Present-Day Song

PRESENT-DAY SONG In recent years changes have taken place in the world of music quite as startling and revolutionary as those which, at the begin ning of the 17th century, suddenly brought the days of vocal counterpoint and the modal system to an end and substituted har mony for melody as the basis of the "new music." Now, in its turn, the harmonic structure based on key relationship after three centuries of development, is being shaken to its very base and the world is talking once more of the "new music." Many com posers in all European countries are exploring its possibilities and producing music, the value and meaning of which in its latest phases cannot be justly estimated at the present time.

Those who would study the "new music" in German song will find it in the later songs of Schonberg (b. 1874), in those of Webern (b. 1883), Krenek (b. 190o), and in Hindemith's (b. 1895) Die junge Magd (for contralto with flute, clarinet and string quartet) and especially Das Marienleben (a cycle for soprano with pianoforte accompaniment).

The Latin countries have been but little subject to German influences: France especially has always found from age to age, and notably in modern times, solutions of her artistic problems, which have proved of deep interest to those who live beyond her borders; they bear emphatically her own hall-mark.

France.

Allusion has already been made to the French as pi oneers in establishing solo song to lute accompaniment, which here, as in Italy, originated in adaptations of polyphonic corn positions. But in France from the first, the main influence apart from opera, has come from popular sources, the native folk-song and the vaudeville, the ditties of country and of town. In both that union of grace, simplicity and charm, characteristic of the French nation, tended to produce an art of dainty unpretentious attractiveness. It preserved these characteristics in spite of the artificial atmosphere of the French Court, in which it mainly flourished, up to the time of the Revolution, in spite, too, of the somewhat different influences, which might have been expected to affect it, derived from opera, the mania for which did not, as in Italy kill the smaller branch of vocal music. Brunettes, musettes,

minuets, vaudevilles, beorgerettes, pastourelles, as the songs were styled according to the nature of the poetry to which they were attached, may be found in Weckerlin's "Echos du temps passé" (3 vols. 1855).

The melodious style of Gounod (1818-1893), whose earlier songs are excellent, is felt as a real influence in the work of Massenet, Godard, Saint-Saens, Delibes, Bizet, Lalo, Chaminade, Reynaldo Hahn and others, but it has yielded, during the last quarter of a century, to tendencies which corresponded closely with those of the Impressionist movement in French literature and painting. The new movement owed much to the work and inspiration of Cesar Franck (whose contribution to song is small) but more to that of Faure (1845-1924). The style of this master was new and individual. His harmonic conceptions, at first con sidered strange and revolutionary, were soon justified by the subtle effects of mood which they enabled him to express, as, for example, in "Les roses d'Ispahan," "Dans les ruines d'une abbaye," "Nell," "Le secret," "Lydie" and "Les berceaux." If much of his work in song may be regarded as experimental, this cannot be said of Duparc (1848-1933) whose 15 songs rank among the treasures of French art. They are characterized by an individual warmth, both of feeling and colour. The quietly mov ing, subtly blending harmonies and the smooth but expressive melodic line, most grateful to sing, are of a kind which it is impos sible to associate with any poetry or any language but that of France. When he is dramatic his work is brilliant but without forced effects or violent transitions. Cesar Franck was his master. (See the following songs :—"Extase," "La vague et la cloche," "Phydyle," "Chanson triste," and "Soupir.") To the same school belongs Chausson (1855-1899), whose songs are the expression of a refined and sensitive nature, remarkable for delicate beauty of detail and of form, somewhat after the manner of Duparc but on a smaller scale: e.g., "Le temps de lilas," "Les papillons," "Nanny," "La colibri." With these composers may be associated De Breville (1861– ), Ropartz (1864– ), composer of the well known "Berceuse," and De Severac (1873-1921).