Schubert’s first Symphony in D is dated 1813; the Second in B-flat is dated 1814; the Third in D, in 1815; the Fourth in C-minor (described by the composer as “the Tragic”) is dated 1816; and scored for two violins, viola, violoncello and bass, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets and drums.

The Fifth Symphony, known as the “Symphony without trumpets and drums,” is scored for two violins, viola, violoncello, double-bass, flute, two oboes, two bassoons and two horns. It is dated 1816. Up to this point Schubert’s Symphonies show the influence of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Now came the true Schubert style with the Sixth, the C-major Symphony, which is regarded as Schubert’s masterpiece. It is scored for two violins, viola, violoncello and double-bass; two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, and drums. This work was first performed in Vienna in 1828, but it was not heard in Paris and London until 1856. In 1842 Habeneck rehearsed it in Paris, but the Orchestra refused to play it; and when Mendelssohn put it into rehearsal in London the Philharmonic Orchestra laughed at the triplets in the last movement, and Mendelssohn, very indignant, withdrew it. Sir Augustus Manns, who introduced the work in England in 1856, remembers hearing at the end of the first movement the principal horn call out to one of the first violins: “Tom, have you been able to discover a tune yet?” “I have not,” was Tom’s reply.

The B-minor, the Unfinished, was written in 1822, before the C-major. The Unfinished we may note, was composed before Beethoven’s Ninth and the C-major Symphony after it.

Perhaps Mendelssohn’s most characteristic orchestral work is to be found in the Midsummer Night’s Dream music, the oratorio of Elijah and the Overture to Melusine. Of course, his Symphonies—the Reformation, which appeared in 1830, two years after Schubert’s C-major, the Italian in 1831 and the Scotch in 1842, contain beautiful work especially for the woodwind.

With his suave, graceful, sunny and charming melodies, it was only natural that Mendelssohn’s instrumentation should be delicate.

In the world of pictures we often turn from the deep, rich colors of Titian, Rembrandt and Velasquez to enjoy the softer hues of Chardin, Watteau and Fragonard. It is the same in music. Refreshing it is to turn from the dark, heavy colors of Beethoven, or the glowing hues of Weber and Wagner to the opalescent tints of delightful, fanciful, poetic Mendelssohn.

Mendelssohn’s life was happy from beginning to end; and this joy bubbles up in his music. The world gave him much; and he gave the world much in return.

Born in Hamburg in 1809, he spent his early years in Berlin, where his family removed. He had a childhood almost unparalleled in the annals of music for happiness. He conducted a little Orchestra in his father’s house every Sunday morning, where many of his early compositions were performed, among them the Overture to the Midsummer Night’s Dream, which he wrote when he was only seventeen. As pianist, organist, conductor and composer, Mendelssohn had one triumph after another. He made nine visits to London, where he stood next to Handel in popular affection.

In 1835 he became conductor of the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig and he established the Conservatory of Music in that city. He died in Leipzig in 1847.

Mendelssohn has suffered somewhat from the high position the English have given him in music; but he has a place that is quite his own. He followed in the footsteps of Weber rather than in those of Beethoven; and, though he has no tragic depths, he has given the world lyric compositions of great beauty and the greatest oratorios since Handel’s.

Mendelssohn sketched and painted well; he had a love for literature; he wrote charming letters; and he was altogether a delightful person.

Mendelssohn’s orchestration is noted for its perfect balance, its clarity and its polish. He seems to have cared less for the brass than the other groups. His violin concerto, ranking next to Beethoven’s, shows his sympathy for the violin. The viola is also well treated in all his works. The violoncello obbligato in the accompaniment to the solo “It is enough” in Elijah proves that this instrument was a favorite. The clarinet passages in the Overture to Melusine and the use of the horns in the Notturno in A Midsummer Night’s Dream exhibit his poetic and romantic touch in the highest degree.

Many persons have left snap-shots of happy Mendelssohn, Sir Julius Benedict, a pupil of his, wrote enthusiastically: “It would be a matter of difficulty to decide in what quality Mendelssohn excelled the most,—whether as composer, pianist, organist, or conductor of an Orchestra. Nobody, certainly, ever knew better how to communicate—as if by an electric fluid—his own conception of a work to a large body of performers. It was highly interesting, on such an occasion, to contemplate the anxious attention manifested by a body of sometimes more than five hundred singers and performers, watching every glance of Mendelssohn’s eye and following, like obedient spirits, the magic wand of this musical Prospero. Once, while conducting a rehearsal of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, the admirable Allegretto in B-flat, not going at first to his liking, he remarked, smilingly that he knew every one of the gentlemen engaged was capable of performing and even composing a scherzo of his own, but that just now he wanted to hear Beethoven’s, which he thought had some merits. It was cheerfully repeated. ‘Beautiful! Charming!’ cried Mendelssohn, ‘but still too loud in two or three instances. Let us take it again from the middle.’ ‘No, no,’ was the general reply of the band, ‘the whole piece over again, for our satisfaction;’ and then they played it with the utmost delicacy and finish, Mendelssohn laying aside his bâton and listening with evident delight to the perfect execution. ‘What would I have given,’ he exclaimed, ‘if Beethoven could have heard his own composition so well understood and so magnificently performed.’”

Another admirer wrote: “When once his fine, firm hand grasped the bâton, the electric fire of Mendelssohn’s nature seemed to stream out through it and be felt at once by singers, orchestra and audience. Mendelssohn conducted not only with his bâton, but with his whole body. At the outset, when he took his place at the music-stand, his countenance was wrapped in deep and almost solemn earnestness. You could see at a glance that the temple of music was a holy place to him. As soon as he had given the first beat, his face lighted up, every feature was aflame and the play of countenance was the best commentary on the piece. Often the spectator could anticipate from his face what was to come. The fortes and crescendos he accompanied with an energetic play of features and the most forcible action; while the decrescendos and pianos he used to modulate with a motion of both hands till they slowly sank to almost perfect silence. He glanced at the most distant performers when they should strike in, and often designated the instant when they should pause, by a characteristic movement of the hand, which will not be forgotten by those who ever saw it.”

Contemporary with Mendelssohn, though they seem much nearer to us than he, are three great geniuses of the Nineteenth Century,—Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner. Though all three were admirers of the Classic masters, they formed an entirely new school of music, which was called “The Music of the Future.”

It is hard to say to which of these men Music owes the most; for while Wagner was certainly the greatest composer, Berlioz daringly led the way into these new regions where Wagner followed, and Liszt, with his extraordinary influence, his generosity of spirit, his untiring zeal in producing Wagner’s works as well as his lavish gifts to Wagner in times of trouble, was not the least important of the three in making Music what it is to-day. Moreover, Liszt’s own compositions helped to establish in the affections of the public this Music of the Future that became the Music of the Present and that is rapidly taking its place in the Music of the Past ranking as Classic in the first meaning of the word (see page 232).

To understand how Music departed from the old roads and took a new path, we must remember that in 1830 with the Revolution that sent Charles IX from the French throne, a new spirit came into the world of literature, art and music. It is known as the Romantic Movement. Writers and painters, full of the excitement of the period and joy at the triumph of republican ideas, sought to portray nature and human nature in truer lines and colors than the traditional rules and measurements of the Classic period.

There was a great outburst of literature in France—Gautier, Flaubert, de Musset, de Vigny and Victor Hugo are a few of the names that rise to one’s lips when the Romantic Movement is mentioned. Painters, too, were numerous. There was but one French composer—Berlioz. Just what Victor Hugo expressed in literature, just what Delacroix expressed in painting, Berlioz expressed in music; and Berlioz stands alone, a solitary figure.

“Berlioz’s early influences were as much literary as musical. His reading was mainly romantic; his musical gods were Beethoven, Weber and Gluck, whose orchestral writings influenced him most. He knew little of Beethoven’s piano writings and did not like Bach. Into the intellectual world of the Beethoven symphony and the operas of Gluck and Weber, he breathed the newer, more nervous life of the French Romanticists. Color and sensation became as important as form and the pure idea. These influences and his literary instincts led him to graft the programme form on the older symphony. All his music aims at something concrete. Instead of the abstract world of the classical symphonists he gives us definite emotions, or paints definite scenes. His own words: ‘I have taken up music where Beethoven left it’ indicate his position. He is the real beginner of that interpenetration of music and the poetic idea which has transformed modern art.”[74]

Berlioz’s temperament was like a volcano bursting continually into fire and flame and his mind took delight in everything of enormous magnitude. He loved to think of the Pyramids of Egypt, of huge lonely mountains, of great seas, the bursting of thunderbolts and the howl of tempests. Everything with him appeared in colossal proportions; and, consequently, much of his music seemed to the people of his time, even more than to us to-day, to have been written for the ears of giants and Titans and not for men and women of ordinary build.

Heine appreciated this phase of the extravagant Berlioz. “A colossal nightingale, a lark the size of an eagle,” he wrote of him, “such as once existed in the primæval world. Yes, the music of Berlioz, in general seems to me primitive almost antediluvian; it sets me dreaming of gigantic species of extinct animals, of mammoths, of fabulous empires with fabulous sins, of all kinds of impossibilities piled one on top of the other. These magic accents recall to us Babylon, the hanging-gardens of Semiramis, the marvels of Nineveh, the audacious edifices of Mizraim such as are shown in the pictures of the English painter Martin.”

This is all true, but it represents only one side of Berlioz.

Berlioz could be exquisite and dainty as well as colossal and terrific, as we hear in the Queen Mab Scherzo from the Roméo et Juliette Symphony, and the Dance of the Sylphs from the Damnation of Faust.

Berlioz is called the “Father of Modern Orchestration.” To appreciate the magnitude of his work, we must forget all our modern music for a moment and remember what the Orchestra was like when Berlioz, a country boy of eighteen, arrived in Paris in 1821.

Berlioz “is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of music. In his earliest years, as in his latest, Berlioz was himself, a solitary figure, owing practically nothing to other people’s music, an artist we may say, without ancestry and without posterity. Mozart builds upon Haydn and influences Beethoven; Beethoven imitates Mozart and in turn influences the practice of all later symphonists; Wagner learns from Weber and gives birth to a host of imitators. But with Berlioz—and it is a point to be insisted on—there is no one whose speech he tried to copy in his early years and there is no one since who speaks with his voice. How many things in the early Beethoven were made in the factory of Mozart! How many times does the early Wagner speak with the voice of Weber! But who can turn over the scores of Berlioz’s early works and find a single phrase that can be fathered upon any previous, or contemporary, writer? There was never any one, before his time or since, who thought and wrote just like him; his musical style especially is absolutely his own. Now and then in L’Enfance du Christ he suggests Gluck—not in the turn of his phrases but in the general atmosphere of an aria; but apart from this it is the rarest thing for him to remind us of any other composer. His melody, his harmony, his rhythm, are absolutely his own.”[75]

In nothing did the originality of Berlioz show itself more strikingly than in his treatment of the Orchestra.

So many of his ideas and effects were used, and carried still further, by Wagner that some of the richness and beauty of tone of the modern Orchestra that we usually give to Wagner belongs rightfully to Hector Berlioz. For instance, Berlioz discovered the value of pianissimo brass effects; he discovered the ethereal charm of harmonies on divided violins; he discovered the true worth of the viola; he introduced the harp into the Symphony Orchestra; he grouped instruments into families and got from them rich chords in different shades of the same tone-color; he advocated the tuba as a substitution for the coarser ophicleide; he made many experiments with the kettledrums and other instruments of percussion; he divided the strings into many parts (one of his scores calls for five double-basses); and he also advocated the sunken and hidden Orchestra, which Wagner realized in his theatre of Bayreuth.

Wagner frankly confesses his debt to this French genius. “Berlioz was diabolically clever,” he wrote: “I made a minute study of his instrumentation as early as 1840 in Paris and I have often taken up his scores since. I profited greatly both as regards what to do and what to leave undone.”

It is absurd to say that without Berlioz there would have been no Wagner; but it is no exaggeration to say that without Berlioz there might have been a Wagner very different from the one we know.

“Berlioz’s startling originality as a musician rests upon a physical and mental organization very different from, and in some respects superior to, that of other eminent masters,—a most ardent nervous temperament; a gorgeous imagination, incessantly active, heated at times to the verge of insanity; an abnormally subtle and acute sense of hearing; the keenest intellect, of a disserting analyzing turn; the most violent will, manifesting itself in a spirit of enterprise and daring equalled only by its tenacity of purpose and indefatigable perseverance.

“From a technical point of view certain of Berlioz’s attainments are phenomenal. The gigantic proportions, the grandiose style, the imposing weight of those long and broad harmonic and rhythmical progressions towards some end afar off, the exceptional means employed for exceptional ends—in a word, the colossal cyclopean aspect of certain movements are without parallel in musical art.

“The originality and inexhaustible variety of rhythms and the surpassing perfection of his instrumentation are points willingly conceded by Berlioz’s staunchest opponents. As far as the technique of instrumentation is concerned, it may truly be asserted that he treats the Orchestra with the same supreme daring and absolute mastery with which Paganini treated the violin and Liszt the pianoforte. No one before him had so clearly realized the individuality of each particular instrument, its resources and capabilities. In his works the equation between a particular phrase and a particular instrument is invariably perfect; and over and above this, his experiments in orchestral color, his combination of single instruments with others so as to form groups, and again his combination of several separate groups of instruments with one another are as novel and as beautiful as they are uniformly successful.”[76]

Berlioz wrote a Treatise on Instrumentation, which he curiously numbered among his works as opus 10.

Hector Berlioz was born in La Cote Saint-André, near Grenoble, in 1803, and died in Paris in 1869. His father, Dr. Louis Berlioz, wanted him to be a physician and sent him to Paris at the age of eighteen to study medicine. But medicine was against his will, and it was not long before Berlioz abandoned these studies and entered the Paris Conservatory as a pupil of Lesueur. Soon his parents stopped his allowance; and the young man was forced to earn his living by singing in the chorus of an obscure theatre. He was not popular in the Conservatory: his character and his genius were too original. However, in 1830 he obtained the prix de Rome, that envied purse enabling the winner to study in Italy. On returning to Paris, he earned his living by his pen—he was a brilliant journalist—and gave concerts of his works as he finished their composition.

His monster concerts and the huge Orchestra he required were subject to ridicule and caricature. The comic papers were full of illustrated jokes at his expense.

“I am so sorry to hear that your husband has become deaf. How did it happen?” one sympathetic lady says to a friend, who replies, “Well, you see he would go to that last concert of Berlioz!”

Another picture shows two street venders looking at one of their tribe flaunting a rich dress. “How did she become so rich?” one asks the other; and the latter explains: “Why, she sells cotton at the door of Berlioz’s concerts for people to stuff in their ears!”

Berlioz’s symphony Harold in Italy, written in 1834, at Paganini’s request for a solo part in which he could exhibit his fine Stradivari viola, attracted some attention when it was performed at the Conservatory. His dramatic symphony Roméo et Juliette, performed at the Conservatory in 1839, won him fresh laurels. It was dedicated to Paganini, who having heard the Fantastic Symphony and Harold in Italy given under Berlioz’s direction at a concert in Paris in 1838, dropped on his knees before the composer, kissed his hand and the next day sent him a cheque for twenty thousand francs ($4,000). Berlioz spent much time polishing this score; and of all his compositions he preferred the Adagio (love scene) of Roméo et Juliette Symphony.

Berlioz’s life was comparatively uneventful. His operas, Benvenuto Cellini and Béatrice et Bénédict (Much Ado about Nothing) and his two works on the Trojan War were unsuccessful. His gigantic works such as the Damnation of Faust and Requiem were also failures. His success was gained outside of his beloved Paris in 1843 and 1847, when he gave concerts in Germany and Russia. His extraordinary reception amazed his own countrymen, with whom Berlioz was never popular.

In 1852 he became Librarian at the Paris Conservatory. France gave him the cross of the Legion of Honor and other countries bestowed decorations upon him.

“Liszt was at first a pianist, the most extraordinary and fascinating ever known, and one of the most wonderful of improvisators. Yielding to the taste of the time, he composed Fantasias, arrangements, or paraphrases, upon fashionable operas, bristling with difficulties of execution so extreme that no one but himself could attempt to play them.

“It was not until a later period that he began really to compose and then he brought into his work the quality of mysticism which was in his own nature.”[77]

Franz Liszt (1811-1886), is another phenomenon in musical history. He was great as a pianist, great as a composer, great as a conductor, great as a man, great as a friend. In looking over his life it seems incredible that any man could have accomplished so much and in so many varied directions.

All the good fairies of fortune presided over his career from his earliest hours. He was born at Raiding in Hungary, in 1811, the son of Adam Liszt, an official in the Imperial service of Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy (the patron of Haydn) and amateur musician, who taught his son so well that at the age of nine years he appeared at a concert in Œdenburg. Soon afterwards several Hungarian noblemen subscribed a sum to provide for his education for six years. Young Franz studied with Czerny and Salieri (Mozart’s rival) in Vienna and in 1823 played before Beethoven, who embraced him on the stage. In that year “the little Liszt” was taken to Paris by his father and there he had the best instruction. After the death of his father in 1827, he supported himself and his mother in Paris, by teaching and giving concerts.

He lived in Paris in the early days of the Romantic Movement[78] and was brought into relation with all the great artists, writers, poets and musicians of the day. Paganini’s magical playing inspired in him the ambition to do for the pianoforte what Paganini had done for the violin. How well he accomplished his desire we all know.

For many years Liszt travelled through Europe giving concerts everywhere and always with phenomenal success. His concert-tours, which extended from Spain and England to Russia and Hungary, were really triumphal progresses. Much of his money he gave away—sometimes to relieve suffering brought about by some great calamity, sometimes to help needy brother artists, sometimes for the cause of music, particularly for “the Music of the Future.”

In 1849 his career as a virtuoso-pianist practically came to an end and he settled in Weimar. He soon made this town the centre of a brilliant artistic life.

Professional and amateur musicians flocked there to study under the generous master who gave instruction to talented pupils without remuneration. Others came to hear rare and new works performed under his bâton at the Court Theatre of which he was conductor. His splendid interpretations of Lohengrin and Tannhäuser contributed no little in establishing Wagner’s reputation at a time when he greatly needed such endorsement as Liszt was able to give.

In 1861 Liszt left Weimar and went to Rome, where he took minor orders in 1865. Subsequently he was known as the Abbé Liszt.

The last years of his life were divided between Rome, Weimar and Buda-Pesth, an active and influential force in musical art until his sudden death at Bayreuth in 1886.

There are two great paradoxes in the career of Liszt. The first is that just as Rossini, the most popular opera composer of his day, ceased writing operas thirty-nine years before his death, so Liszt, the greatest and most adored pianist of all times, ceased playing in public (except for an occasional charitable purpose) about the same number of years before his end came. He had with his inimitable art familiarized concert-goers with nearly all the best compositions for the piano created by other masters. He had transcribed for the same instrument a large number of songs, operatic melodies and orchestral works (the number of these transcriptions at his death was 371) thereby vastly increasing their vogue. He also wrote altogether 160 original compositions for the pianoforte, many of them as new in form as in substance; unique among them being the fifteen Hungarian Rhapsodies—collections of Magyar melodies with gipsy ornaments molded by him into works of art, after the manner of epic poets. But—and here lies the second paradox—Liszt, the greatest of all pianists was not satisfied with the piano. In many of his pieces for it he endeavored to impart orchestral power and variety of tonal effect; and finally, when he became conductor at Weimar, in 1849, he transferred his attention chiefly to the Orchestra. Of his thirty-four orchestral works the most important are the Faust and Dante Symphonies and thirteen Symphonic Poems, in which he deviated from the old symphonic form in a spirit similar to Wagner’s operatic reforms—abolishing unconnected movements and allowing the underlying poetic idea to shape the form of the music.[79]

Liszt linked himself with Berlioz when he heard the Symphonie fantastique. He took up the cause of Berlioz and became his champion. But independently of Berlioz, Liszt was imbued with the Romantic Movement of 1830. To such a genius and man of the world who came in contact with all the great intellects of the day, it soon became natural to him to make art human and emotional.

Therefore in both his playing and his composition Liszt departed from the Classic ideals of an earlier period and became an expression of his own time. In his endeavor to depict and express emotions, ideas, scenes of nature and even events, he felt that the old Classic forms were suited only to music that was purely music and nothing else. In the new paths that the “Music of the Future” had made for itself a new form was needed to express sensations and ideas of a new age of keener observation, intense sentiment and passionate enthusiasm. Consequently Liszt invented the Symphonic Poem, in which the movements are not divided as in the regular Symphony but lead into one another.

In his orchestration Liszt followed Beethoven, Berlioz and Wagner. It is always rich and heavy and full of color. Liszt makes great use of the harp and his Hungarian blood shows itself in his marvellous and stirring rhythms.

“Concerning so prodigious an activity, so far-seeing an intelligence, so all-embracing a mind, so complete a musical organization, so ardent an imagination, so enthusiastic a nature, so unselfish a character, anything that may be said must seem inadequate.

“The spirit of Franz Liszt soared far above the petty meannesses of life. His influence has been great and far-reaching, and if he has left a priceless artistic legacy to the world, he has also given it a magnificent and unique example of benevolence and self-abnegation and realised to the fullest extent his own motto, Génie oblige!”

The third and greatest member of this remarkable trio, Richard Wagner, seems to have gathered up all that was best in the music that preceded him and having assimilated it in the crucible of his mind, gave it forth again, fresh, new and vital.

Wagner was born in Leipzig in 1803 and died in Venice, in 1883. His career as a musician began in 1833, after he had taken part in the Revolutionary politics of 1830.

His early life was spent in struggling with poverty and composing operas, which were not successful. He acquired greater fame as a conductor than as a composer. Called to be conductor of the Dresden Orchestra in 1842, he began his work by conducting works of Berlioz, who was then making a tour in Germany. (See page 251.) Berlioz speaks gratefully of Wagner’s “zeal and good will” in this matter and also of the success of Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman in Dresden.

The active part he took in Revolutionary politics offended the Court; and Wagner, compelled to flee, hastened to Liszt in Weimar. Liszt got him a passport under a fictitious name; and Wagner hurried to Paris and thence to Zürich, where he finished Lohengrin and sent it to Liszt to produce in Weimar.

The first half of Wagner’s life was singularly unhappy; the last was singularly happy. He had the good fortune to attract the interest of the young King of Bavaria, Ludwig II, who became his patron and turned Wagner’s dreams into realities.

After forty years of struggle and disappointment, Wagner had his own theatre at Bayreuth, where his works were given under ideal conditions. The Bayreuth Opera House was opened in 1876, with a great performance of the Nibelungen Ring; and the greatest artists of the day played in the Orchestra of which Wilhelmj was the first violinist. In the meanwhile, Tristan had been splendidly performed in Munich in 1865 and Die Meistersinger in 1868.

One of Wagner’s great ideas was to make the Orchestra a vital part of his music dramas. In other words he carried the Symphony-Orchestra into the opera.

Wagner is the greatest master of orchestration that the world has ever seen.

“Wagner treats every instrument with the same certainty of touch as if he had played it himself. He knows, as no one else knows, how to avail himself of its resources, and he demands nothing of it beyond what is entirely within its capacity.

“Notwithstanding the large number of performers he requires, he never has recourse to complicated methods in his orchestration. The combinations are always clear and simple, resulting in a sonority that is both plain and powerful. The Leitmotive (guiding themes) ceaselessly move about the whole Orchestra, passing from one desk to another; but, nevertheless, each one has a fondness for one special instrument, or one group of instruments, which agrees with its character, on which it is first heard and to which it returns whenever it must be heard again with preponderating importance. Sometimes we recognize it from its very first note by means of this characteristic timbre.

“Wagner developed the art of orchestration, of orchestral coloring to a point before unknown, a point which is apparently its final limit; but in art there is no limit, its progress is endless. I will not name the person, but it seems to me that there is now among French composers one who has surpassed Wagner in this very respect. Wagner, however, in addition to the new combinations that he devised among the various instruments of the classic Orchestra, introduced new elements, notably tubas, a family intermediate between horns and trumpets, and the bass trumpet which figures in nearly all of his scores, and singularly enriches the group of brasses without rendering his instrumentation any more noisy.”[80]

“Wagner is a supreme master of instrumentation, of orchestral color. His Orchestra differs from Beethoven’s in the quality of tone emitted; over and above effects of richness obtained by the more elaborate treatment of the inner part of the string-quartet, the frequent subdivision of violins, violas, violoncellos, the use of chromatics in horn and trumpet-parts, etc. There is a peculiar charm in the very sound of Wagner’s woodwind and brass. It is fuller than Beethoven’s, though singularly pure. And the reason for this is not far to seek. Wagner rarely employs instruments unknown to Beethoven, but he completes each group or family of wind-instruments with a view to getting full chords from each group.

“Thus the two clarinets of Beethoven’s Orchestra are supplemented by a third clarinet and a bass-clarinet if need be; the two oboes by a third oboe, or a cor anglais (alto oboe); the two bassoons by a third bassoon and a double-bassoon; the two trumpets by a third trumpet and a bass trumpet, etc. The results got by the use of these additional instruments are of greater significance than at first appears, since each set of instruments can thus produce complete chords and can be employed in full harmony without mixture of timbre unless the composer so chooses.

“To account for the exceptional array of extra instruments in the scores of the Nibelungen Ring it is enough to say that they are used as special means to special ends.

“Thus at the opening of the Rheingold, the question is what sound will best prepare for and accord with dim twilight and waves of moving water? The soft notes of the horns might be a musician’s answer; but to produce the full, smooth wavelike motion upon the notes of a single chord, the usual two, or four, horns are not sufficient, Wagner takes eight, and the unique and beautiful effect is secured.

“Again, in the next scene, the waves change to clouds: from misty mountain heights the gods behold Walhalla in the glow of the morning sun. Here subdued, solemn sound is required. How to get it? Use brass instruments piano. But the trumpets, trombones and tuba of Wagner’s usual Orchestra cannot produce enough of it. He, therefore, supplements them by other instruments of their family: a bass trumpet, two tenor and two bass tubas, a contrabass trombone and a contrabass tuba. Then the full band of thirteen brass instruments is ready for one of the simplest and noblest effects of sonority in existence.

“At the close of the Rheingold, Donner with his thunder-hammer clears the air of mist and storm-clouds; a rainbow spans the valley of the Rhine and over this glistening bridge the gods pass to Walhalla. What additional sounds shall accompany the glimmer and glitter of this scene? The silvery notes of harps might do it; but the sounds of a single harp would appear trivial, or would hardly be audible against the full Orchestra. Wagner takes six harps, writes a separate part for each, and the desired effect is forthcoming.”[81]

It might seem that after Wagner nothing more could be done with the Orchestra. But the progress of Music, like all other arts, never ceases. We have three more great names to consider—Richard Strauss, Tschaikowsky and Debussy.

“Richard Strauss is an intellectual musician. Saint-Saëns pointed out long ago the master part harmony would play in the music of the future, and Strauss realized the theory that melody is no longer sovereign in the kingdom of tone. His master works are architectural marvels. In structure, in rhythmical complexity, in striking harmonies, ugly, bold, brilliant, dissonantal, his symphonic poems are without parallel. Berlioz never dared, Liszt never invented such marvels of polyphony, a polyphony beside which even Wagner’s is child’s play and Bach’s is rivalled. And this learning, this titanic brushwork on vast and sombre canvases are never for formal music’s sake; indeed, one may ask if it is indeed music and not a new art. It is always intended to mean something, say something, paint someone’s soul. It is an attempt to make the old absolute music new and articulate.

“The greatest technical master of the Orchestra, making of it a vibrating dynamic machine, a humming mountain of fire, Richard Strauss, by virtue of his musical imagination, is painter-poet and psychologist. He describes, comments and narrates in tones of jewelled brilliancy; his Orchestra flashes like a canvas of Monet,—the divided tones and the theory of complementary colors (over-tones) have their analogues in the manner with which Strauss intricately divides his various instrumental choirs: setting one group in opposition, or juxtaposition, to another; producing the most marvellous, unexpected effects by acoustical mirroring and transmutation of motives; and almost blinding the brain when the entire battery of reverberation and repercussion is invoked. If he can paint sunshine and imitate the bleating of sheep, he can also draw the full-length portrait of a man. This he proves with his Don Quixote, wherein the noble dreamer and his earthly squire are heard in a series of adventures terminating with the death of the rueful knight—one of the most poignant pages in musical literature.”[82]

Richard Strauss was born in Munich, in 1864. His father, Franz Strauss, was first horn-player in the Court Orchestra and could play almost every orchestral instrument. He was an extraordinary musician. Once when playing under Wagner’s bâton, the composer said to him: “Strauss, you can’t be such an anti-Wagnerite as I hear. You play my music so beautifully!” “What has that got to do with it?” the horn-player replied.

Richard early showed his great genius. He played the piano at the age of four and began to compose at the age of six. While at school he had lessons on the piano and violin and studied composition.

“My father kept me very strictly to the old masters,” says Strauss, “in whose compositions I had a thorough grounding. You cannot appreciate Wagner and the moderns unless you pass through a grounding in the Classics. Young composers bring me voluminous manuscripts for my opinion on their productions. In looking at them, I generally find that they want to begin where Wagner left off. I say to all such: ‘My good young man, go home and study the works of Bach, the symphonies of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and when you have mastered these art works come to me again.’ Without thoroughly understanding the significance of the development from Haydn via Mozart and Beethoven to Wagner, these young students cannot appreciate at their proper worth either the music of Wagner, or of his predecessors. ‘What an extraordinary thing for Richard Strauss to say,’ these young men remark; but I only give them the advice gained by my own experience.”

Strauss early attracted the attention of Hans von Bülow, who played his Serenade for wind instruments (op. 7) at Meiningen. In 1885 Strauss was chosen to succeed von Bülow as conductor of that famous Orchestra. In 1885 he became third Kapellmeister in Munich, and, in 1889, assistant Kapellmeister at Weimar. Later he returned to Munich as Court Kapellmeister; and three years later he was made general music director. For a little while he was conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and in 1899 was made Kapellmeister at the Berlin Royal Opera, which position he still holds.

“If the now childish simplicity of Schubert’s orchestration proved a stumbling block to the Viennese Orchestra only fifty odd years ago, and furthermore Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde shared the same fate at a still more recent date, it will not be difficult to realise that Strauss fifteen years ago taxed the virtuosity of the performers with passages that are no longer dreaded.

“The flexibility of execution that formerly was expected only of a first violinist is now imposed upon all five sections of the string band and each member finds before him the pages of what looks like a concerto. To the woodwind are assigned passages that Wagner would have hesitated to write. What Strauss demands from them, Beethoven might have demanded from the strings. Most prominent of all is the attention bestowed upon the deployment of the brass as initiated by Wagner. The trumpets are treated with unprecedented freedom, and are expected to perform passages either of flowing melody, or of rhythmic intricacy in the fastest of tempi. The horns are taught to display the agility of violoncellos. In four-part writing, the fourth horn is much used as a deep bass instrument absolutely apart from the three upper horns. The trombones are employed as much for unallied melodic utterance as for combined harmonic effects, and the intricacy of their parts constantly necessitates the use of three staves in the score. Incidental mention might also be made of such devices for acquiring weird tonal tints as obtained from muted trombones. Similar to Wagner’s procedure in the Overture to the Meistersinger, the tubas—and particularly the tenor tuba—are constantly detached from their conventional association with the trombones, for the purpose of giving expression to flowing cantilena.

“Novelty in the use of instruments of percussion is restricted to rhythmic peculiarities and original combinations with other instruments of more variable pitch; for Wagner’s general method of handling the battery cannot be improved upon.

“In a word, the three choirs of the Orchestra have advanced one step higher. The string-band has become so many virtuoso soloists. The woodwind replace the strings and are themselves replaced by the brass. The battery has acquired prominence such as the Classicists allowed to the trumpets and trombones.

“Strauss advances yet farther by making permanent Wagner’s occasional incorporation into the Orchestra of a second harp, an E-flat clarinet, a double quartet of horns, five instead of four trumpets, and a tenor tuba in addition to a bass tuba. The occasional addition of unusual instruments, such as an oboe d’amore and saxophones, is required.”[83]

In 1864 one of the chief critics of Russia pointed out Tschaikowsky as “the future star of Russian music.” His prediction was verified. Tschaikowsky is now ranked with the great masters. His great popularity in this country is largely due to Mr. Walter Damrosch, who invited him to take part in a series of festival concerts in 1891 at the opening of Carnegie Hall in New York. Here Tschaikowsky conducted several of his works, many of which were already known and loved by concert-goers.

We are all familiar now with Tschaikowsky’s great sweeps of tone; dark, melancholy harmonies; and strange, barbaric rhythms.

“Tschaikowsky is eclectic, and many cosmopolitan woofs run through the fabric of his music. Italy influenced, then Germany, then France; and, in his later day, he let lightly fall the reins on the neck of his Pegasus and was much given to joyously riding in the fabled country of ballet, pantomime, and other delightful places.”[84]

This is perfectly true, but beyond and above all else Tschaikowsky is Russian.

“Like most Slavs,” writes Ernest Newman, “he drew sustenance more from France than Germany. Brahms he thought dull; Wagner he never really understood. He loved music, he said, that came from the heart, that expressed ‘a deep humanity,’ like Grieg’s. To the delicate brain and nerves of the modern man he added the long-accumulated eruptive passions of his race. He takes the language made by the great Germans and uses it to express the complex pessimism of another culture. The color of life in his music ranges from pale gray to intense black, with here and there a note of angry scarlet tearing through the mass of cloud.”

Peter Ilich Tschaikowsky was born in 1840 in Votinsk in the government of Viatka, where his father was inspector of the government mines, soon removing to Petrograd, where the boy received his education. He studied music, played the piano well, and composed light music; but with him at this time music was merely an accomplishment and a social pleasure. In 1861 he began to study music seriously and gave up his work to face poverty for the sake of art. In 1865 he completed his course at the Conservatory, where he had attracted the admiration of Anton Rubinstein with whom he studied orchestration. As an instance of his industry Rubinstein’s story may be quoted. “Once at the composition class,” said Rubinstein, “I set him to write out contrapuntal variations on a given theme, and I mentioned that in this class of work not only quality but quantity was of importance. I thought perhaps he would write about a dozen variations. But not at all. At the next class I received over two hundred. To examine all these would have taken me more time than it took him to write them.”

When Nicholas Rubinstein organized the Conservatory in Moscow in 1866, he gave Tschaikowsky the chair of professor of harmony. He spent much time in composing and Nicholas Rubinstein brought out his works at the concerts of the Russian Musical Society. Tschaikowsky’s life is in his works. Whether in Petrograd, Moscow, in his country home, in Paris, or travelling, he was always composing; and, consequently, his list of works is long.