Symphonies and Their Meaning Part 31

[Footnote A: Of Boston,--born in Germany in 1867.]

It cannot he denied that the smallness of phrase does suggest a smallness of idea. The plan of magic motive will not hold _ad infinitesimum_. As the turn of the triplet, in the first movement, twists into a semblance of the Allegro theme, we feel like wondering with the old Philistine:

... "How all this difference can be 'Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee!"

But there is the redeeming vein of lyric melody with a bold fantasy of mischievous humor and a true climax of a clear poetic design. One reason seems sometimes alone to justify this new license, this new French revolution: the deliverance from a stupid slavery of rules,--if we would only get the spirit of them without the inadequate letter. Better, of course, the rules than a fatal chaos. But there is here in the bold flight of these harmonies, soaring as though on some hidden straight path, a truly Promethean utterance.

It is significant, in the problem of future music, that of the symphonies based upon recent French ideas, the most subtly conceived and designed should have been written in America.

_I._--In pale tint of harmony sways the impersonal phrase that begins with a descending tone. We may

[Music: _Andante_ (Melody in flute and violas) (Violins) (Cellos with ba.s.ses in lower 8ve.)]

remember[A] how first with the symphony came a clear sense of tonal residence. It was like the age in painting when figures no longer hung in the gray air, when they were given a resting-place, with trees and a temple.

[Footnote A: See Vol. I, Chapter I.]

Here we find just the opposite flight from clear tonality, as if painting took to a j.a.panese manner, sans aught of locality. Where an easy half-step leads gently somewhere, a whole tone sings instead.

Nothing obvious may stand.

It marks, in its reaction, the excessive stress of tonality and of simple colors of harmony. The basic sense of residence is not abandoned; there is merely a bolder search for new tints, a farther straying from the landmarks.

Soon our timid tune is joined by a more expressive line that rises in ardent reaches to a sudden tumult, with a fiery strain of trumpets where we catch a glimpse of the triplet figure. After a dulcet lullaby

[Music: (Flute with _tremolo_ of high strings) (New melody in ob. and violas) (Cellos with sustained lower B of ba.s.ses)]

of the first air, the second flows in faster pace (_Allegro commodo_) as the real text, ever with new blossoming variants that sing together in a madrigal of tuneful voices, where the descending note still has a part in a smooth, gliding pace of violins.

In gayer mood comes a verse of the inverted (Allegro) tune, with other melodic guises hovering about. When the theme descends to the ba.s.s, the original Andante phrase sings in the trumpet, and there is a chain of entering voices, in growing agitation, in the main legend with the quicker sprites dancing about. At the height, after the stirring song of trumpets, we feel a pa.s.sionate strife of resolve and regret; and immediately after, the descending tone is echoed everywhere.

A balancing (second) theme now appears, in tranquil

[Music: (Horn) _Allegro dolce_ (Violas & cellos) (Sustained harmony in violins, ba.s.soons and flute)]

flow, but pressing on, at the end, in steady ascent as to Parna.s.sian summit. Later comes a new rejoinder in livelier mood, till it is lost in a big, moving verse of the Andante song. But pert retorts from the latest new tune again fill the air, then yield in attendance upon the returning Allegro theme. Of subtle art is the woof of derived phrases. A companion melody, that seems fraught of the text of the second subject, sings with rising pa.s.sion, while the lower bra.s.s blow l.u.s.tily in eccentric rhythm of the Allegro phrase and at the height share in the dual triumph.

We feel a kinship of mood rather than of theme, a coherence that we fear to relate to definite figures, though the descending symbol is clear against the ascending. An idyllic dialogue, with the continuing guise of the Allegro phrase turns to a gayer revel in the original pace, with a brilliant blare of trumpets.

The free use of themes is shown in the opposite moods of the triplet phrase, of sadness, as in Andante, or buoyant, in Allegro. Here are both in close transition as the various verses return from the beginning, entwined about the first strain of the Andante, gliding through the descending tone into the second soothing song with the Parna.s.sian ascent.

A full verse of the first Andante melody sings at the heart of the plot, followed by the strange daemonic play that keeps the mood within bounds.

Indeed, it returns once more as at first, then springs into liveliest trip and rises to an Olympian height, with a final revel of the triplet figure.

_II._--With a foreshadowing drop of tone begins the prelude, not unlike the first notes of the symphony,

[Music: _Adagio, ma non troppo_ (_espressivo_ Clar.) (Strings) (Clar'ts and ba.s.soons)]

answered with a brief phrase. On the descending motive the main melody is woven.

Tenderly they play together, the melody with the main burden, the lighter prelude phrase in graceful accompaniment. But now the latter sings in turn a serious verse, rises to a stormy height, the horns proclaiming the pa.s.sionate plea amid a tumultuous accord of the other figures, and sinks in subdued temper. In a broader pace begins a new line, though on the thread of the descending motive, and with the entering phrase of the prelude winds to a climax of pa.s.sion. The true episode, of refuge and solace from the stress of tempest, is in a song of the trumpet through a shimmering gauze of strings with glinting harp, to a soft murmuring in the reeds.

[Music: _Animando_ (Violins) (_Trem._ violins doubled above in oboes) (Cellos with sustained lower B of ba.s.ses) Main melody in trumpets]

In a new shade of tone it is echoed by the horn, then in a fervent close it is blended with a guise of the prelude phrase, that now heralds the main melody, in a duet of clarinet and violins. At last in the home tone the horn sings amid the sweet tracery the parting verse, and all about sounds the trist symbol of the first (descending) motive.

_III._--The Scherzo is in one view a mad revel of demon pranks in a new field of harmonies. Inconsequential though they may seem, there is a real coherence, and, too, a subtle connection with the whole design.

To be sure, with the vagueness of tune that belongs to a school of harmonic exploits a certain mutual relation of themes is a kind of incident. The less defined the phrases, the easier it is to make them similar.

Undoubted likeness there is between the main elfin figure and the first phrase of the symphony.

[Music: (Oboes, with lower 8ve. and higher 8ve. of piccolo) _Allegro vivace_ (Strings)]

The triplet is itself a kind of pa.s.sword throughout. With this multiple similarity is a lack of the inner bond of outer contrast.

The mood of demon humor finds a native medium in the tricks of new Gallic harmony. Early in the prelude we hear the descending tone, a streak of sadness in the mirth. Answering the first burst is a strange stroke of humor in the horn, and as if in

[Music: (_Tremolo_ 1st violins) (1st horn) (Clarinets doubled above in strings)]

serious balance, a smooth gliding phrase in the wood. Now the first figure grows more articulate, romping and galloping into an ecstasy of fun. A certain spirit of Till Eulenspiegel hovers about.

Out of the maze blows a new line in muted trumpets, that begins with the inverted triplet figure, and in spite of the surrounding bedlam rises almost into a tune. At the height the strange jest of the horns reigns supreme.

From the mad gambols of the first figure comes a relief in sparkling calls of the bra.s.s and stirring retorts in pure ringing harmonies. In the next episode is a fall into a lyric mood as the latest figure glides into even pace, singing amid gentlest pranks. Most tuneful of all sounds is the answer in dulcet trumpet while, above, the first theme intrudes softly.

The heart of the idyll comes in a song of the clarinet

[Music: (Cl. _espressivo_) (_Pizz._ strings with higher 8ve. of upper voice) (Wood and horn and strings) (Clar. and ba.s.soons)]

against strange, murmuring strings, ever with a soft answer of the lower reed.

New invading sprites do not hem the flight of the melody. But at the height a redoubled pace turns the mood back to revelling mirth with broken bits of the horn tune. Indeed the crisis comes with a new rage of this symbol of mad abandon, in demonic strife with the fervent song that finally prevails.

The first theme returns with a new companion in the highest wood. A fresh strain of serious melody is now woven about the former dulcet melody of trumpet in a stretch of delicate poesy, of mingled mirth and tenderness.--The harmonies have something of the infinitesimal sounds that only insects hear. With all virtuous recoil, here we must confess is a masterpiece of cacophonic art, a new world of tones. .h.i.therto unconceived, tinkling and murmuring with the eerie charm of the forest.--In the return of the first prelude is a touch of the descending tone. From the final revelling tempest comes a sudden awakening. In strange moving harmony sings slowly the descending symbol, as if confessing the unsuccessful flight from regret. Timidly the vanquished sprites scurry away.

_IV._--The first notes of the Finale blend and bring back the main motives. First is the descending tone, but firm and resolute, with the following triplet in

[Music: _Allegro energico_ (Higher figure in strings & wood) (Wood, horns and lower strings) (Strings and wood)]

inversion of the Scherzo theme.

It is all in triumphant spirit. From the start the mood reigns, the art for once is quite subordinate. Resonant and compelling is the motive of horns and trumpets, new in temper, though harking back to the earlier text, in its cogent ending. Splendid is

[Music: (Strings) (Wood & strings doubled below) (Horns and trumpets)]

the soaring flight through flashes of new chords. There is, we must yield, something Promethean, of new and true beauty, in the bold path of harmonies that the French are teaching us after a long age of slavish rules.

The harking back is here better than in most modern symphonies with their pedantic subtleties: in the resurgence of joyous mood, symbolized by the inversion of phrase, as when the prankish elfin theme rises in serious aspiration.