Scan 5
Musical Courier 1908-08-05: Vol 57 Iss 6, 1908
26 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1at each word we utter: "Take care now; you want to speak your way, but I choose you to speak like me." Just as we begin to soar, they pull us by the sleeve. Have we life and vigor? —they will take them away with pin pricks. Are we rising to any height?—here come those men with their foot rule or their tape line, calling to us to come down that they may take our measure.
3The plastic magnificence of Strauss, at which musicians are amazed, is lost to these critics in their footrule measuring. Observe, for instance, in the purely technical division of instrumentation the tremendous advance in the color scheme through Strauss. De we wish to stand by the orchestra of Beethoven? If so, why do we tolerate the Berlioz and the Wagner and List orchestras? Must we stop because these developers of instrumentation died? Is there no more to say? Why deny to Strauss a soul development and accuse him of desiring to shock? Because he happens to live just now and is showing us the status of the musical art through his milieu? At least he is doing something and is compelling the world to listen. Should we not listen if we know how to listen? The critic who predicts that Strauss will not live, after all, is "taking chances," as we call it in America. How can we accept that kind of prophecy? On the strength of the past powers of prophecy on musical composition?
5There was Hanslick, of Vienna, the incarnation of Teutonic conservatism. How did those fare who accepted as bona fide his prediction on Richard I and the havoc that would follow with music art? Will these anti-Strauss critics now revert to Hanslick and proclaim Strauss as evidence of Hanslick's prophetic powers? That would certainly not suit the admirers of Richard Wagner—or would it? Are they prepared to sacrifice Wagner in order to immolate Strauss? Then if there was progress in Berlioz, Wagner and Liszt, why should its further possibility be denied, and if Strauss does not represent that progress, will the wise critics please point out its direction and how they would indicate it?
7And in all this I merely adhere to the question of orchestral development, leaving out the purely musical side of the issue. If, however, the Strauss critic denies the possibility of an orchestral progress beyond Wagner, at once he proves his incapacity to criticise the purely musical features of Strauss. How about the chorale at the conclusion of "Tod und Verklärung"? If any one's artistic sense is not sublimated on hearing that, he actually is unfit to listen to the G minor symphony, much less the C minor; and I go so far as to say that those who consider Strauss cacophonous never heard music anyway. They may think they have; but that verdict upon Strauss proves that they have not heard at all. If any one can close his musical intelligence to Strauss—new twentieth century declaration of the Art—he or she never had the ears open to Mozart or Beethoven, and certainly not to Wagner. Mr. Richard or Dr. Richard Strauss is not under criticism. We are discussing music, and it is the worst of bad taste for Maitland to drag in the personal motive, as if he, engaged, under a salary, to edit a Dictionary of Music, had the moral right to question the money making motives of another man, or any motives. He certainly knows nothing about it; it is his guess and nothing else. His guess has no place in a Dictionary of Music, not even in his platitudinous, nichtssagende criticisms of the Times. As the expressive American vernacular puts it: "Fuller-Maitland has another guess coming," and he may live to retract another day.
9Not a Cure.
11There is a homely and old maxim which tells us that a chronic disease cannot be cured by applying a mustard plaster, and while there is much to learn in reading the following from the "Musicus" in the London Telegraph of July 11th, yet there is no proposition in it that goes to the bottom of the evils in our concert and recital system, and I believe in the radical urging of change and the radical change itself in order to relieve the present depressing situation. "Musicus" says to us:
13What the end of this age of mediocrity is to be cannot easily be foreseen, but it is significant that at the chief music schools of the metropolis, I am authoritatively informed, the proportion of male students of music to females is only one to four—a fact which seems to suggest that mere man is learning wisdom, and that it is idle to seek a livelihood in music unless equipped with quite abnormal gifts.
15But there is still more in the decay—or overproduction of music makers. How many years have elapsed since the programs of vocal and instrumental recitals, etc., became stereotyped, I know not; but this I do know, that the stereos are now showing unmistakable signs of wear, and much as one may love one's Beethoven or Chopin, Bach or Max Bruch, and so on, which can be heard about four times a week all the year around, one would like to give their works a rest. If any there be who doubt that things are as suggested, let me, for example, say that Schumann's "Dichterliebe," after lying on the shelf for years, was recently rediscovered by a singer who announced a performance. Within seven days four other singers also sang it, and since then I myself have heard the cycle, in whole or in part, on five or six occasions. Truth to tell, we are in sad need of a drastic change in our system of concerts. The recital for all but the very elect (or wealthy) is dead—dead as any dodo. One does not require to attend a very large number of recitals to note the same familiar features of the majority of the audience (as well as of the programs) at most. The recital—of course, I am speaking of the average recital, not that of the real genius—is not attractive now to the multitude, whatever once it may have been.
17Some nights ago I had a conversation with a musician, at one time very prominent in London musical life, who now has his abode in New York. He assured me that there matters were on at least as desperate a level in regard to recitals as here; and many years ago one of the most prominent Russian pianists of his day assured me that in L. he was compelled to give away tickets for his recitals in order to obtain an audience, while in B. he had, in addition, to enclose cab fares, or the people would not put in an appearance. The drastic remedy is, then, everywhere required.
19"So far as New York is concerned," said my informant, "I may point out that there exists there no concert institution where leading artists, vocal or instrumental, can meet upon common ground, and appear either separately or in combination to equal yet supreme advantage. The stars of first and second magnitude, who come there from Europe in large numbers, find only a very limited field of action. If they can even succeed in obtaining first appearances with one of the big orchestras, or with the Oratorio Society (there is but one), they are afterwards compelled to fall back upon the eternal recital; and of recitals the New Yorkers are so weary that only the established favorites can make them pay." Are we not precisely in like case? The condition of things, then, is on all fours with our own, save and except that we have abundance of Sunday music, and appreciate it, while New York is only just awakening to its charms. Hermann Klein is seeking to establish a lengthy series of popular Sunday concerts on comparatively new lines. As these apply here as well as to New York (if Sunday be changed to weekday), it may be interesting to point them out for digestion by some enterprising impresario. A series of such concerts given on a weekday might well be successful and useful.
21There is to be no interference with existing institutions, but it is intended to offer an entertainment containing the best and most attractive elements that come in the category of serious music. Selections from classical masterpieces, "the truly beautiful, not the dry, heavy, ultra-modern stuff, but the many hundreds of exquisite compositions written for different combinations of instruments, relieved by no less beautiful excerpts from the vocal treasures of the great composers." No heterogeneous mixture of music or agglomeration of banal things is to find a place; only the best, and it is to be played and sung by the foremost artists of the time. Among those already engaged to appear I note the Mead and Hugo Herrmann and Hess-Schroeder Quartets. The main idea, it will be seen, is somewhat similar to that which obtained at our own St. James' Hall "Pops" of years ago. But there is this important difference between these and the old order, and between these again and many of the new order, which inflicts no less than three quartets in succession, with no kind of relief, upon an audience presumably composed of human beings, whose powers of endurance and of mental digestion, therefore, are limited. In the new concerts the chamber works will, if and when deemed advisable, be curtailed by the omission of one or two movements. There is, of course, an unwritten law against the so called vandalism, but in commonsense it is no more heinous than the singing of separate songs from "Dichterliebe," the playing of extracts from "Der Ring," "Tristan and Isolde," or the like, or the performance of detached numbers from some cantata or oratorio. Even if the unwritten law could be substantiated, clearly it is idle and futile to give concerts, year in, year out, which no one will pay to attend. And it is no less stupid for the superior person, who probably is as well known in New York as in London, to affect to despise a serious attempt at betterment, on the ground of a sham idea of "art."
23Frankly, in view of what I said above, that a drastic change must soon be made in our system of concert giving, I would like to see some such experiment made here. A series of concerts, whose programs should contain music, ancient and modern, only of the highest class, interpreted by singers and instrumentalists thoroughly worthy to attack it, and the whole so arranged that there is no risk of ennui arising from physical and mental strain, would be welcomed by all, I imagine, who have real interest in the art of music and of its application to their fellowmen.
25The above and other articles in English papers show that the work of The Musical Courier is beginning to tell in this direction. But my theories are crystallized and what I say on this subject of a
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