Music

WAGNER’S Centennial March¹ (of which we have unfortunately seen only a poor piano-forte arrangement) is perhaps the most foiling composition to criticism that we have yet met with. To any one who is comfortably content to look for the whole musical essence of a work in the character and relationship of its various themes, and their formal working out, this march presents little difficulty. The two contrasted themes it is built upon are neither new nor especially interesting; they are certainly neither trivial nor very commonplace, they have even a certain stateliness and grandeur, but they do not of themselves produce any marked effect upon either the feelings or the imagination. Their formal treatment, judged by any genuinely musical standard, is so very loose and inorganic that it is wholly uninteresting, and, by itself, monotonous. Sheer persistence and reiteration must not be confounded with thematic development, although when done with a will, and with sustained power, they may at times produce wonderful effects, though of the physical sort; witness the first movement of Gade’s C-minor Symphony. Judged from the printed notes, then (always bearing in mind that we are speaking of a very inadequate piano - forte transcription, the merest spectre of the original work), this march should he pronounced, by the most time-honored rules of criticism, to he wholly flat, unprofitable, and without foison. Beyond all doubt, Wagner’s superb command over all the resources of the modern orchestra, his wondrous power of contrasting different shades of tone, his gorgeous instrumental coloring, will, in any case, go far toward galvanizing even the deadest inorganic mass of notes into life. We know that this faculty is held in light esteem by many, and we are often brought up short in our admiration of works that are purely orchestral in their character, and are comparatively uninteresting when heard through the medium of a piano-forte transcription, by the reproving remark that a Beethoven symphony does not need its orchestral dress to be beautiful. Aye, very true ! Just in so far as the instrumentation of a Beethoven symphony is merely its orchestral dress, can it bear being stripped of it; it can even better do without it. But in so far as the instrumentation is an organic part of the symphony itself, it is an utterly indispensable part. Music is most assuredly the art of tones. We cannot but feel that all those who rejoice in piano-forte arrangements of Beethoven symphonies, and orchestral transcriptions of Bach passacaglias and toccatas, fail to feel some of the very essential beauties of those works. It would appear, then, that the critic must look to the orchestra to reveal to him whatever of beauty lies in the Centennial March ; otherwise there seems to be little hope either for the march or for him.

So much for criticism. But one rather disconcerting fact remains. After playing over the march some half a dozen times, we must candidly admit that we greatly enjoy it. We find it neither monotonous nor dry, but full of fire, dignity, and energy. The themes are given out with such convincing authority, the whole thing is carried through with such indomitable, spontaneous power, there is so much fine, effectual heat in the work, such a total absence of anything small or niggardly in its composition, that it carries us away, in spite of ourselves, perhaps, at first, but very willingly at last. We will mercifully say nothing about the ever - occurring triplet figure, which the newspapers have quite sufficiently talked of in a more or less distracted state of mind, except that it is, as Hamlet might say, an honest triplet. It is simply the first three notes of the first theme,—

and keeps recurring throughout the piece (as fragments of themes have often done before in other pieces), greatly adding to its brilliancy. The effect of the whole march is, no doubt, mainly physical, but we cannot help thinking it an inspiring and wholesome one.

— Mr. Hadley Buck’s Centennial Cantata ² is a very favorable example of the com poser’s style. Anything other than a masterly treatment of easily melodious and dramatically pertinent themes, coming from his facile pen, would have surprised us. We must think that Mr. Buck has been unfortunate in the text to which he has written music. The greater part of Mr. Lanier’s poem, apart from all considerations of its intrinsic poetical worth or unworth is suitable to musical treatment in the dramatic, declamatory, Liszt-Wagner style, but is very ill adapted to musical treatment in the purely musical style in which Mr. Buck is so gracefully at home. Mr. Buck is, above all things, a musician, and never allows the dramatic possibilities of his text to lure him away from a musically self-dependent and consistent form.

Mr. Lanier recently wrote a newspaper letter in which he defended at great length his choice of method in composing this cantata-text. He there lays down three principles (which, in his view, constitute the a, b, c of the matter): (a) that every modern musical composer must write for the human voice as a part of the orchestra ; (b) that only one general conception is permissible in the text, with sonic subordinate ideas very broadly contrasted ; and (c) that in the case in point the poem should consist mainly of Saxon words, in order to aid in producing an effect of “ big, manly, and yet restrained jubilation.” We have nothing to object to the sincerity of Mr. Lanier’s convictions, and, as we have intimated, we think he produced various phrases and movements well adapted to dramatic musical arrangement; but we feel bound to oppose his theory that poetry written for music need no longer be “perfectly clear, smooth, and natural.” There are critics quite as competent as Mr. Lanier who do not believe that the poorness of Wagner’s texts for his own operas is at all essential to their musical splendor. And what does Mr. Lanier say to Schiller’s ode, An die Freude, so magnificently set by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony ? We know of no text, either, which might so well inspire a musician of the modern school as Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner (though this has been very inadequately used by the English composer, Barnett), a poem largely made up of clear and precise narrative. But, to take the example which seems to have been most immediate in its influence upon Mr. Lanier, Dr. von Bülow’s orchestral rendering of Uhland’s Sänger’s Fluch, we may observe that the simple fact of the composer’s skipping the “ connective tissue ” of narrative in that poem, and dwelling on the dramatic episodes in it, by no means proves that the intermediary narrative portions are “ so much waste matter quoad music.” Without these portions, the poem would have been comparatively worthless and ineffective, and could hardly have inspired any musician to the effort of interpretation. If Uhland had, without further explanation, given the ejaculative utterances of the king, the queen, and the singer, he would have been unintelligible; and before his poem could have been translated into tones by Von Bülow, explanatory marginal notes would have been required, similar to those which Mr. Lanier wisely took the precaution to send to Mr. Buck ; and possibly a posthumous newspaper letter from Uhland would not have been amiss. Moreover, a conception to be embodied in words and music cannot safely be subjected to just the same treatment as that which is given to the impression derived from a clear, concise poem, and about to be translated into orchestral effects. Mr. Lanier’s fundamental error appears in a simile to which he confidently calls our attention, namely, that a poet asked to write a cantata-text is in precisely the predicament of a painter whimsically required to paint a picture that shall he viewed only by moonlight. This is as ludicrous as it is loose in its analogy. Mr. Lanier himself points put in one case the power of music to invest unmeaning syllables with great effect ; and this alone shows that music is not an indistinct medium for the transmission of impressions, comparing with the power of non-musical vocal inflections “ as moonlight . . . with sunlight.” The syllables “ zig, zig, zig ” cannot possibly be made impressive in non-musical utterance. So that the idea that music, as contrasted with simple elocution, enfeebles and makes vague, falls to the ground. And even granting that it does make things vague, we should say that the poet, instead of adding to the dimness and mysticism of musical expression, ought to throw into his words a compensating clearness. In either case, then, Mr. Lanier is at fault. He has been misled by a simile, and has gone astray by reason of that peculiar and excessive roominess which an uncertain grasp of principles is apt to create in the mind. His law of the prevailing general idea and of the related subordinate ideas is quite correct, but not at all new; his choice of Saxon words is highly commendable; but his rejection of clearness and intelligibility is a lamentable error. It is quite possible that fine things may be produced in a mystical and indefinite vein, but no art can ever achieve greatly which sets out with forethought to be mystical and vague. Mr. Lanier says that he saturated his mind with a theory, and then waited for the poem to come. He would have done better to keep his mind more clear from theories, and to have gone ardently and without prejudice in search of his poem. As it is, in expounding the alphabet of a new poetic-musieal art, he has forgotten that it must have a grammar also. And though undoubtedly revolutionary forces have been at work in music, and are now at work in poetry, which the general public may not appreciate, yet the criticisms which the Centennial cantata-text has met represent a healthy and instinctively correct popular protest against what is really a hasty and defective attempt to overthrow artistic order.

The character of Mr. Buck’s music is almost always in keeping with the spirit of the text; we may he sure not to find him writing triumphal marches to words like “Cujus animam gementem,” for instance; but all entering into dramatic details, to the detriment of essentially musical thematic development, seems to be repugnant to his nature. Now many of Mr. Lanier verses are of that involved grammatical structure that makes them utterly incomprehensible when read merely prosodically. We must confess that Mr. Buck’s setting often rather increases than lessens this quality in the poetry. Take, for instance, the lines,—

The music to the first line is admirable : the basses thunder out, “ Winter cries, Ye freeze ; ” upon which the whole chorus shriek, “ Away ! ” But in the two following lines, all that the listener can understand is, “ Fever cries, Ye burn away ! Hunger cries, Ye starve away!” In the next line the music again makes the text wholly comprehensible and effective. There are one or two other places where the sense of the text is equally obscure to the listener.

Musically considered, the cantata is a most capital piece of writing. Mr. Buck does not write with a very Titanic pen, but his style is so pure and unforced, his effects are so easily and naturally brought about, that we cannot but overlook an occasional tendency to the trivial and commonplace. The bass solo, “Long as thine art,” which sets out in a quite sufficiently commonplace and sentimental vein, gains strength as it goes on, and at the words, “ Thy fame shall glow, thy fame shall shine,” shows real power and effective brilliancy. The fugued final chorus is a great advance upon the composer’s “ The God of Jacob is our refuge,” in his Forty-Sixth Psalm, and all the choral part from the words, “ Mayflower, Mayflower,” to the words, “Toil, give, kiss o’er and replight,” is brilliant, and, barring the occasional obscurity we have already mentioned, effective, dramatic even, if you will, but always in a merely general way.

—Mr. John K. Paine’s music to Whittier’s Hymn³ shows plainly the master’s hand in its calm, reposeful beauty. It is a very perfect piece of plain choral writing, and we should place it in the foremost rank among the many modern attempts at original composition in this style. We have heard many large adjectives coupled with this music, and many sublime comparisons made with old works of the sort. But the opportunity seems to us hardly to have given room for anything great. An opening hymn for the Centennial Exhibition was required of Mr. Paine, and he has given us one such as we are persuaded few other men in the country could write.