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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
8
MUSIC AS THE CENTURY ENDS.
It has become almost natural to look at the
closing of a century as putting the period to
this or that development in esthetics, and to
take a proportionately solemn account of it in
its relation to the art-productiveness just be-
yond it. Our overlook and outlook toward
music as the year 1901 comes closer, stimu-
lates grave thought. The decade now finish-
ing, especially suggests a period of almost final
—let us say final—efflorescence, similar to the
great epochs of European painting, architec-
ture and sculpture. How mighty are the things
that we have all been watching, or rather
hearing, so well done for us! What bright
names have adorned the century's last quarter
and less! But the same works seem to have
said the last word in their kind. In this year
of grace and art, the bright names are chiefly
the names of the dead. In no part of the
history of music, youngest and most mystic
of all the arts, has there been a richer show-
ing of master-thinkers, of more startling,
varied and complex phases, of more exhaus-
tive workings-out of new and fecund theories
and principles! Who and what shall now suc-
ceed to all this movement? Where are the
signs of new genius; of new yet old art—the
obvious two needs of the generation just com-
ing on with the new century—unless we are
to do nothing but revert to music's glorious
and fertile past?
When the eighteenth century's end came
there had passed away, man by man, Bach,
Handel, Gluck and Mozart; Haydn, an old
man, was only a few years from following
them. But there were then discerned, right
and left, new influences and phases that spoke
loudly for music's immediate future. Certain
of the younger men—especially in Germany,
that to-day is musically almost dead as it can
be—felt what there was to be newly and bet-
ter said in the old paths, as well as described
what was in itself new. An instrument of
vast importance, the pianoforte, was develop-
ing into a marvel of esthetic mechanism. A
special creative influence was to radiate from
it. And so succeeded Beethoven, Schubert,
Schumann, Mendelssohn and Chopin. There-
with came, too, the vivid development in
Italy of Italian opera, and the romantic
movement in German opera, and a French
course of things that now is classic blossomed
out. But that happy chapter of new musical
creativeness had by no means come to its
close, nor had the future of the art grown
dark to the general eye, before Wagner and
Liszt, revolutionists in ideas and labors,
opened a new whole volume to the lyric com-
poser, and Berlioz was fighting a battle for
the New in his France. The first perform-
ance of "Lohengrin" and "Tannhauser"
meant music's revivification as well as reform,
meant new prophets, new revelations.
Where are ours? The great chapter of
music's history last defined—we have read it,
heard it to the end. The symphony that
Haydn began as the eighteenth century was
drawing on to a finish has been ended by
Brahms for us of the last years of the nine-
teenth. Opera, transmuted to music drama,
opera long and short, musical or only nomi-
nally so, opera refined or vulgar, opera from
"La Serva Padrona" to "Siegfried," or "Fal-
staff," or "Le Boheme," is finished. Orato-
rio has really had little worth saying to say
since Mendelssohn's elegance, force and pro-
portion improved on Handel's great chain of
sacred works; and the secular cantata little
more. Orchestration for orchestration's sake
is an epidemic. New melody could not be
expected now. But its substitute might be
less scientifically arid, from learned writers
who think they have the gift. Pianoforte
music, chamber music in general, the organ's
library—for none of these important branches
can we feel that a new phase is at hand early
in the new century nearly born. In virtuo-
sity of performance, in musical execution,
we should hardly expect finer art than ours.
The past fifteen years have brought im-
pressive losses to creative music,as the giants
that had to die have dropped down in the
century's last marches. But it is part of the
aspect of things now to come that only in a
few instances have the careers of the great
workers lately gone from us been incomplete,
or of a sort that suggests their continued in-
fluences in the field. Wagner dies, with
"Parsifal " as his swan-song; and it is doubt-
ful if we cannot well spare his unfinished
" Die Busser," just as we spare Beethoven's
Tenth Symphony. For, good and bad, Wag-
ner had said his say. Liszt, with his virtu-
osity at the pianoforte and in the orchestral
score, was an old man, no longer eloquent.
Berlioz was retired.
The German-Russian
Rubinstein, the Italian Ponchielli — who
founds, with the aged Verdi and with Boito,
no longer young, the neo-Italian school of
opera — they had finished their course.
Brahms, Gounod, Franck, all these were
nearly composers of a past significance.
Verdi still is with us, but at eighty-five he is
not likely to make us alert. Tschaikowsky
died in some prematureness, true; but the
musical art of Russia had already derived
from him what we may believe was his best.
In France no composer of absolute individu-
ality and of secure promise in work of large
form has died since Bizet, in 1875.
Altogether, the cheerfulest musical out-
looks for those audiences at concert-room
and opera-house during the next few years—
so far as such auditors seek novelties of fair
interest—are two. One is toward France.
There, indeed, musicians may not say new
things in art, but in France there is musical
life, movement; and there art lends bright-
ness to the tarnished or even the trivial.
The French are never dull, even where artis-
tically unsuccessful.
The other outlook is
Italian. At eight-five Verdi may be excused,
or advised silence after so glorious a career.
But the " new young men " are making over
Italian opera strenuously, and, on the whole,
effectively. Germany is in a state of musical
post-mortem. The Slaves and Scandinavians
and Russians, and so on, are too national for
general and permanent acceptance. America?
—our own land? It is a land of promise, we
are glad to believe. But it has yet to say an
authoritative sentence to the universal musical
ear. Let us hope that it may come.
So ends the century, and closes a period in
music of indeed astonishing and ominous
completeness and splendor. The twilight of
the gods is more than come. • The past is an
exhaustless heritage. Music's old treasures
may long be the substitutes for new ones.'
Perhaps we may expect the latter grace, in
some small measure. But when all is antici-
pated or guessed at, the question abides,
whether or not we have not all over the West-
ern world, European and American, to
broaden startlingly our system of harmony
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