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THE ART OF MUSIC

The Art of Music

A Comprehensive Library of Information for Music Lovers and Musicians

Editor-in-Chief

DANIEL GREGORY MASON
Columbia University

Associate Editors

EDWARD B. HILL LELAND HALL
Harvard University Past Professor, Univ. of Wisconsin

Managing Editor

CÉSAR SAERCHINGER
Modern Music Society of New York

In Fourteen Volumes
Profusely Illustrated

NEW YORK
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC

Garden Concert

Painting by Antoine Watteau

THE ART OF MUSIC: VOLUME THREE
Modern Music

Being Book Three of

A Narrative History of Music

Department Editors:

EDWARD BURLINGAME HILL

AND

ERNEST NEWMAN

Music Critic, 'Daily Post,' Birmingham, England
Author of 'Gluck and the Opera,' 'Hugo Wolf,' 'Richard Strauss,' etc.

Introduction by

EDWARD BURLINGAME HILL

Instructor in Musical History, Harvard University
Formerly Music Critic, 'Boston Evening Transcript'
Editor, 'Musical World,' etc.

NEW YORK

THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC

Copyright, 1915, by
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC, Inc.
[All Rights Reserved]

MODERN MUSIC

INTRODUCTION

The direct sources of modern music are to be found in the works of Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner. This assertion savors of truism, but, since the achievement of these four masters in the enlargement of harmonic idiom, in diversity of formal evolution, and in intrinsic novelty and profundity of musical sentiment and emotion remains so unalterably the point of departure in modern music, reiteration is unavoidable and essential. It were idle to deny that various figures in musical history have shown prophetic glimpses of the future. Monteverdi's taste for unprepared dissonance and instinct for graphic instrumental effect; the extraordinary anticipation of Liszt's treatment of the diminished seventh chord, and the enharmonic modulations to be found in the music of Sebastian Bach, the presages of later German romanticism discoverable in the works of his ill-fated son Wilhelm Friedemann, constitute convincing details. The romantic ambitions of Lesueur as to program-music found their reflection in the superheated imagination of Berlioz, and the music-drama of Wagner derives as conclusively from Fidelio as from the more conclusively romantic antecedents of Euryanthe. But, despite their illuminating quality, these casual outcroppings of modernity do not reverse the axiomatic statement made above.

The trend of modern music, then, may be traced first along the path of the pervasive domination of Wagner; second, the lesser but no less tenacious influence of Liszt; it includes the rise of nationalistic schools, the gradual infiltration of eclecticism leading at last to recent quasi-anarchic efforts to expand the technical elements of music.

I

If the critics of the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries have successfully exposed not only the æsthetic flaws in Wagner's theory of the music-drama, but also his own obvious departures in practice from pre-conceived convictions, as well as the futility of much of his polemic and philosophical writings, European composers of opera, almost without exception, save in Russia, have frankly adopted his methods in whole or in part. Bruckner, Bungert, d'Albert, Schillings, Pfitzner, Goldmark, Humperdinck, Weingartner, and Richard Strauss in Germany; Saint-Saëns (in varying degree), Chabrier, Lalo, Massenet (temporarily), Bruneau and Charpentier (slightly), d'Indy, Chausson, and Dukas in France; Verdi (more remotely), Puccini, and possibly Wolf-Ferrari in Italy; Holbrooke in England, are among the more conspicuous whose obligation to Wagner is frankly perceptible. In Germany the most prominent contributors to dramatic literature, aside from Cornelius, with Der Barbier von Bagdad, and Goetz with Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung, have been Goldmark, Humperdinck, and Richard Strauss. The latter, with an incredibly complex system of leading motives, an elaborately contrapuntal connotation of dramatic situations, aided by an intensely psychological orchestral descriptiveness, has reached the summit of post-Wagnerian drama. His later dramatic experiments—a ruthless adaptation of Molière's Bourgeois gentilhomme, containing the one-act opera Ariadne auf Naxos, and the ballet 'The Legend of Joseph'—are distinctly less representative examples of his dramatic resourcefulness. In France, the Wagnerian influence is typified in such works as Chabrier's Gwendoline, d'Indy'sFervaal, and to a lesser extent Chausson's Le Roi Arthus. Bruneau's realistic operas and Charpentier's sociological Louise belong, first of all, to the characteristically French lyric drama in which the Wagnerian element is relatively unimportant. In Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, Dukas' Ariane et Barbe-bleue, Ravel's L'Heure espagnole, and Fauré's Pénélope, we find a virtually independent conception of opera which may be almost described as anti-Wagnerian. In Italy, the later Verdi shows an independent solution of dramatic problems, although conscious of the work of Wagner. Puccini is the successor of Verdi, rather than the follower of Wagner, although his use of motives and treatment of the orchestra shows at least an unconscious assimilation of Wagnerian practice, Mascagni and Leoncavallo are virtually negligible except for their early successes, and one or two other works. Younger composers like Montemezzi and Zadonai are beginning to claim attention, but Wolf-Ferrari, combining Italian instinct with German training, seems on the way to attain a renascence of the opera buffa, provided that he is not again tempted by the sensational type represented by 'The Jewels of the Madonna.' Opera in England has remained an exotic, save for the operettas of Sullivan, despite the efforts of British composers to vitalize it. Holbrooke's attempt to produce an English trilogy seems fated to join previous failures, notwithstanding his virtuosity and his dramatic earnestness. Russian composers for the stage have steadily resisted the invasion of Wagnerian methods. Adhering, first of all, to the tenets of Dargomijsky, individuals have gradually adopted their own standpoint. The most characteristic works are Borodine's Prince Igor, Rimsky-Korsakoff's Sniégourutchka, Sadko, Mlada, Le Coq d'Or, and Moussorgsky's Boris Godounoff and Khovanshchina.

In the field of orchestral composition, the acceptance of Wagner's procedure in orchestration is even more universal than his dramatic following. If his system follows logically from the adoption of valve horns and valve trumpets, the enlargement of wind instrument groups and the subdivision of the strings, its far-reaching application is still a matter of amazement to the analyst. Even if it be granted that Wagner himself predaciously absorbed individual methods of treatment from Weber, Meyerbeer, Berlioz, and Liszt, the ultimate originality of his idiom justified his manifold obligations. German composers, except among the followers of Brahms, appropriated his extension of orchestral effect as a matter of course, the most notable being Bruckner, Goldmark, Humperdinck, Mahler, and Strauss. If the two latter in turn can claim original idioms of their own, the antecedents of their styles are none the less evident. French composers from Saint-Saëns to Dukas have made varying concessions to his persuasive sonorities; even the stanch Rimsky-Korsakoff fell before the seduction of Wagnerian amplitude and variety of color. Glazounoff, Taneieff, Scriabine, and other Russians followed suit. Among English composers, Elgar and Bantock fell instinctively into line, followed in some degree by William Wallace and Frederick Delius. If Holbrooke is more directly a disciple of Richard Strauss, that fact in itself denotes an unconscious acknowledgment to Wagner.

If Liszt has had a less all-embracing reaction upon modern composers, his sphere of influence has been marked and widely extended. To begin with, his harmonic style has been the subject of imitation second only to Wagner up to the advent of Richard Strauss and Debussy. His invention of the structurally elastic symphonic poem remains the sole original contribution in point of form which the nineteenth century can claim. For even the cyclic sonata form of Franck is but a modification of the academic type, and was foreshadowed by Beethoven and Schumann. The vast evolution of structural freedom, the infinite ramifications of subtle and dramatic program-music, and the resultant additions of the most stimulating character to modern musical literature rest upon the courageous initiative of Liszt. In France, Saint-Saëns' pioneer examples, though somewhat slight in substance, prepared the way for César Franck's Les Éolides and Le Chasseur maudit, Duparc's Lénore, d'Indy's La forêt enchantée, the programmistic Istar variations, Jour d'été à la Montagne, Dukas' L'Apprenti-sorcier, Debussy's Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un faune and the Nocturnes (programmistic if impressionistic), Florent Schmitts' Tragédie de Salomé, and Roussel's Evocations. In Germany, Richard Strauss' epoch-making series of tone-poems, from Macbeth to Also sprach Zarathustra, combine descriptive aptitude and orchestral brilliance with a masterly manipulation of formal elements. Weingartner's Die Gefilde der Seligen and Reger's Böcklin symphonic poems may be added to the list. In Russia, Balakireff's Thamar, Borodine's 'Sketch from Central Asia,' Rimsky-Korsakoff's Scheherezade (although a suite), Glazounoff's Stenka Razine and other less vital works, Rachmaninoff's 'Isle of the Dead,' Scriabine's 'Poem of Ecstasy' and 'Poem of Fire' mark the path of evolution. Smetana's series of six symphonic poems entitled 'My Home' result directly from the stimulus of Liszt. In Finland, Sibelius' tone-poems on national legendary subjects take a high rank for their poetic and dramatic qualities. If in England, Bantock's 'Dante and Beatrice,' 'Fifine at the Fair' and other works, Holbrooke's 'Queen Mab,' Wallace's 'François Villon,' Delius' 'Paris' and Elgar's 'Falstaff' exhibit differing degrees of merit, the example of Liszt is still inspiriting. Moreover, the Lisztian treatment of the orchestra, emphasizing as it does a felicitous employment of instruments of percussion, has proved a remarkable liberating force, especially in Russia and France. Liszt's piano idiom has been assimilated even more widely than in the case of the symphonic poem and orchestral style. Smetana, Saint-Saëns, Balakireff, and Liapounoff occur at once as salient instances.

The contributory reaction of Berlioz and Chopin upon modern music has been relatively less direct, if still apparent. It was exerted first in fertile suggestions to Wagner and Liszt at a susceptible and formative stage in their careers. Both have played some part in the awakening of Russian musical consciousness, Berlioz through his revolutionary orchestral style and programmistic audacity, Chopin through his insinuating pianistic idiom, which we find strongly reflected in the earlier works of Scriabine. Some heritage of Berlioz can undoubtedly be traced in the music of Gustav Mahler, although expressed in a speech quite alien to that of the French pioneer of realism.

It may be remarked in passing that the influence of Brahms has been intensive rather than expansive. This statement is entirely compatible with a just appraisal of the worth and profundity of his music, nor can it in any way be interpreted as a detraction of his unassailable position. But in consideration of the absence of the coloristic and extreme subjective elements in Brahms' style, and in view of its conserving and reactionary force, the great symphonist cannot be regarded as specifically modernistic. Still, with his extraordinary cohesiveness of form and vital rhythmic progress, both in symphonic writing, chamber music and piano pieces, Brahms has affected Reger, Weingartner and Max Bruch in Germany, but also Glazounoff, Rachmaninoff, Medtner, Parry, and others outside of it.

With the four symphonies of Brahms the long evolution of the classic form in Germany has apparently come to an end with an involuntary recognition that little more could be attained upon conventional lines. The symphonies of Bruckner emphasize this realization. Following in Wagner's orchestral footsteps, both their structure and their ideas are of unequal value, in which separate movements not infrequently rise to sublimity of expression and dramatic fervor. While opinion is still divided as to the merit of Mahler's ten symphonies, they represent isolated instances of powerfully conceived and tenaciously executed works whose orchestral eloquence is in singularly apt conformity with their substance. After a precocious and conservative symphony, composed at the age of nineteen, which pleased Brahms, Richard Strauss waited twenty years before attempting in the Symphonia Domestica so elastic a form as almost to escape classification in this type. Despite much foolish controversy over the programmistic features of this work, its brilliant musical substance, its fundamental and logical coherence, and the remarkable plastic coördination of its themes constitute it a unique experiment in free symphonic structure. In France, the symphony has evolved a type somewhat apart from the Teutonic example, although an outcome of it, namely, the cyclical, in which its themes are derived from generative phrases. After three innocuous specimens (one unpublished) Saint-Saëns' third symphony shows many of the attributes of classicality. César Franck's symphony in D minor embodies most of his best qualities, together with much structural originality. Lalo's more fragile work in G minor displays a workmanship and individuality which entitles it to record. Chausson's Symphony in B-flat, despite its kinship with Franck, possesses a significance quite beyond its actual recognition. D'Indy, after composing an excellent cyclic work upon a French folk-song, produced his instrumental masterpiece with a second in B-flat, which for logical structure and fusion of classic elements with modernistic sentiment deserves to be classed as one of the finest of its time. If Russian symphony composers have not as a whole reached as high a mark as in the freer and more imaginative forms, nevertheless Rimsky-Korsakoff, Borodine, Balakireff, Glazounoff, Rachmaninoff, and Taneieff have displayed sympathy with classic ideals, and have achieved excellent if not surpassing results within these limits. The symphonies of Parry, Cowen and others in England have enlarged little upon the conventional scope. Elgar raised high hopes with his first symphony in A-flat, but speedily dismissed them with his second in E-flat. Sibelius, in Finland, having given proof of his uncommon creative force and delineative imagination in his tone-poems, has also exhibited unusual originality and vitality in his four symphonies. The last of these virtually departs from a genuine symphonic form, but its novelty alike in ideas and treatment suggests that he, too, demands greater elasticity of resource. For the problem of combining the native style and technical requirements of the symphony with modern sentiment is one of increasing difficulty.

The field of piano music, chamber works, songs and choral works is of too wide a range for detailed indication of achievement. The piano music of Balakireff, Liapounoff, Rachmaninoff, Scriabine, of Grieg, of Franck, Debussy, Dukas, and Ravel, of Cyril Scott and others merits a high place. The chamber music of Smetana, Dvořák, Grieg (despite its shortcomings), Franck, d'Indy, Fauré, Ravel, of Wolf, Strauss and Reger deserves an equal record. The songs of Wolf and Strauss, of Duparc, Fauré and Debussy, of Moussorgsky, of Sibelius; the choral works of Franck, d'Indy, Pierné, Schmitt, of Delius, Bantock, Elgar and other Englishmen are conspicuous for technical and expressive mastery.

II

Apart from the general assimilation of the innovating features due to Wagner and Liszt, the most striking factor in musical evolution of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been the rise of nationalistic schools of composition. These have deliberately cultivated the use of native folk-song and dance-rhythms, and in the case of operas and symphonic poems have frequently drawn upon national legend for subjects. One of the earliest of these groups was the Bohemian, whose leader, Smetana, already mentioned in connection with the symphonic poem, chamber and piano music, also won a distinguished place by his vivacious comic opera 'The Bartered Bride,' known abroad chiefly by its inimitable overture. If Dvořák promised to be a worthy disciple of a greatly talented pioneer, his abilities were diffused by falling a victim to commissions from English choral societies, and in endeavoring to emulate Brahms. In reality he was most significant when unconscious, as in the Slavic Dances and his naïve and charming Suite, op. 39, although his symphony 'From the New World' and certain chamber works based upon negro themes are as enduring as anything he composed. Hampered by a truly Schubertian lack of self-criticism, his path toward oblivion has been hastened by this fatal defect, although his national flavor and piquant orchestral color deserve a juster fate.

In the Scandinavian countries Grieg, and, to a lesser degree, Nordraak, as well as Svendsen and Sinding tempered nationality with German culture. Grieg, the more dominant personality, was a born poet, and imparted a truly national fervor to his songs and piano pieces. In the sonata form he was pathetically inept, despite the former popularity of his chamber works and piano concerto. Certain mannerisms in abuse of sequence, and a too persistent cultivation of small forms, have caused his works to lose ground rapidly; nevertheless Grieg has given a poetic and nationalistic savor to his best music that makes it impossible to overlook its value.

A coterie of accomplished and versatile musicians which yields to none for intrinsic charm, vitality, and poetic spontaneity is that of the so-called Neo-Russians, self-styled 'the Invincible Band.' Resenting Rubinstein's almost total surrender to Teutonic standards, and scorning Tschaikowsky as representing a pitiable compromise between Russian and German standpoints, they revolted against conventional technique with as great pertinacity as did Galileo, Peri, Caccini, and Monteverdi in the late sixteenth century. Their æsthetic foster-father, Balakireff, for a time dominated the studies and even supervised the composition of the members—Borodine, Cui, Moussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakoff. Ultimately, each followed his own path, though not without a certain community of ideal. Aiming to continue the work of Glinka and Dargomijsky, both in opera and instrumental music, they wished to use folk-songs for themes and to utilize national legends or fairy stories. But they could not resist the alien form of the symphonic poem, and with it the orchestra of Liszt, and, while they opposed the Wagnerian dramatic forms, one at least, Rimsky-Korsakoff, could not withstand the palpable advantages of the Wagnerian orchestra. Their works combined the elements of western and oriental Russia, adhered largely to folk-song or elements of its style, and in the opera embodied folk-dances, semi-Pagan worship and ceremonial with striking nationalistic effect. Many of their orchestral pieces have taken place in the international repertory of orchestras; of the operas a smaller number have penetrated to European theatres. While the nationalistic operas of Rimsky-Korsakoff are little known beyond Russia, they show his talent in a broadly humanistic and epic standpoint, hardly hinted at in his orchestral works. Moussorgsky's Boris Godounoff, one of the finest operas since Wagner, claims attention from the fact that it attains dramatic vitality from a standpoint diametrically opposed to Wagner. The influence of Boris Godounoff is palpable as forming the subtle dramatic idiom of Pelléas et Mélisande.

Glazounoff, Taneieff, and Glière represent the cosmopolitan element among Russian composers of to-day. Of these Glazounoff is the most notable. His early symphonic poem, Stenka Razine, gave promise of an original and brilliant career, but instead he has become steadily more reactionary. Among his eight symphonies there is scarcely one that is preëminent from beginning to end. His ballets, Raymonda, 'The Seasons,' and 'Love's Ruses,' have been surpassed by younger men. His violin concerto is among his most able works. A master of technique and structure and a remarkably erudite figure, his lack of progressiveness has been against him. A younger composer, Tcherepnine, is known for his skillful ballets, 'Narcissus,' 'Pan and Echo,' and 'The Pavilion of Armida,' which incline, nevertheless, towards the conventional. Rachmaninoff is also of reactionary tendencies, although his piano concertos and his fine symphonic poem, 'The Isle of the Dead,' have shown his distinction.

The rise of the modern French school, largely owing to a patriotic reaction after the Franco-Prussian war and the liberal policies of the National Society, has brought about one of the most fertile movements in modern music. The transition from the operas of Gounod, Thomas, Bizet, and the early Massenet to those of Chabrier, Lalo, d'Indy, Bruneau, Charpentier, Debussy, Dukas, Ravel, and Fauré is remarkable for its concentrated progress in dramatic truthfulness. Similarly, beginning with the eclectic and facile Saint-Saëns, the more romantic and fearless Lalo, and the mystic Franck, through the audacious Chabrier and the suave and poetic Fauré, including the serious and devoted followers of Franck, d'Indy, Duparc, de Castillon, Chausson, and Lekeu, the versatile Dukas, to the epoch-making Debussy with the younger men like Ravel, Schmitt and Roussel, French instrumental music has developed, on the one hand, a fervently classic spirit despite its modernism and, on the other, an impressionistic exoticism which is without parallel in modern music. Aside from a vitally new harmonic idiom, which in Debussy reaches its greatest originality despite d'Indy, Fauré, and the later developments of Ravel, the attainment of racially distinct dramatic style in such works as Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, Dukas' Ariane et Barbe-bleue, Ravel's L'Heure espagnole, and Fauré's Pénélope is one of the crowning achievements of this group. Furthermore, following the examples of the younger Russians, the ballets of Jeux and Khamma by Debussy, La Péri by Dukas, La Tragédie de Salomé by Florent Schmitt, Le Festin de l'Arraignée by Roussel, Orphée by Roger-Ducasse, and, most significant of all, Daphnis et Chloé by Maurice Ravel, have given a remarkable impetus to a genuine choreographic revival.

There has been no nationalistic development in England comparable to that in other countries, although there has been no lack of serious and sustained effort to be both modern and individual. The most important of British composers is undoubtedly Elgar, who has attained something like independence with his brilliant and well-made orchestral works, and more especially for his oratorio 'The Dream of Gerontius.' If Elgar only carried on further a systematized use of the leading motive as suggested by Liszt in his oratorios, it was done with a dramatic resource and eloquence which made the method his own. Bantock, gifted with an orchestral perception above the average, showing a natural aptitude for exoticism, achieved a successful fusion of eclectic elements with individuality in his three-part setting of the Rubaîyat of Omar Khayyám. Other choral works and orchestral pieces have met with a more uncertain reception. William Wallace has been conspicuous for his imaginative symphonic poems, and the insight of his essays on music. Frederick Delius, partly German, has maintained a personal and somewhat detached individuality in orchestral, choral and dramatic works of distinctive value. Josef Holbrooke has been mentioned already for his unusual mastery of orchestral technique, and his courageous and ambitious attempts in opera. Many younger composers are striving to be personal and independent, though involuntarily affected by one or another of existent currents in modern music. Of these Cyril Scott attempts a praiseworthy modernistic and impressionistic sentiment, in which he leans heavily on Debussy's harmonic innovations. Thus, while English composers have been active, they have fallen to the ready temptations of eclecticism, a growing force in music of to-day, and in consequence their art has not the same measure of nationalistic import as in Russia, France, and Germany.

III

In the meantime, as the musical world has moved forward in respect to structure from the symphony to the symphonic poem, followed by its logical sequence the tone-poem, in which the elements of various forms have been incorporated, so has there been progress and even revolution in the technical material of music itself. Dargomijsky was probably the pioneer in using the whole-tone scale, as may be seen in the third act of his opera 'The Stone Guest,' composed in 1869. Rimsky-Korsakoff elaborated on his foundation as early as 1880 in his opera Sniégourutchka. Moussorgsky showed unusually individual harmonic tendencies, as the first edition of Boris Godounoff before the revisions and alterations by Rimsky-Korsakoff clearly demonstrate. After casual experiments by Chabrier, d'Indy, and Fauré, Debussy founded an original harmonic system, in which modified modal harmony, a remarkable extension of whole-tone scale chords, the free use of ninths, elevenths and thirteenths are the chief ingredients. Dukas has imitated Debussy to some extent, Ravel owes much to him; both have developed independently, Ravel in particular has approached if not crossed the boundaries of poly-harmony. Scriabine, following the natural harmonic heritage of the Russians, has evolved an idiom of his own possessing considerable novelty but disfigured by monotony, in that it consists chiefly of transpositions of the thirteenth-chord with the alteration of various constituent intervals. What he might not have accomplished can only be conjectured, since his career has been terminated by his sudden death. Although Richard Strauss has greatly enlarged modern harmonic resource, his results must be regarded on the whole as a by-product of his contrapuntal virtuosity. In his treatise on harmony Schönberg refers to his 'discovery' of the whole-tone scale long after both Russians and French had used it, but it is noteworthy that Schönberg arrived at the conception of this scale and its chords with an absolute and unplagiaristic independence.

The most recent developments affecting the technical character of music are poly-harmony, or simultaneous use of chords in different keys, and free dissonant counterpoint. Striking instances of the former type of anarchic experiment may be found in the music of Igor Stravinsky, whose reputation has been made by the fantastic imagination and the dramatic sincerity of his ballets 'The Bird of Fire,' Petrouchka, 'The Ceremonial of Spring,' and 'The Nightingale.' In these he has mingled Russian and French elements, fusing them into a highly personal and extremely dissonant style, which in its pungent freedom and ingenious mosaic of tonalities is both highly diverting and poignantly expressive. Stravinsky is one of the most daring innovators of to-day, and both his dramatic vitality and the audacity of his musical conceptions mark him as a notable figure from whom much may be expected.

If Maurice Ravel, as shown in his ballet Daphnis et Chloé, was a pioneer in poly-harmony, Alfred Casella, of Italian parentage but of French education, has gone considerably further. Similar tendencies may be found in the music of Bartók, Kodály and other Hungarians.

It seemed formerly that Strauss had pushed the dissonant contrapuntal style as far as it could go, but his style is virtually conventional beside that of the later Schönberg. Schönberg has already passed through several evolutionary stages, but his mature idiom abjures tonality to an incredible extent, and he forces the procedures of free counterpoint to such audacious disregard of even unconventional euphony that few can compass his musical message. Time may prove, however, that tonality is a needless convention, and it is possible to declare that there is nothing illogical in his contrapuntal system. It lies in the extravagant extension of principles of dissonance which have already been accepted. It is indubitable that Schönberg succeeds in expressing moods previously unknown to musical literature, and it is conceivable that music may encompass unheard-of developments in this direction, just as poly-harmony has already proved extremely fruitful.

The developments of poly-harmony and dissonant contrapuntal style prophesy the near inadequacy of our present musical scale. Busoni and others have long since advocated a piano in which the sharps and flats should have separate keys. As music advanced from the modes to the major and minor keys, and finally to the chromatic scale, so the necessity for a new scale may constitute logically the next momentous problem in musical art.

Within recent years, the barriers of nationalism have become relaxed. An almost involuntary interchange of idioms has caused music to take on an international character despite a certain maintenance of racial traits. Eclecticism is becoming to a certain extent universal. Achievement is too easily communicable from one country to another. In some respects music was more interesting when it was more parochial. To prophesy that music is near to anarchy is to convict one's self of approaching senility, for the ferment of the revolutionary element has always existed in art. Since the time of Wagner and Liszt, however, musical development has proceeded with such extreme rapidity as to endanger the endurance of our traditional material. Poly-harmony, dissonant counterpoint and the agitation for a new scale are suspicious indications. Disregarding the future, however, let us realize that the diversity and complexity of modern music is enthralling, and that most of us can readily endure it as it now is for a little longer.

Edward Burlingame Hill.

May, 1915.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME THREE

ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOLUME THREE

MODERN MUSIC

CHAPTER I
BY- AND AFTER-CURRENTS OF THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

Introductory; the term 'modern'—The 'old-romantic' tradition and the 'New German' school—The followers of Mendelssohn: Lachner, F. Hiller, Rietz, etc.; Carl Reinecke—Disciples of Schumann: Robert Volkmann; Bargiel, Kirchner and others; the Berlin circle; the musical genre artists: Henselt, Heller, etc. (pianoforte); Jensen, Lassen, Abt, etc. (song)—The comic opera and operetta: Lortzing, Johann Strauss, and others—French eclecticism in symphonic and operatic composition: Massenet—Saint-Saëns, Lalo, Godard, etc.

The term 'Modern Music,' which forms the title of this volume, is subject to several interpretations. Just as in the preceding volume we were obliged to qualify our use of the words 'classic' and 'romantic,' partly because all such nomenclature is more or less arbitrary, partly because of the fusion of styles and dove-tailing of periods which may be observed in the history of any art, so it now becomes necessary to define the word 'modern' in its present application.

Now 'modern' may mean merely new or up-to-date. And in that sense it may indicate any degree of newness: it may include the last twenty-five years or the last century, or it may be made to apply to contemporaneous works only. But in another sense—that generally accepted in connection with music—it means 'advanced,' progressive, or unprecedented in any other period. Here, too, we may understand varying degrees of modernity. The devotees of the most recent development, impatient of the usual broad application of the term, have dubbed their school the 'futurist.' In fact, any of these characterizations, whether in a time sense or a quality sense, are merely relative. Wagner's disciples, disdainful of the romanticists, called his music the 'music of the future.' Now, alas, critics classify him as a romantic composer! Bach, on the other hand, long popularly regarded as an archaic bugaboo, is now frequently characterized as a veritable modern. 'How modern that is!' we exclaim time and again, while listening to an organ toccata or fugue arranged by Busoni! Beethoven, the great classic, is in his later period certainly more 'modern' than many a romanticist—Mendelssohn, for instance, or even Berlioz—though only in a harmonic sense, for he had not the command of orchestral color that the great and turbulent Frenchmen made accessible to the world.

The newness of the music is thus seen to have little to do with its modernity. Even the word 'contemporary' gives us no definite clue, for there are men living to-day—like Saint-Saëns—whose music is hardly modern when compared to that of a Wolf, dead these twelve years, or his own late countrymen Chabrier and Fauré—not to speak of the recently departed Scriabine with his clavier à lumière.

But it is quite impossible to include in such a volume as this only the true moderns—in the æsthetic sense. We should have to go back to Beethoven with his famous chord comprising every degree of the diatonic scale (in the Ninth Symphony), or at least to Chopin, according to one interpretation. According to another we should have to exclude Brahms and all his neo-classical followers who content themselves with composing in the time-honored forms. (Since there will always be composers who prefer to devote themselves to the preservation and continuation of formal tradition, this 'classical' drift will, as Walter Niemann remarks, be a 'modernism' of all times.) Brahms has, as a matter of fact, been disposed of in the preceding volume, but the inclusion in the present volume of men like Volkmann, Lachner, etc., some of whom were born long before Brahms, calls for an apology. It is merely a matter of convenience, just as the treatment of men like Glinka and Gade in connection with the nationalistic developments of the later nineteenth century is merely an expedient. Such chronological liberties are the historian's license. We have, to conclude, simply taken the word modern in its widest and loosest sense, both as regards time and quality, and we shall let the text explain to what degree a composer justifies his position in the volume. We may say at the outset that all the men reviewed in the present chapter would have been included in Volume II but for lack of space.

In Volume II the two great movements known as the classic and the romantic have been fairly brought to a close. Brahms and Franck on the one side, Wagner and Liszt on the other, may be considered to have concluded the romantic period as definitely as Beethoven concluded the classic. Like him, too, they not only surveyed but staked out the path of the future. But no great art movement is ever fully concluded. (It has been said by æsthetic philosophers that we are still in the era of the Renaissance.) Just as in the days of Beethoven there lived the Cherubinis, the Clementis, the Schuberts (as regards the symphony at least) who trod in the great man's footsteps or explored important by-paths, in some respects supplemented and completed his work; so there are by- and after-currents of the Romantic Movement which also cannot be ignored. They are represented by men like Lachner, Ferdinand Hiller, Reinecke and Volkmann in Germany; by Saint-Saëns, Massenet and Lalo in France; Gade in Denmark.[1] Some of their analogous predecessors have all but passed from memory, perhaps their own works will soon disappear from the current répertoire. Especially in the case of the Germans (whose country has certainly suffered the strain of over-cultivation and over-production, and which has produced in this age the particular brand known as 'kapellmeister music') is this likely. But it must be borne in mind that these composers had command of technical resources far beyond the ken of their elder brothers; also that, by virtue of the more subjective qualities characteristic of the music of their period, as well as the vastly broadened musical culture of this later day, they were able to appeal more readily to a very wide audience.

The historical value of these men lies in their exploitation of these same technical resources. They thoroughly grasped the formulæ of their models; what the pioneers had to hew out by force, these followers acquired with ease. They worked diligently within these limits, exhausting the possibilities of the prescribed area and proving the ground, so to speak, so that newcomers might tread upon it with confidence. They were not as uncompromising, perhaps, as the pioneers and high-priests themselves and therefore fused styles that others thought irreconcilable. What seemed iconoclastic became commonplace in their hands. Thus their eclecticism opened the way for new originalities; their very conservatism induced progress.

I

Germany, it will be remembered, was, during Wagner's lifetime, divided into two camps: the classic-romantic Mendelssohn-Schumann school which later rallied about the person of Brahms, on the one hand, and the Wagner-Liszt, sometimes called the late-romantic or 'New German' school, on the other. The adherents of the former are those whom we have called the poets, the latter the painters, in music; terms applying rather to the manner than to the matter, since the 'painters,' for another reason—namely, because they believed that a poetic idea should form the basis of the music and determine its forms—might with equal rights call themselves 'poets.' And, indeed, their followers, the 'New Germans,' among whom we reckon Mahler and Strauss, constitute what in a later chapter we have called the 'poetic' school of contemporary Germany.

Few musicians accepted Wagner's gospel in his lifetime. Raff and other Liszt disciples, the Weimar group, in other words, were virtually the only ones. A host, however, worshipped the names of Mendelssohn and Schumann. They gathered in Leipzig, their citadel, where Mendelssohn reorganized the Gewandhaus concerts in 1835,[2] and founded the Royal Conservatory in 1843, and in the Rhine cities, where Schumann's influence was greatest. These men flourished during the very time that Wagner was the great question of the day. While preaching the gospel of romanticism, they also upheld the great classic traditions. The advent of Brahms, indeed, brought a revival of pure classic feeling. This persists even to-day in the works of men whose romantic inspirations, akin to Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Chopin, find expression in forms of classic cast.

Both Schumann and Wagner were reformers interested in the broadening of musical culture, the improvement of taste, and the establishment of a standard of artistic propriety—Wagner on the stage, Schumann in the concert room. The former was successful, the latter only partially so. For, while the standards of the concert room are much higher to-day than they were in Schumann's day, musical taste in the home, which should be guided by these standards, has, if anything, deteriorated. The reason for this lies primarily in one of the inevitable developments of musical romanticism itself—the genre tendency; secondarily, in the fact that, while the Wagnerians were propagandists, writers of copious polemics and agitators, the classic romanticists were purely professional musicians who disdained to write, preferring deeds to words (and incidentally doing far too much), or else, like Hiller, were feuilletonists, pleasant gossips about their art and nothing more.

The development of the small forms, the miniature, the genre in short, and the corresponding decay of the larger forms was perhaps the most outstanding result of the romantic movement. Wagner alone, the dramatic romanticist, continued to paint large canvases, frescoes in vivid colors. The 'poetic' romanticists were of a lyric turn, and required compact and intimate forms of expression. They had created the song, they had built up a new piano literature out of small pieces, miniatures like Schubert's 'Musical Moments,' Schumann's 'Fantasy Pieces,' Mendelssohn's 'Songs without Words,' Field's 'Nocturnes,' Chopin's Dances, Preludes, and Études. Franz, Jensen, Lassen, and others continued the song; Brahms, with his Intermezzi; Henselt, Heller, and Kirchner, with his piano miniatures, the piano piece. The first degenerated into Abt, Curschmann, and worse, the second into the type of thing of which 'The Last Hope' and 'The Maiden's Prayer' were the ultimate manifestations. Sentiment ran over in small gushes and drippings, even the piano study was made the vehicle for a sigh. The sonata of a former day became a sonatina or an 'impromptu' of one kind or another.

The parallel thing now happened in other fields. The concert overture of Mendelssohn had in a measure displaced the symphony. What has been called the 'genre symphony' of Mendelssohn, Schumann, et al. was also in the direction of minimization. Even Brahms in his gigantic works emphasizes the tendency by the intermezzo character of his slow movements, by the orchestral filigree partaking of the chamber music style. Now came the revival of the orchestral suite by Lachner and Raff, the sinfonietta, and the serenade for small orchestra. Again we sense the same trend in the appearance of the choral ballad and in the tremendous output of small dramatic cantatas for mixed or men's voices.

In France, instrumental literature during the nineteenth century had been largely tributary to that of Germany, just as its opera earlier in the century was of Italian stock. But the development of the 'grand' opera of Meyerbeer, on the one hand, and the opéra comique, on the other, had produced a truly Gallic form of expression, of which the romanticism of the century made use. Gounod and his colleagues of the lyric drama; Bizet, the genius of his generation, with his sparkling rhythms, his fine tunes and his orchestral freshness; Délibes and David with their oriental color, compounded a new French idiom which already found a quasi-symphonic expression in the L'Arlésienne suites of Bizet. Berlioz stands as a colossus among his generation and to this day has perhaps not been quite assimilated by his countrymen. The Germans have profited from his orchestral reforms at least as much as the French. But he gave the one tremendous impetus to symphonic composition, stimulated interest in Beethoven and Weber and so pointed the way for his younger compatriots. Already he speaks of Saint-Saëns as an accomplished musician.

Saint-Saëns is, indeed, the next great exponent of the classic tradition as well as the earliest disciple of the late romantic school of Liszt and Wagner in France. Beside him, Massenet, no less great as technician, forms the transition to modernism on the operatic side, while Lalo and Godard devote themselves to both departments. César Franck, the Belgian, stands aloof in his ascetic isolation as the real creator of the modern French idiom.

II

We shall now consider some of these 'transition' composers in detail; first the Germans, then the French.

Certain attributes they all have in common. Most of them lived long and prospered, enjoying a wide influence or popularity in their day; Lachner and Reinecke both came near to ninety; Volkmann near eighty; Saint-Saëns is still hale at eighty. All of them were highly productive: Hiller, Reinecke, Raff, and Lachner surpassed 200 in their opus-numbers; Saint-Saëns has gone well over a hundred; and Massenet has written no less than twenty-three operas alone. Nearly all of them were either virtuosos or conductors: Hiller, Reinecke, Saint-Saëns, Bülow, Henselt, Heller were brilliant pianists; Lachner, Saint-Saëns, and Widor also organists; Godard a violinist. The first four of these were eminent conductors. Most of them were pedagogues besides; some, such as Reinecke, Hiller, Jadassohn, Rietz, and Massenet, among the most eminent of their generation.

Franz Lachner is the oldest of them. He was born, 1803, in Rain (Upper Bavaria), and died, 1890, in Munich. Thus he came near filling out four-score and ten, antedating Wagner by ten years and surviving him by seven. His career came into actual collision with that of the Bayreuth master too, since the latter's coming to Munich as the favorite of the newly ascended King Ludwig II forced Lachner from his autocratic position as general musical director.

Many forces must have reacted upon an artist whose life thus spans the ages. He was a friend of Schubert in Vienna, where he became organist in 1824, and is said to have found favor even with Beethoven. Sechter and Abbé Stadler gave him the benefit of their learning. After holding various conductor's posts in Vienna and in Mannheim he finally found his way to Munich, where he had already brought out his D minor symphony with success. As court kapellmeister he conducted the opera, the church performances of the royal chapel choir and the concerts of the Academy, meanwhile creating a long series of successful works, nearly all of which exhibit his astounding contrapuntal skill. His seven orchestral suites, a form which he and Raff revived, occupy a special place in orchestral literature, as a sort of direct continuation of Bach's and Händel's instrumental works. They are veritable treasure stores of contrapuntal art. Perhaps another generation will appreciate them better; to-day they have fallen into neglect. This is even more true of his eight symphonies, four operas, two oratorios, etc. Of his chamber music (piano quartets, string quartets, quintets, sextets, nonet for wind, etc.), his piano pieces and songs, influenced by Schubert, some few numbers have survived.

Most prominent in Mendelssohn's immediate train is Ferdinand Hiller. His junior only by two years (he was born Oct. 24, 1811, in Frankfurt), he followed closely in the footsteps of that master. Like him, he came of Jewish and well-to-do parents; like him, he had the advantage of an early training, a broad culture and wide travel. A pupil of Hummel and a brilliant pianist, he was presented to Beethoven in Vienna; in Paris he hobnobbed with Cherubini, Rossini, Chopin, Liszt, Meyerbeer and Berlioz, taught and concertized; in Milan he produced an opera (Romilda) by the aid of Rossini. Mendelssohn, already his friend, brought out his oratorio 'Jerusalem Destroyed' at the Gewandhaus in 1840, and in 1843-44 (after a sojourn in Rome) he himself directed the Gewandhaus concerts made famous by Mendelssohn. Shortly after, he inaugurated a series of subscription concerts in Dresden, also conducting a chorus, and there brought out two operas (Traum in der Christnacht, 1845, and Konradin, 1847). Finally he did for Cologne what Mendelssohn had done for Leipzig by organizing the conservatory and the Gewandhaus concerts: he established the Cologne conservatory (1850) and became conductor of the Konzertgesellschaft and the Konzertchor, both of which participated in the famous Gürzenich concerts and the Rhenish music festivals. The eminence of his position may be deduced from the fact that in 1851-52 he was asked to direct the Italian opera in Paris. As teacher and pianist he was no less renowned. For that reason alone history cannot ignore him.

As a composer Hiller illustrates what we have said of the degeneration of the early romantic school into musical genre, though as a contemporary of Mendelssohn he must be reckoned as a by-rather than a post-romantic. He commanded only the small forms, in which, however, he displayed great technical finish, polished grace and a 'clever pedantry.' In short piano pieces, Rêveries (of which he wrote four series), impromptus, rondos, marches, waltzes, variations, and études he was especially happy. An F-sharp major piano concerto, sonatas and suites, as well as his chamber works (violin and 'cello sonatas, trios, quartets, etc.), are grateful and pleasing in their impeccable smoothness. But his six operas, two oratorios, three symphonies and other large works have gone the way of oblivion. His numerous overtures, cantatas, choral ballads, vocal quartets, duets and songs stamp him as a real, miniature-loving romantic. In productivity, too, he remains true to the breed; his opus numbers exceed two hundred. Hiller died in Cologne in 1885.

Another friend of Mendelssohn was Julius Rietz (1812-77), whose brother Eduard, the violinist, had been the friend of the greater master's youth. He, too, after conducting in Düsseldorf, came to the Leipzig Gewandhaus as Gade's successor in 1848, took Mendelssohn's place as municipal musical director and taught at the conservatory until he became court kapellmeister and head of the conservatory in Dresden. His editorial work, the complete editions of the works of Bach, Händel, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Mozart, published by the house of Breitkopf and Härtel, are important. His compositions are wholly influenced by Mendelssohn.

Among the few who actually had the benefit of Mendelssohn's personal tuition is Richard Wüerst (1824-81), whose activities were, however, centred in Berlin, where he was musical director from 1874, royal professor from 1877, and a member of the Academy. His second symphony (op. 21) was prize-crowned in Cologne and his cantata, Der Wasserneck, is a grateful composition for mixed chorus. Several of his songs also have become popular.

Karl Reinecke is less exclusive in his influence. He divides his allegiance at least equally between Mendelssohn and Schumann. He is the example par excellence of the professional musician, the cobbler who sticks to his last. He did not, like Hiller, indulge in literary chit-chat about his art, confining himself to writings of pedagogical import. He learned his craft from his father, an excellent musician and drill-master, and never had to go outside his home for direct instruction. Thus he became an accomplished pianist (unrivalled at least in one department—Mozart), at nineteen appeared as virtuoso in Sweden and Denmark, and in 1846-48 was court pianist to King Christian VIII. After spending some time in Paris he joined Hiller's teaching staff in Cologne conservatory, then held conductor's posts in Barmen and Breslau, and finally (1860) occupied Mendelssohn's place at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. There, when the new building was dedicated in 1884, his bust in marble was placed beside those of Mendelssohn and Schumann, and not till 1885 was he dethroned from his seat of authority—with the advent of Nikisch. At the conservatory, too, his activity was continuous from 1860 on—as instructor in piano and free composition. From 1897 to his retirement in 1902 he was director of studies.

Reinecke was born in 1824 at Altona, near Hamburg, and enjoyed the characteristic longevity of the 'transition' composers, living well into the neighborhood of ninety. In fecundity he surpasses even Hiller, for his works number well-nigh three hundred. Besides Mendelssohnian perfection, well-rounded classic form and fine organization in workmanship, flavored with a touch of Schumannesque subjectivity, Reinecke shows traces of more advanced influences. The idioms of Brahms and even the 'New Germans' crept into his work as time went on. Of course, since Reinecke was a famous pedagogue, his piano compositions (sonatas for two and four hands, sonatinas, fantasy pieces, caprices, and many other small forms) enjoyed a great reputation as teaching material, which somewhat overshadowed their undoubted intrinsic value as music. His four piano concertos are no longer heard, nor are those for violin, for 'cello, and for harp. But his chamber music—the department where thorough musicianship counts for most—is no doubt the most staple item in his catalogue. There are a quintet, a quartet, seven trios, besides three 'cello sonatas, four violin sonatas, and a fantasy for violin and piano, also a sonata for flute. His most popular and perhaps his best work are the Kinderlieder, 'of classic importance in every sense, easily understood by children and not without interest for adults.'[3] Again it is the miniature form that prevails. Similarly in the orchestral field, the overtures (Dame Kobold, Aladin, Friedensfeier, Festouvertüre, In memoriam) and the serenade for string orchestra have outlasted the three symphonies, while the operas ('King Manfred,' 1867, three others, and the singspiel 'An Adventure of Händel'), as well as an oratorio, masses, etc., have already faded from memory, though the smaller choral works, with orchestra and otherwise (including the Fairy Poems for women's voices and the cycle Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe), still maintain themselves in the repertoire of German societies.

Salomon Jadassohn (1831-1902) was still more of a pedagogue and less of a composer. Yet he wrote copiously, over one hundred works being published. It is to be noted that he was a pupil of Liszt as well as Moritz Hauptmann, but he gravitated to Leipzig and lived there from 1852 on. He has a particular fondness for the canon form and makes his chief mark in orchestral and chamber music. But his teaching manuals on harmony and counterpoint are his real monument.

III

Undoubtedly the most important contemporary of Brahms, following in tracks of Schumann, was Robert Volkmann. His acquaintance with Schumann was the predominating stimulus of his artistic career, and, since Brahms is too big and independent a genius to deserve the epithet, Volkmann may count as the Düsseldorf master's chief epigone. He was but five years younger than Schumann, being born April 6, 1815, at Lommatzsch in Saxony, the son of a cantor, who instructed him in piano and organ playing. He studied theory with Anacker in Freiberg and K. F. Becker in Leipzig. He taught in Prague (1839) and Budapest (1842), lived in Vienna 1854-58, and again in Prague, where he was professor of harmony and counterpoint at the National Academy of Music, and died in 1893.

His first published work, the 'Fantasy Pictures' for piano, appeared in 1839 in Leipzig. Unlike most other composers of this group, he managed to give his larger forms a permanent value; his two symphonies, in B major (op. 44) and D minor (op. 53) respectively, are still frequently played. Especially the last contains matter that is imbued with real feeling and effectively handled. His three serenades for string orchestra (opera 62, 63, and 69, the last with 'cello obbligato) are no less pleasing, and, in spite of the tribute which Volkmann pays to Schumann in all his works, even original. Of other instrumental music there are two overtures, the piano trio in B minor, which first made Volkmann's name more widely known, together with two string quartets in A minor and G minor, one other trio and four more quartets, a 'cello concerto, a romance each for 'cello and violin (with piano), a Konzertstück for piano and a number of small works for piano as well as for violin and piano. Among his vocal compositions two masses for men's voices and a number of secular pieces for solo voice with orchestral accompaniment are the most important.

Woldemar Bargiel (1828-97), Theodor Kirchner (1824-1903), Karl Grädener (1812-83), and Albert Dietrich (b. 1829) are all disciples of Schumann. The first, a stepbrother of Clara Schumann, is perhaps the most important. He worked chiefly with the orchestra and chamber combinations, his overture to 'Medea' and his trios being most noteworthy, but he contributed to choral and solo song literature as well. Kirchner is known for his finely emotional piano miniatures (some accompanied by string instruments) as well as for chamber music and songs. Grädener, too, composed in all these forms, and Dietrich, who was court kapellmeister in Oldenburg and was in close personal touch with Schumann in Düsseldorf, left symphonies, overtures, chamber music and songs altogether in the spirit of the great arch-romantic.

The composers so far discussed constitute what is sometimes called the Leipzig circle. While they can not in any sense be considered as radicals, and, indeed, were frequently attacked as conservative or academic by the followers of the more radical wing which made its headquarters at Weimar, they appear distinctly progressive when compared with the ultra-conservative group of composers centred in Berlin, who made it their particular duty to uphold tradition and to apply their energies to the creation of choral music of rather antique type. 'It may be that the attitude of certain Berlin masters,' says Pratt,[4] 'like Grell, Dehn, and Kiel, serve a useful purpose as a counterpoise to the impulsive swing of style away from the traditions of the old vocal counterpoint. They certainly helped to keep musical education from forgetting solid structure in composition amid its desires to exploit impressionistic and sensational devices. Probably this reactionary influence did good in the end, though its intolerant narrowness exasperated the many who were eagerly searching out new paths. It at least resulted in making Berlin a centre for choral music of a severe type, for able teachers of the art of singing, for musical theory and for scholarly investigators of musical history.' It may be added that the Royal Academy was the stronghold of this extreme 'right wing,' and that the chief institutions which helped to uphold old vocal traditions were the Singakademie, the Domchor, the Institut für Kirchenmusik (later merged into the Hochschule für Musik). The Conservatory, founded in 1850 by Marx, Kullak, and Stern, and the Neue Akademie der Tonkunst, established in 1855 by Theodor Kullak, also acquired considerable importance.

Eduard August Grell (1800-86) gave proof of his contrapuntal genius in a series of sacred works including a sixteen-part mass, an oratorio, and a Te Deum, besides many songs and motets. He assisted Rungenhagen in conducting the Singakademie from 1832, becoming sole conductor and teacher of composition at the Academy in 1851, and was a musician of very wide influence. Siegfried Dehn (1799-1858) is chiefly important as teacher of a number of the composers mentioned in this chapter and as the author of treatises. Friedrich Kiel (1821-85), whose requiem in F minor has been called among all later works of this class the most worthy successor of those of Mozart and Cherubini, has also written a Missa Solemnis, an oratorio Christus, and another Requiem (A minor)—works which attest above all the writer's polyphonic skill, and which prove the appropriateness of applying such a style to modern works of devotional character. Kiel's Stabat mater, Te Deum, 130th Psalm and two-part motets for women's voices, as well as his chamber music and piano pieces, are all worthy of consideration. Karl Friedrich Rungenhagen (d. 1851) and August Wilhelm Bach (d. 1869), both noted as composers of choral music, may complete our review of the 'Berlin circle.'

There remain to be mentioned those specialists who are concerned almost exclusively with the two most characteristic mediums of the romantic genre—the piano piece and the song. Schumann and Chopin had brought the miniature piano composition to its highest plane of expression and the most advanced technical standard, which even the dramatic imagination and the virtuoso brilliance of Liszt could not surpass. They and such milder romanticists as Mendelssohn and John Field had brought this class of music within the reach of amateurs, Schumann even within that of the child. Brahms, with no thought of the dilettante, had intensified this form of expression, making a corresponding demand upon technical ability. It remained for men like Adolf Henselt, Stephen Heller, and Theodor Kullak to popularize the new pianistic idiom, as Clementi, Hummel, and Moscheles had popularized that of the classics. These are the real workers in genre, monochrome genre, with their pictorial description, their somewhat bourgeois romanticism and sometimes maudlin sentimentality. Even their études are cast in an easy lyrical vein which was made to convey the pretty sentiment.

Henselt (1814-89) was an eminent pianist, born in Silesia, pupil of Hummel and Sechter in Vienna. After 1838 he lived in St. Petersburg. Pieces like the Poème d'amour and the 'Spring Song' are comparable to Mendelssohn's 'Songs without Words,' but they are more richly embroidered and of a fuller sonority. His F minor concerto is justly famous. Stephen Heller (1814-88) was also famous as a concert pianist. Of his compositions, to the number of 150, all for his own instrument, many are truly and warmly poetic in content. Though lacking Schumann's passion and Chopin's harmonic genius, he surpasses Mendelssohn in the originality and individuality of his ideas. In a number of his things, probably pot-boilers, he leans dangerously to the salon type of composition, with which many of his immediate followers flooded the market. We are all familiar with the album-leaf, fly-leaf, mood-picture, fairy and flower piece variety of piano literature, as well as the pseudo-nature study, the travel picture in which the Rhine and its castles and Loreley, the Alps and its cowbells, Venice with its barcarolles and Naples with its tarantellas figure so conspicuously.

Kullak (1818-82), already mentioned as the founder of the Neue Akademie of Berlin and famous both as pianist and teacher, wrote some 130 works, most of which is in the salon type or in the form of brilliant fantasias and paraphrases, less important, perhaps, than his études ('School of Octave Playing,' etc.). The piano technicians Henri Hertz (1803-88), Sigismund Thalberg (1812-71), Karl Klindworth (b. 1830), Karl Tausig (1841-71), Nicolai Rubinstein (1835-81), brother of Anton and founder of the Moscow conservatory, and Hans von Bülow, of whom we shall speak later, might all be mentioned in this connection, though their work as virtuosi, teachers, and editors is of greater moment than their efforts as original composers.

The song engaged the exclusive activity of numberless composers of this period, and perhaps to a great extent with as untoward results as the piano piece. But there are, on the other hand, men like Eduard Lassen (1830-1904), Adolf Jensen (1837-79), and Wilhelm Taubert (1811-91) whose work, in part at least, will take a place beside that of the great romantics. Robert Franz, by far the most important of these, has been treated in Volume II (p. 289). Taubert is to-day chiefly known for his 'Children's Songs,' full of ingenuous charm and sincere feeling. It should not be forgotten, however, that their composer wrote a half dozen operas, incidental music for Euripides' 'Medea' and Shakespeare's 'Tempest,' as well as symphonies, overtures, chamber, piano and choral works. Berlin, his birthplace, remained his headquarters. Here he conducted the court concerts, the opera and the Singakademie, and was the president of the musical section in the Senate of the Royal Academy.

Adolf Jensen, in Hugo Riemann's judgment, is much more than Franz entitled to the lyric mantle of Schumann. His songs, appearing in modest series bearing no special title, have in them much real poetic imagination. They are unmistakably influenced by Wagner. Books 4, 6, and 22, as well as the two cycles Dolorosa and Erotikon, are picked by Naumann as especially noteworthy. The popular Lehn' deine Wang is most frequently sung, but is one of the less meritorious of Jensen's songs. The composer has also been successful with pianoforte works, his sonata op. 25 and the pieces of opera 37, 38, and 42 being worthy essays along the lines of Schumann. An eminently aristocratic character and a profound subjective expression are their distinguishing features, together with the soft beauty of their melodic line. Jensen was a native of Königsberg (1837), and spent some years in Russia in order to earn sufficient money to live near Schumann in Düsseldorf, but the tragic end of the latter frustrated this plan. Hence he followed a call to conduct the theatre orchestra in Posen, later going to Copenhagen, Königsberg, Berlin, Dresden, and Graz. He died in Baden-Baden in 1879.

Lassen, another song-writer of distinction, came more definitely under the Liszt influence and will therefore be treated with the 'New Germans' in another section.

The degeneration of the song, corresponding to that of the small piano forms, is to be noted in the productions of such men as Franz Abt (1819-85) and Karl Friedrich Curschmann (1804-41). Abt is among song-writers the typical Spiessbürger, the middle-class Philistine dear to the Männerchor member's heart. His songs are of that popular melodiousness which at its best flavors of the folk-song and at its worst of the music hall. Of the former variety are 'Wenn die Schwalben heimwärts ziehn' and 'Gute Nacht, mein herziges Kind.' All of Abt's songs and vocal quartets are of the more or less saccharine sentimentality which for a time was such an appealing factor in American popular music. Indeed, when Abt visited the United States in 1872 he was received with extraordinary acclaim.

Curschmann's songs are perhaps slightly superior in musical value, and at one time were equally popular, but they are not as near to becoming folk-songs as are some of Abt's. Many others might be mentioned among the purveyors of this sentimental stuff. If, as Naumann says, Taubert and his kind are the musical bourgeoisie, these are the small middle class. Arno Kleffel (b. 1840), Louis Ehlert (1825-84), Heinrich Hofmann (1842-1902), Alexander von Fielitz (b. 1860) may be regarded as standing on the border line of the two provinces.

Much more worthy, from a purely musical standpoint, are the frank expressions of good humor and hilarity, the light rhythmic sing-song of the comic opera and the operetta represented by Lortzing and Johann Strauss (Jr.), respectively. Albert Lortzing (1801-51) revived or perpetuated in a new (and more engaging) form the singspiel of J. A. Hiller and Dittersdorf, the genre which, as we remember, had its origin in the ballad operas of eighteenth-century England. For all his lightheartedness and ingenuousness, and despite his indebtedness to Italy and the opéra comique, Lortzing belongs to the Romantic movement. Bie is of that opinion and says of him: 'He was at bottom a tender and lightly sentimental nature running over with music and winning his popularity in the genre of the bourgeois song and the heart-quality chorus.' Born as the son of an actor, travelling around from theatre to theatre, learning to play various instruments, appearing in juvenile rôles, becoming actor, singer and conductor by turns, Lortzing fairly absorbed the ingredients that go to make the successful provider of light amusement. Successful he was only in an artistic sense—economically always 'down on his luck.' He began to compose early and turned out operas by the dozen, all dialogue operas or singspiele, writing (or adapting) both words and music. Not till 1835 did he make a hit—with Die beiden Schützen. Zar und Zimmermann, Der Wildschütz, Undine (a romantic fairy opera), and Der Waffenschmied are the most successful of his works, and still live as vigorous an existence in Germany as the Gilbert and Sullivan operas do in England. He became more and more popular as time went on, for he had no successful imitator. No one after him managed to write such dear old songs, such funny ensembles, and such touching scenes of every-day life. No one, in short, could make people laugh and cry by turns with such perfect musical art. He is a classic, as classic in his form as Dittersdorf; but, as Bie says, Mozart, Schubert, and Weber had lived, and, for Lortzing, not in vain.

In this department, too, we must record a degeneration. It was accomplished notably by Victor Nessler (1841-90), whose Trompeter von Säkkingen still haunts the German opera houses, while its most popular number, Behüt dich Gott, is still a leading 'cornet solo,' zither selection, and hurdy-gurdy favorite.

Johann Strauss (1825-1899)[5] might be denied a place in many a serious history. But let us not forget that a large part of the public, when you say 'Strauss,' still think of him instead of Richard! And neither let us forget Brahms' remark about the 'Blue Danube' waltz—that he wished he might have written so beautiful a melody—was quite sincere. The 'Blue Danube' has become the second Austrian national anthem—or at least the leading Viennese folk-song. 'Artist's Life,' 'Viennese Blood,' 'Bei uns z'Haus,' 'Man lebt nur einmal' (out of which Taussig made one of the most brilliant of concert pieces)—these waltzes are hardly less beloved of the popular heart—and feet unspoiled by one-step or tango. In his operettas, too, whose style is similar to that of Offenbach and Lecocq (see II, p. 392 ff.), Strauss remains the 'waltz king': the pages of Die Fledermaus ('The Bat'), 'The Gypsy Baron,' and 'The Queen's Lace Handkerchief' teem with fascinating waltz rhythms. Strauss is as inimitable in his way as Lortzing was in his—to date he has no serious rival, unless it be the composer of Rosenkavalier himself. Karl Millöcker[6] (1842-99) with the 'Beggar Student' and Franz von Suppé (1819-1895) with Das Mädchen vom Lande, Flotte Bursche, etc., come nearest to him in reputation. The latter should be remembered for more serious work as well, and the still popular 'Poet and Peasant' overture. He was the teacher of the American Reginald de Koven.

IV

If Leipzig represents the centre, and Berlin the right wing, the group of Liszt disciples gathered together in Weimar must be taken as the 'left' of the romantic schools. Out of this wing has grown the new German school which is still in the heyday of its glory and among whose adherents may be reckoned most of the contemporary German composers. We have mentioned in this chapter only two of the older disciples of this branch, namely Raff (who has already been noticed in Vol. II), and Lassen, who is most widely known as a song-writer. The rest we defer to a later chapter.

Joseph Joachim Raff was born at Lachen, on Zürich lake, in 1822. The son of an organist, he first became an elementary teacher. His first encouragement came from Mendelssohn, but his hope to be able to study with that master was never realized. Bülow and Liszt were also helpful to him, but many disappointments beset his path. He followed Liszt to Weimar in 1850, became a collaborator on the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, and championed Wagner in a brochure entitled 'The Wagner Question' (1854). In the course of his sixty years (he died in Frankfurt in 1882) he turned out what is perhaps the largest number of works on record. His opus numbers go far beyond 200—even the indefatigable Riemann does not attempt a complete summary of them. There are 11 symphonies, 3 orchestral suites, 5 overtures and orchestral works; concertos, sonatas, etc., for various instruments; 8 string quartets, a string sextet and an octet, piano trios, quartets, and every kind of smaller form imaginable. The piano pieces flavor in many cases of the salon. The songs, duets, vocal quartets and choruses are chiefly remarkable for their great number. His opera 'King Alfred' never got beyond Weimar, while some of his six others (comic, lyric, and grand) were not even performed. Out of all this mass only the Wald and Leonore symphonies have stood the test of time, and even these are rapidly fading.

Yet Raff was in some ways an important man. His extraordinary and extremely fruitful talent was subjected to the changing influences of the neo-classic and the late romantic school. If the Mendelssohnian model led him to emphasize the formalistic elements in his work, he soon realized that perfect form was only a means and not an end. That emotion, mood, and expression were not to be subordinated to it he learned from Liszt. Hence his works, descriptive in character as their titles imply, show the conflict between form and content which had already become a problem with Berlioz. His symphonies, now purely descriptive (a development starting with the pastoral symphony of Beethoven), now dramatic (with Berlioz's Fantastique as the model), are mildly programmistic and colorful, but have neither the sweep of imagination of Berlioz nor the daring brilliance of Liszt.

At any rate Raff had considerable influence upon others—Edward MacDowell among them. He 'proved,' as it were, the methods of the new German school along mediocre lines. He was a pioneer and not a mere camp follower as most of his contemporaries.

Hans von Bülow's (1830-94) importance as pianist, conductor, and editor overshadows his claim as a creative musician. As such he has left music for Shakespeare's 'Julius Cæsar,' a symphonic mood-picture 'Nirvana,' an orchestral ballad 'The Singer's Curse,' and copious piano works. Their style is what may be expected from their creator's close associations with Liszt and Wagner, which are too well known for comment. He became Liszt's pupil in 1853 (marrying his daughter Cosima in 1857)[7] and was Wagner's staunchest champion as early as 1849. In his later years he gave evidence of a broad catholicity and progressive spirit by making propaganda for Brahms and propitiating the youthful Richard Strauss. In his various executive activities he accomplished miracles for the cause of musical culture, and as conductor of the Meiningen and the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra laid the foundation of the contemporary conductor's art.

Eduard Lassen (1830-1904), who, through Liszt's influence, was made musical director at the Weimar court in 1858, becoming Hofkapellmeister in 1861, is chiefly known for his pleasing songs. His early training was received at the Conservatory, where he won the prix de Rome in 1851. The fact that his songs betray at times an almost Gallic grace is therefore not surprising. He wrote, besides two operas (Frauenlob and Le Captif), music for Hebbel's Nibelungen (11 'character pieces' for orchestra), for Sophokles' 'Œdipus Colonos,' and for Goethe's 'Faust'; also symphonies, overtures, cantatas, etc.

C. S.

V

Turning to France, we have as the leading 'transition' composers Massenet, Saint-Saëns, and Lalo, three musicians strangely difficult to classify. They remain on the margin of all the turbulent movements in modern musical evolution. Each pursued his own way and the only point of contact between the three, outside of their uniformly friendly relations, is their individual isolation. Each might have turned to the other for sympathy in his loneliness. No doubt the spoiled and successful Massenet, the skeptical and mocking Saint-Saëns, and the noble and sensitive Lalo must have felt alone in the attacks or indifference of their fellow artists. Yet, aloof as they were, each in his way has been an important influence on French music. Massenet by the essentially French character of his melody, Saint-Saëns by his eminently Latin sense of form, and Lalo by the picturesque fondness for piquant rhythms, have each woven themselves into the very texture of modern French music, Saint-Saëns and Lalo in particular being propagandists for the new and vital growth of the symphonic forms in Paris during the last three decades. If there is less of the spectacular and the intense in their productions, there are qualities that make for a certain recognition and popularity over a relatively longer space of time. There is nothing enigmatic or revolutionary with either. Each expressed himself with varying degrees of sincerity in an idiom which, without pointing to the future, is nevertheless of the time in which it was written. If there are retrogressive qualities in Saint-Saëns, it must not be forgotten that he is one of the significant exponents of the symphonic poem. If Massenet attempted no revolutionary harmonic procedure, he nevertheless made a certain type of lyric opera all his own. If Lalo was content to compose in the conventional form known as symphony, concerto, quartet, etc., he none the less endowed them with a quality immediately personal and not present heretofore in these forms. They are all intimately related to French music as it has been and as it will be.

'I was born,' wrote Jules-Émile-Frédéric Massenet (1842-1912) in an article appearing in 'Scribner's Magazine,' 'to the sound of hammers of bronze.' With this stentorian statement, which would have better served to inaugurate the biography of a Berlioz or a Benvenuto Cellini, Massenet tells us the bare facts of a more or less colorless life. With the exception of a few hard years during his apprenticeship at the Conservatoire, Massenet remains for well over a quarter of a century the idol, or rather the spoiled child, of the Parisian public. His reputation abroad is considerably less, the rôle of his elegant or superficial art being taken in Germany and America by Sig. Puccini. Nevertheless, even to the American public, little interested in the refined neuroticism of this child of the Second Empire, Massenet is not devoid of a certain charm.

To obtain an adequate idea of his importance among the group of composers of the late nineteenth century it is necessary to close one's ears against the railing of the snobbish élite. There is much in Massenet to criticize. If one thinks merely of the spirit which actuates his productions, one is very apt to be condemnatory. When one considers, however, a fluid and elegant technique such as was his, an amazing power of production that recalls the prolific masters of the Renaissance, and a power not only to please but even to dictate to the fickle operatic tastes of a quarter-century, one must stop one's criticism to murmur one's admiration. Massenet has probably never been justly appraised. Among his compatriots the critics allied with the young school are so vituperative as to render their opinions valueless. His admirers show an equal lack of proportion, being ofttimes friends rather than well equipped critics. Any just observer of musical history, however, must stop to consider the qualities of a man that could retain his hold upon the sympathies of a public rather distinguished for the fickleness and injustice of its tastes. To find the work that best exemplifies the Massenetian qualities among an opus that includes twenty-four operas, seven orchestral suites, innumerable songs, some chamber music, and some incidental music for various popular productions, is not easy.

Let us pass his operas in rapid review. The first dramatic work of any importance is Le Roi de Lahore, given for the first time in April, 1877. In this opera, as in Hérodiade, which followed it four years later, there is much that has become permanently fixed in the concert répertoire. It is doubtful whether either will ever regain its place in the theatre. With Manon, however, an opéra comique in five acts, Massenet inaugurates a success that was to be undimmed until his death in 1912. Manon, since its production in 1884, has enjoyed a remarkable career of more than 1,200 productions in Paris. It is typical, as regards the text, of the successful libretto that the composer of Werther, of Le Jongleur de Nôtre Dame, and Thaïs was to employ. Massenet in his attitude toward adaptable literary material may be said to have had his ear to the ground. It is not surprising, therefore, that the passionate novelette of the Abbé Prévost should have attracted him, and in Manon one may observe the characteristics of the Massenetian heroine that were to make him so popular among the sensitive, subtle, spoiled, and restless women of our time. One enthusiastic biographer asserts that Massenet has taken one masterpiece to make another. Although one must acknowledge the undoubted charm of this fragile little opera, one cannot consider it on the same intellectual plane as that sincere epic of a young sentimentalist of the late eighteenth century. Throughout the five acts are scenes or parts of scenes that show Massenet at his best. Technically speaking, however, the work is often inferior to the one or two little masterpieces composed later on. In it a certain crudity and hesitation of technique are often apparent. The casual mingling of musical declamation with spoken dialogue is often unsatisfactory if not absolutely distasteful. It is in the splendid love-scene of Saint Sulpice that the composer first gives a revelation of his remarkable powers as a musico-dramatic artist.

In 1892 at Vienna was presented a work that Massenet was never to surpass: Werther. This work has never attained the popularity of Manon, but it is infinitely superior in every detail. In it Massenet has achieved an elastic musical declamation that is almost unique in the history of opera. Throughout, with absolute deference to the principles of diction, the solo voice sings a sort of melodic recitative skillfully accompanied by a transparent yet marvellously colored orchestra. The comparative lack of success of Werther is no doubt due to the sentimentalization of a tale already morbid when fresh from the pen of Goethe. Naturally in adapting it to the stage, and especially to the French stage, the idyllic charm of Goethe's extraordinary tale has been lost. Also, the glamour of its quasi-autobiographical connection with a great poet has entirely vanished. With all these qualifications, one must nevertheless—if his opinion be not too influenced by musical snobbishness—acknowledge Werther to be a lyric work of the greatest importance.

There is only one other work that could add to Massenet's reputation or show another facet of his genius, Le Jongleur de Nôtre Dame. This work, founded upon a legend of the Middle Ages adapted with taste and discretion by Maurice Lena of the University of Paris, is a treasure among short operas. The skeptical box-holder of the theatre rejoices in the fact that there is no woman's rôle. The three brief acts centre about the routine of a monastery and the apparition of the Virgin. Massenet has treated this innocent historiette with a tenderness and care that belie the casual overproduction that characterized his career.

After Le Jongleur one is face to face with a sad succession of hastily composed, often mediocre, stage pieces. Upon the occasion of the presentation of the posthumous opera Cleopatra at Monte Carlo in 1914, friendly critics pointed to the renewal of Massenet's genius. An examination of Cleopatra, however, reveals a deplorable use of conventional procedures with certain disagreeable mannerisms of the composer at their worst. Panurge, presented in 1913, is a better work. No doubt in composing it Massenet wished to achieve a French Meistersinger. He has fallen far short of this and one is forced to confess that the Gallic cock crows in a shrill and fragile falsetto.

Among Massenet's orchestral suites, it would be unjust to omit mention of the Scènes Alsaciennes. Also one can separate from the quantity of stage music composed for various dramatic pieces Les Erynnies, composed for the drama of Leconte de Lisle. An examination of the cantatas, 'Eve' in particular, is interesting as evidence of Massenet's extraordinary virtuosity.

So much for the actual works. When one considers the influence of Massenet upon the new musical school that sprang up in France after Franck, one can hardly exaggerate it. Among his pupils are many of the distinguished young musical Nihilists of to-day, for, if we admit the meretricious aims of Massenet in contemporary music, it is impossible not to admit, too, that he possessed one of the most certain techniques for the stage since Rameau. Absolutely conversant with the exactions of dramatic composition, one might say that in each bar of music he was haunted by the foot-lights. Musically speaking, the modelling of the Massenetian melody is characterized by an elegance that is sickly and cloying. Towards the end of his career there was no need to subject his music to the polishing that other composers find necessary. His mannerisms resolved themselves into tricks. The effect of these tricks was so certain as to enable this skillful juggler to intersperse pages of absolutely meaningless filling. In one department of technique, however, one can think of little but praise—that is Massenet's clear and sonorous orchestration. He is one of the shining examples of that economy of resources to be observed in present-day French composers. His orchestra is that of the classics, and yet he seems to endow it with possibilities for color and dramatic expression unknown in France, at least in the domain of theatrical composition, before his appearance.

His dominant fault is a nervous and ever-present desire to please at all costs. He had an uncanny power of estimating the receptivity of audiences and was careful not to go beyond well-defined limits. In Esclarmonde there is a timid attempt to acclimate the procedures of Richard Wagner to the stage of the Opéra Comique. We cannot share the enthusiasm of some of Massenet's critics for this empty and inflated imitation. It is not good Massenet, and it is poor Wagnerism, for the real Massenet, say what you will, is the Massenet of a few scenes of Manon, of the delicate moonlight reverie of Werther, and the cloying Meditation from Thaïs. The mistake of critics in appraising a composer like Massenet is that they assume that there is a platinum bar to standardize musical ideals. Massenet set himself to do something. He wanted to please. Haunted by the sufferings of his student life at the Conservatoire, he wanted to be successful; he was eminently so. If his means of obtaining this success seem questionable to those of us who believe in a continuous evolution of art, when we are confronted with the industry, the achievement, and the mastery of technical resources that are to be observed in Massenet, we must unwillingly acclaim him a genius.

We have already referred to Massenet's prodigious output. Besides his 23 operas his works include 4 oratorios and biblical dramas, his incidental music to any number of plays, his suites, overtures, chamber music, piano pieces and four volumes of songs, as well as a capella choruses. Massenet was a native of Montaud, near St. Étienne (Loire), studied at the Conservatoire with Laurent (piano), Reber (harmony), and Ambroise Thomas (composition). He captured the prix de Rome in 1863 with the cantata David Rizzio.

French Eclectics:

Édouard Lalo Benjamin Godard
Camille Saint-Saëns Jules Massenet

VI

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was born October 9th, 1835, in Paris. He lives to-day (1915) in possession of all his powers as an artist and a witty pamphleteer. In some respects Saint-Saëns may be dubbed a musical Voltaire. A master of all the forms peculiar to symphonic music, he has never succeeded in endowing his work with any quality save clarity and brilliance. One would almost think at times that he deliberately stifled emotional elements in himself of which he disapproved. There is scarcely any department of music for which he has not written. Symphonies, chamber music, songs, operas and a ballet, and all this in quantity. Saint-Saëns, too, has undeniably lofty musical standards. Prolific, like Massenet, too prolific, in fact, for the subtle, sensitive taste of our time, Saint-Saëns seems rather to defy the public than to make any effort to please. His skill as a technician and his extraordinary abilities as a virtuoso have won him immediate recognition with musicians. In examining the whole of his work, there are only four orchestral pieces which have enduring qualities. These are the four symphonic poems in which Saint-Saëns pays an eloquent tribute to the form espoused by his friend Franz Liszt. Of these, the finest is Phaëton. Strange to say, the best known of this tetralogy of masterpieces is not the best. Beside the magnificently picturesque Phaëton the Danse macabre seems a drab and inelegant humoresque. After Phaëton, Le Rouet d'Omphale must be given the place of distinction in the long list of Saint-Saëns's compositions. In it the composer has given us a witty delineation of the irresistible powers of seduction of a truly feminine woman. The delicate orchestral texture entirely made up of crystalline timbres marks Saint-Saëns as one of the surest and most skillful manipulators of the modern orchestra since Wagner. As is characteristic of many French composers, there is a remarkable economy of means. Small aggregations of instruments achieve brilliant and compelling sonorities.

In the operatic field, Saint-Saëns is not happy. Here all of his reactionary neo-classicism found its full vent, and we are shocked to see a musician of Saint-Saëns's taste and intelligence employing the pompous conventionalities of the opera of 1850. 'Samson and Delilah,' however, has found its way into the répertoire no doubt on account of its fluent melodic structure and its agreeable exoticism. No matter what his technical excellences, one is conscious, with Saint-Saëns, of a certain sterility. Sometimes his music is so imitative of the classics as to be absolutely devoid of any reason for being. Bach and Mendelssohn are his great influences and Liszt and Berlioz have had a great part in the formation of his orchestral technique. M. Schuré remarks aptly: 'One notices with him a subtle and lively imagination, a constant aspiration to strength, to nobility, to majesty. From his quartets and his symphonies are to be detached grandiose moments and rockets of emotion which disappear too quickly. But it would be impossible to find the individuality which asserts itself in the ensemble of his works. One does not feel there the torment of a soul or the pursuit of an ideal. It is the Proteus, multiform and polyphonic, of music. Try to seize him, and he changes into a siren. Are you under the charm? He undergoes a change into a mocking bird. You believe that you have got him at last, then he climbs into the clouds like a hypogriff. His own nature is best discerned in certain witty fantasies of a skeptical and mordant character, like the Danse macabre and the Rouet d'Omphale.' When one considers that Saint-Saëns has been before the public ever since the sixties, a period in which musical evolution has undergone the most rapid and surprising changes, it is not strange that he eludes characterization. He is a musician who has, as Mr. Schuré so aptly says, refused to set himself the narrow and rocky path of an ideal. He has consistently avoided extremes. Side by side with Saint-Saëns the modernist, the champion of the symphonic poem, is Saint-Saëns the anti-Wagnerian. He is one of the great pillars, however, in the remarkable edifice of French symphonic music.

With Romain Bussine, in 1872, Saint-Saëns founded the Société Nationale, an organization which was to have the most far-reaching influence on the development of French music. Like Lalo, Saint-Saëns worked for a sort of protective tariff to keep French symphonic music from being overwhelmed by the more experienced Teuton neighbors. As a pamphleteer and propagandist, Saint-Saëns is full of verve and always has the last word. He was one of the first to appreciate Wagner, but later, feeling that the popularity of the master of Bayreuth might overwhelm young French composers, he withdrew his sympathetic allegiance.

Édouard-Victor-Antoine Lalo was born in Lille in 1822. This modest, aristocratic, and noble-minded musician has scarcely enjoyed his just due even in this late day. He died, exhausted, in 1892. His whole artistic career was ill-fated. His opera, Le Roi d'Ys, and his ballet Namouna were both indifferently successful if not absolute failures. It is doubtful if Lalo ever recovered from the disappointment and overwork that attended the composition and production of Namouna. Without hesitation we should characterize these two works as his most important. There is an excellent symphony in G minor, a concerto for 'cello, the Symphonie Espagnole for violin and orchestra, and a concerto for piano, all of an equally lofty musical texture. It is difficult to class Lalo with any group of musicians. He was mildly influenced by Wagner, as were all young musicians of his time, and yet Le Roi d'Ys is absolutely his own. Lalo came of Spanish parentage. It is probable that a certain sort of atavism is responsible for the constant suggestion of the subtle monotony of Spanish rhythms in his music. He is too distinct a Latin to be overwhelmed by Wagner.

It is very probable that Lalo will never be genuinely popular. The Symphonie Espagnole is in the répertoire of every virtuoso violinist. The same may be said of the concerto for 'cello, and yet it is doubtful if the layman of symphonic concerts would complain were he never again to hear anything of Lalo. This is due to a certain aristocratic aloofness, and emotional reserve, and an ever-present sense of proportion dear only to the élite.

Lalo's influence was not in itself far-reaching. A sincere, splendidly developed artist, he had none of the qualities that make disciples. As one of a group of musicians, however, that were to play an important rôle in saving French music from foreign domination and in finding an idiom characteristic and worthy of a country possessed of the artistic traditions of France, Lalo cannot be overestimated. As a member of the Armingaud quartet he worked fervently to create a taste for symphonic music. His own dignified symphonic productions supplemented this necessary work of propaganda, for it must not be forgotten that for almost a century before the advent of César Franck there was no French symphonic music. The French genius, insofar as it expressed itself in music at all, turned rather to the historical opera so pompously fashioned, or the witty and amusing opéra comique. Lalo must be considered with Saint-Saëns and Franck as one of the pioneers in making a regenerate Parisian taste. His life is colorless and offers little to the critic in interpretation of his musical ideals. Lalo composed silently, with conviction, and without self-consciousness. He was singularly without theories. Concrete technical problems absorbed him, and in the refinement and nobility of his music is to be found the most eloquent essay upon the rôle of an artist who seeks sincere self-expression rather than general recognition.

As a leaven to the frivolous musical tastes prevalent in the French capital before the last three decades Lalo has played his part nobly. He will always be admired by all sincere musicians. His art is complete, devoid of mannerisms, plastically perfect, and yet without the semblance of dryness. In his symphony one will observe an unerring sense of form, an exquisite clarity of orchestration, and a happy choice of ideas suitable for development, Le Roi d'Ys is scarcely a masterpiece. The text is constructed from a pretty folk-story, is not very dramatic and occasionally gives one the impression of amateurishness and puerility. The music is exquisite and makes one regret that Lalo could not have found other and more suitable vehicles for his dramatic genius. Namouna is a sparkling, colorful ballet. When it was revived some years ago, a more propitious public enthusiastically revised the adverse verdict of 1882.

Little may be said of Benjamin Godard (1849-95) except that he wrote much, too much perhaps, in nearly all forms: symphonies (with characteristic titles, such as the 'Gothic,' 'Oriental,' Symphonie légendaire), concertos for violin and for piano, orchestral suites, dramatic overture, symphony, a lyric scene, chamber music, piano pieces, over a hundred songs, etc. Few of these are heard nowadays, even in France perhaps. Neither are his operas, Pédro de Zalaméa (1884), Jocelyn (1888), Dante et Béatrice (1890), Ruy Blas (1891), La Vivandière (1895), and Les Guelfes (1902). Jocelyn—and, indeed, its composer—are perpetuated by the charmingly sentimental Berceuse, beloved of amateur violinists. Godard studied composition with Reber and violin with Vieuxtemps at the Conservatoire. He won the grand prix for composition awarded by the city of Paris with the dramatic symphony 'Tasso.' This, like the Symphonie légendaire, employs a chorus and solo voices in combination with the orchestra.

Two composers, noted especially for their organ works, should be mentioned in conclusion: Alexandre Guilmant (born 1837) and Charles-Marie Widor (born 1845). Both made world-wide reputations as virtuosos upon the organ, the former in the Trinité, the latter in St. Sulpice in Paris. Guilmant has travelled over the world and received the world's plaudits; Widor has remained in Paris while droves of pupils from all over the globe have gone back to their homes and have spread his fame. Both have composed copiously for the organ, Guilmant more exclusively so, also editing and arranging a great deal for his instrument. Widor has written two symphonies, choral works, chamber music, and piano pieces, songs, etc., even a ballet, La Korrigane, two grand operas, Nerto and Les Pêcheurs de St. Jean, a comic opera and a pantomime, Jeanne d'Arc. He is César Franck's successor as professor of organ at the Conservatoire, and since 1891 has taken Dubois' place in the chair of composition.

C. C.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The last-named is treated with his compatriots in a succeeding chapter.

[2] The Gewandhaus Concerts properly date from 1763, when regular performances began under J. A. Hiller, though not given in the building known as the Gewandhaus until 1781. At that time the present system of government by a board of directors began. The conductors during the first seventy years were, from 1763: J. A. Hiller (d. 1804); from 1785, J. G. Schicht (d. 1823); from 1810, Christian Schulz (d. 1827); and from 1827, Christian August Pohlenz (d. 1843). The standard of excellence was already famous. But in 1835 Mendelssohn brought new éclat and enterprise, especially as he soon had the invaluable help of the violinist David. The list of conductors has been from 1835: Mendelssohn (d. 1847); from 1843, Ferdinand Hiller (d. 1885); from 1844, Gade (d. 1890); from 1848, Julius Rietz (d. 1877); from 1860, Reinecke; and from 1895, Arthur Nikisch.—Pratt, 'The History of Music.'

[3] Naumann: Musikgeschichte, new ed. by E. Schmitz, 1913.

[4] Waldo Selden Pratt: 'The History of Music,' New York, 1908.

[5] Strauss' father, Johann, Sr. (1804-1849), was, with his waltzes and the wonderful travelling orchestra that played them, as much the hero of the day as his son. The son first established an orchestra of his own, but after his father's death succeeded him as leader of the older organization.

[6] Karl Millöcker, b. Vienna, 1842; d. 1899, Baden, near Vienna.

[7] He was divorced from her in 1869 and she became the wife of Richard Wagner in the following year.

CHAPTER II
THE RUSSIAN ROMANTICISTS

Romantic Nationalism in Russian Music; Pathfinders; Cavoss and Verstovsky—Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka; Alexander Sergeyevitch Dargomijsky—Neo-Romanticism in Russian Music; Anton Rubinstein—Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky.

I

Russian music as a whole is a true mirror of Slavic racial character, life, passion, gloom, struggle, despair, and agony. One can almost see in its turbulent-lugubrious or buoyant-hilarious chords the rich colors of the Byzantine style, the half Oriental atmosphere that surrounds everything with a romantic halo—gloomy prisons, wild mountains, wide steppes, luxurious palaces and churches, idyllic villages and the lonely penal colonies of Siberia. It really visualizes the life of the empire of the Czar with a marvellous power. With its short history and the unique position that it occupies among the world's classics, it depicts the true type of a Slav, the melancholy, simple and hospitable moujik, with more fullness of color and virility than, for instance, the German or Italian compositions depict the representative types of those nations. In order to understand the reason of this peculiar difference between Russian and West European music it is necessary to understand the social and psychological elements upon which it is built.

While the West European composers founded their creations upon the traditions of the masters, Russian music grew out of the very heart, the joys and the sorrows of the common people. All the Russian composers of the early nationalistic era were men of active life, who became musicians only on the urgency of their inspiration. Glinka, for instance, was a functionary in the Ministry of Finance, Dargomijsky was a clerk in the Treasury Department, Moussorgsky was an army officer, Rimsky-Korsakoff an officer of the navy, Borodine was a celebrated inventor and scholar. Academic musicians are wont to find the stamp of amateurishness on most of the Russian classic music. To this Stassoff, the celebrated Russian critic, replied: 'If that is the case, our composers are only to be congratulated, for they have not considered the form, the objective issues, but the spirit, the subjective value of their inspirations. We may be uneven and amateurish as nature and human life are, but, thank Heaven, we are not artificial and sophisticated!'

Be it a song, instrumental composition, or opera, everything in Russian music breathes the ethnographic and social-psychologic peculiarities of the race, which is semi-Oriental in its foundations. Nationalism in music has been the watchword of most of the Russian composers since the very start. But, besides, there has been a strong tendency to subjective individualism, that often expresses itself in a wealth of sad nuances. This has been to a great extent the reason that foreigners consider melancholy the predominant racial quality, a view not just to Russian music as a whole, which is far too vigorous and healthy a growth to remain continuously under the sway of one emotional influence. To a foreign, especially an Anglo-Saxon ear Russian music may sound sometimes too realistic, sometimes too monotonous and sad without any obvious reason. It has been declared by foreign academicians lacking in cohesion, technique, and convincing unity. However, this is not a defect of Russian art, but a characteristic trait of its racial soul. Every Russian artist, be he a composer, writer, or painter, in avoiding artificiality puts into his creation all the idiomatic peculiarities of his race without polishing out of it the vigor of 'naturalness.' Russian music, more than any other Russian art, expresses in all its archaic lines, soft shades, and polyphonic harmonies the peculiar temperament of the nation, which is just as restless and unbalanced as its life.

The fundamental purpose of the pathfinders of Russian music was to create beauties that emanated, not from a certain class or school, but directly from the soul of the masses. Their ideal was to create life from life. In order to accomplish their tasks they went back to melodic traditions of early mediæval music, to the folk-songs, the mythological chants and the folk dances. Since the Russian people are extremely musical, folk-song is a great factor in the nation's life and evolution. Music accompanies moujiks from the cradle to the grave and plays a leading rôle in their social ceremonies. Though profound melancholy seems to be the dominant note, yet along with the gloom are also reckless hilarity and boisterous humor, which often whirl one off one's feet, as, notably, in Glinka's Kamarinskaya. The phenomenon is startling, for music of the deepest melancholy swings unexpectedly to buoyant humor and exultant joy. This is explained by the fact that the average Russian is extremely emotional and consequently dramatic in his artistic expression. Very characteristic is a passage of Leo Tolstoy on Russian folk-song in which he writes:

'It is both sad and joyous, on a quiet summer evening, to hear the sweeping song of the peasants. In it is yearning without end, without hope, also power invisible, the fateful stamp of destiny, and the faith in preordination, one of the fundamental principles of our race, which explains much that in Russian life seems incomprehensible.'

The early Russian composers thus became creators in touch with the common people, the very opposite of the composers of German and Latin races, who created only for the salons of aristocracy. The latter were and remained strangers to the people among whom they lived. Everything they composed was strictly academic and expressed all the sentimentality and stateliness of the nobility. Although geniuses of great technique, in racial color, emotional quickness and spontaneity they remain behind the Russians.

In spite of the fact that all the early Russian composers were descendants of aristocracy, they remained in their feelings and in their themes, like Gogol, Dostoievsky, and Turgenieff in fiction, true portrayers of the common people's life. There has never been an aristocratic opera, a nobility music and salon influence noticeable in Russian musical development. This may be due to the fact that the Russian aristocracy is not a privileged superior class of the autocratic régime, as is that of Germany, Austria, Italy, and England, but merely an intellectual, more advanced element of the country. Thanks to Czar Feodor, the father of Peter the Great, who destroyed all the pedigrees, patents and papers of the nobility, saying that he did not want to see their snobbery and intrigue in his empire, there are no family documents in Russia which go back beyond the reign of Czar Feodor. There is no doubt that this autocratic proceeding has been beneficial to Russian art, particularly to music, in having made it democratic in its very foundations.

Though music has been cultivated in Russia since the time of Peter the Great, the origin of the true nationalistic school belongs to the Napoleonic era, the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I. Cosmopolitan that he was, Peter the Great disliked everything national, and invited Italian musicians to form a school of systematic musical education in his empire. But Catherine II became deeply interested in encouraging native music and herself took an active part in the work. Between her political schemings and romantic affairs, she took time to write librettos, to invite musicians to her palace and to instruct them how to use the themes of the folk plays, fairy tales, and choral dances for a new Russian stage music. It is said that sixty new operas were written during her reign and produced on the stage of the newly-founded municipal opera house. One of them, 'Annette,' is quoted as the first wholly Russian opera, in librettist, theme, and composer.

A very conspicuous figure of the pre-nationalistic period of Russian musical history is C. Cavos (1776-1840), an Italian by birth, but a Slav in his work. He wrote songs, instrumental music and operas, more or less in Italian style but employing both Russian text and theme. His opera, 'Ivan Sussanin,' was considered a sensational novelty and the composer was hailed as a great genius of the country. But his works died as soon as they had loomed up under the protection of the court and nothing of his compositions has survived.

Close upon Cavos followed Verstovsky, whose operas 'Tomb of Askold' and 'Pan Tvardovsky' were produced in Moscow when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812. The first was built upon an old Slavic saga in which Askold, the hero, and his brother, Dir, play the same rôles as do Hengist and Horsa in Saxon chronicles. The other was founded upon an old Polish story of adventure somewhat resembling the Faust legend. Besides the operas Verstovsky composed a large number of songs, ballads, and dances. By birth a Pole and by education an Italian, his compositions resemble in many ways those of Rubinstein.

Russian musical conditions in the first half of the past century were very much like those in America at present. Besides Cavos and Verstovsky there had been and were a number of more or less conspicuous imitators of the Italian school. Their works were as little Russian in character as Puccini's 'Girl of the Golden West' is American. But the advent of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert in Germany made a deep impression upon the music-loving Russians. The men upon whom the romantic German music made the strongest impression were Glinka and Dargomijsky, both inclined toward romantic ideals and themes. Their first striking move was to rebel against the Italian influences. 'Russia, like Germany, shall have its own music independent of all academic schools and foreign flavors, and it shall be a music of the masses. Music is more vigorous and more individual when it is national. We like individuality in life and literature, as in all arts and politics. Why should the world not cling more to the racial than to the cosmopolitan ideal? The tendency of Italian music is cosmopolitan. I believe that the tempo of music must correspond to the tempo of life. Our duty is to speak for all the nation.' Thus Glinka wrote at the critical moment.

II

Naturally Glinka's first attempts were ridiculed by contemporary salon critics and concert habitués, who looked at him as a 'moujik-maniac' and naïve dilettante. His attempt at something truly national in character was considered plebeian and undignified for a nobleman. But, encouraged by Shukovsky, the famous poet of that time and the tutor of the heir-apparent, later Czar Alexander II, Glinka published in 1833 the first volume of his songs and ballads, based purely on themes of folk-songs. As he was merely a functionary of the Ministry of Finance, without any systematic musical training and had no professional prestige, his work was ignored by the press, while society merely made fun of him and his songs. It was evident that he could not get any hearing in this way.

Shukovsky, whose apartment at the palace was a rendezvous of artists and reformers of that time, suggested to Glinka that he compose an opera out of the rich material in his unpublished ballads, songs, and instrumental sketches, and he on his part would take care that it should be produced on the imperial stage. Shukovsky even outlined a libretto on an historical subject similar to that used by Cavos and suggested to name it 'A Death for the Czar.' Baron Rosen, the poetic private secretary of the Czarevitch, wrote the libretto under the supervision of Shukovsky and Glinka named it 'A Life for the Czar.' This was the first distinctly national Russian opera that stands apart from the Italian and German style. Instead of effective airs and elaborate orchestration Glinka emphasized the use of choruses and spectacular scenic methods, which are more natural to Russian life than the former. When the opera was produced in 1837 for the first time in St. Petersburg the people went wild about it and the young composer was hailed as a great æsthetic reformer. The czar appointed him to act as a conductor of the court choir, the famous pridvornaya kapella. The phenomenal success embittered the professional musicians of Russia and they began to fight the composer with redoubled vigor.

Fortunately the czar, and especially Shukovsky, were on the side of Glinka, so that all the intrigues of his enemies failed. Meanwhile he had composed several songs and a large number of ballads and orchestral pieces, of which Kamarinskaya and the 'Spanish Overture' are the most known. Glinka's songs and instrumental pieces are full of melody and color, and they are still sung and played in Russia, but the best he has created are his two operas. In 1842 he finished his second opera, 'Russlan and Liudmilla,' which, though more poetic and melodious than 'A Life for the Czar', failed to arouse the enthusiasm which had greeted his first opera. The reason for that may have been that it was distinctly democratic and not historical, and historical pieces were a fad of that time.

Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka was born in 1804, in the province of Smolensk, and his father, a wealthy nobleman, sent him at the age of thirteen to be educated in an aristocratic college in St. Petersburg. The young man was intended for the civil service of the government, but he loved music so passionately that he neglected his other studies and took lessons in piano and the theory of composition from various teachers of the capital until he was about to be expelled from the school. Graduated in 1824, he tried to get a position in the treasury department, but, failing in this, continued to study music till he secured it. Beethoven, Weber, and Schubert made a lasting impression upon his mind and he never ceased to worship them, though he never imitated them. Byron, Goethe, and Pushkin were the poets that inspired him most of all, and he used to say if he could be in his native music what those men had been in their native poetry he would die a happy man.

With all his lack of technical skill, Glinka remains the founder of the nationalistic school of music of his native land. In spite of his many shortcomings he is natural and superior to the opera composers of his time in Italy and Germany. As all Russians have inborn love of song and as that is expressed in manifold ways in their actual life more than in the life of any other nation, Glinka's main idea was to found the Russian opera on combined passages of realistic musical life, giving them a dramatic character. To emphasize this he made use of picturesque stage glitter and spectacular scenic effects. This betrays itself forcibly in the vivid colors that outline the semi-Oriental architecture of a cathedral, palace, public building or cottage, or in the picturesque costumes for marriage, for burial and for the various other social and official ceremonies characteristic of Russia.

In his private life Glinka was just as unfortunate as Tschaikowsky. The girl he had begun to love passionately married a man of more promising social career. He married a woman whom he did not love and they were divorced after some scandal and difficulty. Then the woman whom he had first loved and who was married to a prominent army officer changed her mind and eloped with Glinka. In order to avoid a public scandal the czar forced the composer to relinquish the woman of his choice. Glinka obeyed and fell into a mood of melancholy which undermined his health little by little until he died in Berlin in 1857. But, strange to say, the private life of Glinka did not affect his compositions, for there is nothing extremely melancholy or sentimentally sad in his music. An air of sentimental romanticism emanates from his numerous ballads, songs, and instrumental works. Like the rest of his contemporaries he is lyric, full of color and sentiment in his minor works. One and all are distinctly national.

Together with Glinka, Dargomijsky undertook to carry the idea of nationalism in music into practice, in spite of all the objections of contemporaries. They met frequently and became close friends. Their aspirations were the same, though Glinka was socially prominent by reason of his official position, and Dargomijsky was a mere clerk in the treasury department and composed chiefly for his own pleasure. It was much more difficult for him than for Glinka to obtain social recognition, though the majority of his works are far more national and artistic than Glinka's. His songs stand close to the heart of the moujik. 'Glinka is an artist of the nobility, I am of the peasants,' was the way Dargomijsky defined the difference between Glinka and himself.

Born on February 2, 1813, in the province of Tula, Alexander Sergeyevitch Dargomijsky was the son of a postal official, who lost his position and property in Moscow when Napoleon occupied that city. The boy grew up in great poverty and the only education he received was that given by his parents. At the age of twenty he made a trip to St. Petersburg and managed to get the position of clerk in the treasury department. Here he continued his studies in music, which had been near his heart since early childhood. After a few years of strenuous work he realized that it was more important for him to collect and study folk-music than to acquire the technique and theory of the art of music, and with this in view he undertook excursions to the villages during the summer vacation, collecting folk-songs, attending festivals and social ceremonies of the peasants. In this way he stored up a huge material and knowledge for his individual work. His first attempt was a series of songs and ballads. In 1842 Dargomijsky resigned his official position to devote his time exclusively to music. His first opera, 'Esmeralda,' had a great success in Moscow and gave him some prestige and courage to undertake the composition of his second opera, 'The Triumph of Bacchus,' which, however, was a failure.

Dargomijsky's masterpiece is and remains his opera Russalka ('The Nymph'), which is composed to a libretto based upon a poem of Pushkin. It takes a listener to the picturesque and romantic banks of the Dnieper River, where the heroine, Natasha, the daughter of a miller, is deserted by a princely lover. In despair she flings herself into the river and is at once surrounded by a throng of the russalkas—the nymphs, with whom Russian imagination has populated every brook, lake, and river. She herself becomes a nymph and eventually succeeds in enticing her false lover to her arms beneath the water.

Dargomijsky's last opera, 'The Marble Guest,' for the libretto of which he used the poetic drama of Pushkin, based on the legend of Don Juan, was produced only after his death in 1872. It differs from his previous operas by the predominance of recitative, concerted pieces being almost banished. Like Glinka, he was not over-prolific in his compositions. Besides the four operas he wrote only five or six orchestral pieces, some thirty songs and ballads and a few dances. Tschaikowsky complained bitterly that he was too lazy, although he admitted that Dargomijsky was greatly hampered by lack of systematic musical education.

Like Glinka, Dargomijsky was unhappy in his private life. The woman whom he loved so deeply was the wife of another man, and the one who loved him found no response on his part. He was relieved of his worries for daily bread after his Russalka made a success on the stage. His apartment was the real rendezvous of the group of young Russian nationalistic composers who surpassed him by far in their works, such as Borodine, Moussorgsky, Balakireff, César Cui, Rimsky-Korsakoff, and Seroff. Dargomijsky died in 1869.

III

At the same time that the Balakireff group of Russian nationalists began its work in St. Petersburg a romantic temple was founded by Rubinstein. Among the masters of Russian music he occupies an interesting place, being, as it were, a link between the lyric Oriental and the nationalistic Slav. In many ways he was a phenomenal figure. Though he laid the corner-stone of the modern Russian musical pedagogic system and was a dominant authority of his time, he never caught the true national spirit of Russia and by no means all his talented pupils became his followers. He died a man disappointed in his ideals and ambitions. 'All I care about after my death is that men shall remember me by this conservatory; let them say, this was Anton Rubinstein's work,' he said, pointing to the Imperial Conservatory in St. Petersburg,[8] of which he had been not only the founder but the director for many years.

During all his influential life Rubinstein was bitterly opposed to the Russian nationalistic school of music, at the head of which stood Balakireff, Moussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakoff. He referred to them as to dabblers and eccentric amateurs. Even toward his pupil, Tschaikowsky, he assumed a condescending attitude. His veneration of the classics was almost fanatical. In the genius of his contemporaries he had no faith. He truly believed that music ended with Chopin. Even Wagner and Liszt were small figures in his eyes. To the realistic style initiated by Berlioz and the music dramas of Wagner he was indifferent. His aspirations were for the highest type of pure music, but he lacked the ability to transform his own ideals into something real. Lyric romanticism was all he cared for. The slightest innovation in form, all attempts at realism in music, upset his æsthetic measuring scale. But, despite his deficiencies and faults, he deserves more credit from posterity than it seems willing to accede to him. Saint-Saëns has said: I have heard Rubinstein's music reproached for its structure, its large plan, its vast stretches, its carelessness in detail. The public taste to-day calls for complications without end, arabesques, and incessant modulations; but this is a fashion and nothing more. It seems to me that his fruitfulness, grand character and personality suffice to class Rubinstein among the greatest musicians of all times.'

The outspoken romanticism of Rubinstein's works is in a sense akin to the spirit of Byron's poems. There is a passionate sweetness in his melodies that one finds rarely in composers of his type. But in giving overmuch attention to objective form, he often missed subjective warmth, especially in his operas and his larger instrumental works. He achieved the greatest success in his songs of Oriental character, from which there breathes the spirit of a heavy tropic night. But in these his best moments he remains exotic and inexplicable to our Occidental ears.

Russian Romanticists:

Mikhail Glinka Alexander Dargomijsky
Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky Anton Rubinstein

Romantic as his music was the course of Rubinstein's life. He himself, according to Rimsky-Korsakoff, blamed the romantic incidents of his life for his shortcomings. 'I was spoiled by the flattery of high society, which I received during my first concert tour as a boy of thirteen,' Rubinstein told his brother composer. 'It made me conceited and fanatical. The misery that I endured later wasted the best creative years of my life, and the sudden success which followed my acquaintance with the Grand Duchess Helen [the sister of the Czar, who loved him] killed my aspirations for the higher work by making me unexpectedly the dictator of Russian musical education. If I had worked up step by step by my own efforts I would have reached the goal of my ambition.' At any rate the unusual career of Rubinstein explains the psychological side of his achievements and disappointments. Born in 1829 in the village of Vichvatinetz, in the Province of Podolia, in southwestern Russia, he began to study the piano at the age of eight in Moscow. His teacher, Alexander Villoing, at once realized that his pupil was a genius and for five years spent his best efforts upon him. When the boy was thirteen his teacher undertook a concert tour with him, first through Russia, later abroad. Rubinstein was a pianistic marvel and was received everywhere with the greatest enthusiasm. Chopin and Liszt declared him a 'wonder child.' After three years of touring he settled in Paris, lived in princely style and spent all the money he had earned. Feeling the pinch of poverty, he went to Vienna to secure the influence of Liszt, who advised him to go to Berlin and gave him letters of introduction. There he found the city in a state of revolution and abandoned by society. In despair and almost starving, Rubinstein pushed on to St. Petersburg, where the once celebrated prodigy began to earn his living with piano lessons at fifty cents until by a mere chance he secured the position of pianist in the court choir. At this time he composed his first opera, Dimitry Donskoi, which was performed with some success.

Rubinstein now undertook another trip to Liszt, at Weimar, and there he met the Grand Duchess Helen, who at once invited the young pianist to be her guest in Italy. This was the beginning of his career. In 1856 Rubinstein composed some of his songs and piano pieces and soon after this the Imperial Conservatory of Music was founded in St. Petersburg and Moscow with the Grand Duchess as patroness. In 1862 Rubinstein became the director of the conservatory in St. Petersburg and held the position until 1867 and later from 1887 to 1891. In 1865 he married and made his residence at Peterhof, where he lived in close touch with Russian society. During this period of power and comfort Rubinstein composed his sonatas, symphonies, operas, and piano pieces, few of which are ever performed nowadays.

Rubinstein's orchestral and operatic works occupy a place between Schumann and Meyerbeer. His most popular orchestral compositions are 'Faust,' 'Ivan IV,' 'Don Quixote,' and his Second Symphony, 'Ocean.' The other five symphonies are rather stately, cold tone pictures without any definite foundation. More known, and even frequently performed, are his chamber music pieces, the 'cello sonata in D major, and the trio in B major. Of his operas and oratorios only one work, 'The Demon,' has survived in the classic Russian répertoire. The rest are long forgotten. Of longer life than Rubinstein's orchestral and operatic compositions are his piano pieces, especially his barcarolles, preludes, études, and dances. All of his larger piano pieces are, like his orchestral works, prolix, diffuse and full of unassimilated ideas. Through all his compositions there blows a breath of Oriental romanticism, something that reminds one of the 'Thousand and One Nights.' A peculiar sweetness and brilliancy of harmony distinguish his style, but these particular qualities make Rubinstein unpopular in our realistic age. It is true that his piano pieces have little that is individual, but they are graceful and aristocratic. To an ear attuned to modern impressionism they are nothing but graceful, warmly colored salon pieces devoid of arresting features. But whatever may be the fate of Rubinstein's instrumental music, he was a composer of excellent songs, which will be sung as long as man lives. They are the very crown of his creations. From among his numerous ballads and songs 'The Asra,' 'The Dream,' 'Night,' etc., are especially enchanting. In them he stands unmatched by any composer of his time. The number of his works surpasses one hundred; there are ten string quartets, three quintets, five concertos, three sonatas for violin and piano, two for 'cello and piano, two for violin and orchestra. According to Russian critical opinion he was an imitator of Mendelssohn and Schumann. But the fact is he suffered from the overwhelming influence of the German classics, whom he did not assimilate thoroughly, and from being one of the greatest of piano virtuosi of his age, which absorbed most of his attention and time. It is not unnatural that a great executive artist should acquire the forms of those composers whose works he performs most. In following these models Rubinstein simply demonstrated a psychological rule.

Rubinstein's main importance in Russian music resides in the fact that he laid the foundation of a nation-wide musical education, so that now the national and local governments are back of a serious æsthetic culture. Besides having been twice a director of the Imperial Conservatory of Music in St. Petersburg, he was from time to time a director of the Imperial Musical Society and conductor of the St. Petersburg symphony concerts. He died in 1894 in Peterhof and is buried in the graveyard of Alexandro-Nevsky monastery, near to his rivals, Balakireff, Borodine, and Moussorgsky.

IV

An artist of the same school as Rubinstein, yet entirely different in works and spirit, was Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky. Rubinstein was a creative virtuoso, Tschaikowsky was a creative genius. They took the same general direction in form and themes, but otherwise a wide abyss separated these two unique spirits of Russian music. Tschaikowsky had Rubinstein's passion and technical skill, the same lyric style, and, like him, adhered to West European form, but in his essentials he remains a Russian of the most classic tendencies; his language is that of an emotional Slav. His music glows with the peculiar fire that burned in his soul; rapture and agony, gloom and gayety seem in a perpetual struggle for expression. With all its nationalistic riches there is nothing in Tschaikowsky's tonal structures that resembles those of his contemporaries. He is a romantic poet of classic pattern, yet wholly a Russian. He is altogether introspective, sentimentally subjective, and ecclesiastically fanatic. With all his Slavic pathos and subjective vigor Tschaikowsky builds his tone-temples in Gothic style, which he never leaves. That is very largely the reason why his music is so phenomenally popular abroad, while his contemporaries have, despite their originality and greatness, remained in his shadow.

Tschaikowsky's compositions are as strange as his inner self. His likening his artistic expressions to a violent contest between a beast and a god no doubt had its psychological reason. That there is much mystery in his life and its relation to his art is apparent from the following passage with which Kashkin, his biographer, closes his book,[9] 'I have finished my reminiscences. Of course, they might be supplemented by accounts of a few more events, but I shall add nothing at present, and perhaps I shall never do so. One document I shall leave in a sealed packet, and if thirty years hence it still has interest for the world the seal may be broken; this packet I shall leave in the care of Moscow University. It will contain the history of one episode in Tschaikowsky's life upon which I have barely touched in my book.'

That seal is still unbroken. All we can guess of the nature of the secret is that it involves a tragedy of romantic character. We shall get a closer idea of the great composer when we consider a few characteristic episodes of his private life in connection with his career as a musician. Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky was born in 1840, in the province of Viatka, where his father was the general manager of Kamsko-Botkin's Mills. He showed already in his early youth a great liking for music and poetry, but the wish of his parents was that he should make his career as an official of the government. With this in view he was educated in the aristocratic law school in St. Petersburg. Graduated in 1859, he became an officer in the department of the Ministry of Justice. While he was a student in the law school he kept up his studies of music by taking lessons from F. D. Becker and K. I. Karel and did not give them up even when he became an active functionary with less leisure than before. The desire for a thorough musical education gave him no peace until he entered the newly founded Conservatory of Music, where Rubinstein and Zarembi became his teachers. Though regularly the course was longer, Tschaikowsky was graduated after three years of study, in 1866, and at once was invited to become a professor of harmony in the Imperial Conservatory of Music in Moscow. During the first years of his life as a teacher Tschaikowsky composed some smaller instrumental and vocal pieces, which were performed with marked success, partly by his pupils, partly by touring musical artists. His first large compositions were the First Symphony, which he composed in 1868, and his opera Voyevoda, which he wrote a year later. Both these compositions were less successful than his earlier ones. Nevertheless the disappointment did not discourage the young composer, for he proceeded to compose new operas, 'Undine,' Opritchnik, and 'Vakula the Smith,' besides some music for orchestra. In 1873 he composed the ballet 'Snow Maiden,' and then followed in succession his Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies.

Assured of a pension of three thousand rubles ($1,500) a year and an extra income from the royalty of his published music, Tschaikowsky resigned his teaching post and devoted all his time to composition. His Fourth Symphony had to some extent satisfied his ambition as a symphonic composer, since it had been received enthusiastically by the public in both Moscow and St. Petersburg; he now threw all his efforts into opera. In 1878 he finished his Evgheny Onegin, his greatest opera, besides his two ballets.

In spite of his stormy private life and various romantic conflicts Tschaikowsky was a prolific worker. Besides the above-mentioned operas he wrote six symphonies, of which the last two have gained world-wide fame, three ballets, the overtures 'Romeo and Juliet,' 'The Tempest,' 'Hamlet,' and '1812,' the 'Italian Caprice,' and the symphonic poem 'Manfred.' Besides these he wrote two concertos for piano and orchestra, one concerto for violin, three quartets, one trio, over a hundred songs, some thirty smaller instrumental pieces and a series of excellent church music. They vary in their character and quality. Some of them are truly great and majestic, while others are of mediocre merit. Opritchnik, Mazeppa, Tcharodeiki, and Jeanne d'Arc are dramatic operas, while Evgheny Onegin, Pique Dame, and Yolanta are of outspoken lyric type. Tscherevitschki and 'Vakula the Smith' are his two comic operas.

Though Tschaikowsky's ambition was to excel in opera, his symphonic compositions represent the best he has written, especially his Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies, 'The Tempest,' the Marche Slav, 'Manfred,' his piano concerto in B-flat minor, and his three ballets, 'Snow Maiden,' 'Sleeping Beauty,' and 'Swan Lake.' He is a perfect master of counterpoint and graceful melodies. How well he mastered his technique is proven by the careful modelling of his themes and figures. But in opera his grasp is behind those of his rivals. There is too much of the West European polish and sentimentality, and too little of the elemental vigor and grandeur of a Russian dramatist.

To the period of Tschaikowsky's last years as a teacher in Moscow, especially from 1875 to 1885, belong the mysterious romantic troubles which presumably became the foundation of his creative despair, the pessimism which has made him the Schopenhauer of sound. Here may lie the secret of all the turbulent emotionalism from which emanated those tragic chords, all the wild musical images, that incessant melancholy strain which characterize his works. In 1877 he married Antony Ivanovna Millukova, but their married life was of short duration. There are many strange stories as to his despair on account of an unhappy love. Tschaikowsky was an affectionate friend of a Mme. von Meck, with whom he was in perpetual correspondence and who gave him material aid in carrying out his artistic ambitions, though he had never met her. Why he did not is a mystery. It is said that he contemplated suicide upon many occasions. He told his friend Kashkin that twice he had gone up to his knees in the Moscow River with the idea of drowning himself, but that the effect of the cold water sobered him. When his wildest emotions seized him he would rush out and sit in the snow, if it was winter, or stand in the river until numb with the cold. This cured him temporarily, but he insisted that he remained a soul-sick man. 'I am putting all my virtue and wickedness, passion and agony into the piece I am writing,' he wrote to a friend while composing his Symphonie Pathétique.

In 1890 Tschaikowsky celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his musical activity and was honored with the degree of Doctor of Music by Cambridge University. He made a tour of America, of which he spoke in high terms as a country of new beauties and new life. One of his remarks is characteristic. 'The rush and roar of that wild freedom of America still haunts me. It is like fifty orchestras combined. Although you do not see any Indians running about the streets of New York, yet their spirit has put a stamp on its whole life. It is in the everlasting activity and the stoic attitude toward what we call fate.'

One of the peculiar traits of Tschaikowsky was his indifference to his creations after they had been produced. He even disliked to hear them and always found fault with his early compositions, especially with his operas; yet he did not know how he could have improved them. Exceptions, however, were his Fourth and Sixth Symphonies, his 'Eugen Onegin,' Sérénade Mélancholique, his Concerto in D, and a few other compositions. While working upon his favorite opera he was also engaged upon his Fourth Symphony. When 'Eugen Onegin' was first performed in Moscow, Tschaikowsky whispered to Rubinstein, who was next to him in the audience: 'This and the Fourth Symphony are the decisive works of my career. If they fail I am a failure.'

Tschaikowsky died suddenly, October 25, 1893, in St. Petersburg—of cholera, as it was said officially. But according to men who knew him intimately he poisoned himself. This, we may be sure, is one of the secrets sealed by Kashkin.

Tschaikowsky was one of the greatest masters of the orchestra the world has seen. In effects of striking brilliance and of sombreness he is equally successful, and it is no doubt in a great measure on account of this Slavic splendor that his orchestral works have won the public. Yet he is far more than a colorist. His mastery over orchestral polyphony is supreme. There is always movement in his music, a rising and falling of all the parts, a complicated interweaving, never with the loss of sonority and richness. He is a great harmonist as well and an irresistible melodist. His rhythms are full of life, whether they are march, waltz or barbarous wild dances. The movement in five-four time in the Sixth Symphony is in itself a masterpiece and has stimulated countless efforts in the directions to which it pointed. It must be admitted that melody, harmony, and rhythm, all bear the stamp of the Slavic temperament, and, in so far as they are Slavic or racial, they are vigorous and healthy; but often Tschaikowsky becomes morbidly subjective, is obviously not master of his mood, but slave to it. Hence, after frequent hearings, there comes a weight upon the listener, an intangible oppression which he would be glad to avoid, but which cannot be shaken off. One detects the line of the individual and forgets the splendor of the race.

Yet through Tschaikowsky the glories of Russian music were revealed to the general public. He occupies a double position, as a Russian and as a strange individuality, whose influence has been pronounced upon modern music. The Russian composers unquestionably hold a conspicuous place among those composers who have been specially gifted to hear new possibilities of orchestral sound and to add to the splendor of orchestral music. Many of them denied Wagner. The question of how far the peculiar powers of the orchestra have been developed by them independently of Wagner, with results in many ways similar, may become the source of much speculation. It is quite possible that, thanks to their own racial sensitiveness, they have devised a brilliant orchestration similar but unrelated to Wagner.

I. N.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Established by the Imperial Musical Society in 1862.

[9] Kashkin: 'Life of Tschaikowsky' (in Russian).

CHAPTER III
THE MUSIC OF MODERN SCANDINAVIA

The Rise of national schools in the nineteenth century—Growth of national expression in Scandinavian lands—Music in modern Denmark—Sweden and her Music—The Norwegian composers; Edvard Grieg—Sinding and other Norwegians—The Finnish Renaissance: Sibelius and others.

The most striking characteristic of the music of the nineteenth century has doubtless been its astonishing enrichment in technical means. Its next most striking characteristic is easily its growth in national expression. National art-music in the modern sense was almost unknown before the nineteenth century. The nearest thing to it was a 'Turkish march' in a Mozart operetta or sonata, or an 'allemand' or 'schottisch' in a French suite. The national differences in eighteenth century music were differences of school, not of nationality. It is true that Italian music usually tended to lyricism, French to dexterity of form, and German to technical solidity; it is true further that these qualities corresponded in a rough way to the characteristics of the respective nations. But all three used one and the same musical system; they differed not so much in their music as in the way they treated their music.

In the nineteenth century the national feeling found expression as it never had before. The causes of this were numerous, but the most important were two of a political nature: First, the spread of the principles of the French Revolution made democracy a far more general fact than it had ever been before; political authority and moral influence shifted more and more from the rulers to the people and the character of the ordinary men and women became more and more the character of the nation. Second, the resistance called forth by Napoleon's wars of aggression aroused national consciousness as it had never been aroused before. Napoleon, with a solid national consciousness behind him, was invincible until he found a national consciousness opposed to him—in Spain in 1809, in Russia in 1812, and in Germany in 1813. Only the sense of nationality had been able to preserve nations; and it was the sense of nationality that thereafter continued to maintain them.

To these two political causes we may perhaps add a third cause—one of a technical-musical character. With the early Beethoven the old classical system of music had reached its apogee. When this was once complete and firmly implanted in people's consciousness contrasting sorts of music could be clearly apperceived. Once the logical course of classical development was finished, men's minds were free to look elsewhere for beauties of another sort. So when a political interest in the common people led men to investigate the people's folk-songs, musical consciousness was at the same time prepared to appreciate the striking differences between art-music and folk-music.

Now all the national music of the nineteenth century is based in a very real sense on the folk-music of the people. The music of the eighteenth century could not be truly national, because it was supported chiefly by the aristocracy, and an art will inevitably tend to express the character of the people who pay its bills. The differences between the aristocracy of one nation and that of another are largely superficial. The court of Louis XV was distinguished from that of Frederick the Great chiefly by the cut of the courtiers' clothes. But the France of 1813 was distinguished from the Germany of 1813 by the mould of the national soul. And the national soul can be seen very imperfectly in the official art of a nation; it must be sought for in the popular art—in the myths, the fairy tales, the ballads, and the folk-songs. So when the newly awakened national consciousness began to demand musical expression, it inevitably sought its materials in the music of the people.

I

In the eighteenth century this popular music was thought too crude to be of artistic value. The snobbishness of political life was reflected in the prevailing attitude toward art. Because the people's melodies were different from the accepted music they were held to be wrong. Or rather, one may say that cultivated people hardly dreamed of their existence. Gradually, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, scholars became aware of the value of popular art. Herder was the first important man to discover it in Germany, and he passed his appreciation of it on to Goethe. By the opening of the nineteenth century the appreciation of folk-art was well under way. Collections of folk-songs and folk-poetry were appearing, and their high artistic value was being recognized. With the first decade of the century the impulse reached the Scandinavian lands, and their national existence in art began.

These countries had of course been free from the immediate turmoil of the Napoleonic wars. They had suffered, as all Europe had suffered, but they had not been obliged to defend their nationality with their blood. Denmark and Norway-Sweden had been for centuries substantially independent, and Finland, which had been in loose subjugation alternately to Sweden and Russia, was practically independent for some time until a political pact between Napoleon and the Czar Alexander made her a grand duchy of Russia; but even as a part of the Russian Empire she suffered no violation of her national individuality until late in the nineteenth century. Political independence and geographical isolation had left the northern nations somewhat turgid and provincial. Their artistic life had been largely borrowed. The various courts had their choirs and kapellmeisters, usually imported from Germany. Native composers were infrequent; composition was largely in the hands of second-rate musicians from Germany who had migrated that they might be larger fish in a smaller puddle. And the composition was, of course, entirely in the foreign style. Stockholm and Copenhagen had their opera in the latter half of the eighteenth century, but the works performed were chiefly French and Italian. These imported works set the standard for most of the native musical composition. Toward the end of the eighteenth century German influence began to predominate, especially in Denmark, where the German Singspiel took root and enjoyed a long and prosperous career. The German influence was much more proper to the Scandinavian lands than that of France or Italy, but it had not the slightest relation to a national art. Danish stories occasionally appeared in the subject matter, but the music was substantially that of Reichardt and Zelter in Germany. In Sweden the course of events was the same. Occasionally national subject matter appeared in operatic librettos, but in the music never. Sweden, which up to the beginning of the nineteenth century continued to be a force in European political affairs, had naturally enjoyed a considerable degree of intercourse with other nations, and was all the more influenced by them in her art. Norway and Finland, however, were completely isolated, and received their musical ministrations not at second hand but at third. In all these countries there was a considerable degree of musical life (choirs, orchestras, and dramatic works), but this was almost wholly confined to the large cities. Yet all these nations had the possibilities of a rich artistic life—in national traditions, in folk-song, and in a common sensitiveness of the racial soul. All four nations are distinctly musical, and in Denmark and Finland especially the solo or four-part song was cultivated lovingly in the home and in the smaller communities.

From their isolation and provincialism the Scandinavian countries were awakened, not by direct, but by reflex impulse. The vigorous national life of other European lands gradually stimulated a sympathetic movement in the two Scandinavian peninsulas. Denmark saw its first good collection of folk-songs in 1812-14, Sweden in 1814-16. In 1842 came A. P. Berggreen's famous collection of Danish songs, and about the same time the 540 Norse folk-songs and dances gathered and edited by Ludwig Lindeman. Doubtless this interest had some political significance. But far more important than these was the appearance in 1835 of the first portion of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, which has since taken its place beside the Iliad and the Nibelungenlied as one of the greatest epics of all time. This remarkable poem seems to have been genuinely popular in origin. It remained in the mouths and hearts of the people throughout the centuries, almost unknown to the scholars. A Finnish physician, Elias Lönnrot, made it his life work to collect and piece together the fragments of the great poem. In 1835 he published thirty-five runes, and in 1849 a new edition containing fifty—all taken down directly from the peasants' lips. This work had a decided political significance. It intensified and solidified the national consciousness, tending to counterbalance the influence of the Swedish language, which until then had been unquestionedly that of the cultivated classes; later it formed a buffer to the Russian language which the Czar attempted to force upon the Finns by imperial edict. It served to arouse the national feeling to such a pitch that Finland has in recent years been the chief thorn in the Czar's side. And this fact, as we shall see, helped to give the Finnish music of the last three decades its intense national character.

The distinctly national movement in Scandinavian countries began, as we have said, in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Its growth thereafter was steady and uninterrupted and was aided by the generous spread of choral and symphonic music. In the first stage the music written was based chiefly on German models, but it was written more and more by native Scandinavians. In the second stage (roughly the second third of the century) the native composers wrote music that was based on the national folk-music, but timidly and vaguely. In the third stage, the folk-tunes were frankly utilized, the national scales and rhythms were deliberately and continuously called into service, and the whole musical output given a character homogeneously and distinctively national. It was in this stage that the Scandinavian music became known to the world at large. Grieg, a man of the highest talent, possibly of genius, made himself one of the best loved composers of the nineteenth century, and awakened a widespread taste for the exotic. Together with Tschaikowsky the Russian he made nationalism in music a world-wide triumph. After his success it was no longer counted against a composer that he spoke in a strange tongue. The very strangeness of the tongue became a source of interest; and if there was added thereto a strong and beautiful musical message the new composer usually had easy sailing. The outward success of Grieg doubtless stimulated musical endeavor in Scandinavian lands, and enabled the world at large to become familiar with many minor talents whose reputations could otherwise not have passed beyond their national borders. Finally, there has arisen in Finland the greatest and most individual of all Scandinavian composers, and one of the most powerful writers of music in the modern world—Jean Sibelius. In him the most intense nationalism speaks with a universal voice.

The folk-music which made this Scandinavian nationalism possible is rich and extensive. Apparently it is of rather recent growth, but this fact is offset by the isolation of the countries in which it developed. It is of pure Germanic stock (with the exception of certain Eastern influences in the music of Finland). Yet it has a marked individuality, a perfume of its own. This is the more remarkable as we discover that in external qualities it exhibits only slight differences from the German folk-song. The individuality is not obvious, as with the Russian or Hungarian folk-music, but subtly resident in a multitude of details which escape analysis. Not only is the Scandinavian music clearly distinct from that of the other Germanic lands, but the music of each of the four countries is subtly distinguished from that of all the others. The Danish is most like the ordinary German folk-song with which we are familiar. It is not rich in extent or variety of mood. Its chief qualities are a discreet playfulness and a gentle melancholy. In formal structure it is good but not distinguished. It is predominantly vocal; in old and characteristic dances Denmark is lacking. The Swedish folk-music is in every way richer. It does not attain to the extremes of animal and spiritual expression, like the Russian, but within its fairly broad limits it can show every variety of feeling. Even in its liveliest moments it reveals something of the predominant northern melancholy, but the dances, which are numerous and spirited, reveal a buoyant health. The thin veil of melancholy which has been so often noticed is not nearly so prominent as a certain refined sensuality. Sweden, more than any of the other Scandinavian lands, has known periods of cosmopolitan luxury. She has become a citizen of the world, with something of the man-of-the-world's self-indulgence and self-consciousness. So her folk-songs frequently reveal an exquisite sense of form which seems French rather than Germanic.

The Norse folk-song naturally shows a close relationship with that of Sweden, but in every point of difference it tends straight away from the German. Norway has for centuries been a primitive country in its material conditions; a country of tiny villages, of valleys for months isolated one from the other; a country of pioneer virtues and individualistic values. Large cities are few; the ordinary machinery of civilization is even yet limited. The economic activities are still in great measure primitive, and much of the work is out of doors, as in shipping, fishing and pasturing. The scenery is among the grandest in the world. So it is not surprising that the Norwegian folk-music is vigorous and sometimes a little crude, and that it reveals an intense feeling for nature. The people are deeply religious and filled with the stern Protestant sense of a personal relation with God. The tender and mystic aspects of the music are less easy to account for; many of the songs are an intimate revelation of subtle mood, and others show a tonal vagueness which in modern times is called 'impressionistic.' More than the Swedish songs they are spontaneous and poetic. If they reflect nature it is in her personal aspect. They show not so much the Norwegian mountains as the fog which covers the mountains. They sing not so much the old Vikings as the quiet people who have settled down to fishing and trading when their wanderings are over. They reveal not the face of nature, but her bosom on which lonely men may rest.

The Finnish music is of a mixed stock. Primarily it is an adaptation of the Swedish, and the greater number of Finnish songs are externally of Swedish mould. But Lapland has also contributed her child-like melodies. The true Finnish music, however, is that drawn from the legendary sources of the original race. The melodies of the old runes retain their primitive aspects, and are unlike those of any other nation. They are doubtless the very melodies to which the Kalevala was originally sung. Externally monotonous and heavy, they reveal strange beauties on closer examination. They are distinguished by many repetitions of the same note, by irregular or ill-defined metre, and by a long and sinuous melodic line. Another typical sort of melody is the 'horn-call,' developed from the original blasts of the hunting-horn. The theme of the trio of the scherzo of Sibelius' second symphony is typical of the rune melody. Finally the Russian influence may be felt in many of the older Finnish tunes—in uncertain tonality and a peculiar use of the minor. This mixture of musical forces is indicative of the ethnological and social mixture which is the Finnish race. The Finns are primarily a Mongolian people. From the Laplanders to the north they received what that simple people had to give. For centuries they were under the domination of Sweden; Swedish was the language of their literature and their cultured conversation, and Swedish was their official civilization. A considerable accession of Swedish immigrants and infusion of Swedish blood left their affairs in the control of Germanic influences. (It is on this account that the Finnish is included in a chapter on Scandinavian music.) Finally, a nearness to Russia and an intermittent subjugation to the Czardom brought into their midst Russian influences which were assimilated flexibly but incompletely. In the late nineteenth century Finland experienced a renaissance of national feeling. The genuine Finnish language gained the uppermost, and provided a rallying point for the resistance to the Czar's attempted Russianization of his duchy. Finnish traditions displaced those of the Vikings. And Finland began to stand forth as an oriental nation with a heroic background. Therefore, though her music developed largely out of Germanic materials, it has become, under Sibelius (himself of Teutonic blood), a thing apart.

The use of folk-music on the part of the Scandinavian composers seems to have been less deliberate and conscious than in the case of the 'neo-Russian' nationalists.[10] In the earliest composers who can be regarded as national it is scarcely to be noticed. For some years after Danish music began to have a national character the actual presence of folk-elements was to be detected only on close examination. Such a careful writer as Mr. Finck indignantly denies that Grieg made any deliberate use of folk-music. In his view the melodies of the people are so inferior to those of Grieg that to suggest the latter's indebtedness is something in the nature of blasphemy. Nevertheless, in the process of nationalizing the northern music the patriotic composers introduced the spirit and the technical materials of the folk-music into conscious works of art. Just what the process was is hardly to be known, even by the composers themselves. We know that Grieg was an ardent nationalist and studied and admired the folk-songs. To what extent he imitated or borrowed folk-melodies for his compositions is not of first importance. Probably, with the best of the nationalists, the process was one of saturating themselves in the music of their native land and then composing personally, and from the heart. At all events, it is certain that the influence of any folk-music, deeply studied, is too pervasive for a sensitive composer to escape.

Since the first third of the nineteenth century the Scandinavian composers have been heavily influenced by the prevailing German musical forces. German musicians were frequent visitors or sojourners in Scandinavian cities, and the musicians of the northern lands sought their education almost exclusively in Germany. Hence Scandinavian music has reflected closely the changes of fashion that prevailed to the south. Mendelssohn and Schumann (through the work of Gade) were the first dominating influences. Chopin influenced their style of pianistic writing, and Wagner and Liszt in due time influenced their harmonic procedure. Music dramas were written quite in the Wagnerian style, and a minor impulse toward programme music came from Berlioz and Liszt. In the art of instrumentation Wagner and Strauss received instant recognition and imitation—an imitation which soon became a schooling and developed into a pronounced native art. Even Brahms had his share in the work, primarily in the shorter piano pieces which have been so distinctive a part of the Scandinavian musical output, and latterly in the 'absolute' polyphonic work of Alfvén, Stenhammar and Norman.

But though all these strands are distinctly discernible, that which gives the Scandinavian tonal art a right to a separate existence is a contribution of its own. In the larger and more ambitious forms the Scandinavian composers have usually not been at their best or most distinctive. It is the smaller forms—songs, piano pieces, orchestral pictures, etc.—which have carried the music of the Northland throughout Europe and America. In these we best see the distinguishing Scandinavian traits. First there is an impressionism, a dexterity in the creation of specific mood or atmosphere, which preceded the recent craze for these qualities. The music of Grieg, simple as it seems to us now, was in its time a sort of gospel of what could be done with music on the intimate or pictorial sides. Vagueness, mystery, poetry spoke to us out of this music of the north. Next there was a feeling for nature, for pictorial values, for delineative music in its more romantic terms, which had not been found in the more strenuous program music of the Germans. The 'Sunrise' of Grieg's 'Peer Gynt Suite' attuned many thousands of ears to the beauty of natural scenery as depicted in music. Finally there was a feeling for tonal qualities as such, which the modern French school has developed to an almost unbelievable extent. The tone of the piano became an intimate part of the poetry of northern piano pieces. Further, the school of Grieg has shown an astonishing talent in the handling of orchestral color. Brilliant and poetic instrumentation has been one of the chief glories of the northern school. It was the romantic impulse that was behind all the best work, and accordingly the formal element does not bulk large in Scandinavian music. But there is often a wonderful finesse, polish and dexterity which reveals an exquisite sense of structure and workmanship, especially in the smaller forms. Vocal music, especially before the opening of the twentieth century, flourished, and the songs of certain northern composers have taken their place beside the best beloved lyric works of Germany. Finally, there are brilliant exceptions to the statement that the best northern work has been achieved in the smaller forms; the concertos of Grieg, the symphonic pieces of Sinding, and the symphonies and tone-poems of Sibelius, strike an epic note in modern music.

II

The early history of Danish music is that of any royal court of post-Renaissance times. Foreign composers and performers were invited to the capital, and when the lower classes had been unusually well drained of their earnings history recorded a 'brilliant musical age.' In the eighteenth century there was a royal opera, performing French and Italian pieces. From time to time various choral or instrumental societies were founded. In the conventional sense the musical life of Copenhagen was flourishing. But in all this there was no trace of national Danish music.

The first composer who may be called truly national began working after a thorough Germanizing of the country's musical taste had taken place. This man was Johann Peter Emilius Hartmann (1805-1900). His extensive work was hardly known outside the limits of his native land. The few examples which were played in Germany were speedily forgotten. But he gradually came to be recognized as the great national composer of Denmark. Though a large part of his student years was spent in his native land, he was at first under the influence of the fashionable composers of the time, such as Marschner, Spontini, Spohr and Auber. But, though not a student of Danish folk-songs, he gradually came to feel the individuality of the national music, and in 1832 made himself a national spokesman with his melodrame 'The Golden Horns,' to Oehlenschlager's text. His opera, 'Little Christine,' to Andersen's story, performed in 1846, was thoroughly national and popular in spirit. His output was astonishingly large and varied. He wrote for nearly every established form, symphonies, overtures, songs, choral pieces, religious and secular, sonatas as well as short romantic pieces for the piano, works for organ and violin, ballets, and picturesque orchestral poems. His nationalism does not appear consistently in his work; he seems to have made it no creed; perhaps he only imitated it from Weber and Chopin. But when he chose to work with national materials he came nearer to the popular spirit than any other composer of the time, barring the two or three great ones of whom Weber is the type. His facility was great, his themes pregnant and arresting. He revealed an energetic structural power, and together with fine polyphonic ability a mastery of romantic suggestion in the style of Mendelssohn. But it is chiefly by his native feeling for the folk-style that he established himself as the first Scandinavian nationalist in music. Grieg wrote of him: 'The dreams of our younger generation of northern men were his from the time he reached maturity. The best and deepest thoughts which moved a later generation of more or less important spirits were spoken first in him, and found their first echo in us.'

But it was Niels W. Gade (1817-1890) who represented the Danish school in the eyes of the outside world. This was due chiefly to his strategic position as friend of Mendelssohn and, after Mendelssohn's death, director of the Gewandhaus orchestra in Leipzig. At bottom he was thoroughly a German of the conservative romantic school. His excellence in the eyes of the time consisted in his ability at writing Mendelssohn's style of music with almost Mendelssohn's charm and finish. But he was also the Dane, and in subtle wise he managed to impregnate his music with Danish musical feeling. His eight symphonies had a high standing in his day, the first and last being typically national in character, serving, in fact, as a sort of propaganda for the national school that was to come. But Gade was more thoroughly national in some of his choral ballads and dramatic cantatas, such as 'Calamus,' 'The Erlking's Daughter,' 'The Stream,' and others; and especially in his orchestral suite, 'A Summer Day in the Country,' and his suite for string orchestra, Holbergiana. His personality was not so vigorous as that of Hartmann; his culture was more conservative and classical; the shadow of Mendelssohn prevented the more aggressive national utterance that might have been desired. But what he did he did well, and his immense influence on the future of Scandinavian music was established through his masterful fusing of the best German classic manner of the time with popular national materials.

Among the Danish composers of the same time we may mention Emil Hartmann (1836-1898), son of the great Hartmann, prolific composer of orchestral pieces, chamber music, and operas of professedly national character; Peter A. Heise (1830-1870), composer of songs to some of the best national lyric poetry of the time; and August Winding (1835-1899), composer of piano, orchestral and chamber music in which national color and folk humor were discreetly brought to the foreground.

In recent times the Danish school, of the four Scandinavian branches, has been least national in intent. Foreign gods have exercised their sway in one fashion or another. Nor can we say that the absolute value of the more recent works is distinguished. Among the half dozen Danish composers who have attained to eminence there is none who can be considered the equal of either Gade or Hartmann in personal ability. Much of the best efforts of the younger men has gone to larger forms, in which either their creative inspiration or their formal mastery has proved insufficient. Among them there are four of marked ability: August Enna, in opera; Asger Hamerik, in symphonic music; P. E. Lange-Müller, in lyric and piano works; and Carl Nielsen, in chamber music.

August Enna (born 1860) is the most prolific and successful of Denmark's opera composers. Chiefly self-taught, but mainly German in his influences, he has written some ten operas in which one influence or style after another is evident. 'Cleopatra,' after Rider Haggard's story, is ambitious and theatric, but it reveals, alongside of frank Wagnerism, the ghost of Meyerbeer and of Italian opera of the 'transition period' of the 'eighties. 'Aucassin and Nicolette' attempts the quaint and naïve style which is supposed to comport with the late Middle Ages; it has a distinction of its own, but too often it is mere conventional romantic opera. The fairy operas after Andersen—'The Little Match Girl' and 'The Princess of the Peapod'—are in more congenial style, but lack the necessary consistent manner of light fantasy. The truth is that Enna, with marked abilities, is limited to the expression of tender sentiment, gentle melancholy, and personal, intimate moods. His invention is happy, though uneven; his use of the orchestra colorful but not always in taste. He lacks the ability to conceive and carry out a large work in a consistent and elevated manner. He fails in that ultimate test of the thorough workman—the ability to execute a whole work in a consistent and homogeneous style. The trouble is not with his operatic instinct, which is sufficiently vivid; nor with his melodic invention as such, for this is often fresh and charming. But his musicianship and his inspiration have not proven equal to the task he has set himself.

Asger Hamerik (born 1843) has undertaken an equally big task in the field of symphonic music. He plans on a large scale, but it can hardly be said that he thinks likewise. We may note a 'Poetic' symphony, a 'Tragic' symphony, a 'Lyric' symphony, a 'Majestic' symphony, and a choral symphony, among several others. Of his two operas, one, 'The Vendetta,' received a performance in Milan. There is considerable choral and chamber music, and in particular a 'Northern' orchestral suite by which his artistic personality may be best known. But he has at bottom little of the national feeling. He is facilely eclectic, but with no individual or consistent binding principle. He has a romanticism that recalls Dvořák's—graceful, mildly sensuous, pleasing rather than inspiring; he has further a marked gift as an instrumental colorist. But his harmony is conventional, and his thematic ideas are usually undistinguished. Finally, his structural power is not sufficient to raise his musical material to a high artistic plane. Hamerik is out of the main line of Scandinavian national music, but has not been able to make a place for himself in music universal.

Much more to the purpose in intent and achievement is P. E. Lange-Müller (born 1850). He reveals a graceful sense of form and a sincere emotional feeling in his smaller works for piano and voice. His harmony is conservative and sometimes disappointing; but whenever he strikes the tender mood of folk-music he saves himself with a touch of poetry. But he is rather a follower of the old school of German romanticism than of Scandinavian nationalism. The four-act opera, Frau Jeanna, is content with an unobtrusive lyric style, but the lyricism is not exalted enough to sustain such a large-scale work. The melodrama Middelalderlig, of more recent date, shows much poetic color but a fundamental lack of invention. In the larger works he is at his best in the fairy-comedy, 'Once upon a Time.' His symphony 'In Autumn,' his orchestral suite, 'Alhambra,' and 'Niels Ebbesen' for chorus, have met with indifferent success. Lange-Müller is primarily a lyric composer for voice and piano, and in this field he shows a sort of grace and tenderness which we shall meet with frequently in recent Swedish music.

A sincere and able, yet austere, composer is Carl Nielsen (born 1865). His music is, with that of the Swede Alfvén, less programmistic and more 'absolute' than we shall meet with in any other distinguished Scandinavian musician of modern times. The national element in his work is almost nil. A master of counterpoint, and a vigorous innovator in the modern Russian style, he commands respect rather than love. His output includes more than half a dozen symphonies, a number of works for string quartet and violin, some large compositions for chorus and orchestra, and a four-act opera, 'Saul and David.' It is by this that he is best known. This is a work to command respectful attention from musicians, but hardly enthusiastic applause from ordinary audiences. The writing shows great musical knowledge, careful and ample ability in counterpoint and in modulation of the complex modern sort, a certain unity of style, and a command of special emotional color. But the work is perhaps rather that of the symphonist than of the operatic poet. His instrumentation, unlike his harmony, is conservative. His workmanship is thorough, and his musicianship wide and soundly based.

Among the minor names there are several who deserve mention for one reason or another. Ludolf Nielsen (born 1876) is a thorough classicist at heart, though he has become known in Germany through his symphonic poems 'In Memoriam,' Fra Bjaergene, and 'Summer Night Moods.' He is more than usually talented, but very conservative in his style. His themes are interesting though not striking, and his product is sufficiently inspired with human feeling to be preserved from pedantry. Hakon Börresen (born 1876) has distinguished himself with many songs which preserve the national tradition established for Norway by Grieg and Sinding. His chamber music has revealed harmonic invention and tender coloring which show him to be one of the chosen of the younger Danish composers. Finally, we may mention Otto Malling (born 1848), an able writer for organ and string quartet; Victor Bendix (born 1851), well known in Denmark for a number of symphonies which combine delicate poetry with structural beauty; Ludvig Schytte (born 1848), prolific writer of piano pieces, and Cornelius Rübner, who commands respect for solidly classic workmanship. These latter men are of the old school. Of the younger generation in Denmark we are hardly justified in hoping for works of great distinction, unless a possible exception may be made in the case of Börresen. For, speaking broadly, the national impulse has departed from Danish composition.

III

Though Scandinavian art was first brought to the attention of the world at large through the Norwegians (Grieg in music and Ibsen in literature), Sweden has in more recent years held her share of international attention. After Ibsen the Swede Strindberg was perhaps the most talked-of dramatist in Europe. Still more recently the novels of Selma Lagerlöf and the sociological writings of Ellen Key have been widely translated and read, not only in European lands, but in America also. Strindberg was a supreme artist, a personality of an intensity equalling Nietzsche and of a spiritual variety suggesting that of Goethe. The strain of violent morbidity in his Weltanschauung was a purely personal and not at all a national matter. As executive artist he showed an almost classic balance and control. Selma Lagerlöf is sane and finely poised, and Ellen Key has by her moderation and her clearness of intellectual vision made herself a leader in a department of modern sociological study which more than any other is apt to be treated sentimentally and hysterically. Poise and artistic control are, in fact, to be noticed generally in modern Swedish art, and especially in music. The cosmopolitan character of Swedish political history is here seen in its results. Someone has called Stockholm 'the Paris of the north.' The epithet is just: grace, conscious artistry, sensuous self-indulgence, are to be found in Swedish music in a degree that contrasts markedly with the militant self-expression of the Norwegian school. Without losing its national qualities the art of modern Sweden has spoken the easy language of the European capitals.

Sweden's story is like Denmark's: first a thorough Germanization of her music, then a gradual growth of the national tone. This tone grew in every case out of the early German romanticism. The first great Swedish composer and the earliest romanticist was Franz Berwald (1796-1868). His position in Sweden is somewhat analogous to that held in Denmark by Hartmann. His output was large, and in the largest forms. He undertook symphonic works which until his time had been neglected in his native land. Without being known much outside Sweden he gained a place in the hearts of his countrymen which he has held ever since. His most popular work was his Symphonie Sérieuse in G minor, composed in 1843, sincere, poetic and musicianly. The influence of Schumann is predominant. A considerable quantity of symphonic and chamber music, reflecting chiefly Beethoven and Mendelssohn, gained him a position as the foremost symphonic writer of his time. An early violin concerto, composed in 1820, reveals him as a sincere student of Beethoven, youthful, romantic and progressive. Out of half a dozen operas we may mention Estrella de Soria, a romantic work of large proportions, built on the Parisian model (though showing the homely influence of Weber)—with hunting chorus, grand ballet, and all. That he was not unconscious of his nationality is proved by the names of some of his choral compositions, such as Gustav Adolph bei Lützen, 'The Victory of Karl XII at Narwa,' and the Nordische Phantasiebilder. A 'symphonic poem,' En landtlig Bröllopfest, makes extensive use of Swedish melodies, but the style is not a national one, and the themes are merely utilized without being developed. As a highly trained and spontaneous worker in the early romantic style Berwald performed a great service in awakening musical consciousness in his native land. But here ends his national significance.

Berwald's tendency was represented in the following generation by Albert Rubenson (1826-1901), a less talented but very able composer. He came from the Leipzig school and was thoroughly Germanized, but like Berwald devoted some attention to Swedish subjects. Ludwig Normann (1831-1885) anticipated the modern Swedish composers in his preference for the smaller forms. In his piano music he is tender and idyllic, delighting in detail and suggestive device, something of a poet and tone-painter. Mendelssohn is the chief influence in his piano work. Though this is thin in style, it is rich in charming melody and is carried out with a fine polish. In his larger works, such as the symphony in E-flat major (1840), he is still the melodist; his writing is fresh and even original, but his scoring is without distinction. His romantic overtures are in the Mendelssohnian manner, with romantic color in the fashion of the time.

One of the most talented of the early Swedish composers was Ivan Hallström (1826-1901), who may be said to have been the first truly national composer of his land. He appreciated the artistic possibilities of the national folk-song and made its use in his music a chief tenet in his artistic creed. This was preëminently true in his operas—such as Den Bergtagna, Die Gnomenbraut, Der Viking, and Neaga. The last-named is a romantic work teeming with color and poetry, with traces of Wagnerian influence, but with much vigor, beauty and depth. Some of these works have been favorably received in Germany, but they are not sufficiently personal and dramatic to justify a long life. The Swedish folk-song was carried into symphonic and chamber music by J. Adolph Hägg (born 1850), a disciple of Gade and an able and fruitful composer of symphonies and sonatas, and romantic pieces for piano, which are filled with romantic and local color.

But the early musical generation, of which Hallström may be considered one of the last, was more distinctive and national in its songs than in its instrumental works. The first half of the nineteenth century may be called the golden age of the Swedish Lied. It was a time of choral societies, some of which became famous throughout the continent. Otto Lindblad (1809-1864) was a leader and prolific composer for such societies. It is to his credit to have composed the official national song of Sweden. But the great lyric genius of Sweden was Adolph Fr. Lindblad (1801-1879), who is commonly called 'the Swedish Schubert.' His genius was tender and elegiac, responding sensitively to the colors of nature, and, thanks to the art of Jenny Lind, it became familiar to concert-goers in many lands.

Swedish music of modern times has maintained a wide variety of forms and styles. The national feeling is still strong, though some of the ablest work is being done in an 'absolute' idiom. On the whole the recent Swedish school is best represented to the outside world by Petersen-Berger with his short and graceful piano pieces, and by Sjögren with his songs. In opera Sweden has approached an international standing, but has not quite attained it. Her opera is represented at its best by Andreas Hallén (born 1846), who used national tone-material with Wagnerian technique. Like most other northern musicians of his time he went to Leipzig for his training and sought in Germany for his beacon lights. After returning to his native land he became indispensable in its musical life, serving as director of the Stockholm Philharmonic Society and of the Stockholm opera. Besides songs and choral works he wrote a number of symphonic pieces of a high order, filled with Swedish melody and Swedish color. The Swedish Rhapsodies opus 23, based entirely upon well-known national songs, are of a solid technique and agreeable variety; the themes themselves are little developed, but by their scoring and their juxtaposition they become fused into an admirable whole. The Sommersaga, opus 36, lacks specific Swedish color, but is an attractive and able work in the older romantic style. The Toteninsel, opus 45, is an ambitious symphonic poem. The themes are arresting, the development powerful, and the harmony energetic, but the work lacks the dithyrambic quality demanded of tone-poems in recent times, and hence seems outmoded. In 'The Music of the Spheres,' dating from 1909, we discover an admirable adaptation and fusion of modern harmonic technique, but the ideas and the construction speak of a bygone age. In all these works Hallén was mainly under the influence of Liszt. In the operas, on which his reputation chiefly rests, he was at first wholly Wagnerian. His first work for the stage, 'Harald the Viking,' though presumably Swedish, is utterly Wagnerian in treatment. Were it not that Wagnerian imitation cannot be truly creative, this work would surely take a high rank, for it is powerful, dramatic, and admirably scored. The national tone becomes more marked in the later operas—Hexfällen (1896), Waldemarskatten (1899) and Waldborgsmässa (1901). The Wagnerian leit-motif and Wagnerian harmony are still present, but the Swedish material has suitably modified the general style. In Waldemarskatten, which is of a light romantic tone, one even feels that the composer has despaired of being successful in the highest musical forms and has made a compromise in the direction of easy popularity. But the work is filled with beautiful passages. In the spots where Hallén imitates folk-song or folk-dance, he is fresh and inspiring. His musical treatment is never highly personal; on the other hand he shows most valuable qualities—vigor, passion, folk-feeling, and above all dramatic sense. His scoring, too, is rich and colorful.

Perhaps the best known and most typical of the modern Swedes is Emil Sjögren (born 1853), the undisputed master of the modern Swedish art-song. No other composer of his land is so individual as he. No other is more specifically Swedish, in perfumed grace and sensuous tenderness. Yet he is by no means a salon composer. His work is energetic, showing at times even a touch of the noble and heroic. His nationalism does not consist so much in his use of actual Swedish material as in his finely racial manner of treatment. In his short piano pieces—cycles, novelettes, landscape pictures, etc.—he has impregnated the salon manner of a Mendelssohn with something of the color and personal feeling of a Grieg. His choral works are highly prized in Sweden. His work in the classical forms, chiefly for violin and piano, are conservative in form and (until recently) in harmony. But it is in his songs that Sjögren has expressed himself most perfectly. These are very numerous and show a wide range of emotional expression. Beyond a doubt they are thoroughly successful only in the tenderer and intimate moods. They reveal a psychological power recalling that of Schumann, and an impressionistic harmonic perfume similar to that in Grieg's best work. In the brief strophe form Sjögren shows himself master of the exquisite form which distinguishes the Swedish folk-song. In his early period his accompaniment followed closely the regular voice-part, and his harmony, while always personal, was simple. A middle period shows a perfect blending of voice and piano, with freedom and variety in each, much pianistic resourcefulness, and a remarkable melodic gift. Since this period his harmony has undergone a striking change. He has evidently sat at the feet of the modern French masters, and has adopted an idiom which is complex and difficult. He has managed to keep it original and personal, but it is to be doubted whether the recent songs will ever hold a permanent place beside the lovely ones of the middle period.

Of almost equal personal distinction and importance is Wilhelm Petersen-Berger (born 1867), a master of romantic piano music in the smaller forms, and a national voice to his native land. His work is varied. There is chamber music such as the E minor violin sonata. There is a 'Banner Symphony' (1904) and one entitled Sonnenfärd (1910). There are male choruses, such as En Fjällfärd, and orchestral works such as the 'May Carnival in Stockholm,' together with at least four operas—Sveagaldrar (1897), Das Glück (1902), Ran (1903) and Arnljot (1907). Finally there are the piano pieces, a rich and varied list ranging all the way from the simplest of 'parlor melodies' to large tone poems and concert works. Some of the piano pieces bear such titles as 'To the Roses,' 'Summer Song,' and 'Lawn Tennis.' Others are ambitiously named 'Northern Rhapsody' (with orchestra) and 'Swedish Summer.' With some of these works Petersen-Berger takes a place beside the ablest and most poetic modern writers for the pianoforte. Landscape, story and mood are here expressed, with a technique ranging from that of Schumann's 'Children's Pieces' all the way to the modern idiom of Ravel. If some of the pieces seem cheap and sentimental let it be remembered that they are replacing much less attractive things written by third rate men, and are helping to raise the taste of the 'ordinary music-lover' as Mendelssohn's 'Songs without Words' did half a century before. His melody is truly lyric and his harmony truly impressionistic. His genius for the piano is proved by his ability to get full and colorful effects out of a style of writing which on paper looks thin. Though sentimentality abounds, the spirit is fundamentally vigorous and healthy and at times approaches something like tragic dignity. The 'Northern Rhapsody' is a wholly admirable treatment of folk-tunes on a large scale and with the idiom of pianistic virtuosity. The songs are often charming, though on the whole less satisfactory than the piano pieces. When he writes simply he shows almost flawless taste and artistic selection. When he aims at the mood of high tragedy, as in the songs from Nietzsche, he is sometimes unexpectedly successful. The Nietzsche songs, radical in technique, are moving and impressive. In his large works Petersen-Berger is not so successful. His Sonnenfärd symphony is lyric, rather than orchestral. It is lacking in structural power, and in the broad spiritual sweep which such a large-scale work must have. But here again his charming melody almost saves the day. The opera Arnljot can hardly be called a success; it is long and ambitious, but thinly written, undramatic, and not very pleasing.

In direct contrast to Petersen-Berger is Hugo Alfvén (born 1872), Sweden's most important contrapuntist. In him the national influence is reduced to a minimum, though it is sometimes to be noticed in a certain manner of forming themes and moulding cadences. Swedish color is, however, noticeable in certain works specifically national. The Midsommarvaka is built upon Swedish tunes, organized and developed in the spirit of the classic composers. The whole spirit is intellectual and technical, but this has its agreeable side in the composer's ability to build up long sustained passages. The 'Upsala Rhapsody,' opus 24, is merely an excuse for the technical manipulation of a collection of rather cheap melodies. The symphonies are more able and even less interesting. The solidity and complexity of the polyphonic style excite admiration, but the themes are without distinction and the total effect is pedantic. In his songs, however, Alfvén gives us a surprise. His power of development here becomes something like poetic greatness, especially where the form is free enough to give the work a symphonic character. The voice part is unconventional, declamatory and impressive, and the accompaniment varied and impressive. Altogether, these songs are among the most admirable which modern Scandinavian has given us.

Among the other able composers of modern Sweden we should mention Tor Aulin (born 1866), who has consecrated his lyric and poetic talent chiefly to the violin; Erik Akerberg (born 1860), whose classical predilections have led him to choral and symphonic work; and Wilhelm Stenhammar (born 1871). The last is one of the ablest of modern Swedish composers, a man whose talents have by no means been adequately recognized, and a genius, perhaps, who is destined to out-strip his better-known contemporaries. The list of his works includes two operas, Tirfing (1898) and 'The Feast at Solhaug' (the libretto from Ibsen's play); string quartets, sonatas and concertos for piano and violin; large choral works, songs, and ballads with orchestral accompaniment. The piano concerto, opus 23, ranks with Grieg's finest orchestral works. The themes, not always remarkable, are lifted into the extraordinary by Stenhammar's brilliant handling of them. The A minor quartet, opus 25, shows great beauty of simple material, and an intellectual and technical dominance which lift it quite above the usual Swedish chamber music. The sonata for violin and piano, opus 19, is a fine work, simple, fresh, original and charming. In much of the instrumental music the idiom is advanced, with the emphasis thrown on the voice leading rather than on the harmony; but it cannot easily be referred to a single school, for it is always personal and individually expressive. When we come to a work like Midvinter, opus 24, a tone poem for large orchestra, we are at the summit of modern Scandinavian romantic writing. This work is a masterpiece. The themes, says the composer in a note, were taken down by ear from the fiddler Hinns Andersen, except for one, a traditional Christmas hymn which is sung by a chorus obbligato. The counterpoint in this work is masterly, the animal vigor overwhelming. At no point is the composer found wanting in structural power or invention. On the whole, no modern Scandinavian composer, unless it be Sinding, approaches Stenhammar in the fusing of fresh poetry with strong intellectual and technical control. But not only has he written some of Scandinavia's finest chamber and symphonic music; he has written also at least one opera which stands out from among its contemporaries as genius stands out from imitation. This is 'The Feast at Solhaug,' opus 6, dated 1896, and performed at the Berlin Royal Opera House in 1905. This work is utterly lyrical and utterly national; it is doubtful if there is a more thoroughly Swedish work in the whole list of modern Scandinavian music. In the vulgar sense it is not dramatic; it has little concern for square-cornered emotions and startling confrontations. Its melody, which is astonishingly abundant, is always spontaneous and always expressive. The discreetly managed accompaniment is unfailingly resourceful in supplying color and emotional expression. We can say without hesitation that there has been no more beautiful dramatic work in the whole history of Scandinavian opera.

IV

Norway, as it seems, has always been a nation of great individuals. In her early history she was as isolated socially as she was geographically. Though nominally a part of the Swedish Empire, she always maintained a large measure of independence, and strengthened the barrier of high mountains with a more impassable barrier of neighborhood jealousy. Life was difficult among the mountains and fjords, and each man was obliged to depend upon his own courage and energy. Luxury was unknown. Even civilization was primitive. Hence, when Norway began to attain artistic expression in the nineteenth century she was as provincial as a little village in the middle west of America. But her life, while simple, was intense, and the narrowness of the spiritual environment fostered a broad culture of the soul. Norway became a nation of laborers, of poets, of thinkers, and of religious seers. The very friction that opposed the current made it give out more light.

Ibsen, the first supreme genius of Norway in the arts, wrote equally from Norway's traditional past and from Norway's circumscribed present. Out of the combination of the two he created 'Brand,' one of the noblest poetic tragedies of modern times. His later social dramas, as we know, altered the theatre of the whole world. Beside Ibsen was Björnson, only second to him in poetry and drama. And it was during Ibsen's early years that Norway began to attain self-expression in music. The first composer of national significance was Waldemar Thrane (1790-1828), composer of overtures, cantatas, and dances, and of the music to Bjerragaard's 'Adventure in the Mountains.' But the fame of Norway was first carried outside the peninsula by Ole Bull (1810-1880), the virtuoso violinist who, after touring through all the capitals of Europe, settled down in Pennsylvania as the founder of a Norwegian colony. His compositions for the violin had an influence out of all proportion to their inherent value. He was a romantic voice out of the north to thousands who had never thought of music except in terms of Mendelssohn and Händel. His Fantasies and Caprices for the violin were filled with national melodies and national color. He was an ardent patriot, and through his national theatre in Bergen, no less than through his music and playing, awakened his countrymen to artistic self-consciousness.

Of far wider power as a composer was Halfdan Kjerulf (1815-1863), a composer of songs which stand among the best in spontaneity and delicate charm. His charming piano pieces in the small forms were filled with romantic color. In his many songs, simple, yet varied and original, he showed a power of evoking emotional response that forces one to compare his talent with that of Schubert. With him we should mention E. Neupert (1842-1888), who carried the romanticism of Weber and Mendelssohn into Norway, in a long and varied list of chamber and orchestral music; M. A. Udbye (1820-1889), composer of Norway's first opera Fredkulla; and O. Winter-Hjelm (born 1837), who was a generous composer of songs, choral and orchestral pieces in the conservative romantic style of Germany. Johann D. Behrens (1820-1890) proved himself a valuable conductor and composer for Norway's unbelievably numerous male singing societies.

But the greatest composer of the older romantic period was Johan Svendsen (born 1840). He was solidly grounded in the methods and ideals of Schumann, Mendelssohn, Gade and even Brahms, and remained always true to their vision. A specific national composer he was not, but with discreet coloring he treated national subjects in such works as the 'Norwegian Rhapsody,' the 'Northern Carnival,' the legend for orchestra Zorahayde, and the prelude to Björnson's Sigurd Slembe. In the classical forms he wrote two symphonies and a number of string quartets of marked value. As a colorist he must be highly ranked. But his color is not so much that of nationality as that of romanticism in the conventional sense. His virtues were the romantic virtues of sensuous beauty, discreet eloquence, and somewhat self-conscious emotion. But Norway found her true national propagandist in Richard Nordraak (1842-1866). This man, who died at the age of twenty-four, was a remarkably talented musician, and an unrestrained enthusiast for the integrity of his native land, both in politics and in art. It is said that his meeting with Grieg in Copenhagen in 1864, and their later friendly intercourse, determined the latter to the strenuously national aspirations which he later carried to such brilliant fruition. The funeral march which Grieg inscribed to him after his death is one of his deepest and most moving works. Nordraak's few compositions—incidental music to two of Björnson's plays, piano pieces and songs—show his effort after purely national coloring, but have otherwise no very high value.

The great apostle of Norwegian nationalism was of course Grieg. His place among the composers of whom we are now speaking was partly that of good angel and partly that of press agent. The other Scandinavian composers have basked to a great extent in the light which he shed, have taken their inspiration from him, and have learned invaluable lessons in the art of musical picture painting. He was by no means merely a nationalist. Besides acquainting the world with the beautiful peculiarities of Norwegian folk-song and with the fancied beauties of northern scenery, he showed composers in every part of the world how to use the melodic peculiarities of these songs to build up a strange and enchanting harmony, capable of calling forth mysterious pictures of the earth and sea and their superhuman inhabitants. Grieg was the first popular impressionist. He helped to shift the emphasis from the technical and emotional aspects of music to its specific pictorial and sensuous aspects. And he prepared the world at large for the idea of musical nationalism, which has become one of the two most striking facts of present-day music.

When we say that Grieg was the first popular impressionist we do not mean that he was more able or original than certain others who were working with the same tendencies at the same time. His popularity resulted to a great extent from the form and manner in which he worked. His piano music was admirably suited to making a popular appeal. It was often short and easy; it was nearly always melodious and clear. Its picturesque titles suggested a reason for its unusual turns of harmony and phrase. It was never so radical in its originality as to leave the mind bewildered. Hence Grieg became extremely popular among amateurs and casual music-lovers. His piano pieces became Hausmusik as those of Mendelssohn had been a generation before. The 'impressionistic' effect was usually produced by simple means—a slight alteration of the familiar form of cadence, a gentle blurring of the major and minor modes, an extended use of secondary sevenths and other orthodox dissonances. These interested the musical amateur without repelling him, and, when listened to in association with the picturesque titles, suggested all sorts of delightful sensuous things, such as the mist on the mountains, the sunlight over the fjords, or the heavy green of the seaside pines. This musical style of Grieg's was expertly managed; it was unquestionably individual and was matured to a point where it showed no relapses to the style out of which it had developed. As an orchestral colorist Grieg was talented and original, but by no means revolutionary. He chose timbres with a nice sense of their picturesque values, but in orchestration he is not a long step ahead of the Mendelssohn of the overtures.

Edvard Grieg at the Piano

After a photograph from life

Edvard Hagerup Grieg, the son of Alexander Grieg, was born in Bergen, Norway, in 1843. He was descended from Alexander Greig (the spelling of the name was changed later to accommodate the Norwegian pronunciation), a merchant of Aberdeen, who emigrated from Scotland to Norway soon after the battle of Culloden, in 1746. His father and his grandfather before him served as British consul at Bergen. His mother was a daughter of Edvard Hagerup, for many years the mayor of Bergen, the second city of Norway. It was from her that Grieg inherited both his predisposition for music and his intensely patriotic nature. She was a loyal daughter of Norway and was possessed of no small musical talent, which her family was glad to cultivate, sending her to Hamburg in her girlhood for lessons in singing and pianoforte playing. These she supplemented later by further musical studies in London, and she acquired sufficient skill to enable her to appear acceptably as a soloist at orchestral concerts in Bergen. It was a home surcharged with a musical atmosphere into which Edvard Grieg was born; and his mother must have dreamed of making him a musician, for she began to give him pianoforte lessons when he was only six years old.

Though he disliked school (he appears to have been a typical youngster in his predilection for truancy), the boy made commendable progress in his music and even tried his hand at little compositions of his own; but before his fifteenth year there was no serious thought of a musical career for him. In that year Ole Bull, the celebrated violinist, visited his father's house, and, having heard the lad play some of his youthful pieces, prevailed upon his parents to send him to Leipzig that he might become a professional musician. It was all arranged very quickly one summer afternoon; the fond parents needed little coaxing, and to the boy 'it seemed the most natural thing in the world.' Matriculated at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1858, young Grieg at first made slow progress. He studied harmony and counterpoint under Hauptmann and Richter, composition under Rietz and Reinecke, and pianoforte playing under Wenzel and Moscheles. At the conservatory at that time were five English students, among them Arthur Sullivan, J. F. Barnett, and Edward Dannreuther, who subsequently became leaders in the musical life of London; and their unstinting toil and patience in drudgery inspired the young Norwegian to greater concentration of effort than his frail physique could stand. Under the strain he broke down completely. An attack of pleurisy destroyed his left lung and thus his health was permanently impaired. He was taken home to Norway, where it was necessary for him to remain the greater part of a year to recuperate. But as soon as he was able he returned to Leipzig; he was graduated with honors in 1862.

At Leipzig Grieg came strongly under the sway of Mendelssohn and Schumann. He did not escape from that influence when he went to Copenhagen in 1863 to study composition informally with Niels Gade. While Grieg always held Gade in high esteem, the two musicians really had little in common, and the slight influence of the Dane was speedily superseded by that of Nordraak, with whom Grieg now came in contact. Nordraak was ambitious to produce a genuinely national Norwegian music, and, brief as their friendship was, it served to set Grieg, whose talents lay in the same direction, on the right path. Now fairly launched upon the career of a piano virtuoso and composer, he became a 'determined adversary of the effeminate Scandinavianism which was a mixture of Gade and Mendelssohn,' and with enthusiasm entered upon the work of developing independently in artistic forms the musical idioms of his people. In 1867 Grieg was married to Nina Hagerup, his cousin, who had inspired and who continued to inspire many of his best songs, and whose singing of them helped to spread her husband's fame in many European cities. In 1867 also he founded in Christiania a musical union of the followers of the new Norse school, which he continued to conduct for thirteen years.

Besides the giving of concerts in the chief Scandinavian and German cities and making an artistic pilgrimage to Italy Grieg at this period was increasingly industrious in composition. He was remarkably active for a semi-invalid. He had found himself; and he continued to develop his creative powers in the production of music that was not only nationally idiomatic, but thoroughly suffused with the real spirit of his land and his people. In 1868 Liszt happened upon his first violin sonata (opus 8) and forthwith sent him a cordial letter of commendation and encouragement, inviting him to Weimar. This letter was instrumental in inducing the Norwegian government to grant him a sum of money that enabled him to go again to Rome in 1870. There he met Liszt and the two musicians at once became firm friends. At their second meeting Liszt played from the manuscript Grieg's piano concerto (opus 16), and when he had finished said: 'Keep steadily on; I tell you you have the capability, and—do not let them intimidate you!' The big, great-hearted Liszt feared that the frail little man from the far north might be in danger of intimidation; but his spirit was brave enough at all times—though he wrote to his parents: 'This final admonition was of tremendous importance to me; there was something in it that seemed to give it an air of sanctification.' Thenceforward the recognition of his genius steadily increased. In 1872 he was appointed a member of the Swedish Academy of Music; in 1883 a corresponding member of the Musical Academy at Leyden; in 1890 of the French Academy of Fine Arts. In 1893 the University of Cambridge conferred on him the doctorate in music, at the same time that it honored by the bestowal of this degree Tschaikowsky, Saint-Saëns, Boito, and Max Bruch. Except when on concert tours his later years were spent chiefly at his beautiful country home, the villa Troldhaugen near Bergen, and there he died on September 4, 1907, after an almost constant fight with death for more than forty-five years.

Hans von Bülow called Grieg the Chopin of the North, and the convenience of the sobriquet helped to give it a wider popular acceptance than it deserved, for in truth the basis for such a comparison is rather slight. Undoubtedly Chopin's bold new harmony was one of the sub-conscious forces that helped to shape Grieg's musical genius. His mother had appreciated and delighted in Chopin's music at a time when it was little understood and much underrated; and from childhood Chopin was Grieg's best-loved composer. In his student days he was deeply moved by the 'intense minor mood of the Slavic folk-music in Chopin's harmonies and the sadness over the unhappy fate of his native land in his melodies.' It is certain that there is a certain kinship in the musical styles of the two men, in their refinement, in the kind and even the degree of originality with which each has enriched his art, in many of their aims and methods. While Grieg never attained to the heights of Chopin in his pianoforte music, he surpassed his Polish predecessor in the ability to handle other instruments as well as in his songs, of which he published no fewer than one hundred and twenty-five.

These songs we hold to constitute Grieg's loftiest achievement; and in all his music he is first of all the singer—amazingly fertile in easily comprehensible and alluring melodies. He patterned these original melodies after the folk-songs of that Northland he loved so ardently, just as he often employed the rhythms of its folk-dances; and by these means he imparted to his work a fascinating touch of strangeness and succeeded in evoking as if by magic the moods of the land and the people from which he sprang. On the wings of his music we are carried to the land of the fjords; we breathe its inspiriting air, and our blood dances and sings with its lusty yet often melancholy sons and daughters. Much as there is of Norway in his compositions, there is still more of Grieg. His melodies are his own and more enchanting than the folk-songs which provided their patterns; and as a harmonist he is both bold and skillful.

Grieg's place, as may be gathered from what has already been said, is in the small group of the world's greatest lyricists. He wrote no operas and he composed no great symphonies. His physical infirmity militated against the sustained effort necessary for the creation of works in these kinds; but it is also plain from the work he did when at his best that his inclination and his powers led him into other fields. He possessed the dramatic qualities and ability only slightly, the epic still less, though it cannot be denied that in moments of rare exaltation he was 'a poet of the tragic, of the largely passionate and elemental.' His nearest approach to symphonic breadth is to be found in his pianoforte concerto, which Dr. Niemann pronounces the most beautiful work of its kind since Schumann, his sonatas for violin and pianoforte, his string quartet and his 'Peer Gynt' music. Yet these beautiful and stirring compositions are, after all, only lyrics of a larger growth. Grieg himself knew well his powers and his limitations, and he was as modest as he was candid when he wrote: 'Artists like Bach and Beethoven erected churches and temples on the heights. I wanted, as Ibsen expresses it in one of his last dramas, to build dwellings for men in which they might feel at home and happy. In other words, I have recorded the folk-music of my land. In style and form I have remained a German romanticist of the Schumann school; but at the same time I have dipped from the rich treasures of native folk-song and sought to create a national art out of this hitherto unexploited expression of the folk-soul of Norway.' The spirit of the man recalls the pretty little quatrain of Thomas Bailey Aldrich:

'I would be the lyric,
Ever on the lip,
Rather than the epic
Memory lets slip.'

And this is not to disparage pure and simple song. It is enough for Edvard Grieg's lasting fame that he did have in rare abundance the pure lyric quality—that close and delicate touch upon the heart strings which makes them vibrate in sympathy with all the little importances and importunities of individual human life.

V

The one Norwegian composer, besides Grieg, who has attained an international position, is Christian Sinding (born 1856). He is consciously and genuinely national, but in almost every other way is a complement and contrast to the other northern master. Where Grieg is best in the idyllic, Sinding is best in the heroic. Sinding is apt to be trivial where Grieg is at his best—namely, in the smaller forms. On the other hand, Sinding is noble and inspiring in works too long for Grieg to sustain. In Sinding the Wagnerian influence is marked and inescapable. He, like Grieg, is most at home when working with native material—the sharp rhythms, short periods and angular line of the Norwegian folk-song—but he develops it objectively where Grieg developed it intensively. Sinding need not work from the pictorial; Grieg was obliged to. Sinding's speech is much more cosmopolitan, his harmony less pronounced, his form more conventional. At times he attains a high level of emotional expression. On the other hand, he has written much, and his reputation has suffered thereby. Frequently he is uninspired. But the sustained magnificence of his orchestral and chamber music has done much to offset the prevailing idea that the northern composers could work only in the parlor or genre style. He sounds the epic and heroic note too often and with too much inspiration to permit us to question the greatness of his art.

He has worked in most of the established forms. His D minor symphony, opus 21, is one of the noblest in all Scandinavian music. His symphonic poem, 'Perpetual Motion,' with its inexhaustible energy and its glittering orchestral color, takes a high rank in modern orchestral music. His chamber music—quartets, quintets, trios, violin sonatas, etc.—is distinguished by melodic inspiration, vigorous counterpoint, and sustained structural power. His piano concerto and two violin concertos, and his grandiose E-flat minor variations for two pianos, have taken a firm place in concert programmes. As a piano composer in the smaller forms he is of course less personal, less distinguished, than Grieg. But every piano student knows his Frühlingsrauschen and Marche Grotesque. As a song composer he may justly be ranked second to Grieg in all the Scandinavian lands. His power and sincerity in the shorter strophic song is astonishing; his strophes have the cogency and finish of the Swedish folk-song combined with the intensity and sincerity of the Norwegian. In his longer songs he is noble and dramatic; he is a master of poignant emotional expression and of sustained and mounting energy. Two of his familiar songs—'The Mother' and 'A Bird Cried'—are masterpieces of the first rank. Sinding's harmony is vigorous. An 'impressionist' in the modern sense of the term he is not. He loves the use of marked dissonance for specific effect; his harmonic style is broad, solidly based, square-cornered. It is regrettable, perhaps, that he did not work more in opera; his only dramatic work, 'The Holy Mountain,' was performed in Germany early in 1914. But this fact doubtless furnishes us the reason, for Norway does not offer a career for an opera composer, who must depend for his success on great wealth and large cities. As it is, Sinding has made a high, perhaps a permanent, place for himself in chamber and orchestral music.

Johan Selmer (born 1844) has taken a place as the most radical of the 'new romanticists' in Norway. His work is extensive and varied, and is most impressive in the larger forms. He has written a series of symphonic poems, several large choral works, many part songs and ballads, and the usual quota of Lieder. His chief influences were Wagner, Liszt, and Berlioz. He can hardly be called a nationalist in music, for his work shows little northern feeling except where he makes use of specific Norwegian tunes; indeed he seems equally willing to get his local color from Turkey or Italy. His work is thoroughly disappointing; modelling himself on the giants, he has been obliged to make himself a gigantic mask of paper. Neither his melodic inspiration, his structural power, nor his technical learning was equal to the task he set himself. His chief orchestral work, 'Prometheus,' opus 50, is ridiculously inadequate to its grandiose subject. His Finnländischer Festklang is the most ordinary sort of rhapsody on borrowed material. Of his other works we need only say that they reveal abundantly the effect of large ambitions on a little man. Along with Selmer we may mention three opera composers of Norway, none sufficiently distinguished to carry his name beyond the national border: Johannes Haarklou (born 1847), Cath. Elling (born 1858) and Ole Olsen (born 1850). The last, though yet 'unproduced' as a dramatic composer, deserves to be better known than he is. His symphonic and piano music is pleasing without being distinguished; but the operas Lajla and Hans Unversagt are charmingly colorful and melodic, revealing musical scholarship and fine emotional expression. Finally we may mention Johann Halvorsen (born 1864), a follower of Grieg and an able composer for violin and male chorus.

One of the most promising of the younger Norwegians was Sigurd Lie (1871-1904), whose early death cut off a career which bade fair to be internationally distinguished. Surely he would have been one of the most national of Norwegian composers. His list of works, brief because of ill health, includes a symphony in A minor, a symphonic march, an oriental suite for orchestra, a piano quintet, a goodly list of short piano pieces, and many songs and choral works. He used the Norwegian folk-song intensively, combining its spirit with that of the old ecclesiastical tone. He was a true poet of music; his moods were usually mystic, gray and religious, and his effects, even in simple piano pieces, were obtained with astonishing sureness. His harmony, though not radical, was personal and highly expressive. His songs, much sung in his native land, reveal a genius for precise and poignant expression.

One of the most popular of Norway's living composers for the piano is Halfdan Cleve (born 1879), writer of numerous works of which those in the large forms are most important. Cleve is cosmopolitan, enamored of large effects, and of dazzling virtuosity. His technique is varied and exceedingly sure, but he lacks the appealing loveliness which has brought reputation to the works of so many of his countrymen. More popular is Agathe Backer-Gröndahl (born 1847), industrious writer of piano pieces in the smaller forms. Outwardly a classicist, she has drunk of the lore of Grieg and has achieved charming and able works, distinguished by delicate feeling and care for detail. Her children's songs are altogether delightful. But when she attempts longer works her inspiration is apt to fail her.

Perhaps the most original and personal composer after Grieg and Sinding is Gerhard Schjelderup (born 1859), a tone poet of much technical ability and genuine national feeling. His songs and ballads are very fine, striking the heroic note with sincerity and conviction. In his simple songs and piano pieces, Schjelderup's innate feeling for the folk-tone makes him utterly successful. In his operas, 'Norwegian Wedding,' 'Beyond Sun and Moon,' 'A People in Distress,' and his incidental music, he lacks the dramatic and structural power for long sustained passages; but his genius for expressive simplicity has filled these works with beauties. Schjelderup's symphonies and chamber music have made a place for themselves in European concert halls equally by their freshness of feeling and by their excellence of technique.

VI

Finland's music, centred in its capital Helsingfors, was from the first under German domination. The national spirit, as we have seen, grew up under the inspiration of the Kalevala, then newly made known to literature. The first national composer of note was Frederick Pacius (1809-1891), born in Hamburg, but regarded as the founder of the national Finnish school. He was under the Mendelssohnian domination, but gave no little national color to his music and helped to centre the growing national consciousness. Besides symphonies, a violin concerto and male choruses, he wrote an opera 'King Karl's Hunt,' and several Singspiele which contained national flavor without any specific national material. To Pacius Finland owes her official national anthem. Other Finnish composers of note were Karl Collan (1828-1871), F. von Schantz (1835-1865) and C. G. Wasenus. The Wagnerian influence first penetrated the land of lakes in the works of Martin Wegelius (1846-1906), able composer of operas, piano and orchestral music, and choral works. But the first specific national tendency in Finnish music is due to Robert Kajanus (born 1856), who achieved the freshness and primitive force of the national folk-song in works of Wagnerian power and scope. Besides his piano and lyric pieces we possess several symphonic poems of his—including Aino and Kullervo—all markedly national in feeling.

Among the modern Finnish composers of second rank Armas Järnefelt (born 1869) is distinguished. In orchestral suites, symphonic poems (for example, the Heimatklang), overtures, choral works, piano pieces, and songs, he has shown spontaneity and technical learning. Poetic feeling and sensitive coloring are marked in his work. Much the same can be said of Erik Melartin (born 1875), except that his genius is more specifically lyric. His songs reflect the energy and freshness of a race just coming to consciousness. His smaller piano pieces show somewhat the salon influence of Sweden, but in all we feel that the artist is speaking. Ernst Mielck (1877-1899) had made a place for himself with his symphony and other orchestral works when death cut short his career. Oscar Merikanto (born 1868) has written, besides one opera, many songs and piano pieces, most of them conventional and undistinguished, and Selim Palmgren (born 1878) has already attained a wide reputation.

In Sibelius we meet one of the most powerful composers in modern music. Masterpiece after masterpiece has come from his pen, and the works which fall short of distinction are few indeed. He is at once the most national and the most personal composer in the whole history of Scandinavian music. His style is like no one else's; his themes, his mode of development, his harmonic 'atmosphere,' and his orchestral coloring are quite his own. But his materials are, with hardly an exception, drawn from the literature and folk-lore of the Finnish nation; his melodies, when not closely allied to the folk-melodies of his land, are so true to their spirit that they evoke instant response in his countrymen's hearts; and the moods and emotions which he expresses are those that are rooted deepest in the Finnish character. This powerful national tradition and feeling of which he is the spokesman he has vitalized with a creative energy which is equalled only by the few greatest composers of the world to-day. He has touched no department of music which he has not enriched with powerful and original works. As an innovator, pure and simple, he seems likely to prove one of the most productive forces in modern music. No deeper, more moving voice has ever come out of the north; only in modern Russia can anything so distinctly national and so supremely beautiful be found.

Jean Sibelius was born in Finland in 1865 and at first studied for the law. Shifting to music, he entered the conservatory at Helsingfors and worked under Wegelius. Later he studied in Berlin and thereafter went to Vienna. Here, under Goldmark, he developed his taste for powerful instrumental color, and under Robert Fuchs his concern for finely wrought detail. But even in his early works there was little of the German influence to be traced beyond thorough workmanship. With his symphonic poem, En Saga, opus 9, he became recognized as a national composer. The Finns, longing for self-expression, looked to him eagerly. They had, as Dr. Niemann[11] has put it, been made silent heroes by their struggles with forest, plain, cataract and sea, and by the bitter recent political conflict with Russia. And, as always happens in such cases, they sought to give expression to their suppressed national ideals in art. Sibelius's symphonic poem, Finlandia, is a thinly veiled revolutionary document and his great male chorus, 'The Song of the Athenians' (words by the Finnish poet Rydberg), gave verbal expression to the thoughts of the patriots of the nation. The former piece has explicitly been banned in Finland by Russian edict because of its inflammatory influence on the people. But all this has not made Sibelius a political figure such as Wagner became in 1848. He has worked industriously and copiously at his music, watching it go round the civilized world, keeping himself aloof the while from outward turmoil, though his personal sympathies are known to be strongly nationalistic.

It was the symphonic poems which first made Sibelius a world-figure. These include a tetralogy, Lemminkäinen, consisting of 'Lemminkäinen and the Village Maidens,' 'The River of Tuonela,' 'The Swan of Tuonela,' and 'Lemminkäinen's Home-faring'; Finlandia, En Saga, 'Spring Song,' and the more recent 'Spirits of the Ocean' and 'Pohjola's Daughter.' The Lemminkäinen series is based on the Kalevala tale, which narrates the adventures of the hero Lemminkäinen, his departure to the river of death (Tuonela), his death there, and the magic by which his mother charmed his dismembered limbs to come together and the man to come to life. Of the four separate works which make up the series 'The Swan of Tuonela' is the most popular. It was in this that Sibelius's original mastery of orchestral tone was first made known to foreign audiences. With its enchanting theme sung by the English horn it weaves a long, slow spell of the utmost beauty. Finlandia tells of the struggles of a submerged nation; the early parts of the work are filled with passionate excitement and military bustle; then there emerges the motive of all this struggle—a majestic chorale melody, scored with the strings in all their resonance, a song at once of battle and of devotion, a melody for whose equal we must go to Beethoven and Wagner. En Saga, the earliest of the great nationalistic works, is without a definite program, but is dramatic in the highest degree. It is a masterpiece of free form, with its long, swelling climaxes and passionate adagios, surrounded by a haze of shimmering tone-color, as though the bard were singing his story among the fogs of the northern cliffs. The national character of these works is quite as marked in their themes as in their subject-matter. Sibelius is fond of the strange rhythms of the old times—3/4, 7/4, 2/2, or 3/2 time. His accent is almost crudely exaggerated. His original themes are so true to the national character that they seem made of one piece with the folk-tunes. The mood of these works is rarely gay; the animation is primitive and savage. The prevailing spirit is one of loneliness and gloom. In the symphonic poems, which grow increasingly free in harmony, we see in all its glory the orchestral scoring which is one of Sibelius's chief claims to fame. It is no mere virtuoso brilliancy, as is often the case with Rimsky-Korsakoff. It is always an accentuation of the character of the music with the character of the tone of the instrument chosen. It is color from a heavy palette, chosen chiefly from the deeper shades, showing its contrast in modulation of tones rather than high lights, yet kept always free of the turgid and muddy.

The same qualities are shown in the four symphonies. Of these the last is a thing of revolutionary import—a daring work whose full meaning to the future of music has not begun to be appreciated. The other three are perhaps less symphonies than symphonic rhapsodies. They seem to imply a program, being filled with episodes, dramatic, epic, and lyrical, interspersed with recitative and legend-like passages. But, however free the form, the architecture is cogent. In his development work Sibelius is always masterly. Some of the passages, like the main theme of the first movement of the first symphony, or the slow movement from the same, are amazing in their imaginative power and beauty. The fourth symphony is a work apart. In the first and second movements the harmony is quite as radical as anything in modern German or French music. It is, in fact, hardly harmony at all, but the free interplay of monophonic voices.

Jean Sibelius

After a photo from life (1913)

From this method, which at the present moment is almost Sibelius's private property, the composer extracts a quality of poetry which is impressive in its suggestions of great things beyond.

Some of Sibelius's best music has been written to accompany dramatic performances. That for Adolph Paul's play, 'King Christian II,' has been widely played as an orchestral suite. The introduction is especially fine. The warm and sweetly melancholy nocturne, the 'Elegy' for strings, and the profoundly moving Dance of Death are all movements of rare beauty. The lovely Valse Triste, a mimic drama in itself, written for Järnefelt's play, Kuolema, has carried his reputation far and wide, as the C sharp minor prelude carried Rachmaninoff's, or the 'Melody in F' Rubinstein's. There are, further, two orchestral suites from the accompanying music to Maeterlinck's 'Pelléas and Mélisande,' and Procopé's 'Belshazzar's Feast.' For orchestra we may further mention the Karelia Overture, the Scènes historiques, the Dance-Intermezzo, 'Pan and Echo,' the melancholy waltzes to accompany Strindberg's 'Snowwhite,' the two canzonettas for small orchestras, the Romance in C major for string orchestra, the short symphonic poem, 'The Dryads,' and the Funeral march.

The violin concerto, one of the most difficult of the kind in existence, has already gained its place among the standard concert pieces for the instrument. It shows deep feeling and national color, especially in the rhythmically vigorous finale. The string quartet, Voces Intimæ, opus 56, is a masterly work in a reserved style. The first three movements are said to have as a sort of program certain chapters from Swedenborg. The piano music is generally on a lower plane. To a great extent it recalls Schumann and Tschaikowsky; in such works as the Characterstücke, opera 5, 24, 41, and 58, in the sonatina, opus 67, and in the rondinos, opus 68, we find little that can be called original. But we must remember that in these pieces Sibelius was writing music to appeal to the people, and has succeeded to a remarkable degree in raising the general standard of taste in his native land. For his most personal piano work we must look to his transcriptions of Finnish tunes, especially 'The Fratricide' and 'Evening Comes.'

In his songs for solo voice Sibelius has achieved remarkable things. The remarkable 'Autumn Evening' is a sort of free recitative, always verging on melody, accompanied by suggestive descriptive figures in the piano part. Here we see in germ one of his most important contributions to modern music—an emphasis on expressive monody. The ballad, Des Fahrmanns Braut, which has been arranged for orchestral accompaniment, is weaker musically, but shows the same genius for expressive melodic recitative. And not the least important and characteristic part of Sibelius's work has been in the form of male choruses. Of these we may mention 'The Origin of Fire' and 'The Imprisoned Queen,' both with orchestral accompaniment, and, above all, the magnificent 'Song of the Athenians,' which has come to have a national significance among the Finns. As we look over this remarkable list of works, from the great symphonic forms down to brief songs, and note the quantity of germinal originality they contain, their high poetry, their universal beauty and intense national expression, we must adjudge Sibelius to be a master with a creative vitality which cannot be matched by more than half a dozen composers writing to-day.

H. K. M.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] See Chapter IV.

[11] Walter Niemann: Die Musik Skandinaviens.

CHAPTER IV
THE RUSSIAN NATIONALISTS

The founders of the 'Neo-Russian' Nationalistic School: Balakireff; Borodine—Moussorgsky—Rimsky-Korsakoff, his life and works—César Cui and other nationalists, Napravnik, etc.

I

The most significant phase in the history of Russian music is that which represents the activity of the Balakireff group and the founders of the St. Petersburg Free School of Music. This belongs to the middle of the past century, when the seed sown by Glinka, Dargomijsky and partly by Bortniansky began to bear its first fruits. Up to that time the question of Russian national music had not been aroused. The country was dominated either by German or the Italian musical ideals. Art, particularly music, was in every direction aristocratic, academic, and pedantically ecclesiastic. The ruling class was foreign to the core and followed literally the timely æsthetic fads of other countries. The idea that there could be any art in the life of a moujik was ridiculed and flatly denied. O, Bóje sohraní! a patron of music would exclaim at any attempts at a national music.

To the middle class and the common people the admission to high-class musical performances and the opera was legally denied. The concerts of the Imperial Musical Society and the performances of the Imperial Opera were meant only for the élite, and the direction of those institutions was in the hands of bureaucratic foreigners. It was at a critical moment that Balakireff, who had come as a young lawyer from Nijny Novgorod to St. Petersburg, laid the foundation of the Free School of Music. This institution was meant to train young Russians, to arouse in them an enthusiasm for the possibilities latent in their native music, and at the same time to arrange free concerts for the people and perform the works of those native composers who were turned away by the existing organizations. Founded by Balakireff, the composer, Lomakin, the talented choirmaster, and Stassoff, the celebrated critic, the free school became the institution of Borodine, Moussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakoff. Balakireff, Borodine and Moussorgsky can be considered as the real founders of the Russian 'realistic' school of music, if not the pioneers of a new musical art movement altogether. Upon their principles and examples rest the original vigor and the subjective glamour of all subsequent Russian music. The vague initiative given by Glinka and Dargomijsky underwent a thorough process of reconstruction at the hands of these three reformers; the stamp set by them upon the Russian music is as unique and as lasting as the semi-oriental spirit that permeates Russian life and character with its exotic magic.

The ideal of building up an art out of national material seemed to hang in the air, for this was the time of a great national awakening in Russia. Gogol, Lermontov, Pushkin, Dostoievsky, and Turgenieff in poetry and fiction, Griboiedoff and Ostrovsky in the drama, Stassoff, Hertzen, and Mihailovsky in critical literature, and the revolutionary movement of the so-called narodno-volts in politics were all symptoms of a vigorous reform period. It should be noted that in this great and far-reaching movement the Russian church, with all its seeming supremacy, exercised but little influence over matters of art and literature. While the church in Western Europe was aristocratic in its institutions, in Russia it remained throughout the centuries democratic. A Russian clergyman has remained nothing but a more or less refined moujik, a man who lives the life of the common people and associates with the people. As such he has never been antagonistic to the spirit of the common people, as far as their æsthetic tendencies and traditions are concerned. He has never tried to make art an issue of the church. Music, less than any other of the arts, has never been influenced in any way by ecclesiastical interests. No instrumental music of any kind has ever been performed in Russian churches. Hence, unlike those of Western Europe, Russian composers never came under the sway of the church. The western church was, as we have seen, originally opposed to the influence of folk music. In Russia, on the other hand, it favored any assertion of the people's individuality. It was, therefore, unlike the aristocratic classes, sympathetic to such a work as that which the Free School of Music made the object of its existence.

Before treating the works of the three great Russian reformers individually we may remark that none of them made music his sole profession. Balakireff was sufficiently well off to devote himself to his art without thought of material gain. Borodine earned his living as a scholar and pedagogue, and so maintained his independence as a composer. Moussorgsky alone felt the pinch of poverty; his official duties were strenuous and left him little leisure for composition. Yet, like his colleagues, he never compromised with public taste.

The real initiator of this new movement, Mily Alekseyevitch Balakireff, was born at Nijny Novgorod in 1837. He studied law at the University of Kazan, though music was his hobby from early childhood on. His musical ideals were Mozart, Beethoven, and Berlioz. During one of his summer vacations Balakireff met in the country near Nijny Novogorod a certain Mr. Oulibitcheff, a retired diplomat and friend of Glinka, an accomplished musician himself and thoroughly familiar with the classic composers of every country. It was he who converted Balakireff to the idea that Russia should have its own music, and that the lines to be followed should be those indicated by Glinka. With an introduction to that apostle of nationalism Balakireff journeyed to St. Petersburg in 1855. He found the city under the spell of German and Italian music, and the masses limited to the musical enjoyment to be derived from military bands and boulevard artists. With all the youthful energy at his command Balakireff set himself to combat the foreign influence and advance nationalistic ideas of music.