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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
TELEPHONE NUMBER, 1745.--EKIHTEENTH STREET.
The musical supplement to The Review is
published on the first Saturday of each month.
THE NEW RUSSIAN SCHOOL.
It would be strange if the next great
composer were to spring from the ranks of
the amateurs in music, for amateurs the
composers forming what is called the new
Russian School are, and have been, with but
few exceptions. Glinka was a man of "com-
parative affluence" we are told, and Glinka
is really the father of the school, though
Balakireff and Cesar Cui were its actual
founders. Cui, Rimski-Koisakoff, Moussorg-
sky, and Borodine were all men who earned
their living by some profession other than
music. Of the two youngest Russian com-
posers who have lately come to the front,
Rachmaninoff (born in 1873) and Glazounoff
(born in 1865), I can only say that the latter
comes of a wealthy family, but I should not
be surprised to hear that Rachmaninoff, the
most promising composer of the age, is also
independent of the money to be earned by
composition. In the case of some of these
composers, Borodine, Cui and Rimski-Kor-
sakoff, for instance, the necessity of looking
on musical studies as a secondary thing in
their early lives had rather a bad result, but
the non-necessity of writing pot-boilers or of
wearing out the spirit by the dull round of
teaching, as our native composers are com-
pelled to do, has given the compositions of
this group of men a serious and uncommon
place character for which we may seek in
vain elsewhere.
Russia has much in her favor as the future
land of mus.ic. She is a great nation, a war-
like nation, a nation that knows what it is to
suffer, and above all, a nation that is not too
civilized. It is strange that Art should die
when people become too civilized; but so it
is. Men must be face to face with the
primary difficulties of life; there must be
strenuousness in living; there must be high
ideals which war, as a compensation for all its
terrors and brutalities, has always aroused
in the minds of men. Were we ideal enough,
perhaps a long peace with its smoothness of
living and material luxury, would be a hot
bed of art of all kinds. But I cannot see
that our experience upholds the truth of that.
Art of a kind does grow when matetial luxury
prevails, but it is, as a rule, art applied to
living, not the expressive arts of poetry and
music. Perhaps there never was a time
when existence was so comfortable, when the
decorative arts so vied with each other to
make life beautiful, and yet will it be held
that poetry is as much in the ascendant as it
was in the days of the great Elizabeth, when
every Englishman's hand was on his sword-
hilt, when every English heart beat high to
defend the race from tyrants; or can it be
said that our output of poetry is equal in
foixe, majesty and inspiration to that which
illumined the years following the French
revolution and the long war with France?
For music and poetry you must have either
the stirring heroism of war or else the sim-
plicity of the peace that follows it; the peace
that becomes complicated with luxury, that-
makes a race decadent and vicious, only pro-
duces art of an eccentric kind or else art in
which manner instead of matter is the inspir-
ing force.
There is one thing that will take the place
of these and that is if there is sufficient hard-
ship in life itself and sufficient strenuousness
in living. The Russians are brought face to
face with a fearful climate, the people famil-
iar with starvation; Death on his white horse
stalks through the land; all this gives a mel-
ancholy, a passionate concentration of feel-
ing: but as a reaction you have an intense
joy in life itself. The rich, it is true, lead
most luxurious lives, but a poet or musician
does not belong to the rich, though he may
be born of them; he feels for the nation as a
whole, for the human beings of his race, and
so the national life inspires him. Were it
otherwise, Rimski-Korsakoff, Glazounoff or
Rachmaninoff would simply have produced
works which might have come from Paris;
whereas, to my mind at least, all the melan-
choly, fierce gayety and energetic barbarism
of their race are echoed in the music of these
men. And so I look to Russia to produce a
great genius in music.
O
HODERN HUSICAL riACHINES.
A few years ago the domain of those who
earned a living by employing their arms
to turn some mechanical box of whistles was
chiefly confined to the low class of Italian.
The padrone usually brought as his colleague
a gaudily dressed ape. The musician usually
did his best to give the combination as wide
a berth as he could, and then dismissed the
subject from his mind as a nuisance well
gotten rid of, and which the march of civili-
zation would probably abolish. His pre-
dictions have been very far from verified.
That old wheezy organ has proved very
prolific; its evolution into higher forms is
now exceedingly rapid. We possess pianos to
play over our studies for us; machines to give
us the latest songs sung by the most favored
artists; organs guaranteed to do quite as
well as the finest living organist, and instru-
ments to play for our sole delectation what
the finest orchestra is just playing at such an
immense cost to crowds. Many of these
automatic musical instruments are finding a
ready introduction into our homes—the legiti-
mate cradle for our future race of art-lovers
—and their status cannot be readily shelved.
What is going to be the result of these in-
terlopers on the musical future? Will their
alien origin encourage or will it stultify the
growth of the natural plant?
We are not taking the case of the ordinary
street piano (although that has some bearing
on the issue). Let us at once admit that
this article offers glimpses of melody and
tends to brighten some of our dark places
where, without its aid, no such cheery mes-
senger were possible. It is undoubtedly a
boon, but its field of labor should be just that
usually selected by the home missionary, the
temperance agent and the Christian worker
generally, i. e., it should move in the lower
strata of society. Its handsome cousins, to
whom any bravura passage offers no difficul-
ties, who can play tenths as easily as single
notes; or its other "organic" relations, who
can give orchestral imitations with dynamic
effects and even using the tempo rubato—
are these visitors at the houses of the rich to
be regarded as friends or foes?
Q
Imagine the advantage offered to an ardent
admirer of Wagner (one, let us suppose, who
is not sufficient of a musician to be able to
decipher a vocal score), hearing the "Tris-
tan" played a few times before he goes to the
stage for the complete opera! The net gain
and enjoyment in such a case must certainly
be great. Or take the ordinary student of
the pianoforte. He has his piece played for
him, as often as he desires, in the exact
tempo, and with a perfect technical complete-
ness which may serve him as a fine object
lesson.
But such a Frankenstein, by its very pro-
portions, is apt to hypnotize some more sen-
sitive art-student. Possibly it would eventu-
ally quite discourage him. From his super-
ficial point of view, it might take him years
to become as proficient as the prototype. If he
were, again, a thoroughly mercenary man—
and the musical world contains a few of such
specimens—he might even be cogitating over
such a problem as this: "Are the cost of so
many years lessons, plus the daily labor of
practising, equal to the pleasure I should
have from purchasing at the outset a machine
which will play for me whatever I want?"
Only to such a very earthly being would it
be necessary to point out that one of our pri-
mary duties as inhabitants of the world, is to
develop our merits; that real enjoyment must
be something in which the mind has the
greater share; and that music is one of the
most potent influences which tend to beautify
the mind. Can, then, any mere machine ac-
as a substitute for our mental purposes?
Even supposing that the time saved from act
quiring an art were used in prosecuting some
scientific subject, it is very problematical
whether the experiment would, after the
lapse of years, show such beneficial results.
We keep constantly reading of some of the
greatest scientists deploring the fact that
they had not set aside part of their lives to a
study of some art.
That some of the new forms of automatic
musical instruments are becoming a power
and that they will exercise a decided influence
on our future musical students is proved by
the notice extended to them by men of the
highest standing in the world of art, both at
home and abroad, says Albert W. Borst in
The Musician.-
Teachers cannot ignore
them as they could their predecessors.
Neither need they regard them as formidable
antagonists. Macaulay long since prophesied
that " in an enlightened age there will be much
intelligence and much science, much philos-
ophy. . . . abundance of verses but little
poetry. Men will judge and compare, but
will not create." Our age of machinery is
thus not favorable to an advance on purely
artistic lines. But like all novelties of abnor-