Nothing afforded Liszt more pleasure than to give advice to, or to use his influence for the benefit of, talent struggling to clarify its own conceptions, or seeking indispensable publicity. The list of his protégés includes many who have made world records, like Raff, Bülow, Tausig, and Wagner. But for "Meister" Liszt's early perception of Wagner's then undeveloped genius, we should have had no sixth high-priest to record, and no Bayreuth festivals.
America has only recently entered the lists, for the conditions attendant upon a new civilization make artistic achievement impossible. These conditions were emphatically bad in our land, and they yielded reluctantly to art requirements. The religious bigotry of a large portion of those who first came to America, seeking freedom of conscience (for those who thought and believed as they thought and believed), was deadly to art impulse. They looked upon any music not set to sacred words as a frivolity that would imperil their souls, and they exercised little judgment in selecting such music as they did use. This narrow view of our art greatly delayed the advent of musical intelligence, and it called a species of "psalm-smiters" into being, who, with inappropriate adaptations of secular melodies, and worse attempts at composition, debased both music and the services of the church, and sapped the vitality of art tendency when it first became manifest. America still harbors some of these vampires, but the day of art is breaking over our land, and these creatures of darkness will soon disappear.
Our progress was at first slow, but there have been no backward steps, and the past fifty years have witnessed a magical advance in general intelligence and in creative capacity.
Before closing this chapter I must return to Germany and trace some of the subsidiary sources of her present supremacy.
The name "Robert Franz," which was years ago adopted by a timid young musician as his nom de plume, was formed by combining the first names of his ideal tone poets, Schumann and Schubert. His success was immediate, and he soon became so identified with this name that his own almost passed out of use. Robert Franz was a pure lyrist, and his songs must be given place little below those of his great models. He served to perpetuate the spirit of song, and placed the world under tribute by his Bach researches.
Raff was a man of startling routine, and of no less astounding inequalities in merit. Some of his symphonies are replete with sensuous melody and fresh harmonic, contrapuntal, and instrumental color, while others are incomprehensibly dull. "Leonora" and "Im Walde" represent Raff at his best, and they are so strong and beautiful that they will keep their creator's name before the musical world for many years. No one can predict how long Raff's mastery of methods and forms will exert a salutary influence upon composers.
Schumann was Brahms' musical god-father, and he predicted great results from the development of his godson's talent. There is much difference of opinion as to whether Schumann's prophecy was fulfilled, but many capable critics are on the affirmative side. Brahms has, in one way at least, shown the possession of absolutely great qualities,—viz., his productivity did not exhaust, but increased the vitality of his conceptions. He was an artist with whom future generations will have to do, but he was not an epoch-maker.
CHAPTER V
WAGNER AND THE MUSIC DRAMA
It is quite proper to devote a chapter to Richard Wagner, for his later works are not only examples of the most skillful and purposeful employment of the contrapuntal and instrumental resources which he, in common with his contemporaries, inherited from the past, but they show how audacious genius may safely pursue its purposes out beyond beaten paths into unexplored regions of tonal expression.