Symphonies and Their Meaning Part 8

In the clash of themes and harmonies of the climax, the very limits of modern license seem to be invoked. Later the three themes are entwined in a pa.s.sage of masterly counterpoint.

There is a touch of ancient harmony in the delicate tune of third movement, which has the virtue of endless weaving. It is sung by solo violin, mainly supported by a choir of lower strings.

A final conclusive line is given by the solo flute. Besides the constant course of varying tune, there is a power of ever changing harmony that seems to lie in some themes.

[Music: _Modere_ (Viola solo) _Tres simplement_]

One can hardly call it all a Scherzo. It is rather an idyll after the pathos of the Andante. Or, from another view, reversing the usual order, we may find the quality of traditional Trio in the first melody and a baccha.n.a.le of wild humor in the middle. For, out

[Music: _Tres anime_ (Woodwind and strings)]

of a chance phrase of horns grows of all the symphony the boldest harmonic phrase (repeated through ten bars). Above rings a barbarous cry, in defiance of common time and rhythm.

Suddenly we are surprised by the sound of the martial stride of the second theme of the Andante which moves on the sea of rough harmony as on a native element. One whim follows another. The same motion is all there, but as if in shadow, in softest sound, and without the jar of discord; then comes the fiercest clash of all, and now a gayest dance of the first tune, _a.s.sez vif_, in triple rhythm, various figures having their _pas seul_. A second episode returns, brilliant in high pace but purged of the former war of sounds. At the end is the song of the first tune, with new pranks and sallies.

The beginning of the Finale is all in a musing review of past thoughts.

The shadow of the last tune lingers, in slower pace; the ominous dirge of first motto sounds below; the soothing melody of the Andante sings a verse. In solemn fugue the original motto is reared from its timid phrase to masterful utterance, with splendid stride. Or

[Music: _Modere et solennel_ (Cellos and ba.s.ses)]

rather the theme is blended of the first two phrases, merging their opposite characters in the new mood of resolution. The strings prepare for the sonorous entrance of woodwind and horns. One of the greatest fugal episodes of symphonies, it is yet a mere prelude to the real movement, where the light theme is drawn from a phrase of latest cadence. And the dim hue of minor which began the symphony, and all overspread the prelude, at last yields to the clear major. There is something of the struggle of shadow and light of the great third symphony of Brahms.

The continuous round of the theme, in its unstable pace (of 5/4), has a strange power of motion, the feeling

[Music: (Ob.) (Strings)]

of old pa.s.sacaglia. To be sure, it is the mere herald and companion of the crowning tune, in solo of the reeds.

From the special view of structure, there is no symphony, modern or cla.s.sic, with such an overpowering combination and resolution of integral themes in one movement. So almost constant is the derivation of ideas, that one feels they must be all related. Thus, the late rush of rhythm, in the Finale, is broken by a quiet verse where with enchanting subtlety we are carried back somewhere to the idyll of third movement.

Above, rises another melody, and from its simple outline grows a fervor and pathos that, aside from the basic themes of the whole work, strike the main feeling of the Finale.

[Music: _Un peu moins vite_]

The martial trip from the Andante joins later in the return of the whirling rhythm. At last the motto strikes on high, but the appealing counter-melody is not easily hushed.

[Music: (Ob.) (Cellos with _tremolo_ violins)]

It breaks out later in a verse of exalted beauty and pa.s.sion. The struggle of the two ideas reminds us of the Fifth Symphony. At last the gloom of the fateful motto is relieved by the return of the original answer, and we seem to see a new source of latest ideas, so that we wonder whether all the melodies are but guises of the motto and answer, which now at the close, sing in united tones a hymn of peace and bliss.

CHAPTER IX

DeBUSSY AND THE INNOVATORS

At intervals during the course of the art have appeared the innovators and pioneers,--rebels against the accepted manner and idiom. The mystery is that while they seem necessary to progress they seldom create enduring works. The shadowy lines may begin somewhere among the Huebalds and other early adventurers. One of the most striking figures is Peri, who boldly, almost impiously, abandoned the contrapuntal style, the only one sanctioned by tradition, and set the dramatic parts in informal musical prose with a mere strumming of instruments.

It is not easy to see the precise need of such reaction. The radical cause is probably a kind of inertia in all things human, by which the accepted is thought the only way. Rules spring up that are never wholly true; at best they are shifts to guide the student, inadequate conclusions from past art. The essence of an art can never be put in formulas. Else we should be content with the verbal form. The best excuse for the rule is that it is meant to guard the element of truth in art from meretricious pretence.

And, we must not forget, Art progresses by slow degrees; much that is right in one age could not come in an earlier, before the intervening step.

The masters, when they had won their spurs, were ever restive under rules.[A] Yet they underwent the strictest discipline, gaining early the secret of expression; for the best purpose of rules is liberation, not restraint. On the other hand they were, in the main, essentially conservative. Sebastian Bach clung to the older manner, disdaining the secular sonata for which his son was breaking the ground.

[Footnote A: Some of the chance sayings of Mozart (recently edited by Kerst-Elberfeld) betray much contempt for academic study: "Learning from books is of no account. Here, here, and here (pointing to ear, head, and heart) is your school." On the subject of librettists "with their professional tricks," he says: "If we composers were equally faithful to our own rules (which were good enough when men knew no better), we should turn out just as poor a quality in our music as they in their librettos." Yet, elsewhere, he admits: "No one has spent so much pains on the study of composition as myself. There is hardly a famous master in music whom I have not read through diligently and often."]

The master feels the full worth of what has been achieved; else he has not mastered. He merely gives a crowning touch of poetic message, while the lighter mind is busy with tinkering of newer forms. For the highest reaches of an art, the poet must first have grasped all that has gone before. He will not rebel before he knows the spirit of the law, nor spend himself on novelty for its own sake.

The line between the Master and the Radical may often seem vague. For, the former has his Promethean strokes, all unpremeditated, compelled by the inner sequence,--as when Beethoven strikes the prophetic drum in the grim Scherzo of the Fifth Symphony; or in the Eroica when the horn sounds sheer ahead, out of line with the sustaining chorus; or when Bach leaps to his harmonic heights in organ fantasy and toccata; or Mozart sings his exquisite clashes in the G Minor Symphony.

As the true poet begins by absorption of the art that he finds, his early utterance will be imitative. His ultimate goal is not the strikingly new but the eternally true. It is a question less of men than of a point of view.

It seems sometimes that in art as in politics two parties are needed, one balancing the weaknesses of the other. As certain epochs are overburdened by the spirit of a past poet, so others are marred by the opposite excess, by a kind of neo-mania. The latter comes naturally as reaction from the former. Between them the poet holds the balance of clear vision.

When Peri overthrew the trammels of counterpoint, in a dream of h.e.l.lenic revival of drama, he could not hope to write a master-work. Destructive rebellion cannot be blended with constructive beauty. An antidote is of necessity not nourishment. Others may follow the path-breaker and slowly reclaim the best of old tradition from the new soil. The strange part of this rebellion is that it is always marked by the quality of stereotype which it seeks to avoid. This is an invariable symptom. It cannot be otherwise; for the rejection of existing art leaves too few resources.

Moreover, the pioneer has his eye too exclusively upon the mere manner.

A wholesome reaction there may be against excess. When Gluck dared to move the hearts of his hearers instead of tickling their ears, he achieved his purpose by positive beauty, without actual loss. In this sense every work of art is a work of revolution. So Wagner, especially in his earlier dramas,[A] by sheer sincerity and poetic directness, corrected a frivolous tradition of opera. But when he grew destructive of melody and form, by theory and practice, he sank to the role of innovator, with pervading trait of stereotype, in the main merely adding to the lesser resources of the art. His later works, though they contain episodes of overwhelming beauty, cannot have a place among the permanent cla.s.sics, alone by reason of their excessive reiteration.

[Footnote A: The "Flying Dutchman," "Lohengrin" and "Tannhauser" seemed destined to survive Wagner's later works.]

One of the most charming instances of this iconoclasm is the music of Claude Debussy.[A] In a way we are reminded of the first flash of Wagner's later manner: the same vagueness of tonality, though with a different complexion and temper. Like the German, Debussy has his own novel use of instruments. He is also a rebel against episodic melody.

Only, with Wagner the stand was more of theory than of practice. His lyric inspiration was here too strong; otherwise with Debussy. Each article of rebellion is more highly stressed in the French leader, save as to organic form, where the latter is far the stronger. And finally the element of mannerism cannot be gainsaid in either composer.[B]

[Footnote A: Born in 1862.]

[Footnote B: Some recurring traits Wagner and Debussy have in common, such as the climactic chord of the ninth. The melodic appoggiatura is as frequent in the earlier German as the augmented chord of the fifth in the later Frenchman.]

Among the special traits of Debussy's harmonic manner is a mingling with the main chord of the third below. There is a building downward, as it were. The harmony, complete as it stands, seeks a lower foundation so that the plain tower (as it looked at first) is at the end a lofty minaret. It is striking that a cla.s.sic figure in French music should have stood, in the early eighteenth century, a champion of this idea, to be sure only in the domain of theory. There is a touch of romance in the fate of a pioneer, rejected for his doctrine in one age, taken up in the art of two centuries later.[A]

[Footnote A: Rameau, when the cyclopaedic spirit was first stirring and musical art was sounding for a scientific basis, insisted on the element of the third below, implying a tonic chord of 6, 5, 3. Here he was opposed by Fetis, f.u.x and other theoretic authority; judgment was definitively rendered against him by contemporary opinion and prevailing tradition. It cannot be said that the modern French practice has justified Rameau's theory, since with all the charm of the enriched chord, there is ever a begging of the question of the ultimate root.]

A purely scientific basis must be shunned in any direct approach of the art whether critical or creative,--alone for the fatal allurement of a separate research. The truth is that a spirit of fantastic experiment, started by the mystic manner of a Cesar Franck, sought a sanction in the phenomena of acoustics. So it is likely that the enharmonic process of Franck led to the strained use of the whole-tone scale (of which we have spoken above) by a further departure from tonality.[A] And yet, in all truth, there can be no doubt of the delight of these flashes of the modern French poet,--a delicate charm as beguiling as the bolder, warmer harmonies of the earlier German. Instead of the broad exultation of Wagner there is in Debussy the subtle, insinuating dissonance. Nor is the French composer wanting in audacious strokes. Once for all he stood the emanc.i.p.ator of the art from the stern rule of individual vocal procedure. He cut the Gordian knot of harmonic pedagogy by the mere weapon of poetic elision. He simply omitted the obvious link by a license ancient in poetry and even in prose. He devised in his harmonies the paradox, that is the essence of art, that the necessary step somehow becomes unnecessary. Though Wagner plunges without ceremony into his languorous chords, he carefully resolves their further course. Debussy has them tumbling in headlong descent like sportive leviathans in his sea of sound. Moreover he has broken these fetters of a small punctilio without losing the sense of a true harmonic sequence. Nay, by the very riotous revel of upper harmonies he has stressed the more clearly the path of the fundamental tone. When he enters the higher sanctuary of pure concerted voices, he is fully aware of the fine rigor of its rites.

And finally his mischievous abandon never leads him to do violence to the profoundest element of the art, of organic design.[B]

[Footnote A: As the lower overtones, discovered by a later science, clearly confirm the tonal system of the major scale, slowly evolved in the career of the art,--so the upper overtones are said to justify the whole-tone process. At best this is a case of the devil quoting scripture. The main recurring overtones, which are lower and audible, are all in support of a clear prevailing tonality.]

[Footnote B: In the drama Debussy avoids the question of form by treating the music as mere scenic background. Wagner, in his later works, attempted the impossible of combining a tonal with the dramatic plot. In both composers, to carry on the comparison beyond the technical phase, is a certain reaching for the primeval, in feeling as in tonality. Here they are part of a larger movement of their age. The subjects of their dramas are chosen from the same period of mediaeval legend, strongly surcharged in both composers with a spirit of fatalism where tragedy and love are indissolubly blended.]

_"THE SEA." THREE SYMPHONIC SKETCHES_

_I.--From Dawn to Noon on the Sea._ In awesome quiet of unsoothing sounds we feel, over a dual elemental motion, a quick fillip as of sudden lapping wave, while a shadowy air rises slowly in hollow intervals. Midst trembling whispers descending (like the soughing wind), a strange note, as of distant trumpet, strikes in gentle insistence--out of the other rhythm--and blows a wailing phrase. The trembling whisper has sunk to lowest depths. Still continues the lapping of waves--all sounds of unhuman nature.

[Music: (Muted trumpet, with Eng. horns in lower 8ve.) _Very slowly_ _Espressivo_ (Cellos with ba.s.ses in lower 8ve.)]

On quicker spur the shadowy motive flits faster here and there in a slow swelling din of whispering, to the insistent plash of wave. Suddenly the sense of desolation yields to soothing play of waters--a _berceuse_ of the sea--and now a song sings softly (in horn), though strangely jarring on the murmuring lullaby. The soothing cheer is anon broken by a shift of new tone. There is a fluctuation of pleasant and strange sounds; a dulcet air on rapturous harmony is hushed by unfriendly plash of chord.