in which we feel acutely that the poetic—or shall we say the novelistic?—scheme that has so far been followed line by line is being put aside for the moment in order that the composer, having stated his thematic material, may subject it, for purely musical reasons, to something in the nature of the ordinary 'working-out.'
The four-movement form obviously allows greater scope to a composer who has a great deal to say upon a fruitful subject, but it labors under an equally obvious disability. The modern sense of psychological unity demands that the symphony of to-day shall justify, in its own being, the casting of it into this or that number of movements. Every work of art must, if challenged, be able to give an answer to what Wagner used to call the question 'Why?' 'Why,' we have a right to say to the composer, 'have you chosen to give your work just this form and these dimensions and no other?' It is because modern composers cannot quite silence the voice that whispers to them that the four-movement form is the form of the suite, in which the charm of the music comes mainly from the delight of the purely musical faculty with itself, rather than a form suited to a music that aims first of all at expressing more definite feelings about life, that they try to vivify the merely formal unity of the suite form with a psychological unity—mainly by means of quasi-leit-motifs that reappear in each of the movements.
But, though this system has given us some of our finest modern works of the symphonic type, it has its limitations. If the composer does not tell us the poetic meaning of his themes and all their reappearances, these reappearances frequently puzzle rather than enlighten us: this is notably the case with César Franck. If the composer works upon a single leit-motif, it is, as a rule, of the 'Fate-and-humanity' type of the Tschaikowsky symphony—a type that in the end becomes rather painfully conventional. This simplicity of plan, however, has the advantage of leaving the composer free to develop his musical material with the minimum of disturbance from the poetic idea. On the other hand, if his poetic scheme is at all copious or extensive, and he allows himself to follow all the vicissitudes of it, he must either give us a written clue to every page of his music—which he is generally unwilling and frequently unable to do—or pay the penalty of our failing to see in his music precisely what he intended to put there; for it is as true now as when Wagner wrote, three-quarters of a century ago, that purely instrumental music cannot permit itself such sudden and frequent changes as dramatic music without running the risk of becoming unintelligible. Always there arises within us, when the composer's thought branches off at an angle that does not seem to us justified by the inner logic of the music quâ music, that awkward question, "Why?" and to that question only the stage action, as Wagner says, or a program, as most of us would say to-day, can supply a satisfactory answer. This conflict between form and matter can be seen running through almost all modern German instrumental music of the poetic order; only the genius of Strauss has been able to resolve the antinomy with some success. None of Beethoven's successors has been able, as he was, to fill every bar of a symphonic composition with equal meaning, or to convey, as he did in the third symphony, the fifth and the ninth, the sense of a drama that is implicit in the music itself, and so coherent, so perspicuous, that words cannot add anything to it in the way of definiteness.
II
The symphonic work of Brahms (by which one means not merely the symphonies but the overtures, the concertos, the chamber music and the piano music) does, indeed, as we have seen, found itself on the middle rather than the later Beethoven (whereas it was from the latest Beethoven that Wagner drew his chief nourishment); but in spite of a certain timidity and a certain rigidity of form, Brahms's profound nature and his consummate workmanship give his work an individuality that enables him to stand by the side of Beethoven, though he never reaches quite to Beethoven's height. The other exploiters of the classical heritage have less individuality. They aim at breaking no new ground; they are content to till afresh the soil that the classical masters have fertilized for them.
Max Bruch may be taken as the type of a whole crowd of these post-classical writers. Their virtues are those that are always characteristic of the epigone. There is in art, as in the animal world, a protective mimicry that enables certain weaker species to assume at any rate the external markings of more vigorous organisms than themselves. In music, minds of this order clothe themselves with the qualities that lie on the surface of the great men's work. Their own art is parasitic (one uses that term, of course, without any offensive intention, with a biological, not a moral, implication). The parasitic organism lives easily in virtue of the fact that the parent organism undertakes all the labor of the chief vital functions. The epigone manipulates again and again the forms of his great predecessors. The substance he pours into these molds is hardly more his own. Yet work of this kind can have undeniable charm; after all, it is better for a man whose strength is not of the first order to live contentedly upon the side of the great mountain than to court destruction by trying to scale its dizziest peaks. The work of these epigones always has the balance and the clarity that come from the complete absence of any sense of a new problem to beat their heads against.
Max Bruch was born in 1838 and evinced the early precocity of genius; he had a symphony performed in his native Cologne at the age of fourteen. As a beneficiary of the Mozart Foundation he became a pupil of Ferdinand Hiller in composition and of Carl Reinecke and Ferdinand Breuning in piano. As executive musician he has had a brilliant career. After teaching in Cologne he became successively musical director in Coblentz, court kapellmeister in Sondershausen, chorus conductor in Berlin (Sternscher Gesangverein), conductor of the Philharmonic Society of Liverpool, England, and the Orchesterverein of Breslau. In 1891 he became head of the 'master school' of composition in the Berlin Academy, was given the title of professor, received in 1893 the honorary degree of Doc. Mus. from Cambridge, and in 1898 became a corresponding member of the French Academy of Fine Arts.
His most important creative work is unquestionably represented by his large choral works with orchestra. Together with Georg Vierling (1820-1901) he may be credited with the modern revival of the secular cantata. Frithjof, op. 23 (1864), written during his stay in Mannheim (1862-64), was the foundation-stone of his reputation, followed soon after by the universally known 'Fair Ellen,' op. 25, and later by Odysseus, op. 41 (1873), Arminius, op. 43, 'The Song of the Bell,' op. 45, 'The Cross of Fire,' op. 52, all for mixed chorus. There is a sacred oratorio, 'Moses,' op. 52, and a secular one 'Gustavus Adolphus,' op. 73, and a large number of other choral works for mixed, male and female chorus. His operas, 'Lorelei' (1863) and 'Hermione' op. 40, had only a succès d'estime. The first violin concerto, in G minor, op. 26, is perhaps Bruch's most famous composition, and a grateful constituent of every violinist's repertoire. There are two other violin concertos (both in D minor), opera 44 and 45, a Romance, a Fantasia and other violin pieces with orchestra, also works for 'cello and orchestra, including the well-known setting of Kol Nidrei. Three symphonies (E-flat minor, F minor and E major), op. 28, 36 and 51; a few chamber music and piano pieces complete the catalogue of his works. Bruch's idiom is frankly melodic, though his harmonic texture is quite rich and his counterpoint varied. Formally he is conservative and, all in all, he imposes no strain upon the listener's power of comprehension. His music is solid and grateful, but not of striking originality. Through his masters, Reinecke and Hiller, he represents the Schumann-Mendelssohn tradition in a vigorous though inoffensive eclecticism.
The leading members of this order of composers in the Germany of the second half of the nineteenth century besides Bruch, were Hermann Goetz (1840-1876; symphony in F major), Friedrich Gernsheim (born 1839; four symphonies and much chamber music), Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843-1900; chamber music, church music, symphonies, etc.), Joseph Rheinberger (1839-1901); Wilhelm Berger (1861-1911; works for choir and orchestra, chamber music, two symphonies, etc.); and Georg Schumann (1866; orchestral and choral works, chamber music, etc).
Goetz is best known for his work in the operatic field and may be more appropriately treated in that connection (see p. [245]). Gernsheim, a native of Worms, was a student in the Leipzig conservatory and broadened his education by a sojourn in Paris (from 1855). The posts of musical director in Saarbrücken (1861), teacher of piano and composition at the Cologne conservatory (1865), conductor of the Maatschappig concerts in Rotterdam (1874) successively engaged his activities. From 1890-97 he taught at the Stern conservatory in Berlin and conducted the Sternsche Gesangverein till 1904, besides the Eruditio musica of Rotterdam. In 1901 he became principal of a master-school for composition. Since 1897 Gernsheim has been a member of the senate of the Royal Academy. Similar to Bruch in his tendencies, Gernsheim has composed, aside from the instrumental works mentioned above, a number of choral works of which Salamis, Odin's Meeresritt (both for men's chorus, baritone and orchestra) and Das Grab im Busento (men's chorus and orchestra) are especially notable. Overtures and a concerto each for piano, for violin, and for 'cello must be added to complete the list of his works.