IV

We are now in the very thick of the fight of the fierce battle waged

by Tschaïkowsky for his ideals. To know the complexion of his soul you

must study his orchestral works, and after his op. 57, six Lieder,

comes the noble Manfred symphony, op. 58. If I had a spark of the

true critic in my veins I would be able to give the dates of the

performances of this--to use a banal expression--inspired work. But I

am not a handy man at figures of any sort, and indeed barely remember

the composition except as a magnificent picture in poignant tones,

Manfred seeking forgetfulness of his lost Astarte in the mountains,

the Witch of the Alps; and after a wonderful sketch of the Alps, with

the piercing blue above the calm, a ranz des vaches not at all in

the Rossinian manner, the death of Manfred, and the maddening tonal

debaucheries in the hall of Arimanes. Here is our Tschaïkowsky at

his top notch; the temper of the man showing out clear and poetic

and dramatic to all extremes. The passion of life and its folly are

proclaimed by a master pessimist who from his birth was sacrificed to

those three dread sisters told of by De Quincey. A most moving and

agitated tale, and one that almost shakes your belief in the universe.

No joy of life here but a morbid brooding, a mood of doubt and

darkness. There are desperate moments in the music, and Manfred’s naked

soul stands before us. The finale, with its sweeping melos, accompanied

by the organ, is most melancholy, but not without a gleam of hope.

Tschaïkowsky is a poet who sometimes prophesies.

Op. 59 is a Doumka, a rustic Russian scene for piano solo. Op. 60

consists of a dozen romances for voice, and op. 61 is the delightful

fourth orchestral suite, Mozarteana, in which Tschaïkowsky testified in

a lively manner to his love for Mozart. He has utilized the Ave Verum

in a striking way, and not even Gounod himself was ever so saturated

with the Mozartean feeling as the Russian composer in this suite. It

is a great favorite.

The Pezzo Capriccioso is numbered op. 62 and is for violoncello, with

orchestral accompaniment. It is as wayward and Slavic as anything

Tschaïkowsky ever wrote, ending in mid air, as is occasionally his

wont. More songs comprise op. 63, and the opus that follows, 64, is the

fifth symphony in E minor. It is the most Russian of all his symphonies

and its basis is undoubtedly composed of folksongs. Its pregnant motto

in the andante, which is intoned by the clarinets, is sombre, world

weary, and in the allegro the theme, while livelier and evidently

bucolic, is not without its sardonic tinge. The entire first movement

is masterly in its management of the variation, the episodical matter,

the various permutations in the Durchführung all being weighed to the

note and every note a telling one. Not themes for a symphony in the

classic sense, Dvorák thinks, yet not without power, if lacking in

nobility and elevation of character. But what an impassioned romance

the French horn sings in the second movement! It is the very apotheosis

of a night of nightingales, soft and seldom footed dells, a soft moon

and dreaming tree-leaves. Its tune sinks a shaft into your heart and

hot from your heart comes a response; the horizon is low, heaven is

near earth and carking life beyond, forgotten in the fringes and

shadows. Some pages of perfect writing follow; the oboe and the horn

in tender converse, and you can never forget those first six bars; all

youth, all love is clamoring in them.

How that slow valse, with its lugubrious bassoon and its capering

violins in the trio, affects one! A sorrowful jesting, quite in the

Russian style. It is a country where the peasants tell a joke with

the tears streaming down their faces and if the vodka is sufficiently

fiery, will dance at a funeral. The clatter and swirl of the finale is

deafening, the motto in the major key is sounded shrill, and through

the movement there is noise and confusion, a hurly-burly of peasants

thumping their wooden shoes and yelling like drunken maniacs. All the

romance, all the world-weariness has fled to covert, and the composer

is at his worst with the seven devils he has brought to his newly

garnished mansion. It is this shocking want of taste that offends

his warmest admirers, and his skill in painting revelries is more

accentuated than Hogarth’s. Certainly you can never affix the moral

tag.

Tschaïkowsky is often possessed by these devils, and then the whole

apparatus of his orchestra is shivered and shaken. His chromatic

contrapuntal scales on the heavy brass, his middle voices never at

peace, the whir and rush of the fiddles and the drumming and clash of

cymbals are the outward evidence of the unquiet Calmuck man beneath the

skin of Peter Ilyitch. That he can say obscure things I am willing to

swear, and his neurotic energy is tremendous. This fifth symphony has

its weak points; structurally it is not strong, and the substitution

of the valse for the familiar scherzo is not defensible in the eyes of

the formalists. But there are moments of pure beauty, and the mixing of

hues, despite the Asiatic violence, is deft and to the ear bewildering

and bewitching.

Just here I should like to make a digression and examine more fully

the predecessor of the symphony in E minor, the fourth in F minor.

In symmetry, beauty of musical ideas, suavity, indeed in general

workmanship, it is not always the equal of the fifth symphonic work,

but in one instance this may be qualified: The first movement is full

of abounding passion, is more fluent in expression than the first

allegro of the fifth symphony.

The theme in the introduction of the F minor symphony bears a strong

resemblance to the opening of Schumann’s B flat symphony, but not in

rhythm. It is used in several movements later as a sort of leading

motive or perhaps to give an impression of organic unity. The theme

proper is romantic in the extreme and charged to the full with passion

and suspense. The halting, syncopated phrases, the dramatic intensity,

the whirl of colors, moods and situations are all characteristic.

The episode which follows the principal theme can hardly be called a

theme; it is a bridge, a transition to the second subject. Tschaïkowsky

can sometimes be very Gallic, for Gounod is suggested--a phrase from

the tomb music in Roméo et Juliette--but is momentary. Musically this

first movement is the best of the four, more naïve, full of abandon and

blood-stirring episodes.

The second movement in B flat minor, andantino in modo di canzona, is

a tender, sad little melody in eighth notes, embroidered by runs in

the woodwind--Cossack counterpoint. It has a sense of remoteness and

dreary resignation. It is uncompromisingly Slavic. It is said to be the

actual transcription of a Russian bargeman’s refrain. This is treated

in a variant fashion--the second subsidiary in A flat being delivered

by clarinets and fagottes, a middle part piu mosso in F, the whole

concluding with the fagotte intoning the first melody. Sombre it is and

not the equal in romantic beauty of the lulling horn solo in the slow

movement of the E minor symphony.

The scherzo allegro in F, plucked by the string choir, is deficient in

musical depth, but its novel workmanship fixes one’s attention. It is

called a pizzicato ostinato, although the pizzicati are not continuous.

It is full of a grim sort of humor, and the trio for woodwind, oboes

and fagottes is rollicking and pastoral. The third theme--smothered

staccato chords for brass with sinister drum taps--is thoroughly

original and reminds us of the entrance of Fortinbras in the composer’s

Hamlet. The working out is slim but clever.

The last movement in F is a triumph of constructive skill, for it is

literally built on an unpretentious phrase of a measure and a half. It

is all noisy, brilliant, interesting, but not of necessity symphonic.

The main theme, almost interminably varied, is not new. It may be

found in a baritone solo, Mozart’s Escape from the Seraglio, and in

a slightly transformed shape it lurks in the romanza of Schumann’s

Faschingschwank aus Wien. Tschaïkowsky’s wonderful contrapuntal skill

and piquancy of orchestration invest this finale with meaning.

Western ears are sometimes sadly tried by the uncouth harmonic

progressions and by the savagery of the moods of this symphony.

Symphony perhaps in the narrow meaning of the term it is not. A

wordless music drama it could be better styled. All the keen, poignant

feeling, the rapidity of incident, the cumulative horror of some mighty

drama of the soul, with its changeful coloring and superb climax are

here set forth and sung by the various instruments of the orchestra,

which assumes the rôle of the personages in this unspoken tragedy.

How intensely eloquent in this form is Tschaïkowsky, and what a

wondrous art it is that out of the windless air of the concert room can

weave such epical sorrow, joy, love and madness!

Op. 65 brings us to six romances for voice and piano, and op. 66 the

ballet of La Belle au Bois Dormant. Op. 67 is the Hamlet overture

fantaisie, which evidently finds its form in Wagner’s unsurpassable

Eine Faust overture. It is remarkable in that it begins in A minor

and closes in F minor. There seems to be little attempt to paint

the conventional Hamlet mood, the mood of atrabiliary sluggishness

and frenetic intellection, but rather hints of the bloody side of

Shakespeare’s purple melodrama. In it stalks the apparition, and

the witching hour of midnight booms to the bitter end. There is the

pathetic lunacy of Ophelia--a lovely theme limns her--and there is

turmoil and fretting of spirit. At the close I am pleased to imagine

the figure of Fortinbras thinly etched by staccato brass and the

rest, that is silence to the noble spirit who o’ercrowed himself, is

sounded in thunder that may be heard in the hollow hills. It is not

Tschaïkowsky’s most masterly effort in the form, but it is masterly

withal, and its mastery is mixed with the alloy of the sensational.

Op. 68 is an opera in three acts, La Dame de Pique; op. 69, Yolande,

opera in one act; op. 70, the lovely Souvenir de Florence, a sextuor

for two violins, two altos and two ’celli. It is Tschaïkowsky at his

happiest and he makes simple strings vibrate with more colors than

the rainbow. Op. 71 is Casse-Noisette, a two-act ballet, a suite

that has often been played here. It is dainty, piquant and bizarre.

Op. 72 consists of eighteen pieces for piano solo, variously called

Impromptu, Berçeuse, Tendres Reproches, Danse Caractéristique,

Méditation, Mazurque pour Danser, Polacca de Concert, Dialogue, Un

Poco di Schumann, Scherzo Fantaisie, Valse Bluette, L’Espiègle, Écho

Rustique, Chant Élégiaque, Un Poco di Chopin, Valse à Cinqtemps,

Passé Lointan and Scène Dansante, which last bears the sub-title of

Invitation au Trepak.

These pieces are of value; many are graceful and suitable for the

salon. The polacca and the scherzo are more pretentious and might be

played in public. The imitations of Schumann and Chopin are clever.

It must be confessed, however, that Tschaïkowsky often bundles the

commonplace and the graceful and does not write agreeably for the

piano. Rubinstein surpassed him in this respect. There is always

a certain want of sympathy for the technical exigencies of the

instrument and the suavely facile and the bristling difficult are often

contiguous. There is no mistaking Tschaïkowsky’s handiwork in these

pieces, the longest of which, the scherzo, is twenty-one pages and

quite trying. The most brilliant is the polacca.

It cannot be denied that the composer must have boiled numerous pots

with his piano pieces, many of them are so trivial, so artificial and

vapid. Op. 73 is six melodies for voice, and in these are four vocal

romances without opus number. I have not said much about the songs,

although they are Tschaïkowsky’s richest lyric offerings. Some are

redolent of the sentimentality of the salon, but there are a few that

are masterpieces in miniature. Pourquoi, words by Heine, in German

Warum sind denn die Rosen so Blass? is popular, not without justice,

while Nur wer die Sehnsucht Kennt is fit to keep company with the best

songs of Schubert, Schumann, Franz and Brahms. In intensity of feeling

and in the repressed tragic note this song has few peers. It is a

microcosm of the whole Romantic movement.

Among the unclassified works I find a cantata with Russian words, three

choruses of the Russian Church, the choruses of Bortiansky, revised

and annotated by Tschaïkowsky in nine volumes; an Ave Maria for mezzo

soprano or baritone, with piano or organ accompaniment; Le Caprice

D’Oksane, opera in four acts; Jeanne D’Arc, opera in four acts and six

tableaux; Mazeppa, opera in three acts; La Tscharodeika, La Magicienne

ou la Charmeuse, opera in four acts, and Hamlet--the overture I

have already spoken of,--which consists of overture, melodrames,

marches and entr’acts, regular music for the play. Then there is the

Mouvement Perpétuel, from Weber’s C major sonata, arranged for the left

hand--Brahms has had an imitator--and an impromptu caprice for piano.

Tschaïkowsky has also made a Manual of Harmony in Russian. The richness

and variety of this composer’s music is remarkable. Not coming into the

world with any especially novel word to speak or doctrine to expound,

he nevertheless has been gladly heard for his sincerity--a tremendous

sincerity--and his passionate, almost crazy intensity. If you were to

ask me his chief quality I should not speak of his scholarship, which

is profound enough, nor of his charm, nor of the originality of his

tunes, but upon his great, his overwhelming temperament--his almost

savage, sensual, morbid, half mad musical temperament--I should insist,

for it is his dominant note; it suffuses every bar he has written, and

even overflows his most effortless production.

The history of the symphonic Ballade called Voyévode is interesting. In

1891 Tschaïkowsky gave the work a rehearsal and, not liking it, tossed

the score into the fire. It was rescued in a semi-charred condition

by his pupil, Siloti, the pianist. It has no opus number, but through

internal evidence it may safely be called an early and immature work

of the composer. This ballade, with its crude realism, its weakness in

thematic material and above all its imitative instrumentation, strongly

savoring of Wagner, may be classed as a youthful sketch worked over.

The programme is a dramatic one. The music attempts to depict the

jealousy of a chieftain, who, finding his young wife in the arms of

another, shoots her. But the bullet never reaches her heart, for the

servant he has commanded to fire on the lover misses his aim--purposely

perhaps--and the Voyévode is killed instead. The poem is by Pushkin.

Tschaïkowsky has succeeded in writing a vigorous, even rough, dramatic

episode, in which the galloping of the chieftain’s horse as he returns

from the war, the amorous scene in the garden and the catastrophe are

all fairly well pictured. Melodramatic is the word that best describes

this music, which contains in solution many of Tschaïkowsky’s most

admirable characteristics. The bassoon is heard, with its sinister

chuckle, and there is a richness of fancy and warmth of color in

the love music, sensuous and sweet, but lacking in distinction,

that we look for in this master. The sharp staccato chord that

symbolizes shooting is sensational. The close is evidently suggested

by Siegfried’s Funeral March. The garden music is from the second act

of Tristan and Isolde. Indeed, Wagner is continually hinted at in the

orchestration. Tschaïkowsky’s freedom from Wagner’s influence, as

hitherto evidenced in his other and more important works, leads us

to surmise that this is the effort of a beginner. It has historical

interest and shows us the dramatic trend of the Russian’s mind, but as

absolute music it is not many degrees removed from the barbaric “1812”

overture solennelle. It was first played here in the autumn of 1897 by

the Symphony Society under Mr. Walter Damrosch.

I still have left for review the Roméo et Juliette overture-fantaisie

without opus number, the sixth symphony, op. 74, in B minor, and

the third piano concerto in E flat, op. 75. The Jurgenson catalogue

goes no further than op. 74, so the piano concerto is posthumous. An

unpublished piano nocturne is announced for early publication; that

ends the list.

V

As the Roméo et Juliette was first played here in 1876 it must have

been composed about the time of the first piano concerto, perhaps

later. It is evidently a work of the composer in the first gorgeous

outburst of his genius. It is a magnificent love poem, full of the

splendors of passion and warring hosts. How it strikes fire from the

first firm chord! Imperial passion flames in it, and the violins mount

in burning octaves. The Juliette theme is sealed with the pure lips of

a loving maid; but I will spare you further rhapsodizing.

The third piano concerto, like Beethoven’s fifth, is in the key of E

flat, but there the resemblance ends, although the work is unusually

vigorous and built on a theme even shorter than the one used in the B

flat minor piano concerto. The posthumous concerto is really a fantasy

for piano and orchestra with a nine page cadenza in the first part.

It is not as long as its predecessors, and the subsidiary themes are

very amiable and fetching. I should dearly love to hear it if only for

the orchestration, hints of which appear in the second piano part.

Fantastic in form, it has one rattling good theme in the allegro molto

vivace, a theme that is rhythmically related to one in Moniuszko’s

opera, Halka. It is very Slavic, very piquant. The composer juggles

with three subjects, and the cadenza is utilized as a working out

section. This is extremely florid, possibly made so to suit the style

of Louis Diémer, to whom the concerto is dedicated. The last movement

is a more brilliant restatement of the first themes, and the song

motive, this time in the tonic--it was in G at first--is very rich and

melodious. The coda, a vivacissimo, is muscular and brief.

As far as the piano partition may be judged, this last composition

of Tschaïkowsky’s does not build, neither does it detract from his

fame. It smells a little of the piece made to order, although I may be

mistaken in this. In any case I hope someone will play it; it is not

very difficult or trying to one’s endurance. Its technical physiognomy

resembles that of its brethren; there are octaves, chord passages in

rapid flight and there are many scales; rather an unusual quantity in

this composer’s piano music. The cadenza is especially brilliant.

My first impression of the sixth symphony, the “Suicide,” as it has

been called, has never been altered; the last movement is Tschaïkowsky

at his greatest, but the other movements do not “hang” together; in

a word, there is a lack of organic unity. Tschaïkowsky is never a

formalist. He works more freely in the loosely built symphonic poem,

the symphonic poem born of Berlioz, although fathered by Liszt. Yet we

look for certain specific qualities in the symphonic form, and one of

them is homogeneity.

Consider this last symphony. The opening allegro has for its chief

subject a short phrase in B minor, a rather commonplace phrase, a

phrase with an upward inflection, that you may find in Mendelssohn

and a half dozen other classical writers. The accent is strong to

harshness, and after the composer considers that he has sufficiently

impressed it upon your memory the entrance of an episodical figure

leads you captive to the second theme in D. Here is the romantic

Russian for you! It is lovely, sensuous, suave. It is the composer in

his most melting mood, and is the feminine complement to the abrupt

masculinity of the first subject. Atop of it we soon get some dancing

rhythms under a scale-like theme, and then the working out begins.

The second subject is first treated, and this is followed by an

exposition of the first subject, and in thundering tones and with

all the harmonic and rhythmic skill the composer knows how to

employ so well. There is constant use of scales for contrapuntal

purposes, and the basses shake the very firmament. It is the old

Tschaïkowsky--sombre, dreary and savage. The mood does not last long.

The sky lightens with a return of the cantabile, and then comes the

schluss. This is wonderfully made and very effective. The movement

ends peacefully. Its color throughout is beautiful, leaning toward the

darker tints of the orchestral palette.

But the second and third movements are enigmas to me.

Raff introduced a gay march into a symphony, Beethoven a funeral march

and Tschaïkowsky penned a lugubrious valse for his fifth symphonic

work; but the second movement of this B minor symphony is in five-four

time and sounds like a perverted valse, but one that could not be

danced to unless you owned three legs. It is delightfully piquant

music and the touch of Oriental color in the trio, or second part--for

the movement is not a scherzo--produced by a pedal point on D is very

felicitous. The third movement starts in with a Mendelssohnian figure

in triplets and scherzo-like, but this soon merges into a march. The

ingenuity displayed in scoring, the peculiar and recurring accent,

which again suggests the East, helps the movement to escape the

commonplace.

But why these two movements in a symphony? They are episodical,

fragmentary and seem intended for a suite. Can it be possible that

Tschaïkowsky has only given us a mosaic--has made a short rosary of

numbers that bear no active relationship! As well believe this as

strive to reconcile these four movements. Dr. Dvorák’s words return

with peculiar force after listening to this symphony. “Tschaïkowsky

cannot write a symphony; he only makes suites.”

Therefore the most tremendous surprise follows in the finale. Since

the music of the march in the Eroica, since the mighty funeral music

in Siegfried, there has been no such death music as this “adagio

lamentoso,” this astounding torso, which Michel Angelo would have

understood and Dante wept over. It is the very apotheosis of mortality,

and its gloomy accents, poignant melody and harmonic coloring make it

one of the most impressive of contributions to mortuary music. It sings

of the entombment of a nation, and is incomparably noble, dignified

and unspeakably tender. It is only at the close that the rustling of

the basses conveys a sinister shudder; the shudder of the Dies Iræ when

the heavens shall be a fiery scroll and the sublime trump sound its

summons to eternity.

No Richard Strauss realism is employed to describe the halting heart

beats; no gasps in the woodwind to indicate the departing breath; no

imitative figure to tell us that clods of earth are falling heavily on

the invisible coffin; but the atmosphere of grief, immutable, eternal,

hovers about like a huge black-winged angel.

The movement is the last word in the profoundly pessimistic philosophy

which comes from the East to poison and embitter the religious hopes of

the West. It has not the consolations of Nirvana, for that offers us a

serene non-existence, an absorption into Neánt. Tschaïkowsky’s music is

a page torn from Ecclesiastes, it is the cosmos in crape. This movement

will save the other three from oblivion. The scoring throughout is

masterly.

Whether or not the composer had a premonition of his approaching death

is a question I gladly leave to sentimental psychologists.

Again we must lament the death of the master. What might his ninth

symphony not have been! He was slain in the very plenitude of

his powers, at a time when to his glowing temperament was added a

moderation born of generous cosmopolitan culture.

Little remains to be added. All who met Tschaïkowsky declare that he

was a polished, charming man of the world; like all Russians, a good

linguist, and many sided in his tastes. But not in his musical taste.

He disliked Brahms heartily, and while Brahms appreciated his music,

the Russian shrugged his shoulders, and frankly confessed that for

him the Hamburg composer was a mere music-maker. In a conversation

with Henry Holden Huss he praised Saint-Saëns, and then naïvely

admitted that it was a pity an artist whose facture was so fine had

so little original to say. He reverenced the classics, Mozart more

than Beethoven, and had an enormous predilection for Berlioz, Liszt

and Wagner. This was quite natural, and we find Rubinstein, with whom

Tschaïkowsky studied, upbraiding him for his defection from German

classic standards. Curiously enough, Wagner did not play such a part in

Tschaïkowsky’s music as one might imagine. The Russian’s operas were

made after old-fashioned models and, despite his lyric and dramatic

talent, have never proved successful. He dramatically expressed himself

best in the orchestra, and totally lacked Wagner’s power of projecting

dramatic images upon the stage.

As regards the suicide story, I can only repeat that while it has been

officially denied, it has never been quite discredited. Kapellmeister

Wallner of St. Petersburg, a relative by marriage of Tolstoy, and an

intimate of Tschaïkowsky, told me that his nearest friends had the

matter hushed up. He is supposed to have died of cholera after drinking

a glass of unfiltered water, but his stomach was never subjected to

chemical analysis. The fact that his mother died of the same malady

lent color to the cholera story. It is all very sad.

Tschaïkowsky lived, was unhappy, composed and died, and he will be

forgotten. Let us enjoy him while we may and until “all the daughters

of music shall be brought low.”