Marion Bauer

“ It is a short step now to polytonality and atonality, to Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Milhaud, and Honegger.
You have seen the white ray of sunlight enter your window, which upon a second glimpse divides into all the colors of the rainbow. In other words, the white light is the fundamental tone, which is the sum of all the other colors, much as any single tone is the sum of its overtones, and it is with these overtones that our modern composers are experimenting. Here we see that modern music is the result of evolution (slow growth) and not revolution! ”

“ It has gone from the noise of primitive man with his drum, to the attempts of the savage to sing and to make crude instruments, to the music of the ancient nations in their religious ceremonies and entertainments, to the Arab singer who handed his art to the western world through the troubadours, to the people of all times and nations who danced and sang for the joy of it. ”

“ Louis Gruenberg, the American composer, said, “I have looked in vain for a flaw in Carmen but it is perfection throughout. It is the one opera in the world that wins both musicians and the masses alike, and it disarms criticism.”
Emma Calvé will always be remembered as Carmen, for she not only sang the part with its intense melody and Spanish color, but she lived it on the stage.
Bizet is an amazing orchestral tone painter, and one of the greatest of all opera writers. ”

“ Though Chopin was seemingly French in manner, habits and tastes, he was extraordinarily patriotic and his music is perhaps the finest expression of Poland the world has ever seen.
No one has surpassed, or even equalled Chopin in writing for the piano. He understood its possibilities, limitations, tonal qualities and power to express emotion.
He did not leave a great quantity of compositions, but a well-ordered collection of music, so individual that even today, with all his imitators, when we hear Chopin— (and where is there a piano recital without at least one number?) ”

“ But Hans Sachs, the greatest Meistersinger of all, the town cobbler, thought Walther a beautiful singer even though he broke musical laws and the very freedom and the new loveliness in his music charmed him.
In the evening when Walther and Eva try to run away, Beckmesser decides to serenade Eva. Hans Sachs, cobbling shoes in his doorway interrupts Beckmesser’s ludicrous serenade with a jolly song, in which he marks all Beckmesser’s mistakes with his hammer, just as Beckmesser had marked Walther’s. ”

“ He uses interesting little musical devices which make it easy to recognize a Puccini piece, and his music has charm. It is built on Italian tradition but is distinctly of the 19th century. He enjoyed the greatest popularity of his day, and there have been few, excepting perhaps Verdi and Wagner, whose operas have been so well known. His beautiful melody, piquant airs, fine rhythms, clever orchestration and humanness of plot, make Puccini very often touch the edge of opéra comique. Although he uses a musical phrase over and over again, it is not like the Wagner leit-motif. ”

“ Hereafter when we speak of rhythm it will mean movement either in tones or in gestures. Rhythm expressed in tones makes music; rhythm expressed in gestures makes the dance. The reason we like dance music and marches is that we feel the rhythm, the thing that makes us want to mark the beat of the music with our feet, or hands, or with head bobbings. This love of the beat is strong in the savage, and upon this he builds his music.
Our American Jazz is the result of our desire for strong rhythms and shows that we, for all our culture, have something in us of the savage’s feeling for movement. ”

“ Even as we see prehistoric man using the things of nature for his tools, such as elephant tusks, flint, and wood; and as we see him making paint from earth and plants, we also see him getting music from nature. It would have been impossible for these early men and children to have lived out-of-doors and not to have listened to the songs of the birds, the sound of wind through the trees, the waves against the rocks, the trickling water of brooks, the beat of the rain, the crashing of thunder and the cries and roars of animals. ”

“ But the true spirit of romance never dies and never becomes artificial,—such romance had MacDowell. He was sincere, always a poet, always himself, and in spite of his Irish-Scotch inheritance, German training and love of Norse legends, he expressed MacDowell in every note. He lived before the time when we question “How shall we express America in Music”? In fact he was much against tagging composers as American, German, French, and so on. ”

“ Then, think of the Gypsy music,—the dances, the songs, and the wonderful violin playing! So wild, so weird, so out-of-doors is it, that we are thrilled by the very thought of it.
Where did these folk come from? Who are they? What are they? They have spread over most of Europe, and are found in Hungary, Bohemia, Roumania, Italy, Spain, Germany, Russia, England, Turkey, and even America. They are a race and they have a language of their own. Theirs is a mixture of the ancient Prakrit or Indian, with the different languages with which they have come in contact in the course of many centuries. ”

“ The French who, under William of Normandy conquered Britain, were leaders in composing poetry and song, and they brought over to Britain all their talents. Now romance began and with it the art of glorifying in song and verse, deeds of valor and the charms of lovely ladies. And here the troubadours and trouvères make their entrance into our story.
France had had songs of deeds and action called Chansons de Geste, which were tales of the brave Charlemagne, celebrating his victory over the invading Moors from Spain. One of the greatest of these was the Chanson de Roland. ”

“ In the same way, we have seen in following the growth of music, that no matter how beautiful a style of composition is, as soon as it becomes set in form, or in other words as soon as it hardens, it changes. Let us look back to the period of the madrigal. You remember that the early madrigals were of rare beauty but later the composers became complicated and mechanical in their work and the beauty and freshness of their compositions were lost. The people who felt this, reached out for new forms of expression and we see the opera with its arias and recitatives as a result. ”

“ The reasons why one ought to know them are seldom made clear. But just at this time, when the word “appreciation” is so active in the world’s conversation, there should be little difficulty in separating from the mass of unformed comment at least one reason for acquaintance with the history of music.
No one can “appreciate” an art work without knowing its period, the state of the art in that period, the ideals and purposes of composers, the capacity of their public and the particular gifts and aims of the writer of the work under consideration. ”

“ Slowly we see the idea die out that only the nobles and the wealthy had the right to life, liberty and happiness, and we see the ideas of freedom and equality taking the place of serfdom and slavish obedience to over-lords. All this may seem strange to appear in a book on music but art always mirrors the life and feelings of the people of its time. ”

“ We unite people of all nations under one flag and one government, but we have been sung to sleep and amused as children by the folk songs of the European nations to which our parents and grandparents belonged! And so we have heard from childhood Sur le Pont d’Avignon, Schlaf Kindlein Schlaf, Wurmland, The Volga Boat Song, Sally in our Alley, or The Wearing of the Green, none of which is American.
In spite of all these obstacles to the growth of a folk music in America, we have several sources from which they have come. ”

“ This led again to the crashing of the large and dried forms made perfect by Beethoven and we see him as the bridge which leads to Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schubert and Schumann and we see them expressing in shorter form every possible human mood.
Beethoven was great enough to bring music to maturity so that it expressed not only forms of life, but life itself.
How and what did he do? First, he became master of the piano and could from childhood sit down and make marvelous improvisations. He studied all forms of music, counterpoint, harmony, and orchestration. ”

“ Haydn led a beautiful life with the Esterhazy family. In the summer he hunted and fished, and in the winter, went off to Vienna to hear the orchestra and meet great personages attracted by the art, music and court life. But he had to keep on composing for the Esterhazys, who were constantly entertaining and there were many special occasions to be celebrated with Haydn’s lovely music.
It seems hard for us to realize that one family could play the compositions of one man continually, but we have rarely had so great a man to listen to! ”

“ Here Liszt was able to help young musicians who came from all over the world. Wagner would never have been so successful, had not Liszt aided him during his exile. He stood by him with patience and loving kindness and helped him to produce his operas. He was of untold assistance to Schumann and Berlioz, Rubinstein, Cornelius and countless others by performing their works when nobody else dared to. Liszt was in high favor with society, and having a love for the new in music, he used his popularity to help music grow. ”

“ Although music had no such variety, melody and richness as today, just see what the Venerable Bede says about it: “Music is the most worthy, courteous, pleasant, joyous and lovely of all knowledge; it makes a man gentlemanly in his demeanor, pleasant, courteous, joyous, lovely, for it acts upon his feelings. Music encourages us to bear the heaviest afflictions, administers consolation in every difficulty, 76refreshes the broken spirit, removes headache and cures crossness and melancholy.” ”

“ Don’t you believe that studying history through folk tunes would be fascinating? People today have found out much about the different races and tribal events through them.
It is impossible to find out who wrote the five thousand folk songs of England and the more than five thousand of Russia and of Ireland and all the others, for it was not until the 19th century that folk songs and dances became a serious study. The fact is, that a true folk song doesn’t want to find its composer for it loses its rank as a folk song if its maker should turn up! ”

“ César Franck.
419It is not easy to write of Brahms without seeming to exaggerate, because if we speak of his songs we must say that no one ever created more beautiful song form; if we speak of his chamber music we must acknowledge that he understood writing for instruments as no one before or since has surpassed. His piano pieces, too, are pure delight! Where will one find finer work than his one concerto for violin and those for piano? His four symphonies have so far been unsurpassable and his choral works, too. ”