Stories of Symphonic Music

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Most concert-goers have observed, at performances of modern orchestral works of a descriptive character, the efforts of many persons in the audience to extract from programme notes and analyses information as to the dramatic or pictorial or poetic meaning of the music to which they were listening. A search for enlightenment under such conditions necessarily leads to disappointment, since it is either pursued distractedly while the music is actually in progress, or during the brief and unpropitious leisure of an intermission. The design of this book is to offer in compact and accessible form such information as will enable the intending concert-goer to prepare himself, in advance, to listen comprehendingly to those symphonic works of a suggestive or illustrative nature, from Beethoven to the present day, which are part of the standard orchestral repertoire, and such others as seem likely to become so—to serve, in effect, as a guide to modern orchestral programme-music. For convenience of indication, the designation "tone poems," as used in the sub-title, is employed in its broadest significance to characterize all modern delineative music for orchestra in the freer forms, whether it be a symphonic poem by Liszt, a "legend" by d'Indy, a suite by Charpentier, a "sketch" by Debussy, or the precise thing described by Strauss as a Tondichtung.

No exclusively musical analysis of the works discussed is attempted, since it is aimed merely to give the concert-goer such information concerning their illustrative purpose as will enable him to place himself in an intelligent attitude towards their performance. Nor has the author indulged in speculative "interpretations" of any sort regarding the poetic content of these works; he has confined himself in every case to setting forth only such facts and clews as have been ascertained or justifiably inferred.

An exhaustive cataloguing of modern programme-music has not been attempted. It has been thought worth while to include only such works of importance as the American concert-goer is likely to find upon the programmes of symphony concerts in this country. Thus such submerged or moribund or otherwise negligible music as Schumann's forgotten overture, "Julius Cæsar," Berlioz's overture to "Waverley," Rubinstein's character-pictures, "Faust" and "Ivan IV.," Liszt's "Hamlet," Beethoven's "King Stephen" and "Battle of Vittoria," have been permitted to remain unexpounded. [1]

A book such as this must necessarily be largely of the nature of a compilation, since, in the case of the older works in the concert-repertoire, it must make use of information already obtained and recorded. It is believed, however, that it may supply a want hitherto unfulfilled in that, particularly, it assembles in convenient shape information concerning important contemporary works which exists, at present, only in a scattered and more or less unavailable condition.

In justification of its purpose, the author may be permitted to say that he considers it absurd and illogical that the concert-goer should, as some assert, be asked to listen to a piece of descriptive music in ignorance of its literary or pictorial or dramatic basis. He heartily agrees with Mr. Ernest Newman, who has written with unsurpassed acumen and force concerning programme-music and its principles, when he asserts that "if the poem or the picture was necessary to the composer's imagination, it is necessary to mine; if it is not necessary to either of us, he has no right to affix the title of it to his work; ... if melody, harmony, and development are all shaped and directed by certain pictures in the musician's mind, we get no further than the mere outside of the music unless we are familiar with those pictures." A title, it is true, is sometimes sufficient as a spur to the hearer's imagination—as in the case, for example, of such broadly impressionistic music as Claude Debussy's "The Sea," the various movements of which bear these subsidiary titles: "From Dawn till Noon on the Sea"; "Frolics of Waves"; "Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea." But what would the hearer, unacquainted with the subject which provoked it, make of Debussy's "Prelude to 'The Afternoon of a Faun,'" did not the appended sub-title—"Eclogue of S. Mallarmé"—direct him to the source of the composer's inspiration, the fantastic and singular poem of the French symbolist? Even in the case of descriptive music based upon an exceedingly familiar subject, the title alone may be insufficient. In the case, for instance, of Edward MacDowell's symphonic poem, "Lancelot and Elaine," the composer offers his listener merely the title. He has said, indeed, that he "never would have insisted that this symphonic poem need mean 'Lancelot and Elaine' to every one." Yet if he intended this music, as it is known that he did, to describe certain definite and particular incidents in the story of Lancelot and the Maid of Astolat—as the tournament, Lancelot's downfall, his interview with Guinevere, the passing of the funeral barge—it obviously could not, without a sacrifice of psychological and dramatic consistency, coincide with any other sequence of happenings which the uninstructed listener might choose to substitute. To tell the hearer that he is at liberty to interpret a piece of avowed and detailed descriptive music according to any "programme" which may happen to occur to him, is, in principle, precisely like playing for him on the piano a new and unknown song, and telling him that he may fit to it any words he chooses.

It cannot be too positively insisted upon that, as Mr. Newman has pointedly observed, a piece of eloquent delineative music cannot be equally understood and appreciated by the man who knows and the man who does not know its programme. Mr. Newman concedes, of course, the fact that such a work as Tschaikowsky's overture, "Romeo and Juliet," would undoubtedly "give intense pleasure to any one who listened to it as a piece of music, pure and simple." "But I deny," he continues, "that this hearer would receive as much pleasure from the work as I do. He might think the passage for muted strings, for example, extremely beautiful, but he would not get from it such delight as I, who not only feel all the musical loveliness of the melody and the harmonies and the tone color, but see the lovers on the balcony and breathe the very atmosphere of Shakespeare's scene. I am richer than my fellow by two or three emotions in a case of this kind. My nature is stirred on two or three sides instead of only one. I would go further and say that not only does the auditor I have supposed get less pleasure from the work than I, but he really does not hear Tschaikowsky's work at all. If the musician writes music to a play and invents phrases to symbolize the characters and to picture the events of the play, we are simply not listening to his work at all if we listen to it in the ignorance of his poetical scheme. We may hear the music, but it is not the music he meant us to hear"—which is simply a more telling and vivid statement of a truth which Berlioz enunciated more than three score and ten years ago in a prefatory note to his Symphonie fantastique: "The plan of an instrumental drama, being without words, requires to be explained beforehand. The programme (which is indispensable to the perfect comprehension of the dramatic plan of the work) ought therefore to be considered in the light of the spoken text of an opera, serving to ... indicate the character and expression."

It should be said, in conclusion, that these elucidations—if they may hopefully be regarded as such—are addressed, not to the professional student of music, but to the intelligent concert-goer who desires to listen understandingly, and with adequate appreciation, to those works which are intended not merely to appeal to his perception of beautiful sound and beautiful form, but which set before him, for the education of his heart or the delight of his spirit, some notable and intense impression of the human drama or the visible world.

The writer is indebted for the information accumulated in the following pages to so many sources—biographies, autobiographies, scores in print and in manuscript, and enlightenment personally and most helpfully supplied by the composers of various contemporary works—that he finds it difficult to avow them with adequate particularity. He has consulted (to name but a few such authorities) Riemann's Musik-Lexikon, the "Oxford History of Music," Apthorp and Champlin's "Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians," Fétis' Biographie Universelle des Musiciens, Grove's "Dictionary of Music and Musicians," Schumann's "Music and Musicians," Wagner's Prose Works, and—for records and details not generally accessible—the exceedingly valuable programme-notes prepared for the concerts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, during the last six years, by Mr. Philip Hale, and, before him, by Mr. W. F. Apthorp.

L. G.

DIXVILLE NOTCH, NEW HAMPSHIRE, SEPTEMBER, 1907.

THE ORCHESTRA AS POET, PAINTER, AND DRAMATIST

"How can an orchestra, without the aid of voices or pantomime or scenery, tell the story of Don Quixote, paint a picture of the sea, or describe the visions of a dying man?" asks an intelligent but somewhat puzzled layman. "I have always thought of instrumental music," he goes on to say, "as the art of arranging tones according to more or less binding laws of design and effect; and yet I hear constant talk nowadays of the 'expressive capacity' of music, its ability to paint pictures, tell stories, enact dramas. What, briefly, is meant by the 'expressive (or pictorial or descriptive) capacity' of music?" Perhaps it may be possible to tell him—"briefly," as he requests.

Music in the old days—the days before Beethoven, let us say—was, outside of the church and the opera-house, primarily an art of pure design. The musician of those days was concerned mainly with the arrangement of tones according to certain well-defined rules and conventions, to the end of producing a euphonious and beautiful pattern of sound. The symphonies of Mozart, the early symphonies of Beethoven, had no other aim than to be beautiful. Music was then, as has been aptly said, a species of "sensuous mathematics." The musician who, in the year 1797, set out to compose a symphony, proceeded according to very definite rules. He must invent what was called a "first theme," usually rather vigorous and assertive in character, and a "second theme," of contrasting character—usually of a gentler and more feminine quality. These themes were then developed at length—presented in different keys, altered as to rhythm, harmony, and instrumentation, in whatever manner was made possible by the composer's skill and the fertility of his invention. Finally, the two themes were recalled in their original state, and the first movement of the symphony was at an end. The composer had accomplished a complete musical organism in what was called, among his craft, "sonata form." He might then proceed with the other movements of his symphony, which must also be constructed according to certain specific laws. Always he must proceed according to rule. His "second theme," for example, must be sounded in a key which bore a hard-and-fast relationship to the key of his "first theme"; and if his symphony began, let us say, in F major, it must end in F major, or in some closely related key. It would never for a moment have occurred to him—this excellent eighteenth-century music-maker—to begin a serious composition in F major and end it, say, in C-sharp minor: that would have seemed an aberration of the most preposterous kind.

Our eighteenth-century instrumental composer, then, was a builder of tonal edifices of a very plain and solid kind, which must be proportioned and fashioned strictly according to rule. Moreover, his constructive material, so to speak, was of the sparest. His range of harmony was extremely small, his melodic patterns were simple in outline and of limited expressiveness, his rhythms were square-cut and obvious, his orchestral technique of the most meagre order. There were, it is true, composers prior to the nineteenth century who wrote a crude kind of orchestral programme-music [2]— music which aimed to describe scenes and events, to picture aspects of nature and definite states of mind. Karl von Dittersdorf (1739-1799) composed a number of symphonies descriptive of Ovid's "Metamorphoses"—"The Downfall of Phaëton," "Acteon's Transformation into a Deer," "Andromeda's Rescue by Perseus," "Phineus with his Friends in the Mountains." Justin Heinrich Knecht (1752-1817) anticipated certain features of the "Pastoral" symphony in his "Tableau musical de la nature," composed when Beethoven was fourteen years old; and Haydn gave to certain of his multiple symphonies naively indicative titles—"The Hunt," "The Morning," "Fire." But such manifestations of the "programmatic" tendency bore little relation to the really serious and important musical art of the period. The symphonist of Haydn's day little dreamed of a time when men of his trade would erect tonal structures of strange and fantastic shape, from materials whose rarity and richness were beyond his conception; and that within these gorgeous and curiously wrought structures, dramas of human passion and emotion, comedies and tragedies, would be enacted for other men to see and to be moved thereby.

Yet that is what happened. As the years went by musicians began to discern that the art in which they were working contained singular and unsuspected possibilities. They began, by laborious and slow experiment, and by unconscious inspiration, to evolve new harmonies, more subtle and complex than the old, which thrilled them oddly; their melodies took on a freer, more pliant, more expressive character; their rhythms became more varied and supple, their instrumentation richer, fuller, more complex. Then it dawned upon them that this art of theirs, which had been but a kind of inspired and innocent pattern-weaving, might be made to express definite emotions, moods, experiences, even many things in the material world, without the aid of scenery, singers, or singing-actors. They found that certain combinations and sequences of tones could be made to convey to the hearer certain more or less definite feelings and ideas: that minor harmonies, in slow and grave rhythms, suggested grief or depression; and that, conversely, harmonies in the major mode, in rapid and energetic movement, suggested gaiety, or jubilation, or relief. And then, of course, there were directly imitative effects which might be employed to suggest an aspect of nature or to aid in the telling of a story—the songs of birds, the whistling of wind, the crash of thunder, the rhythmic tramping of armies, the trumpets and drums of martial conflict, the horn fanfares of the chase; for all these things suggested easily and naturally their analogies in tone.

But it soon became evident to the composer that no matter how intense and vivid his music might be, it could be made to express, unaided, only general emotions, moods, passions. He could say—as does Chopin, for example, in the funeral march in his B-flat minor sonata—"I am sad"; but he could not say why he was sad; he could not say, "I am sad because my mother has died," or "because my country has been vanquished." So, to supply this need—to make it possible for his music to speak both eloquently and concretely—the composer called in the aid of the written and associated word, and the miracle was accomplished. Upon the score of his symphony or his "tone-poem" he wrote, for example, the title "Don Quixote"; this title he made known to his audience; and the hearers, with this clew, were thus made aware that they were listening to an expression in tones—tones of a kind unimagined by Haydn or Mozart, tones of marvellous poignancy and vividness—of the dreams and longings and passions and griefs of a particular person whose story they intimately knew: the definite emotions and events of a definite drama, rich in comedy, pathos, tenderness, and human fascination.

This, then, is the miracle of modern "programme-music"; this is why we say of it that it is capable of voicing comedy or tragedy, pathos or ecstasy; this is why, in brief, we may speak of its "expressive capacity."

The growth of the art in this direction has been as steady as it has been amazing. Music, with Haydn and Mozart (it is always to be remembered that we are discussing here only symphonic music) was, as has been said, largely a weaving of tonal arabesques, innocent of meaning or definite expression. The great Beethoven came, and transformed its naïve tones into new and powerful sonorities, developing, expanding, discovering, until he had endowed it with a novel and unfamiliar eloquence. Schubert followed him, adding new effects of harmony, new and unparalleled ways of grouping tones, and filling the art with a fresh and wonderful exuberance, making it sing with a new tenderness and ecstasy. He left it a richer, a more amply expressive medium than he had found it. Came Berlioz, a master of orchestral utterance, of orchestral delineation. He made of music the handmaid of romance and passion as he found them in the world's dramas and poems and novels. Franz Liszt, a man of fervid imagination and intrepid individuality, added still other notes to the instrument—enlarged its compass, increased its sonority. Under him the symphony renounced its strict allegiance to the classic forms and became frankly a medium of dramatic and poetic expression. He made a thing which he called a "symphonic poem," in which the music was conceived and evolved, not in accordance with those classic rules of form of which we have spoken, but in accordance with the outlines of a chosen poem or a drama; so that he was able to illustrate in music, with the aid of title or descriptive text, the story of Hamlet or the Divine Comedy or Orpheus or Tasso or Prometheus. Wagner, though his field was not the concert-room, but the opera-house, so enlarged the possibilities of tonal speech as to make of it virtually a new language. His genius yielded, with magical fertility, a bewildering wealth of novel harmonic, melodic, and orchestral ideas—ideas which have been appropriated to the music of the concert-hall by all those who have followed him.

And so we come to the music of our own time, which is but a logical and inevitable result of a century of growth and evolution. What, above all, is characteristic of it? First, its devotion to a "programme"—to a literary or dramatic or pictorial subject. Our modern tone-poet—as we aptly call him—having found ready to his hand an art which can convey with extraordinary vividness moods of longing and despair, ecstasy and jubilation, must make it still more specific and articulate. He writes a huge orchestral work and calls it, let us say, "Death and Transfiguration," presenting with it an elaborate poem descriptive of the agonies and hallucinations, the memories and visions, of a dying man. He then invites us to find in his music a description, which he produces by means of every harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, and orchestral device at his command, of the subject which he has set before us. To achieve his end—to express all those varied emotions of anguish, terror, longing, despair, aspiration, triumph—he stops at nothing: he heaps dissonance upon dissonance, he writes in several keys at once, he assaults our ears with what would have seemed to the placid soul of Haydn the pandemonium of a mad-house. Yet, if he be a genius, we are swayed and enthralled. We even derive a double pleasure from this new kind of art-work, which is at once music and drama.

Such, in brief, is the method of the modern "tone-poet." He is, as has been said, both musician and dramatist, symphonist and poet. Nor is this all: he can be a painter as well, and can, by the aid of suggestion and the broad analogies of his tonal palette, limn for us with his instruments such an exquisite and magical picture of the dawn as Charles Martin Loeffler paints in his orchestral fantasy after Verlaine, "La Bonne Chanson"; or such a portrait as is limned by Strauss, in his "Don Quixote," of the crack-brained and lovable knight of Cervantes. Music, to-day, can annotate the art of the painter—as witness the symphonic commentary by the Swiss composer, Hans Huber, on certain paintings by Böcklin; it can be sportively delineative of personalities—as witness Sir Edward Elgar's orchestral characterization of the peculiarities of various of his friends; it can be portentously metaphysical, as in Strauss's formidable "Also Sprach Zarathustra": it has become, in brief, "a tongue of all life."

BANTOCK — TONE-POEM, "THE WITCH OF ATLAS" [3]

(Granville Bantock: born in London, August 7, 1868; now living in Birmingham, England)

This tone-poem is noteworthy, aside from its intrinsic quality, for the completeness with which it fulfils the obligations imposed by logic and consistency upon the writer of programme-music. Here is an orchestral work inspired by certain portions of Shelley's poem—a musical illustration of various passages which in themselves contain the imaginative essence of that extraordinary fantasy. But the composer has not been content merely to tell us that his music is a tone-poem "after Shelley"; he has gone further: he has quoted as a preface to the score the precise passages in the poem which suggested his music; and opposite each passage he has placed a key-letter, which refers to a duplicate printed at the beginning of the corresponding illustrative passage in the music. That is to say, he has enabled us to follow him throughout the entire course of his musical exposition, not dubiously and by guesswork, but with certitude and intelligent comprehension. We are not put to it to decide whether, for example, the mellifluous andante passage for four horns, in the middle section of the work, is intended as an illustration of the lines in the poem descriptive of the "green and over-arching bower" inhabited by those who had received the Witch's panacea, or of the lines which celebrate the radiance of her beauty: we know precisely what it is intended to represent, and are in a position not only to feel its effect as sheer music, but to appreciate its expressive force.[4]

Prefaced to the score are these excerpts from Shelley's poem; they are quoted here together with an indication of the character of the music which introduces each corresponding section of the tone-poem:

PRELUDE, "SAPPHO" [7]

This is an orchestral preface to nine fragments from Sappho set to music for contralto and orchestra, and "indicating," says the composer, "emotional moods of the Greek poetess as an introduction to her songs." The verses set to music by Mr. Bantock are (1) the famous Hymn to Aphrodite, and the fragments beginning as follows: (2) "I loved thee once, Atthis, long ago";[8] (3) "Evening, thou bringest all"; (4) "Stand face to face, friend"; (5) "The moon has set"; (6) "Peer of Gods he seems"; (7) "In a dream I spake"; (8) Bridal Song—"O fair, O lovely!" (9) "Muse of the golden throne." [9]

The Prelude is constructed of themes taken from certain of the songs to which it serves as an introduction. It opens with harp-chords, in the manner of an improvisation, derived from the setting of the ninth Fragment:

"Muse of the golden throne,
O raise thy strain...."

This is repeated; then follows, after some intervening measures, an expressive phrase sung by violins, 'cellos, horn, and bassoon, which, in the setting of the fifth Fragment, accompanies the words:

"I yearn and seek, I know not what to do,
And I flutter like a child after her mother."

There is a crescendo, leading to a fortissimo proclamation by the trumpet of a theme from the ninth Fragment ("Muse of the Golden Throne"), followed by the impassioned theme (for violins and trumpet) which, towards the close of the fifth Fragment, underscores the lines:

"Yea, Eros shakes my soul, yea, Eros,
A wind on the mountain falling on the oaks."

This leads directly into a climactic outburst for full orchestra, on a theme borrowed from the sixth Fragment:

"Dare I to love thee?"

A languishing passage follows (strings, wood-wind, and horns), taken from the setting of the words (in the sixth Fragment):

"Sight have I none, nor hearing, cold dew bathes me,
Paler than grass I am, and in my madness
Seem as one dead."

There is a brief crescendo, then the conclusion, of gradually subsiding intensity. The music is almost note for note that of the seventh Fragment:

"Delicate Adonis is dying; what shall we do?
Beat your breasts, maidens, and rend your tunics!
Ah, for Adonis!
The Dawn shall see thee no more,
Nor dark-eyed Sleep, the daughter of Night,
Ah, for Adonis!" [10]

BEETHOVEN — SYMPHONY No. 3. "EROICA": Op. 55

OVERTURE TO "CORIOLANUS": Op. 62

This overture, composed in 1807, was published in the following year. The original manuscript is inscribed: "Overtura (Zum Trauerspiel Coriolan), composta da L. v. Beethoven." The "tragedy" here indicated for which it was written is not the "Coriolanus" of Shakespeare, but the "Coriolan" of Heinrich Joseph von Collin, a contemporary of Beethoven, who filled the post of Secretary at the Austrian Court. In their main outlines, the plays of Collin and of Shakespeare are alike, with, however, this prime difference—the Coriolanus of Shakespeare is slain, while the death of Collin's hero is self-inflicted. According to Wagner, this overture is a tone-picture of the scene—"the most decisive of all"—between Coriolanus, his mother, and wife, in the enemy's camp before the gates of his native city. But the most pointed and illuminating guide to the contents of Beethoven's music will be found in these brief sentences written in elucidation of the overture by Mr. H. E. Krehbiel: "One may forget both plays [Collin's and Shakespeare's] while listening to Beethoven, and go back to Plutarch and the Greek tragic poets for the elements of the music. They are the monumental ones illustrated in the 'Prometheus' of Æschylus and the 'Œdipus' of Sophocles. Like Prometheus, Œdipus, Ajax, and Pentheus, Coriolanus becomes insolent in his pride and goes to destruction. He is noble, kind, good, courageous, but vainglorious in his pride of ancestry, position, and achievement; and he falls. The elements in his character to which Beethoven has given marvellously eloquent proclamation are his pride, which leads him to refuse to truckle to the plebeian tribunes; his rage which had stomach for the destruction of Rome, and his tenderness which makes him yield to the tears of mother and wife and brings death to him. The moods are two; the first is published in the stupendous unisono C of the introduction and the angry principal subject; the second, in the gentle and melodious second theme. The overture dies with mutterings in the depths; with pride unbroken."

SYMPHONY No. 6, "PASTORAL": Op. 68

The "Pastoral" symphony, composed in the summer of 1808, is the first example of symphonic programme-music by a great master. Its illustrative purpose is frankly proclaimed by the descriptive titles which head the separate movements as follows:

1. AWAKENING OF JOYFUL IMPRESSIONS ON ARRIVING IN THE COUNTRY

(Allegro ma non troppo)

2. SCENE BY THE BROOK

(Andante molto moto)

3. MERRY GATHERING OF COUNTRY-FOLK

(Allegro)

4. THUNDER-STORM

(Allegro)

5. SHEPHERD'S SONG; GLAD AND THANKFUL FEELINGS AFTER THE STORM

(Allegretto)

Beethoven in the music of this symphony is avowedly a musical realist. In the "Scene by the Brook" he delineates the rippling of the water by weaving and shimmering of the strings; the songs of birds by imitative figures in the wood-wind (the nightingale: flute; the quail: oboe; the cuckoo: 2 clarinets), which he is at pains to label in the score; and in the "Thunder-storm" section, wind, falling rain, flashes of lightning, the growling of thunder, are suggested by means of easily recognized musical symbols. Yet that the composer was here a somewhat timorous "programmist" is indicated by the note which he wrote in the sketchbook containing ideas for the music of the "Pastoral": "The hearer is left to find out the situations for himself"—a recommendation which he afterwards thought better of—and by the deprecatory after-thought with which he accompanied the description of the symphony on the programme of the concert at which it was first performed (in Vienna, December 22, 1808): "More expression of feeling than painting [depiction]"—and this despite the verisimilitude of the storm and the phonographic warblings of the instrumental birds in a tone-poem whose naïve realism is as deliberate as it is beyond dispute![13]

OVERTURE TO "EGMONT": Op. 84

Beethoven's incidental music to Goethe's "Egmont" was commissioned by Hartl, manager of the court theatres at Vienna. The overture, composed in 1810, was performed for the first time, together with the rest of the incidental music, at a performance of the play at the Hofburg Theatre, on May 24, 1810. The overture was published in the following year.

The dramatic significance of this music has been pithily summarized by Mr. Philip Hale: "The overture is at first a mighty lamentation. There are the voices of an aroused and angry people, and there is at the last tumultuous rejoicing."

The more elaborate interpretation of Dr. Leopold Damrosch is as acceptable as any:

"The overture begins with an outcry—a cry for help—uttered by an entire nation. Then follow heavy, determined chords, which seem to press down the very life of the people, who seem helplessly ... to yield to their fate. Only the all-pervading woe remains impressively sounded forth, first by the oboe.... From every side the wail is repeated, ... bringing before us, as in a picture, the hands of the nation uplifted in prayer to Heaven, until it is lost in the unison of the first outcry, fortissimo.... Only one ray of hope remains—Egmont. But even his light-hearted nature seems imbued with anxiety for his oppressed country. His motive is as if bound in chains by the simultaneous repetition of sombre chords. In deep melancholy the violins repeat the motive, seeming to languish more and more. But with sudden impulse it revives; Egmont shakes off the gloom which surrounds him; his pulse beats quickly and gladly. On every side his fellow-citizens cry to him for aid. They flock together, and in excited bands surround him, their only champion and deliverer. As if to arouse Egmont still more to action, the sombre chords of the introduction are heard suddenly, but now in agitated measures, shorter, more commanding, and more incisive. Egmont heeds not these warnings. His short, lightly given answers indicate that the decisive moment has not yet arrived for him. Three times the stringed instruments thunder forth the word of command. Then, as if Egmont with a prophetic eye saw the future before him, he seems to press forward with a mighty rush to meet the oppressors. The hosts of followers, faithful to his call, rally to a spirited attack, and in fierce contest the victory seems to be won.

"But this is only a dream. True to his nature, he is playing with his doom. Two vehemently interrupting chords try to arouse Egmont from his reveries; but still he dreams on and hears them not. Beethoven then leads to the dramatic catastrophe and to the musical climax. Harshly and powerfully the authoritative chords resound again.... This time they arouse Egmont from his reveries; and for the first time he seems to have a presentiment of the actual danger. But his vision of before has not yet left him. It still hovers about him, and even the repeated alarm will not shake it from his mind.

"For the third time the terrible chords resound with trumpets and kettle-drums thundering out from the orchestra fortissimo. At last the illusion is over. A cry of anguish escapes him. His fate is sealed. Death is his doom. In mute horror the people surround the scaffold of their idol and their heart-felt prayers ascend to Heaven.

"But now their wrath, gaining double force from the martyrdom of their hero and from the hope that Heaven will listen to their prayers, bursts forth. At first a distant murmur is heard. But in wild turmoil the storm of insurrection swells onward; and soon triumphal sounds of victory announce the tyrant's downfall. We hear the chains resolutely rent asunder, and louder rises the cry of victory."

BERLIOZ — OVERTURE TO "KING LEAR": Op. 4

(Hector Berlioz: born in la Côte Saint-André, France, December 11, 1803; died in Paris, March 9, 1869)

Berlioz, a sincere and ardent admirer of the genius of Shakespeare, wrote his overture to "King Lear" at Nice and at Rome in the spring of 1831. Although the work bears an early opus number, it stands, in order of composition, between the Symphonie fantastique (Op. 14-a, 1830) and Lélio (Op. 14-b, 1831-1832).

Berlioz had seen his innamorata, Henrietta Smithson,[14] play Shakespearian rôles at the Odéon, Paris, in 1827. He was profoundly impressed. "Shakespeare," he wrote afterwards, with characteristic fervor, "coming upon me thus suddenly, struck me as with a thunderbolt. His lightning opened the heaven of art to me with a sublime crash, and lighted up its fullest depths. I recognized true dramatic grandeur, beauty, and truth." Four years later he wrote the "King Lear" overture.

Berlioz has supplied no programme or elucidation of the music. It is entitled simply, Ouverture du Roi Léar (Tragédie de Shakespeare), leaving the hearer to decipher unaided its precise significance. Is it a character study of the figure of the harassed and desperate king? Are definite incidents, definite phases, of the tragedy, depicted in the music? Or is the overture a preparatory mood-picture, an introduction designed to awaken in the hearer emotions appropriate to the play? Mr. Edward Dannreuther, writing, with presumable deliberation, in the "Oxford History of Music," declares that "in this piece the form of expression ... is vivid enough for a tragic opera which might be named 'Lear, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia'; so vivid, indeed, that, given the general designation, even an unimaginative hearer is likely to take the composer's meaning, and to find the proper names for the themes."

What, in brief, are the general emotional characteristics of the music? The opening is threatening, portentous, fate-burdened. [15] There are brief moments of tenderness—a pathetic tenderness. The mood changes suddenly—the expression-mark in the score is disperato ed agitato. The music is now furious, turbulent, wildly passionate, interrupted by intervals of quietness, of suspended intensity—a quietness that is piteous, poignant, momentous. The end is convulsive, storm-swept; and one is here reminded of Hazlitt's description of the mind of Lear, "staggering between the weight of attachment and the hurried movements of passion, like a tall ship driven about by the winds, buffeted by the furious waves; ... or it is like the sharp rock circled by the eddying whirlpool that foams and beats against it, or like the solid promontory pushed from its basis by the force of an earthquake."

It is possible to see in this music a picture of Lear, "stretched to the last moment upon the rack of this tough world"; of Cordelia, "unmingled tenderness and strength, sunshine and rain at once"; of Goneril and Regan, types of "the ravening egoism in humanity which is at war with all goodness." Or one may recall the words of Coleridge as most pithily characterizing the overture of Berlioz: "What is Lear? It is storm and tempest—the thunder at first grumbling in the far horizon, then gathering around us, and at length bursting in fury over our heads—succeeded by a breaking of the clouds for a while, a last flash of lightning, the closing in of night, and the single hope of darkness."

FANTASTIC SYMPHONY: Op. 14-a

1. DREAMS, PASSIONS

(Largo)
(Allegro agitato e appassionato assai)

2. A BALL

(Waltz: Allegro non troppo)

3. SCENE IN THE FIELDS

(Adagio)

4. MARCH TO THE SCAFFOLD

(Allegretto non troppo)

5. WALPURGIS NIGHT'S DREAM

(Larghetto)
(Allegro)

This Symphonie fantastique, in five movements, constitutes the first part of a work entitled by Berlioz "Episode in the Life of an Artist." The second part, a "lyric monodrama," is entitled "Lélio; or, The Return to Life." The Symphonie fantastique was composed in 1830, at the time of Berlioz's "interminable and inextinguishable" passion for the Irish actress Henrietta Smithson—the tragic history of which this is not the place to review. The "Episode in the Life of an Artist," as he wrote to his dear friend Ferrand early in 1830, was to portray "the development of my infernal passion." As to the meaning of the "Fantastic Symphony," Berlioz has himself supplied the following detailed explanatory preface:

"HAROLD IN ITALY"

SYMPHONY IN FOUR MOVEMENTS, WITH VIOLA SOLO: Op. 16

1. HAROLD IN THE MOUNTAINS; SCENES OF MELANCHOLY, HAPPINESS, AND JOY

(Adagio)
(Allegro)

2. MARCH OF PILGRIMS SINGING THEIR EVENING HYMN

(Allegretto)

3. SERENADE OF A MOUNTAINEER OF THE ABRUZZI TO HIS MISTRESS

(Allegro assai)
(Allegretto)

4. ORGY OF BRIGANDS; RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PRECEDING SCENES

(Allegro frenetico)

Upon the romanticists in France—"the heroic boys of 1830," as William Ernest Henley called them—the influence of Byron was gripping and profound. To Berlioz, in particular, "greedy of emotion, intolerant of restraint, contemptuous of reticence and sobriety, ... and prepared to welcome, as a return to truth and nature, inventions the most extravagant and imaginings the most fantastic and far-fetched," this prince of romanticists must have seemed a poet after his own heart. Yet, singularly enough, there are in his writings comparatively few references to the author of "Manfred" and "Don Juan."

The manner in which the "Harold" symphony came to be written is related by Berlioz in his Memoirs. His Symphonie fantastique had been played at a concert at the Paris Conservatory (December 22, 1833), with conspicuous success. "And then," says Berlioz, "to crown my happiness, after the audience had gone out, a man with a long mane of hair, with piercing eyes, with a strange and haggard face, one possessed by genius, a colossus among giants, whom I had never seen and whose appearance moved me profoundly, was alone and waiting for me in the hall, stopped me to press my hand, overwhelmed me with burning praise, which set fire to my heart and head: it was Paganini!... Some weeks after this vindicatory concert of which I have spoken, Paganini came to see me. 'I have a marvellous viola,' he said, 'an admirable Stradivarius, and I wish to play it in public. But I have no music ad hoc. Will you write a solo piece for the viola? You are the only one I can trust for such a work.' 'Yes, indeed,' I answered, 'your proposition flatters me more than I can tell, but, to make such a virtuoso as you shine in a piece of this nature, it is necessary to play the viola, and I do not play it. You are the only one, it seems to me, who can solve the problem.' 'No, no; I insist,' said Paganini; 'you will succeed; as for me, I am too sick at present to compose; I cannot think of it.'

"I tried then to please the illustrious virtuoso by writing a solo piece for the viola, but a solo combined with the orchestra in such a manner that it would not injure the expression of the orchestral mass, for I was sure that Paganini, by his incomparable artistry, would know how to make the viola always the dominating instrument....

"His proposal seemed new to me, and I soon had developed in my head a very happy idea, and I was eager for the realization. The first movement was hardly completed, when Paganini wished to see it. He looked at the rests for the viola in the allegro and exclaimed: 'No, it is not that: there are too many rests for me; I must be playing all the time.' 'I told you so,' I answered; 'you want a viola concerto, and you are the only one who can write such a concerto for yourself.' Paganini did not answer; he seemed disappointed, and left me without speaking further about my orchestral sketch. Some days afterwards, suffering already from the affection of the larynx which ultimately killed him,[17] he went to Nice, and returned to Paris only at the end of three years.

"Since I then saw that my plan of composition would not suit him, I set myself to work in another way, and without any anxiety concerning the means to make the solo viola conspicuous. My idea was to write for the orchestra a series of scenes in which the solo viola should figure as a more or less active personage of constantly preserved individuality; I wished to put the viola in the midst of poetic recollections left me by my wanderings in the Abruzzi, and make it a sort of melancholy dreamer, after the manner of Byron's 'Childe Harold.' Hence the title, Harold en Italie. As in the Symphonie fantastique, a chief theme (the first song of the viola) reappears throughout the work; but there is this difference: the theme of the Symphonie fantastique, the 'fixed idea,' interposes itself persistently as an episodic and passionate thought in the midst of scenes which are foreign to it and modifies them; while the song of Harold is added to other songs of the orchestra with which it is contrasted both in movement and character and without any interruption of the development."

The relationship between Berlioz's symphony and Byron's poetic account of the Italian wanderings of his Harold is of the slightest, and any attempt to discover, in Berlioz's programme of the moods and incidents of his symphonic hero, definite correspondences with Byron's poem, would be more than futile. One who seeks enlightenment concerning the intentions of Berlioz in this symphony must fall back upon the composer's own brief hints as contained in the inscriptions appended to the several movements. The voice of the solo viola, as we know, typifies throughout the "melancholy dreamer" as conceived by Berlioz—it is Harold undergoing his adventures: in the mountains; encountering a band of devout and simple pilgrims; observing an enamoured mountaineer in the act of serenading his mistress; and, finally, involved in a tumultuous orgy of drunken bandits. Concerning this last movement, Berlioz has left us some additional information. Included in his Memoirs is a letter addressed to Heine, in which Berlioz gives an account of a performance of the symphony at Brunswick in March, 1843. "In the finale of 'Harold,'" he writes, "in this furious orgy in which the drunkenness of wine, blood, joy and rage all shout together; where the rhythm now seems to stumble, and now to run madly; where the mouths of brass seem to vomit forth curses and reply with blasphemies to entreating voices; where they laugh, drink, strike, bruise, kill, and ravish; where, in a word, they amuse themselves; in this scene of brigands the orchestra became a veritable pandemonium; there was something supernatural and frightful in the frenzy of its dash; everything sang, leaped, roared with diabolical order and unanimity—violins, basses, trombones, drums, and cymbals; while the solo alto, Harold, the dreamer, fleeing in fright, still sounded from afar some trembling notes of his evening hymn. Ah! what a feeling at the heart! What savage tremors in conducting this astonishing orchestra! You know nothing like it, the rest of you, poets; you have never been swept away by such hurricanes of life. I could have embraced the whole orchestra, but I could only cry out, in French it is true, but my accents surely made me understood: 'Sublime! I thank you, gentlemen, and I wonder at you: you are perfect brigands!'"

BIZET — SUITE FROM "L'ARLÉSIENNE," No. 1 [19]

(Georges[18] Bizet: born in Paris, October 25, 1838; died in Bougival, France, June 3, 1875)

Bizet was commissioned to write incidental music for the performance at the Vaudeville Theatre, Paris, of Alphonse Daudet's three-act play "L'Arlésienne." The play and Bizet's music were given at the Vaudeville on October 1, 1872, and withdrawn after fifteen performances. Bizet's music comprised twenty-seven numbers. After the failure of the Vaudeville production, the composer arranged various numbers out of the twenty-seven in the form of a suite, and these were performed at a Pasdeloup concert in Paris on November 10, 1872. Ten years after the composer's death the play of Daudet, together with Bizet's music in its revised form, was revived in Paris, and it has since been repeatedly performed there.

The plot of "L'Arlésienne" is thus related by Mr. Philip Hale: "Fréderi, a young farmer of Carmague, and the son of Rose Mamaï, of Castelet, is madly in love with a girl of Arles, a brunette who is irresistible in the farandole; [20] and he would fain wed her. She is not seen in the drama. Fréderi is told at last that she is unworthy the love of any honest man; and he, thinking that contempt can kill passion, swears he will forget her. The baleful beauty of the woman haunts him day and night. The maiden Vivette, with whom he has grown up, wishes to console him; but, when he would woo her, the woman of Arles comes between them. Thus tortured by jealousy, hatred, love, despair, on a night when the peasants are celebrating the Festival of Saint Éloi, and dancing the farandole to the sound of flute and tambourine, Fréderi hurls himself from the garret-window of the farm-house and dashes his skull against the pavement of the court.

"As a contrast to this furious passion there is the pure love of the long-separated shepherd Balthazar and Mère Renaud. There is also the Innocent, the young brother of Fréderi, whose brain begins to work only as the tragedy deepens, and at last is awakened to full consciousness by the catastrophe."

The connection of the several numbers of Bizet's suite with the action of the play may be briefly indicated:

I. PRELUDE

The Prelude, which serves also as the introduction to the play, prefigures two of the chief dramatic personages: the Innocent, and the impassioned Fréderi. Prefacing the themes of these two appears the tune of an old Provençal Christmas song. There are four variations of this theme, and then follows the theme of the Innocent, forming the second section of the Prelude. The theme of Fréderi's passion constitutes the finale. It is this theme which accompanies the speech of Balthazar at the tragic end of the drama: "Go to the window—you will see whether one does not die of love!"

II. MINUETTO

In the complete version of the music for the play this piece is No. 17 of Act II. The middle portion has been said to denote "the tender and resigned affection of the Shepherd Balthazar and Mère Renaud."

III. ADAGIETTO

This music is played during the conversation between Mère Renaud and her lover Balthazar in the Court of Castelet. Mr. Hale has thus admirably translated the passage:

IV. CARILLON [21]

This number forms the prelude to the fourth scene, the Court of Castelet. In celebration of the betrothal of Fréderi and Vivette, the court-yard of the farm-house is gay with May-poles and decorations of cornflowers and poppies. The orchestra plays an unvarying chime-like figure throughout fifty-six measures. There is a contrasting episode—the entrance of Mère Renaud; then the bell-like figure is resumed, and continues to the end.

CHADWICK — DRAMATIC OVERTURE, "MELPOMENE" [22]

(George Whitfield Chadwick: born in Lowell, Mass., November 13, 1854; now living in Boston)

Chadwick's three principal overtures, "Melpomene," "Adonais," and "Euterpe," belong to that somewhat anomalous class of modern works which occupy a place on the border-line between programme music and "absolute" music—music which, while constructed according to the classic rules of design rather than in conformity with a poetic or dramatic scheme, is yet devoted to the expression of some mood or idea more definite than that which one looks for in music that is admittedly "absolute." In the "Melpomene," "Adonais," and "Euterpe" overtures, the composer has given us no clews as to the particular significance of his music beyond those conveyed by their titles—which are, doubtless, in their case, sufficient to establish a receptive mood in the hearer. The "Melpomene," composed in 1887, was originally intended as a companion piece to his earlier and seldom-played "Thalia" overture. That was subtitled "Overture to an Imaginary Comedy," and the sub-title of the "Melpomene" was intended to be "Overture to an Imaginary Tragedy." In the published score, however, the sub-title was omitted, and only the name of the Tragic Muse[23] was retained as an indication of the emotional purport of the music. The overture, as has been said, bears no explanatory note or preface whatever. Of its emotional outlines an indication is given in this vivid exposition of the music by Mr. Rupert Hughes:

"It opens with the solitary voice of the English horn.... The woful plaint of this voice, breathing above a low, sinister roll of the kettle-drum, establishes at once the atmosphere of melancholy. Other instruments join the wail, which breaks out wildly from the whole orchestra. Over a waving accompaniment of clarinets, the other wood-winds strike up a more lyric and hopeful strain, and a soliloquy from the 'cello ends the slow introduction. The first subject is announced by the first violins against the full orchestra.... After a powerful climax and a beautiful subsidence, ... the second subject appears, ... with honeyed lyricism. Almost before one knows it he is in the midst of the elaboration [the development, or "working-out" section, of a composition in sonata form]. It is hard to say whether the composer's emotion or his counterpoint is given freer rein here, for the work is remarkable both for the display of every technical resource and for the irresistible tempest of its passion.... The cheerful consolation of the second subject provokes a cyclonic outburst of grief; there is a furious climax of thrilling flutes and violins over a mad blare of brass, the while the cymbals shiver beneath the blows of the kettle-drum-sticks. An abrupt silence prepares for a fierce, thunderous clamor from the kettle-drums and the great drum. This subsides to a single thud of a kettle-drum; there is another eloquent silence; the English horn returns to its first plaint; but grief has died of very exercise, and the work ends in a coda [conclusion passage] that ... leaves the hearer with a heart purged white and clean."

ELEGIAC OVERTURE, "ADONAIS" [24]

The score of this overture, completed in 1899, bears the following inscription: "In memoriam Frank Fay Marshall, obiit July 26, 1897." Its emotional kinship with the great threnody of Shelley is indicated in the title and in the character of the music. It might fittingly bear as motto these incomparable lines from Shelley's poem, which voice in words the precise emotion which has seemed to shape the utterances of the musician:

"Oh, weep for Adonais—he is dead!
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!
Yet wherefore? Quench within thy burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep,
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;
For he is gone, where all things wise and fair
Descend:—oh, dream not that the amorous Deep
Will yet restore him to the vital air;
Death feeds on his mute voice and laughs at our despair.

"He will awake no more, oh, never more!
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
So fair a prey, till darkness and the law
Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw."

CONCERT OVERTURE, "EUTERPE" [25]

It has been said authoritatively that this overture (composed in 1903) follows no definite programmatic plan; that the spirit which animates it is adequately suggested by the title. Euterpe, it will be recalled, was the fourth daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Her province among the Muses has been admirably stated by Thomas Heywood, that seventeenth-century Englishman of amazing literary fecundity and erudition. [26] "Euterpe," he wrote in 1624, "is called the goddess of pleasantness and jollities, said to be delighted in all sorts of pipes and wind instruments, and to be both their inventresse and guidress.... This is the consequence and coherence betwixt Clio[27] and Euterpe, according to Fulgentius: we first in Clio acquire sciences, and arts, and enterprises, and by them honour and glorie: that obtained, in Euterpe we find pleasure and delectations in all such things as we sought and attained.... For Euterpe imports to us nothing else but the joy and pleasure which we conceive in following the Muses and truly apprehending the mysteries of discipline and service."

SYMPHONIC POEM, "CLEOPATRA" [28]

The narrative of Plutarch, rather than the play of Shakespeare, has served as the dramatic and poetic basis of this musical embodiment of the tragic history of Antony and Cleopatra. The composer has gone for his basic material to Plutarch's Life of Antony, from which, according to an authorized exposition, "those situations having the most direct reference to Cleopatra have been chosen for musical suggestion, although the action of the tragedy is not literally followed." Those phases of the tale selected by the composer for particular delineation appear to relate—in the order of their place in the score—to the voyage of Cleopatra up the River Cydnus in her barge (that barge which, "like a burnished throne, burnt on the water"); the martial approach of Antony; the passion of the lovers; Antony's melancholy end, and the burial of the pair in one grave.

The music (it was composed in 1904) opens with a passage suggestive of Cleopatra's voyage upon the Cydnus—a tonal paraphrase of Shakespeare's picture of that wonderful floating pageant: the barge whose poop

According to an exposition prepared with the sanction of the composer, the music, after this passage, proceeds as follows in relation to the progress of the tragedy:

"... A climax for the whole orchestra is succeeded by an allegro agitato depicting the approach of Antony and his army. A bold military theme is worked up to a powerful climax, but soon dies away in soft harmonies for the wind instruments and horns. The Cleopatra theme then begins, first with a sensuous melody for the violoncello, repeated by the violins and afterwards by the whole orchestra.

"Strange harmonies are heard in the muted strings. The English horn and clarinet sing short, passionate phrases, to which the soft trombones later on add a sound of foreboding. But suddenly the Cleopatra theme appears again, now transformed to a vigorous allegro, and Antony departs to meet defeat and death.

"The Antony theme is now fully worked out, mostly in minor keys and sometimes in conjunction with the Cleopatra motive. It ends with a terrific climax.... A long diminuendo, ending with a melancholy phrase for the viola, suggests Antony's final passing, and Cleopatra's lamentation follows.

"In this part much of the previous love music is repeated, and some of it is entirely changed in expression as well as in rhythm and instrumentation. At last it dies away in mysterious harmonies.

"The work closes with an imposing passage in which the burial of Antony and Cleopatra in the same grave is suggested by the two themes now heard for the first time simultaneously. For this, Shakespeare's line is, perhaps, not inappropriate:

"She shall be buried by her Antony;
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous ..."

CHARPENTIER — SUITE, "IMPRESSIONS OF ITALY" [29]

(Gustave Charpentier: born in Dieuze, France, June 25, 1860; now living in Paris)

1. SERENADE

(Assez vite)

2. AT THE FOUNTAIN

(Tranquille, assez lent)

3. ON MULEBACK

(Allegretto; andantino)

4. ON THE SUMMITS

(Moderato)

5. NAPLES

(Allegro non troppo)

Charpentier, a pupil of the Paris Conservatoire, won the Prix de Rome of 1887, and while at the Villa Medici, Rome, composed the suite Impressions d'Italie.

The following explanatory programme, written by Alfred Ernst, the late French music-critic, translator, and historian, is illuminating and trustworthy:

CHAUSSON — SYMPHONIC POEM, "VIVIANE": Op. 5

(Ernest Chausson: born in Paris, 1855; died in Limay, June 12, 1889)

The subject of Chausson's symphonic poem is not the familiarly known Vivien of Tennyson—"treacherous, malignant, wanton"—but the vastly different Viviane of the old French legends. This delectable creature, the legendary woman who fired the imagination of Chausson, was a fairy who inhabited the forest of Brocéliande. [31] "More beautiful than the snow-necked swan," she typified the beneficence of nature. Merlin, "the old seer that knew the future as well as the past"—Merlin, who was, at various times in the growth of the old legend, the Celtic Mercury, bard, savant, prophet, warrior—was willing, observes Mr. Philip Hale in an interesting commentary, "yea, eager, to enter within the magic circle he had taught her [Viviane]. He knew what his fate would be. He longed to give her this assurance that he would never leave her." The Armorican tale upon which, in particular, Chausson based his symphonic poem has been paraphrased by Mr. Hale from Villermarqué as follows:

"Arthur went to Gaul to deliver the king of Little Brittany and put Berry under the dominion of the Bretons, and Merlin followed him. After the deeds were done, Merlin took leave of Arthur for a time and went homeward through the great forests. He assumed the shape and dress of a young student. Finally he came to the forest of Brocéliande, and there he found a spring, which was visited by a young maiden who lived in a dwelling near by. Her mother was the fairy of the valley, and she had endowed her daughter with these gifts: she would be loved by the wisest man in the world; he would obey all her wishes, and he could never force her to obey his; she would learn from him whatever she wished to know. And the name of this maiden was Viviane, which means, in the Chaldæan language, I shall do nothing. Pleased with her at first sight, he showed her many strange and wonderful things; he commanded proud processions to pass by for her amusement; he said the word, and gardens smiled before her; and then he left her for a year with the promise to teach her all that he knew.

"Merlin returned on the eve of Saint John's Day. She was more beautiful than ever. 'Her skin was so fresh, so white, so smooth!' And he was well-nigh mad with love. He taught her how to make water run where none ran before, to change her form at will, to put to sleep whomever she pleased. 'He taught her then this secret and many others: our Lord God wished it thus.'

"Again Merlin left her to join Arthur; but he often visited Viviane, who knew him only as a fair youth. The king would miss him, and send messengers; but his call would be in vain.

"The hermit Blaise knew the secret of Merlin, and urged him to keep far from the forest. Merlin answered: 'I shall never have the courage to abandon her. Yet I know that once near her I shall never have the strength to come back to you."

"The hermit said: 'Why do you go if you know what is to happen?'

"'I go because I gave her my promise. I love her with such a love that I cannot hold myself back. It is I, I alone, that gave her this power, and I shall enlarge it. She shall know all I know. I could not, I cannot, I do not wish to defend myself.'

"The good hermit left him for one mad, and began to weep. He embraced him, and Merlin went away, and he too wept at leaving his dear master.

"Viviane had pondered many ways of keeping Merlin as her own. This time she caressed him as she had never done before. She said: 'I wish this Garden of Joy to stay here as it is, forever, that we might live here always, we two; that we should never grow old, never leave each other, never cease to love in full happiness.' And Merlin told her how to do this.

"They sat one day beneath a bush of hawthorn, in the shade, on the green grass, and the head of Merlin was on the knees of Viviane. She passed again and again her hands through his hair, until he slept. Then she arose and twined nine times her scarf around the bush of blossoming hawthorn, and cast nine spells which Merlin had taught her. Then she took her seat near him, and put again his head upon her knees, and she thought it all had been only play, and that there really was no bewitchment. But when Merlin opened his eyes and looked about him, forest, garden, bush of hawthorn—all had disappeared, and he found himself in a castle of enchantment, on a bed of flowers, prisoner to the love of Viviane.

"'Ah, Viviane,' he cried, 'I shall think you purposed to deceive me if you now ever go from me!'

"'Sweetheart,' said Viviane, 'how could you think so? How could I ever leave you?'

"And she kept her word to him."

Chausson's symphonic poem was first performed in Paris (at a concert in the Cirque d'Hiver), March 30, 1884. Later it was extensively revised, and the altered version was played at a Lamoureux concert on January 29, 1888. The following preface is printed in the score:

CONVERSE — "THE FESTIVAL OF PAN," ROMANCE FOR ORCHESTRA: Op. 9

(Frederick Shepherd Converse: born in Newton, Mass., January 5, 1877; now living in Westwood, Mass.)

This symphonic poem, composed in 1899, is the first of a series of "romances" suggested to the composer by scenes in Keats's "Endymion." What portions of the poem inspired this particular work Mr. Converse has not avowed; yet the statement is responsibly made that "emphasis is thrown upon the contrast between Endymion's melancholy and the joyous pomp of the festival of Pan"; it may not, therefore, be inapt to quote those portions of Keats' poem which set forth this situation:

"Now while the silent workings of the dawn
Were busiest, into that self-same lawn
All suddenly, with joyful cries, there sped
A troop of little children garlanded;
Who, gathering round the altar, seem'd to pry
Earnestly round as wishing to espy
Some folk of holiday; nor had they waited
For many moments, ere their ears were sated
With a faint breath of music, which even then
Fill'd out its voice and died away again.

"Leading the way, young damsels danced along,
Bearing the burden of a shepherd's song;
Each having a white wicker, overbrimm'd
With April's tender younglings; next, well trimm'd,
A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks
As may be read of in Arcadian books;
Such as sat listening round Apollo's pipe,
When the great deity, for earth too ripe,
Let his divinity o'erflowing die
In music, through the vales of Thessaly.

"... Then came another crowd
Of shepherds, lifting in due time aloud
Their share of the ditty. After them appear'd,
Up-follow'd by a multitude that rear'd
Their voices to the clouds, a fair-wrought car
Easily rolling so as scarce to mar
The freedom of three steeds of dapple-brown;
Who stood therein did seem of great renown
Among the throng. His youth was fully blown,
Showing like Ganymede to manhood grown;

"A smile was on his countenance; he seem'd
To common lookers-on like one who dream'd
Of idleness in groves Elysian;
But there were some who feelingly could scan
A lurking trouble in his nether lip,
And see that oftentimes the reins would slip
Through his forgotten hands: then would they sigh,
And think of yellow leaves, of owlets' cry,
Of logs piled solemnly.—Ah, well-a-day,
Why should our young Endymion pine away!"

"ENDYMION'S NARRATIVE," ROMANCE FOR ORCHESTRA: Op. 10

This is the second of Mr. Converse's symphonic poems, or "romances," based upon scenes in the "Endymion" of Keats (the first, "The Festival of Pan," is described in the preceding pages). "Endymion's Narrative" was composed in 1901. The following explanation of the purpose of the music was given by the composer at the time of the first performance of the work by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1903:

"... As I have remarked on the title-pages of these works, they were suggested by certain scenes from the poem. I meant by this that there was no desire or attempt to follow the text, slavishly and in detail, but merely to give a general reflection of its emotional phases. As a clew to 'Endymion's Narrative,' I would say that its idea was derived from the scene in the poem where Endymion, oppressed with melancholy feeling, and no longer cheered by the simple pleasures of his companions, is withdrawn from the Festival by Peona, his anxious sister, and led by her to a secluded part of the wood, where she strives to find the cause of his despondency and to soothe him with sisterly affection. Under her influence he reveals the cause of his sorrow. He then relates to her what seems to me the spiritual essence of the whole poem, the struggle of a mind possessed of an ideal beyond the common view, and yet bound by affection and devotion to conditions which confine and stifle its urging internal impulses.

"The piece begins with despondency and indecision. The hero is harassed by alluring glimpses of the ideal, and soothed by simple affection and love. There is a sort of dramatic growth of the various elements, until finally the ideal comes victorious out of the struggle, and the ungovernable impulse rushes exultantly on with the mad joy of determination." [32]

"NIGHT" AND "DAY," TWO POEMS FOR PIANOFORTE [33] AND ORCHESTRA: Op. 11

These tone-poems, composed in 1904, derive their inspiration from lines by Walt Whitman, which serve as mottoes for the music. For the first of the two, "Night," he has chosen this line from "A Clear Midnight" (in the section, "From Noon to Starry Night"):

"This is thy hour, O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless."

"This," wrote Mr. Converse to the compiler of the Boston Symphony programme-books at the time of the first performance of the two poems,[34] "expresses quite completely the mood which I have tried to create in my music. Of 'Day,' Whitman says:

'Day full-blown and splendid—day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter.' [35]

"As far as it goes, this describes my [second] poem very well, but the real essence is lacking, although it was the best and most fitting quotation I could find for a motto. The moods of 'action,' 'ambition,' 'laughter,' and of love, too (for the erotic impulse is suggested in the poem), are all there, but strung upon and incident to the one predominant and insistent theme of the struggle of life. This restless, stirring, eternal energy ... is the main strain of the poem, and the other emotional phases are eddies momentarily emerging from it, but always being absorbed again in it, until at the end the tragedy of it becomes apparent and dominant. This is what I have tried to express."

He also points out that the titles are only symbolical; that he has had no intention "of expressing the physical characteristics of night and day"; his purpose was "to suggest their psychological meaning, to put into music the moods suggested by them."

CONCERT OVERTURE, "EUPHROSYNE" [36] : Op. 15 — FANTASY, "THE MYSTIC TRUMPETER": Op. 19

This overture, composed in 1903, is prefaced in the score with these lines from Milton's "L'Allegro":

"But come thou goddess fair and free,
In Heaven ycleped Euphrosyne,
And by men, heart-easing Mirth."

It has no other programme.

This work was composed in 1903-04. The poem by Whitman which has served the composer as his poetic point of departure is contained in the section of Leaves of Grass called "From Noon to Starry Night." The music is intended as an expression of the emotional and poetic substance of the poem. "I wished," the composer has said, "to use the elemental phases of the poem: mystery and peace; love; war or struggle; humiliation; and finally joy. So I divided the poem into five parts, and my music follows this division. Each section is introduced, or, rather, tied to the preceding one, by characteristic phrases for trumpet."

For each of these five connected divisions into which the music naturally falls, some dominant thought of the poet may be held to suggest the keynote. As in Whitman's strange phantasmagoria, there is set before us the spectacle of the human soul undergoing some of its universal and most vital experiences. After an introduction in which the Trumpeter's "liquid prelude" persuades one to turn from "the fretting world," and whose song "expands the numb'd, embonded spirit," we witness our typical human experiencing the transports of love, the perils and vicissitudes of war, the cankering perplexities and despairs that afflict the spirit in its moments of reaction; and, finally, the assured and confident joy that comes with the attainment of an ultimate poise and self-mastery.

For the five connected sections into which the music, upon the authority of the composer, may be divided, analogies are to be found in Whitman's poem. Those portions of the poem which correspond with the successive mood-pictures in the music may be indicated as follows (only the opening lines of each section are quoted):

[I. "MYSTERY AND PEACE"]

[II. "LOVE"]

[III. "WAR OR STRUGGLE"]

[IV. "HUMILIATION"]

[V. "JOY"]

DEBUSSY — PRELUDE TO "THE AFTERNOON OF A FAUN" [37]

(Claude Debussy: born in St. Germain-en-Laye (Seine-et-Oise), France, August 22, 1862; now living in Paris)

Debussy's prelude, composed in 1892, was the first of his representative works for orchestra. It was inspired, as he indicates in a sub-title, by the singular poem of the French symbolist, Stéphane Mallarmé, L'Après-Midi d'un Faune. This "eclogue," published in 1876, aroused fierce contention because of its obscurity and the uncompromising manner in which it exemplified Mallarmé's novel poetic method; which was, as Mr. Edmund Gosse has lucidly stated it, "to use words in such harmonious combinations as will suggest to the reader a mood or a condition which is not mentioned in the text, but is nevertheless paramount in the poet's mind at the moment of composition." Mr. Gosse thus interprets "The Afternoon of a Faun," which has defied literal translation:

"A faun—a simple, sensuous, passionate being—wakens in the forest at daybreak and tries to recall his experience of the previous afternoon. Was he the fortunate recipient of an actual visit from nymphs, white and golden goddesses, divinely tender and indulgent? Or is the memory he seems to retain nothing but the shadow of a vision, no more substantial than the 'arid rain' of notes from his own flute? He cannot tell. Yet surely there was, surely there is, an animal whiteness among the brown reeds of the lake that shines out yonder? Were they, are they, swans? No! But naiads plunging? Perhaps! Vaguer and vaguer grows the impression of this delicious experience. He would resign his woodland godship to retain it. A garden of lilies, golden-headed, white-stalked, behind the trellis of red roses? Ah! the effort is too great for his poor brain. Perhaps if he selects one lily from the garth of lilies, one benign and beneficent yielder of her cup to thirsty lips, the memory, the ever receding memory, may be forced back. So, when he has glutted upon a bunch of grapes, he is wont to toss the empty skins into the air and blow them out in a visionary greediness. But no, the delicious hour grows vaguer; experience or dream, he will never know which it was. The sun is warm, the grasses yielding; and he curls himself up again, after worshipping the efficacious star of wine, that he may pursue the dubious ecstasy into the more hopeful boskages of sleep."

The manner in which Debussy has set to music this extraordinary conception cannot be better indicated than in the exposition by Louis Laloy, the French critic: "One is immediately transported into a better world; all that is leering and savage in the snub-nosed face of the satyr disappears; desire still speaks, but there is a veil of tenderness and melancholy. The chord of the wood-wind, the distant calls of the horns, the limpid flood of harp-tones, accentuate this impression. The call is louder, more urgent, but it almost immediately dies away, to let the flute sing again its song [the exotic and dreamy phrase with which the prelude begins]. And now the theme is developed: the oboe enters in, the clarinet has its say; a lively dialogue follows, and a clarinet phrase leads to a new theme, which speaks of desire satisfied; or it expresses the rapture of mutual emotion rather than the ferocity of victory. The first theme returns, more languorous, and the croaking of muted[38] horns darkens the horizon. The theme comes and goes, fresh chords unfold themselves; at last a solo 'cello joins itself to the flute; and then everything vanishes, as a mist that rises in the air and scatters itself in flakes."[39]

THREE NOCTURNES

This suite was written in 1897-99. In date of composition it stands, so far as Debussy's more important works are concerned, between the opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1893-95) and the "symphonic sketches" La Mer (1903-05). The score bears no explanatory note or elucidation; but the following "programme" (which, it has been remarked, would itself seem to require elucidation) is said to have been supplied by the composer:

"The title 'Nocturnes' is intended to have here a more general and, above all, a more decorative meaning. We, then, are not concerned with the form of the nocturne, but with everything that this word includes in the way of impressions and special lights.

"Clouds: The unchangeable appearance of the sky, with the slow and melancholy march of clouds ending in a gray agony tinted with white.

"Festivals: Movement, rhythm dancing in the atmosphere, with bursts of brusque light. Here, also, the episode is of a procession [a wholly impalpable and visionary pageant] passing through the festival and blended with it; but the main idea and substance obstinately remain,—always the festival and its blended music,—luminous dust participating in tonal rhythm.

"Sirens: The sea and its innumerable rhythm. Then amid the billows silvered by the moon the mysterious song of the Sirens is heard; it laughs and passes." [41]

These "Nocturnes" may be sympathetically approached only when it is understood that they are dream-pictures, fantasies, rather than mere picturesque transcripts of reality. The brief characterization of them by Debussy's colleague, Alfred Bruneau, is more suggestive than many an elaborate commentary: "Here, with the aid of a magic orchestra, he has lent to clouds traversing the sombre sky the various forms created by his imagination; he has set to running and dancing the chimerical beings perceived by him in the silvery dust scintillating in the moonbeams; he has changed the white foam of the restless sea into tuneful sirens."

"THE SEA," THREE SYMPHONIC SKETCHES

1. FROM DAWN TILL NOON ON THE SEA

(De l'aube à midi sur la mer)

2. FROLICS OF WAVES

(Jeux de vagues)

3. DIALOGUE OF THE WIND AND THE SEA

(Dialogue du vent et de la mer)

La Mer (trois esquisses symphoniques) was composed in 1903-05. Debussy has supplied no programme other than that contained in the titles of the different movements. The music is broadly impressionistic, a tonal rendering of colors and odors, of voices imagined or perceived, no less than of moods and reveries. The comment of the French critic, M. Jean d'Undine, is suggestive: "How can any one analyze logically creations which come from a dream, ... and seem the fairy materialization of vague, acute sensations, which, experienced in feverish half-sleep, cannot be disentangled? By a miracle, as strange as it is seductive, M. Debussy possesses the dangerous privilege of being able to seize the most fantastical sports of light and of fluid whirlwinds. He is cater-cousin to the sorcerer, the prestidigitateur...."

And it has elsewhere been written of these pieces, by way of an indication of their mood:

"For Debussy the sea is wholly a thing of dreams, a thing vaguely yet rhapsodically perceived, a bodiless thing, a thing of shapes that are gaunt or lovely, wayward or capricious; visions that are full of bodement, or fitful, or passionately insistent: but that always pertain to a supra-mundane world, a region altogether of the spirit. It is a sea which has its shifting and lucent surfaces, which even shimmers and traditionally mocks. But it is a sea that is shut away from too-curious an inspection, to whose murmurs or imperious commands few have needed to pay heed; a sea whose eternal sonorities and immutable enchantments are hidden behind veils that open to few, and to none who attend without, it may be, a certain rapt and curious eagerness."

DUKAS — "THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE" [42]

(Paul Dukas: born in Paris, October 1, 1865; now living there)

L'Apprenti Sorcier, an "orchestral scherzo," is a paraphrase of Goethe's ballad, Der Zauberlehrling, beginning:

"Hat der alte Hexenmeister
Sich doch einmal wegbegeben!
Und nun sollen seine Geister
Auch nach meinem Willen leben!"

The story upon which the poem is based is contained in a dialogue of Lucian's, "The Lie-fancier." Eucrates, so runs the story, became the disciple of the wizard Pancrates, whom Isis had educated in the art of magic. "When we came to an inn," relates Eucrates, "he would take the wooden bar of the door, or a broom, or the pestle of a wooden mortar, put clothes upon it, and speak a couple of magical words to it. Immediately the broom, or whatever else it was, was taken by all the people for a man like themselves; he went out, drew water, ordered our victuals, and waited upon us in every respect as handily as the completest domestic. When his attendance was no longer necessary, my companion spoke a couple of other words, and the broom was again a broom, the pestle again a pestle, as before. This art, with all I could do, I was never able to learn from him; it was the only secret he would not impart to me; though in other respects he was the most obliging man in the world. At last, however, I found an opportunity to hide me in an obscure corner, and overheard his charm, which I snapped up immediately, as it consisted of only three syllables. After giving his necessary orders to the pestle without observing me, he went out to the market. The following day, when he was gone out about business, I took the pestle, clothed it, pronounced the three syllables, and bid it fetch me some water. He directly brought me a large pitcher full. 'Good,' said I, 'I want no more water; be again a pestle!' He did not, however, mind what I said; but went on fetching water, and continued bringing it, till at length the room was overflowed. Not knowing what to do, for I was afraid lest Pancrates at his return should be angry (as indeed was the case), and having no alternative, I took an axe and split the pestle in two. But this made bad worse; for now each of the halves snatched up a pitcher and fetched water; so that for one water-carrier I now had two. Meantime in came Pancrates; and understanding what had happened, turned them into their pristine form: he, however, privily took himself away, and I have never set eyes on him since."[43]

Goethe's ballad is thus translated by Sir John Bowring:

DVOŘÁK — OVERTURE, "NATURE" [44] : Op. 91

(Anton Dvořák: born in Mülhausen (Nelahozeves), near Kralup, Bohemia, September 8, 1841; died in Prague, May 1, 1904)

This overture is the first section of a tripartite work entitled "Nature, Life, Love," which was originally intended by Dvořák to be performed as a whole. The second division of this triple overture is known to-day as "Carnival" (Op. 92), the third as "Othello" (Op. 93). The three overtures were first performed at Prague, under the composer's direction, on April 28, 1892.

Dvořák is said to be responsible for the ideas embodied in the following description of the poetic scheme of the "Triple Overture," which was published in the programme of the concert at which Dvořák made his début in America (at Carnegie Hall, New York, October 21, 1892):

"This composition, which is a musical expression of the emotions awakened in Dr. Antonin Dvořák by certain aspects of the three great creative forces of the Universe—Nature, Life, and Love—was conceived nearly a year ago, while the composer still lived in Bohemia.... The three parts of the overture are linked together by a certain underlying melodic theme. This theme recurs with the insistence of the inevitable personal note marking the reflections of a humble individual, who observes and is moved by the manifold signs of the unchangeable laws of the Universe."

Part I—"Nature"—of the "Triple Overture" was thus interpreted, with the sanction, it may be inferred, of the composer (the English translation was attributed to Mr. E. Emerson):

"As a typical expression of his fondness for nature and of the blissful and occasional reverent feelings which it stirs in him, the composer chose to present the emotions produced by a solitary walk through meadows and woods on a quiet summer afternoon, when the shadows grow long and longer, till they lose themselves in the dusk, and gradually turn into the early dark of night. Unlike Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, the unconscious summer music of drowsy crickets and birds is not actually represented by instrumental equivalents. Subjective feeling only is suggested by the blithesome introduction melody in F major, which is ornamented by passages running over the instruments, like rills of pleasure. It is followed by an expression of the growing vociferous joy which all nature proclaims. The more quiet gladness of the beholder finds voice in the second melody, in A major, whose spirit is enlivened into a broader universal gaiety, rising rapidly to a climax, from which the theme quickly returns to the tranquil pastoral form.

"The so-called 'elaboration' section leads back to the first key of F major.... The predominating suggestions henceforth are peace and quietude, with little interruptions here and there, such as are occasioned by the sudden rustling of the tree-tops in the forest or by the subdued exclamations of a garrulous little brook. All this is done with a light touch, so that it is left to the imagination of the listener to supply what the music can but faintly suggest. Finally, when darkness has set in, there are only the sounds of night. The pervading mood of the composer becomes similar to that of Milton's 'Il Penseroso' when night overtakes him, while he listens to the even-song of the nightingale and hears

"... the far-off curfew sound,
Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar."

OVERTURE, "CARNIVAL": Op. 92

This overture is Part II. ("Life") of Dvořák's "Triple Overture," "Nature, Life, Love" (see page 85). Its poetic significance has been set forth as follows, with, it is said, the authority of the composer:

"If the first part of the overture ['Nature'] suggested 'Il Penseroso,' the second, with its sudden revulsion to wild mirth, cannot but call up the same poet's 'L'Allegro,' with its lines to 'Jest and youthful jollity.' The dreamer of the afternoon and evening has returned to scenes of human life, and finds himself drawn into

'The busy hum of men

---

When the merry bells ring round,
And the jolly [45] rebecks sound
To many a youth and many a maid,'

dancing in spirited Slavonic measures. Cymbals clang, strange instruments clash; and the passionate cry of the violins whirls the dreamer madly into a Bohemian revel. Anon the wild mirth dies away, as if the beholder were following a pair of straying lovers, whom the boisterous gaiety of their companions, with clangor of voices and instruments, reach but dimly. A lyric melody ... sets in, and almost unconsciously returns to the sweet pastoral theme, like a passing recollection of the tranquil scenes of nature. But even this seclusion may not last. A band of merry maskers bursts in, the stirring Slavonic theme of the introduction reappears, and the three themes of the second overture, the humorous, the pathetic, and the pastoral, are merged into one, with the humorous in the ascendant, till a reversion changes the order. The whole ends in the same gay ... key with which it began."

OVERTURE, "OTHELLO": Op. 93

"Othello" is Part III. ("Love") of Dvořák's "Triple Overture," "Nature, Life, Love" (see page 85). The official commentator who has been quoted in the preceding pages concerning the poetic content of the tripartite work wrote as follows of "Othello":

"If the first two parts represented the impressions of Nature and Life as gay and stirring in general, the third overture lets Love appear as a serious and burning passion. The composer has tried to express some of the emotions engendered in him by the final scenes of 'Othello' as an embodiment of both the gentlest and the fiercest expressions of love. The composition is by no means a faithful musical interpretation of the Shakespearean lines, but rather the after-revery of a man whose imagination has been kindled by the theme of the play. It begins with ... the prayer of Desdemona before retiring. While she is still praying for herself and for her husband, weird sounds in the orchestra suddenly announce the approach of the murderer. This is but an effect of the imagination, however, for presently the prayer of Desdemona continues till she falls asleep. Once more the orchestra announces the approach of Othello. This time it is he. He pauses at the threshold. He enters the room, looks long at Desdemona, and kisses her. The theme changes to an allegro. Desdemona awakes, and then follows the cruel, pathetic scene between Desdemona and the Moor:

"'Alas, why gnaw you so thy nether lip?[46]
Some bloody passion shakes your very frame.'

"Her entreaties are answered by the deep threats of Othello. Gradually the imaginary conversation becomes tinged with a note of melancholy, and a regretful love scene ensues, according to the composer, till the Moor's jealousy and mad revenge gain the upper hand again. This motif is worked out at some length ... and especially the deep notes of Othello's lion-like anger are sounded repeatedly. In the end he restrains himself no longer. The scene of anguish follows. Desdemona throws herself at his feet:

"DES. Kill me to-morrow, let me live to-night!
OTH. Nay—
DES. But half an hour.
OTH. Being done, there is no pause.
DES. But while I say one prayer!
OTH. (smothering her.) It is too late.

"Othello rises from the deed, and looks wildly about him. Then comes the wild, remorseful reflection that he may have been deceived.

"'... Had she been true,

If heaven would make me such another world,

Of one entire and perfect chrysolite,

I'd not have sold her for it.'

"The choral motif of Desdemona's appeal surges up from the overlying themes, this time in the deep tones of Othello. It is his turn to make his last prayer."

SYMPHONIC POEM, "THE WOOD DOVE": Op. 110

This symphonic poem, composed after Dvořák's return to Bohemia from the United States in 1895, was published four years later. It is based upon "the like-named [47] ballad of C. J. Erben." Erben's ballad is founded on the Bohemian superstition that the souls of those who, while mortal, have lived godly lives, reappear on earth after death as white doves. The ballad tells a story which is a variant upon the ancient tale of the widow who found prompt solace in the soldier delegated to keep guard over the body of her dead husband. Erben's version, which the music of Dvořák illustrates, is set forth in an argument printed in the score. It runs as follows:

[The work by which Dvořák is most familiarly known in America—the symphony in E minor, "From the New World" (composed in 1893 during Dvořák's sojourn in America as director of the National Conservatory of Music)—is not programme-music, except in so far as its slow movement is concerned—the Largo in D-flat major. In this movement, it has been said with authority, Dvořák has essayed a musical publication of the mode which he found in the story of Hiawatha's wooing, as set forth in Longfellow's poem. Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, who, in a sense, stood sponsor for the symphony at the time of its production, observes that there may be here "a suggestion of the sweet loneliness of the night on the prairies"; and he speaks of an episode in the middle of the movement which seems intended "to suggest the gradual awakening of animal life in the prairie scene"; and a striking use is made, he remarks, "of trills exchanged between the instrumental choirs as if they were the voices of the night, or dawn, in converse." The title of the symphony is explained, as most readers will remember, by the fact that in it Dvořák, by his own confession, according to Mr. Krehbiel, "sought to encourage American composers to seek and reflect in their music the spirit of the [negro] folk-tunes which have grown up in America. He does not want them to use the tunes themselves for thematic treatment, for that is not his conception of the meaning of nationalism in music; but he wants native composers to study the characteristic elements of those tunes (for those are the things which make them hit the taste and fancy of the public) and compose soundly on themes conceived in their vein. This he did in his American symphony." The sons of Dvořák have recently (1907) put themselves on record in the following interesting contribution to the history of this much-discussed symphony: "... the passages of the symphony and of other works of this American period, which, as some pretend, have been taken from negro airs, are absolutely our father's own mental property; they were only influenced by negro melodies. As in his Slav pieces he never used Slav songs, but, being a Slav, created what his heart dictated, all the works of this American period—the symphony included—respond to Slav origin, and any one who has the least feeling will proclaim this fact. Who will not recognize the homesickness in the Largo of this symphony? The secondary phrase of the first movement, the first theme of the scherzo, the beginning of the finale, and perhaps, also, the melody of the Largo, which give a certain impression of the groaning negro song, are only influenced by this song, and determined by change of land and the influence of a foreign climate."]

ELGAR — VARIATIONS ON AN ORIGINAL THEME ("ENIGMA"): Op. 36

(Edward William Elgar: born in Broadheath, near Worcester, England, June 2, 1857; now living in Malvern, England.)

These Variations have an inner history, or, rather, fourteen inner histories; but precisely what they are is a secret which is locked within the breast of Sir Edward Elgar and certain of his friends. The Variations are fourteen in number, and their purpose has been publicly avowed by the composer. In them, he says: "I have sketched ... the idiosyncrasies of fourteen of my friends; ... but this is a personal matter, and need not have been mentioned." The score bears the sub-title "Enigma," and is dedicated "to my friends pictured within." Hints as to their identity are contained in these initials and sobriquets printed at the head of the different variations:

1. "C. A. E." L'istesso tempo, G minor, ending in major, 4-4.
2. "H. D. S.-P." Allegro, G minor, 3-8.
3. "R. B. T." Allegretto, G major, 3-8.
4. "W. M. B." Allegro di molto, G minor, with end in G major, 3-4.
5. "R. P. A." Moderato, C minor, 12-8 and 4-4.
6. "Ysobel." Andantino, C major, 3-2.
7. "Troyte." Presto, C major, 3-2.
8. "W. N." Allegretto, G major, 6-8.
9. "Nimrod." Moderato, E-flat major, 3-4.
10. "Dorabella." Intermezzo, Allegretto, G major, 3-4.
11. "G. R. S." Allegro di molto, G minor, 2-2.
12. "B. G. N." Andante, G minor, 4-4.
13. "* * *." Romanza, Moderato, G major, 3-4.
14. "E. D. U." Finale, Allegro, G major, 2-2.

As to the "Enigma," Sir Edward has thus declared himself: "The Enigma I will not explain—its 'dark saying' must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the apparent connection between the Variations and the theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme 'goes,' but is not played; ... so the principal theme never appears, even as, in some late dramas—e. g., Maeterlinck's L'Intruse and Les Sept Princesses—the principal character is never on the stage."

The score bears the date-line: "Malvern, 1899."

OVERTURE, "COCKAIGNE" ("IN LONDON TOWN"): Op. 40

At the time of the first performance of this overture (at a London Philharmonic concert, June 20, 1901), the following outline of the dramatic significance of successive episodes in the music was put forth by Mr. Joseph Bennet, presumably with the authority of the composer:

When the overture was first performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra (in November, 1901), Mr. Philip Hale included in his programme-notes this more detailed exposition: "The overture is a succession of scenes: it may be called panoramic. The scenes are connected by a slender thread. The composer imagines two lovers strolling through the streets of the town. The first picture suggested is that of the animation, of the intense vitality of the street life. Then comes a section which, according to the composer's sketch, expresses the 'sincere and ardent spirit underlying the Cockaigner's frivolity and luxury.' The lovers seek quiet in a park and give way to their own emotions. They grow passionate, but they are interrupted and disconcerted by the rough pranks of young Cockaigners. The lovers leave the park and seek what Charles Lamb described as the sweet security of the streets. A military band approaches, passes with hideous rage and fury, and at last is at a safe and reasonable distance. The lovers go into a church. The organ is playing, and even here they cannot escape wholly the noise of the street. To the street they return, and the former experiences are renewed."

The score, which contains no programme or elucidation whatsoever, was published in 1901.

"DREAM CHILDREN," TWO PIECES FOR SMALL ORCHESTRA: Op. 43

These pieces, published in 1902, are prefaced with the following quotation from the paper in Charles Lamb's Essays of Elia entitled "Dream Children; A Revery":

"... And while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech: 'We are not of Alice, [48] nor of thee, nor are we children at all.... We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been.'" [49]

Elgar's music, "for pianoforte or small orchestra,"[50] is in two slightly contrasted parts: (1) A pensive andante movement in G minor, and (2) a livelier allegretto in G major, which, however, changes to andante and closes, with grave sentiment, molto lento.[51] The correspondence between the dominant moods of the essay and the characteristics of the music are obvious and easily perceptible. The pieces were "sketched long ago," says the composer [writing in June, 1907], "and completed a few years back." The first performance was at a Queen's Hall Promenade Concert, London, September 4, 1902.

No more searching and effective commentary could be written upon this music than that of Mr. Vernon Blackburn, though its delicately stated meanings do not lie always upon the surface:

"Sir Edward Elgar can go further than the great English prose poet, and in his music he delves into the finest things of the life of childhood; not the precocious things, not the interrogatory matters which so often puzzle the brains of elder people, but simply the artless questions of childhood which are answered never—it is those things which appeal to Sir Edward, yet, with his infinitely fine sense of musical suggestion, are still never answered. We can easily see why it is that Elgar chooses out of a great system of idealistic writing to limit himself for once within the boundaries of childhood, just the thoughts and the dreams of youth, that wonderful period in life; after all, the thoughts and dreams of youth do not go further than the theories of manhood, and Sir Edward Elgar therefore reaches a point of interrogation which ranks among all those many questions which in music seem to us to continue, from the time of the Abate Martini, through the questionings of Gluck, past the art of Mozart and Schumann, right unto the present day.

"Elgar called into life the children of his dream just as all the greatest of modern composers may for the listener revive the feelings that have been closed behind the gate of his mind. The children of his dreams touch a musical paternity that may be ranked among the things that issue from the paternity of thought. Such a great musician as Edward Elgar may well dream of those children who stand on the edge of the horizon, towards whom he beckons to come over the sea of silence—who never come, but who allow him to dream of the mystery of that which is sometimes forever denied, but which is at all times the inspiration of highest thought."

OVERTURE, "IN THE SOUTH" ("ALASSIO" [52] ): Op. 50

This overture was completed in 1904. These lines from Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" are quoted in the score:

"Thou art the garden of the world."

(Cantos IV., XXV., XXVI.)

The music is said to have been "conceived on a glorious spring day in the Valley of Andora," and is meant "to suggest the Joy of Living in a balmy climate, under sunny skies, and amid surroundings in which the beauties of nature vie in interest with the remains and recollections of the great past of an enchanting country."

Mr. A. A. Jaeger, in the course of an elaborate analysis and exposition of the overture which is said to have been prepared with the sanction of the composer, writes in detail concerning the meaning of certain passages in the music. Of an episode which occurs shortly after the beginning (at the entry of what the musician would call the "second theme" of the overture), he says:

"Gradually a calmer mood comes over the music. The strings are muted, and wood-wind (clarinet and English horn) and violins are heard in a little dialogue which seems to have been suggested by 'a shepherd with his flock and his home-made music.'... As the music dies away in softest ppp, the drums and double-basses sound persistently ... even after the long-delayed second subject proper of the overture has commenced. So far the thematic material has been largely constructed of short sequences. The new subject, on the other hand, is a long-drawn, finely curved melody of shapely form.... Tinged with a sweet sadness, it is doubtless meant to suggest the feeling of melancholy which is generally coexistent with the state of happiness resulting from communion with nature, a melancholy which in this case, however, may be supposed to have been produced by contemplating the contrast (shown nowhere more strikingly than in Italy) between the eternal rejuvenescence of nature and the instability of man's greatest and proudest achievements. The melody is announced by first violins, solo viola, and solo 'cello. It is immediately repeated in the higher octave.... A melody in the same gentle mood follows." Later there occurs "a passionately ascending sequence, as if the composer were rousing himself from a deep revery." There are trumpet-calls, and the music becomes increasingly animated. "We reach a second very important episode, grandioso, in which the composer has aimed to 'paint the relentless and domineering onward force of the ancient day, and give a sound picture of the strife and wars of a later time.' First we have this bold and stately phrase, very weightily scored for the full orchestra, except flutes. It is followed by another forceful passage," in which are "clashing discords.... Soon the music grows even more emphatic.... With almost cruel insistence the composer covers page after page with this discordant and stridently orchestrated but powerfully suggestive music. It is as if countless Roman cohorts sounded their battle-calls from all the corners of the earth.... It is a wild scene which the composer unfolds before us—one of turbulent strife, in which many a slashing blow and counter-blow are dealt in furious hand-to-hand fight.... The Roman motif (grandioso) seems to exhort the warriors to carry their eagles victorious through the fray, that Senatus populusque Romanus may know how Roman legions did their duty. Gradually the clamor subsides," and, with a high note sounded on the glockenspiel [an orchestral implement which produces a bell-like tone], "we are back in the light of the present day.

"A curious passage seems to suggest the gradual awakening from the dream, the bright sunshine breaking through the dust of battle beheld in a poet's vision of a soul-stirring past." Later we hear (solo viola) "the lonely shepherd's plaintive song, floating towards the serene azure of the Italian sky." Finally, the overture is brought to an end with a phrase "which has stood throughout for the brave motto of Sunshine, Open Air, and Cheery Optimism."

FRANCK — "LES ÉOLIDES," [53] SYMPHONIC POEM [54]

(César Franck: born in Liège, Belgium, December 10, 1822; died in Paris, November 8, 1890)

This symphonic poem, composed in 1876, was suggested by the opening lines of a poem by Leconte de Lisle, though the derivation is not avowed in the score. A prose translation of these lines may be given as follows:

Æolus was conceived by the Greeks to be a companion of the gods and master of the winds. Jeremy Collier wrote of him: "Æolus, a king of the seven islands betwixt Italy and Sicily called Æoliæ, very Hospitable, he taught his People to use Sails, and by observing the Fire or Smoak of Strongyle (Stromboli) could predict how the Winds would blow, whence the Poets call'd him the God of the Winds. He was also a skilful Astrologer, which contributed to this Fiction. There were Three of this Name." This is how Ulysses described to King Alcinous his visit to Æolus:

"To the Æolian island we attain'd,
That swum about still on the sea, where reign'd
The God-lov'd Æolus Hippotades.
A wall of steel it had; and in the seas
A wave-beat-smooth rock moved about the wall.
Twelve children in his house imperial
Were born to him; of which six daughters were,
And six were sons, that youth's sweet flower did bear.
His daughters to his sons he gave as wives;
Who spent in feastful comforts all their lives,
Close seated by their sire and his grave spouse.
Past number were the dishes that the house
Made ever savor; and still full the hall
As long as day shined." [56]

"THE WILD HUNTSMAN," SYMPHONIC POEM [57]

Le Chasseur Maudit, composed in 1883, tells the story of Bürger's ballad, Der Wilde Jäger. This argument, in prose, is prefaced to the score:

Then follows the entry of the ribald huntsmen, led by the Count; the chase is pictured, and we hear the complaints of the protesting peasants.

The Count, suddenly left alone, attempts in vain to wind his horn; then, in uncanny and terrifying tones, the curse is pronounced.

The Infernal Chase begins, there are wild horn calls; the pace grows more and more precipitous until the close.

SUITE, "PSYCHE" [59]

Franck composed in 1887-88 a symphony for chorus and orchestra entitled "Psyché," the text of which is credited to Messrs. Sicard and Fourchard. In 1900 four parts of the work, written for orchestra alone, were extracted and published in the form of a suite, with the titles quoted above.

The tale of Cupid and Psyche, as told by Apuleius in "The Golden Ass," has been thus admirably paraphrased by Mr. H. E. Krehbiel:

"Psyche was a mortal, the daughter of a king, whose beauty was so great that she received the homage, almost the worship, which was the due of Venus. Wherefore the goddess resolved to revenge herself upon the proud beauty, and asked her son, Cupid, to inspire in her a passion for a low-born creature unworthy of her. Then should Psyche be humiliated and Venus come into her rights again. Cupid set out to obey his mother's injunctions. Finding the maiden asleep in her chamber, he anointed her lips with the bitter water from one of the fountains in Venus's garden, and touched her side with the point of his magic arrow. When she opened her eyes she could not see the god, who had made himself invisible, but he could see her, and the sight of her loveliness so unnerved him that he unwittingly wounded himself with his own arrow. To make as much reparation as possible he emptied his amber jar of sweet water over all her ringlets. But Venus's wishes came near fulfilment. Psyche did not become enamoured of a boor, but of all her admirers none came with offerings of love and marriage. Fearing that the anger of the gods had been incurred by them, her parents consulted the oracle of Apollo, and were told that their daughter should have no mortal lover. Her future husband, a monster irresistible to both gods and men, awaited her at the top of a high mountain. Great was their grief, but Psyche offered willingly to make expiation for having received honors which belonged only to the immortal queen of love and beauty. She was led to the summit of the mountain and left to her fate. Thence came Zephyrus, and carried her gently to a flowery vale in the midst of which stood a magnificent palace. She became its mistress. Invisible hands administered abundantly to all her wants, filled her mouth with nectareous food and wines, and her ears with music. Every night she was visited by him whom the oracle said was to be her husband, but she saw him not. He came only in the darkness of the night, and disappeared before the break of day. She begged for a sight of him whose words of love had aroused a deep passion within her, but he refused. It was Cupid, who wanted to be loved as an equal, not worshipped as a god.

"But when Psyche's sisters heard of her great happiness they filled her mind with doubt and misgivings, and persuaded her to disobey her strange visitor's commands. Perhaps he was a hideous monster who would in time devour her. At night, when he was fast asleep, she uncovered her lamp and gazed, not upon a monster, but upon the loveliest of visions. A god lay before her with golden ringlets clustering about his white neck and ruddy cheeks, and snowy wings on his shoulders. She leaned over him for a closer view, and a drop of burning oil fell upon his glistening skin. He awoke, and without a word spread his wings and flew out of the window. With him vanished palace and gardens. Day and night Psyche wandered about seeking her lost love. She found herself in the temple of Ceres, whose pity she awakened, and who told her to surrender herself to Venus and seek to win her forgiveness. Voluntarily she submitted to become the slave of the goddess, who imposed cruel and impossible tasks upon her, but she performed them all, with supernatural aid extended by Cupid. At last the god himself, recovered from his wound, and, unable to endure the separation longer, made supplication to Jupiter, who pleaded the cause of the lovers with Venus, and won her consent to their union. Thereupon he sent Mercury to the maiden with a cup of ambrosia, which, drinking, she became immortal, and was united forever to Cupid."

The poetic substance of the four movements which constitute the work in its exclusively instrumental form may be briefly indicated as follows:

I. PSYCHE'S SLEEP

"In the dim regions of her dreams, her spirit becomes aware of some perfect bliss, not of this world, which she feels will yet be hers."

II. PSYCHE BORNE AWAY BY THE ZEPHYRS

There is first a suggestion of the zephyrs; then follows a portion which is said to characterize Psyche herself. A reminiscence of the theme which, in the first movement, served as a love motive, follows; then, again, we hear the Psyche theme.

III. THE GARDENS OF CUPID

This movement is a love scene, "a depiction of the delights of Psyche in the company of her invisible lover."

IV. PSYCHE AND CUPID

The final bliss of the lovers is said to be portrayed here. "Love, at first hesitant, grows bold; it has its passionate flights, its returns to calmness, its torrents of passion, then its moments of ecstasy. The themes are so blended or enchained that they are nearly all of like importance, and often one is the conclusion of the other. They are charged with a penetrating solemnity which touches the heart-core."

"Eros and Psyche," writes Gustave Derepas in an examination of the work of Franck in its original form, "do not appear as individuals. The orchestra interprets their feelings, and for this reason: the two are in this poem not individuals. Franck, forgetting the legendary personages, looks on them as symbols of the human soul and supreme love. Music, absolute music without words, because its notes do not have a definite meaning, is of all the forms of art the most adequate expression of these immaterial realities. There are no solos in this oratorio. The orchestra has the most important part; it translates the longings, the regrets, the final joy of Psyche.... It is to be easily seen that the whole work is charged with the spirit of Christian mysticism."

M. Vincent d'Indy, a distinguished pupil, as well as a profound and discerning appreciator, of César Franck, has observed that when Franck (always a mystic of mystics) passed to purely profane subjects his angelic imaginings pursued him. "He was fain to put the ancient myth of Eros and Psyche into tones. There are passages of ravishing description in the music in which he fulfilled his purpose. But the capstone of the work, the love duet, as it is called, between Eros and Psyche, has seemed to me always and only an ethereal dialogue between the soul as the mystical author of 'The Imitation of Christ' conceived it and a seraph descended from heaven to instruct it."

"THE DJINNS," SYMPHONIC POEM FOR ORCHESTRA AND PIANO [60]

Les Djinns was written in illustration of lines from Victor Hugo's Les Orientales, which, translated into prose, are as follows:

The Djinns (or Jinns, from an Arabic word meaning "to be dark" or "to be veiled") were, in Arabian mythology, supernatural beings of prevailingly malevolent character and purpose. They were both male and female, and were regarded as extremely long-lived. Created two thousand years before Adam, of smokeless fire, their homes were in the mountains named Kaff, which were believed to girdle the earth. Yet they haunted all places and all elements—the sea, the land, the air. They could assume any form at will, but were prone to appear to men in whirlwinds, tempests, and dust clouds.

In Franck's symphonic poem (in which the piano is employed rather as an orchestral adjunct than as a solo instrument) the music delineates the sudden and terrifying approach through the air of the horde of tempest-driven demons, their horrible lamentations and imprecations, their passing and final disappearance.

GLAZOUNOFF — "STENKA RÂZINE," SYMPHONIC POEM: Op. 13

(Alexander Glazounoff: born in St. Petersburg, August 10, 1865; now living there)

Stenka Râzine (or Râzin), the subject of Glazounoff's symphonic poem, was a Cossack rebel and outlaw who flourished in the seventeenth century. In 1667 he was elected leader of the insurgent Cossacks, and, after a tumultuous career of plunder and devastation, was finally executed at Moscow in 1671. He is the hero of numerous Russian ballads, and Nikolai Kostomaroff, in 1859, made him the subject of one of his famous historical monographs.

In the legend selected by Glazounoff for musical treatment, Stenka Râzine is portrayed as the hero of an incident which is related by the composer as follows in an explanatory note (in French) prefaced to the score:

Glazounoff's music is based on three main themes. We hear first the melancholy chant of the bargemen on the Volga (derived from a celebrated Russian folk-tune); by it the Volga is typified (the theme is announced by the oboe, against tremolos in the strings). Stenka himself is next portrayed by a theme that is brutally forceful and savage. Then follows a gracious and dulcet melody (sung, pp, by clarinet, with accompaniment of harp, flutes, bassoon, and horn), in which the princess, Stenka's captive and beloved, is suggested. By his vivid and dramatic juxtaposition of these themes, Glazounoff suggests the progress and culmination of his tonal narrative.

The score bears the date-line: "St. Petersburg, 1885."

"THE KREMLIN," SYMPHONIC PICTURE IN THREE PARTS: Op. 30

This "symphonic picture" (composed in 1890) is a delineation, in three sections, of scenes associated in the imagination of the composer with the historic and picturesque citadel at Moscow. They are arranged and titled as follows:

"The Kremlin," writes Mr. Arthur Symons in his Cities, "is like the evocation of an Arabian sorcerer, called up out of the mists of the North; and the bells hung in these pagan, pagoda-like belfries seem to swing there in a lost paradox, as if to drive away the very demons that have fixed them in mid-air.... All the violence of the yellow, Mongolian East is in these temples, which break out into bulbs, and flower into gigantic fruits and vegetables of copper and tiles and carved stone; which are full of crawling and wriggling lines, of a kind of cruelty in form; in which the gold of the sun, the green of the earth's grass, and a blue which is to the blue of the sky what hell is to heaven, mock and deform the visible world in a kind of infernal parody....

"... The priests, with their long hair and Christ-like presence, wearing heavy vestments of blue and red velvet and gold-embroidered stuff (in which one sees the hieratic significance of the blue of the domes), pass through the concealing door from the presence of the people to the presence of God, the door which, at the most sacred moment, shuts them in upon that presence; and a choir of sad, deep, Russian voices, the voices of young men, chants antiphonally and in chorus, weaving, in a sort of instrumental piece in which the voices are the instruments, a heavy veil of music, which trembles like a curtain before the shrine."

GOLDMARK — OVERTURE, "SAKUNTALA": Op. 13

(Karl Goldmark: born in Keszthely, Hungary, May 18, 1830; now living in Vienna)

This overture, which made its composer famous, has been in the European concert repertory since 1865 (in December of which year it was performed for the first time in Vienna), and in that of America since 1877. The music is conceived as a commentary on Kalidassa's famous Indian drama, "Sakuntala," the story of which is outlined as follows in a preface printed in the score:

"RUSTIC WEDDING" SYMPHONY (No. 1): Op. 26

1. WEDDING MARCH, WITH VARIATIONS

(Moderato molto)

2. BRIDAL SONG

(Allegretto)

3. SERENADE

(Allegretto moderato, scherzando)

4. IN THE GARDEN

(Andante)

5. DANCE: FINALE

(Allegretto molto)

Goldmark's Ländliche Hochzeit symphony, first performed at a Philharmonic concert in Vienna under Hans Richter in March, 1876, is rather a suite than a symphony. The picturesque significance of the various movements, which bear an obvious relationship to the central idea expressed in the title, may be indicated as follows:

I. WEDDING MARCH

This movement needs no gloss, since its character and significance lie upon the surface of the music.

II. BRIDAL SONG

The song may be imagined as being sung by friends of the bride. It has a second part, with a tender tune for the oboe (as if one of the bridesmaids had stepped forward), accompanied by the theme of the march in the basses.

III. SERENADE

After a prelude, two oboes sing a duet, which is varied and developed by other instruments.

IV. IN THE GARDEN

This is a love-scene. An impassioned duet is suggested, in which the tenor is represented by 'cellos and horns, the soprano by the violins and the higher wood-wind instruments. The movement ends serenely.

V. FINALE

A peasant dance, spirited and jocose, with a tender episode in the middle. "For a moment we steal out of doors, and are again lost in the rare strain of the garden scene." In the epilogue "the simple second tune of the dance [first heard in the strings] broadens into song, like a festive hymn, rising to a height of fervent appeal, that is too intimate for a mere tripping of feet.... The end is in a climax that is much more than the frolic of a dance."

GRIEG — SUITE (No. 1), "PEER GYNT" [62]

(Edvard Grieg:[61] born in Bergen, Norway, June 15, 1843; died in Bergen, September 4, 1907)

1. MORNING MOOD

(Allegretto pastorale)

2. THE DEATH OF AASE

(Andante doloroso)

3. ANITRA'S DANCE

(Tempo di Mazurka)

4. IN THE HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING

(Marcia e molto marcato)

This is the first, as it is the more famous and frequently played, of the two orchestral suites arranged by Grieg from the incidental music which he wrote, at Ibsen's suggestion, for the latter's singular drama, "Peer Gynt." The story of the play, in the form in which it was given by Ibsen to Grieg for musical accentuation, is thus succinctly told by Mr. Henry T. Finck in his comprehensive and authoritative monograph on the Norwegian master:

"Peer Gynt is a rough Norwegian peasant youth, who, in the first act, drives his mother Aase (Ohse) to distraction by his fantastic talk and ruffianly actions.

"His dream is to become emperor of the world. Everybody dreads and avoids him. He hears that the beautiful Ingrid is to be married, goes uninvited to the wedding, and carries the bride into the mountain wilderness. The next day, deaf to her laments, he deserts her, after taunting her with not having the golden locks or the meekness of the tender-hearted Solvejg, who, at the wedding, loved him at sight, notwithstanding his ruffianly appearance and behavior. After divers adventures Peer finds himself in the Hall of the Mountain King, where he is tortured by gnomes and sprites, who alternate their wild dances with deadly threats; he is rescued at the last moment by the sound of bells in the distance, which make the hall of the goblins collapse. Then he builds a hut in the forest, and Solvejg comes to him on her snow-shoes of her own free will. Weeping, she tells him she has left her sister and parents to share his hut and be his wife. Happiness seems to be his at last, but he is haunted by the gnomes, who threaten to torture him every moment of his life, whereat, without saying a word to his bride, he leaves her and returns to his mother. Aase is on her death-bed, and soon expires in his arms. Later, he turns up in Africa, where he has divers adventures. Having succeeded in stealing from robbers a horse and a royal garment, he goes among the Arabs and plays the rôle of a prophet. He makes love to the beautiful Anitra, daughter of a Bedouin chief, and elopes with her on horseback; but she, after cajoling all his stolen jewels from him, suddenly turns her horse and gallops back home. In the last act, Peer Gynt, after suffering shipwreck on the Norwegian coast, returns to the hut he has built in the forest; there he finds Solvejg faithfully awaiting his return, and dies as she sings the tearful melody known as 'Solvejg's Cradle Song.'"

In Grieg's suite, the "Morning Mood" (Morgenstimmung) music forms the prelude to the fourth act of the play. It is a piece of serene and idyllic tone-painting, with no dramatic suggestions.

"The Death of Aase" is a brief and sombre dirge on the death of Peer's mother, scored entirely for muted[63] strings.

"Anitra's Dance" is the music of the dance with which the daughter of the Bedouin chief tries to beguile the inconstant Peer.

"In the Hall of the Mountain King" is taken from the accompaniment to the scene in which Peer, in the dwelling of the trolls, is beset and tormented by gnomes and imps. The music of this number has been characterized as "a veritable hornets' nest."

HADLEY — TONE-POEM, "SALOME": Op. 55

(Henry Hadley: born in Somerville, Massachusetts, December 20, 1871; now living in Germany)

This tone-poem, "after Oscar Wilde's tragedy," is said to have been completed before the production of Richard Strauss's music-drama on the same subject.[64] It is alleged that when Mr. Hadley's music was composed (it was published at Berlin in the latter part of 1906), the "Salome" of Strauss was unknown to him.

The score contains the following programme, printed in German and English:

At the time of the first American performance of this tone-poem by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, on April 12, 1907, Mr. Philip Hale published in the programme-books this exposition of the significance of the music:

"'Salome' begins ... Lento e molto tranquillo, ... with a description of the moonlit scene. The music follows the course of the argument, but how literally, how imaginatively, must be determined by each hearer. It will be remarked that a theme, which might be called Salome's desire, introduced early in the work after a passage for solo violoncello (for horns and then for clarinets, oboes, and English horns), is used at the end of the tone-poem, 'con adore' (sic), to accentuate the address of Salome to Iokanaan's head. 'Salome's Dance,' Allegretto ben ritmato, with a 'stretto con delirio,' is specified by the composer with a title. The chief motives elsewhere are unidentified by him. One hearer, then, may take the motive, poco largamente, early in the work, given to trombones and tuba fortissimo with drum-roll, for Iokanaan's denunciation, and recognize the significance of its entrance after the dance, while to another the motive may have another meaning. So, too, there may be various opinions concerning the precise significance of other themes. It is enough to say that the music follows the course of the published argument. After the dance and the scene in which Herod consents to the beheading of the holy man there is a return to the opening tonality, tempo, and mood. Themes already typical of Salome are again used. There is a suddenly introduced and short Allegro con fuoco. Grand pause: Lento. The English horn sighs the love theme of Salome."

HUBER — SYMPHONY No. 2, in E MINOR: Op. 115

(Hans Huber: born in Schönewerd, Switzerland, June 28, 1852; now living in Bâle)

This symphony was written in eulogy of the Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin (born in Bâle, October 16, 1827; died in San Domenico, near Florence, January 16, 1901), and in glorification of his highly imaginative and individual art. The original intention of the composer, it is said, was to name his score a "Böcklin" symphony, and to give to various portions of the music the titles of certain of Böcklin's best-known canvases. This plan was, however, not adhered to, and now only the last movement—the finale—is avowedly an endeavor to compose a tonal commentary on various paintings by the Swiss artist. There is, therefore, no authorization for an attempt to find definite translations of Böcklin into tone anywhere save in the concluding movement; yet it may be worth mentioning that the first movement is said to have been suggested by Böcklin's picture, "Sieh, es lacht die Au" ("See, the Meadow Laughs"), which pictures two young girls in a meadow plucking flowers, while others stand about in various postures, one playing a lute[66]; that the second movement, the Scherzo—in a Dionysiac mood of revelry—is said to suggest the play of fauns and satyrs of the kind that Böcklin loved to paint; and that the third movement hints at moods inspired by his "Sacred Grove," "Hymn of Spring," and "Venus Anadyomene."

The Finale is in form a theme with variations, and each variation is named after a picture by Böcklin. I quote Mr. Philip Hale's concise and vivid characterizations of the different sections and the subjects which inspired them:

"I. THE SILENCE OF THE OCEAN
(In the museum at Bern)

"Adagio molto, E major, 8-8. A dark woman—woman only to the waist—of unearthly beauty lies on a lonely rock far out at sea. Three sea-birds listen with her. A strange sea-creature, with man's face, is stretched beneath the wave. His eyes are without speculation. His tail floats above the surface, and is brushed by the woman's hair.

"II. PROMETHEUS CHAINED
(1882; owned by Arnhold of Berlin)

"The god-defying hero, a giant in form, is bound on the summit of Caucasus, which rises abruptly from the foaming sea. Allegro molto, 4-4. The theme is taken from the first movement.... The wild orchestra surges until the end comes, in six syncopated blows, in extreme fortissimo.

"III. THE FLUTING NYMPH
(1881; owned by von Heyl of Darmstadt)

"Allegretto grazioso, E major, 3-4. A flute solo that, in alternation with the clarinet, leads into the familiar theme, in its first transformation, of the first movement.

"IV. THE NIGHT
(Painted before 1888, and owned by Henneberg of Zurich)

"Adagio ma non troppo, D-flat major, 3-4. A woman draped in black, but with a shoulder exposed, floats over a peaceful land, and slowly drops poppy-heads from a cornucopia. The melody is played by the violoncellos. Harp, bassoons, double bassoons, violas, and double-basses accompany.

"Va. SPORT OF THE WAVES
(1883; in the New Pinakothek, Munich)

"Quasi presto, E minor, 2-4, 3-4. Water-men and water-women frolic in the waves. One woman gayly dives. Another, frightened, is laughed at by a bearded and rubicund old fellow, whose head is wreathed with pond-lilies. A caprice for the wood-wind. In the section 2-4 the violins continue the melody, while violin and viola solos ornament, and harp and triangle add color.

"Vb. THE HERMIT FIDDLING BEFORE THE STATUE OF THE MADONNA
(Painted after 1882; in the National Gallery, Berlin)

"Molto moderato, E major, 3-4. An aged man in his cell plays with bowed head before the Madonna, while little angels listen. The strings are hushed. Organ relieved here and there by flutes, oboes, clarinets.

"VI. THE ELYSIAN FIELDS
(1878; in the National Gallery, Berlin)

"Allegretto tranquillo, G major, 6-8. One of Böcklin's most celebrated paintings. A landscape of diversified and wondrous beauty, with mermaids, swans, a fair woman on the back of a centaur crossing a stream, a group in the distance around an altar. Long-sustained trombone chords furnish the harmonic foundation. The melody, of a soft and lightly flowing dance character, is maintained by the wood-wind and violins, and a horn reminds one of an expressive theme in the first movement.

"VII. THE DAWN OF LOVE
(1868; owned by von Heyl of Darmstadt)

"Andante molto espressivo ed appassionato, E major, 3-4. Nymphs and young loves in a smiling and watered landscape. The passionate melody is given to the strings. Wood-wind and horns take part in this as well as in the accompaniment. A short and vigorous crescendo leads to the last variation.

"VIII. BACCHANALE
(Owned by Knorr of Munich)

"Tempo di valse, ma quasi presto, E major, 3-4. Men and women are rioting about a tavern near Rome. Some, overcome by wine, sprawl on the ground. The theme is developed in waltz form. A rapid violin passage leads to the close, maestoso ma non troppo. The organ joins the orchestra in thundering out the chief theme."

A graphic suggestion of that which Huber has sought to express in his music is conveyed by this felicitous comment on the art and temperament of Böcklin, written by Mr. Christian Brinton:

"Arnold Böcklin was able to develop a national art, an art specifically Germanic, because he had the magic to impose his dream upon his fellow-countrymen, and because that dream was the reflex, the embodiment, of all the ineffable nostalgia of his race, not alone for the cream-white villas of Italy, the fountains and the cypresses, but for the gleaming marbles and golden myths of Greece. His art is merely another version of that Sehnsucht which finds voice in the ballads of Goethe, the prose fancies of Heine, or the chiselled periods of Winckelmann. Once again it is the German viewing Greece through Renaissance eyes. The special form under which Böcklin's appeal was made implied a reincarnation, under actual conditions, of the classic spirit. He realized from the outset that the one way to treat such themes was to retouch them with modern poetry and modern passion. Pan, Diana, Prometheus, monsters of the deep and grotesques of the forest, were made vital and convincing.... The persuasive charm of his classic scenes is chiefly due to the anti-classic and often frankly humorous, Dionysian manner in which they are presented.... The formula of Böcklin's art consists in peopling sea or sky, shore or wood, with creatures of tradition or of sheer imagination. Its animus is a pantheistische Naturpoesie, illustrating the kinship of man and nature, a conception both Hellenic and Germanic, which arose from a blending of that which his spirit caught at in the world about him and that which came through the gates of fancy and of fable...."

d'INDY — ORCHESTRAL LEGEND, "THE ENCHANTED FOREST": Op. 8

(Vincent d'Indy: born in Paris, March 27, 1852; now living there)

This work, which the composer calls a Legende-symphonie, is based on a ballad by Uhland entitled "Harald." It was composed in 1878. On a fly-leaf of the score is printed, in French, this paraphrase of Uhland's ballad:

"SAUGEFLEURIE" ["WILD SAGE"], LEGEND FOR ORCHESTRA: Op. 21

Saugefleurie, Legende d'après un conte de Robert de Bonnière, was composed in 1884. The tale upon which it is based is from the Contes des Fées of de Bonnière, excerpts from which are prefaced to the score. The story has been retold in English prose as follows:

The music opens quietly; there is a violin solo; then the approach of the prince's hunting-party is suggested. The love-scene follows—solo first and second violins, solo viola, and flutes; there is an increase of intensity, and the music becomes passionate and stressful. The hunt music returns, followed by a reminiscence of the love-theme; then the end.

"ISTAR," SYMPHONIC VARIATIONS: Op. 42

"Istar" was first performed in Brussels, under the direction of Eugène Ysaye, January 10, 1897. The music illustrates a French version of an ancient Babylonian poem, "Istar's Descent into Hades," the original of which is believed to have been in the library of Sardanapalus. The French version of the poem, which is printed as a preface to the score, has been translated as follows by Mr. W. F. Apthorp:

Mr. Apthorp has thus set forth the peculiarity of d'Indy's tone-poem (for such it virtually is): "The theme is not given out simply at the beginning, neither is it heard in its entirety until the last variation, in which it is sung by various groups of instruments in unison and octaves, and worked up later in full harmony. Each one of the variations represents one of the seven stages of Istar's being disrobed at the gates of the 'immutable land,' until in the last she stands forth in the full splendor of nudity.... By following the poem, and noting the garment or ornament taken off, the listener can appreciate the composer's poetic or picturesque suggestiveness in his music." Another commentator has observed that d'Indy has here "reversed the customary process.... He by degrees unfolds from initial complexity the simple idea which was wrapped up therein, and appears only at the close, like Isis unveiled, like a scientific law discovered and formulated."

"SUMMER DAY ON THE MOUNTAIN": Op. 61

Jour d'été à la montagne, a tone-poem in three parts (dated 1905, published in 1906, first performed in Paris, February 18, 1906), is based on a prose poem by Roger de Pampelonne. These quotations, in French, are prefaced to the score:

In all three movements of d'Indy's tripartite tone-poem a piano is included among the orchestral forces; yet it is never used as a solo instrument, nor even as an orchestral voice (save for a few measures in the third movement), but is employed solely for purposes of instrumental embroidery.

LISZT — "TASSO: LAMENT AND TRIUMPH," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 2) [70]

(Franz Liszt: born in Raiding, near Ödenburg, Hungary, October 22, 1811; died in Bayreuth, July 31, 1886)

Tasso: Lamento e Trionfo, was conceived as a "symphonic prelude" to Goethe's drama "Tasso," and performed during the celebration at Weimar in 1849 of the centenary of the poet's birth. It was revised by Liszt in 1854, and published, in its present form, two years later. The score contains this preface by the composer:

The second portion of the symphonic poem, the "Triumph," is introduced by trumpet calls and by brilliant passages in the strings. The Tasso theme, transformed, is proclaimed with the utmost orchestral pomp and sonority, and brings the music to a jubilant and festive close.

"THE PRELUDES," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 3) [71]

Les Préludes, composed in 1854, is a tonal commentary on the thoughts contained in a passage from Lamartine's Méditations poetiques. The score bears as a preface an excerpt from the Méditations, which may be translated as follows:

"What else is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown song of which the first solemn note is sounded by death? Love is the morning radiance of every heart; but in what human life have not the first ecstasies of awakening bliss been broken in upon by some storm whose cruel breath dispelled every fond illusion and blasted the sacred shrine? And what soul, thus sorely wounded, does not, emerging from the tempest, seek balm in the solitude and serenity of country life? Yet man will not long resign himself to the soothing quietude of nature; and when the trumpet sounds the signal of alarm, he hastens to arms, no matter what may be the cause that summons. He plunges into the thick of the combat, and, in the fury and tumult of battle, regains self-confidence through the exercise of his powers."

"ORPHEUS," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 4) [72]

Orphée, composed in 1854, was conceived by Liszt at a time when he was engaged in conducting rehearsals of Gluck's opera "Orpheus" for performance at Weimar, and the completed symphonic poem was first played there, as a prelude to the opera of Gluck, on February 16,1854. The score contains a preface by Liszt which forms an admirable commentary on the spirit and temper of the music:

Mr. Philip Hale has thus described the music in which Liszt crystallized his fancies:

"... Harp arpeggios are thrown over soft horn tones for a prelude, and then Orpheus sings of the might of his art.... The song of Orpheus becomes more intimate in its appeal [Lento ... English horn, oboe.] The passage ends, ... and a short phrase is given to the first violin. Some hear, in this phrase, a call, 'Eurydice!' These themes are used alternately until there is a climax with the entrance of the first and solemn Orpheus theme, fortissimo. [Later] the Orpheus song is again intoned in all its majesty. There is a hush, and the Eurydice theme is heard. The 'mystical end' is brought by an alternate use of strings and wood-wind instruments in the Orpheus song."

"MAZEPPA," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 6) [74]

This symphonic poem, composed, in the early thirties, as a piano piece (it was published as No. 4 of the famous Études d'exécution transcendante), was made over by Liszt for orchestra in 1850. Both originally and in its final shape the music is an illustration, not of the familiar poem of Byron, but of verses in Victor Hugo's Les Orientales. Hugo's lines, in French and German, preface the score. The following prose translation is by Mr. W. F. Apthorp:

"FESTKLÄNGE," [75] SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 7) [76]

Liszt has supplied no programme of any kind to this symphonic poem (composed in 1851). The music has been variously interpreted. It has been said to be a "portrayal of scenes that illustrate some great national festival"—"a coronation, something surely of a royal character"; others have believed that it was composed to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary (occurring November 9, 1854) of the arrival in Weimar of Liszt's patroness and friend, the Grand-Duchess Marcia Paulowna, sister of the Tsar Nicholas I. Lina Ramann, Liszt's biographer, offers the more plausible explanation that the work was intended as the wedding-music for Liszt and the Princess Carolyn von Sayn-Wittgenstein,[77] between whom, in 1851 (the year of the composition of the music), a union sanctioned by state and church seemed at last to be possible. Fräulein Ramann sees in this symphonic poem "a song of triumph over hostile machinations"; ... "bitterness and anguish are forgotten in proud rejoicing." The programme thus suggested is as acceptable as any other.

"THE BATTLE OF THE HUNS," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 11) [78]

In the summer of 1885 Liszt conceived the idea of setting music to a picture by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1855-1874), one of the set of six frescos on a wall of the Raczynski Gallery in the New Museum at Berlin. The subject of this picture "The Battle of the Huns" (Hunnenschlacht), is the legend which tells of the terrific aërial battle between the ghosts of the slain Huns and Romans after the struggle outside the walls of Rome, in 451, which engaged the forces of Attila and of Theodoric the Visigoth. The picture has been thus described: "According to a legend, the combatants were so exasperated that the slain rose during the night and fought in the air. Rome, which is seen in the background, is said to have been the scene of this event. Above, borne on a shield, is Attila with a scourge in his hand; opposite him Theodoric, king of the Visigoths. The foreground is a battle-field, strewn with corpses, which are seen to be gradually reviving, rising up, and rallying, while among them wander wailing and lamenting women."

Liszt's symphonic poem (completed early in 1857) has been found by commentators to typify the conflict between Heathendom and Christianity, eventuating in the triumph of the Cross. The comment of Liszt himself, contained in a letter written in May, 1857, to the wife of Kaulbach, is, naturally, as authoritative as it is valuable: "I have been encouraged," he says, "to send you what indeed truly belongs to you, but what, alas! I must send in so shabby a dress that I must beg from you all the indulgence that you have so often kindly shown me. At the same time with these lines you will receive the manuscript of the two-pianoforte arrangement of my symphonic poem, 'The Battle of the Huns' (written for a large orchestra and completed by the end of last February), and I beg you, dear madam, to do me the favor to accept this work as a token of my great reverence and most devoted friendship towards the master of masters. Perhaps there may be an opportunity later on, in Munich or Weimar, in which I can have the work performed before you with full orchestra, and can give a voice to the meteoric and solar light which I have borrowed from the painting, and which at the Finale I have formed into one whole by the gradual working up of the Catholic choral 'Crux fidelis' and the meteoric sparks blended therewith. As I have already intimated to Kaulbach in Munich, I was led by the musical demands of the material to give proportionately more place to the solar light of Christianity, personified in the Catholic choral 'Crux fidelis,' than appears to be the case in the glorious painting, in order thereby to win and pregnantly represent the conclusion of the Victory of the Cross, with which I, both as a Catholic and as a man, could not dispense."[79]

"THE IDEAL," SYMPHONIC POEM (No. 12) [80]

Die Ideale, conceived in 1856, completed in 1857, is based on Schiller's poem of that title. The burden of the poem—which, to Lord Lytton, seemed "an elegy on departed youth"—has been set forth as follows: "The sweet belief in the dream-created beings of youth passes away; what once was divine and beautiful, after which we strove ardently, and which we embraced lovingly with heart and mind, becomes the prey of hard reality; already midway the boon companions—love, fortune, fame, and truth—leave us one after another, and only friendship and activity remain with us as loving comforters."

Schiller's conclusion, which the poet himself admitted to be somewhat tame, did not satisfy Liszt, and in a note to the final section of his symphonic poem he wrote: "The holding fast and at the same time the continual realizing of the ideal is the highest aim of our life. In this sense I ventured to supplement Schiller's poem by a jubilantly emphasizing resumption, in the closing Apotheosis, of the motives of the first section."

Liszt's tonal paraphrase, as he pointed out in a letter to Hans von Bülow, divides itself, after the introduction, into four (connected) sections, superscribed as follows: (1) Aspiration; (2) Disillusion; (3) Activity; (4) Apotheosis. There is no programme or argument prefaced to the work, but instead Liszt has printed in the score, as mottoes, quotations from Schiller's poem. These excerpts, consecutively arranged, are as follows—their sequence will suggest the dramatic and emotional outlines of Liszt's music:[81]

[INTRODUCTION]

"Then wilt thou, with thy fancies holy—

Wilt thou, faithless, fly from me?

With thy joy, thy melancholy,

Wilt thou thus relentless flee?

O Golden Time, O Human May,

Can nothing, Fleet One, thee restrain?

Must thy sweet river glide away

Into the eternal Ocean-Main?

The suns serene are lost and vanish'd

That wont the path of youth to gild,

And all the fair Ideals banish'd

From that wild heart they whilom fill'd.

ASPIRATION

"The Universe of things seem'd swelling

The panting heart to burst its bound,

And wandering Fancy found a dwelling

In every shape—thought, deed, and sound.

"As a stream slowly fills the urn from the silent springs of the mountain and anon overflows its high banks with regal waves, stones, rocks, and forests fling themselves in its course, but it rushes noisily with proud haste into the ocean.

"Thus happy in his dreaming error,

His own gay valor for his wing,

Of not one care as yet in terror

Did Youth upon his journey spring;

Till floods of balm, through air's dominion,

Bore upward to the faintest star—

For never aught to that bright pinion

Could dwell too high or spread too far.

"How fair was then the flower, the tree!

How silver-sweet the fountains fall!

The soulless had a soul to me!

My life its own life lent to all!

"As once, with tearful passion fired,

The Cyprian sculptor clasp'd the stone,

Till the cold cheeks, delight inspired,

Blush'd—to sweet life the marble grown;

So youth's desire for Nature!—round

The Statue, so my arms I wreathed,

Till warmth and life in mine it found,

And breath that poets breathe—it breathed.

"And aye the waves of life how brightly

The airy Pageant danced before!—

Love showering gifts (life's sweetest) down;

Fortune, with golden garlands gay;

And Fame, with starbeams for a crown;

And Truth, whose dwelling is the day."

DISILLUSION

"Ah! midway soon lost evermore,

After the blithe companions stray;

In vain their faithless steps explore,

As one by one they glide away.

---

"And ever stiller yet, and ever

The barren path more lonely lay.

"Who, loving, lingered yet to guide me,

When all her boon companions fled,

Who stands consoling yet beside me,

And follows to the House of Dread?

"Thine, Friendship, thine the hand so tender,

Thine the balm dropping on the wound,

Thy task, the load more light to render,

O earliest sought and soonest found!"

ACTIVITY

"And thou, so pleased, with her uniting

To charm the soul-storm, into peace,

Sweet Toil, in toil itself delighting,

That more it labored, less could cease;

Tho' but by grains thou aid'st the pile

The vast Eternity uprears,

At least thou strik'st from Time the while

Life's debt—the minutes, days, and years."[82]

The concluding section (the "Apotheosis") of Liszt's symphonic poem, as it was pointed out above, has no analogue in Schiller's poem, but was contrived by Liszt to round out and complete the poet's conception after what seemed to him a nobler and more eloquent plan.

"A FAUST SYMPHONY" [83]

1. FAUST

(Lento assai. Allegro impetuoso) (Allegro agitato ed appassionato assai)

2. GRETCHEN

(Andante soave)

3. MEPHISTOPHELES

(Allegro vivace ironico)

The full title of this "symphony" (composed in 1853-54, revised in 1857), which has been said to be "really a concatenation of three symphonic poems rather than a symphony, properly so-called," is (in translation), "A Faust Symphony; in Three Character-Pictures (after Goethe), for Grand Orchestra and Men's Chorus." The names of the "three characters," Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles, head the three movements of the symphony. The men's chorus enters only as an epilogue to the last movement. The plan of the work (the score bears no programme or argument), as lucidly and concisely stated by Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, is as follows:

"By means of musical treatment given to four motives, or themes, in the first movement, the idea of Faust is presented—a type of humanity harassed with doubt, rage, despair, loneliness (the first theme, Lento); his strivings and hopes (second theme, Allegro agitato); his ideals and longings (third theme, Andante); his pride and energy (fourth theme, Grandioso).

"The subject of the second movement is Goethe's heroine. There is a brief prelude for flutes and clarinets, which introduces a melody obviously designed to give expression to the gentle grace of Gretchen's character (Andante); then a motive borrowed from the beginning of the first theme of the first movement suggests the entrance of Faust into the maiden's mind; it is followed by the second extended melody, which delineates the feeling of love after it has taken complete possession of her soul. This gives way in turn to the third theme of the first movement, in which the composer had given voice to the longings of Faust, and which in its development shows the clarifying influence of association with the Gretchen music.

"In the third movement Mephistopheles appears in his character as the spirit of negation ('Der Geist der stets verneint'); it is made up of mimicries and parodies of the themes of the first movement, especially the third [Faust's ideals and longings], which one is tempted to think is made the special subject of the evil one's sport, because it enables him to get nearest to Gretchen, whose goodness protects her from his wiles. By these means Liszt develops a conflict which finds its solution in the epilogue sung by the male chorus and solo tenor. The text is the Chorus mysticus which ends Goethe's tragedy, the translation of which ... is as follows:

"'All transient earthly things
Are but as symbols;
The indescribable
Here is accomplished;
Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to event;
The woman-soul e'er leads
Upward and on!' [84]

"The outcome of the struggle is plainly indicated by the circumstance that the words, 'The Woman-Soul,' are sung to the Gretchen motive."

SYMPHONY AFTER DANTE'S "DIVINA COMMEDIA" [85]

This symphony, begun in 1847-48, completed in 1855, is in two parts, the first wholly instrumental, the last having a choral ending. Prefixed to the published score is an introduction, interpretative and analytical, by Richard Pohl, which there is every reason to believe was inspired, as it was evidently sanctioned, by Liszt. Omitting certain not altogether essential passages of philosophic and æsthetic speculation, Pohl's elucidation is as follows:

"When Liszt sought to mirror in music so gigantic a design [as that of Dante's conception], it became his plan to pass by the dramatic and the philosophic parts, that play the rôle, in poetry, of sculpture in architecture. He could view only the ethical (or æsthetical) idea that forms the outline of the whole.

He has therefore put no undue strain upon the means at his command; he has not even charged them with a novel burden. He has sought to represent in general merely such feelings as other masters before him have vented in other forms. In dramatic music, Gluck, Mozart, and others have painted the terrors of hell. Grief, longing, and hope have ever been the main motives of lyric music; visions of heavenly choirs are an oft-recurring figure of religious music.

"Dante's poem consists of three main parts. The first has for its burden the bitter, barren, self-consuming woe that hurls its blasphemies at goodness and divine love, the grief that spurns all hope. The second reveals a suffering tempered by hope, purged by love, that is gradually dissolved by its own purifying power. The third part unfolds the highest fulfilment of hope through love, in that blessed contemplation of God that can only be achieved in another life.

"It was thus possible for the composer to preserve the division of the Dante epic without marring the symmetry of the subject in merging the borders of purgatory and heaven. Considerations of art as of creed must have induced the composer not to separate the second and third parts in their appearance, as indeed they are inseparable in an intrinsic sense. By the cleansing and hallowing that the soul undergoes in purgatory, it is brought, in an unbroken course, nearer to the divine presence, until, freed of every clouding stain, it reaches the full contemplation. It lay within the power of music to present this psychic growth as a general conception of purgatory itself, although Dante touches upon this moment of redemption only in a single episode (in the 21st and 22d cantos). The form demanded by his design and by his art did not allow him to linger over this purely lyric side.

"In spite of the merging of the last two parts, it is easy to distinguish in the outline of Liszt's work the three original divisions, of which the first corresponds to Dante's Hell, the second to his Purgatory, and the third, following the second immediately, and sustained in an all-embracing mystic mood, proclaims the heavenly bliss of Paradise."

INFERNO

"The first movement takes us directly to the gates of Hell, which burst ajar with the thunder-tones of the first bars while a harrowing recitative of trombones hurls in our ears the beginning of that famous legend over the infernal gates:

"'Per me si va nella città dolente:
Per me si va nell' eterno dolore:
Per me si va tra la perduta gente!'

("'Through me the way is to the city dolent;
Through me the way is to eternal dole;
Through me the way among the people lost!') [86]

"Whereupon the trumpets and horns sound the eternal curse: 'Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate' ('All hope abandon, ye who enter in.')

"The latter is the main rhythmic motive of the whole movement; it returns again and again in varying guise and volume.

"At our first entrance within the gates begins that demon tumult—we hear, all about, those tones of woe, lament, and blasphemy of which the poet tells in the third canto:

"'Diverse lingue, orribili favelle,
Parole di dolore, accenti d'ira,
Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle,
Facevano un tumulto, il qual s'aggira,
Sempre in quell' aria senza tempo tinta,
Come la rena quando il turbo spira.'

("'Languages diverse, horrible dialects,
Accents of anger, words of agony,
And voices high and hoarse, with sound of hands,
Made up a tumult that goes whirling on
Forever in that air forever black,
Even as the sand doth when the whirlwind breathes.')

"Abyss upon abyss open before our view. We behold those fearful depths that fall from one circle to the other, down to the most hideous torture, the delirium of despair. The Allegro frenetico paints the madness of despondency, the rage of the damned, their curses and maledictions. Without love or rest or solace, they are ever torn along to that region where the sins of carnal lust are atoned, and a horrible hurricane whirls the condemned souls about in perpetual darkness.

"Here the tone poet halts. The storm abates; it ceases for a moment while are invoked the unhappy lovers, Paolo and Francesca da Rimini. A dialogue begins, and we hear the lamenting sounds:

"'Nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria—'

("'There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery—') [87]

"They pass into the Andante amoroso (in 7/4 rhythm), where the composer is enabled, in the midst of the sobs of hell, to let us feel the irresistible charm of youth and beauty. Not of the heavenly kind, the earthly love still lingers here. But earthly passion brings its own punishment, and the essence of its nature seems expressed in the words that abandon all hope of heavenly bliss. And so the sudden breaking in of the motive 'Lasciate ogni speranza'—though tempered, it is the more ominous and forbidding—is a profound touch of ethical significance.

"When the last glow has passed of this the most alluring of illusive joys, undreamed-of sounds ascend from even deeper abysses. Here hide the sinning souls forgetful of all benefit, contemptuous of mercy, strangers to all reverence, rebellious in their ingratitude. The accents here resound of mockery and scorn and gnashing of teeth. These phantom shrieks of raging impotence are merged in the strange harmonies that lead to the returning motive of the Allegro frenetico. The terrible tumult of the damned is enhanced at the close by the thought of the loss of all hope—a final refrain of the Lasciate, an all-destroying lightning-blast, seems to reveal the horrid scene of torture in the bosom of the archangel of evil himself. The music here seems to rival the impression of Dante's graphic views and forceful lines upon our minds."

---

PURGATORIO AND MAGNIFICAT

"The episode of Francesca da Rimini, when she sings of the fatal charm of the sweetest of human errors, was chosen by Liszt from all the many scenes of the 'Inferno.' So in the 'Purgatory' we find one vision taken from the poem. Right in the initial bars Liszt follows the poet through the first canto. After the horrors of hell, the mild azure of heaven calms the risen souls. In ecstasy they greet the 'Sapphire of the East.' A wonderfully gentle murmur, quieting the spirit, puts us in dreams of the sea rocking in eternal radiance. We think of the ship that glides o'er its mirror without breaking the waves. The stars are still twinkling before the nearing splendor of the sun. A cloudless blue o'ervaults the sacred stillness, where we seem to hear the winged flight of the angel that soars over the ocean of infinity.

"This is the first, soul-stirring moment of redemption. Vanished are all the ghosts of an obstinate fancy, of a pride that at once exalts and destroys itself. Dead are the echoes of unbelieving mockery. The last throes of convulsive blasphemy have left the spirit free. A solemn, soothing silence now prevails in which the soul is loosed from painful rigor, where it breathes freely, though still without a full pervading consciousness. After the angry tempest of flaming nights, peace has appeared, but peace alone—the dawn, the light, without the sun. The wearied soul is not yet ready for a more intense experience. This is perhaps the general meaning of the introduction (Andante).

"This gentle, passive state, however, is but transitory. The secret powers and senses soon awaken, and with them a ceaseless longing. The more it grows, the stronger the thirst for the divine reality, the keener the desire for its immediate view, the deeper is the sense of weakness, of unworthiness, of inability to reach and comprehend it. Here a certain dread appears, together with a healing, a redeeming pain. The barren anguish of envious impotence has turned to devout penitence. This is, however, a moment of sombre elegy. Dante has uttered its oppression most forcefully in the tenth canto, where the sinners recall in remorse the good and beautiful deeds that they have left undone. There is no other feeling that can so bow down a lofty spirit.

"Here the main motive sounds as a choral hymn. A second theme is then sung lamentoso, in fervent self-reproach, in passive resignation, in unutterable grief. The fugue is the most fitting figure for the perpetual play of the feeling at once of retrospection and of hope. At the height of the fugue the main motive (of the choral hymn) rises proudly aloft, presently returns humbly and in contrition, and, broken by phrases of lament, dies finally away. Slowly the heavy clouds of inexpressible woe are lifted. The Catholic chant of the Magnificat proclaims softly deliverance by prayer, "the breathing of the soul." We feel that a conquering penitence is soaring towards eternal blessedness, is leading us up through the purifying circles to the summit of the mystic mount that lifts us to the gates of paradise.

"Now we have reached the point when the poet of the Divine Comedy, at the first song of paradise, stands on the edge of purgatory and catches the glow of the divine light, that his eyes as yet cannot directly bear. Art cannot paint heaven itself, but merely the earthly reflection in the soul that is turned towards the light of divine mercy. And so the full splendor stays hidden from our eyes, though it grows ever brighter with the purer contemplation. Thus far only, the tonal poet wanders in the footsteps of the seer; he does not follow him from star to star, no more than yonder through the various circles of the damned. The idea of absolute bliss transcends human description. The composer could only point to it as a spiritual state that grows from a chain of experience. The union of the soul with God, in prayer, is foreshadowed in the instrumentation. After the sacred glow of divine love has inflamed the human heart, all pain has ceased, all other emotion is lost in the heavenly ecstasy of surrender to God's mercy. The Magnificat of individual praise, extending to the universe, passes into a common Hallelujah and Hosanna, that rises pianissimo in a mighty scale of ancient tone, and creed as well, like a symbolic ladder up to heaven.

"For a long time the soul dwells in this blessed contemplation, that is made sensible by the soft, invisible choir [a hidden chorus of women]. The human heart, attaining a full exaltation, is kindled with a holy fervor and breaks forth with all its strength into a loud jubilation that embraces all worlds of men and spirits. The contrition of the sinner has changed into a knowledge of God and has awakened a champion of God.

"When the instrumental climax that stresses this final moment rings out after a pause, again passing through the seven steps of the scale, and the choir add a last overpowering Hallelujah, we think of all the martyrs whom Dante beheld—holy fathers and soldiers of God, who died for their faith and formed the heavenly hosts who surround the throne of God.[88] Thus closes this mysterious work with the sense of eternal reconciliation, of hope fulfilled, in the glory of transfiguration."[89]

TWO EPISODES FROM LENAU'S "FAUST"

In 1858-59 Liszt composed two orchestral paraphrases of episodes from the "Faust" of Nicolaus Lenau (1802-1850)—Der nachtliche Zug ("The Nocturnal Procession") and Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke ("The Dance in the Village Tavern"). These two pieces he desired should be played together; there was, he admitted, "no thematic connection" between the two; "but, nevertheless, they belong together, owing to the contrast of ideas." In spite of Liszt's wish, however, the two pieces are seldom heard together, the first ("The Nocturnal Procession") being, in fact, but seldom played, while the second—generally known as the "Mephisto Waltz"—is a familiar number on contemporary concert programmes. Mr. Frederick Niecks has thus presented the gist of the first episode, "The Nocturnal Procession":

"Heavy, dark clouds, profound night, sweet, spring feeling in the wood, a warm, soulful rustling in the foliage, fragrant air, carolling of the nightingale. Faust rides alone in sombre mood; the farther he advances the greater the silence; he dismounts. What can be the approaching light illuminating bush and sky? A procession, with torches, of white-dressed children carrying wreaths of flowers in celebration of St. John's Eve, followed by virgins in demure nuns' veils, and old priests in dark habits and with crosses. When they have passed by and the last glimpses of the lights have disappeared, Faust buries his face in his horse's mane and sheds tears more bitter than ever he shed before."

The programme of the second episode, "The Dance in the Village Tavern" or "Mephisto Waltz," has been set forth as follows by Mr. Philip Hale:

"Lenau, in this episode of his 'Faust,' pictures a marriage feast at a village tavern. There is music, there is dancing. Mephistopheles, dressed as a hunter, looks in at the tavern window, and beckons Faust to enter and take part in the sport. The fiend assures him that a damsel tastes better than a folio, and Faust answers that for some reason or other his blood is boiling. A black-eyed peasant girl maddens him at first sight, but Faust does not dare to greet her. Mephistopheles laughs at him, 'who has just had it out with hell, and is now shame-faced before a woman.' The musicians do not please him, and he cries out: 'My dear fellows, you draw a sleepy bow. Sick pleasure may turn about on lame toes to your waltz, but not youth full of blood and fire. Give me a fiddle: it will sound otherwise, and there will be different leaping in the tavern.' And Mephistopheles plays a tune. There is wild dancing, so that even the walls are pale with envy because they cannot join in the waltz. Faust presses the hand of the dark girl, he stammers oaths of love. Together they dance through the open door, through garden and over meadow, to the forest. Fainter and fainter are heard the tones of the fiddle: they are heard through songs of birds and in the wondrous dream of sensual forgetfulness."

It has been recalled—and the fact is historically interesting—that when the "Mephisto Waltz" was first played in Boston under Theodore Thomas (October 10, 1870), in a day that knew not the Till Eulenspiegel or Salome of Strauss, Mr. John S. Dwight, a critic of wide influence in the earlier days of music in America, was moved to stigmatize the music as "positively devilish, simply diabolical"; for, he held, "it shuts out every ray of light and heaven, from whence music sprang."

LOEFFLER — "THE DEATH OF TINTAGILES" SYMPHONIC POEM: Op. 6

(Charles Martin Loeffler: born in Mülhausen (Alsace), Germany, January 30, 1861; now living in Medfield, Massachusetts)

La Mort de Tintagiles: Poème Dramatique (d'après le drame de M. Maeterlinck),[90] pour grand orchestre et viole d'amour, was composed in 1897. It was written originally for orchestra and two violas d'amore [91] obbligato, and was played in this form, for the first time, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, on January 8, 1898. The score was subsequently remodelled, the second viola-d'amore part being eliminated and the prominence of the remaining solo part reduced; the instrumentation throughout was changed, and the score amended in other ways. In its present form it dates from September, 1900.

Loeffler has not essayed a literal and detailed paraphrase of Maeterlinck's play. His music is rather the expression of moods which it suggests, of emotions aroused by the singularly potent and haunting conception of the dramatist. A description and condensed paraphrase of the action of the play, written by Mr. Philip Hale, is printed on a fly-leaf of the score.[92] It reads as follows:

Loeffler's music opens with a suggestion of the sombre and portentous scene which begins the drama; a suggestion of the gathering storm, the tossing trees, the wild and sinister night. A mood is created—a mood appropriate to the prevailing emotional atmosphere of the play; and this mood is developed in the music without particular relation to the progress of the drama until near the close, where the composer takes up the thread of the action at the point in the last act were Ygraine, waiting in agonized vigil before the keyless door of iron, hears, from behind the barrier, the despairing voice and piteous appeals of the doomed Tintagiles. Here the music becomes definitely dramatic in its expression: "There is the plaintive voice of the timorous child; there are the terrifying steps in the corridor, the steps as of many, who do not walk as other beings, yet they draw near and whisper without the guarded door." As the themes of the score were conceived in accordance with the spirit of the play, it may be pointed out, on the authority of the composer, that there are musical symbols for certain of its principal characters and events. Thus a forbidding and threatening phrase which occurs persistently throughout (its first appearance is near the beginning, where it is declaimed, forte, by double-basses, 'cellos, bassoons, and bass clarinet, against string tremolos and agitated runs in the higher wood-wind) typifies the Dread Queen, the Queen of Darkness and of Terror—or, not to put too fine a point upon it, the idea of predestined and over-shadowing death: for, as it has been observed of another of Maeterlinck's plays, "the symbol floats like a flag" in this drama. The plaintive and dolorous tones of the viola d'amore may be said to voice the pathos of those who are foredoomed—typified in the play by the child Tintagiles. The culminating and concluding scene of the tragedy has its counterpart in the climax of the symphonic poem: an anguished crescendo ascent of the strings and wood-wind, allegro frenetico, punctuated by gasping ejaculations of trumpets and cornets, is suddenly cut short, as it were, in mid-air, while above a roll of the drums and the sinister vibration of the gong the theme of the Evil Queen—the theme of Death—is proclaimed fortissimo by violins, English horn, and clarinet. Then begins an epilogue which has no actual equivalent in the drama—which transcends yet fulfils it. The ending of the play is grievous and terrible in the extreme, but the ending of the tone-poem, while it is conceived in a mood of deep and piercing sadness, is at once elegiac and tender: violins and horns intone, molto dolente, a poignant phrase most acutely harmonized; 'cellos and double-basses recall the Death theme; the 'cellos alone sing an expressive phrase which bears a striking resemblance to a melodic idea in the composer's song, Les Paons, [93] and this introduces a cantabile passage, of intense and vivid sweetness (likewise suggestive of Les Paons), for strings, brass, wood-wind, and harp. The music dies away with long-sustained chords, piano, in the trombones, trumpets, horns, and higher wood-wind.

"POEM" ["LA BONNE CHANSON"]: Op. 8

In 1901 Loeffler wrote, as a companion piece to his Villanelle du Diable (see the following pages), an "aubade" for orchestra inspired by Paul Verlaine's ecstatic lines addressed to his bride, Mathilde Mauté, and printed in the volume of poems entitled La Bonne Chanson.[94] Loeffler's paraphrase was originally entitled Avant que tu ne t'en ailles, after the opening line of the poem; later this was changed to La Bonne Chanson; the title finally chosen by the composer is the French of that given above—Poème.

Verlaine's poem, in English prose, is as follows:

Loeffler's tonal translation of Verlaine's poem is in spirit a rhapsody, in form "a fantastic kind of thème varié" (theme with variations), as he describes it, "the theme appearing even in canonic form and in inversion."[96] The music opens with a passage suggestive of the opening verse of the poem: harp, glockenspiel,[97] and strings evoke the thought of the early dawn, the fading and disappearing star. The strings sing the principal theme. After an allegro passage (some will find here the thought of the ascending lark), there is a return to the serener mood of the opening; antique cymbals hint at the sparkle of the dew on the hay. The music keeps pace with the mounting eagerness and desire of the poet-lover; the excitement grows, reaching its climax in an effulgent outburst of the full orchestra, announcing the rising sun.

"THE DEVIL'S VILLANELLE," SYMPHONIC FANTASIA: Op. 9

La Villanelle du Diable, d'après un poème de M. Rollinat, Fantasie symphonique, pour grand orchestre et orgue, was composed in 1901. Its subject is Maurice Rollinat's[98] strange poem, La Villanelle du Diable. A "villanelle" (in the sense in which the term is used by Rollinat) is an old verse-form in which a couplet is followed by a refrain. In Rollinat's poem there are two alternating refrains, or burdens, which are united at the end.

The first is:

"Hell's a-burning, burning, burning."
(L'enfer brûle, brûle, brûle.)

the second:

"The Devil, prowling, runs about."
(Le Diable rôde et circule.)

Each refrain has been given a musical counterpart by the composer, and each couplet is illustrated, though suggestively rather than in literal detail.

The following prose translation of Rollinat's verses, made by Mr. Philip Hale, is prefixed to the published score of Loeffler's fantasia:

"A PAGAN POEM," FOR ORCHESTRA AND PIANO: Op. 14

This tone-poem was written originally (in 1901) for a small combination of instruments,[99] and was intended for performance as chamber-music. It was afterwards arranged for two pianos and three trumpets, and was performed in private in this form. In 1905-6 the work was recast in its present shape—for orchestra with piano. Its inspiration is derived from the Eighth Eclogue of Virgil, the subject of which consists of two love-songs, placed in the mouths of Damon and Alphesibœus. The poetic basis of Loeffler's music is found in the second of these love-songs. A Thessalian girl has resorted to magic incantations in the hope that she may bring back to her cottage her truant lover Daphnis. The passage which inspired the mood of the music, and which is quoted as a preface to the score, is as follows (beginning, in the original, at the line Effer aquam, et molli cinge hæc altaria vitta):

The refrain—Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim—is intoned by three trumpets behind the scenes.

MACDOWELL — "LANCELOT AND ELAINE," SYMPHONIC POEM: Op. 25

(Edward MacDowell: born in New York City, December 18, 1861; now living there and in Peterboro, N. H.)

This symphonic poem was composed at Wiesbaden in 1886. The published score contains no indication of the specific moods, scenes, or incidents which gave rise to the music; there is merely the brief line: "After Tennyson," printed beneath the title. Yet it is known that MacDowell conceived his music to correspond, point by point, with certain definite happenings in the story of Lancelot and the Lily Maid of Astolat, as narrated by Tennyson; and this correspondence between the poem and the music it is possible to indicate here in some detail.

These are the incidents which are successively illustrated in the music:

TWO FRAGMENTS (AFTER THE "SONG OF ROLAND"): Op. 30

MacDowell, while living in Wiesbaden, Germany (from 1885 to 1888), projected a symphony on the subject of the Song of Roland, and a portion of it was composed; but the plan was afterwards abandoned, and the music which was to have formed part of the symphony was published, in 1891, in the form of two short tone-poems founded upon episodes in the poem, and entitled: Die Sarazenen; Die schöne Aldâ: Zwei Fragmente (nach dem Rolandslied) für grosses Orchester. MacDowell has quoted on the fly-leaf of the score those portions of the poem from which the conception of his music sprang.

"The Saracens," a tempestuous Allegretto feroce, is a sombre portrayal of the scene in which Ganelon swears to commit treason against Roland, while the Saracens feast amid the flaring of pagan fires and the wailing of sinister music. It is based on these lines from the Song (printed in the score in old German):

THE SARACENS

"With blasts of trumpets and amid festal and warlike scenes, tumultuously rushed forward the heathen hordes and all their high chiefs. Quoth Ganelon: 'I swear to you that of Roland I shall make an end.'" [103]

The second "fragment," "The Lovely Aldâ," an Andantino teneramente of grave tenderness, depicts the loveliness and the grieving of Aldâ, Roland's wife. [104] MacDowell uses as a preface lines from the German version, which, in translation, read thus:

THE LOVELY ALDÂ

"Then came forward the lovely Aldâ; graciously was she received by the Emperor himself and all his court. Spake she: 'Karl, consecrated sovereign, where is my Roland? Bring back to me my hero, he to whom you gave me as wife! Ah, what joy should I have in beholding him once more!'"

SUITE (No. 2), "INDIAN": Op. 48

This suite, in five movements, was composed in 1891-92. It is MacDowell's last and most important orchestral work. Its thematic material, as he acknowledges in a prefatory note to the score, is based upon melodies of the North American Indians, with the exception of a few subsidiary themes of his own invention. "If separate titles for the different movements are desired," he says in his note, "they should be arranged as follows [I give them here together with the expression marks at the head of each movement, which are highly indicative of their character]:

1. "LEGEND"

("Not fast; with much dignity and character")

2. "LOVE-SONG"

("Not fast; tenderly")

3. "IN WAR TIME"

("With rough vigor, almost savagely")

4. "DIRGE"

("Dirgelike, mournfully")

5. "VILLAGE FESTIVAL"

("Swift and light")

Although there is no reason to believe that MacDowell has here based his music upon such a detailed dramatic plan as underlies, for example, his symphonic poem "Lancelot and Elaine" (see pages 191-194), it is evident that he was inspired by moods and pictures the nature of which is sufficiently indicated by the titles of the different movements. It may be interesting to note that there is authority for the statement that the principal theme of the first movement ("Legend") was taken from a harvest-song of the Iroquois Indians in New York State; that for his second movement ("Love-Song") the composer used a love-song of the Iowas; that the dominant theme of "In War Time" is one to which the Indians of the Atlantic coast attributed a supernatural origin and character; that a Kiowa theme (a woman's song of mourning for her lost son) dominates the "Dirge"; and that the chief melodic ideas of the last movement are a war-song and a woman's dance of the Iroquois.

In this music, it has been said, MacDowell "has caught and transfixed the essential character of his subject: these are the sorrows and laments and rejoicings, not of our own day and people, but of the vanished life of an elemental and dying race: here is the solitude of dark forests, of vast and windswept prairies, and the sombreness and wildness of one knows not what grim tragedies and romances and festivities enacted in the shadow of a fading past."

[MacDowell's three remaining works for orchestra—the symphonic poem "Hamlet; Ophelia" (Op. 22),[105] the "Suite" (No. 1: Op. 42), and its supplement, "In October"—have no programmes whatsoever. The suite is in four movements, titled as follows: (1) "In a Haunted Forest" (In einem verwünschten Walde); (2) "Summer Idyll" (Sommer-Idylle); (3) "The Shepherdess' Song" (Gesang der Hirten); (4) "Forest Spirits" (Waldgeister). "In October," the supplement, is in one movement. This episode formed part of the original suite, but was not published until several years after (the first four parts were published in 1891; the supplement in 1893). Both are included under the same opus number.]

MENDELSSOHN — OVERTURE, "A MIDSUMMER-NIGHTS DREAM": Op. 21

(Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: born in Hamburg, February 3, 1809; died in Leipsic, November 4, 1847)

Mendelssohn, knowing Shakespeare through German translations by Schlegel and Tieck, wrote in 1826 (he was then seventeen years old) his overture to "A Midsummer-Night's Dream." The music was begun July 7th, and finished August 6th. It was first written as a piano duet, and afterwards scored for orchestra. Mendelssohn's incidental music to Shakespeare's play was not composed until seventeen years later. The following comments by Mr. Frederick Niecks furnish an excellent indication of the significance of the overture: "Before our mind's eye," he writes, "are called up Oberon and Titania as they meet in 'grove or green by fountain clear or spangled starlight sheen'; the elves, who, when their king and queen quarrel, creep into acorn-cups; ... Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed; the knavish sprite Puck, alias Robin Goodfellow, who delights in playing merry pranks.... But there are other things in the overture than fairies. There are Duke Theseus and his betrothed, Queen Hippolyta, and their train; the two pairs of lovers—Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena; and those hempen homespuns, the Athenian tradesmen—Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout, and Starveling.... But let us see where the different dramatis personæ are to be found in the overture.

"The sustained chords of the wind instruments [which begin the work] are the magic formula that opens to us the realm of fairyland. The busy, tripping part of the first subject [violins and violas] tells us of the fairies; the broader and dignified part, of Duke Theseus and his following; the passionate first part of the second subject [at first wood-wind, then strings, later the full orchestra], of the romantic lovers; and the clownish second part, of the tradesmen, the braying reminding us of Bottom's transformation into an ass. The development is full of the vivacious bustle and play and fun of the elves; ... the pianissimo passage towards the end ... signifies the elves' blessing on the house of the Duke. In conclusion we have once more the magic formula [the four sustained chords of the opening], which now dissolves the dream it had before conjured up."

OVERTURE, "FINGAL'S CAVE" [OR, "THE HEBRIDES"] [106] : Op. 26

Mendelssohn, visiting the Hebrides in 1829, was deeply impressed with what he saw. "In order to make you realize," he says in a letter written August 7, 1829, "how extraordinarily the Hebrides affected me, the following came into my mind there"—then follows, in notation, a passage from the overture. Later in the month he wrote from Glasgow: "How much lies between then and now! ... Staffa—scenery, travels, people: Klingerman [the friend who accompanied him] has described it all, and you will excuse a short note, especially as what I can best tell you is contained in the above music." In September he wrote from London: "'The Hebrides' story builds itself up gradually"; and early in the following year (January 21, 1832) he wrote from Paris: "I cannot bring 'The Hebrides' to a hearing here because I do not regard it as finished in the form in which I originally wrote it [the first version of the overture was finished late in 1830]. The middle portion ... is very stupid, and the whole working out smells more of counterpoint than of blubber, sea-gulls, and salt fish." His friend Klingermann wrote as follows of the impressions produced by Fingal's Cave: "We were put out in boats, and climbed, the hissing sea close beside us, over the pillar stumps to the celebrated Fingal's Cave. A greener roar of waters surely never rushed into a stranger cavern—comparable, on account of the many pillars, to the inside of an immense organ, black and resounding, lying there absolutely purposeless in its utter loneliness, the wide, gray sea within and without."

It has been said of the music of this overture that, in hearing it, "you will think of yourself in a ship, gliding over rocking waves, about you a vast expanse of sea and sky, light breezes blowing, the romantic stories of the past coloring the sights that one has seen." Wagner, on the strength of this work, praised the composer as "a landscape painter of the first order."

OVERTURE, "BECALMED AT SEA AND PROSPEROUS VOYAGE": Op. 27

Mendelssohn's Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt[107] was written in illustration of two short and contrasted poems by Goethe, entitled Meeres Stille and Glückliche Fahrt (published in 1796). They have been translated into English prose as follows:

The overture was composed in 1828, and revised five years later. The introduction (Adagio) pictures the ominous calm, the deathlike quiet of the waters, the vast and motionless expanse of windless sea. The flute-calls which end this first section have been interpreted as "the cry of some solitary sea-bird," as "whistling for the wind," as a portrayal of "dead silence and solitude." Then follows (Molto allegro vivace) the picture of the sudden and inspiriting change which comes with the springing up of the breeze—the clearing of the sky, the joyous resumption of the voyage, the exhilarated spirits of the mariners. The conclusion suggests the happy arrival in port, the salutes, the dropping of the anchor.

OVERTURE TO THE LEGEND OF THE LOVELY MELUSINA: Op. 32

We know, on the testimony of Mendelssohn himself, that this overture, based on the ancient legend of the fair being who was part woman and part fish, was suggested to the composer by an opera on the subject which he saw at Berlin in 1833. Under date of April 7, 1834, he wrote to his sister Fanny: "You ask me which legend you are to read. How many, then, are there? And how many, then, do I know? And do you not know the story of the lovely Melusina?... Or have you really never heard of the beautiful fish? I have composed this overture to an opera by Konradin Kreutzer ["Melusine," libretto by Fr. Grillparzer, music by Kreutzer, produced at Berlin February 27, 1833] which I heard last year about this time at the Königsstadt Theatre.... Hähnel [the singer—Amalie Hähnel—who took the part of Melusine] ... was very charming, especially in one scene where she presents herself as a mermaid and dresses her hair; it was then that I conceived the idea of writing an overture.... I took what pleased me of the subject (and that is, precisely what coincides with the legend). In short, the overture came into the world, and this is its family history."

The Ouvertüre zum Märchen von der Schönen Melusine was finished November 14, 1833. Schumann wrote of it as follows in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, after a performance in Leipsic: "To understand it, no one needs to read the longspun, although richly imaginative, tale of Tieck;[108] it is enough to know that the charming Melusina was violently in love with the handsome knight Lusignan, and married him upon his promising that certain days in the year he would leave her alone. One day the truth breaks upon Lusignan that Melusina is a mermaid—half fish, half woman. The material is variously worked up, in words as in tones. But one must not here, any more than in the overture to Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' wish to trace so coarse an historical thread all through.... Always conceiving his subject poetically, Mendelssohn here portrays only the characters of the man and the woman, of the proud, knightly Lusignan and the enticing, yielding Melusina; but it is as if the watery waves came up amid their embraces and overwhelmed and parted them again. And this revives in every listener those pleasant images by which the youthful fancy loves to linger, those fables of the life deep down beneath the watery abyss, full of shooting fishes with golden scales, of pearls in open shells, of buried treasures, which the sea has snatched from men, of emerald castles towering one above another, etc. This, it seems to us, is what distinguishes this overture from the earlier ones: that it narrates these kind [sic] of things quite in the manner of a story, and does not experience them. Hence, at first sight, the surface appears somewhat cold, dumb; but what a life and interweaving there is down below is more clearly expressed through music than through words, for which reason the overture (we confess) is far better than this description of it." [109]

It has been said that the music illustrates "the loveliness and the loving nature of Melusina; the hardness of her fate and the anxiety caused by it. The waving motion [the flowing theme heard at the beginning] is indicative of her grace, and at the same time reminds us of the element with which she was connected." A more energetic theme is said to suggest Melusina's knightly consort; a third theme (in the violins) is a love-motive; later there is a return, fortissimo, of the energetic knightly theme of the beginning. There is a development of these themes; and "near the end we may recognize [Melusina's] cries on being discovered by her husband. The rest is like the vanishing of a beautiful reality into a beautiful memory."

SYMPHONY No. 3 ("SCOTCH"): Op. 56

1. Andante con moto

Allegro un poco agitato

2. Vivace non troppo

3. Adagio

4. Allegro vivacissimo

Allegro maestoso assai

To Mendelssohn's Scotch visit in the summer of 1829 may be traced this third symphony in A minor, as well as the "Fingal's Cave" ["Hebrides"] overture (see page 200-202). In a letter dated July 30, 1829, he wrote from Edinburgh: "We went, in the deep twilight, to the Palace of Holyrood, where Queen Mary lived and loved. There is a little room to be seen there, with a winding staircase leading up to it. This the murderers ascended, and, finding Rizzio, ... drew him out; about three chambers away is a small corner where they killed him. The chapel is roofless, grass and ivy grow abundantly in it; and before the altar, now in ruins, Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. [110] Everything about is broken and mouldering, and the bright sky shines in. I believe I found to-day in that old chapel the beginning of my Scotch symphony."

The symphony was planned in 1831. In a letter written from Rome in March of that year he says: "From April 15th to May 15th is the heyday of the year in Italy. Is it to be wondered at that I cannot call up the misty Scotch mood?" The work was not completed until more than a decade later—January 20, 1842.

The first movement has been said to record the sombre impressions made upon the composer by his visit to Holyrood. The second movement has been described as "a picture of pastoral nature, characterized by a continuous flow of rural gaiety," and as "the most wonderful compound of health and life, heath and moor, blowing wind, screaming eagles, bagpipes, fluttering tartans, and elastic steps of racing Highlanders, all rounded off and brought into one perfect picture." The third movement (Adagio) has been characterized as "a revery in which the composer meditates upon the ancient state and grandeur of the country. Its majestic strains might almost have been swept from Ossian's harp." In the last movement "the romantic sentiment disappears. In its place we have the heroic expressed with astonishing force and exuberant spirit." This movement has also been called "the gathering of the clans."

SYMPHONY No. 4 ("ITALIAN"): Op. 90

This symphony was begun during Mendelssohn's sojourn in Italy (1830-31); it was finished in March, 1833. The following commentary by Ambros on the characteristics of the different movements is as sound and as interesting as any: "... That Italian clearness of outline, that cheerful, ingenuous enjoyment of abounding life without dream-like reflection, is a fundamental feature of the A major symphony. If it were not too hazardous, one might say ... [that] there sounds in Mendelssohn's symphony, not indeed the impression of Rome, ... where, according to Jean Paul's expression, the spirits of heroes, artists, and saints gaze on man, seriously admonishing him,—but rather the local tone of the environs of Monte Cavo in the adjacent Albanian chain of mountains. Indeed, we may readily imagine the youth Mendelssohn looking out, let us say, from Nemi or Genzano across the rounded mirror of the sea upon the splendid foliage of the wooded cliffs of the coast, and how the motive of the first movement, loudly exulting in the full joy of life, passes through his soul, so that he has to sing it aloud.

"The Andante [generally known as the 'Pilgrim's March'] has been thought by some to be in the church style. 'The cowl,' according to an old proverb, 'does not make the monk,' and just as little does a continuous contrapuntal bass make a piece of music into a contrapuntally conceived one. We might perhaps say more appropriately that the Andante tells a romance of the olden time, as it were, in the style of Chronicles—only the poet's eye occasionally betrays itself, sadly smiling. Being once in the Albanian mountains, with our fancy, perhaps we now recall the picturesque castle-embattlements of Grotta Ferrata, and the old devotional stations with the solemn mosaic pictures of saints upon a gold ground.

"In the [third movement] the person of the tone-poet advances more into the foreground: it is the purest feeling of well-being, of calm, happy enjoyment, that emanates from the gentle movement of this melody, as if reciting to itself Rückert's glorious words:

"'Die Erd' ist schön genug den Himmel zu erwarten,
Den Himmel zu vergessen nicht schön genug ihr Garten.'

["'The earth is fair enough to make us hope for heaven,
Her garden not so fair that heaven is lost to mind.']

"And these horns in the Trio,[111] are they not as if, in the midst of the Italian paradise, a truly German yearning comes over him for the dear light green of the woods of his home?

"But the Finale, the 'Saltarello,'[112] draws us into the midst of the gay swirl of Southern life; and the almost melancholy ritardando[113] towards the close, does it not remind us, like a sigh of the tone-poet, that amid all the magnificence he is, after all, but a stranger, a wanderer that comes and goes? Like Berlioz's 'Harold,' this symphony is therefore a souvenir of Italian travel, a piece of Italy that the tone-poet has brought away with him." [114]

Mendelssohn witnessed the Carnival at Rome, and this last movement was doubtless the result of his impressions, which he recorded in a letter written [from Rome] February 8, 1831: "On Saturday all the world went to the Capitol to witness the form of the Jews' supplications to be suffered to remain in the Sacred City for another year, a request which is refused at the foot of the hill, but, after repeated entreaties, granted on the summit, and the Ghetto is assigned to them. It was a tiresome affair; we waited two hours, and, after all, understood the oration of the Jews as little as the answer of the Christians. I came down again in very bad humor, and thought that the Carnival had begun rather unpropitiously. So I arrived in the Corso and was driving along, thinking no evil, when I was suddenly assailed by a shower of sugar comfits. I looked up; they had been flung by some young ladies whom I had seen occasionally at balls, but scarcely knew, and when, in my embarrassment, I took off my hat to bow to them, the pelting began in right earnest. Their carriage drove on, and in the next was Miss T——, a delicate young English-woman. I tried to bow to her, but she pelted me, too; so I became quite desperate, and, clutching the confetti, I flung them back bravely. There were swarms of my acquaintances, and my blue coat was soon as white as that of a miller. The B——s were standing on a balcony, flinging confetti like hail at my head; and thus pelting and pelted, amid a thousand jests and jeers and the most extravagant masks, the day ended with races."

RAFF — SYMPHONY No. 3, "IN THE WOODS": Op. 153

(Joachim Raff: born in Lachen, on the Lake of Zurich, May 27, 1822; died in Frankfort-on-the-Main, June 25, 1882)

1. In the Daytime

IMPRESSIONS AND SENSATIONS

(Allegro)

2. At Twilight

(a) REVERY

(Largo)

(b) DANCE OF DRYADS

(Allegro assai)
(Poco meno mosso)

3. At Night

SILENT RUSTLING OF THE WOODS AT NIGHT. ENTRANCE AND EXIT OF THE WILD HUNT WITH FRAU HOLLE (HULDA) AND WOTAN. DAYBREAK

(Allegro)

Raff, an astonishingly prolific composer, wrote twelve symphonies,[115] of which "In the Woods" (Im Walde) is one of the two that have most conspicuously survived the winnowing processes of time.

Im Walde was composed at Wiesbaden in 1869. The programmatic bases of its different movements may be indicated as follows:

I. In the Daytime
IMPRESSIONS AND SENSATIONS (Allegro)

"The first movement represents in a general manner the feelings of a lover of nature in the forest on a summer day." The Introduction evokes the spirit of the woods "with the nameless charm of rustling branches and the glintings of sunlight." The mood is developed at length in its musical expression; the close "brings to its end this charming picture of the quiet surprises of the woodland in an autumn day."

II. At Twilight
(a) REVERY (Largo)

"After a short introduction [clarinet and horn]," comments Mr. George P. Upton, "the Largo begins with a beautiful and suggestive melody [strings]—the revery of the dreamer." Later, "the theme returns twice—the first time with heightened pastoral effect, the second time in much the same manner as when originally given out."

(b) DANCE OF DRYADS (Scherzo: Poco meno mosso)

Flutes announce the principal theme. This "is in reality a dance movement—the dance of the Dryads—but before its close the Revery motive of the Largo appears, and thus unifies the movement and completes the picture of the dreamer and his revery intruded upon by the dancing wood-nymphs."

III. At Night
SILENT RUSTLING OF THE WOODS AT NIGHT. ENTRANCE AND EXIT OF THE WILD HUNT WITH FRAU HOLLE AND WOTAN. DAYBREAK (Allegro)

A mysterious pianissimo theme for 'cellos and double-basses paints the darkness and solemnity of the forest night. The spectral approach of the Wild Hunt, [116] Dame Hulda [117] ("Frau Holle") and Wotan following in the train of the unholy crew, is announced by a strongly rhythmed theme in the strings, clarinets, and bassoons. The hunt draws near and passes in a tumultuous increasing and diminishing uproar of the orchestra; the fury of the chase dies away, and there is a sharply contrasted tone-picture of the dawn; a suggestion of the sunrise brings the end.

SYMPHONY No. 5, "LENORE": Op. 177

PART I. HAPPINESS IN LOVE

1. Allegro

2. Andante quasi larghetto

PART II. PARTING

3. MARCH TEMPO; Agitato

PART III. REUNION IN DEATH
(Introduction and Ballad After Bürger's "LENORE")

4. Allegro

Of this symphony in three divisions (composed at Wiesbaden in 1872) only the last part, strictly speaking, is based on Bürger's [118] celebrated ballad "Lenore." The first two parts illustrate phases of the experience of the two lovers which antedate the beginning of the story told by the poem.

In Bürger's poem the maid Lenore laments the absence of her lover William, who has gone to war "on Prague's dread battle-field";

"Nor had he sent to tell
If he were safe and well." [119]

The war ends, yet still no tidings come from the missing swain. Lenore, frenzied by doubt and longing, utters blasphemies. But that night a horse and rider draw up at the gate, and a knock summons her to the door. It is William. He bids her "bind her dress" and mount upon his horse behind him,

"... for to-day I thee
A hundred leagues must bear,
My nuptial couch to share."

Lenore complies, though after some questioning, and they make off through the moonlight. The pace is wild and terrible. They pass a train of mourners bearing a coffin to the grave, but at the behest of the bewildering bridegroom the funeral party leaves the body and joins in the mad ride. The croaking of night birds is heard, and spectres are seen dancing about a gibbet.

"How all beneath the moonbeams flew,
How flew it far and fast!
How o'er their head the heavens blue
And stars flew swiftly past!
'Love, fear'st thou aught? The moon shines bright.
Hurrah! The dead ride quick by night!
Dost fear, my love, the dead?'
'Ah! speak not of the dead!'"

Finally, as day begins to break, they dash through an iron gateway into a graveyard. Then Lenore beholds a horrid transformation in her lover:

"The rider's jerkin, piece by piece,
Like tinder falls asunder.
Upon his head no lock of hair—
A naked skull, all grisly bare;
A skeleton, alas!
With scythe and hour-glass."

The "snorting charger" vanishes in flame; dreadful cries fill the air; in the moonlight grisly spirits are seen dancing, and howling as they dance:

"For hear! for hear! though hearts should break,
Blaspheme not, lest God's wrath thou wake!
Thy body's knell we toll,
May God preserve thy soul!"

PART I. HAPPINESS IN LOVE
Allegro
Andante quasi larghetto

The first movement of Raff's symphony ("Happiness in Love") portrays the felicity of the lovers before the departure of William for the wars. "Tenderness and longing speak out," changing to "anxiety and foreboding." "The second part of the movement is a delightful representation of the discourse of the lovers, in which it is not difficult to imagine William listening to the anxious expressions of Lenore and seeking to quiet her and allay her apprehensions."

PART II. PARTING
MARCH TEMPO; Agitato

"War has broken out, and the lover must take his departure." As from a distance, the march is heard, at first softly; it increases in volume and emphasis, coming nearer and nearer. There is an interruption (Agitato), "which graphically depicts the parting of the lovers [an impassioned dialogue between violins and 'cellos] and Lenore's grief and despair." The march is resumed, gradually diminishes, and dies away in the distance.

PART III. REUNITING IN DEATH
Allegro

This, as has been said, is the only portion of the symphony which is explicitly derived from Bürger's poem. I quote Mr. George P. Upton's spirited commentary: "It opens with a plaintive theme ... suggestive of Lenore mourning for her lover as she wakes from troubled dreams. Then follows an intimation of her fate in a brief phrase for the trombones. The Trio[120] of the march tells the story of her despair, for the army has returned without her lover. Her blasphemy and the remonstrances of her mother are clearly indicated. The recurrence of the first theme lands up to a rhythmical figure for the viola, representing the tramp of the steed bearing the spectre bridegroom. The bell tinkles softly, and Lenore descends to meet her lover. Then the 'cellos take up the figure, retaining it to the close. The terrible ride begins. The bassoons and oboes carry on the dialogue between the spectre and his bride. One after another the constantly intensified and impetuous music pictures the scenes of the ride, the 'cellos and other strings keeping up their figure. A gloomy dirge tells us of the funeral train, and a weird theme in triple time of the spectres' dance about the gibbet, accompanied by wild cries of the night birds. More and more furious grows the ride until the graveyard is reached, when, after a moment of silence following the transformation, a chorale strain is heard, with a sad and tender accompaniment. The wretched maiden has at last found rest."

RIMSKY-KORSAKOFF — "SADKO," A MUSICAL PICTURE: Op. 5

(Nicolas Andrejevitch Rimsky-Korsakoff: born in Tikhvin, in the government of Novgorod, Russia, March 18,[121] 1844; now living in St. Petersburg)

Rimsky-Korsakoff, who as a young man served as an officer in the Russian navy, has in his music shown a peculiar aptitude for delineating the moods and aspects of the sea. "Sadko," composed in 1867, and sometimes spoken of as "the first Russian symphonic poem," is music of the sea. It has this programme, which is prefaced to the score:

"The ship bearing Sadko [a hero of Russian legend, or, according to some, a historical character], a famous gusli [122] player, is becalmed on the high sea. He is thrown overboard by his fellow-travellers as a propitiatory offering to the Sea King, who receives him in his domain, while the ship sails on. There is a great company beneath the waves, for the Sea King is celebrating the wedding of his daughter to the Ocean. He compels Sadko to play on his gusli, and they all dance to the music. Spectres appear; the dance grows wilder and wilder; stormier and stormier are the billows. Sadko breaks the strings of his instrument; an end is put to the dancing, the sea grows calmer, and it is soon dark and still in the ocean depths." [123]

In the music there is first (Moderato assai) a suggestion of the quiet sea, the becalmed ship. Following that, the picturesque intent of the music, heard in the light of the programme, is easily followed.

"ANTAR," SYMPHONY No. 2: Op. 15

1. Largo

Allegro vivace

2. Allegro

3. Allegro risoluto alla Marcia

4. Allegretto vivace

Andante amoroso

Antar was a famous Arabian warrior-poet of pre-Mohammedan times. He lived in the sixth century, and his eloquence and inspiration as a poet were so revered that one of his poems, inscribed upon deerskin, was hung up among the idols in the Kaaba[124] at Mecca for the adoration of worshippers. Rimsky-Korsakoff's symphony (first performed at Magdeburg in 1881) is based on a tale by Sennkowsky of which Antar is the hero. Its substance is condensed in the following note, in French and German, prefaced to the score:

The grave theme for violas and wood-wind which is heard in the opening Largo, and which recurs throughout the symphony, has been called the "Antar" motive; while the graceful motive for flute and accompanying horns in the succeeding Allegro section has been said to characterize the transformed gazelle—the miraculously potent fairy queen through whose love Antar finally meets his end.

César Cui, to whom the score is dedicated, has thus commented on the music:

"First Part: Antar is in the desert—he saves a gazelle from a beast of prey. The gazelle is a fay, who rewards her deliverer by granting him three pleasures. The whole of this part, which begins and ends with a picture of the desolate and boundless desert, is worthy of the composer's magic brush.

"Second Part: The pleasure of Vengeance—a rugged, savage, unbridled Allegro, with crescendos like the letting loose of furious winds.

"Third Part: The Pleasure of Power—an Oriental march. A masterpiece of the finest and most brilliant interpretation.

"Last Part: The Pleasure of Love, amid which Antar expires—a delicate, poetic, delicious Andante...."

And Alfred Bruneau speaks of the music's striking depiction of the three primal human passions: "These sentiments, passing severally through diverse measures, tonalities, and rhythms, over which hovers insistently the parent-phrase of Antar, are the faithful reflections of our tormented, vague, and mysterious souls."

"SCHEHERAZADE," SYMPHONIC SUITE AFTER "A THOUSAND NIGHTS AND A NIGHT": Op. 35

Prefixed to the score of this suite (published in 1889) is the following programme, printed in French and Russian:

There is doubt as to Rimsky-Korsakoff's precise intention in the programme of this suite. Which one of Sindbad's voyages is described, which of the three Kalendars is referred to, and what adventure of what young prince and princess, the composer leaves to his hearers to decide. Moreover, the event mentioned in the last number of the suite—the wrecking of the ship upon a rock surmounted by a warrior of brass (not "bronze")—occurs in the story of the third Kalendar, while the wreck of Sindbad's ship occurred under different circumstances. The truth seems to be that Rimsky-Korsakoff has aimed at translating into music the spirit and atmosphere which unifies the various stories, and has not troubled himself about the accuracy or the consistency of his paraphrase. Like Scheherazade herself, he has strung together, without regard for continuity or coherence, whatever incidents and fragments suited his purpose. Thus his music is to be taken as a gloss on the tales as a whole—on their general and underlying mood, their color, their imaginative essence.

I. THE SEA AND SINDBAD'S SHIP

The first theme of this movement, heard at the opening, has been identified both as the motive of the Sea and of Sindbad. Later we hear (solo violin, with harp chords) the motive of Scheherazade. An undulating arpeggio figure has been called the Wave motive, and a theme first sung by the solo flute that of the Ship. The Sea motive forms a climax of the full orchestra. There is a tranquil close.

II. THE TALE OF THE KALENDAR-PRINCE

After an introductory passage, we hear the Scheherazade theme on a solo violin with harp accompaniment, followed by a theme, quasi recitando, for solo bassoon, which seems here to have the rôle of narrator. There is an intermezzo of Oriental character. The end is spirited.

III. THE YOUNG PRINCE AND THE YOUNG PRINCESS

"Some think from the 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 moon)." This movement is idyllic, a romanza evolved out of two themes of folk-song character.

IV. FESTIVAL AT BAGDAD. THE SEA.
THE SHIP IS WRECKED ON A ROCK SURMOUNTED BY A BRONZE WARRIOR

The motive of the Sea begins the movement; the Scheherazade theme follows; then (Allegro molto e frenetico) begins a brilliant depiction of the revels at Bagdad. Then, abruptly, we are transferred to a scene on shipboard. "We seem to plunge into the broad movement of the surging sea, straight on to the fateful event." While the jollification is at its height the ship strikes the dreadful rock. "The trombones roar out the Sea motive against the billowy Wave motive in the strings.... The storm dies.... There is a quiet ending with development on the Sea and Wave motives. The tales are told. Scheherazade, the narrator, who lived with Shahriar 'in all pleasance and solace of life and its delights till there took them the Destroyer of delights and the Severer of societies, the Desolater of dwelling-places and the Garnerer of graveyards, and they were translated to the ruth of Almighty Allah,' fades away with the vision and the final note of her violin."

"A NIGHT ON MOUNT TRIGLAV": THIRD ACT OF THE OPERA-BALLET "MLADA" (CONCERT ARRANGEMENT FOR ORCHESTRA) [128]

In 1872 Rimsky-Korsakoff, César Cui, Modest Moussorgsky, and Alexander Borodine (who, with Mily Balakireff, were the famous coterie who founded the "neo-Russian" school forty years ago) [129] wrote each the music of an act to an opera libretto by Gedeonoff, their chief of the Imperial Theatres, who had ordered the work. This composite opera was never produced, but Rimsky-Korsakoff made use of his share of the music for the third act of his opera-ballet "Mlada" (produced in 1893). The composer afterwards made a concert arrangement of the music of this act, and it was performed at Moscow in 1903, under the direction of Wassily Safonoff.

The score of the work in its purely orchestral form is prefaced by a descriptive programme, of which the following is a translation:

"The stage is covered with thick clouds. Darkness. The clouds disperse little by little, and finally disappear completely. Falling stars. A clear, moonless night. A gorge on Mount Triglav. Souls of the dead approach floating, and begin a fantastic round (Kolo). The full moon, which rises, lights up the gorge; in its rays appears the wraith of the princess Mlada, making signs to Jaromir to follow her. Lightly she glides above the rocks and precipices. Jaromir follows her. The shades interrupt the Kolo. Jaromir, in a wild burst of passion, seeks to approach Mlada, who disappears. Jaromir pursues her. The moon grows red. Subterranean thunder. Seized with terror, the shades of the dead disappear. Night birds wing their way across the stage. Evil spirits issue from all the caverns and crevasses—demons, spectres, and sorcerers come forth, and serpents and toads crawl out. Revels and dances of the spirits of darkness. From the midst of the infernal round, Chernobog arises, in the form of a black stag, with his followers. He evokes the souls of Jaromir and of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. Impenetrable darkness. The stage is transformed into a splendid Egyptian hall. Queen Cleopatra is reclining upon a sumptuous couch of purple, surrounded by dancing-girls and slaves. Dances of the slaves, the dancing-girls, and Cleopatra. She seeks passionately to draw Jaromir towards her; the soul of the latter grows animated; the wraith of Mlada hides its face in its hands and weeps. A cock crows. Suddenly everything vanishes. Deep night; a peal of underground thunder. Quiet. The clouds successively disperse. First gleam of dawn. The wooded slope of Mount Triglav. Jaromir is sleeping. Nature awakes; the leaves rustle and the birds twitter. A ray of the rising sun falls on Jaromir. Full daylight."

SUITE, "CHRISTMAS EVE"

TABLEAU 1. INTRODUCTION: CHRISTMAS EVE
TABLEAU 2. IN SPACE
TABLEAU 3. BRILLIANT BALL IN THE IMPERIAL PALACE
TABLEAU 4. NIGHT, IN SPACE

Rimsky-Korsakoff composed, in 1895, an opera, "Christmas Eve," based on a story by Gogol.[130] It was produced at St. Petersburg December 10, 1895. Excerpts from it were afterwards made into a suite by the composer. Mr. H. E. Krehbiel has paraphrased Gogol's tale, as it has been utilized by Rimsky-Korsakoff, with a clearness and concision which could not well be bettered:

"[The story] is concerned with one of the adventures of the hero, a young, handsome, herculean, and stout-hearted blacksmith named Wakula, in an effort to win the hand of a wilful and capricious damsel named Oxana. She commands him to bring her the tscherewitschki (embroidered slippers, or little shoes) of the Empress Catherine the Great. To understand how he achieved this feat it is necessary to relate that his mother, Ssoloka, is a mistress of the magic arts, and also a buxom dame, who counts among her four lovers not only the father of the whimsical Oxana, but the devil himself. One day, the day before Christmas, her four lovers appear at her house in such rapid succession that she is obliged to hide them in sacks, one after another, to prevent discovery of the numerous rivalry. In her haste two are put into one sack. She has just disposed of the last when Wakula comes home, and to him she gives the sacks (as containing so much coal) to carry away to various destinations. Wakula shoulders the three sacks at once and is off. After depositing two of them in the street, he discovers that he has trapped the devil in the third, and under threat of baptizement unless he consents, compels his satanic majesty to transport him instanter to St. Petersburg, and help him get the empress's slippers. Here the suite begins, and, since most of it is of the descriptive order, the rest of the tale may best be told with hints intended to identify the scenes with the music."

TABLEAU I. INTRODUCTION: CHRISTMAS EVE

"The scene pictures Dikanka, a village in Little Russia, on a clear, cold night (Adagio)."

TABLEAU II. IN SPACE

"The stars group themselves upon the clouds (Andante). The stars engage in games and dances (Ballet). Mazurka, Allegro assai.... A procession of comets (Adagio). A round dance, revolution of the constellations about the pole (Andante non troppo). A shower of meteors ( ... Allegro). Clouds descend and hide the stars. A wizard rides into view, seated in a kettle, which he drives with an oven-fork; after him, a rout of wizards, in pots, kettles and bowls, carrying forks, frying-pans, tongs, and pokers; witches astride of brooms. Dance of the witches. Wakula rushes by upon the devil, in the shape of a winged horse; wizards and witches skurry after him (Allegro assai, with a dactyllic figure to suggest the infernal ride). The lights of St. Petersburg are seen (Moderato)."

TABLEAU III. BRILLIANT BALL IN THE IMPERIAL PALACE

"(Polonaise, Allegro non troppo, alla Polacca.) The devil enters with Wakula (the dactyllic figure is resumed). Darkness comes over the scene."

TABLEAU IV. NIGHT, IN SPACE

"Glimpses of the setting moon are had through rifts in the clouds (Andante). Flying through the clouds, a multitude of empty pots and kettles, brooms, forks, and other kitchen utensils (Allegro). Wakula dashes past, in the opposite direction, upon his devil-horse (Allegro assai). The clouds disperse and vanish. The moon sets, and the morning star (Venus) appears (Moderato). Dawn. Kolyada, in a golden sledge, and Ovsen, on a boar with golden bristles, appear with a train of light elves who hymn them (Andante). Kolyada is an ancient Slavic sun goddess. In an old ceremony she used to be represented by a maiden, clad in white robes, who was driven from house to house in the yuletide, while kolyadki (i.e., Kolyada songs) were sung by the youths and maidens who attended her, and received gifts from the people in return for their songs. The sun rises through the frosty mists, and Dikanka becomes visible. Wakula is returned with the shoes in time for early mass. The bells of the village church are heard, and the people singing the pious Christmas canticle."

SAINT-SAËNS — "OMPHALE'S SPINNING-WHEEL," SYMPHONIC POEM No. 1: Op. 31

(Camille Saint-Saëns: born in Paris, October 9, 1835; still living there)

Le Rouet d'Omphale, composed in 1871, was first a piano piece; it was afterwards made over for orchestra and performed in Paris at a Concert Populaire on April 14, 1872.

The following note, in French, prefaces the score:

"The subject of this symphonic poem is feminine seductiveness, the triumphant contest of weakness against strength. The spinning-wheel is merely a pretext; it is chosen simply for the sake of its rhythmical suggestion and from the viewpoint of the general form of the piece."

The note conveys the further slightly ironical information that "those who are interested in the study of details will see on page 19 (letter J) [of the score] Hercules groaning in the bonds which he cannot break [a laboring phrase in the 'cellos and double-basses, repeated with cumulative expression], and on page 32 (letter L) Omphale mocking the hero's futile efforts [a theme sung by the oboe]."

The music has been interpreted as falling naturally into the three following sections: "(1) The power of feminine allurement. Triumphant struggle of weakness against strength; in fact, Omphale's fascination of Hercules. (2) Hercules in bondage; or, as the author has it, 'Hercules groaning under the bonds which he cannot break.' (3) Omphale deriding the vain efforts of the hero."

"PHAËTON," SYMPHONIC POEM No. 2: Op. 39

Phaëton was produced in Paris, under Eduard Colonne, at a concert at the Théâtre du Châtelet, December 7, 1873. The score has this preface:

"Phaëton has obtained leave to drive his father's, the Sun's, chariot through the heavens. But his unskilful hands lead the steeds astray. The flaming chariot, thrown out of its course, approaches the terrestrial regions. The whole universe is about to perish in flames, when Jupiter strikes the rash Phaëton with his thunderbolt." [131]

The portentous drive is first pictured, the gallop of the horses being indicated by an imitative figure in the strings, wood-wind, and horns. A suave and noble theme for the horns has been said to suggest celestial visions glimpsed by the charioteer in the course of his daring flight.[132] The furious rhythm of the drive is heard again, increasing to a precipitate pace. It is cut short by the Jovian thunderbolt (kettle-drums, bass-drum, cymbals, tam-tam). Then, as its reverberations die away, we hear again the august harmonies of the second theme; there is a reminiscence of the opening motive (of the ride), and the music ends ppp.

"DANCE OF DEATH" ["DANSE MACABRE"], SYMPHONIC POEM No. 3: Op. 40

This symphonic poem illustrates a fantastic poem by Henri Cazalis, lines from which are prefixed to the score. They are as follows (in a prose translation made by Mr. W. F. Apthorp):

"Zig and Zig and Zig, Death plays in cadence,
Beating time with his heel upon a tombstone;
Death plays a dance-tune, Zig and Zig and Zig, on his fiddle.
The winter wind blows, and the night is dark;
Groans come from under the lindens;
White skeletons flit across the gloom,
Running and skipping in their capacious shrouds.
Zig and Zig and Zig, capers every one;
You hear the dancers' bones rattle.

"But whist! Of a sudden they quit their dance;
They rush off helter-skelter, the cock has crowed."

A violin solo impersonates Death the fiddler, while the rattling of the bones of the grewsome dancers is delineated by the xylophone (wood-harmonica). The uncanny dance increases in wildness and abandon until it is cut short by the cock-crow (oboe).

"THE YOUTH OF HERCULES," SYMPHONIC POEM No. 4: Op. 50

La Jeunesse d'Hercule, first performed in Paris, at a concert in the Théâtre du Châtelet, January 28, 1877, bears as a preface to the score the following note (in French):

The music has been interpreted as a succession of characterizations in this order: "(1) Irresolution [Andante sostenuto: muted[133] violins; wood-wind, strings, and wood]; (2) character of the path of virtue [Allegro moderato: strings, without mutes, in full harmony]; (3) seductiveness of the nymphs [Andantino]; (4) allurements of the Bacchantes [Allegro: flutes at first, later other wood-wind, strings and wood, full orchestra]; (5) renewed questionings [Adagio: strings, horns, wood-wind]; (6) choice of the path of virtue and consequent struggles [Andante sostenuto and Allegro animato: the theme of Virtue played by clarinet, afterwards by oboe; later, the theme of pleasure heard in the wood-wind against harp arpeggios]; (7) the funeral pyre and immortality beyond [Maestoso: triumphant supremacy of the theme of Virtue, in an orchestral apotheosis]."

SCHUMANN — SYMPHONY No. 1, IN B-FLAT MAJOR ["SPRING"]: Op. 38

(Robert Schumann: born in Zwickau, Saxony, June 8, 1810; died in Endenich, near Bonn, July 29, 1856)

Although Schumann never publicly avowed it, the inspiration for this symphony sprang from a poem by Adolph Böttger (1815-1870), O Geist der Wolke. The music was composed early in 1841. In October of the following year Schumann sent a portrait of himself to his friend Böttger, accompanied by an inscription consisting of the opening phrase of the symphony in notation, and the words: "Beginning of a symphony inspired by a poem of Adolph Böttger. To the poet, in remembrance of Robert Schumann."

The verses of Böttger have been translated (in prose) as follows:

"Thou Spirit of the Cloud, murky and heavy, fliest with menace over land and sea; thy gray veil covers in a moment the clear eye of heaven; thy mist seethes up from afar, and Night hides the Star of Love. Thou Spirit of the Cloud, murky and damp, how thou hast frightened away all my happiness, how thou dost call tears to my face and shadows into the light of my soul! O turn, O turn thy course—In the valley blooms the spring!"

The crux of this poem, and the key to an understanding of the mood of Schumann's music, lies in the concluding line:

"In the valley blooms the spring!"

("Im Thale blüht der Frühling auf!")

Schumann himself spoke of this work as "a Spring symphony," though it is not so titled on the score. In a letter to Spohr he wrote (November 23, 1842): "I composed the symphony ..., if I may say so, under the impulse of that vernal ardor which sways men even at the most advanced age, and seizes them anew each year. I did not aim to portray or to describe; but I do believe that the season in which the symphony was conceived influenced its character and its form and made it what it is." He wrote also, on January 10, 1843, to Wilhelm Taubert (who was to produce the symphony in Berlin): "Could you imbue your orchestra with something of the springtime mood, which I had particularly in mind when I wrote the symphony in February, 1841? The trumpet-call at the entrance I should like to have sound as if it came from on high like an awakening summons. By what follows I might then suggest how on every side it begins to grow green; how, perhaps, a butterfly appears; and, by the Allegro, how gradually all springtime things burst forth. These, it is true, are fancies which occurred to me after I had finished the work. I should like to say, however, concerning the last movement, that I imagined it to suggest the departure of spring, and I would have it played in a manner not too frivolous." It will be observed that Schumann makes no reference whatever in these elucidations to what he has elsewhere alleged as the particular source of his inspiration.

That the composer originally intended to give descriptive titles to the different movements has been declared with particularity, and these are said to have been the superscriptions he planned to use: (1) "Spring's Beginning" (Frühlingsbeginn); (2) "Evening" (Abend); (3) "Merry Companions" (Frohe Gespielen); (4) "Spring at the Full" (Voller Frühling). The last of these would seem to conflict with what Schumann himself wrote to Taubert concerning the Finale.

OVERTURE TO BYRON'S "MANFRED": Op. 115

For Byron's dramatic poem, "Manfred," Schumann, in 1848, wrote incidental music, which was first performed at Weimar under the direction of Liszt on June 13, 1852, in connection with a version of Byron's work prepared by Schumann for the stage. The overture has, not unnaturally, survived the rest of the music to the poem, and has long been a familiar number in the concert-room. It is, of all Schumann's works, says Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, "the most profoundly introspective. It is, as consistently as the prelude to Wagner's 'Tristan und Isolde,' an effort to delineate soul states and struggles without the help of external things. To understand it one must recall the figure in Byron's poem—the strong man torn by remorse, struggling with himself, bending supernatural powers to his will, yearning for forgiveness and death, tortured by a pitiless conscience, living in a solitude which was solitude no more, 'but peopled with the furies,' condemned by his own sin to number

'Ages—ages—
Space and eternity—and consciousness,
With the fierce thirst of death—and still unslaked!'

"The mood of the slow introduction, into which the listener is plunged at once by the three syncopated chords at the opening, is the mood of Manfred weighed down by the reflection:

"'Old man! there is no power in holy men,
Nor charm in prayer—nor purifying form
Of penitence—nor outward look—nor fast—
Nor agony—nor, greater than all these,
"The innate tortures of that deep despair,
Which is remorse without the fear of hell,
But all in all sufficient to itself
Would make a hell of heaven—can exorcise
From out the unbounded spirit, the quick sense
Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge
Upon itself; there is no future pang
Can deal that justice on the self-condemn'd
He deals on his own soul.'"

"The sombreness," says Mr. Frederick Niecks, "is nowhere relieved, although contrast to the dark brooding and the surging agitation of despair is obtained by the tender, longing, regretful recollection of Astarte, the destroyed beloved one. And when at last life ebbs away, we are reminded of Manfred's dying words to the Abbot:

"'Tis over—my dull eyes can fix thee not;
But all things swim around me, and the earth
Heaves, as it were, beneath me....
Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die.'

"From the first note to the last," says Mr. W. H. Hadow, "it is as magnificent as an Alpine storm—sombre, wild, impetuous, echoing from peak to peak with the shock of thunderbolts and the clamor of the driving wind."

SIBELIUS — "LEMMINKAINEN," SYMPHONIC POEM IN FOUR PARTS: Op. 22

(Jan Sibelius: born in Tavastehus, Finland, December 8, 1865; now living in Helsingfors)

"THE SWAN OF TUONELA"
"LEMMINKAINEN'S HOME-FARING"

Sibelius, sometime prior to February, 1906, informed Mrs. Rosa Newmarch, the author of the first authoritative study in English of the Finnish composer, that he was writing a symphonic poem in four parts under the general title "Lemminkainen," based on episodes in "The Kalevala." [134] Two of these parts have been produced—"The Swan of Tuonela" and "Lemminkainen's Home-Faring"; the others are said to be still (1907) incomplete. Of the two completed portions Mrs. Newmarch writes as follows:

"THE SWAN OF TUONELA

"Tuonela was the name of the Finnish Hades. Those wending their way to the final abode had to traverse nine seas and one river—the equivalent of the Styx—whereon sang and floated the sacred swan—

"'... the long-necked, graceful swimmer,
Swimming in the black death-river,
In the sacred stream and whirlpool.'"

The majestic, but intensely sad, swan melody is heard as a solo for cor anglais [English horn], accompanied at first by muted [135] strings and the soft roll of drums. Now and then this melody is answered by a phrase given to 'cello or viola, which might be interpreted as the farewell sigh of some soul passing to Tuonela. For many bars the brass is silent, until suddenly the first horn (muted[136]) echoes a few notes of the swan-melody with the most poignant effect. Gradually the music works up to a great climax, ... followed by a treble pianissimo, the strings playing with the back of the bow. To this accompaniment, which suggests the faint-flapping pinions, the swan's final phrases are sung. The strings return to the natural bowing, and the work ends in one of the characteristic, sighing phrases for 'cello.

"LEMMINKAINEN'S HOME-FARING

"It was in pursuit of the Swan of Tuonela that Lemminkainen, the reckless magician-hero of 'The Kalevala,' lost his life. The capture of the sacred bird was the last test of his courage and devotion before he could win the bride of his heart. But Nasshut, the crippled shepherd, who bore a grudge against Lemminkainen, watched for his approach, hurled at him a serpent snatched from the death-stream, and flung him, mortally wounded, into the 'coal-black waters':

"'There the blood-stained son of death-land
There Tuoni's son and hero
Cuts in pieces Lemminkainen.'

"The Finnish hero shares the fate of Osiris. But the fifteenth rune relates how his aged and faithful mother implores 'the immortal blacksmith' Ilmarinen to forge her a huge rake:

"'Lemminkainen's faithful mother
Rakes the river of Tuoni,

"To her belt in mud and water
Deeper, deeper rakes the death-stream,
Rakes the river's deepest caverns.'

"By untiring perseverance she recovers all the missing members, knits them together by her incantations, and finally restores her son to life. When his thoughts revert to the woman he loves, for whose sake he has accomplished a series of heroic exploits, his mother persuades him in these words:

"'Let the swan swim on in safety
In the whirlpool of Tuoni.
Leave the maiden in the Northland
With her charms and fading beauty
With thy fond and faithful mother
Go at once to Kalevala
To thy native fields and fallows.' [137]

"Then the hero, consoled by the maternal love, which inflicts no sting and exacts no useless sacrifices, starts on his homeward way."

SMETANA — "MY FATHERLAND," A CYCLE OF SIX SYMPHONIC POEMS [138]

(Friedrich Smetana: born in Leitomischl, Bohemia, March 2, 1824; died in Prague, May 12, 1884)

Smetana, an ardent nationalist and incorrigible patriot, composed for the glorification of his country a cycle of six symphonic poems under the general title, "My Fatherland" (Má Vlast), dedicated to the city of Prague. The titles and the programmes (in outline) of the six parts of the cycle are as follows:

I. "VYSEHRAD"
[1874]

A famous and historic Bohemian citadel at Prague. The splendid life there in its past day of glory and renown. The poet, at the sight of the fortress, beholds visions of the past. "Vysehrad rises up before his eyes in its former glory, crowned with gold-decked shrines and the edifices of the Premslide princes and kings, rich in warlike renown. The brave knights assemble in the castle courts, to the sound of cymbals and trumpets, for the festal tourney; here are drawn up beneath the reflected rays of the sun rows of warriors in rich, glittering armor, ready for victorious contests.... Whilst contemplating the past glory of the sublime dwelling of princes, the poet sees also its downfall. Unchained passion overthrows the mighty towers in bitter strife, lays waste the glorious sanctuaries and proud, princely halls. Instead of inspiring songs and jubilant hymns, Vysehrad is become dumb, a deserted monument of past glory; from its ruins resounds the echo of the long-silent song of the singer-prince Lumir through the mournful stillness!"[139]

II. "VLTAVA"
[1874]

The river Moldau—the scenes through which the course of the beloved river leads—beauties of nature, historic edifices, deeds and achievements of men, apparitions of nymphs and naiads.

III. "SÁRKA"
[1875]

Sárka, the "noblest of the Bohemian Amazons," was betrayed in love by one of the hated race of men against whom the Amazons wage ceaseless war. Craving vengeance, she has herself bound to a tree, and, in simulation of distress, impels the knight Ctirad, who is swayed by her beauty, to release her. Ctirad and his warrior band, striking camp for the night, fall asleep after long-continued revels. Sárka then summons her companions by a blast of her horn; they fall furiously upon the sleeping warriors and put them to the sword.

IV. "FROM BOHEMIA'S FIELDS AND GROVES"
[1875]

A tonal celebration of natural beauties; music of pastoral character.

V. "TABOR"
[1878]

The fortress of the Hussites.—A sonorous tribute to the Taborites, their valor, and their heroic devotion to their cause.

VI. "BLANIK"
[1879]

The name of the mountain on which are sleeping in glorious death the Hussite warriors, awaiting the resurrection which will restore them to renewed service for the faith.

SPOHR — SYMPHONY No. 4, "THE CONSECRATION OF SOUND": [140] Op. 86

(Louis Spohr: born in Braunschweig, Germany, April 5, 1784; died in Cassel, November 22, 1859)

1. RIGID SILENCE OF NATURE BEFORE THE CREATION OF TONE

(Largo)

ACTIVE LIFE AFTER THE SAME. SOUNDS OF NATURE.
TURMOIL OF THE ELEMENTS

(Allegro)

2. CRADLE SONG. DANCE. SERENADE

(Andantino)

3. WAR MUSIC. GOING OFF TO BATTLE. FEELINGS OF THOSE LEFT BEHIND.
RETURN OF THE VICTORS.
PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING

(Tempo di marcia)

4. FUNERAL MUSIC

(Larghetto)

CONSOLATION IN TEARS

(Allegretto)

Die Weihe der Töne, composed in 1832, is founded on a poem of the same title by Karl Pfeiffer. In a letter dated October 9, 1832, Spohr wrote: "I have ... lately completed a grand instrumental composition, a fourth symphony, which differs greatly in form from the preceding ones. It is a musical composition inspired by a poem of Karl Pfeiffer's—Die Weihe der Töne—which must be printed or recited aloud before it [the symphony] is performed. In the very first part my task was to construct a harmonious whole out of the sounds of nature. This, as indeed the whole work, was a highly attractive programme [Schumann afterwards described it as 'eulogizing music with music']."

Pfeiffer's poem is as follows, divided in accordance with its relation to the four movements of the symphony:

STRAUSS — "FROM ITALY," SYMPHONIC FANTASIA: Op. 16

(Richard Strauss: born in Munich, June 11, 1864; now living in Berlin)

1. ON THE CAMPAGNA

(Andante)

2. AMID ROME'S RUINS

(Allegro molto con brio)

3. ON THE SHORE OF SORRENTO

(Andantino)

4. NEAPOLITAN FOLK-LIFE

(Allegro molto)

"Aus Italia," the first of Strauss's descriptive works for orchestra, was composed in 1886, a year in which the composer visited Rome and Naples. The score is avowedly programmatic, however, only to the extent of the titling of the different movements, except that the second, "Amid Rome's Ruins," bears this additional superscription: "Fantastic Pictures of Vanished Splendor; Feelings of Sadness and Grief in the Midst of the Sunniest Present."

Of the first movement Mr. Vernon Blackburn has remarked: "... the Campagna is absolutely destitute of scenery, its tragic secret lying, for the most part, too deep even for the modern explorer; its 'dim warm weather' is an attribute which exactly describes its general aspect of loneliness and locked quietude. These are the points which Strauss makes apparent in his music, and proves the constancy of that mood in the second portion of his Fantasia, in which he only completes the hidden tragedy of the Campagna—in the section which he has entitled ['Amid Rome's Ruins']."

In the third movement, "On the Shore of Sorrento," Mr. Hermann Kretzschmar finds (in the middle portion) a picture of the sea ruffled by the wind. "A boat appears, and in it a singer sings a genuine native melody, sprung from the noble sicilianos, which since the end of the seventeenth century have passed over Europe, journeying from the region near Sorrento." "The strings," says another commentator, furnish "a rich background for the sparkling flashes of melody which emanate from the other instruments, the whole being suggestive of a water-picture. The almost constant shimmer in the strings might easily be construed as a description of the restlessness of the ocean, over which the melodies of the wood-wind play like the glintings of sunlight."

In the last movement, "Neapolitan Folk-life," the famous song "Funiculi, Funicula," serves as the principal theme, announced by violas and 'cellos. "The finale is brilliant, tumultuous, audacious."

"'My desolation doth begin to make a better life.' Such," remarks Mr. Blackburn, "might have been the motto upon which Strauss has built the labor of this extraordinary work. He makes you feel through every bar how completely his musical spirit is oppressed by a sense of tragic thought which, if anywhere, is surely appropriate in the presence of the wreckage of that huge civilization which reached the zenith of its glory in the genius of Julius Cæsar."

"DON JUAN," TONE-POEM: Op. 20

This work is usually placed first on the list of Strauss's remarkable series of tone-poems; yet, though it bears an earlier opus number, it was actually preceded, in point of composition, by "Macbeth," op. 23, which was written in 1887, a year earlier than "Don Juan."

The subject of this tone-poem is the "Don Juan" of Nicolaus Lenau (1802-1850), and quotations from Lenau's poem are prefixed to the score. They are as follows:

Lenau is said to have observed of his creation: "My 'Don Juan' is no hot-blooded man eternally pursuing women. It is the longing in him to find a woman who is to him incarnate womanhood, and to enjoy, in the one, all the women on earth, whom he cannot as individuals possess. Because he does not find her, although he reels from one to another, at last Disgust seizes hold of him, and this Disgust is the Devil that fetches him." Elaborate and inexorably detailed commentaries have been written on Strauss's tone-poem; yet this brief exposition by Mr. Philip Hale is more truly illuminating than are the exhaustive excursions of the German analysts:

"Lenau's hero is a man who seeks the sensual ideal. He is constantly disappointed. He is repeatedly disgusted with himself, men and women, and the world; and when at last he fights a duel with Don Pedro, the avenging son of the Grand Commander, he throws away his sword and lets his adversary kill him.

"'Mein Todfeind ist in meine Faust gegeben;
Doch dies auch langweilt, wie das ganze Leben.'

"('My deadly foe is in my power; but this, too, bores me, as does life itself.')"

Of the tragic end of the Don's insatiable experimenting—as Strauss has turned it into music—he says:

"Till the end the mood grows wilder and wilder. There is no longer time for regret, and soon there will be no time for longing. It is the Carnival, and Don Juan drinks deep of wine and love.... Surrounded by women, overcome by wine, he rages in passion, and at last falls unconscious.... Gradually he comes to his senses, the themes of the apparitions, rhythmically disguised as in fantastic dress, pass like sleep-chasings through his brain, and then there is the motive of 'Disgust.' Some find in the next episode the thought of the cemetery, with Don Juan's reflections and his invitation to the Statue. Here the jaded man finds solace in bitter reflection. At the feast, surrounded by gay company, there is a faint awakening of longing, but he exclaims:

"'The fire of my blood has now burned out.'

"Then comes the duel, with the death scene. The theme of 'Disgust' now dominates. There is a tremendous orchestral crash; there is long and eloquent silence. A pianissimo chord in A minor is cut into by a piercingly dissonant trumpet F, and then there is a last sigh, a mourning dissonance and resolution (trombones) to E minor.

"'Exhausted is the fuel,
And on the hearth the cold is fiercely cruel.'"

"MACBETH," TONE-POEM: Op. 23

Macbeth, Tondichtung für grosses Orchestrer (nach Shakespeare's drama), was composed in 1887. It is actually, in date of composition, the first of Strauss's orchestral tone-poems, though "Don Juan" (see the preceding pages), composed in 1888, bears an earlier opus number—20.

Beyond the title and the acknowledgment—"after Shakespeare's drama"—the score bears no programme or explanation save the word "Macbeth" printed over an imperious phrase for violins, horn, and wood-wind near the beginning, and a quotation from the play, in German, placed above a passage on page 11 of the orchestral score, where flutes and clarinets, pianissimo, give out, over muted [143] horns and strings tremolo, a phrase whose expression is marked appassionata, molto rubato. [144] The quotation is from Lady Macbeth's speech in Act I., Scene V.:

"Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the valor of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crown'd withal."

German analysts have been, as in the case of all of Strauss's needlessly and perversely recondite programme-music, at pains to explore the music of "Macbeth," and have written with lavish detail in exposition of its significance. The end of it all appears to be that in this tone-poem Strauss has not attempted to illustrate the external events of Shakespeare's tragedy, but has endeavored to portray the character of its protagonist, Macbeth himself, and the struggle which goes on within his soul.

"DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION," TONE-POEM: Op. 24

Prefaced to the published score of Tod und Verklärung (composed in 1889) is a poem by the German musician Alexander Ritter,[145] which was written after the author had become acquainted with Strauss's music, and under its inspiration. That the verses were included by Strauss in the printed score is sufficient evidence that he regards them as an adequate interpretation of the emotional plan underlying his music.

The subject of this tone-poem is the human soul at grip with death, fronting imminent dissolution, and reviewing feverishly the memorable phases of its past—childhood, youth, love, conflict, strife, aspiration, despair—interrupted by desperate struggles with the Destroyer. At the moment of death there is the beginning of triumph—"deliverance from the world, transfiguration...."

Ritter's poem, translated into English prose by Mr. W. F. Apthorp, is as follows:

The music, for purposes of elucidation, may be divided into five (connected) sections:

We see the sick man lying exhausted upon his bed in the little candle-lit room; he has just wrestled wildly with Death. He smiles faintly, dreaming of his youth.

Abruptly, Death renews the attack, and the dreadful struggle is resumed. There is gradual exhaustion, and once more a respite comes to the sufferer.

Now he is visited by dreams and hallucinations—memories of youth, of young manhood and its vicissitudes, of lusty conflict and passionate endeavor, with illusory glimpses of future triumph.

But again Death attacks his victim. There is a short and furious struggle, a sudden subsidence, a mysterious and sinister gong-stroke; a portentous silence signifies the final stilling of the heart.

Then begins, gradually and gravely, the Transfiguration; and through shimmering harps and sonorous chantings of the brass is suggested the final triumphant attainment of the soul released.

"TILL EULENSPIEGEL'S MERRY PRANKS": Op. 28

The full title of this work is: Till Eulenspiegel's lustige Streiche, nach alter Schelmenweise—in Rondoform—für grosses Orchester gesetzt von Richard Strauss. Translated according to the most reasonable authority, this means: "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Set in the Old-Fashioned, Roughish Manner—in the Form of a Rondo[146]—for Grand Orchestra, by Richard Strauss." This sufficiently formidable announcement introduced to the world in 1895 (the year of its completion and publication) a work which its author sought, after his usual habit, to imbue with a kind of mystification the point and savor of which it is a little difficult to appreciate. When the "rondo" was produced at Cologne, November 15, 1895, Dr. Franz Wüllner, who conducted the performance, requested Strauss to furnish an explanatory programme of the piece. The composer declined. "It is impossible," he said, "for me to furnish a programme to Eulenspiegel; were I to put into words the thoughts which its several incidents suggested to me, they would seldom suffice, and might even give rise to offence. Let me leave it, therefore, to my hearers to crack the hard nut which the Rogue has prepared for them. By way of helping them to a better understanding, it seems sufficient to point out the two 'Eulenspiegel' motives, which, in the most manifold disguises, moods, and situations, pervade the whole up to the catastrophe, when, after he has been condemned to death, Till is strung up to the gibbet. For the rest, let them guess at the musical joke which a Rogue has offered them." The three motives indicated by Strauss were the opening theme of the introduction, the horn theme that follows almost immediately, and the descending interval that is said to be expressive of condemnation and the scaffold.

Till Eulenspiegel, better known to English readers as Tyll Owlglass, is the prank-playing vagabond hero of a fifteenth-century German Volksbuch whose authorship is attributed to Dr. Thomas Murner (1475-1530). Till, according to Dr. Murner, was born at Kneithlinger, Brunswick, in 1283, and died of the plague at Mölln, near Lubeck, in 1350 or 1353, after wanderings through Germany, Italy, and Poland. Till's exploits, the stories of which are household words in Germany, consisted of mischievous pranks and jests that he practised without discrimination and, in some instances, with a frank and joyous absence of delicate sentiment which can best be described as Rabelaisean. In Murner's tale, Till is sentenced to the gallows, but escapes death at the last moment. Strauss, however, does not let his hero off, and permits him to die on the scaffold.

Despite his disinclination to furnish an elucidation of his music, Strauss has apparently given his sanction to an analysis of the score prepared by Mr. Wilhelm Klatte. As this is full, explicit, and seemingly authoritative, it is quoted here, in part, as follows, in an English translation attributed to Mr. C. A. Barry:

"A strong sense of German folk-feeling pervades the whole work. The source from which the tone-poet drew his inspiration is clearly indicated in the introductory bars: Gemächlich [Andante commodo]. To some extent this stands for the 'once upon a time' of the story-books. That what follows is not to be treated in the pleasant and agreeable manner of narrative poetry, but in a more sturdy fashion, is at once made apparent by a characteristic bassoon figure which breaks in upon the piano of the strings. Of equal importance for the development of the piece is the immediately following humorous horn theme. Beginning quietly and gradually becoming more lively, it is at first heard against a tremolo of the divided violins and then again in the first tempo, Sehr lebhaft [Vivace]. This theme, or at least the kernel of it, is taken up in turn by oboes, clarinets, violas, 'cellos, and bassoons, and is finally brought by the full orchestra, except trumpets and trombones, after a few bars crescendo, to a ... fortissimo. The thematic material, according to the main point, has now been fixed upon; the milieu is given by which we are enabled to recognize the pranks and droll tricks which the crafty schemer is about to bring before our eyes, or, far rather, before our ears.

"Here he is (clarinet phrase followed by chord for wind instruments). He wanders through the land as a thorough-going adventurer. His clothes are tattered and torn: a queer, fragmentary version of the 'Eulenspiegel' motive resounds from the horns.... The rogue, putting on his best manners, slyly passes through the gate, and enters a certain city. It is market-day; the women sit at their stalls and prattle (flutes, oboes, and clarinets). Hop! Eulenspiegel springs on his horse (indicated by rapid triplets extending through three measures), gives a smack of his whip, and rides into the midst of the crowd. Clink, clash, clatter! A confused sound of broken pots and pans, and the market-women are put to flight. In haste the rascal rides away (as is admirably illustrated by a fortissimo passage for the trombones) and secures a safe retreat.

"This was his first merry prank; a second follows immediately; Gemächlich [Andante commodo]. Eulenspiegel has put on the vestments of a priest, and assumes a very unctuous mien. Though posing as a preacher of morals, the rogue peeps out from the folds of his mantle (the 'Eulenspiegel' motive on the clarinet points to the imposture). He fears for the success of his scheme. A figure played by muted [147] violins, horns, and trumpets makes it plain that he does not feel comfortable in his borrowed plumes. But soon he makes up his mind. Away with all scruples! He tears them off.

"Again the 'Eulenspiegel' theme is brought forward in the previous lively tempo, but is now subtly metamorphosed and chivalrously colored. Eulenspiegel has become a Don Juan, and he waylays pretty women. And one has bewitched him: Eulenspiegel is in love! Hear how now, glowing with love, the violins, clarinets, and flutes sing! But in vain. His advances are received with derision, and he goes away in a rage. How can one treat him so slightingly? Is he not a splendid fellow? Vengeance on the whole human race! He gives vent to his rage (in a fortissimo of horns in unison followed by a pause), and strange personages suddenly draw near ('cellos). A troop of honest, worthy Philistines! In an instant all his anger is forgotten. But it is still his chief joy to make fun of these lords and protectors of blameless decorum, to mock them, as is apparent from the lively and accentuated fragments of the theme, sounded at the beginning by the horn, which are now heard first from horns, violins, 'cellos, and then from trumpets, oboes, and flutes. Now that Eulenspiegel has had his joke, he goes away and leaves the professors and doctors behind in thoughtful meditation. Fragments of the typical theme of the Philistines are here treated canonically. [148] The wood-wind, violins, and trumpets suddenly project the 'Eulenspiegel' theme into their profound philosophy. It is as though the transcendent rogue were making faces at the bigwigs from a distance—again and again—and then waggishly running away. This is aptly characterized by a short episode in a hopping 2-4 rhythm, which, similarly with the first entrance of the Hypocrisy theme previously used, is followed by phantom-like tones from the wood-wind and strings and then from trombones and horns. Has our rogue still no foreboding?

"Interwoven with the very first theme, indicated lightly by trumpets and English horn, a figure is developed from the second introductory and fundamental theme. It is first taken up by the clarinets; it seems to express the fact that the arch-villain has again got the upper-hand of Eulenspiegel, who has fallen into his old manner of life.... A merry jester, a born liar, Eulenspiegel goes wherever he can succeed with a hoax. His insolence knows no bounds. Alas! there is a sudden jolt to his wanton humor. The drum rolls a hollow roll; the jailer drags the rascally prisoner into the criminal court. The verdict 'guilty' is thundered against the brazen-faced knave. The 'Eulenspiegel' theme replies calmly to the threatening chords of wind and lower strings. Eulenspiegel lies. Again the threatening tones resound; but Eulenspiegel does not confess his guilt. On the contrary, he lies for the third time. His jig is up. Fear seizes him. The Hypocrisy motive is sounded piteously; the fatal moment draws near; his hour has struck!... He has danced in air. A last struggle (flutes), and his soul takes flight.

"After sad, tremulous pizzicati of the strings, the epilogue begins. At first it is almost identical with the introductory measures, which are repeated in full; then the most essential parts of the second and third chief-theme passages appear, and finally merge into [a] soft chord.... Eulenspiegel has become a legendary character. The people tell their tales about him: 'Once upon a time....' But that he was a merry rogue and a real devil of a fellow seems to be expressed by the final eight measures, full orchestra, fortissimo."

"THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA," TONE-POEM: Op. 30

Also sprach Zarathustra, Tondichtung (frei nach Friedr. Nietzsche) für grosses Orchester, was begun in February, finished in August, 1896. It is, as the title implies, a tonal rendering of impressions derived from Also sprach Zarathustra ("Thus Spake Zarathustra"), the remarkable philosophico-romantic fantasy of Friedrich Nietzsche. [149] Strauss's music is, he says, frei nach Nietzsche; that is to say, treated "freely" after Nietzsche. "I did not," he has declared, "intend to write philosophical music or portray Nietzsche's great work musically. I meant to convey musically an idea of the development of the human race from its origin, through the various phases of development, religious as well as scientific, up to Nietzsche's idea of the Over-man (Übermensch)." A large order, one would say. Whatever Strauss may have meant by "philosophical music," he has certainly, whether he intended to or not, composed a score which is utterly and hopelessly incomprehensible unless one knows what its relationship is, at every point, with Nietzsche's book—a knowledge which Strauss has considerately assisted by prefixing to each section of the score an indication of the particular part of the book to which the music refers. If this is not translating philosophy into tones (or seeking to do so), if it is not an endeavor to find musical equivalents for various phases of a particular philosophy, a particular chain of ideas, then we shall have, as it seems, to discover a new significance in very ordinary words. This is not the place to discuss the pros and cons of the matter, or its aspect from the stand-point of musical æsthetics; the foregoing observations have been offered only for the purpose of clearing the ground, and to prepare the way for the statement which has now to be made: that a comprehension of this particular tone-poem, even with a knowledge of the score and its annotations, is impossible without a pretty complete understanding of Nietzsche's book and of his outlook upon life and ideas—an understanding which it is hardly feasible to attempt to communicate here. It is at least possible, though, to set forth certain of the essentials of his philosophical stand-point and of the characteristics of his Zarathustra, as a preparation for an acquaintance with the tone-poem of Strauss; and this cannot be better accomplished than by quoting from Mr. James Huneker's vivid and sympathetic study of the man and his views:

"What does Nietzsche teach? What is his central doctrine, divested of its increments of anti-Semitism, anti-Wagnerism, anti-Christianity, and anti-everything-else? Simply a doctrine as old as the first invertebrate organism which floated in torrid seas beneath a blazing moon: Egoism, individualism, personal freedom, self-hood. He is the apostle of the ego.... He is a proclaimer of the rank animalism of man. He believes in the body and not in the soul of theology....

"It is in Also sprach Zarathustra that the genius of Nietzsche is best studied. Like the Buddhistic Tripitaka, it is a book of highly colored Oriental aphorisms, interrupted by lofty lyric outbursts. It is an ironic, enigmatic, rhetorical rhapsody, the Third Part of a half-mad 'Faust.' In it may be seen flowing all the currents of modern cultures and philosophies, and, if it teaches anything at all, it teaches the wisdom and beauty of air, sky, waters, and earth, and of laughter, not Pantagruelian, but 'holy laughter.' The love of earth is preached in rapturous accents. A Dionysian ecstasy anoints the lips of this latter-day Sibyl on his tripod when he speaks of earth. He is intoxicated with the fulness of its joys. No gloomy monasticism, no denial of the will to live, no futile thinking about thinking—so despised by Goethe—no denial of grand realities, may be found in the curriculum of this Bacchantic philosopher. A pantheist, he is also a poet and seer like William Blake, and marvels at the symbol of nature, 'the living garment of the Deity'—Nietzsche's deity, of course.... It is the history of his soul, as 'Leaves of Grass' is Whitman's—there are some curious parallelisms between these two subjective epics. It is intimate, yet hints at universality; it contains some of Amiel's introspection and some of Baudelaire's morbidity—half-mad, yet exhorting, comforting; Hamlet and John Bunyan."

When Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra was performed in Boston in the year following its completion (October 30, 1897), Mr. W. F. Apthorp wrote for the programme notes of the Boston Symphony Orchestra an analysis and exposition of the work which for completeness and precision could not well be surpassed. I reproduce it, in part, herewith:

"On a fly-leaf of the score is printed the following excerpt from Nietzsche's book:

"'ZARATHUSTRA'S PREFACE' (Friedrich Nietzsche).

"When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the sea of his home and went to the mountains. Here he enjoyed his mind and his solitude, and did not tire thereof for ten years. But at last his heart was changed, and one morning he rose with the dawn, stood before the sun, and spake thus to him:

"'Thou great star! What were thy happiness, if thou hadst not him whom thou dost illumine! For ten years hast thou come here up to my cave: thou wouldst have had enough of thy light and of this road, without me, my eagle, and my serpent.

"'But we awaited thee every morning, relieved thee of thy superfluity, and blessed thee therefor.

"'See! I am tired of my wisdom, like the bee which has gathered too much honey; I need hands that stretch out.

"'I would make gifts and divide, till the wise among men have once more grown glad of their folly, and the poor, once more, of their riches. For this I must go down to the depths: as thou dost of evenings, when thou goest behind the sea and bringest light even to the lower world, thou over-rich star!

"'Like thee, I must go down,[150] as men call it, to them to whom I would descend. So bless me, then, thou placid eye, that canst see an over-great happiness without envy.

"'Bless thy beaker, which would fain overflow, that the water may flow out golden therefrom and carry the reflection of thy ecstasy everywhere!

"'See! This beaker would fain become empty again, and Zarathustra would fain become a man again.

"'—Thus began Zarathustra's downfall.'

"In Nietzsche's book, Zarathustra goes from the mountains down to men and preaches: 'I teach you the Over-man. Man is something that must be overcome. What have ye done to overcome him?... The Over-man is the meaning of the Earth.... Man is a rope, made fast between the Beast and the Over-man—a rope over an abyss. A dangerous passing-over, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous staying-behind, a dangerous shuddering and standing-still. What is great in Man is that he is a bridge and not a purpose: what can be loved in Man is that he is a transition and a downfall.[151]... What good and evil is, that no one yet knows: unless it be he who creates! But this one is he who creates Man's goal, and gives the Earth its meaning: he alone creates it that something shall be good and evil.'

"The great problem Zarathustra tries to solve in his speech is: to teach men the deification of Life; all human values must be 'transvalued,' and therewith a new order of the universe created, 'beyond good and evil.' Zarathustra himself is this 'world beyond,' he is the freest of the free, who descries in all Becoming only a yearning after his own self and teaching, which yearning alone can overcome the 'simian' world and 'simian' Mankind, slaves of traditional convention, and offer to Man—not the Joy of Life, for there is no such thing, but—the 'Fulness of Life,' in the joy of the senses, in the triumphant exuberance of vitality, in the pure, lofty naturalness of the Antique—in short, in the fusion of God, World, and Ego. This art of life of Zarathustra's shall be shared by Mankind; herein shall Zarathustra be dissolved in Mankind and 'go down!' Thus are also to be explained the significant closing words of the fourth chapter of 'Twilight of the Idols'[152]: 'Mid-day: the moment of the shortest shadow; the end of the longest error. The culminating-point of Humanity: Incipit Zarathustra.'

"Taking the excerpt from 'Zarathustra's Preface,' reprinted on the fly-leaf of his score, as his poetic text, Strauss has illustrated it in his own way.... Perhaps it were best ... not to attempt a metaphysico-romantic analysis of the work, but to leave this to the listener's imagination, after putting before him the composer's preface. It will be well, however, to give some sub-captions which Strauss has put at various points of the score.

"Just after the first great fortissimo outburst of the full orchestra and organ on the chord of C major,[153] stands, 'OF THE DWELLERS IN THE REAR-WORLD.' These were fools and pietarians, who sought the solution in Religion. Once Zarathustra, too, cast his delusion beyond Humankind, like all dwellers in the Rear-World. 'The World then seemed to be the work of a suffering and tormented God. The World then seemed to me a dream, a God's poem.... I, too, once cast my delusion beyond Humankind.... Ah, ye brothers, this God, whom I created, was the work of a man, and—an insanity, like all Gods.'

"Further on we find the sub-caption, 'OF THE GREAT YEARNING,' over a strenuous ascending passage in the 'cellos and bassoons, answered by the wood-wind. This refers to the following passage in Nietzsche's book: 'Wouldst thou not weep, not weep out thy purple despondency, then must thou sing, O my soul!... Sing with boisterous song, till all seas grow still, that they may listen to thy yearning.... Already glowest thou and dreamest, already drinkest thou thirstily at all deep-sounding Springs of Comfort, already does thy despondency find its rest in the beatitude of songs to come!'

"Over the expressive, pathetic cantilena in C minor of the second violins, oboes, and horn, stands, 'OF JOYS AND PASSIONS'.

"Further on we come to the 'GRAVE-SONG,' a tenderly expressive cantilena in the oboe, over the 'Yearning-motive' in the 'cellos and bassoons: 'Yonder is the island of graves, the silent one; yonder, too, are the graves of my youth. Thither will I carry an evergreen wreath of Life. Resolving this in my heart, I journeyed across the sea. O ye sights and apparitions of my youth! O all ye love-glances, ye divine moments! How soon are ye dead to me! I think of you to-day as of my dead ones.... To kill me did they wring your necks, ye song-birds of my hopes! Yea, at you, ye dearest ones, did malice ever aim its shafts—to hit my heart....'

"Over the fugued passage, beginning in the 'cellos and double-basses, stands, 'OF SCIENCE.' It is to be noted, as a musical curiosity, that the subject of this fugue contains all the diatonic and chromatic degrees of the scale....

"Considerably further on, where a violent passage in the strings (beginning in the 'cellos and violas) soars up, ... stands, 'THE CONVALESCENT.'... 'Let us kill the Spirit of Weight!...'

"So learn to laugh your way out of yourselves! Uplift your hearts, ye good dancers, high! higher! And forget not the good laughter! This crown to the laughers, this rose-wreath crown: to you, my brothers, do I dedicate this crown! I have pronounced Laughter holy; ye Higher Men, learn—to laugh!... One must have Chaos in himself, to give birth to a dancing star....' Then the 'DANCE-SONG' begins, ushered in by trills in the flutes and clarinets.

"Much further on, after a fortissimo stroke of the bell, comes 'THE SONG OF THE NIGHT-WANDERER.' In the later editions of his book Nietzsche gave the corresponding chapter the title, 'Drunken Song.' On the twelve strokes of the 'heavy, heavy humming-bell (Brummglocke),' he wrote the following lines:

"'ONE!
"'O Man, take heed!'

"'TWO!
"'What speaks the deep midnight?'

"'THREE!
"'I have slept, I have slept—'

"'FOUR!
"'I have awaked out of a deep dream:—'

"'FIVE!
"'The world is deep,'

"'SIX!
"'And deeper than the day thought for.'

"'SEVEN!
"'Deep is its woe,—'

"'EIGHT!
"'Joy, deeper still than heart-sorrow.'

"'Nine!
"'Woe speaks: Vanish!'

"'TEN!
"'Yet all joy wants eternity, ...'

"'ELEVEN!
"'Wants deep, deep eternity!'

"'TWELVE!'

"The composition ends mystically in two keys—in B major in the high wood-wind and violins, in C major in the basses pizzicati. Zarathustra's downfall!"

"DON QUIXOTE," FANTASTIC VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF KNIGHTLY CHARACTER: Op. 35

The full title of this work (composed in 1897) is: Don Quixote (Introduzione, Tema con Variazioni, e Finale): Fantastische Variationen über ein Thema ritterlichen Characters. That is to say, it is in the form of a theme with variations, the theme is of "knightly character," and the variations are "fantastic." From the programmatic point of view, it is a series of tone-pictures in which are set forth, upon a musical canvas of singular vividness, the figures of Cervantes' Knight of the Rueful Countenance and his squire Sancho Panza, and their memorable adventures in quest of knightly glory. The orchestral score contains no programme or explanatory notes, save two superscriptions printed above the dual portions of the theme, identifying the first part with Don Quixote, the second part with Sancho Panza; yet Strauss, with his inveterate lack of consistency in such matters, has annotated the pianoforte arrangement of his music with a completeness which he has capriciously denied to the orchestral score, placing at the head of each variation a verbal clew to the particular adventure which the music aims to describe. From these it is possible to follow its meaning in fairly ample detail.

The music consists of an Introduction, a Theme, ten variations, and a Finale, continuous throughout. Each variation is concerned with some incident in Cervantes' novel. A solo 'cello represents, or "enacts," Don Quixote; a solo viola, Sancho Panza.

INTRODUCTION

Don Quixote is deep in the perusal of old romances of errant chivalry. Grandiose and splendid pictures pass through his mind and inflame his imagination. He beholds Dulcinea—Dulcinea, the ideal woman (oboe melody); he sees her beset by giants and rescued by a knight. "His fantasy was filled with those things that he read, of enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, tempests, and other impossible follies," and in the end, "through his little sleep and much reading, he dried up his brains in such sort as he lost wholly his judgment." The strain becomes unbearable; the orchestra utters confused and insane and wildly chaotic thoughts; until finally, "in some terrible chords that give one the sensation of an overstretched spring snapping violently," we realize that the Knight is at last quite mad. He has determined on a life of chivalry.

THEME

The two-part theme is announced: Don Quixote being limned by a phrase, pathetically grandiose, for solo 'cello (moderato); Sancho Panza by a burly and grotesquely comic theme first heard on the tenor tuba and bass clarinet, but afterwards confined to a solo viola.

Variation I
DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO PANZA SET FORTH

The knight and his squire set forth on their quest of chivalric adventure, the Don inspired by the thought of the lovely Dulcinea del Toboso (the theme of the Ideal Woman). The sight of windmills revolving in the breeze inspires his valor; he charges them, and is overthrown by the sails.

Variation II
THE VICTORIOUS BATTLE WITH THE HOST OF THE GREAT EMPEROR ALIFONFARON

Out of a cloud of dust (strings) Don Quixote perceives the approach of an army. Sancho sees that it is a flock of sheep (the muted[154] brass instruments in the orchestra imitate their bleating), and seeks to restrain the enthusiasm of his master. Don Quixote charges valiantly and puts the enemy to rout.

Variation III
COLLOQUIES OF KNIGHT AND SQUIRE

Don Quixote and Sancho Panzo argue concerning the reasonableness of a life of chivalry. The Don waxes eloquent over the glory of a knightly career, in an orchestral passage (developed out of his own theme and that of Dulcinea) of striking fervor and nobility. Sancho advocates the homely and attainable things of reality; we hear a fragment of his motive; but the Don silences him angrily.

Variation IV
THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE PILGRIMS

The knight and his squire fall in with a band of pilgrims (a theme of ecclesiastical character for the wind instruments). Don Quixote imagines them to be villains and malefactors. He attacks them and is worsted, falling senseless. He revives slowly, and Sancho, relieved, lies down beside him and sleeps.

Variation V
THE KNIGHT'S VIGIL BESIDE HIS ARMS

Don Quixote, following the knightly custom, refrains from sleep and watches beside his arms through the night. Ecstatically he perceives Dulcinea, as in a vision (the theme of the Ideal Woman is heard).

Variation VI
THE MEETING WITH DULCINEA

Sancho Panza assures the Don that a certain vulgar peasant girl whom they meet is his adored Dulcinea (we hear the Ideal Woman theme, transformed into a common and trivial tune—wood-wind and tambourine). Don Quixote is incredulous. He angrily ascribes the effect to some magical agency.

Variation VII
THE RIDE THROUGH THE AIR

Sitting stationary with bandaged eyes on a wooden horse, the knight and his squire believe that they are being borne through the air. We hear in the orchestra the whistling of the wind (here enters the famous "wind-machine"); the themes of the Don and of Sancho are giddily borne aloft on the instrumental breeze. A long-held note on the bassoon indicates their sudden stop, their realization, as they look about them, that they have not left the earth.

Variation VIII
THE JOURNEY IN THE ENCHANTED BOAT

The knight, perceiving an empty boat, and being convinced that it is miraculously intended for his use, embarks in it with his squire for the accomplishment of some predestined deed of chivalry. The orchestra plays a graceful barcarolle. The boat upsets, but the two reach shore in safety. They offer up thanks for their escape (a religious passage for the wind instruments).

Variation IX
THE CONFLICT WITH THE TWO SORCERERS

Don Quixote meets two wayfarers whom he takes to be the magicians whose sorcery has worked him ill. They are merely a pair of inoffensive monks, but the knight attacks them, with victorious results.

Variation X
THE COMBAT WITH THE KNIGHT OF THE SILVER MOON,
AND THE OVERTHROW OF DON QUIXOTE

The bachelor Samson Carrasco, the "Knight of the Silver Moon," one of Don Quixote's townsmen, does battle with him for the sake of his own good and to cure him of his delusions: "so to have him in his own house, I thought upon this device." The music portrays the contest between them, which is thus described by Cervantes: "They both of them set spurs to their horses, and the Knight of the White Moon's being the swifter, met Don Quixote ere he had run a quarter of his career so forcibly (without touching him with his lance, for it seemed he carried it aloft on purpose) that he tumbled horse and man both to the ground, and Don Quixote had a terrible fall; so he got straight on the top of him; and, clapping his lance's point upon his visor, said, 'You are vanquished, Knight, and a dead man, if you confess not, according to the conditions of our combat.' Don Quixote, all bruised and amazed, without heaving up his visor, as if he had spoken out of a tomb, with a faint and weak voice said, 'Dulcinea del Toboso is the fairest woman in the world, and I the unfortunatest knight on earth; and it is not fit that my weakness defraud this truth; thrust your lance into me, Knight, and kill me, since you have bereaved me of my honor.' 'Not so, truly,' quoth he of the White Moon; 'let the fame of my Lady Dulcinea's beauty live in her entireness; I am only contented that the grand Don Quixote retire home for a year, or till such time as I please, as we agreed before we began the battle.' And Don Quixote answered that, so nothing were required of him in prejudice of his Lady Dulcinea, he would accomplish all the rest, like a true and punctual knight."

Don Quixote, defeated, broken-hearted, his illusions vanishing one by one, rides homeward with his squire in profound dejection; and here the orchestra evolves out of a pathetic variant of his theme an eloquent and vivid commentary.

Finale
THE DEATH OF DON QUIXOTE

The knight, once more a sane and wise man, his brain cleared of its mists, his reason restored, lies dying peacefully in his bed. "They stood all gazing one upon another, wondering at Don Quixote's sound reasons, although they made some doubt to believe them. One of the signs which induced them to conjecture that he was near unto death's door was that with such facility he was from a stark fool become a wise man. For, to the words already alleged, he added many more so significant, so Christian-like, and so well couched, that without doubt they confidently believed that Don Quixote was become a right wise man.... Amidst the wailful plaints and blubbering tears of the bystanders he yielded up the ghost—that is to say, he died."[155] The music which portrays his end is simple and very peaceful. The chords which, at the beginning, indicated his aberration, are now orderly, tranquil, and composed.

"A HERO'S LIFE" ["EIN HELDENLEBEN"], TONE-POEM: Op. 40

Ein Heldenleben was completed in December, 1898. The score bears absolutely no indication of its purport or significance save the title: we are left to guess whether the "hero" whose life is celebrated therein is an ideal hero or a figure of history, of myth, of romance, or of private life. Strauss is said to have observed, in response to a question: "There is no need of a programme. It is enough to know there is a hero fighting his enemies." Yet the analysts have been busy with this score, as with others by Strauss; and he has, at least by implication, sanctioned their interpretations.

"A Hero's Life" is in six connected sections, arranged and identified as follows:

1. THE HERO
2. THE HERO'S ADVERSARIES
3. THE HERO'S CONSORT
4. THE HERO'S BATTLE-FIELD
5. THE HERO'S WORKS OF PEACE
6. THE HERO'S RETIREMENT FROM THE WORLD, AND THE END OF HIS STRIVING

I. THE HERO

We hear first the theme of the Hero, a chivalric and wide-arched phrase, of extraordinary breadth and energy, announced forte by horns, viola, and 'cellos. Subsidiary themes follow, picturing various aspects of his nature—his "pride, emotional nature, iron will, richness of imagination," and so forth. The main theme, weightily proclaimed by tenor and bass tubas, four horns, double-basses, 'cellos, and wood-wind, brings the first section to a thunderous close.

II. THE HERO'S ADVERSARIES

Herein are pictured the Hero's opponents and detractors—an envious and malicious crew, rich in all uncharitableness. [156] The wood-wind instruments—flutes, oboes, English horn, clarinets—utter shrill and snarling phrases: beside them, the spiteful cackling of the wood-wind in the "Meistersinger" overture is as the amorous murmuring of doves. There is also an uncouth and sluggish phrase for tenor and bass tubas, intended to picture the malevolence of the dull-witted among the foe. The theme of the Hero, in a sad and meditative guise, pictures his dignified amazement, his pained and sorrowful surprise that his adversaries should so reveal the smallness and meanness and acrimony of their natures. A poignant phrase, of "Parsifal"-like color and profile (muted[157] strings) speaks of his temporary disquietment—perhaps his doubt of his own sublimity; but this is barely hinted at. His dauntless courage reasserts itself, and the mocking and contemptible horde are put, at least for the time, to rout.

III. THE HERO'S CONSORT

A solo violin, in a long and elaborate passage, introduces the Hero's beloved. She is pictured at first as capricious—a coquette; but the music grows more tender, more gentle; the full orchestra enters; the oboe sings an expressive melody; there are rapturous and passionate phrases for the strings amid sweeping arpeggios in the harps, and the love scene reaches its climax. The mocking voices of the foe are heard remotely, like the distant croaking of night birds through an ecstatic dream: they are powerless to disturb the peace and felicity of the lovers.

IV. THE HERO'S BATTLE-FIELD

But now the call to battle sounds, and it may not be ignored. Distant fanfares of trumpets summon the Hero to the conflict. The orchestra becomes a battle-field; the music is chaos—tumultuous, cataclysmic: "it evokes the picture of countless and waging hosts, of forests of waving spears and clashing blades. The din, heat, and turmoil of conflict are spread over all, and the ground piled high with the slain." Through the dust and din we are reminded of the inspiration of the beloved, which urges on and enheartens the champion, whose motive contests for supremacy with that of his adversaries. A triumphant orchestral outburst on the Hero's theme proclaims at last his victory. Yet he rejoices alone—the world regards his conquest with cold and cynical indifference.

V. THE HERO'S WORKS OF PEACE

Now begins a celebration of the hero's victories of peace, his spiritual evolution and achievements. This section is introduced by a reminder of the uncouth phrase for tenor and bass tuba heard in the second division. The heroic and tender themes of the preceding pages are recalled, and with them are woven (a significant indication of the true subject of the tone-poem) quotations of themes from Strauss's earlier works. We hear, in surprising and subtle combinations, reminiscences of "Don Juan," "Thus Spake Zarathustra," "Death and Transfiguration," "Don Quixote," "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks," the music-drama "Guntram," "Macbeth," and the famous and lovely song, Traum durch die Dämmerung. Industrious commentators have discovered twenty-three of these quotations.

VI. THE HERO'S RETIREMENT FROM THE WORLD, AND THE END OF HIS STRIVING

Again we hear, in the tubas, the uncouth and cacophonous phrase which voices the dull contempt of the benighted adversaries. Even the glorious achievements of the Hero's brain, his spiritual conquests, have won only envy and derision. The protagonist rebels mightily; there are passionate and tempestuous phrases, reminiscences of his theme, in the strings, horns, and wood-wind. But his mood quiets. Over a persistent tapping of the kettle-drum, the English horn intones a gentler version of his theme. An agitating memory of the striving and conflict of the past disturbs, but only for a moment, the serenity of his mood. We are reminded of the consoling presence of the beloved one. Peace descends upon the spirit of the Hero. The close is majestic and benign.

"DOMESTIC SYMPHONY": Op. 53

In the course of an interview published in London in 1902, Strauss made this announcement: "My next tone-poem will illustrate 'a day in my family life.' It will be partly lyrical, partly humorous—a triple fugue, the three subjects representing papa, mamma, and the baby." The Symphonia Domestica, composed in 1903, was published in 1904. The first performance anywhere was at Carnegie Hall, New York, March 21, 1904.

The symphony, which bears this dedication: Meiner lieben Frau und unserm Jungen gewidmet ("Dedicated to my dear Wife and our Boy"), is in one movement and three subdivisions: (1) Introduction and Scherzo; (2) Adagio; (3) Double Fugue and Finale. The composer declined, at the time of the first performance of the symphony, to furnish any programme for the music. [158] When the work was produced in Berlin (December 12, 1904), under the direction of the composer, the programme books contained this (presumably authorized) annotation of the music:

"I. INTRODUCTION and development of the three chief groups of themes:

"II. SCHERZO:

"III. ADAGIO:

"IV. FINALE:

A year later, in connection with the first performance in England, an "official" description was published, and it was intimated that this description was "allowed" by the composer "to be made public." It is therefore reproduced here, since there is every reason to believe that it constitutes an authentic interpretation of the music.

"[INTRODUCTION]

"The symphony is concerned with three main themes, that of the husband, that of the wife, and that of the child. The husband theme is divided into three sections, the first of which is marked gemächlich ('easy-going,' or 'deliberate,' given out by 'cellos), the second sinnend ('meditative,'[159] oboe,) and the third feurig ('fiery,' violins). The first section of the symphony, the Introduction, is devoted to an exposition and treatment of the chief themes, or groups of themes, its most striking feature being the introduction of the child theme on the oboe d'amore, an instrument which has practically fallen out of use.[160] The composer himself has spoken of this theme as being of 'almost Haydnesque simplicity.' On this follows a very characteristic passage, which has been interpreted as representing the child in its bath.[161]

"[SCHERZO]

"The Scherzo bears the headings Elternglück—Kindliche Spiele ('Parents' Happiness'—'The Child at Play'). Its chief theme is the child theme in a new rhythm. At its end the music suggestive of the bath recurs, and the clock strikes seven. We then come to the lullaby, where we have another version of the child theme.

"[ADAGIO]

"The sub-headings of the Adagio are Schaffen und Schauen—Liebes-scene—Träume und Sorgen

('Doing and Thinking'—'Love Scene'—'Dreams and Cares'). This elaborate section introduces no new themes of any importance, and is really a symphonic slow movement of great polyphonic elaboration and superlatively rich orchestral color. The gradual awakening of the family is next depicted by a change in the character of the music, which becomes more and more restless, the use of rhythmical variants of previous themes being very ingenious; and then there is another reference to the bath music, and the glockenspiel[162] indicates that it is 7 A.M.

"[FINALE]

"In this way we reach the final Fugue. The principal subject of this is also a new version of the child theme. Its sub-title is Lustiger Streit—Fröhlicher Beschluss ('Merry Argument'—'Happy Conclusion'), the subject of the dispute between father and mother being the future of the son. The Fugue (the chief subject of which is another variant of the child theme) is carried on with unflagging spirit and humor and great variety of orchestration.... As the Fugue proceeds, the child theme gradually grows more and more prominent, and finally seems to dominate the whole score." ["The child seems to have hurt himself in boisterous play," says another commentator. "The mother cares for him, and the father also has a soothing word."] "Some new themes, all more or less akin to it, and all in the nature of folk-tunes, are introduced. The father and mother, however, soon assume their former importance, and the whole ends with great spirit and in the highest good-humor, with an emphatic reassertion of the husband theme with which it began, suggesting that the father had the last word in the argument."

TSCHAIKOWSKY — "ROMEO AND JULIET," OVERTURE-FANTASIE [163]

(Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowsky: born in Votinsk, in the government of Viatka, Russia, May 7, 1840; died in St. Petersburg, November 6, 1893)

"Romeo and Juliet" ("overture-fantasie after Shakespeare"), composed in 1869-70, is the second of Tschaikowsky's programmatic works for orchestra.[164] There is no note of any kind attached to the score; but according to responsible interpreters the music is concerned with definite aspects of Shakespeare's tragedy. At the start is presented the figure of Friar Laurence (churchly harmonies in the clarinets and bassoons); later, the conflict of the opposing houses, expressed in a tumultuous passage full of strife and fury. Then follows the love scene, introducing two themes of rich emotional suggestion. The first of these themes—the rhapsodic and song-like phrase announced by muted[165] violas and English horn—was used by Tschaikowsky in the fragmentary "Duo from 'Romeo and Juliet'" found among his papers after his death, where it voices these words sung by Romeo: O nuit d'extase, arrête toi, O nuit d'amour, étends ton voile noir sur nous! ("O linger, night of ecstasy; O night of love, spread thy dark veil over us!"). The second theme—the lovely sequence of chords scored for muted and divided violins—forms, in the duet, the accompaniment to the impassioned dialogue of the enamoured pair in the chamber scene.[166] Following the love scene is a resumption of the stress and conflict of the first part, against which the solemn warning of Friar Laurence protests in vain. The lovers are again evoked, with more passionate insistence than before; there is a cumulative moment of arresting intensity; then, after a brief and portentous silence, a dolorous reminiscence of Romeo's ecstatic song, now dirge-like and woful (violins, 'cellos, bassoons; afterwards, declaimed with greater breadth, in the strings, with accompaniment of wood-wind, horns, and harp), brings the music to a close.

FANTASIA, "THE TEMPEST": Op. 18

During a visit to St. Petersburg in the winter of 1872-73, Tschaikowsky begged his friend Vladimir Stassov to suggest to him a subject for a symphonic fantasia—something, he preferred, Shakespearian. Stassov responded by sending Tschaikowsky a letter proposing "The Tempest" as a theme, and outlining, in elaborate and enthusiastic detail, the poetic and dramatic plan which, he conceived, should underlie the music. This scheme so appealed to Tschaikowsky that he announced his determination "to carry out every detail"; and, to judge from his own programme affixed to the score, he actually did so. Stassov's remarks, therefore, serve as the best possible commentary on the significance of Tschaikowsky's music. He wrote as follows:

"I ... rejoice in the prospect of your work, which should prove a worthy pendant to your 'Romeo and Juliet' [see the preceding pages]. You ask whether it is necessary to introduce the tempest. Most certainly. Undoubtedly, most undoubtedly. Without it ... the entire programme would fall through. I have carefully weighed every incident, with all their pros and cons, and it would be a pity to upset the whole business. I think the sea should be depicted twice—at the opening and close of the work. In the introduction I pictured it to myself as calm, until Prospero works his spell and the storm begins. But I think this storm should be different from all others [all other orchestral storms], in that it breaks out at once in all its fury, and does not, as generally happens, work itself up to a climax by degrees. I suggest this original treatment because this particular tempest is brought about by enchantment, and not, as in most operas, oratorios, and symphonies, by natural agencies. When the storm has abated, when its roaring, screeching, booming, and raging have subsided, the Enchanted Island appears in all its beauty, and, still more lovely, the maiden Miranda, who flits like a sunbeam over the island. Her conversation with Prospero, and immediately afterwards with Ferdinand, who fascinates her, and with whom she falls in love. The love theme (crescendo) must resemble the expanding and blooming of a flower; Shakespeare has thus depicted her at the close of the first act, and I think this would be something well suited to your muse. Then I would suggest the appearance of Caliban, the half-animal slave; and then Ariel, whose motto you may find in Shakespeare's lyric (at the end of the first act)—'Come unto these yellow sands.' After Ariel, Ferdinand and Miranda should reappear; this time in a phrase of glowing passion. Then the imposing figure of Prospero, who relinquishes his magic arts and takes farewell of his past; and finally the sea, calm and peaceful, which washes the shores of the desert island, while the happy inhabitants are borne away in a ship to distant Italy."

How faithfully Tschaikowsky adhered to this admirable plan is made evident by the following programme, which, in Russian and French, prefixes the score:

"The Sea. Ariel, spirit of the air, obedient to the will of the magician Prospero, evokes a tempest. Wreck of the ship which carries Ferdinand. The Enchanted Isle. First timid stirring of love between Miranda and Ferdinand. Ariel. Caliban. The love-lorn couple abandon themselves to the triumphant sway of passion. Prospero lays aside his magical power and quits the isle. The Sea."

La Tempête was begun early in August, 1873, and finished three months later. It is dedicated to Stassov. The work was produced at a concert of the Moscow Musical Society, December 19, 1873. In November of the following year it was performed in St. Petersburg. Stassov attended a rehearsal, and wrote frankly to Tschaikowsky concerning the music of which he was at least part creator:

"I have just come from the rehearsal for Saturday's concert. Your 'Tempest' was played for the first time. Rimsky-Korsakoff and I sat alone in the empty hall and overflowed with delight.

"Your 'Tempest' is fascinating! Unlike any other work! The tempest itself is not remarkable or new; Prospero, too, is nothing out of the way, and at the close you have made a very common-place cadenza, such as one might find in the finale of an Italian opera—these are three blemishes. But all the rest is a marvel of marvels! Caliban, Ariel, the love scene—all belong to the highest creations of art. In both love scenes, what passion, what languor, what beauty! I know nothing to compare with it. The wild, uncouth Caliban, the wonderful flights of Ariel—these are creations of the first order. In this scene the orchestration is enchanting.

"Rimsky and I send you our homage and heartiest congratulations upon the completion of such a fine piece of workmanship."[167]

FANTASIA, "FRANCESCA DA RIMINI": Op. 32

Tschaikowsky visited Paris in the summer of 1876, and while there sketched the plan of a symphonic poem after Dante—"Francesca da Rimini." He had intended to write an opera based on this theme, and had considered a libretto on the subject prepared by one Zvantsieff. But the project was abandoned. In July of that year he wrote from Paris to his brother Modeste: "Early this morning I read through the fifth canto of the 'Inferno,' and was beset by the wish to compose a symphonic poem, 'Francesca da Rimini.' On October 26th he wrote from Moscow: "I have just finished a new work, the symphonic fantasia 'Francesca da Rimini.' I have worked on it con amore, and I believe that my love has brought with it success.... However, a just estimate of this work is impossible so long as it is not orchestrated and has not been played."

The fantasia was completed in November, 1876.

Prefaced to the score is this introduction:

"Dante arrives in the second circle of hell. He sees that here the incontinent are punished, and their punishment is to be tormented continually by the crudest winds under a gloomy air. Among these tortured ones he recognizes Francesca da Rimini, who tells her story."

Then follows a quotation from the fifth canto of the "Inferno," beginning with Francesca's words:

"... Nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordasi del tempo felice
Nella miseria;"

("... There is no greater pain
Than to recall a happier time
In misery;")

and ending with the concluding line of the canto—that is to say, twenty-one lines out of the hundred and forty comprised in the canto. Since it is, perhaps, well to recall the entire story as Dante relates it, in order that the scope and significance of Tschaikowsky's music may be understood, I quote the canto from beginning to end, in the extraordinarily careful and felicitous translation of Dr. John A. Carlyle:

The opening section (Andante lugubre) of Tschaikowsky's fantasia evokes the sinister and dreadful scene which greeted Dante and Virgil as they entered the region of the second circle—the tempestuous winds, the wailing of the damned, the appalling gloom and horror of the place. "Pale, tormented, shadowy figures approach; they increase in number; orchestral spasm follow spasm; and then there is rest, there is awful silence." There follows a lull in the whirlwind, and a theme heard at the beginning (horns, cornet, trombones) "announces solemnly the approach of Francesca and Paolo. The wood-wind takes the theme, and a recitative leads to the second section of the fantasia, Andante cantabile non troppo." In this section the apparition of the two lovers is brought before us. "This middle part is especially beautiful," observes a German annotator, "on account of the original and vaporous accompaniment by three flutes of the chief theme. The ... motive of the first section enters ('cello) as the thought of remorse, but a delightful melody of the English horn and delicate harp-chords dispel the gloomy thoughts; and the picture of the two, happy in their all-absorbing, passionate, but disastrous love, is maintained. ["We seem," says Mrs. Rosa Newmarch of this passage, "to hear the spirit-voice of Francesca herself, from which all the horrors of hell have not taken the sweetness of human love and poignant memory."] Then the "lamenting ghosts" re-enter (largamente, wind instruments, then in the strings). "The lovers vanish in an orchestral storm." Saint-Saëns, in his lively Portraits et Souvenirs, makes some interesting comments on the music: "The gentlest and kindest of men," he writes, "has let loose a whirlwind in this work, and shows as little pity for his interpreters and hearers as Satan for sinners [here speaks the invincible classicist!].... A long, melodic phrase, the love song of Paolo and Francesca, soars above this tempest, this bufera infernale, which attracted Liszt before Tschaikowsky, and engendered his Dante Symphony [see pages 164-173]. Liszt's Francesca is more touching and more Italian in character than that of the great Slavonic composer; the whole work is so typical that we seem to see the profile of Dante projected in it. Tschaikowsky's art is more subtle, the outlines clearer, the material more attractive; from a purely musical point of view the work is better. Liszt's version is perhaps more to the taste of the poet or painter. On the whole, they can fitly stand side by side; either of them is worthy of Dante."

SYMPHONY No. 4, IN F MINOR: Op. 36

1. Andante sostenuto

Moderato con anima in movimento di valse

2. Andantino in modo di canzona

3. Scherzo, "Pizzicato ostinato": Allegro

4. Finale: Allegro con fuoco

Tschaikowsky began this symphony in 1876, and completed it in the winter of 1877-78. The score bears the dedication: "To my Best Friend"; and behind the phrase lies a singular history, too long to be told here in full. The "best friend" was Nadeshda Filaretowna von Meck, [173] a widow living in Moscow. Exceedingly wealthy, she deeply admired the music of Tschaikowsky. She inquired concerning his pecuniary circumstances, and, learning that his means were straitened and that he was in debt, she sent him, in the summer of 1877, the sum of three thousand rubles. A correspondence had meanwhile begun between them (the first letter, from Mrs. von Meck, is dated December 30, 1876); she had given Tschaikowsky certain small commissions to do for her—transcriptions for violin and piano of certain of his works which she wished made—and for these she paid him generous fees. In the autumn of 1877 she asked him, with many apologies, to permit her to settle upon him an annual allowance of 6000 rubles (about $3000), that he might compose undisturbed by material cares. "If I wanted something from you," she wrote, "of course you would give it me—is it not so? Very well, then, we cry quits. Do not interfere with my management of your domestic economy, Peter Iljitsch." She desired and insisted that they should never meet or personally know each other; "the more you fascinate me, the more I shrink from knowing you," she wrote. Tschaikowsky accepted the settlement, and respected her wish concerning their intercourse. "I can only serve you," wrote the composer, "by means of my music. Nadeshda Filaretowna, every note which comes from my pen in future is dedicated to you!" They corresponded frequently, at length, and with the deepest intellectual and spiritual intimacy; but they never met. "When they accidentally came face to face," writes Tschaikowsky's brother Modeste, "they passed as total strangers. To the end of their days they never exchanged a word...."

Their correspondence, which extended over thirteen years, was abruptly and lamentably ended. In December, 1890, Tschaikowsky received a letter from his patroness informing him that she was on the brink of ruin, and that she would be obliged to discontinue his allowance; this, despite the fact that she had more than once declared to him that, no matter what occurred, his annuity was assured to him for life. As it happened, this curtailment of his income did not greatly affect Tschaikowsky's pecuniary situation, for he had come to know prosperity with his increasing fame; but he suffered keen anxiety on his friend's account. Not long after, it turned out that Mrs. von Meck's fortune was not seriously affected, after all—a turn of events which, however, brought misery to the hyper-sensitive soul of Tschaikowsky. He persuaded himself that Mrs. von Meck's announcement had been merely "an excuse to get rid of him on the first opportunity"; that he had been mistaken in idealizing his relations with his "best friend"; that his allowance had long since ceased to be the outcome of a generous impulse. "Such were my relations with her," he wrote at this time to a friend, "that I never felt oppressed by her generous gifts; but now they weigh upon me in retrospect. My pride is hurt; my faith in her unfailing readiness to help me, and to make any sacrifice for my sake, is betrayed." He thought of returning to her in full the money she had settled upon him, but feared to mortify her. He endeavored, both frankly and diplomatically, to renew their intercourse; but to no avail. She made no response whatever to his attempts to continue their relationship, either through letters or in response to overtures made by Tschaikowsky through mutual friends. He learned that she was ill—ill of "a terrible nervous disease, which changed her relations not only to him, but to others." Yet no illness, no misfortune, it seemed to him, could, as he wrote, "change the sentiments which were expressed in [her] letters."... "I would sooner," he declared, "have believed that the earth could fail beneath me than that our relations could suffer change. But the inconceivable has happened, and all my ideas of human nature, all my faith in the best of mankind, have been turned upside-down. My peace is broken, and the share of happiness fate has allotted me is embittered and spoiled." Two years later, on his death-bed, her name was constantly and feverishly on his lips, "in an indignant or reproachful tone," says Modeste. "... In the broken phrases of his last delirium these words alone were intelligible to those around him."[174] Nadeshda von Meck survived him by only two months. She died January 25, 1894.

The Fourth Symphony is closely bound up with this singular experience. Not only is it dedicated to Tschaikowsky's devoted benefactress, but he speaks of it repeatedly in his correspondence with her as "our" symphony. "May this music, which is so intimately associated with the thought of you," he wrote to her in November, 1877, "speak to you and tell you that I love you with all my heart and soul. O my best and incomparable friend!" That the symphony has a well-defined programme we know on the authority of the composer himself, though the score bears no descriptive title or prefatory note of any kind. Writing to Mrs. von Meck from Florence in March, 1878, Tschaikowsky sent this exposition of his music, which he accompanied with thematic illustrations:

"You ask if in composing this symphony I had a special programme in view.... For our symphony there is a programme. That is to say, it is possible to express its contents in words, and I will tell you, and you alone, the meaning of the entire work and of its separate movements. Naturally, I can do so only as regards its general features."

[I. Andante sostenuto; Moderato con anima in movimento di valse]

"The Introduction is the kernel, the quintessence, the chief thought of the whole symphony. [Tschaikowsky quotes the stern and threatening opening theme, announced by horns and bassoons, Andante.] This is Fate, the fatal power which hinders one in the pursuit of happiness from gaining the goal, which jealously provides that peace and comfort do not prevail, that the sky is not free from clouds—a might that swings, like the sword of Damocles, constantly over the head, that poisons continually the soul. This might is overpowering and invincible. There is nothing to do but to submit and vainly to complain. [Tschaikowsky quotes here the expressive theme for strings, Moderato con anima.] The feeling of despondency and despair grows ever stronger and more passionate. It is better to turn from the realities and to lull one's self in dreams. [Clarinet solo, accompanied by strings.] O joy! What a lovely and gentle dream! A radiant being, promising happiness, floats before me and beckons me on. The importunate first theme of the allegro is now heard afar off, and now the soul is wholly enwrapped with dreams. There is no thought of gloom and cheerlessness. Happiness! Happiness! Happiness!... No, they are only dreams, and Fate dispels them. The whole of life is only a constant alternation between dismal reality and flattering dreams of happiness. There is no port: you will be tossed hither and thither by the waves, until the sea swallows you. This, approximately, is the programme of the first movement."

[II. Andantino, in modo di canzona]

"The second movement shows suffering in another stage. It is a feeling of melancholy such as fills one when one sits alone at home, exhausted by work; the book has slipped out of one's hand; a swarm of memories arise in one's mind. How sad that so much has been and is gone, and yet it is pleasant to think of the days of one's youth. We regret the past and have neither the courage nor the desire to begin a new life. We are weary of life. We wish refreshment, retrospection. We think of happy hours when our young blood still sparkled and effervesced and life brought satisfaction. We think of moments of sadness and irrepressible losses. But these things are far away, so far away! It is sad, yet sweet, to pore over the past."

[III. Scherzo, "Pizzicato ostinato": Allegro]

"No definite feelings find expression in the third movement. These are capricious arabesques, intangible figures which flit through the fancy as if one had drunk wine and become slightly intoxicated. The mood is neither merry nor sad. We think of nothing, but give free rein to the fancy which humors itself in drafting the most singular lines. Suddenly there arises the memory of a drunken peasant and a ribald song.... Military music passes by in the distance. Such are the disconnected images which flit through the brain as one sinks into slumber. They have nothing to do with reality; they are incomprehensible, bizarre, fragmentary."

[IV. Finale: Allegro con fuoco]

"Fourth movement. If you find no pleasure in yourself, look about you. Go to the folk. See how it understands to be jolly, how it surrenders itself to gaiety. The picture of a folk-holiday. Scarcely have you forgotten yourself, scarcely have you had time to be absorbed in the happiness of others, before untiring Fate again announces its approach. The other children of men are not concerned with you. They neither see nor feel that you are lonely and sad. How they enjoy themselves, how happy they are! And will you maintain that everything in the world is sad and gloomy? There is still happiness—simple, native happiness. Rejoice in the happiness of others—and you can still live.

"This is all that I can tell you, my dear friend, about the symphony...."

"MANFRED," SYMPHONY IN FOUR TABLEAUX: Op. 58

This symphony is frankly programme-music. It is not listed among Tschaikowsky's symphonies—where, in order of composition and opus number, it would stand between the Fourth (Op. 36, 1876-78) and the Fifth (Op. 64, 1888). "Manfred, Symphony in Four Tableaux, after the Dramatic Poem by Byron," was composed in 1885. The score contains the following preface, printed in French and Russian:

I
(Lento lugubre; andante)

Manfred's despair and anguish, his inextinguishable longing and remorse, his fruitless quest after forgetfulness, form the emotional and dramatic burden of this movement. Manfred's theme is heard at the beginning—a sombre and tragic motive for bassoons and bass clarinet. There are also musical symbols for his passionate appeal for oblivion, for his occult powers, and for the thought of Astarte. "The movement should not be considered as panoramic in any sense. There is no attempt to depict any special scene, to translate into music any particular soliloquy. It is the soul of Manfred that the composer wishes to portray."

II
(Scherzo: Vivace con spirito)

This movement was suggested by the second scene of act two of Byron's drama, in which Manfred, beside the cataract, evokes the Witch of the Alps, tells her of Astarte and of his own remorse and longing, and—although she intimates that she may help him—rejects her aid; for he is not willing to swear obedience to her will. "As the scene in the poem may be regarded as a picturesque episode—for the incantation is fruitless and only one of many—so the music is a relief after the tumultuous passion and raging despair of the first movement. The vision of the dashing, glistening cataract continues until, with note of triangle and chord of harp, the rainbow is revealed." To the accompaniment of mysterious and ethereal harp tones Manfred conjures up the witch, "who rises beneath the arch of the sunbow of the torrent." Her song is suggested (violins and harps). There is a poignant reminiscence of Manfred's despair. "The glory of the cataract is once more seen. It pales as the theme of despair is heard again."

III
(Pastorale: Andante con moto)

This scene is general in its suggestiveness; it has no definite connection with any particular scene in Byron's poem. The opening is idyllic, but the mood of the music is soon altered. Again we are reminded of Manfred's unalterable woe. Perhaps Tschaikowsky had in mind here a tense passage in the scene between Manfred and the Chamois-Hunter (Act II., Scene I.):

"MANFRED. Think'st thou existence doth depend on time?
It doth; but actions are our epochs: mine
Have made my days and nights imperishable,
Endless, and all alike, as sands on the shore,
Innumerable atoms; and one desert,
Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break,
But nothing rests, save carcasses and wrecks,
Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness.

"CHAMOIS-HUNTER. Alas! he's mad—but yet I must not leave him.

"MANFRED. I would I were—for then the things I see
Would be but a distempered dream.

"CHAMOIS-HUNTER. What is it?
That thou dost see, or think thou look'st upon?

"MANFRED. Myself, and thee—a peasant of the Alps—
Thy humble virtues, hospitable home,
And spirit patient, pious, proud, and free;
Thy self-respect, ingrained on innocent thoughts;

"This do I see—and then I look within—
It matters not—my soul was scorch'd already!"

IV
(Finale: Allegro con fuoco)

This bacchanal in the underground palace of Arimanes is Tschaikowsky's own invention; there is no bacchanal, or suggestion of one, in the corresponding scene in Byron's poem, where Arimanes, seated on his throne of fire, is surrounded by spirits, who praise him in a worshipful hymn.

At the climax of the music's wild revelling the motive of despair is recalled; the music becomes uncanny, mysterious; we hear the theme of Manfred. Nemesis, who has entered the hall together with the Destinies, invokes the wraith of Astarte:

"MANFRED. Can this be death? there's bloom upon her cheek;
But now I see it is no living hue,
But a strange hectic—like the unnatural red
Which Autumn plants upon the perish'd leaf.
It is the same! O God! that I should dread
To look upon the same—Astarte!—No,
I cannot speak to her—but bid her speak—
Forgive me or condemn me.

"PHANTOM OF ASTARTE. Manfred!

"MANFRED. Say on, say on—
I live but in the sound—it is thy voice!

"PHANTOM. Manfred! To-morrow ends thine earthly ills. Farewell!

"MANFRED. Yet one word more—am I forgiven?

"PHANTOM. Farewell!

"MANFRED. Say, shall we meet again?

"PHANTOM. Farewell!

"MANFRED. One word for mercy! Say thou lovest me.

"PHANTOM. Manfred!"

[The Spirit of ASTARTE disappears.]

"NEMESIS. She's gone, and will not be recall'd;
Her words will be fulfill'd. Return to the earth.

"A SPIRIT. He is convulsed.—This is to be a mortal,
And seek the things beyond mortality."

The music rises to a momentous and tragic climax. Manfred's death scene is brought before us. We are in the tower of his castle. Night approaches. The importunate demons have disappeared. Manfred and the Abbot are alone (Act III., Scene IV.):

"THE ABBOT. Alas! how pale thou art—thy lips are white—
And thy breast heaves—and in thy gasping throat
The accents rattle. Give thy prayers to Heaven—
Pray—albeit but in thought—but die not thus.

"MANFRED. 'Tis over—my dull eyes can fix thee not;
But all things swim around me, and the earth
Heaves as it were beneath me. Fare thee well—
Give me thy hand.

"ABBOT. Cold—cold—even to the heart;
But yet one prayer. Alas! how fares it with thee?

"MANFRED. Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die."

"ABBOT. He's gone—his soul hath ta'en his earthless flight.
Whither? I dread to think; but he is gone."

SYMPHONY No. 6, "PATHETIC": Op. 74

Tschaikowsky wrote to Vladimir Davidoff on February 23, 1893:

"Just as I was starting on my journey [the visit to Paris in December, 1892] the idea came to me for a new symphony. This time with a programme; but a programme which should be a riddle to all—let them guess it who can! The work will be entitled 'A Programme Symphony' (No. 6). This programme is penetrated by subjective sentiment. During my journey, while composing it in my mind, I have often wept bitterly. Now that I am home again I have settled down to sketch out the work, and I work at it with such ardor that in less than four days I have finished the first movement, while the other movements are clearly outlined in my mind. There will be much, as regards the form, that will be novel in this work. For instance, the Finale will not be a boisterous Allegro, but, on the contrary, an extended Adagio." Six months later he wrote to Davidoff that the symphony was progressing, and that he considered it the best—especially "the most open-hearted"—of all his works. "I love it as I have never loved any of my musical offspring before." On August 24th he informed his publisher, Jurgenson, that he had finished orchestrating the symphony; nor did his opinion of it change. "It is indescribably beautiful," he wrote, in a fervor of enthusiasm, to his brother Modeste; and to the Grand-Duke Constantine he wrote, on October 3d: "Without exaggeration I have put my whole soul into this work." It was the last score but one upon which he was to work. Five weeks later he was dead.[176]

The symphony was produced at St. Petersburg on October 28th, when it made little impression; it was said that its inspiration "stood far below Tschaikowsky's other symphonies." It did not then bear the title "Pathetic." How it came to be so named is thus related by Modeste Tschaikowsky:

"The morning after the concert I found my brother sitting at the breakfast-table with the score of the symphony before him. He had agreed to send the score to Jurgenson [his publisher] that very day, but could not decide upon a title. He did not care to designate it merely by a number, and he had abandoned his original intention of entitling it 'A Programme Symphony.' 'What would Programme Symphony mean,' he said, 'if I will not give the programme?' I suggested 'Tragic' Symphony as an appropriate title, but that did not please him. I left the room while he was still undecided. Suddenly 'Pathetic' occurred to me, and I went back to the room and suggested it. I remember, as though it were yesterday, how he exclaimed: 'Bravo, Modi, splendid! Pathetic!' And then and there he added to the score, in my presence, the title that will always remain."

What, precisely, was in Tschaikowsky's mind when he composed this "Programme Symphony"? According to Tschaikowsky's intimate friend Nicholas Kashkin, "if the composer had disclosed it to the public, the world would not have regarded the symphony as a kind of legacy from one filled with a presentiment of his own approaching end." To him it seems more reasonable "to interpret the overwhelming energy of the third movement and the abysmal sorrow of the Finale in the broader light of a national or historical significance, rather than to narrow them to the expression of an individual experience. If the last movement is intended to be predictive, it is surely of things vaster and issues more fatal than are contained in a mere personal apprehension of death. It speaks rather of a lamentation large et souffrance inconnue, and seems to set the seal of finality on all human hopes. Even if we eliminate the purely subjective interest, this autumnal inspiration of Tschaikowsky, in which we hear 'the ground whirl of the perished leaves of hope,' still remains the most profoundly stirring of his works."

No one has speculated with finer tact and sympathy concerning this extraordinary human document than has Mr. Philip Hale, whose meditations may well serve as a comment upon the character of the music:

"Each hearer has his own thoughts when he is 'reminded by the instruments.' To some this symphony is as the life of man. The story is to them of man's illusions, desires, loves, struggles, victories, and end. In the first movement they find, with the despair of old age and the dread of death, the recollection of early years, with the transports and illusions of love, the remembrance of youth and all that is contained in that word.

"The second movement might bear as a motto the words of the Third Kalandar in the Thousand Nights and a Night: 'And we sat down to drink, and some sang songs and others played the lute and psaltery and recorders and other instruments, and the bowl went merrily round. Hereupon such gladness possessed me that I forgot the sorrows of the world one and all, and said: "This is indeed life O sad that 'tis fleeting!'" The trio[177] is as the sound of the clock that in Poe's wild tale compelled even the musicians of the orchestra to pause momentarily in their performance, to hearken to the sound; 'and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions, and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused revery or meditation.' In this trio Death beats the drum. With Tschaikowsky, here, as in the 'Manfred' symphony, the drum is the most tragic of instruments. The persistent drum-beat in this trio is poignant in despair not untouched with irony. Man says: 'Come now, I'll be gay'; and he tries to sing and to dance and to forget. His very gaiety is labored, forced, constrained, in an unnatural rhythm. And then the drum is heard, and there is wailing, there is angry protest, there is the conviction that the struggle against Fate is vain. Again there is the deliberate effort to be gay, but the drum once heard beats in the ears forever.

"The third movement—the march-scherzo—is the excuse, the pretext, for the final lamentation. The man triumphs; he knows all that there is in earthly fame. Success is hideous, as Victor Hugo said. The blare of trumpets, the shouts of the mob, may drown the sneers of envy; but at Pompey passing Roman streets, at Tasso with the laurel wreath, at coronation of czar or inauguration of president, Death grins, for he knows the emptiness, the vulgarity, of what this world calls success.

"This battle-drunk, delirious movement must perforce precede the mighty wail—

"'The glories of our blood and state

Are shadows, not substantial things;

There is no armor against fate;

Death lays his icy hands on kings.'"

The last movement—the prodigious Adagio lamentoso—moved Mr. Vernon Blackburn to a comparison with Shelley's "Adonais": "The precise emotions," he wrote, "down to a certain and extreme point, which inspired Shelley in his wonderful expression of grief and despair, also inspired the greatest of modern musicians since Wagner in his 'Swan Song'—his last musical utterance on earth. The first movement is the exact counterpart of those lines—

"'He will awake no more, oh, never more!—
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
The shadow of white Death....'

"As the musician strays into the darkness and into the miserable oblivion of death, ... Tschaikowsky reaches the full despair of those other lines—

"'We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.'

"With that mysterious and desperate hopelessness the Russian comes to an end of his faith and anticipation.... For as ['life'], writes Shelley, 'like a many-colored dome of glass, stains the white radiance of eternity,' even so Tschaikowsky in this symphony has stained eternity's radiance: he has captured the years and bound them into a momentary emotional pang."

"THE VOYVODE," [178] ORCHESTRAL BALLAD (Posthumous): Op. 78

Tschaikowsky composed Le Voyvode at Tiflis in 1890, under the inspiration of a poem by the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855). It is said that after the first performance of the work at Moscow in November, 1891, Tschaikowsky, disheartened over the cool reception of his music by the audience, and by the adverse criticism of his friends, "tore his score in pieces, exclaiming, 'Such rubbish should never have been written!'" [179] The orchestral parts are alleged to have been preserved, and the score restored from them. At all events, the work was published in 1897, four years after Tschaikowsky's death.

Mickiewicz's poem, in French and Russian, prefaces the score. It has been translated into English prose as follows:[180]

WAGNER — "A 'FAUST' OVERTURE" [181]

(Richard Wagner: born in Leipsic, May 22, 1813; died in Venice, February 13, 1883)

Wagner, during his sojourn in Paris in 1840, wrote an orchestral piece which, as he relates, he called an "overture to Goethe's 'Faust,' but which was in reality intended for the first section of a grand 'Faust' symphony." The curious and interesting history of this work may best be told in excerpts from Wagner's correspondence with his devoted friend and benefactor, Franz Liszt. Liszt, to whom Wagner had sent the manuscript of the overture in 1848, wrote in 1852 (October 7th), some months after he had produced the overture at Weimar:[182]

"The work is quite worthy of you; but, if you will allow me to make a remark, I must confess that I should like either a second middle part or else a quieter and more agreeably colored treatment of the present middle part. The brass is a little too massive there, and—forgive my opinion—the motive in F is not satisfactory: it wants grace in a certain sense, and is a kind of hybrid thing, neither fish nor flesh, which stands in no proper relation of contrast to what has gone before and what follows, and in consequence impedes the interest. If instead of this you introduced a soft, tender, melodious part, modulated à la Gretchen, I think I can assure you that your work would gain very much. Think this over, and do not be angry in case I have said something stupid."

To this Wagner responded (November 9, 1852): "You beautifully spotted the lie when I tried to make myself believe that I had written an overture to 'Faust.' You have felt quite justly what is wanting: the woman is wanting. Perhaps you would at once understand my tone-poem if I called it 'Faust in Solitude.' At that time I intended to write an entire 'Faust' symphony. The first movement, that which is ready, was this 'Solitary Faust,' longing, despairing, cursing. The 'feminine' floats around him as an object of his longing, but not in its divine reality; and it is just this insufficient image of his longing which he destroys in his despair. The second movement was to introduce Gretchen, the woman. I had a theme for her, but it was only a theme. The whole remains unfinished. I wrote my 'Flying Dutchman' instead. This is the whole explanation. If now, from a last remnant of weakness and vanity, I hesitate to abandon this 'Faust' work altogether, I shall certainly have to remodel it, but only as regards instrumental modulation. The theme which you desire I cannot introduce. This would naturally involve an entirely new composition, for which I have no inclination. If I publish it, I shall give it its proper title, 'Faust in Solitude,' or 'The Solitary Faust: a Tone-Poem for Orchestra.'"

He did not "abandon" it. Writing to Liszt from Zurich in January, 1855, he congratulated him on the completion of his "Faust" symphony, and added: "It is an absurd coincidence that just at this time I have been taken with a desire to remodel my old 'Faust' overture. I have made an entirely new score, have rewritten the instrumentation throughout, have made many changes, and have given more expansion and importance to the middle portion (second motive). I shall give it in a few days at a concert here, under the title of 'A "Faust" Overture.' The motto will be:

—but I shall not publish it in any case."

This motto, which Wagner retained, has been translated as follows:[183]

The overture, in its revised form, was produced in Zurich, January 23, 1855, at a concert of the Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft. Two days later, Liszt wrote to the composer: "You were quite right in arranging a new score of your overture. If you have succeeded in making the middle part a little more pliable, this work, significant as it was before, must have gained considerably. Be kind enough to have a copy made, and send it me as soon as possible. There will probably be some orchestral concerts here, and I should like to give this overture at the end of February."

Wagner sent the score, with a letter in which he said: "Herewith, dearest Franz, you receive my remodelled 'Faust' overture, which will appear very insignificant to you by the side of your 'Faust' symphony. To me the composition is interesting only on account of the time from which it dates; this reconstruction has again endeared it to me; and, with regard to the latter, I am childish enough to ask you to compare it very carefully with the first version, because I should like you to take cognizance of the effect of my experience and of the more refined feeling I have gained. In my opinion, new versions of this kind show most distinctly the spirit in which one has learned to work and the coarsenesses which one has cast off. You will be better pleased with the middle part. I was, of course, unable to introduce a new motive, because that would have involved a remodelling of almost the whole work; all I was able to do was to develop the sentiment a little more broadly, in the form of a kind of enlarged cadence. Gretchen, of course, could not be introduced, only Faust himself."[184]

"A SIEGFRIED IDYL" [185]

In the summer of 1870 (August 25th) Wagner was married at Lucerne, Switzerland, to Cosima, daughter of Franz Liszt and the Comtesse d'Agoult, and the divorced wife of Hans von Bülow.[186] Siegfried Wagner, the son of Richard and Cosima, was born at Triebschen, near Lucerne, June 6, 1869. In a letter dated June 25, 1870, two months before his marriage to Cosima, Wagner wrote to a friend: "She [Cosima] has defied every disapprobation and taken upon herself every condemnation. She has borne to me a wonderfully beautiful and vigorous boy, whom I could boldly call 'Siegfried': he is now growing, together with my work, and gives me a new, long life [Wagner was then fifty-seven years old], which at last has attained a meaning. Thus we get along without the world, from which we have retired entirely.... But now listen; you will, I trust, approve of the sentiment which leads us to postpone our visit until I can introduce to you the mother of my son as my wedded wife." [187]

Cosima, according to Lina Ramann, was born (in Bellagio) "at Christmas," 1837. The "Siegfried Idyl" was written by Wagner as a birthday gift to his wife, and it was first performed December 24, 1871, as an aubade, on the steps of Wagner's villa at Triebschen; the orchestra was a small group of players gathered from the neighborhood. Hans Richter played the trumpet, and Wagner himself conducted.

The themes out of which the "Idyl" is evolved are, with a single exception, motives from the Nibelungen music-drama "Siegfried," [188] upon which Wagner was engaged when his son was born; the exception is a German cradle-song, Schlaf, Kindchen, balde, Vöglein flieg'n im Walde.

Wagner dedicated the work to his wife in verses which have been translated as follows:

WOLF — "PENTHESILEA," SYMPHONIC POEM [189]

(Hugo Wolf: born in Windischgräz, Steiermark, Austria, March 13, 1860; died in Vienna, February 22, 1903)

This symphonic poem is based on the tragedy of like name by Heinrich von Kleist.[190] The action of Von Kleist's drama is, in outline, as follows: The Amazons, under the leadership of their queen, Penthesilea, go forth to attack the Greeks besieging Troy, hoping that they may celebrate at Themiscyra, with the young men whom they shall capture, the Feast of Roses. The law of the Amazons requires that only those whom they have overcome in conquest may celebrate with them at the festival; therefore, when Penthesilea encounters in battle the surpassingly beautiful Achilles, she perforce attacks him, for she is ravished by love of him. He bests her in the fight, but she is rescued by her sister warriors. Achilles learns that, should he permit her to overcome him, he might possess her. He plans to engage her single-handed, and allow her to conquer him. Penthesilea's suspicions are aroused; she becomes convinced of his trickery. Her consuming love is transformed into consuming and vengeful hate. She slays him, and, together with her hounds, rends his flesh and exults lustfully in his blood. When her frenzy—which is as the frenzy of Wilde's "Salome"—is at last appeased, she stabs herself and sinks upon the body of her lover.

Dr. Kuno Francke finds in the figure of the Amazon queen an image of Kleist's own soul—"a soul," he writes in his History of German Literature, "inspired with titanic daring, driven by superhuman desire, bent on conquering Eternity. When the conviction first dawned upon Kleist that the whole of truth is beyond human reach, all life henceforth seemed worthless to him. When Penthesilea, instead of vanquishing the beloved hero, is overcome by him, even his love is hateful to her. The ideal which she cannot fully and without reserve make hers she must destroy. The god in her having been killed, the beast awakes. And thus, immediately after that enchanting scene where the lovers, for the first time and the last, have been revelling in mutual surrender and delight, she falls like a tigress upon the unsuspecting and weaponless man; with the voluptuousness of despair, she sends the arrow through his breast; she lets the hounds loose upon him as he dies, and together with the hounds she tears his limbs and drinks his blood, until, at last, brought back to her senses, and realizing what she has done, she sinks into the arms of death—a character so atrocious and so ravishing, so monstrous and so divine, so miraculous and so true, as no other poet ever has created."

Although Wolf's symphonic poem is not provided with a programme, there are in the score explanatory titles for its main (connected) divisions. These titles have been annotated in German as follows (the translation is that published in the programme books of the Chicago Orchestra in April, 1904, at the time of the first American performance of the work):[191]

INDEX OF WORKS AND COMPOSERS

A

"Adonais," Overture, 51, 52.
"Afternoon of a Faun, The," Prelude to, 73-75.
"Also Sprach Zarathustra," Tone-Poem, 275-285.
"Antar," Symphony, 222-226.
"Aus Italia," Fantasy, 259-261.

Bantock, Granville, 11-18.
"Battle of the Huns, The," Symphonic Poem, 155-157.
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 19-30.
Berlioz, Hector, 31-41.
Bizet, Georges, 43-47.
"Blanik," Symphonic Poem, 253.
"Böcklin" Symphony, 131-136.

"Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage," Overture (see "Becalmed at Sea and Prosperous Voyage"), 202, 203.
"Carnival," Overture, 87-89.
Chadwick, George W., 49-55.
Charpentier, Gustave, 57-59.
Chausson, Ernest, 61-64.
"Christmas Eve," Suite, 231-234.
"Cleopatra," Symphonic Poem, 53-55
"Cockaigne," Overture, 96-98.
"Consecration of Sound, The," Symphony, 255-258.
Converse, Frederick S., 65-72.
"Coriolanus," Overture to, 24, 25.

"Dance in the Village Tavern, The," Episode (No. II.) from Lenau's "Faust", 174, 175.
"Dance of Death," Symphonic Poem, 237, 238.
"Danse Macabre," Symphonic Poem, 237, 238.
"Dante's 'Divina Commedia,' Symphony after", 164-173.
"Death and Transfiguration," Tone-Poem, 266-269.
"Death of Tintagiles, The," Symphonic Poem, 177-182.
Debussy, Claude, 73-78.
"Der Nächtliche Zug," Episode (No I.) from Lenau's "Faust", 173, 174.
"Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke," Episode (No. II.) from Lenau's "Faust", 174, 175.
"Devil's Villanelle, The," Fantasia, 184-187.
"Die Ideale," Symphonic Poem, 157-161.
"Die Sarazenen," Symphonic Fragment, 194, 195.
"Die Schöne Aldâ," Symphonic Fragment, 195, 196.
"Die Weihe der Töne," Symphony, 255-258.
"Djinns, The," Symphonic Poem, 113, 114.
"Domestic Symphony", 297-302.
"Don Juan," Tone-Poem, 261-264.
"Don Quixote," Variations, 285-292.
"Dream Children," Two Pieces, 98-100.
Dukas, Paul, 79-84.
Dvořák, Anton, 85-93.

"Egmont," Overture to, 27-30.
"Eine Faust Ouvertüre", 339-343.
"Eine Faust Symphonie", 161-164.
"Ein Heldenleben," Tone-Poem, 292-297.
Elgar, Edward, 95-104.
"Enchanted Forest, The," Legend, 137, 138.
"Endymion's Narrative," Romance, 67, 68.
"Enigma" Variations, 95-98.
"Episodes, Two, from Lenau's 'Faust'," 173-175.
"Eroica" Symphony, 19-24.
"Euphrosyne," Overture, 70.
"Euterpe," Overture, 52, 53.

Fantasia, "Francesca da Rimini", 308-316.
Fantasia, "The Tempest", 305-308.
"Fantastic" Symphony, 34-36.
"'Faust,' Lenau's, Two Episodes from", 173-175.
"Faust Overture, A", 339-343.
"Faust Symphony, A", 161-164.
"Festival of Pan, The," Romance, 65, 66.
"Festklänge," Symphonic Poem, 154, 155.
"Fingal's Cave" ["The Hebrides"], Overture, 200-202.
"Francesca da Rimini," Fantasia, 308-316.
Franck, César, 105-114.
"From Bohemia's Fields and Groves," Symphonic Poem, 253.
"From Italy," Fantasia, 259-261.
"From the New World," Symphony, 92, 93.

Glazounoff, Alexander, 115-118.
Goldmark, Karl, 119-122.
Grieg, Edvard, 123-126.

Hadley, Henry K., 127-130.
"Hamlet"; "Ophelia," Symphonic Poem, 198.
"Harold in Italy," Symphony, 36-41.
"Hebrides, The," ["Fingal's Cave"], Overture, 200-202.
"Hero's Life, A," Tone-Poem, 292-297.
Huber, Hans, 131-136.
"Hunnenschlacht," Symphonic Poem, 155-157.

"Ideal, The," Symphonic Poem, 157-161.
"Idyl, A Siegfried", 343-345. "Impressions of Italy," Suite, 57-59.
"Im Walde," Symphony, 213-216.
"In der Natur," Overture, 85-87.
"Indian" Suite, 196, 197.
d'Indy, Vincent, 137-144.
"In the South," Overture, 101-104.
"In the Woods," Symphony, 213-216.
"Istar," Symphonic Variations, 139-141.
"Italian" Symphony, 208-211.

"Jour d'été à la montagne," Tone-Poem, 141-144.

"King Lear," Overture to, 31-33.
"Kremlin, The," Symphonic Picture, 117, 118.

"La Bonne Chanson" ["Poem"], Tone-Poem, 182-184.
"La Forêt Enchantée," Legende, 137, 138.
"La Jeunesse d'Hercule," Symphonic Poem, 238, 239.
"La Mer," Three Sketches, 77, 78.
"La Mort de Tintagiles," Symphonic Poem, 177-182.
"Lancelot and Elaine," Symphonic Poem, 191-194.
"L'Apprenti Sorcier," Scherzo, 79-84.
"L'Après-Midi d'un Faune, Prelude à", 73-75.
"L'Arlésienne," Suite, 43-47.
"La Villanelle du Diable," Fantasia, 184-187.
"Le Chasseur Maudit," Symphonic Poem, 106, 107.
"Lemminkainen's Home-Faring," Symphonic Poem, 249, 250.
"Lemminkainen," Symphonic Poem, 247-250.
"Lenau's 'Faust,' Two Episodes from", 173-175.
"Lenore," Symphony, 216-220.
"Le Rouet d'Omphale," Symphonic Poem, 235, 236.
"Les Éolides," Symphonic Poem, 105, 106.
"Les Préludes," Symphonic Poem, 147, 148.
"Le Voyvode," Orchestral Ballad, 335-337.
Liszt, Franz, 145-175.
Loeffler, Charles Martin, 177-189.
"Lovely Aldâ, The", 195, 196.
"Lovely Melusina, The," Overture, 203-206.

"Macbeth," Tone-Poem, 264-266.
MacDowell, Edward, 191-198.
"Manfred," Overture to, 243-245.
"Manfred," Symphony, 323-329.
"Mazeppa," Symphonic Poem, 151-154.
"Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt," Overture, 202-203.
"Melpomene," Overture, 49-51.
"Melusina, The Lovely," Overture, 203-206.
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix 199-211.
"Mephisto Waltz," Episode (No. II.)from Lenau's "Faust", 174, 175. "Mer, La", 77, 78.
"Midsummer Night's Dream, A," Overture to, 199, 200.
"Mlada" (see "Night on Mount Triglav, A"), 229, 230.
"My Fatherland," Cycle of Symphonic Poems, 251-253.
"Mystic Trumpeter, The," Fantasy, 70-72.

"Nature, Life, Love," Triple Overture, 85-91.
"Nature" Overture, 85-87.
"New World, From the," Symphony, 92, 93.
"Night" and "Day," Two Poems, 68-70.
"Night on Mount Triglav, A" (from the Opera-Ballet "Mlada"), 229, 230.
"Nocturnal Procession, The," Episode (No. I.) from Lenau's "Faust", 173, 174.
"Nocturnes, Three", 75-77.

"October, In," Supplement to Suite No. I., 198.
"Omphale's Spinning-Wheel," Symphonic Poem, 235, 236.
"Orpheus," Symphonic Poem, 148-150.
"Othello," Overture, 89-91.
Overture, "Adonais", 51, 52.
Overture, "Becalmed at Sea and Prosperous Voyage", 202, 203.
Overture, "Carnival", 87-89.
Overture, "Cockaigne", 96-98.
Overture, "Euphrosyne", 70.
Overture, "Euterpe", 52, 53.
"Overture, Faust, A", 339-343.
Overture, "Fingal's Cave" ["The Hebrides"], 200-202.
Overture, "In the South", 101-104.
Overture, "Lovely Melusina, The", 203-206.
Overture, "Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt", 202-206.
Overture, "Melpomene", 49-51.
Overture, "Midsummer Night's Dream, A", 199, 200.
Overture, "Nature", 85-87.
Overture, "Othello", 89-91.
Overture-Fantasie, "Romeo and Juliet", 303-305.
Overture, "Sakuntala", 119, 120.
"Overture, Triple", 85-91.
Overture to "Coriolanus", 24, 25.
Overture to "Egmont", 27-30.
Overture to "King Lear", 31-33.
Overture to "Manfred", 243-245.

"Pagan Poem, A", 187-189.
"Pastoral" Symphony, 25, 27.
"Pathetic" Symphony, 329-335.
"Peer Gynt," Suite, 123-126.
"Penthesilea," Symphonic Poem, 347-351.
"Phaëton," Symphonic Poem, 236, 237.
"Poem" ["La Bonne Chanson"], 182-184.
Prelude, "Sappho", 15-18.
"Preludes, The," Symphonic Poem, 147, 148.
Prelude to "The Afternoon of a Faun", 73-75.
"Psyche," Suite, 108-113.

Raff, Joachim, 213-220.
Rimsky-Korsakoff, Nicolas Andrejevitch, 221-234.
"Romeo and Juliet," Overture-Fantasie, 303-305.
"Rustic Wedding" Symphony, 120-122.

"Sadko," a Musical Picture, 221, 222.
Saint-Saëns, Camille, 235-239.
"Sakuntala," Overture, 119, 120.
"Salome," Tone-Poem, 127-130.
"Sappho," Prelude, 15-18.
"Saracens, The", 194, 195.
"Sárka," Symphonic Poem, 252, 253.
"Saugefleurie," Legend, 138, 139.
"Scheherazade," Suite, 226-229.
Schumann, Robert, 241-245.
"Scotch" Symphony, 206-208.
"Sea, The," Three Sketches, 77, 78.
"Siegfried Idyl, A", 343-345.
Sibelius, Jan, 247-250.
Sinfonia Eroica, 19-24.
Smetana, Friedrich, 251-253.
"Song of Roland, The," Two Fragments after, 194-196.
"Sorcerer's Apprentice, The," Scherzo, 79-84.
Spohr, Louis, 255-258.
"Spring" Symphony [Schumann], 241-243.
"Stenka Râzine," Symphonic Poem, 115-117.
Strauss, Richard, 259-302.
Suite, "Christmas Eve", 231-234.
Suite, "Impressions of Italy", 57-59.
Suite, "Indian", 196, 197.
Suite, "L'Arlésienne", 43-47.
Suite No. I. (Op. 42), MacDowell, 198.
Suite, "Peer Gynt", 123-126.
Suite, "Psyche", 108-113.
Suite, "Scheherazade", 226-229.
"Summer Day on the Mountain," Tone-Poem, 141-144.
"Swan of Tuonela, The," Symphonic Poem, 248, 249.
Symphonic Poem, "Battle of the Huns, The", 155-157.
Symphonic Poem, "Blanik", 253.
Symphonic Poem, "Cleopatra", 53-55.
Symphonic Poem, "Dance of Death", 237, 238.
Symphonic Poem, "Danse Macabre", 237, 238.
Symphonic Poem, "Death of Tintagiles, The", 177-182.
Symphonic Poem, "Die Ideale", 157-161.
Symphonic Poem, "Djinns, The", 113, 114.
Symphonic Poem, "Festklänge", 154, 155.
Symphonic Poem, "From Bohemia's Fields and Groves", 253.
Symphonic Poem, "Hamlet"; "Ophelia", 198.
Symphonic Poem, "Hunnenschlacht", 155-157.
Symphonic Poem, "Ideal, The", 157-161. Symphonic Poem, "La Jeunesse d'Hercule", 238, 239.
Symphonic Poem, "La Mort de Tintagiles", 177-182.
Symphonic Poem, "Lancelot and Elaine", 191-194.
Symphonic Poem, "Lemminkainen", 247-250.
Symphonic Poem, "Le Rouet d'Omphale", 235, 236.
Symphonic Poem, "Les Éolides", 105, 106.
Symphonic Poem, "Les Préludes", 147, 148. Symphonic Poem, "Mazeppa", 151-154.
Symphonic Poem, "Omphale's Spinning-Wheel", 235, 236.
Symphonic Poem, "Orpheus", 148-150.
Symphonic Poem, "Penthesilea", 347-351.
Symphonic Poem, "Phaëton", 236, 237.
Symphonic Poem, "Preludes, The", 147, 148.
Symphonic Poem, "Sadko", 221, 222.
Symphonic Poem, "Sárka", 252, 253.
Symphonic Poem, "Stenka Râzine", 115-117.
Symphonic Poem, "Tabor", 253.
Symphonic Poem, "Tasso", 145-147.
Symphonic Poem, "Viviane", 61-64.
Symphonic Poem, "Vltava", 252.
Symphonic Poem, "Vysehrad", 251, 252.
Symphonic Poem, "Wild Huntsman, The", 106, 107.
Symphonic Poem, "Wood Dove, The", 91, 92.
Symphonic Poem, "Youth of Hercules, The", 238, 239.
"Symphony, A Faust", 161-164.
Symphony after Dante's "Divina Commedia", 164-173.
Symphony, "Antar", 222-226.
Symphony ["Böcklin"], Huber, 131-136.
Symphony, "Consecration of Sound, The", 255-258.
Symphony, "Die Weihe der Töne", 255-258.
Symphony, "Domestic", 297-302.
Symphony, "Fantastic", 34-36.
Symphony, "From the New World", 92, 93.
Symphony, "Harold in Italy", 36-41.
Symphony, "Im Walde", 213-216.
Symphony, "In the Woods", 213-216.
Symphony, "Italian", 208-211.
Symphony, "Lenore", 216-220.
Symphony, "Manfred", 323-329.
Symphony, "Pastoral", 25-27.
Symphony, "Pathetic", 329-335.
Symphony, "Rustic Wedding", 120-122.
Symphony, "Scotch", 206-208.
Symphony, No. 1, B-flat Major ["Spring"], Schumann, 241-243.
Symphony No. 4, F Minor, Tschaikowsky, 316-323.

"Tabor," Symphonic Poem, 253.
"Tasso," Symphonic Poem, 145-147.
"Tempest, The," Fantasia, 305-308.
"Thus Spake Zarathustra," Tone-Poem, 275-285.
"Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks", 269-275.
"Tintagiles, The Death of," Symphonic Poem, 177-182.
"Tod und Verklärung," Tone-Poem, 266-269.
Tone-Poem, "Also Sprach Zarathustra", 275-285.
Tone-Poem, "Death and Transfiguration", 266-269.
Tone-Poem, "Don Juan", 261-264. Tone-Poem, "Ein Heldenleben", 292-297.
Tone-Poem, "Hero's Life, A", 292-297.
Tone-Poem, "Macbeth", 264-266.
Tone-Poem, "Salome", 127-130.
Tone-Poem, "Thus Spake Zarathustra", 275-285.
Tone-Poem, "Tod und Verklärung", 266-269.
Tone-Poem, "Witch of Atlas, The", 11-15.
"Triple Overture", 85-91.
"Trois Nocturnes", 75-77.
Tschaikowsky, Peter Iljitsch, 303-337.
"Two Episodes from Lenau's 'Faust',"173-175.

Variations, "Enigma", 95-98.
"Villanelle du Diable, La", 184-187.
"Viviane," Symphonic Poem, 61-64.
"Vltava," Symphonic Poem, 252.
"Voyvode, The," Orchestral Ballad, 335-337.
"Vysehrad," Symphonic Poem, 251, 252.

Wagner, Richard, 330-345.
"Wild Huntsman, The," Symphonic Poem, 106, 107.
"Wild Sage" ["Saugefleurie"] Legend, 138, 139.
"Witch of Atlas, The," Tone-Poem, 11-15.
Wolf, Hugo, 347-351.
"Wood Dove, The," Symphonic Poem, 91, 92.

"Youth of Hercules, The," Symphonic Poem, 238, 239.

THE END