Part 24

Alfredo Smareglia, a Dalmatian by birth, and a pupil of the conservatory at Milan, excited great expectations by the production at this institution of a symphonic poem, "Leonora," founded upon Burger's ballad. He subsequently wrote the operas "Preciosa" and "Il vassalo di Szigeth," the latter of which was given successfully at the opera house at Vienna, and afterwards at the Metropolitan in New York. Smareglia, who is as industrious as he is highly talented, is now writing a new opera to be given at Vienna.

Alberto Franchetti, a grandson of the rich Jewish banker Rothschild, is a composer of unusual talent and with daring, striking ideas, which are not always successfully realized. His _curriculum vitæ_ reminds one very much of that of Meyerbeer. Educated in music at the conservatory at Dresden, under the celebrated Dræseke, he soon distinguished himself by the production of a symphony in E, which has been performed in many prominent orchestral concerts. After this he wrote the opera "Asrael," a curious mixture, an empirical Italian salad, composed of all that has been and is. He shows, however, in this work a decided talent for the stage, though the symphonic element is rather too prominent. This opera, also, has been given at the Metropolitan opera house in New York. Chiefly influenced by the mannerisms of Wagner, without fully catching his spirit, and never forgetting his severe German musical education, Franchetti is an original figure in the modern history of Italian music. He received the honorable commission of the municipality of Genoa to compose the music to the opera "Christopher Columbus," which was performed at the Teatro Carlo Felice in connection with the Columbian centennial festivities and won a great success.

The Wagnerian enthusiasm in Italy is, however, more of an outward manifestation than an inner power in the life and feelings of the inhabitants of the Apennine peninsula. Even if the fascinating and intoxicating orchestral coloring of the great Bayreuth master is not without effect on the sensuous Italian, his music cannot be fully understood until a regular and thorough study of the classic composers, including Schumann, shall have become a second nature with the Italians. Meanwhile the realists, having invaded literary and artistic France, found their way over the Alps, and many ardent emulators of their methods are to be found among Italian artists. Cremona and Domenico Morelli among the painters, and the two daring Sicilian authors, Giovanni Verga and Luigi Capuana, have been the chief representatives of the movement. About 1878, Verga published a volume of Sicilian peasant sketches, powerful and attractive, imbued with the warm and realistic coloring of his native soil. Curiously enough, these clever little sketches, which bear in themselves the germ of effective libretti, had never been made to serve for operatic plots, probably on account of their small dimensions and too realistic contents, until a strange contingency led many young composers to make use of them. The music publisher, Sonzogno of Milan, a man of great wealth and enterprise, having for a considerable time been aware of the fruitless attempts of young national composers to produce their operas, instituted a competition for short operas in one act. About ten of the competitors went to Verga's rich novel-collection for the plot of their musical compositions. As everybody knows, Pietro Mascagni was the fortunate winner with his now world-famous "Cavalleria rusticana." The subject is a happy one for a one-act opera. Within a very short space of time a powerful dramatic action, with all the glowing and varied Southern coloring, takes place. It is the old, old story, already a thousand times told, of love's conquest and faithlessness, and the natural tragic consequences. The scene is laid in a country of daggers and stiletti. There is no practical use in applying the critical dissecting knife to prove that the enormous success with which the "Cavalleria" met was disproportionate to the real value of the work. We think that never since the beginning of opera has a work by a youthful composer had such a large and international popularity, bringing at the same time nearly an independent fortune to the composer. Before Mascagni competed for the Sonzogno prize his little family was actually starving, and he had not money enough to hire the piano so necessary to the exercise of his profession.

The particular and very uncertain success of Mascagni's second opera, "Amico Fritz," was a great disappointment to those who had looked upon the young author as a coming king in the realm of opera. But the great triumph of his third work, "I Rantzau," produced at Florence in November, 1892, has revived the hope that Mascagni is not merely a lucky child of fortune, but that he possesses an out-spoken musical and dramatic individuality. That he is only an opera composer is beyond a doubt. The sudden changes in stage situation, the sharp contrasts, and, above all, the musical scene-painting which he does with coarse but sure brush, these are factors whose fitness to the genius of Mascagni stamps him as wholly in the trend of his theatrical talent. The chief significance of the new opera, "I Rantzau," lies, in our opinion, in the fact that Mascagni has at last composed something which seems to be the product of a personal and characteristic style.

There are two other composers whose reputations are still young, one of whom, Giordano, has been brought to public attention through the Sonzogno competition. The other, Leoncavallo, a man of literary as well as musical gifts, was able to choose the most practical way of introducing himself as an operatic composer, by paying the expenses of the performance of his opera, "I Pagliacci," at the Teatro del Verme in Milan. The work had an almost unparalleled success. We may well believe that this opera will, in the course of time, enjoy even greater popularity than attended its fortunate twin sister, "Cavalleria Rusticana." Leoncavallo himself wrote the text of his opera. Giordano treated another sketch of the Verga collection. In this work, "Malavita," he displays all the qualities required by an operatic composer--rapid musical development, broadly melodious phrasing, great variety of coloring, and vivid, sparkling rhythm, both in vocal and instrumental writing. There is every hope that Giordano, if his further artistic and musical development should fully realize its brilliant promise, may one day rank among the most prominent of Italian stage composers. But neither Mascagni nor Giordano can reach the surprising and striking originality found in Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci." W. von Sachs, a well-known New York critic, attended in Vienna a performance of "Pagliacci," and we have from him the opinion that Ruggero Leoncavallo may be called the head of the new Milanese school of composers. The plot, founded partly on the "Drama Nuevo" of Estibanez, and in its essential details not unlike the French play "Tabarin," presents the oft tried experiment of a play within a play. The hero is a mountebank who, deceived by his faithless wife, enacts in earnest the mimic scenes of jealousy. The principal characters, five in number, as in the "Cavalleria," belong, with one exception, to a company of strolling players, who, in the typical roles of the old Italian _comedia dell' arte_, tell in pantomime the familiar tale of deception, jealousy and revenge. There is to be noted in the condensed, picturesque action of this opera, an evident attempt to reproduce the more striking characteristics of Mascagni's work. Many of the latter's distinguishing musical methods are used, though without sacrifice of originality of musical idea. Like Mascagni, Leoncavallo has more than a superficial acquaintance with Wagner's works, and the great master's example can surely be traced to the fact that he, too, is the author of his own libretto. In each of these most modern operas of "Cavalleria," "Tilda," "Malavita" and "Pagliacci," a keen striving after the new realistic is to be observed. Each work has met with unqualified success, and this success has been certified by the approbation of such a critical body of judges as gathered at Vienna on the occasion of the Theatrical Exhibition.

The secret of such phenomenal successes lies partly in the rapid advance toward the denouement, in a frank and rich melodious flow of catching phrases, but mainly in the fact that all these young composers belong to the class of musical realists. Their works, then, are powerful because they conform to the spirit of the age. Lastly, their authors have an instinctive knowledge of stage effect, which enables them to use to the best advantage the materials at their disposal.

We recognize in these products of the present time the possibilities of a great musical advance for Italy. The younger composers, unlike their predecessors, have zealously studied the technique of composition with truly international breadth of interest. It is also to be noted that this same generation has completely freed itself from the idolatrous worship of Wagner. Those phases of Wagner's genius which should not be imitated have been shunned, and the Italians have turned to the passionately melodious song-phrase, which is truly characteristic of their nature. They have returned, in a word, to their own feelings and their own inspirations, as well as to their own belief in the power of rapid stage action. Although elaborate musical workmanship has never been a prominent feature of Italian composers, much has nevertheless been done in later years to improve matters in this respect. There is therefore reason to hope, that, if once the system of musical education can be founded on a solid basis, the most gratifying results may follow in Italian music of the future. The inhabitants of the Apennine peninsula, with their sensuous nature, their musical language, and their overflowing love for singing and music in general, must perforce continue to cultivate an art without which their life as a nation would be incomplete.

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

The question of physical and mental heredity is one which at the present day not only challenges the investigation of the learned, but is actively discussed in the wider circles of cultivated society. No better example can be cited in support of the affirmative side of this question, than the family of Johann Sebastian Bach, in which, for the space of not less than two hundred and fifty years, musical talent of a high order was transmitted from one generation to another. Displaying itself for the first time in the sixteenth century, the gift grew more and more marked until it reached its culminating point in the subject of this memoir, but began to dwindle in his posterity and disappeared entirely in the last descendant of the race, who died in Berlin in 1845.

For a long time the erroneous idea was almost universally accepted, that the Bachs originated in Hungary and had emigrated to Thuringia in the second half of the sixteenth century. In reality, however, the family was of pure German extraction and had established itself before the time of the Reformation on the northeastern slope of the Thuringian forest. Wechmar, a village in the neighborhood of Gotha, was the residence of the immediate progenitors of Sebastian Bach, and the first of these concerning whose musical proclivities we have any information were Veit and Caspar Bach. The former had learned the trade of a baker and miller, and, while absent on his travels, he took occasion to visit Hungary, but soon returned to his native village. Here, when the labors of the day were ended, he devoted himself to playing on the zither for amusement. Hans Bach, his son, born about 1580, adopted music as a profession, after having received instruction from the town musician of Gotha, Caspar Bach, presumably his uncle, and, by way of subsidiary occupation, he plied the trade of a carpet-weaver. With his cherished violin for a companion, it was his habit to roam far and wide throughout Thuringia, making the strains of his instrument resound wherever a joyous company was found assembled. A jovial fellow, full of merry jests, he soon became universally popular in the region, and the musical importance of the Bach family was perceptibly increased through the inherited ability of his three sons, Johann, Christoph and Heinrich. Several musicians of note are also to be counted among the descendants of a brother of Hans, of whom Johann Ludwig Bach, who died in 1741 while occupying the position of Capellmeister in Meiningen, deserves special mention.

But the gift for music which had impressed its stamp upon the race was exhibited in a still greater degree by the three brothers already referred to, Johann, Christoph and Heinrich Bach. Christoph, born in 1613, became _Stadt-Musikant_ in Erfurt, and later was transferred to Arnstadt, where Heinrich, born in 1615, was established as organist. Johann, born in 1604, discharged the double office of town-musician and organist in Erfurt. All three, it will be seen, united in turning their attention to instrumental music in general and to church music in particular, cultivating more especially the science of organ-playing, and it may here be remarked that no one of their descendants up to the time of Sebastian Bach departed from this sphere of activity. It was in this great man that true German art first sought expression, and therefore the family in its totality must forever be regarded as an embodiment of the artistic aspiration of the nation. Singularly enough, neither the three brothers, nor their sons and grandchildren, were ever moved by the desire to visit Italy, although so many of their comrades in art were constantly repairing thither. The splendors of the royal courts of Germany were equally powerless to attract; they perseveringly employed their talents in the service of their fellow citizens, faithful alike in their ecclesiastical and civil relations, and bearing with patience the privations to which they were often subjected. During the lifetime of the trio of brothers, three principal gathering-places for the continually increasing branches of the family were appointed, at Erfurt, Arnstadt and Eisenach respectively, and between these three towns there was a constant interchange of visits. If a piece of good-fortune came to any one in either place, he called upon the others to follow him, or, falling into distress, he hastened away in order to try his fate anew under the sheltering care of his kinsmen. In this way the bond of family union was closely cemented between them. In Erfurt, the brothers and their children were able to hold in exclusive possession for a century all musical positions in the gift of the government, and even fifty years later, the town musicians in the place continued to be called "the Bachs," although there was no longer any one among them who bore the name. One branch of the family was permanently established in Arnstadt until 1739, another in Eisenach till 1777, where some of its descendants still remained only twenty years ago, though no longer following the profession of their ancestors. In summing up the qualities of this race of musicians, it is not too much to say that they exhibited the most salient features of the Thuringian type of character, and, with the exception of one of the descendants of Christoph Bach, who settled on Frankish soil, no disposition was ever shown to depart from the region which gave them birth. Indeed, so strongly possessed were they by the necessity of occasionally seeing one another face to face, that for a long time it was their custom to appoint a day in every year, on which the masculine members of the family should assemble in one of the chosen centers. The many happy hours which they passed together on these occasions were devoted to the narration of their respective experiences, interspersed with music as a means of recreation. They generally began with the singing of a choral, which was followed by livelier airs, often set to words free and unconstrained. They were especially fond of "quodlibets," a kind of musical medley, more or less skillfully composed of every sort of merry popular melody, or, as frequently happened, the singers depended upon their own powers of improvisation. Taken as a whole, the Bachs were characterized by a strong love of pleasure, which, however, was by no means incompatible with their sincere and fervent piety.

If one takes into account the low order of cultivation prevailing in Germany at that early period, the artistic excellence attained by this family becomes all the more remarkable. Its musical promise was first revealed in the time of the Thirty Years' War, and it was during the second half of the seventeenth century, when the moral, intellectual and material strength of the nation was at its lowest ebb, that the promise was gloriously fulfilled. Simultaneously with the earliest manifestations of activity in other provinces of intellectual life, German music attained in Sebastian Bach a height so lofty that it has never been surpassed, and from this fact two deductions may be drawn: first, in spite of the sufferings consequent upon the Thirty Years' War, there had remained implanted in the inmost hearts of the people a vital germ of great productive power; and, second, the best of which the German nation was capable in the first century after the war, found expression through this family of artists. It is also noteworthy in respect to the German people, that the first creative impulse by which they were stirred was in the direction of music, and that, in the unsounded depths of feeling from which this impulse springs, they found compensation for the loss of those earthly possessions upon which unmerciful fate had laid its destroying hand. Something like a law of nature is moreover to be discovered in the fact that German musical art at that time, whether ecclesiastical or secular in character, developed itself chiefly in the instrumental line. The essential foundation of both these styles is represented by the _Volkslied_, which must be regarded as the most direct and unperverted utterance of the popular imagination. The _Tanzlied_, at first sung by the people, but later always played, forms the fundamental element of the instrumental music of that day. The ecclesiastical music of the seventeenth century, however, that which alone has a right to the name in the strictest sense, was developed in and through the science of organ composition. Organ music, on the other hand, derived its greatest inspiration from the religious form of the _Volkslied_, that is, from the choral melodies of the Protestant church. If the ecclesiastical music of the time reached a higher point of perfection than secular instrumental music, it is because religion offers a broader field for art than any other manifestation of civilized life. For it has everywhere aroused in the heart that profound enthusiasm from which the creative artistic impulse springs. Everywhere the great productions of ecclesiastical art are animated by a freshness and spontaneity, which may be counterbalanced by works of another class, but cannot be effaced by them. The end of the Thirty Years' War was the beginning of a period in which, to such of the German people as had retained in any degree the love of higher things and the consciousness of a connection with the sheltering and protecting power of God, religion must necessarily have appeared to be the only secure possession in life. It was no joyous burst of gratitude which stirred their souls, but from the depths of their misery they looked upward, imploring help. The character of the church music which originated at that time was at first tender and supplicating like the prayer of an invalid, while later, under Sebastian Bach, it gained depth and fervor, but retained its severity and earnestness, the outpouring of a spirit strengthened by misfortune.

If the Bach family is to be regarded as a standard-bearer of culture in the midst of a period of universal desolation, then it is not in the least surprising that its members were greatly superior to their environment, from a moral point of view. This may be explained in part by the fact that many of them were in the service of the church; yet even those who followed another calling revealed a wholesome soundness of nature which stands out in sharp relief against the ruder manners and moral laxity of their contemporaries. Repeated instances of their unselfish devotion and conscientious discharge of duty under the most trying circumstances have been handed down to us, and when we consider the peculiar relation subsisting between members of their profession and the passions of mankind, our admiration of virtues so rare and so austere must necessarily increase. The musicians of that day followed the fashion of all the industrial corporations by forming themselves into a guild, and it was precisely as a guild that they became an object of contempt on account of their extreme demoralization. The better sort, of course, were aware of this, and in the year 1653 a society of musicians was formed in Upper and Lower Saxony, for the purpose of protecting their common interests and of promoting a higher order of morality. The Bachs, however, did not find it necessary to join a union of this sort. With them, the family traditions, so religiously respected, were more binding than the most formal edict issued under the sanction of the Emperor himself. It is surely not to be reckoned among the least of their merits that they preserved their strong independence and integrity of purpose in an age which had no conception of artistic dignity; furthermore, they were citizens of petty states, at whose courts musicians were ranked with lackeys, and for the most part treated as such when attached to the service of the princely chapels.

Johann Bach had several sons, all of whom were musicians in Erfurt. One of his grandchildren, Johann Bernhard Bach, became organist in Eisenach and won a reputation as composer of organ and orchestral music, but no other member of this branch of the family attained celebrity. The descendants of Heinrich Bach, who himself was a fine organist and excelled in composition, were however more prominent in the musical world. His two sons, Johann Christoph and Johann Michael, took higher rank as composers than any of the other ancestors of Sebastian Bach. The former especially must certainly be pronounced the greatest motet composer living at the close of the seventeenth century. Unfortunately only eight of his motets are extant, but in these he shows himself worthy to stand by the side of his predecessor, Heinrich Schütz, and his great successor, Sebastian Bach. Johann Michael (born 1648, died 1694), while inferior to his brother both as regards invention and execution, has still much of the latter's fervency of feeling, and is distinguished by a certain profundity of imagination. He confined himself to instrumental composition more exclusively than Johann Christoph, and devoted himself in addition to the manufacture of clavichords and violins. But few of his instrumental compositions are now extant, and the twelve motets which have been preserved give perhaps no just idea of his artistic personality, taken as a whole.