THE MUSIC OF YESTERDAY?

Notwithstanding the fact that he played the flute and ranked Rossini above Wagner, Arthur Schopenhauer said some notable things about music. Here is a wise observation of his: “Art is ever on the quest, a quest and a divine adventure;” although this restless search for the new often ends in plain reaction, progress may be crabwise and still be progress. We fear “progress,” as usually understood, is a glittering “general idea” that blinds many to the truth. Reform in art is like reform in politics. You can’t reform the St. Matthew Passion music or the fifth symphony. Is Parsifal a reformation of Gluck? This talk of reforms is confusing the historic with the æsthetic. Art is a tricksy quantity and, like quicksilver, is ever mobile. As in all genuine revolutions, the personal equation counts the heaviest, so in dealing with the conditions of music at the present time we ought to study the temperament of our music-makers and let prophecy sulk in its tent as it may.

One thing is certain: The old tonal order has changed forever; there are plenty of signs and wonders in the musical firmament to prove this. Moussorgsky preceded Debussy in his use of whole-tone harmonies, and a contemporary of Debussy and an equally gifted musician, Charles Martin Loeffler, was experimenting before Debussy in a dark but delectable harmonic region. The tyranny of the diatonic and chromatic scales, the tiresome revolution of the major and minor modes, the critical Canutes who sit at the edge of the musical sea and say to the modern waves, “Thus far and no further!” and then hastily abandon their thrones and rush to safety, else to be overwhelmed—all these are of the past, whether in art, literature, music, or—let Nietzsche speak—in ethics. Even philosophy has changed its garb and logic is “a dodge,” as Prof. Jowett used to say. Every stronghold is being assailed, from the “divine” rights of property to the common chord of C major.

If Ruskin had written music-criticism he might have amplified the connotations of his famous phrase, the “pathetic fallacy,” for we consider it a pathetic fallacy (though not in the Ruskinian sense) in criticism to be overshadowed by the fear that, because some of our predecessors misjudged Wagner, Manet and Ibsen, we should be too tender in our judgments of our contemporaries. Here is “the pathos of distance” run to seed. The music of to-day may be the music of to-morrow, but if not, what then? It may satisfy the emotional needs of the moment, yet become a stale formula to-morrow. What does that prove? Though Bach and Beethoven built their work on the broad bases of eternity—employing that tremendous term in a limited sense; no art is “eternal”—nevertheless, one may enjoy the men whose music is of slight texture and “modern.” Nor is this a plea for mediocrity. Mediocrity we shall always have with us; mediocrity is mankind in the normal, and normal man demands of art what he can read without running, hear without thinking. Every century produces artists who are forgotten in a generation, though they fill the ear for a time with their clever production. This has led to another general idea, that of transition, of intermediate types. But after critical perspective has been attained, it will be seen that the majority of composers fall into this category of the transitional; not a consoling notion, but an unavoidable conclusion. Richard Wagner had his epigones. And so had Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. Mendelssohn was a feminine variation of Bach, and after Schumann followed Brahms—Brahms, who threatens to rival his great exemplar. Yet I can recall the incredulous smiles when, twenty-five years ago, I called the Brahms compositions “The Music of the Future.”

The Wagner-Liszt tradition of music-drama and the symphonic poem have been continued with personal modifications by Richard Strauss. Max Reger pinned his faith to Brahms and absolute music, though not without an individual variation. In considering his Sinfonietta, the Serenade, the Hiller Variations, the Prologue to a Tragedy, the Lustspiel overture, the two concertos respectively for pianoforte and violin, we are struck not so much by the masterly handling of old forms as by the stark, emotional content of these compositions. It is an error to dismiss his music as merely academic. He began as a Brahmsianer, but he did not succeed, as did his master, in fusing form and theme. There is a Dionysian strain in him that too often is in jarring discord with the intellectual structure of his work. The furor teutonicus in conflict with the scholar. Yet at one period Reger was considered the rival of Strauss, though that day has long passed. Arnold Schoenberg now divides the throne. And there were many other claimants—Rezinek, d’Albert, Ernest Boehe, Walter Braunfels, Max Schillings, Hans Pfitzner, Klose, Ehrenberg, Noren, Franz Schreker, and the younger choir whose doings are analyzed weekly by clever Cezar Searchinger in the pages of the Musical Courier. Their name is legion. They enter the lists sounding golden trumpets of self-praise and are usually forgotten after a solitary performance of their huge machines, whether opera or symphony. Size seems to be the prime requisite. Write a music-drama that consumes three nights in its performance, a symphony that takes a hundred men, with a chorus of a thousand, to play and sing. Behold! You are a modern among moderns. But your name is as mud the following year. Exceptions are Mahler and Bruckner, yet I have my suspicions that when the zeal of William Mengelberg has abated, then the Mahler craze will go the way of all flesh, despite the fact that he has composed some thrilling pages. Otherwise, his symphonic structures are too mastodonic to endure; like those of Berlioz, they are top-heavy with ennui, and many chambers are empty of significant ideas or vital emotions. Musical intellectualism at its extreme Kamchatska.

Our personal preferences incline us to the new French music. To be sure, substance is often lacking, but you are not oppressed by the abomination of desolation which lurks in the merely huge, by what Mr. Finck calls Jumboism in music. The formal clarity, the charming color sense, the sprightly, even joyful, spirit, combined with an audacious roving among revolutionary ideas, all endear these youngsters to us. Debussy is their artistic sire, Ravel their stepfather, and if d’Indy does not fall into this category, being a descendant of Franck, he is none the less admirable as a musician. Stravinsky outpoints them all in the imprévu, as does the incredible Prokofieff—a man to be carefully estimated, one who thus far hasn’t put his best foot foremost in America. The Richard Strauss case is no longer a moot one. He has in all probability given his best work, and superlative work it is, despite its slag, scoriæ, rubble, and refuse. He is the chief of a school, a position from which he can never be dislodged, and when history sifts the pretensions of all the second and third rate men of his generation, his figure will be found standing close to Wagner’s and Berlioz’s and Liszt’s. An epigone? Yes. But an epigone of individual genius.

With Arnold Schoenberg freedom in modulation is not only permissible but an iron rule; he is obsessed by the theory of overtones, and his music is not only planned horizontally and vertically but in a circular fashion. There is in his philosophy no such thing as consonance or dissonance, only perfect ear training. (We quote from his Harmony; a Bible for Supermen). He writes: “Harmonie fremde Tone gibt es also nicht”—and a sly dig at old-timers—“sondern nur dem Harmonie-system fremde.” After carefully listening to his “chaos” a certain order disengages itself; his madness is methodical. For one thing, he abuses the interval of the fourth and he enjoys juggling with the chord of the ninth. Vagabond harmonies in which remotest keys lovingly hold hands do not dissipate the sensation of a central tonality somewhere—the cellar, on the roof, in the gutter, up above in the sky so high. The inner ear tells you that his D minor quartet is really thought, though not altogether played, in that key. As for form, you must not expect it from a man who has declared: “I decide my form during composition only through feeling,” a procedure which in other composers’ works might be called improvisation. Every chord is the outcome of an emotion, the emotion aroused by the poem or idea which gives birth to the composition. Such antique things as the cyclic form or community of themes are not to be found in Schoenberg’s bright lexicon of anarchy. He boils down the classic sonata form to one movement and begins developing his theme as soon as it is announced. We should be grateful that he announces it at all; themeless music is the rage at present.

So, as it may be seen, the new dogmatism is more dogmatic than the old. The absence of rule in Schoenberg is an inflexible, cast-iron law of necessity as tyrannical as the Socialism that has replaced Czarism with a more oppressive autocracy, the rule of the unwashed, many-headed monster. Better one tyrant than a million. There is no music of yesterday or to-morrow. There is only the music of Now.