MU SIC.

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THE ROMANTIC PERIOD.§

IT was a singularly happy choice which assigned the last, and necessarily the most controversial, volume of The Oxford History of Music to the late Mr. Dannreuther. Unhappily he did not live to finish the revision of his manuscript, or to remedy or explain the one remarkable lacuna which robs his

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§ The Oxford History of Music. Vol. VI. "The Romantic Period." BY Edward Dannreuther. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press. [15s. net.]

the romantic element was a constantly increasing factor, abstained from such cast-iron verdicts as that of Rubinstein, characterises as one of the rarest of inventors both as regards the who brilliantly, but inaccurately, described Mendelssohn's technicalities of pianoforte-playing as well as composition :—

music as " the swan-song of Classicism." Such an estimate is " As a composer of pianoforte music Schumann had but one partial and misleading. All the really great masters have superior among his contemporaries—Chopin, pre-eminently the been in a measure romantics. Bach's music is charged with instinct realized the impossible and hardly seemed conscious of

emotion and colour, and on occasions rivals the most the fact. There is in his best work a breath and glow as of the advanced achievements of impressionism and illustration, south wind. His fervour of spirit, the fire and force of his fancy,

Of the essentially romantic quality of Beethoven's music, again, it is wholly unnecessary to speak ; while to come down to part, appears over-refined, hectic, and morbid ; a small part Mendelssohn, Mr. Dannreuther takes, in his chapter on over- belongs to the Parisian salon; most is poetical work of a high tures and symphonies, the famous Hebrides Overture as his order, perfect, not only in fragments and sporadically, but in

very first example of the way in which "romantic effects in entire pieces and entire groups of pieces. The music rings true.

instrumental music arose from the desire to reproduce delicacy of his nature kept him within the limits of courtesy and

impressions derived directly from natural phenomena," prompted him to shun the more violent accents of passion ; his and lavishes unstinted praise on the exquisite beauty of this canon of taste was the result of his temperament. He shrank work, as well as on the genius for romantic illustration dis- from the robust, open-air power of Beethoven and was now and

played in the Midsummer Night's Dream music. But while ness. The most artistic of romanticists, ho never forgot or over-

Mr. Dannreuther thus avoids the pitfalls of hasty generalisa- stepped the limits of the art. He avoided everything that might tion and over-rigid classification, he justifies the scheme and seem pedantic, dogmatic, or theoretical. He had nothing to

title of his work by insisting on certain broad distinctions preach or teach, unless it be his own incommunicable gift of which characterise the evolution of music in the nineteenth went out His skill in the use of the sieve for noble words'

century as compared with its general progress before the enriched his work and saved it from extravagance."

advent of Weber. The late Sir George Grove was very We may further note in evidence of the broad catholicity of fond of dwelling on Weber as representing a new type of appreciation which marks a writer who certainly could not be

musician in whom special gifts were reinforced by all-round accused of any bias towards clericalism, Mr. Dannreuther's culture. That view is borne out in the volume before us, generous recognition of the genius of the "twin masters of which traces the growth, and enlarges on the significance, English church and organ music," Samuel and Samuel Sebastian of that nineteenth-century movement which was specially Wesley. Indeed, it is this wide range of sympathy which renders influenced by literary ideals, the one great gap in his book—the omission of any detailed Mr. Dannreuther notices in his introduction that music examination of the works of Brahms—all the more hies- -as was natural in the youngest of arts—has always been plicable. That it was due to lack of appreciation is con- somewhat late in manifesting the influence upon it of elusively negatived by incidental references, which make it other departments of artistic endeavour, but that as time abundantly clear that while he ranked Brahma as a song-writer goes on, and new processes are discovered, the intervals above Franz, and in the same class as Schubert and Schumann, become shorter. He notes, also, that while German music as a symphonist he regarded him as the lineal descendant of followed the traces of German literature at an interval Beethoven. The theory that he may have refused to regard of a generation or so, in France literary romanticism him as a Romantic is also rendered untenable by a notable produced a more immediate result, and music and allusion to Brahma's wonderful capacity of reinforcing the literature came to be very nearly contemporaneous. There romantic content of words by his musical treatment. We can was, however, this cardinal difference, that in France, as only conjecture, therefore, that the omission may have been compared with Germany, the powerful romantic movement in due to some curious oversight, or to some modification of the literature was less in accord with the national taste in music. scope of the volume which, but for the author's last illness, "A leaning towards romanticism in music was mainly would have led him to make good a regrettable defect.

confined to those members of literary and artistic coteries, One may note by way of postscript that whereas in the amateurs for the most part, who felt the influence of Byron, eighteenth century composers were often largely influenced in Scott, Moore or Goethe, and to some extent of Beethoven. their compositions by the fact that they were writing for Parisian musical romanticism was but a reflex of the ferment particular singers, in the period under review composers in French literature," and the immediate musical sequel to the emancipated themselves almost entirely from this influence, romantic movement in literature was restricted to about a though, on the other hand, they were largely indebted to the dozen works, amongst which Auber's Masaniello, Rossini's great instrumental virtuosi, whose mastery of transcendental William Tell, and the symphonies and overtures of Berlioz technique reacted on and influenced the character and were the most noteworthy. But in France, as elsewhere, the ornamentation of their compositions. Few singers in the last survey of completeness. Still, as Mr. W. H. Hadow tells us in impulse was derived largely from a literary source, while its a prefatorial note, " the volume as it stands embodies the results significance is well summarised asan of his research and the verdicts of his critical judgment," "unconscious tendency towards the relaxation of the laws of and no more conclusive evidence of his erudition or his structure in favour of characteristic details, an almost total rejec-

tion of organic design on self-contained lines, and, step by step,

mpartiality could be desired than this admirably written and an approach to a sketchy sort of impressionism and a kind of engrossing volume. Mr. Dannreuther's qualifications for the scene-painting—a huge piling up of means for purpose of ills- task were perhaps unique amongst modern writers on music, tration. No doubt it was guilty of many excesses. It was often because, while he had been an intimate friend and champion crude, often extravagant ; sometimes apparently inspired by mere defiance and bravado. But when all this has been said, it remains of the most commanding figure of the Romantic school, he true that the net gain, the widening both of the range of know- combined this attachment with profound admiration for the ledge and of the scope of emotion, which has resulted from the great classical masters, and a really extraordinary capacity of movement, is a possession the value of which cannot be over- appreciating anything that was good of its kind. In plain rated." English, he was a very wise and faithful, as well as a very Hence one need not be surprised to find that in the course of kindly, critic, as becomes agreeably clear if we test his survey Mr. Dannreuther assigns especial prominence to his quality by his estimates of those composers with whom those innovators and experimenters who sought to enlarge the a priori he might have been supposed to be least in sympathy. borders of their art, whether by choice of subject, novelty of Nothing could be handsomer, for example, than his tributes to treatment, or development of technique. This accounts for the fascination of Bizet, of whose Carmen he observes that and justifies the allotting of so much space to Berlioz and " every note sung by the chief personages seems to belong to Liszt, though it is only right to add that Mr. Dannrepther them by natural right" ; to the melody and satirical invention never fails to discriminate between the value and fruitfulneal of Offenbach; to the all-round accomplishment of Sullivan ; of such pioneer work—considered merely as opening new to the romantic spirit of Auber's and Rossini's best work. paths, expanding the horizon, and multiplying the means of Interpreting the term ";romantic " as applied to music in the musical expression—and its intrinsic beauty and vitality. broadest sense, as implying poetical suggestion by musical But while his attitude is in the main eminently judicial, he means, Mr. Dannreuther indulges in no hard-and-fast dis- occasionally illustrates the converse of the maxim that it is tinctions. He saw musical progress steadily and saw it the mark of mediocrity to praise with moderation ; and as an whole, and while realising that in the period under discussion example of his mastery of the difficult art of panegyric we

may quote his eloquent tribute to Chopin, whom he elsewhere poet of the piano, the genius of the instrument, who by divine his pathos, and, in his lighter moods, his ease, grace, and con-

summate taste, are unique. Some part of his work, not a large

Chopin does not pose for pathos and emphasis. The sensitive then inclined to emphasize those elements that make for sensuous- beauty. The fire of his genius increased in intensity as time hundred years have exercised any direct or stimulating influence on composers. On the other hand, Malibran is immortalised in the verse of De Russet, and Pauline Viardot- Garcia in the pages of Heine and George Sand. Singers of such supreme distinction and intellectuality are rare in any age, but, happily, we have one still with us in Mlle. Camilla Landi, whose interpretation of Kontchakovna's cavatina from Borodine's Prince Igor at the Queen's Hall last Saturday enabled her hearers to realise the delicacy and charm of what Mr. Dannreuther calls "the most exquisite sample of the exotic element in artistic music which has been seen since Chopin's Mazurka, Op. 17, No. 4, and the Trio of his C minor Polonaise." C. L. G.