Music

AT last the Jubilee is over. The monster whose coming was heralded some months ago by such portentous rumblings in and about the Hub, and whose fitful career was anxiously followed by the eyes and ears of so many thousands, has in its turn become a thing of the past. Its career has been at times a brilliant, at times a sluggish, at all times an oppressive one. But if the monster came in like a lion, it certainly went out like the mildest of lambs ; and even in its leonine days of vigorous youth, its roar was neither so terrible nor so lion-like as those who like roaring might have desired. It lacked the very vital principle of success, namely, unity of purpose. Got up as a business enterprise by a company, many of whom were little conversant with and even little interested in music, the “World’s Peace Jubilee” was accepted by the public as a distinctly musical festival. The national or international phase of it, which, in the end, turned out to be the most interesting part of the whole, was at the outset thoroughly mistrusted by ninety-nine people out of a hundred; and however sincere Mr. Gilmore may have been in making it, to the best of his abilities, a genuinely international affair, which sincerity we see no reason to doubt, the “ World’s Peace Jubilee and International Musical Festival ” was considered by most people to be merely a name, —under the circumstances as good a name as any other. As the Jubilee stood face to face with the public, the musical part of it held the first place. We fully believe that the projectors and promoters of the affair did their best, according to their lights, to make the musical part of it as good and as generally enjoyable as possible, and that the higher musical education of the mass of our people was one of their objects. After dispassionately looking back upon the whole Festival, we feel less and less inclined to quarrel with the fact that it was, after all, principally a business enterprise. In a young, democratic country like ours, these speculations in art, or, as Berlioz says, ces mariages de convenance entre l'art et la basse industrie, are inevitable. Art in any shape can nowhere live without money, and in a country where the tendencies are strongly utilitarian, and where four fifths of the people are, at the very best, only willing to take for granted the benefits done mankind by art, and only negatively to encourage her by not running her down with their railroads and steamboats, or grinding her to atoms between the cog-wheels of their factories, we poor art-lovers and artists should only be too thankful when men who have the means think it worth their while to invest in art-stock instead of in railway bonds ; and although the manner in which they handle our poor goddess is at times rough and even insulting, we must believe that they mean her no harm, and can only wish that, even in our own interest, they found her a more paying speculation. There was a deal of humbug about the whole affair, to be sure; but all the musical enterprises ever set on foot in this country that have not been composed at least of one third part humbug, could be written down with a swan-quill on a sheet of ladies’ note-paper.

We think the Jubilee, on the whole, a failure, as whatever results were attained were vastly disproportionate to the means employed. We have hinted that this failure was owing to the want of any unity of purpose in the whole scheme. The thing tried to be too many things at once. It tried to combine a musical festival with a sort of all-the-world’s Fourth-of-July ; even the musical part of it was with too indefinite an artistic purpose. The programmes were from the first rather generally conciliatory than guided by any artistic principle, either good or bad ; there was a want of backbone about the musical management of the whole. One of the most amiable features of the Festival was the great expenditure, both of pains and money, lavished on the production of Handel’s “ Israel in Egypt,” even in the face of a certainty that the oratorio would be a dead pecuniary loss. So far from thinking that a whole day was given up to the performance of a great classic work merely “ to lend respectability to the affair,” as some people imagine, we believe that the committee were too well impressed with the “ respectability ” of the whole Festival to think for a moment that it needed the indorsement of a Handel oratorio to save its reputation from scandal. We think rather that the production of “ Israel ” sprang from an honest desire to conciliate a taste that was known to exist in our more musically cultivated cities, and which, if the committee did not sympathize with, they at least respected and looked up to. The importance given to Verdi’s Anvil Chorus was a like attempt to conciliate a taste of a different order, which, judging from the experience furnished by the previous Jubilee in 1869, was a strongly predominating one. We take “ Israel in Egypt ” and the Anvil Chorus as the two opposite magnetic poles of the Jubilee. What one attracted the other repelled. The two elements were essentially antagonistic, and could not be made to harmonize. The other choral portions of the programmes ranged themselves on a scale of attractiveness between these two points.

The most interesting as well as the most successful part of the Jubilee was the appearance of the French, English, and German bands. Apart from the musical excellence of their various performances, the evident friendly feeling between them and the audience was in itself something worth witnessing. This was particularly noticeable in the reception of the English band. The whole audience seemed to welcome them as brothers and kinsmen ; and when at last they responded to the continued applause with the “ Star-spangled Banner,” which was in turn answered by “ Auld Lang Syne,” a feeling came over all present deeper than that to be roused even by the noblest music. Considered musically, the French band was the most artistic. The only defect noticeable in their playing was one which we are too ignorant of the capacities of wind-instruments to know whether to attribute to the natural, unavoidable imperfections in the instruments themselves, or to some shortcoming in the players. This was a certain exaggerated, almost gasping sforzando, which at times recalled the asthmatic crescendo and diminuendo of a harmonica. As their playing was in other respects so perfect, we are inclined to think that this was the unavoidable result of trying to force wind-instruments out of their proper use in orchestral transcriptions and to do impossible things with them, namely, to imitate the peculiar stirring accent of the strings when strongly attacked by the bow. The Germans played with great fire and precision, but in loud passages they greatly overblew their instruments, especially their low brass, which made the quality of tone coarse and blaring, and many of those delicate effects of light and shade so noticeable in the other bands were wanting in their playing. There was a stirring, martial, warlike spirit in their playing which was well in accordance with our ideas of the Prussian Army; and they even played Strauss waltzes as if they were marching to battle. So long as they played military music, this was all well enough and there was something characteristic in it; but their renderings of other music were generally coarse both in conception and execution, the opening chords of the Egmont Overture, for instance, sounded as if they were trying to blow down the walls of Jericho. The man with the cymbals was in particular a terrible fellow, and seemed to dominate the whole band. The performance of this overture by the Germans was in strong contrast with the playing of some selections from “ Lohengrin ” by the Frenchmen, which shortly followed it. This was almost the perfection of playing, never lacking life or emphasis ; yet throughout, even in the ball-music (which, by the way, was taken in a most furiously rapid tempo), full of delicate lights and shades, and in fine, full, unforced tones. One of the best bits of playing during the Festival was the performance of the Semiramide Overture by the English band, which was very spirited and full of finely marked contrasts. The double-tonguing of the clarinets in the allegro was, indeed, something marvellous. At times the tempo, especially the accelerando at the end, smacked rather more of the band-master than of the cultivated orchestra-conductor ; but this, after all, is a matter of taste, and from all accounts Rossini himself was not averse to a little exaggeration of “ effects ” now and then by way of spice. Another interesting point in the Jubilee was Johann Strauss’s conducting. There was a demoniac, electric je ne sais quoi about the man that was peculiarly fascinating. His command over the orchestra was simply wonderful ; they were like an instrument with him, and he played upon the men under his b&$226;ton just as much as he played upon the violin in his hands. Hearing his waltzes led by himself, after having heard them played by Thomas’s orchestra, was like hearing our old friend of the ball-room, Mr, J. S. Knight, play them, after the matter-of-fact strumming of some school-girl.

The ingenious person who first hit upon the idea of having piano-forte solos in the Coliseum, may safely lay claim to a certain amount of not unamusing originality. Of the three pianists who performed, we most sincerely pity Madame Goddard, and regret that she should have been led into playing on such an occasion, or have been in any way associated with such pianists as Herr Bendel or Mr. Wehli. Really fine pianists who are at the same time conscientious artists are too precious to have (in all literalness) their sweetness wasted on the desert air. As for Herr Bendel, be seems to have for once got into the right place. He is well known in Germany as what a Western critic once called, not infelicitously, “a first-class ivory-thumper,” and the Coliseum gave him ample opportunity of showing off his powers to advantage. We heard him some three years ago in Berlin play Weber’s Concertstück in a most disconcertingly astounding manner; and comparing his recent performances at the Jubilee with his playing then in a room of more limited dimensions, we have come to the conclusion that he is one of those virtuosi to whose playing “distance lends enchantment.” We would not by any means say “the farther off the better,” but we think that what Mr. Wegg calls the “mellerin’ ” influence of a reasonable distance, say half the length of the Coliseum, might always be grateful to the ears of his audience. The first time we heard Mr. Wehli, several years ago, we could not help feeling that his proper sphere was the circus or the variety theatre, and not the concert-room, and we find that that opinion strengthens with time. Another of the mistakes of the Jubilee was Madame Rudersdorff’s singing. She simply could not fill the house with her voice, and she was compelled to force her tones until her singing became a positive screech. As with Madame Goddard, it was only painful to see such a genuine and accomplished artist, in the highest sense of the word, placed in such a false position. Madame PeschkaLeutner’s singing was in every way a charming success. Her rich, telling voice easily penetrated every part of the building, so that little even of her most rapid passage-work was lost by anybody.

But the most significant thing in the whole Jubilee was that the very point that was trumpeted forth in all the announcements as the greatest musical attraction, the one element that was to have made a “ Peace Jubilee ” grander and more imposing than all other musical festivals, turned out to be the thing of all others that most prevented its being a musical success. This was the monstrous size of the whole thing. In this last Jubilee, as in the previous one, the mass of singers had to be distributed over so large a space, that any precision of attack was physically impossible ; there was not and could not be any clearly defined outline to the singing, but everything was blurred and indistinct. Pieces with little melodic outline, such as the chorals and psalm-tunes, suffered least from this, but even here the effect was not so good as when similar pieces were peformed at the Handel and Haydn triennial festivals by an incomparably smaller chorus in a smaller hall. This vagueness of outline was so great, that it was wellnigh impossible to judge of the merits of a composition heard then for the first time. One thing sounded about like another. Then again, it is impossible to keep so large an audience quiet, and the constant running up and down stairs, the walking in the corridors, and the talking and even whispering of so many people, formed a serious drawback in preventing the music from having its full effect.

And now a word as to the advisability of jubilees of this sort from a purely musical and educational point of view. First, as to the good they do. It may be safely said that fully half of the members of the chorus would never have become acquainted with much of the better class of choral music but for these festivals. The months spent in careful rehearsal of even one Bach choral, and a few Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn choruses, cannot fail to be of great benefit to a large class of music-lovers who would otherwise in all probability never have studied anything better than common choir psalmody or poor street ballads. The performances of the foreign bands were no doubt of benefit, and we hope to see some consequent improvement in our own bands in future. So far, good. But, on the other hand, great harm is done by creating in the general public an unnatural and perverted appetite for what is merely big, rather than for what is great and good, a craving after quantity rather than an appreciation of quality. Even though a large mass of the public probably heard fine specimens of classic music for the first time on coming to the Jubilee, the performance of the music was, from the nature of things, so vaguely imperfect and ineffective that little if any real good can be hoped from their making its acquaintance in such a manner. Enterprises like the Jubilee are only pardonable on the supposition of a very low degree of general musical culture in the country, and we think that the small success of the last one, as compared with the Festival in 1869, shows that our people have already made great advance in musical culture. We are not prepared to deny that the first Jubilee may have been an important agent in educating them up to this point. If it was, it certainly did a good work, and Mr. Gilmore should now be content to repose on his fairly earned laurels. But for the future it must be borne in mind that the people have been educated up to the appreciation of something better.