Page:EB1911 - Volume 20.djvu/152

 Mozart’s lesson of dramatic movement has been better learnt than anything peculiar to either music or literature; for, while his libretti show how little that quality has to do with poetic merit, the whole history of Italian opera from Rossini to Mascagni shows how little it has to do with good music. On the other hand, the musical coherence of the individual classical forms used in opera has caused many critics to miss the real dramatic ground of some of the most important operatic conventions. The chief instance of this is the repetition of words in arias and at climaxes, a convention which we are over-ready to explain as a device which prolongs situations and delays action for the sake of musical design. But in the best classical examples the case is almost the reverse, for the aria does not, as we are apt to suppose, represent a few words repeated so as to serve for a long piece of music. Without the music the drama would have required a long speech in its place; but the classical composer cannot fit intelligible music to a long string of different sentences, and so the librettist reduces the speech to mere headlines and the composer supplies the eloquence. Herein lies the meaning of Mozart’s rapid progress from vocal concertos like “Fuor del mar” in Idomeneo and “Martern aller Arten” in Die Entführung to genuine musical speeches like “Non più andrai” in Figaro, in which the obvious capacity to deal with a greater number of words is far less important than the naturalness and freedom with which the pace of the declamation is varied—a freedom unsurpassed even in the Elektra of Richard Strauss.

With Wagnerian polyphony and continuity music became capable of treating words as they occur in ordinary speech, and repetitions have accordingly become out of place except where they would be natural without music. But it is not here that the real gain in freedom of movement lies. That gain has been won, not by Wagner’s negative reforms alone, but by his combination of negative reform with new depths of musical thought; and modern opera is not more exempt than classical opera from the dangers of artistic methods that have become facile and secure. If the libretto has the right dramatic movement, the modern composer need have no care beyond what is wanted to avoid interference with that movement. So long as the music arouses no obviously incompatible emotion and has no breach of continuity, it may find perfect safety in being meaningless. The necessary stagecraft is indeed not common, but neither is it musical. Critics and public will cheerfully agree in ascribing to the composer all the qualities of the dramatist; and three allusions in the music of one scene to that of another will suffice to pass for a marvellous development of Wagnerian Leit-motif.

Modern opera of genuine artistic significance ranges from the light song-play type admirably represented by Bizet’s Carmen to the exclusively “atmospheric” impressionism of Debussy’s Pélleas et Mélisande. Both these extremes are equally natural in effect, though diametrically opposite in method; for both types eliminate everything that would be inadmissible in ordinary drama. If we examine the libretto of Carmen as an ordinary play we shall find it to consist mainly of actual songs and dances, so that more than half of the music would be necessary even if it were not an opera at all. Debussy’s opera differs from Maeterlinck’s play only in a few omissions such as would probably be made in ordinary non-musical performances. His musical method combines perfect Wagnerian continuity with so entire an absence of Leit-motif that there are hardly three musical phrases in the whole opera that could be recognized if they recurred in fresh contexts. The highest conceivable development of Wagnerian continuity has been attained by Strauss in Salome and Elektra; these operas being actually more perfect in dramatic movement than the original plays of Wilde and Hofmannsthal. But their use of Leit-motif, though obvious and impressive, is far less developed than in Wagner; and the polyphony, as distinguished from the brilliant instrumental technique, is, like that technique, devoted mainly to realistic and physically exciting effects that crown the impression in much the same way as skilful lighting of the stage. Certainly Strauss does not in his whole time-limit of an hour and three-quarters use as many

definite themes (even in the shortest of figures) as Wagner uses in ten minutes.

It remains to be seen whether a further development of Wagnerian opera, in the sense of addition to Wagner’s resources in musical architecture, is possible. The uncompromising realism of Strauss does not at first sight seem encouraging in this direction; yet his treatment of Elektra’s first invocation of Agamemnon produces a powerful effect of musical form, dimly perceived, but on a larger scale than even the huge sequences of Wagner. In any case, the best thing that can happen in a period of musical transition is that the leading revolutionaries should make a mark in opera. Musical revolutions are too easy to mean much by themselves; there is no purely musical means of testing the sanity of the revolutionaries or of the critics. But the stage, while boundlessly tolerant of bad music, will stand no nonsense in dramatic movement. (The case of Handelian opera is no exception, for in it the stage was a mere topographical term.) In every period of musical fermentation the art of opera has instantly sifted the men of real ideas from the aesthetes and doctrinaires; Monteverde from the prince of Venosa, Gluck from Gossec, and Wagner from Liszt. As the ferment subsides, opera tends to a complacent decadence; but it will always revive to put to the first and most crucial test every revolutionary principle that enters into music to destroy and expand.

OPHICLEIDE (Fr. ophicleide, basse d’harmonie; Ger. Ophikleid; Ital. oficleide), a brass wind instrument having a cup-shaped mouthpiece and keys, in fact a bass keyed-bugle. The name (from Gr. , serpent, and  , keys), applied to it by Halary, the patentee of the instrument, is hardly a happy one, for there is nothing of the serpent about the ophicleide, which has the bore of the bugle and also owes the chromatic arrangement of the keys to a principle evolved by Halliday for the bugle, to be explained later on.

The ophicleide is almost perfect theoretically, for it combines the natural harmonic scale of the brass wind instruments having cup-shaped mouthpieces, such as the trumpet, with a system of keys, twelve in number, one for each chromatic semitone of the scale; it is capable of absolutely accurate intonation. It consists of a wooden, or oftener brass, tube with a conical bore having the same proportions as that of the bugle but not wide enough in proportion to its length to make the fundamental or first note of the harmonic series of much practical use. The tube, theoretically 8 ft. long, is doubled upon itself once, terminating at the narrow end in a tight coil, from which protrudes the straight piece known as the crook, which bears the cup-shaped mouthpiece; the wide end of the tube terminates in a funnel-shaped bell pointing upwards.

The production of sound is effected in the ophicleide as in other instruments with cup- or funnel-shaped mouthpieces (see ). The lips stretched across the mouthpiece act as vibrating reeds or as the vocal chords in the larynx. The breath of the performer, compressed by being forced through the narrow opening between the lips, sets the latter in vibration. The stream of air, instead of proceeding into the cup in an even flow—in which case there would be no sound—is converted into a series of pulsations by the trembling of the lips. On being thrown into communication with the main stationary column of air at the bottom of the cup, the pulsating stream generates “sound waves,” each consisting of a half wave of expansion and of a half wave of compression. On the frequency per second of the sound waves as they strike the drum of the ear depends the pitch of the note, the acuteness of the sound varying in direct proportion to the frequency. To ensure a higher frequency in the sound waves, their length must be decreased. Two things are necessary to bring this about without shortening the length of the tube: (1) the opening between the lips, fixed at each end by contact with the edges of