Music and Its Masters

by O. B. Boise

The Conservatory faculty of those days included all the most prominent musicians domiciled in Leipzig, for the town was too small to furnish adherents for such contra-minded parties or factions as exist in larger cities. Mendelssohn had enlisted his forces with well-directed regard for harmony, but their creed, although properly placing Bach as the corner-stone of musical faith, was too narrow in its tenets to admit those to communion whose fancy led them outside the pale of traditional forms. They were even lukewarm towards Schumann, who had lived among them, had created a period,[A] and had contributed treasures to musical literature so luminous with genius that, as the mists of prejudice clear away, they will eclipse forever all contemporaneous productions in the various forms which they followed. The rugged boldness of originality was in the esteem of the Leipzig pedagogue but an exhibition of crude ignorance. Those who could not or would not recognize Schumann's great throbbing heart in his writings, because he, in expressing his individuality, did not always follow prescribed formulæ, would naturally have rejected Wagner, for his earlier works were not cast in classic moulds.

Those of Wagner's creations which had been before the public previous to 1860 were characterized by few departures from Weber and Meyerbeer in scheme. Wagnerian harmonies were, however, too strong for the Leipzig critic, but the public flocked to hear them, and was pleased.

Original ideas often find first recognition among the non-professional, because musical leaders are so saturated with pedantry that sparks of genius cannot quickly kindle them to enthusiasm.

In 1862 the Gewandhaus directors made a great concession; they invited Richard Wagner to conduct his "Tannhäuser Overture" at one of their concerts. This was a fatal mistake, for his triumph was complete, and their influence as opponents of the "music of the future" was correspondingly weakened. I have discussed Leipzig at such length, not because it was Wagner's birthplace, but because from this town, with all its intolerance and smallness, started the only short road to success. Leipzig's endorsement was a universally accepted voucher.

Wagner had found this direct path barred, and his wanderings in surmounting or circumventing obstacles lasted for a long series of years, but his faith remained steadfast, and he reached the goal of his ambition a far stronger man because of the difficulties he had overcome. His appearance at the Gewandhaus was only a station on his course to already assured success, and not his starting-point.

Wagner found opera a succession of solo, ensemble, and chorus pieces, strung upon plots often too slender to give them coherence.

Texts had been made subservient to music, and that, in turn, to the singer's convenience and ambition for display. Operas were written as early as the thirteenth century, but Cherubini was the first Italian, and Gluck the first German, to produce works that have survived. Cherubini was followed by Rossini, a man of genius, but too indolent to fully develop his gifts. Had his beautiful sensuous melodies been put into richer settings, had more earnest thought been added to his spontaneity, his operas would have taken their places among the undying creations.

Flashes of genius ultimately tire. It is the steady light of genius, fed by knowledge and earnestness (as in Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann), that can hold the world's attention restfully, which means perpetually.

Bellini, with "Norma" and "Sonnambula," and Donizetti, with "Lucia di Lammermoor" and "Lucretia Borgia," still hold a place on the operatic stage, but their grasp is weakening. Verdi was the best equipped of all Italian opera composers, and his "Trovatore," with it rare gems, will crown his memory to the end of musical time. His later works, "Aida," "Othello," and "Falstaff," written under the influence of the Wagner period, are quite different from his earlier operas in instrumentation and in treatment of themes. In them he is more logical and stronger, but less sensuous. They furnish the first instances of Italian music dressed in foreign garb; of Italian music written under pressure from without. It has until recently been Italy's province to shed influence over the musical world. I construe Verdi's concessions to Wagner as the strongest possible endorsement of the latter's ideas. No other composer was in position to pay such tribute to Wagner's forceful and far-reaching art sense.