Modern Musical DriftHenderson, W. J. (William James)
History
Modern Musical Drift
Henderson, W. J. (William James)
Music -- History and criticism; Strauss, Richard, 1864-1949; Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883
After the fight the bird sings once more, this time in a soprano
voice and with text. Mime enters and psychology reappears. After
Mime's death, more external music, till the bird tells of the
enchanted Princess asleep on the mountain top, and then there is
a burst of hot blood, a rush of musical energy which has in it
something more than mere external description. Nevertheless, in all
music there is nothing else which so clearly demonstrates the ease
with which the purely pictorial in the tone art may be confounded
with the introspective as this second act of "Siegfried," for here
the mood of nature and the mood of the chief actor, whose soul is to
be laid bare, are one.
With the opening of Act III. we have the scene between Wotan and
Erda. Here, again, the character of the music is chiefly descriptive.
The storm is contrasted with the vague tonalities and muted voicing
of Erda's music. After the spear of Wotan is shattered by the
rewelded "Nothung," Loge fills the mountains with his radiance and
his shimmering music. The last of the futile and disappearing gods
has passed from the scene of action. The human drama which is to
lead to the dusk of the high ones has begun. Loge's labor is almost
completed.
With the change from the pealing music to which Siegfried ascends
the mountain to the long-drawn strains of the strings which lead
him to the couch of his desire, we enter upon a scene of soul
revelation. What a marvellous inspiration of genius is the awakening
of Brünnhilde! She went to sleep a weeping, supplicating goddess,
deprived of her divinity. She wakes to the majestic chords which
announce her assumption of a grander divinity, the might and majesty
of perfect womanhood. The duo between her and Siegfried is all
psychologic, not subtle, for the blazing of passion is not subtle,
but none the less the delineation of an inward state.
Of all the dramas of the tetralogy "Siegfried" is that in which pure
beauty is most plentiful. Here is a problem for musical philosophers.
Is Strauss not a maker, but a product? Is the embodiment of subtle
psychologic problems in tone hostile to unaffected beauty? Must the
lyric drama follow the march of symphonic music into the screaming
regions of the Strauss soul analysis? "Siegfried" is quite devoid
of the elements of tragedy. The death of Fafner is not tragic; on
the contrary, it is comic. There is even a touch of bathos in the
dying speech of the transmogrified Bottom of the Wagnerian drama. The
conundrum scene is childish. The bird belongs to the world of the
infantile fairy tale. But the spirit of buoyant youth is in the work.
Its music is nearly all external, and unaffectedly beautiful.
"Siegfried," revelling in purely descriptive music, devoid of mental
sickness contracted from much study of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche,
breathes the spirit of a free world's youth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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