Musical Portraits : Interpretations of Twenty Modern ComposersRosenfeld, Paul
History
Musical Portraits : Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers
Rosenfeld, Paul
Composers; Music -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Music -- 20th century -- History and criticism
It may be that by means of these experiments Schoenberg will gird
himself for a new period of creativity just as once indubitably by the
aid of experiments which he did not publish he girded himself for the
period represented by the D-minor Quartet. It may be that after the
cloud of the war has completely lifted from the field of art, and a
normal interchange is re-established it will be seen that the monodrama,
Op. 20, "Die Lieder des 'Pierrot Lunaire,'" which was the latest of his
works to obtain a hearing, was in truth an earnest of a new loosing of
the old lyrical impulse so long incarcerated. But, for the present,
Schoenberg, the composer, is almost completely obscured by Schoenberg,
the experimenter. For the present, he is the great theoretician
combating other theoreticians, the Doctor of Music annihilating
doctor-made laws. As such, his usefulness is by no means small. He
speaks with an authority no less than that of his adversaries, the other
and less radical professors. He, too, has invented a system and a
method; his "Harmonielehre," for instance, is as irrefragable as theirs;
he can quote scripture with the devil. He is at least demolishing the
old constraining superstitions, and in so doing may exercise an
incalculable influence on the course of music. It may be that many a
musician of the future will find himself the better equipped because of
Schoenberg's explorations. He is undoubtedly the most magistral theorist
of the day. The fact that he could write at the head of his treatise on
harmony, "What I have here set down I have learned from my pupils,"
independently proves him a great teacher. It is probable that his later
music, the music of his puzzling "third period," will shortly come to be
considered as simply a part of his unique course of instruction.
Sibelius
Others have brought the North into houses, and there transmuted it to
music. And their art is dependent on the shelter, and removed from it,
dwindles. But Sibelius has written music innocent of roof and inclosure,
music proper indeed to the vasty open, the Finnish heaven under which it
grew. And could we but carry it out into the northern day, we would find
it undiminished, vivid with all its life. For it is blood-brother to the
wind and the silence, to the lowering cliffs and the spray, to the harsh
crying of sea-birds and the breath of the fog, and, set amid them, would
wax, and take new strength from the strengths of its kin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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