Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches
Singers, musicians of all kinds, are notoriously bad mannered. The storms of the Titan, Beethoven, the petty malevolences of Richard Wagner, the weak sulkiness of Chopin (“Chopin in displeasure was appalling,” writes George Sand, “and as with me he always controlled himself it...
Singers, musicians of all kinds, are notoriously bad mannered. The storms of the Titan, Beethoven, the petty malevolences of Richard Wagner, the weak sulkiness of Chopin (“Chopi...
2. Part 2“When the tumult was calmed down a little the _Kapellmeister_, standing quite impassive with his face turned towards the audience, though he was pretending not to see it (the au...
3. Part 3The single man orchestra, the player of the upright piano, need not make so many preparatory gestures. He may with impunity, if he be of an inventive turn of mind, or if his mem...
4. Part 4Four modern operas stand out as Spanish in subject and atmosphere. I would put at the top of the list Zandonai’s _Conchita_; the Italian composer has caught on his musical palet...
5. Part 5The smart world in Spain to-day dances much as the smart world does anywhere else, although it does not, I am told, hold a brief for our tango, which Mr. Krehbiel suggests is a...
6. Part 6Elsewhere in this rambling article I have touched on the _villancicos_ and the early song-writers. To do justice to these subjects would require a good deal more space and a dif...
7. Part 7Bretón is largely self-taught, and there is a legend that he devoured by himself Eslava’s “School of Composition.” He further wrote the music and conducted for a circus for a pe...
8. Part 8The scenery for the Wagner dramas, in all the theatres where I have seen and heard them, has been built (and a great deal of it in recent years from new designs) with a seemingl...
9. Part 9“Wagner foresaw that in the new drama the whole principle of the stage scenery must undergo a complete alteration but did not particularize in detail. The _Meister_ says that ‘m...
10. Part 10I wonder if all the suggestion music gives us is associative. Sometimes I think so. Was it Berlioz who remarked that the slightest quickening of _tempo_ would transform the cele...
11. Part 11This idea of natural expression becomes associated in any great composer’s mind with another idea, the horror of the _cliché_. Each new giant desires to express himself without...
12. Part 12Rimsky-Korsakow wrote his opera to be sung in the ordinary fashion, and, in so far as this matters, it was perhaps a desecration to perform it in any other manner. However, quit...
13. Part 13Page 44: “Greig’s _Peer Gynt_” “Grieg’s _Peer Gynt_” Page 73: “_l’Heure Espagnole_” “_L’heure Espagnole_” Page 77: “colour of Zurburan” “colour of Zurbaran” Page 77: “Juan de Ju...