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Search - Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions And Grotesques

Old Fogy His Musical Opinions And Grotesques
Author: James Huneker

OLD FOGY HIS MUSICAL OPINIONS AND GROTESQUES With an Introduction and Edited BY JAMES-HUNEKER THEODORE PRESSER CO. 1712 Chestnut Street Phikdelphia London. Weekei Co. These Musical Opinions and Grotesques are dedicated to RAFAEL JOSEFFY Whose beautiful art was ever a source of delight to his fellow-countryman, OLD FOGY VYV j n r V quot f-r v vli... more » vl WO rWl - - i til INTRODUCTION T fY friend the publisher has asked me to 1 VI te U y u wliat I know about Old Fogy, whose letters aroused much curiosity and comment when they appeared from time to time in the columns of THE ETUDE. I con fess I do this rather unwillingly. When I at tempted to assemble my memories of the ec centric and irascible musician I found that, despite his enormous volubility and surface frankness, the old gentleman seldom allowed us more than a peep at his personality. His was the expansive temperament, or, to employ a modern phrase, the dynamic temperament. Antiquated as were his modes of thought, he would bewilder you with an excursion into latter day literature, and like a rift of light in a f ogbank you then caught a gleam of an entirely different mentality. One day I found him reading a book by the French writer Huysmans, dealing with new art. And he confessed to me that he admired Hauptmann s Hannele, though he de spised the same dramatist s Weavers. The truth is that no human being is made all of a piece we are, mentally at least, more of a mosaic than we beUeve. OLD FOGY Let me hasten to negative the report that I was ever a pupil of Old Fogy. To be sure, I did play for him once a paraphrase of The Maiden s Prayer in double tenths by Dogowsky, but he laughed so heartily that I feared apoplexy, and soon stopped. The man really existed. There are a score of persons alive in Philadelphia to day who still remember him and could call him by his name formerly an impossible Hungarian one, with two or three syllables lopped off at the end, and for family reasons not divulged here. He assented that he was a fellow-pupil of Liszt s under the beneficent, iron rule of Carl Czerny. But he never looked his age. Seem ingly seventy, a very vital threescore-and-ten, by the way, he was as light on his feet as were his fingers on the keyboard. A linguist, speaking without a trace of foreign accent three or four tongues, he was equally fluent in all. Once launched in an argument there was no stopping him. Nor was he an agreeable opponent. Torrents and cataracts of words poured from his mouth. He pretended to hate modern music, but, as you will note after reading his opinions, col lected for the first time in this volume, he very often contradicts himself. He abused Bach, then used the Well-tempered Clavichord as a 6 INTRODUCTION weapon of offense wherewith to pound Liszt and the Lisztianer. He attacked Wagner and Wagnerism with inappeasable fury, but I sus pect that he was secretly much impressed by several of the music-dramas, particularly Die Meister singer. As for his severe criticism of metropolitan orchestras, that may be set down to provincial narrowness certainly, he was unfair to the Philharmonic Society. Therefore, I don t set much store on his harsh judgments of Tchaikovsky, Richard Strauss, and other com posers. He insisted on the superiority of Chopin s piano music above all others neverthe less he devoted more time to Hummel, and I can personally vouch that he adored the slightly banal compositions of the worthy Dussek. It is quite true that he named his little villa on the Wissahickon Creek after Dussek. Nourished by the romantic writers of the past century, especially by Hoffmann and his fantastic Kreisleriana, their influence upon the writing of Old Fogy is not difficult to detect. He loved the fantastic, the bizarre, the grotesque for the latter quality he endured the literary work of Berlioz, hating all the while his music...

ISBN-13: 9781406741728
ISBN-10: 1406741728
Publication Date: 3/15/2007
Pages: 196
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Koebel Press
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
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