Berlioz’s overture, _Le Carnaval Romain_, originally intended as an
introduction to the second act of _Benvenuto Cellini_, is dedicated to
Prince de Hohenzollern-Hechingen. It was performed for the first time,
and under the direction of the composer, at the Salle Herz, Paris, on
February 3, 1844. The overture was composed in Paris in 1843, shortly
after a journey in Germany. The score and parts were published in June,
1844.
The chief thematic material of the overture was taken by Berlioz from
his opera _Benvenuto Cellini_, originally in two acts, libretto by Léon
de Wailly and Augusta Barbier. It was produced at the Opéra, Paris, on
September 10, 1838.
The success of _The Roman Carnival_ overture was immediate. The applause
was so long-continued that the work was repeated then and there. Berlioz
gives an account of the performance in the forty-eighth chapter of his
Memoirs. He first says that Habeneck, the conductor at the Opéra, would
not take the time of the _saltarello_ fast enough.
“Some years afterwards, when I had written the overture _The Roman
Carnival_, in which the theme of the _allegro_ is the same _saltarello_
which he never could make go, Habeneck was in the foyer of the Salle
Herz the evening that this overture was to be played for the first time.
He had heard that we had rehearsed it without wind instruments, for some
of my players, in the service of the National Guard, had been called
away. ‘Good!’ said he. ‘There will surely be some catastrophe at this
concert, and I must be there to see it!’ When I arrived, all the wind
players surrounded me; they were frightened at the idea of playing in
public an overture wholly unknown to them.
“‘Don’t be afraid,’ I said; ‘the parts are all right, you are all
talented players; watch my stick as much as possible, count your rests,
and it will go.’
“There was not a mistake. I started the _allegro_ in the whirlwind time
of the Transteverine dancers; the audience shouted, ‘_Bis!_’ We played
the overture again, and it went even better the second time. I went to
the foyer and found Habeneck. He was rather disappointed. As I passed
him, I flung at him these few words: ‘Now you see what it really is!’ He
carefully refrained from answering me.
“Never have I felt more keenly than on this occasion the pleasure of
conducting my own music, and my pleasure was doubled by thinking on what
Habeneck had made me suffer.
“Poor composers, learn to conduct, and conduct yourselves well! (Take
the pun, if you please.) For the most dangerous of your interpreters is
the conductor. Don’t forget this.”
* * *
The overture is scored for two flutes (and piccolo), two oboes, English
horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two
cornets, three trombones, kettledrums, two side drums, cymbals,
triangle, and strings.
ERNEST
BLOCH
(Born at Geneva, Switzerland, July 24, 1880)
“SCHELOMO” (SOLOMON), HEBREW RHAPSODY FOR VIOLONCELLO AND ORCHESTRA
Mr. Bloch is most inspired when he stands firmly and proudly on Jewish
ground. The well equipped composer is seen in all that he writes, but
his three Jewish Poems for orchestra, his Psalms, for voice and
orchestra, his _Schelomo_, are far above his what might be called
Gentile work, even above his concerto, not to mention the cycloramic
_America_. As he has written in an account of himself and his artistic
beliefs, it is the Jewish soul that interests him: “the complex,
glowing, agitated soul” that he feels vibrating through the Bible. No
wonder that the despair of the Preacher in Jerusalem and the splendor of
Solomon alike appealed to him; the monarch in all his glory; the
Preacher, who when he looked on all his works that his hands had wrought
and on the labor that he had labored to do, could only explain: “And
behold, all was vanity, and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit
under the Sun.” And so Mr. Bloch might have taken as a motto for this
Hebrew rhapsody the lines of Rueckert:
_Solomon! Where is thy throne? It is gone in the wind
. . . . . . . . . . .
Say what is pleasure? A phantom, a mask undefined.
Science? An almond, whereof we can pierce but the rind.
Honor and affluence? Firmans that Fortune hath signed
Only to glitter and pass on the wings of the wind._
Other composers have taken Solomon for their hero; as Handel in his
oratorio; Goldmark, representing him as mighty and jealous in _The Queen
of Sheba_; Gounod in the opera similarly entitled, based on the wildly
fantastic tale of Gerard de Nerval; there are older operas, but all, or
nearly all, are concerned with _Grand Turke_, the Sultan of the
Ottomans. It was left for Mr. Bloch to express in music the magnificence
and the pessimistic, despairing philosophy of the ruler to whom is
falsely attributed the book, Ecclesiastes. Here is music that does not
brook conventional analysis; music that is now purely lyrical, now
dramatic, now pictorial; music that rises to gorgeous heights and sinks
to the depths; with a conclusion that is not of the Preacher, the pious
admonition after summing up the whole matter, but a conclusion voiced by
the violoncello: “There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor
wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest.” Here is no Solomon, lord of
all creatures at whose name Afrites and evil genii trembled, the Solomon
of the “Thousand Nights and a Night,” here is the monarch that having
known power and all the pleasures, enumerating them—even to “the
delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all
sorts”—reasoned that everything was futile; that all was vanity.
One might therefore infer that this rhapsody is distressingly somber,
for nothing is more wearisome than a long-drawn-out complaint. The
inference would be wrong, for Mr. Bloch has imagined in tones, in
superbly exultant measures, the pomp and sumptuousness of the King
enthroned. There are orchestral bursts of glorification; between them
are recitatives and lyric reflections for the jaded voluptuary, the
embittered philosopher. The ingenuity displayed is as remarkable as the
individuality, the originality shown by the composer stirred in his soul
not only by the story of Solomon; moved mightily by the thought of
ancient days, the succeeding trials and persecution of his race. More
than once in the rhapsody, if there is a suggestion of Solomon’s court
and temple, there is also the suggestion of the Wailing Wall.
* * *
_Schelomo_ was composed at Geneva, Switzerland, in the first two months
of 1916. With the _Trois poèmes juifs_ (composed in 1916) and the
symphony _Israel_ (1913-18), it is that portion of Mr. Bloch’s work that
is peculiarly Hebraic in character. In a letter to the writer of these
notes in 1917, Mr. Bloch wrote that the Psalms, _Schelomo_, and _Israel_
were more representative than the _Jewish Poems_ because they came from
the passion and the violence that he believed to be characteristics of
his nature. “It is not my purpose, not my desire, to attempt a
‘reconstitution’ of Jewish music, or to base my works on melodies more
or less authentic. I am not an archæologist. I hold it of first
importance to write good, genuine music, my music. It is the Jewish soul
that interests me, the complex, glowing, agitated soul, that I feel
vibrating throughout the Bible; the freshness and naïveté of the
Patriarchs; the violence that is evident in the prophetic books; the
Jew’s savage love of justice; the despair of the Preacher in Jerusalem;
the sorrow and the immensity of the Book of Job; the sensuality of the
Song of Songs. All this is in us; all this is in me, and it is the
better part of me. It is all this that I endeavor to hear in myself and
to transcribe in my music: the venerable emotion of the race that
slumbers way down in our soul.”
The _Musical Quarterly_ of January, 1921, published a translation by
Theodore Baker of Guido M. Gatti’s estimate of _Schelomo_ contributed to
_La Critica musicale_ of April-May, 1920:
“The Hebrew rhapsody for solo violoncello with orchestra bears the name
of the great king Solomon. In this, without taking thought for
development and formal consistency, without the fetters of a text
requiring interpretation, he has given free course to his fancy; the
multiplex figure of the founder of the Great Temple lent itself, after
setting it upon a lofty throne, and chiseling its lineaments, to the
creation of a phantasmagorical entourage of persons and scenes in rapid
and kaleidoscopic succession. The violoncello, with its ample breadth of
phrasing, now melodic and with moments of superb lyricism, now
declamatory and with robustly dramatic lights and shades, lends itself
to a reincarnation of Solomon in all his glory, surrounded by his
thousand wives and concubines, with his multitude of slaves and warriors
behind him. His voice resounds in the devotional silence, and the
sentences of his wisdom sink into the heart as the seed into a fertile
soil: ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, ... all is vanity. What
profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun? One
generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth
abideth for ever.... He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.’...
At times the sonorous voice of the violoncello is heard predominant amid
a breathless and fateful obscurity throbbing with persistent rhythms,
again, it blends in a phantasmagorical paroxysm of polychromatic tones,
shot through with silvery clangors and frenzies of exultation. And anon
one finds oneself in the heart of a dream-world, in an Orient of fancy,
where men and women of every race and tongue are holding argument or
hurling maledictions; and now and again we hear the mournful accents of
the prophetic seer, under the influence of which all bow down and listen
reverently. The entire discourse of the soloist, vocal rather than
instrumental, seems like musical expression intimately conjoined with
the Talmudic prose. The pauses, the repetitions of entire passages, the
leaps of a double octave, the chromatic progressions, all find their
analogues in the Book of Ecclesiastes—in the versicles, in the fairly
epigraphic reiteration of the admonitions (‘and all is vanity and
vexation of spirit’), in the unexpected shifts from one thought to
another, in certain _crescendi_ of emotion that end in explosions of
anger or grief uncontrolled.”
_Schelomo_ is scored for three flutes (and piccolo), two oboes (and
English horn), two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons,
contra-bassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones and tuba,
kettledrums, tambourine, side drum, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam,
celesta, two harps, and strings.
ALEXANDER PORPHIRIEVITCH
BORODIN
(Born at St. Petersburg, November 12, 1833;[16] died there February 28,
1887)