THE LYRICAL DRAMA.* WHEN we recollect how thoroughly the importance
of music as a social influence is recognised, we are struck by the inadequacy
• The Lyrical Drama. By H. Sutherland Eduardo. London : W. H. ALen and Co.
of the literary treatment it has received. Hitherto, with rare exceptions, it has been written of by people who were appar- ently ignorant that any literary skill was needful for writers on musical matters. And, moreover, these writers have always addressed those who were already acquainted with music. They have never attempted to attract the unmusical, or amateurs of modest pretensions. If we disregard mere handbooks, we find that books on music will fall into either the technical, the xsthetic, or the chronological class. The first division is distinguished by its wealth of technical terms, its exhaustive examination of the mathematical and scientific problems involved in music, and by its diagrams of vertical sections of the human throat and chest, with letters of the alphabet and musical notes imprisoned at different points. The msthetic style is largely concerned with the music of the Greeks, Miriam, and a kind of transcendental wstheticism, appropriately unintelligible. The chronological class is almost wholly made up of original casts, appearances from first to last of celebrated prime donne and lemon, and an exuberance of dates. This is not the kind of writing likely to convert un- musical people. Of course, a knowledge of the scientific basis of music is desirable in every student, but there are enough, and more than enough, of works in this department, for the limited number of readers. To attract outsiders and to popularise music, it should be treated with full knowledge, and with a degree of literary skill sufficient to make the perusal pleasurable, even to a person quite ignorant of music. These conditions are more than fulfilled in these essays on the lyrical drama. Mr. Sutherland Edwards' knowledge of his subject is wide and minute. His method is natural and attractive, and his style easy and amusing. No one, whether interested in the subject or not, can fail to be charmed by Mr. Edwards' wit and narrative power.
The first volume is devoted to an examination of operatic plots. As a matter of common knowledge, there is no subject on which there are more hazy opinions. People who have frequented the opera for years, really for the sake of the music alone, are calmly indifferent to the plots, and usually attribute them to history or fairy-stories, "or something of that kind, you know." But if an opera is anything more than a Floral-Hall concert, this is, at least, an unsatisfactory attitude. If the whole raison, d'etre of the acting, singing, and orchestration is the human interest which underlies all, surely it is necessary, if we wish to grasp the full significance and artistic import of the opera, to know what story is being worked out, and of what passions the characters are the exponents. This necessity is admirably met by Mr. Edwards, in his investigation into the origin and sources of the plots of Don Juan, Faust, and Robert le Diable. The Faust legend has been so often written on, that we shall not again refer to it. The story of Robert is Diable is inferior to that of Don Juan, so we will take the latter as a specimen of Mr. Edwards' treatment.
Mr. Edwards rightly assumes that the differentia of the Don Juan legend is not the wickedness of its hero, which unfortu- nately is merely a matter of degree, but the part played by the statue of the Commander. By the instances of the Corinthian General in one of Lucian's Dialogues and of St. George of Scyros, each of which statues was endowed with animation, he esta- blishes an origin for the proceedings of the Commander. These are reinforced by the quotation from Legrand d'Aussy's Coutes D4vots, where a statue of the Virgin bowed its head in reply to the prayer of a disconsolate lover, and by the conduct of another statue of the Virgin, which by bending its finger retained a wed- ding ring which a young man had placed there, irreverently saying, "Woman, I take you for my wife." Next we come to the Chroni- cle of Andalusia, which states that the legend of the statue was invented by the Franciscan Brothers of Seville, to account for the disappearance of Do a Juan Tenorio, whom they had put to death, for having killed the venerable Commander Moa, whose daughter he had carried off. Don Juan was said to have in-
sulted the statue of the Commander, which suddenly became animated, and "precipitated the impious man into the flames
of hell." This story is obviously weak, but in those days people were not exacting about evidence. At the next stage, we find that these loose fragments of story, legend, or tradition have been crystallised into permanent shape. A friar named Gabriel Tellez, who wrote under the pseudonym of "Tirso de Molina," produced in 1622 a drama entitled El Burlador de Sevilla y Combidado de Piedra, which is the source of the different operatic versions of Don luau. Molina's title proved to be a trap for his translators. In French it became "Le Festin de Pierre," which Mr. Cowden Clarke rendered "The Feast with Don Pedro." The Spanish simply means, "The Scoff'. of Seville and the Guest of Stone." Mr. Edwards trades Don Juan to De Musset and Poushkin, and we cannot do a kinder thing than to advise our readers to follow the course of Mr. Edwards' lively narrative.
Many musical readers will find the pages which treat of Meyerbeer, Wagner, and Rossini the most interesting part of
the book. Mr. Edwards refers to such ancient quarrels of cou- noisseurs as those of the Maratistes and Todistes, but he does not explicitly mention the present contention between Wagnerites and Melodists. Perhaps it was more in accordance with the tone of his book to avoid direct discussion ; still, any one can see on which side are the sympathies of Mr. Edwards. He does full justice to the services rendered to opera by Herr Wagner. It would be use- less to deny that the tendency of opera is to become more and more artificial, lifeless, and conventional. Until Herr Wagner's influence was felt, the motive of all operas was nearly identical. Heroes and heroines got into prison, and went mad, and died, with meaningless regularity. When Wagner maintained that every opera should be an artistic whole, with an intelligible story, to be worked out in the playing, he made no new dis- covery, though he called attention to a forgotten principle of the lyrical stage. Mr. Edwards, on the other hand, points out Wagner's similarity in melody to Weber, his excessive fond- ness for marches, and his multiplication of the device of leading motives.' This last appears likely to become too severe a test of memory for ordinary audiences. Some day, visitors will be provided with printed versions of the leading motives, just as now-a-days we have programmes and books of the words. The melodic failings of the Wagner school are, of course, commented on ; and a propos of Ortrud and Frederic, Mr. Edwards pointedly asks whether it is absolutely necessary for bad characters to sing bad music. "Probably not," says Mr. Edwards, and we agree with him. The contro- versy is too complicated for us to discuss here. We shall content ourselves with drawing attention to a cause of the dispute which has not been sufficiently noticed. This is the racial antipathy which underlies it. Speaking broadly, French and Italians are opposed to Germans. In composite England it becomes an individual matter, an affair of inherited temperament. It would be almost allowable to say that the preponderance of the Teutonic or the Celtic blood in an English- man is shown by his musical tastes.
The exposition of the works of the Italian school is, as might be expected, sympathetic and intelligent. Mr. Edwards' bias, if he has a bias, is clearly towards this school of composers, but it does not prevent him from seeing and acknowledging its faults, Its tenuity, monotony, and want of meaning arc painfully evident in its inferior exponents. While he rightly marks the, place of Donizetti and Bellini, Mr. Edwards properly maintains that Rossini at his best will compare with any operatic composer. His Guillaume Tell and Oldie are sufficient to convince any competent and impartial judge that Rossini was not a mere writer of catchy melodies, but a master in the art of composi: , dramatic lyrical music. It has been jocularly said that it was intended to establish a despotism of chamber music, tempered by Wagner. We have heard Mozart called " tuny," and Mr. Edwards speak of the unwilling deference paid to Fidelio by those admirers of Beethoven who could have ad- vised him for his good. This kind of talk seems to 1113 very silly. To begin with, there is no art so simple that any one theory can be said to exhaust it, least of all is this the case with music. In advocating the exclusive cultivation of extremely complex forms, people forget that the quality by which music first attracted mankind was melody. And by melody it retains its hold on men. It is a narrow and unphilo- sophic rule which proscribes the most universal form of any art. Symphonies and quartets may be the culmi- nation of musical art, but we should no more sacrifice opera for them than we should decline to read Shakespeare and Chaucer because we have Emerson and Ruskin on our shelves. It is in view of the growing arrogance of certain cliques of amateurs, and of the danger of anything like narrowness in matters of art, that we feel compelled to make this protest.
We had marked for discussion several other passages in Mr. Edwards' suggestive volumes. We must restrict our- selves to a brief enumeration of these points. As to opera
itself. Mr. Edwards' position on this question is bold and accurate. He pertinently asserts that all arts have their conventions, and that as these conventions are the con- ditions sine gad non of opera, it is blind illogicality which refuses to grant them. The pre-eminence of prime donne, a custom which seems likely to rob opera of its artistic significance, is too serious a topic to deal with at the end of an article. The decline of tenori and contralti and of the ballet is mentioned, but, with the exception of the last, too slightly treated. The chapter on the ballet will come like a surprise to young readers. The "Pas de Quatre " which killed Mr. Lumley's goose with the golden eggs, was a terrible instance of the folly of being too clever. A not particularly relevant chapter on bookmaking concludes this work. Mr. Edwards does not quote an instance of inaccurate indexing rather appropriate to his subject; we mean the arrangement which included Mr. Gosse's poems called "On Lute and Viol." among musical instruments.
Previous page
