Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

Music and Bad Manners

_By THE SAME AUTHOR_

MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR

Music
and Bad Manners

_Carl Van Vechten_

New York Alfred A. Knopf
MCMXVI

COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF

_All rights reserved_

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

_To my Father_

Contents

PAGE

MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS 11

MUSIC FOR THE MOVIES 43

SPAIN AND MUSIC 57

SHALL WE REALIZE WAGNER’S IDEALS? 135

THE BRIDGE BURNERS 169

A NEW PRINCIPLE IN MUSIC 217

LEO ORNSTEIN 229

Music and Bad Manners

Music and Bad Manners

Singers, musicians of all kinds, are notoriously bad mannered. The storms of the Titan, Beethoven, the petty malevolences of Richard Wagner, the weak sulkiness of Chopin (“Chopin in displeasure was appalling,” writes George Sand, “and as with me he always controlled himself it was as if he might die of suffocation”) have all been recalled in their proper places in biographies and in fiction; but no attempt has been made heretofore, so far as I am aware, to lump similar anecdotes together under the somewhat castigating title I have chosen to head this article. Nor is it alone the performer who gives exhibitions of bad manners. (As a matter of fact, once an artist reaches the platform he is on his mettle, at his best. At home he--or she--may be ruthless in his passionate display of floods of “temperament.” I have seen a soprano throw a pork roast on the floor at dinner, the day before a performance of Wagner’s “consecrational festival play,” with the shrill explanation, “Pork before _Parsifal_!” On the street he may shatter the clouds with his lightnings--as, indeed, Beethoven is said to have done--but on the stage he becomes, as a rule, a superhuman being, an interpreter, a mere virtuoso. Of course, there are exceptions.) Audiences, as well, may be relied upon to behave badly on occasion. An auditor is not necessarily at his best in the concert hall. He may have had a bad dinner, or quarrelled with his wife before arriving. At any rate he has paid his money and it might be expected that he would make some demonstration of disapproval when he was displeased. The extraordinary thing is that he does not do so oftener. On the whole it must be admitted that audiences remain unduly calm at concerts, that they are unreasonably polite, indeed, to offensively inadequate or downright bad interpretations. I have sat through performances, for example, of the Russian Symphony Society in New York when I wondered how my fellow-sufferers could display such fortitude and patience. When _Prince Igor_ was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera House the ballet, danced in defiance of all laws of common sense or beauty, almost compelled me to throw the first stone. The parable saved me. Still one doesn’t need to be without sin to sling pebbles in an opera house. And it is a pleasure to remember that there have been occasions when audiences did speak up!

In those immeasurably sad pages in which Henry Fothergill Chorley describes the last London appearance of Giuditta Pasta, recalling Pauline Viardot’s beautiful remark (she, like Rachel, was hearing the great dramatic soprano for the first time), “It is like the _Cenacolo_ of Da Vinci at Milan--a wreck of a picture, but the picture is the greatest picture in the world!” this great chronicler of the glories of the opera stage recalls the attitude of the French actress: “There were artists present, who had then, for the first time, to derive some impression of a renowned artist--perhaps, with the natural feeling that her reputation had been exaggerated.--Among these was Rachel--whose bitter ridicule of the entire sad show made itself heard throughout the whole theatre, and drew attention to the place where she sat--one might even say, sarcastically enjoying the scene.”

Chorley’s description of an incident in the career of the dynamic Mme. Mara, a favourite in Berlin from 1771 to 1780, makes far pleasanter reading: “On leave of absence being denied to her when she wished to recruit her strength by a visit to the Bohemian _baden_, the songstress took the resolution of neglecting her professional duties, in the hope of being allowed to depart as worthless. The Czarovitch, Paul the First of Russia, happened about that time to pay a visit to Berlin; and she was announced to appear in one of the grand parts. She pretended illness. The King sent her word, in the morning of the day, that she was to get well and sing her best. She became, of course, worse--could not leave her bed. Two hours before the opera began, a carriage, escorted by eight soldiers, was at her door, and the captain of the company forced his way into her chamber, declaring that their orders were to bring her to the theatre, dead or alive. ‘You cannot; you see I am in bed.’ ‘That is of little consequence,’ said the obdurate machine; ‘we will take you, bed and all.’ There was nothing for it but to get up and go to the theatre; dress, and resolve to sing without the slightest taste or skill. And this Mara did. She kept her resolution for the whole of the first act, till a thought suddenly seized her that she might be punishing herself in giving the Grand-Duke of Russia a bad opinion of her powers. A _bravura_ came; and she burst forth with all her brilliancy, in particular distinguishing herself by a miraculous shake, which she sustained, and swelled, and diminished, with such wonderful art as to call down more applause than ever.” This was the same Mara who walked out of the orchestra at a performance of _The Messiah_ at Oxford rather than stand during the singing of the _Hallelujah Chorus_.

In that curious series of anecdotes which Berlioz collected under the title, “Les Grotesques de la Musique,” I discovered an account of a performance of a _Miserere_ of Mercadante at the church of San Pietro in Naples, in the presence of a cardinal and his suite. The cardinal several times expressed his pleasure, and the congregation at two points, the _Redde Mihi_ and the _Benigne fac, Domine_, broke in with applause and insisted upon repetitions! Berlioz also describes a rehearsal of Grétry’s _La Rosière de Salency_ at the Odéon, when that theatre was devoted to opera. The members of the orchestra were overcome with a sense of the ridiculous nature of the music they were performing and made strange sounds the while they played. The _chef d’orchestre_ attempted to keep his face straight, and Berlioz thought he was scandalized by the scene. A little later, however, he found himself laughing harder than anybody else. The memory of this occasion gave him the inspiration some time later of arranging a concert of works of this order (in which, he assured himself, the music of the masters abounded), without forewarning the public of his purpose. He prepared the programme, including therein this same overture of Grétry’s, then a celebrated English air _Arm, Ye Brave_, a “sonata _diabolique_” for the violin, the quartet from a French opera in which this passage occurred:

“J’aime assez les Hollandaises,
Les Persanes, les Anglaises,
Mais je préfère des Françaises
L’esprit, la grâce et la gaîté,”

an instrumental march, the finale of the first act of an opera, a fugue on _Kyrie Eleison_ from a Requiem Mass in which the music suggested anything but the words, variations for the bassoon on the melody of _Au Clair de la Lune_, and a symphony. Unfortunately for the trial of the experiment the rehearsal was never concluded. The executants got no further than the third number before they became positively hysterical. The public performance was never given, but Berlioz assures us that the average symphony concert audience would have taken the programme seriously and asked for more! It may be considered certain that in his choice of pieces Berlioz was making game of some of his contemporaries....

In all the literature on the subject of music there are no more delightful volumes to be met with than those of J. B. Weckerlin, called “Musiciana,” “Nouveau Musiciana,” and “Dernier Musiciana.” These books are made up of anecdotes, personal and otherwise. From Bourdelot’s “Histoire de la Musique” Weckerlin culled the following: “An equerry of Madame la Dauphine asked two of the court musicians to his home at Versailles for dinner one evening. They sang standing opposite the mantelpiece, over which hung a great mirror which was broken in six pieces by the force of tone; all the porcelain on the buffet resounded and shook.” Weckerlin also recalls a caprice of Louis XI, who one day commanded the Abbé de Baigne, who had already invented many musical instruments, to devise a harmony out of pigs. The Abbé asked for some money, which was grudgingly given, and constructed a pavilion covered with velvet, under which he placed a number of pigs. Before this pavilion he arranged a white table with a keyboard constructed in such a fashion that the displacing of a key stuck a pig with a needle. The sounds evoked were out of the ordinary, and it is recorded that the king was highly diverted and asked for more. Auber’s enthusiasm for his own music, usually concealed under an indifferent air, occasionally expressed itself in strange fashion. Mme. Damoreau recounted to Weckerlin how, when the composer completed an air in the middle of the night, even at three or four o’clock in the morning, he rushed to her apartment. Dragging a pianoforte to her bed, he insisted on playing the new song over and over to her, while she sang it, meanwhile making the changes suggested by this extraordinary performance.

More modern instances come to mind. Maria Gay is not above nose-blowing and expectoration in her interpretation of Carmen, physical acts in the public performance of which no Spanish cigarette girl would probably be caught ashamed. Yet it may be doubted if they suit the music of Bizet, or the Meilhac and Halévy version of Merimée’s creation.... A story has been related to me--I do not vouch for the truth of it--that during a certain performance of _Carmen_ at the Opéra-Comique in Paris a new singer, at some stage in the proceedings, launched that dreadful French word which Georges Feydeau so ingenuously allowed his heroine to project into the second act of _La Dame de chez Maxim_, with a result even more startling than that which attended Bernard Shaw’s excursion into the realms of the expletive in his play, _Pygmalion_. It is further related of this performance of _Carmen_, which is said to have sadly disturbed the “traditions,” that in the excitement incident to her début the lady positively refused to allow Don José to kill her. Round and round the stage she ran while the perspiring tenor tried in vain to catch her. At length, the music of the score being concluded, the curtain fell on a Carmen still alive; the _salle_ was in an uproar.

I find I cannot include Chaliapine’s Basilio in my list of bad mannered stage performances, although his trumpetings into his handkerchief disturbed many of New York’s professional writers. _Il Barbiere_ is a farcical piece, and the music of Rossini hints at the Rabelaisian humours of the dirty Spanish priest. In any event, it was the finest interpretation of the rôle that I have ever seen or heard and, with the splendid ensemble (Mme. Sembrich was the Rosina, Mr. Bonci, the count, and Mr. Campanari, the Figaro), the comedy went with such joyous abandon (the first act finale to the accompaniment of roars of laughter from the stalls) that I am inclined to believe the performance could not be bettered in this generation.

The late Algernon St. John Brenon used to relate a history about Emma Eames and a recalcitrant tenor. The opera was _Lohengrin_, I believe, and the question at issue was the position of a certain couch. Mme. Eames wished it placed here; the tenor there. As always happens in arguments concerning a Wagnerian music-drama, at some point the Bayreuth tradition was invoked, although I have forgotten whether that tradition favoured the soprano or her opponent in this instance. In any case, at the rehearsal the tenor seemed to have won the battle. When at the performance he found the couch in the exact spot which had been designated by the lady his indignation was all the greater on this account. With as much regard for the action of the drama as was consistent with so violent a gesture he gave the couch a violent shove with his projected toe, with the intention of pushing it into his chosen locality. He retired with a howl, nursing a wounded member. The couch had been nailed to the floor!

It is related that Marie Delna was discovered washing dishes at an inn in a small town near Paris. Her benefactors took her to the capital and placed her in the Conservatoire. She always retained a certain peasant obstinacy, and it is said that during the course of her instruction when she was corrected she frequently replied, “Je m’en vais.” Against this phrase argument was unavailing and Mme. Delna, as a result, acquired a habit of having her own way. Her Orphée was (and still is, I should think) one of the notable achievements of our epoch. It must have equalled Pauline Viardot’s performance dramatically, and transcended it vocally. After singing the part several hundred times she naturally acquired certain habits and mannerisms, tricks both of action and of voice. Still, it is said that when she came to the Metropolitan Opera House she offered, at a rehearsal, to defer to Mr. Toscanini’s ideas. He, the rumour goes, gave his approval to her interpretation on this occasion. Not so at the performance. Those who have heard it can never forget the majesty and beauty of this characterization, as noble a piece of stage work as we have seen or heard in our day. At her début in the part in New York Mme. Delna was superb, vocally and dramatically. In the celebrated air, _Che faro senza Euridice_, the singer followed the tradition, doubly established by the example of Mme. Viardot in the great revival of the mid-century, of singing the different stanzas of the air in different _tempi_. In her slowest _adagio_ the conductor became impatient. He beat his stick briskly across his desk and whipped up the orchestra. There was soon a hiatus of two bars between singer and musicians. It was a terrible moment, but the singer won the victory. She _turned her back on the conductor_ and continued to sing in her own time. The organ tones rolled out and presently the audience became aware of a junction between the two great forces. Mr. Toscanini was vanquished, but he never forgave her.

During the opera season of 1915-16, opera-goers were treated to a diverting exhibition. Mme. Geraldine Farrar, just returned from a fling at three five-reel cinema dramas, elected to instil a bit of moving picture realism into _Carmen_. Fresh with the memory of her prolonged and brutal scuffle in the factory scene as it was depicted on the screen, Mme. Farrar attempted something like it in the opera, the first act of which was enlivened with sundry blows and kicks. More serious still were her alleged assaults on the tenor (Mr. Caruso) in the third act which, it is said, resulted in his clutching her like a struggling eel, to prevent her interference with his next note. There was even a suggestion of disagreement in the curtain calls which ensued. All these incidents of an enlivening evening were duly and impressively chronicled in the daily press.

There is, of course, Vladimir de Pachmann. Everybody who has attended his recitals has come under the spell of his beautiful tone and has been annoyed by his bad manners. For, curiously enough, the two qualities have become inseparable with him, especially in recent years. Once in Chicago I saw the strange little pianist sit down in front of his instrument, rise again, gesticulate, and leave the stage. Returning with a stage-hand he pointed to his stool; it was not satisfactory. A chair was brought in, tried, and found wanting; more gesticulation--this time wilder. At length, after considerable discussion between Mr. de Pachmann and the stage-hand, all in view of the audience, it was decided that nothing would do but that some one must fetch the artist’s own piano bench from his hotel, which, fortunately, adjoined the concert hall. This was accomplished in the course of time. In the interval the pianist did not leave the platform. He sat at the back on the chair which had been offered him as a substitute for the offending stool and entertained his audience with a spectacular series of grimaces.

On another occasion this singular genius arrested his fingers in the course of a performance of one of Chopin’s études. His ears were enraptured, it would seem, by his own rendition of a certain run; over and over again he played it, now faster, now more slowly; at times almost slowly enough to give the student in the front row a glimpse of the magic fingering. With a sudden change of manner he announced, “This is the way Godowsky would play this scale”: great velocity but a dry tone. Then, “And now Pachmann again!” The magic fingers stroked the keys.

Even as an auditor de Pachmann sometimes exploits his eccentricities. Josef Hofmann once told me the following story: De Pachmann was sitting in the third row at a concert Rubinstein gave in his prime. De Pachmann burst into hilarious laughter, rocking to and fro. Rubinstein was playing beautifully and de Pachmann’s neighbour, annoyed, demanded why he was laughing. De Pachmann could scarcely speak as he pointed to the pianist on the stage and replied, “He used the fourth finger instead of the third in that run. Isn’t it funny?”

I cannot take Vladimir de Pachmann to task for these amusing bad manners! But they annoy the _bourgeois_. We should most of us be glad to have Oscar Wilde brilliant at our dinner parties, even though he ate peas with his knife; and Napoleon’s generalship would have been as effective if he had been an omnivorous reader of the works of Laura Jean Libbey. But one must not dwell too long on de Pachmann. One might be tempted to devote an entire essay to the relation of his eccentricities.

Another pianist, also a composer, claims attention: Alberto Savinio. You may find a photolithograph of Savinio’s autograph manuscript of _Bellovées Fatales, No. 12_, in that curious periodical entitled “291,” the number for April, 1915. There is a programme, which reads as follows:

LA PASSION DES ROTULES

La Femme: Ah! Il m’a touché de sa jambe de caoutchouc! Ma-ma! Ma-ma!

L’Homme: Tutto s’ha di rosa, Maria, per te....

La Femme: Ma-ma! Ma-ma!

There are indications as to how the composer wishes his music to be played, sometimes _glissando_ and sometimes “_avec des poings_.” The rapid and tortuous passages between the black and white keys would test the contortionistic qualities of any one’s fingers. Savinio, it is said, at his appearances in Paris, actually played until his fingers _bled_. When he had concluded, indeed, the ends of his fingers were crushed and bruised and the keyboard was red with blood. Albert Gleizes, quoted by Walter Conrad Arensberg, is my authority for this bizarre history of music and bad manners. I have not seen (or heard) Savinio perform. But when I told this tale to Leo Ornstein he assured me that he frequently had had a similar experience.

Romain Rolland in “Jean-Christophe” relates an incident which is especially interesting because it has a foundation in fact. Something of the sort happened to Hugo Wolf when an orchestra performed his _Penthesilea_ overture for the first time. It is a curious example of bad manners in which both the performers and the audience join.

“At last it came to Christophe’s symphony.” (I am quoting from Gilbert Cannan’s translation.) “He saw from the way the orchestra and the people in the hall were looking at his box that they were aware of his presence. He hid himself. He waited with the catch at his heart which every musician feels at the moment when the conductor’s wand is raised and the waters of the music gather in silence before bursting their dam. He had never yet heard his work played. How would the creatures of his dreams live? How would their voices sound? He felt their roaring within him; and he leaned over the abyss of sounds waiting fearfully for what should come forth.

“What did come forth was a nameless thing, a shapeless hotchpotch. Instead of the bold columns which were to support the front of the building the chords came crumbling down like a building in ruins; there was nothing to be seen but the dust of mortar. For a moment Christophe was not quite sure whether they were really playing his work. He cast back for the train, the rhythm of his thoughts; he could not recognize it; it went on babbling and hiccoughing like a drunken man clinging close to the wall, and he was overcome with shame, as though he himself had been seen in that condition. It was to no avail to think that he had not written such stuff; when an idiotic interpreter destroys a man’s thoughts he has always a moment of doubt when he asks himself in consternation if he is himself responsible for it. The audience never asks such a question; the audience believes in the interpreter, in the singers, in the orchestra whom they are accustomed to hear, as they believe in their newspaper; they cannot make a mistake; if they say absurd things, it is the absurdity of the author. This audience was the less inclined to doubt because it liked to believe. Christophe tried to persuade himself that the _Kapellmeister_ was aware of the hash and would stop the orchestra and begin again. The instruments were not playing together. The horn had missed his beat and had come in a bar too late; he went on for a few minutes and then stopped quietly to clean his instrument. Certain passages for the oboe had absolutely disappeared. It was impossible for the most skilled ear to pick up the thread of the musical idea, or even to imagine there was one. Fantastic instrumentations, humoristic sallies became grotesque through the coarseness of the execution. It was lamentably stupid, the work of an idiot, of a joker who knew nothing of music. Christophe tore his hair. He tried to interrupt, but the friend who was with him held him back, assuring him that the _Herr Kapellmeister_ must surely see the faults of the execution and would put everything right--that Christophe must not show himself and that if he made any remark it would have a very bad effect. He made Christophe sit at the very back of the box. Christophe obeyed, but he beat his head with his fists; and every fresh monstrosity drew from him a groan of indignation and misery.

“‘The wretches! The wretches!...’

“He groaned and squeezed his hands tight to keep from crying out.

“Now mingled with the wrong notes there came up to him the muttering of the audience, who were beginning to be restless. At first it was only a tremor; but soon Christophe was left without a doubt; they were laughing. The musicians of the orchestra had given the signal; some of them did not conceal their hilarity. The audience, certain then that the music was laughable, rocked with laughter. This merriment became general; it increased at the return of a very rhythmical motif with the double-basses accentuated in a burlesque fashion. Only the _Kapellmeister_ went on through the uproar imperturbably beating time.

“At last they reached the end (the best things come to an end). It was the turn of the audience. They exploded with delight, an explosion which lasted for several minutes. Some hissed; others applauded ironically; the wittiest of all shouted ‘Encore!’ A bass voice coming from a stage box began to imitate the grotesque motif. Other jokers followed suit and imitated it also. Some one shouted ‘Author!’ It was long since these witty folk had been so highly entertained.

“When the tumult was calmed down a little the _Kapellmeister_, standing quite impassive with his face turned towards the audience, though he was pretending not to see it (the audience was still supposed to be non-existent), made a sign to the audience that he was about to speak. There was a cry of ‘Ssh,’ and silence. He waited a moment longer; then (his voice was curt, cold, and cutting):

“‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I should certainly not have let _that_ be played through to the end if I had not wished to make an example of the gentleman who has dared to write offensively of the great Brahms.’

“That was all; jumping down from his stand he went out amid cheers from the delighted audience. They tried to recall him; the applause went on for a few minutes longer. But he did not return. The orchestra went away. The audience decided to go too. The concert was over.

“It had been a good day.”

Von Bülow once stopped his orchestra at a public performance to remonstrate with a lady with a fan in the front row of seats. “Madame,” he said gravely, “I must beg you to cease fanning yourself in three-four time while I am conducting in four-four time!”

Here are a few personal recollections of bad mannered audiences. A performance of _The Magic Flute_ in Chicago comes to mind. Fritzi Scheff, the Papagena, and Giuseppe Campanari, the Papageno, had concluded their duet in the last act amidst a storm of applause, in face of which the conductor sped on to the entrance of the Queen of the Night. Mme. Sembrich entered and sang a part of her recitative unheard. One could see, however, that her jaws opened and closed with the mechanism incidental to tone-production. After a few bars she retired defeated and the bad mannered audience continued to shout and applaud until that unspeakable bit of nonsense which runs “Pa-pa-pa,” etc., was repeated. Mme. Sembrich appeared no more that day.

Another stormy audience I encountered at a concert of the Colonne Orchestra in Paris. Those who sit in the gallery at these concerts at the Chatelet Theatre are notoriously opinionated. There the battles of Richard Strauss and Debussy have been fought. The gallery crowd always comes early because seats in the top of the house are unreserved. They cost a franc or two; I forget exactly how much, but I have often sat there. To pass the time until the concert begins, and also to show their indifference to musical literature and the opinions of others, the galleryites fashion a curious form of spill, with one end in a point and the other feathered like an arrow, out of the pages of the annotated programmes. These are then sent sailing, in most instances with infinite dexterity and incredible velocity, over the heads of the arriving audience. The objective point is the very centre of the back cloth on the stage, a spot somewhat above the kettle-drum. A successful shot always brings forth a round of applause. But this is (or was) an episode incident to any Colonne concert. I am describing an occasion.

The concert took place during the season of poor Colonne’s final illness (now he lies buried in that curiously remote avenue of Père-Lachaise where repose the ashes of Oscar Wilde). Gabriel Pierné, his successor, had already assumed the bâton, and he conducted the concert in question. Anton Van Rooy was the soloist and he had chosen to sing two very familiar (and very popular in Paris) Wagner excerpts, Wotan’s Farewell from _Die Walküre_, and the air which celebrates the evening star from _Tannhäuser_. (In this connection I might state that in this same winter--1908-9--_Das Rheingold_ was given _in concert form_--it had not yet been performed at the Opéra--on two consecutive Sundays at the Lamoureux Concerts in the Salle Gaveau to _standing room only_.) The concert proceeded in orderly fashion until Mr. Van Rooy appeared; then the uproar began. The gallery hooted, and screamed, and yelled. All the terrible noises which only a Paris crowd can invent were hurled from the dark recesses of that gallery. The din was appalling, terrifying. Mr. Van Rooy nervously fingered a sheet of music he held in his hands. Undoubtedly visions of the first performance of _Tannhäuser_ at the Paris Opéra passed through his mind. He may also have considered the possibility of escaping to the Gare du Nord, with the chance of catching a train for Germany before the mob could tear him into bits. Mr. Pierné, who knew his Paris, faced the crowd, while the audience below peered up and shuddered, with something of the fright of the aristocrats during the first days of the Revolution. Then he held up his hand and, in time, the modest gesture provoked a modicum of silence. In that silence some one shrieked out the explanation: “_Tannhäuser_ avant _Walküre_.” That was all. The gallery was not satisfied with the order of the programme. The readjustment was quickly made, the parts distributed to the orchestra, and Mr. Van Rooy sang Wolfram’s air before Wotan’s. It may be said that never could he have hoped for a more complete ovation, a more flattering reception than that which the Parisian audience accorded him when he had finished. The applause was veritably deafening.

I have related elsewhere at some length my experiences at the first Paris performance of Igor Strawinsky’s ballet, _The Sacrifice to the Spring_, an appeal to primitive emotion through a nerve-shattering use of rhythm, staged in ultra-modern style by Waslav Nijinsky. Chords and legs seemed disjointed. Flying arms synchronized marvellously with screaming clarinets. But this first audience would not permit the composer to be heard. Cat-calls and hisses succeeded the playing of the first few bars, and then ensued a battery of screams, countered by a foil of applause. We warred over art (some of us thought it was and some thought it wasn’t). The opposition was bettered at times; at any rate it was a more thrilling battle than Strauss conceived between the Hero and his enemies in _Heldenleben_ and the celebrated scenes from _Die Meistersinger_ and _The Rape of the Lock_ could not stand the comparison. Some forty of the protestants were forced out of the theatre but that did not quell the disturbance. The lights in the auditorium were fully turned on but the noise continued and I remember Mlle. Piltz executing her strange dance of religious hysteria on a stage dimmed by the blazing light in the auditorium, seemingly to the accompaniment of the disjointed ravings of a mob of angry men and women. Little by little, at subsequent performances of the work the audiences became more mannerly, and when it was given in concert in Paris the following year it was received with applause.

Some of my readers may remember the demonstration directed (supposedly) against American singers when the Metropolitan Opera Company invaded Paris some years ago for a spring season. The opening opera was _Aïda_, and all went well until the first scene of the second act, in which the reclining Amneris chants her thoughts while her slaves dance. Here the audience began to give signs of disapproval, which presently broke out into open hissing, and finally into a real hullabaloo. Mme. Homer, nothing daunted, continued to sing. She afterwards told me that she had never sung with such force and intensity. And in a few moments she broke the spell, and calmed the riot.

Arthur Nikisch once noted that players of the bassoon were more sensitive than the other members of his orchestra; he found them subject to quick fits of temper, and intolerant of criticism. He attributed this to the delicate mechanism of the instrument which required the nicest apportionment of breath. Clarinet players, he discovered, were less sensitive. One could joke with them in reason; while horn players were as tractable as Newfoundland dogs!--A case of a sensitive pianist comes to mind, brought to bay by as rude an audience as I can recall. Mr. Paderewski was playing Beethoven’s C sharp minor sonata at one of these morning musicales arranged at the smart hotels so that the very rich may see more intimately the well-known artists of the concert and opera stage, when some women started to go out. In his following number, Couperin’s _La Bandoline_, the interruption became intolerable and he stopped playing. “Those who do not wish to hear me will kindly leave the room immediately,” he said, “and those who wish to remain will kindly take their seats.” The outflow continued, while those who remained seated began to hiss. “I am astonished to find people in New York leaving while an artist is playing,” the pianist added. Then some one started to applaud; the applause deepened, and finally Mr. Paderewski consented to play again and took his place on the bench before his instrument.

The incident was the result of the pianist’s well-known aversion to appearing in conjunction with other artists. He had finally agreed to do so on this occasion provided he would be allowed to play after the others had concluded their performances. There had been many recalls for the singer and violinist who preceded him and it was well after one o’clock (the concert had begun at eleven) before he walked on the platform. Now one o’clock is a very late hour at a fashionable morning musicale. Some of those present were doubtless hungry; others, perhaps, had trains to catch; while there must have been a goodly number who had heard all the music they wanted to hear that morning. There was a very pretty ending to the incident. Once he had begun, Mr. Paderewski played for an hour and twenty minutes, and the faithful ones, who had remained seated, applauded so much when he finally rose from the bench, even after he had added several numbers to the printed programme, that the echoes of the clapping hands accompanied him to his motor.

I have reserved for the last a description of a concert given at the Dal Verme Theatre in Milan by the Italian Futurists. The account is culled from the “Corriere della Sera” of that city, and the translation is that which appeared in “International Music and Drama”:

“At the Dal Verme a Futurist concert of ‘intonarumori’ was to be held last night, but instead of this there was an uproarious din intoned both by the public and the Futurists which ended in a free-for-all fight.

“In a speech which was listened to with sufficient attention, Marinetti, the poet, announced that this was to be the first public trial of a new device invented by Luigi Russelo, a Futurist painter. This instrument is called the ‘noise-maker’ and its purpose is to render a new kind of music. Modern life vibrates with all sorts of noises; music therefore must render this sensation. This, in brief, is the idea. In order to develop it Russelo had invented several types of noise-makers, each of which renders a different sound.

“After Marinetti’s speech the curtain went up and the new orchestra appeared in all its glory amidst the bellowings of the public. The famous ‘noise-intonators’ proved to be made out of a sort of bass-drum with an immense trumpet attached to it, the latter looking very much like a gramaphone horn. Behind the instrument sat the players, whose only function was to turn the crank rhythmically in order to create the harmonic noise. They looked, while performing this agreeable task, like a squad of knife-grinders. But it was impossible to hear the music. The public was unconditionally intolerant. We only caught here and there a faint buzz and growl. Then everything was drowned in the billowing seas of howls, jeers, hisses, and cat-calls. What they were hissing at, it being impossible to hear the music, was not quite clear. They hissed just for the fun of it. It was a case of art for art’s sake. Painter Russelo, however, continued undisturbed to direct his mighty battery of musical howitzers and his professors kept on grinding their pieces with a beautiful serenity of mind, all the while the tumult increasing to redoubtable proportions. The consequence was that those who went to the Dal Verme for the purpose of listening to Futurist music had to give up all hopes and resign themselves to hear the bedlam of the public.

“In vain did Marinetti attempt to speak, begging them to be quiet for a while and assuring them that they would be allowed a whole carnival of howls at the end of the concert--the public wanted to hiss and there was no way to check it. But Russelo kept right on. He conducted with imperturbable solemnity the three pieces we were supposed to hear: _The Awakening of a Great City_, _A Dinner on a Kursaal Terrace_, and _A Meet of Automobiles and Aeroplanes_. Nobody heard anything, but Russelo rendered everything conscientiously. The only thing we were able to find out about Futurist music is that the noise of the orchestra is by no means too loud, or at least not louder than impromptu choruses.

“But the worst was reserved for the middle of the third piece. The exchange of hot words and very old-fashioned courtesies had now become ultra-vivacious and was being punctuated with several projectiles and an occasional blow. At this point, Marinetti, Boccioni, Carra, and other Futurists jumped into the pit and began to distribute all sorts of blows to the infuriated spectators. The new Futurist style enables us to synthesize the scene. Blows. Carbineers. Inspectors. Cushions and chairs flying about. Howls. Public standing on chairs. Concert goes on. More howls, shrieks, curses, and thunderous insults. Futurists are led back to stage by gendarmes. Public slowly passes out. Marinetti and followers pass out before public. Again howls, invectives, guffaws, and fist blows. Piazza Cardusio. More blows. Galleria. Ditto. Futurists enter Savini’s café while pugilistic matches go merrily on. Mob attempts to storm stronghold. Iron gates close. Futurists are shut in, in good condition, save few torn hats. Mob slowly calms down and disperses. The end.”

_New York, May, 1916._

Music for the Movies

“_O Tempora! O Movies!_”

W. B. Chase.

Music for the Movies

Despite the fact that it would seem that the moving picture drama had opened up new worlds to the modern musician, no important composer, so far as I am aware, has as yet turned his attention to the writing of music for the films. If the cinema drama is in its infancy, as some would have us believe, then we may be sure that the time is not far distant when moving picture scores will take their places on the musicians’ book-shelves alongside those of operas, symphonies, masses, and string quartets. In the meantime, entirely ignorant of the truth (or oblivious to it, or merely helpless, as the case may be) that writing music for moving pictures is a new art, which demands a new point of view, the directors of the picture theatres are struggling with the situation as best they may. Under the circumstances it is remarkable, on the whole, how swiftly and how well the demand for music with the silent drama has been met. Certainly the music is usually on a level with (or of a better quality than) the type of entertainment offered. But the directors have not definitely tackled the problem; they still continue to try to force old wine into new bottles, arranging and re-arranging melody and harmony which was contrived for quite other occasions and purposes. Even when scores have been written for pictures the result has not shown any imaginative advance over the arranged score. It is strange, but it has occurred to no one that the moving picture demands a _new_ kind of music.

The composers, I should imagine, are only waiting to be asked to write it. Certainly none of them has ever shown any hesitancy about composing incidental music for the spoken drama. Mendelssohn wrote strains for _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ which seemed pledged to immortality until Granville Barker ignored them; the Wedding March is still in favour in Kankakee and Keokuk. Beethoven illustrated Goethe’s _Egmont_; Sir Arthur Sullivan penned a score for _The Tempest_; Schubert was inspired to put down some of his most ravishing notes for a stupid play called _Rosamunde_; Grieg’s _Peer Gynt_ music is more often performed than the play. More recent instances of incidental music for dramas are Saint-Saëns’s score for Brieux’s _La Foi_, Mascagni’s for _The Eternal City_, and Richard Strauss’s for _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_. Is it necessary to continue the list? I have only, after all, put down a few of the obvious examples (passing by the thousands upon thousands of scores devised by lesser composers for lesser plays) that would spring at once to any musician’s mind. Of course it has usually been the poetic drama (do we ever hear Shakespeare or Rostand without it?) which has seemed to call for incidental music but it has accompanied (with more or less disastrous consequences, to be sure) the unfolding of many a “drawing-room” play; especially during the eighties.

When the first moving picture was exposed on the screen it seems to have occurred to its projector at once that some kind of music must accompany its unreeling. The silence evidently appalled him. A moving picture is not unlike a ballet in that it depends entirely upon action (it differs from a ballet in that the action is not necessarily rhythmic)--and whoever heard of a ballet performed without music? Sound certainly has its value in creating an atmosphere and in emphasizing the “thrill” of the moving picture, especially when the sound is selected and co-ordinated. It may also divert the attention. On the whole, more photographed plays follow the general lines of _Lady Windemere’s Fan_ or _Peg o’ My Heart_ than of poetic dramas such as _Cymbeline_ or _La Samaritaine_. The problem here, however, is not the same as in the spoken drama. For in motion pictures a poetic play sheds its poetry and becomes, like its neighbour, a skeleton of action. There is no conceivable distinction in the “movies” (beyond one created by preference, or taste, or the quality of the performance and the photography) between Dante’s _Inferno_ and a picture in which the beloved Charles Chaplin looms large. The directors of the moving picture companies have tried to meet this problem; that they have not wholly succeeded so far is not entirely their fault.

It is no easy matter, for example, in a theatre in which the films are changed daily (this is the general rule even in the larger houses), for the musicians (or musician) to arrange a satisfactory accompaniment for 5,000 feet of action which includes everything from an earthquake in Cuba to a dinner in Park Lane, and it is scarcely possible, even if the distributors be so inclined (as they frequently are nowadays) to furnish a music score which will answer the purposes of the different sized bands, ranging from a full orchestra to an upright piano, _solo_. As for the pictures without pre-arranged scores, the orchestra leaders and pianists must do the best they can with them.

In some houses there is an attitude of total disrespect paid towards the picture by the _chef d’orchestre_. He arranges his musical programme as if he were giving a concert, not at all with a view to effectively accompanying the picture. In a theatre on Second Avenue in New York, for example, I have heard an orchestra play the whole of Beethoven’s First Symphony as an accompaniment to Irene Fenwick’s performance of _The Woman Next Door_. As the symphony came to an end before the picture it was supplemented by a Waldteufel waltz, _Les Patineurs_. The result, in this instance, was not altogether incongruous or even particularly displeasing, and it occurred to me that if one had to listen to music while the third act of _Hedda Gabler_ were being enacted one would prefer to hear something like Boccherini’s celebrated minuet or a light Mozart dance rather than anything ostensibly contrived to fit the situation. In the latter instance the result would be sure to be unbearable bathos.

On the other hand there are certain players for pictures who remind one by their methods of the anxiety of Richard Strauss to describe every peacock and bean mentioned in any of his opera-books. If a garden is exposed on the screen one hears _The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring_; a love scene is the signal for _Un Peu d’Amour_; a cross or any religious episode suggests _The Rosary_ to these ingenuous musicians; Japan brings a touch of _Madame Butterfly_; a proposal of marriage, _O Promise Me_; and a farewell, Tosti’s _Good-bye!_ This expedient of appealing through the intellect to the emotions, it may be admitted, has the stamp of approval of no less a composer than Richard Wagner.

Lacking the authority of real moving picture music (which a new composer must rise to invent) the safest way (not necessarily the _best_ way) is the middle course--one method for this, another for that. One of the difficulties is to arrange a music score for a theatre with a large orchestra, where the leader must plan his score--or have it planned for him--for an entire picture before his orchestra can play a note. Music cues must be definite: twenty bars of _Alexander’s Ragtime Band_, seventeen of _The Ride of the Valkyries_, ten of _Vissi d’Arte_, etc. An ingenious young man has discovered a way by which music and action may be exactly synchronized. I feel the impulse to quote extensively from the somewhat vivid report of his achievement, published in one of the motion picture weekly journals: “Here was a man-sized job--how to measure the action of the picture to the musical score, so that they would both come out equal at every part of the picture, and would be so exact that any orchestra might take the score and follow the movement of the play with absolute correctness. It was a question primarily of mathematics, but even so it was some time before a system of computation was devised before the undertaking was gotten down to a certainty. As an illustration, on the opening night of one of the most notable photoplay productions now before the public, the orchestra, notwithstanding a three weeks’ rehearsal, found at the conclusion of the picture that it was a page and a half behind the play’s action in the musical setting.” Then we learn that Frank Stadler of New York “provided the remedy for this condition of affairs.” It is impossible to resist the temptation to quote further from this extremely racy account. “He remembered that Beethoven had overcome the difficulty of proper timing for his sonatas by a mechanical arrangement known as the metronome, invented by a friend of his. This is an arrangement with a little bell attached which may be set for the movement of the music and used as an exact guide to the right measure, the bell giving warning at the expiration of each period so that the leader knows whether he is in time or not.” Mr. Stadler then began the measurement of a film with a metronome, a stenographer, and a watch. He found that the film ran ten feet to every eight seconds and he set the metronome for eight second periods accordingly. “The stenographer made a note of the action of the picture each time the bell rang, with the result that when the entire picture had been run Mr. Stadler had a complete record of the production. All that was necessary then was to select from the classics and the popular melodies the music which would give a suitable atmosphere and a harmonious accompaniment to the theme of the play, so synchronizing the music with the eight second periods that every bar of it fitted the spirit of the many score of scenes of the production.”

The single man orchestra, the player of the upright piano, need not make so many preparatory gestures. He may with impunity, if he be of an inventive turn of mind, or if his memory be good, improvise his score as the picture unreels itself for the first time before what may very well be his astonished vision; and, after that, he may vary his accompaniment, as the shows of the day progress, improving it here or there, or not, as the case may be, keeping generally as near to his original performance as possible. Of course he puts a good deal of reliance on rum-ti-tum shivery passages (known to orchestra leaders as “_agits_”--an abbreviation of _agitato_; a page or two of them is distributed to every member of a moving picture band) to accompany moments of excitement. This music you will remember if you have ever attended a performance of a Lincoln J. Carter melodrama in which a train was wrecked, or a hero rescued from the teeth of a saw, or a heroine pursued by bloodhounds. (Those were the good old days!) Recently I heard a pianist in a moving picture house on Fourteenth Street in New York eke out a half-hour with similar poundings on two or three well used chords (well used even in the time of Hadyn). The scenes represented the whole of a two-act opera, and the ambitious pianist was trying to give his audience the effect of singers (principals and chorus) and orchestra with his three chords. (Shades of Arnold Schoenberg!)

A certain periodical devoted to the interests of the moving picture trade, conducts a department as first aid to the musical conductors and pianists who figure at these shows. In a recent number the editor of this department gives it as his solemn opinion that musicians who read fiction are the best equipped for picture playing. Then, with an almost tragic parenthesis, he continues, “Reading fiction is the last diversion that the average musician will follow. He feels that all the necessary romance is to be found in his music.” Facts are dead, says this editor in substance, but fiction is living and should make you weep. When you cry, all that remains for you to do is to think of a tune which will synchronize with the cause of your tears; this will serve you later when a similar scene occurs in a film drama.

There is one tune which any capable moving picture pianist has found will synchronize with any Keystone picture (for the benefit of the uninitiated I may state that in the Keystone farces some one gets kicked or knocked down or spat upon several times in almost every scene). I do not know what the tune is, but wherever Keystone pictures are shown, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Chicago, and even New York, I have heard it. When a character falls into the water (and at least ten of them invariably do) the pianist may vary the tune by sitting on the piano or by upsetting a chair. In one theatre I have known him to cause glass to be shattered behind the screen at a moment when the picture exposed a similar scene. How Marinetti would like that!

However, the day of this sort of thing is rapidly approaching its close, I venture to say. Some of the firms are already issuing arranged music scores for their productions (one may note in passing the score which accompanied Geraldine Farrar’s screen performance of _Carmen_, largely selected from the music of Bizet’s opera, and Victor Herbert’s original score for _The Fall of a Nation_, a score which does not take full advantage of the new technique of the cinema drama). It will not be long before an enterprising director engages an enterprising musician to compose music for a picture. For the same reason that d’Annunzio, very early in the career of the moving picture, wrote a scenario for a film, I should not be surprised to learn that Richard Strauss was under contract to construct an accompaniment to a screened drama. It will be very loud music and it will require an orchestra of 143 men to interpret it and probably the composer himself will conduct the first performance, and, later, excerpts will be given by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the critics will say, in spite of Philip Hale’s diverting programme notes, that this music should never be played except in conjunction with the picture for which it was written. Mascagni is another composer who should find an excellent field for his talent in writing tone-poems for pictures, although he would contrive nothing more daring than a well-arranged series of illustrative melodies.