Chapter 14
What strikes one also in the _Lieder_ is the importance of the pianoforte accompaniment and its independence of the voice. Sometimes the voice and the pianoforte express the contrast that so often exists between the words and the thought of the poem; at other times they express two personalities, as in his setting of Goethe's _Prometheus_, where the accompaniment represents Zeus sending out his thunderbolts, and the voice interprets Titan; or again, he may depict, as in the setting of Eichendorff's _Serenade_, a student in love in the accompaniment, while the song is the voice of an old man who is listening to it and thinking of his youth. But in whatever he is describing, the pianoforte and the voice have always their own individuality. You cannot take anything away from his _Lieder_ without spoiling the whole; and it is especially so with his instrumental passages, which give us the beginning and end of his emotion, and which circle round it and sum it up. The musical form, following closely the poetic form, is extremely varied. It may sometimes express a fugitive thought, a brief record of a poetic impression or some little action, or it may be a great epic or dramatic picture. Müller remarks that Wolf put more into a poem than the poet himself--as in the _Italienisches-Liederbuch_. It is the worst reproach they can make about him, and it is not an ordinary one. Wolf excelled especially in setting poems which accorded with his own tragic fate, as if he had some presentiment of it. No one has better expressed the anguish of a troubled and despairing soul, such as we find in the old harp-player in _Wilhelm Meister_, or the splendid nihility of certain poems of Michelangelo.
Of all his collections of _Lieder_, the 53 _Gedichte von Eduard Mörike, komponiert für eine Singstimme und Klavier_ (1888), the first published, is the most popular. It gained many friends for Wolf, not so much among artists (who are always in the minority) as among those critics who are the best and most disinterested of all--the homely, honest people who do not make a profession of art, but enjoy it as their spiritual daily bread. There are a number of these people in Germany, whose hard lives are beautified by their love of music. Wolf found these friends in all parts, but he found most of them in Swabia. At Stuttgart, at Mannheim, at Darmstadt, and in the country round about these towns he became very popular--the only popular musician since Schubert and Schumann. All classes of society unite in loving him. "His _Lieder_," says Herr Decsey, "are on the pianos of even the poorest houses, by the side of Schubert's _Lieder_." Stuttgart became for Wolf, as he said himself, a second home. He owes this popularity, which is without parallel in Swabia, to the people's passionate love of _Lieder_ and, above all, of the poetry of Mörike, the Swabian pastor, who lives again in Wolf's songs. Wolf has set to music a quarter of Mörike's poems, he has brought Mörike into his own, and given him one of the first places among German poets. Such was really his intention, and he said so when he had a portrait of Mörike put on the title-page of the songs. Whether the reading of his poetry acted as a balm to Wolf's unquiet spirit, or whether he became conscious of his genius for the first time when he expressed this poetry in music, I do not know; but he felt deep gratitude towards it, and wished to show it by beginning the first volume with that fine and rather Beethoven-like song, _Der Genesende an die Hoffnung_ ("The Convalescent's Ode to Hope").
The fifty-one _Lieder_ of the _Goethe-Liederbuch_ (1888-89) were composed in groups of _Lieder_: the _Wilhelm Meister Lieder_, the _Divan (Suleika) Lieder_, etc. Wolf even tried to identify himself with the poet's line of thought; and in this we often find him in rivalry with Schubert. He avoided using the poems in which he thought Schubert had exactly conveyed the poet's meaning, as in _Geheimes_ and _An Schwager Kronos_; but he told Müller that there were times when Schubert did not understand Goethe at all, because he concerned himself with translating their general lyrical thought rather than with showing the real nature of Goethe's characters. The peculiar interest of Wolf's _Lieder_ is that he gives each poetic figure its individual character. The Harpist and Mignon are traced with marvellous insight and restraint; and in some passages Wolf shows that he has re-discovered Goethe's art of presenting a whole world of sadness in a single word. The serenity of a great soul soars over the chaos of passions.
The _Spanisches-Liederbuch nach Heyse und Geibel_ (1889-90) had already inspired Schumann, Brahms, Cornelius, and others. But none had tried to give it its rough and sensual character. Müller shows how Schumann, especially, robbed the poems of their true nature. Not only did he invest them with his own sentimentalism, but he calmly arranged poems of the most marked individual character to be sung by four voices, which makes them quite absurd; and, worse than this, he changed the words and their sense when they stood in his way. Wolf, on the contrary, steeped himself in this melancholy and voluptuous world, and would not let anything draw him from it; and out of it he produced, as he himself said proudly, some masterpieces. The ten religious songs that come at the beginning of the collection suggest the delusions of mysticism, and weep tears of blood; they are distressing to the ear and mind alike, for they are the passionate expression of a faith that puts itself on the rack. By the side of them one finds smiling visions of the Holy Family, which recall Murillo. The thirty-four folk-songs are brilliant, restless, whimsical, and wonderfully varied in form. Each represents a different subject, a personality drawn with incisive strokes, and the whole collection overflows with life. It is said that the _Spanisches-Liederbuch_ is to Wolf's work what _Tristan_ is to Wagner's work.
The _Italienisches-Liederbuch_ (1890-96) is quite different. The character of the songs is very restrained, and Wolf's genius here approached a classic clearness of form. He was always seeking to simplify his musical language, and said that if he wrote anything more, he wished it to be like Mozart's writings. These _Lieder_ contain nothing that is not absolutely essential to their subject; so the melodies are very short, and are dramatic rather than lyrical. Wolf gave them an important place in his work: "I consider them," he wrote to Kaufmann, "the most original and perfect of my compositions."
As for the _Michelangelo Gedichten_ (1897), they were interrupted by the outbreak of his malady, and he had only time to write four, of which he suppressed one. Their associations are pathetic when one remembers the tragic time at which they were composed; and, by a sort of prophetic instinct, they exhale heaviness of spirit and mournful pride. The second melody is perhaps more beautiful than anything else Wolf wrote; it is truly his death-song:
_Alles endet, was entstehet. Alles, alles rings vergehet_.[190]
And it is a dead man that sings:
_Menschen waren wir ja auch, Froh und traurig, so wie Ihr. Und nun sind wir leblos hier, Sind nur Erde, wie Ihr sehet_.[191]
At the moment he was writing this song, in the short respite he had from his illness, he himself was nearly a dead man.
[Footnote 190:
All that is begun must end, All around will sometime perish.
[Footnote 191:
Once we were also men Happy or sad like you; Now life is taken from us, We are only of earth, as you see.
_Chiunque nasce a morte arriva Nel fuggir del tempo, e'l sole Niuna cosa lascia viva.... Come voi, uomini fummo, Lieti e tristi, come siete; E or siam, come vedete, Terra al sol, di vita priva_.
(Poems of Michelangelo, CXXXVI.)
* * * * *
As soon as Wolf was really dead his genius was recognised all over Germany. His sufferings provoked an almost excessive reaction in his favour. _Hugo-Wolf-Vereine_ were founded everywhere; and to-day we have publications, collections of letters, souvenirs, and biographies in abundance. It is a case of who can cry loudest that he always understood the genius of the unhappy artist, and work himself into the greatest fury against his traducers. A little later, and monuments and statues will spring up all over.
I doubt if Wolf with his rough, sincere nature would have found much consolation in this tardy homage if he could have foreseen it. He would have said to his posthumous admirers: "You are hypocrites. It is not for me that you raise those statues; it is for yourselves. It is that you may make speeches, form committees, and delude yourselves and others that you were my friends. Where were you when I had need of you? You let me die. Do not play a comedy round my grave. Look rather around you, and see if there are not other Wolfs who are struggling against your hostility or your indifference. As for me, I have come safe to port."
DON LORENZO PEROSI
The winter that held Italian thought in its cold clasp is over, and great trees that seemed to be asleep are putting out new life in the sun. Yesterday it was poetry that awaked, and to-day it is music--the sweet music of Italy, calm in its passion and sadness, and artless in its knowledge. Are we really witnessing the return of its spring? Is it the incoming of some great tide of melody, which will wash away the gloom and doubt of our life to-day? As I was reading the oratorios of this young priest of Piedmont, I thought I heard, far away, the song of the children of old Greece: "The swallow has come, has come, bringing the gay seasons and glad years. Ear êdê." I welcome the coming of Don Lorenzo Perosi with great hope.
* * * * *
The abbé Perosi, the precentor of St. Mark's chapel at Venice and the director of the Sistine chapel, is twenty-six years old.[192] He is short in stature and of youthful appearance, with a head a little too big for his body, and open and regular features lighted up by intelligent black eyes, his only peculiarity being a projecting underlip.
[Footnote 192: This article was written in 1899, on the occasion of Lorenzo Perosi's coming to Paris to direct his oratorio _La Résurrection_.] He is simple-hearted and modest, and has a friendly warmth of affection. When he is conducting the orchestra his striking silhouette, his slow and awkward gestures in expressive passages, and his naïve movements of passion at dramatic moments, bring to mind one of Fra Angelico's monks.
For the last eighteen months Don Perosi has been working at a cycle of twelve oratorios descriptive of the life of Christ. In this short time he has finished four: _The Passion_, _The Transfiguration_, _The Resurrection of Lazarus_, _The Resurrection of Christ_. Now he is at work on the fifth--_The Nativity_.
These compositions alone place him in the front rank of contemporary musicians. They abound in faults; but their qualities are so rare, and his soul shines so clearly through them, and such fine sincerity breathes in them, that I have not the courage to dwell on their weaknesses. So I shall content myself with remarking, in passing, that the orchestration is inadequate and awkward, and that the young musician should strive to make it fuller and more delicate; and though he shows great ease in composition, he is often too impetuous, and should resist this tendency; and that, lastly, there are sometimes traces of bad taste in the music and reminiscences of the classics--all of which are the sins of youth, which age will certainly cure.
Each of the oratorios is really a descriptive mass, which from beginning to end traces out one dominating thought. Don Perosi said to me: "The mistake of artists to-day is that they attach themselves too much to details and neglect the whole. They begin by carving ornaments, and forget that the most important thing is the unity of their work, its plan and general outline. The outline must first of all be beautiful."
In his own musical architecture one finds well-marked airs, numerous recitatives, Gregorian or Palestrinian choruses, chorales with developments and variations in the old style, and intervening symphonies of some importance.
The whole work is to be preceded by a grand prelude, very carefully worked out, to which Don Perosi attaches particular worth. He wishes, he says, that his building shall have a beautiful door elaborately carved after the fashion of the artists of the Renaissance and Gothic times. And so he means to compose the prelude after the rest of the oratorio is finished, when he is able to think about it in undisturbed peace. He wishes to concentrate a moral atmosphere in it, the very essence of the soul and passions of his sacred drama. He also confided to me that of all he has yet composed there is nothing he likes better than the introductions to _The Transfiguration_ and _The Resurrection of Christ_.
The dramatic tendency of these oratorios is very marked, and it is chiefly on that account that they have conquered Italy. In spite of some passages which have strayed a little in the direction of opera, or even melodrama, the music shows great depth of feeling. The figures of the women especially are drawn with delicacy; and in the second part of _Lazarus_, Mary's air, "Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died," recalls something of Gluck's _Orfeo_ in its heart-broken sadness. And again, in the same oratorio, when Jesus gives the order to raise the stone from the tomb, Martha's speech, "Domine, jam foetet," is very expressive of her sadness, fear, and shame, and human horror. I should like to quote one more passage, the most moving of all, which is found in the _Resurrection of Christ_, when Mary Magdalene is beside the tomb of Christ; here, in her speech with the angels, in her touching lamentation, and in the words of the Evangelist, "And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus," we hear a melody filled with tenderness, and seem to see Christ's eyes shining as they rest on Mary before she has recognised Him.
It is not, however, Perosi's dramatic genius that strikes me in his work; it is rather his peculiar mournfulness, which is indescribable, his gift of pure poetry, and the richness of his flowing melody. However deep the religious feeling in the music may be, the music itself is often stronger still, and breaks in upon the drama that it may express itself freely. Take, for instance, the fine symphonic passage that follows the arrival of Jesus and His friends at Martha and Mary's house, after the death of their brother (p. 12 _et seq._ of _Lazarus_). It is true the orchestra expresses regrets and sighs, the excesses of sorrow mingled with words of consolation and faith, in a sort of languishing funeral march that is feminine and Christian in character. This, according to the composer, is a picture he has painted of the persons in the drama before he makes them speak. But, in spite of himself, the result is a flood of pure music, and his soul sings its own song of joy and sadness. Sometimes his spirit, in its naïve and delicate charm, recalls that of Mozart; but his musical visions are always dominated and directed by a religious strength like that of Bach. Even the portions where the dramatic feeling is strongest are really little symphonies, such as the music that describes the miracle in _The Transfiguration_, and the illness of Lazarus. In the latter great depth of suffering is expressed; indeed, sadness could not have been carried farther even by Bach, and the same serenity of mind runs through its despair.
But what joy there is when these deeds of faith have been performed--when Jesus has cured the possessed man, or when Lazarus has opened his eyes to the light. The heart of the multitude overflows perhaps in rather childish thanksgiving; and at first it seemed to me expressed in a commonplace way. But did not the joy of all great artists so express itself?--the joy of Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach, who, when once they had thrown their cares aside, knew how to amuse themselves like the rest of the populace. And the simple phrase at the beginning soon assumes fuller proportions, the harmonies gain in richness, a glowing ardour fills the music, and a chorale blends with the dances in triumphant majesty.
All these works are radiant with a happy ease of expression. _The Passion_ was finished in September, 1897, _The Transfiguration_ in February, 1898. _Lazarus_ in June, 1898, and _The Resurrection of Christ_ in November, 1898. Such an output of work takes us back to eighteenth-century musicians.
But this is not the only resemblance between the young musician and his predecessors. Much of their soul has passed into his. His style is made up of all styles, and ranges from the Gregorian chant to the most modern modulations. All available materials are used in this work. This is an Italian characteristic. Gabriel d'Annunzio threw into his melting-pot the Renaissance, the Italian painters, music, the writers of the North, Tolstoy, Dostoïevsky, Maeterlinck, and our French writers, and out of it he drew his wonderful poems. So Don Perosi, in his compositions, welds together the Gregorian chant, the musical style of the contrapuntists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Palestrina, Roland, Gabrieli, Carissimi, Schütz, Bach, Händel, Gounod, Wagner--I was going to say César Franck, but Don Perosi told me that he hardly knew this composer at all, though his style bears some resemblance to Franck's.
Time does not exist for Don Perosi. When he courteously wished to praise French musicians, the first name he chose--as if it were that of a contemporary--was that of Josquin, and then that of Roland de Lassus, who seems to him so great and profound a musician that he admires him most of all. And Don Perosi's universality of style is a trait that is Catholic as well as Italian. He expresses his mind quite clearly on the subject. "Great artists formerly," he says, "were more eclectic than ourselves, and less fettered by their nationalities. Josquin's school has peopled all Europe. Roland has lived in Flanders, in Italy, and in Germany. With them the same style expressed the same thought everywhere. We must do as they did. We must try to recreate a universal art in which the resources of all countries and all times are blended."
As a matter of fact, I do not think this is quite correct. I rather doubt if Josquin and Roland were eclectic at all; for they did not really combine the styles of different countries, but thrust upon other countries the style that the Franco-Flemish school had just created, a style which they themselves were enriching daily. But Don Perosi's idea deserves our appreciation, and one must praise his endeavour to create a universal style. It would be a good thing for music if eclecticism, thus understood, could bring back some of the equilibrium that has been lost since Wagner's death; it would be a benefit to the human spirit, which might then find in the unity of art a powerful means of bringing about the unity of mind. Our aim should be to efface the differences of race in art, so that it may become a tongue common to all peoples, where the most opposite ideas may be reconciled. We should all join in working to build the cathedral of European art. And the place of the director of the Sistine chapel among the first builders is very plain.
* * * * *
Don Perosi sat down to the piano and played me the _Te Deum_ of _The Nativity_, which he had written the day before. He played very sweetly, with youthful gaiety, and sang the choral parts in an undertone. Every now and then he would look at me, not for praise, but to see if we were sharing the same thoughts. He would look me well in the face with his quiet eyes, then turn back to his score, and then look at me again. And I felt a comforting calm radiating from him and his music, from its happy harmony and the full and rhythmic serenity of its spirit. And how pleasant it was after the tempests and convulsions of art in these later days. Can we not tear ourselves away from that romantic suffering in music which was begun by Beethoven? After a century of battles, of revolutions, and of political and social strife, whose pain has found its reflection in art, let us begin to build a new city of art, where men may gather together in brotherly love for the same ideal. However Utopian that hope may sound now, let us think of it as a symptom of new directions of thought, and let us hope that Don Perosi may be one of those who will bring into music that divine peace, that peace which Beethoven craved for in despair at the end of his _Missa Solemnis_, that joy that he sang about but never knew.
FRENCH AND GERMAN MUSIC
In May, 1905, the first musical festival of Alsace-Lorraine took place at Strasburg. It was an important artistic event, and meant the bringing together of two civilisations that for centuries had been at variance on the soil of Alsace, more anxious for dispute than for mutual understanding.
The official programme of the _fêtes musicales_ laid stress on the reconciliatory purpose of its organisers, and I quote these words from the programme book, drawn up by Dr. Max Bendiner, of Strasburg:
"Music may achieve the highest of all missions: she may be a bond between nations, races, and states, who are strangers to one another in many ways; she may unite what is disunited, and bring peace to what is hostile.... No country is more suited for her friendly aid than Alsace-Lorraine, that old meeting-place of people, where from time immemorial the North and South have exchanged their material and their spiritual wealth; and no place is readier to welcome her than Strasburg, an old town built by the Romans, which has remained to this day a centre of spiritual life. All great intellectual currents have left their mark on the people of Alsace-Lorraine; and so they have been destined to play the part of mediator between different times and different peoples; and the East and the West, the past and the present, meet here and join hands. In such festivals as this, it is not a matter of gaining aesthetic victories; it is a matter of bringing together all that is great and noble and eternal in the art of different times and different nations."
It was a splendid ambition for Alsace--the eternal field of battle--to wish to inaugurate these European Olympian games. But in spite of good intentions, this meeting of nations resulted in a fight, on musical ground, between two civilisations and two arts--French art and German art. For these two arts represent to-day all that is truly alive in European music.