Old Fogy | Page 3

fair and fair is foul"--pardon this jumble of Shakespeare!--I shall tell you what I think of the blond madman who sets to music crazy philosophies, bloody legends, sublime tommy-rot, and his friend's poems and pictures. At this writing I have neither humor nor space.
As I understand the rank and jargon of modern criticism, Berlioz is called the father of modern instrumentation. That is, he says nothing in his music, but says it magnificently. His orchestration covers a multitude of weaknesses with a flamboyant cloak of charity. [Now, here I go again; I could have just as easily written "flaming"; but I, too, must copy Berlioz!] He pins haughty, poetic, high-sounding labels to his works, and, like Charles Lamb, we sit open-mouthed at concerts trying to fill in his big sonorous frame with a picture. Your picture is not mine, and I'll swear that the young man who sits next to me with a silly chin, goggle-eyes and cocoanut-shaped head sees as in a fluttering mirror the idealized image of a strong-chinned, ox-eyed, classic-browed youth, a mixture of Napoleon at Saint Helena and Lord Byron invoking the Alps to fall upon him. Now, I loathe such music. It makes its chief appeal to the egotism of mankind, all the time slily insinuating that it addresses the imagination. What fudge! Yes, the imagination of your own splendid ego in a white vest [we called them waistcoats when I was young], driving an automobile down Walnut Street, at noon on a bright Spring Sunday. How lofty!
Let us pass to the Hungarian piano-virtuoso who posed as a composer. That he lent money and thematic ideas to his precious son-in-law, Richard Wagner, I do not doubt. But, then, beggars must not be choosers, and Liszt gave to Wagner mighty poor stuff, musically speaking. And I fancy that Wagner liked far better the solid cash than the notes of hand! Liszt, I think, would have had nothing to say if Berlioz had not preceded him. The idea struck him, for he was a master of musical snippets, that Berlioz was too long-winded, that his symphonies were neither fish nor form. What ho! cried Master Franz, I'll give them a dose homeopathic. He did, and named his prescription a Symphonic Poem or, rather, Po��me Symphonique, which is not quite the same thing. Nothing tickles the vanity of the groundlings like this sort of verbal fireworks. "It leaves so much to the imagination," says the stout man with the twenty-two collar and the number six hat. It does. And the kind of imagination--Oh, Lord! Liszt, nothing daunted because he couldn't shake out an honest throw of a tune from his technical dice-box, built his music on so-called themes, claiming that in this matter he derived from Bach. Not so. Bach's themes were subjects for fugal treatment; Liszt's, for symphonic. The parallel is not fair. Besides, Daddy Liszt had no melodic invention. Bach had. Witness his chorals, his masses, his oratorios! But the Berlioz ball had to be kept a-rolling; the formula was too easy; so Liszt named his poems, named his notes, put dog-collars on his harmonies--and yet no one whistled after them. Is it any wonder?
Tchaikovsky studied Liszt with one eye; the other he kept on Bellini and the Italians. What might have happened if he had been one-eyed I cannot pretend to say. In love with lush, sensuous melody, attracted by the gorgeous pyrotechnical effects in Berlioz and Liszt and the pomposities of Meyerbeer, this Russian, who began study too late and being too lazy to work hard, manufactured a number of symphonic poems. To them he gave strained, fantastic names--names meaningless and pretty--and, as he was short-winded contrapuntally, he wrote his so-called instrumental poems shorter than Liszt's. He had no symphonic talent, he substituted Italian tunes for dignified themes, and when the development section came he plastered on more sentimental melodies. His sentiment is hectic, is unhealthy, is morbid. Tchaikovsky either raves or whines like the people in a Russian novel. I think the fellow was a bit touched in the upper story; that is, I did until I heard the compositions of R. Strauss, of Munich. What misfit music for such a joyous name, a name evocative of all that is gay, refined, witty, sparkling, and spontaneous in music! After Mozart give me Strauss--Johann, however, not Richard!
No longer the wheezings, gaspings, and short-breathed phrases of Liszt; no longer the evil sensuality, loose construction, formlessness, and drunken peasant dances of Tchaikovsky; but a blending of Wagner, Brahms, Liszt--and the classics. Oh, Strauss, Richard, knows his business! He is a skilled writer. He has his chamber-music moments, his lyric outbursts; his early songs are sometimes singable; it is his perverse, vile orgies of orchestral music that I speak of. No sane man ever erected such a