Books › Musical Courier 1913-12-10: Vol 67 Iss 24, 1913 › scan 58
Scan 58
Musical Courier 1913-12-10: Vol 67 Iss 24, 1913
24 lines. Read by computer on 25 September 2026. Printed page 59. See the scan on archive.org.
1FREDERICK PRESTON SEARCH IN HIS LEISURE HOURS.
2Some Snapshots Taken Recently in Northern California.
4MR. SEARCH WITH HIS ACCOMPANIST, MR. CHAPMAN.
5TAKING HIS MORNING WALK.
6THE CELLIST AND HIS FRIEND, GEORGE BUTZ.
8INTERPRETATION.
9[From the London Times.]
10A recent writer has said: "The true critic is simply the most enlightened listener, not standing aloof with a manual of arrogant imperatives, but taking his place among us to stimulate our attention where it falters and to supplement our knowledge where it is deficient." That is to say, it is his function, as another writer has phrased it, "to find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves" in the presence of a work of art; to be, in a word, our interpreter.
12Using the word "interpreter," then, in this, its widest sense, it becomes at once apparent that we can constitute two separate classes. There is the subjective interpreter—the man, that is, who essays to illuminate our conception of the subjective aspects of a musical composition; and this class includes all writers on the art. Secondly, there is the objective interpreter, the man who has equipped himself technically as performer or conductor, in order to make articulate for us the ideas of the composer. And the question before us is, How far is it possible to predicate the lines and limits of their work? In the case of the writer, it is commonly assumed, by the less thoughtful, that his office is the provision of detail. If he can supply a date, explain a title, announce a modulation, or label a theme, then, it is supposed, his duty is fulfilled. He has presented us, with a few words of courteous introduction, to the composer, and we have now the great man's own notes to listen to and no need of an intermediary. There is, it must be admitted, something to be said for this attitude when the music concerned is of a simple character and is written in a contemporary and universally understood idiom. It is doubtful whether, beyond the information of a few data, any critic could increase the average listener's enjoyment of the "Casse-Noisette" suite. But, when the work presented is, for historical or artistic reasons, a little outside the circle of the ordinary man's ready recognition, then do the services of the true critic become invaluable.
14There is a fallacy abroad that, if a composer cannot make a successful appeal to a listener by the sole agency of sound, dispensing with any intervening explanation, the fault lies naked and exposed at the composer's door. Leaving aside the complicated and more controversial side of this question—the side, that is, which involves such issues as program music, form, harmonic exploration, the niceties of counterpoint, and so forth—the position taken up above may be sturdily buttressed by an argument from the historical side. The writer who earns our gratitude under the name of "Q" makes a remark, in his most recent book, which every lover of literature will endorse. "It is," he says, "the property of immortal poetry to shift its appeal. It does not live by continuing to mean the same thing." That is to say, the temperament, the preconceptions, the scale of value, the standard of judgment—all these qualities which form the receptivity of a human being become in the mass so modified from age to age that, after the lapse of a few generations, the poet finds himself pleading for his life before a court with whose traditions and procedure he is entirely unacquainted. And the great poet succeeds, because his conceptions embraced a wider vision than he himself had seen. So it is with great music. It is just conceivable that Bach may have been a man of level and even narrow emotional qualities; but his supreme place is assured because the most modern musician can conceive no crisis of emotion for which a specific balm is not supplied by an intuition quite distinct from intention in that little collection of forty-eight fugues. Indeed, not only do we read into Bach (and every great man of the past) something quite different from what his contemporaries found in him, but even the most imaginative historian among us can no more reconstruct their attitude than he can prophesy the attitude of listeners two hundred years hence toward Wagner or Brahms. Among the legion of music lovers there are, happily, the hundreds who have taken thought, and so have passed from ignorance to some degree of knowledge; and these can be left, in such matters, to adjust the balance for themselves. But there still remain the thousands—or millions—who have passed through no initiation, who discover no element in music beyond tune and rhythm, who respond only to the obvious and unmistakable moods, because they can only, as one of them recently expressed himself, "take music as it comes." Surely, such might inculcably multiply their enjoyment through the services of the true critic—the man who would find for them a little more than they could find for themselves, who would pierce with a full light the mist through which such unfortunates must always view what is just beyond their comprehensions.
16In such a sense the critic's mantle falls also on the conductor and performer, if they are to be accounted in any way great. This truth has been latterly somewhat obscured, and the reason for its temporary eclipse lies in the amazing progress made in technic in recent years. It is comprehensible, if not quite pardonable, that such a phenomenon should for a time absorb attention and interest. Every generation must, of course, produce experts technically superior to those of its predecessor, if there is to be progress; but into a decade we seem to have compressed the advance in technic of fifty normal years. Whatever branch of music we look at—composition, conducting, violin or piano playing—we find now in everything (except singing) an ability so far beyond what is due by date that we are astonished out of our critical attitude. But, unless music is to be permanently degraded into a branch of conjuring, we must soon refocus our minds on content rather than display, and allow the interpreters to regain their place above the jugglers. Then we shall realize again that the great interpreter is the man who can make us see, not what the music meant for the age in which it was written, but what it can mean for us now. "But, Mr. Turner," said a lady to the painter, "I do not see such color in nature." "No, madame," was his reply, "don't you wish you could?"
18It is this power and property of extension, potential in all great music, which helps us to see the commonest error in poor interpretations. An actor, reading through the lines of his part, realizes that he has to mould himself into an individual of a type that would naturally speak such lines. The character and the expression of it in words must strike the audience as homogeneous. From such a coordination is born the genius of all great acting. And in music the same process should hold good—the performer should adapt his idiosyncrasy and technic to the presentation of the highest significance he can discover in the composer's ideas. Yet how long a list could be made of prominent performers, equipped with all the resources necessary for an ideal interpretation, who persistently treat the composer as the vehicle for the exhibition of their powers rather than ennoble themselves by becoming the vehicles of uplifting thoughts. If a man's temperament is such that he is an ideal interpreter of Chopin, then we feel, as he plays Chopin, that we are listening to ideal improvisation—he impresses his personality on us as one of which the notes played are a spontaneous and inevitable manifestation. If, however, he would play us Beethoven, he must not play him distorted through the lens of the Chopin temperament. Unless he can sensitize himself into receptivity of the Beethoven temperament, he should leave the experiment untried. Such wine is not for him to decant. But such counsels of perfection are not likely to appeal to the performer until the day arrives when our audiences have a true conception of the nature and limits of interpretation; and then the appeal will be made through the inexorable, if prosaic, medium of the box office.
20Gaul's "Holy City" Sung at "Old First" Church.
21Gaul's "Holy City" was sung under the direction of Dr. William C. Carl, in the "Old First" Presbyterian Church, of New York, on Sunday evening, in honor of the twenty-second anniversary of the pastorate of the Rev. Howard Duffield.
22Margaret Harrison, soprano; Elizabeth Canfield, contralto; Albert Edwin Betteridge, baritone, were the soloists.
23Preceding the cantata Dr. Carl gave an organ recital.
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.