MUSICIANS AND COMPOSERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2929, 4 May 1910, Page 87

MUSICIANS AND COMPOSERS.

WAGNER AND TSCHAIKOWSKY: A CONTRAST. To pass from Wagner to Tschaikowsky, from "Parisfal" to the Pathetic Symphony, is like passing from a church in which peasants are offering mass to a hut in which peasants are quarrelling, dancing, and .making love. Tschaikowsky has both force and sincerity, but it is the 'orce and sincerity of a ferocious ohild. He takes the orchestra in both hands, tears it to pieces, catches up a fragment of it here, a fragment of it there, masters it like an enemy; he makes it do what he wants. But he uses his fist where Wagner touches it with' the tips of his fingers ; he shows ill-breed-ing after the manner of the supreme gentleman. Wagner can use the whole strength of the orchestra and not make a noise; he never ends on a bang. But Ischaikowsky loves noise for its own sake; he likes to pound the drum and to hear the violins running up and down scales like acrobats.

Wagner takes his rhythms from the sea, as in " Tristan"; from fire, as in parts of the "Ring"; from light, as in " Parsival." But Tschaikowsky deforms the rhythms of Nature with the caprices of half-civilised impulses. He puts the froglike dancing of the Russian peasant into his tunes; he cries and roars like a child in a rage. He gives himself to you just as he is; he is immensely conscious of himself and of his need to take you into his confidence. In your delight at finding anyone so alive you are inclined to welcome him without reserve, and to forget that a man of genius is not necessarily a great artist, and that, if he is not a great artist, he is not a satisfactory man of genius.

I contrast him with Wagner because it seems to me that Wag not alone among quite modern musicians, and though indeed he appeals to our nerves more- forcibly than, any of them, has that breadth and universality b\' which amotion ceases to be merely personal and becomes elemental. To the musicians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries music was an art which had .0 bo carefully guarded from the too-disturbing presence of emotion. Emotion : a there always, whenever the, music is fine music; but the music is something much more than a means for the expression of emotion. It is a pattern; its beauty lies in its obedience to a law. It is music made for music's sake, with what might be called a more exclusive devotion to art than that of our modern musician. This music aims at the creation of beauty in sound; it conceives of beautiful sound as a thing which cannot exist outside order and measure; it has not yet >ome to look upon transgression as an essential part of liberty.—From " Plays, :\ccing, and Music: A Book of Theory," by Arthur Symons. SERENADES UP-TO-DATE. The ordinary person, who has always associated a "serenade" with something soft and dulcet breathed beneath a window, may be rather shocked to hear that the latest thing in serenades is scored for five saxophones, two saxhorns, an oboe d'amore, and a. cornodi-basetto. It is scarcely necessary to add that this work is by Mr Joseph Holbrooke, the composer of " Apollo and the £eaaxa:n," "Dylan," and "Pierrot and Pierrette," champion of the concertina and other despised or forgotten instruments. According to Webster a "serenade" is a piece of music suitable to be performed at night, "especially by gentlemen in a spirit of gallantry under the windows of ladies." Instruments many and various have been utilised by composers of the serenade—which, musically, has a somewhat nebulous meaning; but there has never, never been a serenade for saxophones, saxhorns, and —the other instruments. It seems that the desire to write a. startling serenade was one of the earliest sisfns of Mr Holbrooke's revolutionary instincts. " I rebelled so against the conventional serenade of the mandolin type," he told our representative, " that out of Xiure cussedness I determined myself to writa a serenade—for 14- tubas! But I could not get 14- tubas together. Brass was scarcer in London then. It was a pity. r or it woulc 1 have made a majestic noise." " And how old were you at the time?" 1 our representative asked. "Seventeen," said Holbrooke. "I made that serenade- into a string sextet!" he added thoughtfully. " Or course, a tuba is really a development of the old saxhorn," he went on. j "The word tuba is a misnomer. I think they are magnificent instruments. But to get back to this serenade —somebody said to me one day, ' Why don't you use these unusual instruments by themselves? You are fond, enough of them, in an orchestra.' And my serenade is the result of that challenge. He suggested that perhaps they were ' only good for colour.' That was nonsense. _ If an instrument is good for colour, it is gocd alone, with, the conception, you know, of percussion! " The instruments in my serenade," pro- ■ ceeded Mr Holbrooke, "are all rathe r purple." : " Rather ....?" queried our re- I preventative. j "Purple," said Mr Holbrooke. " I-always '

associate the sounds of particular instruments with colours. The oboe, as it appeals to me, is a bright green. The clarinet is rich pink; the flute white, colourless; the bassoon deep sea-green, sometimes deep brown." " And crimson?" asked our representative. "There is no carnation or crimson in the orchestra," Mr Holbrooke replied. " The sarusophone is the only crimson instrument I know. It is shriller than tho saxophone, which, indeed, is not meant for bleating strong effects'. You get eight sarusophones . . ." Mr Holbrooke could not find words to express the crimson .effect that might be obtained if one got eight earusophones.— Westminster Review. SEBASTIAN BACH'S BRANDENBURG CONCERTO The Brandenburg joncertc nt Sebastian. Baoh is nearly two hundred wars old. It is plain, direct, simple, the ximpcser seems to have worried himself about oe.'ther his individuwi'.ity mm his /rationality aid fcheire it stands—fresh mighty in strength, lovely, purely Baoh. and as purely German It is a glorioiw river -if music one feels in every bar of i< the force and amplitude of e 4 .ha'' »eu'r> wiß". r othin/* petty. Orchestration tnere its .ion* • it is ivTitten for solo violin flute and harpsichord Mid strings. ' Effects' there are -lone vet every phrase makes. ; w effect For sheer beauty the s'ow middle movement »« bo matched only jy ' onw other of Bach's slow movements and some o f Mozart's the loveliness is often Mozartean, but. She poignant note of patho* is- Baeb> alone. The band The band is silent not to make an effect, but because Bach did not need it :he flute, violin and harpsichord parte intertwines the phrase giver, t* - each nstoiment are marvellously expressive and shey flow together and mingle in sweet aonccrds and sweeter diseordf with Vi apparent T***' feet, artlessne.s.JjkcTi 's uever no e ei. in t>) nosfi solemn moments pompous in his tyle. and in no other of his works d<o<i? he "ely more entirely upot, :bp. direct inoruamented utterance of deep feeling The gigantic spirit of she man 'ix B'ngenes;- and povveii', can be "elt n the surging theme y f the first movement its depth and sincerity are not lees obvious in the second though (if Bach had only known >%. -the melody with its drop of a iiminisbed fourth had been made stale mi England ""«- " Hoptoration ames. Tne final is a remit, witfl our>ous mo ments of gloom—that cloistral gloom, which is so marked a characteristic of Bach's church music.—J F fctunciman ■ n the Saturday Review.. MADAME TETRAZZINI. Madame Tetrazzini has just had a unique experience in America, one that adds another to the diva's growing record cl good deeds. A girl whose acquaintance she had made in San Francisco travelled to New York to hear the prima donna sing in " Lucia ■ di Lammerrr.oor." ' She. was taken ill in the great city, and was told by the doctor that if she went to the opera she went in peril of her life. During one of her daily drives, taken by the doctor's orders, the young invalid stopned at the singer's residence in West End avenue and told Tetrazzini the story of. her disappointment. "You mustn't worry," said Tetrazzini, " and perhaps in a day or two you .vill be well 3nough to come to hear me sing." But the singer was too much of an optimist. Next day the girl was too ill even to take her drive. She rang up Tetrazzini on the telephone and poured her tale of woe into the singer's ears. "Well, my dear," answered Tetrazzini, "if you can't come to hear me at the opera you shall hear me sing now. 1 nave an accompanist with me, and if you listen I will sing the Mad Scene from 'Lucia' for you." The girl was delighted. So was the telephone operator who happened to have heard the latter part of the conversation. She notified all the exchanges that were not engaged, and in a few seconds the prima donna, had an unseen audience ot some hundred or more appreciative telephone operators waiting at telephones all over the town to hear the difficult music sung by its greatest living- exponent. It was 20 minutes before the excerpt was finished, and during that time there were more wires "engaged" than ever remembered in the history- of the New York telephone. When the last note died away Tetrazzini took up the receiver and was astounded to hear a chorus of " Brava!" "Bis!" "Encore!" and other expressions of appreciation come over the wire. Tho invalid was too grateful for spoken thanks, but the singer treasures a letter.