book_id
stringlengths 2
6
| title
stringclasses 1
value | author
stringclasses 1
value | conversations
listlengths 1
5.07k
|
|---|---|---|---|
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "He is perhaps the first Briton to write as a true man of the people on such a subject, that is to say, to take it quite seriously. His story is told with such passion that almost every particle of doctrinaire affectation or easy pattern work is consumed and refined away, and he has created in Tess the most inexpressibly pathetic figure that I know of in literature."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Perhaps you have read 'Le Rêve.' It and 'La Debâcle' are the only two of Zola's longer novels that could be recommended to a lady, and even the latter with some misgiving. I cannot say that I think 'Le Rêve' one of Zola's best works. I am far from sure that the French critic who said: 'Nous préférons Monsieur Zola à quatre pattes' was not in the right. Nevertheless, there are passages in it stamped by Zola's unique greatness. With regard to its defects, I would rather say nothing at present, except one--the end strikes me as absurd, _franchement mauvais et du placage litteraire_--a recrudescence of something that we have left far behind, something dead that should have been left to bury its dead. All the same there are, I think, truly great things in the book."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Concerning Marie Bashkirtseff, she seems to me to have had nearly every gift except two, namely imagination and heart. Above all, a sort of critical intuition, which prevented her from ever resting satisfied in anything second-rate. She was a typical little Russian, small of stature, dark of tint; in temperament sensitive, romantic, versatile; unlike the northern Russians, who are prevalently tall and fair and have a certain contempt for the unpractical. Nearly the whole Russian harvest of folk-songs and cognate treasure comes from the south, from Cossacks and little Russians, the true Muscovite being almost a songless bird. Marie must have had in a high degree the incomparable grace and distinction of her countrywomen, with that wonderful animation and 'fever of life' which makes the atmosphere of Russian society the warmest and brightest in the world. As to your statement that 'some of her failings, like her love of luxury and her desire to be attended to at all costs, are pure vanity and wormwood,' I have always stuck up for this barbaric element, and believe that largely on it depends the prodigious formative power of a _free feminine influence_--that thing of such rarity as to be almost non-existent in our puritanical society. I know a man at half a glance who has ever been under it."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Suppose a missionary went among a savage tribe and tried to teach them what Justice is; told them he himself was a son of Justice, and that Justice was made manifest in him; lastly, that Justice is a spirit. Suppose he came back after an absence and found the people teaching that Justice was three persons and burning alive those who did not accept this view!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Celtic writers and painters seemed to come to little. He did not inure himself to the occasionally inconsiderate manners of the Lowland Scotch, nor could he bring himself to repay them steadily in kind. Some of the officials with whom he dealt appeared to have been born, where they would die, in Gath. He would hardly agree with, but he could understand the unqualified remark of his old French associate,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Il n'y a pas d'amour dans ce pays."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "instead of"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "For the truth is Mr. Parson, a remnant of heathenism stirs in the blood of us all. It has persisted through all the centuries since ancient Germanic times, and, once a year, it blazes up with the fire of St. John's Eve. For that night the spooks of ancient heathenism are unchained. Witches ride on broomsticks, instead of being beaten with them, and pass through the air, with mocking laughter, on their way to the Blocksberg. The Wild Hunt scours over the forest and wilder desires over our hearts--all that is most frenzied and most utterly doomed to nonfulfilment. No matter what the order may be that for the time being reigns in the world, for one single heart's desire to be realised, and to give us something to live on, a thousand others must go to ruin, not only for the ever unattainable, but others, allowed to escape from a hand that held them too carelessly. Yes, those bonfires which blaze up--do you know what they are? They are the spectres of our heart's desires, the red-winged birds of paradise that we might have kept by us for life but allowed to escape, the spooks of the old order, of the heathenism that is in us. However satisfied we may be in the light of day and beneath the reign of law and order, this is St. John's Eve in the night sacred to Midsummer Madness. I drink to your ancient heathen fires. Let them blaze high! Will no one clink glasses with me?"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The great scene of the play, in which Heimchen and George are left alone together, is managed with wonderful stagecraft. Till the last moment they seem to be adhering to 'good resolutions,' but a series of incidents, all absolutely natural, occur to distract attention and cause delay, till they hear the whistle of the train and know that it is too late. The bonfires, the punch-drinking, and, above all, George's speech, from which the quotation at the head of these notes is taken, have fired their blood, and Heimchen is unstrung by the painful meeting with her disreputable mother earlier in the day, when she had been obliged to buy back things that her mother had pilfered. At last she throws herself on her knees before George and says, 'Du! Küss' mich nicht! Ich will dich küssen. Ich will alles auf mich nehmen. Meine Mutter stiehlt. Ich stehl' auch'--and the curtain falls."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "There is now no one in this neighbourhood with whom I can _converse_. I find myself permanently in the journalistic attitude, regarding it as luck if I can say two per cent. of what I think about anything; so the meeting with Powell was an oasis at the end of some very sandy months."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "He disliked dons as a class; at Oxford and elsewhere they made him, of course wrongly, restive. He had not been through their mill, and they did not always care for or see his curious and original play of mind. Their committee-trained caution of phrase was alarmed by his emphasis and heavy-shotted superlatives, which merely amused his friends. There were, of course, those among them who liked him well. In some houses he had, apart from his musical gifts, a certain name for being"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The latter epithet was only partially true, for he was simple-hearted and good-natured the moment that the occasion arose."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "His sympathy, writes Madame de Navarro (Miss Mary Anderson),"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "All who had eyes saw this in Johnstone, but all had not eyes. He was interested, absorbed, whelmed in his subject, and thought instinctively more about ideas and purposes than about persons, so that he sometimes ignored persons and therefore dissatisfied them. He also said, what is true, that of the provinces, as compared with the capital,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "This, and any semblance of snobbery, he openly despised. He liked to have power and weight--and was right in liking it--in order to carry out certain musical reforms. But he dismissed at once anyone who, as he put it,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "enabled him soon to get a working knowledge of modern Greek; he was fortunate too in finding a Greek gentleman, who, grateful for the attitude of the _Manchester Guardian_, acted as his interpreter and showed him about the city. The same friend was on intimate terms with the Royal family, and introduced Johnstone to the King and the Duke of Sparta. At the close of his stay at Athens, he hesitatingly asked if there was any return he could make for the various kindnesses he had received, when this friend of royalty named so modest a fee that Johnstone was staggered;"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "he said afterwards when describing the incident, adding that he had never realised what true democracy meant until then. Among his associates there was the correspondent of a Viennese paper who had somehow incurred the dislike and suspicion of the war-party, but, as Johnstone thought, unjustly. At last his life was openly threatened; there was no hope for him unless he managed to leave the country at once, and even then there was a fair chance that he might never reach the ship alive. Johnstone, being on good terms with the patriotic party, pleaded for his life and undertook to get him away; he cycled behind him for the four miles from Athens to the Piræus, and when they reached the harbour kept the mob off until he was safely on board an Austrian Lloyd steamer. The ride was an exciting one, for it was expected that an attempt would be made to shoot the obnoxious correspondent on the way down to the port; some shots were actually fired, but went wide of the mark. When the war was nearing the end Johnstone's services were not so necessary at Athens, and he went to join Mr. Atkins in camp; but he saw no fighting, for the day after his arrival peace was declared. His colleague returned to England, and Johnstone spent some weeks in Crete to investigate the stories of those atrocities which had been the immediate cause of the war. He went _sac au dos_ like J. K. Huysmans in 1870, but unlike him, roughed it with good humour and looked upon hardships of this kind as a helpful and valuable experience. A year later when congratulating a friend, who was somewhat habit-ridden, on his marriage, he wrote,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The problem of changing one's habits is emphatically one of those to be solved '_ambulando_.' The forms of ambulation best adapted to the purpose are serving on a campaign, doing time 'with,' and getting married;"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Our festival was born in 1891. From the first it was organised entirely apart from any pecuniary object; it brought us some delightful music, as we set our own test pieces, and its aim was essentially educational. Our special correspondent from the _Manchester Guardian_ did not arrive on the scene until 1899. We had grown accustomed to unstinted praise, the judges exhausted the adjectives in the language in describing the excellence of the singing, composers told us that they had never heard their part-songs so perfectly rendered. We thought we were perfect. Then came a bomb from the critic (April 27th, 1899). He was not in touch with us or cognisant with our aim, nor did he allow for our limitations. Much of the music seemed to him unworthy; the competitive or sporting element annoyed him; he saw rocks ahead, rocks on which others had been wrecked. He wrote: 'The array of talent is no doubt imposing, but far too much of the music is of an inferior stamp. It should not be forgotten that the end and aim of such festivals is to foster a taste for music. But the taste for inferior music needs no fostering. If, therefore, the organisers of these festivals prescribe second-rate works for the competitions, they simply destroy the _raison d'être_ of these competitions. It is music as an art--not music as a sport or trade--that requires fostering. There is a danger that such concerts may degenerate into a vulgar pot-hunting business, and one would like to see everything done, both as regards the music prescribed and the conduct of the proceedings of the festival itself, to guard against that danger.' I do not claim to know much about music, but I recognise good English when I see it. I saw that 'our special correspondent' was a master of his craft. I replied at once in the _Manchester Guardian_ rejecting his interpretation of our motives, and still more the motives which brought choirs to our Festival. I said that 'no chastening was joyous' and urged that the critic should have patience, that we were then walking and that some day we would run, and expressed a hope that he might be there to see. I afterwards called upon him at the Reform Club, and this commenced a friendship, the memory of which I shall always hold as a matter of pride. He henceforth became for us 'the critic.' We not only awaited his arrival, but in choice of music Mr. Howson (the choir-master) even applied an additional test: 'This will test the choir, but will it also satisfy Mr. Arthur Johnstone's taste?' The choir were conscious ever of his presence. The judges were in the box giving their awards, but 'Mr. Johnstone is in the grand circle, what does he think?' I heard him once appeal to his wife; 'Am I not always open to conviction?' With his first article in view, and with the knowledge of what subsequently he did for us, I could but allow that he made good his claim, for he became the most stalwart defender of our Morecambe musical festival--'a movement,' he wrote in 1903 'that is one of the most genuine and hopeful things in the musical England of to-day.' Again he complained that 'little or nothing has been done by the teachers of music in Manchester to encourage the musical revival that for a good many years had been going on in the North of England, and more particularly in Lancashire.' Later, he wrote a remarkable article in reply to the strictures of Mr. J. Spencer Curwen. Mr. Curwen had questioned whether our festivals help choral music in the long run, and proceeded to comfort us by saying that 'we were entering upon a dangerous path. The more success you have, the nearer you will approach to the state of things which exists in Wales.' To this belated warning Mr. Johnstone replied (October 5th, 1903): 'The peculiar evils enumerated by Mr. Spencer Curwen as being fostered by competitions were observed a good many years ago by those who are organising meetings in North Lancashire. Indeed, one may say the observation of these evils was the point of departure in Lancashire, and we are, therefore, a little tired of these strictures on the choirs got up to learn certain pieces, dispersing immediately afterwards; on fragmentary performances, and the rest of the black things on Mr. Curwen's list. It is evident that Mr. Curwen is entirely without knowledge of the best Lancashire choirs formed by the influence of competition in their own neighbourhood. These choirs have as strong a principle of cohesion as any in the world. Their repertory is exceedingly wide. Their organisers show immense enterprise in unearthing the treasures of the old English and Italian madrigal writers and of the finest modern part-song writers. Let Mr. Curwen go to Morecambe next spring; his ideas on the subject of musical competition will be pretty thoroughly revolutionised.' Yes, Mr. Johnstone was open to conviction, sought nothing less than the truth, was at infinite pains to obtain it--_O si sic omnes_. But the debt we owe to him was not merely because he was a critic keen to discern the good, not merely because he proved a fearless champion. He became a friend always ready to discuss methods of development, and to place his exact and wide knowledge at our disposal, and after we had formed our plans it was a great gain to Mr. Howson and myself to test their wisdom by his opinion. He spoke frequently of the capacity for conducting which the festival revealed, and inveighed against the star system, whether among vocalists, instrumentalists, or conductors--and of these last he had in his mind's eye several whom he maintained we ought to rely upon. It does not fall to me to speak of him as a friend, as a delightful companion, as a courteous gentleman--one whom I married and one whom, alas! I buried in the prime of his powers."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "might have been used with a real meaning. The honeymoon was spent on the Riffel Alp: afterwards the travellers attended the Bayreuth festival, returning to Manchester at the end of August, where they went to live at Tarnhelm (named after the magic helmet of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ring"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "has no application to the musical energies of Manchester. It is like one of the great German towns, Munich or Frankfurt, being wholly independent of the capital, of which it is not a colony. The mark made by Johnstone in this region was attested in a measure that he would never have foreseen. The _Manchester Guardian_, besides giving an honourable obituary notice to its critic, received far more letters in his honour, expressing sorrow at his early death and admiration of his character, than it found space to print, although the most salient of them filled its columns. They were written with knowledge, not by laymen, but by persons with whom Johnstone had worked and had dealt faithfully, sometimes stringently. The remark of Canon Gorton,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I began my friendship with a quarrel,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Dr. Adolph Brodsky, after praising in especial Johnstone's accounts of pianoforte performances, singled out his services in breaking down the popular prejudice in England against Bach. Others wrote of his musical erudition and his"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "He held a high view of his office, and would make a sacrifice of self rather than a sacrifice of truth. It is difficult to calculate the extent of your loss. Musicians succeed musicians; they being dead may yet speak. But the critic's words are ephemeral; they remain in the files of the newspapers. For musicians there are schools; but what school is there for critics? In music we need guides, men with a wide horizon, a general culture, men unfettered by musical faction, with definite ideals, with command of the English tongue, of courage and of true instinct. Such an one, I take it, was Mr. Arthur Johnstone. Who will fill his place?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world and the seed-plot of all other virtues, adding by way of comment,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "In everything, in all intercourse, upon all occasions, under all circumstances, whether in enjoyment, in work, in serious intercourse, he was a gentleman in the strictest sense of the word. Next we may place his wonderful sympathy with the oppressed in every class. Even where there was much that roused his anger in the sinner, as in the case of Oscar Wilde, he was indignant at the merciless treatment he received, and pleaded for a minor punishment. Where his sympathy could have free play he was tender in the extreme, he would take infinite personal trouble, and give all that his modest means permitted. He was fond of animals, he disliked the idea of killing them in"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "and was glad that most of his intimate friends shared his view. But he was not unreasonable on this point; and, to take the real test question, he was not absolutely opposed to vivisection under stringent conditions. For all his early talk of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "he was more anxious to secure it for others than for himself. He was tolerant under his armour, and would rebuke pointless severity by saying,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Well, well, there is something wrong with almost everybody;"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Technique is three-fourths of musical performance."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "); to show, if a classic, why it had attained its position, if modern, why it should command serious attention. He never assumed too much musical knowledge on the part of his readers, avoiding the use of technical expressions, still more of stereotyped phrases. Bad work and slovenly performance he could chastise unsparingly, but he never wrote harshly when he recognised genuine effort, and he was very generous in his praise of young performers, and often attended minor concerts at some inconvenience to encourage rising artists. His style was clear and precise, rather expository in tone; coloured when the occasion demanded, and occasionally enriched with allusions to other arts. Thus the elaborate tracery of Gothic architecture exhibited in Strasburg Cathedral (a favourite figure) is employed to illustrate Bach and contrasted with the formal classicism of earlier composers, and the Palladian style of Handel; Elgar's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Dream of Gerontius is compared to some"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "a pianist's playing of arabesque passages reminds him of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "His discernment of any new work of permanent value was quick and unerring; we may instance his early estimate of Elgar and indeed of Strauss too (for his position then was uncertain) as having been in advance of general musical opinion, though unquestioned at the present day. Tchaïkovsky's Pathetic Symphony was a more obvious discovery; here he showed his critical power rather in quenching the popular enthusiasm (which he had at first assisted in creating) for this work when the public seemed to have lost all sense of proportion, by reminding his readers that after all"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Tchaïkovsky and Dvoràk are inspired barbarians and must not be put on the same level with Beethoven and Schumann."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Passion according to St. Matthew stands to Handel's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Messiah in something like the same kind of contrast that Strasburg Cathedral presents to St. Peter's in Rome. On the other hand, in its course of development music has been quite different from architecture and the graphic and plastic arts, and modern music owes quite a hundred times more to Bach than it does to Handel. Bach represents by far the greatest stimulating influence that has ever existed in the musical world. His stupendous industry, resulting in a body of first-rate work that may be reckoned among the greatest wonders of the world (it is not possible for a modern to know it all); his awe-inspiring union of very great talent with very great character; the completeness of his human nature and the absolute purity of his life and art--these things unite to make of Bach's personality something truly august, something that administers a quietus to the ordinary critical, fault-finding spirit. Glancing over the huge library of his collected works and knowing the glories that a few of them contain, one is fain to say,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "There were giants in the earth in those days. Yet"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "is scarcely the word. For the astounding sinew and sturdiness of the man were quite secondary in the composition of his character to that quality, in virtue of which he worked on throughout a long life as though in perpetual consciousness of something higher than ordinary human judgment; not waiting for full appreciation, which did not come till about a century after his death (very much as in Shakespeare's case), but perfectly realising the great ethical ideal of Marcus Aurelius--the good man producing good works, just as the vine produces grapes. No greater praise can be bestowed on Handel than to say that in his very best moments he is almost worthy of Bach, as, for example, in the choral section"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all, or in the tenor of the recitative"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "He looked for some to have pity on Him, but there was no man; neither found He any to comfort Him."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "--the eighteenth century name for the ordinary orchestral horn--being intertwined with the melodic line in the manner of Gothic tracery. The Mass is in six main divisions--the Kyrie, with three sub-sections; the Gloria and the Credo, each in eight; the Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei, each in two sub-sections. The two choruses of the Kyrie--the former a wailing supplication, the latter a mystical counterpart washed clean of earthly passion--were sufficient to show that the choir had a most thorough grasp of their parts, all the difficult and complex chromatic harmonies coming out with admirable clearness and correctness. The first chorus of the Gloria, with its joyous _vivace_ movement, breaks into a style much more generally"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Here the choir were on thoroughly firm ground. The ring of the voices was magnificent, and the superbly effective contrast at the words"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Et in terra pax was perfectly given. The first occasion on which we noticed any serious defect in the choral singing was in the burst of jubilant melody at the opening of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Et resurrexit. The jar was only momentary and was doubtless the result of an over-vehement attack. It can scarcely be questioned that the most marvellous chorus in the whole work is the Sanctus, which expresses in six-part harmony the mystical rapture of celestial beings set free from all care, pain, and strife. The effect of those persistent three-quaver groups in their garlanded similar motion is like nothing else in this world. They create a harmony of unparalleled richness, filling the ear with a feast of ravishing sound. The contrast with such choruses as Handel's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Hallelujah and"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Worthy is the Lamb is extremely striking. Handel was always of the Church Militant. He was always strenuous, affirming the faith as it were with a note of triumph over its enemies. Such a rose of Paradise as this Sanctus of Bach's is quite remote from all that Handel could do. For an earthly choir, however, with lungs and vocal chords liable to weariness, all this infinitely ornate and elaborate passage-work is very trying, notwithstanding the absolute suavity of the musical expression, and in the ensuing"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Hosanna there were occasional signs of exhaustion. But the choir recovered their breath during the two succeeding solos, and gave a magnificent performance of the concluding"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Dona nobis pacem."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "St. Matthew Passion."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "St. Matthew Passion of Sebastian Bach as the greatest work of sacred musical art in existence, and thus as greater than Handel's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Messiah ; while at the same time thoroughly acquiescing in the greater popularity of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Messiah. Handel was a mighty artist and a most lordly person; but he was a man of the world and a Court composer, and his religion, though perfectly genuine, was external and official in character. Bach, too, was a mighty artist, but he was not a man of the world. He was a devout and pious man and a man of the people, and his religion was inward and personal. Again, Handel was cosmopolitan, whereas Bach was thoroughly German. Not that Bach was wanting in knowledge of Italian and other foreign music. He was a perfectly comprehensive encyclopædia of the musical knowledge that existed in his time. But the basis of his character was too homely, simple and loyal to be modified by foreign influence. Thus while Handel became musically an Italian, Bach remained thoroughly German. All these circumstances suggest reasons for the much wider popularity of Handel's music by comparison with Bach's. The general public like the clear and definite outline, the structural simplicity, that they find in the Italian and quasi-antique style of Handel, while they are bewildered by the subtlety, the complexity, the varied imaginative play, and the rejection of set forms that they find in Bach. It must be remembered that the average man of the world to a great extent determines the tone of the general public; one may be thankful that there exists any work of sacred musical art so splendid as"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Messiah, which is to a great extent intelligible to the average man of the world, and one may rest satisfied that, for the present at any rate, the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Messiah"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "St. Matthew Passion music. The Good Friday service, or mystery, of the Passion dates back to mediæval times. Musical settings of it are quite innumerable. They fall into three main groups, according to style. The earliest are in the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Plain-song of the mediæval church. At the period of Luther's Reformation the plain song gave way to the chorale style. Finally, there are many settings in the oratorio style. Of these Bach himself certainly wrote four, and probably five. By universal consent the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "St. Matthew Passion is the finest of Bach's settings. The main outlines of the scheme were fixed by tradition. Bach had the assistance of a poet named Picander in arranging his text, but it was by Bach's own judgment that all important points were settled. He divided the story into two parts. The first comprises the conspiracy of the High Priest and Scribes, the anointing of Christ, the institution of the Lord's supper, the prayer on the Mount of Olives and the betrayal of Judas, and ends with the flight of the disciples. In the second part are set forth the hearing before Caiaphas, Peter's denial, the judgment of Pilate, the death of Judas, the progress to Golgotha, the Crucifixion, Death and Burial of Christ. Between the two parts there is a broad contrast, a certain solemn stillness prevailing in the first and a passionate stir in the second. Fifteen chorales are heard in the course of the work, each forming a meditation upon the foregoing incident in the story. The chorus is double, and there is immense power in the manner in which the two main masses of sound are used, both to emphasise all that has poetic value and to express the many elements composing the mighty picture. Most of the solos are supported by the first choir. The utterances of Christ are given by a bass voice with string quartet accompaniment. The bass voice is in accordance with tradition. Most of the other recitatives have an _obbligato_ accompaniment, in which a _motif_ bearing figurative reference to some prominent image in the text is worked out. The _obbligato_ is in most, though not in all, cases assigned to a wind instrument, so as to contrast still further with the music accompanying the words of Christ. The longest solo part is that of the Narrator, who sings tenor. In the course of a long and masterly discussion Dr. Spitta, the great biographer of Bach, contends that the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "St. Matthew Passion is not, strictly speaking, either dramatic music or oratorio music. One passage in the discussion may here be quoted:--"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Consider the passage where the Jewish people, prompted by the High Priests and Elders, demand the release of Barabbas. The Evangelist makes them reply to Pilate's question with the single word 'Barabbas.' The situation is, no doubt, full of emotion, and an oratorio writer might have let the tension of the moment discharge itself in a chorus. But it would necessarily have been embodied in a form in which the chorus could have its full value as a musical factor, in a broadly worked-out composition with a text of somewhat greater extent. The dramatic composer would have given it the utmost brevity, since it stands midway in the critical development of an event. He would have to consider the progress of the action as well as the expression of feeling. A sudden roar of the excited populace--thronging tumultuously about the governor--a sudden roar and brief turmoil of voices would be the effect best suited to his purpose. Bach, composing a devotional Passion, makes the whole choir groan out the name 'Barabbas' once only, on the chord of the minor seventh approached by a false close."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Hold thou my _fermate_ [pauses] long and terribly. Wagner was a most exacting critic, but we venture to think that he would have been fairly satisfied with last night's rendering of the first movement. The contrast of the masculine and feminine elements which are inherent in the first and second subjects respectively was presented with all possible effect; the pauses were as long and terrible as Wagner could have desired, and were sustained with a perfectly equable tone-delivery; the beautiful unaccompanied phrase for oboe--which on the recurrence of the passage takes the place of the _fermata_, or pause, at the twenty-first measure--was given with all possible force of expression; and many other individual beauties of the rendering might be cited. The second movement is less taxing for the performers than the rest of the work; it was given in a manner well in keeping with the spirit of the symphony, which is like some vast work of sculpture in bronze, such as the gates of the Baptistery at Florence. Just such plastic force in the moulding of mighty tone-elements and just such nobility of the imagination did Beethoven possess as enabled Ghiberti to mould those wonderful gates, concerning which Michelangelo said that they were worthy to be the gates of Paradise. The scherzo, too, was an artistic triumph for the orchestra. Not a point was missed in that wonderful and uncanny tone-picture. A dance of demons it has been called; but it must be remembered that many great artists have treated grotesque and grisly subjects with an ineffably beautiful touch, such as we see, for example, in Alfred Rethel's marvellous drawing"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Death the Friend."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Faustus and Helena, where the sylphs, typifying simple, untroubled natural influences, are busied about the person of the sleeping"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Faust, pitying the"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Beethoven and his Nine Symphonies ) when he calls it the most rhythmical of them all. Beyond question the rhythm is on the whole more strongly marked in the seventh than in any of the others. The slow movement is not called a march; yet it has a far more definite tramping rhythm than the movement that is called a march in the Heroic Symphony. In the finale the rhythmical emphasis attains a degree of reckless violence that has never been surpassed by any composer except Tchaïkovsky. A scherzo is always strongly rhythmical; but in the scherzo of this symphony one finds a kind of frenzied rushing, whirling movement that is rare in Beethoven's works. Another differentiating quality of the symphony is grotesque expression, which is strong in the vivace, stronger in the scherzo, and goes all lengths in the finale. As with the later works of many other great artists, it is hard to divine the poetic intention of this symphony. One perceives a marvellous design, for the most part grotesque in character; one perceives the work of a gigantic imagination, smelting the stubborn tone-masses as in a furnace and moulding them to its purposes with a kind of superhuman plastic force. But what the mighty design illustrates is not, at present, obvious. The grotesqueness of the first, third, and last movements is all the more striking from the character of the slow movement, which is absolutely remote from the grotesque. The quality of the expression in that slow movement eludes all classification. It is not exactly a funeral march, and not exactly a dirge, though it is undoubtedly mournful in character. A kind of unearthly rhythmical chant one might imagine it to be, accompanying some mysterious function among the gods of the dead. There is perhaps no slow movement left by Beethoven the beauty of which is more penetrating or more imposing. After a fine and spirited rendering of the introduction and vivace, the slow movement--inscribed"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "in the score, though the composer afterwards expressed a desire that the indication should be changed to"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Eroica"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Eroica Symphony is taken note for note from Mozart's youthful operetta,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Bastien et Bastienne, is of no great importance. If an operetta contained something that could thus be caught up into the seventh heaven of art, its existence was thereby justified very much better than the existence of most other operettas. The notion of bringing a charge of plagiarism against Beethoven in reference to this theme is absurd beyond expression. There is, after all, nothing in the theme but a certain rhythmical arrangement of the common chord so simple that it might well have occurred to two composers independently. Whether it occurred independently to Beethoven or whether he heard Mozart's operetta at the Elector's Theatre in Bonn while he was a boy and unconsciously reproduced the theme, as is conjectured by Sir George Grove, is of no importance. With Mozart the theme is little more than a piece of chance passage-work. It leads to nothing; whereas with Beethoven it leads to developments of extraordinary richness and significance, forming the most important element in a tone-picture that greatly surpasses in passionate and incisive eloquence, in fulness of matter, varied interest, and plastic force anything that previously existed in the world of music. It would be hard to mention any other of Beethoven's themes from which results quite so tremendous have been obtained. It is repeated between thirty and forty times in the course of the movement, reappearing under an endless variety of forms, assigned to all sorts of different instruments, changing in key, in tone-colouring, in loudness or softness of utterance, producing an infinite variety of effects in the harmony, combining in all sorts of unexpected ways with other themes, and on every reappearance taking on new value, bringing fresh revelation. To such great uses may an operetta tune come at last, if it happen to be laid hold of by a Beethoven with an imagination like a mighty smelting furnace, and a hand that can model like a great sculptor in bronze. In Dr. Richter's interpretation of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Eroica, the most striking point is his treatment of the contrast between those musical elements symbolising phases of virile energy and the strains of consolation and reconciliation. Of the latter element a characteristic example is the heavenly duet for oboe and 'cello that occurs just after the terrific outburst of rage and defiance in the"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Eroica --represents not merely a contribution of unparalleled brilliancy to the symphonic music of the period, but an immense enlargement of its previously known possibilities. Such a work naturally dwarfs all that has gone before in its own kind; but it is very desirable to avoid the mistake of certain commentators who, perceiving a great gulf between No. 2 and No. 3, declare the former to be an immature work, not thoroughly characteristic of Beethoven, but exhibiting him as a mere disciple of Haydn and Mozart. While listening yesterday to the wonderfully animated and expressive rendering one could scarcely fail to be struck by the fact that it is all intensely Beethovenish; that it goes beyond Mozart, quite as distinctly and persistently as Mozart in his superb G minor Symphony goes beyond Haydn. We need a revision of the current view in regard to these early Beethoven Symphonies. Only the first is immature. No. 2 is stamped with the true Beethoven individuality on every page, and is comparable with Mozart's G minor in the richness of its organisation and the potency of its charm. The enormous difference between No. 2 and No. 3 is not to be correctly indicated by calling the former immature. It is a difference that separates the Beethoven Symphonies from No. 2 to the end into two well-defined groups. As was long ago observed, the odd-number Symphonies, beginning with 3, are cast more or less in the heroic mould, while the intervening even-number Symphonies are much milder in character--creations of halcyon periods in which the composer would seem to have been storing up energy for the titanic labours of 3, 5, 7, and 9. Bearing this in mind, we have no difficulty in assigning No. 2 to its proper place. It is to be grouped along with 4, 6, and 8, and it may thus be called the first of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Symphonies. Besides the general character of the music there is one very special reason for not accepting the view of No. 2 as an immature work. In the second subject of the Larghetto, we have a very beautiful and original musical idea, so thoroughly recognised by the composer as one of his best and most characteristic that he returned to it many years later when composing his last and greatest slow movement. Compare pp. 29 and 363 of Sir George Grove's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Beethoven and his Nine Symphonies,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Missa Solennis."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Missa Solennis had not been heard at these concerts, but it is not surprising that performances of such a work should be few and far between. It is, beyond question, the most austere of all musical works--a product of Beethoven's quite inexorable mood. At the period when it was written the composer had become a sort of suffering Prometheus. Even apart from his deafness, it is wonderful that Beethoven's persistent ill-fortune, his isolated and unhappy life, should not have discouraged him and checked the flow of his creative energy. But that the mightiest of his compositions should have been produced when he was stone-deaf--that is surely one of the most perfectly amazing among well-authenticated facts! So far as we know, there never was any other case in which deafness failed to cut a person off altogether from the world of music. With Beethoven it only brought a gradual change of style. As the charm that music has for the ear faded away he became more and more absorbed, aloof, austere, and spiritual. The warm human feeling of his middle-period compositions gave way to a style of such unearthly grandeur and sublimity as are oppressive to ordinary mortals. Of that unearthly grandeur there is no more typical example than the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Missa Solennis. Not only in regard to the composition but even in regard to a performance the ordinary language of criticism is at fault. Who ever heard a"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "performance of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Missa Solennis"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Dona nobis pacem section, where the composer seems to represent humanity as endeavouring to take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence, protesting against all the oppression that is done under the sun, and sending up to the throne of God so instant a clamour for the gift of peace as may be heard amid the very din of strife. For that prayer for peace sounds against the sullen rolling of drums and menacing clangour of trumpets, the voices having now a mighty unanimity, now the wail of this or that forlorn victim. One looks in vain through the temple of musical art for anything to match that tremendous conception marking the final phase of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Missa Solennis."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Fidelio."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Fidelio. A sort of despair is likely to come over one who attempts to state how Beethoven stands in relation to dramatic music. If one says that he was not a great dramatic composer, there arise the questions--Did he not make the Symphony a hundred times more dramatic than it ever was before? Did he not make music in association with Goethe's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Egmont that seems to belong for evermore to that drama? Did he not individualise Leonora in music as well as Mozart had individualised the much less exalted characters of Donna Anna and Zerlina? Did he not achieve in his"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Third Leonora something that no one has ever equalled or can ever hope to equal in the domain of the dramatic overture? In fact he did all those things, and several more that can be cited in apparent refutation of the statement that he was not a great dramatic composer. And yet it is certain that he never composed dramatic music as one to the manner born--not with the unfailing adequateness to the theme of Gluck, the felicitous profusion of Mozart, the glowing picturesqueness of Weber. No; in the mighty river of Beethoven the symphonist's invention shrinks to a trickle in his one opera. The water is incomparably limpid, and blossoms of the rarest beauty and fragrance grow on the banks of the stream; but every page is stamped, as it were, with the admission that writing operas was not Beethoven's strong point: and beyond question he acted wisely in writing only one. How mighty is the change when he takes the symbols of his one musical drama and uses them for a monumental purpose, in the great"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Leonora Overture! Beethoven is Shakespearean in the range of his mind and in his attitude towards life, which he always approaches on the purely human side, and without the preoccupations of the Court, the camp, the cloister, the academic grove, or the church. But he is not Shakespearean in his medium of expression, which is hard and unyielding--a kind of musical bronze or granite. Yet"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Fidelio --despite its jejune story, which suggests that Beethoven, having objected to Mozart's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Don Giovanni as scandalous, felt it his duty to compose an opera on a subject that should be"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Symphonie Fantastique."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Symphonie Fantastique offers a more complete picture of the composer's musical personality than any other single work. As a specimen of youthful precocity it also stands alone. It was written at the age of twenty-six, when the composer was still a student at the Conservatoire, being persistently snubbed by a group of dons, who all--with the possible exception of Cherubini, the Principal--were utterly his inferiors in every kind of musical power, knowledge, and skill. The experience of Berlioz at the Conservatoire of Paris was very similar to Verdi's at a like institution in Milan; but the marks of genius in work of the student period were far more distinct in Berlioz's than in Verdi's case. We have said that, as a work of precocious genius, the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Symphonie Fantastique stands alone. No doubt other composers, such as Mozart and Schubert, had shown genius of a higher order at an even earlier age. But the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Symphonie Fantastique, as the work of a 'prentice-hand showing absolute mastery of the greatest and most complex resources, has no parallel. The great fact that has always to be remembered in regard to Berlioz is that he devoted himself with all the energy of an enormous and highly original talent to one particular task in music. That task was the winning of new material for the musical medium, and what Berlioz accomplished in the world of tone was very like what Christopher Columbus accomplished in the world of land and sea. Berlioz too opened up a new hemisphere, and he did his work much more thoroughly than the great navigator. This mighty achievement secures for Berlioz a permanent place of the first importance in the musical hierarchy. But to be deterred by respect for his genius from admitting his faults is not the best way of using his magnificent legacy. Those faults are none the less monstrous for being inseparable from his individuality, and a thoroughly enlightened modern musician would probably find it very difficult to define the attitude of his mind towards the works of Berlioz's art. In a sense, everything in the best of those works, among which the symphony played yesterday is unquestionably to be reckoned, is justified. When one finds an artist dealing with certain subjects as though to the manner born, and with enormous power and resource, one must not condemn him because those subjects are unpleasant or even horrible in the extreme. Such condemnation is not living and letting live. Artistic power is associated with qualities of the highest and rarest that human nature produces, and it is always justified. The favourite subjects of Berlioz may well prove a stumbling-block."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Orgy very nearly became in his hands a musical form. In at least three different works of his--"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Symphonie Fantastique,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Harold in Italy, and"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Damnation of Faust --we find a movement called by some such name, and, his appetite for horrors not being satisfied with the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Witches' Sabbath in the first of those three works, he gives us another movement representing a procession to the guillotine of a young man condemned for murdering his sweetheart. In close association with this love of the lurid, spectral, and ghastly is the bitterly ironical spirit which conceived an"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Amen chorus in mock ecclesiastical style to be sung over a dead rat, the guying of the composer's own love-theme with a jig-like variation on a specially ugly instrument (the E flat clarinet) introduced into the orchestra for that purpose, and the use of the stern and majestic Plain Song theme of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Dies Iræ as a _cantus firmus_, to which the mocking laughter of witches (rushing past through the air in a huge weltering broomstick cavalcade) makes a kind of fantastic counterpoint. It is well to bear in mind that the same talent gave us such miraculous gossamer fancies as the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Queen Mab Scherzo and the chorus of Sylphs and that most tenderly beautiful and vividly conceived idyll"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "L'Enfance du Christ."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Symphonie Fantastique the orchestra had to be considerably enlarged. In addition to all the usual instruments the score requires an E flat clarinet, two bells (G and C), a second harp, an extra kettledrum, and a second bass tuba. Everything had been rehearsed with infinite care, and in all five movements the rendering was a display of virtuosity such as only a very rare combination of favourable circumstances would allow one to hear. No other composer displays a very powerful and skilful orchestra to quite such immense advantage. As Mr. Edward Dannreuther has finely and truly remarked--"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "With Berlioz the equation between a particular phrase and a particular instrument is invariably perfect."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Faust."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Faust, which was first performed at the Opéra Comique in Paris in 1846, the opinion was expressed that he ought to have been a chemist, not a musician--a remark that gives extraordinary point to a piece of advice that Berlioz once gave to artists in general:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Always collect the stones that are thrown at you; they may help to build your monument. The remark that Berlioz ought to have been a chemist, originally intended as a sneer, is a perfect case in point. He _was_ a chemist, and it is his chief glory to have been that in the world of music. He tested, analysed, combined anew, and prodigiously enriched those elements of tone which are the material of the musical artist. Of course he was far more than chemist. He was also explorer, but always in search of material for his essentially chemical experiments in tone. One can scarcely wonder that"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Faust was a failure at first. Amongst the happy-go-lucky patchwork of the book is much evidence of that coarse and satirical vein which was so strong in the composer. How could the public be expected to approve of an opera on the subject of Faust that had no love-song or truly lyrical utterance of any kind for the tenor hero, but, on the other hand, had a song about a flea and a rat's requiem, ending with an"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Amen chorus in mock ecclesiastical style, to say nothing of a scene in Pandemonium and an _orgie infernale_? Berlioz was a sort of a belated mediæval. The very title,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Damnation de Faust,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Like Wagner, he perceived that after Beethoven symphonic music could do no more on the old lines, but that music might learn to characterise much more sharply than it had ever done before. His prodigious reform, enlargement, and enrichment of orchestration was entirely carried out under the influence of the desire for stronger and finer characterisation, for a more varied and interesting play of emotion and graphic suggestion. A good many musicians and music-lovers at the present day, recognising the enormous merit of Berlioz's achievement in orchestration, yet consider that, like Moses, he was not allowed to enter the promised land to which he had led his people; or, more literally, that Berlioz was not able to make really good use of his own discoveries, the importance of which is to be recognised in the music of Wagner, Dvoràk, Tchaïkovsky, and others who learned from Berlioz, rather than in his own music. While admitting that later men, such as those mentioned, have used the Berlioz instrument to a more spiritual kind of purpose or with greater epic and dramatic significance, the open-minded music-lover can scarcely deny that the compositions of Berlioz, considered as absolute works of art, include a majestic array of masterpieces. Such things as the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Te Deum and"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Messe des Morts bear, in their unparalleled vastness of conception, the stamp of an imagination comparable only to Michel Angelo's. They are mighty fragments of larger works never carried out--impossible to be carried out. The best-known work by Berlioz--and the most perfect, on the whole, of the extended works--is the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Faust, which must not be judged as an operatic version of Goethe's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Faust, but rather as a musical setting of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Faust story in the racy and drastic manner of the mediæval puppet plays, Goethe's drama being only used in so far as it affords suggestions for scenes of the well-salted and drastic animation that Berlioz loved. Berlioz was a typical French Romantic. His music is absolutely wanting in the ethical element that is so strong in Bach and Beethoven. But he had a powerful and truly poetic sense of the wonderful, the beautiful, the weird, and the characteristic. Over and over again in his"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Faust he achieves typical excellence. That rapture of spring which is one of the great, imperishable poetic themes has nowhere in music been better rendered than in the first pages of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Faust (orchestra and tenor voice), and the ensuing peasant choruses are by far the best musical expression of that"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "which outside the world of art is only possible under a southern sky. The Rácoczy March as orchestrated by Berlioz is not only the finest piece of military music in the world but is an immeasureably long way ahead of the next best piece. The energy, gaiety, and tumultuous eloquence of the final section (altogether Berlioz's own, of course), give us the musical symbol of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "La Gloire --that important conception which has played a part in history for three centuries. The scene on the banks of the Elbe is woven of moonbeams and gossamer fancies that no other composer could have handled. The rhythm of the Mephisto serenade is too good for this world. Here the composer succeeds in expressing the diabolical without any direct suggestion of malice--simply by creating the rhythm and accent of laughter too monstrously whole-hearted and full-blooded for a mere man. Another miracle is the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Chanson Gothique (about the King of Thule), which is, as it were, the distilled essence of all mediæval romances about lovesick maidens looking forth from their casements. In the latter part the composer falls a victim to his evil genius--the _macabre_,--and the terrible squint of the madman is perceptible in the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ride to the Abyss and the howling and gibbering of demons, which entirely lack the significance of the demons in"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gerontius,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Faust"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Faust Symphony fell flat on its first performance in Manchester. There seems to be something in our national temperament which makes it peculiarly difficult for us to penetrate the secret of Liszt and learn to understand his tone-language. In musical society on the Continent"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "is regarded as a fixed characteristic of the Englishman, and those few Englishmen who have learned to like Liszt remember the gradual process by which their ears were opened, like the learning of a foreign language after one is grown up. Some composers have a manner of utterance that may be picked up half unconsciously; but for Britons, at any rate, Liszt's is not of that kind. Patience, persistent study, reflection, observation, comparison, besides an ear of some subtlety, are necessary for the understanding of it, and we have not the habit of taking music seriously (except in the abstract) or of giving it our whole attention. So a thing like the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Faust Symphony goes over our heads as if it were a poem in some foreign language of which we only apprehend the rhythm. It is a pity, for to those few who understand the poem is very great and splendid. Like some ghostly Ancient Mariner, the spirit of the master holds us"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "and speaks as one who is full of matter and wisdom and is a master of life. His story is that old one about Faust and Gretchen--not the Berlioz version ending with the Damnation of Faust, but the original Goethe version which deals with the working out of Faust's salvation (the difference between the two being really quite considerable),--and in the telling of this story he conveys lessons to the heart that are much too delicate for words. A good many composers have made"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Faust music of one kind or another. Spohr and Schumann, Berlioz and Boïto, Wagner and Liszt, all paid their tribute to the inexhaustible interest of the theme, besides Gounod--most superficial and consequently best known of them all. Even in Gounod, however, there is a little genuine"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Faust music--a very little. It is to be found in the first few bars of the overture, in the Mephistopheles Serenade, and, perhaps one might add, in the song about the King of Thule, though Berlioz did that much better. Wagner's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Faust Overture is quite a great composition, and it is nearest akin to Liszt's Symphony. But it is much too one-sided to vie in interest with Liszt's tremendous composition, which seems to grasp the whole subject and tear the very heart out of it, with a kind of imaginative power suggesting Victor Hugo's, though the touch is more true. He begins with the solitary Faust in his study, plunged in gloomy meditation, every phase of which the music expounds (to him who listens closely enough)--intellectual pride, reduced to impotence in the endeavour to solve the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "; the tranquillising of the spirit by mystical influences seeming to emanate from a higher world; then the reawakening of pain in the consciousness that had been hushed and charmed. Here the music, passing up the chord with each note preceded by the semitone above, sounds like a series of broken sighs. And presently we encounter something quite new. A plaintive theme on the clarinet, answered by a single viola, symbolises the vision of feminine companionship. Hope reawakens, and the strength of Faust's nature asserts itself in the splendid E major theme for full orchestra, destined to play the leading part throughout the work. The movement is long, thoughtful, and no less apt in invention than rich and glowing in tone-colour. In the second movement, headed"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gretchen, we encounter quite a different atmosphere. It is a worthy counterpart to the Gretchen episode in Goethe's poem--no doubt the best picture of a girl, from the man's point of view, that exists in literature. Inexpressibly beautiful is the contrast between the fancy-free and the loving Gretchen. There is nothing in all music more rich and rapturous than the ensuing love-scene, which reminds one of the point in the first act of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Die Walküre where the doors swing open and reveals to the enchanted gaze of the lovers the spring landscape bathed in moonlight. But Liszt is here more to the point than Wagner. Then comes Mephisto with his diabolical dance, turning everything into derision, till a light shines down from heaven, where the soul of Margaret appears among the angels, and the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "with his mask torn off, shrinks away, trembling and baffled. Here the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "gives utterance to the crowning idea of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Faust drama--"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The woman-soul draweth us upward and on. Such a work as the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Faust Symphony departs from the classical model inasmuch as it is unified altogether by dramatic and characteristic and not at all by architectural principles. It may also be regarded as three character-sketches, which, with the help of some cross-reference, together tell a story. Any person well versed in modern music, on hearing this composition for the first time, cannot but be astonished at the number of ideas, afterwards used by other composers, that it contains. The most glaring case is the transformation music just before the entry of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "which has been conveyed bodily by Wagner, with only quite unimportant changes, into the third act of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Die Walküre, after the words--"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "So streif' ich dir die Gottheit ab. But dozens of other ideas in Wagner's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Tristan and"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Siegfried and Strauss's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Till Eulenspiegel"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Messiah"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Faust in Solitude."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "must, in the course of three fruitless years, have felt something worse than misgiving. That Wagner did so feel is a matter not of speculation but of history. He has described how, when meditating the subject of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Flying Dutchman, he sent for a pianoforte to see whether, after the mean drudgery and abject misery of those years,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Wagner was not an ordinary man. Everything about him was on a grander scale--his folly and rashness no less than his talent. Though more sensitive than others to the most trifling discomfort, he showed, under an accumulation of miseries that would simply have crushed almost anyone else, a stupendous energy and reaction. He had failed to get his"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Rienzi performed in Paris. For three years he had continued his fruitless endeavours to obtain a hearing at the opera; and a crisis of frightful despondency ensued, when, to ruin and beggary and the sense of having made a fool of himself, was added an attack of a painful skin disease which tormented him at intervals all his life. Now it was precisely at that crisis that he wrote the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Faust Overture--his masterpiece in the strict sense of the term; that is, the first work of his mastership or mature power. Thus, instead of being crushed, Wagner is suddenly found drawing upon the reserve force of his genius to produce a work that stands very nearly on a level with Beethoven's third"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Leonora Overture. For the Faust Overture is a tone-picture of the utmost energy, nobility, and beauty, utterly defying comparison with any other except Beethoven, and attaining to a kind of demonic eloquence that Wagner himself never found again, till quite late in life, during the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ring of the Nibelung"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Nibelung"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Götterdämmerung performance on Saturday with any disposition to satirise the management for the failure of the stage effects in the final scene. In the course of the week Wagner's greatest work had been presented with considerably brighter intelligence and more adequate resource than ever before in this country, and it was piteous that there should be a slight humiliation at the end. It may be doubted, indeed, whether the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Ring in its entirety has ever been better done, for the amazing excellence of the orchestral performance was to some considerable extent matched by the singers, and the dramatic realisation of the composer's intentions was good everywhere except in certain parts of the prologue, and showed positive genius at certain points in each of the main dramas forming the trilogy. The general impression was thus one of a great task nobly carried out, and the concluding fizzle, however tiresome and distressing to the stage managers, could but seem a trifling matter to any appreciative spectator. It is a terrible business, that _finale_ of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Götterdämmerung. Conceived in a mood of frenzied protest, it bears a peculiar stamp of extravagance and violence. It shows Wagner as an Anarchist of the Bakounine type, undertaking, as it were, to"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "and"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "on the off-chance that Nature might afterwards"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "A lifetime of noble endeavour and great achievement, with scarcely any response from the world but the crackling of thorns under a pot, had produced in Wagner such bitterness of spirit as little men are saved from by their natural limitations, and it is that bitterness of spirit which finds expression in the smashing and burning and drowning of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Götterdämmerung"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Die Walküre and"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Siegfried were long ago taken up into the ordinary Covent Garden repertory. There can be little doubt that"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Rhinegold is in all important respects the most difficult part of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ring to make effective. Epic rather than dramatic in character, it presents to the actor an unfamiliar kind of task. He finds himself representing some creature that is scarcely individualised at all, and taking part in the interplay of elemental forces rather than of human passions. This goes far towards accounting for the fact that last week the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Rhinegold performance fell very far below the level of all the rest. The representative of Alberic in the first scene seemed to take very little interest in the love-making with the Rhine maidens. He had apparently adopted the guide-book view of the dwarf as a creature merely of greed and hate, and had overlooked the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "--to borrow Mr. Bernard Shaw's expression--which drives Alberic towards the Rhine maidens; for his acting was quite feeble and pointless, nor was it possible for him to carry out the stage directions that require Alberic to climb over the rock-work and rush after the Rhine maidens with the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "the rock-work being much too insecure and the Rhine maidens too restricted in their movements. In that first scene the rise of the curtain reveals something like the glazed side of a huge aquarium tank, and it was apparently to the general effect of the picture as first displayed that all the attention of the scenic artists had been given. Nibelheim, with the clanking sounds of the Nibelungs at their smiths' work, was fairly well rendered, but here again Alberic's part was ineffectively done, and there was far too much fairy-tale prettiness and variety in the aspect of his crowd of slaves. At Bayreuth these victims of sweating and improper labour conditions are represented with horrifying truth as a huddled crowd of little earth-men, driven hither and thither by the cursing and lashing of their master, and, instead of being to some slight extent adorned and differentiated, uniformly grimy and abject. Stage prettiness was never more out of place than in the Covent Garden presentation of the scene. The setting was best in the final scene, where the Gods march over the rainbow bridge into Valhalla. In the rainbow there was a curious predominance of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "tints to the exclusion of the primary colours, but it took its place well enough in a fairly effective stage picture with a prehistoric building on the heights to the left. Here the only point of inferiority to the Bayreuth presentation was in the meteorological background. After the magnificent orchestrated thunderstorm the sky is supposed to clear and the Gods to enter their new abode amid the glow of a most radiant sunset. But the secrets of atmospheric effect and cloud pageantry seem to remain for the present exclusively in the hands of Bayreuth and Munich, and these things, though they belong to the framework rather than the essential drama, seem to have loomed large in Wagner's imagination when he conceived the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Ring,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Rhinegold presentation was the rendering of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Die Walküre on Wednesday. A dramatic interpretation of Wagner at all comparable to the musical interpretation which we derive from the Liszt-Bülow-Richter tradition is not for the present, or for some time to come, to be expected. But, making allowance for the difference in standard between the musical and scenic arts, which is simply a phenomenon of our time, one may well be thankful for such a rendering of the music's proper scenic background and framework as was given at Covent Garden on all but the first of the four evenings in the production of the present year. In the opening act of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Die Walküre"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Ho-yo-to-ho, the doubt might be raised whether it is rugged enough. But on the whole this artist seems to present a case of almost providential adaptation to the task of impersonating Wagner's greatest heroine. From whatever point of view her impersonation be regarded, it seems better than one could reasonably expect. A most richly endowed and harmonious personality is the basis of it. Fully matching Mr. Van Rooy in breadth and dignity of conception, she greatly surpasses her distinguished colleague in tact and cleverness, whether the matter in hand be the management of draperies, the humouring of a horse, or any such secondary matter upon which the proper development of a stage picture may depend. Vocally, too, Miss Ternina is fully equal to the tremendous task, and her Brynhild is thus a truly wonderful revelation of Wagner's art at its best. For Brynhild is beyond all question Wagner's finest individual creation. In a series of matchless scenes he shows us the development of the warrior-maid into a perfect woman, every phase of that development being touched with a kind of demonic power that makes it impossible for anyone altogether to miss the point. In the second act of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Walküre Brynhild comes forth on to the crags in her shining armour, with helm and shield and corselet of steel. In the leave-taking with her obdurate father, who, against his better judgment, has given way to the counsels of Fricka--that Mrs. Grundy of Valhalla,--the insignia of her Valkyriehood begin to fall off, in anticipation of the humanising process that is to be completed when Siegfried, in the ensuing drama, removes the steel corselet for the bridal feast. Before our eyes, therefore, and step by step Brynhild is transformed, making the heroic life visible and rhythmic for us at every moment. She is the vessel into which Wagner has poured the very finest vintage of his genius. No blackguardly characteristics of the _Uebermensch_, such as develop so very freely in the Siegfried of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Götterdämmerung,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Siegfried is a revelation of sensuous life in its natural and joyous fulness. No historical dress obscures his form, nor are his movements obstructed by any force external to himself. The error and confusion arising from the wild play of passion rage around him and involve him in destruction. But till that destruction is compassed nothing in Siegfried's environment can arrest his own impulse. Not even in presence of death does he allow himself to be swayed by any other influence than the restless stream of life flowing within himself. Fear, envy, and vindictiveness are alike alien to his nature, and so, too, is any desire for love arising from reflection. His every movement is determined by the direct flow of vital force swelling the veins and muscles of his body to rapturous fulfilment of their functions."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Nibelung"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Siegfried, the play of the sunlight through the moving branches that so terrifies the dwarf accustomed to a subterranean environment, the highly realistic smith's work--all these accessories in the picture of the godlike youth were well done, and the peculiar early morning exhilaration of that first act was quite successfully realised. So, too, were the fairy-tale terrors of the dragon's cave and the leafy splendours of the glade in which Siegfried holds converse with the birds. Where there is room for improvement in the Covent Garden staging of these dramas is, above all, in the meteorological background of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Rhinegold and"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Götterdämmerung ; secondly, in the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ride of the Valkyries, which has not hitherto been done in a sufficiently spirited manner anywhere but in Paris; thirdly, in the final scene of conflagration and ruin. At present the final scene is much too elaborately done. All that smashing and falling of timber is a mistake. A chaotic design painted on a sheet of canvas can be let down at the right moment with better effect to the eyes of the spectators, in addition to the immense advantage of producing no noise or dust, costing little, and being completely under control.[1] The present method of rendering the scene is too costly, too noisy, and too dangerous. The Valhalla building should be recognisably the same as in the final scene of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Rhinegold."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ring been revealed to British audiences as in the past three weeks. The windy and cloudy eloquence of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Walküre music and the heroic pathos of Brynhild's leave-taking have long been pretty thoroughly appreciated, but not so the songs of the forge in"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Siegfried, where Wagner throws an almost fabulous kind of energy into the picture of the typical young man singing at his work, summing up all that is finest in that enthusiasm of labour which is perhaps the best part of our inheritance from the nineteenth century. These songs were, in the recent production, allowed to develop without cuts or distortion. The brawny rhythm, the iron clangour, the fizz and tumult of the instrumentation--all these things came out as never before at a performance in this country. So, too, with the long love duet of Siegfried and Brynhild and the ravishing trio of the Rhine Maidens in the last act of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Götterdämmerung. But, apart from such dazzling moments, the performances were in their completeness and sustained excellence an extraordinary revelation of the composer's power in the use of musical symbolism. Just before the rise of the curtain on the first act of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Siegfried one hears that whine or snarl of the Nibelung dwarf, entering on the minor ninth along with the hammering theme. It sounds merely comical and trivial. But just as a personal fault, first observed as something funny, may in the experience of life or study of history be found developing into a source of appalling mischief, so, as these dramas progress, do we find the symbol of Nibelung hatred developing from a comical snarl into those monstrous and multitudinous yells that rend the welkin and dismay the soul amid the gathering horror of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Götterdämmerung tragedy. Persons who are in the habit of chattering about the _Leitmotiv_ as though it were a nostrum might with advantage take note of a few such points. The symbols of Nibelung hatred are not more effective nor anywise better done than the other symbols in the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ring,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Residenzstadt, with an"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Old Castle of the fifteenth century, a"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "New Castle of the eighteenth, and other not very carefully preserved relics of the Court which Franconian Margraves long kept here. Of country residences and"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "too, designed in the over-fantastic manner of the South German potentate, there is more than one in the neighbourhood, and no doubt such things help to create an atmosphere that is favourable to artistic enjoyment. The smoke of modern industrial enterprise is not unknown here, but in the fulfilment of the part of its destiny which is connected with Wagnerian drama Bayreuth is aided by the leafy dells and dingles and the stately avenues of the Hofgarten, if not by the fantastic waterworks of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Eremitage."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Parsifal."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Parsifal was given for the 122nd time in Bayreuth, where, since the original production in 1882, it has formed the principal feature of every festival except that of 1896. Any attempt to describe impressions of the performance has to be preceded by a shaking of oneself free from that hypnotic influence which Wagner's art in its latest phase exercises. The curtain falls on the first act, the lights are turned up, and one emerges quickly into the light of day to find oneself once more in the midst of a chattering but well-behaved international crowd that wanders about the open sandy space girdled with plantations on either side of the theatre. It is not quite the same experience as a child's on awakening from an importunate dream, because the feeling that it was not one's own dream but another's is peculiarly strong, together with a sense of utter astonishment that it should be possible for the consciousness of an adult person to be ravished away into the dream-world of another. Then comes further reflection and the inevitable question how it is done. Is it primarily by means of the music, which passes through the chambers of consciousness like the fumes of an anæsthetic, or does the peculiar potency lie in the dramatic symbols, for the elaboration of which the subtlest essences of a hundred arts seem to have been brought together? All the objections to"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Parsifal would seem to resolve themselves ultimately into distrust of something that is so dreamlike, and dreamlike in a manner so inexpressibly soft and luxurious. It is all rhythmic with the slow, musically ordered movements of the Grail's knights, who are so holy as to feel sin like a bodily pain; it is solemn with hieratic pageantry, and rich with the lustre of costly stuffs and the glitter of ecclesiastical embroideries and jewels. In the first and last acts it has the atmosphere of a Christian sanctuary, and the second act, passing in Klingsor's garden, seems to represent the pleasures of sin as imagined by the most innocent of mediæval monks. All this the orthodox moralist regards with some distrust as tending to create a distaste for hard work and cold water. But let him remember the mischief done by the Puritans in the seventeenth century, and be careful how he lays about him with the iconoclastic hammer. Whatever else"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Parsifal"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Parsifal"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Ring."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ring tetralogy, of which the first began on Monday. It seems to be generally admitted here that the performance of the Prologue ("
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Rheingold ) given on that day was the best that has yet been achieved. Dr. Richter was at the helm for the first time this year, and the generalship that has been one great factor in Bayreuth's reputation ever since the opening of the Wagner Theatre in 1876 soon became perceptible in the plastic force of the orchestral rendering and the consummate knowledge with which everything was disposed in such a manner as to give each performer the best possible chance of doing justice to himself and his part. Moreover,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Rheingold is, of all the Wagnerian dramas, the one best adapted to display the art of Bayreuth advantageously. The staging is of the most extraordinary kind. All the action takes place up in the clouds, down in the waters, or where the forges resound in the fiery caverns of Nibelheim, and not one of the characters is a plain human being. Gods, goddesses, giants, dwarfs, and water nymphs make up the _dramatis personæ_, and the whole drama is more completely outside the range of ordinary operatic art than any other musical and dramatic work. It is therefore natural that Bayreuth, which alone among theatres devoted to musical drama is not hampered by the operatic traditions, should establish pre-eminence in the staging and dramatic presentation of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Rheingold."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Ring here in 1896 the impersonation of Loge by the late Vogel of Munich was a brilliant feature. Vogel was at the time recognised as the best Loge, and his mantle has now fallen on Dr. Otto Briesemeister, who, with a much less effective costume than his predecessor's, dances very cleverly through his long and important part. But among the stage performers it was Mr. Hans Breuer, the representative of the dwarf Mime, to whom the principal honours of Monday's performance fell. Already in 1896 Mr. Breuer was the Bayreuth Mime, and he seems to have been steadily improving his presentation ever since. It is now beyond all expression brilliant. Mime (or Mimmy, as the name has been well Anglicised) is perhaps the best invented of Wagner's purely grotesque figures--better individualised than his master, the sinister Alberich, representing gold as a world-power, for whom Mimmy is compelled to do smith's work. From beginning to end the part presents unfamiliar problems to the actor, for never before was the attempt made to give a musical vehicle to such whining and cringing and snarling. But those problems have all now been solved by Mr. Breuer in a manner suggesting finality. He has penetrated to the very marrow of the composer's conception, and he gives us a figure that glows with imaginative power at every moment. Almost equally good in its very different way is the mighty elemental brutality of Mr. Johannes Elmblad's Fafner--another case of an actor completely identified with the particular part,--and the second giant (Mr. Hans Keller) fairly matched his colleague and Messrs. Breuer and Briesemeister in expressive pantomimic interpretation of the music. The enchanting"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Rhine Daughter"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Ring."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ring here, is enormous, and from the mighty trilogy as now presented that old sense of awkward, cumbrous, and unmanageable material has to a great extent disappeared--not, indeed, to the same extent in all the four parts (prologue and three-fold drama). The change and improvement is most startling in"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Rheingold, which, with all its mythological and thaumaturgical paraphernalia, used to be thought peculiarly clumsy and full of bad quarters of an hour, despite the genius that scintillated here and there. Now that the staging has been perfected, it no longer embarrasses the performers or distracts the spectator's attention, and one has unimpeded enjoyment of the story, with all its rich imaginative play and its Aristophanic quality, as it is interpreted by a group of actors and actresses who have thoroughly mastered their peculiar business."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Rheingold"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Walküre and"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Siegfried, which have long been in the repertory of London, Paris, and other capitals, the superiority of Bayreuth is very much less certain--that is to say, of Bayreuth as represented by this year's performances. There was serious weakness in two out of the three great protagonists, Wotan and Brünnhilde, and for that weakness no degree of skill in the presentation of the finely fantastic and ever-shifting backgrounds could compensate, nor even the superb orchestral interpretation. The Siegfried of Mr. Ernst Kraus was, however, on the whole a very striking performance, as it was at Covent Garden in 1903. It was best in Acts i. and ii. of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Siegfried --the forging of the sword and the slaying of the dragon, preceded and followed by the wonderful forest _rêverie_,--and it was least good in the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Götterdämmerung"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Götterdämmerung. The final drama of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ring series remains a terrible monster among the dramatic works of mankind, with a dreary first and second act, in which little seems to occur besides the heaping up of gloomy storm-clouds. The fierce animation of the retainers' muster in the Hall of the Gibichungs produced on Thursday the utmost effect of which it is capable; but the atmosphere of these scenes in which the tragedy of the curse resting on the Ring is worked out remained, as before, almost intolerable; and, despite the ravishing Rhine-daughter music in the third act, the romantic beauty of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Erzählung (story of Siegfried's youth), and the monumental grandeur of the funeral scenes, the last day of the trilogy left one with the old sense of oppression. As most persons are aware, the whole"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ring drama began in the composer's mind with"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Siegfried's Death --that part which is now called"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Götterdämmerung, --and the other three parts were written to lead up to it. Nevertheless the original nucleus remains the monstrous product of a disordered imagination, while the three parts, conceived as something secondary, form a series of masterpieces. Books, we know, have their fates, and the fate of this one is not the least curious. The experience of this year, while tending to show that the supposed defects of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Rheingold,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Walküre, and"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Siegfried"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Pathetic symphony has been carried over the country during the past two years should have had the result of bringing other works by the same composer to the fore. That result is in no way to be regretted. Tchaïkovsky is a thoroughly interesting composer. His power and originality can scarcely now be disputed, and, whatever may be the verdict upon his art arrived at by those competent to judge when the excitement of novelty shall have passed off, one fact seems already to be quite clear, namely, that he was a great master of the orchestra. Listening to Tchaïkovsky's music for a whole evening and comparing the new with former impressions may have revealed more defects and limitations than merits; but the experience confirms, to our mind, the view that the Russian composer must be allowed to take rank along with Berlioz and Wagner as a consummate and original master of the orchestra, regarded as a medium of expression. He grasps the modern orchestra as if it were one instrument. He sweeps over it like a mighty virtuoso with unerring touch. He knows the suggestions and potencies that lie in the timbre of each pipe, string, and membrane, just as a man knows the articulations of his native language. To any musical strain that is in his mind he gives outward form with absolute success. In short, he has consummate ability to express himself in music, and such ability is so rare that it is sufficient alone to make a composer very famous. There remain, of course, certain questions about the self thus expressed, and not till we reach those questions do the defects and limitations of Tchaïkovsky's art come into view. The great prevalence of melancholy moods in Tchaïkovsky's music is a matter of common observation. When he desires to shake off his habitually gloomy and brooding state, how does he set about it? Just as one would expect with such a disposition--by frenzied excitement, by the blare and glare of military pageant or by an orgiastic dance. His lighter music is bizarre or sardonic when it is not merely intoxicating. The enormous predominance of the rhythmical interest over every other kind of interest, such as that of melody or harmony, in Tchaïkovsky's music, can scarcely have escaped notice; and rhythm is the lowest element in music; it is the element representing animal impulse, as shown by its preponderance in every kind of religious music (Palestrina, for example). The music of Tchaïkovsky rocks, tramps, jigs, whirls, and flies far more than it sings; and when it does sing it is either profoundly melancholy, bitterly sardonic, or merely bizarre. The composer has absolutely no serenity in his disposition, no love of nature or of innocence, no naïveté, no calmness or coolness, no healthy activity, no religion, though much picturesque patriotism, and very little intellectuality--only just enough for the purpose of expression. Such is the disposition revealed in the art of Tchaïkovsky. Like Rubens, the painter, he cares for nothing but exuberant animalism--for Rubens' Madonnas and other quasi-religious pictures are all just as much studies of exuberant animalism as his Venuses and his boar-hunts. Tchaïkovsky, too, loves hunting; though his more special tastes are for fighting and military display, and for dancing. Such a character could not be otherwise than profoundly melancholy in the absence of strong excitement. At the same time, he was--again like Rubens--an artist of enormous power, and his creations have their value. The fifth symphony, which was given yesterday, affords a most interesting comparison with the sixth and last. Such a nature as, according to our view, Tchaïkovsky has revealed in his art would never be thoroughly dignified except in great grief or in some situation bringing his patriotism to the fore. This, we believe--added to the more complete maturity of the art,--is the explanation of that greatness which has been generally recognised as distinguishing the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Pathetic symphony among the composer's works. Alone among the larger works of the composer it has dignity. The feeling that it embodies is tremendously deep and sincere. It is an utterance of a strong semi-primitive nature with robust appetite, but also with an immense capacity for feeling--personal feeling, and family, tribal or patriotic feeling. In the symphony given yesterday, on the other hand, we have a feast of gorgeous tone-colour, orchestral figures of astonishing scope and ingenuity, here and there motifs that are poignantly expressive, vastness of design, superhuman energy; but the dignity of the work is marred by the perpetual intervention of riotous and frenzied rhythms. The other orchestral works given were all of minor importance. Perhaps the best was the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Romeo and Juliet overture, dealing with a subject certain sides of which were naturally congenial to the composer's temperament. He seized on these sides with unerring self-knowledge and made an eloquent musical picture out of them."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Variations on a Rococo Theme and"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Pezzo Capriccioso are two ingenious and bizarre pieces, both very cleverly scored, which enabled Mr. Carl Fuchs to display his admirable mastery of the violoncello as a solo instrument. They were both very finely played, and, especially the latter, aroused considerable enthusiasm. As far as the interpretation was concerned the symphony, too, must be unreservedly commended. There was only one work in the entire concert which, to our mind, bears the stamp of perfection--namely, the little song"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, which is worthy to rank with the best lyrics by Schumann, and indeed shows the spirit of that composer in one of his moods--that which produced"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Ich grolle nicht --very strongly. All the songs were interesting. In fact, the lyrical power of Tchaïkovsky is so striking that it may be placed side by side with his mastery of the orchestra among those qualities which make him a great composer. All that has been said with more especial reference to the orchestral works applies with equal truth to the songs; they are either melancholy, like the first, third, and last given at yesterday's concert, or sardonic, like"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Don Juan's Serenade."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Pathetic symphony. Composed some fifteen years earlier than the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Pathetic, the fourth symphony represents the composer in a very different mood, though with nearly the same technical powers. It is perhaps natural that the earlier work should be more cheerful; but, considering that the composer was thirty-eight years of age when he produced that earlier work, the music sounds curiously youthful. The difference between the style of the symphony given yesterday and the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Pathetic is almost entirely of a kind that eludes analysis. It can only be stated broadly that in the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Pathetic there is a depth and energy of feeling to be found in none but truly great works of art; also that there is mature style, appearing especially in the marvellous tact with which so much rich, highly coloured, and dangerous material is disposed. On the other hand, the earlier symphony, while strongly akin to the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Pathetic in rhythmic and melodic invention, figuration, instrumentation, and device in general, is not only wanting in the tact of the mature artist, but shows the composer not under the influence of any strong feeling, and simply revelling in his powers of gorgeous orchestration, ingenious thematic work, and marshalling of tone masses with a view to picturesque effect. Tchaïkovsky is nearly always martial in one part or another of an orchestral work. In the great symphony the first movement has a ferocious section suggesting actual slaughter, while the greater part of the third movement is an elaborate military pageant. The work given yesterday leads off with martial strains, which recur several times in the first movement and again in the last. The first movement also exemplifies the composer's practice of bringing in a good deal of development immediately after the statement of a theme, instead of waiting for the development section. Though every musical element is telling, the movement is too prolix. In the andantino it soon becomes apparent that the composer's mind is running on his national folk-melody, the second theme especially having a very strong flavour of Russian national music. The movement is short and very charming. Next one passes from song to dance, the scherzo being a kind of Cossack dance orchestrated in the most piquant style, the strings playing pizzicato throughout. Here again the composer is irresistible. The music is ballet-music, not worthy of a symphony, but it is so exhilarating that there has to be a"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Romeo and Juliet"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Romeo and Juliet overture, played yesterday, is probably Tchaïkovsky's best early composition, and it is certainly that which suggests the great last symphony in the most unmistakable manner. The poetic basis of the tone-picture is to a considerable extent the same in both. A warning prologue leads to the scenes of violence and bloodshed. Then follows a romantic love-story with a tragic ending. Everything in the overture is extremely well done--the fighting music is graphic and the love music is deeply fraught with feeling,--but it is not a bit Shakespearean in spirit. The peculiar neuralgic pathos which haunts nearly all Tchaïkovsky's works takes us into a fevered and unnatural atmosphere very unlike Shakespeare's; and the fighting is gory and realistic in the haggard manner of Verestchagin. As with Berlioz's treatment of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Faust,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Pathétique --appeals more strongly to the emotions, No. 5 is constructively the finer work. On the other hand, we have the opinion of the Russian critic Berezovsky--quoted together with the same writer's detailed account of the work in a recent English book on Tchaïkovsky--that No. 5 is the weakest of all the Symphonies. There is something rather depressing in such extreme divergence of opinion. It proves one of two things;--either Tchaïkovsky is not one of the sane composers whose works stand in a certain clear relation to the musical needs of human nature; or else, for all our greatly increased musical culture, we are no quicker than were the men of Beethoven's day in our perceptions; and, in the absence of perception, we are even more tied down than were our predecessors by pedantic notions. The reception of the great"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Symphonic Pathétique in this country disposes of the former alternative. No other instrumental work ever aroused so great a wave of genuine public interest, and even persons who are no great admirers of Tchaïkovsky ought, if they care for the musical life of this country, to take an interest in him, on account of the astonishingly sudden and powerful grip that he took of the public imagination. It is not to externals--such as instrumentation, counterpoint, form, and so forth--that we must look for the explanation. Glazounoff orchestrates no less brilliantly than Tchaïkovsky and has probably a greater mastery of scholastic device, and the same is true of Saint-Saëns. Yet neither of those masters ever did or could stir anything in the least like the interest that Tchaïkovsky stirs. We believe the secret of Tchaïkovsky lies first in his sincerity, his being in earnest, his intentness, his search after the true symbol of his idea or feeling, his rejection of mere fabricated music. In listening to Glazounoff one perceives the trotting out of device."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Note how cleverly, the composer seems to say,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Whereas Tchaïkovsky is always intent on his idea, and, when he uses device, it is with the air of a man deeply in earnest and grasping at a resource of expression. Thus the centre of gravity is with Glazounoff as often as not in the device, with Tchaïkovsky always in the message, and with that dim sub-consciousness of the musical soul we perceive the one to be a cultivated trifler, the other a man with something important to say. That is the first and chief point. Next comes Tchaïkovsky's gift of rhythm--the quality in music for which the general public of the present day cares most. When a person of rudimentary musical notions says that he likes a good tune, it will nearly always be found that what he likes is the rhythm, and that the melody can be freely changed without his perceiving it. The same taste exists in the higher stages of cultivation. A hundred times commoner than a real sense of melodic beauty is the love of a powerful rhythm that carries the listener off his feet. Now Tchaïkovsky does that for the listener much more often than any other composer. He first captivates by something in which his gift of rhythm plays a leading part, and, having captivated, he does not disappoint us by saying empty things. Further points are his astonishingly rich harmony, which is never twisted and inconsequent, like so much of Berlioz's harmony, but always develops logically and clearly his vastness of design; his warmth of colouring, and his picturesque force. Needless to say, that to explain sudden and signal success with the general public there must always be a mention of weak points. Among Tchaïkovsky's weak points that which has gained him most popularity is his persistent habit of presenting his ideas in a sort of balanced and antithetical manner. He does not expect too much intelligence in the listener. First he says a thing, then he says it again an octave lower down or higher up and with different instrumentation; next he repeats a tag of what has just been said, and repeats that once or twice, and so forth. And the thing is not done artificially; such procedure evidently came natural to him. By the time he has finished, something of the idea has been conveyed into the dullest mind; and all this is done along with the extremely modern harmony and with instrumentation so dashing, brilliant, and varied that only a dreadfully analytical person takes note of the thematic iteration. It is a remarkable point that while all the other symphonies are full of Slavonic folk-melodies, the thematic invention in the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Pathetic is all original--every scrap of it. There is not a folk-tune from beginning to end. One has only to think of the first theme of the first quick movement to perceive how thoroughly the composer was worked up. The originality of it is absolute. One may go over all the orchestral composers from Haydn to Wagner and Brahms, asking oneself whether that theme could be by any one of them. Obviously it could not be the work of anyone else except Tchaïkovsky. On hearing that theme for the first time the listener pricks up his ears."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Here is a man with something to say, he thinks. Now there is nothing of that kind in No. 5. The thematic material has been obtained in an easy-going manner--mostly by borrowing. And the superiority of the great No. 6 is just as remarkable in the richness and spontaneity of development as in originality of thematic invention. In other respects the case against Mr. Jacques's view is much stronger. There is not the ghost of an indication in No. 5 of the power which produced that overwhelming battle-picture in the first movement of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Pathetic, or of the completely new kind of eloquence introduced into the world of music in the third movement--the Scherzo-March--of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Pathetic, or of the unparalleled poignancy of expression in the Finale. The fifth is a fine picturesque work, chiefly interesting for the glimpse that it gives us of those exercises by which the genius destined to produce No. 6 strengthened itself. We hear many of the same orchestral effects, such as the frequent use of divided lower strings and the prominence of bassoon parts. The figuration in the Valse, and again in the Finale, also affords a faint premonition of the marvels that enthral us in the latter work. But, before any comparison of the two is really possible at all, one must knock off the last movement of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Pathetic"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Pathetic"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Eighth time at these concerts, says last night's programme, in reference to the great Tchaïkovsky Symphony, which is only eight years old. The performances in London are to be numbered by dozens, and whenever genuine orchestral concerts are given in this country the swan-song of the late Russian master has probably been heard more often than any other symphonic work. Let us not be in too great a hurry to protest against this state of things. The enormous audience of yesterday evening--much the largest of the present season so far--suggests that the public have not lost interest in the Symphony. Nor do we dissent from the views of the public in this respect. There is astounding potency in the charm of the work and in the appeal that it makes to the imagination. For some time past we have been preoccupied with the notion that it forms a sort of pendant to Dvoràk's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "New World Symphony. Dvoràk has caught in his music the breezy, hopeful, democratic, optimistic, and free-thinking spirit of American life, with its upper side of furious go-ahead civilisation, and its under side of primitive humanity (Negroes and Red Indians) in which energy of feeling is out of all proportion to intellectual faculty. Dvoràk's slow movement is undoubtedly a hymn of such primitive humanity, with an undercurrent of meditation on the prairie by night, in which the movements of sap and the germination of seeds within the bosom of inexhaustibly fertile nature become, as it were, audible. It is something like the poetry that Walt Whitman would have written had he been a much better poet. In an analogous manner Tchaïkovsky has caught up and fixed in his"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Symphonie Pathétique the soul of modern Russia. Just as the American Symphony is breezy, democratic, optimistic, and free-thinking, so the Russian is languorous and oppressed, aristocratic, pessimistic, and hierarchic. The absence of any slow movement, except the dirge at the end, is intensely characteristic. The composer has no hymn of thanksgiving or serenely contemplative interlude to give us, but only something with the perfumed and artificial atmosphere of the ballroom, as a relief from the ardours and terrors of his military and patriotic passages. Both in his first and third movements he reminds us that the Russian, for all his profound religiosity and mysticism, for all his abundance of talent and exquisite courtesy under normal conditions, lives in a cruel country and has it in him to be more cruel than any other modern white man. The dirge at the end we believe to be the most powerful expression of tragic emotion that exists in the entire range of music. Such a work will bear a good many performances, especially in a place where there is a Richter to interpret it. Of course neither the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "New World"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "King Olaf."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Froissart was produced at the Worcester Festival. Three years later a choral work--"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Black Knight --was brought to a hearing in the same city, apparently with advantageous results to Mr. Elgar's reputation, for since that time he has devoted much of his energy to composition. The cantata performed yesterday evening for the first time in Manchester seems to have been the fourth of Mr. Elgar's important choral works. When first performed at the Hanley Festival two years ago it attracted much attention, and was hailed by many writers for the press as a work for the Leeds Festival--generally considered the most important event of the kind in the country. The work composed for Leeds and produced there last October was called"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Caractacus. It is in general style similar to"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "King Olaf, while naturally representing a later stage in the composer's development. In both works one notes the same dramatic instinct, the same unconventional treatment, the same faculty of genuine thematic invention, and the same unmistakeable gift for orchestration. As this composer gains in experience it does not seem, as with many others, that his inventive powers become exhausted, but that, on the contrary, they ripen and develop."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Caractacus is obviously a finer work in every way than"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "King Olaf. Now, all these facts make Mr. Elgar a very interesting person. The qualities enumerated above--gift for thematic invention, ingenious and telling orchestration, unconventional treatment, and so forth--are extremely rare and valuable. It is quite possible for a composer to have a long and successful career without possessing any one of them, and it is therefore very natural that a composer who does possess them should be hailed with enthusiasm. But, unfortunately, they are not the only qualities necessary to a composer of extended choral works, and Mr. Elgar, who rises so far above mere feeble conventionalities in his actual music, is not free from the common but most mischievous delusion that almost anything will suffice by way of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "He throws away the resources of his remarkable art upon a text that is in places unfit for any kind of musical treatment, and is, on the whole, hopelessly rambling, incoherent, and tiresome. One becomes interested in a dramatic episode where a bride seems on the point of murdering her bridegroom with a dagger that gleams in the moonlight. But the narrative wanders away to other subjects; a fresh heroine, with quite different affairs and interests, occupies attention, and one hears nothing more of the lady with the dagger. No doubt, the title"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf seems to justify such procedure, but it does not prevent the interest from flagging or the general impression left by the work from being fragmentary and incoherent. The best of the music is at the beginning, where there is an extremely fine chorus,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Challenge of Thor, containing various musical elements all truly expressive and fraught with the same primitive and racy vigour. The more important of the elements in question are the Hammer music, the Iceberg music, the Thunder and Lightning music, and the strains which carry the defiance of Christianity by the old Norse religion. The most effective, too, of the solos is the long tenor recitative following the great chorus. At the words"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "a highly original and interesting strain begins to be heard in the accompaniment. But the promise of these fine things is not well carried out in the latter part of the work. Everywhere the difficulties are very formidable, and in a good many cases they were too much for the chorus, who, except in"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Challenge of Thor,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Enigma Variations."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Variations is a striking example of a primitive form that has proved imperishable. Sir Hubert Parry has pointed out that the fundamental idea of variations in instrumental music is co-ordinate with the _canto fermo_ and counterpoint of the early choral composers. Each system resulted from an attempt at giving form and unity to a composition by repeating a theme over and over again, each time in some new aspect, or with fresh ornamentation; though the effect obtained by winding ingenious counterpoint for other voices about an unchanging _canto fermo_ is, of course, very different from the tricking out of the melody itself. In choral music the _canto fermo_ system almost died out when maturer principles of structure were discovered; but variation-form has never fallen into disuse at any period since its invention. It has been used by all the great masters, and by many of them as a vehicle for great and splendid ideas. General progress from the mechanical to the imaginative marks the successive stages through which the form has passed. One great reason for its vitality is that it admits of treatment in every possible style. Variations may be melodic, or contrapuntal, or harmonic. A superficial composer can make them by simply worrying his theme, a profound composer by developing the musical ideas that are in it. Bach's were mainly contrapuntal, Mozart's mainly melodic--one may even say melismatic--and Beethoven made variations of every kind, in his later works obtaining results of undreamed-of grandeur from the form. But the later Beethoven has never really been followed by any mortal in the austere and wonderful path that he struck out for himself, though Brahms and others have obtained a few hints from him. The originator of modern romantic variations was Schumann, whose"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Etudes Symphoniques revealed a fresh source of life in the form, that has proved less austerely inaccessible than Beethoven's; Brahms, Tchaïkovsky, and many others having obviously derived inspiration from it. Mr. Elgar stands in a peculiar relation to the modern masters of variation-form. He seems to be much preoccupied with the curious idea of musical portraiture, which, again, owes its existence to Schumann. The miniature of Chopin occurring in Schumann's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Carnaval was the first, and perhaps remains to this day the best, example in its kind, and the sketch of Mendelssohn forming No. 24 of the same composer's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Album for the Young is also a recognisable piece of musical portraiture. Mr. Elgar has carried out the idea in an extended scale in these variations. His theme, which he calls"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "has no eccentricity. It is a rather march-like strain in regular form, having three sections, the last of which is a repetition of the first, with fresh harmony and instrumentation. There are nominally fourteen variations;--including the finale, actually thirteen, for No. 10, described as intermezzo, is not a variation. Each of the variations, and the intermezzo, bears initials, or a nickname, which are commonly assumed to represent the composer's friends. Why any such thing should be assumed we do not know. It is both possible and allowable to portray persons who are not one's friends, and some of Mr. Elgar's portraits seem to us extremely severe and satirical. One of the early numbers, in particular, gives a vivid impression of a very unsympathetic personality, garrulous, querulous, trivial, meanly egotistic, and rather ape-like. The composer does well to let the identity of the original remain shrouded in mystery. The variations are grouped according to the usual principles of contrast, and they are all extremely effective. However much the composer may call his theme an enigma--Berlioz called his variation-theme in an early symphony _idée fixe_--one can scarcely escape the impression that it represents the temperament of the artist, through which he sees his subjects; for that, and nothing else, is what forms the connecting link between any series of portraits by the same hand. Wonderful ingenuity is shown in varying the relation in which the theme stands to the musical picture. During the first part of the work, down to the end of the sixth variation, the attitude of the audience seemed rather reserved. But a change began to be noticeable at the seventh variation, called"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Troyte, an impetuous presto movement that shows a hitherto unsuspected kind of energy. Nor did the attention flag at all during the noble and serene harmonies of the ensuing Allegretto. The richly-organised"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Nimrod, forming No. 9, leads to the dainty and tripping"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Dorabella Intermezzo, which has no connection with the theme. The eleventh variation, headed"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "G. R. S., is another demonstration of abundant vigour, and the following"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "B. G. N. has for leading feature a fine lyrical melody for 'cello. No. 13 obviously has reference to someone on a sea voyage, the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "theme from Mendelssohn's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Meeresstille overture being heard amid delicate suggestions of distant sea sound. In the very extended finale there is some powerful polyphonic writing, and the movement ends with a repetition of the theme in augmentation, forcibly declaimed by the heavy brass to the accompaniment of the full orchestra. The audience seemed rather astonished that a work by a British composer should have had other than a petrifying effect upon them. They applauded with the energy that the composer's imaginative power and masterly handling of the orchestra deserve. Dr. Richter signalled to Mr. Elgar, who was seated among the audience, and he thereupon mounted the stage and received an enthusiastic greeting from the public. The striking success of this composition reminds us of the following passage occurring at the end of an article by Sir Hubert Parry written some years ago:--"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "It is even possible that, after all its long history, the variation still affords one of the most favourable opportunities for the exercise of their genius by composers of the future."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Cockaigne."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "still find themselves, as regards understanding the poetic import of a musical work. On two occasions in recent years a work full of slaughter and frenzy, of barbarous revelry and sensuality, of glittering and blaring pageantry, and ending with annihilation--a work the powerful appeal of which lies precisely in the fact that it is the most powerful existing expression in music of everything most un-Christian and anti-Catholic--has been performed without public protest in a British Cathedral. We here refer, of course, to the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Symphonie Pathétique. Dr. Elgar is another composer whose music means something; but what chance is there for us to understand him? One quails before the task of discussing in a concert notice all the questions to which such a work as the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Cockaigne overture gives rise. First let us state, without stopping to give reasons, that we think it worth hearing and worth studying. If any previously existing overture is to be mentioned in order to indicate the type to which"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Cockaigne belongs, it must obviously be"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Meistersinger. The humorous element is somewhat more prominent than in"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Meistersinger, and the general tone and colouring of the two works are utterly dissimilar. But that the composer of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Cockaigne had"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Meistersinger in mind is rendered practically certain by one particular point--the use of a Londoner theme and of the same theme in diminution for the youthful Londoner, in exact analogy with Wagner's symbols for the Meistersingers and the apprentices. Again the opening bustle, giving way to a love-scene, suggests"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Meistersinger, and so does the polyphonic elaboration of the middle part. But there is a great difference between following Wagner's procedure and borrowing his musical ideas. To some slight extent in the E flat section, and more particularly in the harmony thereof, we find the Wagner flavour. For the rest, while the procedure seems at any rate to be based on Wagner's, we find the materials used and the character of the artistic result achieved to be entirely different from Wagner's. There are seven musical elements in"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Cockaigne, the significance of which may be roughly indicated as follows:--(1) Bustle of the streets; (2) a virile personal note; (3) companionship and interchange of ideas between two sweethearts; (4) pert children playing their pranks; (5) military band episode; (6) impressions on passing from the street into a church; (7) new phases of street-bustle music. Musical symbols of very considerable plastic force are invented for these things, and are woven into a powerful and entertaining tone-picture with that mastery of the orchestra which no one can now refuse to recognise in Dr. Elgar. He always works with definite lines, and does not seem to care much for those atmospheric effects in which certain moderns, such as Richard Strauss, are so strong. The music has a far wider range of ideas and emotions than would be possible in a poem occupying the same time in delivery. It gives us impressions of London by day and by night, impressions that are partly realistic and partly antiquarian, following the flight of the imagination with absolute freedom, forming a sort of musical parallel to Henley's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "London Voluntaries."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Cockaigne music had there been no programmes? The answer is, Probably not. But the beauty of an artistic design illustrating a certain subject may often be perceived when one cannot make out what the subject is. In such a case the subject is not"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Cockaigne occurs in some form in old English, French, Italian, and Spanish literature, meaning"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The fancied connection with"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Cockney is of much later date. Henry S. Leigh's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Carols of Cockayne (1869) shows the recognition of the word in the sense of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Cockneydom. There is said to be a connection between"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Cockney and the French"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "and if that is so the appropriation of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Cockaigne as correlative of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Cockney is justified by community of origin, all these words being derived from the stem of _coquere_ (to cook). No doubt"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "originally meant"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "or"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "and"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Cockney at first meant something of the same sort. At the same time there hangs about the word"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Cockaigne a certain proverbial suggestiveness, derived from the time when it was used in the sense of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Dream of Gerontius,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Dream of Gerontius, Cardinal Newman called his poem, with exquisite modesty. How that poem may stand in the estimation of those who share Cardinal Newman's point of view in regard to religious matters is perhaps an important question, but not one with which musical, or any artistic, criticism is concerned. For nothing is more certain about art than that it is subservient to a person's view of life. Artistic or æsthetic criticism must be humble, and must abstain from trespassing on the ground of faith and morals. Indirectly, indeed, æsthetics may have a bearing on these more serious subjects. For is it not written of religious doctrines,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "By their fruits ye shall know them ?--and nothing else is in so complete a sense a"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "of a religion as a work of art arising therefrom. Nevertheless, the function of æsthetics is not to commend or blame a view of life, but rather to enquire with what eloquence, with what sincerity, with what measure of convincing power the artist expounds his ideas and communicates his feelings, whatever those ideas and feelings may be. With these reflections I find it necessary to premise my notes on Edward Elgar's new work. The reflections are rather solemn, but the new work is very solemn. It is deeply and intensely religious; it is totally unconventional, and must be discussed in an unconventional manner. First, then, let me state a point of difference from all that I have experienced in listening to other oratorios and sacred cantatas, and, I may say, all other musical works with words made by one person and music by another. The point is that _this_ music, on the whole, is apt to bring home to the listener the greatness of the poem. The composer has not merely chosen from the poem such material as suited him. He has expounded the poem musically, and to the task of expounding it he has brought what may be described without inflation as the resources of modern music. We shall doubtless hear of plagiarism from"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Parsifal, and there is indeed much in the work that could not have been there but for"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Parsifal. But it is not allowable for a modern composer of religious music to be ignorant of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Parsifal. One might as well write for orchestra in ignorance of the Berlioz orchestration as write any serious music in ignorance of the Wagnerian symbolism. Edward Elgar does nothing so affected as to ignore the development which, for good or for evil, the language of music underwent at the hands of Wagner. His orchestral prelude, however, reverts to an earlier Wagnerian type. It gives a forecast of the whole story in such wise that at the end of it the imagination has to be carried back. We have the last agony of the sick man, his death, and passage to the unseen. The symbols, though employed in the Wagnerian manner, are, nevertheless, thoroughly original, taking us into an atmosphere and a world absolutely remote from all that is Wagnerian. When the voice of Gerontius (assigned to a tenor solo) enters we are carried back to the death-bed--to the prayers of Gerontius and his companions. A series of choruses with intervening and accompanying passages for the solo voice is devoted to the King of Terrors. Here the music touches the various notes in the gamut of feeling, from the agony of terrors to serene confidence. After the parting of Gerontius, with the words"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Novissima hora est, a new voice enters, that of the Priest (baritone), chanting"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Proficiscere, anima Christiana. Among the supplications for the departed is a chant three times repeated, each of the two parts ending with a choral"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Amen that bears a tender echo of the mediæval"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Cantus fictus."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Praise to the Holiest in the Height, recurring before the departure to Purgatory. But the whole work sings"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Praise to the Holiest in the Height _and in the Depth_. A powerfully contrasting note is heard in the death-agony of Gerontius and, above all, in the chorus of demons occurring in the second part. Here a comparison with Berlioz is simply inevitable--for Edward Elgar's dramatic power admits of comparison with the great masters. His demons are much more terrible than those of Berlioz, who was a materialist in the profound sense--not, that is, in virtue of more or less shifting beliefs, but of unalterable temperament. Infinitely remote from that of Berlioz is the temperament revealed in Edward Elgar's music, which, like parts of the poem, fairly merits the epithet"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Dantesque."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gerontius,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Ever since the far-off times of the great madrigal composers England has played but a modest part in the concert of the great musical powers. For the products of the musical mind it has depended almost entirely on importation, and has exported nothing but works of a lighter order. Such are the words with which the German author of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gerontius programme, specially written for this Festival, introduces his subject. The economic metaphor is ingenious. It does not imply too much or justify the state of things to which it refers. Rightly or wrongly, Germany and the Continent of Europe in general did not feel that serious English music was a thing to be taken seriously, and to that fact the writer refers with ingenious delicacy, going on to say that about the turn of the century a change began to be noticeable. Everyone conversant with musical affairs knows how that change was brought about, though not everyone on our own side of the Channel cares to admit what he knows. It is in the main to Edward Elgar--a man who has done his best work living quietly in the Malvern hills, without official position of any kind, remote from social distraction and the strife of commercialism--that the change is due. The presentation of so lengthy a work as the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Dream of Gerontius at a Rhine Festival has a kind of significance that the English musical public would do well to consider. The programme is much more carefully selected than at our own festivals, the idea being not at all that it should contain"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "but that it should be characteristic of musical art as it now stands, giving only the most typically excellent of newer compositions, and of older compositions only those upon which it is felt that contemporary genius had been more particularly nourished. It is not accidental that on the present occasion the names of Handel, Mendelssohn, Schumann are absent while Bach is very abundantly represented; Beethoven's name figures in connection with the most modern in feeling of all his works (the C minor Symphony), and Liszt's with his revolutionary"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Faust"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gerontius yesterday evening had a good many features of special interest. Full justice was done to the instrumental part of the work by the magnificent Festival orchestra of a hundred and twenty-seven performers. Those peculiar qualities of the imagination which make of Dr. Wüllner, jun., by far the best representative of Gerontius as yet found were once more demonstrated, and the part of the Angel was given by Miss Muriel Foster with the wonderfully beautiful and genuine voice that has long been recognised as her most remarkable gift, and with considerably greater and more expressive eloquence than any previous experience might have led one to expect from her. In the bass parts of the Priest and the Angel of Death Professor Messchaert sang with wonderful dramatic power, and the semi-chorus, seated in a line before the orchestra, acquitted themselves almost to perfection in the delicate task that they have to perform throughout the death-bed scene. I have already expressed the view that the final section of the first part, beginning with the Priest's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "is the point at which one first becomes conscious of actual genius in the composition; but now, after further study and another complete hearing of the work, I am not quite satisfied with that statement. Perhaps at that point a good many listeners first become clearly conscious of the composer's genius. But on looking back at the extraordinary eloquence and beauty of the musical symbolism in the prelude and death-agony of Gerontius, one perceives that the _quietus_ which comes to the spirit in the scene following Gerontius's death is merely a climax in a process that really begins with the first notes. The heavenly calm at the opening of the second part I realised yesterday more thoroughly than ever before. Splendid as the treatment of the hymn"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Praise to the Holiest in the Height is, the final section is not so completely adequate as the rest. The truth is that the composer there found himself in presence of a task hopelessly beyond the powers of any mortal except Bach. In the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Sanctus heard on Sunday evening the shining circles of the heavenly choir are, as it were, made audible to the ears of mortals. Bach could only do it once, and no other composer could do it at all. Elgar gives a beautiful and grandly conceived hymn of the Church Triumphant, and with that we may well rest satisfied. He is in the main a dramatic composer, and, in those cases where he enters the domain of purely religious music, he gravitates back rather to Palestrina, with his"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gerontius,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Everyman. Gerontius is not a historical character, but a typical person, belonging to no particular age or country. He is further like Everyman in being a layman, who has lived in the world, as distinguished from the Church, and in being just a plain, well-meaning man, without very great or shining qualities. The poem on which the oratorio is founded begins, at a later stage than"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Everyman, with the death-bed scene, and does not end with the death of Gerontius's mortal part, but peers wistfully into the world beyond, and"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "and in the second the delicately restrained raptures of the soul that"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "as he gradually becomes conscious of the angelic presence that is bearing him along towards the heavenly regions. The only other soloist in the first part is the Priest (bass), who delivers the solemn"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo, as the soul of Gerontius quits the body. In the second part the second and third soloists represent, one the Guiding Angel (mezzo-soprano) and the other the Angel of the Agony (bass), who, at the most solemn moment of the oratorio, is recognised by the Soul as"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The semi-chorus in the first part is the group of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "or friends gathered about the dying man's bed. The function of the chorus in the first part is not defined, but it may be taken as voicing the prayers and aspirations of other faithful souls, aware of Gerontius's case and sympathising with him. In the second part the chorus is now of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "now of demons. The semi-chorus again represents the voices of friends on earth, which at one point are imagined as again becoming audible to the Soul, and also takes part in certain phases of the great hymn"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Praise to the Holiest in the Height,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gerontius"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gerontius,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gerontius the originality is strong and unmistakeable, and the performers find their technical skill severely taxed. But fortunately the composer has a clear head; he knows the technique of each instrument and he never miscalculates. Performers therefore find their task, though often difficult, is always possible and, further, that the result is always satisfactory. For Elgar has an ear; he is a man of tone, and does not care for music that looks well on paper but sounds rather muddy. These points, known to those who for some time past have taken a close interest in Elgar's work, made it possible to hope that the Manchester performance of his great oratorio would be a striking success, and perhaps even throw a new light on the merits of the composition; and it can scarcely be questioned that the experience of yesterday evening fulfilled those hopes. It was doubtless the most carefully prepared of the performances that have been given thus far in this country. Dr. Richter was, for various reasons, peculiarly anxious that it should go well; Mr. Wilson made up his mind some time ago that whatever conscientious work could do to secure a worthy performance should be done; the hopes and endeavours of choir-master and conductor were seconded by the choir in an admirable spirit; and, though it seems that for some time the usual difficulties of an unfamiliar style were felt, not a trace of any such thing was to be observed in the performance, the remarkably willing and energetic style in which the choral singers had grappled with their task bearing its proper fruit in a rendering that sounded spontaneous and unembarrassed, as though the singers were sure of the notes and could give nearly all their attention to phrasing, expression, and dynamic adjustments. In the highest degree remarkable, too, was the orchestral performance. Passages of such peculiar difficulty as the rushing string figures, that represent the strains of heavenly music overheard by the Soul and the Angel as they approach the judgment-seat, came out with much greater distinctness than we have ever heard before, and we had a similar impression at many other points in the performance, which was as delicate as it was precise in detail and broad in style. But experience of all the complete performances yet given induces us to think that the difference between thorough success and ordinary half-success with this oratorio depends more on the semi-chorus than on any other point, and this is where the pre-eminence of last night's rendering, among all yet given in this country, is most unquestionable. Though not placed in front of the orchestra--as they should have been and, we hope, will be next time,--this group of twenty picked singers was really excellent. The voices blended well, and their combined tone was clearly distinguishable from the larger choir's. At the notoriously dangerous points, such as the re-entry with the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Kyrie after the invocation of"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "My work is done, is a most lovely song, to which the haunting"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Alleluia phrase forms a kind of refrain. But even this--one of the very few detachable things in the oratorio--is not the best of the Angel's music. It is surpassed by the other song,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Softly and gently, dearly ransomed Soul,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "has sometimes to be used in a sense different from"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Thus the two great Passions by Bach--the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "St. Matthew and the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "St. John --both have a dramatic element so strong that at certain points the music becomes altogether dramatic. Yet no sane person ever called it theatrical, in the sense of unfit for a church. By"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "in such cases one means two things--(1) having thematic material that is conceived with a certain vividness, in reference to a particular situation or mood of feeling; (2) developed according to procedure that does not sacrifice the vividness to formal or structural considerations. In this sense, then, we call Elgar's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gerontius a dramatic composition from beginning to end. To find fault with it for the absence of choral climax in the manner of Handel and Mendelssohn is as much out of place as it would be with Wagner's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Tannhäuser. On the other hand, we do not agree with the criticism that"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gerontius is Wagnerian music. In two places there is a brief and faint suggestion of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Parsifal, first in the _sostenuto_ theme for _cor anglais_ and 'celli that enters in the fifty-second bar of the Prelude and recurs in some form at several points in the course of the work, and secondly in a recurrent phrase for strings at the entry of the recitative assigned to the Angel of the Agony--and to some extent throughout that recitative, which vaguely recalls"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Parsifal. The other elements we find to be unlike Wagner and unlike every other composer but Elgar. These elements it is convenient to classify, not according to the usual technical or formal principle, but according to a dramatic principle. One notes, in the first place, four main categories--(1) the purely human; (2) the ecclesiastical; (3) the angelic; (4) the demonic. The Prelude opens with the symbols of Judgment and Prayer. Next the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "theme enters, to be joined at the fourteenth bar by the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Miserere. The note of feeling contracts and sinks towards utter abasement, which reaches the lowest point in the _cor anglais_ theme with _tremolando_ accompaniment. But now the sick man's despair finds expression in a loud cry, which is answered in the majestic and ringing tones that remind him to face death hopefully. A quite new musical element enters with the Andantino theme, developed at some length, and informs the penultimate section of the noble tone-poem, which continues till a brief _reprise_ of the slumber theme suggests the passing of the soul. New phases of the Judgment theme connect the Prelude with the opening recitative, and here the imagination has to be carried back, as usual after the Prelude of a dramatic composition, which as a rule epitomises a good part of the action. It is evident, then, that the Prelude is concerned only with the first two of the categories above enumerated--that is to say, with the purely human and the ecclesiastical, and not at all with the angelic or demonic. Of the angelic music the principal elements, in addition to those already mentioned, are the various phases of the great hymn"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Praise to the Holiest in the Height. The extraordinary demon music would in itself offer material for an essay. Here we can only touch on a few obvious features--the upward rushing semiquaver figure in chromatic fourths, which is grotesque and rat-like; the three-part figure for strings in quavers which is first heard with the words"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Tainting the hallowed air, but belongs more particularly to"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "; the terrific fugato"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "; the sinister and ominous four-note theme"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "To every slave and pious cheat ; the _motif_ of demonic pride, p. 83; and the sarcastic prolongation of the last word in"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "He'll slave for hire."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Apostles,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Apostles was first publicly performed, was a sufficiently striking contrast with the corresponding day in the Festival of three years ago that witnessed the production of the same composer's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gerontius."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Apostles Elgar adheres completely to those principles which were exemplified by"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gerontius first among works of British origin. That is to say, the music is continuous, as in Wagnerian musical drama. There is no such thing in the work as a detachable musical"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "--whether air, song, chorus, concerted piece, march, or anything else. The composer has musical symbols corresponding to ideas, feelings, moods, aspects of nature or personality, religious conceptions or aspirations, animated scenes of popular life, phases of local and national custom, exhortations of the angels, suggestions of the devil, mystical rapture, rebellious despair; and he uses those symbols in the manner of a language. There is no mechanical work, no carrying out of architectural schemes with lifeless material. Everything in the score is vivified by the idea. The composition heard to-day consists of the first and second parts of the projected oratorio. In the first part there are three scenes--"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Calling of the Apostles,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "By the Wayside, and"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "By the Sea of Galilee ; in the second part four scenes--"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Betrayal,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Golgotha,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "At the Sepulchre, and"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Ascension. After the prologue and the narrator's opening recitative, the setting forth of the Apostles' calling begins with the changing of the Temple watch at dawn, the watchmen on the roof as they salute the rising sun being conceived as the unconscious heralds of Christ's kingdom on earth. Here the musical treatment is stamped with the utmost grandeur, and points of amazingly vivid and picturesque detail are successively made, the curious Oriental _Melismata_ of the watchman's cry, accompanied by the _Shofar_ (Hebrew trumpet of ram's horn), giving way to the psalm within the Temple, between the phrases of which is heard the brazen clangour of the opening gates, while the air is flooded with the rushing music of harps. For the psalm an old Hebrew melody is used. So rich in matter is the text of the oratorio that I cannot attempt here even to give an outline of it, but must refer readers to Canon Gorton's booklet"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "An Interpretation of the Libretto (Novello and Co.). There will be found an account of the sources from which the composer took his text, and in particular the justification for his view of Judas as a man who intended not to betray his Master to destruction but to force His hand, to make Him declare His power and establish His earthly kingdom forthwith--a view for which there would seem to be patristic authority.[2] The oratorio is not theological; it is a dramatisation of the Gospel story that may be compared with Klopstock's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Messiah. After the introductory sections, broadly expounding the scheme of Redemption as accepted by the entire Christian world, but not enforcing any particular doctrine, all the stress is laid on the individuality of the persons--the Apostles, the Magdalene, and the Mother of Christ--and on the collective character of the groups, such as the women who are scandalised at the ministrations of the Magdalene and the mob which cries"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Crucify Him! As an accompaniment of the drama we have the mystical chorus of angels commenting on the progress of earthly affairs and giving utterance to the sweet, passionless jubilation of sinless beings after the Ascension. To those who are acquainted with"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gerontius it is almost needless to say that the composer is at his best in rendering the music of the heavenly choir. His marvellous faculty of finding music that matches the words inevitably, so that once heard the associations seem to have been long known, is here repeatedly illustrated. Perhaps the most absolutely perfect examples occur at the words"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What are these wounds in Thine hands? and in the recurrent"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Alleluia"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Apostles than in"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gerontius, and so, too, is his audacity in using the special resources of the modern dramatic orchestra to expound a religious theme. The old pompous oratorio manner he has left an immeasurable distance behind him. He sticks at nothing in his determination to cut down to the quick of human nature, to reject all abstractions and conventions and illustrate an idea or fact of religious experience in its relation to actual flesh and blood. The sinister parts of the oratorio recall by their general tone, atmosphere, and colouring the scene in Klopstock's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Messiah"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Apostles as a work of art. It will possibly be found to stand to"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gerontius"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Apostles,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Apostles, which will be heard by the Manchester public for the first time this evening, stands in much the same relation to recent works in oratorio form by other composers as one of the later musical dramas by Wagner holds to the kind of opera that was in vogue when he began to write. According to current ideas, justified by the practice of many well-known composers, an oratorio comes into existence by some such process as the following. A composer casts about for a subject, either being guided in his choice by consideration of what is in some manner appropriate to the particular occasion, or simply taking a story from the Bible that has not been used before, or not too frequently before, for musical purposes. He then either obtains the services of a librettist or himself arranges a libretto setting forth the chosen story. In the drawing up of the libretto the most important matter is the engineering of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "for the composer--here an effective air for the principal personage, there a chorus with scope for effective contrapuntal writing, everywhere due regard for the well-varied interest which the public loves, and, at the end of a part, provision for an effective Finale. But some recognised kind of musical opportunity is always the chief matter. No one cares much about the subject except in so far as it provides the musical opportunity of an accepted kind. It is a case of chorus, air, concerted piece, march, air for another sort of voice, and Finale, with connecting recitatives as a necessary evil, and the whole thing standing or falling according as the composer seizes the said opportunities and turns them to account in the accepted manner, or neglects or fails to do that. For so long a time has that kind of oratorio been regarded by the general public as the only possible kind, that even now immense numbers of persons discuss works like"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gerontius and"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Apostles on the old lines. That a musician should have a mind, and a message to which notes and chords are subservient, is an idea so new as to be disquieting, if not at once dismissed as absurd. People are so much accustomed to say that they never did care about the subject of a musical work; that no sensible person does; that if the music is pretty the work is good; and there is an end of the matter. Yet now comes a composer and makes the subject the chief thing, writing music that gives no one the slightest encouragement to take interest in it apart from the subject--in short, displaying the most complete indifference to everything that used to be expected of a composer, and giving us all to understand that, in a religious work, if the music does not in some clear manner contribute to the exposition of the subject, it is not justified at all. In this respect"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gerontius and"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Apostles are alike. People can take them or leave them, but they cannot make them out to be pretty music, such as one can enjoy without"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Apostles, which make up the oratorio in its present form. This deals with the calling of the Apostles and with some of the most important incidents in the life of the Redeemer during His ministry. Everyone intending to hear the work should read the short and clear account given in Canon Gorton's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Interpretation of the Text. The writer is remarkably successful in bringing out the profound consistency and psychological insight which distinguish this oratorio text so very sharply from most others. Attention may be drawn specially to the characterisation of the three Apostles, John, Peter, and Judas, expounded mainly on pages 13 and 15. Canon Gorton also shows us the sources from which some of the most fruitful ideas and telling symbols of the oratorio have been derived. The music exemplifies a further development along the lines indicated by"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gerontius. In the resources which he calls into play the composer is a thorough-going modern. His orchestra is of great size, and he does not scorn the specially modern instruments or the modern tendency to group and subdivide in an elaborate and subtle fashion. In the quality of his absolute musical invention he shows himself to be neither a classic nor a romantic, but a psychological musician. His thematic web is the exact analogue of the emotional and imaginative play to which the exposition of the story gives rise from point to point, and it thus partakes of the nature of language. The composer cares nothing for accepted views as to what is in accordance with the proper dignity of oratorio; but, trusting to his conception as a whole to ennoble every part, he allows himself to be here and there extremely realistic, very much as the great religious painters have done. He works on a great scale; in the handling of musical symbols he is not dismayed by tasks that might well be considered impossible, and he thus reminds one of the compliment which Erasmus paid to Albrecht Dürer--"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "There is nothing that he cannot express with his black and white--thunder and lightning, a gust of wind, God Almighty and the heavenly host."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Apostles,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Apostles is not to be expected. The same thing has been said of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gerontius, and the score of the later work yet more obviously transcends the powers of the best endowed and disciplined musical forces to render it in a manner which"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "All hope of reaching the end of their task with a feeling of complacency must be abandoned by the choir, orchestra, soloists, and conductor who undertake to perform"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Apostles, which, in point of technical difficulty, is a"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Symphonie Fantastique and Mass in D combined. Still, in a relative sense, a rendering may be satisfactory--in the sense that it has the root of the matter in it, not that it is faultless in every detail,--and in that sense we should call the rendering of yesterday highly satisfactory. The general intonation of the choir was better than on any previous occasion, all the delicate fluting rapture of the celestial choruses at the end sounding wonderfully sweet and showing not the least trace of fatigue. The orchestral playing was more subtle than at Birmingham, and it seemed to afford a better justification of the composer's extraordinary colour schemes. It would be hard to suggest a better representation for any of the solo parts. As at Birmingham, Mr. Ffrangcon Davies gave the words of the Redeemer with admirable dignity, and here and there with a trumpet tone in his voice that might have reminded an Ammergau pilgrim of the late Joseph Mayer. As the Narrator and the Apostle John Mr. Coates gave a rendering worthy of his Gerontius earlier in the season. In the parts for women's voices Miss Agnes Nicholls and Miss Muriel Foster once more proved their immeasurable superiority to singers of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "order in music of real poetic quality. Mr. Black gave a most telling interpretation of the part of Judas, which, as in the Passion Play at Oberammergau, has greater dramatic significance than any other. All the solo parts, except the Redeemer's, are in certain sections so much interwoven with each other and with the chorus that the combined result overpowers the individual interest, though in the parts of the Magdalene and of Judas there are also important independent developments. There can be no question as to the general excellence of the rendering, and the audience was on the same enormous scale as when"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gerontius was given in November; but the reception was very different. There was applause, of course, yesterday, but no scene of great enthusiasm such as the earlier and simpler oratorio evoked. Some persons seem to be of opinion that the comparative reserve of the public was caused by the extreme solemnity of the subject; that they were really impressed by the music, but in such a manner that there was no inclination to be demonstrative. In this there may be some truth; but,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Apostles being unquestionably much more austere and difficult to understand than"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gerontius,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Apostles represents in many important respects an advance upon the earlier oratorio. The poetic theme of the whole work is incomparably more ambitious, and the musical invention is in more respects than one of greater power. In regard to this point the obvious case to take is Mr. Jaeger's example 3 (Novello's edition),"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Christ, the Man of Sorrows, that being the _motif_ of which more frequent and varied use is made than any other. Here we find unmistakable progress. In its simplest form the theme is more intense and more profound in feeling than any in"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gerontius, and furthermore the manner in which the significance of it develops throughout the work, up to the Ascension phrase, where it occurs in its most expanded form, though not for the last time, shows a great advance in the composer's art. Again, the interest of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Apostles music is much more varied. All the symbolism having reference to Christ in solitude makes a most powerful appeal to the imagination; and the opening of the Temple gates at dawn is a scene of astonishingly graphic force and bold design. In the second part the tragedy of the Passion is given in four scenes of tremendous intensity, and then, in the section headed"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "At the Sepulchre, we begin to become aware of the spirit which is Elgar's most rare and wonderful possession."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "And very early in the morning, says the text,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Thereupon are heard the watchers singing an echo of the music from the great sunrise scene at the beginning. After a dozen bars the fluting notes of a celestial chorus begin gliding in, and then we have an example of that _naïf_ mediævalism at which the second part of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gerontius here and there hints. A kind of unearthly exhilaration begins to sound in the music. The Resurrection has brought a new fact into a sorrowful world. It is a sublime adventure, at news of which heaven and earth bubble into song. Throughout all the rest of the work the composer creates that sense of the multitudinous which belongs to parts of the hymn"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Praise to the Holiest in the earlier oratorio. But the angelic rapture that accompanies the Resurrection and Ascension in the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Apostles"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gerontius as the more perfect work of art, though the individual beauties of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Apostles are greater and more wonderful. Nearly everything in the later oratorio is stronger. The symbols of the Church show an advance upon the corresponding parts of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gerontius scarcely less remarkably than the symbols of the heavenly choir. The strange Old Testament element connected with the Temple service again shows imaginative power of quite a new kind, wonderfully enriching the background of the composition, and the tragic force of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Passion scenes is immensely greater than anything in"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gerontius. But with our present degree of knowledge we miss in the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Apostles that crowning artistic unity which prompted us to describe"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gerontius"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "In the South."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "In the South, has a picturesqueness, or rather a kind of graphic power, arising from far-reaching play of the imagination. In thematic invention it is perhaps more strongly stamped with Elgar's originality than any other work. Its whole tone, atmosphere, and colouring are something essentially new in music, the only hint of any other composer's influence occurring in the viola solo, which bears a faint suggestion of Berlioz's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Harold in Italy. But, being a secondary element in the latter part of the Overture, it is to be regarded merely as that kind of reference which in music is as allowable as it is in literature. The _grandioso_ theme beginning in A flat minor, which was suggested by the Roman remains of La Turbie, is so striking that it has already acquired a good many nicknames. The"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "theme, it has been called; elsewhere, the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "theme, the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Jack the Giant-killer, and, among Germans, the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Siebentöter theme. In any case it is a most extraordinary piece of musical expression, of a kind scarcely ever foreshadowed by any other composer, except once or twice by Beethoven, who first sought and found the musical symbol of great historic or cosmic forces, or of the emotion stirred in the human consciousness by the play, or after-effects, of such forces. One thing remains to be said about this Overture. The composer's procedure is a compromise between the old procedure by way of thematic development and the newer by way of dramatic suggestion, and he does not always succeed completely in the fusion of the two, as, for example, Beethoven does in his greater"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Leonora"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Coronation Ode."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Pomp and Circumstance. It is popular music of a kind that has not been made for a long time in this country--scarcely at all since Dibdin's time. At least one may say that of the best parts, such as the bass solo and chorus"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Britain, ask of thyself, and the contralto solo and chorus"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Land of hope and glory. The former is ringing martial music, the latter a sort of Church parade song having the breath of a national hymn. It is the melody which occurs as second principal theme of the longer"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Pomp and Circumstance march, which I beg to suggest is as broad as"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "God Save the King,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Rule Britannia, and"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "See the Conquering Hero, and is perhaps the broadest open-air tune composed since Beethoven's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Freude schöner Götterfunken."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Don Quixote,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Zarathustra, but in nearly all his"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Symphonic Poems. The"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Heldenleben might quite well be labelled with the Nietzschian expression"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Der Uebermensch. Strauss thus seems to stand to Nietzsche in something like the relation that Wagner bore to Schopenhauer, and it is a curious point that in each case the musician is found diverging somewhat violently from the taste of his philosophical master. These two philosophers--the only two that have taken a genuine interest in modern music--had both somewhat rudimentary musical taste, though good taste as far as it went. Schopenhauer's preference was for Rossini and Nietzsche's for Bizet, and even as Wagner's style differs _toto coelo_ from Rossini's, so do Strauss's incredible richness of imaginative detail and indifference to rhythmical charm stamp him as something very different from those"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Halcyonian composers whom Nietzsche loved. Strauss is not likely to become popular in England, but two or three of his larger orchestral works, and especially the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Heldenleben,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Don Quixote was the work upon which public curiosity was chiefly concentrated. In these"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Fantastic Variations we find the composer once more adopting a style as frankly grotesque as in"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Till Eulenspiegel. The long and important introduction stands in a relation to the rest of the work that, so far as I know, is unique. It is a preparation for the principal theme, successively emphasising all the different kinds of significance supposed to be contained in that theme. First we have a naïve, stilted, and pompous phrase suggesting Don Quixote's absorption in the romances of chivalry. Succeeding passages touch upon the hero's pose of gallantry and the great predominance of imagination over reason which leads him into grotesque adventures. The psychological method of the composer causes him to lay stress on the crisis forming the _point de départ_ of Don Quixote's career--a vow of atonement for sins and follies. At last we get the theme in its complete form--a masterpiece of droll characterisation,--and immediately after it the prosaic jog-trot of Sancho Panza. In the first variation a musical element is introduced typifying Don Quixote's feminine ideal--Dulcinea of Toboso. It ends with the windmill incident. One hears the airy swing of the mill-sails, the furious approach of the knight, and his sudden overthrow. Variation No. 2 gives the meeting with the flock of sheep. In the third we have a colloquy between Don Quixote and Sancho, forming an elaborate movement. Next comes the quarrel with the pilgrims, and then the scene in the tavern where Don Quixote undergoes regular initiation into the order of knighthood by keeping guard over his armour all night. No. 6 represents the scene of the peasant woman mistaken for Dulcinea, and No. 7 the ride of the two companions on wooden horses at the fair. Nos. 8 and 9 are concerned with the enchanted boat and the priests mistaken for magicians. No. 10 gives the disastrous fight with the Knight of the Shining Moon. There is also a finale setting forth the reveries of Don Quixote in his old age, and, last of all, his death. Together with the purely grotesque elements are many touches of wonderful poetic beauty, among which may be mentioned the scene of Don Quixote's midnight watch and, above all, the concluding strain--a sigh of ineffable pathos. On the other hand, it may be urged against the encounter with the flock of sheep that such sounds do not really belong to the domain of music, but rather to that of farm-yard imitations. On the whole,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Don Quixote strikes me as a less admirable work than the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Heldenleben,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Don Juan,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Don Juan, though much less eccentric than most of the other"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Symphonic Poems by Richard Strauss, is a typical example of his overwhelmingly rich and effective orchestration. It also exemplifies the peculiar quality of his design, crowded with a Düreresque multiplicity of forms and details, his indifference to symmetry and sustained rhythmical flow, and his systematic endeavour to render the musical medium less vague and more nearly articulate than it ever was before, by enlarging the range of emotional expression, sharpening the instruments of graphic representation, and exploring the mysterious by-ways of the tone-world. Two imaginary figures that originated in Spanish literature have become the property of mankind. If Don Quixote stands isolated, without any close analogue in the romance of other countries, Don Juan--a somewhat later creation--has much in common with several heroes of Germanic legend, such as Tannhäuser, the Wild Huntsman, and Faust. The closest parallel is between Don Juan and Faust. Both are rebellious spirits; but Faust is ruined by intellectual pride, Juan by sensual passion. As those two kinds of revolt belong to the persistent facts of life, neither Juan nor Faust can ever cease to be interesting. It is quite natural that each of them should be found as the subject of innumerable plays, poems, romances, operas, and ballets. The poetic scheme forming the basis of Richard Strauss's Symphonic Poem is remarkably simple. There is no incident of a definite kind. Don Juan is simply conceived as personifying the most direct and vivid affirmation of what Schopenhauer called the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Will to live."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Don Juan,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Don Juan Fantasia was received yesterday with much applause. But there is room for doubt whether the excitement that thus found expression was not due rather to the bold and highly picturesque orchestration than to the essentially musical qualities of the work. Richard Strauss postulates an audience of great mental activity. He expects to be understood instantly, instead of letting a musical idea gradually soak in to the listener's mind, as did the older composers. In order to stimulate such mental activity he constantly deals in strange and violent effects. Hence the irritation of orthodox musicians, who, hearing so much noise and jingle, too rapidly conclude that there is nothing behind; whereas, perhaps, if they listened a little longer, they would begin to discover that Strauss has nearly every gift that was ever in a composer--every gift, that is, except those of a very profound or very sublime order. His power of inventing thematic material to correspond exactly with some peculiar mood of feeling is almost as remarkable as Wagner's. The opening of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Don Juan Fantasia is characteristic of that excited condition of mind which is so frequent with the composer. A passage beginning with an upward rush for the strings shows us Juan launched upon his career. Presently a rapid passage, mainly in triplets, for wood, wind and afterwards strings, suggests the eager hunt after enjoyment. Next the impetuous Don is himself characterised. Of these elements a tone-picture of intoxicating gaiety is composed. Then follow the love-episodes, the most beautiful being that in which the oboe has the melody while the lower strings _a divisi_ add a rich and sombre accompaniment. The masked ball scene is, in places, a little like a travesty of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Venusberg"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Till Eulenspiegel."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Till Eulenspiegel was the great mediæval _farceur_. His name is well known to students of folk-lore. In Flemish books it figures as Thyl Uylenspiegel, in English as Till Owlglass. Like other heroes of popular story, Till lies buried in more than one place, each of his tombstones being adorned with his armorial bearings--an owl perched on a hand-mirror. He originated and, for the most part, lived in Westphalia or some country of the Lower Rhine; but he was a migratory person, and one of his best authenticated exploits occurred in Poland, where he had a contest of skill with the King's professional jester. Till is the incarnation of mockery and satire and buffoonery, sometimes witty and usually coarse. He represents a literary development that may be regarded as a kind of Scherzo, after the Andante of the Troubadours, Minnesingers, and other courtly poets--the inevitable reaction of the popular spirit against too much high-flown sentiment. The legendary figure of Till has appealed with the most extraordinary results to that composer who first brought into the domain of the musical art the specific qualities of the South German imagination, as represented, for example, by Holbein, Dürer, and Adam Krafft. Incisive, graphic, ornate, and with no less unheard-of power of characterisation is Richard Strauss in his music than those other masters in their graphic or plastic achievements. His"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Till reminds one of Dürer's woodcut illustrations to the Apocalypse, but, of course, with colour added. And what colour! and what characterisation in the colour! He controls the orchestra precisely as a good actor the tones of his own voice. He can make it render the finest shades of emotion."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Till"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Till is its mediævalism. Listen to those triplets, in four-part chromatic harmony for five solo violins with _sordini_, expressing the agony of terror into which Till is thrown by his own wicked mockery of religion. By such devices the composer conjures up the atmosphere of the age, characterised by"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Furcht auf der Gasse, Furcht im Herzen."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Sehnsucht."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Sehnsucht, raises a good many interesting questions, such as whether it is not, after all, on harmony rather than on tone-colouring that the essential quality of Strauss's music depends; whether the eminent South German composer would have found it necessary to be so persistently galvanic in his procedure had he not addressed a musical generation that is too fond of taking opium with Tchaïkovsky; whether it is with Eulenspieglish intent that he sets so many unsophisticated love-song texts to music that betrays contempt of mere lyrism, or whether he genuinely misunderstands the trend of his own talent. Thus one might continue indefinitely; for it is the regular effect of Strauss's music to crook the listener's mind into one huge note of interrogation. One further and more important question must, however, be added. Is it Strauss's deliberate intention to abolish rhythm? Would he add to the well-known saying,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "the rider"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The over-strongly salted and too highly flavoured"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Sehnsucht"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Faust Symphonie,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Faust Symphonie on Monday evening, and they are not likely to forget it. Strauss does not belong to the small group of international conductors who can travel from place to place, commanding success everywhere and in music of every style. He has not studied conductor's deportment carefully enough to be generally pleasing to the public. At the same time, his demonic talent comes out clearly enough in his conducting when he has to deal with some work that makes a special appeal to his sympathies. It seems to be his mission to justify Liszt after decades of misunderstanding and detraction. His rendering of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Faust Symphonie was simply a gigantic success. The stress and anguish of the first movement, the wonderful sweetness and charm of the Gretchen music, the almost incredible incisiveness and pregnancy of the characteristic music in the Mephistopheles section of the finale, and the unparalleled grandeur of the concluding idea, where the mask is torn from the face of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "and the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "enters with the final stanza, leading up to the crowning idea of the whole drama,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan --these beauties and splendours of the composition were revealed with the infallible touch of a master into whose flesh and blood it long ago passed: and the audience, including even the English visitors, felt it. The"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Faust Symphonie"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Tod und Verklärung."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Tod und Verklärung we find him in a mood of absolute seriousness. The theme is a death-bed scene, the phantasmagoria of a sick brain during the last moments of earthly consciousness, the final struggle with death, and then a wonderful suggestion of reawakening to immortality. The composition is thus, as a German critic has pointed out, the counterpart of Elgar's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gerontius, so far as the subject is concerned; but in no other respect have the two works any similarity. The qualities with which Strauss's name is most commonly associated--audacious and grotesque realism, gorgeous, intoxicating orchestral figuration and colouring--are here completely in abeyance. In the mood of the opening section there is kinship with the third act of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Tristan --the same hush and oppression of the sick man's lair,--but not in the musical treatment, which with Strauss has much more reference to external detail (_e.g._, the ticking of the clock) than with Wagner. The introductory notes are full of weird power, and they lead on to some exquisitely pathetic"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Seelenmalerei. In the ensuing agitato section any listener acquainted with other Symphonic Poems by the same composer--earlier or later--is likely to be surprised at his comparative moderation and restraint in depicting the terrors of the struggle with death. It cannot be denied that Strauss is greatly preoccupied with such ideas. He has set the very article of death to music on at least four different occasions ("
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Tod und Verklärung,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Don Juan,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Till, and"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Don Quixote ). The hanging of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Till is inconceivably drastic in its realism, and the last sigh of Don Quixote is the most unearthly thing in all music. Don Juan's death is purely _macabre_; but in"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Tod und Verklärung a certain suggestion of the _macabre_ gives way to something very different--the suggestion of the soul rising to immortality; and thus is initiated the final section, dominated by the noble and beautiful"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "theme. Those of the composer's admirers who"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Zarathustra."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Also sprach Zarathustra ("
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Thus spake Zarathustra ) is the first work in Strauss's most advanced manner. It is scored for the following enormous orchestra:--One piccolo and three flutes; three oboes and one cor anglais; one clarinet in E flat, two clarinets in B flat, and one bass clarinet in B flat; three bassoons and one contrafagotto; six horns in F, four trumpets in C, three trombones, and two bass tubas; kettle drums, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, and glockenspiel; a bell in E; organ, two harps, and the usual bow instruments; and the demands on the _technique_ of the performers are as exceptional as the number of instruments employed. It is as striking an example of Dr. Richter's energy that he should not have shrunk from the task of interpreting so vast and bewildering a score, as it is of his openness of mind that at his age he should have cared to bring forward the most typically advanced and modern of compositions--for that we take Strauss's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Zarathustra to be in respect both of subject and treatment. We doubt whether another living musician of anything like Dr. Richter's age possesses in the same degree that youthful elasticity which can do full justice to the works of a younger generation. Moreover, he is not in any special sense a Straussian. He simply knows, as everyone conversant with the musical affairs of the present day knows, that Strauss is a composer of very great and commanding talent, and he thinks that in such a musical centre as Manchester his more important works ought to be known. So, in spite of a rather discouraging attitude on the part of the public and an amount of extra trouble that can scarcely be reckoned up, he gives one of them from time to time. It is not Lancashire any more than it is London that, among British musical centres, has displayed the readiest appreciation of Strauss--the great and typical modern. It is the part of the country served by the Scottish Orchestra, where"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Tod und Verklärung has before now been chosen for performance at a _plébiscite_ concert. This seems very natural, for"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Tod und Verklärung is the clearest, simplest, and least heterodox of Strauss's orchestral works, and much easier to understand at a first hearing than Beethoven's C minor Symphony. It has, in fact, been recognised as a classic nearly everywhere, though here it still lies under suspicion of being a mere piece of eccentricity. We can only hope that after hearing"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Zarathustra --which certainly is rather a large order--some of our conscientious objectors may reconsider their position. The extraordinary thing is that it was better received than the far more generally comprehensible"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Tod und Verklärung. This was no doubt, in part, due to sheer astonishment, but also, we believe, to the perception that whatever else there may be in the work there is a certain grandeur of perception. It is scarcely possible to listen in a state of complete indifference to the opening tone-picture of sunrise, with its great booming nature ground-tone, that recalls the Introduction to Wagner's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Rheingold, and the ringing trumpet harmonies following the three notes of the soulless nature theme. The plan of the tone-poem that gradually unfolds is one of the clearest. It is on the same plan as the discourse of St. Francis on"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "La Joie Parfaite, quoted by Sabatier from the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Fioretti, where the holy man, the better to impress upon Brother Leo wherein perfect joy consists, first enumerates a series of things in which it does not consist, and then, having disposed of the erroneous opinions corresponding to various stages of the upward path towards true wisdom, tells us at last what perfect joy is. The wisdom of Zarathustra is, of course, very different from the wisdom of St. Francis, but his method of inculcating it is the same. He, too, has mortified the flesh with the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Hinterweltler (perhaps"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "is the nearest English equivalent), and thrown himself for a change into the vortex of exciting pleasures--the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Freuden und Leidenschaften he calls them, as who should say the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It is characteristic that he puts the religion first and the exciting pleasures afterwards. He also"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "that experience being symbolised by Strauss's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Fugue of Science. But none of these things, he gives us to understand, by emphatic use of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "theme, is the pearl of great price, or perfect joy, or anything of the sort. The penultimate part of the tone-poem deals with the conversion of Zarathustra into a dancing philosopher--his learning of the great lesson that one must"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "; and here, of course, the musician is very thoroughly in his element. Very remarkable and surprising is the conclusion. Strauss has declared that the whole composition is simply his homage to the genius of Nietzsche, but it is impossible to resist the impression that in the manner of the ending he has endeavoured to suggest an improvement on Nietzsche--and he might well be pleased with himself, and so a little overbearing, after producing that"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Tanzlied (a sort of waltz for demigods or"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Uebermenschen ), which he has done much better than any other composer that ever lived could have done it. He ends with a night picture in B major against the final notes of which the persistent nature theme in C major once more reasserts itself as a pizzicato bass;--in words,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Ein Heldenleben,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Heldenleben we have to remember that Strauss is a reformer and the recognised leader of a party which, whether we like it or not, has played and is playing a great part in the world of music. The central principle of the Strauss school rests upon the perfectly correct observation that the general development of music during the last two centuries shows continual progress towards greater articulateness, and that there is no reason for regarding that progress as having reached its final stage with Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner. Brahms and the neo-classicists were on a wrong track, they consider, and it is the mission of Strauss and his connection to bring the art back into the paths of true progress. This indicates the sense in which Strauss is called a reformer. It is the usual fate of reformers to overshoot the mark; Mr. Weingartner thinks that Strauss has done so very seriously in his last three Symphonic Poems--"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Zarathustra,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Don Quixote, and"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Heldenleben, --and I am constrained to give in my adherence to Mr. Weingartner's view. In each of the three works named there is much that only genius could have produced, but also something that is alien to genius. The perpetration of deliberate cacophony for a symbolical purpose we first encounter in"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Zarathustra, where it is done in a tentative and restrained manner and on a very small scale. In"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Don Quixote the same procedure is used on a larger scale and with much greater boldness, and in"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Heldenleben it has given rise, in the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "section, to an extended movement that I can only call an atrocity. That section displays the composer in a mood of unparalleled extravagance. Taking harmony in the most extended sense that is possible, it still remains a thing outside the limits of which Strauss's battle-picture lies. It therefore fails altogether, I suggest, to carry on the progress of music towards greater articulateness. It is not music, and does nothing whatever for music. It is a monstrous excrescence and blemish--a product of musical insanity, bearing no trace whatever of that genius which produced the lovely and perfect"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Tod und Verklärung and the superbly racy and pithy orchestral Scherzo"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Till Eulenspiegel."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Adversaries, whom Strauss, disarming criticism by a novel method, symbolises in the awful strains quoted as examples 4 and 5 in Mr. Newman's programme. But one must testify according to one's convictions, and I confess that I cannot be reconciled to section 4 of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Heldenleben, and find in section 5 a considerable element of merely curious mystification. The principle of"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Zarathustra, --and the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Seelenmalerei in the love music and afterwards in the renunciation music is all very finely done. Even the drastic musical satire of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Adversaries"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Dumka, which, we believe, was first used as the name of a musical movement by Dvoràk, or at any rate first became familiar to the world in general through his works. It is derived from a Slavonic root meaning"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "and may be taken as something like the equivalent of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "There are several peculiarly interesting and charming movements in the works of the Bohemian composer bearing this name, and that which occurs in the quintet is one of the best. It is in the relative minor of the opening key, and exhibits the composer as a poet of the same sort as Burns--at once sturdy in bearing and delicate in feeling. Here and there the pianoforte part conveys a suggestion of Chopin; but the courtly sentiment of Chopin is soon merged in a broader and more full-blooded vein of feeling. The thematic material is remarkably varied and episodic, while the Scherzo--called, as in other Bohemian compositions"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Furiant"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "From the New World as the Symphony. Whether it was written during the composer's stay in America we do not know, but it is certainly an outcome of his American experiences no less than the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "New World"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "In Memoriam pieces as Tchaïkovsky's noble Trio, written in honour of Nicolas Rubinstein--brother of the more famous Anton and a pianist of nearly equal eminence. The psychological basis of this Trio is of exceptional clearness; it is probably clearer than in any other composition of similar extension. Yesterday, Mr. Siloti played the pianoforte part at these concerts for the second if not for the third time. Frequenters have therefore enjoyed unusually good opportunities of becoming acquainted with the music, which we regard as on the whole the best example of Tchaïkovsky's chamber composition. As in Schubert's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Wanderer Fantasie, the centre of the whole is the theme of the second movement--a beautiful and expressive strain that, in the composer's imagination, evidently symbolised the personality of his lost friend. The ensuing Variations--which include a waltz, a mazurka, and others that are anything but sombre in character--range back over scenes and memories connected with that personality, the composer now giving himself up to lively characterisation, and now thrown back into an elegiac mood by the returning consciousness of the friend's death. Occasionally the two moods are mingled, as in that part of the waltz where the dainty dalliance of the pianoforte part is accompanied by the tragic variant of the central theme in the strings. The opening movement,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "is dominated by that tragic variant which, at the very outset, is given out with mighty eloquence by the richest tones of the 'cello--a wailing complaint that recurs in many different forms and informs all three movements in one way or another. Analysing the composition, therefore, not with reference to musical technicalities, but psychologically, we find it to consist of three main elements:--(1) The composer's affection for his friend and grief at his loss; (2) biographical reminiscences and reflections thereon; (3) the funeral panegyric. To some extent these elements are intermingled throughout the work; but they dominate the respective movements as here numbered, so that, broadly speaking, one may call the first movement"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "the second"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "the third"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "In all important respects the Trio strikes us as thoroughly original, though in a few superficial matters the composer seems to take hints from certain predecessors. Probably the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Wanderer Fantasie influenced the general design to some extent; the opening of the Finale suggests the corresponding part of Schumann's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Etudes Symphoniques by its rhythm and atmosphere, and the short"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Carnaval not a point was missed, and the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Paganini intermezzo, occurring in the middle of the slow waltz, gave a foretaste of the quite extraordinary technical powers which were more fully displayed later on. The"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Davidsbündler finale was played with less noise and more subtlety than is usually bestowed upon this curious march, with the Grossvaterstanz creeping in unobserved, much as the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Marseillaise creeps into the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Faschingschwank in Wien by the same composer. In certain numbers the pianist showed a tendency to prefer pieces of a secondary and almost trivial character such as the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Rondo à Capriccio to which Beethoven has given the whimsical sub-title"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Rage over the lost penny stormed out in a Caprice. Not that this work is altogether frivolous. As in almost all Beethoven's music, the working-out sections contain much that is beautiful and interesting; but the opening theme is quite as bald as the _motif_ of Haydn's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Surprise symphony. In the first part of the programme--that is, down to the end of the Beethoven selections--there were comparatively few indications of the pianist's true calibre. But in Liszt's transcription of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Forelle Mr. Reisenauer began to reveal some of those marvels of which he and perhaps one other living pianist have the monopoly. That interminable trill, with the song _motif_ freely and expressively played by the same hand first below the trill and then above it, was a thing to be remembered. There was not the least trace of those licences which even first-rate players commonly allow themselves in order to facilitate such manoeuvres. To the ear the effect was absolutely that of three independent hands. The"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Erlkönig transcription, on the other hand, was much less impressive. It was performed with an exaggerated _tempo rubato_, and was altogether too noisy. Of the Chopin Nocturne in D flat as rendered yesterday afternoon it is difficult to speak in measured terms. Mr. Reisenauer seems to be pretty generally put down by amateurs as wanting in"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But if so, it must surely be admitted that he gets on extraordinarily well without one. Anyhow, soul or no soul, his rendering of the Nocturne was a revelation. In the midst of an almost nebulous pianissimo the parts were still differentiated with perfect mastery, and altogether a science of tone-gradations was displayed that is probably unique. Not a lurking beauty in the composition escapes his research or exceeds his powers of interpretation. For the concluding number Liszt's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Hungarian Fantasia was chosen, and this piece again fell totally flat on the greater part of the audience, possibly owing to want of familiarity with the Hungarian style. For this Fantasia is based on Hungarian popular songs, and decorated with passages that are a sort of glorified imitation of an Hungarian improvisatore's performance on the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The song-themes are some of the most beautiful and interesting to be found in all Liszt's Rhapsodies and Fantasias, especially the first, which, in Korbay's edition, is set to the words"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "They have laid down him dead upon the black-draped bier, and the wonderful"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Crane"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "French Revolution, the first work showing the author to be a genuine and original man of genius. It shows him deliberately rejecting all that was traditionally connected with the idea of a work in"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "affording to the soloist none of the conventional opportunities for display, demanding from him the mastery of an enormously difficult technique, full of double-note passages, full of heavy and exhausting reduplications; demanding also exceptional tact, intelligence, and presence of mind such as are only to be found in a few players of the very first rank. The music of the first movement is of profoundly sinister and tragic import, portraying the rage, grief, and unrest in some struggle of the heroic soul. It has nothing entertaining and nothing to propitiate superficial taste. No wonder it was a failure at Leipsic in 1859, when that centre of enlightenment was given up to the Mendelssohn cult! After the composer himself, the first pianist to take up the Concerto was Hans von Bülow, who with a performance at a Philharmonic Concert in Berlin won early recognition of its surpassing merit. Other performers who contributed towards the success of the work with the world in general were Madame Schumann and Mr. D'Albert. At the present time it may be doubted whether there is any better exponent of it than Mr. Busoni. What a German writer has called the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "first motive was delivered in a manner that showed perfect grasp of its poetic import, and the tragic eloquence of the ensuing development was never marred either by any sort of technical fault or by inappropriate expression. The"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Benedictus forming the slow movement is fraught with that profound religious feeling the musical expression of which has been accomplished only by Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. It was no less perfectly rendered than the opening movement, and the concluding Rondo was played with appropriate breadth, energy, and mastery of heavy and intricate passages. Afterwards another work for the same instrumental combination was played, namely, Liszt's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Spanish Rhapsody, which Mr. Busoni has treated very much as Liszt himself treated the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Wanderer Fantasie of Schubert, making an arrangement on the concerto principle, with a part for pianoforte and orchestral accompaniments. The Rhapsody is put together on the same principle as the Hungarian Rhapsodies, having majestic motives in the first part, and afterwards dance themes with variations and ornamentations in the transcendental manner peculiar to Liszt. Mr. Busoni's orchestration is all very clever and telling, and in playing the solo part, which is brilliant beyond all description, he, as it were, came down from the pedestal of seriousness and showed that he also can, on occasion, be simply entertaining. As an extra piece without orchestra, Mr. Busoni played Liszt's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Campanella"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Henselt's Concerto, hackneyed in Germany but almost unknown in England, was his accompanied piece yesterday. It is the most considerable work of that curious composer, who made a great reputation as a pianist though he scarcely ever played in public, and some reputation as a composer though he never did anything more original than the pianoforte Etude"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Si oiseau j'étais, and for the most part rested satisfied with giving enfeebled reproductions of Chopin's ideas thinly disguised by arpeggio accompaniments in extended harmonies and ornamental passages in double notes. In a few points, such as the use of _martellato_ octaves and chord passages, he had a more modern technique than Chopin's; but there is no justification for his compositions except good laying out for the instrument. From beginning to end one finds him cultivating the same kind of mild and voluminous euphony. Mr. Busoni played the three movements in his customary style, solving all the technical problems that they present rather more intelligently than anyone else. His unaccompanied solos were, first, two astonishingly ingenious Preludes constructed on themes of chorales by Bach, which are treated as _canti fermi_, and accompanied by passages in florid counterpoint, having the character of an _obbligato_. The theme of the first was"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Sleepers, wake, and of the second the chorale known in this country as"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Luther's Hymn. The third piece was Liszt's seldom-heard transcription of Beethoven's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Adelaide."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Variations Sérieuses, Schumann's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Etudes Symphoniques,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Legend for orchestra left an impression of sweetness and picturesque charm, but also of a talent scarcely equal to the conception and laying out of extended orchestral works. As painters sometimes say, the interest of the picture was literary rather than artistic. It was nice to read the pretty story in the programme to the accompaniment of the pretty music going on in the orchestra. But whether the music by its own eloquence could have roused the desire to know what was the imaginative or narrative basis of the design in tones is doubtful. Except for a short section at the end, containing some slight suggestions of development, the composition is almost entirely arabesque work, which is perhaps an appropriate arrangement, the subject being Moorish. The amazing double power that Liszt possessed of translating from orchestra to pianoforte and from pianoforte to orchestra was certainly never matched in any other mortal. Both processes he performed with consummate ability. Mr. Siloti rendered the solo part with the restraint and the mature mastery of his resources that are characteristic of him. He tears no passion to tatters; he does not play"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "; the tricks of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Oktavenbändiger delight him not; nor does he tickle and paw the notes in the velvety-ineffable style. Mr. Siloti is so considerate as not to obliterate the composer in any way. There is a certain largeness and gentleness in his manner. His technical power is unlimited, but he uses no more of it than is necessary to bring out the composition, and with regard to tone-gradations, pedalling, and the entire management of the pianoforte--as medium of musical expression, not of acrobatic display--one may say that"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Among distinguished pianists of the day there is perhaps none other whose style is so good a model for learners. Many other pianists have great powers, but nearly every other has some frightful fault, whereas Mr. Siloti has no serious fault. He is simple, equable, gentlemanly, masterly. He seeks not to dazzle, to bewilder, to impose, to appal, to petrify--but simply to convince. He _brings out the music_ written by the composer, and that is what a pianist should do. The group of Russian pieces played by Mr. Siloti on his second appearance we thought, on the whole, very charming, especially the Caprice by Arensky. The concluding piece by Rubinstein was not quite so interesting, but it gave the performer his opportunity of treating the audience to that"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Don Juan fantasia, for pianoforte alone, gave Mr. Rosenthal an opportunity of exhibiting his technical powers in one of the most audacious _bravura_ compositions that exist. In many persons the fine frenzy that rages through the middle and latter parts of this piece awakens no sympathy. It has, nevertheless, a legitimate place in the Palace of Art, being nothing more than the logical development to the highest possible point of the _bravura_ style that originated with Liszt. The latter of the two variations on"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "in England and America is not a mere matter of fashion and folly, but is shared by experts and brethren of the craft, many of whom are irresistibly fascinated by Mr. Paderewski's playing, even while they disapprove of much that he does. Why will he insist on using a pianoforte with so hard a tone? Why is the skelp of his hand on the keys so frequently audible from the most distant point of the hall, as a sound quite separate from the musical notes? Why does he never play Bach? Why does he always play Liszt's second Rhapsodie? Such are a few among the searchings of heart to which Mr. Paderewski's public performances give rise, and to none of them--probably--is there a complete and satisfactory answer. The shallow-toned instrument admits of greater clearness in the bass, and has a more scintillating kind of brilliancy in the upper octaves, and Mr. Paderewski, who likes all passage-work a little staccato, naturally favours it. The rage of his"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Tannhäuser Overture was used for the display piece that audiences expect at the end of a recital. It is characteristic of Mr. Godowsky that his favourite amusement is making rearrangements of Chopin's Etudes--the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Godowsky Bedevilments,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It is rather surprising that neither of his recent performances in Manchester should have included any example of Beethoven, of whose greater Sonatas Mr. Lamond is now probably the best living interpreter, with the possible exception of Mr. Busoni. He was of course quite right to play plenty of Liszt, but it may be regretted that he gave so much of the later Liszt--who, conscious of himself as the world-famous magician of the piano, often improvised on rather poor themes, as if to show that any theme, however weak, could be made interesting by his transcendental style of ornamentation--rather than the earlier Liszt who wrote things of such power and eloquence as the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Mazeppa Etude. Mr. Lamond's mind seems recently to have been running on Liszt's Tarantelle Fantasias. He played the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Venezia e Napoli Tarantelle at the Hallé Concert and the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Muette de Portici Tarantelle yesterday--both pieces which are chiefly of interest as proving that Liszt could improvise effectively upon any conceivable sort of thematic material. It would have been much more interesting to hear the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Mazeppa, which Mr. Lamond played in the composer's presence and to his evident satisfaction when last he was in London, a few months before his death in 1886, or some piece in that pregnant early manner. His best performance yesterday was in Chopin's A flat Polonaise--a composition of such excellence that, hackneyed as it is, it cannot in a good rendering fail to give pleasure. Mr. Lamond did full justice to the majestic beauty of the themes, which are all absolutely good, and brought out the famous _basso ostinato_ section in some respects better than we have heard it done since Rubinstein's death. He did not adopt any of the revised versions of the left-hand octave passages favoured by certain distinguished modern performers. On the other hand, he did adopt Rubinstein's version of the ending, with the unexpected and telling chord of C major just before the final phrase. In Rubinstein's F minor Barcarolle--so interesting in rhythm, so original in colouring--Mr. Lamond was not entirely successful, his temperament apparently not furnishing a key to the vein of lyrism in which the piece is conceived. Yet in Liszt's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Liebestraum he was perfect, though one might have expected that his Beethovenish tastes would have rebelled against the hothouse atmosphere of the composition. The opening performance of Schumann's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Carnaval was powerful and distinguished, but too broad in style to be in keeping with the sub-title"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Scènes mignonnes."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Ave Maria and in an unpublished Serenade by the performer's friend and compatriot Drdla--both played as extra pieces at the end of the recital. Virtuoso music, in the rendering of which Mr. Kubelik is well known to be a great expert, was represented in yesterday's recital by the following pieces:--Wieniawski's Fantasia on Themes from Gounod's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Faust, Paganini's caprice"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I Palpiti, Bazzini's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ronde des Lutins, the last-named played among the encore pieces. We do not, as a rule, care for the Fantasia on operatic airs, but Wieniawski's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Faust"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It never rains but it pours. At one period we have a long string of pianistic infant prodigies. Hoffmann, Hegner, Hambourg--they come rapidly to the front, one after another, growing ever younger and younger, and nearly always beginning with"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Next we break into the period of youthful violinists, beginning with"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Kubelik, Kocian, Kreisler come tumbling over each other's heel, each one causing embarrassment to the critics for lack of any stronger terms of commendation than were bestowed upon the last. It is true the string players are not of such tender years as were the pianists on their first appearance. The youngest of the violin prodigies was Bronislav Hubermann, who not many years ago shook his elf-locks at the Philharmonic Society of Vienna and more nearly succeeded in turning the heads of that august, formidable, and severely critical body than might have been thought possible. For the present we are mainly concerned with Mr. Kreisler, who is not so desperately youthful, but is a mature and military-looking man, though he is commonly reckoned among the players of the new school, or the rising generation. His programme yesterday was open to some of the same objections as Mr. Kubelik's on Tuesday evening. It included nothing from the major prophets of music, the most important piece being Tartini's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Trillo del Diavolo Sonata--no doubt one of the best examples of that school which grew up in Italy soon after the perfecting of the violin at the end of the seventeenth century. In a well-contrasted style was the only other piece in more than one movement that he played, namely, Vieuxtemps' second Concerto. In the rendering of these pieces one noted a peculiarly incisive manner of giving full value to all the detail of the figuration, and also a singing tone of rich and strangely penetrating quality. Mr. Kreisler's style is in sharp contrast with Mr. Kubelik's. Instead of caressing the instrument and coaxing the tone out of it, he wrestles with it and plucks out the heart of its mystery. Nor does he seem to care for the sputtering Paganinities so dear to the heart of Mr. Kubelik. His pieces in the second part of the programme were a rather Mozartian Larghetto from a Sonata by Nardini (an eighteenth-century Italian); a"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Tambourin by Leclair (an eighteenth-century Frenchman), much modernised in the arrangement; a bagatelle called"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "L'Abeille, by Franz Schubert of Dresden--not, of course, the famous Schubert, but a violinist who died some twenty-five years ago; an arrangement by Marcello Rossi of the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Song without Words in F, by Tchaïkovsky; and, finally, the Allegretto grazioso from the same Nardini Sonata, played as an encore piece."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "L'Abeille"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "has absolutely no aptness whatever. These worthy dons are creative artists of the highest possible order, to be classed with Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner, and it thus appears that about the middle of the century British music arose like the lark, soaring at once to the topmost airs of the welkin; that to find a parallel for the revelation of genius during the fifty ensuing British years one has to range over two German centuries! Not even Beethoven is to be excepted from the list of things that were matched by our professorial larks, swans, giants, heroes, angels, and demigods! Now all this represents a rather deplorable state of things. Why is it--I cannot help asking once more--that at the present time in this country so much worse nonsense is written about music than about drama, literature, or any other kindred subject? A great stir was recently made by the production of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Paolo and Francesca, yet no admirer of Mr. Stephen Phillips has thought it necessary to call him the equal of Shakespeare. There is certainly this excuse for Mr. Fuller Maitland, that in the London press of recent years much extravagance of the opposite kind has appeared--excessive and, in a few cases, positively brutal detraction of Parry and Stanford and their school--and perhaps the chief blame for the hysterical nonsense of supporters lies within certain opponents who have attacked without regard either for the facts of the case or even for common decency. In any case a state of things has been brought about in which one party howls"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Incompetent humbug! while the other shrieks"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Genius of the highest order!"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "or protest against that epithet--that they are men of high distinction who have played a leading and brilliant part in the English musical revival and generally have deserved well of the musical republic. For my part, while fully recognising their eminence both in talent and character, I am of opinion that their claims to regard as absolute creative artists are habitually overstated by their supporters in the press. The appearance of Parry created a considerable stir. His imposing grasp of choral polyphony was something new in English music. His great intelligence, his wide sympathy and geniality, his virility and industry--all these qualities united to arouse enthusiastic hopes. But, as Mr. Fuller Maitland writes on page 185,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "There has already been a considerable passage of years since those first compositions, but the early enthusiastic estimate has not been justified. Outside the circle of his pupils and personal friends no one now seems to care very much for his music. Here in the North of England concert societies find that the public admiration of it is a rapidly vanishing quantity. Three years ago his"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Job and"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Blest Pair of Sirens were given here, but ever since that occasion his name has been something of a terror to our concert societies. A frequent experience in regard to Parry's music is that, whereas a first hearing impresses in virtue of massiveness and energy or of striking and unconventional dramatic touches, second and subsequent hearings are discouraging."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Job is the most favourable case among the choral and orchestral works that I have heard. It is thoroughly artistic in conception and unconventional in treatment. Moreover, the lyrical interlude of the shepherd-boy's song helps along the early part very happily, and Mr. Plunket Greene is always eloquent in the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Lamentations."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "King Saul, he appeals; at his best, _e.g._, in the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Soldier's Tent (song with orchestral accompaniment), he almost persuades. But the horrors of the empty tone masses hurled at one's head in the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Saul choruses, or of the purple patches of Wagnerian orchestration associated with inept vocal phrases in the principal monologue of the same oratorio--those horrors are so very genuine, whereas the charm of such a song as the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Soldier's Tent, where the composer keeps comparatively well to the point and scores with comparative aptness, is still somewhat doubtful. A remark of Mr. Fuller Maitland's helps me to a possible explanation of the something wrong. He commends the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "When icicles hang by the wall in Parry's English Lyrics. Now I have certainly never heard that song, but I must have read it somewhere, for I distinctly remember the humorous and expressive accompaniment at the words"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It also comes back to me that other passages, such as all that eight-part counterpoint at the end of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Blest Pair of Sirens,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "than, for example, the modern Russians, and this brings us back to the point of the reproach conveyed in the epithet"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "To musicians bent on the holding of official posts and on success in a worldly career it is of the first importance to"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It seems to me that his compositions on Irish subjects require to be considered quite apart from all the rest. However deplorable may be that Brahmsian vein running through a great mass of his non-Irish music, he really does in his"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Phaudrig,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Shamus, and Irish Symphony and in many of his Irish songs entirely escape from his common-room and give us open-air music. No doubt, as Mr. Fuller Maitland very justly points out, the humour of the Dogberry scenes in Stanford's latest opera is admirable. Those are the scenes in which the composer has followed the model of Verdi's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Falstaff most closely. Elsewhere he has undertaken to be more original and has not prospered so well. The music of the love scenes is terrible. All that twisted, clever stuff can never have any but a chilling, afflicting, alienating effect on a soul in which any spark is left either of youthfulness or of sympathy with youth. Stanford's musical cleverness, exceeding that of any other mortal except Camille Saint-Saëns, has been his bane. His sense of humour, too, is perversely adjusted. In connection with any but an Irish subject it is always liable to mislead him, and I have little doubt that it is the humourist quite as much as the don in him which nowadays makes it impossible for him to treat a love-passage in any but a chilly, clever, allusive, intelligible-only-to-the-initiated style. He was a very different man in 1881 when his"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Bower of Roses by Bendeemer's Stream was first heard. Not that he has even now lost his faculty of lyrical tenderness altogether. If the sentiment be associated with an infant, or penetrated with a sense of the weird and uncanny, or intermingled with (Irish) patriotic feeling, he can still find the symbol, as his quite recent music to Moira O'Neill's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Songs from the Glens of Antrim abundantly proves. But the note of warmth and simplicity proper to youthful romance he seems to have lost. A peculiar case among Stanford's compositions is represented by the Irish Symphony, concerning which Mr. Fuller Maitland has nothing to say. Here, notwithstanding the Irish subject, the gown shows through to some slight extent in one place, namely, the development section of the first movement. The conventional critic finds fault with the scherzo in the form of an Irish jig as unsymphonic, as it undoubtedly is. But there would be more sense in suggesting that the composer should have made up his mind to be thoroughly unsymphonic throughout the work, bringing his first movement into harmony with the fine sennachee's improvisation that stands second, the magnificent racy jig, and the buoyant finale. We should thus have had an Irish Rhapsody in four movements without any defect. Even now the one touch of the composer's evil genius that comes out in the first movement is too slight to spoil the work, which has been a joy for a long time, and does not seem to lose its charm. It thus seems to me that Stanford is far too good a man for an"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "of Italy. He gives the young man to understand that it is unbecoming in a gentleman to take part in such things, though he may pay a fiddler to play to him. Elsewhere, too, Lord Chesterfield is even more crushing. He lays stress on the inevitable connection between music and low company. The Venice letter was written in 1749--six years after the first performance of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Messiah"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "A taste of sculpture and painting is in my mind as becoming, as a taste of fiddling and piping is unbecoming, a man of fashion."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Death of Nelson"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Fidelio, together with the third"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Leonora overture, and many other works of towering genius. As yet, however, the real significance of Beethoven was undreamed-of in the philosophy of mankind in general, if dimly suspected by a few enlightened persons, mostly resident in Vienna. Mozart had died before the dawn of the century, and Haydn soon after it, having demonstrated the incomparable excellence of that Viennese school (founded on the teachings of Fux's"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gradus ad Parnassum"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Oberon"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Antient Concerts, which had come to grief through depending too much on aristocratic patronage. The Sacred Harmonic Society did good work by performing Handel's"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Israel in Egypt,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Dettingen Te Deum, and other works, besides the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Messiah."
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The real champion of the Wagnerian art in this country was Dr. Richter, who, by the performance of extracts at his orchestral concerts, gradually opened the ears of the public and brought home the music to their hearts. In that task he was well supported by Mr. Manns at the Crystal Palace and by Sir Charles Hallé in the Manchester neighbourhood. Hence the fact that though the two impresarios who gave performances of the great"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ring"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Golden Legend. Dr. Cowen's Scandinavian and Professor Stanford's Irish Symphonies have done something to win esteem for English music in other countries. But the great achievement of British music during the past fifty years has been the Gilbertian operas, in which Sir Arthur Sullivan matched with a perfect musical counterpart the kind of libretto furnished by W. S. Gilbert, an original type of comic opera being thus created. Among younger composers, Mr. Hamish M'Cunn made a reputation with his"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Land of the Mountain and the Flood overture that he failed to confirm. Mr. Coleridge-Taylor has had a very rapid success with his"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Hiawatha music, whether of a more lasting kind remains to be proved. By far the most remarkable British composer of recently made reputation is Dr. Edward Elgar. Mr. Otto Lessmann, editor of the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Allgemeine Musikzeitung and the most distinguished musical critic of Germany at the present day, wrote thus (after hearing"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Dream of Gerontius at Birmingham last October):"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "If I am not mistaken, the coming man of the English musical world has already appeared, an artist who has shaken off the bonds of conventional form and opened his mind and heart to those great gifts which the masters of the expiring century have left as an inheritance to the future--Edward Elgar, composer of the one great religious choral work brought to a first hearing at the Birmingham Festival, namely 'The Dream of Gerontius.'"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Pig-tails"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Pig-tails. In 1869 appeared Wagner's pamphlet"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "On Conducting,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Meistersinger"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Meistersinger score was carried out to the composer's complete satisfaction. Those who examined the fair copy of Richter's handwriting which was on view at the Musical and Theatrical Exhibition of 1892 in Vienna can testify to the marvellous neatness as well as to the technical correctness and good style of Richter's manuscript. It should be remembered, too, that the score of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Meistersinger was at that time by far the most intricate in existence, and is even now only surpassed in elaborate complexity by"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Tristan."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Meistersinger, Richter had taken the solo and choral parts to Munich, and had there personally trained the singers who were to take part in the first production. The style was so new and so perplexing to the musicians of the day that Richter encountered apparently insuperable obstacles at every turn. Nevertheless, everything was carried through to a brilliantly successful issue, and the first performance of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Meistersinger,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Meistersinger"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Meistersinger"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Nibelung trilogy performed was the cause of a premature attempt to present"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Rheingold before the extraordinary _mise-en-scène_ required by that work was ready. Rather than take part in an unworthy rendering, Richter tendered his resignation and quitted the brilliant post to which he had been so recently appointed. Thus early did Richter show the stuff of which he was made. He had absolutely nothing else in view. He simply had to look about for employment, and we next find him in Paris, working in combination with Pasdeloup, who was engaged in a scheme for bringing out"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Rienzi at the Théatre Lyrique. The scheme came to nothing, but the authorities of the Théatre de la Monnaie in Brussels, who had heard of Richter's fame, invited him to come and superintend the first production of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Lohengrin"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Lohengrin in Brussels he was no less successful than with"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Meistersinger in Munich. Though at first everyone found the music"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "on March 21st, 1870 a magnificent performance was achieved. As an example of the difficulties with which Richter had to contend in preparing for that performance, it may be mentioned that he found the choral singers at the theatre incapable of rendering their parts, and had to teach them, note by note, like children. Yet in the public performance there was no trace of these miseries, everything went with freedom and spontaneity, and ever since the first production under Richter"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Lohengrin"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Ring of the Nibelung. It seems almost incredible that in addition to their gigantic labours in bringing what was almost a new art into existence, these remarkable men should have found means at this period of devoting much time to the study of Beethoven's string quartets. Richter took part regularly in the quartet playing, and he considers these hours during which he was initiated by Wagner into the deepest mysteries of Beethoven's art among the most valuable of his experiences. In the same year, 1870, Wagner finished his"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Siegfried Idyll, a lovely _aubade_ that was written in honour of his infant son's birthday. Richter had been entrusted with the task of getting together a small orchestra in Lucerne, and of rehearsing the new work with them. On the appointed day the musicians assembled on the steps of the villa at Triebschen and performed the piece under Richter's direction to the delight of the Wagner household, among whom the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Siegfried Idyll is generally known as the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Treppenmusik (from"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Treppe,"
}
] |
42097
|
Unknown Title
|
Unknown Author
|
[
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Pig-tails"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Richter Concerts"
}
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.