Scan 7
Musical Courier 1894-11-21: Vol 29 Iss 767, 1894
86 lines. Read by computer on 22 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 8. See the scan on archive.org.
1Bayreuth festivals; but it is the shrewd and spectacular Cosima who is reaping that harvest, while the husbandman who did the planting lies asleep in Wahnfried.
3We have laid some stress on Wagner's improvidence, his reckless extravagance and his inability to make good terms for his works. But it is to his glory that he deliberately cast aside early opportunities to grow rich at the sacrifice of his artistic ideals. If Wagner had followed the alluring invitation of his own "Rienzi" he might have been a second Meyerbeer, and instead of taking his place on the pages of musical history as a majestic reformer, might have been set down simply as one of a long line of Parisian pets. As Mr. Finck says: "Had he, in Paris, even made the single concession of allowing a ballet to be introduced in 'Tannhäuser,' thousands would have been his reward. But not a step would he budge from his artistic ideals, for sybaritic motives or any others. And most wonderful of all, year after year he worked at his tetralogy, though he was convinced he would not live to see it, and certainly never receive any worldly profit from it."
5No, Poor Richard was only a genius in art—not a business man. He was actually frightened at the possibility of an offer of a large sum to visit America, because he saw that such a journey would interrupt his labors. "If the people of New York should ever make up their minds to offer me a considerable sum," he said, "I should be in a most awful dilemma. If I refused I should have to conceal it from all men, for everyone would charge me in my position with recklessness." But—"I should never finish the 'Nibelungen' in my life." The "Nibelungen," thank heaven! was finished. Poor Richard died only tolerably well off, and he died artistically honest. Of how many musicians who have got rich can the same thing be said?
7VAN DER STUCKEN PROTESTS.
9THE New York "Herald" last Friday contained the following protest of Mr. Frank Van Der Stucken, conductor of the Arion Society:
11MR. VAN DER STUCKEN DOES NOT AGREE.
13To the Editor of the Herald:
15In your issue of this morning in an account of last night's Arion concert, I found the following statement:
17"Rudolph von Weldenberg," an a capella chorus, by F. Hegar, the critic with such outrageously bad taste, or it sounded as if some of the harmonies stand in sad need of revision.
19For all the musicians and music lovers who attended the concert it must have been a huge joke indeed to see how a critic could mistake the bold harmonies and daring modulations of the greatest and most "fin de siècle" of German male chorus composers for a fault of intonation of the Arion singers, who again and again have proved that this is not their particular foible. But, considering the immense circulation of your esteemed paper, that always treated me with the utmost fairness, and in justice to the gallant singers I have the honor to direct and who never sang better than in this most difficult work by Hegar, keeping pitch to the very last chord, I beg you to insert these few lines and oblige, respectfully yours,
21FRANK VAN DER STUCKEN,
22Musical Director of the Arion Society.
23NEW YORK, November 13, 1894.
25The right of criticising a critic is an unwritten right, but nevertheless is perfectly valid. If any of the young men of the "Herald" who are deputed to "do" a concert write a criticism that calls for counter criticism, nobody can complain. As a matter of record, the Arion Society did not sing out of tune, and the score of Hegar's interesting composition reveals some striking and novel harmonic combinations. Possibly the young critic of the "Herald" was a worshiper of the mellifluous Mendelssohn, or mayhap an ardent admirer of the suave melodies of Donizetti. Mr. Van Cleef should view with care the programs of concerts to be criticised. For example, one cannot fancy Mr. Steinberg writing a criticism of the sort above quoted. Perhaps Mr. Julius Lyons, the composer of "The Lady or the Tiger," was the heretic who refused to digest Hegar's fin de siècle harmonies.
27The question raised is interesting. Mr. Van Der Stucken declares most emphatically that his forces did not sing out of tune. His ear is fine and sensitive, and he is not the sort of a man to raise an issue if he were in the wrong. As to the possibility of Hegar's harmonic scheme being out of gear, that is of course ridiculous. Some of his effects in simple four part writing are remarkable. If the critic of the "Herald" did not hear and appreciate, why, all the worse for the "Herald" critic. His ear is not attuned to modern harmonies. Really, Mr. Van Cleef should be very careful in his apportionment of assignments. The dramatic critic is never sent to Huber's Museum; why should the Salvation Army critic be sent to a first-class concert like that of the Arion Society? Of course this is only by way of illustration. On the whole we admire Mr. Van Der Stucken's bold and rather unprecedented methods. He was in the right, and he had due cause for his protest.
29NOTICE.
31IF any persons in or about Cincinnati have paid money to anyone for subscription to this paper and have not received the paper regularly they will confer a favor upon the management here by reporting the amount paid and the date or approximate date of payment.
33SHORTEN THE PROGRAMS.
35HOW much music can a human being swallow in a single evening? Most of our concert directors seem to think that the capacity of an audience presumably composed of music lovers is something like that of the gay and festive ostrich or the mild, contemplative Harlem goat. It is not at all uncommon to be present at a concert which lasts two hours and a half, and occasionally there is one which fills nearly three hours.
37Now, the philosophy of this thing is extremely simple. If it is a concert of miscellaneous character, in which the program is composed of a considerable number of compositions of comparative lightness, as in the case of a Sunday night concert at the Metropolitan Opera House, there is no serious reason why the concert, including encores, should not last two hours and a half. For the mind of the hearer is never enchain'd by the inexorable demands of a complex work, and such emotions as are aroused are as a rule of the lighter, more pleasurable and more fleeting kind.
39But when the concert is one of high class music, such as symphonies or oratorio, it should never last more than two hours. No human being who gives his entire attention to the performance can stand more than that without a feeling of exhaustion and an utter indifference to the proceedings of the last half hour. Indeed even a better effect is made by a concert which does not last over an hour and three-quarters, beginning say at 8:15 and ending at 10. The hearer at such a concert goes away satisfied, but not surfeited, nourished, but not dyspeptic.
41"Ah," says the musical gourmand, "but you forget the opera! That always lasts more than two hours, and yet you call it a work of art." Precisely; a work of art—not several works. The auditor at a performance of a five act opera is in much the same situation as the hearer of a symphony in five movements, with this important advantage in favor of the opera—that the foundation of organic unity laid by the story of an opera is firmer in its ready hold upon the mind than that laid by the symphonic composer. An opera is a single number, and its division into acts affords the necessary relief to the hearer.
43But we beg leave to add that some operas are a good deal too long, and not necessarily the bad ones, either. The later music dramas of Richard Wagner, the greatest works ever written for the lyric stage, are all too long for an evening's performance. The master permitted himself to be carried away by the pleasing illusion of a world full of Bayreuths, where people had nothing to do but to start for the opera house at 3:30 p.m., dine between the acts, and get home some time between 10 and midnight. The result is that Wagner's works have to be condensed for general use, and it so happens that the condensation is to their detriment.
45Yet it was Richard Wagner himself who first lifted up the determined voice of opposition to the programs of the London Philharmonic Society, on the score of their inordinate length. And who can wonder? Here is the program of the first concert of that venerable fossil, conducted by him:
47Symphony No. 7……………………………………………..Haydn
48Terzetto………………………………………………………..Mozart
49Violin concerto……………………………………………..Sporh
50"Ocean, thou might monster"……………………………Weber
51Overture, "Isle of Pines"………………………………….Mendelssohn
52Symphony, "Eroica"………………………………………Beethoven
53Duet, "O my Father"………………………………………Marschner
54Overture, "Die Zauberflöte"……………………………..Mozart
56Was not that enough to drive an artistic mind to distraction? His third concert consisted of two overtures, three arias, a concerto and two symphonies, one of which was Beethoven's fifth. No wonder Wagner wrote to Praeger: "These endless programs, with these interminable masses of instrumental and vocal pieces, torture me." No wonder that in writing to Mrs. Praeger he signed himself "Conductor d'omnibus de la Société Philharmonique."
58We have improved a good deal in these matters since the early days of our own Philharmonic, when long programs were in order, but we have not improved enough. Our conductors need to turn their eyes backward a little and study the art of program making as it was illustrated by one of its greatest masters—Theodore Thomas. Here are three programs culled at random from those of his more serious concerts in the season of 1887-88:
60No. 1.
61Symphony, G minor………………………………………Mozart
62Overture, "Leonore," No. 2…………………………….Beethoven
63Concerto for violin, op. 40……………………………….Rubinstein
64Suite No. 1……………………………………………………Mozkowski one of two readings
65Suite No. 1………………………………………………….Mozkowski one of two readings
67No. 2.—BEETHOVEN PROGRAM.
68Overture, "Leonore," Nos. 1, 2 and 3.
69Concerto, No. 5, E flat………………………………….Adèle Aus der Ohe.
70Symphony No. 7, A major……………………………….No. 3.
71Toccata………………………………………………………Bach
72Concerto, G major (strings)……………………………..Bach
73Fantasia, "Wanderer"…………………………………….Schubert-Liszt
74"Eine Faust" symphonie…………………………………Rafael Joseffy.
75Liszt
77We are not getting any such concise, symmetrical programs nowadays, more's the pity. Come, be generous, Messrs. Seidl and Damrosch; give us a little more solid enjoyment and a little less music.
79CONCENTRATION.
81WE have ever espoused the cause of culture. Time and time again we have urged upon our readers the necessity of wide reading, of knowledge which does not pertain to the art of music, of the value of foreign tongues, of the mastery of business detail, and of the advantages to be gained by acquaintance with the masterpieces of painting, poetry and sculpture. The drama, too, should not be neglected, since it is parent to that modern form which Richard Wagner so marvellously developed in his music-dramas. But while culture broadens there is this much to be said on the other side of the question. Mere knowledge for knowledge's sake may prove a bar to concentration. Diffuseness of learning—in a word, the shallow memorizing of a few generalities—is not sufficient, and if musicians are as a rule too prone to confining themselves to their own special art, they very often make the mistake of experimenting recklessly with more than one branch of it.
83The man who plays two or three instruments in a mediocre manner is becoming alarmingly in evidence. Concerts are even given at which a performer plays the piano, sings and afterward gives us a violin solo. A little knowledge on a half dozen instruments is a dangerous thing. Far better the specialist who devotes himself intensely to the organ, the piano, the violin or the 'cello. He is sure, ambition and talent being granted, to make for himself a name and also enjoy the sweet satisfaction of having mastered his task. In his finely discriminating study of French writers of prose and verse, Henry James speaks of the necessity of the artist to master his intellectual instrument and then playing it to perfection. It is not given to all of us—his faculty of intense application, this patience which knows no limit, no bounds. But we do know that the person who attempts the playing of more than one instrument usually falls between two stools. It is a marked characteristic of the American temperament—this grasping at many boughs in the anxiety to bring all the cherries down. A wise fate has, however, set limitations to our ambitions, and so no man has yet been great on two instruments.
85Hearsay evidence as to this is not conclusive. Even a man may not play the virtuoso and be a great composer. Every pianist and violinist who has turned to composition has of necessity abandoned concert playing. The grasp over sheer technical material requires the study of a lifetime. How then can men and women fritter away their time by playing the piano a little, fooling with the violin or dipping into singing? Every pianist fancies that he can play the organ, and there are few organists who do not assert that piano playing is a comparatively easy art to overcome. As a matter of fact, the geniuses of the two instruments most widely differ, and no great organist has ever been a great pianist. Mendelssohn's case is commonly instanced in this respect, but Mendelssohn nevertheless was not a great organ virtuoso, and while his piano playing was delightfully musical, clean cut and sympathetic, he does not rank among the great pianists. Chopin is an exception, but he does not prove the rule. He virtually abandoned piano playing for composition. The same may
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