E I G H T H N O T E S

V OI C ES AND F I GURES OF M USI C AND THE DA NC E

o r h 1 92 C py ig t, 2,

BY DODD, MEAD AND C OM PANY, I NC.

rmma! he U. . t

E! PLANATION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT

HIS book is of purpose fragmentary . It does not contain comprehensive and ” n im searchi g critical studies , but the pressions received and recorded by a reviewer for

- a newspaper in the daily round of concert hall , “ opera house and copy . At the passing hour in which they were written , at the passing moment in which they may engage the reader, enough if they capture a sensation , decant a mood , reflect a trait, recall achievement , isolate an individualizing

t o r of quali y, hazard an opinion , best all , from the tinder of words rekindle the sparks of pleasure

For remembered . to give pleasure in kind and degree is essential obligation upon those who are voice to music or body to the dance ; while it is incumbent duty upon the reviewer to discern and define ! so far as he may) that pleasure .

O to utside occasional pages , too few need speci fication , these memoranda o f the moment were originally strewn through the columns o f the

B ston Ev in Tr n r en a sc i t. o g p From it, with the per

vii ACKNOWLEDGMENT

o f mission the proprietors, they have been astutely assembled and ingeniously coordinated by my t friend , Neil Martin . Without his insis ence, this book would never have been underta ken ; without

accom his persistence, it would never have been

li he d Fo r ffi of i p s . such o ces friendsh p a prefatory

t u . note is polite, prescribed and pet y ret rn

H . T . P. ANDOLPH R , i New Hampsh re, 1 June , 922 . CONTENTS

CONDUCTORS

Tos can ni Muck Men e lber Mo e i , , g g, nt ux,

S ock S oko ski S r nsk . t , t w , t a y

SINGING-AC TORS

Garden Fa a e za Renaud Chal a , rr r, J rit , , i in Ca so Fremsta dt Te azz n G lli p , ru , , tr i i, a

Cu c Rufi o . r i,

SINGERS or SONGS

McCormack Ros n C l Ge ha d , i g, u p, r r t, He m e l Des tinn Te te Gauth e Sch p , , y , i r, u mann-He ink .

PIANISTS

Pa de re ski Gab r lo sch Baue Rakh w , i wit , r, maninov Hof m nn B so ni Mo se s ch , a , u , i iwit , No e va s .

VIOL INISTS

Auer K eisle He f e z Zimb l s S ld , r r, i t , a i t, pa in T ib d E n h au lma Ysa e Casals . g, , , y ,

CHAMBER MUSI C

The Flonzale s The Lo do ers y , n n .

A DISEUSE

Y e e Gu lb v tt i ert .

DANC ERS

The Russ an Ballet P lo N sk i , av wa, ijin y, Genee I sado Dunca , ra n.

I

CONDUCTORS

EIGHTH NOTES

’ TOS ANINI S FIRES I . C

EUTONIC tradition has died hard in

re on music in America . Once it was p p

de rant i of , and it was a pr mary article tonal faith that the best music was made only in German -speaking lands and that the best inter prete rs of it came also from them . The Russians smote the tradition with the hard blows of their symphonies ; the new Frenchmen pricked it with the sharp thrusts of their impressions and images ; the Italians seared it with the hot fires of their newer work . And every year and almost every

of A week the hearers music in merica , whatever “ ” its school , were becoming a more cosmopolitan ’ public . The trad—ition that music is a German art o r u e . too man factur is dead It is dead, , with

of singers and virtuosi the piano and violin . They come to America and usually receive their deserts, whether Germany happened or not to nurture them [ 1 ] E I G H T H N O T E S and whether Berlin o r Munich o r Leipzig or Vienna has approved or disapproved them . And thi s was

too true , , for nearly a decade before the war

of alienated Germany from the rest the world .

With conductors , the German tradition lingered

- longer and with more reason . In German speak ing opera houses and concert halls conductors were t be ter trained , exercised more authority, excited

n e more public i terest , received more public est em than they did elsewhere .

r of To Germany, accordingly, the founde s sym phony orchestras in America went for their con ductors and from Ge rmany came usually the co n ’ ductors who were charged with Wagner s music dramas and other “ serious” work in American opera houses . An Italian might do very well with the operas of hi s own country ; a French conductor “ ” might at least have his routine uses ; but for real conducting in the “high” sense of the word there coul d be only a German . This last remnant of the Teutonic tradition endured long in our opera houses and concert halls . Then it became limp ,

. f faded , threadbare For there came fi teen years o r more ago to the Metropolitan Opera House in

of k to New York a conductor the first ran , known

I n r many another city besides , an talia , Artu o [2 ] C O N D U C T O R S

For the Toscanini . five years he did much of “ serious wor of the opera house ; for five years ’ he led impressively in one and another of Wagner s — music-dramas a grievous blow to the tradition ;

and then , at last , for final thrust into its very

s m bowels, he proved little less impressive in y phonic music when he undertook a concert now and

then as conductor of the Metropolitan orchestra .

When Mr . Toscanini came first to the Metropoli

the tan , wiseacres wagged their heads ominously, and those who were prone to mistake Teutonic pre judices f o r lofty principles made the same boding

. wa s motions Who this Toscanini , with a great reputation behind him in South America and Italy — — lands in which such a reputation coul d not o r

S —be ! at any rate hould not made First of all , he conducted absolutely from memory and he had always done so . Report ran that he carried the

of a scores countless operas , and to the last minuti e

l re of detail , in an abnorma ly susceptible and

iv tent e . memory Gossip told how, within a week , he coul d so absorb the music and the text of a most

- intricate modern music drama , poring over it at i the piano , read ng and rereading it for hours and for whole nights at a time , until it was photo graphed upon his memory—yet not merely photo [3] E I G H T H N O T E S

graphed , but visualized there as a living and com

munica l o - b e thing . He had s carried twenty two operas in his head in one season ; he could recall i as many more with a little study . S ngers and players who had worked with him bore unanimous testimony to the completeness and the accuracy o f ’ Mr. Toscanini s memorizing . He knew the smallest ’ details of the music or the composer s glosses upon

it . He knew every line of the text and the stage

r f r ll di ections . He had corrected out o easy e co e c tion errors in parts that had escaped hi s most

meticulous predecessors .

1 so c And 0 ! it was all true . He did onduct when he appeared first at the Metropolitan . He has so conducted ever since . He conducted so again when

t on oc he passed to symphonic music as conduc or,

of t casion , the Metropoli an orchestra and when he lately traversed America as conductor of the newly assembled orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala o f

Milan . At the Metropolitan when he took in hand a new t produc ion , a fresh revival , or even the preparation of a repertory piece for which he was to be t e

f or sponsible the first time, never in the whole his tory of the opera house had rehearsals been so

not thorough . Mr. Toscanini came to them with [4]

E I G H T H N O T E S

l —in sured , the resu t such unified , complete and polished performances a s the Metropolitan had not — ifi i ’ hitherto known j ust e d him . Since Se dl s time no conductor there had so stamped himself upon

. e the operas that he undertook None , ither, had

accomplished so much with them , and they ranged ’ “ ” “ ” ’ from Gluck s Orpheus and Armide to Duka s s “ ” ’ “ ” ’ Ariane and Verdi s Otello ; from Wagner s ’ “ - Tristan to Wolf Ferrari s Donne Curiose . In

of spite the wiseacres , the impression spread that these were the ways of an operatic conducto r o f the first rank and that these were the resul ts such a conductor accomplished—though he did happen to be an Italian .

Fo r Mr. Toscanini , seemingly, conducting, and i particularly orchestral conducting, is primar ly

- self expression . Obviously none but him knows the purposes and the processes with which b e ap proache s a piece of music and finally brings it to ff performance ; while, unless he is di erent from

t con most conduc ors , he himself may hardly be

of . scious them Clearly, however, by the evidence o f - of l the concert hall , he is not those who wou d ’ ro first discover the composer s thought , emotion , p ce dure , idiosyncrasy, and then bear them to the i audience as ful ly as they may . Of course , th s [6] C O N D U C T O R S transmission does take mo—re or less color from the transmitter and his means that is to say, from the mind and spirit of the conductor and the quality of his orchestra ; but within these limits , there is such a thing as objective conducting . In contrast Mr . Toscanini seems almost wholly hi subjective . What he would ex bit to his hearers ,

hi s own impress upon them , infuse into them , is reaction to the music in hand . The composer and the composition fall into second place ; the orches tra becomes no more than a responsive and impart “ ing instrument ; the conductor is the be -all and ” the end -all of the hour ; the audience listens to him , answers to him , while upon its perceptions and

i . sens bilities, he veritably plays The prelude to ’ “ ” r the of Wagne s Tristan , soliloquy Isolde, dying

fi . trans ure d . and g , flood Mr Toscanini with emotion Through the music and the orchestra he outpours

- that emotion upon a whole concert room . From Beethoven’ s symphony in C minor he receives cer tain sensations . Those sensations , raised to white

i n fire r heat the of performance , he d ives home upon his hearers . To the last inflection he makes the orchestra his voice .

First of all , as every great conductor must , Mr.

a Tosc nini conducts with the clearly apprehending, [7] E I G H T H N O T E S the firmly de mgnmg and the finely discriminating

He not . mind . does merely memorize his music He grasps its substance until he has made it a

n rt . part , a livi g pa , of himself Through and through he knows it largely and knows it minutely .

so its . Comprehending it , he can preserve unity E l ach detail , and each accenting of a detail , fal s

e into its due place , sometimes insignificant , som n times salient . For Mr . Toscanini discrimi ates

He as he conducts . does not magnify the unim portant or make the important monotonous . There are middle voices and middle shadings in his con ducting . It does not alternate heights and depths in fictitious contrasts . In every composition he practices the science of musical architecture and then by imagination and feeling warms it into an “ ” art . To sit under him is to hear the art of musi cal design practiced as no other conductor now practices it . Incredible as it may seem , an Italian conductor may have intellect . To intellect Mr .

fin Toscanini adds imagination , the e subjective imagination that no other conductor in America has

s s b pos es ed in such degree as e . It is the divin ing and individualizing imagination that is the

of highest attribute a great conductor . [8] II - DED C . MANY SI MU K

f O o . ne sort conductor, like Mr Toscanini , invites his hearers to receive his impressions

o f the music that he chooses , to listen to ’ or o r d Ind Mozart Beethoven , Tschaikowsky y,

after it has passed through his temperament . He plays upon his men as some pianists play upon their instruments in order that the or che stra may expres s himself quite as much as the

composer whose name stands upon the program . Those of another sort regard themselves as only — means to an end and that end is the clearest and fullest communication of the contents of the music

in hand as the composer wrought and felt it . These conductors approach a given piece , be it a simple symphony by Haydn or an intricate tone-poem by

to . Strauss, with an eye single its peculiar traits

sub They apprehend its structure, assimilate its stance , penetrate its moods , assort and adjust its details to the underlying or dominating musical e lo and poetic content , discover its accent and

uence t q , and hen to their utmost seek to communi [9] E I G H T H N O T E S

cate all these things to their hearers . They differ e ntiate each piece that they undertake from all the

rest . They give to each its individual voice .

. t O Dr Muck , when he graced the Bos on rchestra ,

was such a one . He sought only the substance, the

of spirit, the peculiar life the music as it came from ’ the composer s hand . His personal distinction was

to be impersonal before his music , but not imper

sonal in the negative sense . Rather, he had as many personalities as there were composers and

pieces on his programs . He made himself and his orchestra the eloquent and the characterizing voice

of t of our each . No conduc or time has seemed to have so few limitations of sympathetic understand

ing and answering emotion .

of i ul in The secret this discrim nation , this tr y te r re tativ e u - p q ality , this self subordination , lies,

of . no perhaps, in the qualities Dr Muck as man less than as musician . His work has proved him a

of man of strong and fine intellect , alert , nervous and sensitive mind . He was schooled in the liberal studies ; he knows other arts than the one that he practices ; he has lived in the world of cultivated men and not merely in the world of makers o f music ; he looks upon life shrewdly and humor i i ousl . r i y He has the penetrat ng, disc minat ng and [ 10] C O N D U C T O R S orderly mind that springs from mental discipline and mental training . He understands before he

the of feels , and breadth and the fineness his under standing he has proved from Bach through the com l posers of our own particu ar place and hour. But

mental qualities alone make only a dry conductor . He must have emotional understanding and re spon

sive ne ss . O as well n this score , again as his work

has proved him , Dr. Muck is no less finely strung .

His is the alert , sensitive, nervous spirit that enters

into the moods and the emotions of the symphony,

- o r the tone poem , the concert piece before him , and

that seizes and reflects them vividly and vitally . As he has proved time and again , he is sensitive alike

to the varied poetry, the varied drama , the whole

range o f the expressive quality of music . He has

of kept it an emotional speech . Such a union men tal and emotional qualities does not in itself in round a conductor . He must add to them the — trinsically musical qualities the feeling f or

n of f o r beauty and poig ancy tone, musical design

and form and ornament, for the underlying and

f or distinguishing melody , the songful utterance ,

for the charm and the power of ordered sound .

Dr . Muck knew no less this purely musical sen

siti ve ne ss . of He is the man intellect , the man of [ 1 1 ] E I G H T H N O T E S

feeling, who has found the conducting of music

the normal and instinctive outlet for these qualities .

His mental , emotional and musical traits stood ever

in even balance . O By general consent, the Boston rchestra under

Dr . Muck was the incomparable orchestra o f the

world . His purpose was to make it as perfect an

instrument as he coul d compass . He would not have it merely more eloquent than other orchestras ;

for that, however high the standard , is relatively

a common criterion . He would have it eloquent with the rare and ideal eloquence in which ful

fil lme nt b e his matches vision . To that end shaped

programs and ordered his rehearsals . For that end he lavished all his powers tirelessly and stimu

e lated all the powers of his men . They answer d as though they knew and felt the goal . At the close o f his long last term in Boston the orchestra stood

o f at the apogee attainment . It was as perfect an instrument as a human instrument could well be .

It was perfect in the range , the balance, the

o f euphony , the elasticity, and the sensibility the blended tonal mass ; perfect in the luminous utterance of music ; in the manifold force of voice that it yielded , in diverse richness and color

of ing, in the variety its march, in rhythmic [ 12]

E I G H T H N O T E S of the composers whose music he played . He transmitted music to us in the living image of its b form and su stance, in the voice and in the emo

a s wa s . tion , it seemed , in which it created Divin

. b e ing, he imparted Imparting, enhanced and

ul of intensified . For in him is that fac ty divina tion and that quality of impartment which diff er e ntiate s the great conductor from the merely able practitioner of his art . The composer writes in emotion , sometimes in an emotion that the music hardly embodies and releases . Divining, pene i trat n . g, Dr Muck enters into this emotion , trans mits it, and sometimes releases and heightens it as though he were freeing that , which from sheer

of intensity feeling, holds the composer almost

- tongue tied . As widely as these composers range , ’ do so ranges Dr . Muck s divination . And to and to be these things is to be a very great conductor . BE A III . MENGEL RG AND MELODR MA

l Mr . Menge berg has become the most sought “ ” of t prima donna conduc ors . He does not ven ture outside of symphonic and choral music t E and the more, hen , has urope sought him f or such concerts from London to Petrograd .

a s Now he is come to America , first visiting conductor of the lately defunct National Sym

O to phony rchestra and again share with Mr. Stransky the conductorship of the Philharmonic

Society . By common consent Mr . Mengel k berg ran s high in his profession , applauded in his native Holland , in adjacent Germany , and , most

of . all, in Paris His energy is inexhaustible ; journeying has become second nature to him ; he is a quick but exacting drill-master ; he has the classic ’ and the modern repertory at his fingers ends ; he

of is a conductor both individuality and power .

hi s Mr. Mengelberg conducts lustily, with all

— all i heart and all his soul and also .h s body . His right hand beats the measure with exceeding clear ness , firmness and precision . His left, no less , is [15] E I G H T H N O T E S

t t s seldom in repose and even hen , it mus be cares

to k o of ing his cheek, so used is he ma ing s me use it . With his left hand he does not signal instrument

o f n . or group i struments , as most conductors do He does that apparently by the concentration of his glance upon them or by inward reli ance upon the ’ players close following of the score . Usually with hi s left hand he is writing the contours o f the

i out melody upon the air, fl nging emphases , catch

k old ing and concentrating climaxes , li e the pic tures of Jove in the classical dictionaries with a fist

o r full of thunderbolts , else holding the orchestra

a s in the hollow of his palm , it were , in a moment of transition .

. t By these tokens , Mr Mengelberg is a conduc or who seeks large and emphatic effect out of whatev er

b e music undertakes , who relies upon sharp con tra sts , who spends little pains upon exposition and the of inse nsi refinements expression , and who is

o f tive to the middle gradients power . Being so ’ o f minded , he hoists the finale Beethoven s Fifth

Symphony for example , from plane to plane of

r excited jubilation, holding the music and the o che stra momentarily suspended in his Jove-like fist for some gentler and contrasting measures . Being so minded , he also takes the slow movement of [ 16] C O N D U C T O R S that same symphony with a robustness that does violence to its imaginative and capricious quality and that insistently coarsens it . In similar fashion , the gentler, the feminine melody as it were , of the

first allegro hardly finds its voice . No sooner does

the it appear than Mr . Mengelberg sends first mas

its culine melody crashing down upon head , even

o f though the music so loses all quality contrast .

Yet when the contrast can be emphatic , Mr . Men l e b e r . g g delights to magnify it By this time, nearly every one knows the sublimity of the first measures ’ “ ”— of Strauss s - Zarathustra the long held , dark and surging organ point , the flaming trumpets , the resilient and resplendent strings , the mighty flood of tone that flings Zarathustra in the sunrise forth

of upon the world and the problem living . Mr. Mengelberg is powerful with it ; he would pile every orchestral richness upon it ; he would make the tone of his band like a great , free , releasing voice . “ - of Then ensues, in the tone poem , the passage The ’ ”— - Back World s Men chromatic , crabbed and dun .

Mr . Mengelberg seizes such a contrast and drives

e . it into the imaginations of his h arers Similarly, just before the beginning of the exuberant close of “ ” the overture to Der Fre ischiitz he must almost [ 1 7] E I G H T H N O T E S choke the orchestra into concentrated suspense that f it may blaze forth into the brilliancy o the coda . ’

i s so too . u It , , with Mr Mengelberg s meas ring of the quality of tone that he draws from his men . He would have it very soft and very shadowed and no conductor can achieve a more exquisite pianissimo—as in the beginning of this same over ture . Or he would have it at the other extreme of “ power, brilliancy and elasticity as in the Dance ” “ ” Song of Zarathustra . Between he seldom finds

s c . middle voices , shaded color , subtle a cents

of in Whatever he does , he must do at the highest

. O t tensities , each in its kind f course hese diverse intensities are highly exciting and highly obvious .

They have as manifestly their limitations . They

of make Mr . Mengelberg a conductor in terms melo drama . I O TE ! T E S ST V . M N U H VI UALI

f In Boston, succeeding Dr . Muck , after the hal

of Ra baud forgotten interregnum , now dwells — the ablest of the Parisian conductors Pierre

O o r old e s Monteux . f them , young , he only has caped the rut in which orchestral concert s in Paris live, move and fulfill their dull being . From this

of Openness mind , from this eager, assimilating curiosity spring programs that in catholicity of choice, range forward and range backward, free dom from every sort of prejudice are unequaled in

Europe or America . Mr . Monteux is a widely read musician who adds incessantly to his reading ; wherever new men rise writing in new manner, thither he turns an inquiring and usually a welcom ing ear . He has the wisdom to perceive that the most enduring classics are staled by too frequent repetition ; that the routine of familiarity may dull

di cr even a masterpiece . Hence a wholesome s e “ ” tion with the standard repertory ; and persistent and often fruitful search for overlooked music of i established composers . Scarcely a conductor n [ 19] E I G H T H N O TE S

the exacting task of program -making be tter assorts the o ld with the new ; the immediately interesting with the permanently valuable ; the demands of the

the . day with scope of the years To an open , as

similatin g mind , he owes again his quick percep

of tion American standards in symphonic concerts ,

of his sense the public they assemble, his ready

of . conformity to the ways a new world Possibly, too , such a plastic temperament gives him his firm yet elastic grasp upon practical orchestral affairs . Each of the preceding conductors of the Boston

O - Rabaud rchestra , except such a mere stop gap as ,

served it well . None has served it better than Mr .

re - Monteux, saving it from dissolution , forming, re - practicing, restoring it, when secession threat

it— hi one the i ened and all t s as the , inevitable th ng to do .

A . s conductor, Mr Monteux excels with music dependent f or impression upon play of rhythm and

of of vibrancy color, music also romantic content or dramatic movement . He has gathered long ex pe rience as conductor of the Russian Ballet with mimes and dancers , long experience in opera

of houses with singers and stage . Out this ex

e rienc - ob ec p e , he brings into the concert hall the j tive, the visualizing sense . He cherishes the large, [20]

THE O S' V. S NGFUL rocx

sa They y in Chicago that now and then Mr. Stock fancies his audience saying to itself at

of sight his presence , familiar these many ’ o f : years , and at sound his orchestra s voice “ ” There he is again . The dread need not haunt

Fo r h a him . althoug the Chic go Orchestra comes

E - too seldom to astern concert halls , when it does come its worth speaks f o r itself ; while as clea r is f o . the quality its conductor, Frederick Stock His band is as clear-minded and quick to his ’ l o d t . will as was Dr . Muck s of in Bos on or Mr Tos ’ of canini s Milanese nearer memory . As for many a year and to the finer and more enduring credit,

the Mr . Stock , conducting , is all for music and not

o r c at all f o r himself . Hence no conscious un on ” scious assertion of personality upon hearers ; no

- displayf ul exercises in the concert room . In his study, he peruses and penetrates a piece in hand ; in rehearsal he prepares it and the orchestra f or

I b e performance . n public , has only to reassert

l the c ‘ his wil upon the orchestra , to resummon om [22 ] C O N D U C T O R S

poser to voice . His large and flowing beat seems o f the simplest ; his left hand restrains of terie r than i urges, sets no spirals upon a throbbing air. With n , but firm upon both band and audience , is the force

of that plumbs the depths orchestral song, gains the heights o f orchestral sonority . As ’ he proves in the first movement of Rakhmaninov s

o r Symphony and again in the Finale , in the final ’ f - o . surge Isolde s death song, Mr Stock excels in the advance and recession , the suspensive stay, the

- sustained flood , the deep laid foundation while the ’ surface boils, which is the conductor s art of climax . As he proves in the Russian’ s Adagio and upon a many another neighboring p ge, he commands

instru equally unfolding, intensifying, ascending mental melody . He chooses the pace that reveals it; knows the long gradient that is mounting path ; feels the modulation accenting and diversifying progress ; holds phrase to phrase in unbroken un dulation ; keeps background as warm as line is clear.

too Finely, , he differentiates and characterizes f melody . So to discover the song o symphonic

enf so music and old his hearers therein , to ply sym phonic climax and sweep listeners upon it is to be eloquent, masterful conductor . For the most dis [23] E I G H T H N O T E S

i tinctive quality in Mr. Stock s his ability to bear

orchestra and audience deep into the music, to hold them fast within its voice , progress , spirit .

AS . Accessory virtues are many . a whole , Mr

bear u Stock s and feels the music in hand , regardf l

of . unity , nowhere sparing pains Many a condue “ ” of tor, having wrenched the prelude Tristan from

of of the voice fate into the voice desire , having t gained the climax of that ceaseless longing, le s “ ” the rest slide any old way into the measures of ’ Isolde s soliloquy . Mr. Stock perceives and conveys

o f the descent that music, sated , numb , wearing itself into silence and nothingness . However ear and imagination may hear the content of Rakhmani ’ nov s Symphony it is no mean design in tones .

- of architec Clear minded , plastic hand with such ture , Mr. Stock maintains the large ascent, the l structural unity . He is as sedu ous with the pro po rtions of orchestral tone ; he seeks and gains its sustained richness ; its momenta ry incisiveness

own of within his ears , upon the ears his audience . Few conductors achieve better than her - and his or — che stra with him the depth and glow of Rakh ’ ’ maninov s or Wagner s harmonies . They are ao

o . A cording t his own mind , heart and time s he [24] C O N D U C T O R S

adjusts details like threads into a fabric , so does he discover and intensify the outstanding strand .

Mr . Stock can make an orchestra , a music flash .

Only one shortcoming persists in him . Discerning

t t . O and practiced conduc or, he heeds rhy hm nce

a s o r the of and again , in the Scherzo Finale ’

Rakhmaninov s . symphony , he makes it beat high l Whenever the composer wi ls , he sustains it . But to his younger hearers , perhaps overswayed by a

of custom and a pleasure the day, often comes the t ul h wish hat he wo d s arpen , intensify, whirl with it .

{251 ’ S'r xo sm s VI . o w PROGRESS

Of the younger conductors now working in

A . merica , Mr Stokowski is unquestionably the best equipped , the fullest tested . Surface shortcomings he once had in a certa in display

ha s ful attitude toward his audiences, which he nearly outgrown ; in a certain inclination toward social prestige which, again , he may discover in

the i . long run , is a vain th ng As conductor there is no mistaking hi s ability with romantic music of

o r of any period any school , with the pieces the

m ul - m mode s and the tra mode s, with whatever is im sharply rhythmed , warmly colored , variously I passioned , largely voiced . n all such music he conducts with imagination and eloquence, vividly t n designing, ardently projec i g, with flashes of rare

t of . insight , with s rokes clear power Finesse and elegance may still somewhat elude him with the eighteenth -centu ry masters ; his severer classics

of may lack a measure poise, may miss grave and k i deep intensities ; but Mr. Stokows i st ll stands in

i . the wax ng years Moreover, as he has amply [26] C O N D U C T O R S

proved in Philadelphia , his standards of orchestral technique are high ; while he can gradually impose

them upon his forces . When he first took over the Philadelphia Orchestra and for an appreciable

. Now period thereafter, it was a mediocre band it

plays with a precision , pliancy, fluency and balance

of tone, with a vitality of rhythm , a roundness of

period , a pervading warmth and resilience that are ’ r Stokowski s ; surely M . handiwork upon it Latterly no orchestra in the United States has

so gained much in prestige as that which Mr . Sto k k ows i leads . For years he has been gradually bet tering the personnel and the playing of the band ; for years he has been ripening himself as condue tor. Now, as the way is with such progress , the outcome seems suddenly to stand clear . At home in Philadelphia , in New York and in the other cities

o r that the orchestra regularly occasionally visits , it has been more applauded and better supported than ever be fore . The expert have found new and lively interests in its concerts , while less exacting hearers have drawn fresh pleasure and stimulation from them . From many a side it is possible to

sc hear warm praise , to di over a new respect for the

Philadelphia Orchestra . Especially among musi “ ” the cians, it is in the air as phrase goes , that the [27] E I G H T H N O T E S Philadelphian band is the risen orchestra in

For America . that very reason , it is beginning to attract individual players of a quality that it has fi much needed . Before long, if it can nally escape one t o o f t and ano her hampering c ndition the pas ,

o it bids fair t be the orchestra that Mr . Stokowski i deserves . At last Philadelphia , l ke Boston and

of or Chicago , is tasting the sweets pride in an

he tr c s a that has given the city prestige in the arts .

Sto By the tokens of recent seasons Mr . kow ki s and Mr . Monteux are now the most inter esting conductors o f symphonic music in America .

now Mr . Stock, Mr . Damrosch , Mr . Stransky, are

fixed quantities, little likely to change ; Mr . Men

l r e be . g g, too , is what he is ; Mr Gabrilowitsch and

of t Mr. Ysaye are relatively at the beginning heir

o one of careers as conductors by profession . N t these, unless it is Mr . Gabrilowitsch, has the per sonal distinction , the individualizing force and

To quality of Mr . Stokowski . none of them do audience and orchestra more clearly react . Whether the listener agrees or disagrees with his

of not version a particular piece, it is possible to hear it and him with indiff erent ears . Whatever the number in hand , he strikes the fire that gives vitality to the music and individuality to the per [28]

VII . S TRANSKY AND STRIFE

Temperance is not the distinguishing grace of either the eulogists or the detractors of m Mr . Stransky . Those who ad ire him ar de ntly aver that he is one of the foremost of living conductors . His detractors rush as far in the other direction . In their ears , Mr . Stransky has not a merit in the concert -room ; he is the merest

to o charlatan among conductors , which is much arrogant and sweeping an assertion to persuade those of us who try to keep fair and open minds about music and musicians as about all things else . ’ “ ” Moreover, harping upon a man s sincerity , like most speculation about motives that we do not know at first hand , is a ticklish business and may be “ ” left as one of the extra -hazardous pastimes of the young .

AS usual , the workaday truth probably lies somewhere between the two extremes . Mr. Stran

r No sky is not a Nikisch o a Muck or a Toscanini . more is he a conductor to be dismissed with a pet

t Ho nl an sneer . w capable and thorough a drill [30] C O N D U C T O R S

master he is , the Philharmonic Society , under him ,

Fo r old has clearly shown . its massive exactness

Mr . Stransky substituted the elastic precision with which it now plays either under his own or a vis ’ iting conductor s baton . It plays with euphony in the several choirs and in the whole orchestra , with rhythmic suppleness and vitality or with diversity

- of . appropriate tone Throughout , the wood wind choir and the horns are good to hear and virtu osi clearly sit among them . The strings have gained in suavity and luminosity of tone and in capacity f or be instrumental song, though they have never i come edgeless and shimmering . The old Ph lh ar monic was a band of power and little else ; now the tradition has yielded in every choir except the

s o r brass , which still overdrives it elf is overdriven .

By so much Mr. Stransky has served the Philhar

so monic Society and its public well , and by much he proves that he has a hand and ear for the finer distinctions of orchestral playing . He has his

n f or of too feeli g the subtler qualities music , , as

of he often shows , and for such strokes tonal elo qu ence as the celebrated entrance of the horns ’ “ f Strau o ss s . toward the end Don Juan Indeed ,

- of the playing Of the tone poem , more than any ’ Stran k . s other piece, exemplifies Mr y s dominant [31] E I G H T H N O TE S ff ” qualities as a conductor. He is all for the e ect that shall play on the instant and unmistakably

f s upon the susceptibilities o hi hearers . He would

h of keep them , as it seems , at a igh pitch nervous hi n excitement . He would bathe them in s to al

hi s sonorities , sting them with rhythms, sweep them along in the irresistible current Of the music or else cradle them sensuously in its sentiment . “ ” So he and his orchestra fling off Don Juan and twenty telling details and as many more glories o f the suff using orchestral color go by the board ; so he can make the march of the magic brooms in ’ Dukas s scherzo a thing of fearsome sonorities and cumulating beat . Where he falls short is in the sensitive modul ation of his music by the fine in stinct and imagination that dwell in conductors o f the first rank and in the subtlety—and also the — “ ff ” f truth that makes an e ect seem not an e fect , but the inevita ble and irresistible voice of the music of the moment . II

SINGING-ACTORS

1 AR EN—MIRROR r THE MO ERNS . G D o D

ll ICK , if you wi , twenty technical flaws in ’ Mary Garden s singing . Discover, as it is

s easy to di cover, that hers was originally a voice that might have served admirably the pur

o poses of song . She has preferred t make it an n exalting, emotional , characterizi g and delinea

she r tive speech . To that end uses all her vocal e

she sources ; for it will risk any vocal sacrifice , l attempt any vocal distortion . The technician wi l rage at her ; singing-teachers count her the abomi nation of desolation - in their trade ; while sensi

of tive ears , trained to the Older arts pure song, in

of now and out the opera houses , do writhe and then under the quality o f some of her tones and the she she methods by which gains them . But

a att ins no less her real end . Her Singing is the

she speech of the part is playing . In her tones float the traits and the emotions of the character portrayed . She colors them with every change and

su e s process of mood , with every subtlety of gg tion . Hers is a truly magnetic art , the art of the {351 E I G H T H N O T E S

n - in si ging actress, however uneven she may be the e xem lification of u p it , near its f llness . Hers are modern means to modern ends . With her came a S new day in operatic acting and inging . ’ S —o r —Miss Garden s inging oftener declamation c alls to a more vivid life than any other singing 'i actress now may, the Tha s of Alexandrian feasts and the desert convent ; the Louise of Montmartre the day before yesterday ; the little juggler whom e the Virgin loved ; the piteous M lisande , or the tempestuous and brooding Carmen . Her range is wide and she differentiates each of the characters

- she . chooses from it The heavy lidded , panther

i O o f l ke riental girl , who has thought the thoughts passion and first feels it when the white - shoul dered ’ k an Jo ana comes from Herod s pit, is far indeed e from the M lisande, wisp in the wind of fate , trembling to the impulses she hardly knows , mov f of . o ing, living as the vision a dream Louise the ’ to dressmaker s shop , palpitating the surge and the beat of Paris, is no less remote from the little white monk , who sits apart and downcast in the

too — common room and wonders how he, , poor — juggler lad shall make his works serve Our Lady . To differentiate and to individualize her charac

a to ters , to c ll them , each in its kind , as intense [36]

E I G H T H N O T E S because of the superb and tireless vitality of the — n - o o f si ging actress behind them . Life the j y it ,

r of , a , the exe tion it the rew rd of it t—he pleasure daily renewed o f all these things bum s too brightly and too eagerly in Mary Garden for her impersonations to be one whit less alive than is she . Even when she exceeds and overemphasizes as “ ” of o r with Fiora in The Love Three Kings, dis torts as with Monna Vanna in Février’ s music

she drama after Maeterlinck , errs with a certain magnificence .

Miss Garden is the guardian , in America , of the “ ” living and vivid tradition of the ul tra modern t opera . It is her knowledge that direc s , her spirit that informs whatever is accomplished in this country in the renewal , from time to time , of the beauty and the power of the music into which De bussy has wrought Maeterlinck’ s “ Pelleas and

be a re r of f or Melisande . Each the opera listens himself . Some there are whom the comparative newness of the idiom of the music baffles until they lose themselves in the pursuit of Debussy’ s har monies , progressions, modulations , scales and

Of of his rhythms . They debate the details musical speech as though they were absolute and exact things and not means to a particul ar end [38] S I N G I N G - A C T O R S

f o expression . They inquire whether such speech may serve other composers and other music- dramas — a matter of pure and futile conjecture . They ’ do serve Maeterlinck s play, and beyond that pur pose Debussy had no occasion to go . So Miss ’ Garden s means as singing-actress serve the ends

f so o the opera . Within music that speaks the Spirits of the personages of the play ; that stirs with the fate that creeps about them , the singing players ’ must seem the figures of Maeterlinck s dream and ’ Debussy s music . So , indeed , does Miss Garden wholly vanish into the being that she would simu

o h De late . S s e speaks with the very tones of ’ she bussy s music . So quivers and swims, pales and brightens in its very atmosphere .

[39] II . THE FERVORS OF FARRAR

Geraldine Farrar is not now the exquisitely

n - he voiced si ging actress that s once was . A streak of of S vulgarity , howiness for its own sake , has gradually crept into her singing and her acting .

i ie de v ivre But, l ke Miss Garden , she knows the jo ; she possesses a rich and glowing vi tality and she imparts it to whatever she undertakes in the opera “ ” - house and even in the moving picture studio . On ul the speaking stage , it is easy to believe , she co d also act . Miss Farrar has histrionic imagination , diversity, range and resource . She is capable of “ ” vivid operatic passion and states of soul . Her tones—except in the upper range where they now — l and then turn a little thin , shrill , pale have fu l

. O ness, surety , warmth peratic comedy and — operatic tragedy if it be not too heroic o r too — sublimated are at her command . She has a quick and clear, if Often deliberately bizarre , sense of pictorial effect in the theater . Her preparation of her parts is thorough and her ambi tion was once ceaseless . [40] S I N G I N G - A C T O R S Miss Farrar’ s Carmen takes high place among the Carmens of our stage . Her Tosca has many of ’ Be mhardt — the virtues of Mme . s in the theater a Tosca that is hot with Latin intensities and change

- ful with quick coming Latin passions . She excels ’ “ ” in Puccini s Madama Butterfly . The spirit and not the surface of Butterfly animates her acting of the part , and transforms a pathetically sentimental n drama i to a piercing poetic tragedy . At first she erred with her Butterfly in the pursuit of a sham and superfluous Japanese realism . Now, and in the scenes with Pinkerton in the first act in par ticular she n i , has lifted and refi ed her mpersona tion to an idealized and a very poignant beauty . The exotic setting fades and Cho - Cho -San ceases to be the Ge isha of Nagasaki and becomes the

of image all women who have given their souls, when men wanted only their bodies, and wanted these only until it was time to ride away . Through ’ the the second and third acts , Miss Farrar s origi nal impersonation was vivid with significant his tri onic strokes and piteous with the emotions of which her tones were the living voice . She de ployed all the musical and histrionic elements that s he has now fused into a whole that almost to the end of the opera sustains itself at [41 ] E I G H T H N O T E S

of t a height tragic beau y and tragic intensity . She continues to idealize the girl into the poetic and romantic beauty that she has sought in the first act . At the same time she keeps the n i in searchi gly human truth, the wring ng human ’ Bu rfl a c tensity of tte y s fate and emotions . She complishes all these thi ngs by the fused arts of — the singing-actress the heightened expressiveness Of her musical speech now to beauty and now to

to poignancy and now both , and the histrionic t action that is as the visualization of the charac er, the moment, the emotion and the music itself.

i of With n these limits Butterfly , Miss Farrar

l n - fu fills , and idealizes, all that a si ging actress may do in , and with the beauty , the felicity and the

of tensity her artistry , at once ordered and spon tane ous she , warms the minds, kindles and sways the e imaginations , and wrings the hearts of thos ’ of inca r that see and hear . Out Miss Farrar s nation of Madama Butterfly the new art of the

- of our the music drama time , new art of operatic ’ ’ impersonation , clothes Puccini s music and Long s ’ story, becomes Belasco s play . The music is

z in mannered , sentimentali ed , drenched the com ’ poser s instinct for the effective theater . Under

i e the is to the th n exotic ven er, fable akin the [42 ] S I N G I N G - A C T O R S

music . Upon both , from Miss Farrar as singing

of actress , falls the finer vesture universal human tragedy . ul The bizarre , the showy , the v gar, but , at the

a - S of s me time, the deep seated human ide Miss Farrar best exemplifies itself in her acting of one

of of her recent parts , the Zaza Berton and ’ ’ Belasco s play and o f Le oncavallo s hitherto mori bund opera . The music, falling within easy com

of pass her tones, unexacting upon her vocal skill , leaves her unha mpered in characterization of the

of personage, in projection mood and intensifying n of emotion . She can be as showy as o e of her instincts prompts her to be inthe dressing- room o f

e - the caf concert ; every pose , gesture , intonation ’ e o f Zaza may re k s world . The more bizarre the means and outcome , the fuller the flavor and in such a part Miss Farrar would have her Operatic “ ” characterization high . The opera proceeds along familiar course of such “contraptions” of the

the stage and , almost within hour, the singing actress is the repentant , the illumined , the trans formed Zaza touched to the heart by the music of a child , putting away old sins for new graces . Frank mechanics , hackneyed sentimentalism , pseudo emotion of the theater that Rejane herself coul d [43] E I G H T H N O T E S

10 ! out not quite clothe with human quality . And ’ o f Miss Fa rra r s song and action rises image of

c human woman prey to human emotions , onquer ing herself in human resolution . The Roman for gave much to one who had loved much . No less may be forgiven Miss Farrar because no less she

m — one hu anizes not Zaza merely, but almost every o f her personages .

[44]

E I G H T H N O T E S

ll — yet sti half woman with the changeful fires, the quivering stresses of her Tosca—above all else

of . daughter the theater Side by side , they have se t l i E l the tremu ous sens bility of her lsa , wistfu ,

l the iridescent , dream ike ; the sharp contours ,

the l - n hard surfaces, shril stru g emotions of her “ in t actress The Dead Ci y her primitive , earthy “ ” Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana . Out of all these impressions and in their own workaday ver ’ m . acular, Mme Jeritza s audiences count her a “ ”— personality the first, perhaps , in the general

of view, to pass the threshold the Metropolitan Since Miss Farrar crossed the great room of Capu ’ “ ” 1 let s house in a Romeo and Juliet of 906 . Agree with the purists that cheapening usage has “ ” made of personality a label common , trite , vari ously meaningless ; yet no other better contains the

ri i - e tza . o sum of Mme . J as sing ng actress N doubt it is the obligation of reviewing to analyze and assort, but to enumerate her abilities is by no

t . 1 2 3 means to convey their commingled quali y , , , 4 , is each an individual and significant num ber ; but they must be marshaled and pronounced together to make one hundred and twenty-three

- thousand four hundred and fif ty six . Presumably there are connoisseurs in the beauty of women qu ite [46] S I N G I N G - A C T O R S

content to look upon Mme . Jeritza , lustrous as gold

of in face and locks , plastic as mercury in flow O limb and torso . thers are as pleased to hear her lambent tones , to note the color playing aptly and endlessly over them, to feel the imaginative and propulsive instinct inflecting and winging them . Yet others are deeply and variously moved because of a sudden—and thereafter until the

e - se e opera is don they , know and feel in her ’ E Of Wagner s Sieglinde and lsa , the Tosca Sardou

of E Ko m old and Puccini , the Marie rich g and — “ ” dimly distant Of Bruges La Morte .

sum of os In a word , by the her powers and p

r sessions and projection , Mme . Je itza upon the l stage works deep and manifold i lusion . But into

o r the personage of Tosca Marie , into the char

E o r or acter that is lsa Sieglinde Santuzza , enters

o f e ritza the personality Marie J . And from that

o f of merging are born the speech song, the mirror face and body, the histrionic definition , the whole means of impression and illusion that convey to — us both operatic figure and singing-actress always through the vesture of her own bright or wistful beauty . Mme . Jeritza , upon the operatic stage , is not one or quality, or two three, however salient .

she i s - In herself the singing actress fused , welded , rounded . Molten is the illusion . [47] D—AGTO T I V. RENAU R WI H TONES

As remarkable an impersonation as the compara — tively new and glorious art of smgmg-acting of acting enhanced by the more exalted and more penetrating speech of music—has achieved in our ’ day was Maurice Renaud s Rigoletto , a perform ’ r Te rnina s Is ance which stands in memo y with olde, ’ with Calve s Carmen . Renaud was not an operatic pers onality as Jean

e f o r o r de Reszk , example , nakedly was , as Miss

Garden, in spite of her range from Salome and Sapho at one extreme to Melisande and Gri sélidis at the other, insistently is . None of us , who knew

Renaud only across the footlights, even though it

of was an acquaintance many years , could isolate l in his personality at all . We knew him vivid y, ’ timatel y, as the Rigoletto of Verdi s opera , as the ’ of of Don Juan Mozart s , as the Mephistopheles — — ' Berlioz more truly of Goethe as the Athanael “ ” “ ” of i of Tannhii use r Tha s , as the Wolfram , as the threefold “ malignant force” of “The Tales ” Sl c so of Hoffmann . ut in each instan e he iden [48] S I N G I N G - A C T O R S tifie d himself with the operatic personage that no che mico -critical process coul d first dissolve and then crystallize him out o f it . The saying used to run in London that there were as many Lord Rose be rys as that nobleman ha d activities . There were as many Renauds as the singing- actor had char

The acte rs . man who split himself into them like the germ of biological process , who gave them what ul hi m Mr. Shaw wo d call the Life Force, kept to l se f . ’

So too . Ex e de He rc le m with Renaud s voice p u .

ack o r - Ex voce McCorm Galli Curci . By their

. of voices they are known The distinction Caruso ,

the for another example , was the volume, splendor,

of the propulsive force , and the golden mellowness

se x his tones . Akin , for the other , were Mme . ’

of . Melba s . The distinction Mme Tetrazzini was the exquisite brightness , softness and limpid glamour of the finer range o f her voice . With twenty other singers it is the sensuous quality of their tones and the easy, pervasive , answering sensation to it that most commends them . Now ’ Renaud s voice was not a big voice and even in its prime it had no golden notes , no sensuous

. t splendors No one ever praised it, even in hose

s f or best year , the mere brightness and softness of [49] E I G H T H N O T E S

i its texture . It was never a v brant voice , in the

of u common sense generally comm nicating quality . It could never be overwhelming by its own pro

ul . e p sive force It b gan , as it remained , an expres sive voice . Fate gives voices ; men , by their intel li e nce g , imagination , ambition , industry and artis tic conscience, train them in the shaping and the

of transmission the tone, in the molding and the

of adjustment the musical phrase , in all the nice ties and all the suggestions of diction . There are

h o r of t voices t at thrill charm hemselves, and there are voices that stir and allure by what they impart

o f and the manner the impartment . In this second category lies the truer and finer artistry of song ; and through all his career Renaud practiced it with increasing acuteness and resource to steadily

finer and more various result . He was the singer

of by dint intelligence , imagination and knowl

o f edge, as well as by grace voice and labor ; and the longer, therefore, did he remain the singer.

m r Such artistry preserved Mme . Se b ich to un usual length of vocal days . It preserved Renaud even longer .

re Because Renaud was so complete , adroit and

r of sourceful in the artist y song in the narrower,

s hi s n more technical sen e , tones were the surer, fi er [50] S I N G I N G - A C T O R S

and more varied in expressive quality . His voice “ ” of i of became as the voice the monk in Tha s , the “ ” of of demon The Damnation of Faust, Don

of of Juan , Rigoletto , the mooning minstrel in “ a ”— Tannh user, the more illusively because he had the means as well as the will to transform and to

of n color it . His tones bore suggestion the hau ted and the tortured devotee ; of the melancholy and fathomless devil ; of the finely amorous and finely irresistible cavalier ever eager to savor new loves, and f or mental as well as sensuous satisf actions ; of

f or the senile malignancy, the passionate a fection

s of e ste r of the pas ionate vindictiveness the j ; , the — dreaming and tender knight of the Wartburg bore

so all these things diversely and illusively, because n by adroit fi esse and not by wrenching violence, he infused them with emotional or characterizing significance . So long as opera is opera , acting within it will have its inescapable drawbacks and

h e limitations . Under the footlights sits t relent less orchestra and at every turn the singer must

o r meet it . Sing he must Sing he ought at what

o f ever cost facial play . His pace must be as slow as the unfolding of the music, though the zest for histrionic speed quiver within him . Emotional or characteristic as he would make his musical [51] E I G H T H N O T E S

of speech , he must yet keep the musical integrity in i ifi hi s declamation . Fertile as he may be s gn

b e cant details , must deal oftenest with large and elemental emotions fin ding outlet in large and ele mental situations . In comparison with the actor

r tu by the spoken word , he is hampered at eve y rn

of by the limitations his medium , and the more difficul t and remarkable becomes his achievement if by operatic impersonation he discloses and sus tains a character and imparts its moods and pas

of sions . His compensation is the possession an exalted speech that often is more poignant and vivid than the spoken word . That speech is musi

- cal tone . Thereby above all else the Singing actor acts , and therewith Renaud excelled .

[52]

E I G H T H N O T E S

song that he chooses , since he follows no appointed

an program ; he sings it, passes to another and other still . By this time out of stored memories

i E r h s hearers have also made their choices . xube

antl or . y, vociferously, they demand this piece that

In as large good humor Chaliapin makes reply, “ conceding, refusing, deferring, until all in good ” time ! as he likes to retort) are content . In such process and progress , audience and singer become for the while a buoyantly reciprocal unit. The ’ like of Chaliapin s concerts hardly anoth er singer

of o r audience , west Russia , may experience . In a sense in the concert -hall Chaliapin makes

i the momentary m niatures, but in succession and sum of them he does disclose more variously than in the opera house the range of his characterizing p—owers and transmitting faculties . For the while in evening clothes , upon a bare platform , beside a piano , before an audience laid lengthwise through a tunnel rather than circled in concentra

—he tion about a stage becomes the shrewdly, the

’ of a of comically , drunken miller song Dargo mij sky; the frenzied fanatic of Rimsky-Korsakov n i Go d vowi g, almost immolat ng, himself to in

- of desert waste ; the brigand chief Rubinstein, scomf ul even of dooming foes victorious ; the sar £54] S I N G I N G - A C T O R S

— ’ donic teller of the tale o f the flea to Musorgsky s — ’ music in Brander s Goethian cellar ; the duelist ’ with both death and life through Sa snovsky s mor

. O dant , carking song r forthwith , at the turning of ac a leaf, he is the sensuous and artful singer, t complished in all the inflections and sha dings of song, making serene and spacious way through the “ ” ’ “ ” grand style of Beethoven s In Questa Tomba . For Chaliapin still keeps a bass voice of ma gnifi l cent sonorities and suavities , may sti l at will ply the arts and a rtifice s of orthodox song Italianate .

By predilection of mind and spirit, by ambition

of become habit, in quest manifold human range

of and deeper humanity expression , he prefers to use S this voice , this kill, as means to concentrated , conveyed , almost visualized characterization .

With verse and music in degree aiding, his tones set the scene , impose the atmosphere, summon the personage . They drive all home upon his hearers , for the instant vital , vivid , complete and possess f ing . The range O these works of Chaliapin in the

- f concert hall is the range o humanity .

I of n the opera house, the range and intensity ’ Chaliapin s characterizing facul ties are as broad And and deep . as befits such environment and aids, ampler and more graphic . In twenty parts [55] E I G H T H N O T E S o f - E Russian opera and music drama , Western uro

not peans , whom he has visited but rarely, do know

of him . Yet they have the advantage us beyond the Atlantic, since they have seen and heard him t hrough the smoldering, senile, savagery, the torturing doubts and dreads o f Tsar Ivan in Rim ’ “ ” sky-Korsakov s Maid of Pskov ; through the blindly exalted faiths and sacrifices of the apostle “ ” ’ “ of the Old Believers in Musorgsky s Khovanst ” china ; through the sombre , corroding, cruel ties, the brooding hate with which he clothes and — characters more out of himself than out of the — ’ “ opera Philip II o f Spain in Verdi s Don Car ” los ; through the Don Quixote of universal fan

of tasy and comicality, and as universal pang and ’ pity that b e similarly leads over Masse net s pale pages . Memory of players in theater or opera

Fo r o f house is pitifully short . the while , the parts in which we Americans at home have known

Me his Chaliapin , we remember only that his p tO he le s i in p , according to Bo to , was nearly naked

his c the Brocken Scene and that Basilio , a cording

snuffl . to Rossini , was spotted and y ’ O S Musor sk s f his Boris we know more , ince g y

- music drama , established in the repertory Of the

O on Metropolitan pera House , awaited Chaliapin [56] S I N G I N G - A C T O R S his recent return to America as it will at all future

comings . To have seen him in the scanty scenes in

- which the usurping Tsar, remorse ridden , holds — the stage f o r they are relatively few in this “ ”— opera of the Russian people is to retain the

of image Boris , sumptuous and splendid , prideful ,

of exalted , majestic , crossing the glittering court

‘ the Kremlin on the way to coronation , at once

- lording and blessing the subject folk . As clear and full rests the image of the gently paternal Boris

I n - wistful , half brooding play with his children in

- . O the still , close palace room f a sudden rises ,

o f beside and against it, the image the scheming

n v re usurper, the con i ing murderer, whipped by

of morse as by flail in the hand specter ; fleeing, cringing before it ; clutching at the old Choui sky

. O as at some warm , familiar, human thing r the Boris whose brow already drips with the clammy sweat of death , questioning vain tongues, search ing empty air f o r the solace and salvation that are

not. So . he dies drained by evil , doomed by fate

of As , through the intensifying lens Chaliapin,

so the eye has seen these images , has the ear heard ,

n o f in as intensifyi g a speech song, the very

o f tongue Boris and of Musorgsky for him . The few but spacious phrases o f the scene of corona [57] E I G H T H N O T E S

of tion ; the milder words , the softer accents the palace -room ; the scurry and welter of the meas — ures of remorse ghosts on the crupper ; the eager

Chouisk leap to y and a living, human world ; the

l i of — pent, groping, stil ng memories the end all

- speak through Chaliapin . The singing actor strips f . of hi m o the Tsar to the bared soul No secret , ’ ’ Musor sk s of Pushkin s g y music , drama , does he fail to penetrate . Yet by complementary power, as

unfla in insistent and gg g, alike in the broad outlines

re vital and in the detail inset, he has recomposed ,

iz e d . of , magnified and isolated Boris Puissance illus ion mul tiples this completeness of conception . The mighty personality o f Feodor Chaliapin has absorbed even the mighty personage that was Boris

Go dunov . I R SO—TO HI S T OST V . CA U U M

In thi s queer operatic world of ours there have been no audiences like those which Caruso assem in bled because, truth , there have been no singers like Caruso . A large part of his hearers , what

re ever he sang, seemed to come from those who garded him as one Of the unique personages of the i time , as Paderewsk was to be seen and heard among pianists or Mme . Bernhardt among players . This company go to see her though they know not a word o f French and barely heed the play when

h off . s e is the stage So they hear Paderewski , though the piano and its “literature are sealed

so saw books to them , and they heard and Caruso , careless Of the opera in which he was appearing o r of the part that it yielded him . Enough for them that they looked upon him and listened to him . And what manner of Caruso went they forth to see and to hear! Surely not the Caruso who used to stand four- square to the audience and pour forth

of - t his flood song . But rather the singing ac or who [59] E I G H T H N O T E S

a learned , with commend ble perseverance, to pene

n of trate the ski a character, to be personage in the musical drama , and not merely an acclaimed

r tenor singing this part o that . In the last decade of his service at the Metropolitan Opera House he “ ” of e n was no longer the tenor the golden voice, rapturing audiences by the opulence of his mellow ’ and glowing song ; f o r the quality of Caruso s tones and his ways with them much changed with the A i passing years . s time matured h s voice so did it ripen his imagination and develop his means

the of until his tones became voice his personage , until he himself entered , perforce, into part and

f or drama . Not nothing may a singer, though he

r be as eminent as Ca uso , work year after year with Toscanini .

old If the , golden magnificence had somewhat ’ out S gone of the inger s voice , tones remained that carried and imparted emotions variously and poignantly, that revealed the personage who was

the singing, that took color and accent from mo

of ment the drama , that characterized , delineated , projected . If once the only emotion that the voice provoked was o f the sensuous delight of beautiful and puissant sound , it continued , to the very end ,

ff . I to thrill . But with a di erent thrill t pleased [60]

E I G H T H N O T E S

” “ e e Prophet and Eleazer in The J w ss . Or give him a homely personage among Italian folk to play

and he played him vividly and well . He was, for a instance , a believ ble and amusing comedian in ’ “ ’ ’ ” r Donizetti s L Elisir d Amo e . He characterized ’ the Canio of L e oncavallo s melodrama stirringly and truthfully “ In Pagliacci Caru so had a clear notion of his personage that he wrought into a workable and

l . cumu ating histrionic design From year to year, b e amplified it with much illuminating and defin

ing detail . Recall, for instance , the exaggerated whimsies of a strolling player with which hi s ma ture d Canio cozened the crowd at the beginning o f the play ; the wiping of the powder from his face as of a player resuming relievedly his own per

son i t a ; the ntensi y, brooding or ominous , th t he threw into his declamation in the play whi le in action he was but doing the part ; the fashion in which he went emotionally dead when he had struck

how n down Nedda ; he retur ed a little to himself, “ ” dragged out of his thr oat la commedia e finita and huddled away, distraught , blind , blank again . ’ Al too of ways , , Caruso s song was the speech

hi s Canio , as elemental in all moods , as direct

- or and full voiced in his emotions , as simple sav [62] S I N G I N G - A C T O R S

age as the character really is . He made tell ingly but untheatrically the swift change from playful banter over the lightness of women to the amorous and vindictive words about a wife that he already suspects ; he did not overdo the ce lebf ate d solil oquy as a Canio might utter it ; he sang in the final scenes with the accents of the pain and the passion that rend the clown amid the ironies of the make believe and the reality . The music of Canio suited the best compass and the best quality of his ma “ ” ture d . voice Hackneyed , popular and all the rest of the damning adjectives of superior right

‘ e ousne ss his Canio may have b e come . But it re main ed one of the most remarkable operatic f personati ons o our time . — VII . FREMSTAD MIND AND WI L L

a not a Mme . Fremst d had been long in oper houses before she discovered that the field o f the

z - mez o soprano is relatively small . To perceive

i u of was to w ll the gradual q est a new range, little by little enlarging the compass of her voice and

persuading it to new timbres . Her voice ever bore the marks of the strain the transformation had laid

its upon it , but the change , with all pains and penal

wa s . ties, worth the accomplishing For had she not achieved it our opera houses woul d have lacked the most illuStrious singing-actress of Wagnerian

L rm nl . parts Since ehmann and Te ina . O y Mme Easton has matched her since in the singing of

n of them ; no one hereabouts in the acti g them .

By force of penetrating will , by keen and tire

of less mental energy , by goading pride achieve

re msta d ment , Mme . F seemed to devise , compose and project most of her impersonations . She was ” no temperamental singing-actress who seized in stinctively upon a few elementary emotions and by easy ardor and readiness of means gave them [64] S I N G I N G - A C T O R S

tonal and histrionic life and being . In all her

“ ' ” Tannhziuse r parts , except possibly Venus in and “ ” Walkii re Sieglinde in Die , wherein complete, secure and long- standing impersonation hid every means to the illusion , it was possible to discover traces of her processes . Her alert and tireless

of mind , her resolute imagination searched out music and text and inner vision the moods and the impulses, the rages and submissions , the raptures and despairs of her Isolde . In its earlier days , her impersonation no more than laid these emo f tions side by side in flat tints . The illusion o tones and action was as the illusion of an Isolde in clear outline and vivid color in a window of glass .

as . Then , Mme Fremstad ripened the impersona tion and herself , these emotions began to appear in the round , to melt their lines into long and sweep

r of ing cu ves feeling, to fuse their colors into a

to manifold glow, animate the whole being of an

Isolde who went the way of tragic fate . The voice became as Isolde’ s at the given moment and in the given stress of the music -drama ; the action seemed the spontaneous and inevitable complement .

r m tad . e s Mme . Fremstad , as Mme F , added to it only the expressive richness of her tones and the [65] E I G H T H N O T E S

tragic sweep of her movements . Her impersona

wa s re scoe d tion no longer f upon the stage . It had its being there in the emotional life of music and

r play . Her th eefold Kundry, from its darksome

and impenetrable wildness in the first scenes , through its sensuous splendors and subtle sugge s

of tion in the garden , to the tranquil beauty the

final episodes underwent a similar evolution . By

fine and indomitable will of imagination , she man tl e d z r her characteri ation in myste y, shadowed in the earlier episodes , agonized when Klingsor evokes her magic in the seductions of the garden — they are half-mental and so the better within ’ re msta d s — Mme . F powers and haloed in the

fi r i n of in trans gu at o of the end . No Kundry the nl te rnational stage probably matches hers . O y she and Te rnina have made head against a perversely baffling part . ’ Fre msta d s in Mme . Isolde and Kundry were ’ tricate l y composed , as Wagner s music and char a cte rization bade . Each was at once a finely and largely wrought vocal and histrionic design sed

ulou l S . Be s y proportioned , colored and haded side these b e r Brii nnhi lde seemed a simpler

one or a s personation , in which elemental mood p sion gave place to another and each was trans [66] S I N G I N G - A C T O R S lated into heroic ardor and sweep of voice and a c

. O of tion ut a young world came her Valkyr, elate and high-hearted ; out of a world already

out of she shadowed and a spirit deepened , called

Siegmund to Valhalla . The high heart was racked r n in the pa ting with Wota but it kept its pride .

transfi Then the exaltation , the desolation , the g “ ” — uration of the two other Ring dramas tragic

— m ta . re s d passion upon tragic passion that Mme F , u bom p by the music and by her will , came finally to sustain to the end . There were moments in her

Briinnhilde when her voice and action struck swift, heroic fire ; there were as many more when her sus taine d intensity of passionate utterance and pas sionate pause flooded eye , ear and imagination ; and once and again the still magnificence of her

to repose seemed fill the stage . I OLO AT A O T ASTS— ET AZZ V II . C R UR C N R T R INI

AND GALLI - CURCI

u fi Mme . Tetrazzini lingers as a very nusual g

ure on the operatic stage of her day . She is the S S coloratura inger pure and simple , who ings and

e o f our r do s little else besides , the sort that fathe s and grandfathers were cherishing in the fifties and

r all — sixties . Her pa ts are Old Italian the mel “ lifluously raving Lucia ; Violetta of Ab ! Fors e ” Lui ; the sorely harried but steadily songful ’ Gilda ; Be llini s maiden among Puritans who are singul arly expert in the ornaments of song ; and the wife in “ Crispino” who crowns her conjugal “ devotion by the brilliant singing of The Carnival ” ’ “ ” of Venice o r Proch s Air and Variations .

Te tra z Smilingly through these parts went Mme . zini , with matronly amiability and Florentine good

o nature fairly oozing from her . N t a penny cared her listeners whether to the eye She was not at all ’ like Scott s Lucy Ashton , the Gilda of romantic

o r - girlish fancies , the sleep walking peasant girl “ that strays across the quivering bridge in La Son [68]

E I G H T H N O T E S

a the st ge with longing eyes, troubled face , grop in —th g gesture . She sings the first measures e pure

—o f song the soliloquy in tones so soft, light, clear that they seem to float upon the air ; they flow from her lips in edgeless sequence ; they are simply col—ored with the longing that sees but may not grasp the perfect . voice of piteous vision blank to all but what it beholds and desires within

of itself . Perfection voice for such music and per sona e of g , perfection artistry in the shaping, the

a of jointure, the curve and the modul tion tone

of the . unite to perfect illusion the character, instant ’ Here is Donizetti s music sun g as that somewhat pedestrian composer may hardly himself have im in a g e d it . — - or A Mme . Galli Curci rather Lucy shton “ ’ ” passes on to Ardon gl ince nsi and the succeed

arkle ing ornate measures . With the crystalline sp o f of o r her staccati , the limpid flow her runs up down the scale, the purity and artfulness of her

cleam e ss trills in crescendo, the and the bright “ ” ness of her skips ! as the old teachers of song

ff i named them) over di cult passages, she weaves f ’ i the pattern o Donizetti s ntricate measures .

- Upon the ear they fall when Mme . Galli Curci

the sings them , as upon eye fall the arabesques [70] S I N G I N G - A C T O R S

above some Moorish doorway in the ruins of Granada when bright Spanish sun shines through

she them . Yet to that pattern gives the voice of

of rhapsody, the rhapsody that plays childlike ,

t . delighted , absorbed wi h haunting delusions Again the perfect voice of coloratura singing as the expressive means for which imaginative com E posers employ it . verywhere indeed , when Doni n L ’ ze tti so embellishes incide tally ucy s song, Mme . ’ Galli -Curci s voice seems to flower under inner

one of prompting into this ornament . Only the feats that she so transmutes into expression of mood or feeling does She seem once and again to

f or dis la f ul — use p y —purposes her ability to swell a long-held tone the mesa di voce of the Old masters . ! TT UF EO— OR O E I . TI A R F P W R

A s the memoirs , letters and essays have come down to us , the seventeenth and the eighteenth cen turi e s seem more interested in their men - singers

l of than in their women . Ha f the anthologies Eng ’ lish prose contain Addison s essay about the tenor

of who slew the lion in the London Queen Anne .

Dr . Burney recounts more of the men that he heard when he wandered through the concert rooms and the opera houses of Europe than he

of f does of the women . Out the records o the time it is easy to reconstruct the men that sang in the “ ” ’ ori ginal casts o f Mozart s operas in Vienna ; but they usually leave the women pale and lifeless

a sh dows . The nineteenth century acclaimed

e Lablache Mario , Jean de Reszk and other tenors ,

Fauré or two and other basses, and a baritone ; but it was rather the century of the prima donna . Wh en the historians and gossips of music begin to delve among its memorabilia , they are likely to

Alboni find much more about Malibran and , P L m atti and Gerster, ehmann; and Mate a than [72] S I N G I N G - A C T O R S they will about the tenors and the baritones that

partnered them on many stages . In the present century the men seem to have

n . u their in ing again With us in America , Car so became a matter o f course from long famil ia rity with his voice and artistry ; but when he made his occasional descents upon Paris, Ber

old lin or Vienna , the public received him as of it w received the primi donne , ith no whit less excite ment and acclaim . He happened to be a tenor

in a time when eminent tenors were few, and it is the good fortune of the high -voiced among men to be sought and extoll ed above the baritones and basses . They of the lower voices have always

been plentiful and capable . From one view their numbers and their ability have been their bane, and they have shone as constellations rather than as

re dile c individual planets . Besides, as common p “ m ” tions run , they take unsy pathetic parts in most operas and whi le they may impress their hearers

do . mentally, they not charm them sensuously

of Then , at last, in this operatic age men singers , a baritone stirred the same excitement, wonder and mixed admiration as have the primi

n e . don e and th primi tenori Next to Caruso , Titta Ruff o was f or some years the most acclaimed [73] E I G H T H N O T E S

- E . In man singer in urope America , at his first appearance , he proved that admiration and excite ment over primi donne of both sexes are by no means moribund and are not likely to be unless human nature dies too . Caruso , years ago , made i h s début in America in routine fashion . New York e learned gradually to appreciate Jean de Reszk . ’ Mme . Melba s début in the nineties was a chilly ’ r occasion . But Titta Ruff o s was a début compa a — ble in all sorts of excitement from violent admira — ’ Te trazzini s . tion to violent detraction to Mme . f l Am Mr . Ruf o elected to appear in Ham et in ’ bro ise Thomas s opera , so dead and buried that

to even in Paris , where it was be resurrected for his

of O r centenary , the director the péra had to sea ch f or singers who even cursorily knew the parts in it. ff r Mr . Ru o , it is said , is more ambitious as acto

so i of than singer, and perhaps th s phantom a real

Hamlet tempted hi m. He could hardly have known that Latin Hamlets in opera or drama usually

in of strike Americans as queer. Yet spite these handicaps, his acting revealed and maintained two distinctions . It has a singular projecting power and a remarkable command of dic hi m tion and tonal coloring . There is in a rare communicati ve force as out of a strong and vivid [74] S I N G I N G - A C T O R S personality releasing itself in a similar his

tri onic . temperament His diction is as puissant ,

of too . It has not the polished elegance Mr . Zena ’ or tello s , f example, but it has an exceeding clear

Hi s ness and it is uncommonly plastic . transitions from bald declamation to songful phrase are thrill ing in their vocal beauty and in their histrionic intensity . The voice that accomplishes these things is a very big voice, still in the noon of its strength, and maintained by the utmost vitality of technical resource . In its highest ranges it has a clear tenor I quality . n its middle course, especially when Mr. Ruff o is not propelling it to the full as he is too

to do . often wont , it has a warm and songful beauty I n its lowest ranges it loses body, distinctive tim bre, and becomes an ordinary voice .

What Mr. Ruffo displayed in that first evening in America , he has shown ever since . The great

of the power tone, great resources that maintain it, the great power of temperament behind it are at once hi s glory and his peril . They are his peril when he drives his voice and makes it hard , metallic n and merely noisy . They are his peril again whe , in the temptation to prolong and intensify telling

n of phrases, they produce u steadiness tone . They

hi s are glory when they enable the singer to hold, [75] E I G H T H N O T E S

expand , magnify and illuminate a phrase tones seem to flood the theater and sweep ff to a climax . Then does Mr . Ru o seem f o a demon of mighty song .

[76]

I C O AC F R AL L . M C RM K O

HEN a renowned singer of the opera

- l house condescends to the concert hal , — — she f or it is Oftenest She usually con

of descends indeed . Too many us have heard Miss “ ” Farrar rattle a careless voice through a reel or two of songs ; or Miss Garden variously proving her “ ” possession of personality to an amused audience ;

r - o Mme . Galli Curci showering high notes pro

so longed , as many bonbons upon her hearers . “ n the Curiosity and nothi g else, these ladies of ” lyric stage seem to agree , has assembled the “P ” l listening company . lay down to it, they a so fondly believe, and let integrity as artist and musi

o cian g hang . Thereby, they harvest vogue, fame , i money, wh le from Trenton even to Tulsa mankind

n one of and woma kind rejoice in them . Yet not them excels o r equals John McCormack in the en

f one during favor o the public . Not has reaped a singer’ s reward in reputation and riches as he “ ” has garnered them Any old way they sing in the concert-hall ; while he plies in it every beauty [79] E I G H T H N O T E S

’ of i il his voice, every secret of h s sk l . Round and ’ n m rou d they go in hackneyed , co mon , showy num bers ; while steadily he widens and betters the range of his pieces .

Mc ormack of Mr . C is a master the art of song f and therefore still a student o it . He knows the w highways and the by ays of music , and therefore still explores them that they may yield him new H matter . e keeps warm artistic ambition and

of artistic conscience, sparing no pains prepara tion , upbuilding from year to year the quality of his concerts . If he makes occasional sacrifices to his public, from him , as from no other whom it frequents, it has learned many a true quality , many

of . a find standard , song If he must prudently

r o f yield his hearers their po tion sentimentality , he counters with the rarefied beauty , often high and

of grave, of his singing ancient music . Scrutinize ’ McCo rmack s — find one o f Mr . audiences and in

of it , taking fill of pleasure , not a few connoisseurs “ ul music . It is the custom to call him a pop ar

. S singer . He is deservedly As inging goes in these days , he is also , and quite as often , an aristo crat of song . ’ McCormack s Mr . program usually begins with

- a group of eighteenth century airs . And what [80] S I N G E R S O F S O N G S

other singer of the hour more arduously turns

the ancient pages , so often shuts book with treasure 9 in his hands The impression , the emotion of — these songs from Peri , from Costanza , from a Bach, from Mozart , and from the early H ndel

Mc ormack is of pure music unadorned . Mr . C can

of risk the nakedness such song, his perception i . ts grasps its austerities He can carry it to heights ,

understand its breadth , respect its severities . With — a too com H ndel , , in his later manner when the poser chose to lay the ornament of song upon

n out of melodic li e amply phrased , charged again that amplitude with a magnificent melancholy k Mc ormac i s . Mr. C master He can summon as by ’ “ intuition the glow of Handel s grand manner . The books tell the prowess of ancient singers in

m of this ancient music . Mode s , studious it , have

reason to accept Mr . Mccormack as such voice . To these “ old airs” usually succeeds a mis ce llan of E y classic French , Russian , German , ng lish pieces . Over all of them plays the familiar beauty Of v o icch pure tenor still with no re e di ness to thin it, no baritone darkening to cloud it ; ’ ’ the musician s perception , the singer s skill , the ’ tu imagining and in itive artist s regard for pace , accent, color ; the tone that bears all three , gives [81 ] E I G H T H N O T E S

own s life and character, yet keeps its sen uous per ’ i c f e ct on. Mc o rma k These are Mr. C s familiar

s virtues . To them he is adding the newer qualitie

no of maturing years . He measures sentiment w l and seldom overdoes it, un ess under irresistible temptation of Irish airs . He also summons the

of breadth , the force the dramatizing singer and

of . L at no cost musical tone ater on his programs, inevitably, will come the humors , the heartaches , . of - the fancies Irish folk pieces, but who that

of in knows the art diction , tastes the spice of nuendo of , craves the pleasure finely spun threads of l song, wou d have the singer forego these num

! suble t bers Finesse and fervor, y and sentiment “ ” - it is possible to sing even Mother Machree with an air of distinction . I OSING THE USSIAN I . R R

Most of us in the Western world heard first o f

Vladimir Rosing when , exiled from his native Rus

- sia E . , he descended upon nglish concert halls

There he won quickly no little note, no small pub i lic ; while discriminat ng reviewers, worthy of m hi . O trust, warmly yet persuasively praised ften

of and with admiration , the major cities Britain “ heard him as singer in his own concerts , as as ” sisting artist to orchestras , and once and again in

opera . Then Mr . Rosing ventured the United

States , where , though the reviewers were negligent,

stirred audiences heard , applauded and waxed in

regard for him . A few, at least , were aware o f the coming of an unusual , an engrossing singer,

a singer, too , not to be easily compared with any

- our concert halls have much known . ’ in Ro s s . Mr . g voice is a tenor Heard in stripped

song, with neither characterization nor outpoured passion to cloak them , his tones are of clear

Italian quality , even as Russian music , in lyrical

flow in the opera house , often becomes Italianate . [83] E I G H T H N O T E S

. la By this token , Mr Rosing sings vibrantly, e sti cally, freely, clearly, yet now and again with a “ ” r t n pe ceptible whiteness , wi h play of that plai tive note which in Italian song—and at passing

t — r moments wi h him easily becomes nasal and wi y. Evidently he is a well schooled and thoroughl y practiced singer . When he believes that pure song is voice to the music in hand , he sings with clear

- t regard for well shaped , transparent tone , sus ained line, warm , felicitous Italian phrasing, adept modu S lation , pun transition, plastic progress , apt cli max .

Usually, however, Mr . Rosing prefers to make his song an insistently expressive art . In his tones he woul d define and project character ; summon pic ture and vision ; evoke and convey passions of the ul mind , the soul , the body . And he wo d do all these things to the utmost . For such purpose , he

or o r bends breaks rhythms, chops fuses phrases,

r o r zigzags the melodic line , sha ply changes pace accent, emphasizes contrast , multiplies climax . To gain these ends he uses unashamed what the vestal

of — virgins song call vocal tricks the falsetto , for

o r - ll example , the long sustained note, swe ed , di

s mini hed , melted almost inaudibly into the air.

e H uses them , however, not as display in shallow [84]

E I G H T H N O T E S

way-train ; Arensky in piteous grayness and ha unt

r l ing monotonies ; Cui , sta k , woefu , delirious; Borodin , satirizing swollen and world—ly conceit . With his tones Mr . Rosing pictures and the listening ear opens the seeing eye as variously

the of l blank horizons the end ess steppes, the

of of palaces the great , the cold interior the peas ’ i s ant s hut . And there always truth , and also

- vision , in this tone picturing .

of Again his tones are the voice passion and then ,

of a ll most , he penetrates his hearers with deep

of illusion . The delirium a starved peasant cry ing to his barren lands ; the great cry of the heart

of —in a race assembled , multiplied , released ’ — Gre chaninov s invocation to Russia rise to tragic

. O o f l immensity ut himse f, as much as from music

. ma nifice nce s . and verse, Mr Rosing makes these g u Let the body and the head , fl ng back almost in contortion , the spoken tone , the sudden gesture , go f or the accessory histrionic means they sincerely

I the are . t is transmitting, the impassioning power of Mr . Rosing that conveys such sensation . There is rhetoric in such singing but an honest, living rhetoric .

[86] I I ULP AND O PLE TENESS I . C C M

Julia Culp is unique among the women singers

of pure song in this generation . Her artistry is comparable to the artistry which distinguished

Mme . Lehmann and Mme . Sembrich , but hers is a

fin . inte r re closer, a more con ing frame In the p

tation of - folk song, the song of homely sentiment,

she and in the interpretation of German lieder, has

l of r . u no pee s The songs , in partic ar, Schubert

‘ m inv ite he r— and Brah s naturally Schubert, per haps , by the lyric sensibility and the artful modula

of tion melody , to both of which her tones and tal

a s ents are sensitive as a mirror ; Brahms , in turn , n by the large sweep , the deepeni g and darkening

of of coloring, the moody intensity not a few the

c pie es that She usually chooses from him . In the

sonorities and the sustaining power of her tones ,

o f in her own cast mind and imagination , is that

i hl r which answers r c y to his matter and manner .

she But whoever the composer, where he ends — begins in the tone -picturing and wistful longing ’ of Schubert s song of Suleika , for instance ; in the [87] E I G H T H N O T ES

piteous and darksome passion that swells out of his ’ ” Mii dchen s Klage ; in the homely directness o f

the of feeling and imagery, universality humble

o r emotion , elate sorrowing, that makes the songs of Franz perennially touch the hearts of human ki nd ; in the light fancies o r the graver moods Of Cornelius ; in the folk -song note that Brahms could strike in his songs of the loveliness of German land

of of scapes , the luring coquetry amorous German

o f - girls , rude and energetic German men folk . There is that in the mind and imagination of such u composers as Sch bert, Brahms , Wolf and Franz that they may not set down upon music -paper though they stretch notes and directing words to F the utmost . o r they can do no more than seek to

i the enk ndle the singer and leave the passion , poe

s try, the vision , the scene that engros ed and fired them to her answering imagination . Not once in vain do they ask of Mme . Culp such fulfillment.

A r of E a or t nd when the ballad y ngl nd Sco land,

o r m on France A erica find place her programs,

- l . Mme . Cu p is also intuitive interpreter Folk song

one it is the custom to call them . Yet some must b . Wh e originally have made them , sung them at

i set . l s imag ned and in his notes, Mme Culp fu fill in her tones and her hearers know the richness of [83]

— A D - IV . GERH R T GERMAN SCHOOLED

Another singer of Ge rman lieder less impeccable

and with clearer limitations than Mme . Culp , is

Elena Ge rhardt . Her voice is most pleasurable

its c ll in middle tones . With them her te hnical ski is most secure and adroit ; while they have more vari ety of force and color and more expressive f quality than any other part o her voice . She is

of mistress sustained feeling, rapturous, pictorial , “ ’ ” la . S We s homely She ings , for example , y Song, out of e n of Hugo Wolf, a glowing picture an chanted island—such an island as rises in Boeck ’ — lin s pictures and the glow of intense longing is “ in her tones . In another vein goes the Brauner ” ’ — Bursche of Brahms s gypsy songs the gay vein of the youth dancing the Czardas with hi s sweet n heart, and flingi g down his money exultantly,

m of showily . She excels , then , in the impart ent a single mood , picture or emotion in sustained song and within the frame she is capable of much v a ri f e ty o expression .

So of , too , she excels in the songs robust, reso [90] S I N G E R S O F S O N G S

e o lute, hearty , homely emotion dear to G rman c m

posers and German audiences . Such a song is ’ ” Brahms s The Smith , her beloved encore piece . ’ “ ” k re ie h A in is Schumann s Ins F , which s e sings

with ringing and reiterated declamatory intensity . r She is expe t, too , in the lighter vein of this home

' li she l on side of im ne ss . Where fal s short the agination and expression is in songs that are half — narrative , half characterization and to add a

- h - third half, Irish wisc half picture . Her tones

f o r are not as graphic as they might be, instance , ’ in Schumann s song of the girl telling her whim sical u fort ne at cards , and they do not quite bring ’ the moodiness of Liszt s song o f the three gypsies

accom and of the philosophizing bystander . She plishe s such pieces with perceiving and practised

she intelligence, but is able singer achieving

she the song, and not as sometimes is , the per f l ect y attuned instrument to it . ’ e dif Yet , whatever Miss G rhardt s details, she f e rentiate s the music of the five signal composers — of German song Schumann , Brahms , Liszt , — Strauss and Hugo Wolf and so makes keen pleas ure in the concert hall . She catches the rapturous glow of Schumann ’ s romantic music and the voice n of romance is in his songs as in o other . She does [91 ] E I G H T H N O T E S

her best to make Brahms articulate even when he — pretends a sorry business for his mind and tem — e rament . p to be gypsy She catches the nervous , erotic ecstasies of Strauss ; the straining for mood

and picture and the subtle emphases of Liszt . Her Wolf is the Wolf who is the master song-writer of our s time , becau e he was responsive to every sort

of poetic fancy, no matter what the picture, the mood o r the emotion ; because he could make word and music as one ; because he raised voice and

to piano equal and essential part in the song .

E I G H T H N O T E S shortcomings of a careless eagerness and confi “ i of dence . S ngers no particular age let personal ” n ity, intelligence, imagi ation veil vocal limitations that, removed , would make the other qualities shine

on only the brighter. Vocally, the other hand , Miss l e —Hempel asks no indu g nces , proffers no excuses and needs none . Her rich soprano tones flow warmly, in full body ; they are even and edgeless through the whole range of a voice of no small com pass ; they are supple to her will as it plays upon

o f the contours , the contents , the colors the music ; they are crystalline in depth and transparency ; ff they give o glowing lusters . ’ Miss He mpel s voice unmistakably recalls Mme . ’ mistm stf ul Melba s in her noon , as that elder gen e ration will be which likes to believe that there can be no younger singers like the singers it knew . l ’ Miss He mpe s tones are comparable with Mme . ’ Melba s in union o f lustrous softness with clear brilliance, of sumptuous body with exceeding

of agility , lyric sweetness with florid sparkle , in a silvery quality that captures the ear while it evades

out of words . The kinship recurs , again , when

of t n stores breath and wi h wondrous even ess, Miss Hempel sustains her upper tones through the long rapturous phrases of the melody that is one un [94] S I N G E R S O F S O N G S

S a ’ broken kyward winging, in H ndel s air from “ Atalanta ; when the ear knows not whether to admire more the lyric loveliness of the middle “ ” and purely songful strophe of Casta Diva o r the “ showering fioriture of the end ; when a vocal ” waltz swirls in a glittering spray of the ornaments of t e song, but never loses rhy hmic flow whil modu lation becomes as playful ripple . Yet not even

Mme . Melba herself could have declaimed the recitative that prefaces “ Casta Diva” with such opulence of phrase and such propul sive power as Miss Hempel gives to it in perfect blend f o . trifle s lyric and dramatic singing Upon , too , Miss Hempel not only bestows the glamors of her voice but also the instinct Of the comédienne in ’ tones . In Beethoven s ditty about Chloe and her kiss , Miss Hempel brings such archness as

Mme . Sembrich used to bring to light lyrics and that Miss Hempel may have learned in her studies th with at mistress of song . DES I NN - . T IOLIN I E VI , V L K

As there is no word but Splendor f or the singing l of Mme . Cu p there is no word but beauty for the Singing o f Emmy De stinn in the few ripe years h before s e withdrew from public appearance .

of of t There were beauty voice , beauty ar istry,

of beauty insight and impression , beauty even in the presence of the Singer herself aglow with the penetrating and quickening charm that is the birth right of these fine -fib re d Czech women The ’ happy analogue of Miss De stinn s voice in song is the tone that Mr . Kreisler draws from the violin . n It had a like soft, lustrous and fi ely spun texture ; it moved in a delicately vibrant progress from undul ation into undulation ; it was as ful l of adroit and iridescent shadings ; it had the same soft clear warmth and exquisite sensibility ; it was con trolled by the same fine artistry penetrating the b ea re r until it transported him into a world in which there is naught else f o r the moment but the possessing loveliness Of sound . Of like beauty was the artistry of Miss Des [96]

E I G H T H N O T E S stract beauty of musical sound and of the arti stry that guides and controls it become the concrete

rt . beauty of a pa icular mood , emotion and image And so doing they put the finest command of musi cal means and ends at the service of as fine a poetizing and emotionalizing sensibility . The blending is beauty also . I VII . TEYTE V A PARIS

Maggie Teyte came to America with one of the testimonials” that Debussy used occasionally to

S t co emit , to ing his songs and the songs of o her n

temporary French composers . She had dwelt in Paris in the inmost circles of the “new school” and was said there to have imbibed the “ only true and ” of authentic versions its songs . Then , and since

one or then , no has sung them so well so charac l te risti ca l . S y Her voice is a rather ingular one, a

E - he distinctly French voice , nglish born though s

. t is There is a faint nasal quali y in it , a hint of dryness akin to that which makes most French tenors sing like sublimated baritones . Sometimes, too fine , a tone in it has a very but still perceptible

edge . It is a very bright voice that has been pol i she d n of cle i to a kind dry am es s . It does lack richness ; it does lack sensuous warmth . It falls on u of the ear m ch as the light a very clear, dry,

on . cool , still autumn day falls the eye There are ’ Te t e s glints in Miss y tones ; they are transparent , prismatic , catching many reflections from the music [99] E I G H T H N O T E S

of and the mood the songs that she sings . Italians would not like her voice ; they woul d say it lacke d

ul sensuous richness . The English wo d believe they f ought to like it, because it is a voice o r connois — se urs . The French warm to it because it is so in French a voice all its distinctive traits . We

Americans may take it as individuals . Perhaps it is fairest to say that the mind as well as the ear

it— n m so appreciates the i stru ent is polished , so

so to . limpid , serviceable its purpose

run F r Miss Teyte can the Debussyan gamut . o the first time we in America heard Debussy hu — mo rous in the song of the bourgeoisie and their “ Sunday excursions . For the first time , too , we

- - heard Debussy half sensual , half melancholy in li i ’ the song of Bi t s s tresses . Besides there was De

o f bussy playful and mocking, in the song the puppets ; ghostly again in the phantoms of the moonlight ; finding in the sea and its colors and sounds strange images of stuff s and their hues and t rustlings ; Debussy languorously ecs atic , De bussy bitter- sweet ; and always Debussy subduing the images of lights and sounds and colors to the melancholy they stirred in the soul they touched . Therein is the poetic formula of the new French t song . It is as characteristic and some imes as arbi [ 100]

I I AUTHIER THE IONEER V I . G P

of To the living composers song, after Debussy ,

E the va Gauthi er gives voice . Her artistry, like t ff artistry of Miss Tey e , although it achieves di er

t . si ent ends , is the ar istry of sophistication As g nal interpreter of the modem s and ultra -modem s she is to song what Miss Garden I s to opera . She is mistress of tonal imagery and tonal illusion . An audience which assembles to hear Miss

Gauthier is a pleasure in itself . It usually wears bright clothes , for it is a cheerful company come for pleasure and not from a sense o f duty or in

- semi boredom . It includes many young listeners, come to hear and to applaud youth . The singer herself usually meets more than halfway the mood of the audie nce . Her gown shines with color, while a touch of fantasy has shaped it . She dif

a s fuses a hint of the exotic , though face and hair had caught lasting imprint o f her Javanese days .

s She al o comes eagerly , alertly, to her task and is quick to reciprocate the pleasure of her audience . [ 102] S I N G E R S O F S O N G S Hers is the thoroughbred instinct to be always

doing her best .

To this personal quality, which is not exactly

of - the routine the concert hall , Miss Gauthier may

o we . of her audiences Yet her choice pieces , her unique place among present singers in America , help to swell them . Usually her programs are

of . plentiful in music this immediate day For her,

of to o o r indeed , none it may be venturesome too

he l f . s ba fling With it oftens fi ls an entire concert , letting the new men , the bold men , of France ,

E f o r Italy, ngland , Germany and America , wreak two hours what detractors call their wicked or their

ou o foolish way . She sings fantastical songs t f

out of Stravinsky ; ironic pieces the Parisians , Ravel and Satie ; the newest numbers of Malipiero “ ” Ca sella the — in and , , advanced Italians fine , a wholly exceptional and altogether Singul ar music to be heard in America from no one else in such understanding and sympathy . She summons and sustains the at mosphere in which each song has its

out of being and herself animates , intensifies and colors it . At her command is the mood , the pas

of sion , the picture every song ; while, again out

of . herself she shades, warms and deepens them I nto her singing passes every inflection, every sug { 1031 E I G H T H N O T E S

of gestion the composer, be it a golden image of

o f Duparc , a sensuous tremor Debussy , an ironic

she stroke of Ravel . Often matches subtlety for “ ” u of subtlety, producing the so nds the new music,

no c n . im achieving less its dire t , pungent , i stant u pression , its brevities , its rec rring harshness , its smart and smack . And throughout this mul tifold accent and coloring her voice keeps often to the beauty and obeys not a few of the pre scrip

f or tions of pure song . So in her and a pleasure

s t two i h . that e her hearers aglow, artistries jo n ands

[ 104]

E I G H T H N O T E S — ve nie nt but not a deprecatory phrase rejoice in S her . She stirs them because her inging expresses in terms that they can feel and understand , moods

- and emotions that are half inarticulate in them , and because it awakens spontaneously their half- dor

of l mant sense beautifu and moving song . At the s ame time, the voice and the artistry that she plies upon it are the pleasure of the sophisticated and the

. or uncon sensitive In her time, consciously sciousl she the y, has done great service to broader understanding and appreciation of the art of song in America . She has spread broadcast its satis factions and pleasures , opened them to a great half deaf and half-dumb world that scarcely guessed them . Those that still crave the Old Schumann -Heink o f the big sweep may still have it when she choos es to place on her programs fragments from the

of operas her prime , her somewhat melodramatic “ ” r of E - o r ve sion The rl King , less deservingly , the plaint of Rachel crying with the voice of distraught motherhood for her children . Yet even they must e feel what a far finer thing is the rich , warm , v l vet of y beauty her sustained song, falling on the

of to ear like the pile a thick, soft carpet the naked foot ; the depths of subdued yet glowing color that [ 106] S I N G E R S O F S O N G S — she may still give it colors like those in Venetian pictures ; and the imagination t hat catches and

S of weaves each phrase into the pirit the whole .

- Once Mme . Schumann Heink sang with a careless

she she opulence of power. Now when chooses , sings with a discriminating artistry, and so gilds and glamors her song . At twilight , in her still ripens the triple resource of the great singer

artistry and life .

[ 107]

I A ERE S I— OETR AND O ER . P D W K P Y P W

HAT was it that diff erentiated Pa de rew ski from the other pianists o f a past and an immediate generation 9 When he was minded to exercise all his powers that the music in hand asked and’ when they answered

his ff readily to call , he was distinctly di erent from his fellows , however eminent . The contrast de pended only Slightly upon external circumstance . It did not lie in the fact that Paderewski pre ferred that the lights be lowered while he was play

so ing and , as some like to believe, clothed music and performance in atmosphere—if only it would

o rick l— come by s easy a t whereas Mr . Bauer or i Mr . Gabrilowitsch s t at the piano in full day . It did not come from the fact that Paderewski is a man of courtly and somewhat old - fashioned man ners and of like individual habit in his dress whereas Mr . Hofmann o r Mr . Go dowsky is as routine toward his audience as he is to the eye . I t did not even proceed from the fact , commonly s aid to indicate a greatness apart , that Paderewski [ 1 1 1 ] E I G H T H N O T E S — coul d be as inco nsiderate toward his hearers say in promptness and in the temperature o f the con — cert -room as he was courteous to them in other O things . nly in relatively little did it spring from the fact that he was and is interesting and impres

all of sive to see , whereas nearly the pianists the first rank in this day seem to the Sight but ordinary

of men an ordinary world , busy with the practice

of their profession . It is an old surmise and probably a true one that many have gone to hear Paderewski to whom music is an unpleasant noise and a piano only a

re sum keyed and wired box that makes it . The p p tion is that they sought the concert because they had reason to believe that Paderewski wa s an un usual and impressive personality and that they stayed to the end because on that score b e inter

e ste d . a a and stimulated them Mr . B uer, Mr . G

bril wi c do z o ts h . , even Mr Busoni , not sei e the eye of the body and the eye Of the imagination when

o r they cross the stage to the piano hold them fast , i wh le they are playing . Paderewski did . In the n tall , spare and slightly bent figure ; in the leoni e and au reoled head ; in the deep -set eyes ; in the powerful yet sensitive hands ; in the air of quiet concentration and courteous detachment there was [ 1 12]

E I G H T H N O T E S

’ c ian. Mr . Gabrilowitsch plays Schumann s “ ” Cam eval and his listeners b e ar with pleasure the graphic, fanciful and often poetized panorama in tones that he unrolls before them . Mr. Busoni has ’ made Bach s music magnificently eloquent of sub stance, form and creative passion . Mr. Hofmann ’ penetrates Beethoven s later sonatas with lucid in sight and deep understanding ; he imparts them with grave power. In twenty pieces , it is possible to recall the perceiving imagination and the im parting ardor with which Harold Bauer renews

ou their beauty and reanimates their force, and so ward with one and another pianist of the first m n . ra k Hearing, the listener ad ires the wealth, the plasticity and the readiness of technical re source and verve that they bring to the music ;

and S r their clear mental , emotional piritual e sponse to it ; the diverse eloquence with which they n impart matter and man er, mood and suggestion ; their sense of style ; their feeling for color ; their poetizing impul ses ; their play of answering emo

so t tion , and for h with a score of admirable and t exalted at ributes . But always on the stage is

tu b e a re r the vir oso and in the auditorium the , each

hi s discharging due function . Relatively seldom does any one of these illus [ 1 14] P I A N I S T S — trious pianists transport his audience lifting it out of un itself , making it aware of means and un

of w conscious process , flooding it ith the music that he is playing and with the power of his own pro

e ctin uf j g and s fusing personality , immersing it in the single and overmastering sensation of the

th e o f beauty , the passion and poetry sound that h imagination and exaltation ave made music .

O ul o f ften , when he was in f l possession every faculty and deeply stirred by hi s music Paderewski

so could so transport his audience . To do is the n achievement of a u ique, manifold , almost epical power. For a while this power seemed to wane in the concert -hall because for the time he chose

- to divert it to the study table . There he sought to — compose music piano pieces in the larger forms ,

- a symphony, an opera even as he played it . The attempt and the outcome must have disclosed to his

so clear mind , as it did to many another not clear, that only in the interpreting and the imparting of the music of other men could be fully release him self and sweep his hearers into the world o f tonal passion and poetry, tonal vision and tonal pageant , that seemed to surge upon hi s imagination . He returned again to the concert-hall after this e xpe ri ment and co ul d still use that imagination undimin [ 1 15] E I GH T H N O T E S

i he d t s , even heightened , wi h like transporting out come . But Paderewski was much more tha n a pianist clothed with power and passion . For another of the distinctions that to the day of his retirement

a set him apart from other pianists , was the r nge

of and evenness his technical and interpretative ,

f acul his pianistic, his musical and his poetizing ties . There is reason to praise Mr . Busoni for his mastery of technical intricacies and his grave elo que nce ; Mr. Hofmann for his loveliness and

t of his varie y tonal color, for his lucidity , for w manly continence ; Mr . Gabrilo itsch for an ex ceeding beauty of touch and tone and for a tem

e ramen n an p t that k ows both power d charm ; Mr . Bauer for a rare li mpidity and surety of technical means and for a finely di scriminating sense of

o on . styles . And s through the list In contrast Paderewski assembled in himself and exercise d of —in i him—self greater or less but always in h gh degree nearly all the resources and all the quali

of ties an Olympian pianist .

[ 116]

E I G H T H N O T E S

’ witsch of Tschaikovsky s concerto is almost at an other pole from the Gabrilowitsch gently weaving ’ Mozart s elegant arabesques , singing with Schu ’ bert s free -voiced music o r meditative over the ’ pieces of Brahms s twilight years . When a

o ff pianist can s di erentiate his playing, there is no doubting his technical artistry ; when he is so sen

i of s tive to the particular quality his several pieces, there is no mistrusting his response to the emotion and the poetry of music ; and when he accomplishes

a s . s this discrimination as justly Mr Gabrilowit ch, there is no mistaking the poise and controlling in

o telligence behind . Thus does he stand in the p s session of the three attributes of a pianist in the

of — of high , full sense the word mental grasp his

r of his susce ti music and mental cont ol playing, p bility to the pe culiar beauty and the particular emotion or mood of his pieces , and the executive ability to bring his understanding o f them and his feeling for them to clear and persuasive expres sion .

- In the concert room Mr. Gabrilowitsch , in him self, lacks the immediate appeal of an unusual per s on li a t . y He escapes , indeed , the pedagogic air of f . o . Mr Bauer, the businesslike routine Mr Hof m n r L an o the somnolent heaviness of Mr. hevinne . [ 1 18] P I A N I S T S

He lacks equally the quick sense of alert power

. Ca rre fio that sprang from Mme , for example , as she crossed the stage to the piano ; the impression of an uncanny and impish personality that de Pachmann bore through the very door of the ante

or of room , the suggestion mingled remoteness and ’ power that was in Pa de re wski s pre se nce f When

Mr . Gabrilowitsch has gone half his way through a recital , it is easy to find in his bearing the poise,

n of fine l - the tensity, the alert ess , the token a y tem pered mind and spirit that are in his playing.

He looks his absorption in it , he suggests his elas f tic control o himself and all that he would do .

of is The sense personality, however, neither upper most in the be are r as it was with de Pachmann nor electric and almost compulsory as it was with

Paderewski . A departing audience recalls Mr .

Gabrilowitsch the man less than Mr. Gabrilowitsch i the . as pianist Advance he may, he is never l kely to have the reward—perhaps experience is the — truer word of Glamo rous women close packed about his platform . Yet he will leave his listeners

of as he leaves them now, with haunting memories t his playing . He stirs , and , in all probabili y, will

o i stir t the end , not to loud enthusiasm, but to ntent and intimate admiration . [ 1 19] E I G H T H N O T E S

It is within the truth to call Mr. Gabrilowitsch t and Mr . Bauer objective pianis s, to say , even , that

- they have gone to extremes in self subjection . It t were fairer and truer to call hem poised pianists . No one who has heard them often and widely can doubt either the large amplitude or the nervous

of vigor their power when the music demands it .

Deliberate and polished as they can be , they can be equally free and spontaneous . The truth is that being no virtuosi with a technique and a tem

e rament p and little else , but men of fine mind t and practiced intelligence, they discriminate wi h their music . They find as nearly as they can the

ul t of partic ar charac eristics each piece , and set themselves to the imparting . To the end they are in likely to remain the intimate pianists, seeming, deed , oftenest to be playing to themselves, while by some happy chance their audience has been a d mitte d of to hear, and they are hardly aware its presence .

con Mr . Gabrilowitsch , in particular, is plam

ul o f scious , thoughtf even, the ends that he would gain , but these ends are the perfect impartment of

in of O the music in its k d , and not the glory ssip Gabrilowitsch or the answering excitement of the

r or audience . He may o may not have stirred [ 120]

II MANINOV THE URITAN I . RAK H P

Like Paderewski , but in less degree, Mr . Rakh maninov is possessed of a personality which ar

—an rests his audience audience, too , which in

diversity sometimes recalls his predecessor . But

khmanino to this audience Mr . Ra v plays in his

no own fashion . He does t caress his hearers with

of an insinuating beauty , an illuding glamour tone ;

rather, at moments his touch is appreciably me

o tt . talli , a li le thin , perilously brittle No more does he invariably persuade his hearers that the f piano is an instrument o unfolding song . Quite as often with him it is an instrument that parts phrase

AS t from phrase , even note from note . li tle , is

khmaninov di la f ul . Ra s . Mr p y technician True , there is hardly a pianistic feat of strength or agility ! to use the phrase of the circus posters) that he cannot accomplish easily . But he does each and all of these feats as though they were the merest convolutions of the music , or decorations upon it . They are ; therefore why stress them !

akhmanino No more is Mr . R v the poetizing [ 122] P I A N I S T S

c pianist, transmuting each pie e with his own awak

n k . ened imagi ation , like Paderews i He has per “ sonality and to spare ; but he is not a very per ” f r . o sonal pianist He is all the music in hand, to release and enhance the composer’ s design—and ’ not . E the pianist s venly and exactly, coolly and h detachedly, he does w at the composer bids .

of Flawless master every technical device , this

c prowess never labors , never intrudes itself . It a complishes all things technical for what they are — f precisely . The voice o this prowess is a tone a — — s clear and often as cool as a crystal . It is a transparent mirror of the music to the uttermost detail ; it reflects as completely and lucidly the mood in which the pianist is imparting it . At his

of will and hands , this tone runs a gamut grada tions as exact as they are endless . It moves in masses and it moves in filaments ; it gathers force

- and it droops to whisper . Chameleon like, it as sumes on the instant whatever color the pianist

m . would i pose Like the technical prowess , this

’ Rakhmaninov s touch and tone is Mr . precise,

r . poised and pe fect medium In both , mind and l hand , continence and cu tivation are in impeccable mingling . A Puritan comes among pianists . [ 123] E I G H T H N O T E S

akhmanino By these means Mr . R v sets forth the

o f design , the course, the structure the music in hand . He misses neither the large lines nor the interwoven deta il ; no modulation , no ornament may escape his clear eyes , his adjusting fingers . The songful unfolding of a melody, the play and inter

of o r play motives fragments of motives, the beat of t rhy hm changeful or sustained , the tonal prog ress , however intricate, the tonal design however obscure , contrast , climax, the levels and the slopes — between not so much as o ne evades him . Revela

of tion the form , the substance, the purely tonal ’ i s content of the composer s measure , as precise ,

flawless, complete as the other virtues . Yet composers also infuse into their music pic t — ure , poetry, passion , fervors , fantasy all the — — works at their will and mood of the imagina tion , flickering inward or quivering outward .

Thoughtfully , assiduously, exactly, Mr . Rakhman inov photographs these things upon the sensitive

hi s plate o f his mind . In like manner touch and

the tone convey the picture, as print is to the nega ” tive . He interprets ! as the word goes) with every virtue Of musical photography ; but with such

The photography he is done . portrait , the land scape , the fresco , the miniature , fused and heated [ 124]

I T E A UT F ONE— OF ANN V. H G M O T H M

Josef Hofmann matured late , but he matured magnificently . In him now are all the qualities o f a great pianist as they have not mingled in any single man since the golden prime of Paderewski . “ ” He is not a personality in the concert -hall ; he is even a prosaic figure there . But he happens to be a great musician and a very great pianist , and by these two attributes he can hold the interest of his

re hearers, however miscellaneous his audience , i s ons ve of . p to the end a recital No longer, in his “ ’ the present estate, can he be called pianists pianist . If once he was austere , exact, he has now waxed with emotional , imaginative, character in izing, dramatizing power . And more , he has fused into his playing a new sense of beauty ; while out o f it, at due moments, springs the quality that — he has hitherto lacked poetic charm .

of . n of . The glory Mr Hofman , as Mr Kreisler, is his wealth and individuality of tone animating

fi NO and trans guring the music he plays . pianist of o ur time summons 3 tone so lustrous as that of

. r flow Mr Hofmann , so like a c ystal through which [ 126] P I A N I S T S

a hundred tints and shadings of tint . Sensitiveness tw to color and luminosity are its ofold distinctions . It can be richly clangorous as at moments in ’ ’ Schumann s Fantasia or in Liszt s Rhapsodies . It

so can be fleet , light , elastic and glinting that the stars Shall seem to dance in it through the

Waltzes of Chopin . It can be also an exquisitely soft and limpid tone - a tone that distills phrases — out of the air into beauty a s with Schu ’ ” mann s Bird as Prophet . It can spin threads of arabesques as though they were interlacing filaments of color weaving themselves around the

- song that it also is bearing to as many hued beauty . ’ su e rla Mr . Hofmann s tone is like the voice of a p tive Si nger in the sensuous beauty that it evokes

sa i s from the instrument that , as some y, least i — dowered with it . There n is his power and to much greater degree than when he elects to make — the piano sonorous and therein is the play of his imagination and feeling . The sensations that his music awakes in him are the sensations of the

o f . range , the beauty and the power tones Grave “ ” i s as he is . mental as he , he plays to the senses

f b ear o those that .

[ 127] F OR V . BUSONI BACH

E . In urope, Mr Busoni is composer, manifold f o o . musician , teacher and theorist ab ut music i To us in America , he continues a wander ng and unique virtuoso . The more the pity , since he is a highly individualized , variously interesting and altogether remarkable figure in the music o f

our . one t time There was not , and is not, hat

of matches him in the music Bach , whether he plays it as the composer put it on paper or in hi s own transcriptions , giving to its substance and spirit the richer resource of modern tonal speech . Many a pianist sets them on his programs and plays them after his kind ; but there is none that plays them a s does Busoni himself . f . wa s o Mr Busoni , in his American days , not romantic mind and temper and , wisely enough , he was chary o f the music of Chopin . He might well also have put aside the piano -pieces of

Schumann and Schubert . He seemed to play such numb ers with Sheer power of mental grasp upon t hem rather than with imagination and intuition . Music of large and deep matter sti rred him but [ 128]

I MOISEI ITSCH AND NTELLECT V . W I

of We are at the turn , as it were , in the passage

I of pianists . n the newer generation , qualities the mind expressing themselves in reciprocal qualities of the hand are uppermost in Mr. Hofmann , in

Mr . Bauer, in measure in Mr . Gabrilowitsch , in

i ki o Le v ts . t germ in Mr. They hark back Busoni — penetrating and individual intellect , measuring — imagery, sentiment and emotion rather than to

Paderewski , passionate and poetic spirit releasing itself in tones .

Of this intellectual line is Benno Moiseiwitsch . His mind discovers and adjusts the design of the composer in the piece in hand ; chooses and sets in proportionate array the technical resources whereby

of he may compass it . By exercise the intellect rather than by spontaneous play of responsive temperament , Mr . Moiseiwitsch seems to apprehend and distill the particular beauty of voice o r mood n that the composer would evoke ; the emotion , se ti ment , picture, vision that has brought the piece into being . By similar transfer from one mind to an [ 130] P I A N I S T S other the creative faculty in the composer becomes

- the re creative faculty in the pianist .

to e Then the t chnical means . Again they are the exercises of a penetrating, precise, perfecting i ’ m nd . Mr . Moiseiwitsch s tone is richly sonorous

o f es without trace roughness , coarsen s , overstrain . It is luminous without a hint of the hardness of an

r allin ove rc yst e touch . It is endlessly supple ; yet

not i s . O of an outline blurred f many colors , many

r accents, yet always in adept propo tion is this tone . It achieves both beauty and power. It is a tone admirably suited to the music of Brahms whose endless and intricate technical exactions he can sweep before him , whose grave, moody and sometimes abstruse wanderings he can play with an impression of continuous creative and re

of com creative fire . With many the modern posers , too , he is in intellectual accord . He is

of to of clearly kin Ravel , for instance, whose piece the fountains and the water-god he makes a little marvel of tonal illusion and graphic imagery .

There is mystery and magic, too , in his interpreta f o . tions Debussy He can compass the bright , crisp o r f broken rhythms o Cyril Scott . His is a tone lacking only the sensuous loveliness which up springs from a mind and spirit softer in fiber ; the [ 131 ] E I G HT H N O TE S emotional thrill that is bo rn of a temperament in which there is less reflection and more instinct . him This lack denies the finest romantic sensibility ,

of . n in the freest romantic zest His Chopi , for

a or stance , may gain songful or brooding visionary

of beauty . But here and there are a slow ne ss

oo pace at which it is possible to demur, an almost t

ffi precise articulation , without su cient ffl a uence .

[132]

E I G H T H N O T E S

of limitations and the possibilities her instrument. Not once does she try to force it to quasi -thunderous

- o f voice , to stretch it to quasi orchestral range tim

r h bre and color . Yet at eve y turn S e summons its more songful speech and utilizes the diversities and

of contrasts tonal color that it may yield . Her

of t o f sense design wi h the music , proportion with

the . She piano , also applauds her Never does let pianistic fancy harden into mere pianistic display .

AS an imaginative musician writes , so an imagi native musician plays . Beyond peradventure an ld o head Sits upon her young shoulders .

Miss Novaes, in her present estate, is doubly fortunate . She is not to be taken for granted and

h to S e is remembered . On the way a concert by

Mr . Hofmann , Mr . Bauer, Mr . Grainger, even by

L itzki the . ev young Mr , the listener knows in meas ure what to expect ; at the concert itself , with rare

f o r f o r re exception better or worse , he usually “ ” i of l ce ve s it . The following every pianist wou d have him so ; it is our American way to set and

fix every artist in his appropriate niche . Perish his audiences , if he happens to be restless there . Miss Novaes is still comparative newcomer ; freshly ears await her ; while she herself at each

a . he ring amplifies powers , enriches pleasure [ 134] P I A N I S T S

Thereby she is clearly remembered , anticipated — anew . Routine pianist even in the routine of the — illustrious Miss Nova e s will hardly be for years ll f to come . She is sti in the days o ripening .

” I . FATHER AUER

OW Pugnani taught Viotti ; and Viotti taught Rode ; and it was the end of the

eighteenth century . And Rode taught Bohm ; and BOhm taught Joachim ; and Joachim taught Auer ; and it was the end of the nineteenth t cen ury . Then Auer taught Heifetz and it was the

of beginning the twentieth and these days .

n of roni So ru s, like a verse in the Book the Ch cles and in clearer descent than some which it re 1731 1922 cords, the royal line from to that ,

of whatever the accident individual nationality, has perpetuated the Italian school of violin -play t u ing and fai hf l to an august standard , has set the

n of n s of maki g music, in the fi er sen e the words,

o O above the display f skill . f this illustrious com i pany in our t me, Joachim never condescended to “ ” the United States ; transcontinental tours were no institution in his prime ; while the America of his imagination was the country and the folk b e re membered from the tales o f Chateaubriand and

not Cooper. As surely, had war and revolution [ 139] E I G H T H N O T E S

of altered the face Russia , Auer would never have crossed the seas . Pupils from the four com ers of the earth flocked to him at Petrograd ; he enjoyed life there as it went under the vanished Tsars ; his ’ fullest years were his years in Peter s capital . Yet

- i to New York he came in his seventy th rd year,

- and once more the concert room , from which he “ U had long withdrawn , tempted him . p and down hi E America had gone s pupils from Mr . lman and E Miss Parlow to ddy Brown and Jascha Heifetz,

the of Spreading directly fame their master . Surely

se e American eyes were eager to , American ears to hear, the violinist who had nurtured such violinists . O bviously, in the test , Auer contended with

of . E so the inevitable handicaps his years ven , he escaped many an infirmity that made the playing o f n his master, Joachim , in the fi al years at Lon

l . don and Berlin , a painfu disillusion The Rus ’ sian s ear was still true ; his memory played him no tricks ; his hand answered to mental control and imaginative prompting ; his sense of quality of tone and befitting style with his several pieces was undiminished . Clearly , for example , as he trav e rse d b e ff of his program , di erentiated a Sonata

L of atte m - ocatelli , which is music bold p weaving, [ 140]

E I G H T H N O T E S

- that are but bright:and lively pattern weaving. ul His master, at more than twice his age, co d sum mon a like lightness of tone and accent . Who that

i of has heard Mr. He fetz play the Chaconne Bach o r of the Chaconne Vitale has forgotten the large , expanding, proportioned , contrasted design in which the youth fashions the two musics ; how they seem to create themselves under his inciting u hand ; how strand after strand is sp n , set in

the tex march, diversified , developed , woven into ture and the progress of the whole ; how a grave and n warm direct ess gives new vitality, new impression to the musi c ! To hear Auer play this same Cha conne of Vitale was to understand that even Hei fetz has bettered his instruction only with play of youthful prowess and of innate violinistic in ’ stincts that excel in themselves his master s . The model stood clear . And so forth and so onward with twenty tokens of that teaching by whi ch Auer cultivates the abil

of ities and the impulses pupils until , upbuilding

or upon his foundations , they excel , bid fair to

the excel, their master. But like finest and the

r t of t to t ues them , he gave proof of hat devotion the unalloyed voice of the violin and to the un clouded speech of music which is th e glory of [ 142] V I O L I N I S T S

those Italian traditions and standards . Mr . Heifetz ,

Mr . Spalding, Mr . Kreisler and a few others have them now in their keeping . From Tartini ,

Pu nani Corelli , g , Viotti they have endured for two

centuries and a half through Rode , Joachim and Auer ; by the practice and what in time may be the , teaching of the violinists now in young or matured prime , they promise to continue into the genera fi tion to come . They af rm the obligation of the violinist to set forth his music in the speech of the composer as closely as he may apprehend it , as

of clearly as he may project it , without thought distortion of it to himself o r of display through it of his own powers . They bid him be musician before he is violinist and so surrender himself to his music . Again they enjoin him to use the violin

- for neither feat nor trick Paganini wise , but to

b e ar draw from it with arm , wrist and fingers , to with the finest ear, to direct with the most sensitive control in mind and spirit, the unmatched beauty and expressiveness of voice that it will give back to those so cherishing and guiding it . There is high faith , a noble devotion in those Italian stand

t . ards , alike wi h music and with instrument Not another code f or the violin is comparable with them . [ 143] KRE SLE —THE MAN I N T E S C II . I R H MU I

’ Kre isle r s Before Mr . tone , listening becomes a

o spiritual faculty . N other violinist so melts the listening mind , ear, heart into a common pleasure , f i a sublimated and su fus ng sensuous delight . He keeps hi s tone like a finely spun thread of beauti n ful , penetrating, exquisitely modulated sou d , never halting, never breaking, never losing either

o r resilience glamour, a sensitive and subtle speech that quickens in turn the finest sensibilities of

r those that b e a . ’ Kre isle r Yet SO universal is Mr . s genius that he is one of the few virtuosi of our day who draws all

of sorts and conditions listeners , from the adept and discriminating to the mere seekers of enter i ta nment. . Those upon whom Mr Kreisler, the personality expressing itself through his violin , ex c rci se s an endless fascination , sit beside those who find a lasting satisfaction in his finesse as tech nician n the , in his i sight with pieces in hand , in his li i n fe cit e s of style . Those who hear o ly his silken

S i c tone, h ning with deli ate lusters, stand elbow to [ 1441

E I G H T H N O T E S

of as Mr . Hofmann among pianists, the servant his

ru music , his inst ment and his artistry and so the master of all three . ’ Kre isle r s s Mr . programs usually include piece out of the compo sers of the seventeenth and eight e e nth — centuries from Bach , Mozart and Gluck,

n Ca r from the French miniaturists , Couperi and

Pu nani n . O t n tier, from g , Corelli and Tarti i f e

of or they are the music court and salon , slender

. O ample in form , grave or gay in mood bsession as they sometimes seem with him , yet do they dis

n of close many Of the fi er qualities his playing, as : perhaps no other numbers do . More he even per sua de s his hearers to take thought of these pieces l A apart from violin and vio inist . ll this music , ’ — Kr i le r rifl moreover and Mr . e s s own t e s with their

- touches of eighteenth century melancholy, and even ’ f n f ci Paganini s masking o te—ch ical feats under an ful or eloquent exercise exists f or its own charm and its own beauty and f or such other charm and beauty as the violinist may add to them . Since it ’ Kr i l r f o r . e s e s is such , Mr zest it and perfections in i it are easy to understand . Another violinist m ght

of match him in knowledge his instrument, might

is possess his technique , tone , even h illuminative

ul of u fac ty imagination . Yet wo ld he lack the [ 146] V I O L I N I S T S

’ fine impulse to the flowering fancy of Gluck s melody ; feel not the gentle wistfulness of Cou perin ; hear no voice of old in the Viennese

Caprice ; discover no large , free , fertile improvisa tion in the Italian pieces ; and see or hear no pat ’ I terns dancing upon the air in Bach s Suite . n

' Kreisler, imagination becomes emotion and when imagination and emotion are so fused and of such

ff of F r e ect they are the attributes genius . o genius—the special election for special work by — fore -ordering and fore- equipping fate is the alembic through which Mr . Kreisler distills tone, and technique , imagination and emotion , violin and

muSI G.

[ 147] II EIFETZ E L RI PENmG I . H , N W Y

f At each hearing o Mr . Heifetz he gives fre sh

of u t proof the q alities hat have , in so short a time ,

i o f ur set him among the illustrious viol nists o day . He has given such voice to the ancient classics of ’ ’ f or the violin , to Bach s and Vitale s Chaconnes ,

of example , as the ears this generation have heard

. . O hi s only from Mr Kreisler nce more, at hands, ’ Kre i sle r s h as at Mr . — , the violin has become w at it really is e specially in distinction above the

—an piano aristocratic instrument .

au In the bearing of Mr . Heifetz toward his die nce s there is also hint of this aristocracy ; f o r

o r of unlike one another violinist these days , he

out of w of comes no common Russian Je ry, but ul an ancient and c tivated Hebrew family, long practicing the arts of music within and without the synagogue . So born and bred , accustomed to public appearance from childhood , his repose upon the stage is both natural and becoming . Even

the im now, when he is plainly in transition from

of e of o pulses youth toward the impuls s manho d, [ 148]

E I G H T H N O T E S

- concert room , Mr. Heifetz seems unmistakably F . o r the intent upon his music, his playing time, n l him they absorb him u ti , for , there is naught

. O else in the world nce embarked upon concerto ,

, , i , —sonata suite merely m scellaneous piece he and it the music, the violinistic means , the medium that

e come~ a re all he himself has b inextricably fused .

O of ut him rapt, the breath of genius blows upon an audience . Fo r no word short of genius may now be a d v ise dly used of the qualities that make Mr . Heifetz in his early twenties one of the few signal violinists

of . this day The eye, inevitably, discovers his youth ; but not until recently has the ear f un noted Signs o co ted and changing years . E ven so , the quality of tone little reflects this ma turing . It remains the voice of the violin , absolute — and unalloyed not the more o r less individualized tone of other illustrious violinists of the hour . As often as not it remains also the perfect voice of the O music . nly when the phrases broaden and the

a accents sh rpen , when the lines move more largely l and the periods deepen and swel , does the chang ing Heifetz draw the bow . He may do what technical feats he will with the

of the of ease , the certainty , the brilliance flash a [ 1 50] V I O L I N I S T S

jewel when light catches and penetrates it ; but they remain to the essential qualities of his tone

me sa di voc of what the staccati , the scales , the e an ornate singer are to her real mastery of the art of i song . Without the extraordinary sk ll and sensi bility of hand and without the equal fineness and

of l not e susceptibility ear, he cou d do th se feats t as he does , however much innate instinc and ardu

ous practice might serve him . In those same quali

of c ties hand and ear dwells the se ret of a tone, the

o f i like which in intrinsic beauty, in pure and qu n

ia l f is r te sse nt voice o h inst ument only Mr . Kreisler

and Mr. Casals may now draw from wood and

strings .

a s to More and more , it seems, this tone tends n take texture and ti cture , progress and motion , from a mind and Spirit individually stirred . For i a t me, it was the abstract and absolute perfection ’ o f He if e tz s Mr . playing that most possessed his

of audiences . They heard the voice the violin con ve ying unflawe d the voice of the music unclouded .

No interpreter, as the stock phrase is, stood between b e are r and composer, no moodiness in the violinist Al interposed upon the instrument . ong the stream of tone flowed the piece in hand , while the violinist himself threw no reflection upon this unspecked [ 151 ] E I G H T H N O T E S

t . current, s irred no eddies along its course With

of . i t the ripening Mr He fetz from you h to man ,

ul no r inevitable change has come . The imp se has mally entered into him to re -create the given music

own in his image, to make the violin speak for

f o r himself as well as the composer. As yet these t reactions are somewhat blurred , the will o convey

f or the . them discoverably groping way Then ,

the e rf ec for the instant , flaws scratch younger p

of tion , the tranquil luminosity the unquestioning

of years becomes obscured , the chroniclers write a

of hr e of time transition . T ough such y ars struggle and mastery Mr . Heifetz now goes . Already , how

of i ever, dart out them the hours in wh ch he holds the goal and summons the means . Then his play

of ing Bach, for example, sounds with the breadths , the depths and the heights of ardent re -creation ; while shadowed old eighteenth -century masters are of a sudden incandescent again .

E I G H T H N O T E S f o S . E n fineness his pirit ; Mr lman , u less he curbs himself, plays upon the easier sensibilities of his hearers ; Mr . Spalding vibrates between a gravity

a almost austere and a soft It lian glow . Mr . Hei fetz and Mr. Zimbalist make pure distillation Of n music and i strument . In the younger man went

of hint uncanny perfection , whereas Mr . Zimbalist

his works clear will upon both . There is not a vio linist o who seems s negative as Mr. Zimbalist

o au until he plays . He disdains t cultivate his dience l indif , yet no more wou d he be deliberately f e re nt - . Without a trace o f self consciousness he comes , he goes . Always his aloofness is the aloof

of o f - ness a reticence with self, a whole minded absorption in the chosen task . Sometimes in his miscellaneous pieces at the end of a concert he will include some fashionable — ’ piece of the hour~ Sa ra sate s fantasia upon ’ “ ” ’ Bizet s Carmen , for instance . It vies with Liszt s familiar and similar fantasias for piano in epitom o f o f the chosen opera , in vivid suggestion the f ill usions o the theater. And Mr . Zimbalist plays

ou it as bravura piece for the violin . Nineteen t “ of twenty listeners are programing and dram “ ” atizing it . Yet for him it is as absolute and self [ 154] V I O L I N I S T S

’ contained as though it were Reger s Prestissimo or

S . the ixth variation of Corelli His mind , hand and spirit know no other way ; yet thereby be is rare and precious violinist .

[ 155] D HO HT V. SPAL ING TAKING T UG

Our public needed several years to learn that Al bert Spalding had become , in his days of study i and publ c performance abroad , an impeccable virtuoso , an understanding musician and an artist

s with an individuality and style of his own . It cho e to mistrust because he had been overzealously heralded on his first appearance here . It may also have doubted because he i s American by birth and breeding and therefore without the glamour that often Sheds itself upon less well - equipped and less deserving virtuosi of foreign birth and fame .

won He has his present position , then , as he has won all else in his career, by no other virtues

own than his assiduity, ambition , standards and

- So self ripening . doing, he won deservedly, heart in l e n . on g y For several years , it was his way,

o r each new appearance, to reveal heighten some signal quality as musician and man . During these

of years , however, the power complete revelation , the ability to make the music in hand sound as if d it were newly created as he playe it, seemed to [ 156]

E I G H T H N O T E S the pattern is woven in a fine ecstasy of assured creation , though the music may have been all in ’ the day s work for busy Bach or diligent Tartini , who did their “job quite as often as they com posed for themselves . But in them was that per petual fountain and perpetual passion of creation in tones that are the perpetual pleasure and ex — cite ment of this elder music the passion and the plenty that make the formal prescriptions seem the willing servants of the beauty and the power that were in the spirits of these men when they so spoke forth . The imparting violinist must speak n as nobly, as abu dantly, as passionately as they and then will he transport his hearers into the very

of I thrill and joy this creation . t is thi s miracle that Mr. Spalding works .

[ 158] I . THIB AUD THE FINELY TRUNG V , S

Jacques Thibaud is a patrician among violinists . A ’ ' nd so , since a virtuoso s personality will play into

i s t h outer semblance , no mat er how continent he may be , it is interesting to watch the rare light ness and suppleness and sureness o f his bowing and fingering . They seem the outward and visible

of - signs the sensitive and high bred spirit, the elastic and certain command within . Whatever the ’ l music , Mr . Thibaud s tone in itse f is not quite like th at Of any other violinist . It is not a very l ’ . Kre is e r s fine tone , like Mr ; it is not a very big ’ dise m tone , as Mr . Ysaye s was ; it is not the

or . . bodied tone of Mr . Heifetz Mr Zimbalist It

of of is rather a tone soft and velvety texture, — caressing warmth a tone that persuades the ear rather than penetrates it ; a tone that glows softly with the colors that the violinist Sheds upon it . No

not . violinist that plays in these days , even Mr

Kreisler, plays Bach as does Mr . Thibaud . He opens the music ; he weaves and interweaves its many strands ; he contrasts , coalesces and colors [ 159] E I G H T H N O T E S

f or them . Other violinists may have done as much ’ c o f Bach s pie es but, most them , so doing, merely

be set them forth . Where such end , Mr . Thibaud gins . He gives the music its propulsive force ; makes it sound as though it were born of creative

of . passion , almost creative inspiration

the of He excels also with music Mozart, the skeleton forms of the early concertos in particul ar. With them the composer was often his own violin

of ist . If not , according to the custom those days , he left much to the performing virtuoso , who might be finely strung musician as well . The violin — — pa rt and still more the accompaniment were no more than hints from the composer . The dexterity o f the orchestra would fill out his measures ; the ll violinist, according to his degree, would add ski

t . and tas e, discernment, artifice A first move “ ” - ment with two motives in interplay, passage work ’ f or ul the violinist s plasticity and finesse , songf measures for his sentiment ; a Slow movement of

of and silken melody, melancholy mood ; a light gl inting finale and the concerto was done—for a Mozart in perpetual flow of music through an easy going day .

of i S i im Such a violinist Mozartian t me , k ll ,

a inati on . . g , is Mr Thibaud His tone glows with [ 160]

E I G H T H N O T E S adept improvisation—the conjurer in tones at

a . final sh ke of his magic sack Mr. Thibaud

. h catches the intent , conveys the illusion T rough

he ul out is not merely faithf to his composer. He divines him . He serves this divination with means free from every technical , every temperamental

rf infirmity . He is wont to pursue an ideal pe ec

- . O n the tion ften he attai s it and concert hall , when he does , may know no deeper delight .

[ 162] . L AN F OR ETTER OR ORSE VII E M , B W

Each time that Mr . Elman is heard he seems more and more to stand at the parting o f the two

roads that a virtuoso of the violin may take . If

. E he chooses , Mr lman can definitely take the road “ ” that will make him a popular violinist, sure of audiences of a sort and more and more disposed to

minister unto them . He ministers to them now when he plays with the contortions of his body that “ ” have replaced his former weaving, as though he were in mighty effort to release the emotions surg

o f ing out him through his violin . On this score

Mr. Elman sorely needs either a sense of poise or a

o f sense humor . He ministers to such auditors,

instru again , when he seems to squeeze out his mental songs as though his violin were a paint tube from which in travail o f spirit he was press

ing them . He ministers to them , finally, when , in

o r songful sharply rhythmed transcription , he draws out the song in long reaches of sentimental tone o r underscores each beat of the measure . ’

. E From his beginnings in America , Mr lman s tem [ 163] E I G H T H N O T E S

ram n A pe e t has seemed exuberant . t first the out let of it was the fine fire that he used to bring to ’

f or . fire Tschaikowsky s concerto , example This

of a has been less bright l te, and in its stead has come the tendency to exaggeration , and even to f Showiness . Therein commonness and a kind o popularity lie . In more respects than one this

. E road may tempt Mr lman , but it is also a way that by twenty other qualities o f hi s playing he

wi o r ought not t mistakenly to choose . “ ” He can still read the classical sonatas with

s young ensibilities and enthusiasms . He seems never to suspect that they are classics and that there

of . hi m are traditions in the playing them To ,

of they are only music, full its own beauty , grace and vitality . Otherviolinists give it various dis tinctions ; he restores it often to the freshness with which the first listeners may have heard it . Sim ’ ilarl of E to y the quality Mr . lman s tone seems point him along the road that the true virtuosi o f the violin take to enduring distinction .

Perhaps when a violinist begins as Mr. Elman did as an acclaimed and eloq uent prodigy exciting the vague curiosity and the momenta ry admiration Of those that know little and regard even less the

i of glor es the instrument and its music, come such [ 1641

Y VIII . SAYE AND THE GRAND STYLE

o r When Mr . Ysaye put by the violin to become che stral conductor, his choice left an appreciable gap in the public imagination . The expert and the dilettanti may have debated at will and length his qualities and attainments in comparison with the other virtuosi of the bow and string ; but in the general mind Mr. Ysaye had become the foremost n o f livi g violinists . There was reason for the pub lic so to regard him . He was an imposing figure in

- the concert hall . Grandiloquence was his way with

o f music . He was the last the great violinists to “ cultivate the grand style In the old days when he played hi s black locks tossed about his forehead and his great body swayed to and f ro in the un folding of a melody, at the climax of advancing progressions .

But Mr . Ysaye , like other of the greatest and the truest artists of the theater and the concert w hall , under ent the spiritualizing process of ripen in hi s g time . It was as though he had distilled artistry into the finest , concentrated essence ; [ 166] V I O L I N I S T S stripped himself of all supe rfluitie s ; as though his personality , his music and his utterance of both had become fused into a single and simplified whole . He may have seemed to do less , since he put aside all personal display for the sake of dis f play, and all musical e fect for the purpose of f . A the e fect ; yet he really accomplished more S,

b e with the years of richest maturity, simplified his

n so technical resource and attai ment, also he spir itualize d h the tone t at he produced . The style of his maturity was a style for which he had polished every technical means and in which b e practiced every felicity and finesse of exquisitely sure and supple resource . The tone that this technique

in of spun was , turn , golden mellowness ; it per sua de d the ear and warmed the spirit as by some gentle and glamorous magic . It was a ripened , S idealized , piritualized playing of the violin and

of its music . To the very end his days as vir l tuoso . u , however, Mr Ysaye co d , when the music bade him , summon the violin to a mighty eloquence . He could mingle the fin e felicities of his later and maturer years with the tonal sweep and rhythmic fire that made him unique among violinists of liv l f t ing memory. He could sti l make his great e fec s

o f his i of power, when the voice viol n was as the [ 167] E I G H T H N O T E S

of sound many voices , when the depths , the

of breadths, the sweeps and the glows his tone l seemed unmatched and unmatchable . He cou d transfi ure the g music he was playing, however

own im commonplace , giving it the voice of his

of agination and his own passion . It is the virtue “ ” r of to do so . the g and style, the final attribute it

[ 168]

E I G H T H N O T E S

deeper voice and songful quality . His intonation proves alike his flawless ear and his unerring hand . He has attained a delicacy of execution that makes the minutest figuration in the music spring in clear

- and lace like tracery from his bow . His reticence, his sensibility, his regard for his tone, measured ,

n n - - lumi ous and flowi g, glamour the give and take l Of any miscel any, however severely chosen , with l which composers belittle violoncel ists . At one extreme there is not a hint of grating harshness or o f thinness in his tone ; at the other

of there is not a trace the smear, the blur, the over pressure upon strings and bow by which many a ’ cellist fancies he makes his instrument more ex ’ Ca sals s pressive . Mr . bowing and fingering are ideally light , elastic, sensitive and felicitous . He

no a . does t comm nd his instrument , he caresses it l He plays not merely by ripened skill , fu l resource and impeccable ear ; but he plays also by an

r innate instinct and aptitude . He was bo n for the ’ cello as Mr . Kreisler for the violin or de Pach

c mann for the piano . His flawless deli acy matches ’ the pianist s ; hi s technical sensitiveness and surety match the like qualities in the violinist ; and he is

r dowe ed , like both these virtuosi , with exquisite [ 170] V I O L I N I S T S

sense of the tone that he evokes . That tone , beyond

o f all peradventure , is the ideal voice the violon cello . ’ Balzac s personage dreamed o f a tone in the human voice that should concentrate the perfect

of so beauty sound . At moments Mr . Casals con c entrate s in his tone the perfect be auty of his in

. I strument t does not lack body and fullness, yet it is altogether limpid ; it does not lack warmth and richness , yet it is never thick and sluggish . It ul flows with edgeless suavity , yet it und ates to every curve of the music and vibrates to every accent that the composer has laid upon it ; heat and light are both in it ; and not only sensuous beauty and S musical sensibility, but a piritualized intensity distinguish it . Therein it is individual of Mr .

Casals and no other, for what the man is under

— —so neath as Mr . Kreisler likes to say in the last and fine analysis his tone must be . It is not merely

V that Mr . Casals draws from the ioloncello a tone

of that seems the ideal voice the instrument , he draws from it also a tone that through the music opens the alertly perceiving and serenely appre

the hending mind , warm , sensitive and manifold

of imagination , the pure heights and depths the [ 171 ] E I G H T H N O T E S

fine ly-touched Spirit of Pablo Casals hims is remarkable man as well as remarkable he is such a virtuoso of the Violoncello attributes make him.

[ 172]

” I THE IGHTEOUS FL ONZAL E . R YS

0 write chamber-music is to write under hard prescription and f o r the few ; to play

- chamber music is to strive for perfection ,

anti again in a few appreciating ears . Both are p

odes and antidotes to the passion for the obvious ,

now the mediocre, the democratic , obsessing some “ ” of us in community singing and other strenuous f exercises en masse . No division O music more needs the hand that discerns as well as helps ; none

more seldom receives it . Hereabouts , however, it has been well and wisely fostered by the late F l E . l onza e dward J de Coppet , who founded the y

. E Quartet, and by Mrs lizabeth Shurtleff Coolidge , who for a time maintained the Berkshire Quartet,

Elshuco more recently assembled the Trio , and , ’ Letz s if report runs accurately, still helps Mr . string quartet along its way ; while altogether unobtrusively she has paid for various series of chamber concerts at universities and made it pos sible for the London String Quartet to visit the major American cities . [ 175] E I G H T H N O T E S — While other string quartets have come and also

—at of t gone the will founders and sus ainers, at ff “ ” the interest or the indi erence of followings , f o r nearly twenty years the Flonz a le y Quartet has kept place in American concert -halls and paid wel comed visits to European . As the Calvinistic cate “ ” “ of chism contained the whole duty man , so The ” Flonzale s y have embodied , to us , the whole duty

f - n o . chamber musicians . As in the beginni g Mr l Betti and Mr . Pochon stil sit in the seats of the ’ n d Archa mbaul t of violi s and Mr . in the chair the

o f Violoncello . Aftermath the late war substituted

o r Mr. Bailly for Mr . Ara at the viola , but rare , maybe, presumptuous was any ear detecting change in the quality o f tone or the sensibility of the e u

l en semble . No string quartet can excel un ess it joy such permanence . It is not enough that the four should practice together in private and play — n together in public even ad libitum . Nor yet agai that they shoul d consciously strive to unify tech nique and tone , understanding and response , trans mission and illumination . Rather they must enter into that instinctive and reciprocal divination of themselves and their music, their means and ends, — which flowe rs and by sub- conscious process only

- ih long, close, affectionate intimacy . The final [ 176]

E I G H T H N O T E S

in Beethoven his earlier and middle years . There

who are those , a little regretfully, would have these beginnings the halcyon days of the Fl onz aley Quar tet . Let them be content that this early virtue con tinue s undiminished while to it have been added other and greater glories .

For t , though perfection may ever speed her fee h before her pursuers , yet wider and wider does S e spread her mantle . From the serenities , the melan cholie s of , the gayeties Mozart , from Haydn pen

atte m -weav sive , playful or merely at manifold p “ ing ; from the young Beethoven adding to the best ” n of models the rich ess of his invention , the ardor hi s of hi s spirit , the vigor hand and the fecundity “ ” of S Flonza le s his kill , The y were bound to go forward . They went and with every year over

i . one broaden ng fields In direction , they achieved the songful flood , the endless ripple and glint and glamour of the quartets of Schubert ; the eager ia

striv tensities, the changeful glow, the shadowed

f ulfillments of of ings , the radiant the quartets t l Schumann . The voices hat had undu ated to clas sical of of t continence line and reticence inflec ion , — — now spoke and not less eloquently in the holde r

i rre ula ri curves , the larger emphases , the inspired g

of o . ties , the passionate freedoms r mantic music [ 178] C H A M B E R - M U S I C

” I Flonz ale n another direction , The ys compassed

th of the racial rhy mic tang, the melody the soil , — the fOlk-song footfall and the folk- song repetition

—of a an occasional Bohemian like Dvor k , of a

- - semi occasional and a semi sophisticated Russian . E xpanding yet again and deepening withal , they

rumina essayed the relatively austere, abstruse, t f o . ing and remote music Brahms Then , first, in a long and sunny progress , reproach overtook them . “ ” lonz ale s The F y are Latins . Therefore when they give voice to music , they incline to lucidity, pre ci sion of I n , to the play lyric impulse poetry and fancy, to refinement rather than ruggedness . The reasoned perceptions of the mind will not always

of curb the instinctive promptings the spirit, and ’ s o . , like Mr Toscanini in Brahms s symphonies, they seemed now and again to subdue and trans t mute to themselves the manifest mat er, manner and will of the composer . Yet a limpid and lyrical Brahm s ! so far as might be even at the hands of “ ” The Flonz ale ys ) had timely virtue in a day when “ too many Americans counted Teutonic interpreta ” re tions among the finalitie s of music . Like proach awaited Mr. Betti and his colleagues when they ventured among the later quartets o f Beet l the hoven . Plausibly, they groped on y where [ 1 79] E I G H T H N O T E S

not composer also sought and always found , pur sued light where he had left obscurity—and then made rich amends when they rose to the exalta tion of his song or caught the fires of his impa s n sio e d energies . “ This progress The Fl onzale ys have crowned with their revelation of the chamber-music of our own particul ar and fruitful day . The quartets of

Debussy and Ravel , for example , were not new to most ears hearing them at their concerts . Yet, t there , many a listener perceived as for the firs n time the pith and poi t of the harmonic texture , the pungent or the subtle play of the instrumental m voices , the rhyth ic élan at once sustaining and

i of diversify ng the tonal progress , the fertility de

r vice, the iridescent image y, the poised mood that seemed in those days of discovery to give music both a new sensibility and a new precision . It was

the as though finesse and the felicity, the perfect “ perception and the perfect plasticity o f The Flon ” za leys with Mozart had renewed themselves with Debussy and Ravel ; a s though such little masters of style with the last years o f the eighteenth cen tury had been born anew and as fully panoplied into the first years of the twentieth . “ rt s Relatively, however, these qua ets were tand [ 180]

E I G H T H N O T E S

or music in their own day . They have found room f

ff es t w Gri , for Milhaud , for the li tle kno n Belgians , for overlooked Parisians . Before long, with their present zest for discovery, they may descry the

E . ascendant Italians , the risen nglish As for us

. Loe ffle r m Americans, Mr has but to write a cha ber

to piece lay it in their hands . “ For a decade and more the works of The Flon ” zale — ys have thus been the works Mrs . Coo ’ — lidge s Berkshire festivals aside Of chamber u music in America . It is q ite true that the Kneisel

Quartet preceded them , opened the way and

of u smoothed it . The misfortune the Kneisel Q ar

was n me dioc tet, however, to decli e from merit to rity, to chill a public they had themselves warmed , to leave it eager for the fervors and the felicities “ l ” of The Fl onz a eys . Slowly Mr . Betti and his companions won their deserts, thrice familiar as their quality now seems ; yet no less firmly they A have maintained , amplified , advanced it . s many cities as will have them may now take recurring — pleasure in them so long as they do not overtax jealously guarded powers , relax cherished stand ards, disturb necessary leisures, exhaust zest into “ ” Flonzale s routine . The y began in artistic right [ 182] C H A M B E R - M U S I C

ul of eousne ss . In the f lness fame and vogue they

To so have unremittingly maintained it . do is not yet common record in the annals Of musicians

America .

[183] THE Z T II . ES FUL LONDONERS

The London String Quartet came as a revelation to American audiences long accustomed to no other “ ” f Fl z l standards than those o The on a e ys . The Londoners were novel ; they were also and mani f l e st y different . They struck an emotional fire in “ ” their playing while The Fl onz ale ys were content ul with a warm glow . They sought op ence while the older group seeks , and finds, lucidity, elegance, sensuous contour. L Shrewdly and wisely , withal , Mr. evey, Mr.

P . . r etre , Mr Warner and Mr Wa wick preferred to

ob come overseas unheralded . Even those whose j it is to sca n the reviews o f concerts in London news papers little anticipated their quality . Possibly familiarity had accustomed the British reviewers to the signal virtues of the quartet ; whereas in

America they fell fresh, clear and warm upon newly listening but hardly unexacting ears . They

of - heard an exceeding warmth tone , full bodied ,

of rich pile and texture , brightly colored and , in

of moments ardent expression , charged with deep [ 184]

E I G H T H N O T E S

and kindling rhythm . Cool heads , warm hearts and quick energies guided and spurred them .

Their own zest gave zest to their audiences . “ ” The Londoners recall The Kne isels in their first and golden prime ; they renew the high tradition ’ descended from the best days of J oachim s tets .

[ 186] W 1

A DISEUSE

E I G H T H N O T E S

articles of a speech perfectly attuned to as many

matters .

As various is the play Of eyes no less eloquent, of features that seem to etch upon themselves what

or that tongue speaks , yet oftener what lies behind

its sayings . Prompting and guiding all these means S are intelligence and pirit , as acute, fine and

- r many sided as they are alert and quenchless . T ag

edy may deepen both tone and feature , comedy may brighten them , irony often creases them , wit smiles n u over them , the i tuition which is close to geni s often enhances them .

of A characteristic program Mme . Guilbert will include a few little pieces of the time of Marie —“ Antoinette Bergers and Musettes of the Little ”

S . i n Trianon , he calls them Poss bly Marie sa g ’ them hers elf when she and her demoiselles d hon neur dallied beside the temples and the fountains in the groves of the garden . Perhaps an attending court ier with a voice and a knack at elegant song, sang them to her while the company listened , as ’ ’ Lancret s Wattea u s t s in and pic ure , in discreet

of attitudes , with a becoming air melancholy . Whatever the original circumstances they were prettily artifical ditties that warned an imaginary P S s hyllis against the inconstancy of hepherd swain , [ 1901 A D I S E U S E

that sang the charms and accomplishments of a

“ ” ’ cousine tte ; that spoke a young girl s longings “ ” for marriage and the married state . And with

such songs Mme . Guilbert can summon the mood

and manner, touch artifice with artifice and add

grace to grace . Elegant longing and sentimental

of melancholy, with the faintest spice pretending,

might go no farther .

of f And then will come pieces robuster stu f, of franker flavor and more human quality in whi ch

it is easy to prefer her . They will narrate stories

on of the monks whom , from the middle ages , the tellers of folk tales and the makers of folk verse have not much loved . They would make them churlish and clownish, avaricious and libidinous, U knaves and hypocrites unredeemed . pon such

l o f songs Mme . Yvette will lavish all her Skil ironic

she innuendo . Gayly keeps company with the par ticula r monk who descended upon the good woman o f f or the house, begged shelter and warmth , and then for bed and board , and finally for the lady herself . She will mock him to his face ; perhaps he had his wicked will ; perhaps he failed of it anyhow the answer is written in the intonations that she gives the deriding little refrain and that make [ 191 ] E I G H T H N O T E S

doub t ! as it Often is) piquancy . Boccaccio might have told the tale with like smiling gusto . Next perhaps stand songs smacking in their turn

of the as heartily and broadly the rude tongues,

ul outspoken imp ses , the rough fooleries , the blunt, sordid give -and -take o f the peasant folk of the ’ - Mau a ssant s of French country side , as do p tales

Normandy farms . To these Mme . Guilbert can summon in her tones not only the two tongues but f also the two personages o the dialogued pieces,

o r i s and wheth er monk peasant the target , diver s if y the refrains with arch and apt mockery .

At the other extreme Mme . Guilbert can be at will both tender and humble, puissant and opulent . Recall her Mary Magdalen in Oriental splendor Of presence and possessions going from door to n door, yet in humility . Neither great ki gs, rich merchants nor even the common hangman had pity

she of o r place f o r her . Yet when came to Jesus l Nazareth , he repu sed her not, but spoke gentle words of pardon and compassion . Then in Mme . ’ Guilbert s tones is the beauty of the merciful and

re o f the pure in heart that Rostand , with all the sources of the theater to serve him , hardly com “ ” passed so fully in like scene of La Samaritaine . ’ r For contrast is Mme . Guilbert s other Ma y, the [ 192 ]

VI II

DANCERS

E I G H T H N O TE S

temporary stage , and because the music yielded n them new, strange , and very penetrating se sations .

In parquet and in gallery, Americans were nu me rous in thes e audiences and for several years

l - before the Ba let came to America , they , as eye and

- r to n ear witnesses, ecounted their cou trymen these

. t s in Russian glories In urn , the corre pondents Paris and London of American newspapers wrote

o f much about the ballets and operas . The names

Nijinsky and Karsavina , the chief dancers , were repeated many times beyond the Atlantic ; and

of of even that Fokine, producer nearly all these

n of of nu ballets and i ventor many them , was not known over sea .

of the In the ordinary course westward progress,

Russian Ballet, as it was speedily called ! as if

own there were no other in its country) , should have visited the United States long before it did . It tarried elsewhere because whenever such an ex pe dition was proposed it exacted what seemed to American managers impossible terms . When

ia il Mr. D h e ff who ever negotiations began g , had final responsibility and authority over all that it

e undertook , insisted that his company must danc in America in very large theaters to very large au

die nce s E . at very high prices , as it had in urope [ 198] D A N C E R S It was accustomed to dance no more than four

times a week, it must be engaged in toto ; it was t hard to convince him hat New York , Boston and Chicago could provide orchestras worthy of his

r dance s . But the war and its consequences altered many

n E e — thi gs in urop among them , evidently, the Di hfl fl a e . mind of Mr. g Accordingly he looked

to America with a kindly , even a longing eye ; “ ” b e modified his demands to suit the times, and agreed readily to the reasonable terms upon which

the Russian Ballet made its first American tour. l It brought its ful forces, with the exception of

on Karsavina , the chief dancer the feminine side, less distinguished and less individual than her P predecessor, Anna avlowa , but none the less a

dancer who rises high in the second rank . It failed

also to bring Fokine, who has since exemplified

’ here a rare sense of beautiful and Significant

motion , keen imagination and feeling playing t through it, and the pic orial , elastic, illusive and seemingly easy co Odination of all the elements in

our an intricate spectacle . In day no such imagina tion as his has worked with the ball et on the actual

stage to such resulting beauty . Beyond any ’ Dia hile ff s individual dancer, he made Mr . g bal [ 199] E I G H T H N O T E S

i let what it was . It did br ng Nijinsky, who , what ff ever his idiosyncrasies and e eminacies , then ex celled all the dancers of his se x in imaginative

of variety, felicitous grace and airy lightness motion .

distinc Nijinsky and Fokine aside, the salient — — tion of the Russian Ballet wa s and is its e u — semble its dancing en masse o r in divided and subdivided groups wherein each dancer kept clear individuality , yet was a contributing part to an adroitly ordered but seemingly spontaneous whole . The least of the dancers danced with sense of the

o f mimed drama , the momentary picture , as well l as of rhythmed steps and movements . These ba lets , moreover, moved against scenery and were clothed with costumes that were a revelation in color to the American eye . Bakst , unsurpassed master then o f the richness and the power of color on the stage, ample and free of design , impres

ionisti c s Often in artistic procedure , was the author of most of the scenery and costumes . A few

o f of the younger artists the theater made the rest . As the austere reviewers of Paris and London affirmed , it is true that the Russian Ballet addressed itself to the imagination and the emotions through the eye rather than through the ear, and that in [2001

E I G H T H N O T E S

f o r bodies , their instinct for balance , energy with out i t a exertion , to the highest po nt hat they h ve been able to develop an art for which that tech — nique exists namely , the conveyance of choreo ’ Di hil ff r graphic ideas . Mr . a e s Russians neve g — escaped from their subjection to ideas and , t moreover, to artistic ideas ; ideas , hat is , conceived f at a high pitch o emotional intelligence .

wa s l It , in fact , not in the technical ski l of the t dancing, but in the varie y and imaginative quality of those ideas that the true individuality of the Rus sian Ballet stood revealed . Take , for example , the “ — dances from Prince Igor in itself a rather

u on tedious opera , fo nded a turgid ballad that was foisted on Russian literature by an eighteenth-cen tury forger and has been allowed to stay there to avoid a scandal . How astutely every means that the theater Offers was utilized to produce the desired e fl e ct :the menace of the coming cloud of barbarians that is to lie for centuries on the desolate face of Russia ! f or we are in the camp of Polovtsians of in the , forerunners the great v a sion) ; not the blusterings of Tamburlaine the

a Great, but the quiet vigor, half melancholy, h lf

f of but play ul, a tribe that is itself a little unit in

To the swarm . the eye open the infinite horizons [202 ] D A N C E R S

o f Of the steppe, with the line the burial tumuli stretching away to endless times and places ; down

tu . O the cen ries, into Siberia n the ear sounds the

- long drawn , iterant music ! Borodin drew his

- themes from Tartar Mongol sources) . The women

o f o r crouch , unconscious themselves , rise and

stretch lazy limbs, and in the end fling themselves

carelessly prone when their dance is over. To them succeeds the savage-joyful panther-leaping of the men ; the stamping feet and quick nerve - racking beat of the drum ; and , more threatening than all ,

a n of the g mboli g the boys , like kittens unwit

f or tingly preparing themselves the future chase . Again in Schumann’ s “ Carnaval was a whole — new range of ideas a series of purely musical

r or ideas , litera y dramatic, it is true, in general — scheme for Schumann himself provided the main verbal notions . Carnaval , Pierrot , Columbine ,

E — of usebius , Florestan but the inspiration the details was drawn from music, and certain move

of ments and gestures the Russian dancers , certain trippings and stridings conveyed humorous fancies which can be conveyed only by music and dancing and which cannot be put into words . This is pure choreography, mimed comment, abstracted from all drama and letters . [203] E I G H T H N O T E S

O o f n the other hand , as against the expression “ ” r - o r a litera y historical idea as in Prince Igor,

- - a the expression of a half romantic , half music l idea “ ” ul as in Carnaval , the Russians co d gain the

of illusion remote and detached beauty . In De ’ “ ’ ’ ” L A res- bussy s p midi d un Faune , for example , there could be no possible illusion of reality ; nor yet again the illusion of pure fanta sy as in Les Sylphides The new intent was a beauty of

of ancient scene and vesture, imagined beings as they stirred in Hellenic fancy , and a beauty , like

of — i wise, the sensations sensat ons Hellenic per haps, but quite as much of the place and time of e Mallarm and Debussy , the poet and the composer — that faun and nymphs receive one from another

of . in the scheme verse, music and mimed episode Faun and nymphs must be as visualized figme nts f l i o the stimu ated imag n—ation rather than mimes in the flesh ; their impul ses for they are not so much — as moods must seem wisps Of sensation , flicking ’ the spectator s imagination . Visualized they must be as figures twining about the ancient vase upon

c which they have been painted , with interlo king

l o r and angu ar arms ; moving their bodies , their

s draperies, their hands and heads a though they were of a sudden released from the static instant in [204]

E I G H T H N O T E S mysterious language of gestures with which ballet masters are wont to darken the mind of the specta i tor. Neither did t seek to entertain us by the mere S t portrayal of such imple mat ers as love , invita tion , refusal, indignation and forgiveness . To make it worthy of its purpose there must be some individuality in the emotions, which gives P S . it a new ignificance avlowa , for instance, does not so much imita te the movement of a butterfly

th e butte rfl -fli ht as emotional quality of a y g , the sense raised in our minds by watching it ; and then it is not an ordinary butterfly, but a Grimm

e butterfly, a dream butterfly, a butterfly multipli d many times by itself, raised as it were to the Pav

- lowa th power . “When for a moment the Russians are confined — to mere imitation the representation , for instance, — o f the joy of youth they catch newly expressive t i w ges ures , such as that wholly ch ldlike , bold s ing

of on ing the arms, as if they were pinned at the

- shoul ders . In all ballet dancing there is a dim

to attempt represent the spiritual , the fantastical , by means of the material ; the tiptoeing and the lifting-up o f the women is a suggestion of the ethereal ; but the perfect ease and grace of the Russians enables them to carry this to a far higher [206] D A N C E R S

point than any others have done , so that in their

of suggestion things flying, things swimming, things

o r n poised , thi gs blown in the wind , the sense of the material passes away altogether . “ The art of the older ballet tu rned its back on life and on all the other arts and shut itself up in a narrow circle of tradition . According to the old of - method producing a ballet, the ballet master composed his dances by combining certain well . o established movements and p ses , and for his mimetic scenes he used a conventional system of ul gestic ation , and endeavored by gestures of the dancers’ hands according to established rules to convey the plot of the ballet to the spectator. Not to form combinations of ready-made and estab

- lishe d dance steps, but to create in each case a new

r fo m corresponding to the subject, the most ex pressive form possible for the representation of the period , the character and the idea represented that was and is the first rule of the Russians under

Diaghileff . “ The second rule is that dancing and mimetic gesture have no meaning in a ballet unless they serve as an expression of its dramatic action , and they must not be used as a mere divertisse ment t o r entertainment, having no connec ion with the [207] E I G H T H N O T E S

of scheme the whole ballet . The thi rd rule is that the new ballet admits the use of conventional ges ture only where it is required by the style o f the ballet, and in all other cases endeavors to replace gestures of the hands by mimes is of the whole body . Man can be and Should be expressive from head to foot . “ The fourth rule is the expressiveness of groups and of ensemble dancing . In the older ballet the dancers Were ranged in groups only for the pur

Of - not pose ornament , and the ballet master was concerned with the expression of any sentiment in groups of characters o r in ensemble dances .

the i The new ballet , on other hand , in develop ng

of the principle expressiveness, advances from the expressiveness of the face to the expressivenes s of the whole body, and from the expressiveness of the individual body to the expressiveness of a group of bodies and the expressiveness o f the combined danc ing of a crowd . The fifth rule is the alliance of dancing with other arts . The new ballet , refusing to be the slave

o f o r S either music of cenic decoration , and recog nizing the alliance of the arts only on the condi

of tion complete equality , allows perfect freedom both to the scenic artist and to the musician . In [208]

I T E OETR OF VLO A I . H P Y PA W

It was the Dia ghile ff Ballet that first brought Pavlowa to Western Europe from the Russia where she was high -placed ballerina in imperial

she opera houses . A few years later assembled a

n Mordkin n company, i cluding Michael , and bega to produce ballets in her own right . Under these circumstances she gave to America the first important glimpse of the beauties of the Rus

co Ordina in sian ballet and its t g arts . She has since

of become ceaseless wanderer on the face the globe , carrying with her the beauty o f the dance as it has not manifested itself in any one person in our day . Year after year Pavlowa has revealed to us the range of her resources, the diversity of her accom

lishme nt h p , tec nical and pictorial , imaginative and emotional . She has run the whole gamut of tech nical c means and techni al achievement . It is not merely that Pavlowa accomplishes every feat of

n rt tech ical vi uosity with exceeding plasticity , with exceeding sureness , with an air, almost, of sim [2 10] D A N C E R S plicity in the doing of the intricate and of spon tane it the y in compassing of the involved . It is rather that Pavlowa gives to these feats o f high technique a beauty o f line in swift and rhythmed motion that makes them seem to spring out of the imagination in themselves , like the emotion of ab

f allS solute music . She into a pose ; the technician can derive from it on the instant one o r the “ ” other classic position ; yet the eye sees first and

of i feels longest the exquisite beauty line . The m pression is as though fluid motion were arrested i for an nstant to expand in static beauty, as the running brook halts for a moment to make a sunlit i pool . Or the impression and emot on are Of the

of of winged lightness the movement , the blending each one of its parts into a single lovely flash . Such technique has impalpability ; it is like air in motion ; it is as fluid as water ; a s swift as fire . Here is the beauty of motion in its distilled essence, as inde finable by word as the absolute distilled beauty — of music , but as recognizable and real more real even than reality . The nearest approximation to the classic bal

old of let , as of it went in the capitals Central E E and astern urope , came to the present ’ generation o f our stage in Pavlowa s ballet -pan [2 1 1 ] E I G H T H N O T E S tomime of t The Sleeping Beau y. There was the

o f Dia hile ff Russian Ballet g and Nijinsky ; there is , o r was, the Russian Ballet of the state theaters in n Petrograd and Moscow . The o e was the handi

of d work innovators, individualists , seceders, e signed less for a Russian than a cosmopolitan au

dience . It mimed quite as often as it danced . The

r other exemplifies, prese ves and enriches the tra dition that began when the first French and Italian dancing masters were summoned from the West to bring their method with them . It exalts the for malism and the virtuosity of the dance . “ ” n T i The Sleepi g Beauty is such a ballet . scha kowsky finished the music in the prime of his powers , and , as his friends recall , was better satis fie d with it than with anything he had done for the w theater. As the tradition prescribed he rote it

o l t an appointed scenario , carefu ly divided and sub divided into the number of measures the om nipotent ballet-master chose to allot to each dance and each mimed episode . It does not lack the stately graces that become a formal and somewhat rococo ballet ; it has many a moment of lyric warmth or rhythmic glow ; it is like a mirror f or the varied reflecti ons of story and. action . The fable is the familiar folk-tale of the lovely [2 12]

E I G H T H N O T E S

And according to the prescriptions of the in classic ballet , Pavlowa herself danced the tradi

onal of ti dresses , variously colored , a prima bal

— l k r lerina bi lowing s i t, light bodice and silken

fle shin s . g , nearly invisible Her beauty was the

of beauty her own dark features , of her darting

of arms and gossamer fingers , of her winged feet ,

S . her whole lender, sinewy , alert and intent body Her artistry was the artistry in which She had been schooled and become perfect in the days of her ’ youth in Russia s imperial theaters . It shone through all the technical feats that the ballet ex

of acted , shone through the glamour young seren n ity and surprise, wonder and eagerness , happi ess and affection with which She invested them as he came a personage who was a fairy- book princess before She was past mistress of the adagios and

flittin s of variations , the posings and g the classic

own dance . Her spirit added yet another man

O She tu of tle . nce more was a crea re light and air who made a transcendent virtuosity , a flaw

a less elegance, perfect sense of style like wreath ing vapors upon the watching eyes and the quick ened imagination . ’ Yet Pavlowa s artistry can be as contemporary

. not as it can be classic . Mlle Genee herself was [2 14] D A N C E R S

better grounded in all the technical aptitudes of the

old t classical balle , but Pavlowa prefers to use them as the instruments of her modernized imagi

nation . Similarly in the decoration of the many

i she S stages upon wh ch dances, he follows the ways of the scenic past when they suit the music and n the ballet that she has in ha d . But she turns — much more eagerly if she is minded not to be — careless to the methods and the fashions of the present when they bid fair to heighten the illusion h “ ” s e . that seeks With The Sleeping Beauty , with “ ” o r t The Magic Flute, wi h her terpsichorean ’ “ ” transcription o f Weber s Invitation to the Dance she i s content with backgrounds of the traditional “ ” i to sort . Pass ng to her newer divertissements ; l a highly imaginative ba let of the present, like her ’ “ ” “ version of Liszt s Preludes ; like her Orien ”— tale made from a patchwork of the music of — Musor sk - she Serov, g y and Rimsky Korsakov sets around them decorations in the more modern fashion . “ “ O n rientale , like its forerun er, Thamar, was born of Russia ‘ and of the East and of a time that liked fierce passions , high colorings , vivid

- shapes , and sharp set music in the theater and liked them the better when they came with barbaric tang . [2 15] E I G H T H N O T E S

’ of o Instead a neutral setting, the play f Bakst s

- O hot , broad color over a close walled riental cham

- ber, remote , solitary, perfume laden , voluptuous

in its every suggestion . Instead of merely inci u dental dresses , cost mes that were part and pa rcel I of this play of color and implication . nstead of

out i conventionalized music, music of the Russ ans that was as highly colored as the settings, that ran to sharp , wild rhythms, that bore passion and f f n whipped it . Instead o the play o pretty sentime t

i f o r and light humor, the enchantress wait ng her

f or passing prey, devoured with desire it, pur it l suing with fierce and sensual temptation , a most S possessing it, and indomitable still when it lips — from her a mimodrama with passion and fate at odds within it ; a mimodrama in which every means was shaped to the stark and graphic end . Bakst carried the eye and the imagination into ’ e the enchantress s chamber . Her wom n danced there in the languor of the Orient . Her serpent like priest w rought his incantations over his per

she im fumed jar . And lay and watched and in i a gination devoured the object of her des re . Chance brought him—the younger warrior—to her door . Her soldiers led him within . Upon him she plied all the fie rce ne ss of her fascination . Her [216]

E I G H T H N O T E S

This gesture and thi s motion were as stark and

i . fierce , as hard and burning as the passion beh nd By that passion She would master and devour its object . She did not caress ; she commanded . Power was in the miming and savagery in the dance . Then came the climax when the hand is almost upon the prey, and fierce anticipation played out of her graphic glance and her dancing body . Then the moment of fierce bewilderment f when the warrior bafles her . Finally, the slow t sinking, wi h the very voice and line of the music, into the waiting, indomitable and devouring .

of so Miming such imagination and intensity, stark, so of elemental , is revelation the other Pavlowa

Of of the actress passion and power, mate and foil

of the . to the wraith, the white flame , dance

[218] III . MANIFOLD NIJ INSKY

Like Pavlowa , Nijinsky was no contented tech nician of the dance , superlatively as he could sum mon the older virtuosity in such pieces in the Rus ’ “ sian Ballet s repertory as The Enchanted Prin ” “ o r - cess , in a measure , the quasi idyllic Spectre ” de la Rose . He was schooled in it for nine years , as is every Russian dancer ; b e practiced it for years afterward in the imperial theaters before a public more expert and insistent with these tech nical felicities than any other in the world . He still made use of them in mimed impersonation and graphic suggestion remote indeed from the ends for which the older French and Italian ballet masters designed them . They conceived the art of th e dance as self

- sufficie nt contained , self , absolute, reward enough

in its own agilities , graces , subtleties for those that practiced and those that watched and ap O pla ude d it . bviously it asked little of the mind ; I it gave as little room for any play of the spI r t. Yet for the dancer and the mime of these later and [219] E I G H T H N O T E S newer days who would ply his intellect and set free n his fancy and feeli g in all that he undertakes, this old virtuosity provides often the apt and ready

—a means shading here , a happy stroke there, a luminous point upon an implication that might w other ise be dark , a persuasive suavity that ingrati r tates and kindly disposes the spectator . The ale t t ness, the patience, the dexterity , the endless ques for exactitude of the elder virtuosity have their

no uses in the new freedoms . In itself it may be more than a relatively paltry goal ; yet without it the dancer and the mime of these d ays lacks hi s tested tools .

i insk l N j y often ta ked in his day , as few dancers

of . can talk, about the art the dance Lucidly and with a gentle confidence , he was ready to link the

r present with the future . He recalled the reperto y of the Russian Ballet as it then was : on the one side the pieces that exemplify the dance , —“ ” “ E ” “ The Sylphs , The nchanted Princess , The ” “ ” “ ” of Phantom the Rose , Butterflies , Carnaval — ballets of atmospheric and poetic suggestion as well as of the skill that they exact :on the other side “ ” mimodrama s e e the Sch h razade , “ ” i l Thamar, seeking illusion by act ng that shou d be only the more graphic bec ause it is wordless [220]

E I G H T H N O T E S

of ing from the grace , the charm , the beauty mo

o f tion . The interest and the illusion the mimo dramas sprang from visualized and intensified

o f action . But the appeal Petrushka , the puppet,

- was , to a degree, in what he half humanly was, in his reactions to his fantastic fortunes . He touched his audience by wha t it felt about him rather than by what it merely saw hi m do . Why

r l not, then , go fo ward to a ballet that shou d de i pend much more upon th s static suggestion , a bal

ul not l of let that sho d be fu l dynamic emphasis , a — — ballet almost to put an extreme case without movement! “ of In The Afternoon a Faun , Nijinsky first worked out his idea o f a ballet that should be in trinsicall so of y static , impersonal , to say ; spirit ualize d o f atmosphere and illusion , reticent means

of o r and means newly devised employed . Studi ous of always pictures and sculptures , the old

ha s- S Greek reliefs suggested the implicity, the

c of directness, the e onomy, even the rigidity line in pose and gesture that he sought . From the

on of actors the stage the spoken word , when to their abilities , they add intuition , inspiration and

a what in short is called genius , eman te , though they

not Se speak not and stir , the nsations, the emotions , [222 ] D A N C E R S the traits of the personage that they are assuming

o f in the circumstances the play . May not a dancer

of so in and mime the speechless theater receive,

so tensify and transmit , bear to his audience the sensations and the illusions implicit in Debussy’ s ’ music and Malla rmé s verses ! May not he and others besides , into whom he has infused his intent , weave out of pose and gesture and graphic impres tw sion , from within ou ard , an atmosphere like that which Debussy weaves in tones ! So Nijinsky designed and accomplished his “ f ” version of The Afternoon o a Faun . So he went ’ “ ” ’ forward to Debussy s Jeux , to Stravinsky s “ ” Sacré de Printemps, neither of which has been “ ” seen in America . In Jeux, he sought to sim plif y and Spiritualize light fancy until the audi ence should forget that it was looking upon youth

o r that might be on their way to from tennis , yes te rda - - y, to day, to morrow, should feel only the play

- of ever renewed young moods, caprice , pastime, and coquetry . He pursued a distilled illusion , he used as distilled and concentrated means . —So far as he could accomplish his end , the piece half

- mimed , half danced and sometimes merely a still projection—characterized In “ Le Sacré de ”— Printemps spring rites of a primitive and pagan [223] E I G H T H N O T E S

—he tu Russia re rned to static suggestion , to rigid , but t sparing always clearly rhy hmed pose, gesture, movement , to this intensified projection by subtler

of and keener means than action , the beliefs , the

of emotions , the ceremonies primitive folk and l faith . A ready he had persuaded Stravinsky to his experiments and they worked upon “ Le ” T Sacré in a common courage and loyalty . hen f or a year o r two he paused f or the nursing of

of new ideas , for the shaping new designs, for the “ fresh opportunity . It came with Till Eulen ” spiegel , in the graphic concentration of a place , a time , a folk , their moods and their manners , in f hint withal at social philosophy . The stage o the mime may thus match , may outdo , Nijinsky believed , the austerer stage of the spoken word .

! Who shall say that he did not succeed For in

of l hi s his definition Till , he surely fulfi led own faith in the characterizing arts of the dancer and the mime . In the prank upon the bread — basket went the Sportive Till yet with a more — serious intent or two unde m e ath and the lithe

of l ness, the swiftness his rhythmed pil aging had the beauty of the dance . When he mocked the pious pretence of the monks this Till grimaced [224]

’ ENEE S OO HA M V . G C L C R

Adeline Genee was to the very day of her retire ment the dancer, par excellence , for cool and culti vate d spirits . To the end She kept her hold upon the public that liked her devotion to the classic ballet and that was ever a little dubious over the newer and franker dancing of Isadora Duncan with

of her train of imitators , and the passionate and thrilling Russians . Miss Duncan and her pro geny danced in a fashion of their own that has wid ened the expressive scope and vividness of the dance, mated it to new rhythms and new music, u subdued its virt osity and increased its humanity . Wh en the Russians danced , it was with the strange

of so and exotic savor, the mingling simplicity and

hi stication — of p , the passion and the mystery to us — the Western World that are in most of the applied f arts of the Slav . Alone among the dancers o the

h e e first rank t at we in America have known , G n e perpetuated the traditions of the classic school of the dancing that descended from the eighteenth century into the nineteenth , that flowered in the [226] D A N C E R S

r of E golden yea s Taglioni and llsler, Grisi and Ce rito ; fell away into the sterile and finical vir tuo sit on of y that long flourished the stages Paris, Rome and Petrograd ; only tO rise reincarnated f or us of E e America and ngland in Gen e . By chance or design— much more probably the — latter She emphasized this descent and heightened

o f S this similitude by her choice pieces . In one he l danced and mimed as La Camargo , the i lustrious ! dancer of the Paris Of Louis V, who widened the technical range of the ballet and who , beyond

S of r all her isters the eighteenth centu y, clothed

own her dancing in her traits and spirit . In ’ e of another, Gen e danced in the ballet the nuns ’ ghostly temptations from Meyerbeer s opera , “ Robert the Devil It wa s a ballet o f the thirties ” and the forties , a real French ballet in white

fle shin s our tulle skirts and g , as grandparents would have called it . In such ballets did the danc ers of the golden age move . Between whiles,

e own too , Gen e disported herself, with her adept faculty as a comédienne , in light interludes, in fanciful o r humorous dances of character . Fo r those that know and care for the classic tech nique of the dance and for those that only half sus

e ct of n p , out quickened feeli g, its exactions and [227] E I G H T H N O TE S

’ Ge née s felicities, dancing in the ballet from “ ” Robert was high , rare pleasure . She aecom plishe d in it nearly every possible feat of virtuosity in a flawless perfection that seemed to rise with the

diflicul t of . y the achievement Her light bounds, her graceful swirls, her rhythmed steps about the stage seemed aerial and bodiless . Her pirouettes were little rhapsodies in technique . Her poses flowed into beauty and grace of line that sug

f t of e . gested no e fort , hat bore not a trace stiffn ss

Artifice f l they were , but spontaneous and beauti u

o f artifice . The subtler attributes and graces the — o ld dancing shone in her in the varied poise o f

of her head and shoulders, in the management her

or hands , in the keeping of her body in flowing arrested arabesque . She accomplished all thes e w things ith an ease , a sureness , an elegance, a completeness that were style in itself in conscious but unobtruded perfection . Then entered the per sonali of to ty the dancer glamour this dancing, in

of the narrow sense the word , with beauty and with ’ of charm . Meyerbeer s ballet in spite its elaborate program of temptations expresses nothing to the imaginations of the present but the beauty wi th

. a now which the dancer may clothe it D ncing in it, “ ” its own adays, is absolute dancing existing for [228]

E I G H T H N O T E S mother and the anxious soldier were no other than ’ friends and companions o f La Camargo s village

so e youth , and Gen e could bubble with sur prised pleasure at sight of them once more and play at being a peasant girl again . Ge nee mimed with many o f the conventional signs o f the classic pantomime ; but she softened and refined them with her individual charm , made her face the clear mirror of what they woul d re

fle ct , and kept them flowing with an elegant and airy lightness She could not mime deep and S l passionate moods , but he cou d fill surfaces with L beautiful light and shade . She danced , too , as a S i Camargo , in the full flowing kirt and the h gh bodice that dancers wore in those days , danced in the very entrechats—the crossings of the feet in — n air that Camargo herself i vented , and in many another fashion that the eighteenth century may o r

she may not have known . Over this dancing wove the wonted beauty and charm that were in all She did ; while costume, surroundings , the little tale , and the plea sant illusion o f the eighteenth century touched both with elegance, with fragrance .

[230] AT D AD V . ISOL E IS ORA

The charm of Isadora Duncan’ s dancing in her

best days was its exquisite innocence , its exquisite n light ess and its exquisite plasticity . Some there were who called it the dancing of the future

of a d which , course, was pure conjecture . Her ve rtise me nts in turn called her dances a revival — ! — of Greek o r was it classic art That de sig

nation was no less conjectural . If the archaeolo

e gists may be trust d , scanty indeed are the accounts

o f or Hellenic dancing, even allusions to it, that have come down to us . Whereas Genee idealized the conventions of the

tum—o r ballet, Miss Duncan in her Isadora as Europe still prefers to call her—had invented a method of dancing that was and is all her own ; that gives oftenest the impression of abstract and

remote beauty ; and that depends unusually little, little upon the personal charm of the dancer . Wh ether Isadora ever studied the classical tech

nique of the ballet is not easy to learn . It was her way to wrap all her beginnings in mystery . [231 ] E I G H T H N O T E S

one o f At the least, in the nineties , when she was ’ the chorus girls of Daly s Theatre , she must have learned something of the ways of ordinary stage dancing . Doubtless those beginnings trained her muscles to supple obedience , doubtless they gave her something of the skill she had in her prime to hide all mechanism ; and most surely they taught her much to avoid . There was not a trace of con vention in her dancing . She had plainly gone to — other models to Greek and Roman marbles and

to - vases , Roman wall paintings , and to the pictures l o f the more primitive Italian painters . As plain y she studied the rhythmic movements of natural oh

e cts of t unf et j , children , and of un utored folk in te re d dance . Her dancing seemed less a return to the conjectures of what Greek dancing may have been than a return to nature itself ; to dancing as beautiful , rhythmic and expressive motion in all f its purity and abstraction . Out o her own imagi

out own nation , of her intuitions and aptitude, she

h own made her own methods , fas ioned her ends

own and set her standards . The suggestions from i w thout She wove within . This dancing was truly all her own:yet as truly

on own it was little dependent her personality. Certainly she lacked physical and sensuous beauty [232 ]

E I G H T H N O T E S

’ n of l Miss Duncan s danci g was graphic beautifu , sensitive and idealized movement . It was graphic no less of idealized , abstract moods and emotions .

I of t was loveliest all, for example, when it would express awakening, stirring, mounting joy, when it would attain to a pure and idealized elation . It

r of was g aphic , in turn , in its expression innocence ; never was dancing less sensual . It was graphic,

of of ten too , moods wistful longing and wistful

. its own derness It had even a passion Of , a clear soft passion that sought its own ideal of beautiful

c dis losure . But it was not passionate dancing in the ordinary sense of the word . Take , for ex ’ to out ample, Miss Duncan s dances music of ’ “ ” Gluck s Orpheus . The suggestion of the blessed spirits of the Elysian Fields lay exactly within the range and quality of her artistry and imagination .

she of a of Then indeed was a figure ideal be uty ,

l u o f of truly poetic i l sion , exquisite purity motion O and mood . She had also to suggest rpheus , dis trau ht of E i a g at the loss urydice, torn al ke with p prehension and anticipation as he makes his way

all to the underworld . She did indeed imply

l . this, but remotely, statuesquely, a little cold y The play of body and face and arms lacked the intens ity that we modem s almost unconsciously [234] D A N C E R S

associate with such passionate grief . No one

n one k ows, no cares whether the miming of the Greeks and Romans suggested such emotions reti — — cently as reticently a s did Mise unca n whether m they made them less, and not ore , human . ! Cer tainly the account o f the miming in Anatole ’ France s novel of pagan Alexandria implies no

such reticence . ) Rather the essential matter is that a dancer here and now Should implant Or ’ heus s p grief vividly in us who watch her . At ’ such moments Miss Duncan s lack of passion o r

suppression of passion , in the ordinary sense of the

. ro word , partially defeated her Recall her p grams and they avoided almost always the ex

of pression vehement and consuming passion .

. Be Joyous and virginal , she illuded the spectator

- be . fore her, doomed and woe stricken , doubted

In a word , Miss Duncan was the dancer rather

than the mime . The mime , as ancient dancing and

even modern ballet employs the word , dances to

suggest specific emotions , a specific mood , even a specific character Miss Allan’ s much debated “ Vision of Salome was not dancing in the strict

of . sense the term , but miming She sought to

udaea suggest , she did suggest, the Princess of J and the particul ar episode of the execution of the Bap [235] E I G H T H N O T E S

i 'i t st. So Tha s in the episode that Anatole France describes imparts the particular personage o f

Greek and Trojan legend . When Miss Dunca n

- m in of Echo mimed the tale Pan and , for instance ,

o r of o r of O the fable Narcissus , the passion rpheus —it ul was beautif miming in loveliness of pose , in

o f su e grace movement, in exquisiteness of gg s

tion . It visualized ; but it visualized a little

tamely, a little in flat tints . The spectator looked

upon a picture of Narcissus , a vision of Pan and

E o r cho , as Botticelli some other primitive Italian

painter might have imagined them . There was little sense of the emotions of the youth or the

nymphs . They lacked intensity . They were not

characterized but pictured . The reason was not m f far to seek . Lu inous as the motions o Miss ’ Duncan s dancing could be ; though she could make her arms as beautiful and significant as a line of

poetry , her face had scant range of vivid expres ul sion . The spectator co d read little there but ’ ’ I n sadora s absorption in her task , Isadora s smili g

or joy of it, at most some generalized emotion . Now one may not mime without very clear and

of u on of adroit play feat re , and it was this side pantomime that Miss Duncan had obv ious limita

r t ons . [236]

E I G H T H N O T E S

’ often a suggestion o f joy in Miss Duncan s dances ’ was of that strangely like that Mozart s music , and that similarly beguiled and stirred those who saw

or . heard Each had the same chastity of form, O u mood and impression . n occasion Miss D ncan believed She danced to Beethoven . Almost always she was dancing to Mozart .

THE END

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