Produced by David Newman, Chuck Greif, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net MUSICAL PORTRAITS INTERPRETATIONS OF TWENTY MODERN COMPOSERS BY PAUL ROSENFELD NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE 1920 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC. THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY, N. J. To ARTHUR MOORE WILLIAMSON _Some of the material of this book was originally printed in the form of articles in "The Dial," "The New Republic," and "The Seven Arts." Thanks are due the editors of these periodicals for permission to recast and reprint it._ CONTENTS WAGNER, 3 STRAUSS, 27 MOUSSORGSKY, 57 LISZT, 73 BERLIOZ, 87 FRANCK, 101 DEBUSSY, 119 RAVEL, 133 BORODIN, 149 RIMSKY-KORSAKOFF, 159 RACHMANINOFF, 169 SCRIABINE, 177 STRAWINSKY, 191 MAHLER, 205 REGER, 223 SCHOENBERG, 233 SIBELIUS, 245 LOEFFLER, 257 ORNSTEIN, 267 BLOCH, 281 APPENDIX, 299 MUSICAL PORTRAITS Wagner Wagner's music, more than any other, is the sign and symbol of the nineteenth century. The men to whom it was disclosed, and who first sought to refuse, and then accepted it, passionately, without reservations, found in it their truth. It came to their ears as the sound of their own voices. It was the common, the universal tongue. Not alone on Germany, not alone on Europe, but on every quarter of the globe that had developed coal-power civilization, the music of Wagner descended with the formative might of the perfect image. Men of every race and continent knew it to be of themselves as much as was their hereditary and racial music, and went out to it as to their own adventure. And wherever music reappeared, whether under the hand of the Japanese or the semi-African or the Yankee, it seemed to be growing from Wagner as the bright shoots of the fir sprout from the dark ones grown the previous year. A whole world, for a period, came to use his idiom. His dream was recognized during his very lifetime as an integral portion of the consciousness of the entire race.