386 



The Review of Reviews. 



Apra 20, 1906. 



THE MUSICAL GENIUS. 



Mozart, Beethovex, and Others. 



On January 27Lh, 1756, Mozart was born at Salz- 

 burg, and the musical world has recently been cele- 

 brating the 150th anniversary of his birth. Apropos 

 Karl Storck contributes an article on Musical Genius 

 to the February number of Wesiennann. 



MUSIC-DEAUA NATIONAL AND INTERN AlIONAL. 



He begins by referring to Gluck and Wagner and 

 their methods of reforming the opera ok music- 

 drama. Gluck desired to create music which would 

 appeal to all nations, and so make what he called 

 the ridiculous differences of national music disap- 

 pear. \Mien he found he could not manage it in 

 Germany, he went to Paris. Just a hundred years 

 later Wagner also went to Paris, imagining that 

 there only he, too, would be able to proclaim with 

 success his ideas of operatic reform. Not that Ger- 

 many was wanting in talent, but it lacked national 

 spirit, and Wagner, who did not wish to conquer 

 €ither Paris or the world, hoped to reach Germany 

 through Paris. 



To-dav, however, notwithstanding all the talk 

 about the intemationality of art, we regard music 

 which embraces all nations rather as a limitation of 

 the greatest powers. We feel that the influence of 

 Wagner over the world and his universality lay just 

 in his German nationality-, whereas it is the inter- 

 national qualities of Gluck's works that make the 

 revival of them so successful. But opera — that is, 

 music wedded to words — can hardly help taking on 

 a national character. The great exception is Mozart, 

 who has been able to compose music for words 

 which unites it in characteristics to satisfy and de- 

 light all nations. He is justly regarded by the whole 

 world as the summit of musical art, though three 

 other names — ^Wagner, Beethoven and Bach — run 

 him close for the honour. 



ABSOLUTE VERSUS PROGRAMME MTSIC. 



Mozart, savs the writer, is the only writer of really 

 absolute music. Wagner, on the other hand, endea- 

 voured to combine music with all the other arts, 

 and Beethoven was the founder of that music which 

 does not stand alone, but needs to be united to 

 another of the arts. Beethoven's tone-poems sug- 

 gest the idea that the music is connected with poetic 

 thoughts or philosophical ideas, or is a nature- 

 picture, and he excels all his successors in this 

 power of expressing such things in music. His music 

 still affects us more than that of any other composer. 

 The musical power of Bach in itself is stronger 

 than in Beethoven, but in Mozart everything is 

 Titanic. His creative force is divine. Composing 

 was to him a necessitv'. No one is really sorry that 

 Mozart's life was so short, because of the perfection 

 of his work. He died, like Raphael, in his thirty- 

 sixth year. He created the world-lan»tiage of music, 

 the art of arts ; he is the prototype of the musical 

 genius. 



THE DEMONIAC ELEMENT IN MOZART. 



Dr. Alfred Heuss contributes to the Zeitschrift der 

 Internationalen Musikgcsdlschaft for February an 

 interesting paper on the " Demoniac Element in 

 Mozart's Works." By '' demoniac," or possessed, 

 the writer means the innately passionate passages ; 

 and Mozart, he says, had a strong passionate nature ; 

 passionate passages abound in his compositions. In 

 his creative work he simply let himself go — with odd 

 results occasionally. 



In the February Velhagen Heinz Grevenstett tells 

 Mozart's love-storv-, the story of his marriage with 

 Constance Weber. 



THE REAL RULERS OF JAPAN. 



The Rev. W. Elliot Griffis, who was one of the 

 first Americans employed to introduce Western civi- 

 lisation into Japan, contributes to the Xorth Anun- 

 (.aii Rcciav for Februar) an interesting article on 

 Japan's Elder Statesmen. He maintains that it is 

 the survivors of the fifty-five Counsellors who made 

 the revolution who really govern Japan. There are 

 few left alive now : of these Marquis I to is the chief. 

 The Rev. Mr. Griffis has a ver\- poor opinion of the 

 much vaunted Bushido. He quotes a saying of 

 Count Okuma to the effect that " 'Violence is the rule 

 of Bushido, and on violence it has been nurtured. 

 It is out of touch with civilisation." This may be 

 borne in mind by those who are endeavouring tn 

 persuade the British public that Bushido is the one 

 thing needful. Certainly when Bushido had the field 

 all to itself it does not seem to have made much of 

 a success of it. Mr. Griffis says : — 



I can remember Japan when there "waa not a telegraph, 

 railway, ritled cannon, public ho^^pital. Christian chmch. 

 oi* newspaper; when Yedo bureaucracy, not ao very tlil- 

 ferent from tiiat in St. Petersbure:, was hardly more than 

 destro.ved; and when, poverty stricken, and often famine- 

 cursed, a pitifully large nunilier of her people, under the 

 rule of the sword, supported one-tenth, the armed t^entry 

 and nobles, in non-f>axpayin? privilege, when millions in 

 beggary or caste-slavery suffered unspeakable disease, or 

 outside of humanity rotted on the roads, and when for all 

 there was no more liberty of mind or conscience than in 

 Russia. Thirt-y millions of human l)eings lived iu compul- 

 sory frugality on a soil unable to furnish meat food, or 

 even sufficient grain for its inhabitants. Pitiless economics 

 allowed only the hopefully strong, but never a deformed, 

 child to survive its birth. Japan had need of life and life 

 more abundantly. The full programme of Mikadoism, which 

 meant national unity, required that, first of all, the Yedo 

 bureaucracy should be abolished and feudalism swept away, 



Mr. Griffis declares that social plague and moral 

 pestilence have followed as the aftermath of war in 

 Japan. At first the Japanese kept their heads. 

 But— 



In 1905. especially after the Mukden victory, the moral 

 tension of the nation was dangerously loosened. Rampant, 

 degenerate and over-fat with Russian blood, visions of the 

 great mulct, so confidently expected, intoxicated the less 

 wise among the Japanese, .\fter Togo's victory, they felt 

 already the clinking of the Russian roubles in their hands. 



From this moral peril they were saved bv the 

 courage of the Eld'^'' Statesmen, who insisted upon 

 making peace 



