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For in poor Mahler's work we feel only the intention, rarely the achievement. We feel him agonizedly straining, pushing and laboring, trying to manufacture his banal thematic material into music by the application of all the little contrapuntal formulas. We find him relying finally upon physical apparatus, upon sheer brute force.
The two-and three-part contrapuntal singing which is done in the sight-singing classes is admirable for this, as the whole effect is blurred or entirely spoilt in such clear-cut work by a false entry. For all large school functions, such as a prize-giving, the songs should be sung by heart.
So anxious were they to attain perfection of form they often lost sight of the spirit which alone can give vitality to musical utterances. The great Bach infused this into his fugues, the highest manifestation of the contrapuntal, or polyphonic music of old.
The themes are not good of their sort, the sort being, as he said, the sort that are useful for contrapuntal working. That working is coldly mechanical, and is not distinguished either by lightness or by sureness of touch. A dozen of Mendelssohn's pupils could have done as well or better.
As a contrapuntal feat it remains, with some of Bach's organ fugues and Bach's and Handel's choruses, a veritable miracle of musical art not of ingenuity alone, for each separate fibre in the musical web has character and combines with the other fibres to produce an ensemble of overwhelming strength and beauty.
One is ever conscious in Reger that he is solving contrapuntal problems in order to astonish the vulgar herd of the professors. Reger certainly knew the art of talking with an astonishing show of logic, and yet saying nothing. Perhaps he talked continuously in order not to have to reflect. And for all his erudition, he understood his masters intellectually only.
If it was necessary to think that one part was written before another one would be apt to say the voice part was done first; yet when one pays attention to the orchestral part, with its intricate contrapuntal weaving and interweaving of themes, that seems impossible, and one realizes that the two must have been conceived simultaneously.
But Sousa can write other things than marches, and his scoring is full of variety, freedom, and contrapuntal brilliance. Henry Schoenefeld. Long before Dvôrák discovered America, we aboriginals had been trying to invent a national musical dialect which should identify us as completely to the foreigner as our nasal intonation and our fondness for the correct and venerable use of the word "guess."
They are in appearance not so far removed from the contrapuntal type of theme, and while they sing themselves they yet served their inventors capitally for contrapuntal treatment. Numberless sonatas were written about the same time. Either the subjects were contrapuntal, formal, in build, or consisted of patterns made out of broken chord-series.
Spohr's more pretentious works are a singular union of meagerness of idea with the most polished richness of manner; but, in imagination and thought, he is far the inferior of those whose knowledge of treating the orchestra and contrapuntal skill could not compare with his.
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