THE CONTEMPORARIES OF SCHUBERT AND SCHUMANN
The spirit of the ‘thirties’ in France; the lyric poets of
the French romantic period--Monpou and Berlioz--Song-writers
of Italy; English song-writers--Robert Frans--Löwe and the
art-ballad.
In another volume[26] we have seen what a remarkable wave of literary
romanticism swept over France in the late twenties and early thirties
of the nineteenth century. There has rarely been an age of more
pronounced lyricism, rarely an age which created in a short time so
many excellent lyrics. There were a number of fine talents working
at this time. The purely literary virtuosity was remarkable. The
radicalism of their method was marked, and the strangeness of their
product revealed a movement in all the vigor of its early youth. In
their insistence on the sensuous quality of words the romanticists
of the thirties looked forward to the France of the early twentieth
century, with its hazy, indefinite outlines. The early romanticists
reduced the sound of words to a fine art. The later impressionists
reduced it almost to an exact science.
The central tenet of the romanticists was freedom--freedom from the old
classic forms, freedom from a host of conventions which governed the
French language in poetry, and freedom especially from the severity
and reserve of the classic ideal. To the poet of the Napoleonic age
any violence of manner was an error in taste. He shunned it as he
would have shunned the smell of garlic on a peasant’s breath. To the
poet of the age of Louis Philippe any conscious reserve of manner
was a coldness, a lack of genuine human feeling, an artistic lie. The
emotions as well as the artistic sense must be stirred. And they must
be stirred both by the picturing of emotion and by the beauty of lovely
sounds. We have occasion to notice throughout the art of the nineteenth
century an increasing insistence on the sensuous (it cannot be too
often repeated). It shows in every department of artistic life. In
poetry it is shown in a development of the mellifluousness of rhythm
and suggestiveness of word. The French romanticists did for French
poetry what Shelley did for English and what Poe did for American.
These three qualities--freedom, emotionalism, and sensuousness--we may
accept as the dominant notes of French romantic poetry.
High above all literary men of the time towered Victor Hugo. This man,
along with Shakespeare, Dante, and Goethe, was one of the greatest
virtuosos of language the world has ever seen. Pity only that he had
not the genius of the other three! To his time he seemed supreme. But
since his death his reputation has been steadily declining. We have
come to see how much of his work was only--language. He attained his
emotional effects through emotional words rather than through emotional
interpretation. He was incurably melodramatic and only his power of
language saves a large share of his work from falling to the level
of any yellow-back novel or the cheap theatre romance. He attempted
to cover the whole of life--to interpret the criminal, the hero, and
the child, as well as woman in every one of her moods and states. But
through all the work, even the magnificent scenes of _Les Misérables_,
the true human touch is somehow lacking. Everything is sacrificed to
the great god Effect, to whom alone Hugo offered his most precious
burnt offerings. Much of his work was in the form of short lyrics, but
it is in this department that his reputation has suffered most in the
half century just past. The lyric demands a naïveté which Hugo, already
famous at the age of seventeen, never had. His lyric poems are always
overweighted with their language, always too foreign to the spirit of
the folk-poem, which is at the foundation of all lyric expression. They
were, however, freely set to music, as was inevitable, and furnish a
goodly share of the texts for the song literature of the time.
Lamartine in his lyric work suffered considerably from the disease of
the time--over-emphasis. He ranked as a philosopher in his day--much
the sort of philosopher which Maeterlinck pretends to be to-day. He had
a goodly share of the didactic in his makeup, as Hugo never had (except
toward the end of his life, when didacticism became the fashion). As a
result we can hardly place Lamartine any higher than Hugo as a lyric
poet. But his ardent religious sense, combined with his fine power over
eloquent language, made him greatly loved in his day and as a result
his texts enter largely into the song literature of the time. Béranger
had much more of the true lyric in him. His language was simple, his
message popular. He was always more at home in the streets than in the
drawing room. In some ways he might be called the Kipling of his time.
He appealed to the French sense of national pride, dwelling upon the
glorious history of the past and the nobility of the French character
with all the paraphernalia of the jingo poet. In particular he
resuscitated, or rather created, the Napoleonic myth. The age in which
he wrote was a new one, containing few of the immediate conditions of
Napoleon’s time. A new generation had sprung up, a generation which had
not experienced the heartaches and miseries of the Napoleonic wars, or
else had forgotten them, and thought of the time only as the age in
which France single-handed had defeated the whole of Europe. Napoleon
was no longer the epileptic and egomaniac who had shattered the fine
ideals of the French Revolution and for his own ambition brought
France almost to the verge of ruin. He was now _le petit caporal_ who
had fought with his men on the bridge at Arcola, had eaten the same
food and slept on the same hard ground with his army. The myth was
tremendously attractive, and made it possible some twenty years later
for a shallow adventurer to become Emperor of France (merely because he
happened to be the nephew of the great Bonaparte) and bring France once
more to the verge of ruin to please personal and dynastic ambition.
In the creation of this myth Béranger’s sense of the picturesque and
popular served him well. As a lyric poet, apart from the peculiar
nature of his subject matter, he would hardly be remembered. The most
genuine and most refined of the literary men of the time was Musset,
for many years the lover of Georges Sand and Chopin’s successor in her
affections. His work partook far less of the spectacular than that
of his contemporaries. He was interested in interpreting the human
soul and he did his work with the most delicate literary art. His
inspiration was fresh and creative; his workmanship was finished to
the last degree. It is a great pity that he had no Schubert to set his
poems to music. A musician of the stature of Musset might have created
a distinctive and great French song literature fifty years earlier than
it came.
I
If the right composer had been at hand French song literature in the
nineteenth century might have equalled the German, for the conditions
seemed to be ripe. But the French musical tradition for many decades
was extraordinarily emasculated, and in no department of musical
activity did this show so plainly as in the songs. With a few
exceptions the French songs from 1830 to 1890 show very few qualities
of creative vigor. The ideal was suavity and facility. Doubtless there
was beneath the smooth melodies a subtlety of suggestion that gave
them a certain artistic value, but this quality is peculiarly French,
and without other elements of interest the French songs could hardly
attain any great international vogue. It is astonishing--the sameness
of these songs which appear in volumes, with eternal repetition and
rigid convention. The sentimentalism of the period dominates the whole
song output. The composers were extraordinarily timid; the melodies
followed the same suave line, and the harmonies were the same eternal
succession. The tradition of good taste became little better than a
worship of the accredited and commonplace.
The one composer who was markedly free of this fault was, of course,
Hector Berlioz, one of the most powerful geniuses in all French
music. There is little to connect his work with that of other French
composers: in many ways he was their polar opposite. A certain love
for graceful and somewhat cold melody (a quality he derived from Gluck
and not from his contemporaries), a certain clinging to established
forms (with very revolutionary content), and here ends the list
of similarities. For the rest he carried into his vocal music the
qualities which made his symphonies seem so wild and so anarchic to his
countrymen. His harmonies were daring in the extreme. His vocal parts
were irregular, without balanced phrases, without regular succession
and contrast of similar sections, without any of the clearness of
outline which is almost the sole virtue in most of his contemporaries.
He modulated through any number of keys, introduced dissonance in
unheard of quantity, and filled his accompaniment with rich detail to
an extent which to the taste of his time was nothing short of vulgar.
Throughout his work he followed his own whim where other men would
have followed iron convention. But, though his songs are few in number
and though they contain peculiar difficulties which have prevented
their extensive use in concert programs, they have held their place in
the estimation of musicians far better than any other French songs of
the period. There are no waste places in these songs. Throughout it is
the creative musician who is speaking. The conventional melodic phrases
and harmonic sequences, when they are used, have a fine sincerity.
When the music is unconventional it is stimulating and suggestive.
The impression one gets is that of a vigorous, even violent, brain
ceaselessly creating, willing to experiment, willing to make mistakes,
but always writing what he believes to be his best. His artistic
sincerity is shown by the several versions which exist of some of his
songs; his richness of invention by the variants in these versions.
Most of the songs are highly elaborate and dramatic. Sometimes, as
often happened with Berlioz, they tend to the pretentious and pompous.
They are never easy to grasp. But each and every one of them is worth a
musician’s study and the student of singing in particular cannot well
afford to let Berlioz remain a closed book to him.
The earlier songs, written before 1830, are in general simple
and conventional. At times we feel the young man who has not yet
realized his creative powers. But even these early songs have a high
standard compared to the sort of thing that was being produced at the
time. Before 1830 Berlioz was still under the spell of Gluck (if,
indeed, he ever emerged from it) and his conventionality is that of
the great master of opera rather than that of the familiar French
_chanson_. ‘The Dead Shepherdess,’ dating from 1827, is remarkable
for its classic dignity and beauty. The Irish Songs, in 1829 and
1830, composed to words by Thomas Moore, show the surging up of the
revolutionary fervor which took hold of him about this time and came
to fruit in the _Symphonie Fantastique_ that so startled and shocked
Parisian audiences. The songs are in the strophic form, as were most
of Berlioz’s songs, but otherwise they are unusual enough to prove a
problem for the singer. They are by no means steady in quality, and
doubtless there is evidenced a failure on the structural side, an
inability to keep genius within firmly controlled limits. ‘At Sunset’
is typical. It is irregular and so filled with detail that it tends
to become ‘spotty.’ It is obviously an attempt at atmosphere--at the
same atmosphere upon which the recent French song-writers have built
their reputation. The singer’s problem lies in keeping these details
from protruding from the general design and still giving them their
individual value. The task of selecting the essential in the song and
keeping this to the fore is truly a task for the singer’s intellect,
that intellect which is called on so little in the mass of French
songs. ‘Rich and Rare’ has much sensuous beauty and is a real problem
in expressive singing. ‘Farewell Bessy’ is altogether lovely. But the
finest of the songs is the last, the ‘Elegy.’ Here Berlioz reaches a
height of tragic impressiveness which he never equalled in his songs
and equalled only rarely in his symphonic music. The effect of this
song in concert is tremendous.
The song called ‘The Captive’ (three versions of it exist) is one of
the best known and one of the simplest. Here Berlioz has been content
with a conventional accompaniment and has spent his effort on the
melody--an irregular and somewhat arbitrary melody, but one with a
certain aristocratic charm which the singer must find for himself.
The ‘Villanelle’ is perhaps the best of all. Here the originality of
Berlioz’s genius finds expression within very narrow limits. The simple
old form is combined with a harmonic energy that is admirable. ‘In the
Graveyard’ is a study in the tragic mood, unconventional, needless
to say, and thoroughly successful. Other songs which deserve mention
are: ‘I Believe in Thee,’ a sentimental love song; ‘On the Lagoon,’ a
slow barcarolle in six-eight time; and ‘Zaïde,’ a bolero that is highly
effective for concert use.
François Louis Hippolyte Monpou (born 1804; died 1841) was the
recognized song-writer of the romantic movement. He is now little
more than a historical fact. In his early years he was an organist
and conductor of church music, but his ability was not marked and he
drifted looking for something to do. He gained some local fame in 1828
from his three-part setting of Béranger’s _Si j’étais petit oiseau_ and
was taken up in the drawing rooms as a representative of the romantic
school. He took the drawing room verdict seriously and turned out a
number of songs to the words of Hugo, Musset, Béranger, and others. His
songs had a certain popular quality and an effect of boldness which
suited the fancy of the romantic school. But his musicianship was
faulty and his harmony and rhythm were awkward and unresourceful. After
he became established as a song-writer he took to doing operas, some of
which are melodically effective and dramatically vigorous.
II
Italy has for three centuries been deficient in art-songs, but she
has produced a certain amount of lyric music which the student
will discover and sing gladly from time to time, and a few of her
song-writers should be mentioned here. Giuseppe Mercadante (1795-1870)
was primarily an opera composer, but, unlike most of the Italian
opera writers, produced a goodly number of songs. These are simple
and florid, possessed of a certain Italian charm, but on the one hand
too thin to rank as true interpretative music, and on the other
somewhat too operatic to convey a simple lyrical sentiment. However,
his vogue was great and he may be considered the originator of the
modern Italian song tradition. The continuer of the tradition was
Luigi Gordigiani (1806-1860), a peasant boy who showed marked talent
for music and carried into his work a feeling for folk-song which
was new to Italian music at the time. He was one of the first native
collectors of folk-music and one of the first to appreciate it. He is
known almost solely as a song-writer, and so popular have his songs
become and so firmly have they remained in people’s hearts that he
has with some justice been called ‘the Italian Schubert.’ However,
we must not be from this led to suppose that he had anything like
Schubert’s richness of melodic inspiration, musical resource, or
genuine dramatic power. His songs are in every case supplied with the
simplest accompaniment and in form do not go much beyond the folk-songs
which are their model. They have a certain freedom, a development
which is typical of the art-song rather than the folk-song. But their
materials are of the simplest, and with their technical sameness and
their general melancholy tinge they tend toward monotony. Among the
loveliest of his songs is _La Bianchina_, a melody of much sweetness
cast in the strophic form. _Il Tempo Passato_ shows more energy and
passion than is usual in Gordigiani. Some of his religious songs are
effective, especially _O Sanctissima Vergine Maria_, which is said
to have been admired by Chopin. We should mention also Gordigiani’s
waltz songs, which are brilliant and effective without becoming cheap.
Another Italian song writer, and one better known in foreign lands than
Gordigiani, is Ciro Pinsuti (1829-1888), whose output was immense. He
exemplifies Italian grace and suavity and imparted to his part-songs
in particular a beauty which has carried them to singing societies the
world over.
In England in the first part of the nineteenth century song writing,
as we have seen in another chapter,[27] was at a very low ebb. The
chief output of songs was in the street ballad class and in the
slightly superior opera ballad. The ballad opera of the nineteenth
century was not that of the previous century, of which ‘The Beggar’s
Opera’ was a type. The newer ballad opera was usually romantic,
somewhat elaborate, and composed by one musician instead of ten. Of
this opera ‘The Bohemian Girl’ by Michael Balfe (1808-1870) is an
excellent example. Three of its ‘ballads’--‘I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble
Halls,’ ‘The Heart Bowed Down,’ and ‘When Other Lips’--are among the
best known of household songs. And if we except the omnipresent street
ballad and ‘occasional’ song (such as cheap pæans of triumph over
Napoleon) such lyrics were the chief item in English song. Their beauty
is obvious to everybody. They deserve their long life and popularity.
But it cannot be said that they are an interpretation of their text,
as is the case in a song by Schubert. In addition to his opera ballads
Balfe has at least one thoroughly fine song to his credit--‘Killarney,’
said to have been written on his deathbed. Rarely has a conscious
composer caught the true Irish idiom and flavor as Balfe did here.
Balfe’s once popular setting of Longfellow’s ‘The Day Is Done’ is
admirably expressive. Sir Henry Bishop (1786-1855) and Julius Benedict
(1804-1885) were popular composers of the time, known rather by their
operas than by their songs. But of the group only William Vincent
Wallace (1814-1865), in addition to Balfe, can be said to have lived.
His ‘Maritana’ is still occasionally performed, and the song, ‘Scenes
That Are Brightest,’ from that work, has a popularity analogous to that
of ‘The Heart Bowed Down.’ But whatever occasional beauties may have
lived from the England of the early nineteenth century, we must feel
how dead the period was productively. Much of the English music of
the time is _gauche_ in the extreme, and none of it shows any of the
creative vigor which goes to make history.
III
It is hard to say anything about Robert Franz (1815-1892). All that
there is to be said about him he has said in his songs. He lived the
most quiet of lives, hindered in his work by ill health throughout
most of his maturity. His musical output, if we except a few pieces
of church music, consists almost wholly of songs. (He composed 279 in
all.) He was not ambitious; his only desire in life seems to have been
to do his work well. He had no qualities of self-advertisement. His
fame came very slowly and for a long time he was known only among the
elect. He was through most of his life miserably poor and the greater
part of his energy went to work which was not much better than that of
a hack. But he has by this time attained a rank among the greatest song
writers of all time. In some respects he is supreme. Probably no other
song writer, not even Brahms, produced such a high proportion of great
songs or such an even standard of excellence in his whole output. He
shows little variation or development. His first songs are as good as
his last. All were the best he could do. Schumann, who discovered and
‘announced’ Franz, as he had so many other notable composers, wrote of
his opus 1 in the _Neue Zeitschrift für Musik_: ‘Were I to dwell on all
the exquisite details I should never come to an end.’ It was through
Schumann’s influence that the unknown and modest musician had his first
work published.
[Illustration: Robert Franz]
_After a photograph from life._
When we come to examine Franz’s songs in detail we discover an
astonishing subtlety and variety of method and expression within the
superficially narrow limits he allowed himself. Probably no other
song composer save Hugo Wolf has made each one of his songs so
perfectly individual. We find this individuality first in the outline
and superficial character of the melody; next we discover it in the
technical methods and devices used in development and elaboration;
finally, we trace it in all the niceties of ornament and prove the
absolute fitness down to the last note. Franz’s peculiar success in
all this is due, of course, first of all to selection of themes which
are very accurately adjusted to the end in view. A poetic melody, an
accompanying figure which provides just the right suggestion, and we
have the materials for a fine song. In a majority of cases we have
the whole thematic material for the song in the first three or four
measures. The simple germ is developed without the introduction of
extraneous matter, yet without a suggestion of vain repetition. When we
consider that the majority of the songs are in the strophic form (and
the strophe is usually very brief) we may realize the artistry which
achieved utter individuality within the space of a few bars. In other
words, the perfection of Franz’s songs comes not from elaboration but
from selection--the test, as we have so often pointed out, of the true
lyric composer.
Franz’s melody is likely to veil itself against the first glance. It is
always beautiful and well proportioned, but it so persistently avoids
striking effects that it is apt to seem colorless. But if we listen
with our inner ears we shall find it eloquent. Avoiding the striking,
Franz’s melody also avoids the obvious and at first hearing we are apt
to find it a trifle aimless and meandering. But its continuous subtle
deviations from the expected are never without purpose, and never, if
we know how to listen, without meaning. Usually, too, there is little
or no obvious design, no striking climax point, no resounding cadence.
But here again we need only look beneath the surface to discover the
most restful and satisfying architecture. Though the emotional color
may be almost unvarying from beginning to end, though the final
note of the voice may not be on the tonic and may glide in the piano
postlude, yet we discover that if any note had been changed the whole
would have been less perfect. These qualities we find in their simplest
form in such masterpieces as _Widmung_ and _Bitte_, songs simple as
any folk-song yet rich with conscious artistry. Franz’s harmony is not
radical or striking. It contains practically nothing which could not
be found in Schumann before him; we might almost say that it contains
nothing that could not be found in the Beethoven sonatas. He is fluent
though not frequent with modulation; his greatest radicalism is a
stimulating use of altered chords and passing notes. In fact, his
harmony is in every way more conservative than that of Schumann; for,
whereas Schumann was professedly an innovator, Franz loved best the old
German tradition--that of the Bach fugues and the Lutheran chorale.
Franz’s treatment of the words is individual. Few song writers have
ever set their texts with more conscientious regard for the niceties of
metre and accent. Yet it is musical design and not verbal peculiarities
which determines his melodic line. The melody is always and beyond
all a melody. The perfect marriage of words and music in Franz comes
from his selection of melodies which would nicely fit the words in
hand. Neither is strained; neither is sacrificed to the other. In
this respect Franz is surpassed by no song writer who ever lived.
Now and then the melody is so handled as to seem like very reserved
declamation, but even these instances are rare. Franz was not a purist
in the setting of his texts; he did hold strictly to the ‘one syllable
one note’ principle. Not infrequently he uses the slurred phrase on
a single vowel. But we can never feel that this was done out of a
careless disregard for the integrity of the text. In his accompaniment
Franz is even greater than in his treatment of the voice. It is here
that his extreme artistry becomes most evident. The accompaniment is
always rich, always a thing of value in itself. Usually it would make
a perfectly satisfactory musical composition alone. It is so well
filled with musical beauties that with a little more emphasis it might
overpower the voice part. But always it is kept nicely in its proper
function. In no other song writer are the voice and piano parts so
perfectly fused. In Franz’s accompaniments is shown his great musical
resourcefulness. No two are alike. Nearly all the recognized means are
used--solid chords, broken chords, melodic figurations over a spread
bass, four-part chorales with free passing notes, contrapuntal melodies
against the voice, suggestive devices innumerable. But in every case
the germ principle is simple and is strictly adhered to throughout.
Franz’s accompaniments are, as a whole, more polyphonic than those
of any other song writer. In the greater part of his songs the inner
notes do not serve merely for harmonic filling-in; they are parts of
individual voices which are preserved in their integrity. In all these
songs there is nothing ambitious or spectacular. But so deeply based is
his musicianship that we may say that anyone who knows the Franz songs
accurately knows in epitome the whole development of German classical
music. Moreover, they are the finest of cultural exercises. For one
who has learned to love the Franz songs has learned one of the most
precious things music has to give--the art of _listening_.
The germ figures which Franz uses in his accompaniments are almost
endless in their variety. Sometimes they are, in a restrained way,
highly picturesque. We may point out the triplets in _Was pocht mein
Herz so sehr?_, the suggestion of ripples in _Auf dem Meere_, the
broken accompaniment in _Es treibt mich hin_, the delicate trill
which persists through _Ach, wenn ich doch ein Immchen wär_, the
long rolling diatonic figure in _Meeresstille_, and so on through
innumerable instances. The attainment of the most exquisite beauty
within the smallest limits may be studied in _Widmung_, _Deine weissen
Lilienfinger_, _Leise zieht durch mein Gemüth_, and _Treibt der Sommer
seinen Rosen_, the last a remarkable example of a song built up out of
the repetition of the briefest of units, yet without monotony. Franz’s
range of expression is usually limited to the tender and graceful. He
has not succeeded in the mood of tragedy or deep emotion. But several
of his songs are powerfully energetic, witness _Frühlingsfeier_ and
_Das ist ein Brausen und Heulen_. The dramatic element, too, is almost
entirely absent, though in such a song as _Childe Harold_ we have
something approaching it. The influence of the chorale, of which traces
are to be found in nearly every one of the songs, is predominant in
such ones as _Gute Nacht_, _Wenn sich zwei Herzen Scheiden_, _Habt ihr
sie schön gesehen_, _Stille Liebe_, _In der Fremde_, _Der Schmetterling
ist in die Rose verliebt_, and _Frühling_, as well as others already
mentioned.
To name all the Franz songs which are distinguished in musical beauty
and workmanship would be to name the best portion of his life work. But
we may point out as of especial beauty (in addition to those already
named) _Auf geheimen Waldespfade_, _Auf dem Teich_, _Der Sommer ist
schön_, _Die Welt ist so öd_, _Im Friedhof_, _Im Walde_, _Für Musik_,
_Im Mai_, _Ich hab’ in deinen Augen_, _Der junge Tag erwacht_, and _Er
ist gekommen_.
IV
We have seen in a previous chapter how Schubert, having created one
supremely great ballad, failed ever to write another. So the task of
creating the art-ballad fell not upon his shoulders but upon those of
another, Johann Carl Gottfried Löwe, who was born in North Germany
in 1796, almost at the same time as Schubert, and long outlived the
gentle Viennese composer. Löwe wrote a quantity of choral and church
music, but he is chiefly known for his numerous ballads, which he
made known throughout Europe in his own concert tours and which have
pretty well held their own to this day, in spite of serious drawbacks.
Löwe’s songs were almost solely in the ballad form. To this he gave his
best talents, which were marked though uneven. Undoubtedly he was an
artist, working with sincerity and reserve in a form which, more than
most forms, would tempt a composer to artistic excess. Add to this the
fact that Löwe was not endowed with a rich fund of musical ideas (at
least from the standpoint of pure beauty) and we must pay considerable
respect to the man who stuck to his guns as he did and produced such
a sincere and admirable body of work as he did. Löwe’s ballads are
descriptive in the highest degree. Every resource that the composer has
at his command he calls upon to make the scene pictorial and vivid.
In his search for effects he stumbled upon many musical devices which
must have proved valuable to later composers. His harmony, considering
the time in which he worked, is free and daring. His modulation goes
by direct chromatic progression to the most remote keys. Dissonance he
uses freely for poignant effect. But the great fault is that he was
not a melodist. Melody is, of course, not needed in the ballad as it
is in the lyric, but none the less the composer who cannot call forth
a beautiful melody when he needs it must jog along as a second-rate
artist. It is the lack of melody which we miss most in Löwe’s ballads.
Melody is obviously absent because the composer could not command it,
not because he chose not to use it. Time and again he writes what is
meant to be, and perhaps was believed to be, a pleasing tune. But too
often it is only empty and angular. It was in developing the form and
technique of the art-ballad that Löwe performed his chief service to
music.
Apart from this failing in point of melody many of Löwe’s ballads are
altogether admirable. He caught the spirit of the ballad as few others
have, that spirit expressed so well in Goethe’s words: ‘The ballad
requires a mystical touch, by which the mind of the reader is brought
into that frame of undefined sympathy and awe which men unavoidably
feel when face to face with the miraculous or with the mighty forces
of nature.’ Löwe’s resource in the invention of picturesque musical
formulas is very great. With his fine sense of drama he managed to
make his best ballads impressive and moving. In the _Erlking_ or ‘Sir
Oluf’ we feel (if they are well sung) that we are living through a
great life experience with the characters represented. His _Erlking_
is not comparable with Schubert’s in loveliness. But it emphasizes the
dramatic elements of the poems as Schubert did not try to and probably
could not have done if he had tried. The galloping of the horse is
represented graphically in the accompaniment. The three characters
speak in three different kinds of voice--the father’s is quiet and low,
the son’s high and excited, the Erlking’s eerie and unsubstantial. The
Erlking’s speeches are all in G major and on the notes of the tonic
chord. For the effective delivery of the song there are demanded not
only dramatic fire and intensity of emotional expression, but the
careful differentiation of the three qualities of voice.
One of the finest of the ballads is ‘Sir Oluf,’ in which there are four
speaking characters and an abundance of picturesque stage machinery.
Sir Oluf, riding through the forest on his way to his wedding, is
accosted by the elves and invited to dance, with the fatal consequences
usual in ballads. Oluf’s ride is described in a stirring _allegro
vivace_ in the introduction, and the dance of the elves is pictured
in a charming passage. Another of the great ballads, perhaps the
best known of all, is ‘Edward,’ the text being that of the famous
Scotch folk-ballad of the same name. (Brahms wrote a piano piece on
the subject, and also set the words as a duet.) The dramatic power is
gained from the repetition many times over of an incisive emotional
phrase. The whole effect is broad and tragic. Among the many others
of Löwe’s ballads which are worthy of study and of frequent inclusion
in concert programmes we may mention ‘Henry the Fowler,’ ‘The Moorish
Prince,’ and ‘Odin’s Ride Over the Sea.’
Few composers have given their best to the ballad form. This is a pity,
because no single form of poetry has such a universal and direct appeal
as the condensed dramatic story in verse. No type of poetry is more
difficult to write with sincerity and human truthfulness. The ballad
has remained almost as it was in the beginning, the peculiar property
of folk-art. It is, on the other hand, the easiest form for a musician
to abuse, the one which tempts most to cheap and clumsy effects. Löwe
is one of the few composers who has given his best to the ballad form
and, while that best is far inferior to what a first-rate genius would
have done, it is too stimulating and suggestive to be absent from any
singer’s cultural equipment.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Vol. II, chapter VI.
[27] Chapter VII.