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Musical Courier 1893-04-12: Vol 26 Iss 684, 1893
82 lines. Read by computer on 25 September 2026. Printed page 7. See the scan on archive.org.
1The Musical Courier.
2PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY
3BY THE
4MUSICAL COURIER COMPANY,
5(INCORPORATED)
619 Union Square W., New York.
7ESTABLISHED JANUARY, 1880.
8No. 684.
10EDITORS:
11MARC A. BLUMENBERG. OTTO FLOERSHEIM.
12JAMES G. HUNEKER. HARRY O BROWN
13HUGH CRAIG.
15BUSINESS DEPARTMENT:
16SPENCER T. DRIGGS. R. S. MAXWELL.
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19EUROPEAN BRANCH OFFICE:
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21III R., Berlin, W. Germany.
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42American News Company, New York, General Distributing Agents.
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45NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 1893.
47Telephone – – – 1253-18th.
49RAFAEL JOSEFFY will not play with the New York Symphony Orchestra on its spring tour as has been announced. Mr. Joseffy's health is not of the best; hence this announcement. Manager Nolan has engaged Scalchi as soloist in Mr. Joseffy's place.
51WHAT ARE WE COMING TO!
53MR. MARION CRAWFORD has written a very suggestive little essay, "The Novel; What it is." He defines the novel as a "marketable commodity belonging to the class of intellectual artistic luxuries." As an opera is a novel, story, or drama in music, we may be permitted to use his definition with respect to this form of art. The clause, "marketable commodity," excludes the work of dukes, counts, barons and tutti quanti who hire a hall, pay for an orchestra and engage singers to the delight of everybody except the public. The word "intellectual" will eliminate the mere melodists; the word "artistic" will eliminate the mere compiler, and then "Where are we at?" Mr. Crawford, although he concedes that in Mr. Bellamy's ideal state, novels would be not only unsalable, but unintelligible if not inconceivable, is yet inclined to take an optimistic view, and, as he considers that we live in an emotional age, trusts to emotion to stimulate production.
55Mr. Frederic Harrison, however, who has also been discussing this novel, is decidedly pessimistic. What he, too, says of the novel is true, we think, of opera. He thinks that our elaborate culture, our fastidiousness about form, our mechanical system of education check originality and that absorption in material interests, love of comfort, kill it. Then, "we are all like men under the glamour of some great change impending." This state of expectancy is pleasing enough and does not check enjoyment or science, but diverts profound minds from imaginative work. Although it is absurd to suppose that the end of a century can have any real effect, he cannot help noticing that for the four last '93's there was no living master of first rank in literature universally acknowledged as such. Let us see how this is with opera. In 1893, we have no living master of first rank. Wagner is dead, Verdi is but a survival; where are the coming men? In 1793, the age of Bach and Händel had passed, Gluck died in 1787 and Mozart in 1791; Haydn was writing symphonies; Weber's first opera appeared in 1800, and Cherubini is hardly of the first rank. In 1693 what composer had anything but a local reputation? and in 1593 Palestrina was within a year of his death.
57Will there be a renaissance? Harrison thinks not, for modern democracy ends in monotony and lowered vitality, and is adverse to high art. He adds it is useless to try to get out of it. To sail about lakes in swan boats by moonlight, or to play at Robinson Crusoe in Samoa, is as futile as the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles by putting up some branches in a back yard. The world will be as dull as Mr. W. Watson's "Eloping Angels" found heaven, and we worldlings will have neither the will nor the power to elope. While Harrison sees still a future in science, Mr. Crawford seems to despair of musicians. "Few persons can listen to an average symphony or sonata without noticing the conventionality and artificiality of many parts of the production. This is not due to the instinct of the musician, nor to the taste of the public, but is a distinct survival of a former existence, as much as the caudal appendage or the buttons on the backs of our coats."
59PREFACE TO "WAGNER AND HIS WORKS."
61MR. H. T. FINCK'S two volumes, entitled "Wagner and his Works," will be in the market on April 22. Through the author's courtesy we are enabled to print herewith the preface, which indicates the scope and object of the work. The publishers are Charles Scribner's Sons.
63Although only half a century has elapsed since Richard Wagner first became prominent as an operatic composer, it may be safely asserted that more has already been written and printed about him than about any other dramatic author, excepting Shakespeare. To add to this collection two more volumes may seem a rash and superfluous proceeding; but if the reader will take the trouble to compare these volumes with other works on the same subject he will see at a glance that the biographic treasures had been very far from exhausted by my predecessors. There are many short Wagner biographies in the market, written by Tappert, Muncker, Pohl, Nohl, Gaspérini, Hueffer, Dannreuther, Kobbé, and others. Several of these are excellent in their way, but they all attempt to present in from 100 to 200 pages, a subject which requires 1,000 pages for adequate treatment.
65The only two elaborate biographies are Glasenapp's and Jullien's. Glasenapp having been the first in the field had to do some hard pioneer work, for which he deserves credit. But his treatise exists only in German, and it will probably never be translated, as it is too verbose and contains too many dry details of merely local interest. Nor is it complete; it ends with the "Parsifal" year and gives no account of Wagner's death. The operas, too, are not analyzed; it is simply a biography. Jullien's book is valuable for its numerous portraits, caricatures and other illustrations, as well as for the light it throws on the French episodes in Wagner's life, although in this respect Servière's "Wagner Jugé en France" is more complete and entertaining. For other than French readers Jullien presents his subject from too Gallic a point of view. Apparently he does not read German, since he gets his views of Wagner's literary and theoretical works at second hand from Grove's Dictionary and other sources, but his greatest blemish is his total inability to understand Wagner's character. This character, owing to peculiar circumstances, was indeed often as difficult to understand as the "Art Work of the Future" itself. But in the case of a man who has so many enemies as Wagner had it is the duty of a biographer to carefully verify all statements and not to accept as gospel truth stories manufactured by hostile newspapers. Wagner's personality, as presented by Jullien, is as much of a caricature as any of the pictures in his book.
67While Jullien misrepresents his character, the other biographers, including Glasenapp, have very little to say about it, devoting themselves chiefly to his writings, musical and literary. It is indeed only since the appearance of all the biographies here mentioned that an opportunity has been given us to see the real Wagner. The three volumes of letters to Liszt, Uhlig, Fischer and Heine have thrown a flood of light on his personality, and my cordial thanks are due to the publishers for permission to make use of this invaluable source of information regarding the most important creative period in Wagner's life, the years of his exile. I also wish to thank Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co. for permission to quote from the interesting new material, including forty Wagner letters, contained in Prager's "Wagner as I Knew Him;" and Mr. Theodore Thomas for kindly placing at my disposal all the correspondence relating to the "Centennial March." Of other new sources of information I must mention the fifteen letters to Mrs. Wille, printed in the "Rundschau" in 1887—letters which bring the most romantic episode in Wagner's life—his friendship with King Ludwig—vividly before our eyes; and Oesterlein's monumental "Wagner Katalog" in three volumes, containing references to about 30,000 letters and other documents bearing on Wagner and his friends and artists—a work which immensely facilitated my researches in German libraries. Personally I am indebted to Mr. Oesterlein for placing the treasures of his museum, including some valuable manuscripts, at my disposal at a considerable sacrifice of his time.
69I think I may safely say that I am indebted to previous biographers for less than one-twentieth part of the material contained in these two volumes; all the rest is based on my personal experiences, on Wagner's own autobiographic writings and other original documents, including a collection of Wagneriana, which I began seventeen years ago, and which I have found of great use, especially in the chapters relating to the critics. Some readers may think that too much space has been devoted to these hostile criticisms, and that some of the quotations are cruel, inasmuch as the writers have since become partial or complete converts. I have indeed mercilessly quoted their own words, but the cruelty is not mine. These critics are self impaled; they helped to make Wagnerian history, and I, as veracious historian, am bound to chronicle the facts. Besides, these men had no end of fun in ridiculing Wagner and his admirers in former years; now that the tide has turned, have we not a right to a little fun at their expense? The comicality of these criticisms will, like good wine, still further improve with age; and these opinions have also a serious value as contributions to the history of aesthetic taste. Schiller once suggested that hundreds of similar criticisms on him and Goethe should be collected for such a purpose.
71As regards the plan of this book, I have endeavored to avoid what might be called the chronological mosaic style of biography, which consists in presenting the facts in loose connection in the year and month they occurred in. The arrangement here adopted of presenting the various phases of Wagner's history, activity and personality in pictures complete in themselves without neglecting the main chronological divisions will, I hope, commend itself to the reader. This method is facilitated by the roving life Wagner led, the constant changes of residence from Dresden to Paris, to London, Venice, Zürich, Lucerne, &c., which add so much to the interest of his career. The frequent subdivisions into chapters and sub-chapters make it easy for readers who care only for the biography to skip the other parts. But Wagner the man was so thoroughly identified with Wagner the artist that a complete biography had to include a consideration of his works too.
73AN INTERESTING NOVELTY.
75THE Paris correspondent of the London "Musical News" sends that journal an interesting account of the recent first performance of Vincent d'Indy's "Le Chant de La Cloche." Here it is:
77This légende dramatique, words and music by Vincent d'Indy, was given at the Lamoureux concert of Sunday last. The work was first produced in 1885, when it created some sensation, being indeed "crowned" at the concours de la ville de Paris in that year; but it afterward fell into neglect till Lamoureux, a conductor of enlightened taste and wide sympathies, again brought it forward. Numerous rehearsals were held under the dual direction of the composer and the conductor. The chorus and orchestra gave a very fine performance of the work.
79The légende is divided into a prologue and seven tableaux—the last two forming an epilogue—and give good opportunities for contrasted effects. The poem concerns itself with the life of one Wilhelm, a bell founder, and each scene is merely a selected incident with apparently no attempt at narrative continuity. Thus we gather that Wilhelm loves Léonore, but one does not know that his fiancée is dead until she appears to him in a vision. Wilhelm also leads his townsmen in their resistance of an attack by highwaymen, but nothing comes of it; he is all his life constructing a huge bell, which seems to cause him much agony of mind—one does not learn why—and it is announced that he is dead as the bell is about to be set in motion. Whereupon it begins to swing of itself, "as if animated by supernatural life."
81Wilhelm's death seems as motiveless, dramatically, as the rest of the incidents. But after all a nice dramatic consistency is not necessary in works of this kind; the poet was well within his artistic right in simply providing himself with material for a series of musical illustrations. He preserved a balance of interest between chorus and soloists,
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