Music and Its Masters

by O. B. Boise

The English are a sturdy race, and their climate and out-of-door amusements have endowed their voices with uncommonly mellow and tuneful qualities. It is therefore quite natural that their musical activities should have been so largely centred in chorus singing, which they make peculiarly sonorous and artistically adequate.

This choral virtuosity is not a recent growth, for it attracted Händel in the eighteenth century. It was also recognized by Mendelssohn. This love for song has been materially fostered by the Established Church, whose elaborate services have furnished composers with both incitement and outlet. Most of England's choral works are dignified and smooth, but they lack intensity.

There is an element in English (and American) musical life the evil influence of which cannot be easily over-estimated: it is the popular ballad. In them the best lyric texts in any language are associated with musical conceptions which are usually so devoid of artistic qualities and significance, that no one at all musical would endure them were it not for the halo cast about their imbecility by the poet's art, which they profane.

The Scandinavian countries, and Russia, Poland, and Hungary, each with its distinctive folk-song treasury and romantic traditions, have, during this century, awakened to great musical activity, and each of them has produced one or more composers who have made an impression on art evolution.

The first named have given us Svendsen, Grieg, and Hamerik, not to mention the artistic but less stalwart Gade, with their weird and at times grotesque rhythms, melodic contour, and harmonies. The sensation produced by these Scandinavian song characteristics when first brought to the notice of the outside world, impelled these talented men to incorporate them into their art. This was a mistake, for great music is as broad as the universe, whereas the vein of national song is narrow and only limitedly fruitful. Had Svendsen escaped infection from this northern piquancy, he might possibly have fitted himself to wear high-priestly robes, for his endowments were of the highest, and his début as a composer was startlingly brilliant.

Russia's musical type is less pronounced than the Scandinavian. Her producers have therefore developed on cosmopolitan lines. Tschaikowski, who was beyond compare the most gifted composer that Russia has given to the world, may with the passage of time be recognized as the natural heir of our priestly line. His emotional power, clean-cut individuality (originality), fine sense of rhythmic values and color combinations, and his inexhaustible lyric invention place him at the head of symphonists of his time.

An event which reflected honor on the empire of the Czar was the birth within her borders of that giant of all pianists, Anton Rubinstein. I speak of him as a pianist rather than as a composer, for while he often showed the possession of uncommon creative faculties, he was too diffuse, seldom focussed his tonal diction to such coherent strength as would make his writings comparable with his playing.

Poland gave us Chopin, who is the one exception to the rules by which I have endeavored to trace the successive stages of musical evolution. All other composers have taken inherited forms and means, and have moulded them into shapes comporting with the spirit of their individual conceptions, and even these conceptions were to a considerable extent reflections of their environment. Beethoven was a mighty genius, but he did not create an art type, and was therefore not, in a broad sense, original, whereas Chopin was radically so, his works seeming to owe no allegiance to schools, and seldom to nationality, but only to his poetic soul, of which they were the legitimate offspring.

His fancies are sometimes more graceful than strong; they even, now and then, verge on the sentimental; so Chopin is not entitled to a place among the giants, although he revolutionized composition for the piano, and wrote some things so beautiful that they excite ever fresh wonder. The small form seemed to best suit his spontaneous style; therefore op. 10 and op. 25, and the preludes, undoubtedly better represent Chopin's individuality than do any other of his works.

Franz Liszt was born in Hungary, and in his less serious moments made use of the gypsy-like rhythms, twists, and spasmodic utterance of her national music. At other times he wrote universal music, which he made characteristic through breathing into it his own rich individuality. The Abbé Doctor was more fêted and less spoiled thereby than any successful artist of modern times. He led a life of triumph from youth to old age, and through it all preserved a simple modesty of manner, interest in new talents and accomplishments, and an indescribable intellectual fascination.