thought and expression--or, as the critics say, between _ethos_ and
technique--is one that constantly tempts the critic of music, and
always betrays him. Very seductive it is, because analogy with other
arts is so plausible a device for exploiting music; but push it to its
logical outcome and it inevitably vanishes--the form proves to be not
the investiture, nor even the incarnation, of the thought, but the
thought itself. Change the expression and you annihilate the thought;
develop a technique and you create a system of ideas; mind and body
are ultimately one. Now the case of Dvořák is strongly corroborative
of such a theory of the identity in music of _ethos_ and technique.
What is seen from one angle of vision as his love of exotic color, his
devotion to curious intervals of melody, sudden excursions in tonality,
and odd molds of rhythm, appears from the other, the technical side,
as mastery of orchestral sonority and inheritance of a peculiar
musical dialect. It is therefore difficult to account exactly for
the genesis of any given quality in his work. Is it the result of an
outer influence acting upon a peculiarly plastic nature, or does it
spring rather from deeply-rooted individual traits that have dominated
the course of his development and shaped his style? Did his early
experiences in a village band, for example, awaken and evolve his
sense of tone color, or would his music have been primarily sensuous
even if he had had the training of Brahms, Tschaïkowsky, or César
Franck? It seems probable that here, as elsewhere, inner endowment
and outer influence have reacted with a subtlety and complexity that
defy analysis, and thought and style are but aspects of one essence.
Consequently, the difference between _ethos_ and technique, however
serviceable as a means of getting over the ground, as a tool of
investigation, will mislead us unless we constantly remember how
partial is its validity. We may indeed, for the sake of clearness and
thoroughness, speak first of one aspect, then of another, but the man
we are studying, like the shield in the allegory, remains all the time
one.
To approach the technical side first, there can be no doubt that the
rich quality of Dvořák's tone, a quality so striking that Mr. Hadow
places him with Beethoven, Berlioz, and Wagner in the class of supreme
masters of orchestration, would never have been attainable to one who
had not had his peculiar experience. He has the practical player's
exhaustive knowledge of instruments, which enables him, by disposing
the parts always in effective registers, to get a rich and mellow
sonority in his _ensemble_ writing. Examine any chord in his scores,
and you see that each player gives a tone that he can sound fully and
advantageously, and that each choir of instruments--the strings, the
wood, the brass--gives in isolation an effective chord. The resultant
harmony is a well-balanced, thoroughly fused mass of tone. But far
more important than the power to write effectively disposed single
chords is the power to weave a fabric of close texture and firm
consistency, to make the orchestra sustain, ramify, and reinforce
itself, so to speak. By far the best way to secure this solidity of
texture is to write coherent and well-individualized melodies in the
different parts, which serve as strands to bind the whole. Such is the
method of Beethoven among classic and of Tschaïkowsky among romantic
composers, and so efficient is good polyphonic or «many-voiced» writing
as a means of sonority that it has been truly said, «Pure voice-leading
is half an orchestra.» Yet great skill is required for such
polyphonic writing, since all the independent melodies must cooperate
harmoniously; and Dvořák, who got little academic training as a boy,
is not a great contrapuntist. Just here, however, his band experience
coming to his aid, he was saved from writing lumpish, doughy stuff--in
which one poor tune in the soprano vainly attempts to hold up a heavy
weight of amorphous «accompaniment»--by his extraordinary knack of
vitalizing his entire mass of tone through rhythmic individualization
of the parts. Taking a skeleton of simple harmony, he manages to write
for the different voices such salient and individual rhythms that they
stand out with almost the grace of melodious contrapuntal parts. It is
a sort of metrical yeast to keep his bread from being soggy. Numerous
examples will at once occur to students of his scores, particularly
from the Slavonic Dances and Rhapsodies. A third form of his orchestral
mastery might be pointed out in the well-calculated special effects
for single instruments, such as the oboe duet that concludes the first
movement of the Suite, opus 39, which occur everywhere in his scores.
But that is, after all, a commoner form of skill, whereas rich sonority
and life in the fabric as the result of rhythmic individualization of
the parts, can be found in few scores so highly developed as in those
of Dvořák.
As regards structure, Dvořák is felicitous but eccentric. He does not
lay out his plans with the careful prevision of one to whom balance
and symmetry are vital. His scheme is not foreordered, it is sketched
currently. Thus, for example, his modulation is singularly radical,
impulsive and haphazard. He loves to descend unexpectedly upon the most
remote keys, never knows where he will turn next, and when he gets
too far from home returns over fences and through no-thoroughfares.
Often, with him, a change of key seems dictated merely by a desire
for a particular patch of color; he wishes to brighten the tonal
background with sharps or mollify it with flats, and plump he comes to
his key, little caring how he gets there or where he is going next.
His use of contrasts of tonality is thus characteristic of his love
of color-effects for themselves and his willingness to subordinate to
them purity of line. Again, it is probably not forcing the point to
see in his use of uneven rhythms, such as five and seven bar periods,
another instance of the same tendency to license. Undoubtedly in part a
legacy from Bohemian folk-song, which is particularly rich in them, his
uneven rhythms seem to be also in part due to a certain fortuitousness
of mind. It is as if he closed his phrase, without regard to strict
symmetry, wherever a good chance offered. The theme of the Symphonic
Variations, opus 78, is an example. It is interesting to contrast this
rhythmic trait of Dvořák's with Grieg's accurate and sometimes almost
wearisome precision of outline. Both men derive from folk-music a love
of incisive meter--their music has a strong pulse; but Grieg, who is
precise, lyrical, sensitive to perfection of detail, is really finical
in his unfaltering devotion to square-cut sections, while Dvořák, more
wayward, less perfect and exquisite, strays into all sorts of odd
periods. His somewhat arbitrary treatment of tonality relations and
of rhythm is thus illustrative of a general laxity of method highly
characteristic of the man. In contrast with a jealously accurate artist
like Grieg, he is felicitous more by force of genius than by wisdom of
intent.
Dvořák's childlike spontaneity is in no way better exemplified than
by his attitude toward folk-music, and here again he may profitably
be contrasted with Grieg. Both devotees of local color have enriched
art with unfamiliar lineaments and unused resources, yet their modes
of procedure have been quite different. Grieg, traversing the usual
mill of German musical education, turned consciously to Norwegian
folk-song to find a note of individuality. Struck with the freshness
of the native dances, he transplanted them bodily into his academic
flower-pots. His courtship of the national Muse was conscious,
sophisticated, and his style is in a sense the result of excogitation.
Dvořák, on the contrary, growing up in his small Bohemian village,
unable to get classic scores, assiduously fiddling throughout his youth
at village fêtes where the peasants must have a scrap of tune to dance
by, became thoroughly saturated with the rude music. It moved in his
veins like blood; it was his other language. Thus the two men were at
quite polar standpoints in relation to nationalism. With Dvořák it was
a point of departure, with Grieg it was a goal of pilgrimage. And so,
while the Norwegian has tended to immure himself in idiosyncrasy, the
Bohemian has rubbed off provincialisms without losing his inheritance.
His music, while retaining the sensuous plenitude, the individual
flavor, the florid coloring, with which his youth endowed it, has
acquired, with years and experience, a scope of expression, a maturity
of style, and a universality of appeal that make it as justly admired
as it is instinctively enjoyed.
Imperceptibly we have passed from technical analysis into personal
inventory. And indeed, all Dvořák's peculiarities of style may be
viewed as the inevitable manifestations of a nature at once rich
and naïve. His music makes a delightfully frank appeal. It is never
somber, never crabbed, never even profound. It breathes not passion,
but sentiment. It is too happily sensuous to be tragic, too busy with
an immediate charm to trouble about a remote meaning. Even when he is
moving, as in the Largo of the New World Symphony, is it not with a
gentle, half-sensuous pathos, a wistfulness more than half assuaged by
the wooing sweetness of the sounds that fill our ears? To him music is
primarily sweet sound, and we shall misconceive his aim and service
if in looking for something deep in him we miss what is, after all,
very accessible and delightful for itself--the simple charm of his
combinations of tone.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.--Dvořák's fecundity is surprising. He has
written cantatas, oratorios, a mass, a requiem, and hymns for chorus
and orchestra; five symphonies, five overtures, four symphonic
poems, the well-known Slavonic Dances and Rhapsodies, concertos for
piano, violin, and violoncello, the inimitable Suite, op. 39, the
Symphonic Variations, op. 78, and other orchestral works of smaller
proportions; seven string quartets, a sextet, three trios, a terzetto
for two violins and a viola, two string quintets, a piano quintet, a
piano quartet, a sonata for violin and piano, and a serenade for wind
instruments; and, finally, many piano works and songs. He is at his
best in his orchestral and chamber works, of which the following are
typical: the Slavonic Dances, op. 46 and 72, the Slavonic Rhapsodies,
op. 45, the Suite, op. 59, the Symphony, «From the New World,» op. 95,
and the Scherzo Capriccioso, op. 66; the Sextet, op. 48, the Quartet
and Quintet on negro themes, op. 96 and 97, the Piano Quintet, op.
81, and the Piano Quintet, op. 87. Though these compositions lose
much in transcription, they are all obtainable in four-hand piano
arrangements. The piano music is somewhat unidiomatic except the later
things, but the Mazurkas, op. 56, the Poetische Stimmungsbilder, op.
85, and the Humoreskes, op. 101, are worth knowing. Of the songs, nine
of the best are published separately by the house of Simrock, and the
two most popular ones, «Gute Nacht» and «Als die Alte Mutter,» are to
be had in Schirmer's series entitled «Gems of German Songs.» A study
of these will probably arouse a desire for more, and the student may
buy the Gipsy Songs, op. 55, and the Love Songs, op. 83. The duets,
«Klänge aus Mähren,» not very well known, are characteristic.
FOOTNOTES:
[D] A graphic picture of the sleepy little place is given in the essay
on Dvořák in «Studies in Modern Music,» W. H. Hadow, Second Series.
Macmillan, New York, 1894.
IV
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS
[Illustration: CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS]
IV
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS
It is a principle of musical expression that of the two great types
of temperament, the active and the contemplative, the first tends to
express itself in strongly rhythmic figures, the second in phrases of
vaguer outline, full of sentiment not easily to be confined in molds.
The man of action is incisive, vigorous, compact in utterance; the
mystic is by contrast indefinite and discursive. It has been well
established, indeed, that primeval music was the product of two modes
of instinctive emotional expression, the gesticulatory and the vocal,
dance and song; and throughout its growth these two strands, however
closely they may intertwine, can still be traced. Thus it happens that
even to-day we find the complex work of modern musicians getting a
special impress of personality and style according as the rhythmic or
the melodic-harmonic faculty predominates in the individual. One man's
music will be notable for its strong impulse, its variety and vivacity
of rhythm; another's will appeal to the more dreamy and sentimental
part of our natures, will speak to our hearts so movingly that we shall
recognize its descent from the song rather than from the dance. And in
all such cases the first man will be of the active temperament, a man
of the world, of many interests and great nervous force; the second
will be contemplative, inclined to the monastic life, and of great
heart rather than keen intelligence.
Such an antithesis of artistic product and of personal character exists
in a peculiar degree between Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck, the
two greatest composers France has produced since Bizet. Each of these
men is great by virtue of qualities somewhat wanting in the other.
The one is clever, worldly, learned--and a little superficial; the
other, profound, religious, of singularly pure and exalted spirit, is
yet emotional to the verge of abnormality. And so with their music;
that of Saint-Saëns is energetic, lucid, consummately wrought, while
Franck's, more moving and more subtle, is so surcharged with feeling as
to become vague and inarticulate. A review of their lives and a brief
analysis of their work will bring out more clearly this divergence of
nature, which, in spite of the many traits they have in common, has
determined them to very different careers and exacted of them very
dissimilar artistic services.
At a concert given in Paris in 1846 appeared a new prodigy, a boy
pianist, «le petit Saint-Saëns,» as the «Gazette Musicale» announced
him, who, only ten and a half years old, played Händel, Bach,
Beethoven, and Mozart, «without notes, with no effort, giving his
phrases with clearness, elegance, and even expression in the midst of
the powerful effects of a numerous orchestra using all its resources.»
This, the first public appearance of Saint-Saëns, was by no means his
first musical exploit. We read that he began the study of the piano
with his great-aunt at the age of three, when already his sense of tone
was so keen that he would press down with his left hand the slender
fingers of the right until they became strong enough to satisfy his
exacting requirements; that at five he composed little waltzes; that
at ten he played fugues by Bach, a concerto of Hummel, and Beethoven's
C-minor Concerto; and that he could tell the notes of all the
clock-chimes in the house, and once remarked that a person in the next
room was «walking in trochees.» By the time he was seventeen he had
earned wide reputation as a pianist, had taken prizes for organ-playing
at the conservatory, and had written an ode for chorus, solo, and
orchestra, and a symphony. Thus early did he lay the foundations
of that skill which in the early seventies, when at Wagner's house
he played on the piano the «Siegfried» score, won from von Bülow
the remark that, with the exception of Wagner and Liszt, he was the
greatest musician living.
The surprising energy and versatility shown at the opening of
Saint-Saëns's career have proved, in the course of time, to be the
salient traits of his typically Gallic nature. He is, to a remarkable
degree, the complete Frenchman. He has all the intellectual vivacity,
all the nervous force, the quick wit and worldly polish, even the
physical swarthiness and the dry keenness of visage, that we associate
with his countrymen. M. Georges Servières, in his «La Musique Française
Moderne,» gives the following excellent description: «Saint-Saëns
is of short stature. His head is extremely original, the features
characteristic; a great brow, wide and open, where, between the
eyebrows, the energy and the tenacity of the man reveal themselves;
hair habitually cut short, and brownish beard turning gray; a nose like
an eagle's beak, underlined by two deeply marked wrinkles starting from
the nostrils, eyes a little prominent, very mobile, very expressive.
The familiars of his Mondays, those who knew the artist before injured
health and family sorrows had darkened his character, remember that
there was about him then a keen animation, a diabolic mischievousness,
a railing irony, and an agility in leaping in talk from one subject
to another with a sprightliness of fancy that equaled the mobility
of his features, which were animated at one and the same moment by
the most contrary expressions; and I could cite as instances of his
gay humor many funny anecdotes that he loved to tell, adjusting on
his nose the while, with both hands, in a way peculiar to him, his
eye-glasses, behind which his eyes sparkled with malice.» Some examples
of this railing irony of Saint-Saëns are preserved. There is, for
instance, a story of an ambitious woman at one of his «Mondays,» who
fairly browbeat him into accompanying her two daughters in a duet.
After enduring as long as he could the torture of their timeless and
tuneless performance, he turned to the mother with, «_Which_ of your
daughters, madam, do you wish me to accompany?» A man of his wit
naturally found himself at home in Paris society, and counted among his
friends for years such people as the Princess Pauline Metternich, Mme.
Viardot-Garcia, and Meissonier, Tourgenieff, and Dumas. A story told in
the «Figaro,» of how at Madame Garcia's, where he often played both the
organ and the piano, he would pass from improvising «masterly pages»
in the contrapuntal style to waltzes for the young people to dance by,
illustrates in little that peculiar combination of distinction and
gayety, characteristic of Paris, which is the native air of Saint-Saëns.
But this adept metropolitan is also an inveterate nomad. Not content
with traveling all over Europe in his virtuoso tours, he has long had
the habit of wintering in outlandish places like the Canary Islands.
Often he leaves home without announcing to any one his departure, or
even giving friends his addresses; sometimes without knowing himself
where he will go. The spectacle of distant lands and alien races has
for him an inexhaustible fascination. In writing of his experiences
in England, where he went in 1893 to receive the doctor's degree from
Cambridge, he dwells with gusto on the procession of dignitaries,
at the head of which, he says, «marched the King of Bahonagar, in
a gold turban sparkling with fabulous gems, a necklace of diamonds
at his throat.» «Dare I avow,» he adds, «that, as an enemy of the
banalities and the dull tones of our modern garments, I was enchanted
with the adventure?» And in his charming little essay, «Une Traversée
de Bretagne,» the same enthusiasm throws about his oboe-playing
ship-captain the glamour of romance. On his first trip to the Canaries,
made incognito, he is said to have offered himself as a substitute to
sing a tenor part in «Le Trouvère,» and to have come near appearing in
this incongruous rôle. When his grand opera, «Ascanio,» was produced
at Paris, he scandalized his friends and the public by being absent
from the first performance. Diligent inquiry, and even the efforts
of the diplomatic agents of the Government, failed to discover his
whereabouts, and it was actually rumored that he had died in Ceylon, on
his way to Japan. But all the while he was happily basking in the sun
at Palma, scribbling verses. Finally his fondness for astronomy is well
known, and he is said to have a private observatory in some «ultimate
island.» There is much about this picturesque Frenchman that reminds
one of the heroes of Jules Verne's romances.
When he is at home, Saint-Saëns carries on a many-sided activity of
which composition is hardly more than half. For one thing, he is
indefatigable in his efforts to improve public taste. In 1864 he gave
in a series of concerts all the concertos of Mozart; in 1878, such is
the catholicity of his taste, he organized concerts to produce Liszt's
Symphonic Poems. He has done much for musical bibliography by his
careful editions of Gluck, Rameau, and others. In 1871 he took active
measures to better the opportunities of young native composers. At
that time, as he puts it, «the name of a composer at once French and
living, upon a programme, had the property to put everybody to flight.»
The great improvement that has taken place since then is due largely to
him and his brother-workers of the National Society of Music.
His two volumes of critical essays, «Harmonie et Mélodie» and
«Portraits et Souvenirs,» are marked by soundness of principle, broad
eclecticism of taste, and a pungent, epigrammatic style. In general
temper he is classical without being pedantic; that is to say, he has
no superstitious awe for rules, but a profound reverence for law.
The licenses of modern technique and the mental vagueness of which
they are the reflection find in him a formidable foe. The thrust he
gives, in the preface of «Portraits et Souvenirs,» to those amateurs
who are «annoyed or disdainful if the instruments of the orchestra
do not run in all directions, like poisoned rats,» is typical of his
attitude and method. He is a master of innuendo and delicate sarcasm,
which he always employs, however, to protect art against affectation
and ignorance. In dealing with the theory that music depends for
its effect on physical pleasure, he speaks derisively of the solo
voice which one can «savor at one's leisure, like a sherbet.» He says
of those orchestral conductors and choirmasters who always complain
of difficulties that they «love above all their little habits and
the calm of their existence.» Among these sparkling sentences one
comes frequently also upon pieces of wisdom, sometimes expressed
with rare dignity, as when he writes, «There is in music something
which traverses the ear as a door, the reason as a vestibule, and
which goes yet further.» A writer so highly gifted with both raillery
and eloquence might do mischief were he narrow or intolerant. That
Saint-Saëns is neither can be seen from a mere enumeration of some
of his subjects, chosen almost at random: there are essays on The
Oratorios of Bach and Händel, Jacques Offenbach, Liszt, Poetry and
Music, The Nibelungen Ring and the Performances at Bayreuth, Don
Giovanni, A Defense of Opéra-Comique, The Multiple Resonance of Bells,
and The Wagnerian Illusion.
These titles indicate a wide enough range of interest, but Saint-Saëns
is furthermore a writer on subjects entirely unconnected with music.
His devotion to philosophy has prompted him to publish a volume called
«Problèmes et Mystères;» an antiquarian interest has found expression
in his «Note sur les décors de Théâtre dans l'antiquité romaine;» and
he has printed a volume of poems under the title «Rimes familières.»
Finally, a comedy in one act called «La Crampe des écrivains» (a
disease from which he appears never to have suffered) has been
successfully produced at Paris.
As a composer, Saint-Saëns impresses the student first of all by
his excessive, his almost inordinate, cleverness. It is not seemly
for a human being to be so clever; there is something necromantic
about it. Look at the opening of the G-minor Piano Concerto and see
a modern Frenchman writing like the great Bach. See, in the «Danse
Macabre,» Berlioz and Johann Strauss amalgamated. Listen to the rich
effects of tone in the 'Cello Sonata in C minor. Study the thematic
transformations and the contrapuntal style of the Symphony in the
same key. Admire the lightness, the cobweb iridescence, of the «Rouet
d'Omphale.» The author of these works is obviously a man of great
intellectual skill and versatility.