MUSIC.
THE VOICES OF THE ORCHESTRA.
MANY of our readers are probably familiar with the historic passage in Schumann's letters in which, writing on Decem- ber 11th, 1839, he describes his impressions on hearing Schubert's 0 Major Symphony for the first time. One phrase, that in which he speaks of its "heavenly length"—himmlische Lange—has become proverbial; but even happier, as a piece of characterisation. is the remark that the instruments seem all to be endowed with human voices. But although they perhaps sound more human in the symphonies of Schubert than in the works of any other composer—his horns, wood- wind, and trombones do not merely talk, but converse—the instruments of the modern orchestra always exhibit an affinity with various types of humanity,—of both sexes and widely differing temperaments. The violin is commonly called the king of instruments, and the title may be admitted as indicating its supremacy. But viewed as a voice, the violin is the prima donna of the orchestra. To it are assigned all the beaux r6les.—the most brilliant roulades. cadenzas, and embellishments, the most perilous ascents into aerial altitudes. And the voice of the violin—which has in- geniously been declared to bear much the same relation to the passionless tones of the flute as the voice of a woman to that of a boy—varies in its intellectual and emotional content, according to the skill of the player and the demands of the composer, as much as a Viardot differs from a Melba. It soars to angelic, to superhuman heights in, say, the Prelude to Lohengrin, and yet all the time contains in itself possi- bilities of feline or wolfish ululation. Triste lupus—fidibus : every fiddle is said to have a wolf. just as the "goose" exists in every clarinet—in France, however, they talk of the couac of the clarinettes canardes—wbile Berlioz describes how, when he had a separate rehearsal for thirty-six double-basses, preparatory to a performance of the C Minor Symphony at the Industrial Exhibition of 1844, when they came to the Scherzo it was " like the grunting of about fifty ferocious wild boars." But it is only in its weaker and unworthier moments that the infra-human character of the orchestra betrays itself. Its natural history is accidental, not essential. Descending from the violin to the viola, we cannot but be struck by the unassertive- ness of this most beautiful instrument. One hardly ever meets a viola player who adopts the career of the virtuoso,—perhaps becaUse with the exception of Berlioz's Harold there is no orchestral work of first-rate importance in which the central role is assigned to that instrument. Indifferently described as the alto or tenor, its unobtrusive efficiency certainly presents little affinity with the traits associated with the latter voice, The 'cello, however, is the singer par excellence of the orchestra; the perfect representative of the cantabile style. What lessons in phrasing may not vocalists derive from such players as Signor Piatti—now, alas! withdrawn from the plat- form he adorned so long—M. Gerardy, Herr Hugo Becker, or Mr. W. H. Squire ! Almost the only fault that one has to find with the most accomplished 'cellists is their comparative neglect of the lowest register of the instrument and their efforts, in their show-pieces. to emulate the qualities of the violin Thus one of the greatest living performers on this instrument is said to amuse himself at home by playing Paganini's violin concertos on the 'cello. So Bottesini, the famous flouble-bass player, was habitually wont to mimic the fiddle on his instrument, which, by the way, was not a true double- bass, but about half-way in size between it and the 'cello. The real beauty as well as the utility of the double-bass, the basso profondo of the string band, is often overlooked. How splendidly rich and full is its pizzicato, often undistinguish- able from a drum tap 1 And bow much of the sombreness
and picturesque savagery of the modern Russian masks depends on the use of the basses !
The flute, the leader of the woodwind quartet, may fairly be described as the "royal and ancient" instrument. On one of the tombs in the pyramids of Gizeh—dating back to 2,000 B.C., or earlier—there is a representation of a band of eight flutes. Rossini's historic reply to the query, What is worse than a flute solo ? naturally recurs to the mind in this connection. But the gibe is most unjust, as those who listened to the lovely duet for two flutes in the Danse des Mirlitons in Tschaikowsky's Casse-noisette suite on Wednesday at the Queen's Hall will readily admit. Besides, the flee is the only instrument on which a really great Sovereign and commander attained proficiency. More- over, Frederick the Great not only played the flute, but composed for it, and composed uncommonly well. Gluck wrote the most angelic music for it in his Orpheus; Schumann speaks of its "ethereal tones." But in this country, until quite recently, flute-playing was regarded as the recreation of incompetent amateurs and pale young curates. It is true that you cannot breathe passion into the flute, that it has no Sehnsucht in its accents, that its grada- tions of colour are limited. But what charm, elegance, and freshness a fine flautist of the French school has at his com- mand! Fifty years ago Berlioz —an impartial and supremely competent judge—declared that nowhere was the flute played as at Paris. and the statement may be endorsed to-day, when the conductor of the orchestra at the Opera is none other than the greatest living flautist, M. Taffanel. The element of poignancy, entirely absent from the placid tones of the flute, is more acutely present in the accents of the oboe than in those of any other instrument. It is above all others the voice of complaint. Again, there is perhaps no wind instru- ment in regard to which the difference between amateurs and professionals is more strongly marked—the tone emitted by the former being invariably me an, wizened, and shrill—, or, indeed, between the professionals themselves, for, to take concrete examples, what could be more utterly unlike than the tones emitted by Mr. Malsch and by Mr. Lalande,—both admirable artists, the one excelling in classical purity of phrasing, the other in romantic fervour of expression? The timbre of the oboe depends, of course, a good deal on the nature of the reed employed. But more depends on the temperament of the player. A fine artist so far neutralises the mechanical limitations common to all keyed instruments as to convey the impression that his instrument is part of himself. Mr. Lalande, for example, recalls to ns the grotesque image applied to the famous clarinet player, Herr Miiblfeld, that he resembled an elephant playing on its trunk. Of the cor anglais, or tenor oboe, it is enough to say that it achieves what is denied to the human voice in singing or speaking.— it lends a romantic charm to a distinctly nasal tone. As the oboe is the voice of unrest, of complaint, of discontent, the clarinet shares with the horn and the 'cello the role of conso- lation and persuasion. Far more human than the flute, it has at command serener accents than those of the oboe: while less poignant, it is more tender in expression, though capable of uttering a veritable cri de cceur,—witness the famous clarinet quintet of Brahma (Op. 115). Furthermore, on the corruptio optimi pessima principle, the clarinet, as we
have already seen, can exchange its dovelike notes for the " quack " of the goose. In his realistic efforts to portray the unearthly notes of the obscenw volucres in Faust's ride to the abyss, it is on the weird yelping tones of the clarinet that Berlioz chiefly relies, just as Richard Strauss assigns to it the bizarre theme expressive of the hero in his "Till Eulen- spiegel." Of the bass clarinet with its awe-inspiring yet enchanting tones, as of the cor anglais, one can never think without recalling certain strains from Tristan and Only partially musical people regard the bassoon solely as " the humourist of the orchestra," much as the trombone is with equal injustice regarded as a musical buffoon. It is simply because in either case the step from the sublime to the ridiculous is easier than in that of other instruments.
The bassoon can be legitimately humorous, but, like many humourists, before and after Grimaldi, is possessed by a spirit of melancholy, a fact of which Beethoven took
deliberate heed in assigning some of his most pathetic melodies to its hoarse but strangely affecting tones. The bassoon, it may be added, is the only modern orchestral instrument (using the adjective in its technical sense) men- tioned in a standard quotation, and it is obvious that Coleridge took the conventional view of the bassoon as a minister of mirth. Passing "out of the wood" into the brass, we encounter in the trumpet a voice pre-eminently fitted by its fierce clangour- " sere ciere viros Martemque accendere cantu," and therefore much in evidence at the present moment. Un- fortunately in too many orchestras this noble instrument— noblest of all in the slide pattern, but still noble in the form known as the valve, or, as Berlioz calls it, the cylinder or chromatic trumpet—has been superseded by the cornet-a- pistons, whose " incredible popularity " roused Berlioz's wrath nearly sixty years ago. For the cornet is an incurably vulgar creature, and we have the fullest sympathy for the inwardness of that laconic epitaph—a masterpiece of the art of omission —alleged to have been engraved on the tomb of an Irish- man :—
" Patrick O'Rafferty, His neighbour played the cornet."
The cornet is only endurable in a tutti. Its notion of expres- sion is mere bleating sentimentality.
Whether because of its association with the chase of the deer, or because one of its forms is known as the Waldhorn, or because of some subtle intrinsic affinity, the horn always suggests the serene beauty of the woodland. And yet this idyllic, amiable instrument, by the simple process of muting, can be made to speak with the most malign and sinister accents. Hence the extraordinarily effective use which Wagner has made of the muted horn as the harbinger of ill. Lastly, the horn has a special personal interest because it was as a player on that beautiful instrument in the orchestra of the Karnthnerthor Theatre that Hans Richter entered on his musical career. He played the trumpet at the historical first performance of the "Siegfried Idyll," in December, 1870, and, if he cannot play every other instrument in the orchestra, as is often averred, at any rate he not only knows how they ought to be played. but exactly what can and what cannot be done on each instrument. The trombone is specially interesting as it is practically the only wind instrument now left in its natural condition, and not furnished with simplifying mechanism. To this immunity it probably owes the unimpaired splendour of the tones which commended it so peculiarly to Gluck, to Mozart, and to Schubert. Mendelesohn's remark as to the reverence with which its solemn tones should be employed is justly admired, and on another occasion he admitted it, by implication along with other wind instruments, into heaven, on condition that they never got behind the beat. The bass tuba, which serves as double-bass to the brass group, is so habitually alluded to as the tuba tout court that its nomen- clature is rather unfortunate. For this is not the tuba 'ninon spargens sonum Per sepulcra regionum, or the instru- ment which Ennius immortalised in the unforgettable line-
" At tuba terribili sonitu taratantara dixit."
It is a big brass instrument, derived from the bombardon, resembling it in appearance, and furnished with a mechanism of valves which gives it an extensive compass in the bass.
The drum and the harp complete the regular forces of the orchestra. The latter is at once the largest, the most pictu- resque, and—for its size—the weakest instrument in the orchestra, though perfectly invaluable for creating an atmo- sphere and, in its delicate harmonics, for simulating the faint notes of elflaud. The drum, one of the most inflammatory of instruments, was emancipated from its purely subordinate posi- tion by Beethoven—who, by the way, always mentally heard his melodies in the tones of some particular instrument and not of the human voice—and raised to the rank of a soloist. Berlioz has not only left on record his written appreciation of the gorgeous efforts it produces, but scored his works lavishly and elaborately for the instrument which more than any other links primitive with modern musical culture. Tausch, who
succeeded Schumann as Kupellmeister at Diisseidorf, wrote a concerto for five kettledrums, which was performed several years ago in London by an accomplished amateur, but the achievement belonged to the domain of gymnastic (in the modern sense) rather than of music, and to this day we can recall the maze of drumsticks and flying coat-tails presented by the acrobatic performer. To judge from their passion for the instruments of percussion, we should not be surprised if one of the young Russian school were to give us a concerto
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