|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 16
The "Creation" libretto was prepared for Handel, but he did not
attempt to set it; and this perhaps was just as well, for the effort
would certainly have killed him. Of course the opening offers some
fine opportunities for fine music; but the later parts with their
nonsense--Milton's nonsense, I believe--about "In native worth and
honour clad, With beauty, courage, strength, adorned, Erect with front
serene he stands, A MAN, the Lord and King of Nature all," and the
suburban love-making of our first parents, and the lengthy references
to the habits of the worm and the leviathan, and so on, are almost
more than modern flesh and blood can endure. It must be conceded that
Haydn evaded the difficulties of the subject with a degree of tact
that would be surprising in anyone else than Haydn. In the first part,
where Handel would have been sublime, he is frequently nearly sublime,
and this is our loss; but in the later portion, where Handel would
have been solemn, earnest, and intolerably dull, he is light,
skittish, good-natured, and sometimes jocular, and this is our gain,
even if the gain is not great. The Representation of Chaos is a
curious bit of music, less like chaos than an attempt to write music
of the Bruneau sort a century too soon; but it serves. The most
magnificent passage in the oratorio immediately follows, for there is
hardly a finer effect in music than that of the soft voices singing
the words, "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,"
while the strings gently pulse; and the fortissimo C major chord on
the word "light," coming abruptly after the piano and mezzo-forte
minor chords, is as dazzling in its brilliancy to-day as when it was
first sung. The number of unisons, throwing into relief the two minor
chords on C and F, should be especially noted. The chorus in the next
number is poor, matched with this, though towards the end (see bars 11
and 12 from the finish) Haydn's splendid musicianship has enabled him
to redeem the trivial commonplace with an unexpected and powerful
harmonic progression. The work is singularly deficient in strong
sustained choruses. "Awake the harp" is certainly very much the best;
for "The heavens are telling" is little better than Gounod's "Unfold,
ye everlasting portals" until the end, where it is saved by the
tremendous climax; and "Achieved is the glorious work" is mostly
mechanical, with occasional moments of life. As for the finale, it is
of course light opera. On the whole the songs are the most delightful
feature of the "Creation," and the freshness of "With verdure clad,"
and the tender charm of the second section of "Roaming in foaming
billows," may possibly be remembered when Haydn is scarcely known
except as an instrumental composer. The setting of "Softly purling,
glides on, thro' silent vales, the limpid brook" is indeed perfect,
the phrase at the repetition of "Thro' silent vales" inevitably
calling up a vision, not of a valley sleeping in the sunlight, for of
sunlight the eighteenth century apparently took little heed, but of a
valley in the dark quiet night, filled with the scent of flowers, and
the far-off murmur of the brook vaguely heard. The humour of the
oratorio consists chiefly of practical jokes, such as sending Mr.
Andrew Black (or some other bass singer) down to the low F sharp and G
to depict the heavy beasts treading the ground, or making the
orchestra imitate the bellow of the said heavy beasts, or depicting
the sinuous motion of the worm or the graceful gamboling of the
leviathan. It has been objected that the leviathan is brought on in
sections. The truth, of course, is that the clumsy figure in the bass
is not meant to depict the leviathan himself, but his gambolings and
the gay flourishings of his tail. It is hard to sum up the "Creation,"
unless one is prepared to call it great and never go to hear it. It is
not a sublime oratorio, nor yet a frankly comic oratorio, nor entirely
a dull oratorio. After considering the songs, the recitatives, the
choruses, in detail, it really seems to contain very little. Perhaps
it may be described as a third-rate oratorio, whose interest is
largely historic and literary.
MOZART, HIS "DON GIOVANNI" AND THE REQUIEM
It may well be doubted whether Vienna thought even so much of
Capellmeister Mozart as Leipzig thought of Capellmeister Bach. Bach,
it is true, was merely Capellmeister; he hardly dared to claim social
equality with the citizens who tanned hides or slaughtered pigs; and
probably the high personages who trimmed the local Serene Highness's
toe-nails scarcely knew of his existence. Still, he was a burgher,
even as the killers of pigs and the tanners of hides; he was
thoroughly respectable, and probably paid his taxes as they came due;
if only by necessity of his office, he went to church with regularity;
and on the whole we may suppose that he got enough of respect to make
life tolerable. But Mozart was only one of a crowd who provided
amusement for a gay population; and a gay population, always a
heartless master, holds none in such contempt as the servants who
provide it with amusement. So Mozart got no respect from those he
served, and his Bohemianism lost him the respect of the eminently
respectable. He lived in the eighteenth century equivalent of a "loose
set"; he was miserably poor, and presumably never paid his taxes; we
may doubt whether he often went to church; he composed for the
theatre; and he lacked the self-assertion which enabled Handel,
Beethoven, and Wagner to hold their own. Treated as of no account,
cheated by those he worked for, hardly permitted to earn his bread, he
found life wholly intolerable, and as he grew older he lived more and
more within himself and gave his thoughts only to the composition of
masterpieces. The crowd of mediocrities dimly felt him to be their
master, and the greater the masterpieces he achieved the more
vehemently did Salieri and his attendants protest that he was not a
composer to compare with Salieri. The noise impressed Da Ponte, the
libretto-monger, and he asked Salieri to set his best libretto and
gave Mozart only his second best; and thus by a curious irony stumbled
into his immortality through sheer stupidity, for his second best
libretto was "Don Giovanni"--of all possible subjects precisely that
which a wise man would have given to Mozart. When Mozart laid down the
pen after the memorable night's work in which he transferred the
finished overture from his brain to the paper, he had written the
noblest Italian opera ever conceived; and the world knew it not, yet
gradually came to know. But the full fame of "Don Giovanni" was
comparatively brief, and at this time there seems to be a hazy notion
that its splendours have waned before the blaze of Wagner, just as the
symphonies are supposed to have faded in the brilliant light of
Beethoven. At lectures on musical history it is reverently spoken of;
but it is seldom sung, and the public declines to go to hear it; and,
though few persons are so foolish as to admit their sad case, I
suspect that more than a few agree with the sage critic who told us
not long since that Mozart was a little _pass�_ now. Is it indeed so?
Well, Mozart lived in the last days of the old world, and the old
world and the thoughts and sentiments of the old world are certainly a
little _pass�s_ now. But if you examine "Don Giovanni" you must admit
that the Fifth and Ninth symphonies, "Fidelio," "Lohengrin," the
"Ring," "Tristan," and "Parsifal" have done nothing to eclipse its
glories, that while fresh masterpieces have come forth, "Don Giovanni"
remains a masterpiece amongst masterpieces, that in a sense it is a
masterpiece towards which all other masterpieces stand in the relation
of commentaries to text. And though this, perhaps, is only to call it
a link in a chain, yet it is curious to note how very closely other
composers have followed Mozart, and how greatly they are indebted to
him. Page upon page of the early Beethoven is written in the
phraseology of the later Mozart; in nearly every bar of "Faust," not
to mention "Romeo and Juliette," avowedly the fruit of a long study of
"Don Giovanni," a faint echo of Mozart's voice comes to us with the
voice of Gounod; Anna's cries, "Quel sangue, quella piaga, quel
volto," with the creeping chromatic chords of the wood-wind, have the
very accent of Isolda's '"Tis I, belov'd," and the solemn phrase that
follows, in Tristan's death-scene. Apart from its influence on later
composers, there is surely no more passionate, powerful, and moving
drama in the world than "Don Giovanni." Despite the triviality of Da
Ponte's book, the impetus of the music carries along the action at a
tremendous speed; the moments of relief occur just when relief is
necessary, and never retard the motion; the climaxes are piled up with
incredible strength and mastery, and have an emotional effect as
powerful as anything in "Fidelio" and equal to anything in Wagner's
music-dramas; and most stupendous of all is the finale, with its
tragic blending of the grotesque and the terrible. Or, if one
considers detail, in no other opera do the characters depict
themselves in every phrase they utter as they do in "Don Giovanni."
The songs stamp Mozart as the greatest song-writer who has lived, with
the exception of Handel, whose opera songs are immeasurably beyond all
others save Mozart's, and a little beyond them. The mere musicianship
is as consummate as Bach's, for, like Bach, Mozart possessed that
facility which is fatal to many men, but combined with it a high
sincerity, a greedy thirst for the beautiful, and an emotional force
that prevented it being fatal to him. For delicacy, subtlety, due
brilliancy, and strength, the orchestral colouring cannot be matched.
And no music is more exclusively its own composer's, has less in it of
other composers'. Beethoven is Beethoven _plus_ Mozart, Wagner is
Wagner _plus_ Weber and Beethoven; but from every page of Mozart's
scores Mozart alone looks at you, with sad laughter in his eyes, and
unspeakable tenderness, the tenderness of the giants, of Handel, Bach,
and Beethoven, though perhaps Mozart is tenderest of them all. He
cannot write a comic scene for a poor clownish Masetto without
caressing him with a divinely beautiful "Cheto, cheto, mi vo' star,"
and in presence of death or human distress the strangest, sweetest
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|