Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 3.djvu/305

SCHOOLS OF COMPOSITION. the Art-life of the 19th century. But, we can understand it. It speaks to us in accents far stronger than words. And, in listening to it, we are brought into closer communion with the Composer's inmost soul than we could have gained through any amount of personal intercourse with him during his life-time.

We have thought it necessary to call attention to these æsthetic subtleties, with more than ordinary earnestness, because, without a full appreciation of their import, it would be absolutely impossible to attain a clear understanding of our present position with regard to the great Masters who originated the dual train of thought we have endeavoured to describe—the teachers who first directed their inventive powers into two well-defined channels, which, running side by side, and sometimes even intermingling, have never lost one particle of the individuality bestowed on them when they first parted at the fountain head.

Upon these two Schools—the Imaginative and the Romantic—the German Music of the present century almost entirely depends for its distinctive character. Schubert identified himself with both; and was enabled, by the freshness and spontaneity of his ideas, and the inexhaustible extent of his inventive power, to use the strongest points of both so profitably, that it is impossible to determine the side towards which his natural bias most forcibly attracted him. Perhaps we shall not be far wrong, if we say that, as a general rule, his Vocal Music is most freely pervaded by the spirit of Romanticism, while that of Imagination is more clearly discernible in his Instrumental Compositions. Without instancing such works as 'Die junge Nonne,' or 'Der Erl-König,' the very first bar of which transports us into the Region of Romance before we have heard the first word of the Poetry, we need only point, in confirmation of this view, to some of the least pretentious of his shorter Songs—those gorgeous 'trifles,' which, like the sketches of Raffaelle, contain, sometimes, more Art than many a more elaborate work. 'Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh' is as true a Romance as Schiller's 'Fridolin': while the 'Impromptus,' and 'Momens Musicals,' so often played, and so rarely interpreted, contain passages as deeply imaginative as those in the Ottet, or the Symphony in C major. We quote these well-known examples, in the hope of tempting our readers to seek out others for themselves: and they will find no difficulty in doing so; for it is impossible to take up a volume of Schubert's Compositions, without finding, on every page, evidence to prove that he was equally ready, at any moment, to pursue the course of either stream, or to exchange it for its fellow channel.

Every really great German Master—Weber, Spohr, Marschner, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Raff, Goetz, Wagner,—has more or less strictly carried out the same principle to its legitimate conclusion, and used either the ideal freedom of Imagination, or that of Romanticism, as a stepping-stone to his own individual greatness.

Weber's strongest sympathies were with the Romantic School. As a rule,—his Instrumental Music excepting, of course, the Overtures to his matchless dramatic inspirations—is brilliant, rather than imaginative; presenting, at every turn, some sparkling passage suggestive, of all that is light, and bright, and beautiful, in Nature, and thus continually hovering around the borders of Romanticism, though rarely descending towards those sombre depths in which Beethoven so frequently delighted to dwell. But, in his dramatic works, no sooner does some weird idea present itself to his mind, than he yields himself to its influence, body and soul, and paints it in such wild fantastic colours, that his audience cannot choose but dream, or shrink, or shudder, at his will.

Spohr's genius led him into quite another path. Like Schubert, he was equally ready to clothe his ideas in the language either of Imagination or Romanticism, or even of both together. A deeper Philosopher than Weber, he exercised, in a certain sense, a stronger power over the minds of his hearers: but, he could not terrify them, as Weber could; simply because he was, himself, too deep a Philosopher to feel terrified, even when dealing with the Supernatural in its ghastliest and most unholy manifestations. In one respect, however, the two were entirely of the same mind. They both knew the value of Form too well to neglect it, either in their greater works, or in those of comparatively small pretension; and, for this reason, their writings are invaluable, as examples of the unlimited freedom of thought which may be made compatible with the most perfect structural symmetry.

Heinrich Marschner, though neither so inspired a poet as Weber, nor so deep a philosopher as Spohr, did good service, in his generation, to the cause of Romantic Opera. His two greatest works, 'Der Vampyr,' and 'Der Templer und die Jüdin,' though fast losing their popularity, even in the land of their birth, might be studied, with advantage, by some who are not likely to equal, either their richness of imagery or their musician-like structure. There are passages, in the former Opera, grim enough to make the hearer shudder; while the latter breathes the pure spirit of Chivalry in every Scene. The passage which describes the midnight carousal of The Black Knight and Friar Tuck, is a stroke of genius not lightly to be consigned to oblivion.

If Schumann cared less for accepted forms than Weber or Spohr, it was only because his rich vein of original thought enabled him to strike out new modifications of a general design, compacted together with no less care than that adopted by his predecessors, though arranged on lines peculiarly his own. It would seem, sometimes, as if the richness—one might almost say the redundancy—of his inventive power tempted him to overleap the bounds within which the most gifted of his associates was perfectly contented to dwell. But he neither underrated the value of self-restraint, nor refrained from turning it to account, in some of his best and most