Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
48 PAGES
With which is Incorporated THE KEYNOTE.
VOL XXIV.
No. 18.
fi.oo PER YEAR
SINGLE COPIES, 10 CENTS
Published Every Saturday, at 3 E^fourteeiitli Street. New York, May 1,1897.
ISOLDEN'S LIEBES-TOD.
A chord of agony, a silence brief,
Then tremblingly a melody steals in
From mystic violins, entrancing, sweet,
Breathing of rapture, night, and moon-bathed
flowers,
Throbbing on vibrant harp strings, till the air
Is heavy with melodious perfume,
And nightingales are swooning with delight.
Onward it flows like some harmonious river,
Washing with crystal wave on dreaming shores,
Pulsating wilder as it nears the ocean,
Dashing with mad emotion, till at last,
With upward rush of surging music waves,
It meets the ocean in a grand embrace,
And, lost in that eternal sea of bliss,
It sinks to magic silence, calm and deep,
Resting forever 'neath the stars of love.
—Frank E. Sawyer.
O
BRAHMS' PERSONAL TRAITS.
The death recently of Johanne Brahms
and the various obituary notices that have
been, accorded him have revived the war
that has raged among musical critics ever
since the time when the Leipziger Signale,
that brightest of German musical papers,
dismissed his first piano concerto, after its
production by him in the Gewand Haus of
that town in 1859,3s a "symphony with
piano obligate "
Brahms was one of those artists whom
criticism could not kill, nor even swerve
from his chosen path. Like Ibsen, he per-
sisted in his way even to the point of going
out of his way to show that he was still bent
upon following it. For the last twenty
years since he resigned from the leadership
of the Viennese Society of the Friends of
Music in 1875 n e devoted his life to the
systematic pursuit of musical composition,
and the result has been that he has con-
cededly outstripped Wagner in the succes-
sion to the bays of Beethoven and Bach—
bays for which Berlioz, Schumann, Schu-
bert, Liszt, Rubinstein, Tschaikowsky,
Verdi, Dvorak, and Saint Sacns have
reached in vain.
The very trait always dwelt upon by his
fiercest critics—his cold intellectuality, is
the trait that enabled him to rear such
spires of musical architecture as the "Song
of Destiny " and the German Requiem—
that enabled him to turn out the mass of
work embodied in his 200 odd opus num-
bers, and that finally brought him to a
proper appreciation of so essentially differ-
ent a genius as that of Wagner. Thus by
sheer fixity of purpose and relentless plod-
ding, this man, whom the critics called
heavy, dull, and phleVtoi&tic, achieved what
Billow and SchumannN^rOnhesied. for him
thirty years before, whejilr tlmypronounced
him the coming succesfctjr of the great
Beethoven.
What Milton was among the courtly cava-
lier singers, Brahms, the austere, was
among the Viennese musicians of his day
—the Schuberts, Franzes, Strausses, Mil-
loeckers, and others whose catchy songs
ring on like the charming ditties of Love-
lace, Suckling, and Herrick. Like Milton,
he tarried long enough by the wayside to
show that he was not devoid of lyric
quality, as shown by his Magellone ro-
mances and his children folk-songs, as well
as by some of the more exquisite passages
of his chamber pieces, but in the end he
always returned to his stern adherence to
the lofty ideals of flawless workmanship
and the attainment of the sublime. In this
he was a living reproach to a generation of
haste and superficiality, and for this they
called him cold and ungracious. In the
meanwhile he worked on, not caring for
the applause of the hour and undeterred by
the discouragingly small demands for his
works, content to leave the issue to the
future.
Though Brahms has ever been charged
with failing to infuse his personality or
temperament into his music, it is a striking
fact that the most salient characteristics of
it were likewise the most predominant
traits of the man himself. Brahms, the
man, detested and shunned personal noto-
riety of any sort, as he hated meretricious
music. When the University of Cambridge
offered him the degree of Doctor of Music
he declined to accept it, as this would have
involved the formal bestowal of the diplo-
ma upon him in person, with the usual
jeers and ribaldry of the irrepressible
undergraduates as an inevitable incident.
When he was in Baden-Baden he avoided
the Cursaal because the local band leader
pursued him with his obsequious atten-
tions, while the musical ladies who always
gather there tried in their way to make a
social lion of him.
Thus it came that Brahms had few
friends, and few acquaintances. In this
country those who enjoyed the distinction
of Brahms' friendship r can almost be
counted on one hand. Remenyi, the vio-
linist, was one of his oldest friends, since
Remenyi and Brahms in their youth trav-
eled on a joint concert tour through Ger-
many, on which occasion Brahms as-
tounded Joseph Joachim, Remenyi'sfriend,
by transposing at sight a Beethoven sonata
from A to B flat, because the piano hap-
pened to be a half-tone below pitch.
Three other .warm friends of Brahms
now living in this country are Rafael Jo-
seffy and Zinzig, the pianists, and Herr
Kneisel, the Boston violinist, all finished
players of Brahms' best music. One of
the truest friends the composer had was
the warm-hearted and ardent Antonin
Dvorak, whose admiration for his great
fellow-composer knew no bounds.
When Dvorak was last in New York he
and Anton Seidl, the great orchestra
leader, had many discussions, ending al-
ways in Dvorak excitedly declaring that
Brahms was the greatest living master of
music, while Seidl would good-humoredly
retort that in his estimation Dvorak him-
self deserved the palm. When Dr. Dvorak
returned to Europe he at once revisited
Brahms, and it was by his advice, so it is
stated, that he did not serve out his re-
maining term as the head of the National
Conservatory of Music, notwithstanding
all Mrs. Thurber's tempting offers.
Brahms, it is understood, warned his more
volatile friend and brother musician
against the danger of frittering away his
energy and time on such unproductive
work as teaching and managing conserva-
tory pupils, and the Bohemian composer
accordingly refused to sign another con-
tract.
It is now repotted that Brahms be-
queathed to Antonin Dvorak his unfinished
and posthumous manuscripts and scores,
among which are believed to be a '* Faust "
overture and perhaps a fifth symphony.
©
Moritz Rosenthal sailed for Europe on
April 21. He has entirely recovered from
the illness which compelled him to cancel
his concert tour. He will return to this
country next November and appear in one
hundred concerts.
o
L'Art Musical is the title of an exceed-
ingly newsy and well edited journal which
comes to us from Montreal. It is published
in the French language. The editorial
staff is a strong one.