Tastes
change. Fashions change. Presumptions, through whose refracting prisms
each new age interprets its aesthetics, also change, but usually unpredictably
because we absorb the restrictions without being conscious of their control. It’s
probably called culture, and perhaps we are all imprisoned by its inherently
commercial pressure. And we only rarely perceive change in our ability to
respond to stimuli, often surprisingly perceived when we remove our experience
into a different culture, a different aesthetic and possibly another time. This
is precisely why exploration of criticism from the past can be so rewarding
and, in a way that the writing would never have achieved in its contemporary
setting, challenging. It was this kind of experience that flowed from every
page of Paul Rosenfeld’s Musical Portraits.
These
“Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers” were published in 1920, having
previously appeared as occasional pieces elsewhere. A hundred years on, of
course, the first challenge is the meaning of the word “modern” in its title,
especially when the presented list of composers starts with Wagner and finishes
with Bloch. Personally, I have nothing against classifying Bloch as “modern” in
the 1920s, but the inclusion of Wagner is surely pushing the definition, since
he had already been dead for over 35 years.
Reading
Rosenfeld’s text, however, one quickly understands Wagner‘s
inclusion. For the writer, Wagner’s work created the cusp between the
feudal and modern worlds. His stature and influence was still so great, his
achievements still considered so monumental, that this work of critical
appraisal just had to begin with his name. Rosenfeld sees his music dramas as
manifestations of a new industrial age, reflecting the unprecedented might of
the new coal-powered civilization.
Strauss,
Richard, of course, comes next. Pure genius, he is judged, at least on the
evidence of his early symphonic poems, which approached a realization of the
Nietzschean dream via colours that suggested impressionist
painting. By the time we reach Salome, however, he had become “a bad composer”,
“once so electric, so vital, so brilliant a figure” had
transformed into someone “dreary and outward and stupid”. Rosenkavalier is
judged “singularly hollow and flat and dun, joyless and soggy”. One must recall
that this was 1920 and that Richard Strauss still had over 20 years of creative
life remaining.
Mussorgsky’s
“marvelous originality” was an expression of the true nature of Russian
folklore, culture and peasant life. Liszt, on the other hand, was offering work
like “satin robes covering foul, unsightly rags”, “designed by the pompous and
classicizing Palladio, but executed in stucco and other cheap materials”. The
impression was vivid, but the substance close to zero.
Berlioz,
on the other hand, had grown in stature. His music was judged barbarous and
radical and revolutionary, “beside which so much modern music dwindles”. He was
the first to write directly for the orchestra as an instrument.
Cesar Franck suffers the ignominy of having a good
part of his section devoted discussions of Saint-Saens. He can be gratified,
however, that the author judges his work greater than that of this more famous
composer, who seemed to seek only an increase in opus numbers. Franck’s own
music is seen as an expression of the silent
majority, those who feel “forsaken and alone and powerless”, the army of
society’s workers. The basis for this is that Franck had himself to work for a
living.
Claude
Debussy, by contrast, already seems to Rosenfeld to have achieved the status of
a god, so elevated by aesthetic and achievement from the rest of humanity that
it could hardly be considered he had ever composed a bad note. The piano of
this most perfect living musician, becomes “satins and liqueurs”, his orchestra
sparkling “with iridescent fires ... delicate violets and argents and shades of
rose”.
Ravel
is something of a problem child, certainly impressive, but whose judgment is
not quite trusted, no matter how engaging it might sound. “Permitted to remain,
in all his manhood, the child that we all were”, he seems to receive a pat on
the head to encourage him to try harder.
Borodin,
a true proud nationalist, suffered from “flawed originality”. But his music,
like an uncovered, uncut piece of porphyry or malachite is perfect in its
natural, unpolished state. Rimsky-Korsakov, on the other hand, is merely
decorative and graceful, but also vapid, whilst Rachmaninoff offered product
that was “too smooth and soft and elegantly elegiac, simply too dull”. It was
the music of the pseudo-French culture of the Saint Petersburg upper crust.
Scriabine,
however, “awakened in the piano all of its latent animality”. He wrote music
that “hovered on the borderland between ecstasy and suffering”, probably
bitter-sweet to the layman. But Strawinsky was the ultimate realist. A product
of industrialization, he produced “great weighty metallic masses, molten piles
and sheets of steel and iron, shining adamantine bulks”. So real were the
impressions in his music that one might even smell the sausages grilling at Petrushka’s
fair.
Four
contemporary “German” composers are
thoroughly dismissed, Strauss being bankrupt, Reger grotesquely pedantic, Schoenberg intellectually tainted and
Mahler banal, despite the fact that only two of the four were actually German.
Specifically, Mahler’s scores were “lamentably weak, often arid and banal”. It
seems that much of Rosenfeld’s criticism arises out of an inquisitorial
distrust of Mahler’s sincerity in converting from Judaism. The music of Reger,
the author judges, is unlikely to suffer a revival and the composer himself is
described as being like a “swollen,
myopic beetle, with thick lips and sullen expression, crouching on an organ
bench”. Let us say no more. Schoenberg is a troubling presence, formalistic and
intellectual. He smells of the laboratory and exists in an obedience to some
abstract scholastic demand. We are still discussing music, by the way.
Sibelius
personifies nationalism, Finnish
nationalism, of course. As it emerges from its domination under the Russian
yoke, Finnish identity suddenly realizes it has a beautiful landscapes, meadows
and forests.
Loeffler,
surprisingly, gets a full entry. Perhaps it has something to do with his opting
to live in the United States. Ornstein will be a name that is perhaps
unfamiliar to 21st-century music lovers. At the time he was a brilliant
25-year-old pianist who was embarking on the composition of tough, rugged
scores. And finally Bloch is praised for introducing non-European and oriental
influences into western music. He is praised for retaining his Jewish identity
and culture, which suggests that Mahler might have got off with lighter
criticism had he not rejected the faith and thus have allowed they author to
note the similarity of that composer’s clarinet writing to klezmer.
Opinion
in the words of Paul Rosenfeld often presents a florid display, mixing
prejudice and observation, and pre-judgment with insight. He describes his
appreciation of these twenty composers through the distorting lens of his own
aesthetic, derived from the assumptions of his age. Reading this short,
concentrated work, we soon appreciate that we are doing the same. Only the
language and the presumptions are changed.