The Inter Ocean Nr. 208 (Chicago, Illinois) infomiert auf S. 6 über die kommende Saison des Chicago Orchestra unter Theodor Thomas und ergänzt den Bericht durch den Artikel, der andernorts schon am 12.10.1892 publiziert worden war und hier auch kommentiert wird
"MUSIC AND THEATERS.
[... Vorschau ...].
Has the musical symphony had its day? Not, at least in this center, if the announcements of Mr. Thomas are the gospel of local muscial [sic] preachments. In conncection with the beginning of the Chicago orchestra season the alarm sounded by Mr. Henry T. Finck in the current Forum is not uninteresting. "There can be no doubt," he thinks, "that the art form of the future for orchestral music is the symphonic poem as constructed by Liszt, Saint-Saens and Dvorak." Mr. Finck proceeds:
"Beethoven undoubtedly improved [...]
As the three-volume novel has had its day, so the four-movement symphony is doomed to extinction. It is too long. Its writers usually labor under the strange delusion that genius consists in taking some insignificant theme and developing it interminably with the utmost display of technical skill and ingenuity. Genius, on the contrary, consists in the faculty of originating significant ideas, expressing them in the simplest possible way and stopping short when all that is new has been said, whether it makes one page or a dozen or more. In architecture there is some excuse for skyscrapers, because, if not beautiful, they are at any rate useful and profitable. But long symphonies are the reverse of useful and profitable. A very talented composer, who died six years ago, the Viennese Anton Bruckner, practically wrecked his whole career by writing skyscraper symphonies lasting up to an hour and a half. No conductor dared in risk the success of a whole concert on such works, and consequently they were ignored, and the poor deluded man died broken-hearted. He had been unable to read the signs of the times. * * *
"MUSIC AND THEATERS.
[... Vorschau ...].
Has the musical symphony had its day? Not, at least in this center, if the announcements of Mr. Thomas are the gospel of local muscial [sic] preachments. In conncection with the beginning of the Chicago orchestra season the alarm sounded by Mr. Henry T. Finck in the current Forum is not uninteresting. "There can be no doubt," he thinks, "that the art form of the future for orchestral music is the symphonic poem as constructed by Liszt, Saint-Saens and Dvorak." Mr. Finck proceeds:
"Beethoven undoubtedly improved [...]
As the three-volume novel has had its day, so the four-movement symphony is doomed to extinction. It is too long. Its writers usually labor under the strange delusion that genius consists in taking some insignificant theme and developing it interminably with the utmost display of technical skill and ingenuity. Genius, on the contrary, consists in the faculty of originating significant ideas, expressing them in the simplest possible way and stopping short when all that is new has been said, whether it makes one page or a dozen or more. In architecture there is some excuse for skyscrapers, because, if not beautiful, they are at any rate useful and profitable. But long symphonies are the reverse of useful and profitable. A very talented composer, who died six years ago, the Viennese Anton Bruckner, practically wrecked his whole career by writing skyscraper symphonies lasting up to an hour and a half. No conductor dared in risk the success of a whole concert on such works, and consequently they were ignored, and the poor deluded man died broken-hearted. He had been unable to read the signs of the times. * * *
Apart from its usually excessive length, the symphony has the fatal defect of not being an organic form of art. With a few exceptions, there is no more connection between its four movements than there is between four Pullman cars; less, indeed, because the best Pullman trains are vestibuled, whereas Haydn made the blunder of entirely detaching the symphonic movements; and that blunder has been perpetuated to the present day; although Mendelssohn, Schumann, and a few more recent writers have, in single instances, run their movements together and also tried to connect them organically by employing, to a slight extent, the same thematic material in two or more of them. But the symphony can hardly be saved by that device. It is too artificial in structure to survive much longer.
Unfortunately for Mr. Finck, the length of a symphony is of little concern to people who admire that form of composition. [...]. But the old symphonic form still holds its own, and if the symphony be somewhat longer than four Pullman cars, and even as winding as a freight train, to carry Mr. Finck's simile further, it will probably remain on the musical track with the right of way signals plainly in view."
Zitierhinweis:
Franz Scheder, Anton Bruckner Chronologie Datenbank, Eintrag Nr.: 190210185, URL: www.bruckner-online.at/ABCD-190210185letzte Änderung: Feb 02, 2023, 11:11