Musical Thought and Action in the Old World

by Arthur Elson

How They Went For Poor Richard

In the Monthly Musical Record, J. Cuthbert Hadden writes of the wit that the caricaturists once exercised at Wagner's expense. In the early pictures, mothers were drawn weeping at the sad fate of their children, who would have to grow up the hear the "music of the future". The orchestra of the future was shown to consist of a group of very vocal cats, reinforced by howls from a row of children under chastisement. A "player of the future" was depicted, who claimed that the box office at a Wagner concert should wait then years for its money. Wagner was pictured in heaven, too - giving points to Mozart and Beethoven, advising the addition of brasses and drums to the celestial harps, and taking care the Offenbach and other light opera composers were being properly roasted in the infernal regions.

More interesting is a mention of other composers' estimates of Wagner. Rossini, of course, was adverse. After attending Tannhauser he said, "It is too intricate to be judged at a first hearing, but I shall not give it a second." A friend handed him the score of Lohengrin, and soon observed that he was holding it upside down. Rossini then explained, "I can't make anything out of it when it is right side up." but even Schumann once said that these two works were amateurish,. Marschner, whom Wagner praised as a predecessor in the romantic school, criticised the new works and said, "If Wagner, who is a highly gifted man, had been a true composer, he would not have thought it necessary to make such a noise and to employ quack methods to win musical fame and hide the poverty of his productions."

In France Tannhauser met with much opposition aside from the riot of the Jockey Club over Wagner's refusal to introduce a ballet. The work was called "distressing and harassing", and many wanted Tannhauser to marry Elisabeth. The music was considered "formless and devoid of melody", and Prosper Merimee said he could compose something as good after hearing his cat walk over the piano keyboard - an intended denunciation, in spite of the fact that Scarlatti's "cat-fugue" is good music.

Lohengrin was called "the apogee of hideousness, a distracting and altogether distressing noise, a mere blaring of brass, and a short method of utterly ruining the voice." Hullah spoke of it as "an opera without music", while Gustav Engel termed it "blubbering baby talk". Hanslick, the German critic, wrote, "The simplest song of Mendelssohn appeals more to heart and soul than ten Wagnerian operas."

Of the Ring Tschaikowsky said, "There never was such endless and tedious twaddle". This is strange because Tschaikowsky was himself a radical and an opponent of Brahms. Tolstoy called the Ring bad art, but Tolstoy was no musician, and read lurid meanings into the clean, sweet Kreutzer Sonata of Beethoven. Berlioz, however, was a greater authority, and another radical; but even he could not stand Tristan, and said of it, "I have not the slightest idea of what the composer wants to say."

These early opinions are revived now because we have five fingers on each hand. At first glance this seems irrelevant, but the fingers led humanity into counting by tens instead of by some other arbitrary group of units; and thus Wagner's birth centennial is at hand.

The Old Music Of The Flowery Kingdom

In the Musical Times, A. Corbett-Smith gives an account of Chinese music. Of the dramatic music, which speaks for itself with insistent clangor, he mentions two classes. The domestic or social play (Erh Wang) has an orchestra of flutes, strings, drums, and gongs. This is the milder and more innocuous kind. The martial or historical drama (Pang Tzu) dispenses with the strings. Wagner thought he was doing something very advanced when he had his orchestra comment on the stage action; but the Chinese go farther and let their music foretell the outcome of events. Their scores show by the quality of the music whether a general is to be victorious or not, or a lover happy or disappointed. This is futurist music with a vengeance; and is has been recently noted that a Chinese ambassador called the Rheingold music for women and children.

But it is hardly fair to judge Chinese music by the stage alone. There are various instruments in use not mentioned in the article, belonging to eight classes of bamboo and calabash. In the first group are drums of all sizes. Musical stones, struck by a hammer, were in use in China before 2250 B.C. Sixteen of them, hung in a row, form the instrument called the King. Metal is used in bells and gongs. Baked clay forms the Hiuen, a primitive whistly or flute. The seven silk strings of the Kin, and the twenty-five of the larger Che, give a soft and agreeable tone when plucked. Wooden instruments are mostly for noise and percussion. Bamboo yields flutes and Pan-pipes, sixteen of the latter forming the Siao. The calabash, or gourd, is used in the Cheng, an elementary mouth organ of the reed type.

Chinese music is based largely on the pentatonic scale. In the often quoted legend, the mythical sage Fo Hi, having retired to the country for meditation and investigation, came at last to the banks of the sacred river, near which grew the bamboos ready to be made into flutes. While there he heard the Foang Hoang, or consecrated bird. The male bird sang notes like the black keys on our piano, while the female bird gave our white keys diatonic scale. As everything feminine has been held of little importance in China, the notes of the male bird were accepted as the official Chinese scale. This scale is not without great beauty, as the early Scotch fold songs may show. The Chinese music is often overlaid with din and clatter, but it may have its charm, too. Such a work as the favorite song in praise of the Mu Li flower exerts a strong appeal even to Caucasian ears. The limited scale, rhythmic stule and constant iteration of Chinese music have been echoed unintentionally in our own song, There Is A Happy Land. But on the whole our music appeals little to the Chinese. When Father Amiot had some Western pieces played in a Chinese gathering the polite Mandarins gave due applause; but, on being pressed for a frank opinion, one of them replied, "Your music is very clever and intricate, but it does not go to the heart as ours does." This, too, in a former century, when Richard Strauss was undreamed of, and no Scriabine had arisen to perpetrate Prometheus.

Forecasters of government crop reports say that this season's yield of operas will exceed that for the same period of last year by many bushels, with the percentage of condition gradually improving and the market price off a little. The visible supply from preceding years, too, is still on the increase; for in the Grand Ducal library at Schwerin there has been found a number of early German works by Reinhard Keiser. He flourished in Hamburg at the end of the seventeenth century. In his orchestra was a lad named Handel, who, during Keiser's temporary absence, took the leader's post at the harpsichord without waiting to be asked.

Parisina has received its finishing touches from Mascagni and D'Annunzio. That lady is not a relative of Melusina, but rather a new edition of Francesca da Rimini. The second act isheld to be the best in the opera. The scene is an outdoor shrine at Loreto, where Parisina comes with the stepson, who wins her love later on. There are effective peasant's choruses and religious music that is more Gregorian than the church scene in Cavalleria Rusticana.

Leoncavallo's Zingari is another lurid affair, based on a story by Pushkin. A gypsy girl, Fleana, is discovered in the arms of a stranger, by name Radu. The latter is a prince who has abandoned his position to follow Fleana. The pair are then married, to the sorrow of the tribal poet Tamar, who loves her. In the second act the wedded pair have found marriage a failure, and no longer feel any love. Tamar makes love to Fleana, and brings her to his hut; but Radu has overheard and is consumed with rage. While the pair are still in the hut, Radu blocks the entrance with vessels of oil and sets the place a fire.

Riccardo Zandonai's Melaenis, to be given at Milan, is laid in the time of Commodus, and deals with the real love felt by the heroine for a man who casts her aside when the emperor's favor enables him to marry another woman. The work admits of much scenic display.

The Etude Magazine November 1912