Musical Criticisms

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nt, by the blare and glare of military pageant or by an orgiastic dance. His lighter music is bizarre or sardonic when it is not merely intoxicating. The enormous predominance of the rhythmical interest over every other kind of interest, such as that of melody or harmony, in Tcha?kovsky's music, can scarcely have escaped notice; and rhythm is the lowest element in music; it is the element representing animal impulse, as shown by its preponderance in every kind of religious music (Palestrina, for example). The music of Tcha?kovsky rocks, tramps, jigs, whirls, and flies far more than it sings; and when it does sing it is either profoundly melancholy, bitterly sardonic, or merely bizarre. The composer has absolutely no serenity in his disposition, no love of nature or of innocence, no na?veté, no calmness or coolness, no healthy activity, no religion, though much picturesque patriotism, and very little intellectuality-only just enough for the purpose of expression. Such is the disposition revealed in the art of Tcha?kovsky. Like Rubens, the painter, he cares for nothing but exuberant animalism-for Rubens' Madonnas and other quasi-religious pictures are all just as much studies of exuberant animalism as his Venuses and his boar-hunts. Tcha?kovsky, too, loves hunting; though his more special tastes are for fighting and military display, and for dancing. Such a character could not be otherwise than profoundly melancholy in the absence of strong excitement. At the same time, he was-again like Rubens-an artist of enormous power, and his creations have their value. The fifth symphony, which was given yesterday, affords a most interesting comparison with the sixth and last. Such a nature as, according to our view, Tcha?kovsky has revealed in his art would never be thoroughly dignified except in great grief or in some situation bringing his patriotism to the fore. This, we believe-added to the more complete maturity of the art,-is the explanation of that greatness which has been generally recognised as distinguishing the "Pathetic" symphony among the composer's works. Alone among the larger works of the composer it has dignity. The feeling that it embodies is tremendously deep and sincere

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ng in the tact of the mature artist, but shows the composer not under the influence of any strong feeling, and simply revelling in his powers of gorgeous orchestration, ingenious thematic work, and marshalling of tone masses with a view to picturesque effect. Tcha?kovsky is nearly always martial in one part or another of an orchestral work. In the great symphony the first movement has a ferocious section suggesting actual slaughter, while the greater part of the third movement is an elaborate military pageant. The work given yesterday leads off with martial strains, which recur several times in the first movement and again in the last. The first movement also exemplifies the composer's practice of bringing in a good deal of development immediately after the statement of a theme, instead of waiting for the development section. Though every musical element is telling, the movement is too prolix. In the andantino it soon becomes apparent that the composer's mind is running on his national folk-melody, the second theme especially having a very strong flavour of Russian national music. The movement is short and very charming. Next one passes from song to dance, the scherzo being a kind of Cossack dance orchestrated

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o and Juliet" overture, played yesterday, is probably Tcha?kovsky's best early composition, and it is certainly that which suggests the great last symphony in the most unmistakable manner. The poetic basis of the tone-picture is to a considerable extent the same in both. A warning prologue leads to the scenes of violence and bloodshed. Then follows a romantic love-story with a tragic ending. Everything in the overture is extremely well done-the fighting music is graphic and the love music is deeply fraught with feeling,-but it is not a bit Shakespearean in spirit. The peculiar neuralgic pathos which haunts nearly all Tcha?kovsky's works takes us into a fevered and unnatural atmosphere very unlike Shakespeare's; and the fighting is gory and realistic in the haggard manner of Verestchag

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ntation." Whereas Tcha?kovsky is always intent on his idea, and, when he uses device, it is with the air of a man deeply in earnest and grasping at a resource of expression. Thus the centre of gravity is with Glazounoff as often as not in the device, with Tcha?kovsky always in the message, and with that dim sub-consciousness of the musical soul we perceive the one to be a cultivated trifler, the other a man with something important to say. That is the first and chief point. Next comes Tcha?kovsky's gift of rhythm-the quality in music for which the general public of the present day cares most. When a person of rudimentary musical notions says that he likes a good tune, it will nearly always be found that what he likes is the rhythm, and that the melody can be freely changed without his perceiving it. The same taste exists in the higher stages of cultivation. A hundred times commoner than a real sense of melodic beauty is the love of a powerful rhythm that carries the listener off his feet. Now Tcha?kovsky does that for the listener much more often than any other composer. He first captivates by something in which his gift of rhythm plays a leading part, and, having captivated, he does not disappoint us by saying empty things. Further points are his astonishingly rich harmony, which is never twisted and inconsequent, like so much of Berlioz's harmony, but always develops logically and clearly his vastness of design; his warmth of colouring, and his picturesque force. Needless to say, that to explain sudden and signal success with the general public there must always be a mention of weak points. Among Tcha?kovsky's weak points that which has gained him most popularity is his persistent habit of presenting his ideas in a sort of balanced and antithetical manner. He does not expect too much intelligence in the listener. First he says a thing, then he says it again an octave lower down or higher up and with different instrumentation; next he repeats a tag of what has just been said, and repeats that once or twice, and so forth. And the thing is not done artificially; such procedure evidently came natural to him. By the time he has finished, something of the idea has been conveyed into the dullest mind; and all this i

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which energy of feeling is out of all proportion to intellectual faculty. Dvoràk's slow movement is undoubtedly a hymn of such primitive humanity, with an undercurrent of meditation on the prairie by night, in which the movements of sap and the germination of seeds within the bosom of inexhaustibly fertile nature become, as it were, audible. It is something like the poetry that Walt Whitman would have written had he been a much better poet. In an analogous manner Tcha?kovsky has caught up and fixed in his "Symphonie Pathétique" the soul of modern Russia. Just as the American Symphony is breezy, democratic, optimistic, and free-thinking, so the Russian is languorous and oppressed, aristocratic, pessimistic, and hierarchic. The absence of any slow movement, except the dirge at the end, is intensely characteristic. The composer has no hymn of thanksgiving or serenely contemplative interlude to give us, but only something with the perfumed and artificial atmosphere of the ballroom, as a relief from the ardours and terrors of his military and patriotic passages. Both in his first and third movements he reminds us that the Rus