technical resource is phenomenal, his ambition and energy impressive, and his originality and artistic daring unquestioned. His first renown came from symphonic poems, like Don Juan (1889), Tod und Verklarung (1890), Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (1895), Also sprach Zarathustra (1896) and Ein Heldenleben (1899). His operas include Guntram (1894, Weimar), Feuersnot (1901, Dresden) and the much-debated Salome (1905, Dresden). He has also written 2 symphonies, much chamber music and many songs.
To these may be added a few more, not so specially distinguished in opera, but otherwise important:—
Joseph Brambach of Bonn (d. 1902), the writer of a number of fine choral cantatas; Felix Draeseke of Dresden, born in 1835, who for a time was associated with Wagner and Liszt, but later reverted to more conservative styles, with many orchestral and vocal works, besides 4 operas (from 1867), notably Herrat (1892, Dresden); Max Bruch of Berlin, born in 1838, an eminent composer in the choral field, with also 3 symphonies, striking violin-concertos and other chamber music, etc.; Heinrich von Herzogenberg of Berlin (d. 1900), with similar works, besides piano-pieces; Jean Louis Nicodé of Dresden, born in 1853, a master of orchestral style, and a writer for the piano and the voice; Anton Rückauf (d. 1903), an eminent song-composer; and Hugo Wolf of Vienna (d. 1903), still more famous for his songs.
231. The National Groups (a).—Nationalism in musical art
is no new thing. Every race, every distinct country, and often
limited districts within a single country, have always had idioms
of expression, peculiarities of temperament, tendencies of feeling
and a range of ideas which the keen observer and critic
learns to know as individual and distinctive. Every composer
and player usually betrays in all that he does what was his
origin and education in a particular people and land. Even in
the earlier periods, when music was held to be far more homogeneous
than now in contrapuntal, dramatic or instrumental
method, these national traits made themselves felt. The whole
course of music-history illustrates the principle that, as evolution
proceeds, musical art tends to become heterogeneous along
lines of race, country and local predilection.
But in these latter days this age-long tendency has received impetus from several directions. One cause is political—the steady rise of ambition for national freedom and autonomy, with the social and intellectual life appropriate to each racial division. Another cause is the discovery by scientific criticism of the suggestiveness, for a full knowledge of humanity and society, of traits induced by descent and habitat, what had been merely odd or picturesque becoming significant. Still another
