Articles: Letters to the editor on popular music

“To the Editors of the Evening Post:

I am convinced that you would confer a favor upon many persons who are fond of melody by entering the following protest against the music which is usually sung or played for the public benefit, and therefore ask that this little screed be published. The amount of weary musical performances to which we are compelled to listen is something to be astonished at. At our concerts, summer and winter, one may see hundreds of nice-looking, quiet city people patiently trying to listen to pieces of music which are only fit to be played by one set of musicians and heard by another. Without denying that there may be pleasure derived by certain persons from listening to sounds produced by various instruments, when said sounds are arranged as a sort of puzzle or in a way to be as unlike melody as possible, one may doubt that such things can please in any great number.

Any person who has noted the behavior of audiences other than those who attend the Philharmonic or the concerts which are professedly only for musical people who dislike melody, must have remarked the pleasure which they seemed to derive from either instrumental or vocal music when it was at all melodious. Duets, quartets and trios are apt to please a musical audience very much. An experiment tried in the way indicated below might satisfy musical conductors that the people at large are really fond of melody and harmony.

Take a large audience, say such as usually fills Niblo’s, and have a competent quartet sing the ‘Good Night’ from ‘Martha,’ with orchestral accompaniment, or the orchestral itself perform the overture to the same opera. The result will be that the audience will applaud tremendously and demand a repetition of the performance. Then let a soprano of undoubted power sing one of those skeleton arias which can only have been written to try the voice, or let the orchestra perform a ‘Scherzo in B flat,’ and see whether the audience will demand any more of either one or the other.

The ‘Last Rose of Summer,’ well sung and well accompanied, will give more pleasure to the average audience than the most elaborate piece of vocal music ever written.

Many leaders and conductors say that our taste is improving rapidly, thanks to their persistence in giving us classical music. They would change their opinion if they were to introduce four voices in the mist of one of their performances, and have them sing ‘Hard Times Come Again No More,’ with orchestra to accompany them. All the blowing and scraping of all the inharmonious sounds contained in an ordinary ‘oratorio’ would not bring forth one-tenth of the applause which would follow ‘Hard Times.’

It is hinted that we may yet be able to comprehend Wagner’s music if we keep on listening as we do to the usual style of music now given to us. I fear that the most of us will regard Wagner as the poor old lord regarded Gibbon the historian after having been compelled by his wife to read the ‘Decline and Fall’ many times to improve his mind. After his wife died and he could express an opinion of his own without fear, he always took intense pleasure in company, when Gibbon’s name was mentioned, in declaring that he (Gibbon) was a ‘low fellow.’

If we are compelled by a company of music-mad composers to endure more ‘scherzos,’ fugues, andantes, &c., we will not survive like the old lord, but perish under the infliction.

When one reflects upon the enormous power in the musical way contained in an ordinary orchestra, one cannot help wishing that some of it could be devoted to playing sweet music occasionally.

As to piano music, it is too vast a theme of a disagreeable kind to treat here. Those who play the piano in ordinary society seem to know only two pieces of music, one is ‘Yankee Doodle,’ and the other some very brilliant operatic affair. Between these two they know nothing, and never seem to fancy that no end of sweet music might be found in the intervening space.

The insane desire to produce music of an unsympathetic kind has taken possession of even the directors of burlesque pieces. In spite of the pleasure which audiences invariably express when they are treated to some concerted piece with melody in it, they are frequently expected to hear patiently some cold and dry voice singing something from some new opera, to have Offenbachian jigs sung to them.

There has been abundance of very sweet music written, and it is a pity that we do not hear more of it. G. W. G.

New York, August 29, 1873.”

“To the Editors of the Evening Post:

I have just read the letter on ‘Popular Music,’ by ‘G.W.G.,’ in your issue of September 1.

I think the evil of which he complains would be obviated to a great extent if audiences would refrain from applauding what they neither understand nor enjoy, simply because it is considered fashionable or ‘all the rage.’ An ordinary summer-night’s audience, such as may usually be seen at Central Park Garden, must be composed almost entirely of persons ignorant of the science of music; a very small proportion can be even amateurs; they hear a long classical selection, which to their ears is nothing but a chaotic confusing of chords, scales and broken cadences, formless, meaningless and utterly devoid of melody or harmony; they see it is put down in the programme as the composition of some Hungarian with an unpronounceable name, and they imagine it must be something very fine; finally it comes to an end with three or four tremendous chords by the whole orchestra, and down comes the applause as a matter of course.

The fact is that the performance of classic music at popular concerts is simply an absurdity, because classic music is not and never can be popular music, for the reason that, it is understood and enjoyed only by those who have devoted the best part of a lifetime to the study of it—in other words, professional musicians. I think it will not be denied that even the most highly cultivated amateurs on the whole prefer Gounod, Verdi and Strauss to Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner. I do not pretend to say that the Thomas concerts have not been popular, but I do assert that the extremely intricate classical selections which have been performed nightly have in no degree contributed to that result. They have been a tedious infliction to nine-tenths of the audience, who did not come to hear them, cared nothing about them, were restless, figetty and talkative during their performance, and applauded at their termination more from a sense of relief than for any other reason.

As your correspondent observes, we hear a great deal of talk about the improvement of the popular musical taste, &c. I can only say that the idea of educating the great mass of people, who are entirely ignorant of the simplest rudiments of the science, up to an understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of so-called classical music simply by dinning it into their ears night after night, whether they will or no, seems to me the height of absurdity. Amateur. New York, September 10, 1873.”