Heinrich von Herzogenberg, too, is chiefly identified with the revival of choral song, especially of ecclesiastical character (a Requiem, op. 72; a mass, op. 87; Totenfeier, op. 80; 'The Birth of Christ,' op. 90; a Passion, op. 93, etc.). In this department Herzogenberg is the successor to Friedrich Kiel.
Rheinberger occupies a peculiar position. He is a stanch adherent to classical traditions and generally considered as an academic composer. That his classicism was not inconsistent with a hankering after the methods of the New German School, however, is shown in his Wallenstein symphony (op. 10) and his 'Christophorus' (oratorio). Having received his early training upon the organ, he has shown a preponderant tendency toward organ music and ecclesiastical composition in general. Nevertheless he has written, besides the works already named, a symphonic fantasy, three overtures, and considerable piano and chamber works. Eugen Schmitz[31] calls him a South German Raff, for 'as many-sided as Raff, he, in contrast to this master of North German training, received his musical education in South Germany.' (Born in Vaduz, in Lichtenstein, he continued his training in Feldkirch and during 1851-54 at the Royal School of Music in Munich). In Munich he became the centre of a veritable school of young composers, exerting a very broad influence, first as teacher of theory and later royal professor and inspector of the Royal School. Rheinberger also conducted the performances of the Royal Chapel choir. He received the honorary degree of Ph.D. from the University of Munich and became a member of the Berlin Academy.
Riemann's judgment of his merit, voiced in the following sentences, may be taken as just on the whole. He says: 'Rheinberger enjoyed a high reputation as composer, in the vocal as well as in the instrumental field. However, the contrapuntal mastery and the æsthetic instinct evident in his workmanship cannot permanently hide his lack of really warm-blooded emotion.' His organ works, of classic perfection, will probably last the longest. His Requiem, Stabat Mater, and a double-choir Mass stand at the head of his church compositions. He also wrote an opera, Die Sieben Raben. Like Bruch's, his style is eclectic, being a fusion of neo-classical and post-romantic influences.
Wilhelm Berger is a native of America (Boston, 1861), but was educated in Berlin, where he was a pupil of Fr. Kiel at the Royal Hochschule. Later he became teacher at the Klindworth-Scharwenka conservatory and in 1903 succeeded Fritz Steinbach as conductor of the famous Meiningen court orchestra. Some of his songs are widely known, but his choral compositions (Totentanz, Euphorin, etc.) constitute his most important work. Berger is a Brahms disciple without reserve, and so are Hans Kössler (b. 1853, symphonic variations for orchestra, etc.), Friedrich E. Koch (b. 1862, symphonic fugue in C minor, oratorio Von den Tageszeiten, etc.), Gustav Schreck (b. 1849), and Max Zenger (b. 1837). Georg Schumann, the last on our list of important epigones, has had more hearings abroad than most of his contemporary brothers-in-faith, especially with his oratorio 'Ruth' (1908), several times performed by the New York Oratorio Society. As conductor of the Berlin Singakademie (since 1900), he has not lacked incentive to choral writing, hence 'Amor and Psyche,' Preis und Danklied, etc. A symphony in B, a serenade, op. 32, and other orchestral pieces as well as chamber works have come from his pen, all in the Brahms idiom.
The names of the still smaller men are legion. Let us mention but a few of them: Robert Radecke (1830-1911) wrote a symphony, overtures, and choral songs; Johann Herbeck (1831-77), symphonies, etc.; Joseph Abert (b. 1832), besides operas a symphony, a symphonic poem, 'Columbus,' and overtures; Albert Becker (1834-99), a Mass in B minor, a prize-crowned symphony, choral and chamber works; Franz Wüllner (1832-1902), chiefly choral works; Heinrich Hofmann (1842-1902), besides the operas Armin and Ännchen von Tharau, a symphony, orchestral suites, cantatas, chamber music and piano music, much of it for four hands; and Franz Ries (b. 1846), suites for violin and piano, string quartets, etc. Georg Henschel is especially noted for his songs (see Vol. V); Hans Huber, a German Swiss, for his 'Böcklin Symphony' and chamber music; while the Germanized Poles Maurice Moszkowski (b. 1854) and the brothers Scharwenka (Philipp and Xaver, b. 1850) claim attention with pleasing and popular piano pieces. Needless to say, such a list as this can never be complete.
III
Side by side with the neo-classical school, but always steadily encroaching upon it, is the 'poetic' school that derives from Liszt and Wagner. It is a truism of criticism that in musical history the big men end periods rather than begin them. The composer who inaugurates a movement appears to posterity as a fumbler rather than a master, and even in his own day his methods and his ideals fail to command general respect, so wide a gulf is there in them between intention and achievement. It was so, for example, with Liszt and his immediate school. But in the end there comes a man who, with a greater natural genius than his predecessors, assimilates all they have to teach him either imaginatively or formally, and brings to fulfillment what in them was at its best never more than promise. The tentative work of Liszt comes to full fruition in the work of Strauss. He has a richer musical endowment than any of his predecessors in his own special line, and a technical skill to which none of them could ever pretend. Liszt had imagination, but he never succeeded in making a thoroughly serviceable technique for himself, no doubt because his early career as a pianist made it impossible for him to work seriously at composition until comparatively late in life. Strauss is of the type of musician who readily learns all that the pedagogues can teach him, and utilizes the knowledge thus acquired as the basis for a new technique of his own.
Richard Strauss was born June 11, 1864, in Munich, the son of Franz Strauss, a noted Waldhorn player (royal chamber musician). He studied composition with the local court kapellmeister, W. Meyer, and as early as 1881 gave striking evidence of his talent in a string quartet in A minor (op. 2), which was played by the Walter quartet. A Symphony in D minor, an overture in C minor and a suite for thirteen wind instruments, op. 7, all performed in public, the last by the famous 'Meininger' orchestra, quickly spread his name among musicians and in 1885 he was engaged by Hans von Bülow as musical director to the ducal court at Meiningen. Here Alexander Ritter is said to have influenced him in the direction of ultra-modernity. After another year Strauss returned to Munich as third royal kapellmeister; three years later (1889) he became Lassen's associate as court conductor in Weimar; from 1894 to 1898 he was again in Munich, this time as court conductor, and at the end of that period went to Berlin to occupy a similar post at the Royal Prussian court. In 1904 he became general musical director (Generalmusikdirektor). Since the appearance of his first works mentioned above he has been almost incessantly occupied with composition.
These early works and those immediately following give little hint of the later Strauss, except for the characteristically hard-hitting strength of it almost from the first. Works like the B minor piano sonata (op. 5) and the 'cello sonata (op. 6), for example, have a curious, cubbish demonstrativeness about them; but it is plain enough already that the cub is of the great breed. With the exception of a few songs, and a setting of Goethe's Wanderers Sturmlied for chorus and orchestra (op. 14), all his music until his twenty-second year was in the traditional instrumental forms; it includes, besides the works already mentioned, a string quartet (op. 2), a violin concerto (op. 8), a symphony (op. 12), a quartet for piano and strings (op. 13), a Burleske for piano and orchestra, and sundry smaller works for piano solo, etc. According to his own account, he was first set upon the path of poetic music by Alexander Ritter—a man of no great account as a composer, but restlessly alive to the newest musical currents of his time, and with the literary gift of rousing enthusiasm in others for his own ideas. He was an ardent partisan of the 'New German' school of Liszt and Wagner. Of his own essays in the operatic field only two saw completion: Der faule Hans (1885) and Wem die Krone? (1890). They were mildly successful in Munich and Weimar. Besides these he wrote symphonic poems that at least partially bridge the gap between Liszt and Strauss; 'Seraphic Phantasy,' 'Erotic Legend,' 'Olaf's Wedding Procession,' and 'Emperor Rudolph's Ride to the Grave' are some of the titles. Ritter was of Russian birth (Narva), but lived in Germany from childhood (Dresden, Leipzig, Weimar, Würzberg, etc). He was a close friend of Bülow and married Wagner's niece, Franziska Wagner.
