Philharmonic Society of New York Public Rehearsal

“The second rehearsal for the concert which is to be given next week by the Philharmonic Society took place on Friday. The attendance was thin, as is usual at this season—a sad contrast to the overflowing prosperity of three years ago. Among the many complaints produced by recent management is that caused by the too rare appearance of the great name of Beethoven on the programmes. The selection of a symphony by Haydn and one by Liszt for this concert is also much objected to. Amateurs in general are little in sympathy with the music of the future, or with that of the far past. It must be admitted, however, that if the contrast between the mild suavity of Haydn’s Oxford Symphony and the lurid horrors of Liszt’s attempt to characterize Dante’s Inferno be too extreme for enjoyment, it is very apposite for instruction. The music of breathes of ‘woods and meads and hamlets gay;’ one can hear the sylvan murmurs, and see in fancy’s eye the Watteau groups, while the gentle rain of sound refreshes the ear, and the bland, orthodox cadences gratify the mind with a sweetly-fulfilled expectation. Having heard the Inferno Symphony on the previous Friday, we awaited its beginning with much the same feeling with which one approaches a cold bath, or a dentist, or any other necessary shock; and it was more painful, more revolting, more suggestive of ghastly and distressing images on the second hearing than on the first. Art, however, must live her own life, tread her own path; and if in this, our time, her feet are bleeding and her garments torn, we must, nevertheless, swell the mournful procession which follows her. Look at the gloomiest and grimiest of Gustave Doré’s pictures of London, and you have the same effects as in this symphony of Liszt. Like that, it suggest gloom, squalor, anxiety, and heart-sickening pain. The means by which Liszt produces this effect are powerful, imaginative, and masterly; but they are also, and above all, destructive of the rules and traditions of composition. The ear is harrowed by discords, which it bears in the hope of a resolution which never comes. The question is stated, the answer withheld. The power of music to depict waiting, expectation, the drawing nigh and leading up to a climax, is used as never before, and the climax when it comes is an abortive one. It may be that one of the most vivid conceptions of a hell is that of a place where rest is impossible, where we are forever seeking, and forever disappointed. But this symphony seems to us to describe less the Tuscan poet’s dream of Hades, than the French painter’s cruel realization of soil and squalor, of want and despair.

It is difficult for a man to escape from his antecedents, and Liszt was a pianist, and a man great and wonderful in his preludes. His themes in the old days were furnished by others, and though they were sometimes trivial enough, they supplied by their compactness the needed complement to his vague but delightful wanderings. But in his orchestral work there is no theme at all; it is an eternal prelude. He employs with mastery all the resources of the orchestra, all the devices of counterpoint; he drags in a harp, he calls in aid a chorus, he introduces a fugue, and the end of it all is a ceaseless wandering up and down the scale in a minor arpeggio—a never-ending still-beginning prelude. The next rehearsal is on Friday, the 14^th, and this choral symphony should, at least, be studied if it cannot be enjoyed.”