The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
Whilst another, equally eminent, would make an equally great impression by almost whispering the words to himself, as if afraid of betraying the secret: "The play's the thing...." Who could say of the one or the other interpretation "This is right," or "This is wrong"? In this case the same result is arrived at by different means. On the other hand, I remember a little story my father told me when I was a boy, of a man who had been made very angry by a letter from his son at the University asking him for money. In that mood he is met by an old friend who asks him, "What's the matter? Why are you thus out of sorts?" "Well," says the other, "look at this impertinent letter I've just got from my son, 'Father, please send me money!'"—reading out the words in a quick, impatient, commanding voice. "Of course," he adds, "I shan't do anything of the kind."
"Let me see the letter," the benevolent friend asks—he was very fond of the boy—and, reading the words with a gentle, pleading, affectionate inflexion of the voice, he says, "Why, my dear fellow, it's a very charming letter. He writes, 'Father, please send me money.'" "Ah," says the father, "if he writes like that, he shall have it!" Here, without doubt, the different interpretation had a different result. Certainly the son will have thought so.
Varieties such as just quoted are, however, quite impossible in music. Here we are faced by absolute orders given by the composer who says: "This is to be forte, this piano; here you must increase, there decrease; here hurry, there retard." But this apparent clipping of the interpreter's wings is only a blessing in disguise, for it makes it possible for even a singer of inferior intelligence to render by artistic representation or performance, i.e., to interpret a song; so that, whilst we would not listen to a representation of the character of Hamlet by a stupid or uneducated man, we may thoroughly enjoy the rendering of a song by a singer with a fine voice, even if he be a most uninteresting, commonplace person otherwise, as long as he masters the technique of his art and loyally and conscientiously follows the directions given by the composer.
A loyal, reverent attitude to the author is a thing on which too great stress cannot be laid. A work deemed worth performing should be rendered as the author wrote it. By this I do, of course, not mean that an orchestral work or an organ fugue or a string quartet should not be played on the pianoforte. Quite the contrary. Skilful transcriptions and arrangements are indeed as great a boon as are reproductions of the famous masterpieces of painting or sculpture, without which our knowledge of the art would be lamentably defective. There have also been cases where one great master has thought it desirable to complement the work of another, either by writing accompaniments to originally unaccompanied instrumental works, as Schumann did to Bach, or by strengthening the accompanying orchestra in a choral work, as Mozart did to Handel's Messiah. As far as I know the original text has in all such cases been allowed to remain intact; and works thus treated being obtainable in the original as well as in the complemented version, the choice is left to the personal taste of the musicians responsible for the performance. What I mean is that the text of the composer should not be tampered with. There have now and then attempts been made at improving Beethoven's scores on the plea that some instruments employed by the master—like, for instance, the flute—have been developed so as to allow notes to be played on them now which were impossible at the time Beethoven wrote, and that very likely, had these notes been at the master's disposal, he would have made use of them. This may or may not be so, but it seems to me a dangerous theory to work upon, for once you commence meddling with a master work it would be difficult to know where to draw the line, and there is no saying whither it would lead. Besides, every great period in the history of art has its own characteristics. A so-called full orchestra in Beethoven's time was a very different thing from what we are accustomed to consider one to-day, when woodwind, brass, percussion, harps, and what not often alone outnumber the entire personnel of a grand orchestra a century ago. Moreover, if you leave Beethoven's scores untouched, his mastery of orchestration becomes all the more wonderful. There are instances—just think of that glorious climax in the Third Leonora Overture, or the end of that to Egmont—where, even considering only the mere physical power of sound, he gets results from his orchestration that no modern writer has as yet surpassed.
It is hardly credible that, arrogant enough as such attempts at improving Beethoven's orchestration are, there exist people who go further still and actually alter a great composer's directions as to expression. Most of us know how particularly fond Beethoven was of interrupting a seemingly increasing fortissimo by a sudden pianissimo. You will recall that splendid scherzo in the "Seventh Symphony," where he commences with an exultant fortissimo, evidently meaning to continue in that vein, when all of a sudden the ft on the last crotchet of the second bar is followed by a pp on the first crotchet of the third, the result is simply marvellous.
Well, some years ago I had to conduct that symphony as a deputy for the regular conductor, who was prevented from being at his post on that occasion. Can you imagine my surprise and disgust when, at the rehearsal, commencing with the Scherzo, and looking forward to that sudden pp on the first note of the third bar, that pp appeared already on the last note of the second bar, which should have still been ft. Stopping the orchestra indignantly, I asked, "What on earth are you doing, gentlemen?"
"We have got it so in our parts," was the answer. "Impossible," I said. "Let me see!" The leader handed me the part, and there, to be sure, I was flabbergasted to find the mark of pp on the first note of the third bar actually transferred in blue pencil to the preceding note, thus not only completely spoiling Beethoven's fun, but altering and weakening the subject, which, as anybody might see, commences with the down, not the up beat. I wonder if one should envy a man or pity him for a degree of self-estimation which could render him capable of blue-pencilling Beethoven!
He certainly has arrived at what a witty American friend of mine would call the "Shoehorn stage." To my enquiries about a mutual acquaintance, that gentleman answered, "He? Why, he's that big now he has to use a shoehorn to put on his hat!"
But this is by no means an isolated example of the lamentable lack of reverence in this country toward the works of the great masters of music. However much one might be horrified at the utterly mistaken tempi one often has to listen to in the rendering of the classics, especially Mozart and Beethoven, that, after all, sad and deplorable as it is, may only be the consequence of ignorance or the result of insufficient musical training on the part of the performer. It is the wanton, deliberate tampering with the text of a great composer which is unpardonable. No one among the classics was more explicit or exacting as to the way he wished his works to be rendered than Beethoven. Take once more that surpassingly beautiful Leonora Overture No. III. Who has not been thrilled to the innermost depths of his soul by those distant trumpet-calls, each ending with a long pause on the last note, and followed immediately, i.e., without any further pause and whilst that last note still lingers in one's ears, by one of the most divinely inspired phrases ever penned by even that great master? After the first call the orchestra plays it, in a mysterious pianissimo, in the same key as the call itself—B flat; after the second, more impressive still, a third lower, in G flat. Well, at a recent performance of that great work the conductor, according to the papers an "acknowledged authority" on Beethoven, coolly added a "general pause" on to each of those two pauses on the last note of the trumpet-call; that after the second call lasting for fully ten seconds. No words can express my disappointment, my indignation, for, of course, the sublime beauty of that low G flat with which the double-basses and 'celli enter whilst the high B flat of the trumpet-call is slowly dying away in the distance was lost completely. Indeed it would have mattered little now in what key the orchestra had come in—the thing was irretrievably spoiled.