Critics have generally ascribed to this composition the honor of
inaugurating a new and important department in the realm of tonal
creation—namely, that of descriptive or program music; that is to say,
music which attempts to embody in tone something more than mere ideal
beauty of metrical form and rhythmic symmetry, and to express something
more than vague emotional states, too intangible for utterance in words;
music which conveys not only sensuous pleasure and indefinite moods, but
a distinct, realistic suggestion; which gives, against a background of
harmony, with its general emotional coloring, an actual picture of some
scene in nature or experience in life; music, in a word, which takes its
place in line with the advanced position of the other arts, in progress
toward dramatic truth and worthy realism. Descriptive music, like
landscape painting, has been the latest, and in some respects the
loftiest, phase of the art to be developed.
We can scarcely with justice credit to Weber, as a strictly original
departure, the opening of this new path in the domain of musical art,
which was in modern times to lead so far and to such important and
magnificent results. Descriptive music, of a more or less pronounced
character, had already appeared from time to time, though rarely so
labeled, and mostly in detached fragments, in the works of most of the
greatest composers, preëminently in those of Haydn, Mozart, Gluck, and
Beethoven. Even the austere Handel was not entirely free from occasional
digressions into this field. But we may safely ascribe to Weber the
honor of being one of the first to have the full courage of his
convictions and to declare himself boldly for this phase of creative
art, by giving to this distinctly descriptive composition an
unmistakably descriptive title, thus fearlessly unveiling and
emphasizing its realistic intentions.
The work opens with a simple but serious passage of recitative in single
notes, in the baritone register, conveying the “Invitation to the Dance”
as if by a mellow masculine voice. Then comes the reply, in a soft
soprano, brief, kindly, but as if offering some playful objection, as
the lady, true to her sex, waits to be asked a second time before saying
yes. The invitation is repeated more urgently, followed by the assenting
treble, as the lady steps upon the floor on the arm of her partner. A
brief dialogue ensues, in which the two voices can be distinctly traced
by their differing registers, alternating and interwoven, as the pair
pace the polished floor, exchanging those airy nothings of the
ball-room. Then the orchestra enters, with a passage of brilliant
resonant chords, full of spirited life and gay challenge, calling the
dancers to their places, and the waltz proper begins. Its crisp, piquant
rhythm and free elasticity of movement, its bright, graceful melody and
cheerful major harmony, all express youthful elation, fresh, joyous
excitement, thoughtless, hence unmixed, gaiety.
As the steps and the pulses quicken, there comes on that exhilaration of
mood familiar to all dancers, caused by the lights, the flowers, the
perfumes, the music, the gay costumes, the beauty and the gallantry of a
ball-room, the rhythmic exercise of the muscles and free circulation of
the blood, all acting together to produce upon the senses and the fancy
an effect amounting almost to intoxication; an echo of which is awakened
in every breast, which has felt it often and keenly, on catching a
strain of distant dance music, to the end of life. This mood is depicted
in the composition before us by an exuberance of runs and ornamentation,
following the first simple enunciation of the waltz melody.
After rising to quite a little climax of ecstasy, this mood lapses
abruptly into the second waltz theme, slower, more lyric, dreamy,
languorous, almost melancholy in tone, conveying that impression which
every susceptible person feels, to the verge of rising tears, after
listening long to waltz music, which is quite different from its first
inspiring effect, and which every devoted dancer feels equally surely in
the prolonged waltz. The time has come when one has grown so accustomed
to the waltz movement as to be scarcely conscious of it, seems rather,
in a state of rhythmic rest, to be floating on the atmosphere, which
ebbs and flows to a three-four measure. Thoughts, breath, pulses, flying
feet, the murmur of voices, all existence has adapted itself to this
waltz tempo, as to its normal element, and the very planets seem to
swing through space in triple rhythm. The true waltz has but two moods,
which touch the opposite poles of emotion—that of joyous elation and of
dreamy languor. We may call them the _Allegro_ and the _Penseroso_ of
the waltz. And Weber, in the “Invitation to the Dance,” has recognized
this and woven his composition of but two themes, representing the
contrasting phases of feeling described.
In the midst of the second warm and sinuous melody, we hear again the
masculine voice, in less conventional accents, and the soft responses of
the treble, through quite a colloquy, while the accompaniment keeps ever
steadily to the undulating waltz movement, till the two voices merge
gradually into the general murmur and are drowned in the flourishes of
the orchestra, as our couple disappears in the whirl, with which the
waltz, taking up again the first sparkling melody with accelerated pace,
draws with increasing confusion to its close. When the dance has ceased,
and the orchestra is silent, the introductory theme recurs, as the
gentleman leads his lady to a seat and expresses his thanks with the
sedate courtesy of his first greeting; and thus ends this charming
composition and this glimpse into that gay social world, where the hand
some, talented, but rather dissolute young composer was only too great a
favorite in his early years.
In spite of a certain baldness and primitive naïveté noticeable in the
treatment at times, the “Invitation to the Dance,” so widely and justly
popular, is one of Weber’s ablest pianoforte compositions, both from a
musical and a dramatic standpoint. Regarded from that of pure music, it
is especially interesting from the fact that it was the first
composition to raise the waltz, used up to that time only as an
accompaniment for dancing, to the level of legitimate and recognized
artistic musical forms. In the hands of Schubert, Chopin, Strauss,
Rubinstein, and Moszkowski, these successive kings of the waltz, it has
since reached its present development.
The “Invitation to the Dance” was written a few months after Weber’s
happy marriage with the opera singer, Caroline Brandt, and is dedicated
to “My Caroline.”