One of the most original and individual of composers—A student, not a copyist, of Wagner—Independent intellectual basis for his art—Originator of the tone poem—Unhampered by even the word “symphonic”—Means much to the musically elect—Not a juggler with the orchestra—A modern of moderns—Technical difficulties, but not impossibilities in his works—“Thus Spake Zarathustra” and other scores—Life and truth, not mere beauty, the burden of modern music—Huneker’s “Piper of Dreams”—“Zarathustra” and “A Hero’s Life” described—An intellectual force in music—“A Hero’s Life” Strauss’s “Meistersinger”—Tribute to Wagner in “Feuersnot”—Performances of Richard Strauss’s scores in America—His symphony in F minor (1883) had its first 18 performance anywhere, under Theodore Thomas—Straussiana—Boyhood anecdotes—Scribbled scores on schoolbook covers—Still at school when first symphony was played in public—Studied with Von Bülow—Married his Freihild—Ideals of the highest [207]
XIII.—A NOTE ON CHAMBER MUSIC [224]
HOW TO APPRECIATE VOCAL MUSIC
XIV.—SONGS AND SONG COMPOSERS
Strophic and “composed through”—Schubert the first song composer to require consideration; also the greatest—Early struggles—Too poor to buy music paper—Becomes a school-teacher—Impatient under drudgery—Publishers hold aloof—Fortune for a song, but not for him—History of “The Erlking”—How it was composed—Written down as fast as pen could travel—Tried over the same evening—The famous dissonances—As sung by Lilli Lehmann—Schubert only eighteen years old when he composed “The Erlking”—His marvelous fecundity—Died at thirty-one, yet wrote six hundred songs and many other works—Schumann’s individuality—Distinguished from Schubert—Not the same 19 proportion of great songs—The best composed during his wooing of Clara—Phases of Franz’s genius—Traces of his knowledge and admiration of Bach—Choice of keys—Objected to transpositions—Pitiable physical disabilities—Brahms a profound thinker in music—Jensen, Rubinstein, Grieg, Chopin, Wagner—Liszt one of the greatest of song composers—Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf and others [231]
XV.—ORATORIO
An incongruous art form—Originated in Italy with San Filippo Neri—Scenery, action and even ballet in the early oratorio—The influence of German composers—Bach’s “Passion” music—Dramatic expression in Händel—Rockstro’s characterisation of—First performance of “The Messiah”—Haydn’s “Creation” and “Seasons”—Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” next to “The Messiah” in popularity—Dramatic episodes in the work—Gounod, Elgar and others [248]
XVI.—OPERA AND MUSIC-DRAMA
Origin of opera—Peri and the Florentines—Monteverde—Cavalli introduces vocal melody to relieve the monotony of recitative—Aria developed by Alessandro Scarlatti—Characteristics 20 of Italian opera from Scarlatti to Verdi—Gluck’s reforms—German and French opera—“Les Huguenots,” “Faust,” and “Carmen”—Comparative popularity of certain operas here—Far-reaching effects of Wagner’s theories—Their influence on the later Verdi and contemporary Italian composers—Wagner’s music-dramas—A music-drama not an opera—Form wholly original with Wagner—Gave impetus to folk-lore movement—Krehbiel’s “Studies in the Wagnerian Drama”—Wagner and anti-Wagner—Finck’s “Wagner and His Works”—Wagner a melodist—Examples—Unity a distinguishing trait of the music-drama—Wagner’s method illustrated by musical examples—The Curse Motive—The Siegfried, Nibelung, and Tarnhelm motives—Leading motives not mere labels—Their plasticity musically illustrated—The Siegfried horn call developed into the motive of Siegfried, the hero, and into the climax of the “Götterdämmerung” Funeral March—An illustration from “Tristan”—Wagner as a composer of absolute music—His scores the greatest achievement musical history, up to the present time, has to show [260]