Part I--"Nature"--of the "Triple Overture" was thus interpreted,
with the sanction, it may be inferred, of the composer (the English translation was attributed to Mr. E. Emerson):
"As a typical expression of his fondness for nature and of the blissful and occasional reverent feelings which it stirs in him, the composer chose to present the emotions produced by a solitary walk through meadows and woods on a quiet summer afternoon, when the shadows grow long and longer, till they lose themselves in the dusk, and gradually turn into the early dark of night. Unlike Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, the unconscious summer music of drowsy crickets and birds is not actually represented by instrumental equivalents. Subjective feeling only is suggested by the blithesome introduction melody in F major, which is ornamented by passages running over the instruments, like rills of pleasure. It is followed by an expression of the growing vociferous joy which all nature proclaims. The more quiet gladness of the beholder finds voice in the second melody, in A major, whose spirit is enlivened into a broader universal gaiety, rising rapidly to a climax, from which the theme quickly returns to the tranquil pastoral form.
"The so-called 'elaboration' section leads back to the first key of F major.... The predominating suggestions henceforth are peace and quietude, with little interruptions here and there, such as are occasioned by the sudden rustling of the tree-tops in the forest or by the subdued exclamations of a garrulous little brook. All this is done with a light touch, so that it is left to the imagination of the listener to supply what the music can but faintly suggest. Finally, when darkness has set in, there are only the sounds of night. The pervading mood of the composer becomes similar to that of Milton's 'Il Penseroso' when night overtakes him, while he listens to the even-song of the nightingale and hears
"... the far-off curfew sound, Over some wide-watered shore, Swinging slow with sullen roar."
OVERTURE, "CARNIVAL": Op. 92
This overture is Part II. ("Life") of Dvořák's "Triple Overture," "Nature, Life, Love" (see page 85). Its poetic significance has been set forth as follows, with, it is said, the authority of the composer:
"If the first part of the overture ['Nature'] suggested 'Il Penseroso,' the second, with its sudden revulsion to wild mirth, cannot but call up the same poet's 'L'Allegro,' with its lines to 'Jest and youthful jollity.' The dreamer of the afternoon and evening has returned to scenes of human life, and finds himself drawn into
'The busy hum of men
* * * * *
When the merry bells ring round, And the jolly[45] rebecks sound To many a youth and many a maid,'
dancing in spirited Slavonic measures. Cymbals clang, strange instruments clash; and the passionate cry of the violins whirls the dreamer madly into a Bohemian revel. Anon the wild mirth dies away, as if the beholder were following a pair of straying lovers, whom the boisterous gaiety of their companions, with clangor of voices and instruments, reach but dimly. A lyric melody ... sets in, and almost unconsciously returns to the sweet pastoral theme, like a passing recollection of the tranquil scenes of nature. But even this seclusion may not last. A band of merry maskers bursts in, the stirring Slavonic theme of the introduction reappears, and the three themes of the second overture, the humorous, the pathetic, and the pastoral, are merged into one, with the humorous in the ascendant, till a reversion changes the order. The whole ends in the same gay ... key with which it began."
OVERTURE, "OTHELLO": Op. 93
"Othello" is Part III. ("Love") of Dvořák's "Triple Overture," "Nature, Life, Love" (see page 85). The official commentator who has been quoted in the preceding pages concerning the poetic content of the tripartite work wrote as follows of "Othello":
"If the first two parts represented the impressions of Nature and Life as gay and stirring in general, the third overture lets Love appear as a serious and burning passion. The composer has tried to express some of the emotions engendered in him by the final scenes of 'Othello' as an embodiment of both the gentlest and the fiercest expressions of love. The composition is by no means a faithful musical interpretation of the Shakespearean lines, but rather the after-revery of a man whose imagination has been kindled by the theme of the play. It begins with ... the prayer of Desdemona before retiring. While she is still praying for herself and for her husband, weird sounds in the orchestra suddenly announce the approach of the murderer. This is but an effect of the imagination, however, for presently the prayer of Desdemona continues till she falls asleep. Once more the orchestra announces the approach of Othello. This time it is he. He pauses at the threshold. He enters the room, looks long at Desdemona, and kisses her. The theme changes to an allegro. Desdemona awakes, and then follows the cruel, pathetic scene between Desdemona and the Moor:
"'Alas, why gnaw you so thy nether lip?[46] Some bloody passion shakes your very frame.'
"Her entreaties are answered by the deep threats of Othello. Gradually the imaginary conversation becomes tinged with a note of melancholy, and a regretful love scene ensues, according to the composer, till the Moor's jealousy and mad revenge gain the upper hand again. This motif is worked out at some length ... and especially the deep notes of Othello's lion-like anger are sounded repeatedly. In the end he restrains himself no longer. The scene of anguish follows. Desdemona throws herself at his feet:
"DES. Kill me to-morrow, let me live to-night! OTH. Nay-- DES. But half an hour. OTH. Being done, there is no pause. DES. But while I say one prayer! OTH. (_smothering her._) It is too late.
"Othello rises from the deed, and looks wildly about him. Then comes the wild, remorseful reflection that he may have been deceived.
"'... Had she been true, If heaven would make me such another world, Of one entire and perfect chrysolite, I'd not have sold her for it.'
"The choral motif of Desdemona's appeal surges up from the overlying themes, this time in the deep tones of Othello. It is his turn to make his last prayer."
SYMPHONIC POEM, "THE WOOD DOVE": Op. 110
This symphonic poem, composed after Dvořák's return to Bohemia from the United States in 1895, was published four years later. It is based upon "the like-named[47] ballad of C. J. Erben." Erben's ballad is founded on the Bohemian superstition that the souls of those who, while mortal, have lived godly lives, reappear on earth after death as white doves. The ballad tells a story which is a variant upon the ancient tale of the widow who found prompt solace in the soldier delegated to keep guard over the body of her dead husband. Erben's version, which the music of Dvořák illustrates, is set forth in an argument printed in the score. It runs as follows:
I
"The young widow, weeping and lamenting, follows the body of her husband to the grave. "(_Andante, marcia funèbre_)
II
"A jovial, well-to-do peasant meets the beautiful widow, consoles her, and persuades her to forget her grief and take him for a husband. "(_Allegro; andante_)
III
"She fulfils her lover's wish. A joyous wedding. "(_Molto vivace; allegretto grazioso_)
IV
"From the branches of a freshly budding oak, over-shadowing the grave of her first husband--who had been poisoned by her--the mournful cooing of the wild dove is heard. The melancholy sounds pierce to the heart of the sinful woman, who, overcome by the terrors of an evil conscience, goes mad, and seeks death in the waters hard by. "(_Andante_)
V "Epilogue "(_Andante; più lento_)"
[The work by which Dvořák is most familiarly known in America--the symphony in E minor, "From the New World" (composed in 1893 during Dvořák's sojourn in America as director of the National Conservatory of Music)--is not programme-music, except in so far as its slow movement is concerned--the _Largo_ in D-flat major. In this movement, it has been said with authority, Dvořák has essayed a musical publication of the mode which he found in the story of Hiawatha's wooing, as set forth in Longfellow's poem. Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, who, in a sense, stood sponsor for the symphony at the time of its production, observes that there may be here "a suggestion of the sweet loneliness of the night on the prairies"; and he speaks of an episode in the middle of the movement which seems intended "to suggest the gradual awakening of animal life in the prairie scene"; and a striking use is made, he remarks, "of trills exchanged between the instrumental choirs as if they were the voices of the night, or dawn, in converse." The title of the symphony is explained, as most readers will remember, by the fact that in it Dvořák, by his own confession, according to Mr. Krehbiel, "sought to encourage American composers to seek and reflect in their music the spirit of the [negro] folk-tunes which have grown up in America. He does not want them to use the tunes themselves for thematic treatment, for that is not his conception of the meaning of nationalism in music; but he wants native composers to study the characteristic elements of those tunes (for those are the things which make them hit the taste and fancy of the public) and compose soundly on themes conceived in their vein. This he did in his American symphony." The sons of Dvořák have recently (1907) put themselves on record in the following interesting contribution to the history of this much-discussed symphony: "... the passages of the symphony and of other works of this American period, which, as some pretend, have been taken from negro airs, are absolutely our father's own mental property; they were only influenced by negro melodies. As in his Slav pieces he never used Slav songs, but, being a Slav, created what his heart dictated, all the works of this American period--the symphony included--respond to Slav origin, and any one who has the least feeling will proclaim this fact. Who will not recognize the homesickness in the _Largo_ of this symphony? The secondary phrase of the first movement, the first theme of the scherzo, the beginning of the finale, and perhaps, also, the melody of the _Largo_, which give a certain impression of the groaning negro song, are only influenced by this song, and determined by change of land and the influence of a foreign climate."]
FOOTNOTES:
[44] The title of this overture in the original Czech is _V přirodě_, which is said by those who best understand that tongue to be most faithfully rendered by the German _In der Natur_, by which title the overture is generally known in European concert-halls. Mr. W. F. Apthorp has suggested that Dvořák "might well have chosen Schiller's
'Freude trinken alle Wesen An den Brüsten der Natur'
(All beings drink joy at Nature's breast)
as the motto for his work."
[45] "L'Allegro" is here misquoted. Milton wrote of "jocund," not "jolly," rebecks.
[46] Shakespeare, of course, wrote this line otherwise than as it is carelessly given here.
[47] The Czech title of Dvořák's symphonic poem and of Erben's ballad is _Holoubek_. Carl Jaromir Erben (born 1811; died 1870) is known in America as the librettist of Dvořák's cantata, "The Spectre's Bride."
ELGAR
(_Edward William Elgar: born in Broadheath, near Worcester, England, June 2, 1857; now living in Malvern, England._)
VARIATIONS ON AN ORIGINAL THEME ("ENIGMA"): Op. 36
These Variations have an inner history, or, rather, fourteen inner histories; but precisely what they are is a secret which is locked within the breast of Sir Edward Elgar and certain of his friends. The Variations are fourteen in number, and their purpose has been publicly avowed by the composer. In them, he says: "I have sketched ... the idiosyncrasies of fourteen of my friends; ... but this is a personal matter, and need not have been mentioned." The score bears the sub-title "Enigma," and is dedicated "to my friends pictured within." Hints as to their identity are contained in these initials and sobriquets printed at the head of the different variations:
1. "C. A. E." _L'istesso tempo_, G minor, ending in major, 4-4. 2. "H. D. S.-P." _Allegro_, G minor, 3-8. 3. "R. B. T." _Allegretto_, G major, 3-8. 4. "W. M. B." _Allegro di molto_, G minor, with end in G major, 3-4. 5. "R. P. A." _Moderato_, C minor, 12-8 and 4-4. 6. "Ysobel." _Andantino_, C major, 3-2. 7. "Troyte." _Presto_, C major, 3-2. 8. "W. N." _Allegretto_, G major, 6-8. 9. "Nimrod." _Moderato_, E-flat major, 3-4. 10. "Dorabella." Intermezzo, _Allegretto_, G major, 3-4. 11. "G. R. S." _Allegro di molto_, G minor, 2-2. 12. "B. G. N." _Andante_, G minor, 4-4. 13. "* * *." Romanza, _Moderato_, G major, 3-4. 14. "E. D. U." Finale, _Allegro_, G major, 2-2.
As to the "Enigma," Sir Edward has thus declared himself: "The Enigma I will not explain--its 'dark saying' must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the apparent connection between the Variations and the theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme 'goes,' but is not played; ... so the principal theme never appears, even as, in some late dramas--_e.g._, Maeterlinck's _L'Intruse_ and _Les Sept Princesses_--the principal character is never on the stage."
The score bears the date-line: "Malvern, 1899."
OVERTURE, "COCKAIGNE" ("IN LONDON TOWN"): Op. 40
At the time of the first performance of this overture (at a London Philharmonic concert, June 20, 1901), the following outline of the dramatic significance of successive episodes in the music was put forth by Mr. Joseph Bennet, presumably with the authority of the composer:
1. CHEERFUL ASPECT OF LONDON. 2. STRONG AND SINCERE CHARACTER OF LONDONERS. 3. THE LOVERS' ROMANCE. 4. YOUNG LONDON'S INTERRUPTION. 5. THE MILITARY BAND. 6. IN THE CHURCH. 7. FINALLY, IN THE STREETS.
When the overture was first performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra (in November, 1901), Mr. Philip Hale included in his programme-notes this more detailed exposition: "The overture is a succession of scenes: it may be called panoramic. The scenes are connected by a slender thread. The composer imagines two lovers strolling through the streets of the town. The first picture suggested is that of the animation, of the intense vitality of the street life. Then comes a section which, according to the composer's sketch, expresses the 'sincere and ardent spirit underlying the Cockaigner's frivolity and luxury.' The lovers seek quiet in a park and give way to their own emotions. They grow passionate, but they are interrupted and disconcerted by the rough pranks of young Cockaigners. The lovers leave the park and seek what Charles Lamb described as the sweet security of the streets. A military band approaches, passes with hideous rage and fury, and at last is at a safe and reasonable distance. The lovers go into a church. The organ is playing, and even here they cannot escape wholly the noise of the street. To the street they return, and the former experiences are renewed."
The score, which contains no programme or elucidation whatsoever, was published in 1901.
"DREAM CHILDREN," TWO PIECES FOR SMALL ORCHESTRA: Op. 43
These pieces, published in 1902, are prefaced with the following quotation from the paper in Charles Lamb's _Essays of Elia_ entitled "Dream Children; A Revery":
"... And while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech: 'We are not of Alice,[48] nor of thee, nor are we children at all.... We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. _We are only what might have been._'"[49]
Elgar's music, "for pianoforte or small orchestra,"[50] is in two slightly contrasted parts: (1) A pensive _andante_ movement in G minor, and (2) a livelier _allegretto_ in G major, which, however, changes to _andante_ and closes, with grave sentiment, _molto lento_.[51] The correspondence between the dominant moods of the essay and the characteristics of the music are obvious and easily perceptible. The pieces were "sketched long ago," says the composer [writing in June, 1907], "and completed a few years back." The first performance was at a Queen's Hall Promenade Concert, London, September 4, 1902.
No more searching and effective commentary could be written upon this music than that of Mr. Vernon Blackburn, though its delicately stated meanings do not lie always upon the surface:
"Sir Edward Elgar can go further than the great English prose poet, and in his music he delves into the finest things of the life of childhood; not the precocious things, not the interrogatory matters which so often puzzle the brains of elder people, but simply the artless questions of childhood which are answered never--it is those things which appeal to Sir Edward, yet, with his infinitely fine sense of musical suggestion, are still never answered. We can easily see why it is that Elgar chooses out of a great system of idealistic writing to limit himself for once within the boundaries of childhood, just the thoughts and the dreams of youth, that wonderful period in life; after all, the thoughts and dreams of youth do not go further than the theories of manhood, and Sir Edward Elgar therefore reaches a point of interrogation which ranks among all those many questions which in music seem to us to continue, from the time of the Abate Martini, through the questionings of Gluck, past the art of Mozart and Schumann, right unto the present day.
"Elgar called into life the children of his dream just as all the greatest of modern composers may for the listener revive the feelings that have been closed behind the gate of his mind. The children of his dreams touch a musical paternity that may be ranked among the things that issue from the paternity of thought. Such a great musician as Edward Elgar may well dream of those children who stand on the edge of the horizon, towards whom he beckons to come over the sea of silence--who never come, but who allow him to dream of the mystery of that which is sometimes forever denied, but which is at all times the inspiration of highest thought."
OVERTURE, "IN THE SOUTH" ("ALASSIO"[52]): Op. 50
This overture was completed in 1904. These lines from Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" are quoted in the score:
"... a land Which _was_ the mightiest in its old command, And _is_ the loveliest, ... Wherein were cast ... ... the men of Rome!
* * * * *
"Thou art the garden of the world." (Cantos IV., XXV., XXVI.)
The music is said to have been "conceived on a glorious spring day in the Valley of Andora," and is meant "to suggest the Joy of Living in a balmy climate, under sunny skies, and amid surroundings in which the beauties of nature vie in interest with the remains and recollections of the great past of an enchanting country."
Mr. A. A. Jaeger, in the course of an elaborate analysis and exposition of the overture which is said to have been prepared with the sanction of the composer, writes in detail concerning the meaning of certain passages in the music. Of an episode which occurs shortly after the beginning (at the entry of what the musician would call the "second theme" of the overture), he says:
"Gradually a calmer mood comes over the music. The strings are muted, and wood-wind (clarinet and English horn) and violins are heard in a little dialogue which seems to have been suggested by 'a shepherd with his flock and his home-made music.'... As the music dies away in softest _ppp_, the drums and double-basses sound persistently ... even after the long-delayed second subject proper of the overture has commenced. So far the thematic material has been largely constructed of short sequences. The new subject, on the other hand, is a long-drawn, finely curved melody of shapely form.... Tinged with a sweet sadness, it is doubtless meant to suggest the feeling of melancholy which is generally coexistent with the state of happiness resulting from communion with nature, a melancholy which in this case, however, may be supposed to have been produced by contemplating the contrast (shown nowhere more strikingly than in Italy) between the eternal rejuvenescence of nature and the instability of man's greatest and proudest achievements. The melody is announced by first violins, solo viola, and solo 'cello. It is immediately repeated in the higher octave.... A melody in the same gentle mood follows." Later there occurs "a passionately ascending sequence, as if the composer were rousing himself from a deep revery." There are trumpet-calls, and the music becomes increasingly animated. "We reach a second very important episode, _grandioso_, in which the composer has aimed to 'paint the relentless and domineering _onward_ force of the ancient day, and give a sound picture of the strife and wars of a later time.' First we have this bold and stately phrase, very weightily scored for the full orchestra, except flutes. It is followed by another forceful passage," in which are "clashing discords.... Soon the music grows even more emphatic.... With almost cruel insistence the composer covers page after page with this discordant and stridently orchestrated but powerfully suggestive music. It is as if countless Roman cohorts sounded their battle-calls from all the corners of the earth.... It is a wild scene which the composer unfolds before us--one of turbulent strife, in which many a slashing blow and counter-blow are dealt in furious hand-to-hand fight.... The Roman motif (_grandioso_) seems to exhort the warriors to carry their eagles victorious through the fray, that _Senatus populusque Romanus_ may know how Roman legions did their duty. Gradually the clamor subsides," and, with a high note sounded on the glockenspiel [an orchestral implement which produces a bell-like tone], "we are back in the light of the present day.
"A curious passage seems to suggest the gradual awakening from the dream, the bright sunshine breaking through the dust of battle beheld in a poet's vision of a soul-stirring past." Later we hear (solo viola) "the lonely shepherd's plaintive song, floating towards the serene azure of the Italian sky." Finally, the overture is brought to an end with a phrase "which has stood throughout for the brave motto of Sunshine, Open Air, and Cheery Optimism."
FOOTNOTES:
[48] "Alice W----n," Lamb's first love. According to Hazlitt, she married a pawnbroker in Princes Street, Leicester Square. Did he bear the romantic name of Bartrum? ("the children of Alice call Bartrum father," says Elia in a passage in "Dream Children" tactfully omitted from Elgar's excerpt). Compare the passage immediately preceding that quoted by Sir Edward: "Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W----n; and, as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and difficulty, and denial meant in maidens--when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was...." And one recalls the sentence in "New Year's Eve": "Methinks it is better that I should have pined away seven of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the fair hair and fairer eyes of Alice W----n, than that so passionate a love-adventure should be lost."
[49] These words are not italicized by Lamb.
[50] The pieces were composed originally for small orchestra; the piano solo is an arrangement; thus the statement in the sub-title quoted above is an inverted one.
[51] The first piece is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, kettle-drums, harp, and strings; the second is similarly scored, except that only 2 horns are employed.
[52] Alassio: an Italian seaport town on the Mediterranean, near Genoa.
FRANCK
(_César Franck: born in Liège, Belgium, December 10, 1822; died in Paris, November 8, 1890_)
"LES ÉOLIDES,"[53] SYMPHONIC POEM[54]
This symphonic poem, composed in 1876, was suggested by the opening lines of a poem by Leconte de Lisle, though the derivation is not avowed in the score. A prose translation of these lines may be given as follows:
"O floating breezes of the skies, sweet breaths of lovely spring, that with capricious kisses caress the hills and the plains!
"Virgins, daughters of Æolus, lovers of peace, eternal Nature wakens to your songs!"[55]
Æolus was conceived by the Greeks to be a companion of the gods and master of the winds. Jeremy Collier wrote of him: "Æolus, a king of the seven islands betwixt Italy and Sicily called Æoliæ, very Hospitable, he taught his People to use Sails, and by observing the Fire or Smoak of Strongyle (Stromboli) could predict how the Winds would blow, whence the Poets call'd him the God of the Winds. He was also a skilful Astrologer, which contributed to this Fiction. There were Three of this Name." This is how Ulysses described to King Alcinous his visit to Æolus:
"To the Æolian island we attain'd, That swum about still on the sea, where reign'd The God-lov'd Æolus Hippotades. A wall of steel it had; and in the seas A wave-beat-smooth rock moved about the wall. Twelve children in his house imperial Were born to him; of which six daughters were, And six were sons, that youth's sweet flower did bear. His daughters to his sons he gave as wives; Who spent in feastful comforts all their lives, Close seated by their sire and his grave spouse. Past number were the dishes that the house Made ever savor; and still full the hall As long as day shined."[56]
"THE WILD HUNTSMAN," SYMPHONIC POEM[57]
_Le Chasseur Maudit_, composed in 1883, tells the story of Bürger's ballad, _Der Wilde Jäger_. This argument, in prose, is prefaced to the score:
"'Twas a Sunday morning; far away resounded the joyous sound of bells and the joyous chants of the crowd.... Sacrilege! The savage Count of the Rhine has winded his horn.
"Halloo! Halloo! The chase rushes over corn-fields, moors, and meadows.--'Stop, Count, I entreat you; hear the pious chants!'--No! Halloo! Halloo!--'Stop, Count, I implore you; take care!'--No! and the riders rush on like a whirlwind.
"Suddenly the Count is alone; his horse refuses to go on; the Count would wind his horn, but the horn no longer sounds.... A dismal, implacable voice curses him: 'Sacrilegious man,' it cries, 'be forever hunted by Hell!'
"Then flames flash all around him.... The Count, terror-stricken, flees faster and ever faster, pursued by a pack of demons, ... by day across abysses, by night through the air."[58]
In the music there is first a portrayal of the serene Sabbath landscape, the chanting chorus; there is pealing of bells, and the sacred song rises to a climax.
Then follows the entry of the ribald huntsmen, led by the Count; the chase is pictured, and we hear the complaints of the protesting peasants.
The Count, suddenly left alone, attempts in vain to wind his horn; then, in uncanny and terrifying tones, the curse is pronounced.
The Infernal Chase begins, there are wild horn calls; the pace grows more and more precipitous until the close.
SUITE, "PSYCHE"[59]
1. PSYCHE'S SLEEP (_Sommeil de Psyché_) 2. PSYCHE BORNE AWAY BY THE ZEPHYRS (_Psyché enlevée par les Zéphirs_) 3. THE GARDENS OF CUPID (_Les Jardins d'Eros_) 4. PSYCHE AND CUPID (_Psyché et Eros_)
Franck composed in 1887-88 a symphony for chorus and orchestra entitled "Psyché," the text of which is credited to Messrs. Sicard and Fourchard. In 1900 four parts of the work, written for orchestra alone, were extracted and published in the form of a suite, with the titles quoted above.
The tale of Cupid and Psyche, as told by Apuleius in "The Golden Ass," has been thus admirably paraphrased by Mr. H. E. Krehbiel:
"Psyche was a mortal, the daughter of a king, whose beauty was so great that she received the homage, almost the worship, which was the due of Venus. Wherefore the goddess resolved to revenge herself upon the proud beauty, and asked her son, Cupid, to inspire in her a passion for a low-born creature unworthy of her. Then should Psyche be humiliated and Venus come into her rights again. Cupid set out to obey his mother's injunctions. Finding the maiden asleep in her chamber, he anointed her lips with the bitter water from one of the fountains in Venus's garden, and touched her side with the point of his magic arrow. When she opened her eyes she could not see the god, who had made himself invisible, but he could see her, and the sight of her loveliness so unnerved him that he unwittingly wounded himself with his own arrow. To make as much reparation as possible he emptied his amber jar of sweet water over all her ringlets. But Venus's wishes came near fulfilment. Psyche did not become enamoured of a boor, but of all her admirers none came with offerings of love and marriage. Fearing that the anger of the gods had been incurred by them, her parents consulted the oracle of Apollo, and were told that their daughter should have no mortal lover. Her future husband, a monster irresistible to both gods and men, awaited her at the top of a high mountain. Great was their grief, but Psyche offered willingly to make expiation for having received honors which belonged only to the immortal queen of love and beauty. She was led to the summit of the mountain and left to her fate. Thence came Zephyrus, and carried her gently to a flowery vale in the midst of which stood a magnificent palace. She became its mistress. Invisible hands administered abundantly to all her wants, filled her mouth with nectareous food and wines, and her ears with music. Every night she was visited by him whom the oracle said was to be her husband, but she saw him not. He came only in the darkness of the night, and disappeared before the break of day. She begged for a sight of him whose words of love had aroused a deep passion within her, but he refused. It was Cupid, who wanted to be loved as an equal, not worshipped as a god.
"But when Psyche's sisters heard of her great happiness they filled her mind with doubt and misgivings, and persuaded her to disobey her strange visitor's commands. Perhaps he was a hideous monster who would in time devour her. At night, when he was fast asleep, she uncovered her lamp and gazed, not upon a monster, but upon the loveliest of visions. A god lay before her with golden ringlets clustering about his white neck and ruddy cheeks, and snowy wings on his shoulders. She leaned over him for a closer view, and a drop of burning oil fell upon his glistening skin. He awoke, and without a word spread his wings and flew out of the window. With him vanished palace and gardens. Day and night Psyche wandered about seeking her lost love. She found herself in the temple of Ceres, whose pity she awakened, and who told her to surrender herself to Venus and seek to win her forgiveness. Voluntarily she submitted to become the slave of the goddess, who imposed cruel and impossible tasks upon her, but she performed them all, with supernatural aid extended by Cupid. At last the god himself, recovered from his wound, and, unable to endure the separation longer, made supplication to Jupiter, who pleaded the cause of the lovers with Venus, and won her consent to their union. Thereupon he sent Mercury to the maiden with a cup of ambrosia, which, drinking, she became immortal, and was united forever to Cupid."
The poetic substance of the four movements which constitute the work in its exclusively instrumental form may be briefly indicated as follows:
I. PSYCHE'S SLEEP
"In the dim regions of her dreams, her spirit becomes aware of some perfect bliss, not of this world, which she feels will yet be hers."
II. PSYCHE BORNE AWAY BY THE ZEPHYRS
There is first a suggestion of the zephyrs; then follows a portion which is said to characterize Psyche herself. A reminiscence of the theme which, in the first movement, served as a love motive, follows; then, again, we hear the Psyche theme.
III. THE GARDENS OF CUPID
This movement is a love scene, "a depiction of the delights of Psyche in the company of her invisible lover."
IV. PSYCHE AND CUPID
The final bliss of the lovers is said to be portrayed here. "Love, at first hesitant, grows bold; it has its passionate flights, its returns to calmness, its torrents of passion, then its moments of ecstasy. The themes are so blended or enchained that they are nearly all of like importance, and often one is the conclusion of the other. They are charged with a penetrating solemnity which touches the heart-core."
"Eros and Psyche," writes Gustave Derepas in an examination of the work of Franck in its original form, "do not appear as individuals. The orchestra interprets their feelings, and for this reason: the two are in this poem not individuals. Franck, forgetting the legendary personages, looks on them as symbols of the human soul and supreme love. Music, absolute music without words, because its notes do not have a definite meaning, is of all the forms of art the most adequate expression of these immaterial realities. There are no solos in this oratorio. The orchestra has the most important part; it translates the longings, the regrets, the final joy of Psyche.... It is to be easily seen that the whole work is charged with the spirit of Christian mysticism."
M. Vincent d'Indy, a distinguished pupil, as well as a profound and discerning appreciator, of César Franck, has observed that when Franck (always a mystic of mystics) passed to purely profane subjects his angelic imaginings pursued him. "He was fain to put the ancient myth of Eros and Psyche into tones. There are passages of ravishing description in the music in which he fulfilled his purpose. But the capstone of the work, the love duet, as it is called, between Eros and Psyche, has seemed to me always and only an ethereal dialogue between the soul as the mystical author of 'The Imitation of Christ' conceived it and a seraph descended from heaven to instruct it."
"THE DJINNS," SYMPHONIC POEM FOR ORCHESTRA AND PIANO[60]
_Les Djinns_ was written in illustration of lines from Victor Hugo's _Les Orientales_, which, translated into prose, are as follows:
"In the plain is born a sound; 'tis the breathing of the night.
"The sound draws near. It grows louder! Heavens! It is the galloping of the Djinns.
"It is their funeral plaint. Hark to them! Cries of Hell! Voices that howl and weep!
"They depart, ... but the air groans again. Then silence.
"All passes away, and space swallows up the sound."
The Djinns (or Jinns, from an Arabic word meaning "to be dark" or "to be veiled") were, in Arabian mythology, supernatural beings of prevailingly malevolent character and purpose. They were both male and female, and were regarded as extremely long-lived. Created two thousand years before Adam, of smokeless fire, their homes were in the mountains named Kaff, which were believed to girdle the earth. Yet they haunted all places and all elements--the sea, the land, the air. They could assume any form at will, but were prone to appear to men in whirlwinds, tempests, and dust clouds.
In Franck's symphonic poem (in which the piano is employed rather as an orchestral adjunct than as a solo instrument) the music delineates the sudden and terrifying approach through the air of the horde of tempest-driven demons, their horrible lamentations and imprecations, their passing and final disappearance.
FOOTNOTES:
[53] The English equivalent of this title, "The Daughters of Æolus"--or, as Mr. W. F. Apthorp once translated it, "The Æolidæ"--would scarcely be recognized by the concert-goer as denominating Franck's well-known work.
[54] Without opus number.
[55]
"O brises flottantes des cieux, Du beau printemps douces haleines, Qui de baisers capricieux Caressez les monts et les plaines;
Vierges, filles d'Éole, amantes de la paix, La nature éternelle à vos chansons s'éveille."
[56] Chapman's translation.
[57] Without opus number.
[58] Translated by Mr. Philip Hale.
[59] Without opus number.
[60] Without opus number.
GLAZOUNOFF
(_Alexander Glazounoff: born in St. Petersburg, August 10, 1865; now living there_)
"STENKA RÂZINE," SYMPHONIC POEM: Op. 13
Stenka Râzine (or Râzin), the subject of Glazounoff's symphonic poem, was a Cossack rebel and outlaw who flourished in the seventeenth century. In 1667 he was elected leader of the insurgent Cossacks, and, after a tumultuous career of plunder and devastation, was finally executed at Moscow in 1671. He is the hero of numerous Russian ballads, and Nikolai Kostomaroff, in 1859, made him the subject of one of his famous historical monographs.
In the legend selected by Glazounoff for musical treatment, Stenka Râzine is portrayed as the hero of an incident which is related by the composer as follows in an explanatory note (in French) prefaced to the score:
"The Volga, vast and calm. For long years the region about the great river dwelt in peace; then suddenly there appeared the terrible Ataman [Cossack chief] Stenka Râzine, who, at the head of his ferocious horde, began to sweep along the Volga, devastating and pillaging the towns and villages situated along its banks. His ship was splendidly adorned, his sails were of silk, his oars were gilt; in the midst of a tent of cloth of silver, upon barrels full of gold and silver, reclined the Persian princess, Stenka Râzine's captive and mistress. On a certain day she fell into deep thought, and, addressing her master's comrades, began to tell them that she had dreamed a dream, in which it had been revealed to her that Stenka Râzine would be shot, that his band of warriors would be cast into dungeons, and that she herself would perish in the waves of the Volga. The dream of the princess came true. Stenka was surrounded by the soldiers of the Tsar. Seeing that the day was lost, Stenka said: 'Never, during all the thirty years of my raids, have I offered the Volga a gift. To-day I will give it what is dearest to me among all the treasures of the earth,' and with these words he hurled the princess deep into the waves. The fierce band began to sing in honor of its Ataman, and all hurled themselves upon the soldiers of the Tsar."
Glazounoff's music is based on three main themes. We hear first the melancholy chant of the bargemen on the Volga (derived from a celebrated Russian folk-tune); by it the Volga is typified (the theme is announced by the oboe, against tremolos in the strings). Stenka himself is next portrayed by a theme that is brutally forceful and savage. Then follows a gracious and dulcet melody (sung, _pp_, by clarinet, with accompaniment of harp, flutes, bassoon, and horn), in which the princess, Stenka's captive and beloved, is suggested. By his vivid and dramatic juxtaposition of these themes, Glazounoff suggests the progress and culmination of his tonal narrative.
The score bears the date-line: "St. Petersburg, 1885."
"THE KREMLIN," SYMPHONIC PICTURE IN THREE PARTS: Op. 30
This "symphonic picture" (composed in 1890) is a delineation, in three sections, of scenes associated in the imagination of the composer with the historic and picturesque citadel at Moscow. They are arranged and titled as follows:
I. POPULAR FEAST
(Scenes of festivity, the music based on or suggested by Russian folk-songs.)
II. IN THE MONASTERY
(There are, first, passages of religious character; then a section of contrasted quality, with a suggestion of temple gongs and Oriental color.)
III. ENTRANCE AND MEETING OF THE PRINCE
(The prevailing spirit of this movement is festal. There is a suggestion of pomps and occasions, of brilliant pageantry.)
"The Kremlin," writes Mr. Arthur Symons in his _Cities_, "is like the evocation of an Arabian sorcerer, called up out of the mists of the North; and the bells hung in these pagan, pagoda-like belfries seem to swing there in a lost paradox, as if to drive away the very demons that have fixed them in mid-air.... All the violence of the yellow, Mongolian East is in these temples, which break out into bulbs, and flower into gigantic fruits and vegetables of copper and tiles and carved stone; which are full of crawling and wriggling lines, of a kind of cruelty in form; in which the gold of the sun, the green of the earth's grass, and a blue which is to the blue of the sky what hell is to heaven, mock and deform the visible world in a kind of infernal parody....
"... The priests, with their long hair and Christ-like presence, wearing heavy vestments of blue and red velvet and gold-embroidered stuff (in which one sees the hieratic significance of the blue of the domes), pass through the concealing door from the presence of the people to the presence of God, the door which, at the most sacred moment, shuts them in upon that presence; and a choir of sad, deep, Russian voices, the voices of young men, chants antiphonally and in chorus, weaving, in a sort of instrumental piece in which the voices are the instruments, a heavy veil of music, which trembles like a curtain before the shrine."
GOLDMARK
(_Karl Goldmark: born in Keszthely, Hungary, May 18, 1830; now living in Vienna_)
OVERTURE, "SAKUNTALA": Op. 13
This overture, which made its composer famous, has been in the European concert repertory since 1865 (in December of which year it was performed for the first time in Vienna), and in that of America since 1877. The music is conceived as a commentary on Kalidassa's famous Indian drama, "Sakuntala," the story of which is outlined as follows in a preface printed in the score:
"Sakuntala, the daughter of a nymph, is brought up in a penitentiary grove by the chief of a sacred caste of priests as his adopted daughter. The great king Dushianta enters the sacred grove while out hunting; he sees Sakuntala, and is immediately inflamed with love for her.
"A charming love-scene follows, which closes with the union (according to Grundharveri, the marriage) of both.
"The king gives Sakuntala, who is to follow him later to his capital city, a ring by which she shall be recognized as his wife.
"A powerful priest, to whom Sakuntala has forgotten to show due hospitality, in the intoxication of her love, revenges himself upon her by depriving the king of his memory and of all recollection of her.
"Sakuntala loses the ring while washing clothes in the sacred river.
"When Sakuntala is presented to the king, by her companions, as his wife, he does not recognize her, and he repudiates her. Her companions refuse to admit her, as the wife of another, back into her home, and she is left alone in grief and despair; then the nymph, her mother, has pity on her and takes her to herself.
"Now the ring is found by some fishermen and brought back to the king. On his seeing it, his recollection of Sakuntala returns. He is seized with remorse for his terrible deed; the profoundest grief and unbounded yearning for her who has disappeared leave him no more.
"On a warlike campaign against some evil demons, whom he vanquishes, he finds Sakuntala again, and now there is no end to their happiness."
"RUSTIC WEDDING" SYMPHONY (No. 1): Op. 26
1. WEDDING MARCH, WITH VARIATIONS (_Moderato molto_)
2. BRIDAL SONG (_Allegretto_)
3. SERENADE (_Allegretto moderato, scherzando_)
4. IN THE GARDEN (_Andante_)
5. DANCE: FINALE (_Allegretto molto_)
Goldmark's _Ländliche Hochzeit_ symphony, first performed at a Philharmonic concert in Vienna under Hans Richter in March, 1876, is rather a suite than a symphony. The picturesque significance of the various movements, which bear an obvious relationship to the central idea expressed in the title, may be indicated as follows:
I. WEDDING MARCH
This movement needs no gloss, since its character and significance lie upon the surface of the music.
II. BRIDAL SONG
The song may be imagined as being sung by friends of the bride. It has a second part, with a tender tune for the oboe (as if one of the bridesmaids had stepped forward), accompanied by the theme of the march in the basses.
III. SERENADE
After a prelude, two oboes sing a duet, which is varied and developed by other instruments.
IV. IN THE GARDEN
This is a love-scene. An impassioned duet is suggested, in which the tenor is represented by 'cellos and horns, the soprano by the violins and the higher wood-wind instruments. The movement ends serenely.
V. FINALE
A peasant dance, spirited and jocose, with a tender episode in the middle. "For a moment we steal out of doors, and are again lost in the rare strain of the garden scene." In the epilogue "the simple second tune of the dance [first heard in the strings] broadens into song, like a festive hymn, rising to a height of fervent appeal, that is too intimate for a mere tripping of feet.... The end is in a climax that is much more than the frolic of a dance."
GRIEG
(_Edvard Grieg:[61] born in Bergen, Norway, June 15, 1843; died in Bergen, September 4, 1907_)
SUITE (No. 1), "PEER GYNT"[62]
1. MORNING MOOD (_Allegretto pastorale_)
2. THE DEATH OF AASE (_Andante doloroso_)
3. ANITRA'S DANCE (_Tempo di Mazurka_)
4. IN THE HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING (_Marcia e molto marcato_)
This is the first, as it is the more famous and frequently played, of the two orchestral suites arranged by Grieg from the incidental music which he wrote, at Ibsen's suggestion, for the latter's singular drama, "Peer Gynt." The story of the play, in the form in which it was given by Ibsen to Grieg for musical accentuation, is thus succinctly told by Mr. Henry T. Finck in his comprehensive and authoritative monograph on the Norwegian master:
"Peer Gynt is a rough Norwegian peasant youth, who, in the first act, drives his mother Aase (Ohse) to distraction by his fantastic talk and ruffianly actions.
"His dream is to become emperor of the world. Everybody dreads and avoids him. He hears that the beautiful Ingrid is to be married, goes uninvited to the wedding, and carries the bride into the mountain wilderness. The next day, deaf to her laments, he deserts her, after taunting her with not having the golden locks or the meekness of the tender-hearted Solvejg, who, at the wedding, loved him at sight, notwithstanding his ruffianly appearance and behavior. After divers adventures Peer finds himself in the Hall of the Mountain King, where he is tortured by gnomes and sprites, who alternate their wild dances with deadly threats; he is rescued at the last moment by the sound of bells in the distance, which make the hall of the goblins collapse. Then he builds a hut in the forest, and Solvejg comes to him on her snow-shoes of her own free will. Weeping, she tells him she has left her sister and parents to share his hut and be his wife. Happiness seems to be his at last, but he is haunted by the gnomes, who threaten to torture him every moment of his life, whereat, without saying a word to his bride, he leaves her and returns to his mother. Aase is on her death-bed, and soon expires in his arms. Later, he turns up in Africa, where he has divers adventures. Having succeeded in stealing from robbers a horse and a royal garment, he goes among the Arabs and plays the rôle of a prophet. He makes love to the beautiful Anitra, daughter of a Bedouin chief, and elopes with her on horseback; but she, after cajoling all his stolen jewels from him, suddenly turns her horse and gallops back home. In the last act, Peer Gynt, after suffering shipwreck on the Norwegian coast, returns to the hut he has built in the forest; there he finds Solvejg faithfully awaiting his return, and dies as she sings the tearful melody known as 'Solvejg's Cradle Song.'"
In Grieg's suite, the "Morning Mood" (_Morgenstimmung_) music forms the prelude to the fourth act of the play. It is a piece of serene and idyllic tone-painting, with no dramatic suggestions.
"The Death of Aase" is a brief and sombre dirge on the death of Peer's mother, scored entirely for muted[63] strings.
"Anitra's Dance" is the music of the dance with which the daughter of the Bedouin chief tries to beguile the inconstant Peer.
"In the Hall of the Mountain King" is taken from the accompaniment to the scene in which Peer, in the dwelling of the trolls, is beset and tormented by gnomes and imps. The music of this number has been characterized as "a veritable hornets' nest."
FOOTNOTES:
[61] "In cyclopædias," says Mr. H. T. Finck, "we generally find his name given as Edvard Hagerup Grieg, but he does not sanction the middle name, and never uses it in his correspondence. 'It is true,' he writes to me, 'that my baptismal name includes the Hagerup. My artist name, however, is simply E. G. The Hagerup which is to be found in most of the encyclopædias is derived in all probability from the archives of the Leipsic Conservatory.'"
[62] Without opus number.
[63] See page 12 (foot-note).
HADLEY
(_Henry Hadley: born in Somerville, Massachusetts, December 20, 1871; now living in Germany_)
TONE-POEM, "SALOME": Op. 55
This tone-poem, "after Oscar Wilde's tragedy," is said to have been completed before the production of Richard Strauss's music-drama on the same subject.[64] It is alleged that when Mr. Hadley's music was composed (it was published at Berlin in the latter part of 1906), the "Salome" of Strauss was unknown to him.
The score contains the following programme, printed in German and English:
"Oscar Wilde's tragedy, 'Salome,' presents first a moonlight scene of Oriental beauty. Without the palace the soldiers are keeping guard; within, a feast is in progress. Salome leaves Herod's banquet and seeks the grateful cool of the lovely night. John the Baptist (Iokanaan) has been made prisoner by Herod in an old well. On hearing his voice proclaiming the Christ, Salome is deeply moved and determines to see him. She prevails upon the captain, Narraboth, who is in love with her, to have Iokanaan brought forth. When Salome beholds him, Salome, the wilful and haughty, who has always triumphed in her loves, finally herself falls a victim to a consuming passion for Iokanaan. Notwithstanding her pleadings, he repulses and condemns her as the daughter of a wicked woman, while the soldiers reconduct him to his imprisonment. The music and revelry of Herod's banqueters are heard. Missing Salome at the feast, Herod leaves the palace and seeks her. Upon finding her cold and silent to his advances, he asks her to partake of fruits and wine with him. This she refuses to do. Finally he begs her to dance, promising her anything her heart desires, if she will but consent. At last Salome is persuaded, and dances the dance of the seven veils for Herod. Delighted and enchanted with Salome's charms and maddening dance, he lays half his kingdom at her feet. She will have none of it, but, reminding him of his promise, demands the head of Iokanaan in a silver plate. Herod, superstitious and now thoroughly alarmed at so extraordinary a request, pleads with Salome. It is of no avail. She will have only what she demanded. At last, to the utter collapse of Herod, he is bound to keep his promise. Salome, on being presented with the head of Iokanaan, fondles and caresses it, breathing words of passion into its deaf ears. Herod, in fright of what has been done and in rage and disgust with Salome, orders her instant death. The soldiers rush upon her with their spears and put her to death.[65]
At the time of the first American performance of this tone-poem by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, on April 12, 1907, Mr. Philip Hale published in the programme-books this exposition of the significance of the music:
"'Salome' begins ... _Lento e molto tranquillo_, ... with a description of the moonlit scene. The music follows the course of the argument, but how literally, how imaginatively, must be determined by each hearer. It will be remarked that a theme, which might be called Salome's desire, introduced early in the work after a passage for solo violoncello (for horns and then for clarinets, oboes, and English horns), is used at the end of the tone-poem, '_con adore_' (_sic_), to accentuate the address of Salome to Iokanaan's head. 'Salome's Dance,' _Allegretto ben ritmato_, with a '_stretto con delirio_,' is specified by the composer with a title. The chief motives elsewhere are unidentified by him. One hearer, then, may take the motive, _poco largamente_, early in the work, given to trombones and tuba _fortissimo_ with drum-roll, for Iokanaan's denunciation, and recognize the significance of its entrance after the dance, while to another the motive may have another meaning. So, too, there may be various opinions concerning the precise significance of other themes. It is enough to say that the music follows the course of the published argument. After the dance and the scene in which Herod consents to the beheading of the holy man there is a return to the opening tonality, tempo, and mood. Themes already typical of Salome are again used. There is a suddenly introduced and short _Allegro con fuoco_. Grand pause: _Lento_. The English horn sighs the love theme of Salome."
FOOTNOTES:
[64] The first production anywhere of Strauss's "Salome" was at Dresden, December 9, 1905, a little more than a year before the first American production (at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, January 22, 1907).
[65] Mr. Hadley, in this description, gives a slightly inaccurate account of Wilde's drama. Salome, in the play, has not "always triumphed in her loves," for Wilde makes her out to be a virgin, and Iokanaan her first love. Nor do the soldiers, at the end of the tragedy, "rush upon her with their spears." The stage direction at this point reads: "The soldiers rush forward and crush beneath their shields Salome, daughter of Herodias, Princess of Judæa."
HUBER
(_Hans Huber: born in Schönewerd, Switzerland, June 28, 1852; now living in Bâle_)
SYMPHONY No. 2, in E MINOR: Op. 115
1. _Allegro con fuoco_ 2. _Scherzo; allegro con fuoco non troppo_ 3. _Adagio ma non troppo_ 4. _Finale_: "METAMORPHOSES, SUGGESTED BY PICTURES BY BÖCKLIN"
This symphony was written in eulogy of the Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin (born in Bâle, October 16, 1827; died in San Domenico, near Florence, January 16, 1901), and in glorification of his highly imaginative and individual art. The original intention of the composer, it is said, was to name his score a "Böcklin" symphony, and to give to various portions of the music the titles of certain of Böcklin's best-known canvases. This plan was, however, not adhered to, and now only the last movement--the finale--is avowedly an endeavor to compose a tonal commentary on various paintings by the Swiss artist. There is, therefore, no authorization for an attempt to find definite translations of Böcklin into tone anywhere save in the concluding movement; yet it may be worth mentioning that the first movement is said to have been suggested by Böcklin's picture, _"Sieh, es lacht die Au"_ ("See, the Meadow Laughs"), which pictures two young girls in a meadow plucking flowers, while others stand about in various postures, one playing a lute[66]; that the second movement, the Scherzo--in a Dionysiac mood of revelry--is said to suggest the play of fauns and satyrs of the kind that Böcklin loved to paint; and that the third movement hints at moods inspired by his "Sacred Grove," "Hymn of Spring," and "Venus Anadyomene."
The Finale is in form a theme with variations, and each variation is named after a picture by Böcklin. I quote Mr. Philip Hale's concise and vivid characterizations of the different sections and the subjects which inspired them:
"I. THE SILENCE OF THE OCEAN (_In the museum at Bern_)
"_Adagio molto_, E major, 8-8. A dark woman--woman only to the waist--of unearthly beauty lies on a lonely rock far out at sea. Three sea-birds listen with her. A strange sea-creature, with man's face, is stretched beneath the wave. His eyes are without speculation. His tail floats above the surface, and is brushed by the woman's hair.
"II. PROMETHEUS CHAINED (_1882; owned by Arnhold of Berlin_)
"The god-defying hero, a giant in form, is bound on the summit of Caucasus, which rises abruptly from the foaming sea. _Allegro molto_, 4-4. The theme is taken from the first movement.... The wild orchestra surges until the end comes, in six syncopated blows, in extreme _fortissimo_.
"III. THE FLUTING NYMPH (_1881; owned by von Heyl of Darmstadt_)
"_Allegretto grazioso_, E major, 3-4. A flute solo that, in alternation with the clarinet, leads into the familiar theme, in its first transformation, of the first movement.
"IV. THE NIGHT (_Painted before 1888, and owned by Henneberg of Zurich_)
"_Adagio ma non troppo_, D-flat major, 3-4. A woman draped in black, but with a shoulder exposed, floats over a peaceful land, and slowly drops poppy-heads from a cornucopia. The melody is played by the violoncellos. Harp, bassoons, double bassoons, violas, and double-basses accompany.
"V_a._ SPORT OF THE WAVES (_1883; in the New Pinakothek, Munich_)
"_Quasi presto_, E minor, 2-4, 3-4. Water-men and water-women frolic in the waves. One woman gayly dives. Another, frightened, is laughed at by a bearded and rubicund old fellow, whose head is wreathed with pond-lilies. A caprice for the wood-wind. In the section 2-4 the violins continue the melody, while violin and viola solos ornament, and harp and triangle add color.
"V_b._ THE HERMIT FIDDLING BEFORE THE STATUE OF THE MADONNA (_Painted after 1882; in the National Gallery, Berlin_)
"_Molto moderato_, E major, 3-4. An aged man in his cell plays with bowed head before the Madonna, while little angels listen. The strings are hushed. Organ relieved here and there by flutes, oboes, clarinets.
"VI. THE ELYSIAN FIELDS (_1878; in the National Gallery, Berlin_)
"_Allegretto tranquillo_, G major, 6-8. One of Böcklin's most celebrated paintings. A landscape of diversified and wondrous beauty, with mermaids, swans, a fair woman on the back of a centaur crossing a stream, a group in the distance around an altar. Long-sustained trombone chords furnish the harmonic foundation. The melody, of a soft and lightly flowing dance character, is maintained by the wood-wind and violins, and a horn reminds one of an expressive theme in the first movement.
"VII. THE DAWN OF LOVE (_1868; owned by von Heyl of Darmstadt_)
"_Andante molto espressivo ed appassionato_, E major, 3-4. Nymphs and young loves in a smiling and watered landscape. The passionate melody is given to the strings. Wood-wind and horns take part in this as well as in the accompaniment. A short and vigorous _crescendo_ leads to the last variation.
"VIII. BACCHANALE (_Owned by Knorr of Munich_)
"_Tempo di valse, ma quasi presto_, E major, 3-4. Men and women are rioting about a tavern near Rome. Some, overcome by wine, sprawl on the ground. The theme is developed in waltz form. A rapid violin passage leads to the close, _maestoso ma non troppo_. The organ joins the orchestra in thundering out the chief theme."
A graphic suggestion of that which Huber has sought to express in his music is conveyed by this felicitous comment on the art and temperament of Böcklin, written by Mr. Christian Brinton:
"Arnold Böcklin was able to develop a national art, an art specifically Germanic, because he had the magic to impose his dream upon his fellow-countrymen, and because that dream was the reflex, the embodiment, of all the ineffable nostalgia of his race, not alone for the cream-white villas of Italy, the fountains and the cypresses, but for the gleaming marbles and golden myths of Greece. His art is merely another version of that _Sehnsucht_ which finds voice in the ballads of Goethe, the prose fancies of Heine, or the chiselled periods of Winckelmann. Once again it is the German viewing Greece through Renaissance eyes. The special form under which Böcklin's appeal was made implied a reincarnation, under actual conditions, of the classic spirit. He realized from the outset that the one way to treat such themes was to retouch them with modern poetry and modern passion. Pan, Diana, Prometheus, monsters of the deep and grotesques of the forest, were made vital and convincing.... The persuasive charm of his classic scenes is chiefly due to the anti-classic and often frankly humorous, Dionysian manner in which they are presented.... The formula of Böcklin's art consists in peopling sea or sky, shore or wood, with creatures of tradition or of sheer imagination. Its animus is a _pantheistische Naturpoesie_, illustrating the kinship of man and nature, a conception both Hellenic and Germanic, which arose from a blending of that which his spirit caught at in the world about him and that which came through the gates of fancy and of fable...."
FOOTNOTES:
[66] This canvas, painted in 1887, is in a private collection in Dresden.
d'INDY
(_Vincent d'Indy: born in Paris, March 27, 1852; now living there_)
ORCHESTRAL LEGEND, "THE ENCHANTED FOREST": Op. 8
This work, which the composer calls a _Legende-symphonie_, is based on a ballad by Uhland entitled "Harald." It was composed in 1878. On a fly-leaf of the score is printed, in French, this paraphrase of Uhland's ballad:
"Harald, the brave hero, rides at the head of his warriors. They go by the light of the moon through the wild forest, singing many a song of war.
"Who rustle in ambush in the thickets? Who come down from the clouds and start from the torrent's foam? Who murmur in such harmonious tones and give such sweet kisses? Who hold the knights in such voluptuous embrace? The nimble troop of Elves; resistance is in vain. The warriors have gone away, gone to Elfland.
"He alone has remained--Harald, the hero, the brave Harald; he goes on by the light of the moon through the wild forest.
"A clear spring bubbles at the foot of a rock; scarcely has Harald drunk of the magic water than a strong sleep overpowers his whole being; he falls asleep on the black rocks.
"Seated on this same rock, he has slept for many centuries--and for many centuries, by the moonlight, the elves have circled slowly round about Harald, the old hero."[67]
"SAUGEFLEURIE" ["WILD SAGE"], LEGEND FOR ORCHESTRA: Op. 21
_Saugefleurie, Legende d'après un conte de Robert de Bonnière_, was composed in 1884. The tale upon which it is based is from the _Contes des Fées_ of de Bonnière, excerpts from which are prefaced to the score. The story has been retold in English prose as follows:
"Once upon a time a young and beautiful fairy, Saugefleurie, lived humbly and alone by the edge of a lake. The bank was covered with jonquils. She lived quietly in the trunk of a willow, and stirred from it no more than a pearl from its shell. One day the king's son passed by a-hunting, and she left her tree to see the horses, dogs, and cavaliers. The prince, seeing so fair a face, drew rein and gazed on her. She saw that he was handsome; and, as her modesty was emboldened by naïve love, she looked straight into his eyes. They loved each other at first sight, but not a word was spoken. Now it was death for Saugefleurie to love a mortal man, yet she wished to love the prince, and was willing, loving, to die. Nor was there any kindly power to save her. 'My lord,' she said, 'the fine days are past; do you not find solitude beautiful, and do not lovers love more warmly when their love is hidden? If it seem good to you, let us stay here without fear; our eyes can speak at leisure, and we shall find pleasure only in dwelling together. My heart will be light if it be near you. My lord, I give you my life. Take it, and without a question.' Love and death are always ready and waiting. Do not think that Saugefleurie, whose fate I mourn, was spared. She withered at once, for she was Saugefleurie."[68]
The music opens quietly; there is a violin solo; then the approach of the prince's hunting-party is suggested. The love-scene follows--solo first and second violins, solo viola, and flutes; there is an increase of intensity, and the music becomes passionate and stressful. The hunt music returns, followed by a reminiscence of the love-theme; then the end.
"ISTAR," SYMPHONIC VARIATIONS: Op. 42
"Istar" was first performed in Brussels, under the direction of Eugène Ysaye, January 10, 1897. The music illustrates a French version of an ancient Babylonian poem, "Istar's Descent into Hades," the original of which is believed to have been in the library of Sardanapalus. The French version of the poem, which is printed as a preface to the score, has been translated as follows by Mr. W. F. Apthorp:
"Towards the immutable land Istar, daughter of Sin, bent her steps, towards the abode of the dead, towards the seven-gated abode where HE entered, towards the abode whence there is no return.
* * * * *
"At the first gate, the warder stripped her; he took the high tiara from her head.
"At the second gate, the warder stripped her; he took the pendants from her ears.
"At the third gate, the warder stripped her; he took off the precious stones that adorn her neck.
"At the fourth gate, the warder stripped her; he took off the jewels that adorn her breast.
"At the fifth gate, the warder stripped her; he took off the girdle that encompasses her waist.
"At the sixth gate, the warder stripped her; he took the rings from her feet, the rings from her hands.
"At the seventh gate, the warder stripped her; he took off the last veil that covers her body.
* * * * *
"Istar, daughter of Sin, went into the immutable land, she took and received the Waters of Life. She gave the sublime Waters, and thus, in the presence of all, delivered the SON OF LIFE, her young lover."[69]
Mr. Apthorp has thus set forth the peculiarity of d'Indy's tone-poem (for such it virtually is): "The theme is not given out simply at the beginning, neither is it heard in its entirety until the last variation, in which it is sung by various groups of instruments in unison and octaves, and worked up later in full harmony. Each one of the variations represents one of the seven stages of Istar's being disrobed at the gates of the 'immutable land,' until in the last she stands forth in the full splendor of nudity.... By following the poem, and noting the garment or ornament taken off, the listener can appreciate the composer's poetic or picturesque suggestiveness in his music." Another commentator has observed that d'Indy has here "reversed the customary process.... He by degrees unfolds from initial complexity the simple idea which was wrapped up therein, and appears only at the close, like Isis unveiled, like a scientific law discovered and formulated."
"SUMMER DAY ON THE MOUNTAIN": Op. 61
1. DAWN (_Aurore_) 2. DAY (_Jour_) 3. EVENING (_Soir_)
_Jour d'été à la montagne_, a tone-poem in three parts (dated 1905, published in 1906, first performed in Paris, February 18, 1906), is based on a prose poem by Roger de Pampelonne. These quotations, in French, are prefaced to the score:
"I. DAWN
"Awake, dark phantoms! smile to heaven, majestically, for a ray in the Infinite rises and strikes your brow. One by one the folds of your great mantle are unrolled, and the first gleams, caressing the proud furrows [on your brow], spread over them an instant of sweetness and serenity.
"Awake, mountains! The king of space appears!
"Awake, valley! who concealest the happy nests and sleeping cottages; awake, singing. And if, in thy chant, sighs also reach me, may the light wind of the morning hours gather them and bear them to God.
"Awake, cities! to which the pure rays penetrate regretfully! Sciences, turmoils, human degradations, awake!... Up, artificial worlds!
* * * * *
"The shadows melt away little by little, before the invading light....
"Laugh or weep, creatures who people this world.
"Awake, harmonies! God hearkens!
"II. DAY (_Afternoon, under the pines_)
"How sweet it is to cling to the mountain-sides, broad staircase of heaven!
"How sweet it is to dream, far from the turmoil of man, in the smiling majesty of the mountain-tops!
"Let us mount towards the summits; man deserts them, and there, where man is no longer, God makes His great voice heard; let us view His ephemeral creatures from afar, in order that we may be able to serve and love them.
"Here, all earthly sounds mount in harmony towards my rested heart; here, all becomes hymn and prayer; Life and Death hold each other by the hand, to cry towards heaven: Providence and Goodness. I no longer see what perishes, but what is born again on the ruins; the great Guide seems to reign there alone.
* * * * *
"All grows still. Crossing the sun-lit plain, a sweet, innocent song reaches me, borne by the wind, which glides through the depths of the woods.
"Oh, wrap me wholly in thy sublime accents, wind, whose wild breath gives life to the organ of Creation! Gather the birds' songs on the dark pines; bring to me the rustic sounds, the joyous laughs of the maidens of the valley, the murmur of the waves, and the breath of plants. Hide in thy great sob all the sobs of the earth; let only the purest harmonies reach me, works of the divine Good!
"III. EVENING
"Night steals across the all-covering sky, and the waning light sends forth a fresh breath swiftly over the weary world. The flowers stir, their heads seek one another, to prop themselves one against another and sleep. A last ray caresses the mountain-tops, whilst, happy after his rude day's work, the mountaineer seeks his rustic abode, whose smoke rises from a fold of the vale.
"The sound of bells, sign of life, ceases little by little; the lambs crowd into the fold, and before the crackling fire the peasant woman rocks to sleep her child whose timid soul is dreaming of mists, the daring wolf, and the black verge of the woods.
"Soon all things sleep beneath the shadows, all appears ghostly in the valley; yet all still lives.
* * * * *
"O Night! Eternal Harmony dwells beneath thy veil; joy and grief are but sleeping.
"O Night! consuming Life stirs through the all-consuming day; Life creates itself anew beneath the pearl-strewn mantle of thy outstretched arms...."
In all three movements of d'Indy's tripartite tone-poem a piano is included among the orchestral forces; yet it is never used as a solo instrument, nor even as an orchestral voice (save for a few measures in the third movement), but is employed solely for purposes of instrumental embroidery.
FOOTNOTES:
[67] Translated by Mr. Philip Hale.
[68] Paraphrased by Mr. Philip Hale.
[69] It has been said that the concluding passage of this version (in Mr. Apthorp's prose translation the last four lines) is not in the original Babylonian poem, but is an arbitrary addition by the French translator. Moreover, the French version is credited to the Gilgamesh epic (the Assyrio-Babylonian epic of which Izdubar, or Gilgamesh, is the hero), with which, it has been pointed out, the story of Istar's descent into Hades has nothing to do. Istar (or Ishtar) was the chief deity of the Babylonians and Assyrians. At first a merely local deity, she ultimately came to be regarded as the personification of fertility (both of the soil and of human and animal life) and of war. She corresponded in general to the Ashtoreth (Astarte) of the Syrio-Canaanites, save that she was conceived as ruling the planet Venus, rather than the moon, over which Ashtoreth held sway. Being the representative of the principle of fertility, Istar was regarded also as the goddess of sexual love.
LISZT
(_Franz Liszt: born in Raiding, near Ödenburg, Hungary, October 22, 1811; died in Bayreuth, July 31, 1886_)
"TASSO: LAMENT AND TRIUMPH," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 2)[70]
_Tasso: Lamento e Trionfo_, was conceived as a "symphonic prelude" to Goethe's drama "Tasso," and performed during the celebration at Weimar in 1849 of the centenary of the poet's birth. It was revised by Liszt in 1854, and published, in its present form, two years later. The score contains this preface by the composer:
"In 1849 all Germany celebrated brilliantly the one-hundredth anniversary of Goethe's birth. At Weimar, where we then happened to dwell, the programme of the festival included a performance of his drama 'Tasso,' appointed for the evening of August 28th. The sad fate of the most unfortunate of poets had excited the imagination of the mightiest poetic geniuses of our time--Goethe and Byron: Goethe, whose career was one of brilliant prosperity; Byron, whose keen sufferings counterbalanced the advantages of his birth and fortune. We shall not conceal the fact that, when in 1849 we were commissioned to write an overture for Goethe's drama, we were inspired more directly by the respectful compassion of Byron for the _manes_ of the great man whom he invoked than by the work of the German poet. At the same time, although Byron gave us the groans of Tasso in his prison, he did not join to the recollection of the keen sorrows so nobly and eloquently expressed in his 'Lamentation' the thought of the triumph that awaited, by an act of tardy yet striking justice, the chivalric author of 'Jerusalem Delivered.'
"We have wished to indicate this contrast even in the title of the work, and we have endeavored to succeed in formulating this grand antithesis of genius, ill treated during life, but after death resplendent with a light that dazzled his persecutors. Tasso loved and suffered at Ferrara; he was avenged at Rome; his glory still lives in the people's songs of Venice. These three points are inseparably connected with his undying memory. To express them in music, we first invoked the mighty shadow of the hero, as it now appears, haunting the lagoons of Venice; we have caught a glimpse of his proud, sad face at the feasts in Ferrara, where he produced his masterpieces; and we have followed him to Rome, the Eternal City, which crowned him with the crown of glory and glorified in him the martyr and the poet.
"'Lamento e Trionfo'--these are the two great contrasts in the fate of poets, of whom it has been justly said that, while curses may weigh heavily on their life, blessings are always on their tomb. In order to give this idea not only the authority but the brilliance of fact, we have borrowed even the form from fact, and to that end chosen as the theme of our musical poem the melody to which we have heard the Venetian gondoliers sing on the lagoons three centuries after his death the first strophes of Tasso's 'Jerusalem':
"'_Canto l' armi pietose e 'l Capitano, Che 'l gran Sepolcro liberò di Cristo!_'
"The motive [first given out with sombre effect by the bass clarinet and three solo 'cellos, accompanied by harp, horns, and low strings _pizzicato_], is in itself plaintive, of a groaning slowness, monotonous in mourning; but the gondoliers give it a peculiar coloring by drawling certain notes, by prolonging tones, which, heard from afar, produce an effect not unlike the reflection of long stripes of fading light upon a looking-glass of water. This song once made a deep impression on us, and when we attempted to speak of Tasso our emotion could not refrain from taking as the text of our thoughts this persistent homage paid by his country to the genius of whose devotion and fidelity the court of Ferrara was not worthy. The Venetian melody is so charged with inconsolable mourning, with such hopeless sorrow, that it suffices to portray Tasso's soul; and again it lends itself as the imagination of the poet to the picturing of the brilliant illusions of the world, to the deceitful, fallacious coquetry of those smiles whose treacherous poison brought on the horrible catastrophe for which there seemed to be no earthly recompense, but which was clothed eventually at the capital with a purer purple than that of Alphonse."
The second portion of the symphonic poem, the "Triumph," is introduced by trumpet calls and by brilliant passages in the strings. The Tasso theme, transformed, is proclaimed with the utmost orchestral pomp and sonority, and brings the music to a jubilant and festive close.
"THE PRELUDES," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 3)[71]
_Les Préludes_, composed in 1854, is a tonal commentary on the thoughts contained in a passage from Lamartine's _Méditations poetiques_. The score bears as a preface an excerpt from the _Méditations_, which may be translated as follows:
"What else is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown song of which the first solemn note is sounded by death? Love is the morning radiance of every heart; but in what human life have not the first ecstasies of awakening bliss been broken in upon by some storm whose cruel breath dispelled every fond illusion and blasted the sacred shrine? And what soul, thus sorely wounded, does not, emerging from the tempest, seek balm in the solitude and serenity of country life? Yet man will not long resign himself to the soothing quietude of nature; and when the trumpet sounds the signal of alarm, he hastens to arms, no matter what may be the cause that summons. He plunges into the thick of the combat, and, in the fury and tumult of battle, regains self-confidence through the exercise of his powers."
"ORPHEUS," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 4)[72]
_Orphée_, composed in 1854, was conceived by Liszt at a time when he was engaged in conducting rehearsals of Gluck's opera "Orpheus" for performance at Weimar, and the completed symphonic poem was first played there, as a prelude to the opera of Gluck, on February 16,1854. The score contains a preface by Liszt which forms an admirable commentary on the spirit and temper of the music:
"One day I had to conduct Gluck's 'Orpheus.' During the rehearsals it was well-nigh impossible for me to refrain from abstracting my imagination from the point of view--touching and sublime in its simplicity--from which the great master had considered his subject, to travel in thought back to that Orpheus whose name soars so majestically and harmoniously over the most poetic of Greek myths. I saw again, in my mind's eye, an Etruscan vase in the Louvre, representing the first poet-musician, draped in a starry robe, his brow encircled by a mystically royal fillet, his lips parted and breathing forth divine words and songs, and his fine, long, taper fingers energetically striking the strings of his lyre. I thought to see round about him, as if I had seen him in the flesh, wild beasts listening in ravishment; man's brutal instincts quelled to silence; stones softening; hearts harder still, perhaps, bedewed with a miserly and burning tear; warbling birds and babbling water-falls interrupting their own melodies; laughter and pleasures listening with reverence to those accents that revealed to Humanity the beneficent power of art, its glorious illumination, its civilizing harmony.
"With the purest of morals preached to it, taught by the most sublime dogmas, enlightened by the most shining beacons of science, informed by the philosophic reasonings of the intellect, surrounded by the most refined of civilizations, Humanity to-day, as formerly and always, preserves in its breast its instincts of ferocity, brutality, and sensuality, which it is the mission of art to soften, sweeten, and ennoble. To-day, as formerly and always, Orpheus, that is to say, Art, should spread his melodious waves, his chords vibrating, like a sweet and irresistible light, over those conflicting elements which rend each other and bleed in the soul of every one of us, as they do in the entrails of every society. Orpheus bewails Eurydice--Eurydice, that emblem of the Ideal engulfed by evil and suffering, whom he is allowed to snatch from the monsters of Erebus, to lead forth from the depths of Cimmerian darkness, but whom he cannot, alas! keep for his own on earth. May at least those barbarous times never return, when furious passions, like drunken and unbridled mænads, revenged themselves upon art's disdain of their coarse, sensual delights by felling it with their murderous thyrsi and their stupid fury.
"Had it been given me completely to formulate my thought, I could have wished to render the serenely civilizing character of the songs that radiate from every work of art; their gentle energy, their august empery, their sonority that fills the soul with noble ecstasy, their undulation, soft as breezes from Elysium, their gradual uprising like clouds of incense, their diaphanous and azure ether enveloping the world and the whole universe as with an atmosphere, as with a transparent garment of ineffable and mysterious Harmony."[73]
Mr. Philip Hale has thus described the music in which Liszt crystallized his fancies:
"... Harp arpeggios are thrown over soft horn tones for a prelude, and then Orpheus sings of the might of his art.... The song of Orpheus becomes more intimate in its appeal [_Lento_ ... English horn, oboe.] The passage ends, ... and a short phrase is given to the first violin. Some hear, in this phrase, a call, 'Eurydice!' These themes are used alternately until there is a climax with the entrance of the first and solemn Orpheus theme, _fortissimo_. [Later] the Orpheus song is again intoned in all its majesty. There is a hush, and the Eurydice theme is heard. The 'mystical end' is brought by an alternate use of strings and wood-wind instruments in the Orpheus song."
"MAZEPPA," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 6)[74]
This symphonic poem, composed, in the early thirties, as a piano piece (it was published as No. 4 of the famous _Études d'exécution transcendante_), was made over by Liszt for orchestra in 1850. Both originally and in its final shape the music is an illustration, not of the familiar poem of Byron, but of verses in Victor Hugo's _Les Orientales_. Hugo's lines, in French and German, preface the score. The following prose translation is by Mr. W. F. Apthorp:
I
"So, when Mazeppa, roaring and weeping, has seen his arms, feet, sabre-grazed sides, all his limbs bound upon a fiery horse, fed on sedge grass, reeking, darting forth fire from his nostrils and fire from his feet;
"when he has writhed in his knots like a reptile, has well gladdened his joyous executioners with his futile rage, and fallen back at last upon the wild croup, sweat on his brow, foam at his mouth, and blood in his eyes,
"a cry goes up; and suddenly horse and man fly with the winds over the plain, carried away across the moving sands, alone, filling with noise a whirlwind of dust, like a black cloud in which the lightning winds like a snake!
"They go on. They pass through the valleys like a thunder-storm, like those hurricanes that pile themselves up in the mountains, like a globe of fire; then, next minute, are nothing more than a black dot in the dusk, and vanish into the air like a flake of foam on the vast blue ocean.
"They go on. The space is large. Both plunge together into the boundless desert, into the endless horizon which ever begins over again. Their course carries them onward like a flight, and great oaks, towns and towers, black mountains bound together in long chains, everything totters around them.
"And, if the hapless man struggles, with cracking head, the horse, flying faster than the breeze, rushes with still more affrighted bound into the vast, arid, impassable desert, stretching out before them, with its ridges of sand, like a striped cloak.
"Everything reels and takes on unknown colors; he sees the woods run, sees the broad clouds run, the old ruined donjon-keep, the mountains with a ray bathing the spaces between them; he sees; and herds of reeking mares follow with a great noise!
"And the sky, where the steps of night are already lengthening, with its oceans of clouds into which still other clouds are plunging, and the sun, ploughing through their waves with his prow, turns upon his dazzled forehead like a wheel of golden-veined marble.
"His eye wanders and glistens, his hair trails behind, his head hangs down; his blood reddens the yellow sand, the thorny brambles: the cord winds round his swollen limbs and, like a long serpent, tightens and multiplies its bite and its folds.
"The horse, feeling neither bit nor saddle, flies onward, and still his blood flows and trickles, his flesh falls in shreds; alas! the hot mares that were following just now, bristling their pendent manes, have been succeeded by the crows!
"The crows; the great horned owl with his round, frightened eye; the wild eagle of battle-fields, and the osprey, monster unknown to the daylight; the slanting owls, and the great fawn-colored vulture who ransacks the flanks of dead men, where his bare red neck plunges in like a naked arm!
"All come to augment the funereal flight: all leave both the solitary holm-oak and the nests in the manor to follow him. He, bloody, distracted, deaf to their cries of joy, wonders, when he sees them, who can be unfurling that big black fan on high there.
"The night falls dismal, without its starred robe, the swarm grows more eager and follows the reeking voyager like a winged pack. He sees them between the sky and himself, like a dark smoke-cloud, then loses them and hears them fly confusedly in the dark.
"At last, after three days of mad running, after crossing rivers of icy water, steppes, forests, deserts, the horse falls, to the shrieks of the thousand birds of prey, and his iron hoof, on the stone it grinds, quenches its four lightnings.
"There lies the hapless man, prostrate, naked, wretched, all spotted with blood, redder than the maple in the season of blossoms. The cloud of birds turns round him and stops; many an eager beak longs to gnaw the eyes in his head, all burned with tears.
"Well, this convict who howls and drags himself along the ground, this living carcass, shall be made a prince one day by the tribes of the Ukraine. One day, sowing the fields with unburied dead, he will make it up to the osprey and the vulture in the broad pasture-lands.
"His savage greatness shall spring from his punishment. One day, he shall gird around him the furred robe of the old Hetmans, great to the dazzled eye; and, when he passes by, those tented peoples, prone upon their faces, shall send a resounding bugle-call bounding about him!
II
"So, when a mortal, upon whom his god descends, has seen himself bound alive upon thy fatal croup, O Genius, thou fiery steed, he struggles in vain, alas! thou boundest, thou carriest him away out from the real world, whose doors thou breakest with thy feet of steel!
"With him thou crossest deserts, hoary summits of the old mountains, and the seas, and dark regions beyond the clouds; and a thousand impure spirits, awakened by thy course, O impudent marvel! press in legions round the voyager.
"He crosses at one flight, on thy wings of flame, every field of the Possible and the worlds of the soul; drinks at the eternal river; in the stormy or starry night, his hair mingled with the mane of comets, flames on heaven's brow.
"Herschel's six moons, old Saturn's ring, the pole, rounding a nocturnal aurora over its boreal brow, he sees them all; and for him thy never-tiring flight moves, every moment, the ideal horizon of this boundless world.
"Who, save demons and angels, can know what he suffers in following thee, and what strange lightnings shall flash from his eyes, how he shall be burned with hot sparks, alas! and what cold wings shall come at night to beat against his brow?
"He cries out in terror; thou, implacable, pursuest. Pale, exhausted, gaping, he bends in affright beneath thy overmastering flight; every step thou advancest seems to dig his grave. At last the end is come ... he runs, he flies, he falls, and arises King!"
"FESTKLÄNGE,"[75] SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 7)[76]
Liszt has supplied no programme of any kind to this symphonic poem (composed in 1851). The music has been variously interpreted. It has been said to be a "portrayal of scenes that illustrate some great national festival"--"a coronation, something surely of a royal character"; others have believed that it was composed to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary (occurring November 9, 1854) of the arrival in Weimar of Liszt's patroness and friend, the Grand-Duchess Marcia Paulowna, sister of the Tsar Nicholas I. Lina Ramann, Liszt's biographer, offers the more plausible explanation that the work was intended as the wedding-music for Liszt and the Princess Carolyn von Sayn-Wittgenstein,[77] between whom, in 1851 (the year of the composition of the music), a union sanctioned by state and church seemed at last to be possible. Fräulein Ramann sees in this symphonic poem "a song of triumph over hostile machinations"; ... "bitterness and anguish are forgotten in proud rejoicing." The programme thus suggested is as acceptable as any other.
"THE BATTLE OF THE HUNS," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 11)[78]
In the summer of 1885 Liszt conceived the idea of setting music to a picture by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1855-1874), one of the set of six frescos on a wall of the Raczynski Gallery in the New Museum at Berlin. The subject of this picture "The Battle of the Huns" (_Hunnenschlacht_), is the legend which tells of the terrific aërial battle between the ghosts of the slain Huns and Romans after the struggle outside the walls of Rome, in 451, which engaged the forces of Attila and of Theodoric the Visigoth. The picture has been thus described: "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."
Liszt's symphonic poem (completed early in 1857) has been found by commentators to typify the conflict between Heathendom and Christianity, eventuating in the triumph of the Cross. The comment of Liszt himself, contained in a letter written in May, 1857, to the wife of Kaulbach, is, naturally, as authoritative as it is valuable: "I have been encouraged," he says, "to send you what indeed truly belongs to you, but what, alas! I must send in so shabby a dress that I must beg from you all the indulgence that you have so often kindly shown me. At the same time with these lines you will receive the manuscript of the two-pianoforte arrangement of my symphonic poem, 'The Battle of the Huns' (written for a large orchestra and completed by the end of last February), and I beg you, dear madam, to do me the favor to accept this work as a token of my great reverence and most devoted friendship towards the master of masters. Perhaps there may be an opportunity later on, in Munich or Weimar, in which I can have the work performed before you with full orchestra, and can give a voice to 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. 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 'Crux fidelis,' than appears to be the case in the glorious painting, in order thereby 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."[79]
"THE IDEAL," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 12)[80]
_Die Ideale_, conceived in 1856, completed in 1857, is based on Schiller's poem of that title. The burden of the poem--which, to Lord Lytton, seemed "an elegy on departed youth"--has been set forth as follows: "The sweet belief in the dream-created beings of youth passes away; what once was divine and beautiful, after which we strove ardently, and which we embraced lovingly with heart and mind, becomes the prey of hard reality; already midway the boon companions--love, fortune, fame, and truth--leave us one after another, and only friendship and activity remain with us as loving comforters."
Schiller's conclusion, which the poet himself admitted to be somewhat tame, did not satisfy Liszt, and in a note to the final section of his symphonic poem he wrote: "The holding fast and at the same time the continual realizing of the ideal is the highest aim of our life. In this sense I ventured to supplement Schiller's poem by a jubilantly emphasizing resumption, in the closing Apotheosis, of the motives of the first section."
Liszt's tonal paraphrase, as he pointed out in a letter to Hans von Bülow, divides itself, after the introduction, into four (connected) sections, superscribed as follows: (1) _Aspiration_; (2) _Disillusion_; (3) _Activity_; (4) _Apotheosis_. There is no programme or argument prefaced to the work, but instead Liszt has printed in the score, as mottoes, quotations from Schiller's poem. These excerpts, consecutively arranged, are as follows--their sequence will suggest the dramatic and emotional outlines of Liszt's music:[81]
[INTRODUCTION]
"Then wilt thou, with thy fancies holy-- Wilt thou, faithless, fly from me? With thy joy, thy melancholy, Wilt thou thus relentless flee? O Golden Time, O Human May, Can nothing, Fleet One, thee restrain? Must thy sweet river glide away Into the eternal Ocean-Main? The suns serene are lost and vanish'd That wont the path of youth to gild, And all the fair Ideals banish'd From that wild heart they whilom fill'd.
ASPIRATION
"The Universe of things seem'd swelling The panting heart to burst its bound, And wandering Fancy found a dwelling In every shape--thought, deed, and sound.
"As a stream slowly fills the urn from the silent springs of the mountain and anon overflows its high banks with regal waves, stones, rocks, and forests fling themselves in its course, but it rushes noisily with proud haste into the ocean.
"Thus happy in his dreaming error, His own gay valor for his wing, Of not one care as yet in terror Did Youth upon his journey spring; Till floods of balm, through air's dominion, Bore upward to the faintest star-- For never aught to that bright pinion Could dwell too high or spread too far.
"How fair was then the flower, the tree! How silver-sweet the fountains fall! The soulless had a soul to me! My life its own life lent to all!
"As once, with tearful passion fired, The Cyprian sculptor clasp'd the stone, Till the cold cheeks, delight inspired, Blush'd--to sweet life the marble grown; So youth's desire for Nature!--round The Statue, so my arms I wreathed, Till warmth and life in mine it found, And breath that poets breathe--it breathed.
"And aye the waves of life how brightly The airy Pageant danced before!-- Love showering gifts (life's sweetest) down; Fortune, with golden garlands gay; And Fame, with starbeams for a crown; And Truth, whose dwelling is the day."
DISILLUSION
"Ah! midway soon lost evermore, After the blithe companions stray; In vain their faithless steps explore, As one by one they glide away.
* * * * *
"And ever stiller yet, and ever The barren path more lonely lay.
"Who, loving, lingered yet to guide me, When all her boon companions fled, Who stands consoling yet beside me, And follows to the House of Dread?
"Thine, Friendship, thine the hand so tender, Thine the balm dropping on the wound, Thy task, the load more light to render, O earliest sought and soonest found!"
ACTIVITY
"And thou, so pleased, with her uniting To charm the soul-storm, into peace, Sweet Toil, in toil itself delighting, That more it labored, less could cease; Tho' but by grains thou aid'st the pile The vast Eternity uprears, At least thou strik'st from Time the while Life's debt--the minutes, days, and years."[82]
The concluding section (the "Apotheosis") of Liszt's symphonic poem, as it was pointed out above, has no analogue in Schiller's poem, but was contrived by Liszt to round out and complete the poet's conception after what seemed to him a nobler and more eloquent plan.
"A FAUST SYMPHONY"[83]
1. FAUST (_Lento assai. Allegro impetuoso_) (_Allegro agitato ed appassionato assai_)
2. GRETCHEN (_Andante soave_)
3. MEPHISTOPHELES (_Allegro vivace ironico_)
The full title of this "symphony" (composed in 1853-54, revised in 1857), which has been said to be "really a concatenation of three symphonic poems rather than a symphony, properly so-called," is (in translation), "A Faust Symphony; in Three Character-Pictures (after Goethe), for Grand Orchestra and Men's Chorus." The names of the "three characters," Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles, head the three movements of the symphony. The men's chorus enters only as an epilogue to the last movement. The plan of the work (the score bears no programme or argument), as lucidly and concisely stated by Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, is as follows:
"By means of musical treatment given to four motives, or themes, in the first movement, the idea of _Faust_ is presented--a type of humanity harassed with doubt, rage, despair, loneliness (the first theme, _Lento_); his strivings and hopes (second theme, _Allegro agitato_); his ideals and longings (third theme, _Andante_); his pride and energy (fourth theme, _Grandioso_).
"The subject of the second movement is Goethe's heroine. There is a brief prelude for flutes and clarinets, which introduces a melody obviously designed to give expression to the gentle grace of _Gretchen's_ character (_Andante_); then a motive borrowed from the beginning of the first theme of the first movement suggests the entrance of _Faust_ into the maiden's mind; it is followed by the second extended melody, which delineates the feeling of love after it has taken complete possession of her soul. This gives way in turn to the third theme of the first movement, in which the composer had given voice to the longings of _Faust_, and which in its development shows the clarifying influence of association with the _Gretchen_ music.
"In the third movement _Mephistopheles_ appears in his character as the spirit of negation ('_Der Geist der stets verneint_'); it is made up of mimicries and parodies of the themes of the first movement, especially the third [Faust's ideals and longings], which one is tempted to think is made the special subject of the evil one's sport, because it enables him to get nearest to _Gretchen_, whose goodness protects her from his wiles. By these means Liszt develops a conflict which finds its solution in the epilogue sung by the male chorus and solo tenor. The text is the _Chorus mysticus_ which ends Goethe's tragedy, the translation of which ... is as follows:
"'All transient earthly things Are but as symbols; The indescribable Here is accomplished; Earth's insufficiency Here grows to event; The woman-soul e'er leads Upward and on!'[84]
"The outcome of the struggle is plainly indicated by the circumstance that the words, 'The Woman-Soul,' are sung to the _Gretchen_ motive."
SYMPHONY AFTER DANTE'S "DIVINA COMMEDIA"[85]
1. INFERNO 2. PURGATORIO AND MAGNIFICAT
This symphony, begun in 1847-48, completed in 1855, is in two parts, the first wholly instrumental, the last having a choral ending. Prefixed to the published score is an introduction, interpretative and analytical, by Richard Pohl, which there is every reason to believe was inspired, as it was evidently sanctioned, by Liszt. Omitting certain not altogether essential passages of philosophic and æsthetic speculation, Pohl's elucidation is as follows:
"When Liszt sought to mirror in music so gigantic a design [as that of Dante's conception], it became his plan to pass by the dramatic and the philosophic parts, that play the rôle, in poetry, of sculpture in architecture. He could view only the ethical (or æsthetical) idea that forms the outline of the whole. He has therefore put no undue strain upon the means at his command; he has not even charged them with a novel burden. He has sought to represent in general merely such feelings as other masters before him have vented in other forms. In dramatic music, Gluck, Mozart, and others have painted the terrors of hell. Grief, longing, and hope have ever been the main motives of lyric music; visions of heavenly choirs are an oft-recurring figure of religious music.
"Dante's poem consists of three main parts. The first has for its burden the bitter, barren, self-consuming woe that hurls its blasphemies at goodness and divine love, the grief that spurns all hope. The second reveals a suffering tempered by hope, purged by love, that is gradually dissolved by its own purifying power. The third part unfolds the highest fulfilment of hope through love, in that blessed contemplation of God that can only be achieved in another life.
"It was thus possible for the composer to preserve the division of the Dante epic without marring the symmetry of the subject in merging the borders of purgatory and heaven. Considerations of art as of creed must have induced the composer not to separate the second and third parts in their appearance, as indeed they are inseparable in an intrinsic sense. By the cleansing and hallowing that the soul undergoes in purgatory, it is brought, in an unbroken course, nearer to the divine presence, until, freed of every clouding stain, it reaches the full contemplation. It lay within the power of music to present this psychic growth as a general conception of purgatory itself, although Dante touches upon this moment of redemption only in a single episode (in the 21st and 22d cantos). The form demanded by his design and by his art did not allow him to linger over this purely lyric side.
"In spite of the merging of the last two parts, it is easy to distinguish in the outline of Liszt's work the three original divisions, of which the first corresponds to Dante's Hell, the second to his Purgatory, and the third, following the second immediately, and sustained in an all-embracing mystic mood, proclaims the heavenly bliss of Paradise."
INFERNO
"The first movement takes us directly to the gates of Hell, which burst ajar with the thunder-tones of the first bars while a harrowing recitative of trombones hurls in our ears the beginning of that famous legend over the infernal gates:
"'_Per me si va nella città dolente: Per me si va nell' eterno dolore: Per me si va tra la perduta gente!_'
("'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!')[86]
"Whereupon the trumpets and horns sound the eternal curse: '_Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate_' ('All hope abandon, ye who enter in.')
"The latter is the main rhythmic motive of the whole movement; it returns again and again in varying guise and volume.
"At our first entrance within the gates begins that demon tumult--we hear, all about, those tones of woe, lament, and blasphemy of which the poet tells in the third canto:
"'_Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, Parole di dolore, accenti d'ira, Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle, Facevano un tumulto, il qual s'aggira, Sempre in quell' aria senza tempo tinta, Come la rena quando il turbo spira._'
("'Languages diverse, horrible dialects, Accents of anger, words of agony, And voices high and hoarse, with sound of hands, Made up a tumult that goes whirling on Forever in that air forever black, Even as the sand doth when the whirlwind breathes.')
"Abyss upon abyss open before our view. We behold those fearful depths that fall from one circle to the other, down to the most hideous torture, the delirium of despair. The _Allegro frenetico_ paints the madness of despondency, the rage of the damned, their curses and maledictions. Without love or rest or solace, they are ever torn along to that region where the sins of carnal lust are atoned, and a horrible hurricane whirls the condemned souls about in perpetual darkness.
"Here the tone poet halts. The storm abates; it ceases for a moment while are invoked the unhappy lovers, Paolo and Francesca da Rimini. A dialogue begins, and we hear the lamenting sounds:
"'_Nessun maggior dolore, Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria_--'
("'There is no greater sorrow Than to be mindful of the happy time In misery--')[87]
"They pass into the _Andante amoroso_ (in 7/4 rhythm), where the composer is enabled, in the midst of the sobs of hell, to let us feel the irresistible charm of youth and beauty. Not of the heavenly kind, the earthly love still lingers here. But earthly passion brings its own punishment, and the essence of its nature seems expressed in the words that abandon all hope of heavenly bliss. And so the sudden breaking in of the motive '_Lasciate ogni speranza_'--though tempered, it is the more ominous and forbidding--is a profound touch of ethical significance.
"When the last glow has passed of this the most alluring of illusive joys, undreamed-of sounds ascend from even deeper abysses. Here hide the sinning souls forgetful of all benefit, contemptuous of mercy, strangers to all reverence, rebellious in their ingratitude. The accents here resound of mockery and scorn and gnashing of teeth. These phantom shrieks of raging impotence are merged in the strange harmonies that lead to the returning motive of the _Allegro frenetico_. The terrible tumult of the damned is enhanced at the close by the thought of the loss of all hope--a final refrain of the _Lasciate_, an all-destroying lightning-blast, seems to reveal the horrid scene of torture in the bosom of the archangel of evil himself. The music here seems to rival the impression of Dante's graphic views and forceful lines upon our minds."
* * * * *
PURGATORIO AND MAGNIFICAT
"The episode of Francesca da Rimini, when she sings of the fatal charm of the sweetest of human errors, was chosen by Liszt from all the many scenes of the 'Inferno.' So in the 'Purgatory' we find one vision taken from the poem. Right in the initial bars Liszt follows the poet through the first canto. After the horrors of hell, the mild azure of heaven calms the risen souls. In ecstasy they greet the 'Sapphire of the East.' A wonderfully gentle murmur, quieting the spirit, puts us in dreams of the sea rocking in eternal radiance. We think of the ship that glides o'er its mirror without breaking the waves. The stars are still twinkling before the nearing splendor of the sun. A cloudless blue o'ervaults the sacred stillness, where we seem to hear the winged flight of the angel that soars over the ocean of infinity.
"This is the first, soul-stirring moment of redemption. Vanished are all the ghosts of an obstinate fancy, of a pride that at once exalts and destroys itself. Dead are the echoes of unbelieving mockery. The last throes of convulsive blasphemy have left the spirit free. A solemn, soothing silence now prevails in which the soul is loosed from painful rigor, where it breathes freely, though still without a full pervading consciousness. After the angry tempest of flaming nights, peace has appeared, but peace alone--the dawn, the light, without the sun. The wearied soul is not yet ready for a more intense experience. This is perhaps the general meaning of the introduction (_Andante_).
"This gentle, passive state, however, is but transitory. The secret powers and senses soon awaken, and with them a ceaseless longing. The more it grows, the stronger the thirst for the divine reality, the keener the desire for its immediate view, the deeper is the sense of weakness, of unworthiness, of inability to reach and comprehend it. Here a certain dread appears, together with a healing, a redeeming pain. The barren anguish of envious impotence has turned to devout penitence. This is, however, a moment of sombre elegy. Dante has uttered its oppression most forcefully in the tenth canto, where the sinners recall in remorse the good and beautiful deeds that they have left undone. There is no other feeling that can so bow down a lofty spirit.
"Here the main motive sounds as a choral hymn. A second theme is then sung _lamentoso_, in fervent self-reproach, in passive resignation, in unutterable grief. The fugue is the most fitting figure for the perpetual play of the feeling at once of retrospection and of hope. At the height of the fugue the main motive (of the choral hymn) rises proudly aloft, presently returns humbly and in contrition, and, broken by phrases of lament, dies finally away. Slowly the heavy clouds of inexpressible woe are lifted. The Catholic chant of the _Magnificat_ proclaims softly deliverance by prayer, "the breathing of the soul." We feel that a conquering penitence is soaring towards eternal blessedness, is leading us up through the purifying circles to the summit of the mystic mount that lifts us to the gates of paradise.
"Now we have reached the point when the poet of the Divine Comedy, at the first song of paradise, stands on the edge of purgatory and catches the glow of the divine light, that his eyes as yet cannot directly bear. Art cannot paint heaven itself, but merely the earthly reflection in the soul that is turned towards the light of divine mercy. And so the full splendor stays hidden from our eyes, though it grows ever brighter with the purer contemplation. Thus far only, the tonal poet wanders in the footsteps of the seer; he does not follow him from star to star, no more than yonder through the various circles of the damned. The idea of absolute bliss transcends human description. The composer could only point to it as a spiritual state that grows from a chain of experience. The union of the soul with God, in prayer, is foreshadowed in the instrumentation. After the sacred glow of divine love has inflamed the human heart, all pain has ceased, all other emotion is lost in the heavenly ecstasy of surrender to God's mercy. The _Magnificat_ of individual praise, extending to the universe, passes into a common Hallelujah and Hosanna, that rises _pianissimo_ in a mighty scale of ancient tone, and creed as well, like a symbolic ladder up to heaven.
"For a long time the soul dwells in this blessed contemplation, that is made sensible by the soft, invisible choir [a hidden chorus of women]. The human heart, attaining a full exaltation, is kindled with a holy fervor and breaks forth with all its strength into a loud jubilation that embraces all worlds of men and spirits. The contrition of the sinner has changed into a knowledge of God and has awakened a champion of God.
"When the instrumental climax that stresses this final moment rings out after a pause, again passing through the seven steps of the scale, and the choir add a last overpowering Hallelujah, we think of all the martyrs whom Dante beheld--holy fathers and soldiers of God, who died for their faith and formed the heavenly hosts who surround the throne of God.[88] Thus closes this mysterious work with the sense of eternal reconciliation, of hope fulfilled, in the glory of transfiguration."[89]
TWO EPISODES FROM LENAU'S "FAUST"
1. THE NOCTURNAL PROCESSION 2. THE DANCE IN THE VILLAGE TAVERN (MEPHISTO WALTZ)
In 1858-59 Liszt composed two orchestral paraphrases of episodes from the "Faust" of Nicolaus Lenau (1802-1850)--_Der nachtliche Zug_ ("The Nocturnal Procession") and _Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke_ ("The Dance in the Village Tavern"). These two pieces he desired should be played together; there was, he admitted, "no thematic connection" between the two; "but, nevertheless, they _belong together_, owing to the contrast of ideas." In spite of Liszt's wish, however, the two pieces are seldom heard together, the first ("The Nocturnal Procession") being, in fact, but seldom played, while the second--generally known as the "Mephisto Waltz"--is a familiar number on contemporary concert programmes. Mr. Frederick Niecks has thus presented the gist of the first episode, "The Nocturnal Procession":
"Heavy, dark clouds, profound night, sweet, spring feeling in the wood, a warm, soulful rustling in the foliage, fragrant air, carolling of the nightingale. Faust rides alone in sombre mood; the farther he advances the greater the silence; he dismounts. What can be the approaching light illuminating bush and sky? A procession, with torches, of white-dressed children carrying wreaths of flowers in celebration of St. John's Eve, followed by virgins in demure nuns' veils, and old priests in dark habits and with crosses. When they have passed by and the last glimpses of the lights have disappeared, Faust buries his face in his horse's mane and sheds tears more bitter than ever he shed before."
The programme of the second episode, "The Dance in the Village Tavern" or "Mephisto Waltz," has been set forth as follows by Mr. Philip Hale:
"Lenau, in this episode of his 'Faust,' pictures a marriage feast at a village tavern. There is music, there is dancing. Mephistopheles, dressed as a hunter, looks in at the tavern window, and beckons Faust to enter and take part in the sport. The fiend assures him that a damsel tastes better than a folio, and Faust answers that for some reason or other his blood is boiling. A black-eyed peasant girl maddens him at first sight, but Faust does not dare to greet her. Mephistopheles laughs at him, 'who has just had it out with hell, and is now shame-faced before a woman.' The musicians do not please him, and he cries out: 'My dear fellows, you draw a sleepy bow. Sick pleasure may turn about on lame toes to your waltz, but not youth full of blood and fire. Give me a fiddle: it will sound otherwise, and there will be different leaping in the tavern.' And Mephistopheles plays a tune. There is wild dancing, so that even the walls are pale with envy because they cannot join in the waltz. Faust presses the hand of the dark girl, he stammers oaths of love. Together they dance through the open door, through garden and over meadow, to the forest. Fainter and fainter are heard the tones of the fiddle: they are heard through songs of birds and in the wondrous dream of sensual forgetfulness."
It has been recalled--and the fact is historically interesting--that when the "Mephisto Waltz" was first played in Boston under Theodore Thomas (October 10, 1870), in a day that knew not the _Till Eulenspiegel_ or _Salome_ of Strauss, Mr. John S. Dwight, a critic of wide influence in the earlier days of music in America, was moved to stigmatize the music as "positively devilish, simply diabolical"; for, he held, "it shuts out every ray of light and heaven, from whence music sprang."
FOOTNOTES:
[70] Without opus number.
[71] Without opus number.
[72] Without opus number.
[73] This translation (the preface in the score is printed both in the original French of Liszt and in a German version made by Peter Cornelius) is probably the work of Mr. W. F. Apthorp.
[74] Without opus number.
[75] The English translation of this title, "Sounds of Festivity," would not identify it in the minds of most readers with Liszt's symphonic poem, which is most familiarly known by its German name.
[76] Without opus number.
[77] The Polish princess to whom Liszt was devoted for many years, and with whom he sought unsuccessfully to effect a legal union. She was born in Monasterzyska (Kieff), February 8, 1819, and died in Rome, March 3, 1887.
[78] Without opus number.
[79] Translated by Constance Bache.
[80] Without opus number.
[81] The order in which the verses are quoted by Liszt is not the order which they follow in Schiller's poem; and Liszt has included certain passages which Schiller omitted in the final revised form of _Die Ideale_.
[82] The quotations in verse are from Lord Lytton's translation. The prose passage in the "Aspiration" section is from a translation by Mr. Frederick Niecks.
[83] Without opus number.
[84]
"Alles Vergängliche Ist nur ein Gleichniss; Das Unzulängliche, Hier wird's Erreigniss;
"Das Unbeschreibliche, Hier ist's gethan; Das Ewig-Weibliche Zieht uns hinan."
[85] Without opus number.
[86] This translation, and those that follow, are from the English version of Longfellow.
[87] The translation of these lines in the prose version of Dr. John A. Carlyle--"There is no greater pain than to recall a happy time in wretchedness"--may appear to some to be more felicitous, as it is more precise, than that of Longfellow.
[88] The final passage is said to have been conceived as an expression of the thought in these lines of Dante (from the twenty-first canto of the "Paradiso"):
"I saw rear'd up, In color like to sun-illumined gold, A ladder, which my ken pursued in vain, So lofty was the summit; down whose steps I saw the splendors in such multitude Descending, every light in heaven, methought, Was shed thence."
--_Translated by H. F. Cary._
[89] The English of this "introduction" is from the translation of Mr. Philip H. Goepp.
LOEFFLER
(_Charles Martin Loeffler: born in Mülhausen (Alsace), Germany, January 30, 1861; now living in Medfield, Massachusetts_)
"THE DEATH OF TINTAGILES" SYMPHONIC POEM: Op. 6
_La Mort de Tintagiles: Poème Dramatique (d'après le drame de M. Maeterlinck),[90] pour grand orchestre et viole d'amour_, was composed in 1897. It was written originally for orchestra and two violas d'amore[91] obbligato, and was played in this form, for the first time, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, on January 8, 1898. The score was subsequently remodelled, the second viola-d'amore part being eliminated and the prominence of the remaining solo part reduced; the instrumentation throughout was changed, and the score amended in other ways. In its present form it dates from September, 1900.
Loeffler has not essayed a literal and detailed paraphrase of Maeterlinck's play. His music is rather the expression of moods which it suggests, of emotions aroused by the singularly potent and haunting conception of the dramatist. A description and condensed paraphrase of the action of the play, written by Mr. Philip Hale, is printed on a fly-leaf of the score.[92] It reads as follows:
"_La Mort de Tintagiles_, a little drama for marionettes, is in five short acts. The characters are the tender boy Tintagiles; his older sisters, Ygraine and Bellangère; Aglovale, the warrior retainer, now very old and tired; and the three handmaidens of the Queen.
"Tintagiles is the future monarch of the nameless land in the strange years of legends. He and his sisters are living in a gloomy and airless castle far down in a valley; and in a tower that shows at night red-litten windows lurks the enthroned Queen. The serene ancients portrayed Death as beautiful of face; but this Queen in the nameless land is not beautiful in any way; she is fat as a sated spider. She squats alone in the tower. They that serve her do not go out by day. The Queen is very old; she is jealous, she cannot brook the thought of another on the throne. They that by chance have seen her will not speak of her--and some whisper that they who are thus silent did not dare to look upon her. 'Tis she who commanded that Tintagiles, her orphaned grandson, should be brought over the sea to the sombre castle where Ygraine and Bellangère have passed years, as blind fish in the dull pool of a cavern.
"The sea howls, the trees groan, but Tintagiles sleeps after his fear and tears. The sisters bar the chamber door, for Bellangère has heard strange muttering in rambling, obscure corridors, chuckling over the child whom the Queen would fain see. Ygraine is all of a tremble; nevertheless, she believes half-heartedly and for the nonce that he may yet be spared; then she remembers how the Horror in the tower has been as a tombstone pressing down her soul. Aglovale cannot be of aid, he is so old, so weary of it all. Her bare and slender arms are all that is between the boy and the hideous Queen of Darkness and of Terror.
"Tintagiles awakes. He suffers and knows not why. He hears a vague something at the door, and others hear it. A key grinds in the lock outside. The door opens slowly. Of what avail is Aglovale's sword used as a bar? It breaks. The door is opened wider, but there is neither sight nor sound of an intruder. The boy has fainted, and the chamber suddenly is cold and quiet. Tintagiles is again conscious and he shrieks. The door closes mysteriously.
"Watchers and boy are at last asleep. The veiled handmaidens whisper in the corridor; they enter stealthily and snatch Tintagiles from the warm and sheltering arms of life. A cry comes from him: 'Sister Ygraine!' a cry as from some one afar off.
"The sister, haggard, with lamp in hand, agonizes in a sombre vault, a vault that is black and cold; agonizes before a huge iron door in the tower tomb. The keyless door is a forbidding thing sealed in the wall. She has tracked Tintagiles by his golden curls found on the steps, along the walls. A little hand knocks feebly on the other side of the door; a weak voice cries to her. He will die if she does not come to him, and quickly; for he has struck the Queen, who is hurrying towards him. Even now he hears her panting in pursuit; even now she is about to clutch him. He can see a glimmer of the lamp through a crevice which is so small that a needle could hardly make its way. The hands of Ygraine are bruised, her nails are torn, she dashes the lamp against the door in her wild endeavor, and she, too, is in the blackness of darkness. Death has Tintagiles by the throat. 'Defend yourself!' screams the sister: 'don't be afraid of her! One moment and I'll be with you! Tintagiles? Tintagiles? Answer me! Help! Where are you? I'll aid you!--kiss me!--through the door!--here's the place!--here!' The voice of Tintagiles--how faint it is!--is heard through the door for the last time: 'I kiss you, too--here--Sister Ygraine! Sister Ygraine! Oh!' The little body falls.
"Ygraine bursts into wailing and impotent raging. She beseeches in vain the hidden, noiseless monster....
"Long and inexorable silence. Ygraine would spit on the Destroyer, but she sinks down and sobs gently in the darkness, with her arms on the keyless door of iron."
Loeffler's music opens with a suggestion of the sombre and portentous scene which begins the drama; a suggestion of the gathering storm, the tossing trees, the wild and sinister night. A mood is created--a mood appropriate to the prevailing emotional atmosphere of the play; and this mood is developed in the music without particular relation to the progress of the drama until near the close, where the composer takes up the thread of the action at the point in the last act were Ygraine, waiting in agonized vigil before the keyless door of iron, hears, from behind the barrier, the despairing voice and piteous appeals of the doomed Tintagiles. Here the music becomes definitely dramatic in its expression: "There is the plaintive voice of the timorous child; there are the terrifying steps in the corridor, the steps as of many, who do not walk as other beings, yet they draw near and whisper without the guarded door." As the themes of the score were conceived in accordance with the spirit of the play, it may be pointed out, on the authority of the composer, that there are musical symbols for certain of its principal characters and events. Thus a forbidding and threatening phrase which occurs persistently throughout (its first appearance is near the beginning, where it is declaimed, _forte_, by double-basses, 'cellos, bassoons, and bass clarinet, against string tremolos and agitated runs in the higher wood-wind) typifies the Dread Queen, the Queen of Darkness and of Terror--or, not to put too fine a point upon it, the idea of predestined and over-shadowing death: for, as it has been observed of another of Maeterlinck's plays, "the symbol floats like a flag" in this drama. The plaintive and dolorous tones of the viola d'amore may be said to voice the pathos of those who are foredoomed--typified in the play by the child Tintagiles. The culminating and concluding scene of the tragedy has its counterpart in the climax of the symphonic poem: an anguished _crescendo_ ascent of the strings and wood-wind, _allegro frenetico_, punctuated by gasping ejaculations of trumpets and cornets, is suddenly cut short, as it were, in mid-air, while above a roll of the drums and the sinister vibration of the gong the theme of the Evil Queen--the theme of Death--is proclaimed _fortissimo_ by violins, English horn, and clarinet. Then begins an epilogue which has no actual equivalent in the drama--which transcends yet fulfils it. The ending of the play is grievous and terrible in the extreme, but the ending of the tone-poem, while it is conceived in a mood of deep and piercing sadness, is at once elegiac and tender: violins and horns intone, _molto dolente_, a poignant phrase most acutely harmonized; 'cellos and double-basses recall the Death theme; the 'cellos alone sing an expressive phrase which bears a striking resemblance to a melodic idea in the composer's song, _Les Paons_,[93] and this introduces a _cantabile_ passage, of intense and vivid sweetness (likewise suggestive of _Les Paons_), for strings, brass, wood-wind, and harp. The music dies away with long-sustained chords, _piano_, in the trombones, trumpets, horns, and higher wood-wind.
"POEM" ["LA BONNE CHANSON"]: Op. 8
In 1901 Loeffler wrote, as a companion piece to his _Villanelle du Diable_ (see the following pages), an "aubade" for orchestra inspired by Paul Verlaine's ecstatic lines addressed to his bride, Mathilde Mauté, and printed in the volume of poems entitled _La Bonne Chanson_.[94] Loeffler's paraphrase was originally entitled _Avant que tu ne t'en ailles_, after the opening line of the poem; later this was changed to _La Bonne Chanson_; the title finally chosen by the composer is the French of that given above--_Poème_.
Verlaine's poem, in English prose, is as follows:
"Before you fade and disappear, pale morning-star--a thousand quails call in the thyme--
"Turn towards the poet, whose eyes brim with love--the lark mounts skyward with the day--
"Turn your face which the dawn drowns in its blue--what joy among ripe wheat-fields!--
"Make my thought shine yonder--far off, O so far!--The dew shines brightly on the hay--
"In the sweet dream wherein my love still sleeping stirs--Quick! be quick! for, lo, the golden sun!"[95]
Loeffler's tonal translation of Verlaine's poem is in spirit a rhapsody, in form "a fantastic kind of _thème varié_" (theme with variations), as he describes it, "the theme appearing even in canonic form and in inversion."[96] The music opens with a passage suggestive of the opening verse of the poem: harp, glockenspiel,[97] and strings evoke the thought of the early dawn, the fading and disappearing star. The strings sing the principal theme. After an _allegro_ passage (some will find here the thought of the ascending lark), there is a return to the serener mood of the opening; antique cymbals hint at the sparkle of the dew on the hay. The music keeps pace with the mounting eagerness and desire of the poet-lover; the excitement grows, reaching its climax in an effulgent outburst of the full orchestra, announcing the rising sun.
"THE DEVIL'S VILLANELLE," SYMPHONIC FANTASIA: Op. 9
_La Villanelle du Diable, d'après un poème de M. Rollinat, Fantasie symphonique, pour grand orchestre__et orgue_, was composed in 1901. Its subject is Maurice Rollinat's[98] strange poem, _La Villanelle du Diable_. A "villanelle" (in the sense in which the term is used by Rollinat) is an old verse-form in which a couplet is followed by a refrain. In Rollinat's poem there are two alternating refrains, or burdens, which are united at the end.
The first is:
"Hell's a-burning, burning, burning." (_L'enfer brûle, brûle, brûle._)
the second:
"The Devil, prowling, runs about." (_Le Diable rôde et circule._)
Each refrain has been given a musical counterpart by the composer, and each couplet is illustrated, though suggestively rather than in literal detail.
The following prose translation of Rollinat's verses, made by Mr. Philip Hale, is prefixed to the published score of Loeffler's fantasia:
"Hell's a-burning, burning, burning. Chuckling in clear staccato, the Devil, prowling, runs about.
"He watches, advances, retreats like zig-zag lightning; Hell's a-burning, burning, burning.
"In dive and cell, underground and in the air, the Devil, prowling, runs about.
"Now he is flower, dragon-fly, woman, black cat, green snake; Hell's a-burning, burning, burning.
"And now, with pointed mustache, scented with vetiver, the Devil, prowling, runs about.
"Wherever mankind swarms, without rest, summer and winter, Hell's a-burning, burning, burning.
"From alcove to hall, and on the rail-ways, the Devil, prowling, runs about.
"He is Mr. Seen-at-Night, who saunters with staring eyes. Hell's a-burning, burning, burning.
"There floating as a bubble, here squirming as a worm, the Devil, prowling, runs about.
"He's grand seigneur, tough, student, teacher. Hell's a-burning, burning, burning.
"He inoculates each soul with his bitter whispering: the Devil, prowling, runs about.
"He promises, bargains, stipulates in gentle or proud tones. Hell's a-burning, burning, burning.
"Mocking pitilessly the unfortunate whom he destroys, the Devil, prowling, runs about.
"He makes goodness ridiculous and the old man futile. Hell's a-burning, burning, burning.
"At the home of priest or sceptic, whose soul and body he wishes, the Devil, prowling, runs about.
"Beware of him to whom he toadies, and whom he calls 'My dear sir.' Hell's a-burning, burning, burning.
"Friend of the tarantula, darkness, the odd number, the Devil, prowling, runs about.
"--My clock strikes midnight. If I should go to see Lucifer?--Hell's a-burning, burning, burning; the Devil, prowling, runs about."
"A PAGAN POEM," FOR ORCHESTRA AND PIANO: Op. 14
This tone-poem was written originally (in 1901) for a small combination of instruments,[99] and was intended for performance as chamber-music. It was afterwards arranged for two pianos and three trumpets, and was performed in private in this form. In 1905-6 the work was recast in its present shape--for orchestra with piano. Its inspiration is derived from the Eighth Eclogue of Virgil, the subject of which consists of two love-songs, placed in the mouths of Damon and Alphesibœus. The poetic basis of Loeffler's music is found in the second of these love-songs. A Thessalian girl has resorted to magic incantations in the hope that she may bring back to her cottage her truant lover Daphnis. The passage which inspired the mood of the music, and which is quoted as a preface to the score, is as follows (beginning, in the original, at the line _Effer aquam, et molli cinge hæc altaria vitta_):
"Fetch water forth, and twine the altars here with the soft fillet, and burn resinous twigs and make frankincense, that I may try by magic rites to turn my lover's sense from sanity; nothing is wanting now but the songs.
"_Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home._
"Songs have might, even, to draw down the moon from heaven; with songs Circe transformed the crew of Ulysses; by singing, the cold snake is burst asunder in the meadows.
"_Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home._
"Threefold first I twine about thee these diverse triple-hued threads, and thrice round these altars I draw thine image: an odd number is god's delight.
"_Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home._
"Tie the threefold colors in three knots, Amaryllis, but tie them; and say, 'I tie Venus's bands.'
"_Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home._
"As this clay stiffens and as this wax softens in one and the self-same fire, so let Daphnis do for love of me. Sprinkle barley-meal, and kindle the brittle bay-twigs with bitumen. Cruel Daphnis burns me; I burn this bay at Daphnis.
"_Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home._
"So may Daphnis love, as when the heifer, weary with seeking the steer through woodland and high grove, sinks on the green sedge by a water-brook, in misery, and recks not to retire before the falling night: so may love hold him, nor may I care to heal.
"_Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home._
"This dress he wore of old the traitor left me, dear pledges of himself; which now I even in the doorway, O earth, commit to thee; for these pledges Daphnis is the debt.
"_Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home._
"These herbs, and these poisons gathered in Pontus, Mœris himself gave me; in Pontus they grow thickest. By their might I have often seen Mœris become a wolf and plunge into the forest, often seen him call up souls from their deep graves and transplant the harvests to where they were not sown.
"_Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home._
"Fetch ashes, Amaryllis, out-of-doors, and fling them across thy head into the running brook; and look not back. With these I will assail Daphnis: nothing cares he for gods, nothing for songs.
"_Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home._
"See! the embers on the altar have caught with a flickering flame, themselves, of their own accord, while I delay to fetch them. Be it for good! something there is for sure; and Hylax barks in the doorway. May we believe? or do lovers fashion dreams of their own?
"_Forbear: from the city--forbear now, my songs--Daphnis comes._"[100]
The refrain--_Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim_--is intoned by three trumpets behind the scenes.
FOOTNOTES:
[90] _La Mort de Tintagiles_ is one of the _Trois petits drames pour marionnettes_ published in one volume in 1894. The two others were _Alladine et Palomides_ and _Intérieur_.
[91] The _viola d'amore_, or _viole d'amour_, is a member of the now virtually obsolete family of viols. Its characteristic feature is a supplementary set of strings, passing beneath the fingerboard and through holes drilled in the lower part of the bridge, which vibrate sympathetically with the strings actually engaged by the bow. The tone produced is of a singularly rich and beautiful quality. Until Loeffler wrote for it in _La Mort de Tintagiles_, the only conspicuous modern use of the instrument was by Meyerbeer in his opera _Les Huguenots_, where it is employed in the accompaniment to _Raoul's_ air in the first act, _Plus blanche que la blanche hermine_. This obbligato part, written by Meyerbeer especially for Chrétien Urhan (see foot-note on page 39), is now commonly given to an ordinary viola.
[92] This work is issued, as is all of Loeffler's published music, by G. Schirmer.
[93] One of a set of four songs (_Timbres Oubliés_, _Adieu pour jamais_, _Les Soirs d'Automne_, _Les Paons_), to words by Gustave Kahn, published in 1904 with the title, _Quatre Mélodies pour chant et piano_ (op. 10).
[94] _La Bonne Chanson_ was published in 1870, the year of Verlaine's marriage to Mathilde Mauté. In his _Confessions_ he praises it as "so sincere, so amiably, sweetly, purely thought, so simply written." On another occasion he spoke of it as follows (the English is Mr. Arthur Symons's): "The author values it as perhaps the most _natural_ of his works. Indeed, it was Art, violent or delicate, which had affected to reign, almost exclusively, in his former works, and it was only from then that it was possible to trace in him true and simple views concerning nature, physical and moral.... Life had its way, and distress soon came, not without his own fault, to the household of the poet, who suddenly threw up everything and went wandering in search of unsatisfying distractions." Verlaine and his wife were divorced a few years after their marriage.
[95] Translated by Mr. Philip Hale.
[96] A "canon" is the most strict and rigid form of what musicians call "imitation." In canonic writing, two or more parts, or "voices," take up and repeat, or "imitate," in succession precisely the same phrase or subject. A theme is said to be "inverted" when it is repeated in contrary motion, turned upside-down, as it were, ascending intervals being represented by descending, and _vice versa_.
[97] An orchestral implement used to produce a bell-like tone.
[98] Maurice Rollinat, a godson of George Sand, was born in Châteauroux, France, in 1853 (some authorities say 1846). He was both poet and composer--though his music has not compelled respect among the knowing. He was a celebrity in Paris during the early eighties, when his volume of poems, _Les Névroses_, appeared, the volume which contained _La Villanelle du Diable_. He died in a mad-house at Ivry on October 26, 1903. Two other poems from _Les Névroses_--_L'Étang_ and _La Cornemuse_--have suggested music to Loeffler: they form the poetic bases of his two "Rhapsodies" for oboe, viola, and piano, published in 1905.
[99] Piano, two flutes, oboe, clarinet, English horn, two horns in F, three trumpets (behind the scenes), viola, and double-bass.
[100] From the English version of F. W. Mackail, London, 1889.
MACDOWELL
(_Edward MacDowell: born in New York City, December 18, 1861; now living there and in Peterboro, N. H._)
"LANCELOT AND ELAINE," SYMPHONIC POEM: Op. 25
This symphonic poem was composed at Wiesbaden in 1886. The published score contains no indication of the specific moods, scenes, or incidents which gave rise to the music; there is merely the brief line: "After Tennyson," printed beneath the title. Yet it is known that MacDowell conceived his music to correspond, point by point, with certain definite happenings in the story of Lancelot and the Lily Maid of Astolat, as narrated by Tennyson; and this correspondence between the poem and the music it is possible to indicate here in some detail.
These are the incidents which are successively illustrated in the music:
I. "LANCELOT AND GUINEVERE. THE QUEEN INDUCES LANCELOT TO ENTER THE LISTS AT CAMELOT." [101]
[An expressive theme for the strings, suggestive of the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, afterwards repeated by the wood-wind.]
II. "LANCELOT RIDES SADLY TO THE TOURNAMENT" --
[A knightly theme (the Lancelot motive) for the horns, against an opposing figure in the basses.]
III. --"AND, COMING TO THE CASTLE OF ELAINE'S FATHER" --
IV. --"SEES ELAINE"--
[An oboe solo, gentle and pensive, is heard against an exceedingly delicate accompaniment figure in the strings.]
V. --"AND GOES TO THE TOURNAMENT WEARING HER TOKEN."
VI. "THE HERALDS."
[Martial phrases (an expansion of the opening theme) for horns, trumpets, and trombones, declaimed "very forcibly, almost roughly."]
VII. "THE TOURNAMENT."
[An energetic figure in the violins (the Tournament theme), increasing in speed and force, brings a climax in which the Lancelot theme is heard _fortissimo_ in the brass.]
VIII. "LANCELOT'S VICTORY"--
[The Lancelot theme is proclaimed, _furioso_, by horns and wood-wind.]
IX. --"AND DOWNFALL."
[A precipitous descent of the violins, followed by a dramatic pause. Clarinets and bassoons have a mournful reminiscence of Lancelot's motive.]
X. "THE COMING OF ELAINE." ("What matter, so I help him back to life?")
[Lancelot's theme, in the wood-wind and horns, is heard, _diminuendo_, against trills and tremolos, _pianissimo_, in the strings.]
XI. "THE SADNESS OF ELAINE." ("I fain would follow love, if that could be: I needs must follow death, who calls for me.")
[The theme of the opening (the love-theme of Lancelot and Guinevere) recurs significantly in the muted[102] strings.]
XII. "LANCELOT GOES BACK TO THE COURT." [The Lancelot theme is heard in the strings and wood-wind.]
XIII. "LANCELOT AND THE QUEEN." ("Take ... These jewels, and make me happy, making them An armlet for the roundest arm on earth.")
[An impassioned episode. Trumpets and trombones sound an imperious phrase, _fortissimo_, against tempestuous passages in the strings.]
XIV. "GUINEVERE THROWS THE TROPHIES INTO THE RIVER."
[A tumultuous orchestral outburst, followed by a sudden descent of the strings through three octaves.]
XV. "LANCELOT SEES THE BLACK BARGE BEARING ELAINE DOWN THE RIVER."
("In her right hand the lily, in her left The letter--all her bright hair streaming down-- And all the coverlet was cloth of gold Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white All but her face, and that clear-featured face Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead, But fast asleep, and lay as tho' she smiled.")
[A solemn episode for wood-wind, horns, and strings; the violins have a persistent tremolo.]
XVI. "ELAINE'S MESSAGE."
("I loved you, and my love had no return, And therefore my true love has been my death.
* * * * *
"Pray for my soul, thou too. Sir Lancelot, As thou art a knight peerless.")
[The Elaine theme is dolorously recalled, _pianissimo_, by the oboe, under a trill in the violins.]
XVII. "AND LANCELOT SITS BY THE RIVER-BANK"--
[Under a weaving accompaniment figure in the violins, _ppp_, two horns intone, very softly and tenderly, a variant of the Lancelot theme.]
XVIII. "--NEVER DREAMING THAT HE SHOULD DIE 'A HOLY MAN'"
[Long-sustained chords, _pianissimo_, for full orchestra.]
TWO FRAGMENTS (AFTER THE "SONG OF ROLAND"): Op. 30
1. THE SARACENS (_Die Sarazenen_) 2. THE LOVELY ALDÂ (_Die schöne Aldâ_)
MacDowell, while living in Wiesbaden, Germany (from 1885 to 1888), projected a symphony on the subject of the Song of Roland, and a portion of it was composed; but the plan was afterwards abandoned, and the music which was to have formed part of the symphony was published, in 1891, in the form of two short tone-poems founded upon episodes in the poem, and entitled: _Die Sarazenen_; _Die schöne Aldâ: Zwei Fragmente (nach dem Rolandslied) für grosses Orchester_. MacDowell has quoted on the fly-leaf of the score those portions of the poem from which the conception of his music sprang.
"The Saracens," a tempestuous _Allegretto feroce_, is a sombre portrayal of the scene in which Ganelon swears to commit treason against Roland, while the Saracens feast amid the flaring of pagan fires and the wailing of sinister music. It is based on these lines from the Song (printed in the score in old German):
THE SARACENS
"With blasts of trumpets and amid festal and warlike scenes, tumultuously rushed forward the heathen hordes and all their high chiefs. Quoth Ganelon: 'I swear to you that of Roland I shall make an end.'"[103]
The second "fragment," "The Lovely Aldâ," an _Andantino teneramente_ of grave tenderness, depicts the loveliness and the grieving of Aldâ, Roland's wife.[104] MacDowell uses as a preface lines from the German version, which, in translation, read thus:
THE LOVELY ALDÂ
"Then came forward the lovely Aldâ; graciously was she received by the Emperor himself and all his court. Spake she: 'Karl, consecrated sovereign, where is my Roland? Bring back to me my hero, he to whom you gave me as wife! Ah, what joy should I have in beholding him once more!'"
SUITE (No. 2), "INDIAN": Op. 48
This suite, in five movements, was composed in 1891-92. It is MacDowell's last and most important orchestral work. Its thematic material, as he acknowledges in a prefatory note to the score, is based upon melodies of the North American Indians, with the exception of a few subsidiary themes of his own invention. "If separate titles for the different movements are desired," he says in his note, "they should be arranged as follows [I give them here together with the expression marks at the head of each movement, which are highly indicative of their character]:
1. "LEGEND" ("_Not fast; with much dignity and character_")
2. "LOVE-SONG" ("_Not fast; tenderly_")
3. "IN WAR TIME" ("_With rough vigor, almost savagely_")
4. "DIRGE" ("_Dirgelike, mournfully_")
5. "VILLAGE FESTIVAL" ("_Swift and light_")
Although there is no reason to believe that MacDowell has here based his music upon such a detailed dramatic plan as underlies, for example, his symphonic poem "Lancelot and Elaine" (see pages 191-194), it is evident that he was inspired by moods and pictures the nature of which is sufficiently indicated by the titles of the different movements. It may be interesting to note that there is authority for the statement that the principal theme of the first movement ("Legend") was taken from a harvest-song of the Iroquois Indians in New York State; that for his second movement ("Love-Song") the composer used a love-song of the Iowas; that the dominant theme of "In War Time" is one to which the Indians of the Atlantic coast attributed a supernatural origin and character; that a Kiowa theme (a woman's song of mourning for her lost son) dominates the "Dirge"; and that the chief melodic ideas of the last movement are a war-song and a woman's dance of the Iroquois.
In this music, it has been said, MacDowell "has caught and transfixed the essential character of his subject: these are the sorrows and laments and rejoicings, not of our own day and people, but of the vanished life of an elemental and dying race: here is the solitude of dark forests, of vast and windswept prairies, and the sombreness and wildness of one knows not what grim tragedies and romances and festivities enacted in the shadow of a fading past."
[MacDowell's three remaining works for orchestra--the symphonic poem "Hamlet; Ophelia" (Op. 22),[105] the "Suite" (No. 1: Op. 42), and its supplement, "In October"--have no programmes whatsoever. The suite is in four movements, titled as follows: (1) "In a Haunted Forest" (_In einem verwünschten Walde_); (2) "Summer Idyll" (_Sommer-Idylle_); (3) "The Shepherdess' Song" (_Gesang der Hirten_); (4) "Forest Spirits" (_Waldgeister_). "In October," the supplement, is in one movement. This episode formed part of the original suite, but was not published until several years after (the first four parts were published in 1891; the supplement in 1893). Both are included under the same opus number.]
FOOTNOTES:
[101] The headings are those chosen by the composer.
[102] See page 12, foot-note.
[103] Ganelon (or Ganelonne) was the traitor in Charlemagne's camp through whose perfidy Roland met his death. After the war Ganelon was taken to Aix and was there sentenced by the Emperor to be torn in pieces by four horses, pulling apart his arms and legs; the execution took place before the entire court.
[104] This according to the German version used by MacDowell. In the French, Aldâ appears not as the wife, but as the betrothed, of Roland. This is the passage as it occurs in the (modern) French version:
"L'Empereur est revenu d'Espagne, Il vient à Aix, la meillure ville de France. Monte au palais, entre en la salle, Une belle damoiselle vient à lui; C'est Aude. Elle dit au Roi, 'Où est Roland le capitaine, Qui m'a juré de me prendre pour femme?'"
[105] This work was composed at Frankfort in 1884, and was published in the following year with the title: "Hamlet; Ophelia: Two Poems for Grand Orchestra"; but the composer afterwards changed his mind concerning this designation, and preferred to entitle the score: "First Symphonic Poem (a. 'Hamlet'; b. 'Ophelia')." "Lancelot and Elaine" was published in 1888 with the sub-title: "Second Symphonic Poem."
MENDELSSOHN
(_Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: born in Hamburg, February 3, 1809; died in Leipsic, November 4, 1847_)
OVERTURE, "A MIDSUMMER-NIGHTS DREAM": Op. 21
Mendelssohn, knowing Shakespeare through German translations by Schlegel and Tieck, wrote in 1826 (he was then seventeen years old) his overture to "A Midsummer-Night's Dream." The music was begun July 7th, and finished August 6th. It was first written as a piano duet, and afterwards scored for orchestra. Mendelssohn's incidental music to Shakespeare's play was not composed until seventeen years later. The following comments by Mr. Frederick Niecks furnish an excellent indication of the significance of the overture: "Before our mind's eye," he writes, "are called up Oberon and Titania as they meet in 'grove or green by fountain clear or spangled starlight sheen'; the elves, who, when their king and queen quarrel, creep into acorn-cups; ... Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed; the knavish sprite Puck, _alias_ Robin Goodfellow, who delights in playing merry pranks.... But there are other things in the overture than fairies. There are Duke Theseus and his betrothed, Queen Hippolyta, and their train; the two pairs of lovers--Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena; and those hempen homespuns, the Athenian tradesmen--Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout, and Starveling.... But let us see where the different _dramatis personæ_ are to be found in the overture.
"The sustained chords of the wind instruments [which begin the work] are the magic formula that opens to us the realm of fairyland. The busy, tripping part of the first subject [violins and violas] tells us of the fairies; the broader and dignified part, of Duke Theseus and his following; the passionate first part of the second subject [at first wood-wind, then strings, later the full orchestra], of the romantic lovers; and the clownish second part, of the tradesmen, the braying reminding us of Bottom's transformation into an ass. The development is full of the vivacious bustle and play and fun of the elves; ... the _pianissimo_ passage towards the end ... signifies the elves' blessing on the house of the Duke. In conclusion we have once more the magic formula [the four sustained chords of the opening], which now dissolves the dream it had before conjured up."
OVERTURE, "FINGAL'S CAVE" [OR, "THE HEBRIDES"][106]: Op. 26
Mendelssohn, visiting the Hebrides in 1829, was deeply impressed with what he saw. "In order to make you realize," he says in a letter written August 7, 1829, "how extraordinarily the Hebrides affected me, the following came into my mind there"--then follows, in notation, a passage from the overture. Later in the month he wrote from Glasgow: "How much lies between then and now! ... Staffa--scenery, travels, people: Klingerman [the friend who accompanied him] has described it all, and you will excuse a short note, especially as what I can best tell you is contained in the above music." In September he wrote from London: "'The Hebrides' story builds itself up gradually"; and early in the following year (January 21, 1832) he wrote from Paris: "I cannot bring 'The Hebrides' to a hearing here because I do not regard it as finished in the form in which I originally wrote it [the first version of the overture was finished late in 1830]. The middle portion ... is very stupid, and the whole working out smells more of counterpoint than of blubber, sea-gulls, and salt fish." His friend Klingermann wrote as follows of the impressions produced by Fingal's Cave: "We were put out in boats, and climbed, the hissing sea close beside us, over the pillar stumps to the celebrated Fingal's Cave. A greener roar of waters surely never rushed into a stranger cavern--comparable, on account of the many pillars, to the inside of an immense organ, black and resounding, lying there absolutely purposeless in its utter loneliness, the wide, gray sea within and without."
It has been said of the music of this overture that, in hearing it, "you will think of yourself in a ship, gliding over rocking waves, about you a vast expanse of sea and sky, light breezes blowing, the romantic stories of the past coloring the sights that one has seen." Wagner, on the strength of this work, praised the composer as "a landscape painter of the first order."
OVERTURE, "BECALMED AT SEA AND PROSPEROUS VOYAGE": Op. 27
Mendelssohn's _Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt_[107] was written in illustration of two short and contrasted poems by Goethe, entitled _Meeres Stille_ and _Glückliche Fahrt_ (published in 1796). They have been translated into English prose as follows:
"BECALMED AT SEA"
"A profound stillness rules in the water; the ocean rests motionless; and the anxious mariner looks on a smooth sea round about him. No breeze in any quarter! Fearful quiet of death! Over the monstrous waste no billow stirs."
"PROSPEROUS VOYAGE"
"The fog has lifted, the sky is clear, and the Wind-god looses the hesitant band. The winds sough, the mariner looks alive. Haste! Haste! The billows divide, the far-off grows near; already I see the land!"
The overture was composed in 1828, and revised five years later. The introduction (_Adagio_) pictures the ominous calm, the deathlike quiet of the waters, the vast and motionless expanse of windless sea. The flute-calls which end this first section have been interpreted as "the cry of some solitary sea-bird," as "whistling for the wind," as a portrayal of "dead silence and solitude." Then follows (_Molto allegro vivace_) the picture of the sudden and inspiriting change which comes with the springing up of the breeze--the clearing of the sky, the joyous resumption of the voyage, the exhilarated spirits of the mariners. The conclusion suggests the happy arrival in port, the salutes, the dropping of the anchor.
OVERTURE TO THE LEGEND OF THE LOVELY MELUSINA: Op. 32
We know, on the testimony of Mendelssohn himself, that this overture, based on the ancient legend of the fair being who was part woman and part fish, was suggested to the composer by an opera on the subject which he saw at Berlin in 1833. Under date of April 7, 1834, he wrote to his sister Fanny: "You ask me which legend you are to read. How many, then, are there? And how many, then, do I know? And do you not know the story of the lovely Melusina?... Or have you really never heard of the beautiful fish? I have composed this overture to an opera by Konradin Kreutzer ["Melusine," libretto by Fr. Grillparzer, music by Kreutzer, produced at Berlin February 27, 1833] which I heard last year about this time at the Königsstadt Theatre.... Hähnel [the singer--Amalie Hähnel--who took the part of _Melusine_] ... was very charming, especially in one scene where she presents herself as a mermaid and dresses her hair; it was then that I conceived the idea of writing an overture.... I took what pleased me of the subject (and that is, precisely what coincides with the legend). In short, the overture came into the world, and this is its family history."
The _Ouvertüre zum Märchen von der Schönen Melusine_ was finished November 14, 1833. Schumann wrote of it as follows in the _Neue Zeitschrift für Musik_, after a performance in Leipsic: "To understand it, no one needs to read the longspun, although richly imaginative, tale of Tieck;[108] it is enough to know that the charming Melusina was violently in love with the handsome knight Lusignan, and married him upon his promising that certain days in the year he would leave her alone. One day the truth breaks upon Lusignan that Melusina is a mermaid--half fish, half woman. The material is variously worked up, in words as in tones. But one must not here, any more than in the overture to Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' wish to trace so coarse an historical thread all through.... Always conceiving his subject poetically, Mendelssohn here portrays only the characters of the man and the woman, of the proud, knightly Lusignan and the enticing, yielding Melusina; but it is as if the watery waves came up amid their embraces and overwhelmed and parted them again. And this revives in every listener those pleasant images by which the youthful fancy loves to linger, those fables of the life deep down beneath the watery abyss, full of shooting fishes with golden scales, of pearls in open shells, of buried treasures, which the sea has snatched from men, of emerald castles towering one above another, etc. This, it seems to us, is what distinguishes this overture from the earlier ones: that it narrates these kind [_sic_] of things quite in the manner of a story, and does not experience them. Hence, at first sight, the surface appears somewhat cold, dumb; but what a life and interweaving there is down below is more clearly expressed through music than through words, for which reason the overture (we confess) is far better than this description of it."[109]
It has been said that the music illustrates "the loveliness and the loving nature of Melusina; the hardness of her fate and the anxiety caused by it. The waving motion [the flowing theme heard at the beginning] is indicative of her grace, and at the same time reminds us of the element with which she was connected." A more energetic theme is said to suggest Melusina's knightly consort; a third theme (in the violins) is a love-motive; later there is a return, _fortissimo_, of the energetic knightly theme of the beginning. There is a development of these themes; and "near the end we may recognize [Melusina's] cries on being discovered by her husband. The rest is like the vanishing of a beautiful reality into a beautiful memory."
SYMPHONY No. 3 ("SCOTCH"): Op. 56
1. _Andante con moto_ _Allegro un poco agitato_ 2. _Vivace non troppo_ 3. _Adagio_ 4. _Allegro vivacissimo_ _Allegro maestoso assai_
To Mendelssohn's Scotch visit in the summer of 1829 may be traced this third symphony in A minor, as well as the "Fingal's Cave" ["Hebrides"] overture (see page 200-202). In a letter dated July 30, 1829, he wrote from Edinburgh: "We went, in the deep twilight, to the Palace of Holyrood, where Queen Mary lived and loved. There is a little room to be seen there, with a winding staircase leading up to it. This the murderers ascended, and, finding Rizzio, ... drew him out; about three chambers away is a small corner where they killed him. The chapel is roofless, grass and ivy grow abundantly in it; and before the altar, now in ruins, Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland.[110] Everything about is broken and mouldering, and the bright sky shines in. I believe I found to-day in that old chapel the beginning of my Scotch symphony."
The symphony was planned in 1831. In a letter written from Rome in March of that year he says: "From April 15th to May 15th is the heyday of the year in Italy. Is it to be wondered at that I cannot call up the misty Scotch mood?" The work was not completed until more than a decade later--January 20, 1842.
The first movement has been said to record the sombre impressions made upon the composer by his visit to Holyrood. The second movement has been described as "a picture of pastoral nature, characterized by a continuous flow of rural gaiety," and as "the most wonderful compound of health and life, heath and moor, blowing wind, screaming eagles, bagpipes, fluttering tartans, and elastic steps of racing Highlanders, all rounded off and brought into one perfect picture." The third movement (_Adagio_) has been characterized as "a revery in which the composer meditates upon the ancient state and grandeur of the country. Its majestic strains might almost have been swept from Ossian's harp." In the last movement "the romantic sentiment disappears. In its place we have the heroic expressed with astonishing force and exuberant spirit." This movement has also been called "the gathering of the clans."
SYMPHONY No. 4 ("ITALIAN"): Op. 90
1. _Allegro vivace_ 2. _Andante con moto_ 3. _Con moto moderato_ 4. _Saltarello: Presto_
This symphony was begun during Mendelssohn's sojourn in Italy (1830-31); it was finished in March, 1833. The following commentary by Ambros on the characteristics of the different movements is as sound and as interesting as any: "... That Italian clearness of outline, that cheerful, ingenuous enjoyment of abounding life without dream-like reflection, is a fundamental feature of the A major symphony. If it were not too hazardous, one might say ... [that] there sounds in Mendelssohn's symphony, not indeed the impression of Rome, ... where, according to Jean Paul's expression, the spirits of heroes, artists, and saints gaze on man, seriously admonishing him,--but rather the local tone of the environs of Monte Cavo in the adjacent Albanian chain of mountains. Indeed, we may readily imagine the youth Mendelssohn looking out, let us say, from Nemi or Genzano across the rounded mirror of the sea upon the splendid foliage of the wooded cliffs of the coast, and how the motive of the first movement, loudly exulting in the full joy of life, passes through his soul, so that he has to sing it aloud.
"The _Andante_ [generally known as the 'Pilgrim's March'] has been thought by some to be in the church style. 'The cowl,' according to an old proverb, 'does not make the monk,' and just as little does a continuous contrapuntal bass make a piece of music into a contrapuntally conceived one. We might perhaps say more appropriately that the _Andante_ tells a romance of the olden time, as it were, in the style of Chronicles--only the poet's eye occasionally betrays itself, sadly smiling. Being once in the Albanian mountains, with our fancy, perhaps we now recall the picturesque castle-embattlements of Grotta Ferrata, and the old devotional stations with the solemn mosaic pictures of saints upon a gold ground.
"In the [third movement] the person of the tone-poet advances more into the foreground: it is the purest feeling of well-being, of calm, happy enjoyment, that emanates from the gentle movement of this melody, as if reciting to itself Rückert's glorious words:
"'Die Erd' ist schön genug den Himmel zu erwarten, Den Himmel zu vergessen nicht schön genug ihr Garten.'
["'The earth is fair enough to make us hope for heaven, Her garden not so fair that heaven is lost to mind.']
"And these horns in the Trio,[111] are they not as if, in the midst of the Italian paradise, a truly German yearning comes over him for the dear light green of the woods of his home?
"But the Finale, the 'Saltarello,'[112] draws us into the midst of the gay swirl of Southern life; and the almost melancholy _ritardando_[113] towards the close, does it not remind us, like a sigh of the tone-poet, that amid all the magnificence he is, after all, but a stranger, a wanderer that comes and goes? Like Berlioz's 'Harold,' this symphony is therefore a souvenir of Italian travel, a piece of Italy that the tone-poet has brought away with him."[114]
Mendelssohn witnessed the Carnival at Rome, and this last movement was doubtless the result of his impressions, which he recorded in a letter written [from Rome] February 8, 1831: "On Saturday all the world went to the Capitol to witness the form of the Jews' supplications to be suffered to remain in the Sacred City for another year, a request which is refused at the foot of the hill, but, after repeated entreaties, granted on the summit, and the Ghetto is assigned to them. It was a tiresome affair; we waited two hours, and, after all, understood the oration of the Jews as little as the answer of the Christians. I came down again in very bad humor, and thought that the Carnival had begun rather unpropitiously. So I arrived in the Corso and was driving along, thinking no evil, when I was suddenly assailed by a shower of sugar comfits. I looked up; they had been flung by some young ladies whom I had seen occasionally at balls, but scarcely knew, and when, in my embarrassment, I took off my hat to bow to them, the pelting began in right earnest. Their carriage drove on, and in the next was Miss T----, a delicate young English-woman. I tried to bow to her, but she pelted me, too; so I became quite desperate, and, clutching the confetti, I flung them back bravely. There were swarms of my acquaintances, and my blue coat was soon as white as that of a miller. The B----s were standing on a balcony, flinging confetti like hail at my head; and thus pelting and pelted, amid a thousand jests and jeers and the most extravagant masks, the day ended with races."
FOOTNOTES:
[106] There is no general agreement as to the title of this overture. Mendelssohn himself referred to it as "The Hebrides," again as "The Solitary Island." The first published score was entitled "Fingal's Cave" (_Die Fingals-Höhle_), yet the parts for the players bore the title "The Hebrides" (_Die Hebriden_). It was called "The Isles of Fingal" when it was first performed in London (May 14, 1832).
[107] As it has been pointed out by others, the usual translation of this title, "Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage," does violence to the significance of the German original. "Becalmed at Sea," or "Sea-Calm," conveys more faithfully the meaning of the first part of the title, and suggests the sharp and dramatic contrast intended by Goethe in his two poems.
[108] Some have said--erroneously, as it seems--that Mendelssohn's overture was suggested by the version of the legend made by Ludwig Tieck.
[109] Translated by Mr. John S. Dwight.
[110] Mendelssohn was a better musician than historian.
[111] "Trio": in a Minuet or Scherzo movement, a contrasting middle section of more tranquil character.
[112] "Saltarello": an Italian dance of marked rhythmical character. It has been described as "a duet dance of a skipping nature." "The woman always holds her apron, and performs graceful evolutions in the style of the Tarantella. The couple move in a semicircle, and the dance becomes faster and faster as it progresses, accompanied by many beautiful motions of the arms. This is a very ancient dance, and has quite a unique character: we find that it is especially performed by gardeners and vintners."
[113] "Ritardando": a gradual slowing of the tempo.
[114] From _Die Grenzen der Poesie und Musik_, translated by J. H. Cornell.
RAFF
(_Joachim Raff: born in Lachen, on the Lake of Zurich, May 27, 1822; died in Frankfort-on-the-Main, June 25, 1882_)
SYMPHONY No. 3, "IN THE WOODS": Op. 153
1. IN THE DAYTIME IMPRESSIONS AND SENSATIONS (_Allegro_)
2. AT TWILIGHT (_a_) REVERY (_Largo_)
(_b_) DANCE OF DRYADS (_Allegro assai_) (_Poco meno mosso_)
3. AT NIGHT SILENT RUSTLING OF THE WOODS AT NIGHT. ENTRANCE AND EXIT OF THE WILD HUNT WITH FRAU HOLLE (HULDA) AND WOTAN. DAYBREAK (_Allegro_)
Raff, an astonishingly prolific composer, wrote twelve symphonies,[115] of which "In the Woods" (_Im Walde_) is one of the two that have most conspicuously survived the winnowing processes of time.
_Im Walde_ was composed at Wiesbaden in 1869. The programmatic bases of its different movements may be indicated as follows:
I. IN THE DAYTIME IMPRESSIONS AND SENSATIONS (_Allegro_)
"The first movement represents in a general manner the feelings of a lover of nature in the forest on a summer day." The Introduction evokes the spirit of the woods "with the nameless charm of rustling branches and the glintings of sunlight." The mood is developed at length in its musical expression; the close "brings to its end this charming picture of the quiet surprises of the woodland in an autumn day."
II. AT TWILIGHT (_a_) REVERY (_Largo_)
"After a short introduction [clarinet and horn]," comments Mr. George P. Upton, "the _Largo_ begins with a beautiful and suggestive melody [strings]--the revery of the dreamer." Later, "the theme returns twice--the first time with heightened pastoral effect, the second time in much the same manner as when originally given out."
(_b_) DANCE OF DRYADS (_Scherzo: Poco meno mosso_)
Flutes announce the principal theme. This "is in reality a dance movement--the dance of the Dryads--but before its close the Revery motive of the _Largo_ appears, and thus unifies the movement and completes the picture of the dreamer and his revery intruded upon by the dancing wood-nymphs."
III. AT NIGHT SILENT RUSTLING OF THE WOODS AT NIGHT. ENTRANCE AND EXIT OF THE WILD HUNT WITH FRAU HOLLE AND WOTAN. DAYBREAK (_Allegro_)
A mysterious _pianissimo_ theme for 'cellos and double-basses paints the darkness and solemnity of the forest night. The spectral approach of the Wild Hunt,[116] Dame Hulda[117] ("Frau Holle") and Wotan following in the train of the unholy crew, is announced by a strongly rhythmed theme in the strings, clarinets, and bassoons. The hunt draws near and passes in a tumultuous increasing and diminishing uproar of the orchestra; the fury of the chase dies away, and there is a sharply contrasted tone-picture of the dawn; a suggestion of the sunrise brings the end.
SYMPHONY No. 5, "LENORE": Op. 177