MU S IC.
THE RUSSIAN INVASION.
MEL NEWMARCH, who has already laboured with admirable results as an interpreter of Russian culture, has happily timed the issue of her new volume.* Books about music, no matter how well written, hall a limited public, but at a moment when we are all talking about the Russian Opera, whether we have been to see it or not, it is a great help to have the assistance of so well informed and illuminating an account of the origins and development of this immensely interesting product. The conversational advantages, to put it no higher, of a careful study of Mrs. Newmarch's volume are incontest- able. Anyone with a good memory can learn not only the plots of the principal operas from Glinka onwards, but, what is much more important, the outstanding facts of the great Shaliapin'a meteoric career. He can discourse learnedly on the Skomorokhi, and make discreet play with a varied assortment of magnificently barbaric) names such as Gorbounov and Kalinnikov, Yagjinsky and Yastrebsiev, Blaramberg and Splavsky, Sollogoub and Kapnist and Bortniansky. He will be able to solve the curious problem which was recently posed by an Irish humorist when he observed that "the strange thing about Russian operas is that they are always written by some one else," and he will not fail to dwell on the equally curious dualism of the Russian composers, who nearly always began life in some other calling, whether as Cruardamen or -naval officers, -Professors of Chemistry or Government Officials, and sometimes combined the two functions to the end. No one with social expirations or a pretence to culture can really afford to dispense with this information, for Russian opera is perhaps the only topio of the hour on which educated people can meet on a common ground of admiration. Ulster, the suffrage, Lloyd-Georgian finance, Mr. Winston Churchill, are all dangerous subjects which divide house against house and estrange lifelong. friends. Even golf has begun to develop fissiparous ten- dencies.
Readers of Mrs. Newmarch's volume who approach the subject from a more disinterested standpoint will find it rich in curious and suggestive information. The paral- lelism between Russia end IlIngland is close :enough in certain respects. As with us, foreign, and eepeoially
influences were for long predominant, even surviving the success of Glilika and lasting on into the "sixties." But, as might be expected ander an autocratic rule, the Court -imposed -its tastes more directly. 'We have no analogue to the Empress-librettist who was quite a common figure in the eighteenth century. And in the evolution of British music there is nothing quite like the emergence of the group of nationalist composers who were inspired by the example of Glinka and Dargomijaky, but owed even more to the personal magnetism of Balakirev, the uncompromising apostle of racialism. How the disciples of Balakirev gradually drifted away from him, and the group re- formed itself on a larger scale and with looser adhesions, with the publisher-Maecenas Belaiev as its centre, is one of the most in. tot-eating episodes in the annals of modern art. Another unique feature about the growth of Russian opera is the paramount influence of the amateur. The men who have counted, with hardly an exception, devoted themselves to art without any thought or hope of pecuniary reward, and in most cases were obliged to rely on some other calling for their livelihood. Russian opera at the outset was dominated by " alienotnania," and when nationalism began to assert itself, it was in a spirit so jealous of foreign interference as to divide the musical world into two camps, Rubinstein and, to a lesser extent, Tchaikovsky ranging themselves against the disciples of Balakirev. Yet, though Tchaikovsky more than any other Russian composer enhanced the prestige of Russia beyond her borders, the influence exerted by the nationalist group has been deeper in the long run. By a strange freak of destiny, in reacting against the foreigner they have not alienated, they have positively subjugated him. It is the old case of Graecia capta ferunt rictorem, cepit, only that there is much more ferocitas in the music of the Slav than in that of the Teuton.
• Th.t.3$1014641t 04781:11, l3,r Ron Nr•Travgl!. London I Herbert The wheelies come full circle, and what makes the conquest of the foreign world MOre curious is that it has been chiefly effected by an inatruffient Which enlightened musicians bad come to regard as practically obsolete—the ballet—but which, as revived and developed by the Russians, has proved the most concentrated synthesis of the arts yet attained on the modern atage. Within the last year we have seen Debussy and Ravel, tWO At the most advanced French composers, co-operating with the Phighilev.Bakst-Fokine troupe, and now the redoubtable Etransa bps followed snit in the Legend of Joseph, recently produced in Paris and performed for the first time in London on Tuesday. The occasion was worthy of Carlyle, whose RwRiorable denunciation of the futilities and extravagances of the old Italian ballet might, with little change, have been applied to this amazing "explosion of all the upholsteries " " Such talent and such martyrdom of training, gathered from the four ',dads, was pow hero to do its feat and to be paid for it— regardless of expense indeed. . . . Alas 1 and of all these notable Or noticeable human talents, and excellent perseverances and energies, baCked by mountains of wealth, and led by the divine wet of mimic and rhythm, vouchsafed by Heaven to them and us, what was to be the issue here this evening P An hour's amuse- ment, not amusing either, but wearisome and dreary, to a high- dizened select populace of male and female persons, who seemed to Me not Werth amusing.* tie deacription is inadequate and unfair when applied to fhie 'opening and closing stages of the entertainment.-the tale of the Georgian Vampire Princess, Thinner, in which the epirit of barbaric paganism finds unbridled expression, to the nnerring accompaniment of Balakirenes sombre music; -or be exquisite fantasy of -the Papillone, which had a quite isiagical effect in depotipharizing the atmosphere. But on Vie contribution of Strang; and his librettistewhioh hutted Inst an hour--,Carlyle's tirade forms an admirable comment, lie result of this strange alliance is, if not Strauss's Waterloo, something perilously near it, But this is not the fault of the Russians; it is simply the inevitable consequence of the clashing of metiods, and of Strauss's attempt to read all Use "ologjes " into pantomime, as he has previously attempted to read them into symplionie muai, Not Mite* with 'tatting the legend Of Joseph in a Venetian frame with "an oppressive cpylence, accentuated by the sumptuous decoration carried ont 'in the manner of Veronese,' with its wealth of gold and brecade," he has sanctioned the issue by hie librettists of an ifficiaihreatrie whiph, with the profuse aid of capital letters and in language -steeped in maudlin transcendentalism, epleayours to idealize and disinfect the sophidicated animalism of the plot. The score is the feeblest that Strauss has yet given ris, being for the most part a rehash of delouse and Eisktra, with occaaional explosions of diatonic platitude, which ip any other composer. would be palled downright vulgar. lu one respect, however, Strauss deserves credit for consis- tency. He has sedulously excluded all Orientalisui from hie, Room, which is frankly modern, if we except one brief move- ment in the manner of Handel There is, of course, the venal complexity and intricacy of orchestration, the daring discords and abuse of the instruments of percussion. But never have his thick-and-thin admirers been more apologetic in their comments. Yet, if we were to judge from the attitude of the audience, "Joseph in Venice" was a veritable triumph. The house was crammed and the ;lplause stentorian. Of coarse allowance must be made for e prestige and presence of Strauss, and the prodigious talent of the Russian ;lancers, who did their best for ttie worst, the most sophisticated, and the most decadent of all the ballets in which they have appeared. There is ranch that is repellent, and even horrible, in such pieces as grhe4erasrede and Thamar. But at least there is no nauseating. attempt to represent these stories in any other than their true light; no psendomhilosophical pamphleteering as to the high and holy motives which underlie the action. Yet all alike are ;wallowed with impartial and uncritical enthusiasm by the London opera-going public—happily a small section of the nmaic-loving world. We owe the Russian ballet a great debt for introducing ma to a new world—romantic, barbaric, exquisitely fantastic—but we have done nothing to keep them on the rails, or to exhibit disapproval of their extravagances. It will be curious to see what effect Anseries, will have on these amazing artists and their directors, for so far they have never crossed the Atlantic, • For our we have a horrible um- giving that Strauss, at the inetigstion, of his evil literary genius, Hofmannsthal, may seise the occasion to compose a Legend of Judas Iscariot in Chicago, or a &miller; and Sapphira in San Francisco. Meanwhile the Univereity of Oxford, on the morrow of the production of Joseph, Imo con- ferred on the composer the honorary degree of Doctor Of
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