The rondo is the most ancient, simple, and natural form of homophonic
musical construction. It is based upon the folk-song and is always in
one or the other of the more or less complex song forms. It consists of
a simple melodic period, usually eight measures in length, bright and
cheerful in character, alternating several times, virtually unchanged at
each reappearance, with one or more subordinate subjects, in a more
lyric or dramatic mood, for the sake of variety and contrast.
An apt but homely illustration of the rondo may be found in that most
laborious and indigestible product of American cookery, that culinary
absurdity, originating in our natural tendency toward display and
dyspepsia, the layer cake. In the most primitive form of rondo, or more
strictly speaking, rondino, the first theme appears but twice,
corresponding to a first and second layer of cake, with the filling of
cream or jelly between, represented by the second contrasting subject,
of a more piquant and savory flavor, between the first theme and its
reappearance—a sort of musical Washington pie. In the more extended
forms, the principal melody recurs several times, occasionally with
slight changes of treatment, but without radical transformation or
development, like a successive series of cake layers of slightly
different flavor, but the same fundamental material and an entirely
different filling between them, each time; and a coda, or musical
postscript, is occasionally added by way of frosting over the whole.
The rondo form is by nature adapted to the expression of the lighter,
more pleasurable emotions. Graceful fancy, playful tenderness, arch
coquetry, sparkling vivacity, here find their most ready and appropriate
embodiment. The form is sometimes employed to express pensive sadness or
restless, impatient longing, but never effectively to utter grave,
profound thought or grand and lofty sentiment. Hence it most frequently
appears as the final movement of symphony or sonata, a sort of light,
pleasant dessert after the more substantial repast.
_Rondo_ is one of those words of many relatives, both in our own English
and other languages. Probably the great-grandfather of them all is the
Latin _rotundus_, and probably the first emigrant to America, in the
musical line of descent, was the old-fashioned _round_, familiar to our
ancestors. Cousins and other close connections of the rondo are in music
the _roundelay_ and in poetry the _rondeau_, _rondel_, and _roundel_,
all bearing a striking family resemblance both in external features and
inward characteristics.
The poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, in his “Century of Roundels,”
presents to us many charming representatives of this most modern branch
of the family. The following verses, quoted from the work mentioned, are
the best possible descriptive illustration of the form, scope, and
characteristics of both the roundel in poetry and the rondo in music:
“THE ROUNDEL.
“A Roundel is wrought as a ring or a star-bright sphere,
With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought,
That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear
A Roundel is wrought.
“Its jewel of music is carven of all or of aught—
Love, laughter, or mourning—remembrance or fear—
That fancy may fashion to hang in the ear of thought.
“As the bird’s quick song runs round, and the hearts in us hear
Pause answer to pause, and again the same strain caught.
So moves the device whence, round as a pearl or tear,
A Roundel is wrought.”
The E flat rondo of Weber is a fine specimen of its class, perfect and
considerably complex in form and charmingly exhilarating in mood, with
just enough of dramatic suggestion to give the necessary contrast of
shading. It is neither distinctly descriptive nor deeply emotional. It
pleases like a piece of rare old lace or hand embroidery, rather than
like a picture or poem, by its delicate workmanship, its fine finish,
and its beautiful, skilfully combined materials. Its mission is to charm
the esthetic taste, like some dainty little Italian villa of variegated
marbles, half hidden in a grove of olive and orange trees, by its
symmetry of outline, its harmony of varied colors, and the simple,
joyous, sunshiny life and love of life which it suggests, rather than to
arouse the intellect or stir the depths of feeling by historic or
legendary association with vivid or tragic human interests.
This composition should be played freely and fluently, with a certain
gaiety and vivacity, but at a reasonably moderate tempo, with a tone
crisp and sparkling, not dry, yet not too legato; clear, but not heavy.
The player should employ few, if any, of the modern rubato effects and
be careful to avoid blurred or too close pedaling, especially in the
first subject. A somewhat slower tempo and more decided lyric effect
should be introduced when the left-hand theme in B flat major occurs,
and still more during the suggestion of dramatic recitative, alternating
between the two hands, which opens with the half note in the right hand
on G flat, A natural, and E flat. But, as a whole, the tempo should be
kept very steady, and a strongly marked rhythmic distinctness and
precision are absolute essentials in the proper presentation of this, as
of all Weber’s works.