Part 4

It is a real difficulty in the way of Strauss appreciation that while only familiarity can enable us to follow the intricate windings of the threads that make up his gorgeously rich fabrics, frequent hearings of his later and more complex symphonic poems are not to be had, even in the large cities. In the meanwhile we have no recourse but piano arrangements, unsatisfactory for two reasons. In the first place, it is physically impossible to play with two hands even a respectable fraction of the melodies that Strauss delights to elaborate for two hundred; and four-hand versions are better only in degree, not in kind. Secondly, piano versions fail us precisely in this matter of unraveling dissonance, since by reducing a colored pattern to monochrome they diminish the salience of the lines we are trying to follow, and by juxtaposing in one tone-quality tones that in the orchestra are softened by difference of timbre they notably increase the physical harshness of the combinations. Obviously, then, we must be exceedingly chary of condemning Strauss, or any other composer, for orchestral dissonance that we have either become acquainted with insufficiently, or only through piano arrangements.

After making these subtractions, however, there undoubtedly remain many puzzling clashes of tone in Strauss's scores, which can be accounted for only as introduced either for color or for dramatic expression.

The use of dissonance for the sake of color enrichment is a familiar proceeding in modern music, especially in that of impressionistic type like Debussy's and Ravel's. Such use is essentially decorative. To a more or less clearly defined harmonic nucleus are added softer tones, clashing with it, and thus forming about it an aura or atmosphere elsewhere compared to the mist which softens the outlines of the landscape.[10] Strauss is too fond of clear outlines and solid mass to employ these impressionistic methods habitually, or even frequently; but when he does, it is with his usual skill and daring. The theme of the silver rose in "Der Rosenkavalier" is the inevitable example: the last pages of the score are crowded with those silvery, scarcely audible triads of celesta and flutes, shifting and settling on the stronger G major chord like snowflakes on a leaf (Figure VIII, page 70).

Delicious as are these shimmerings, a use of dissonance on the whole more characteristic of the masculine nature of Strauss is the harsher, more insistent juxtaposition of clashing tones for the sake of their potency in the expression of the tragic, the gruesome, or the abnormal. Naturally this is pushed furthest in the treatment of such pathological subjects as "Salome" and "Elektra," where its effect is carefully enhanced by contrast with strong or clear consonant harmonies--"Salome" has its Jochanaan and "Elektra" its Chrysothemis. The close juxtaposition of foreign tone groups, either successive or simultaneous, is carried to great lengths in these operas. The theme of the chattering Jews in "Salome" is an example of the successive, as is the curious succession of the chords of F minor and B minor at Chrysothemis' entrance in "Elektra."[11]

The simultaneous kind was foreshadowed in the famous ending of "Also Sprach Zarathustra," where the woodwind instruments sound the chord of B major against the softly plucked C of the strings; but we have to go to the operas again to find it carried to its logical and sometimes cruel extreme. There we find alien triads marching uneasily together in double harness;[12] dominant sevenths similarly shackled;[13] and strange passages in which the upper parts move naturally, but above a dislocated bass.[14] Such procedures, which, it must always be remembered, because of differences in tone quality between instruments of different families, sound far less harsh in the orchestra than on the piano, even if they are no less queer musically, can theoretically be carried to any extent. How far Strauss sometimes carries them, a single example must suffice to show.

Whether one "likes" such passages as this or not is of course a question of taste. But one thing at least is certain: it will not do to charge Strauss with mere musical anarchy in writing them--his work as a whole shows too keen a sense of the traditional harmonic values. That æsthetic insensibility, posing as "freedom from rules," "independence," "liberalism," and the like, to which in the minds of so many modern composers all keys are the same, is happily not one of his failings. That he has the keenest possible sense of the individual qualities of the different keys, and of the structural importance of their interrelationships, each one of his long series of symphonic poems has by its masterly design shown afresh. How remarkable, for example, is the antithesis of C, minor and major, and B, minor and major, which is the constructive principle of "Also Sprach Zarathustra!" How interesting is the choice of F major for the easy-going husband in the "Symphonia Domestica," and of the keener, more brilliant B major for the wife! And how this strong tonal sense not only guides the design as a whole, but suggests endless charming and imaginative details! At the end of the lullaby, in the same work, when the child has fallen asleep and the music has sunk to a tranquil G minor chord, this quietude is irradiated by a flash of B major and three notes of the wife-theme,--the loving tenderness of the waking and watching mother over the sleeping infant. Twice this happens, and each time the somnolent G minor returns. Thus does genius use tonality.

Being thus brought back to consider how Strauss uses all the elements of music, even this subtlest one of contrasting tonalities, in the interest of characterization, we may ponder with profit one final interpretation which might seem over-ingenious had we not the example of Mr. Klatte to spur our critical imaginations. Why is it that we so seldom hear the four tones of Till Eulenspiegel's main theme on any other degrees of the scale than A, F, B, C? Why is it that, in spite of the constant movement from key to key of the music, this theme is hardly ever carried also into the new key?[15] Why does Strauss so insist on this A, F, B, C, not only when the music is in F major, but when, as at Till's anger, it is in D minor, when, as in the procession of the burghers, it is in A minor, and when, just before the return of the main theme, it is in C major? Why always A, F, B, C, whatever the key? Is it not because Till, half-witted, perverse, self-imprisoned, is not subject to social influences, and remains unplastically himself, whatever his environment? To transpose a theme into the key prevailing at the moment is to make order--but Till represents disorder.... Such at least is the ingenious explanation of a woman who understands character as well as Strauss understands keys.

IV

All that we have been saying so far has concerned itself primarily with Strauss's powers of observation and characterization; we have noted how broad a field of human character he covers, and what varied artistic resources he brings to its depiction; we have seen how peculiarly fitted he is for this part of his work by his active temperament, with its accompanying intellectual alertness and freedom from self-consciousness. But we saw that the great dramatist needs not only observation but sympathy, in order that his work may be as moving as it is vivid; and in this power of emotion we may at first be inclined to consider Strauss deficient. There is undoubtedly a popular superstition which puts him among the intellectuals. The clean-cut efficiency of his personality, his businesslike habits, his mordant wit, both in words and in notes (was there ever anything so witty as "Till Eulenspiegel"?), even questionably relevant details like his exquisitely neat handwriting and his well-groomed and not in the least long-haired appearance,--all these create the impression of a personality by no means _schwärmerisch_, far removed indeed from the rapt dreamer who is the school-girl's ideal composer.

There is perhaps a measure of truth in this picture. Many of Strauss's most characteristic merits, as well as defects, may be traced to his lack of the introspective tendency which has been so fundamental in most of the other great German musicians, from Bach to Wagner, and which is seen perhaps at its purest and best in Schumann. Strauss is at the other pole from Schumann--and music is wide! Mr. Ernest Newman, in the ablest studies of Strauss yet published in English,[16] points to the internal evidence of this lack in his earliest and therefore least sophisticated compositions. "The general impression one gets from all these works," writes Mr. Newman, "is that of a head full to overflowing with music, a temperament that is energetic and forthright rather than warm ..., and a general lack not only of young mannish sentimentality, but of sentiment. There is often a good deal of ardour in the writing, but it is the ardour of the intellect rather than of the emotions." And again: "Wherever the youthful Strauss has to sing rather than declaim, when he has to be emotional rather than intellectual, as in his slow movements, he almost invariably fails.... He feels it hard to squeeze a tear out of his unclouded young eyes, to make those taut, whip-cord young nerves of his quiver with emotion."[17]

Now, although Mr. Newman would not accept his own description of Strauss the youth as a fair account of the mature composer, although, indeed, he specifically insists, in a later passage, that Strauss's musical imagination lost, at adolescence, its "first metallic hardness" and "softened into something more purely emotional," yet his vivid phrases seem to give us a picture of Strauss that is in essentials as true at fifty as it was at fifteen. "A temperament that is energetic and forthright rather than warm," "an ardour of the intellect rather than of the emotions"--these are surely still Straussian characteristics. And what is more they are characteristics that, whatever their dangers, have exerted a splendid influence in modern music. Schumann's was a noble introspection that no one who knows it can help loving; but in natures less pure the introspective habit of German romanticism has not always been so happy in its effects. An unhealthy degree of self-contemplation tends to substitute futile or morbid imaginings for the solid realities of life; the over-introspective artist cuts himself off from a large arc of experience and is prone to exaggerate the importance of the more intimate sentiments, and when, as in German romanticism, such a tendency is widespread, a whole school may become febrile and erotic. The vapors of such confirmed sentimentalism can best be dispersed by a ray of clear, cold intelligence, such as Shaw plays through contemporary literature and Strauss through contemporary music. "Cynicism," says Stevenson, "is the cold tub and bath towel of the emotions, and absolutely necessary to life in cases of advanced sensibility." Strauss has administered this tonic shock to us, immersed as we were in the languors of the Wagnerian boudoir. He has rooted us out of our agreeable reveries, sent us packing outdoors, and made us gasp with the stinging impacts of crude existence and the tingling lungfuls of fresh air. Is it not worth while, for this vigorous life, to sacrifice a few subtle nuances of feeling?

If then we so emphasize his possession of the active rather than the contemplative temperament, it is not to blame him for not being a Schumann, but to render as precise as possible in our own minds the notion of what it is to be a Strauss. If there is a point where blame or regret must mingle with our appreciation, it will be likely to come not at the preliminary determination of what his temperament is, but at the further discovery of certain extremes to which he has allowed his interest in externals to carry him, especially in his later work. And here we must try to set right a misconception with which Mr. Newman leaves the student of his essay on "Program Music."[18]

V

Mr. Newman, wishing to draw a reasoned distinction between self-sufficing, or "pure," or "abstract" music--that is, music that makes its appeal directly and without the aid of any verbal tag--and "poetic" music, or, more specifically, music with a definite program or title, adopts, seemingly without criticism, the popular notion that the first is less "emotional" than the second, and supports it by piling up epithets which beg the very question he is supposed to be examining. It is easy to "damn a dog by giving him a bad name," and it is easy to make music without program seem a dry and academic affair by calling it "abstract note-spinning," "mathematical music," "mere formal harmony," "embroidery," "juggling," "the arousing of pleasure in beautiful forms"--much too easy for a man of Mr. Newman's penetration and fair-mindedness.

One expects this kind of thing from inexperienced youths whose enthusiasm has been inflamed by the gorgeous color and the easily grasped "story" of such a work as, let us say, Tschaikowsky's "Romeo and Juliet," who have not had time to live themselves into accord with the profound emotional life of the great musical classics such as Bach's fugues and Beethoven's symphonies; but from Mr. Newman such superficialities, especially when they are associated, as these are, with many penetrating and true observations, and an argument in the main convincing, come as a surprise.

The central fallacy that vitiates Mr. Newman's conclusions lurks in his assumption that "specific reference to actual life" necessarily means greater emotion, and that the generality or "abstractness" of classic music is a symptom of emotional deficiency. "In the old symphony or sonata," says Mr. Newman, "a succession of notes, pleasing in itself but not having specific reference to actual life--not attempting, that is, to get at very close quarters with strong emotional or dramatic expression, but influencing and affecting us mainly by reason of its purely formal relations and by the purely physical pleasure inherent in it as sound--was stated, varied, worked out, and combined with other themes of the same order...." And again: "The opening phrase of Beethoven's 8th Symphony refers to nothing at all external to itself; it is what Herbert Spencer has called the music of pure exhilaration; to appreciate it you have to think of nothing but itself; the pleasure lies primarily in the way the notes are put together." To this a footnote is appended: "There is emotion, of course, at the back of the notes; the reader will not take me to mean that the pleasure is merely physical, like a taste or an odour. But the emotive wave is relatively small and very vague; it neither comes directly from nor suggests any external existence." Once more, the assumption that degree of emotion is in a direct ratio with externality of suggestion.

But as a matter of fact is not the exact opposite the truth? Are we not most deeply moved when we are lifted clean out of the concrete and carried up to the universal of which it is only an example? Is not the general far more moving than the particular? Do we not feel external details to be irrelevant and even annoyingly intrusive when we are stirred to the recognition of inward truths, of spiritual realities? No doubt program music owes to its reference to the particular story, the well-known hero, the familiar book or picture, a certain vividness, an immediateness of appeal even to the unmusical, a rich fund of associations to draw upon; but even program music, surely, tends in all its more powerful moments to penetrate below this comparatively superficial layer of external facts to the profounder (and of course vaguer) emotional strata of which they are, so to speak, the outcroppings. It is odd how little difference there is between program music and music, without the tag, in their more inspired moments; in all symphonic poems it is the symphonic rather than the poetic element that is chiefly responsible for the effect produced; and indeed, increasingly realistic as Strauss has become in his later works, even here the memorable moments are those of emotional fulfilment and realization, in which we tacitly agree to let the program go hang. Far from the "emotive wave" being proportional to the suggestion of "external existence," then, one would say that it was rather proportional to the realization of universal spiritual truth, and that in systematically confronting us with ever more and more crassly external existences Strauss has in his later works followed a practice as questionable as the theory which supports it, and levied an ever greater tax of boredom on our joy in the finer moments of his art.

Even in "Tod und Verklärung," which remains to this day, in the words of M. Romain Rolland,[19] "one of the most moving works of Strauss, and that which is constructed with the noblest unity," the repulsively realistic details with which the gasping for breath of the dying man is pictured consort but incongruously with the tender beauty of the "childhood" passages and the broad grandeur of the "transfiguration." The love of crass realism thus early revealed has grown apace, by even steps, unfortunately, with the extraordinary powers upon which it is parasitic. In the works conceived partially in a spirit of comedy, to be sure, such as "Till Eulenspiegel" and "Don Quixote," it finds a whimsical, witty expression for itself which not only seldom strikes a false note, but is often exceedingly amusing. Till's charge among the market-women's pots and pans, the bleating of the sheep in "Don Quixote," even perhaps the baby's squalling in the "Symphonia Domestica," are clever bits of side play, like the "business" of an irrepressible comedian, which are not out of key with the main substance of the music. But even here these realistic touches are exuberances, and inessential; the essential thing in "Till," for example, is the spirit of mischief and destruction that existed in the human heart for centuries before the rascal Eulenspiegel was born, and that respond in us to his pranks; and this essence Strauss expresses in the purely musical parts of his work, and by means identical in kind with those employed in a Beethoven scherzo.

And if realistic detail is in such instances subordinate to musical expression it may in the treatment of more serious subjects become positively inimical to it. Do we really care very much about supermen and "convalescents" and the rival claims of Christianity and neo-paganism when we are listening to "Also Sprach Zarathustra"? Does not that everlasting C-G-C, with its insistence on an esoteric meaning that we never knew or have forgotten, pester us unnecessarily? What we remember in "Zarathustra" is much more likely to be the poignant passion of the "Grablied," or the beautiful broad melody of the violins, in B major, near the end, which bears no label at all save the tempo mark "Langsam." Similarly, in the "Symphonia Domestica" the family squabbles, growling father giving the réplique to bawling infant, leave us skeptically detached or mildly amused. It is the musical charm of the "easy-going" parts in F major, the cradle song, above all the largely conceived slow movement with its wonderful development of the husband's "dreamy" theme, that really stir us. As for "Ein Heldenleben," what an unmitigated bore are those everlasting Adversaries!

Thus in the later works Strauss's shortcomings on the subjective side, his native tendency to concern himself more with concrete appearances than with essential emotional truths, seem exaggerated to such a degree as seriously to disturb the balance of his art. As he has interested himself more and more in externals he has not entirely evaded the danger of exalting the "program" at the expense of the "music," and his work, for all its extraordinary brilliance, its virtuosity, its power, has become over-emphatic, ill-balanced, hard in finish and theatrical in emphasis. It is ultimately a spiritual defect that compels us to withhold our full admiration from "Ein Heldenleben" or the "Domestica." We admit their titanic power, their marvelous nervous vitality; their technical temerities grow for the most part acceptable with familiarity; it is their emotional unreality that disappoints us. This charge of unreality, made against realism, may surprise us, may seem to savor of paradox; but it is inevitable. For music, as we have been told _ad nauseam_, but as we must never be allowed to forget, exists to express feeling; the only truth essential to it is truth to emotion; and therefore realism, looking as it does away from inward emotion to external fact, ever tends toward musical unreality.

How shall we account for this progressive externalizing of Strauss's musical interest? Is it all temperament? Has environment had anything to do with it? Do those high-sounding but dubious things "modern German materialism" and its accompanying æsthetic "decadence" bear in any way upon the matter? These are questions too large for a humble annalist of music to answer. M. Romain Rolland, however, in his essay on French and German Music in "Musiciens d'aujourd'hui," has one suggestion too relevant to be neglected here. "German music," says M. Rolland, "loses from day to day its intimateness: there is some of it still in Wolf, thanks to the exceptional misfortunes of his life; there is very little of it in Mahler, despite his efforts to concentrate himself upon himself; there is hardly any of it in Strauss, although he is the most interesting of the three. They no longer have any depth. I have said that I attribute this fact to the detestable influence of the theatre, to which almost all these artists are attached, as Kapellmeisters, directors of opera, etc. They owe to it the often melodramatic or at least external character of their music--music on parade, thinking constantly of effect."

One hesitates to accept so damning a charge as this against any artist, especially against a musical artist, who above all others should render sincere account of what is in his own heart rather than "give the public what it wants." Yet there is only too much in the later Strauss that it explains. How else shall we account for the exaggerated emphasis, the over-elaboration of contrasts that seem at times almost mechanical, and that suggest shrewd calculation of the crowd psychology rather than free development of the musical thought? What else explains so well the sensational elements so incredibly childish in an art so mature as Strauss's: the ever-increasing noisiness, the introduction of wind-machines, thunder-machines, and heaven knows what diabolic engines; the appetite for novelty for novelty's sake? And is there not a reflection of the "saponaceous influences of opera," as Sir Hubert Parry so well calls them, in the cloying over-sweetness, the sensuous luxury, of those peculiar passages, like the oboe solo in "Don Juan," the love music in "Ein Heldenleben," which form such conventional spots in the otherwise vital tissue of the music? Surely the opera house, and not the concert hall, is the place where such sybaritisms naturally breed.