Five years ago in an oracular mood, I ventured to prophesy that moving-picture entertainments would soon be listed with symphony concerts. Probably, at the time, I wore the mask of Cassandra and nobody believed me. Nevertheless, my sapient prognostications have been amply fulfilled. No great composer, to be sure, has yet constructed a score to fit the flash-backs and double exposures of Bebe Daniels, but that will come later. Indeed, I am willing to predict that, within the next ten years, Igor Stravinsky will set a Chaplin film to music. Why not? In the meantime, while they gaze on Gloria Swanson in the arms of Wallace Reid, picture patrons are regaled with snippets of Verdi and Friml. Mary Pickford cutifies to a bar or two of Schubert, followed by a bar or two of Jerome Kern, while Norma Talmadge cavorts to remnants of Grieg and Offenbach. At the beginning of the show, and between the news and feature films, a more or less competent "symphony orchestra" of approximately ninety-five men (in the larger houses) performs music that hitherto could only be heard in Carnegie Hall or the Opera House. Within a few months, indeed, at these cinema concerts, I have listened to the overture to Iphigénie en Aulide, Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March, Dvořák's Carneval overture, the andante con moto from Schubert's major Symphony, Dukas's l'Apprenti-sorcier, the first movement of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, the overture to Oberon, the March from the Symphonie Pathétique, Tchaikovsky's Capriccio Italien, and even the vorspiel to Die Meistersinger![1] In 1920, the direction of the Rialto Theatre in New York went so far as to offer a prize of $500 for the best orchestral composition submitted by an American. Among the judges in this contest were Artur Bodanzky, Victor Herbert, Carl Deis, and O. G. Sonneck. Eighty-five compositions were entered in this competition and the gold was awarded to Mortimer Wilson of Iowa for his New Orleans overture. This work was performed at the Rialto during the week of October 24, 1920. The week of December 19, Maurice Baron's Ouverture Triomphale, the second choice of the judges, was given a hearing. I listened to both of these numbers and can testify that they were no better and no worse than might have been expected.
Soloists appear at these moving-picture concerts. I have heard them sing the Cardinal's air from La Juive, Son lo spirito che nega from Mefistofele, Una voce poco fà, Il est doux, il est bon from Hérodiade, and the Polacca from Mignon. I have heard them play Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen, Liszt's piano concerto in E flat, Saint-Saëns's Le Cygne, Tchaikovsky's B flat minor piano concerto, Grieg's piano concerto, and Bruch's arrangement for cello of the Kol Nidrei. These soloists are by no means all amateurs or broken-down opera singers. The first violin of the band in one of the New York electrical picture houses, who frequently appeared there in the rôle of virtuoso, was engaged by the Chicago Orchestra to fill a similar chair, and Percy Grainger, himself, played one week at the Capitol Theatre. It takes no great stretch of the imagination to foresee that, in the not too far-distant future, Pablo Casals, Harold Bauer, Elena Gerhardt, Eva Gauthier, and, probably, even Geraldine Farrar, will have hearings under these happy auspices.
There is no doubt in my mind, as a matter of fact, that the cut and dried Carnegie Hall type of concert, formal and forbidding, is bound to disappear in favour of this warmer and more informal mode of entertainment, unless the entrepreneurs of the symphony societies take steps to meet this new and increasingly formidable form of competition. Percy Grainger, playing a Steinway grand in a darkened auditorium, in a highly decorative set arranged by John Wenger, with an amber light focused on his aureole of golden hair, is a vastly more effective performer than the Percy Grainger who plays on the bare stage of Carnegie Hall, with the house and its occupants brightly illuminated. Anybody who heard him at the Capitol Theatre will support me in this categorical statement. It must also be taken into consideration that the average customer cannot detect the difference between a performance of Rimsky-Korsakoff's Scheherazade by the Rivoli Orchestra and one by the Boston Symphony. Naturally he pays his money where he can hear the Scheherazade and see W. S. Hart on the same bill.
The backers and angels of the various symphony organizations may as well make up their minds that they will be compelled to face this new music. Now, observing how much effect the cinema palaces have made by combining music with pictures, it has occurred to me to wonder why some enterprising Henry Lee Higginson or Harry Harkness Flagler has not hit upon the idea of combining pictures with music. The ways in which this suggestion might be turned to advantage, without loss of dignity, are manifold. Let our present concern be a consideration of pictures as an excellent substitute for program notes.
The obvious first use of the films in this capacity would have an educational value. For example, one reads in the program books that the first theme of Marecipio's Third Symphony is a tender melody in G flat minor played by the flute and the first violins. To the layman, it will be readily admitted, this statement conveys nothing whatever. I doubt, indeed, if the majority of the auditors who attend symphony concerts can distinguish the difference between a flute and a violin. Certainly, when glockenspiel, tympani, celesta, bassoon, clarinet, and oboe are concerned, the tired business man has not the faintest conception of how they look or sound. I am acquainted with a lawyer, a constant attendant of symphony concerts for the past ten years, who was amazed to discover recently that the bassoon was a wind instrument. He had always confused it with the double-bass. When this fellow read descriptions of various themes he must have been very much puzzled. My proposition would discourage such confusion. Simply, it is for the title of a theme to be flashed on the screen at the moment it is announced in the orchestra. Thus: First Theme
A little later this will be followed by another title:
Second Theme
Then will come a proclamation of the working-out section, with indications here and there of the uses of the various themes. Still later, the recapitulation will be published, and the coda, if there be one. The performance may be preluded by general remarks about the composer and such particularizations regarding the symphony as may be deemed pertinent. If this course be rigorously pursued throughout the season, by the first of April, every constant concert-goer may be expected to know at least as much about the sonata form as I do.
It does not seem necessary to dwell at length on the advantages that will ensue from a resort to this simple device. Briefly, however, the hearer will be put into possession of accurate information at the time when he most needs it and when, therefore, it will make its maximum effect; there will be no rustling of programs to disturb honest listeners; above all, the requirements of the electrical machine will demand the darkening of the auditorium, an immense advantage. There is, to be sure, no apparent reason why the auditorium should not be darkened in any case. The fact remains, however, that it never is. Seemingly, it never will be until there springs up a sufficiently compelling motive for this desirable procedure.
A second and more novel use of titles may be made under circumstances in which program notes are of small avail. I refer to quotations. Authors frequently quote from other authors. They indicate these borrowings either by inverted commas or by a reference to the original book or its writer. There is no hint of plagiarism in this line of conduct, which is recognized and regular. On the other hand, a composer, who quotes, consciously and intentionally, from another composer, is in danger of being misunderstood. He can, to be sure, label his intention in the printed score. When Meelisande speaks in Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, Dukas cites a phrase from Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. In the book of the lyric drama this fact is noted. In performance, however, it cannot be noted. In this particular instance, with Mélisande singing on the stage, Dukas's intention is fairly obvious. Suppose, however, that the composer of a symphony wishes to quote a few bars from Beethoven for some reason of emphasis or irony. How can he indicate this to his auditors? The fact is that he cannot indicate it. He may mention his obligation in the published score, and the conductor who performs the work may be aware of it, but, even if it be acknowledged in the program notes, the passage cannot be denoted with exactitude. Moreover, the composer cannot depend on every auditor reading these notes; furthermore, many concerts are given without any notes at all. His purpose, therefore, is liable to misconstruction. My plan, then, is for a title to be flashed on the screen at the exact moment the quotation is being performed, something like this:
This phrase is quoted
from
Purcell's Dido and Æneas
There is a passage in Strauss's Ein Heldenleben in which the composer cites themes from his own earlier works. By means of this simple device, each of these quotations (I believe there are twenty-three) could be distinctively labelled.
But the third and most important possible use of the electrical pictures in connection with symphony concerts carries us much further than the mere employment of titles. I think it would be an excellent idea to illustrate symphonic poems, all program music, indeed, by appropriate accompanying action on the screen.[2] This expedient would provide a concert with almost as many moving-pictures as are presented in an evening at a cinema theatre, for it is well to realize that eight-tenths of the music played at modern concerts is program music. Let me offer a concrete example. When an orchestra plays Dukas's l'Apprenti-sorcier, it is the custom to print Goethe's verses, on which the tone-poem is founded, in the program books. Why not, instead, cause a picture to be taken which will synchronize exactly with the music, and run off this picture whenever and wherever the music is performed? A roll of films, indeed, should be sold with each score. Now, when the theme of the broomstick demon, roused to fetch water by the inquisitive apprentice, is heard in the orchestra, the stick will rise on the screen and go through the motions of bearing pails of water into the laboratory of the sorcerer until the room is flooded. In vain the apprentice begs him to desist, for, although the lad has puzzled out the incantation necessary to summon the spirit, he has neglected to acquaint himself with the countercharm essential to dispel the disturbing presence. This magic broom, pouring out pails of water, could be cleverly counterfeited on the silver sheets, and, I think that the music performed before this appropriate action would make treble the ordinary effect.
Just here, some conservative confederate veteran or Presbyterian music critic from Joliet will rise to confront me with the dictum that music which depends upon another art is not music at all. I will smite this churl right lustily with a blow which he will remember all his days. What he says is, perhaps, true—I neither affirm nor deny it—but granted that such a phenomenon as program music exists—and any honest concert-goer will testify to the truth of my earlier assertion that eight-tenths of all the music performed at contemporary symphony concerts is program music—it is certainly preferable that this program be enacted before the eyes than that it be presented as reading matter. There is, I believe, no room for argument here. The symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, and a few others, pure music, so-called, should be played with titles on special educational occasions, but program music should invariably be performed to pictorial accompaniment. I am not quite sure but that even Beethoven's Sixth and Seventh Symphonies should be included in this class.
Berlioz's mad, transcendental Fantastic Symphony, presented in the customary manner, is, it must be admitted, a colossal bore, but, performed with cinema decorations, the opium dream of the young musician, the brilliant ball, the pastoral scene in the fields, the ghoulish march to the scaffold, and the concluding Walpurgisnacht scene, the witches' sabbath, with its revels of two-horned goats, mephitic necromancers, and writhing pythonesses, would be another matter. Nijinsky and his Russian nymphs should film l'Après-midi d'un faune, as they danced it. The Russians might also give their effulgent interpretation of Balakireff's Thamar. Debussy's La Mer is a superb movie subject, and so is César Franck's Le Chasseur Maudit. In Saint-Saëns's Le Rouet d'Omphale, I see Francis X. Bushman as the subjugated Hercules spinning for. Theda Bara as Omphale. Phaëton would be more difficult to photograph, but the Danse Macabre[3] would be easy. Wagner, of course, when performed in concert, should be filmed. During a rendering of the overture to Tannhäuser, one should see a vision of the Venusberg and the march of the pilgrims. To illustrate the march from Götterdämmerung, the moon should shine on the cortège of Siegfried, as the body of the hero is borne slowly through the mountain passes. The picture illustrating the prelude to Tristan, however, could only be exhibited privately before the Society of the Friends of Music. The State Board of Censors would certainly issue no permit for public showings of this film at Carnegie Hall.
The music of Richard Strauss, all of it, bawls for illustration. How true this is, one realizes completely when one listens to his operas. Every bar in Salome is accentuated by the stage action: the sombre piety of John, the sensuality of the Princess of Judea, the ribaldry of Herod, the shrieking peacocks, and the raucous Jews. Think of the effect the symphonic poems would make when visualized! Aus Italien, with views of the Campagna, the ruins of Rome, the shores of Sorrento, concluding with a wild Neapolitan tarantella; Till Eulenspiegel, for which Nijinsky would again be requisitioned; Don Juan, probably another private picture. Macbeth and Don Quixote, never very successful when presented as pure music, would benefit especially by this treatment. Even the celebrated episode of the sheep would at last be clear.
But the particular Strauss works I desire to see filmed are the Sinfonia Domestica and Ein Heldenleben. Richard, as the hero of these autobiographical compositions, must be asked to assume the leading rôle in both productions. In the first, he must be assisted by his wife and a baby; probably his own son has grown too big to play his own part.[4] In the second, I look forward with particular interest to a glimpse of the battle with the critics. This section of the film, I think, will have to be retaken in every country in which the symphonic poem is played. Certainly, I have no great curiosity to see Strauss in combat with the German Spanuths, Weissmanns, Istels, and Riemanns. Let us inveigle the composer to Fort Lee with our local Sarceys. Let us see Papa Krehbiel heaving a brick at him, while Strauss retaliates with his booted toe in Papa Krehbiel's tenderest spot. Let us watch Mr. Finck valiantly climbing a hill, bearing over his shoulder a placard with the device:
Johann Not Richard!
and Strauss putting him to route amidst utter cacophony. At the close of this episode I see Henry Theophilus in a heap at the foot of the hill, woefully nursing a bruised shin. The combat with Henderson should be a glove match in the ring.
These are merely a few suggestions, not too idle, I hope, which an enterprising conductor with a little money would do well to carry out. The idea, of course, is capable of being stretched to infinitude. But the first man who accepts even these few hints merely at their face value will no longer have to worry about a deficit at the end of the season, no longer have to struggle with the recalcitrant and ignorant ladies who form his board and attempt to dictate his programs. Without the aid of Fritz Kreisler or Frau Schumann-Heink, he can always fill his house, and the hieroglyphics on the front door will be changed from S. O. S. to S. R. O.
October 18, 1921.
- ↑ Strauss's Ein Heldenleben, which even symphony society audiences found heavy ten years ago, was performed at the Capitol Theatre in New York during November, 1922. A year later, lunching at the Ritz-Carlton, I became aware that the orchestra was playing Debussy's l'Après-midi d'un faune.
- ↑ In the matter of synchronization there are technical difficulties to be overcome, but I leave these to the chefs d'orchestres and the moving-picture producers.
- ↑ In 1922, this was actually done under the direction of Dudley Murphy, with Adolf Bolm, Ruth Page, and Olin Howland as the pantomimists. I saw and heard a performance at the Rialto Theatre in New York during the week of July 23, 1922. I have been informed that Mr. Murphy arranged a similar picturization of l'Après-midi d'un faune, but I did not see this.
- ↑ He was recently married (1924)!