Dr. Dubbe was in his element yesterday. The trinity of B's--Bach,
Beethoven, and Brahms--or, as Dr. Dubbe put it, the "trinity of
logicians," was much to his taste: a truly Gothic program.
"But what a contrast is the second half," said Dr. Dubbe. "In the first
we have the Kings of absolute music. In his youth Beethoven strayed from
the path (for even he must sow his musical wild oats), but in his
maturer years he produced no music that was not absolute. But in the
second half we have Berlioz and program music."
"I thought program music was music suitable for programs," said Mrs.
Givu A. Payne.
"Berlioz," continued Dr. Dubbe, "instituted the 'musical reform' in
Germany--the new German school of Liszt and Wagner. Berlioz's music is
all on the surface, while Brahms' music sounds the depths. He uses the
contra-bassoon in about all of his orchestral compositions (you will
hear it to-day), and most of his piano works take the last A on the
piano. If his bass seems at times muddy it is because he goes so deep
that he stirs up the bottom."
"How clear!" exclaimed Miss Gay Votte.
"Take measure sixty-five in Berlioz's 'Dance of the Sylphs,'" said Dr.
Dubbe. "The spirits hover over Faust, who has fallen asleep. The 'cellos
are sawing away drowsily on their pedal point D (probably in sympathy
with Faust), and what sounds like Herr Thomas tuning the orchestra is
the lone A of the fifth. The absent third represents the sleep of Faust.
This is a trick common to the new school. Wagner uses it in 'Siegfried,'
in the close of the Tarnhelm motive, to illustrate the vanishing
properties of the cap. In measure fifty-seven of the Ballet you will
find a chord of the augmented five-six, a harmony built on the first
inversion of the diminished seventh of the key of the dominant, with
lowered bass tone, and which in this instance resolves into the dominant
triad. Others claim that this harmony is a dominant ninth with root
omitted and lowered fifth."
"It has always seemed so to me," said Mrs. Fuller-Prunes. But I don't
believe she knows a thing about it.
"I think it's all awfully cute," said Miss Georgiana Gush.
"The harmony," resumed Dr. Dubbe, frowning, "really sounds like a
dominant seventh, and may be changed enharmonically into a dominant
seventh and resolve into the Neapolitan sixth. This is all clear to you,
I suppose?"
"Oh, yes," we all replied.
Dr. Dubbe then analyzed and played for us Brahms' First Symphony, after
which Miss Ellenborough served doughnuts made in the shape of a Gothic
B. We all had to eat them--one for Bach, one for Beethoven, and one for
Brahms.