Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

But put Igor Strawinsky, or some other modern genius, to work on this problem and see what happens! The musician of the future should revel in the opportunity the moving picture gives him to create a new form. This form differs from that of the incidental music for a play in that the flow of tone may be continuous and because one never needs to soften the accompaniment so that the voices may be heard; it differs from the music for a ballet in that the scene shifts constantly, and consequently the time signatures and the mood and the key must be as constantly shifting. The swift flash from scene to scene, the “cut-back,” the necessary rapidity of the action, all are adapted to inspire the futurist composer to brilliant effort; a tinkle of this and a smash of that, without “working-out” or development; illustration, comment, piquant or serious, that’s what the new film music should be. The ultimate moving picture score will be something more than sentimental accompaniment.

_New York, November 10, 1915._

Spain and Music

“_Il faut méditerraniser la musique._”

Nietzsche.

Spain and Music

It has seemed to me at times that Oscar Hammerstein was gifted with almost prophetic vision. He it was who imagined the glory of Times (erstwhile Longacre) Square. Theatre after theatre he fashioned in what was then a barren district--and presently the crowds and the hotels came. He foresaw that French opera, given in the French manner, would be successful again in New York, and he upset the calculations of all the wiseacres by making money even with _Pelléas et Mélisande_, that esoteric collaboration of Belgian and French art, which in the latter part of the season of 1907-8 attained a record of seven performances at the Manhattan Opera House, all to audiences as vast and as devoted as those which attend the sacred festivals of _Parsifal_ at Bayreuth. And he had announced for presentation during the season of 1908-9 (and again the following season) a Spanish opera called _Dolores_. If he had carried out his intention (why it was abandoned I have never learned; the scenery and costumes were ready) he would have had another honour thrust upon him, that of having been beforehand in the production of modern Spanish opera in New York, an honour which, in the circumstances, must go to Mr. Gatti-Casazza. (Strictly speaking, _Goyescas_ was not the first Spanish opera to be given in New York, although it was the first to be produced at the Metropolitan Opera House. _Il Guarany_, by Antonio Carlos Gomez, a Portuguese born in Brazil, was performed by the “Milan Grand Opera Company” during a three weeks’ season at the Star Theatre in the fall of 1884. An air from this opera is still in the répertoire of many sopranos. To go still farther back, two of Manuel Garcia’s operas, sung of course in Italian, _l’Amante Astuto_ and _La Figlia dell’Aria_, were performed at the Park Theatre in 1825 with Maria Garcia--later to become the celebrated Mme. Malibran--in the principal rôles. More recently an itinerant Italian opéra-bouffe company, which gravitated from the Park Theatre--not the same edifice that harboured Garcia’s company!--to various playhouses on the Bowery, included three zarzuelas in its répertoire. One of these, the popular _La Gran Via_, was announced for performance, but my records are dumb on the subject and I am not certain that it was actually given. There are probably other instances.) Mr. Hammerstein had previously produced two operas _about_ Spain when he opened his first Manhattan Opera House on the site now occupied by Macy’s Department Store with Moszkowski’s _Boabdil_, quickly followed by Beethoven’s _Fidelio_. The malagueña from _Boabdil_ is still a favourite _morceau_ with restaurant orchestras, and I believe I have heard the entire ballet suite performed by the Chicago Orchestra under the direction of Theodore Thomas. New York’s real occupation by the Spaniards, however, occurred after the close of Mr. Hammerstein’s brilliant seasons, although the earlier vogue of Carmencita, whose celebrated portrait by Sargent in the Luxembourg Gallery in Paris will long preserve her fame, the interest in the highly-coloured paintings by Sorolla and Zuloaga, many of which are still on exhibition in private and public galleries in New York, the success here achieved, in varying degrees, by such singing artists as Emilio de Gogorza, Andrea de Segurola, and Lucrezia Bori, the performances of the piano works of Albeniz, Turina, and Granados by such pianists as Ernest Schelling, George Copeland, and Leo Ornstein, and the amazing Spanish dances of Anna Pavlowa (who in attempting them was but following in the footsteps of her great predecessors of the nineteenth century, Fanny Elssler and Taglioni), all fanned the flames.

The winter of 1915-16 beheld the Spanish blaze. Enrique Granados, one of the most distinguished of contemporary Spanish pianists and composers, a man who took a keen interest in the survival, and artistic use, of national forms, came to this country to assist at the production of his opera _Goyescas_, sung in Spanish at the Metropolitan Opera House for the first time anywhere, and was also heard several times here in his interpretative capacity as a pianist; Pablo Casals, the Spanish ’cellist, gave frequent exhibitions of his finished art, as did Miguel Llobet, the guitar virtuoso; La Argentina (Señora Paz of South America) exposed her ideas, somewhat classicized, of Spanish dances; a Spanish soprano, Maria Barrientos, made her North American début and justified, in some measure, the extravagant reports which had been spread broadcast about her singing; and finally the decree of Paris (still valid in spite of Paul Poiret’s reported absence in the trenches) led all our womenfolk into the wearing of Spanish garments, the hip-hoops of the Velasquez period, the lace flounces of Goya’s Duchess of Alba, and the mantillas, the combs, and the _accroche-coeurs_ of Spain, Spain, Spain.... In addition one must mention Mme. Farrar’s brilliant success, deserved in some degree, as Carmen, both in Bizet’s opera and in a moving picture drama; Miss Theda Bara’s film appearance in the same part, made with more atmospheric suggestion than Mme. Farrar’s, even if less effective as an interpretation of the moods of the Spanish cigarette girl; Mr. Charles Chaplin’s eccentric burlesque of the same play; the continued presence in New York of Andrea de Segurola as an opera and concert singer; Maria Gay, who gave some performances in _Carmen_ and other operas; and Lucrezia Bori, although she was unable to sing during the entire season owing to the unfortunate result of an operation on her vocal cords; in Chicago, Miss Supervia appeared at the opera and Mme. Koutznezoff, the Russian, danced Spanish dances; and at the New York Winter Garden Isabel Rodriguez appeared in Spanish dances which quite transcended the surroundings and made that stage as atmospheric, for the few brief moments in which it was occupied by her really entrancing beauty, as a _maison de danse_ in Seville. The tango, too, in somewhat modified form, continued to interest “ballroom dancers,” danced to music provided in many instances by Señor Valverde, an indefatigable producer of popular tunes, some of which have a certain value as music owing to their close allegiance to the folk-dances and songs of Spain. In the art-world there was a noticeable revival of interest in Goya and El Greco.

But if Mr. Gatti-Casazza, with the best intentions in the world, should desire to take advantage of any of this _réclame_ by producing a series of Spanish operas at the Metropolitan Opera House--say four or five more--he would find himself in difficulty. Where are they? Several of the operas of Isaac Albeniz have been performed in London, and in Brussels at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, but would they be liked here? There is Felipe Pedrell’s monumental work, the trilogy, _Los Pireneos_, called by Edouard Lopez-Chavarri “the most important work for the theatre written in Spain”; and there is the aforementioned _Dolores_. For the rest, one would have to search about among the zarzuelas; and would the Metropolitan Opera House be a suitable place for the production of this form of opera? It is doubtful, indeed, if the zarzuela could take root in any theatre in New York.

The truth is that in Spain Italian and German operas are much more popular than Spanish, the zarzuela always excepted; and at Señor Arbós’s series of concerts at the Royal Opera in Madrid one hears more Bach and Beethoven than Albeniz and Pedrell. There is a growing interest in music in Spain and there are indications that some day her composers may again take an important place with the musicians of other nationalities, a place they proudly held in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, no longer ago than 1894, we find Louis Lombard writing in his “Observations of a Musician” that harmony was not taught at the Conservatory of Malaga, and that at the closing exercises of the Conservatory of Barcelona he had heard a four-hand arrangement of the _Tannhäuser_ march performed on ten pianos by forty hands! Havelock Ellis (“The Soul of Spain,” 1909) affirms that a concert in Spain sets the audience to chattering. They have a savage love of noise, the Spanish, he says, which incites them to conversation. Albert Lavignac, in “Music and Musicians” (William Marchant’s translation), says, “We have left in the shade the Spanish school, which to say truth does not exist.” But if one reads what Lavignac has to say about Moussorgsky, one is likely to give little credence to such extravagant generalities as the one just quoted. The Moussorgsky paragraph is a gem, and I am only too glad to insert it here for the sake of those who have not seen it: “A charming and fruitful melodist, who makes up for a lack of skill in harmonization by a daring, which is sometimes of doubtful taste; has produced songs, piano music in small amount, and an opera, _Boris Godunow_.” In the report of the proceedings of the thirty-fourth session of the London Musical Association (1907-8) Dr. Thomas Lea Southgate is quoted as complaining to Sir George Grove because under “Schools of Composition” in the old edition of Grove’s Dictionary the Spanish School was dismissed in twenty lines. Sir George, he says, replied, “Well, I gave it to Rockstro because nobody knows anything about Spanish music.”--The bibliography of modern Spanish music is indeed indescribably meagre, although a good deal has been written in and out of Spain about the early religious composers of the Iberian peninsula.

These matters will be discussed in due course. In the meantime it has afforded me some amusement to put together a list (which may be of interest to both the casual reader and the student of music) of compositions suggested by Spain to composers of other nationalities. (This list is by no means complete. I have not attempted to include in it works which are not more or less familiar to the public of the present day; without boundaries it could easily be extended into a small volume.) The répertoire of the concert room and the opera house is streaked through and through with Spanish atmosphere and, on the whole, I should say, the best Spanish music has not been written by Spaniards, although most of it, like the best music written in Spain, is based primarily on the rhythm of folk-tunes, dances and songs. Of orchestral pieces I think I must put at the head of the list Chabrier’s rhapsody, _España_, as colourful and rhythmic a combination of tone as the auditor of a symphony concert is often bidden to hear. It depends for its melody and rhythm on two Spanish dances, the jota, fast and fiery, and the malagueña, slow and sensuous. These are true Spanish tunes; Chabrier, according to report, invented only the rude theme given to the trombones. The piece was originally written for piano, and after Chabrier’s death was transformed (with other music by the same composer) into a ballet, _España_, performed at the Paris Opera, 1911. Waldteufel based one of his most popular waltzes on the theme of this rhapsody. Chabrier’s _Habanera_ for the pianoforte (1885) was his last musical reminiscence of his journey to Spain. It is French composers generally who have achieved better effects with Spanish atmosphere than men of other nations, and next to Chabrier’s music I should put Debussy’s _Iberia_, the second of his _Images_ (1910). It contains three movements designated respectively as “In the streets and roads,” “The perfumes of the night,” and “The morning of a fête-day.” It is indeed rather the smell and the look of Spain than the rhythm that this music gives us, entirely impressionistic that it is, but rhythm is not lacking, and such characteristic instruments as castanets, tambourines, and xylophones are required by the score. “Perfumes of the night” comes as near to suggesting odours to the nostrils as any music can--and not all of them are pleasant odours. There is Rimsky-Korsakow’s _Capriccio Espagnole_, with its _alborado_ or lusty morning serenade, its long series of cadenzas (as cleverly written as those of _Scheherazade_ to display the virtuosity of individual players in the orchestra; it is noteworthy that this work is dedicated to the sixty-seven musicians of the band at the Imperial Opera House of Petrograd and all of their names are mentioned on the score) to suggest the vacillating music of a gipsy encampment, and finally the wild fandango of the Asturias with which the work comes to a brilliant conclusion. Engelbert Humperdinck taught the theory of music in the Conservatory of Barcelona for two years (1885-6), and one of the results was his _Maurische Rhapsodie_ in three parts (1898-9), still occasionally performed by our orchestras. Lalo wrote his _Symphonie Espagnole_ for violin and orchestra for the great Spanish virtuoso, Pablo de Sarasate, but all our violinists delight to perform it (although usually shorn of a movement or two). Glinka wrote a _Jota Aragonese_ and _A Night in Madrid_; he gave a Spanish theme to Balakirew which the latter utilized in his _Overture on a theme of a Spanish March_. Liszt wrote a _Spanish Rhapsody_ for pianoforte (arranged as a concert piece for piano and orchestra by Busoni) in which he used the jota of Aragon as a theme for variations. Rubinstein’s _Toreador and Andalusian_ and Moszkowski’s _Spanish Dances_ (for four hands) are known to all amateur pianists as Hugo Wolf’s _Spanisches Liederbuch_ and Robert Schumann’s _Spanisches Liederspiel_, set to F. Giebel’s translations of popular Spanish ballads, are known to all singers. I have heard a song of Saint-Saëns, _Guitares et Mandolines_, charmingly sung by Greta Torpadie, in which the instruments of the title, under the subtle fingers of that masterly accompanist, Coenraad V. Bos, were cleverly imitated. And Debussy’s _Mandoline_ and Delibes’s _Les Filles de Cadiz_ (which in this country belongs both to Emma Calvé and Olive Fremstad) spring instantly to mind. Ravel’s _Rapsodie Espagnole_ is as Spanish as music could be. The Boston Symphony men have played it during the season just past. Ravel based the habanera section of his _Rapsodie_ on one of his piano pieces. But Richard Strauss’s two tone-poems on Spanish subjects, _Don Juan_ and _Don Quixote_, have not a note of Spanish colouring, so far as I can remember, from beginning to end. Svendsen’s symphonic poem, _Zorahayda_, based on a passage in Washington Irving’s “Alhambra,” is Spanish in theme and may be added to this list together with Waldteufel’s _Estudiantina_ waltzes.

* * * * *

Four modern operas stand out as Spanish in subject and atmosphere. I would put at the top of the list Zandonai’s _Conchita_; the Italian composer has caught on his musical palette and transferred to his tonal canvas a deal of the lazy restless colour of the Iberian peninsula in this little master-work. The feeling of the streets and patios is admirably caught. My friend, Pitts Sanborn, said of it, after its solitary performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York by the Chicago Opera Company, “There is musical atmosphere of a rare and penetrating kind; there is colour used with the discretion of a master; there are intoxicating rhythms, and above the orchestra the voices are heard in a truthful musical speech.... Ever since _Carmen_ it has been so easy to write Spanish music and achieve supremely the banal. Here there is as little of the Spanish of convention as in Debussy’s _Iberia_, but there is Spain.” This opera, based on Pierre Louys’s sadic novel, “La Femme et le Pantin,” owed some of its extraordinary impression of vitality to the vivid performance given of the title-rôle by Tarquinia Tarquini. Raoul Laparra, born in Bordeaux, but who has travelled much in Spain, has written two Spanish operas, _La Habanera_ and _La Jota_, both named after popular Spanish dances and both produced at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. I have heard _La Habanera_ there and found the composer’s use of the dance as a pivot of a tragedy very convincing. Nor shall I forget the first act-close, in which a young man, seated on a wall facing the window of a house where a most bloody murder has been committed, sings a wild Spanish ditty, accompanying himself on the guitar, crossing and recrossing his legs in complete abandonment to the rhythm, while in the house rises the wild treble cry of a frightened child. I have not heard _La Jota_, nor have I seen the score. I do not find Emile Vuillermoz enthusiastic in his review (“S. I. M.,” May 15, 1911): “Une danse transforme le premier acte en un kaléidoscope frénétique et le combat dans l’église doit donner, au second, dans l’intention de l’auteur ‘une sensation à pic, un peu comme celle d’un puits où grouillerait la besogne monstreuse de larves humaines.’ A vrai dire ces deux tableaux de cinématographe papillotant, corsés de cris, de hurlements et d’un nombre incalculable de coups de feu constituent pour le spectateur une épreuve physiquement douloureuse, une hallucination confuse et inquiétante, un cauchemar assourdissant qui le conduisent irrésistiblement à l’hébétude et à la migraine. Dans tout cet enfer que devient la musique?” Perhaps opera-goers in general are not looking for thrills of this order; the fact remains that _La Jota_ has had a modest career when compared with _La Habanera_, which has even been performed in Boston. _Carmen_ is essentially a French opera; the leading emotions of the characters are expressed in an idiom as French as that of Gounod; yet the dances and entr’actes are Spanish in colour. The story of Carmen’s entrance song is worth retelling in Mr. Philip Hale’s words (“Boston Symphony Orchestra Programme Notes”; 1914-15, P. 287): “Mme. Galli-Marié disliked her entrance air, which was in 6-8 time with a chorus. She wished something more audacious, a song in which she could bring into play the whole battery of her _perversités artistiques_, to borrow Charles Pigot’s phrase: ‘caressing tones and smiles, voluptuous inflections, killing glances, disturbing gestures.’ During the rehearsals Bizet made a dozen versions. The singer was satisfied only with the thirteenth, the now familiar Habanera, based on an old Spanish tune that had been used by Sebastian Yradier. This brought Bizet into trouble, for Yradier’s publisher, Heugel, demanded that the indebtedness should be acknowledged in Bizet’s score. Yradier made no complaint, but to avoid a lawsuit or a scandal, Bizet gave consent, and on the first page of the Habanera in the French edition of _Carmen_ this line is engraved: ‘Imitated from a Spanish song, the property of the publishers of _Le Ménestrel_.’”

There are other operas the scenes of which are laid in Spain. Some of them make an attempt at Spanish colouring, more do not. Massenet wrote no less than five operas on Spanish subjects, _Le Cid_, _Cherubin_, _Don César de Bazan_, _La Navarraise_ and _Don Quichotte_ (Cervantes’s novel has frequently lured the composers of lyric dramas with its story; Clément et Larousse give a long list of _Don Quixote_ operas, but they do not include one by Manuel Garcia, which is mentioned in John Towers’s compilation, “Dictionary-Catalogue of Operas.” However, not a single one of these lyric dramas has held its place on the stage). The Spanish dances in _Le Cid_ are frequently performed, although the opera is not. The most famous of the set is called simply _Aragonaise_; it is not a jota. _Pleurez, mes yeux_, the principal air of the piece, can scarcely be called Spanish. There is a delightful suggestion of the jota in _La Navarraise_. In _Don Quichotte_ la belle Dulcinée sings one of her airs to her own guitar strummings, and much was made of the fact, before the original production at Monte Carlo, of Mme. Lucy Arbell’s lessons on that instrument. Mary Garden, who had learned to dance for _Salome_, took no guitar lessons for _Don Quichotte_. But is not the guitar an anachronism in this opera? In a pamphlet by Señor Cecilio de Roda, issued during the celebration of the tercentenary of the publication of Cervantes’s romance, taking as its subject the musical references in the work, I find, “The harp was the aristocratic instrument most favoured by women and it would appear to be regarded in _Don Quixote_ as the feminine instrument par excellence.” Was the guitar as we know it in existence at that epoch? I think the _vihuela_ was the guitar of the period.... Maurice Ravel wrote a Spanish opera, _L’heure Espagnole_ (one act, performed at the Paris Opéra-Comique, 1911). Octave Séré (“Musiciens français d’Aujourd’hui”) says of it: “Les principaux traits de son caractère et l’influence du sol natal s’y combinent étrangement. De l’alliance de la mer et du Pays Basque (Ravel was born in the Basses-Pyrénées, near the sea) est née une musique à la fois fluide et nerveusement rythmée, mobile, chatoyante, amie du pittoresque et dont le trait net et précis est plus incisif que profond.” Hugo Wolf’s opera _Der Corregidor_ is founded on the novel, “Il Sombrero de tres Picos,” of the Spanish writer, Pedro de Alarcon (1833-91). His unfinished opera _Manuel Venegas_ also has a Spanish subject, suggested by Alarcon’s “El Nino de la Bola.” Other Spanish operas are Beethoven’s _Fidelio_, Balfe’s _The Rose of Castille_, Verdi’s _Ernani_ and _Il Trovatore_, Rossini’s _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_, Mozart’s _Don Giovanni_ and _Le Nozze di Figaro_, Weber’s _Preciosa_ (really a play with incidental music), Dargomijsky’s _The Stone Guest_ (Pushkin’s version of the Don Juan story. This opera, by the way, was one of the many retouched and completed by Rimsky-Korsakow), Reznicek’s _Donna Diana_--and Wagner’s _Parsifal_! The American composer John Knowles Paine’s opera _Azara_, dealing with a Moorish subject, has, I think, never been performed.