Of Mushrooms and Lilac Blossom

Critical Assesment

Criticism is a very personal thing, but I find it very hard to agree with those that have piled criticism onto Berté's shoulders. As we have already heard, he did not set out to plunder Schubert's melodies, but was specifically asked to use them, and he deliberately used many lesser known works. His adaptations seem to me to have been done with taste and discretion. He has not altered Schubert's harmonies, or invented stupid counter melodies. The Schubert we hear is as pure as can be, in the circumstances, though I accept, of course, that for many those 'circumstances' are intolerable. To my mind, Das Dreimäderlhaus is, well, fun. I cannot see that what Berté has done is inherently any 'worse' than, say, Liszt, transcribing Schubert songs as virtuoso piano solos or orchestraing Der Wanderer, Joachim orchestrating the Grand Duo, Mahler arranging a quartet or Weber, Reger, Berlioz, Mottl, etc, orchestrating songs or piano works. I also must agree with Gruhn^[1], when he says:

"The argument that Das Dreimäderlhaus does damage to Schubert's greatness is just as nonsensical as the counter argument that it has helped Schubert for the first time to real popularity".

However, I cannot be so generous to George Clutsam. Lilac Time retains many of Berté's arrangements although often with changes, some minor, some less so, but invariably taking it further away from the European Operetta / Singspiel tradition. But there are also significant changes to the music used, and these are invariably the substitution of a lesser known piece (typically a dance) with one of Schubert's 'greatest hits' (usually a song). I find this to be in very questionable taste, tending towards exploitation. For example, Wiegenlied, D498, becomes Dream Enthralling, and Ständchen (Leise flehen meine Lieder - D957/4) is inserted into the second act by the simple ploy of getting Schober to give a small recital at the wedding reception. Exploitation and taste apart, the famous 'golden song' seems to me to be inherently a better song in Berté's arrangement with the opening melody taken from an Ecossaise, D735/6, than when Clutsam replaces this with Die Forelle.

But my criticism of Clutsam is mild compared to my views on Romberg. He managed to squeeze into Blossom Time virtually any Schubert melody that the audience might have heard of. Amongst the inaccurate historical 'facts' that can be found in Blossom Time souvenir programmes^[2] is the absurd claim, presumably originally just a typo, that "… One such descriptive passage of the score employs thirty-two Schubert themes in eight bars", and you can almost believe that that is true. The 'big hit' of the show, The Song of Love is based on the Symphony no 8 in B Minor (unfinished), a fact that they boast about in programmes. It is almost painful to hear poor singers trying to squeeze inappropriate and poorly fitting words into the melody of Die Forelle !

In many cases, the melodies that Romberg borrows, are simply dropped into his bland music to provide some sort of spice. To describe that music as an arrangement of Schubert's is to do Schubert a great dishonour. I can't help the feeling that many of the critics of Das Dreimäderlhaus et al, have based that criticism on heresay, or on exposure to a less pure adaptation such as Lilac Time. I'm certainly on Berté's side, but for Blossom Time, at least, I'm with the critics.

Notes

[1]	B. Gruhn: Die leichte Muse: Kulturgeschichte der Operette, Munich, 1961.
[2]	This statement can be found in souvenir programmes dating from the 1940s, but was still being repeated in other programmes as late as 1970, the latest I have in my collection.