Librettist

“ Hence there is a want of relation between the librettist who is no true poet, and the composer, who moves others because he is moved himself, and is eloquent because he is sincere. In the 'Pré aux Clercs' on the other hand, the action takes place in a region more accessible to the ordinary run of play-goers, and the drama is a very pleasing national poem, free from incongruities and well adapted for music. ”

“ On the subject of librettists "with their professional tricks," he says: "If we composers were equally faithful to our own rules (which were good enough when men knew no better) , we should turn out just as poor a quality in our music as they in their librettos." ”

“ At the same time we must be careful not to go to the other extreme and entertain an idea of such accompaniment, as though its entire purpose were one solely of subordination; the truth is precisely the reverse. The libretto is written in the interest of the music, and has no further importance save in so far as it brings home to the mind a more intimate knowledge of the actual subject the artist has selected for his work. Music maintains this freedom pre-eminently by virtue of the fact that it does not apprehend the content in the manner the libretto may be assumed to make it intelligible. ”

“ It is consequently an injurious assumption that the construction of the libretto is a matter of indifference to the musical composition. We find, on the contrary, that really distinguished musical compositions presuppose an excellent libretto, carefully selected by the composers or actually written by them. It is impossible that an artist should treat with indifference the material with which he is dealing and a musician least of all, precisely in the degree that poetry has already worked out and settled for him the epic, lyrical, or dramatic configuration of the content in question. ”

“ It has ever been my contention that the conscientious artist should carefully read and re-read the whole libretto, so as to inform himself of the poet's purpose and meaning in the construction and development of the plot, as well as to ever bear in mind his conception of the composer's idea of how the poetry and the various aspects of mind of the characters should be aptly and effectively musicked and interpreted so as to awaken a kindred, or appreciative, feeling in the minds of his hearers. ”

“ In a fourth Libretto, more carefully constructed than either of the three we have mentioned, he has given us an Italian illustration of Goethe's 'Faust.' This famous Libretto he has himself set to Music. And here we have to grapple with one of the greatest difficulties with which the later Schools of Dramatic Music are called upon to contend. Their demands upon the individual are excessive. How can one man shine, in the first rank, as a Poet and a Musician, a Philosopher and a Machinist, a Maestro di Canto and a designer of Scenery? ”

“ This truth is that the writer of the libretto, having at his disposal the clear, idea-suggesting word, can bring up a pathetic situation before the mind; that the singer, having at his command the physical apparatus for producing an effect on the nerves, can sensuously awaken emotion; while the composer, possessing neither the arbitrary idea-suggesting word, nor the nerve-moving sound, but only the artistic form, can please to the utmost, but move only to a limited degree. ”

“ I, myself, have known an ardent lover of music who resolutely refused to look into a libretto because, being of a lively and imaginative temperament, she preferred to construct her own plots and put her own words in the mouths of the singers. ”

“ A libretto offers us to start with definite ideas, and compels the attention to forsake that field of more visionary emotion destitute of distinct idea, in which we are permitted to range without interruption, and are not forced to abandon our licence to receive from pure music whatever chance impression or wave of emotion it may arouse. ”

“ For this reason the art of music cannot rest satisfied, even where we are dealing with the more sharply defined features of the libretto proposed, with such recitative of declamation; nor in general can it remain content [Pg 412] with the unmediated difference between the pure melody, which, in comparison with it and as above explained, floats over the particularity of the words, and the recitative, whose task it is so far as possible to identify itself with it. On the contrary we must look for some mode of mediation between these extremes. ”

“ Therefore, concludes the syllogism, it matters nothing as to the character of the libretto or poem to whose words the music is arranged, so long as the dramatic framework suffices as a support for the flowery festoons of song, which drape its ugliness and beguile attention by the fascinations of bloom and grace. On the other hand, the apostles of the new musical philosophy insist that art is something more than a vehicle for the mere sense of the beautiful, an exquisite provocation wherewith to startle the sense of a selfish, epicurean pleasure ”

“ Few fashionable novels—happily defunct at the end of the season—have been more gladly welcomed, or more calmly tolerated; and the libretto-system has only escaped some very rough handling, out of consideration for the music with which it is eternally wedded.
We have heard of persons who maintain that a knowledge of Latin and French is equivalent to a knowledge of Italian, and that by their joint means an opera may be thoroughly mastered without the aid of a translation. We confess such a feat appears to us Herculean. ”

“ If you could succeed in not thinking about singers, decorations, and situations, but feel solely absorbed in representing men, nature, and life, I am convinced that you would yourself write the best libretto of any one living; for a person who is so familiar with the stage as you are, could not possibly write anything undramatic, and I really do not know what you could wish to change in your poetry. ”

“ I would go farther, and assert that, while a merely mechanical musician may set inappropriate melodies to words, and render music inexpressive of character, what constitutes a musical dramatist is the conscious intention of fitting to the words of his libretto such melody as shall interpret character, and the power to do this with effect. ”

“ For inasmuch as music has to adapt itself to words, these words should not particularize the picture too closely; if they do the musical declamation becomes absorbed in trifles, lacking in a common impulse, too contracted in the direction of particular features, and the unity and general effect is impaired. In this direction people are only too frequently at fault when expressing an opinion upon the excellence or insufficiency of a libretto. ”

“ Though nominally dramatic—inasmuch as each Solo Singer is invested with a representative personality—the Libretto is really epic throughout, for the principal singers are never employed for any other purpose than that of describing, either the beauties of the 'new-created world,' or the wonders attendant upon its mysterious birth. ”

“ The entire purpose of an opera seemed to be to tell a story which should serve as a basis for the setting of certain sentiments to songs in aria form. The art of libretto construction was to arrange the succession of sentiments in such a way that the proper series of solos, duets, choruses, and ensembles should be made, and that the arias of different character should enter in such a way as to provide variety of style, and give the singers opportunities to display all their accomplishments. In short, everything was made tributary to that marvelous art of song in which these singers excelled. ”

“ It is very difficult at present to find a good libretto for an opera. The old ones, which are the best, are not written in the modern style, and the new ones are all good for nothing; for poetry, which was the only thing of which France had reason to be proud, becomes every day worse, and poetry is the only thing which requires to be good here, for music they do not understand. ”

“ The power of the music did not show itself so much by attracting her attention to the subject of the piece, as by taking up and developing as its libretto the poem of her own life and soul, shifting her deeds and intentions from the hands of her judgment and holding them in its own. ”

“ In addition to the human interest and the truth of passion which a libretto must share with every dramatic poem, there ought to be a strong infusion of the lyrical element, not to be mistaken for the tendency towards 'singing a song' too rampant amongst tenors and soprani. ”

“ In the drawing up of the libretto the most important matter is the engineering of "opportunities" for the composer—here an effective air for the principal personage, there a chorus with scope for effective contrapuntal writing, everywhere due regard for the well-varied interest which the [109] public loves, and, at the end of a part, provision for an effective Finale. But some recognised kind of musical opportunity is always the chief matter. No one cares much about the subject except in so far as it provides the musical opportunity of an accepted kind. ”

“ If these observations are correct, we have not only proof of the inseparable quality of the words and the music of a popular song, but also evidence to which you can personally testify regarding the foundations of lyric-writing.
But first let us hear what Berlin has to say about the inseparable quality of words and music: "The song writer who writes both words and music, has the advantage over the lyric writer who must fit his words to somebody else's music and the composer who must make his music fit someone else's words. ”

“ This more perfect modulation of articulate sounds, is what distinguisheth verse from prose. Verse is subjected to certain inflexible laws. The number and variety of the component syllables are ascertained, and in some measure the order of succession. Such restraint makes it a matter of difficulty to compose in verse; a difficulty that is not to be surmounted but by a singular genius. Useful lessons of every sort convey’d to us in verse, are agreeable by the union of music with instruction. But are we for that reason to reject knowledge offered in a plainer dress? ”

“ Life external, simple facts, are to me an artless raw libretto, which, naturally, cannot in itself satisfy one who has come into this world with the intention of enjoying grandiose opera. I call it culture, this faculty of seeing things creatively, not in monotones, not through window-panes, but through multiplying lenses which collect the rays of all suns and concentrate them on the focus. ”

“ Every one is talking—many poets, poeticules, and poetasters are writing—what they call "free verse." Let there be no mistake about one thing. Free verse that is flabby, in-organic, shapelessly obvious, is as much of a crime against poetry as the cheapest echo of a Masefield that any doggerel scribbler ever strummed. ”

“ Music is the language of the commentator, who talks the whole of the time and gives us no breathing space. Moreover his is a difficult language which also requires to be explained. He who step by step has mastered, first the libretto (language!) , then converted it into action in his mind's eye, then sought out and understood, and became familiar with the musical symbolism thereto: aye, and has fallen in love with all three things: such a man then experiences a great joy. ”

“ It is curious to see the naïf way in which for the last hundred years German critics have been in the habit of considering the libretto and the music of an opera as two distinct things, the one of which may be condemned and the other extolled, as if a composer had no sort of responsibility with regard to the words he sets, 'Do you suppose that any proper composer will allow a libretto to be put into his hand like an apple?' are Weber's own words. ”

“ Then, again, the teachers of the lyre take similar care that their young disciple is temperate and gets into no mischief; and when they have taught him the use of the lyre, they introduce him to the poems of other excellent poets, who are the lyric poets; and these they set to music, and make their harmonies and rhythms quite familiar to the children's souls, in order that they may learn to be more gentle, and harmonious, and rhythmical, and so more fitted for speech and action; for the life of man in every part has need of harmony and rhythm. ”

“ It is as if the lyre could accommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them, in a determined proportion of sound; even as the musician can accommodate his voice to the sound of the lyre. A child at play by itself will express its delight by its voice and motions; and every inflexion of tone and every gesture will bear exact relation to a corresponding antitype in the pleasurable impressions which awakened it; it will be the reflected image of that impression ”

“ Here are several young persons doomed to spend the flower of their years in mechanically repeating the silliest libretto in modern theatrical literature, set to music which must pall somewhat on the seven hundred and eighty-eighth performance. ”

“ For as there are persons who, by conscious art or mere habit, imitate and represent various objects through the medium of colour and form, or again by the voice; so in the arts above mentioned, taken as a whole, the imitation is produced by rhythm, language, or 'harmony,' either singly or combined.
Thus in the music of the flute and of the lyre, 'harmony' and rhythm alone are employed ”