Part 14
During his advanced school years, his piano lessons continued, he received lessons in the violin, and went through a severe course in composition with the Royal Kapellmeister, Meyer. In 1882, he attended the University of Munich. His "Serenade" for wind instruments, composed at this time, attracted the attention of Hans von Buelow, under whom he studied for a while at Raff's conservatory in Frankfort. Buelow invited him to Meiningen as co-director of the orchestra, and when in November, 1885, Buelow resigned as conductor, Strauss became his successor, remaining there, however, only till April, 1886. His symphonic fantasia, "Italy," had its origin through a trip to Rome and Naples during this year. In August, 1886, he was appointed assistant conductor to Levi and Fischer at the Munich Opera, where he remained until July, 1889, when he became conductor at Weimar. In 1892, he almost died from an attack of pneumonia, and on his recovery took a long trip through Greece, Egypt and Sicily. It was on this tour that he wrote and composed "Guntram," which was brought out at Weimar in May, 1894. After the first performance, he announced his engagement to the singer of _Freihild_ in "Guntram," Pauline de Ahna, the daughter of a Bavarian general. The same year he returned to Munich as conductor, remaining there until 1899, when he became one of the conductors at the Berlin Opera, which position he still holds. He is one of the "star" conductors of Europe, receiving invitations to conduct concerts in many cities, including Brussels, Moscow, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Madrid, London and Paris; and his American tour was a memorable one. He is a man of untiring industry. It is said that he worked no less than half a year on "Thus Spake Zarathustra," and that the writing of his scores is a model of beauty.
Strauss occupies a commanding position in the world of music. He has achieved it through a remarkable combination of musical technique and inspiration coupled with rare industry. His ideals are of the highest. His intellectual activity is great. He seems a man of calm and noble poise, of broad horizon. It would be presumption to speak of "expectations" as to one who has accomplished so much. For the great achievements already to his credit, and among these "Salome" surely must be included, are the best promise for the future.
XIII
A NOTE ON CHAMBER MUSIC
Lovers of chamber music form an extremely refined and cultured class, and, like all highly refined and cultured people, are very conservative. They are the purists among music-lovers, the last people who would care to see the classical forms abandoned, and who would be disturbed, not to say shocked, by any great departure from the sonata form. For the string quartet is to chamber music what the symphony is to orchestra and the sonata to the pianoforte--is, in fact, a sonata for two violins, viola and violoncello, just as the symphony is a sonata for orchestra.
Oddly enough, a pianoforte solo is more effective in a large hall than a string quartet, although the latter employs four times as many instruments; and the same is true of those pieces of chamber music in which the pianoforte is used, such as sonatas for pianoforte and violin or violoncello, pianoforte trios, quartets, quintets, and so on. A fine soloist on the pianoforte will be more at home in a large auditorium like Carnegie Hall or even the Metropolitan Opera House than would a string quartet or any other combination of chamber-music players. Paderewski plays in Carnegie Hall, and, I am sure, would be equally effective in the Opera House. But an organization of chamber-music players would be lost in either place. The Kneisel Quartet plays in New York in Mendelssohn Hall, a small auditorium which is just about correctly proportioned for music of this kind.
Indeed, compared with the opera, the orchestra and even with the pianoforte, chamber music requires a setting like a jewel. For just as its devotees are the purists among music-lovers, so chamber music itself is something very "precious." It certainly is a most charming and intimate form of musical entertainment and the constituency of a well-established string quartet inevitably consists of the musical elite.
The same opinions that have been expressed regarding the sonatas and the symphonies of the great composers apply in a general way to their chamber music. Haydn's is naive; Mozart's more emotional in expression; Beethoven's, among that of classical composers, the most dramatic. In fact, Beethoven's last quartets, in which the instruments are employed quite independently and in which roles practically of equal importance are assigned to each, are regarded by Richard Strauss as having given the cue to Wagner for his polyphonic treatment of the orchestra, and Wagner himself spoke of them as works through which "Music first raised herself to an equal height with the poetry and painting of the greatest periods of the past." Nevertheless, there are many who hold that in his last quartets Beethoven sought to accomplish more than can be expressed with four stringed instruments, and prefer his earlier works of this class, like the three "Rasumovski" quartets, Opus 59, dedicated by the composer to Count Rasumovski, who maintained a private string quartet in which he played second violin, the others being professionals.
Schubert's most famous quartet is the one in D minor with the lovely slow movement, a theme with variations, the theme being his own song, "Death and the Maiden." One of the greatest works in the whole range of chamber music is his string quintet with two violoncellos. His pianoforte trios also are noble contributions to this branch of musical art. "One glance at this trio," writes Schumann of the Schubert trio in B flat major, "and all the wretchedness of existence is put to flight and the world seems young again.... Many and beautiful as are the things Time brings forth, it will be long ere it produces another Schubert."
Mendelssohn's chamber music is as polished, affable and gentlemanly as most of his other productions, and rapidly falling into the same state of unlamented desuetude. Schumann has given us his lovely pianoforte quintet in E flat. Brahms has contributed much that is noteworthy to chamber music, and, as a rule, it is less complex and more intelligently scored than his orchestral music. Dvorak in his E flat major quartet (Opus 51) introduces as the second movement a Dumka or Bohemian elegy, one of the most exquisite of his compositions. Fascinating in his national musical tints, he was genius enough for his music to be universal in its expression; and he who used the folksongs of his native Bohemia so skillfully was no less artistic in the results he accomplished when, during his residence in New York, he wrote his string quartet in F (Opus 96) on Negro themes. Tschaikowsky and neo-Russians like Arensky, and the Frenchmen, Cesar Franck, Saint-Saens, d'Indy and Debussy, are some of the modern names that figure on chamber-music programs.
HOW TO APPRECIATE VOCAL MUSIC
XIV
SONGS AND SONG COMPOSERS
Songs either are strophic or "_durchcomponirt_" (composed through). In the strophic song the melody and accompaniment are repeated unchanged through each stanza or strophe of the poem; while, when a song is composed through, the music, although the principal melody may be repeated more than once, is subjected to changes in accordance with the moods of the poem.
Schubert is the first song composer who requires serious consideration. While not strictly the originator of the _Lied_, he is universally acknowledged to be the first great song composer and to have lifted song to its proper place of importance in music. Gluck set Klopfstock's odes to music; Haydn as a song writer is remembered by "Liebes Maedchen hoer' mir Zu"; Mozart by "Das Veilchen"; and Beethoven by "Adelaide" and one or two other songs. Before Schubert's day this form of composition was regarded as something rather trivial and beneath the dignity of genius. But Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven at least did one thing through which they may possibly have contributed to the development of song-writing. By their freer writing for the pianoforte they prepared the way for the Schubert accompaniments.
Where Schubert got his musical genius from is a mystery. His father was a schoolmaster, whose first wife, Schubert's mother, was a cook. The couple had fourteen children and an income of $175. If this income is somewhat disproportionate to the size of the family, it yet is fortunate that they had fourteen children instead of only thirteen. Otherwise there would have been one great name less in musical history, for Schubert was the fourteenth.
He was born in Vienna in January, 1797. His thirty-one years--for this genius who so enriched music lived to be only thirty-one--were passed in poverty. His father was wretchedly poor, and his own works, when they could be disposed of at all to publishers, were sold at beggarly prices. Now they are universally recognized as masterpieces and are worth many times their weight in gold.
Too Poor to Buy Music Paper.
Shortly before he was twelve years old, Schubert, who had been singing soprano solos and playing violin in the parish choir, was sent to the so-called Convict, the Imperial school for training boys for the Court chapel. During his five years there his progress was so rapid that even before he was fourteen years old he was occasionally asked to substitute for the conductor of the school orchestra. Life, however, was hard. He had no money with which to buy even a few luxuries in the way of food to eke out the wretched fare of the Convict, nor music paper. Had it not been for the kindness of a fellow pupil and friend, named Spaun, he would not have been able to write down and work out his ideas.
When his voice changed, the straitened family circumstances obliged him to become an assistant in his father's school. He was able to bear poverty with patience, but not the drudgery of teaching, and he is said often to have lost his temper with the boys. Altogether, he taught for three years, 1815 to 1818; and while his work was most distasteful to him, his genius was so spontaneous that during his three years he composed many songs, among them his immortal "Erlking." Finally a university student, Franz von Schober, who, having heard some of Schubert's songs, had become an enthusiastic admirer of the composer, offered him one of his rooms as a lodging, whereupon Schubert, straightway accepting the offer, gave up teaching and from that time to the end of his brief life led a Bohemian existence with a clique of friends of varied accomplishments. In this circle he was known as "Canevas," because whenever some new person joined it, his first question regarding the newcomer was "_Kann er wass?_" (Can he do anything?)
Outside a small circle of acquaintances, Schubert remained practically unknown until he made the acquaintance of Johann Michael Vogl, an opera singer, to whom his devoted friend, Von Schober, introduced him. Vogl was somewhat reserved in his opinion of the songs which he tried over with Schubert at their first meeting, but they made an impression. He followed up the acquaintance and became the first professional interpreter of Schubert's lyrics. "The manner in which Vogl sings and I accompany," wrote Schubert to his brother Ferdinand, "so that we appear like _one_ on such occasions, is something new and unheard of to our listeners." Publishers, however, held aloof. Five years after the "Erlking" was composed, several of them refused to print it, although Schubert offered to forego royalties on it. Finally, some of Schubert's friends had the song published at their own expense, and its success led to the issuing of eleven other songs, Schubert unwisely accepting eight hundred florins in lieu of royalty on these and the "Erlking." Yet from one of these songs alone, "The Wanderer," the publishers received twenty-seven thousand florins between the years 1822 and 1861.
How the "Erlking" was Composed.
Schubert being the greatest of song composers, and the "Erlking" his greatest song, the circumstances under which it was written are of especial interest. His friend Spaun, the same who provided him with music paper at the Convict, relates that one afternoon toward the close of the year 1815 he went with the poet Mayrhofer to visit Schubert. They found the composer all aglow, reading the "Erlking" aloud to himself. He walked up and down the room several times, book in hand, then suddenly sat down and as fast as his pen could travel put the music on paper. Having no piano, the three men hurried over to the Convict, where the "Erlking" was sung the same evening and received with enthusiasm. The old Court organist, Ruziczka, afterward played it over himself without the voice, and when some of those present objected to the dissonance which occurs three times in the course of the composition and depicts the child's terror of the _Erlking_, the old organist struck these chords and explained how perfectly they reflected the spirit of the poem and how felicitously they were worked out in their musical resolution.
Schubert's song is almost Wagnerian in its descriptive and dramatic quality. The coaxing voice of the _Erlking_, the terror of the child, the efforts of the father to allay his boy's fears, each has its characteristic expression, which yet is different from the narrative portions of the poem, while in the accompaniment the horse gallops along. Schubert was but eighteen years old when he set this ballad of Goethe's to music; yet there is no more thrilling climax to be found in all song literature than those dissonances which I have mentioned and which with each repeat rise to a higher interval and become each time more shrill with terror. Whoever has heard Lilli Lehmann sing this song should be able to appreciate its real greatness, as Goethe, who had remained utterly indifferent to Schubert's music, did when the "Erlking" was sung to him by Frau Schroeder-Devrient, to whom he exclaimed: "Thank you a thousand times for this great artistic achievement. When I heard this song before I did not like it at all, but sung in your way it becomes a true picture."
Finck on Schubert.
More than six hundred songs by Schubert have been published, and when we remember that he wrote symphonies, sonatas, shorter pianoforte pieces, chamber music and operas, the fertility of his brief life is astounding. The rapidity with which he composed, however, was not due to carelessness, but to the spontaneity of his genius and the fact that he loved to compose. "He composed as a bird sings in the spring, or as a well gushes from a mountain-side, simply because he could not help it," says Mr. Finck, in his "Songs and Song Writers." We have it on the authority of Schubert's friend, Spaun, that when he went to bed he kept his spectacles on, so that when he woke up he could go right to the table and compose without wasting time looking for his glasses. In the two years 1815-16 he wrote no less than two hundred and fifty-four songs. Six of the songs in the "Winterreise" cycle were composed in one morning, and he had eight songs to his credit in a single day. The charming "Hark, Hark, the Lark" was written at a tavern where he chanced to see the poem in a book the leaves of which he was slowly turning over. "If I only had some music paper!" he exclaimed, whereupon one of his friends promptly ruled lines on the back of his _Speise Karte_, and Schubert, with the varied noises of the tavern going on about him, jotted down the song then and there.
Of course, it is impossible to touch on all the aspects of such a genius as his. In his songs clear and beautiful melody is, as a rule, combined with a descriptive accompaniment. Sometimes the description is given by means of only a few chords, like the preluding ones in "Am Meer." At other times the description runs through the entire accompaniment, like the waves that flash and dance around the melody of "Auf dem Wasser zu Singen"; the galloping horse in the "Erlking"; the veiled mist that seems to hang over the scenes in the wonderfully dramatic poem, "Die Stadt"; the flutter of the bird in "Hark, Hark, the Lark"; the brook that flows like a leitmotif through the "Maid of the Mill" cycle--these are a few of the examples that with Schubert could be cited by the dozen.
And the range of his work--here again space forbids the multiplication of examples. It extends from the naive "Haiden Roeslein" to the tragic "Doppelgaenger"; from the whispering foliage of the "Linden Tree" to the pathetic drone of the "Hurdy-Gurdy Man"; from the "Serenade" to "Todt und das Maedchen." Schubert is the greatest genius among song composers. Compare the growing reputation of him who of all musicians was perhaps the most neglected during his life, with that of Mendelssohn, the most feted of composers, but now rapidly dropping to the position of a minor tone poet, and who, although he wrote eighty-three songs, is as a song writer remembered outside of Germany by barely more than one _Lied_, the familiar "On the Wings of Song."
Schumann's Individuality.
In Schumann's songs the piano part is more closely knit and interwoven with the vocal melody than with Schubert's, and, as a result, the voice does not stand out so clearly. While his songs are not what they have been called by a German critic, "pianoforte pieces with accidental vocal accompaniments," at times, in his vocal compositions, the pianoforte gains too great an ascendancy over the voice. If asked to draw a distinction between Schubert and Schumann, I should say that there is a twofold interest in most of Schubert's songs. He reproduces the feeling of the poem in his vocal melody; then, if the poem contains a descriptive suggestion, he produces that phase of it in his accompaniment, without, however, allowing the pianoforte part to encroach on the vocal melody. The melody gives the feeling, the accompaniment the description or mood picture. Schumann, on the other hand, rarely is descriptive. Nearly always he produces a mood picture in tone, but requires both voice and pianoforte to effect his purpose. As this, however, is Schumann's method of composition, and as it is better that each composer should leave the seal of his individuality on everything he does, and not be an imitator, it is not cause for regret that while Schubert is Schubert, Schumann is Schumann.
The proportion of fine songs among the two hundred and forty-five composed by Schumann is, however, much smaller than in the heritage left us by Schubert; and while Schubert, from the time he wrote his first great vocal compositions, added many equally great ones every year, Schumann's songs, on the whole, show a decided falling off after he had wooed and won Clara Wieck. It was during his courtship that he produced his best songs. Separated from her by the command of her stern father, he made love to her in music.
"I am now writing nothing but songs, great and small," we find him saying in a letter to a friend in the summer of 1840. "Hardly can I tell you how delicious it is to write for voice instead of for instruments, and what a turmoil and tumult I feel within me when I sit down to it." While he was composing his song cycle, "Die Myrthen," he wrote to Clara: "Since yesterday morning I have written twenty-seven pages of music, all new, concerning which the best I can tell you is that I laughed and wept for joy while composing them." A month later he writes her, in sending her his first printed songs: "When I composed them my soul was within yours; without such a love, indeed, no one could write such music--and this I intend as a special compliment." ... "I could sing myself to death, like a nightingale," he writes to her again, on May 15th. Never was there such a musical wooing, and those who wish to participate in it can do so by singing or listening to such songs as "Dedication," "The Almond Tree," "The Lotos Flower," "In the Forest" (Waldesgespraech), "Spring Night," "He, the Noblest of the Noble," "Thou Ring upon My Finger," "'Twas in the Lovely Month of May," "Where'er My Tears Are Falling," "I'll Not Complain," and "Nightly in My Dreaming." Among his songs not inspired by love should be mentioned the "Two Grenadiers," which Plancon sings so inimitably.
Phases of Franz's Genius.
Robert Franz (1815-1892) had his life embittered by neglect and physical ills. His family name originally was Knauth, his father having been Christoph Knauth. But in order to distinguish him from his brother, who was engaged in the same business, he was addressed as Christoph Franz, a name which he subsequently had legalized. Yet critics insisted that Robert Franz was a pseudonym which the composer had adopted from vanity in order to indicate that he was as great as _Robert_ Schumann and _Franz_ Schubert put together.
Franz was strongly influenced by Bach and Haendel, many of whose scores he supplied with what are known as "additional accompaniments," filling out gaps which these composers left in their scores according to the custom of their day. His songs show this influence in their polyphony, and the German critic, Ambros, said that Franz's song, "Der Schwere Abend," looked as if Bach had sat down and composed a Franz song out of thanks for all that Franz was to do for him through his additional accompaniments. Besides their polyphony derived from Bach, Franz's songs are interesting for their modulations, which are employed not simply for the sake of showing cleverness or originality, but for their appropriateness in expressing the mood of the poem. He also was extremely careful in regard to the choice of key and decidedly objected to transpositions of his songs, in order to make them singable for higher or lower voices than could use the original key. "When I am dead," he wrote to his publisher, "I cannot prevent these transpositions, but so long as I am alive I shall fight them."
Franz did not endeavor to reproduce visible things in his pianoforte parts, and the voice in his songs often is declamatory, merging into melody only in the more deeply emotional passages. He is a reflective rather than a dramatic composer, disliked opera, and himself said that any one who had penetrated deeply into his songs well knew that the dramatic element was not to be found in them, nor was it intended to be. Composers, however, have many theories regarding their music which, in practice, come to naught; and whether Franz thought his songs dramatic or not, the fact remains that when Lilli Lehmann sang his "Im Herbst" it was as thrillingly dramatic as anything could be.
Self-Critical.
Franz was extremely self-critical. He kept his productions in his desk for years, working over them again and again, until in many cases the song in its final shape bore slight resemblance to what it had been at first. He declared his Opus 1 to be no worse than his latest work, because it had been composed with equal care and had had the benefit of his ripening judgment and experience. He admired Wagner and dedicated one of his song volumes to him; but when some critics fancied that they discovered Wagnerian traits in several songs in his last collection, Op. 51-52, he was able to prove that these very songs were among the first he had written, and were published so late in his career simply because he had kept them back for revision.