Musical Portraits : Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers. Paul Rosenfeld
of clever preciosity, full of piquant details culled from eighteenth-century prints and memoirs. The scene of the coiffing is a print of Hogarth's translated to the stage; Rofrano's name "Octavian Maria Ehrenreich Bonaventura Fernand Hyazinth" is like an essay on the culture of the Vienna of Canaletto; the polite jargon of eighteenth-century aristocratic Austria spoken by the characters, with its stiff, courteous forms and intermingled French, must have been studied from old journals and gazettes. And Strauss's score is equally precious, equally a thing of erudition and cleverness. Mozart turned the imbecilities of Schickaneder to his uses; Weber triumphed over the ridiculous romancings of Helmine von Chezy. But Strauss follows Hofmannsthal helplessly, soddenly. Just as Hofmannsthal imitates Hogarth, so Strauss imitates Mozart, affects his style, his turns, his spirit; inserts a syrupy air in the style of Haendel or Méhul in the first act; and jumbles Mozart with modern comic-opera waltzes, Haendel with post-Wagnerian incantations. And like Hofmannsthal's libretto, the score remains a superficial and formless thing. The inner and coherent rhythm, the spiritual beat and swing, the great unity and direction, are wanting. "I have always wanted to write an opera like Mozart's, and now I have done it," Strauss is reported to have said after the first performance of "Der Rosenkavalier." But "Der Rosenkavalier" is almost antipodal to "Don Giovanni" or to "Falstaff" or to "Die Meistersinger" or to any of the great comic operas. For it lacks just the thing the others possess abundantly, a strong lyrical movement, a warm emotion that informs the music bar after bar, scene after scene, act after act, and imparts to the auditor the joy, the vitality, the beauty of which the composers' hearts were full. It is a long while since Strauss has felt anything of the sort.
Had the new time produced no musical art, had no Debussy nor Scriabine, no Strawinsky nor Bloch, put in appearance, one might possibly have found oneself compelled to believe the mournful decadence of Richard Strauss the inevitable development awaiting musical genius in the modern world. There exists a group, international in composition, which, above all other contemporary bodies, arrogates to itself the style of modernity. It is the group, tendrils of which reach into every great capital and center, into every artistic movement and cause, of the bored ones, the spoilt ones. The present system has lifted into a quasi aristocratic and leisurely state vast numbers of people without background, without tradition or culture or taste. By reason of its largeness and resources, this group of people without taste, without interest, without finesse, has come to dominate in particular the world of art as the world of play, has come to demand distraction, sensation, excitement which its unreal existence does not afford it. Indeed, this band has come to give a cast to the whole of present-day life; its members pretend to represent present-day culture. It is with this group with its frayed sensibilities and tired pulses that Strauss has become increasingly identified, till of late he has become something like its court-musician, supplying it with stimulants, awaking its curiosities, astonishing and exciting it with the superficial novelty of his works, trying to procure it the experiences it is so lamentably unable to procure itself. It is for it that he created the trumpery horrors, the sweet erotics of the score of "Salome." It is for it that he imitated Mozart saccharinely in "Der Rosenkavalier"; mangled Molière's comedy; committed the vulgarities and hypocrisies of "Joseph's Legende." And did no evidence roundly to the contrary exist, one might suppose this group to really represent modern life; that its modernity was the only true one; and that in expressing it, in conforming to it, Strauss was functioning in the only manner granted the contemporary composer. But since such evidence exists aplenty, since a dozen other musicians, to speak only of the practitioners of a single art, have managed to keep themselves immune and yet create beauty about them, to remain on the plane upon which Strauss began life, to persevere in the direction in which he was originally set, and yet live fully, one finds oneself convinced that the deterioration of Strauss, which has made him musical purveyor to this group, has not been the result of the pressure of outward and hostile circumstances. One finds oneself positively convinced that it was some inner weakness within himself that permitted the spoilt and ugly folk to seduce him from his road, and use him for their purposes.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.