Part 15

An almost infinite variety of effect is possible, however, within these seemingly narrow limits, dependent upon the differing ability and personality of the composer, the diversity in melodic and harmonic coloring, and especially upon the environment and conditions conceived of by the writer as the setting or background of the picture. The range of legitimate suggestion in this regard by means of such works is as broad as that of human experience itself. For instance, the child imagined may be the idolized prince of a royal line, rocked in a golden cradle with a jeweled crown embossed upon its satin canopy, and guarded by the loyalty, the hopes and pride of a mighty nation; or it may be the sickly offspring of want and suffering, doomed from its birth to sorrow and struggle and disappointment, to a crown of toil and a heritage of tears; or perhaps it may be a fairy changeling, stolen by Titania in some wayward caprice, rocked to sleep in a lily-cup upon crystal waves, or watching, with large, wondering human eyes, the pranks of the forest elves as they trace with swiftly circling feet their magic rings upon the moss, or awaken the morning-glories upon the lawn with a shower-bath of dew.

The lullaby song of the mother may thrill with the sweet content and rapturous joy of a life of love and brightness but just begun, and seemingly endless in its forward vista of ever new and ever glad surprises. Her fancies may be winged by hope and happiness to airy flights in which no sky-piercing height seems impossible; or her voice may vibrate with the songs of a broken-hearted widow, who guards the little sleeper in an agony of loving fear, as the last treasure saved from the wreck of her world. As the smallest plot of garden ground possesses the capacity to receive and develop the germs of the most diverse forms of vegetation, from the violet to the oak, from the fragrant rose to the deadly poppy, so these modest little musical forms are replete with an almost boundless potentiality of suggestion.

In the case of this particular work by Grieg, the child portrayed is no delicate rose-tinted girl-baby, downily cushioned upon silken pillows, peeping timidly from a drift of dainty laces like the first crocuses from the feathery snow of April, but the lusty son of a Viking stock, with the blood of a sturdy race of fighters coursing red through his veins, and with a will and a voice of his own, cradled in the hollow trunk of a pine or the hide-lashed blade-bones of the elk, wrapped in the skin of wolf or bear, and lulled to sleep by the rough, but kindly, crooning of a peasant nurse. May we not fancy the refrain of her song somewhat after the fashion of the following lines?

“Oh, hush thee, my baby; The time will soon come When thy rest will be broken By trumpet and drum, When the bows will be bent, The blades will be red, And the beacon of battle Will blaze overhead. Then hush thee, my baby, Take rest while you may, For strife comes with manhood As waking with day.”

Grieg: The Bridal Procession, from “Aus dem Volksleben.” Op. 19, No. 2

One of the best known and most popular of Grieg’s compositions is the second movement of his piano suite entitled “Aus dem Volksleben” (sketches of Norwegian country life), a work which portrays, with all his graphic power and good-natured humor, a number of unique and characteristic phases of the peasant life in Norway. This second movement, at once the easiest and most pleasing number of the suite, is intended as a realistic representation of the music of a primitive peasant band, which leads a rural bridal procession, made up of Norwegian countrypeople, on its way to the church.

We may fancy ourselves seated on a bank by the roadside, with a jolly company of villagers in picturesque holiday costume, listening to their jests and gaiety as we await the rustic pageant. Soon our attention is caught by the sound of distant music, gradually approaching, strange, weird, uncanny music, as if the gnomes and trolls had left their work in the secret mines and caverns of the mountains, where they are ever forging new chains for the fettered earth-giants as their prisoned strength increases, and had turned musicians for a frolic and come forth into the light of day to join the festival. The rhythmic beat of drums and cymbals, the shrill, strident notes of the fife, the quaint, quavering tones of the pipe and clarinet, mingle in a strain jocosely mirthful, rather than truly gay, and becoming more insistent as it advances.

There is no trace of tenderness, no hint of sweet anticipation, no suggestive undertone of sacred solemnity, in this music. We miss the warm color and tremulous, sustained effects of the violins, which with us are always symbolic of love. It seems almost like a musical satire on the tender passion; as if the divine but dethroned Balder (the God of Love in Norse mythology), disgusted by the infidelity and ingratitude of mankind, were employing all his wondrous power as a minstrel to depreciate and deride this his best gift to humanity. But perhaps we do not rightly appreciate the significance of the music. As it draws nearer and nearer, growing stronger with every moment, we begin to suspect that perhaps its very rudeness and primitive energy express more truthfully than more delicate, dreamy, finely shaded cadences could do, the idea that human love is one of the elemental forces of nature, underlying and antedating all the subtilizing refinements of civilization, and destined to outlast them, as the rugged granite of the northern mountains antedates and will outlast all the crystal palaces of taste and luxury.

On comes the procession, the music swelling and growing with every step, till as it passes immediately before us it becomes an almost deafening crash of dissonant instruments, each player with lusty good-will doing his utmost to honor the occasion, outvie his comrades, and earn his share in the wedding feast, by making his part most prominent in the general din. First comes the band, then the bride and groom and the bridesmaids in white, with wands and wreaths, a troop of children with baskets of flowers, then a company of the immediate friends and relatives of the bridal pair, with the older neighbors and acquaintances soberly bringing up the rear. So they defile before us, and pass on their way down the sunlit country road to the church, the music gradually diminishing as it recedes into the distance, growing fainter and fainter till only occasional shriller notes or louder fragments reach us, and at last even these are sunk in the summer silence.

This movement is in march time and form, and the strict, unvarying march rhythm should be preserved throughout, absolutely without variation. The tone should be crisp and clear, with but little singing quality, to represent that of wooden wind instruments, but varying in degree from the softest possible _pp_ to the most tremendous _fff_ which the performer is capable of producing. The player is here afforded an opportunity of testing his powers in that most difficult of all elements in pianism—a long-sustained, evenly-graded crescendo and diminuendo. To produce its true realistic effect, the music should emerge almost imperceptibly out of silence, increase steadily, but by infinitesimal degrees, to the greatest quantity of tone power which the instrument will produce; then diminish as gradually and steadily till it dissolves into silence again at the close; not stopping at a given point, but simply ceasing to sound. Those who have heard Rubinstein render the Turkish march from “The Ruins of Athens” will remember it as a masterly model for this effect.

SAINT-SAËNS 1835

Saint-Saëns: Le Rouet d’Omphale

Saint-Saëns, though himself a first-rate concert pianist and the composer of some excellent things for the piano, notably in concerto form, is, nevertheless, chiefly gifted and principally celebrated as a writer for orchestra, having done his best, most original, and most interesting work in this line. Among his many important compositions for full orchestra, there are perhaps none which better represent his individuality and peculiar style than his four “Symphonic Poems,” of which two have been selected for illustration here. This form of composition, as well as its name, originated with Franz Liszt, whose twelve “Symphonic Poems” are his most important contributions to orchestra literature. In musical structure the symphonic poem corresponds to the modern overture and to the pianoforte ballade, as exemplified by Chopin, much more nearly than to the symphony proper. It consists of a single movement, without different divisions and pronounced differentiated parts, such as are to be found in the regulation symphony, though it often expresses a wide variety of moods, merging into one another without pause or interruption.

Its only radical point of similarity to the symphony lies in the fact that its first principal theme is subjected to an elaborate and logical development in most cases, as in the symphonic allegro. It is distinctly an outgrowth of modern romanticism and deals always with the somewhat definite poetic thought, or some real or imaginary episode from life. It is, in fact, program music of the most pronounced and uncompromising type, and the special thought or episode is always indicated by its descriptive title.

The four Symphonic Poems of Saint-Saëns are: (1) Le Rouet d’Omphale; (2) Phaeton; (3) Danse Macabre; (4) La Jeunesse d’Hercule.

I have selected for consideration here the first and third, entitled respectively the “Rouet d’Omphale” and the “Danse Macabre”; the one descriptive of a classic, the other of a medieval scene and tradition.

The first, the “Wheel of Omphale,” was suggested by the Greek myth of Hercules and Omphale. The story of the pair is familiar to all readers of classic mythology, and represents perhaps the most singular episode in the checkered career of this hero and demigod. The legend runs as follows: Hercules, having killed his friend Iphitus in a fit of madness, to which he was occasionally subject, fell a prey to a severe malady, sent upon him by the gods in punishment for this murder. He consulted the Delphic oracle with a view to learning the means of escaping from this disease. He was informed by the oracle that he could only be cured by allowing himself to be sold as a slave for three years, and giving the purchase money to the father of Iphitus as recompense for the loss of his son. Accordingly Hercules was sold by Mercury as a slave to Omphale, the Queen of Lydia, then reigning in that country, who had long been desirous to see this strongest of men and greatest hero of his age. He remained with her the allotted three years, and during this period of slavery, by the wish of the queen, the warrior-hero assumed female attire and sat spinning among the women, where his royal mistress often chastised him with her sandal for his awkward manner of holding the distaff, while she paraded in his lion’s skin, armed with his famous war-club. But if awkward at the distaff this son of Jupiter understood other arts which he practised upon the Lydian queen; for in the intervals of spinning he made love to her so successfully that from their union sprang the race of Crœsus, famous in antiquity. Some authorities regard this legend of Hercules and Omphale as of astronomical significance, while others give it a moral interpretation, saying it illustrates how even the strongest and bravest of men is demeaned and belittled when subjugated by a woman.

The music opens with a playfully realistic introduction, consisting of a series of light, rapid-running figures and graceful embellishments, imitatively suggesting the roll and buzz of the spinning-wheels. A series of delicate turns, each an audible circle, add their quota of pertinent symbolism to the general effect. Soon the melody enters, joyous, musical, yet with a certain arch mockery, enhanced by its odd, piquant rhythm. It is the song of the spinning maidens, cheerfully speeding their hours of toil with music and mirth, with occasional irrepressible touches of gay raillery at the expense of the clumsy captive warrior, whose long face and futile attempts at their handicraft afford them vast amusement. Now and then a distinct burst of silvery laughter is heard above the boom of the wheels, interrupting the strain. Omphale, too, is there, admonishing, chiding, ridiculing the hero, as he moodily pursues his unwonted and unwilling task with many a blunder and comical mistake; yet we can fancy a half-tender smile softening her reprimands and sweetening her playful chastisements.

Then with a radical change of mood and movement comes the second important theme, a broad, impressive, strikingly original melody in the bass, half gloomy, half indignant, the mighty manly voice of Hercules, uplifted in grave lament and dignified protest, deploring his hard lot, defying its humiliations, reproaching his gay tormentors, rebelling at his menial duties and unworthy surroundings, yet with a stern, proud gravity, a grand fortitude which scorns alike weak complainings and impotent petulance. It subsides at last into philosophic resignation and sorrowful self-repression, as if consoled by the thought that his punishment is after all just and his submission voluntary.

Then the spinning movement is resumed and the first song virtually repeated, though in a materially modified rhythm; and the work ends playfully, as it begins, with a wonderfully realistic imitation of the gradual stopping of the wheels, as their momentum exhausts itself and little by little their speed slackens and they finally come to a complete rest when abandoned by the girls, as sunset ends the day’s work.

This composition is one of Saint-Saëns’ most genial and melodious productions, as well as an excellent piece of descriptive work. It may be rendered on the piano either in the four-hand arrangement by Guiraud, or as transcribed for two hands by the composer himself. It is about equally feasible and effective in either of these forms.

Saint-Saëns: Danse Macabre

For the significance of the French word _macabre_ we must turn to the Arabic _makabir_, signifying a burial place or cemetery. The “Danse Macabre,” therefore, is simply a “cemetery dance” or “Dance of Death.”

One of the most prevalent superstitions during the middle ages throughout Europe, and especially France, was that of the “Danse Macabre,”—a belief that once a year, on Hallowe’en, the dead of the churchyards rose for one wild, hideous carnival, one bacchanalian revel, in which old King Death acted as master of ceremonies. This gruesome idea appears frequently in the literature of the period, and also in its painting, particularly in church decoration, and a more or less graphic portrayal of the “Danse Macabre” may still be seen on the walls of some old cathedrals and monasteries.

This composition, belonging as it does to the ultra-realistic French school of the present day, is a vivid tone picture of the same “Danse Macabre.” At the head of the original composition, serving as motto and undoubtedly as direct inspiration for the music, stands a curious ancient French poem in well-nigh obsolete fourteenth century idiom. I have made a free translation of these verses into English, as follows:

On a sounding stone, With a blanched thigh-bone, The bone of a saint, I fear, Death strikes the hour Of his wizard power, And the specters haste to appear.

From their tombs they rise In sepulchral guise, Obeying the summons dread, And gathering round With obeisance profound, They salute the King of the Dead.

Then he stands in the middle And tunes up his fiddle, And plays them a gruesome strain. And each gibbering wight In the moon’s pale light Must dance to that wild refrain.

Now the fiddle tells, As the music swells, Of the charnel’s ghastly pleasures; And they clatter their bones As with hideous groans They reel to those maddening measures.

The churchyard quakes And the old abbey shakes To the tread of that midnight host, And the sod turns black On each circling track, Where a skeleton whirls with a ghost.

The night wind moans In shuddering tones Through the gloom of the cypress tree, While the mad rout raves Over yawning graves And the fiddle bow leaps with glee.

So the swift hours fly Till the reddening sky Gives warning of daylight near. Then the first cock crow Sends them huddling below To sleep for another year.

The composition opens with twelve weird strokes indicating the arrival of midnight, struck out upon a vibrant tombstone by the impatient hand of Death himself. There follows a light, staccato passage, suggesting the moment when, in obedience to this awesome signal, the specters appear from their graves and come tiptoeing forward to take their places in the fantastic circle. Then comes a strikingly realistic passage where Death attempts to tune up his fiddle, as he is to furnish the music for the dance. It has been lying disused since the last annual festival, is very much out of tune, and refuses to come up to pitch. In spite of his best endeavors, the E string obstinately remains at E flat. The repetition of this passage at intervals throughout the composition suggests occasional hasty and ill-timed efforts to tune up.

Now comes the first theme of the dance itself, light, fantastic, suggestive of purely physical excitement and ghastly pleasure, and graphically representing the imagery of the corresponding verse of the poem.

The second theme is slower, heavier, more gloomily impressive, with its weird minor harmonies and its strongly marked rhythms, suggesting the darkness and terror of that midnight scene, the gruesome gravity of old King Death, as master of ceremonies, and the increasingly ponderous tread of that ghostly multitude, to which the gray walls of the abbey and the very ground itself seem to reel in unison. This is the moment when “the sod turns black where each skeleton whirls with a ghost.”

Death again attempts to tune up his fiddle, with frenzied haste, and the dance grows in speed and impetuous power. Later it is interrupted by a lyric intermezzo, brief but pathetically sweet. It seems to be a plaintive lament played in a momentary pause of the dancing, expressing the sad memories and hopeless longings of the dancers, the real mood which underlies the forced gaiety of this wild revel. It is appropriately accompanied by the Æolian-like effect of the night wind sighing among the cypress boughs. An onward rush follows, more furiously impetuous than before, for just as in the small hours the boisterous and frenzied merriment of the witches in “Walpurgis Night” grew apace, so does this skeleton dance gradually reach an almost demoniac climax of hilarity, as all unite in a grand finale, a thunderous whirl of hideous merriment. Here the first and second dance themes are very ingeniously woven together, appearing simultaneously in a piece of most grotesque but effective counterpoint.

Then comes a sudden hush, in which the distant crow of the morning cock is distinctly heard, a signal that daylight is approaching and the revel must end. With a wild hurry and scurry the specters betake themselves to their graves once more, a final lugubrious wail from the fiddle closing the composition, as Death is the last to leave the field.

Counterparts among Poets and Musicians

Those who have had sufficient interest to read any considerable number of the foregoing chapters cannot have failed to perceive that, to the mind of the author, the sister arts, music and poetry, sustain to each other an even closer, more vitally intimate relation than the family connection generally conceded to them.

It is a kinship of soul and sympathy, as well as of race—a similarity of aim and influence upon humanity; a similarity, even in the kind of effect produced, and the means employed to produce it, which renders them largely interdependent and reciprocally helpful. The purpose of both is expression, chiefly emotional expression, descriptions of nature and references to natural phenomena being introduced merely as accessories, as background or setting for the human life and interest, which are of primary importance. Both express their meaning, not through imitated sounds or forms borrowed from the physical world, but by means of audible symbols devised by man for this express purpose, which have come by long usage and general acceptance to have a definite significance, but require a certain degree of education to comprehend them, and which are therefore more intellectual, more adapted to the expression of the subtler phases of life, and more purely human in their origin, than the media of form and color employed in the plastic arts.

True, the one uses tones, the other words, as its material; but the difference is by no means so radical as at first appears. Both exist in time, while all other arts have to do with space and substance. Both have but one dimension, so to speak,—namely, duration,—and owe whatever of the beauty of form and proportion they possess to a symmetrical subdivision of this given duration into correspondent parts or sections, by means of accents, brief pauses, and rhymes or cadences. Both may successfully treat a progressive series of moods or scenes, of varying character, and fluctuating intensity, which is not possible in the plastic arts, limited as they all are to the portrayal of a single situation, a single instant of time, a single fixed conception. Both, again, possess a certain warmth and inherent pulsing life, which is their common, dominant characteristic, due to the heart-throb of rhythm, which is lacking in all other arts.

Even in the media they employ, there is a strong though subtle resemblance; both appeal directly to the sense of hearing, which scientists tell us is more intimately connected with the nerve centers of emotional life than any other of the senses. In both cases the immediate appeal is to the feelings and the imagination, without recourse to intervening imagery borrowed from external nature. Both embody the cry of one soul to another, and they are not widely divergent in quality or effect. Language at its highest is almost song, and music at its best is idealized declamation. All good poetry must be musical. It should, as we say, sing itself; and all good music must be poetical, conveying a distinctly poetic impression.

To me every poem presupposes a possible musical setting, and every worthy composition, a possible poetic text. Hence the language used, in describing music, must of necessity, so far as the powers of the writer permit, possess a generally poetic character. In all my thought and reading, along this line, it has seemed to me, not only of extreme interest, but of great practical value to every musician and writer, to devote careful study to the analogy between these arts, to the correspondences between artists, in these parallel lines of work, and between their special productions in each, to obtain the widest possible familiarity with both arts and their mutual relations, with a view to letting each aid to a fuller elucidation and better appreciation of the other. I have always grouped together in my mind Bach and Milton, Beethoven and Shakespeare, Mozart and Spenser, Schubert and Moore, Schumann and Shelley, Mendelssohn and Longfellow, Chopin and Tennyson, Liszt and Byron, Wagner and Victor Hugo.