Musical Portraits

Musical Portraits, by Paul
Rosenfeld

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Title: Musical Portraits Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers
Author: Paul Rosenfeld
Release Date: October 16, 2006 [EBook #19557]
Language: English
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MUSICAL PORTRAITS
INTERPRETATIONS OF TWENTY MODERN COMPOSERS

BY PAUL ROSENFELD
NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE 1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC.
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY, N. J.
To ARTHUR MOORE WILLIAMSON
Some of the material of this book was originally printed in the form of
articles in "The Dial," "The New Republic," and "The Seven Arts."
Thanks are due the editors of these periodicals for permission to recast
and reprint it.

CONTENTS
WAGNER, 3 STRAUSS, 27 MOUSSORGSKY, 57 LISZT, 73
BERLIOZ, 87 FRANCK, 101 DEBUSSY, 119 RAVEL, 133
BORODIN, 149 RIMSKY-KORSAKOFF, 159 RACHMANINOFF,
169 SCRIABINE, 177 STRAWINSKY, 191 MAHLER, 205 REGER,
223 SCHOENBERG, 233 SIBELIUS, 245 LOEFFLER, 257
ORNSTEIN, 267 BLOCH, 281 APPENDIX, 299

MUSICAL PORTRAITS

Wagner
Wagner's music, more than any other, is the sign and symbol of the
nineteenth century. The men to whom it was disclosed, and who first
sought to refuse, and then accepted it, passionately, without
reservations, found in it their truth. It came to their ears as the sound of
their own voices. It was the common, the universal tongue. Not alone
on Germany, not alone on Europe, but on every quarter of the globe

that had developed coal-power civilization, the music of Wagner
descended with the formative might of the perfect image. Men of every
race and continent knew it to be of themselves as much as was their
hereditary and racial music, and went out to it as to their own adventure.
And wherever music reappeared, whether under the hand of the
Japanese or the semi-African or the Yankee, it seemed to be growing
from Wagner as the bright shoots of the fir sprout from the dark ones
grown the previous year. A whole world, for a period, came to use his
idiom. His dream was recognized during his very lifetime as an integral
portion of the consciousness of the entire race.
For Wagner's music is the century's paean of material triumph. It is its
cry of pride in its possessions, its aspiration toward greater and ever
greater objective power. Wagner's style is stiff and diapered and
emblazoned with the sense of material increase. It is brave, superb,
haughty with consciousness of the gigantic new body acquired by man.
The tonal pomp and ceremony, the pride of the trumpets, the arrogant
stride, the magnificent address, the broad, vehement, grandiloquent
pronouncements, the sumptuous texture of his music seems forever
proclaiming the victory of man over the energies of fire and sea and
earth, the lordship of creation, the suddenly begotten railways and
shipping and mines, the cataclysm of wealth and comfort. His work
seems forever seeking to form images of grandeur and empire, flashing
with Siegfried's sword, commanding the planet with Wotan's spear,
upbuilding above the heads of men the castle of the gods. It dares
measure itself with the terrestrial forces, exults in the fire, soughs
through the forest with the thunderstorm, glitters and surges with the
river, spans mountains with the rainbow bridge. It is full of the gestures
of giants and heroes and gods, of the large proud movements of which
men have ever dreamed in days of affluent power. Even "Tristan und
Isolde," the high song of love, and "Parsifal," the mystery, spread
richness and splendor about them, are set in an atmosphere of heavy
gorgeous stuffs, amid objects of gold and silver, and thick clouding
incense, while the protagonists, the lovers and saviors, seem to be
celebrating a worldly triumph, and crowning themselves kings. And
over the entire body of Wagner's music, there float, a massive diadem,
the towers and parapets and banners of Nuremberg the imperial free

city, monument of a victorious burgherdom, of civic virtue that on the
ruins of feudalism constructed its own world, and demonstrated to all
times its dignity and sobriety and industry, its solid worth.
For life itself made the Wagnerian gesture. The vortex of steel and
glass and gold, the black express-packets plowing the seven seas, the
smoking trains piercing the bowels of the mountains and connecting
cities vibrant with hordes of business men, the telegraph wires setting
the world aquiver with their