Scan 10
Musical Courier 1906-08-22: Vol 53 Iss 1378, 1906
57 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
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1criticisms is that they were penned by men who were among the leading musical and critical lights of the day, men of exhaustive musical knowledge and experience. From their standpoint they were right, and it were idle to ridicule them as wholly lacking in judgment. Men like Hauptmann and Wuerst, who had been classic fed all their lives, could not be expected to take to the new school. The brain cells that could enable them to do so had not been opened.
3In Bayreuth last week I had a discussion with Karpath, critic of the Vienna Tageblatt, about Hanslick. Karpath, an ardent Wagnerian, throws Hanslick overboard completely, saying he had "absolutely no use for a critic who had failed to recognize the greatest productive musical genius of the nineteenth century." I cannot agree with him. Hanslick was a great critic, with a highly developed love of the beautiful. Never was there a greater Beethoven admirer and appreciator among critics than he, and never a greater advocate for absolute beauty in music. Tschaikowsky loathed the "Ring" and was glad to get away from Bayreuth in 1876. Even Schumann wrote that Wagner was, strictly speaking, not a true musician, because he lacked the sense of form and "wohlklang," and Schumann knew only Wagner's earlier operas, "The Flying Dutchman," "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin," which abound in "wohlklang" to a far greater degree than do his later works.
5Before attending the Bayreuth festival last week I had purposely avoided hearing all Wagner operas for a whole year, in order to be fresh for Bayreuth impressions. While listening to "Tristan and Isolde," "Parsifal" and the four performances of the "Ring," the conviction was forcibly brought home to me that Wagner was not a musician in the sense that Beethoven, Mozart and Bach were musicians; he had neither the melodic invention of the two former, nor the contrapuntal powers of the latter. Beethoven and Mozart are universally loved and appreciated, while Wagner is not and never will be. Why? Because he does not, like the two great classists, the Italians and others, make for absolute beauty in music. He makes for the characteristic and for expression. Ausdruck is the watchword with Wagner. Expression, an enhancing of the spoken word by a strongly characteristic, rather than beautiful, musical setting. Take a person of average musical intelligence, a music lover, who attends opera solely for the purpose of enjoying the music per se. Let him drop in and listen to any one act of an opera by Mozart or Weber or Rossini or Donizetti or Gounod or Bizet. Without any knowledge of the text or the tendencies of the composer, and without paying any attention to the doings on the stage, he can lean back, shut his eyes and let his ears drink in the music alone in ecstatic delight.
7Not so with Wagner. To be sure, there are parts of great lyric beauty in each of his works, but they are comparatively seldom, and for a complete understanding of the music, a thorough knowledge of the text, the poetic import of the drama, is absolutely essential, especially in his later works. A full appreciation of them also requires a high order of musical intelligence, a knowledge of Wagner's artistic aims and a scientific knowledge of music. Given the necessary requirements and Wagner's music dramas open up to one a new world, a field of enjoyment unique in musical literature.
9Years ago I once attended a performance of "Siegfried" without having looked at the text, with no knowledge of the "Nibelungenlied" and with a very imperfect understanding of Wagner's aims. I understood nothing of the action and I found the music, excepting "Waldweben" and the close of the last act, inexpressibly tedious. Later, when I became interested in the German mythology with which the "Ring" deals, studied the Wagner text books and learned to understand the meaning of his modes of musical expression, the scales fell from my eyes. One of the grandest musical impressions of my life was the performance of the "Ring" in Bayreuth last week. I could not say the same of "Tristan" and "Parsifal," but they were not performed with such perfection.
11I find it easy to understand why Liszt, with his great musical intellect, was such an enthusiastic Wagnerian. Liszt was an ardent advocate of program music, and Wagner's music is essentially program music; i.e., it is closely wedded to the poetic
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15ALBERTO JONÁS
17LESCHETIZKY METHOD
18Anna Hirzel (LANGENHAN)
195 NORDENDSTRASSE
20MUNICH
22MRS. Wilhelm Eylau
23PIANO INSTRUCTION.
24Martin Luther St. 68, Portal II
25BERLIN, W.
27EDGAR STILLMAN-KELLEY
28COMPOSER
29STUDIO ADDRESS: Tauenzien St., 19A, Berlin, W.
30PIANO SCHOOL FOR THE LESCHETIZKY METHOD AND SCHOOL OF INTERPRETATION.
31Pupils received in the house and practice supervised.
32In charge of MRS. POTTER-FRISSELL, pupil of Stepanoff, Prentner (certificated) and Leschetizky. Highly endorsed by Emil Sauer and leading Dresden musicians. Dunning System of Improved Music Study for beginners also represented. Instructor in Ehrlich's School of Music and Franklin College, Dresden. Apply Nurnbergerstr, 84, Pt. r. DRESDEN.
34GEORG FERGUSON
35BARITONE.
36Vocal Instructor.
37KLEIST STRASSE 27, BERLIN W.
39MARY FOREST GANZ
40VOICE CULTURE
41KLEIST STR., 31
42BERLIN, W.
44Prof. Rudolf Schmalfeld,
45Mme. Margarethe Schmalfeld-Vahsel,
46Kammersängerin.
47VOCAL INSTRUCTION.
48Lessons given in English, French and Italian.
49Wagner Singing.
50Heilbronner Str. 8, BERLIN, W.
52MAX GARRISON
53Vocal Instruction
54Late leading Baritone of Vienna Royal Opera.
55FORMING OF HEAD TONES A SPECIALTY.
56BERLIN W. Heilbronner Str. 80
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