Music

THE musical season advances bravely. Besides the great number and rapid succession of concerts this winter, we notice a marked improvement in the quality of most of the programmes of concerts of the popular sort. A decided exception, however, to this rule were the concerts given by the Wachtel troupe, the programmes of which were almost beneath criticism. And the famous tenor himself did little to redeem the character of the occasion. He has undeniably a most superb tenor voice. There is no good or fine quality that his voice does not possess, and it has a magnetic power over the audience that is at times almost maddening. But here his merits cease. We look in vain for a single point in his singing that shows him to be an artist in any high sense of the word. His method of vocalization is bad. The Smooth flow of his scales and arpeggi is broken up by aspirations and other consonantal sounds. He attacks notes badly, either with an exaggerated upward portamento, or with an explosive stroke of the chest (coup de poitrine), where the stroke should come from the glottis. His phrasing is vulgar. He rarely sustains his voice throughout a phrase, which gives his singing that ungraceful, jerky (saccadé) abruptness which is the worst fault of the German school. His style is wanting both in dignity and simplicity, and his exaggerated crescendos and sudden changes of timbre are the merest claptrap shamming of sentiment and expression. He sings with a certain amount of enthusiasm, it is true, but shows all the while a coarse want of appreciation of the music ; and though we may be electrified by the ease with which he throws out his glorious chest C, yet this vocal phenomenon is a small compensation for his gross and almost wanton violation of all that is really artistic in singing.

The performances of Elijah and Judas Maccabæus by the Handel and Haydn Society in conjunction with the artists of the Dolby troupe were, in many respects, the most satisfactory renderings of those oratorios, especially of the former, that Boston has yet heard. Mr. Santley’s impersonation of the great prophet is more than faultless. It is truly great. His singing of the song, “ Is not his word like a fire?” with the sharp hammer-like ring of his voice in the closing measure, is not to be soon forgotten. He has a repose and almost stolidity of manner which is as far removed from the gloomy lifelessness of many of our singers as it is from the seemingly greater intensity of the Italians, and which gives us the sense of great reserved power. We feel that he is equal to any emergency. The fire of passion is also there, but he, like a true artist, keeps it locked up within himself, confined that it may do real work; instead of flashing out before the faces of the audience in a pyrotechnic display of sham intensity, that may dazzle for the moment, but leaves no lasting impression. Miss Edith Wynne sings like a thorough artist, and with the most self-forgetting devotion to the music. The air, “ Hear ye, Israel,” may have been sung more brilliantly by other singers, but not with more genuine fervor and noble simplicity of expression.

Theodore Thomas’s concerts have been better this winter than ever before. The programmes have been uniformly interesting. Among the novelties performed we notice especially the symphony ”Im Walds,” by Joachim Raff ; and the KaiserMarsch, and Introduction and Finale from Tristan und Isolde, by Richard Wagner. The Raff symphony abounds in happy, natural melody, worked out with great skill and exquisitely put upon the orchestra. The last movement is at times abstruse, and many of the progressions sound forced, but it comes to a happy close with an allusion to one of the themes in the first Allegro.

The symphony, as a whole, leaves the impression of great beauty, and no doubt the Finale would be more intelligible after a second or third hearing. The Wagner KaiserMarsch (written in commemoration of the late German victories) is superb. Almost all that has been played of Wagner in this country has shown us the poet-composer in his more perplexed moods. Such compositions as the Overture to Tannhäuser and Eine Faust-Ouvertür tell more of the struggles of life than of realization of the end striven after. Even the “ Procession to the Church,” in Lohengrin, with its joyous harmonies, is rather a mystic suggestion of happiness to come than an expression of thanksgiving alter a victorious struggle. But the key-note of the KaiserMarsch is victory. There are in it many passages full of the death-grapple of battle, but ever and anon the triumphant marchtheme rises above the tumult, and when at times it seems in danger of being lost amid tire discordant noise of war, Luther’s great song of faith, Ein' feste Burg, rings out like a trumpet-call to rally the wavering forces, and at last the glorious march-theme bursts forth with all-conquering power, a nation’s song of victory. This majestic theme is full of the national, Volkslied spirit, and, in spite of rattling snare-drums and clashing cymbals (which latter instrument by the way, is invariably very ill played in our orchestras), has nothing of the wild, barbaric pomp that is so striking a feature in many modern compositions of a like character, such as the War - March of Priests in Mendelssohn’s Athaiie, and many of the marches by Liszt and Berlioz. It is also far removed from the vulgar mock-grandeur, the mere pasteboard and saw-dust splendor of such compositions as the Bridal March in Gounod’s Romeo, or the Marche du Sacre in Meyerbeer’s Prophet. Wagner’s great command over the various resources of the modern orchestra shows itself here as in all his later works. He knows how to make each instrument do its best, and he so well balances the different parts of the orchestra that even in the loudest passages the quality of tone is never harsh or disagreeable, nor does great sonority and volume of tone ever degenerate into mere noisiness. The Introduction and Finale from Tristan show us another phase of the composer’s genius. Here every note speaks of love and tenderness. The Finale especially is one of the most beautiful passages in all Wagner, if not in all modern music. But the selections, as presented by Mr. Thomas, are, in spite of their great beauty, hardly suited to the con cert-room. The Introduction is but a preparation for the drama, not a condensed résumé of the whole work, as are many overtures. The musical phrase it is based upon is the charaterization in tones of the love - potion administered to Tristan by Isolde. It is the vague, chaotic expression of a passion without a definite object, the germ from which the great love-story is to he developed. The strain of intense, unsatisfied longing that runs through this Introduction leaves an almost painful impression upon the mind when divorced from what follows it in the drama. The Finale (Isolde’s dying speech over Tristan’s body) suffers still more by being separated from the rest of the work. It is full of allusions to the love-scene in the Second Act, which are unintelligible when we have not previously heard that scene. Then again the most important part in the music is left out, namely, the singer ; and with the singer the text also. As played by Mr. Thomas, it is but the accompaniment without the song. With Wagner the words are of the first importance. They are the vivifying power that calls the music into life. To separate his music from the text is to take Helen and Paris out of the Iliad, to deprive the effect of its cause. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, however, we can catch glimpses of the beauty and greatness of the composition, and we must heartily thank Mr. Thomas for giving us even this imperfect taste of one of Wagner’s later (and greater) lyric dramas.

By far the best of recently published songs ¹ that have come under our notice is Gounod’s “ Queen of Love.” There is a quiet, natural sincerity of sentiment in the music that is very different from the composer’s usual vein, and reminds one of the old Mozart and Haydn songs. Only in the four or five additional bars to the last verse do we recognize the dreamy, sensuous spirit of Gounod, that is so fascinating in his Faust and Romeo. The song is written in a pure, simple style, not common in modern French music, and the flow of the harmonies is so easily smooth that we are at first inclined to overlook the consummate contrapuntal skill and mastery over the technical part of composition that is displayed in every bar. In strong contrast to the above are the two songs by Millard. This composer’s music abounds in strong, fiery passages of the sort that, when well sung, almost invariably bring down the house ; again we meet passages of real beauty and sentiment, of noble breadth of melody and finely harmonized. Such a passage is the opening phrase of “Forget not ! ” and there are many points of like beauty in “The Tear.”But side by side with bursts of almost dazzling brilliancy we

find the most clumsily ungrammatical blunders in harmony, and vulgar, ungraceful freaks of rhythm. Some phrases begin like a comet, only to go out like a squib, and mere violence of phrasing and secondhand Italian disperazione too often take the place of sentiment and passion. Nevertheless we know of no American song-writer who has given to the world so much that is effective in that dubious class of compositions known as “encore pieces,” as has Mr. Millard, and the above-mentioned songs do no discredit to his reputation in this respect. Franz Abt’s “ The Old, Old Tale ” is another song of this class, though less pretentious in style than the foregoing. It is well written, and although full of musical commonplaces and trite harmonic progressions, has a certain artistic refinement that saves it from being wholly uninteresting. Abt unites an Italian warmth of expression and spontaneity of melody to something of the German Volkslied spirit. But in his hands the song of the people loses in vigor what it gains in perhaps somewhat affected refinement, and the Swiss, Suabian, or Tyrolese turn that he gives to many of his melodies bears about the same relation to the strong, buoyant folk-songs of those countries as do Watteau’s Louis XIV. shepherdesses and dairy-maids to the real tenders of sheep and churners of milk. Massenet’s “ Declaration ” is full of exquisite tenderness and delicacy of sentiment. It is not one of those songs that take the heart by storm at the first hearing, but its quiet, unobtrusive beauties grow upon one on better acquaintance. M. Massenet shows a most graceful ease in writing, and has treated his subject with great purity and refinement of feeling. We feel in the lines,

that the modest timidity is genuine, and that the “ sweet maid ” is in no danger of being made a fool of. The edition is not free from typographical errors. “ The Old Place,” by Ferdinand J. White, is a rather good ballad of the Anglo-Italian school, of pleasing though somewhat sleepy melody, and without any disagreeable eccentricities of harmony or rhythm. A rather mawkish sentimentality pervades the composition, and there is little in it to distinguish it from hosts of other lackadaisical ballads. The unhappy swain into whose mouth the verses are put might, without impropriety, add, “ the same old tune,” to the catalogue of items that have remained unchanged in the course of his lovelorn experience. Agnes Ashton’s “ I love but thee alone,” although no more original, and, if possible, still more commonplace, than the foregoing, is quite pleasing from the homely English character of the melody. It recalls forcibly the old Dempster ballads, a class of songs which is unfortunately rapidly becoming extinct. We say unfortunately, not from any great regard for Mr. Dempster’s compositions, but because we do not see that their place is filled by anything better or even as good. No doubt many of those who used to sing and sigh over Dempster, now enjoy much of the music of the Franz Abt school, or have even learned to find beauties in Schubert, Schumann, and Robert Franz ; but we fear that a far greater number find their musical ideal in songs of the “ Put me in my little Bed ” order, — those astounding bits of doggerel in which dying soldiers, sleeping infants, ministering angels, reclaimed inebriates, weeping widows, indigent orphans, and heaven knows what not, are set to music for the edification of the million. Weak and sentimental as Dempster and the rest of his school were, they were at least better than these back-stairs songwrights; and in these days when music must be either very old or very new to suit the popular taste, we are glad to see something of the old ballad spirit in any recent publications.

In piano-forte music ² we notice Edouard Dorn’s “ Gondoling, ” as quite pleasing in melody. We suppose it to be intended for a gondola-song, but have been unable to find the word gondolina in any Italian dictionary. Augusta Gottschalk’s “ Christmas Eve ” polka is brilliantly put upon the instrument, but has no very salient points either to praise or to condemn. The “ Flying Dutchman Galop,” by Henry Eikmeier, is a lively, rattling piece of dance-music that can be ranked with the best of its class, and is, perhaps, better written for the piano than is usual in such compositions.

Christmas Eve. By AUGUSTA GOTTSCHALK. Boston : Oliver Ditson & Co.

The Flying Dutchman, Galop Brillante. By HENRY EIKMEIER. New York: C. H. Ditson & Co.