CHAPTER XIX

PHANTOMS OF HARMONY

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?

EMIL SAUER, the pianist, was among my valued friends in London at this stage of my progress, and it is to him that I owe later one of the charming experiences of my life. He played his own beautiful piano concerto with the Philharmonic Orchestra in New York, and its performance gave me a vision of pure music, much as I am able to visualize the characters I assume on the stage. I was in a box at Carnegie Hall, and as Sauer played his delightful strains, I was wholly detached from my surroundings. I became aware that it was a summer morning, with the weather fine but hot. Toward noon the heat grew oppressive, and the engaging landscape spread before me was of no importance in comparison with the need for the refreshing shade of a great tree. A storm was brewing, and finally broke; and after it came a superb sunset. A splendid cool and purple night followed; the dawn approached, and the sun arose in a blaze of glory. This in brief was the distinct story of a poet's long day; no words can describe it, music only could voice the composer's vision.

Seeking out Sauer after the concert, I was delighted to learn that, though his concerto had not been programed in any such way, these were actually the thoughts and experiences which he had in mind while writing this noble piece, which is far too little known and should be sought out by pianists and added to their repertories.

The singer of songs has the advantage of the words, which have been the source of inspiration for the music. But an instrumental writer appeals directly through music alone to the emotions of his audience. In most cases the audience enjoys what is written without comprehending what the composer has intended. The voices of his instruments are the only ones at his command, and in a symphony words are out of place. The world must gather from songs without words such comfort as it may.

I have always felt that for songs of a certain character some accompaniment should be devised midway between that of the piano and that of a full orchestra. A number of pieces have been written for me in the endeavor to illustrate more richly than is possible with the sound of the piano the meaning of the poet's word. A beautiful piece was composed for me by Ernest Walker of Oxford to William Morris's poem "From the Upland to the Sea " in which the voice has the advantage of declaiming the words and takes an equal place with the pianoforte and the voices of a string quartette. Walford Davies was kind enough to set Browning's "Prospice" to music for me, in which the voice is heard with a quintette of piano and strings. As an ample suggestion of orchestral music and much less expensive, I suggest to present-day composers that they consider this means for expressing themselves, as any new mode for making known one's artistic thoughts should be of value.

At this time of my career I became particularly interested in the ballads of Loewe, the clerical contemporary of Schubert, who left the church to devote himself to the composition of songs. I commend his splendid ballads to all singers, for they are among the best and most comprehensible of music stories, so to speak, that exist in all song literature. What can be finer than the Scotch ballads of "Archibald Douglas," and the gruesome "Edward," or the fantastic fairy tale of "Tom the Rhymer "? Loewe's setting of "The Erl King," which Schubert had done before him, is by many considered equally fine, and nothing in the whole range of comedy can excel his delightful "Wedding Song." There is no mystery about these ballads, and yet they are exemplifications of the highest form of their art. Flowers of music are indeed as beautiful and as amazing in their variety as natural blossoms.

Besides giving many recitals and appearing in works which I have already mentioned, I sang in Sullivan's oratorio "The Martyr of Antioch" and his cantata "The Golden Legend"; in Hofmann's "Melusine"; in Mendelssohn's "Walpurgis Night," and in Rossini's "Moses in Egypt." I had also the opportunity in the spring of 1895 of taking part at Crystal Palace under the conductorship of Hubert Parry in his remarkable oratorio "Job," which should be more frequently heard in America. Notwithstanding the somberness of the subject, it is a composition of great musical value and affords, to the barytone part in particular, one of the finest modern pieces of musical declamation. The title rôle was originally written for Plunkett Greene, who created the part and rendered it many times with superb dramatic feeling.

Tinel's "St. Francis " was performed by me soon after this under the conductorship of Hallé, with Prout's "Hereward," and Goring Thomas's posthumous work, "The Swan and the Skylark," while Berlioz's "Te Deum" and Verdi's "Requiem" followed in quick succession. Gounod's "Redemption" and Mendelssohn's "Elijah" I also sang before the opera season of 1895.

Elijah" is almost sufficiently dramatic to be included in the operatic repertory. The experiment was tried in England of putting that oratorio on the stage, and Erickson Bushnell, the well-known American singer, a man of considerable private means, was also smitten with the idea and attempted to give "Elijah" in operatic form.

Many years afterward, when I myself had frequently sung "Elijah" in New York, I was seriously urged to render it on the stage in a series of performances. I deliberated upon this, realizing the extreme difficulty of mounting a masterpiece of oratorio so that even to enthusiasts it would be in the least acceptable as an opera. The spirit of the work, to be retained at all, would have to be communicated to the actors and singers by an artistic director, to whom literature, religion, and poetry were of paramount importance and of equal value. No mere stage manager could do anything with "Elijah " as an opera. The only person whom I have heard speak with real poetic and lofty religious insight into the possibilities of such a production is that admirable Welsh enthusiast, the choral director Tali Esen Morgan. But such are the difficulties that would attend a production of this kind, that it is better to live in the hope and expectation of the future possibility of some such artistic wonder, rather than to have in the retrospect blasted hopes. Mendelssohn in writing the "Elijah" had a veritable inspiration, and had he intended that work to be produced other than as it was originally produced as an oratorio at the Birmingham Festival in 1846, he would have elaborated it accordingly; as it stands so it should be performed, and then every spiritual member of the

audience can visualize to his heart's content and come away satisfied.

I remember once hearing William Stoll, Jr., a Philadelphia conductor of orchestra and an excellent violinist, declare that he had the gift of auralizing music; he knew the symphonies so well, he assured me, that if he desired to hear one of them as he was about to go to sleep, all he had to do was to start it in his mind and he would hear a perfect performance, as if played by master instrumentalists, from the first note to the closing bar.

This reminds me of what I have read of Goethe, who, if he wished to see again a statue or a picture from some gallery in Europe, would sit quietly facing a dark corner in his study, concentrate his thoughts upon the Venus de Milo or some other work of art, when it would immediately seem to form itself and to stand out, so that it appeared to his mind's eye as if he were looking at the actuality.

A Philadelphian named Waters has told me that he once had a distinct vision upon waking in the morning. As he lay looking into the room from his bed he saw a pair of hands playing upon a curved keyboard, unlike that of any piano or organ of which he knew. Years afterward such keyboards and organ appliances came into existence and are now used. The strangest part of my friend's narrative was that, at the time he had this prophetic vision of the new keyboard, he also heard from the instrument music of the most extraordinary kind, quite unlike anything he had ever listened to.

The subject is one of such interest that I may be pardoned if I quote here a letter written in 1874 by the late Frances Ridley Havergal, the English poetess and writer of hymns, to her mother, in which she says: