Stories of
SYMPHONIC MUSIC

A GUIDE TO THE MEANING OF IMPORTANT
SYMPHONIES, OVERTURES, AND
TONE-POEMS FROM BEETHOVEN
TO THE PRESENT DAY

BY
LAWRENCE GILMAN
AUTHOR OF
"PHASES OF MODERN MUSIC"
"THE MUSIC OF TO-MORROW" ETC.

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
MCMVII

Copyright, 1907, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
All rights reserved.
Published October, 1907.

TO
E. W. G.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Most concert-goers have observed, at performances of modern orchestral works of a descriptive character, the efforts of many persons in the audience to extract from programme notes and analyses information as to the dramatic or pictorial or poetic meaning of the music to which they were listening. A search for enlightenment under such conditions necessarily leads to disappointment, since it is either pursued distractedly while the music is actually in progress, or during the brief and unpropitious leisure of an intermission. The design of this book is to offer in compact and accessible form such information as will enable the intending concert-goer to prepare himself, in advance, to listen comprehendingly to those symphonic works of a suggestive or illustrative nature, from Beethoven to the present day, which are part of the standard orchestral repertoire, and such others as seem likely to become so—to serve, in effect, as a guide to modern orchestral programme-music. For convenience of indication, the designation "tone poems," as used in the sub-title, is employed in its broadest significance to characterize all modern delineative music for orchestra in the freer forms, whether it be a symphonic poem by Liszt, a "legend" by d'Indy, a suite by Charpentier, a "sketch" by Debussy, or the precise thing described by Strauss as a Tondichtung.

No exclusively musical analysis of the works discussed is attempted, since it is aimed merely to give the concert-goer such information concerning their illustrative purpose as will enable him to place himself in an intelligent attitude towards their performance. Nor has the author indulged in speculative "interpretations" of any sort regarding the poetic content of these works; he has confined himself in every case to setting forth only such facts and clews as have been ascertained or justifiably inferred.

An exhaustive cataloguing of modern programme-music has not been attempted. It has been thought worth while to include only such works of importance as the American concert-goer is likely to find upon the programmes of symphony concerts in this country. Thus such submerged or moribund or otherwise negligible music as Schumann's forgotten overture, "Julius Cæsar," Berlioz's overture to "Waverley," Rubinstein's character-pictures, "Faust" and "Ivan IV.," Liszt's "Hamlet," Beethoven's "King Stephen" and "Battle of Vittoria," have been permitted to remain unexpounded. [1]

A book such as this must necessarily be largely of the nature of a compilation, since, in the case of the older works in the concert-repertoire, it must make use of information already obtained and recorded. It is believed, however, that it may supply a want hitherto unfulfilled in that, particularly, it assembles in convenient shape information concerning important contemporary works which exists, at present, only in a scattered and more or less unavailable condition.

In justification of its purpose, the author may be permitted to say that he considers it absurd and illogical that the concert-goer should, as some assert, be asked to listen to a piece of descriptive music in ignorance of its literary or pictorial or dramatic basis. He heartily agrees with Mr. Ernest Newman, who has written with unsurpassed acumen and force concerning programme-music and its principles, when he asserts that "if the poem or the picture was necessary to the composer's imagination, it is necessary to mine; if it is not necessary to either of us, he has no right to affix the title of it to his work; ... if melody, harmony, and development are all shaped and directed by certain pictures in the musician's mind, we get no further than the mere outside of the music unless we are familiar with those pictures." A title, it is true, is sometimes sufficient as a spur to the hearer's imagination—as in the case, for example, of such broadly impressionistic music as Claude Debussy's "The Sea," the various movements of which bear these subsidiary titles: "From Dawn till Noon on the Sea"; "Frolics of Waves"; "Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea." But what would the hearer, unacquainted with the subject which provoked it, make of Debussy's "Prelude to 'The Afternoon of a Faun,'" did not the appended sub-title—"Eclogue of S. Mallarmé"—direct him to the source of the composer's inspiration, the fantastic and singular poem of the French symbolist? Even in the case of descriptive music based upon an exceedingly familiar subject, the title alone may be insufficient. In the case, for instance, of Edward MacDowell's symphonic poem, "Lancelot and Elaine," the composer offers his listener merely the title. He has said, indeed, that he "never would have insisted that this symphonic poem need mean 'Lancelot and Elaine' to every one." Yet if he intended this music, as it is known that he did, to describe certain definite and particular incidents in the story of Lancelot and the Maid of Astolat—as the tournament, Lancelot's downfall, his interview with Guinevere, the passing of the funeral barge—it obviously could not, without a sacrifice of psychological and dramatic consistency, coincide with any other sequence of happenings which the uninstructed listener might choose to substitute. To tell the hearer that he is at liberty to interpret a piece of avowed and detailed descriptive music according to any "programme" which may happen to occur to him, is, in principle, precisely like playing for him on the piano a new and unknown song, and telling him that he may fit to it any words he chooses.

It cannot be too positively insisted upon that, as Mr. Newman has pointedly observed, a piece of eloquent delineative music cannot be equally understood and appreciated by the man who knows and the man who does not know its programme. Mr. Newman concedes, of course, the fact that such a work as Tschaikowsky's overture, "Romeo and Juliet," would undoubtedly "give intense pleasure to any one who listened to it as a piece of music, pure and simple." "But I deny," he continues, "that this hearer would receive as much pleasure from the work as I do. He might think the passage for muted strings, for example, extremely beautiful, but he would not get from it such delight as I, who not only feel all the musical loveliness of the melody and the harmonies and the tone color, but see the lovers on the balcony and breathe the very atmosphere of Shakespeare's scene. I am richer than my fellow by two or three emotions in a case of this kind. My nature is stirred on two or three sides instead of only one. I would go further and say that not only does the auditor I have supposed get less pleasure from the work than I, but he really does not hear Tschaikowsky's work at all. If the musician writes music to a play and invents phrases to symbolize the characters and to picture the events of the play, we are simply not listening to his work at all if we listen to it in the ignorance of his poetical scheme. We may hear the music, but it is not the music he meant us to hear"—which is simply a more telling and vivid statement of a truth which Berlioz enunciated more than three score and ten years ago in a prefatory note to his Symphonie fantastique: "The plan of an instrumental drama, being without words, requires to be explained beforehand. The programme (which is indispensable to the perfect comprehension of the dramatic plan of the work) ought therefore to be considered in the light of the spoken text of an opera, serving to ... indicate the character and expression."

It should be said, in conclusion, that these elucidations—if they may hopefully be regarded as such—are addressed, not to the professional student of music, but to the intelligent concert-goer who desires to listen understandingly, and with adequate appreciation, to those works which are intended not merely to appeal to his perception of beautiful sound and beautiful form, but which set before him, for the education of his heart or the delight of his spirit, some notable and intense impression of the human drama or the visible world.

The writer is indebted for the information accumulated in the following pages to so many sources—biographies, autobiographies, scores in print and in manuscript, and enlightenment personally and most helpfully supplied by the composers of various contemporary works—that he finds it difficult to avow them with adequate particularity. He has consulted (to name but a few such authorities) Riemann's Musik-Lexikon, the "Oxford History of Music," Apthorp and Champlin's "Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians," Fétis' Biographie Universelle des Musiciens, Grove's "Dictionary of Music and Musicians," Schumann's "Music and Musicians," Wagner's Prose Works, and—for records and details not generally accessible—the exceedingly valuable programme-notes prepared for the concerts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, during the last six years, by Mr. Philip Hale, and, before him, by Mr. W. F. Apthorp.

L. G.

DIXVILLE NOTCH, NEW HAMPSHIRE, SEPTEMBER, 1907.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Opera-overtures do not, of course, come within the scope of a book designed expressly to serve as a guide to music written for the concert-room. Hence, even works that are either frequently or always played apart from their intended operatic setting—as the several "Leonora" overtures of Beethoven, and the "Francs-Juges" and "Benvenuto Cellini" overtures of Berlioz—are not included.

STORIES OF
SYMPHONIC MUSIC

THE ORCHESTRA AS POET, PAINTER, AND DRAMATIST

"How can an orchestra, without the aid of voices or pantomime or scenery, tell the story of Don Quixote, paint a picture of the sea, or describe the visions of a dying man?" asks an intelligent but somewhat puzzled layman. "I have always thought of instrumental music," he goes on to say, "as the art of arranging tones according to more or less binding laws of design and effect; and yet I hear constant talk nowadays of the 'expressive capacity' of music, its ability to paint pictures, tell stories, enact dramas. What, briefly, is meant by the 'expressive (or pictorial or descriptive) capacity' of music?" Perhaps it may be possible to tell him—"briefly," as he requests.

Music in the old days—the days before Beethoven, let us say—was, outside of the church and the opera-house, primarily an art of pure design. The musician of those days was concerned mainly with the arrangement of tones according to certain well-defined rules and conventions, to the end of producing a euphonious and beautiful pattern of sound. The symphonies of Mozart, the early symphonies of Beethoven, had no other aim than to be beautiful. Music was then, as has been aptly said, a species of "sensuous mathematics." The musician who, in the year 1797, set out to compose a symphony, proceeded according to very definite rules. He must invent what was called a "first theme," usually rather vigorous and assertive in character, and a "second theme," of contrasting character—usually of a gentler and more feminine quality. These themes were then developed at length—presented in different keys, altered as to rhythm, harmony, and instrumentation, in whatever manner was made possible by the composer's skill and the fertility of his invention. Finally, the two themes were recalled in their original state, and the first movement of the symphony was at an end. The composer had accomplished a complete musical organism in what was called, among his craft, "sonata form." He might then proceed with the other movements of his symphony, which must also be constructed according to certain specific laws. Always he must proceed according to rule. His "second theme," for example, must be sounded in a key which bore a hard-and-fast relationship to the key of his "first theme"; and if his symphony began, let us say, in F major, it must end in F major, or in some closely related key. It would never for a moment have occurred to him—this excellent eighteenth-century music-maker—to begin a serious composition in F major and end it, say, in C-sharp minor: that would have seemed an aberration of the most preposterous kind.

Our eighteenth-century instrumental composer, then, was a builder of tonal edifices of a very plain and solid kind, which must be proportioned and fashioned strictly according to rule. Moreover, his constructive material, so to speak, was of the sparest. His range of harmony was extremely small, his melodic patterns were simple in outline and of limited expressiveness, his rhythms were square-cut and obvious, his orchestral technique of the most meagre order. There were, it is true, composers prior to the nineteenth century who wrote a crude kind of orchestral programme-music [2]— music which aimed to describe scenes and events, to picture aspects of nature and definite states of mind. Karl von Dittersdorf (1739-1799) composed a number of symphonies descriptive of Ovid's "Metamorphoses"—"The Downfall of Phaëton," "Acteon's Transformation into a Deer," "Andromeda's Rescue by Perseus," "Phineus with his Friends in the Mountains." Justin Heinrich Knecht (1752-1817) anticipated certain features of the "Pastoral" symphony in his "Tableau musical de la nature," composed when Beethoven was fourteen years old; and Haydn gave to certain of his multiple symphonies naively indicative titles—"The Hunt," "The Morning," "Fire." But such manifestations of the "programmatic" tendency bore little relation to the really serious and important musical art of the period. The symphonist of Haydn's day little dreamed of a time when men of his trade would erect tonal structures of strange and fantastic shape, from materials whose rarity and richness were beyond his conception; and that within these gorgeous and curiously wrought structures, dramas of human passion and emotion, comedies and tragedies, would be enacted for other men to see and to be moved thereby.

Yet that is what happened. As the years went by musicians began to discern that the art in which they were working contained singular and unsuspected possibilities. They began, by laborious and slow experiment, and by unconscious inspiration, to evolve new harmonies, more subtle and complex than the old, which thrilled them oddly; their melodies took on a freer, more pliant, more expressive character; their rhythms became more varied and supple, their instrumentation richer, fuller, more complex. Then it dawned upon them that this art of theirs, which had been but a kind of inspired and innocent pattern-weaving, might be made to express definite emotions, moods, experiences, even many things in the material world, without the aid of scenery, singers, or singing-actors. They found that certain combinations and sequences of tones could be made to convey to the hearer certain more or less definite feelings and ideas: that minor harmonies, in slow and grave rhythms, suggested grief or depression; and that, conversely, harmonies in the major mode, in rapid and energetic movement, suggested gaiety, or jubilation, or relief. And then, of course, there were directly imitative effects which might be employed to suggest an aspect of nature or to aid in the telling of a story—the songs of birds, the whistling of wind, the crash of thunder, the rhythmic tramping of armies, the trumpets and drums of martial conflict, the horn fanfares of the chase; for all these things suggested easily and naturally their analogies in tone.

But it soon became evident to the composer that no matter how intense and vivid his music might be, it could be made to express, unaided, only general emotions, moods, passions. He could say—as does Chopin, for example, in the funeral march in his B-flat minor sonata—"I am sad"; but he could not say why he was sad; he could not say, "I am sad because my mother has died," or "because my country has been vanquished." So, to supply this need—to make it possible for his music to speak both eloquently and concretely—the composer called in the aid of the written and associated word, and the miracle was accomplished. Upon the score of his symphony or his "tone-poem" he wrote, for example, the title "Don Quixote"; this title he made known to his audience; and the hearers, with this clew, were thus made aware that they were listening to an expression in tones—tones of a kind unimagined by Haydn or Mozart, tones of marvellous poignancy and vividness—of the dreams and longings and passions and griefs of a particular person whose story they intimately knew: the definite emotions and events of a definite drama, rich in comedy, pathos, tenderness, and human fascination.

This, then, is the miracle of modern "programme-music"; this is why we say of it that it is capable of voicing comedy or tragedy, pathos or ecstasy; this is why, in brief, we may speak of its "expressive capacity."

The growth of the art in this direction has been as steady as it has been amazing. Music, with Haydn and Mozart (it is always to be remembered that we are discussing here only symphonic music) was, as has been said, largely a weaving of tonal arabesques, innocent of meaning or definite expression. The great Beethoven came, and transformed its naïve tones into new and powerful sonorities, developing, expanding, discovering, until he had endowed it with a novel and unfamiliar eloquence. Schubert followed him, adding new effects of harmony, new and unparalleled ways of grouping tones, and filling the art with a fresh and wonderful exuberance, making it sing with a new tenderness and ecstasy. He left it a richer, a more amply expressive medium than he had found it. Came Berlioz, a master of orchestral utterance, of orchestral delineation. He made of music the handmaid of romance and passion as he found them in the world's dramas and poems and novels. Franz Liszt, a man of fervid imagination and intrepid individuality, added still other notes to the instrument—enlarged its compass, increased its sonority. Under him the symphony renounced its strict allegiance to the classic forms and became frankly a medium of dramatic and poetic expression. He made a thing which he called a "symphonic poem," in which the music was conceived and evolved, not in accordance with those classic rules of form of which we have spoken, but in accordance with the outlines of a chosen poem or a drama; so that he was able to illustrate in music, with the aid of title or descriptive text, the story of Hamlet or the Divine Comedy or Orpheus or Tasso or Prometheus. Wagner, though his field was not the concert-room, but the opera-house, so enlarged the possibilities of tonal speech as to make of it virtually a new language. His genius yielded, with magical fertility, a bewildering wealth of novel harmonic, melodic, and orchestral ideas—ideas which have been appropriated to the music of the concert-hall by all those who have followed him.

And so we come to the music of our own time, which is but a logical and inevitable result of a century of growth and evolution. What, above all, is characteristic of it? First, its devotion to a "programme"—to a literary or dramatic or pictorial subject. Our modern tone-poet—as we aptly call him—having found ready to his hand an art which can convey with extraordinary vividness moods of longing and despair, ecstasy and jubilation, must make it still more specific and articulate. He writes a huge orchestral work and calls it, let us say, "Death and Transfiguration," presenting with it an elaborate poem descriptive of the agonies and hallucinations, the memories and visions, of a dying man. He then invites us to find in his music a description, which he produces by means of every harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, and orchestral device at his command, of the subject which he has set before us. To achieve his end—to express all those varied emotions of anguish, terror, longing, despair, aspiration, triumph—he stops at nothing: he heaps dissonance upon dissonance, he writes in several keys at once, he assaults our ears with what would have seemed to the placid soul of Haydn the pandemonium of a mad-house. Yet, if he be a genius, we are swayed and enthralled. We even derive a double pleasure from this new kind of art-work, which is at once music and drama.

Such, in brief, is the method of the modern "tone-poet." He is, as has been said, both musician and dramatist, symphonist and poet. Nor is this all: he can be a painter as well, and can, by the aid of suggestion and the broad analogies of his tonal palette, limn for us with his instruments such an exquisite and magical picture of the dawn as Charles Martin Loeffler paints in his orchestral fantasy after Verlaine, "La Bonne Chanson"; or such a portrait as is limned by Strauss, in his "Don Quixote," of the crack-brained and lovable knight of Cervantes. Music, to-day, can annotate the art of the painter—as witness the symphonic commentary by the Swiss composer, Hans Huber, on certain paintings by Böcklin; it can be sportively delineative of personalities—as witness Sir Edward Elgar's orchestral characterization of the peculiarities of various of his friends; it can be portentously metaphysical, as in Strauss's formidable "Also Sprach Zarathustra": it has become, in brief, "a tongue of all life."

FOOTNOTES:

[2] "Programme-music" is the infelicitous term accepted, by common consent, as characterizing that class of music which, unaccompanied by words spoken or sung, aims to depict or suggest definite moods, objects, or events. This it accomplishes with the aid of a title, explanatory note, argument, or programme, which must needs be made known to the hearer in order that the purpose of the composer may be fulfilled. It is opposed, in musical terminology, to "absolute music," which is self-contained, having no other aim than, as Wagner expressed it, "the arousing of pleasure in beautiful forms."

BANTOCK

(Granville Bantock: born in London, August 7, 1868; now living in Birmingham, England)

TONE-POEM, "THE WITCH OF ATLAS" [3]

This tone-poem is noteworthy, aside from its intrinsic quality, for the completeness with which it fulfils the obligations imposed by logic and consistency upon the writer of programme-music. Here is an orchestral work inspired by certain portions of Shelley's poem—a musical illustration of various passages which in themselves contain the imaginative essence of that extraordinary fantasy. But the composer has not been content merely to tell us that his music is a tone-poem "after Shelley"; he has gone further: he has quoted as a preface to the score the precise passages in the poem which suggested his music; and opposite each passage he has placed a key-letter, which refers to a duplicate printed at the beginning of the corresponding illustrative passage in the music. That is to say, he has enabled us to follow him throughout the entire course of his musical exposition, not dubiously and by guesswork, but with certitude and intelligent comprehension. We are not put to it to decide whether, for example, the mellifluous andante passage for four horns, in the middle section of the work, is intended as an illustration of the lines in the poem descriptive of the "green and over-arching bower" inhabited by those who had received the Witch's panacea, or of the lines which celebrate the radiance of her beauty: we know precisely what it is intended to represent, and are in a position not only to feel its effect as sheer music, but to appreciate its expressive force.[4]

Prefaced to the score are these excerpts from Shelley's poem; they are quoted here together with an indication of the character of the music which introduces each corresponding section of the tone-poem:

(A)

"A lady-witch there lived on Atlas' mountain

Within a cavern by a secret fountain."

[A tranquil passage for solo violin, muted.][5]

(B)

"'Tis said, she was first changed into a vapour,

And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit,

Like splendour-winged moths about a taper,

Round the red west when the sun dies in it;"

[A mysterious phrase for solo viola, above trumpets, trombones,and tuba pianissimo, with harp arpeggios.]

(C)

"And old Silenus, shaking a green stick

Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew

Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick

Cicadæ are, drunk with the noonday dew:

And Dryope and Faunus followed quick,

Teasing the god to sing them something new,

Till in this cave they found the lady lone,

Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone."

[A solo violin has a wide-arched phrase against sweeping harp arpeggios; a staccato passage in the wood-wind introduces a lyric theme in the strings—an expansion of the one with which the tone-poem opened.]

(D)

"And every nymph of stream and spreading tree,

And every shepherdess of Ocean's flocks,

Who drives her white waves over the green sea;

And Ocean, with the brine on his gray locks,

And quaint Priapus with his company,

All came, much wondering how the enwombèd rocks

Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth;—

Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth."

[This section begins, in more sprightly mood, with trills on the solo violin against a staccato figure in the wood-wind.]

(E)

"For she was beautiful: her beauty made

The bright world dim, and everything beside

Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade":

[Four horns sing a flowing and tender theme, andante; solo viola and solo 'cello play a pizzicato accompaniment.]

(F)

"The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling

Were stored with magic treasures—sounds of air,

Which had the power all spirits of compelling,"

[Vigorous descending passages in the strings, against fortissimo chords of the full orchestra, introduce a theme of animated character announced by trumpets, trombones, tuba, horns, wood-wind, and strings.]

(G)

"And then she called out of the hollow turrets

Of those high clouds, white, golden and vermilion,

The armies of her ministering spirits.

In mighty legions million after million

They came, each troop emblazoning its merits

On meteor flags; and many a proud pavilion,

Of the intertexture of the atmosphere,

They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere."

[The animated theme continues in the full orchestra. Later, an extended harp passage leads into the succeeding section.]

(H)

"To those she saw most beautiful, she gave

Strange panacea in a crystal bowl.

They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave,

And lived thenceforward as if some control,

Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave

Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,

Was as a green and over-arching bower

Lit by the gems of many a starry flower."[6]

[The horn theme of section E returns in more elaborate orchestral dress, against pizzicato arpeggios and trills in the strings.]

PRELUDE, "SAPPHO"[7]

This is an orchestral preface to nine fragments from Sappho set to music for contralto and orchestra, and "indicating," says the composer, "emotional moods of the Greek poetess as an introduction to her songs." The verses set to music by Mr. Bantock are (1) the famous Hymn to Aphrodite, and the fragments beginning as follows: (2) "I loved thee once, Atthis, long ago";[8] (3) "Evening, thou bringest all"; (4) "Stand face to face, friend"; (5) "The moon has set"; (6) "Peer of Gods he seems"; (7) "In a dream I spake"; (8) Bridal Song—"O fair, O lovely!" (9) "Muse of the golden throne." [9]

The Prelude is constructed of themes taken from certain of the songs to which it serves as an introduction. It opens with harp-chords, in the manner of an improvisation, derived from the setting of the ninth Fragment:

"Muse of the golden throne,
O raise thy strain...."

This is repeated; then follows, after some intervening measures, an expressive phrase sung by violins, 'cellos, horn, and bassoon, which, in the setting of the fifth Fragment, accompanies the words:

"I yearn and seek, I know not what to do,
And I flutter like a child after her mother."

There is a crescendo, leading to a fortissimo proclamation by the trumpet of a theme from the ninth Fragment ("Muse of the Golden Throne"), followed by the impassioned theme (for violins and trumpet) which, towards the close of the fifth Fragment, underscores the lines:

"Yea, Eros shakes my soul, yea, Eros,
A wind on the mountain falling on the oaks."

This leads directly into a climactic outburst for full orchestra, on a theme borrowed from the sixth Fragment:

"Dare I to love thee?"

A languishing passage follows (strings, wood-wind, and horns), taken from the setting of the words (in the sixth Fragment):

"Sight have I none, nor hearing, cold dew bathes me,
Paler than grass I am, and in my madness
Seem as one dead."

There is a brief crescendo, then the conclusion, of gradually subsiding intensity. The music is almost note for note that of the seventh Fragment:

"Delicate Adonis is dying; what shall we do?
Beat your breasts, maidens, and rend your tunics!
Ah, for Adonis!
The Dawn shall see thee no more,
Nor dark-eyed Sleep, the daughter of Night,
Ah, for Adonis!" [10]

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Without opus number. The score was published in 1903.

[4] It is intended to point out here that the composer has realized that a piece of elaborate orchestral programme-music is as authentic and legitimate a fusion of literary and musical modes of expression as is the song, the opera, or the oratorio; that a full knowledge of its subject-matter is as essential in the one case as in the others, and as little to be satisfied, in most instances, by a knowledge of the title alone. Mr. Bantock has appreciated that certain things in his music were conceived in a particular way not primarily in obedience to a musical design, but as an expression of a definite mood or picture or idea; and that he owes it to his hearers not to set his music before them without giving them at the same time full and definite information as to what it is intended to express.

[5] A mute is an implement placed over the bridge of a stringed instrument to give a veiled and softened quality to the tone.

[6] Those who may wonder concerning the precise significance of Shelley's poem—"unrivalled as an Ariel-like flight of fairy fancy," affirms his most succinct biographer—should turn to the poet's ironical prefatory verses addressed "To Mary, On Her Objecting to the Following Poem Upon the Score of Its Containing No Human Interest."

[7] Without opus number. Published in 1906.

[8] Swinburne devised an ingenious embroidery on this exquisite fragment in his "On the Cliffs."

"I loved thee.—hark, one tenderer note than all—
Atthis, of old time, once—one low, long fall,
Sighing—one long, low, lovely, loveless call.
Dying—one pause in song so flamelike fast—
Atthis, long since in old time overpast—
One soft first pause and last.
One.—then the old rage of rapture's fieriest rain
Storms all the music-maddened night again."

[9] The extant examples of the verse of the Lesbian poetess comprise the Ode to Aphrodite, twenty-seven lines in Sapphic strophes; the four strophes instanced by Longinus as a specimen of the sublime: "Blest as the immortal gods is he"; and a hundred or more single lines and stanzas in a wide variety of metres. These are contained in the Teubner Anthologia Lyrica, in the Poetæ Lyrici of Bergk, and, with English translations, in Henry Thornton Wharton's Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings, and a Literal Translation.

"Among the ancients," wrote John Addington Symonds in his Studies of the Greek Poets, "Sappho enjoyed a unique renown. She was called 'The Poetess,' as Homer was called 'The Poet.' Aristotle quoted without question a judgment that placed her in the same rank as Homer and Archilochus. Plato, in the Phædrus, mentioned her as the tenth Muse. Solon, hearing one of her poems, prayed that he might not see death till he had learned it. Strabo speaks of her genius with religious awe.... The epigrammists call her Child of Aphrodite and Eros, nursling of the Graces, pride of Hellas, peer of Muses, companion of Apollo. Nowhere is a hint whispered that her poetry was aught but perfect. As far as we can judge, these praises were strictly just. Of all the poets of the world, of all the illustrious artists of all literatures, Sappho is the one whose every word has a peculiar and unmistakable perfume, a seal of absolute perfection and inimitable grace."

[10] The English translations used by the composer, and quoted here, are from Mr. H. T. Wharton's Sappho, mentioned on a preceding page.

BEETHOVEN

(Ludwig van Beethoven: born in Bonn, December 16, 1770; died in Vienna, March 26, 1827)

SYMPHONY No. 3. "EROICA": Op. 55

1. Allegro con brio.
2. Marcia funèbre: adagio assai.
3. Scherzo: allegro vivace; trio.
4. Finale: allegro molto.

On the score of the MS. of Beethoven's "Eroica Symphony" in the Bibliothek at Vienna appear these words:

"Sinfonia grande
Napoleon Bonaparte...."

and thereby hang many tales.

Anton Schindler,[11] the close friend and biographer of Beethoven, wrote at length in his famous Life of the symphonist concerning the origin of the Eroica. In the autumn of 1802, says Schindler, Beethoven resumed a plan which he had formed of doing homage to Napoleon, the hero of the day, "in a grand instrumental work," and set about its execution. "But it was not till the following year that he applied himself in good earnest to that gigantic composition, known by the title of Sinfonia Eroica, which, however, in consequence of various interruptions, was not finished till 1804.... The original idea of that symphony is said to have been suggested by General Bernadotte, who was then French ambassador at Vienna, and had a high esteem for our Beethoven....

"In his political sentiments Beethoven was a republican; the spirit of independence natural to a genuine artist gave him a decided bias that way. Plato's Republic was transfused into his flesh and blood, and upon the principles of that philosopher he reviewed all the constitutions in the world. He wished all institutions to be modelled upon the plan prescribed by Plato. He lived in the firm belief that Napoleon entertained no other design than to republicanize France upon similar principles, and thus, as he conceived, a beginning would be made for the general happiness of the world. Hence his respect and enthusiasm for Napoleon.

"A fair copy of the musical work for the First Consul of the French Republic, the conqueror of Marengo, with the dedication to him, was on the point of being despatched through the French embassy to Paris, when the news arrived in Vienna that Napoleon Bonaparte had caused himself to be proclaimed Emperor of the French. The first thing Beethoven did on receiving this intelligence was to tear the title-leaf off the symphony (on it were written the words 'Napoleon Bonaparte') and then fling the work itself, with a torrent of execrations against the French Emperor—against the new 'tyrant'—upon the floor, from which he would not allow it to be lifted. [12]

"It was a long time before Beethoven recovered from the shock, and permitted this work to be given to the world.... I shall only add that it was not till the tragic end of the great Emperor at St. Helena that Beethoven was reconciled with him and remarked that, seventeen years before, he had composed appropriate music to the catastrophe, in which it was exactly predicted musically, but unwittingly—alluding to the Dead March in the symphony."

When the symphony was first performed in public under Beethoven's direction, at the Theater an der Wien, April 7, 1805, it was announced on the programme as "A new grand Symphony in D-sharp by Herr Ludwig van Beethoven, dedicated to his excellence Prince von Lobkowitz." In October of the following year the symphony was published with this title and motto:

Sinfonia Eroica.... Composta per festeggiare il Sovvenire di un grand Uomo

("Heroic Symphony.... Composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.")

Interpreters innumerable have attempted to read the meaning of this baffling symphony, with its funeral march followed perplexingly by a gay scherzo and an energetic and jubilant finale. For Adolph Marx (1799-1866) the dirge pictured a battle-field at night, covered with the silent bodies of the dead; the scherzo told of the rejoicings of the homeward-bound soldiers; in the finale was the consecration of victory by Peace. Berlioz found the scherzo and finale akin to the rites celebrated by Homer's warriors over a dead hero. Still another elucidation, in which the license of the interpreter is more than a little stretched, found the first movement to convey "a grand idea of Napoleon's determination of character." The second movement is "descriptive of the funeral honors paid to one of his favorite generals," the "winding up" of which represents "the faltering steps of the last gazers into the grave"; while the finale offers "a combination of French revolutionary airs"! But no one has viewed this symphony more sympathetically or more consistently than did Wagner in an article contributed to a series of papers "On the poetic contents of Beethoven's tone-works," published in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, in 1852.

"The designation 'heroic,'" he wrote, "is to be taken in its widest sense, and in no wise to be conceived as relating merely to a military hero. If we broadly connote by 'hero' ('Held') the whole, the full-fledged man, in whom are present all the purely human feelings—of love, of grief, of force—in their highest fill and strength, then we shall rightly grasp the subject which the artist lets appeal to us in the speaking accents of his tone-work. The artistic space of this work is filled with all the varied, inter crossing feelings of a strong, a consummate individuality, to which nothing human is a stranger, but which includes within itself all truly human, and utters it in such a fashion that, after frankly manifesting every noble passion, it reaches a final rounding of its nature, wherein the most feeling softness is wedded with the most energetic force. The heroic tendency of this art work is the progress towards that rounding off."

For him the first movement "embraces, as in a glowing furnace, all the emotions of a richly gifted nature in the heyday of unresting youth ... yet all these feelings spring from one main faculty—and that is Force ... we see a Titan wrestling with the Gods."

In the second movement—the Funeral March—"this shattering force" reaches the "tragic crisis" towards which it was rushing. The tone-poet clothes its proclamation in the musical apparel of a Funeral march. Emotion tamed by deep grief, moving in solemn sorrow, tells us its tale in stirring tones.

"Force robbed of its destructive arrogance—by the chastening of its deep sorrow—the Third Movement shows in all its buoyant gaiety. Its wild unruliness has shaped itself to fresh, to blithe activity; we have before us now this lovable, glad man, who paces hale and hearty through the fields of Nature."

The finale shows us the man entire [that is to say, as Wagner somewhat ponderously explains, a combination of the two sides hitherto shown—the "deeply, stoutly suffering man," and the "gladly, blithely doing man">[ harmoniously "at one with self, in these emotions where the memory of Sorrow becomes itself the shaping force of noble deeds.... The whole, the total Man now shouts to us the avowal of his Godhood."

OVERTURE TO "CORIOLANUS": Op. 62

This overture, composed in 1807, was published in the following year. The original manuscript is inscribed: "Overtura (Zum Trauerspiel Coriolan), composta da L. v. Beethoven." The "tragedy" here indicated for which it was written is not the "Coriolanus" of Shakespeare, but the "Coriolan" of Heinrich Joseph von Collin, a contemporary of Beethoven, who filled the post of Secretary at the Austrian Court. In their main outlines, the plays of Collin and of Shakespeare are alike, with, however, this prime difference—the Coriolanus of Shakespeare is slain, while the death of Collin's hero is self-inflicted. According to Wagner, this overture is a tone-picture of the scene—"the most decisive of all"—between Coriolanus, his mother, and wife, in the enemy's camp before the gates of his native city. But the most pointed and illuminating guide to the contents of Beethoven's music will be found in these brief sentences written in elucidation of the overture by Mr. H. E. Krehbiel: "One may forget both plays [Collin's and Shakespeare's] while listening to Beethoven, and go back to Plutarch and the Greek tragic poets for the elements of the music. They are the monumental ones illustrated in the 'Prometheus' of Æschylus and the 'Œdipus' of Sophocles. Like Prometheus, Œdipus, Ajax, and Pentheus, Coriolanus becomes insolent in his pride and goes to destruction. He is noble, kind, good, courageous, but vainglorious in his pride of ancestry, position, and achievement; and he falls. The elements in his character to which Beethoven has given marvellously eloquent proclamation are his pride, which leads him to refuse to truckle to the plebeian tribunes; his rage which had stomach for the destruction of Rome, and his tenderness which makes him yield to the tears of mother and wife and brings death to him. The moods are two; the first is published in the stupendous unisono C of the introduction and the angry principal subject; the second, in the gentle and melodious second theme. The overture dies with mutterings in the depths; with pride unbroken."

SYMPHONY No. 6, "PASTORAL": Op. 68

The "Pastoral" symphony, composed in the summer of 1808, is the first example of symphonic programme-music by a great master. Its illustrative purpose is frankly proclaimed by the descriptive titles which head the separate movements as follows:

1. AWAKENING OF JOYFUL IMPRESSIONS ON ARRIVING IN THE COUNTRY

(Allegro ma non troppo)

2. SCENE BY THE BROOK

(Andante molto moto)

3. MERRY GATHERING OF COUNTRY-FOLK

(Allegro)

4. THUNDER-STORM

(Allegro)

5. SHEPHERD'S SONG; GLAD AND THANKFUL FEELINGS AFTER THE STORM

(Allegretto)

Beethoven in the music of this symphony is avowedly a musical realist. In the "Scene by the Brook" he delineates the rippling of the water by weaving and shimmering of the strings; the songs of birds by imitative figures in the wood-wind (the nightingale: flute; the quail: oboe; the cuckoo: 2 clarinets), which he is at pains to label in the score; and in the "Thunder-storm" section, wind, falling rain, flashes of lightning, the growling of thunder, are suggested by means of easily recognized musical symbols. Yet that the composer was here a somewhat timorous "programmist" is indicated by the note which he wrote in the sketchbook containing ideas for the music of the "Pastoral": "The hearer is left to find out the situations for himself"—a recommendation which he afterwards thought better of—and by the deprecatory after-thought with which he accompanied the description of the symphony on the programme of the concert at which it was first performed (in Vienna, December 22, 1808): "More expression of feeling than painting [depiction]"—and this despite the verisimilitude of the storm and the phonographic warblings of the instrumental birds in a tone-poem whose naïve realism is as deliberate as it is beyond dispute![13]

OVERTURE TO "EGMONT": Op. 84

Beethoven's incidental music to Goethe's "Egmont" was commissioned by Hartl, manager of the court theatres at Vienna. The overture, composed in 1810, was performed for the first time, together with the rest of the incidental music, at a performance of the play at the Hofburg Theatre, on May 24, 1810. The overture was published in the following year.

The dramatic significance of this music has been pithily summarized by Mr. Philip Hale: "The overture is at first a mighty lamentation. There are the voices of an aroused and angry people, and there is at the last tumultuous rejoicing."

The more elaborate interpretation of Dr. Leopold Damrosch is as acceptable as any:

"The overture begins with an outcry—a cry for help—uttered by an entire nation. Then follow heavy, determined chords, which seem to press down the very life of the people, who seem helplessly ... to yield to their fate. Only the all-pervading woe remains impressively sounded forth, first by the oboe.... From every side the wail is repeated, ... bringing before us, as in a picture, the hands of the nation uplifted in prayer to Heaven, until it is lost in the unison of the first outcry, fortissimo.... Only one ray of hope remains—Egmont. But even his light-hearted nature seems imbued with anxiety for his oppressed country. His motive is as if bound in chains by the simultaneous repetition of sombre chords. In deep melancholy the violins repeat the motive, seeming to languish more and more. But with sudden impulse it revives; Egmont shakes off the gloom which surrounds him; his pulse beats quickly and gladly. On every side his fellow-citizens cry to him for aid. They flock together, and in excited bands surround him, their only champion and deliverer. As if to arouse Egmont still more to action, the sombre chords of the introduction are heard suddenly, but now in agitated measures, shorter, more commanding, and more incisive. Egmont heeds not these warnings. His short, lightly given answers indicate that the decisive moment has not yet arrived for him. Three times the stringed instruments thunder forth the word of command. Then, as if Egmont with a prophetic eye saw the future before him, he seems to press forward with a mighty rush to meet the oppressors. The hosts of followers, faithful to his call, rally to a spirited attack, and in fierce contest the victory seems to be won.

"But this is only a dream. True to his nature, he is playing with his doom. Two vehemently interrupting chords try to arouse Egmont from his reveries; but still he dreams on and hears them not. Beethoven then leads to the dramatic catastrophe and to the musical climax. Harshly and powerfully the authoritative chords resound again.... This time they arouse Egmont from his reveries; and for the first time he seems to have a presentiment of the actual danger. But his vision of before has not yet left him. It still hovers about him, and even the repeated alarm will not shake it from his mind.

"For the third time the terrible chords resound with trumpets and kettle-drums thundering out from the orchestra fortissimo. At last the illusion is over. A cry of anguish escapes him. His fate is sealed. Death is his doom. In mute horror the people surround the scaffold of their idol and their heart-felt prayers ascend to Heaven.

"But now their wrath, gaining double force from the martyrdom of their hero and from the hope that Heaven will listen to their prayers, bursts forth. At first a distant murmur is heard. But in wild turmoil the storm of insurrection swells onward; and soon triumphal sounds of victory announce the tyrant's downfall. We hear the chains resolutely rent asunder, and louder rises the cry of victory."

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Anton Schindler, the son of a cantor and school-master, was born at Modl, Moravia, in 1769. He was the intimate associate of Beethoven from 1819 until the latter's death, save for a brief period of estrangement occasioned by Beethoven's untranquil temper. He outlived Beethoven by more than half a century, and died, near Frankfort, at the age of ninety-five.

[12] Such is the account, declares Schindler in a foot-note, given by Count Moritz Lichnowsky, "who, with Ferdinand Ries, witnessed the circumstance."

[13] It is due to the casual reader to remark here that this somewhat Pecksniffian observation of Beethoven's has given rise to more confused and dogmatic philosophizing about the functions and limitations of musical art than time or mere reason can ever hope to overcome. If the bird-songs, the thunder-storm, and the rest of the naturalistic music-making in the "Pastoral" are not to be classed as musical "depiction" (Malerei is Beethoven's word), but are really only "expression of feeling" (Ausdruck der Empfindung), then must one resign one's self to the conclusion that there is actually no such thing as programme-music at all.

BERLIOZ

(Hector Berlioz: born in la Côte Saint-André, France, December 11, 1803; died in Paris, March 9, 1869)

OVERTURE TO "KING LEAR": Op. 4

Berlioz, a sincere and ardent admirer of the genius of Shakespeare, wrote his overture to "King Lear" at Nice and at Rome in the spring of 1831. Although the work bears an early opus number, it stands, in order of composition, between the Symphonie fantastique (Op. 14-a, 1830) and Lélio (Op. 14-b, 1831-1832).

Berlioz had seen his innamorata, Henrietta Smithson,[14] play Shakespearian rôles at the Odéon, Paris, in 1827. He was profoundly impressed. "Shakespeare," he wrote afterwards, with characteristic fervor, "coming upon me thus suddenly, struck me as with a thunderbolt. His lightning opened the heaven of art to me with a sublime crash, and lighted up its fullest depths. I recognized true dramatic grandeur, beauty, and truth." Four years later he wrote the "King Lear" overture.

Berlioz has supplied no programme or elucidation of the music. It is entitled simply, Ouverture du Roi Léar (Tragédie de Shakespeare), leaving the hearer to decipher unaided its precise significance. Is it a character study of the figure of the harassed and desperate king? Are definite incidents, definite phases, of the tragedy, depicted in the music? Or is the overture a preparatory mood-picture, an introduction designed to awaken in the hearer emotions appropriate to the play? Mr. Edward Dannreuther, writing, with presumable deliberation, in the "Oxford History of Music," declares that "in this piece the form of expression ... is vivid enough for a tragic opera which might be named 'Lear, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia'; so vivid, indeed, that, given the general designation, even an unimaginative hearer is likely to take the composer's meaning, and to find the proper names for the themes."

What, in brief, are the general emotional characteristics of the music? The opening is threatening, portentous, fate-burdened. [15] There are brief moments of tenderness—a pathetic tenderness. The mood changes suddenly—the expression-mark in the score is disperato ed agitato. The music is now furious, turbulent, wildly passionate, interrupted by intervals of quietness, of suspended intensity—a quietness that is piteous, poignant, momentous. The end is convulsive, storm-swept; and one is here reminded of Hazlitt's description of the mind of Lear, "staggering between the weight of attachment and the hurried movements of passion, like a tall ship driven about by the winds, buffeted by the furious waves; ... or it is like the sharp rock circled by the eddying whirlpool that foams and beats against it, or like the solid promontory pushed from its basis by the force of an earthquake."

It is possible to see in this music a picture of Lear, "stretched to the last moment upon the rack of this tough world"; of Cordelia, "unmingled tenderness and strength, sunshine and rain at once"; of Goneril and Regan, types of "the ravening egoism in humanity which is at war with all goodness." Or one may recall the words of Coleridge as most pithily characterizing the overture of Berlioz: "What is Lear? It is storm and tempest—the thunder at first grumbling in the far horizon, then gathering around us, and at length bursting in fury over our heads—succeeded by a breaking of the clouds for a while, a last flash of lightning, the closing in of night, and the single hope of darkness."

FANTASTIC SYMPHONY: Op. 14-a

1. DREAMS, PASSIONS

(Largo)
(Allegro agitato e appassionato assai)

2. A BALL

(Waltz: Allegro non troppo)

3. SCENE IN THE FIELDS

(Adagio)

4. MARCH TO THE SCAFFOLD

(Allegretto non troppo)

5. WALPURGIS NIGHT'S DREAM

(Larghetto)
(Allegro)

This Symphonie fantastique, in five movements, constitutes the first part of a work entitled by Berlioz "Episode in the Life of an Artist." The second part, a "lyric monodrama," is entitled "Lélio; or, The Return to Life." The Symphonie fantastique was composed in 1830, at the time of Berlioz's "interminable and inextinguishable" passion for the Irish actress Henrietta Smithson—the tragic history of which this is not the place to review. The "Episode in the Life of an Artist," as he wrote to his dear friend Ferrand early in 1830, was to portray "the development of my infernal passion." As to the meaning of the "Fantastic Symphony," Berlioz has himself supplied the following detailed explanatory preface:

"A young musician of morbid sensibility and ardent imagination poisons himself with opium in a fit of amorous despair. The narcotic dose, too weak to result in death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest visions, during which his sensations, sentiments, and recollections are translated in his sick brain into musical thought and images. The beloved woman herself has become for him a melody, like a fixed idea which he finds and hears everywhere.

"Part I

"DREAMS, PASSIONS

"He first recalls that uneasiness of soul, that vague des passions, those moments of causeless melancholy and joy, which he experienced before seeing her whom he loves; then the volcanic love with which she suddenly inspired him, his moments of delicious anguish, of jealous fury, his returns to loving tenderness, and his religious consolations.

"Part II

"A BALL

"He sees his beloved at a ball, in the midst of the tumult of a brilliant fête.

"Part III

"SCENE IN THE FIELDS

"One summer evening in the country he hears two shepherds playing a Ranz-des-vaches in alternate dialogue; this pastoral duet, the scene around him, the light rustling of the trees gently swayed by the breeze, some hopes he has recently conceived, all combine to restore an unwonted calm to his heart and to impart a more cheerful coloring to his thoughts; but she appears once more, his heart stops beating, he is agitated with painful presentiments; if she were to betray him!... One of the shepherds resumes his artless melody, the other no longer answers him. The sun sets ... the sound of distant thunder ... solitude ... silence....

"Part IV

"MARCH TO THE SCAFFOLD

"He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned to death and led to execution. The procession advances to the tones of a march which is now sombre and wild, now brilliant and solemn, in which the dull sound of the tread of heavy feet follows without transition upon the most resounding outbursts. At the end, the fixed idea reappears for an instant, like a last love-thought interrupted by the fatal stroke.

"Part V

"WALPURGIS NIGHT'S DREAM

"He sees himself at the witches' Sabbath, in the midst of a frightful group of ghosts, magicians, and monsters of all sorts, who have come together for his obsequies. He hears strange noises, groans, ringing laughter, shrieks, to which other shrieks seem to reply. The beloved melody again reappears; but it has lost its noble and timid character; it has become an ignoble, trivial, and grotesque dance-tune: it is she who comes to the witches' Sabbath.... Howlings of joy at her arrival ... she takes part in the diabolic orgy.... Funeral knells, burlesque parody on the Dies iræ. Witches' dance. The witches' dance and the Dies iræ together."[16]

"HAROLD IN ITALY"

SYMPHONY IN FOUR MOVEMENTS, WITH VIOLA SOLO: Op. 16

1. HAROLD IN THE MOUNTAINS; SCENES OF MELANCHOLY, HAPPINESS, AND JOY

(Adagio)
(Allegro)

2. MARCH OF PILGRIMS SINGING THEIR EVENING HYMN

(Allegretto)

3. SERENADE OF A MOUNTAINEER OF THE ABRUZZI TO HIS MISTRESS

(Allegro assai)
(Allegretto)

4. ORGY OF BRIGANDS; RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PRECEDING SCENES

(Allegro frenetico)

Upon the romanticists in France—"the heroic boys of 1830," as William Ernest Henley called them—the influence of Byron was gripping and profound. To Berlioz, in particular, "greedy of emotion, intolerant of restraint, contemptuous of reticence and sobriety, ... and prepared to welcome, as a return to truth and nature, inventions the most extravagant and imaginings the most fantastic and far-fetched," this prince of romanticists must have seemed a poet after his own heart. Yet, singularly enough, there are in his writings comparatively few references to the author of "Manfred" and "Don Juan."

The manner in which the "Harold" symphony came to be written is related by Berlioz in his Memoirs. His Symphonie fantastique had been played at a concert at the Paris Conservatory (December 22, 1833), with conspicuous success. "And then," says Berlioz, "to crown my happiness, after the audience had gone out, a man with a long mane of hair, with piercing eyes, with a strange and haggard face, one possessed by genius, a colossus among giants, whom I had never seen and whose appearance moved me profoundly, was alone and waiting for me in the hall, stopped me to press my hand, overwhelmed me with burning praise, which set fire to my heart and head: it was Paganini!... Some weeks after this vindicatory concert of which I have spoken, Paganini came to see me. 'I have a marvellous viola,' he said, 'an admirable Stradivarius, and I wish to play it in public. But I have no music ad hoc. Will you write a solo piece for the viola? You are the only one I can trust for such a work.' 'Yes, indeed,' I answered, 'your proposition flatters me more than I can tell, but, to make such a virtuoso as you shine in a piece of this nature, it is necessary to play the viola, and I do not play it. You are the only one, it seems to me, who can solve the problem.' 'No, no; I insist,' said Paganini; 'you will succeed; as for me, I am too sick at present to compose; I cannot think of it.'

"I tried then to please the illustrious virtuoso by writing a solo piece for the viola, but a solo combined with the orchestra in such a manner that it would not injure the expression of the orchestral mass, for I was sure that Paganini, by his incomparable artistry, would know how to make the viola always the dominating instrument....

"His proposal seemed new to me, and I soon had developed in my head a very happy idea, and I was eager for the realization. The first movement was hardly completed, when Paganini wished to see it. He looked at the rests for the viola in the allegro and exclaimed: 'No, it is not that: there are too many rests for me; I must be playing all the time.' 'I told you so,' I answered; 'you want a viola concerto, and you are the only one who can write such a concerto for yourself.' Paganini did not answer; he seemed disappointed, and left me without speaking further about my orchestral sketch. Some days afterwards, suffering already from the affection of the larynx which ultimately killed him,[17] he went to Nice, and returned to Paris only at the end of three years.

"Since I then saw that my plan of composition would not suit him, I set myself to work in another way, and without any anxiety concerning the means to make the solo viola conspicuous. My idea was to write for the orchestra a series of scenes in which the solo viola should figure as a more or less active personage of constantly preserved individuality; I wished to put the viola in the midst of poetic recollections left me by my wanderings in the Abruzzi, and make it a sort of melancholy dreamer, after the manner of Byron's 'Childe Harold.' Hence the title, Harold en Italie. As in the Symphonie fantastique, a chief theme (the first song of the viola) reappears throughout the work; but there is this difference: the theme of the Symphonie fantastique, the 'fixed idea,' interposes itself persistently as an episodic and passionate thought in the midst of scenes which are foreign to it and modifies them; while the song of Harold is added to other songs of the orchestra with which it is contrasted both in movement and character and without any interruption of the development."

The relationship between Berlioz's symphony and Byron's poetic account of the Italian wanderings of his Harold is of the slightest, and any attempt to discover, in Berlioz's programme of the moods and incidents of his symphonic hero, definite correspondences with Byron's poem, would be more than futile. One who seeks enlightenment concerning the intentions of Berlioz in this symphony must fall back upon the composer's own brief hints as contained in the inscriptions appended to the several movements. The voice of the solo viola, as we know, typifies throughout the "melancholy dreamer" as conceived by Berlioz—it is Harold undergoing his adventures: in the mountains; encountering a band of devout and simple pilgrims; observing an enamoured mountaineer in the act of serenading his mistress; and, finally, involved in a tumultuous orgy of drunken bandits. Concerning this last movement, Berlioz has left us some additional information. Included in his Memoirs is a letter addressed to Heine, in which Berlioz gives an account of a performance of the symphony at Brunswick in March, 1843. "In the finale of 'Harold,'" he writes, "in this furious orgy in which the drunkenness of wine, blood, joy and rage all shout together; where the rhythm now seems to stumble, and now to run madly; where the mouths of brass seem to vomit forth curses and reply with blasphemies to entreating voices; where they laugh, drink, strike, bruise, kill, and ravish; where, in a word, they amuse themselves; in this scene of brigands the orchestra became a veritable pandemonium; there was something supernatural and frightful in the frenzy of its dash; everything sang, leaped, roared with diabolical order and unanimity—violins, basses, trombones, drums, and cymbals; while the solo alto, Harold, the dreamer, fleeing in fright, still sounded from afar some trembling notes of his evening hymn. Ah! what a feeling at the heart! What savage tremors in conducting this astonishing orchestra! You know nothing like it, the rest of you, poets; you have never been swept away by such hurricanes of life. I could have embraced the whole orchestra, but I could only cry out, in French it is true, but my accents surely made me understood: 'Sublime! I thank you, gentlemen, and I wonder at you: you are perfect brigands!'"

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Harriet Constance Smithson, born in Ireland in 1800, was a member of a company of English actors that stirred Paris in 1827 by their performances of Shakespearian plays, then unknown to the French public. Miss Smithson was known in Paris as "Henrietta." Berlioz married her in October, 1833. She died in 1854.

[15] Mr. W. F. Apthorp finds in the initial phrase of this introduction a reminder of Lear's speech to Gloster before the latter's castle (act ii., scene iv.):

"Go tell the duke and 's wife I'd speak with them,
Now, presently; bid them come forth and hear me,
Or at their chamber door I'll beat the drum
Till it cry sleep to death."

"It is quite as likely, however," observes Mr. Apthorp, "that Berlioz may have associated this violent, recitative-like passage with Lear's casting-away Cordelia in the first act of the tragedy."

[16] Translated by Mr. W. F. Apthorp.

[17] Paganini died in 1840. When the symphony was first performed at the Paris Conservatory, in 1834, Chrétien Urhan, one of the most famous virtuosos of his day, played the solo-viola part.

BIZET

(Georges[18] Bizet: born in Paris, October 25, 1838; died in Bougival, France, June 3, 1875)

SUITE FROM "L'ARLÉSIENNE," No. 1[19]

1. PRELUDE
2. MINUETTO
3. ADAGIETTO
4. CARILLON

Bizet was commissioned to write incidental music for the performance at the Vaudeville Theatre, Paris, of Alphonse Daudet's three-act play "L'Arlésienne." The play and Bizet's music were given at the Vaudeville on October 1, 1872, and withdrawn after fifteen performances. Bizet's music comprised twenty-seven numbers. After the failure of the Vaudeville production, the composer arranged various numbers out of the twenty-seven in the form of a suite, and these were performed at a Pasdeloup concert in Paris on November 10, 1872. Ten years after the composer's death the play of Daudet, together with Bizet's music in its revised form, was revived in Paris, and it has since been repeatedly performed there.

The plot of "L'Arlésienne" is thus related by Mr. Philip Hale: "Fréderi, a young farmer of Carmague, and the son of Rose Mamaï, of Castelet, is madly in love with a girl of Arles, a brunette who is irresistible in the farandole; [20] and he would fain wed her. She is not seen in the drama. Fréderi is told at last that she is unworthy the love of any honest man; and he, thinking that contempt can kill passion, swears he will forget her. The baleful beauty of the woman haunts him day and night. The maiden Vivette, with whom he has grown up, wishes to console him; but, when he would woo her, the woman of Arles comes between them. Thus tortured by jealousy, hatred, love, despair, on a night when the peasants are celebrating the Festival of Saint Éloi, and dancing the farandole to the sound of flute and tambourine, Fréderi hurls himself from the garret-window of the farm-house and dashes his skull against the pavement of the court.

"As a contrast to this furious passion there is the pure love of the long-separated shepherd Balthazar and Mère Renaud. There is also the Innocent, the young brother of Fréderi, whose brain begins to work only as the tragedy deepens, and at last is awakened to full consciousness by the catastrophe."

The connection of the several numbers of Bizet's suite with the action of the play may be briefly indicated:

I. PRELUDE

The Prelude, which serves also as the introduction to the play, prefigures two of the chief dramatic personages: the Innocent, and the impassioned Fréderi. Prefacing the themes of these two appears the tune of an old Provençal Christmas song. There are four variations of this theme, and then follows the theme of the Innocent, forming the second section of the Prelude. The theme of Fréderi's passion constitutes the finale. It is this theme which accompanies the speech of Balthazar at the tragic end of the drama: "Go to the window—you will see whether one does not die of love!"

II. MINUETTO

In the complete version of the music for the play this piece is No. 17 of Act II. The middle portion has been said to denote "the tender and resigned affection of the Shepherd Balthazar and Mère Renaud."

III. ADAGIETTO

This music is played during the conversation between Mère Renaud and her lover Balthazar in the Court of Castelet. Mr. Hale has thus admirably translated the passage:

"BALTHAZAR.

"God keep you, Renaud!

"MÈRE RENAUD.

"Oh! O my poor Balthazar.

"BALTHAZAR (in a low voice).

"It's my fault. I knew you were coming. I should not have stayed.

"MÈRE RENAUD.

"Why not? To keep your oath? Bah! that is not worth the trouble. God himself has not wished that we should die without a meeting, and for this He put love in the hearts of those children there. And, after all, He owes us this as a reward for our bravery.

"BALTHAZAR.

"Yes, there was need of courage. Leading my beasts, I sometimes saw the smoke of your dwelling, and it seemed to make a sign to me: 'Come! She is here!'

"MÈRE RENAUD.

"And when I heard your dogs bark, and I recognized you and your great cape afar off, it took all my strength to keep me from running towards you. And now, at last, our trouble is at an end, and we can look on each other without blushing. Balthazar!

"BALTHAZAR.

"Renaud!

"MÈRE RENAUD.

"Would you be ashamed to kiss me now, all old and wrinkled by years as I am?

"BALTHAZAR.

"Oh!

"MÈRE RENAUD.

"Well, press me close to your heart. For fifty years I have owed you this kiss of friendship."

IV. CARILLON [21]

This number forms the prelude to the fourth scene, the Court of Castelet. In celebration of the betrothal of Fréderi and Vivette, the court-yard of the farm-house is gay with May-poles and decorations of cornflowers and poppies. The orchestra plays an unvarying chime-like figure throughout fifty-six measures. There is a contrasting episode—the entrance of Mère Renaud; then the bell-like figure is resumed, and continues to the end.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] The baptismal names of Bizet were Alexandre-César-Léopold. As "Georges" he was known to the world and to his family and friends.

[19] Without opus number.

[20] "Farandole": a peasant dance of Southern France and the adjoining Italian provinces. It is in 6-8 rhythm and rapid tempo.

[21] "Carillon": a set of bells, tuned in a scale; in the modern orchestra, a series of small steel bars producing, when struck, bell-like tones throughout a range of about two and one-half octaves. Hence the use of the term to characterize an instrumental piece suggestive of bell music.

CHADWICK

(George Whitfield Chadwick: born in Lowell, Mass., November 13, 1854; now living in Boston)

DRAMATIC OVERTURE, "MELPOMENE"[22]

Chadwick's three principal overtures, "Melpomene," "Adonais," and "Euterpe," belong to that somewhat anomalous class of modern works which occupy a place on the border-line between programme music and "absolute" music—music which, while constructed according to the classic rules of design rather than in conformity with a poetic or dramatic scheme, is yet devoted to the expression of some mood or idea more definite than that which one looks for in music that is admittedly "absolute." In the "Melpomene," "Adonais," and "Euterpe" overtures, the composer has given us no clews as to the particular significance of his music beyond those conveyed by their titles—which are, doubtless, in their case, sufficient to establish a receptive mood in the hearer. The "Melpomene," composed in 1887, was originally intended as a companion piece to his earlier and seldom-played "Thalia" overture. That was subtitled "Overture to an Imaginary Comedy," and the sub-title of the "Melpomene" was intended to be "Overture to an Imaginary Tragedy." In the published score, however, the sub-title was omitted, and only the name of the Tragic Muse[23] was retained as an indication of the emotional purport of the music. The overture, as has been said, bears no explanatory note or preface whatever. Of its emotional outlines an indication is given in this vivid exposition of the music by Mr. Rupert Hughes:

"It opens with the solitary voice of the English horn.... The woful plaint of this voice, breathing above a low, sinister roll of the kettle-drum, establishes at once the atmosphere of melancholy. Other instruments join the wail, which breaks out wildly from the whole orchestra. Over a waving accompaniment of clarinets, the other wood-winds strike up a more lyric and hopeful strain, and a soliloquy from the 'cello ends the slow introduction. The first subject is announced by the first violins against the full orchestra.... After a powerful climax and a beautiful subsidence, ... the second subject appears, ... with honeyed lyricism. Almost before one knows it he is in the midst of the elaboration [the development, or "working-out" section, of a composition in sonata form]. It is hard to say whether the composer's emotion or his counterpoint is given freer rein here, for the work is remarkable both for the display of every technical resource and for the irresistible tempest of its passion.... The cheerful consolation of the second subject provokes a cyclonic outburst of grief; there is a furious climax of thrilling flutes and violins over a mad blare of brass, the while the cymbals shiver beneath the blows of the kettle-drum-sticks. An abrupt silence prepares for a fierce, thunderous clamor from the kettle-drums and the great drum. This subsides to a single thud of a kettle-drum; there is another eloquent silence; the English horn returns to its first plaint; but grief has died of very exercise, and the work ends in a coda [conclusion passage] that ... leaves the hearer with a heart purged white and clean."

ELEGIAC OVERTURE, "ADONAIS" [24]

The score of this overture, completed in 1899, bears the following inscription: "In memoriam Frank Fay Marshall, obiit July 26, 1897." Its emotional kinship with the great threnody of Shelley is indicated in the title and in the character of the music. It might fittingly bear as motto these incomparable lines from Shelley's poem, which voice in words the precise emotion which has seemed to shape the utterances of the musician:

"Oh, weep for Adonais—he is dead!
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!
Yet wherefore? Quench within thy burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep,
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;
For he is gone, where all things wise and fair
Descend:—oh, dream not that the amorous Deep
Will yet restore him to the vital air;
Death feeds on his mute voice and laughs at our despair.

"He will awake no more, oh, never more!
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
So fair a prey, till darkness and the law
Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw."

CONCERT OVERTURE, "EUTERPE" [25]

It has been said authoritatively that this overture (composed in 1903) follows no definite programmatic plan; that the spirit which animates it is adequately suggested by the title. Euterpe, it will be recalled, was the fourth daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Her province among the Muses has been admirably stated by Thomas Heywood, that seventeenth-century Englishman of amazing literary fecundity and erudition. [26] "Euterpe," he wrote in 1624, "is called the goddess of pleasantness and jollities, said to be delighted in all sorts of pipes and wind instruments, and to be both their inventresse and guidress.... This is the consequence and coherence betwixt Clio[27] and Euterpe, according to Fulgentius: we first in Clio acquire sciences, and arts, and enterprises, and by them honour and glorie: that obtained, in Euterpe we find pleasure and delectations in all such things as we sought and attained.... For Euterpe imports to us nothing else but the joy and pleasure which we conceive in following the Muses and truly apprehending the mysteries of discipline and service."

SYMPHONIC POEM, "CLEOPATRA" [28]

The narrative of Plutarch, rather than the play of Shakespeare, has served as the dramatic and poetic basis of this musical embodiment of the tragic history of Antony and Cleopatra. The composer has gone for his basic material to Plutarch's Life of Antony, from which, according to an authorized exposition, "those situations having the most direct reference to Cleopatra have been chosen for musical suggestion, although the action of the tragedy is not literally followed." Those phases of the tale selected by the composer for particular delineation appear to relate—in the order of their place in the score—to the voyage of Cleopatra up the River Cydnus in her barge (that barge which, "like a burnished throne, burnt on the water"); the martial approach of Antony; the passion of the lovers; Antony's melancholy end, and the burial of the pair in one grave.

The music (it was composed in 1904) opens with a passage suggestive of Cleopatra's voyage upon the Cydnus—a tonal paraphrase of Shakespeare's picture of that wonderful floating pageant: the barge whose poop

"was beaten gold;

Purple the sails, and so perfumed that

The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made

The water which they beat to follow faster,