II
Gustav Mahler (1860-1910) has received little recognition as a song-writer outside of Germany. The great effort of his life was expended on his symphonies, which are planned on a scale larger than man had ever thought of before. In many ways Mahler was a very great master. As an artist he was unimpeachable. As a writer for the orchestra he was original and forceful. As a developer of the new radical technique he holds a high place in the history of German music. It may be doubted whether his musical ideas and his power of musical architecture were equal to the execution of his stupendous plans. But these faults, if they exist, do not enter greatly into his songs—at least into the most typical of them. For Mahler had one quality which always stood by him when others failed. This was his intimate feeling for the folk-song. A peasant by birth, he retained a certain simplicity of soul in his attitude toward music which seems contradicted by his great technical complexity. He can reproduce not only the simple form of the folk-song, but also its spirit, its naïve literal quality, which takes joy in what a sophisticated person would find common. This quality we find very frequently in his songs. The greatest of these is the group entitled Kindertotenlieder, which are loved in Germany (and especially in Vienna) almost beyond any other. These dirges for children have hardly any parallel in music. They combine an intense pathos with something of the naïve simplicity of the child. They are not mere dirges. They are dirges for those ‘the doubly dead in that they died so young.’ The congenital faults of Mahler are not to be found here. The songs are almost above criticism from the musical standpoint. But Mahler the peasant is to be seen especially in the songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, that wonderful collection of German folk-poetry which has been such a storehouse for the nation in the last century. While these have not the spiritual elevation or the consistently high musicianship of the Kindertotenlieder, they preserve an unconventional freshness of spirit which is hardly less remarkable.
Richard Strauss is generally regarded as the great continuer of the German song tradition. That he is a true continuer is perfectly correct. Whether his music, absolutely considered, is as ‘great’ as people once thought is still undecided by the public. Some profess to discover liberal injections of the charlatan in Strauss’s work. Whether he sometimes gets his effects by cheap means which the artist in him would despise is a question to be argued elsewhere. We must, however, grant him two great faculties—the faculty of beautiful melody and that of musical ability. In sheer beauty of theme (and this is especially true in some of his songs) he is worthy to be regarded as of the line of Schubert and Brahms. In musical learning there are probably not half a dozen men in the world to-day to equal him and there was a time, ten or more years ago, when he seemed to stand almost alone. While for some years past his symphonic poems and operas have overshadowed his smaller work, he has been known from the beginning as a brilliant writer of songs, and has not ceased to give some of his best energies to song composition. The result is a truly brilliant list of lyrics. We can no more deny the able musicianship of the later ones than we can deny the impressive beauty of the earlier. They are far from being repetitions of each other. This great variety, both in mood and in technical style, proves what a rich fund of ideas and artistic power the composer had to draw from. The technique of the later ones is about that familiar to us in the Strauss operas, a brilliant use of dissonance and rapid modulation combined with an extremely bold polyphony. At the basis of this style is always a theme or a group of themes as simple, as conventional in conception as anything in Schubert. It is as though Strauss were afraid of losing utterly the interest of the average man and gave him every now and then a simple tune that he would be sure to enjoy. But it is more than this. For Strauss is a German of the Germans. His whole musical culture is truly built on the great German tradition of Bach-Beethoven-Brahms. His complexity is only a development of the noble simplicity of all fine German music. It is right and proper that his themes should be simple and understandable. But it is possible, and probably perfectly just, to argue that he has failed to make the one part of his music seem a development of the other. We feel here that the new style and the old are both present, that they are juxtaposed, that they have not been fused or synthesized. And this duality, which we feel in some of the operas and in the later orchestral works, also appears in his songs. It makes these later songs less admirable, from the technical standpoint, than those of Ravel, who has organized his materials into an almost homogeneous technique.
However the case may stand in this matter Strauss’s early songs will remain as worthy of a place in the great German hierarchy. Opus 10 contains a number of masterpieces. Zueignung is, in sheer beauty, almost equal to Schumann at his best. ‘The Night’ is a simple song of great loveliness and ‘Patience’ is a superbly eloquent piece of emotional writing based on an accompaniment of simple repeated chords. It is in work like this that a great composer tests himself out. This power to achieve great beauty within narrow limitations is, as we have so often pointed out in the course of this book, the proof that genuine creative power is there. These songs which we have just mentioned are among the very best in the Strauss list. Others of the first rank are: ‘I Love Thee,’ opus 37, a powerful example of emotional lyricism; Ich trage meine Minne, opus 32, a simple piece of marvellous beauty and grace; and ‘With Thy Blue Eyes,’ opus 56, a song of unusually tender and appealing quality. Among the earlier songs we should mention the charming Morgen; Wozu, Mädchen, soll es frommen, opus 19; Nachtgang, opus 29; and Traum durch die Dämmerung, the last one of the most admired. ‘Rest My Soul’ and the ‘Nuptial Song’—the former very simple and the latter highly organized—are stimulating examples of Strauss’s art. Of the later songs (which seem to show a falling off in artistic sincerity) we may mention ‘The Three Holy Kings,’ opus 56, which is a sort of miniature opera, with an abundance of incidental music in the form of a stately march. ‘The Lonely One’ of opus 51 contains a bass part very effectively used and ‘The Valley’ is musical description of a high order.
Max Reger (born 1873) is a sharp contrast to Strauss. People have seen fit to describe him as a schoolmaster. This is justified in that Reger is one of the most eminent technical musicians in Germany and a master of strict fugue and counterpoint in the modern idiom equalled by no one else in the world. His cast of mind seems to be all with the classics, though he is radical enough in his musical style when he chooses to be. He writes largely in the ‘absolute’ forms and seeks none of the means for effect that are so generally cultivated nowadays. In these respects he may be a ‘schoolmaster.’ But beneath the austerity of his style there is a wonderful fund of ideas and along with it a deftness in using them that makes his technique available for many very different sorts of music. In his songs Reger shows a wide variety. The fact which proves that he is musician and not schoolmaster is that the songs requiring fancy, deftness, sense of style are quite as fine as the others. He always considers well what he writes. By some his songs may not be considered lyrical as Schubert’s are, but his vocal music is truly music that can be sung and its effectiveness on the platform is likely to outstrip expectations. The songs have much beauty of melody, much suavity and charm, and especially a nice adaptation to the spirit of the text. They contain in rich quantity the gift of humor. In downright lively fun Reger reminds one of Chabrier. The songs are all very human. The first feeling one has in studying them is respect for the man’s musicianship. But his technical learning is so unfailing that this quality becomes a bore and one becomes conscious of the genuineness of the feeling and the accuracy of expression. Reger’s superb technique has not used him; he has used it. We may consider it likely that Reger’s reputation will grow considerably in years to come. The songs in particular should be more widely known and loved. They will not tickle lazy ears, but they will give a rare delight to discriminating ones. Certainly there are few men working now who are on the whole more admirable in their songs than Reger.
Reger’s technical style marks most of his songs. But underneath they have a distinct individuality. The Folk-Song in opus 37 is managed with great simplicity and taste. ‘The Dying Child,’ from opus 23, exemplifies Reger’s free but well considered harmonic method. ‘Of Kissing,’ from the same group, shows us another Reger, as dainty and popular as Brahms in lighter mood. Traum durch die Dämmerung, from opus 35, has a wonderful accompaniment of half-suggested interweaving voices and is considered superior to Strauss’s setting of the same poem. The long-drawn melodies (in both the piano and the voice part) of ‘Love-Longings’ show us still another Reger, a master of restrained sensuous effect. The Lullaby of opus 43 is fitted out with a very complex accompaniment but retains a luscious and quiet effect from sheer power of musicianship. Two of Reger’s best songs are ‘I Believe, Dear Love’ and the ‘Prayer,’ from opus 62. The former is a charming scherzo movement and the latter illustrates the tendency, increasing in song accompaniments for half a century, to spread the piano part over an extremely wide range of notes. ‘The Willow Tree’ of opus 48 is a study in a style common to the French song writers, that of gaining emotional effect from the mere juxtaposition of chords.
The Schlichte Weisen of opus 76 are perhaps Reger’s most typical and most highly developed product in this field. These ‘simple tunes’ are not at all simple in point of technique, making use of all the virtuosity and finesse of his wonderful musical equipment. The songs are nearly all in lighter vein and most of them are brightened with a delicious humor. They alone would place Reger among the most notable of musical humorists. None but the trained musician can appreciate all the technical genius that went into the writing of these songs. But any music-lover, any concert audience, in fact, can appreciate their beauty and sprightly charm. The thirty-six songs maintain a remarkably high level of creative musicianship, and in point of variety and taste they are almost unsurpassed. Nearly all of them are worth knowing, but we may mention a few among the best. ‘In a Little Rose Garden’ is written in imitation of the old German Lied. ‘The Child’s Prayer’ is utterly delightful in its simplicity. The ‘Dialogue’ is inimitable in humorous description. In ‘The Oath’ and ‘Concerning Love’ the humor is irresistible, and in ‘God’s Blessing’ musical learning has been put to the service of delicate delineation of mood.