|
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 42
The whole of this paper might have been devoted to a discussion of
the technical side of Tschaikowsky's music, for the score of this
symphony is one of the most interesting I know. It is full of
astonishing points, of ingenious dodges used not for their own sake,
but to produce, as here they nearly always do, particular effects; and
throughout, the part-writing, the texture of the music, is most
masterly and far beyond anything Tschaikowsky achieved before. For
instance, the opening of the last movement has puzzled some good
critics, for it is written in a way which seems like a mere perverse
and wasted display of skill. But let anyone imagine for a moment the
solid, leaden, lifeless result of letting all the parts descend
together, instead of setting them, as Tschaikowsky does, twisting
round each other, and it will at once be perceived that Tschaikowsky
never knew better what he was doing, or was more luckily inspired,
than when he devised the arrangement that now stands. Much as I should
like to have debated dozens of such points, it is perhaps better,
after all, just now to have talked principally of the content of
Tschaikowsky's music; for, when all is said, in Tschaikowsky's music
it is the content that counts. I might describe that content as
modern, were it not that the phrase means little. Tschaikowsky is
modern because he is new; and in this age, when the earth has grown
narrow, and tales of far-off coasts and unexplored countries seem
wonderful no longer, we throw ourselves with eagerness upon the new
thing, in five minutes make it our own, and hail the inventor of it as
the man who has said for us what we had all felt for years.
Nevertheless, it may be that Tschaikowsky's attitude towards life, and
especially towards its sorrows,--the don't-care-a-hang attitude,--is
modern; and anyhow, in the sense that it is so new that we seize it
first amongst a hundred other things, this symphony is the most modern
piece of music we have. It is imbued with a romanticism beside which
the romanticism of Weber and Wagner seems a little thin-blooded and
pallid; it expresses for us the emotions of the over-excited and
over-sensitive man as they have not been expressed since Mozart; and
at the present time we are quite ready for a new and less Teutonic
romanticism than Weber's, and to enter at once into the feelings of
the brain-tired man. That the "Pathetic" will for long continue to
grow in popularity I also fully expect; and that after this generation
has hurried away it will continue to have a large measure of
popularity I also fully expect, for in it, together with much that
appeals only to us unhealthy folk of to-day, there is much that will
appeal to the race, no matter how healthy it may become, so long as it
remains human in its desires and instincts.
LAMOUREUX AND HIS ORCHESTRA
Richter and Mottl, the only considerable conductors besides
Lamoureux whom we had heard in England up to 1896, may be compared
with a couple of organists who come here, expecting to find their
instruments ready, in fair working order, and accurately in tune.
Lamoureux, on the other hand, was like Sarasate and Ysa�e, who would
be reduced to utter discomfiture if their Strads were to stray on the
road. He played on his own instrument--the orchestra on which he had
practised day by day for so many years. Richter and Mottl took their
instruments as they found them, and devoted the comparatively short
time they had for rehearsal to the business of getting their main
intentions broadly carried out, leaving a good deal of minor detail to
look after itself, and not complaining if a few notes fell under the
desks at the back of the orchestra. Lamoureux had laboriously
rehearsed every inch of his repertory until it was note-perfect, and
each of his men knew the precise bowing, phrasing, degree of piano or
forte, and tempo of every minutest phrase. Now I do not mean by this
that the orchestras on which Richter and Mottl performed played many
wrong notes, while the Lamoureux orchestra played none; and still less
do I mean that Lamoureux got finer results than Richter or Mottl. So
far as the mere notes are concerned, the Englishmen who played for the
German conductors acquitted themselves quite as well as the Frenchmen
who played for Lamoureux. Both made mistakes at times; and a seemingly
paradoxical thing is that when a Lamoureux man stumbled all the world
was bound to hear it, whereas in our English orchestras a score of
mistakes might be made in an evening without many of us being much the
wiser. The reason for this is the reason why the playing of Lamoureux
on his trained orchestra, for all its accuracy, was not better than,
nor in many respects so good as, the playing of Richter and Mottl on
the scratch orchestras which their agents engaged for them. Probably
few uninformed laymen have any notion of the extent to which mere
noise is responsible for the total effect of a Wagner piece or a
Beethoven symphony--not the noise of big drum, cymbals and so on; but
the continuous slight discords caused by some of the players being
various degrees in front and others various degrees behind; the
scratching produced by uncertain bowing, or by an unfortunate fiddler
finding himself a little behind the general body (as he does
sometimes) and making a savage rush to catch it up; the hissing of
panting flautists; and the barnyard noises produced by exhausted
oboe-players. Even with Richter, stolid and trustworthy though he is,
these unauthorised sounds count for a great deal; and with a conductor
like Mottl, who varies the tempo freely in obedience to his mood in
the most rapid pieces, they count for very much more. They result in a
continuous murmur which, so to speak, fills the interstices in the
network of the music, covering wrong notes, and giving the mass of
tone a richness and unity which otherwise it would lack. In such
movements as the Finale of the Fifth symphony this continuous murmur
does the work done for the piano by the upper strings without dampers
and the lower ones when the pedal is pressed down; it gives solidity
and colour to the music; and certainly half the effect in fine
renderings of "The Flying Dutchman" overture, the Walk�renritt, and
the Fire-music, is due to it. But Lamoureux's men had practised so
long together under their conductor's beat that all the instruments
played like one instrument, no matter how the tempo was varied; the
bowing of each passage had been considered and finally settled, so
that there was no uncertainty there; and in the course of long
rehearsal every wind-player had learned precisely where he must
breathe, where he must reserve his breath, and where he could let
himself go, so that the tone of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons
never became in the smallest degree forced or hoarse. And the result
of this was the entire absence of that murmur which one has come to
regard as characteristic of the orchestra. If a wrong note was played,
there was nothing to hide its nakedness. It was as though a
penetrating flood of cold white light were poured upon the music and
made it transparent: one perceived every remotest and least
significant detail with a vivid distinctness that can only be compared
with a page of print seen through a strong magnifying glass, or,
perhaps better still, with a photograph seen through a stereoscope. As
in a stereoscope, the outlines were defined with a degree of clearness
and sharpness that almost hurt the eye; as in a stereoscope, there was
neither colour nor suggestiveness. An orchestral virtuoso, like a
piano or violin virtuoso, may over-practise.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|