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Musical Courier 1891-12-16: Vol 23 Iss 617, 1891
68 lines. Read by computer on 19 September 2026. Printed page 704. See the scan on archive.org.
1THE "Wagner bubble" evidently is not quite as "busted" as our English friend Mr. Rowbotham would have the world at large believe, nor is there any apparent danger of such a calamity befalling us in the near future; for this the statistics in regard to Wagner performances in various parts of the world during the season which ended last summer are ample and unanswerable proof. In all, on the European continent, there were 963 performances in the German language alone—and, of course, excluding the large number of representations given in other languages—by 54 German opera companies, 5 Austrian, 3 Dutch, 3 Russian and 3 Swiss. "Lohengrin" heads the list with 263 performances, followed by "Tannhauser" 247, "Dutchman" 129, "Meistersinger" 91, "Walküre" 64, "Rienzi" 40, "Tristan" 37, "Götterdämmerung" 30, "Siegfried" 26, "Rheingold" 26 and "Die Feen" 10. In regard to the towns, Berlin heads the list with 81 Wagnerian performances, followed by Hamburg with 58, Dresden 52, Vienna 49, Frankfort-on-the-Maine 47, Munich 44 and Leipsic 41.
3IT would seem that even Chauvinism in France has its limits. "Lohengrin" has been and still is a great success in Paris and the French provinces and the tone of the entire press has changed in favor of Wagner. In witness thereof, notice a recent editorial in the "Petit Journal," in which "the two giants," Wagner and Meyerbeer, undergo a comparison from the French viewpoint. The writer asserts, indeed, that the genius of the latter composer is far more sympathetic to the French, "who love only the lucid in art," than that of the former, who unites "glowing beauties" to "lamentable obscurities" and with whom "one has to pay dearly for the pleasure received when the inspiration vanishes like a meteor which has burst through the sky and disappeared into darkness."
5Wagner himself would hardly have been satisfied with this comparison, but it nevertheless marks a decided advance in French ideas on Wagner upon those expressed before the "Lohengrin" performances, and this impression is strengthened by the following sentences, which prove the writer's common sense in believing that there ought to be no geographical or political limitation in the appreciation of true art: "However much of Prussians they may have been, Wagner and Meyerbeer, these two Prussians of genius, it is not their nationality which concerns us but their work. They are dead; heaven receive their souls! The productions of their brains belong to humanity. We may well dispute among ourselves as to which deserves the front place, but as to the rest—the rest is not worth taking into consideration. Ask not the bird from whence he comes, but what he sings!"
7THE "Critic" last October contained the review of a brochure by Sir Daniel Wilson on "The Right Hand's Left Handedness," which is published by Macmillan. The book is in all respects a marvelous one, throwing as it does many sidelights on the question of ambidexterity.
9The review, which is really the gist of the book, and which is quoted below, must of necessity interest pianists who use both hands continually. Paralysis, so say physicians, is seldom found among the piano playing tribe, for the constant use of both hands keeps up activity in both cerebral hemispheres, and danger of a deadening of the ganglionic centre is averted. The review follows:
11At the outset of his work the author quotes a characteristic passage from the journal of Thomas Carlyle, in which that erratic philosopher treats the subject in his usual grandiose and cynical fashion. "Curious," he wrote, "to consider the institution of the right hand among universal mankind—probably the very oldest human institution that exists, indispensable to all human co-operation whatsoever. No human Cosmos possible to be even begun without it. Why that particular hand was chosen is a question not to be settled, not worth asking except as a kind of riddle; probably arose in fighting; most important to protect your heart and its adjacencies, and to carry the shield on that hand."
13Sir Daniel Wilson shows by much and varied evidence, drawn from the shape of prehistoric implements, from the names of the hands in many languages, and from the testimony of travelers and missionaries, that the preferential use of the right hand is a custom as ancient and widespread as Carlyle supposed. But its source was very different from the plausible but unscientific origin which the latter thus suggested. The thorough investigations of modern science have proved that the predominant use of the right hand has no better claim to the title of an "institution" than has the human custom of walking erect. Both habits proceed from organic causes and originate in the structure of the human frame.
15While this structure has an outward appearance of symmetry, a very slight knowledge of anatomy suffices to show that this appearance is deceptive. The deeper our research proceeds the stronger the distinction is found to be. The right lung is more capacious than the left, having three lobes, while the left has only two.
17The liver, the heaviest organ of the body, is on the right side, overweighing the heart on the left. Thus the centre of gravity is decidedly on the right side, requiring for this side a larger supply of nerve force than for the left. As the nerve force of the right side of the body proceeds from the left hemisphere of the brain, this hemisphere, by natural correlation, becomes the larger, heavier and more active of the two. The centres of nerve force for speaking, writing and other higher exertions of the mental faculty are found to be especially strong in the left hemisphere; and when its powers are disabled by injury, the sluggish and untrained right hemisphere which actuates the left side of the body can but feebly and imperfectly supply its place. From the results of this greater supply of nerve force to the right (dexter of a droit) side we get the origin and meaning of such words as "adroitness" and "dexterity."
19Occasionally, however, the right hemisphere is the larger and more active. The man is then left handed. How this exceptional state is caused we do not know. This, indeed, is the real riddle, which yet remains to be solved. Yet it is no more mysterious than any of the other variations of structure which continually occur, and on which the Darwinian system of development and progress is built. Why in the same family is one child tall and another short? Why has one a large and long head and another a small and round head? What, in brief, is the origin of the immense variety of physical and mental traits and endowments in the people around us? This is a question which cannot be answered as yet, whatever the future of science may have in store for us. We can only recognize the differences, and make our social and educational arrangements to correspond with them. Among these educational provisions is one of much importance, which has been hitherto almost universally neglected, the ancient Greeks alone seeming to have had an idea of its value. This provision is the proper education of the two hands, an education which by its reflex influence would stimulate both hemispheres of the brain. Our author's own experience as a left handed man, whose right hand has been trained to use the pen, while as an artist (and one of no mean rank, as the charming illustrations of his "Old Edinburgh" and other works show) he holds the pencil or crow quill in the left, has taught him the great importance of this two sided training. Many remarkable examples of a like character are given, from the left handed Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest of modern artists and mechanicians, to other hardly less notable instances of our own time.
21The conclusion to which we are thus brought is of serious moment. Throughout Christendom the age of militarism and brute force is passing away. The era of industrialism is taking its place. The manifold and incessant work of the inventive brain and the executive hand is rapidly transforming the world. It may reasonably be assumed that the nation which first realizes and enforces in its schools and workshops the principle that the whole brain should be stimulated to act, and both hands be specially trained for this work, will be apt to take the lead in the future of civilization.
23The nation that makes its boys and girls play Czerny on Virgil's practice clavier will be doing a good thing, for, while the children may not have an iota of musical ability, the exercise is excellently stimulating for the brain, which is an idea for Mr. Virgil which he probably never considered. THE MUSICAL COURIER is teeming with many such like.
25A MASCAGNI DEFENSE.
27THIS item appeared in a recent issue of an Eastern paper:
29"Cavalleria Rusticana" is as full of tricks as the monkey on an Italian organ, writes A. P. Dunlop. It is a trick to sing the principal tenor song before the curtain rises; a trick to use the church as a contrast to the passionate scenes before it; a trick to call this singing pantomime a melodrama; a trick to give the same soft, sweet, sensuous Sicilian song over and over again as a tenor solo, as a soprano solo, as a duet, as a chorus—now in the minor, now in the major, now as an intermezzo, then as a finale; a trick to pass suddenly from piano to forte, from fortissimo to silence; a trick to add Wagnerian orchestration to tunes that may be whistled.
31Mr. Frank Saddler, who is at present studying music in Munich, deeply resented the above, for he wrote to the Pittsburgh "Dispatch" the following able defense of the talented young Italian composer:
33Mr. Saddler writes: Apropos of this sarcastic paragraph, it may be of interest to recall a few tricks of the masters.
35Let us begin with Bach: he was a trickster of the deepest dye. His favorite trick was to sketch a theme for a single voice, turn it over to another voice, continuing the first as accompaniment, and so on till the theme had appeared in all voices; then he would weave the themes together in a close netting—then spin off this web while holding a long bass note that did not chord with another single voice. This trick was called the fugue, and Bach became such an adept at it that no composer since his time has been able to approach him in this field of trickery.
37"Let there be light and there was light." What a glorious trick of Haydn's in his "Creation," that C major chord (on the word light) "passing suddenly from piano to forte;" and what a grand trick of Händel's in the Hallelujah chorus, "passing suddenly from fortissimo to silence," then ending in a much slower tempo with the plagal cadence. One of Gluck's best tricks was the splendid conception of the barking of the three headed dog, Cerberus, that guards the passage to hell, which he produced with the double basses by merely slipping the hand quickly along the fingerboard from great B to small F—a diminished fifth. Beethoven's final and most audacious trick was that of introducing a chorus in his ninth symphony.
39Mozart died at an early age with a trick on his hands—the trick of adding to his orchestra, in the requiem (which he felt he was writing for himself), two basses horns, weird, grave sounding instruments which never have and probably never will have a permanent place in the orchestra. What a peculiar trick Méhul resorted to in his one act opera, "Uthal," wherein he cuts out the violins entirely, scoring his melodies for viola. Weber's music to the "Wolfschlucht" scene in "Freischütz" was pronounced the most transparent trickery by the public of his time, and was ridiculed. And Meyerbeer! With his bassoon solos, bass clarinet solos, kettledrum solos, &c., he was certainly a trickster par excellence.
41Then still another, Berlioz, with his English horn solo with kettle-drum accompaniment in his Fantastic Symphony; introduction of the piano into the orchestra as an orchestral instrument in the "Storm;" his requiem, with four brass bands at the four corners of an immense body of strings and wood, among which were ten kettle-drums, several bass drums, cymbals, &c. But as we come down to modern masters we find nothing but tricks, and as it would be impossible to enumerate the tricks of that prince of tricksters, Wagner, we will let the foregoing suffice.
43You will see that the great masters are addicted to trickery, but this need not lessen your admiration for them a bit. These tricks are merely the means of producing a desired effect, and that constitutes the science of all art.
45And now as to Mascagni's opera. The first mentioned trick, the singing of the tenor solo before the curtain rises, is merely a variation of such usages as the tenor solo introducing the first act of "Tristan," or serenades from behind the scenes, such as the beautiful one in Lachner's "Catharma Cornaro," during which there is a perfect suspension of all action on the stage.
47As to the second point, every person who has traveled on the Continent knows that in all peasant villages church and inn stand either side by side or opposite each other. "Turiddu's" mother being the proprietor of the inn, it is perfectly natural to have the scenes transpire before her house. Had he selected any other day than Sunday for his action the peasants would have been in the fields at work and he would have had no chorus. Having thus provided for his chorus, he took the most natural and simple means of bringing them on and off the stage by sending them to and from church: everything just as natural and void of trickery as you could wish.
49Mascagni did not call his opera a "melodrama;" therefore the responsibility for the third trick lies on other shoulders. The other tricks mentioned may all be proven legitimate by reference to the work of the masters. Regarding the last trick, the richness of Mascagni's orchestration has led many to call it "Wagnerian," which it is far from being. It is the genuine Italian system, as any student of instrumentation will recognize from his manner of handling the woodwind and the heavy brass (tuba and trombones).
51Now listen to what happened in Vienna a few weeks ago at the performance of a burlesque on Mascagni's opera. The writer of the burlesque had that noble intermezzo arranged for and played on a hand organ of the meanest species. Imagine his surprise when at the first note of the grind organ solo the audience took a receptive attitude, listened in perfect silence till the last chord had died out, then broke into rapturous and prolonged applause. Even the harsh, grating tones of the hand organ could not conceal the beauty of the beloved intermezzo.
53Let this be a lesson to all who would attempt to belittle Mascagni or detract one jot from the honor that is due him for giving "Cavalleria Rusticana" to the world.
55The most foolish charge brought against Mascagni is that the "Cavalleria Rusticana" shows the influence of other composers—ergo, the young man has no talent. How about Mozart's, Beethoven's and Wagner's early opuses?
57IS MUSIC AN INTELLECTUAL ART?
59THE above caption will doubtless appear ridiculous to the serious musical thinker, but nevertheless the question has not only been raised in the past but it is heard every day and will be heard until the great trumpet virtuoso Gabriel announces the crack of doom.
61The London "Musical News" contained, in one of its late issues, an excellent article entitled "The Alleged Non-Intellectuality of Music," by Mr. Henry C. Banister, a scholarly and sympathetic critic who does not propose to treat the subject exhaustively, but deals with it very effectively all the same. He might have used for his motto the saying of De Quincey, which he quotes at the tail end of his little thesis: "Music is an intellectual or a sensual pleasure, according to the temperament of him who hears it," for therein lies the gist of the question.
63Mr. Banister says: "The capacity for command, foresight, plan and so forth all betokens an intellect of undoubted power, and in that sense a man may be intellectual; but if by intellectual was meant an artistic or literary capacity, then the man referred to may not be intellectual. In other words, intellectual is a term which embraces more than mental power; it takes in those faculties of the imagination, the fancy, the perception of the beautiful, without which there is a hardness, an angularity, depriving the intellect of the element of charm."
65Again he says: "But the highest forms, while they are emanations of genius which no painstaking would achieve, manifest also in their development that capacity for taking pains which is partly moral, partly mental. For, take any fine movement of extended structure, whether that of continuity or development known as the 'sonata form,' or the fugal form, and therein is exhibited that design, in conjunction with a sense of and aim at beauty, which has been considered an evidence of the working of an intelligent mind. The sonata form, indeed, with its two principal subjects—like hero and heroine in a novel—and its subordinate or tributary subjects—the minor, though not by any means unimportant or superfluous characters—its modulations, affecting, as it were, changes of locality and scene—its development of these subjects by contrapuntal, fragmentary or simultaneous working, like the delineation of the characters and the entanglements of the plot—all being, however, free from any slang talk, vulgarity, immorality of suggestion and other elements which seem often to be considered necessary for the 'go' or success of a novel—surely may well hold its own as an intellectual production, even—nay, especially—in comparison with the average run of modern novels. These, confessedly, are to catch and amuse the public. Not so the op. 13, op. 57 and others of Beethoven or the C minor or A minor of Mozart.
67The fugue, as an evidence of intellectual skill, Mr. Banister also speaks of: "On the other hand, in the
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