I. Allegro moderato
II. Molto vivo
III. Andante
IV. Allegro
Only a Russian can do justice to this music, which is wildly Russian;
that is to say, the Russia of the Orient. One is tempted, hearing the
repetitions of the first leading theme, a motto phrase it may be called,
to say with Hamlet: “Leave thy damnable faces and begin,” but the
monotony of repetition becomes irrepressive. A Russian critic was
reminded more than once in the course of the first and last movements of
the ancient Russian knights in their awkwardness, also in their
greatness. We are told that Borodin intended to portray them in tones.
He himself said that in the slow movement he wished to recall the songs
of Slav troubadours; to picture in the first movement the gatherings of
princes, and in the _finale_ the banquets of heroes where the Russian
Guzla and bamboo flute were heard while the mighty men caroused. It is
easy in the lyrical passages to be reminded of corresponding phrases in
_Prince Igor_, nor is this surprising, for he was working on the
symphony and the opera at the same time. He was then obsessed by the
life of feudal Russia.
No composer can be called great simply because he is a nationalist in
his music. The folk tunes of a nation have often worked damage to the
composer relying on them for his themes, and content with the mere
exposition of them. Rimsky-Korsakov and Moussorgsky were nationalists,
but their music passed the frontier; it gives pleasure in every country.
Is Borodin to be ranked with them?
Eric Blom, speaking of Borodin as a pioneer, remembers how he was once
condemned as an “incompetent amateur who wrote hideous discords because
he did not know the rules of harmony”—an unwarranted and foolish
condemnation, as unjust as Tchaikovsky’s characterization in the bitter
letter he wrote to Mme von Meck in 1878 the year after this symphony was
first heard. Admitting that Borodin had talent, “a very great talent,”
he said that it had come to nothing for the want of teaching, “because
blind fate has led him into the science laboratories instead of a vital
musical existence.” The reference was to Borodin’s fame as a chemist at
the Academy of Medicine. This was written when Tchaikovsky was accused
of that atrocious crime, cosmopolitanism, by his fellow laborers in the
Russian vineyard.
There are pages of splendid savagery in this symphony; there are a few
wild, haunting melodies. No, the composer of the two symphonies, one at
least of the string quartets, and a handful of exquisite songs is not to
be flippantly dismissed.
* * *
Borodin’s Symphony in B minor was written during the years 1871-77. The
first performance was at St. Petersburg in the Hall of the Nobility,
February 14, 1877, and Eduard Napravnik was the conductor.
Borodin’s First symphony, in E flat major, was begun in 1862 and
completed in 1867. Stassov furnished him with the scenario of a libretto
founded on an epic and national poem, the story of Prince Igor. This
poem told of the expedition of Russian princes against the Polovtsi, a
nomadic people of the same origin as the Turks, who had invaded the
Russian Empire in the twelfth century. The conflict of Russian and
Asiatic nationalities delighted Borodin, and he began to write his own
libretto. He tried to live in the atmosphere of the bygone century. He
read the poems and the songs that had come down from the people of that
period; he collected folk songs even from Central Asia; he introduced in
the libretto comic characters to give contrast to romantic situations;
and he began to compose the music, when at the end of a year he was
seized with profound discouragement. His friends said to him: “The time
has gone by to write operas on historic or legendary subjects; today it
is necessary to treat the modern drama.” When anyone deplored in his
presence the loss of so much material, he replied that this material
would go into a second symphony. He began work on this symphony, and the
first movement was completed in the autumn of 1871. But the director of
the Russian opera wished to produce an operatic ballet, _Mlada_. The
subject was of an epoch before Christianity. The fourth act was
intrusted to Borodin: it included religious scenes, apparitions of the
ghosts of old Slavonic princes, an inundation, and the destruction of a
temple; and human interest was supplied by a love scene. Faithful to his
theories, Borodin began to study the manners and the religion of this
people. He composed feverishly and did not leave his room for days at a
time. Although the work was prepared by the composers—Minkus was to
write the ballet music, and Borodin, Cui, Moussorgsky, and
Rimsky-Korsakov the vocal music—the scenery demanded such an expense
that the production was postponed, and Borodin began work again on his
Second symphony and _Prince Igor_. He worked under disadvantages: his
wife, Catherine Sergeïevna Protopopova (she died August 9, 1887), an
excellent pianist, was an invalid, and his own health was wretched. In
1877 he wrote: “We old sinners, as always, are in the whirlwind of
life—professional duty, science, art. We hurry on and do not reach the
goal. Time flies like an express train. The beard grows gray, wrinkles
make deeper hollows. We begin a hundred different things. Shall we ever
finish any of them? I am always a poet in my soul, and I nourish the
hope of leading my opera to the last measure, and yet I often mock at
myself. I advance slowly, and there are great gaps in my work.”
Borodin in a letter (January 31, 1877) to his friend, Mme Ludmilla
Ivanovna Karmalina, to whom he told his hopes, disappointments,
enthusiasms, wrote: “The Musical Society had determined to perform my
Second symphony at one of its concerts. I was in the country and did not
know this fact. When I came back to St. Petersburg, I could not find the
first movement and the _finale_. The score of these movements was lost;
I had without doubt mislaid it. I hunted everywhere, but could not find
it; yet the Society insisted, and there was hardly time to have the
parts copied. What should I do? To crown all, I fell sick. I could not
shuffle the thing off, and I was obliged to reorchestrate my symphony.
Nailed to my bed by fever, I wrote the score in pencil. My copy was not
ready in time, and my symphony will not be performed till the next
concert. My two symphonies then will be performed in the same week.
Never has a professor of the Academy of Medicine and Surgery been found
in such a box!”
The Second symphony was at first unsuccessful. Ivanov wrote in the
_Nouveau Temps_: “Hearing this music, you are reminded of the ancient
Russian knights in all their awkwardness and also in all their
greatness. There is heaviness even in the lyric and tender passages.
These massive forms are at times tiresome; they crush the hearer.” But
Stassov tells us that Borodin endeavored by this music to portray the
knights. “Like Glinka, Borodin is an epic poet. He is not less national
than Glinka, but the Oriental element plays with him the part it plays
for Glinka, Dargomijsky, Balakirev, Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov. He
belongs to the composers of programme music. He can say with Glinka:
‘For my limitless imagination I must have a precise and given text.’” Of
Borodin’s two symphonies the second is the greater work, and it owes its
force to the maturity of the composer’s talent, but especially to the
national character with which it is impregnated by the programme. The
old heroic Russian form dominates it as it does _Prince Igor_.
The symphony is scored for three flutes (and piccolo), two oboes,
English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets,
three trombones, bass tuba, three kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals,
triangle, tambourine, harp, and the usual strings.
It appears from the score that this symphony was edited by
Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazounov.
I. _Allegro_, B minor, 2-2. The first movement opens with a vigorous
theme given out by the strings in unison, while bassoons and horns
reinforce each alternate measure. This theme may be taken for the motto
of the movement, and it is heard in every section of it. Another motive,
_animato assai_, is given to the wood-wind. After the alternation of
these two musical thoughts, the expressive second theme, _poco meno
mosso_, 3-2 time, is introduced by the violoncellos, and afterward by
the wood-wind. The vigorous first theme is soon heard again from the
full orchestra. There is development. The time changes from 2-2 to 3-2,
but the motto dominates with a development of the first measure of the
second subject. This material is worked at length. A pedal point, with
persistent rhythm for the drum, leads to the recapitulation section, in
which the theme undergoes certain modifications. The _coda_, _animato
assai_, is built on the motto.
II. _Scherzo_, _prestissimo_, F major, 1-1 time. There are a few
introductory measures with repeated notes for first and second horn. The
chief theme is followed by a new thought (syncopated unison of all the
strings). This alternates with the first theme.
_Trio_: _Allegretto_, 6-4. A melody for the oboe is repeated by the
clarinet, and triangle and harp come in on each alternate half of every
measure. This material is developed. The first part of the movement is
repeated, and the _coda_ ends _pianissimo_.
III. _Andante_, D flat major, 4-4. There are introductory measures in
which a clarinet is accompanied by the harp. A horn sings the song of
the old troubadours. _Poco animato_. There is a tremolo for strings, and
the opening melody, changed somewhat, is heard from wood-wind
instruments and horns. _Poco più animato_, 3-4. A new thought is given
to the strings with a chromatic progression in the bass. After the
climax the opening theme returns (strings), and the movement ends with
the little clarinet solo. Then comes, without a pause, the
IV. _Finale._ _Allegro_, B major, 3-4. The movement is in sonata form.
There is an introduction. The chief theme, _forte_, is given to the full
orchestra. It is in 5-4. The second subject, less tumultuous, is given
to clarinet, followed by flute and oboe. The chief theme is developed,
_lento_, in the trombones and tuba, and in a more lively manner by
strings and wood-wind. The second subject is developed, first by
strings, then by full orchestra. The recapitulation section is preceded
by the introductory material for the opening of the movement.
JOHANNES
BRAHMS
(Born at Hamburg, May 7, 1833; died at Vienna, April 3, 1897)
Those who like to know about composers as human beings rejoice in the
knowledge that Beethoven was irascible, the despair of his landladies,
given to rough joking; that Haydn was nagged by his shrew of a wife and
fell in love in London with a widow; that Mozart was fond of punch and
billiards; that César Franck’s trousers were too short. There are many
anecdotes about the great, some of them no doubt apocryphal.
In the excellent biography of Brahms by Walter Niemann[17] there is an
entertaining chapter entitled “Brahms as a Man.”
He was not fussy in his dress. At home he went about in a flannel shirt,
trousers, a detachable white collar, no cravat, slippers. In the country
he was happy in a flannel shirt and alpaca jacket, carrying a soft felt
hat in his hand, and in bad weather wearing on his shoulders an
old-fashioned bluish-green shawl, fastened in front by a huge pin. (In
the ’sixties many New Englanders on their perilous journeys to Boston or
New York wore a shawl.) He preferred a modest restaurant to a hotel
table d’hôte. In his music room were pictures of a few composers,
engravings—the Sistine Madonna among them—the portrait of Cherubini, by
Ingres, with a veiled Muse crowning the composer—“I cannot stand that
female,” Brahms said to his landlady—a bronze relief of Bismarck, always
crowned with laurel. There was a square piano on which a volume of Bach
was usually standing open. On the cover lay notebooks, writing tablets,
calendars, cigar cases, spectacles, purses, watches, keys, portfolios,
recently published books and music, also souvenirs of his travels. He
was passionately patriotic, interested in politics, a firm believer in
German unity. He deeply regretted that he had not done military service
as a young man. Prussia should be the North German predominant power.
A Viennese musician once said that whenever he heard one of Brahms’
symphonies he was inclined to prefer it to the other three; but he was a
passionate Brahmsite. The second has a freshness and a spontaneity that
are perhaps not found in the others, though the third presses it hard in
these respects; but there is a rugged grandeur in the first that puts it
above the others.
Professor Schweizerhoffsteinlein, the celebrated Wagnerite, once said:
“To me, however many movements there are in an orchestral work of
Johannes Brahms, to me—hear me once—there are only two: he makes the
first, and I make the second.” But the eminent professor was no doubt
unjust toward Brahms, in his clumsy ponderous way.
The sensuousness of Brahms is cerebral; it might be called Platonic.
There are various kinds of sensuousness in music, as in human life. Some
years ago Joséphin Péladan, the fantastical Sar of dark corners, likened
the music of Brahms to a gypsy woman dancing in tight-fitting corsets.
He detected “latent heat beneath the formal exterior.”