Red/Cordite for Concerts
Since the Florentines, whom we may credit with some taste in the matter of art, invented the opera, not a month has passed without some glabrous-headed numskull or other rising to proclaim shrilly that the lyric drama is a by-blow form, not worthy of serious consideration by respectable, high-minded lovers of music. Others than numskulls have offered contributions to this popular cause. Addison and Charles Lamb ridiculed the opera, and every critic of today has slugged it with cherry-pits and pebbles. What seems to have escaped attention is the fact that of all music-forms the opera, valiantly withstanding these attacks, has remained the most consistently popular. It is even "reformed" every half-century or so by a Gluck, a Meyerbeer, a Wagner, or a Debussy. Also, I may add, the very music critics who affect a staggering contemptuousness for music drama in the abstract spend a great deal of unnecessary time at the Metropolitan Opera House and write a great many unnecessary words about the performances there. The explanation of this phenomenon, I am inclined to believe, after some personal observation of the gentlemen in question, is that they like it.
Personally, I will admit frankly that I prefer the opera, even when it is bad, to a good symphony concert. No music is good enough to stand up against the depressing circumstances of a performance at Carnegie Hall. At the opera, on the other hand, there is mystery: a white arm laid carelessly over the ledge of a box in the dim light; the gleam of the jewels and the silver and gold head-dresses in the soft glow; a feather-fan half-concealing a whispered word of love or perhaps a kiss. Even on the stage, however mediocre the singing and acting, there is some display of personality, something to talk about. And in the opera house there is the opportunity to talk. Besides, I can walk in and walk out, sit down or stand up; I am not forced to wait for the band to stop playing before I take or relinquish my seat. These are superficial advantages; the heart of the matter lies deeper: the fact is that opera was written for the opera house and it belongs there. You may not care for opera but, if it amuses you, you like it in the opera house.
Listening recently to a concert given by the Schola Cantorum at Carnegie Hall, a feeling that had been groping for expression for some time crystallized within me, a feeling that concerts should not be given in halls, a feeling that even the idea of the concert as it exists is a false and artificial conception. It is impossible for me to enjoy music in a brilliantly lighted, badly ventilated auditorium, in the midst of a crowd of elderly, anserine ladies and gentlemen, or rapt or bored or merely fatuous juveniles, the conductor panting and sweating, the men of the band sawing and blowing, and a soprano weighing four hundred pounds puffing through Ocean, thou mighty monster! The zest for conductors, Dirigentenliebe, is an amusing form of nymphomania. For there are ladies who prefer the baton to the blade. Each must have her own particular Kapellmeister. There is impending danger of an epidemic of this neurotic disorder, and I do not think it an improbable result that, in the course of three or four years, New York will have thirty or forty symphony orchestras. I must admit that attending their concerts would give me coeliac pains, but it amuses me to watch the fandango from the safe distance which my garret affords. It is from that distance, indeed, that I shall watch all concerts henceforth.
Let us consider the occasion to which I have just referred. The estimable ladies and gentlemen who form the choir of the Schola Cantorum, the gentlemen in evening dress, the ladies in white and blue and pink frocks, performed three numbers, the Kyrie, the Gloria, and the Credo, from Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli. This mass is a lofty and noble work. It is also difficult, in the sense that all crystal things are difficult, in the sense that it is more difficult to sing Vedrai carino than it is to sing Vissi d'arte, although Puccini's aria requires a higher and heavier voice than Mozart's. The chorus wandered through Palestrina's measures accurately enough, no doubt, but the effect was unendurable. This mass—any mass—was not composed to be sung correctly by ladies and gentlemen in evening dress to the polite approbation and discreet applause of two thousand Godless souls, the majority of whom, it is safe to say, had never set foot in a Catholic church. This mass—any mass—will only sound right when wafted out of the invisible galleries of some dimly lit cathedral, odiferous with incense, the emblems and symbols of demonology as close to mind in the fantastic carvings on the pillars and baptismal fonts as the emblems and symbols of angelology in the altar, the candles, and the vestments of the celebrating priests. The audience, the congregation, what you will, must be familiar with the intention of the mass, nay more, they must enter into the spirit of its celebration and believe in its carminative powers, Under such conditions, with however little authority the boy Pattis may attack the high C's, the communicants will not be disturbed by these descents from the pitch. They will either doze decently or be lifted into sublimity, and the vagueness of the tones will even enhance the effect. Amelita Galli-Curci herself could compel me to listen in the gloom of a sweet-scented, damp cathedral.
The second part of the program was devoted to Spanish folk-music. The ladies and gentlemen of the choir, following the ridiculous fashion of our concert halls, stood up and stood still while they intoned the sardanas and other dancesongs, created to be shouted out by peasants, stepping merrily about, waving handkerchiefs, and exchanging busses. Several of these songs were performed as solos by the languorous and sinisterly Venusian Marguerite d'Alvarez, who gave them an authentic enough interpretation, but the very vividness of her recital warned one of the falseness of her point of attack. Within the respectable confines of Carnegie Hall she made her auditors self-conscious. Corsets and white shirts grew stiffer. Collars refused to wilt. Had she, however, been transplanted to some dirty Andalusian tavern, where she might sit in a corner, wrapped sombrely in a splendid Manila shawl, while she sang in the smoke-laden atmosphere to the accompaniment of the strumming of guitars and to the shrill cries of a dozen Gipsy girls, her
Vivan los Sevillanos
y Sevillanas!
would flame into life; even the cradle-songs and celebrations of the Virgin Mary would make their true effect.
There is a place for hearing music as well as a time, and I have sworn a vow that if I can only listen to music in the concert hall I shall hear it no more . . . unless, like the ladies, I may be permitted to choose my own conductor and enjoy the delights of Dirigentenliebe, and here the ladies hold me at a disadvantage, for Alice Delysia and Pola Negri do not wave the baton with the authentic gesture of Arthur Nikisch and Thomas Beecham. To return to my theorem, let me particularize: why do you enjoy l'Après-midi d'un faune more when it is presented as a ballet than when it is performed in the concert hall? Because the music is played in a suggestive atmosphere, the action and the colours and the lights supplying the place inadequately filled in the concert hall by the program notes, which are rustled and turned while the flute purls softly. The ideal spot, however, in which to listen to this music would be an ancient hillside near some ruined Greek temple, the band hidden and mysterious and not too near. Then one could imagine the stately, obscene ceremony between the faun and the nymphs.
Chopin's music, indubitably, should be performed in a drawing-room, an Empire or a Louis XVI drawing-room, to be precise. There should be countesses present, with firm round breasts and spreading crinolines, and if a princess or an archduchess can be provided, so much the better. Between the mazurkas and the polonaises, servants in livery should pass ices, and if a young woman can be persuaded to faint occasionally, the effect will be heightened. The flowers should be lilies, tube-roses, and gardenias, pale but strongly aromatic blooms.
Funeral marches, wedding marches, and Strauss waltzes fall into their proper environments at times, but where should one listen to the music of Brahms? Experience tells me that the music of Brahms sounds best in a German public garden, with plenty of good beer, Pilsener or Münchener, according to your taste, in hefty seidels close at hand, and more good beer in vast barrels in the nearby cellar. It will do no harm to eat black and white radishes while you give ear to the F major, and Frankfurters will be found to go excellently well with the D major. Brahms would be the first to be delighted with this scheme, and if he is conducting his scores in the halls of Eblis, I have no doubt he has already experimented with it himself.
For the Mozart symphonies a rococo ballroom is required, the ceiling elaborately ornamented with gold Eroses and stucco roses. If Fragonard or Boucher painted the wall-panels, that will be an advantage, and it will do no hurt to the music if they be a little indecent. The orchestra will be visible and the men must wear red coats and knee breeches of some eighteenth century style, and they must be peruked. The leader must wear the tallest peruke of all (it should tower two feet above his head), and however high he may stand on his toes in the ecstasy of the beat, his heels must never leave the floor, for these heels, red, too, should be five inches high.
Scriabin designed a temple suitable for the performances of his own music, music which demands a certain amount of subaudition, a temple of odours and colours that might have pleased des Esseintes. This temple has not yet been constructed, but compromises have been attempted. For instance, the Russian Symphony Orchestra once played Scriabin's Prometheus before a moving-picture screen on which coloured lights were projected and merged by means of a keyboard with an electrical attachment. An effort to illustrate Siegfried's Rhine Journey with appropriate accompanying action in a washtub would make an analogous effect.
Leo Ornstein, whose favourite figure in composition is anacoluthon, should play his music on a piano balanced on a pushcart, the whole moved to the middle of Manhattan Bridge. His audience should pass in motor-cars, the chauffeurs tooting their sirens, in street-cars, the motormen madly clanging their bells, and in aeroplanes, with their engines throbbing vehemently.' The result would be Jovian. I have enjoyed The Wild Men's Dance and Impressions of the Thames even in the concert hall but, if I heard them under these circumstances, I should probably break a blood-vessel.
Where should the music of Richard Strauss be performed? Hardly any two of his compositions in the same place, I should say. Ein Heldenleben would sound best in front of the banal colonnade and monument of Vittorio Emanuele at Rome; the Sinfonia Domestica in Wanamaker's; Don Quixote in a farmyard; Tod und Verklarung in Roosevelt Hospital; and Don Juan in a brothel or, at least, a Temple of Love. In lieu of program notes, copies of the Contes drolatiques, the Sonnets of Pietro Aretino, and Le Journal d'une femme de chambre should be distributed to the customers.
Chamber music, as I have pointed out elsewhere[1] is written to be played and not to be listened to. Such pleasure as it gives is subjective rather than objective. As songs are a species of chamber music they are perhaps most effective if sung in a drawing-room, although there are exceptions to this rule. I have carried d'Alvarez and her Spanish ditties to an Andalusian tavern. The Two Grenadiers should be sung in vaudeville; Debussy's La Chevelure should be sung in bed; and Mrs. Beach's The Year's at the Spring should be sung at the meetings of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. As for the song recital, so-called, it is an abomination, a monstrous form of entertainment foisted on the public by the musical snobs who insist that the program shall be arranged according to their laws, a classic group, a group of German lieder, a French group, etc., and that the singer shall interpret these without a gesture, standing dignifiedly near the centre of the platform. There are signs that healthy interpreters with a touch of genius are breaking away from this absurd tradition.
Only concertos seem to belong exclusively to the concert hall. They are written for just this kind of audience, just this kind of place. The soloist, violinist or singer or jew's-harpist, dramatizes the thing and centres the attention visually on himself. It is Kreisler's Beethoven, or Ysaye's Beethoven, or Sarasate's, or Paganini's, or Liszt's. Yes, this is freak music and the atmosphere of the concert hall is entirely consistent with it.
To conclude in a major key, I would say that it is obvious that some music should never be played anywhere. At the head of this class stand the compositions of Sir Edward Elgar.
July 1, 1921.
- ↑ Music for Museums, a paper in Music After the Great War.