Verdi and Weber
THE new series of "Master Musicians," edited by Mr. Eric Blom, set a high example with Alfred Einstein's Gluck, and J. A. Westrup's Purcell. Mr. Hussey's Verdi is not so learned a piece of research as either of these, but it is an admirable addition to the series. There have been many books about Verdi written during the last few years, and there is little new to be discovered about him ; but Mr. Hussey has at any rate had the advantage of Luzio's Carteggi Verdiani, published in 1935, from which he has extracted biographical details of considerable interest. The chief merit of this study of Verdi lies in the remarkably attractive way in which the author, by a judicious process of selection, pre- sents familiar material seen from an individual angle as regards the development of Verdi's personality. He has also made an extremely careful study of the more important operas, and his musical analyses are often most illuminating, for he knows not only the music, but also both the librettos and their sources, historical as well as literary. Thus for Don Carlos he gives us first the historical facts, then a synopsis of Schiller's play, and finally an analysis of both the original French libretto and the Italian revision of it. The result is that Mr. Hussey's book is a really important contribution to the dramaturgy of opera in general, from both the literary and the musical points of view.
Weber, on the other hand, has for many years stood in sad need of a competent biographer, and it must be said that Mr. Saunders has simply thrown away the most magnificent chances that were ever offered to a musical writer. He exhibits an industry which almost merits the epithet German, but he has yet to learn that the most difficult part of writing about music is not the understanding of the music, but the translation of that under- standing into words. The main authority for Weber's life is still the vast memoir compiled by his son Max in 1864-66. Despite the fact that it is the work of a dutiful son intent on emphasising the respectability of a very "Bohemian" musician, it none the less shows dearly that Weber's personal life was a long series of fantastic adventures, which in more competent hands might have provided material either for a picaresque novel or for a serious study of character on modern lines of psychological analysis. Mr. Saunders is content merely to quote paragraphs from "the Baron," as he always calls Max von Weber, or from Spitta's article in Grove's Dictionary; occasionally he borrows a word of wisdom from Sir Donald Tovey. How much more interesting it would have been to learn a little more about Weber's friends—Gansbacher, above all, to whom he showed a life-long devotion, or that very curious old gentleman, Duke Emil of Saxe Gotha, about whom even "the Baron" has more to say than Mr. Saunders. The result is that we get no really understanding portrait of Weber himself, that mysterious blend of aristocracy and Bohemianism, femininity and severity, genius and trivial mindedness.
Nor does Mr. Saunders attempt any revaluation of Weber as .a composer, or demonstrate the position which he ought to hold ID the history of music. What one wants is a study of Weber as a composer of opera, seen amongst his contemporaries, German, French and Italian—Schubert and Spohr, Maul, C.herubini and Paer. Mr. Saunders merely runs away from the vital question of what constitutes romantic music ; and he seems to have no con-
ception of the real state of German opera in Weber's day. He repeats the old traditional German nonsense about Weber's art being based on Germanic folk-song, and how the good German
composers were always deprived of their artistic rights by those wicked intriguers the Italians, whereas the truth is that the bulk
of the German operatic repertory was French and Italian, and such native German opera as obtained success was not the works of Mozart and Beethoven, but trivialities by composers whose names are hardly remembered even in their native land. It was the fault not of the Italians, but of the German public, and of the incompetent German librettists and composers. What Weber gt
out to do was to educate his public, and to raise German oPel to a more honourable level. Mr. Saunders' book will be Ilaninl as a record of facts in English ; but the book which We
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