Philharmonic Society of New York Concert: 5th

Part of announcement for the Parepa-Rosa English Opera Troupe performances. “In the evening she [Parepa] will sing Beethoven’s ‘Ah Perfido’ for the Philharmonic Society.”

“The Philharmonic Concert, for which a general rehearsal in presence of a tremendous audience was held yesterday, takes place this evening at the Academy.”

“To-night, it will be remembered, the fifth concert of the present Philharmonic season will take place at the Academy of Music. Great interest is felt in the Liszt symphony, which (as heard at the rehearsals) is judged in widely differing manners. The rehearsal of yesterday was well attended. There will be the usual brilliant crowd on hand to-night. Madame Parepa-Rosa will be the vocalist of the evening.”

“If any proof were necessary to show that music has its devotees in this city, who will pay their respects at its shrine, rain or shine, the Philharmonic concert last night would satisfy the most incredulous Thomas. Every seat was occupied, and by a class of people, too, very different from the rank and file of theatre-goers, generally speaking. Beauty, intelligence and fashion graced box, parquet and stall, and throughout the performance there was that earnest attention which bespeaks the appreciative listener. We have already given our full, unbiased opinion of Liszt’s Dante Symphony, the craziest thing in music that ever emanated from a human brain. It may last for some time before the public as a curiosity, as a melancholy example of a great intellect at sea without compass or rudder, but all true musicians will repudiate such machine music at once. Pray, Mr. Bergmann, let us have no more of it. Hell is bad enough, according to sacred writings and popular preachers, but nothing can be more excruciating to the ear of a musician than this frenzied attempt of Liszt to portray its horrors in music. Mme. Parepa-Rosa sang the well known scene and aria, ‘Ah, perfido!’ divinely, giving to its interpretation all the treasures of her full, resonant, clear and true voice, and Carl Rosa made a success in the first movement of the ‘Concerto Militaire’ of Lipinski. Beethoven’s ‘Coriolanus’ overture, which he wrote as an introduction to a tragedy, not an opera, is as unlike the great master as could be imagined, and the description of it given in the programme did not explain matters any better. But it was a relief after the insane rhapsody of Liszt, for true music can always be listened to with pleasure. Still we would prefer any other of Beethoven’s works for such an occasion. One proof of its comparative weakness is the fact that an attempt has been made to make it programme music a la Berlioz. When Beethoven is himself he defies analyzation, for he pours forth such a deluge of harmony and melody that the listener is compelled to drink without the possibility of any chemical analysis of his beverage. The overture to ‘Euryanthe’ has always been and will be the favorite of the admirers of Weber, and their name is Legion. It is a bright, genial emanation of a cheerful soul, transporting the hearer to the pleasant woods and valleys and presenting a vivid picture of pastoral life. The opening and closing tutti are full of brio and enthusiasm, quickening and fresh as the mountain breeze that sweeps over the valleys. There are exquisite morceaux of ’cello, horn, basson [sic], and clarionet coloring, forming interesting little episodes throughout. Then comes a delicious reverie of violins and violas, suggestive in its pianissimo manner of the whispering breeze, the purling brook, the waving field of yellow grain. Suddenly we are startled by a fugato movement, which breaks in upon the tenderness and beauty of the scene. The opening of the fugue is rather aimless and unsatisfactory, but it gradually collects strength by concentrating upon its quaint theme all the power of the orchestra, until the hearer experiences a feeling of relief at being brought back to the contemplation of pastoral life. It was, indeed, the gem of last night’s concerto [sic]. The programme for the next concert, May 7, comprises Schumann’s Symphony, No. 2 in C; Gade’s Overture to Ossian and Beethoven’s fourth Overture to Fidelio.”

“The audience assembled at the fifth Philharmonic Concert of the present season last evening, was almost as large as that which overflowed into the lobbies of the Academy on the occasion of the final rehearsal on Friday. The impression of the principal feature of the programme was not so deep as at an earlier stage of the preparations it was hoped it would be. Liszt’s symphony to Dante’s ‘Divina Commedia,’ hardly improves by frequent hearing. The larger portion of it belongs to that order of elaborate programme music, out of which the listener may construct for himself incidents and dramas of the most tremendous nature, if he has a turn for so doing. An explanatory hand-bill, however, limits the action of the imagination, in some degree, in this instance. We shall not undertake to produce a complete summary of this document. The religious idea of Dante’s work has been selected as the composer’s canvas. The chaos of the under-world is first depicted, gentler strains afterward bringing before one the episode of Francesca di Rimini, and these dying away, when the shrill cries of the damned fill the ear, when repeated falling progressions bear the theme down and down again, when the stormy utterances, chromatically effected, paint an elemental war, and when the accentuation of the curse, ‘Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate,’ is given with tenfold vehemence. This ends the first part of the symphony, which part is divided into two movements, an allegro frenetico, and an andante amoroso. The second section delineates Purgatory. The principal theme begins after the manner of a chorale. Upon its close follows a second indicative of self accusation, patient resignation, and inexpressible sorrow. A fugue movement is introduced—lamenting, weeping, entreating—commencing with one voice, and gradually developing into a chorus of voices innumerable, striving, with ever-increasing fervor, in prayer. At the climax of the fugue, the principal theme originally introduced after the manner of a chorale stands out boldly, and soon after shrinks back, and, accompanied by a plaintive recitative, disappears altogether. Gradually, the heavy clouds of an unspeakable suffering are cleared away. The sound of harps announces that Paradise is near. The chant of the Magnificat is hearkened to, setting forth redemption by means of prayer. From the personal Magnificat a transition is made into the chorus of the whole universe, Hosanna and Hallelujah. ‘The human heart, now thoroughly transfigured,’ adds the programme, ‘is enkindled with a holy fire, and bursts into a loud cry of joy, which pervades all the earth and the hells.’ The illustration of all this subject matter of the second part, however, is still less felicitous, to our own thinking, than that of the first; though the din of hell is almost the only portion of that to the suggestion of which some approach has been made. The result, to be brief, was quite unsatisfying, and would have been improved to a very slight extent only had the one chance of fault finding offered by the interpretation, and growing out of a misplacing of a weak chorus of boys, been withdrawn from us. It was a positive relief, after three-quarters of an hour passed amid ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing,’ to be favored with Beethoven’s overture to ‘Coriolanus,’ executed, save in respect of a slight variation of time by the violoncellos, with perfect accuracy and great spirit; and it was doubly refreshing afterward to mark the pure and symmetrical beauty of the scena ed aria, by the same genius, commencing ‘Ah! Perfido,’ and sung so as to produce general enthusiasm by Mme. Parepa-Rosa, whose richness and volume of voice no amount of labor seems to impair, and whose grand style no tasks set by miscellaneous ballad-writers, lost in the mazes of opera, can make her forget or disregard. After Mme. Parepa-Rosa’s contribution, Herr Carl Rosa rendered on the violin, with an orchestral accompaniment, the first movement of a Concerto Militaire, by Lipinski, sufficiently martial in character to be worthy of the artist’s breadth of tone, and rich enough in passages in thirds and tenths to display his thorough command of the finger board. Weber’s overture ‘Euryanthe,’ familiar, but ever welcome, was the closing feature of the concert.”

“The fifth concert of the Philharmonic Society was given on Saturday evening, with the following programme: [lists program].

“The Liszt Symphony had been awaited with the greatest interest by critics and connoisseurs, for it is acknowledged to be one of the master’s grandest and most highly finished productions, remarkable not so much for bold effects and a broad treatment of unusual combinations, as for severe scientific study and the solution of the gravest difficulties of counterpoint. To the select few who can delight in the unraveling of musical tangles and appreciate a composer’s triumph over obstacles of his own creating, this Symphony is an engrossing subject of contemplation—nay, it is an impressive and in some places an inspiring poem. To the less highly educated lover of music it is, however, comparatively unattractive, and, of all Liszt’s orchestral works that we have heard, it is the least likely to please a miscellaneous audience. Two parts only of Dante’s poem have been taken for illustration—the Inferno and the Purgatorio. The objection will at once occur to most minds that neither of these is a good subject for treatment, and in particular that the torments of Hell are essentially incapable of musical expression. It is the absence of every element of music which makes Hell. Beauty is the soul of music, and it is therefore no more possible to describe or even suggest with musical tones a state of existence with which the faintest traces of the beautiful are utterly inconsistent than it is for an artist with any combination of gay colors to paint the blackness and horrible void of eternal night. Dante and Milton were too conscious of the limitation of human powers to attempt a description of Hell in its reality. The Hells of the Divina Commedia and the ‘Paradise Lost’ are merely the stages upon which the poets dramas are enacted, and if they differ entirely from our instinctive conceptions of what Hell must be, we are not shocked by the inconsistency because, first, we feel that the reality is something beyond human expression, and secondly, our concern is with the personages of the poem rather than the place. With the musician, however, the case is different. He cannot tell the story of the suffering souls, or reproduce the sad processions which Dante saw winding through the lurid gloom of the abysmal circles. The limits of his art confine him to the general description of a state of torture, remorse, and horror. Music is indeed capable of expressing sensations and emotions for which words have no power of utterance; but the difficulty is that if it could express the deprivation of harmony which constitutes Hell it would cease to be music. Hell and music are contradictory terms. Liszt has endeavored to escape this dilemma by filling the lower world not with the shrieks of demons and the curses of the damned, but the wall of the suffering. His Inferno is not the black pit out of which rise only the frightful cries of the impenitent, but a gloomy region tossing with the billows of unrest, and resonant with menaces, above which echoes the sorrowful plaint of the soul which in misery looks back upon the happier time. So, after the blare of trumpets has pealed out the everlasting curse, ‘Leave hope behind, all ye who enter here,’ and a short allegro frenetico has indicated the tempest and frenzy of despair, the composer takes up the poet’s exquisitely pathetic lines,

Nessun maggior eolore

Che ricordano del tempo falso

Nella miseria,

and makes them really the burden of the movement. We do not believe that Dante’s immortal verses will ever be wedded to more beautifully descriptive music. The illustrative programme well designates this passage as a dialogue. It begins as a duet between the flute and clarionet, with a wild dreamy accompaniment on the harp and violins muted; it is taken up in turn by the violoncelli, the violins, and the violas. It is the very poetry of sorrow; but there is no such sorrow as that in Hell; there is no revery [sic] so delicious in its pathos. Untrue though it is, it is enough to stamp Liszt as a poet; but that curious defect in his poetical nature which so often makes him insensible to the difference between the grand and the fantastic breaks out just here in a freak of extravagance which actually provokes a laugh. It is of no use to say that the tumult which interrupts the revery so rudely is nothing to laugh at, and that musicians don’t laugh; the fact that whenever it is played some people do laugh is enough to condemn it. The trumpets, however, are heard again in the resonant tones of the curse, and the movement closes grandly with a fortissimo passage in Liszt’s strongest style. The Purgatorio is better suited to musical treatment, partly because it affords more scope for human feeling, and partly because our ideas of Purgatory as a state or place are much vaguer than our ideas of Hell. Liszt’s purpose seems to have been to combine the expressions of grief, patience, hope, and worship. A choral theme, borrowed from a Gregorian chant, colors the whole movement, and at the last the choir of voices in the distant back ground [sic] intones the Magnificat, rising to an outburst of joy at the assurance of forgiveness and the near prospect of heaven. Love and resignation in the midst of intense suffering—this is the central idea. Listening to the performance on Saturday night, the plaintive phrases seemed too vague, and the iterations, however interesting as a study of counterpoint, became monotonous. Remembered afterwards, the impression becomes almost awful. With the playing of the orchestra it would be difficult to find fault. The fifteen boys, however, to whom the choral work was intrusted [sic], were not equal to their task, though considering that they were boys, they sang pretty well. Their intonation was not always true, and their confidence sometimes failed them. They were places on a platform behind and above the orchestra, and Mr. Messiter accompanied them on a cabinet organ, which was of course inaudible in the front. A much finer effect would have been produced by a large choir placed out of sight behind the scenes. The chant ought to have had the rich yet soft tones which can only be produced by the blending of many voices heard at a distance, and besides the singers ought not to have been seen. The spectacle of fifteen young gentlemen with round jackets and white kid gloves standing beside a melodeon with sheets of music in their hands was not at all suggestive of Purgatory. Beethoven’s ‘Coriolanus’ and Weber’s ‘Euryanthe,’ the two overtures in the second part, call for no special remark except that they were beautifully played, and after the mingled sensations of wonder and disappointment aroused by the symphony, they were inexpressibly refreshing. But Madame Parepa-Rosa after all gave the heartiest delight. The grand scena and aria of Beethoven’s which she chose for this occasion—her last song in New-York until after she returns from Europe—is a composition displaying a remarkable variety of her best qualities. It has much of the grandeur of declamation which distinguished the great ‘Ocean’ scena in ‘Oberon,’ and the pathos and smoothness of melody for which we all love Beethoven. The stately magnificence of Madame Rosa’s recitatives, the passion of dramatic inspiration, the absolute purity and taste of the cantabile passages, the bird like [sic] sweetness of her softest tones, and the clarion notes with which she electrifies an audience as no other singer can—we had them all in turn. Never before these last few days have we realized her immeasurable superiority to all the difficulties of her art. She is the only woman in America who can sing the Ah! perfido; she is the only woman in American who can sing the ‘Oberon’ scena; and on Friday [a reference to Friday afternoon’s Philharmonic Public Rehearsal and her own company’s performance of Weber’s opera that night] she sang them both.

“Mr. Carl Rosa followed his wife with the first movement of Lipinski’s concerto militaire for the violin. He is too good an artist to be always a conductor, and too good a conductor to be always playing the violin, and we are glad that he resumes now and then the branch of art by which he first made himself a favorite in this country. The Lipinski concerto abounds with technical difficulties which Mr. Rosa conquers with apparent ease. The clearness of his touch and the correctness of his method have lost nothing during his devotion to other pursuits, and he is still the same old conscientious and intelligent performer that he was of old.”

“Liszt’s elaborate symphony, as produced at the Philharmonic concert on Saturday last, has found little favor in critical circles. A musical work which aims to depict abstract ideas can seldom be successful; and Liszt’s musical illustration of the ‘Divina Commedia’ probably is more suggestive to the composer than to his listeners. That there is much grandeur in certain phases of the work, and that the orchestral treatment is striking and original, none can deny; but that the work will ever be a standard symphony is more than doubtful. It was well performed on Saturday night. The pleasant contrast of vocal effects brought about by the introduction of a boy chorus would have been better, had the choristers been so arranged that their voices would have reached the audience more easily, for as it was there seemed a lack of power, though the quality of the voices was good. The programme of the evening contained an elaborate analysis of the symphony, evolved from the inner consciousness of the German writer Pohl, and by its aid the work became comparatively intelligible.

“Beethoven’s ‘Coriolanus’ overture was given in good style, but in no way awakened the enthusiasm of the audience. Weber’s ‘Euryanthe’ overture, though coming at the close of the programme, met with a kinder reception. Madame Parepa-Rosa was the vocalist of the evening, and sang in magnificent style Beethoven’s grand aria ‘Ah! perfido.’ She was twice called, but declined to sing again. Mr. Rosa played in a brilliant style a violin movement by Lipinski, showing much technical skill in his performance.

“This concert was a decidedly ‘heavy’ one. The music produced was of the most elaborate style (excepting, perhaps, the violin solo), and listening to it was no light matter. So the audience seemed to think, for the attention bestowed on the performance was closer than is usual at a Philharmonic concert.”

“A symphony by Liszt, intended to give expression in music to some of the strange and wonderful scenes written of by Dante in his great poem, was played on Saturday evening, at the Philharmonic Concert. The enterprise that leads the directors of the Philharmonic Society to give these modern productions is commendable. It is easy to say that the symphonies of the old masters are better and more enjoyable, but all musically-inclined persons are anxious to know what the modern men are about, and the wilder and the more extravagant the music they write is, the greater naturally is the curiosity to hear it.

“The music of Liszt to Dante’s ‘Hell’ and ‘Purgaotry’ is to our thinking the worst that the composers of this school can do. We are thankful to believe that in this symphony they have run their course to is very end and exhausted their powers of perversion. Having lived through that hour of agony during which this symphony lasted and escaped with reason not overthrown, we can safely bid defiance to Liszt, Wagner, and their fellow madmen of the school of the future. The principle on which this musical monstrosity was constructed was evidently to find out precisely what effects the best composers had made use of to produce lovely and satisfying results, and to reverse them. It was like playing one of Beethoven’s symphonies backward. In the first place it was necessary that the whole composition should be made tuneless, and in the next place, so far as possible, it was to set time at defiance. In other words, the accent was to be thrown on such unexpected parts of the beat that the musicians should seem to be playing in one time and the conductor to direct another. The tortures of the damned were to be illustrated, and this congenial theme gave Liszt a famous excuse for unheard-of bedevilment of his orchestra. Shrieks from the trumpets, cries of shrill anguish from the piccolos, groups of distress from the bass tuba, throbs of pain from the kettle drums, screams of sharp torture from the clashing cymbals, yells of demoniac rage from the trombones, sighs and sobs from the softer wind instruments, were all heard at once in a wild carnival of discord, and as a climax to this orchestral fury the violins were sent wailing and complaining in chromatic intervals from the top to the bottom of the musical scale till it seemed as though Beelzebub, prince of the devils, must have stood at the composer’s right hand while he scored this work. The admirers of Liszt answer such suggestions of discord by the reply that the truer this statement is the more genius of the author is demonstrated, for the horrors of the nether world were exactly what he intended to paint, and the more hideous the result the better the picture. The wonder is that Liszt’s familiar spirit did not inspire him to compose for each class of instruments in a separate key. The effect of the demoniac conclusion and horror at which he aimed would then certainly have been attained and his audience sent howling with anguish out of the house. Even now it is not too late, and Mr. Bergmann, when he next performs this work, might have all the viola parts written, say in the key of C, the second violins in C sharp major, the violas in minor, the double basses and violoncellos in E flat, and so on through the major and the minor scales. The doors might then be closed on the audience, the orchestra tied down to their seats, and all the clergymen of the city invited to witness the result. The picture of the infernal regions that would then be presented would, beyond a doubt, strike terror in the heart of the stoutest sinner. In fact, we know of nothing better calculated to call the obdurate to repentance than this work of Liszt’s, for if any person could fully be brought to realize that his punishment hereafter would consist in being compelled forever to listen to the symphony that we haerd for an hour on Saturday night, there is, we venture to say, no man living bold enough to contemplate unmoved such a doom, or who would not at once take measures to be rescued from so terrible a fate.

“Madame Parepa Rosa sang Beethoven’s noble aria, ‘Ah, Perfido,’ in the spirit of exaltation in which it was written. Of all the range of arias written in the Italian mode, there is confessedly none more lofty, noble, dignified, and beautiful than this effort of highest inspiration. The great wear to which Madame Rosa’s voice has been recently subjected was apparent in her singing. At first the tone wavered; it was not that steady, round, even and unerring tone to which she has accustomed her audiences, but as we have said, she sang the aria grandly and fittingly, declining with good sense the enore which was tendered to her, for what could be sung after this song that would not seem frivolous and weak?

“Carl Rosa played with great delicacy and skill a military concerto by Lipinski, a Pole, who was a famous violinist, under the Paganini school, forty years ago, and more recently conductor at the Royal Theatre at Dresden, but a feeble composer. The concert closed with Von Weber’s ever charming ‘Euryanthe Overture.’” [reprinted DJM 04/23/70, p. 232]