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LETTERS AND PAPERS
THE BOOK CLUB OF CALIFORNIA
SAN FRANCISCO •MCMXXIIIMUSI G DEFT
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C 0	« c «	«	•TABLE OF CONTENTS
Oscar Weil: A Memoir	ix
Commentaries for the Programmes of Symphony Concerts at
the Greek Theatre of the University of California, 1306-1307	3
Beethoven: Second Symphony
Beethoven: Sixth Symphony
Mozart: Symphony in C major [Jupiter}
Beethoven: Seventh Symphony
Haydn: The Military Symphony
Mozart: Symphony in E flat
MacDowell: Indian Suite
Goldmark: Symphony [Rustic Wedding}
Rimsky-Korsakow: Symphonic Suite, Scheherazade
Schumann: First Symphony
Brahms: Second Symphony
Haydn: Second Symphony
Beethoven: Fourth Symphony
Tschaikowsky: Fifth Symphony
Mendelssohn: The Scotch Symphony
The Letters of Oscar Weil	3 3
To Miss Flora Jacobi
To James Woodward King
To Albert I. Elkus
To his Sister, Mrs. A. Z. Sinsheimer
To Mrs. Weil
To Sam Franko
To Hother Wismer
To Daniel Gregory Mason
To Mrs. Ludwig Rosenstein
Letters to Children
To Miss Blanche Partingtonable of Contents
"Preludes in Divers Keys”: Contributions to the Argonaut, San
Francisco, 1879-1880	77
Reményi—Potpourri—Reményi (Controversial)—Journalistic Crit-
icism—Opéra Bouffe—Subjective Interpretation—Raff—Wilhelm
Henry Ketten—Max Vogrich—"Pinafore” at the Bush Street Theatre
—Vogrich—Criticism of a Young Vocalist—Miss Melville at the Bush
Street Theatre — The Händel and Haydn Society—Mr. Louis Lisser.
The Mundwyler Collection of Chamber Music at the Univer-
sity of California	99
The Paintings of Francis McComas	100
An Informal Talk before the Music Section of the Adelphian
Club in Alameda	102.
Words spoken at the Funeral of Oscar Weil by Stewart W.
Young on April 16,192.1, in San Francisco	117
Compositions of Oscar WeilOSCAR WEIL :
A MEMOIR
























OSCAR WEIL : A MEMOIR
”T was natural that the passing of such a man as Oscar Weil should
prompt the desire to collect the most characteristic of hi$ Writings
in order to preserve in some form to all who valued him the sense
of his uniqueness, his special distinction. So, to rescue from the
fleeting years his contribution and the memory of him, these pa-
pers were gathered, that those to whom he was an inspiration and
a guide might continue to refresh themselves with his message
jand those to whom he was unknown might now at last benefit
from the contact of so gracious and cultivated a spirit.
OscarWeil was born June 2.nd, 1835,in Columbia County,New
York State. His parentage was German and of the Jewish faith. He
received his early education in a private school at Albany, and in his
boyhood painting and music seem equally to have engaged his in-
terests. After a year of study in New York, the decision was made in
favor of music and at the age of eighteen OscarWeil went to Ger-
many. In the Conservatory at Leipsic he came under the instruction
of Reinecke, Richter, Plaidy and Moscheles. Later he studied in Paris
with Damke and Lalo and enjoyed the guidance and friendship of
Stephen Heller.
The outbreak of the Civil War brought him back to this country
where he enlisted for the Northern cause. Among the fields upon
which he saw service were Antietam, Branby Station,The Wilderness,
Petersburg and Hatcher’s Run. His record shows him to have been
four times wounded, prisoner for three months in Libby, and in the
course of his rise from private to major, to have been twice brevetted
for gallantry. He was in active service till the end of the war.
After the peace, burning his uniforms and all other mementos of
the struggle, he set out for Leipsic to resume his studies. A wound in
the hand incapacitated him in the executant fields and his energies
were now concentrated upon the creative and theoretical aspects of
his art. There followed a year rich in contacts and associations, for
young Weil seems to have attracted the friendly interest of his masters
and to have been admitted into their intimate circles.
His health had never fully recovered from the hardships of theMemoir [
/war, so that when finally he decided to return to follow a professional
f career in his native land, he sought the milder climate of the Western
: coast In 1868 he settled in San Francisco and with Louis Schmidt
‘founded the San Francisco Institute of Music and gave the first series
of chamber music concerts in San Francisco. After an interruption of
two years in Healdsburg during which a venture in journalism as as-
sociate editor of the Russian River Flag occupied him, he returned to
San Francisco where, his musical activities re-asserting themselves,
Weil entered upon his work in the theatre.
This began with his general directorship of the Bush Street Thea-
tre and became an integral part of his life. In 1881 he sought larger
fields and for fifteen years, whenever he was not on tour, the center
of his activity was New York, Boston, or London. In this period, he
not only composed his operas, but saw them produced, often under
his own baton. This too was the time of his association with the Bos-
ton Ideals and, later with the Bostonians, whose general musical di-
rector he was for four years.
Permanently, however, he could not find in the theatre the best
medium for his gifts, for the stage imposes compromises on its ser-
vants and Mr. Weil was a man of very definite and uncompromising
convictions. As a result of this quality in his nature, many found him
difficult to work with. He was moreover a man of marked reserve, and
from the acquaintances of all periods of his life, one hears of his aloof-
ness and of the difficulty of approaching him intimately. He gave his
affection and his substance with a quixotic generosity but maintained
with a fierce and jealous courage his self-sufficiency. There were few
who penetrated that fascinating and convincing exterior which he
himself viewed with the feeling of the artist and by means of which
he guarded all that was too sensitive to be revealed except to those
who could divine it. Spiritually he was an aristocrat, and life to him
was the contemplation of that which he adjudged beautiful and noble,
of that which the aspiring imagination of man has exalted above the
facts of his daily existence. Thus to Mr. Weil, art was a religion and,
if it gave him not all he desired, it gave sufficient upon which to build.
He was accordingly but little understood,—revered always, respect-
ed, sought after, sometimes feared and even disliked; but those whowere not his friends knew him only as a man of mettle and an op- Oscar Weil
ponent against whom struggle was futile unless they were themselves A Memoir
valiant and well armed. The arrogance that many felt in Oscar Weil
was usually but a reproof of that which he deemed in others a lack
of reverence for the values which he worshipped with a humility at
times almost naive. Nevertheless there was in him something of the
spirit of Cyrano. He could sacrifice both feelings and sentiment to the
integrity of the dramatic situation; he would force relationship into
artificial channels to sustain perhaps a gesture or a chance word, de-
lightful to his sense of the fit. And he was even capable in these
moments of turning upon those for whom he really cared, and of
wounding them,—perhaps bitterly. But whosoever accepted Mr. Weil
on his own terms—and that was the only way one could have him—
found in him something exceedingly rare and genuine.
When, in 1858, Weil returned for the last time to San Francisco^
it was with teaching that he principally occupied himself. The scope
of the city's musical life can be seen from the excerpts from the Argo-
naut criticisms contained in the body of this volume. From these it
will be easily inferred that for a man of his natural capacities, his vi-
tality and aspiration, he must have keenly felt the crudity of his sur-
roundings,— for his was not the pioneering temperament. Indeed
one had always the impression that he was somewhat embittered by
his milieu and by the lack of that intelligent appreciation and under-
standing which he craved but would not seek.
The list of compositions printed at the end of this volume shows
Weil to have been a moderately productive composer. His music is
lyric, suave and tuneful, and has melodic charm and grace; it is char-
acterized by careful workmanship and refinement of taste and refleas
always the reverence Weil felt for the direct and simple style which
derived from Mozart through Mendelssohn. To judge however from
the emotional content of his work, Schubert must have had a very
deep influence in guiding his pen. He was always a stria adherent to
classical form, and his compositions are cast in excellent, if not large
molds.
Weil's conneaion with the Bostonians as well as the success of his
operas, "Pygmalion," "Suzette," and "A War-Time Wedding,"causedOscar Weil: the public to associate him with the theatre, but his own preference
A Memoir lay in chamber music, and above all in Lieder and choral works. His
waltzes for vocal quartette, "In May time,” and the Spring Songs are
familiar numbers on the concert platform.
At the time of the earthquake and fire in 1506, the partly finished
score of an oratorio was stolen from him and was never recovered.
There is every reason to believe that he thought of this as his most
ambitious work. He never undertook the re-writing of this score, and,
in fact, shortly afterward gave up the idea of any further activity as a
composer. This decision was due neither to weariness nor inertia: it
was, on the other hand, a genuine renunciation of that which he loved
best to do; a renunciation based on much careful consideration, and
founded on the realization that that which he had to contribute fell
short of his standards of artistic importance and value.
The critical notices from the Argonaut and other sources show with
how bitter a pen Weil could score what he believed to be sham and
pretense, and also how kindly and helpfully critical he could be when
he discovered what he believed to be sincere and right intention.
Far removed from the fluency of mere journalistic comment are the
annotations to the programs of the symphony concerts given in
1506-07 under direction of Dr. J. Fred Wolle at the Greek
Theatre of the University of California. Weil threw his best efforts
into the preparation of these commentaries, and they unquestionably
represent his most mature thought in this field. The fine quality of
his constructive and interpretative criticism is testified to by such mu-
sicians as Carreno, Bauer, Casals, and Gabrilowitsch, who upon their
visits to San Francisco took occasion to discuss their work with him.
All had profound regard for his understanding and critical insight
into the works of the masters.
To teaching he brought all the best of his varied experience; his
one aim was sound musicianship. Mere technical exhibitions were to
him less than nothing, and his interest was always focussed on the
deep musical significance of the composition. Endowed with an un-
erring insight into the elusive spirit of the music and an intuitive feel-
ing for its emotional content, he had acquired, in addition, a mastery
of its structural and architectural design; and to these he added a finedramatic sense for the pedagogic means required to build up in the Oscar Weil:
mind of the pupil a unified and convincing understanding of the A Memoir
work under study. To convey his conception of a phrase, a passage
or a movement, he had at his command a skill in the use of suggestive
and descriptive epithet and of apt and allusive phrase, that amounted
to genius. While expressing a contempt for interpretation (' 'that stuff
they call interpretation”), it was precisely in this field, properly un-
derstood, that he excelled.
A lesson from Mr. Weil was to the young student an educational
adventure. He constantly journeyed far from the immediate business
of the hour into fields of general culture, into discussion of books,
painting and poetry. For he was deeply versed in the history and liter-
ature of the English, French and German peoples and had brought
away from his contact with these an imaginative power and a wealth
of allusion which served to illuminate his own art. To him art was all
comprehensive and music only one of its manifestations.
Weil's intuitive discrimination had naturally impelled him toward
the higher intellectual and artistic circles, and he counted among the
personal friends of his own generation Sir Arthur Sullivan, Edward
Dannreuther, Sir Hubert Parry, Carl and Perepa Rosa, Homer Mar-
tin, John La Farge, the brothers St. Gaudens, Wm. Hunt, Stanford
White, Arthur Foote, and John K. Paine. He brought into his social
relationships an air of refreshing gallantry, suggesting the French eti-
quette rather than the English, for he carried himself in a manner that
was at once dignified and debonair, distinguished and familiar, com-
manding and intimate. It was characteristic of him that he could find
grounds for friendship with persons in all stations of life, and that
he drew to him independent spirits of all interests and metiers.
Children, especially, he loved, and his humor—of the quality of
Stevenson's and Lewis Carroll’s, a play of fancy at once quaint and
simple—drew to him in return the love of children. His relation with
them was marked by a seriousness that never savored of condescension
and a whimsicality that never implied a laugh at their expense." When
Mr. Weil was in a room where there were children, he never talked
as though they were not there,” says one of his child friends. His un-
derstanding of them was born of a deep respect for those qualitiesOscar Weil : that are the common possession of children and the great; it was a
A Memoir response to the ingenuous which served perhaps as a foil to the more
subtle and analytical side of his nature.
And Weil himself, in spite of the accumulating years maintained
the youthfulness and vigor of his mind. Shortly before his death, in
the home of a friend where several young people of the theatre were
congregated, he listened musingly for a time to their rather blasé and
world-weary conversation, and then suddenly broke in with : "Do you
know, you young people amaze me. Here I find you in the early twen-
ties, talking as though you had tasted all the joys that life has to offer,
while here lam at eighty, still seeking a new flavor and a new -vice.”
In i8yi he had married Miss Phebe Cummings Bagley and of the
marriage a son, Leo, was born. It was the sorrow of the prolonged
illness and, in 1919, the death of his son in middle age that brought
Mr. Weil to a realization of how dependent even a gallant and in-
dependent spirit is upon its natural affections. And to those who knew
him well, there seemed to date from this time a gentle sobering of his
nature, which, as his social relationships grew fewer and his intima-
ci es deepened, colored the remaining years of his life.
In the spring of 19x1, after several slight warnings, Weil suffered
a heart attack, and was moved for treatment to the Franklin Hospital.
Strength returning quickly, he was brought back for convalescence
to the rooms at zozoy2 Bush Street, in which he had resided since the
conflagration of 1906. Apparently he was well on the road to recov-
ery for he resumed his teaching. On the evening of April 13 th, he
retired early and when the next morning his housekeeper went to call
him, it was to find that he had died gently and peacefully in his sleep.
Naturally the expressions of regret from the outer world were
many and there were some extended and genuine tributes to his mem-
ory. For all those to whom at concerts that animated and slight figure,
the short white beard and moustache (tinged with brown from his
constant cigarette), the piercing and whimsical gray eyes beneath the
bushy brows was a familiar sight, all vaguely felt that San Francisco
had lost in him something fine and lofty. But scattered—near and afar
—there were those few who, knowing that he of all uniquely voiced
something within themselves which they valued, felt a sense of irre-Oscar Weil
mediable loss, sincere and moving, and an awe that such a force should ^ Memoir
be so abruptly snatched away.
The three friends of his, who have edited this volume, have met
together constantly, for almost two years. They have spoken of him
admiringly,affectionately, critically-attempting among and for them-
selves to fix with intelligible words a portrait of this complex and
elusive personality. They have striven to avoid the eulogistic and sen-
timental trend toward which their affection and sense of loss very
naturally drove them. Oscar Weil was not without his vanities nor
his prejudices. But when that has once been said, it can well be for-
gotten. What Oscar Weil was, to himself and to all whom he directly
or indirectly influenced, is revealed in the writings this note intro-
duces,—an essence, the expression of which was not a vague haze of
ideals, but rather a projection of values tested by a discrimination fun-
damentally honest.
Flora J. Arnstein
Albert I. Elkus
December 192.3	Stewart W. Young
San Francisco
■

COMMENTARIES



OSCAR WEIL: LETTERS, AND PAPERS
COMMENTARIES FOR THE PROGRAMMES OF
SYMPHONY CONCERTS AT THE GREEK THEATRE
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
BEETHOVEN: SECOND SYMPHONY
' I'N the history of the development of the Symphony, the Second
Symphony of Beethoven can hardly be said to form a very import-
ant step. It is decidedly Mozartean in general plan as well as in
much of its detail,—a worthy fourth if considered in connection
with the three great Symphonies of Mozart,—those in E flat, G
minor, and C major;— but, in spite of its somewhat greater am-
plitude and more vivid scoring, of the same general type, and
bearing many traces of a family resemblance. This resemblance,
^however, applies also to its charm, to its singleness of aim in the
direction of tonal and formal (linear) beauty, and to its absence of
any dramatic intention or programme. It is, as are the Mozart Sym-
phonies, simply beautiful music for the music's sake; an exposition
of exquisite grace in its content and perfect symmetry in its form; in
short, a somewhat bigger Mozart Symphony, just as the first Trios,
much of the earlier pianoforte work, the Septet and the main body
of the Op. 18 String Quartettes are Mozartean in type and character
and often scarcely distinguishable from the work of that master.
In this there would be nothing remarkable (since Beethoven has
so often, and warmly, expressed his admiration and reverence for
Mozart) were it not for the fact that in several of his earlier works,
notably the pianoforte Sonatas Op. 2.6,2.7, and 31, and the Variations
Op. 35,—the publication of which immediately preceded that of this
Symphony—the composer had already so definitely sounded that per-
sonal note which we recognize as "Beethoven,”as striking higher and
reaching deeper than the Mozartean line, and which in a larger com-
position with all the resources of the orchestra at his command would
have seemed to be the one to which he would have most naturally in-
clined for his symphonic scheme.
I do not, however, regard this as an instance of reversion to a for-
mer manner; the Pianoforte Concerto in C minor, which follows the
Concert of
September 13,1906
3Beethoven: Second Symphony in the order of printed compositions, and which was writ-
Symphony ten at about the same period, is, especially in its first and second move-
ments, again the Beethoven of the big style. It is rather to be attribu-
ted to the fact that many of his compositions were the results of a long
process of evolution; sketched in every possible form in his note-
books, and developed in his mind, they grew gradually, but unerring-
ly, into the form best suited to the thematic matter that had been con-
ceived, possibly, long before the actual writing. The thematic germ
was found, noted down, and then allowed to develop into usable
form; if it would not develop it was hammered! His notebooks show
us a deal of this hammering process. Themes apparently the most
uncouth and rebellious—bits of crude metal—were gradually forged
into the most graceful arabesques; little rough nuggets of thought,
as it were, polished until they became sinuous and flexible lines. Beet-
hoven had a tremendous capacity for work, and such work is the foun-
dation on which all great things are built.
The D major Symphony is, then, as I see it, an earlier work—in its
conception—than several of the Sonatas that preceded it, though
written down later than they. It has a somewhat more important in-
troductory Adagio than any of the earlier works, and a more virile
Scherzo, a precursor, as it were, of the energetic and turbulent play-
episode of theEroica! ’ The Larghetto is also a longer movement than
we find in a symphony (in any composition, if I am not mistaken);
while the Finale—a somewhat loosely constructed rondo—is, ex-
cepting for its meaningful coda, very much such a one as we might
meet with in one of the larger Symphonies of Haydn. It is only in
the first movement that one finds any padding of the conventional
type (if one finds it!), and this first movement is of less consequence
than either of the other three, though it has a splendidly youthful and
virile character.
The Symphony is, apart from the delight one has in the hearing of
it, well worth a thorough study. It is a model of compact and clearly
defined form, with an absolutely perfect treatment of thematic ma-
terial. The themes—with the possible exception of that of the Lar-
ghetto—are never of quite the first order of Beethoven, but they are
treated accordingly: just sufficiently to impress them upon the hearer,
4and just enough for their worth and their purpose. Never once are
they overmuch insisted upon, never over-elaborated! The pianoforte
score is the best means of study,—worth a library of written analysis.
For those who find the arrangements of Liszt or Hummel too difficult
to read, there is a simpler one by August Horn which preserves beau-
tifully the important lines of the composition and will recall much,
both of the symmetry and color, that so entrances one in the hearing.
BEETHOVEN: SIXTH SYMPHONY [Pastoral]
"TI LL painting in instrumental music, if pushed too far, is a fail-
ure.” These are Beethoven’s own words, found in one of his
JL JLsketchbooks, proving quite conclusively that he recognized
the limitations of his art, and that in the composition of his sixth Sym-
phony he intended, as he states on the title page, "more an expres-
sion of feeling than a painting.,, Expressions of his own feelings, re-
member; of the emotions awakened in his own breast by the situations
that give title to the various movements; not in any sense an attempt
to delineate either scenes or situations for others. Indeed, we find
him again noting—a propos of this same Symphony—"The hearers
should be allowed to discover the situations for themselves”; and
again,"People will not require titles to recognize the general inten-
tion to be more a matter of feeling than painting in sounds.”
This, I think, we may safely accept as Beethoven’s attitude towards
all of his compositions that bear descriptive titles, excepting perhaps
the"Battle Symphony”(Op. 31) which as a mere pot-boiler,we need
not consider at all. That the bird episode, towards the close of the
second movement of the" Pastorale,” imitates the voices of the night-
ingale, quail, and cuckoo need not trouble us. Beethoven himself
spoke of it as a joke, and I think it falls beautifully into its place as
an "aside,” uttered playfully, as one might a witticism happily re-
membered and flung lightly into the flow of an even quite serious
sentence.
It would seem almost as though Beethoven, while thus clearly de-
fining his own attitude towards the descriptive element in music, was
looking both backward and forward; into the past, with its innumer-
able programme pieces that had been a fashion since the time of the
5
Beethoven : Second
Symphony
Concert of
September 17,1306Beethoven: Sixth earlier Frenchmen and Italians; and into that future of symphonic
Symphony monstrosities on all sorts of impossible themes in which we of today
are living. He himself did very little programme making. Of his
thirty-three Pianoforte Sonatas only two have authentic inscriptions,
—the * * Pathétique ’ ’ and ' ' L'Absence* ’ ; the ' ' Pastorale * ’ was christened
by its publisher (very appropriately, too!) ; and the "Moonlight"by
a sentimental German poet. Beethoven laughed at the title and called
it "silly.” He certainly did call theThird Symphony the "Eroica,” but
I fancy him, later on, not over-satisfied with the title. Aside from
the Funeral March and something in the general trend of the first
movement, the "Eroica,” is simply a symphony and nothing more;
there is nothing of the heroic in either its Scherzo or the final set of
variations. The Fifth is much the more heroic symphony of the two.
The programme for his Sixth Symphony, as well as its division into
five movements and much of their sub-titles, Beethoven found made
to his hand in a " Grande Symphonie ” by J. S. Knecht,which had been
published in 1784, twenty-four years before the birth of the "Pastor-
ale,” and which had been advertised on the cover of one his own early
Sonatas. We have no means of knowing whether or not he had ever
heard the Knecht Symphony; it is, of course, possible, though I have
not been able to trace any performance of it in Germany. Besides his
programme, Beethoven found other material for his Symphony ready
made : the opening theme of the first movement is a phrase from a
Bohemian folk-song, caught from the lips of a peasant and lifted by
his magical touch into the empyrean; the Scherzo is built largely on
a dance tune frequently heard at the country inns in the neighbor-
hood of Vienna ; and the storm episode of the fourth movement is
really an amplification of the storm music in “ Prometheus.” At its first
performance, December 2.2., 1808, this Symphony was given as No. 5
and was followed on the programme by the one in C minor, now
known as the Fifth, but then designated the Sixth. Both were com-
pleted at about the same time.
There can be no attempt here to describe or analyze this master-
work of the Master-Genius of our Art ; one must hear it ! And this best,
I should say, without reference to its programme,—forgetting as far
as one can that there is such a programme, and permitting the music
6to interpret itself. This is the only rational way to listen to any music;
analysis should come before and after the hearing.
There is surely much to be gained towards the understanding and
enjoyment of music through a recognition and analysis of its forms;
but this analysis must be made for oneself, and it is not until one has
learned somewhat of the how to do it for oneself that there is the
least profit to be had out of reading the analysis of another. I hope
to have something to say, shortly, about the how-to-analyze-for-one-
self,as well as about the construction (build) of the Symphony, which
embraces also the Sonata, since their form is virtually identical. The
subject is really not at all difficult to one who has a little patient ca-
pacity for work.
MOZART: SYMPHONY IN C MAJOR [Jupiter]
1HAVE often wondered whether Mozart, when writing the group
of three Symphonies of which the one in C—now known as the
Jupiter—is the third, could have had any premonition that this was
to be his last work in the symphonic form. He was only thirty-one
years old, in excellent health, and with every prospect of an average
life before him; he had already written forty-six Symphonies (the first
of them before he was nine years of age!) and had been making steady
and conscious growth towards a greater freedom of style and expres-
sion than had characterized either his own earlier work or that of any
of his predecessors. His insight into the possibilities of the orchestra
was—as we see it developed in the dramatic compositions of his later
days—broadening and ripening, and he had already passed from his
marvelous youth into a mature manhood that promised for his art
such things as the world had never known before. He had still four
years to live, and during those four years he wrote unceasingly. But
not another symphony! The great Three—written, within six weeks,
in the Spring of1787, j ust after the success of* 'Don Giovanni* * at Prague
and the comparative failure of the same opera at Vienna—were to be
his last message, even as they are the culmination of the Symphony
before Beethoven. It was the final word of the old order of things as
it gave way to the new! And it is curious to observe how for the Finale
of the Symphony in C—the capstone, as it were, of his symphonic
7
Beethoven : Sixth
Symphony
Concert of
Octobem, 1906Mozart: Symphony arch—Mozart reverted to the severest of all musical forms, one that
in C Major had been—so far as orchestral writing is concerned—in abeyance
since Bach. It was the first appearance (practically, also, the last!) of
the Fugue as a symphonic movement; as an orchestral fugue it bids
fair to stand for all time as a model of perfection: the lightest, bright-
est, and merriest of all fugues and at the same time the most skillful
and ingeniously wrought since Bach and Handel were working their
miracles. It is interesting to note that the only other fugue of this type
—the Comedy Fugue let me call it—which we have, should have
been written by the composer from whom most of us would have least
expected it: by Verdi! His great vocal fugue at the end of"Falstaff” is
no mean counterpart to the one of Mozart; it is scarcely less skillful
in treatment, and maintains throughout its gayety and brio as well as its
melodic charm, untrammeled by the exigencies of strict fugal writing.
At still another point do they touch—Mozart and Verdi. The first
theme of the Mozartean Fugue (it is built upon four themes, each of
them with a distinct character of its own) is a succession of four notes
—C, D, F, E—that had been frequently used by the older contrapun-
tists as a melodic form: by Palestrina, in a Mass; by Agricola in a Hym-
nus; and, later, by many others as a CantusFirmusinvarious works.Ver-
di, making his confession of faith—as it were—in his old age, reverts
to this same theme and uses it as a fundamental motif m the Finale to
the third act of his " Otello ’ ’ and uses it with superb musicianship, too!
Another exceedingly interesting episode in this third act of" Otello”
is the scene between Cassio and Iago: Mozartean to the last degree. It
is an elaborately wrought number of entire originality, yet wonder-
fully suggestive of Mozart as we knew him in "Figaro” and "Don
Giovanni”; to find it in the score of either opera would not surprise
one in the least. And yet it is quite as much Verdi as Mozart! How
the extremes touch!
Mozart was the least autobiographical of composers, or we should
have had from him, instead of this serene and exquisitely modeled
Symphony in C, a tale of woe in unresolved and unresolvable discords,
for at the time of its writing he was sorely beset with troubles of many
kinds. He was never a good manager, and his wife a worse. He was
chronically in debt; never, perhaps, quite as much so as just at thisperiod. His most ambitious opera,the*'Don Giovanni/' had just been Mozart: Symphony
coldly received at Vienna; his prospects for an appointment that might in C Major
secure him a permanent livelihood seemed the most remote; and
there was the family to be provided for. But none of all this went into
his composition. His music, his art, was a higher life that never touch-
ed the earth, with its debts and sordid cares, but that lifted him far
above it into that realm in which magic is wrought so lightly and
easily that it no longer seems like magic.
And it was from out of this magic land that he brought to us this
Symphony in C; exquisitely fashioned and perfect in form and detail
as was no symphony before it. Keats might have written it: Raphael
might have painted it: the first sculptor of all Greece might have
raised it—a slender column of Pentelican, chaste, almost cold, in its
lofty serenity—against the purest of skies!
I can conceive no higher musical pleasure than one gets from a
hearing of the "Jupiter;" I can imagine nothing better, as study, than
a repeated hearing of it. To know it is to have a standard from which
to judge the larger forms, before and after Mozart.
BEETHOVEN: SEVENTH SYMPHONY	Concert of
BEETHOVEN speaks a language no one has spoken before, and October 2.5,1506
treats of things no one has dreamt of before: yet it seems as
though he were speaking of matters long familiar, in one's moth-
er tongue; as though he touched upon emotions one had lived
through in some former existence. * * * The warmth and depth
of his ethical sentiment is now felt all the world over, and it will ere
long be universally recognized that he has leavened and widened the
sphere of men's emotions in a manner akin to that in which the con-
ceptions of great philosophers and poets have widened the sphere of
men's intellectual activity." I quote from a paper by Mr. Edward
Dannreuther which appeared in Macmillan's Magazine of July, 1876,
and find myself, as I pass in review the entire range of Beethoven's
symphonic work, wondering whether Mr. Dannreuther has not rather
under- than over-stated the influence of this mighty spirit! The full
scope of it cannot, I think, be estimated as yet: for that our art must
have grown much older. We know only that we of the present are
9Beethoven: Seventh groping along in his footsteps; following at an immeasurable dis-
Symphony tance; following as best we may, and as it is in us to realize what he
has said to us and done for us, and wondering whether, after all, we
fully understand!
It is well nigh a hundred years since Beethoven wrote his first
Symphony, and over seventy-eight since the seventh was complet-
ed. Not a hundred years before his first was written the symphon-
ic form was an unknown quantity; as Beethoven received it from
Haydn and Mozart it was narrow, somewhat rigid and hampered by
restrictions within which even the great genius of a Mozart could
scarcely find free play. Beethoven accepted the form as he found it,
recognizing the validity of its structural basis and breathing into it
from the first an ethical spirit that made for what there was of possi-
ble expansion within its limits. Thus we find in his first two Sympho-
nies his confession of faith in the law of his forebears as far as he felt
that law to be consistent with his own beliefs; what he desired to say
could be fully expressed within those limitations, and the recognized
forms sufficed. With the third Symphony, the"Eroica,” however, the
striving after expansion really began; and I seem to see in this Sym-
phony a struggle with his form in which, in spite of the many superb
beauties which it contains, he was not entirely the victor. If the scheme
in its inception was really for a heroic symphony, it seems to have been
lost sight of after the Funeral March; the Scherzo and Finale (vari-
ations) belong elsewhere, and its true ending should have been
somewhat such an apotheosis as we find at the conclusion of the Fifth.
It is, however, precisely in these two movements that we meet for the
first time the Beethoven who had outgrown the limitations of the
traditional Symphony; the Scherzo, as distinguished from the staid
and courtly Minuet of his predecessors, is a new birth: the earliest
of a succession of great movements in which he so marvelously com-
bined the comedy and tragedy of life; and the variations of the Fin-
ale—woven or* an already thrice used theme—are of a depth and
ingenuity undreamed of before, and equalled since only by himself.
In the Fourth Symphony we have a return to the earlier forms, as
though he joyed to get back to his music for music's sake. It is a bright,
buoyant, exquisitely fashioned piece of mere music, with a trace of sad-
ioness in its introductory Adagio, and a passionate utterance in the slow Beethoven: Seventh
movement, such as even in Beethoven we do not often find; otherwise Symphony
it is of the same general type as the Second, although its Minuet, as
it is designated, is very grown-up and has largely the character of a
Scherzo.
The Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, born about the same time, are
again of the Beethoven who is reaching about him for new worlds to
conquer: the Fifth, introspective, deep-motived, with a physiognomy
all its own, and the Sixth, a Poet's reverie; then a lapse of four years,
during which many great works were in progress,—and then again
a symphony: the Seventh! Here, I think, we have our Beethoven in his
finest form: as a symphonist certainly at his greatest! It is the mighty
spirit of music-making that possesses him; it is the composer of the
Second and Fourth grown to his full stature, weaving into the warp
of his splendid hymn to youth those shimmering threads of romance
that impart such magical color to the Introduction and Allegretto;
it is the Poet of illimitable horizon who sings to the entire universe
the joy of living and loving. In its form the Seventh Symphony is a
direct outcome of the legacy bequeathed us by Mozart; but how ampli-
fied ! how expanded! The Introduction has assumed well nigh the
proportions of an independent movement, and is charged with the
most beautiful themes of its own; the Vivace which follows is one of
those stupendous instances of fire and audacity in which Beethoven
stands alone. Here and there the headlong rush of its current is ar-
rested ; there is a sudden hush, a whispering as of voices from another
sphere, a glance backward, as it were, into some half-forgotten ro-
mance; but in the main the entire movement breathes the vehemence
and splendid turbulence of a glorious youth. The Allegretto (real-
ly Andantino), with its rare charm of persistent rhythm and fascinat-
ing color it, is to the technician another instance of Beethoven's won-
derful sense of the fitness of things. It was originally designed for one
of the Rasumowsky Quartettes; as we now hear it, its charm seems to
depend so largely on the orchestral color (note the beautiful clarinet
theme in A major) that one marvels that it should ever have been
intended for the strings alone. This superb color—the Beethoven
tone quality—you will hear again in the Trio of the Presto (virtually
iiBeethoven: Seventh Scherzo) where, the violins resting on a long sustained A, the clari-
Symphony nets, horns and bassoons introduce a pilgrim's hymn which was in
common use in Lower Austria; it is a voice from the wonder-world.
Finale: again youth in all its glory; the hot blood of passion in its
veins, love in its heart, and a brain aglow with poetic fancy: such is the
Seventh Symphony of Beethoven.
Concert of HAYDN: THE MILITARY SYMPHONY
November8,1906 TUST how, or when,—or, indeed, why, the term"Symphony" be-
I gan to be used to denote a set of orchestral pieces intended to be
I played in succession cannot be accurately determined. The desig-
y nation, as now applied, seems to date from the time of Christian
and Philipp Emanuel Bach (sons of John Sebastian) and was so used in
their day by a number of their contemporaries both in Germany and
France. Previous to this period what was known as a Symphony (Sin-
fonía^ was the instrumental introduction to a vocal piece, though the
term was also sometimes applied to short independent compositions
for solo instruments; thus Bach's Three Part Inventions (as we now
call them) for the clavecin were originally entitled Symphonien, and
each separate piece Sinfonía, and we find instances of the same use of
the term among the Italian and French composers of his day.
In the meantime the Sinfonía, as a merely introductory movement,
had assumed somewhat larger proportions, and become to a certain
extent an independent piece consisting of a Grave, or slow movement,
followed by one in a lively tempo (usually fugued) and was called an
Ouvertüre, in which form we find it adopted by Bach and Handel as
the opening number, or Prelude, for many of their Suites. The Suite
had originally consisted merely of a set of dance tunes somewhat loose-
ly strung together, though some semblance of a key-relationship had
usually been observed. (It is interesting to find Handel endeavoring,
in several of his Suites for the harpsichord, to establish a further unity
through the use of a rhythmic modification of the same tune form
(theme) in the various movements. Curiously enough, the applica-
tion of this identical device reappears in the work of some of the later
symphonists—Mendelssohn, A minor Symphony; Schumann in D
minor, and others—used with the same intention).
12.It has been generally assumed that the Suite was the origin of our Haydn:TheMilitary
symphonic form, and that the course of its development lay through Symphony
the expansion of the Ouvertüre (or Prelude, as it frequently appears in
the Suites of Bach) and the omission of some of the dance tunes. This
view, however, ignores entirely the important work of the Italian
violinists of the 16th and 17th centuries—Vivaldi, Veracini, Tartini,
and their school—in whose Sonatas and Concertos I discern a much
nearer approach to the style that we now recognize as "symphonic”
than is to be found in any of the compositions of their contemporaries.
There was great breadth and dignity in much of what they wrote; a
fine nobility of sentiment combined with the utmost elegance of style.
The influence of their work upon the two great German masters, Bach
and Handel, cannot be over-estimated; both of them studied the Ital-
ians thoroughly, and the result of those studies is plainly recognizable
in the Concertos and Sonatas of both. Bach, especially, was largely in-
fluenced by their forms, improving upon and developing them until
in such of his compositions as the Sonatas forViolin and Clavecin, the
"Italian Concerto,” and the Concertos for various instruments with
orchestra, he attained to what I think must ever remain for us a stand-
ard of absolute perfection of treatment.
In the hands of the following generation, however, the very means
that had been to Bach a tower of strength, viz.: his fertility in the in-
vention of beautiful themes and his wonderful skill in devising the
most ingenuous and interesting polyphonic treatment for them, be-
came a fatal element of weakness. The new tunes were dull—it seemed
almost as though the good themes for contrapuntal treatment were
exhausted—and the technique of writing had become perfunctory
and dry. There ensued a dead period: not without plenty of activity,
for many composers ran up and down and put forth their work, and
a great deal of it. But there were no results! Small wonder, then, that
some of those composers (and Philipp Emanuel Bach, among them,
was decidedly a man of brains!) should have recognized the hopeless-
ness of continuing to work in a form which they could not imbue
with life, and cast about them for some means by which their themes
—no longer sufficing for polyphonic treatment, even if they had pos-
sessed the skill to render such treatment interesting—should be set
1Haydn: The Military in a logical framework or form, and the use of various contrasting
Symphony themes in the same movement suggested itself without a doubt as well
worth an experiment. (Note, again, that Bach had pointed the way in
this direction—in the "Italian Concerto” and other works—as, in-
deed, he had for well nigh all we have in music up to Beethoven!)
Something of the sort had already been known in the Rondos of
Rameau and Couperin, and this form had been utilized by Bach him-
self; they had usually taken a tune or melody of eight or sixteen meas-
ures and followed it by a short episode of contrast through which
they led up to a repetition of the theme. This is the Rondo in its simp-
lest form: designed, I should say, to gratify a natural desire to hear for
a second time a pleasing theme, and at the same time to render its sec-
ond hearing more interesting through the interpolation of a bit of
contrast. This episode, which in the earlier Rondo had been unim-
portant—frequently, indeed, a mere padding of passage-work or
modulation to nearly related keys—soon gave way to a second mel-
ody of definite outline, and in this type of Rondo I think we have the
true germ of what later became the established Sonata form of our
time (the Sonata form being that of the Symphony, Quartette, and,
indeed, all chamber music); that is, a movement in which two or more
contrasting themes are so treated that each adds to, and enhances, the
interest of the other.
All forms in art are the result of a steady and recognizable growth
of certain principles by a process of evolution; the most natural (har-
monic) tendency in music is towards the chord that rests on the fifth
of the scale (the dominant chord, as it is called) and it was inevitable
that this dominant chord should ultimately become the basis of the
second—or contrasting—theme of every important movement. This
once settled, the direction of further development seems to have de-
cided itself on the most simple lines; the first theme was followed by
an episode of more or less importance that led to the second, and this,
again, was succeeded by a Coda (or tail-piece) in its own key, which
led easily and naturally to a repetition from the beginning. Thus each
theme has been twice heard. Now the two themes—or fragments of
them—were exploited through various harmonic or contrapuntal
devices according to the ingenuity of the composer—toyed with, one
Hmight say—until the reappearance of the first theme in its original Haydn ¡The Military
key. The second theme is now again heard, but this time in the key of Symphony
the tonic, and thus the end is reached, though frequently the close is
through another Coda.
This was the established form when Haydn began his work, and
though he showed himself extremely awkward in its application to his
earlier Symphonies and Quartettes, he soon controlled it to a greater
extent, and with greater freedom, than any of his predecessors or con-
temporaries. Indeed, it is from Haydn that our present form may be
said to date: the slow movement especially (practically in Rondo
form), as we know it, scarcely existed before him. The Military Sym-
phony, while tuneful and interesting in a certain way, is one of his
lighter works, characteristic of its composer in his sportive mood. It
was written during one of his visits to London as a piece d}occasion, and
probably served its purpose, which, I fancy, was to enliven—jolly—
the staid British public. But Haydn the symphonist is not to be judged
entirely by it, as in some of his other works he has reached far greater
heights of sentiment, skill, and style.
MOZART: SYMPHONY IN E FLAT
WITH the performance, today, of the Symphony in E flat our
orchestra rounds off its rendering of Mozart’s *''greatThree”
(that in G minor having been given last season); and, in
placing it between two typical compositions of the more modern
school, enables us somewhat to realize for ourselves the value and im-
portance to the art of this master who, I think, combined in himself
more of the qualities that go to the making of a great composer than
any of those the world has known either before or after him.
His early training in the elements ot composition (it began when
he was the merest child) undoubtedly laid the foundation for his facile
technique and wonderful contrapuntal skill; to these were allied by
nature an unexampled spontaneity of melody together with an ex-
quisite sense of harmonic purity and balance; and to these, again, were
finally added the great spirit of work, more work and incessant work
during the few years of his life—he died before he had reached his
thirty-sixth year—and that unremitting striving after perfectionwhich
is in itself the sum total of the life of the true artist.	15
Concert of
November Z2., 1306Mozart:Symphony Unquestionably Mozart learned much from Haydn; he learned
in E Flat from every one who had anything to teach. From his father, how to
write, as well as to play the clavecin and the violin; from Padre Mar-
tini, at Bologna, how to make good counterpoint in the strict style;
from every conductor and instrumentalist with whom he came in con-
tact during his many travels: from each and all of them he learned
something of value. And when he came to the summing up and ap-
plying of his vast intuitive knowledge and acquired skill, to the com-
bining of it with his natural melodic gift and refined taste, there re-
sulted a series of compositions of the most absolute technical perfec-
tion and exquisite charm, in which melody, harmony, counterpoint,
and orchestration were blended to a degree that still remains to us a
standard of symphonic style.
Mozart learned much from Haydn, but Haydn, also, learned much
from Mozart. It was after the Mozart Symphonies—the later ones— ;
that Haydn began to broaden his style and enrich his orchestration:
it was after the appearance of the later Mozart String Quartettes that
those of Haydn took on their finest form and most complete devel-
opment,—and even in his larger vocal works, "The Creation” and
"The Seasons,” I seem to trace in Haydn's freer and more pliable treat-
ment the influence of the example of the younger man: for much of
Haydn's important work was done after Mozart’s death.
His knowledge of Bach and Handel—of whom there were at that
time very few things in print—came quite late in his life. But both
of these added their quota to the enrichment of his own later works,
—and make it doubly sad to think of him dying so young, with the
thirst for greater and deeper composition upon him, and with the
striving up to the final movement—in the "Requiem”—for a place
beside the giants in their own domain.
Sponsor for Beethoven he certainly was, for when the burly young-
ster from Bonn played and improvised before him he hailed in him
the coming man—even as Schumann did later with Brahms—and
bade the world "watch him, for he will do great things! "And that the
youngster did the great things, he himself was always ready to ac-
knowledge was due largely to the influence of the elder master, whom
he studied and made his model throughout his early life as a com-
16poser. I regret that there is a limitation to my space, for it would be
most interesting to be able to quote here some of the contempora-
neous criticism evoked by the three Mozartean Symphonies that seem
to us of the present day to be as simple and lucid as anything we know
in music. By a majority of the Viennese critics they were soundly rated
as "extravagantly long,” "diffuse,” and even "bizarre”; precisely the
same terms that were applied to Beethoven later on, and which many
gentlemen of the critical profession have still constantly ready for use
whenever a larger work of Brahms is to be debated. Here, on the
other hand, is an opinion from the pen of Sir Hubert Parry—one of
the foremost musicians of our time—who, in speaking of the great
trio of Symphonies of which the E flat is the first, says:" In such struct-
ural elements as the development of the ideas, the concise and ener-
getic flow of the music, the distribution and contrast of instrumental
tone, and the balance and proportion of sound, these works are gen-
erally held to reach a pitch almost unsurpassable from the point of
view of technical criticism. Mozart’s intelligence and taste, dealing
with thoughts as yet undisturbed by strong or passionate emotion,
attained a degree of perfection in the sense of pure and directly in-
telligible art which later times can scarcely hope to see approached. |
In all of which I fully agree with Sir Hubert.
MACDOWELL: INDIAN SUITE
SOME four years ago, when Mr. MacDowell visited San Francisco
and his' Indian Suite’ ’ was given at an orchestral concert, I sat with
him during the final rehearsal of the piece. He had already gone
through the Concerto—his second, written not very long before—
and had done considerable work with the orchestra over some of the
more intricate passages in the Suite, dwelling particularly on the In-
dian themes and their characteristic phrasing and colorit, the declama-
tion of them, as it were, and the suggestive intonation with which they
were to be rendered. It was quite evident, as he came to sit beside
me, that the two hours of hard work had thoroughly wearied him,
and I prepared myself for one of our accustomed silent sessions. But
with the first utterance of the horns at the opening of the "Legend,”
he brightened up and began to talk, giving me the origin of the tunes
17
Mozart: Symphony
in E Flat
Concert of
March i, 1907MacDowell: Indian as they came in their order, pointing out here a bit that he had found
Suite difficulty in working out to his satisfaction and there one that "'came
easy,” or that he liked,— now a phrase that "just wouldn't come
right,” now another that was "pretty good,” and then—the piece
finished—he turned to me with a smile (and no man ever had a
brighter or sweeter!), saying: "I like it: I still like it about as well as
anything I have done, and I hope that some day you also will get to
care for it—a little! ” He had already, at the beginning of our acquaint-
ance, assured me that from what he knew of me (musically) he did
not expea me to care for his things; and when I expressed my great
liking for some of his songs and lesser pianoforte pieces, he replied
with,"Oh, yes: but the larger things! ? ” And so we had agreed to "sink
the shop ”; there was so much else in the world to live for!
But with Edward MacDowell there was no such thing possible as
entirely sinking "the shop.” His music, his work, was the under-cur-
rent in all he thought and the mainspring of his very life, and in our
talks it came frequently to the fore as the subjea nearest to his heart
and the one thing in the world best worth thinking of even though
there was, after all, so little really to be said about it.
In the eyes of the critical world of today the name of MacDowell
stands at the head of the roster of American composers, and—in a
certain general sense—I think with much right. For, differ with him as
one will as to the tendency of some of his work and the question of
its artistic value, one cannot but acknowledge its decided importance,
its earnestness and entire sincerity. His is a great talent, of which he
has made the most—in his own way; a talent which has been sub-
jeaed to thorough discipline and training and kept always pure and
wholesome, untarnished by any meaner thirst for mere notoriety, and
ever faithful to its higher ideals.
As to the lasting value of the bulk of his work, it would be prema-
ture to speculate. So much, in all art, that seems to us of today to be
of the first importance, is forgotten tomorrow. But of the future of the
the"Indian Suite” I find it impossible to doubt. It seems to me to be the
first American composition that is truly American; it has the qualities
of a fine, spontaneous work of art in that it has its own beauty of form
and matter entirely apart from the origin of its themes or the local in-
mterest that may attach to them. In music nothing lives but through its
beauty: that which is merely interesting dies early, if it can be said to
have ever really lived at all. To MacDowell the working out of this
Suite had been a labor of love. He had gathered the themes from the
Indians themselves—many tunes, from which he selected these for
his use—and given himself a long summer in Switzerland to think out
a setting for them; he had to invent, as it were, a new vocabulary, a
musical language which called for a new harmonic background as
well as orchestral scheme. And all this, it seems to me, he did, once
for all, as well as it could be done. His idea was not to embody these
crude but characteristic tunes in an elaborated composition of the
conventional form (as Dvorak did, later, with the negro tunes in his
"New World” Symphony) but to project them into a setting that
should—as far as possible—suggest the atmosphere from which they
had sprung; in other words, to sing the Indian songs in the Indian’s
own tongue and dialect instead of through a translation. He endeav-
ored, as he told me, to find for each tune an orchestral color, not exactly
of the original—because that was usually sung, and could not be liter-
ally reproduced—but of the timbre of it, or, say, the impression the
singing of it had made on him. Most of the tunes are Zuni, all of them
are true tunes, not changed in the least, though the harmonies at the
beginning of the "Love Song" are, of course added.
But the poem in which these fragments of Indian song are em-
bodied, with its original and beautiful form and treatment, is Mac-
Dowell, and MacDowell at his best. Beautiful as many of his songs
and pianoforte pieces are, he has done nothing, I think, of a value
quite equal to this Suite.
GOLDMARK: SYMPHONY [Rustic Wedding]
HERR GOLDMARK has chosen the designation of "Symphonie ”
for the series of orchestral pieces in E flat which make up his
b Op. 26,together with the further title of "Rustic Wedding"; and,
as all—or nearly all—of the terms which we apply to music are some-
what vague and indefinite, there would seem, on the surface, to be no
particular reason why he should not call his composition anything he
sees fit. But a symphony it is certainly not: unless, indeed, we are dis-
*9
MacDowell: Indian
Suite
Concert of
March 14,1907Goldmark : posed to recognize in that title a sufficient flexibility to include any
Symphony collection of pieces that have a relationship of key and alternation of
quick and slow movements. It was, however, precisely for the pur-
pose of discriminating between such loosely thrown-together col-
lections of pieces in the simpler forms—or Suites, as they were called
—and those which had their chief point of interest in the logically de-
veloped first, or Sonata, movement, with its several contrasted themes
and their musical or ethical elaboration—that the title of "Sympho-
ny*^' was applied by the Masters, and took its place in musical nomen-
clature as designating a composition in at least one movement of
which the epical element should predominate and—as far as might
be—extend its influence in determining the character of the entire
composition. It was in this sense that the term was understood and ap-
plied by all composers of importance from the time of Philipp Eman-
uel Bach ; and while, as I said before, there has always existed consider-
able latitude in the use of musical titles, it seems to be a pity that where
a certain definiteness of intention has been reached it should not be
maintained as far as possible.
Judged by the standard of form Herr Goldmark's "Symphonie”
is, then, not a symphony at all, but a Suite pure and simple, with the
added title "The Rustic Wedding" tacked on to hold it together and
supply what it lacks of inner coherence. Just in how far the set of
pieces portrays a rustic—or any other sort of—wedding, or whether
it through its contents suggests anything at all beyond a pleasing suc-
cession of orchestral movements, must be left to each hearer to de-
termine; and the extent to which it creates any such definite impres-
sion is entirely a question of one's power of imagination or the ex-
tent to which ode is inclined to humor Herr Goldmark. There is un-
doubtedly something of the rustic touch to be discerned in the theme
of the opening set of variations—quite lost sight of, I should say, in
the variations themselves,— and also, slightly indicated, in the Finale;
beyond this I cannot see that the title bears the slightest relation to
the composition. The two short slower movements might each of
them bear the name of the other and nobody be any the wiser; the
Serenade-Scherzo might be called "Humoresque," or "Badinage,"
or anything else suggestive of a lighter mood—just as a genre painter
zolabels his girl figure "Ophelia”or "The Orphan” or what not else that Goldmark
means anything or nothing, on the chance that it may mean some- Symphony
thing to some one who will buy.
Schumann found a "rustic wedding” in Beethoven’s Seventh Sym-
phony, and a half dozen otherpoetic commentators have found a half
dozen other—and quite different—programmes for the same com-
position: Beethoven himself disclaimed any. "It is just music,” said
its maker: just music, and nothing else.
Aside from its title, however, there is no adverse criticism to be
made on Herr Goldmark’s Suite; it is pretty music, made with the skill
and fluent technique of a master musician; and has, withal, an attractive
melodic quality thanks to which it has acquired a popularity beyond
any of his compositions, excepting perhaps the famous Suite for violin
and pianoforte. Goldmark, with a long life devoted almost exclus-
ively to composition—:he is now in his seventy-sixth year—has not
been very prolific. Three or four Operas—of which only one, "The
Queen of Sheba,” has been at all successful—three Overtures which
are still in the repertoire, the Violin Suite, and this so-called "Rustic”
Symphony are the works by which his name is kept alive, though he
is still writing, and a new opera is promised for the coming year. He
is undoubtedly a man of great talent and pronounced individuality,
but lacks somewhat the spontaneity of utterance that distinguishes
the composer by the grace of God; as a consequence we find the bulk
of his work interesting, indeed, and replete with evidences of great
skill and accomplished musicianship, but frequently labored and un-
attractive except in a technical sense. In our "Suite-Symphony ” of to-
day he may be said to have for once shaken himself loose and freed his
muse from the turgid atmosphere that mostly envelopes her; his skill
of manipulation is in evidence throughout—to be noted particularly
in the variations and the clever fugato bits of the final "Dance”—but
the music is mostly music, with pretty tunes, suave harmonies, and
graceful, pleasing instrumentation.
A rather good story anent the composer may not be out of place
here. I referred above to his Suite for pianoforte and violin; this is
one of his earlier works, and the first with which he achieved what
might be called a great success. It was played everywhere; and wher-
ziGoldmark : ever it was played, there Herr Goldmark liked to be present to re-
Symphony ceive his share of the applause and honors. And it was at Dresden (as
I remember) that, the Suite being announced for performance, Herr
Goldmark arrived at the hotel and, having entered his name on the
register, was followed by a wag, who added to the signature "and
suite.” Since which episode he has been known throughout Germany
as "Karl Goldmark und Suite.”
RIMSKY-KORSAKOW: SYMPHONIC SUITE, SCHEHERA-
Concert of ZADE [from the Thousand and One Nights}
March z8,1907 It	K RIMSKY-KORSAKOW is the most Russian of Russian
j\ /■ composers: the foremost representative of the school of
JL V JL musiciansto whom Tschaikowsky is a weakling and Rubin-
stein a renegade, and who will tolerate nothing in their music but
what distinguishes itself through its national colorit from the work of
the composers of the outer world. Rubinstein is to them a German
musician, and undoubtedly with a certain right, since the influence of
Mendelssohn is strongly present in much of his work, and his meth-
ods—even in the few compositions to which he has given a distinct-
ive Russian flavor—are formed entirely on the lines of the German
masters: Tschaikowsky they decry as a cosmopolite who, to be sure,
lived mostly in Russia, but whose artistic sympathies were beyond the
frontier, and who, having learned his craft from the outer world, wrote
for it also, and sought its commendation and approval.
The list of the Russian Russians is a long one when we consider
that thirty years ago it numbered only three or four, and some of the
names,— Balakiref, Rachmaninoff, Borodine, and others, have made
frequent appearances on our concert programmes of late years: but
the compositions with which they have won their way into the world
are in the main the least Russian of their works, and might—the aver-
age of them, at least—have been written anywhere and by composers
of any nationality who could make occasional thematic use of Russian
folk-songs and dress them up with plenty of partially-resolved dis-
sonant harmonies. In other words, the neo-Russians are not nearly so
exclusively or formidably Russian as they are trying to make them-
selves believe they are; when they wish to be agreeably or compre-
2.Zhensively musical they find it very convenient to speak in a language Rimsky-Korsakow
that is understood the world over. Occasionally one detects the ac- Symphonic Suite,
cent, and a light touch of foreign accent has frequently much charm. Scheherazade
But the Russians are noted for being excellent linguists, and not a few
of the compositions with which these younger Slavs have made their
way are uttered in exceedingly pure French or German.
M. Rimsky-Korsakow, however, the eldest of them (he has just
passed his seventieth birthday), and the most important musician —
in a national sense—that Russia has had since Glinka, has maintained
his uncompromising attitude toward the occidental civilization; ex-
cepting its technique—which he has absorbed, one might say, fully
and completely—he will have none of it! Not a Russian of St. Peters-
burg, with its French theatre and restaurants and Parisian manners
(on the surface) is M. Rimsky-Korsakow, but one who with his feet
in Moscow has his eyes turned constantly and longingly towards the
plains and steppes of the Caucasus; one whom you do not have to
scratch very deeply to find the Tartar. This he has made felt through-
out such of his music as has come to my hearing,— some six or seven
of his pieces for orchestra. He has written a great deal,—Operas, Sym-
phonies and smaller orchestral pieces; very little of it is known outside
of his own country, and where it is performed, is regarded rather in the
light of a curiosity. There is a barbaric touch to it all that perhaps inter-
ests, even excites us for a moment; then, in the main, it wearies. It is
somewhat as though the things were written in a dialect with which
we are only remotely familiar: we make them out but do not fully un-
derstand. Our Suite of to-day is one of the few works through which
the composer has become widely known, and has a special interest in
in its oriental theme, since I take M. Korsakow to be in close touch
with whatever sources there are from which such material is to be
drawn, and I think we may rely on him for the verity of what he says.
Picturesque the music certainly is, with its quaint semi-barbaric jingle
and its suggestion of the atmosphere of the Arabian Nights (in M.
Korsakow’s,unexpurgated translation); good music as music it cer-
tainly is not, in that it is poor in thematic invention—has so few
good tunes—and lacks everything of well-defined form and real co-
herence.
2-3Rimsky-Korsakow : Symphonic Suite, Scheherazade	An outward semblance of unity is brought about by the use of the cadenza for the solo violin, the harp figure and the occasional recur- rence of the opening theme of the first movement: very obvious and shallow all of it, and suggesting, rather, a mis-application of the Wag- nerian Leit-motive device. But where the piece does hang together is in its orchestral treatment; this is brilliant and masterly,— a really splendid color-scheme. It is like one of Monticelli’s glowing canvases: a mass of superb color that fairly dazzles at first sight, and in which after close inspection one finds some small figures that after all amount to little. In short: what M. Rimsky-Korsakow has to say seems to be of little importance, but in the saying of it he has used no end of uncom-
monly fine words.
Concert of SCHUMANN: FIRST SYMPHONY
April 11,1507	AA T T E have come to know our Schumann fairly well in this A \ / country during the fifty odd years that have elapsed since V V I heard in New York the first American performance of his Pianoforte Concerto—by S. B. Mills—and lost my boyish head and heart over the " Widmung,” which was sung by Madame Caradori on the same programme. The name of the composer was all but unknown to us at that time, and very few, if any, of his works had found their way into our concert rooms—what we had of them; the music-shops knew him scarcely better than we did, for I searched them over on the morning after the concert and found only a single copy of the "Pap- illons,,, Op. 2., which I incontinently dragged home and devoured, and with which I was at once fascinated and—disappointed. We heard very little music of the better kind in those days: Haydn, Mozart, a little Mendelssohn, less Beethoven, and a few of the smaller things of Chopin; the rest was nothing. And, as will be observed, the good things that we did get to hear were mostly of the same general type, and belonged, in a sense, to the same family: we found the same forms and the same language in them all, differently expressed, of course, by the different composers, but still bearing—especially in the form — a certain family resemblance. (It is to be remembered that it was only the early Beethoven whom we knew at that period. The later Sonatas, Quartettes, and orchestral works were supposed to be too difficult of 24either performance or comprehension). For Schumann—the earlier Schumann: First
pianoforte works and the songs—we were totally unprepared: the Symphony
charm of his poetic and sensitive musical moods fascinated, even as his
novel and entirely original method of treating the instrument interest-
ed and delighted us; but we could make nothing satisfactory of the
forms. The seeming want of coherence in the short pieces, of which the
longer works were made up, simply bewildered; they appeared to us to
be so many musical fragments, in which the most exquisite things were
said and endless depths of feeling revealed, but without any consecu-
tive line of thought or logical sequence. In those days form still count-
ed for much, and it took the world considerable time and considerable
study to realize that there had arisen at last a composer who had real
worth and yet had ventured to forsake the recognized line of purely
musical development, as it had been established by the masters, in
order to express more freely the poetic substance of what he had to
say: that the deeply romantic character of his imaginative nature called
for just this form of rhapsodic utterance, and that his forms were as
much an essential of his ideas as his harmonies were the inevitable
complement of the melodies to which they were mated.
And, just as in his early pianoforte compositions Schumann reveals
to us an unexampled freshness and spontaneity of invention, so in
his songs we find him recreating each poem into his own language
—and rounding out the verses of his author with a musical setting
so perfect that it seems at times almost impossible that the poetry and
music should have sprung from different hearts and have been noted
down by different hands. He penetrates more deeply into the vital
essence and sources of feeling than any of the song writers who had
preceded him; moulds his musical form anew, as it were, in order to
adapt it to the thought and cadence of his poet, and in doing this may
be said to have created for us a new art, for the modern song—and
this with all respect and admiration for Schubert—certainly had its
beginning with Schumann.
Schumann's serious study of music had not begun until he was
past his twentieth year, and it is small wonder that his earlier work
shows at times a lack of control of his form and at others a struggle
with it. He was always dependent on his emotions, and developed
ISchumann: First his technique by the force of his feelings; his artistic instinct and good
Symphony taste saved him from anything like gross error, but could not make
good the lack of hard work and experience in giving him control of
his material. This we feel—and, I am confident, he himself felt—in
the three Pianoforte Sonatas and other attempts at the larger, more
sustained forms, of his first period. He had exploited the lyric and ro-
mantic side of his talent to the full, and felt the call—the need—for a
form that should afford him broader scope and the freedom that
should enable him to say big things in a big way; this freedom, this
self-control, were to be attained only by hard work and much of it,
and to this he set himself resolutely. With all his wealth of beautiful
pianoforte music and wonderful songs behind him he gave himself
up for several years to the most severe discipline and study, the first
result of which to be given to the world was the Symphony in B flat,
Op. 38. And the world wondered, for here was at once the greatest
symphonist since Beethoven. The Symphony of Schubert in C was
not known to the world at that time and those of Mendelssohn bear
scarcely a trace of the influence of the Master-Symphonist; here at last
was one who spoke in the same language and with the same mighty
spirit upon him as the Master,— one who brought to his work the
buoyancy of youth and the ripeness of a man,—at once a seer, a poet,
and a musician. The marvel of this Symphony, when one remembers
the course of Schumann's development, is the certainty of his mastery
over his means. The student finds the forms clear and concise, found-
ed on the traditions and yet moving easily and freely within them in
a direction entirely Schumann's own; the orchestration is solid and
skillful, never showy for the mere sake of display, but bright and trans-
lucent throughout. Long enough,—short enough,—it is as beauti-
fully rounded and modeled as though Mozart had written it.
It has the freshness and sense of inward happiness of a bridegroom
(it was almost the first composition after Schumann's marriage to
Clara Wieck), and does not require the title which the composer at
first designed for it, but, on second thought, withheld, to enable us to
recognize in it a "Spring Symphony." From the opening summons
of the trumpet and horns we feel the awakening of Spring,—the
first movement is full of it up to the novel, purely Schumannesque
2.6coda, where the strings break into a Spring-song of a beauty that is Schumann: First
quite exceptional and equaled, I think, only by the tender grace of the Symphony
exquisite Larghetto.
The final movement was to have been called "Spring's Farewell";
Schumann omitted the explanatory titles because "he believed that
the attention of the hearer is distracted from the main purpose of the
work (the music) by things of this kind." In this he was surely quite
right.
BRAHMS: SECOND SYMPHONY
LIKE Schumann, Brahms arrived at the composition of his first
Symphony comparatively late in life and when he felt himself
^able to bring to bear upon his work a thoroughly developed
technique and a judgment which was matured by much practice in
both instrumental and vocal writing. The severest self-criticism had
always been a sort of second nature with him and had, after his re-
markably successful debut as a composer, twice influenced him to
seek a retirement of several years in order that he might devote him-
self to further study and to the ripening of his talent; it is consequently
not surprising that we find him in his first Symphony as perfect in
poise and maturity as in his last (there are but four), or that we should
recognize in him at once the lineal descendant of Schumann and
Beethoven.
His studies—his models—had been chiefly Bach and Beethoven:
Bach for his counterpoint and exquisite beauty of line, and Beetho-
ven for his formal as well as ethical richness and variety. Curiously
enough, of Schumann—whose protege he was—we find but the
slightest trace of influence; what there is of it is to be noted in the Sym-
phonies: in their close-knit forms and in the briefness of many of the
themes, which are frequently almost aphoristic in their compactness.
Towards Schubert he had a strong leaning, and at times surprises us
with a melodic or harmonic turn that one feels instinctively Schubert
might have written, but never quite did. The points of resemblance
between these two—Schubert and Brahms—are most interesting,
and, I think, go far towards proving what Schubert might have done
with a life as long as that of the later composer, or with his oppor-
I
Concert of
May z, 1907Brahms: Second tunity for a thorough study of Bach. They had the same richness and
Symphony variety of melodic invention, and the same subtle appreciation of har-
monic possibilities; they saw the same things, but in a different way;
their thoughts ran along the same lines, but they expressed them each
in a manner entirely his own.
I do not think I go too far when I claim that in point of style and
construction, as well as in the absolute fitness of his thematic and har-
monic material for his purpose, Brahms has said the last word in the
Symphony. If we regard that form as the highest achievement of our
art, we look to it also for the greatest attainable perfection within its-
self; we have Beethoven as the standard by which we measure our
symphonist, and measured by this standard I can see nothing endur-
ing in either the contemporaries of Brahms or in those who have fol-
lowed him. Instances of great musical gifts there have been: some of
them, indeed, quite exceptional. Good symphonies, too, have been
written by the dozens: there are no less than seven by Gade, five by
Rubinstein, four by Raff, six of Tschaikowsky, etc.; but there is not
one of them all that combines at once the sustained power and per-
fect poise together with the loftiness of style and thought that will
serve to keep it in line with the work of the masters. And a symphony
of the second order, while it may have charm, attractiveness, emo-
tional quality—what you will of what makes it pleasant to sit through
—is always a symphony of the second order: and the names of such
are not written in the great book! The advent of Brahms as a sym-
phonist was at a time when composers had become divided into two
camps, as it were, both striving for the expansion of the Symphony;
Berlioz, Liszt, and their followers seeking at once to modify the form
and to attach to their work a more positive meaning—or story—than
their predecessors had found to be either possible or in good taste:
Schumann, Mendelssohn, and the so-called conservatives looking to
the inner development and more tense, closely knit construction for
their growth,—expanding from within, so to speak, and with a feel-
ing that if their music did not of itself suffice, it would scarcely gain
in convincing power through the endeavor to make it partly some-
thing else or merely the illustration of a story that had to be imagined.
To Brahms, nurtured as he had been on Bach and Beethoven, there
x8could naturally be no question as to which camp was his; he felt—as
I think all great artists have felt—that the forms of the higher logic
were in no sense a hindrance to the freest expression, if one had but
thoroughly mastered them, and this he proved in himself by making
those forms the basis of works entirely original in general character as
well as in detail and development. In this he is a genuine descendant
of Beethoven whom I think he most resembles in loftiness and sin-
cerity of artistic purpose.
HAYDN: SECOND SYMPHONY
THE designation of this Symphony of Haydn as the "second” is
apt to be misleading; it is second only in the group of six print-
ed in score by Peters, but was written quite towards the close of
his career as a symphonist—the twelfth, in fact, of the London series
—and had been preceded by over a hundred compositions in the
same form. Out of this hundred—the exact number of his listed
Symphonies is one hundred and twenty-five; about twenty-five of
these were in reality merely overtures, or preludes, to operas, and in a
single movement—only forty odd have been printed in score and
pianoforte arrangement. There are, however, besides those published
in score, some twenty earlier symphonies of which the band parts
were printed, and it is from these that we get some idea of the sym-
phonic beginnings of this master who was destined to exercise such
great influence on the development of instrumental music.
Anything less symphonic than these little early efforts of Haydn
can scarcely be imagined. They consist mostly of crude and unwieldly
attempts to bring his themes under control of somesort of logicalform,
and their frequently pretty tunefulness is almost invariably handi-
capped by the rigidity and awkwardness of the manner in which the
tunes are strung together, reminding one not a little of the essays in
English verse that preceded Chaucer or the attempts at picture mak-
ing of the pre-Pre-Raphaelites. The personal note was entirely lack-
ing in them—in his early Quartettes as well. The tunes were cast in
the same mold as those of his contemporaries, the harmonic scheme
—modulations, etc.,—was purely conventional, and the forms were
rigid and helpless; of scoring—the setting for orchestra—the begin-
I
Brahms: Second
Symphony
Concert of
August 1907Haydn: Second ning was still to be made, since the complete orchestra—as we know
Symphony it in his own later works and those of Mozart—was unknown in
Vienna at that period. Only London, Paris and Mannheim boasted
completely organized symphonic bands: Haydn—also Mozart, at first
—wrote for such instrumental combinations as were gotten together
on occasion or were chosen by their patrons.
Haydn’s employment as composer and conductor for Prince Es-
terhazy furnished him an exceptional opportunity for all sorts of ex-
periments in form as well as instrumentation; he had a band con-
stantly at his disposal and could try things on and change and better
them to his heart’s content. The result is plainly to be traced in his
work—the Sonatas, Quartettes and Symphonies; the Operas have en-
tirely disappeared—in a growing amplitude and flexibility of the
forms, more subtle and refined treatment of the harmonies and greater
richness and variety of instrumentation. But it was not, after all, until
the advent of Mozart as a composer that Haydn really found himself.
The influence of the younger musician upon the elder was far-reach-
ing in almost every direction, but is especially noticeable in the broad-
ening of the scope as well as forms of his instrumental compositions
and in the finer balance and colorit of his scoring.
Mozart was a child when Haydn wrote his first symphony, and he
had written his last, and finest three, several years before the London
engagement for which Haydn composed the twelve which have sur-
vived as his best; his work, therefore, comes between Haydn’s lighter
period and his greater achievements.
In all of Haydn’s later work there is nothing, I think, finer or more
characteristic of its composer than our Symphony of today; it is a
model of grace and perfect treatment, with its pretty tunes, suave har-
monies, and the clearest, most translucent instrumentation. No com-
poser was ever brighter or merrier than Papa Haydn when the mood
was on him. Not, indeed, with the turbulent boisterousness of his
burly pupil Beethoven, nor the sans culottes abandon of some of the
symphonists of a more modern school, but with a sweet, ingenuous
letting loose of himself; with a brio and gayety that carries everything
before it. His themes, slightly bourgeois as they are, have a distinctive
freshness and spontaneity, and fit their setting perfectly. There is
3°not a touch of morbidness or Weltschmerz (I am sure he did not even Haydn: Second
know the word) in his make-up; he is all sunshine and cheerfulness. Symphony
Wholesome, I should call him, with the wholesome quality of Chau-
cer and Montaigne, and sweet as a clear blue sky or a running brook
m summer.
BEETHOVEN: FOURTH SYMPHONY	Concert of
TF the "Eroica” Symphony represents for Beethoven a period of September 11,1907
I storm and stress, and a struggle in which, overmastered perhaps by
I the tremendous thing he endeavored to portray, he lost for the
moment control of the formal perfection that distinguishes the bulk
of his work, we find him in the Fourth returned to the chaste Mo-
zartean line of his First and Second Symphonies, and again weaving
his beautiful melodies into a web of the most consummate grace.
The period of the " Eroica” was for Beethoven surely that one of
impatience with the limitations of his art that has been the incentive
of much that has been done in music before as well as since his time;
„ the desire to express the definite—to break into Literature, let us say
—that has led to so many aberrations and to so much discussion.
Useless discussion, of course: since in art the only argument is the
work itself, and the light in which we see it is entirely a personal one.
After the "Eroica” there came a breathing spell—one fancies Beet-
hoven brooding over the things to come,—and then that marvelous
group of compositions of the middle period which comprises the
Waldstein and (so-called)/'Apassionata” Sonatas, the Gmajor Piano
Concerto and the one for violin, the ' ' Fidelio ’ ’ the Rasumowsky Quar-
tettes, and the Fourth Symphony; all of them works of such perfect
congruity of matter and manner—that greatest quality in art that we
call "style”—that it is not difficult to understand the large body of
his worshippers who consider this as his greatest period—the fine
flower of his career.
I seem to see in the Fourth Symphony something in the nature of
a recantation,—a return to the domain of pure music : to the quest
for beauty for its own sake and for the sake of the unending things
it may have to say to the listener as an expression merely of pure
beauty. It reads to me like a verification of Plato when he said of
31Beethoven : Fourth
Symphony
Concert of
September 2.6,1907
music that “it brings the soul into harmony with all right things.”
And these “right things! ” this real meaning of what there is in the
beauty of music,— the message of it, let us say,— all this is, after all,
in the soul of the listener, and there alone; for one can translate the
composer to oneself only in a language that one knows, and one can
understand only the language that is familiar to one’s own soul. We
may like to fancy that we reach out beyond; it is only a foolish vag-
ary of our vanity.
TSCHAIKOWSKY: FIFTH SYMPHONY
ALTHOUGH it is chiefly through the work and influence of
Beethoven that the Symphony now stands at the head of all
Lmusical forms, and while we recognize that in his hands it
reached what seems to us its highest development as an expression
of human sympathy as well as in technical mastery, we should not
forget, I think, that every larger art form carries within itself the wid-
est possibilities for the expression of the mental and emotional qual-
ities of the individual, and that there is an infinity of moods and emo-
tions that will always seek expression, just as there will always be those
who sympathize with them, even though embodied in a form that
may fall short of the highest standard. And thus, although the scope
of the Symphony—as we recognize it at present, and apart from the
so-called Symphonic Poem—maybe said to have been exhausted by
Beethoven and its limitations reached in his greater works, it has been
left for men of other moods than his and influenced by other con-
ditions, to work out along the same lines much that is of almost equal
value although of lesser influence. Even in his own time we find
Schubert and Spohr, both of them living in the same city with Beet-
hoven and amongst his most ardent admirers, pursuing, each, his own
path and following out his own line of thought and development:
Schubert with the lyrical element strongly predominant and Spohr
leaning towards what has in our day blossomed into the full-grown
programme Symphony; and it is not strange that a later generation,
influenced by changed conditions both of thought and expression,
should have sought new channels for their utterance.
Leaving out of the reckoning the lesser symphonists, we have
3zSchumann, Mendelssohn, and Brahms as the important factors in the Tschaikomky: Fifth
modern trend of the Symphony on classical lines, each with his well Symphony
defined individual characteristics and original point of view; after
them none, I think, of an importance quite equal to that of Tschai-
kowsky, who, with certain weaknesses and inequalities inherent in
his nature as a man and development as a musician, which were un-
doubtedly detrimental to his work, had, along with an exquisite mel-
odic and harmonic sense, a directness of force and intensity almost
unknown since Beethoven.
Theman was a modern in his attitude towards the world of thought,
—an ancient Russian in his attitude towards himself. He loved his
native land, his country home with its desolate, dreary surroundings,
and he loved a few of his friends; there his interests in life seemed to
stop. To the work of his contemporaries he was as indifferent as was
Beethoven before him, though he left on record a few kind words
about Grieg. Although a facile writer with abundant technique, he
produced his larger works only with infinite labor; he changed, cor-
rected, and rewrote entire movements, and was even then rarely sat-
isfied with the finished product. And yet I think we often feel that
he was not sufficiently—or rather, perhaps, not properly—critical.
Like Rubinstein and Raff, he was too easily satisfied with the first
thematic material that came to his hand; he was sure he could do
something with it—he could, indeed, give an interesting turn to the
most commonplace theme—and he let it go at that. As a result there
will be found in even some of his finer things an occasional weak
moment or a passage that he would undoubtedly himself on later
and more critical revision have been glad to eliminate.
But compared with the many beauties in his work the weak pas-
sages are few; and the beauties are so many and so great that we over-
look the blemishes—as we do with Schubert—even if we do not
forget them.
Despite the greater popularity gained by his Sixth—the "Pathet-
ique”—Symphony, he himself considered the Fifth his best: and in
this I think most musicians are in accord with him. It has not, to be
sure, the wonderful moving power and passionate utterance of the fin-
al Adagio of the "Pathetique,” nor the marvelous fiery energy of the
33Tschaikowsky:Fifth first movement, but it is a more even, well balanced, "symphonic”
Symphony symphony, is admirably coherent—which the "Pathetique” is not
always—and beautifully self-contained. There are moments in the
Sixth when the passion is well nigh torn to tatters: when it almost
rants. This is the Tschaikowsky who was morbid and moody to the
point of despair, who wept on the slightest provocation, and even
without provocation, and who, with everything to live for, found his
life not worth the living. The atmosphere of the Fifth is happier and
clearer; there is a firmer grip of things and a brighter outlook, and
even the impassioned beauty of the slow movement has nothing
morbid about it.
The "Valse” I could have wished elsewhere: it would have fitted
beautifully into a suite, and is only another abortive attempt at some-
thing novel in place of a Scherzo. It is the question of the day for the
symphonists, is this of the Scherzo: after Beethoven I think Brahms
has most nearly solved it.
Worth noting is the skillful—and beautiful—way in which
Tschaikowsky binds his Symphony together by the use of the theme
of the introductory Adagio. The device is not new, nor is it particu-
larly profound, but the treatment of it is in this case quite masterly.
MENDELSSOHN: THE SCOTCH SYMPHONY
Concert of ~TTT is through his two Symphonies in A minor and A major (the
October 10,1907 I "Scotch” and the "Italian”) that Mendelssohn holds his own
JL amongst the master-composers in that form, his other three pub-
lished ones having virtually disappeared from the repertoire, although
the final—choral—movement ofthe "Lobgesang” (a sort of ecclesi-
astical counterpart of Beethoven's Ninth) is still occasionally given.
These two Symphonies, however, occupy a place so entirely their own,
and are so thoroughly characteristic of their composer as well as of the
spirit of their time that,while we recognize in them a certain slightness
both of form and material and a very decided reactionary tendency
as coming after the work of Beethoven, there can be no question of
their importance as a link in the chain of great symphonies that was
begun by Haydn. Not a strong link—in the symphonic sense—I
should say; perhaps, indeed, the weakest of those that have proved
34themselves able to really hold. But one of pure metal without a doubt.
Mendelssohn was neither progressive nor a reformer; he accepted
the formulas of his predecessors without a question, and was content
to work out his ideas along well-travelled lines, with Mozart for his
model in matters of form and instrumentation, and—in the treat-
ment of voices—Bach. Of the influence of Beethoven there is scarcely
a trace; though he was thoroughly familiar with Beethoven’s work,
conducted all his larger compositions and frequently played his Con-
certos, he seemed to ignore the lofty spirit of the master, or was, per-
haps, not able to assimilate it. Looking into the mass of Mendels-
sohn’s compositions one understands, I think, somewhat of this. He
was a thorough-going classicist, with great mastery over his technique
and a strong natural drift towards purely formal modes of expression;
he was essentially a lyrist, whose most dramatic moments are never en-
tirely convincing; he was a gentle, sweet nature, with the most charm-
ing things to say, but who never lost a certain gentleman-like reserve
in the saying of them; a less-inspired Schubert, who would not have
been a full-fledged genius if he could, lest there might be attached
to the metier something not quite comme-il-faut.
Nevertheless, when we remember all the beautiful things he has
done for us: the charm and the satisfying quality of his best work and
the usefulness to the amateur of some of his slighter things, I am sure
we would not have him other than he was. The Violin Concerto, the
Overtures, the Organ Sonatas, the Serious Variations for the piano,
the Octette: surely these are masterpieces of their kind. And even in
them we have not yet the Mendelssohn who is likely to be longest re-
membered; he must be looked for in the vast store of vocal works that
are a treasure-house in themselves: the part-songs, the two Oratorios,
"Elijah”and"St.Paul,”and—aboveall—the Psalms andMotets.These
latter are really noble compositions, written, with a constant recollec-
tion of their sacred purpose, in a strain so elevated that one forgets
entirely the great contrapuntal skill that has been lavished upon them
and recognizes only their direct appeal, their musical charm, and that
air of distinction which marks the work of the master in every art.
In the " Scotch” Symphony I think we have Mendelssohn’s finest
composition for the orchestra, although it cannot be denied that it is
35
Mendelssohn : The
Scotch SymphonyMendelssohn : The Scotch Symphony	precisely here that we find him adhering most closely to purely formal lines. The pattern—the scheme according to which the various move- ments are planned and laid out—is obvious throughout, and in the hands of a less exquisite melodist would have resulted in an impres- sion of rigidity and stiffness. But the piece is saved by its flow of grace- ful tune, its harmonic interest and variety, and, above all, by its won- derful orchestral color it. It is permeated by the sombre tone of a High- land landscape in which the mountain tops are fitfully touched with streaks of sunlight,—gloomy moors ribboned by flashes of white water,—the grim side of the Scotsman's nature relieved by its humor and its pathos; it is an impression quite different from that given in the "Hebrides" Overture, but none the less true, and none the less beautiful. The Scherzo—always a strong feature with Mendelssohn —is unique in its characteristic rhythm and its gay spirit and aban- don : a perfect bit of local color, which is again suggested by the broad melody—in the nature of a Volks-tune—which is newly introduced at the close of the final movement. This is indeed Mendelssohn at his best.
36THE LETTERS OF OSCAR WEILTHE LETTERS OF OSCAR WEIL
TO MISS FLORA JACOBI
~~ Y dear Miss Jacobi: I am glad you felt more com- November
fortable about Miss Margulies; I fancied you would. 19°^
If she directs much attention to the technical work
it is undoubtedly because you need it; we had over-
looked it somewhat in the later days in the inter-
est of general musical development. Then, too, she
may have points to make that will have to be
worked for somewhat differently from what is my method: all this
is not going backward, remember, but grafting the one thing on the
other, and in time they all combine to make you a better all-round
player.
St. Saens! Really a great man and almost great musician. In every
direction he has some of the big qualities; it is just possible that they
have not been quite sufficiently concentrated in any one to have per-
mitted him his most complete development. Yet, as he stands he is
a mighty figure. To fully realize this one must know his serious music
for the Church; austere and of a deep gravity quite equal to the early
Italians, and, what is more, as well written as the work of any of them.
Every Frenchman is two men in one; the elegant St. Saens of the
Salon is the other man. But from this other St. Saens you get some
wonderfully fine stuff; better—in its way—than that of any other.
That you didn’t quite take in the Symphony (with organ)* at a
first hearing is not surprising. It is permeated with somewhat of the
color of the Church music I referred to above, and one must know
it to fully comprehend; and even then one may not really care for it.
.... I trust you will not miss the Musical Art Society (Choral) per-
formances. You will get more out of them I think (hope!) than from
most of the other things! I see that Lichtenberg and Miss Margulies
are to play the Schubert B minor Rondo; watch the introduction,
which is one of Schubert’s big pages! The entire Rondo is very fine,
tho a bit long.
.... Of course you want the Gallery by yourself! Some day, soon,
♦Saint-Saëns, Symphony in C minor, Op. 78.
39To Miss Flora Jacobi
I will make you a little list of my pictures, and you will see how they
affect you.
Sincerely yours,
Oscar Weil
December 11,1506 My dear Miss Jacobi:
I fancy you to be quite in the right hands, both as to your piano
and your harmony work, since a getting down to the strict (very ex-
act) thing was what you really needed and what we should have had
to return to shortly. You had been allowed to dissipate a bit of late
—or, rather, perhaps—encouraged to do so, in order to bring about
a somewhat greater freedom of personal expression as well as cour-
age in attack of the key-board; this was beginning to tell a little as
against absolute accuracy, &c. The process of development is (has to
be, frequently) through a temporary neglect of one side of one’s work
in favor of another.
With the harmony work it is, I fancy, very much the same state of
things: Mr. Goldmark is probably getting you back into the traces.
I am glad he is rather severe as to rules &c., though you are to remem-
ber that to both him and Miss M. you are a new pupil, and that all
such teachers (good ones) harp a little overmuch on exactness, firstly
to get them in hand, and secondly to find out how they will work
and what they can do, and in what they may be trusted. You will get
good out of them both I think.
Hansel and Gretel, with much that is charming (the Song of the
Sandman, for instance,—the Dream music, and other bits) is to me
a not entirely successful experiment. I find the canvas quite too large
for the picture, which is, after all, genre, while it is painted on the scale
of an Epic. The Wagnerian method seems a bit cumbersome when
applied to the slight story, though the treatment (handling) is mostly
very skillful.
Sibelius! A long, fair Finn, who has nurtured himself on Ossian
and the Sagas: needs very much a period of roast beef diet (Bach) and
is, at the same time, not an uninteresting personage! I should not,
however, care to live with him! Ditto with Tschaikowsky; on quite
different grounds, however: though the Fifth Symphony is one of
40his best works; finer, I think than the Pathétique. Strange, how near
he came to being a really great musician,—and how entirely he missed
it !—and—oh the tragedy of it—knew it all the time ! But he did some
fine things,— especially Choral. Take another look at the Schumann
C major Symphony; the introductory Adagio and the slow movement
are of the best we have! . . .
Sincerely yours,
Oscar Weil
. . . . Yes! When you get the better things in Choral music—espe-
cially the a Capella side of it—you have the highest and purest side
of our Art ! That, I think, is what it grew for: that and the string Quar-
tette. All the earthy, clogging element falls away from it as it does
from the best in all Art and Poetry: the Virtuoso, the Conductor and
the always self-conscious Singer have gone to the wall, and there is
nothing between you and pure Music. Is it not a sign of the times
that it is so little cultivated, so little to be heard? Leipsig is almost
the only place left where one can hear it frequently; there, there is
much singing of the best things; and, possibly, it is due to my three
years of two or three times a week hearing it and singing in it that
I am to-day somewhat of a purist and conservative old fogy. After a
debauch of the emotional pabulum with which we are so overfed
nowadays a bath in one of the great vocal scores is like a plunge into
crystal waters after toiling along a dusty road in midsummer: one is
renewed by it.
The B flat Sonata* is one of the interesting ones for study : a bit
long-winded, perhaps, and not one of the most inspired. But excel-
lent drill stuff, and characteristic of the P. F. Sonata of that period.
The first theme of the ist movement is founded on a theme of de-
menti, not very much modified, either ! I can somewhat imagine how
you will play it with Miss Margulies, and how she will be fussy with
the very opening phrase!.. You are to keep watch of your attitude
towards the Opera; I fancy (perhaps hope, a little) that as you get the
hearing of the greater things in Art your interest in it will wane, and
*Beethoven, Op. 22.
4*
To Miss Flora Jacobi
January ist, 1907To Miss Flora Jacobi
you will—with me—relegate it to its place as one of the lower forms!
It takes time, of course! ....
Sincerely yours,
Oscar Weil
February 15 th, My dear Miss Jacobi:
1907	Opera is—as I should put it—an imperfect art form,—complicat-
ed in its embracing so many widely divergent elements—the music
and its rendering by the orchestra and the singers, the acting, the
mise en scene &c.: incapable of perfect presentation in all directions,
and, above all, appealing at the same time to too many senses and
emotions to reach at all that higher sense by which we are affected
by the pure work of Art. ... I cannot fully go into the matter in
short space; nor, indeed, do I need to. You will, some day, I am con-
vinced, see it as I do, though it may be long before you quite agree
with me. But I rely on you to eventually separate for yourself the
homogeneous from the hybrid in Art, to recognize the limitations
of works in the lower forms that have to serve as "entertainment,”
and to realize the distinction between the literature of the Drama—
as Drama—and the Dramatic writing of the real poet who appeals
first of all to the intelligent reader.
Sardou, Scribe, Pinero &c.,—all good Dramatists for the stage:
can you read them? Do you care to take their stuff into your life? Do
you respect yourself the more after having been swayed for the mo-
ment by the same sort of emotionalism with which they move the
gallery, or even the better dressed rabble that sits in the stalls?
At the same time, I am annoyed that you dismiss the Traviata so
cavalierly: it has much—musically—that is simple, natural, and of
the best Verdi. The finale of the second act is, I think, a masterpiece
(of that kind of writing) and the last act is nearly perfect. Not very
deep: but very natural, and technically of the first order.
Debussy! I don't know him very much, but think him genuine
and honest—for a modern Frenchman! They have a warp, all of them,
somehow. What bothers me is to be clear whether it is inherited (tra-
dition, &c.) or adopted as a deliberate pose! There is refinement (raf-
finement possibly is the better term) and delicacy: undoubtedly some-
Ithing to say, and quite as undoubtedly a thoroughly vicious way of To Miss Flora Jacobi
saying it. I am always in doubt whether it is art or artful. All of them,
except the painters: in them I can discriminate. I don't know a
Frenchman (St. Saens excepted) who ever forgets his ego, or who
ever thinks much past the impression he is (personally) making. They
ogle, and they leer at you. Let me add to my exceptions, Faure, a beau-
tiful talent, and Franck—who, however, again, takes himself too
much au grand serieux\
My eye is tired, and I haven't half answered your letter, for which
I thank you. But you will excuse me, and give me a chance another
time. . . .
If you get time to read, let me recommend "The Tragic Muse" by
Henry James. There's much in it for you.
Sincerely yours,
Oscar Weil
My dear Miss Jacobi:
A bad correspondent!? Yes, I'm afraid I'm always that; but of late April 4,1909
— and I can't account for it! — I have found scarcely anything so
difficult as getting down to writing—even the most unimportant bit
of a letter. I think them;—when it comes to pen and paper I find
myself a coward!
______Your letter—programme notes as well—gave me real pleas-
ure, though it was no surprise to find your views of the new things
you heard both sound and musical! You would be safe for that! The
Brahms Liebeslieder I thought you were familiar with;—I think you
had read them in their original form (Vocal quartette—not chorus;
—and P. F. 4 hands). You also read them, I think, in Kirchner's
2. hand arrangement. They are much better as Brahms wrote them
than in Hermann's string arrangement: and (though it is an interest-
ing experiment to try them for chorus) really only suited for quar-
tette. They were originally sketched only for P. F.; the voices were
added as an afterthought, and they are quite complete with the voices
omitted! I have been going over many Brahms scores lately, with
Arthur, and grow to love him more and more deeply. He is of the
bluest blood—a Prince Royal____We are doing nothing here: an oc-
43To Miss Flora Jacobi
June 3,1910
October 9
casional virtuoso doesn’t count. I teach, and wait longingly for this
summer vacation!
I imagine you to be getting a deal out of your lessons with Mr.
Joseffy, in a pianistic way. Otherwise (as a musician) I don’t really
know him, though I have heard him play some of the great things
very beautifully. Especially the G major Concerto of Beethoven and
some Brahms things. Do you know the Horn Trio, Op. 40? I first
heard it from Joseffy, and he played it beautifully!
(Oh! lest I forget;—there is a second set of Brahms Liebeslieder
Op. 65. You want to know them!) I have the Franck Prelude and
Variation copy; but the man filled it with errors which I am correct-
ing: it will be ready in a week or so I hope, and I will send it.. . .
Voila, my little budget ; report of a humdrum state of existence. We
have colds, get over them, and have fresh colds: that is our life here!
I send you my schonste Gmsse, with an added one for Fred.
Sincerely yours,
Oscar Weil
My dear Mrs. Arnstein:
.... I send the heartiest good wishes to you and beg that if you
come across Mr. Andrea del Sarto’s portrait of himself (in the Louvre)
—and then you will understand Browning’s poem—you will men-
tion to him a little old man who thinks of him very often, and who
would very much like to see him again! ....
Very Sincerely Yours,
Oscar Weil
TO JAMES WOODWARD KING
DEAR Jim: It occurs to me that in speaking of the Mozart Vari-
| ations I was thinking of the "Ah vous dirai-je” ones, which I
frequently use; they have no cadenza. The Pastorale has one,
which, however, I amplify; he himself, usually did this (in Sonatas
and Concertos, as well, when playing in public—only, he improvised,
just as up and to (and including) Moscheles and Mendelssohn most
players did. I’ve heard Moscheles do it,— also he and David together.
Chopin did it (in small gatherings—never, I believe, in public—)
44and also Liszt. I heard Biilow do it once, when his memory went back
on him in the Fugue of B flat (Op. 106) Sonata, and pretty well he
did it too. . . .
Yr
O
.... Faust Valse, Liszt—vulgar showy type, you don't want it. 6th
Rhapsodie all right, if you can get it quick and glittery. Try Concert
Etude E flat, Moszkowski: bully. Étincelles (do it very quick and vo-
lante—flying).
Work Jongleuse up to limit.
“ A flat Ballade — .1 !
(Campanella—too much for you to do so that it’s worth while).
Mendelssohn Prelude and Fugue E minor: great piece for you to
open with. Brahms Rhapsodie, E flat, op. 115 ! Great piece. Brahms
—Ballade G minor, op. 118 (No. 3 ) fine\ for you. That's a few. As you
see, I'm hurried; we can look at these when you come down.
Best &c
O
What's the matter with the Chopin Variations op. 12? I'm fond of
them and, well played, they're an excellent number.
Dear Jims:
Casals plays Sacramento on Friday (I think) 21st, and you might
like to meet him—after the show: if not earlier. Wonderful cellist, ex-
cellent musician and very nice chap. Just tell him you are my pupil,
and that I bid you greet him. Mrs. C. is with him; an unusually fine
singer (nice lady), but is not doing public work: don't care to do the
kind of programmes they ask of singers (the American stuff ) at pres-
ent. If you can send her (to the stage, or hotel) a few (not costly)
flowers, it will be a graceful thing. You’ll like C, as well as his won-
derful (really that) playing.
First in the world!....	tra la la
O
C. and I are friends of nearly 20 years standing. He’s also one of
Bauer's best chums.
To James Woodward King
Thursday, 12 th
Feb. 19—
45To James Woodward King
March 1116(19x7)
Tuesday,
October xx, igiz
Dear Jims:
Nice notice—but better still is the bank account; look after and
fatten it!
Don’t bother about the jacket: what I have will do, though it’s not
ideal. But so few things are, that one more or less doesn’t count.
(I picked up an "almost” the other day; a little mahogany (rich,
warm-colored) tea table, delicately and beautifully finished, quite low
—just the height for tea or a chess table—and in many ways quite ex-
ceptional looking, for!! $2-50! Second hand store corner Polk and
Sutter. Saw it in passing, and had it home in an hour. Quite a little
beauty). . . .
Best
O
TO ALBERT I. ELKUS
I GOT your letter (train, en route from Paris) on Friday; haven’t been
able to get at writing_What you have to tell about atmosphere,
conditions in Paris, Bauer’s talk &c., all interesting as a result of ob-
servation, and all that sort of thing: nothing more than that. All of it
has got nothing whatever to do with one’s own work, unless I am en-
tirely and fundamentally wrong! There can be only one thing, one
tendency, one direction for the man who is ever going to do any real
thing, and that direction (call it school, or anything you like) the one
that he can’t help working in. If he can help doing it, (I mean, be as
happy not doing it)—he’d better let it alone.
I can’t (for myself) imagine greater rubbish than all this talk about
schools &c. &c.—all of it that ever was talked wouldn’t further the
writing of one good phrase! Do you suppose that the big fellows
(any of them) ever bothered their heads with that sort of thing, or
introspected themselves to wonder whether they were "it,” or merely
the path-breakers for some one who was to come later (as a result of
their path-breaking) and be " it ” ? No! They just learned their counter!
point and things and then wrote! Said what they had to say in the
way most natural (beautiful) to them, and let it go at that! And I tell
you over and over again, the only salvation is to get down to one's own
self, and be that! Whether it leads to Regerism, or Strauss, Offen—or
46theotherBach,—one cannot choose; if one can choose, one isn’t worth To Albert I. Elkus
a damn! That’s my credo!
I can’t write you a letter to-night, dear lad,—I thought I might be
able to, but I’m too tired and worn; in a few days I shall get to it.
Only this (lest you make definite plans before you get my next)—
get down to work with a good P. F. master and look for all you can
into the fundamentals of how to build a tone and touch. The other
side of it (style, interpretation) you will get all you need by observa-
tion and out of yourself!
Alter
If you see Allan grass him herzlich from me.
Wednesday Night
.... A "piano” without a good sound body-tone behind it, is not November 6,12.
a real "piano, ” it is simply a weak tone.
The foundation of all playing lies in the clean, healthy middle qual-
ity (a soft, full forte) that is produced by entire control of the fingers,
(arm, lower, and upper as well) and from which the various grada-
tions into "p” &c. and "ff” (all that) are managed; in the softest upp”
the fingers must be handled from their strength, not their weakness!
.... Just what you are after is not to be readily found (in one man,
I mean)—and you will probably have to gather it up for yourself:
this point from one, and the other point from another, and then put-
ting this and that together, work it out for yourself. This was the way
I got what I know about teaching: the way I think most chaps get it.
You have undoubtedly made it all (the general lay of it, I mean)
harder for yourself—and more wearing—by your anxiety to have it
all right, and not remembered that it is almost never all right. To be-
gin with, you are after (at least) three different ends of the work,
which implies three good teachers. Now, out of the many who teach,
even one really good teacher is a rarity; if you have that, and the others
are only men you can get on with and something out of, you are doing
very well. That’s the way I should look at it. When you have your
first year’s work behind you (and the results in hand) you will find it
all much easier; the thing simplifies itself; reduces itself to much less
of being taught and more of observing. . . .
47To Albert I. Elkus
December 12., 1912.
Dear lad:
A good teacher is a slow growth. There is more than one way of
doing things: it is precisely the ability to find the best way in the
individual case that marks the good teacher. If I can teach the P. F.
at all, it's because I have no cut and dried method, but seek in each
case the method most likely to bring the result I am after—beauty
of tone and style. Sometimes I succeed: one can't always!
If you want to know just where you stand in P. F. playing (and
what you have to be clear about in order to teach it well) —test yourself
with, say, the Prelude and Fugue—W.T. C.— in D, Beethoven Son-
ata in E flat, Op. 31 (No. 3 ), Chopin B minor Scherzo—(adding, per-
haps, for a very different sort of thing, the Liszt Gnomenreigen) and
see whether you can control (or show another how to gain) exactly
(with no compromise) the touch and tone—kind and variety—that
you would yourself demand for an adequate playing of those things.
And those are by no means the most exacting : the Preludes of Chopin
or the Op. 70 of Moscheles alone cover almost as much ground. Just
tackle the Beethoven G major Concerto (not by any means one of
the most formidable ones, technically) and then examine your tech-
nical equipment! You’ll find out a lot!
To write well, one must have (built on a sub-structure of good,
sound and free harmony) a fluent and, above all, free, naturally flow-
ing counterpoint. All men who ever wrote well had it (according to
their natures and needs) and no man ever wrote well who hadn’t it,
or until he acquired it. It need not necessarily always be in evidence,
—though, in good writing, it always is. See the "Little Duke” by
Lecoq, the "Belle Hélène” by Offenbach, or anything by Sullivan or
Rich. Strauss! Canon, Fugue! The veriest modern of the moderns
(unless it is one of the plein air damfools, Frenchmen) leans on them
all the time; such a thing as a coherent development is impossible
without them (as a basic means) and almost every important work
of the so-called moderns (the ones who claim emancipation) from
Liszt down, uses them—in a more or less recognizable way—con-
tinually!
Don’t let anybody fool you about this. The forms will work them-
selves out easily: you have but just touched—grazed—them, but you
48will find that they will not trouble you much when you get right down
to it. Neither will scoring.
But good counterpoint, and good voice writing! Of them, one can
never learn too much.
.... no man ever grew into a conductor out of what was to be
learned in a school: you can’t point out one in all Europe! First must
come observation,—then a chance at some experience: it’s the only
way conductors are grown. The other thing is like learning to swim
out of a book!
.... I begin, Saturday, to rehearse the Brahms Zigeunerlieder;
have a very good quartette of voices. It will be fun. If you don’t know
them look ’em up; one of the freshest, most spontaneous bits of writ-
ing that I know. . . .
Dear lad:
Your accounts of yourself and the work read as though you were
in the quiet plan-ahead frame of mind that is undoubtedly best for
the kind of thing you are doing just now. It won’t last, of course: ought
not to! But when the other mood comes—the eagerness to do things
and write things—you will be better equipped for it: will be work-
ing on firmer ground, and get the profits! I still feel as I always did,
I think, about too much stria counterpoint: i. e., the ever-long lin-
gering at it,—that it is apt to stiffen the muscles rather than make them
flexible and pliable! One cannot do too much of it—but, I believe in
spreading it over one’s entire musical life,—not giving oneself up to
it entirely for too long a period. If I were what I call an aaive musician
I should want to come back every little while to my straight-jacket
of "stria,”—but keep working mostly at the (somewhat) free! The
"strict” is your finger exercises and scales, and one gains (even time)
by not losing sight of them. But all that is largely a question of the
individual, of previous experience, and personal trend! Your instances
of 5ths &c. were interesting: the Palestrina case I knew. The Mozart
"Cosi fan” wants only a counterpoint above it leading down to F—
the third of the D chord—to be entirely legitimate. You will find lots
49
To Albert I. Elkus
March 14,To Albert L Elkus of stiffer ones in J. S.— Organ Fugue in A minor; (in the Liszt version
it sticks out—thus:
These are as Fifthy as I want to see them:—stronger still in the G
minor (big Organ one) and (of the"dim”to a "perfect” type) the 13 th
Three Part Invention fairly teems with them. I haven’t time to quote,
but I know bushels of them! Everything is only a question of how
and why you use it, and what you get out of the use of it that you
couldn’t have got equally well any other way: I know some bully
octaves in voice writing of Brahms_
I^°P. M. Dear Lad:
arc*° 31st The things will have gone to you from S. and C. by this; Prout’s
book (awfully verbose) is, anyway, a covering of the ground, and the
Goetschius (I don’t know how it will strike you) an entirely differ-
ent view of the whole situation. Saunder’s book of examples is inter-
esting: not in stock, but will send you one as soon as I can get it.
Your work interested me, of course, tho I felt it to be a bit cramped
in places, and ugly in others (as all of the too limitedly "stria” stuff is)
by the insisting on the treatment of the inversions of the 7th degree
chord as 7th degree instead of frankly accepting it as a dominant 7th
with omitted root, which (in some cases, only, of course!) it really is,
theory, preachment, dry old worm-eaten Sechter and Fux laws to the
contrary notwithstanding! . . . Why in thunder, in an age when we
admit that the earth is round, and kings are human beings and a dom-
inant seventh — even with omitted root—is a good sound healthy
chord, we should still fetter ourselves with conditions that are never
going to arise in practice, I can’t understand. "Stria”! Yes, of course!
Can’t be too strict,—i. e. in working for clean, pure stuff! ... I envy
you the hearing of a good chorus: it’s one of the fine things in life,
and I miss it—I miss it.
5°You don’t say anything about the Dürer Drawings and other stuff To Albert L Elkus
at the Albertina (isn’t that the name?) — haven’t you seen them yet?
What!!
Good night, dear boy: I’m tired. But, I think of you constantly,
and you know how!
Alter
My dear boy:
In re next season,—I fancy that your summer with Bauer may April 18, 1913
work some change in yourview as to whom you would wish to work
with for P. F. To be quite frank, I have an idea that you would better
not have been with him so soon: that you should first have done more
on other lines and grown sattelfest in your technique. It is in that di-
rection after all that your greatest need lies: i. e. in the clearing up of
all the technical questions (of the how to do it, and the how to show
others how to do it) and Bauer’s line of work leads too far afield for
your present status. Later it would be exceedingly interesting for you,
though you need him less than most of his pupils do: so much of
what he has to show you, you don’t have to be shown! Of course,
there is a deal of gain in his way of doing things, and above all, in his
broad survey of many pianistic questions that most of the others re-
duce to mere pedantry. If you can assimilate the good out of it, and then
go back to working out the essentials, it will undoubtedly work out
all right; just whom to go to then, is, however, a puzzle to me. Not
Carreno, I should say; though, later again, you could do some inter-
esting work with her.
What you have to guard against is the very natural inclination to
be with an interesting (and musical) personality on the one hand, [as
against] your absolute need for a stock-in-trade of the requirements
for a good Piano teacher. I think you understand just what I mean;
you are not one who requires to be shown about "interpretation”
and all that! Your musical sense and good ears will do all that for you.
For another year, I should say, you should dig at Piano playing.
.... I suppose that no matter how one means to write (if any one
who can really write can coolly and deliberately choose in what style
—or school—he will write)—it is a gain to have pegged away at
51To Albert I. Elkus "strict” counterpoint and then done a lot of "free” and florid—pro-
vided one has time for it all. That and form control seem to me to
be all that can be taught in composition. When one can control the
form (any form), the most modern modernism can show him nothing
more, since the breaking loose—when it is at all good—is nothing
more than a free handling of what the masters—guided by good taste
and sound logic — treated with more regard for coherency and a
greater sense of beauty! What you would have to learn from a man
like .... I can’t for the life of me see! Riifer, Geo. Schumann—I
don’t know who else in Berlin, but, of course, there are others—are
more my idea of composition teachers: you can work forms and de-
velopment with them, and then if you elect to work in the no-form
no-development school you can always shoot loose for yourself: that’s
easy! ... You will tumble into some queer doings in Paris: possibly
there will come a good clear streak of light through it. If you could
get with Saint-Saëns!!! That would be worth while! Sound sense and
a great master!. . .
Not a good letter, I know. But I’m tired. Good night.
Alter
May 10th Dear lad:
(Sunday evening)	This in answer to yours anent the Fugue—which hasn’t shown up
—from Berlin, after H moll Messe. Ochs must be a great fellow from
all accounts and from what Arthur tells me of him! I know but little
of Ries; what I do know gives me much respect for him: don’t think
you will regret working with him, though I do think you might have
been better off with a man whose work (generally) has been more in
the larger forms—in which Ries (as far as I know him) has done less.
Ph. Scharwenka I know through a Trio, Violin Sonata, and some
Piano pieces; none of them give me a very exalted opinion of him.
They are all well enough written, but they are, again, almost entirely
a sort of aufgeblasene Salon music; where they do things au serieux
(chamber music) it is palpably done nur ernst und gediegen zu sein. A
sort of stronger (and further reaching) von Fielitz; a type I don’t like!
I should think you would get more from J. though I, myself, don’t
value him for a nickel’s worth. His counterpoint is not good (in its
S2-tendency and as example, I mean) to judge from his book and his
own stuff. . . . Such men as Gernsheim don’t appeal to you,—you
line them up as Philistines; yet it’s with such as he that you find just
what you are after—or ought to be, i. e. real technique, real knowledge
and experience. You wouldn’t have cared for Reinecke (i. e. for his
compositions) yet he could have shown you more things (resources)
in an hour than J.-H. and Co. could in a month,—simply because he
had a firm, clean-cut technique to work on instead of mere grope-
aboutativeness! Marxsen, who taught Brahms all he ever got from a
teacher, wasn’t what we nowadays would consider a very up-to-date
man; but he knew things!
Then, after all, it’s a question of what you want to do! It seems to
be in the air, just now, to try to be what they call "modern,” —i. e. to
write inflated blather! The pretentious dressing up of nothing to say
—the main-stay of their system!
You don’t want "influence,” "tendency,” from a teacher—ought
not to! You want technique: handling of forms, advice about scoring,
&c. &c.; the rest youhave yourself. If you haven’t it ("the rest”) what’s
the use of it all? Outside of the counterpoint (to write good Canon
and Fugue) all you can be taught is how to make a good "bridge”
and "Durchführung, ”— if you can do that, you can do anything! And
J. can’t do that to save his life! And there are probably a dozen men
of no reputation whatever in Berlin who can do it, and could show
you all you want to know! Then the rest is for you to do! . . .
Yr aff
Alter
The whole question of the value of lots of thorough contrapuntal
work we have threshed out abundantly. I have in my mind the results
with the chaps who did it and the (non) results of our horde of ready
writers whose every work shows that they didn’t! If you want to know
what Beethoven got out of it just look at his exercises done with Al-
brechtsberger (all in the simplest species) and then at, say the slow
movement of the F major quartette and the ist movement and Alle-
gretto of the C minor (all Op. 18) done just after.—It is the greatest
fertilizer of the mind; it digs up the soil and lets the pure air in.
53
To Albert I. Elkus
June 10,1913To Albert I. Elkus Whether there is good seed there to germinate—that's another ques-
tion. In your case I believe there is! But; you have got to (absolutely,
you have got to) work for a time with the view of making your haste
slowly! Fretting—spells failure. ... You cannot fume and fret and
hustle yourself into good composition! Inspiration comes only to
those who wait for, and are not hunting for it! She is a nymph who
is not to be ravished; if you are worthy she will come at her own sweet
will; if you are not worthy it is another and a very different minx
whom you will find in your embrace!
Dear Lad:
Nov. 2.0th, 1913	Your voluminous—that’s one word for it: (Schumann’s "himm-
lische Lange, "which he applies to the Schubert C major Symphony,
is another, and a better)—letter came in this A. M.; I had begun to be
hungry for a sight of your fist, and it took quite that much to appease!
Have had only a first reading of it as yet (fairly busy day—) and shall
not go into it to-night: but want to write, as to-morrow is full (lessons,
and symphony concert in the afternoon) and on Saturday Carreno
comes and I shall probably be with her considerably for a few days_
I had a delightful time with Bauer. He was here nearly two weeks,
and we were together as much as circumstances would permit. Lunch
or dinner every day, and several entire afternoons and evenings. He
had gotten the right impression of you (which, of course, pleased me).
He said that Charlie was playing (tlike an inspired cow!” He himself is
playing finer than ever. We had a great time going over some Bach
(Chromatic Fantasie and Italian Concerto) in which our views diverge
somewhat: ditto the Davidsbiindler (where we differ a good deal) and
some Chopin things. He is the sanest and at the same time the most
inspired of them all: nobody quite in his class! . . . Have a Violin
Sonata of.... ; some good things in it, but too precieuse; that fool
thing of insisting on showing how much one knows and how pro-
found one can be! What a fine thing it would be for the younger gen-
eration if being clever or profound should go out of fashion! There
might be a chance of something good cropping up then!
.... it is only that (as I see P. F. teaching) the entire thing of mak-
ing so much of technical methods and all that is distinctly wrong (nar-
54rowing) and tends directly away from helping the student (especially To Albert I. Elkus
the kind of amateurs we get hold of in our clientele) to be really mu-
sical. Some degree of technical help they (all students who haven't
grown-up at the P. F.) have to have; and, of course, there are the ways
of making things easier and smoother that one wants to know and
have for one's pupils, as well as for oneself!—But all that fool stuff
of a semi-lifetime devoted to finger gymnastic and all that,—I can tell
in a minute whether a chap has grown into his piano playing through
that or through the natural musical channels! I never saw one pianist
whose technique had been built up on "technical" lines who wasn't
belittled by it.
.... Carreno has been here—very ill, bad bronchitis (abed, with
Doctor) all the time, but played (twice) superbly. Fine Beethoven
(the greatest Waldstein, I think—of them all) and a superb Schu-
mann Fantasie. I saw her only for a moment, yesterday, after the Con-
cert; she was scarcely able to stand, and very feverish, but looked
handsome as ever! Never did an hour of what they call technical study
in her life!
My dear lad:
I have hung on a bit with acknowledging the Schönberg* (which January 5,1514
came—in accordance with your usual thoughtful methods—on Xmas
morning), in order that I might look into it sufficiently to give you a
somewhat comprehensive resume. This—owing to the usual causes
— I have not been able as yet to do: but I have taken a good look at
it, and, in some ways like it very much. As a text book it is really very
thorough,—goes into the matter of chord formation quite as thor-
oughly, to say the least, as Thuille, while it is less verbose and much
better written. Stimmführung he doesn't touch at all: devotes himself
entirely to the perpendicular. That he makes much of the altered chord
—whole tone scale (in its harmonic bearing)—ninth and eleventh
chords in every possible inversion, together with every conceivable
(often un and in) alteration as a defence of his own and his pupils'
compositions, is only to be expected, and grinned at! Why one should
be at such pains to account for every accidental combination that
^Treatise on Harmony.
55To Albert L Elkus
February 15
arises from the crossing and interweaving of parts—when it all ex-
plains itself on the simplest contrapuntal grounds—I fail to under-
stand!—There is, also, (just as in Shrecker’s book, and Bach notes)
a deal of tirade against every one else who has theorized—"die Theo-
retiker”he calls them, with a sneering inflection;—but one gets used
to that, for it seems to be a part of the method of the extreme neue
Schule! They all do it,—and I find that the extremists among the
painters do the same thing. . . .
Dear lad:
I have just received yourpie cejustificatifznexit the "Geisha* ' to which
title Mrs. E. filed protest—over the Phone — on account of said
Geisha’s reputation for naughtiness!!—and see all your points from
your standpoint» To which said standpoint you are entirely welcome;
as I see it, lots of these things that might (and many of them probably
would) be very much the thing in a score, where your harshly (on P.
F.) colliding jabs would (owing to the different colorit of the voices
producing them) sound very differently and very well, are simply bru-
tal and out of place in the accompaniment of a little song on the P. F.
My own scores (especially things in the "War-Time Wedding”) would
show you that I too know how to use them—but I hope I know, al-
so, where to apply my paprika and my cayenne, and haven’t yet got-
ten my palate into such shape that I have to flavor everything I drink
with cognac or absinthe! Why one should always want to stick every-
thing one knows into every little song passes my understanding! Sup-
pose the Poet should insist on parading his entire vocabulary in his
every little lyric! Songs should have good tunes! If you have them you
don’t need to doctor them up with messy (un) harmonies! If you
haven’t got them you don’t get good songs! Voila! . . .
I’ve been over the other two with Miss Pratt who likes them, and
I’m copying them for her to use. She agrees fully with me about the
diction of the Shelley one. Likes the opening phrase (as I do) as you
have it, if it could be made all right in the singing, but sees (as I do)
that it can’t! So we change—for the present, at least! . . .
A propos of the Bach-Busoni Chaconne: not a good piece—too
long: too much D minor: too many climaxes: too,much Busoni!
56. . . . 7th Symphony! Well, I too, think of it with its crest far up
in the blue. . . . the B major trio*; to me it's (with the Horn Trio) his
finest. The Stimmung!He labored dreadfully over it (when it was writ-
ten: then, 30 years later, re-wrote) and one feels that a bit. But, to me,
it’s fine enough to carry that and still be a wonder. It's so Brahms!
The symphonies—! I agree with you, to a certain extent. But there
are in Brahms occasional moments that are, as you say of the F dur,
‘'unsatisfactory,” that I recognize as such, and that are yet not so to
me. He is the one composer of whom I can feel that he is laboring
(catch the odor of the sweat) and rather sympathize with it! I don't
pretend to fully understand myself in this: it just is so, that's all I
know! Moments in the F moll sonata,—in almost all the big works.
They came hard to him; I can see that! But they have—even the turgid
spots—a something for me that nothing else has. . . .
I dine with the C. E.'s on Wednesday—I like C. even though I do
occasionally quarrel with his views of an organized propaganda of
virtue! Think of all the lies Moses had to fabricate, in order to leave,
after all, nothing but a lot of empty forms that have to serve as a re-
ligion! That's systematized reform: dead sure it's right — till 3 or 4
centuries after. . . .
Dear Lad:
This is in answer to yours of the 3 rd, enclosing Rakoczy bit of Fu-
gato &c.; should have gone a week ago,—but haven't been in writing
trim.My cold—a nasty sort of bronchial cough—has kept me bark-
ing, instead of sleeping, nights, (not troubling me much during the
day) and the day's work has tired me so that evenings I have just sat
and mooned; thought letters, but hadn't energy to write 'em. It is all
a bit better now, I think, tho last night was a very bad one. I'm not ill,
you know: nobody sees that I'm not ship shape,—I simply haven't
any energy — i. e., after my work is done — I still get through that
all right. . . .
Don’t be too sure as to knowing how to go at a Motet when you
want to! To write (well) for voices one must have written for voices,
and much, much! That's the secret of the why I've been eager that
♦Brahms, Op. 8.
57
To Albert L Elkus
April 30 thTo Albert I. Elkus
July 2.1 st, 1914
November 6—
you get interested in it. The form is, of course, nothing. Any form
that fits the text well: there are a hundred models, besides one's good
sense (taste)! Our English "Anthem” is simply a motet, usually with
organ, as we don't do a Capella things; but a good Anthem is one of
the best introductions one can get in the country (and in England),
and gives one a standing that songs and P. F. pieces won't. Part songs
(4 stimmig, or 5 or 6) are a good beginning. Some day you'll get at
it. If you were to hear the Thomaner at Leipsig for a bit I'm sure your
fingers would itch to have a try at it. . . .
I've sent the Programs to your mother: kept the Schonberg* to
have a good look at it. The Analysis is surely a model of patience and
plodding, and (as far as I’ve looked) I find some of the excerpts very
interesting. Only, I can't find any musical stuff in it; only counter-
point, &c.
.. . . There, it's good night, dear Albert. I have you lots in my mind
and somewhat (more or less) im Herzen.
Alter
t... . Should you have the courage to draw very lightly on the Leit-
motive Wagnerian stream-along-ery and subordination of the singer,
and turn frankly to Verdi (Otello) as a model?
"Guinevere” seems to invite Lohengrinism; there would be the
rock to split on! Just enough but not a scintilla too much of that at-
mosphere would be fine; but the Verdi technique is, after all, so much
more genuinely musical than that of Wagner that—for an examplar
and guide—he is the man to study! Sure!
Dear Lad:
If (to jump into it at once) I find myself liking the new song—
Lines from Kennedy's sonnet—somewhat less than the Shelley, it is
because it makes (to a certain extent) the impression of a fragment:
not a scrap (not in that sense)—since it really completes and rounds
itself off;—but as though it might have begun somewhere before it
does begin. That may have been what you are driving at,—and driv-
ing very well, too,—in a sense beautifully. It has beauty, a certain
* Analytical Notes to the Gurrelieder.
f With regard to a proposed opera.
58sincerity &c. Also (just my notion of things) a certain unnecessary,
here and there, jump into remotenesses (you’ll claim, of course, that
they aren’t: and they aren’t excepting for a lyrical bit in such short
form) of key that strike me always as being a resource when one does-
n’t know what else to do in a situation. (It’s such an easy—I call it
"cheap”—way round! And (that’s the worst of it) doesn’t sound
either profound or original any more; has been used so much! The D
maj or of the "'star-girt”— the E flat, later—you like them, I suppose.)
In short, it’s a very nice song, with (but in spite of) a little touch
of that affectation (it’s in the air) that is called modernism, but isn’t!
Only a reflex of certain Wagnerisms, and misapplied! I think you’ll
find that the chaps (moderns) who have succeeded as song writers
have done so, not in consequence of their skill in squirming about,
but—in spite of that tendency—because they had some tunes in their
songs! The other kind of thing always makes the impression of a
fragment: as such it may be very fine, but it’s something else than a
real song, and never takes hold in the same way.
Your beginning is hazardous for a low voice (which the song /r)
but you, of course, know that. If well done it will be beautiful and
effective, as indeed the whole song is!
Dear Lad:
I’ve just got through a Sonata lesson—Mr. S. and Mrs. A.— been
at it a straight two hours (little one of Schubert and the B minor of
Bach) and feel fresher than when I wrote this afternoon.
Margaret says she’s never going to be too grown up for you to send
your love; I’m to send you an installment from her. She’s really grow-
ing, though, in every way. Yesterday it was E minor Prel. and Fugue
of Mendelssohn (by heart), Etude (6th) Chopin, and the 3rd of the
Double Notes set of Moszkowski (beautifully done), and (first time
to me) Rigoletto of Liszt. She’ll do it, too!
You are not to imagine from what I wrote to-day that I don’t like
the new song. I do, very much, and Tibbets took to it immensely
(though—I think I ought to let you have this, as he is very genuine
and nice—he said, after going over it the second time, "hm—which
most—Wagner or Brahms!”) and likes it even better than the first
59
To Albert I. Elkus
November 6th
10:30?. M.To Albert I. Elkus
August zifl, 19x0
one. The influences are felt in it more than anything of yours that I
know; the nature of it—as a semidramatic-lyrical fragment—brings
that, I think. What I mean by criticism of that kind of thing is not (in
your case) so much an objection to an occasional dropping into that
style (some verses absolutely call for—and are the better for it), as a
desire—hope—that you will light on a theme (verses) that will call
for a really tuneful treatment—real song with a melody that sings it-
self and is remembered as a beautiful tune! There is lots of room in
the direction of simple tune for good songs, and it is only where there's
an easily recognizable and rememberable tune that a song gets sung
to any extent! Schubert, Mendelssohn and all the others (even Strauss)
will bear me out in this! Nicht wahr?
TO MRS. A. Z. SINSHEIMER
MY dear little Sister: This is to say Hello, and bushels of herz-
liche Grussse for your birthday—I forget whether it's the
twenty-third or thirty-third: something like that: isn't it!?
I don't know whether I ever told you about Dr. H. sending me
to B. for a thorough examination, on the 2.8 th of June, 1919, (he had
an idea of opening, and resetting my broken leg, and giving me an-
other 3 or 4 months of Hospital—and big bill!—) and how, after
said examination, B. called his nurse and told her to enter an engage-
ment for June 2.8 th, 193 9,2.: 30 P. M., for re-examination of Major
Weil! Well: I shall, of course, have to keep the appointment; but
only on condition that you go with me, to see what he says, and to
look after me a bit. So, see that you keep in trim: for if you don't
come I positively won't go! I regard that as settled. Paul (good boy,
that!) tells me that you are coming up for the Autumn months! There
is to be some opera, and other good music! You must long to hear
something by this time.
Ubrigens!—do you remember how Mother made Raspberry Vin-
egar? I promised Mrs. Salinger to ask you—told her you knew how
to make everything good! So you must give me some sort of a recipe:
even if you have to invent it!
I send you lots of love—a little of it to spare for the kids.
Affectionately,
Oscar
60TO MRS. WEIL
1AM hard at my opera, and if everything goes well shall finish up be-
fore December; by then anyway. The story &c. seem very bright and
funny, and I am filling it up with Spanish (Havanese) color in the
melodies and accompaniments. I have almost a third of it down on
paper and have even begun to score, as I can do this when not in trim
for composition_____
Lots of love to both of you; the market is full of California fruit,
and every time I see it, it makes me homesick after you. I am looking
up cards for Leo.
Received yours of 2.3rd today (the second) and glad enough to
hear from you. The same mail brought one from F. J. (at Philadel-
phia) and my contract for the Operetta, from Wallace; this reached
New York too late for me. So that is all settled in black and white. I
am still awaiting marching orders from Cranz, who, I take it, must be
in Vienna. I shall probably have to meet him there. It is a long and
expensive journey; but as Genee, Suppe, Strauss and others live there
it may be a good thing for me to have to go. . . .
Homer* at Haufleur begs me to come to him for a few days on my
way to Paris, which I shall try to do. Have seen but few of my friends.
Dannreuther is out of town, returns on the 13 th, Sullivan will be here
only for one day — 16th, and Carl Rosa is at Cologne for the next
3 weeks. Have been out several times to dinner; last evening with
Hebb (of the Metropolitan Board of Works) to a veryrw/Zcrowd, and
am to do an evening at Lady Wilde’s (Oscar’s Mamma) next week.
.... London, although I know it pretty well, amazes and be-
wilders one! It is so immense, and has such tremendous go. It is like
a hundred New Yorks in one. But very much improved, as a city, and
the streets and buildings are magnificent.
My lodgings continue to be pleasant; the landlady very decent, and
everything very neat. The maid servants here are as neat and tidy as
possible, and seem quite a different race from those one sees at home.
To-day was Lord Mayor’s show; a procession that would have delight-
ed Leo’s heart; State Coaches with gorgeous flunkies; Forest Rangers,
-*Homer Martin.
6l
To Mrs. Weil
August zcj, 1881
London,
Nov. yth, 1883To Mrs. Veil
Paris,
Dec. 31 st, 1883
N.Y.Junez 5,1885
splendid bands, &c. I wish I had you both here with me! In time! I
send lots of love and kisses to both of you, and already look for your
next letter.. . .
Lieber Leo:
Nächste Woche bekömmst du einen Brief, so wie auch postage
stamps. Indessen Grüsse and Küsse, von deinem
Papa
A short, tired letter will be all I can do to-night; it’s 10, and I have
been writing nearly all day. The Opera is almost finished (my work);
it has gone somewhat slowly as I got it piecemeal and had to work at
it backwards and forwards. I think it will be bright; however, shall
not get my pay till it reaches over in U. S. I think I shall get another
to do here; i. e. one that belongs here, but to be done where I hap-
pen to be.
Of course I have been out very little, but that little has been very
pleasant. Firstly, Sunday, P. M. 13rd, took Mary Selfridge out; Ves-
pers at Notre Dame, and a ramble through old Paris after; dinner at
Aunt Helen’s and then to call on Mrs. Elias_On Thursday P. M.
Mr. Bacon (a painter friend of Mary Selfridge, 5 o and married; Boston
man, with whom I happen to have lots of friends in common) gave
me a dinner at the Restaurant Barras; 16 men, artists and writers; very
jolly. The Friday company dinner at Auntie’s; yesterday (Sunday) ele-
gant luncheon at DeMunck’s (they live in splendid style, &c.) and
last evening bachelor’s dinner given by cousin Alphonse. Add that
Paris is at its gayest, the streets crowded and simply fascinating, and
you will see that, in spite of long hours of work I am having a sort of
holiday. Have 4 or 5 invitations for this week and shall probably
accept them all.
____Sullivan is to arrive here next week, but goes on at once to
Cala., where he has some business. Shall probably not see him until
he returns this way. I am feeling unusually well, and looking well,
they say. The cool spring has been good for me. But the organ grind-
ers, pianos, ambitious sopranos &c. in the neighborhood make life
6zpretty hard in the summer, when everyone lives with open windows. To Mrs. Weil
I will send some duets: not too difficult. Funny how my violin
songs are spreading, I have read and heard of their being sung in at
least 2.0 different parts of the country during the past season; also in
Berlin; and always with success. ...
Long Pond' Maine,
____I have been doing some work here: new text for my operetta duly 4,88
and some Etudes in Broken Chords and Arpeggios; these for Schmidt.
Have also promised him a set of Children’s Songs, but haven’t got at
them yet. Fish some every day, and enjoy bass fishing very much. Am
all browned up, and in capital health: the fare is very simple, but
agrees with me.... We haven’t had any hot weather, as yet: it’s more
like May than mid-summer. Warm enough, however, to bathe in the
pond, which I do every day. It’s solitary and very quiet, here: but I
like that. . . .
St. Paul, Minn.
I came in at 4 o’clock, meaning to write at once, but found Ralph December 2.7,1888
Martin—son of my old friend Homer—whom I had not yet seen;
Ralph is a good boy, but he doesn’t know when to go. It’s now nearly
6 and I have still to dine and dress for the theatre. I had to make a
flying trip to Boston last week, from Chicago, (to find some mem-
oranda that were in my trunk there) and found your letter.
I have had a delightful surprise here. Found living at this hotel,
my dear old Colonel, of the 5 th, who was my boss and dear friend
during the last part of the war. Col. W. F. Drum. We hadn’t met since
’ 6 6 when I went to California and he to the frontier. He is only about
8 years older than I, but white head and beard: Mrs. Drum, who is
with him, seems quite an old lady. How glad we were to see each
other! The Colonel is Inspector General of this department, and trots
me out to all his fellow officers as though I were a favorite son of
whom he was very proud. He always liked me, and used to say that
I belonged in the regulars; in fact, got me the offer of a commission
in the 2_nd Infantry at the end of the war. Weather here very mild and
pleasant. Business good, Pygmalion the great success. . . .To Mrs. Weil
N. Y. Nov. 12., 95.
Monday, Feby 2.5-94
Thanks for the letters, and I am—of course—glad you liked the
Opera*. It must have been in many respects a crude performance; the
rehearsals were so hurried (for the piece is in some ways really diffi-
cult) that many points must have been lost for want of proper work-
ing out. This—I fancy from all the reports—would especially be the
case with the conclusion of the 2.nd Act: properly done, it ought to
be very effective in a quiet, poetic way,... I don’t imagine the opera
will prove what is called a great popular success; it is probably too
serious for that. But it seems to have made an impression, and the
Management thinks it will do some business. The newspapers were
not nice; but I didn’t expect they would be. They like to say some-
thing smart, and in case of a new work don’t dare to praise, lest their
judgment should not be confirmed when the piece gets East. I know
them of old, asses all!
.... I am laying out a new opera: to be light and fanciful: no real-
ism, nor agony, but all bright and playful—that is, if it comes out as
I hope.
TO SAM FRANKO
MY dear Franko: It is the easier for me to say to you just what
I felt about the work on Saturday since I regard it as—on the
.whole—a very successful debut, and one full of promise.
I did feel in the Ouverture that you had either not had sufficient
work on it, or that you were yourself a trifle unsteady; probably both
conditions were present. But the Symphonyt was really beautifully
done (barring, possibly a slight tendency of the 1st violins to hurry
the last movement, which the Conductor didn’t succeed in checking
as effectively as he will with a little more experience),—there was
grace, delicacy, and a real beauty of tone. Schmidt seems to me on the
whole (so far, at least,) a very good choice for Concettmeister. Both
accompaniments were also very well done. Of course, a purely virtu-
oso piece like the VariationsJ, is a severe test: where its performance
was not entirely up to the highest mark was in no way the fault of
*First performance of “The War-Time Wedding,” October 28,1895, at the Columbia Theatre,
San Francisco,
f Mozart, in D (K.194).
$From Moszkowski’s First Suite.
64the Conductor: on the contrary; his end of it seemed to me to be ex-
cellent. The Prelude* (which, again, is a thing I don't care for in the
least) showed rather coarse work in the brasses, insufficient strings,
and not very thorough study on the part of the dirigent! Am I right? Re-
member, I don't think the piece worth any study, unless you are going
to conduct it: in that case, however, there is a great deal more to be
done with it.
There! I have been frank with you. On the whole, I feel that you
may be satisfied with yourself! The thing best worth doing — the
Symphony—was delightful!
Now let me make a personal suggestion. Try—sometime—a beat
more from the wrist, and shorter strokes, reserving the longer ones
for a purpose: you will, I think, find that it brings at once greater re-
pose and more precision—and it looks better—cooler!
I wish you had had a bigger audience; but that I trust will come.
Yours sincerely,
Oscar Weil
My dear Franko:
My young friend (and pupil in Counterpoint) Albert I. Elkus of
this city, is going to Europe for study, with Composition especially
in view. He will probably be for a time in Berlin; and I have told him
to call on you—firstly as a friend of mine who will be glad to have
news of me (how gracefully I am growing old, &c.), and, secondly,
that he may have the benefit of your sound, musicianly advice. . . .
Myself!? Well,—as I said before, we are growing towards middle
age—73 last birthday;—still working hard, and still, I fear, capable
of follies, though fewer, I hope, than formerly. I hear of you once in
a while through the press, or from those that come to us from the
music-land; and hope always that things are going as you would wish.
I do think of you often. Perhaps, in a year or two, I may get over your
way; I owe myself a good vacation, and am hungry for a little good
music.
Also, aufWiedersehen.	Ever faithfully yours,
Oscar Weil
*Meistersinger Prelude.
65
To	Sam Franko
Sept. 2.0th, 1912.To Sam Franko
Jan'y zg-zi
Oct. zjth-16
zozoM Bush St,
San Francisco,
April 10th, 09
My dear Franko:
Why be funny at my expense? Why say "enclosed photo will show
you,” and on turning paper and envelope inside out some forty times
I find no photo! If you really look like what you enclosed you have
grown ethereal and into a mere shade, long before your time, which
I trust, may still be a long distance off. Send me the "counterfeit
presentment.” Glad, of course, to hear from you, and shall be more so
to welcome you to this God-forsaken corner of the earth! A few bits
of decentish scenery are surely not enough to make a country hab-
itable; that’s all we have! If I were but a bit younger, how soon I’d
shake the mud (worse than dust) of it from me! There—you have
the truth; the fashion is to lie about California.
Indessen—
Ever yours,
Weil
TO HOTHER WISMER
MY dear Wismer: I have still to thank you for the very nice
evening of last Tuesday, which both my niece and I enjoyed:
the Gade Sonata (always a favorite of mine) in particular.
I was glad to hear the Reger again, if only to confirm my opinion
that, though interesting to study and work out, it is a very dull and
un-inspired Composition : like almost everything I know of R’s, made,
just literally made, and nothing more.
Pray make my compliments to Mrs. Hughes!
Faithfully yoursift
Oscar Weil
TO DANIEL GREGORY MASON
MY dear Mr. Mason: I trust you will permit a stranger—whose
name is probably unknown to you—to tell you of the pleas-
ure with which he heard your Elegy-Variations from Mr.
Gabrilowitsch the other day. Pleasure is not quite my word—-though
there was that, as well;—it was a deep gratification at the being ac-
quainted with the work of a serious musician whose endeavor seems
66to be in the noblest direction,—who has something beautiful to say
and strives to say it in a way that wins one's sincere respect.
Mr. Gabrilowitsch tells me that you are still a young man, and I
am glad of it,—for you will have time to fulfill the promise of your
op. x, which is of fine things. We need just such young men,—we
need them sadly!
I shall look to know all your work—what is already in print as
well as what is to come in the future—and shall follow it with a deep
and sincere interest.
Very truly yours,
Oscar Weil
TO MRS. LUDWIG ROSENSTEIN
Mf dear Clara: I am sure you will like my friend Thompson*
when you get to really know him. Begin with the "Shelley.”
The "Puck”t you probably know, but even so re-read the
last one; also perhaps "The Centurion” and"The Winged Hats.” The
Bjornsons are both a bit sad, but I haven't any others here: they are
fine however of their type. Belong to the library.
Arnold! I'm very fond of him and suggest—for a start—the "Soh-
rab.” Then "Philomela,” "The Forsaken Merman,” "The Strayed
Reveller,” &c. &c.
Parker's bookj—if you can stand a long one—is a really good
novel. I’ll try to see you on Friday, and if you can't find any comfort
in these, will hunt you up something else.
Meantime, gute Besserung,
Uncle O
LETTERS TO CHILDREN
DEAR Jack: I suppose you were too busy to write me, yourself,
| for Christmas; but I had your message from dear Mamma,
and thank you for it. I hope you are finding contentment in
your new home, and also that you are fairly well satisfied with your
parents. As we can't choose our Fathers and Mothers for ourselves,
*Francis Thompson.
fPuck of Pook’s Hill.
¿The Right of Way.
To Daniel Gregory
Mason
Wednesday, P. M.
Dec. z6,14
67Letters to Children
May ist, igoz
we have, of course, to put up with those that fate dispenses to us;
after all, in most cases it might have been worse! Nicht wahr? Write
and tell me about it.
Your affectionate Uncle O
October 5th
Our Luischen has reached the estate
Of a grown up young woman of eight;
She grows bigger and stronger,
And broader, and longer,
And wiser—? Ah well,—let us wait!
[On the presentation of a wrist watch}
Uncle sent me here to say
He sends his love for Ben’s birthday,—
And I’m to watch on Benjy’s wrist,
To see his practise time’s not missed,—
For he’s to work, as well as play,
And be a good boy every day!
"May-be”!
TO MISS BLANCHE PARTINGTON
MY dear Miss Partington: There is no photo of yours truly
(there was one taken about 30 years ago, and I haven’t any
idea of the existence of a copy). Bach left no portrait, you
know, and he and I have much in common!
Of my printed work, so far as I can see, the most important is prob-
ably that for the use of children. There are, besides the 3 Operettas*,
the Op. 6—11P. F. pieces, Breitkopf and Härtel;—6 Vignettes, Dit-
son;—2.4 Miniatures, Cranz of Hamburg; 6 Sonatinas, Miles and
Thompson (one of the things I think best of); several sets of Etudes
and many Songs. Of Piano pieces there are many smaller things—
"Fantasiestücke,” "Vaises,” "Feuillettes,” &c. &c.: probably some-
thing like 5 o: the more important ones are Sonata in F, Ballade in G
*The Operettas for Children by H. C. Bunner and Oscar Weil.
68minor; not a very long list, you see. My song work has been of more
consequence: the best probably the Op. 7 (Goethe texts) several of
which have had much vogue in Germany;—the Op. 10, the well
known ones with Violin;—the Op. 11,5 German Songs to which I
did English texts; the second set of Violin Songs (pub. by Miles and
Thompson, and which I think better than the first set) and some later
ones, viz. Op. 2.8, and these last, Op. 31 and 32. There are now in
print and just coming out, 3 Trios for Women's voices and P. F., Op.
33; 3 English Songs, Op. 34 (Ditson) and 6 Songs in Canon for
Women's voices, Op. 3 5.
I have more unprinted than printed stuff: the larger things are,
firstly, not so much desired (from as unimportant a man as I am) and,
secondly, one is not anxious to let them go till one is convinced that
they are at least as all right as one can make them. And I am never
any too well satisfied with my stuff.
(I should have added, above, Choruses for mixed voices and for
women's voices). Then there have been four operas: the 1st "Pyra-
mus,'' an early experimental work, and a failure; "Pygmalion," a re-
spectful perversion of Gilbert's play,—dramatic and a great success;
"Suzette," comic and a great success, and "A War-Time Wedding,"
melo-dramatic and also successful, though it had to be withdrawn on
Mrs. Davis' secession from the Bostonians, for whom it was written.
This one is to be revived next season. Larger, unprinted things em-
brace an Oratorio, "The Passion"; Symphonic Ouverture—played
several times in London at the Crystal palace; several larger things
for Chorus and Orchestra; a Violin Sonata, &c.; whether I shall ever
print them or not is a question. A man who does much teaching finds
it very hard to get the repose for composition, and I am content to
do smaller things when in the mood; once in a while I fish out a little
bunch, and print. Then I may go on for several years and—except to do
work for study—quite forget that I ever had the ambition to be a com-
poser. To tell the truth, I am more interested in the work of my pupils
than in my own attempts; what I have left of ambition is for them.
So, you see, there's not much to talk about. Hope you'll come in
again; will try to give you a better cup of tea.
Truly yours, Oscar Weil
69
To Miss Blanche
PartingtonTo Miss Blanche
Partington
Sunday,
May nfi yox
May 2.1st
Monday127 Oct»
My dear Miss Partington:
I will say that if that sort of thing* is to be done at all, I don’t see
how it could be managed with finer tact or in better taste. I think we
are both to be congratulated on it: you, on the way you have handled
a difficult subject, and I, on the good hands into which I fell.
That Will Greenbaum was not quite accurate in some of the points
he gave you is the fault of neither of us. I was less than three months
in Libby: was not co-conductor with Thomas, but was offered—and
declined—the post. But those are minor matters! With lots of much
obliged, and all that,
Sincerely yours,
Oscar Weil
My dear Miss Partington:
I take it that you don’t usually go to the Park on Sunday afternoon
for your music; but if ever you do, I trust it will be on next Sunday
(26th) as there are to be compositions by two of my pupils of whom I
am both fond and a bit proud. They come at the close of the programme
—a Canzonetta Espagnole by Emil A. Bruguière (a San Francisco
lad) and a March by Henry Bossert (who is in the army, stationed
here for the present); and, while I don’t easily ask for or suggest that
sort of thing, I’m sure a kind word from you would make both lads
very happy and proud—of course, in case you find them deserving
of it. There! I’ve asked for the kind of thing I never would permit
anyone to ask, I never would for myself! I trust you, however, to un-
derstand just what I mean.
Very sincerely yours,
Oscar Weil
My dear Miss Partington:
Of course I will do you a screed anent Technique: I think I don’t
fully like to do it—reasons, you know: not of the clearest, but still
reasons.
At the same time, the fact that I don’t quite like it makes it the
nicer to have the opportunity to do it for you. Not very well today :
^Referring to Miss Partington’s article on Mr. Weil in the Call, May 11,1902.
70have had a cold for three or four days past, and find myself a bit drag-
ged down with it. I trust you will get lots of good out of your vaca-
tion: there's none to be gotten here.
Sincerely yours,
Oscar Weil
My dear Miss Partington:
Thanks very much: but, the Doctor doesn't give me the slightest
hope of being out by the 17th. It has been—and is still likely to be
a siege, tho I have begun—an experiment—to do most of my lessons.
I was so unhappy without them. I am allowed four per diem; two in
the morning, two in the afternoon, with the nurse between for an
over-hauling.
If you want to be good to me, think of and send me—something
I can read; something to divert. Nothing about music, please, unless
it be technical! Sorry to miss Mansfield—and you—and lots of good
things, probably,—. But I'm having an experience, and there's some-
thing in that.
Ever sincerely yours,
Oscar Weil
My dear Miss Partington:
Glad to have your nice appropriate note; you are not to make so
much of a little favor that I am always glad to have the opportunity
to do for you. That's straight.
Sincerely yours,
Oscar Weil
My dear Miss Partington:
'The man who nose"* has—and oh! the hard work that it was!—
copied out clean a set of chorus Waltzes "In Maytime," text from the
Russian of Thesamow,t and is rehearsing them as well as he can with
a lot of singers who are over their ears in preparation for two Easters
at once—for the Jews have also had Somebody rise (I think it must
have been stocks or the price of trousers) on the I2.th.
*Miss Partington frequently referred to Mr. Weil as “the man who knows.”
f Mr. Weil often wrote his own verses under a whimsical nom de plume.	-j j
To Miss Blanche
Partington
Nov. 19,1905
Tuesday 8 th Nov.
April 5 th (/ think)To Miss Blanche
Partington
Wednesday yth
On said ixth, at 3:30, we are going to sing them (and a few trifles
by unimportant chaps, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruch and others) at
Berkeley. You are the }/i part of my audience—Mrs. Stein, Sabin and
myself, the other three: we are the only ones who count! Which
means, that I shall be glad if you can come, and tell me—frankly, our
way—whether the experiment is a failure, and in how far.
I do hope you can: of course you are to bring your party,—if he’s
the party you belong to.
Sincerely yours,
Oscar Weil
My dear Miss Partington:
“Concerto Grosso” (not in any sense Grand Concerto)—a Concerto
for a body of instruments in contra-distinction to a ditto for a solo
player. “Of course for strings alone”—Why “of course”? There are
several “Grossi” by the same talented young composer* for Strings
and Reeds (the “Hautboys” and Bassoons used as a Reed force—ri-
piendi—just as we use a body of strings, not single instruments or a
part as in the modern orchestra); several—I think (tho I remember
only one)—with Trumpets and Drums also. These things—grow-
ing out of the earlier use of the same form by the Italians, even to the
Grave followed by a fugue or fiigato of the ist movement,—are the
ancestors of our modern Suite and Symphony: the Divertimenti, Ser-
enati, & c. of Mozart’s time (though the fugal movement was no long-
er obbligato) and in reality precisely the same thing that said Italians
(and Handel also) called a “Sonata” or “Concerto,” as the thing hap-
pened to be for a single instrument or accompanied by several. Look
at those by Vivaldi for the fiddle made over by Jim Bach into Con-
certos for the Organ. Enormously interesting! Then some Germans,
beginning with the Mannheim chaps, Stamitz, Biber and others, began
to add color and slightly modify the scope and form (Em. Bach really
started the thing) and thus led through to Haydn and Mozart et al.
And more to the same effect.
Ever yours,
Oscar Weil
♦Handel.
IMy dear Miss Partington:
I got back to town last night after four weeks of loafing: it was
worth coming back to find that you had taken the trouble to call me
up three times. And Pm sorry three times: twice for missing you, and
once on account of Miss Barrymore, whose grandmother was my
grande passion when I was a boy in jackets. How do you do!? Very
well, I hope: if you are not you shall get out a pair of stout walking
shoes and go for a few days down to the Big Basin, where you will
find all sorts of loveliness for the eye, and brawn, muscle, color &c.
for the rest of you. It’s a good place—of the roughest—good grub
a la Deutschland and capital air.
Hope to see you shortly.
Sincerely,
Oscar Weil
To Miss Blanche
Partington
Tuesday, Aug. 30 th
73

					
					
					
					
					
					
					
					PRELUDES IN DIVERS KEYS
PRELUDES IN DIVERS KEYS
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ARGONAUT, SAN FRANCISCO
. Edouard Remenyi, solo violinist to his Imper-
ial Royal Majesty the Emperor of Austria, etc., is
a great artist—from the showman’s standpoint.
That he does not attract large audiences is an ac-
cident (of mis-management, I should say), and not
I at all his fault; he does every conceivable thing to
^draw them, is up to every trick of the trade, plays
the farceur much better than the fiddle, and enraptures ninety-nine
out of every hundred persons who go to hear him. The hundredth
one—who generally has some little respect for music as an art, and
who perhaps has some idea besides of what violin playing ought to
be—he disgusts. I have heard Mr. Remenyi play two movements from
the Mendelssohn Concerto, the Otello Fantaisie, some transcriptions
from Chopin, his own Hungarian specialties, etc., and if this is play-
ing the violin, I, for one, would not be sorry if every violin excepting
those of the orchestra players, were broken up for kindling wood.
The guts might remain unmolested inside their original possessors—
who would put them to much better use—and the hairs of the bow
continue to adorn the tails of the Arabian mares—the violin is some-
times male and sometimes female, but the bow hairs are supposed
(perhaps because they make the tone) to be always from feminine
tails—and continue in their former useful and delightful avocation
of brushing the flies off the rounded haunches. As for Mr. Remenyi—
he might get him to a nunnery; he looks as though it would console
him somewhat for the loss of his fiddle.
Remenyi has considerable technique—of a certain undisciplined
kind; quite enough to play most of the pieces of his repertoire much
better than he does, and—setting aside his penchant for sawdust and
spangles—will count as a violinist of about the fourth or fifth rank,
of whom it is extremely doubtful whether—even with youth and in-
dustry in his favor—he would ever reach the first. He can make much
noise on the violin, but has no tone; that is, none of the sustained
tone that is the first requisite for a good player. He can make his
77
June 14,
RemenyiRemenyi noise only by constantly shifting his bow (doing this constantly—and
disgustingly, even—in the cantabile of the Mendelssohn Concerto),
and sawing his trills out of the fiddle very much as I have seen it done
by country fiddlers. In his piano passages he is compelled to resort to
the same trick of the incompetents; the change of direction is quick,
light, and well managed; but it nevertheless disfigures the phrases.
His left hand is at times excellent; certain passages—especially rapid
scales—he does very well. But he is very uncertain with them, and
evidently feels this himself; if a passage is in the least hazardous, he
slides and slobbers up to it and down from it. Thirds, sixths, and oc-
taves are all managed in the same way; they are rarely cleverly or neat-
ly given, and, in rapid tempi, very much mixed. His staccato is not bad,
though in no way remarkable; his leggiero rather heavy; and his matel-
lato excellent. His style—individual, genial, magnetic, whatever they
may call it—is simply the most abominable caricature of music that
ever came to my notice. It is as though he felt that he can not make
the points that would be made by a real violinist, and substitutes a
sensation of his own. In playing a melody, he howls and slides (like
the attempt at portamento of a bad singer), expressing his emotion by
series of sudden stunning fortes and extreme pianos. This, again, even
in the Andante of the Mendelssohn Concerto, and—still more offen-
sively—in the Introduction and Adagio of the Otello Fantaisie. His
Nocturne of Chopin is bathos with frills; his Mazurka a grimace sim-
ilarly embellished. All of these things had to submit themselves to his
one style of cadenza, which generally consists of some scale passages
and a bit of arpeggio across the four strings, with a little tail of pian-
issimo with the bow well up on the finger-board. His martial intro-
duction to the Rakozcy March is a stirring and a clever performance,
and there were good things in his playing of Paganini’s Twenty-fourth
Caprice. But, per contra, the Twenty-first would not have counted as
a creditable performance from a pupil.
June 2.1,1879 TT is not without considerable surprise that I find in the Nation of
Potpourri I the 5 th inst. a suggestion so entirely at variance with either the
JL musical or general aesthetic standpoint affected by this paper, that
I am inclined to suspect its musical editor of having left his work in
78very incompetent hands while he is having his summer vacation. The Potpourri
writer, in canvassing " the best means of gradually raising ourselves to
the rank of a musical nation/* suggests that "'young men and women
should be urged to bestow their time and leisure on the bowed in-
struments/* "with a view to the formation of string-quartet clubs, and
the cultivation and study of the purer forms of chamber music/* and
after adducing several arguments in favor of this certainly praise-wor-
thy suggestion proceeds to champion the cause of the now (fortun-
ately) almost forgotten form of operatic potpourri as "a means of ele-
vating the taste of those to whom the highest forms of composition
are as yet unintelligible.** His argument is as follows: "Amateurs are
apt to be discouraged by the inherent difficulties of most chamber
music, especially that of Beethoven, Schumann and Rubinstein. In such
cases it is best to leave classic music alone for the time being and get
some of the operatic potpourris for one, two or three instruments and
piano, published, e. g., in the Edition Peters in a comfortable and very
cheap form. Operatic potpourris do not belong to the higher class of
music, we grant, but neither do they deserve the supreme contempt
which many pedantic music-teachers affect for them.** Now, setting
aside the suspicion that the critical columns of the Nation are being
used to advertise the Peters edition of operatic olla-podrida as unwor-
thy a paper of such excellent general tone, it seems to me that there
is here put forward a suggestion utterly pernicious, and based very
largely on the most culpable ignorance, not only of the immense rep-
ertoire of lighter and easier chamber music, but also of the end to be
attained in the cultivation of all music as well as the means to be wisely
employed toward attaining it. What this writer may mean by the state-
ment that this arrangement " will serve as a means to elevating the
taste of those to whom the highest forms of composition are as yet
unintelligible*’ is something not altogether easy to understand. Surely
not that the cultivation of a style of music which is in its very nature
utterly devoid of sound logical form, or even aesthetic coherence, is in
any way to prepare the student for the study of the legitimate forms of
such compositions as are based upon a sound and natural development
of their thematic material. Surely it cannot be intended to imply that
the study of operatic melodies aimlessly strung together has any, even
79Potpourri the remotest, relation to the cultivation of a sound, healthy musical
taste? The melodies may be excellent and beautiful in themselves and
in their proper place and setting, but so is also a chapter out of “Les
Miserables” or a speech in “Egmont.” A chromo-lithograph repro-
duction of a single figure from some dramatic picture may have its in-
terest to one who is familiar with the picture itself, or even a certain
attractiveness of its own, but is it on these grounds to be recommend-
ed for study by a young art student? The writer speaks of'The inherent
difficulties of most chamber music,” and seems to forget—or knows
nothing of—the mass of such music by Reissiger, Fesca, Meyer,
Krause, and other excellent composers, that is neither very difficult
to execute nor to comprehend. The older school in which the formal
construction lies nearer the surface, and is consequently easier to
analyze and study, has its Dussek, Pleyel, Kuhlau, and others, who
have left us much that for the purpose of amateurs is beautiful and
interesting, not to mention Haydn himself, many of whose works—
especially the earlier ones—present no technical difficulties that ama-
teurs can not overcome, or that they should not be encouraged to
grapple with for the sake of the sound musical regimen that will be
found in them.* The operaticpotpourri is a monstrosity, the outgrowth
of a depraved vulgar taste. I say depraved since I regard it as a feeling
founded not a.t all upon the cultivation or love for music in itself—
/. e., the music of home, properly all chamber music—but a reflected
light from the glare and excitement of the music of the theatre, min-
gled—the lover of it scarcely knows how little or how much—with
the remembered spell of this or that voice or personnel\ the effect upon
the emotions of the situation, the scene, the surroundings. With true
music it has nothing in common. Nor can it ever "serve as a means of
elevating” any taste, but, actually the reverse of this, it must necessarily
vitiate and utterly deprave the feeling for true art of the impression-
able music maker who to any extent indulges in it. This has always been
recognized by the better musicians of every country; none—but one
*“For the study of quartets, however, much excellent material will be found in Pleyel—easy, and
consequently available for first studies—Kriitzer, Ries, Viotti and Onslow. There are other com-
posers of easy quartet music; their names escape me at this writing, but can be found in Hoff-
meister’s catalogue. Hauptmann, Dussek, Kuhlau, Kiicken, Krebs, and many others, have written
Sonatas for pianoforte and violin or flute, that can be recommended as sound, healthy music of
pure form;—” Argonaut, June 28,1879.
8o—of the better composers has ever written an operatic potpourri. The Potpourri
arrangement of a single air from an opera will occasionally be found
from a master hand, and—to show the extent to which their neces-
sities forced them to yield to vulgar fashion—a few variations on op-
eratic themes by the greatest. But never a potpourri, excepting by those
who courted the public for its money, and who at the same time held
that public in contempt for an appetite which they were willing to
gratify. When the writer in the Nation says that "arranged in an ar-
tistic way they will give pleasure to the most refined musician,” I am
at a loss to know where or how he has obtained his idea of a "refined
musician,” and can assure him, as well as my readers, that the diet
which he prescribes would be apt to suit the taste of an ignorant mu-
sical sensualist or average Italian amateur, rather than a musician of
any kind. The taste for potpourri has gone the way of the furor for
"brilliant variations”and "descriptive songs”; we have buried it with
the souvenirs of our salad days. There, in the name of respectable art,
let it rest.
I AM sorry to find that I have caused another tempest in the teapot
by what I said in last week’s issue of the Argonaut about the violin
playing of Mr. Edouard Remenyi, "virtuoso of his Imperial and
Royal,” etc. I have seen the steam spout from the numerous minor
vents of this ever-ready cauldron—it boils on the slightest provoca-
tion—in the form of no end of impertinent inquiries as to what' 'spite’ ’
I have against Mr. Remenyi, what he has done to me that I should
"pitch into” him, etc., etc., and I know the thing is boiling. I wish to
say, then, that I had no intention of "pitching into ” Mr. Remenyi or
anybody else, and am not conscious of ever entertaining any such in-|
tention. I said about this gentleman’s violin playing precisely what
(in the light of somewhat of experience in such matters and—what
will perhaps be conceded to me—some accurate knowledge of the
subject) I supposed to be true, and what I thought it might be useful
to the public to know. That my remarks about Mr. Remenyi’s play-
ing were perfectly just, and that their correctness will be admitted by
competent authority, I am fully convinced. Regarded from any critical
standpoint—treated as the work of one who claims to be an artist,
81
June xi, 1875
Remenyi
(Controversial)Remenyi and who endeavors to make good that claim by seeking to belittle
(Controversial) the good name of a gentleman and artist like Brahms—Remenyi’s
playing deserves, perhaps, no consideration whatever. But, unless one
regarded it (properly enough) as the performance of a mere monte-
bank, one must tell the truth about it. That Mr. Remenyi has an abun-
dant crop of newspaper notices that read very differently from mine
cannot concern me. I think I know something of the manner in which
these are obtained and by whom they are written. That a large class
of the soi disant professionals disagree with me, and, judging prob-
ably from their own manner of treating such matters, ascribe what I
have found it necessary to say to “personal malice/ * etc., is also a matter
to which I am perfectly indifferent. As I said before, this is a case for
the judgment of competent authority; the gabble about such matters
of the loud-mouthed dilettanti may overtone the speech of those who
know, but it remains gabble after all. There is a world-wide difference
between knowing about a thing and merely talking about it.
June xi, 1879 TT seems as though it were about time that our musical community
JournalisticCriticism I should begin to discriminate between newspaper criticism and
J[mere newspaper notices. Of the latter they have certainly had their
fill any time these past years; the supply is not yet exhausted. It still
remains possible for any aspiring tenorino or grasping soprano to get
all the “good notices” he or she may desire, by a little clever manage-
ment or the assistance of some friend who has “influence,” and, so
long as these notices are understood to emanate from no authority,
but are merely the good-natured act of a reporter who does not lay
claim to an opinion, I will not say that they do much harm. But such
notices are not criticism, nor, as far as I know, do they claim to be such.
Precisely what they are supposed to represent I do not know; per-
haps about the same thing that is meant by the fadaises that pass cur-
rent in so-called “good society,” where one is compelled to talk, but
is indisposed to say anything lest one should not be understood. There
are very respectable people and very clever litterateursvfho know noth-
ing of music. They are not to blame, nor to be blamed, for it. But
certainly when the proprietors of a respectable paper engage for the
special work of musical criticism a person who has some knowledge
8xof the subject and a high regard for his art, this musical small-fry that Journalistic Criticism
hangs on the selvage of the profession cannot expea that the matter
is to be treated from their standpoint, or that it is the opinion of the
calibre that they are accustomed to deal out among themselves and
their satellites that is to be dignified with a place in a musical column.
The faa is, that in a community in which, like this, the profession is
so largely made up of people who have not the remotest claim to a
place in it, and where the competent authority (with knowledge and
experience) is limited to a meagre half-dozen, criticism necessarily—
and naturally—addresses itself to that circle of cultivated amateurs in
which music is cultivated as an art and con amore; where, along with
somewhat of general culture, there is intelligent study and a genuine
love of it; where there are no bread-and-butter considerations drag-
ging it down to the level of a mere money-getter, and no petty mean-
nesses to belittle it; where in short, it remains pure, clean and unde-
filed. To the real musician my criticism can have no value; my opin-
ion on any given subjea, though we may differ on points of taste,
etc., must in the main agree with his. To the professional small-fry I
do not care to talk. Ignorance is only another term for prejudice, and
to this they have generally added an amount of conceit, as well as
small personal feeling that will not permit them to receive fully the
judgment of one of whom they know that he has accurate knowledge
where they have but a scattering and empty vocabulary. I cannot teach
them anything—there is no room for that—and I hold myself above
argument with them. What I write is for amateurs and students, and
is written with the sole view of aiding such in discriminating between
the good and bad in an art in which the bad has learned how to ren-
der itself attraaive and to have its praises sung by the full choir of
newspaper reporters. This I hold to be my duty; it is certainly a pleas-
ure. But the manufacture of notices and gossip for the edification of
this or that member of the profession and his clientele of friends is
neither, and is never to be looked for in these columns.
LES BRIGANDS,” the"Marjolaine,” and the rest of the droller- August 9,1879
ies of the late houffe season in the California Theatre are per- Opera Bouffe
*4 haps not exaaly the sort of pegs on which to hang my scrap of
83Opéra Bouffe	parchment; their slightness of itselfrenders such an attempt somewhat hazardous. One may have some little to say in favor of the clever gri- mace or bit of suggestive espieglierie that frequently goes so far toward making the success of the light-weight music of which these things are made up; but the very quality that makes the things go, leaves it almost out of the question to treat them in any serious light. And yet the whole matter of opera bouffe, as we have known it in this country since the advent of Tosti and the " Grande Duchesse,” has its serious side and its valuable lesson for us—if we care to see and learn—and I am not at all certain that it is not from this direction rather than from the more pretentious sporadic attempts at Grand Opera that our na- tional taste for the lyric drama is to be eventually evolved, if such a thing is ever to grow up amongst us. That the development of such a taste— in any degree that may entitle it to be considered as a natural one— is a matter of extreme doubt, lies, I think, in the very nature—firstly, of the thing itself, and secondly, of the time in which we live. I doubt whether opera, in the sense in which we know it, could have come into existence in our day; to exist at all it is necessary that it should be at once a tradition and a means of culture. As a tradition we retain it, and educate ourselves into a somewhat of liking for (appreciation, we call it) this most anomalous of stage representations. It is a taste that requires to be cultivated; but we have been told by the wiser gen- erations before us (whose lead we are willing to follow in our pleas- ures, at least) that it is a refined and elevated one, and we assimilate it with all its absurdities and improbabilities. As a means of culture we make it a stepping-stone to at least somewhat of a study of music— up, and not down, as a musician would consider it—learning through the effect of the dramatic music upon our emotions to know that there is such an art in which we may after all have some concern, and ending perhaps by caring for the music itself when we meet it in the purer forms in which it exists for its own sake instead of as a mere accessory of stage effect or decoration. So that, for the present at least, we may consider that we have a use for opera of some sort (I am thinking of it as something apart from the lyric drama of Wagner and the tendency to be clearly discerned in Verdi’s latest work*), and I ♦Otello. 84think it becomes an important question as to just what kind of opera Opera Bouffe
is likely to most fully meet that want and be of the greatest service in
preparing the way for some real and valuable thing.
THE good that I look for as a result of the opera bouffe perform- August 9,1879
ances, that may nowadays be said to have become an almost
permanent institution, is rather in the satiety, the utter wearying
of the public ear with the jingle and vapidity of the light diet they
afford, than in any lasting or satisfying effect they are likely to have.
Those French composers, who have furnished the major portion of
this musical dissipation, have themselves begun to realize this con-
dition in their foreign audiences; the demand for something better
has had its noticeable effect on such works as "Le Petit Due” and
" Madame Favart.” According to German accounts of Offenbach’s
latest work, "Les Contes d’Hoffmann” is even less bouffe, and has less
of mere jingle than its predecessors; it is simply a comic opera. The
text is clean, the music respectable throughout. In this country we
may not yet have entirely wearied of the froth and sizzle of the lighter
things of Lecocq and Herve; we are fresher than our friends of Paris
and Vienna and have a less varied menu to choose from. But it will
surely come. We shall grow tired of the whole thing. We shall throw
it overboard once and forever, and when we have got safely rid of it,
it will be scarcely a fortnight before we have forgotten that it ever
had an existence. It is our way. Then what? Italian opera? I can not
think it. If the French opera bouffe is an absurdity, Italian opera of the
school of Bellini, Donizetti and their imitators (this embraces the rep-
ertoire up to the later Verdi) is scarcely less so. I can not imagine either
fashion or tradition obtaining a lasting hold upon the art develop-
ment of such a people as we are, and without the support of these
artificial stimulants Italian opera becomes an impossible thing.
1HAVE my doubt of the value of any careful analysis of the play- August 30,1879
ing or of an artist whose style is so entirely subjective (or rather Subjective
erratic, which is more nearly accurate), that in speaking of his in- Interpretation
terpretation of a composition one is after all only describing the mo-
mentary mood or caprice—whichever it may be—that controls him.
85Subjective It is simply a kaleidoscopic style that depends largely on an accident-
Interpretation al arrangement of the bits of color; they may fall into most harmon-
ious and delightful combination and give great pleasure; they are,
however, quite likely to present only dull grays or crude inartistic ef-
fects, and often become positively disagreeable.
Artists who abandon themselves as entirely as Mr. Boscovitz* does
to the subjective manner of treating the composition of others are in
the very nature of things unreliable in their interpretation. If they
chance—as in the instance of Rubinstein — to be possessed of the
same quality of genius that created the works, the reading often be-
comes very interesting since it acquires a quality and individuality
that is of itself of great value. When, however, the interpretation is
really none at all, but results from the caprice of a player who, while
he possesses many charming qualities, betrays neither that of genius
nor even artistic coherence or consistency, the pleasure that one ex-
pects to derive from a Sonata of Beethoven, or Nocturne of Chopin,
may become the very reverse; the obtrusion of an individual that is
neither Chopin nor Beethoven is offensive and in bad taste, and smacks
not a little of an arrogant assumption on the part of the player that
it is him and his reading of the composition that one is to receive as
the true interpretation of it, and to consider as of a value at least equal
to that of the composer as expressed in the printed edition he saw fit
to give to the world. Mr. Boscovitz always does some things delight-
fully; it is too much to ask of any artist that he should play equally
well in all styles. In his own peculiar style Mr. Boscovitz produces
charming effects, and plays certain things—as, for instance, the greater
portion of Chopin’s "Berceuse” the other evening—as well as it is
possible to play them.
August 30,1879 rr^HE "Hungarian Suites” of Raff, which formed the strong
Raff I number of Mr. Herold’s concluding Matinee of the present
JL series—last Wednesday—is one of those works which present
in a very pronounced manner the more objectionable characteristics
of that composer. It is prolix, barren in thematic material, overelab-
orated to a degree, and trivial and unmeaning in spite of a certain
*Fabri-Boscovitz seiies of “Concerts Intimes”at Dashaway Hall.
86pompous breadth of treatment which has become one of the manner- Raff
isms of the newer school of orchestral writing. At the same time this
Suite—and, indeed, the same may be said of most of Raff's compo-
sitions—contains many beautiful moments (notably the commence-
ment of the last movement, "In the Czar da”), and is scored in an ef-
fective and frequently original manner; in fact, it would be a beauti-
ful composition if it had only more music in it. Raff, who occasionally
does a thing of such supreme beauty that one is compelled to class
him among the composers by the grace of God, has thrown into the
world so many compositions of this sort—things without any better
claim to existence than the mere fact that, as he writes easily, he might
as well do it as not, even though he happens to have no material at
hand to do it with—that I haye lost all faith in him and well nigh all
interest in his newer works. He is a man with a passion for writing
who indulges that passion incessantly; he has the fatal facility that
enables him to write well even when he has nothing to say, and who
elaborates that "nothing” with every modern device of startling mod-
ulation and bizarre instrumentation until to the unwary and non-
critical listener it begins to wear the air of a real "something” of more
or less profundity and value. He twaddles as much as he talks, mix-
ing his twaddle with his genuine matter in a skillful—well-nigh
masterly— manner, and for every composition of value that he has
given to the world he has produced a dozen that are not worth the
paper on which they were written. Among these latter productions
I should class this Suite; a pompous, windy, inflated, clever nothing.
THE immense success that attended the Wilhelmj concerts of last January 3 o, 18 8 o
week has continued during the present one, the audiences being Wilhelmj
smaller but quite as enthusiastic. Mr. Wilhelmj, who on the first
evenings exhausted his travelling repertoire, has since been playing
some of those compositions in which he is heard to the best advan-
tage— notably the Chaconne of Bach and Concertos of Bruch and
Beethoven — and materially deepened the impression made by his
former efforts; he is indeed a magnificent artist. I still seem to miss in
his playing the sympathetic quality that should be one of the first re-
quisites in a truly great violinist; the tone is large, full, and round, butWilhelmj it does not penetrate, and lacks that indefinable something that is the
main charm of what I call the true violin tone. One hears it occasion-
ally in players of lesser rank. Mr. Louis Schmidt Jr. has it, and from
what I hear from others (I did not hear him on his visit two years
ago), young Lichtenberg in a still higher degree. Those of our readers
who still remember the tone of Paul Jullien, who played here many
years ago, will understand precisely what I mean; it is a quality that,
excepting to one who has heard and felt it, is simply impossible to
describe. Of the fine violinists who have played in this city during
the past twelve years, Wieniawski alone possessed it in any great de-
gree; but he was then already suffering from disease of the heart and
playing with great reserve, rarely giving free vent to what was within
him, and only occasionally appearing at his best. This true quality—
what in the voice we call timbre—one has naturally or not at all; it is
not to be acquired, nor, when any one lacks it, can its absence be in
any way made good. It is the most precious quality of the violinist;
everything else is secondary to it. This I have felt in almost every-
thing Mr. Wilhelmj has done here, but particularly in the Concerto
of Beethoven (of which he played the first movement on Wednes-
day), and in the transcribed Nocturnes of Chopin. In these latter, es-
pecially, I have seemed to feel the effort to attain a warmth of tone
and style that is foreign to his nature; there was an evident intention
in the right direction constantly frustrated by the naturel of the player,
which threw a chill over the performance, and made of the Nocturnes
something very different from what Chopin ever dreamed of. Mere
sliding up or down the strings or varying the tone from forte to piano
will not do it, and compositions that we know in their original form
and the clear-cut beauty of the Chopinesque pianoforte style, become
positively offensive when so treated.
In the case of this Nocturne in G minor (Op. 32.), transposed to
E minor and an octave above its original register, the effect was al-
most barbarous. The Beethoven Concerto was on the whole a very
fine performance, very broad and noble. Some of the exquisite grace
of the lovely composition (it is one of the pearls of our Beethoven
literature) was lacking, and somewhat of warmth.The Cadenza, also,
strikes me as over-long and pointless. Of the three that I know—those
88of David, Joachim, and Vieuxtemps—either is preferable from a mu-
sician's standpoint. But Wilhelmj played his superbly, and would
probably have done so had it been twice as difficult. The Chaconne
of Bach was also a thing to be grateful for; it is in the broad, grand
style of Bach that Wilhelmj is finer than any violinist I have ever
heard, excepting only Joachim. What he lacks that Joachim has is
what he will never attain: the fully satisfying quality of tone, sugges-
tive of great warmth held in artistic reserve, and the immense sweep
of the bow that makes it seem almost inexhaustible. Wilhelmj shifts
his bow constantly in what in a player of less repose would seem a ner-
vous manner; he frequently cuts a note in two (dividing it between an
up and down bow), and occasionally plays sad havoc with his rhythm
(especially in anticipating the commencement of a measure) through
his carelessness in this respect. The Concerto of Max Bruch* was new
to me; I had previously heard only the slow movement. It impresses
me as one of the finest compositions of its style that we possess,worthy
of a place with those of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Joachim. Wil-
helmj plays it as though he were of the same opinion, and in a man-
ner that cannot fail to impress this upon his hearers. It was a very
noble performance.
THE world's greatest violinist," who began by announcing his
performances as the first evening instrumental concerts ever giv-
en in this city, when it would not be a difficult matter to reckon
up at least fifty such within a few seasons; who promised a grand or-
chestra under Mr. Herold, and then gave a scrub band led by Messrs.
Schultz, Schmidt, Vogrich, and Owens (more or less), during the tuttis,
but whose orchestral accompaniments have been of the rarest; who
advertises Bach's Chaconne as rarely hitherto attempted in public on
account of its "almost insurmountable difficulty," when, in fact, it is
in the repertoire of a dozen violinists whom I could name and who
play it in public;—this really great violinist, who plays the classical
things superbly and does not disdain to lend his magnificent Stradi-
varius to the gallery for "Swanee River," will play at Baldwin's The-
atre next week, beginning on Monday night with the Mendelssohn
*The First, in G minor.
Wilhelmj
February j, 1880
Wilhelmj
89Wilhelmj Concerto, which is sure to be a performance that no one should fail
to hear. The great violinist has evidently a wrong idea of the country
he has come into and the manner in which it is necessary to announce
one’s self in it, and also seems to have some foolish and ignorant news-
paper friends. But he is a great artist, all the same; one whose like we
shall not soon hear again.
February 7,1880 rTpHE California Theatre recitals of Mr. Henry Ketten were term-
Henry Ketten I inated rather abruptly by the matinee performance of Wednes-
day; somewhat unaccountably, as the audiences of Tuesday and
Wednesday were quite large, and the interest in Mr. Ketten’s playing
seemed to grow with each recital. To those who had heard Mr. Ketten
during the first week of the Patti season, and formed their opinion of his
powers from his performance of the hackneyed programme that had
served him during the concert tour, his first recitals at Dashaway Hall
proved a genuine surprise; in the concerts we had heard only the
player who desired to catch the general public, in the recitals we made
the acquaintance of the artist. And—setting aside all questions of a
difference of schools or methods—I may say that there can be no
question that in many respects Mr. Ketten is a really great artist.
His performance of Beethoven’s great Sonata Op. 53 (the so-called
"Waldstein” Sonata), of the Chopin Polonaise in A flat, of the Liszt
transcription of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, and of parts of Schu-
mann’s "'Carnaval,” were masterly; nothing could possibly be finer.
Along with an unfailing technical accuracy and beautiful control of
his tone, there was a spirit of bravura that exercised an almost elec-
trical influence ; it was the playing that makes an audience enthusiastic;
and carries even the critic quite out of sight of his merely objective
standpoint—it was great. In so wide a range of music of different
styles as that played by Mr. Ketten there will naturally be inequalities;
no artist can be expected to do everything equally well. If the Beet1
hoven Sonata in C was a superb performance, that in F minor (the
"Appassionata”) was in some things less satisfactory—especially in
the variations of the middle movement; the Chopin ' ' Berceuse ’ ’ seem-
ed to want both delicacy and repose; in the pieces of Handel one
felt overmuch the modernizing touch of the brilliant concert pianist.
90The Schumann ''Romanza” (in F sharp), as well as Mendelssohn's
"Rondo Capriccioso,” suffered from what I take to be Mr. Ketten’s
weakest side, the want of a true legato, especially in cantabile passages.
His own things he plays magnificently. And some of them—the "Ser-
enade Espagnole,” "Castagnetti,” and the famous "Caprice”—I find
charming; not great work in any sense, but beautifully made, and very
fresh and original.
7k MORE marked contrast than that between the pianoforte style
AA ofMr.KettenandthatofMr.Vogrich—of the Wilhelm j con-
jL Icerts—it would be difficult to find. Mr. Ketten impresses the
musician as an exceedingly intelligent artist with a technique made
up of specialties which he uses with admirable judgment. InMr.Vo-
grich, on the other hand, is to be recognized at once the intellectual
musician, who, with a sound, genuine technique that is all-sufficient
for musical purposes, subordinates his execution to its legitimate
place, secondary to the thing that is to be done with it. He uses it as
a means, not as an object and prime factor. His training at the piano-
forte is admirable, and as a result his playing makes what I should call
a thoroughly healthy impression. One thinks first of the beautiful
music, and only on second thought of the beautiful manner in which
it was rendered. Or, let me say, he shows us the inner spirit of his
composer (always supposing it not to be Liszt); whereas in the case
of Mr. Ketten it is after all likely to be this dazzle and glitter of the
surface passage that attracts. Those who heard Mr. Vogrich’s playing
of the Chopin Concerto and the Beethoven Sonata will understand
fully what I mean; it was Chopin and Beethoven, never Vogrich. To
know how well he accompanies, one must have watched the delicate
appreciation with which he filled in, while he conducted, the bits in
the Beethoven Violin Concerto from the orchestral score. It was a
delightful thing to listen to, and a pleasure to see. The single com-
position of Mr. Vogrich that I have heard inclines me to have great
respect for him. Next week, however, we are to hear an ouverture
for orchestra, from which we shall probably get a better idea of his
powers.
91
Henry Ketten
February 7,1880
Max VogrichFebruary 7,1880
"Pinafore”at the
Bush Street Theatre
THE "Pinafore” revival at the Bush Street Theatre is particu-
larly interesting from a musical point of view, as affording the
first opportunity of hearing the solo parts of Sullivan’s bright
and—to me—charming music thoroughly well sung. I doubt wheth-
er there has been a better cast than this one even in the crack perform-
ances of Boston and New York, or, indeed, whether there has been
one so good. The beautiful voice and excellent method of Miss Mon-
tague are more than enough to make amends for the quiet—almost
tameness, and yet hardly that—of her acting; and Miss Melville, in
accepting the part of Buttercup, has, so to speak, created it in this
city. We have never before either seen or heard the part; in the hands
of Miss Melville it is full of character and has its proper musical value.
Mr. Toedt sings the music of "Ralph” with the same refined artistic
sense and beautiful style that characterized his work during the Patti
season, and has only to gain a little more repose of manner to make
his performance of the role nearly perfect. Mr. Turner’s Captain is
thoroughly enjoyable in every respect—remarkably well sung and
acted, with a good-natured bonhomie that leaves the final denouement
perfectly natural; while Mr. Peakes—whose conception of Deadeye
seems to me to want humor—makes a really valuable bass part out
of what has hitherto been the neglected musical side of the cast.
Mr. Barrows is my ideal Sir Joseph. I don’t think it would be pos-
sible to improve on the courtly dignity and refined humor with which
he invests the part. The chorus is the weak side of the stage; it is about
the worst I ever heard. The orchestra, also, does its work in a most
inefficient manner; not because it has not plenty of excellent mater-
ial in it, but because it is in the hands of a conductor who seems to be
utterly out of place at its head. I never saw such a mess as he makes
of the most simple rhythms and bits of accompaniments, and through-
out the performance found myself in a constant terror lest the whole
thing should go to pieces over some trifling rallentando or change of
tempo. I pity a chorus and orchestra under such an uncertain and
timid baton. The solo artists can take care of themselves, but chorus
and orchestra are obliged to grope about in the dark and get into all
sorts of trouble, for which they get all the blame, when they are not
in the least at fault.
9*R. VogriclTs composition* is one on which I should not wish February 14,1880
to — indeed, could not—form a final judgment on hear- Vogrich
ing it but once, under such adverse circumstances, but it im-
pressed me as having many qualities that betoken great talent, and
the promise of fine things in the future. Thematically it is fresh and
interesting, without being strikingly original; the themes have, how-
ever, the genuineness and spontaneity of real thought that is quite
sure ultimately to find its own forms of expression. The instrumen-
tation seems to be clever and shows the result of considerable rou-
. tine, as well as feeling for orchestral effect. Of this, however, one was
compelled to judge more from what was suggested than what was
done, which was frequently not at all what the composer had evi-
dently designed.
The weak sides in Mr. VogriclTs work seem to me to be a certain
want of repose — especially in his harmonic construction, which is
exceedingly restless — and the absence of complete certainty in his
own mind with regard to his form. Not but there is discernible in
this Ouverture a clearly defined formal intention, rather successfully
carried out, but there is also to be felt throughout it the fact that Mr.
Vogrich is not yet quite clear as to his models; his evident predilec-
tion for the Poemes Symphoniques of Liszt struggles at times with his
recollection of the great Leonore Ouverture, and again with the In-
troduction to "Tristan” of Wagner, and between them all he has evi-
dently not yet entirely decided where to cast his lines. I hope he will
think better of it, and conclude to stick by Beethoven in the end. I
think it will be the safer anchor for him. For he has undoubtedly
much talent of a high order and beautiful quality; he is of the stuff of
which great artists are made. That he did not play the Weber "Con-
certstiick” well does not signify; he was evidently unprepared, tired,
and wretchedly accompanied. But he can play beautifully, and in time
will write beautifully. In his interest I can not wish it, but for ours I
should be glad if he could remain in this city. We should be the gainer
for the constant activity among us of such an artist-nature allied with
the freshness and hopefulness of youth. Naturally, it would not last;
the sordid, superficial nature of our life and work would soon either
*Overture, “Marmion.”
93Vogrich destroy the quality of the work or drive the artist from us. But while
it lasted it would be helpful. And I know of no place in the world
that needs an infusion of new, healthy artist-blood more than the one
we live and write in_______________
February 14,1880 TTNSTANCES of young singers who carry the evidence of their un-
Criticism of a I ripeness on to the concert stage are so frequent with us, and what
Young Vocalist JL1S sa^ or written about the critic who happens to take enough in-
terest in them to tell them candidly of their mistake in doing so, or
the faults they display, is mostly so entirely misunderstood and so
rarely attributed to what seems to me the only motive one could have
for writing about them at all, that I am often half-inclined to wish there
were no such things as debutantes. Certainly, the most of them would,
at least, be much the better off without either the teachers who rush
them prematurely before the public, or the foolish friends who, out of
sheer ignorance, flatter them into the belief that they have the power
to sustain themselves there; the flattery of friends and honeyed prom-
ises of designing or misguided teachers are generally more palatable
than the truth, and while one is young, one is very apt to prefer the
sweeter meat to the more wholesome. I think it must be about a year
since I wrote of Miss_that she had a pretty, light, flexible, soprano
voice of a very little timbre, and scarcely any charm of tone-quality; that
she had evident talent for a certain kind of florid singing, and that, with
much work of the right kind, she might hope some day to become a
very good singer in what I consider an utterly worthless and unmu-
sical school. This, or something to the same effect. And this—after
hearing her performances in the two Wilhelm j matinees of this week
—is what I have to say to her to-day. Miss .... has still her pretty,
light voice and does some of her passages and scales quite neatly, her
trill is frequently very good, her downward scale generally clear (the
upward one mostly the reverse of it), and her staccato at least promis-
ing. But, as a singer, this is all there is of her. And of true singing—
the cantabile, that is after all the foundation of all singing and the only
thing worth seriously considering—she has not the first or remotest
idea. If she has ever been taught how to properly make or sustain a
tone, she certainly forgot all about it in public; from the beginning
94to the end of her work I could see nothing of it. Her attaque is mostly Criticism of a
bad (false), and, as a natural result, her intonation is at times inaccurate; Young Vocalist
her legato and portamento (the one thing she should have been taught
before ever a scale or trill was thought of) in the crudest condition, and
—what seems to me to be the worst blemish in her work—her idea of
phrasing is none at all, or rather, at times, positively abominable.This
was most noticeable in the two ballads that she sang as encores; her
numbers on the programme consisted only of worthless, unmusical
variations. If progress in the bad direction in which she was when I
heard her a year ago is progress, or if a somewhat improved trill and
somewhat greater flexibility of voice is improvement, then Miss.... is
progressing and improving. But in all the essentials of a good vocal
school of style she seems to me to stand just about where she did, with
very little to hope for out of the present direction of her training.
It T the Bush Street Theatre "H. M. S. Pinafore” has been succeeded
M by "'The Chimes of Normandy,” which has been, in the main,
JL JL a very pleasant performance. Next week's repertoire will be made
up of "The Bohemian Girl” and "The Grand Duchess,” in the latter
of which Miss Melville made a great success at the beginning of her
San Francisco career. I hear from Mr. Locke that he expeas shortly
to produce Sullivan's new opera, "The Pirates of Penzance.”
February 14,1880
Miss Melville at the
Bush Street Theatre
THE Handel and Haydn Society is studying Mendelssohn's February 2.1,1880
"Saint Paul,” presumably for public performance. Now that The Handel and
this society has found, in Mr. Gustav Hinrichs, an able and com- Haydn Society
petent conduaor, it is to be hoped that it will see the wisdom of leav-
ing the musical direction of its affairs entirely in his hands; in which
case we may hope for an eventual good result from its work. Never-
theless, it seems to me as though "Saint Paul” were rather big game
for it to fly at in the present condition of affairs. I wonder whether it
is possible for any society of musical amateurs to be modest, or have
any idea of its own weaknesses and shortcomings?
95February zi,1880
Mr. Louis Lisser
THE programme for the matinee which is to be given at the
Bush Street Theatre on next Thursday afternoon—for the ben-
efit of Mrs. William V. Wells—contains, among other attrac-
tive numbers, Schumann’s "Papillons” for the pianoforte, to be
played by Mr. Louis Lisser, which, as nearly as I can recollect, will be
the first public performance in this city of that interesting and beau-
tiful work. It is of its composer’s early period (Op. 2.) and was written
before he had subjected his glowing fancy and poetic imagination to
the restraints and limitations of conventional form; he was still at this
time striking out lustily right and left into new paths and unsounded
channels, both of form and technique, bringing to the surface many
a bright pearl of thought or glittering gem of pianoforte effect, and
horrifying the respectable Dryasdusts of German newspaper criticism
by the audacity with which he ventured to write what he thought and
felt, instead of confining himself to what they had been taught to con-
sider as proper and regelrecht. The "Papillons” is a series of vividly
characteristic sketches in color, alternately grave, humorous, and sen-
timental; at times almost bizarre with the extravagance that is part of
Schumann’s earlier method, and again tender and delicate, as he alone
could be when in the softer mood. It is altogether a delightful work,
and Mr. Lisser (whom I have heard play it in private) plays it with a
full appreciation of all its subtler quality.THE MUNDWYLER COLLECTION OF CHAMBER MUSIC
THE PAINTINGS OF FRANCIS McCOMAS
AN INFORMAL TALK BEFORE THE MUSIC SECTION
OF THE ADELPHIAN CLUB IN ALAMEDAHi
THE MUNDWYLER COLLECTION OF CHAMBER MUSIC
Contribution to The Occident, University of California}
| "HAVE before me a memorandum-catalog of the large collection
of chamber music which has within the last few days been present-
ed to the University of California by the Messrs. Fred, John and
Louis Mundwyler; a veritable library of especial value, since it
contains, besides the well known trios, quartettes and quintettes
for stringed instruments by the classic masters, many examples of
the work of composers who, though less celebrated, have written
much that is beautiful, but that is rarely heard and—generally
Ip speaking—difficult of access.
Such names as Onslow, Lindpaintner, Ries and Hummel are al-
most unknown to the music student of our day. Romberg, Reicha
and others whom we find here represented—.frequently by really im-
portant works—are entirely forgotten on our programs; they are the
little masters of music, so to speak, and are lost in the shadow of the
great names. They are the minor poets whom we know only through
the anthologies, and of whom we often wonder how it came about
that the bulk of their work should be so entirely neglected. A con-
siderable number of these ensembles (there are about two hundred
and fifty titles in the list) are for wind instruments or combinations
of wind and strings; some of them very rare, and obtainable only with
great difficulty: others out of print, and scarcely known excepting to
the antiquary.
The Mundwyler brothers, through whose liberality and public
spirit this important collection becomes accessible, are of our most
respected instrumentalists; they were amongst the earliest of our or-
chestra players who were available for symphonic work, and are of
that”old guard”that embraces in its rolls of honor such names as
Ernst Schlott, a master on the horn, whose equal for beauty of tone
and phrase I have never heard, Mr. A. Spadina, still—after nearly fifty
years of service—in our orchestra, an admirable clarinetist and excel-
lent all-around musician, and J. L. Mundwyler, our first oboe, of
whom, after his also nearly fifty years of service, any symphony or-
chestra might be proud.
September 1907
99October 24,1901
THE PAINTINGS OF FRANCIS McCOMAS [Contribution to
the San Francisco Catt\
I FANCY that it will have been the experience of almost everyone
who has ever attempted to write about music that when it comes to
the describing of a composition—that is, the saying of anything that
shall convey to the reader any coherent idea of the thing talked about
—one has well-nigh arrived at the impossible. This certainly was the
view of Robert Schumann, who, once in his editorial days, after strug-
gling through a column of vain effort to describe a new symphony
(by Onslow, I believe), gave up the task as fruitless with the remark:
’'After all, there is no telling you anything about the symphony that
will be of the least value; the only way to do that would be to send
a score to each of my readers—who can read it. The others would
have to hear the piece.”
I think it is much the same with any attempt to talk about pic-
tures. One may catalogue the subjects, which means nothing at all,
since the subject is the least important part of a picture—or should be.
One may dilate on the technique or methods of the painter and have
said nothing at all, since no description of them can be made to con-
vey any real thing to the reader. Ruskin exhausted volumes of his
superb descriptive analysis over Turner. I doubt whether it ever help-
ed anyone to know anything about Turner until they had seen his
work. There is no printed word that will describe the beauty of a line,
no cunningly contrived phrase that will convey the charm of a tint.
You may, indeed, say of a painter that he is or is not a fine colorist, or
that he draws well or does not draw well; but it seems to me that one
has in a such case to be pretty sure of one's judgment as to whether the
painter's coloring or drawing is, after all, not precisely that that he re-
quires for his purpose—for the best expression of himself. One heard
constantly in the New York picture shows of some twenty odd years
ago—from some of the painters as well as the dilettanti—that Homer
Martin couldn't draw, and—I have heard that also—that he had no
feeling for color! I believe these people really thought so—then. Very
few of them would venture to think so to-day, now that Martin is
ranked by the world as one of the few great painters our country has
> produced, and has his honored place among the best men of our time.
100The fact of it is, that while he could draw in the sense that would i T& P<dntmp*f
have satisfied the critics, if he saw fit, and while he understood £he,’’ praw}3 McComas
resources of the palette with the most brilliant colorist of them, ali,>\	| Y 2
to Martin the display of his technical skill in these matters was as
nothing or less than nothing. He had something of his own to say,
and found for himself the technique with which he could most ade-
quately say it, and this seems to me to be the only right way to paint
—or in fact, to do anything. As to the value of the thing said, that is
entirely a question of the man who says it.
All of which means that in calling attention to the work of Fran-
cis McComas, which is at present to be seen at Vickery’s art rooms on
Post Street, I am going to attempt no description of the pictures them-
selves, no parade of technical terms or the set phrases that generally
go to make—and muddle up — picture notices; no art writing, in
fact. Mr. McComas’ pictures impress one as quite above that sort of
thing. They are entirely that or there is nothing at all to be said about
them. It is work in which there is—and can be—no question of mere
technique; it bears on its face the conviction that the aim—the con-
stant aim — has been to say something nobly, beautifully; that the
struggle with the method — and it is always a struggle, and a hard
one, for the artist—has never once deluded the painter into an im-
pression that the trick of technique was worthy of a place on his can-
vas alongside the poetic intention. With Mr. McComas, it is what he
has to say that is of the first value, and it seems to me, of a very high
value; when he is at his best—which, of course, no man can be al-*
ways—his means of expression are absolutely adequate. Where he has
not been entirely successful, it will be found, I think, that the struggle
is still with himself rather than with his medium; that it is the idea,
rather than the work in which it is to be clothed, that has not yet shap-
ed itself fully to his satisfaction — that is not as yet entirely crystal-
lized. But it is precisely in this idea, this poetic insight with the charm
of nature, this far and deep seeing artist-eye that finds in everything
around it that higher beauty that the rest of us would all so gladly
find there but can only find through the guidance of the true artist,
that the worth of Mr. McComas’ work lies. The twenty-four little pic-
tures which he has hung at Vickery’s are just so many little poems,
IOI' The Paintings, bf ¿quatrains and lyrics—that will linger forever in the memory, with
Francis NicCojnas Jfiejre and there among them one that rises to the dignity of a full-
f i •* \ y l V 1:1 i / 'fledged sonnet, and has a majesty and symphonic breadth of form and
subject that reminds one of the best things of Keats. One would not
willingly miss having seen and studied this little volume of poems;
they are in themselves an education in a direction in which we all—
for we are all Philistines in the main—have everything to learn from
men like Mr. McComas.
AN INFORMAL TALK BEFORE THE MUSIC SECTION OF
THE ADELPHIAN CLUB IN ALAMEDA [From the Alameda
Tidings']
October n, 1902. "THAVE said a hundred times, on being urged to discuss musical
I matters, that as far as I could see, music—that is, music itself, apart
JLfrom the mere details of the technical side of it—was not a thing
to be talked about with the likelihood of either profit or satisfaction,
any more than questions of religion or the higher ethics. We believe
things, or we don’t believe them; and in the main we can scarcely tell
why. W e think, of course, that we can account to ourselves for our be-
liefs, and have our little round of logic or no-logic with which we bol-
ster up and fortify what we like to consider our views; but let us once
endeavor to free ourselves from the powerful influence of heredity—
let us segregate that that we have been taught to believe from that
which we can fully recognize as an individual conviction, or that has
had its growth within, out of ourselves—and I fear we shall have to
admit that much, if not the greater part, of what we fancied to be our
own belief is in reality a something that has either been handed down
to us ready made by our intellectual progenitors, or that we have—
unconsciously, most likely—absorbed from other minds through a
sympathetic affinity or kinship.
In the arts I think this is apt to be particularly the case. How other-
wise should we account for the many changes of fashion which each
of them has experienced? Sculpture, as a distinct and recognized art,
the eldest of the sisters, being based upon the representation of the
human form, has been less subject to the caprices of changing taste
102.than either painting or music; nevertheless we find the perfect work
of Phidias and Praxiteles—up to which period the growth and devel-
opment had been normal, gradual and healthy—superseded by the
muscular exaggerations and representations of violent action of the
era of the Laocoons and Wrestlers. It was bad art: meretricious and
vulgar in comparison with the purer grace and refinement of what
had preceded it; but it was a novelty—and the very public that had
constantly before its eyes the exalted beauty of the Parthenon, the
Temple of Hermes, the Shrine of Victory and a hundred other ex-
amples of what has endured even to our day as the perfection of the
sculptor’s work, turned from these masterpieces to lavish its applause
on the degenerates. It was a new fashion, and it was welcome.
We find precisely the same thing occurring during the Italian Ren-
aissance ; Donatello yielding place to Verrochio and Cellini; in France,
Jean Goujou, in many respects a worthy successor of the best of them
and yet in himself a change of fashion from the earlier seeking after
strict truth of line to a certain exaggeration of length of line, had in
his time to make way for the classic school (French Classic, mind:
really sham classic), which was again displaced by the prettinesses of
the Belleuse and the sculptors of the boudoir, who in their turn have
been relegated to the lumber-room (where indeed they belong) in
favor of the sturdier men of our own time—Falguiere, Rodin, and
their followers, who embody for us of to-day the truth in their work,
even as the contortionists and confectioner modelers were held to be
the prophets of true art in theirs.
In painting—a younger art, by far—there have been since its be-
ginning (not so long before the advent of the Renaissance in Italy),
a greater number of distinct changes of fashion than I have time here
to enumerate; schools fundamentally opposed to each other in almost
everything that goes to the painting of a picture or decoration of a
wall-space. Yet each of these schools had its devout believers; each
of them stood in its day for the nearest possible approach to the ideal
of perfection.
The changes of fashion in literature—distinct changes of fashion,
I mean, as distinguished from a change of interest in things them-
selves or growth towards lucidity of expression or grace of style—
103
An Informal Talk
on MusicAn Informal Talk
on Music
have been numberless; you are all, doubtless, at least as familiar with
them as I am. What I wish to arrive at here is that we should note the
fact that there accompanied each of these changes a development;
that the new thing was each time taken to be the true thing. Claude
was a belief in his time; Turner, thanks to his prophet Ruskin, be-
came equally a belief at a not much later day. Raphael constituted the
true faith of the painter up to the advent of Carlo Dolci and the sen-
timentalists; when the tide of fashion had strewn the beach of neg-
lect with the weakling followers that they generated, there came the
pre-Raphaelites, believed in even by the Ruskins, and loudly acclaim-
ed as the regenerators of art. Who believes in the pre-Raphaelites to-
day? Who will affirm that Holman Hunt, the pre-Raphaelite, was a
truer painter than, say, Millet, with his semi-impressionistic tenden-
cies, which of themselves were the rankest heresies of scarcely a gen-
enation before his time, or that Gabriel Rossetti was true where Dag-
nan-Bouveret is false? Each of these men, each of these schools, was be-
lieved in—was received as the whole truth—by a large body of fol-
lowers. Each engrossed the world in its time, and each was a faith.
And nine out of ten, nineteen out of twenty, of these beliefs, these
faiths, have been proven by the test of time and survival to have been
not beliefs and not faiths at all—since something of a true faith will live
on through eternity — but fashions that grew up with no stronger
hold upon the soil from which they sprang than just sufficed to keep
them there until it came to be their turn to be up-rooted by the very
hands that erst had nourished them; they were each in its turn forced
to make room for another and a newer fashion.
I speak of these things because I am going to ask you to follow
with me some of the changes of fashion in the art of music, in the
hearing and studying of it, and to note—if you can find it in your-
selves to have somewhat of confidence in my viewpoint—how, pre-
cisely as in literature and the other arts, it is only what is best and truest
out of each period that has had in it the longer life; how that portion
of it that was meretricious and designed solely to attract attention
through its novelty, a new fashion in short, lived only the brief life of
a mere fashion, and passed into limbo unhonored and unwept.
In music, until we arrive at recent schools, the citing of instances
104with which the student may be expected to be familiar, is more dif- An Informal Talk
ficult than in the other arts, since, while galleries and reproductions on Music
of all sorts keep before us the records of painting and sculpture from
the beginnings of them (both the good and the bad), music has had
no home other than the temporary shelter given it by the public while
itVas in favor. It might be a welcome guest on the one day; on the
next it was quite as likely as not to be displaced by a newer favorite,
and to become as much a thing of the past as last year's bonnet or the
tender passions of our salad days. It is only within the last hundred
years that there has been much printing of music; only within the last
fifty that the printing of it has been in the hands of enterprising, up-
to-date publishers, who make market for composers, good and bad
alike, and who fatten on the popular craving for novelty and trash in
the spirit of shop-keepers who look only to the salability of their
wares. Remember that for more than fifty years the name of Bach
was known in the world only to a few musicians and students; that
Handel for a like period was scarcely remembered at all outside of
England—and very little there; that for quite as long there was not
a pianist in Europe who had the temerity to play a Beethoven sonata
in public (or, indeed, who cared to); and then imagine the complete
oblivion into which the lesser men would sink in the face of a change
of fashion. Beethoven and Schubert were shelved in Vienna when
Rossini came into the field with his facile melodies and sugar-plum
roulades. Mozart himself was forced into the background by de-
menti (whom we remember in our day only by his one set of studies),
and the Dusseks and Steibelts, and their ilk of brilliant pianists, as they
were rated;—Mozart, who had written the most beautiful music the
world had known, but who had gone out of fashion!
When I began by saying that, apart from questions of technique,
music was not a thing to be talked about with profit, and that in so
many matters we simply either believe or do not believe without be-
ing able to account to ourselves satisfactorily for our beliefs, I meant
to prepare you, as far as I might, for my saying now that in speaking
of the what and how to study, it is not in the least my intention to sug-
gest that you should like anything in music for any other reason than
that you like it, or to cease to care for the things that you do like be-
io5An Informal Talk cause somebody tells you they are bad. Setting aside the question of
on Music honesty to yourself, neither you nor the cause of good music would
be the gainer by such self-deceit; both must inevitably suffer. What
I hope to do is to impress upon you somewhat my conviction that it
is open to everyone, through the much hearing and study of the work
of the great masters, to form for himself a standard—to grow up to
it, as it were—which shall be for the individual a true one, and ac-
cording to which each one will be able to judge for himself what to
him is good or bad without much danger of mistaking the one for
the other, or of accepting a sham for a verity. It is to be said in this
connection that music, to the hearer at least, is impalpable, evanes-
cent. It passes before one a panorama, as it were, of tone, and affects
one chiefly through the emotions; if the emotions aroused or evoked
by it are pleasurable, one likes the music; if they are not pleasurable, one
is bored. To which the reasonable reply—and it is one, I beg you to re-
member, that covers the whole subject—is that to those who are un-
knowing (you observe I avoid the term "ignorant,” though it is very
nearly that that I mean ) in any art, or indeed in most matters, it is usu-
ally the superficial, the obvious thing, that attracts and interests. The
less you know of painting the more likely you are to be entrapped by
that mere external prettiness of subject which to the connoisseur means
nothing at all. The less you know of the better, higher literature the
more possible will be your interest in the shallow magazine pabulum
with which our market is flooded and our center-tables littered. In
music it is even so.
There is much doing of music in our day—much playing of instru-
ments and singing of songs, much going to concerts and opera; it is
one of the vices of our time—I should say, one of our approved meth-
ods of time-wasting. For any use of our time that does not include some
form of serious thought, some degree of growth of the better self, is
a waste of that time and an act of injustice to ourselves. There is no
standing still for the soul. And—I give this as an outcome of much
observation in the field of music-study, of talks with people who play
on instruments or sing, of endeavor to find some point of contact with
pupils—the proportion of music-hearers or music-students who are
even aware or willing to be made aware of any serious side to the art,
106of anything in it beyond a mere passing diversion, is extremely small. An Informal Talk
I find that to the average person music is simply an entertainment, on Music
pleasurable when it is pretty and easily understood, perhaps at times
exciting; but as far as its intellectual status is concerned, just a point
above euchre or golf.
It is on this hypothesis, and on this one only, that one is able to
account for the low, shamefully unfit character of the music that is to
be heard in so many of our churches—music unsuitable utterly to
either the solemnity of the service or to the sobriety of thought that
ought to accompany divine worship. That it is unsuitable to its pur-
pose, which, I take it, should be the gentle guidance of the thoughts
to purer and loftier things, the bridging over, as it were, for the senses
of the space between the sordid atmosphere of every-day life and the
more spiritual ether of the sanctuary—that it should be utterly unfit
to do this does not seem to occur to clergymen, music committees or
music makers. So long as it pleases the unthinking ear and is attract-
ive, it answers its purpose; it is listened to and commented on very
much as a concert performance would be, and I imagine it never occurs
to ninety-nine per cent of the church-goers that they have been party
to an utterly wicked perversion of what—treated aright—would be
one of the most solemn and edifying portions of the service.
I cannot be made to believe that a genuine feeling for the fitness
of things is lacking in the great mass of people. I do believe that a
wholesome, clean sense of right and wrong lies deep in the human
heart — undeveloped often, perverted often, but there unquestion-
ably. And if this feeling for the fitness of things, this sense of right
and wrong, is not to be brought into play and applied to the choice
of music when it is called upon for the highest service with which it
is honored, it seems to me that we are doing the art, and ourselves, a
grievous wrong. Here we have an instance where it is our duty—the
plain duty of every one—to learn how to hear aright. And, as I see
it, this consists in the study, as far as we can pursue it, of the best and
purest of the music literature of the church, by which I mean of all
branches of the church. The simple, devout music of the earlier Eng-
lish and Italian composers and those who have reverently followed
in their footsteps, music in which there was no thought of, no oppor-
HAn Informal Talk trinity for the display of self, but in which the sole aim of the com-
on Music poser was to lend, as far as he might, a higher grace and nobler beauty
to that portion of the service that was entrusted to him. If you will
learn to know something of the Englishmen, Tallis, Byrd, and their
contemporaries (Sullivan, Stanford, and a considerable number of the
composers of our own day are of their legitimate followers) —if you
will look diligently into the spirit (as distinguished from the tech-
nique, or method) of Allegri, di Lasso, Palestrina, and the other Ital-
ians of their school; at Schicht, Praetorius, and the Germans of before
Bach’s time, you cannot but revolt at the tawdry, tinsel-laden stuff to
which the average choir-director asks you to listen; you will have
learned to hear for yourself—whether you are musician or not—that
it is unclean.
I have said the "Germans before Bach”; with the master himself you
are not always safe. In his day there had already crept into church
music somewhat of the spirit of over-elaboration, a certain dangerous
—though perhaps not quite unnatural—disposition to consider the
music as music and for its own sake, and a constant drifting some-
what away from its integrity of purpose. It was no longer music, the
hand-maiden; a certain claim to consideration asserted itself; recog-
nition was demanded, and—for its purpose—the music suffered. Bach
is perhaps at his best in his larger compositions for the church—the
Mass in B minor, the Passion according to St. Matthew, and many of
the motets and cantatas; but these were not designed for, nor are they
adapted to use in the service proper, and the greater number of the
things that he did write for that purpose—chorales and shorter an-
thems—are not in a form that makes them generally available for
us. Nearly everything that we have of Bach is unapproachable in its
way, full of the enduring beauty of a great style and a perfection of
workmanship entirely beyond comparison; but for the purposes of the
church—the Protestant church especially—a bit over-elaborated and
contrapuntal, a bit too frequently suggestive of the art that went to
the making of it. And until you have learned to hear the music of your
church in a spirit that unhesitatingly rejects every intrusion of artifici-
ality and every obtrusion upon your notice of technical skill or sen-
suous prettiness; until you have learned to demand entire purity of
108intention as well as execution from those who make that music, you An Informal Talk
are not hearing aright. Of this I am sure, and so, I am convinced, must on Music
be everyone who gives the matter a sober; serious thought.
When we come to the subject of the music of the home we find
ourselves in touch with the native soil into which it is, I should hope,
taken for granted no seed should be willingly permitted to fall but
such as is like to bring forth what is purest and best. Most parents, I
imagine, consider it a paramount duty to influence, as far as possible,
the reading of their children; to guard against the poisoning of the
pure young soul by contact with the indecencies of the average daily
newspaper and other pernicious and contaminating literature. How
many parents will you show me who ever give a thought to so pre-
paring themselves to guide their children in their musical studies that
they shall be able to discriminate between the good or evil influence
of such teaching as may come to them? What proportion of parents,
out of the general average, ever have any idea that it matters in the
least? The music study is considered as something outside of the real
work of the child—an accomplishment supplemental to the general
education. It is not supposed to seriously affect the child's life in any
way or to have any influence on its future. Whereas, this influence,
if we are but able to see rightly what constitutes an influence, is quite
likely to become an important factor in the shaping of the child's
character. To begin with—and this is the gist of it all—it is quite im-
possible that a child should be encouraged to do anything superficially,
and not be the worse for it. And by far the greatest part of the music
teaching of children is superficially done—by incompetent persons in
a superficial way and over a superficial curriculum, and as far as I have
been able to see, most parents prefer that way. It is impossible that a
child, or an adult, for that matter, should devote part of each day to the
playing over of things — etudes, pieces, and what not—of which it
knows only that they are etudes and pieces, but of which it knows
nothing further, and not be the worse for it. To learn with the fingers
only is to learn nothing,—worse than nothing, since it is to employ
the time in doing something not worth thinking about. And unless
the pupil is helped to an understanding that there is something real in
what is being done—something beyond a mere agreeable aural sen-
109An Informal Talk
on Music
sation—that there is a harmonic basis and an interesting structural
side to the thing it is playing, and that these elements—the harmony,
counterpoint and construction—are the real thing, the thing itself—
there is nothing in it worth thinking about. Certainly the playing the
mere notes of any composition—if that were all of it, as it too fre-
quently is—would not be worth the trouble it costs! It would not help
you to a recognition of the meaning, the beauties, the interesting de-
velopment, that may be there; and until you have learned to hear and
value these things you have wasted every hour you have given to your
practicing. The fingers must be prepared to do the work; but the brain
and the heart must direct—must tell them what to do. And when it is
done, it must be the mind and the heart that speak, and they only. All
playing, all singing, that leaves the hearer conscious only of the tech-
nique involved in the doing of it, is bad playing and bad singing. It
is the gabble of those who talk but do not say anything; it is the empty
phrase with nothing behind it!
When there comes before us the question of what should be stud-
ied by the pupil who is to learn to hear things in the right way—
which, I cannot repeat it too often or too earnestly, is of a thousand
times more importance than the mere playing of them—it implies
the simplest of answers. Nothing but good music; nothing but what
is wholesome and clean; nothing but what leads straight upwards to
the work of the masters. In this matter I will hear of no compro-
mise, I will listen to no argument for the school of trash. People will
tell you—I hear it constantly—that children must be amused in order
to interest them. But I know also that children can be interested in
good things and taught to recognize them, and to distinguish the
good from the bad, and that if you will only give them a chance, as it
is your duty to do, they will prefer the good thing eventually. The pre-
ference for trash is rooted in vulgarity or depravity; the child mind
is neither vulgar nor depraved.
It is for their harmful influence upon the music of the home—
harmful in the main, as I see it—that I find myself growing daily
more and more out of sympathy with one of the popular forms of our
present musical performance—the virtuoso solo recital. With the
great number of pianists who are nowadays touring the world pro-
nofessionally in search of fame and money—the one implying the other An Informal Talk
—it is a prime necessity that there should be in the performance of on Music
each of them something eclatant—a specialty that can be used as a
trade-mark. The travelling pianoforte virtuoso has grown into a fash-
ion, taking his place with other shows and entertainments, and he is
forced by his audience to be a show in order to remain a fashion and to
make a living out of it. But what good does the audience get out of it
as the programmes are at present? Less than none, I should say; for
whatever influence there is in this sort of thing is distinctly for the bad,
if one thinks at all of music as music. Look at the programmes of
the whole tribe of modern virtuosi, and what do you find? The music,
the Bach, Beethoven, Schumann—the things worth the hearing are
always put at the beginning—gotten out of the way as soon as pos-
sible, and then crowded out of your recollection by the firework af-
fairs in which the showy technique gets its innings. Of Bach in his
integrity one rarely gets anything at all; it is invariably Bach-d’Albert,
Bach-Taussig, Bach-Liszt—Bach with trimmings, and always played
while the late comers are being shown to their seats. The wonderful
Preludes and Fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavichord, the Italian
and other Concertos, the many beautiful smaller compositions that
there would surely be profit and pleasure in hearing from a finished
artist—it is rarely that the virtuoso has the courage to play them at
all. It is even so with the work of the other masters. Of Mozart one
hears almost nothing (if the A major Piano Sonata is occasionally
given, it is only to make a tour de force of the final Rondo, a la Turque.)
Out of the thirty-three Sonatas of Beethoven it is the little round
of showy ones—the"Waldstein,” the"Appassionata,”the Opus 103,
with its long chains of trills, and two or three others; the rest of
them are mostly left severely alone. Schubert, with the exception of
a few of his lesser pieces, is usually served only with sauce piquante by
Liszt; Schumann has a few of his things—"Symphonic Variations,”
"Carnaval,” and a half-dozen of trifles—constantly in evidence, and
his great canvasses (like the F sharp and G minor Sonatas) left turned
to the wall along with his numberless other beautiful pianoforte com-
positions, because they are showy and effective. Chopin—poor, abus-
ed Chopin—even he comes in for like treatment. Chopin is, in the
hiAn Informal Talk pianistic sense, the most grateful of all the composers to play (I mean
on Music of the real composers, and do not, of course, include the Liszts, Thal-
bergs, and their ilk); but what opportunity does the average virtuoso
ever give you to hear him beyond the hackneyed little round of things
that almost every amateur plays? Out of the four Ballades it is always
— and then once again—the rather superficial and showy one in A
flat; the one in G minor, a genuine Ballade of almost unapproach-
able beauty, is rarely played; the one in F, wonderful tone-poem that
it is, is ignored because it ends quietly (I wonder Liszt didn't make a
concert arrangement of it with a rattling passage to end up with, so
that it would "go”!), and the one in F minor, than which Chopin has
left us nothing finer, more poetic or exquisitely beautiful, is—as far
as the virtuoso music-peddler is concerned—as though it had never
been written. Lying buried on the same shelf with these things you
will find the Fantasie in F, the last of the three Sonatas, the Barcarolle,
and much of his finest work—great compositions to which the virtu-
oso would be forced to give a place on their programmes if the major-
ity of hearers would only learn to listen for true music and not merely
for fireworks, or tours de force. It is incredible to me that an audience
should have patience with the programme-maker who says to it virtu-
ally,—”1 know that you don’t care for the good things and are impa-
tient to get into the rubbish, the sky-rockety showers of arpeggios, the
dazzling octaves and little sham sentimentalities that you so love, but
some Bach and Beethoven has to be played—it is the proper thing
nowadays—so we will have a little of that stuff at the beginning of the
programme to get it out of the way as soon as possible and then, then
you shall have your fill of bon bons. You shall get your " Marche Mi-
litaire” and your Second Rhapsodie and regular Wagner-Liszt, played
with all the brilliancy and glitter that a Steinway Grand is capable of,
and you will forget all about having been bored with the—obbligato—
good music.” A programme for musical people — for even ordinary
sensible people would, I should expect, bring the finest things last, so
that one might carry them away in the memory—have them, as it were,
for a possession, to remember, and as a food for thought. Indeed, an
artistic programme would never embrace half as much stuff as is now-
adays strung together in order to get an attractive menu; two or three
nxfine things—a single Sonata of Beethoven or Schubert (you never hear
a Schubert Sonata from one of the virtuoso tribe) is as much as anyone
can fully take in at a sitting. If you have understood your Beethoven
or Schubert, the one Sonata is enough to carry away with you; enough
to live and dream on for a month; if you have not fathomed it fully,
go home and study it. That would be the programme for an audience
that had learned to hear aright; that had learned to discriminate be-
tween the far-reaching word of the true musician and the meaningless
babble of the mere piano-virtuoso composer. I imagine such an aud-
ience of genuine music-hearers at a Symphony Concert rising in a body
and leaving the room after the Symphony and declining to sit through
the circus with which the Symphony is usually followed—and oblit-
erated. Just as they would rise and cast out utterly those who should
dare to bring into the church the unseemly and trivial stuff that is
nowadays so often heard there.
The harmful, the pernicious influence, then, that I find in the Vir-
tuoso Recital—the show Recital, as we mostly get it — is twofold:
the better music is placed in the background and forced to yield the
place of honor and influence to the superficial and showy things, while
the show pieces, with their greater glitter and attractive brilliancy of
passage work, are what gain the admiration and applause of the pub-
lic—which never thinks deeply, and rarely seriously—and come to
be regarded by our youth—our growing music-students—as the kind
of thing to look up to, as what is best worth doing.
Pray do not understand me as condemning the showy or effective
order of music simply because it is such, for that is not in the least my
intention, nor have I any fault whatever to find with those whose dis-
position or taste inclines them to prefer what is in the lighter vein.
Such a taste is perfectly natural, perfectly legitimate; some of the best
music of the best composers is to be found in their lighter, playful
things, and some excellent musicians —Johann Strauss, Adolph
Adam, Arthur Sullivan and others of unquestioned genius and unde-
niable musicianship—have delighted the world with the gayety of
their tunes and the verve and brio of their rhythms. Y ou will surely not
find prettier music, or brighter, or music easier—even for the merest
child—to understand, than in the "Don Giovanni'' or the "Marriage
, ■
An Informal Talk
on MusicAn Informal Talk of Figaro” of Mozart—and even Brahms with his characteristic of in-
on Music tense earnestness, the high priest of the religion of pure art and classic
form, has left us some compositions—Waltzes, Dances, and Songs of
the most delightful and unaffected gayety.
No; you shall have your music of any type or character that suits
your mood, provided you have so educated your judgment that it will
accept only the good music—of its type, whatever that may be—and
reject the bad. A good Coon Song is not to be despised simply be-
cause it is a Coon Song; I know several that I like very much and that
are very good music—one in particular that is so beautiful in its mel-
ody and so perfect in treatment that no musician who ever lived need
be ashamed to have written it.
You shall accept then the seriousness of the masters—of Bach,
Beethoven, Verdi, Schumann—the great men—because they are the
masters, and because their utterance is lofty and genuine; and you
shall reject the pretentious gravity of the von Fielitz’s, the Goldmarks,
the Mackenzies, because it is not a true gravity at all but a mere
grave utterance of platitudes.
You are to find voice for your sentiment in Chopin, Mendelssohn,
Schubert and their kin, and,when it seeks the greater depths, in Bach,
Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms; and not in the peurile sentimen-
talities of the Chaminades, Schiitts, Godards, and other weak dilu-
tions.
You are to get your pieces of lighter calibre—yes, and your bril-
liant and effective ones as well—at first hand from the masters who
have written an abundance of that sort of thing, and you are to scorn
the sham jewelry and powder and paint of the makers of mere vir-
tuoso parade pieces!
As to the judging, the discriminating between the real thing and
the sham, it is entirely and only a question of being honest with your-
self. Give your better self a chance and you cannot go wrong!WORDS SPOKEN AT THE FUNERAL OF OSCAR WEIL
BY S. W. YOUNG ON APRIL 16,192.1, IN SAN FRANCISCOWORDS SPOKEN AT THE FUNERAL OF OSCAR WEIL
BY S. W. YOUNG ON APRIL 16,19x1, IN SAN FRANCISCO
STRIFE is the father and king of all, and some he has made
gods and some he has made men. Opposition brings men
together, and out of discord comes the fairest harmony. But
many do not wish to understand how that which is torn in
different directions comes into accord with itself—how har-
mony comes out of contrariety.”
It is well nigh twenty-five hundred years since these words were
written. We owe them to Heraclitus, the noblest of all the Greeks.
They present a philosophy of life to which ifie intervening centuries
have not always cared to listen, for, gentler, Sweeter-voiced Plato has
bidden us believe that all things are inherently in unison; that all
strife and conflict are nought but error; that progress lies in discover-
ing error and thereby overcoming strife. Here we have two diamet-
rically opposed conceptions of life. To Heraclitus strife is the one and
only mechanism out of which progress can possibly develop; to Plato
strife is merely that residue of human error which is to be eliminated
in order that humanity may attain to a perfect unity which shall en-
dure forever.
Which solution of the question is correct? Different persons will
doubtless answer differently. But those who have lived in the world
of action; those who have in any way contributed to progress; those
who have themselves progressed, be it ever so little; aye, even those
who have manfully entered the lists and as manfully failed; can it be
doubted that these will know that Heraclitus was right? Progress is
not given to us. We fight for it and we win it, and it is no ground for
discouragement that, with all our striving, the results sometimes seem
rather meager.
But strife is as multifarious as life itself, with an infinite variety of
aims and purposes. Races and nations strive for material supremacy
and individuals strive for wealth, for glory, for social prestige and for
hosts of other things. But races wax and wane; nations rise and fall to
dust; wealth, glory, prestige—these are of little worth once he who
has possessed them closes his accounts and casts them away. It may
almost seem to us at times that all striving is senseless, all without pur-
IWords Spoken at pose, nought but the vanity of vanities. But no! a thousand times No!
the Funeral of There is no strife that is so mean and petty and sordid that human wel-
Oscar Weil fare is not in some way and to some degree influenced by the out-
come, either for good or for bad. The only real problem is to find in
which direction lies the good, in which the bad.
Is it in any way possible to discover a worthy aim in all this strife?
Can we conceive of any particular direction that we desire progress
to take? Does this seething cauldron that we call life leave us with still
enough sense of direction to permit us to distinguish between an up
and a down? Between a backwards and forwards? Do we want to go
anywhere? and can we tell ourselves where we want to go?
Truly the affairs of humanity are sadly confused, and in the strug-
gle it is indeed often difficult to tell friend from foe. But this confus-
ion need blind no one to the true problem of human progress. Hu-
manity has been confused before and it will doubtless be confused
again. Perhaps as the world grows older the confusion will inevitably
increase, but the fundamental problem still remains clearly visible to
whomsoever will look. The problem of human progress is today pre-
cisely what it always has been and always will be, so long as the human
species holds the scepter on earth. It is simply this; to see to it that
culture maintains a winning fight against barbarism.
Culture against barbarism! This is the grand strife, the ever-con-
tinuing battle, which, surging here and there, has through all the ages
determined the advance or decadence of human valuations; which has
shown life to be dignified, grand and beautiful; or cheap, sordid and
ugly, according to the turn which the tide of battle has taken. This is
the deeper struggle which is above, infinitely above, all the strife of
races and nations.
But we are still confronted with the query "what is culture, what
is barbarism? ” This is no proper occasion to enter into a discussion of
that matter. Perhaps most of us know perfectly well what we mean
by the terms. I shall content myself by giving as concise a miniature
picture as I can of my idea of culture, and as for barbarism, that is
merely another name for what is not culture.
Culture is that condition of human existence which is favorable to
the appearance of fine specimens of humanity. And a fine specimen
mof humanity is one to whom life is a joyous journey in a profoundly
sacred sense; one who finds value in all that is finest in life; or rather,
perhaps, one who puts fineness and beauty into life and thereby gives
it a value. Life in itself is neither good nor bad, neither beautiful nor
ugly. Whether life shall be beautiful or ugly to us is a matter which
in no small degree lies in our own hands. It depends upon how much
strength we can muster within us to create beauty for ourselves. The
desire, the will, the power to make life beautiful and thus give to it a
value, these are the attributes of the man of culture. So long as such
personalities can appear among us, so long will the victory be denied
to barbarism.
It is no small task for one to create a world of beauty out of what
one finds about him. However, it can be done, and it has been done,
else we should never have known beauty. No matter how difficult
the road, the man who would create culture must pursue it without
faltering. He must never weary. Nothing may turn him aside. Even
friendship, that loveliest of human relationships, must yield and even
break, if it threatens to defeat the higher purpose. For him who strives
for culture, nothing may ever be too good. In fact, nothing may ever
be quite good enough. It must ever be "more, more, more" and "bet-
ter, better, better." It must be the aim of the man of culture to build
up, in spite of all opposition and at any cost, the conviction that
strength is beauty, and that beauty is truth. Thus may harmony come
out of contrariety.
My friends, I have tried to picture to you in these few words the re-
ligion of him who no longer walks among us; but has gone to abide
in our memories for so long as we shall live.
Words Spoken at
the Funeral of
Oscar Weil




		
		
		
		
		
		
		





COMPOSITIONS OF OSCAR WEIL
PIANOFORTE
Four Sketches, Opus i
Danses Sérieuses, Opus 3
Phantasiestiicke, Opus 4
Fliegende Blätter, Opus 6
Vignettes, Opus iz
Polonaise	Scherzo.	Valse Sérieuse
Tarantelle Impromptu	Humoresque
Twelve Short Studies, Opus 13
Firth Fond & Company
Breit\opf & Härtel
Breit\opf & Härtel
Breittypf & Härtel
Oliver Ditson Company
Arthur P. Schmidt
Miniatures, Opus 15	Arthur P. Schmidt
Twenty-four pieces for small hands
Book I. Melody—Harlequin—Song without Words—A Roundelay
Romanza—Minuet—Rough and Tumble—A Merry Game—Valse
Daisy Chain—In the Gloaming—Hand over Hand
Book, II. Over the Hills and Far Away—Spring Song—Gigue—In
Autumn — March — Schottische — In Wonderland S Arabesque —
Gavotte—Etude—Serenade—Mazurka
Six Vaises, Opus 16
Ballade in G minor, Opus 17
Trois Morceaux, Opus 15
Idylle	Mazurka	Barcarolle
Feuillettes, Opus 2.6
Valse	Mazurka	Villanelle
Rêverie	Laendler	Scène Rustique
Six Sonatinas, Opus 2.9
Scherzino
Arthur P. Schmidt
Arthur P. Schmidt
Miles & Thompson
Miles & Thompson
Miles & Thompson
ArthurP. Schmidt
No.jof 'Short Lyrics, ”a collection of,pianoforte literature edited by Oscar Weil
SONGS
Sechs Kleine Lieder fur eine Singstimme mit Klavier, Opus 7
Blumengruss	Gleich und gleich Breit\opf & Härtel
Wanderers Nachtlied	Klage
Ein Tännlein grünet wo Am Flusse
Two Songs with Violin Obligato, Opus 10
English and German text
In Autumn	[ Herbstfruhlingslied ]
Spring Song	[ Friihlingslied ]
Breitkopf & Härtel
Arthur P. Schmidt
G. Schirmer
OliverDitson Company
The (tSpring Song” is also published without obligato by Arthur P. SchmidtArthur P. Schmidt
Compositions of
Oscar Weil
Five Songs, Opus 11
When the Day is Done
Devotion
Farewell
Autumn Blossoms
Ave Maria
"Devotion” and "Autumn Blossoms” were published also by Oliver Ditson Company
Three Songs, Opus 2.3	Miles & Thompson
There’ll Never be One like You
Kiss Me, Sweetheart	O Salutaris
Four Ballads, Opus 24	Miles & Thompson
The Stars are with the Voyager
Why canst Thou not Rejoice
My true Love has my Heart
A Question
Two Songs with Obligato for Violin or
Violoncello, Opus 2.7	C. W. Thompson & Company
In Spring Love came Roses
Three Songs, Opus 31	Breitkopf & Härtel
English and German text	Miles & Thompson
O fair sweet Spring [ Frühling ]
Love hath Wings [ Liebe entflieht wie der Vogel in Baum ]
Goodnight	[ Gut’ Nacht]
Three Songs from Shakespeare, Opus 32	Breit\opf & Härtel
English and German text	Miles & Thompson
It was a Lover and his Lass [ Ein junger Bursch durchs Kornfeld ging ]
Come away, Death	[ Komm herbei, Tod ]
O Mistress Mine	[ Wo Schweifst du, Herrin ? ]
Three Songs, Opus 34	Oliver Ditson Company
Just You and I
Let the Dream go
What is it Thou hast to tell Me
Songs, Opus 37
Many a Day and oft
Take, oh take those Lips away
Songs, Unnumbered
Low my Lute
Stars of the Summer Night
My Glory
My Love loves Me
Slumber Song from the Swedish
My Glory
The Summer Time that was
When I am dead
Stars of the Summer Night
Christmas Song
(.Manuscript)
Oliver Ditson Company
C. H Ditson & Company
M. Gray
San Francisco, 1874
The Call
San Francisco, Dec. 18,1898VOCAL ENSEMBLE
Quartets for Female Voices, Opus 14	Wm. A. Pond
Sigh no more, Ladies The River Shore
Spring is here	Ave Maria
In our Boat	Song of May
Part Songs for Women’s Voices, Opus 3 3 OliverDitson Company
The Meads are green again
When the Year is young
Night
In Maytime [Im Maien], Waltzes for Vocal Quartet,
OpUS 3 5	English and German text	Breitkopf & Hdrtel
Duets for Alto and Baritone, Opus 3 6	Oliver Ditson Company
The Nightingale has a Lyre of Gold
Love is a little golden Fish
Waken Thou with Me
In the letter to Miss Partington on page 68, Mr. Weil refers to the publications of “Six Canons
for Women’s Voices, Opus 35, ” of'which no trace can be found.
Three Operettas
Words by H. C. Banner. Music by Oscar Weil.
Illustrations by C. D. Weldon and C. J. Taylor
Bobby Shaftoe
Seven Old Ladies of Lavender Town
Three Little Kittens from the Land of Pie
OPERAS
Pyramus and Thisbe
Pygmalion and Galatea
Based on the play of Sir W. S. Gilbert
Suzette, a Comic Opera in Three Acts
Libretto adapted from a French source by Oscar Weil
In Mexico, or A War-Time Wedding
Libretto by C.T.Dazey and Oscar Weil
The Operas were performedfrom manuscript scores andparts. A vocal score of “Suzette” was
published by Oliver Ditson Company.
Harper and Brothers
1897
Symphonic Overture	(Manuscript)
The Passion, an Oratorio	(.Manuscript)
Compositions of
Oscar Weil
The manuscripts of a number of works in larger forms were lost in the conflagration of1906.
Undoubtedly among these were the “Sonata in F” and the “Sonata for Piano and Violin, ”
to which reference is made in the letter to Miss Partington.Four hundred copies of "OscarWeil: Letters and Papers”
printed by the Grabhorn Press, San Francisco, California,
in December, 192.3 • Title page design by H. Von Schmidt.
Photograph by Dorothea Lange from a painting of Oscar
Weil by Olga M. Ackerman. Copy No. 2. $ 7





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