Robert Schumann did not contribute to the actual need of the people until 1840-1841 when he produced a large number of exquisite songs. His piano works, however, exhibit more originality and greater strength and depth; they indicate a greater mastery of the classic ideal, show extended chord effects, and present broadness of idea. A new feature here was the syncopated accent.[35] This was the beginning of that breaking of the rhythmic effect which, to our mind, has not only been detrimental to the beneficial results of Music as a rhythm-re-establisher, but which has also been the forerunner of our American “craze” for “ragtime” Music. It was an “out-of-order” effect, and came from an “out-of-order” mind, for poor Schumann died insane at Bonn in 1856. Schumann, more than any other composer of his time, connected economic stimuli with emotionalism, and the titles he gave his piano works, revealed his belief that Music could be made to express definite conceptions. Schumann not only felt the need of rhythmic works, but he also produced them, and the richness of his harmony is more pronounced in effect than Schubert’s. Yet even Schumann did not sound the depths of German tragedy, because the social pressure was not yet charged with tragic stimuli. The century had not yet wrung the German heart. It was still submissive, although in fearful contemplation of its possibilities, nor had it as yet been aroused into active fury for national unity. Tragedy alone could fully move those much tried Teutonic depths. The interest manifested in Schumann’s musical periodical “Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik” proved that the growth of musical knowledge in public culture was keeping pace with the increasing complication of economic life, and with the growing intensity of its emotion-producing influences. As complicated as the forces which succeed in arousing national emotions, are the musical constructions which are contemporaneous with such forces. Mendelssohn reflected the reactionary feeling of one part of public thought, but he did not dominate in his field as did von Weber and Schumann. Bach and Händel influenced his work, and lent it the chief beauty evident in his many charming productions. His own life of ease and wealth prevented his being subjected to those harrowing experiences, so necessary to the soil of genius. For these reasons he cannot represent more than a certain phase of that whole social mind, which found its complete reflection in Schumann. During the period before 1849, it is significant that the waltz and the operetta should have begun their shallow but necessary existences in German life. Progress and prosperity had given a kind of careless capacity for enjoyment to the people, and a tendency toward unhealthy sluggishness of the national pulse. But we must notice that the public demanded the most pronounced rhythm as a means of imparting to the body an excitation of a higher degree of rhythmic motion. This was supplied perfectly in the waltz. Was this the first step backward to Grecian rhythmic exercises? The dance is as old as human life, but the waltz is peculiarly sensuous and suavely rhythmic, and its development by Johann Strauss came at an extraordinarily receptive moment in social desire. One must attempt to place one’s own consciousness in the imaginary body of a person living in those times, in order to feel the need of the waltz. As our own time is near enough in stimuli similar to that period before 1848, the feat may not be impossible. The younger Strauss reflected most perfectly the restful period, which followed the unification of the Germans.
But Richard Wagner marks the highest point of German social pressure. This master did not defeat our thesis in the least degree, even in his early works, which were as conservative as any others of the times. Until 1842 his life was unsettled and his career doubtful. “Rienzi,” given at Dresden in this year, proved a great success, and in 1843 is “Fliegende Hollender” showed the first positive adoption of revolutionary ideas in Music, although “Rienzi” contained some significant references to freedom and to the power of the people. Wagner certainly held the radical convictions of the time, and his later works were undoubtedly inspired by the stirring stimuli of then existing social pressure. In 1850 “Lohengrin” was produced with great success. Many trials tormented the spirit of Wagner until 1861, when his “Tannhäuser” was produced in Paris amid the howling of radical mobs, who literally forced it into failure. All this time his operas had been a part of Germany’s operatic repertoire, but his greatest strokes in musical revolution were yet unfelt. Humiliation and poverty, malice and active enmity, assailed him at every point. Yet bravely defiant, truly reflecting the German temper of that period, he succeeded in gaining the patronage of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and in 1865 “Tristan” was produced. This was a work which entirely overturned the traditional structure of operatic ideals and made it possible for his enemies to deprive him of his hoped-for refuge in the King’s favor. But in 1868 “Die Meistersänger” was performed at Munich. This work presented a genuine plea for greater freedom in art creations and exhibited a perfection of musical treatment, combined with daring innovations, which to this day constitute a lasting charm. After many misfortunes, but with a consciousness that his works had established German opera upon a new and ideal basis, Wagner realized his dreams in the production of “Der Ring des Nibelungen” in his own theatre at Bayreuth, in August, 1876. Note how close in time was Wagner’s climax, in his activity of revolutionary Music, and the triumph of united Germany over the disdainful powers of Europe! At one and the same period (1876), we see Wagner established as the German emotional dictator, and German solidarity in Prussia’s settled supremacy. At this time also, after a most distressing period of bloody warfare and mental torture, all Europe was at comparative peace. Does not our thesis hold good?
Now in the years of progress and peace from 1876 to 1882, what happens to the mind of Wagner, as we behold him finally freed from toil, poverty, enmity and humiliation? The same thing that happened to the social mind under the suave influence of constitutional government, headed by a wise and good king. Stimuli became softer, and the social mind became more complicated in sense-perceptions, more sentimental, with a dramatic expression less colored by earthly strife and blood, more refined by spiritual and intellectual habits, and lo! in 1882 “Parsifal” marks the last production of the mighty Wagner. This work presents a decided falling back from the standards he had created in spontaneity and thematic development. The fact and the cause are plain. The cause of the “falling off” is to be found in the absence of deeply stirring economic stimuli, in the social pressure of the quiet years during which this work was in preparation. Let the historical facts speak for themselves. Assuredly the day will come, when sociologists and psychologists will recognize as a scientific phenomenon, and one admitting of quantitative psychiatric measurement, the relation between social nerve disturbance in emotion, and social tranquillization in Music, with its uncountable millions of vibrations which strike the nerves, and act in ways now seemingly mysterious, upon the life of a group.
With Wagner’s death, attention descends the mount of achievement along emotional lines in Germany. Brahms, Strauss, Bruch, Bruchner and other recent composers, all cling to the robe of Wagner. Here and there these composers attempted alterations which distorted his idea, but succeeded only in picturing the milder intellectual stimuli which now ruled German thought.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] Even Beethoven illustrates the progressive idea of the time, in the evolution of free initiative in new forms, exhibited in his symphonies, which are progressive steps in greater freedom of treatment, from the first, to the revolutionary introduction of choruses in the ninth.
[35] Beethoven’s exquisite works for stringed instruments show syncopation effects, but the hard, syncopated “accent” seems first evident as sharp contrasts, in the works of Schumann.
CHAPTER VIII.
France (1800-1913).
France, as a most progressive nation, presents a splendid musical system and a correspondingly good product of musical culture. The French national mind is peculiarly sensitive to modern social pressure. Let this pressure be relieved by musical rhythm and France will bound ahead in musical paths as she has in so many other lines. In money expenditure, she stands high, but this expenditure is made largely in Paris. Culture in a State must be considered in its relation to all of its inhabitants, and while France shows a large absolute expenditure, her per capita expenditure is relatively low. This expenditure, however, is independent of private donations, which have no place in State control, and which are a detriment rather than a benefit to the general public, representing as they do, a control by the princely “fads” of a ruling class. National musical genius is expressed in the degree to which the national emotions are aroused by national stimuli. Had France reacted to her social pressure in the same manner as did Germany with practically the same stimuli, our history might have properly closed with Germany’s triumph. But France had received quite a different mental preparation from that which tortured the German heart in the 18th century, and the nature of French emotionalism was both far less sincerely tragic, and far more highly intellectual at every phase, than was Germany’s. The common people of France were indeed subjected to genuine misery before the downfall of the monarchy, but they were ever arrayed in the glory of a conquering nation,—a leading power, conscious of its own supremacy in European affairs, although the peasantry were ground down with taxes, and made to be the overburdened supporters of a vicious royalty; yet the tone of the public mind, while somewhat critical, was chiefly domineering, and capable of great enthusiasm. Free thought was still in the freshness of youth, so that oppressions, as they came, were analyzed and denounced even while endured. Germany had never thought of doing this until 1848. The troubles of France were a direct consequence of the desires of the common people, and were not so much brought upon them by outside forces, as they were voluntarily encountered and even created, by themselves, in their conscious development of a new idea of popular rule. France wanted to do great and new deeds before she was mentally ready for such achievements, and her trials were of her own making. This fact does not lessen her emotional response to her social pressure, but it does color it with a certain control even in its deepest action. Thus it was with France, Napoleon draining her soil of its best blood, but crowning the nation with laurels. The philosophical spirit aroused by the genius of Voltaire did not weaken even under this glory, and the French mind, although wearied by the revolution, rested only a moment in the re-actions under Napoleon. The reckless Republic was but the first sign of the new national temper, and—although all Europe united to subdue it, and Napoleon’s Empire patted it into momentary quiet with an encouragement of all forms of progress—the national mind had tasted freedom and the old tolerance of royalty was dying. During the fourteen years of his reign, Napoleon gave substantial benefits to France. Continental Europe bent in submission at his feet. Although the French people hated the old idea of monarchy, they could not deny the advantages which France received from his powerful genius. His death in 1821 left his former subjects in a bad way, the people striving for constitutional government, against the allies in favor of absolutism. But little by little, certain advances were made by the people, in a gradual assertion of their opinions. Revolution was a constant menace in the social pressure of the half century following Napoleon’s downfall.
The rebellious fanaticism underlying each and all of civilized manifestations, is certain to strike new and staggering blows at the commercialism of our times. We feel as though terror and its causes in religion were lurking very near the surface of the world politics today.