W. J. Henderson

“ No one has a right to say that Mozart failed because he did not achieve what Beethoven did. Mozart accomplished all that could be accomplished with the resources of musical art in his day, and he himself enormously enlarged those resources. That is the achievement of a genius. Every one has a right to say that Donizetti and Bellini failed because they not only did not succeed in accomplishing all that it was possible to accomplish in opera in their time, but deliberately ignored the fundamental principles of the art and also the immense advances in its technic made by Gluck and Mozart. ”

“ If at last I turned impatiently away and owed the strength of my repugnance to the independence already developed in my nature both as artist and as man, so did that double revolt of man and artist inevitably take on the form of a yearning for appeasement in a higher, nobler element; an element which, in its contrast to the only pleasures that the material present reads in modern life and modern art, could but appear to me in the guise of a pure, chaste, virginal, unseizable and unapproachable ideal of love. ”

“ There is something vital in a noble tone, something enthralling and inspiring. One recognizes it immediately when it is the voice of a distinguished singer, and I have seen audiences moved to amazing enthusiasm by a glorious voice which had neither dramatic intelligence nor vocal cunning to aid the potent spell of its pure quality. An orchestra should be a mighty singer in every sense, and it must have the first requisite of one—a fine voice. There should be nothing cheap or vulgar in its tone. ”

“ In the experience of Tannhäuser Wagner has set before us the struggle of the pure and the impure, the lusts and the aspirations of man's nature. It is essentially the tragedy of the man. We may try as we please to exalt the importance of Elizabeth as a dramatic character, but the truth is that she is merely the embodiment of a force. Tannhäuser is typical of his sex, beset on the one hand by the desire of the flesh, which satiates and maddens, and courted on the other by the undying loveliness of chaste and holy love. ”

“ On the other hand a man is not necessarily a mere formalist because he clings to the old-fashioned sonata form. Brahms's compositions show a completeness of architectonic detail, superimposed upon a symmetrical and inevitable organic development, such as are to be found in those of no other symphonist, except Beethoven. Why deny to the late Viennese master depth of feeling because he fashioned the expression of that feeling with all the force of a gigantic musical intellect? Brahms's music grows slowly in popular favor because it is not easy for the careless hearer to grasp its inner spirit. ”

“ The storm is contrasted with the vague tonalities and muted voicing of Erda's music. After the spear of Wotan is shattered by the rewelded "Nothung," Loge fills the mountains with his radiance and his shimmering music. The last of the futile and disappearing gods has passed from the scene of action. The human drama which is to lead to the dusk of the high ones has begun. ”

“ Thus the pleasures of life presented themselves to my feeling in the shape alone of what our modern world can offer to the senses; and this again appeared attainable by me as artist solely along the direction which I had already learnt to recognise as the exploitation of our public art-morass. In actual life I was at like time confronted—in the person of a woman for whom I had a sincere admiration—with the phenomenon that a longing akin to my own could only imagine itself contented with the paltriest return of trivial love ”

“ Whenever one man in a boat-crew is seized with a notion that he can pull the whole boat himself, the crew goes to pieces and loses the race. So in an orchestra, if the second trombonist, for example, is convinced that the audience ought to hear his part, he destroys the balance of the performance and oversets the composer’s purpose. Of course, a conductor must do all he can to see that the ambitious second trombonist does not mis-behave, but it requires a real esprit de corps in an orchestra to maintain an ideal balance of tone. ”

“ It is not for those who persist in listening to tunes as tunes only and condemning as no music that music which aims at some sort of representation.
To condemn such music is to throw over the later works of Beethoven, the choicest products of Chopin and Schumann, and many another creation with which even the mere tune-lover would be loath to part. But when the broad principles of all art are applied to the soul searchings of Richard Strauss, questionings will arise. Is it art? Certainly not, by the law of Schopenhauer, which guided Wagner,—eternal ideas represented by means of prototypes. ”

“ In every department of music known to his time Bach demonstrated that he was a genius of the highest order. He is regarded as the most excellent of all models for students of composition because his works combine, in the highest beauty, originality of melodic ideas with profundity of design. His mastery of the formal material of his art enabled him to imbue the severest form, such as the fugue, with grace, beauty, and expressiveness. His melodic diction is not of the kind popular with the masses, and his music today is enjoyed only by those who truly love the best. ”

“ What here I saw was no longer the figure of conventional history, whose garment claims our interest more than does the actual shape inside, but the real, naked Man, in whom I might spy each throbbing of his pulses, each stir within his mighty muscles, in uncramped, freest motion; the type of the true human being."
It was the recognition of Siegfried in his perfection, not as belittled in the "Nibelungen Lied," that made Wagner conceive him as the hero of his drama. ”

“ It will not profit any beginner in instrumentation to go farther back than Beethoven. The great symphonist’s string plan is always notable for its breadth, solidity, and flexibility, and there is nothing in the fundamental work of string writing which cannot be learned from him. But there is another composer whose works are neglected by professors and masters, and yet whose orchestration excels all other in the classic school in buoyancy, clarity, suavity, and polish, and to the constant study of his scores I heartily commend all who desire to master the basis of modern instrumentation. ”

“ He is a German dramatist. His music alone saves him from perdition. Prate as he may of the organic union of the arts, the magic of melody and harmony is his wand of transformation.
With that he lifts the tiresome rehearsal of the incidents of "Rheingold" by Wotan to eloquence. With that he changes the hair-splitting of Tristan and Isolde to the most passionate of love duets. With that he makes almost a miracle of Siegfried's condensed narrative in the last act of "Götterdämmerung." The theory is a perfect one; Wagner's practice is wholly faulty. His music saves him. ”

“ When, therefore, he came to the composition of his wonderful operas, he saw no necessity for the creation of new forms, because he did not feel the shackles of the old ones. To him they were chains of roses, and the impulse had not come which set all composers thundering against the restrictive barriers of mere formalism. With Mozart there was no such thing as mere formalism; and if there is any lesson which every repetition of "Don Juan" forces home upon us with vital force, it is that fashion is no restraint on genius. Mozart accepted the material of Italian opera as he found it. ”

“ Behind this delightful comedy there lies a symbolism which should not be overlooked. The masters represent the tyranny of formalism in art, the dominance of that opinion which mistakes form for substance, and attributes to the outward shape of every work the credit for its merit. Walther von Stolzing, in his efforts as poet and singer, is the embodiment of the free impulse, the desire for untrammelled expression. Sachs, without the creative power of the young knight, is the truer artist. ”

“ The average theatre orchestra is an eloquent demonstration of the bad [Pg 127] effects of poor balance among the instruments. The desperate struggles of two first violins, one second, one viola, one ’cello, and one double-bass to produce sufficient sound to make themselves heard in forte passages against the sonorous pealing of a cornet, a trombone, and a pair of tympani, are as vain as they are ridiculous. Such efforts are repeated on a larger scale when modern symphonic music is performed by an orchestra whose strings are led by six first violins. ”

“ In this drama we come to the drawing together of the threads, the stretto of the dream fugue. Behold Brünnhilde, who has given all her wisdom to Siegfried and hence has none left for herself, sending him out in quest of further reputation as a mighty hero. There is something pathetic in this and also pitiably modern. Must husbands have had outings in the elemental days even as now? Was the epic man inconstant of soul? Ah Brünnhilde! A wise woman would go with him. It is not good for man to be alone. ”

“ There is so much that is external and incidental in this work that the constant employment of guiding themes was unnecessary. The result is that we enter an atmosphere of buoyant, jubilant out-door life, full of the vigour and sweetness of spring and young manhood. The whole of the scene of the forging of the sword is sung in music aglow with the flame of the forge, alive with the rhythm of the bellows and the hammer. The forest scene gives us the bird music and the "Waldweben," freely written, the latter a mood picture, using only the Volsung theme as a reminder. ”

“ But the melody and the rhythm and the emotion of it are as the music of Brahms. Some day, I think, if not soon, the world will see how profoundly representative of his nation and his time Brahms was, and he will be hailed, as Milton was, an organ voice of his country. The irresistible seriousness of Germany has never spoken with more convincing accent than in the music of Brahms. There is a feeling in this music which is far removed from the possibility of a purely sensuous embodiment. ”

“ The principal requirements of good orchestration are solidity, balance of tone, contrast, and variety. Solidity is obtained by a proper dispersal of the harmony, so that certain notes in the chords do not stand out too prominently at the expense of others. The composer must not only be a master of harmony, but he must have the true harmonic feeling. He must have that almost instinctive grasp of the proportions of chords which can come only from real musical gifts cultivated by long familiarity with modern music. ”

“ It matters little from what point we view the tendency of musical art as it is disclosed to our vision through its most potent manifestations. We are driven inward upon the central and all-important question, How far can music go in the direction of depicting things which lie outside itself? Is it to convert itself into a language, or shall it sink into a kind of rapt mysticism which shall be accepted in a vague way as a species of philosophic speculation? ”

“ Kurvenal, misunderstanding the purpose of the King, resists the entrance of his guard and is slain, after himself giving a fatal wound to the false Melot. Mark has learned the secret of the potion. He recognises the truth that the unhappy pair have been the victims of Fate, and he has come to unite them. Alas, too late! The mightiest of monarchs, Death, has come before him. Isolde, her soul spreading its wings for flight, sings out her apostrophe to her dead hero, a marvellous pæan of praise, the echo of the duet of love, and sinks lifeless on his insensate form. ”

“ Perhaps the most heartless music ever written for an opera by a man of real talent is that of "Semiramide." Hardly an air in it will stand the test of comparison with its own text, and the manner in which a plotting priest, supposed to be a dark and mysterious villain, goes about expressing his desperate soul through trills and scales is almost ridiculous. Yet "Semiramide" is full of melody, and it contains musical effects which were new and striking at the time of its production. The employment of four horns together with clarinets in the finale, for instance, was an innovation. ”

“ Remember always that music is the youngest of our modern arts. Remember, too, that although we can trace its beginnings back to the fourth century of the Christian era, we find that twelve hundred years were occupied with the development of a single form of music,—vocal polyphony, the form in which the mighty masterpieces of the Roman Church down to the day of Lasso and Palestrina were composed. ”

“ Those to whom he opened his inner self, to whom he addressed his feelings and his hopes, who, in a word, understood him as both man and artist, were united in praise of his personality. Liszt, Praeger, Uhlig, Roeckel, Fischer, Von Bülow, Judith Gautier, Baudelaire, Frau Wille—all the company of Wagner's friends and helpers loved his nature and found in him none of that arrogance, that intolerance, that insufferable conceit, which the unsympathetic outer world condemned. ”