Edward Dent

BUSONI AS CONDUCTOR

[pp. 130-134]

Busoni had often deplored the narrow-mindedness of German musical life, and for some years to come he was still to be the object of perpetual attack on the part of German critics. But Berlin, for all its musical conventionality, was at any rate a place in which experiments could be tried. In other countries Busoni might earn fame and even money, but only by asserting himself as a virtuoso at the pianoforte. In Berlin he had by this time attained a certain position of notoriety, if not of whole-hearted respect. His personal followers might be few, but they were at any rate passionately loyal to him, and their numbers were gradually increasing; they could be at least recognized as a party, if only as a dangerous one. Whatever he undertook in Berlin was certain to attract attention, however hostile. The very solidity of the German musical organization gave him an opposition worthy of challenging. He formed the plan of a series of orchestral concerts to be devoted entirely to new works or to older works which were seldom performed. The plan was spread over a number of years, twelve concerts being given between 1902 and 1909.
Busoni had no ambition to pose as a star conductor. He had discovered at Helsingfors that he had a certain ability for conducting, and orchestral players in various countries were always delighted to play under him, though his utter lack of all affectation of gesture generally led critics to doubt his competence. His primary object in organizing these concerts was to assist young and unknown composers, and he regarded it as most important that they should conduct their own works; it was only when they refused to do so, or were unable to come to Berlin, that he made himself their interpreter. It was a period in which new works found little encouragement in Germany, especially if they were not of German origin. The conventional German attitude of those days was not without its justification. No historian could possibly deny that the main stream of European music from 1800 to 1900 had been predominantly and consistently German. It was only natural that the average German, especially after the political development of the German Empire, should believe as a matter of course that music was a purely German art and that other countries could only be considered musical in so far as they imported music and musicians from Germany. To call this doctrine chauvinism or even patriotism would be quite unjust; it was more in the nature of a religious creed far too firmly established to engender fanatics. Even outside Germany it had its adherents; there were musicians in England and Italy who certainly practised it, if they did not preach it. No wonder that foreign music had little chance of acceptance in Germany; if it was tolerable, it was 'German', and native Germans could produce as good themselves; if it was not 'German', it was not music. The most dangerous revolutionary of the moment, Richard Strauss, was at any rate in the direct German tradition; the men whose new methods of musical expression were to change the whole face of music within the next generation were not Germans at all. The broadestminded of German conductors might well hesitate to introduce novelties, and to give entire concerts of novelties was utterly inconceivable.
Busoni gave his first concert of new works on November 8, 1902. It was not surprising that the Berlin critics greeted it with a chorus of abuse. The «Prelude and,Angel's Farewell» from Elgar's «Dream of Gerontius», which was the first item, was described as 'the most barren piece of senseless music-fabrication that has been heard for a long time'. At the next concert Delius's «Paris» offered an obvious opportunity for comparing it to the next-murning feelings induced by a'night out'. The Berliner Neueste Nachrichten, with that high sense of moral responsibility so characteristic of German musical criticism, added that 'after the complete fiasco of the second concert, the announcement that these orchestral concerts would be continued in the autumn of 1903 sounded little short of blasphemous'. The «Germania» paid Busoni the ironic compliment of saying that he must indeed be an accomplished conductor to be able to conduct such stupidities. Busoni, it need hardly be remarked, was entirely unabashed by these rebukes. He did not wait for the autumn, but gave a third concert in January. To quote further criticisms would be superfluous. But there was a public for the concerts, and a public which gradually became more and more appreciative. When Vincent d'Indy conducted his «Symphonie sur un chant montagnard» in November 1906 it was received with so much enthusiasm that Busoni asked the composer to repeat it'at the next concert along with his second symphony (in B flat). At the last of the concerts (January 1909) Béla Bartòk conducted the Scherzo from his «Suite». it was described as 'another of those outrages on good taste which he has gradually made his speciality', and the critic added that it was an insult that such music should be played in a concert-hall which bore the sacred name of Beethoven. The reader of to-day may recall the story of Balow at Vienna related in an earlier chapter.
Busoni seldom included compositions of his own in these programmes; the «Comedy» Overture and the Violin Concerto may well have been put in only to lighten their severity, for both of them are cheerful and attractive in character without any pretence of being revolutionary in style. It was not unnatural that he was accused of neglecting German composers to the advantage of foreigners; he replied that German composers in general had more chance of performance elsewhere and therefore had less need of encouragement from him. He pointed out further that as a matter of fact several German works had found a place in the programmes. It was no part of his object to perform music by such well-known people as Strauss, Mahler, or Schillings. The reader of to-day will observe that practically all the non-German names in Busoni's programmes have become universally famous, whereas of the German composers only one, if any, is known outside Germany - Hans Pfitzner. Pfitzner in those days had an almost smaller following as a composer than Busoni himself; his genius had been recognized only by such men as Mahler and (in later years) Oskar Fried.
The ten years between 1800 and 1900 had wrought a remarkable change and development in Busoni's personality, a change difficult to sum up in a few words. The causes of the change were manifold and various; they can be traced separately, but it must be borne in mind that their effect was due to their simultaneous interaction. The first and probably the most continuously intimate influence on his character came as the result of a marriage which to the very end of his life was uncloudedly happy. In all probability it was only the sense of moral security derived from Gerda's companionship that gave him the courage to abandon for ever - after Helsingfors, Moscow, and Boston - any idea of settling down to the routine of a permanent teaching post in a school of music. The experience of those three places, followed by the still wider experience resulting from his travels as a virtuoso to such centres as Brussels, Paris, and London, gave him a deeper confidence in himself and an ever intenser consciousness of the international ideal of the artist. Tours in Italy revived his devotion to the land of his birth and parentage, a devotion already stimulated to some extent by the study of Liszt's impressions of Italian life and landscape. Verdi's «Falstaff» opened his eyes to the possibility of a new type of Italian music that should be prophetic of the future as well as rooted in the noblest traditions of the past. Then came the call to Weimar, and in that 'holy city' he realized that he was no longer an ambitious youth striving frantically for the recognition of his own individual talent, but a mature artist with an inward vocation to leadership. To spend his whole days in educating and inspiring those joyous and ardent young people who surrounded him in the Tempelherrenhaus was a very different matter from the drudgery of scales and exercises timed by the clock of the New England Conservatory. Busoni knew in Welmar that although there would never be an end of acquiring knowledge it would be of little use to him unless he could give it out again generously to the younger generation. At Berlin his concerts of modern works brought him yet more closely into contact with the younger generation and with the international world of pioneers in music. Before his marriage he had practised his art for himself alone and had in consequence suffered all the agonies of spiritual solitude. With the new century he had become, and knew that he had become, a leader.