Wagner was unique in this respect, for he endured years of calumny and injustice without flinching. His nature was dual, as if his art instinct had been grafted into an heroic character, like a noble oak, from which it drew vitality, and whose wide-spread roots imparted stability to its convictions without infusing into them any other suggestion of its stern elements. Were all talented composers as firmly rooted as Wagner, there would be less reason for protesting against ignorance and carelessness in print.
The second question propounded in the headlines of this chapter can be discreetly considered, but it can receive no conclusive answer until time's verdict is rendered. We can weigh the impressions made upon our individual susceptibilities by the qualities of the more prominent candidates for high-priestly honors, and compare these with like individual conceptions of ideal attributes, but the result of our speculations must necessarily partake more of the character of a weather-vane, subject to the caprice of changing conditions, than of a finger-post, giving reliable direction to our anticipations.
Of all the composers of recent times, Brahms attracted the largest following of musicians, and with right, for the volume of his worthy creations is larger than that produced by any of his contemporaries. He wrote a vast number of songs, ensemble pieces for a great variety of instrumental combinations, accompanied and unaccompanied piano-forte pieces, and symphonies, overtures, etc., for the grand orchestra. His work is usually characterized by rich harmonies, melodic voice-leading, transparent form, and a varying amount of spontaneity that at times fails to conceal evident effort. This effort makes itself felt in peculiar and even grotesque harmonic successions and rhythms, and it is traceable through all periods of his career. These, which to me are forced methods, are the only features that individualize Brahms' music. He is greatest when self-forgetful, and these unnatural features bespeak self-consciousness. Schumann, who was, as I said in a previous chapter, Brahms' musical god-father, was a genius with a clearly defined individuality, the complete and natural expression of which obliged him to invent means to supplement those that he had inherited from his predecessors. These invented means were peculiar harmonic compounds and erratic accents. Schumann usually employed these devices with grateful results; for he makes us feel that they are essential to the development of full significance in his tonal schemes. Genius has a magical power over resources and modes, often transforming eccentricities into felicitous, expressive means, and endowing that which would be chaotic in other hands with logical import.
Brahms seems to have been dazzled by these extreme manifestations of his great prototype's individuality. He not only adopted, but exaggerated these, and made them the distinguishing features of his style. He was a masterly contrapuntist, had a clear sense of form, handled the orchestra well, although he never exhausted its resources, and was always a logical thinker. His skill in the treatment of themes was so astounding that he often imparted significance to trivial motives (vide the "Academic Overture" and his sets of variations), but he was not a great initial inventor (an originator of pregnant themes) nor was he a resourceful colorist.
As I said before, Brahms was greatest when self-forgetful, for at such times the artificial element dropped out of his diction and he became a masterful musician, possessed of all the qualities but one that have characterized our priestly line. This missing quality is to my mind the most essential of all,—viz., a natural, distinguishing, and pervading individuality.
Tschaikowski received brief mention while we were considering Russia's services to art in the fourth chapter. Because of Russia's half-closed door her art has, until recent times, been very much isolated. For this reason Tschaikowski's claims have not even now been fully laid before our tribunal. It is a peculiar but characteristic circumstance that America anticipated Europe by several years in her knowledge and appreciation of this great creator. America is constantly eager for novelty, and has not learned to seek it at home; Germany, and in a less degree the other European countries, feel complacency in their own achievements, and corresponding distrust and intolerance of foreign products.
It was but six years ago that Germany was made aware of the fact that a great genius had lived, created, and died outside of her sphere of direct influence, and almost without her knowledge. Tschaikowski had naturally been known in a way to well-read German musicians, but it required such a blow as was struck by Professor Leopold Auer to draw from our tocsin a peal sufficiently vibrant to penetrate to the farthermost confines of the musical world and to herald the coming of a new hero. Never was an act of justice and love more conscientiously and adequately accomplished. Auer showed rare judgment in the selection of his programme. His evident desire was to display as many features of Tschaikowski's versatile genius as possible. He therefore chose the scholarly second, instead of the more assertively emotional sixth symphony. The violin concert, the "Nutcracker" suite, and the symphonic poem "Francesca da Rimini" followed. I know of no other composer of any time whose works could furnish an equal variety of defined moods, each bearing the unmistakable stamp of his individuality.
Professor Auer conducted the orchestral works and played the concerto with a skill which drew its inspiration from the reverent memory of his lost friend. His exaltation infected the orchestral players, and finally the audience, making the evening memorable, and sending out waves of enthusiasm that have carried Tschaikowski's name and music to the remotest corners of the musical world.
In my previous mention of Tschaikowski I accorded him virtues that "place him at the head of symphonists of his time." He had, however, two frailties, one of which more or less pervades his works, while the other shows itself but seldom. The former is a too great fealty to his themes as at first announced, and the latter is an occasional tendency to be melodramatic. Plastic compositions must be true to the spirit, but not to the initial form of their themes, for pregnant themes possess many phases of suggestiveness, and the more of these phases a composer feels and displays, the richer the homogeneity of his creations.
Were it not for these slight weaknesses in Tschaikowski's work I should not hesitate to predict that time would make him her choice for our seventh high-priest, and he may win the honor in spite of them, for his great qualities are overpowering.