Part 20

FRENCH AND GERMAN MUSIC

In May, 1905, the first musical festival of Alsace-Lorraine took place at Strasburg. It was an important artistic event, and meant the bringing together of two civilisations that for centuries had been at variance on the soil of Alsace, more anxious for dispute than for mutual understanding.

The official programme of the fetes musicales laid stress on the reconciliatory purpose of its organisers, and I quote these words from the programme book, drawn up by Dr. Max Bendiner, of Strasburg:

"Music may achieve the highest of all missions: she may be a bond between nations, races, and states, who are strangers to one another in many ways; she may unite what is disunited, and bring peace to what is hostile.... No country is more suited for her friendly aid than Alsace-Lorraine, that old meeting-place of people, where from time immemorial the North and South have exchanged their material and their spiritual wealth; and no place is readier to welcome her than Strasburg, an old town built by the Romans, which has remained to this day a centre of spiritual life. All great intellectual currents have left their mark on the people of Alsace-Lorraine; and so they have been destined to play the part of mediator between different times and different peoples; and the East and the West, the past and the present, meet here and join hands. In such festivals as this, it is not a matter of gaining aesthetic victories; it is a matter of bringing together all that is great and noble and eternal in the art of different times and different nations."

It was a splendid ambition for Alsace--the eternal field of battle--to wish to inaugurate these European Olympian games. But in spite of good intentions, this meeting of nations resulted in a fight, on musical ground, between two civilisations and two arts--French art and German art. For these two arts represent to-day all that is truly alive in European music.

Such jousts are very stirring, and may be of great service to all combatants. But, unhappily, France was very indifferent in the matter. It was the duty of our musicians and critics to attend an international encounter like this, and to see that the conditions of the combat were fair. By that I mean our art should be represented as it ought to be, so that we may learn something from the result. But the French public does nothing at such a time; it remains absorbed in its concerts at Paris, where everyone knows everyone else so well that they are not able and do not dare to criticise freely. And so our art is withering away in an atmosphere of coteries, instead of seeking the open air and enjoying a vigorous fight with foreign art. For the majority of our critics would rather deny the existence of foreign art than try to understand it. Never have I regretted their indifference more than I did at the Strasburg festival, where, in spite of the unfavourable conditions in which French art was represented through our own carelessness, I realised what its force might have been if we had been interested spectators in the fight.

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Perfect eclecticism had been exercised in the making up of the programme. One found mixed together the names of Mozart, Wagner, and Brahms; Cesar Franck and Gustave Charpentier; Richard Strauss and Mahler. There were French singers like Cazeneuve and Daraux, and French and Italian virtuosi like Henri Marteau and Ferruccio Busoni, together with German, Austrian, and Scandinavian artists. The orchestra (the Strassbuerger Staedtische Orchester) and the choir, which was formed of different Chorvereine of Strasburg, were conducted by Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, and Camille Chevillard. But the names of these famous Kapellmeister must not let us forget the man who was really the soul of the concerts--Professor Ernst Muench, of Strasburg, an Alsatian, who conducted all the rehearsals, and who effaced himself at the last moment, and left all the honours to the conductors of foreign orchestras. Professor Muench, who is also organist at Saint-Guillaume, has done more than anyone else for music in Strasburg, and has trained excellent choirs (the "Choeurs de Saint-Guillaume") there, and organised splendid concerts of Bach's music with the aid of another Alsatian, Albert Schweitzer, whose name is well known to musical historians. The latter is director of the clerical college of St. Thomas (Thomasstift), a pastor, an organist, a professor at the University of Strasburg, and the author of interesting works on theology and philosophy. Besides this he has written a now famous book, Jean-Sebastien Bach, which is doubly remarkable: first, because it is written in French (though it was published in Leipzig by a professor of the University of Strasburg), and secondly, because it shows an harmonious blend of the French and German spirit, and gives fresh life to the study of Bach and the old classic art. It was very interesting to me to make the acquaintance of these people, born on Alsatian soil, and representing the best Alsatian culture and all that was finest in the two civilisations.

The programme for the three days' festival was as follows:

Saturday, May 20th.

Oberon Overture: Weber (conducted by Richard Strauss).

Les Beatitudes: Cesar Franck (conducted by Camille Chevillard).

Impressions d'ltalie: Gustav Charpentier (conducted by Camille Chevillard).

Three songs by Jean Sibelius, Hugo Wolf, Armas Jaernefelt (sung by Mme. Jaernefelt).

The last scene from Die Meistersinger: Wagner (conducted by Richard Strauss).

Sunday, May 21st.

Cinquieme Symphonie: Gustav Mahler (conducted by Gustav Mahler).

Rhapsodie, for contralto, choir, and orchestra: Johannes Brahms (conducted by Ernst Muench).

Strasburg Concerto in G major, for violin (played by Henri Marteau; conducted by Richard Strauss).

Sinfonia domestica: Richard Strauss (conducted by Richard Strauss).

Monday, May 22nd.

Coriolan Overture: Beethoven (conducted by Gustav Mahler).

Concerto in G major, for piano: Beethoven (played by Ferruccio Busoni).

Lieder: An die enfernie Geliebte: Beethoven (sung by Ludwig Hess).

Choral Symphony: Beethoven (conducted by Gustav Mahler).

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M. Chevillard alone represented our French musicians at the festival; and they could have made no better choice of a conductor. But Germany had delegated her two greatest composers, Strauss and Mahler, to come to conduct their newest compositions. And I think it would not have been too much to set up one of our own foremost composers to combat the glory which these two enjoy in their own country.

M. Chevillard had been asked to conduct, not one of the works of our recent masters, like Debussy or Dukas, whose style he renders to perfection, but Franck's Les Beatitudes, a work whose spirit he does not, to my mind, quite understand. The mystic tenderness of Franck escapes him, and he brings out only what is dramatic. And so that performance of Les Beatitudes, though in many respects fine, left an imperfect idea of Franck's genius.