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ASPECTS OF MODERN OPERA

_Estimates and Inquiries_


BY

LAWRENCE GILMAN

AUTHOR OF

"The Music of To-morrow," "Phases of Modern Music," "Stories of
Symphonic Music," "Edward MacDowell: A Study," "Strauss' 'Salome': A
Guide to the Opera," "Debussy's 'Pelleas et Melisande': A Guide to the
Opera," etc.


  NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
  LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
  MCMIX

  COPYRIGHT, 1908,
  JOHN LANE COMPANY

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.




TO

ERNEST NEWMAN

A CRITIC OF

BREADTH, WISDOM, AND INDEPENDENCE

THESE STUDIES

ARE APPRECIATIVELY INSCRIBED




CONTENTS


                                                          PAGE

  INTRODUCTORY: THE WAGNERIAN AFTERMATH                      1

  A VIEW OF PUCCINI                                         31

  STRAUSS' "SALOME": ITS ART AND ITS MORALS                 65

  A PERFECT MUSIC-DRAMA                                    107




INTRODUCTORY

THE WAGNERIAN AFTERMATH


Since that day when, a quarter of a century ago, Richard Wagner ceased
to be a dynamic figure in the life of the world, the history of
operatic art has been, save for a few conspicuous exceptions, a barren
and unprofitable page; and it has been so, in a considerable degree,
because of him. When Mr. William F. Apthorp, in his admirable history
of the opera--a book written with unflagging gusto and vividness--observed
that Wagner's style has been, since his death, little imitated, he
made an astonishing assertion. "If by Wagner's influence," he went on,
"is meant the influence of his individuality, it may fairly be said to
have been null. In this respect Wagner has had no more followers than
Mozart or Beethoven; he has founded no school." Again one must
exclaim: An astonishing affirmation! and it is not the first time that
it has been made, nor will it be the last. Yet how it can have seemed
a reasonable thing to say is one of the insoluble mysteries. The
influence of Wagner--the influence of his individuality as well as of
his principles--upon the musical art of the past twenty-five years has
been simply incalculable. It has tinged, when it has not dyed and
saturated, every phase and form of creative music, from the opera to
the sonata and string quartet.

It is not easy to understand how anyone who is at all familiar with
the products of musical art in Europe and America since the death of
the tyrant of Bayreuth can be disposed to question the fact. No
composer who ever lived influenced so deeply the music that came
after him as did Wagner. It is an influence that is, of course,
waning; and to the definite good of creative art, for it has been in a
large degree pernicious and oppressive in its effect. The shadow of
the most pervasive of modern masters has laid a sinister and
paralysing magic upon almost all of his successors. They have sought
to exert his spells, they have muttered what they imagined were his
incantations; yet the thing which they had hoped to raise up in glory
and in strength has stubbornly refused to breathe with any save an
artificial and feeble life. None has escaped the contagion of his
genius, though some, whom we shall later discuss, have opposed against
it a genius and a creative passion of their own. Yet in the domain of
the opera, wherewith we are here especially concerned, it is an
exceedingly curious and interesting fact that out of the soil which he
enriched with his own genius have sprung, paradoxically, the only
living and independent forces in the lyrico-dramatic art of our time.

Let us consider, first, those aspects of the operatic situation which,
by reason of the paucity of creative vitality that they connote, are,
to-day, most striking; and here we shall be obliged to turn at once to
Germany. The more one hears of the new music that is being put forth
by Teutonic composers, the stronger grows one's conviction of the
lack, with a single exception, of any genuine creative impulse in that
country to-day. It is doubtless a little unreasonable to expect to be
able to agree in this matter with the amiable lady who told Matthew
Arnold that she liked to think that aesthetic excellence was "common
and abundant." As the sagacious Arnold pointed out, it is not in the
nature of aesthetic excellence that it should be "common and
abundant"; on the contrary, he observed, excellence dwells among rocks
hardly accessible, and a man must almost wear out his heart before