Modern Musical Drift

by W. J. Henderson

A Winter's Tale, Act IV. Sc. 3.

In the domain of the song new developments have come forward with startling rapidity in recent years. Every student of musical history is familiar with the growth of what is called the art song. The folk song was a simple form, in which a good, round tune, once made, served for every stanza. The early composers of songs were content to adhere to this form, which had its musical claim for supremacy, just as the Italian opera had.

But after a time the imperious demand of text for appropriate embodiment compelled a departure from the old manner. Mozart set a pretty fashion when he composed "Das Veilchen" and altered the germinal thematic idea, by a process similar to symphonic development, to meet the varying sentiment of the verse. But not much was accomplished till the birth of the so-called romantic movement. This was really nothing more than the victory of a principle, which had for centuries been striving for dominion, and it led the world to enthusiastic adoration of the songs of Schubert and the operas of Weber.

Then began the reign of what the Germans call the "durchcomponirtes lied," literally the "through-composed song." This is the song in which the music faithfully follows the text and changes in melodic externals and in harmonic plan to express sentiment. Schubert's "Erl-König" is a perfect specimen of this kind of song. Of course the writing of songs in the old strophical form did not cease. Why should it? There were still plenty of texts which lent themselves readily to that kind of setting, and if popularity be sought, there is nothing like a fixed melodic idea.

Gradually, however, those composers who seek always to dwell in a rarefied atmosphere, who are nothing if not "utter," and who ceaselessly endeavor to make poor Music a mere handmaid of all the other arts, have driven the "durchcomponirtes lied" to the verge of incoherence. The musical idea has become almost intangible, and all that seems to be left is a vague dispensation of tonalities and recitativo. For some sanity in this method of writing we have to thank the arch speculator of Munich, Richard Strauss. Whatever may be the ultimate outcome of the dispute over his orchestral riddles, there need be no hesitation in pronouncing him a master of the modern manner of song writing.

Mr. Strauss's songs belong of a surety to the domain of the ultra-romantic. There is little of the old-fashioned German lied in them. It might be possible to trace their descent from the folksong of Germany, and occasionally one appears in the genuine "volksthümlisches lied"[1] style. But many generations of artistic development separate these songs from their progenitors. The strophic form has quite disappeared in most of them. They are in the widest sense composed through. The germinal thematic idea is but a root from which the song grows. It barely sets a style and a direction for the whole. But it must not be supposed that these songs are in any sense formless.

They have an individual symmetry of form. It is a variety of the form of the romantic school, which is built entirely upon the emotional plan underlying the music. The musical scheme, therefore, consists of a proposition which is worked out by a method of transition, so that new material springs from the original thematic germ, and we arrive at novel and striking conclusions. Of melodic shape in the old sense some of these songs have almost nothing. But they are none the less luxuriously melodious. Their melodic nature differs from that of a Schubert song as the melodic nature of a Wagner drama does from that of a Weber opera. This does not mean that they are better songs than Schubert's. There are no other songs as fine as those of the fecund Franz Peter. But music is making progress, and the methods of song writing will probably change as fast as those of operatic and orchestral composition. Art is ever disinclined to stand still.

The harmonic basis of the Strauss songs is the principal cause of their melodic luxuriance. Strauss harmonizes wholly for what the Germans call the "stimmung." We have no word which exactly reproduces the meaning of this one; but let us call it the voicing of the mood. Strauss's harmony is designed to make an atmosphere in which his melody floats. At the same time this atmosphere is to envelop the hearer and saturate him with the feeling of the song. The high organism of this plan of attack upon the listener stamps it as the refined product of modern, thoroughly sophisticated art.

It is very trying on the singer. Some of Dr. Strauss's voice-parts, planned, not as the ultimate object in view, but wholly as a part of a general scheme, are cruelly difficult. In range alone they make searching demands upon the vocal resources. In the department of mental conception of tone—the highest field of vocal technic—they are as evasive as some of the tonal illusions of Wagner. But they are not unsingable. On the contrary, once let the singer thoroughly permeate himself with the harmonic atmosphere, and thus attune himself to the "stimmung" of the song, and his troubles reduce themselves to the common problems of production and coloring of tone, which have nothing more to do with the nature of Dr. Strauss's songs than with those of all other artistic composers.

It is essential to the success of songs of this kind that the declamation be arranged with much skill, otherwise that pregnant significance which is to come of a perfect marriage of sound and sense will be missing. In this department of his technical labor Dr. Strauss shows much ingenuity in most of his songs. Sometimes the text is dramatized in a manner quite masterly. In the entire range of song literature one would search far to find anything more subtle or potent than the opening of "Hoffen und wieder verzagen." This is a piece of dramatic declamation written in the modern recitative idiom and as distant as possible from the pure lied style; but it is intensely dramatic.