Part 2
“At last they reached the end (the best things come to an end). It was the turn of the audience. They exploded with delight, an explosion which lasted for several minutes. Some hissed; others applauded ironically; the wittiest of all shouted ‘Encore!’ A bass voice coming from a stage box began to imitate the grotesque motif. Other jokers followed suit and imitated it also. Some one shouted ‘Author!’ It was long since these witty folk had been so highly entertained.
“When the tumult was calmed down a little the _Kapellmeister_, standing quite impassive with his face turned towards the audience, though he was pretending not to see it (the audience was still supposed to be non-existent), made a sign to the audience that he was about to speak. There was a cry of ‘Ssh,’ and silence. He waited a moment longer; then (his voice was curt, cold, and cutting):
“‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I should certainly not have let _that_ be played through to the end if I had not wished to make an example of the gentleman who has dared to write offensively of the great Brahms.’
“That was all; jumping down from his stand he went out amid cheers from the delighted audience. They tried to recall him; the applause went on for a few minutes longer. But he did not return. The orchestra went away. The audience decided to go too. The concert was over.
“It had been a good day.”
Von Bülow once stopped his orchestra at a public performance to remonstrate with a lady with a fan in the front row of seats. “Madame,” he said gravely, “I must beg you to cease fanning yourself in three-four time while I am conducting in four-four time!”
Here are a few personal recollections of bad mannered audiences. A performance of _The Magic Flute_ in Chicago comes to mind. Fritzi Scheff, the Papagena, and Giuseppe Campanari, the Papageno, had concluded their duet in the last act amidst a storm of applause, in face of which the conductor sped on to the entrance of the Queen of the Night. Mme. Sembrich entered and sang a part of her recitative unheard. One could see, however, that her jaws opened and closed with the mechanism incidental to tone-production. After a few bars she retired defeated and the bad mannered audience continued to shout and applaud until that unspeakable bit of nonsense which runs “Pa-pa-pa,” etc., was repeated. Mme. Sembrich appeared no more that day.
Another stormy audience I encountered at a concert of the Colonne Orchestra in Paris. Those who sit in the gallery at these concerts at the Chatelet Theatre are notoriously opinionated. There the battles of Richard Strauss and Debussy have been fought. The gallery crowd always comes early because seats in the top of the house are unreserved. They cost a franc or two; I forget exactly how much, but I have often sat there. To pass the time until the concert begins, and also to show their indifference to musical literature and the opinions of others, the galleryites fashion a curious form of spill, with one end in a point and the other feathered like an arrow, out of the pages of the annotated programmes. These are then sent sailing, in most instances with infinite dexterity and incredible velocity, over the heads of the arriving audience. The objective point is the very centre of the back cloth on the stage, a spot somewhat above the kettle-drum. A successful shot always brings forth a round of applause. But this is (or was) an episode incident to any Colonne concert. I am describing an occasion.
The concert took place during the season of poor Colonne’s final illness (now he lies buried in that curiously remote avenue of Père-Lachaise where repose the ashes of Oscar Wilde). Gabriel Pierné, his successor, had already assumed the bâton, and he conducted the concert in question. Anton Van Rooy was the soloist and he had chosen to sing two very familiar (and very popular in Paris) Wagner excerpts, Wotan’s Farewell from _Die Walküre_, and the air which celebrates the evening star from _Tannhäuser_. (In this connection I might state that in this same winter--1908-9--_Das Rheingold_ was given _in concert form_--it had not yet been performed at the Opéra--on two consecutive Sundays at the Lamoureux Concerts in the Salle Gaveau to _standing room only_.) The concert proceeded in orderly fashion until Mr. Van Rooy appeared; then the uproar began. The gallery hooted, and screamed, and yelled. All the terrible noises which only a Paris crowd can invent were hurled from the dark recesses of that gallery. The din was appalling, terrifying. Mr. Van Rooy nervously fingered a sheet of music he held in his hands. Undoubtedly visions of the first performance of _Tannhäuser_ at the Paris Opéra passed through his mind. He may also have considered the possibility of escaping to the Gare du Nord, with the chance of catching a train for Germany before the mob could tear him into bits. Mr. Pierné, who knew his Paris, faced the crowd, while the audience below peered up and shuddered, with something of the fright of the aristocrats during the first days of the Revolution. Then he held up his hand and, in time, the modest gesture provoked a modicum of silence. In that silence some one shrieked out the explanation: “_Tannhäuser_ avant _Walküre_.” That was all. The gallery was not satisfied with the order of the programme. The readjustment was quickly made, the parts distributed to the orchestra, and Mr. Van Rooy sang Wolfram’s air before Wotan’s. It may be said that never could he have hoped for a more complete ovation, a more flattering reception than that which the Parisian audience accorded him when he had finished. The applause was veritably deafening.
I have related elsewhere at some length my experiences at the first Paris performance of Igor Strawinsky’s ballet, _The Sacrifice to the Spring_, an appeal to primitive emotion through a nerve-shattering use of rhythm, staged in ultra-modern style by Waslav Nijinsky. Chords and legs seemed disjointed. Flying arms synchronized marvellously with screaming clarinets. But this first audience would not permit the composer to be heard. Cat-calls and hisses succeeded the playing of the first few bars, and then ensued a battery of screams, countered by a foil of applause. We warred over art (some of us thought it was and some thought it wasn’t). The opposition was bettered at times; at any rate it was a more thrilling battle than Strauss conceived between the Hero and his enemies in _Heldenleben_ and the celebrated scenes from _Die Meistersinger_ and _The Rape of the Lock_ could not stand the comparison. Some forty of the protestants were forced out of the theatre but that did not quell the disturbance. The lights in the auditorium were fully turned on but the noise continued and I remember Mlle. Piltz executing her strange dance of religious hysteria on a stage dimmed by the blazing light in the auditorium, seemingly to the accompaniment of the disjointed ravings of a mob of angry men and women. Little by little, at subsequent performances of the work the audiences became more mannerly, and when it was given in concert in Paris the following year it was received with applause.
Some of my readers may remember the demonstration directed (supposedly) against American singers when the Metropolitan Opera Company invaded Paris some years ago for a spring season. The opening opera was _Aïda_, and all went well until the first scene of the second act, in which the reclining Amneris chants her thoughts while her slaves dance. Here the audience began to give signs of disapproval, which presently broke out into open hissing, and finally into a real hullabaloo. Mme. Homer, nothing daunted, continued to sing. She afterwards told me that she had never sung with such force and intensity. And in a few moments she broke the spell, and calmed the riot.
Arthur Nikisch once noted that players of the bassoon were more sensitive than the other members of his orchestra; he found them subject to quick fits of temper, and intolerant of criticism. He attributed this to the delicate mechanism of the instrument which required the nicest apportionment of breath. Clarinet players, he discovered, were less sensitive. One could joke with them in reason; while horn players were as tractable as Newfoundland dogs!--A case of a sensitive pianist comes to mind, brought to bay by as rude an audience as I can recall. Mr. Paderewski was playing Beethoven’s C sharp minor sonata at one of these morning musicales arranged at the smart hotels so that the very rich may see more intimately the well-known artists of the concert and opera stage, when some women started to go out. In his following number, Couperin’s _La Bandoline_, the interruption became intolerable and he stopped playing. “Those who do not wish to hear me will kindly leave the room immediately,” he said, “and those who wish to remain will kindly take their seats.” The outflow continued, while those who remained seated began to hiss. “I am astonished to find people in New York leaving while an artist is playing,” the pianist added. Then some one started to applaud; the applause deepened, and finally Mr. Paderewski consented to play again and took his place on the bench before his instrument.
The incident was the result of the pianist’s well-known aversion to appearing in conjunction with other artists. He had finally agreed to do so on this occasion provided he would be allowed to play after the others had concluded their performances. There had been many recalls for the singer and violinist who preceded him and it was well after one o’clock (the concert had begun at eleven) before he walked on the platform. Now one o’clock is a very late hour at a fashionable morning musicale. Some of those present were doubtless hungry; others, perhaps, had trains to catch; while there must have been a goodly number who had heard all the music they wanted to hear that morning. There was a very pretty ending to the incident. Once he had begun, Mr. Paderewski played for an hour and twenty minutes, and the faithful ones, who had remained seated, applauded so much when he finally rose from the bench, even after he had added several numbers to the printed programme, that the echoes of the clapping hands accompanied him to his motor.
I have reserved for the last a description of a concert given at the Dal Verme Theatre in Milan by the Italian Futurists. The account is culled from the “Corriere della Sera” of that city, and the translation is that which appeared in “International Music and Drama”:
“At the Dal Verme a Futurist concert of ‘intonarumori’ was to be held last night, but instead of this there was an uproarious din intoned both by the public and the Futurists which ended in a free-for-all fight.
“In a speech which was listened to with sufficient attention, Marinetti, the poet, announced that this was to be the first public trial of a new device invented by Luigi Russelo, a Futurist painter. This instrument is called the ‘noise-maker’ and its purpose is to render a new kind of music. Modern life vibrates with all sorts of noises; music therefore must render this sensation. This, in brief, is the idea. In order to develop it Russelo had invented several types of noise-makers, each of which renders a different sound.
“After Marinetti’s speech the curtain went up and the new orchestra appeared in all its glory amidst the bellowings of the public. The famous ‘noise-intonators’ proved to be made out of a sort of bass-drum with an immense trumpet attached to it, the latter looking very much like a gramaphone horn. Behind the instrument sat the players, whose only function was to turn the crank rhythmically in order to create the harmonic noise. They looked, while performing this agreeable task, like a squad of knife-grinders. But it was impossible to hear the music. The public was unconditionally intolerant. We only caught here and there a faint buzz and growl. Then everything was drowned in the billowing seas of howls, jeers, hisses, and cat-calls. What they were hissing at, it being impossible to hear the music, was not quite clear. They hissed just for the fun of it. It was a case of art for art’s sake. Painter Russelo, however, continued undisturbed to direct his mighty battery of musical howitzers and his professors kept on grinding their pieces with a beautiful serenity of mind, all the while the tumult increasing to redoubtable proportions. The consequence was that those who went to the Dal Verme for the purpose of listening to Futurist music had to give up all hopes and resign themselves to hear the bedlam of the public.
“In vain did Marinetti attempt to speak, begging them to be quiet for a while and assuring them that they would be allowed a whole carnival of howls at the end of the concert--the public wanted to hiss and there was no way to check it. But Russelo kept right on. He conducted with imperturbable solemnity the three pieces we were supposed to hear: _The Awakening of a Great City_, _A Dinner on a Kursaal Terrace_, and _A Meet of Automobiles and Aeroplanes_. Nobody heard anything, but Russelo rendered everything conscientiously. The only thing we were able to find out about Futurist music is that the noise of the orchestra is by no means too loud, or at least not louder than impromptu choruses.
“But the worst was reserved for the middle of the third piece. The exchange of hot words and very old-fashioned courtesies had now become ultra-vivacious and was being punctuated with several projectiles and an occasional blow. At this point, Marinetti, Boccioni, Carra, and other Futurists jumped into the pit and began to distribute all sorts of blows to the infuriated spectators. The new Futurist style enables us to synthesize the scene. Blows. Carbineers. Inspectors. Cushions and chairs flying about. Howls. Public standing on chairs. Concert goes on. More howls, shrieks, curses, and thunderous insults. Futurists are led back to stage by gendarmes. Public slowly passes out. Marinetti and followers pass out before public. Again howls, invectives, guffaws, and fist blows. Piazza Cardusio. More blows. Galleria. Ditto. Futurists enter Savini’s café while pugilistic matches go merrily on. Mob attempts to storm stronghold. Iron gates close. Futurists are shut in, in good condition, save few torn hats. Mob slowly calms down and disperses. The end.”
_New York, May, 1916._
Music for the Movies
“_O Tempora! O Movies!_”
W. B. Chase.
Music for the Movies
Despite the fact that it would seem that the moving picture drama had opened up new worlds to the modern musician, no important composer, so far as I am aware, has as yet turned his attention to the writing of music for the films. If the cinema drama is in its infancy, as some would have us believe, then we may be sure that the time is not far distant when moving picture scores will take their places on the musicians’ book-shelves alongside those of operas, symphonies, masses, and string quartets. In the meantime, entirely ignorant of the truth (or oblivious to it, or merely helpless, as the case may be) that writing music for moving pictures is a new art, which demands a new point of view, the directors of the picture theatres are struggling with the situation as best they may. Under the circumstances it is remarkable, on the whole, how swiftly and how well the demand for music with the silent drama has been met. Certainly the music is usually on a level with (or of a better quality than) the type of entertainment offered. But the directors have not definitely tackled the problem; they still continue to try to force old wine into new bottles, arranging and re-arranging melody and harmony which was contrived for quite other occasions and purposes. Even when scores have been written for pictures the result has not shown any imaginative advance over the arranged score. It is strange, but it has occurred to no one that the moving picture demands a _new_ kind of music.
The composers, I should imagine, are only waiting to be asked to write it. Certainly none of them has ever shown any hesitancy about composing incidental music for the spoken drama. Mendelssohn wrote strains for _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ which seemed pledged to immortality until Granville Barker ignored them; the Wedding March is still in favour in Kankakee and Keokuk. Beethoven illustrated Goethe’s _Egmont_; Sir Arthur Sullivan penned a score for _The Tempest_; Schubert was inspired to put down some of his most ravishing notes for a stupid play called _Rosamunde_; Grieg’s _Peer Gynt_ music is more often performed than the play. More recent instances of incidental music for dramas are Saint-Saëns’s score for Brieux’s _La Foi_, Mascagni’s for _The Eternal City_, and Richard Strauss’s for _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_. Is it necessary to continue the list? I have only, after all, put down a few of the obvious examples (passing by the thousands upon thousands of scores devised by lesser composers for lesser plays) that would spring at once to any musician’s mind. Of course it has usually been the poetic drama (do we ever hear Shakespeare or Rostand without it?) which has seemed to call for incidental music but it has accompanied (with more or less disastrous consequences, to be sure) the unfolding of many a “drawing-room” play; especially during the eighties.
When the first moving picture was exposed on the screen it seems to have occurred to its projector at once that some kind of music must accompany its unreeling. The silence evidently appalled him. A moving picture is not unlike a ballet in that it depends entirely upon action (it differs from a ballet in that the action is not necessarily rhythmic)--and whoever heard of a ballet performed without music? Sound certainly has its value in creating an atmosphere and in emphasizing the “thrill” of the moving picture, especially when the sound is selected and co-ordinated. It may also divert the attention. On the whole, more photographed plays follow the general lines of _Lady Windemere’s Fan_ or _Peg o’ My Heart_ than of poetic dramas such as _Cymbeline_ or _La Samaritaine_. The problem here, however, is not the same as in the spoken drama. For in motion pictures a poetic play sheds its poetry and becomes, like its neighbour, a skeleton of action. There is no conceivable distinction in the “movies” (beyond one created by preference, or taste, or the quality of the performance and the photography) between Dante’s _Inferno_ and a picture in which the beloved Charles Chaplin looms large. The directors of the moving picture companies have tried to meet this problem; that they have not wholly succeeded so far is not entirely their fault.
It is no easy matter, for example, in a theatre in which the films are changed daily (this is the general rule even in the larger houses), for the musicians (or musician) to arrange a satisfactory accompaniment for 5,000 feet of action which includes everything from an earthquake in Cuba to a dinner in Park Lane, and it is scarcely possible, even if the distributors be so inclined (as they frequently are nowadays) to furnish a music score which will answer the purposes of the different sized bands, ranging from a full orchestra to an upright piano, _solo_. As for the pictures without pre-arranged scores, the orchestra leaders and pianists must do the best they can with them.
In some houses there is an attitude of total disrespect paid towards the picture by the _chef d’orchestre_. He arranges his musical programme as if he were giving a concert, not at all with a view to effectively accompanying the picture. In a theatre on Second Avenue in New York, for example, I have heard an orchestra play the whole of Beethoven’s First Symphony as an accompaniment to Irene Fenwick’s performance of _The Woman Next Door_. As the symphony came to an end before the picture it was supplemented by a Waldteufel waltz, _Les Patineurs_. The result, in this instance, was not altogether incongruous or even particularly displeasing, and it occurred to me that if one had to listen to music while the third act of _Hedda Gabler_ were being enacted one would prefer to hear something like Boccherini’s celebrated minuet or a light Mozart dance rather than anything ostensibly contrived to fit the situation. In the latter instance the result would be sure to be unbearable bathos.
On the other hand there are certain players for pictures who remind one by their methods of the anxiety of Richard Strauss to describe every peacock and bean mentioned in any of his opera-books. If a garden is exposed on the screen one hears _The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring_; a love scene is the signal for _Un Peu d’Amour_; a cross or any religious episode suggests _The Rosary_ to these ingenuous musicians; Japan brings a touch of _Madame Butterfly_; a proposal of marriage, _O Promise Me_; and a farewell, Tosti’s _Good-bye!_ This expedient of appealing through the intellect to the emotions, it may be admitted, has the stamp of approval of no less a composer than Richard Wagner.