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Title: Music after the great war, and other studies

Author: Carl Van Vechten

Release date: May 21, 2024 [eBook #73668]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: G. Schirmer

Credits: Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR, AND OTHER STUDIES ***





Music After the Great War




  Music
  After the Great War

  AND OTHER STUDIES

  BY
  CARL VAN VECHTEN

  NEW YORK
  G. Schirmer
  MCMXV




  _Copyright, 1915, by G. Schirmer_

  26311




_FOR FANIA_




Contents


                                      PAGE

  MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR              1

  MUSIC FOR MUSEUMS?                    27

  THE SECRET OF THE RUSSIAN BALLET      45

  IGOR STRAWINSKY: A NEW COMPOSER       83

  MASSENET AND WOMEN                   119

  STAGE DECORATION AS A FINE ART       137

  ADOLPHE APPIA AND GORDON CRAIG       159




Music After the Great War




Music After the Great War


When the great war was declared, Leo Stein, in Florence at the time,
asserted that the day of the cubists, the futurists, and their ilk was
at an end. “After the war,” he said, “there will be no more of this
nonsense. Matisse may survive, and Picasso in his ‘early manner,’ but
Renoir and Cézanne are the last of the great painters, and it is on
their work that the new art, whatever it may be, will be founded.” Leo
Stein belongs to a family which, in a sense, has stood sponsor for the
new painters, but his remarks can scarcely be called disinterested, as
his Villa di Doccia in Florence contains no paintings at present but
those of Renoir and Cézanne. There are mostly Renoirs.

Of course a general remark like this in regard to painting is based
on an idea that there is no connection--at least no legitimate
connection--between the painting of Marcel Duchamp, Gleizes, Derain,
Picabia, and the later work of Picasso, and the painters (completely
legitimatized by now) who came before them. Without arguing this
misconception, it may be stated that a similar misconception exists in
relation to “modern” music. There are those who feel that the steady
line of progression from Bach, through Beethoven and Brahms, has broken
off somewhere. The exact point of departure is not agreed upon. Some
say that music as an art ended with Richard Wagner’s death. There are
only a few, however, who do not include Brahms and Tschaikowsky in the
list of those graced with the crown of genius. There are many who are
generous enough to believe that Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy
have carried on the divine torch. But there are only a few discerning
enough to perceive that Strawinsky and Schoenberg have gone only a step
further than the so-called impressionists in music.

Since the beginnings of music, as an art-form, there has always been a
complaint that contemporary composers could not write melody. Beethoven
suffered from this complaint; Wagner suffered from it; we have only
recently gone through the period when Strauss and Debussy suffered
from it. The reason is an obvious one. Each new composer has made his
own rules of composition. Each has progressed a step further in his
use of harmony. Now it is evident that in this way novelty lies, for
an entirely new unaccompanied melody would be difficult to devise. It
is in the combination of melody and harmony that a composer may show
his talent at invention. It is but natural that any advance in this
direction should at first startle unaccustomed ears, and it is by
no means uncertain that this first thrill is not the most delicious
sensation to be derived from hearing music. In time harmony is
exhausted--combinations of notes in ordered forms--but there is still
the pursuit of disharmony to be made. We are all quite accustomed to
occasional discords, even in the music of Beethoven, where they occur
very frequently. Strauss utilizes discords skilfully in his tonal
painting; in such works as _Elektra_ and _Heldenleben_ they abound. The
newer composers have almost founded a school on disharmony.

To me it seems certain that it is the men who have given the new
impetus to tonal art in the past five years who will make the opening
for whatever art-music we are to hear after the war, and I am
referring even to occasional pieces after the manner of Tschaikowsky’s
overture, 1812, in which the Russian National Anthem puts to rout the
_Marseillaise_.... Perhaps it will be Karol Szymanowski of Poland
(if he is still alive) or a new César Franck in Belgium who will rise
to write of the intensity of suffering through which his country has
struggled. But it seems to me beyond a doubt that music after the great
war will be “newer” (I mean, of course, more primitive) than it was
in the last days of July, 1914. There will be plenty of disharmonies,
foreshadowed by Schoenberg and Strawinsky, let loose on our ears,
but, in spite of the protests of Mr. Runciman, I submit that these
disharmonies are a steady progression from Wagner, and not a freakish
whim of an abnormal devil. I do not predict a return to Mozart as one
result of the war.

There are always those prone to believe that such a war as is now in
progress has been brought about by an anarchic condition among the
artists, as foolish a theory as one could well promulgate, and keep
one’s mental balance. It is this group which steadfastly maintains
that, after the war, things will be not merely as they were immediately
before the war broke out, but as they were _fifty_ years before. Now,
it should be apparent to anyone but the oldest inhabitant that the
music-dramas of Richard Wagner are aging rapidly. Public interest
in them is on the decline, thanks to an absurd recognition, in some
degree or other, everywhere from Bayreuth to Paris, from Madrid to
New York, of what is known as the “Master’s tradition.” Some of this
tradition has been invented by Frau Cosima Liszt von Bülow Wagner and
all of it is guaranteed to put the Wagner plays rapidly in a class with
the operas of Donizetti and Bellini, stalking horses for prima donnas
trained in a certain school. Without going into particulars which would
clog this issue, it may be stated that the tradition includes matters
pertaining to scenery, staging, lighting, acting, singing, and even
_tempi_ in the orchestra. It is all-inclusive.

It must have been quite evident to even the casual concert-goer that
German music has passed its zenith. It has had its day and it is not
likely that post-bellum music will be Germanic. In an article in a
recent number of “The Musical Quarterly,” Edgar Istel reviews German
opera since Wagner with a consistent tone of depreciation. The subject,
of course, does not admit of enthusiasm. He calls Edmund Kretzschmer
and Karl Goldmark “the compromise composers.” There are probably not
many Americans who have heard of the former or his “most successful
opera,” _Die Folkunger_. Goldmark is better known to us, but we do not
exaggerate the importance of _Die Königin von Saba_, the _Sakuntala_
overture, or _Die ländliche Hochzeit_ symphony. Nor do we foreigners
to the _Vaterland_ know much about Victor Nessler’s _Der Trompeter von
Säkkingen_, although we hear one air from it frequently at Sunday night
concerts in the opera house. August Bungert tried to outdo Wagner with
a six-day opera cycle, _Homerische Welt_, produced in 1898-1903 and
already forgotten. Max Schillings, whose name has occasionally figured
on symphony orchestra programmes in America, is thus dismissed by
Istel: “Schillings’ last work, _Der Moloch_ (1906), proves his total
inability as a dramatic composer.” Hans Pfitzner is another name on
which we need not linger. Engelbert Humperdinck, of course, wrote the
one German opera which has had a world-wide and continuous success
since _Parsifal_--_Hänsel und Gretel_. But the music he has composed
since then has not awakened much enthusiasm. _Hänsel und Gretel_ is,
after all, folk-music with Wagnerian orchestration. It assuredly is
not from Humperdinck that we can look for post-bellum music. We have
heard Kienzl’s very mediocre _Der Kuhreigen_ and we have been promised
a hearing of _Evangelimann_. The name of Siegfried Wagner signifies
nothing. Ludwig Thuille wrote some very interesting music in the last
act of _Lobetanz_, but that opera could not hold the stage at the
Metropolitan Opera House. W. von Waltershausen’s _Oberst Chabert_
has been given in London, not, however, with conspicuous success.
D’Albert has written many German operas in spite of his Scotch birth.
Of these the best is _Tiefland_, negligible in regarding the future.
Leo Blech’s unimportant _Versiegelt_ gave pleasure in Berlin for a
time. Wolf-Ferrari, one of the most gifted of the German composers,
is half Italian. His work, of course, is not notable for originality
of treatment. _Suzannen’s Geheimniss_ is very like an old Italian or
Mozart opera. So is _Le Donne Curiose_. His cantata, _Vita Nuova_,
is archaic in tone, a musical Cimabue or Giotto. _I Giojelli della
Madonna_ is an attempt at Italian _verismo_. Richard Strauss! the most
considerable German musical figure of his time. His operas will still
be given after the war and his tone-poems will be heard, but he has
done his part in furthering the progress of art-music. He has nothing
more to say. In _The Legend of Joseph_, the ballet which the Russians
gave in Paris last summer, it was to be observed that the Strauss idiom
exploited therein had fully expressed itself in the earlier works of
this composer. _Salome_ and _Elektra_ represent Strauss’s best dramatic
work, and _Don Juan_ and _Till Eulenspiegel_ are, perhaps, his best
tone-poems. Richard Strauss, however, is assuredly not post-bellum. His
music is a part of the riches of the past. One can easily pass rapidly
by the names of Bruckner, Weingartner, and Gustav Mahler. Max Reger,
I think, is not a great composer. But there are two Austrian names on
which we must linger.

One of them is Erich Korngold, the boy composer, who is now eighteen
years old. His earlier work, such as the ballet, _Der Schneemann_,
sounds like Puccini with false notes. It is pretty music. Later,
Korngold developed a fancy for writing Strauss and Reger with false
notes. And he is still in process of development. What he may do cannot
be entirely foreseen.

Arnold Schoenberg is another matter. He is still using as propaganda
music which he wrote many years ago. No public has yet caught up with
his present output. That is an excellent sign that his music is of the
future. The string sextet, _Verklärte Nacht_, which the Kneisel Quartet
played more than once in the season just past, dates from 1899. The
string quartets were written in 1905 and 1908. The five orchestral
pieces, the six piano pieces, and _Pierrot Lunaire_, other music of
his on which what fame he possesses outside of Austria rests, are all
over two years old. Now the Boston Symphony Orchestra has only recently
deemed it fitting to play the five orchestral pieces, and I believe the
piano pieces received their first public performance in New York at
one of the concerts given by Leo Ornstein, although several pianists,
notably Charles Henry Cooper and Mrs. Arensberg, had played them in
private.

In 1911 Schoenberg issued his quite extraordinary “Handbuch der
Harmonielehre,” which is one of the best evidences that, even though
the composer dies in the war, others will follow to carry on the torch
from the point where he dropped it. Yes, Schoenberg, no less than
Henri Matisse, is a torch-bearer in the art race. He is a stone in the
architecture of music--and not an accidental decoration.

May I quote a few passages from the “Handbuch”?

“The artist does not do what others find beautiful, but what he finds
himself bound to do.”

“If anyone feels dissatisfied with his time, let it not be because that
time is no longer the good old time, but because it is not yet the new
and better time, the future.”

“Though I refrain from overprizing originality, I cannot help valuing
novelty at its full worth. Novelty is the improvement toward which we
are drawn as irresistibly, as unwittingly, as towards the future. It
may prove to be a splendid betterment, or to be death--but also the
certainty of a higher life after death. Yes, the future brings with it
the novel and the unknown; and therefore, not without excuse, we often
hold what is novel to be identical with what is good and beautiful.”

With the single exception just noted it is not from the German
countries that the musical invention of the past two decades has come.
It is from France. Whether Debussy or Erik Satie or Fanelli first
developed the use of the whole-tone scale is unimportant; they have all
been writing in Paris.

Erik Satie is one of the precursors of a movement--not important
in himself, but of immense importance as an indication. He is not
a genius, and therefore his work has received little attention and
has had no great influence. But it must be remembered that he was
born in 1860 and that his _Gymnopédies_ and _Gnossiennes_, composed
respectively in 1888 and 1890, make a free use of the whole-tone scale
and other harmonic innovations ordinarily attributed to Debussy. A
_Sarabande_, written in 1887, should be tried on your piano. It will
certainly startle you. Satie has recently achieved a little notoriety,
thanks to Debussy and Ravel, who have dragged his music into the light.
The more dramatic resurrection of Fanelli by Gabriel Pierné has been
related too often to need retelling here.

Debussy, beyond question, is one of the high-water marks in the history
of music. _L’Après-midi d’un Faune_ is certainly post-Wagnerian in a
sense that _Salome_ is not. Maurice Ravel, Paul Dukas, Roger-Ducasse,
Florent Schmitt, Chausson, Chabrier, and Charpentier are all
revolutionists in a greater or less degree, and all of them are direct
descendants of the great French composers who came before them. But
what has been accomplished in France in the last few years? Dukas has
written nothing important since _Ariane et Barbe-Bleue_. Debussy’s
recent works are not epoch-making: a makeshift ballet, _Jeux_, a
few piano pieces; what else? Ravel’s ballet, _Daphnis et Chloë_, is
lovely music. Some people profess to find pleasure in listening to
Schmitt’s _Salome_. It is unbearable to me, danced or undanced. Vincent
d’Indy--has he written a vibrant note since _Istar_? Charpentier’s
_Julien_--a rehash of _Louise_. It sounds some fifty years older,
except the carnival scene. There is live futurist music in that last
act. When Charpentier painted street noises on his tonal canvas, were
they of night or morning, he knew his business. But certainly not a
post-bellum composer, this. Charpentier will never compose another
stirring phrase; that is written in the stars. Since _Pelléas et
Mélisande_ and _Ariane et Barbe-Bleue_, is there one French opera which
can be called great? There are two very good ones, Raoul Laparra’s _La
Habanera_ and Maurice Ravel’s _l’Heure Espagnole_, and very many bad
ones, such as Massenet’s _Don Quichotte_, the unbelievable _Quo Vadis?_
of Jean Nouguès, and the imitative and meaningless _Monna Vanna_ of
Février. I do not think it is from France that we may expect the
post-bellum music.

Italy, long the land of opera, has held her place in the singing
theatres. Verdi and Puccini still dominate the opera houses. But
Puccini’s work is accomplished. His popularity is waning, as the
comparative failure of _The Girl of the Golden West_ will testify. You
will find the germ of all that is best in Puccini in _Manon Lescaut_,
an early work. After that there is repetition and misdirection of
energy, gradually diffused talent. It does not seem necessary to speak
of Mascagni and Leoncavallo. They have both tried for so long a time
to repeat their two successes and tried in vain. Cilea, Franchetti,
Catalani, and Giordano--these names are almost forgotten already. Is
Sgambati dead? Does anyone know whether he is or not? Zandonai--ah,
there’s a name to linger on! Watch out for Zandonai in the vanguard of
the post-bellum composers. Save him from the war-maw. His _Conchita_
disclosed a great talent; that opera shimmered with the hot atmosphere
of Spain, a bestial, lazy Spain. This work I place with Debussy’s
_Iberia_ as one of the great tonal pictures of Spain. I have not
heard Zandonai’s opera, _Francesca da Rimini_, which was produced at
Covent Garden Opera House last summer, but I have been told that its
beauties are many. I hope we may hear it in New York. Pratella is one
of Marinetti’s group of futurists, one of the noise-makers. I am not so
sure of Pratella as I am sure that many of his theories will be more
successfully exploited by someone else.

Spain has been heard from recently--Spain, which has lacked a composer
of “art-music.” Albeniz and others have been writing piano music and
now we are promised a one-act opera by Granados. Perhaps in time Spain
may lift her head high and tinkle her castanets to some purpose, on
programmes devoted to her own composers. But now it is Bizet, Chabrier,
Debussy, Laparra, and Zandonai who have perverted these castanets and
tambourines to their own uses.

I am no admirer of modern English music. I take less pleasure in
hearing a piece by Sir Edward Elgar than I do in a mediocre performance
of _Le Prophète_--and I assure you that Meyerbeer is not my favorite
composer. A meaner skill than Sir Edward’s, perhaps, lies in Irving
Berlin’s fingers, but a greater genius. I once spent a most frightful
afternoon--at least nearly all of an afternoon--listening to Elgar’s
violin concerto, and I remember a dreadfully dull symphony, that
sounded as if it were played on a throbbing organ at vespers in a dark
church on a hot Sunday afternoon. The _Cockaigne_ overture is more to
my taste, although I think it no great achievement. Has there been a
real composer in Britannia since Sir Arthur Sullivan, whose works one
rehears with a pleasure akin to ecstasy? I do not think so. Cyril Scott
is interesting. Holbrooke, Delius, Grainger, Wallace, and Bantock write
much complex music for the orchestra, to say nothing of piano pieces,
songs, and operas. (Holbrooke supplements his labors in this direction
with the writing of articles for “The English Review” and other
periodicals, in which he complains bitterly that the English composer
is without honor in his own country.) I find Scott’s piano pieces
better. But since _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_ and _Le Nozze di Figaro_
there have been but few comic scores comparable to _Patience_. You will
hear the Sullivan operas many times after the war, but one cannot think
of founding a school upon them.

I shall not hesitate on the music of America, because in a country
that has no ante-bellum music--one cannot speak with too great
enthusiasm of Ethelbert Nevin and Edward MacDowell--there is no
immediate promise of important development. However, in a digression,
I should like to make a few remarks on the subject of the oft-repeated
charge, re-echoed by Holbrooke in relation to British musicians, that
American composers are neglected and have no chance for a hearing
in their own country. Has ever a piano piece been played more often
or sold more copies than MacDowell’s _To a Wild Rose_, unless it be
Nevin’s _Narcissus_? Probably _The Rosary_ has been sung more times in
more quarters of the globe than _Rule Britannia_. Other American songs
which have achieved an international success and a huge sale are _At
Parting_, _A Maid Sings Light_, _From the Land of the Sky-blue Water_,
and _The Year’s at the Spring_. Orchestral works by Paine, Hadley,
Converse, and others, are heard almost as soon as they are composed,
and many of them are heard more than once, played by more than one
orchestra. Of late years it has been the custom to produce an American
work each season at the Metropolitan Opera House, a custom fortunately
abandoned during the season just past. No, it cannot be said that the
American composer has been neglected.

Finland has presented us with Sibelius, whose latest works indicate
that Helsingfors may have something to say about the trend of tone
after the war, and from Poland Karol Szymanowski has sent forth some
strange and appealing songs.

But it is to Russia, after all, I think, that we must turn for the
inspiration, and a great deal of the execution, of our post-bellum
music. Fortunately for us, we have not yet delved very deeply into
the past of Russian music, in spite of reports to the contrary. Mr.
Gatti-Casazza once assured me that _Boris Godunow_ was the only Russian
opera which stood any chance of success in America. He has doubtless
revised his feeling on the subject, since he has announced _Prince
Igor_ for production this season, an opera which should be greeted
with very warm enthusiasm, if the producers give any decent amount of
attention to the very important ballet.

It is interesting, in turning to Russian literature, to discover
that Turgenev in the middle of the nineteenth century was writing a
masterpiece like “A Sportsman’s Sketches,” a work full of reserve and
primitive force, and a strange charm. And Turgenev was born and bred a
gentleman in the sense that Thackeray was born and bred a gentleman.
In English literature we have travelled completely around the circle,
through the artificial, the effete, and the sentimental, to the
natural, the forceful, the primitive. Art like that of D. H. Lawrence,
George Moore, and Theodore Dreiser is very much abroad in the lands.
Russia began her circle only in the last century with her splendidly
barbaric school of writers who touch the soil at every point, the soil
and the soul: Turgenev, Gogol, Pushkin, Dostoievsky, Andreyev, Tolstoy,
Tchekhov, Gorky, and Artzybachev, a noble group of names. We find in
Russia a situation very akin to that of Ireland, a people commercially
under-developed, in a large measure born to suffering, keenly alive to
artistic impulse.

In Ireland this impulse has expressed itself almost entirely through
the written word, but in Russia it has found an outlet in a thousand
channels. (The arts have grouped themselves together in the glowing
splendor of the Russian Ballet productions.) Music, like literature,
sprang into being in Russia, fed on the rich folk-songs of the
Slavic races, during the nineteenth century; and again like Russian
literature, its first baby notes were wild, appealing, barbaric,
forceful, and sincere--the music of the steppes and the people, rather
than the music of the drawing-room and the nobility. Let us remember
that about the time Richard Wagner was writing _Tristan und Isolde_,
Moussorgsky was putting on paper, with infinite pain, the notes
of the scores of the poignant _Boris Godunow_ and the intense _La
Khovanchina_. Since then the Russian music world has been occupied by
men who have given their lives to the foundation of a national school.
Their work has been largely overshadowed in America by the facile
genius of Tschaikowsky, who wrote the most popular symphony of the
nineteenth century, but who is less Russian and less important than
many of his confrères.

If for a time after the war one must turn to the past for operatic
novelties, one can do no better than to go to Russia. It is my firm
conviction that several of the Russian operas would have a real success
here. _La Khovanchina_ to many musicians is more beautiful than
_Boris_. It is indeed a serious work of genius. The chorus with which
the first act closes has power enough to entice me to the theatre at
any time. I do not know of a death-scene in all the field of opera
as strong in its effect as that of the Prince Ivan Khovansky. He is
stabbed and he falls dead. He does not sing again, he does not move;
there are no throbs of the violins, no drum beats. There is a pause.
The orchestra is silent. The people on the stage are still. It is
tremendous!

Rimsky-Korsakow’s music is pretty well known in America. His
_Scheherazade_ and _Antar_ suites are played very often; but his operas
remain unsung here. Why? He wrote some sixteen of them before he died.
Even so early a work as _A Night in May_ contains many lovely pages.
It is a folk-song opera built along the old lines of set numbers. It
reminds one of _The Bartered Bride_. First produced in 1880, it does
not show its age. _The Snow Maiden_ contains the _Song of the Shepherd
Lehl_ and one or two other airs familiar in the concert répertoire.
_Sadko_, if given in the Russian manner, would fill any opera house for
two performances a week for the season; and _Ivan the Terrible_ is a
masterpiece of its kind. But the greatest of them all is the last lyric
drama of the composer, _The Golden Cock_, in which this great tone
colorist bent his ear further towards the future than he had ever done
before.

The death of Alexander Scriabine recently in Petrograd created little
comment, although the papers had been filled a few weeks before with
descriptions of the very bad performance of his _Prometheus_ by the
Russian Symphony Orchestra. Scriabine, another Gordon Craig, was too
great a theorist, too concerned with the perfect in his art, ever
to arrive at anything approximating the actual. As an influence, he
can already be felt. His synchronism of music, light, and perfumes
was never realized in his own music, although the Russian Ballet has
completely realized it. (How cleverly that organization--or is it a
movement?--has seized everybody’s good ideas, from Wagner’s to Adolphe
Appia’s!) As for Scriabine’s strange scales and disharmonies, Igor
Strawinsky has made the best use of them--Igor Strawinsky, perhaps the
greatest of the musicians of the immediate future. I hope Americans may
hear his wonderfully beautiful opera, _The Nightingale_; and if all the
music of the future is like that, I stand with bowed and reverent head
before the music of the future (with the mental reservation, however,
that I may spurn it when it is no longer music of the future). His
three ballets are also works of genius.

It is indeed to Strawinsky, whose strange harmonies evoked new fairy
worlds in _The Nightingale_ and whose barbaric rhythms stirred the
angry pulses of a Paris audience threatened with the shame of an
emotion in the theatre, to whom we may turn, perhaps, for still new
thrills after the war. Strawinsky has so far showed his growth in every
new work he has vouchsafed the public. From Schoenberg, and Korngold
in a lesser degree, we may hope for messages in tone, disharmonic by
nature, and with a complexity of rhythm so complex that it becomes
simple. (In this connection I should like to say that there are
scarcely two consecutive bars in Strawinsky’s ballet, _The Sacrifice
to the Spring_, written in the same time-signature, and yet I know
of no music--I do not even except _Alexander’s Ragtime Band_--more
dance-compelling.) We may pray to Karol Szymanowski for futurist wails
from ruined Poland; a rearranged, disharmonic version of the national
airs of the warring countries may spring from France or Italy; but
for the new composers, the new names, the strong, new blood of the
immediate future in music, we must turn to Russia. The new music will
not come from England, certainly not from America, not from France,
nor from Germany, but from the land of the steppes--a gradual return
to that orientalism in style which may be one of the gifts of culture,
which an invasion from the Far East may impose on us some time in the
next century.

  _June, 1915._




Music for Museums?




Music for Museums?


I saw people actually enjoying themselves at a recent piano recital.
During the performance of some of the numbers they laughed; at other
times they nudged one another and made comments. The conclusion of
each piece was punctuated by a certain amount of vociferous applause,
and an almost equal amount of disapprobation. One group of pieces on
the programme, Claude Debussy’s _Children’s Corner_, was familiar;
as a result, it aroused less interest than some of the other music
played. Albeniz, one of the new men who is making the list of Spanish
compositions extend beyond the folk-song, was represented by his _El
Albaicin_; Maurice Ravel by _Gaspard de la Nuit_, a very successful
attempt to paint atmosphere and character in the very limited tonal
medium of the pianoforte; Scriabine by four preludes and a sonata; and
Leo Ornstein, the pianist, by _Seven Sketches_ and _Two Shadow Pieces_.
Mr. Ornstein’s compositions have no truck with majors and minors,
thirds and fifths, pentatonic and diatonic scales. His descending
fingers strike masses of keys; some auditors seemed to think there is
no plan in these assaults on the board. Personally, I am willing to
wager that the last piano sonatas of the deaf Beethoven meant just
as little to their first hearers. We have become accustomed to the
sweet and unsubtle way of the tonic and dominant. Arnold Schoenberg
and Igor Strawinsky are yet discordant to our melody-soaked and
harmony-demanding ears.

Yet, if concert programmes are consulted, one will find in them
very little music earlier than the eighteenth century. The symphony
orchestra is really a discovery of the nineteenth century. When our
symphony orchestras play Bach, Haydn, or Mozart, the reënforcements,
the rearrangements, would astonish those old composers as much as the
electric signs on Broadway, could they be brought back to hear them.
Either one-half the band--nay, two-thirds--must sit still during
the playing of these numbers, if the original body of tone is to be
preserved, or else some readjustment is necessary. For instance, it
is quite customary to allow the full body of strings to play a Mozart
symphony, although the wood-winds and brasses are not appreciably
greater in number in the modern orchestra than they were in Mozart’s
time. Lack of proportion and over-emphasis are the natural results.

It is only the composers who have invented the modern orchestra,
Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, Strauss, Reger, Strawinsky and Scriabine--to
mention a few names--who get justice done to their compositions. In
fact, as it stands, the modern orchestra exists for the perfect playing
of modern music. It is a dizzy, vertiginous force; floods of sound
are let loose on the hearer to drown his sensibilities and to make
him “feel.” Now, there was something very precise and exact and prim
about the peruked band of the day of Haydn, which would have played
the _Symphonie Pathétique_ as if it were the _Marche Funèbre d’une
Marionnette_. Music in the good old days did not cause women to swoon
and men to swear. There were no Wagnerites then. (Are there any now?)
The composer of _Armide_ would not have inspired an Aubrey Beardsley
drawing. So when the modern orchestra plays Mozart it makes just a
little too much of it. Mozart and Strauss! It is the difference between
Cimabue and Michael Angelo.

The conflict between periodic conventions and contemporary methods
and tastes is always great and will always serve as an excuse for
discussion. There seems to be no adequate reason why we should give
up Shakespeare because we do not perform his plays in the Elizabethan
manner. After all, a tune is a tune, and _Voi che sapete_ would
probably sound very well played on mandolins if Mme. Sembrich did not
happen to be handy to sing it. The Anglican church has found it well
adapted for hymnal purposes, as anyone knows who has heard _Adeste
Fideles_. So, perhaps, Bach rearranged by Gustav Mahler, or Josef
Stransky, or anybody else who happens to have the time, is to be
listened to, just as we are all forced to lend our ears several times a
year, whether it be in a concert hall or a restaurant, or on an ocean
liner, to Gounod’s idea of a Bach prelude.

There is a great deal of the old music which gives a pleasant
impression to the ear if it be not heard too frequently. Mozart, Bach,
and Gluck, however, stand the test of frequent repetition better
than Beethoven. It would also be a mistake, perhaps, not to give the
students of music an opportunity to hear past examples of the art, to
establish in their minds a knowledge of the successive steps which
have been taken in building up this arbitrary thing which we call
“art-music,” although it is neither the music of the Chinese, who,
after all, may be considered an artistic race, the African negroes, the
Indians, nor the Japanese. It would not be advisable, perhaps, to have
any admirer of present-day art-music believe that it was all that could
be said or done in music; an historical survey is necessary. For some
of us there is always the question of relative importance. It may be a
fact that nobody in the future will be able to extract more beautiful
arbitrary art-music out of the air than has been composed by Mozart and
Wagner. We are sure that Berlioz, Liszt, Meyerbeer, and Mendelssohn
can be improved on because they have been. Perhaps Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony is really better music than any which has been composed
before or since. (Personally, I do not for a moment think so.) For
the purpose of argument, however, it is necessary to presuppose that
some people set up standards of this sort. There are those, doubtless,
who are really sincere in their devotion to the composers whose names
begin with a B; but there is a larger group whose ears find it easier
to listen not merely to music based upon a certain scale, but to
_certain_ music based on this scale. As a result, one might say that
the very limited attendance on which our symphony orchestras may count
is largely made up of middle-aged people who are never contemptuous of
familiarity.

The principle, of course, is all wrong. Still, when every person in a
vast population is expected to enjoy arbitrary art-music, one cannot
expect perception or taste. In our civilization everybody is supposed
to “love” music. Poor though we may be, we send our daughters to the
music-masters. From cottage to cottage the echoes of the pianoforte
resound and, especially in the beginning, each pupil is given a taste
of what is known in the provinces as “classical” music. Czerny is
hauled out to teach the fingers how to be agile. There must be a taste
of Bach’s _Wohltemperirtes Clavier_, a Chopin waltz or two.... Heller
is a favorite with small-town teachers, and then the student may burst
gaily into the intricacies of the latest air by Irving Berlin. Now,
why is it that the newest of the arts--at least the newest from the
arbitrary point of view from which we consider music as an art--is
taught to almost all the children of all the lands? They are actually
beaten with sticks to drive them to the keyboard. To be sure, children
are also taught to read, for more cogent reasons. It would do no
harm to anyone to be taught to read music; but to be taught to play
it is like being taught to act. What if we should all be taught to
paint?--Well, after all, why not?

The results are not heartening. The fact is that over fifty per cent.
of the audiences who attend symphony concerts cannot carry a tune.
Naturally they are not averse to hearing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
played over and over and over again, but I should like to ask these
same people how many times during the course of a season they would
listen to a masterpiece in words--_Hamlet_, for instance. How much less
often would they care to hear a play by Bernard Shaw?--and yet there
are some overtures and symphonies which every orchestra plays every
season to its patrons. Some of this music one also hears in restaurants
and in the opera house. It is monstrous!

I really do not think that a modern symphony orchestra ought to be
allowed to play more than one Beethoven symphony a season. This
fossilization would be deadening to any art. A set concert programme
is almost an occasion for despair under the brightest conditions, but
with no new life in its make-up, it had better remain an unperformed
programme. When an orchestra is the medium through which a new musician
pours out his inspiration to the world, there is meaning in the
organization. When it ambles idly through Brahms and Bach it occupies
the same place in the world’s affairs that the museum does. Why should
all our orchestras insist, except on rare occasions, on being museums?

We have seen that only an inert audience may be counted upon from the
ranks of the music students of the country. More interest might be
expected from auditors prepared to be unprepared. To be sure, every
conductor is keen to put a few “novelties” on his programmes every
year. This season, for instance, a symphony by Sibelius, which has been
played in Europe for some time and has been performed here before,
has been hauled out again to make the critics foam at the mouth. Igor
Strawinsky’s early work, _Fireworks_, composed and published in 1908,
has been vouchsafed us. Since then Strawinsky, who, to my mind, is
the most brilliant of the new composers, has written three ballets,
_The Firebird_, _Petrouchka_, and _The Sacrifice to the Spring_, and an
opera, _The Nightingale_. Not a note, so far as I am aware, of these
most interesting scores has been heard in New York, although Paris and
London are thoroughly familiar with them. Schoenberg is as yet barely a
ghoulish name in this country, to be whispered shudderingly until some
daring soul makes the Austrian composer a conventional thing of the
past. The Kneisels have at last taken him up, if that means anything,
and, of course, Ornstein has played him. The Flonzaleys have played
a quartet and the Boston Symphony Orchestra has performed the five
orchestral pieces. Chicago, too, has heard these. This is as far as we
have gone with Schoenberg. There is really no use of referring to so
bad a performance as the Russian Symphony Orchestra gave of Scriabine’s
_Prometheus_. We hear too much Strauss now. There was a time when we
did not hear enough. The academic Reger was feared like the plague for
whole years. Now that his message means as little as possible, he jumps
from programme to programme.

Symphony concerts, then, as they exist in America--and to a lesser
degree elsewhere--are museums, where one may inspect bits of old
musical armor, tunes in _Sèvres_, tinkling lace shawls from Brussels,
or harmonious bowls of the Ming period. The audiences are shameless
so-called music-lovers who dawdle through endless repetitions of the
_Euryanthe_ overture, and who whisper exquisite trifles to one another
about the delights of an audition of a Mozart symphony. Really there
is nothing so smug, so snobbish, to be found in the world as the
audience of a symphony society, unless it be a string-quartet audience.
Beside these groups you find opera-goers are simple human beings. Both
the organization and its supporters, then, we discover, are simply
corrupted by cob-webs. They are things of the past that persist in
going on. A live orchestra, built on living principles, which played
new music if it played at all, would serve not only to develop new
composers, but also new ideas. One can talk intelligently and even
quarrel with one’s neighbor about a new Strawinsky work. At best, if
one is a critic, one can write a column about how Gustav Mahler doubled
the brasses in a Beethoven symphony and thus became the most arrant of
knaves, or, if one is not a critic, one may say, “I like Mr. Stransky
so much when he conducts Liszt!” To be sure, the snobs and the smug
would be bewildered by the novelties. Perhaps they wouldn’t even go to
the concerts, although that seems unbelievable. But there would be new
audiences. At a recent concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in New
York, Dr. Muck dared to place three unfamiliar works on the programme.
(God knows this was an unusual proceeding.) Not one of these was
formidable; not one of them new, except to those comfortable ladies and
gentlemen who have sat through concerts devoted to Beethoven and Bach
so long that they should know the tunes by heart. Yet the protests were
many and loud. I think Dr. Muck really stirred up an interest in music
by this procedure.

But if our symphony societies are dead, what of our string quartets?
Chamber music! Its title explains it. It is music intended to be played
at home ... _music intended to be played_, not to be listened to,
except, perhaps, by some doting members of the performers’ families.
Suppose you play the violin and you can find another violinist, and a
’cellist, and a violist, you invite them all to come to your house some
night and you take down Schubert’s quartets, or Tschaikowsky’s, and
entertain yourselves. Father, reading his paper, listens listlessly....
Sister Mary doesn’t object to giving her ear occasionally, but there is
no concerted attention devoted to you. Nor should there be. People do
not, as a rule, attempt to play piano duets in public. Why they should
play string quartets I do not know. Yet you will find the cult of the
string quartet is almost a mystic body. There is a great deal said
about this being the “highest and noblest” form of music (arbitrary
art-music), and a great many people are impressed with the idea that to
know the string quartets of the masters in itself constitutes a liberal
education. To know how to play them does, in fact, make for a certain
education, but to listen to them--well, that is a different matter. The
string quartet plays in the very dustiest part of the museum in which
“modern” concerts are given. Its audiences are fanatics who have gone
mad over an old religion, and while they will listen on occasion to
trios, sextets, and piano quintets, their idea of the limitations of
the possible combinations of instruments is circumscribed.... To my
mind, there seems to be no good reason why we should not have a duet
between child’s voice and flute; two guitars and two mandolins make
very pretty music.

I really do not know whether it is the concert-going public which makes
snobs of the critics, or the critics who make snobs of the public. It
is certain that the music critics are loftier in their self-created
mountain strongholds than almost any body of people since the worthy
mastersingers. They are the cataloguers of the museum, and as each
set of performers takes out an old doll and makes its arms and legs
wobble, and teases it to cry “Mama,” they express their delight or
their displeasure over the results. If a new doll, by any chance, is
brought in, it is quickly sent to the basement by these judges, unless
it imitates not only in appearance, but in gesture as well, some old
doll. Montemezzi is a doll who did not win the disapproval of the
critics because they had been hearing _L’Amore dei tre Re_ or something
like it all their lives.... Zandonai, on the other hand.... New dolls
are not wanted in a museum which contains the works of Beethoven, Bach,
and Brahms. Pratella’s name does not even begin with a B. But neither
does Strauss’s, nor Debussy’s. After all, however, if one writes
criticisms one must have a standard, I hear you objecting. Most critics
do, mercifully enough for their readers, for if one’s standard is not
to accept any innovations after a diminished seventh, it at least
gives his readers an opportunity to be aware of what he means when he
says that a work is discordant. When a seasoned examiner of musical
criticism meets this word he understands that the critic means that
the music under discussion is quite different from that of Weber and
Puccini. There may be, on the other hand, very good reasons to suppose
that to an unprejudiced ear, one not fed up on art-music, the new music
may not be any more discordant than the hum of a factory, the roar of
a city, or any of the familiar rhythmical sounds to which our ears are
so accustomed that we accept them. The Hottentot and the Chinaman find
real pleasure in what we call discords, and, as a result, they have
achieved in their music complexities of rhythm which would be beyond
the grasp of the ordinary composer of our art-music.... It is alone the
critic’s point of view, well-defined, which makes him comprehensible
when he disdains to be more scientific in his criticism.

There would seem to be a better way, unless the critic can describe
his emotions as poignantly as Pater painted his impressions of the
_Monna Lisa_. Why not a scientific description? For years columns and
pages have been pouring over to us about the “discordant” Schoenberg,
but nothing which actually gives you an idea of Schoenberg has yet
appeared, at least not under my eyes. (I might except a few paragraphs
in Huneker’s article.) One could give an idea of what the music really
was like, at least to a musician. Or one could make a confession, such
as I heard Alfred Hertz make after the first performance in London
of Strawinsky’s very beautiful opera, _The Nightingale_, in which
instruments are combined with such strange effect that it is almost as
if the composer had discovered a new scale of tones: “I am considered a
good musician. When I am conducting an orchestra I can detect a false
note in the furthest bassoon, or the nearest flute, but in the second
act of _The Nightingale_ I could not name a single note.”

  _January, 1915._




The Secret of the Russian Ballet




Secret of the Russian Ballet


Irony certainly directed the workings of fate when it was decreed, in
this age of individualism, that the group-spirit should dominate the
movements of the theatre, an institution in which, not so many years
ago, the individual reigned, his head crowned with bays. Democracy has
two effects: it strengthens the individual and it gives him the power
to join with other individuals in fostering the growth of his ideals.
Thus Max Reinhardt, distinctly individual though he may be, has made
his impression through his artists, his actors, and his musicians. So
has Stanislawsky of Moscow, who in one instance solicited the services
of Gordon Craig. The Irish Theatre movement, which developed so great
a genius as Synge and many lesser, but still important, writers,
such as T. C. Murray and St. John Ervine, was essentially conceived
in the group-spirit. But more than any of these, the most brilliant
movement in the theatre of our time, the Russian Ballet (I am referring
specifically to the organization under the direction of Serge de
Diaghilew) has relied to an extraordinary degree on the group for its
effect--one which, on modern art, music, dancing, stage decorations,
and women’s fashions, can scarcely be overestimated. I have heard it
said, not altogether as a jest, that the Russian Ballet has had an
influence on European politics.

There are still many people, however, who have never seen the
performances of the Russian Ballet, who think of it only as an
aggregation of virtuosi, much after the manner of one of Mr.
Grau’s all-star casts in _Les Huguenots_. It is true that the
names of Nijinsky, Karsavina, Fokine, Miassine, Bolm, and Fokina
have inevitably awakened the same sort of magic sympathy that the
names of Nordica, Melba, Calvé and the de Rezskes once evoked. The
misunderstanding has followed in natural sequence. Nevertheless--and
this is said without any desire to depreciate the value of the Russian
stars--it is fortunate that the ideal of the producers of these
mimed dramas is aimed higher than at the exploitation of individual
talent. Their ultimate goals are cohesiveness and general pictorial
effect. And this fact makes it possible for the Ballet to give
representative performances with or without the aid of any particular
dancer. In the summer of 1914, for example, in the absence of the
superlative Nijinsky, the Russians made very lovely productions of
Rimsky-Korsakow’s _The Golden Cock_ and Richard Strauss’s _The Legend
of Joseph_.

For any comprehensive view of the achievements of the organization, it
is essential to remember that Mr. de Diaghilew’s Russian Ballet began
in Paris as an art exhibition; that is the secret. For two seasons
Bakst and other Russian painters hung their pictures in the French
capital. These two picture-shows are now included in the official lists
of the Russian Ballet seasons, and by no means accidentally, or for
purposes of misrepresentation. For the Ballet has, in a large sense,
continued to be a picture-exhibition, and in spite of the fact that
some of the novelty has been worn off by multiplied imitations, the
thing itself still retains a good deal of the original impulse. The
Russian Ballet, on its decorative side, is entirely responsible for
the riot of color which has spread over the Western world in clothes
and house furnishings. Without the Russian Ballet as an inspiration
there could have been no Paul Poiret, no Paul Iribe, no George Barbier,
no Jean Cocteau, no George Lepape, no Marcel Lejeune. There surely
would have been no “Gazette de Bon-Ton” and no department-shop sales
of striped and spotted fabrics of every shade under the sun. George
Bernard Shaw did not stretch the truth when he said that for the past
five years the Russian Ballet has furnished the sole inspiration for
fashions in women’s dress.... One does not need to remember any further
back than the summer of 1914, when _Papillons_ and _The Legend of
Joseph_ were produced, to follow him. The crinolined ruffled skirts of
the former ballet and the prim Veronese gowns of the latter (recall
Lillah McCarthy’s dresses in _The Doctor’s Dilemma_) have been repeated
in a thousand forms. And so we might go back, year by year, to the
season when Bakst’s _Sheherazade_ launched the Oriental craze which is
still making itself felt in hamlets on the Great Lakes.

These decorations, and the costumes which accompany them, designed by
such artists--many of them well-known painters in Russia--as Roerich,
Bakst, Fedorowsky, Soudeikine, Golovine, Doboujinsky, Alexander
Benois, and Nathalie Gontcharova, are the basis of the beauty of the
Russian Ballet, and they are so perfect in their many manifestations
that no amount of imitation can entirely spoil them. When Roerich’s
scene for the Polovtsian camp in _Prince Igor_, a composition in dull
greys and reds, with low, round-topped tents and rising columns of
smoke, was disclosed in Paris, Jacques Blanche, the French painter,
was moved to write an article in which he hailed the designer as the
inventor of a new type of stage scenery, and even called upon the easel
painters to learn a lesson in truth from this rugged Russian. Roerich
subsequently designed the very beautiful green landscape of the first
scene for Strawinsky’s _The Sacrifice to the Spring_, and the grewsome
setting, between somewhere and nowhere, of the second. To Fedorowsky
are due the barbaric decorations and costumes for Moussorgsky’s opera,
_La Khovanchina_. The dresses of the Persian ballet in this opera,
orange riots, speckled with patches of deep green and blue, have been
plentifully imitated. Soudeikine devised the extravagant ostrich-plumed
gauds worn by the six negroes who accompanied Florent Schmitt’s Salome
on her decadent way. And Nathalie Gontcharova, with exquisite fantasy,
designed the scenes and costumes for _The Golden Cock_, a production in
which the Russians showed that they were willing to go yet further in
the realms of color-combination than they had before ventured. Bakst,
of course, is as well known to us as Aubrey Beardsley or Longfellow.
There have been books of his work on sale; the magazines and newspapers
have reprinted many of his best designs; there has been an exhibition
of his original drawings at the Berlin Photographic Galleries in New
York. However, in spite of the reproductions and imitations, I think
those who have not yet seen a Bakst production, such as _Sheherazade_,
_Daphnis et Chloë_, or the extraordinary _Legend of Joseph_, on the
stage may prepare for a thrill.

The scene exposed on the very large Drury Lane stage as the curtain
rose on Richard Strauss’s ballet was certainly very splendid in its
majestic beauty. The stage directions give some conception of the
picture:

“The scene, the stage furniture, and the costumes are throughout in
the manner of Paolo Veronese, and thus follow, in style and fashion,
those of the period of about 1530. The Egyptian characters wear
Venetian costumes; Joseph and the dealers who bring him to Potiphar,
Oriental dress of the sixteenth century. The scene represents a huge
pillared hall in the Palladian style. The pillars and ceiling are of
bright gold with a greenish sheen. The floor is inlaid with blocks of
colored marble. The background is traversed by a raised loggia, also
of gold, which is open to the air on the farther side, and gives a
view over gardens with playing fountains, and distant wings of the
palace; the openings on the further side are, however, curtained during
the banquet by a vast carpet of Flemish work representing the Earthly
Paradise--stretches of verdure, alive with exotic beasts of every kind.
The loggia has no balustrade, but is open between the pillars from
floor to ceiling, so that the personages traversing it are entirely
visible from head to foot. On the right a flight of steps leads up to
the loggia. Over the floor of the loggia an Oriental carpet is hung,
reaching down to the hall.

“On the stage in front of the loggia are set two tables at right angles
to each other; the one furthest from the spectator is rather long and
runs parallel to the supporting wall of the loggia; the other is only
short, and joins the first at right angles on the left. The table to
the front is raised on three steps as a dais. On the tables are richly
chiselled vessels of gold and silver, high ewers of cut crystal full
to the brim with gleaming red and white wines, and dishes in which
lie, heaped in profusion, pomegranates, peaches, and grapes of unusual
size: golden platters and crystal glasses are before the guests. The
guests--men and women by threes, in opulent Venetian costumes--sit
at the farthermost side of the table at the back, half concealed
behind the vessels of gold, the crystal, and the piled fruit. At the
table in front Potiphar and his wife, the latter in a robe of scarlet
brocade, cut very low, over which hang long strings of pearls. At her
feet on the lowest step of the dais, a young female slave. The tables
are served by eight negro slaves in a semi-Oriental garb of pink and
gold, and on their heads are nodding plumes of white and pink. Behind
the dais, in the angle to the left, under the loggia, Potiphar’s
bodyguard--gigantic mulattos, with breast-plates of black inlaid with
gold, of Toledo workmanship, with black plumes and halberds of gold.
They also carry whips with short golden handles.”

The spaciousness of this picture, the sense of splendor it conveyed,
cannot be communicated second-hand. A young Spanish painter,
José-Maria Sert, designed the majestic loggia, and Bakst vivified the
scene, truly Veronese, with its women in gorgeous brocades, flaring
skirts, puffed sleeves, and stilted mules, the officers in waving
plumes, two of the slaves holding lank greyhounds in check. One detail
was essentially Bakst. In the old Venetian costumes a panel of lace,
down the front, covered the opening made by the flaring brocades. This
Bakst removed, exposing the legs of his women, in silken hose, tightly
trousered above the knee. This undergarmenting, in its inception, is
authentic, as anyone may see who visits the Museo Civico Correr in
Venice.

I have hesitated this long over _The Legend of Joseph_ because, in
reproduction at least, it is one of the least familiar of the Bakst
ballets, not because it is more interesting than _Sheherazade_,
_Daphnis et Chloë_, or a half-dozen other of this artist’s productions.

In considering the factors which go to make up the perfection of
this organization it is necessary to lay considerable stress on the
importance of the music. In each of the cities where the Ballet has
appeared a large orchestra of picked musicians (in some instances an
organized orchestra, such as Thomas Beecham’s in London) has assisted
at the performances. The music of the ballets, even when adapted for
this use, as in _Cléopâtre_, is of a fine quality, and in the variety
of the compositions employed (ordinarily three or four ballets make
up a programme) and in the manner of their performance there is the
greatest amount of interest for those who are more interested in
hearing than in seeing. Particularly is this true as the Russian Ballet
has been the means of bringing some of the most radical and anarchistic
of modern composers to a hearing before the public. Since Tschaikowsky
wrote three ballets, no musician in Russia has considered it less than
an honor to write for dancing.

Certain of the works performed have been taken from the concert room,
_l’Après-midi d’un Faune_, for example, with the approval, and even
the applause, of Monsieur Debussy; and _Sheherazade_, in spite of the
protests of Rimsky-Korsakow’s heirs. Balakirew’s _Thamar_, too, was
programme music before it became a ballet. But several works have
been written for performance by this organization. Among these I may
mention Maurice Ravel’s _Daphnis et Chloë_, the music of which exactly
illustrates the action of the ballet but is not easily transferable to
the concert room, although Ravel made an arrangement which the Colonne
Orchestra has played in Paris and the Symphony Society of New York
has performed in New York; Debussy’s _Jeux_; Reynaldo Hahn’s _Le Dieu
Bleu_; Steinberg’s _Midas_; Tcherepnine’s _Narcisse_; Richard Strauss’s
_The Legend of Joseph_, which the composer himself conducted for
several performances both in London and in Paris; and the three really
extraordinary works of Igor Strawinsky, _The Firebird_, _Petrouchka_,
and _The Sacrifice to the Spring_. I have elsewhere expressed my great
admiration for the genius of this young man; it is certainly my opinion
that more inspiration is made manifest in these three works than in
any other recent music I have heard in the theatre or the concert
room. Paul Dukas also wrote a ballet for the Russians, _La Péri_, but
although it was announced, the production was finally made under other
auspices.

Any concert-goer will immediately note the fact that a good deal of
the music in the répertoire of the Russian Ballet is familiar to him.
Balakirew began his symphonic poem, _Tamara_ (the ballet is called
_Thamar_), suggested by a poem by Lermontoff, in 1867; it was concluded
in 1882. The composer wrote in 1869 that he had composed parts of it as
he “danced along” the street. The Chicago Orchestra performed the work
for the first time in America in 1896. The Russian Symphony Society
introduced it to New York in 1908. When the Russians adopted the work
to use as a ballet the critic of the “Morning Times” in London said
that the action did not fit the music very well, and yet the story of
the ballet is almost precisely that of the symphonic poem, so that if
anyone was at fault in this regard it must have been the composer.
Here is the fable to which Balakirew wrote music, in the words of the
programme notes (by William Hubbard Harris) of the Chicago Orchestra:

“In the narrow Dariel Pass, where the River Terek roars, covered with
heavy mists, there rises an ancient tower, in which there lived Queen
Thamar, an angel of beauty, a cruel, wily demon in thoughts, and yet
at the same time divine. At her enchanting call the passing traveller
entered the tower to take part in the banquet in progress there.
Shouts and cries of revelry awakened echoes in the darkness, as if
at a great feast a hundred young, pleasure-loving men and women were
gathered, or as if, in that great tower, erstwhile forbidding, the
celebration of funeral rites were taking place. At the break of day
gloomy silence again reigned, broken only by the foaming Terek as it
hurried away a corpse. At this moment there appeared at the window
a pale shadow. It waved afar a last farewell to the loved one. That
farewell breathed such tender ecstasy, the voice which uttered it was
so sweet, that its every accent, filled with promise, seemed to tell of
near, unspeakable happiness.”

Only in its conclusion does the ballet action vary from this story. The
Queen lures the Prince to his doom, dances with him as the centre of a
bacchanale, and then gives him the knife-thrust, as her slaves hurl him
through an opened door into the river. But as the curtain falls we see
her, not waving farewell to her old victim, but waving welcome to a new
one.

Perhaps the composer really was at fault, because the music has never
made a profound impression in this country. Here is W. J. Henderson’s
account of it in “The Sun,” following the performance by the Russian
Symphony Society:

“Tamara was a queen, and she dwelt by the River Terek in an ancient
tower, where she was wont to indulge in nights _à la Cléopâtre russe_.
In the mornings the dead bodies of her lovers went floating down the
stream, while she sang exquisite love-songs, just as if her lovers
could be lured back. In the music of Balakirew one could hear the
river, which sounded much like the Rhine, even to suggestions of the
Drachenfels. The riotous nights were perhaps less clearly indicated.
They were somewhat repressed, muffled, as it were. Perhaps Tamara, out
of consideration for the neighbors, used to shut the windows when she
was holding high jinks on the banks of the blue Terek in the Caucasus.
But they had long nights up there, for the listener sitting outside
the tower (in a hard orchestra chair) and waiting for the exquisite
love-song, grew stiff and cold. And, after all, it was a mean little
love-song, because it had no tune, and it would not have lured a
red-headed boy, let alone a dead man.”

However, Mr. Henderson had not seen Karsavina as the wicked queen
when he wrote those lines, nor had he seen Bakst’s gorgeous Georgian
costumes--a variant, it is true, of the greens and blues with which
he had decorated _Sheherazade_. The fault of the ballet, as a whole,
is that it is reminiscent of _Sheherazade_; and yet it is effective
and has persisted in the répertoire of the Russians since it was first
given in 1912. The overdresses of the women gave rise to one of the
fashions in women’s gowns which spread over our world two years ago.

Rimsky-Korsakow’s _Sheherazade_ is another matter. The music was not
written to accompany the story used in the ballet, and yet it fits
it perfectly. Still, Mme. Rimsky-Korsakow (the composer, of course,
is dead) protested violently against what she called a desecration
of her husband’s intention, when the ballet was first produced. (A
similar protest was lodged against the organization in 1914, when
it produced Rimsky-Korsakow’s last opera, _The Golden Cock_, with a
double cast, one choreographic and one vocal, although the opera had
been written to be _sung_.) No piece of music is better known in the
concert hall than this, and any concert-goer will remember the violin
theme which portrays the last of the Sultan’s wives, as she relates
the four stories from the “Arabian Nights” which the four movements of
the Suite describe. The ballet follows the action of the prologue of
these stories; the women of the harem steal the keys from the grand
eunuch and let loose the black slaves for a drunken revel of lust,
which is interrupted by the sudden return of the sultan and death to
all concerned. The third movement, that which in the Suite describes
the love of the young prince and the young princess, was omitted from
Fokine’s original arrangement of the ballet, but in 1914 he added this
movement to the action. _Sheherazade_ has been considered since the
time it was first produced in Paris some six years ago, the masterpiece
of the Russians. It made the designer of its scenery and costumes,
Leon Bakst, famous. His color-scheme, mostly of greens, blues, and
oranges, has been frequently imitated in later theatrical productions.
Karsavina’s Zobeide is a suggestive picture of languorous lust, and
Nijinsky, as the principal slave, alternates between surprising leaps
into the air and the most lascivious gestures, as, like some animal, he
paws the reclining Sultana.

_L’Après-midi d’un Faune_ is as well known as _Sheherazade_ in the
concert room. This was the first ballet which Nijinsky staged (he also
enacted the principal rôle). The music was written by Debussy as a
prelude to Mallarmé’s somewhat obscure poem. An English translation,
at least an acceptable one, has hitherto been lacking, but Walter
Conrad Arensberg’s very sympathetic and understanding version has
just appeared; were it not for its length I should like to transcribe
it here. When Debussy’s work is performed Edmund Gosse’s summary of
his idea of the meaning of the poem (with which, by the way, the poet
expressed himself as entirely pleased) usually appears in the programme
notes. But Debussy’s music is called a _prélude_ to the poem and so the
action of the ballet is a prelude to the wonderings of Mallarmé’s faun.
This is the scenario as it was printed in the programmes given out for
the first Paris performances:

“Ce n’est pas _l’Après-midi d’un Faune_ de Stéphane Mallarmé; c’est,
sur le prélude musical à cet épisode panique, une courte scène qui la
précède:

“Un Faune sommeille;

“Des Nymphes le dupent;

“Une écharpe oubliée satisfait son rêve.

“Le rideau baisse pour que le poème commence dans toutes les mémoires.”

There are, I think, seven nymphs engaged in the performance. Their
dresses and their action are suggestive of the figures of Greek vases
and bas-reliefs. One after another they flee from the strangely
misunderstanding faun, until one, bolder than the others, approaches,
almost to remain. The faun still does not understand and she, too,
flees, dropping her scarf behind her. This the faun seizes and, as
the curtain descends, returning to his rock, he presses this scarf
to his lips and breast, at last, apparently, something more than the
faun he has been. Nijinsky in this pantomime (it can scarcely be
called a ballet) suggests all that the poem and the music call forth
in imaginative minds. He has dehumanized the characters and, in a
sense, thereby taken away the sting of the too intense voluptuousness
of the action. However, in spite of this fact, and the further one
that Monsieur Debussy, unlike Mme. Rimsky-Korsakow, not only approved
of the use of his music in this form but even applauded it, the
first performance in Paris (1912) was roundly hissed. Paul Souday, a
well-known critic, led the opposition, and Rodin took up the cudgels
for the defence. “Accusé d’avoir ‘offensé la morale,’ Nijinsky s’est
empressé de donner satisfaction à M. Paul Souday en supprimant sa
‘mimique indécente’ à la fin du ballet. Et pourtant, son illusoire
possession de la nymphe enfuiée, ce corps étendu sur le voile encore
parfumé d’elle, c’était beau!” wrote Gauthier-Villars. It is true that
Nijinsky altered his original performance for a few evenings; then,
however, he returned to his original conception. Meanwhile, the troup
moved to London, where _l’Après-midi d’un Faune_ was acclaimed above
all the other ballets, and almost invariably _repeated_. Since then
it has seldom been given in London and Paris without the audience
demanding a repetition.

_Les Sylphides_, _Papillons_, _Carnaval_, and _Le Spectre de la
Rose_, are all exquisite studies of a different style from the three
ballets I have mentioned. _Carnaval_ is undoubtedly the best of the
lot, although Nijinsky as the rose ghost (the fable was suggested by
a poem of Théophile Gautier) who comes to a young girl in a dream
and bounds out of the window, like a spirit, at dawn, is in his most
poetical mood. _Papillons_ is the newest of these four ballets, and for
it Bakst designed some charming crinolined dresses. Pierrot, in the
garden, after the dance, has set a candle to catch butterflies, and
as the dancers flit out, each pretending to be a butterfly, he tries
to catch them, until the coming of their parents to take them home
teaches him the bitter truth that they are only young girls. The music
is by Schumann, orchestrated by Tcherepnine. _Les Sylphides_ is little
more than a suite of dances in a charming adaptation by Bakst of the
conventional ballet costume. Glazunow and other Russian composers have
orchestrated these Chopin waltzes, mazurkas and preludes. In _Carnaval_
(orchestrated by Tcherepnine, Glazunow, Liadow, and Rimsky-Korsakow)
the fanciful names by which Schumann designated several movements
in these delightful piano pieces are transferred to the characters.
Nijinsky is the Harlequin; Karsavina, Colombine, etc., while such
pieces as _Dancing Letters_ and _Paganini_ are used as divertissements.
The scene, with the two Victorian sofas at the back and Pierrot lying
over the footlights, is charming. The principal characters are those of
the _Commedia dell’ Arte_, while the other dancers are dressed after
the period of about 1830.

_Le Dieu Bleu_ I have not seen, but I transfer the following account
of it from the “London Times” of February 28, 1913, in which the
critic says that “it introduces us to Mme. Karsavina and M. Nijinsky
in two new rôles which suit them well, and it gives good opportunities
for the combination of music, dancing, and spectacle for which M.
de Diaghilew’s troup is famous--a combination designed this time to
suggest what Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World had in mind when he spoke
of the ‘furniture, frippery, and fireworks of China.’ The scene is not
precisely China in this case, but ‘India of the fables,’ which in the
theatre comes to much the same thing, the point only being that it is
the Far Orient, where a glamour of riotous colour is thrown over man’s
actions, and where gods and monsters are as near to us and as alive as
the priests and populace who worship them.

“When the curtain goes up we see M. Bakst’s design of a temple cut
into a rock, with a glimpse of the sky seen through a cleft at the
back, and in the middle a pool on which is floating (or ought to have
been, for it was invisible last night) the sacred lotus. A young man
is about to be initiated into the priesthood. He is surrounded by a
crowd of worshippers, who bring offerings of fruits, flowers and
peacocks to the shrine, and, generally speaking, occupy themselves in
providing the requisite amount of furniture and frippery. Suddenly
there is a tumult at the back, and a young girl (Mme. Karsavina) pushes
her way in past the guards and falls at the feet of her lover, the
would-be initiate, imploring him not to desert her for the priesthood.
He is at first indifferent, but gradually his religious ecstasy
passes off as she recalls their old life together, and eventually,
with an abrupt gesture, he throws himself into her arms. The priests,
in consternation, hurry him off into the back premises, and after
handcuffing the girl, leave her in the darkness, where (like Tamino in
the caverns) she is told she will meet her trial and punishment. After
long moments of suspense, during which night falls, she pushes open a
door through which she sees a chance of escape, and immediately seven
obscene monsters crawl out and are about to drag her with them when,
in despair, she appeals to the sacred lotus in the pool. The lotus
thereupon turns into the goddess, who rises with the blue god from the
water. And then the fireworks began, for the blue god was M. Nijinsky,
who at once set to work to draw the teeth, so to speak, of the
monsters and to make even the trees and flowers ‘bow themselves when he
did dance,’ thus proving satisfactorily that M. Salomon Reinach and his
friends knew what they were about in maintaining that Orpheus came over
the mountains from the East. The miracle accomplished, the priests come
in to take note of it, the young lovers fall into each other’s arms,
the goddess retires to the lake, and the god goes up a staircase, which
is disclosed behind by the removal of a mountain, and remains glued
to it, in spite of the stage directions that he is supposed to fly to
heaven. Being a god, he presumably thought he could please himself.

“The scenario does not give quite so many opportunities to M. Reynaldo
Hahn as to MM. Bakst and Fokine, who are responsible for the pictorial
and choreographic sides of the ballet. The theme associated with the
god is the most striking. The dance with the peacocks is attractive,
there are some beautiful moments when the young girl appeals to her
lover, and their duet of joy at the end is spirited, but much of the
music is lacking in character and the energy of the dance. It is
written with the beautifully clear technique to which M. Hahn has
accustomed us, but there is little driving force in it, and not a touch
of passion in the scenes where passion is wanted to give contrast to
the personal movements of the crowd or the calm atmosphere of the
divinities.”

_Le Pavilion d’Armide_ is a graceful combination of two picturesque
periods of romantic art, for a French Vicomte, storm-stayed on his
travels, is offered hospitality by a Marquis, who lodges him in a
pavilion of his castle, where the Gobelin tapestry comes to life
during the night. The whole thing is, of course, a dream, in which the
Vicomte sees in the Magician of the tapestry the person of his host,
and himself plays the part of Rinaldo (the characters are those of
Quinault’s play set to music by Lulli and Gluck). When the change comes
and Armida and her court come to life, what really comes to life is
the court of Versailles; here is the Grand Monarque himself, and there
the most enchanting group of knights in pink with feather head-dresses
dance with ladies whose costumes combine the grace of Watteau with the
conventional dancing-skirt with the happiest results.

In the dances from _Prince Igor_, accompanied by a chorus, the Russians
loosen their restraint to a degree which would mean a totally
unrestrained performance in the hands of another group of dancers. It
is almost impossible to believe, after witnessing these wild Polovtsian
dances, that the action has been perfectly ordered by Fokine and can
be repeated exactly at any time. The ballet occupies almost all of the
fourth act of Borodine’s opera. I believe that the choruses to which
these dances are performed were sung at a concert of the MacDowell
Chorus in Carnegie Hall, March 3, 1911. The New York Winter Garden
once utilized the music for a ballet. The scene used by the Russians,
painted by Roerich, is marvelously suggestive of barbarism; the now
languorous, now passionate music, pulsing with rhythm, is admirably
adapted to dancing. Usually Mme. Fokina and Bolm are seen in these
dances, but it is the ballet corps itself which becomes the important
feature in their success.

“How excellently,” says one foreign critic, “every means that the
theatre offers has been made use of to produce the desired effect;
the menace of the coming cloud of barbarians that is to lie for
centuries on the desolate face of Russia (for we are in the camp of
the Polovtsians, forerunners of the great invasion); not the loud
blustering of a Tamburlaine the Great, but the awful, quiet vigor,
half melancholy, half playful, of a tribe that is but a little unit
in the swarm; the infinite horizons of the steppe, with the line of
the buried _tumuli_ stretching away to endless times and places, down
the centuries into Siberia; the long-drawn, resigned, egoless music
(Borodine drew his themes from real Tartar-Mongol sources); the women
that crouch, unconscious of themselves, or rise and stretch lazy limbs,
and in the end fling themselves carelessly prone when their dance is
over; the savage-joyful panther leaping of the men; the stamping feet
and quick, nerve-racking beat of the drum; and more threatening than
all, the gambolling of the boys, like kittens unwittingly preparing
themselves for the future chase.”

But whose is the guiding hand, the hand that combines the rhythms,
the colors, and the human element in these works? It is Fokine’s;
without Fokine I do not see very well how these ballets could come
into existence. (I am now speaking of Fokine, of course, entirely
as a producer. He is also known as a dancer. One must bear in mind,
also, that Nijinsky’s three ballets--he contrived the action
for _l’Après-midi d’un Faune_, _Jeux_, and _The Sacrifice to the
Spring_--were very original and effective.) Until Fokine began
to work, the ballet-master had been content to arrange all his
_coryphées_ in straight lines across the stage, each dancer making
the same simultaneous movement as her neighbor. Fokine divined the
ineffectiveness of this false symmetry. He divided his forces into
many groups, each group a unit in movement. (The ultimate result of
the application of this principle was Nijinsky’s staging of _The
Sacrifice to the Spring_, in which each dancer was set a separate
simultaneous task.) Nor did Fokine allow any one group of dancers the
whole of any movement in the music. He subdivided the movements into
phrases. He really divided his ballet into choirs, just as Richard
Strauss and Reger subdivided the orchestra, in which, in the time of
Bellini and Donizetti, large bodies of the strings used to play in
unison. Then each choir was given certain phrases to interpret, some
in the background, some in the foreground, until the polyphony of the
music was perfectly synchronized with the action of the ballet. Many
of the ideas for Fokine’s ballets were derived from pictures. It is
possible to see at once the pictorial resemblance between _The Legend
of Joseph_ and Veronese’s _The Marriage at Cana_, or between _Midas_
and Mantegna’s _Parnasse_ in the Louvre. But Fokine also learned how
to control movement, and how to preserve balance from pictures. In the
Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice there is a room devoted to large
paintings by Gentile Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio, depicting events in
Venetian history. In one of them is a procession, and a study of the
different groups of marchers and bystanders will give you an excellent
idea of the effective and pictorial intricacy of a Fokine ballet. In
_The Legend of Joseph_ Fokine attains one of his most thrilling effects
in the last scene, where the handmaidens of the refused Potiphar’s
wife, clad in black gauze, with bare arms and legs, wave their arms in
a frenzy of hysterical disdain at the offending Joseph. Shortly after
seeing the ballet, in walking through the Egyptian rooms of the British
Museum, I came across an Egyptian fresco which almost seemed to me at
first, in the exact spirit in which Fokine had caught its feeling, to
be a photograph of the action I had seen on the stage.

Russians are natural dancers. It is said that only Russians and
Poles can learn to do the mazurka properly, in which the women
engage in that peculiar gliding step which someone characterized as
the definite expression of Meredith’s phrase, “gliding women.” So,
under the guidance of Fokine, with the inspiration which such music
and color as are provided for them can give, the Russians engaged
in the carrying out of these ballets easily rise to an unattainable
(for other dancers) height of seeming spontaneity. They have that
“like-to-do-it” and creative (as opposed to reproductive) air which
every stage director knows is almost impossible to instill into a
large company with any hope that it will be retained after the first
performance. But the Russians never lose it. A ballet, given so often
as _Sheherazade_, during a period extending over many seasons, always
seems freshly produced. There are no slovenly details. The wild orgy
of the Polovtsian dances of _Prince Igor_ is invariably exposed with a
feeling on the part of the spectator that he is witnessing the intense
enjoyment of the participants.

Another important point is the variety in the ballets, a variety which
covers not only subject and music, but also treatment in decoration
and staging, so that such an ultra-modern work as _The Sacrifice to
the Spring_, staged by Nijinsky in an attempt to emulate the style
of the futurists in painting, with music by Strawinsky, who might
be called a master of dissonance, and with decorations in hard and
primitive colors by Roerich, finds itself naturally side by side with
the charming and poetic _Sylphides_, gracefully staged by Fokine,
with music by Chopin (orchestrated), and with decorations in pale
green and white by Bakst. Of course, some ballets, because of their
fables, or the nature of their music, naturally resemble one another.
_Sheherazade_, _Cléopâtre_, and _Thamar_ all have certain points
in common; so have _Les Sylphides_, _Carnaval_, and _Papillons_.
There is a resemblance between _Daphnis et Chloë_, _Narcisse_, and
_l’Après-midi d’un Faune_. But it is easy to vary these likenesses by
not putting them into juxtaposition, by mingling them with the bizarre
_Petrouchka_, the barbaric Polovtsian dances from _Prince Igor_, the
idealistic _Spectre de la Rose_, with Weber’s _Invitation to the Dance_
as its accompaniment, the gorgeous and pompous _Legend of Joseph_, the
frivolous _Midas_, the exotic _Le Dieu Bleu_, or the pageantry of the
dances from Rimsky-Korsakow’s _Sadko_.

It is impossible, of course, to ignore the genius and virtuosity of
individual interpretation entirely in a study of the Russian Ballet,
minimize as one may its importance. There have been very many pages
written in an attempt to capture the charm and genius of Nijinsky on
paper. He has been described variously as “half-human, half-god,” as a
tongue of flame, and as a jet of water spurting from a fountain. The
word “youth” expresses something of the wonder of this marvelous boy.
He never seems to be doing anything difficult, and yet his command of
technique is incredible. He always seems spontaneous, and yet I have
been told that, like Olive Fremstad, he does not make the slightest
movement of a finger which has not been carefully thought out. He
seems to me to be the greatest of stage artists (and I include all
concert musicians as well as opera singers and actors in this sweeping
statement). I mean by this that he communicates more of beauty and
emotion to me as a spectator than other interpretative artists do. All
impressions of this sort are necessarily personal, but they do not for
that reason lack value. It is essential, however, to see Nijinsky in a
variety of parts to get his true measure. As the lover of the sylphs in
_Les Sylphides_ he is a pale _efféminé_, a Chopiniac, a charming Aubrey
Beardsley drawing, a lovely thing in line, and grace, and sentiment.
In _Petrouchka_ he is a puppet, and--remarkable touch--a puppet with a
soul. His performance in this ballet (the characters are marionettes,
but the story is something like that of _Pagliacci_) is, perhaps, his
most wonderful achievement. He suggests only the puppet in action; his
facial expression never changes; yet the pathos is greater, more keenly
carried over the footlights, than one would imagine possible under
any conditions. I have seen Fokine in the same rôle, and although he
gives you all the gestures, the result is not the same. It is genius
that Nijinsky puts into his interpretation of the part. Who can ever
forget Nijinsky as Petrouchka when thrown by his master into his queer
black box, mad with love for the dancer, who, in turn, prefers the Moor
puppet, rushing about waving his pathetically stiff arms in the air,
and finally beating his way with his clenched fists through the paper
window and cursing the stars? It is a more poignant expression of
grief than most Romeos can give us. _Jeux_ shows us the love games of
a trio (two women and a man) searching for a tennis ball in a garden
at twilight. It recalls itself to me chiefly for the _glissando_ (the
music is by Debussy) with which the ballet begins as the tennis ball
bounces across the stage, followed by Nijinsky, who bounds across the
broad stage of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris in two leaps.
These leaps are triumphs of dexterity, grace of motion, and thrill,
and he does not waste them. They have given rise to the rumor that
Nijinsky’s element is the air. In _l’Après-midi d’un Faune_ he makes
only one of these quick movements, but with such astonishing effect
that on one occasion (it was the third time I had seen this stage
arrangement of Debussy’s prelude to Mallarmé’s poem) my companion,
a well-known dramatic critic who sits stolidly through performances
by all the great tragedians, burst into tears. In _Sheherazade_, as
the black slave of the harem who dominates the story of the ballet,
Nijinsky utilizes his leap to dominate the bacchanale, which is the
climax of that piece of sensual excitement. As the crowd of women,
wives of the sultan, and black slaves, drunk with wine and lust, enter
into the wildest dance, the negro in silver trousers in the centre
of the stage leaps higher and higher straight into the air above the
heads of his companions.... The descent, with the indescribable curve
of the legs, is something to be seen. In _Carnaval_, Nijinsky enacts
the Harlequin with great roguishness and impertinence. To the piece
called _Reconaissance_ he dances with Karsavina, as Colombine, the
most entrancing of polkas. His dancing of the piece called _Paganini_,
however, is most memorable. At that point where the dominant seventh
on E flat emerges through a deft use of the pedal, he represents the
effect to perfection by suddenly sitting down, as a writer on the
“London Times” once noted. It is not, as a matter of fact, as a mere
dancer that Nijinsky excels, although he _does_ excel even there, but
it is in the poetic interpretation of his rôle, the genius in his
playing, that he expresses so much more than his nearest rival. He
is incomparable as a dancer, as you may very well see in works like
_Carnaval_ and _Les Sylphides_, in which dancing dominates the action;
but even in these ballets he never loses sight of characterization, and
the shaded values of ensemble.

Tamara Karsavina is a very beautiful woman, although her beauty
has not the subtle quality of the more gifted Anna Pavlowa. She is
an artist and a fine dancer, a mime of great talent. She fits more
perfectly into an ensemble scheme than Pavlowa, who was once a member
of this organization herself. She is delicate and flower-like and she
suggests vice with a great degree of verisimilitude. Her Salome, with
the painted roses on her nude knees and breasts, is a fragile bit of
decadence. As the temptress Queen of _The Golden Cock_ she suggests the
strange perverted power of a Kundry, an Astarte, or a Loreley. In _The
Legend of Joseph_ it is her duty to sit at a table without changing her
expression throughout almost an entire act. It is a difficult task;
one must perceive the depths of the woman’s boredom, which does not
express itself even in impatience, and she must dominate the scene.
She accomplishes her tasks beautifully, as she does also the long walk
across the stage in stilted Venetian shoes at the close of the scene.
In _Petrouchka_ she is a fitting companion to Nijinsky, and her little
dance with the cornet is a delicious and entrancing moment; her Chloë
is exquisite, soft, Greek, and girlish, and in Ravel’s ballet and
in Florent Schmitt’s _Salome_ she dances _on her toes_ in bare feet
(remember that half the so-called “toe-dancers” resort to padded and
reinforced slippers for their power). I never lack enthusiasm for
Karsavina; but I cannot place her near Nijinsky.

The crescendo of eulogy with which these notes progress seems
unavoidable. If one is in sympathy with the aims of this group of
artists (Gordon Craig is not, I believe), one must recognize the
success with which they have carried them out. Naturally, there are
flaws. Doboujinsky’s costumes for _Midas_ are certainly very hard in
color; Steinberg’s music for the same ballet, a series of futile brass
blares; the story itself (Bakst _should_ confine himself to painting),
a bore. Miassine is scarcely the dancer one would have chosen for so
important a rôle as Joseph, which, on the other hand, he is suited
to physically. Karsavina’s portrayal of the ultimate emotions of
Potiphar’s wife is a little unconvincing. I do not even admire Bakst’s
setting for his very lovely costumes in _l’Après-midi d’un Faune_. But
these are very small insects in the amber of enjoyment.

  _November, 1915._




Igor Strawinsky: A New Composer




Strawinsky: A New Composer


In America we are not accustomed to look to performances of the ballet,
which, after all, is not an institution with us, for musical manna.
There have doubtless been ballets given here with music by composers
whose names occur in Grove’s Dictionary, sometimes performed by a
fairly good band, but we have not expected, or received, revelations on
these occasions. Since the Russian Ballet (the organization directed
by Serge de Diaghilew) has travelled to and fro in Europe, Paris, and
more especially London, have learned a thing or two in this respect.
For much of the most interesting of the modern music has been brought
to these cities by the Russians, who include not only ballet but also
opera in their répertoire. They are responsible for the productions,
outside of Russia, of Moussorgsky’s two operas, _Boris Godunow_ and _La
Khovanchina_ (this latter music-drama was not produced by the Imperial
Theatres in Russia until over twenty years after its publication in
the Rimsky-Korsakow version. Its presentation at Moscow took place
after its Paris and London performances, and at Petrograd only a
month or so before!); Rimsky-Korsakow’s operas, _Ivan the Terrible_,
_A Night in May_, and _The Golden Cock_; and Borodine’s _Prince Igor_.
As for ballets, Richard Strauss wrote _The Legend of Joseph_ for
these dancers; Maurice Ravel, _Daphnis et Chloë_; Debussy, _Jeux_;
Reynaldo Hahn, _Le Dieu Bleu_; Paul Dukas, _La Péri_ (to be sure,
this work was finally produced under other auspices; withdrawn by the
composer from the Russians a few days before the date set for the first
performance, on the ground that insufficient time had been allotted for
rehearsals); and Tcherepnine, _Narcisse_ and _Le Pavilion d’Armide_;
but most important of all are the three ballets (and the lyric drama)
contributed by Igor Strawinsky, who has, in a sense, developed a new
medium out of the orchestra by writing a new language for it, although
it may be plainly seen that he is the logical descendant of the
really Russian composers (brushing aside the Tschaikowsky-Rubinstein
interlude; nationalism was, of course, no object with these musicians).
There are suggestions of Strawinsky’s style so far back as Glinka, in
the Oriental dances of _Russlan and Luidmilla_. You will find the germs
of his method in Borodine’s symphonies; from Moussorgsky to Strawinsky
is but a step, especially if you refer to the original text of _Boris
Godunow_ and not the Rimsky-Korsakow version. In fact, Strawinsky,
in spite of his radical departures from academic methods, is the
inevitable defender of the faith of the famous “Five” whose slogan was
“Nationalism and Truth.” As all real progress in art is dependent, in a
measure, on the past, it is necessary to establish this fact.

My personal impressions of this young Russian’s music and its effect
on me are very strong. I attended the first performance in Paris of
Strawinsky’s anarchistic (against the canons of academic art) ballet,
_The Sacrifice to the Spring_, in which primitive emotions are both
depicted and aroused by a dependence on barbarous rhythm, in which
melody and harmony, as even so late a composer as Richard Strauss
understands them, do not enter. A certain part of the audience,
thrilled by what it considered a blasphemous attempt to destroy music
as an art, and swept away with wrath, began very soon after the rise
of the curtain to whistle, to make cat-calls, and to offer audible
suggestions as to how the performance should proceed. Others of us,
who liked the music and felt that the principles of free speech were
at stake, bellowed defiance. It was war over art for the rest of the
evening and the orchestra played on unheard, except occasionally when a
slight lull occurred. The figures on the stage danced in time to music
they had to imagine they heard and beautifully out of rhythm with the
uproar in the auditorium. I was sitting in a box in which I had rented
one seat. Three ladies sat in front of me and a young man occupied the
place behind me. He stood up during the course of the ballet to enable
himself to see more clearly. The intense excitement under which he was
laboring, thanks to the potent force of the music, betrayed itself
presently when he began to beat rhythmically on the top of my head with
his fists. My emotion was so great that I did not feel the blows for
some time. They were perfectly synchronized with the beat of the music.
When I did, I turned around. His apology was sincere. We had both been
carried beyond ourselves. Later, when the public’s attitude had assumed
a more formal aspect, I had a better opportunity for studying the score
of this ballet.

My second personal impression is a memory of an evening a few nights
later, when I attended a performance of Strawinsky’s earlier ballet,
_Petrouchka_. _Petrouchka_ is another kind of entertainment. It was a
success with the public from the beginning, and is still an important
feature in the répertoire of the Russian Ballet. It is by _Petrouchka_,
in fact, that Strawinsky will be introduced to New York by the Russians
during the current season.... The curtains had closed on these pathetic
scenes from the Russian carnival. They were drawn back to disclose
Karsavina and Nijinsky. Presently a third figure appeared, very
thin and short, with a Jewish profile (I do not know, however, that
Strawinsky is a Jew). Dragged on the stage by Nijinsky, pale, awkward,
and timid, his near-sighted eyes blinded by the footlights, the
composer bowed his acknowledgments to the applause, nervously fingering
his eyeglasses. This account would be incomplete without a reference
to his dress, as irreproachable in fit and texture as that of Arturo
Toscanini.

A London experience is also worth the telling. It happened after the
first performance there of _The Nightingale_, a lyric drama to set a
pace in the race towards the future. There was a long intermission
after this short opera before the continuation of the bill, which
included a performance of _The Legend of Joseph_, the composer himself
conducting, and Steinberg’s _Midas_. In the foyer I met my friend
Alfred Hertz. Those who know this conductor are familiar with his
moods. Tired, after a rehearsal of _Parsifal_, or excited before the
performance of a work which he is about to conduct for the first time,
he becomes _distrait_ and unconversational to a degree which would not
seem possible in a man who ordinarily is as fond of anecdote as he is
of Viennese pastry. I recognized his mood on this occasion. Mopping his
brow (it was June), he was good enough to explain.

“I can’t stay here any longer,” he said. “It’s very embarrassing.
Strauss asked me to come. I am here as his guest to hear _The Legend
of Joseph_, but I can’t listen to it. I’m too tired--I am exhausted. I
have never heard such extraordinary music. I have never been so moved,
so excited before at the performance of a new opera.... Oh, if I could
have the privilege of introducing that work to New York, then I should
be happy!”

I am very glad to quote these words to the lasting honor of one who
realized at once the pleasure that Strawinsky’s music, quite in a new
mode, would give to the coming generation, and to a few in the present.

M. D. Calvocoressi, I believe, had the honor of signing the first
article in English about Strawinsky, shortly after the production
of _The Firebird_ in Paris. Mr. Calvocoressi is to musicians what
Mr. George Moore, who introduced Paul Verlaine, Jules Laforgue, and
Arthur Rimbaud to English readers, has been to poets--an appreciator
of contemporaries. This is a rare trait, one not possessed by John
Runciman of the “Saturday Review” or by several other prominent
critics, whose names instantly spring to mind. The initial article
in English about the young Russian composer appeared in the London
“Musical Times” for August 1, 1911. Since then Mr. Calvocoressi has
written much on the subject, and a good deal of his information seems
to have been gleaned from headquarters, since he quotes Strawinsky
freely. (This critic is, of course, particularly interested in
Russian music. He translated Balakirew’s songs into French, and wrote
a life of Moussorgsky.) With the words of the composer as a guide,
Mr. Calvocoressi has made a most interesting discovery, that in the
lyric-drama music of this young man “working-out” plays no part. There
is no development in the music of _The Nightingale_; the music simply
expresses what the text dictates it shall express as it goes along.
(In this respect, of course, Strawinsky is but following an ukase of
the “Five” to its logical conclusion; they, in their desire to create
a national school, chose as the best means of banishing any suggestion
of Wagner, whose theories were generally being blindly accepted and
adopted by composers of music-dramas at this epoch, the banning of the
use of the _leitmotiv_. However, they repeated themes and melodies, and
Moussorgsky in _Boris_ brings back the bells that served to ring in
Boris’s coronation, in broken rhythm to ring out his life.)

In regard to this matter Strawinsky has put himself on record as
saying, “I want to suggest neither situations nor emotions, but simply
to manifest, to express them. I think there is in what are called
‘impressionist’ methods a certain amount of hypocrisy, or at least a
tendency towards vagueness and ambiguity. That I shun above all things,
and that, perhaps, is the reason why my methods differ as much from
those of the impressionists as they differ from academic conventional
methods. Though I often find it extremely hard to do so, I always aim
at straightforward expression in its simplest form. I have no use for
‘working-out’ in dramatic or lyric music. The one essential thing is to
feel and to convey one’s feelings.”

This, of course, is a more elaborate version of what Moussorgsky said,
“Plain truth, however unpalatable, and nothing more. No half measures;
ornamentation is superfluity.”

In one of Mr. Calvocoressi’s recent articles about Strawinsky that
critic says, in lines which illuminate: “According to the modern
conception of the lyric drama, the chief quality of dramatic music is
terseness--a quality most uncommon in all kinds of music, and which
many will, not altogether wrongly, think almost incompatible with
the very essence of musical art. The principle of music as generally
understood appears to be amplification, repetition.

“At all events, the art of music has always consisted chiefly in that
of ‘working-out.’ And it is but of late that a number of music-makers
and music-expounders have raised an outcry against prolixity and
redundance in music: an outcry, it must be added, that for the present
does not find much echo among the majority of art judges nor of the
public.

“The first of great musicians to abjure the principle of formal,
elaborate ‘working-out’ in dramatic and lyric music was Moussorgsky.
A striking peculiarity of his best songs and of his masterpiece,
_Boris Godunow_, is the absolute lack, not only of anything resembling
tautology or amplification, per se, but of all that is not absolutely
essential to direct expression (including many devices which no other
musician of the time would have dreamt of leaving out), even if the
omission be in defiance of tonal construction and balance.

“For instance, the song, _The Orphan_, ends very dramatically on the
suspensive harmony of the dominant. _Death’s Lullaby_, which depicts a
dialogue between a horror-stricken mother and Death, who comes to take
away a child, ends abruptly on the burden of Death’s last utterance,
with which the composer’s intention is fulfilled. He never gives a
thought to the practice of bringing back the main key which would have
led him either to an inappropriate modulation or to a superfluous
addition. Similarly, _Boris Godunow_, in the authentic version, ends,
without even a cadence, on a chord that hardly leaves the impression of
the tonic.”

Mr. Calvocoressi points out the fact that there are few passages for
orchestra alone in _Boris_ outside of the _polonaise_ and the very
brief preludes to the acts, and he asks us to observe the working of
the same principle in _Pelléas et Mélisande_, in which it is evident
that Debussy was influenced by Moussorgsky. Schoenberg was the first
to apply this principle to orchestral music. However, if an opera-goer
finds much to enjoy in the dramas of Moussorgsky and Strawinsky, it
does not necessarily follow that all the value of a work like _Die
Walküre_ disappears, to his ears. The two principles of art are
different; each, perhaps, is equally valid.

“But the fact is that a new factor has appeared in the domain of
dramatic music, which is now entering a new path; and consequently
a new order of artistic pleasure may be the outcome of this stage
of evolution. The first consequence, of course, is a greater
differentiation between the style of dramatic music and the style
of instrumental music; unquestionably a progress, since it widens
the range of methods and gives greater freedom to the composer’s
imagination.”

All of this is very stimulating, and very true; still, it cannot be
said that audiences as a whole grasp Strawinsky’s intention, as it is
exploited in _The Nightingale_, so readily as they do Moussorgsky’s
as manifested in _Boris Godunow_. Rimsky-Korsakow’s emendations of
the latter work, which one critic has labeled as mutilations, may be
responsible for the greater public reaction. But the success of _Boris_
was by no means immediate. Produced in Petrograd in 1874, it was not
heard in Paris until nearly thirty years later, nor in New York until
1913. Musicians, in the meantime, had had access to the score, and had
adopted some of the Moussorgsky idiom as their own. When _Boris_ was at
last produced here it was not, therefore, the utter novelty that _The
Nightingale_ now seems. The very principle of the new music demands a
greater effort at concentration than can be expected of most audiences
when they are listening to music, as many ears catch the meaning of a
phrase only after it has been repeated a convenient number of times.
This is one of the chief reasons for the popular success of _The Ring_
dramas. It seems incredible, and impertinent, to the average audience
that a composer should have had the idea of expressing himself without
repeating himself. A catalogue of representative themes would be of
no use to a prospective auditor of _The Nightingale_. Now, there are
two advantages to this method, aside from the implied advantage of an
improvement in effect: First, it makes for a very short opera (_The
Nightingale_, in three acts, is so short that at its early performances
it was given in a bill with two ballets, one of which, _The Legend of
Joseph_, runs for over an hour); second, the audience is not called
upon to listen intellectually (nor should it be, at the performance of
an opera). The only intention of the composer is to make his listeners
_feel_ each situation he illustrates with his music. It may be said
that Wagner’s intention was the same, and thereby lies the difficulty
in training listeners to understand the new principle. Wagner’s way is
easier for them because they can get the emotional feeling _through
the intellect_. The repetition of themes would not in itself assure
an effect, but the labeling of these themes does just that, so that
whenever the Sword _motif_ or the Siegfried _motif_ occurs, the _mind_
of the listener, knowing the name of the theme, is perfectly prepared
to create the emotional reaction demanded by the composer. Strawinsky
appeals directly to the emotions. On the listener who expects a theme
to reappear again and again he makes only the impression of being a
noise-maker (in the sense of a worker in dissonance; _The Nightingale_
is most continent in sound). But on the open-minded auditor his effect
is usually astounding.

The story of the music-drama closely follows the Hans Andersen tale.
In the first act a deputation from the Chinese Emperor’s court, headed
by the kitchen-maid, seeks the nightingale in its grove. The Imperial
Chancellor, the Bonze, and a number of courtiers are included in this
strange procession, which follows the kitchen-maid, as she alone knows
the bird’s song, to request the nightingale to come to the court to
cheer up the melancholy ruler. Although loath to leave its quiet
groves, the bird agrees to go.

In the second act the nightingale’s arrival has stirred the Emperor’s
jaded senses. However, the present of a mechanical bird which
comes from Japan diverts his attention. In the meantime, the real
nightingale has disappeared. The Emperor orders the little brown
songster banished from all China, while he places the mechanical toy by
his bedside.

Death stands in the Emperor’s bedchamber in the third act. Torn by his
aching conscience, the dying ruler calls in vain for his musicians
to make him forget. But the nightingale returns and so charms Death
with its songs that he agrees to allow the Emperor his life. The
Emperor revives and offers his saviour a place at court, but the bird
refuses and returns to its woodland haunts with the promise that it
will sing each evening. Now the courtiers enter, prepared to find the
Emperor dead. They are astounded when he sits up in bed and bids them
“Good-morning!”

All the symbolism, all the undercurrents of suggestion contained
in the text are never explicitly referred to except in the brief
utterances of a minor character, the fisherman, who sings a prophecy or
an explanation at the beginning and end of each act, foretelling the
delight that will be caused by the songs of the bird, the distress that
will follow its departure, and its final victory over Death.

The book offers exceptional opportunities for excursions into imitative
music such as Richard Strauss, to name one composer, would take delight
in expanding into pages of detail, as many of the diverting incidents
of Andersen’s tale are carried over into the drama. In the first act,
for example, the courtiers mistake the croaking of frogs and the lowing
of cattle for the song of the bird; in the second act the ladies of the
court fill their mouths with water and gargle in an attempt to imitate
the nightingale’s trill. These distractions do not serve to steer
Strawinsky from his direct course. He notices them, of course, but in
the briefest and most concise manner.

The score of _The Nightingale_ calls for a large orchestra, although
for a continent use of it. The list of instruments includes wood-winds
by threes, with a piccolo, clarinet, bass clarinet, and double-bassoon,
three trombones, tuba, and two cornets besides the usual two trumpets;
two harps, two glockenspiels, a celesta, a pianoforte (this part is
very important), and the whole of the usual percussion, to which are
added small antique cymbals. The parts of the nightingale and the
fisherman are also sung from the orchestra pit.

The work was begun in 1909 (this date is disputed) and completed in
1914, when it received its first hearing in Paris in May. Strawinsky
seems to have found difficulty in composing it. “I can write,” he
is reported to have said, “music to words, viz., songs; or music to
action, viz., ballets. But the coöperation of music, words, and action
is a thing that daily becomes more inadmissible to my mind. And even
should I finish _The Nightingale_, I do not think I shall ever attempt
to write another work of that kind.”

Igor Strawinsky was born June 17 (June 5, Russian style), 1882, at
Oranienbaum, near Petrograd. This date has been in dispute, and various
authors have disagreed about it. My authority is Mr. Strawinsky
himself. He was the son of a court-singer and was destined to study
law. But, working assiduously with a pupil of Rubinstein, he became a
remarkable pianist from the age of nine. He encountered Rimsky-Korsakow
at Heidelberg in 1902 (when he was 20), and that Russian composer had
a great influence on his career, although very little on his musical
style. During this period Strawinsky attended concerts, visited
museums, and delved in literature. Everything in the world of art is
said to have awakened his curiosity. In 1903 he wrote the _allegro_ of
a sonata for the piano, of which the _andante_, _scherzo_ and _finale_
were completed the following year. Rimsky-Korsakow had accepted him as
a pupil, and while the young man alarmed the older composer to some
extent, he secretly predicted great success for the only one of his
pupils who showed revolutionary tendencies. Strawinsky says that the
composer of _Sheherazade_ struggled valiantly with himself at this
period in an effort not to restrict what might be beautiful in his
pupil’s anarchic methods, at the same time wishing to preserve his
own ideals. In 1905-6 Strawinsky worked at orchestration, and during
this period, as an exercise, he orchestrated his master’s opera, _Pan
Voyevode_, from the piano score. Subsequently his work was corrected
by comparison with Rimsky-Korsakow’s own scoring, recently completed.
This might have been a dangerous exercise for a “sedulous ape,” but
Strawinsky was not that. He also orchestrated marches of Schubert
and sonatas of Beethoven. His friends at this time were the group
surrounding Rimsky-Korsakow, Chaliapine, César Cui, Glazunow, and
Blumenfeld, the _chef d’orchestre_. Strawinsky was married January 11,
1906.

Soon after his marriage he terminated his symphony in E flat (1905-7).
It was performed in 1907, and was published later by Jurgenson. A song
with orchestral accompaniment, _Le Faune et la Bergère_, dates from
this period (1906), and in 1908 he completed his _Scherzo Fantastique_,
which was inspired by a reading of Maeterlinck’s “Life of the Bee.”
This has been played in Paris. Edward Burlingham Hill says of it: “In
its long passages for staccato strings, divided into melodic phrases
for wood-wind instruments and in fanciful figures for wind instruments,
celesta, and harps, one can imagine the sinuous and yielding swaying
of bees, iridescent with color, and pulsing with life.” I do not think
this work has been played in America. New York has not heard it. He
set two poems of Gorodetzki to music in 1908. When Rimsky-Korsakow’s
daughter married Maximilien Steinberg in 1908, Strawinsky sent
_Fireworks_ as a wedding present, but before the post had delivered the
gift the older composer was dead. As a tribute to his master’s memory
Strawinsky composed the _Chant Funèbre_, performed at the Belaïeff
concerts. _Fireworks_ has been played in New York both by the Russian
and the New York Philharmonic Societies. Four piano études, written
in the summer of 1908, have stood on my piano for some time. They are
interesting. Vuillermoz says that Strawinsky began _The Nightingale_
in this year; Calvocoressi’s date is 1910; the programme at the first
performance gave the date as 1909.

About this time an incident occurred which considerably changed the
young composer’s outlook, and which brought him to the attention of
a larger world. He was “discovered” by the director of the Russian
Ballet, Serge de Diaghilew, and commissioned to write a ballet on a
Russian folk-story scenario fashioned by Michel Fokine. Leon Bakst and
Golovine, the painters, completed the collaboration. The work, _The
Firebird_, was terminated May 18, 1910, and produced three weeks later.
The first sketches for this ballet must have been written before the
death of Rimsky-Korsakow, if we are to believe a very delightful story
told somewhere by Calvocoressi. On hearing Strawinsky play some bars
of _The Firebird_, the older composer is quoted as saying: “Look here,
stop playing that horrid thing; otherwise I might begin to enjoy it!”
The production of _The Firebird_ established the composer’s reputation
in Paris, and the very impressionists whose methods he has dubbed
“hypocritical” were among the first to sign themselves his admirers.
Of these Maurice Ravel was the leader. _Petrouchka_ was completed just
a year later (May 26, 1911), and its production by the Russian Ballet
gave his fame a firm hold with the public. His third choreographic
drama, _The Sacrifice to the Spring_, followed in 1913, and his
opera, _The Nightingale_, in 1914. Several songs, including _Le petit
Myosotis_ and _Le Pigeon_, are other products of recent years.[A]

It is astonishing to learn that _The Nightingale_ was begun so
early in the composer’s career, but it is still more astonishing to
discover that the first sketches of _The Sacrifice to the Spring_
were written before _Petrouchka_ was conceived. That ballet, which
achieved the great honor of being hissed in Paris (I have described
the incident earlier in this article), is the work on which, with _The
Nightingale_, rests his chief claim to being a composer with something
new to say. The work differs from most of the mimed dramas given by
the Russians in that it is practically without a fable. The scenes
take place in barbaric Russia, long before the Christian era, and we
are introduced to rites connected with the worship of the soil and
the springtide; after a series of ritual dances, one of the younger
maidens is chosen as a sacrifice to the spring, whereupon she spares
her friends the trouble of killing her by dancing herself to death.
This exceedingly angular dance, the expression of religious hysteria,
marvelously conceived by Nijinsky and thrice marvelously carried out
by Mlle. Piltz, was one of the causes for the outbreaks at the early
performances of the ballet.

The lack of a fable, the early and uncertain setting of the action,
offered Strawinsky an opportunity which he seized with avidity. The
music is not descriptive, it is rhythmical. All rhythms are beaten into
the ears, one after another, and sometimes with complexities which seem
decidedly unrhythmic on paper, but when carried out in performance
assume a regularity of beat which a simple four-four time could not
equal. H. E. Krehbiel, in his valuable book, “Afro-American Folksongs,”
describes the tremendous effect made on him by the intricate rhythms
(which he tried in vain to note down) of the musicians of African
tribes at the World’s Fair in Chicago. The rhythmic effect of _The
Sacrifice to the Spring_ is as powerful and complex. It is interesting
to remember, in this connection, that the ancient Greeks accorded
rhythm a higher place than either melody or harmony. Strawinsky
describes the dawn of a spring morning in a few measures at the
beginning of the prelude (here, it must be admitted, there is a
startling reminder of _l’Après-midi d’un Faune_), and then he settles
down to the business, and art, of providing material for dances. This
he has done with consummate effect. In many cases his chord-formations
could not be described in academic terms; the instruments employed add
to the strangeness of the sounds. I remember one passage in which the
entire corps of dancers is engaged in shivering, trembling from head
to toe, to music which trembles also. It makes my flesh creep even
to think of it again. At the beginning of the ballet the adolescents
pound the earth with their feet, while a little old woman runs in and
out between their legs, to the reiterated beat of a chord of F flat,
A flat, C flat, F flat; G, B flat, D flat, and E flat, all in the
bass (begin from below and read in order), while an occasional flute
or a piccolo screams its way in high treble. Try this on your piano.
“He has had recourse,” writes Edward Burlingham Hill, “to a violently
revolutionary style which is difficult to reduce to a systematic
analysis. Chords employing minor and major triads simultaneously in
different octaves, figures in double thirds, strange aggregations
of notes that can hardly be described as chords, even with critical
license, are the ingredients of this unusual style.” M. Montagu-Nathan,
in his “Short History of Russian Music,” says: “In criticising the
work, the mistake was made of suggesting that Strawinsky’s music
had gone back to an elemental stage in an endeavor to provide an
appropriate setting for the pre-historic. In reality, of course, the
movement was forward, in that music was used in a sphere to which it
had hitherto been strange. That is progress. A composer who sets ‘The
Creation’ to living music is just as progressive as another who takes
‘The Last Judgment’ as his theme.”

Strawinsky seems to meet his problems according to their nature with an
inevitable sense of the fitness of things. He has set, in _Petrouchka_,
a story of the Russian fair; the leading characters are puppets;
the period, 1830. The music is realistic in tone, in some instances
intentionally vulgar. It has been pointed out that the themes of
the nurses’ dance, the dance of the _cochers_, and the Russian dance
in the first scene, are founded on Russian folk-tunes. There is all
through the piece an implied tone of a village carnival; the accordion
and hurdy-gurdy are never very far away, in suggestion at least. The
dancer, personified by Mme. Karsavina, trips her lightest measures
to the fanfare of a cornet, and Petrouchka sobs out his heart to the
empty sky to the screaming of a piccolo. There are tunes, real tunes,
the piece abounds in them, and the whole is wrapped in an atmosphere
of realism and truth which gives music the tone of originality.
Incidentally, there is a triangle solo in the score.

M. Montagu-Nathan says: “The carnival music is a sheer joy, and the
incidents making a demand upon music as a descriptive medium have been
treated not merely with marvelous skill but with unfailing instinct
for the true satiric touch. _Petrouchka_ is, in fact, the musical
presentment of Russian fantastic humor in the second generation.
There is none of the heavy scoring once thought necessary to reveal
the humorous possibilities of some particular situation; Strawinsky
lives in a world which has learned to take things for granted, and
his method is elliptical. This perception of proportion in humor is
one of the surest indications of refinement, and _Petrouchka_ not only
testifies to the composer’s possession of this quality, but provides
an assurance that he has a technical equipment which can hardly betray
him.”

The fable is one of love and hate in that fanciful domain in which we
become aware of the existence of a soul hitherto considered absent from
such a corporeal habitation. Among the mingled crowd of merry-makers
and mountebanks at the carnival is a showman, practiced in the black
arts. In his booth he exposes his animated dolls: the dancer, flanked
by Petrouchka, the simple fool, and the fierce Moor. The three enact a
tragedy of jealousy which terminates in the “shedding of Petrouchka’s
vital sawdust.”

_The Firebird_ stirred another cell in the imagination of this young
Russian giant. Again he is dealing with a Russian folk-tale, but it is
a fairy story this time, not a vulgar story of country life; he has
manipulated his orchestra into a thousand gorgeous colors to illustrate
it. The instruments revolve their tones kaleidoscopically, reflecting
the myriad hues with which Golovine and Bakst have invested the scene.
The rhythms are exotic; the harmonies and the melodies of the utmost
brilliancy. One of the dances of the Firebird has a haunting melancholy
about it which seems to have been wafted from the steppes.

The Firebird in the beginning of the action falls a prey to the young
Prince Ivan; as the price of her freedom she offers him one of her
plumes, which he accepts while she flies away into the soft blue
shadows of the night. Dawn breaks, and Ivan finds himself in front of a
magic castle, from the gates of which troop out a group of white-robed
maidens. They indicate by means of their leader, Tsarevna, with whom
Ivan at once falls in love, that he must not venture inside, but as
soon as they have left him he rashly pushes back the great gate in
front of him. There is a crash and in a moment out rushes pell-mell
a huddled mass of slaves, dancers, men in armor, and buffoons, who
surround him and drive him dizzy with their chatter. The uproar works
up to a _crescendo_ of frenzy when the monstrous figure of Kostchei,
the Immortal, the lord of the castle, stalks out to quell the din.
Kostchei has already turned others into stone, but over Ivan he has
no power; the Firebird’s plume protects him, and on his brandishing
it before the terror-stricken god the bird herself appears. At first
she makes the crowd dance; then she lulls them to sleep and shows Ivan
where the egg containing Kostchei’s soul is concealed. He brings it out
and smashes it. The old god crumbles to pieces, the stones are brought
to life, and the lovers’ hands are joined. The character of Kostchei
is an important one in Russian folk-lore; he is the subject of an
opera by Rimsky-Korsakow. Ralston, in his “Russian Folk-Tales,” thus
describes him: “Kostchei is merely one of the many incarnations of the
dark spirit.... Sometimes he is described as altogether serpent-like
in form; sometimes he seems to be of a mixed nature, partly human and
partly ophidian; but in some stories he is apparently framed after the
fashion of a man.... He is called ‘immortal’ or ‘deathless’ because
of his superiority to the ordinary laws of existence.... Sometimes
his ‘death’--that is, the object with which his life is indisputably
connected--does not exist within his body.” It may be seen that in
almost every instance Strawinsky has followed the lead of the “Five”
in choosing material closely associated with Russian folk-lore.

There came a reaction after the foundation of the Russian national
school by the “Five” (Cui, Borodine, Rimsky-Korsakow, Balakirew and
Moussorgsky), and the result of foreign influence was felt. These
composers had worked, as most of the Russian novelists have worked,
with a sense of the soil from which they had sprung; their compositions
are redolent with the mode and manner of folk-music. They chose, in
most instances, Russian subjects for their operas. Moussorgsky in
particular effected a tremendous revolution in style, developing
a manner in which ornamentation and affectation played no part; a
tense simplicity and sincerity marked all his music, which never
asked alms of conventional rules of composition. (I am willing to say
this quite in the face of Mr. Runciman, who recently stated in the
“Saturday Review” that there were only two Russian compositions of any
importance, a symphony by Borodine and Tschaikowsky’s fourth symphony.
“Any other two pieces of Russian music are as alike as two mushrooms.”)
Rubinstein and Tschaikowsky were the leaders of the opposition, whose
music is more akin to that of other nations. They actually succeeded,
for a number of years, in establishing themselves in England, France,
and America as the representative Russian composers. And naturally
their immediate success was greater, even in their own country,
where individuals were trying to free themselves from the curse of
their birthright, struggling up from the soil; culture was growing.
John Reed tells a wonderful story of a Serbian peasant who, having
assimilated some culture (in Serbia _Kultur_ is about twenty years
old), was reminded by the fields of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. So
the Russians, learning French, were a thousand times more impressed
with _salon_ music than they were with the work of their more national
composers. Moussorgsky, of course, has only recently been dragged out
of his retirement, even now in somewhat modified form. (Neither of his
operas is produced as he wrote it; he died leaving the orchestration of
_La Khovanchina_ unfinished; Rimsky-Korsakow reorchestrated _Boris_--a
needless task, perhaps a desecration; he also wrote a good deal of the
orchestration of _La Khovanchina_; the work was completed by Maurice
Ravel and Strawinsky in a more reverent spirit.) Strawinsky is the
new giant upon whom has fallen the mantle of Russian nationalism.
His work is based, primarily, on the work of the “Five,” all of whom
are dead. That he reminds one occasionally of the modern Frenchmen
only means that they, too, have learned their lessons from Borodine
and Moussorgsky; Debussy’s debt to Moussorgsky has frequently been
acknowledged; it is obvious if one compares _Pelléas et Mélisande_ with
_Boris Godunow_. Strawinsky’s love of Oriental color is possibly an
inheritance from his master, Rimsky-Korsakow.

This young Russian has appeared in an epoch in which the ambition of
most composers seems to be to dream, to write their symbolic visions in
terms of the mist, to harmonize the imperceptible. Strawinsky sweeps
away this vague atmosphere with one gesture; his idea of movement is
Dionysian; he overwhelms us with his speed. One critic has referred to
him as the “whirling dervish of his art.” His gifts to future composers
are his conciseness, his development of the complexities of rhythm, and
his invention of chord-formation. His use of dissonance is an art in
itself. Richard Strauss has employed dissonance in obvious development
of Richard Wagner’s polyphonic and chromatic style. Pushed to its
furthest, his system is one of inversion. With Strawinsky the use of
dissonance is invention itself. He improvises new chords, while Strauss
is taking recognized chords apart to make something else of them. So
this new figure stands for something in advance of what has already
been expressed. He is, perhaps, the most vital of the modern forces in
the music world.

  _August 6, 1915._


  Here is the complete bibliography of Strawinsky’s works (the list
  has been revised and edited by the composer himself): Symphony in
  E flat, op. 1, 1905-1907 (Jurgenson); _Le Faune et la Bergère_,
  voice and orchestra, op. 2, 1907 (Belaïeff); _Scherzo Fantastique_
  for orchestra, op. 3, 1907-8 (Jurgenson); _Fireworks_, for
  orchestra, op. 4, 1908 (Schott); _Funeral Hymn_ for the death of
  Rimsky-Korsakow, op. 5, 1908 (MS.); Four Études for the piano, op.
  6, 1908 (Jurgenson); Two Melodies (words by Gorodetzski), voice
  and piano, op. 7, 1908 (Jurgenson); _The Firebird_, “Conte dansé,”
  1909-10 (Jurgenson); Two Melodies (words by Verlaine), voice and
  piano, 1910 (Jurgenson); _Petrouchka_, burlesque scenes in four
  tableaux, 1910-11 (Russischer Musik-Verlag); Two Melodies (words by
  Balmont), for voice and piano, 1911 (Russischer Musik-Verlag); _Les
  Roi des Étoiles_ (words by Balmont), for chorus and orchestra, 1911
  (Russischer Musik-Verlag); _The Sacrifice to the Spring_, tableaux
  of Pagan Russia, in two parts, 1911-13 (Russischer Musik-Verlag);
  Three Melodies (Japanese poems), for voice and small orchestra,
  1912, (Russischer Musik-Verlag); _Souvenir de ma Jeunesse_, three
  children’s songs for voice and piano, 1913 (Russischer Musik-Verlag);
  _The Nightingale_, opera in three acts, 1909-14 (Russischer
  Musik-Verlag).

  Recent works include three pieces for string quartet (MSS.), played
  by the Flonzaley Quartet in New York, November 30, 1915; and a new
  ballet in two parts, for the Russian Ballet, entitled _Les Noces
  villageoises_.

  Strawinsky has also orchestrated a melody of Beethoven, some of the
  works of Grieg and Chopin, and the song of the Boyard Chaklovity from
  _La Khovanchina_ of Moussorgsky. With the aid of notes left by the
  composer he wrote the final chorus of _La Khovanchina_.




Massenet and Women




Massenet and Women


The name of Jules Massenet, spoken before his tomb, should evoke
many memories besides the souvenirs of the delicate melodies he
wrote--memories of beautiful and frail women, a long, exotic list,
women whom he melodically created in his operas and women whom he
selected to sing his heroines.

Xavier Leroux in his preface to the “Souvenirs,” in which Massenet
carefully describes his life, calls him the _musicien de la femme_. His
music is peculiarly feminine--“melodically, sentimentally, sensuously
feminine,” says Philip Hale. “The Eve of Massenet is a Parisian
_cocotte_. His Mary Magdalen is a _grande amoureuse_ even after her
conversion; a true sister of Thaïs.”

Marie-Magdeleine, Eve, Salome, Manon, the fragrant, who suggested a
flower girl in the _Boulevard des Capucines_; Chimène, inspired by
the classic Corneille; Esclarmonde, in which the astonishing Sybil
Sanderson rose to her fame; Charlotte, who, according to Thackeray,
having seen Werther’s body “borne before her on a shutter, like a
well-conducted person went on cutting bread and butter”; the eternal
Thaïs, who at first failed to interest the jaded boulevards; the
sanguinary Anita, the girl from Navarre; Sapho, who never, in the
opera at least, was carried upstairs until Mary Garden portrayed her;
Cinderella, the faithful Grisélidis, many times tempted; the Spanish
dancer, l’Ensoleillad and Nina in the opera _Chérubin_; Ariane and her
companions, Phèdre and Perséphone; Thérèse, Dulcinée, and the Queen
Amahelly, all written for that “_grande tragédienne lyrique_,” Lucy
Arbell: it would seem that every country and every period of history
had been searched for a complete survey of feminism. And among the
unproduced works which the composer left in a completed form is a
_Cléopâtre_!

And what a list of women has sung these parts! Women whom Massenet
wholly or partly adored; women for whom he dropped precious dots of
ink on paper, instead of buying them pearls in the Rue de la Paix;
women for whom, in some instances, he preserved his scores for years.
For Massenet was never hasty. He never gave a score to an unworthy
interpreter. In this connection it is only necessary to remember that
_Amadis_, completed in 1890, and _Panurge_, completed in 1910, are not
yet produced (1912).

Women reciprocated his love. Louis Schneider, in his biography of
the composer, puts it thus: “A woman is like a child; she gives
instinctively to the person who loves her. This explains why his
incessant glorification of woman made all women like him.”

And so, linked indissolubly with the name of Massenet, we may recall
the names of those who helped him to build his fame as the feminist
composer, those who “created” in the theatre the atmosphere he had
devised for his characters. Five names stand out in prominent relief:
the charming Marie Heilbronn, the ill-fated Sybil Sanderson, Emma
Calvé, Mary Garden, and Lucy Arbell. But there are countless others:
Marie Renard, who “created” Charlotte and first sang Manon in Vienna;
Marie Delna, who brought _Werther_ to Paris; Lina Cavalieri, the first
Ensoleillad in _Chérubin_, who afterwards introduced Thaïs and Manon
to Italy, and later brought back Thaïs to the répertoire of the Paris
Opéra; Lucienne Bréval, who was the first Ariane and Grisélidis;
Marguerite Carré, the first Nina in _Chérubin_ and who assisted in the
revival of _Sapho_ at the Opéra-Comique; Mlle. Kousnezoff, the Fausta
in _Roma_; Mme. Duvivier, Salome at Brussels; Mme. Fidès-Devriès,
Salome at Paris; Pauline Viardot, the sister of the great Malibran, who
sang Marie-Magdeleine as an oratorio at the Odéon, April 11, 1873; Lina
Pacary, who sang one season at New Orleans, who was the first to sing
the Magdeleine in operatic form; Julia Guiraudon, the first Cendrillon;
Aino Ackté, the first Vierge; Joséphine de Reszke, sister of two
famous singers, who “created” the leading feminine rôle in _Le Roi de
Lahore_; and Mme. Galli-Marié, the first Carmen, who honored the first
performance of _Don César de Bazan_. But the list is interminable. What
names does it not include? What beautiful woman with a voice of the
past three decades does not receive a few words of gratitude in the
“Souvenirs”?

Of all the women, however, who have sung the Massenet rôles the one
most particularly identified with the composer was Sybil Sanderson,
the beautiful California girl, whose career was as short as it was
brilliant. Massenet met her at a dinner given by an American friend.
She came with her mother, described by the composer as being almost
as beautiful as her daughter. After dinner Miss Sanderson asked the
composer if he would hear her sing. He consented affably, as was his
custom--never was there a more gentle man!--and seated himself at the
piano.

“You will excuse me,” she added, “if I do not sing your music. That
would be too audacious.”

She ended by doing something very much more audacious: she sang the
second air of the Queen of the Night from _The Magic Flute_.

The composer’s feelings may be adjudged from his remarks in his
_Souvenirs_: “What a prodigious voice! Three octaves, either _forte_ or
_pianissimo_!”

He did not waste any time. His publisher was urging him to set a
poem on a Byzantine subject, _Esclarmonde_, to music, and, with
Sybil Sanderson in mind, he went to work directly on the score.
_Esclarmonde_, in which Massenet pays his tribute to Wagner--the
subject suggests _Parsifal_ and _Tristan und Isolde_, to say nothing of
_Armide_--was produced at the Opéra-Comique during the Paris Exposition
of 1889. It was given 101 times before Miss Sanderson went to Brussels.

Before her début Sybil Sanderson was scarcely known in Paris. It was
rumored among artists that Massenet had written an opera for a fair
Californian (she was the daughter of Judge S. W. Sanderson, of the
Supreme Court) who was being trained by the master to play the title
part, and some few had seen Massenet dining at a restaurant in the
Rue Daunou with an American girl, accompanied by a lady who, judging
from the likeness of the two, was probably her mother. Then came her
début, and all Paris was talking about La Belle Sanderson, and the
extraordinary range of her voice.

_Thaïs_, the famous opera of the monk and the Alexandrian courtesan,
was also written for Miss Sanderson. While Massenet was composing it
the singer was appearing three times a week at the Opéra-Comique in
_Manon_. It was therefore for that theatre that _Thaïs_ was destined.
However, Miss Sanderson, like many another artist before and since,
moved by a sudden caprice, signed a contract with Gailhard to sing at
the Opéra, without taking the trouble to inform Carvalho, then manager
of the Opéra-Comique. Massenet did not hesitate. He wrote to Gailhard:
“You have the artist; the work must follow her!”

_Thaïs_ was produced March 16, 1894--and failed! At that time the book
was considered a trifle indelicate! Even Sybil Sanderson’s popularity
could not save it. In 1898 the work was revived with Mme. Berthet in
the title part. For this _reprise_ Massenet wrote a new scene in the
oasis and the scene of the ballet, which have always been omitted in
American representations, except in Boston. Lina Cavalieri sang the
work in Paris in 1907. Since then it has never been long from the
_affiches_ of the Opéra, while in America it has become one of the most
popular of modern operas, thanks to Mary Garden, who made her American
début in the title rôle, and subsequently prevented Lina Cavalieri from
singing it in New York. While he was writing _Thaïs_ Massenet always
kept a tiny figurine on his writing table. This had been made for him
by Gérome, and served him as his present inspiration.

Here is the tribute that Massenet pays to Sybil Sanderson in his
“Souvenirs”: “Sybil Sanderson!... It is only with poignant emotion
that I recall this singer struck by pitiless Death, in her full
beauty, in the glory of her talent. Ideal Manon at the Opéra-Comique;
unforgettable Thaïs at the Opéra; these rôles identified themselves
with her temperament, one of the most magnificently gifted that I have
ever known. An invincible vocation called her to the theatre, there
to become the ardent interpreter of many of my works; but also, for
us, what joy to write operas and rôles for the artists who realize our
dreams!...

“The silent crowd which pressed on the way of the cortège which led
Sybil Sanderson to her last home was considerable. Over it a veil of
sadness seemed to hang. Albert Carré and I followed the coffin. We
walked directly behind what remained of her beauty, grace, and talent,
and Carré, interpreting the feelings of the people about us, said:

“‘She was loved.’”

It is to the “Souvenirs” also that we must turn for a description of
the selection of the first Manon. Mme. Carvalho sighed when she heard
the music, and breathed the wish that she was twenty years younger,
so that she might sing it. Characteristically, Massenet dedicated
the score to her. He wanted Mme. Vaillant-Couturier, then singing an
operetta of Lecocq’s at the Nouveautés, for the opera.

“She interested me greatly and, as I thought, bore an astonishing
resemblance to a young florist of the Boulevard des Capucines. Without
ever having spoken [it must be remembered that this book was written
for Massenet’s grandchildren] to this delicious young girl, I was
obsessed by the vision, and the thought of her was ever with me. This
was indeed the Manon whom I had seen, whom I saw always before me as I
worked.”

The manager of the Nouveautés would not let Mme. Vaillant-Couturier go,
but while they were talking Massenet observed that Brasseur had his
eyes on a pretty gray hat with roses, which was going up and down the
foyer. The hat moved toward the composer.

“A débutant then no longer recognizes a débutante?”

It should be explained that Marie Heilbronn had appeared in Massenet’s
first opera, _La Grand’ Tante_.

“Heilbronn!” I exclaimed.

“Herself.”

She reminded him of his first opera and the part she took in it, and
in answer to his questions continued: “No, I am rich, and yet, shall
I confess it? I wish to go back on the stage; I am haunted by the
theatre. If I could only find a good rôle.” Massenet told her of
_Manon_, and that night, at her insistence, he played the music through
for her at her apartment in the Champs-Elysées. It was 4.30 in the
morning when he was done. She had been moved to tears, and from time to
time she would exclaim, “That is my life; it’s my life!”

In speaking of Heilbronn’s death after the eightieth odd performance
of _Manon_ the composer says: “Ah, who will tell artists how faithful
we are to their memories; how attached to them we are; the great
grief which the day of separation brings us? I should prefer to stop
performances rather than have the part sung by another.”

This in itself is beautiful, but read what he has to say of her
successors:

“Some time afterward the Opéra-Comique disappeared in flames and
_Manon_ was not performed for ten years. It was the dear and unique
Sybil Sanderson that revived the work at the Opéra-Comique. She played
at the two hundredth. A glory was reserved for me at the five hundredth
when the part was taken by Mme. Marguerite Carré. Some months ago
this captivating and exquisite artist was applauded the night of the
seven hundred and fortieth performance. Let me be permitted to salute
in passing the fine artists who have also taken the part: Mlles. Mary
Garden, Geraldine Farar (so reads the book), Lina Cavalieri, Mme.
Bréjean-Silver, Mlles. Courtney, Geneviève Vix, Mmes. Edwina and
Nicot-Vauchelet--and how many other dear artists besides! They will
pardon me if their names do not come at this moment to my grateful pen.”

Massenet wrote two operas for Emma Calvé, and she appeared in four
other of his works. _La Navarraise_, London, June 20, 1894, and
_Sapho_, Opéra-Comique, November 27, 1897, were written for her. She
also sang Salome in _Hérodiade_, Chimène in _Le Cid_, and the leading
feminine rôles in _Le Roi de Lahore_ and _Le Mage_.

Adolphe Jullien, the French critic, says somewhere: “Hors de Calvé pas
de _Sapho_ possible, aux yeux du compositeur.” Yet when Marguerite
Carré sang this work, founded on Daudet’s famous novel, at its
_reprise_ at the Opéra-Comique in 1909, he wrote an entire new scene
for her. Mary Garden was the American Sapho, and was adversely
criticised for her forceful acting in the early parts of the play. Yet
Jullien writes of Calvé:

“Mlle. Emma Calvé, c’est le cri général, joue et chante avec une
ardeur presque excessive le personnage de Sapho, très-difficile à
faire accepter à l’Opéra-Comique, en passant de la langueur la plus
lascive à la violence la plus grossière, par example quand elle injurie
ses anciens amants qui viennent de dévoiler son passé au malheureux
Gaussin.”

Another Sapho was Georgette Leblanc, who also created some excitement
with an exceedingly immodest conception of Thaïs.

Anita in _La Navarraise_ shares, along with Carmen and Santuzza, the
honor of being one of the three rôles of her varied répertoire which
Calvé was permitted to sing frequently in this country. It was not long
ago that she appeared as Anita at the Manhattan Opera House, where she
was succeeded in it by Mme. Gerville-Réache. The work is still in the
répertoire of the Opéra-Comique (or was, before the war began).

Although Mary Garden has done more to establish Massenet’s reputation
in this country than any other singer, and has sung many of his operas
successfully in Europe, especially _Manon_ and _Thaïs_, Massenet
wrote only one part especially for her, the title rôle of _Chérubin_.
_Chérubin_ was produced at Monte Carlo, February 14, 1905. He is the
same youngster immortalized by Beaumarchais and Mozart. He is but
seventeen in the Frenchman’s opera, but his good looks and audacity
make him a veritable Don Juan.

Schneider wrote of Mary Garden in the title part: “She is Chérubin
himself, in flesh and bones; she was the joy and delight of the
evening. By reason of her slenderness and agility, her easy and
graceful manner, with her innocent airs of conquest and her naïve mien
of vexation, she is truly the irresistible youth in whose presence
all hearts surrender. And to think that M. de Croisset, only the day
before, insisted that his Chérubin should not be played by a woman!
His, perhaps, but not that of M. Massenet.”

It was Oscar Hammerstein’s idea that Mary Garden should perform another
man’s part. Tired, it is said, of the continuous assertions to the
effect that all his operas were written about women for women, Massenet
wrote _Le Jongleur de Notre Dame_, in which the single female figure,
that of the Virgin, does not sing a note. It is interesting to observe
that this opera is dedicated to Mme. Massenet. It was produced February
18, 1902, at Monte Carlo. Paris heard it two years later. When Mr.
Hammerstein decided to produce it in New York he asked Miss Garden if
she would sing the part of the Juggler, hitherto in every instance sung
by a man. She assented, and appeared in the rôle at the Manhattan,
November 27, 1908. Her success in the rôle was immediate and continued.

Massenet, in the “Souvenirs,” speaks of the affair: “I was a little
frightened, I admit, at the idea of the monk taking off his robes after
the play to put on a smart gown from the Rue de la Paix. But before the
triumph of the artist I bow and applaud.”

_Thaïs_ introduced Mary Garden to America, and it is in this rôle that
she has achieved the greatest popular success of her career. She has
sung it everywhere, from Paris to Brooklyn. She sang _Sapho_ three
times in New York and _Grisélidis_ a few times.

“I sang the patient Griselda first at Aix-les-Bains,” she once told a
reporter. “The King of Greece heard me, and said he didn’t think the
part a suitable one for me. I wonder what he meant!”

Miss Garden has also sung Manon, and Prince Charmant in _Cendrillon_.

Massenet’s last inspiration was a contralto, Lucy Arbell, who fired his
brain to many creations. She sang the rôle of Perséphone in _Ariane_.
This goddess of the nether world appeared only in one act of this long
opera, but into that act Massenet put the most popular air of the
score, the air of the roses, “_Emmène ta sœur_.” After Ariane had been
performed sixty times at the Paris Opéra, Massenet asked her how many
times she had sung the part, thinking she would have forgotten.

“Sixty,” she answered.

“Wrong,” he replied, “for you have repeated the air of the roses every
night. You have sung the part 120 times!”

The part of Dulcinée in _Don Quichotte_ was written for Lucy Arbell.
She sang it both in Paris and Monte Carlo. It is said that before
the first performance she spent considerable time learning to play
the guitar, so that she could accompany her air in the fourth act
herself. _Thérèse_, _Bacchus_ and _Roma_ all contain parts written
with Lucy Arbell in mind. One cannot do better than close with the
picture evoked by Massenet in describing the effect which the music of
_Thérèse_ had on his interpreter when he first played it to her.

“At the first playing of the score to our _créatrice_, Lucy Arbell,
artist that she was, stopped me as I was playing the final scene,
where Thérèse, with a cry of fear, sees the terrible cart bearing her
husband, André Thorel, to the scaffold, and screams, ‘_Vive le roi!_’
with all her force, so that she may be sure of joining her husband
in his death. It was at this instant that our interpreter, greatly
moved, stopped me and said, ‘I could never _sing_ that scene up to
the end, because when I recognized my husband, who gave me his name,
who saved Armand de Clerval, I should lose my voice. I ask you to let
me _declaim_ the end of the piece.’ Great artists alone,” concludes
Massenet, “have the gift of divining these instinctive movements.”

  _October, 1912._




Stage Decoration as a Fine Art




Stage Decoration as a Fine Art


The question of the use of “scenery” on the stage is perpetually
bobbing up, and as perpetually it remains an unsolved question.
Specific instances of the dire harm that the decoration can do to
a play may be observed in our theatres almost any week during the
active season. To take an example, let us mention one of Mr. Sothern’s
Shakespearean productions, which had already been cut to run within the
time-limit, but which played from eight in the evening until midnight
because the “elaborate” settings had to be changed frequently. The
intermissions, as a result, occupied more of the spectators’ patience
than the play. In another instance, a musical comedy went to pot on the
first night because the stagehands could not handle the setting of the
second act with enough expedition. As a result, they kept the curtain
down for thirty minutes, a fatal length of time in a playhouse devoted
to frivolity.

John Palmer, in that book, quotation from which is sheer delight, “The
Future of the Theatre,” says that this is the age of the “naturalist”
drama, and that as a result, when anyone tries to produce a “romantic”
or “poetic” play, there is an attempt made to wrap up the shortcomings
of the performance in elaborate upholstery.

“Why does the electrician or the costumier become so much more
important in poetic than in naturalist drama? The electrician and
costumier become more important as the author and actor become less
competent of themselves to assert their intention. Naturalist authors
and naturalist players are masters of their method. The poetic
dramatists and players are not. Poetic drama has fallen upon evil
times. The dramatist, being unequal to his burden, the artificers in
light and hair and turpentine are invoked to help him sustain it. In
the mid-twentieth-century outburst of poetic splendor, which will
follow the foundation of our national theatre, it will soon be realized
how the former degradation of the poetic drama was directly measured by
the importance yielded thereby to the subordinate crafts. The quaint
superstition of to-day that the limelight man is an important person in
the raising of Cæsar’s ghost will disappear when poetic drama of the
future is lifted to the level of the naturalist drama of to-day.

“Even to-day, when there comes an actor of genius who can present
Shakespeare in the solid flesh, it is possible for the least reflective
play-goer to realize how little it matters that the limelight is
not of the latest and best quality, or that paint upon the scene is
spread too thick. We have lately had opportunities, within a single
year, of measuring Shakespeare as produced by Mr. Granville Barker
against Shakespeare as acted by Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson.
Compare for a moment Mr. Barker’s _Twelfth Night_ with Sir Johnston
Forbes-Robertson’s _Hamlet_. Mr. Barker’s _Twelfth Night_ had every
advantage that a producer can bestow. Beautiful costumes against a
decorative background, excellent music, an intelligent revival of
the necessary apron, a very fair quality of acting, rising in a few
instances to an extremely high level of accomplishment--all that the
producer as fine-artist has been able to discover was tested and
adapted for the occasion.

“‘Look here upon this picture, and on this.’

“Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson in his _Hamlet_ of 1913 seemed bent upon
showing once for all that production matters not at all when great
acting is toward. The Drury Lane _Hamlet_ of 1913 showed not only
that the actor and his author require no artistic aid of theatrical
haberdashers to make their effect, but also that the actor and his
author, if they have as much genius between them as will cover a penny
piece, can unite and play clean out of existence the ugliest daubs of
the false cardboard naturalism of the late ‘nineties.’ In Sir Johnston
Forbes-Robertson’s _Hamlet_ was no borrowed grace of the producing
fine-artist. Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson had not even the advantage
of the poetic conventions to which his play was originally fitted.
He made his dramatic appeal in spite of his conditions, rather than
with their assistance. Yet everyone open to the appeal of Shakespeare
had to declare that the total æsthetic effect of Sir Johnston
Forbes-Robertson’s _Hamlet_ infinitely outweighed the total æsthetic
effect of Mr. Barker’s _Hamlet_.”

Now, this is the most specious kind of argument. Of course, genius,
even unclothed genius, is at all times preferable to mediocrity
decked in gauds, but genius properly caparisoned is only added to. If
Forbes-Robertson’s interesting study of _Hamlet_ had been properly set,
its effect would have been even more vivid.

Let us take, for instance, the case of the Russian dancers. Anna
Pavlowa is generally regarded as the greatest of living women dancers.
A similar place is assigned Waslav Nijinsky among the male dancers. And
yet it cannot be said that Mlle. Pavlowa, with her mediocre (in most
instances) scenic and choreographic accompaniments, makes the effect
that Nijinsky does surrounded by the Bakst scenery and the elemental
spontaneity of the superb Russian ballet. Mlle. Pavlowa’s genius
creates the utmost enthusiasm; it awakens admiration on every hand;
but it would be more compelling were it encased in the beauty which it
suggests.

To take another example, let us regard the production of _Boris
Godunow_ at the Metropolitan Opera House. Seldom, at this theatre, have
more dramatic splendors been revealed than Adamo Didur showed us in
the title part; and never has such adequate staging been seen there.
The scenery and costumes, in fact, were all a part of the Russian
equipment used in Paris a few seasons ago. Mme. Fremstad’s Brünnhilde
in _Götterdämmerung_ is an even more indisputable proof of genius than
Mr. Didur’s Boris (taking into account the Russian’s close following
of his model, Feodor Chaliapine), but the setting of _Götterdämmerung_
at the Opera is so unimaginative, so unappealing, so unsuggestive,
that one has to forget that before one can focus one’s attention on the
compelling art of the singing actress.

Of late years the item of scenery has become more and more costly, more
and more elaborate. What does it mean, after all, the kind of scenery
we see? Who cares about the painted stumps of trees, the ridiculous
apple blossoms and the pink drawing-rooms? A little simple staging
would effect a much needed reform in the American Theatre, especially
if it were coupled with a good play.

It is in Europe that attempts have been made at reform. Some of them
have been successful. Gordon Craig has been accounted the inventor of
many of the ideas that are prevalent at present, but like many other
inventors, he neither had the practical ability, nor perhaps the
desire, to put them into effect himself. Stanislawsky, Reinhardt, and
even Bakst, have all learned something from him, and have turned his
ideas to practical account.

At present Gordon Craig, ensconced in the Arena Goldoni in Florence,
is said to be at the head of a great school which shall teach the art
of the theatre. He is, to be sure, surrounded by a pack of boys with
soulful eyes, who wear dirty-greens and call him “Master.” These he
takes driving occasionally over the hills near Florence in no other
vehicle than a coach and four. When this monumental anachronism passes
through the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele, or down the Via Tornabuoni with
its crowd from _Patience_ seated aloft, the effect on the populace of
Firenze La Bella can be only faintly imagined.

Occasionally someone tries to effect an entrance into the school
over which this eccentric genius presides and for which he issues
pronunciamentos and catalogues without number, to say nothing of
advertisements, and articles in “The Mask,” and _affiches_ which are
pasted on the high walls of the Italian and English towns. If the youth
who is hardy enough to make the trial succeeds in reaching the great
presence he may be deemed a lucky mortal. Mr. Craig observes each
newcomer from carefully prepared peep-holes. One look convinces him
whether the prospective student has talent for the arts or not; one
look alone suffices. Once having made up his mind, nothing changes it.

Robert Jones tried to invade the domain of the Craig school last
summer, but not once could he get near the Master; not once could he
get any more information than that very vague sort which is included
in the catalogue. Jones, sick of trying to get on in Florence, went to
Germany and now is one of Reinhardt’s props and aids. (He has since
done good work in New York.)

Another friend of mine who did not care to enter the school had more
success. He attained the Craig presence.

“But how,” he asked, “do you intend to teach music without teachers?”

“Oh,” answered Mr. Craig quite simply, “we shall work away, driving
nails into boards, or walking in the country, and when we feel like it
we shall sing!”

And so the possessor of some of the best ideas that have come to the
theatre in recent years ingeniously steps aside while others, with a
view to their more practical use, apply them to their own purposes. (I
need not refer to Adolphe Appia here. I leave his case for a separate
discussion.)

In the first paragraph of this article I emphasized the practical value
of simpler scenery for plays which require frequent or sudden changes;
but, of course, the artistic side far outweighs that. The kind of
scenery we see so much of in New York really deceives nobody. The
moment a human being of three dimensions steps on the stage you have
that human being posing against badly painted pictures. It is as if one
should combine statuary and painting.

The intention in current stage decoration seems to be to intensify the
lack of imagination on the part of the spectator. Each part of what is
called the scenery of a play is so clearly defined that there is no
opportunity for the communication of suggested feeling. The spectator
sees at once that he is looking at an imitation of the place, scenery
painted to look as much like the place as possible. As a consequence he
has the feeling, after the first five minutes, if he has imagination,
that he is not in the place at all. When the photographic accuracy
wears away the lack of suggestion becomes appalling. The commonplace is
scaled.

This is said, taking into account scenery which has scarcely any
plastic features--such scenery, for instance, as is used to a great
extent at the Metropolitan Opera House, where rocks and rills, woods,
templed hills and marble halls are painted on flimsy drops. In palaces
the architectural features are depicted in the same naïve way, using
the word naïve in its worst sense. I believe that scenery like this is
intended to represent the real thing just as much as a _papier-mâché_
mill which crushes the villain in a melodrama, and it succeeds just as
much.

This art, I think, came from Italy. At least, most of the scenery that
is painted in this fashion, or the inspiration for it, comes from
there nowadays. May it not be possible that it is suggested to the
scene-painter by the houses one sees in the small Italian towns, where
windows with shutters often are painted on the façade? The fantasy of
some of these windows is sublime. Occasionally, persons are painted
looking out of them. Dogs sit on the sills; I have seen peacocks. In
some instances the whole architecture is painted on the outside of the
house--columns, balconies, and all. This is a familiar enough device
in Italian churches, and I fancy many Catholic churches in America may
show traces of the style.

Carl Hagemann of Germany tries to get away from this sort of thing,
just as David Belasco has tried to in New York, by making his whole
scene plastic, every object built separately inside of a sky drop which
runs around from one proscenium arch to the other. If he uses a house
or a tree or a bench, it is not painted on the drop. It is built. In
the case of interiors his task is easier, of course.

This method of procedure has two distinct disadvantages. In the first
place, it takes away all the charm of suggestion, which I think should
play an important part in theatrical entertainment, and in the second
place, it does away with the possibility of producing a play with more
than one scene in each act, unless the producer happens to have a
revolving stage in his theatre, an equipment, by the way, which every
playhouse in New York should possess. Hagemann gave Goethe’s _Faust_,
which has countless scenes, by means of a revolving stage. He has
produced Shakespearean plays in this manner. Mr. Belasco has followed
Hagemann’s method pretty closely in some of his recent productions.
_The Auctioneer_ is a play, it seems to me, which needs this kind of
scenery, if anything does. _A Good Little Devil_, on the other hand,
would have benefited greatly by more imaginative treatment.

Gordon Craig, of course, would substitute suggestion for realism. He
uses a combination of screens, occasional draperies, and little else,
to gain his ends. The lighting is all from above; the natural lighting
in this world. If your floors were made of glass under which were
concealed hundreds of glaring electric lights, you would get the effect
that footlights give on the stage.

It seems to me there are few romantic or poetic plays which would not
be improved by Craig’s method of staging; and yet he has had little
practical experience in putting on pieces. Sets of model scenes for
_Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ have been exhibited in London. I think Beerbohm
Tree used adaptations of one of these at one time. Certainly Craig’s
_Hamlet_ was seen at Stanislawsky’s Theatre in Moscow. It is highly
probable that Isadora Duncan’s dancing background is a fancy of Gordon
Craig’s. However, little of the practical work of this man has reached
the public, except through his books, which are verbose and vague
except in spots; and through his conversation, which is usually said to
be unillumined even by flashes.

Craig worked at Moscow for a considerable time, however, and it is
probable that from the point of view of staging, Stanislawsky now leads
the world. He has adopted some of Craig’s ideas and fitted them to
others until he has obtained a formula for staging every play from _Le
Bourgeois Gentilhomme_ to _Hedda Gabler_. This theatre is the direct
antithesis of the Opéra-Comique in Paris, which has obtained such a
false reputation for good staging.

The Opéra-Comique clings stolidly to the Italian method of using
flimsy drops, with every detail carefully painted thereon, combined
with plastic objects, the whole painted in pastel or primary colors
in a manner to suggest a St. Valentine’s gift of the 1850 period.
The lighting is usually excellent. There are no innovations to be
looked for at the Opéra-Comique at present, which holds as fast to its
traditions as if the Russian Ballet had never been seen in Paris.

Max Reinhardt and Leon Bakst have utilized Craig’s ideas in a
measure, but they have altered them to a degree where they have
become unrecognizable. Reinhardt is known in New York by _Sumurun_,
one of his slightest productions. Still, it gives a good idea of his
impressionistic use of flat surfaces to create atmosphere and a
colorful background to his picture.

Leon Bakst, who has designed many of the famous ballets which the
Russians give in Paris and other Continental cities from time to time,
proceeds on a more lavish scale. There are no plastic features in a
scene by Bakst. Everything is painted on flat canvas, but the barbaric
gorgeousness, the impressionistic and suggestive qualities, appeal
to the eye as no attempted copy of a real scene could ever do. The
number of colors he uses in one scene is almost countless, and yet the
combination is always thrilling and effective.

Bakst is better known for his _Sheherazade_ than for any other of his
ballets, but he also designed the scenery for _Carnaval_, _Thamar_,
_Jeux_, _Daphnis et Chloë_, _Narcisse_, _l’Après-midi d’un Faune_, and
_Le Spectre de la Rose_.

He has further utilized his supreme talent for decoration in staging
the dramas in which that Russian mime, Ida Rubinstein, has appeared at
the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris during recent seasons: Oscar Wilde’s
_Salome_, Verhaeren’s _Hélène de Sparte_, and d’Annunzio’s _Le Martyre
de Saint-Sébastien_ and _La Pisanelle, ou la Mort parfumée_.

It was in this last play, produced in Paris in the spring of 1913
for ten special performances, that Bakst expressed himself perhaps
more personally than he had hitherto been able to do. Unlimited means
were placed at his disposal. He had all the money he wanted and an
exactitude in color, in scene and costume, was aimed at which required
the dyeing and redyeing of many stuffs, and the searching through
countless shops for others.

The scene in the port, with the ship of the blood-red sails painted
against a sky of blood-red clouds, in front of which figures garbed
in scarlet, vermillion, maroon, rose, mulberry, carnation, and other
shades of this brilliant color carried on the drama, will not soon be
forgotten by those who saw it. In the final scene Bakst combined black,
white, green, orange, rose, and magenta in the most extraordinary
manner. In this play, too, he utilized a series of curtains of
different colors, according to the scene, which hung half the depth
of the stage on either side. And back of the proscenium arch, also on
either side, was builded a column of gold, each column divided into
numberless small pillars, like the mass which supports the ribs of a
vaulted roof of a great Gothic cathedral.

This season Bakst has staged two new ballets for the Russians, Richard
Strauss’s _The Legend of Joseph_, in which Paolo Veronese is suggested
in the superb Venetian robes, and _Papillons_, which calls into play
the same qualities Bakst had already exhibited in his designs for
_Carnaval_.

The new school of scene-painting in Russia is said to have been the
inspiration of the painter Wronbel, who, however, did not do much
himself, as he died before his ideas were fully accepted. Bakst,
Alexandre Benois and N. Roerich took up the work. To Roerich we owe
the _décors_ of the ballet _The Sacrifice to the Spring_, devised by
Nijinsky to carry out the ideas of the cubists, and which aroused
storms of hisses whenever it was given in Paris. Alexandre Benois
painted the scenes for _Petrouchka_ and also those for _Le Pavilion
d’Armide_. Serge Soudeikine is responsible for the decorations used
in _La Tragédie de Salomé_, and Theodore Fedorowsky painted the
extraordinary scenes for Moussorgsky’s music-drama, _La Khovanchina_.
The costumes of the Persian ballet in this opera, of orange, with
vivid patches of green and blue, rest in the memory. The art of the
Russians, it seems to me, has found nearly complete expression. It is
impossible for them to go much further in their violent riots of color,
their barbaric impressionism.

It is a style particularly suited to the Russian Ballet performances;
the effect makes a complete whole which those who have seen it cannot
erase from the memory. Its practical application to other branches
of theatrical entertainment is more difficult. Certain plays of
Shakespeare could be dressed in this manner. Certainly _The Pirates of
Penzance_ and _Patience_ would be superbly fitted by it; so would the
music-dramas of Gluck, Wagner, and Richard Strauss.

But there is still another source from which one might set the plays of
Shakespeare, leaving aside the best way, which would be to give them
in front of screens and draperies in the simplest manner possible.
It often has occurred to me while wandering through various European
galleries that the work of the early Italian painters might easily be
adapted to the uses of stage decoration. Florence is full of this sort
of thing, but three pictures I remember especially--three pictures of
the fifteenth century, by an unknown painter. They are small and they
hang, with other pictures between them, in one of the long galleries of
the Uffizi. Two of them represent feasts. The simplicity and coloring
of the architecture and the costumes would be joyously in keeping with
certain plays of Shakespeare. The famous _Marriage of Boccaccio Adimari
with Lisa Ricasoli_, in the Ancient and Modern Gallery in Florence, is
another example. This train of splendid ladies and gentlemen, with a
background of old Italian houses, would make as fine a stage pageant as
one could wish for. One of its features is a bench with a cloth thrown
over it, which would occupy the entire length of the front of the
stage. Over this an awning is spread, under which the procession walks.

Numberless other examples of first aid to a producer who wants to do
something new with Shakespeare could be mentioned. I cannot resist a
passing reference to the frescos of Benozzo Gozzoli in the Palazzo
Riccardi in Florence. The subject of the frescos is The Gifts of the
Magi; what the artist has really shown is a Medici hunting party.
The paintings, in a perfect state of preservation, depict youths in
the most exquisite garments in which any actor could hope to disport
himself. The combination of the greens, the purples, the blues, and
the mulberries, all intertwined with the most lavish use of gold, would
make such a stage-picture as has not been seen since the days when a
desire for beauty and not a desire for photographic accuracy--which
always defeats itself--governed those who put drama on the stage.

  _June, 1914._




Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig




Adolphe Appia and G. Craig


In the first edition of “On the Art of the Theatre” (1911), Gordon
Craig distinguishes himself by killing off Adolphe Appia. In the 1912
edition of the book (and the subsequent editions) he apologizes for his
carelessness in a footnote in which he refers to Appia as “the foremost
stage-decorator of Europe.” “I was told that he was no more with us,
so, in the first edition of this book, I included him among the shades.
I first saw three examples of his work in 1908, and I wrote to a friend
asking, ‘Where is Appia, and how can we meet?’ My friend replied, ‘Poor
Appia died some years ago.’ This winter (1912) I saw some of Appia’s
designs in a portfolio belonging to Prince Wolkonsky. They were divine,
and I was told that the designer was still living.” There is no other
reference to “the foremost stage-decorator of Europe” in this book.
Now, Appia’s book, “Die Musik und die Inscenierung,” translated from
his original French text by Princess Elsa Cantacuzène, with eighteen
plates from drawings by the author for the settings for the Wagner
music-dramas, was issued by F. Bruckmann in Munich in 1899. This is
the book which Hiram Kelly Moderwell refers to in “The Theatre of
To-day.” Loomis Taylor, last season director of the German works at the
Metropolitan Opera House, is also perfectly familiar with it, and he
related to me recently how an attempt of his to bring Appia to Germany
several years ago failed. There is no mention made by Gordon Craig of
_any_ book by Appia; Mr. Taylor has read only the German text; and even
Mr. Moderwell seems to have been ignorant of the fact that a previous
work in French had been issued by Appia.

I have in my possession a small volume (51 pages) entitled “La
Mise-en-scène du Drame Wagnérien,” by Adolphe Appia, published by Léon
Chailley in Paris in 1893. The sale was afterwards (1895) continued
under the imprint of the well-known publisher, Fischbacher, 33 Rue de
Seine. There is no copy of this work in the New York Public Library,
nor in any other library that I have yet consulted. (The later German
work is comparatively well known among artists of the theatre.) The
only reference to it that I have discovered is in a footnote (Appia
seems destined to be exiled to footnotes) in a now little read work by
Houston Stewart Chamberlain, “Richard Wagner,” issued in 1897, four
years after Appia’s pamphlet had first appeared. Appia dedicated “Die
Musik und die Inscenierung” to Mr. Chamberlain in this fashion: “_à
Houston Stewart Chamberlain qui seul connaît la vie que j’enferme en
ces pages_.”

There is enough interior evidence, without any reference to
chronological evidence, to give one cause to presuppose a knowledge
on Gordon Craig’s part of these books, even the German version of
which appeared before Craig had developed many of his theories. The
chronology, for the most part, is damning, for even in the short
French book (there is a reference in this pamphlet to the fact that
it is a condensed version of a longer work which Appia feared might
never see publication) one may find not only the germs but also a
complete analysis of the principles of modern stagecraft. It was
Appia’s idea that the stage director should use every effort, _by means
of the decoration_ as well as by means of the actor, to bring out
the secret of the drama he was producing. Appia was the first to see
the inconsistency of placing the actor against scenery with painted
perspective. It was Appia who foresaw that lighting should be used for
a more important purpose than mere illumination; that it should serve
as the element which binds together the decoration and the figure of
the actor, a theory which, as Mr. Moderwell points out, was imagined
before a lighting system had been devised to make its practical
application possible. It was Appia who discovered that although Wagner
had invented a new form of drama, he had not the slightest notion of
how to produce it. He is very explicit here. He says, for example, that
the action of the ordinary opera is determined by convention, that of
the spoken drama by life. In other words, the prima donna of opera must
sing her airs in conformation with the beat of the conductor, and she
may stand as near the footlights as she pleases. No question of art
is raised; nor should there be. You cannot improve (beyond a certain
very easily discoverable point) _The Barber of Seville_ by superior
stage management. In a play the actor tries, as best he may, to imitate
life. Between his lines he may take what time he likes to add action to
best serve this purpose. In Wagner’s _Wort-Tondrama_ (the master’s own
expression) the music is used for a double new purpose. It illuminates
the soul of the drama, _le drame intérieur_, and it defines to a
nicety the _time_ of the action (“not the duration of time,” says
Appia, “but time itself”). In other words, the author-composer wished
the illusion of his music-dramas to be as complete as that of the
great tragedies of the spoken drama, but he has set a definite limit
to his characters’ actions by composing music which it takes a certain
time to perform. He takes all liberty away from the actor without
telling him precisely what to do. Thus Tristan and Isolde, after they
have drunk the love-potion, are given a number of moments, songless,
to express their emotion in gesture; just as Brünnhilde, awakened by
Siegfried, must continue to greet the sun until the harp stops playing.
Appia foresaw that this action must be controlled by one man, who must
regulate it to the last detail. He must arrange the scenery and the
lights and the action not only to correspond exactly to the demands
of the music and the words, but also to bring out to the utmost the
underlying meaning of the work.

For this purpose he has gone into detail with which it does not seem to
be necessary to encumber this brief account. In the German work this
detail is, of course, much fuller than in the shorter French version.
The German book, besides, is embellished with engravings which give one
a very good idea of the intentions of the artist-author. Appia, for
instance, is not content with making one drawing for the setting of the
third act of _Die Walküre_; he makes no less than _seven_. These show
the varying condition of the lights and position of the characters at
different stages in the action. Loomis Taylor has called Appia’s idea
for this setting “the most beautiful that one could conceive.” And yet
no one, so far as I know, has ever attempted to use it. The Appia case
is an extraordinary one. Here we have a man who has not only developed
a complete and invaluable theory for the production of a group of
dramas, but who has also gone to the pains to outline to the minutest
detail the manner in which his ideas may be carried out, and no one has
taken the trouble to follow these instructions in the way he intended.
Once his work was complete, Appia seemed content. He has now gone on
to something else. Before the war began he had identified himself with
the Dalcroze school at Hellerau and had gone far beyond practical
present-day stage-decoration methods, evolving still newer theories in
cubes. However, may we not consider, with the evidence, that Appia was
the innovator of the new movement in the theatre?--may we not assure
ourselves that without Appia there would have been no Gordon Craig,
perhaps no Stanislawsky? His ideas have most certainly been awarded
fruition in a thousand forms.

I cannot resist a quotation or two in pursuit of my comparison. “_Das
Rheingold_ presents three elements: water (the bottom of the Rhine),
air (the summit of a mountain separated from Walhalla by the Rhine),
and fire (the subterranean forges of the Nibelungs).” Compare this with
Gordon Craig’s now famous description of the decorations for _Macbeth_:
“I see two things. I see a lofty and steep rock, and I see the moist
cloud which envelops the head of this rock. That is to say, a place for
fierce and warlike men to inhabit, a place for phantoms to nest in.”
But examples in which Appia exacts of the decoration a promise to play
a leading rôle are too frequent to be quoted. One other selection will
show how this comparatively (to the public) unknown designer went to
work twenty-two years ago to evolve a new form of stagecraft:

“The last tableau of _Die Walküre_ represents a mountain-top, the
favorite meeting-ground of the Valkyries. It is purely decorative
up to the moment when the god (Wotan) surrounds it with a circle of
flames to protect the sleep of Brünnhilde, but from that instant it
acquires a deep significance. For this sleep is Wotan’s precaution
against the workings of his own desire; that is to say, the god,
having renounced his power to direct events, has made the _confidante_
of his desire impotent. This fact gives the value of a dramatic rôle
to the decoration, since the return of the scene in _Siegfried_ and
_Götterdämmerung_ not only constitutes for the eye a unity between the
three parts of the trilogy but also always leads the spectator to the
vital point in the drama (Wotan’s will, active or passive).”

Appia’s purpose, in every instance, was, working from the general
to the particular, to discover the author’s intention and then to
illuminate it. The stage director or decorator, in his opinion, was
only the clairvoyant slave in the service of the author’s text. The
leaders of the modern movement in the theatre are in complete accord
with him on this point as well as others.

  _August 12, 1915._




FOOTNOTE:

  [A] See end of article for list of works.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.





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