SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
menaces music in Germany
And, lastly, I want to speak of the greatest danger of all that menaces music in Germany; there is too much music in Germany. This is not a paradox. There is no worse misfortune for art than a super-abundance of it. The music is drowning the musicians. Festival succeeds festival: the day after the Strasburg festival there was to be a Bach festival at Eisenach; and then, at the end of the week, a Beethoven festival at Bonn. Such a plethora of concerts, theatres, choral societies, and chamber-music societies, absorbs the whole life of the musician. When has he time to be alone to listen to the music that sings within him? This senseless flood of music invades the sanctuaries of his soul, weakens its power, and destroys its sacred solitude and the treasures of its thought.
You must not think that this excess of music existed in the old days in Germany. In the time of the great classic masters, Germany had hardly any institutions for the giving of regular concerts, and choral performances were hardly known. In the Vienna of Mozart and Beethoven there was only a single association that gave concerts, and no Chorvereine at all, and it was the same with other towns in Germany. Does the wonderful spread of musical culture in Germany during the last century correspond with its artistic creation? I do not think so; and one feels the inequality between the two more every day.
Do you remember Goethe’s ballad of Der Zauberlehrling (L’Apprenti Sorcier) which Dukas so cleverly made into music? There, in the absence of his master, an apprentice set working some magic spells, and so opened sluice-gates that no one could shut; and the house was flooded.
This is what Germany has done. She has let loose a flood of music, and is about to be drowned in it.
this was: Menaces Music In Germany
go to next chapter: Pelléas et Mélisande
