Notes on Strauss and Beethoven

Waggish Tonal Capers and Passionate intensity

ARTHUR SYMONS

IN an essay entitled The Problem of Richard Strauss, I once used this motto of Alfred de Vigny: "Je ne puis trop admirer un homme qui trouve a une symphonie le defaut d'etre trop Cartesienne, et a une autre de pencher vers le systeme de Spinosa". I pointed out the fundamental fallacy of Strauss's attempt "to convey an idea in music"— a fallacy stated nakedly by the composer, For the name of Nietzsche—the music being labelled "nach Nietzsche"—substitute the name of Calvin; say that you represent the babes (his hideous idea!) a span long, suffering in hell, and the just made perfect in heaven; the notes, so far as they are capable of conveying a definite idea, could remain as appropriate to the one as to the other.

The first thing I ever heard of Strauss was his Don Juan, and it puzzled me, as the problem of his music has always puzzled so many of his admirers. It had ideas, and it induced sensations. But were these ideas very profound, very sincere, very personal? And were these sensations really musical sensations? Strauss gives a quotation from Lenau at the beginning of this score, and from this we know that we have to expect two motives: the motive of passion and the motive of loneliness. Knowing this, I felt passion and loneliness in the music. But when I had come away, I began to wonder whether I had not felt them only in a literary way; whether I had not received them in a formless mass which the composer had given to me for my own shaping. The music was not wholly new: it reminded me of both Wagner and Tschaikowsky, though it had more of the wind of the Russian than of the waves of the German. And, distressingly, it reminded me sometimes of L'Enfant Prodigue, one nervous thrill following another in a merely clever imitation of natural things. That emphatic, heavy-handed way with the orchestra, was it masterly or was it the wrong kind of emphasis, the mere point and pungency of antithesis? Of one thing I am certain in regard to Strauss: that he is not a man of genius.

A Musical Joke

TILL EULENSPIEGEL is meant to be a musical joke; but Strauss turns the occasional savor into the main substance of the dish, as the Russians index certain dishes on the menu by their sauces. Here an orchestra is divided against itself, each part playing its own joke in its own corner; and often the aggregate harmony resembles the sound of something tearing. There are astounding effects of sound, but never for their own sake as music: they are means to an end. And surely all this tearing apart, for emphasis alone, is the sin of all modern German art. In Till Eulenspiegel I was made aware of a formidable, somewhat gross talent for a low kind of grotesque, unjustified by a spark of inspiration, but composed of wheels that moved within wheels, which creaked noisily yet created nothing.

Then, turning to Zarathustra, consider how soon, after the touch of inspiration in the beginning, it passes into the dry and academical! If these dry intervals indicate something profound, it is not anvthing profoundly musical. It is, in a word, a groan which cannot be uttered. Were it not for the programme—always to me a hateful interference between one's hearing and the sound of the orchestra— one might call it scholasticism. Can this be the vital thunder and spring, can this be the dance, of Zarathustra? Tt is not so that I read his book. Rather, I imagine, the Seventh Symphony of Beethoven would speak—would deliver wonderfully —his meaning. The dismal gospel drones; thus the uneasy pessimist forever struggles with a bad dream.

No one has ever shown how noise can be learned and ingenious without being vital or beautiful, nor how the striving after an articulate voice strikes it speechless. All the divine voice, which is song, fades away in this speech which says nothing intelligible. It is not a vital but a cloudy noise; and its nearest approach to joy is in a kind of huge parody of the Wagnerian fever, through which whirl Italian snatches, masquerading in fancy dress. And, after all, with an incomparable expenditure of energy, with an unprecedentcd emphasis, nothing has been said, I fail, however, to find this in the splendid theatrical music of the Feuersnot lovescene, which has a kind of Rossini effect. Unquestionably the fact of the matter is, that in the greater part of the music of Strauss the orchestra jests after the approved German fashion, chimera bombilens in vacuo. If only Richard Strauss had taken to heart this magnificent and monstrous phrase of Rabelais, he might have spun less monstrous webs out of his intricate spider's intellect; only, he is what the French call un cerebral.

The Knight of La Mancha

THE Don Quixote of Cervantes is the work of a man of genius who created only this masterpiece. This creation of the Spaniard has its place beside the creations of Rabelais and Aristophanes: it is as unique in its own way as The Clouds, Hamlet, or Gargantua. It not only dominates fiction; it has an infinite variety, an unsurpassed invention both in tragedy and in comedy.

But turn to the Don Quixote of Strauss, and you will see the composer's impotent fancy spurring itself to feats it cannot achieve. The whole thing is a piece of vast delusion, yet one singularly petty, Here indeed is the battle with the windmill and the barber's basin, and the journey through the air is indicated by a process of churning. Strauss worries Cervantes' text as the commentators do Shakespeare's: not a word escapes him, and he would set even the commas to music. It is the commentary of the ingenious student—like the most literal and allegorical of the scholastic churchmen at his task of illustrating the Bible, In Macbeth the metaphysical herovillain is shown with a scholastic dryness, struggling with Italian outbursts. There are new crescendos and a heavy emphasis on the air, but the music is dull. Shakespeare's Macbeth is not. So, as we must return to Zarathustra, there is no ecstasy, no dignity, no pride; but a heavy fumbling after keys in the dark, without unlocking any door. Had he but read Baudelaire, he might have given one a sense—which he does not—of absolute horror, of the agonies of the damned:

"Un malheureux ensorcele Dans ses tatonnements futiles Pour fuir d'un lieu plein de reptiles, Cherchant la lumière et la clé;

Un damné descendant sans lampe Au bord d'un gouffre dont l'odeur Trahit 1'humide profondeur D'eterncls escaliers sans rampe."

Beethoven's Sublime Harmonies

WHEN Beethoven becomes sublime, it is the sublime, not in action, but in being. Some new epithet must be invented, for this music narrates nothing, yet is epic; sings no articulate message, yet is lyric; moves to no distinguishing action, yet is already awake in the dark waters out of which a world is to awaken.

In his first orchestral work, the First Symphony in C Major, the music is made for the sake of music, with its frequent beauty, the form being mastered before there is anything to be said. The gay Minuet is the first of the laughing series, Think, after this, of the Overture to Egmont, where the meaning has come into music, and a more than human voice begins to sing and lament with a profound musical depth of appropriate beauty. In its large and solemn dignity, its dramatic sense, its sense of being filled by the breath of Goethe's inspiration, Beethoven equals and surpasses this inspiration in a creation from the same subject.

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In the Second Symphony comes, together with Beethoven's individuality, a Beethoven growing into his real self, with touches of unearthly' beauty and a certain new poignancy. In this begins that stealthy and mysterious entrance of one knows not what unexpected guests, with mysterious pauses and questionings. In the third, the Eroica, Beethoven becomes fully great, his whole complex life at its full vitality: here is music which has "the supreme grace". The Funeral March is certainly' for a hero, who is praised rather than lamented in his death. It has vastness rather than intensity. There are no cries nor weeping, and the throb is new in music, this last, this vital throb. In the Scherzo there is force in gaiety: yet always there is the same atmosphere, wherein is Beethoven's greatness.

The Fourth Symphony has much more subtle instrumentation which strikes one at once in the profound and lovely introduction which leads to the splendid Allegro, with its immense male energy, This is the beginning of the subtlest form of Beethoven's melody'. In the Adagio there is a religious sweetness, with which just a drop of poignancy is found, Beethoven beautifies rapture in melting, fiercely orchestral colors; an instrumentation which had never before existed is used as the subtlest and therefore the most perfect means of expression. We think of Crashaw's phrase, "honeyed drops of sound", or "those tumultuous drops of noise".

The Magnificent "Fifth'

THE Fifth Symphony is stupendous, It begins with the Allegro con brio, wringing all its fierce, stabbing meaning out of it. No mortal orchestra can give all that one divines in the composer's intention; but I have never heard an interpretation so poignant and arresting as Richter's. The intensity never slackens, yet it is continually different; and all the shades of this demoniac onslaught of sound upon the limits of Time and the ramparts of the world seem to shatter one's nerves. Then comes the martial peace of the Andante, with its vast sky. In the Seventh Symphony there is the extraordinary mastery of his material— of pure music, signifying nothing but the eternal, disembodied meaning of the notes, sometimes with a kind of fierceness in its huge dance. What astonishing harmonies are in this enormous creation, with its huge crescendos and surges and plunges of depths beyond depths and of heights above heights!

In the Allegretto I seem to hear the lovely colors of the cellos; then the great monotony, with the two themes intermingled and fused into one and the reiteration of those few notes, with their strange and lovely originality. The miraculous Assai meno presto is one of the greatest things, with its astonishing orchestral effects, never for display but always for a rare and exotic beauty, Finally the Allegro con brio with its shattering humor; a stupendous thing, so big and so great; the peasant of genius who revels in his mirth like a y'oung Hercules.

Beethoven's Eighth Symphony in F, conducted by Richter, is a revelation of exactly what the composer meant to express; this massive music, with its firm outlines, modelled as if by great thumbmarks, ecstatic little voices running in and out like little friendly animals between the feet of a man striding on his way. The theme is joy, inexhaustible joy; then joy on more familiar terms, yet none the less profound; then a subtler mood of joy, joy with a new note of heroic love. Finally joy becomes a vast gaiety in which the elements join, and all nature and all the beasts; a gaiety which laughs and brays. It is a great universal intoxication, the immeasurable laughter of the world.

Beethoven's Choral Pieces

IN the Choral Fantasia, there is a delicious effect of the soli on flute, oboe, clarinets and bassoons, each with its individual color, each with its own variation of the air which has been given by the piano. For once the concerto form comes right in this subtly' designed fantasia, with a wonderful freedom and a vivid originality. It is an experiment which might perhaps lead to the Choral Symphony. The vocal parts come in first for women soli, then for men soli, then with full orchestra for full choir. Then the solo voices are woven, to and fro, in the pauses after the chords, exactly like the solo instruments before. The whole is absolutely instrumental, and very beautiful in instrumentation, with the utmost delicacy of light and shade.

I notice in the Choral Symphony the vast, elementary surging of the Allegro, with its variety subdued and heightened to splendor. If ever music was sublime, this is. It is not of the earth only, but the earth of Uebermenschen, this overwhelming glory of sound. Never did music reach such an intensity, and it is the intensity of the Universe (as at the end, when the morning stars sang together with such voices), in which I felt a kind of sacred awe, mixed with wonder and delight, The molto vivace, with its dance of playful thundering, its biting speed, its Maenad's dance of triumph, is superb; and I felt in hearing it the strange excitement that comes over one and increases, with a kind of suspense and wonder. The Adagio is great and exquisite even among its slow movements; there is a solemn sweetness which has in it all Beethoven's tenderness and all his religion: a sleepy ecstasy, in which love dreams awaken, with its mystic conclusion, in which purity of sound can go no farther. In the Presto notice the splendid grotesque discordant effect of the wind at the opening, and the curious trying over of the various airs, with the sudden capture of the right one, by cellos and basses,

The wonder lies in the wholly instrumental voices, so cruelly effective. The words are nothing; all he wants and gets is a sense of joy bursting its bounds, Then, joy is restrained to the praise of God, in the vastly planned ecclesiastical movement, so rapturous and mysterious, There is a marvellous effect in the passage on the top a fortissimo for thirteen bars, which leads to the final rush to the Abyss of joy, as of a glorious annihilation in rapture,

Weingartner, the Conductor

QUITE new demands on rendering", said "Wagner, "arrive with Beethoven's works, through, their uncommonly expressive use of rhythm; and to find the right tempo for a move ment of a Beethovcnian symphony, above all to discover that tempo's perpetual, intensely delicate and speaking modifications—without which the import of the extraordinarily eloquent musical phrase often stays completely unintelligible—is a task which any appointed orchestra leader of nowadays has no scruple in embarking on, but only bccause he has not the faintest notion of what it means ". In hearing, during May, 1903, a Beethoven festival, arranged by Professor Johan Kruse, in which all the symphonies and much of the most important writing for strings were given in chronological order under the conductorship of Felix Weingartner, I found myself throughout conscious of just these difficulties, as I observed them mastered by one who is probably, after Richter, the finest living conductor.

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The vitality of Weingartner extends from the elbow-joint to the wrist, and from the wrist to the tips of the fingers, The thumb and forefinger of the left hand, the hand which is not centered about the baton, are pinched together delicately, as if in the act of taking snuff; the little finger is detached from the others and creeps about the air, as with a subtle life of its own; and the whole hand, drooping and rising from the wrist, smooths out as if stroking a soft texture, For extreme emphasis the fist is clenched, and plunges downwards and outwards with all the force of the elbow. There is never a sweeping gesture from the shoulder; the arms never open in a purely natural curve; the body holds itself rigid as if under extreme emotion, and seems more ready to break than to bend. He has the air of a puppet wound up to work; a puppet whose clock-work is a brain incessantly alert, and acting through a nervous organization which gives its separate life to each note. You see him watching, listening to the sounds before they are heard; and he seems to hold back the nervous force of his brain, lest it should outrun the measure. The notes live, not always with their most subtle, but always with their most vital musical life. He holds himself in, and he enforces mastery into his orchestra, because he has no moments of slackness or of indifference. If he is sometimes hard or staccato, it is only the exaggeration of his inestimable structural knowledge of exactly what the music means as music— it is the equivalent of a firm outline in drawing. He has not yet realized that the drawing of Leonardo may be finer than the drawing of Ingres: Richter's direction is perhaps the drawing of Leonardo. Weingartner's playing of the Kreutzer Sonata is in itself an interpretation, like his conducting, very subdued, very detached, making every shade of musical meaning almost too mathematically clear; quite without magic or genius for the instrument, but very interesting as a musical study. Each chord, each note, is taken separately; every pause dwelt upon. There are no liaisons; yet never a note that is mechanical. It lives, at least in the brain.

Beethoven's Minor Works

IN the Quartet in C Major new colors come into the harmonies, colors that have passed through fire and come out changed; a new body which has discovered a new soul. Here there is an ominous and mysterious drama, where tragic cries surge up and are quieted; one hears the death drum beating in his veins. Here Beethoven has found what no one had cver found before: poignant musical emotion, a quivering fullness, as of the incumbent heaven above the earth of the Allegro, like angels singing in grave ecstasy. In the Scherzo, we find a characteristic use of the Russian scheme, whose somber pungency suited his mood of writing at that time. Then we are swept by the vast and amazing novelty of this dancing movement, in which a quick dance becomes half savage and half solemn.

In the Quintet in C Major, as in the Allegro, Beethoven is his essential self; he is the depth of divine delight. He will become greater, but never more truthful to beauty and to his own soul. Note the assured simplicity of his use of the tremolo, for his own purposes, and not for display; thus its delicate and certain appeal. Throughout, there is a fresh, sheerly musical quality; he has not too much to say for clearness, but he has something to say, and it is his own message,

There is in the Quartet in C Sharp Minor a purity in its harmony, harmony which exists only in the great joy of being harmony; with an intensity of beauty which at moments goes mad with delight. Form is so mastered that form, as a limitation, disappears; we are conscious of nothing but of divine sounds that wander at their will.

I find in the Quartet in A Minor the sense of mystery, the questioning spirit, so wholly absent in Mozart's divine acceptance. Many voices cry and question in this Assai sostenato and have no answer; it is full of mournful doubt, with tragic outcries. Note in the firm, confident and resolute Allegro, with its manly affirmations, the strange piercing harmonies, avoiding any kind of sweetness so as to have their own savor. The "hymn of holy thanksgiving to God, in the Lydian mode" is a marvellous piece of abstract worship, swelling to the Andante of "renewed strength", with its passion of grateful hope, which cries and exults out of the depths; returning to the hymn, as if the impulse of worship had been re-bom by mere gladness. Never has music come nearer to speaking; never was there more luminously transcendent speech. It is a saying of speechless things, an outpouring of a heart too full for speech. Tears and the agony of praise are in this somber music. The sense of impending tragedy is carried through the passionate Allegro, with its lonely agony. Has he ever written a more tragic work?

The Artistry of Joachim

IN Joseph ; Joachim we lost a great artist, the most disinterested of his time. He did not transport the senses by miracles of sound: he gave you Beethoven. I remember hearing his quartet play the posthumous quartets of Beethoven. I had long puzzled over those strange compositions, and had wondered what quality it was that made musicians look upon them as priceless. Except perhaps a first hearing of Tristan, I scarcely remember a more overwhelming musical sensation. What I heard—I heard it as literally as Baudelaire heard for the first time the dazzling, feverish, diabolical overture of Tannhaiiser— seemed suddenly to become clear; a voice that had never been heard on earth began to speak in a tongue that was perhaps the speech of angels. The mystery of it all was deepened and came closer; a singular and remote thing became intimate, familiar with the mind that drank it in as pure music. Joachim was scarcely there, nor were his players; one saw occasionally a grave head motionless, the bow moving as if mechanically; and the sound came from the four instruments as if one impulse moved and directed them. Had they been playing well? That was not the question; their playing had exlanguished a question that seemed no longer necessary: it was Beethoven, not illustrated, presented, commented on, but there quietly revealed,

To be even the leader of a quartet rcquires a certain self-abnegation, for the whole art of the rendering is one of subordination, in which every performer must play, so to speak, into the hands of his fellows. It is well called chamber music, and is never heard at its best in a large hall. To overhear it is not like hearing an orchestra or a solo instrument. It is the most private form of music, like a long talk among friends. The greatest musicians have loved it, as poets have loved the sonnet, for its capacity to say so many of the things that lie between the extremes of the lyrical and the dramatic.