Music

AMONG other questions of more or less vital importance to the musical cultivation of our people, there is one which forces itself irresistibly upon our notice, namely, the musical performances at our theatres. There is probably not a theatre in the country that does not boast something in the shape of an orchestra, which, besides furnishing such occasional music as may be required in the course of the drama itself, regales the audience with “choice and varied selections of new and popular music ” between the acts. As a subject for æsthetic contemplatlon, the theatre “ orchestra ” is at best a dispiriting one ; but in spite of the fact that it is, as at present conducted and constituted, in nine cases out of ten an almost unmitigated evil, we are not inclined to look upon it as a wholly hopeless case. The question whether music ought or ought not to he introduced between the acts of plays is an interesting one for abstract æsthetic discussion, but is unfortunately of no practical value. Whatever may be our opinion as to what ought or ought not to be is little to the purpose in this case, as playwrights, managers, and orchestral players have long since settled what shall be. Dramatic authors from Shakespeare down to the sensationalists of our own day have introduced music into their dramas ; musicians cannot be hired for less than a whole evening, and managers can never be persuaded to support an orchestra without “getting their full money’s worth,” or, in other words, making them play as much as possible. The theatre orchestra may then be regarded as an unavoidable fact. But it is the vile quality of the thing that we must principally protest against, rather than its possible inappropriateness. With lamentably few exceptions the musical interludes at our theatres are very poor, both as to the music performed and the manner of performance. To be sure the management of the theatre have, at the outset, little reason to suppose that the audience is of a particularly musical cast. They have not come together with any distinctly musical intent, and whatever of music is introduced during the evening will no doubt be regarded by most listeners as merely a conventional makeweight in the entertainment. But yet it may be fairly supposed that a certain proportion of the audience are in some measure musically cultivated, or, at the very least, musically disposed, and we cannot see how the theatre management would lose by furnishing music that would be enjoyed by the more cultivated portion of the public, instead of move than boring them by such musical trash as is merely tolerated by the unmusical portion to whom good and bad music are equally indifferent. Of all perverted developments in the fine arts, bad music is the most insufferable. We can shut our eyes against bad drawing or false combinations of colors, and can turn away from bad sculpture and architecture with contemptuous indifference; but when bad music comes upon the field, there is nothing for it but patient suffering or ignominious flight. The “music” that the audience is doomed to listen to at many of our best theatres is beyond all doubt a serious drawback to the enjoyment of quite a considerable portion of our theatre-going public. The musical part of the audience constitute indeed a minority, but a cultivated minority have rights that are to be respected, especially where the uncultivated majority are manifestly indifferent.

To look at once at the darkest side of the picture, there is one point in our theatre orchestras about which the many are unfortunately not indifferent, and that is the cornet à pistons. It would be difficult to estimate the harm that has been done the popular musical taste and to musical performances in general by this, we had almost said diabolical, little instrument. Through its great popularity with the masses it has gradually crept from the lowest place in the orchestra up to the first and highest. It dominates the whole orchestra, and everything has to give way before it. A good cornet soloist draws a higher salary at some of our theatres than any but the leading violinist. As a solo instrument, the cornet has the smallest pretensions to anything beyond a certain penetrating brilliancy of tone, fascinating at first, but inexpressive and, after a while, most tediously monotonous. By means of modern mechanism the flexibility and power of rapid execution of the instrument have been greatly increased, but only just enough to tempt the skilful performer to try to push his instrument out of its proper sphere and to do things with it which no composer in his senses ever intended to be done. What the Rev. H. R. Haweis says of the amateur flute and cornet may be applied with equal force and justice to the professional cornet player : —

“ There is a composure about the flute and cornet, an unruffled temperament, a philosophical calm, and absolute satisfaction in their respective efforts, which other musicians may envy but cannot hope to rival. Other musicians feel annoyed at not accomplishing what they attempt; the cornet and the flute tell you at once they attempt what cannot be done.”¹ In listening to some of the difficult variations, full of rapid running passages, fioriture and prolonged double - tonguing, that are attempted by cornet players, even such masters of the instrument as Levi, Sylvestre, or our own admirable Arbuckle, we cannot help a sympathetic recall of Dr. Johnson’s, “ Difficult, madam ! Would that it were impossible ! ” Hector Berlioz, in his work on instrumentation, speaks thus of the cornet: “ The cornet à pistons is very much the fashion in France to-day, especially in certain musical circles where elevation and purity of style are not considered as very essential qualities ; it has thus become the indispensable solo instrument for contra-dances, galops, airs with variations, and other second-rate compositions. Continually hearing it, as we now do in ball-rooms, orchestras, executing melodies more or less wanting in originality and refinement of style, combined with the character of its timbre, which has neither the nobility of the tones of the horn nor the haughty brilliancy of those of the trumpet, renders the introduction of the cornet à pistons into the high, melodic style of considerable difficulty. It can figure there, however, with advantage, but only rarely and on the condition of having only to sing phrases in a broad, slow movement and of an incontestible dignity. . . . . Joyous melodies on this instrument will always risk the loss of much of their nobility, if they possess any, and if they are wanting in it, a redoubling of their triviality. A phrase which might seem tolerable when executed by the violins or the wooden wind-instruments, would become odiously insipid and vulgar when thrown out into relief by the pungent, flaunting, unabashed tones of the cornet à pistons.”

If this were the only evil, it might be perhaps bearable ; but the cornet having, as we have said, gained almost undivided supremacy over all other instruments in the orchestra, has, very like a prime minister in office, given prominent positions to some of its less lucky relations. When any instrument plays a solo, the rest of the orchestra naturally expects to be thrown into the shade ; but human lips are not made of cast-iron, neither are human lungs made of leather, and there is a limit to even a cornet player’s powers of endurance, and he cannot play solos all the time. If when not dazzling the public by his lovelorn screaming and pyrotechnic flourishes in a solo, the cornet could only be allowed to repose on his hard-earned laurels, and give the rest of the orchestra a chance ! But no. Like the comprimario singer in our opera troops, who, “when not required by the business of his part, will please help in the chorus,” the cornet, when not playing solos, must take its natural place in the body of instruments and do duty with the rest. But one cornet in an orchestra of the size we usually find in our theatres, is like Walter Brown pulling a fourteenfoot oar on one side of the boat and half a dozen children paddling with shingles on the other. The equilibrium of forces is destroyed. Thus we find that one cornet cannot exist without a second, and last, but by no means least, a trombone.

We might fill a volume in detailing the various abuses that this latter instrument has been put to, but will content ourselves with again quoting from Berlioz : “ Gluck, Beethoven, Mozart, Weber, Spontini, and some others have understood the whole importance of the rôle of the trombone ; they have applied with perfect intelligence the various characters of this noble instrument to painting human passions and reproducing the sounds of nature ; they have consequently preserved its power, its dignity, and its poetry. But to constrain it, as a crowd of composers do to-day, to howl out in a credo brutal phrases, less worthy of the sacred temple than of a tavern, to sound as for the entryof Alexander into Babylon, when there is only question of a dancer’s pirouette, to strum chords of the tonic and dominant for a little song which a guitar would suffice to accompany, to mingle its Olympian voice in the povertystricken melody of a vaudeville duet, or the frivolous noise of a contra-dance, to prepare in the tutti of a concerto for the triumphal advent of an oboe or a flute, is to impoverish and degrade a magnificent individuality, to make a slave and buffoon of a hero, to discolorize the orchestra, to render impotent and useless all rational progression of instrumental forces, to undo the past, present, and future of art, to commit a voluntary act of vandalism, or show a want of sentiment and expression that approaches to stupidity.” This has more direct reference to the abuse of the trombone in writing for full orchestra, but applies with double force to our small theatre orchestras, where the ridiculously small proportion of strings and reeds gives additional prominence to the brass. But bad as this arrangement of orchestral forces is, many not altogether bad effects might be drawn from it, were the music performed only well arranged for the number and quality of the instruments employed. This, however, is rarely the case. The music performed is generally written for full orchestra, which means an orchestra capable of filling at least eighteen and often twenty-four instrumental parts. When such music is played by only twelve or fourteen instruments, it may well be asked, What becomes of the remaining parts ? The answer is simple : They must shift for themselves, and the piece do without them as best it can. In some cases music composed for full orchestra, such as light overtures, potpourris, dance music, etc., is published with a view to being performed by a smaller number of instruments than it was originally written for, and some arrangement has been made by which one instrument can take the place of another when absolutely necessary. But these “ arrangements for a small orchestra ” are very rarely well done ; the only object seeming to be to prevent an awkward silence in the middle of a piece where the absence of some solo instrument would leave a disconcerting gap, little or no attention being paid to restoring the dynamic balance of the harmony which the absence of so many instruments from the orchestra must unavoidably destroy. Exceptional combinations of instruments, which our theatre orchestras most certainly are in the history of orchestration, require exceptional treatment, and where instruments have double duty to do, they cannot be treated as if they were only filling their normal place in the orchestra.

But we have dwelt long enough upon this side of the question, and are in truth rather sick of fault-finding. In spite of the many and great imperfections of our theatre orchestras, we can see even now indications of how great improvements could be made in them with very little trouble, and how the musical part of theatrical entertainments might be made no despicable agent in improving the popular taste in music, instead of being as they now are a mere drag on popular musical education. And here let no enthusiast for “ popular music ” imagine for a moment that we would preach the playing of Beethoven symphonies, Bach fugues, or Haydn quartettes between the acts at our theatres. We are always glad to hear Strauss waltzes and some of the better class of polkas and mazurkas, many of which can be easily brought within the executive scope of a few instruments. Operatic potpourris we would heartily protest against, as being in the first place an insult to the composer of the opera, and secondly as being perhaps the lowest conceivable form of music, if that can be called a form which has no form or logical development whatever. We have called the operatic potpourri the lowest musical form, but we had almost forgotten those most hideous agglomerations of tunes known as the “medley of popular airs ” and the “ burlesque overture.” The two forms of composition are really one and the same, differing only in name, and are in fact nothing more than the vulgarest popular airs, such as we hear whistled in our streets by bootblacks and newspaper boys, thrown together without rhyme or reason, and most villanously put upon the orchestra. Far better than these are the German “bouquets of melodies,” Conradi’s “ Melodiensträusse,” for instance, which are keenly enjoyable even by cultivated musicians. These “ bouquets ” consist of bits of different melodies, often not more than four or five bars of each one, thrown together pellmell, and following upon each other’s heels in such quick succession that it often requires the closest attention on the part of the listener to detect where one air changes to another. Thus little bits from operas, symphonies, oratorios, national airs, waltzes, sentimental ballads, and Scotch hornpipes are reeled off before the audience in most bewildering confusion and often with irresistibly comic effect. The “ bouquet ” arranger has of course an eye to the most glaring and ridiculous contrasts in these sudden changes of theme, and the way in which one air merges into another is at times quite startling. We have heard Handel’s Lascia ch’io pianga followed so closely by Arditi’s Il Bacio that it was impossible to tell where the one stopped and the other began. Of course these things have no more form than the potpourri, but they are written with manifestly comic intent, and we would no more quarrel with their formlessness than with Artemas Ward’s spelling or Hans Breitmann’s grammar. That musical wit and humor should be so well appreciated as it actually is by the mass of our audiences is in itself a hopeful sign for the future. Comic variations on any well-known theme are always keenly enjoyed whenever heard. Those astounding bits of musical humor where the piccolo, flute, and trombone play a theme in alternate bars, where an air is tossed about all over the orchestra from the first violin to the kettle-drums, where the man with the clarinet “ quacks ” up from a low note to a high one in most sea-sick portamento, and the double-bass squeaks in high harmonics, to be answered by an angry growl from the depths of the bassoon, — are cheap means, perhaps, from any high artistic point of view, for raising a laugh, but more grateful to our ears than cornet cavatinas, badly arranged overtures, or vulgar dance-hall music.

When the play performed is of such a nature as to make things of this sort out of place between the acts, the question what to play becomes one of very serious difficulty. Light music of any kind is out of place between the acts of Shakespeare tragedies or in fact of any serious plays, and we shudder at the thought of confiding any really fine music to many of our theatre orchestras. Some of them, to be sure, are capable of producing fine compositions of the simpler sort in quite a passable manner, and they have this advantage over most of the orchestras at our classical concerts, that they are accustomed to play together seven or eight times a week. In some cases it is only a deficiency in numbers that prevents them from being quite good and effective orchestras. The only way that we can see out of the difficulty is, that whatever good music they are called upon to play should be arranged by a competent musician especially for the instruments at his command, with a view to combining those instruments to the best advantage.