Music and Its Masters

by O. B. Boise

Schumann's music is more involved than Beethoven's or Schubert's, and his restless passion found expression in broken rhythms and in dissonant compounds, which, however they may at first impress us, gain natural and deep significance with close familiarity. He was the first composer to feel and apply the immense, expressive resources inherent in rhythm.

Schumann's quintet for strings and piano-forte is one of the greatest pieces of ensemble music that has been written, and his piano concerto in A minor is, to my mind, without a rival. Of his songs, the "Frauen Liebe und Leben" cyclus are, when the numbers are considered singly, and then in their respective relations to his beautifully rounded conception of womanliness, the most remarkable, although the "Dichter Liebe" is full of gems, and the "Spring Night" is a picture which is more suggestive of a magic wand than of a human intellect.

Our fifth high-priest was not alone a musician; he was a philosopher and the ablest critic the musical world has seen. He was so broad that he could be generous as well as just, as was shown by his laudatory writings in regard to his rival,—Mendelssohn. He estimated Wagner's cruder stage correctly, and would doubtless have become an adherent of the new faith had he lived to see its riper fruits; for he was always susceptible to manifestations of genuine creative ability and logical reasoning.

The consideration of Wagner, the sixth in line, involves entering upon a somewhat new field, and it will require so much space that I will give him, his forms, and his methods a separate chapter. Before undertaking that task it may be well to trace some of the tributary influences which, following collateral lines, have helped to swell the tide of musical culture. It will facilitate the accomplishment of this purpose to scan the achievements of each nation separately, mentioning only such individuals and events as were active agents in furthering the cause.

France evinced a very marked interest in music early in its second era, but her good intentions were several hundred years in crystallizing. The establishment of an Academy of Music in Paris (1672) was the first really noteworthy event in the history of French music. Tulli, who was its first director, was a very able man. He wrote operas, which were sung in French, and he created the chrysalis from which our symphony was later developed.

Although the next hundred years were not productive of great men, Paris had at the end of that period become attractive and congenial to such masters as Gluck, Cherubini, and Piccini. This shows that she had educated a generation of intelligent listeners, and at least a portion of the executants necessary to the performance of grand opera.

In 1795 the Conservatory was founded, which event marked the beginning of that earnest, organized effort that has given the world so many rare instrumentalists and vocalists. The finesse of the French school is delicious when applied with intellectual breadth sufficient to prevent its becoming finical. France has also produced numberless composers, but few who have attained to more than passing fame. Her people are quick in their perceptions, and deft and dainty in all that appertains to æsthetics. They are enthusiastic lovers of such music as does not require them to think earnestly while following it, but they are emotionally volatile.

Berlioz is the only French composer who successfully resisted the pressure of this environment. He was made of stern stuff, and followed the promptings of his muse without wavering, although she often dictated courses and methods that precluded immediate success with the public. In his Requiem Mass, which looks bizarre to a casual observer of the score, he uses each and all of the executive forces, an immense orchestra with all possible accessories, auxiliary brass corps, chorus, and soli, with such keen appreciation of individual quality and such unerring judgment as to the appropriate rôle for each quality in the grand ensemble, that the effects he attains not only disarm criticism, they fill one with awe. Still, if we scrutinize Berlioz's works closely, we find that he was more a Rubens than a Rembrandt, for while his diction was often more erratic than sequential, his sense of tone color was so acute that it led him to inaugurate the movement that is still in progress for purging music of pernicious unisons reinforcements.

Of the other notable French composers, Gounod is delightfully melodious, but is too sweet to be entirely wholesome, and Saint-Saëns (half German in instinct and manner) is a phenomenal master of instrumentation, and he is very ingenious, but one is seldom convinced that his compositions have grown from emotional germs. Massenet, Bizet, and others have written, or are writing, charming music, but it has little substantiality. Its charms are liable to effervesce, like the emotions of the Paris public. The French seem to reserve all of their earnestness for the more tangible arts, and for science, to all of which they have contributed their full share.

England's musical career has been unique. The people of that snug little island across the channel should be an enthusiastically happy race, for nature endowed their land with fertility and beauty, and centuries of skillful cultivation have enhanced these virtues until Albion's rural loveliness is to-day unequalled. They have exceptionally rich traditions, their prowess in arms and achievements in literature, science, pictorial art, and industry furnish abundant grounds for their national pride, but it is a pity that their blessings have not made them more demonstrative, for stoical complacency is not good soil in which to grow an emotional art. For this reason recorded English composition, which began so unprecedentedly well in the sixteenth century with the invention of the madrigal, has not fulfilled the promise implied by that event.