Scan 16
Musical Courier 1896-07-01: Vol 33 Iss 852, 1896
52 lines. Read by computer on 20 September 2026. Printed page 17. See the scan on archive.org.
1THE MUSICAL COURIER.
3pose upon those artists serious loss and embarrassment.
5The eventual consequences from the death of an impresario such as Sir Augustus Harris may not be estimated at once. While his practical talents in the line of art fitted a much lower groove than that of opera he nevertheless managed to gauge public operatic taste and supply it with a liberality and discretion which it is a simpler matter to discuss than find a successor to duplicate. While unable, from the musician's standpoint, to estimate the relative worth of any corps of artists he was unusually expert in estimating the exact relative value set upon them by the public. This understood, he lacked neither energy nor generosity in bringing together for Covent Garden each year a superb phalanx of singers whose combination was unsurpassed in any opera house the world over.
7At the very period when the succession of brilliant seasons at Covent Garden began to constitute itself a matter of consistently important operatic history, and barely in the zenith of his years, Sir Augustus Harris, impresario, has been cut off. He exercised a large influence upon the successful sustenance, if not upon the absolute growth, of opera, and his experience and astute ability in this regard will not be easy to replace.
9The unexpectedness and untimeliness of his decease add to the complication of matters, which for the prosperous future of opera it is earnestly to be hoped may promptly be readjusted satisfactorily.
11THE WAGNER LEGENDS.
13CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS have issued a new volume, The Legends of the Wagner Drama, Studies in Mythology and Romance, by Jessie L. Weston, which will doubtless find a large number of readers. The book is published by a London house with which Scribner's Sons have arranged for the American publication.
15Any new Wagner book at the present period presupposes a large reading clientele, for the reasons that no puzzling drama in the world was ever so coveted to be understood, and ever so hopelessly misunderstood, by an unlearned majority as the Wagner drama, while at the same time a large mass of students remain ever on the qui vive for any possible analysis or opinion which may give fresh insight or illumination to their already developed appreciation.
17Miss Weston brings to her task in the first place an innate appreciation and understanding of the language in which Wagner wrote aside from her regard for the fantastic symbolism of the lore. She has already translated effectively the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and is completely at home in Northern national literature as she is in the shades of tongue which have given it living meaning and effect.
19The principal merit of her book—and it is a novel merit—lies in her clear pointing out of the discrepancies between the original Volsunga saga, the Nibelungenlied, the Parzival of Wolfram Von Eschenbach and the Tristan of Gottfried von Strassburg, and their representative dramas as built by Wagner. Miss Weston's book bears solely to one issue, which she has compassed satisfactorily with an intelligent force of analysis, this issue being to prove Wagner's gigantic power in the separation of false or ineffective detail from his dramatic scheme without in any way decreasing or diverting the original potency of intention of the story.
21It is as a consummate dramatist, a master in the art of selection, that the author seeks to put forward Wagner. He faced a gigantic confusion of mythical lore, each story with its thread almost obscured and its purpose consequently enfeebled by a perplexing burden of detail. Even the Wagner enthusiasts well know that Wagner might judiciously have thrown away much more than he did. A character might here and there be spared and the remainder left less to say, but a reading of Miss Weston's book will serve to disclose a liberal discretion on Wagner's part in dealing with his original prodigality of material. To fully appreciate Wagner's histrionic acumen it is necessary to know how and where he has discarded and in what instances altered characters and situations so as to more consistently and effectually fit the exigencies of the present stage.
23Every instance with its origin and references in which change or omission has been made is clearly cited, compared and explained in the present volume. Those who enjoy the search for original purism after tortuous journeys through the thousand inexactitudes of recorded mythical lore will find themselves taken with nice conscientiousness by Miss Weston to the true Wagnerian basis with the merits of Wagnerian eclecticism in ignoring or altering subjects on this original basis lucidly described. The Aryan traditions are gone back to, with the Celtic and other parent myths of the Norse, the author having at all times a succinct grasp of her subject.
25The logical explanation of mythical lore so as in any manner to appeal to living interest is not a simple task. There is a vast opportunity to get swamped in the ridiculous when a pen unacquainted with the exactest niceties of mythical symbol undertakes to account for the raison d'être of many anomalous figures. If a reasoner might discard the animal section of the Nibelungen Trilogy, including the obedient collie bear and talking dragon, there might be dug out from the Old Testament a virtuous justification for the children of what would now be called "incestuous" unions. The maidens singing under water are strangely amphibious creatures too, but have a certain justificatory picturesqueness. All figures are embraced in Miss Weston's book with a very exact symbolic appreciation and their place and significance in the Wagner drama interestingly exposed.
27So much has been written anent Wagner and Wagner opera that to strike any new vein is commemorative. The importance of union in Wagner's case between subject text and music cannot possibly be overlooked in one phrase by anyone pretending to truly enjoy the master. To enjoy Wagner, first and above and beyond all predecessors, or yet successors, he demands comprehension. Any book which draws simply and clearly the original story of his operas, pointing out his alterations and their cause, will prove a helpful guide to a closer understanding of his entire operatic purpose, the music and text with Wagner being matter indissoluble.
29One of the numerous changes quoted by Miss Weston is in the case of Siegfried. The original myth, confers invulnerability on Siegfried through his tasting of the dragon's blood. Wagner altered this and caused the results to be produced instead through Brünnhilde's spells. Such change necessarily opened an avenue of invention for Brünnhilde in the master's mind. This as a leading instance, however, is but one of several effectively outlined in the present volume.
31AUBER.
33ON the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Auber's death, on May 13, Hans von Basedow issued a Gedenkblatt from which we cull some interesting passages.
35In the ninth volume of the collected works of Richard Wagner appear his Recollections of Auber, which treat especially of the great effect of Masaniello: "French dramatic music reached its culmination in Auber's unsurpassable Masaniello, a national work, such as any nation only produces once. This display of energy, this sea of feeling and passion, painted in the most glowing colors, pervaded by the most appropriate melodies, in which grace and power, gentleness and heroism are blended, is not this the true incarnation of the last history of the French nation? Could this astonishing work of art have been created by anyone but a Frenchman? It is not too much to say that in this work the newer French school reached its zenith, and, with it, conquered the hegemony of the civilized world."
37Wagner expresses himself in similar terms respecting the chef d'œuvre of Auber in his pamphlet, Ueber Deutsches Musikwesen. On the other hand Auber had a special fondness for Tannhäuser, although he did not fully comprehend the German music drama, although in his search for piquant melodies he did not seize the real musical portion of Wagner's work; yet Wagner always recognized the greatness of Auber, even as the reformer of musical comedy, and it is in this last respect that Auber is to be characterized. When Auber began to be Auber, Italy ruled in Paris, Rossini in opera, Cherubini in the more serious field, and as head of the Conservatory. The former was an artist from whom flowed an inexhaustible stream of purely Italian melody; the latter a serious, thoughtful musician, whose Requiem is a masterpiece of the very first rank.
39Auber began as a Parisian and a dilettante, and hence perhaps he became so great. A full blooded Parisian, he wrote for full blooded Parisians his first work, and then, when fully ripe, at an age when Rossini ceased to create, he commenced serious studies under Cherubini. Wherever he was born, he was all through a child of Paris. His father excelled as a singer and a violinist, and was in such circumstances as to attract famous artists to his house. Auber thus grew up in musical surroundings, although he was destined for business and spent two years in a merchant's office in London. In 1804 he returned to Paris, and thenceforth to his death on May 13, 1871, he was a genuine Parisian, spending his days either in the saddle (for the love of riding remained with him till advanced life) or on the piano stool, and Parisian is his work; even his romanticism has nothing German in it—no elves or spooks or forest magic, but the French romanticism of situations.
41"I said in commencing that Auber is the creator of the French musical Lustspiel. This expression is more appropriate than the meaningless Sptcloper; I do not mean the Lustspiel that to-day holds the stage in the literary field, but the Lustspiel quickened with romanticism, with sentimentalizing tendencies, with too virtuous virtues, and too frivolous frivolity." Such are Le Maçon, La part du diable, Fra Diavolo, Le Domino noir that are still in the repertory of most opera houses. The greatest of his works, however, is Masaniello or La Muette de Portici as it is more truly named, though it owes the figure of Fenella to the fact that Auber could not find a singer for his music of the part, and so Scribe and he altered the libretto to introduce Mlle. Noblet. The effectiveness of the change cannot be overrated. The success of the piece was enormous. It became the prelude to the Revolution of July, and in this regard is paralleled only by Beaumarchais' Mariage de Figaro, the precursor of the first Revolution. In many of Auber's pieces can be seen his fondness for introducing a song as a kind of Leitmotiv that returns in the most different situations.
43AMERICAN TEACHERS AND ENGLISH CRITICS.
45THE Strand Magazine has in its July number a very kindly article on American singers in London. It is, of course, profusely illustrated, and gives the usual data respecting its subjects. It deserves attention, however, in other respects, especially for the good words it says for American teachers. After speaking of Patti, whom the writer says America can justly claim, as she made her first appearance here, he continues:
47"In certain respects the early training of Patti was unique, and offers a sharp contrast to the training now undergone by American singers who seek a career abroad. It may be that the American teachers are commonplace, or that they are not appreciated at their proper worth. At all events, it now seems to be considered indispensable for an American to study with a Continental master. The process is called by the not very elegant term 'finishing off,' and to finish off with Lamperti, Duprez or Marchesi has been, and continues to be, the customary thing. It explains the yearly exodus of young singers from the United States, and their constant presence in London and other musical centres. The custom is not wholly complimentary to the American teacher, and if the facts were widely known it would be quickly realized that not a little of the credit which now goes to the European master is due to the faithful work of the American trainer."
49We are glad to see such an appreciation of the merits of American schools of music in a European magazine. THE MUSICAL COURIER has always lifted up its voice against the craze for sending aspiring singers to foreign schools, with all their strange and dangerous surroundings, when we have at our own doors teachers as competent as any of the vaunted foreign maestri. The Strand writer comes to details. "Lillian Nordica, for instance, who in the space of ten years has become one of the leading singers of the world, found her earliest appreciator and helper in John O'Neil, of the New England Conservatory in Boston. It is true that the beautiful Maine girl received splendid instruction from the noted San Giovanni, of Brescia, when she studied with him in 1879, but, with true appreciation of her 'conservatory days,' she never fails to remember the instruction given by her American teacher. In like manner Emma Eames studied in Boston with Miss Clara Munger, under the advice of Professor John K. Paine and Herr Gericke, who at that time was leader of the celebrated Boston Symphony Orchestra. It was the training which she received in those days that paved the way for her extraordinary and unheralded success at the Grand Opera in Paris during the season of '89."
51Ella Russell studied with John Underner, of Cleveland, before she began her successes in Europe. Antoinette Sterling was a pupil of Abella in New
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