From my saying this to you, you may gather with what eager anticipations and confidence I look forward to your oratorio, which will, I trust, solve the problem of combining ancient conceptions with modern appliances; otherwise the result would be as great a failure as that of the painters of the nineteenth century, who only make themselves ridiculous by attempting to revive the religious elements of the fifteenth, with its long arms and legs, and topsy-turvy perspective. These new resources seem to me, like everything else in the world, to have been developed just at the right time, in order to animate the inner impulses which were daily becoming more feeble. On the heights of religious feeling, on which Bach, Handel, and their contemporaries stood, they required no numerous orchestras for their oratorios; and I can remember perfectly in my earliest years, the “Messiah,” “Judas,” and “Alexander’s Feast” being given exactly as Handel wrote them, without even an organ, and yet to the delight and edification of every one.
But how is this to be managed nowadays, when vacuity of thought and noise in music are gradually being developed in inverse relation to each other? The orchestra, however, is now established, and is likely long to maintain its present form without any essential modification. Riches are only a fault when we do not know how to spend them. How, then, is the wealth of the orchestra to be applied? What guidance can the poet give for this, and to what regions? or is music to be entirely severed from poetry, and work its own independent way? I do not believe it can accomplish the latter, at least, only to a very limited extent, and not available for the world at large; to effect the former, an object must be found for music as well as for painting, which, by its fervour, its universal sufficiency and perspicuity, may supply the place of the pious emotions of former days. It seems to me that both the oratorios of Haydn were, in their sphere, also very remarkable phenomena. The poems of both are weak, regarded as poetry; but they have replaced the old positive and almost metaphysical religious impulses, by those which nature, as a visible emanation from the Godhead, in her universality, and her thousandfold individualities, instils into every susceptible heart. Hence the profound depth, but also the cheerful efficiency, and certainly genuine religious influence, of these two works, which hitherto stand alone; hence the combined effect of the playful and detached passages, with the most noble and sincere feelings of gratitude produced by the whole; hence is it also, that I individually could as little endure to lose in the “Creation” and in the “Seasons” the crowing of the cock, the singing of the lark, the lowing of the cattle, and the rustic glee of the peasants, as I could in nature herself; in other words, the “Creation” and the “Seasons” are founded on nature and the visible service of God,—and are no new materials for music to be found there?
The publication of Goethe’s “Correspondence with a Child” I consider a most provoking and pernicious abuse of the press, through which, more and more rapidly, all illusions will be destroyed, without which life is only death. You, I trust, will never lose your illusions, and ever preserve your filial attachment to your father.
To his Father.
Düsseldorf, March 23rd, 1835.
Dear Father,
I have still to thank you for your last letter and my “Ave.” I often cannot understand how it is possible to have so acute a judgment with regard to music, without being yourself technically musical; and if I could express, what I assuredly feel, with as much clearness and intuitive perception as you do, as soon as you enter on the subject, I never would make another obscure speech all my life long. I thank you a thousand times for this, and also for your opinion of Bach. I ought to feel rather provoked that after only one very imperfect hearing of my composition, you at once discovered what after long familiarity on my part, I have only just found out; but then again it pleases me to see your definite sense of music, for the deficiencies in the middle movement and at the end consist of such minute faults, which might have been remedied by a very few notes (I mean struck out), that neither I, nor any other musician would have been aware of them, without repeatedly hearing the piece, because we in fact seek the cause much deeper. They injure the simplicity of the harmony, which at the beginning pleases me; and though it is my opinion that these faults would be less perceptible if properly executed, that is, with a numerous choir, still some traces of them will always remain. Another time I shall endeavour to do better. I should like you, however, to hear the Bach again, because there is a part of it which you care less for, but which pleases me best of all. I allude to the alto and bass airs; only the chorale must be given by a number of alto voices, and the bass very well sung. However fine the airs “Bestelle dein Haus” and “Es ist der alte Bund” may be, still there is something very sublime and profound in the plan of the ensuing movements, in the mode in which the alto begins, the bass then interposing with freshness and spirit, and continuing the same words, while the chorale comes in as a third, the bass closing exultantly, but the chorale not till long afterwards, dying away softly and solemnly. There is one peculiarity of this music,—its date must be placed either very early or very late, for it entirely differs from his usual style of writing in middle age; the first choral movements and the final chorus being of a kind that I should never have attributed to Sebastian Bach, but to some other composer of his day; while no other man in the world could have written a single bar of the middle movements.
My Mother does not judge Hiller rightly, for, in spite of his pleasures and honours in Paris, and the neglect he met with in Frankfort, he writes to me that he envies me my position here on the Rhine, even with all its drawbacks; and as, no doubt, a similar one may still be met with in Germany, I do not give up the hope of prevailing on him to forsake the Parisian atmosphere of pleasures and honours, and return to his studio. Now farewell, dear Father. I beg you soon let me hear from you again.—Your
Felix.