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The
Merry-Go-Round

[Illustration]




_BOOKS BY_
_CARL VAN VECHTEN_

MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR              1915

MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS                  1916

INTERPRETERS AND INTERPRETATIONS       1917

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND                     1918

THE MUSIC OF SPAIN                     1918




The
Merry-Go-Round

_Carl Van Vechten_


_"Tournez, tournez, bons chevaux de bois,
  Tournez cent tours, tournez mille tours,
  Tournez souvent et tournez toujours,
  Tournez, tournez au sons de hautbois."_
                      PAUL VERLAINE


[Illustration]

New York   Alfred A. Knopf

MCMXVIII




COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




Contents


                                                     PAGE

IN DEFENCE OF BAD TASTE                                11

MUSIC AND SUPERMUSIC                                   23

EDGAR SALTUS                                           37

THE NEW ART OF THE SINGER                              93

_Au Bal Musette_                                      125

MUSIC AND COOKING                                     149

AN INTERRUPTED CONVERSATION                           179

THE AUTHORITATIVE WORK ON AMERICAN MUSIC              197

OLD DAYS AND NEW                                      215

TWO YOUNG AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHTS                        227

_De Senectute Cantorum_                               245

IMPRESSIONS IN THE THEATRE

    I _The Land of Joy_                               281

    II A Note on Mimi Aguglia                         298

    III The New Isadora                               307

    IV Margaret Anglin Produces _As You Like It_      318

THE MODERN COMPOSERS AT A GLANCE                      329

FOOTNOTES                                             330

INDEX                                                 331




     Some of these essays have appeared in "The Smart Set,"
     "Reedy's Mirror," "Vanity Fair," "The Chronicle," "The
     Theatre," "The Bellman," "The Musical Quarterly," "Rogue,"
     "The New York Press," and "The New York Globe." In their
     present form, however, they have undergone considerable
     redressing.




In Defence of Bad Taste


     "_It is a painful thing, at best, to live up to one's
     bricabric, if one has any; but to live up to the bricabric
     of many lands and of many centuries is a strain which no
     wise man would dream of inflicting upon his constitution._"

                        Agnes Repplier.




In Defence of Bad Taste


In America, where men are supposed to know nothing about matters of
taste and where women have their dresses planned for them, the
household decorator has become an important factor in domestic life.
Out of an even hundred rich men how many can say that they have had
anything to do with the selection or arrangement of the furnishings
for their homes? In theatre programs these matters are regulated and
due credit is given to the various firms who have supplied the myriad
appeals to the eye; one knows who thought out the combinations of
shoes, hats, and parasols, and one knows where each separate article
was purchased. Why could not some similar plan of appreciation be
followed in the houses of our very rich? Why not, for instance, a card
in the hall something like the following:

    _This house was furnished and decorated according
      to the taste of Marcel of the Dilly-Billy Shop_

or

    _We are living in the kind of house Miss Simone
        O'Kelly thought we should live in. The
          decorations are pure Louis XV and
             the furniture is authentic._

It is not difficult, of course, to differentiate the personal from the
impersonal. Nothing clings so ill to the back as borrowed finery and I
have yet to find the family which has settled itself fondly and
comfortably in chairs which were a part of some one else's aesthetic
plan. As a matter of fact many of our millionaires would be more at
home in an atmosphere concocted from the ingredients of plain pine
tables and blanket-covered mattresses than they are surrounded by the
frippery of China and the frivolity of France. If these gentlemen were
fortunate enough to enjoy sufficient confidence in their own taste to
give it a thorough test it is not safe to think of the extreme burden
that would be put on the working capacity of the factories of the
Grand Rapids furniture companies. We might find a few emancipated
souls scouring the town for heavy refectory tables and divans into
which one could sink, reclining or upright, with a perfect sense of
ease, but these would be as rare as Steinway pianos in Coney Island.

For Americans are meek in such matters. They credit themselves with no
taste. They fear comparison. If the very much sought-after Simone
O'Kelly has decorated Mr. B.'s house Mr. M. does not dare to struggle
along with merely his own ideas in furnishing his. He calls in an
expert who begins, rather inauspiciously, by painting the dining-room
salmon pink. The tables and chairs will be made by somebody on Tenth
Street, exact copies of a set to be found in the Musee Carnavalet. The
legs under the table are awkwardly arranged for diners but they look
very well when the table is unclothed. The decorator plans to hang Mr.
M.'s personal bedroom in pale plum colour. Mr. M. rebels at this. "I
detest," he remarks mildly, "all variants of purple." "Very well,"
acquiesces the decorator, "we will make it green." In the end Mr. M.'s
worst premonitions are realized: the walls are resplendent in a
striking shade of magenta. Along the edge of each panel of Chinese
brocade a narrow band of absinthe velvet ribbon gives the necessary
contrast. The furniture is painted in dull ivory with touches of gold
and beryl and the bed cover is peacock blue. Four round cushions of a
similar shade repose on the floor at the foot of the bed. The fat
manufacturer's wife as she enters this triumph of decoration which
might satisfy Louise de la Valliere or please Doris Keane, is an
anachronistic figure and she is aware of it. She prefers, on the
whole, the brass bedsteads of the summer hotels. Mr. M. himself feels
ridiculous. He never enters the room without a groan and a remark on
the order of "Good God, what a colour!" His personal taste finds its
supreme enjoyment in the Circassian walnut panelling, desk, and tables
of the directors' room in the Millionaire's Trust and Savings Bank.
"Rich and tasteful": how many times he has used this phrase to express
his approval! In the mid-Victorian red plush of his club, too, he is
comfortable. "Waiter, another whiskey and soda!"

Mildred is expected home after her first year in boarding school. Her
mother wishes to environ her, so to speak. Mildred is delicate in her
tastes, so delicate that she scarcely ever expresses herself. Her mind
and body are pure; her heart beats faster when she learns of distress.
Voluptuousness, Venus, and Vice are all merely words to her. Mother
does not explain this to the decorator. "My daughter is returning from
school," she says, "I want her room done." "What style of room?"
"After all you are supposed to know that. I am engaging you to arrange
it for me." "Your daughter, I take it, is a modern girl?" "You may
assume as much." In despair for a hint the decorator steals a look at
a photograph of the miss, full-lipped, melting dark eyes, and
blue-black hair. Sensing an houri he hangs the walls with a deep shade
of Persian orange, over which flit tropical birds of emerald and
azure; strange pomegranates bleed their seeds at regular intervals.
The couch is an adaptation, in colour, of the celebrated _Sumurun_
bed. The dressing table and the _chaise-longue_ are of Chinese
lacquer. A heavy bronze incense burner pours forth fumes of Bichara's
_Scheherazade_. From the window frames, stifling the light, depend
flame- brocaded curtains embroidered in Egyptian enamelled
beads. It is a triumph, this chamber, of _style Ballet Russe_. Diana
is banished... and shrinking Mildred, returning from school, finds
her demure soul at variance with her surroundings.

A man's house should be the expression of the man himself. All the
books on the subject and even the household decorators themselves will
tell you that. But, if the decoration of a house is to express its
owner, it is necessary that he himself inspire it, which implies, of
course, the possession of ideas, even though they be bad. And men in
these United States are not expected to display mental anguish or
pleasure when confronted by colour combinations. In America one is
constantly hearing young ladies say, "He's a man and so, of course,
knows nothing about colour," or "Of course a man never looks at
clothes." It does not seem to be necessary to argue this point. One
has only to remember that Veronese was a man; so was Velasquez. Even
Paul Poiret and Leon Bakst belong to the sex of Adam. Nevertheless
most Americans still consider it a little _effemine_, a trifle
_declasse_, for a business man (allowances are sometimes made for
poets, musicians, actors, and people who live in Greenwich Village),
to make any references to colour or form. He may admire, with obvious
emphasis on the women they lightly enclose, the costumes of the
_Follies_ but he is not permitted to exhibit knowledge of materials
and any suddenly expressed desire on his part to rush into a shop and
hug some bit of colour from the show window to his heart would be
regarded as a symptom of madness.

The audience which gives the final verdict on a farce makes allowances
for the author; permits him the use of certain conventions. For
example, he is given leave to introduce a hotel corridor into his last
act with seven doors opening on a common hallway so that his
characters may conveniently and persistently enter the wrong rooms.
It may be supposed that I ask for some such license from my audience.
"How ridiculous," you may be saying, "I know of interior decorators
who spend weeks in reading out the secrets of their clients' souls in
order to provide their proper settings." There doubtless are interior
decorators who succeed in giving a home the appearance of a well-kept
hotel where guests may mingle comfortably and freely. I should not
wish to deny this. But I do deny that soul-study is a requirement for
the profession. If a man (or a woman) has a soul it will not be a
decorator who will discover its fitting housing. Others may object,
"But bad taste is rampant. Surely it is better to be guided by some
one who knows than to surround oneself with rocking chairs, plaster
casts of the Winged Victory, and photographs of various madonnas." I
say that it is _not_ better. It is better for each man to express
himself, through his taste, as well as through his tongue or his pen,
as he may. And it is only through such expression that he will finally
arrive (if he ever can) at a condition of household furnishing which
will say something to his neighbour as well as to himself. It is a
pleasure when one leaves a dinner party to be able to observe "That is
_his_ house," just as it is a pleasure when one leaves a concert to
remember that a composer has expressed himself and not the result of
seven years study in Berlin or Paris.

But Americans have little aptitude for self-expression. They prefer to
huddle, like cattle, under unspeakable whips when matters of art are
under discussion. They fear ridicule. As a consequence many of the
richest men in this country never really live in their own homes,
never are comfortable for a moment, although the walls are hung double
with Fragonards and hawthorne vases stand so deep upon the tables that
no space remains for the "Saturday Review" or "le Temps." And they
never, never, never, will know the pleasure which comes while
stumbling down a side street in London, or in the mouldy corners of
the Venetian ghetto, or in the Marche du Temple in Paris, or, heaven
knows, in New York, on lower Fourth Avenue, or in Chinatown, or in a
Russian brass shop on Allen Street, or in a big department store (as
often there as anywhere) in finding just the lamp for just the table
in just the corner, or in discovering a bit of brocade, perhaps the
ragged remnant of a waistcoat belonging to an aristocrat of the
Directorate, which will lighten the depths of a certain room, or a
chair which goes miraculously with a desk already possessed, or a
Chinese mirror which one had almost decided did not exist. Nor will
they ever experience the joy of sudden decision in front of a picture
by Matisse, which ends in the sale of a Delacroix. Nor can they feel
the thrill which is part of the replacing of a make-shift rug by _the_
rug of rugs (let us hope it was Solomon's!).

I know a lady in Paris whose salon presents a different aspect each
summer. Do her Picassos go, a new Spanish painter has replaced them.
Have you missed the Gibbons carving? Spanish church carving has taken
its place. "And where are your Venetian embroideries?" "I sold them to
the Marquise de V.... The money served to buy these Persian
miniatures." This lady has travelled far. She is not experimenting in
doubtful taste or bad art; she is not even experimenting in her own
taste: she is simply enjoying different epochs, different artists,
different forms of art, each in its turn, for so long as it says
anything to her. Her house is not a museum. Space and comfort demand
exclusion but she excludes nothing forever that she desires.... She
exchanges.

Taste at best is relative. It is an axiom that anybody else's taste
can never say anything to you although you may feel perfectly certain
that it is better than your own. If more of the money of the rich
were spent in encouraging children to develop their own ideas in
furnishing their own rooms it would serve a better purpose than it
does now when it is dropped into the ample pockets of the professional
decorators. Oscar Wilde wrote, "A colour sense is more important in
the development of the individual than a sense of right and wrong."
Any young boy or girl can learn something about such matters; most of
them, if not shamed out of it, take a natural interest in their
surroundings. You will see how true this is if you attempt to
rearrange a child's room. Those who have bad taste, relatively, should
literally be allowed to make their own beds. On the whole it is
preferable to be comfortable in red and green velvet upholstery than
to be beautiful and unhappy in a household decorator's gilded cage.

  _September 3, 1915._




Music and Supermusic


     "_To know whether you are enjoying a piece of music or not
     you must see whether you find yourself looking at the
     advertisements of Pears' soap at the end of the program._"

                        Samuel Butler.




Music and Supermusic


What is the distinction in the mind of Everycritic between good music
and bad music, in the mind of Everyman between popular music and
"classical" music? What is the essential difference between an air by
Mozart and an air by Jerome Kern? Why is Chopin's _G minor nocturne_
better music than Thecla Badarzewska's _La Priere d'une Vierge_? Why
is a music drama by Richard Wagner preferable to a music drama by
Horatio W. Parker? What makes a melody distinguished? What makes a
melody commonplace or cheap? Why do some melodies ring in our ears
generation after generation while others enjoy but a brief popularity?
Why do certain composers, such as Raff and Mendelssohn, hailed as
geniuses while they were yet alive, soon sink into semi-obscurity,
while others, such as Robert Franz and Moussorgsky, almost
unrecognized by their contemporaries, grow in popularity? Are there no
answers to these conundrums and the thousand others that might be
asked by a person with a slight attack of curiosity?... No one _does_
ask and assuredly no one answers. These riddles, it would seem, are
included among the forbidden mysteries of the sphynx. The critics
assert with authority and some show of erudition that the Spohrs, the
Mendelssohns, the Humperdincks, and the Montemezzis are great
composers. They usually admire the grandchildren of Old Lady Tradition
but they neglect to justify this partiality. Nor can we trust the
public with its favourite Piccinnis and Puccinis.... What then is the
test of supermusic?

For we know, as well as we can know anything, that there is music and
supermusic. Rubinstein wrote music; Beethoven wrote supermusic (Mr.
Finck may contradict this statement). Bellini wrote operas; Mozart
wrote superoperas. Jensen wrote songs; Schubert wrote supersongs. The
superiority of _Voi che sapete_ as a vocal melody over _Ah! non
giunge_ is not generally contested; neither can we hesitate very long
over the question whether or not _Der Leiermann_ is a better song than
_Lehn' deine Wang'_. Probably even Mr. Finck will admit that the
_Sonata Appassionata_ is finer music than the most familiar portrait
(I think it is No. 22) in the _Kamennoi-Ostrow_ set. But, if we agree
to put Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, and a few others on
marmorean pedestals in a special Hall of Fame (and this is a
compromise on my part, at any rate, as I consider much of the music
written by even these men to be below any moderately high standard),
what about the rest? Mr. Finck prefers Johann Strauss to Brahms, nay
more to Richard himself! He has written a whole book for no other
reason, it would seem, than to prove that the author of _Tod und
Verklarung_ is a very much over-rated individual. At times sitting
despondently in Carnegie Hall, I am secretly inclined to agree with
him. Personally I can say that I prefer Irving Berlin's music to that
of Edward MacDowell and I would like to have some one prove to me that
this position is untenable.

What is the test of supermusic? I have read that fashionable music,
music composed in a style welcomed and appreciated by its contemporary
hearers is seldom supermusic. Yet Handel wrote fashionable music, and
so much other of the music of that epoch is Handelian that it is often
difficult to be sure where George Frederick left off and somebody else
began. Bellini wrote fashionable music and _Norma_ and _La Sonnambula_
sound a trifle faded although they are still occasionally performed,
but Rossini, whose only desire was to please his public, (Liszt once
observed "Rossini and Co. always close with 'I remain your very
humble servant'"), wrote melodies in _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_ which
sound as fresh to us today as they did when they were first composed.
And when this prodigiously gifted musician-cook turned his back to the
public to write _Guillaume Tell_ he penned a work which critics have
consistently told us is a masterpiece, but which is as seldom
performed today as any opera of the early Nineteenth Century which
occasionally gains a hearing at all. Therefor we must be wary of the
old men who tell us that we shall soon tire of the music of Puccini
because it is fashionable.

Popularity is scarcely a test. I have mentioned Mendelssohn. Never was
there a more popular composer, and yet aside from the violin concerto
what work of his has maintained its place in the concert repertory?
Yet Chopin, whose name is seldom absent from the program of a pianist,
was a god in his own time and the most brilliant woman of his epoch
fell in love with him, as Philip Moeller has recently reminded us in
his very amusing play. On the other hand there is the case of Robert
Franz whose songs never achieved real popularity during his lifetime,
but which are frequently, almost invariably indeed, to be found on
song recital programs today and which are more and more appreciated.
The critics are praising him, the public likes him: they buy his
songs. And there is also the case of Max Reger who was not popular, is
not popular, and never will be popular.

Can we judge music by academic standards? Certainly not. Even the
hoary old academicians themselves can answer this question correctly
if you put it in relation to any composer born before 1820. The
greatest composers have seldom respected the rules. Beethoven in his
last sonatas and string quartets slapped all the pedants in the ears;
yet I believe you will find astonishingly few rules broken by Mozart,
one of the gods in the mythology of art music, and Berlioz, who broke
all the rules, is more interesting to us today as a writer of prose
than as a writer of music.

Is simple music supermusic? Certainly not invariably. _Vedrai Carino_
is a simple tune, almost as simple as a folk-song and we set great
store by it; yet Michael William Balfe wrote twenty-seven operas
filled with similarly simple tunes and in a selective draft of
composers his number would probably be 9,768. The _Ave Maria_ of
Schubert is a simple tune; so is the _Meditation_ from _Thais_. Why do
we say that one is better than the other.

Or is supermusic always grand, sad, noble, or emotional? There must be
another violent head shaking here. The air from _Oberon, Ocean, thou
mighty monster_, is so grand that scarcely a singer can be found today
capable of interpreting it, although many sopranos puff and steam
through it, for all the world like pinguid gentlemen climbing the
stairs to the towers of Notre Dame. The _Fifth Symphony_ of Beethoven
is both grand and noble; probably no one will be found who will deny
that it is supermusic, but Mahler's _Symphony of the Thousand_ is
likewise grand and noble, and futile and bombastic to boot. _Or sai
chi l'onore_ is a grand air, but _Robert je t'aime_ is equally grand
in intention, at least. _Der Tod und das Madchen_ is sad; so is _Les
Larmes_ in _Werther_.... But a very great deal of supermusic is
neither grand nor sad. Haydn's symphonies are usually as light-hearted
and as light-waisted as possible. Mozart's _Figaro_ scarcely seems to
have a care. Listen to Beethoven's _Fourth_ and _Eighth Symphonies_,
_Il Barbiere_ again, _Die Meistersinger_.... But do not be misled:
Massenet's _Don Quichotte_ is light music; so is Mascagni's
_Lodoletta_....

Is music to be prized and taken to our hearts because it is
contrapuntal and complex? We frequently hear it urged that Bach (who
was more or less forgotten for a hundred years, by the way) was the
greatest of composers and his music is especially intricate. He is the
one composer, indeed, who can _never_ be played with one finger! But
poor unimportant forgotten Max Reger also wrote in the most
complicated forms; the great Gluck in the simplest. Gluck, indeed, has
even been considered weak in counterpoint and fugue. Meyerbeer, it is
said, was also weak in counterpoint and fugue. Is he therefor to be
regarded as the peer of Gluck? Is Mozart's _G minor Symphony_ more
important (because it is more complicated) than the same composer's,
_Batti, Batti_?

We learn from some sources that music stands or falls by its melody
but what is good melody? According to his contemporaries Wagner's
music dramas were lacking in melody. _Sweet Marie_ is certainly a
melody; why is it not as good a melody as _The Old Folks at Home_? Why
is Musetta's waltz more popular than Gretel's? It is no better as
melody. As a matter of fact there is, has been, and for ever will be
war over this question of melody, because the point of view on the
subject is continually changing. As Cyril Scott puts it in his book,
"The Philosophy of Modernism": "at one time it (melody) extended over
a few bars and then came to a close, being, as it were, a kind of
sentence, which, after running for the moment, arrived at a full stop,
or semicolon. Take this and compare it with the modern tendency: for
that modern tendency is to argue that a melody might go on
indefinitely almost; there is no reason why it should come to a full
stop, for it is not a sentence, but more a line, which, like the
rambling incurvations of a frieze, requires no rule to stop it, but
alone the will and taste of its engenderer."

Or is harmonization the important factor? Folk-songs are not
harmonized at all, and yet certain musicians, Cecil Sharp for example,
devote their lives to collecting them, while others, like Percy
Grainger, base their compositions on them. On the other hand such
music as Debussy's _Iberia_ depends for its very existence on its
beautiful harmonies. The harmonies of Gluck are extremely simple,
those of Richard Strauss extremely complex.

H. T. Finck says somewhere that one of the greatest charms of music is
modulation but the old church composers who wrote in the "modes" never
modulated at all. Erik Satie seldom avails himself of this modern
device. It is a question whether Leo Ornstein modulates. If we may
take him at his word Arnold Schoenberg has a system of modulation. At
least it is his very own.

Are long compositions better than short ones? This may seem a silly
question but I have read criticisms based on a theory that they were.
Listen, for example, to de Quincy: "A song, an air, a tune,--that is,
a short succession of notes revolving rapidly upon itself,--how could
that by possibility offer a field of compass sufficient for the
development of great musical effects? The preparation pregnant with
the future, the remote correspondence, the