Chapter 20

BOHEMIAN SYMPHONIES

In the music of modern Bohemia is one of the most vital utterances of the folk-spirit. The critic may not force a correspondence of politics and art to support his theory. Yet a cause may here be found as in Russia and Finland. (Poland and Hungary had their earlier song). There is a sincerity, an unpremeditated quality in Bohemian music that is not found among its western neighbors. The spirit is its own best proof, without a conscious stress of a national note. Indeed, Bohemian music is striking, not at all in a separate tonal character, like Hungarian, but rather in a subtle emotional intensity, which again differs from the wild abandon of the Magyars. An expression it must be of a national feeling that has for ages been struggling against absorption. Since ancient times Bohemia has been part of a Teutonic empire. The story of its purely native kings is not much more than legendary. Nor has it shared the harder fate of other small nations; for the Teuton rule at least respected its separate unity.

But the long association with the German people has nearly worn away the racial signs and hall-marks of its folk-song. A Bohemian tune thus has a taste much like the native German. Yet a quality of its own lies in the emotional vitality, shown in a school of national drama and, of late, in symphony. It is not necessary to seek in this modern culmination a correspondence with an impending danger of political suppression. Art does not follow history with so instant a reflection.

The intensity of this national feeling appears when Smetana himself, the minstrel of the people, is charged at home with yielding to the foreign influence. Here again is the hardship of the true national poet who feels that for the best utterance of his message he needs the grounding upon a broader art; here is the narrow Chauvinism that has confined the music of many lands within the primitive forms.

Two types we have in Bohemian music of later times: one, Smetana, of pure national celebration; a second, Dvôrák, who with a profound absorption of the German masters, never escaped the thrall of the folk-element and theme.

_SMETANA. SYMPHONIC POEM, "THE MOLDAU RIVER"_[A]

[Footnote A: Friedrich Smetana, 1824-1884, foremost among Bohemian dramatic composers, wrote a cycle of symphonic poems under the general title "My Country." Of these the present work is the second.]

Simplicity is uppermost in these scores; yet the true essence is almost hidden to the mere reader. With all primitive quality they are more difficult than many a classic symphony. The latent charm of folk humor and sentiment depends more on tradition and sympathy than on notation.

The naïvely graphic impulse (that we find throughout the choral works of Bach) that merely starts a chance themal line, as here of the first branch of the Moldau, does not disturb the emotional expression. And while the feeling is sustained, the art is there, not to stifle but to utter and set free the native spring of song.

It must be yielded that the design is not profound; it smacks of the village fair rather than of grand tragedy. Song is ever supreme, and with all abundance of contrapuntal art does not become sophisticated. The charm is not of complexity, but of a more child-like, sensuous kind.

It must all be approached in a different way from other symphonic music. The minstrel is not even the peasant in court costume, as Dvôrák once was called. He is the peasant in his own village dress, resplendent with color and proud of his rank.

We cannot enjoy the music with furrowed brow. It is a case where music touches Mother Earth and rejuvenates herself. Like fairy lore and proverbs, its virtue lies in some other element than profound design. For any form of song or verse that enshrines the spirit of a people and is tried in the forge of ages of tradition, lives on more surely than the fairest art of individual poet.

The stream is the great figure, rising from small sources in playful flutes, with light spray of harp and

[Music: _Allegro commodo non agitato_ _lusingando_ (Flute with chord of _pizz._ strings)]

strings. The first brook is joined by another (in clarinets) from a new direction. Soon grows the number and the rustle of confluent waters. The motion of the strings is wavelike, of a broader flow, though underneath we scan the several lesser currents. Above floats now the simple, happy song, that expands

[Music: _dolce_ (Reeds and horns with waving strings and stroke of triangle)]

with the stream and at last reaches a glad, sunny major.

Still to the sound of flowing waters comes the forest hunt, with all the sport of trumpets and other brass.

It is descriptive music, tonal painting if you will; but the color is local or national. The strokes are not so much of events or scenes as of a popular humor and character, which we must feel with small stress of each event. The blowing of trumpets, the purling of streams, the swaying of trees, in primal figures, all breathe the spirit of Bohemia.

The hunt dies away; emerging from the forest the jolly sounds greet us of a peasant wedding. The

[Music: _Tempo moderato_ (Reeds and strings)]

parade reaches the church in high festivity and slowly vanishes to tinkling bells.

Night has fallen; in shifted scene the stream is sparkling in the moonlight still to the quiet sweet harmonies. But this is all background for a dance of nymphs, while a dulcet, sustained song sounds through the night. At last, to the golden horns a faintest harmony is added of deeper brass. Still very softly, the brass strike a quicker phrase and we seem to hear the hushed chorus of hunt with the call of trumpets, as the other brass lead in a new verse that grows lustier with the livelier song and dance, till--with a flash we are alone with the running stream with which the dance of nymphs has somehow merged.

On it goes, in happy, ever more masterful course, a symbol of the nation's career, surging in bright major and for a moment quieting before the mighty Rapids of St. Johann. Here the song of the stream is nearly lost in the rush of eddies and the strife of big currents, with the high leaps of dashing spray,--ever recurring like unceasing battle with a towering clash at the height of the tempest. At last all meet in overpowering united torrent, suddenly to hush before the stream, at the broadest, rushes majestically along in hymnal song of exalted harmonies and triumphant melody, with joyous after-strains.

As the pilgrim to his Mecca, so the waters are wafted into the climactic motive of the Hradschin, the chant of the holy citadel. The rest is a long jubilation

[Music: _Motiv Vyserad_ (Full orchestra, with rapid figures in the strings)]

on quicker beats of the chant, amid the plash of waters and the shaking of martial brass. Strangely, as the other sounds die away, the melody of the stream emerges clear and strong, then vanishes in the distance before the jubilant Amen.

In the general view we must feel a wonderful contrast here with the sophomoric state of the contemporary art in other lands where the folk-song has lost its savor,--where the natural soil is exhausted and elegant castles are built in the air of empty fantasy, or on the sands of a vain national pride.

_DVÔRÁK. SYMPHONY, "FROM THE NEW WORLD."_[A]

[Footnote A: Anton Dvôrák, 1841-1904.]

It is a much-discussed question how far Dvôrák's American symphony is based on characteristic folk-song. Here are included other questions: to what extent the themes are based on an African type, and whether negro music is fairly American folk-song. Many, perhaps most people, will answer with a general negative. But it seems to be true that many of us do not really know the true negro song,--have quite a wrong idea of it.

To be sure, all argument aside, it is a mistake to think that folk-song gets its virtue purely from a distinctive national quality,--because it is Hungarian, Scandinavian, or Slavonic. If all the national modes and rhythms of the world were merged in one republic, there would still be a folk-song of the true type and value. There is a subtle charm and strength in the spontaneous simplicity, all aside from racial color. It is here that, like Antaeus, the musician touches Mother Earth and renews his strength. So, when Dvôrák suddenly shifts in the midst of his New World fantasy into a touch of Bohemian song, there is no real loss. It is all relevant in the broad sense of folk feeling, that does not look too closely at geographical bounds. It is here that music, of all arts, leads to a true state of equal sympathy, regardless of national prejudice. What, therefore, distinguishes Dvôrák's symphony may not be mere negro melody, or even American song, but a genuine folk-feeling, in the widest meaning.

In one way, Dvôrák's work reminds us of Mendelssohn's Scotch Symphony: both exploit foreign national melody in great poetic forms. One could write a Scotch symphony in two ways: one, in Mendelssohn's, the other would be to tell of the outer impression in the terms of your own folk-song. That is clearly the way Mendelssohn wrote most of the Italian Symphony,--which stands on a higher plane than the Scotch. For folk-song is the natural language of its own people. It is interesting to see the exact type that each theme represents; but it is not so important as to catch the distinction, the virtue of folk-song _per se_ and the purely natural utterance of one's own. Of course, every one writes always in his folk-tones. On the other hand, one may explore one's own special treasures of native themes, as Dvôrák himself did so splendidly in his Slavic Dances and in his Legends. So one must, after all, take this grateful, fragrant work as an idea of what American composers might do in full earnest. Dvôrák is of all later masters the most eminent folk-musician. He shows greatest sympathy, freedom and delight in revelling among the simple tones and rhythms of popular utterance, rearing on them, all in poetic spontaneity, a structure of high art. Without strain or show, Dvôrák stood perhaps the most genuine of late composers, with a firm foot on the soil of native melody, yet with the balance and restraint and the clear vision of the trained master.[A]

[Footnote A: The whole subject of American and negro folk-song is new and unexplored. There are races of the blacks living on the outer reefs and islands of the Carolinas, with not more than thirty whites in a population of six thousand, where "spirituals" and other musical rites are held which none but negroes may attend. The truest African mode and rhythm would seem to be preserved here; to tell the truth, there is great danger of their loss unless they are soon recorded.]

In a certain view, it would seem that by the fate of servitude the American negro has become the element in our own national life that alone produces true folk-song,--that corresponds to the peasant and serf of Europe, the class that must find in song the refuge and solace for its loss of material joys. So Dvôrák perhaps is right, with a far seeing eye, when he singles the song of the despised race as the national type.

Another consideration fits here. It has been suggested that the imitative sense of the negro has led him to absorb elements of other song. It is very difficult to separate original African elements of song from those that may thus have been borrowed. At any rate, there is no disparagement of the negro's musical genius in this theory. On the contrary, it would be almost impossible to imagine a musical people that would resist the softer tones of surrounding and intermingling races. We know, to be sure, that Stephen Foster, the author of "The Old Folks at Home," "Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground," and other famous ballads, was a Northerner, though his mother came from the South. We hear, too, that he studied negro music eagerly. It is not at all inconceivable, however, Foster's song may have been devoid of negro elements, that the colored race absorbed, wittingly or unwittingly, something of the vein into their plaints or lullabies,--that, indeed, Foster's songs may have been a true type that stirred their own imitation. From all points of view,--the condition of slavery, the trait of assimilation and the strong gift of musical expression may have conspired to give the negro a position and equipment which would entitle his tunes to stand as the real folk-song of America.

The eccentric accent seems to have struck the composer strongly. And here is a strange similarity with Hungarian song,--though there is, of course, no kinship of race whatever between Bohemians and Magyars. One might be persuaded to find here simply an ebullition of rhythmic impulse,--the desire for a special fillip that starts and suggests a stronger energy of motion than the usual conventional pace. At any rate, the symphony begins with just such strong, nervous phrases that soon gather big force. Hidden is the germ of the first, undoubtedly the chief theme of the whole work.

It is more and more remarkable how a search will show the true foundation of almost all of Dvôrák's themes. Not that one of them is actually borrowed, or lacks an original, independent reason for being.

Whether by imitation or not, the pentatonic scale of the Scotch is an intimate part of negro song. This avoidance of the seventh or leading tone is seen throughout the symphony as well as in the traditional jubilee tunes. It may be that this trait was merely confirmed in the African by foreign musical influence. For it seems that the leading-note, the urgent need for the ascending half-tone in closing, belongs originally to the minstrelsy of the Teuton and of central Europe, that resisted and conquered the sterner modes of the early Church. Ruder nations here agreed with Catholic ritual in preferring the larger interval of the whole tone. But in the quaint jump of the third the Church had no part, clinging closely to a diatonic process.

The five-toned scale is indeed so widespread that it cannot be fastened on any one race or even family of nations. The Scotch have it; it is characteristic of the Chinese and of the American Indian. But, independently of the basic mode or scale, negro songs show here and there a strange feeling for a savage kind of lowering of this last note. The pentatonic scale simply omits it, as well as the fourth step. But the African will now and then rudely and forcibly lower it by a half-tone. In the minor it is more natural; for it can then be thought of as the fifth of the relative major. Moreover, it is familiar to us in the Church chant. This effect we have in the beginning of the Scherzo. Many of us do not know the true African manner, here. But in the major it is much more barbarous. And it is almost a pity that Dvôrák did not strike it beyond an occasional touch (as in the second quoted melody). A fine example is "Roll, Jordan Roll," in E flat (that opens, by the way, much like Dvôrák's first theme), where the beginning of the second line rings out on a savage D flat, out of all key to Caucasian ears.

We soon see stealing out of the beginning _Adagio_ an eccentric pace in motion of the bass, that leads to the burst of main subject, _Allegro molto_, with a certain

[Music: _Allegro molto_ (Strings) (Horns) _Pizz._ (Strings) (Clarinets doubled below in bassoons) (Strings)]

ragged rhythm that we Americans cannot disclaim as a nation. The working up is spirited, and presently out of the answer grows a charming jingle that somehow strikes home.

[Music: (Violins, with harmony in lower strings)]

It begins in the minor and has a strange, barbaric touch of cadence. Many would acknowledge it at most as a touch of Indian mode. Yet it is another phase of the lowered seventh. And if we care to search, we find quite a prototype in a song like "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel." Soon the phrase has a more familiar ring as it turns into a friendly major. But the real second theme comes in a solo tune on the flute, in the major,

[Music: (Solo flute) (Strings)]

with a gait something like the first.[A] Less and less we can resist the genuine negro quality of these melodies, and, at the same time, their beauty and the value of the tonal treasure-house in our midst.

[Footnote A: Again it is interesting to compare here the jubilee song, "Oh! Redeemed," in the collection of "Jubilee and Plantation Songs," of the Oliver Ditson Company.]

The whole of the first Allegro is thus woven of three melodious and characteristic themes in very clear sonata-form. The second, Largo, movement is a lyric of moving pathos, with a central melody that may not have striking traits of strict African song, and yet belongs to the type closely associated with the negro vein of plaint or love-song. The rhythmic

[Music: _Largo_ (English horn solo)]

turns that lead to periods of excitement and climaxes of rapid motion, are absent in the main melody. But

[Music: (Oboe and clarinets) (Basses _pizz._ with _tremolo_ figures in violins)]

they appear in the episode that intervenes. Even here, in the midst, is a new contrast of a minor lament that has a strong racial trait in the sudden swing to major and, as quickly, back to the drearier mode. This is followed by a rhapsody or succession of rapid, primitive phrases, that leads to a crisis where, of a sudden, three themes sing at once, the two of the previous Allegro and the main melody of the Largo, in distorted pace with full chorus. This excitement is as suddenly lulled and soothed by the return of the original moving song.

The Scherzo starts in a quick three-beat strum on the chord we have pointed to as a true model trait of negro music, with the lowered leading-note. The

[Music: _molto vivace_ (Fl. and oboes) (Strings) (Cl't.)]

theme, discussed in close stress of imitation, seems merely to mark the rapid swing in the drone of strange harmony. But what is really a sort of Trio (_poco sostenuto_) is another sudden, grateful change to major, perfectly true to life, so to speak, in this turn of mode and in the simple lines of the tune. The lyric mood all but suppresses the dance, the melody sounding like a new verse of the Largo. The trip has always lingered, but not too much for the delicious change when it returns to carry us off our feet.

The Scherzo now steals in again, quite a piece, it seems, with the Trio. As the rising volume nears a crisis, the earliest theme (from the first Allegro) is heard in the basses. In the hushed discourse of Scherzo theme that follows, the old melody still intrudes. In mockery of one of its turns comes an enchanting bit of tune, as naïve an utterance as any, much like a children's dancing song. And it returns later with still new enchantment of rhythm. But the whole is too full of folk-melody to trace out, yet is, in its very fibre, true to the idea of an epic of the people.

Presently the whole Scherzo and Trio are rehearsed; but now instead of the phase of latest melodies is a close where the oldest theme (of Allegro) is sung in lusty blasts of the horns and wood, with answers of the Scherzo motive.

In the last movement, _Allegro con fuoco_, appears early a new kind of march tune that, without special

[Music: _Allegro con fuoco_ (Horns and trumpets with full orchestra)]

trick of rhythm, has the harsh note of lowered leading-note (in the minor, to be sure) in very true keeping with negro song. The march is carried on, with flowing answer, to a high pitch of varied splendor and tonal power. The second theme is utterly opposed in a certain pathetic rhapsody. Yet it rises, at the close, to a fervent burst in rapid motion. We

[Music: (Solo clarinets) (_tremolo_ strings)]

may expect in the Finale an orgy of folk-tune and dance, and we are not disappointed. There is, too, a quick rise and fall of mood, that is a mark of the negro as well as of the Hungarian. By a sudden doubling, we are in the midst of a true "hoe-down," in jolliest jingle, with that naïve iteration, true to life; it comes out clearest when the tune of the bass (that sounds like a rapid "Three Blind Mice") is

[Music: (Strings, wood and brass) (See page 205, line 9.)]

put in the treble. A pure idealized negro dance-frolic is here. It is hard to follow all the pranks; lightly as the latest phrase descends in extending melody, a rude blast of the march intrudes in discordant humor. A new jingle of dance comes with a redoubled pace of bits of the march. As this dies down to dimmest bass, the old song from the Largo rings high in the wood. Strangest of all, in a fierce shout of the whole chorus sounds twice this same pathetic strain. Later comes a redoubled speed of the march in the woodwind, above a slower in low strings. Now the original theme of all has a noisy say. Presently the sad second melody has a full verse. Once more the Largo lullaby sings its strain in the minor. In the close the original Allegro theme has a literal, vigorous dispute with the march-phrase for the last word of all.

The work does less to exploit American music than to show a certain community in all true folk-song. Nor is this to deny a strain peculiar to the new world. It seems a poet of distant land at the same time and in the same tones uttered his longing for his own country and expressed the pathos and the romance of the new. Dvôrák, like all true workers, did more than he thought: he taught Americans not so much the power of a song of their own, as their right of heritage in all folk-music. And this is based not merely on an actual physical inheritance from the various older races.

If the matter, in Dvôrák's symphony, is of American negro-song, the manner is Bohemian. A stranger-poet may light more clearly upon the traits of a foreign lore. But his celebration will be more conscious if he endeavor to cling throughout to the special dialect. A true national expression will come from the particular soil and will be unconscious of its own idiom.

The permanent hold that Dvôrák's symphony has gained is due to an intrinsic merit of art and sincere sentiment; it has little to do with the nominal title or purpose.