Music

OF the many important musical events of the past winter in Boston, Mr. John K. Paine’s symphony claims our attention first. We heartily wish that we could put the extreme pleasure that two hearings of this work have given us into a more systematic form than it is actually possible to do. Had it been a sensational work (and there are sensational works in a high as well as in a low sense), an analysis of its effect upon us might have been comparatively easy, even after only one hearing. The mind is readier to grasp a composition full of strokes and strong hits than it is to separate into its various factors one in which the development is more purely organic. Absolute music, developing itself from a thematic germ, is a fair epitome of all organic and cosmic development in the physical world. If the theme be really vital, if it do really “contain the potency and power” of a living composition, its rational development will he beautifully gradual and uneventful. Whether this epitomizing of cosmic. growth is the highest mission of music or not is apart from the present question. In considering any particular work of a man, it is impertinent to ask whether he has done the highest possible thing; all that we have a right to ask is whether he has done well the thing he palpably tried to do. To come more closely to the point, then, we are in no condition to analyze Mr. Paine’s symphony (we have not even seen the score, much less studied it), but can only give our impressions of it. It gave us unalloyed enjoyment from beginning to end. It is melodious, natural, spirited, with that strength that comes from perfect equilibrium. Of dryness of detail we found not a trace; it is thoroughly genial throughout. One technical point we would mention, and that is that Mr. Paine has made a long stride in handling the orchestra since he wrote his St. Peter. The orchestral coloring is throughout good, at times even peculiarly fascinating. We must all heartily thank Mr. Thomas for giving us a hearing of this work ; both the performances were good, the second one even masterly.

— It is an ungrateful task at best to speak of the performance of Bach’s great Magnificat by Mr. Sharland’s choral society and Mr. Thomas’s orchestra. One thing is certain : every musician who has the progress of our musical culture at heart must thank Mr. Sharland and Mr. Thomas most heartily for the good-will they have manifested in bringing out this important work. Whether the musical means they had at hand, and the conditions under which the work was inevitably brought out, made the venture a piece of artistic good judgment or not is another question. At the worst they can say, and with reason too, that the conditions under which Bach’s choral music can be well given in this country can be brought about only by an increased familiarity with the compositions themselves, and that a beginning, either good or bad, must be made sometime. We for one regard the ultimate, we will not say popularity, hut wide-spread recognition of Bach’s works in this country as just as much a certainty as the ultimate triumph of right over wrong. It can only be a matter of time. Encouraged by this belief, we also think that great delicacy of management in introducing his works to our public is not so much needed as it is with some other composers. Take Spohr, for instance. Spohr was a man whose really high genius has been greatly thrown into the shade by his overpoweringly brilliant contemporaries, and who has consequently missed much of the recognition due him from the world. A condition of general musical culture is easily conceivable in which an intimate acquaintance with Spohr’s music might be of great benefit to the music-loving community, and it would then be the duty of our leaders in musical matters to do all in their power to make us understand and appreciate Spohr. But they would have to go to work much more carefully than if it were Bach they were trying to introduce. Any bad first impression the public might receive would be far more fatal to the cause of Spohr than to that of Bach. When a man attains to a certain pitch of musical culture, Bach becomes, æsthetically speaking, an absolute necessary of life to him. Without Bach there is no further musical life conceivable. So we may be pretty sure that if Bach frightens away an audience at one time, he will conquer them at another.

Hence we are by no means sorry that the attempt was made. The performance was, upon the whole, not a satisfactory one ; it is only justice to the great John Sebastian to say so. But, on the other hand, it is only justice to Mr. Sharland and Mr. Thomas to state, with all attainable brevity, why it was, humanly speaking, impossible that the performance should have been satisfactory under the existing circumstances. In the first place, Bach’s choral music is technically extremely difficult. Each part in the chorus is of itself quite a task for the ordinary singer. To all the florid vocalization of which we find so much in Händel’s choruses Bach often adds an extreme difficulty of intonation, arising from his habitual use of much more daring modulations than those of his great contemporary. The Magnificat is in five real parts, and the choral business is almost without exception in more or less strict imitation, so that one, two, or three parts are often left singing alone. Now it cannot be asked of any chorus to sing such music with assurance, unless they are thoroughly familiar with it. Mr. Sharland’s chorus was forced, unavoidably, as we believe, to learn the Magnificat in an exceedingly short time. We are well aware that some most remarkable results have been obtained from a very small number of rehearsals. Hector Berlioz mentions in his Letters from Germany some almost incredible instances of rapid rehearsing. But his rehearsals were all conducted on the “ partial rehearsal ” plan. He writes, in one of his letters from Berlin, “The next day finds us at our work, Ries with his violin, the accompanist, and myself ; we take successively the children, the female voices, the first soprani, the second soprani, the first tenors, the second tenors, the first and second basses ; we make them sing by groups of ten, then by twenties; after which we make two parts sing together, then three, four, and at last the whole chorus.”This is the only feasible method of making a chorus learn a work in few rehearsals; indeed, Berlioz assures us that it is the only way to ever get a really fine performance of a choral work of more than common difficulty, and he had no little experience in drilling choruses. But this plan of rehearsing is just the one of all others that is impossible with us. Our choral societies are composed of amateurs who come together for the pleasure of rehearsing, — mark this well, — and not for the glory of giving exceptionally fine performances; and rehearsing in the Berlioz fashion is exceedingly poor fun. Such rehearsing with any of our societies would probably have for a result not a fine performance, but a fine harvest of tenders of resignation from nine tenths of the members. It is only paid musicians that you can drill in that way, not amateur volunteers. Berlioz’s choruses in Germany were also made up of volunteers, but Berlioz came to Germany as a lion of the first magnitude. If Anton Rubinstein or Charles Gounod were to come to Boston and drill a chorus for a week or so, no doubt he would find no lack of singers willing to undergo any amount of tough rehearsing for such an occasion.

Another great difficulty in bringing out a great choral work of Bach’s is the immense difficulty of the solos. Bach’s airs stand almost without parallel in the history of music. They are not only of great technical difficulty, but the high intellectual and æsthetic qualities they demand in the singer place them beyond the reach of all but very few artists. Alas, how few singers are good musicians even ! It is no slur upon our singers to say that they cannot sing Bach. A man may be able to sing “ It is enough,” in Elijah, exceedingly well, and the baritone song from the Prodigal Son really superbly, without having the faintest conception of a Bach aria. It is one thing to sing " If with all your hearts,”and altogether another to sing “Deposuit potentes.” Mr. Joseph Jefferson is an exceedingly good actor, and can really exhaust the dramatic, pathetic, and humorous possibilities of Rip Van Winkle or Asa Trenchard, but it takes no great acumen to say what he would make of Hamlet’s soliloquy, or the death-scene in King Lear. We must insist that we are not wrong in our estimate of Bach’s airs and of the qualities they demand. Bach is not alone in this. How many singers are there who can really sing “ Thou shalt break them,” in the Messiah, or “Mi tradì quell’ alma,” in Don Giovanni ? And yet we have all grown up in an atmosphere, so to speak, of the Messiah, and most of us know Don Giovanni nearly by heart. But Bach we hardly know a note of; his vocal style is wholly unfamiliar to us, and we sing his music—as might be expected. It is true that there may be found, even in America, here a singer and there a singer who has made a loving and fruitful study of Bach’s works for his or her own æsthetic delight, but whoever they may be, they were not on the platform at the performance of the Magnificat.

Still another quite sensible difficulty stood in the way of the performance. In re-scoring the Magnificat, Franz has written out a very elaborate organ part, which was found to be virtually impracticable in the Music Hall. Whether this organ part is a piece of bad musical judgment on the part of Franz himself, as some excellent judges seem inclined to think, or not, we are not at present competent to decide; we prefer to think that Franz’s organ part would be perfectly practicable in halls or churches where the organist is placed near the conductor, and where the organ itself “speaks ” well to the action. In the Music Hall the organist is seated in the worst possible position for following the conductor well, and moreover the action of the organ is such that the audible note follows the action of the key-board only at a very appreciable interval of time. Many of the pipes being at a great distance from the orchestral and choral body on the stage makes the matter worse. It is therefore manifestly impossible for an elaborate organ part to tally well with the orchestra unless the organist has had long practice with this particular organ, and has accustomed himself to play always a few seconds before the beat of the conductor. The chances, even then, of any passages of more than moderate intricacy being clearly rendered are very slight. As it was, Mr. Paine found himself forced to greatly simplify Franz’s organ part, in order to play together with the orchestra and chorus at all, thus nullifying many of Franz’s intentions, and to a greater or less extent marring the clearness of the performance. Again, the chorus had been rehearsed by Mr. Sharland at different tempi, in many instances, from those Mr. Thomas took at the concert,and it was only at the last rehearsal that they were made to sing at Mr. Thomas’s tempi.

But even with all these drawbacks, any one listening reverently and with a goodwill (and no one ought to listen otherwise) could not help feeling the unspeakable beauty and grandeur of the work. We hope that it will be given again and again, until both our singers and our public have become really familiar with it. Mr. Sharland and Mr. Thomas certainly merit all praise for their earnest zeal in the good cause.

— The Saint-Saëns concerto,¹ played at one of the Harvard Musical Association’s concerts by Mr. B. J. Lang, strikes us as being, all things considered, the best thing that has been written in the concerto form since the Mendelssohn and Schumann concertos. The first movement is simply great. The dainty little scherzo that follows it and the tarantella finale are gems of their kind. In playing it, Mr. Lang fairly outdid himself, especially in the first two movements; the effect upon the audience was electric. And yet there is something about the work that rather puzzles us. We do not remember ever hearing a work that we enjoyed so intensely while hearing it, and that left so vague an impression upon our minds when it was all over. While listening to it we are delighted, and when it is done we somehow feel dissatisfied. It may be that the scherzo and tarantella are somewhat overpowered by the superb first movement, which is after all the strongest in the work, but we are inclined to think that the finale is susceptible of being made more strongly effective than Mr. Lang made it. There is a certain savage energy inherent in the tarantella form, as there is indeed in many of the dance forms, a certain wild, unkempt fierceness of animal spirits, that seems to be wholly foreign to Mr. Lang’s nature. He plays with no lack of fire, but it is a highly refined fire. The noble breadth of phrasing and the dainty elegance of style that made his playing of the first two movements so noteworthy did not stand him in such good stead in the tarantella. There are some things that will not bear much refining, things in which a certain coarseness of texture is an essential factor. There is, to be sure, a certain “modesty of nature” that should not be too often overstepped; there is a certain dignity and self-control to be preserved even in moments of the intensest passion. But there are some few things of which selfabandonment is the prime essence. It would seem as if the tarantella, which is supposed to result in absolute fainting, might be one of these.

— The Hay is i’ the Mow,² by Gatty, is a song that we somehow cannot help rather liking. It is insignificant enough, and reminds one of the late lamented Mr. Dempster, but it sounds genuine and unforced. The last three bars of the last verse strike us as unnecessary, and as weakening the general effect of the song.

— George Osgood’s The Lake and the Lily ³ has much delicate beauty in it, but we think it tends too much to sameness. The fifth and sixth measures from the end, however, are susceptible of being made very effective by good singing. Gounod himself could not have written sweeter harmony.

— Joachim Raff’s Impromptu Valse (Op. 94) for the piano forte ⁴ only shows how sure of his reputation the composer must be to allow himself to flood the market as he does with very second-rate compositions. We see little to recommend this waltz as music, but it might be made good use of as a study. It is well put upon the instrument. The edition is not quite free from errors.