Strauss makes hardly a pretence at
having melodic ideas. They serve but as pawns or puppets for his
harmonic and orchestral _mise-en-scene_. He is like a play-wright
constructing his plot around a scenic design.
Just a little common sense is needed,--an unpremeditated attitude. Thus
the familiar grouping, "_Bach_, _Beethoven_ and _Brahms_" is at least
not unnatural. Think of the absurdity of "_Bach_, _Beethoven_ and
_Bruckner_"![A]
[Footnote A: A festival was held in Munich in the summer of 1911, in
celebration of "Bach, Beethoven and Bruckner."]
The truth is, the Bruckner cult is a striking symptom of a certain
decadence in German music; an incapacity to tell the sincere quality of
feeling in the dense, brilliant growth of technical virtuosity. In the
worship at the Bayreuth shrine, somehow reinforced by a modern national
self-importance, has been lost a heed for all but a certain vein of
exotic romanticism, long ago run to riotous seed, a blending of hedonism
and fatalism. No other poetic message gets a hearing and the former may
be rung in endless repetition and reminiscence, provided, to be sure, it
be framed with brilliant cunning of workmanship.
Here we feel driven defiantly to enounce the truth: that the highest
art, even in a narrow sense, comes only with a true poetic message. Of
this Bruckner is a proof; for, if any man by pure knowledge could make a
symphony, it was he. But, with almost superhuman skill, there is
something wanting in the inner connection, where the main ideas are
weak, forced or borrowed.
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