Music

As the merely intelligent and dry critic often fails to recognize essential beauties because of the presence of unessential imperfections, so can the enthusiast get to mistake these very imperfections for beauties. - MORITZ HAUPTMANN.

Dilettanti think they can master at the first dash what artists have been thinking of for days, months, and years. — ROBERT SCHUMANN.

IN his pamphlet on Orchestral Conducting, Wagner says: “Unquestionably composers cannot be indifferent as to the manner in which their works are presented to the public, since the latter can manifestly receive a correct impression of a composition only from a good performance, whereas it is unable to recognize as such the incorrect impression produced by a bad performance.” The last part of this statement is doubly true when the faults in a bad performance arise wholly from a misconception of the composer’s idea, and not from any technical executive shortcoming on the part of the performers; in which case the “ intelligent public ” is usually too prone to charge the composer with musical platitudes which are wholly due to the æsthetic incompetence of the interpreter. Indeed, it requires an expert of no common degree of critical acumen to lay what blame there may be upon the right shoulders. That the musical critic should be such an expert would seem to be a reasonable requirement both of the composer and public. It may well be questioned whether any one but a musician can be an adequate judge of a composition, even under the most favorable conditions. Even those persons who may incline to think Berlioz’s definition of music, as “the art of moving, by combinations of tones, intelligent men gifted with special and practiced organs,” too narrow, cannot deny that a man is primâ facie the best judge of matters that come strictly within his own department of knowledge. There are men who — though foreign to the practice, and only slightly versed in the theory of music—have educated their natural gifts, by long familiarity with fine music, to a pitch that will authorize them to consider their own opinion of some value in cases where they really hear a work adequately performed. But the man who, without being a musician himself, can discriminate between a poor composition and a poor performance, is a sufficiently rara avis to be looked upon rather as a monstrosity than a normal human individual. We know that some “ knights of the pigtail,” who look upon music merely as the transubstantiation of a collection of black dots, metronome marks, and Italian abbreviations into corresponding sounds, will say, on the other hand, that a superb performance will often make a comparatively worthless composition appear of greater value than it actually is. But this is not true ; it is both physically and metaphysically impossible. Nothing can come of nothing ; no performer, were he thrice a Liszt and a magician to boot, can get more out of a composition than lies in it. It is monstrously untrue that the mere swelling and diminishing tones, which are exactly enough indicated by the engraved notes and expression - marks, constitute music.

They are no more music than the mechanically correct utterance of printed words and sentences is human speech. They are but the flesh, bone, and gristle of music, but no more music itself than the cerebral hemispheres are the human soul. They are, so to speak, the mere physical organs of music, that appeal to our senses, through which the essence of music appeals to our souls. Nay, we would even say that, in a certain high sense, that is the greatest and highest music which most depends upon a fine performance for its adequate realization, not the worst and lowest. If it takes a Von Bülow to show us that Liszt’s Ricordanza is not wholly worthless, what a verily Titanic player would it not take to reveal to us all the heights and depths of Beethoven’s Opus 106 Sonata ! There is, to be sure, an indestructible something in the highest music that even a poor performance, let it twist and distort it as it may, cannot entirely mar. But let us not for a moment imagine that because we enjoy an inadequate performance of a high work more than a perfect performance of a low one, we therefore have grasped the high work in all its glorious perfection ; we have caught only far-off glimpses of the wonderful thing. It is conceivable how quick and acute the intelligence must be that can, at the first or second hearing of a composition, pierce through the distorting medium of an inadequate performance, and grasp the high possibilities that actually he in the music itself. Such critical insight is to be acquired only by long technical mental drill, added to great general æsthetic culture. A natural, intrinsic capacity is, of course, presupposed. This brings us directly to our point. If the musical critic does not possess this faculty in an eminent degree, by what right does he presume to encounter this truth-seeking world with his opinion of a new composition ?

The complete musical critic, the Schumann or Berlioz, is undoubtedly a desideratum in every æsthetic community, yet what an astoundingly rare phenomenon he is! But in his absence, the straightforward, honest man of even passable æsthetic lights may do much, if he will only modestly content himself with saying what he knows, and merely suggesting what he feels. Let the critic never forget what a combination of qualities it takes to enable a man to pass judgment autocratically upon a new work ; let him first test himself, before he ventures to declare this good and that bad. Upon the whole, we think that incalculably more harm may be done by misplaced blame than by misplaced praise. A new work that is damned at the outset by the “ dastardly spirit of the pen ” has but a gloomy future before it, whereas the composition that begins by shining with the spurious lustre of undeserved praise acquires thereby a prominence that exposes it to the scrutiny of every one. We wonder whether it ever occurred to some critics that they may often err in demanding too much of a composition It sometimes seems as if no composer to-day could give even a concert - overture to the world without being floored on the very threshold of public recognition by having Bach or Beethoven mercilessly flung at his head. What need is there of being always Titanic ? In other arts we do not admit this kind of criticism, by comparison. The Parthenon casts no shadow upon our admiration for the new station of the Boston and Providence railway. Our enjoyment of Paul Veronese’s Marriage at Cana is not lessened by the very palpable fact that it is not the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Michael Angelo’s Adam, lying carelessly upon the hill-side, with that gigantic strength of limb, and that ineffable depth of adoration in his face just crystallizing into a gaze, looks as if he could sweep Paul Veronese and all his works out of existence with a single wave of his outstretched arm. Yet the Veronese still enjoys a comfortable immortality. But it seems at times as if the Passion - music, the Ninth Symphony, Don Giovanni, and the B-flat Trio stood like an appalling “ Lasciate ogni speranzi ” at the gate of modern music. This is entirely intolerable. Why should the godlike C-minor Symphony, that Olympian Lamento e Trionfo, begrudge Liszt’s Tasso its chivalric brilliancy ? Is Tschaikowski’s Concerto any the less vigorous, because Beethoven’s great E - flat stands unapproached ? Let this sort of criticism stop, that the world may see more clearly what is to be seen.

The “ merely intelligent and dry ” critic, with the brain of a Corliss engine and the soul of a gnat, who has searched the learning of the schools to his own confusion, and would measure music with his contrapuntal foot-rule, is indeed an irritating mortal, but does comparatively little harm. Being himself merely a thinking machine, he can never speak a vital word ; he can put two and two together and make a deafening cackle about having hatched four, but beyond this he can hardly add to the stock of the world’s experience. But the untutored “enthusiast,” whose swelling soul spurns all earthly shackles, who, without being able to recognize so much as a crossrelation when he sees it, much less when he hears it, soars blissfully about in the realms of high art, hero-worship, and the sublime and beautiful in general, launching thunder-bolts with one hand, and showering benedictions with the other in the vaguest manner: he will ever remain an inexplicable astonishment to the thinking observer. When the human mind, from among its various possibilities of progress, chooses the direction of doing what it knows nothing about, be it the building of monuments or the writing of reviews, there is no telling what sublime heights of bewilderment it may not reach. To read some of these men’s writings, one would think that, like Paracelsus’ Homunculi, “ by art they receive their life, by art they receive body, flesh, bones, and blood; by art are they born; therefore art is in them incarnate and selfexisting, so that they need not learn it of any man, but all men must learn it of them; for through art they have their existence, and have grown up in it like a rose or other flower in the garden.” Such men are often more narrow than the musical scholastics themselves, for, in their giddy careering in the midst of space, they are too unconscious of any landmark save their own preconceived notions to notice within what a small circle the centripetal force of their own ignorance confines their course.

Musical critics, therefore, may well beware of condemning a work at the first hearing, simply because they can make nothing of it. The very fact that we do not understand a thing ought to make us timid in criticising it; for what but the most unfruitful nonsense can come of discussing what we do not comprehend ? Snap-judgment has a good many sins to answer for. At the best, we none of us know a composition as well as the composer himself, least of all at the first hearing. Virgil’s Æneid is, as we all know, dry enough reading when done by the aid of a dictionary and grammar ; so let us first feel reasonably at home in a composition before we allow ourselves to say much about it, certainly before we say anything against it.

— We had hardly sent to the press, a few months ago, our arguments upon the present impossibility of a good performance of any of Bach’s choral works in this country, when the bringing out of the St. Matthew Passion by the Handel and Haydn Society came as a very strong demonstration on the other side of the question. Our notice of this has been too long postponed, but we are glad to acknowledge, now, how convincingly our despondent prediction has been answered. It would seem that a good performance of a Bach choral work is not so impossible as we had supposed. To be sure, the performance of the Passion on Palm Sunday cannot in general be said to have been superlative, but there were some few isolated points in it that were superb.

First and foremost in the list of good things comes Madame Rudersdorff’s singing. It is safe to say that nothing finer of the sort has ever been heard here. To really sing the great “ Erbarme Dich ” bespeaks as much in the singer as to really play Beethoven’s great adagio in the Sonata Opus 106 does in the pianist. As the one touches the highest point yet attained of tragic instrumental music, so is the other the highest expression of the tragic element in song. It is useless to question whether it might not have been better sung. What good thing is there that might not be improved ? To say that it was well sung, is tantamount to saying that it was grandly, superbly done. Any performance of such music that is not very close upon perfection is simply atrocious, horrible, and utterly unbearable. Second to Madame Rudersdorff’s singing alone stands Mr. William Winch’s singing of the part of the Evangelist ; and be it remembered that Mr. Winch’s task, physically speaking, was by far the most severe of the evening. But although Bach’s recitatives give the singer quite as much scope as the airs for the display of vocal training, understanding, sentiment, and dramatic power, they are sung with piano-forte accompaniment, and thus enable the singer to husband his voice more carefully than he can do when he has to compete with the greater dynamic intensity of a complex orchestral accompaniment in imitative counterpoint. Still more favorable is the fact that the whole accompaniment consists of a few simple chords, and is moreover in the hands of a single, presumably sympathetic, accompanyist; whereas the difficult and complicated accompaniments to the airs are in the hands of an orchestra, which no degree of competency on the part of its conductor can force into absolute sympathy with the singer except by much and careful rehearsing. Mr. Winch was, in fact, far more successful in the Evangelist’s recitatives than in the tenor air with chorus, “ Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen.” In some points in the recitative he rose absolutely to the sublime pitch. To have done what he did that evening is to have done what no tenor has yet done in this country, and what few tenors have done so finely anywhere. Mr. John Winch did himself great credit, singing his recitative in a large, manly style, and showing much feeling and real appreciation in the air, “ Gebt mir meinen Jesum wieder.” Mr. Rudolphsen, although he was called upon at the

shortest possible notice to sing instead of our great basso, Mr. Whitney, who was prevented by illness, succeeded in dissipating the first pang of regret for the latter’s absence, which is saying a great deal. Miss Beebe sang the soprano airs in a very pure style, but without either much sentiment or, apparently, much artistic comprehension. Yet we know of no one who could have sung the very high and trying soprano music in the work as well as she. The choruses were in general exceedingly well done, but we should have adopted a quieter tempo in the final chorus.