In my father’s time the overture to Cherubini’s “Anacreon” had a frequent and honored place on his programmes. A modern audience would vote it too dry and old-fashioned.
The music of Niels W. Gade was quite a favorite with our grandfathers and grandmothers, but he is unendurable to-day.
A new orchestral composition of Carl Goldmark was eagerly waited for, forty years ago, and there was great rivalry between my father and Theodore Thomas as to which should have the privilege of performing it first. People used to revel in his “exotic and luxuriant orchestration,” but to-day his colors have faded before the greater glories of Strauss and Debussy and Ravel, and only his “Rustic Symphony” occasionally figures on our programmes.
During the second year of the German opera at the Metropolitan, Goldmark’s “Queen of Sheba” made a success which equalled that of the Wagner operas. Solomon’s temple, painted in gold, the Jewish rituals, the Oriental harmonies, and the naïve surprise of the public on seeing biblical characters upon a modern operatic stage, all combined to make the work a sensational success. To-day it has disappeared completely from the repertoire of European and American opera-houses.
The fate of Franz Liszt as a composer is still more tragic because it is partly undeserved. He created the form of the symphonic poem, but those who succeeded him have developed it so much farther as to leave his works somewhat submerged. I still have great admiration for his “Faust” Symphony, but neither I nor others of my colleagues who share this admiration have been able to make this work really popular with the general public. His “Dante” Symphony, “Festklänge,” and “Orpheus” receive still fewer public performances, and his “Ce qu’on entend sur les montagnes” has never been performed here to my knowledge. But “Les Préludes” and the two Piano Concertos, on the contrary, are still played ad nauseam.
The symphonies of Gustav Mahler have never received genuine recognition here, although he was a very interesting apparition in the musical field. He was a profound musician and one of the best conductors of Europe, and it is possible that, in the latter capacity, he occupied himself so intensely and constantly in analyzing and interpreting the works of the great masters that he lost the power to develop himself as composer on original lines. All his life he composed, but his moments of real beauty are too rare, and the listener has to wade through pages of dreary emptiness which no artificial connection with philosophic ideas can fill with real importance. The feverish restlessness characteristic of the man reflects itself in his music, which is fragmentary in character and lacks continuity of thought and development. He could write cleverly in the style of Haydn or Berlioz or Wagner, and without forgetting Beethoven, but he was never able to write in the style of Mahler.
Of all the greater composers of the last hundred years no one has been killed oftener than Mendelssohn, yet he always seems to come back again with a new renaissance. His music for “Athalie,” his “Reformation” Symphony, his overtures to “Melusine” and “Ruy Blas” are dead as a door-nail, but his Violin Concerto is still the most perfect example of its kind, his “Midsummer Night’s Dream” the best incidental music ever conceived for a Shakespearean play, his “Elijah” the most dramatic oratorio ever written, and the Scotch and Italian Symphonies still possess a delightful and eternal charm.
The works of Meyerbeer, on the contrary, have deservedly disappeared even from our popular programmes. Those empty “Torchlight Dances” and the vulgar ballet music from “Le Prophète”! I confess, though, that I still have a sneaking fondness for the “Coronation March,” perhaps because I had to conduct it so many times at the Metropolitan, when I first began conducting the operas there. That the same man who penned the glorious fourth act of the “Huguenots” could have been satisfied with the empty drivel which preponderates during the rest of that opera, is one of the eternal mysteries.
About thirty years ago Moritz Moszkowski was one of the most popular composers of the day, especially for the piano, but modern ears have but little use for his delicate, though evanescent, charm, and his orchestral suites are but rarely heard to-day. He has lived in Paris for many years, and during the war he suffered greatly. Advancing years and a long illness had left him very weak, and it seemed almost as if the musical world in which he had been so popular a figure had forgotten him completely.
But last winter, Ernest Schelling, one of our best American pianists, and an old friend of Moszkowski’s, conceived the happy idea of giving a testimonial concert in his honor, which should be thoroughly original in character. He, together with his distinguished colleague, Harold Bauer, accordingly enlisted the co-operation of twelve other celebrated pianists who were in America during the winter. This list, a truly remarkable one, included Elly Ney, Ignaz Friedman, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Rudolph Ganz, Leopold Godowsky, Percy Grainger, Ernest Hutcheson, Alexander Lambert, Josef Lhevinne, Yolanda Mero, Germaine Schnitzer, and Sigismond Stojowski.