Arnold Schoenberg is another matter. He is still using as propaganda music which he wrote many years ago. No public has yet caught up with his present output. That is an excellent sign that his music is of the future. The string sextet, Verklärte Nacht, which the Kneisel Quartet played more than once in the season just past, dates from 1899. The string quartets were written in 1905 and 1908. The five orchestral pieces, the six piano pieces, and Pierrot Lunaire, other music of his on which what fame he possesses outside of Austria rests, are all over two years old. Now the Boston Symphony Orchestra has only recently deemed it fitting to play the five orchestral pieces, and I believe the piano pieces received their first public performance in New York at one of the concerts given by Leo Ornstein, although several pianists, notably Charles Henry Cooper and Mrs. Arensberg, had played them in private.
In 1911 Schoenberg issued his quite extraordinary “Handbuch der Harmonielehre,” which is one of the best evidences that, even though the composer dies in the war, others will follow to carry on the torch from the point where he dropped it. Yes, Schoenberg, no less than Henri Matisse, is a torch-bearer in the art race. He is a stone in the architecture of music—and not an accidental decoration.
May I quote a few passages from the “Handbuch”?
“The artist does not do what others find beautiful, but what he finds himself bound to do.”
“If anyone feels dissatisfied with his time, let it not be because that time is no longer the good old time, but because it is not yet the new and better time, the future.”
“Though I refrain from overprizing originality, I cannot help valuing novelty at its full worth. Novelty is the improvement toward which we are drawn as irresistibly, as unwittingly, as towards the future. It may prove to be a splendid betterment, or to be death—but also the certainty of a higher life after death. Yes, the future brings with it the novel and the unknown; and therefore, not without excuse, we often hold what is novel to be identical with what is good and beautiful.”
With the single exception just noted it is not from the German countries that the musical invention of the past two decades has come. It is from France. Whether Debussy or Erik Satie or Fanelli first developed the use of the whole-tone scale is unimportant; they have all been writing in Paris.
Erik Satie is one of the precursors of a movement—not important in himself, but of immense importance as an indication. He is not a genius, and therefore his work has received little attention and has had no great influence. But it must be remembered that he was born in 1860 and that his Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes, composed respectively in 1888 and 1890, make a free use of the whole-tone scale and other harmonic innovations ordinarily attributed to Debussy. A Sarabande, written in 1887, should be tried on your piano. It will certainly startle you. Satie has recently achieved a little notoriety, thanks to Debussy and Ravel, who have dragged his music into the light. The more dramatic resurrection of Fanelli by Gabriel Pierné has been related too often to need retelling here.
Debussy, beyond question, is one of the high-water marks in the history of music. L’Après-midi d’un Faune is certainly post-Wagnerian in a sense that Salome is not. Maurice Ravel, Paul Dukas, Roger-Ducasse, Florent Schmitt, Chausson, Chabrier, and Charpentier are all revolutionists in a greater or less degree, and all of them are direct descendants of the great French composers who came before them. But what has been accomplished in France in the last few years? Dukas has written nothing important since Ariane et Barbe-Bleue. Debussy’s recent works are not epoch-making: a makeshift ballet, Jeux, a few piano pieces; what else? Ravel’s ballet, Daphnis et Chloë, is lovely music. Some people profess to find pleasure in listening to Schmitt’s Salome. It is unbearable to me, danced or undanced. Vincent d’Indy—has he written a vibrant note since Istar? Charpentier’s Julien—a rehash of Louise. It sounds some fifty years older, except the carnival scene. There is live futurist music in that last act. When Charpentier painted street noises on his tonal canvas, were they of night or morning, he knew his business. But certainly not a post-bellum composer, this. Charpentier will never compose another stirring phrase; that is written in the stars. Since Pelléas et Mélisande and Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, is there one French opera which can be called great? There are two very good ones, Raoul Laparra’s La Habanera and Maurice Ravel’s l’Heure Espagnole, and very many bad ones, such as Massenet’s Don Quichotte, the unbelievable Quo Vadis? of Jean Nouguès, and the imitative and meaningless Monna Vanna of Février. I do not think it is from France that we may expect the post-bellum music.
Italy, long the land of opera, has held her place in the singing theatres. Verdi and Puccini still dominate the opera houses. But Puccini’s work is accomplished. His popularity is waning, as the comparative failure of The Girl of the Golden West will testify. You will find the germ of all that is best in Puccini in Manon Lescaut, an early work. After that there is repetition and misdirection of energy, gradually diffused talent. It does not seem necessary to speak of Mascagni and Leoncavallo. They have both tried for so long a time to repeat their two successes and tried in vain. Cilea, Franchetti, Catalani, and Giordano—these names are almost forgotten already. Is Sgambati dead? Does anyone know whether he is or not? Zandonai—ah, there’s a name to linger on! Watch out for Zandonai in the vanguard of the post-bellum composers. Save him from the war-maw. His Conchita disclosed a great talent; that opera shimmered with the hot atmosphere of Spain, a bestial, lazy Spain. This work I place with Debussy’s Iberia as one of the great tonal pictures of Spain. I have not heard Zandonai’s opera, Francesca da Rimini, which was produced at Covent Garden Opera House last summer, but I have been told that its beauties are many. I hope we may hear it in New York. Pratella is one of Marinetti’s group of futurists, one of the noise-makers. I am not so sure of Pratella as I am sure that many of his theories will be more successfully exploited by someone else.