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MUSICAL COURIER
his own in America when his operas are sung in our native tongue, but not until then will he be valued by the public at large as he deserves. The Elopement from the Seraglio was the outstanding success of the Opera Comique in Paris last season. It was sung in French! The Mozart operas hold the German stage. They are sung in the language of the people who pay money to hear them!
be musical as well as understandable. W. J. Henderson once aptly pointed out that singers can sing English as is proven by the fact that every sou-brette in musical comedy knows how to make herself understood. If she did not, she would not remain long in public favor. Let it be so with our high-salaried opera stars!
It is our firm belief that Mozart will come into
March 8, 1923
subject for Mozart and da Ponte's labors. Music critics, we do fear, lack a sense of humor. They also lack what is more important, faith in the imaginative power of average human beings. The proof of the case of Cosi Fan Tutte is that da Ponte’s plot is invariably taken at face value and entered heartily into by the auditors.
The Elopement from the Seralgio has a slender subject, not uninteresting and never unintelligible, and if the librettos of Idomeneo and The Clemency of Titus are more or less the conventional stories of opera of the period in which they are composed, the music so assists them that no one need be disconcerted by the lack of fresh or novel scenes in the dramas.
Over The Magic Flute many lances are broken, but mostly because of the earnest souls who seek for deep symbolism which baffles them. If they would approach this opera as a delightful, spectacular, fantastic fairy story and be content with a few obvious indications of moral purpose such as good entertainment often provides, they would find nothing but could be taken with due allowance for the licenses of stagecraft. The evident change of purpose of the authors after the opera is begun is disconcerting only if we insist too insistently on the logical. Those of the latter mind had best flee the opera house at once, for what then becomes of The Ring of the Nibelung, Parsifal or any number of credited operas ?
We do not propose to go exhaustively into the much debated and mooted problem of opera in English, but only so far as it affects Mozart. It is a humorous comment on the situation of the purists who demand opera in its original language that though English is taboo they sit calmly and quietly under the spell of Russian operas in French and German operas in Italian. In a generation, we are told, The Magic Flute has had but four performances in New York in the language to which the music was composed, German, the majority of the representations being in Italian. On what grounds, other than those of snobbery, are such proceedings excused? In the countries where opera has grown into the life of the people and as part consequence of this, has produced composers of merit, opera invariably is demanded in the vernacular.
There are two factors only that need seriously be considered in the question of translated opera. The purists have but one leg to stand on, namely that, because the composer wrote his music for such and such words and sentiments, the real value is lost when the accents are misplaced. This is, of course, undeniable; but when the real value of keeping the accents where they belong is lost on the greater percentage of the audience which hears them, does the gain offset the loss? What is the practical benefit of a purely aesthetic principle if it fails to work for the general welfare? If the accents are properly placed and only a small minority is appreciative of the fact, are we not chasing a will-o-wisp?
What we have to consider is the state of existing librettos in English and of the singers who sing them. We recently had some examples of translated Wagner books. It was quite a simple matter for the wags to pick out separate and individual absurdities and make merry over them, but for the most part the general results of the work were overlooked. Would the original libretto have stood the same relentless close scrutiny to which the English adapters were put? Willingness to spend money, a wise selection of the proper persons to make new, not revised or patched-up translations, would supply books which would not sacrifice the beloved accents too much or too ludicrously and would present singable English that is not silly; probably far less so than the original lines.
Whenever anyone states that English is not a beautiful language we wonder if he knows what English is. As for singers who can sing it beautifully, we must have an imperative demand before they will appear. We listen to a very great deal of bad German, Italian and French uncomplainingly because few of us know it is bad and the rest if they are honest will admit that they cannot from the singer’s enunciation, except in rare cases, understand much more of it than they do when opera is sung in English at the present time. But because diction is poor is no adequate argument against cpera in our native language. Singers compelled to sing English would soon be forced to enunciate or would be left behind. That English can be sung and be sung beautifully is evident from such artists as Emma Calvé, Florence Easton and Clarence White-hill. Even Chief Capoulican, whose English was so startlingly clear that it sent everyone into terroi because of the miserable opera he acted in, and the vile English verse be bad to sing, showed that it can
VIENNA’S CONSERVATISM A HARD BLOW
TO THE AMBITIONS OF THE MODERN COMPOSER
The Orchestra as Well as Chamber Music Field Feels the Far-Reaching Effect of the Present National Crisis—Breaking the Ice Old Treasures in Modern Garb—Rivalry for Strauss—Rare Birds and Sham Novelties
by the Socialist Party of Austria, and their promoters have a sufficiently strong hold on their public^ now to allow of occasional experiments such as the inclusion of Schönberg, Mahler and other works of a decidedly modern character. The same applies to the concerts conducted by the Volks-heim, with its six or seven dependencies in the various poor districts, where modern songs and modern chamber music form the substance of regular Sunday night concerts at extremely low admission prices.
Such pioneer work holds out some hope to our young composers.' Here they will ultimately find an unspoiled, an un-blasé public, with open hearts and open minds. It is here that the germs are being laid for the musical revolution to come.	. .
For the moment, however, Strauss and Puccini are the heroes of the day, and, aside from the comparatively limited attempts quoted above, we are just now witnessing a tremendous reaction from modernism. Heretofore, the conservatism of our important societies and artists may have seemed to be just mere laziness ; in the light of recent events it assumes the appearance of a carefully organized obstruction. A veritable wave of old music has gone through our concert halls during the last few weeks. It is the same old story over again: with stolid reactionaries, great achievements of the past are the cheapest arguments against the accomplishments of present-day modern movements. By all means, let us honor the great works of our ancestors, but let’s not do so to the detriment of our contemporary artists. And, above all, let us be careful in the choice of our arguments. Surely, The History of the Life and Death of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ (the work is even longer than its title), by Heinrich Schütz, is not a very strong argument in favor of the old masters, and the fact that such a thing of purely historical interest was inflicted upon a bored audience (at the latest concert of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde) to the exclusion of any modern work, smacks of an intentional demonstration. The same is true of practically all of this society’s concerts this year. Their programs, it seems, are being compiled by some self-contented bookworm, instead of a live conductor.
Old Treasures in Modern Garb.
Research into the past, however, may often be fruitful, when governed by a modern and clever spirit, and one of the most interesting and pleasing concerts of old music was that devoted to a revival of the old Minnelieder of the Middle Ages. These songs, products of the German Troubadours from the time “when knights were bold,” have been carefully selected and re-written by Alfred Rottauscher, a Vienna poet, and Bernhard Paumgartner, director of the Mozarteum in Salzburg, has provided the accompaniments in a stylé frequently approaching the ecclesiastical modes (the originals, of course, having been written for voice alone and leaving the lute accompaniment entirely to the discretion of the singer). These songs have now been published by the Stephenson publishing firm, of Vienna, and Hans Duhan, the baritone, offered them in an interesting song recital. They are of great historical interest, but, fortunately, their interest is not limited to their historical importance. There is in these songs a simple tenderness of feeling and a subtle humor which give joy to the hearts of a modern audience. Wagnerites were pleased to hear some of the lovely lyrics by Walter von der Vogelweide, of Meistersinger fame, and readers of the book found a highly (Continued on page 10)
Vienna, January 31.—Conservatism is rampant in Vienna’s musical life, and it is conservatism of the most radical and uncompromising kind. Our principal musical organizations, it seems, will perform almost anything else rather than give the modern composer a show, and what little contemporary music is chosen by them for performance, is stuff of the tamest and most old-fashioned sort. Here’s the list: Weingartner, in his Philharmonic series, tries to pass off Korngold’s Much Ado About Nothing as representative modern music and, aside from his own Reisenauer Variations, offers no untried new composition. Furtwängler, still worse, plays the same old favorite things and his only “new” work this year is a performance of Handel’s Saul—hardly a real novelty. That kind old gentleman, Ferdinand Löwe, who still directs the destinies of the Konzertverein series, may be hardly looked to for musical radicalism; he persists in playing his friends and contemporaries, Brahms and Bruckner, over and over again, and the new piano concerto by Julius Weismann which he included in his latest program, with the composer himself at the piano, was merely a sham novelty—the customary concoction of Brahms, Wagner and Strauss which certain younger German composers dote on.
The situation is no better in the chamber music field. We have no Hindemiths and Havemanns, but we still have the Roses, who delight in their Beethoven and Brahms cycles. In former years they used to play Schönberg now and then (which in fact they still do on their foreign tours), but their programs have become more and more “bourgeois” with the waning years. Webern, Berg, Wellesz and the others do not exist for them, and when they DO play a novelty now and then, one may be sure to anticipate wellbehaving, nice music such as the Fantastischer Reigen by the same Julius Weismann alluded to above. The same atmosphere of conservatism prevails at the concerts of the Mairecker-Buxbaum Quartet, and the Gottesmann Quartet, consisting of Jour enthusiastic and enterprising young men, is not sufficiently prominent, unfortunately, to attain any far-reaching educational results with its occasional brave excursions into the realm of new and interestingly novel music.
Breaking the Ice.
There are, of course, a few exceptions to the rule. Needless to say, Arnold Schönberg and his pupils are working hard and arduously to break away from the new composer, principally for Schönberg himself, in the series of propaganda concerts organized by Schönberg’s Society for Private Performances. The enthusiasm of the young men centering around the prophet of Mödling (a suburb of Vienna made famous by Schubert, and now the dwelling place of so diametrically opposed a musician as Arnold Schönberg) is indeed almost touching. Knowing that their labor is wasted on the public, they have held for the sheer love of art, some hundred and more rehearsals for their production of Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire alone 1 The ultimate production, of course, found, for the most, a stoical audience. There was none of the hissing and whistling which has become closely associated with Schönberg performances of late, but it was evident that to the majority of the hearers Pierrot Lunaire was merely a surface sensation.
How much more encouraging was the reception accorded the Schönberg Verklärte Nacht (in the arrangement for string orchestra) at one of the Workers’ Orchestral Concerts, which are achieving an increasingly prominent position in the city’s musical life. These concerts are organized
THE REDOUTENSAAL IN THE IMPERIAL PALACE, VIENNA.
This is the historic hall where Mozart conducted his symphonies for the Austrian Court. When the place was adapted for the Vienna Staatsoper’s performance last year, the original appearance of the hall, including the costly old tapestries,
was fully preserved.	*