The Educational Influence of the Opera

by Henry T. Finck

"Opera never was educational and never will be. The highest form of educational music is the string quartet, and next follows the orchestra, and with these the educational influences of music cease. It becomes an emotional entertainment or a fashionable pleasure".

Such was the verdict pronounced by the Chicago Tribune on Oscar Hammerstein's project of giving a season of what he called "educational opera" in New York. Just what that astute manager means by "educational opera" I have never been able to find out clearly. I guess, however, that his idea was that by accustoming people to listening to fairly good performances of great operas at low prices he would find it easier, later in the season, to lure them to his high priced performances of the same operas by the world's great singers. As the French say, l'appetit vient en mangeant. Most people do not know that they are hungry for opera till they have begun to eat. A clever caterer can then tempt them to try dish after dish till they become epicures, willing to pay almost any price for the choice "delicatessen".

Operatic Delicatessen

If we may believe the editor just cited, these operatic "delicatessen" do not nourish the mind, are not "educational". Another Chicagoan, Mr. Frederick Stock, the excellent conductor of the concerts given by the Theodore Thomas Orchestra, has also expressed the opinion that chamber music and the symphony are immensely more educational than opera. He thinks that a great wave, a real tidal wave, of music is sweeping over the United States, but that the progress of this wave is being unfortunately retarded by three things: (1) The prevalence of program music; (2) the craze for "stars", and (3) the overemphasizing of the educational value of opera.

While I have never had the pleasure of attending one of the concerts presided over by Mr. Stock, I have referred to him as an excellent conductor because Paderewski, Maud Powell and other great artists have spoken to me of his admirable qualities as musician and leader. His ideas on educational music, on the other hand, seem tome utterly wrong. In my opinion, the things he condemns are the very factors most helpful in the task of educating the masses up to an appreciation of good music.

Value of Mental Pictures

Program music has undoubtedly, in not a few cases, gone too far. The masses are taught, in the words of Mr. Stock, "to look for tonal scenes and not to the true nature and functions of music. Music is lost sight of in the quest of scenery." That may be so in some cases; but we must remember that it is that very "quest of scenery" which has given many thousands their first real acquaintance with music, by teaching them to focus their attention on the details of the composition they are listening to.

Expert musicians, who easily follow every detail in the pattern of a piece, are apt to forget that the unmusical and the semi-musical lack that ability. To them a piece of music, as it moves on from bar to bar, seems almost or quite as vague and meaningless as the motions of the ocean from wave to wave. But explain to them what scene or story the composition illustrates and they will try to follow the progress of the music attentively; which arousing of the attention is in the highest degree educational.

A few months ago Maddie Wheeler Ross related in The Etude how she taught one of her pupils, whose playing was lifeless and mechanical, to perform a hunting song with swing and spirit. She gave her mental pictures of the chase by making her read a poem that was full of the hare and hound spirit, and in a short time the girl played the piece in the true huntsman's spirit.

Such mental pictures of the music to be heard are given in the program books distributed at concerts. You may be sure the managers would not go to the expense of printing these books if it had not been proved that they help the audience to enjoy the music thoroughly, and thus serve as a lure for future concerts.

Composers, as well as players and listeners, are helped by these mental pictures. Even Haydn, Beethoven and other masters who are not classed among composers of program music confessed that they usually had pictures in their minds while creating new works; and Beethoven once had a plan of providing all his pieces with poetic titles.

How the Opera Educates

Turning now to the opera, we note at once that it has a great advantage over concerts in that, instead of mere mental pictures, it presents real pictures, and thus appeals to thousands whose eyes are better trained than their ears. but, while looking, the cannot help hearing, too, and thus their ears are gradually educated to an appreciation of the music. At first mere passive hearers, they soon become active listeners.

Besides its scenic attractions, the opera - modern opera, at any rate - has the advantage of being a drama as well as a musical work. The interesting plots of such operas as Lohengrin, Siegfried, Aida, Carmen, Faust, Louise, Pelleas et Melisande, etc., attract many to whom the music at first makes but a vague appeal, but who are thus unconsciously educated to an appreciation of music in general.

It is foolish to sneer at opera as being a mere fad of fashion. Doubtless a great many people attend operatic performances merely because they are fashionable; but among these, too, there are not a few who, after unwillingly hearing the music of this or that opera over and over again, suddenly find that they life it for its own sake. And when they have once learned to understand and like the music of an opera it is not so difficult to persuade them to attend a concert. Before their operatic training this would have been impossible.

Chamber Music Only for the Educated

The statement that chamber music is more educational than opera is not in harmony with the facts. I have known men and women who, at first utterly indifferent to music, were persuaded to go to the opera, and thus learned to like orchestral concerts, too, and even chamber music; but I have yet to hear of anyone who got his musical education at chamber music concerts. These concerts are intelligible only to those whose musical culture is already far advanced. Others are unmercifully bored by them, and, after a trial or two, nothing but the point of a pistol could persuade them to go again.

The reason is obvious. The vast majority of chamber compositions - trios, quartets, quintets, etc - appeal merely to the intellect. There is little charm and variety of color, little that appeals to the feelings. Orchestral concerts provide much more that appeals to the senses and the feelings, and are therefore more valuable as educators. It is because of these appeals to their sense for beauty of tonal color that many persons attend symphony concerts, and after a time they learn to appreciate the intellectual (formal) side of the art also. Others go to orchestral concerts because they are impressed by the grand climaxes of sound, when affect them like the sight of a great mountain.

Emotional Entertainment

In the opera we have a still greater variety of musical color and grandeur, because with the orchestra there are associated a chorus and soloists. The appeal to the feelings also is more powerful, not only because operatic music is usually more emotional than concert pieces are, but because they play with which the music is associated also arouses the feelings.

The journalist cited at the beginning of this article declares that in the opera music ceases to be educational because "it becomes an emotional entertainment". A statement quite as topsy turvy I do not think I could find outside the librettos of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas.

Does a great preacher cease to be a religious educator if he provides his congregations with "emotional entertainment"? Does a political orator cease to educate his hearers to sound doctrines when he stirs their feelings?

As a matter of fact, the greatest preachers, the greatest political orators, are those who realize that it is only through the feelings that the public mind can be seized and educated.

Educators who have studied their subject psychologically are agreed that the mind can be trained ten times as quickly if the feelings are enlisted as an aid. For this reason the opera is ten times as valuable as an educator than chamber concerts are, five times as valuable as symphony concerts.

Wullner and De Reszke

The greatest educator in our concert halls last season was Dr. Ludwig Wullner. He affected his hearers, as I wrote after his first recital in New York, "like a great revivalist at religious meetings, like an orator appealing to patriotic sentiment". He taught thousands to appreciate for the first time the full import of the art songs by German and other composers. He did it, without the aid of a great voice, chiefly by emphasizing the emotional side of these lieder, which most other singers had neglected, their main object having been to sing beautifully. He did it, moreover, with the help of quasi operatic methods, using pose, gestures and facial expressions as aids; always, of course, within the limits of good taste.

The greatest singer of our time - perhaps of all time - Jean de Reszke - has said to me more than once that emotion is to him the essence of music, and that he has no interest in music that is without emotion. He had a more beautiful voice than Wullner, yet he, too, owed his success chiefly to his gift of warming the hearts of his hearers and providing the "emotional entertainment" so contemptuously referred to by that Chicago journalist.

I would not have paid so much attention to this writer were it not that he voices the sentiments of many, if not most, professional musicians.

These professionals do not realize that their sneering attitude towards opera as an "inferior branch of music" acts as a boomerang. Many music lovers are angered by it and exclaim: "Very well, keep your dry, intellectual sonatas and symphonies to yourselves. I'll spend my money on the emotional entertainment provided by opera."

But the opera is far from being merely emotional. Read Jahn's "Mozart" to realize how many subtle intellectual details there are in the operatic scores of that Austrian composer; and from this point of view the most emotional operas ever written - Wagner's - are infinitely more subtle even than Mozart's. To study these details at the piano is an education in itself - a general as well as a musical education. And here we see a way in which the opera may have an educational influence even on those who are located where they can hear no public performances. Read and re-read one of the later Wagner dramas and then note with what incredible ingenuity the words and music are dovetailed together, and you will get a new idea of the power of human intellect and genius. No quartet or symphony ever written presents such a combination of inspiration with subtle calculation.

Several prominent American critics have a habit of speaking condescendingly of the opera as a thing good enough for the public, but not to be compared as fine art to a Beethoven quartet or a Brahms symphony. If they are right, then many of the composers always classed among the greatest do not deserve their fame, and Italy can hardly be classed as a musical country at all, for her contributions to the concert hall are almost nil. France, too, must take a back seat, for her composers have done very much more for the operatic than for the concert stage. Nor does Germany fare much better, for four of her reputed great masters - Gluck, Mozart, Weber, and Wagner - are, after all, chiefly purveyors of "emotional entertainment".

What is left of music? Why, the three B's, to be sure - Bach, Beethoven and Brahms - and even Beethoven, horrible dictu, wrote an opera!

It is needless to say that this supercilious attitude of the professionals and critics - thus reduced ad absurdum - is a mere pose - the attitude of the medicine man among savages who know show to astonish the natives and make them look on him as a "Big Injun", who know so much more than they do.

Opera as an Aid to Culture

When Richard Wagner was conductor at the Royal Opera of Dresden he heard that there was a movement to abolish the annual subvention grated to the Court Theatre, on the ground that it was merely "a place of luxurious entertainment". He practically agreed with this indictment, as the theatre had in Dresden been gradually degraded into a mere commercial speculation. He held, however, with great zeal, that the theatre - including the opera house - could be made highly educational, and he most cordially endorsed the maxim expressed by the Emperor Joseph that "the theatre should have no other object than to assist in the refinement of taste and morals." In writing his own operas he tried to live up to that ideal, and when he gave the world his last work he called it "Parsifal: A Stage-consecrating Festival Play".

The Metropolitan Opera House in New York is not always a temple of art, but it is so when "Parsifal" is performed there in the dame art reverent spirit in which it was written. Other operas have been very often given in New York in a manner calculated to educate the esthetic feelings of every attentive listener. I fail to see, therefore, why Mr. Stock (as reported by Agnes Gordon Hogan in the Philadelphia Record) should say that "the opera as presented in the United States is much like the war dance of the savages."

Stars and Students

Mr. Stock also denounces our "star system". But the star system does not prevail here any more. What we have is an ensemble of stars, which is much better than ensembles of mediocrities they have in most European opera houses.

It is unwise for Mr. Stock to be too severe on stars, for he is a star himself. He has a well trained orchestra, and it would probably play tolerably well under the baton of any one of its members; but would it play as well as it does under his own direction? Certainly not. Stars have their uses, in and out of opera. Without them full justice cannot be done to the music. And there is one more important point to be considered.

It is to these stars that the opera owes much of its educational value, to students in particular. David C. Taylor has written a suggestive book, "The Psychology of Singing", in which he tries to show that the "old Italian method" consisted of making students hear the best singers as often as possible and imitating them. Wagner held the same view; "Ich glaube hier ist Alles Praxis und lebendiges Beispiel", he wrote in 1879 to Wolzogen. Nowhere in the world, therefore, is opera so educational to students as in New York, for nowhere else are so many great singers assembled.

The Etude Magazine November 1909