Walter Damrosch conducting
Some critics have called Debussy a revolutionist. They are wrong. Debussy’s musical ancestors are Rameau and Couperin; and his works show us that “revolution is merely evolution made clear for all to see.”
Such is the French music of the present—beautiful, refined, clear, polished, delicate, enchanting!
We, in our great country, like to hear all schools of music, and our wonderful orchestras are able to play equally well the works of all composers and of all schools and nationalities. Some of us prefer the French, some of us the Russian, and some of us the German Schools; but our taste is broad and cultured, and we wish to hear the various ways in which the musical minds of the day are expressing themselves.
What an advance since the days of “a consort of lutes, or viols”! What a development since the Fifteenth Century, when gentle ladies played the psaltérion and flute and vielle, as seen in our [frontispiece]! But to appreciate the evolution of the Orchestra, let us look at the picture of an Orchestra of the Eleventh Century (facing page [274]), the earliest known representation of any Orchestra, taken from the capital of a column of a church near Rouen, and then compare it with the picture of the Symphony Society of New York (facing page [272]).
Between these two Orchestras, separated by a period of eight hundred years, we can realize the progress of “music’s ever welling spring, which has flowed through the centuries until it has become an ocean.”
CHAPTER IX
THE CONDUCTOR
The Score; a page from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony; requirements of a Conductor; Lully; Wagner; our Symphony Orchestras.
The Orchestra, a great instrument, composed, as we have seen, of so many different instruments, voices, and human personalities, awaits the Conductor before it becomes of value.