^Q^X^SVc s^ill be discussed in the following pages, with such care and minuteness of research as have not to my knowledge been previously bestowed upon so interesting a subject. Apart from courtesy, it must be owned that the greater portion of musical work in England during the last half-century has been done by foreigners. The premature death of Purcell and the advent of Handel were equally conducive to crushing the singularly rich development of early English Music, and to ushering in a long line of illustrious foreigners, from Handel, and Gluck, and Haydn, to Weber, and Eossini, and Mendelssohn. To these the English nation pinned their faith, with- drawing that faith from native composers, who in PREFACE. ix consequence no longer believed in themselves ; not at least outside the walls, or, more properly speaking, the organ-lofts of churches and cathedrals. Within the last ten years a change for the better has come over English Music, reviving the confidence at once of the worker and of those for whom the work is intended. With English Music during the last fifty years, and more especially with our contemporary school of composers, I propose to deal in a subsequent volume, provided such a volume should be called for. For purposes of reference I have here thought it sufiicient to introduce the separate chapters by a general synopsis of the period, which had previously appeared in The Fortnightly Review. Portions of the chapter on Liszt are republished from the same periodical, while some of the materials of the Wagner chapter were previously used for an article in The, Quarterly Review of July, 1888. I^OTE. The ink was scarcely dry upon the final pages of this book, when the hand which wrote them ceased work for ever j a wide circle of friends mourned the sudden removal from their midst of an amiable, clear-minded, and highly-gifted companion ; and musical art in England sustained a loss the full extent of which will be realised as time goes on. It has been the earnest endeavour of the- friend who has undertaken the task of preparing the present volume for the press, to avoid all unnecessary alteration, and to follow in the minutest detail what he believes would have been the writer's wishes. Headers will observe with satisfaction that the author had chosen for this first instalment of his work a section of the subject upon which, by reason of his superior knowledge and known predilections, he was entitled to speak with special authority ; and it may be regarded as a singular coincidence that the last chapter should have been devoted to a declaration of certain opinions, his able advocacy of which during many years past has contributed . not a little towards the making of that history it was his intention, to write. H. A. EUDALL. London, March, 1889. CONTENTS. CHAPTEE I. INTEODUCTOET — GENEEAL MUSIC DTJEING THE QTJBEN'S EEIGN IN ENGLAND 1 CHAPTEE 11, WAGNEE IN ENGLAND 29 CHAPTEE III. LISZT IN ENGLAND 85 CHAPTEE IV. BBELIOZ IN ENGLAND . . . . . . . .151 CHAPTEE V. CONCLUSION 235 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. 1837-1887. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY — GENERAL MUSIC DURING THE QUEEN's REIGN IN ENGLAND. It is no exaggeration to say that with the exception perhaps of natural science, both in the applied and the philosophic sense, there is no branch of human knowledge, or of human art, in which the change that the half-century of the Queen's reign has wrought, is so marked as it is in the spirit of music. I advisedly say the spirit of music, for with the practice and the productiveness of the art I shall have to deal later on. By the spirit of music is here understood the spirit in which music is regarded both by the artists who practise it, and by the amateurs who enjoy it in a more or less active manner. Fifty years ago, music in the higher sense was, to the majority of the people, an all but unknown quantity. The existing concert B 2 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. societies in London were few in number, and appealed almost exclusively to their own members, drawn from what then would have been called " the nobility and gentry," and what in modern parlance we may describe as " the classes ; " the masses being left out in the cold. Still more was this true of the Italian Opera, from the aristocratic precincts of which rigorous restrictions of dress and prohibitive prices excluded the vulgar. The general attitude of society towards the art was essentiallj'- that of Lord Chesterfield when he warned his son against a tendency towards being a "fiddler," even in the amateur sense, as wholly un- worthy of an English gentleman ; or of the poet Byron when he declined to acknowledge the difi"erence " 'twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee" in the famous epigram generally but erroneously attributed to Swift. That attitude, one is happy to say, if not altogether extinct, is at least rapidly becoming so. There are still gentlemen of the old school who have a certain pride in confessing their inability to distinguish " God save the Queen" from "Yankee Doodle;" and I remember that at the meeting convened for the dis- cussion of the Eoyal College of Music, and graciously presided over by the Prince of Wales at St. James's Palace, the speakers, including such men as Mr. Gladstone, the late Lord Iddesleigh, Lord Eosebery, and the late Archbishop of Canterbury, almost with- out exception prefaced their remarks upon music by INTROD UCTOR K 3 saying that they knew nothing whatever about music. But this contemptuous treatment of the art is essentially confined nowadays to official persons, such as provincial mayors, Church and law dignitaries, and the members of the British Government, which, whether Whig or Tory, wastes every year a huge sum of public money on teaching little Board School children to sing " by ear," while it declines to give any support to the higher development of the art, with the exception of a trumpery sum of £500 per annum grudgingly doled out to the Eoyal Academy. This stolid obtuseness, formerly so common, can no longer be laid to the charge of intelligent English- men ; and that this is so, and that musicians are no longer separated from the rest of society by the barrier which of old at fashionable parties took the tangible shape of a cord dividing the professionals from the rest of the company, is in no small measure due to the enlightened encouragement of art and artists by the reigning sovereign. Sir George Macfarren, differing in this from other historians, has more than once expressed an opinion that the decline and fall of English music was not in reality caused by the intolerance of the Puritans and their modern suc- cessors, but by the accession of the House of Hanover — a race of aliens with no sympathy for the national development of the art ; as if such sympathy could have been expected from the Stuarts, who in their tastes and habits were quite as much foreigners as B 2 4 HALF A CENTUR Y OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. George I. and Greorge II. Charles II. had not been many months on the throne when he went out of his way to affront English music. One of the earliest entries in "Pepys's Diary" (October 14, 1660) refers to a visit of Mr. Pepys to Whitehall Chapel, " where one Dr. Croft made an indifferent sermon, and after it an anthem, ill-sung, which made the King laugh." Neither did profane music of English growth find favour with the merry monarch ; for, a little more than a month after the last entry (November 20), we find that " at a play the King did put a great affront upon Singleton's musique in bidding them stop, and made the French musique play, which my Lord Sandwich says, do much outdo all ours." On the other hand, when George I. came over to this country he had quarrelled with the great Handel and refused to see him, and it was by no means an easy matter to reconcile the King with his runaway Kapellmeister, who had by that time become the darling of the English aristocracy. Our present Queen has from the first acted upon the wise principle of encouraging the art quite in-, dependently of the narrow prejudices of nationality.. Every foreign musician of distinction, from Mendelssohn down to Liszt, has met with a gracious reception at Windsor and Buckingham Palace ; and before her bereavement withdrew her to a great extent from public amusements, the Queen was a constant fre- quenter of the Italian Opera. On the other hand,. INTROD UCTOR Y. 5 the honour of knighthood has recently been showered upon English musicians with an almost too lavish hand. With the Queen, love of music was an hereditary instinct, further developed by the en- couragement and sympathy of her husband, himself an ardent worshipper of the art and a composer of merit. The important part which music played in the home life of this exalted couple is charmingly illustrated in the letters of Mendelssohn, whose genius was acknowledged by them even before the pro- fessional critics and the public at large had made up their minds as to his merits. Mendelssohn happened to be present in London at the time of the coronation, and gives a glowing description of that impressive ceremony. He writes, June 28, 1838 : I have just seen the fair young girl step forth from this gate [the letter contains a sketch of Westminster Abbey as a vignette], and as she, in her mediaeval costume, passed down the line of halberdiers, dressed in red, against the venerable grey walls, I could have imagined myself back in the middle ages. It was a very pretty picture, with just a touch of sunlight. May it be a good omen for her reign ! " And again : ^Nothing more brilliant, by the way, could be seen than all the beautiful horses with their rich harness, the carriages and grooms covered with gold embroideries, and the splendidly dressed people inside. All this, too, was encircled by the venerable grey buildings and the crowds of common people under the dull sky, which was only now and then pierced by sunbeams ; at first, indeed, it rained. But when the golden, fairy-like carriage — supported by tritons with 6 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLANtD. their tridents, and surmounted by the great crown of England — drove up, and the graceful girl was seen bowing right and left ; when at that instant the mass of people were completely hidden by their waving handkerchiefs and raised hats, while one roar of cheering almost drowned the peal of the bells, the blare of the- trumpets, and thundering of the guns, one had to pinch oneself to- make sure that it was not all a dream out of the " Arabian Nights." Then fell a sudden silence, the silence of a church, after tho- Queen had entered the cathedral. It was not till four years later that Mendelssohn made the acquaintance of the lady whom he had thus admired at a distance. The passage in which he describes to his mother what one may call a morning's music at Buckingham Palace, is so charm- ing and so pertinent to the subject, that, although long, and quoted before, it deserves insertion here : Prince Albert had asked me to go to him on Saturday at two- o'clock, so that I might try his organ before I left England. I found him alone ; and as we were talking away the Queen came- in, also alone, in a simple morning dress. She said she was obliged to leave for Claremont in an hour, and then, suddenly interrupting herself, exclaimed, " But goodness ! what a confusion ! " for the wind had littered the whole room, and even the pedals of the organ (which, by the way, made a very pretty feature in the room), with leaves of music from a large portfolio that lay open. As she spoke, she knelt down and began picking up the music ; Prince Albert helped, and I, too, was not idle. Then Prince Albert pro- ceeded to explain the stops to me, and sh« said that she would meanwiile put things straight. I begged that the Prince would play me something, so that, as I said, I might boast about it itt Gtemany ; and he played a chorale by heart, with the pedals, so charmingly and clearly and correctly, that it would have done credit to any professional ; and the Queen, having finished her work, came and sat by him and listened, and looked pleased. INTR OD UCTOR Y. 7 Then the young Prince of Gotha came in, and there was more chatting, and the Queen asked if I had written any new songs, and she said she was very fond of singing my puhliahed ones. " You should sing one to him," said Prince Albert, and after a little begging she said she would try the " Friihlingslied " in B flat, " if it is still here," she added, " for aU my music is packed up for Clare- monf Prince Albert went to look for it, but came back saying it was already packed. " But one might perhaps unpack it," said I. " We must send for Lady ," she said (I did not catch the name). So the bell was rung and the servants were sent after it, but without success; and at last the Queen went herself, and whilst she was gone Prince Albert said to me, " She begs you will accept this present as a remembrance," and gave me a case with a beautiful ring, on which is engraved " V.E., 1842." . . . The Duchess of Kent came in too, and while they were all talking I rummaged about amongst the music, and soon discovered my first set of songs. So of course I begged her to sing one of these, to which she very kindly consented ; and which did she choose 'I — " Schoner und sochner schmiickt sich" — sang it quite charmingly, in strict time and tune, and with very good execution. Only in the line " Der Prosa Last und Miih," where it goes down to D and up again by semitones, she sang D sharp each time ; and as I gave her the note the first two times, the last time she sang D where it ought to have been D sharp. But with the exception of this little mistake it was really charming, and the last long G, I have never heard better or purer or more natural from any amateur. Then I was obliged to confess that Fanny had written the song (which I found very hard, but pride must have a fall), and to beg her to sing one of my own also. If I would give her plenty of help she would gladly try, she said, and then she sang the Pilgerspruch, " Lass dich nur," really quite faultlessly, and with charming feeling and expression. In her public encouragement of the art, the Queen has essentially followed that principle of a consti- tutional sovereign which says, " Le roi ne gouverne pas." She has governed neither concert-room nor 8 HALl" A CENTUM Y OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. theatre, and apart from the expenses of the private band, ably directed by Mr. Cusins, the Eoyal ex- chequer has not been drawn upon for any of those contributions which Continental Kings and Kaisers bestow upon their Court theatres. In judging of this fact we should remember, however, that this is the country of self-help, in which art has to take its chance along with other unprotected industries. That it has upon the whole thriven well upon that prin- ciple — although a little material support from high quarters might at times have appeared desirable enough — the following remarks will show. In these remarks, even the briefest summary of the musical events which have happened during the last fifty years will not be attempted. Such a summary would by far exceed the limits of space here at disposal, and would, moreover, only tend to encumber the reader's memory with an endless enumeration of names, and dates, and facts. It will be more to the purpose to sketch in a few words the state of English music in the year 1837, and to indicate in what direction, and by what means, the great change previously alluded to has been efifected. The anonymous author of a volume of "Musical Recollections of the Last Half-Century," published in 1872, who, whatever may be thought of his critical faculties, has at least the authority of an eye-witness, speaks of this particular year in a manner which reminds one of the famous Chapter on Snakes in INTRODUCTORY.- g Iceland. "The concert season of 1837," he writes, " may be dismissed without the slightest reference ; " and a little further on he states : " Equally dull and dreary was the operatic season." As regards concerts, however, one important exception should be made — the first performance in London of Mendels- sohn's " St. Paul," which was given by the Sacred Harmonic Society, then recently removed to Exeter Hall, on March 7, after having been heard for the first time in England at the Liverpool Festival in the previous October, Sir George Smart acting as conductor. On that occasion the work had been the subject of very divergent comments. One of Mr. Davison's predecessors in the office of musical critic of The Times speaks of " St. Paul " as a purely ecclesiastical work, without " fervid bursts of genius or witching graces of melody," and he complains that "Braham had only a single air, or rather he accompanied Linley in a solo," having reference to the famous " Be thou faithful unto death," and its accompaniment for the violoncello obbligato. That nothing else worth mentioning happened in London during the first year of the Queen's reign can- not, of course, be accepted in its literal sense ; at the same time, the chances of anything happening were then, comparatively, very limited. The spirit of modern enterprise and competition had not yet entered the quiet realms of music — or at least of orchestral music — for virtuosi were as ambitious. lo HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. although not quite as numerous, then as they are now. Virtually, the only stronghold of that form of music was in those days the Philharmonic Society, which still survives. Only a few years before this, it was in so flourisliing a condition that, as Spohr writes in his autobiography : " Notwithstanding the high price of admission, the number of subscribers was so great, that many hundreds who had inscribed their names could not obtain seats." ' New and im- portant works by contemporary musicians were in those days frequently included in the programmes, and in the year 1837 it produced, amongst other things, a symphony by Onslow, and the overture " The Naiads," by Sterndale Bennett — then a young and rising musician, who subsequently became the conductor of the society. The Antient Concerts were already in a very attenuated condition, although they lingered on for many years afterwards. Their programmes consisted mainly of detached choruses and airs from Handel's oratorios, varied now and then by a song from Purcell or from Cimorosa, or the English Bach, or an overture by Mozart. Even for a complete per- formance of one of Handel's works this venerable society, founded as early as 1776, had not strength enough left. Its performances were directed (not, of course, conducted) in turns by the Archbishop of York, Eoyal and other Dukes, and various members. INTR on UCTOR Y. i r of the aristocracy ; and the admission was so diffi- cult that ordinary mortals were practically excluded.. From 1804 these concerts, previously given in Totten- ham Street, and after that at the Concert Eoom in the Opera House, took place in the Hanover Square Eooms. It was to make up for the shortcomings of the Antient Concerts that the Sacred Harmonic Society was founded in 1832, and by the time we are speak- ing of, it had already done excellent work, performing "Israel in Egypt," the "Dettingen Te Deum," "The Messiah," Mozart's "Twelfth Mass," and other works in their complete form. Those who knew the Society and its conductor for many years. Sir Michael Costa, in their old age, could scarcely realise the vast service done by both conjointly to sacred music, which was then, and remains to this day, the most perfect expression of English national feeling in the art of sound. If we look back upon these limited eflforts of our grandfathers with something like pity, the feeling is changed to envy when we come to consider the Italian operatic stage of those days, or at least the singers who trod that stage. The season of 1837, as has already been said, was con- sidered by contemporaries an unusually dull and dreary one. Yet we hear of "Grisi's exquisite singing, Lablache's imposing attitudes, and those wondrous high notes of Eubini," as displayed in Costa's Maleh Adhel ; and later on Pasta appears 12 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. in a selection from Tancredi and Anna Bolena, given on the same evening of June 29, for the benefit of M. Laporte. All this took place at Her Majesty's Theatre. In the way of journalism, music was represented, apart from the criticisms which appeared cursorily in the daily papers and in The AthenoBum, by one organ of its own. The Musical World, founded in 1836. Having thus completed the brief summary of things musical in London fifty years ago, it will now be neces' sary to consider what changes Queen Victoria's reign has brought about. The Antient Concerts have long ago gone the way of all things superannuated, and the Hanover Square Eooms, where they were held, is now the dining-room of a club, with the paintings by Cipriani still remaining in the arched roof. The Phil- harmonic, as was said before, still exists, but is de- clined into the vale of years, and shows the signs of senescence. The Sacred Harmonic came to a close five years ago. Its very valuable library is now in the possession of the Eoyal College of Music. Exeter Hall, which witnessed most of its triumphs, is, as far as music is concerned, mute and inglorious, being given over to May meetings, Young Men's Christian Asso- ciations, and the like. As to Italian Opera, very difi'erent opinions might be held. Its Juggernaut car has crushed almost every manager approaching it, from the time of Handel to our own. Italy is the land of song no longer. It has only two composers of INTR OD UCTOR V. 1 3 genius left, one of whom (Verdi) is an old man, albeit still in the full possession of his genius, while the other (Arrigo Boito) is too fastidious or too much occupied in other ways to give a successor to his Mefistofele. As to the Italian school of singing, the hel canto, it is practically a lost art. Even on so important an occasion as the first performance of •Verdi's Otello at La Scala, in 1887, Italy was unable to furnish a cast of native singers ; and in other countries the so-called Italian stage is invaded by a motley assembly from all quarters of the world, know- ing little or nothing of Italian traditions, and pro- nouncing the language of Dante and Petrarch with multifarious accents, amongst which the lingua Toscana in bocca Americana prevails. Mr. Maple- son's last season introduced a score or so of American prima donnas, and perhaps one or two Italian tenors. Italian Opera as a distinct type of art has ceased to exist, and its ruin is due to the so-called " star system," and the caprices and exorbitant pecuniary demands on the part of leading singers which it engenders. Fortunate it is that some of the " stars " are, at least, of such genuine brilliancy as we observe in Madame Patti, Madame Albani, and other excellent artists, Chronos, in the Greek legend, devours his own children, but luckily their places are filled up again twice and thrice over as soon as they are vacated. Such is the eternal vitality of nature, and of its coun- 14 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. terfeit, art. The Antient Concerts are dead, but of new concert institutions, with plenty of life and vigour in them, we have many. Let us first consider orches- tral music, which has made enormous strides within the last fifty, or, more properly speaking, within the last twenty years. For the general appreciation of this, the highest form of music in its pure or absolute state, no one has done more in this country than Mr. Manns, the conductor of the Crystal Palace Saturday Concerts. The excellence of these perform- -ances is known all the world over, and their pro- grammes comprise almost the entire range of classical and modern music, and bear ample testimony to the catholicity of taste and breadth of knowledge possessed by Mr. Manns and by Sir George Grove, who from the first has been, so to speak, the philosopher and guide of these concerts, and whose analyses of the music performed have largely contributed to their educational value. Additional impetus to orchestral art in this country was given by the advent of Hans Eichter, by many considered to be the first of living conductors, and certainly unrivalled in the interpreta- tion of Wagner, excerpts from whose dramatic works, together with Beethoven's symphonies, form the staple of the Eichter Concerts. Quite recently the London Symphony Concerts, founded and conducted by Mr, Henschel, have made an important addition to this branch of the art, supplying, at the same time, the long-felt want of high-class orchestral perform- INTRODUCTORY. 15 ances in London proper during the winter months. It is especially gratifying to notice that the progress of national taste marked by these facts is not restricted to London. Our large provincial towns are beginning to move. Apart from the great Festivals, which the limits of space make it impossible even to mention by name, some of them have established high-class per- formances all the year round. Sir Charles Halle at Manchester, Mr. Stockley at Birmingham, and Mr. Kiseley at Bristol, should be mentioned in this connec- tion. The orchestras of these gentlemen consist largely of local musicians, and the flow of healthy decentralisation thus indicated will, it must be hoped, not stop there. Before this reign is over, every great provincial city ought to have an orchestra of its own, and an operatic theatre to boot, even as the small towns of France, Germany, and Italy have such orchestras and theatres, largely supported by muni- cipal liberality. If orchestral music has been largely developed during the Queen's reign, it may well be said of chamber music, or at least of its public execution, that it took its rise during this reign. The credit is in the first instance due to the late Mr. John Ella. He started, in 1845, a series of inorning concerts of instrumental chamber m.usic, which became known as the Musical Union, and were continued by him for thirty-five years, with the result that many works of that class, both classical and modern, and very many i6 HALF A CENTUR Y OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. of tlie greatest virtuosi of the day, were for the first time introduced to English amateurs. Mr. Ella, it may be incidentally mentioned, also invented the analytical programmes which have ever since played so important a part in our concert-rooms, although abroad they are as good as unknown. The Musical Union has ceased to exist ; its occupa- tion, indeed, was partly gone when, in the winter of 1858-59, the Monday Popular Concerts were started on the basis of good music at cheap prices. The first performance took place February 14, 1859, being devoted exclusively to the works of Mendelssohn, and including, among other things, an organ performance by Mr. E. Hopkins ; a form of art, by-the-bye, which since then has dropped out of the programmes, and might be revived with advantage, provided a better instrument could be found for St. James's Hall. During the first year twelve concerts were given, and the success was such that the director believed the experimental stage to be passed, and announced the Monday Popular Concerts as a permanent establishment. Part of that success was, no doubt, due to the low prices at which high-class music was for the first time offered to the public ; for whereas previously reserved seats used to cost fifteen shillings, and unreserved seats ten shillings, the former were bere reduced to one-third of that price, and for admittance to the hall the moderate sum of only one shilling was, and is to the present day, chraged INTROD UCTOR Y. 1 7 The one-hundredth Popular Concert was given on July 7, 1862, when, according to The Times, more than one thousand persons were refused admission for want of space — a statement in itself sufl&cient to show the broad popular basis on which the concerts were by that time founded. In 1865 the Saturday Afternoon Concerts were added to those given on Monday evenings, and on May 15 of the same year one of the most important events in the history of this institution — the first appearance of Madame Schumann — took place. The programme on that occasion was devoted entirely to the works of her husband, which, in those days, were thought by the public and the press to be the abstruse effusions of the modern spirit, and are now as generally and almost as highly appreciated as those of Beethoven himself. Five years later, in 1870, Madame Norman- Neruda was added to the list of executants, and has remained one of the prime favourites of these and English audiences generally ever since. In the season of 1873-74 more than common attention was paid to contemporary talent, the names of Saint-Saens, Eubinstein, Eheinberger, Eaff, and other then living composers playing a prominent part. The cause of this inroad upon established tradition is partly to be found in the appearance at the piano -of Dr. Hans von Blilow, who here, as everywhere •else, exercised a beneficial but, so far as the Popular -■Concerts were concerned, a too passing influence. 1 8 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND^ There are few names of eminence absent from the list of executants who have appeared on and off. The one-thousandth performance was given on April 4, 1888. Like a mighty tree, the Mondaj'' Popular Concerts have thrown out shoots more or less vigorous, which, in the form of annual concerts and series of concerts, come round every season with the regularity of natural phenomena. To mention these, or any of these, this is not the place. What is of more im- portance is to indicate the growing demand for music of the better class which this increasing supply has- created, in accordance with a well-known rule of political economy. That, together with the good seed thus sown, rank and pernicious weeds are growing apace, is an almost foregone conclusion in a city so vast as London, which contains not one, but five-and-twenty different publics. At St. James's Hall, and at our smaller concert-rooms, to say nothing of innumerable private houses, false sentiment and arrant mediocrity flourish in the shape of the "royalty" song, so called from the blackmail which the singer levies on composer and publisher for advertising, by his performance, what he must know to be the most unqualified trash. The public, as Liberty Wilkes is said to have said, is a goose from which every wise man plucks a feather.. This is the same in all countries; still, it must be owned that the goose-like quality in musical matters is proportionately larger in England than elsewhere,,' INTROD UCTOR P. 1 9 or else what could induce even our best singers to minister to it, and to jeopardise their reputation by drawing large profits from the aforesaid abominable system ? To reduce the loud cackle of ganders and geese to a pianissimo, to stop the system of blackmailing by enlightening those who are too willing to submit to that tax, will be the task of the large number of music schools and conservatoires which have sprung up during the last few years, hatching our future Beethovens and Marios, and, in a general way, teach- ing the young idea how to shoot. The educational impetus given to music in this country was largely due to the late Mr. John Hullah, who, in his private, and later on in his official capacity, as Government inspector of schools, did excellent service in diffusing elementary knowledge amongst all classes. In 1840 he went to Paris to study the system inaugurated by Guillaume Louis Bocquillon Wilhem, the founder of popular musical education, and of the important Orph^on movement in France. The principles of Wilhem's method are contained in his " Guide de la Methode Eldmentaire et Analytique de Musique et de Chant," and the same principles Mr. Hullah forthwith proceeded to adapt to English uses. In 1841 he started, at Exeter Hall, classes for the instruction of schoolmasters, and from that modest beginning the vast development of musical training in elementary English schools may be said to have taken its rise. 20 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. Mr. Hullah was a firm believer in his own method, and strongly opposed to the so-called Tonic Sol-fa system, which, of late years, has found a vast number of adherents among popular teachers, and the practical results of which cannot be denied, whatever may be thought of its scientific merits. Mr. John Curwen was the founder, in 1853, of the Tonic Sol-fa Associa- tion, which has since spread its branches all over England, being especially favoured by the Non- conformists. Amongst our great music schools only the Eoyal Academy existed prior to the accession of her present Majesty, having been founded as long ago as 1823. On March 24 of that year the first lesson was given by Mr. Cipriani Potter to Kellow Pye, in the same house in Tenterden Street where the institution still flourishes. As far as outward prosperity and number of pupils are concerned, the Academy has never been in a better condition than at present ; and it must be hoped that Mr. A. C. Mackenzie, the new principal, will difi"er from his predecessor, Sir George Macfarren, by conducting the institution more in accordance with the spirit of the age. That spirit, on the other hand, is, in difi'erent ways, represented by two younger institutions : the Eoyal College of Music, over which Sir George Grove presides, and the Guildhall School of Music, directed by Mr. Weist Hill. The former was opened by the Prince of Wales, who had taken an active interest in the foundation of the school, oa INTROD UCTOR Y. 2 1 May 7, 1883. Largely by his exertions a sum of money, amounting to over £110,000, had been raised, and the college started with fifty scholarships for tuition, fifteen of which included maintenance, the remainder of the students paying their own fees. The admirable and serious spirit in which the art is taught here has been evinced more than once by the public performances of the pupils. Ars vera res severa is evidently the principle of both teachers and taught. The Guildhall School of Music, opened in 1880, which owes its existence entirely to municipal liberality, has long since become self-supporting. In the building erected for it by the Corporation of London on the Victoria Embankment, and in- augurated in December, 1886, it supplies no less than two thousand five hundred pupils with artistic pabulum. The Guildhall School of Music has a special task assigned to it, the task of spreading the taste for the higher forms of music amongst all classes of society. It rests on a popular basis. Its charges are within the means of those even very moderately endowed with the goods of this world, and it accordingly appeals to the people in the broadest sense of the word. It would, of course, be by no means desirable that a tenth or even a hundredth part of the two thousand five hundred pupils should join the professional ranks, although there is no reason why amongst that vast number a few artists of real genius should not be discovered. 22 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. To train them up to a certain point all the appliances are at hand. But this is a comparatively remote contingency. The more immediate task of the school is of an educational kind. It should form, in the first instance, good audiences rather than excellent performers. In England such a purification of taste is even more necessary than in other countries, which can look back upon generations of intelligent amateurs. With us the general culture of the art as a national growth is of comparatively recent origin. In consequence, our public labours under the diffir- dence of inexperience. It is slow to form an opinion of a new work. It prefers to wait and see what the newspapers say the next morning. This is a serious ■drawback for the art which, like every other modern institution, must draw its strength from the support of an enlightened public opinion. If the Guildhall School will spread that enlightenment amongst ever- widening circles, the trouble and the money spent on it will not have been wasted. It is curious to observe the comparatively inferior position which the teaching of dramatic music, properly so called, occupies at most of these schools, and the small number of vocalists at all equal to Mr. Sims Keeves, Madame Patey, Mr. Lloyd, and Mr. Santley, which in consequence they have supplied to the stage. There are, indeed, people who believe that our nation has no real taste for the opera, and that the oratorio takes its place as the real expression INTRO D UCTOR Y. 23 of our dramatic feeling in music. There are a good many facts which give plausibility to this supposition; the music of Wagner, for example, is highly ap- preciated in the concert-room, but the attempts that have been made to present his later music-dramas on the stage have been dismal failures in a pecuniary sense. The place . of the deceased Sacred Harmonic Society has been taken by numerous choral bodies, amongst which the excellent choir conducted by Mr. Barnby is facile princeps. On the other hand, the largest city in the world is able to support an English Opera only during one month, or, at most, six weeks of the year. Of the attempts at es- tablishing English Opera on a permanent basis which were made during the last fifty years, and amongst which the joint enterprise of Miss Louisa Pyne and Mr. W. Harrison was the most important, this is not the place to speak. For the last decade and more the cause of English Opera has rested entirely upon the shoulders of Mr. Carl Eosa. Mr. Eosa &t the beginning had not only to get his singers where he could find them in America and England, but he had also to create a repertoire for them. That rSpertoire is, of course, not limited to works •of s English growth, but it includes a considerable portion of them. Mr. Cowen's Pauline, Mr. Goring Thomas's Esmeralda and Nadeshda, Mr. C. V. •Stanford's The Canterbury Pilgrims, Mr. Mac- kenzie's Colomba and Tlie Troubadour, and quite 24 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. recently Mr. Corder's Nordisa, a somewhat unfor- tunate attempt at reviving the old-fashioned form of English Opera, identified with the poet Bunn and Balfe, have been commissioned and produced with various degrees of success by Mr. Carl Eosa, Of the respective merits of these works it would be inadvisable to speak in a chapter which is a summary of facts and not a criticism ; for the same reason the survey of contemporary English art must be limited to an enumeration of some of the most prominent names. From the earlier part of the period here under discussion, the memory of Sterndale Bennett alone survives, and his works are still occasionally heard in our concert-rooms. The veteran composers, Mr. John Barnett and Mr. Charles Salaman, are still amongst us ; Mr. Henry Leslie, Mr. Barnby, and Mr. Cusins are well reputed both as composers and conductors. Among the younger men, Mr, John Francis Barnett, Mr, Wingham, Mr. Stanford, Mr. Hubert Parry, Mr. G. H. Lloyd, Mr. Cowen, more successful as a writer of symphonies than as a dramatic composer, Mr. Goring Thomas, Mr. Mac- kenzie, Mr. Corder, Mr. Hamish MacCuhn, a young Scotchman of extraordinary promise, and Sir Arthur Sullivan, so far as outward success is concerned by a long way the first of English composers, may be referred to. Church music, in which England has excelled for many centuries past, has not, of course, been silent during the present reign ; and the modern INTRODUCTORY. 25 school of English organists, founded by Samuel Wesley, and including such men as Mr. Hopkins, Mr. Best, Dr. Stainer, Dr. Bridge, Mr. Kendrick Pyne, and many others, need not shun comparison with the foreigner. The question how much of the work done and being done by these and other men will become his- torical, or whether many or any of their compositions will be remembered fifty years hence, it would be premature to decide. Certain it is that our English school has given signs of various and valuable gifts, and the long mooted discussion as to whether England is or is not a musical country can no longer be said to be 5M& judice. Mr. Cowen's symphonies — particularly the "Scandinavian" and the "Welsh," which have made their way to most European and American concert-rooms — I am prepared to class amongst the best specimens of symphonic writing that could be produced by any living master at home or abroad. Mr. Mackenzie's maiden effort in opera, Colomba, showed dramatic qualities of a very high order indeed, as did also the first and the fourth acts of The Trou- badour, and the so-called dream-scene of the oratorio, " The Eose of Sharon." If the promise here held out has not been altogether fulfilled in other works by Mr; Mackenzie, the fault lies perhaps less with the composer than with the circumstances in which London musicians are compelled to work, surrounded as they are by the turmoil of the largest city in the 26 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. world, and impelled by competition to produce against time and in excess of the degree of spon- taneous inspiration allotted to man. Sir Arthur Sullivan's position in the history of our music is altogether exceptional, if not unique. Royalty has delighted to honour him, and the popular verdict has endorsed the opinion of " society ; " yet his time is largely occupied in the production of operettas which, excellent though they are of their kind, are not the class of work upon which great reputations are gene- rally founded. That this gifted composer is capable of treading the higher walks of the art is sufficiently proved by such a work as "The Golden Legend," the opening movement of which, with its novel and poetic effect of cathedral bells made vocal and articu- late, in my opinion reveals 'imaginative qualities of no common order, although the Berlin critics — who,, by the way, went into raptures over The Mikado : — failed to see it. Let us hope that Sir Arthur Sullivan will rise to still higher things in the future. The graceful, although not dramatically very power- ful, muse of Mr. Goring Thomas, the author of Esmeralda and Nadeslida, claims a passing tribute. This composer, nurtured 'in the traditions of the Opera Comique, possesses some of the qualities of the French school, and there is no reason why English- men should appreciate him less on that account, for art is distinctly an international thing ; it is a matter of give and take amongst the peoples of the earth, and INTRODUCTORY. 27 any nation that would proudly seclude itself from this ■continual interchange would, in the words of Othello, <;ut off The fountain from the which my current runs, Or else dries up. In the same sense that Mr. Goring Thomas is influenced by France, Mr. C. Villiers Stanford -embodies in his music some of the features of the modern German school ; but that foreign example has not altogether extinguished in him the true old English feeling is proved by his choral ballad, " The Eevenge," resonant with the roaring of storms and the thunder of guns. If amongst this array of talent a genius in the proper sense of that much-abused term has not yet made his appearance ; if in secular music at least we have not a distinctly national type of art, we may take heart of grace from the thought that the race of great composers is, with one or two exceptions, extinct in other countries as well as our own. It seems as if Nature, after her effort in creating such men as Schumann, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Wagner, Berlioz, and Verdi, had for a time relapsed into a passive stage. The visits, or, as Buddhists would say, the avatars, of genius are like those of angels, few and far between. It is pleasant to think that the next embodiment of this heaven-born spirit is as likely to take place iu this as in any other country. Here at least every- thing is fresh and hopeful, and the English prophet 28 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. need no longer fear the contempt of his countrymen. In most respects the conditions are more favourable now than at any other period during the long musical epoch, a brief and necessarily very imperfect sum- mary of which has been the object of this sketch. CHAPTER II. WAGNER IN ENGLAND. When Mendelssohn first came to England, in the spring of 1829, he was received with open arms both by artists and by society, and one of the earliest of his charming home letters describes a grand fete at Devonshire House, to which the fortunate youth was invited. Wagner's reception in this country, when he landed at Tower Wharf in the autumn of 1839, was of a very different kind. Neither the Philharmonic directors nor the Duke of Devonshire took the slightest notice of him, for the simple reason, amongst others, that they were not aware of his existence ; for Wagner, at the time, was a poor, unknown, and struggling man. The great works destined to revolutionise dramatic music, lay as yet in a dim future not pierced even by his own eye. All that he cared for was to become a famous operatic composer, and to reap the lucrative laurels with which operatic success is crowned in these days, and of which Meyerbeer had earned his fill in Paris., 30 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. For that city Wagner was bound when he first approached these shores. He came from Riga in a sailing vessel, having acted as musical director of the theatre of that remote Northern city for some time. Similar appointments at Konigsberg and Magdeburg had gone before, and had led to the composition of two operas, one of which, Das Liehesverbot, founded upon Measure for Measure, was given once at Magdeburg, while the other, entitled Die Feen, and developed from a fairy play by Gozzi, never saw the light during the composer's lifetime, although it has quite recently been given at Munich with such success of esteem as is due to the juvenile effort of a great master. Wagner at last became tired of the narrow misery of provincial theatres ; he determined to escape into a higher sphere at any price, and the means he fixed upon for that purpose were thoroughly characteristic of the man. Having read and discerned the operatic potentialities of Lord Lytton's novel, " Eienzi," he sketched the plot and sent it to Scribe for translation, proposing at the same time that the famous librettist should use his influence for the production of the' work at the Grand Opera. For, with a view to that theatre the opera had been designed, so as to put any thought of offering it to a German manager out of the question. The result of such an application from a perfect stranger might have been foreseen by any one but the young enthusiast. Scribe,, as far as WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 31 one can tell, did not answer his letter ; or, if he did,, that answer was the reverse of encouraging. But Wagner, nothing daunted, resolved to see what personal solicitation would do, and he accordingly- embarked at Riga in a sailing vessel, accompanied by his wife, nee Minna Planer, an actress of some talent, to whom he remained fondly attached through good and evil report, and a huge Newfoundland dog, the first probably of a long series of similar monsters without which Wagner did not think life worth living,, and one of which lies buried at his feet in the garden of Wahnfried. The direction was in the first instance London, and there the couple arrived after a long and fatiguing voyage. In a note to Mr. Dannreuther's- excellent article in Grove's Dictionary, it is stated that they lodged for a night at the "Hoop and. Horseshoe," 10, Queen Street, Tower Hill, still existing ; then stayed at the King's Arms boarding house. Great Compton Street, Soho ; from which place the dog disappeared, and turned up again after a couple of days, to his master's frantic joy. Wagner'& accurate memory for localities was puzzled when he wandered about Soho with Mr. Dannreuther in 1877, and failed to find the old house. Mr. J. Cyriax states that the premises have been pulled down. After a week, they left London for Paris, where Wagner finished his Rienzi amongst much misery and tribulation, and where the dog basely deserted him for a wealthy Englishman, if the novelette, " The 32 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND.. End of a Musician in Paris," contains, as is generally supposed, many autobiographical details,. In spite of what has been said, it may well be doubted whether Mendelssohn found at Devonshire House, or even on the trip to the North — which inspired him with his Scotch Symphony, and with the beautiful "Hebrides" overture — more valuable treasures than Wagner brought away from this country, for it was while journeying hither that the idea ..of The Flying Dutchman first dawned upon him, or at least gained realistic and dramatic con- sistency. The voyage was long and unfavourable ; they were driven out of their course, and on one occasion the captain had to seek shelter in a Nor- wegian port. That it was in such surroundings that Wagner received the vivid' impression of the wild atmosphere of storm and sea, and the measured songs of the sailors at their work, which we all know from The Flying Dutchman, one might guess, if there were not the master's own testimony on the subject. He was inland born (Leipsic, May 22, 1813), and the terrors and beauties of the sea impressed the young man all the more because they were new to him. It was yet in another sense that Wagner owed the story of the Flying Dutchman, or at least of its dinouement, indirectly to this country. This being one of the very few benefits which he reaped in England, a few words on the subject may not be out of place. Sixteen or seventeen years ago the present WAGNEK IN ENGLAND. 33 writer, then a very young man, made some very minute researches as to the genesis of the Flying Dutchman legend,, and embodied them .first in The Academy newspaper, and afterwards in a book which is not a good book, and, he is happy to think, is now out of print, although at the time it attracted a good deal of attention, and, in a manner, started the literary Wagner movement in England. The result of those investigations may therefore be repeated in outline here. The story of the Flying Dutchman can be traced back as far as the sixteenth century, and like that of his fellow-sufferer by land, the Wandering Jew, seems to be an outgrowth of the thoroughly revolutionised and exalted state of feeling caused by the two great events of those times — the discovery of a new world by the Spaniards and of a new faith by the Germans. Captain Vanderdecken, as^ is . generally known, tries to double the Cape of Good Hope notwithstanding a heavy gale blowing dead in his teeth, and , finding this task too much for him, the obstinate Dutchman swears that he will carry out his purpose, even if he should have to sail till doomsday. The Evil One, hearing this oath, accepts it in its most literal meaning, and in consequence the un- fortunate sailor is doomed to roam for ever and aye «n the ocean, far from his wife and his beloved Holland. However, the poets of later ages, pitying the weary wanderer of the main, have tried, in 34 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. different ways, to release him from this desolate fate. Captain Marryat, in his well-known novel, has not been very fortunate in this respect. Another denoue- ment of the story was invented by Heinrich Heine, and upon this Wagner has avowedly based the poem of his opera. In Heine's fragmentary story, " The Memoirs of Herr von Schnabelwopski," the hero (who, by-the- bye, shows, only slightly disguised, the characteristic features of the great humourist himself) tells us how, on his passage from Hamburg to Amsterdam, he saw a vessel with blood-red sails — very likely the phantom ship of the Flying Dutchman, whom shortly after- wards he beheld in ipsissima persona on the stage of the last-named city. The new feature added to the old story is this : that, instead of an unconditional sentence, Vanderdecken is condemned to wander till doomsday, unless he shall have been released by the love of a woman " faithful unto death." The devil, or at least the German devil, being proverbially stupid, does not believe in the virtue of women, and therefore allows the unhappy captain to go ashore once every seven years in order to take a wife. The poor Dutchman has been disappointed in his attempts at finding such a paragon of faithful spouses for many a time, till at last, just after another period of seven years has elapsed, he meets a Scotch (according • to Wagner, a Norwegian) merchant, and readily obtains his paternal consent to a proposed marriage with his daughter. WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 35 This daughter herself has formed a romantic attach- ment for the unfortunate sailor, whose story she has heard, and whose picture hangs in her room. When she sees the real Flying Dutchman she recognises him at once by the resemblance with his likeness, and, heroically deciding to share his fate, accepts the offer of his hand. At this moment Schnabelwopski-Heine is, by an unforeseen and indescribable incident, called away from the house, and when he comes back, is just in time to see the Dutchman on board his own ship, which is weighing anchor for another voyage of hopeless despair. He loves his bride, and would save her from the fate that threatens her if she accom- panies him ; but she, " faithful unto death," ascends a high rock, and throws herself into the waves, by which heroic deed the spell is broken, and the Flying Dutchman, united with his bride, enters the long- closed gates of eternal rest. Heine pretends, as we have said, to have seen this acted on the Amsterdam stage ; this statement, how- ever, he withdrew afterwards, and emphatically claimed as his own the invention of the beautiful and eminently dramatic episode. The former statement was also in so far inaccurate that he never sailed from Hamburg to Holland ; his voyage was, on the contrary, directed to London, and here most likely it was also that, he made the acquaintance of the Flying Dutchman in a theatrical capacity. The story of a phantom, ship seems to have been at that time (1827) to a certain extent popular in England. 36 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. A very impressive version of it had appeared ia BlachwoodI s Magazine (May, 1821), and this was, made the groundwork of a melodramatic production of the late Mr. Fitzball, a prolific playwright of those days. The piece in question is extremely silly and bad in every respect. Mynheer Vanderdecken here is the slave and ally of some horrid monster of the deep, and his motive in taking a wife is only to increase the number of his victims. In this wicked purpose, however, he does not succeed — the heroine escaping his snares, and marrying (if I remember rightly) a young officer whom she had loved against the will of her father. The piece was running at the Adelphi Theatre about the time of Heine's visit to London, and nothing is more probable than that the German poet, who conscientiously studied the English stage, should have seen it. For the circumstance of the Dutchman's taking a wife, Heine would, in that case, be indebted to Fitzball, in whose piece there also occurs an old picture connected with the story. It would thus be most interesting to note how Heine developed out of these trivial indications his noble idea of the Dutchman's deliverance by the loYe of a woman. Wagner, on his part, has heightened the dramatic pathos of the fable by making his hero symbolise a profound philosophical idea, thus raising the conception of his character from the sphere of a popular tale into that of artistic significance, out WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 37 of fancy into imagination. The pitiful figure of Mynheer Vanderdecken becomes an embodiment of life-weariness, longing for death, and forgetfulness of individual pain and struggle, or (which is the same) of existence. Still, we must acknowledge, it would seem that the modest germs of these grand ideas were furnished to both the German poet and composer by the English playwright. 11, Between the first and the second visit of Wagner to this country sixteen years elapsed, and during that time a considerable change in his position had of course taken place. It may, indeed, well be doubted whether many people go, during the appointed time of three-score and ten, through half the adventures and perils which fell to the lot of Wagner during the interval referred to. For he was essentially a man of action, who lived both long and much, and who trans- ferred the dramatic impetus of his stage work into his own life. Such a man is likely to sufi'er much ; but, if endowed with supreme genius, his sufi"erings will, like the actions of the just in the old English poem, " smell sweet, and blossom from the dust." It must be owned that throughout his artistic career life supplied him with plenty of materials for such suflferings and such blossomings. One thinks, with 38 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. a kind of horror, of what might have happened if his Paris scheme had been successful, if he had been allowed to become, together with Meyerbeer, the fertile provider of grand operas for the inter- national stage. Whether, even in such circumstances, his higher nature would, sooner or later, have re- coiled from the flesh-pots is a matter for conjecture. Fortunately, he was exposed to no such temptations ; his attempts at placing Rienzi or his earlier operas at any of the Paris theatres proved utterly abortive ; he had to fathom the lowest depths of musical drudgery to gain a bare living for himself and his wife, and was only saved at the last moment from actual starvation by an unexpected stroke of luck. The score of Rienzi was accepted at the Dresden Court Theatre, and the first performance took place, with immense iclat, on October 20, 1842 ; the result soon afterwards being the appointment of the composer as Kapellmeister to the Saxon Court. That position Wagner held till the spring of 1849, and three more operas. The Flying Dutchman, Tann- hduser, and Lohengrin, were completed up to that date, and the two former produced at Dresden. The events which led to Wagner's flight from the Saxon capital are matter of history. The Paris revolution in February, 1848, found its echo in most of the German cities ; and Wagner, thoroughly dissatisfied with the humdrum existence of official theatrical life, joined in a movement from which he WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 39 expected an artistic rather than a political regenera- tion. What actual part he took in the revolution — whether he ever went beyond inflammatory speeches, and mounted a barricade — has never been sufficiently established. But what he had done was quite enough to bring him within reach of the law, and how real his danger was is sufficiently proved by the fate of his colleague and friend, August Eoeckel, the eldest brother of the well-known writer of songs, resident at Bristol, who was captured after the flight in May, and languished in a Saxon prison for thirteen years. The guilt of both men was aggravated by the fact of their being attached to the Saxon Court ; and the strong, one is almost inclined to think personal, feeling against Wagner which existed at Dresden, is sufficiently proved by the fact that he also had to wait for twelve years, and employ all manner of princely and other influential intercessors, before the decree of banish- ment was raised, and he was allowed once more on German ground. His escape from worse evil he owed, like most other • good things which befell him, to the unique friendship of Franz Liszt. That friendship has found a memorial as unique as itself in the . correspondence between AVagner and Liszt from 1841 to 1861 which has re- cently been given to the world by Wagner's widow, Liszt's daughter Cosima, and of which an English version by the present writer appeared in July, 1888. From a letter in this correspondence, and from 40 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. Wagner's own statements, it appears that he was staying with Liszt at Weimar early in May, 1849, where he witnessed a rehearsal of Tannhduser, which Liszt had recently put on the Weimar stage. Here, also, he heard that the Saxon police were on his traces, and accordingly borrowed the passport of one of Liszt's friends, Dr. Widmann, by means of which he made his escape to Switzerland. He settled at Zurich, and it was from here that he made his second visit to England. His thoughts had been directed towards this country for a long time, and it was here that he expected to find sympathy and intelligent acceptance of his ideas after his banishment had precluded him from taking any active part in the musical doings of his own country. To say noT;hing of an overture on the subject of "Eule Britannia," which belongs to his juvenile period, and the manuscript of which has tracelessly disappeared, there occurs in the corre- spondence with Liszt, as early as June 5, 1849, reference to a distinct plain of visiting • this country. By the advice of Liszt, Wagner had gone once more to Paris with a view of writing a work for the Grand Opera there, and, with his usual sanguine tempera- ment,, he saw everything finished in his mind's eye. His subject he intended to lay out for dramatic pur- poses himself, and then not a hackneyed librettist like Scribe, but a young French poet, with an open mind, was to look after the necessary vers.ificatiGn. WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 4' " During these slow preparations," he was heard to say, " I shall have to occupy my leisure with London ; I am ready to go there as soon as possible to do all in my power for the performance of my works. As to this I expect your friendly command." Soon afterwards we are informed that he had fixed upon a plan of having Lohengrin performed in London, and in English, even before it had been heard in the original. This is the passage alluded to : Latterly I have accustomed, myself to the notion of giving it to the world at first in a foreign language, and now I take up your own former idea of having it translated into English, so as to make its production in London possible. I am not afraid that this opera would not he understood hy the English, and for a slight alteration I should be quite prepared. As jet, however, I do not know a single person in London. . . . Could you manage, dear friend, to write to London and to introduce my undertaking, and could you also let me know to whom to apply further ? Liszt, as usual, was ready with his advice and his help, but he also had few connections in London, and the only person of whom he could think to apply to was Mr. Chorley, the influential critic, who, by the way, took subsequently a most hostile position to Wagner when he came to England. The immediate cause of that visit arose from a different and entirely unex- pected quarter. In 1854, the Philharmonic Society, which at that time occupied the leading position amongst musical institutions in England, was under- going a serious crisis. Sir Michael Costa had resigned 42 HALF A CEJSITUHY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. his post of conductor, and to find a substitute for him was an extremely diflScult task. At a meeting of the directors many names were mentioned ; some sug- gested Lindpaintner, others Berlioz ; others insisted upon appointing a musician of English birth, or at least one residing in England. At last M. Sainton, the famous violinist, who, at the age of seventy, still lives amongst us in full possession of his mental and artistic faculties, rose to his feet and named Wagner. He himself had no personal cognisance of Wagner's capacities, neither had any of the other directors, but, as M. Sainton remarked, a man who had been so much abused must have something in him. This sentiment was received with acclamation, and it was unanimously resolved that a leap in the dark should be made.* * When the above statement, founded upon M. Sainton's relation to me, appeared in Tlie, Quarterly Heview, M. Ferdinand Praeger, one of Wagner's early admirers, addressed a letter to the musical paper?, in which the following passages occur : " On the strength of its being a matter of historical interest, I would venture to supply the key to this otherwise too emotional version of the pro- ceedings of the conscientious directors of the Society in question. M. Sainton had a dear old friend, Charles Liiders, an excellent musician, albeit of the so-called old school, and I had the good fortune to be intimate with both. To these friends I had suggested Wagner, of whom neither knew even the existence. . . . When the directors heard that I had proposed to Sainton to name Wagner, I was invited to attend their meeting, where I gave all the information they required. This must have been most satisfactory to them, for I received the voted thanks, and enjoyed the honour of a ' shake hands all round.' The first correspondence concern- WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 43 The result of that resolution appears in a letter to Liszt which is not dated, but evidently belongs to the very early part of 1855 : "To-day I was asked, on the part of the Philharmonic Society of London, whether I should he inclined to conduct its concerts this year. I asked in return : (1) Have they got a second conductor for the commonplace things ? and (2) Will the orchestra have as many rehearsals as I may consider necessary? If they satisfy me as to all this, shall I accept then ? If I could make a little money without disgrace, I should be pleased well enough. Write to me at once what you think of this." ing the matter was between Wagner and myself." Whether it was M. Sainton or M. Praeger from whose head the Wagner idea sprang ready-made, Minerva fashion, those two gentlemen, who are both still amongst us, must settle between themselves. But M. Praeger is quite mistaken when he says : " the first correspondence concerning the matter was between Wagner and myself." Wagner had written to several friends on the subject; he had, indeed, practically accepted the offer of the Philharmonic Society before he even knew M. Praeger's London address. This appears beyond a doubt from a letter dated Zurich, Jan. 6, 1855, and addressed to Herr J. A. Eoeckel, which has never been published, and which Mr. Eoeckel, of Bristol, the son of Wagner's correspondent, has kindly placed at my disposal. In that letter, Wagner states that he has written to Mr. Hogarth, secretary of the Philharmonic Society, accepting their terms subject to the two conditions mentioned in the text. He then goes on to say : "I have not yet received their answer; but provided I really go to London, I reckon, of course, upon your friendly counsel " (Mr. Eoeckel had been in London as Manager of the German Opera). " I have also thought of Ferdinand Praeger, and should be very pleased if he would look after my affairs very carefully; for besides him, I really do not know anybody in London, nor do I intend to make many acquaintances there. At all events, kindly let me have Praeger's address. I scarcely know whether I ought to wish 44 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. A little later, Jan. 19, 1855, he writes : " I am able to-day to send you particulars about London. Mr. Anderson, treasurer of the Philharmonic Society and conductor of the Queen's band, came specially to Zurich to arrange the matter with me. I did not like the idea much, for it is not my vocation to go to London and conduct Philharmonic Concerts, not even for the purpose of producing some of my compositions, as is their ■wish. On the other hand, I felt distinctly that it was necessary for me to turn my back, once for all, upon every hope and every desire of taking an active part in our own artistic life, and for that reason I accepted the hand held out to me. London is the only place in the world where I can make it possible to produce Lohengrin myself, while the kings and princes of Germany have something else to do than grant me my amnesty. It would please me very much if I could induce the English people next year to get up a splendid German Opera with my works, patronised by the Court. I admit that my best introduction for that purpose will be my appointment as conductor of the Philharmonic (the old), and so I consented at last to the sale of myself, although I fetched a very low price — £200 per four months. I shall be in London at the beginning of March to conduct eight concerts, the first of which takes place March 12, and the last, June 25. or not to wish that the matter should come to something." The point is of very little consequence ; but when historic statements are made, and authoritatively contradicted, it is as well to be accurate. It may perhaps interest some readers to see the letter addressed by "Wagner to the Philharmonic Society, and accepting their appointment subject to the conditions more than once referred to. It is an interesting document, were it only on account of the master's curious French style. It has never been published before, and the original has kindly been placed at my disposal by Mr. W. G. Cusins, in whose possession it is : Monsieur, En reponse de la demande honorable, que Vous m'addressez au nom de Messieurs les Directeurs de la Societ6 Philharmonique, WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 45 Wagner arrived in London late in February, and after staying for a short time at the house of his friend, M. Praeger, at 31, Milton Street, Dorset Square, took rooms at 22, Portland Terrace, Kegent's Park. M. Sainton relates that one morning in February, at nine o'clock, a youthful-looking German called on him, in full evening dress, in order to pay him an official visit as one of the Philharmonic directors. At first their intercourse was a little formal, and slightly impeded by Wagner's imperfect knowledge of French ; but soon the ice began to tha^v, and before an hour was over the two were chatting as if they had known each other for years, and from that moment they were fast friends, and remained, during Wagner's stay in London, in- separable. de Londres, je me sens otlig^ de vous faire observer, que avant de me decider finalement, il m'importe de savoir : 1", s'il-y-aurait tin second . directeur de Concert, en quality de "Maltre de Concert," pour diriger les pifeces des Inatrumentistes et Chanteurs concertants, de manifere que je n'eusse k diriger que les grandes pifeces d'Orchestre et d'Ensemble vocale ? 2", si I'orchestre serait engag6 sur des condi- tions, qui, par le nombre necessaire des repetitions, me permettaient de repondre d'un esprit d'ex^cution, tel qu'il seul me peut decider a m'occuper de manifestations publiques de mon art ? Attendu que Vous etes dans le cas, de me contenter parfaitement sur ces deux points, je me declare pret k accepter I'engagement de la Society Philharmonique, quand il me sera offert. Agr^ez, Monsieur, I'assurance de ma consideration distingu^e. {Sirjned) Eichaed Wagner. ZvBica, 28 Dez., 1854. 46 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. Wagner had few otlier acquaintances in London, and not being able to speak our language, was practically debarred from English society. To that circumstance Wagner's wretched condition while in this country, and the prejudice - he conceived and expressed against things English, must be largely attributed. When Heine, who also came to England without proper introductions, and not knowing the language, stood in Cheapside, the crowd of people rushing madly past him reminded him of the fatal crossing of the Beresina Bridge by the fugitive army of Napoleon ; so sternly were all the faces set, so madly did they seem to fly from some impending fate. On Wagner the whirl of London life, the intellectual and poetic currents he was unable to fathom, must have made a similar impression. 'Englishmen were, and had to remain, strangers to him, and strangers appear frequently hostile. There were only two exceptions to this rule. Dr. Wylde,, whom Wagner calls " a good man," and Mr. Ellerton. "Eecently," he writes to Liszt, May 16, 1855, "a Mr. Ellerton, a rich amateur, has attached himself to me very cordially. He has heard my operas in Germany, and my portrait has been hanging in his room for the last two years. He is the first Englishman I have met who does not care particularly for Mendels- sohn — a fine, amiable mind." This Mr. Ellerton, really called John Lodge, for the additional name was assumed at an advanced age for family reasons, had WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 47 studied in Italy and Germany, and was able to- converse with Wagner in his own language, and to- enter into his ideas. His not caring much for Mendelssohn must not be accounted bad taste. What Wagner means is probably that Mr. EUerton did not share the Mendelssohn-worship which in those days was the key-note of English musical taste. What is especially in that gentleman's favour is that he does not seem to have pestered Wagner with his own very numerous compositions. For Mr. EUerton published more than 120 works, including a " Stabat Mater," a. number of symphonies and string quartets, and an opera, Domenica, produced, at Drury Lane in 1838, of which Mr. Alfred Bunn says that " it won't do ; he is a good musician^ but not equal to writing for the stage; perhaps he holds himself above it." Apart from this, his intercourse with Mr. Klind- worth, who took long walks with him, and played Liszt's music to him, was of much value to Wagner. Unfortunately that gentleman was in weak health. " Poor Klindworth," he writes, "has been ill all along, and the fact that I could undertake nothing with him has deprived me of a great pleasure. He is better now, but not yet allowed to walk with me. Besides him, my intercourse is limited to Sainton, the leader of the orchestra, who caused my ill-fated appointment here, and a certain Lliders, who lives with him. Both are ardently devoted to me, and do all in their 48 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. power to make my stay here pleasant. Apart from this, I frequently go to Praeger, a good soul." The most interesting acquaintance Wagner made in London, and one he highly prized, was that with Berlioz, who was conducting the new Philharmonic Concerts at the time. For him Wagner entertained a very lively admiration, which was not altogether reciprocated by the French composer, who, later on, gloated over the defeat of Tannhauser in Paris in a manner little creditable to his heart. But all this was still in the distant future, and Wagner speaks of his newly-gained friend as one of the few acquisitions of his dreary London days. " One real gain," he writes to Liszt, " I bring back from England — the cordial and genuine friendship which I feel for Berlioz, and which we have mutually concluded. I heard a concert of the new Phil- harmonic under his direction, and was, it is true, little edified by his performance of Mozart's G minor Symphony, while the very imperfect execution of his ' Romeo and Juliet ' Symphony made me pity him. A few days afterwards we two were the only guests at Sainton's table. He was lively, and the progress in French which I have made in London permitted me to discuss with him for five hours all the problems of art, philosophy, and life, in a most fascinating conversation. In that manner I gained a deep sym- pathy for my new friend ; he appeared to me quite difi"erent from what he had done before. We dis- WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 49 covered suddenly that we were, in reality, fellow- sufferers, and I thought upon the whole I was happier than Berlioz. After my last concert he and the other few friends I have in London called upon me ; his wife also came. We remained together, till three o'clock in the morning, and took leave with the warmest embraces." Berlioz, on his part, gives a description of this London episode to Liszt, in which he says : " Wagner is splendid in his ardour, and I confess that even his violence delights me. He has something singularly attractive for me, and if we both have asperities, those asperities, dovetail with each other," accompany- ing the last remark by an indented line, the angles of which run in parallels. Wagner's professional prospects appeared at first very bright. M. Sainton gives an interesting de- scription of the first rehearsal, at which Wagner conducted the Heroic Symphony of Beethoven with- out book — at that time an almost unprecedented feat of memory, although since then Herr Richter and other conductors have imitated it. The orchestra and the few persons present were at once astonished and delighted at the new reading given to the familiar work, the delicacy of the nuances insisted upon, the intelligence and fire with which the melodies were phrased. After the rehearsal the musicians broke out into a storm of applause such as has been seldom heard in an English concert-room. so HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. Wagner Mmself was extremely pleased with his re- ception, as the following extracts will show: — After the first rehearsal, the directors of the Philharmonic were so delighted and full of hope that they insisted on my performing some of my compositions at the very next concert. I had to yield, and chose the pieces from Lohengrin. . . . The orchestra, ■which has taken a great liking to me, is very efficient, and pos- sesses great skill and fairly quick intelligence; but it is quite spoilt as regards expresEdon — there is no piano, no nuance. It was astonished and delighted at my way of doing things. With two further rehearsals I hope to put it tolerably in order. But then this hope and my intercourse with the orchestra are all that attract me here; beyond this all is indifferent and disgusting to me. The public, however, have distinguished me very much, both in receiving me and even more at the close. Curious to me was the confession of some Mendelssohnians that they had never heard and understood the overture to the Hebrides as weU as under my direction. The first Philharmonic Concert took place on March 12. On the next day, most of the daily papers came ont with a shower of abuse, "which was echoed in the weeklies, notably in The Atliencewrn, and continued without abatement during the entire stay of Wagner in London. M. Sainton relates that, at the next rehearsal, when Wagner entered the orchestra, not a hand was raised to welcome him, the musicians receiving him with absolute silence. He himself attributes this change of attitude to the influence of the press, while Wagner discovers in it the influence of Costa, "the real master and despot of the musicians, who can dismiss and appoint them according to his will." Probably both were WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 51 right. Wagner, although, we have seen, a true and warm-hearted friend, was little conciliatory in his manner to strangers; and the asperities, of which Berlioz speaks, naturally roused the indigna- tion of those who came into contact with them. He was well known to be no admirer of Italian Opera ; and the Italian faction, with Costa at their head, naturally hated him. What was worse, he had written a very ill-judged pamphlet against the Jews, in which Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer were severely criticised, although by no means vulgarly abused. Meyerbeer's influence was far-reaching, and Mendelssohn was at the time the idol of the English public. We have been informed on the best authority that Wagner, when he had to conduct a work by Mendelssohn, deliberately and slowly put> on a pair of white kid gloves to indicate the formal, or, one might say, fashionable character, of the music ; and this piece of bad taste naturally roused the ire of Mendelssohn's admirers in the press and elsewhere. As is usual in such cases, both sides were to blame. But at the same time it remains a matter of regret that the influence which a man of Wagner's genius and high artistic aims might have had on English music, was thus almost literally "snuffed out by an article." That article, perhaps I should say that series of articles, appeared in The Times newspaper. Mr. J. W. Davison, at that time the musical representative E 2 52 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. of the great English organ, was, like all good critics, not a mere reasoner, but a man of imagination, and, like all imaginative men, a good hater as well as a good lover. To dislike Wagner he had more than one reason, amongst which his passion for Mendels- sohn was the first and foremost. Mendelssohn to him was not only the dearest of friends, but the greatest of modern musicians, and any one who had spoken of Mendelssohn with the disrespect that Wagner had shown, was, d priori, an object of aversion. In such circumstances, calm criticism was a matter of extreme difficulty, almost of impossibility. One should bear this in mind while reading the following extracts. I need , not say that they are quoted with no desire of disparaging the memory of a dear friend and colleague, whose vast knowledge of the literature of music and keen appreciation of its beauties made him an excellent judge, when his judgment was not, as in the present instance, blinded by prejudice. That Mr. Davison, in his treatment of Wagner, both as a conductor and composer, was egregiously mistaken, few impartial judges will deny nowadays. But that mistake did, upon the whole, credit to his heart ; and what writer on music or on art is there who can open old volumes of his writings without a certain tremor ? Critics are, after all, the children of their time, a little raised perhaps by experience and study above the level of current opinion, but still far from infallible. WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 53 The first Philharmonic Concert of the season, as has been said, took place on March 12, and The Times of the 14th remarks that the Philharmonic Society had not loved Costa wisely, but too well; and that the Mton had been oflfered to Berlioz, who was already engaged for the new Philharmonic Concerts. Nothing was known of Wagner's music in this country except the Overture to Tannhduser, which was at the best but a commonplace display of noise and extravagance. " No other musician," The Times goes on to say, "foreign or English, capable of beating time to the symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven being available within a distance of a thousand miles and more, one of the directors was dispatched to Zurich. . . . Wagner was chosen as being probably the very opposite of the Italian con- ductor." Then follow some disparaging remarks on Wagner's career and opinions : Hayda's Symphony 'Ko. 7 was executed with amazing spirit. Such a familiar work, however, in the hands of such a company of players, would fare well even without a conductor. It was in the (dramatic) concerto by Spohr, magnificently played by Ernst, the ("Isles of Rngal") overture of Mendelssohn, and the ("Eroica") symphony of Beethoven that the qualities of the new director were put to the test. The result, on the whole, was by no means satis- factory; but this may be accounted! for in more ways than one. Herr Wagner's method of using the baton (like that of some other German musicians) must be very perplexing at first to those unac^ quainted with it, and the confusion between the up and down heat, which he appears to employ indiscriminately (so unlike the clear and decided measure of his predecessor), requires a long time to get accustom ed to. Moreover, Herr Wagner conducts without a score 54 HALF A CENTUR Y OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. before him, which says more, we think, for his memory than for his judgment. Such precedents are dangerous. Supposing a leading instrument, entrusted with an important passage, were to , be found " napping " (which is possible), and that Herr "Wagner's memory should faU him at a pinch (which is possible — for if Homer nods, why not the author of Lohengrin i), what would be the con- sequence ? A dead standstill — nothing less. Herr Wagner, how- ever, did not " nod " last night, but exhibited unabated energy and fire ; and though his readings are in many places new and strange, his changes perpetual and fidgety, his indications of terrvpo some- times quicker (as in the first movement of the " Eroica " and the coda, of the "Isles"), sometimes slower (as' in Beethoven's slow movement and the opening of Mendelssohn's overture) than we have been accustomed to ; and although, for these and other reasons too numerous to mention, the band did not go so smoothly or pointedly, or generally so well as we have been accustomed to, we must decline at present to offer any positive opinion about his merits as a chef d'orchestre. The second concert, at wMch Beetlioven's 9th Symphony and extracts from Lohengrin were per- formed, and for which, as Wagner remarks, with ironic emphasis, the directors actually granted him twa rehearsals, was, curiously enough, not noticed in The Times at all, neither was that of April 16th. With regard to the fourth concert, of April 30, we read as follows : Wagner's mode of conducting does not seem to win upon the orchestra under his direction, nor his interpretations of the great composers to invite the adherence of connoisseurs. Weber's over- ture was encored. It was much too fast in some places .... and was hardly redeemed by the impetuous enthusiasm imparted to certain points. Beethoven's Symphony 'So. 7 showed the same discrepancies .... etc., etc. WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 55 Of tlie fifth concert, of May 14, similar com- plaints are made with, regard to Mozart's Symphony in E flat, but — The " Pastoral Symphony " was a great deal better, and the con- ductor seemed more at home. But even in this liberties were taken which, had the effect been good, might have passed unnoticed, but, since it was not good, only elicited a protest. ... Of the overture to Tannliduser we have already spoken, and the execution last night gave us no cause to modify our first impression. A more inflated display of extravagance and noise has rarely been sub- mitted to an audience ; and it was a pity to hear so magnificent an orchestra engaged in almost fruitless attempts at accomplishing things which, even if really practicable, would lead to nothing. The quaint and characteristic overture to Preciosa was played with great spirit, and brought the concert to an end with eclat. . . . At the concert of May 28, as even The Times was obliged to admit, the performance of the G- minor Symphony by Cipriani Potter was directed — "With evident good-will. . . . The overture to Leonora, although the opening slow movement was a little mysterious, went with more decision than anything we have hitherto heard played under Herr Wagner's Mton. Mendelssohn's (A minor) symphony was by no means so happy. The tempi were all wrong, excepting in the slow movement. ... It was listened to with apathy. Spohr's overture (" Berg-geist ") was well executed. Concert of June 11 ,• The Times says : Herr Wagner, to his credit be it said, took as much pains with Macfarren's " Chevy Chase," as he had done with Potter's Sym- phony at the sixth concert. Of the two symphonies we may at once say that Beethoven's (No. 8) went the best. The only fault we could find was with the extreme slowness of the minuet. . . . 56 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. In the trio, where the cello obbligato has of late years been allotted to all the celli, Herr Wagner maintained the original design of the composer, and gave it to the principal alone. Strange to say, however, in this instance we prefer the innovation to the first intention. Mozart's " Jupiter " Symphony was, to speak mildly, sacrificed to the whims and caprices of the conductor. The Times, on the subject of the eighth and last concert of " one of the most unprosperous seasons," has much to say. Spohr's third symphony and Beethoven's fourth were not well played, indeed, it would scarcely be possible for a symphony so well known as Beethoven's B flat to go worse. . . . The engage- ment of Herr Wagner has not proved fortunate. No foreign conductor ever came with such extraordinary pretensions and produced so unfavourable an impression. We should not quarrel with Herr Wagner's " new readings," although we agree with few of them, if he could render them intelligible to his orchestra. But this he has failed to do, and the result has been a series of performances unparalleled for inefficiency. The fact is that the author of Lohengrin knows better how to theorise fancifully than to reduce his theories to practice. His conducting shows as great a lack of the requisite science as his music. . . . Herr Wagner has cut a sorry figure in this country, where plain common sense goes for something. . . . We believe him to be a very clever man, one of the most subtle and specious indeed of a race of modern German system-makers ; but his works present irrefutable proofs that his organisation is not musical, and a musician, like a poet, is born, not made. Another such set of concerts would go far to annihilate the Philharmonic Society. The historic importance of this indictment, which deserved quotation as an authentic expression of critical opinion of the time, is increased by the fact that it seems to have served as a watchword to the WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 57 remainder of the press. The opinion of The Times was echoed by the other papers, as far as I have thought it necessary to consult them ; with one notable exception, however, ' This was The Daily News, at that time musically represented by Mr, George Hogarth, Dickens's father-in-law. That gentleman took Wagner's part with a warmth and ability highly creditable to his critical judgment. One extract with regard to the opening concert must here sufSce, If ever doctors differed, it was on this occasion. Mr. Hogarth wrote in The Daily News: Haydn's charming symphony was certainly never more delight- fully played. The andante was taken a little slower than usual here, and we thought that the effect of the movement was thereby enhanced. . . . The orchestra in accompanying achieved the great desideratum, a true piano. Beethoven's "Eroica" was magni- ficently executed from beginning to end ; we never heard the band play more evidently con aniore, nor ever observed a better under- standing or more complete sympathy between them and the conductor, and we felt as much gratified as surprised that such a result should have been effected by a single rehearsal. Whatever differences and controversies may exist as to the doctrines and tenets of the musical school, to which Herr "Wagner is said to belong, and as to his own character as a composer, disputes into which we do not enter because we are as yet unacquainted with their merits— on one point he has left no room for question — his consummate excellence as an orchestral chief. It is curious to note that the tone adopted by Mr. Hogarth in his history of the Philharmonic Society, published in 1862, is entirely different from these extracts, which were written under the im- S8 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. mediate impression of a great event. " During the season of 1855," we are told there, " Herr Wagner, though he discharged his duties with great care and assiduity, was unable to gain the confidence of the orchestra or the favour of the public. The season altogether was neither pleasant nor successful, and at its close, Wagner hastened to take his. departure from England." As regards the last sentence, I have been assured by Mr. W. G. Cusins, Master of the Queen's Music, and for a number of years conductor of the Phil- harmonic Society, that, in spite of the attacks of the press,, the Philharmonic season of 1855 was, in a pecuniary sense, an extremely successful one. The public were eager to see the man who excited such ire in celestial bosoms, and many of those who came to scoff remained to admire.. The fin^ concert, indeed, took the form of an absolute triumph for the much maligned conductor, and the scene, as described by Wagner, and fully endorsed by a remark in Tlhe Daily News, is well worth quotation. At the last concert (Wagner -writes), the public and the orchestra roused themselves to a demonstration against the London critics.. I have always been told that my audiences were very much in my favour, and of the orchestra I could see that it was always most willing to follow my intentions as far as bad habits and want of time would allow. But I soon saw that the public received im- pressions! slowly and with difficulty, and was unable to distinguish the genuine from the spurious, trivial pedantry from sterling worth, while the orchestra — out of regard for its real master and despot Costa, who can dismiss and appoint the musicians according to his WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 59 ■will — always limited its applause to the smallest and least com- promising measure. This time, at the leave-taking, it broke through all restraint. The musicians rose solemnly, and, together with the whole thickly crowded hall, began a storm of applause so continuous that I really felt awkward.. After that the band crowded round me t» shake hands, and even some ladies and gentlemen of the public held out their hands to me, which I had to press warmly. In this manner my absurd London expedition finally took the character of a triumph for me, and I was pleased at least to observe the in- dependence of the public which this time it showed towards the critics. How much of this " ovation " was due to geauine admiration of "Wagner's work, how much tct the genuinely English desire of doing kindness tO' an injured man, may be open to doubt. There were,, however, two very distinguished per- sons who treated Wagner and Wagner's art in a manner which- almost moved him to tears. " You have pro- bably heard," he writes to Liszt, "how charmingly Queen Victoria behaved to me. She attended the seventh concert with Prince Albert, and as they wanted to hear something of mine, I had the Tannhduser overture repeated, which helped me tb> a little ex- ternal amende. I really seemed to have pleased the Queen. In a conversation I had with her, by desire, after the first part of the concert, she was so kind that I was really quite touched. These two were the first people in England who dared to speak in my favour openly and undisguisedly, and if you consider that they had to deal with a political outlaw, charged with high • treason and ' wanted ' by the police, 6o HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. you will think it natural that I am sincerely grateful to both." In spite of these few bright points, Wagner's days in London were amongst the unhappiest of his eventful career, but it is interesting to observe how, even in such circumstances, he was able to forget external troubles over a subject that really laid hold of his mind. The instrumentation of Die Walkiire was, for the greater part, finished at Portland Terrace, and the masterly exposition of Buddhism as dis- tinguished from the asceticism of Dante's "Divina Commedia," in a letter to Liszt, is dated from London. Wagner left England immediately after the last Philharmonic Concert, and arrived in Zurich on June 30, glad to be home again, and more eager than ever for his work, which he had given up almost entirely during the latter days of his London^ purgatory. An offer seems to have been made to him to conduct the new Philharmonic Concerts of 1856, but this he declined to do. The old Philharmonic directors never proposed to renew this engagement. Before leaving this part of the subject, we must lay before our readers two interesting letters, for which we are indebted to their recipient, M. Prosper Sainton, and which show Waojner in a most amiable liwht — full of gratitude for the kindness that had been shown to him, looking back upon his London troubles with a certain humour, remembering old friends by their nicknames, and old stories and old jokes. I should WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 6r add, by way of commentary, that the chagrins et disa- grSments mentioned in the letter refer to the secession of M. Sainton from the Philharmonic Society, which Wagner erroneously attributes to the friendship shown to him by that gentleman. The Mr. Bumpus, about whose welfare he so anxiously inquires, is the book- seller in Oxford Street, whom Wagner, of course, had never met, but whose thoroughly insular name amused him very much. The peculiar French in which these letters are written adds to their charm. Zurich, 19 December, '55. Cher Prosperb ! — C'est aujourd'hui que je viens do quitter le lit de malade, que j'ai gard6 pendant deux mois k I'exception de peu de jours. C'^tait — je crois — la maladie de Londres, Idngtemps cach6e, qui est 6olat6e enfin, pour me rappeler ce que je dois k toi et k tes soins bien amicaux, sans lesquels j'aurais probablement trouve ma mort — Ik d'ou je n'ai remport^ maintenant qu'une certaine collection de rhumes et de catarrhs latents qui viennent de sortir enfin de leur cage. Les vapeurs de Londres s'ayant enfuides finalement, tant de mon corps que de mon esprit, ma premi&re occupation est de ramasser tout le frangais que je puisse encore' trouver dans ces coins de mon pauvre cerveau, oti — d'aprfes la doctrine du prof esseur Praeger — naissent nos facultes linguistiques ; car je me sens vraiment agite et press6 k t'6crire, et k te dire, que je t'aime toujours encore, et qu'un de mes plus doux souvenirs, c'est ta connaissance et ton amiti6. Le croieras-tu 1 — ■ Pourtant je ne veux pas te cacher que ces souvenirs sont accom- pagnes par des regrets : — ^je sens que mon amiti6 t'a beaucoup coiite. Si je pouvais effaeer quelque chose de ma conduite passee, ce seraient ces plaintes et temoignages de mecontentement que je t'ai donnas tant de fois k entendre, en recompense de ta meilleur volonte, et, surtout, des chagrins et des d&agr^ments assez affligeants, que tu devais essuyer alors toi-m^me, a cause de moi.. . . . Te voilk maintenant pay^ comme tu le meritais. Et qu'est-ce- 62 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. que tu as gagii6 en ^change de ce que tu as perdu % H61as ! un triste don, mon amitie, at le souvenir d'un homme melancolique, fort souvent insupportable qui mangeait tes diners et attaquait ta meilleure humeur par son f rangais horrible ! Voil^ ta recom- pense ! Et moi ? ne devrais-je pas 6tre mortifie par I'id^e de t'avoir attire tout cela sans te pouvoir restituer la moindre part de ce que tu as perdu h, cause de moi ? Tout ce qui me console un peu, c'est la legon que tu as regue, et qui t'aura appris de ne t'oceuper jamais, quant k I'art que des hommes d'une trempe bien differente de la mienne. Mais oomme je suis le plus %e je te donne encore un eonseil un peu grec : Tu me comprendras ! Eh bien ! II faut maintenant Men faire bonne mine a mauvais jeu, c'est pour cela que je te prie de demander k LMers ce que fait Bumpus ? S'il m'en pent donner de bonnes nouvelles, cela me con- solera et touchera profond6ment. J'espfere qu'il va bien ? Et la sallade d'homard,. et les bouteilles de sodarwater, qui 6taient i;oujours si affreuses pour yous deux h, voir \ Et Charlemagne % — II Trovatore, et les amis guerriers d'Alira. A la verite, je t'assure que je porte un grand et vif desir d'avoir •des nouvelles de votre part, mais bien larges — tr^s larges ! Entends- tu bien? Ou m'en veux-tu k present, puisque tu as appris que ma connaissance t'a porte de malheur? Je n'y crois pasj car je sais que tu es, avant tout, excellent gargon, coeur genereux. . . . AUons done ! Gardon notre amiti6 qui m'est k moi pr6cieux comme un sourire inattendu du destin. Esperons nous levoir un jour pour continuer ce que n'a que 'Commence, et bravons les canailles ! Adieu, mon tr&s cher Prospfere ! Mille saluts k Liiders et k la maison Praeger, mes parents ! Je te remericie encore de tout mon cceur pou.rtant de bien dont tu m'as combie, et suis persuade de ce •que je n'en perdrais jamais le souvenir. Ton tout devoue frfere et ami, ElCHAED WaGNEE. A second letter, addressed to M. Sainton, is dated Bayreuth, IS/S. At that time Wagner was in the WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 63 zenith of Lis fame, arid just preparing a performance of his Nihelungen Ring at the Bayreuth Theatre, erected for him by the liberality of his admirers, and of the King of Bavaria. But he had not for- gotten his old London friends, and a letter from M. Sainton, which reached him in the middle of his excitement, immediately elicited the following reply : MoN CHER Sainton, — Tu n'avais pas besoia de me rappeler ton souvenir. J'ai dictS k ma femme ma vie entifere ; elle la voulait savoii au fond. Cela est ^crit et sera Iegu6 k mon fils, pour le faire paraitre aprfes ma mort. Et qiioi ? Vous vous figurez de ne pas figurer dans cette vie ? Diable ! ITo. 8, Hind Street. EtLiiders? Toute votre histoire k vous deux est d6pos6e dans ce manuscrit depuis Helsingfors jusqu'^ Toulouse (en passant Hambourg). Et puis Londres ? — Charlemagne ? Oi. as-tu le sens, mon cber ? Eh bien ! Eapelle-toi bientot k ce qu'existe encore un certain chef-d'orchestre de I'annienne Philharmonie (pensionn6^) a Bay- reuth (en Bavifere, non Syrie !). Prends un beaujour ta ch&re femme, charge Liiders sur tes ^paules, monte un bon cab k I'heure, et arrive k juste temps k Wahnfried ; a une heure nous dlnons (! !) souper k sept heure du soir. Et maintenant, treve aux Lohengrins k Londres, g'a m'a coste ! — Mais si tu veux, apporte ton violon avec toi, et puis les Mbe- lungen feront les honneurs k vous tous. Force de salutations cordiales de la part de ton anoien ami, ElCHARD Wagnee. Bateeuth, 4 Juin, 1875. III. Twenty-two years elapsed after Wagner's hurried departure before he again set foot on English ground. 64 HALF A CENTURY Of MUSIC IN ENGLAND. Once more the interval had wrought an important change, both in his position in the art world and in . musical things in England. In 1877, Wagner was in the zenith of his fame ; the first of the Bayreuth performances had been given in the previous year, and had placed the master, as he said in his speech after the curtain had closed on the last of the Nibelungen dramas, in a position which before him no artist had occupied, A theatre had been built for the performances of his own works, and Bayreuth promised to become the artistic Mecca, not only of the disciples of a certain school, but of all who cared for ideal aspirations in art. Only one thing had been wanting — pecuniary success. In spite of all that the Wagner societies and the King of Bavaria had done, in 'spite also of the large support of outside amateurs, including many English- men and Americans, the enormous expenses of the undertaking had not been covered ; and it was partly to make up the deficit that Wagner undertook once more to cross the British Channel. The first idea of giving a series of monster concerts at the Albert Hall seems to have originated with Herr Wilhelmj, the famous violinist, who had led the Bayreuth orchestra in splendid style. But the enterprise itself was due to Messrs. Hodge & Essex, of Argyll Street. Six concerts were accordingly advertised, to consist of excerpts from Wagner's works, beginning with Rienzi, and ending with the Gdtterddmmerung . Parsifal WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 65 had not yet been written in tliose days, although the poem was in existence, and was read by the master to a small circle of friends in London. Many of the Bayreuth artists, including Madame Materna, were to take part in the performances, and a colossal orchestra of 170 performers had been engaged. Wagner himself had undertaken to conduct the first part of each concert, while Hans Eichter, also with Bayreuth laurels fresh upon his brow, was to direct the second. Mr. Edward Dannreuther had superintended the rehearsals. Wagner took a great interest in this matter ; he was evidently eager that Englishmen should receive as correct and comprehensive a view of his art as could be obtained apart from the stage, and he had for that purposie prepared the programmes with great care. The originals of these programmes, drawn up and the greater part of the verses written in his own neat handwriting, are now in my possession. Before speaking in detail of the Wagner Festival of 1877, it will be well to say a few words as to the progress which the music of the future had in the meantime made in England. There is a certain poetic justice in the fact that, as Wagner in 1855 had been, as I said before, snuffed out by an article, so the way for his triumphant return in 1877 was paved by a literary movement which was started when only a single opera of his had been performed in this country, and when little more than his name 66 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. was known to the general public. Of that movement it beseems the present writer to speak with modesty and a certain reluctance, for the reason that it was he who began it. Wagner's pamphlet on Beethoven, written in connection with the centenary of the master's birth, was published in December, 1870 ; and that pro- found and brilliant expose I took for the subject of a long and comprehensive article in the Academy news- paper, which was soon afterwards enlarged into an essay in The Fortnightly Review, and finally developed in the volume, " Richard Wagner and the Music of the Future," which, although imperfect enough as a literary effort, served at least to place Wagner's theory, and the embodiment that theory had found in his art- work, before English readers. A series of excellent essays published by Mr. Dannreuther in The Monthly Musical Record and subsequently collected in a brochure, tended in the same direction, although appealing, in its original form of publication, to a more limited circle. The , interest attracted by these writings was very general, and a perfect flood of criticisms and articles appeared in various newspapers and reviews. Most of these were distinctly hostile, but the controversy thus set going served at least to make impartial persons anxious to become better acquainted with the style of music which gave rise to so many divergent comments. Wagner watched these proceedings with a lively interest. In spite of the evil reception he had WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 6^ met with in this country, he never lost his faith in the musical susceptibility of the English nation, •closely allied as it was to his own ; and any sign of sympathy that came to him from this country he always welcomed with special warmth. To this feeling the exaggerated terms of acknowledgment in which Wagner spoke of these literary contributions are no doubt attributable ; he remembered English press utterances of sixteen years ago, and the con- trast struck him accordingly. Alluding apparently to some scheme, of the exact nature of which I am ignorant, he wrote in a letter dated Lucerne, April 14, 1871: "You will soon have an opportunity of seeing that I do not undervalue the sympathy of foreign countries with the new phase of the development of the German spirit. In the mean- while such utterances as yours are in the highest ■degree welcome to me ! " Eeferring to the article in The Fortnightly Review, Madame Wagner wrote later on : " My husband does not read English very fluently, but what I have communicated to him of your essay has highly interested and pleased him. Years ago. The Westminster Review published an article entitled ' Lyric Feuds,' which deals with the Wagner question at some length. This article is probably the only thing that had preceded yours in the English language." It appeared, I have since taken the trouble to ascertain, in July, 1867, and -considering the time at which it was written, is a 68 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. distinctly laudable effort. The " Lyric Feuds " alluded to are those between Handel and Buononcini, and Gluck and Piccinni in Paris. To the Wagner question seventeen pages are devoted. The writer evidently has very little knowledge of Wagner's music, and speaks of the "new 'school' of Wagner and Schumann ; " but he is much impressed with the beauty of the master's literary style as displayed in the French translation of his four operatic poems,, and the letter to M. Villot, also written in French. To return once more to the Wagner movement in England, brief reference should be made to the foundation of the first Wagner Society in 1873, which had a president in the person of the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, at that time Lord Lindsay, and an influential council,* but existed essentially,, like Schumann's Davidsbund, in the head of its founder and musical director, Mr. Edward Dannreuther, to whom the present writer served as humble literary adviser and amanuensis. Two- concerts were given at the Hanover Square Eooms, on February 19 and May 9, 1873, and the pecuniary result was so favourable that a respectable sum was remitted to the Bayreuth Theatre Fund. In the late autumn of 1873, and the spring of the follow- ing year, six further concerts were given ; but these were less successful, owing, perhaps, to the fact that the programmes included a great deal of other music than Wagner's, and the enterprise, therefore, was. WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 69 ■allowed to drop. An interesting incident in the lives of the conductor and the honorary secretary of the old Wagner Society was their visit in an official capacity at Bayreuth, when the foundation stone of the Wagner Theatre was laid on May 22, 1872. They both made Wagner's personal ac- quaintance on that occasion, and witnessed a performance of the " Kaisermarsch " and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, under Wagner'a direction. The «vent, perhaps the most memorable in his musical life, was thus recorded by the present writer : It is difficult to say what are the mysterious conditions of musical leadership; they are certainly nearest akin to the qualities of a great military commander ; and one can only agree with good old Emperor William, who, himself entirely innocent of musical know- ledge, said, after Wagner's late performance of Beethoven's C minor Symphony at Berlin, in his homely way, "Now you see what a good general can do with his army." It is indeed one of the most interesting sights to see the imme- diate rapport established between Wagner and his orchestra as soon as he raises his baton. Each individual member, from the first violinist to the last drummer, is equally under the influence of a great personal fascination, which seems to have much in common with the effects of animal magnetism. Every eye is turned towards the master ; and it appears as if the musicians derived the notes they play, not from the books on their desks, but from Wagner's glances and movements. I remember reading in Heine a descrip- tion of Paganini's playing the violin, and how every one in the audience felt as if the virtuoso was looking at and performing for him or her individually. A gun aimed in the direction of many different persons is said to produce a similar illusory effect ; and several artists in Wagner's orchestra and chorus assured me that they felt the fascinating spell of the conductor's eye, looking at them during the whole performance. Wagner, in common life, is 70 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND, of a rather reserved, and extremely gentlemanly deportment ; tut- as soon as he faces his band a kind of demon seems to take posses- sion of him. He storms, hisses, stamps his foot on the ground, and performs the most -wonderful gyratory movements with his arms' ; and woe to the wretch who wounds his keen ear with a false note L At other times, when the musical waves run smoothly, Wagner ceases almost entirely to heat the time, and a most winning smUfr -is the doubly-appreciated reward of his musicians for a particularly well-executed passage. The practical results of the literary campaign, apart from the concerts of the Wagner Society, did not amount to very much. The, Flying Dutchman had already been performed before its commencement in the autumn of 1870, at Drury Lane Theatre, when Mr. Santley was the Dutchman, and Madame lima di Murska an excellent Senta. Signor Arditi,. who conducted, did his beSt to inspire chorus and orchestra with his own love for this weird sea music, and the general performance was all that could be expected in the circumstances; and so, indeed, wa& the appreciation of an unsophisticated audience. Unfortunately the work had been delayed until the fag end of the season, and disappeared again from the repertoire for many years. In 1875, Lohengrin, and in 1876, Tannhduser, saw the light of the Anglo-Italian stage ; but in spite of the excellence of Madame Nilsson, Madame Albani, and other artists, the general spirit of these renderings was the antipodes of what Wagner had intended. The routine of conventional opera proved too much for WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 71 the new spirit here at work ; and it is no secret •that Wagner considered the performance of Tann- hduser at Covent Garden the worst he had ever seen for ensemble, while acknowledging, at the same time, the vocal achievements of individual singers. Wagner arrived in London on April 30, 1877, and took up his residence with his friend, Mr. Edward Dannreuther, at 12, Orme Square. Perhaps it would have been better for the external success of his enter- prise had he lived in great state at Claridge's Hotel, like a prince and ruler of men as he was ; but in spite of what his enemies said of his love of luxury, and in spite of his undoubted predilection for beautiful things and beautiful clothes on aesthetic grounds, his personal habits were extremely simple, and he found in the house and in the family circle of Mr. Dann- reuther those comforts which he appreciated more than the society of the great and noble. Not that he in any sense excluded himself from that society. By special invitation of the Queen, he went to Windsor to have a long audience of Her Majesty, and expressed to Mr. Cusins his delight at the kind- ness with which he had been received. Altogether he liked to mix in the society of English people ; and I remember more especially an interesting evening at Mr. Dannreuther's house, when he was the life and soul of a large and distinguished gather- ing, including, amongst others, George Eliot and Mr. G. H. Lewes. Madame Wagner, who speaks 7,2 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. English perfectly, served as interpreter, and her conversation with the great English novelist — who took a deep interest in music, although her appre- ciation of Wagner's music was of a very platonic kind — was both friendly and animated. " Your husband," remarked George Eliot, with that straight- forwardness which was so conspicuous and so lovable in her character, " does not like Jews ; my husband is a Jew." Needless to add that Wagner's aversion to the Hebrew race was of a purely theoretic kind, and did not extend to individuals — witness his warm friendship for Tausig, one of his staunchest adherents, and the earliest promoter of the Bayreuth idea. The concerts at the Albert Hall took place on May 7, 9, 12, 14, 16, and 19, and were largely attended, although not largely enough to equal the vast sums spent in advertisements, salaries of vocalists and orchestral players, etc. To make up for the loss, two additional "concerts at popular prices were given on May 28 and 29. Wagner conducted part of the performances on each occasion, and during the rest of the concert sat in the front row of the orchestra, following the music with obvious interest, and himself the observed of all observers. As a conductor he scarcely did himself justice on this occasion. To those who had seen him conduct the Ninth Symphony five years earlier, the difference seemed great indeed, and by no means accounted for by the lapse of time, although that no doubt told considerably at Wagner's WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 73 age. The truth is that Wagner's strength did not lie in keeping great masses together by a firm beat, or in helping an orchestra over the difficulties of making: acquaintance with new and intricate music. But when these difficulties were overcome, when the players knew their parts so thoroughly that mere time-beating became unnecessary, then a slight motion of the hand, a keen glance of the eye, would make them do things which a humdrum conductor could never think of. In London this perfect sympathy between the leader and the led was never established ; there was not sufficient time for it, to say nothing of Wagner's ignorance of the English language, which made interpretation a weary and arduous task. Wagner in consequence made the orchestra nervous, and the musicians greatly preferred Hans Eichter to him, showing that preference with a demonstrativeness which was probably not very agreeable to the most modest of men and greatest of conductors. In spite of all this, the artistic results of the Albert Hall Concerts were both striking and permanent. English audiences here heard Wagner's music played for the first time as that music should be played, and the impression received, and evinced by incessant out- bursts of enthusiasm, was all the more remarkable because that music had to rely entirely upon its own inerits apart from the powerful aid of stage sur- roundings. This point was strongly insisted upoij by a writer in The Examiner newspaper, whose words 74 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. may be quoted as the expression of contemporary- feeling. " On the present occasion," said The Examiner of May 12, 1877, " Wagner's works appeared before us under a new condition — unsurrounded, that is, by the pomp and circumstance of the stage, and depending for their effect on the intrinsic beauty of the music alone. That this should be done with the sanction and personal assistance of the composer has been the cause of some surprise and much discussion in this country. Wagner, it is well known, advocates the absolute blending of music with the dramatic action from which it takes its rise, and without which it loses much of its power and significance. In the abstract this is undoubtedly true, and the composer would have infinitely preferred to produce his works on the stage for which they are so eminently destined. Unfortunately this stage is wanting in London, for the present at least ; and in order to bring before the English public an adequate rendering of his musical intentions, he had, not without reluctance, to accept the offer of a concert-room. But in this case also the ' ill wind ' has not been without its proverbial good effect. It tends to destroy a pre- judice, frequently insisted upon by Wagner's enemies, that, without the assistance of stage appliances, his music would be devoid of all intrinsic charm. The selection from the Rhinegold on Monday triumphantly proved the absurdity of such a notion. Here was no WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 75 darkened theatre, no invisible orchestra, no elaborate machinery— merely a few ladies and gentlemen in ordinary evening dress, and in ordinary concert-room surroundings ; and yet the rushing and gushing of the mighty river, enlivened by the gambols of the water-maidens, was placed before the imagination with a distinctness perhaps the more vivid as the ear alone conveyed the charm to the mind. And thi& ejffect was produced, not alone on the few devotees who might supply the scenery from their remem- brances of Bayreuth, but on a vast miscellaneous audience totally indifferent, it may be presumed," ta Wagner theories, and unacquainted with the mythological significance of Loge and Wotan. A similar impression resulted from the graphic render- ing of the thunder-clap, v/hen Donnar smites the rock with his hammer, and from the lovely melody which, by its broad expansion suggests the rainbow bridge on which the gods ascend to their rocky castle. Our remarks are, of course, not intended to advocate the transference of Wagner's music from the stage to the concert-room, but we certainly are prepared to affirm that, without any external aid, this music ranks with the highest productions of the art, both as regards- melodious beauty and perfect mastery of form. If the Wagner concerts were to serve no other purpose than to establish this fact beyond the power of jcaptious criticism, their artistic result would be highly beneficial." 76 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. In a pecuniary sense the concerts were less success- ful. A very large sum had been promised to Wagner for his personal services in the matter, but when he heard that things were not going well, he declared himself willing to forego all remuneration with that generosity which if on occasion he expected from his friends, he was not loth to exercise himself. This sacrifice Messrs. Hodge & Essex, who behaved throughout in a straightforward and admirable manner, refused to accept, and a sum of £700 was eventually remitted to Bayreuth. But this Wagner did not expect when he left London, and the last words he uttered standing at the carriage window as the train steamed out of Victoria Station were : " All is lost, except honour." The parting scene was an %xtremely impressive one. A small group of friends was assembled on the platform to bid the master God speed, all of whom he shook cordially by the hand, while those more intimate he kissed after the German fashion. From any other man this sign of affection would have been scarcely welcome, but the kiss of so great a master seemed to set as it were a seal on an important event in the history of art ; and I remember well that the late Mr. Davison, whom I had encouraged to accom- pany me to the station, assuring him of the very best reception on Wagner's part, had tears in his eyes. The antagonism of former years was forgotten in this moment of general emotion and reconcilement. WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 77 When the news of the fiaancial disaster got about, a number of men determined to wipe oflF the stain on the English artistic character, and a subscription was opened without Wagner's knowledge, and soon reached the sum of £561, which was duly sent to Wagner. But once again he gave an instance of that contempt for money which he invariably showed when he had any money to contemn. He had made arrangements that the royalties to come from per- formances of "The Ring" at Munich should be set aside to cover the debt of the Bayreuth Theatre, and the sum collected in England was accordingly returned to the subscribers, one of whom wrote in his surprise : " Strange things happen in the realm of music." A letter accompanying the remittance and addressed to Mr. Dannreuther deserves quotation on account of the noble spirit and genuine kindness of its tone. It may serve as the final and har- monious chord of the English episode in Wagner's life: Batbbdih, 227wJ August, Vill. Deae Friend, When I found myself compelled to give up a consideraUe portion of the receipts originally promised to me for the concerts in London, so as to ensure the artistic success of those concerts, a number of my friends conceived the idea of covering this loss hy a subscription, towards which you took the initiative by appeaUng to those interested in my art in England. Some little time since, and after you had issued your appeal, other and nearer ways to help me out of the difficulties arising from the deficit at Bayreuth have been found. I would therefore ask the favour of the honoured sub- 78 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. scribers, a list of whom you have lately communicated to me, to " accept again the sums they have so kindly placed at my disposal ; and I would heg of you to offer them all my warm and most sincere thanks for the sympathy they have so kindly shown towards me. Most truly yours, ElCHARD WaGNEK. IV. After having seen what Wagner did and suffered in England, it remains to inquire briefly what hia music did and suffered there, what successes it achieved, what rebuffs it met with, and what its permanent influence on English art is likely to be. Perhaps it will be found that the questions here stated are in a kind of correlation, and throw mutual light upon each other ; for it is a curious fact that Wagner's music, essentially and intensely dramatic as it is, has fared amongst us a great deal better in the concert- room than it has on the stage. When Wagner was over here for the last time and saw his work triumph at the Albert Hall, he witnessed, as I already stated, a performance of Tannhauser, which he declared to be the worst he had ever seen. The Albert Hall Concerts were the germ from which the Eichter Concerts sprang, for it was at the Albert Hall that the public were impressed with the singular force and delicacy and mental grasp which Hans Eichter brought to the interpretation of Wagner's works, and which, by some hidden magic, he imparts to WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 79 the orchestra, from the leader at the first violin desk to the last drummer. English audiences felt this very keenly, and they accordingly ap- plauded Kichter as they never applauded a conductor before ; indeed, they hero-worshipped him as only prima-donnas, or fiddlers, or pianists are usually worshipped. When Mr. Franke — an impresario who, unlike the majority of his race, was a musical enthusiast, and ended in the Bankruptcy Court accordingly — started the Eichter Concerts, musical and fashionable London flocked to them, and his success would have been as permanent as it was brilliant had he not acted upon a very natural and logical train of reasoning. If these people — he may have said to himself— like Wagner's music apart from its stage surround- ings, how will they not appreciate him when they see his work set forth with all the potency of action and of scenery ? In consequence he started a German, or what was and- for a number of years will remain synonymous, a Wagner. Opera season at Drury Lane in 1882, and the result was disastrous, although not so disastrous as later on at Covent Garden, when the experiment was repeated, or as the pecuniary result of the Nibelungen performances under Neumann's management at Her Majesty's Theatre in the first- named year had been. In following the aforesaid; train of thought, poor Mr. Franke overlooked! two; important facts. The one is that English people like 8o HALf A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. serious music and like the stage, but they do not care for serious music on the stage. This is a confession which the present writer makes with peculiar reluc- tance, but which one can scarcely help making. Or else, how is one to account for such an appalling juxtaposition of facts as the following ? Half-a-dozen or more theatres in London at which operettas of various kinds flourish, and which are of course carefully shunned by the musical public proper, and not a single theatre at which serious Opera in English has been performed for the last two years ; Mr. Eosa, after having attempted that serious Opera in the metropolis for many years, abandoning such, an attempt for the present, and worshipping at the shrine of Planquette and his congeners. How are the WdLliure, or Tristan, or even the Meister singer, to flourish in a city where Dorothy runs for a thousand consecutive nights ? If before these lines are a year old they are reduced ad ahsurdum, if the mysterious Mansion House scheme for the foundation of a National Opera ever comes to anything, if the immediate or even the distant future brings us novel performances of Wagner's or any other good operas, no one will be more delighted than myself But of all this there appears very little chance at present. It is true that the English performances of Rienzi, TJie Dutchman, Tannhduser, and Lohengrin, were well attended, and that the last- named opera, during Mr. Harris's Italian season of WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 8i 1888, drew larger houses than any other. But this can scarcely be cited as a triumph of the true Wagnerian spirit, for Lohengrin has received the cachet of general popularity ; it is appreciated by numbers of people who have never heard or would not care for if they had heard, the master's later music-dramas, and none of these has so far been attempted either in English or in Italian on the London stage. It remains a fact, then, and is indeed the second fact overlooked by Mr. Franke, that although the English lovers of Wagner's music are numerous ■enough to support the Eichter Concerts, and to send a large contingent to Bayreuth every year, they are not numerous enough to make a Wagner season in our own midst a paying thing ; and with this fact we have to reckon when we come to consider the second question above propounded — that having reference to the influence which Wagner's music has had, and is likely to have, on the English school. A wider range of view here becomes necessary. It has often been said, and I have frequently said it myself, that Wagner has, for the present, ruined dramatic music in the same sense that Beethoven for -a long period ruined symphonic music. Such colossi ■throw a shadow on the onward path of the art from which later-born and lesser-born men find it difficult to emerge. To ignore Wagner is, for a modern ■dramatic composer, tantamount to assigning his work to the dusty repositories of the past ; to imitate him 82 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND; successfully is almost a matter of impossibility. Hence compromises have to be adopted, and a hybrid mix- ture of the old and the new is the result. Germany ,^ being nearest to the cause, has suffered most from the effect, and unfortunate amateurs in that country have at present to choose between the insipid abomination of Nessler, and the dull and long-winded operas with mythical subjects and plenty of leit-motives which Goldmark and other serious-minded but not very powerful composers evolve from their Wagnerian consciousness. Hermann Goetz, the author of the Taming of the, Shrew, who had something to say and said it in his own way, unfortunately died young, as did Bizet in France, where also the Wagnerian im- pulse has led to such incongruous results as one observes, for example, in Saint-Saens's Henry VIII, Even in Italy a similar phenomenon is repeated. If Verdi were a younger man, and Boito a more indus- trious man, they might no doubt have worked out the problem in their own national fashion, and given us more works so instinct with genuine dramatic feeling,, and yet so thoroughly Italian, as are Mefistofele and Otdlo. But whether Verdi will write another opera, or whether Boito will ever complete his Nero, is at least doubtful, and in the meantime competent mediocrity rules the day. Considering all this, it is perhaps as well that the chief attention of our English composers is at present diverted from the dramatic channel ; for in the WAGNER IN ENGLAND. 83 oratorio also, and in the symphony, Wagner's in- fluence, although by no means a quantite negligeable, is not of such immediate, such overpowering eflfect as it needs must be in opera. Here, also, the powerful impulse given by him has, so to speak, purified the air, has swallowed no end of formulas, has transfused the rigid mould of the classical form with the freedom of poetic spirit. Liszt felt this when he wrote and when he named the " Symphonic Poems " ; Mr. Mac- kenzie when he conceived the beautiful dream scene in the " Eose of Sharon " ; Mr. Hamish MacCunn when he took firm grip of his poetic and pictorial subject in his weird orchestral ballad of the "Dowie Dens o' Yarrow." That all these things would not have been written as they are written if Wagner had never existed, there can scarcely be a doubt. At the same time there is no sign of slavish imitation. There is yet another respect in which the great master's spirit may be of infinite benefit to English music. The principle of Tart pour Hart has never found a more perfect earthly embodiment than it did in Wagner. He abhorred compromise as much as Nature is said to abhor a vacuum. His whole life was a continuous struggle for the high things in art as opposed to the lucrative pursuits of modern vulgarism and commercialism. He had an artist's love for the luxu- ries and amenities of life ; but rather than write such things as set the modern fleshpots boiling, he would have starved. This he says plainly in the corre- G 2 84 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. spondence with Liszt so frequently cited in the course of these remarks, and, what is more, he meant it, and acted up to his meaning. Indeed, when he held forth against the Jews, he did not use that term for the Hebrew race so much as for the men — Christians, Jews, or Philistines — who had introduced the worship of the golden calf, the " smartness," and knowingness, and reckless striving for effect, into art. These things exist and thrive, unfortunately, in all countries of the old world and the new. The royalty ballads, which even composers of note and of talent do not disdain to pour forth, the oratorios and cantatas that have been written, with an obvious view to a rule over the country, as the phrase runs, are the specifically British emanations of modern commercialism. All these things are an abomination to the musician imbued with Wagner's spirit ; and rather than condescend to them, he would break stones in the highways, or give lessons at young ladies' schools. There are, no doubt, such high-minded men amongst us ; but can it be con- scientiously said that the majority of English, or, for that matter, of Italian or German musicians are in this sense truly Wagnerian ? CHAPTER III. LISZT IN ENGLAND. Every one who witnessed the reception granted to Liszt on his visit to this country in 1886 must have been struck by the cordial — one might say, personal — form which that reception took. Such ovations had never been offered to an artist in England before — not, at least, since the days of Paganini. Quiet- looking and eminently respectable persons would stand on their seats and wave their umbrellas and hats and handkerchiefs in a frantic manner when Liszt entered St. James's Hall ; and even before he entered that hall his arrival was announced by the shouts of the crowd outside, who acclaimed him as if it were a king returning to his kingdom, and not a mere musician, whom Lord Chesterfield and even Dr. Johnson would have generically and contemp- tuously described as " a fiddler." There is no doubt that much of this enthusiasm proceeded from genuine admiration of his music, mixed with a feeling that that music, for a number of years, had been shame- fully neglected in this country, and that now, at last, 86 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. the time had come to make amends to a great and famous man, fortunately still living. It is equally certain that a great many people who were carried away by the current of enthusiasm — including the very cabmen in the street who gave three cheers for the "Habby Liszt" — had never heard a note of his music, nor would have appreciated it much if they had. The spell to which they submitted was, as I said before, a purely personal one ; it was the same fascination which Liszt exercised over almost every man and woman who came into contact with him or witnessed his public performances, which, fifty years ago, impelled the young ladies of Berlin to fight for a piece of horsehair from the cushion on which the virtuoso had sat at the piano, and which appertained to the more than septuagenarian, with his command- ing presence, his noble brow, his flowing white hair, and the winning, albeit somewhat cynical smile, as much as to the beautiful youth of twenty- five. The intelligent foreigner who, from these ovations and demonstrations, might have argued that England was the very centre and focus of a Liszt cult, would have been as signally wrong as that accomplished person frequently is. As a matter, of fact, our ad- miration of his music is skin-deep. For a number of years not a note of Liszt's music would have been heard in London but for the devotion and self- sacrifice of his pupil, the late Walter Bache, whose annual concerts were carried on at a great pecuniary LISZT IN ENGLAND. 87 loss, and in spite of every discouragement from the majority of the press ; Mr. Bache's sole purpose being that of gradually forming a circle of Liszt- worshippers, and of still more gradually expanding that circle from esoteric to exoteric dimensions. In that purpose, and especially in the latter part of it, Mr. Bache, it must be feared, has not been successful. Whether the English admirers of Liszt count by dozens or by scores is a question of comparatively little importance. That the multitude, even the musical multitude, know little and care less about the real essence of his music cannot be denied by any impartial observer. When any of the Hungarian Rhapsodies are performed at the Eichter Concerts, or even at provincial festivals, audiences are generally carried away by the impetuous verve, the rhythmical piquancy, the brilliant national colouring of those marvellous compositions. The Piano- forte Concerto in E flat is, as a matter of course, in the repertoire of most modern pianists, and Mr. Hartvigson has more than once created quite & furore withthe weird ^' Danse Macabre." But these things show Liszt the composer only in the two capacities of an interpreter of Hungarian, or, more strictly speaking, of gipsy music, and as a consummate writer for his own instrument, the pianoforte. Of the vast and new ideas by which Liszt's position in the history of music will be permanently made or marred, and which find expression in his " Symphonic Poems," and in his " Dante " and " Faust " Symphonies, there 88 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. is little in these more popular efforts. And these- symphonies and symphonic poems are no more, in a general sense, popular than Liszt's church music — his oratorio, " Christus," and his " Gran " Mass,. neither of which has ever been heard in England, although the Leeds or Birmingham committee might do worse than place them in one of their festival pro- grammes, were it only for the sake of the experiment. More than ordinary technical difficulties may partly account for this neglect, but such difficulties are no longer an impediment. Where there is a will there is nowadays a musical way, and if the English public really wanted Liszt, they would most assuredly have him. The cause why no such desire exists may, of course, be explained differently according to different standpoints. Is it that English people, with their sound common sense, have seen through the vapidity and flimsiness of Liszt's pretensions to a high aim and an equally great power of execution in art? Is it that the same matter-of-fact way of looking at things prevents them from realising the subtle essence, the sublimated poetry of Liszt's imaginings ? These are questions which it is almost impossible to decide definitely for the present. Here again, a wider view is taken than the subject immediately in hand would seem to warrant. Liszt's position in Germany and the rest of Europe is no more finally settled than it is in England ; and the system which gives LISZT IN ENGLAND. 89 significance to his great orchestral works is still trembling in the balance, even of unprejudiced and liberal-minded judges. That system shows, no doubt, a certain elective affinity with Wagner's great reforms in the domain of the music-drama. It may have occurred to Liszt, although he has never said so in so many words, that even as Wagner broke through the old forms, and created a new form in the drama from the mere necessities of the poetic idea, so might that same poetic idea be turned to new creative account in purely instrumental music, the listener's fancy being expected to supply the events which actually pass before his eyes on the stage. The way in which he has gone to work has been explained at some length in the biographical article on Liszt, contributed to Grove's Dictionary by the present writer, and it may be well to repeat the gist of his remarks in this connection. It is in Liszt's symphonic poems and sym- phonies, we are told, that his mastery over the orchestra as well as his claims to originality are chiefly shown. It is true that the idea of pro- gramme music, such as we find it illustrated here, had been anticipated by Berlioz. Another important feature, the leit- motive (i.e. a theme representative of a character or an idea, and therefore recurring whenever that character or that idea comes into prominent action), Liszt has adopted from Wagner. At the same time, these ideas appear in his music free from serious blunders. The diffi- culties of our language, our insular position, and, with the exception of Mr. Bennett's well-designed^ but of its nature, limited biographical primer, the 176 HALF A CENTUR V OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. almost total absence of preliminary local research were evidently insuperable impediments to this French author. The gulf left by him I have tried to fill up very much in his own manner, relying: chiefly, upon contemporary evidence written, and, where the memory of surviving friends made ib possible, oral. The copious notes and extracts from the newspapers which Dr. Freemantle of' Shef- field has kindly placed at my disposal, have been of the greatest service to me, and I frankly ac- knowledge my obligation to him for many extracts from old newspapers which I should have had to find out for myself instead of merely verifying them. After having traced at some length the prepara- tions which Berlioz made, and which life made for him, in anticipation of his journey to England, it will now be necessary to see how that country itself was prepared to receive the distinguished visitor, and the message he had to deliver. Musical reputations, except in the case of virtuosi and prima-donnas, travelled slowly in those days, and Berlioz had acquired considerable fame on the Con- tinent before the English press, which had scarcely yet developed the musical critic proper, took much notice of him. As far as I have been able to ascertain, it was not till early in the forties that even the papers more especially concerned with music realised the rise of a new and important power. The Musical World BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 177 of March 9, 1843, contains the following paragraph : " It is rumoured that M. Berlioz, the highly-prized French composer is preparing a new Symphony foi the Philharmonic Society, which, it is said, he will conduct in person." This was evidently what, in journalistic phrase, is called a "feeler," for there is no evidence that the Philharmonic directors had any such revolutionary purpose. On April 6 the same information is again repeated in an even more definite form ; it is said : " This popular French composer, who several years since married Miss Smithson, the actress, is shortly expected to produce one of his Symphonies in London, having accepted an engagement to that effect from the directors of the Philharmonic Concerts." " Are we to have Berlioz this year at the Philharmonic?" the same paper asks again in November, 1843, alluding pro- bably to the following spring ; but neither in 1844, nor at any subsequent period, did the Philharmonic Society go out of its way to do honour to Berlioz. In the meanwhile, other voices chimed in with that of Mr. Davison, who, be it said to his honour, was amongst the first and staunchest advocates of Berlioz, although, from his general bias of taste, it may be surmised that his sympathy was with the man rather than with the music ; or perhaps it would be more correct to say, that he liked the music better than he would otherwise have done because the man's talk was so clever and fascinating. The Morning Post 178 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. in May, 1844, speaks of "that wonderfur sclierzo, ' Queen Mab,' in his ' Eomeo and Juliet ' Choral Sym- phony, a work that ought to be heard in this country, if only for the curiosity of hearing how a French musician interprets Shakespeare." The following extract also deserves quotation as one of the rare instances of correct prophecy eight years before the event : " It is positively stated," writes The Musical World in November, 1844, "there will be a New Philharmonic Society next season, and amongst the gentlemen already insured as members the name of Berlioz figures prominently." Berlioz, who was keenly alive to the value of newspaper notoriety, was only too glad to familiarise the English public with his name, and the musical critic of The Morning Post having been charged with imitating the French master's criticism of F^licien David's Le Desert, he hastened to address the following letter to The Morning Post, which appeared in that journal on April 26, 1845 : Sir, I have read in an English journal an accusation of plagiarism brought against you with reference to an article on the " Desert " of Fdlicien David. I could find in the article of the Morning Post no trace whatever of that of the Debats, and if we agree in our opinion of this work, our manner of expressing it is widely different. I hasten to address you this declaration, and am happy to have the opportunity of expressing to you my sentiments of high esteem and good brotherhood. Heotok Berlioz. BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 179 The summons which brought Berlioz to this country was due finally to neither the new nor the old Philharmonic Society, but to the enterprise of an individual. Louis Antoine Jullien, the king of promenade concerts, lives still in the memory of middle-aged people as one of the most, imposingly grotesque phenomena of English concert-rooms. His " Allied Armies' Quadrille," his " Indian Quadrille and Havelock's March," and numerous other pieces of the same kind, struck the iron of popular excite- ment at the moment when it was hottest, and under their convoy Jullien, who, albeit a gigantic humbug, was a lover of good music, managed to smuggle a great many excellent works into public favour. Be- ginning with detached movements of Symphonies, and finally going so far as to introduce sometimes two complete works of that class in a single concert programme, he did an immense deal for the spread of musical taste in this country, and the artists he engaged were a combination of all the talents. But by far the most striking feature of his concerts was M. Jullien himself. Let us quote Sir George Grove's picturesque description of the man : In front of this " mass of executive ability," " the Mons " — to adopt the name hestowed on him hy Punch, whose cartoons have preserved his image with the greatest exactness — with coat thrown widely open, white waistcoat, elaborately embroidered shirt-front, wristbands of extravagant length turned back over his cuffs, a wealth of black hair, and a black moustache — itself a N 2 i8o HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. startling novelty — wielded his Mton, encouraged his forces, re- pressed the turbulence of his audience with indescribable gravity and magnificence, went through all the pantomime of the British Army or Navy Quadrille, seized a violin or piccolo at the moment of climax, and at last sank exhausted into his gorgeous velvet chair. All pieces of Beethoven's were conducted with a jewelled baton, and in a pair of clean kid gloves, handed him at the moment on a silver salver. What was it that attracted Jullien to Berlioz ? There was no doubt a kind of electric affinity between the two men. Alas that one should have to own it, there was in Berlioz's as well as in Jullien's nature a considerable leaven of the poseur. There is some- thing extremely tragic in the fact, but it is a fact nevertheless, that Berlioz with the highest ideals of art ever aspired to by man, was occasionally com- pelled to stoop to low things. Monster concerts with no artistic object of an appreciable kind, formed part of his programme ; and the creator of the " Scfene d'Amour" in Romeo and Juliet, perhaps the divinest song of love ever conceived by human heart, was also the author of " Le Chant des chemins de fer, grand choeur avec solo de tenor, compost sur des paroles de Jules Janin, et execute a Lille pour I'inauguration du chemin de fer du nord (14 Juin, 1846)." In August, 1847, la France Musicale made the startling statement that Hector Berlioz had been engaged by Jullien as the conductor of the English Opera season at Drury Lane, and The Musical BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. i8i World, commenting upon that statement, added : "We are informed Berlioz was on' the point of ac- cepting (at the hands of MM. Rocqueplan and DupoHchel) an engagement as conductor at the Academy (Paris), when JuUien proffered him, with magnificent terms, the post of conductor at the London theatre, which was instantly accepted." As usual, JuUien had planned his campaign on the largest scale. The orchestra, according to Berlioz's own account, was superb, and the chorus consisted of 120 voices. "JuUien," says an English newspaper, "has engaged the twin poet-librettists, MM. Eoyer and Vaez, to write six poems, three of which will be put to music by Halevy, Benedict, and Berlioz. In addition to the three-act opera which JuUien has engaged Berlioz to write, he has secured his services to direct four concerts composed of his (Berlioz's) works." It is doubtful whether in spite of these allurements Berlioz would have accepted the London engagement, had it not been for two cogent reasons, one public, one personal. Rocqueplan and Duponchel, the managers of the Grand Opdra already named, had played him an extremely shabby trick, They had received the appointment entirely through the in- fluence of Berlioz's patron and employer, M. Bertin, the proprietor of the Journal des Debats, and on the understanding that Berlioz was not only to be the conductor, but to have his opera La Nonne Sanglante i82 HALF A CENTUR Y OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. performed without delay. When, however, the papers were signed, these shifty gentlemen adopted a very different tone and placed all manner of difficulties in Berlioz's way. In such circumstances the Drury Lane engagement was particularly gratifying, and accepted without any inquiry into Jullien's capability of carrying out his splendid promises. The second reason appears from a passage in one of the master's letters to his friend the Tajan-Proge of St. Petersburg. Berlioz writes from London, November 10, 1847 : " Je suis venu seul a Londres ; vous pouvez en diviner les raisons, d'ailleurs, j'avais un prodigieux besoin de cette liberte qui m'a toujours et partout manqu^ jusqu'ici. II a fallu non pas un coup d'etat, mais bien nne succession de coups d'dtat pour parvenir a la reprendre." The person of whose presence Berlioz wished to be rid was, it need scarcely be said, not his poor wife, from whom he was separated, but Mdlle. Recio, with whom he found it as difficult to live at this time, as later on when their union had been legalised. Berlioz arrived in London on November 6, 1847, and went straight to 76 (now 27), Harley Street, where JuUien had provided sumptuous lodgings for his conductor, in the same house where the Beethoven Quartet Society at that time gave its performances. Berlioz, in the " Soirees de I'Orchestre," gives an ac- count of how, by opening his door, he was able to listen BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 183 to an excellent performance of one of Beethoven's quartets by Ernst, Cooper, Hill, and Rousselot, and how he exclaimed in stentorian tones, " John, shut the door," when the C minor quartet ceased, and a prima donna began to warble. He was also very much struck by observing a number of amateurs following the work in the score, and conceived a high notion of English musical proficiency, until, sitting behind one of these enthusiasts, he noticed that the eyes of the ama- teur were fixed on page 4, when the executants had arrived at page 6. Altogether his observations on Eng- lish musicians and English music-lovers are of a very shrewd and pertinent kind, and perhaps a more striking remark on the general attitude of the English public of those, and partly of our own days, has never been made than when Berlioz says that "le desir d'aimer la musique est au moins reel et persistant en Angleterre." In short, Berlioz soon felt at home in England, and in that respect had the advantage of both Liszt and Wagner, who remained strangers in our midst. His English wife and his love of English literature now stood him in good stead. He .was able to sympathise with English moods and English life, and when he did criticise, criticised discriminately and leniently. Another advantage was that he had by this time become tolerably familiar with our language, and could communicate with his orchestra without an in- terpreter. I have been assured by various competent 1 84 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. witnesses, , that although Berlioz preferred to speak French, he could speak English fluently and even eloquently when it came to the point. Of his eyery-day, life in London he has himself given lively descriptions in various portions of his letters and memoirs, , . What struck him most was the terrific hurry of London existence, which made it almost impossible for musicians to concentrate their minds on any particular task. The distances appeared enormous even to a Parisian, and he complains bitterly of the time taken up by paying calls and receiving calls; but he had, from the first almost, a large circle of friends in England, and that circle naturally increased with every new visit. Mr. Osborne and Mr. Ella he had kuown in Paris, and his warm friendship for them is proved by the letters, since published, which he addressed to them. One of them, written to Mr. Ella, contains the amusing story of how L'Enfance du Christ came to be fathered ,on Pierre Ducre, a musician of the olden time. With Sainton, his compatriot and warm admirer, he. naturally lived in daily intercourse, and it was at his house that in 1855 he met Wagner, and formed those pleasant relations which, alas, , were not found proof against professional jesilousy. later on. Of the English press and its representatives, the French master's experience was of the most, pleasant kind. Mr. Davison, as . has . already been said, took up his cause from the first, and the leader of the BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 185 critics, of those days was followed by most of the other writers of the press, including Mr. Chorley, of Tha Atherumm, and Mr. Gruneisen ; and Berlioz was posi- tively delighted, with the treatment he had received at the hands of the English, newspapers, and which so favourably differed from the attitude of the French critics. M. d'Ortigue, his staunch adherent and colleague on the Journal des DSbats, is admonished more than once to take note of these " dithyrambes comme on n'en ecrivit jamais sur.moi," and to "boil them down " into an article- for the Debats. Only " un vieux niais du Morning Chronicle," and later on Mr. Hogarth, whose disapprobation Berlioz charitably attributes to his appointment as Secretary of the old Philharmonic Society, were the chief dissentient voices in a chorus of praise which accompanied Berlioz during his stay in England, with almost unbroken hatmony. English critics are sometimes charged with narrow-mindedness and obtuse indif- ference to new merit, and it is pleasant to cite so striking an exception to the supposed rule. That society, in the ordinary sense of the word, did much for the French composer I have not been able to discover. He visited at Lady Blessington's house, and at Mrs. Grote's, where all the foreign musicians seeking refuge from the French Eevolution of 1848 met with kindness and hospitality. The Earl df Westmoreland also sent him a free admission to the Antient Concerts, a courtesy which Berlioz nodoubt 1 86 HALF A CENTUR Y OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. highly appreciated. But as a rule his acquaintance seems to have chiefly been with literary men and artists. Naturally the stage attracted much of his attention, and he speaks in terms of highest praise of Macready's acting in Sir Henry Taylor's Philip van Artevelde, without, however, vouchsafing a single word of commendation to that remarkable work. His attention was evidently entirely absorbed by the stage management, and especially by the grouping of masses, which he describes as superb. He also became personally acquainted with Macready, whom probably he knew from the old Paris days, and who gave him a magnificent dinner in his honour. "C'est un homme charmant, et point du tout pretentieux dans son intdrieur," says Berlioz. A friend also put down his name as an honorary member of one of the leading clubs, the atmosphere of which he found extremely oppressive : " Mais Dieu salt le divertissement qu'on pent trouver dans un club anglais ! " I have tried in the above to give a general sketch of Berlioz's life in London during his five visits to this country. It is time that we should return to the chronological order of things. Berlioz's engagement with Jullien was to the effect that the former was to conduct all the operas, and in addition to this give four grand concerts of his own compositions at an aggregate salary of 20,000 francs. The rehearsals began immediately after his BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 187 arrival in London, and the first performance of the English Opera season at Drury Lane took place on December 6, 1847. It consisted of Beethoven's Leonora Overture, " conducted by Berlioz, who is ■deeply versed in the scores of Beethoven, with wonderful animation," and this great work formed, curiously enough, the prologue to Donizetti's Lucia, ■called in the English version The Bride of Lam/mer- moor. Berlioz detested modern Italian music, and what his feelings may have been when Jullien first revealed the programme of the season to him, one can only vainly imagine. In his letters he speaks of nothing but the great success which the perform- ance had met with; of the five recalls "avec fr^n^sie," granted to Madame Dorus-Gras, the soprano, and Sims Eeeves, the tenor, and of the splendid recep- tion given to himself by the public. " Sims Reeves," he says, "has a pretty, natural voice, and he sings as well as that terrible English language will allow any one to sing " — that the terrible English language was that of Shakespeare and his beloved Moore he forgot for the moment. Again he writes: "Reeves is a priceless discovery for Jullien ; he has a charming voice, of refined and sympathetic timbre, he is an excel- lent musician, his face is very expressive, and he acts with the fire of his Irish nationality." (Mr. Reeves, as a matter of fact, was born at Woolwich.) With the press notices, also, Berlioz expresses him- self delighted, and he does not, as he was prone to do. 1 88 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. exasserate : for all the criticisms tliat I Lave seen are highly favourable, and the English verdict was summed up in the sentence : " Berlioz has established his continental fame as one of the greatest living conductors." The Bride of Lamtnermoor was re- peated several times pending the great event of the season, the production of Balfe's new opera, The Maid of Honour, which took place on December 20, 1857, Mr. Sims Keeves again singing the tenor part. The first three performances were, by per- mission of Mr. Lumley, conducted by Balfe himself, "since when his place has been efficiently occupied by Berlioz who, by his courteous manners and general kindness, has entirely won the affections of the orchestra." The opera does not seem to have had any great success, although *in the course of January it was given no less than eighteen times ; Linda di Chamouni making up the repertoire. That Berlioz's great power was entirely wasted on this kind of music, and that he himself was fully aware of the fact, appears from his confidential cor- respondence, although he was too good a diplomatist to breathe a word of it in England. Financial troubles were added to the artistic misery of the situation. JuUien's attempt at establishing the English music - drama on a solid basis proved an utter failure ; he had opened the theatre without possessing so much as a single piece of music, and with the exception of Balfe's opera, specially written BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 189 for him, he had to borrow scores and parts from Mr. Lumley. The extraordinary shifts he devised to retrieve Ijis position are humorously described by Berlioz in one of the " Soirees de I'Orchestre." Robert the Devil was to be mounted and rehearsed in six days ; and when the general rehearsal of Linda di Chamouni was called, it was found that there was not a single part on any of the desks. This way of going on, Berlioz adds, is highly characteristic of operatic managers in England. On one side of the Channel they take ten days to mount an opera, which on the other it takes ten months to prepare; and what is worse, the public is perfectly satisfied as long as there are some celebrated names in the cast. The "star system," it would seem, was as rife in 1848 as it is in this present year of grace. It was probably to pacify his ill-used conductor that JuUien suddenly developed a great admiration for Gluck, one of Berlioz's favourite idols. A model performance of Iphigenia in Tauris was to be given, and a committee meeting for devising the best means of efi'ecting that purpose was held at Drury Lane Theatre, on December 14, 1847; Sir Henry Bishop, Berlioz, Planche, Chorley, and Jullien being present. This meeting also Berlioz has described with grim humour. Needless to add that, like the projected performance of Robert le Diable, the scheme came to nothing. 190 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. In the meantime, JuUien's affairs were going from bad to worse. As early as January 14, that is, less than six weeks after the opening of the theatre, conductor and soloists were without their salaries ; the available cash being paid over to chorus, or- chestra, and stage carpenters, in order to prevent a strike. JuUien himself had gone to the provinces to give highly successful promenade concerts, and had taken the best instrumentalists with him. He also had sold his publishing business in Eegent Street for £8,000. But all this was as a drop in the ocean of the manager's vast liabilities, and the beginning of the end was within measurable distance. Berlioz nevertheless kept up his spirits ; he had made up his mind that the recent death of Mendelssohn had opened a splendid chance for a new composer in England, and with that object in view he pushed on the rehearsals for his first concert with feverish energy. That concert took place at Drury Lane Theatre on February 7, 1848, and it may interest the reader to see the programme in full : ^art i. Oyerkure : " Carnival of Eome.'' Romance : " The Young Shepherd " (words by M. De Vere) . Miss Miran. " Harold in Italy " Symphony, in four parts, with Solo on Tenor, played by Mr. Hill. 1. Harold in the Mountains — Scenes ezpressive of Melancholy, Happiness, and Joy. 2. March of Pilgrims, singing their Evening Prayer. 3. The Mountaineer of the Abbruzzi to his Mistress. 4. Serenade — Souvenirs of the foregoing Scenes — Revels of Brigands. BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 191 ?art il. The First and Second Acts of the Lyrical Drama of " Faust." Jpsri HI. Cavatina : " Benvenuto Cellini." Chorns of Souls in Purgatory — " Requiem." Funeral Oration and Apotheosis ; being the Finale of the " Triumphal " Symphony, composed for Double Orchestra and Chorus, expressly by order of the French Government on the removal of the remains of the victims of July, and on the inauguration of the Column of the Bastille. The artistic success of the concert was greater than the pecuniary one. " His reception," says The Dramatic and Musical Review, "throughout the evening must have been gratifying to him. . . . H& kept his forces together with a firm hand, and there was but one defection in the chorus throughout the evening. The effect of the entertainment (although the house was crowded with orders) must be to stamp M. Berlioz as a composer of original and effective music." A very interesting article on this concert, by Mr. Edward Holmes, appeared in The Atlas, an influential newspaper of those days. The operatic season at Drury Lane still continued; to drag on a precarious existence. On February 9" Mr. Sims Eeeves's benefit took place under somewhat stormy conditions. Berlioz's " Carnaval Eomain " was played before the opera ; then a long delay occurred because Madame Dorus-Gras, probably for financial reasons, refused to perform, and the audienc& became very riotous indeed, when "just as the storm. 192 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IK ENGLAND. was at its utmost height, M. Hector Berlioz walked into the orchestra, and his presence turned the tide immediately from exasperation to commendation." On February 16 The Maid of Honour was given for the last time by command of the Queen, and on the 20th of the same month the season was pre- maturely brought to a close with The Marriage of Figaro. Berlioz's occupation as an operatic conductor was now gone, and his high hopes, founded ypon JuUien's splendid promises, were crushed, in the bud. But he was not easily daunted, and his expectations of a lucrative position in England as the; inheritor of Mendelssohn's position were as sanguine as ever. To remain on the spot and keep himself en evidence appeared to him a matter of the utmost importance, and he was accordingly a constant , frequenter of concerts and all manner of musical celebrations. On February 22 the Eoyal Society of Musicians gave its annual dinner at the Freemasons' Hall, and among the toasts proposed during the evening was one "containing a just tribute of respect to M. Hector Berlioz, who was invited as a guest. This toast was received with unanimous and long-continued plaudits. M. Berlioz, returning thanks in the French language, paid several compliments to the musical taste and feeling of the English nation, and expressed himself highly flattered by his reception in this country, and gratified by the manner in which his works had been BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 193 executed by our artists." On March 13 lie was present at the first Philharmonic Concert of the season, when Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony was performed. Writing to Mr. Davison, he says : " I was looking for you everywhere the other night, at the Philharmonic Concert. I wished to tell you what you know' as well as I — that the Symphony of Mendels- sohn is a masterpiece struck at one blow, like a gold medallion. Nothing more new, more vivid, more noble, more learned, has proceeded from his free inspiration. The- Conservatoire of Paris has not even an idea that this magnificent composition exists ! and will discover it about ten years hence." Persons inclined to suspect a sop to the great critical . Cerberus in this emphatic eulogy of his favourite composer would be signally mistaken. With a generosity very rare amongst artists, Berlioz on all occasions expressed unbounded admiration for Men- delssohn, in spite of the ill-disguised contempt for his own music felt and given utterance to by the German master. With regard to the same Italian Symphony, he writes in terms of equal enthusiasm to his intimate friend D'Ortigue, placing it infinitely above " celle egalement en la qu'on joue a Paris," the latter being evidently the Scotch Symphony, which by most people, myself included, is looked upon as Mendels- sohn's masterpiece in the highest walk of orchestri(,l art. On March 28 Berlioz was present at the matinSe 194 HALF A CENTUR Y OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. of the Musical Union at Willis's Eooms, and on April 7 he conducted the " Huugarian March " at a concert of the Amateur Musical Society, when he was enthusiastically received and the March encored. His great desire was to obtain a footing at the Phil- harmonic Concerts, and with this view another "feeler" was put forth by the friendly Musical World : We have heard that Mr. Costa, with true liberality and artistic feeling, has proposed to the Philharmonic Society to devote an act of one of the forthcoming concerts to compositions of Berlioz, and has nobly offered to resign the baton on that occasion. . . . One thing is certain, the Philharmonic Society, in deference to its own responsible position, cannot allow Hector Berlioz to leave London without taking advantage of his presence to give their subscribers a concert of unusual attractions. For the present this ijrgent appeal remained a hrutum fulmen, and before many days were over Berlioz had left London, His departure took place in the second week of July, although I am not able to give the exact date ; but before bidding a tem- porary good-bye to England, he addressed a letter to the editor of The Musical World, expressing his gratitude, and hinting, at the same time, that that gratitude was synonymous with " lively anticipation of favours still to receive." Mr. Editor, Permit me to have recourse to your journal, as the one which occupies itself exclusively with musical matters, to express in a few words sentiments very natural after the reception I have met with in London. BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 195 I am going to return into that country wMch is still called France, and which, after all, is my own. I am going to see by what means an artist can live, or how long it will take him to die, in the midst of the ruins underneath which the flower of his art is crushed and buried. But, however long the torture which awaits me may endure, I shall preserve till the end the most grate- ful remembrance of your excellent and skilful artists, of your intelligent and attentive public, and your brethren of the press, who have lent me so noble and so constant a support. I am doubly happy to have been able to admire in them the" fine qualities of kindness, talent, and intelligent attention united to the probity of criticism; they are the evident indexes of a veritable love of music, and ought to reassure all the friends of that poor great art on its prospects, by affording them the conviction that you will not allow it to perish. The personal question is, therefore, only secondary here, for you may believe me, that I love music much more than mij music, and I wish that the opportunity of proving it had been oftener given me. Yes, our muse, terriiied by all the horrible clamours which resound from one end of the Continent to the other, seems to me secure of an asylum in England,* and the hospitality will be all * At one time Berlioz thought that asylum jeopardised even in this peaceful island. His " Memoirs " were partly written, or at least put into book form, during his stay in England, and in one of its entries, dated April 10, 1848, the day of the Chartist manifestation, he says : " Perhaps in a few hours England will also be given to confusion, like the rest of Europe, and even this asylum will no longer exist for me." But, at eight o'clock in the evening of the same day, he adds : " After all, those Chartists are a very mild sort of revolutionaries, everything went off well, the guns, those powerful orators, those great logicians, whose irresist- ible arguments penetrate the masses so deeply, were in the Speaker's seat, but they were not obliged to speak. The mere look of them sufficed to bring to every soul the conviction of the inopportune- ness of a revolution, and the Chartists dispersed in the most perfect order. Excellent people ! you understand about revolutions as much as the Italians do about the writing of Symphonies ! " 2 196 HALF A CENTUR Y OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. the more splendid the more frequently the host remembers that one of his sons is the greatest of poets, that musie is one of the diverse forms of poetry, and that on the same liberty which Shakespeare used in his immortal conceptions, depends the entire development of the music of the future. Adieu, then, all you who have so cordially treated me ; my heart is oppressed in quitting you, and I repeat involuntarily, those sad and solemn words of Hamlet's father : " Farewell, farewell, remember me." Hbctob Berlioz. Tills letter, and another of similar purport addressed not long afterwards to The Morning Post, give a tolerably correct view of the situation. Berlioz had some cause for gratitude. Although looked upon by the general public, perhaps, more as a strange meteor than as a star of definable magnitude, he had no doubt struck the popular fancy, and critics and more enlightened amateurs looked upon him decidedly as the coming man. His compositions also were beginning to make headway, and Messrs. Cramer & Beale advertised a four-hand arrangement of the " Hungarian March " from Faust, and " in the press other works and arrangements by this distinguished composer." No wonder that Berlioz, on his part, thought well of the musical aptitude of the English people, extolling the " fine voices, very common in England," and the " sustained attention of the play and concert-going public." In short, when he left this country in July, 1848, it was fully recognised by himself and others that he was the champion of the progressive party in England, and that, if BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 197 a great occasiou should arise, he would be the man for it. III. That occasion was not long in coming, although it had not yet arrived in the last week of May, 1851, when Berlioz visited this country for the second time. He came on this occasion in an ofl&cial rather than in an artistic capacity. The Great Exhibition was in full swing, and he was appointed a member of the musical jury. He did not again occupy his old lodgings at the Beethoven Eooms, but took a lodging at 27, Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square. His time was fully taken up by his ofl&cial duties and by his letters to the Journal des Debats/ the latter occupation, although always distasteful to him, yielding more satisfactory results. It is to this period that belong two magnificent specimens of descriptive writing : the one deals with the Crystal Palace at seven o'clock in the morning, the vast building being perfectly still and empty, expectant, as it were, of the crowds from the four quarters of the globe which soon will throng its aisles. The sentiment is essentially that of Wordsworth's famous sonnet on London Bridge : Ah, that mighty heart is lying still, although Berlioz had probably never heard of that masterpiece of English sonnet writing. The other ipS HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. article (both are now embodied in "Les Soirees de rOrcbestre ") ecboes tbe profound impression wbicb tbe voices of 6,000 charity cbildren singing in unison at St. Paul's had made upon the master of grand effects. Berlioz stood amongst the choristers clad in a surplice, and joining in the chanting of the Psalms as well as his emotion would allow him. On leaving the great church he met old Cramer, who, forgetting in his transports of delight that he could speak French, kept calling out in Italian : " Cosa stupenda I stupenda ! la gloria dell' Inghilterra ! " Duprez, the great tenor, was also present, and also in tears. I may mention that Berlioz was present again at the anniversary meeting of the charity schools in the next following year. The Musical World of June 3, 1852, writes: "Among the choir were observed, in surplices, Berlioz, Joachim, Osborne," etc. His labours on the jury were probably not of a very agreeable kind. Berlioz has described the troubles of a musical umpire in connection with another exhibition ; and eager tradesmen and manufacturers are the same all the world over. The musical jury. Class X., consisted of many dis- tinguished members, including Sir Henry Bishop (Chairman), Sir George Smart, Thalberg, Berlioz, the Chevalier Neukomm, Cipriani Potter, Dr. Wylde, and Sterndale Bennett. But in spite of this, one of the papers somewhat rudely remarks that, "the jury, as ultimately settled, contained but one man. BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 199 and him a foreigner — Berlioz — who could be said to possess any extensive knowledge of musical instruments, and even in his case scientific attain- ment was wanting ; " and the same journal remarks of the official report, " that a more miserably weak and worthless document never appeared on a great public occasion." JSTevertheless the Prench miaster's second visit to England, which came to a close in the last "week of July, was not without impoitant results ; for it was, no doubt, between, and perhaps at, the official jury-meetings that he and Dr. Wylde discussed a scheme, the consummation of which startled the world not many months afterwards. IV. The foundation .of the New Philharmonic Society in 1852, raised expectations, and was greeted by contemporaries with a chorus of hopeful joy which subsequent events did not .altogether justify. The old Philharmonic Society, which at that time had almost the monopoly of orchestral music in London, used or abused its position in the manner peculiar to monopolists. New music was rare in its pro- grammes ; it clung to the so-called classical masters with a tenacity doubly accounted for by the fossilised taste of its patrons, and by the fact that familiar works might be performed with some credit even after the one rehearsal which, monstrous to . 200 HALF A CENTUR Y OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. relate, was all that was allowed for each concert. Even Mendelssohn's genius had been unable to rouse the Philharmonic from its slumbers, during his one year of office ; and when Wagner came to be confronted with the so-called traditions of this orchestra, in 1855, he shrewdly surmised that Mendelssohn, having found reform impossible, meekly acquiesced in existing evils. "By the Philharmonic Society," remarked a not malevolent critic, " the works of Berlioz, though of European fame, have been studiously avoided, simply because they im- peratively demand the most careful rehearsal.." Intelligent musicians of all parties felt at last that this state of things was intolerable, and that the only possible remedy lay in competition. To Dr. Wylde belongs the credit of having brought these vague aspirations to a point, and in having concentrated the necessary energies, and raised the necessary funds for the foundation of a rival insti- tution which was appropriately called the New Philharmonic Society. The prospectus of that Society, issued in January, 1852, and signed by Mr. Beale, its secretary, is a curious document. Starting from the general proposition that the " faithful performance of a fine composition is an ever-springing source of pleasure," it defines the mission of the new Society in the following sen- tences, pompously expressed, but full of true meaning viithal : BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 201 The New Philharmonic Society has for its object the diffusion and advancement of Musical Art. It is proposed not only to extend ' a knowledge of the productions of the greatest masters by a more perfect performance of their works than has hitherto been attained, but likewise to give to modem and native composers a favourable opportunity for establishing the worth of their claims upon the attention and esteem of a discerning public. Exclusive- ness, the baneful hindrance to all progress of art, will not be tolerated in this society. To exclude works of living authors because they have not the excellencies of the illustrious dead, is as absurd as to deny the advantages of the discovery of new countries because they do not possess the civilisation and beauties of ancient Eome or Greece. Some degree of novelty must be one of the materials of every instrument which works upon the mind, and curiosity blends itself more or less with all the passions. "The first and the simplest emotion," says Burke, "which we discover in . the human mind, is curiosity.'" Now, while on the one hand, by a performance of new works, laudable curiosity is gratified, on the other hand encouragement is given to unknown and aspiring talent, while a better appreciation of the excellence of former works is imparted to the public. Modern works may not approach the perfection of those of a former period ; yet they will bear a pecu- liarity of style, an impress of manner, will be tinted with the complexion of the present age, and may thus convey a charm which earlier works, however superior, cannot possess. When entrepreneurs begin to talk about Greece and Eome, and cite Burke and other authorities, their words generally rouse suspicions in experienced bosoms. But that the Philharmonic directors meant what they somewhat magniloquently expressed, was sufficiently proved by their appointiug Berlioz as their conductor and by giving him carte blanche in the matter of rehearsals. As to this point, Berlioz expresses himself with wonder and delight, adding 202 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. that tlie directors neither expected nor desired imme- diate gain; Mr. Beale^ who, albeit a tradesman, was a genuine lover of music, declaring publicly that the rehearsals for Beethoven's Choral Symphony alone had swallowed up more than a third of the entire subscription. "Do not tell this in France," Berlioz cautiously adds in the letter to D'Ortigue, where the message occurs. The opening concert took place at Exeter Hall on March 24, 1852, and the success was, according to Berlioz, pyramidal. " I was recalled," he adds, " more times than I can remember, and acclaimed both as a composer and conductor." The press the next morning was again, according to BerlioZj dithyrambic in its praise, and- it must be owned that, in this instance, he only slightly exaggerates. The papers that I have consulted are unanimous in their more or less qualified approbation, and even " le vieux niais du Chronicle " had by this time either been super- seded or mended his manner. " The character of the music," that journal says, speaking of the "Borneo and Juliet " Symphony, which, with the omission of the Finale, was given at the beginning of the second part, "is wild, passionate, and perfectly original in its piquancy of treatment, particularly as regards the wooden band. The ideas are worked out in a thoroughly dramatic manner, and there runs through the whole an unfailing vein of imagination, some- times bright and sparkling, and again plaintively BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 205 and passionately sombre." It is true that this critic was not over pleased with the reading of the "Jupiter" Symphony, which opened the con- cert; but Berlioz might console himself with Tlie Times, which "had never heard a more perfect execution of Mozart's magnificent Symphony," al- though " the [omission of the repeats was a double mistake, a mistake of taste and a mistake of policy." Mozart's work was followed by a selection from Iphigenia in Tauris, Berlioz still remaining faithful to the idol of his youth, and Beethoven's " Triple " Concerto (Messrs. Silas, Sivori, and Piatti), and Weber's " Oberon " Overture completed the first part. The " Song of Thoas " in the Gluck fragment was, curiously enough, sung by all the male choristers, a strange proceeding on behalf of so ardent a purist as Berlioz, for which The Aihenceum takes him roundly to task, not without a show of justice. But the audience, caring no more about purism in those than it does in our days, encored it. As to the "Eomeo and Juliet" Symphony, The Times is most outspoken in its praise, and its highly pertinent remarks do great credit to the critic, and are well worth reading even in our day, when the work is much more generally acknowledged to be a masterpiece than it was thirty-six years ago. That M. Berlioz has a poetical mind, that he has in him much of the quality of a painter, that he is wholly independent of mere conventionalities, that he disdains commonplace, that he aspires- 204 HALF A. CENTUR Y OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. to raise himself up to his subject, and that he tries to invent, if he does not positively succeed in finding, something entirely new on his own account, we cannot suppose any unprejudiced person who, capable of judging, listened attentively to last night's per- formance will be prepared to deny. There is an earnestness in the whole of the work which shows the composer to have been full to the brim of his subject. From the quarrels of the Montagues and Capulets, with which the Symphony opens, to the illustration of Queen Mab, with which the first part concludes, there is con- tinued evidence of aspiration, if not of absolute creative genius. This last, as a piece of instrumentation, defies description. The orchestral combinations, as unprecedented as they are often singu- larly happy, are all exclusively the property of Berlioz, who discovered them, and to whose wild and wayward imagination they are as tints to give variety to his pictures. A more gorgeous example of instrumental colouring than the long movement in A major, which follows the joyous chorus of the Capulet youths reeling home from their orgie, was never written ; such an endless change of tone, such ever-shifting gradations, and so nicely balanced and contrasted, could alone render a morceau of such unusual length endurable. Berlioz, however, has rendered it not merely endurable but interesting from first to last, and we must venture an opinion that this " Sc^ne d' Amour," as it is entitled in the score, is not only the most beautiful passage in the Symphony of "Eomeo and Juliet," but the most gorgeous piece of musical colouring by a musical colourist, whose most vivid scenes must recall to the ardent observer the later pictures- which came from the golden brush of Turner. The AthencBum is more guarded ia its remarks, and institutes an elaborate compariaon between the play and its attempted musical rendering, in which altogether it discovers more " excellent and shrewd sense " than creative genius ; admitting, however, the "charm, glow, tenderness, grandeur" of the orchestral colouring. Eegarding the excellence of BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 205 the performance, ia which Miss Dolby sang the con- tralto and Mr. Lockey the tenor solos, the papers are unanimous, as well as regarding the applause with which it was received. The orchestra was indeed one of singular excellence, and included many names familiar as household words to this day Sivori led the violins, Piatti the violoncelli, Bottesini the double basses (twelve in number), Messrs. C. Harper and Garrett were the two first horns, Mr. T. Harper the first trumpet. Even the crotdles, or antique cymbals, of the pianissimo of which Berlioz speaks with special delight, were in the hands of such artists as M. Silas and Mr. W. Ganz. It throws a curious side light upon the miscellaneous taste and comprehensive appetite of these days if one reads that after such a work the audience were still able to appreciate a Fantasia on the double bass by Signer Bottesini, and Eossini's Overture to Guillavme Tell. So far everything had passed off satisfactorily ; the birth of the new Society had attracted no end of attention; and the different opinions expressed only tended to keep the interest alive. But already, at the second concert given on April 14, a note of personal disagreement mingles with the chorus of artistic enthusiasm. This concert was chiefly devoted to the "encouragement of native talent," an ex- pression used in the newspaper criticisms of those days as an epithet of admiration by one party, and of derision by the other. Dr. Wylde contributed a 2o6 HALF A CENTURY OJB MUSIC IN ENGLAND. Pianoforte Concerto in F minor, played by M. Alex- andre Billet, and tlie second part of the concert was mainly taken up by an operatic masque entitled, "The Island of Calypso," by Edward Loder, the composer of the " Night Dancers," in which Mr. and Mrs. Sims Eeeves, Miss Dolby and Mr. Weiss took the soli. The performance had not been sufficiently rehearsed, and seems, by all accounts, to have been indifferent ; but it was with regard to the soli that the quarrel already ialluded to arose, ^o stringent had been the censure of the press that Berlioz, according to his not very commendable custom, thought it necessary to rush into print, and he accordingly wrote an explanatory letter to Mr. Loder, which was duly published in The Mudcal World : To Me. Loder, of Manchester. SiH, I think it my duty to offer you some explanations on the subject of the execution of your beautiful work at the second concert of the New Philharmonic Society. You were absent, but be assured I neglected nothing to secure for it a good performance. Some faults, however, by no means numerous, were remarked upon in the execution of the last part. We might have had to deplore more serious accidents. Mr. and Mrs. Eeeves, entrusted with the parts of "Telemachus" and "Eucharis," not having been present at a single rehearsal with the orchestra. At the first rehearsal (with wind instruments and double quartet) I was compelled to sing, as well as I could, the airs and recitatives while directing the orchestra. At the second, with eighty musicians, Miss Dolby and Mr. Weiss alone attended. At the third, with the semi- orchestra, in Blagrove's Eooms, I was again obliged to sing the parts of " Eucharis " and " Telemachus," Mr. and Mrs. Eeeves being again absent. These two artists have only rehearsed on one BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 207 oooasioa with me, tlie same day as the concert, and the orchestra in conseoLuence was obliged to accompany them without having heard them. You will understand, therefore, why the band occaaonally wanted confidence in the recitatives. Nevertheless, the only grave error we have to regret was not committed by the orchestra. I was on the point of refusing to direct the execution of a work of such importance under such strange conditions ; but the fear of having my conduct misconstrued restrained me. It is the first time in my life I was ever placed in such a position. You will see that I was forced to submit to it, and it is only me, I can assure you, whom it has compromised. Eieceive, sir, the assurance of my high esteem for your musical merit, and my distinguished sentiments for yourself. Your all-devoted Hbctok Berlioz. 15*?i A'sril, 1852. This grave impeacliment not unnaturally elicited a retort at once direct and characteristic on the part of the popular tenor.. It is amusing to meet, at this early day, with an instance of that indisposition which has played so important a part in Mr. Sims Reeves's career. Tq that cause he attributes his absence from the second rehearsal, omitting, however, to explain whetlier Mrs. Sims Eeeves, who also failed to put in an appearance, was sympathetically in- disposed ! Of the first rehearsal he had had no intimation when he left London for a few days, and "of another rehearsal mentioned by M. Berlioz, we heard nothing whatever ; this, sir, is my explanation." The Finale and peroration ' of this remarkable document is written with a pungency and directness which makes one wonder whether the same hand 2o8 HALF A CENTUR Y OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. which penned these lines could possibly have traced the rambling life and recollections, recently pub- lished, as " written by himself," by the great 'tenor ; unless, indeed, the burden of years affects the hand more severely than the voice. " Were \Ias,fautes pev, nombreuses, which elicited a chorus of condemnation from the press, committed by us only ? Did our non-attendance at rehearsal make the band falter in the recitatives and songs of the other artists ? Did it give unsteadiness to the choristers ? M. Bei:lioz says that the only grave error was not committed by the orchestra, but with due deference I must observe that it appears to me a very grave error to perform a work from first to last without any successful attempt at accent or colouring, and this was certainly the case with the execution of Mr. Lbder's ' Calypso,' and will be so whenever a conductor (however exalted his merits) consents to give a new and bel ouvrage to the public with only one full band rehearsal." Apart from Beethoven's C minor Symphony, the remainder of the second concert did not contain any- thing noteworthy, and Berlioz's works shine by their absence. At the third concert (April 28, 1852), on the other hand, the " Komeo and Juliet " was repeated by general desire, and performed, according to the composer, even better than on the first occasion.^ This concert deserves to be remembered chiefly by two incidents of a personal kind. The pianist was Madame Pleyel, the same person whom, as Mdlle. BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 209 Moke, Berlioz had loved, and desired to assassinate, if his own account is true. What were the feelings of Berlioz when brought into personal contact with his old flame he has omitted to state. But the lady, after the manner of her kind, seems to have been less reticent. It appears that the accompaniment to Weber's "Concertstiick" was played somewhat roughly; and that particularly in one of the solo passages the orchestra crashed in a bar or two too soon, thus spoil- ing an effect intended for the pianist, I am positively assured that Madame Pleyel attributed this contre- temps to the spite of her jilted lover, and complained to several members of the committee. No candid judge will attribute such meanness to the great composer. At the same time, the orchestral playing in the piece in question seems to have been exception- ally bad, and a contemporary writer attributes the pianist's comparative failure in some measure to the carelessness of M. Berlioz, who took no pains to keep the accompaniments within due bounds ; so that Madame Pleyel had literally to force her way through that deservedly popular work by dint of her own individual powers. The second incident was of a more pleasant kind. The widow of Spontini had come over to London for the purpose of hearing the extracts from the Vestale, and sent to Berlioz the hdton used during his career by her husband, together with the follow- ing letter : 2 lo HALF A ■ CENTUR Y OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. SlE, I came here to attend the Concert this evening. Will you permit me to present to you the hiton with which my dear husband used to conduct the works of Gluck, Mozart, and his own. It cannot be transmitted to better hands than yours. When you are conducting, this evening, La Vestale, it will vividly remind you of my dear husband, who loved and admired you so much. Heaven has refused him the satisfaction of hearing the last perform- ance of his Olyrmpia at Berlin, and that of La Vestale conducted by you. Yet he will hear you this evening ! By this time the public interest in the proceed- ings of the New Philharmonic Society had begun somewhat to flag, but it was roused once more to a pitch of enthusiasm by the fourth concert (May 12, 1852), when the Ninth Symphony, at that time little known to English people, was given. As to this performance it is unnecjessary to quote newspaper- extracts, for it still lives in the memory of many musicians who were present, and who are unanimous in testifying that such singing and such playing had never been heard before and were very rarely heard afterwards in an English concert-room. Berlioz knew the score by heart, and threw his whole soul into its perfect rendering; and his enthusiasm had com- municated itself to every man in the orchestra, every singer in the chorus. Seven band rehearsals had been held, and in addition to this, strings and wood, wind and brass, had been put through their paces separately. No wonder, then, that in a technicaU as well as in an intellectual sense, the performance BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 211 was perfect, and in its way monumental. Madame Clara Novello, Miss Williams, Mr. Sims Eeeves, and Herr Staudigl, were the solo quartet. The fifth concert, May 28, was again of less interest, a Pianoforte Concerto by M. Silas being the principal novelty. Berlioz's Overture, " Les Francs Juges," was also performed, and seems to have dis- appointed the audience. At the sixth and last concert, June 9, the Ninth Symphony was repeated ; and a Cantata, " Prayer and Praise," by Dr. Wylde, as well as fragments from Berlioz's "Faust" Cantata, were in the second part of the programme. Madame Pleyel also appeared again, but had taken the pre- caution to select a piece without orchestral accom- paniments. According to The Musical World, the " Faust " fragments made a very favourable impression, and Berlioz, in his summing up of the season, is, as usual, full of enthusiasm. " What a thing it was to see the enormous public at Exeter Hall roused by the extracts from ' Eomeo ' and ' Faust,' to hear the hurrahs of our grand orchestra ! I frequently thought of you, my dear Morel, in the evening on coming home, when we had supper with these Englishmen, real enthusiasts, with rum and iced champagne. What a singular, what a grand nation ! It understands everything, or at least it contains people who understand everything." Unfortunately, the people who understood every- thing, or at least who understood Berlioz, were not p 2 212 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. numerous enough to make the fortunes of the New Philharmonic Society. The season had no doubt been an artistic success, but it had been a financial failure ; and Mr. Beale, Berlioz's chief supporter, who had already some weeks before given him an en- gagement for the second season, had to cancel that engagement, and to announce his own resignation as secretary of the Society. Berlioz was naturally ex- tremely disappointed, and, according to his wont, attributed the failure to personal spite. In the letter to his friend Morel, already quoted, he says : " One of my chefs-d'orchestre has found means to have my engagement cancelled. He has been chaffed {heme) during the past year by the artists, the public, and the press so much, that he says he will take his revenge by choosing for next year a partner less unaccommodating than myself. He wants to engage old Spohr. Improving upon this hint, M. JuUien commits himself to the following statement : ' Beale sent in his resignation to the committee because Costa, in alliance with the pianist Dr. Wylde {sic), had brought it about that Berlioz should not be engaged, and that in his place either old Spohr or Lindpaintner should be invited, from whom he thought he had nothing to fear as a conductor.' " The substratum of truth in this sentence is that Lindpaintner conducted the first four, and Spohr the two last concerts of the season of 1853, in conjunction with Dr. Wylde. The other statements contained in BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 213 the same sentence are partly very doubtful, and partly sheer nonsense. Every one knows that Costa had absolutely nothing to do with the management of the New Phiiharmonic Society, and was from his position the very last person in England to be consulted. As to the resignation of Mr. Beale, which, by the way, seems to have been withdrawn — for the prospectus of the second season is signed by him — it was due mainly, if not exclusively, to financial causes. The. New Philharmonic Society was originally started by four gentlemen — Sir Charles Fox, Mr. Thomas Brassey (the father of the present Lord Brassey), Mr., afterwards Sir Morton Peto, the great railway contractor, and Dr. Wylde, each of whom put down two hundred pounds. Mr. Beale, of Cramer & Co., undertook the general and financial manage- ment. That management, as we have already seen, was carried on in an extremely liberal spirit. Any number of rehearsals was allowed to Berlioz, and no expenses were spared for the excellent orchestra engaged by Mr. Jarrett, which had Sivori for its leader, and many of the best artists of the day for its members. The receipts had been generally good, but they were far from equal to such heavy demands. When the balance sheet was presented at the end of the season, it turned out that the original capital had been expended within a few pounds, in addition to which Mr. Beale or his firm were out of pocket for a very considerable sum. The four guarantors 214 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. were accordingly called upon for nearly the whole amount of their subscription (£102 18 s. 6d. was the exact sum), and be it said to the credit of the commercial gentlemen, that they paid their money down without any demur ; Mr. Brassey adding that "it would have been much more agreeable to him if the deficiency had been divided by three instead of by four," and if Dr. "Wylde, the artistic member of the committee, " had released himself from any deficit." At the same time the committee-meeting was not of a very cheerful kind, and it appears that in consequence of some remarks then made, Mr. Beale sent in his resignation. It was also not un- natural that the New Philharmonic directors should have been anxious to engage for their second season a conductor a little less exacting in the matter of rehearsals, and therefore a. little less expensive than Berlioz. That Dr. Wylde was not in any sense hostile to the great French composer is sufficiently proved by the fact that three years later, when he had the sole responsibility of the concerts, he was most anxious to have again the services of Berlioz. I have before me a whole series of letters addressed by Berlioz to Dr. Wylde, and written in the most cordial terms, in which he asks him "non comme a un direeteur de concerts, mais comme \ un artiste," to be released from his promise to conduct the entire series of concerts of 1855; and he accordingly was present only at BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 215 the last two. This does not look like ill-will on the one side, or permanent offence on the other. Berlioz was too accustomed to adversity to be easily daunted, and with Beale's letter before him- he speaks of other English plans with unabated hopeful- ness. " I hear again of a number of new schemes," he writes, " always for England ; here, in Paris, always — nothing." The English schemes soon took definite shape ; nothing less was intended than a performance at Cbvent Garden of Benvenuto Cellini — the opera which had signally failed in Paris at the Grand Opera in 1838, but which Liszt had quite recently (March 20, 1852) produced at Weimar with great success. Berlioz's popularity in England at the time was so great, that an equally favourable result might be expected almost with certainty, but the per- sons who anticipated such a success entirely overlooked the difference which existed and exists in England between those who frequent orchestral concerts, and the habitues of the Italian Opera. The fatal consequences of this mistake became apparent when, on Saturday, June 25, 1853, the Italian version of Benvenuto saw the light at Covent Garden. If .the New Philharmonic Concerts had been Berlioz's Austerlitz, this was his Waterloo. " The performance," writes Mr. Chorley, in his " Thirty Years' Musical EecoUectious," " was 2i6 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. prepared with great care, and the composer himself presided in the orchestra. Mesdames Julienne-Dejean and Nantier-Didi^e, and Messrs. Tamberlik, Formes, and Tagliafico taking the principal parts. The even- ing was one of the most melancholy evenings which I ever passed in any theatre. At an early period the humour of the audience began to show itself, and the painful spectacle had to be endured of seeing the composer conducting his own work through every stage of its condemnation. The Queen and Prince Albert, and the King and Queen of Hanover, were present, but even the presence of these distinguished persons was unable to check the disgraceful conduct of the audience, venting itself in cat-calls and howls louder even than the thunderstorm which was raging outside. An attempt even was made to stop the performance of the overture, ' Carnaval Eomain,' which served as an introduction to the second act, and which, together with other compositions by Berlioz, had been applauded less than a month before* at one of the Old Philharmonic Concerts at the Hanover Square Eooms." No wonder that, as The Musical World briefly states, " the manage- * The Concert took place on Monday, May 30, at the Hanover Square Eooms, and the selection from the works of Berlioz, con- ducted by himself, consisted of "Harold in Italy" (Viola Solo, M. Sainton), " The Eepose of the Holy Family " (Signor Gardini), and "Le Carnaval Komain." The second part of the Concert, including Beethoven's C miaor Symphony and a miscellaneous selection, was conducted by Costa. BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 217 ment did not think it expedient to bring Benvenuto Cellini forward again." The press notices of the work and the performance would furnish an interest- ing study if sufficient space were at hand, and if the reader's patience had not already been tried by too many quotations. The desire of the critics, on the whole, seems to have been to " let down easily " a composer for whom many of them had expressed admiration in public, and whose unfair and dastardly treatment at the hands of the audience all of them could scarcely help condemning. At the same time the opera does not seem to have pleased the critics any more than it did the audience, and even the warmest admirer of Berlioz at this day would scarcely hold it up as a masterpiece, in spite of many detached beauties and glimpses of genius. Never having seen one of his operas on the stage, I am loth to give a definite opinion on the point ; but, as far as one can judge by pianoforte arrangements, it seems to me that Berlioz did not possess dramatic genius in the proper sense of the word. His nature was too lyrical, too expansive for that ; he lacked the crispness of touch, the succinctness of utterance, the concentration of impulse, which go to the making of a great writer for the stage, apart from which he had no definite and consistent idea of the musico- dramatic form. Much as he despised the fireworks and the meaningless con- ventionalities of the Italian and light French schools, he employs the same conventionalities in Benvenuto, 2 1 8 HALF A CENTUR Y OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. ■in Beatrice et Benedict, and even in Les Trot/ens, without hesitation, and in close and startling juxta- position with poetic beauties of a very high order. And it is not, perhaps, matter for much regret that the recent Berlioz revivals in France and England have not led to the mounting of a single one of his operas, although Mr. Eosa at one time announced Benvenuto at Her Majesty's Theatre, and had even a statue of Perseus cast for the purpose. I do not mean to deny that an intelligent and artistically-minded manager might and should have made a trial ; but I greatly doubt whether such a trial would have redounded much to the credit of Berlioz. By way of a specimen of contemporary criticism, I add a few sentences from The Times' notice of Benvenuto, which is written essentially on the lines above indicated, and may be called a model of tact and good feeling. After stating that the libretto of Benvenuto Cellini was among the very worst entrusted to a musical composer, and that M. Berlioz was really to be pitied, The Times of June 27, 1853, remarks: "The in- strumental prelude to Act II., ' Carnaval Eomain,' is a, splendid piece of orchestration; and the fact that this was hissed here when it was always ap- plauded elsewhere, must have led many to suspect the entire sincerity of those continued marks of disapproval dealt indiscriminately by a resolute BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 219 and determined party, at almost every morceau, good, bad, and indifferent. . . . That the music of Benvenuto Cellini is composed on principles in op- position to those of the acknowledged masters is true. But because a thing is new, that is no proof of its being bad. For our own part, amid much that was objectionable according to the received notions of art which we have always been the first to uphold, we ■detected much that deserved to be admired. The instrumentation is often unnecessarily intricate and oftener unnecessarily noisy. The cymbals and big drum, except in the ' Carnaval,' are a nuisance, and go far to damage what is otherwise intrinsically fine. The rhythm is often broken and irregular, so as to torment and puzzle the ear ; and several of the melodies which begin happily, are spoiled by being tortured into strange and unexpected cadences. The scene of the ' Carnaval,' though full of life and colour, is decidedly too long ; and the contortions of the Polichinello, together with the satirical dumb show directed against that very uninteresting personage Balducci, occupy a considerable space of time without offering any attraction to the audience. And yet, there is some excellent music in this scene. All the part which is a repetition from the overture, is striking and characteristic, while the choruses of the people, and their exclamations of pleasure as the piece in the Theatre of Cassandro is being enacted, are picturesque and dramatically appropriate. 223 HALF A CENTUR Y OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. Granted that there are many things to oflfend the prejudices of those who look exclusively to the ac- cepted models of dramatic musical composition, that there is much that sounds prolix and monotonous, that the voices are at times injudiciously taxed, and that there are many odd combinations with a great deal of straining after effects not always obtained, we find on the other hand enough of pleg,sing, original, and effective to counterbalance these drawbacks, and to entitle Benvenuto Cellini to consideration, if not to approval." A story which does infinite credit to the hearts of the two persons concerned, and which I have on the best authority, may be told in connection with this unfortunate premiere. It appears that Berlioz had asked the principal artists and a few friends to a supper after the pierformance, to celebrate the antici- pated success. When that success was converted into a dismal failure, none of the convives liked to put in an appearance, with the sole exception of Mr. Davison. The table was spread for many guests and the two men sat down at the deserted board, Berlioz being moved to tears by the tact and true politeness shown by his solitary guest. The parallel scene from the "Virginians," when George War- rington entertains his friends after the discomfiture of Pocahontas, must have recalled this interesting evening to Mr. Davison's mind when he came to read Thackeray's novel some years later. The amount BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 221 of sympathy and of lachrymose moisture mixed on both those occasions with the more substantial viands was something prodigious. It is needless to say that Berlioz attributed his defeat to personal motives, and that the chief leader of the intrigue got up against him assumed in his mind the features of Signor Costa. Daring his stay in London Berlioz had, so to speak, Costa on the brain. People had been comparing his own con- ducting with that of the Italian maestro, not to the advantage of the latter. He had himself attacked Costa in the Journal des Debats; what, then, was more likely than that the wily Neapolitan should have availed himself of this opportunity of revenging himself upon his rival ? It is true, and Berlioz has to acknowledge it, that Costa had been most helpful and serviceable during the rehearsals, but this, Berlioz charitably suggests, might have been a feint to cover a deep-laid design. " Public opinion, if not mine," the master says in his Memoirs, " points in that direction ; " and the article in The Times, above quoted, certainly hints at the existence of a cabal. Intrinsically it is probable enough that Costa, and the Italians generally, had no particular good-will towards a man who called Bellini a petit polisson and made a point of speaking of modern Italian music with the utmost contempt. At , the same time, intrinsic evi- dence is scarcely sufficient to sustain a charge of malice prepense, and it is extremely difficult to bring 222 HALF A CENTUR Y OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. forward direct testimony in such a case. Certain it is that the loudest clamours of the Italian clique would soon have been silenced by the indignation of the impartial public if Benvenuto Cellini had pleased, or if Berlioz's popularity in England had been any- thing like what he believed it to be. In the theatre itself no dissentient voice was raised, but the friends of the master were naturally eager to make some amende to his wounded feelings ; Mr. Beale, who had from the beginning been his staunch adherent, again taking the initiative. The first idea was to give a concert for the master's benefit at Exeter Hall ; and when this had to be abandoned, owing to his departure from England, the money already collected, to the amount of £200, was offered to him as a free gift. Berlioz at the time was in straitened circumstances, and five thousand francs would have been a most welcome addition to his slender funds ; but he thought of what his enemies in Paris would say of his accepting this bounty, and declined with a heavy heart. The English committee then determined upon purchasing the full score of Faust, and publishing the same with English words ; and this delicate compliment was accepted with gratitude. " My dear ," Berlioz wrote, " the concert can- not take place. The gentlemen of the committee organised to get it up have conceived the delicate, charming, and generous idea of devoting the sum BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 223 realised by the subscription opened for the concert, to the acquisition of the score of my Faust, which will be published, with English text, under the super- intendence of Beale and other members of the committee. It would be impossible to be more cordial and artist-like at the same time ; and I rejoice at the result of the performance at Covent Garden, since it has been the cause of a demonstration so sympathetic, intelligent, and worthily expressed. Give all the publicity in your power to the manifestation ; you will render justice to your compatriots, and at the same time confer a very great pleasure on "Yours, etc., "Hector Berlioz," Berlioz left England on July 9, and, after a short stay in Paris, went on to Baden, where a grand festival in his honour had been prepared by that somewhat equivocal but ardent admirer of his art, M. Benazet, the farmer of the gambling tables, by whose commission Beatrice et Benedict was written later on. VI. Two years elapsed before he again, and for the last time, trod English ground. By that time considerable changes had taken place in this country. Signor Costa, in December, 1854, resigned the conductorship of the Philharmonic Society, and, at the suggestion 2 24 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. of his friend, M. Sainton, the post was offered to Berlioz, who, however, had already been engaged by the New Philharmonic Society. Originally that engagement was for the whole season ; but when other and more advantageous proposals were made to him in Germany, he wrote to Dr. Wylde, asking to be released from his promise, and his prayer was granted. The correspondence, to which allusion has already been made, is a voluminous one, and none of the letters having hitherto been published, one of them may be given here as a specimen of Berlioz's mode of expression in the ordioary affairs of life and apart from sentiment : MoN CHBB Monsieur Wilde, Je m'addresse a vous non comme \ un directeur de con- certs, mais comme k un artiste. TJne foule de propositions tres avantageuses me sont faites de tons c6te3 pour la saison proohaine, aux quelles, k cause de la votre, il me sera impossible de rdpondre affirmativement. Je ne puis manquer \ la parole que je vous ai donnde ; mais considerez le tort immense que vous allez faire k ma carri^re, en m'obligeant a refuser ce qui m'est offert. Soyez assez bon confrere pour me rendre ma parole et ma liberie, je vous en aurai une extreme reconnaissance ; il vous sera facile d'ailleurs de me remplacer pour les deux concerts. En attendant votre prompts rdponse, qui je I'espfere, sera favorable, recevez I'assurance de mes sentiments les plus distingufe. Votre tout devoue H. Bbklioz. 17, EUE DB BOUESAULT, PaEIS. 26 Decemhre, 1851. It was finally settled that Dr. Wylde should con- duct the first four, and Berlioz the last two concerts BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 225 of the season, and he accordingly arrived in London early in June to conduct the rehearsals for the fifth of the six concerts. Wagner by that time had Clearly got through his martyrdom at the old Phil- harmonic Society, and the contemporary press re- •corded an astonishing fact : Wagner and Berlioz, the two ultra-republicans in the realms of music, installed in the two most prominent posts of the musical world of this classical and exclusively conservative Xondon. The fifth New Philharmonic Concert was given on Wednesday evening, June 13, and the principal item of the programme was once more the " Romeo and Juliet " selection. The selection on this occa- sion was confined to orchestral pieces. What had become, by this time, of the splendid chorus of which Berlioz spoke in terms of such praise in 1852 1 one asks, on reading that at the general rehearsal of June 12 "the vocal portion of 'Eomeo and Juliet' was rendered so badly after several trials, that Berlioz decided to omit it." This necessary precaution seems to have riled the chorus singers to an unbearable degree, and when the master entered the orchestra for the second part of the concert, they took the extreme and unprecedented measure of hissing him, while the public, we are told, greeted him with a simultaneous tumult of applause. Even the orchestra seems to have done its duty in a very leisurely -fashion, for Wagner, who was present, writes : " The Q 2 26 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND^ very imperfect execution of his * Romeo and Juliet ' Symphony made me pity him." With Berlioz's read- ing of the G minor Symphony by Mozart, Wagner was also " little edified ; " but The Musical World is in raptures with the rendering of Mr, Henry Leslie's overture, " The Templar," saying : " The marked pains bestowed upon it by Berlioz warranted the assumption that the renowned foreign musician was well satisfied to conduct an English composition of such merit." The remainder of the concert was of no special interest. The conduct of the chorus could, of course, not pass unnoticed, and an angry controversy arose in- the press, to which Berlioz, always ready for a news- paper fray, contributed the following letter, addressed to the editor of The Musical World : Sib, One of tlie members of the chorus of the New Philhar- monic Society demands from me an explanation on the subject of the suppression of the choruses of my Symphony (" Romeo and Juliet") at the concert which I directed at Exeter Hall the 13th of this month. The reasons which compelled me to make the- suppression were evident and imperious. The little chorus of the prologue, for fourteen voices only, had been studied in the French language, M. and Mdme. Gassier being, to my great astonishment, engaged for the solos of this part of my Symphony, which it was impossible for them to sing in English. Now, at the last moment, M. Gassier, whose voice is a baritone, declared that he could not sing a tenor part, and that Mdme. Gassier (a high soprano) could, not sing a contralto part, as was evident to myself. It was then necessary to commence new studies with the English text, and the extremely difficult choruses, the words of which should be welt BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 227 pronounced, and wittout any accompaniment, could not be suffi- ciently learned in so short a time. As for the song of the Capulets, ■which the male choristers had taken much pains with, it was perfectly known ; but learning that it was now the custom to have the choruses executed before the public withcmt the chorus singers having once rehearsed with the orchestra, I experienced a lively inquietude, the more so that but a small number of these gentlemen came to the last rehearsal, and having twice in succession failed to come in after the signal of the orchestra, it was evident that those who were to sing at the concert, without ever having heard the orchestra — that is to say, the majority — would assuredly fail in the same manner. Could I expose them to so unfortunate an accident ? Could I expose the Philharmonic Society to a disaster of such gravity? Could I expose myself to see one of the principal morceaux of my work compromised in such an attempt 1 I leave to artists, and to every one who has any knowledge of musical matters, the trouble of answering. As for myself, I do not believe that such experiments should be made in public. I have the honour to be. Sir, Your devoted servant, Heotob Berlioz. London, 2Gth Jwae, 1855. The sixth and final concert of the season took place on July 4. Mr. Klindworth, recommended to Dr. Wylde by Wagner, played Henselt's Pianoforte Concerto, and amongst the works performed were Howard Glover's Cantata, "Tarn 0' Shanter," " Harold in Italy " (Viola Obbligato, Ernst), and the Overture to a MS. Opera, Abellino, by M. Praeger. Three days afterwards Berlioz left London never to return, and not to be heard of- again in any prominent way for many years to come. His works disappeared from our programmes; his name was Q 2 228 HALF A CENTURY OF MUSIC IN ENGLAND. all but forgotten ; and if he ever thought -of England asain, the bitter truth must have come home to him, that, in spite of the " dithyrambs " of the press, and the pyramidal successes he had met with, no permanent impression whatever had been made by his music. Those successes, both with the press and the public, had, indeed, been of a purely personal kind. No one could help admiring and being struck by the characteristic face and figure of the famous composer, expressive of the most ardent zeal for art that ever inspired mortal frame. Much less than this would have been required to call forth that mo- mentary enthusiasm which English audiences, both in London and at provincial festivals, consider it a duty of hospitality to proffer to any composer taking the trouble to conduct his own work, and which would be wholly laudable were it not mis- leading and, through total want of discrimination, valueless. To apply the well-worn saying about the rocket and the stick to so great a genius as Berlioz would be undignified ; let us rather say that he was a meteor rising for a little space above the horizon, illuminating the English heavens, and disappearing again into space. I find that JuUien, faithful to his old gods, introduced the " Invitation \ la Valse," as arranged for orchestra by Berlioz, at a "Weber Night" in December, 1857, and on February 13, 1858, the Overture, Benvenuto Cellini, and the same BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 229 " Invitation a la Valse " were played at the Crystal Palace ; the rest is silence for many years. Time brought its revenges to Berlioz as to other great men; but, as the irony of fate would have it, it was only to his memory. The Franco-German War arose and roused the national feelings of both nations to the highest pitch. That struggle between two of the most musical nations of the world did not produce a single song worth remembering ; but when the fight was over music benefited by the popular enthusiasm. It is doubtful whether the Festival plays at Bayreuth would ever have become a reality had Germany not become a unified nation. The French on their side felt the necessity of pitting some musical hero against Beethoven and Wagner, and upon whom could their choice possibly have fallen but upon the much-maligned, much-ridiculed Berlioz ? A Berlioz revival accordingly took place in France early in the seventies, and found its echo in England before long. On June 4, 1878, twenty- three years after Berlioz had departed from England, M. Pasdeloup conducted a performance of Faust at Her Majesty's Theatre. The audience was scanty, and the overworked chorus of the opera and an Italian tenerino were quite incapable of doing justice to this music, the only bright point in the wretched afi'air being the singing of Margaret by Madame Minnie Hauck. But wretched though it was, this first 230 HALF A CENI UR Y OF, MUSIC IN ENGLAND. performance marked the break of dawn. . Sir Charles Halld brought his Manchester Chorus to London, and revealed the beauties of Faust to a Metropolitan public (May 21, 1880). The Crystal Palace, the Eichter Concerts, Mr. Barnby, and other conductors followed suit ; and to Mr. Cusins belongs the credit of having given the first complete performance of " Eomeo and Juliet " (under Berlioz the Finale was always omitted) at a Philharmonic Concert (March 10, 1881). By this time we have heard all Berlioz's important works, excepting the operas, in England, and his name is more or less frequently found in our concert programmes. But has his music, even now, taken firm hold of the masses, as distinguished from the classes, of professional musicians and highly cultured amateurs ? I should say not ; with the sole exception, perhaps, of Faust, which carries the day in all circumstances by dint of its subject. Has the French master's work left any deep or abiding trace on the minds and the workmanship of English musicians ? is another ques- tion which must, I think, be answered in the negative. I have previously called Berlioz's life a tragedy, and the features of that tragedy may, on a small scale, be observed in the English incident. We see in the hero the same restless craving for notoriety, the eager courting of newspaper praise and the dispensers thereof, the same sanguine exaggeration of success, and the same proneness to obtain that BERLIOZ IN ENGLAND. 231 success by the most uncongenial, if not absolutely inartistic means which, in a lesser man, would be almost comic, and which in his case rouse the spectator to the Aristotelian "terror and pity." Berlioz conducting night after night Lmia, is a sight not altogether unlike Prometheus tied to his rock. In the best conceivable musical world such a sight of course would not have occurred. Berlioz would have had the means to carry out his gigantic