By far the most original of these numbers is “The Dance of the
Dervishes,” the second one referred to. This brief but complete
composition is full of striking originality and graphic realism. It is
one in which Beethoven’s genius seems to have anticipated by half a
century the pronounced modern trend toward descriptive or program music,
and is as realistic a tone-painting as we might expect from the pen of
Saint-Saëns, Wagner, or any of the recent writers. The dance was
introduced into the play as an interesting local feature,—the dervishes
being numerous in connection with the Turkish army,—and Beethoven
naturally selected it as an effective subject for musical treatment.
But, before speaking of their dancing as illustrated by Beethoven, it
may be of sufficient historical interest to give a brief sketch of the
dervishes themselves.
They developed as a sect or order from Mohammedanism after it was well
established in the world. The name “dervishes,” which they assumed,
comes from a Russian word which means “beggars from door to door.” The
Arabic word which means the same thing is “fakirs.” So they are called
dervishes or fakirs in different localities, but are the same body. They
declared themselves Moslems, but their doctrines, in many respects,
differed widely from those of Mohammed. Their beginnings are in
obscurity, but they were a well-established order by the eleventh
century. Their expressed beliefs, as we earliest come to know them, were
chiefly and decidedly religious. They seemed to represent the spiritual
and mystical side of Islam, having a philosophy much like that of the
Hindus, and perhaps borrowed from them. Their central idea seemed to be
that the soul is an emanation from God, and that man’s highest aim is to
seek a total absorption in Him. Their various and strange rites and
ceremonies seem only different ways by which they sought for union with
the deity. In this way they claimed that they secured miraculous powers.
At first they largely lived in convents, under rules and orders, giving
themselves up to meditation and penance, observing the rules of poverty,
abstinence from wine, and celibacy, in the higher classes. Their growth
was rapid; but in time they largely fell away from their highest estate,
ceased to be so strictly a religious body, broke up into various ranks
and sub-orders, became more free from conventional rules, more nomadic,
and more wild and fanatical; but their social and political influence
ever increased, so that they have long been regarded as a dangerous
element in the state. There are crowds of them all through the East that
seem to belong to no society, wandering mendicants, and, though often
skilled in trades, largely subsisting by professional jugglery, bigoted
in their fantastic beliefs, and varying in their rites and strange
ceremonies. And yet always and everywhere there is still some general
adherence to the old appointed religious ways, a peculiar tie or
affiliation with the distinctive body or sect, however differing in
certain notions or modes of worship. The lowest devotee of them all
claims that the dervishes or fakirs constitute a distinct body of
religious believers in spite of all divisions and varieties in
manifestation. They acknowledge no authority but that of their spiritual
guides, as that of the Mahdi in the Soudan, where these fanatics have
been so lately fighting the English. They agree also in not following
the letter of the Koran, or the general teachings of its interpreters.
As a whole body, in all its orders, all over the world, they seek, as an
act of worship, to get into an ecstatic state. They do this in various
ways: Sometimes by drinking hasheesh, but more generally by some
physical or mental ways, and while under the excitement they perform
astounding feats in jugglery or mysticism that really seem almost
miraculous. We cannot stop to detail these different methods. One of
them is the dance of a certain order which has received the name of the
“dancing or whirling dervishes.”
This is the dance of Beethoven—an ingenious method of excitement and
self-torture, and at the same time a strict religious ceremonial. It
consists of little more than an exceedingly rapid gyration upon an
imaginary pivot, spinning round and round like tops, with almost
incredible velocity, till overcome by dizziness from the protracted
rotary motion, or by physical exhaustion, they fall in a swoon, after
passing through all the successive stages of delirious frenzy always
attending intense fanatical religious excitement, no matter what the
race or faith. The dance is accompanied by frantic gestures, wild cries,
and doleful groans, and often by a species of weird oriental music,
adapted to its rhythm, and intended to stimulate the dancers to greater
excitement, and consequently greater exertion and speed.
This music, as well as a portrayal of the dance, Beethoven gives us in
this composition, which has been admirably transcribed for the piano by
Saint-Saëns. It begins softly and a little slowly. As the dancers
gradually get under way and warmed to their task, it gradually grows in
speed and power as the frenzy increases, till it reaches a furious,
almost insane climax; then rapidly diminishes as, one by one, the
dancers, exhausted or swooning, drop out of the circle.
It demands great freedom and facility in octave playing, and endless
verve and abandon of style; and needs, to be comprehended and enjoyed by
an audience, some explanation of its character and artistic
signification, either given by the player or printed on the program.
WEBER
1786 1826