Richard was writing his new
tone-poem, which the Societe Harmonique accepted provisionally for the
season following. Sordello had set the town agog because of the
exhaustive articles by Rentgen it brought in its wake. He was a critic
who wrote brilliantly of music in the terms of painting, of plastic arts
in the technical phraseology of music, and by him the drama was
discussed purely as literature. This deliberate and delicate confusion
of aesthetics clouded the public mind. He described Sordello as a vast
mural fresco, a Puvis de Chavannes in tone, a symphonic drama wherein
agonized the shadowy AEschylean protagonist. Even sculpture was rifled
for analogies, and Van Kuyp to his bewilderment found himself called
"The Rodin of Music"; at other times, "Richard Strauss II," or a "Tonal
Browning"; finally, he was adjured to swerve not from the path he had so
wonderfully hewn for himself in the virgin jungle of modern art, and
begged to resist the temptations of the music-drama.
Rentgen loathed the music of Wagner. Wagner had abused Meyerbeer for
doing what he did himself--writing operas stuffed with spectacular
effects.
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