I. The Pines of the Villa Borghese
II. The Pines near a Catacomb
III. The Pines of the Janiculum
IV. The Pines of the Appian Way
Respighi wrote _Pines of Rome_ as a companion piece to his _Fountains of
Rome_. He may yet write “_Hills of Rome_,” but it would have to be in
seven movements. In the _Fountains of Rome_ he set no bird a-singing. In
the third section [of the Pines of Rome] “Pines of the Janiculum,” he
introduces a nightingale. Perhaps he had in mind the reply of the good
King Agesilaus, who, when a man was recommended to him as a skillful
imitator of that justly famous bird, replied: “I have heard the
nightingale itself.” So Respighi obtained a gramophone record of a
nightingale which he heard singing. The movement would not suffer if
there were no nightingale in the orchestra.
In the “Pines of the Villa Borghese,” where children are supposed to be
playing games, darting to and fro, shrieking, emitting loud squeals of
joy, the instrumentation is unusually brilliant, effective, original.
One finds more poetic feeling, more imagination in “Pines near a
Catacomb,” with the somber opening, the solemnity of the double basses,
the mysterious song which swells and dies away. Yes, there is more
poetic feeling in this movement than in “Pines of the Janiculum,” with
the moon full and the gramophone turned on for the faint voice of the
nightingale. At first in the _finale_ there is the rhythm of innumerable
steps that De Quincey might have heard at the beginning of his “Dream
Fugue” in “The Vision of Sudden Death.” There is the vision of past
glories, of soldiers victorious making their clashing and blaring way to
the Capitol; with the huzzaing crowd “to see Great Pompey pass the
streets of Rome.” This march is exciting by reason of its rhythmic and
dynamic increasing intensity and its overpowering climax.
But if one takes the work poem as a whole, the composer is revealed as a
supreme master of orchestral color rather than a man of fine,
entrancing, impressive ideas.
* * *
This symphonic poem was composed in 1924. It was performed at a concert
in the Augusteum, Rome, in the season of 1924-25. The score calls for 3
flutes (and piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet,
2 bassoons, double bassoon, 4 horns, 1 trumpet off stage, 3 trumpets, 3
trombones and bass tuba, 6 buccine (the bucina was the war trumpet of
ancient Rome): 2 flicorni (Fluegelhorn) soprani, 2 flicorni tenori, 2
flicorni bassi—replaced if necessary by horns; kettledrums, bass drum,
cymbals, 2 small cymbals, tambourine, rattle, triangle, tam-tam, harp,
bells, celesta, gramophone (No. R. 6105 of the Concert Record
Gramophone—the “Song of the Nightingale”), pianoforte, organ, and
strings.
The piece is in four connected sections. They are based upon this
programme, printed as preface to the score:
“1. The Pines of the Villa Borghese. _Allegretto vivace_, 2-8. Children
are at play in the pine grove of the Villa Borghese, dancing the Italian
equivalent of ‘Ring Around a-Rosy’; mimicking marching soldiers and
battles; twittering and shrieking like swallows at evening; and they
disappear. Suddenly the scene changes to—
“2. The Pines near a Catacomb. _Lento_, 4-4; beginning with muted and
divided strings, muted horns, _piano_. We see the shadows of the pines
which overhang the entrance to a catacomb. From the depths rises a chant
which reëchoes solemnly, sonorously, like a hymn, and is then
mysteriously silenced.
“3. The Pines of the Janiculum. _Lento_ 4-4; _piano cadenza_; clarinet
solo. There is a thrill in the air. The full moon reveals the profile of
the pines of Gianicolo’s Hill. A nightingale sings (represented by a
gramophone record of a nightingale’s song heard from the orchestra).
“4. The Pines of the Appian Way. _Tempo di marcia._ Misty dawn on the
Appian Way. The tragic country is guarded by solitary pines.
Indistinctly, incessantly, the rhythm of innumerable steps. To the
poet’s phantasy appears a vision of past glories; trumpets blare, and
the army of the consul advances brilliantly in the grandeur of a newly
risen sun toward the sacred way, mounting in triumph the Capitoline
Hill.”
Mr. Ernest Newman was facetious, hearing the symphonic poem at a concert
of the London Symphony Orchestra in October, 1925: “The tame nightingale
in the last movement (a gramophone record, ‘kindly lent,’ as the
programme informed us, ‘by the Gramophone Company, Hayes’) did not
communicate the expected thrill. Perhaps the captive bird does not sing
with the rapture of the free one. Perhaps the proper romantic
associations were lacking; it might have been better had the lights been
put out and we had all held hands. But I fancy the explanation is that
realism of this sort is a trifle too crude to blend with music. We all
remember Mr. Arnold Bennett’s ‘Card,’ who, having bought in the days of
his prosperity a painting of a Swiss scene with a church tower in it,
and still having enough of the Five Towns left in him to want to fortify
the beautiful with the useful, had a real clock face inserted in the
tower to tell him and the world the time. Since then we have read of Mr.
Harry Leon Wilson’s little boy, who used to gaze with a blend of
fascination and terror on a picture of a lion in a cage, the bars of the
cage being real, inserted in the frame; the great thing was to put your
fingers behind the bars and half hope, half fear that the lion would go
for them. Musical realism of the Respighi type has the same queer
attractiveness and the same drawbacks. Of course, if the public likes
it, it can be extended indefinitely. We may yet live to see the evening
when the _Pastoral_ symphony will be given with real running water in
the slow movement, nightingale by the Gramophone Company, quail by
Messrs. Fortnum and Mason.”
NICOLAS ANDREJEVITCH
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
(Born at Tikhvin, in the government of Novgorod, March 18, 1844; died at
St. Petersburg, June 21, 1908)
SYMPHONIC SUITE, “SCHEHERAZADE” (AFTER “THE THOUSAND NIGHTS AND A
NIGHT”), OP. 35
I. The Sea and Sindbad’s Ship
II. The Story of the Kalandar Prince
III. The Young Prince and the Young Princess
IV. Festival at Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship Goes to Pieces against a
Rock Surmounted by a Bronze Warrior. Conclusion
Rimsky-Korsakov wrote an argument for his score. The music is in
illustration of _Sindbad the Sailor_, the storm at sea, the shipwreck,
the tale of one of the three Kalandars, a tale of a prince and a
princess. The argument is not wholly clear, and probably this was the
composer’s intention. What prince and what princess? There are so many
in _The Thousand Nights and a Night_. Who will be so rash as to name the
one of the three Kalandars? In the last movement there is a festival at
Baghdad, and lo, suddenly Sindbad’s ship sails to its fate.
In the ballet all this music is wedded to the story that is the prelude
to the wondrous tales: the story of the two rulers, their wanton wives,
and the resolve of one of the Kings to kill a spouse every morning,
until Scheherazade by her charm as a narrator softens his heart. What
then becomes of the graphic sea music; or that illustrative of Kalandar,
prince and princess? It is not necessary to insist on the incongruity.
Unless a conductor can feel in this music the spirit of _The Thousand
Nights and a Night_, unless he is himself a rhapsodist with admiration
for the wild fancy, the humor now grotesque, now cruel, now Rabelaisian,
for the sensuousness that is at times sensuality; unless there is
understanding, with appreciation of the imagination that peopled the air
with slaves of King Solomon’s ring, hideous afreets and
space-annihilating genii, his interpretation will be that of a man who
complains of endless repetitions without contrapuntal development. The
music is not for the academic.
Grant that _Scheherazade_ reeks at times of benzoin and the pastils of
the harem; that it suggests:
_Lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates in argosy transferred
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one
From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon_—
grant all this: there remains the superb sea music with the rolling
billows, the tossing, laboring vessel, the final crash and wild
farewell. There is more than a constant display of fancy or imagination.
The wonder is, as a matter of technic, how Rimsky-Korsakov succeeds in
casting his spell with analogous themes constantly varied. Nor is this
due solely to the surprising, masterly, and entrancing instrumentation.
* * *
_Scheherazade_, with the _Easter Overture_, was composed in the summer
of 1881 at Neyzhgovitsy on the shore of Lake Cheryemenyetskoye. It was
produced at St. Petersburg in the course of the following concert
season.
The suite, dedicated to Vladimir Stassov, is scored for piccolo, two
flutes, two oboes (and English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, four
horns, two trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, snare
drum, bass drum, tambourine, cymbals, triangle, tam-tam, harp, and
strings.
The following programme is printed in Russian and French on a fly-leaf
of the score:
“The Sultan Schahriar, persuaded of the falseness and the faithlessness
of women, has sworn to put to death each one of his wives after the
first night. But the Sultana Scheherazade saved her life by interesting
him in tales which she told him during one thousand and one nights.
Pricked by curiosity, the Sultan put off his wife’s execution from day
to day, and at last gave up entirely his bloody plan.
“Many marvels were told Schahriar by the Sultana Scheherazade. For her
stories the Sultana borrowed from poets their verses, from folk songs
their words; and she strung together tales and adventures.”
Rimsky-Korsakov has this to say about _Scheherazade_ in _My Musical
Life_, translated into English by J. A. Joffe:
“The programme I had been guided by in composing _Scheherazade_
consisted of separate, unconnected episodes and pictures from _The
Arabian Nights_: the fantastic narrative of the Prince Kalandar, the
Prince and the Princess, the Baghdad festival, and the ship dashing
against the rock with the bronze rider upon it. The unifying thread
consisted of the brief introductions to Movements I, II, and IV, and the
_intermezzo_ in Movement III, written for violin solo, and delineating
Scheherazade herself as telling her wondrous tales to the stern Sultan.
The conclusion of Movement IV serves the same artistic purpose.
“In vain do people seek in my suite leading motives linked always and
unvaryingly with the same poetic ideas and conceptions. On the contrary,
in the majority of cases, all these seeming leitmotives are nothing but
purely musical material, or the given motives for symphonic development.
These given motives thread and spread over all the movements of the
suite, alternating and intertwining each with the other. Appearing as
they do each time under different moods, the self-same motives and
themes correspond each time to different images, actions and pictures.
“Thus, for instance, the sharply outlined fanfare motive of the muted
trombone and trumpet, which first appears in the Kalandar’s Narrative
(Movement II) appears afresh in Movement IV, in the delineation of the
doomed ship, though this episode has no connection with the Kalandar’s
Narrative. The principal theme of the Kalandar’s Narrative (B minor,
3-4) and the theme of the Princess in Movement III (B flat major, 6-8,
clarinet) in altered guise and quick tempo appear as the secondary
themes of the Baghdad festival; yet nothing is said in _The Arabian
Nights_ about these persons taking part in the festivities. The unison
phrase, as though depicting Scheherazade’s stern spouse, at the
beginning of the suite, appears in the Kalandar’s Narrative, where there
cannot, however, be any thought of Sultan Schahriar.
“In this manner, developing quite freely the musical data taken as a
basis of the composition, I had in view the creation of an orchestral
suite in four movements, closely knit by the community of its themes and
motives, yet presenting, as it were, a kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images
and designs of Oriental character—a method that I had to a certain
degree made use of in my _Skazka_ (Fairy Tale), the musical data of
which are as little distinguishable from the poetic as they are in
_Scheherazade_.
“In composing _Scheherazade_ I meant these hints to direct but slightly
the hearer’s fancy on the path which my own fancy had traveled, and to
leave more minute and particular conceptions to the will and mood of
each listener. All I had desired was that the hearer, if he liked my
piece _as symphonic music_, should carry away the impression that it is
beyond doubt an Oriental narrative of some numerous and varied
fairy-tale wonders, and not merely four pieces played one after the
other and composed on the basis of themes common to all the four
movements. Why, then, if that be the case, does this name and the
subtitle (‘After _The Thousand and One Nights_’) connote in everybody’s
mind the East and fairy-tale wonders; besides, certain details of the
musical exposition hint at the fact that all of these are various tales
of some one person (which happens to be Scheherazade) entertaining
therewith her stern husband.”
A characteristic theme, the typical theme of _Scheherazade_, keeps
appearing in the four movements. This theme, that of the Narrator, is a
florid melodic phrase in triplets, and it ends generally in a free
_cadenza_. It is played, for the most part, by a solo violin; sometimes
by a wood-wind instrument. “The presence in the minor cadence of the
characteristic seventh, G, and the major sixth, F sharp—after the manner
of the Phrygian mode of the Greeks or the Doric church tone—might
illustrate the familiar beginning of all folk tales, ‘Once upon a
time.’”
I. The Sea and Sindbad’s Ship. _Largo e maestoso_, E minor, 2-2. The
chief theme of this movement, proclaimed frequently and in many
transformations, has been called by some the “Sea” motive, by others the
“Sindbad” motive. It is proclaimed immediately and heavily in fortissimo
unison and octaves. Soft chords of wind instruments—chords not unlike
the first chords of Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” overture in
character—lead to the “Scheherazade” motive, lento, 4-4, played by solo
violin against chords of the harp. Then follows the main body of the
movement, allegro non troppo, E major, 6-4, which begins with a
combination of the chief theme, the “sea” motive, with a rising and
falling arpeggio figure, the “wave” motive. There is a crescendo. A
modulation leads to C major. Wood-wind instruments and violoncellos
pizzicato introduce a motive that has been called the “ship,” at first
for solo flute, then oboe, lastly, clarinet. A reminiscence of the “sea”
motive is heard from the horn between the phrases. A solo violoncello
continues the “wave” motive, which in one form or another persists
almost throughout the whole movement. The “Scheherazade” motive soon
enters (solo violin). There is a long period that at last reëstablishes
the chief tonality, E major. The “sea” motive is sounded by full
orchestra. The development is easily followed. There is an avoidance of
contrapuntal use of thematic material. The style of the composer in this
suite is homophonous, not polyphonic. He prefers to produce his effects
by melodic, harmonic, rhythmic transformations and by most ingenious and
highly colored orchestration. The movement ends tranquilly.
II. The Story of the Kalandar Prince. The second movement opens with a
recitative-like passage, _lento_, B minor, 4-4. A solo violin
accompanied by the harp gives out the “Scheherazade” motive, with a
different _cadenza_. There is a change to a species of _scherzo_
movement, _andantino_, 3-8. The bassoon begins the wondrous tale,
_capriccioso quasi recitando_, accompanied by the sustained chords of
four double basses. The beginning of the second part of this theme
occurs later and transformed. The accompaniment has the bagpipe drone.
The oboe then takes up the melody, then the strings with quickened pace,
and at last the wind instruments, _un poco piu animato_. The chief
motive of the first movement is heard in the basses. A trombone sounds a
fanfare, which is answered by the trumpet; the first fundamental theme
is heard, and an _allegro moto_ follows, derived from the preceding
fanfare, and leads to an orientally colored _intermezzo_. “There are
curious episodes in which all the strings repeat the same chord over and
over again in rapid succession—very like the responses of a congregation
in church—as an accompaniment to the ‘Scheherazade’ motive, now in the
clarinet, now in the bassoon.” The last interruption leads to a return
of the Kalandar’s tale, _con moto_, 3-8, which is developed, with a few
interruptions from the “Scheherazade” motive. The whole ends gayly.
III. The Young Prince and the Young Princess. Some think from a
similarity of the two themes typical of prince and princess that the
composer had in mind the adventures of Kamar al-Zaman (Moon of the Age)
and the Princess Budur (Full Moons). “They were the likest of all folk,
each to other, as they were twins or an only brother and sister,” and
over the question which was the more beautiful, Maymunah, the Jinniyah,
and Dabnash, the Ifrit, disputed violently.
This movement is in simple _romanza_ form. It consists in the long but
simple development of two themes of folk-song character. The first is
sung by the violins, _andantino quasi allegretto_, G major, 6-8. There
is a constant recurrence of songlike melody between phrases in this
movement, of quickly rising and falling scale passages, as a rule in the
clarinet, but also in the flute or first violins. The second theme,
_pochissimo piu mosso_, B flat major and G minor, 6-8, introduces a
section characterized by highly original and daringly effective
orchestration. There are piquant rhythmic effects from a combination of
triangle, tambourine, snare drum, and cymbals, while violoncellos (later
the bassoon) have a sentimental counter phrase.
IV. Festival at Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship Goes to Pieces Against a Rock
Surmounted by a Bronze Warrior. Conclusion. _Allegro molto_, E minor,
6-8. The _finale_ opens with a reminiscence of the “sea” motive of the
first movement, proclaimed in unisons and octaves. Then follows the
“Scheherazade” motive (solo violin), which leads to the fête in Baghdad,
_Allegro molto e frenetico_, E minor, 6-8. The musical portraiture,
somewhat after the fashion of a tarantelle, is based on a version of the
“sea” motive, and it is soon interrupted by Scheherazade and her violin.
In the movement _vivo_, E minor, there is a combination of 2-8, 6-16,
3-8 times, and two or three new themes, besides those heard in the
preceding movements, are worked up elaborately. The festival is at its
height—“This is indeed life; O sad that ’tis fleeting”—when there seems
to be a change of festivities, and the jollification to be on shipboard.
In the midst of the wild hurrah the ship strikes the magnetic rock.
The trombones roar out the “sea” motive against the billowy “wave”
motive in the strings, _Allegro non troppo e maestoso_, C major, 6-4;
and there is a modulation to the tonic, E major, as the tempest rages.
The storm dies. Clarinets and trumpets scream one more cry on the march
theme of the second movement. There is a quiet ending with development
of the “sea” and “wave” motives. The tales are told. Scheherazade, the
narrator, who lives with Shahryar “in all pleasance and solace of life
and its delights till there took them the Destroyer of delights and the
Severer of societies, the Desolator of dwelling places and Garnerer of
graveyards, and they were translated to the ruth of Almighty Allah,”
fades with the vision and the final note of her violin.