Musical Criticisms Part 12

The root of the mischief I take to be that the composer--for all his great and imposing powers, his fine taste, his profound and varied learning--is wanting in sureness of touch and consequently in the ability to establish that correspondence between form and idea without which a work of art cannot properly be said to exist. Mr. Fuller Maitland claims for Parry and his group that they "have far more extensive resources in the different styles of music" than, for example, the modern Russians, and this brings us back to the point of the reproach conveyed in the epithet "academic." To musicians bent on the holding of official posts and on success in a worldly career it is of the first importance to "show extensive resources in the different styles of music," and in the large body of Parry's compositions I find far more evidence of desire to show such extensive resources than of the artistic impulse to make music that is absolutely genuine. Sullivan, with his much lower aims and ideals, is for me a better balanced personality and a truer artist. Much of his music in the comic operas is quite to the point. The outward form corresponds to the inward idea in a certain absolute and final manner which there is no mistaking. Hence the clearness of Sullivan's musical individuality or physiognomy. He was not intent on showing resources, but on modelling his material into conformity with his idea, and, because at his best he had the power of doing that, his physiognomy is clear to us and his art vital. It thus appears that such commercialism as Sullivan's does less mischief than such academic tendencies as Parry's.

In Stanford's case I have often protested against the indiscriminate use of the epithet "academic." It seems to me that his compositions on Irish subjects require to be considered quite apart from all the rest. However deplorable may be that Brahmsian vein running through a great ma.s.s of his non-Irish music, he really does in his "Phaudrig," "Shamus," and Irish Symphony and in many of his Irish songs entirely escape from his common-room and give us open-air music. No doubt, as Mr. Fuller Maitland very justly points out, the humour of the Dogberry scenes in Stanford's latest opera is admirable. Those are the scenes in which the composer has followed the model of Verdi's "Falstaff" most closely. Elsewhere he has undertaken to be more original and has not prospered so well. The music of the love scenes is terrible. All that twisted, clever stuff can never have any but a chilling, afflicting, alienating effect on a soul in which any spark is left either of youthfulness or of sympathy with youth. Stanford's musical cleverness, exceeding that of any other mortal except Camille Saint-Saens, has been his bane. His sense of humour, too, is perversely adjusted. In connection with any but an Irish subject it is always liable to mislead him, and I have little doubt that it is the humourist quite as much as the don in him which nowadays makes it impossible for him to treat a love-pa.s.sage in any but a chilly, clever, allusive, intelligible-only-to-the-initiated style. He was a very different man in 1881 when his "Bower of Roses by Bendeemer's Stream" was first heard. Not that he has even now lost his faculty of lyrical tenderness altogether. If the sentiment be a.s.sociated with an infant, or penetrated with a sense of the weird and uncanny, or intermingled with (Irish) patriotic feeling, he can still find the symbol, as his quite recent music to Moira O'Neill's "Songs from the Glens of Antrim" abundantly proves. But the note of warmth and simplicity proper to youthful romance he seems to have lost. A peculiar case among Stanford's compositions is represented by the Irish Symphony, concerning which Mr. Fuller Maitland has nothing to say. Here, notwithstanding the Irish subject, the gown shows through to some slight extent in one place, namely, the development section of the first movement. The conventional critic finds fault with the scherzo in the form of an Irish jig as unsymphonic, as it undoubtedly is. But there would be more sense in suggesting that the composer should have made up his mind to be thoroughly unsymphonic throughout the work, bringing his first movement into harmony with the fine sennachee's improvisation that stands second, the magnificent racy jig, and the buoyant finale. We should thus have had an Irish Rhapsody in four movements without any defect. Even now the one touch of the composer's evil genius that comes out in the first movement is too slight to spoil the work, which has been a joy for a long time, and does not seem to lose its charm. It thus seems to me that Stanford is far too good a man for an "academic,"

though I cannot deny that the epithet is actually justified by more than half the entire body of his published works.

After all it was scarcely likely that the sudden efflorescence of English music, ensuing upon a long period of sterility, would lead at once to fruit of complete maturity. We have now reached the second generation since the revival, and it would be a pity if our best men at the present day were nowise in advance of the leaders who came forward thirty years ago.

[Sidenote: =Centenary Article.=

_January 1, 1901._]

At the dawn of the nineteenth century music was at a low ebb in this country. Purcell had been dead more than a hundred years, and Handel about forty years. The spirit of Puritanism had killed the madrigal-singing of Shakespearean England and suppressed every other manifestation of the popular musical genius. Charles II. had come back from his long residence abroad with a contempt for English music, both sacred and secular, which, as Pepys's Diary shows, he did not hesitate to express in public, and thus the merry-makings of the Restoration brought no revival of the national art. Nor was it likely that the situation, as regards Court influence, should be improved by the House of Hanover--at the time of their accession a race of aliens having no sympathy with the national development of the art. Characteristic of the view that cultivated Englishmen took of music about the middle of the eighteenth century is a letter of Lord Chesterfield's,[3] written when his son was staying at Venice, to warn him against all the "singing, piping, and fiddling" of Italy. He gives the young man to understand that it is unbecoming in a gentleman to take part in such things, though he may pay a fiddler to play to him. Elsewhere, too, Lord Chesterfield is even more crus.h.i.+ng. He lays stress on the inevitable connection between music and low company. The Venice letter was written in 1749--six years after the first performance of the "Messiah" in London and ten years before Handel's death. Perhaps, therefore, the Chesterfield view of music was at that time exceptional. But it must have become more prevalent in the ensuing half-century, and the view of music as an inferior art, represented in its extreme form by Lord Chesterfield, is far from being extinct at the present day. At the same time, fully to account for the low level of musical taste in the England of 1801, due allowance must be made for the comparative neglect of all but political and military affairs caused by the tremendous agitations of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars.

[3] "A taste of sculpture and painting is in my mind as becoming, as a taste of fiddling and piping is unbecoming, a man of fas.h.i.+on."

In the first year of the nineteenth century began the triumphant career of John Braham, the first of the three great English tenor singers who successively adorned the ensuing hundred years. Braham was a good singer, but perhaps the most deplorable composer that ever successfully foisted his rubbish on a tasteless public. His "Death of Nelson"

persists to the present day, for the justification of those who share Lord Chesterfield's musical opinions, and even that unpardonable mixture of sentimental slip-slop and half-hearted c.o.c.k-a-doodle-doo seems to have been a comparatively favourable example of the compositions with which Braham regaled the London public during the early years of the century. The scene of his first triumphs was Covent Garden Theatre, where he was accustomed to appear in composite operatic entertainments, his own part being almost invariably written by himself. A few years after the London _debut_ of Braham the penny-whistle melodies of Sir Henry Bishop sufficed to make him the most popular composer of the day.

In 1810, when Bishop became director at Covent Garden, none of the inst.i.tutions that have played an important part in the musical progress of the century as yet existed in this country. It is true the Festival of the Three Choirs had been held regularly for a very long time already. But there was no Philharmonic Society, no genuine opera, no Sat.u.r.day and Monday popular concerts of chamber-music, no Academy or College of Music, no Crystal Palace or Halle orchestra. The great choral a.s.sociations, independent of Cathedral authorities, had not yet been formed, and England was far too much isolated from the rest of the world in regard to musical affairs.

It is curious to note how precisely the downfall of Napoleon corresponds with the beginning of better things in the English musical world.

Leipsic was fought in 1813, and earlier in that year--as though with a premonition that an era was at hand in which it would be possible to cultivate the arts of peace--a group of musicians a.s.sembled in London to discuss the formation of a Philharmonic Society. The event is of striking significance. Hitherto music had flourished only under the patronage of Lords Temporal and Spiritual; but the _souffle_ of the French Revolution had pa.s.sed over the world, and it was time for music--which had put off the courtly periwig and the courtly graces, and had attained in Beethoven to the purely human standpoint--to be established on a broader basis. Let us give the worthy Bishop his due. A well-meaning person, if a trivial composer, he helped to found the London Philharmonic Society, which was the first society in Europe, and in the world, consciously formed for the furtherance of musical art and for no other purpose.

Glancing now at musical activity in other countries, we find attention necessarily concentrated in the first instance upon the heroic figure of Beethoven, who in this year (1813) had already given to the world his Eroica, C minor, Pastoral, and Seventh Symphonies, besides his Violin Concerto, Razoumoffsky Quartets, Waldstein and Appa.s.sionata Sonatas, his one opera "Fidelio," together with the third "Leonora" overture, and many other works of towering genius. As yet, however, the real significance of Beethoven was undreamed-of in the philosophy of mankind in general, if dimly suspected by a few enlightened persons, mostly resident in Vienna. Mozart had died before the dawn of the century, and Haydn soon after it, having demonstrated the incomparable excellence of that Viennese school (founded on the teachings of f.u.x's "Gradus ad Parna.s.sum"), which had early attracted Beethoven--a Rhinelander by birth--within its charmed circle, and held him there for life. In the first year of the London Philharmonic Society's activity the music of those three--Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven--formed the staple of the concert programmes. In the second year the first performance in England of the Eroica was given. Other works of the highest importance by the same master soon followed, and in 1817 an unsuccessful attempt was made to induce Beethoven to come to England himself and conduct compositions of his own for the Society. In this manner connection was established between this country and the great central stream of musical life and energy at that time.

Beethoven was the colossus who bridged over the gulf between the two great countries of Cla.s.sicism and Romance. Of the Romantic composers, Weber--the founder of German National Opera--was the earliest born. His music was first heard in England during the twenties, the opera "Oberon"

being brought out at Covent Garden under his own direction. Another great Romantic composer born before the close of the eighteenth century was Schubert--a wonderful but most unfortunate man of genius, destined to meet with scarcely any recognition during his lifetime. At a much later period he was discovered and introduced to this country by Sir George Grove. The real seed-time of the Romantic School, however, was the period from 1803 to 1813, which saw the birth of Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Verdi, and Wagner (of all except Berlioz between 1809 and 1813). It is curious that all the stars destined to dominate the musical firmament of the period following Beethoven's death should thus have risen above the horizon within the short period of ten years, and all but one within a period of five years. Every one of them, except Schumann, came sooner or later to our hospitable sh.o.r.es and played a more or less important part in that process by which we have gradually learned to discard Lord Chesterfield's maxim about having nothing to do with fiddling ourselves, while laying more and more to heart his other maxim about paying fiddlers to play to us.

Even more important than these flying visits of master composers from abroad, for their influence on the formation of taste, were the more regular visits of distinguished Continental performers, some of whom, indeed, not only came regularly but came to stay. Of these the most important were Mr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Halle, who in 1857 founded the Manchester concerts that still bear his name; Mr. August Manns, who became conductor at the Crystal Palace in 1855; and Dr. Richter, who has been our regular visitor since 1877 and is now, to the great credit of the Halle Committee and their supporters, living in our midst. Scarcely less important among such foreign influences making for the welfare of musical art in this country is the violin-playing of Dr. Joachim, who has been our constant visitor ever since 1844.

Pursuing the signs of awakening musical life in the second and ensuing decades of the century, we note the foundation of the Royal Academy of Music in 1823, and of the Sacred Harmonic Society in 1832. That Society, now defunct, was originally founded with the idea of replacing an older inst.i.tution called the "Antient Concerts," which had come to grief through depending too much on aristocratic patronage. The Sacred Harmonic Society did good work by performing Handel's "Israel in Egypt,"

"Dettingen Te Deum," and other works, besides the "Messiah." They also did something to make Mozart's church music known in London, though with little encouragement from the public, and they rendered a service to art by insisting on complete performances instead of the sc.r.a.ps and t.i.t-bits from oratorios that were popular at that day. Soon after the founding of the Sacred Harmonic Society, that is about the beginning of the Victorian era, came the palmy days of Italian opera in London. But though the expensive warblings of Grisi, Lablache, and Rubini were no doubt found highly exhilarating by the privileged few who could afford to hear them, it is doubtful whether they did anything for the development of the national taste, except, perhaps, by firing the ambition of Sims Reeves.

Great as is the value of such fine stimulating influences--the visits of distinguished players, singers, composers, and conductors, and performances of master works by musical societies,--they are not enough to leaven the ma.s.s of the people without systematic educational endeavour. Reference has been made to the founding of the Royal Academy of Music. Sixty years later the Royal College was inst.i.tuted, with a view to bringing educational opportunities more into conformity with the wants of the time. Among the work done for the improvement of musical education during the intervening period Mr. John Hullah's is worthy of specially honourable mention. After studying popular musical education in France, and especially the Orpheon movement, Mr. Hullah began cla.s.ses at Exeter Hall for the musical instruction of schoolmasters, and thus originated the vast development of musical training in English elementary schools. In opposition to Mr. Hullah's principles, Mr. John Curwen in 1853 founded the Tonic Sol-fa a.s.sociation, which has since spread its branches all over England. There is supposed to be some sort of connection between staff notation and Church principles, tonic sol-fa and Dissent. Some day, it may be hoped, the history of choral singing in England will be written with the care that the subject deserves. It remains to this day the princ.i.p.al contribution of this country to musical art in modern times. Theoretical masters.h.i.+p originated with the Germans, refined and exact orchestral playing with the French, and brilliant solo singing with the Italians, but it has been reserved for this country to perfect the art of choral singing. Certain persons, more patriotic than truthful, try to make out that the English are best in everything, but this claim in regard to choral singing bears investigation.

Next to the absolute contempt and neglect of music from which we began to emerge early in the century, our greatest misfortune has been a tendency to prefer composers representing the end of some artistic development while rejecting the turbid and formally imperfect but inspiring initiators. Thus, in one age we wors.h.i.+p Handel--a mighty musical architect, but one who never did and never could inspire anyone--while we detest Bach, the most powerful of all inspiring, stimulating, school-forming influences. In another age we make a somewhat similar mistake in regard to Mendelssohn and Schumann, and it is even possible to recognise the same unfortunate tendency at the present day in the public att.i.tude towards Richard Strauss and Tchakovsky respectively, the former a rugged composer teeming with ideas and varied suggestions, the other a remarkable painter in tones but peculiarly restricted in the range of his ideas and emotions, taking care never to suggest anything, but only to attempt what he can render with symmetrical completeness. It is impossible not to regret that we should thus continually prefer composers who lead to nothing, though that is just what might be expected as a result of Lord Chesterfield's principles.

With regard to the extraordinary Mendelssohnian taste of the British public which placed the accomplished fair-weather composer on a much higher pinnacle here than he ever occupied in his own country, there is even now one important question that has not yet been, and probably never will be, settled. That Mendelssohn was long absurdly overrated is certain; but the question is--Had there been no Mendelssohn, would our choirs and public taken to better stuff, or would they simply have concerned themselves so much the less with any sort of music? Possibly the Mendelssohn craze was a necessary evil, supplying the requisite spoon-meat for a period of musical infancy. It is, however, a.s.sociated with much humiliation. The main current of musical life and energy since Beethoven's time has lain in the field of dramatic composition, and from that main current we remained excluded for a most unconscionable time. The case became a painful one, only to be met by such sapient observations as that of the late Mr. Hueffer that "the British public likes the dramatic stage and likes serious music, but does not like the two things in combination." The real champion of the Wagnerian art in this country was Dr. Richter, who, by the performance of extracts at his orchestral concerts, gradually opened the ears of the public and brought home the music to their hearts. In that task he was well supported by Mr. Manns at the Crystal Palace and by Sir Charles Halle in the Manchester neighbourhood. Hence the fact that though the two impresarios who gave performances of the great "Ring" drama in London in the eighties incurred grievous loss, Mr. Schultz Curtius gave it in the nineties and prospered, and that the voice of senseless detraction is mute, except in the case of one or two incorrigible old mandarins who cannot escape from the fixed idea that life consists in the correspondence of an organism with the environment of its great-grandfather.

The best of the English Cathedral composers was Samuel Sebastian Wesley, whose enthusiasm for Bach, antedating the movement initiated by Mendelssohn, has scarcely met with sufficient acknowledgement. Soon after the middle of the century a group of British composers with a wider than the purely ecclesiastical scope began to appear. Sullivan, Mackenzie, Parry, Cowen, and Stanford all learned their art in Germany, and came back to their native country to practise it. All of them have written oratorios, but without lasting success except in the case of Sullivan's "Golden Legend." Dr. Cowen's Scandinavian and Professor Stanford's Irish Symphonies have done something to win esteem for English music in other countries. But the great achievement of British music during the past fifty years has been the Gilbertian operas, in which Sir Arthur Sullivan matched with a perfect musical counterpart the kind of libretto furnished by W. S. Gilbert, an original type of comic opera being thus created. Among younger composers, Mr. Hamish M'Cunn made a reputation with his "Land of the Mountain and the Flood" overture that he failed to confirm. Mr. Coleridge-Taylor has had a very rapid success with his "Hiawatha" music, whether of a more lasting kind remains to be proved. By far the most remarkable British composer of recently made reputation is Dr. Edward Elgar. Mr. Otto Lessmann, editor of the "Allgemeine Musikzeitung" and the most distinguished musical critic of Germany at the present day, wrote thus (after hearing "The Dream of Gerontius" at Birmingham last October): "If I am not mistaken, the coming man of the English musical world has already appeared, an artist who has shaken off the bonds of conventional form and opened his mind and heart to those great gifts which the masters of the expiring century have left as an inheritance to the future--Edward Elgar, composer of the one great religious choral work brought to a first hearing at the Birmingham Festival, namely 'The Dream of Gerontius.'"

Progress has been very much more rapid during the last twenty-five years than in any other period of the century. Indeed, so wonderfully has been the revolution in public taste effected by improved educational opportunities and the more artistic and expressive style of singing and playing introduced by the Wagnerian school, that musical art now finds itself in a completely new atmosphere, and hope leaps out, probably asking too much of the immediate future. The great lesson that requires to be brought home at the present time to all concerned, directly or indirectly, with musical affairs is that music is one of the fine arts, that it is subject to the laws of art and no others. This seems a painfully obvious principle when stated, but how rarely does anyone act on it! We find any number of persons pursuing music as a sport, others as a business, others as a mild discipline for children--a kind of drill,--others again as a learned subject, but very few as an art. The first result of mastering this lesson would be the shaking off of fixed ideas, such as that every composer must play the organ and write church music. Chopin wrote nothing but pianoforte pieces, yet his fame is undying, and much more is heard of his music now--fifty years after his death--than ever before, while plenty of composers whose works include voluminous compositions for choir and orchestra are absolutely forgotten in their own lifetime. The real artist is distinguished from other men above all by being enamoured of perfection. He finds what he can do and rests satisfied with doing that, whether it be a great thing or a small, whether it be one thing or many.

CHAPTER XIII.

DR. HANS RICHTER.

(_October 20, 1897._)

The genius of musical interpretation is a phenomenon of modern times.

Beethoven marks the end of that great symphonic period which begins with Haydn, and though seventy years before the production of Beethoven's greatest symphony, Joseph Haydn had been drilling the little Esterhazy orchestra and trying to secure satisfactory performances, yet to the end of Beethoven's time the most important orchestras were usually filled up with amateurs for those special occasions on which a symphony was to be performed. It seems certain that the notion of a rendering actually corresponding to a symphonic composer's ideal intentions never dawned on musicians as a practical possibility till long after the greatest of symphonic composers was dead and buried.

Beethoven, no less than Sebastian Bach, often wrote for the future--not even for the next generation, but for the distant future. And Mendelssohn, who re-discovered Sebastian Bach and did so much to stir up the lethargy of his musical contemporaries and re-awaken interest in the great works of the past--did not Mendelssohn announce, as a general principle for the guidance of conductors, that they should beware of slow _tempi_, and take everything at a good pace, so that the faults of phrasing might not be too obvious?

The very terms in which the recommendation was couched show that Mendelssohn was not unconscious of the faults that marred the best orchestral playing of his time; but being of a mild, easy-going disposition, he was not the man to expect impossibilities--such is the ordinary musician's term for any exertion a little out of his ordinary routine. It was reserved for a more masterful mind to expect impossibilities, and to obtain them.

When the works of Wagner began to attract attention, consternation fell on all the old-fas.h.i.+oned conductors of Germany, the "Pig-tails" as Wagner never wearied of calling them. Life was not worth living, they felt, if they had to deal with such scores, and then lamentations were reinforced by the bandsmen, who found that countless pa.s.sages written by Wagner were impossible of performance.

But it so happened, as if by a special Providence, that along with Wagner certain performing musicians, who were not so easily frightened, had been ripening towards their life's task. From Liszt and Von Bulow presently came demonstrations of the fact that Wagner's music was not so impossible as at first thought to be, though requiring a method of interpretation different from that of the "Pig-tails." In 1869 appeared Wagner's pamphlet "On Conducting," just three years after his first meeting with Hans Richter, and, whatever may be thought of the style of that pamphlet, it is beyond question that it marks the beginning of a new era in the history of orchestral music. Besides Richter, all modern conductors of world-wide reputation--Bulow, Levi, Seidl, Weingartner and Richard Strauss--were found in the same school. They learned from Wagner how to play Beethoven, and their method has revolutionised the musical world.

Now that Bulow is gone, the acknowledged leader and master of them all is Hans Richter, the incarnate genius of musical interpretation.

To Richter's influence and example, far more than to anything else that could be named, is due that prodigious improvement in the standard of orchestral performance all over the world, which is the most notable feature in the history of music during the past thirty years.

Princ.i.p.ally owing to Richter's matchless combination of artistic enthusiasm, practical mastery, and genial good sense, we now hear things that musical prophets and wise men, such as Beethoven desired to hear and had not heard.

Hans Richter belongs to a German family of musicians. He was born at Raab, in Hungary, in 1843, and, after a good musical grounding, entered the Conservatorium at Vienna in 1859. He chose the horn as his princ.i.p.al instrument, but his gift for playing musical instruments was so prodigiously strong that in the course of a few years he acquired the technical control of all the more important instruments in the orchestra, besides pianoforte and organ.

One of the earliest appointments that he held was that of princ.i.p.al horn-player at the Imperial Opera in Vienna. After quitting the Conservatorium he continued his studies under Sechter, the celebrated contrapuntist, and thus when the great opportunity of his life came he approached his task with magnificent and perhaps unparalleled resources, in respect of practical and theoretical knowledge. The opportunity came in 1866--Wagner, then living in Switzerland, wanted a competent musician to help him in preparing the score of "Meistersinger" for the press.

To Vienna, then, as now, the metropolis of the musical world, he forwarded the request that such a musician should be found and despatched to him at Triebschen, near Lucerne. The choice fell on Richter, and thus the two great men, the exact complements of each other as regards their artistic power became acquainted. Richter took up his residence in Wagner's house; the great composer, who possessed a Napoleonic eye for talent, at once appreciated the immense powers of his youthful colleague, and an alliance sprang up between the two men which only terminated at Wagner's death.

Trial performances with orchestras brought together from the musicians of Zurich and Lucerne quickly convinced the Wagnerian circle of Richter's genius for selecting, training and conducting an orchestra, while the preparation of the "Meistersinger" score was carried out to the composer's complete satisfaction. Those who examined the fair copy of Richter's handwriting which was on view at the Musical and Theatrical Exhibition of 1892 in Vienna can testify to the marvellous neatness as well as to the technical correctness and good style of Richter's ma.n.u.script. It should be remembered, too, that the score of "Meistersinger" was at that time by far the most intricate in existence, and is even now only surpa.s.sed in elaborate complexity by "Tristan."

But not only with the preparation of the score was Richter concerned.

Long before Wagner had put the final touches to "Meistersinger," Richter had taken the solo and choral parts to Munich, and had there personally trained the singers who were to take part in the first production. The style was so new and so perplexing to the musicians of the day that Richter encountered apparently insuperable obstacles at every turn.

Nevertheless, everything was carried through to a brilliantly successful issue, and the first performance of "Meistersinger," which took place at Munich in June, 1868, was really the first great triumph of the Wagnerian cause. Though Bulow was at the conductor's desk, it is unquestionable that the labour of Hercules, which was necessary to bring the work to a first hearing, was performed in the main by Richter.

At the sixth performance the representative of Kothner fell ill, and, at the last moment, Richter stepped into the breach, donned the costume of Kothner, and sang and acted the part with great success. No wonder a distinguished critic should have said that Wagner's "Meistersinger" has become part of Richter's flesh and blood.

He prepared the score; he trained all the singers and players for the first performance; he has conducted countless brilliant representations of the entire work, and on one occasion, at any rate, he enacted one of the characters. The qualities exhibited by Richter in connection with the production of "Meistersinger" caused him to be appointed fellow-director with Bulow at the Royal Opera in Munich, and when Bulow resigned in the following year Richter stood alone in that post.

The impatience of the King of Bavaria to have Wagner's immense "Nibelung" trilogy performed was the cause of a premature attempt to present "Rheingold" before the extraordinary _mise-en-scene_ required by that work was ready. Rather than take part in an unworthy rendering, Richter tendered his resignation and quitted the brilliant post to which he had been so recently appointed. Thus early did Richter show the stuff of which he was made. He had absolutely nothing else in view. He simply had to look about for employment, and we next find him in Paris, working in combination with Pasdeloup, who was engaged in a scheme for bringing out "Rienzi" at the Theatre Lyrique. The scheme came to nothing, but the authorities of the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels, who had heard of Richter's fame, invited him to come and superintend the first production of "Lohengrin" in French which they were preparing.

With "Lohengrin" in Brussels he was no less successful than with "Meistersinger" in Munich. Though at first everyone found the music "impossible," on March 21st, 1870 a magnificent performance was achieved. As an example of the difficulties with which Richter had to contend in preparing for that performance, it may be mentioned that he found the choral singers at the theatre incapable of rendering their parts, and had to teach them, note by note, like children. Yet in the public performance there was no trace of these miseries, everything went with freedom and spontaneity, and ever since the first production under Richter "Lohengrin" has been a great feature of the Brussels repertory.

After fulfilling his engagement in Brussels, Richter returned to Triebschen, near Lucerne, where he found Wagner just finis.h.i.+ng that colossal work, the "Ring of the Nibelung." It seems almost incredible that in addition to their gigantic labours in bringing what was almost a new art into existence, these remarkable men should have found means at this period of devoting much time to the study of Beethoven's string quartets. Richter took part regularly in the quartet playing, and he considers these hours during which he was initiated by Wagner into the deepest mysteries of Beethoven's art among the most valuable of his experiences. In the same year, 1870, Wagner finished his "Siegfried Idyll," a lovely _aubade_ that was written in honour of his infant son's birthday. Richter had been entrusted with the task of getting together a small orchestra in Lucerne, and of rehearsing the new work with them. On the appointed day the musicians a.s.sembled on the steps of the villa at Triebschen and performed the piece under Richter's direction to the delight of the Wagner household, among whom the "Siegfried Idyll" is generally known as the "Treppenmusik" (from "Treppe," a stair or flight of steps).

The following year Richter accepted an invitation to Buda-Pesth, and there he remained until, in 1875, he was appointed conductor at the Imperial Opera in Vienna, a post that he still (in 1897) holds. Thus the Austrian Capital became for the second time his home and the centre of his activity, and, indeed, those who know him well, know that in spite of all cosmopolitan experiences, Richter is "ein echter Wiener"--a true child of Vienna.

The next "labour of Hercules" was the bringing out of Wagner's trilogy, the "Ring of the "Nibelungs" with which the Bayreuth theatre was inaugurated in 1876. During the rehearsals Wagner sat on the stage directing the actors and Richter stood at the conductor's desk.

Now that the work has become familiar we have lost all standard for estimating the task which Richter undertook and once more carried through to a brilliantly successful conclusion.

That vast scene which occupies four evenings in performance he seemed to have at his fingers' ends. Such was the impression made by Richter upon all who were concerned, either actively, or merely as spectators and listeners, in the inaugural Festival of 1876 at Bayreuth that they recognised him as a new phenomenon in the world of art.

The period of modern orchestral conducting may be said to date from that occasion. It was then brought home to everyone that conducting was a great art worthy of independent cultivation. The public began to take an interest in the style of different conductors, and to show some sensitiveness as regards interpretations of the great masters. The era of the "Pig-tails" had come to an end.