I. Adagio; allegro moderato; poco adagio
II. Allegro moderato; presto; maestoso; allegro
Saint-Saëns’ Symphony in C minor has the finest and most characteristic
qualities of the best French music: logical construction, lucidity,
frankness, euphony. The workmanship is masterly. There is no hesitation.
The composer knew exactly what he wanted and how to express himself. A
few of the themes that when first exposed might seem to some
insignificant assume importance and even grandeur in the development.
The chief theme of the _adagio_, the theme for strings, is very French
in its sustained suavity, in a gentle, emotional quality that never
loses elegance, and the preparation for the entrance of this _adagio_ is
worthy of the greatest masters. It is not necessary to speak of the many
beautiful or stirring pages; of the consummate skill of the technician;
of the unerring instrumentation.
* * *
This symphony was composed for the London Philharmonic Society and first
performed at a concert of that society in London, May 19, 1886, when the
composer conducted. It was performed at Aix-la-Chapelle in September of
that year under the direction of the composer.
For the first performance in London, Saint-Saëns prepared the following
analysis, which was translated into English:
“This symphony is divided into two parts, after the manner of
Saint-Saëns’ Fourth concerto for piano and orchestra and Sonata for
piano and violin. Nevertheless, it includes practically the traditional
four movements: the first, checked in development, serves as an
introduction to the _adagio_, and the _scherzo_ is connected, after the
same manner, with the _finale_. The composer has thus sought to shun in
a certain measure the interminable repetitions which are more and more
disappearing from instrumental music.
“The composer thinks that the time has come for the symphony to benefit
by the progress of modern instrumentation, and he therefore establishes
his orchestra as follows: three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two
clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, double bassoon, four horns,
three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, three kettledrums, organ,
pianoforte (now for two hands and now for four), triangle, a pair of
cymbals, bass drum, and the usual strings.
“After an introduction _adagio_ of a few plaintive measures the string
quartet exposes the initial theme, which is somber and agitated
(_allegro moderato_). The first transformation of this theme leads to a
second motive, which is distinguished by greater tranquillity; after a
short development, in which the two themes are presented simultaneously,
the motive appears in a characteristic form, for full orchestra, but
only for a short time. A second transformation of the initial theme
includes now and then the plaintive notes of the introduction. Varied
episodes bring gradually calm, and thus prepare the _adagio_ in D flat.
The extremely peaceful and contemplative theme is given to the violins,
violas, and violoncellos, which are supported by organ chords. This
theme is then taken by clarinet, horn, and trombone, accompanied by
strings divided into several parts. After a variation (in arabesques)
performed by the violins, the second transformation of the initial theme
of the _allegro_ appears again, and brings with it a vague feeling of
unrest, which is enlarged by dissonant harmonies. These soon give way to
the theme of the _adagio_, performed this time by some of the violins,
violas, and violoncellos, with organ accompaniment and with a persistent
rhythm of triplets presented by the preceding episode. This first
movement ends in a _coda_ of mystical character, in which are heard
alternately the chords of D flat major and E minor.
“The second movement begins with an energetic phrase (_allegro
moderato_), which is followed immediately by a third transformation of
the initial theme in the first movement, more agitated than it was
before, and into which enters a fantastic spirit that is frankly
disclosed in the _presto_. Here arpeggios and scales, swift as
lightning, on the pianoforte, are accompanied by the syncopated rhythm
of the orchestra, and each time they are in a different tonality (F, E,
E flat, G). This tricky gayety is interrupted by an expressive phrase
(strings). The repetition of the _allegro moderato_ is followed by a
second _presto_, which at first is apparently a repetition of the first
_presto_; but scarcely has it begun before a new theme is heard, grave,
austere (trombone, tuba, double basses), strongly contrasted with the
fantastic music. There is a struggle for the mastery, and this struggle
ends in the defeat of the restless, diabolical element. The phrase rises
to orchestral heights, and rests there as in the blue of a clear sky.
After a vague reminiscence of the initial theme of the first movement, a
_maestoso_ in C major announces the approaching triumph of the calm and
lofty thought. The initial theme of the first movement, wholly
transformed, is now exposed by divided strings and the pianoforte (four
hands), and repeated by the organ with the full strength of the
orchestra. Then follows a development built in a rhythm of three
measures. An episode of a tranquil and pastoral character (oboe, flute,
English horn, clarinet) is twice repeated. A brilliant _coda_, in which
the initial theme by a last transformation takes the form of a violin
figure, ends the work; the rhythm of three measures becomes naturally
and logically a huge measure of three beats; each beat is represented by
a whole note, and twelve quarters form the complete measure.”
This symphony is dedicated to the memory of Franz Liszt.
Liszt died at Bayreuth, July 31, 1886. The symphony was performed at
London before his death. When Liszt was in Paris in March of 1886 to
hear the performance of his _Graner Messe_ at St. Eustache, the symphony
was nearly completed, and Saint-Saëns gave Liszt an idea of it by
playing it on the pianoforte. The statement that Saint-Saëns intended
the symphony to be “a funereal memorial and an apotheosis of the
glorious master” is nonsensical. The dedication was a posthumous
tribute.
ARNOLD
SCHOENBERG
(Born at Vienna, September 13, 1874)
“VERKLÄRTE NACHT” (RADIANT NIGHT), ARRANGED FOR STRING ORCHESTRA, OP. 4
Schoenberg’s music, to be enjoyed, does not need either the original
verse or the paraphrase. Indeed, it would be better if the argument were
not printed for the concertgoer. As it is, he may be too anxious to
discover the emancipated woman and the good, easy-going, complaisant man
in the music, and be oblivious of the strains of beauty and passion. For
this music, on the whole prolix, has beautiful and passionate pages of
compelling eloquence. Other pages are a sandy, dreary waste. The
impression would be still stronger, the music still more significant, if
the composition were much shorter. Whether the music itself gains by the
revision and enlargement, is a question that admits of discussion.
* * *
This piece, originally a sextet, was published in 1905; the arrangement
for string orchestra was published in 1917. The sextet was composed in
1899.
An excerpt from Richard Dehmel’s poem, “Weib und die Welt,” is printed
on a flyleaf of the score. When the sextet was first performed in New
York by the Kneisel Quartet, Mr. Krehbiel paraphrased this poetic
fragment as follows:
“Two mortals walk through a cold, barren grove. The moon sails over the
tall oaks, which send their scrawny branches up through the unclouded
moonlight. A woman speaks. She confesses a sin to the man at her side:
she is with child, and he is not its father. She had lost belief in
happiness, and, longing for life’s fullness, for motherhood and mother’s
duty, she had surrendered herself, shuddering, to the embraces of a man
she knew not. She had thought herself blessed, but now life had avenged
itself upon her, by giving her the love of him she walked with. She
staggers onward, gazing with lack-lustre eye at the moon which follows
her. A man speaks. Let her not burden her soul with thoughts of guilt.
See, the moon’s sheen enwraps the universe. Together they are driving
over chill waters, but a flame from each warms the other. It, too, will
transfigure the little stranger, and she will bear the child to him. For
she has inspired the brilliant glow within him and made him too a child.
They sink into each other’s arms. Their breaths meet in kisses in the
air. Two mortals wander through the wondrous moonlight.”
FRANZ PETER
SCHUBERT
(Born at Lichtenthal, near Vienna, January 31, 1797; died at Vienna,
November 19, 1828)
Schubert was a clumsy man, short, round-shouldered, tallow-faced, with a
great shock of black hair, with penetrating though spectacled eyes,
strong-jawed, stubby-fingered. He shuffled in his walk, and he expressed
himself in speech with difficulty. He described himself as unhappy,
miserable; but his practical jokes delighted tavern companions, and he
was proud of his performance of _The Erlking_ on a comb. He kept a diary
and jotted down platitudes. He had little taste for literature,
painting, sculpture, travels; he was not interested in politics or in
questions of sociology. He went with his own kind. Unlike Beethoven, he
could not impose on the aristocracy of Vienna. He loved the freedom of
the tavern, the dance in the open air or late at night, when he would
play pretty tunes for the dancers. Handel was the superb personage of
music. Gluck was a distinguished person at the Court of Marie
Antoinette; Sarti pleased the mighty Catherine of Russia; Rossini, the
son of a strolling horn player, was at ease with royalty and worshiped
by women. There is little in the plain life of Schubert to fire the zeal
of the anecdotical or romantic biographer. No Grimm, no Diderot,
relished his conversation. There is no gossip of noble and perfumed
dames looking on him favorably. There is a legend that he was
passionately in love with Caroline of the House of Esterhazy; but his
passion followed a spell of interest in a pretty housemaid. He sang love
in immortal strains; but women were not drawn towards him as they were
towards Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven—the list is a long one. He was not a
spectacularly heroic figure. His morbidness has not the inviting charm
of Schumann’s torturing introspection. We sympathize more deeply with
the sufferings of Mozart, and yet the last years of Schubert were
perhaps as cruel. Dittersdorf is close to us by his autobiography. Smug
Blangini amuses by his vanity and by his indiscreet defence of Pauline
Bonaparte, his pupil. No one can imagine Schubert philosophizing in
books after the fashion of Wagner, Gounod, Saint-Saëns. It would have
been easier for him to write a dozen symphonies than a feuilleton in the
manner of Hector Berlioz. Schubert was a simple, kindly, loving, honest
man, whose trade, whose life, was music.
Schubert thought in song even when he wrote for the pianoforte, string
quartet, or orchestra. The songs which he wrote in too great number were
composed under all sorts of conditions, almost always hurriedly, in the
fields, in the tavern, in bed. There were German songs before
Schubert—folk songs, songs of the church, set songs for home and
concert; but Schubert created a new lyric—the emotional song. Plod your
weary way through the ballads of Zumsteeg, the songs of J. A. Hiller,
Reichardt, Zelter, and the others: how cold, formal, precise they are!
They are like unto the cameo brooches that adorn the simpering women in
old tokens or keepsakes; as remote and out of fashion as the hair
jewelry of the early ’sixties. Take away “The Violet,” and what interest
is there in Mozart’s book of songs? There is Haydn’s famous _Canzonet_;
there is perhaps Beethoven’s “In Questa Tomba” with a few of the songs
addressed to the “_Ferne Geliebte_”; but Beethoven knew the voice best
as an orchestral instrument. The modern song was invented by Franz
Schubert.
The striking characteristics of Schubert’s songs, spontaneity, haunting
melody, a birthright mastery over modulation, a singular good fortune in
finding the one inevitable phrase for the prevailing sentiment of the
poem and in finding the fitting descriptive figure for salient detail,
are also found in the best of his instrumental works.
There is the spontaneous simplicity, the simplicity praised by Walt
Whitman: “The art of art, the glory of expression is simplicity. To
speak with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of
animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods
and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art. The greatest
poet swears to his art: ‘I will not be meddlesome. I will not have in my
writing any elegance or effect or originality to hang in the way between
me and the rest like curtains. What I tell, I tell for precisely what it
is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or soothe, I will have
purposes as health or heat or snow has, and be as regardless of
observation. What I experience or portray shall go from my composition
without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by my side and look
in the mirror with me.’”
Then there is the ineffable melancholy that is the dominating note.
There is gayety such as was piped naïvely by William Blake in his _Songs
of Innocence_; there is the innocence that even Mozart hardly reached in
his frank gayety; yet in the gayety and innocence is a
melancholy—despairing, as in certain songs of “The Winter Journey,” when
Schubert smelled the mould and knew the earth was impatiently looking
for him—a melancholy that is not the titanic despair of Beethoven, not
the whining or shrieking pessimism of certain German and Russian
composers; it is the melancholy of an autumnal sunset, of the ironical
depression due to a burgeoning noon in spring, the melancholy that comes
between the lips of lovers.
_The sunniest things throw sternest shade,
And there is even a happiness
That makes the heart afraid!
There is no music in the life
That sounds with idiot laughter solely;
There’s not a string, attuned to mirth,
But has its chord in melancholy._
No one has treated the passion of love more purely. Love with the modern
French composer is too often merely a pronounced phase of eroticism, or
it is purely, or impurely, cerebral. With Wagner it is as a rule
heroically sensuous if not sensual. Is there one page of Schubert’s
music that is characterized first of all by sensuousness? A few measures
are played or sung; the music may be unknown to the hearer, but he says
to himself “Schubert,” and not merely because he recognizes restless
changes from major to minor and from minor to major, tremulous
tonalities, surprising ease in modulation, naïve, direct melody. The
sedulous ape may sweat in vain; there is no thought of Schubert, whose
mannerisms are his whole individuality.
This individuality defies analysis. It was finely said by Walt Whitman
that all music is “what awakens from you when you are reminded by the
instruments”; the hearer’s thoughts are sweeter and purer, his soul is
cheered or soothed, when he is reminded by the music of Schubert.
Pompous eulogies have been paid this homely, human, inspired man, who
knew poverty and distress, who was ignored by the mob while he lived his
short life, who never heard some of his most important works, whose
works were scattered.
“Schubert, turning round, clutched at the wall with his poor, tired
hands, and said in a slow voice, ‘Here, here is my end.’ At three in the
afternoon of Wednesday, November 19, 1828, he breathed his last, and his
simple, earnest soul took its flight from the world. There never has
been one like him, and there will never be another.” When you read these
words of Sir George Grove, something chokes you; they outweigh the
purple phrases and dexterously juggled sentences of the rhetorician.