Music

MR. STRAKOSCH’S Italian opera troupe has just given us the best and most successful Italian “ season ” that this city has seen for a long while. Coming so almost immediately after the dreary season of the Maretzek troupe, its success has seemed doubly brilliant. Few people will feel inclined to doubt that Mr. Strakosch’s is the better company of the two, although the Maretzek troupe could boast more really great artists. Setting aside Madame Nilsson in the one, and Madame Lucca in the other, we look in vain for any two artists in the Strakosch troupe that can counterbalance Mademoiselle di Murska and Signor Tamberlik. Monsieur Jamet is certainly a better basso than Signor Nannetti. But when we have named Lucca, Di Murska, Tamberlik, and Jamet, we have come to the end of all Mr. Marctzek’s good material. Mr. Strakosch, on the other hand, can show the names of Nilsson, Torriani, Cary, Maurel, Campanini, Del Puente, Scolari, Capoul, Nannetti, all of whom are very good, and a respectable chorus, orchestra, and mise en scène. What of good there was in the Maretzek troupe was superb ; what of bad, was bad with a vengeance, and not stinted as to quantity. Of Mr. Strakosch’s artists, Madame Nilsson alone deserves the adjective “superb,” but the rest were very good, and the weak points in the troupe few and far between. Such a performance of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots as Mr. Strakosch gave us had, we will venture to say, never been known in Boston. It must not be for a moment imagined that it even approached the performances in Paris, Vienna, or London, in splendor of mise en scène or excellence of chorus and orchestra, but it was nevertheless extremely praiseworthy.

Verdi’s new Aida was given with a better mise en scène than anything we have yet seen on our operatic stage. It was of course the event of the season upon which the greatest amount of public curiosity was concentrated. After all that we had heard of Verdi’s sudden complete change of style, his newly developed elaboration of the orchestra (an item that certainly did not promise much in his hands), and the absence of hand-organ tunes, we must confess to being agreeably disappointed in the work. Strange as it may appear, the heretofore reckless and devil-may-care Verdi has written what is to all intents and purposes a Meyerbeer opera. It is not surprising that some of his newly-tried effects seem rather innocent when compared with those of a man who had grown gray in all the wiles of dramatic machinery ¹ as Meyerbeer had. But the general tendency of the work is none the less unmistakable. Although almost every bit of elaborate writing in the opera shows the composer to be largely indebted to Meyerbeer’s example, one can hardly blame Verdi for a piece of plagiarism that is, after all, but fair tit for tat, when we consider how much Meyerbeer had previously benefited by Verdi’s own genius. Looking at the two men together throughout their career, it is Verdi, not Meyerbeer, that must inevitably strike us as a man of original genius. Whatever of good we find in Verdi’s operas is essentially his own. Meyerbeer, on the contrary, was preëminent for his capacity for assimilating and reproducing other men’s ideas. As Wagner says : “ Meyerbeer has not one single individual tendency; but he has always by his eavesdropping caught each and every word of his predecessors, and elaborated it with such monstrous ostentation, and withal with such astounding rapidity, that he whose footsteps he Was dogging hardly uttered a word before Meyerbeer would instantly shriek out the whole phrase, perfectly unconcerned as to whether he had understood the word aright. Hence it not seldom happened that he said something different from what the original speaker meant to say. But Meyerbeer’s noise was so deafening that the first speaker never got to the true expression of his own meaning, and at last found himself forced to chime in with Meyerbeer’s phrase as his only chance of putting in his word at all. Meyerbeer never succeeded in Germany in finding a phrase which would in any way fit Weber’s original word. What Weber uttered, so full of melodious vitality, could not be repeated in Meyerbeer’s acquired, dry formalism. So at length, tired of such unprofitable toil, he listened only to Rossini’s siren-strains, and traveled to the land where those raisins grew.² Thus he became the weathercock of music in Europe, turning hither and thither until, the direction of the wind being settled, he could at last stand still. Meyerbeer only composed operas à la Rossini in Italy until the great wind began to shift in Paris, and Auber and Rossini, with La Muette and Tell, were raising it to a gale in the new direction. How soon Meyerbeer was in Paris ! When once there he found in the Frenchified Weber (only think of Robin des Bois) and the be-Berlinized Beethoven opportunities which both Auber and Rossini had let slip as too remote from their special ends, but which he, with his cosmopolite capacity, knew well enough how to make the most of. He gathered up all that caught his notice into one monstrous, gaudy, heterogeneous phrase, in whose strident shriek Auber and Rossini became all at once inaudible. The grim devil Robert took them one and all.”

When some years later Verdi’s fiery unison swept the stage, Meyerbeer was quick to see how such effects might be utilized. In short, Verdi is by no means in Meyerbeer’s debt. The balance is the other way, if anything. What we are astonished at is that Verdi should have done so well, in a direction that was new to him, as he has in Aïda. Great music he has certainly not given us, but there is enough of spontaneous inspiration and wild, unfettered intensity in the work to place it not very far behind his finest opera, while the greater pains he has taken with his orchestra and his whole manner of writing have rid it of many of the more patent vulgarisms that have hitherto defaced even his best works. It could not be expected that Verdi should have toned down or abandoned those peculiar tendencies to which he owes the success of his whole career, and which proved so tempting to Meyerbeer. And we find that in Aïda there is no lack of screaming on high notes, sudden explosions of chorus and orchestra, and in short any of his long-used stunning effects. His intrinsic melodic power, although not so marked as in some of his. earlier work, is still great. The weakest scene in the opera is the one that should have been the strongest, namely, the dying scene in the tomb. Here the composer has had the same bad luck that almost every one else has had since Gounod wrote the prison scene in Faust. The tomb scene in Gounod’s Romeo, the upas-tree scene in Meyerbeer’s Africaine, Ophelia’s dying scene in Thomas’s Hamlet, are all hopelessly weak. It remains to be seen whether it is reserved for Wagner to break the spell in his Götterdämmerung.

Compared with the great final terzett in Ernani, the Aïda finale is poor indeed, in spite of its greater elaboration and more ambitious design. This very terzett in Ernani is perhaps one of the best and withal the most characteristic examples of Verdi’s peculiar genius. Its form is as simple as that of any ballad. It is in fact nothing more nor less than a simple melody with the simplest accompaniment, in a rather rapid waltz-tempo. But in passionate intensity, tragic power, it can be called second to very, very little in all Italian music. The interest is sustained to the very end in spite of the little variety there is in it; from Elvira’s first frenzied “ Ferma, crudele ” we feel the influence of genuine, unconscious genius. And how admirably dramatic the music is, without for a moment stepping out of the simple form or interrupting the regular rhythmic advance of the melody ! How the music changes from the horror and fury of Elvira’s words, “ Quale d’Averno demone ha tali trame ordite ? . . La morte che t’aspetta, o vecchio, affretterò,” to most seductive accents, sorrowful entreating, at “ Ma che diss’ io ? Perdonami.” With what tones of rejoicing in his own power does old Silva launch forth his “ E vano, o donna, il piangere,” and with what irresistible, hammer-like force his “ Morrà, morrà ” falls upon the unhappy lovers, like the voice of inexorable fate ! Here Verdi is truly great and truly original. Had more things of this sort lain in his brain, waiting to see the light, he might well have afforded to leave Meyerbeer in his debt for strong effects, without troubling himself about orchestral elaboration. Not having anything more to say of this Titanic sort, he has wisely paid himself out of Meyerbeer’s bag, not without gratifying results.

It is with a feeling very like disappointment that, after a pretty careful study of Meyerbeer’s Huguenots, and at last hearing a really respectable performance of the work, we find ourselves unable heartily to enjoy it. Setting aside the great duet in the fourth act, and some few other unmistakable gems, we cannot but find the opera as a whole very flat and unprofitable. There is so much of artifice, so little of real art, so much that is transparently factitious, so little that is convincingly spontaneous and great in it! That it is really the best example of Meyerbeer’s tendencies as an artist can hardly be doubted ; and it only goes to prove the justice of Wagner’s apparently too severe strictures on him. “ The secret of Meyerbeer’s opera music is — effect. . . . Would we express more exactly what we understand by this word, we might translate ' effect ’ by result without a cause. Indeed, the effect that Meyerbeer’s music produces upon those who are able to find edification therein is wanting in an efficient cause. This miracle is only possible to the most extravagant music ; i. e., to a power of expression that has ever striven (in the opera) to become more and more independent of all that was worthy to be expressed, and which proclaims its independence by degrading the subject matter, through which alone it can rationally exist and be justified, to such a level of moral and artistic nothingness, that it in turn can find its existence, proper proportions, and justification only in an act of abstract musical volition, which, as such, is wanting in ail true expression. . . . Such frightful emptiness, shallowness, and artistic nullity is to be found in Meyerbeer’s music, that we are tempted to rate his specific musical ability ... as absolutely null. Yet we must not be surprised that he has, notwithstanding all this, obtained such immense success with the European operagoing public, for this can be readily explained by a glance at the public itself, — but a purely artistic observation, and a very instructive one, claims our notice.” Here Wagner goes on to an analysis of the various efficient causes by which the melody in G flat major, “ Tu l’as dit,” in the love scene of the fourth act of the Huguenots must stand on an immeasurably higher artistic level than most of the composer’s music; but as we have already had occasion to quote the passage in a former number,³ we will not repeat it here. Whatever of specific musical ability Meyerbeer had (and in this respect we think Wagner rates him too low), however much appreciation he sometimes shows of the dramatic element in music, we cannot but think all this goes but a little way towards redeeming his habitual theatricality and most gigantic charlatanism. Of all the “ effect ” composers he seems to us to be the least sincere and the least true to what is high and noble in art. He has many profound admirers ; the number of young composers and musicians in France to-day who found their faith on him is immense. But we can find little evidence in his works that he himself had any living art-faith beyond a faith in the efficacy of seeming.

— A short Te Deum in E flat major,⁴ by Dudley Buck, recalls to us forcibly what we said somewhat over a year ago ⁵ on the subject of modern church music. We gave then some reasons which seemed to us valid for the inferiority of modern church music, but we are not sure that the decay of church music cannot be attributed to a much deeper and more pregnant cause than the habitually conciliatory attitude of organist-composers towards the public. In summing up our arguments in the article referred to, we found that the one word sentimentalism comprehensively expressed all the shortcomings in modern church music. We now feel as strongly as before that this same sentimentalism, — which is in itself a symptom of decay, the rouge and pearlpowder with which the withered body of a worn-out sentiment tries to impose itself upon the world as still young and vigorous,— is really the besetting evil. It has twice been our misfortune to make Mr. Buck the occasion for our strictures upon church music. His music is so well written, so excellent in form, a rare excellence nowadays, that this sentimental vein that runs through it, this passionless yearning of semitones, this gold-mitred and chasubled splendor and pomp of diminished sevenths and augmented sixths, is all the more distressing. The very air of artistic respectability it has makes its want of genuine devotional fire all the more felt. But in the pass that church music has got to today, it would take the very old Bach himself to reform it and save it from destruction.

Harrison Millard’s Meeting by the Brookside is an unpretending little ditty with an attractive title-page. The title-page, in fact, expresses the sentiment of the song quite as well as the music or poetry does. The song belongs to the would-be piquant sentimental order, in which our best concert singers find many of their most repaying encore pieces, and of which Claribel’s Five o’clock in the Morning is an excellent example. As the rage for sentimental ballads shows no signs of abating, we must hail with pleasure any songs, however imbecile in sentiment, and insignificant in musical value, which do not end with the burial of the blighted hero or heroine. And such innocent dénouements —

make us thankful for even a moment’s respite from those doleful descents into the not silent tomb which so often cast their gloom over musical entertainments.

Violetta’s Nobody home but me is an artless expression of the fact that courtship should be carried on hidden from the inquisitive gaze of a too gossiping world, and is musically and poetically worthy of the grammatical purism displayed in its title.

Campana’s Pace a quest’ alma oppressa is a melodious and easily flowing terzett in the Italian operatic style.

Frank Boott’s Ave Maria, which is published both as a mezzo-soprano solo and as a quartette for female voices, is to our thinking the best thing the composer has done since his Maria Mater for mixed voices. Anything that is written in a purely religious spirit is so precious nowadays, when so much that is theatrical and overstrained has got mixed up with sacred music, that this Ave Maria, in its modest simplicity of form, is to us worth hosts of more pretentious compositions in which the religious spirit is wanting. Yet, with all its simplicity, the dramatic element in its highest sense is by no means wanting in this composition. The music perfectly expresses every shade of meaning in the words, and is not without a certain degree of unobtrusive learning.

Carl Prüfer is now bringing out under the title of Pianist’s Favorites a very nicely engraved and printed edition of easy pianoforte pieces by H. Lichner, G. Lange, F. Behr, and others, which will be eagerly welcomed by piano-forte teachers, if only for its typographical excellence.

F. Boscovitz’s Fairy Gondola is a fascinating little trifle, thoroughly Italian in spirit, which suggests the magnetic entrain and verve of the composer’s way of playing music of this sort.