Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 1, No. 5 (1927-02)

226 The Phonograph Monthly Review years, his mind becoming more and more clouded, the victim besides of a wasting paralysis. When death took him, in 1903, he who had really died five years before, his biographer thus describes the vestiges of a great spirit: ‘He looked like a small doll of white wood; the nose came out sharply from the waxen face; the delicate hands had become still more delicate; they were crossed and the fingers fell quite loose like the fingers of a white glove. This was all Fate had left of the artist who once bore a whole tone world in his brain—a fragment, a human ruin.’ He now lies near Beethoven and Schubert, the masters he so dearly revered. “What I seem to see first about the musical history of this man is the extraordinary concentration of his life as a com- poser. At the age of twenty-eight he had written practically nothing. From 1888 to 1890, he wrote one after another in a kind of fever; fifty-three Morike lieder, fifty-one Goethe lieder, forty-four Spanish lieder, seventeen Eichendosff lieder, a dozen songs to poems of the poet Keller and the first of the three Italian lieder. In short, about two hundred songs in all, each one having it own marvellous individuality and covering the whole range of human experience w’th the most marvellous psychological acumen. And then the fountain spring dries up. “He complains bitterly to his friends that he can no longer bring to himself the meaning of melody or harmony and talks of self destruction in his letters. At Dobl ng in Novem- ber, 1891, sight returns for a moment to the blind and he writes in one month fifteen more Italian lieder, none of which show any tension or effort. Then till 1895 he suffers his tortures alone again as his mind refuses to obey his com- mand. But when that year comes he sets to work on “Der Corregidor,” and writes the second book of Italian lieder in the joy of returned creative powers. In 1896 he sets to work on “Manuel Venegas”. And then, as I have said, mad- ness took him and they carried him off to an asylum. Thus we see that in the space of thirty-seven years, for the last five cannot count, there were only about five years in which he composed the bulk of his works. And, with the usual irony reserved for the great, fame found him during those last five years, when he was little more than an idiot. Wolf Societies began to spring up all over Central Europe, particu- larly in Suabia and in and around Vienna. He was given a magnificent funeral attended by all the people who had done nothing for him while he lived. The critics that scorned him, the representatives of the Austrian state and of the Conser- vatoire that had expelled him, the managers of the Opera, who had closed their doors on him—all were present. But this little shell of a man had done his work and left it for posterity. He would have doubtless cared little enough for the belated praise. As Rolland says so aptly: “ T doubt if Wolf with his rough, sincere nature would have found much consolation in this tardy homage if he could have foreseen it. He would have said to his pos'humous admirers: ‘You are hypocrites. It is not for me that you raise those statues; it is for yourselves. It is that you may make speeches, form committees, and delude yourselves and others that you were my friends. Where were you when I was in need of you? You let me die. Do not play a comedy round my grave. Look rather around you, and see if there are not other Wolfs who are struggling against your hostility or your indifference. As for me, I have come safe to port.’ “So much for his brief life. What is the secret of his genius and why is it no mere rhetoric to say that he was the greatest song writer that ever lived? Shakespeare is great because he draws to the life more characters than the average playwright before him or smce. Wagner is the consummate master of dramatic music because of the variety and veracity of his portraits for the musical stage. Brangaena does not sing like Magdalene nor does the harmonic depiction of Mimi re- semble that of Kurvenal. These facts are axiomatic to any, even the most casual, student of either Shakespeare or Wagner. It is for this same reason that Wolf is above all previous song writers. He is capable of expressing a thousand subtle emotions. He is the first psychologist in song. “Nothing is more beautiful than Brahms or Schumann or Grieg at their best. But no one can deny that in many of their finest songs it is the composer we hear talking rather than the poet or the creation of the poet. Wolf, to my mind, never is inconsiderate of the poem he is treating. And we are never able to observe his physiognomy for the most significant reason—because we cannot identify the artist with his characters, so many sided is his gift of observation and so varied his portraiture. In fact, the chief value of Wolf is that he is never Wolf, to phrase it as Mr. Chesterton might. “For instance, in the technical handling of his songs there are certain tricks that we can always discover in Schubert, however lovely his melodies may be. We find frequent obvious changes from major to minor, phrases of a certain stereotyped length, a stereotyped kind of cadence. However beautiful the musical results of these cliches they often make the composer false to the poet and result in incongruous handlings in respect to meter and emphasis. Again, in the case of Brahms I can recall numerous musical gestures that are as irrelevant and as unimportant as a man’s trick of fumbling with his watch-chain and with them a frequent disregard for the poem that is disconcerting in spite of the architectural loveliness of Brahm’s songs. But in Wolf there are no formulae. The music is welded to the word, not with a stodgy adherence to it, mind you, but with a treatment that causes the poem to transcend itself. In fact, the worst reproach one can make against Wolf is that he puts more into the poem than the poet himself. “Let me give you three examples from Schubert, Brahms and Wolf. What I mean may become instantly apparent.” Miss Marion Roberts then played on a piano a Schubert, a Brahms and a Wolf song. After a brief talk on each Mr. Poliak said: I should like to use the rest of the progrm for recorded illustrations of the master. It is significant that all but one, the Werrenrath record of Zur’ Ruh Zur Ruh’, are foreign recordings.” The following Wolf songs were then presented on a Columbia Viva-Tonal machine loaned to the Society by courtesy of Lyon & Healy: Zur’ Ruh Zur Ruli’ (Victor) Reinald Werrenrath Fussreise (Polydor) Elizabeth van Endert Der Freund (Polydor) Heinrich Schlusnus Der Musikant (Polydor) Heinrich Schlusnus Auf Den Grunen Balkon (His Master’s Voice) Pffena Gerhardt Verschwiegene Liebe (Polydor) Heinrich Schlusnus Der Rattenfanger (Polydor) Heinrich Schlusnus Mr. Poliak first read the English translation of each song before playing the same in order to bring out the manner in which the composer caught the spirit of the poet, and also gave a few remarks on each song before its presentation to explain its technical construction. PHILADELPHIA PHONOGRAPH SOCIETY The second meeting of the Philadelphia Phonograph Society was held Tuesday evening, December 14 at 8 p. m. in the offices of the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, 40 North Sixth Street. In the absence of the president and vice-president, James V. Yarnall, secretary of the society presided. The report of the initial meeting of the Philadel- phia society was read from the December issue of the Phonograph Monthly Review as the minutes of the pre- ceding meeting. A discussion on the new electrically recorded records and instruments was led by George Lyons, manager of the Bruns- wick interests in Philadelphia. Mr. Lyons described the Brunswick process of recording in particular and told how the new machines and records were able to reproduce with fidelity tones which could not be heard in the old-type of records and machines. He explained that in the recording of piano music by the old process both the lower and higher range of notes were not recordable. In concerted numbers, he explained, each instrument is clearly audible and that there was less friction and overtone. A member of the society inquired why there was no process by which records playing much longer than those at present being offered could be made. J. J. Doherty, manager of the Columbia Company and Mr. Lyons both told of the experi- ments now being made to produce records which would play up to half an hour on one side. Another member of the society inquired as to the reasons there were no completely recorded sets of opera records, giving the entire opera, as is now possible in symphonic music. Mr. Yarnall said that the phonograph society move- ment had been started for just that purpose, i.e. the develop- ment of a sufficiently strong following for all better forms of recorded music so as to make profitable the production of this type of records by the manufacturers. The member in- quiring called attention to the Columbia Brown-Label series