File:Modern music and musicians - (Encyclopedic) (1918) (14799233753).jpg

Identifier: modernmusicmusic02elso (find matches)
Title: Modern music and musicians : (Encyclopedic)
Year: 1918 (1910s)
Authors: Elson, Louis Charles, 1848-1920
Subjects: Piano Musicians Composers
Publisher: New York : The University Society Inc.
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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Text Appearing Before Image:

BEETHOVEN IN HIS THIRTY-EIGHTH YEAR.
Engraved by T. Johnson, after a copy of the portrait by W. F. Mähler in the
possession of Mrs. Jabez Fox, Cambridge. Massachusetts.

even Brahms, has contributed anything new in this direction. The Ninth
Symphony called a halt to further development. Our North Germans feel
this instinctively, and endeavor to bring their labors to fruitage in the
form of the symphonic poem created by Liszt. The most active and
successful in this genre is undoubtedly Richard Strauss, but this is not
the place to investigate his art and his achievements. It is conceded
that the form of the symphonic poem authorizes and is highly favorable
to the development of fancy. It's danger lies in the road, all too wide,
which program music opens, and the consequent degradation of music to
a role possibly hurtful to the art.
112

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN 113

The Lorenzetti, especially Ambrogio, show to what unholy results
leads the new effort to make painting express the greater concrete ideas—
program painting, in short, can degrade the art. The expressive power of
Text Appearing After Image:

BEETHOVEN IN HIS FORTY-SECOND YEAR.
Engraved by R. A. Müller, after a drawing by Louis Latronne in 1812.
music is gigantic. If this is united with a visible exposition, and there-
fore with action, so that the music illustrates specific scenes or motions,
and the listener receives the desired impression without becoming con-
scious of the intention, the attempt is to a great degree justified, and is
capable of being brought into agreement with the esthetic laws of art.
An instance is the musical drama of " The Fall. " But if music must
illustrate an invisible event according to the fancy of the hearer, or rather
according to his speculations, which afford free play to the most contra-
dictory suppositions, it is forced into the role of interpreter, in which, be-

114 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

cause it is necessarily too high and too sublime, it becomes inartistic and
unsatisfactory in conveying the desired impression. Such symphonic
poetry as this should at least be accompanied with an explanatory stere-
opticon.

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