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It is not even the libretto of "Der Rosenkavalier," essentially coarse and boorish and insensitive as it is beneath all its powdered preciosity, that wearies one with Strauss's "Musical Comedy"; or the hybrid, lame, tasteless form of "Ariadne auf Naxos" that turns one against that little monstrosity. It is the generally inexpressive and insufficient music in which Strauss has vested them.
In the drawing-room she hesitated, and then settled down on the piano-stool like a bird alighting and played a few bars from the Rosenkavalier waltz. He was thunderstruck, for she had got not only the air but some of the accompaniment right. "Go on! Go on!" he urged her, marvelling. She turned, smiling, and shook her head. "That is all that I can recall to myself."
It is for it that he created the trumpery horrors, the sweet erotics of the score of "Salome." It is for it that he imitated Mozart saccharinely in "Der Rosenkavalier"; mangled Molière's comedy; committed the vulgarities and hypocrisies of "Joseph's Legende."
Composition becomes more and more a mechanical thing, the brilliant orchestration of sloppy, undistinguished music, the polishing up of details, the play of superficial cleverness which makes a score like "Der Rosenkavalier," feeble as it is, interesting to many musicians.
As soon as he had played a few bars she passed demurely out of the sitting-room, through the main part of the bedroom into the cabinet de toilette. She moved about in the cabinet de toilette thinking that the waltz out of The Rosenkavalier was divinely exciting. The delicate sound of her movements and the plash of water came to him across the bedroom.
Even when he turned his back on the absolutists and wrote programmatic music, romantic suites that begin with Debussy-like low flutes and end with trumpet blasts that recall the sunrise music of "Also Sprach Zarathustra," ballet suites that seek to rival the "Carnaval" of Schumann and the waltzes in "Der Rosenkavalier," "Böcklin" suites that pretend to translate into tone some of the Swiss painter's canvases, he only intensified the general ill-will.
And hummed a fragment of the waltz from The Rosenkavalier which he had played for her two evenings earlier. He glanced round sharply. Had she, then, real taste? "It is like that, isn't it?" she questioned, and hummed it again, flattered by the look on his face.
The Opera alone seemed something like normal to one who trusted his eyes rather than his ears for information. There was almost a full house for the "Rosenkavalier"; for music is a solace in time of trouble, as other capitals than Berlin revealed.
There is no doubt that he would have earned quite as much money with "Salome" and "Der Rosenkavalier" had they been works of high, artistic merit as he has earned with them in their present condition.
"I can't," he said. "But you play. I am sure of it." "And you?" he parried. She made a sad negative sign. "Well, I'll play something out of The Rosenkavalier." "Ah! But you are a musician!" She amiably scrutinised him. "And yet no." Smiling, he, too, made a sad negative sign. "The waltz out of The Rosenkavalier, eh?" "Oh, yes! A waltz. I prefer waltzes to anything."
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