Anywhere on the Continent the audience would have given unmistakable signs of their disapproval, and the Press been unanimous in the condemnation of such practices on the part of the conductor. Here that gentleman was vociferously applauded by the audience and—with, I think, one solitary exception—lauded to the skies by the Press, the one or two papers which were bold enough to timidly admit his "occasionally taking liberties with Beethoven" declaring such liberties to be those of "an intimate, an adept."
Intimate indeed! If a hundred years ago an intimate of Beethoven's had dared to do such a thing in Beethoven's presence, the master, as we know him from his letters, would have flung the score at his head, thundering, "Knave, canst thou not read? Dost thou think if I had wanted those two general pauses, I did not know how to put them in my score?"
What are we coming to? Irreverence, contempt of traditions, breaking with a glorious past, disregard of law, of form—are they also in the realm of music a sign of the times, a sort of Bolshevism?
Fancy an actor, tired of that everlasting "To be or not to be," and thinking it too hackneyed, surprising the audience by commencing the great monologue for a change with "To exist or not to exist"; or another, going one better, and considering the absence of rhyme in that monologue rather a mistake of Shakespeare's, hitting on the happy and original idea of correcting it into something like:
To be or not to be—
That is what staggers me.
And yet that would not be one whit less of a sacrilege.
And take a song or an aria; how often does one not hear even good singers change a note into a higher one, with the object of showing the voice to better advantage, or of making a phrase, generally the final cadence, more effective, so as to get a few more handfuls of applause, or perhaps even an additional recall at the end?
"That's villainous," says Hamlet, "and shows a most pitiful ambition."
This altering of notes brings me upon a question which has ever been the subject of much controversy among musicians: Are there any rules as to the singing of recitatives or, rather, to the substituting now and then, in the singing of recitatives of notes other than those written by the composer? Should, for instance, the phrase in the Messiah
