Scan 6
Musical Courier 1898-01-19: Vol 36 Iss 933, 1898
61 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. Printed page 7. See the scan on archive.org.
A town on its own line is one of the directory's headings. That is where the town on a maker's page comes from.
1room and seized his sword and slew four of the bystanders. The anecdote gives in exaggerated form the possible effect of music. It is safe to assert, we think, that the wildest Wagnerian music of to-day would not cause our good men to slay the bystanders. Fortunately, we have passed beyond that elemental stage of barbarism where every emotion takes immediate shape in action. But we know that before man has arrived at a reasonable degree of civilization he has little protection against the sensuous effect of music, or, indeed, the sensuous effect of any art. He is apt to look at every development of art according to its appeal to the senses. Music, unfortunately, is of all arts at once the most subtle in its spirituality and the most direct in its appeal to the senses. It has an immediate effect on the nerves by its rhythm, its motion. But its sensuous effect varies according to the excitability of the nervous system and according to the amount of self-control which man is able to exercise. Self-control either in an individual or a nation is only the result of training, of careful education. So that the higher moral influence of music is not generally in evidence except where the mind and character are developed to receive it.
3The action of music upon animals is often advanced as an argument in favor of the heavenly nature of music; it is rather an argument in favor of its opposite nature. Many animals are soothed or disturbed, according as they hear harmonies or discords, wave-like melodies or abrupt and capricious movements of sound. Sometimes they are so controlled as to be lulled to sleep, or at least to blinking forgetfulness of animal cares and pains. But does this mean that they understand music or appreciate it at its true value? The animal pleasure in hearing soothing sounds is like that experienced by man when he is smoking a good cigar after a satisfactory dinner, or that felt by a woman who, in a new and becoming gown, hears her praises sung by some admirer. The sensuous effect of music unbalanced by education or self-control results in intoxication. Man can become drunk with music, either when playing or listening. But is it due entirely to the music that he becomes intoxicated, lost in mazes of sound? He also becomes intoxicated with wine or with love, if the love is merely a passion. But is it not his own physical nature which leads him into intoxication? Is he not subject, under, not master, of a nervous excitability? Do not all who are capable of passing beyond the elementary state of musical civilization realize that there is in music something which appeals to man beyond and above a sensuous gratification? Does not the great composer, understanding music as an art, find it ennobling to exercise the power of creation in the same fashion that the artist, the sculptor, the architect, the poet exercise it? Does not the musician who interprets the work of a master mind find intellectual satisfaction in following out the workings of a creative mind, and find, too, a glow of pure artistic delight in feeling that the music is shaped in harmony with the fine sense of beauty that has always been evident in creation of immortal works, from the creation of the star and flower to the creation of the Andante from the Fifth Symphony and the Allegro from the Seventh?
5The listener is in lesser degree subject to the same laws of musical thought and feeling which govern the composer. If of a sensuous nature his mental activity is at a low ebb. If he stands higher in the scale of being, his listening becomes more of an art, more of a truly aesthetic pleasure. And the higher he rises, the firmer grasp he has over himself and his own thought, the more thoroughly does he perceive and follow the real meaning of a musical composition, trace out the fundamental musical ideas upon which it is built and contemplate the value of the musical design. To appreciate design is absolutely necessary in order to thoroughly enjoy music. For design in music is like order in the universe—without order would result chaos, and the earth would again become a formless void.
7The appreciation of design, of order, in music does not by any means destroy the feeling for its loveliness any more than the knowledge of grammar, rhetoric and logic prevent one from realizing the beauty of the "Divina Commedia" or the "Earthly Paradise"; any more than knowledge of drawing and perspective prevent one from enjoying a Sargent portrait or a Farrar landscape. Music, indeed, less than any other art suffers from man's technical knowledge of its construction, of the laws of its being. For the other arts present the impressions derived from actual observations, from seeing what it presented. This is decisively true of painting and sculpture and to a less degree of architecture, and is partly true of literature in that the latter, particularly in the novel and the drama, presents man himself as a material entity. But music alone of all the arts "formulates the direct expression of man's innermost feelings and sensibilities. The other arts express the outer surroundings of man; music expresses that which is within him." Surely, therefore, of all the arts music is the one which should be treated with greatest reverence. Its material, its subject matter, is absolutely pure. It is, of course, venturing upon dangerous ground to touch except in passing upon the question of absolute purity in music. There are many kinds of music and many types of mind for it to appeal to. But this much is certain: The tones which the composer selects to express meaning are as pure in themselves as lines chosen by the architect.
9Yet what a poor reward for his finest inspirations is given often to the composer. For when he has selected these combinations of tone which will best present his musical idea, when he has with that technical mastery of form, which every true musician must have, built it in logical proportions, so that like a temple or a monument or a statue it may stand the test of cold criticism, satisfied the sense for proportion, when he has informed it with color, when he has compelled the voices heard in his inmost heart to utter the message he would send forth to his kind, then though he speaks of the sins and frailties of men with tongues of fire, though he speaks of truth and peace in phrases crystal pure as the water-drops which tell of a clear green polar sea untouched by man—is it not a poor reward to hear "that music is of all others the most sensuous of arts?" Would it not be more sane and sensible to say to him: "Speak freely your message to the world. All arts are sensuous if undirected by reason, if unrestrained in expression. All arts are sensuous if seen from the standpoint of sensuousness." In the lines of architecture may be traced by a sensuous eye a thousand and suggestive hints; in the forms of nature, in the most lovely scenes, may be seen all lines and curves that suggest forbidden things. In the juxtaposition and harmony of colors may be traced the theories of sex; in chemistry, in every science there is present in embryo all mysteries of creation, receptiveness, reproduction, attraction and repulsion; all mysteries of life are told in every art.
11Gauss, the mathematician, once gave the following toast: "I drink," he said, "to pure mathematics, the only art that has never been defiled by practical application." A musician who understands his art in every aspect ought to be able to paraphrase this toast and say, "I drink to pure and absolute music, which should never be defiled by sensuous application."
13PIANO INSTRUCTION.
14Frederic Mariner,
15TECHNIC SPECIALIST…..
16STUDIO:
17VIRGIL PIANO SCHOOL,
1829 West 18th St., New York.
20CAROLYN L. YEATON,
21CONCERT PIANIST.
22Steinway Hall or
23363 West 31st Street, New York.
25MARGARET GAYLORD,
26Concerts, Oratorio.
27SOPRANO.
28Address 139 West 41st St., New York City.
29Soprano Plymouth Church, Brooklyn.
31VIOLA PRATT GILLET,
32DRAMATIC CONTRALTO.
33ADDRESS
34L. M. RUBEN,
35487 Fifth Avenue,
36NEW YORK.
38FRANCES MILLER,
39DRAMATIC SOPRANO.
40262 W. 139th St.,
41NEW YORK.
43Signor ARTURO NUTINI,
44"The Blind Paderewski,"
45CONCERT PIANIST.
46Direction, J. BISTOLFI,
47151 West 46th Street, New York.
49VIENNA OFFICE THE MUSICAL COURIER,
50IV. Plösslgasse 3, Thur. 24, December 17, 1897.
52THERE have occurred so many concerts during the present season that I will simply try to calendar or index them, and reserve the most important features for comment below.
54The first concert was in October when the Society of Friends of Children gave its annual entertainment. Schlager, Lilli Petri, Grünfeld, Hellmesberger and others took part, and a large audience was present.
56The Gutmann repertory was headed with a series of concerts given by the New Symphony Orchestra of Budapest, under the skillful leadership of Karl Zimmer, formerly leader of the New Berlin Symphony Orchestra. The idea was to have an orchestra independent of opera and other subscription concert engagements to assist at leading events and to revive among the deteriorating Viennese a taste for superior forms of music by more frequent soirées devoted to Bach, Beethoven and the classics, &c. More about this later on. Of this series, Max Garnier, from Paris, Schlager and the "Wonderchild" boy violinist, Max Wolfsthal, were the most important features, not omitting the name of Herr Boudie, the violinist, who made an excellent impression, and Frau Kahlig.
58Rosé opened the season with an unsurpassed performance of the Quartet Rosé. On the program was a trio, first performance, of César Franck, op. 1, No. 1. Madame Rappoldi-Kahrer, from Dresden, presided at the piano. She is a pianist of real ability, and was well received, but the trio met with marked disfavor, plainly exhibited by the hisses which mingled with the applause. I heard only the last part of the last movement, and found it childish and devoid of originality, with a finale always seeming to be reaching the close perilously near, but never getting there. That Franck should have written a work like this is surprising.
60On the second Rosé evening a trio of Saint-Saëns was given with greater éclat, Mrs. Margaret Stern, from Dresden, being at the piano. The Hellmesberger, Fitzner, Duesberg, Soldat Roeger quartets have all given one or two concerts, but at the rate these quartets are multiplying in Vienna I shall have to give up attending some of them. The taste for chamber music is growing in strength and appreciation in Vienna. Herr Prill, another founder of a quartet, which he introduced not long ago to the Vienna public as the sixth now in existence, in the first Philharmonic concert occupied, with Hellmesberger, the place of Rosé and Grün in the seat of the concert-meister. A
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