Scan 22
Musical Courier 1902-03-26: Vol 44 Iss 1148, 1902
64 lines. Read by computer on 26 September 2026. Printed page 23. See the scan on archive.org.
1What right have you to meddle in philosophy, literature and politics?
3"It is a mere accident of birth that you are not factory girls or dry goods saleswomen. And were you such, can you feel certain that you would have the courage to prefer honest, laborious misery to blameworthy ease?"
5The audience was stupefied. Several of the members moved to-day that the invitation be withdrawn for the two remaining lectures, but the majority refused to do so, arguing that such a sincere man as M. Zola should be allowed freedom of speech, however startling and severe his words might be.
7Now, why doesn't Zola give both sides of the slate and lecture before "an exceedingly aristocratic" club of Parisian gentlemen—and tell the truth. A nice truth it would be, of vulgar dissipations, idiotic gambling, boozing, yellow gossip and shattered commandments. Schopenhauer—who was hardly a friend of the female sex—was in the habit, so his biographer, Frauenstadt, tells us, of placing a gold piece on the table of the hotel where he dined daily in Frankfort. He did this for years. The money was for the first officer at the table who would converse on any topic except wine, women, horses! And the gold always went back into the philosopher's pocket! Let Zola try the same experiment in the cafés and clubs of Paris—or New York! Justice to "frivolous women," after all!
9Musical wars are verbose affairs. We all know what a boon Richard Wagner was to the printing and bookbinding trades, and I have frequently wondered why these guilds have not commemorated Wagner in tablets of Rhine gold. He deserved it.
11And now the name of Strauss is keeping the presses of Germany hot: A brochure comes from Dresden, and in it the author Gustav Brecher, gives us a very thoughtful summing up of the music of Strauss.
13At the outset we are all a bit apologetic about Strauss. He is not the sort of musical personality one can dump into the reader's lap to make the best or the worst of, but he needs be explained—not his work so much as his position in music. So far Strauss is not a creator of a musical art form, but a completer of one, and the written word about him sends us back to program music for a starting point.
15Brecher very sensibly dismisses the early bits of program writing of Kuhnau, Vogler, Haydn, Bach, Händel and even Beethoven, and he begins with Berlioz as the first one who cultivated seriously the musical means as the expression of a program. But form, that result after which so many of the great ones had striven and had attained, was not to be demolished over night, and so Berlioz frequently forsakes the purely logical trend of his narrative and makes formal concessions.
17Liszt advanced a step and gave his material freer field by replacing the symphony with the symphonic poem with correspondingly elastic outlines. But when Liszt was freest he was unfortunately rhapsodic, and finally he succumbed to form as the only means of bringing about cohesion.
19Now the successor of the giant Liszt realized the faulty logic of his predecessor. When Liszt had wandered from the symphonic form he had also forsaken the symphonic construction of his themes—hence the choppy incoherency of much of his music. Strauss overcomes this by using long, sweeping, symphonic themes to establish—or at least to aid in it—the cohesion of his several musical mood pictures, and then lets the idea dictate its own form.
21Brecher is imbued with typical German conscientiousness, and traces Strauss' development in no less than six periods. I need not tell you that when the final judgment is passed on the compositions from his pen Strauss' musical career will be divided into fewer and simpler parts.
23From op. 1 to 11 Brecher finds the advance from the formalist to the absolute musician. This period includes among others his Serenade for wind instruments, the Violin Concerto and the one for horn, in which thematic invention is so healthy and the flow of composition so spontaneous.
25In the next division, which extends to op. 19, and includes his F minor Symphony and the six Schack songs, the lion is beginning already to show his claws but timidly. Over him hangs the influence of other masters—particularly Brahms. Brecher reasons that so far Strauss, the musician, and he the tone-poet, have not yet merged their personality into a musical "troisième sexe"; and that here Strauss does not even follow program music in the Liszt sense, but "Aus Italien" presents simply four mood pictures in tone—which is distinctly a harking back to the older ideas of program music.
27Yet the "Symphonic Phantasie"—"Aus Italien"—cannot be dismissed with such miserly praise. The rhythmic originality of Strauss is here already prominent, and the orchestration is remarkable.
29A hasty glance is thrown over the development of the orchestral character: Haydn put an end to the purely vocal use of this body; Mozart gave it greater freedom and beauty; while Beethoven endowed it with individuality. But all these and their followers had their eyes fixed on form more than on orchestral color. So Berlioz—the inventor of instrumental hues—was driven to new orchestral devices to express his ideas; this clearly was the result of a need.
31But Berlioz fell a victim to his own schemes. His orchestra became all color, and the thematic contents dwindled in importance. Liszt realized this, and availing himself of Berlioz's wonderful color combinations used them to express an underlying thematic idea, and did not count on them as did Berlioz, so frequently—to fill the place, both of theme and expression.
33Wagner, ever wide awake to what had been done before him, made liberal use of the Berlioz devices and Liszt's thematic application. He also furthered his father-in-law's psychologic use of the mass of instruments: a bulk of tone and a highly colored one did not answer Richard's wants, for his subjects were abstruse, and stripped of psychology his works became mere hulk.
35On this again Strauss has built, and it is more than likely that the orchestration of the latter-day Richard will last beyond the near future. The musical plane of his logic is very definite. He believes in the individuality of his instruments, and is not chary of sounding many themes at the same time, interweaving them with motives which exist not only on paper but are alive to the ear, because of the skillful manner of preserving prominence by means of instrumental individuality.
37"Macbeth" and "Don Juan" are reckoned by Brecher as forming Strauss' third period—"die erste Glanzperiode." Here is the first unbared glance given us of Strauss' individuality. The author judges "Don Juan" to be not only among his greatest works, but also one of the most complete contributions to the entire literature of program music. In it Strauss has got at the kernel of his subject so absolutely, and has then worked outwardly, expressing his thoughts in tone so consistently as never had been achieved before by anyone. And, adds Brecher, the viewpoint is sympathetically of our time.
39The next period is reckoned a reactionary one. "Tod und Verklärung" and "Guntram" are but lispsings of Liszt and Wagner, thinks Brecher. He does not find the architecture so crafty, nor the invention so subtle, and the overmuch of chromatics pleases him not.
41And "Guntram" is of the same musical ilk, but places Strauss before us as a poet. We do not care for the trend of the "Guntram" plot; it savors far too much of the later Wagner and his Montsalvatic Brotherhood of kissing elders.
43From op. 27 to 34 is bracketed as the fifth period. This includes some of the greater Strauss songs, in which he succeeds so admirably in absorbing the mood of the poem and then retailing it in musical form.
45From the same time dates his orchestral rondo "Till Eulenspiegel," which is simply electrical in its vagaries. This period closes with "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Here Strauss' musical conception and fancy rise to such heights that Brecher believes only the perspective of time can reveal their altitude. Better would it have been had the work simply been called "Zarathustra," thinks the author. But why? Does not the trailing name of Nietzsche give it liberties of comprehension?
47The sixth period begins with "Don Quixote" and is called one of reckless development. This work and "Heldenleben" are simply reflections of the hideous present. In them truth conquers beauty in the honesty of expression.
49"Don Quixote" has been attacked on all sides, but is it not, after all, a picture of a deranged intellect which Strauss has chosen for his subject, and is there any legitimate ground for quarreling with an author or composer over the choice of his subject? So much should be taken for granted and the treatment alone criticised.
51The songs of ops. 37, 41 and 43 fall in this period. They also tend to sheer naked realism of expression.
53"Heldenleben" is the musical viewpoint of one who has arrived at the summit of his striving and looks behind him in survey of the conquered field. A further advance in the line of the symphonic poem beyond this work seems scarcely possible.
55Brecher devotes the concluding chapter to the life of Strauss. The usual facts are rehearsed here. The author sensibly points out that Strauss, with Bach, Beethoven and Schubert, is a blow to the vulgar argument that an artist must have lived outwardly his experiences in order to relate them in his work. With Strauss the creative incentive is a fully developed imagination, coupled with an earnest striving to get at the seed of logic rather than at the result itself.
57In all this is reflected his schooling in philosophy. Strauss to-day is as universal a genius as ever was Wagner.
59Our friends, the folks-lorists, who are always going, in Russian fashion, "to the people" for the beginnings of every art, music and poetry in particular will not care for W. B. Yeats' assertion that "what we call popular poetry never came from the people at all." As a matter of logic all art comes from the artist; your racial theories can go hang. It is always the individual; never the nation. Genius has no race.
61Mr. Yeats asks in Cornhill, "What is popular poetry?" He says:
63"Longfellow has his popularity, in the main, because he tells his story or his idea so that one needs nothing but his verses to understand it. No words of his borrow their beauty from them that used them before, and one can get all that there is in story and idea without seeing them, as if moving before a half faded curtain embroidered with kings and queens, their loves and battles and their days out hunting, or else with holy letters and images of so great antiquity that nobody can tell the god or goddess they would commend to an unfading mem-
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