Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies
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Title: Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies
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SYMPHONIES AND THEIR MEANING
THIRD SERIES: MODERN SYMPHONIES.
by
PHILIP H. GOEPP
1913
PREFACE
Criticism of contemporary art is really a kind of prophecy. For the
appreciation of the classical past is an act of present perception, not
a mere memory of popular verdicts. The classics live only because they
still express the vital feeling of to-day. The new art must do
more,--must speak for the morrow. And as the poet is a kind of seer, the
true critic is his prophetic herald.
It is with due humility that we approach a view of the work of our own
time, with a dim feeling that our best will be a mere conjecture. But we
shall the more cheerfully return to our resolution that our chief
business is a positive appreciation. Where we cannot praise, we can
generally be silent. Certain truths concerning contemporary art seem
firmly grounded in the recorded past. The new Messiah never came with
instant wide acclaim. Many false prophets flashed brilliantly on the
horizon to fall as suddenly as they rose. In a refracted view we see the
figures of the great projected in too large dimension upon their day.
And precisely opposite we fail to glimpse the ephemeral lights obscuring
the truly great. The lesson seems never to be learned; indeed it can, of
course, never be learned. For that would imply an eternal paradox that
the present generation must always distrust its own judgment.
Who could possibly imagine in Schubert's time the sway he holds to-day.
Our minds reel to think that by a mere accident were recovered the
Passion of Bach and the symphonies of Schubert. Or must we prayerfully
believe that a Providence will make the best prevail? And, by the way,
the serious nature of this appreciation appears when we see how it was
ever by the greatest of his time that the future master was heralded.
The symphony of the present age has perhaps fallen somewhat in estate.
It was natural that it should rush to a high perfection in the halcyon
days of its growth. It is easy to make mournful predictions of
decadence. The truth is the symphony is a great form of art, like a
temple or a tragedy. Like them it has had, it will have its special eras
of great expression. Like them it will stay as a mode of utterance for
new communities and epochs with varying nationality, or better still,
with vanishing nationalism.
The tragedy was not exhausted with Sophocles, nor with Shakespeare nor
with Goethe. So the symphony has its fallow periods and it may have a
new resurgence under new climes. We are ever impatient to shelve a great
form, like vain women afraid of the fashion. It is part of our constant
rage for novelty. The shallower artist ever tinkered with new
devices,--to some effects, in truth. Such is the empiric course of art
that what is born of vanity may be crowned with highest inspiration.
The national element will fill a large part of our survey. It marks a
strange trait of our own age that this revival of the national idea
falls in the very time when other barriers are broken. Ancient folk-song
grew like the flower on the battle-field of races. But here is an
anxious striving for a special dialect in music. Each nation must have
its proper school; composers are strictly labelled, each one obedient to
his national manner. This state of art can be but of the day. Indeed,
the fairest promise of a greater future lies in the morrow's blending of
these various elements in the land where each citizen has a mixed
inheritance from the older nations.
In the bewildering midst of active spirits comes the irresistible
impulse to a somewhat partisan warfare. The critic, if he could view
himself from some empyraean perch, remote in time and place, might smile
at his own vehemence. In the clash of aims he must, after all, take
sides, for it is the tendency that is momentous; and he will be excited
to greater heat the stronger the prophet that he deems false. When the
strife is over, when currents are finally settled, we may take a more
contented joy in the impersonal art that remains.
The choice from the mass of brilliant vital endeavor is a new burden and
a source almost of dismay. Why should we omit so melodious a work as
Moskowski's _Jeanne d'Arc_,--full of perhaps too facile charm? It was,
of course, impossible to treat all the wonderful music of the Glazounows
and the Kallinikows. And there is the limpid beauty of the Bohemian
_Suk_, or the heroic vigor of a _Volbach_. We should like to have
mentioned _Robert Volkmann_ as a later Romanticist; and _Gade_ has ever
seemed a true poet of the Scandinavian symphony.
Of the modern French we are loth to omit the symphonies of _Chausson_
and of _Dukas_. In our own America it is a still harder problem. There
is the masterly writing of a _Foote_; the older _Paine_ has never been
fully valued in the mad race for novelty. It would have been a joy to
include a symphony of rare charm by _Martinus van Gelder_.
A critical work on modern art cannot hope to bestow a crown of laurels
among living masters; it must be content with a view of active
tendencies. The greatest classic has often come into the world amid
least expectation. A critic in the year 1850 must need have omitted the
Unfinished Symphony, which was then buried in a long oblivion.
The present author prefers to treat the main modern lines, considering
the special work mainly as example. After all, throughout the realm of
art the idea is greater than the poet, the whole art more than the
artist,--though the particular enshrinement in enduring design may
reflect a rare personality.
PHILIP H. GOEPP.
NOTE: Especial thanks are owed to the Philadelphia Orchestra for a free
use of its library, and to Messrs. G. Schirmer Company for a like
courtesy.--P.H.G.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.--The Symphony during the Nineteenth Century
CHAPTER II.--Berlioz and Liszt
CHAPTER III.--Berlioz. "Romeo and Juliet." Dramatic Symphony
CHAPTER IV.--A Symphony to Dante's "Divina Commedia"
CHAPTER V.--The Symphonic Poems of Liszt
"Les Préludes"
"Tasso"
"Mazeppa"
"Battle of the Huns"
CHAPTER VI.--The Symphonic Poems of Saint-Saëns
"Danse Macabre"
"Phaeton"
"The Youth of Hercules"
"Omphale's Spinning Wheel"
CHAPTER VII.--César Franck
Symphony in D minor
CHAPTER VIII.--D'Indy and the Followers of Franck
D'Indy's Second Symphony
CHAPTER IX.--Débussy and the Innovators
"The Sea"--Débussy
"The Sorcerer's Apprentice"--Dukas
CHAPTER X.--Tschaikowsky
Fourth Symphony
"Manfred" Symphony
Fifth Symphony
CHAPTER XI.--The Neo-Russians
Balakirew. Symphony in C
Rimsky-Korsakow
"Antar" Symphony
"Schérézade." Symphonic Suite
Rachmaninow. Symphony in E minor
CHAPTER XII.--Sibelius. A Finnish Symphony
CHAPTER XIII.--Bohemian Symphonies
Smetana. Symphonic Poem: "The Moldau River"
Dvôrák. Symphony: "From the New World"
CHAPTER XIV.--The Earlier Bruckner
Second Symphony
Fourth (Romantic) Symphony
Fifth Symphony
CHAPTER XV.--The Later Bruckner
Ninth Symphony
CHAPTER XVI.--Hugo Wolff
"Penthesilea." Symphonic Poem
CHAPTER XVII.--Mahler
Fifth Symphony
CHAPTER XVIII.--Richard Strauss. Symphonic Poems
"Death and Transfiguration"
"Don Juan"
"Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks"
"Sinfonia Domestica"
CHAPTER XIX.--Italian Symphonies
Sgambati. Symphony in D major
Martucci. Symphony in D minor
CHAPTER XX.--Edward Elgar. An English Symphony
CHAPTER XXI.--Symphonies in America
Henry Hadley. Symphony No. 3
Gustav Strube. Symphony in D minor
Chadwick. Suite Symphonique
Loeffler. "The Devil's Round." Symphonic Poem
SYMPHONIES AND THEIR MEANING
MODERN SYMPHONIES
CHAPTER I
THE SYMPHONY DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
After the long dominance of German masters of the musical art, a
reaction could not fail to come with the restless tendencies of other
nations, who, having learned the lesson, were yet jealous of foreign
models and eager to utter their own message. The later nineteenth
century was thus the age of refraction of the classic tradition among
the various racial groups that sprang up with the rise of the national
idea. We can see a kind of beginning in the Napoleonic destruction of
feudal dynasties. German authority in music at the beginning of the
century was as absolute as Roman rule in the age of Augustus. But the
seed was carried by teachers to the various centres of Europe. And, with
all the joy we have in the new burst of a nation's song, there is no
doubt that it is ever best uttered when it is grounded on the lines of
classic art. Here is a paramount reason for the strength of the modern
Russian school. With this semi-political cause in mind it is less
difficult to grasp the paradox that with all the growth of
intercommunication the music of Europe moves in more detached grooves
to-day than two centuries ago. The suite in the time of Bach is a
special type and proof of a blended breadth and unity of musical thought
in the various nations of Europe of the seventeenth century. In the
quaint series of dances of the different peoples, with a certain
international quality, one sees a direct effect of the Thirty Years'
War,--the beneficent side of those ill winds and cruel blasts, when all
kinds of nations were jostling on a common battle-ground. And as the
folk-dances sprang from the various corners of Europe, so different
nations nursed the artistic growth of the form. Each would treat the
dances of the other in its own way, and here is the significance of
Bach's separate suites,--English, French and German.
Nationalism seems thus a prevailing element in the music of to-day, and
we may perceive two kinds, one spontaneous and full of charm, the other
a result of conscious effort, sophisticated in spirit and in detail. It
may as well be said that there was no compelling call for a separate
French school in the nineteenth century as a national utterance. It
sprang from a political rather than an artistic motive; it was the itch
of jealous pride that sharply stressed the difference of musical style
on the two sides of the Rhine. The very influence of German music was
needed by the French rather than a bizarre invention of national traits.
The broader art of a Saint-Saëns here shines in contrast with the
brilliant conceits of his younger compatriots, though it cannot be
denied that the latter are grounded in classic counterpoint. With other
nations the impulse was more natural: the racial song of the
Scandinavians, Czechs and other Slavs craved a deliverance as much as
the German in the time of Schubert. In France, where music had long
flourished, there was no stream of suppressed folk-song.
But the symphony must in the natural course have suffered from the very
fulness of its own triumph. We know the Romantic reaction of Schumann,
uttered in smaller cyclic forms; in Berlioz is almost a complete
abandonment of pure music, devoid of special description. Liszt was one
of the mighty figures of the century, with all the external qualities of
a master-genius, shaking the stage of Europe with the weight of his
personality, and, besides, endowed with a creative power that was not
understood in his day. With him the restless tendency resulted in a new
form intended to displace the symphony: the symphonic poem, in a single,
varied movement, and always on a definite poetic subject. Here was at
once a relief and a recess from the classic rigor. Away with sonata form
and all the odious code of rules! In the story of the title will lie all
the outline of the music.
Yet in this rebellious age--and here is the significance of the
form--the symphony did not languish, but blossomed to new and varied
flower. Liszt turned back to the symphony from his new-fangled device
for his two greatest works. It has, indeed, been charged that the
symphony was accepted by the Romantic masters in the spirit of a
challenge. Mendelssohn and even Schumann are not entirely free from such
a suspicion. Nevertheless it remains true that all of them confided to
the symphony their fairest inspiration. About the middle of the century,
at the high point of anti-classical revolt, a wonderful group of
symphonies, by Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Liszt, were presented
to the world. With the younger Brahms on a returning wave of
neo-classicism the form became again distinctively a personal choice.
Finally, in the spontaneous utterance of a national spirit on broad
lines, as in the later Russian and Finnish examples, with the various
phases of surging resolution, of lyric contemplation and of rollicking
humor, the symphony has its best sanction in modern times.
To return to the historical view, the course of the symphony during the
century cannot be adequately scanned without a glance at the music-drama
of Richard Wagner. Until the middle of the century, symphony and opera
had moved entirely in separate channels. At most the overture was
affected, in temper and detail, by the career of the nobler form.
The restless iconoclasm of a Liszt was now united, in a close personal
and poetic league, with the new ideas of Wagner's later drama. Both men
adopted the symbolic motif as their main melodic means; with both mere
iteration took the place of development; a brilliant and lurid
color-scheme (of orchestration) served to hide the weakness of intrinsic
content; a vehement and hysteric manner cast into temporary shade the
classic mood of tranquil depth in which alone man's greatest thought is
born.
But a still larger view of the whole temper of art in Europe of the
later century is needed. We wander here beyond the fine distinctions of
musical forms. A new wave of feeling had come over the world that
violently affected all processes of thought. And strangely, it was
strongest in the land where the great heights of poetry and music had
just been reached. Where the high aim of a Beethoven and a Goethe had
been proclaimed, arose a Wagner to preach the gospel of brute fate and
nature, where love was the involuntary sequence of mechanical device and
ended in inevitable death, all overthrowing the heroic idea that teems
throughout the classic scores, crowned in a greatest symphony in praise
of "Joy."
Such was the intrinsic content of a "Tristan and Isolde" and the whole
"Nibelungen-Ring," and it was uttered with a sensuous wealth of sound
and a passionate strain of melody that (without special greatness of its
own) dazzled and charmed the world in the dramatic setting of mediaeval
legend. The new harmonic style of Wagner, there is good reason to
suppose, was in reality first conceived by Liszt, whose larger works,
written about the middle of the century, have but lately come to
light.[A] In correspondence with this moral mutiny was the complete
revolt from classic art-tradition: melody (at least in theory), the
vital quality of musical form and the true process of a coherent thread,
were cast to the winds with earlier poetic ideals.
[Footnote A: The "Dante" Symphony of Liszt was written between 1847 and
1855; the "Faust" Symphony between 1854 and 1857. Wagner finished the
text of _Tristan und Isolde_ in 1857; the music was not completed until
1859. In 1863 was published the libretto of the _Nibelungen-Ring_. In
1864 Wagner was invited by King Ludwig of Bavaria to complete the work
in Munich.]
If it were ever true that a single personality could change an opposite
course of thought, it must be held that Richard Wagner, in his own
striking and decadent career, comes nearest to such a type. But he was
clearly prompted and reinforced in his philosophy by other men and
tendencies of his time. The realism of a Schopenhauer, which Wagner
frankly adopted without its full significance (where primal will finds a
redemption in euthanasia), led by a natural course of thought to
Nietzsche's dreams of an overman, who tramples on his kind.
In itself this philosophy had been more of a passing phase (even as
Schopenhauer is lost in the chain of ethical sages) but for its strange
coincidence with the Wagnerian music. The accident of this alliance gave
it an overwhelming power in Germany, where it soon threatened to corrupt
all the arts, banishing idealism from the land of its special
haunts.[A] The ultimate weakness of the Wagnerian philosophy is that it
finds in fatalism an excuse for the surrender of heroic virtue,--not in
the spirit of a tragic truth, but in a glorification of the senses; just
as in Wagner's final work, the ascetic, sinless type becomes a figure
almost of ridicule, devoid of human reality. It is significant that with
the revival of a sound art, fraught with resolute aspiration, is
imminent a return to an idealistic system of philosophy.
[Footnote A: In literature this movement is most marked, as may be seen
by contrasting the tone of Goethe with that of Sudermann; by noting the
decadence from the stories of a Chamisseau and Immermann to those of a
Gottfried Keller; from the novels of Freytag to the latest of Frenssen
and Arthur Schnitzler; from the poems of Heine to those of Hoffmansthal,
author of the text of Strauss' later operas.
Or, contrast merely the two typical dramas of love, Goethe's "Faust" and
Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde."]
In the musical art even of Germany the triumph was never complete. The
famous feud of Brahms and Wagner partisans marked the alignment of the
classical and radical traditions. Throughout the second half of the
century the banner of a true musical process was upheld; the personal
meeting of the youthful Brahms with the declining Schumann is
wonderfully significant, viewed as a symbol of this passing of the
classic mantle. And the symphonies of Gustav Mahler seem an assurance of
present tendencies. The influence of Bach, revived early in the century,
grew steadily as a latent leaven.
Nevertheless in the prevailing taste and temper of present German
music, in the spirit of the most popular works, as those of Richard
Strauss (who seems to have sold his poetic birthright), the aftermath of
this wave is felt, and not least in the acclaim of the barren symphonies
of a Bruckner. It is well known that Bruckner, who paid a personal
homage to Wagner, became a political figure in the partisan dispute,
when he was put forth as the antagonist of Brahms in the symphony. His
present vogue is due to this association and to his frank adoption of
Wagner idiom in his later works, as well as, more generally, to the
lowered taste in Germany.
In all this division of musical dialect, in the shattering of the
classic tower among the diverse tongues of many peoples, what is to be
the harvest? The full symbol of a Babel does not hold for the tonal art.
Music is, in its nature, a single language for the world, as its
alphabet rests on ideal elements. It has no national limits, like prose
or poetry; its home is the whole world; its idiom the blended song of
all nations.
In such a view there is less hope in the older than in the newer world.
No single, limited song of one nation can in the future achieve a second
climax of the art. It is by the actual mingling of them all that the
fairest flower and fruit must come. The very absence of one prevailing
native song, held a reproach to America, is in reality her strength; for
hers is the common heritage of all strains of song. And it may be her
destiny to lead in the glorious merging of them all.
CHAPTER II
BERLIOZ AND LISZT
The path of progress of an art has little to do with mere chronology.
For here in early days are bold spirits whose influence is not felt
until a whole generation has passed of a former tradition. Nor are these
patient pioneers always the best-inspired prophets; the mere fate of
slow recognition does not imply a highest genius. A radical innovation
may provoke a just and natural resistance. Again, a gradual yielding is
not always due to the pure force of truth. Strange and oblique ideas may
slowly win a triumph that is not wholly merited and may not prove
enduring.
To fully grapple with this mystery, we may still hold to the faith that
final victory comes only to pure truth, and yet we may find that
imperfect truth will often achieve a slow and late acceptance. The
victory may then be viewed in either of two ways: the whole spirit of
the age yields to the brilliant allurement, or there is an overweighing
balance of true beauty that deserves the prize of permanence. Of such a
kind were two principal composers of the symphony: Franz Liszt and
Hector Berlioz. Long after they had wrought their greatest works, others
had come and gone in truer line with the first masters, until it seemed
these radical spirits had been quite rejected.
Besides the masters of their own day, Schumann and Mendelssohn, a group
of minor poets, like Raff and Goetz, appeared, and at last Brahms, the
latest great builder of the symphony, all following and crowning the
classical tradition.
The slow reception of the larger works of Liszt strangely agrees with
the startling resemblance of their manner to the Russian style that
captivated a much later age. It seemed as if the spirit of the Hungarian
was suddenly revived in a new national group. His humor wonderfully
suited the restless and sensational temper of an age that began after
his death.
The very harmonies and passionate manner that influence modern audiences
evoked a dull indifference in their own day.[A] They roused the first
acclaim when presented in the more popular form of the music-drama. It
may well be questioned whether Liszt was not the fountain source of the
characteristic harmonies of Wagner's later opera.
[Footnote A: Compare the similarity of the themes of the Faust Symphony
of Liszt and of the _Pathétique_ of Tschaikowsky in the last chapter of
vol. ii, "Symphonies and Their Meaning."]
Historically considered, that is in their relation to other music
preceding and following them, the symphonies of Liszt have striking
interest. They are in boldest departure from all other symphonies, save
possibly those of Berlioz, and they were prophetic in a degree only
apparent a half-century later. If the quality of being ahead of his time
be proof, instead of a symptom, of genius, then Liszt was in the first
rank of masters. The use of significant motif is in both of his
symphonies. But almost all the traits that startled and moved the world
in Tschaikowsky's symphonies are revealed in this far earlier music: the
tempestuous rage of what might be called an hysterical school, and the
same poignant beauty of the lyric episodes; the sheer contrast, half
trick, half natural, of fierce clangor and dulcet harmonies, all painted
with the broad strokes of the orchestral palette. Doubly striking it is
how Liszt foreshadowed his later followers and how he has really
overshadowed them; not one, down to the most modern tone-painters, has
equalled him in depth and breadth of design, in the original power of
his tonal symbols. It seems that Liszt will endure as the master-spirit
in this reactionary phase of the symphony.
Berlioz is another figure of a bold innovator, whose career seemed a
series of failures, yet whose music will not down. His art was centred
less upon the old essentials, of characteristic melody and soul-stirring
harmonies, than upon the magic strokes of new instrumental grouping,--a
graphic rather than a pure musical purpose. And so he is the father not
only of the modern orchestra, but of the fashion of the day that revels
in new sensations of startling effects, that are spent in portraying the
events of a story.
Berlioz was the first of a line of _virtuosi_ of the orchestra, a
pioneer in the art of weaving significant strains,--significant, that
is, apart from the music. He was seized with the passion of making a
pictured design with his orchestral colors. Music, it seems, did not
exist for Berlioz except for the telling of a story. His symphony is
often rather opera. A symphony, he forgot, is not a musical drama
without the scenery. This is just what is not a symphony. It is not the
literal story, but the pure musical utterance. Thus Berlioz's "Romeo and
Juliet" symphony is in its design more the literal story than is
Shakespeare's play. And yet there is ever a serious nobility, a heroic
reach in the art of Berlioz, where he stands almost alone among the
composers of his race. Here, probably, more than in his pictured
stories, lies the secret of his endurance. He was, other than his
followers, ever an idealist. And so, when we are on the point of
condemning him as a scene-painter, we suddenly come upon a stretch of
pure musical beauty, that flowed from the unconscious rapture of true
poet. As the bee sucks, so may we cull the stray beauty and the more
intimate meaning, despite and aside from this outer intent.
CHAPTER III
BERLIOZ. "ROMEO AND JULIET."
_DRAMATIC SYMPHONY_
In the sub-title we see the growing impulse towards graphic music. A
"dramatic symphony" is not promising. For, if music is the most
subjective expression of the arts, why should its highest form be used
to dramatize a drama? Without the aid of scene and actors, that were
needed by the original poet, the artisan in absolute tones attempts his
own theatric rendering. Clearly this symphony is one of those works of
art which within an incongruous form (like certain ancient pictures)
affords episodes of imperishable beauty.
Passing by the dramatic episodes that are strung on the thread of the
story, we dwell, according to our wont, on the stretches where a pure
musical utterance rises to a lofty height of pathos or of rarest
fantasy.
In the first scene of the Second Part is the clear intent of a direct
tonal expression, and there is a sustained thread of sincere sentiment.
The passion of Romeo shines in the purity rather than in the intensity
of feeling. The scene has a delicate series of moods, with subtle
melodic touches and dramatic surprises of chord and color. The whole
seems a reflection of Romeo's humor, the personal (_Allegro_) theme
being the symbol as it roams throughout the various phases,--the sadness
of solitude, the feverish thrill of the ball. Into the first phrase of
straying violins wanders the personal motive, sadly meditative.
[Music: _Allegro._
(Choir of wood, with sustained chords of strings)]
Sweeter dreams now woo the muser, warming into passion, pulsing with a
more eager throb of desire, in changed tone and pace. Suddenly in a new
quarter amid a quick strum of dance the main motive hurries along. The
gay sounds vanish, ominous almost in the distance. The sadness of the
lover now sings unrestrained in expressive melody (of oboe), in long
swinging pace, while far away rumbles the beat of festive drum.
The song rises in surging curves, but dies away among the quick festal
sounds, where the personal motive is still supreme, chasing its own
ardent antics, and plunges headlong into the swirl of dance.
II Penseroso (in his personal rôle) has glided into a buoyant,
rollicking Allegro with joyous answer. Anon the outer revel breaks in
with shock almost of terror. And now in climax of joy, through the
festal strum across the never-ceasing thread of transformed meditation
resound in slowest, broadest swing the
[Music: _Larghetto espressivo_
(Ob. with fl. and cl. and arpeggic cellos)]
warm tones of the love-song in triumph of bliss.[A] As the song dies
away, the festal sounds fade. Grim meditation returns in double
figure,--the slower, heavier pace below. Its shadows are all about as in
a fugue of fears, flitting still to the tune of the dance and anon
yielding before the gaiety. But through the returning festal ring the
fateful motive is still straying in the bass. In the concluding revel
the hue of meditation is not entirely banned.
[Footnote A: In unison of the wind. Berlioz has here noted in the score
"_Réunion des deux Thémes, du Larghetto et de L'Allegro_," the second
and first of our cited phrases.]
The Shakespearian love-drama thus far seems to be celebrated in the
manner of a French romance. After all, the treatment remains scenic in
the main; the feeling is diluted, as it were, not intensified by the
music.
The stillness of night and the shimmering moonlight are in the delicate
harmonies of (_Allegretto_) strings. A lusty song of departing revellers
breaks upon the scene. The former distant sounds of feast are now near
and clear in actual words.
[Music: _Adagio_
(Muted strings)
(_Pizz._ basses an 8ve. lower)]
There is an intimate charm, a true glamor of love-idyll about the
Adagio. On more eager pulse rises a languorous strain of horn and
cellos. The flow
[Music: (Horn and cellos with murmuring strings)]
of its passionate phrase reaches the climax of prologue where, the type
and essence of the story, it plays about the lovers' first meeting. As
lower strings hum the burden of desire, higher wood add touches of
ecstasy, the melting violins sing the wooing song, and all break into an
overwhelming rapture, as though transfigured in the brightness of its
own vehemence, in midst of a trembling mystery.
The restless spirit starts (_allegro agitato_) in fearsome agitation on
quick nervous throb of melody; below, violas sing a soothing answer;
there is a clear dialogue of wistful lovers.
Instead of the classic form of several verses led by one dominant melody
to varied paths and views, here almost in reverse we seem to fall from a
broader lyric mood to a single note of sad yearning that
[Music: (Fl. with Eng. horn an 8ve. below)
(Muted violins with sustained lower strings)]
grows out of the several strains. Upon such a motive a new melody sings.
The delicate bliss of early love is all about, and in the lingering
close the timid ecstasies of wooing phrase. But this is a mere prelude
to the more highly stressed, vehement song of love that follows on the
same yearning motive. Here is the crowning, summing phase of the whole
poem, without a return to earlier melody save that, by significant
touch, it ends in the same expressive turn as the former languorous
song.
The first melody does not reappear, is thus a kind of background of the
scene. The whole is a dramatic lyric that moves from broader tune to a
reiterated note of sad desire, driven to a splendid height of crowned
bliss. The turbulence of early love is there; pure ardor in flaming
tongues of ecstasy; the quick turn of mood and the note of omen of the
original poem: the violence of early love and the fate that hangs over.
Berlioz has drawn the subject of his Scherzo from Mercutio's speech in
Scene 4 of the First Act of Shakespeare's tragedy. He has entitled it
"Queen Mab, or the Fairy of Dreams," and clearly intends to portray the
airy flight of Mab and her fairies. But we must doubt whether this, the
musical gem of the symphony, has a plan that is purely graphic,--rather
does it seem to soar beyond those concrete limits to an utterance of the
sense of dreams themselves in the spirit of Mercutio's conclusion:
"... I talk of dreams
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
Which is as thin of substance as the air;"
And we may add, as elusive for the enchanted mind to hold are these
pranks and brilliant parade of tonal sprites. It stands one of the
masterpieces of program-music, in equal balance of pure beauty with the
graphic plan.
Imps they are, these flitting figures, almost insects with a
personality. In pace there is a division, where the first dazzling
speed is simply the fairy rhythm (halted anon by speaking pauses or
silences), and the second, a kind of idyll or romance in miniature. It
is all a drama of fairy actors, in a dreamland of softest tone. The main
figure leads its troop on gossamer thread of varied journey.
[Music: (Violins) _Prestissimo_]
Almost frightening in the quickest, pulsing motion is the sudden
stillness, as the weird poising of trembling sprites. Best of all is the
resonant beauty of the second melody in enchanting surprise of tone.
[Music: (Strings without basses)]
Anon, as in a varied dance, the skipping, mincing step is followed by a
gentle swaying; or the figures all run together down the line to start
the first dance again, or the divided groups have different motions, or
one shouts a sudden answer to the other.
Much slower now is the main song (in flute and English horn) beneath an
ariel harmony (of overtones), while a quicker trip begins below of the
same figure. And in the midst is a strange concert of low dancing
strings with highest tones of harp,--strange mating of flitting sprites.
We are suddenly back in the first, skipping dance, ever faster and
brighter in dazzling group of lesser figures. And here is the golden
note of fairy-land,--the horn in soft cheery hunter's lay, answered by
echoing voices. For a moment the call is tipped with touch of sadness,
then rings out brightly in a new quarter. Beautiful it sings between the
quick phrases, with a certain shock of change, and there is the terror
of a sudden low rumbling and the thrill of new murmuring sounds with
soft beat of drum that hails the gathering fairies. There is a sudden
clarion burst of the whole chorus, with clash of drum and clang of
brass, and sudden pause, then faintest echoes of higher voices.
A new figure now dances a joyous measure to the tinkling of harp and the
sparkling strokes of high
[Music: (Harp in higher 8ve.)
(Clarinet with chord of horns)
(Violas)]
cymbals and long blown tone of horns. The very essence it is of fairy
life. And so the joy is not unmixed with just a touch of awe. Amidst the
whole tintinnabulation is a soft resonant echo of horns below, like an
image in a lake. The air hangs heavy with dim romance until the sudden
return to first fairy verse in sounds almost human. Once more come the
frightening pauses.
The end is in a great crash of sweet sound--a glad awakening to day and
to reality.
CHAPTER IV
A SYMPHONY TO DANTE'S "DIVINA COMMEDIA"
_FOR ORCHESTRA AND CHORUS OF SOPRANOS AND ALTOS_
The "Divina Commedia" may be said in a broad view to belong to the great
design by which Christian teaching was brought into relation with
earlier pagan lore. The subject commands all the interest of the epics
of Virgil and of Milton. It must be called the greatest Christian poem
of all times, and the breadth of its appeal and of its art specially
attest the age in which it was written, when classic pagan poetry broke
upon the world like a great treasure-trove.
The subject was an ideal one in Dante's time,--a theme convincing and
contenting to all the world, and, besides, akin to the essence of pagan
poetry. The poet was needed to celebrate all the phases of its meaning
and beauty. This is true of all flashes of evolutionary truth. As in the
ancient epics, an idea once real to the world may be enshrined in a
design of immortal art.
To-day we are perhaps in too agnostic a state to be absorbed by such a
contemplation. The subject in a narrower sense is true at most to those
who will to cherish the solace of a salvation which they have not fully
apprehended. And so the Liszt symphony of the nineteenth century is not
a complete reflection of the Dante poem of the fourteenth. It becomes
for the devout believer almost a kind of church-liturgy,--a Mass by the
Abbé Liszt.
Rare qualities there undoubtedly are in the music: a reality of passion;
a certain simplicity of plan; the sensuous beauty of melodic and
harmonic touches. But a greatness in the whole musical expression that
may approach the grandeur of the poem, could only come in a suggestion
of symbolic truth; and here the composer seems to fail by a too close
clinging to ecclesiastic ritual. Yet in the agony of remorse, rising
from hopeless woe to a chastened worship of the light, is a strain of
inner truth that will leave the work for a long time a hold on human
interest.
Novel is the writing of words in the score, as if they are to be sung by
the instruments,--all sheer aside from the original purpose of the form.
Page after page has its precise text; we hear the shrieks of the damned,
the dread inscription of the infernal portals; the sad lament of lovers;
the final song of praise of the redeemed. A kind of picture-book music
has our symphony become. The _leit-motif_ has crept into the high form
of absolute tones to make it as definite and dramatic as any opera.
I. INFERNO
The legend of the portal is proclaimed at the outset in a rising phrase
(of the low brass and strings)
[Music: (Doubled in two lower 8ves.)
_Lento_
(3 trombones and tuba: violas, cellos and brass)]
_Per me si va nella cit-ta do-lente;
Per me si va nell'eterno dolore;_
and in still higher chant--
_Per me si va tra la perduta gente._
Then, in antiphonal blast of horns and trumpets sounds the fatal doom in
grim monotone (in descending harmony of trembling strings):
[Music: (Chant in octaves of trumpets and horns)
La-scia-te ogni spe-ran- - -za.
(Brass, wood and _tremolo_ strings)]
_Lasciate ogni speranza mi ch' entrate!_[A]
[Footnote A:
"Through me the way is to the city dolent;
Through me the way is to eternal dole;
Through me the way among the people lost.
All hope abandon, ye who enter in!"
--_From Longfellow's translation._]
A tumult on a sigh (from the first phrase) rises again and again in
gusts. In a violent paroxysm we hear the doom of the monotone in lowest
horns. The fateful phrases are ringing about, while pervading all is
the hope-destroying blast of the brass. But the storm-centre is the
sighing motive which now enters on a quicker spur of passionate stride
(_Allegro frenetico, quasi doppio movimento_). In its winding
[Music: _Alla breve_
_Allegro frenetico (quasi doppio movimento)_
(Theme in violins and cellos)
(Woodwind and violas)]
sequences it sings a new song in more regular pace. The tempest grows
wilder and more masterful, still following the lines of the song, rising
to towering height. And now in the strains, slow and faster, sounds the
sigh above and below, all in a madrigal of woe. The whole is surmounted
by a big descending phrase, articulate almost in its grim dogma, as it
runs into the line of the first legend in full tumult of gloom. It is
followed by the doom slowly proclaimed in thundering tones of the brass,
in midst of a tempest of surging harmonies. Only it is all more fully
and poignantly stressed than before, with long, resonant echoes of the
stentorian tones of lowest brass.
Suddenly we are in the dulcet mood (_Quasi Andante, ma sempre un poco
mosso_) 'mid light waving strings and rich swirling harp, and soothing
tones of flutes and muted horns. Then, as all other voices are hushed,
the clarinet sings a strain that ends in lowest notes of expressive
grief (_Recit., espressivo dolente_)--where we can almost hear the
words. It is answered by a sweet plaint of other wood, in
[Music: _Quasi Andante, ma sempre un poco mosso_
_dolce teneremente_
(Clarinets and bassoons)]
questioning accents, followed by the returning waves of strings and
harp, and another phrase of the lament; and now to the pulsing chords of
the harp the mellow English horn does sing (at least in the score) the
words,--the central text of all:
[Music: _Poco agitato_
(English horn, with arpeggic flow of harp)
Nes-sun mag-gior do-lo-re che ri-cor-dar-si del tem-po fe-li-ce.[A]]
[Footnote A: "There is no greater sorrow than to be mindful of the happy
time in misery."--_From Longfellow's translation._]
Other voices join the leader. As the lower reed start the refrain, the
higher enter in pursuit, and then the two groups sing a melodic chase.
But the whole phrase is a mere foil to the pure melody of the former
plaint that now returns in lower strings. And all so far is as a herald
to the passage of intimate sentiment (_Andante amoroso_) that lies a
lyric gem in the heart of the symphony. The melting strain is stressed
in tenderness by the languor of harmonies, the delicate design of
elusive rhythm and the appealing whisper of harp and two
violins,--tipped by the touch of mellow wood.
[Music: _Andante amoroso. (Tempo rubato)_
_dolce con intimo sentimento_
(Melody in first violins; arpeggios of harp and violas;
lower woodwind and strings)]
With the rising passion, as the refrain spreads in wider sequences, the
choirs of wood and strings are drawn into the song, one group answering
the other in a true love duet.
The last cadence falls into the old sigh as the dread oracle sounds once
more the knell of hope. Swirling strings bring us to a new scene of the
world of shades. In the furious, frenetic pace of yore (_Tempo primo,
Allegro, alla breve_) there is a new sullen note, a dull martial trip
of drums with demonic growls (in the lowest wood). The sigh is there,
but perverted in humor. A chorus of blasphemous mockery is stressed by
strident accents of lower wood and strings.[A]
[Footnote A: We are again assisted by the interpreting words in the
score.]
Gradually we fall into the former frenzied song, amid the demon
cacchinations, until we have plunged back into the nightmare of groans.
Instead of the big descending phrase we sink into lower depths of gloom,
wilder than ever, on the first tripping motive. As the sighing strain
resounds below in the midst of a chorus of demon shrieks, there enters
the chant of inexorable fate. Mockery yields to a tinge of pathos, a
sense almost of majestic resignation, an apotheosis of grief.
II. PURGATORIO
A state of tranquillity, almost of bliss, is in the opening primal
harmonies (of harp and strings and
[Music: _Andante con moto quasi Allegretto. Tranquillo assai_
(Oboe _molto espressivo_)
_Sempre piano e legato_
(Full arpeggic harp and muted strings)]
soft horns). Indeed, what else could be the mood of relief from the
horrors of hell? And lo! the reed strikes a pure limpid song echoed in
turn by other voices, beneath a rich spray of heavenly harmonies.
This all recurs in higher shift of tone. A wistful phrase (_piu lento_,
in low strings) seems to breathe
[Music: _Un poco meno mosso_
(English horn, clarinets, bassoons, French horn)]
a spoken sob. Then, as in voices of a hymn, chants a more formal liturgy
of plaint where the phrase is almost lost in the lowest voice. It is all
but articulate, with a sense of the old sigh; but it is in a calmer
spirit, though anon bursting with passionate grief (_lagrimoso_).
[Music: _Lamentoso_ (In fugue of muted strings)]
And now in the same vein, of the same fibre, a fugue begins of lament,
first in muted strings.
It is the line of sad expressive recitative that heralded the plaint and
the love-scene. There is here the full charm of fugue: a rhythmic
quality of single theme, the choir of concerted dirge in independent
and interdependent paths, and with every note of integral melody. There
is the beauty of pure tonal architecture blended with the personal
significance of the human (and divine) tragedy.
The fugue begins in muted strings, like plaintive human voices, though
wood and brass here and there light up the phrases. Now the full bass of
horns and wood strikes the descending course of theme, while higher
strings and wood soar in rising stress of (sighing) grief.
[Music: (In double higher 8ves.)
_With lower 8ves._
(Strings, with enforcing and answering wind)]
A hymnal verse of the theme enters in the wood answered by impetuous
strings on a coursing phrase. The antiphonal song rises with eager
stress of themal attack. A quieter elegy leads to another burst, the
motive above, the insistent sigh below. The climax of fugue returns to
the heroic main plaint below, with sighing answers above, all the voices
of wood and brass enforcing the strings.
Then the fugue turns to a transfigured phase; the theme rings triumphant
retorts in golden horns and in a masterful unison of the wood; the wild
answer runs joyfully in lower strings, while the higher are strumming
like celestial harps. The whole is transformed to a big song of praise
ever in higher harmonies. The theme flows on in ever varying thread,
amidst the acclaiming tumult.
But the heavenly heights are not reached by a single leap. Once more we
sink to sombre depths not of the old rejection, but of a chastened,
wistful wonderment. The former plaintive chant returns, in slower,
contained pace, broken by phrases of mourning recitative, with the old
sigh. And a former brief strain of simple aspiration is supported by
angelic harps. In gentle ascent we are wafted to the acclaim of heavenly
(treble) voices in the _Magnificat_. A wonderful utterance, throughout
the scene of Purgatory, there is of a chastened, almost spiritual grief
for the sin that cannot be undone, though it is not past pardon.
The bold design of the final Praise of the Almighty was evidently
conceived in the main as a service. An actual depiction, or a direct
expression (such as is attempted in the prologue of Boito's Mefistofele)
was thereby avoided. The Holy of Holies is screened from view by a
priestly ceremony,--by the mask of conventional religion. Else we must
take the composer's personal conception of such a climax as that of an
orthodox Churchman. And then the whole work, with all its pathos and
humanity, falls to the level of liturgy.
The words of invisible angel-chorus are those of the blessed maid
trusting in God her savior, on a theme for which we are prepared by
preluding choirs of harps, wood and strings. It is sung on an ancient
Church tone that in its height approaches the mode of secular song. With
all the power of broad rhythm, and fulness of harmony and volume, the
feeling is of conventional worship. With all the purity of shimmering
harmonies the form is ecclesiastical in its main lines and depends upon
liturgic symbols for its effect and upon the faith of the listener for
its appeal.
At the end of the hymn, on the entering _Hosanna!_ and _Hallelujah!_ we
catch the sacred symbol (of seven tones) in the path of the two vocal
parts, the lower descending, the higher ascending as on heavenly scale.
In the second, optional ending the figure is completed, as the bass
descends through the seven whole tones and the treble (of voices and
instruments) rises as before to end in overpowering _Hallelujah!_ The
style is close knit with the earlier music. A pervading motive is the
former brief phrase of aspiration; upon it the angelic groups seem to
wing their flight between verses of praise. By a wonderful touch the
sigh, that appeared inverted in the plaintive chant of the _Purgatorio_,
is finally glorified as the motive of the bass to the words of
exultation.
CHAPTER V
THE SYMPHONIC POEMS OF LISZT
Liszt was clearly a follower of Berlioz in the abandon to a pictorial
aim, in the revolt from pure musical form, and in the mastery of
orchestral color. If we feel in almost all his works a charming
translation of story in the tones, we also miss the higher empyraean of
pure fancy, unlimited by halting labels. It is a descent into pleasant,
rich pastures from the cosmic view of the lofty mountain. Yet it must be
yielded that Liszt's program-music was of the higher kind that dwells in
symbols rather than in concrete details. It was a graphic plan of
symbolization that led Liszt to choose the subjects of his symphonic
poems (such as the "Préludes" and the "Ideals") and to prefer the poetic
scheme of Hugo's "Mazeppa" to the finer verse of a Byron. Though not
without literal touches, Liszt perceived that his subjects must have a
symbolic quality.
Nevertheless this pictorial style led to a revolution in the very nature
of musical creation and to a new form which was seemingly intended to
usurp the place of the symphony. It is clear that the symphonic poem is
in very essence opposed to the symphony. The genius of the symphony lies
in the overwhelming breadth and intensity of its expression without the
aid of words. Vainly decried by a later age of shallower perception, it
achieved this Promethean stroke by the very magic of the design. At one
bound thus arose in the youngest art a form higher than any other of
human device,--higher than the epic, the drama, or the cathedral.
Bowing to an impatient demand for verbal meaning, Liszt invented the
Symphonic Poem, in which the classic cogency yielded to the loose thread
of a musical sketch in one movement, slavishly following the sequence of
some literary subject. He abandoned sheer tonal fancy, surrendering the
magic potency of pure music, fully expressive within its own design far
beyond the literal scheme.[A]
[Footnote A: Mendelssohn with perfect insight once declared,--"Notes
have as definite a meaning as words, perhaps even a more definite one."]
The symphonic poems of Liszt, in so far as his intent was in destructive
reaction to the classic process, were precisely in line with the drama
of Wagner. The common revolt completely failed. The higher, the real
music is ever of that pure tonal design where the fancy is not leashed
to some external scheme. Liszt himself grew to perceive the inadequacy
of the new device when he returned to the symphony for his greatest
orchestral expression, though even here he never escaped from the thrall
of a literal subject.
And strangely, in point of actual music, we cannot fail to find an
emptier, a more grandiose manner in all these symphonic poems than in
the two symphonies. It seems as if an unconscious sense of the greater
nobility of the classic medium drove Liszt to a far higher inspiration
in his melodic themes.
Yet we cannot deny the brilliant, dazzling strokes, and the luscious
harmonies. It was all a new manner, and alone the novelty is welcome,
not to speak of the broad sweep of facile melody, and the sparkling
thrills.
_LES PRÉLUDES_
This work has a preface by the composer, who refers in a footnote to the
"_Méditations poétiques_" of Lamartine.
"What else is our life than a series of preludes to that unknown song of
which the first solemn note is struck by death? Love is the morning glow
of every heart; but in what human career have not the first ecstasies of
bliss been broken by the storm, whose cruel breath destroys fond
illusions, and blasts the sacred shrine with the bolt of lightning. And
what soul, sorely wounded, does not, emerging from the tempest, seek to
indulge its memories in the calm of country life? Nevertheless, man will
not resign himself for long to the soothing charm of quiet nature, and
when the trumpet sounds the signal of alarm, he runs to the perilous
post, whatever be the cause that calls him to the ranks of war,--that he
may find in combat the full consciousness of himself and the command of
all his powers."
How far is the music literally graphic? We cannot look for the "unknown
song" in definite sounds. That would defeat, not describe, its
character. But the first solemn notes, are not these the solemn rising
phrase that reappears in varying rhythm and pace all about the beginning
and, indeed, the whole course
[Music: _Andante_
(Strings, doubled in two lower 8ves.)]
of the music. Just these three notes abound in the mystic first
"prelude," and they are the core of the great swinging tune of the
Andante maestoso, the beginning and main pulse of the unknown song.
[Music: _Andante maestoso_
(Basses of strings, wood and brass, doubled below; arpeggic
harmonies in upper strings; sustained higher wood)]
Now (_dolce cantando_) is a softer guise of the phrase. For death and
birth, the two portals, are like
[Music: (Strings, with arpeggic violins)
_dolce cantando_
(_Pizz._ basses)]
elements. Even here the former separate motive sounds, and so in the
further turn of the song (_espressivo dolente_) on new thread.
The melody that sings (_espressivo ma tranquillo_) may well stand for
"love, the glow of dawn in every heart." Before the storm, both great
motives (of love and death) sound together very beautifully, as in
[Music: _espress. ma tranquillo_
_dolce._
(Horns and lower strings, with arpeggic harp and violins)]
Tennyson's poem. The storm that blasts the romance begins with the same
fateful phrase. It is all about, even inverted, and at the crisis it
sings with the fervor of full-blown song. At the lull the soft guise
reappears, faintly, like a sweet memory.
The Allegretto pastorale is clear from the preface. After we are lulled,
soothed, caressed and all but entranced by these new impersonal sounds,
then, as if the sovereign for whom all else were preparing, the song of
love seeks its recapitulated verse. Indeed here is the real full song.
Is it that in the memory lies the reality, or at least the realization?
Out of the dream of love rouses the sudden alarm of brass (_Allegro
marziale animato_), with a new war-tune fashioned of the former soft
disguised motive. The air of fate still hangs heavy over all. In
spirited retorts the martial madrigal proceeds, but it is not all mere
war and courage. Through the clash of strife break in the former songs,
the love-theme in triumph and the first expressive strain in tempestuous
joy. Last of all the fateful original motto rings once more in serene,
contained majesty.
On the whole, even with so well-defined a program, and with a full play
of memory, we cannot be quite sure of a fixed association of the motive.
It is better to view the melodic episodes as subjective phases, arising
from the tenor of the poem.
_TASSO_
Liszt's "Tasso" is probably the earliest celebration, in pure tonal
form, of the plot of man's suffering and redemption, that has been so
much followed that it may be called the type of the modern symphony.[A]
In this direct influence the "Tasso" poem has been the most striking of
all of Liszt's creations.
[Footnote A: We may mention such other works of Liszt as "Mazeppa" and
the "Faust" Symphony; the third symphony of Saint-Saëns; Strauss' tone
poem "Death and Transfiguration"; Volbach's symphony, besides other
symphonies such as a work by Carl Pohlig. We may count here, too, the
Heldenlied by Dvôrák, and Strauss' Heldenleben (see Vol. II).]
The following preface of the composer accompanies the score:
"In the year 1849 the one hundredth anniversary of Goethe's birth
was celebrated throughout Germany; the theatre in Weimar, where we
were at the time, marked the 28th of August by a performance of
'Tasso.'
"The tragic fate of the unfortunate bard served as a text for the
two greatest poets produced by Germany and England in the last
century: Goethe and Byron. Upon Goethe was bestowed the most
brilliant of mortal careers; while Byron's advantages of birth and
of fortune were balanced by keenest suffering. We must confess that
when bidden, in 1849, to write an overture for Goethe's drama, we
were more immediately inspired by Byron's reverential pity for the
shades of the great man, which he invoked, than by the work of the
German poet. Nevertheless Byron, in his picture of Tasso in prison,
was unable to add to the remembrance of his poignant grief, so
nobly and eloquently uttered in his 'Lament,' the thought of the
'Triumph' that a tardy justice gave to the chivalrous author of
'Jerusalem Delivered.' We have sought to mark this dual idea in the
very title of our work, and we should be glad to have succeeded in
pointing this great contrast,--the genius who was misjudged during
his life, surrounded, after death, with a halo that destroyed his
enemies. Tasso loved and suffered at Ferrara; he was avenged at
Rome; his glory still lives in the folk-songs of Venice. These
three elements are inseparable from his immortal memory. To
represent them in music, we first called up his august spirit as he
still haunts the waters of Venice. Then we beheld his proud and
melancholy figure as he passed through the festivals of Ferrara
where he had produced his master-works. Finally we followed him to
Rome, the eternal city, that offered him the crown and glorified in
him the martyr and the poet.
"_Lamento e Trionfo_: Such are the opposite poles of the destiny
of poets, of whom it has been justly said that if their lives are
sometimes burdened with a curse, a blessing is never wanting over
their grave. For the sake not merely of authority, but the
distinction of historical truth, we put our idea into realistic
form in taking for the theme of our musical poem the motive with
which we have heard the gondoliers of Venice sing over the waters
the lines of Tasso, and utter them three centuries after the poet:
"'Canto l'armi pietose e'l Capitano
Che'l gran Sepolcro liberò di Christo!'
"The motive is in itself plaintive; it has a sustained sigh, a
monotone of grief. But the gondoliers give it a special quality by
prolonging certain tones--as when distant rays of brilliant light
are reflected on the waves. This song had deeply impressed us long
ago. It was impossible to treat of Tasso without taking, as it
were, as text for our thoughts, this homage rendered by the nation
to the genius whose love and loyalty were ill merited by the court
of Ferrara. The Venetian melody breathes so sharp a melancholy,
such hopeless sadness, that it suffices in itself to reveal the
secret of Tasso's grief. It lent itself, like the poet's
imagination, to the world's brilliant illusions, to the smooth and
false coquetry of those smiles that brought the dreadful
catastrophe in their train, for which there seemed to be no
compensation in this world. And yet upon the Capitol the poet was
clothed with a mantle of purer and more brilliant purple than that
of Alphonse."
With the help of the composer's plot, the intent of the music becomes
clear, to the dot almost of the note. The whole poem is an exposition of
the one sovereign melody, where we may feel a kindred trait of Hungarian
song, above all in the cadences, that must have stirred Liszt's patriot
heart. Nay,--beginning as it does with melancholy stress of the phrase
of cadence and the straying into full rhythmitic exultation, it seems
(in strange guise) another
[Music: _Adagio mesto_
(With rhythmic harp and horns)]
of Liszt's Hungarian rhapsodies,--that were, perhaps, the greatest of
all he achieved, where his unpremeditated frenzy revelled in purest
folk-rhythm and tune. The natural division of the Hungarian dance, with
the sad _Lassu_ and the glad _Friss_, is here clear in order and
recurrence. The Magyar seems to the manner born in both parts of the
melody.[A]
[Footnote A: A common Oriental element in Hungarian and Venetian music
has been observed. See Kretschmar's note to Liszt's "Tasso" (Breitkopf &
Haertel).]
In the accents of the motive of cadence (_Lento_) we feel the secret
grief of the hero, that turns _Allegro strepitoso_, in quicker pace to
fierce revolt.
In full tragic majesty the noble theme enters, in panoply of woe. In the
further flow, as in the beginning, is a brief chromatic strain and a
sigh of descending tone that do not lie in the obvious song, that are
drawn by the subjective poet from the latent fibre. Here is the modern
Liszt, of rapture and anguish, in manner and in mood that proved so
potent a model with a later generation.[A]
[Footnote A: See note in the final chapter of Volume II.]
The verse ends in a prolonged threnody, then turns to a firm, serenely
grave burst of the song in major, _Meno Adagio_, with just a hint of
martial grandeur. For once, or the nonce, we seem to see the hero-poet
acclaimed. In a middle episode the motive of the cadence sings
expressively with delicate harmonies, rising to full-blown exaltation.
We may see here an actual brief celebration, such as Tasso did receive
on entering Ferrara.
And here is a sudden fanciful turn. A festive dance strikes a tuneful
trip,--a menuet it surely is, with all the ancient festal charm, vibrant
with tune and spring, though still we do not escape the source of the
first pervading theme. Out of the midst of the dance sings slyly an
enchanting phrase, much like a secret love-romance. Now to the light
continuing dance is joined a strange companion,--the heroic melody in
its earlier majestic pace. Is it the poet in serious meditation at the
feast apart from the joyous abandon, or do we see him laurel-crowned, a
centre of the festival, while the gay dancers flit about him in homage?
More and more brilliant grows the scene, though ever with the dominant
grave figure. With sudden stroke as of fatal blast returns the earlier
fierce burst of revolt, rising to agitation of the former lament,
blending both moods and motives, and ending with a broader stress of the
first tragic motto.
Now, _Allegro con brio_, with herald calls of the brass and fanfare of
running strings (drawn from the personal theme), in bright major the
whole song bursts forth in brilliant gladness. At the height the
exaltation finds vent in a peal of simple melody. The "triumph" follows
in broadest, royal pace of the main song in the wind, while the strings
are madly coursing and the basses reiterate the transformed motive of
the cadence. The end is a revel of jubilation.
_MAZEPPA_
The Mazeppa music is based upon Victor Hugo's poem, in turn founded upon
Byron's verse, with an added stirring touch of allegory.
The verses of Hugo first tell how the victim is tied to the fiery
steed, how--
"He turns in the toils like a serpent in madness,
And ... his tormentors have feasted in gladness
Upon his despair.
* * * * *
"They fly.--Empty space is behind and before them
* * * * *
"The horse, neither bridle nor bit on him feeling,
Flies ever; red drops o'er the victim are stealing:
His whole body bleeds.
Alas! to the wild horses foaming and champing
That followed with mane erect, neighing and stamping,
A crow-flight succeeds.
The raven, the horn'd owl with eyes round and hollow,
The osprey and eagle from battle-field follow,
Though daylight alarm.
* * * * *
"Then after three days of this course wild and frantic,
Through rivers of ice, plains and forests gigantic,
The horse sinks and dies;
* * * * *
"Yet mark! That poor sufferer, gasping and moaning,
To-morrow the Cossacks of Ukraine atoning,
Will hail as their King;
* * * * *
"To royal Mazeppa the hordes Asiatic
Will show their devotion in fervor ecstatic,
And low to earth bow."
In his splendid epilogue the poet likens the hero to the mortal on whom
the god has set his mark. He sees himself bound living to the fatal
course of genius, the fiery steed.
"Away from the world--from all real existence
He is borne upwards, despite his resistance
On feet of steel.
He is taken o'er deserts, o'er mountains in legions,
Grey-hoary, thro' oceans, and into the regions
Far over the clouds;
A thousand base spirits his progress unshaken
Arouses, press round him and stare as they waken,
In insolent crowds
* * * * *
"He cries out with terror, in agony grasping,
Yet ever the mane of his Pegasus clasping,
They heavenward spring;
Each leap that he takes with fresh woe is attended;
He totters--falls lifeless--the struggle is ended--
And rises as King!"[A]
[Footnote A: The English verses are taken for the most part from the
translation of F. Corder.]
The original _Allegro agitato_ in broad 6/4 time (aptly suggestive of
the unbridled motion) grows
[Music: (In brass and strings with lower 8ve.)
(With constant clattering higher strings and
chord of low wind on the middle beat)]
more rapid into an _alla breve_ pace (in two beats), with dazzling maze
of lesser rhythms. Throughout the work a song of primeval strain
prevails. Here and there a tinge of foreshadowing pain appears, as the
song sounds on high, _espressivo dolente_. But the fervor and fury of
movement is undiminished. The brief touch of pathos soon merges in the
general heroic mood. Later, the whole motion ceases, "the horse sinks
and dies," and now an interlude sings a pure plaint (in the strain of
the main motive). Then, _Allegro_, the martial note clangs in stirring
trumpet and breaks into formal song of war, _Allegro marziale_.
[Music: (Brass and strings)
_Allegro marziale_
(With lower 8ve.)]
In the wake of this song, with a relentless trip and tramp of warrior
hordes, is the real clash and jingle of the battle, where the sparkling
thrill of strings and the saucy counter theme are strong elements in the
stirring beauty.
There is a touch here of the old Goth, or rather the Hun, nearer akin to
the composer's race.
At the height rings out the main tune of yore, transformed in triumphant
majesty.
The musical design embraces various phases. First is the clear rhythmic
sense of the ride. We think of other instances like Schubert's
"Erl-King" or the ghostly ride in Raff's "Lenore" Symphony.
The degree of vivid description must vary, not only with the composer,
but with the hearer. The greatest masters have yielded to the variety of
the actual graphic touch. And, too, there are always interpreters who
find it, even if it was never intended. Thus it is common to hear at the
very beginning of the "Mazeppa" music the cry that goes up as starts the
flight.
We are of course entitled, if we prefer, to feel the poetry rather than
the picture. Finally it is probably true that such a poetic design is
not marred merely because there is here or there a trick of
onomatopoeia; if it is permitted in poetry, why not in music? It may be
no more than a spur to the fancy, a quick conjuring of the association.
_HUNNENSCHLACHT--"THE BATTLE OF THE HUNS"_
Liszt's symphonic poem, "Hunnenschlacht," one of the last of his works
in this form, completed in 1857, was directly inspired by the picture of
the German painter, Wilhelm Kaulbach, which represents the legend of the
aerial battle between the spirits of the Romans and Huns who had fallen
outside of the walls of Rome.[A]
[Footnote A: A description of the picture is cited by Lawrence Gilman in
his book, "Stories of Symphonic Music," as follows:
"According to a legend, the combatants were so exasperated that the
slain rose during the night and fought in the air. Rome, which is seen
in the background, is said to have been the scene of this event. Above,
borne on a shield, is Attila, with a scourge in his hand; opposite him
Theodoric, King of the Visigoths. The foreground is a battle-field,
strewn with corpses, which are seen to be gradually reviving, rising up
and rallying, while among them wander wailing and lamenting women."]
The evidence of the composer's intent is embodied in a letter written in
1857 to the wife of the painter, which accompanied the manuscript of an
arrangement of the music for two pianos. In the letter Liszt speaks of
"the meteoric and solar light which I have borrowed from the painting,
and which at the Finale I have formed into one whole by the gradual
working up of the Catholic _choral_ 'Crux fidelis,' and the meteoric
sparks blended therewith." He continues: "As I have already intimated to
Kaulbach, in Munich, I was led by the musical demands of the material to
give proportionately more place to the solar light of Christianity,
personified in the Catholic _choral_ ... than appears to be the case in
the glorious painting, in order to win and pregnantly represent the
conclusion of the Victory of the Cross, with which I both as a Catholic
and as a man could not dispense."
The work begins _tempestuoso_ (_allegro non troppo_), with a nervous
theme over soft rolling drums and
[Music: _Tempestuoso. Allegro non troppo_
(Bassoons with _tremolo_ cellos and roll of kettle-drums)]
trembling low strings, that is taken up as in fugue by successive groups
and carried to a height where enters a fierce call of the horns. The
cries of battle spread with increasing din and gathering speed. At the
first climax the whole motion has a new energy, as the strings in
feverish chase attack the quickened motive with violent stress. Later,
though the motion has not lessened, the theme has returned to a
semblance of its former pace, and again the cries of battle (in brass
and wood) sound across its path.
[Music: (Strings, _tremolo_, doubled above)
(Horns)]
In the hush of the storm the full-blown call to arms is heard in lowest,
funereal tones. Of a sudden, though the speed is the same, the pace
changes with a certain terror as of a cavalry attack. Presently amid the
clattering tramp sounds the big hymn,--in the ancient rhythm that moves
strangely out of the rut of even time.[A]
[Footnote A: Quoted on the following page.]
A single line of the hymn is followed by a refrain of the battle-call,
and by the charge of horse that brings back the hymn, in high pitch of
trumpets. And so recur the former phases of battle,--really of threat
and preparation. For now begins the serious fray in one long gathering
of speed and power. The first theme here grows to full melodic song,
with extended answer, led by strepitous band of lower reed over a heavy
clatter of strings. We are in a
[Music: (Trombones with lower 8ve)
_Marcato_]
maze of furious charges and cries, till the shrill trumpet and the
stentorian trombone strike the full call in antiphonal song. The tempest
increases with a renewed charge of the strings, and now the more distant
calls have a slower sweep. Later the battle song is in the
basses,--again in clashing basses and trebles; nearer strike the broad
sweeping calls.
Suddenly over the hushed motion in soothing harmonies sings the hymn in
pious choir of all the brass. Then the gathering speed and volume is
merged in a majestic tread as of ordered array (_Maestoso assai;
Andante_); a brief spirited prelude of martial motives is answered by
the soft religious strains of the organ on the line of the hymn:
"Crux fidelis, inter omnes
Arbor una nobilis,
Nulla silva talem profert
Fronde, flore, germine.
Dulce lignum, dulces clavos,
Dulce pondus sustinet."[A]
[Footnote A:
Faithful cross, among the trees
Thou the noblest of them all!
Forest ne'er doth grow a like
In leaf, in flower or in seed.
Blessed wood and blessed nails,
Blessed burden that it bears!]
As in solemn liturgy come the answering phrases of the organ and the big
chorus in martial tread. As the hymn winds its further course, violins
entwine about the harmonies. The last line ends in expressive strain and
warm line of new major tone,--echoed in interluding organ and violins.
Suddenly a strict, solemn tread, with sharp stress of violins, brings a
new song of the _choral_. Strings alone play here "with pious
expression"; gradually reeds add support and ornament. A lingering
phrase ascends on celestial harmonies. With a stern shock the plain hymn
strikes in the reed, against a rapid course of strings, with fateful
tread. In interlude sound the battle-cries of yore. Again the hymn ends
in the expressive cadence, though now it grows to a height of power.
Here a former figure (the first motive of the battle) reappears in a
new guise of bright major,[A] in full, spirited stride, and leads once
more to a blast of the hymn, with organ and all, the air in unison of
trumpets and all the wood. The expressive cadence merges into a last
fanfare of battle, followed by a strain of hymns and with reverberating
Amens, where the organ predominates and holds long after all other
sounds have ceased.
[Footnote A: In the whole tonality we may see the "meteoric and solar
light" of which the composer speaks in the letter quoted above.]
CHAPTER VI
THE SYMPHONIC POEMS OF SAINT-SAËNS
There is something charming and even ideal in a complete versatility,
quite apart from the depth of the separate poems, where there is a
never-failing touch of grace and of distinction. The Philip Sydneys are
quite as important as the Miltons, perhaps they are as great. Some poets
seem to achieve an expression in a certain cyclic or sporadic career of
their fancy, touching on this or that form, illuminating with an elusive
light the various corners of the garden. Their individual expression
lies in the _ensemble_ of these touches, rather than in a single
profound revelation.
A symptom of the eminence of Saint-Saëns in the history of French music
lies in his attitude towards the art as a whole, especially of the
German masters,--the absence of national bias in his perceptions. He was
foremost in revealing to his countrymen the greatness of Bach, Beethoven
and Schumann. Without their influence the present high state of French
music can hardly be conceived.
It is part of a broad and versatile mastery that it is difficult to
analyze. Thus it is not easy to find salient traits in the art of M.
Saint-Saëns. We are apt to think mainly of the distinguished beauty of
his harmonies, until we remember his subtle counterpoint, or in turn
the brilliancy of his orchestration. The one trait that he has above his
contemporaries is an inbred refinement and restraint,--a thorough-going
workmanship. If he does not share a certain overwrought emotionalism
that is much affected nowadays, there is here no limitation--rather a
distinction. Aside from the general charm of his art, Saint-Saëns found
in the symphonic poem his one special form, so that it seemed Liszt had
created it less for himself than for his French successor. A fine
reserve of poetic temper saved him from hysterical excess. He never lost
the music in the story, disdaining the mere rude graphic stroke; in his
dramatic symbols a musical charm is ever commingled. And a like poise
helped him to a right plot and point in his descriptions. So his
symphonic poems must ever be enjoyed mainly for the music, with perhaps
a revery upon the poetic story. With a less brilliant vein of melody,
though they are not so Promethean in reach as those of Liszt, they are
more complete in the musical and in the narrative effect.
_DANSE MACABRE_
Challenged for a choice among the works of the versatile composer, we
should hit upon the _Danse Macabre_ as the most original, profound and
essentially beautiful of all. It is free from certain lacks that one
feels in other works, with all their charm,--a shallowness and almost
frivolity; a facility of theme approaching the commonplace.
There is here an eccentric quality of humor, a daemonic conceit that
reach the height of other classic expression of the supernatural.
The music is founded upon certain lines of a poem of _Henri Calais_
(under a like title), that may be given as follows:
Zig-a-zig, zig-a-zig-a-zig,
Death knocks on the tomb with rhythmic heel.
Zig-a-zig, zig-a-zig-zig,
Death fiddles at midnight a ghostly reel.
The winter wind whistles, dark is the night;
Dull groans behind the lindens grow loud;
Back and forth fly the skeletons white,
Running and leaping each under his shroud.
Zig-a-zig-a-zig, how it makes you quake,
As you hear the bones of the dancers shake.
* * * * *
But hist! all at once they vanish away,
The cock has hailed the dawn of day.
The magic midnight strokes sound clear and sharp. In eager chords of
tuned pitch the fiddling ghost summons the dancing groups, where the
single fife is soon followed by demon violins.
Broadly sings now the descending tune half-way between a wail and a
laugh. And ever in interlude is the skipping, mincing step,--here of
reeds answered by solo violin with a light clank of cymbals. Answering
the summoning fifes, the unison troop of fiddlers dance the main step
to bright strokes of triangle, then the main ghostly violin trips in
with choir of wind. And broadly again sweeps the song between tears and
[Music: _In waltz rhythm_
(Flute)
(Harp, with sustained bass note of strings)]
smiles. Or Death fiddles the first strain of reel for the tumultuous
answer of chorus.
Now they build a busy, bustling fugue (of the descending song) and at
the serious moment suddenly
[Music: (Solo violin)
_Largamente_
(_Pizz._ strings)]
they skip away in new frolicsome, all but joyous, tune: a shadowy
counterfeit of gladness, where the sob hangs on the edge of the smile.
As if it could no longer be contained, now pours the full passionate
grief of the broad descending strain. Death fiddles his mournful chant
to echoing, expressive wind. On the abandon of grief follows the revel
of grim humor in pranks of mocking demons. All the strains are mingled
in the ghostly bacchanale. The descending song is answered in opposite
melody. A chorus of laughter follows the tripping dance. The summoning
chords, acclaimed by chorus, grow to appealing song in a brief lull. At
the height, to the united skipping dance of overpowering chorus the
brass blows the full verse of descending song. The rest is a mad storm
of carousing till ... out of the whirling darkness sudden starts the
sharp, sheer call of prosaic day, in high, shrill reed. On a minishing
sound of rolling drum and trembling strings, sings a brief line of
wistful rhapsody of the departing spirit before the last whisking steps.
_PHAETON_
On a separate page between title and score is a "_Notice_,"--an epitome
of the story of Phaeton, as follows:
"Phaeton has been permitted to drive the chariot of the Sun, his father,
through the heavens. But his unskilful hands frighten the steeds. The
flaming chariot, thrown out of its course, approaches the terrestrial
regions. The whole universe is on the verge of ruin when Jupiter strikes
the imprudent Phaeton with his thunderbolt."
There is a solemn sense at first (_Maestoso_), a mid-air poise of the
harmony, a quick spring of resolution and--on through the heavens. At
the outset and always is the pervading musical charm. In the beginning
is the enchantment of mere motion in lightest prancing strings and harp
with slowly ascending curve. In farther journey comes a spring of the
higher wood and soon a firm note of horns and a blast of trumpets on a
chirruping call, till the whole panoply of solar brilliance is
shimmering. Now with the continuing pulse (of saltant strings) rings a
buoyant,
[Music: _Allegro animato_
(Violins)
_Marcato_ (Trumpets and trombones)]
regnant air in the brass. A (canon) chase of echoing voices merely adds
an entrancing bewilderment, then yields to other symbols and visions.
Still rises the thread of pulsing strings to higher empyraean and then
floats forth in golden horns, as we hang in the heavens, a melody
tenderly solemn, as of pent delight, or perhaps of a more fatal hue,
with the solar orb encircled by his satellites.
Still on to a higher pole spins the dizzy path; then at the top of the
song, it turns in slow descending curve. Almost to Avernus seems the
gliding fall when the first melody rings anew. But there is now an
anxious sense that dims the joy of motion and in the
[Music: (With trembling of violins in high B flat)
(Horns)]
returning first motive jars the buoyant spring. Through the maze of
fugue with tinge of terror presses the fatuous chase, when--crash comes
the shock of higher power. There is a pause of motion in the din and a
downward flight as of lifeless figure.
Now seems the soul of the sweet melody to sing, in purest dirge, without
the shimmer of attendant motion save a ghostly shadow of the joyous
symbol.
_THE YOUTH OF HERCULES_
The "Legend" is printed in the score as follows:
"Fable tells us that upon entering into life Hercules saw the two paths
open before him: of pleasure and of virtue.
"Insensible to the seductions of Nymphs and Bacchantes, the hero devotes
himself to the career of struggle and combat, at the end of which he
glimpses across the flames of the funeral pyre the reward of
immortality."
We can let our fancy play about the score and wonderfully hit an
intention of the poet. Yet that is often rather a self-flattery than a
real perception. In the small touches we may lose the greater beauty.
Here, after all, is the justification of the music. If the graphic
picture is added, a little, only, is gained. The main virtue of it lies
in our better grasp of the musical design.
In the muted strings, straying dreamily in pairs, is a vague line of the
motto,--a foreshadowing of the heroic idea, as are the soft calls of the
wind with wooing harp a first vision of delight.
[Music: _Allegro moderato_
(Strings)]
Now begins the main song in sturdy course of unmuted strings. The wood
soon join in the rehearsing. But it is not all easy deciphering. The
song wanders in gently agitated strings while the horns hold a solemn
phrase that but faintly resembles the motto.[A] Lesser phrases play
about the bigger in rising flight of aspiration, crowned at the height
with a ray of glad light.
[Footnote A: It is well to resist the vain search for a transnotation of
the story. And here we see a virtue of Saint-Saëns himself, a national
trait of poise that saved him from losing the music in the picture. His
symphonic poems must be enjoyed in a kind of musical revery upon the
poetic subject. He disdained the rude graphic stroke, and used dramatic
means only where a musical charm was commingled.]
As the dream sinks slowly away, the stern motto is buried in quick
flashes of the tempting call. These are mere visions; now comes the
scene itself of temptation.
To ripples of harp the reed sings enchantingly in swaying rhythm; other
groups in new surprise of
[Music: (Flutes, oboe, clarinets and harp)]
scene usurp the melody with the languishing answer, until one Siren
breaks into an impassioned burst, while her sisters hold the dance.
Straight upon her vanished echoes shrieks the shrill pipe of war, with
trembling drum. We hear a yearning sigh of the Siren strain before it is
swept away in the tide and tumult of strife. Beneath the whirl and
motion, the flash and crash of arms, we have glimpses of the heroic
figure.
Here is a strange lay in the fierce chorus of battle-cries: the Siren
song in bright insistence, changed to the rushing pace of war.
The scene ends in a crash. Loud sings a solemn phrase; do we catch an
edge of wistful regret? Now returns the sturdy course of the main
heroic melody; only it is slower (_Andante sostenuto_), and the high
stress of cadence is solemnly impassioned.
As if to atone for the slower pace, the theme strikes into a lively
fugue, with trembling strings (_Allegro animato_).
There is an air of achievement in the relentless progress and the
insistent recurrence of the masterful motive. An episode there is of
mere striving and straining, before the theme resumes its vehement
attack, followed by lusty echoes all about as of an army of heroes.
There is the breath of battle in the rumbling basses and the shaking,
quivering brass.
At last the plain song resounds in simple lines of ringing brass, led by
the high bugle.[A]
[Footnote A: Saint-Saëns employs besides the usual 4 horns, 2 trumpets,
3 trombones and tuba, a small bugle (in B-flat) and 2 cornets.]
Yet the struggle, the inner combat, is not over. At the very moment of
triumph sings on high over purling harp the mastering strain of Sirens,
is buried beneath martial clash and emerges with its enchantment. But
here the virile mood and motive gains the victory and strides on to
final scene.
We remember how Hercules built and ascended his own funeral pyre. In
midst of quivering strings, with dashing harp and shrieking wood, a roll
of drum and a clang of brass sounds the solemn chant of the trombone,
descending in relentless steps. As the lowest is reached, there comes a
spring of freedom in the pulsing figures, like the winging of a spirit,
and a final acclaim in a brief line of the legend.
_OMPHALE'S SPINNING WHEEL_
Between title and score is this _Notice_:
"The subject of this symphonic poem is feminine witchery, the triumphant
struggle of weakness. The spinning wheel is a mere pretext, chosen from
the point of view of rhythm and the general atmosphere of the piece.
"Those persons who might be interested in a study of the details of the
picture, will see ... the hero groaning in the toils which he cannot
break, and ... Omphale mocking the vain efforts of Hercules."
The versions of the story differ slightly. After the fulfilment of his
twelve labors Hercules is ordered by the oracle to a period of three
years' service to expiate the killing of the son of King Eurytus in a
fit of madness. Hermes placed him in the household of Omphale, queen of
Lydia, widow of Tmolus. Hercules is degraded to female drudgery, is
clothed in soft raiment and set to spin wool, while the queen assumes
the lion skin and club.
In another version he was sold as slave to Omphale, who restored him to
freedom. Their passion was mutual. The story has a likeness to a similar
episode of Achilles.
The spinning-wheel begins _Andante_ in muted strings alternating with
flutes and gradually hurries into a lively motion. Here the horn accents
the spinning, while another thread (of higher wood) runs through the
graceful woof. A chain of alluring harmonies preludes the ensnaring
song, mainly of woodwind above the humming strings, with soft dotting of
the harmony by the horns. The violins, to be sure, often enforce the
melody.
[Music: _Andantino_
(Fl. and muted violins)
_Grazioso_
(Strings, muted)]
In the second verse, with fuller chorus, the harp adds its touches to
the harmony of the horns, with lightest tap of tonal drum. Later a
single note of the trumpet is answered by a silvery laugh in the wood.
Between the verses proceeds the luscious chain of harmonies, as with the
turning of the wheel.
Now with the heavily expressive tones of low, unmuted strings and the
sonorous basses of reed and brass (together with a low roll of drum and
soft clash of cymbals) an heroic air sings in low strings and brass, to
meet at each period a shower of notes from the harp. The song grows
intense with the
[Music: (Wood and _trem._ violins doubled above)
(Horns)
_espress. e pesante_
(Cellos, basses, bassoons and trombone, doubled below)]
added clang of trumpets and roll of drums,--only to succumb to the more
eager attack of the siren chorus. At last the full effort of strength
battling vainly with weakness reaches a single heroic height and sinks
away with dull throbs.
In soothing answer falls the caressing song of the high reed in the
phrase of the heroic strain, lightly, quickly and, it seems, mockingly
aimed. In gently railing triumph returns the pretty song of the wheel,
with a new buoyant spring. Drums and martial brass yield to the laughing
flutes, the cooing horns and the soft rippling harp with murmuring
strings, to return like captives in the train at the height of the
gaiety.
CHAPTER VII
CÉSAR FRANCK
The new French school of symphony that broke upon the world in the
latter part of the nineteenth century had its pioneer and true leader in
César Franck.[A] It was he who gave it a stamp and a tradition.
[Footnote A: If language and association, as against the place of birth,
may define nationality, we have in César Franck another worthy
expression of French art in the symphony. He was born at Liège in 1822;
he died in 1890.]
The novelty of his style, together with the lateness of his acclaim (of
which it was the probable cause), have marked him as more modern than
others who were born long after him.
The works of Franck, in other lines of oratorio and chamber music, show
a clear personality, quite apart from a prevailing modern spirit. A
certain charm of settled melancholy seems to inhere in his wonted style.
A mystic is Franck in his dominant moods, with a special sense and power
for subtle harmonic process, ever groping in a spiritual discontent with
defined tonality.
A glance at the detail of his art discloses Franck as one of the main
harmonists of his age, with Wagner and Grieg. Only, his harmonic manner
was blended if not balanced by a stronger, sounder counterpoint than
either of the others. But with all the originality of his style we
cannot escape a sense of the stereotype, that indeed inheres in all
music that depends mainly on an harmonic process. His harmonic ideas,
that often seem inconsequential, in the main merely surprise rather than
move or please. The enharmonic principle is almost too predominant,--an
element that ought never to be more than occasional. For it is founded
not upon ideal, natural harmony, but upon a conventional compromise, an
expedient compelled by the limitation of instruments. This over-stress
appears far stronger in the music of Franck's followers, above all in
their frequent use of the whole tone "scale" which can have no other
_rationale_ than a violent extension of the enharmonic principle.[A]
With a certain quality of kaleidoscope, there is besides (in the
harmonic manner of César Franck) an infinitesimal kind of progress in
smallest steps. It is a dangerous form of ingenuity, to which the
French are perhaps most prone,--an originality mainly in details.
[Footnote A: Absolute harmony would count many more than the semitones
of which our music takes cognizance. For purpose of convenience on the
keyboard the semitonal raising of one note is merged in the lowering of
the next higher degree in the scale. However charming for occasional
surprise may be such a substitution, a continuous, pervading use cannot
but destroy the essential beauty of harmony and the clear sense of
tonality; moreover it is mechanical in process, devoid of poetic fancy,
purely chaotic in effect. There is ever a danger of confusing the novel
in art with new beauty.]
And yet we must praise in the French master a wonderful workmanship and
a profound sincerity of sentiment. He shows probably the highest point
to which a style that is mainly harmonic may rise. But when he employs
his broader mastery of tonal architecture, he attains a rare height of
lofty feeling, with reaches of true dramatic passion.
The effect, to be sure, of his special manner is somewhat to dilute the
temper of his art, and to depress the humor. It is thus that the
pervading melancholy almost compels the absence of a "slow movement" in
his symphony. And so we feel in all his larger works for instruments a
suddenness of recoil in the Finale.
One can see in Franck, in analogy with his German contemporaries, an
etherealized kind of "Tristan and Isolde,"--a "Paolo and Francesca" in a
world of shades. Compared with his followers the quality of stereotype
in Franck is merely general; there is no excessive use of one device.
A baffling element in viewing the art of Franck is his remoteness of
spirit, the strangeness of his temper. He lacked the joyous spring that
is a dominant note in the classic period. Nor on the other hand did his
music breathe the pessimism and naturalism that came with the last
rebound of Romantic reaction. Rather was his vein one of high spiritual
absorption--not so much in recoil, as merely apart from the world in a
kind of pious seclusion. Perhaps his main point of view was the
church-organ. He seems a religious prophet in a non-religious age. With
his immediate disciples he was a leader in the manner of his art, rather
than in the temper of his poetry.
_SYMPHONY IN D MINOR_
The scoring shows a sign of modern feeling in the prominence of the
brasses. With all contrast of spirit, the analogy of Franck with the
Liszt-Wagner school and manner is frequently suggestive.
The main novelty of outer detail is the plan of merely three movements.
Nor is there a return to the original form, without the Scherzo. To
judge from the headings, the "slow" movement is absent. In truth, by way
of cursory preamble, the chronic vein of César Franck is so ingrainedly
reflective that there never can be with him an absence of the meditative
phrase. Rather must there be a vehement rousing of his muse from a state
of mystic adoration to rhythmic energy and cheer.[A]
[Footnote A: The key of the work is given by the composer as D minor.
The first movement alone is in the nominal key. The second (in B flat)
is in the submediant, the last in the tonic major. The old manner in
church music, that Bach often used, of closing a minor tonality with a
major chord, was probably due to a regard for the mood of the
congregation. An extension of this tradition is frequent in a long coda
in the major. But this is quite different in kind from a plan where all
of the last movement is in insistent major. We know that it is quite
possible to begin a work at some distance from the main key, leading to
it by tortuous path of modulation; though there is no reason why we may
not question the composer's own inscription, the controlling point is
really the whole tonal scheme. Here the key of the second movement is
built on a design in minor,--would have less reason in the major. For it
rests on a degree that does not exist in the tonic major. To be sure,
Beethoven did invent the change to a lowered submediant in a succeeding
movement. And, of course, the final turn to the tonic major is virtually
as great a license.]
_Lento_ in basses of the strings a strain sounds like a basic motive,
answered with harmonies in the wood. In further strings lies the full
tenor of quiet reflection, with sombre color of tonal scheme. Motives
are less controlling probably in Franck than in any other
symphonist,--less so, at any rate, than his one
[Music: _Lento_]
special mood and manner. Yet nowhere is the strict figural plot more
faithful in detail than with César Franck.
The theme has an entirely new ring and answer when it enters Allegro
after the Lento prelude. The further course of the tune here is in
eccentric, resolute stride in the descending scale. Our new answer is
much evident in the bass. The Allegro seems a mere irruption; for the
Lento prelude reappears in full solemnity. Indeed, with all the title
and pace, this seems very like the virtual "slow" movement. A mood of
rapt, almost melancholy absorption prevails, with rare flashes of joyous
utterance, where the Allegro enters as if to break the thrall of
meditation. A very striking inversion of the theme now appears. The
gradual growth of phrases in melodious instalments is a trait of Franck
(as it is of Richard Strauss). The rough motto at each turn has a new
[Music: _Allegro non troppo_
(Strings)
(Wind)]
phase and frequently is transfigured to a fresh tune. So out of the
first chance counter-figures somehow spring beautiful melodies, where we
feel the fitness and the relevance though we have not heard them before.
It is a quality that Franck shares with Brahms, so that in a
mathematical spirit we might care to deduce all the figures from the
first phrase. This themal manner is quite analogous to the harmonic
style of Franck,--a kaleidoscope of gradual steps, a slow procession of
pale hues of tone that with strange aptness reflect the dim religious
light of mystic musing.
More and more expressive are the stages of the first figures until we
have a duet _molto cantabile_ in the strings. Much of the charm of the
movement lies in the balance of the new rhythms, the eccentric and the
flowing. By some subtle path there grows a song
[Music: _Allegro. Molto cantabile_]
in big tones of unison, wood and strings and trumpets, that is the real
hymnal refrain of the movement. Between this note almost of exultation
and all shades of pious dreaming the mood is constantly shifting.
[Music: _Allegro_]
Another phrase rises also to a triumphant height (the clear reverse of
the former tuneful melody) that comes now like a big _envoi_ of assuring
message.
Though the whole movement is evenly balanced between Allegro and
Penseroso (so far as pace is concerned), the mood of reflection really
finds full vent; it has no reason for a further special expression.
Simple as the Allegretto appears in its suggestion of halting dance, the
intent in the episodes is of the subtlest. The slow trip of strings and
harp is soon given a new meaning with the melody of English horn.
Throughout we are somehow divided between pure dance and a more
thoughtful muse. In the first departure to an episode in major, seems to
sing the essence of the former melody in gently murmuring strings, where
later the whole chorus are drawn in. The song moves on clear thread and
wing right out of the mood of the dance-tune; but the very charm lies in
the mere outer change of guise. And so the second episode is still far
from all likeness with the first dance beyond a least sense of the old
trip that does appear here and there. It is all clearly a true scheme of
variations, the main theme disguised beyond outer semblance, yet
faithfully present throughout in the essential rhythm and harmony.
In the Finale, _Allegro non troppo_, we are really clear, at the outset,
of the toils of musing melancholy.
[Music: _Allegro non troppo_
_Dolce cantabile_]
After big bursts of chords, a tune rolls pleasantly along, _dolce
cantabile_, in basses of wood and strings. Expressive after-phrases
abound, all in the same jolly mood, until the whole band break
boisterously on the simple song, with a new sonorous phrase of basses.
Then, in sudden remove, sounds the purest bit of melody of all the
symphony, in gentlest tones
[Music: _Dolce cantabile_
(In the brass)]
of brass (trumpet, trombone and tuba). But, though in complete recoil
from the rhythmic energy of Allegro theme, it is even farther from the
reflective mood than the latter. It shows, in this very contrast, the
absence of the true lyric in the meditative vein, frequent with César
Franck. The burst of melody blossoms ever fairer. In its later musing
the tune browses in the bass. A waving phrase grows in the violins,
which continues with strange evenness through the entrance of new song
where we are surprised by the strange fitness of the Allegretto melody.
And the second phase of the latter follows as if it belonged here. So,
almost listless, without a hair of rhythmic change (_les temps ont
toujours la même valeur_), the Finale theme sings again most softly in
the strings. It has, to be sure, lost all of its color, without the
original throb of accompanying sounds. The phase of the movement is a
shadowy procession of former ideas, united in the dreamy haze that
enshrouds them. The stir that now begins is not of the first pale hue of
thought, rather the vein of big discussion, brewing a storm that breaks
finally in full blast on the gentle melody (of the brass) transfigured
in ringing triumph, in all the course of the song. Nor is the succeeding
phase the mystic habit of our poet; it is a mere farther digestion of
the meat of the melody that leads once more to a height of climax whence
we return to first course of themes, tuneful afterphrase and all, with
the old happy motion. The counterpoint here is the mere joyous ringing
of many strains all about.
Against all rules comes a new chorusing paean on the theme of
Allegretto, led by stentorian basses, together with an enchanting
after-strain, which we might have remarked before. And still another
quarter, long hushed, is heard anew, as a voice sounds a faint reminder
of the hymn of the first Allegro. Indeed, the combining strains before
the close seem sprung all of one parental idea. The motto of the
beginning sings in fittest answer to the latest phrases. The very maze
of the concert forbids our turning to their first origin. The end is in
joyous chanting of the Finale melody.
CHAPTER VIII
D'INDY AND THE FOLLOWERS OF FRANCK
Perhaps the noblest essay in symphonic music of the followers of Franck
is the second symphony of Vincent D'Indy.[A] His vein is indeed
throughout nearest akin of all the disciples to the serious muse of the
master.
[Footnote A: Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris on March 27, 1852.]
Though D'Indy is surpassed in a certain poetic originality by some of
his compatriot contemporaries, there is in this symphony a breadth of
design and detail, a clear melodic quality and a sustained lofty feeling
that seem to mark it the typical French symphony of its time. The
strength of the work lies in a unity that is not merely of figure and
outline. If we must measure a symphony mainly by the slow movement, we
cannot avoid, with all the languorous beauty, a certain conventionality
of mood, stressed with an exotic use of the appoggiatura, while in the
Scherzo is a refined savagery of modern cacophony.
The directions are all in French; we are reminded of Schumann's
departure from the Italian fashion.
Each movement, save the third, has its prelude: a gathering of threads
before the new story. The first notes of basses, together with the
answer on high, sound a prophetic legend of the whole.
The harmonic lucubrations are profoundly subtle. Indeed the very nature
of the first phrase is of dim
[Music: _Extrêmémént Lent._ (Woodwind)
(Strings and harps)]
groping; it ends in a climax of the answer and merges into the main song
of the Allegro (_très vif_) in horns, with rapid trip of strings.
[Music: _Très vif_ (Horns)
(Strings)]
Throughout (from a technical view) is a fine mastery of the device of
ornamental notes, and secondary harmonies; there is also a certain
modern sense of chords and their relations. Together with an infinite
brilliance of these resources there is not only no weakness in cogency
of form, but there is a rare unity of design. The movements are bound
together, at least in themal relation, as strictly as in any symphony.
While the first phrase of the Allegro theme may hark back to the answer
of original motto, the second is the main thread of narrative.
[Music: (Flutes, oboes and clarinets)
_Sempre staccato_]
Again and again is the climax rung on the first high note of the theme.
Then, in lieu of cadence, out of a bright dissonance the quick notes
dance upward in sturdy pace, the answer of the Allegro in sharp
disguise. And then from the height descends a refreshing spray of
subtlest discords, ending in another masterful burst of new harmony.
The dainty, dazzling play is stopped by a rough thud of basses and a
fierce clang of chords. In the sharp blare of brass on the ascending
phrase is almost lost the original motto in lowest basses. It is now
heard in gradually quickened speed, while the rising phrase runs more
timidly. At last the quickened motto sinks gently into lulling motion,
_un peu plus modéré_. Above, in strings and horns, the melody haunts us
with a dim sense that takes us to the first languishing answer of the
original legend. And the whole is strong-knit; for the very Allegro
theme began in resolute mood of a like figure. A counter-strain rises to
meet the main phrase. The whole episode is an intertwining of song in
the vein of the first answer of motto.
The quick rising notes suddenly return with snatches of the main motive,
the chain of echoing phrases runs a gamut of moods, fitful, anxious,
soothed, until the bright upward trip begins anew, with the enchanting
burst of chord and descending harmonies. A climactic height is stressed
by a rough meeting of opposing groups, in hostile tone and movement,
ending in a trill of flutes and a reëntry of the episode.
In the returning Allegro the thread is still the same, though richer in
color and texture. Again there is the plunge into dark abyss, with
shriek of harp, and the ominous theme in the depths. The slow ascending
phrase here has a full song and sway. The end is in spirited duet of two
quick motives.
The second movement, _modérément lent_, begins in revery on the answer
of original motive, and the stately pathos of the theme, in horns,
clarinets and violas, with rhythmic strings, grows naturally out of the
mood.
_Plus animé_, in subtle change of pace (from 6/4 to 3/2), the episode
begins with eccentric stride of harps (and added woodwind), that serves
as a kind of
[Music: _Modérément Lent._
(Melody in horns, clarinets and violas)
(Acc'd in strings)]
accompanying figure and foil for the sweeping song of the real second
melody (in oboe solo, succeeded by the clarinet).
[Music: (Oboe solo)
_Très espress._
(Violins)
(Acc't in bassoons, horns, harps and basses)]
In the clash of themes and harmonies of the climax, the very limits of
modern license seem to be invoked. Later the three themes are entwined
in a passage of masterly counterpoint.
There is a touch of ancient harmony in the delicate tune of third
movement, which has the virtue of endless weaving. It is sung by solo
violin, mainly supported by a choir of lower strings.
A final conclusive line is given by the solo flute. Besides the constant
course of varying tune, there is a power of ever changing harmony that
seems to lie in some themes.
[Music: _Modéré_
(Viola solo)
_Très simplement_]
One can hardly call it all a Scherzo. It is rather an idyll after the
pathos of the Andante. Or, from another view, reversing the usual order,
we may find the quality of traditional Trio in the first melody and a
bacchanale of wild humor in the middle. For, out
[Music: _Très animé_
(Woodwind and strings)]
of a chance phrase of horns grows of all the symphony the boldest
harmonic phrase (repeated through ten bars). Above rings a barbarous
cry, in defiance of common time and rhythm.
Suddenly we are surprised by the sound of the martial stride of the
second theme of the Andante which moves on the sea of rough harmony as
on a native element. One whim follows another. The same motion is all
there, but as if in shadow, in softest sound, and without the jar of
discord; then comes the fiercest clash of all, and now a gayest dance of
the first tune, _assez vif_, in triple rhythm, various figures having
their _pas seul_. A second episode returns, brilliant in high pace but
purged of the former war of sounds. At the end is the song of the first
tune, with new pranks and sallies.
The beginning of the Finale is all in a musing review of past thoughts.
The shadow of the last tune lingers, in slower pace; the ominous dirge
of first motto sounds below; the soothing melody of the Andante sings a
verse. In solemn fugue the original motto is reared from its timid
phrase to masterful utterance, with splendid stride. Or
[Music: _Modéré et solennel_
(Cellos and basses)]
rather the theme is blended of the first two phrases, merging their
opposite characters in the new mood of resolution. The strings prepare
for the sonorous entrance of woodwind and horns. One of the greatest
fugal episodes of symphonies, it is yet a mere prelude to the real
movement, where the light theme is drawn from a phrase of latest
cadence. And the dim hue of minor which began the symphony, and all
overspread the prelude, at last yields to the clear major. There is
something of the struggle of shadow and light of the great third
symphony of Brahms.
The continuous round of the theme, in its unstable pace (of 5/4), has a
strange power of motion, the feeling
[Music: (Ob.)
(Strings)]
of old passacaglia. To be sure, it is the mere herald and companion of
the crowning tune, in solo of the reeds.
From the special view of structure, there is no symphony, modern or
classic, with such an overpowering combination and resolution of
integral themes in one movement. So almost constant is the derivation of
ideas, that one feels they must be all related. Thus, the late rush of
rhythm, in the Finale, is broken by a quiet verse where with enchanting
subtlety we are carried back somewhere to the idyll of third movement.
Above, rises another melody, and from its simple outline grows a fervor
and pathos that, aside from the basic themes of the whole work, strike
the main feeling of the Finale.
[Music: _Un peu moins vite_]
The martial trip from the Andante joins later in the return of the
whirling rhythm. At last the motto strikes on high, but the appealing
counter-melody is not easily hushed.
[Music: (Ob.)
(Cellos with _tremolo_ violins)]
It breaks out later in a verse of exalted beauty and passion. The
struggle of the two ideas reminds us of the Fifth Symphony. At last the
gloom of the fateful motto is relieved by the return of the original
answer, and we seem to see a new source of latest ideas, so that we
wonder whether all the melodies are but guises of the motto and answer,
which now at the close, sing in united tones a hymn of peace and bliss.
CHAPTER IX
DÉBUSSY AND THE INNOVATORS
At intervals during the course of the art have appeared the innovators
and pioneers,--rebels against the accepted manner and idiom. The mystery
is that while they seem necessary to progress they seldom create
enduring works. The shadowy lines may begin somewhere among the Huebalds
and other early adventurers. One of the most striking figures is Peri,
who boldly, almost impiously, abandoned the contrapuntal style, the only
one sanctioned by tradition, and set the dramatic parts in informal
musical prose with a mere strumming of instruments.
It is not easy to see the precise need of such reaction. The radical
cause is probably a kind of inertia in all things human, by which the
accepted is thought the only way. Rules spring up that are never wholly
true; at best they are shifts to guide the student, inadequate
conclusions from past art. The essence of an art can never be put in
formulas. Else we should be content with the verbal form. The best
excuse for the rule is that it is meant to guard the element of truth in
art from meretricious pretence.
And, we must not forget, Art progresses by slow degrees; much that is
right in one age could not come in an earlier, before the intervening
step.
The masters, when they had won their spurs, were ever restive under
rules.[A] Yet they underwent the strictest discipline, gaining early the
secret of expression; for the best purpose of rules is liberation, not
restraint. On the other hand they were, in the main, essentially
conservative. Sebastian Bach clung to the older manner, disdaining the
secular sonata for which his son was breaking the ground.
[Footnote A: Some of the chance sayings of Mozart (recently edited by
Kerst-Elberfeld) betray much contempt for academic study: "Learning from
books is of no account. Here, here, and here (pointing to ear, head, and
heart) is your school." On the subject of librettists "with their
professional tricks," he says: "If we composers were equally faithful to
our own rules (which were good enough when men knew no better), we
should turn out just as poor a quality in our music as they in their
librettos." Yet, elsewhere, he admits: "No one has spent so much pains
on the study of composition as myself. There is hardly a famous master
in music whom I have not read through diligently and often."]
The master feels the full worth of what has been achieved; else he has
not mastered. He merely gives a crowning touch of poetic message, while
the lighter mind is busy with tinkering of newer forms. For the highest
reaches of an art, the poet must first have grasped all that has gone
before. He will not rebel before he knows the spirit of the law, nor
spend himself on novelty for its own sake.
The line between the Master and the Radical may often seem vague. For,
the former has his Promethean strokes, all unpremeditated, compelled by
the inner sequence,--as when Beethoven strikes the prophetic drum in the
grim Scherzo of the Fifth Symphony; or in the Eroica when the horn
sounds sheer ahead, out of line with the sustaining chorus; or when Bach
leaps to his harmonic heights in organ fantasy and toccata; or Mozart
sings his exquisite clashes in the G Minor Symphony.
As the true poet begins by absorption of the art that he finds, his
early utterance will be imitative. His ultimate goal is not the
strikingly new but the eternally true. It is a question less of men than
of a point of view.
It seems sometimes that in art as in politics two parties are needed,
one balancing the weaknesses of the other. As certain epochs are
overburdened by the spirit of a past poet, so others are marred by the
opposite excess, by a kind of neo-mania. The latter comes naturally as
reaction from the former. Between them the poet holds the balance of
clear vision.
When Peri overthrew the trammels of counterpoint, in a dream of Hellenic
revival of drama, he could not hope to write a master-work. Destructive
rebellion cannot be blended with constructive beauty. An antidote is of
necessity not nourishment. Others may follow the path-breaker and slowly
reclaim the best of old tradition from the new soil. The strange part of
this rebellion is that it is always marked by the quality of stereotype
which it seeks to avoid. This is an invariable symptom. It cannot be
otherwise; for the rejection of existing art leaves too few resources.
Moreover, the pioneer has his eye too exclusively upon the mere manner.
A wholesome reaction there may be against excess. When Gluck dared to
move the hearts of his hearers instead of tickling their ears, he
achieved his purpose by positive beauty, without actual loss. In this
sense every work of art is a work of revolution. So Wagner, especially
in his earlier dramas,[A] by sheer sincerity and poetic directness,
corrected a frivolous tradition of opera. But when he grew destructive
of melody and form, by theory and practice, he sank to the rôle of
innovator, with pervading trait of stereotype, in the main merely adding
to the lesser resources of the art. His later works, though they contain
episodes of overwhelming beauty, cannot have a place among the permanent
classics, alone by reason of their excessive reiteration.
[Footnote A: The "Flying Dutchman," "Lohengrin" and "Tannhäuser" seemed
destined to survive Wagner's later works.]
One of the most charming instances of this iconoclasm is the music of
Claude Débussy.[A] In a way we are reminded of the first flash of
Wagner's later manner: the same vagueness of tonality, though with a
different complexion and temper. Like the German, Débussy has his own
novel use of instruments. He is also a rebel against episodic melody.
Only, with Wagner the stand was more of theory than of practice. His
lyric inspiration was here too strong; otherwise with Débussy. Each
article of rebellion is more highly stressed in the French leader, save
as to organic form, where the latter is far the stronger. And finally
the element of mannerism cannot be gainsaid in either composer.[B]
[Footnote A: Born in 1862.]
[Footnote B: Some recurring traits Wagner and Débussy have in common,
such as the climactic chord of the ninth. The melodic appoggiatura is as
frequent in the earlier German as the augmented chord of the fifth in
the later Frenchman.]
Among the special traits of Débussy's harmonic manner is a mingling with
the main chord of the third below. There is a building downward, as it
were. The harmony, complete as it stands, seeks a lower foundation so
that the plain tower (as it looked at first) is at the end a lofty
minaret. It is striking that a classic figure in French music should
have stood, in the early eighteenth century, a champion of this idea, to
be sure only in the domain of theory. There is a touch of romance in the
fate of a pioneer, rejected for his doctrine in one age, taken up in the
art of two centuries later.[A]
[Footnote A: Rameau, when the cyclopaedic spirit was first stirring and
musical art was sounding for a scientific basis, insisted on the element
of the third below, implying a tonic chord of 6, 5, 3. Here he was
opposed by Fétis, Fux and other theoretic authority; judgment was
definitively rendered against him by contemporary opinion and prevailing
tradition. It cannot be said that the modern French practice has
justified Rameau's theory, since with all the charm of the enriched
chord, there is ever a begging of the question of the ultimate root.]
A purely scientific basis must be shunned in any direct approach of the
art whether critical or creative,--alone for the fatal allurement of a
separate research. The truth is that a spirit of fantastic experiment,
started by the mystic manner of a César Franck, sought a sanction in the
phenomena of acoustics. So it is likely that the enharmonic process of
Franck led to the strained use of the whole-tone scale (of which we have
spoken above) by a further departure from tonality.[A] And yet, in all
truth, there can be no doubt of the delight of these flashes of the
modern French poet,--a delicate charm as beguiling as the bolder, warmer
harmonies of the earlier German. Instead of the broad exultation of
Wagner there is in Débussy the subtle, insinuating dissonance. Nor is
the French composer wanting in audacious strokes. Once for all he stood
the emancipator of the art from the stern rule of individual vocal
procedure. He cut the Gordian knot of harmonic pedagogy by the mere
weapon of poetic elision. He simply omitted the obvious link by a
license ancient in poetry and even in prose. He devised in his harmonies
the paradox, that is the essence of art, that the necessary step somehow
becomes unnecessary. Though Wagner plunges without ceremony into his
languorous chords, he carefully resolves their further course. Débussy
has them tumbling in headlong descent like sportive leviathans in his
sea of sound. Moreover he has broken these fetters of a small punctilio
without losing the sense of a true harmonic sequence. Nay, by the very
riotous revel of upper harmonies he has stressed the more clearly the
path of the fundamental tone. When he enters the higher sanctuary of
pure concerted voices, he is fully aware of the fine rigor of its rites.
And finally his mischievous abandon never leads him to do violence to
the profoundest element of the art, of organic design.[B]
[Footnote A: As the lower overtones, discovered by a later science,
clearly confirm the tonal system of the major scale, slowly evolved in
the career of the art,--so the upper overtones are said to justify the
whole-tone process. At best this is a case of the devil quoting
scripture. The main recurring overtones, which are lower and audible,
are all in support of a clear prevailing tonality.]
[Footnote B: In the drama Débussy avoids the question of form by
treating the music as mere scenic background. Wagner, in his later
works, attempted the impossible of combining a tonal with the dramatic
plot. In both composers, to carry on the comparison beyond the technical
phase, is a certain reaching for the primeval, in feeling as in
tonality. Here they are part of a larger movement of their age. The
subjects of their dramas are chosen from the same period of mediaeval
legend, strongly surcharged in both composers with a spirit of fatalism
where tragedy and love are indissolubly blended.]
_"THE SEA." THREE SYMPHONIC SKETCHES_
_I.--From Dawn to Noon on the Sea._ In awesome quiet of unsoothing
sounds we feel, over a dual elemental motion, a quick fillip as of
sudden lapping wave, while a shadowy air rises slowly in hollow
intervals. Midst trembling whispers descending (like the soughing
wind), a strange note, as of distant trumpet, strikes in gentle
insistence--out of the other rhythm--and blows a wailing phrase. The
trembling whisper has sunk to lowest depths. Still continues the lapping
of waves--all sounds of unhuman nature.
[Music: (Muted trumpet, with Eng. horns in lower 8ve.)
_Very slowly_
_Espressivo_
(Cellos with basses in lower 8ve.)]
On quicker spur the shadowy motive flits faster here and there in a slow
swelling din of whispering, to the insistent plash of wave. Suddenly the
sense of desolation yields to soothing play of waters--a _berceuse_ of
the sea--and now a song sings softly (in horn), though strangely jarring
on the murmuring lullaby. The soothing cheer is anon broken by a shift
of new tone. There is a fluctuation of pleasant and strange sounds; a
dulcet air on rapturous harmony is hushed by unfriendly plash of chord.
Back again in the quieter play of rhythm the strange, sweet song (of
horns) returns.
In a ravishing climax of gentle chorus of quick plashing waves and
swirling breeze the song sings on and the trumpet blows its line of tune
to a ringing phrase of the clarinet.
[Music: (Strings and horns)
_ad lib. faster_]
When this has died down, the lapping waves, as in concert, strike in
full chord that spreads a hue of warmth, as of the first peep of sun. It
is indeed as though the waves rose towards the sun with a glow of
welcome.
In the wake of the first stirring shock is a host of soft cheering
sounds of bustling day, like a choir of birds or bells. The eager
madrigal leads to a final blast (with acclaiming chorus of big rocking
waves), echoed in golden notes of the horns. One slight touch has
heightened the hue to warmest cheer; but once do we feel the full glow
of risen sun.
The chilling shadows return, as the wistful air of hushed trumpet
sounds again. We hover between flashes of warming sun, until the waves
have abated; in soothing stillness the romantic horn[A] sings a lay of
legend.
[Footnote A: English horn.]
Now to friendly purling of playful wavelets, the sea moves in shifting
harmonies. In sudden climax the motion of the waves fills all the brass
in triumphant paean, in the gleam of high noon.
_II.--Play of the Waves._ There is a poetic background as for the play
of legend. We seem to be watching the sea from a window in the castle of
_Pelléas_. For there is a touch of dim romance in a phrase of the
clarinet.
The movement of waves is clear, and the unconscious concert of
sea-sounds, the deeper pulse of ocean (in the horns), the flowing
ripples, the sharp dash of lighter surf (in the Glockenspiel), all with
a constant tremor, an instability of element (in trembling strings). We
cannot help feeling the illusion of scene in the impersonal play of
natural sounds. Anon will come a shock of exquisite sweetness that must
have something of human. And then follows a resonant clash with spray of
colliding seas.
Here the story of the waves begins, and there are clearly two roles.
To light lapping and cradling of waters the wood sings the simple lay,
while strings discourse in quicker, higher phrase. The parts are
reversed. A shower of chilling wave (in gliding harps) breaks the
thread.
[Music: _Con anima_
(Highest and lowest figure in strings.
Middle voices in octaves of wood)]
Now golden tones (of horns) sound a mystic tale of one of the former
figures. The scene shimmers
[Music: (With rhythmic harps and strings)
(Flutes)
(Eng. horn) _espressivo_
(Strings)
(Horns)]
in sparkling, glinting waters (with harp and trilling wood and strings).
But against the soothing background the story (of English horn) has a
chill, ominous strain.
With the returning main song comes the passionate crisis, and we are
back in the mere plash and play of impersonal waves.
On dancing ripples, a nixie is laughing to echoing horns and lures us
back to the story.
[Music: (Strings with lower 8ve.)
(Cl.) _grazioso_ (Horns)]
Later, it seems, two mermaids sing in twining duet. In a warm hue of
light the horns sound a weird tale. It is taken up by teasing chorus of
lighter voices. In the growing volume sounds a clear, almost martial
call of the brass.
In a new shade of scene we recover the lost burden of song; the original
figures appear (in the slower air of trembling strings and the quicker
play of reed, harp and bells), and wander through ever new, moving
phases. A shower of chords (in strings and shaking brass) brings back
the ominous melody, amidst a chorus of light chatter, but firmly resting
on a warm background of harmony. And the strain roves on generous path
and rises out of all its gloom to a burst of profound cheer.
[Music: (1st violins with lower 8ve.)
(2d violins; percussion with cellos below)
(Harp with violas)
(Flutes with higher 8ve.)
(See page 104, line 11.)]
As in all fairy tales, the scene quickly vanishes. On dancing rays and
ripples is the laughing nixie; but suddenly breaks the first song of the
main figures. A climactic phrase of trumpets ends with a burst of all
the chorus on stirring harmony, where in diminishing strokes of bells
long rings the melodic note.
The teasing motive of the nixie returns while the trumpet sounds a
shadowy echo of its phrase, again to dying peal of bells. A chorus of
eerie voices sing the mocking air, and again sounds the refrain of
trumpet as in rebuke. On a tumult of teasing cries flashes a delivering
burst of brilliant light, and we are back in the first scene of the
story. Only the main figure is absent. And there is in the eager tension
of pace a quivering between joy and doubt. Then, in answer to the
lighter phrase of the other, is the returning figure with a new song now
of blended longing and content that soars into higher flights until a
mighty chorus repeats the strain that rises to triumphant height of joy
and transforms the mocking motive to the same mood.
But it is all a play of the waves. And we are left once more to the
impersonal scene where yet the fragrance of legend hovers over the dying
harmonies.
_III.--Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea._ Tumultuous is the humor of the
beginning; early sounds the stroke of wave of the first hour of the sea.
The muted trumpet blows a strain (to trembling strings) that takes us
back to the first (quoted) tune of the symphony in the wistful mood of
dawn. For a symphony it proves to be in the unity of themes and thought.
Now unmuted and unrestrained in conflict of crashing chords, the trumpet
blows again the motto of the roving sea. In various figures is the
pelagic motion, in continuous coursing strings, in the sweeping phrase
of the woodwind, or in the original wave-motion of the horns, now
unmuted.
The main burden is a plaint
[Music: (Woodwind in lower octaves
and touches of horns)
(_Animato_) _poco rit._
(Strings in higher and lower octaves)]
(in the wood) against the insistent surge (of strings), on a haunting
motive as of farewell or eventide, with much stress of pathos. It is
sung in sustained duet against a constant churning figure of the sea,
and it is varied by a dulcet strain that grows out of the wave-motive.
Indeed, the whole movement is complementary of the first, the obverse as
it were. The themes are of the same text; the hue and mood have changed
from the spring of dawn to the sadness of dusk. The symbol of noontide
peace reappears with minor tinge, at the hush of eve. The climactic
motive of the sea acclaiming the rising sun is there, but reversed.
The sea too has the same tempestuous motion (indeed, the plaintive song
is mainly of the wind), unrestrained by the sadder mood. At the
passionate climax, where the higher figure sinks toward the rising
lower, it is as if the Wind kissed the Sea.
The concluding scene begins as in the first movement, save with greater
extension of expressive melody. And the poignant note has a long song
against a continuous rippling (of harps).
More elemental figures crowd the scene; the first melody (of trumpet)
has a full verse, and the dulcet phrase (of wave-motive).
Toward the end the plaintive song has an ever-growing chorus of
acclaiming voices. In the fever of united coursing motion the phrase
loses the touch of sadness until in eager, spirited pace, as of
galloping steeds, it ends with a shout of victory.
_DUKAS. "THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE"_
Chief among the companions of Claude Débussy in his adventures is Paul
Dukas.[A] Though he lags somewhat in bold flights of harmonies, he shows
a clearer vein of melody and rhythm, and he has an advantage in a
greater freedom from the rut of repeated device.
[Footnote A: Born in 1865.]
It is somehow in the smaller forms that the French composer finds the
trenchant utterance of his fancy. A Scherzo, after the ballad of Goethe,
"The Sorcerer's Apprentice," tells the famous story of the boy who in
his master's absence compels the spirit in the broom to fetch the
water; but he cannot say the magic word to stop the flood, although he
cleaves the demon-broom in two.
After the title-page of the score is printed a prose version (by Henri
Blaze) of Goethe's ballad, "Der Zauberlehrling."
Of several translations the following, by Bowring, seems the best:
THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE
I am now,--what joy to hear it!--
Of the old magician rid;
And henceforth shall ev'ry spirit
Do whatever by me is bid:
I have watch'd with rigor
All he used to do,
And will now with vigor
Work my wonders, too.
Wander, wander
Onward lightly,
So that rightly
Flow the torrent,
And with teeming waters yonder
In the bath discharge its current!
And now come, thou well-worn broom,
And thy wretched form bestir;
Thou hast ever served as groom,
So fulfil my pleasure, sir!
On two legs now stand
With a head on top;
Water pail in hand,
Haste and do not stop!
Wander, wander
Onward lightly,
So that rightly
Flow the torrent,
And with teeming waters yonder
In the bath discharge its current!
See! he's running to the shore,
And has now attained the pool,
And with lightning speed once more
Comes here, with his bucket full!
Back he then repairs;
See how swells the tide!
How each pail he bears
Straightway is supplied!
Stop, for lo!
All the measure
Of thy treasure
Now is right!
Ah, I see it! woe, oh, woe!
I forget the word of might.
Ah, the word whose sound can straight
Make him what he was before!
Ah, he runs with nimble gait!
Would thou wert a broom once more!
Streams renew'd forever
Quickly bringeth he;
River after river
Rusheth on poor me!
Now no longer
Can I bear him,
I will snare him,
Knavish sprite!
Ah, my terror waxes stronger!
What a look! what fearful sight!
Oh, thou villain child of hell!
Shall the house through thee be drown'd?
Floods I see that widely swell,
O'er the threshold gaining ground.
Wilt thou not obey,
O thou broom accurs'd!
Be thou still, I pray,
As thou wert at first!
Will enough
Never please thee?
I will seize thee,
Hold thee fast,
And thy nimble wood so tough
With my sharp axe split at last.
See, once more he hastens back!
Now, O Cobold, thou shalt catch it!
I will rush upon his track;
Crashing on him falls my hatchet.
Bravely done, indeed!
See, he's cleft in twain!
Now from care I'm freed,
And can breathe again.
Woe oh, woe!
Both the parts,
Quick as darts,
Stand on end,
Servants of my dreaded foe!
O ye gods, protection send!
And they run! and wetter still
Grow the steps and grows the hall.
Lord and master, hear me call!
Ever seems the flood to fill.
Ah, he's coming! see,
Great is my dismay!
Spirits raised by me
Vainly would I lay!
"To the side
Of the room
Hasten, broom,
As of old!
Spirits I have ne'er untied
Save to act as they are told."
In paragraphs are clearly pointed the episodes: the boy's delight at
finding himself alone to conjure the spirits; the invocation to the
water, recurring later as refrain (which in the French is not addressed
to the spirit); then the insistent summons of the spirit in the broom;
the latter's obedient course to the river and his oft-repeated fetching
of the water; the boy's call to him to stop,--he has forgotten the
formula; his terror over the impending flood; he threatens in his
anguish to destroy the broom; he calls once more to stop; the repeated
threat; he cleaves the spirit in two and rejoices; he despairs as two
spirits are now adding to the flood; he invokes the master who returns;
the master dismisses the broom to the corner.
There is the touch of magic in the first harmonics of strings, and the
sense of sorcery is always sustained in the strange harmonies.[A]
[Footnote A: The flageolet tones of the strings seem wonderfully
designed in their ghostly sound for such an aerial touch. Dukas uses
them later in divided violins, violas and cellos, having thus a triad of
harmonics doubled in the octave.
The remaining instruments are: Piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets,
bass-clarinet, 3 bassoons, contra-bassoon (or contra-bass sarrusophon);
4 horns, 2 trumpets (often muted); 2 cornets-à-pistons; 3 trombones; 3
kettle-drums; harp; glockenspiel; big drum, cymbals and triangle.]
After a mystic descent of eerie chords, a melodious cooing phrase begins
in higher wood, echoed from one voice to the other, while the
spirit-notes are still sounding.
Suddenly dashes a stream of descending spray, met by another ascending;
in the midst the first phrase is rapidly sounded (in muted trumpet). As
suddenly the first solemn moment has returned, the phrase has grown in
melody, while uncanny harmonies prevail. Amidst a new feverish rush a
call rings
[Music: (Wood and _pizz._ strings)
_Vivace_
(Horns and trumpets)]
loud and oft (in trumpets and horns) ending in an insistent, furious
summons. The silence that ensues is as speaking (or in its way as
deafening) as were the calls.
After what seems like the grating of ancient joints, set in reluctant
motion, the whole tune of the first wooing phrase moves in steady gait,
in comic bassoons, to the tripping of strings, further and fuller
extended as other voices join. The beginning phrase of chords recurs as
answer. Ever the lumbering trip continues, with strange turn of harmony
and color, followed ever by the weird answer. A fuller apparition comes
with the loud, though muffled tones of the trumpets. The original tune
grows in new turns and folds of melody, daintily tipped with the ring of
bells over the light tones of the wood. The brilliant
[Music: _Vivace_
(Melody in 3 bassoons)
(Acc't in _pizz._ strings)]
harp completes the chorus of hurrying voices. Now with full power and
swing the main notes ring in sturdy brass, while all around is a rushing
and swirling (of harps and bells and wood and strings). And still more
furious grows the flight, led by the unison violins.
A mischievous mood of impish frolic gives a new turn of saucy gait. In
the jovial answer, chorussed in simple song, seems a revel of all the
spirits of rivers and streams.
At the top of a big extended period the trumpet sends a shrill defiant
blast.
But it is not merely in power and speed,--more in an infinite variety of
color, and whim of tune and rhythmic harmony, that is expressed the
full gamut of disporting spirits. Later, at fastest speed of tripping
harp and wood, the brass ring out that first, insistent summons, beneath
the same eerie harmonies--and the uncanny descending chords answer as
before. But alas! the summons will not work the other way. Despite the
forbidding command and all the other exorcising the race goes madly on.
And now, if we are intent on the story, we may see the rising rage of
the apprentice and at last the fatal stroke that seemingly hems and
almost quells the flood. But not quite! Slowly (as at first) the hinges
start in motion. And now, new horror! Where there was one, there are now
two ghostly figures scurrying to redoubled disaster. Again and again the
stern call rings out, answered by the wildest tumult of all. The shouts
for the master's aid seem to turn to shrieks of despair. At last a
mighty call overmasters and stills the storm. Nothing is heard but the
first fitful phrases; now they seem mere echoes, instead of
forewarnings. We cannot fail to see the fine parallel, how the masterful
command is effective as was the similar call at the beginning.
Significantly brief is the ending, at once of the story and of the
music. In the brevity lies the point of the plot: in the curt dismissal
of the humbled spirit, at the height of his revel, to his place as broom
in the corner. Wistful almost is the slow vanishing until the last
chords come like the breaking of a fairy trance.
CHAPTER X
TSCHAIKOWSKY
The Byron of music is Tschaikowsky for a certain alluring melancholy and
an almost uncanny flow and sparkle. His own personal vein deepened the
morbid tinge of his national humor.
We cannot ignore the inheritance from Liszt, both spiritual and musical.
More and more does the Hungarian loom up as an overmastering influence
of his own and a succeeding age. It seems as if Liszt, not Wagner, was
the musical prophet who struck the rock of modern pessimism, from which
flowed a stream of ravishing art. The national current in Tschaikowsky's
music was less potent than with his younger compatriots; or at least it
lay farther beneath the surface.
For nationalism in music has two very different bearings. The concrete
elements of folk-song, rhythm and scale, as they are more apparent, are
far less important. The true significance lies in the motive of an
unexpressed national idea that presses irresistibly towards fulfilment.
Here is the main secret of the Russian achievement in modern music,--as
of other nations like the Finnish. It is the cause that counts. Though
Russian song has less striking traits than Hungarian or Spanish, it has
blossomed in a far richer harvest of noble works of art.
Facile, fluent, full of color, Tschaikowsky seems equipped less for
subjective than for lyric and dramatic utterance, as in his "Romeo and
Juliet" overture. In the "Manfred" Symphony we may see the most fitting
employment of his talent. Nor is it unlikely that the special
correspondence of treatment and subject may cause this symphony to
survive the others, may leave it long a rival of Schumann's "Manfred"
music.
With Tschaikowsky feeling is always highly stressed, never in a certain
natural poise. He quite lacks the noble restraint of the masters who, in
their symphonic lyrics, wonderfully suggest the still waters that run
deep.
Feeling with Tschaikowsky was frenzy, violent passion, so that with all
abandon there is a touch of the mechanical in his method. Emotion as the
content of highest art must be of greater depth and more quiet flow. And
it is part or a counterpart of an hysterical manner that it reacts to a
cold and impassive mood,--such as we feel in the Andante of the Fourth
Symphony.
The final quality for symphonic art is, after all, less the chance flash
of inspiration than a big view, a broad sympathy, a deep well of feeling
that comes only with great character.
Nay, there is a kind of peril in the symphony for the poet of uncertain
balance from the betrayal of his own temper despite his formal plan.
Through all the triumph of a climax as in the first movement of the
Fourth Symphony, we may feel a subliminal sadness that proves how subtle
is the expression in music of the subjective mood. There is revealed not
the feeling the poet is conscious of, but, below this, his present self,
and in the whole series of his works, his own personal mettle. What the
poet tries to say is very different from what he does say. In a
symphony, as in many a frolic, the tinge of latent melancholy will
appear.
_SYMPHONY NO. 4_
Reverting to a great and fascinating question as to the content of art,
we may wonder whether this is not the real tragic symphony of
Tschaikowsky, in the true heroic sense, in a view where the highest
tragedy is not measured by the wildest lament. There may be a stronger
sounding of lower depths with a firmer touch (with less of a conscious
kind of abandon),--whence the recoil to serene cheer will be the
greater.
There is surely a magnificent aspiration in the first Allegro, a
profound knell of destiny and a rare ring of triumph. Underlying all is
the legend of trumpets, _Andante sostenuto_ (3/4), with a dim touch
[Music: _Andante sostenuto_
(Horns and bassoons doubled in 8va.)]
of tragedy. Opposite in feeling is the descending motive of strings,
_Moderato con anima_ (9/8). First gently expressive, it soon rises in
passion (the original
[Music: _Moderato con anima_
_in movimento di valse_
(Strings and one horn, the melody doubled below)]
motto always sounding) to a climax whence an ascending motive, in lowest
basses, entering in manner of fugue, holds a significant balance with
the former. Each in turn rears a climax for the other's
[Music: (Horns doubled below)
(Cellos and bassoons)]
entrance; the first, lamenting, leads to the soothing hope of the second
that, in the very passion of its refrain, loses assurance and ends in a
tragic burst.
Suddenly a very new kind of solace appears _Dolce grazioso_, in a
phrase of the clarinet that leads to a duet of wood and _cantabile_
strings, impersonal almost in the sweetness of its flowing song.
[Music: _Moderato assai_
(Oboe doubled in flute)
(Strings)]
In such an episode we have a new Tschaikowsky,--no longer the subjective
poet, but the painter with a certain Oriental luxuriance and grace. It
is interesting to study the secret of this effect. The preluding strain
lowers the tension of the storm of feeling and brings us to the attitude
of the mere observer. The "movement of waltz" now has a new meaning, as
of an apparition in gently gliding dance. The step is just sustained in
leisurely strings. Above is the simple melodic trip of clarinet, where a
final run is echoed throughout the voices of the wood; a slower moving
strain in low cellos suggests the real song that presently begins, while
high in the wood the lighter tune continues. The ripples still keep
spreading throughout the voices, at the end of a line. The tunes then
change places, the slower singing above.
With all the beauty, there is the sense of shadowy picture,--a certain
complete absence of passion. Now the lower phrase appears in two
companion voices (of strings), a hymnal kind of duet,--_ben sostenuto
il tempo precedente_. Here, very softly in the same timid pace, enters a
chorus, on high, of the old sighing motive. Each melody breaks upon the
other and
[Music: _Bel sostenuto il tempo (moderato)_
(Strings)
(Woodwind doubled above)
(Kettle-drums)]
ceases, with equal abruptness. There is no blending, in the constant
alternation, until the earlier (lamenting) motive conquers and rises to
a new height where a culminating chorale sounds a big triumph, while the
sighing phrase merely spurs a new verse of assurance.
[Music: (Strings and flutes)
(Doubled above and below)]
A completing touch lies in the answering phrase of the chorale, where
the answer of original motto is transformed into a masterful ring of
cheer and confidence.
As is the way with symphonies, it must all be sung and striven over
again to make doubly sure. Only there is never the same depth of lament
after the triumph. In a later verse is an augmented song of the answer
of trumpet legend, in duet of thirds, in slow, serene pace, while the
old lament sounds below in tranquil echoes and united strains. Before
the end, _molto piu vivace_, the answer rings in new joyous rhythm.
Somewhat the reverse of the first movement, in the second the emotional
phase grows slowly from the naïve melody of the beginning. Against the
main melody that begins in oboe solo (with _pizzicato_ strings),
_semplice ma grazioso_, plays later a rising
[Music: _Andantino in modo di canzone_
(Clarinet with lower 8ve.)
(Cello)
_Grazioso_
(Bassoons, with _pizz._ basses)]
counter-theme that may recall an older strain. The second melody, in
Greek mode, still does not depart
[Music: (Strings, wood and horns)]
from the naïve mood, or lack of mood. A certain modern trait is in this
work, when the feeling vents and wastes itself and yields to an
impassive recoil, more coldly impersonal than the severest classic.
A sigh at the end of the second theme is a first faint reminder of the
original lament. Of it is fashioned the third theme. A succeeding climax
strongly
[Music: _Piu mosso_
(Clarinet doubled below in bassoons)
(Strings)]
brings back the subjective hue of the earlier symphony. A counter-theme,
of the text of the second melody of Allegro,--now one above, now the
other--is a final stroke. Even the shaking of the trumpet figure is
there at the height, in all the brass. Yet as a whole the first melody
prevails, with abundant variation of runs in the wood against the song
of the strings.
The Scherzo seems a masterly bit of humor, impish, if you will, yet on
the verge always of tenderness. The first part is never-failing in the
flash and sparkle of its play, all in _pizzicato_ strings, with a
wonderful daemonic quality of the mere instrumental effect. Somewhat
suddenly the oboe holds a long note and
[Music: _Pizzicato ostinato_
_Scherzo Allegro_
(Strings)
(_Pizzicato sempre_)]
then, with the bassoons, has a tune that is almost sentimental. But
presently the clarinets make mocking
[Music: (Oboes and bassoons)]
retorts. Here, in striking scene, all the brass (but the tuba) very
softly blow the first melody with eccentric halts, in just half the old
pace except when they take us by surprise. The clarinet breaks in with
the sentimental tune in faster time while the brass all the while are
playing as before. There are all kinds of pranks, often at the same
time. The piccolo, in highest treble, inverts the second melody, in
impertinent drollery. The brass has still newer surprises. Perhaps the
best of the fooling is where strings below and woodwind above share the
melody between them, each taking two notes at a time.
The first of the Finale is pure fanfare, as if to let loose the steeds
of war; still it recurs as leading idea. There is a kind of sonorous
terror, increased by the insistent, regular notes of the brass, the
spirited pace of the motive of strings,--the barbaric ring we often hear
in Slav music. At the height
[Music: _Allegro con fuoco_
(Wood doubled above and below)
(Violins)
(_Pizz._ strings)]
the savage yields to a more human vein of joyousness, though at the end
it rushes the more wildly into a
[Music: _Tutti_
(Doubled above and below)]
series of shrieks of trebles with tramping of basses. The real battle
begins almost with a lull, the mere sound of the second tune in the
reeds with light strum of strings and triangle. As the theme is
redoubled (in thirds of the wood), the sweep of strings of the first
motive is added, with chords of horns. A rising figure is now opposed to
the descent of the second melody, with shaking of woodwind that brings
back the old trumpet legend. Here the storm grows apace, with increasing
tumult of entering hostile strains, the main song now ringing in low
brass.
In various versions and changes we seem to see earlier themes briefly
reappearing. Indeed there is a striking kinship of themes throughout,
not so much in outline as in the air and mood of the tunes. This seems
to be proven by actual outer resemblance when the motives are developed.
Here in a quiet spot--though the battle has clearly not ceased--is the
answer of old trumpet motto, that pervaded the first Allegro. There is a
strong feeling of the Scherzo here in the _pizzicato_ answers of
strings. The second theme of the Andante is recalled, too, in the
strokes of the second of the Finale. In the thick of the fray is a
wonderful maze of versions of the theme, diminished and augmented at the
same time with the original pace. Yet it is all a clear flow of melody
and rich harmony. The four beats of quarter notes, in the lengthened
theme, come as high point like the figure of the leader in battle. A
later play of changes is like the sport of the Scherzo. This insensibly
leads to the figure of the fanfare, whence the earlier song returns
with the great joyous march.
The final height of climax is distinguished by a stentorian, fugal blast
of the theme in the bass, the higher breaking in on the lower, while
other voices are raging on the quicker phrases. It is brought to a
dramatic halt by the original prelude of trumpet legend, in all its
fulness. Though the march-song recurs, the close is in the ruder humor
of the main themes.
_THE "MANFRED" SYMPHONY_
Schumann and Tschaikowsky are the two most eminent composers who gave
tonal utterance to the sombre romance of Byron's dramatic poem.[A] It is
interesting to remember that Byron expressly demanded the assistance of
music for the work. If we wish to catch the exact effect that is sought
in the original conception, Schumann's setting is the nearest approach.
It is still debated whether a scenic representation is more impressive,
or a simple reading, reinforced by the music.
[Footnote A: Prefixed are the familiar lines:
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."]
Tschaikowsky's setting is a "symphony in four pictures, or scenes (_en
quatre tableaux_), after Byron's dramatic poem." In the general design
and spirit there is much of the feeling of Berlioz's "Fantastic"
Symphony, though the manner of the music shows no resemblance whatever.
There is much more likeness to Liszt's "Faust" Symphony, in that the
pervading recurrence of themes suggests symbolic labels. Moreover, in
the very character of many of the motives, there is here a striking line
of descent.
_Lento lugubre_, the first scene or picture, begins with a theme in
basses of reeds:
[Music: _Lento lugubre_
(Woodwind)
(Strings)]
with later _pizzicato_ figure of low strings.
An answering strain is one of the most important of all the melodies:
[Music]
On these, a bold conflict and climax is reared. If we care to indulge in
the bad habit of calling names, we might see "Proud Ambition" in the
first motives, intertwined with sounds of sombre discontent. The pace
grows _animando_,--_piu mosso_; _moderato molto_. Suddenly Andante sings
a new, expressive song, with a dulcet cheer of its own, rising to
passionate periods and a final height whence, _Andante con duolo_, a
loudest chorus of high wood and strings, heralded and accompanied by
martial tremolo of low wood, horns, basses, and drums, sound the fateful
chant that concludes the first scene, and, toward the close of the work,
sums the main idea.
[Music: (Strings and flutes)
(Basses, wood and horns)
(Same continuing rhythm)]
The apparition of the Witch of the Alps is pictured in daintiest,
sparkling play of strings and wood, with constant recurrence of mobile
figures above and below. It seems as if the image of the fountain is
fittest and most tempting for mirroring in music. Perhaps the most
beautiful, the most haunting, of all the "Manfred" music of Schumann is
this same scene of the Witch of the Alps.
Here, with Tschaikowsky, hardly a single note of brass intrudes on this
_perpetuum mobile_ of light, plashing spray until, later, strains that
hark back to the first scene cloud the clear brilliancy of the cascade.
Now the play of the waters is lost in the new vision, and a limpid song
glides in the violins, with big rhythmic chords of harps, is taken up in
clarinets, and carried on by violins in new melodic verse, _con
tenerezza e molto espressione_. Then the whole chorus sing the tune in
gentle volume. As it dies away, the music of the falling waters plash as
before. The returning song has phases of varying sadness and passion. At
the most vehement height,--and here, if we choose, we may see the stern
order to retire,--the fatal chant is shrieked by full chorus in almost
unison fierceness.
Gradually the innocent play of the waters is heard again, though a
gloomy pall hangs over. The chant sounds once more before the end.
The third, "Pastoral," scene we are most free to enjoy in its pure
musical beauty, with least need of definite dramatic correspondences. It
seems at first as if no notes of gloom are allowed to intrude, as if the
picture of happy simplicity stands as a foil to the tragedy of the
solitary dreamer; for an early climax gives a mere sense of the awe of
Alpine nature.
Still, as we look and listen closer, we cannot escape so easily, in
spite of the descriptive title. Indeed, the whole work seems, in its
relation to the poem upon which it is based, a very elusive play in a
double kind of symbolism. At first it is all a clear subjective
utterance of the hero's woes and hopes and fears, without definite
touches of external things. Yet, right in the second scene the torrent
is clear almost to the eye, and the events pass before us with sharp
distinctness. Tending, then, to look on the third as purest pastoral,
we are struck in the midst by an ominous strain from one of the earliest
moments of the work, the answer of the first theme of all. Here notes of
horns ring a monotone; presently a church-bell adds a higher note. The
peaceful pastoral airs then return, like the sun after a fleeting storm.
The whole of this third scene of Tschaikowsky's agrees with no special
one in Byron's poem, unless we go back to the second of the first act,
where Manfred, in a morning hour, alone upon the cliffs, views the
mountains of the Jungfrau before he makes a foiled attempt to spring
into the abyss. By a direction of the poet, in the midst of the
monologue, "the shepherd's pipe in the distance is heard," and Manfred
muses on "the natural music of the mountain reed."
The last scene of the music begins with Byron's fourth of Act II and
passes over all the incidents of the third act that precede the hero's
death, such as the two interviews with the Abbot and the glorious
invocation to the sun.
From Tschaikowsky's title, we must look for the awful gloom of the
cavernous hall of Arimanes, Byron's "Prince of Earth and Air." The gray
figure from most ancient myth is not less real to us than Mefistofeles
in "Faust." At least we clearly feel the human daring that feared not to
pry into forbidden mysteries and refused the solace of unthinking faith.
And it becomes again a question whether the composer had in mind this
subjective attitude of the hero or the actual figures and abode of the
spirits and their king. It is hard to escape the latter view, from the
general tenor, the clear-cut outline of the tunes, of which the
principal is like a stern chant:
[Music: (Wood, strings and horns)]
The most important of the later answers lies largely in the basses.
[Music: (Low wood)
(Rhythmic chords in strings)]
There is, on the whole, rather an effect of gloomy splendor (the
external view) than of meditation; a sense of visible massing than of
passionate crisis, though there is not wanting a stirring motion and
life in the picture. This is to speak of the first part, _Allegro con
fuoco_.
The gloomy dance dies away. _Lento_ is a soft fugal chant on elemental
theme; there is all the solemnity of cathedral service; after the
low-chanted phrase follows a tremendous blare of the brass. The
repeated chant is followed by one of the earliest, characteristic themes
of the first scene. And so, if we care to follow the graphic touch, we
may see here the intrusion of Manfred, at the most solemn moment of the
fearful revel.
As Manfred, in Byron's poem, enters undaunted, refusing to kneel, the
first of the earlier phases rings out in fierce _fortissimo_. A further
conflict appears later, when the opening theme of the work sounds with
interruptions of the first chant of the spirits.
A dulcet plaint follows, _Adagio_, in muted strings, answered by a note
of horn and a chord of harp.
[Music: _Adagio_
(Muted strings answered by horn and harp)]
It all harks back to the gentler strains of the first movement. In the
ethereal _glissando_ of harps we see the spirit of Astarte rise to give
the fatal message. The full pathos and passion of the _lento_ episode of
first scene is heard in brief, vivid touches, and is followed by the
same ominous blast with ring of horn, as in the first picture.
A note of deliverance shines clear in the final phrase of joined
orchestra and organ, clearer perhaps than in Manfred's farewell line in
the play: "Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die." To be sure, Schumann
spreads the same solace o'er the close of his setting, with the Requiem.
The sombre splendor of romance is throughout, with just a touch of
turgid. In the poignant ecstasy of grief we feel vividly the
foreshadowing example of Liszt, in his "Dante" and "Faust" Symphonies.
_FIFTH SYMPHONY (E MINOR)_
With all the unfailing flow of lesser melodies where the charm is often
greatest of all, and the main themes of each movement with a chain of
derived phrases, one melody prevails and reappears throughout. The
fluency is more striking here than elsewhere in Tschaikowsky. All the
external sources,--all the glory of material art seem at his command. We
are reminded of a certain great temptation to which all men are subject
and some fall,--however reluctantly. Throughout there is a vein of
daemonic. The second (Allegro) melody grows to a high point of
pathos,--nay, anguish, followed later by buoyant, strepitant, dancing
delight, with the melting answer, in the latest melody. The daemon is
half external fate--in the Greek sense, half individual temper. The end
is almost sullen; but the charm is never failing; at the last is the
ever springing rhythm.
[Music: _Andante_
_pesante e tenuto sempre_
(Clarinet)
(Low strings)]
The march rhythm of the opening Andante is carried suddenly into a quick
trip, _Allegro con anima_ (6/8), where the main theme of the first
movement now begins, freely extended as in a full song of verses. New
accompanying figures are added, contrasting phrases or counter-melodies,
to the theme.
[Music: _Allegro con anima_
Solo clarinet (doubled below with solo bassoon.)
(Strings)]
One expressive line plays against the wilder rhythm of the theme, with
as full a song in its own mood as the other. A new rhythmic motive, of
great charm, _un pocchetino piu animato_, is answered by a bit of the
theme. Out of it all grows, in a clear
[Music: _Molto espr._
(Strings)]
welded chain, another episode, where the old rhythm is a mere gentle
spur to the new plaint,--_molto piu tranquillo, molto cantabile ed
espressivo_.
[Music: _Molto piu tranquillo_
_Molto cantabile ed espr._]
To be sure, the climax has all of the old pace and life, and every voice
of the chorus at the loudest. In the answering and echoing of the
various phrases, rhythmic and melodic, is the charm of the discussion
that follows. Later the three melodies come again in the former order,
and the big climax of the plaintive episode precedes the end, where the
main theme dies down to a whisper.
_Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza._ After preluding chords in
lowest strings a solo horn begins a
[Music: _Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza_
(Horn)
_dolce con molto espr._
(Strings)]
languishing song, _dolce con molto espressione_. It is a wonderful
elegy, a yearning without hope, a swan-song of desire, sadder almost
than the frank despair of the Finale of the _Pathétique_
symphony,--pulsing with passion, gorgeous with a hectic glow of
expressive beauty, moving too with a noble grace. Though there is a foil
of lighter humor, this is overwhelmed in the fateful gloom of the
returning main motto.
The abounding beauty with all its allurement lacks the solace that the
masters have led us to seek in the heart of a symphony. The clarinet
presently twines a phrase about the tune until a new answer sounds in
the oboe, that now sings in answering and chasing duet with the horn.
The phrase of oboe proves to be the main song, in full extended
periods, reaching a climax with all the voices.
[Music: _Con moto_
(Solo oboe)
_dolce espr._]
Well defined is the middle episode in minor reared on a new theme of the
clarinet with an almost fugal polyphony that departs from the main lyric
mood.
[Music: _Moderato con anima_
(Solo clar.)
(Strings)]
At the height all the voices fall into a united chorus on the original
motto of the symphony. The first melodies of the Andante now return with
big sweep and power, and quicker phrases from the episode. The motto
reappears in a final climax, in the trombones, before the hushed close.
We must not infer too readily a racial trait from the temper of the
individual composer. There is here an error that we fall into frequently
in the music of such men as Grieg and Tschaikowsky. The prevailing mood
of the Pathetic Symphony is in large measure personal. Some of the more
recent Russian symphonies are charged with buoyant joyousness. And,
indeed, the burden of sadness clearly distinguishes the last symphony of
Tschaikowsky from its two predecessors, the Fourth and the Fifth.
The tune of the _valse_, _Allegro moderato_, is first played by the
violins, _dolce con grazia_, with accompanying strings, horns and
bassoon. In the second part, with some loss of the lilt of dance, is a
subtle design--with a running phrase in _spiccato_ strings against a
slower upward glide of bassoons. The duet winds on a kind of _crescendo_
of modulations. Later
[Music: (_Spiccato_)
(Strings)
(Horns)
(Bassoon)]
the themes are inverted, and the second is redoubled in speed. The whole
merges naturally into the first waltz, with a richer suite of adorning
figures. The dance does not end without a soft reminder (in low
woodwind) of the original sombre phrase.
Almost for the first time a waltz has entered the shrine of the
symphony. And yet perhaps this dance has all the more a place there. It
came on impulse (the way to visit a sanctuary), not by ancient custom.
But with all its fine variety, it is a simple waltz with all the
careless grace,--nothing more, with no hidden or graphic meaning (as in
Berlioz's Fantastic Symphony).
The middle episode, though it lacks the dancing trip, is in the one
continuing mood,--like a dream of youthful joys with just a dimming hint
of grim reality in the returning motto.
In the Finale the main legend of the symphony is transformed and
transfigured in a new, serener mood, and is brought to a full melodic
bloom. Indeed, here is the idealization of the original motto. _Andante
maestoso_ it begins in the tonic major. When the theme ceases, the brass
blow the rhythm on a monotone, midst an ascending _obligato of strings_.
[Music: (Brass and lower woodwind)
(See page 139, line 1.)]
In answer comes a new phrase of chorale. Later the chorale is sounded
by the full band, with intermediate beats of rhythmic march.
Once more there is a well-marked episode, with a full share of melodic
discussion, of clashing themes, of dramatic struggle. First in the tonic
minor a theme rises from the last casual cadence in resonant march,
_Allegro vivace_. Then follows a duet, almost
[Music: _Allegro vivace_
(Strings and low wood)
(Trill of kettle drums)]
a harsh grating of an eccentric figure above against
[Music: (Solo oboe)
(Strings)
(Low wood)
(_Pizz._ cellos)]
the smoother course of the latest Allegro motive. The themes are
inverted. Presently out of the din rises a charming canon on the
prevailing smoother phrase, that soars to a full sweep of song. A new
[Music: (Violins)
(Wind)
(Basses 8va.) (Low strings)]
hymnal melody comes as a final word. Though the main motto returns in
big chorus, in full extension, in redoubled pace and wild abandon, still
the latest melody seems to contend for the last say. Or, rather,
[Music: (Woodwind doubled above and below)
_espr._
(Strings)
(See page 141, line 2.)]
it is a foil, in its simple flow, to the revel of the motto, now grown
into a sonorous, joyous march. And we seem to see how most of the other
melodies,--the minor episode, the expressive duet--have sprung from bits
of the main text.
To return for another view,--the Finale begins in a mood that if not
joyous, is religious. Out of the cadence of the hymn dances the Allegro
tune almost saucily. Nor has this charming trip the ring of gladness,
though it grows to great momentum. As a whole there is no doubt of the
assurance, after the earlier fitful gloom, and with the resignation an
almost militant spirit of piety.
In the dulcet canon, an exquisite gem, bliss and sadness seem
intermingled; and then follows the crowning song, broad of pace,
blending the smaller rhythms in ecstatic surmounting of gloom. In
further verse it doubles its sweet burden in overlapping voices, while
far below still moves the rapid trip.
But the motto will return, in major to be sure, and tempered in mercy.
And the whole hymn dominates, with mere interludes of tripping motion,
breaking at the height into double pace of concluding strain. Before
falling back into the thrall of the legend the furious race rushes
eagerly into the deepest note of bliss, where in sonorous bass rolls the
broad, tranquil song. And though the revel must languish, yet we attend
the refrain of all the melodies in crowning rapture. Then at last, in
stern minor, sounds the motto, still with the continuing motion, in a
loud and long chant.
In blended conclusion of the contending moods comes a final verse of the
legend in major, with full accoutrement of sounds and lesser rhythm, in
majestic pace. And there is a following frolic with a verse of the
serene song. The end is in the first Allegro theme of the symphony, in
transfigured major tone.
We must be clear at least of the poet's intent. In the Fifth Symphony
Tschaikowsky sang a brave song of struggle with Fate.
CHAPTER XI
THE NEO-RUSSIANS
For some mystic reason nowhere in modern music is the symphony so
justified as in Russia. Elsewhere it survives by the vitality of its
tradition. In France we have seen a series of works distinguished rather
by consummate refinement than by strength of intrinsic content. In
Germany since the masterpieces of Brahms we glean little besides the
learnedly facile scores of a Bruckner, with a maximum of workmanship and
a minimum of sturdy feeling,--or a group of "heroic" symphonies all cast
in the same plot of final transfiguration. The one hopeful sign is the
revival of a true counterpoint in the works of Mahler.
Some national song, like the Bohemian, lends itself awkwardly to the
larger forms. The native vein is inadequate to the outer mould, that
shrinks and dwindles into formal utterance. It may be a question of the
quantity of a racial message and of its intensity after long
suppression. Here, if we cared to enlarge in a political disquisition,
we might account for the symphony of Russians and Finns, and of its
absence in Scandinavia. The material elements, abundant rhythm, rich
color, individual and varied folk-song, are only the means by which the
national temper is expressed. Secondly, it must be noted as a kind of
paradox, the power of the symphony as a national utterance is increased
by a mastery of the earlier classics. With all that we hear of the
narrow nationalism of the Neo-Russians, we cannot deny them the breadth
that comes from a close touch with the masters. Mozart is an element in
their music almost as strong as their own folk-song. Here, it may be,
the bigger burden of a greater national message unconsciously seeks the
larger means of expression. And it becomes clear that the sharper and
narrower the national school, the less complete is its utterance, the
more it defeats its ultimate purpose.
The broad equipment of the new Russian group is seen at the outset in
the works of its founder, Balakirew. And thus the difference between
them and Tschaikowsky lay mainly in the formulated aim.[A]
[Footnote A: In the choice of subjects there was a like breadth.
Balakirew was inspired by "King Lear," as was Tschaikowsky. And amid a
wealth of Slavic legend and of kindred Oriental lore, he would turn to
the rhythms of distant Spain for a poetic theme.]
The national idea, so eminent in modern music, is not everywhere equally
justified. And here, as in an object-lesson, we see the true merits of
the problem. While one nation spontaneously utters its cry, another,
like a cock on the barnyard, starts a movement in mere idle vanity, in
sheer self-glorification.
In itself there is nothing divine in a national idea that needs to be
enshrined in art. Deliberate segregation is equally vain, whether it be
national or social. A true racial celebration must above all be
spontaneous. Even then it can have no sanction in art, unless it utter a
primal motive of resistance to suppression, the elemental pulse of life
itself. There is somehow a divine dignity about the lowest in human
rank, whether racial or individual. The oppressed of a nation stands a
universal type, his wrongs are the wrongs of all, and so his lament has
a world-wide appeal. And in truth from the lowest class rises ever the
rich spring of folk-song of which all the art is reared, whence comes
the paradox that the peasant furnishes the song for the delight of his
oppressors, while they boast of it as their own. Just in so far as man
is devoid of human sympathy, is he narrow and barren in his song. Music
is mere feeling, the fulness of human experience, not in the hedonic
sense of modern tendencies, but of pure joys and profound sorrows that
spring from elemental relations, of man to man, of mate to mate.
Here lies the nobility of the common people and of its song; the
national phase is a mere incident of political conditions. The war of
races is no alembic for beauty of art. If there were no national lines,
there would still be folk-song,--merely without sharp distinction. The
future of music lies less in the differentiation of human song, than in
its blending.
Thus we may rejoice in the musical utterance of a race like the Russian,
groaning and struggling through ages against autocracy for the dignity
of man himself,--and in a less degree for the Bohemian, seeking to hold
its heritage against enforced submergence. But we cannot take so
seriously the proud self-isolation of other independent nations.
_BALAKIREW.[A] SYMPHONY IN C_
[Footnote A: Mili Alexeivich Balakirew was born at Nizhni-Novgorod in
1836; he died at St. Petersburg in 1911. He is regarded as the founder
of the Neo-Russian School.]
The national idea shines throughout, apart from the "Russian Theme" that
forms the main text of the Finale. One may see the whole symphony
leading up to the national celebration.
As in the opening phrase (in solemn _Largo_) with
[Music: (Lower reed, with strings in three 8ves.)
_Largo_]
its answer are proclaimed the subjects that presently
[Music: (Flute and strings)]
appear in rapid pace, so the whole movement must be taken as a big
prologue, forecasting rather than realizing. There is a dearth of
melodic stress and balance; so little do the subjects differ that they
are in essence merely obverse in outline.
Mystic harmonies and mutations of the motto lead to a quicker guise
(_Allegro vivo_). Independently of themes, the rough edge of tonality
and the vigorous primitive rhythms are expressive of the Slav feeling.
Withal there is a subtlety of harmonic manner that could come only
through the grasp of the classics common to all nations. Augmentation
and diminution of theme abound, together with the full fugal manner. A
warm, racial color is felt in the prodigal use of lower reeds.[A]
[Footnote A: Besides the English horn and four bassoons there are four
clarinets,--double the traditional number.]
In all the variety of quick and slower melodies a single phrase of five
notes, the opening of the symphony, pervades. In all kinds of humor it
sings, martial, solemn, soothing, meditative, or sprightly. Poetic in
high degree is this subtle metamorphosis, so that the symphony in the
first movement seems to prove the art rather than the national spirit of
the Neo-Russians.
Of the original answer is wrought all the balance and foil of second
theme, and like the first it reaches a climactic height. But the first
is the sovereign figure of the story. It enters into the pattern of
every new phase, it seems the text of which all the melodies are
fashioned, or a sacred symbol that must be all-pervading. In a broader
pace (_Alla breve_) is a mystic discussion of the legend, as of dogma,
ending in big pontifical blast of the answering theme.
The whole movement is strangely frugal of joyous abandon. Instead of
rolling, revelling melody there is stern proclamation, as of oracle, in
the solemn pauses. The rhythm is purposely hemmed and broken. Restraint
is everywhere. Almost the only continuous thread is of the meditative
fugue.
A single dulcet lyric verse (of the motto) is soon
[Music: (Cellos with _tremolo_ of lower strings)]
banished by a sudden lively, eccentric phrase that has an air of forced
gaiety, with interplay of mystic symbols. At last, on a farther height,
comes the first
[Music]
joyous abandon (in a new mask of the motto), recurring anon as recess
from sombre brooding.
Here the second subject has a free song,--in gentle chase of pairs of
voices (of woodwind and muted strings and harp) and grows to alluring
melody. As
[Music: (Lower reed, with _tremolo_ of lower strings)]
from a dream the eccentric trip awakens us, on ever higher wing. At the
top in slower swing of chords horn and reeds chant the antiphonal
legend, and in growing rapture, joined by the strings, rush once more
into the jubilant revel, the chanting legend still sounding anon in
sonorous bass.
The climax of feeling is uttered in a fiery burst of all the brass in
the former dulcet refrain from the motto. In full sweep of gathering
host it flows in unhindered song. Somehow by a slight turn, the tune is
transformed into the alluring melody of the second theme. When the
former returns, we feel that both strains are singing as part of a
single song and that the two subjects are blended and reconciled in
rapture of content.
A new mystic play of the quicker motto, answered by the second theme,
leads to an overpowering blast of the motto in slowest notes of brass
and reed, ending in a final fanfare.
All lightness is the Scherzo, though we cannot escape a Russian vein of
minor even in the dance. A rapid melody has a kind of perpetual motion
in the strings, with mimicking echoes in the wood. But the strange part
is how the natural accompanying voice below (in the bassoon) makes a
haunting melody of
[Music: _Vivo_
(Violins doubled below in violas)
(Bassoon)
(_Pizz._ cellos)]
its own,--especially when they fly away to the major. As we suspected,
the lower proves really the principal song as it winds on in the
languorous English horn or in the higher reed. Still the returning dance
has now the whole stage in a long romp with strange peasant thud of the
brass on the second beat. Then the song rejoins the dance, just as in
answering glee, later in united chorus.
A quieter song (that might have been called the Trio) has still a
clinging flavor of the soil,--as of a folk-ballad, that is not lost with
the later madrigal nor with the tripping figure that runs along.
Strangely, after the full returning dance, an epilogue
[Music: (Trio) _Poco meno mosso_
(Strings)]
of the ballad appears over a drone, as of bagpipe, through all the
harmony of the madrigal. Strangest of all is the playful last refrain in
the high piccolo over the constant soft strumming strings.
The Andante, in pure lyric mood, is heavily charged with a certain
Oriental languor. The clarinet
[Music: (Clarinet)
_Andante_
(Strings with harp)]
leads the song, to rich strum of harp and strings, with its note of
sensuous melancholy. Other, more external signs there are of Eastern
melody, as in the graceful curl of quicker notes. Intermediate strains
between the verses seem gently to rouse the slumbering feeling,--still
more when they play between the lines of the song. The passion that is
lulled in the languor of main melody, is somehow uttered in the later
episode,--still more in the dual song of both
[Music: (Violins doubled below)
(Horns and bassoons doubled above in wood)
(Strings and horns)]
melodies,--though it quickly drops before a strange coquetry of other
strains. Yet the climax of the main song is reached when the lighter
phrase rings fervently in the high brass. Here the lyric beauty is
stressed in a richer luxuriance of rhythmic setting. Once more sings the
passionate tune; then in midst of the last verse of the main song is a
quick alarm of rushing harp. The languorous dream is broken; there is an
air of new expectancy. Instead of a close is a mere pause on a passing
harmony at the portals of the high festival.
With a clear martial stress the "Russian Theme" is sounded (in low
strings), to the full a national
[Music: _Allegro moderato_
Finale _Thème Russe_
(Cellos with basses in lower 8ve.)]
tune of northern race. Enriched with prodigal harmony and play of lesser
themes it flows merrily on, yet always with a stern pace, breaking out
at last in a blare of warlike brass.
Nor does the martial spirit droop in the second tune, though the
melodies are in sheer contrast. In faster rhythm, the second is more
festal so that the first returning has a tinge almost of terror. An
[Music: (Cl't)
(Strings)]
after-strain of the second has a slightest descent to reflective
feeling, from which there is a new rebound
[Music: (Cellos)
(Strings and harp with sustained chord of horns)]
to the buoyant (festal) melody.
Here in grim refrains, in dim depths of basses (with hollow notes of
horns) the national tune has a free fantasy until it is joined by the
second in a loud burst in the minor.
Now the latter sings in constant alternation with the answering strain,
then descends in turn into the depths of sombre musing. There follows a
big, resonant dual climax (the main theme in lower brass), with an edge
of grim defiance. In the lull we seem to catch a brief mystic play of
the first motto of the symphony (in the horns) before the last joyous
song of both melodies,--all with a power of intricate design and a
dazzling brilliancy of harmony, in proud national celebration.
A last romp is in polacca step on the tune of the Russian Theme.
_RIMSKY-KORSAKOW.[A] "ANTAR," SYMPHONY_
[Footnote A: Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakow, Russian, 1844-1908.]
The title-page tells us that "the subject is taken from an Arabian tale
of Sennkowsky." Opposite the beginning of the score is a summary of the
story, in Russian and in French, as follows:
I.--Awful is the view of the desert of Sham; mighty in their
desolation are the ruins of Palmyra, the city razed by the spirits
of darkness. But Antar, the man of the desert, braves them, and
dwells serenely in the midst of the scenes of destruction. Antar
has forever forsaken the company of mankind. He has sworn eternal
hatred on account of the evil they returned him for the good which
he intended.
Suddenly a charming, graceful gazelle appears. Antar starts to
pursue it. But a great noise seems pulsing through the heavens, and
the light of day is veiled by a dense shadow. It is a giant bird
that is giving chase to the gazelle.
Antar straightway changes his intent, and attacks the monster,
which gives a piercing cry and flies away. The gazelle disappears
at the same time, and Antar, left alone in the midst of ruins, soon
goes to sleep while meditating on the event that has happened.
He sees himself transported to a splendid palace, where a multitude
of slaves hasten to serve him and to charm his ear with their song.
It is the abode of the Queen of Palmyra,--the fairy Gul-nazar. The
gazelle that he has saved from the talons of the spirit of darkness
is none other than the fairy herself. In gratitude Gul-nazar
promises Antar the three great joys of life, and, when he assents
to the proffered gift, the vision vanishes and he awakes amid the
surrounding ruins.
II.--The first joy granted by the Queen of Palmyra to Antar are the
delights of vengeance.
III.--The second joy--the delights of power.
IV.--Antar has returned to the fallen remains of Palmyra. The third
and last gift granted by the fairy to Antar is the joy of true
love. Antar begs the fairy to take away his life as soon as she
perceives the least estrangement on his side, and she promises to
do his desire.
After a long time of mutual bliss the fairy perceives, one day,
that Antar is absent in spirit and is gazing into the distance.
Straightway, divining the reason, she passionately embraces him.
The fire of her love enflames Antar, and his heart is consumed
away.
Their lips meet in a last kiss and Antar dies in the arms of the
fairy.
The phases of the story are clear in the chain of musical scenes, of the
movements themselves and within them. In the opening Largo that recurs
in this movement between the visions and happenings, a melody appears
(in violas) that moves in all the
[Music: (Violas) _Largo_
(Woodwind)]
acts of the tragedy. It is clearly the Antar motive,--here amidst ruin
and desolation.
The fairy theme is also unmistakable, that first plays in the flute,
against soft horns, _Allegro giocoso_,
[Music: (Flute) _Allegro giocoso_
(Horns) (Harp)]
and is lost in the onrushing attack, _furioso_, of a strain that begins
in murmuring of muted strings.
Other phrases are merely graphic or incidental. But the Antar motive is
throughout the central moving figure.
The scene of the desert returns at the end of the movement.
In the second (_Allegro_, rising to _Molto allegro_, returning
_allargando_) the Antar motive is seldom absent. The ending is in long
notes of solo oboe and first violins. There is no trace of the fairy
queen throughout the movement.
The third movement has phases of mighty action (as in the beginning,
_Allegro risoluto alla Marcia_), of delicate charm, and even of humor.
The Antar melody plays in the clangor of big climax in sonorous tones of
the low brass, against a quick martial phrase of trumpets and horns.
Again there is in this movement no sign of the fairy queen.
In the fourth movement, after a prelude, _Allegretto vivace_, with light
trip of high flutes, a melody, of actual Arab origin, sings _Andante
amoroso_ in the
[Music: (Arabian melody)
_Andante amoroso_
(Eng. horn)
(Bassoon)]
English horn, and continues almost to the end, broken only by the
dialogue of the lover themes. At the close a last strain of the Antar
melody is followed by the fairy phrase and soft vanishing chord of harp
and strings.
_"SCHÉRÉZADE," AFTER "A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS." SYMPHONIC SUITE_
Prefixed to the score is a "program," in Russian and French: "The Sultan
Schahriar, convinced of the infidelity of women, had sworn to put to
death each of his wives after the first night. But the Sultana
Schérézade saved her life by entertaining him with the stories which she
told him during a thousand and one nights. Overcome by curiosity, the
Sultan put off from day to day the death of his wife, and at last
entirely renounced his bloody vow.
"Many wonders were told to Schahriar by the Sultana Schérézade. For the
stories the Sultana borrowed the verses of poets and the words of
popular romances, and she fitted the tales and adventures one within the
other.
"I. The Sea and the Vessel of Sindbad.
"II. The Tale of the Prince Kalender.
"III. The Young Prince and the Young Princess.
"IV. Feast at Bagdad. The Sea. The Vessel is Wrecked on a Rock on which
is Mounted a Warrior of Brass. Conclusion."
With all the special titles the whole cannot be regarded as close
description. It is in no sense narrative music. The titles are not in
clear order of events, and, moreover, they are quite vague.
In the first number we have the sea and merely the vessel, not the
voyages, of Sindbad. Then the story of the Prince Kalender cannot be
distinguished among the three tales of the royal mendicants. The young
prince and the young princess,--there are many of them in these Arabian
fairy tales, though we can guess at the particular one. Finally, in the
last number, the title mentions an event from the story of the third
Prince Kalender, where the vessel (not of Sindbad) is wrecked upon a
rock surmounted by a warrior of brass. The Feast of Bagdad has no
special place in any one of the stories.
The truth is, it is all a mirroring in tones of the charm and essence of
these epic gems of the East. It is not like the modern interlinear
description, although it might be played during a reading on account of
the general agreement of the color and spirit of the music. But there is
the sense and feeling of the story, _das Märchen_, and the romance of
adventure. The brilliancy of harmony, the eccentricity and gaiety of
rhythm seem symbolic and, in a subtle way, descriptive. As in the
subject, the stories themselves, there is a luxuriant imagery, but no
sign of the element of reflection or even of emotion.
_I._--The opening motive, in big, broad rhythm, is clearly the Sea. Some
have called it the Sindbad motive. But in essence these are not very
different. The Sea is here the very feeling and type of adventure,--nay,
Adventure itself. It is a necessary part of fairy stories. Here it
begins and ends with its rocking theme, ever moving onward. It comes in
the story of the Prince Kalender.
The second of the main phrases is evidently the motive of the fairy tale
itself, the feeling of "once upon a time," the idea of story, that leads
us to the events themselves. It is a mere strumming of chords of the
harp, with a vague line, lacking rhythm, as of musical prose. For rhythm
is the type of event, of happenings, of the adventure itself. So the
formless phrase is the introduction, the narrator, _Märchen_ in an
Oriental dress as Schérézade.
The first number passes for the most part in a rocking of the motive of
the sea, in various moods and movements: _Largo e maestoso, Allegro non
troppo,--tranquillo_. At one time even the theme of the story sings to
the swaying of the sea.[A]
[Footnote A: We remember how Sindbad was tempted after each fortunate
escape from terrible dangers to embark once more, and how he tells the
story of the seven voyages on seven successive days, amid luxury and
feasting.]
_II._--In the tale of the Prince Kalender Schérézade, of course, begins
the story as usual. But the main thread is in itself another interwoven
tale,--_Andantino Capriccioso, quasi recitando_, with a solo in the
bassoon _dolce e espressivo_,--later _poco piu mosso_, in violins.[A]
There is most of happenings here. A very strident phrase that plays in
the brass _Allegro molto_, may be some hobgoblin, or rather an evil
jinn, that holds the princess captive and wrecks the hero's vessel. The
sea, too, plays a tempestuous part at the same time with the impish
mischief of the jinn.
[Footnote A: In the old version the word "Calender" is used; in the new
translation by Lane we read of "The Three Royal Mendicants." In certain
ancient editions they are called "Karendelees,"--i.e., "miserable
beggars." Each of the three had lost an eye in the course of his
misfortunes. The story (of the Third Kalender) begins with the wreck of
the prince's vessel on the mountain of loadstone and the feat of the
prince, who shoots the brazen horseman on top of the mountain and so
breaks the charm. But there is a long chain of wonders and of troubles,
of evil enchantments and of fateful happenings.]
_III._--The third number is the idyll,--both of the stories and of the
music. Here we are nearest to a touch of sentiment,--apart from the mere
drama of haps and mishaps.[A] But there are all kinds of special
events. There is no prelude of the narrator. The idyll begins
straightway, _Andantino quasi allegretto_, winds through all kinds of
scenes and storms, then sings again _dolce e cantabile_. Here, at last,
the Schérézade phrase is heard on the violin solo, to chords of the
harp; but presently it is lost in the concluding strains of the love
story.
[Footnote A: The story, if any particular one is in the mind of the
composer, is probably that of the Prince Kamar-ez-Zemán and the Princess
Budoor. In the quality of the romance it approaches the legends of a
later age of chivalry. In the main it is the long quest and the final
meeting of a prince and a princess, living in distant kingdoms. Through
the magic of genii they have seen each other once and have exchanged
rings. The rest of the story is a long search one for the other. There
are good and evil spirits, long journeys by land and sea, and great
perils. It is an Arab story of the proverbial course of true love.]
_IV._--The last number begins with the motive of the sea, like the
first, but _Allegro molto_, again followed by the phrase of the story
teller. The sea returns _Allegro molto e frenetico_ in full force, and
likewise the vague motive of the story in a cadenza of violin solo. Then
_Vivo_ comes the dance, the pomp and gaiety of the Festival, with
tripping tambourine and strings and the song first in the flutes.[A]
Presently a reminder of the sea intrudes,--_con forza_ in lower wood and
strings. But other familiar figures flit by,--the evil jinn and the
love-idyll. Indeed the latter has a full verse,--in the midst of the
carnival.
[Footnote A: We may think of the revels of Sindbad before the returning
thirst for adventure.]
Right out of the festival, rather in full festal array, we seem to
plunge into the broad movement of the surging sea, _Allegro non troppo e
maestoso_, straight on to the fateful event. There are no sighs and
tears. Placidly the waves play softly about. And _dolce e capriccioso_
the siren Schérézade once more reappears to conclude the tale.
_RACHMANINOW. SYMPHONY IN E MINOR_[A]
[Footnote A: Sergei Rachmaninow, born in 1873.]
_I._--The symphony begins with the sombre temper of modern Russian art;
at the outset it seems to throb with inmost feeling, uttered in subtlest
design.
The slow solemn prelude _(Largo)_ opens with the
[Music: _Largo_
(Strings)]
chief phrase of the work in lowest strings to ominous chords, and treats
it with passionate stress until the main pace of Allegro.
[Music: _Espr_. (Violins)
(Wood and horns)]
But the germ of prevailing legend lies deeper. The work is one of the
few symphonies where the whole is reared on a smallest significant
phrase. The first strain (of basses) is indeed the essence of the
following melody and in turn of the main Allegro theme. But, to probe
still further, we cannot help feeling an ultimate, briefest motive of
single ascending tone against intrinsic obstacle, wonderfully expressed
in the harmony, with a mingled sense of resolution and regret. And of
like moment is the reverse descending tone. Both of these symbols
reappear throughout the symphony, separate or blended in larger melody,
as principal or accompanying figures. Aside from this closer view that
makes clear the tissue of themal discussion, the first phrase is the
main melodic motto, that is instantly echoed in violins with piquant
harmony. In the intricate path of deep musing we feel the mantle of a
Schumann who had himself a kind of heritage from Bach. And thus we come
to see the national spirit best and most articulate through the medium
of ancient art.
The main Allegro melody not so much grows out of the Largo prelude, as
it is of the same fibre and
[Music: _Allegro moderato_
4 times
_molto expr._ (Violins)
(Wood with _tremolo_ strings)
(Strings with clarinets and bassoons)]
identity. The violins sing here against a stately march of harmonies.
Such is the fine coherence that the mere heralding rhythm is wrought of
the first chords of the Largo, with their descending stress. And the
expressive melody is of the same essence as the original sighing motto,
save with a shift of accent that gives a new fillip of motion. In this
movement at least we see the type of real symphony, that throbs and
sings and holds us in the thrall of its spirit and song.
Moments there are here of light and joy, quickly drooping to the darker
mood. Following the free flight of main melody is a skein of quicker
figures, on aspirant pulse, answered by broad, tragic descent in minor
tones.
Milder, more tranquil sings now the second melody, a striking embodiment
of the sense of striving ascent. Chanted in higher reeds, it is
immediately
[Music: (Oboes and clarinets)
(Violins) (Oboes and clar'ts)
(Horns) (Bassoons)
_dolce_
(_Pizz._ strings)]
followed and accompanied by an expressive answer in the strings. On the
wing of this song we rise to a height where begins the path of a brief
nervous motive (of the first notes of the symphony) that with the
descending tone abounds in various guise. As a bold glance at the sun is
punished by a sight of solar figures all about, so we feel throughout
the tonal story the presence of these symbols. An epilogue of wistful
song leads to the repeated melodies.
The main figure of the plot that follows is the first melody, now in
slow, graceful notes, now in feverish pace, though the brief (second)
motive moves constantly here and there. A darkest descent follows into
an Avernus of deep brooding on the legend, with an ascending path of the
brief, nervous phrase and a reverse fall, that finally wears out its own
despair and ends in a sombre verse of the prelude, with new shades of
melancholy, then plunges into an overwhelming burst on the sighing
phrase. Thence the path of brooding begins anew; but it is now
ascendant, on the dual pulse of the poignant motto and the brief,
nervous motive. The whole current of passion is thus uttered in the
prelude strain that at the outset was pregnant with feeling. At the
crisis it is answered or rather interwoven with a guise of the second
theme, in hurried pace, chanted by stentorian brass and wood in
hallooing chorus that reaches a high exultation. To be sure the Russian
at his gladdest seems tinged with sense of fate. So from the single
burst we droop again. But the gloom is pierced by brilliant
shafts,--herald calls (of brass and wood) that raise the mood of the
returning main melody, and in their continuous refrain add a buoyant
stimulus. And the verse of quicker figures has a new fire and ferment.
All absent is the former descent of minor tones. Instead, in solemn hush
of tempest, without the poignant touch, the tranquil second melody
returns with dulcet answer of strings. A loveliest verse is of this
further song where, in a dual chase of tune, the melody moves in
contained rapture. In the cadence is a transfigured phase of the
ascending tone, mingled with the retiring melody, all woven to a
soothing cadence.
But the struggle is not over, nor is redemption near. The dulcet phrases
sink once more to sombre depth where there is a final, slow-gathering
burst of passion on the motto, with a conclusive ring almost of fierce
triumph.
_II._--The second movement, _Allegro molto_, is a complete change from
introspection and passion to an
[Music: _Allegro molto_
(Insistent strum of strings)
_Marcato_]
abandon as of primitive dance. Strings stir the feet; the horns blow the
first motive of the savage tune; the upper wood fall in with a dashing
jingle,--like a stroke of cymbals across the hostile harmonies.
Whether a recurring idiom is merely personal or belongs to the special
work is difficult to tell. In reality it matters little. Here the
strange rising tone is the same as in the former (second) melody. In
the rude vigor of harmonies the primitive idea is splendidly stressed.
Right in the answer is a guise of short, nervous phrase, that gets a new
touch of bizarre by a leap of the seventh from below. In this figure
that moves throughout the symphony we see an outward symbol of an inner
connection.--Bells soon lend a festive ring to the main tune.
In quieter pace comes a tranquil song of lower voices with a companion
melody above,--all in serene major. Though it grew naturally out of the
rude
[Music: _Molto cantabile_]
dance, the tune has a contrasting charm of idyll and, too, harks back to
the former lyric strains that followed the second melody. When the dance
returns, there is instead of discussion a mere extension of main motive
in full chorus.
But here in the midst the balance is more than restored. From the dance
that ceases abruptly we go straight to school or rather cloister. On our
recurring nervous phrase a fugue is rung with all pomp and ceremony
(_meno mosso_); and of the dance there are mere faint echoing memories,
when the
[Music: _Meno mosso_
(Oboe) _molto marcato_
(Violins) staccato]
fugal text seems for a moment to weave itself into the first tune.
Instead, comes into the midst of sermon a hymnal chant, blown gently by
the brass, while other stray
[Music: _Leggiero_]
voices run lightly on the thread of fugue. There is, indeed, a playful
suggestion of the dance somehow in the air. A final tempest of the
fugue[A] brings us back to the full verse of dance and the following
melodies. But before the end sounds a broad hymnal line in the brass
with a dim thread of the fugue, and the figures steal away in solemn
stillness.
[Footnote A: It is of the first two notes of the symphony that the fugal
theme is made. For though it is longer in the strings, the brief motion
is ever accented in the wood. Thus relentless is the themal coherence.
If we care to look closer we see how the (following) chant is a slower
form of the fugal theme, while the bass is in the line of the
dance-tune. In the chant in turn we cannot escape a reminder, if not a
likeness, of the second theme of the first movement.]
_III._--The Adagio has one principal burden, first borne by
violins,--that rises from the germ of earlier
[Music: _Adagio_
(Strings with added harmony in bassoons and horns)]
lyric strains. Then the clarinet joins in a quiet madrigal of tender
phrases. We are tempted to find here an influence from a western
fashion, a taint of polythemal virtuosity, in this mystic maze of many
strains harking from all corners of the work, without a gain over an
earlier Russian simplicity. Even the Slavic symphony seems to have
fallen into a state of artificial cunning, where all manners of greater
[Music: (Solo clarinet)
_espress._
(Divided strings) _dolce_]
or lesser motives are packed close in a tangled mass.
It cannot be said that a true significance is achieved in proportion to
the number of concerting themes. We might dilate on the sheer inability
of the hearer to grasp a clear outline in such a multiple plot.
There is somehow a false kind of polyphony, a too grea
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