On Conducting | Page 8

lost courage, and gave up the study of Beethoven for some time. Later, I found it instructive to note how I came to take true delight in performances of Mozart's instrumental works: it was when I had a chance to conduct them myself, and when I could indulge my feelings as to the expressive rendering of Mozart's cantilena.
I received a good lesson at Paris in 1839, when I heard the orchestra of the Conservatoire rehearse the enigmatical Ninth Symphony. The scales fell from my eyes; I came to understand the value of CORRECT execution, and the secret of a good performance. The orchestra had learnt to look for Beethoven's MELODY in every bar--that melody which the worthy Leipzig musicians had failed to discover; and the orchestra SANG that melody. THIS WAS THE SECRET.
Habeneck, who solved the difficulty, and to whom the great credit for this performance is due, was not a conductor of special genius. Whilst rehearsing the symphony, during an entire winter season, he had felt it to be incomprehensible and ineffective (would German conductors have confessed as much?), but he persisted throughout a second and a third season! until Beethoven's new melos [Footnote: Melody in all its aspects.] was understood and correctly rendered by each member of the orchestra. Habeneck was a conductor of the old stamp; HE was the master--and everyone obeyed him. I cannot attempt to describe the beauty of this performance. However, to give an idea of it, I will select a passage by the aid of which I shall endeavour to shew the reason why Beethoven is so difficult to render, as well as the reason for the indifferent success of German orchestras when confronted by such difficulties. Even with first class orchestras I have never been able to get the passage in the first movement
[Figure: musical example]
performed with such equable perfection as I then (thirty years ago) heard it played by the musicians of the Paris "Orchestre du Conservatoire." [Footnote: Wagner, however, subsequently admitted that the passage was rendered to his satisfaction at the memorable performance of the Ninth Symphony, given May 22nd, 1872, to celebrate the laying of the foundation stone of the theatre at Bayreuth.] Often in later life have I recalled this passage, and tried by its aid to enumerate the desiderata in the execution of orchestral music: it comprises MOVEMENT and SUSTAINED tone, with a DEFINITE DEGREE OF POWER. [Footnote: ("An dieser Stelle ist es mir, bei oft in meinem spateren Leben erneueter Erinnerung, recht klar geworden, worauf es beim Orchestervortrag ankommt, weil sie die BEWEGUNG und den GEHALTENEN TON, zugleich mit dem Gesetz der DYNAMIK in sich schliesst.")] The masterly execution of this passage by the Paris orchestra consisted in the fact that they played it EXACTLY as it is written. Neither at Dresden, nor in London [Footnote: Concert of the Philharmonic Society, 26th March, 1855.] when, in after years, I had occasion to prepare a performance of the symphony, did I succeed in getting rid of the annoying irregularity which arises from the change of bow and change of strings. Still less could I suppress an involuntary accentuation as the passage ascends; musicians, as a rule, are tempted to play an ascending passage with an increase of tone, and a descending one with a decrease. With the fourth bar of the above passage we invariably got into a crescendo so that the sustained G flat of the fifth bar was given with an involuntary yet vehement accent, enough to spoil the peculiar tonal significance of that note. The composer's intention is clearly indicated; but it remains difficult to prove to a person whose musical feelings are not of a refined sort, that there is a great gap between a commonplace reading, and the reading meant by the composer: no doubt both readings convey a sense of dissatisfaction, unrest, longing--but the quality of these, the true sense of the passage, cannot be conveyed unless it is played as the master imagined it, and as I have not hitherto heard it given except by the Parisian musicians in 1839. In connection with this I am conscious that the impression of dynamical monotony [Footnote: i.e., a power of tone the degree of which remains unchanged.] (if I may risk such an apparently senseless expression for a difficult phenomenon) together with the unusually varied and ever irregular movement of intervals in the ascending figure entering on the prolonged G flat to be sung with such infinite delicacy, to which the G natural answers with equal delicacy, initiated me as by magic to the incomparable mystery of the spirit. Keeping my further practical experience in view, I would ask how did the musicians of Paris arrive at so perfect a solution of the difficult problem? By the most conscientious diligence. They were