lyric
artists of the Nineteenth Century were imperfect
singers, Mme. Pasta and Pauline Viardot, for ex-
ample, and Signor Ronconi, all of whom were su-
perb histrions. Nor can your scene painters or
your stage decorators do justice to or give variety
to so large a repertoire . . . Even an ideal stock
company could not be expected to give more than
decent performances of Hamlet, Charley's Aunt,
Man and Superman, La Course du Flambeau, Han-
nele, and Francesca da Rimini in a single week.

Even if nothing can be done now, and I do not
admit that the case is so hopeless, when the Metro-
politan Opera House is rebuilt why not have it
stand for the best in operatic art? Why not an
attempt at the perfect theatre? Why not two
theatres under one roof? The smaller auditorium
would serve for a more intimate exploitation of the
smaller forms of operatic art ; operas like Manon
and Cost Fan Tutte, La Boheme and The Bartered
Bride would find their homes here. There are two
such auditoriums in the famous theatre which Pro-
fessor Max Littmann designed for Stuttgart. Let
each stage be provided with all the modern appa-
[211]

I nterp retations

ratus for lighting, all the mechanical appliances
which make production easier, including, of course,
the revolving stage, without which even the changes
in the Wagner dramas are difficult to achieve. It
seems to me it would be possible on occasion to add
an apron to the stage, so that we might really be in
touch with the prima donna again, receive her best
from our midst, so to speak.

Once these mechanical adjuncts were provided
the sailing would be easy, at least if the director of
the theatre approved of the modern stage art, an
art which at its best brings out the secrets of the
drama, and softens the rough places. The deco-
rations and lights should provide emphasis to the
real drama and they should also serve to interest
the eye when the invention of the playwright or
that of the composer fails . . . All scenery for
opera, at least almost all scenery for opera, cer-
tainly all Italian scenery (and a good deal of the
French) since the days of Bibiena in the Seven-
teenth Century, has been a striving after the archi-
tectural . . . First, as Gordon Craig cleverly
points out, scenery became imitation architecture ;
later it became imitation artificial architecture!
For literally centuries this false tradition has been
followed, degenerating the while. Our producers
of opera know nothing of the distinction between
[212]

The Problem of Style

" presentation " and " representation," " unity of
scene" and "unity of idea," "subjective" and
" objective reproduction," " monodrama," " styli-
zation," " conventionalism," " naturalism ; " all the
glittering phraseology of the modern artists of the
theatre is to them as the argot of the automobile
world to an aborigine fresh from Africa . . .
Adolphe Appia and other modern artists, following
Appia, have striven to make the actor the living
emotional part of the setting ; he should stand out.
. . . Many of the settings at the Metropolitan
Opera House have this fault, that they submerge
the actor. For example neither Clarence White-
hill, who is a very big man, nor the explosively
dramatic Mme. Ober could hope to achieve an exist-
ence on the stage in front of such sets as were pro-
vided for them in The Taming of the Shrew. The
shrieking combination of purple, blue, and pink, in
one of the scenes made it impossible to see or hear
anything else. In like manner the setting for the
King's hut in Les Pecheurs de Perles was so littered
with assegai, javelins, and batique work that the
actors and singers quite disappeared. Joseph Ur-
ban devised a very beautiful setting for this opera
for the short-lived Cleveland Opera Company.
The foreground was occupied with a flight of steps
leading to a raised platform, guarded at either side
[213 ]

I nterp retations

by a column. Behind this frame each picture was
inserted ... in each instance a back drop . . .
The very bad rococo setting of the first act of Der
Rosenkavalier at the Metropolitan Opera House is
another case in point. Mme. Hempel's beautiful
blue dressing gown faded into this setting, disap-
peared in it, and became less important than the
many hundred painted roses with which it was em-
bellished. Compare this setting with that of the
second act of Pierrot the Prodigal, as produced by
Winthrop Ames at the Booth Theatre, a pale
mauve and lace concoction which furnished a per-
fect boudoir background for the gestures of the
pantomimists. One could go on and on.

One of the worst faults of productions at the
Metropolitan Opera House is the effect of unmeas-
ured space that the stage usually presents. For
certain scenes this is an advantage, but more often
than not a good deal of the music and drama are
lost in a desert. Even on a large stage it is possi-
ble to secure an effect of intimacy, whether by the
setting or by the lighting. A skillful use of shad-
ows would make us believe in Rodolfo's attic or in
Marguerite's garden. Certain scenes are built out
of all proportion for the drama they are supposed
to frame. The setting for the second act of Der
Rosenkavalier, for example, is excellent in itself,
[214]

The Problem of Style

but after the first five minutes of the act, the space
is much too vast. It is likewise a mistake to have
important characters dressed in white enact inti-
mate drama against a white background. If I
were asked to stage this scene I should provide a
small reception room in the first plan of the stage,
opening through an enormous arch, the full
width of the stage, to the hallway behind.
Once Sophie and Octavian were alone, the
servitors would draw a green or black curtain
across this opening, and for the ensuing scene
the attention would be focused where it be-
longs instead of wandering aimlessly about a hall
of ample size for a performance of Mahler's Sym-
phony of a Thousand. As a matter of fact, the
present system of cluttering up the stage with a
million details is all wrong even for a palace hall or
a public square. A salient feature or two would
suggest what is needed without usurping the atten-
tion. In the church scene of Faust, for example, a
single column, lighted, while the rest of the scene
remained in total obscurity, would emphasize the
importance of Mephistopheles and Marguerite.
" Stage settings," says Georg Fuchs, " are like
families : the happiest are those of which we speak
the least."

All over the world — even in America — great
[215]

Interp retations

stage directors have grown up in the theatre (al-
though seldom in the opera house), working hand
and hand with the playwright and the decorator to
make everything that can be made of the material
in hand ... At Hellerau Jaques-Dalcroze, with
the priceless, assistance of Adolphe Appia, has, un-
der special conditions, given performances of
Gluck's Orfeo and other works ; Stanislawsky's the-
atre in Moscow is the wonder of the age ; in Petro-
grad Evere'inow and Meyerhold have done some re-
markable things ; in Berlin there is Reinhardt ; in
Buda-Pesth Hevesi ... Is there a man in the
world who understands the art of the stage more
completely than Fokine, who devised the remark-
able and highly original action of several of the
best of the Russian Ballets? Nijinsky has done
such things with Till Eulenspiegel as to suggest to
any sensible man that he might perform similar
wonders with Die Meistersinger and his production
of L'Apres-rnidi d'wn Faune shows his versatility
as a producer . . . Yes, there are capable stage
directors, turn where you will you can find them.
Look at what the Washington Square Players have
done. Did you see Philip Moeller's production of
The Life of Man? How great an effect he got
with how small means ! . . . There may be twenty
young men in New York capable of improving con-
[ 216 ]

The Problem of Style

ditions at the Metropolitan Opera House . . .
All that is required is a little daring ingenuity . . .
A young man or two to suggest that Wagner be
given with Appia's scenery and lighting directions
(the love scene of Tristan und Isolde on a pitch
dark stage, for instance) ; to introduce all the fra-
grant charm of the thirties into a performance of
La Sonnambula, so that a modern interpreter of
the role might be surrounded by all the physical
advantages which enhanced the performance of
Jenny Lind; to draw a veil of fine gauze over the
scenes of Pelleas et Melisande (this was done in
Mrs. Campbell's production) so that Debussy's ly-
ric drama might be still more vague and mystic;
to read Meilhac and Halevy's book for Carmen
before ordering the scenery for it so that the real-
istic acting of the heroine might find some logical
support in the stage setting; to reveal the melo-
dramatic intensity of Trovatore, the Viennese
charm of Der Roserikavalier, the fragrant bouquet
of Manon, the exoticism of Salome and the horror
of Elektra.

Or he might make curious experiments to break
the stolid monotony of the present system, in
which Gotterddmmerung, Madama Butterfly, and
Faust are all painted and produced in precisely
the same stupid manner. For example he might
[217]

Interp retations

imitate the Russians' production of Rimsky-Kor-
sakow's The Golden Cock, given with two casts,
one to sing and one to act; or he might follow
the example of Veronese and other Venetian paint-
ers of Bible scenes and put all the characters of
say Faust into modern clothes ; or he might reverse
the idea and dress all the characters of Fedora in
Russian costumes of the time of Ivan the Terrible ;
he might present a whole opera against flat drops
close to the footlights, after the manner of Meyer-
hold's production of the Maeterlinck plays; he
might do this opera after the fashion of Aubrey
Beardsley, that one in the style of Albrecht Diirer ;
or he might follow John Palmer's excellent advice
to dress the opera " decently and inconspicuously."
Heaven knows this would be a novelty. One of the
first duties of this young man would be to put a
ban on conventional, meaningless, routine gesture.
But in whatever he would do he would display im-
agination ... I shouldn't wonder, if some such
experiment were made, that people of fashion who
now make it a point to go to the opera, would be
hard pressed to secure their seats, because their
ranks would be swelled by people of brains and
ideas, who might find a certain pleasurable excite-
ment in making excursions into this new opera
house.

[218]

The Problem of Style

Of course all these improvements would be easier
of accomplishment if such a thing existed as Amer-
ican opera . . . The few experiments in this line
cannot be considered as potent enough to encour-
age a new theory of stage art. If, however, a se-
ries of works in our language by our composers
were to be produced each season the stimulus to
American endeavour to make suitable productions
for these works should be very great. The result
would rise spontaneously out of the necessity. Vi-
brant and living music requires novelty of expres-
sion. At present we can but look towards the past
or beyond the seas for our material, and so long
as that is true it will be more difficult to give the
American artist of the theatre his opportunity.

But why, in any case, take all this trouble, may
be the managerial query, for a public that doesn't
know any better, a public which has an instinctive
distrust and dislike for any kind of innovation?
Why educate this public up to a standard it doesn't
expect and doesn't want, only to find that when it
has acquired a taste for this high standard it will
accept nothing else? Against this train of reason-
ing there is, of course, no argument. Only if di-
rectors do argue thus let us have no more talk of
opera as an art. Let us speak simply of the busi-
ness of opera giving and refer to managers and
[219]

Interp retations

performers as trades people. I'm afraid I'm one
of the few who take the production of opera seri-
ously. Isn't it silly of me?

November 29, 1916.

[220]

Notes on the Ar mi d e
of Gluck

Notes on the Armide
of Gluck

RICHARD WAGNER, like many another
great man, took what he wanted where he
found it. Everyone has heard the story
of his remark to his father-in-law when that august
musician first listened to Die Walkiire: "You
will recognize this theme, Papa Liszt? " The mo-
tiv in question occurs when Sieglinde sings : Kehrte
der Vater nun heim. Liszt had used the tune at
the beginning of his Faust symphony. Not long
ago, in playing over Schumann's Kinderscenen, I
discovered Briinnhilde's magic slumber music, ex-
actly as it appears in the music drama, in the
piece pertinently called Kind im Einsch.luw.mern.
The chorus which greets the arrival of Lohengrin,
Wie fasst uns selig susses Grauen sends the mem-
ory back to the tenor solo and chorus at the be-
ginning of Mendelssohn's Walpurgis Nacht, while
clear recollections of certain phrases in Der Frei-
schiitz are conjured up by a passage in the Tann-
hauser march. When Weber's Euryanthe was re-
vived recently at the Metropolitan Opera House it
had the appearance of an old friend, although com-
paratively few in the first night audience had heard
[223]

Interp retations

the opera before. One recognized tunes, charac-
ters, scenes, because Wagner had found them all
good enough to use in Tanrihauser and Lohengrin.
But, at least, you will object, he invented the music
drama. That, I am inclined to believe, is just
what he did not do, as any one may see for himself
who will take the trouble to glance over the scores
of the Chevalier Gluck and to read the preface to
Alceste.

Gluck's reform of the opera was gradual;
Orphee (in its French version), Alceste, and
Iphigenie en Aulide, all of which antedate Armide,
are replete with indications of what was to come;
but Armide, it seems to me, is, in intention at least,
almost the music drama, as we use the term to-day.
The very nature of the characters and scenes con-
firms my amiable suspicion regarding Wagner.

What is the character of Armide herself but that
of a wilful Kundry ? Her father, Hidraot, is cer-
tainly the counterpart of Klingsor. Renaud, too,
who will have none of her, we seem to have seen
since as Parsifal. Ubalde and the Danish Knight
will be familiar figures to any one who has attended
a performance of Lohengrin. The scene of the
Naiad certainly suggests the scene between Sieg-
fried and the Rhine maidens in the third act of Die
Gotterdammerung and the scene at the end of the
[224]

The Armide of Gluck

work, in which Armide sets fire to her palace and
flies away on a hippograff, may have been in Wag-
ner's mind when he penned the conclusion to the
last Ring drama in which Briinnhilde on her horse
mounts the funeral pyre of the hero while the Gib-
ichs' palace is destroyed by flames. As if to give
us the clue to the whole matter the overture begins
with exactly the same theme, note for note, as that
which opens the prelude of Die Meister singer.
More subtle evidence of Wagner's debt to Gluck
is to be found in the conclusion of the final act, in
which one theme, in recitative form, is dramatically
extolled by voice and orchestra in a manner which
foreshadows exactly the later love death of Isolde
and Brunnhilde's self immolation. That Wagner
was familiar with the Gluck scores is not in doubt.
He made a concert ending for the overture to
Jphigenie en Aidide (because he was displeased
with the one which Mozart had already made, as he
signified with reasons in an article published in the
" Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik," July 1, 1854 ; you
may read it in the third volume of William Ashton
Ellis's translation of Wagner's prose works), and
somewhere in his writings he gives Gluck the credit
for the invention of the leit-motiv. "With what
poignant simplicity, with what truth has Gluck
characterized by music the two elements of the con-
[225]

I nterp retations

flict," he writes, concerning the overture to Iphi-
genie en Aulide. " In the beginning one recog-
nizes in the marvellous vigour of the principal
theme, with its weight of brass, a compact mass
concentrated on a unique interest; then, in the
theme which follows, the opposed and individual in-
terest of the victim moves us to tenderness." (In-
deed, in the article in the " Neue Zeitschrift " he
indicates four themes in this overture, each of
which he calls by a name.)

But it is for more essential reasons that one
names Gluck the father of the music drama as we
understand it to-day. In Armide he does away
with recitative accompanied by the clavichord.
The music of this work forms a continuous whole,
made up, to be sure, of distinguishable pieces and
melodies, separated by recitatives ; but these reci-
tatives, always accompanied by the orchestra, are
the dramatic backbone of the drama. Nor is there
repetition of words, a favourite device of opera
composers of the period (and of periods to follow),
who often repeated a phrase several times in order
to effectively melodize over it. " I have tried,"
says Gluck himself, " to be more of a painter and
poet in Armide than musician." More of a painter
and poet than musician ! Might not Wagner have
said this? He was painter and poet and musician.
[226]

The Armide of Gluck

Wagner, as a matter of fact, wrote von Biilow:
" One thing is certain : I am not a musician."

The preface to Alceste contains so adequate a
statement of Gluck's intentions that I cannot do
better than transcribe the meat of that admirable
document here (the translation is that which ap-
pears in Grove's Dictionary) :

" When I undertook to set the opera of Alceste
to music, I resolved to avoid all those abuses which
had crept into Italian opera through the mistaken
vanity of singers and the unwise compliance of
composers, and which had rendered it wearisome
and ridiculous, instead of being, as it once was, the
grandest and most imposing stage of modern times.
I endeavoured to reduce music to its proper func-
tion, that of seconding poetry by enforcing the
expression of the sentiment, and the interest of the
situations, without interrupting the action, or
weakening it by superfluous ornament. My idea
was that the relation of music to poetry was much
the same as that of harmonious colouring and well-
disposed light and shade to an accurate drawing,
which animates the figures without altering their
outlines. I have therefore been very careful not
to interrupt a singer in the heat of a dialogue in
order to introduce a tedious ritornelle, nor to stop
him in the middle of a piece either for the purpose
[ 227 ]

Interp retations

of displaying the flexibility of his voice on some
favourable Vowel, or that the orchestra might give
him time to take breath before a long-sustained
note.

" Furthermore, I have not thought it right to
hurry through the second part of a song, if the
words happened to be the most important of the
whole, in order to repeat the first part regularly
four times over ; or to finish the air where the sense
does not end in order to allow the singer to ex-
hibit his power of varying the passage at pleasure.
In fact my object was to put an end to abuses
against which good taste and good sense have long
protested in vain.

" My idea was that the overture ought to in-
dicate the subject and prepare the spectators for
the character of the piece they are about to see;
that the instruments ought to be introduced in pro-
portion to the degree of interest and passion in the
words ; and that it was necessary above all to avoid
making too great a disparity between the recitative
and the air of a dialogue, so as not to break the
sense of a period or awkwardly interrupt the
movement and animation of a scene. I also
thought that my chief endeavour should be to at-
tain a grand simplicity and consequently I have
avoided making a parade of difficulties at the ex-
[228]

The Armide of Gluck

pense of clearness ; I have set no value on novelty
as such, unless it was naturally suggested by the
situation and suited to the expression; in short
there was no rule which I did not consider myself
bound to sacrifice for the sake of effect."

Gluck had indeed determined to unite the arts of
speech, painting, and music in the same work long
before Wagner attempted to do so. He even went
further (following, it is true, a custom of the pe-
riod) and made the art of the dance an essential
part of his scheme. Any adequate production of
Armide or Iphigenie en Aulide cannot be made
without taking this fact into account. The ballet
requires as much attention as the orchestra or the
singers. The ballet, in fact, in these music dramas
and in Orphee is an integral part of the action. It
may be said that the inadequate dancing in the
production of Armide at the Metropolitan Opera
House in New York militated against the perma-
nent success of the work there, in spite of Mme.
Fremstad's remarkable performance of the title
part and Mr. Caruso's lovely singing (the best he
has done here) of the music of Renaud.

Armide served to open the New York opera sea-
son of 1910-11. The exact date of the perform-
ance (the first in America) was November 14, 1910.
This reads like a simple enough statement unless
[229 ]

Interpretations

one remembers that Armide was produced at the
Academie Royale de Musique in Paris on Septem-
ber 23, 1777. In other words this opera, which
by many is considered the masterpiece of its com-
poser, had to wait for over a century and a quarter
for a hearing on these shores. The year 1777 was
history-making for the United States, but Marie
Antoinette wrote a friend, shortly after the pro-
duction of Armide, that no one in Paris was think-
ing any more about America. Everybody was dis-
cussing Gluck's new opera. Why was the New
York production so belated? There were many
reasons : the Gluck renaissance in Europe is of com-
paratively recent date. Armide has been per-
formed recently in London; Paris has seen many
revivals of it; several German cities and Brussels
have produced it. A decade ago both Oscar Ham-
merstein and Heinrich Conried promised Armide
to New York, but the promises were not kept.
The Metropolitan production was made after Mr.
Conried's death, by Giulio Gatti-Casazza and
Arturo Toscanini.

H. T. Parker, in an article which appeared in
the " Boston Transcript " in 1906, outlines a few
of the reasons why an impresario might not face
a production of Armide with equanimity :

" There are thirteen important parts in Armide
[230]

The Armide of Gluck

in the shortened version used in the recent Euro-
pean revivals. Except Armide herself not one is
a star part ; yet every one, if the opera is to keep
its charm, must be sung with qualities of voice, ar-
tistry, imagination, and restraint that are rare
among our generation of singers, major or minor.
In Gluck's day two tenors in a single opera was a
trifling demand for a composer to make. Outside
Wagner it alarms the modern manager when both
these tenors have considerable parts. Again
Armide requires eight different settings — an Ori-
ental palace, enchanted glades and gardens, the
mouth of Hades, and sombre and fantastic no-
wheres. A flowery couch that bears Armide and
her knight through the air and the enchantress's
chariot, likewise for aerial journeys, are incidental
pieces of machinery. Above all, in five of the eight
scenes, a ballet appears, not for ornamental
dances, or showy spectacle, but for intimate and
delicate illustration of the situation and the
music."

When the work was to be presented in Paris
Gluck wrote his friend De Roullet that he would
let the Opera have it only on certain conditions,
of which the principal ones were that he should
have at least two months for preparatory study,
that he could do what he pleased at rehearsals, and
[231 ]

I nter p r etations

that there should be no understudies: the parts
should be sung by the first artists.

" Unless these conditions are acceded to," he
wrote, " I shall keep Armide for my pleasure," and
he terminated the letter with a supreme phrase:
" I have written music which will never grow old."

The Academie Royale very sensibly let the com-
poser have his way about rehearsals and singers
and the work was produced there. It was revived
in 1805, in 1811, and again in 1825. Later per-
formances have been rare until within the last few
years. F. A. Gevaert, the Director of the Con-
servatory of Brussels, who died in 1908, has been
largely responsible for the renewed interest in this
great composer. In his preface to Armide he re-
lates an interesting incident in connection with the
projected attempt to perform the opera in Paris
in 1870. It seems that in 1858, when Meyerbeer
was throned without a rival at the Paris Opera, an
event occurred which caused a sensation in the mu-
sical world — the publication in the "Revue Con-
temporaine" of a study of Armide signed by the
name of one of the highest personages in France.
It again became the fashion to praise the work of
Gluck. The act of Hate was played and sung at
one of the concerts of the Societe des Concerts, and
the piece itself was inscribed in the list of lyric
[232]

The Armide of Gluck

dramas to be performed at the Opera. However,
as often happens in such matters, the director did
not keep his promise in spite of the example of the
enormous success of the revival of Orphee at the
Theatre Lyrique in 1859 when Mme. Pauline Viar-
dot sang the title part.

Finally Emile Perrin, who became director of the
Opera in 1862, took the matter to heart. In 1866
he asked Gevaert to become general director of
music in the theatre. Knowing Gevaert to be a
fervent admirer of Gluck, for he had studied the
five French works of the composer since his youth,
Perrin often asked him to play the score of Armide
on the piano. In 1868 Perrin decided to prepare
the work for production during the winter of 1870—
71. He went to the most extraordinary pains
about the scenery, costumes, and machinery, and
he sent to St. Petersburg for a ballet master. He
entrusted the principal roles to the first artists of
the Opera whose repertoire at this period embraced
works by Halevy, Meyerbeer, and Rossini. He al-
lotted Armide to Mme. Sasse ; Hate to Mme. Guey-
mard ; Renaud to Villaret ; and Hidraot to Devo-
yod. The fourth act, however, in which none of
the principal characters of the piece appears, he
did not cast at once. He recognized this act as the
most dangerous point in his enterprise.
[233]

Interpretations

" To present to the public toward the end of
the evening an entire act sung by secondary artists
is to run a chance of failure," he said. " On the
other hand to cut three-quarters of the act, as one
has done at many of the revivals of Armide is to
discredit in advance the work which one has pre-
tended to honour. Well, I will have this act, which
is a veritable musical intermezzo, sung by the stars
of the troupe, by the artists who actually have the
highest standing with the public. Faure will sing
Ubalde, Miss Nilsson will sing Lucinde (both of
whom were at that moment having the greatest
success in Hamlet), Mme. Carvalho (who created
the part of Marguerite in Faust) will take the part
of Melisse, and Colin (a young tenor who had just
sung the part of Raoul in Les Huguenots with suc-
cess) will play the part of the Danish Knight. As
this act may be detached from the rest of the
piece we will rehearse it separately."

This splendid idea of Perrin's, however, was
never to be carried out. Ten days before the date
set for the opening performance war was declared
between France and Germany and Armide was sent
to the storehouse. It was not until 1905 (twenty-
five years later !) that the music drama finally ap-
peared on the affiches of the Opera when Mme.
Breval enacted the title part; Mr. Delmas sang
[234 ]

The Armide of Gluck

Hidraot ; Mr. Affre, Renaud ; Mile. Alice Verlet, a
Naiad; Mile Feart, Hate; Mr. Gilly, Ubalde (the
part which he sang in New York) ; and Mr. Scar-
amberg the Danish Knight. Since then Armide
has never been long absent from the repertoire of
the Opera. I have heard Mme. Litvinne there in
the title part, and Mmes. Borgo and Chenal have
also appeared in it. It was after the 190S per-
formance that Jean Marnold launched his attack
on this " ceuvre batarde, — ballet-heroi'co-dramat-
ico-feerique."

Quinault wrote the tragedy of Armide after an
episode to be found in Tasso's " Jerusalem Deliv-
ered." Quinault's book was originally set by Lulli
and first represented in Paris in 1686. It was re-
vived in 1703, 1713, 1724, 1746, 1761, and 1764.
Gluck's first work for the Paris Opera was Iphi-
genie en Aulide. Later he arranged Alceste and
Orphee for presentation at that theatre and wrote
some smaller pieces for performance at Versailles
to please Marie Antoinette. In composing Armide
Gluck followed the original book with slight alter-
ations, in spite of the fact that, as Gevaert says,
the poetic form of the text, excellent for the reci-
tative in vogue in Lulli's time, lends itself as little
as possible to purely musical voice writing, on ac-
count of the melange of different metres and the
[235 ]

Interp retations

irregular return of the rhyme. Gluck might eas-
ily have altered the verses and omitted some of the
prolixities of the plot, as had been done when Lulli's
opera was revived, but he did not seem to wish to,
counting on the resources of his art to sustain the
attention of the auditor in the moments when the
action slackened, or indeed, ceased altogether.
The lack of symmetry in the verses of Quinault the
composer found altogether to his liking and pro-
posed to draw from it some entirely new effects.
In consequence he resolved to set the poem of 1686
from the first to the last verse, with the exception
of the prologue, to music. The only modification
that he permitted himself was an original ter-
mination to the terrible scene of the third act,
which ends, in Quinault's play, with Hate returning
to her cavern, after having abandoned Armide to
her fate, with four added verses :

del! quelle horrible menace!

Je fremis, tout mon sang se glace!

Amour! Puissant Amour! viens calmer mon effroie,

Et prends pitie d'un coeur qui s'abandonne a toil

In order to appreciate the superiority of Gluck's

work to Lulli's it is only necessary to compare the

two settings of Armide's arioso, Enfin, U est en

ma puissance. Twenty years before Gluck com-

[ 236 ]

The Armide of Gluck

posed Armide J. J. Rousseau had written an ar-
ticle about the ridiculous weakness of Lulli's set-
ting of these words, the unsuitability of the mu-
sical treatment.

All the later works of Gluck were enriched by
many numbers which had done service in operas
he had written in earlier days, which were quickly
forgotten then, and have been entirely forgotten
to-day, except by the compilers of musical biogra-
phies and the makers of thematic catalogues.
Wotquenne, in his thematic catalogue of the works
of Gluck, indicates what melodies in Armide are
second-hand, so to speak. The overture, it seems,
was originally employed for Telemacco (1765) and
was again used before Feste d' Apollo (1769).
The Dance of the Furies and the Sicilienne had
previously done duty in the ballet Don Juan. The
other numbers which have been used before have
been very much modified in their new positions. It
may be noted that the entire scene of Hate is little
more than a mosaic of various themes from earlier
operas of Gluck. Armide's appeal to Love at the
end of the third act is accompanied by a rhythm in
the second violins which closely resembles a pass-
age in Paride ed Elena. Julien Tiersot has an in-
genious theory to account for these self-borrow-
ings:

[ 237 ]

Interp retations

" Certain scenes in Armide belonged to the or-
der of ideas which in other times had already in-
terested Gluck. In his youth he had depicted mu-
sically many scenes of invocation and evocation.
Certain figures, certain rhythms, certain sonori-
ties, had imposed themselves upon him in this con-
nection and he had already made use of them in
many of his operas. He found himself thus on
familiar ground when he had to put to music the
duet by which Armide and Hidraot evoke the spir-
its, and all the scene with Hate."

I can never glance into the score of this remark-
able work, or hear it performed, however indiffer-
ently, without feeling a very sincere emotion. The
melodies of Gluck's immediate successors charm
one; Mozart more than charms, for he succeeded
in painting the characteristics of his personages
in tone, but even in Mozart's most dramatic score
there lies no such clear indication of the way of the
modern music drama as may be found in Armide
on almost every page. I do not dwell on the over-
ture, for that to me is but a futile preparation for
the drama for which, after all, it was not written.
But from the rise of the first curtain I can only
follow the progress of the work with increasing ad-
miration. The pride and despair expressed in Ar-
mide's opening scene are vastly more successful
[238]

The Armide of Gluck

than the overture in evoking the proper atmos-
phere, but it is with the entrance and sudden death
of Aronte, after his short announcement, that the
real drama begins, and it is with Armide's excla-
mation, del! c'est Renaud! that music drama be-
comes an established fact and not a theory. The
finale of the first act is a whirlwind and should be
treated as such in performance. The second act
is one of violent contrasts : pastoral scenes alter-
nate with stormy invocations. So, by means of his
magical background, Gluck emphasizes the con-
trasts in his heroine's nature, in which love of Re-
naud is struggling with her hatred of him as the
enemy of her country. Love conquers and in Ar-
mide's appeal to the spirits of the air to bear her
and her lover away one may find as noble a piece of
music, as beautiful an idea completely realized, as
Wagner's conception of Wotan's appeal to Loge
at the close of Die Walkiire. The third act begins
with the most familiar air of the piece, Ah! si la
liberte — Armide's soliloquy before her appeal to
Hate to rescue her from the bonds of love. The
ensuing scenes are replete with dramatic express-
iveness and I do not know of a scene more moving,
in its effective and beautiful simplicity, in the whole
range of music drama (nor am I forgetting the
poignancy of several episodes in the lyric dramas
[239]

I nter p retations

of Moussorgsky, arrived at, by the way, by similar
means) than the appeal to Love with which the act
closes. The fourth act is an interlude, filled with
charming music, to be sure. And in the fifth act,
in the duet between Armide and Renaud, and more
especially in the dramatic recitative with which the
work ends, may be found the seed from which grew
the great trees of the nineteenth century.

October 22,1915.

[240]

Erik S a ti e

" Modern music has produced nothing to replace
Beethoven and Wagner. Neither has modern litera-
ture supplanted Shakespeare. I really cannot guess
why it should."

Edwin Evans.

Erik Satie

PAUL VERLAINE'S " Sagesse " appeared
in 1881 (but it was not until 1893 that Ed-
mond Gosse tracked the dissipated poet to
the basement of the Cafe Soleil d'Or in the BouP
Mich'!); the Sar Peladan published "Le Vice
Supreme " in 1884 ; in the same year Joris K.
Huysmans issued " A Rebours " ; " Les Com-
plaintes " of Jules Laforgue dates from 1885 ;
" Les Illuminations " of Arthur Rimbaud appeared
in 1886 ; so did George Moore's " Confessions of a
Young Man " ; the " Poesies Completes " of
Stephane Mallarme are dated 1887. . . . Degas,
Monet, Renoir, Manet . . . were all painting in
the Eighteen Eighties . . . Augusta Holmes was
presiding over her celebrated salon at which
Catulle Mendes, " with his pale hair, and his fra-
gile face illuminated with the idealism of a depraved
woman," was an outstanding figure. Were not
" Mephistophela " and " Le Roi Vierge " romances
of this epoch? . . . Symbolism, mysticism, vers
libre, impressionism, decadence, were in the Pari-
sian air. Painters and writers alike were indulging
in strange acrobatics — absinthe on the high wire.
Only the musicians stuck to the earth, refusing to
be lured to the giddy new trapezes. Massenet and
[243]

Interp retations

Saint-Saens were the popular French composers
. . . Gounod, Bizet . . . Cesar Franck, believer
and mystic, belonged to the epoch to be sure (in the
Eighties he wrote his best piano music and the
Symphony m D Minor) and pointed toward the
future, a future amply fulfilled in the work of Vin-
cent d'Indy and other disciples of the organist of
Sainte-Clotilde. . . . There was another voice, a
wee small voice it seemed then, even to its possessor,
especially to its possessor. Erik Satie did not
consider himself an innovator, and at the time his
music was swept into the maelstrom of unheard
things, but in 1886 he had written his Ogives, in
1887 his S'arabandes, in 1888 his Gymnopedies, and
in 1890 his Gnossiennes (which appeared the same
year with the "Axel" of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam)
. . . He passed unnoticed, however, save for his
own circle, until twenty-five years later . . . and
then it was recalled that Claude-Achille Debussy
had very modestly stepped futureward in 1893 with
La Damoiselle Elue.

A strange figure, Erik Satie, a shy and genial
fantasist, who has been writing strange music with
strange titles in Paris for thirty years, music which
has only recently been published in any quantity or
any buyable form (Roland-Manuel writes that a
clerk in the largest Paris music shop told him in
[244]

Erik Satie

1909 that Satie had written " some waltzes and
two cake-walks " and an old lady assured him that
Satie was the proprietor of a bathing establish-
ment on the Avenue Trudaine!), music which is
even yet to be heard in most of the great concert
halls of the world. . . . Beginning with the classic
form of the sarabande, Satie, whose talent is a curi-
ously blended result of those literary and artistic
impulses which, at first, had so little effect on the
art of other composers, has written a mass for the
poor, trumpet calls for the Rose-Croix, ditties for
a music hall divinity, preludes for plays by Jules
Bois and the Sar Peladan, and dances for the Rus-
sian Ballet and Valentine de Saint-Point. He has
celebrated the desiccation of sea-urchins and he has
written a fugue in " the form of a pear." . . .
Over music as simple in its melodic line, and as
French, as that of Massenet he has inscribed the
most astounding titles and the most terrifying di-
rections to the performer. ... In one instance he
has asked the pianist to play " sur du vetours
jaunie, sec comme un coucou, leger comme un
oeuf "; in another he directs " like a nightingale
with a toothache." . . . He has been heard to re-
mark, " II faut etre rigolo! "... Incorrigible
Satie . . . Scotch and French, product of Hon-
fleur, a village organist's teachings, Montmartre,
[245 ]

Interp retations

the Conservatoire, and the Schola Cantorum;
played on by impressionism, Catholicism, Rose-
crucianism, Pre-Raphaelitism, the science of black
magic, theosophy, the theory of androgyny, the
camaraderie of the cabaret . . . part-child, part-
devil, part-faun ... all intelligence (you may get
the picture from his portrait painted by Antoine de
la Rouchefoucauld), there is no other such figure
in modern music ; there is no other such figure in
all the annals of music. . . . The editor of Lom-
broso might issue a new edition of " The Man of
Genius " to include Satie ; Gerard de Nerval would
die of envy were he alive; Jules Laforgue would
feel that his " Moralites Legendaires " had not
been written in vain; and Max Nordau might
chortle, " I told you so." . . . Yet the bearded
and be-spectacled countenance, the tete de bla-
gueur of Erik Satie is rarely seen on the Paris
boulevards, and his name is seldom celebrated with
that of his contemporaries. Only in queer corners
of articles about modern French composers you will
find it, usually without pregnant comment. . . .
At least three literary portraits exist in French,
however. Jean Ecorcheville, Roland-Manuel, and
G. Jean-Aubry have all written about him with
sympathy, and his name is often on the lips of
Debussy and Ravel. Both of them have orches-
[246]

Erik Satie

trated works of Satie (why does not Mr. Damrosch
include Debussy's orchestral version of the first
and third Gymnopedies in one of his programmes?)
and every Saturday, I am told, he visits the com-
poser of UApris-midi d'tm Fawne in perpetuation
of a friendship which has existed since the two met
in the late Eighties when Satie held forth at the
piano of the Auberge du Clou, Avenue Tru-
daine. . . .

Eric-Alfred Leslie Satie (he doubtless owes this
remarkable series of names to a Scotch mother)
was born at Honfleur (where the aunt in the play
comes from) May 17, 1866 (G. Jean-Aubry gives
this date incorrectly as 1855). On his published
music he has changed the c in his first Christian
name to a k and dropped the Alfred Leslie. One
of his childhood friends was Alphonse Allais,
doubtless an early instigator of that subtle buf-
foonery which later became a notable character-
istic with Satie. His first music teacher was the
organist (Vinot, a pupil of Niedermeyer) of the
church of Sainte-Catherine in the village of Hon-
fleur and it was just here in the beginning, perhaps,
that he became imbued with that Gregorian spirit
which permeates a good deal of his music. . . .
At the age of eight his musical education is said
to have begun, but neither then nor later did he
[ 247 ]

Interp retations

manifest signs of precocity or aptitude. There
is something of a similarity to be observed in the
case of Moussorgsky; neither of these musicians
ever learned to handle the old technique of their
art freely and yet (perhaps I should say, and so)
both succeeded in expressing themselves. ... At
the age of twelve Satie left Honfleur for Paris,
where his first teacher was Guilmant. At the
Paris Conservatoire, which he entered in 1879,
Satie was indolent and there is a legend that he
was dropped from one piano class on the ground
of sheer incompetence. His teachers of harmony
assured him that his metier was the piano; his
piano professors advised him to stick to composi-
tion; and Mathias, the Hungarian, a pupil of
Chopin, in despair one day counselled Satie to study
the violin! Decidedly this young man was not
considered musical at the Conservatoire. In the
classes of Mathias he was a co-pupil with Chevil-
lard, Paul Dukas, and Philipp, but there is no
evidence that he ever acquired any great efficiency
in the art of piano playing; rather the contrary.
. . . Next we find him in the cabarets of Mont-
martre (one writer speaks of the Chat Noir where
he must have been a contemporary of Yvette Guil-
bert unless she was singing at the Divan Japonais
at this epoch) and playing at the Auberge du Clou
[248]

Erik Satie

which remains to this day a popular eating place
for artists, and it was here, according to Jean-
Aubry, that he met Claude- Achille Debussy, who
might have heard him play his Ogives (1886) and
the now famous Sarabandes (1887), of which there
are three, *' les deux manches et la belle." The
mystic harmonies in these strange piano pieces
spell ( and ante-date) much of the mysterious won-
der in Debussy's later work. Was this the Gre-
gorian inspiration? Satie did not know that he
was revolutionary ; he did not want to be ; he did
not expect to be. He wrote his round clear notes
on white sheets of paper. He did not ask anybody
to play his music ; he made no effort to get it pub-
lished, and so he remained obscure. (There is an
analogy in the case of Henri Rousseau, the painter,
who, I am told, wanted " to paint like Bougue-
reau." He strove to be academic. Fortunately
he never succeeded.)

About this time Satie encountered the Sar
Peladan and the second cycle of his career began.
One of the phenomena of the early Nineties in Paris
was the foundation of a mystical sect, half artistic,
half theosophic, called the Salon de la Rose-Croix.
A youth with an ascetic, Assyrian face, a mop of
black hair, a wealth of black beard, and piercing,
penetrating eyes, the eyes of Maurice Renaud as
[249 ]

Interp retations

Athanael in Thais, Josephin Aime Peladan, was
the founder. He was the son of a writer and
mystic, Adrien Peladan, and was born at Lyons in
1858. He began as a fervent disciple of Barbey
d'Aurevilly, by writing romances ; later he travelled
in Italy and went to Bayreuth and wrote about
Leonardo da Vinci and Richard Wagner ; then he
proclaimed himself Sar, became a magician, wore
long flowing robes, founded the Salon of the Rose-
Croix (1892-1898), gave aesthetic soirees, at which
esoteric dramas of his own devising were per-
formed, and generally held the attention by his
eccentricities. His books, written in a blatant
metaphoric style, were a strange mixture of the
dreams of a magician, the faith of an obstinate
Catholic, a hallucinatory idealism, glorification of
the flesh, and erotic sensualism. His knowledge of
music, of painting, of the life of the Greeks, of all
the subjects he touched upon (and they were
many), was seemingly a little confused ; his philoso-
phy was neither scientific nor literary. The novel-
ists thought of him as a mystic and a man of ideas ;
to the mystics he remained a novelist ; to the public
at large he loomed as another of those eccentric fig-
ures which always amuse the Paris crowd. His
principal work is the series of novels called by him
" Ethopees," which appeared under the general
[250]

Erik Satie

title of " Decadence Latine." It includes " Le
Vice Supreme" (1884), " Curieuse " (1885),
" L'Initiation Sentimentale " (1886), "A Coeur
Perdu" (1887), " Istar " (1888), "La Victoire
du Mari" (1889), "Coeur en Peine" (1890),
"Androgyne" (1891), "Le Panthee " (1893),
"Typhonia" (1898), "Le Dernier Bourbon"
(1895), "La Lamentation d'llou" (1896), "La
Vertu Supreme " (1896), and " Finis Latinorum "
(1899). Some of his other books are " Comment
On Devient Mage " (1892 ; let us hope he did not
advocate the method of Bouvard and Pecuchet),
"Comment On Devient Fee" (1893), "L'Art
Idealiste et Mystique " (1894). Recently he has
published his book on the war, " L'Allemagne
devant l'Humanite " (1916). His plays include
Le Fils des Etoiles (1895), PromethSe, Semiramis
(1897), Oedipe et le SpUnx (1898), and Le Mys-
tere du Grail. It is interesting to read the letters
in which the directors of the Odeon (Porel) and
the Comedie Francaise (Jules Claretie) refused his
play, Le Prince de Byza/hce. They are published
in the volume with the play. Le FUs des Etoiles
was also refused at both these theatres. His
play, St. Francis of Assist, was translated into
English " and adapted " by Harold John Massing-
ham. . . . Peladan gave a performance in Paris
[251]

Interp retations

(March 17, 1892) of Palestrina's Pope Marcellus
Mass. . . . Gustave Moreau was interested in his
salons and I believe that Odilon Redon exposed pic-
tures there. . . . Among the other painters in the
Rose-Croix movement Jean Delville, Alphonse Os-
bert, Carlos Seon, Egusquiza, Aman Jean, Fernan
Khopff, and Armand Point may be mentioned. A
feature of the salon of 1893 was the portrait of
Peladan by Marcellin Desboutins. . . . Was Al-
bert Samain one of the poets of the movement?
Certainly Erik Satie composed music for two of
the Sar's plays (this fact is not mentioned in the
books of the plays ; of so little importance was the
name of Satie at the time), he Fils des Etoiles and
he Prince de Byzance, and he wrote trumpet calls,
emulating the fashion of Bayreuth, for the Salon of
the Rose-Croix. Roland-Manuel professes to dis-
cover a revolt against Wagnerism in this music;
personally I do not believe that Satie was making
any such conscious attempt. Ravel orchestrated
the prelude for he Fils des Etoiles, the " Wagnerie
kaldeenne " of the Sar Peladan (performed at Du-
rand-Ruel's in February, 1892).

About this time Satie composed the music for a

ballet, Uspud, which brought about a rupture with

the direction of the Opera. He is said to have

proposed a duel and to have been refused! An-

[252]

Erik Satie

other incredibly out of character episode of this
period was his attempt to become a member of the
Institut upon the death of Ernest Guiraud (it was
Guiraud to whom fell the honour of completing
Les Contes d 'Hoffmann, left unfinished at Offen-
bach's death) in 1892. Gustave Moreau is said
to have been the only member of the august body
in favour of admitting him.

A long silence ensued. Satie was forgotten
seemingly. . . He felt the need of technical forti-
fication and he immured himself in the Schola Can-
torum, from which institution he emerged with
pastorals, chorals, and fugues, in the best d'Indy
forms, if not quite in the d'Indy manner ! . . . The
real emergence of Satie occurred on January 16,
1911 when Ravel played three of his compositions,
including one of the Sarabandes at a concert of
the Societe Musicale Independente. . . . This
baffling figure was now dragged into the audito-
rium, and to the music publishers, and a series of
remarkable piano works has resulted. ... At
present Erik Satie lives at Arcueil near the forti-
fications of Paris.

The list of Satie's work is long and interesting.

A few of the pieces mentioned, however, have not

as yet been published. Of others the manuscript

has disappeared. Here is the list, which I think

[258 ]

Interp retations

is nearly complete: Valse-Ballet (1885), which
appeared in the " Musique des Families " ; Les
Anges, Sylvie, and Les Fleurs (1885 ; songs, all of
which are lost) ; Ogives (1886) ; Trots Sarabandes *
(1887) ; Trois Gymnopedies (1888) ; Trots Gnos<
siennes (1890) ; three preludes for Le FUs des
Etoiles (1891); L'Hymne au Drapeau for Le
Prince de Byzance (1891) ; prelude for Le Naz-
areen of Henri Mazel ( 1892) ; Les Sonneries de
la Rose-Croix (1892); Uspud, "Christian ballet
for one dancer" (1892), respectfully submitted
by me to Waslav Nijinsky as a suggestion (pub-
lished by La Librarie de l'Art Independant) ; pre-
lude for a play by Jules Bois, La Porte Hero'ique
du del (1893; orchestrated by Roland-Manuel) ;
Danses Gofhiques, neuvaines pour le plus grand
calme et la forte tranquillite de tnon ame, raise
sous Vinvocation de Samt-Benoit (1893; the ex-
tracts from these dances published in " S. I. M."
are incorrectly printed) ; La Messe des Pauvres
(1895) ; in 1896 Satie made some sketches for an
English pantomime, Jack m the Box, in collabora-
tion with Jules Depaquit (mss. lost) ; Pieces
Froides (Airs a, faire fuir and Danses de tr avers
[dedicated to Mme. J. Ecorcheville] 1897) ; Le
Picadilly, for piano, and arranged for small or-
chestra (out of print) ; Je te veux, waltz for
[254]

Erik Satie

piano; also arranged as a song and for small or-
chestra (1897) ; Poudre d'or, waltz (1897) ; Ten-
drement, valse chantee!!! (1897); La Diva de
I'Empire, song (1900) ; Ecorcheville mentions some
sketches for a Poisson Reveur (1900) ; Trois
morceaux en forme de poire, avec viae maniere de
commencement, une prolongation du meme et un en
plus, suivi d'tme redite, piano, four hands (1903;
orchestrated by Roland-Manuel) ; Pousse V Amour,
music for a play by M. de Feraudy (1905) ; En
habit de cheval; pieces en forme de fugue (choral-
fugue litanique — autre choral-fugue de papier) ,
piano, four hands (1911) ; and Apercus DSsagre-
ables (Pastorale, Choral, and Fugue) , piano, four
hands (1911).

Since 1912 he has written : VSritables preludes
fLasques (pour un chien) (1912) ; Les pantins dan-
sent, for Valentine de Saint-Point (1912) ; De-
scriptions automatiques (April 1913) ; Embryons
desseches (June 1913) ; Croquis et agaceries d'un
gros bonhomme en bois (July 1913) ; Chapitres
tournes en tous sens (August 1913) ; Vieux sequins,
vieilles cuirasses (1913) ; Pieces enfantim.es (1913) ;
La piege de Meduse, dances for a comedy of the
composer (1913) ; Choses vues a, droite et a gauche,
for piano and violin (1913) ; Les heures seculaires
et instantanees (1914); Trois valses distinguees
[255 ]

Interpretations

du precieux degoute (1914); Trots poemes
d' amour, words by the composer (1914) ; Jeux et
divertissements (1914); Avant-dernieres pensees
(1915); and Dapheneo, he Chapelier, and La
Statue de bronze, songs (1916).

Edgard Varese had arranged the music for an
extraordinary performance of Shakespeare's
comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream at the
Cirque-Nouveau in Paris, a performance which
had to be abandoned. He had chosen music by
Plorent-Schmitt, Varese, Debussy, Strawinsky,
Roussel, and Ravel. Oberon was to have made his
august entrance to the strains of Tipperary, and
Satie contributed Cimq Grimaces for the occasion.

Before the war began Jean Cocteau, Paulet
Thevenaz, and Strawinsky were planning a work
called Parade for the Russian Ballet. It did not
progress beyond the idea. Later Cocteau trans-
ferred his attention to Satie and Picasso. Parade
was produced by the Russians in Paris May 18,
1917. The other novelties in this short season at
the Chatelet were Contes Russes (Kikimora, Bovo
Karolewitch, Baba Yaga, and Epilogue et Danses
Russes) : music by Liadow, choregraphy by Mias-
sine, settings and costumes by Larionow ; Les Fem-
mes de Bonne Humeur, adapted from a comedy of
Goldoni ; music by Scarlatti, orchestrated by Tom-
[ 256 ]

Erik Satie

masini ; choregraphy by Miassine ; scenery and cos-
tumes by Leon Bakst (the setting was arranged
as though it were seen through a crystal globe,
deforming the lines of perspective) ; and Las Me-
ninas, danced to a Pavane of Gabriel Faure; set-
ting by Carl Socrate; costumes by Jose-Maria
Sert (who, it will be remembered, designed the set-
ting for The Legend of Joseph) ; choregraphy by
Miassine, who was also responsible for the chore-
graphy of Parade. Nijinsky did not dance in this
Paris season. The principal interpreters of the
troupe were Mmes. Tchernicheva and Lopoukowa,
and Leonide Miassine. ... At the first perform-
ance in Paris Parade was given with Les Sylphides,
Petrouchka, and Soleil de Nuit.

Here is Jean Cocteau's scenario as it was printed
in the programmes : " The scene represents the
houses of Paris on a Sunday. Street Theatre.
Three music hall numbers serve as the free show.
Chinese magician. American girl. Acrobats.
Three managers organize the publicity. They ex-
plain in their terrible language that the crowd
takes the free show for the spectacle inside and
they try to make the people understand their error.
Nobody is convinced. After the final number su-
preme effort of the managers. The Chinaman,
the acrobats, and the girl come out of the empty
[ 257 ]

Interp retations

theatre. Seeing the failure of the managers they
try for the last time their own charms but it is too
late."

Picasso's costumes did not please the critics.
That does not mean that they were not good. Of
course, however, Charles Demuth is the man
chosen by God to make the designs for this sym-
bolic ballet. As for Satie's music that too seems
to have caused a disturbance similar to that pro-
voked by the production of The Sacrifice to the
Spring, although perhaps not so serious. The
critics did not like this music. From Pierre
Lalo's article in " Le Temps " I gathered that Sa-
tie had introduced a new instrument into the mod-
ern orchestra, the typewriter ! ! ! !

Here is what Henri Quittard had to say in " Le
Figaro " : " La musique de M. Erik Satie ne me-
rite pas moins de louanges (this after a paragraph
devoted to the demolishment of Picasso). Ce
compositeur a recu du ciel la grace singuliere de
conserver toute sa vie l'heureuse facilite des per-
sonnes tres jeunes a prendre le plus vif plaisir aux
blagues d'atelier et aux grosses charges des plus
innocentes. II s'est done diverti, avec une fan-
taisie tant soit peu laborieuse, a reproduire les
effets burlesques qu'une douzaine de musiciens de
foire produisent sans effort et m§me sans y penser
[258]

Erik Satie

le moins du monde. II lui a f allu, pour un resultat
si plaisant, beaucoup de travail et un nombreux
orchestra d'excellents artistes. Mais il a fort bien
reussi. Et je ne doute pas qu'il n'ait pris un
grand divertissement a si belle besogne."

"It is interesting to observe that both Strawin-
sky and Satie are very much interested in clowns
nowadays, as impersonal mediums for the expres-
sion of the comic spirit. ... At present this com-
poser is working on a string quartet and a Scene
Lyrique after the Dialogues of Plato. Satie also
dreams of writing " furniture music " for the dif-
ferent rooms of a house and the different occur-
rences of life.

You will find the name of Satie furtively poking
its head out of odd manuscripts yet to be published,
touched on in the writings of James Huneker
and Philip Hale, and mentioned in obscure corners
of newspaper feuilletons about French music (Rene
Lenormand, in " L'Harmonie Moderne," gives
Satie the credit of having initiated the French
renaissance in music), but his delicate melodies are
seldom performed in public (however, Riccardo
Vines has given many auditions of his works in
Paris) ; their structure is too ethereal, too gauze-
like, too butterfly-winged, too gauche, too angular,
at once too refined and too barbaric to meet the
[259]

I nterp retations

tympa num of the public ear. It is vague music,
but has not vagueness become the slogan of a school
since Satie began to write? Musicians know, and
some of them love, this music, and its relation to
the work of the more publicly recognized Debussy
is too apparent to call for extended comment.
There is more than a casual use of the whole-tone
scale to recommend this comparison to the critical
ear; there is a fragile melodic line, and there are
sonorous harmonies, formed without regard for
tradition, to be played diminuendo. Satie's very
limitations have added to his artistic stature.
Like Moussorgsky, if he had been more of an ex-
pert with the cliche and technique of his art he
might not have developed his own personality so
successfully, might not have expressed himself so
sincerely, with so much originality. . . . From the
beginning he imagined strange procedures. For
instance he hit, almost at once, on the plan of pub-
lishing his music without bar lines. (Satie here,
of course, remembered the old religious composers.
The tyranny of the bar line in music dates back no
farther than the Seventeenth Century. ... It is
interesting to observe that Stephane Mallarme in
many of his poems ignored punctuation ; a modern
English poet, Mina Loy, has followed his example.)
There are no separations. Nothing is dichoto-
[260] '

Erik Satie

mized. . . . The music runs along. ... It is not
difficult to play, however, as Satie has the habit of
employing few accidentals and almost all the notes
in many of his compositions are of the same, or a
related, value. Appogiatuxa, syncopation, brav-
ura, he is not frienHlywith. The pieces are writ-
ten in facile keys for pianists. They are some-
times difficult for the ear and brain, never for the
fingers. ..." Their particular colour," writes
Jean Ecorcheville, " is made up of harmonic blem-
ishes, subtly combined, sonoroties juxtaposed with-
out regard for the permitted cadences or the re-
quired resolutions." . . . He has written tunes for
Paulette Darty, divette de music-hall, to sing. . . .
Fancy, even a song called Tendrement . . . and
the music-hall, the cabaret atmosphere enter,
strangely disguised, even into the Gymnopedies
(did these dances for nude Spartan babies, in-
spired by the " Salammbo " of Flaubert, in turn
inspire Isadora Duncan?). This is a part of his
joke, for he is very gamin, this composer, and he
loves the rigolo. Certainly the first Sarabande
bears a strong resemblance to the prelude to
Tristan. ... In La Tyrolienne turque, Espan~
aria, Celle qui parle trop, and Sur un vaisseau you
may find other adroit and ridiculous quotations.
... In one instance he has transposed the trio of
[ 261 1

I nterp retations

Chopin's Funeral March to C major and written
under it that it is a citation from the celebrated
mazurka of Schubert. There are jocular refer-
ences to Puccini and Chabrier. . . . Then there
is the mystical side of his nature . . . the Gothic
side, revealed in his Gothic Dances and his Pointed
Arches, with their angular lines. His pale frail
Gnossiennes (Gnosse was a town in ancient Crete),
the second of which is a veritable masterpiece of
definite indecision (like a miniature picture in tone
of Flaubert's " L'Education Sentimentale "), were
partly the result of the Javanese dances at the
Paris Exposition in 1889 and partly of the Greek
chorus of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre (Satie, I am told,
spends long hours in the churches, listening to the
organ and the chanting of the priests). Timor-
ous, meticulous, mincing, neat, petulant, petty, are
some of the adjectives one might apply to this
music, and yet none of them exactly describes its
effect, half -spiritual, half-mocking! Is there any
other music like it? Baudelaire once wrote:
" Have you observed that a bit of sky seen through
an air-hole, or between two chimneys, two rocks, or
through an arcade, gives a more profound idea
of the infinite than the grand panorama seen from
the top of a mountain? "

There are three periods to be observed in the
[262]

Erik S a t i e

style of Satie. First the period of the Sarabandes
and the Gymnopedies (by no means the usual im-
mature output of a composer's nonage) ; next the
period in which he applied himself to find fantastic
expression for the vagaries of the Salon de la
Rose-Croix ; finally the period in which he appeared
before his little world bearing before him his
printed music, garnished with the most extrava-
gant titles. . . . From these titles and from his
directions to performers one might derive the idea
that Satie is a purveyor of programme music.
Nothing could be further from the truth. . . . His
titles and his directions, apparently, often have
nothing whatever to do with the music they are
supposed to describe. True ironist that he is he
conceals his diffidence under these fantastic titles.
He ridicules his own emotion at just the point at
which the auditor is about to discover it. He also
protects himself against the pedants and the phili-
stines by raising these barriers. Is not this a
form of snobbery? "II est de toute evidence,"
Satie is quoted as saying to Roland-Manuel, " que
les Aplatis, les Insignifiants; et les BoursouflSs n'y
prendront aucun plaisir. Qu'ils avalent leurs
barbes. Qu'ils se dansent sur le ventre" . . .
Under a melancholy tune he has posed these words :
"This is the hunt after a lobster. The hunters
[263]

Interp retations

descend to the bottom of the water. They run.
The sound of the horn is heard at the bottom of
the seas. The lobster is tracked. The lobster
weeps." ... In his remarkable theatre in Petro-
grad Everei'now has given performances of Bern-
ard Shaw's Candida at which a little negro
page-boy read all the stage directions as they oc-
curred in the text. It was this Russian producer's
idea that the author's comments were the best part
of the play and he was determined that his audi-
ences should share them. A performer of Satie's
later music should resort to some similar expedient,
if he wishes his audience in on the whole fun. If
Vladimir de Pachmann were the pianist, he might
not only play and read Satie's directions but add
others of his own as well. Fancy de Pachmann
playing the delicate Airs to make you run from the
Cold Pieces, saying at intervals, softly to his audi-
tors. . . . En y regardant a deux foix . . . Sele
dire. . . . A plat . . . Blanc . . . Toujours. . . .
Passer . . . Pareillement. . . . Du coin de la
main (how Pachmann would love to say that!)
. . . Seul. . . . Etre visible un moment. . . . Se
raccorder . . . Un peu cuit . . . Encore . . .
Mieux . . . Encore. . . . Tres bien. . . . Merveilleuse-
ment. . . . Parfait . . . N'Allez pas plus haut. . . .
Sans bruit . . . and Tres loin. ... In the lan-
[264]

Erik Satie

tern number of Descriptions automatiques the
player is told to keep from lighting the lantern,
next to light it, to extinguish it, and finally to put
his hands in his pockets ... all of this, so far as
one can make out with the aid of the naked ear,
without any perceptible relation to the music which
is, as one biographer points out, mostly in two
voices !

The importance of Satie lies in the fact that he,
without knowing it, even without others knowing
it, was really the founder of the French impression-
istic school. He liberated French music from the
tyranny of the major-minor. This is realized by
the impressionists themselves to-day, thirty years
too late perhaps, but they are endeavouring to
make amends. Erik Satie began the attack, un-
wittingly, which led to the present victory. . . .
The new art was born of irresolution, a circum-
stance, as Ecorcheville says, which finds an analogy
at the close of the Sixteenth Century. . . . The
artist finds pleasure in fugitive dissonances, which
the academicians describe as licentious, but a new
movement results. . . . Ecorcheville, with a bit
of a smile, compares Satie to Monteverde. . . .
His effect on his successors, possibly, has been
just as important. And while the pedants may
refuse to take him seriously and the great public
[365]

Interp retations

does not even know his name, future historians
must reserve a few pages for this esoteric figure.
. . . Fumiste — peut-etre — mats il a fait quelque
chose.

November 16, 1916.

[266]

The Great American
Composer

" nothing popular should be held beneath the atten-
tion of thoughtful people — "

H. R. Haweis.

The Great American
Composer

WHEN some curious critic, a hundred
years hence, searches through the avail-
able archives in an attempt to discover
what was the state of American music at the begin-
ning of the Twentieth Century do you fancy that
he will take the trouble to exhume and dig into the
ponderous scores of Henry Hadley, Arthur Foote,
Ernest Schelling, George W. Chadwick, Horatio
W. Parker, and the rest of the recognizedly " im-
portant " composers of the present day? Will he
hesitate for ten minutes to peruse the scores of
Mona, the Four. Seasons Symphony or The Pipe
of Desire? A plethora of books and articles on
the subject will cause him to wonder why so much
pother was made about Edward MacDowell, and
he will even shake his head a trifle wearily over the
saccharine delights of The Rosary and Narcissus.
But if he is lucky enough to run across copies of
Waiting for the Robert E. Lee, Alexander's Rag-
time Band, or Hello Frisco, which are scarcely
mentioned in the literature of our time, his face
will light up and he will feel very much as Yvette
Guilbert must have felt when she unearthed Le
[269]

Interpretations

Cycle du Vm,,ov Le Lien Serre or C'est le Mai, and
he will attempt to find out, probably in vain (until
he disinters a copy of this article in some public
library) something about the composers, Lewis
F. Muir, Irving Berlin, and Louis A. Hirsch, the
true grandfathers of the Great American Com-
poser of the year 2001.

There are difficulties in his way. Nothing dis-
appears so soon from the face of the earth as a
very popular song. The music shops sell hun-
dreds of thousands of copies before the demand
suddenly ceases. No more copies are ordered
from the publishers, who themselves lose interest
in songs which may be taking up space which
should be allotted to newer tunes. As for the
purchasers, on every moving day they consign
their old popular songs to the dustheap. After
the Ball makes way for Two Little Girls in Blue
(or vice-versa; I really can not be expected to re-
member that far back !) Try to buy After the
Ball now and see if you can. Advertise for a copy
and see if you can get one. You will find it very
difficult, I think, and yet it was only 1892, or
1893, when everybody was singing this melancholy
tale of the misadventures of a little girl in a big
city. No doubt at that period kind old ladies
stopped on the streets to pat bleached blondes on
[ 270 ]

Great American Composer

the cheeks, with the reflection, " She may be some-
body's daughter."

Music of that variety will not be sought after
by collectors and prized and sung again, except
out of curiosity, or to " furnish innocent merri-
ment." There will be those, no doubt, impelled
to form a collection of the sentimentalities of the
late Nineteenth Century, including therein the
drawings of Howard Chandler Christy, which will
be as rare as black hawthorne vases in 2000, and
the novels of George Barr McCutcheon, a single
copy of whose " Nedra " or " Graustark " may
fetch the tidy sum of forty dollars in gold at some
Twenty-first Century auction.

The sentimental song, however, has been largely
obliterated in the output of the best new music of
the Twentieth Century, into which a new quality
has crept, a quality which may serve to keep it
alive, just as the " coon songs " which preceded
it in the Nineteenth Century have been kept alive.
Dixie and such solemn tunes as were devised by
Stephen C. Foster are not to be scoffed at. They
are not scoffed at, as we very well know. They
are sung and played like the folk-songs of other
nations. They are known all over the world.
They have found their way into serious composi-
tions by celebrated composers. Even the cake-
£ 271 J

I nterp retations

walks of a later date, The Georgia Campmeeting,
Hello, Ma Baby, and the works of Williams and
Walker (curiously enough the best ragtime has
not been written by negroes, although Under the
Bamboo Tree and the extraordinary At the Ball
are the work of black men) have their value, but
ragtime, as it exists to-day, had not been invented
in the Eighteen Nineties. The apotheosis of syn-
copation had not begun. Not that syncopation
is new in music. Nearly the whole of Beethoven's
Seventh Symphony is based on it. Schumann
scarcely wrote two consecutive bars which are not
syncopated. But ragtime syncopation is differ-
ent. Louis Hirsch once pointed out to me what
he considered its distinctive feature. " The mel-
ody and harmony are syncopated separately,"
was his explanation and it will have to suffice, in
spite of the fact that the same thing is true of the
prelude to Parsifal, in which the conductor is
forced to beat 6-4 time with one hand and 4-4
with the other, and of Spanish dances, in which
singer, guitarist, public, and dancer vie with one
another to produce a complexity of rhythm.
There is abundance of syncopation and the most
esoteric rhythmic intricacy in Igor Strawinsky's
ballet, The Sacrifice to the Spring, but ragtime is
not the word to describe that vivid score, nor is
[272]

Great American Composer

it likely that any one can find much resemblance
between Everybody's Doing It or Ragging the
Scale and the jota or the prelude to Parsifal.

There is a theory that the test of good music is
whether you tire of it or not. If I were to be al-
lowed to apply this test I would say frankly that
Die Walkiire and Beethoven's Fifth, Symphony
are not good music. In a brilliant essay Louis
Sherwin explodes verbal torpedoes about this
point, warning his readers not to forget that if
they heard the music of the " classic " composers
exploited by every street organ and cabaret pianist
it would soon become as intolerable as Pretty Baby
has become during the summer just past. Prob-
ably a great many people are tired of hearing Die
Wacht am Rhein, but that does not prove that it
is not a good tune.

The works of our best composers have been
highly appreciated. Strawinsky collects exam-
ples of them with assiduity and intends to use
them in some of his forthcoming works just as
he has used French and Russian popular songs
in The Firebird and Petrouchka. Popular songs,
indeed, form as good a basis for the serious com-
poser to work upon as the folk-song. This is a
remark I have been intending to make for some
time and I want to emphasize it. Take, for ex-
[273]

Interpretations

ample, the songs in the repertoire of Yvette Guil-
bert; some are folk-songs and some are not. I
defy any one outside of Julien Tiersot, Professor
Jean Beck, H. E. Krehbiel, and one or two others,
to tell you which is which, and they can tell you
because they know all the available collections of
French folk-songs. Therefore, when they hear
Mme. Guilbert sing a melody that is strange to
them they take it for granted that it must have
had a composer. A folk-song, according to the
authorities, is a song which has no composer; it
just grows. Some one sings it one day in the
fields, some one else adds to it, and finally there it
is before your ears, a song known all over the
country-side, but no one knows who started it
rolling. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is such a folk-
song; it is an extremely good example and it has
been quoted with effect in Dvorak's symphony,
From the New World. Funiculi' Funicula' is not
a folk-song. It is a popular Neapolitan song
(most popular Neapolitan songs, like Sole Mio,
Santa Lucia, and Maria Mari, are not folk-songs)
written by Denza, a well-known composer, to cele-
brate the funicular railway in Naples. Neverthe-
less, no less a personage than Richard Strauss
quoted it bodily in his symphonic fantasia, Aus
Italien, although to be sure, he laboured under the
[ 274 ]

Great American Composer

impression at the time that it was a folk-song.
Similarly an American tune, It Looks to me Like
a Big Night To-night found its way into Elektra.
This may have been unconscious assimilation on
the part of Strauss ; at any rate it is interesting
to note how a vulgar air was transformed into the
beautiful theme — one of the most expressive in
this music drama — of the Children of Agamem-
non. When Paul Dukas's lyric drama, Ariane et
Barbe-Bleue, was produced at the Metropolitan
Opera House, the critical writers, almost to a man,
referred to the song of the wives, which floats out
of the cellar of the castle when Ariane opens the
door in the first act, as a Brittany folk-song. So
it may very well be ; I believe that Dukas has said
that it was. However, I am informed on good
authority that he composed it himself ! It has a
folk-song air, to be sure, and it is interesting to
catch its resemblance to the Berceuse of the Prin-
cess of the Sea in Rimsky-Korsakow's opera,
Sadko and to the old Spanish tune, known to us
as Flee as a Bird, which Eugene Walter has used
with such theatrical effect in his play, The Assas-
sin. La Jambe de Bois, utilized by Strawin-
sky in the first scene of Petrouchka, might be a
folk-song but it is not. It is a French popular
song. " When Elgar used a genuine Welsh folk-
[275]

Interp retations

song in his Introduction and Allegro for Strings a
well-known London critic, a prominent member of
the Folk-Song Society, declared it to be a poor
imitation of the folk-style," writes Ernest New-
man. " When the legend got about that a certain
melody in In the South was an Italian folk-song,
the same critic recognized the genuine folk-quality
in it, and it was distinctly unfortunate for him
that the melody happened to be Elgar's own in-
vention from first to last."

Thus it happens that while many composers,
even such celebrated men (in their day) as Raff,
Rubinstein, Gade, and Mendelssohn, fall rapidly
into oblivion, the composer of a good popular song
is assured of immortality as such things go. His
name may be forgotten but his song will be sung
down through the century as often perhaps as any
folk-song, probably a good deal oftener. Take
The Old Folks at Home, for example, or Dixie, or
My Old Kentucky Home, or Old Black Joe, and
you will find that more people know them and sing
them and love them to-day, nearly three-quarters
of a century after they were composed, than know
or sing or love Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, or No-
body Knows de Trouble I've Seen.

It is my theory that the American composers
of to-day (I am still speaking of Irving Berlin,
[276]

Great American Composer

Louis Hirsch, Lewis F. Muir, and others of their
kind) have brought a new quality into music, a
spirit to be found in the best folk-dances of Spain,
in gypsy, Hungarian, and Russian popular music,
and a form entirely new. They have been work-
ing for a livelihood, to be sure, but in that respect
they have only followed the precedent established
by Offenbach, Richard Strauss, and Puccini.

Bernard Shaw has probably made a great deal
more money than Henry Arthur Jones, but no-one
thinks of calling him less of an artist than Mr.
Jones for that reason. Zuloaga sells his pictures
and Rodin his sculptures at very high rates.
There seems to be, indeed, no particular reason
why an artist should not be permitted to make
money if he is able to do so. It is the nature of
some artists to shy at the annoyances and compli-
cations of business. The work of others, Ste-
phane Mallarme, Monticelli, is antipathetic to the
crowd and always will be. Many of the greatest
artists, however, have made the widest appeal (I
might mention Beethoven, Michael Angelo, and
Tolstoi) and some few men of this stamp have been
able to transform their inspirations into worldly
goods. In the circumstances one can scarcely
blame Avery Hopwood and Irving Berlin for mak-
ing money.

[277]

Interp retations

The most obvious point of superiority of our
ragtime composers (overlooking the fact that their
music is pleasanter to listen to) over Messrs. Par-
ker, Chadwick, and Hadley, is that they are ex-
pressing the very soul of the epoch while their
more serious confreres are struggling to pour into
the forms of the past, the thoughts of the past,
re-arranged, to be sure, but without notable ex-
pression of inspiration. They have nothing new
to say and no particular reason for saying it.
Louis Hirsch told me of a scene he once witnessed
at Joseffy's : A new pupil entered and proceeded
to play for the master. Joseffy interrupted her.
" You are not playing the right notes," he said.
" I'm sure that I am," she replied. " Begin
again." She did so. " That's wrong," he in-
terrupted again. " It's not written like that."
" But it is. Won't you look at it, please? " He
examined the score and apologized, " Oh, it's some-
thing of MacDowell's. I see you were right. I
thought you were playing a transcription of the
Tristan prelude." "I have remarked," writes
Turgeniev in one of his letters to Mme. Viardot,
" that in imitative work the most spirituelles
are precisely the most detestable, when they take
themselves seriously. A sot copies servilely ; a man
of spirit without talent imitates pretentiously and
[278]

Great American Composer

with an effort, with the worst of all efforts, with
that of wishing to be original."

Regard the form of Waiting for the Robert E.
Lee. A writer in the " London Times " calls at-
tention to the fact that, although for convenience
it is written out in a rhythm of 8, it is really a
rhythm of 3 followed by a rhythm of 5, proceed-
ing without warning occasionally into the normal
rhythm of 8. It is impossible for many trained
singers to read ragtime at all. They can decipher
the notes but they do not understand the con-
ventions observed by the composers in setting these
notes on paper, conventions which are A B Cs to
every cabaret performer.

The complicated vigour of American life has
expressed itself through the trenchant pens of
these new musicians. It is the only music pro-
duced in America to-day which is worth the paper
it is written on. It is the only American music
which is enjoyed by the nation (lovers of Mozart
and Debussy prefer ragtime to the inert and
saponaceous classicism of our more serious-minded
composers) ; it is the only American music which
is heard abroad (and it is heard everywhere, in the
trenches by way of the victrola, in the Cafe de
Paris at Monte Carlo, in Cairo, in India, and in
Australia), and it is the only music on which the
[ 279 ]

I nterp retations

musicians of our land can build on in the future.
If it can be urged against it that it is a hybrid
product, depending upon negro and Spanish
rhythms, at least the same objection can be urged
against Spanish music itself, which has emerged
from the music of the Moors and the Arabs.
Havelock Ellis even finds Greek and Egyptian in-
fluences.

If the American composers with (what they
consider) more serious aims, instead of writing
symphonies or other worn-out and exhausted
forms which belong to another age of composition,
would strive to put into their music the rhythms
and tunes that dominate the hearts of the people
a new form would evolve which might prove to be
the child of the Great American Composer we have
all been waiting for so long and so anxiously. I
do not mean to suggest that Edgar Stillman
Kelley should write variations on the theme of Oh
You Beautiful Doll! or that Arthur Farwell should
compose a symphony utilizing The Gaby Glide for
the first subject of the allegro and Everybody's
Doing It for the second, with the adagio move-
ment based on Pretty Baby in the minor key. It
is not my intention to start some one writing a
tone-poem called New York, in which all these
songs and ten or fifteen more should be themati-
[280]

Great Americ an Composer

cally bundled together and finally wrapped in the
profundities of a fugue. But if any composer,
bearing these tendencies in mind, will allow his in-
spiration to run riot, it will not be necessary for
him to quote or to pour his thought into the mould
of the symphony, the string quartet, or any other
defunct form, to stir a modern audience. The
idea, manifestly based though it may be on the
work of Irving Berlin and Louis Hirsch, will ex-
press itself in some new way. Percy Aldridge
Grainger, Igor Strawinsky, Erik Satie, are all
working along these lines, to express modernity in
tone, allowing the forms to create themselves, but
alas, none of these men is an American !

Americans are inclined to look everywhere but
under their noses for art. It never occurs to
them that any object which has any relation to
their everyday life has anything to do with beauty.
Probably the Athenians were much the same.
When some stranger admired the classic pile on
the Acropolis the Athenians in all probability
turned up their noses with the scornful remark,
" That ! Oh, that's the Parthenon ; it's been here
for ages ! " It will be remembered that Mytyl and
Tyltyl in The Bluebird spent considerable time and
covered a good deal of ground in their search for
that rare ornithological symbol, only to discover
[ 281 ]

I nterp retations

that it existed all the time at home, the last place
in the world where thej thought of looking for it.
Our Woolworth and Flatiron Buildings we are
likely to ignore while we bow the knee before the
Chateau District of Fifth Avenue and our ridicu-
lous Public Library. Chateaux are all very well
on the Loire but imitations of them have no place
in New York. As for that absurd Roman Li-
brary ! Imagine what might have been done with
a sky scraper. The present building, years in
course of erection, has already practically out-
grown its usefulness, and it has not been open to
the public for a decade. It is already too small
and when one observes the acres of space wasted
in corridors one groans. Of course a library in
New York should shoot straight up into space, at '
least forty stories high. Speeding elevators
should hoist the student in a jiffy to whatever
mental stimulation he required ! R. J. Coady in a
very amusing magazine called " The Soil " has
sung the praises of American machinery, and his
illustrations indeed show us magnificent works of
art, of the best kind since they are also utilitarian.
One day Mina Loy picked up one of those paste-
board folders to which matches are attached,
which are given away at all cigar counters for the
use of patrons. " Some day these will be very
[282]

Great American Composer

rare and then they will be considered beautiful,"
she said, and it is true. A few years after we
discover how to light our cigarettes with our per-
sonal magnetism, or perhaps stop smoking alto-
gether, such a contrivance will naturally assume
an interest for curious collectors, and become as
diverting an object for a cabinet as a Japanese
scent bottle or Capo di Monte porcelain. The
Baron de Meyer has found it amusing to decorate
rooms with early Victorian atrocities such as bas-
kets of shells and antimacassars, the sort of thing
that went with black walnut commodes, knitted
firescreens, whatnots, and Rogers' groups in the
days, not so very long ago, when " Godey's Lady's
Book " reposed on the centre table near the
Family Bible. But now they are rare, and there-
fore curious; they even assume a certain beauty
in our eyes.

In his essay on "The Poet" Ralph Waldo
Emerson found occasion to remark : " We have
yet had no genius in America, with tyrannous eye,
which knew the value of our incomparable mate-
rials, and saw, in the barbarism and materialism
of the times, another carnival of the same gods
whose picture he so much admires in Homer ; then
in the Middle Age; then in Calvinism. Banks
and tariffs, the newspaper and caucus, Methodism
[283]

Interp retations

and Unitarianism, are flat and dull to dull peo-
ple, but rest on the same foundations of wonder
as the town of Troy and the temple of Delphi, and
are as swiftly passing away." It is impossible to
appreciate what is constantly before our eyes,
that which is buzzing in our ears. We are so ac-
customed to ragtime that we scarcely know that it
exists. It would be absurd, you think, to consider
it as art, because it is so commonplace. One
might as easily consider the Woolworth Building
or the Manhattan Bridge works of art and how
could any one possibly do that? Just the same I
am inclined to believe that the Woolworth Build-
ing, the Manhattan Bridge, and that " roaring,
epic rag-time tune," Waiting for the Robert E.
Lee are among the first twenty-four beautiful
things produced in America. It is no more use to
imitate French or German music than it is to imi-
tate French or German architecture. The sooner
we realize this the better for all of us.

January 23, 1917.

[284]

The Importance of

Electrical Picture

Concerts

The Importance of

Electrical Picture

Concerts

IN an article called " Music for Museums " I
once complained of the unvaried fare offered
to us by the programme makers of the sym-
phony concerts, a monotonous round of the sym-
phonies of Beethoven and Brahms, the overtures
of Weber, and excerpts from Wagner's music
dramas. There should be laws restricting orches-
tral organizations to one Beethoven symphony a
season, I asserted, and I berated orchestral con-
ductors for their tendency to give the old masters
places that should be reserved, at least on occa-
sion, for the younger generation. My remarks
seem to have been read and taken seriously unless
it can be supposed that the conductors themselves
have seen the error of their ways, for during the
current season (1916-17) we have found Mr.
Damrosch and even Mr. Stransky (insofar as he
has been able so to do without cracking the condi-
tions of the famous Pulitzer will, which stipulated
that the music of Beethoven, Liszt, and Wagner
should be frequently performed at the concerts of
the Philharmonic Society) vying with each other
[287 ]

Interpretations

in an - effort to discover unperformed works in
dusty attics or on the shelves of the music shops
and libraries, and to give early hearings to new
music by modern composers. Up to date, to be
sure, they have ignored a good deal that we might
conceivably listen to with pleasure, but they have
provided us with specimens previously unheard, at
least in these benighted parts, of the art of Haydn
and Mozart; Richard Strauss's Macbeth, long
buried has been dug up, and the new Alpine Sym-
phony, still-born, has been played; a suite from
Strawinsky's earliest ballet, The Firebird, and
several movements of a symphony by Zandonai
have been added to the repertoire of the concert
room; and d'Indy's Istar, which we have long
prayed for, has been revived, together with a more
ancient treasure, Raff's Lenore Symphony, once
as popular as Tschaikowsky's Sixth Symphony.
Now these are steps, tentative to be sure, in the
right direction, and although a good deal of this
music, some of us, at the cost of burning in hell,
would refuse to hear twice, it is certainly pleas-
anter to hear it once than to listen to the standbys
and battle horses of the ordinary concert season,
year after year, a procedure which always makes
me cry out with Shakespeare's duke, " Enough ;
no more, 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before."
[288]

Electrical Picture Concerts

Dr. Muck in Boston does not agree with me. He
even brings his men to New York to play Schu-
mann's Rhenish Symphony and Rimsky-Korsa-
kow's Scheherazade and calls the result a pro-
gramme! This strikes me as insolence; but it is
the efficient kind of insolence, like the rape of Bel-
gium, which there is no gainsaying. The concerts
of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie
Hall are always sold out and Dr. Muck could, if
he so desired (and I am expecting something of
the sort), make up a programme consisting of the
Beautiful Blue Danube waltz and Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony without any appreciable effect
on the box office.

There is, of course, the necessity (so it is re-
garded) of educating the children. They must,
according to the accepted theory of education,
hear what has been done before they hear what
will be done, but it does not seem necessary to turn
the best orchestra in this country (one of the best
anywhere) into an educational institution. It is
too disheartening to realize, as some of us must,
that the orchestra of orchestras, which one might
hope to find exploiting new tonal combinations for
our delectation, is becoming a museum where rare
old bits of tune may be inspected and reheard.

Hope has appeared, however, in an unlooked for
[289]

Interp retations

quarter. The extreme popularity of the cinema
theatres was not to be guessed at a few seasons
ago, nor could any of us have foretold that sym-
phony orchestras of a size and quality which com-
pare more than favourably with some of our estab-
lished organizations would play sweet music in
these temples of amusement from late morning till
midnight. No, this was not to be foreseen or fore-
heard. The accompaniment to the pictures is
scarcely a matter for congratulation, as yet (as I
have indicated elsewhere at some length), but the
accompaniment to the pictures is- only a small
part of the duty of an orchestra in a theatre de-
voted to electrical dramas. Now a concert at a
moving picture show is often a much more serious
matter than an old Theodore Thomas popular pro-
gramme. Symphonies, concertos, rhapsodies,
arias, overtures (from those of Dichter und Bauer
and Guillaume Tell to those of Lohengrin and
Tschaikowsky's 1812) all figure in the scheme.
At one of these theatres more music is performed
in one day than an assiduous concert-goer could
hope to hear in three in the concert halls. The
duration of a symphony concert is about two hours
with a short intermission, thab of a song recital
about an hour and a half, but an orchestra, or an
organ, or a piano, furnishes a pretty continuous
[290]

Electrical Picture Concerts

flow of melody in a moving picture theatre from
11 a. m. to 11 p. m. In the large houses soloists
are sandwiched in between pictures ; and some-
times these soloists are better performers than
those one hears under more holy auspices — fre-
quently they are the same. The violinists play
Kreisler . . . and the Beethoven Romances, and
pieces by Drdla and Vieuxtemps and de Beriot and
Paganini and Mendelssohn. . . . Yes, the first
movement of the E minor concerto sometimes
figures in moving picture theatre concert pro-
grammes where, at the present day, I am inclined
to believe it belongs.

This might be regarded as poetic justice. It is
true, however, and a fact that cannot be ignored.
It strikes me that from this time on we should hear
precious little about " concerts for young people,"
" educational concerts," " popular concerts," and
the like. In the circumstances the directors of
our best orchestras can find no flimsy excuse for
playing too much Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert,
or Wagner, or any of the works of Greig, Liszt,
Mendelssohn, and Tschaikowsky. Brahms, by
the peculiar veils of his art, is protected for the
moment from the moving picture theatre (Bruck-
ner seems to be protected from any theatre at all),
although the violinists occasionally perform his
[291]

I nterp retations

gypsy dances, and almost any day I expect to
hear between Douglas Fairbanks and Charley
Chaplin some deep-voiced contralto sing the Sap-
phische Ode or the Vergebliches Standchen. . . .
The importance of the musical accompaniment to
the film and of the intermediate concert numbers
is obviously recognized by the managers of such
theatres as the Strand and the Rial to and the
electric picture theatres on Second Avenue. The
close attention with which the music is followed
and the very violent applause which congratulates
each performer, often exacting recall numbers, are
ready proofs of the pleasure it gives. What is
known as " cheap " music is seldom played. In
fact, there is so much of an air of the concert room
about these performances that I am afraid they
would bore me even if the music were less familiar
to my ears. I should prefer, on these occasions,
more informality, more excursions into the rhyth-
mic realms conjured up for us by Louis Hirsch
and Irving Berlin. Nothing of the sort need be
hoped for. The music performed is what is known
to the less tone-educated multitudes as " classic."
Any intelligent child, with a little direction from
a musical elder, can pick up the routine of the
concert and opera world in a ten weeks' course at
the Rialto or the Strand. Such unavoidable songs
[292]

Electrical Picture Concerts

as the prologue to Pagliacci and the subsequent
tenor air from the same opera, all three of Dalila's
airs, the waltz from La Boheme, the prayer from
Tosca, Celeste Aida, Cielo e Mar, Paradiso,
Danny Deever, Les Filles de Cadiz, the habanera
from Carmen, Dich Theure Halle, The Two Grena-
diers, Dost Thou Know That Fair Land? from
Mignon, the jewel waltz from Faust, the page's
song from Les Huguenots, the Miserere, the
prayer from Cavalleria Rusticana, the Bach-
Gounod Ave Maria, Depuis le Jour from Louise,
the gavotte from Manon, Pleurez mes Yeux from
Le Cid, the drinking song from La Traviata, the
Ava Maria from Otello, Plus Grand dans son
Obscurite from Gounod's La Heine de Saba, and
Che Faro Senza Euridice? will be as familiar to
his little ears as Dixey or the stolen strains of
America.

In like manner he will accustom himself to the
delights of Kreisler's Caprice Viennois and Tam-
bourin Chinois, Beethoven's two violin Romances,
the Bach air arranged for the G string, the Preis-
lied from Die Meistersmger, arranged by Wil-
helmj, Pierne's SSrSnade, Dvorak's Humor-

esque As for the concert repertoire he

will hear the overtures to Euryanthe and Oberon,

II Barbiere di Siviglia, Tannhimser, Sakuntala,

[293]

Interp retations

Semiramide and such concert pieces and tone-
poems as the Danse Macabre, Phaeton, Mephisto
Waltz, Les Preludes, some of the orchestrated
rhapsodies of Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakow's Spanish
Caprice, the Arlesieime suite, the Peer Gynt suite,
a number of Strauss waltzes, Massenet's Elegie,
the entr'actes from The Jewels of the Madonna,
certain ballet airs of Gluck, etc.

He will not be cognizant of the fact that he is
getting what is known as a " musical education "
(the knowledge of and the ability to hum tunes
from seven-eighths of the aforementioned pieces
would generally be considered as a musical educa-
tion). Heaven forefend that such an idea be put
into his head! The moving picture concerts, like
the pictures themselves should be classified as
amusements. . . . Only having gone thus far, why
not go a little farther? If one must become ac-
quainted with Wagner in the concert hall at all,
why not in the electric picture theatre? There
are no excerpts in the present concert repertoire
that could not as well be played there ; the Funeral
March from Gotterdammerung, the Lohengrin
prelude, the Good Friday Spell from Parsifal, the
Ride of the Valkyries, and all the rest of them
should be doled out to the youngsters seeking tone-
knowledge and to those oldsters who insist upon
[294]

Electrical Picture Concerts

hearing them divorced from the text and the stage
action, between the actualities and the feature
film. And while you can scarcely ask Dr. Muck
or Mr. Damrosch to pay Beethoven the compli-
ment of giving him up altogether for the time
being, his music might be played less by the or-
ganized orchestras in view of the hearings it would
receive at the hands of the moving picture socie-
ties. The first two symphonies, at any rate,
could be left to their mercies. Mendelssohn, as a
symphonist, might also be tendered to their keep-
ing. . . . Grieg and Liszt, for the most part . . .
Rubinstein, Tschaikowsky, and Massenet, a good
deal of Saint-Saens . . . Glazunow and Elgar,
certainly Elgar (if the moving picture audiences
would permit it). There is another field for the
Strand Philharmonic Society, for the band of the
Academy of Music : the exploitation of the Ameri-
can composer who, one complains, never gets his
chance at a hearing. The conductors of these
concerts might introduce new music by George W.
Chadwick, Henry Hadley, Arthur Farwell, Ed-
gar Stillman Kelley, and Ernest Schelling.

If anything so nearly pleasant as this happens

in the musical world (and there are, as I stated in

the beginning, indications that it is happening),

think of the space there would be on the pro-

[ 395 ]

Interp retations

grammes of our august societies for the new
music our curious ears are aching to hear ! Think
of the resurrections of works by Mozart, Haydn,
Cesar Franck, that one never does hear. Per-
haps Debussy's La Mer, Nocturnes, and Images
(Iberia, Gigue, and Rondes de Printemps), all
too infrequently played, would become more famil-
iar. I should like to listen at least once to Al-
beniz's Catalonia and Turina's La Procession du
Rocio, which Debussy has compared to a luminous
fresco. . . . Spanish music altogether is unknown
in our concert halls. . . . We could hear more
Sibelius and Moussorgsky ... a little Borodine
. . . John Carpenter . . . Schoenberg's Five
Pieces . . . Strawinsky's Scherzo Fantastique
and the Sacrifice to the Spring. Why not even
PetrouchJea? Ornstein's The Fog, Ravel, Dukas
(has La Peri been played here?), d'Indy, Chabrier,
Korngold, Reger, Loeffler. . . .

December 7, 1916.

[296]

Modern Musical Fiction

" We must beware of checking the fancy of the
novelist by pedantic restrictions — "

Andrew Lang.

Modern Musical
Fiction

IT has been the fashion for musicians to sneer
at the attempts of literary men and women
to celebrate their fellow-craftsmen. Novels
which float in a tonal atmosphere frequently do
contain a large percentage of errors, but is this
not as true of novels which deal with electrical
engineers, book-binders, painters, politicians, or
clowns of the circus? Perhaps not quite. To
learn the technical phraseology, the bibliography,
the iconography, the history, the chronology of
music, a man must devote a lifetime to its study.
Happy the musical pedant who does not make
blunders now and again. They cannot be avoided.
Even our accredited music critics, be they ever so
wary, occasionally fall into traps. In the cir-
cumstances we should smile leniently on the minor
and major mistakes of our minor and major novel-
ists. To a musician, to be sure, these are fre-
quently ludicrous. One of Ouida's characters has
the habit of playing organ selections from the
masses of Mendelssohn, and the tenor in " Moths "
goes about singing melodies from Palestrina ! In
[299]

Interp retations

" Les Miserables " Victor Hugo allots one of
Hadyn's quartets to three violins and a flute. In
" Peg Woffington " Charles Reade describes the
actress as whistling a quick movement and then
tells how Mr. Cibber was confounded by " this
sparkling adagio," and the following passage from
Marie Corelli's " The Sorrows of Satan " de-
serves what notoriety this page can afford it:
" An amiable nightingale showed him (Prince
Rimanez) the most elaborate methods of applying
rhythmed tune to the upward and downward rush
of the wind, thus teaching him perfect counter-
point, while chords he learnt from Neptune."
Even George Moore, whose " Evelyn Innes " is
generally regarded as one of the most successful
attempts of a novelist to describe musicians and
music, in " Ave " speaks of Anton Seidl as a
broken old man who looked back upon his life as a
failure. However, it is easy to paraphrase a
happy remark made by Andrew Lang in his pref-
ace to " A Tale of Two Cities " : " The histori-
cal novelist is not the historian." So we may
say that the musical novelist is not the musi-
cian.

In Europe writers of fiction have frequently
chosen musical subjects. Balzac's " Gambara "
and " Massimilla Doni," the tale of a musical de-
[300 ]

Modern Musical Fiction

generate whose chief pleasure it is to hear two
tones in perfect accord, come to mind. Other
more or less familiar French examples are Camille
Selden's "Daniel Vlady " (1862), Guillaume
Edouard Desire Monnaie's " Les Sept Notes de la
Gamme" (1848), George Sand's " Consuelo,"
and Romain Rolland's " Jean-Christophe." Nor
should one forget Saint-Landri, composer and
conductor, who figures prominently in Guy de
Maupassant's " Mont Oriol." Listen to him :
" Yes, my dear friend, it is finished, finished, the
hackneyed style of the old school. The melodists
have had their day. This is what people cannot
understand, music is a new art, melody in its first
lisping. The ignorant ear loves the burden of a
song. It takes a child's pleasure, a savage's pleas-
ure in it. I may add that the ears of the people
or of the ingenuous public, the simple ears, will
always love little songs, airs, in a word. It is an
amusement similar to that in which the frequenters
of cafe-concerts indulge. I am going to make use
of a comparison in order to make myself under-
stood. The eye of the rustic loves crude colours
and glaring pictures; the eye of the intelligent
representative of the middle class who is not ar-
tistic loves shades benevolently pretentious and
affecting subjects ; but the artistic eye, the refined
[301 ]

Interp retations

eye, loves, understands, and distinguishes the im-
perceptible modulations of a single tone, the mys-
terious harmonies of light touches invisible to most
people. . . . Ah ! my friends, certain chords mad-
den me, cause a flood of inexpressible happiness to
penetrate all my flesh. I have to-day an ear so
well exercised, so finished, so matured, that I end
by liking even certain false chords, just like a vir-
tuoso whose fully developed taste amounts to a
form of depravity. I am beginning to be a viti-
ated person who seeks for extreme sensations of
hearing. Yes, my friends, certain false notes.
What delights ! How this moves, how this shakes
the nerves ! how it scratches the ear — how it
scratches ! how it scratches ! "

Hans Andersen has written at least two musical
tales, " The Improvisatore " and " Only a Fid-
dler." Another Norse story is Kristofer Janson's
"The Spell-bound Fiddler." In D'Annunzio's
" II Fuoco " there are long passages devoted to a
discussion of music ; Richard Wagner is a figure in
this novel and there is an account of his death in
Venice. There should be mention of Henryk Sien-
kiewicz's " Yanks the Musician and Other Tales."
Tolstoi made music rather than a musician the
hero of " The Kreutzer Sonata." It is the first
and'last time that this celebrated sonata for violin
[302 ]

Modern Musical Fiction

and piano has performed the offices of a n aphro -
disiac.

German literature is full of examples: Gustav
Nicolai's " Arabesken " (1835) " Die Geweihten "
(1836), and "Die Musikfeind," G. Blaul's "Das
Musikfest" (1836), August Kahlert's " Tonle-
ben " (1838), G. A. Keferstein's " Konig Mys von
Fidibus" (1838), Julius Becker's " Der Neuro-
mantiker" (1840), Ludwig Bechstein's " Clari-
nette" (1840), Wilhelm Bachmann's " Catinka
Antalani " (1845), Karl Goldmick's " Der Unster-
bliche" (1848), Edward Maria Oettinger's
"Rossini" (1851), Daniel Elster's " Des Nacht-
wachters Tochter " (1853), Eduard Morike's
"Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag" (1856), A.
E. Brachvogel's "Friedemann Bach" (1859),
and H. Rau's "Beethoven," "Mozart," and
" Weber " are a few. Elise Polko's " Musical
Tales " have been translated into English. One
of the best of the German musical novels is com-
paratively recent, Ernst von Wolzogen's " Der
Kraft-Mayr," translated by Edward Breck and
Charles Harvey Genung as " Florian Mayr."
The book gives an excellent picture of the Liszt
circle at Weimar ; the composer is one of the lead-
ing figures of the story and James Huneker as-
serts that it is the best existing portrait of Liszt.
[303 ]

Interpretations

Of course he is only presented as a teacher in his
old age. Von Wolzogen, it will be remembered,
supplied Richard Strauss with the book for his
music drama, Feuersnot, yet to be given in Amer-
ica.

Elizabeth Sara Sheppard's " Charles Au-
chester," with which both the names of Mendels-
sohn and Sterndale Bennett are connected, is gen-
erally spoken of as the first musical novel in Eng-
lish. This is not strictly true. There were
earlier attempts. The fourth edition of " Musi-
cal Travels Through England " — by the late Joel
Collier (George Veal) was issued in 1776 and
" The Musical Tour of Dr. Minim, A. B. C. and
D. E. F. G. with a description of a new invented
instrument, a new mode of teaching music by ma-
chinery, and an account of the Gullabaic system in
general " appeared in London in 1818. There is
further " Maj or Piper ; or the adventures of a
Musical Drone " in five volumes by the Reverend
J. Thompson, the second edition of which ap-
peared in 1803, but there is less about music in
this novel than the title would imply. Since
" Charles Auchester " there has been indeed a
brood of musical novels. " Alcestis," dealing with
musical life in Dresden in the time of Hasse, ap-
peared in 1875. Jessie Fothergill ? s sentimental
[304]

Modern Musical Fiction

story, " The First Violin " was published in 1878.
Sometime later it was made into a play for Rich-
ard Mansfield. There are many others: George
Meredith's "Sandra Belloni" and " Vittoria,"
Kate Clark's "The Dominant Seventh," J.
Mitchell Chappie's "The Minor Chord," Edna
Lyall's "Doreen," Rita's "Countess Daphne,"
Marion Crawford's " A Roman Singer," Edward
L. Stevenson's " A Matter of Temperament,"
George Augustus Sala's " The Two Prima Don-
nas," J. H. Shorthouse's " A Teacher of the
Violin," A. M. Bagby's "Miss Traumerei," Jane
Kingsford's " The Soprano," Henry Harland's
"As It Was Written," Henry Fothergill Chor-
ley's " A Prodigy " (in three volumes, dedicated
to Charles Dickens), William Kennedy's "The
Prima Donna," Mrs. S. Samuel's " Cherry the
Singer," Hall Caine's " The Prodigal Son," Allen
Raine's " A Welsh Singer," Lucas Cleeve's " From
Crown to Cross," E. F. Benson's " Sheaves,"
George du Maurier's " Trilby," Anne Douglas
Sedgwick's (Mrs. Basil de Selincourt) "Tante,"
made into a play for Ethel Barrymore, Arnold
Bennett's "The Glimpse," John Philip Sousa's
" The Fifth String," Gustave Kobbe's " All-of-a-
Sudden Carmen," Delia Pratt Grant's " Travelli,
The Sorceress of Music," J. Meade Falkner's
[305 ]

Interp retations

"The Lost Stradivarius," Myrtle Reed's "The
Master's Violin," and H. A. Vachell's "The
Other Side." At least one of Walter Pater's
tales, " Denys l'Auxerrois," is based on a musical
theme, of a pagan boy who builds an organ, a
pretty fable told with emotion and rhythm. Two
of James Huneker's twelve volumes, " Meloma-
niacs " and " Visionaries," are devoted to short
stories on musical subjects.

Robert Hichens has written one musical novel,
" The Way of Ambition." The story is that of
an English composer, Claude Heath, married to an
ambitious young woman, Charmian, who deter-
mines to " make him." In this attempt she al-
most wrecks his career but after the complete fail-
ure of the opera she has urged him to write, he
asserts himself and makes her see the folly of try-
ing to direct the course of an artist. The begin-
ning of the struggle is most amusingly depicted:

" On the morning after the house-warming, when
a late breakfast, was finished, but while they were
still at the breakfast-table in the long and narrow
dining-room, which looked out on the quiet square,
Charmian said to her husband:

" ' I've been speaking to the servants, Claude.
I've told them about being very quiet to-day.'

" He pushed his tea-cup a little away from him.
[306]

Modern Musical Fiction

" ' Why ? ' he asked. ' I mean why specially to-
day? '

" ' Because of your composing. Alice is a good
girl, but she is a little inclined to be noisy some-
times. I've spoken to her seriously about it.'

" Alice was the parlour-maid. Charmian would
have preferred to have a man answer the door, but
she had sacrificed to economy, or thought she had
done so, by engaging a woman. As Claude said
nothing, Charmian continued:

" ' And another thing ! I've told them all that
you're never to be disturbed when you're in your
own room, that they're never to come to you with
notes, or the post, never to call you to the tele-
phone. I want you to feel that once you are
inside your own room you are absolutely safe, that
it is sacred ground.'

" ' Thank you, Charmian.'

" He pushed his cup farther away, with a move-
ment that was rather brusque, and got up.

" ' What about lunch to-day? Do you eat
lunch when you are composing? Do you want
something sent up to you? '

" « Well, I don't know. I don't think I shall
want any lunch to-day. You see we've break-
fasted late. Don't bother about me.'

" ' It isn't a bother. You know that, Claudie.
[307 J

Interp retations

But would you like a cup of coffee, tea, anything
at one o'clock ? '

" ' Oh, I scarcely know. I'll ring if I do.'
" He made a movement. Charmian got up.
" ' I do long to know what you are going to
work on,' she said, in a changed, almost mys-
terious, voice, which was not consciously assumed.

" Claude went up to the little room at the back
of the house. At this moment he would gladly,
thankfully, have gone anywhere else. But he felt
he was expected to go there. Five women, his
wife and the four maids, expected him to go there.
So he went. He shut himself in, and remained
there, caged."

We subsequently learn that he passed the time
that day, and many thereafter reading Carlyle's
" French Revolution." Now this is amusing.

Heath has a leaning towards Biblical subjects
for his inspiration but Charmian urges him to
write an opera ; she succeeds, indeed, in making him
do so and she also succeeds in disposing of it to
Jacob Crayford, an American impresario who
seems faintly modelled after Oscar Hammerstein.
A good part of the book is taken up with descrip-
tions of the writing of this opera (there is a strik-
ing passage descriptive of oriental music), its
[308 ]

Modern Musical Fiction

rehearsals, its performance, and its failure. Rob-
ert Hichens knows music (he was at one time a
music critic) and he knows the stage. These
scenes are carefully done, but he asks the New
York music critics to pass judgment on Heath's
opera without having seen or heard the rehearsals.
This is an inaccuracy. . . . One of the charac-
ters, a Frenchwoman, says, " English talent is not
for opera. The Te Deum, the cathedral service,
the oratorio form in one form or another, in fact
the thing with a sacred basis, that is where the
English strength lies." Mme. Sennier probably
overlooked the fact that England's two greatest
composers, Purcell and Sir Arthur Sullivan, did
write operas and that most of the oratorios popu-
lar in England were written by Germans. Heath
desires to write music for Francis Thompson's
" The Hound of Heaven " to the dismay of his
wife who reads him other poetry in an attempt
to set his. muse on the right road. " She re-read
Rossetti, Keats, Shelley, dipped into William Mor-
ris, — Wordsworth no — into Fiona Macleod,
William Watson, John Davidson, Alfred Noyes."
In the end, we are led to believe, Heath was well
on the road towards becoming another Elgar.

W. J. Henderson's musical romance, " The Soul
of a Tenor," is particularly wooden and lifeless.
[309]

I nterp retations

The characters are but puppets at the behest of a
not very skilful manipulator. The story con-
cerns Leandro Baroni (originally Leander Bar-
rett of Pittsburg) , a tenor at the Metropolitan Op-
era House, who through a love affair with a gypsy
soprano, Nagy Bosanska, finds " his soul," becomes
a great Tristan, and returns to his puritanic and
faithful American wife, from whom he had be-
come estranged. There are glimpses of other
singers, of rehearsals at the Metropolitan Opera
House, of performances of L'Africaine and other
operas. The author disclaims -any intention of
painting portraits of living models, with a brief
exception in favour of magnificent Lilli Lehman
rehearsing and singing Don Giovanni at Salzburg
(Baroni is the Ottavio), but surely Mrs. Harley
Manners, who attends morning musicales and re-
hearsals at the Opera, is an almost recognizable
character. There are amusing pages; that in
which the critics' views of Baroni are exposed is
the most diverting: "It was universally con-
ceded that he was in some ways the most gifted
tenor since Jean de Reszke. The ' Boston Her-
ald ' declared that he was far greater because one
night, when he had a cold, he sang out of tune,
and this the Boston man declared showed that he
was not a mere vocal machine. The ' Evening
[ 310 ]

Modern Musical Fiction

Post ' of New York fell at his feet because, when
made up for Lohengrin, he was the image of Max
Alvary. That he sang it like Campanini was not
mentioned. The ' Tribune ' published a depre-
catory essay two columns long after he sang Don
Ottavio in Mozart's inaccessible Don Giovanni
and a sprightly weekly printed eight pictures of
him and his shoes and stockings, with a Sunday
page giving an intimate account of his manner
of taking his morning bath and dressing for the
day. The ' American ' expressed regrets about
him because, being an American, he did not advo-
cate opera in English. The ' Sun ' went into
a profound analysis of his vocal method and his
treatment of recitative in all schools of opera,
showing thereby that he was a greater master of
the lyric art than Farinelli or Garat, singers of
whom the readers of the article had never heard,
and about whom, therefore, they cared absolutely
nothing. The ' Times ' asserted that he had
no method at all, and that this was what made
him a truly great singer." Erudition steeps this
pen, but why does Mr. Henderson, himself a music
critic, and therefore not liable to error, spell
Bruckner with an umlaut?

There are points of interest about Willa Sibert
Cather's recent musical novel, " The Song of the
[311]

Interp retations

Lark," although I do not think the book as a
whole can be considered successful. The Swed-
ish-American singer who plods through its pages
at the behest of the eyes of the reader was un-
doubtedly suggested by Olive Fremstad. The
first hundred pages of the book are the best.
Thea Kronborg growing up in Moonstone, Colo-
rado, and her childhood friends are thoroughly
delightful. The study years in Chicago and the
love scenes in the home of the Cliff Dwellers are
neither so interesting nor so true. Kronborg,
the artist, does not seem to be realized by Miss
Cather. The outlines of the completed figure are
much more vague than those of the original rough
sketch. Indeed as Thea grows older she seems to
elude the author more and more. . . . Thea's ar-
tistic soul is born before Jules Breton's picture
in the Chicago Art Institute ; hence the title. . . .
The fable is weak and the men who fill in the later
pages are mere lay figures. There is a brief
glimpse of Theodore Thomas and an arresting de-
scription of Pauline Viardot as Orphee. H. R.
Haweis's " Musical Memories " play a part in
Thea's early life. A Chicago soprano is drawn
rather skilfully. . . . Thea at the Metropolitan
Opera House sings Elsa, Sieglinde, Venus and
Elizabeth, Leonora (in Trovatore), and Fricka
[312]

Modern Musical Fiction

in Das Rheimgold. Here is a passage which de-
scribes Olive Fremstad as well as it does Thea
Kronborg: " It's the idea, the basic idea, pulsing
behind every bar she sings. She simplifies a char-
acter down to the musical idea it's built on, and
makes everything conform to that. The people
who chatter about her being a great actress don't
seem to get the notion of where she gets the no-
tion. It all goes back to her original endow-
ment, her tremendous musical talent. Instead of
inventing a lot of business and expedients to sug-
gest character, she knows the thing at the root,
and lets the musical pattern take care of her.
The score pours her into all those lovely postures,
makes the light and shadow go over her face,
lifts her and drops her. She lies on it, the way
she used to lie on the Rhine music. Talk about
rhythm ! "

There are many plays on musical subjects:
The Broken Melody, La Tosca, The Greater Love,
The Music Master, The Climax, The Tongues of
Men, Edward Knoblauch's Paganmi, Hermann
Bahr's The Concert, and Rene Fauchois's Bee-
thoven are a few. Frank Wedekind has written
two plays which may be included in the list: Der
Rammer Sanger, presented as The Tenor by the
Washington Square Players, and Musih.
[313 ]

II

Tower of Ivory

IT was to have been expected that Gertrude
Atherton, who allows no ink to drop idly
from her pen, would turn her attention to the
American girl as opera singer; in a flamboyant
and breathless romance, " Tower of Ivory," she
has done so, on the whole creditably. There is
considerable of reality about Margarete Styr,
once Peggy Hill of New York. Mrs. Atherton
has wisely set her history back in the last days
of the mad Ludwig of Bavaria, for there might
have been recognition scenes if she had made it
contemporaneous. The author has admitted that
Mottl-Fassbender was her model, but she has al-
lowed her imagination full rein. Mottl-Fass-
bender is not an American, nor has she ever sug-
gested a " tower of ivory " ; however, she cannot
be held responsible for Styr's. early life. Mrs.
Atherton's heroine was born in a mining camp,
the daughter of a poor miner, and passes her
childhood in dirty drudgery. Seduced by a drum-
mer, she is taken to New York where she passes
from one man to another until she falls into the
hands of a millionaire who begins her musical
education. By this time, however, she is so dis-
[314]

Tower of Ivory

gusted with the male sex that she runs away pres-
ently to join a travelling theatrical troupe. In
a short Pacific voyage, from one town to another,
she suffers shipwreck and her life is saved by a
boy who ties her to a floating mast, projecting
above the angry waves, and who clings to it des-
perately himself as there is no more rope. After
several hours she sees him drop below where he
is washed away, the helpless prey of the sea.
At this moment her soul is born, what Mrs. Ather-
ton calls the " Soul of an Artist." Remembering
her voice she goes to Europe. She begins to read.
One of the few books mentioned is " A Rebours."
These study years or months are elided. They
are dangerous ground for a novelist. It will be
remembered that George Moore neglected to fur-
nish them in " Evelyn Innes." When we first
meet the Styr, indeed, she has erased her past,
has become the reigning Wagnerian singer in
Munich, the favourite artist of Ludwig, and an
ascetic. She lives alone and is rarely to be seen
except on the stage. Shut up in her tower over
the Isar her personal life becomes a mystery.
Through this isolation a young Englishman,
charmingly characterized, much better done on
the whole than the Styr herself, breaks. As he
enters her house Mrs. Atherton describes it to
[315]

Interpretations

us. It is a relief to discover that the Styr has
as bad taste in house decoration as most singers.
Have you ever been in a prima donna's apart-
ment?

"She felt some vanity in displaying her salon
to one she knew instinctively possessed a culti-
vated and exacting taste. It was a large room
on the right of the entrance, with a row of alcoves
on the garden side, each furnished to represent
one of the purple flowers. The wood-work was
ivory white; the silk panels of the same shade
were painted with lilacs, pansies, asters, orchids,
or lilies, as if reflecting the alcoves. There was
but one picture, a full-length portrait of Styr as
Brynhildr, by Lenbach. The spindle-legged fur-
niture was covered with pale brocades and not
aggressive of any period. It was distinctly a
' Styr Room,' as her admirers, who were admitted
on the first Sunday of the month, had long since
agreed, while sealing it with their approval."

Styr's repertoire includes the Brunnhildes,
Isolde, Kundry, Elizabeth and Venus, Iphigenia,
the Countess in Figaro, Katherina in The Tam-
ing of the Shrew, Leonora in Fidelio, Donna Anna,
Aida, and Dido in Les Troyens. She is indeed
the " hochdramatisch " of the Hoftheater in
Munich. She gives command performances of
[ 316 ]

Tower of Ivory

Parsifal, Gotterdammerwng, and Tristan before
Ludwig, always at midnight, the favourite hour
of that remarkable monarch. On one occasion
she smuggles her young Englishman in and he
hears the king heave a deep sigh, presumably be-
cause after death he will have no further oppor-
tunities for enjoying the music of Wagner. . . .
When we first meet the Styr she sings alone, by
command, at Neuschwanstein, the country palace
of Ludwig, at midnight and out of doors, on a
bridge which crosses a mountain torrent. Her
selections, chosen by the monarch, include Kun-
dry's appearance to Klingsor, Act II, Scene I of
Parsifal, part of the ensuing scene, the Cry of the
Valkyries, and finally a group of songs. This
reads very much like a description of Mme. Gad-
ski appearing with the Philharmonic Society.
The Styr, however, sings unaccompanied, without
orchestra or piano !

There is a long account of her Isolde. We
are told that by the expression of her eyes alone
she can fix the mood of her audience. Her
powers of suggestion are uncanny. On one occa-
sion she shows the Englishman how she would play
Mrs. Alving:

" ' I won't permit you to question my right to
be called an actress ! You remember the scene in
[317]

Interp retations

Ghosts in which Mrs. Alving listens to Oswald's
terrible revelation? '

" He nodded, holding his breath. She did not
rise, nor repeat a word of the play, but he watched
her skin turn grey, her muscles bag, the withering
cracking soul stare through her eyes. Every
part of her face expressed a separate horror, and
he could have sworn that her hair turned white."

Mrs. Siddons, according to report, could move
a roomful of people to tears merely by repeating
the word, " Hippopotamus " with varying stress.

As Isolde the Styr gives another example of
this power, " staring at the phials in the casket
while the idea of death matured in her desperate
brain, — death for herself as well as for the man
that betrayed her, — raised her head slowly, her
body to its full height. She looked the very
genius of death, a malign fate awaiting its mo-
ment to settle upon the ripest fruits, the blithest
hopes. A subtle gesture of her hand seemed to
deprive it of its flesh, leave it a talon which held
a scythe; by the same token one saw the skeleton
under the blue robe; her mouth twisted into a
grin, her eyes sank. It was all over in half a
minute, it was but a fleeting suggestion, but it
flashed out upon every sensitive soul present a
picture of the charnel house, the worm, death
[318]

Tower of Ivory

robbed of its poetry, stripped to the bones by
the hot blasts from that caldron of hate."

We learn that " No other Isolde has ever been
as great as Styr, for no other has been able to
suggest this ferocious approach of a devastating
force, this hurricane sweeping across the mind's
invisible plain, tearing at the very foundations of
life. And all this she expressed before singing
a note, with her staring moving eyes, her eloquent
body, still and concealed as it was, a gesture of
the hand. . . . When she started up, crying out
to the wind and waves to shatter the ship the pas-
sion in her voice hardly expressed the rage con-
suming her in plainer terms than that first long
silent moment had done."

Brain, says Styr, all brain : " ' You give no
stage artist the credit of a brain, I suppose?
Can you imagine a born actress — born, mind
you — living her part, yet never quite shaking
loose from that strong grip above? That is
what is meant by " living a part." You abandon
yourself deliberately — with the whole day's prep-
aration — into that other personality, almost to
a soul in possession, and are not your own self
for one instant ; although the purely mental part
of that self never relaxes its vigilance over the
usurper. It is a curious dual experience that
[319]

Interp retations

none but an artist can understand. Of course
that perfect duality is only possible after years
of study, work, practical experience, mastery of
technique. . . . Most singers have no brain, no
mental life; they must be taught their roles like
parrots, they put on a simulation of art with
their costumes which deceives the great stupid
public and touches no one. Mere emotionalism,
animal robustness, they call temperament. I
strengthened and developed my brain during those
terrible years to such an extent that I now act
out of it, think myself into every part, relying
not at all upon the instructions of the uninspired,
nor upon chance.' "

However, even brainy prima donnas with dis-
gust for all men in their hearts are occasionally
exposed to emotional storms, thinks Mrs. Ather-
ton. The departure of Ordham for England and
his subsequent marriage (there had never been
talk of love or marriage between Ordham and
Styr; their relationship up to this time had been
idealistic) threw Styr into a frightful state. The
bad news came to her on a Tristan night. She
flung aside her carefully studied gestures, her pre-
pared effects, and stormed through the music
drama. Afterwards she felt that this perform-
ance had been so electrifying that any return to
[320 ]

Tower of Ivory

her original conception of the role would be con-
sidered as an anti-climax. So she steadfastly
refused to sing Isolde in Munich again. As a
matter of fact this was probably the worst per-
formance she had ever given.

There are descriptions of the singer as Briinn-
hilde : " In Die Wcdkiire she made her alter-
nately the jubilant sexless favourite of Wotan,
shadowed subtly with her impending womanhood,
and the goddess of aloof and immutable calm,
Will personified, even when moved to pity. In
Gotterdammerung, particularly of late, she had
portrayed her as woman epitomized, arguing that
all great women had the ichor of the goddess in
their veins, and that primal woman was but the
mother of sex modified (sometimes) but not re-
made. In the last act of Siegfried her voice was
wholly dramatic and expressed her delight at com-
ing into her woman's inheritance in ecstatic cries,
almost shouts, which were never to be forgotten
by any that heard them, and stirred the primal
inheritance in the veriest butterfly of the court.
In this beautiful love scene of Gotterdammerwng,
the last of the tetralogy, her voice was lyric,
rich and round and full, as her voice must always
be, but stripped of its darker quality, and while
by no means angelic, a character with which she
[321 ]

I nterp retations

could invest it when portraying the virgin Eliza-
beth, was as sweet and clear and triumphant as
if bent upon giving the final expression to the first
love of woman alloyed with knowledge." Some-
where else in the book there is another clue to
her conception of the role of Briinnhilde : " Of
late Styr had played the character consistently
to the end as a woman. But to-night she ap-
peared to defer once more to Wagner — possibly
to the King — and to be about to symbolize the
' negation of the will to live,' the eternal sacri-
fice of woman, the immolation of self; although
she had contended, and for that reason sang no
more at Bayreuth, that such an interpretation
was absurd as a finale for Briinnhilde, no matter
what its beauty and truth in the abstract. The
gods were doomed, her renouncement of life did
not save them, and as for the sacrifice of woman
to man, that she had accomplished twice over.
Briinnhilde died as other women had died since,
and doubtless before, in the hope of uniting with
the spirit of her man, and because life was become
abhorrent."

In the scene with Siegfried disguised as Gunther
Styr made another of those physical transforma-
tions which so startled her audiences ; at the close
of the drama she mounted her horse and rode
[322]

Tower of Ivory

straight into the flames. Mrs. Atherton says that
only " Vogel " had done this before her. Prob-
ably she refers to Therese Vogl, a favourite Wag-
nerian singer in Munich in the Eighties and early
Nineties. According to report Vogl (or was it
Rosa Sucher?) did indeed mount the horse and
charge into the wings, whereupon a dummy
mounted on a papier tnache horse was swung
across the back of the stage into the flames. A
substitution of this sort is in vogue in the Witch's
ride in Hansel wnd Gretel at the Metropolitan
Opera House. There have been those who have
danced the Dance of the Seven Veils in Salome;
there have been tenors who have taken the ter-
rific falls of Pra Diavolo or of Matha in Sa-
lamvibo, but I have never heard of a Brunnhilde
who has been brave enough to ride her Grane
into the flames. Not trusting my own memory
I asked Tom Bull, who has seen all the perform-
ances of the Wagner dramas at the Metropolitan
since they were first produced there. He said
that no soprano had ever attempted the feat at
that house. " We've had but one Brunnhilde that
would dare do it and that's Premstad. She never
did, however. No one ever did here. Why, we've
had the same horse for years, a tame old creature,
and even now he baulks on occasion." As luck
[323 ]

Interp retations

would have it that very day this nag gave the
occupants of the stage some trouble!

There is an amusing scene depicting the effect
of Wagner on the artistic temperament. Those
of us who have been unfortunate enough to have
visited singers in their dressing-rooms on such
occasions will appreciate the following account:

" He (Ordham) had made his way across the
back of the stage, passed opened doors of supers
who were frankly disrobing, too hungry to observe
the minor formalities, and was approaching the
room of the prima donna, when its door was sud-
denly flung open, a little man was rushed out by
the collar, twirled round, and hurled almost at
his feet. The Styr, her hair down, her face livid,
her eyes blazing shouted hoarsely at the object
of her wrath, who took to his heels. The mtend-
ant rushed upon the scene. Styr screamed out
that the minor official had dared come to her
dressing-room with a criticism upon the set of
her wig, and that if ever she were spoken to again
at the close of a performance by any member of
the staff, from the intendant down, she would
leave Munich the same night. The great func-
tionary fled, for she threatened to box his ears
unless he took himself out of her sight, and the
Styr, stormed up and down, beat the scenery
[324]

Tower of Ivory

with her hands, stamped, hissed, her pallor deep-
ening every second, until it was like white fire.
Ordham half fascinated, half convulsed, at this
glimpse of the artistic temperament in full blast,
stared at her with his mouth open. She looked
like some fury of the coal-pit, flying up from the
sooty galleries on the wings of her voice. Her
words had been delivered with a strange broad
burring accent, which Ordham found more puz-
zling than her tantrum.

" Suddenly she caught sight of him. If pos-
sible her fury waxed.

" ' You ! You ! ' she screamed. ' Go ! Get out
of here! How dare you come near me? I hate
you ! I hate the whole world when I have finished
an opera ! They ought to give me somebody to
kill ! Go ! I don't care whether you ever speak
to me again or not — ' "

Later she apologizes and explains : " ' It is
all over a few hours later, after I have taken a
long walk in the Englischergarten, then eaten a
prosaic supper of cold ham and fowl, eggs per-
chance, and salad! But for an hour after these
triumphs I pay ! I pay ! ' " Mrs. Atherton, per-
haps, has idealized her heroine when she gives her
better manners in private life : " ' Tantrums do
not hurt a prima donna; in fact they are of use
[ 325 J

Interp retations

in inspiring the authorities with awe. But in
private life — well, the price I sometimes had to
pay was too high. I soon stopped throwing
things about like a fishwife; and all the rest of
it.' "

Evelyn Lines, it will be remembered, gave her-
self to Ulick Dean after a performance of Tristan.
One of the characters of " The Way of Ambition "
says : " The Empress Frederick told a friend of
mine that no one who had not lived in Germany,
and observed German life closely, could under-
stand the evil spread through the country by
Wagner's Tristan." " It is no wonder," says
Mrs. Atherton, " the Germans keep on calling for
more sensation, more thrill with an insatiety which
will work the ruin of music and drama in their
nation unless some genius totally different from
Wagner rises and diverts them into safer chan-
nels. Beyond Wagner in his own domain there
is nothing but sensationalism. Rather he took
all the gold out of the mine he discovered and left
but base alloy for the misguided disciples."

Margarete Styr was not engaged by Walter
Damrosch to sing in New York although there
seems to have been correspondence between them.
But she did sing in London under Hans Richter
and made a great success there. Her roles seem
[326 J

Tower of Ivory

to have been the three Briinnhildes, Isolde, and
Elizabeth. It was not felt that London was
sophisticated enough to sit through her very
voluptuous representation of Venus; so an older,
fatter singer was put in the part and much of
the scene was cut. Styr made her appearance as
Elizabeth in the second act after the boxes were
filled. Queen Victoria, having heard rumours of
Peggy Hill's life in New York, refused to meet the
Styr socially, did not entertain her at Bucking-
ham or Windsor, but everybody else in London
seems to have invited her.

[ 8S7 ]

Ill

Love Among the Artists

BERNARD SHAW wrote " Love Among the
, Artists " in 1881, but of all his published
novels (the first of the five has never
been printed) it was the last to reach the public;
it was published serially in " Our Corner " in
1887—8. The author has never professed admi-
ration for any of these early works. Dixon Scott
calls Shaw the " son of Donizetti's Lucrezia
Borgia," and the Irishman concedes the truth of
this description when he says " I was brought up
in an atmosphere in which two of the main con-
stituents were Italian opera and complete free-
dom of thought." He has written musical criti-
cism and one complete book on music, " The
Perfect Wagnerite " ; all through his work run
references to the tonal art, expertly expressed and
adroitly placed. " Love Among the Artists " is
far from being a completely satisfactory novel
but on its musical side, at least, it is very divert-
ing, and it is much more modern in its comments
than most of the musical novels of a couple of
decades later. In a preface the author explains
his purpose, " I had a notion of illustrating the
[328]

Love Among the Artists

difference between the enthusiasm for the fine arts
which people gather from reading about them, and
the genuine artistic faculty which cannot help
creating, interpreting, or at least unaffectedly en-
joying music and pictures." There are actresses
and painters in the book but the most clearly out-
lined characters are musicians, an English com-
poser (did such a good one ever exist?) and a
Polish pianist. Both are delightfully limned and
although it has been my misfortune up to date
to meet softer-spirited and less noble-minded com-
posers than Owen Jack who is done in the grand
manner, modelled somewhat after Beethoven, at
least the lady pianist is like the average interpre-
tative instrumental artist.

We first meet Mme. Aurelie Szczymplica at the
rehearsal of Jack's Fantasia by the Antient
Orpheus Society. She has consented to introduce
the new music to England; indeed so highly does
she regard the composition, although she does
not know the composer, that she has prevailed
upon the directors of the Society to reverse their
unfavourable decision in regard to its perform-
ance. Accompanied by her mother she comes in
bundled in furs, and asks the conductor to re-
hearse the Fantasia first, although she avows her
intention of remaining to hear the orchestra go
[ 329 ]

Interp retations

through with the rest of the programme. Jack
is allowed to conduct his own work. The first
section goes pretty well.

" But when a theme marked andante cantabile,
which formed the middle section of the fantasia,
was commenced by the pianist, Jack turned to
her ; said ' Quicker, quicker. Plus vite '; and be-
gan to mark his beat by striking the desk. She
looked at him anxiously; played a few bars in
the time indicated by him ; and then threw up her
hands and stopped.

" ' I cannot,' she exclaimed. ' I must play it
more slowly or not at all.'

" ' Certainly, it shall be slower if you desire
it,' said the elder lady from the steps. Jack
looked at her as he sometimes looked at Mrs.
Simpson. ' Certainly it shall not be slower, if
all the angels desired it,' he said, in well pro-
nounced but barbarously ungrammatical French.
' Go on ; and take the time from my beat.'

" The Polish lady shook her head ; folded her
hands in her lap; and looked patiently at the
music before her. There was a moment of si-
lence, during which Jack, thus mutely defied,
glared at her with distorted features. Manlius
rose irresolutely. Jack stepped down from the
desk; handed him the stick; and said in a smoth-
[330]

Love Among the Artists

ered voice, ' Be good enough to conduct this lady's
portion of the fantasia. When my music recom-
mences, I will return.' "

After the lady has had her way Jack is con-
vinced that it is better than his !

She plays at the concert, appears in society,
and immediately fascinates the stupidest young
man in the book, Adrian Herbert, who breaks his
engagement with an English lady to marry her.
He paints very badly and his favourite composer
is Mendelssohn. He sees nothing in Jack and his
artist-wife acquires a great contempt for his
opinions. They begin to quarrel soon after they
are married; and each quarrel is usually followed
by a passionate reunion. There is no question
about her preferring her piano to her husband.
Her mother is a mere automaton. Aurelie's
world revolves around her ambition. Yet she is
a lady. She would not promise to marry Adrian
until he had secured his release from his engage-
ment with the English girl ; her manners in general
are good. She is always, however, coldly self-
sufficient. She does not speak English very flu-
ently and like all artists she is susceptible to flat-
tery, so that when an American utters some stupid
commonplaces in the language she only half un-
derstands she gives him credit for possessing a
[331]

Interp retations

high degree of intelligence. A baby is born to
this ill-assorted pair and this baby provides the
occasion for one of the most deliciously humorous
scenes in the book :

" Mary was in the act of handing the child care-
fully back to Madame Szczymplica, when Aurelie
interposed swiftly ; tossed it up to the ceiling ; and
caught it dexterously. Adrian stepped forward
in alarm; Madame uttered a Polish exclamation;
and the baby itself growled angrily. Being sent
aloft a second time, it howled with all its might.

" ' Now you shall see,' said Aurelie, suddenly
placing it, supine, kicking and screaming, on the
pianoforte. She then began to play the Skaters'
Quadrille from Meyerbeer's opera of The Prophet.
The baby immediately ceased to kick ; became si-
lent ; and lay still with the bland expression of a
dog being scratched, or a lady having her hair
combed.

" ' It has a vile taste in music,' she said, when
the performance was over. ' It is old fashioned
in everything. Ah yes. Monsieur Sutherland:
would you kindly pass the little one to my
mother.' "

Owen Jack is the type of high-tempered, ridic-
ulously natural (without a trace of self-conscious-
ness) composer, with, it must be added, a strong
[332]

Love Among the Artists

strain of romanticism in his blood. He does not
resemble Percy Grainger, Cyril Scott, Claude De-
bussy, Giacomo Puccini, or Engelbert Humper-
dinck. He is discovered on a park bench in the
first chapter of the book, where, overhearing an
old gentleman bemoaning his inability to find a
tutor for his son; he applies for the position.
Thus the author describes his first appearance:
" He was a short, thick-chested young man, in
an old creased frock coat, with a worn-out hat
and no linen visible. His skin, pitted by small-
pox, seemed grained with black, as though he had
been lately in a coal-mine, and had not yet suc-
ceeded in towelling the coal-dust from his pores.
He sat with his arms folded, staring at the ground
before him. One hand was concealed under his
arm : the other displayed itself, thick in the palm,
with short fingers, and nails bitten to the quick.
He was clean shaven, and had a rugged, resolute
mouth, a short nose, marked nostrils, dark eyes,
and black hair, which curled over his low, broad
forehead." Jack is engaged, after queries have
been made and more or less satisfactory replies
have been received in regard to his past, and goes
to the Sutherland home at Windsor where he pro-
ceeds to pound the spinet into bits, to rag the
servants, to express his frank opinions of Adrian's
[333 ]

Interpretations

vile painting, and finally after he has alienated
most of the household, to precipitate a situation
of ejection by bringing a drunken soldier to the
house to play the clarinet. On the way to Lon-
don he bursts into a first class compartment, oc-
cupied by an old man, who has bribed the guard
to be allowed to travel alone, and his daughter,
Magdalen, who is being taken home a prisoner
from the delights of life on the stage. A most
outrageous squabble follows. Once in the Lon-
don station the girl sees a chance to escape and
presses Jack to accept a ring in return for cab
fare. He empties his pockets into her hands, with
a gesture of gallantry, gold, silver, copper, about
four pounds altogether, and refuses the ring, but
she sends a porter after him with it. Later Jack
gives Magdalen lessons in speaking, teaches her
how to use her voice, and she becomes a successful
actress, a state of affairs which her family accepts
with resignation. Jack also enters into an en-
gagement to teach singing to a class of young
ladies, who arouse his deepest ire. Genius in its
old age is sometimes able to give instruction with-
out losing its temper ; never in youth. As a mat-
ter of fact great interpretative artists, great com-
posers, are never the best teachers. Jack as a
teacher is impossible. On one occasion he inter-
[334]

Love Among the Artists

rupts a lesson to leave the room in a rage ; asked
when he will return he snaps, " Never ! " But he
comes back for the next lesson as if nothing had
happened, and indeed, so far as he was concerned,
nothing had. His landlady gives a further il-
luminating description of Jack as a teacher :

" ' I got him a stationer's daughter from High
Street to teach. After six lessons, if you'll be-
lieve it, Miss, and she as pleased as anything with
the way she was getting along, he told the sta-
tioner that it was waste of money to have the girl
taught, because she had no qualification but vanity.
So he lost her; and now she has lessons at four
guineas a dozen from a lady that gets all the
credit for what he taught her. Then Simpson's
brother-in-law got him a place in a chapel in the
Edgeware Road to play the harmonium and train
the choir. But they couldn't stand him. He
treated them as if they were dogs ; and the three
richest old ladies in the congregation, who had led
the singing for forty-five years, walked out the
second night, and said they wouldn't enter the
chapel till he was gone. When the minister re-
buked him, he up and said that if he was a God
and they sang to him like that, he'd scatter 'em
with lightning ! ' "

In a sudden outburst Jack explains himself to
[ 335 ]

Interpretations

a lady who has been instrumental in getting him
pupils : " ' Here am I, a master of my profes-
sion — no easy one to master — rotting, and
likely to continue rotting unheard in the midst of
a pack of shallow panders, who make a hotch-potch
of what they can steal from better men, and share
the spoil with the corrupt performers who thrust
it upon the public for them. Either this, of the
accursed drudgery of teaching, or grinding an
organ at the pleasure of some canting villain of a
parson, or death by starvation, is the lot of a
musician in this country. I have, in spite of
this, never composed one page of music bad
enough for publication or performance. I have
drudged with pupils when I could get them, starved
in a garret when I could not ; endured to have my
works returned to me unopened or declared inexe-
cutable by shop-keepers and lazy conductors;
written new ones without any hope of getting even
a hearing for them; dragged myself by excess of
this fruitless labour out of horrible fits of despair
that come out of my own nature ; and throughout
it all have neither complained nor prostituted my-
self to write shopware. I have listened to com-
placent assurances that publishers and concert-
givers are only too anxious to get good original
work — that it is their own interest to do so. As
[336]

Love Among the Artists

if the dogs would know original work if they saw
it: or rather as if they would not instinctively
turn away from anything good and genuine ! All
this I have borne without suffering from it —
without the humiliation of finding it able to give
me one moment of disappointment or resentment;
and now you tell me that I have no patience, be-
cause I have no disposition to humour the caprices
of idle young ladies.' "

This is most excellent stuff and there is more
of it. Of Jack as a composer we have several
glimpses, but from the scene in which he pays the
drunken clarinettist to play a part in his Fantasia
so that he may know how it will sound, it is fore-
ordained that he will become a great figure. I
must omit the very amusing preliminary negotia-
tions, the prolonged exchange of notes, which pre-
lude the performance of Jack's Fantasia by the
Antient Orpheus Society. But an incident of the
rehearsal is too good to leave unquoted, especially
as it will remind readers of a similar incident in
the life of Hugo Wolf, used by Romain Holland
in his novel, " Jean-Christophe." But Shaw im-
agined the scene before it happened to Wolf ! To
be sure with a happier ending. The Antient Or-
pheus Society is any Philharmonic Society, con-
ductor, board of directors and all, to the life. I
[337]

Interpretations

suppose they are like that in Abyssinia if they are
so unfortunate as to have philharmonic orchestras
there. The plot of Wagner's Die Meistersinger is
enacted season after season at the meetings of the
doddering old fools who controll the destinies of
the society. The fussy old idiots take creaking
cautious steps towards the future. These are
fully described . . . and finally the rehearsal in
the great Chapter IX:

" Jack had rapped the desk sharply with his
stick, and was looking balefully at the men, who
did not seem in any hurry to attend to him. He
put down the stick; stepped from the desk; and
stooped to the conductor's ear.

" ' I mentioned,' he said, ' that some of the parts
ought to be given to the men to study before re-
hearsal. Has that been done? '

" Manlius smiled. ' My dear sir,' he said, ' I
need hardly tell you that players of such stand-
ing as the members of the Antient Orpheus or-
chestra do not care to have suggestions of that
kind offered to them. You have no cause to be
uneasy. They can play anything — absolutely
anything, at sight.'

" Jack looked black, and returned to his desk
without a word. He gave one more rap with his
stick, and began. The players were attentive, but
[338]

Love Among the Artists

many of them tried not to look so. For a few
bars, Jack conducted under some restraint, ap-
parently striving to repress a tendency to ex-
travagant gesticulation. Then, as certain combi-
nations and progressions sounded strange and
farfetched, slight bursts of laughter were heard.
Suddenly the first clarinettist, with an exclamation
of impatience, put down his instrument.

" ' Well? ' shouted Jack. The music ceased.

" ' I can't play that,' said the clarinettist
shortly.

" ' Can you play it? ' said Jack, with suppressed
rage, to the second clarinettist.

" ' No,' said he. ' Nobody could play it.'

" ' That passage has been played ; and it must
be played. It has been played by a common sol-
dier.'

" ' If a common soldier ever attempted it, much
less played it,' said the first clarinettist, with some
contemptuous indignation at what he considered
an evident falsehood, ' he must have been drunk.'
There was a general titter at this.

" Jack visibly wrestled with himself for a mo-
ment. Then, with a gleam of humour like a flash
of sunshine through a black thundercloud , he said :
'You are right. He was drunk.' The whole
band roared with laughter.
[339]

Interp retations

" ' Well, / am not drunk,' said the clarinettist,
folding his arms.

" ' But will you not just try wh ' Here

Jack, choked by the effort to be persuasive and
polite, burst out raging : ' It can be done. It
shall be done. It must be done. You are the
best clarinet player in England. I know what
you can do.' And Jack shook his fists wildly at
the man as if he were accusing him of some in-
famous crime. But the compliment was loudly ap-
plauded, and the man reddened, not altogether
displeased. A cornist who sat near him said
soothingly. in an Irish accent, ' Aye do, Joe. Try
it.'

" ' You will : you can,' shouted Jack reassur-
ingly, recovering his self-command. ' Back to the
double bar. Now ! ' The music recommenced,
and the clarinettist, overborne, took up his in-
strument, and when the passage was reached,
played it easily, greatly to his own astonishment.
The brilliancy of the effect, too, raised him for a
time into a prominence which rivalled that of the
pianist. The orchestra interrupted the movement
to applaud it; and Jack joined in with high good
humour.

" ' If you are uneasy about it,' he said, with an
[340 ]

Love Among the Artists

undisguised chuckle, ' I can hand it over to the
violins.'

" ' Oh, no, thank you,' said the clarinettist.
' Now I've got it, I'll keep it.' "

There are many, many more delightful pages in
this very delightful book. We see Jack, at the
request of a young lady that he play Thalberg's
Moses in Egypt, satisfying her with improvised
variations of his own on themes from Rossini's
opera; on another occasion he improvises on
themes from the second symphony of an old sec-
ond-rate English composer, one of the patrons
of the Antient Orpheus Society. Finally we see
him the completely arrived master with his music
for Shelley's " Prometheus Unbound " : " four
scenes with chorus ; a dialogue of Prometheus
with the earth; an antiphony of the earth and
moon ; an overture ; and a race of the hours."

[341]

IV
Maurice Guest

HENRY HANDEL RICHARDSON'S
" Maurice Guest " was issued by Heine*
maim in London in 1908. Sometime later
an American edition appeared. Otto Neustatter's
German translation was published in Berlin by
G. Fischer in 1912. The book seems to exist in
the New York Public Library only in its German
form. A search through the English "Who's
Who ? " and kindred manuals of biography re-
vealed no information about the author. Lately
I have learned that Henry Handel Richardson is
a pseudonym, assumed with much mystery by a
Australian lady, herself a musician and at one
time a music student at Leipzig. She has already
published a second novel and a third is on the
press, I believe.

Mr. Richardson (for convenience I retain the
author's symbol) has dealt with what is generally
ignored in imaginative works about musicians,
the study years. " Maurice Guest " is a novel of
music student life in Leipzig. With unfaltering
authority and a skilful pen he has drawn such a
hectic picture of this existence (from my knowl-
[342]

Maurice Guest

edge of a similar life in Paris I should say that
it is not overdrawn) as should frighten any Amer-
ican mother to the point of preventing her off-
spring from embarking on a musical career which
shall require any such preparation. Indeed if
mere students in Germany indulge in such riots of
emotion what can be expected of virtuosi I should
like to know !

The character of the title is an English boy,
no colossal exception, no abnormality . . . rather
the average boy who takes up music for a voca-
tion without having much reason for doing so.
His somewhat negative, romantic, sentimental, but
very serious temperament quickly involves him in
the maelstrom of student sex life, in which, for
him, there is no escape. He fails in his piano
studies while others, more brilliantly equipped for
the career of an artist, quickly speed to their goals,
at the same time living disordered and drunken
existences. It is the tragedy of the real artist
and the man who thinks he is one written in terms
of the student. Tchekov in one of his greatest
plays, The Seagull, compares the two types, as
Trigorin and Treplieff, on another plane, of
course. Frank Wedekind, too, in MusUc, has
dealt with the subject. Of the thousands of music
students in Germany only a comparatively few
[ 343 ]

Interpretations

develop into artists, while of those who master
the art, still fewer are capable of profiting finan-
cially by it. The central character of Musik,
Klara Huhnerwadel, is a neurotic girl, insanely
in love with her singing teacher. The play has a
tragic and, according to Wedekind's wont, a bit-
terly ironic ending. In Mr. Richardson's book,
Maurice, who is not unlike Octavius in Man and
Superman, indeed not unlike Hamlet, is contrasted
with a brilliant and unscrupulous Polish violinist,
Schilsky, successful in love, successful as a vir-
tuoso, successful as a composer. He not only
plays the violin like a master, but we are told he
plays a dozen other instruments better than well ;
we are given a description of his piano playing.
Like Richard Strauss he has written a tone-poem
suggested by Nietzsche's " Zarathustra." He is
an excellent chef d'orchestre. His amatory ad-
ventures are conducted with an unscrupulous eye
on the pocket books of his conquests. He lives on
women, especially one woman, who, however, can-
not hold his attention, even by paying freely.
Despised by the town, there is scarcely a woman
who is not in love with him, scarcely a man who
is not his friend. All admire his genius. Here
is a picture of the man, which you might place
next to the conventional description of the musi-
[344]

Maurice Guest

cian composing in a garden, surrounded by night-
ingales and gardenias, dreaming of angels. Re-
gard this Saint Cecil :

" In the middle of the room, at the corner of
a bare deal table that was piled with loose music
and manuscript, Schilsky sat improving and cor-
recting the tails and bodies of hastily made notes.
He was still in his nightshirt, over which he had
thrown coat and trousers ; and, wide open at the
neck, it exposed to the waist a skin of the dead
whiteness peculiar to red-haired people. His
face, on the other hand, was sallow .and unfresh ;
and the reddish rims of the eyes, and the coarsely
self-indulgent mouth, contrasted strikingly with
the general youthfulness of his appearance. He
had the true musician's head : round as a cannon-
ball, with a vast, bumpy forehead, on which the
soft fluffy hair began far back, and stood out
like a nimbus. His eyes were either desperately
dreamy or desperately sharp, never normally at-
tentive or at rest ; his blunted nose and chin were
so short as to make the face look top-heavy. A
carefully tended young moustache stood straight
out along his cheeks. He had large slender hands
and quick movements.

" The air of the room was like a thin grey veil-
ing, for all three puffed hard at cigarettes.
[ 345 ]

Interpretations

Without removing his. from between his teeth,
Schilsky related an adventure of the night before.
He spoke in jerks, with a strong lisp, and was
more intent on what he was doing- than on what
he was saying.

"'Do you think he'd budge?' he asked in a
quick sputtery way. ' Not he. Till nearly two.
And then I couldn't get him along. He thought
it wasn't eleven, and wanted to stop at every cor-
ner. To irritate an imaginary bobby. He dis-
puted with them too. Heavens, what sport it
was ! At last I dragged him up here and got him
on the sofa. Off he rolls again. So I let him lie.
He didn't disturb me.'

" Heinrich Krafft, the hero of the episode, lay
on the short, uncomfortable sofa, with the table-
cover for a blanket. In answer to Schilsky, he
said faintly, without opening his eyes : ' Nothing
would. You are an ox. When I wake this morn-
ing with a mouth like gum arabic, he sits there
as if he had not stirred all night. Then to bed,
and snores till midday, through all the hellish
light and noise.'

" Here Fiirst could not resist making a little
joke. He announced himself by a chuckle —
like the click of a clock about to strike.

" ' He's got to make the most of his liberty.
[ 346 ]

Maurice Guest

He doesn't often get off duty. We know, we
know.' He laughed tonelessly and winked at
Krafft.

"Krafft quoted:

" ' In der Woche zwier.'

" ' Now you fellows, shut up ! ' said Schilsky.
It was plain that banter of this kind was not
disagreeable to him; at the same time he was just
at the moment too engrossed, to have more than
half an ear for what was said. With his short-
sighted eyes close to the paper, he was listening
with all his might to some harmonies that his
fingers played on the table. When, a few min-
utes later, he rose and stretched the stiffness from
his limbs, his face, having lost its expression of
rapt concentration, seemed suddenly to have grown
younger."

The conflict in this novel is expressed through
Louise, one of those young women with a certain
amount of money who find food for the gratifica-
tion of their sex desires in the atmosphere of a
music school town. She it is who, thrown aside
by Schilsky, creeps back literally on her knees
to beg him to renew their love ; she it is who lav-
ishes attention and money on his quite careless
indifference ; and she it is to whom Maurice Guest
[347]

Interp retations

devotes his love. Schilsky goes away without a
word, and Louise, abandoned, in utter grief ac-
cepts the attentions of Maurice, at first without
enthusiasm, later at least with gratitude, but
when she has at length become his mistress the
shadow of her past continually haunts Maurice;
continually he drags it over their altar of love,
polluting the oblations with his frantic suspicions.
The psychology of these scenes, protracted to
the wearying point, is so completely satisfying
that they seem almost autobiographical. Here is
a typical scene in which the comparison is laid
bare:

" ' Or tell me,' Maurice said abruptly with a
ray of hope ; ' tell me the truth about it all for
once. Was it mere exaggeration, or was he really
worth so much more than all the rest of us? Of
course he could play — I know that — but so can
many a fool. But all the other part of it —
his incredible talent, or luck in everything he
touched — was it just report, or was it really
something else? — tell me.'

" ' He was a genius,' she answered, very coldly
and distinctly; and her voice warned him once
more that he was trespassing on ground to which
he had no right. But he was too excited to take
the warning.

[348 J

Maurice Guest

" ' A genius ! ' he echoed. ' He was a genius !
Yes, what did I tell you? Your very words imply
a comparison as you say them. For I? — what
am I? A miserable bungler, a wretched dilettant
— or have you another word for it ? Oh, never
mind — don't be afraid to say it ! — I'm not sen-
sitive to-night. I can bear to hear your real
opinion of me ; for it could not possibly be lower
than my own. Let us get at the truth at once,
by all means!-— But what I want to know,' he
cried a moment later, ' is, why one should be given
so much and the other so little. To one all the
talents and all your love; and the other unhappy
wretch remains an outsider his whole life long.
When you speak in that tone about him, I could
wish with all my heart that he had been no better
than I am. It would give me pleasure to know
that he, too, had only been a dabbling amateur —
the victim of a pitiable wish to be what he hadn't
the talent for.' "

At length Schilsky returns and Maurice be-
comes in truth Don Jose, to the Carmen (her
favourite opera) of Louise. She frankly admits
that the Pole is her only passion, and Maurice,
who lacks the stamina of his Spanish prototype,
brings the book to a satisfactory conclusion by
killing himself. . . . There is a short final scene
[ 349 J

I nterp retations

in which we get a glimpse of Louise as Mme.
Schilsky.

There is nothing jerky about the telling of
this sordid story; nothing jars. It is done with
a direction and a vivid attention to the matter in
hand which is very arresting, and such atmos-
pheric episodes as decorate its progress only aid
in the elaborate development of the main theme.
For example Schilsky is the recipient of homo-
sexual affection from one Heinrich Krafft, who
plays Chopin divinely and keeps a one-eyed cat
named Wotan. This character is sharply etched
with a few keen strokes. He in turn is under the
subjugating amorousness of a masculine young
lady named Avery Hill. There is an American
girl, Ephie Cayhill, who pursues Schilsky and
whom he seduces as he might munch a piece of
cake, the while he is playing, composing, drinking,
and continuing his affair with Louise. Her sister
discovers her secret at a crucial moment, and she
is carried away from Leipzig and drops out of
the book, having served her purpose in denoting
Schilsky's unlimited capacity.

The American colony is sketched, not at length,
but the details catch the eye like the corners of
a battle field in a Griffiths's picture. Mr. Rich-
ardson here, however, has almost verged on cari-
[350]

Maurice Guest

cature at times. We have all of us heard Ameri-
cans who go abroad talk but this perhaps is a little
strong: "I come to Schwartz (a piano teacher)
last fall and he thinks no end of me. But the
other week I was sick, and as I lay in bed, I
sung some — just for fun. And my landlady —
she's a regular singer herself — who was fixing
up the room, she claps her hands together and
says : ' My goodness me ! Why you have a
voice ! ' That's what put it in my head, and I
went to Sperling to hear what he'd got to say.
He was just tickled to death, I guess he was, and
he's going to make something dandy of it, so I
stop long enough. I don't know what my hus-
band will say though. When I wrote him I was
sick, he says : ' Come home and be sick at home '
— that's what he says." And here's another
American lady: " Now Mr. Dove is just a lovely
gentleman, but he don't skate elegantly, an' he
nearly tumbled me twice. Yes, indeed. But I
presume when Miss Wade says come, then you're
most obliged to go." But there isn't much of
this sort of thing. The piano teachers of the
colony, with their small petty jealousies, their
sordid family lives, are painted. Pension life is
depicted on the canvas, and the average family
of Leipzig that takes in music students to board
[351]

Interp retations

and room. A typical figure is Frau Furst, the
widow of an oboe player in the Gewandhaus or-
chestra who died of a chill after a performance
of Die Meistersmger. In her youth she had a
good soprano voice and Robert Schumann often
sent for her to come to his house in the Inselstrasse
to try his songs, while Clara Schumann accom-
panied her. During her husband's lifetime she had
become accustomed to remaining in the kitchen
during musical evenings at the house, and she
continues to do so when her son, who is a pianist
and teacher, has friends in. On the same fourth
floor with the Fiirsts " lived a pale, harassed
teacher, with a family which had long outgrown
its accommodations ; for the wife was perpetually
in childbed, and cots and cradles were the chief
furniture of the house. As the critical moments
of her career drew nigh, the ' Frau Lehrer ' com-
plained, with an aggravated bitterness, of the un-
ceasing music that went on behind the thin par-
tition ; and this grievance, together with the racy
items of gossip left behind the midwife's annual
visit, like a trail of smoke, provided her and
Furst's mother with infinite food for talk. They
were thick friends again a few minutes after a
scene so lively that blows seemed imminent, and
they met every morning on the landing, where,
[ 352 ]

Maurice Guest

with broom or child in hand, they stood gossiping
by the hour."

There are several descriptions of the students
in the cafes, students with their blasphemous, ob-
scene gossip, mingled with technical small talk.
All through the book we are reminded why these
young people are foregathered in these strange
relations. That there are men and women of
small talent who escape the weakening influences
of such a circle I am too ready to admit, but
Mr. Richardson has not gone to extremes. The
life of vocal students in Paris is similar.

April 4, 1917.

[353]

Why Music is Unpopular

" I write what I see, what I feel, and what I have
experienced, and I write it as well as I can; that is
all."

Joris K. Huysmans.

Why Music is
Unpopular

MUSICAL criticism usually falls automatic-
ally into two classes. In the one the
critic, whose emotions have ostensibly been
aroused by poems in tone, tries to render to the
reader the intensity of his feelings by quoting
from the word poets. The first line of " En-
dymion " and passages from Shakespeare fall
athwart his pages. Scarcely a musical note but
has its literary echo. If you have never heard
Beethoven's Seventh Symphony it may afford you
some small consolation to find it tied up in the
critic's mind with something like this :

" Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert. . . ."

The music of Maurice Ravel reminds these un-
imaginative scribes of lines from Arthur Rimbaud
and Jules Laforgue; snitches and snatches from
Keats and Wordsworth serve admirably to evoke
the spirit of almost any musician; I have found
Walt Whitman linked with Edward MacDowell;
Milton and Handel are occasionally made to seem
to speak the same language; Byron and Tschai-
[ 357 ]

Interp retations

kowsky are asked to walk hand in hand. An
audience of silly maiden ladies in the middle West,
unaccomplished in the skill of tones, hearing little
music, applauds delightedly this soft sobbery.
. . . Two lines I have never seen quoted. This
from W. B. Yeats (" King and No King ") would
certainly suit many a singer : " Would it were
anything but merely voice ! " and sometimes, after
a few days of shameless concert-going with a
friend from out of town, I feel like reassuring
him, Calibanwise : " Be not afeard ; the isle is full
of noises."

Our second critic approaches his task with more
sobriety of expression. He feels that it is his
bounden, and unenlivening, duty to avoid florid
language in his dismal effort to impress his readers
with the sublime seriousness of the art he is so
laboriously striving to keep within academically
prescribed limits. His erudite style bristles with
adverbial clauses and semi-technical conjurations,
abjurations, and apostrophes. He summons the
eleven dull devils of dusty knowledge to his aid
in his consistent endeavour to be accurate and
just. He never deals in metaphor, never in
simile; no figures of speech sully the dead drab
of his pages ; he would consider them, if he thought
about the matter at all, cheapening influences,
[ 358 ]

Why Music Is Unpopular

encroaching on the drowsy preserves of his som-
nolent profession. With as pedantic a gesture
as he can command he lays out his weights and
measures, always qualifying, always. Buts, ifs,
and in spite ofs cumber his operose paragraphs.
No music is perfect, none is imperfect. With this
axiom, liberally disregarded by more lively writers,
for a text, he proceeds to tell us that the allegro
of the new fantasia is admirable in form, but that
the themes, perhaps, do not justify such elaborate
treatment. He emphasizes history; he leans on
handbooks; musty facts are dragged in pales-
tri cally for their own sake alone. His manner is
formidable, exegstjcal, eupggtic*. adynamic . . .
asthenic He clings to cliche, " The composition
smells of the midnight oil," etc., etc.

These two unideal, imaginary critics are only
too actually with us on every hand. They always
have been and they always will be. They are one
of the principal reasons for the profound and
unfortunate indifference, nay contempt, with
which music (as an art, in so many words) is
regarded by the man who may take an enormous
amount of pleasure in reading books and looking
at pictures. Instead of realizing the unconfined
and boundless nature of the greatest and most
mysterious of the arts, they have acted as direct
[359]

Interp retations

agents in the perpetuation of the bugaboos and
voodoos of the academy, freely offering incense
and the freshly slain sacrifices of baby musicians
to the false gods of their fathers. Often, indeed,
their work is feticidal. Far from urging the lay-
man to approach the sacred temple, they frighten
him away. " Come and listen " is never on their
lips, never flows from their pens. Instead they
write : " Stay away. I have spent my whole life
trying to learn what you never can know. Any
pleasure you may take in music is a false pleasure
because it is not based on knowledge, which does
not permit you to enjoy yourself. Retreat,
young man ; go back to your books and pictures ;
the gods of music want none such as you to draw
near to the altars." Instead, indeed, of sending
the reader to the nearest concert hall they have
made him take a mental oath that never, if he
knows it, will he voluntarily set foot in such a
place. I am pre-supposing readers! The ter-
rible truth is that these men, after a time, are
not even read, and their early readers, skeptical
thereafter of all literature devoted to music, never
again will peruse a line of what they are forced
to consider hopeless drivel. Thereby they shut
themselves off, unwittingly, not only from further
communion with music itself but also from in-
[360]

Why Music Is Unpopular

timacy with one of the most delightful sidetracks
of all literature, for it cannot be denied that there
are books on the subject which would amuse a
tone-deaf autodidact.

For there are other kinds of music critics.
There is the man, for instance, who writes with
a flourish, indulges in " fine writing " and what is
"precious," and vocalizes with adjectives. You
may not agree with his hyperbolic statement that
Grieg and MacDowell were the great musicians of
the Nineteenth Century but you are interested in
it because he means it and because he is not afraid
to say so emphatically. " Perhaps," you some-
times whisper to yourself chasteningly, " he is
right. Perhaps Brahms and Strauss are little
men compared with these singers. How can
one be sure? Was Mendelssohn greater than
Beethoven? "

A second critic slashes violently into some
school or other; he drives his sword into the
heart of your pet theory, while valiantly defend-
ing as good a one of his own; he dips his pen
in gall and writes on paper soaked in wormwood.
He despises the new music, any new music, and he
consumes nine thousand words in telling you why ;
he loathes the opera and he throws all the weight
of his influential opinion against it. This man
[361]

Interp retations

is readable and interesting. His views assume
importance even to those who do not agree with
them, because they arouse curiosity. " Can the
music of Schoenberg be as bad as all that ? " You
question yourself. " I must hear it and judge for
myself."

A third imaginary musical writer mingles anec-
dote with more pregnant matter; nothing is too
trivial for his purpose, nothing too serious. He
is accurate without being pedantic ; he paints the
human side of the art. He draws us nearer to
compositions by talking about the composers.
When he writes of a singer it is not as if he were
describing a vocal machine emitting nearly per-
fect notes; he pictures a human being applying
herself to her art; his account is vivid, often
humorous. He enlivens us and he awakens our
interest. This is not altogether a matter of
style : it is a matter of feeling. The style is per-
haps the man!

There are but two rules for the critic to fol-
low: have something to say and say it as well
as you know how; say it with charm or say it
with force but say it naturally ; do not be afraid
to say to-day what you may regret to-morrow;
and, above all, do not befuddle and befog the mind
of your reader by dragging in Shelley, Francis
[ 362 ]

Why Music Is Unpopular

Thompson, William Blake, and Verlaine. If you
can suggest ideas to him by quoting from the
poets, by all means quote freely, but do not try
to kindle in him the sensation caused by a hearing
of Cesar Frank's D Minor Symphony by printing
copious excerpts from the published works of
Swinburne and Mallarme. Musical criticism has
two purposes, beyond the obvious and most essen-
tial one that it provides a bad livelihood for the
critic: one, and perhaps the most important, is
to entertain the reader, because criticism, like
any other form of literature, should stand by
itself and not lean too heavily on the matter of
which it treats ; the other is to interest the reader
in music, or in books about music, or in musicians.
Criticism can be informing without being pedan-
tic; it can prod the pachydermal hide of a con-
servative old fogy concert-goer without deviating
from the facts. Above all else criticism should be
an expression of personal feeling. Otherwise it
has no value. " Whoever has been through the
experience of discussing criticism with a thorough,
perfect, and entire Ass," writes Bernard Shaw,
" has been told that criticism should above all
things be free from personal feeling."

On one occasion I experienced an irrepressible
desire to rail against the intellectual snobbery
[ 363 ]

I nterp retations

which persuaded flaccid minds that the string
quartet was the noblest form of art and that
the organizations which devoted themselves to this
fetich were archangelic interpreters of a heavenly
song. I might have said : " The string quartet
is an over-rated form of art. Certainly Bee-
thoven, Mozart, and Brahms have poured some of
their greatest inspiration into this mould, some
of their most musical feeling, and yet the nature
of this music is such that its interpreters derive
more pleasure from its performance than its audi-
tors." It is possible that these sentences might
have been read, if so, understood . . . and for-
gotten. If every time I expressed a personal feel-
ing (and all my feelings and tastes are intensely
personal) I followed with something like this, " it
seems to me," or " this may or may not be true,"
or " according to my taste," or " Mr. Thing does
not agree with me," my utterances would lose
whatever force or charm they possess and they
would be so clogged with extraneous qualifications
that no one would read them. " It is the fault of
our rhetoric," Emerson once wrote, " that we
cannot strongly state one fact without seeming
to belie some other.". . . What I did say about
string quartets provoked attention. Philip Hale
remarked that the older lions roared and shook
[364]

Why Music Is Unpopular

their manes because I spoke disrespectfully of
chamber music, which thus suffered along with
the equator. Perhaps. . . . However, a certain
salutory disrespect for the snobbery of string
quartet fanatics survived . . . also along with
the equator.

It is not necessary that you, graceful reader,
should agree with the critic. You will satisfy no
longing in the heart of the animal if you do
agree with him, unless he be made of false metal.
It will require only a little reading on your part
to convince you that the critics themselves, espe-
cially the best and most interesting critics, do not
agree. There are no standards, it would seem,
by which music can be assessed and judged with
any degree of finality. Lawrence Gilman, in an
article entitled " Taste in Music," which appeared
in the " Musical Quarterly " for January, 1917,
gives us plenty of evidence on this point, if any
were needed. He reminds us that John F. Runci-
man viewed Parsifal with a contemptuous eye,
called the music " decrepit stuff," " the last sad
quaverings of a beloved friend " while Ernest
Newman describes it as " in many ways the most
wonderful and impressive thing ever done in
music." Vernon Blackburn regarded Elgar's
Dream of Gerontms as the finest musical work
[365]

Interp retations

since Wagner but Mr. George Moore dismisses
it briefly as " holy water in a German beer-bar-
rel." H. E. Krehbiel considers Pelleas et Meli-
sande as a score of which " nine-tenths is dreary
monotony " whereas Louis Laloy is stirred to
reverence by contemplation of its beauty. Jean
Marnold and H. T. Finck do not agree about
Carmen and W. J. Henderson and James Hune-
ker hold precisely opposite opinions regarding the
merits of Strauss's Don Quixote.

To be sure there is pretty general acknowledg-
ment that Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart were
great composers. But some critics insist that
the musicians who imitate the forms and styles
of those masters to-day are great composers, a
point of view which always awakens the murder-
ous instinct within me, as it should be apparent
to the veriest dolt that an artist in some way
must reflect the spirit of his own epoch. There
are critics who accept Wagner, Rienzi, Lohengrin,
Ring, and Parsifal; others find nothing to enjoy
or praise in certain of his works and even dis-
cover tiresome passages in Die Walkiire. Some
critics profess to admire folk-songs and folk-song
influences: others do not. Many otherwise esti-
mable men have been found who are willing to
subscribe to an everlasting veneration for the
[366]

Why Music Is Unpopular

music of Liszt, a reverence for the compositions
of Rubinstein. I have read in several newspapers
and at least one magazine that Horatio Parker's
Mona was a valuable contribution to national art.
It is possible. When we are told that Percy
Grainger is a greater composer than Debussy we
may be interested if we are interested in the man-
ner of the telling, but we are not obliged to accept
the statement as literally true. Indeed it is so
certain that there is so little that can be regarded
as eternally true on the subject of music that the
matter seems scarcely worth arguing about.

There are many delightful writers about music
and you will find that all of them, in one way
or another, bear out the point of my remarks.
There are too many others who are hedging the
most universal of the arts away from the people
to whom it belongs, protecting it with their dull
vapourings, their vapid technicalities, their wor-
ship of Clio, their stringent analyses, or, worse
than all, their extensive explanations. Let each
judge for himself, and let every one be encouraged
to judge. Let more think about music; to make
that possible curiosity must be stimulated, so
that there may be a more general desire to hear
music. Books are on every hand; if one does
not visit galleries at least one cannot escape re-
[ 367 ]

Interp retations

productions of good pictures in the magazines
and the Sunday supplements of the newspapers;
but to hear music (I speak of so-called " art
music ") it is necessary to visit certain halls on
certain days. This requires encouragement be-
cause it also requires patience. Why I have
waited more than twelve years to hear Vincent
d'Indy's Istar only to discover that I have heard
it too late ! The conductors of our concerts make
matters difficult ; do not let our critics make them
more so.

In the interests of strict accuracy this article,
of course, should have been entitled " Some re-
marks on one of the reasons for the comparative
unpopularity of music as an art form," an exact
description of its contents, but if I had called it
that do you think you would have read it?

March 1, 1917.

THE END

[368]

"Borzoi" stands for the best in litera-
ture in all its branches — drama and fiction,
poetry and art. "Borzoi" also stands for
unusually pleasing book-making.

Borzoi Books are good books and there
is one for every taste worthy of the name.
A few are briefly described on the next
page. Mr. Knopf will be glad to see that
you are notified regularly of new and forth-
coming Borzoi Books if you will send him
your name and address for that purpose.
He will also see that your local dealer is
supplied.

Address THE BORZOI

220 West Forty-Second Street

New York

MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS

Mr. Van Vechten has written another book which will ap-
peal strongly to musia-lovers as well as to the many who,
knowing little about music, would like to know more. His
writings are the encouragement and not, as so often hap-
pens in the case of critics' works, the despair of the un-
initiated. His publisher especially commends to your at-
tention:

Music and Bad Manners

THE CONTENTS

I. Music and Bad Manners.
II. Music for the Movies.

III. Spain and Music.

(This is the only detailed account in
English of Spanish Music.)

IV. Shall we Realize Wagner's Ideals?
V. The Bridge Burners.

VI. A New Principle in Music.
VII. Leo Ornstein.

Some Reviews of this book follow:

"When Carl Van Vechtetfs first book, ' Music After the
Great War,' was published a year or so ago, I lifted a
modest hymn in praise of it, and at the same time de-
nounced the other music critics of America for the few-
ness of their books, and for the intolerable dulness of that
few. . . . Now comes his second book, 'Music and Bad
Manners ' — thicker, bolder, livelier, better. In it, in fact,
he definitely establishes a point of view and reveals a per-
sonality, and both have an undoubted attractiveness. In it
he proves, following Huneker, that a man may be an
American and still give all his thought to a civilized and
noble art, and write about it with authority and address,
and even find an audience that is genuinely interested in
it ... a bird of very bright plumage, and, after Hune-
ker, the best now on view in the tonal aviary. ... In
chapter III he spits on his hands, as it were, and settles
down to business, and the result is a long, a learned and a
very instructive dissertation on modern Spanish music —
a school of tone so little understood, and even so little
known, that it gets but twenty lines in Grove's Diction-
ary, and is elsewhere scarcely mentioned at all. Here is

useful pioneering; here is also good criticism, for it arouses
the curiosity of the reader about the thing described, and
makes him want to know more about it. And following it
come four chapters upon various aspects of that new
music which now causes such a pother, with its gossamers
of seconds and elevenths, its wild niggerish rhythms, and
its barbaric Russian cadences. . . . Van Vechten consti-
tutes himself its literary agent, and makes out a very
plausible case for it." — H. L. Mencken in " The Smart Set."

"Mr. Van Vechten is well known in the musical and
literary worlds, and, while ' clever,' he is just and sound
in his critical verdicts. He inspires students and enter-
tains general readers. . . . His theory about the develop-
ment of music - appropriate to and especially for the
' movies ' is unique. . . . There are many clever suggestions
one can cull from a careful study of the book." — " The Liter-
ary Digest."

"'Music and Bad Manners,' by Carl Van Vechten, tells
many amusing stories to show what stupidities and bru-
talities may be perpetrated by persons of the so-called
' artistic temperament,' and on the other hand, what rude-
ness may be shown by an audience. These stories . . .
are vastly entertaining, but the title essay gives a mislead-
ing impression of Mr. Van Vechten's book, of its weight
and poise, .for it has much serious discussion and criticism
and much historical information of value and significance.
Music lovers will skim with a smile the essay on ' Music
and Bad Manners,' but they will read with absorbed at-
tention the other half dozen essays of the volume. Mr.
Van Vechten writes sound and not too technical English,
and has the good taste and good temper to write without
rancour." — ■" Vogue."

"Carl Van Vechten is one of the relatively few people
in America to write about music neither as a press agent
nor as a pedant, but as an essayist. . . . 'Music After the
Great War ' and ' Music and Bad Manners ' are delightful
reading whether the reader is a musician or not. ' Music
and Bad Manners' ranges from a pretty thorough, if dis-
cursive, outline of the national music of Spain to the col-
lection of lively anecdotes forming the essay from which
the volume takes its name. The comments, always shrewd
and based on wide experience, betray the rare quality of
clear and independent thought. Moreover, Mr. Van Vech-
ten, by the more than occasional heterodoxy of his ideas,

stimulates a healthy desire to climb out of deep-worn ruts.
The essays, in particular, on present musical tendencies are
none the less illuminating because they are never ponder-
ous. . . . The charm of the book is mainly due to the
author's keen enjoyment of the grotesque, illustrated in
scores of incisive phrases, and in a wealth of vivid anec-
dote."— Henry Adams Bellows in " The Bellman,"

"'Music and Bad Manners' by Carl Van Vechten is a
series of seven essays on musical topics that is intensely
interesting. . . . The book will be of deepest interest to all
musicians."— " The New York Herald."

" Mr. Van Vechten has done a service to the literature
of music in preparing the best description of Spanish
music that I have been able to find in English. . . . The
description of Spanish dance music and dances is exceed-
ingly interesting as well as enlightening, and the whole
chapter has a distinct value in acquainting the reader with
the musical progress of a musical people whose records
are nowhere adequately presented in English." — Russell
Ramsey in " The Dial."

" Carl Van Vechten devotes seventy-five pages of his
book, ' Music and Bad Manners ' to a consideration of
Spain and music. . . . The result of Mr. Van Vechten's
effort ... is an essay which no student of music to-day
can afford to be without, for it comprises the one thorough
examination that has yet been made of a subject." — Pitts
Sanborn in " The New York Globe."

"Carl Van Vechten is fundamentally and whole-heart-
edly progressive. He approaches his subject, as, indeed,
he seems to approach all art and life itself, in the spirit of
adventure. He enjoys, appreciates, even revels in the
idioms and has little patience with the pedants and critics
who oppose them."— "The New York Call."

" Mr. Van Vechten considers modern tendencies with an
open mind. He is to be no more deceived into disapproval
of innovators by their apparent disregard for tradition
than awed by tradition itself (in this case the Bayreuth
tradition) into accepting the present specious and old-
fashioned methods of staging Wagner as the sacred in-
tention of the master . . . Mr. Van Vechten is a well
informed specialist, a bold champion, and an entertaining
gossip."— " The New York Evening Sun."

"A recent book received from the house of Alfred A.
Knopf, New York publisher, which would make excellent
and interesting reading for most musicians, is Carl Van
Vechten's 'Music and Mad Manners.' It is lively through-
out and draws great interest in the recital of many
anecdotes of well-known musicians and vocalists of this
century." — " The Musical Leader."

" Carl Van Vechten is doing much to rescue music from the
limbo of emotional criticism and to set it up among our men-
tal household gods. All of which is a suggestion that ' Music
and Bad Manners' contains the only pleasantly informa-
tive chats on modern music, or perhaps music in modern days,
if you think of modern music as something unholy, that have
come to my notice." — Fanny Butcher in " The Chicago Tri-
bune."

" Carl Van Vechten, whose book, ' Music After the Great
War,' excited considerable interest in artistic circles last
year and drew upon him the censure of certain conservatives
because he did not agree with them as to the entertaining
value of chamber music, has published a new volume, that is
bound to extend his reputation as an original thinker and in-
vestigator." — " The Evening News " (Newark, N. J.)

"Mr. Van Vechten's education in music has been broad
and catholic, and he has read widely and remembered well,
so that he selects from a large mass of material. The mu-
sician may test his own breadth by trying to read the book
without swearing. To the layman interested in musical
topics it will prove bright, snappy, and original; and if he is
alive and believes in evolution, he will be delighted with much
of what he finds between its covers." — W. K. Kelsey in " The
Detroit (Mich.) News Tribune."

"A new book which music lovers will enjoy." — "The New
York Sun."

"This volume of musical essays may be cordially com-
mended to music-lovers who neither bow down to the young-
est nor the eldest composer, but seek to listen honestly ac-
cording to their powers. The author is a critic of discern-
ment and sincerity." — " The Providence (R. I.) Journal."

" This study of music and music makers is as lively as some
of the new tunes that have been given to us recently, but it
is not at all commonplace. It sets a new mark in musical
criticism." — "The Portland (Oregon) Telegram."

" ' Music and Bad Manners ' by Carl Van Vechten is one
of the most readable books dealing with music that has been
issued in a long time. The writer, a decidedly clever one,
does not spend his energy on themes and theories that would
prove interesting only to absorbed students of music but he
writes in a delightful style that gives a universal interest to
his themes. It is the kind of book that the average lover of
music will find most invigourating and that will stimulate his
love of music to a further examination of the thesis set
forth by Mr. Van Vechten. It is sound and discriminating
in its judgments and it is unique in its subject matter. There
is always an eye for selecting the things of highest in-
terest. . . . This is a book that will prove pleasing to all who
read it. Its exhibition of the knowledge of music is not
pedantic, and the author is one of the new forces in music."
— " The Springfield (Mass.) Union."

" From the opening chapter until the final page the book is
replete with interesting matter." — ''The Buffalo (N. Y.)
Commercial."

"The author relates that Strawinsky once played some
measures of ' The Firebird ' to his master, Rimsky-Korsakow,
until the latter said, 'Stop playing that horrid thing; other-
wise I might begin to enjoy it.' I stopped reading this book
for much the same reason. It contains an infinite amount of
amusing musical gossip, and deals, among other things, with
Leo Ornstein and music in Spain." — " The Masses."

"The field being covered by Mr. Van Vechten is quite
virgin. He writes of live matters, things that we ought to
think about, and probably do, but are a little afraid of. He
says things for us, and now and then upsets the highbrows
in his own way." — " The Console."

" Mr. Van Vechten is entertaining at all times, but he is
most himself when discussing the music of Schoenberg, Orn-
stein, Strawinsky, and other 'bridge-burners' as he labels
them in this volume. ... If his object be to inspire in his
readers a desire to hear the music he describes he has suc-
ceeded in one instance at least." — " Courier-Journal," Louis-
ville, Kentucky.

ALFRED A. KNOPF, PUBLISHER, NEW YORK

i^: ( iiM ( i;i|.ii!r:!i:^r!^t/i::i:i;i|;t!.!!!: ; !:: ; ::;;i;!iii;4':!

lillillillliiii

iPEiilil;:

lit

ilisitKi!',;-:!'l!!!!:!:'!';ii!i?i!l!i'!l.'liiSvi'''';.'

• , hi, i i in
1 i i , ) i <"