ORCHESTRAL LITERATURE AND ORCHESTRAL DEVELOPMENT
The perfection of instruments; emotionalism of the romantic period;
enlargement of orchestral resources--The symphony in the romantic
period; Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann; Spohr and Raff--The concert
overture--The rise of program music; the symphonic leit-motif;
Berlioz’s _Fantastique_; other Berlioz symphonies; Liszt’s dramatic
symphonies--The symphonic poem; _Tasso_; Liszt’s other symphonic
poems--The legitimacy of program music.
I
Most typical of the romantic period--more typical even than its
art of song--was its orchestral music. Here all that was peculiar
to it--individuality, freedom of form, largeness of conception,
sensuousness of effect--could find fullest development. The orchestra
in its eighteenth-century perfection was a small, compact, well-ordered
body of instruments, in which every emphasis was laid on regularity
and balance. The orchestra of Liszt’s or Berlioz’s dramatic symphonies
was a bewildering collection of individual voices and romantic tone
qualities. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that, whereas
a Haydn symphony was a chaste design in lines, a Liszt symphony was
a gorgeous tapestry of color. Between the two every instrument had
been developed to the utmost of tonal eloquence which composers could
devise for it. The number of kinds of instruments had been doubled or
trebled, thanks partly to Beethoven, and the size of the orchestra in
common use had been increased at least once over. The technique of
orchestral instruments had increased astonishingly; Schubert’s C major
symphony, which was declared unplayable by the orchestra of the Vienna
Musikverein, one of the best of the age, is a mere toy compared with
Liszt’s or Berlioz’s larger works. Such instruments as the horns and
trumpets were greatly improved during the second and third decades of
the century, so that they could take a place as independent melodic
voices, which had been almost denied them in Beethoven’s time. As an
instrument of specific emotional expression the orchestra rose from
almost nil to its present position, unrivalled save by the human voice.
It is doubtless true to say that this enlargement resulted from
the technical improvements in orchestral instruments and from the
increase of instrumental virtuosity, but the converse is much more
true. The case is here not so much as with the piano, that an improved
instrument tempted a great composer to write for it, but rather that
great composers needed more perfect means of expression and therefore
stimulated the technicians to greater efforts. For, as we have seen,
the musical spirits of the romantic period insisted upon breaking
through conventional limitations and expressing what had never before
been expressed. They wanted overpowering grandeur of sound, impressive
richness of tone, great freedom of form, and constant variety of color.
They wanted especially those means which could make possible their
dreams of pictorial and descriptive music. Flutes and oboes in pairs
and two horns and two trumpets capable of only a partial scale, in
addition to the usual strings, were hardly adequate to describe the
adventures of Dante in the Inferno. The literary and social life of the
time had set composers thinking in grand style, and they insisted upon
having the new and improved instruments which they felt they needed,
upon forcing manufacturers to inventions which should facilitate
complicated and extended passages in the wind, and the performers
to the acceptance of these new things and to unheard-of industry in
mastering them. Thus the mere external characteristics of romantic
orchestral music are highly typical of the spirit of the time.
Perhaps the most typical quality of all is the insistence upon sensuous
effect. We have seen how the denizens of the nineteenth century longed
to be part of the things that were going on about them, how, basing
themselves on the ‘sentimental’ school of Rousseau, they considered a
truth unperceived until they had _felt_ it. This distinction between
contemplating life and experiencing it is one of the chief distinctions
between the classical and the romantic spirit everywhere, and between
the attitude of the eighteenth century and that of the nineteenth in
particular. When Rousseau offered the feelings of his ‘new Heloïse’ as
justification for her conduct, he sent a shock through the intelligent
minds of France. He said, in substance: ‘Put yourself in her place
and see if you wouldn’t do as she did. Then ask yourself what your
philosophic and moral disapproval amounts to.’ Within some fifty years
it became quite the craze of polite society to put itself in the new
Heloïse’s place, and George Sand did it with an energy which astonished
even France.
Now, when one commences thoroughly to reason out life from
one’s individual feelings, it becomes necessary to reconstruct
philosophy--namely, to construct it ‘from the bottom up,’ from the
demands and relations of the individual up to the constitution of the
mass. And it is quite natural that when insistence is thus laid on
the individual point of view the senses enter into the question far
more largely than before. At its most extreme this view comes to an
unrestrained license for the senses--a vice typical of Restoration
France. But its nobler side was its desire to discover how the other
man felt and what his needs were, in place of reasoning on abstract
grounds how he ‘ought’ to act. Besides, since the French Revolution
people had been experiencing things so incessantly that they had
got the habit. After the fall of Napoleon they could not consent to
return to a calm observation of events. Rather, it was precisely
because external events had calmed down that they so much more needed
violent experience in their imaginative and artistic life. The classic
tragedies of the French ‘golden age’ were indeed emotional and in high
degree, but the emotions were those of types, not of individuals. They
were looked on as grand æsthetic spectacles rather than as appeals from
one human being to another. It was distinctly bad form to show too much
emotion at a tragedy of Racine’s; whereas in the romantic period tears
were quite in fashion. However great the human falsity of the romantic
dramas, they at least pretended to be expressions of individual
emotions, and were received by their audiences as such. The life of a
follower of the arts in Paris in the twenties and thirties (or anywhere
in Europe, for that matter) was one of laughing and weeping in the joys
and sorrows of others, moving from one emotional debauch to another,
and taking pride in making the feelings of these creations of art as
much as possible one’s own. It was small wonder, then, that musicians
did the same; that, in addition to trying to paint pictures and tell
stories, they should endeavor to make every stroke of beauty _felt_ by
the auditor, and felt in a physical sensuous thrill rather than in a
philosophic ‘sense of beauty.’
And nothing could offer the romantic musicians a finer opportunity for
all this than the timbres of the orchestra. The soft golden tone of the
horn, the brilliant yellow of the trumpet, the luscious green of the
oboe, the quiet silver white of the flute seemed to stand ready for the
poets of the senses to use at their pleasure. In the vibrating tone of
orchestral instruments, even more than in complicated harmonies and
appealing melodies, lay their chance for titillating the nerves of a
generation hungry for sensuous excitement. But we must remember that if
these instruments have poetic and colorful associations to us it is in
large measure because there were romantic composers to suggest them.
The horn and flute and oboe had been at Haydn’s disposal, yet he was
little interested in the sensuous characteristics of them which we feel
so acutely. In great measure the poetic and sensuous tone qualities of
the modern orchestra were brought out by the romantic composers.
The classical orchestra, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, had
originally been based on the ‘string quartet’--namely, the first
violins, the second violins, the violas, and the ‘cellos, with
the double basses reënforcing the 'cello part. The string section
completely supported the musical structure. This was because the
strings alone were capable of playing complete and smooth scales and
executing all sorts of turns and trills with nearly equal facility.
Wind instruments in the eighteenth century were in a very imperfect
condition. Some of them, like the trumpets, were capable of no more
than eight or ten notes. All suffered from serious and numerous
restrictions. Hence they were originally used for giving occasional
color or ornamentation to the music which was carried by the strings.
About the middle of the century the famous orchestra of the court
of Mannheim, under the leadership and stimulus of Cannabich and
of the Stamitz family, reached something like a solid equilibrium
in the matter of instrumentation, and from its disposition of the
strings and wind all later orchestration took its rise. The Mannheim
orchestra became renowned for its nuance of effect, and especially for
its organized crescendos and diminuendos. The ideal orchestra thus
passed on to Haydn and Mozart was a ‘string quartet’ with wood-wind
instruments for the occasional doubling of the string parts, and the
brass for filling in and emphasizing important chords. Gradually
the wood-wind became a separate section of the orchestra, sometimes
carrying a whole passage without the aid of strings, and sometimes
combining with the string section on equal terms. With this stage
modern instrumentation may be said to have begun. The brass had to
wait; its individuality was not much developed until Beethoven’s time.
Yet during the period of orchestral development under Haydn and Mozart
the strings remained the solid basis for orchestral writing, partly
because of their greater practical efficiency, and partly because the
reserved character of the violin tone appealed more to the classic
sense of moderation. And even with the increased importance of the
wood-winds the unit of writing was the group and not the individual
instrument (barring occasional special solos). The later history of
orchestral writing was one of a gradually increasing importance and
independence for the wood-wind section (and later for the brass)
and of individualization for each separate instrument. Mozart based
his writing upon the Mannheim orchestration and upon Haydn, showing
considerable sensitiveness to timbres, especially that of the
clarinet. Haydn, in turn, learned from Mozart’s symphonies, and in his
later works for the orchestra further developed freedom of writing,
being particularly fond of the oboe. Beethoven emancipated all the
instruments, making his orchestra a collection of individual voices
rather than of groups (though he was necessarily hampered by the
technically clumsy brass).
Yet, compared to the writing of Berlioz and Liszt, the classical
symphonies were in their orchestration rather dry and monochrome
(always making a reservation for the pronounced romantic vein in
Beethoven). Haydn and Mozart felt orchestral contrasts, but they used
them rather for the sake of variety than for their absolute expressive
value. So that, however these composers may have anticipated and
prepared the way for the romanticists, the difference between the two
orchestral palettes is striking. One might say it was the difference
between Raphael’s palette and Rubens’. And in mere externals the
romanticists worked on a much larger scale. The string orchestra in
Mozart’s time numbered from twenty-two to thirty instruments, and to
this were added usually two flutes and two horns, and occasionally
clarinets, bassoons, trumpets, and kettle-drums in pairs. Beethoven’s
orchestra was little larger than this, and the capabilities of
his instruments only slightly greater, but his use of the various
instruments as peculiar and individual voices was masterly. All the
great composers of the second quarter of the nineteenth century studied
his instrumentation and learned from it. But Beethoven, though he
sought out the individual character of orchestral voices, did not make
them sensuously expressive as Weber and Liszt did. About the time of
Beethoven’s death the use of valves made the brass possible as an
independent choir, capable of performing most of the ordinary diatonic
and accidental notes and of carrying full harmony. But it must be said
that even the most radical of the romantic composers, such as Berlioz,
did not avail themselves of these improvements as rapidly as they
might, and were characteristic rather in their way of thinking for
instruments than in their way of writing for them. The valve horns and
valve trumpets came into use slowly; Schumann frequently used valve
horns plus natural horns, and Berlioz preferred the vulgar _cornet à
pistons_ to the improved trumpet.
But the romantic period added many an instrument to the limited
orchestra of Mozart and Beethoven. Clarinets and trombones became the
usual thing. The horns were increased to four, and the small flute
or piccolo, the English horn, and the bass clarinet (or the double
bassoon), and the ophicleide became frequent. Various instruments,
such as the ‘serpent,’ the harp, and all sorts of drums were freely
introduced for special effects.
Berlioz especially loved to introduce unusual instruments, and
quantities of them. For his famous ‘Requiem’ he demanded (though he
later made concessions): six flutes, four oboes, six clarinets, ten
bassoons, thirty-five first and thirty-five second violins, thirty
‘cellos, twenty-five basses, and twelve horns. In the _Tuba Mirum_
he asks for twelve pairs of kettle-drums, tuned to cover the whole
diatonic scale and several of the accidentals, and for four separate
‘orchestras,’ placed at the four corners of the stage, and calling
for six cornets, five trombones, and two tubas; or five trumpets, six
ophicleides, four trombones, four tubas, and the like. His scores are
filled with minute directions to the performers, especially to the
drummers, who are enjoined to use a certain type of drumstick for
particular passages, to place their drum in a certain position, and
so on. His directions are curt and precise. Liszt, on the other hand,
leaves the matter largely to ‘the gracious coöperation of the director.’
Experimentation with new and sensational effects made life thrilling
for these composers. Berlioz recalls with delight in his Memoirs an
effect he made with his arrangement of the ‘Rackoczy March’ in Buda
Pesth. ‘No sooner,’ says he, ‘did the rumor spread that I had written
_hony_ (national) music than Pesth began to ferment. How had I treated
it? They feared profanation of that idolized melody which for so many
years had made their hearts beat with lust of glory and battle and
liberty; all kinds of stories were rife, and at last there came to
me M. Horwath, editor of a Hungarian paper, who, unable to curb his
curiosity, had gone to inspect my march at the copyist.’
'“I have seen your Rakoczy score,” he said, uneasily.
'“Well?”
'“Well, I feel horribly nervous about it.”
'“Bah! Why?”
'“Your motif is introduced piano, and we are used to hearing it
fortissimo.”
'“Yes, by the gypsies. Is that all? Don’t be alarmed. You shall have
such a forte as you never heard in your life. You can’t have read the
score carefully; remember the end is everything.”
‘All the same, when the day came my throat tightened, as it did in
times of great excitement, when this devil of a thing came on. First
the trumpets gave out the rhythm, then the flutes and clarinets, with
a pizzicato accompaniment of strings--softly outlining the air--the
audience remaining calm and judicial. Then, as there came a long
crescendo, broken by the dull beats of the big drum (as of distant
cannon), a strange restless movement was perceptible among them--and,
as the orchestra let itself go in a cataclysm of sweeping fury and
thunder, they could contain themselves no longer. Their overcharged
souls burst with a tremendous explosion of feeling that raised my hair
with terror.’
This bass-drum beat pianissimo ‘as of distant cannon’ has never to this
day lost its wild and mysterious potency. But it must not be supposed
that the romanticists’ contribution to orchestration consisted mainly
in isolated sensational effects. Their work was marvellously thorough
and solid. Berlioz in particular had a wizard-like ear for discerning
and developing subtleties of timbre. His great work on Orchestration
(now somewhat passé but still stimulating and valuable to the student)
abounds in the mention of them. He points out the poetic possibilities
in the lower registers of the clarinets, little used before his day.
He makes his famous notation as to the utterly different tone qualities
of one violin and of several violins in unison, as though of different
instruments. And so on through hundreds of pages. The scores of the
romanticists abound in simple effects, unheard of before their time,
which gain their end like magic. Famous examples come readily to mind:
the muted violins in the high registers in the ‘Dance of the Sylphs’
from ‘The Damnation of Faust’; the clumsy bassoons for the dance of the
‘rude mechanicals’ in Mendelssohn’s incidental music to ‘A Midsummer
Night’s Dream’; the morose viola solo which recurs through Berlioz’s
‘Harold in Italy’; the taps and rolls on the tympani to accompany the
speeches of the devil in _Der Freischütz_ or the flutes in their lowest
register in the accompaniment to Agathe’s air in the same opera--all
these are representative of the richness of poetic imagination and
understanding of orchestral possibilities in the composers of the
romantic period.
II
It was inevitable that the pure symphonic form should decline in
esteem during the romantic period; for it is based primarily on a love
of pure design--the ‘da capo’ scheme of statement, development, and
restatement, which remains the best method ever invented for vividly
presenting musical ideas without extra-musical association or aid. It
is primarily a mold for receiving ‘pure’ musical material, and the
romantic period, as we have seen, had comparatively little use for
music without poetic association. Of the best symphonies of the time
the greater part have some general poetical designation, like the
‘Italian’ and ‘Scotch’ symphonies of Mendelssohn, or the ‘Spring’ and
‘Rhenish’ symphonies of Schumann. These titles were in some cases mere
afterthoughts or concessions to the demands of the time, and in every
case the merest general or whimsical suggestion. Yet they can easily
be imagined as fitting the musical material, and they always manage
to add interest to the work without interfering with the ‘absolute’
musical value. And even when they are without specific title they are
infused with the spirit of the age--delight in sensuous effects and
rich scoring, emotional melody, and varied harmonic support.
For all this, as for nearly everything else in modern music, we must
go back to Beethoven if we wish to find the source, but for purposes
of classification Schubert may be set down as the first romantic
symphonist. He adhered as closely as he could to the classical mold,
though he never had a predominant gift for form. A beautiful melody
was to him the law-giver for all things, and when he found such a
melody it went its way refusing to submit to the laws of proportion.
Yet this willfulness can hardly be regarded as standing in the way
of outward success; the ‘Unfinished’ symphony in B minor could not
be better loved than it is; it is safe to say that of all symphonies
it is the most popular. It was written (two movements and a few bars
of a scherzo) in 1822, was laid aside for no known reason, and lay
unknown in Vienna for many years until rescued by Sir George Grove. The
mysterious introduction in the ‘cellos and basses, as though to say,
‘It happened once upon a time’; the haunting ‘second theme’ introduced
by the ‘cellos; the stirring development with its shrieks of the
wood-wind--all are of the very stuff of romantic music. A purist might
wish the work less diffuse, especially in the second movement; no one
could wish it more beautiful. In the great C major symphony, written
in the year of his death, Schubert seems to have been attempting a
_magnum opus_. If he had lived, this work would certainly have been
regarded as the first composition of his ‘second period.’ He labored
over it with much more care than was his custom, and showed a desire to
attain a cogent form with truly orchestral ideas. The best parts of the
‘Unfinished Symphony’ could be sung by the human voice; the melodies
of the C major are at home only with orchestral instruments. The work
was all but unprecedented for its time in length and difficulty; it is
Schubert’s finest effort in sustained and noble expression, and, though
thoroughly romantic in tone, his nearest approach to ‘absolute’ music.
It seems outmoded and at times a bit childlike to-day, but by sheer
beauty holds its place steadily on orchestral programs. Schubert’s
other symphonies have dropped almost completely out of sight.
Mendelssohn’s four symphonies, including the ‘Italian,’ the ‘Scotch,’
and the ‘Reformation,’ have had a harder time holding their place. It
seems strange that Mendelssohn, the avowed follower of the classics,
should not have done his best work in his symphonies, but these
compositions, though executed with extreme polish and dexterity, sound
thin to-day. A bolder voice might have made them live. But the ‘Scotch’
and ‘Italian’ in them are seen through Leipzig spectacles, and the
musical subject-matter is not vigorous enough to challenge a listener
in the midst of modern musical wealth. As for the ‘Reformation’
symphony, with its use of the Protestant chorale, _Ein feste Burg_,
a technically ‘reformed’ Jew could hardly be expected to catch the
militant Christian spirit. Yet these works are at their best precisely
in their romantic picturesqueness; as essays in the ‘absolute’ symphony
they cannot match the nobility and strength of Schubert’s C major.
Schumann, the avowed romantic, had much more of worth to put into his
symphonies, probably because he was an apostle and an image-breaker,
and not a polite ‘synthesist.’ The ‘Spring’ symphony in B flat,
written in the year of his marriage, 1840 (the year of his most
exuberant productivity), remains one of the most beautiful between
Beethoven and recent times. The austerity of the classical form
never robbed him of spontaneity, for the ideas in his symphony are
not inferior to any he ever invented. The form is, on the whole,
satisfactory to the purist, and, beyond such innovations as the
connecting of all four movements in the last symphony, he attempted
little that was new. The four works are fertile in lovely ideas,
such as the graceful folk-song intoned by ‘cellos and wood-wind in
the third, or the impressive organ-like movement from the same work.
Throughout there is the same basic simplicity of invention--the
combination of fresh melodic idea with colorful harmony--which endears
him to all German hearts. It is customary to say that Schumann was a
mere amateur at orchestration. It is certainly true that he had no
particular turn for niceties of scoring or for searching out endless
novelties of effect, and it is true that he sometimes proved himself
ignorant of certain primary rules, as when he wrote an unplayable
phrase for the horns in his first symphony. But his orchestration is,
on the whole, well balanced and adequate to his subject-matter, and is
full of felicities of scoring which harmonize with the romantic color
of his ideas.
Of the other symphonists who were influenced by the romantic fervor
the greater part have dropped out of sight. Spohr, who may be reckoned
among them, was in his day considered the equal of Beethoven, and his
symphonies, though often manneristic, are noble in conception, romantic
in feeling, and learned in execution. Of a much later period is Raff,
a disciple of Liszt, and, to some extent, a crusader on behalf of
Wagner. Like Spohr, he enjoyed a much exaggerated reputation during
his lifetime. Of his eleven symphonies _Im Walde_ and _Leonore_
(both of a mildly programmistic nature) were the best known, the
latter in particular a popular favorite of a generation ago. Raff
further developed the resources of the orchestra without striking
out any new paths. Many of his ideas were romantic and charming, but
he was too often facile and rather cheap. Still, he had not a little
to teach other composers, among them the American MacDowell. Gade,
friend of Mendelssohn and his successor at Leipzig, was a thorough
scholarly musician, one of the few of the ‘Leipzig circle’ who did not
succumb to dry formalism. He may be considered one of the first of
the ‘national composers,’ for his work, based to some extent on the
Danish folk idiom, secured international recognition for the national
school founded by J. P. E. Hartmann. Ferdinand Hiller, friend of Liszt
and Chopin, wrote three symphonies marked by romantic feeling and
technical vigor, and Reinecke, for many years the representative of the
Mendelssohn tradition at Leipzig, wrote learnedly and at times with
inspiring freshness.
III
In the romantic period there developed, chiefly at the hands of
Mendelssohn, a form peculiarly characteristic of the time--the
so-called ‘concert overture.’ This was based on the classic overture
for opera or spoken drama, written in sonata form, usually with a slow
introduction, but poetic and, to a limited extent, descriptive, and
intended purely for concert performance. The models were Beethoven’s
overtures, ‘Coriolanus,’ ‘Egmont,’ and, best of all, the ‘Leonore No
3,’ written to introduce a particular opera or drama, it is true, but
summing up and in some degree following the course of the drama and
having all the ear-marks of the later romantic overture. From a mere
prelude intended to establish the prevailing mood of the drama the
overture had long since become an independent artistic form. These
overtures gained a great popularity in concert, and their possibilities
for romantic suggestion were quickly seized upon by the romanticists.
Weber’s overture to _Der Freischütz_, though written for the opera,
may be ranked as a concert overture (it is most frequently heard in
that capacity), and along with it the equally fine _Euryanthe_ and
_Oberon_. The first named was a real challenge to the Philistines. The
slow introduction, with its horn melody of surpassing loveliness, and
the fast movement, introducing the music of the Incantation scene, are
thoroughly romantic. Weber’s best known concert overture (in the strict
sense), the _Jubel Ouvertüre_, is of inferior quality.
Schumann, likewise, wrote no overtures not intended for a special drama
or a special occasion, but some of his works in this form rank among
his best orchestral compositions. Chief among them is the ‘Manfred,’
which depicts the morbid passions in the soul of Byron’s hero, as
fine a work in its kind as any of the period. The ‘Genoveva’ overture
is fresh and colorful in the style of Weber, and that for Schiller’s
‘Bride of Messina’ is scarcely inferior. Berlioz has to his credit a
number of works in this form, mostly dating from his earliest years of
creative activity. Best known are the ‘Rob Roy’ (introducing the Scotch
tune, ‘Scots Wha’ Hae’) and the _Carnival Romain_, but the ‘Lear’ and
‘The Corsair,’ inspired by two of his favorite authors, Shakespeare and
Byron, are also possessed of his familiar virtues. Another composer
who in his day made a name in this form is William Sterndale Bennett,
an Englishman who possessed the highest esteem of Mendelssohn and
Schumann, and was a valuable part of the musical life of Leipzig in
the thirties and later. The best part of his work, now forgotten save
in England, is for the piano, but the ‘Parisina’ and ‘Wood Nymphs’
overtures were at one time ranked with those of Mendelssohn. Like all
English composers of those times he was inclined to the academic,
but his work had much freshness and romantic charm, combined with an
admirable sense of form.
But it is Mendelssohn whose place in this field is unrivalled. His
‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ overture, written when he was seventeen, has
a place on modern concert programs analogous to that of Schubert’s
‘Unfinished Symphony.’ This work is equally the delight of the
musical purist and of the untechnical music-lover. It is marked by
all Mendelssohn’s finest qualities. Not a measure of it is slipshod
or lacking in distinction. Its scoring is deft in the extreme. Its
themes are fresh and charming. And upon it all is the polish in which
Mendelssohn excelled; no note seems out of place, and none, one
feels, could be otherwise than as it is. It is mildly descriptive--as
descriptive as Mendelssohn ever was. The three groups of characters in
Shakespeare’s play are there--the fairies, the love-stricken mortals,
and the rude mechanicals--each with its characteristic melody. The
opening chords, high in the wood-wind, set the fanciful tone of the
whole. For deft adaptation of the means to the end it has rarely been
surpassed in all music. In his other overtures Mendelssohn is even less
descriptive, being content to catch the dominant mood of the subject
and transmit it into tone in the sonata form. ‘Fingal’s Cave,’ the
chief theme of which occurred to him and was noted down on the supposed
scene of its subject in Scotland, is equally picturesque in its subject
matter, but lacks the buoyant invention of its predecessor. The ‘Calm
Sea and Prosperous Voyage’ is a masterpiece of restraint. The technical
means are exceedingly simple, for in his effort to paint the reigning
quiet of his theme Mendelssohn dwells inordinately upon the pure tonic
chord. Yet the work never lacks its composer’s customary freshness or
sense of perfect proportion. His fourth overture--‘To the Story of
the Lovely Melusina’--is only second to the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’
in popularity. In these works Mendelssohn is at his best; only the
‘Elijah’ and the violin concerto equally deserve long life and frequent
repetition. For the overtures best show Mendelssohn the synthesist. In
them he has caught absolutely the more refined spirit of romanticism,
with its emphasis on tone coloring and its association of literary
ideas, and has developed it in a classic mold as perfect as anything in
music. Nowhere else do the dominating musical ideas of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries come to such an amicable meeting ground.
IV
Yet this ‘controlled romanticism,’ which Mendelssohn doubtless hoped
would found a school, had little historical result. The frenzied
spirits of the time needed some more vigorous stimulation, and those
who had vitality sufficient to make history were not the ones to be
guided by an academic gourmet. The Mendelssohn concert overtures are a
pleasant by-path in music; they by no means strike a note to ring down
the corridors of time. ‘Controlled romanticism’ was not the message
for Mendelssohn’s age; for this age was essentially militant, smashing
idols and blazing new paths, and nothing could feed its appetite save
bitter fruit.
This bitter fruit it had in full measure in Berlioz’s romantic
symphonies, as in Liszt’s symphonic poems. Of the true romantic
symphonies the most remarkable is Berlioz’s _Symphonie Fantastique_,
one of the most astonishing productions in the whole history of music.
It seems safe to say that in historical fruitfulness this work
ranks with three or four others of the greatest--Monteverdi’s opera
_Orfeo_, in 1607; Wagner’s _Tristan_, and what else? The _Fantastique_
created program music; it made an art form of the dramatic symphony
(including the not yet invented symphonic poem and all forms of free
and story-telling symphonic works). At the same time it gave artistic
existence to the _leit-motif_, or representative theme, the most
fruitful single musical invention of the nineteenth century.
The _Fantastique_ seems to have no ancestry; there is nothing in
previous musical literature to which more than the vaguest parallel can
be drawn, and there is nothing in Berlioz’s previous works to indicate
that he had the power to take a new idea--two new ideas--out of the sky
and work them out with such mature mastery. One might have expected a
period of experimentation. One might at least expect the work to be the
logical outcome of experiments by other men. But Berlioz had no true
ancestor in this form; he had no more than chance forerunners.
Nevertheless program music, or at least descriptive music, in some
form or other, is nearly as old as music itself. We have part-songs
dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which imitate the
cuckoo’s call, or the songs of other birds. Jannequin, contemporary
with Palestrina, wrote a piece descriptive of the battle of Marignan,
fought between the French and the Swiss in 1515. Even Bach joins the
other program composers with his ‘Caprice on the departure of his
brother,’ in which the posthorn is imitated. Couperin gave picturesque
titles to nearly all his compositions, and Rameau wrote a delightful
piece for harpsichord, suggestively called ‘The Hen.’ Many of Haydn’s
symphonies have titles which add materially to the poetry of the music.
Beethoven admitted that he never composed without some definite image
in mind. His ‘Pastoral Symphony’ is so well known that it need only
be mentioned, though strict theorists may deny it a place with program
music on the plea that, in the composer’s own words, it is ‘rather
the recording of impressions than painting.’ Yet Beethoven wrote one
piece of downright program music in the strict sense, for his ‘Battle
of Vittoria’ frankly sets out to describe one of the battles of the
Napoleonic wars. It is, however, pure hack work, one of the few works
of the master which might have been composed by a mediocre man. It is
of a sort of debased program music which was much in fashion at the
time, easy and silly stuff which pretended to describe anything from
a landscape up to the battle of Waterloo. The instances of imitative
music in Haydn’s ‘Creation’ are well known. Coming down to later
times we find the ophicleide imitating the braying of the ass in
Mendelssohn’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ overture, and since then few
composers, however reserved in manner and classic in taste, have wholly
disdained it.
Yet all this long, even distinguished, history does not fully prepare
the way for the program music of Berlioz. It is not likely that he was
familiar with much of it. And even if he had been he could have found
no programmistic form or idea ready at hand for his program pieces. The
program music idea was rather ‘in the air’ than in specific musical
works. From the literary romanticists’ theory of the mixing of the
genres and the mingling of the arts his lively mind no doubt drew a
hint. And the influence of his teacher, Lesueur, at the Conservatory
must be reckoned on. Lesueur was something of a radical and apostle
of program music in his day, having been, in fact, relieved of his
duties as director of music in Notre Dame because he insisted upon
attuning men’s minds to piety by means of ‘picturesque and descriptive’
performances of the Mass. Program music! Here was a true forerunner of
Berlioz--a very bad boy in a very solemn church. Perhaps this accounts
for Berlioz’s veneration of his teacher, one of the few men who doesn’t
figure somewhat disgracefully in the Memoirs. At any rate, the young
revolutionist found in Lesueur a sympathetic spirit such as is rarely
to be found in conservatories.
To sum up, then, we find that Berlioz had no precedent in reputable
music for a sustained work of a close descriptive nature. Works of
picturesque quality, which specifically do not ‘depict events’--like
the ‘Pastoral’ symphony--are not program music in the more exact
sense. Isolated bits of description in good music, like the famous
‘leaping stag’ and ‘shaggy lion’ of Haydn’s ‘Creation,’ offer no
analogy for sustained description. And the supposed pieces of sustained
description, like the fashionable ‘battle’ pieces, had and deserved no
musical standing. The _Fantastique_, as we shall see, was detailed and
sustained description of the first rank musically. The gap between the
_Fantastique_ and its supposed ancestors was quite complete. It was
bridged by pure genius.
As for the _leit-motif_, it is even more Berlioz’s own invention.
The use of a particular theme to represent a particular personage or
emotion was, of course, in such program music as had existed. But
only in a few isolated instances had this been used recurrently to
accompany a dramatic story. Mozart, in _Don Giovanni_, had used the
famous trombone theme to represent the Statue, first in the Graveyard
scene and later in the Supper scene. Weber had somewhat loosely used
a particular theme to represent the devil Samiel in _Der Freischütz_.
We know from Berlioz’s own description[98] how this work affected him
in his early Parisian years and we may assume that the notion of the
leit-motif took hold on him then. But the leit-motif in Mozart and
Weber is hardly used as a deliberate device, rather only as a natural
repetition under similar dramatic conditions. The use of the leit-motif
in symphonic music, and its variation under varied conditions belongs
solely to Berlioz.
True to romantic traditions, Berlioz evolved the _Fantastique_ out of
his own joys and sorrows. It originated in the frenzy of his love for
the actress, Henriette Smithson. He writes in February, 1830:[99]
‘Again, without warning and without reason, my ill-starred passion
wakes. She is in London, yet I feel her presence ever with me. I listen
to the beating of my heart, it is like a sledge-hammer, every nerve in
my body quivers with pain.
‘Woe upon her! Could she but dream of the poetry, the infinite bliss
of such love as mine, she would fly to my arms, even though my embrace
should be her death.
‘I was just going to begin my great symphony (Episode in an Artist’s
Life) to depict the course of this infernal love of mine--but I can
write nothing.’
Why, this is very midsummer madness! you say. But the kind of madness
from which came much good romantic music. For the work had been planned
in the previous year, not long after Miss Smithson had rejected
Berlioz’s first advances.
But the composer very soon found that he could write--and he wrote like
a fiend. In May he tells a friend that the rehearsals of the symphony
will begin in three days. The concert is to take place on the 30th.
As for Miss Smithson, ‘I pity and despise her. She is nothing but a
commonplace woman with an instinct for expressing the tortures of the
soul that she has never felt.’ Yet he wished that ‘the theatre people
would somehow plot to get _her_ there--that wretched woman! She could
not but recognize herself.’
The performance of the symphony finally came off toward the end of the
year. But in the meantime a new goddess had descended from the skies.
The composer’s marriage was to depend on the success of the concert--so
he says. ‘It must be a _theatrical_ success; Camille’s parents insist
upon that as a condition of our marriage. I hope I shall succeed.
‘P. S. That wretched Smithson girl is still here. I have not seen her.’
And a few weeks later: ‘I had a frantic success. They actually encored
the _Marche au Supplice_. I am mad! mad! My marriage is fixed for
Easter, 1832. My blessed symphony has done the deed.’
But not quite. He was rewriting this same symphony a few months later
in Italy when there came a letter from Camille’s mother announcing her
engagement to M. Pleyel!
As explanation to the symphony the composer wrote an extended
‘program’--in the strictest modern sense. He notes, however, that the
program may be dispensed with, as ‘the symphony (the author hopes)
offers sufficient musical interest in itself, independent of any
dramatic intention.’ The program of the _Fantastique_ is worth quoting
entire, since it stands as the prototype and model of all musical
programs since:
‘A young musician of morbid sensitiveness and ardent imagination
poisons himself with opium in an excess of amorous despair. The
narcotic dose, too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy
sleep, accompanied by the strangest visions, while his sensations,
sentiments and memories translate themselves in his sick brain into
musical thoughts and images. The loved one herself has become for him a
melody, like a fixed idea which he rediscovers and hears everywhere.
‘First Part: Reveries, Passions. He first recalls that uneasiness of
the soul, that wave of passions, those melancholies, those reasonless
joys, which he experienced before having seen her whom he loves; then
the volcanic love with which she suddenly inspired him, his frenzied
heart-rendings, his jealous fury, his reawakening tenderness, his
religious consolations.
‘Second Part: A Ball. He finds the loved one at a ball, in the midst of
tumult and a brilliant fête.
‘Third Part: In the Country. A summer evening in the country: he hears
two shepherds conversing with their horns; this pastoral duet, the
natural scene, the soft whispering of the winds in the trees, a few
sentiments of hope which he has recently conceived, all combine to give
his soul an unwonted calm, to give a happier color to his thoughts; but
_she_ appears anew, his heart stops beating, painful misapprehensions
stir him--if she should deceive him! One of the shepherds repeats his
naïve melody; the other does not respond. The sun sets--distant rolls
of thunder--solitude--silence----
‘Fourth Part: March to the Gallows. He dreams that he has killed his
loved one, that he is condemned to death, led to the gallows. The
cortège advances, to the sounds of a march now sombre and wild, now
brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy steps follows
immediately upon the noisiest shouts. Finally, the fixed idea reappears
for an instant like a last thought of love, to be interrupted by the
fatal blow.
‘Fifth Part: Dream of the Witches’ Festival. He fancies he is present
at a witches’ dance, in the midst of a gruesome company of shades,
sorcerers, and monsters of all sorts gathered for his funeral. Strange
sounds, sighs, bursts of laughter, distant cries and answers. The loved
melody reappears again; but it has lost its character of nobility and
timidity; it is nothing but an ignoble dance, trivial and grotesque;
it is she who comes to the witches’ festival. Sounds of joy at her
arrival. She mingles with the hellish orgy; uncanny noises--burlesque
of the _Dies Irae_; dance of the witches. The witches’ dance and the
_Dies Irae_ follow.’
The music follows this program in detail, and supplies a host of other
details to the sympathetic imagination. The opening movement contains
a melody which Berlioz avers he composed at the age of twelve, when he
was in love with yet another young lady, a certain Estelle, six years
his senior. And in each movement occurs the ‘fixed idea,’ founder of
that distinguished dynasty of leit-motifs in the nineteenth century:
[Illustration: Music score]
In the opening movement, when the first agonies of love are at their
height, this theme undergoes a long contrapuntal development which
is a marvel of complexity and harmonic energy. It recurs practically
unchanged in the next three movements, and at its appearance in the
fourth is cut short as the guillotine chops the musician’s head off.
In the last movement it undergoes the change which makes this work the
predecessor of Liszt’s symphonic poems:
[Illustration: Music score]
The structure of this work is complicated in the extreme, and it
abounds in harmonic and contrapuntal novelties which are strokes of
pure genius. Many a musician may dislike the symphony, but none can
help respecting it. The orchestra, though not large for our day, was
revolutionary in its time. It included, in one movement or another
(besides the usual strings) a small flute and two large ones; oboes;
two clarinets, a small clarinet, and an English horn; four horns, two
trumpets, two _cornets à pistons_, and three trombones; four bassoons,
two ophicleides, four pairs of kettle-drums, cymbals, bells, and bass
drum.
A challenge to the timid spirits of the time; and a thing of
revolutionary significance to modern music.
The other great dramatic symphonies of the time belong wholly to
Berlioz and Liszt. The Revolutionary Symphony which Berlioz had planned
under the stimulus of the 1830 revolution, became, about 1837, the
_Symphonie Funèbre et Héroïque_, composed in honor of the men killed
in this insurrection. It is mostly of inferior stuff compared with
the composer’s other works, but the ‘Funeral Sermon’ of the second
movement, which is a long accompanied recitative for the trombones, is
extremely impressive. ‘Harold in Italy,’ founded upon Byron’s ‘Childe
Harold,’ was planned during Berlioz’s residence in Italy, and executed
under the stimulus of Paganini. Here again we have the ‘fixed idea,’
in the shape of a lovely solo, representing the morose hero, given to
the viola. The work was first planned as a viola concerto, but the
composer’s poetic instinct carried him into a dramatic symphony. First
Harold is in the mountains and Byronic moods of longing creep over him.
Then a band of pilgrims approaches and his melody mingles with their
chant. Then the hero hears an Abruzzi mountaineer serenading his lady
love, and to the tune of his ‘fixed idea’ he invites his own soul to
muse of love. And, finally, Harold is captured by brigands, and his
melody mingles with their wild dance.
Berlioz’s melodies are apt to be dry and even cerebral in their
character, but this one for Harold is as beautiful as one could wish:
[Illustration: Music score]
The ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is by many considered Berlioz’s finest work.
It is in two parts, the first including a number of choruses and
recitatives narrating the course of the tragedy, and the second
developing various pictures selected out of the action. The love scene
is ‘pure’ music of the highest beauty, and the scherzo, based on the
‘Queen Mab’ speech, is one of Berlioz’s most typical inventions.
All these compositions antedate by a number of years the works of
Liszt and Wagner, which make extended use of Berlioz’s means. Wagner
describes at length how the idea of leit-motifs occurred to him during
his composition of ‘The Flying Dutchman’ (completed in 1841), but he
was certainly familiar with Berlioz’s works. Liszt was from the first a
great admirer of Berlioz, and greatly helped to extend his reputation
through his masterly piano arrangements of the Frenchman’s works. His
development of the leit-motif in his symphonic poems is frankly an
adaptation of the Berlioz idea.
Liszt’s dramatic symphonies are two--‘Dante’ and ‘Faust’--by which,
doubtless, if he had his way, his name would chiefly be known among
the nations. We have seen in an earlier chapter how deeply Liszt
was impressed by the great paintings in Rome, and how in his youth
he dreamed of some later Beethoven who would translate Dante into
an immortal musical work. In the quiet of Weimar he set himself to
accomplish the labor. The work is sub-titled ‘Inferno, Purgatory, and
Paradise,’ but it is in two movements, the Purgatory leading into, or
perhaps only to, the gate of Heaven. The first movement opens with
one of the finest of all Liszt’s themes, designed to express Dante’s
[Illustration: Music score]
lines: ‘Through me the entrance to the city of horror; through me the
entrance into eternal pain; through me the entrance to the dwelling
place of the damned.’ And immediately another motive for the horns and
trumpets to the famous words: ‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here.’
The movement, with an excessive use of the diminished seventh chord,
depicts the sufferings of the damned. But presently the composer comes
to a different sort of anguish, which challenges all his powers as
tone poet. It is the famous episode of Paolo and Francesca da Rimini.
It is introduced by another motive of great beauty, standing for the
words: ‘There is no greater anguish than, during suffering, to think of
happier times.’ In the Francesca episode Liszt lavishes all his best
powers, and achieves some of his finest pages. The music now descends
into the lower depths of the Inferno, and culminates in a thunderous
restatement of the theme, ‘All hope abandon,’ by the horns, trumpets
and trombones. The second movement, representing Purgatory, strikes
a very different note, one of hope and aspiration, and culminates in
the Latin _Magnificat_, sung by women’s voices to a modal tune, which
Liszt, now once more a loyal Catholic, writes from the heart.
The ‘Faust’ symphony, written between 1854 and 1857, is hardly less
magnificent in its plan and execution. It is sub-titled ‘three
character-pictures,’ and its movements are assigned respectively to
Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles. Yet the last movement merges into
a dramatic narration of the love story and of Faust’s philosophic
aspirations, and reaches its climax in a men’s chorus intoning the
famous final chorus from Goethe’s drama: ‘All things transitory are
but a semblance.’ The Faust theme deserves quoting because of its
chromatic character, which has become so typical of modern music:
[Illustration: Music score]
The whole work is in Liszt’s most exalted vein. The ‘character
pictures’ are suggestive in the extreme, and are contrasted in the most
vivid manner. Liszt has rarely surpassed in sheer beauty the Gretchen
episode, the theme of which later becomes the setting for Goethe’s
famous line, ‘The eternal feminine leads us upward and on.’ These two
works--the ‘Dante’ and the ‘Faust’--are doubtless not so supremely
creative as Liszt imagined, but they remain among the noblest things in
modern music. Their great difficulty of execution, even to orchestras
in our day, stands in the way of their more frequent performance, but
to those who hear them they prove unforgettable. In them, more than in
any other of his works, Liszt has lavished his musical learning and
invention, has put all that was best and noblest in himself.
V
The most typical musical form of to-day--the symphonic poem--is wholly
the creation of Liszt. The dramatic symphony attained its highest
development at the hands of its inventor; later works of the kind,
such as Raff’s ‘Lenore Symphony,’ have been musically of the second or
third rate. It is quite true that a large proportion of the symphonies
of to-day have some sort of general program or ‘subject,’ and nearly
all are sufficiently dramatic in feeling to invite fanciful ‘programs’
on the part of their hearers. But few composers have cared or dared to
go to Berlioz’s lengths. The symphonic poem, on the other hand, has
become the ambition of most of the able orchestral writers of our day.
And, whereas Berlioz has never been equalled in his line, Liszt has
often been surpassed, notably by Richard Strauss, in his.
Curiously enough, Berlioz, who was by temperament least fitted to work
in the strict symphonic form, always kept to it in some degree. The
most revolutionary of spirits never broke away wholly from the past.
Liszt carried Berlioz’s program ideas to their logical conclusion,
inventing a type of composition in which the form depended wholly and
solely on the subject matter. This latter statement will almost serve
as a definition of the symphonic poem. It is any sort of orchestral
composition which sets itself to tell a story or depict the emotional
content of a story. Its form will be--what the story dictates, and no
other. The distinction sometimes drawn between the symphonic poem and
the tone poem is largely fanciful. One may say that the former tends
to the narrative and the latter to the emotional, but for practical
purposes the two terms may be held synonymous.
In any kind of musical narration it is usually necessary to represent
the principal characters or ideas in particular fashion, and the
leit-motif is the natural means to this end. And, though theoretically
not indispensable, the leit-motif has become a distinguishing feature
of the symphonic poem and inseparable from it. Sometimes the themes are
many (Strauss has scores of them in his _Heldenleben_), but Liszt took
a particular pleasure in economy of means. Sometimes a single theme
served him for the development of the whole work. He took the delight
of a short-story writer in making his work as compact and unified
as possible. In fact, the formal theory of the symphonic poem would
read much like Poe’s well known theory of the short story. Let there
be some predominant character or idea--‘a single unique effect,’ in
Poe’s language--and let this be developed through the various incidents
of the narration, changing according to the changing conditions,
but always retaining an obvious relation to the central idea. Or,
in musical terms, select a single theme (or at most two or three)
representing the central character or idea, and repeat and develop this
in various forms and moods. This principle brought to a high efficiency
a device which Berlioz used only tentatively--that of _transformation_.
To Liszt a theme should always be fluid, rarely repeating itself
exactly, for a story never repeats itself. And his musicianship and
invention show themselves at their best (and sometimes at their worst)
in his constant variation of his themes through many styles and forms.
But such formal statement as this is vague and meaningless without
the practical application which Liszt gave it. The second and in many
respects the noblest of Liszt’s symphonic poems is the ‘Tasso, Lament
and Triumph,’ composed in 1849 to accompany a festival performance of
Goethe’s play at Weimar on the hundredth anniversary of the poet’s
birth. The subject caught hold of Liszt’s romantic imagination. He
confesses, like the good romanticist that he is, that Byron’s treatment
of the character appealed to him more than Goethe’s. ‘Nevertheless,’
he says in his preface to the work, ‘Byron, in his picture of Tasso in
prison, was unable to add to the remembrance of his poignant grief,
so nobly and eloquently uttered in his “Lament,” the thought of the
“Triumph” that a tardy justice gave to the chivalrous author of
“Jerusalem Delivered.” We have sought to mark this dual idea in the
very title of our work, and we should be glad to have succeeded in
pointing this great contrast--the genius who was misjudged during his
life, surrounded, after death, with a halo that destroyed his enemies.
Tasso loved and suffered at Ferrara; he was avenged at Rome; his
glory still lives in the folk-songs of Venice. These three elements
are inseparable from his memory. To represent them in music, we first
called up his august spirit as he still haunts the waters of Venice.
Then we beheld his proud and melancholy figure as he passed through
the festivals of Ferrara where he had produced his master-works.
Finally, we followed him to Rome, the eternal city, that offered him
the crown and glorified in him the martyr and the poet.’ A few lines
further Liszt says: ‘For the sake, not merely of authority, but the
distinction of historical truth, we put our idea into realistic form
in taking for the theme of our musical hero the melody to which we
have heard the gondoliers of Venice sing over the waters the lines of
Tasso, and utter them three centuries after the poet.’ The theme is
one of the finest in the whole Liszt catalogue. We need hardly go to
the length of saying that its origin was a fiction on the part of the
composer, but doubtless he changed it generously to suit his musical
needs. Yet his evident delight in its pretended origin is typical of
the man and the time; romanticism had a sentimental veneration for
‘the people,’ especially the people of the Middle Ages, and a Venetian
gondolier would naturally be the object of a shower of quite undeserved
sentimental poetry. The whole story, and the atmosphere which
surrounded it, was meat for Liszt’s imagination.
[Illustration: Music score]
This is the theme--a typical one--which Liszt transforms, ‘according
to the changing conditions,’ to delineate his hero’s struggles, the
heroic character of the man; his determination to achieve greatness;
his ‘proud and melancholy figure as he passed through the festivals at
Ferrara’--the theme of the dance itself is developed from the Tasso
motif:
[Illustration: Music score]
and then his boisterous acclamation by the crowd in Rome:
[Illustration: Music score]
And here, for a moment, the listener hides his face. For Liszt has
become as cheap as any bar-room fiddler. His theme will not stand this
transformation. It happens again and again in Liszt, this forcing of a
theme into a mold in which it sounds banal. No doubt the acclamations
of the crowd _were_ banal (if Liszt intended it that way), but this
thought cannot compensate a listener who is having his ears pained. It
is one of the regrettable things about Liszt, whose best is very nearly
equal to the greatest in music, that he sometimes sails into a passage
of banality without seeming to be at all conscious of it. Perhaps in
this case he was conscious of it, but stuck to his plan for the sake
of logical consistency. (The most frenzied radicals are sometimes the
most rigid doctrinaires.) The matter is worth dwelling on for a moment,
because it is one of the most characteristic faults of the great man.
In the present case we are compensated for this vulgar episode by the
grand ‘apotheosis’ which closes the work:
[Illustration: Music score]
Such is the method, and it is in principle the same as that since
employed by all composers of ‘symphonic poems’--of program music in
fact.
Liszt’s symphonic poems number twelve (excluding one, ‘From the
Cradle to the Grave’ which was left unfinished at the time of his
death). When they are at their best they are among the most inspiring
things in modern music. But Liszt’s strange absence of self-criticism
mingles with these things passages which an inferior composer might
have been suspicious of. In consequence many of his symphonic poems
have completely dropped from our concert programs. Such ones as the
‘Hamlet,’ the _Festklänge_, and ‘What is to Be Heard on the Mountain,’
are hardly worth the efforts of any orchestra. _Les Préludes_, on the
other hand, remains one of the most popular of our concert pieces.
Nowhere are themes more entrancing than in this work, or his structural
form more convincing. ‘The Ideal,’ after Schiller’s poems, was one
of Wagner’s favorites among the twelve, but is uneven in quality.
‘Orpheus,’ which is less ‘programmistic’ than any of the others, in
that it attempts only an idealized picture of the mythical musician,
is worked out on a consistently high plane of musicianship. ‘Mazeppa,’
narrating the ride of Byron’s hero tied on the back of a wild horse,
is simply an elaboration and orchestral scoring of one of the piano
études published as Liszt’s opus 1 in 1826. The étude was even
entitled ‘Mazeppa,’ and was descriptive of the wild ride, so we may, if
we choose, give Liszt the credit of having schemed the symphonic poem
form in germ before he became acquainted with the works of Berlioz.
‘Hungaria,’ a heroic fantasy on Hungarian tunes, should have been, one
would think, one of the best of Liszt’s works, but in point of fact
it sounds strangely empty, and exhibits to an irritating degree the
composer’s way of playing to the gallery. The _Festklänge_ was written,
tradition says, to celebrate his expected marriage with the Princess
von Wittgenstein, and, in view of Huneker’s remark that Liszt accepted
the Pope’s veto to this project ‘with his tongue in his cheek,’ we may
assume that its emptiness was a true gauge of his feelings. In most
of these works there is more than one chief theme, and sometimes a
pronounced antithesis or contrast of two themes. In this classification
falls ‘The Preludes,’ which, in attempting to trace man’s struggles
preparatory to ‘that great symphony whose initial note is sounded by
death,’ makes use of two themes, each of rare beauty, to depict the
heroic and the gentle sides of the hero’s nature, respectively. The
antithesis is more pronounced in ‘The Battle of the Huns,’ founded on
Kalbeck’s picture, which is meant to symbolize the struggle between
Christianity (or the Church) and Paganism. The Huns have a wild minor
theme in triplets, and the Church is represented by the Gregorian hymn,
_Crux Fidelis_.
Thus by works as well as by faith Liszt established the musical type
which best expressed his fervent romantic nature. The symphonic poem
form, coming to something like maturity at the hands of one man, was
a proof of his intellectuality and his high musicianship. We may wish
that he had written less and criticized his work more, but many of the
pages are inescapable in their beauty. In them we are in the very
heart of nineteenth-century romanticism.
VI
Since the early days of violent opposition to Berlioz and Liszt the
question of the ‘legitimacy’ of program music has not ceased to
interest theorists. There are not a few writers to-day who stoutly
maintain that the program and the pictorial image have no place in
music; that music, being constructed out of wholly abstract stuff, must
exist of and for itself. They wish to have music ‘pure,’ to keep it to
its ‘true function’ or its ‘legitimate place.’ Music, they say, can
never truly imitate or describe outward life, and debases itself if it
makes the unsuccessful attempt.
Yet program music continues to be written in ever-increasing abundance,
and, though from the practical point of view it needs no apologist, it
boasts an increasing number who defend it on various grounds. These
theorists point to the ancient and more or less honorable history of
program music, extending back into the dark ages of the art. They
mention the greatest names of classical music--Bach and Beethoven--as
those of composers who have at least tried their hand at it. They
show that the classic ideal of the ‘purity of the arts’ (by no means
practised in classical Greece, by the way) has broken down in every
domain, and that some of the greatest works have been produced in
defiance of it. And, arguing more cogently, they point out that whether
or not music _should_ evoke visual images in people’s minds, evoke them
it does, and in a powerful degree. When _Tod und Verklärung_ makes
vivid to the imaginations of thousands the soul’s agonies of death
and ecstasies of spiritual resurrection, it is no better than yelping
at the moon to moan that this music is not ‘pure,’ or is out of its
‘proper function.’
Undoubtedly it is true that music which attempts to be accurately
imitative or descriptive of physical objects or events is not worth
the trouble. Certainly bad music cannot become good merely by having
a program. But it is to be noted that all the great composers of
program music insisted that their work should have a musical value
apart from its program. Even Berlioz, as extreme as any in his program
music, recorded the hope that his _Fantastique_, even if given without
the program, would ‘still offer sufficient musical interest in
itself.’ As music the _Fantastique_ has lived; as descriptive music
it has immensely added to its interest and vividness in the minds of
audiences. And so with all writers of program music up to Strauss and
even Schönberg, with his _Pelleas und Melisande_ (though Schönberg is
one of the most abstract of musicians in temperament).
Further, good program music throws its emphasis much more on the
emotional than on the literal story to be told. Liszt rarely describes
outward events. He is always depicting some emotion in his characters,
or some sentimental impression in himself. And there are few, even
among the most conservative of theorists, who will deny the power of
music to suggest emotional states. If so, why is it not ‘legitimate’ to
suggest the successive emotional states of a particular character, as,
for instance, Tasso? The fact that a visual image may be present in the
minds of the hearers does not alter the status of the music itself. If
we admit this, then we can hardly deny that the composer has a right to
evoke this image, by means of a ‘program’ at the beginning.
The fact is that not one listener in a hundred has any sense of true
absolute music--the pure ‘pattern music’ which is as far from emotions
and sentiments as a conventional design is from a Whistler etching.
Even the most rabid of purists, who exhaust a distinguished vocabulary
of abuse in characterizing program music, may expend volumes of emotion
in endeavoring to discover the ‘meaning’ of classical symphonies.
They may build up elaborate significations for a Beethoven symphony
which its composer left quite without a program, making each movement
express some phase of the author’s soul, or detecting the particular
emotion which inspired this or that one. They will even build up a
complete programmistic scheme for _every_ symphony, ordaining that the
first movement expresses struggle, the second meditation, the third
happiness, and the last triumph--and more of the like. They will enact
that a symphony is ‘great’ only in so far as it expresses the totality
of emotional experience--of _specific_ emotional experience, be it
noted. This sort of ‘interpretation’ has been wished on any number of
classical symphonies which were utterly innocent of any intent save the
intent to charm the ear. And nearly always the deed has been done by
professed enemies of program music.
But, in spite of the fact that the instinct for programs and meanings
resides in nearly every breast, still there _is_ a theoretical case for
absolute music. There is nothing to prove that music, in and of itself,
has any specific emotional implications whatsoever. It is merely an
organization of tones. As such, since it sets our nerves tingling, it
can indeed arouse emotion, but not _emotions_. That is, it can heighten
and excite our nervous state, but what particular form that nervous
state will take is determined by other factors. In psychological
language, it increases our suggestibility. Under the nervous excitement
produced by music a particular emotional suggestion will more readily
make an impression, and this impression will become associated in our
minds with the music itself. The program is such a suggestion. In a
more precise way the words and actions of a music drama supply the
suggestion. Of course, we have been so long and so constantly under
the influence of musical suggestions that music without a particular
suggestion may have a more or less specific import to us. Slow minor
music we are wont to call ‘sad,’ and rapid major music ‘gay.’ But
this is because such music has nearly always, in our experience, been
associated with the sort of mood it is supposed to express. Somewhere,
in the course of our musical education, there came the specific
suggestion from outside.
But this discussion is purely theoretical. The practical fact is that
music, thanks to a complex web of traditional suggestion, is capable
of bringing to us more or less precise emotional meanings--or even
pictorial meanings, for there is no dividing line. And this fact must
be the starting point for any practical discussion of the ‘legitimacy’
of programme music. Starting with it, we find it difficult to exclude
any sort of music on purely abstract grounds. Any individual may
personally care more for ‘abstract’ music than for program music; that
is his privilege. But it is a very different thing to try to ordain
‘legitimacy’ for others, and legislate a great mass of beautiful music
out of artistic existence.
After all, the case reduces to this: that an ounce of practice is worth
a ton of precept. And the successful practice of program music is one
of the chief glories of the romantic movement. Whatever may have been
the faults of the period, it demonstrated its faith by deed, and the
present musical age is impregnated with this faith from top to bottom.
H. K. M.
FOOTNOTES:
[98] ‘Berlioz’s Memoirs,’ Chap. X.
[99] ‘Letters to Humbert Ferrand,’ quoted in Everyman English edition
of the Memoirs, Chapters XV and XVI.