Chapter VIII

_Through the Looking Glass_ was originally written in 1917-19 for strings, wind and piano, and performed by the New York Chamber Music Society. In 1921-22 Taylor rescored the suite for full orchestra, and it is now a regular feature of the repertoire of our leading orchestras. It is principally through this work that he first achieved his fame as a composer.

In reviewing the suite for the “New York Tribune,” Lawrence Gilman wrote:

“He is wit enough to know that the peculiar distinction of
Carroll’s delicious masterpiece is the mood of half tender, half
mocking detachment in which it is conceived; and he preserves this
balance in his music with extraordinary skill and felicity. He
neither burlesques nor sentimentalizes his subject. He touches it
affectionately, even caressingly, as in the poetic and sensitive
_Dedication_; but in his eye is a twinkle that is imperfectly
suppressed. Incidentally, he has composed an admirable piece
of music—distinguished in invention, ingenious in facture, and
expertly scored.”

The suite is, of course, based on Lewis Carroll’s immortal nonsense tale _Through the Looking Glass_, and its four movements are selected from portions and episodes of the book.

The first movement is divided into two parts. It opens with the _Dedication_, and the score quotes the dedicatory verse of the author:

“Child of the pure, unclouded brow
And dreaming eyes of wonder!
Though time be fleet, and I and thou
Are half a life asunder,
Thy loving smile will surely hail
The love-gift of a fairy-tale.”

A tenderly lyric theme, sung by a muted solo violin, is used to express the spirit of these lines:

[Music: Andante moderato

Solo Violin]

This melody is next given to the clarinets, and then again to the strings as its brief development leads to the second part of the first movement, _The Garden of Live Flowers_. Here Alice finds herself surrounded by talkative flowers, who, to quote the tigerlily, will speak “when there’s anybody worth talking to.” The music reflects the brisk chatter of the garden folk:

[Music: Allegro

3 Flutes]

The second movement, _Jabberwocky_, is without doubt the masterpiece of the suite, for in it Taylor shows his skill as a tonal narrator, his humor, and his consummate mastery of orchestration. After a seven measure introduction, a solo clarinet establishes the “brillig” atmosphere with this motive:

[Music]

The actual encounter with the Jabberwock is depicted by means of a fugue, started by the basses “burbling,” which an English writer described as sounding like “Bach gone wrong.”

[Music]

The fight ends with a series of xylophone glissandos telling us how “through and through the vorpal blade went snickersnack!” Then the dying agonies of the Jabberwock, a bassoon cadenza:

[Music]

The hero comes “galumphing back” to this figure, played by the piano:

[Music]

while the clarinet simultaneously sounds again the original heroic theme.

In the third movement, _Looking Glass Insects_, the composer again shows us his ability in orchestration, this time with more delicate touches. The several themes describe the bee-elephant, the rocking-horse-fly, the snap-dragon-fly, and the bread-and-butter-fly, but as the composer himself remarks, “there is no use trying to decide which insect any one of them stands for.”

The fourth movement tells of _The White Knight_, the “toy Don Quixote, mild, chivalrous, ridiculous, and rather touching,” who fell off in front when the horse stopped, and backwards when it went on again.

After a brief, galloping introduction, the first theme starts off bravely:

[Music]

but falls out of the saddle before very long:

[Music]

The first theme doubtless represents the Knight’s own conception of himself as something of a dare-devil, but three hard falls necessitate his giving way to the somewhat sentimental and pathetic second theme, in which a solo violoncello paints him as he really was:

[Music]

[Music: A page from the orchestra score

“Through the Looking Glass” - “Looking Glass Insects”]

The two themes, in various forms, alternate until the close, when Alice waves her handkerchief as the Knight rides off, for he thought it would encourage him if she did.

American critics have been practically unanimous in their praise of the _Looking Glass_ Suite, but when it was first played in London (1925) at the Queen’s Hall Promenade Concerts, the English writers were by no means unqualified in their approval. A perusal of their comments almost gives one the impression that they resented an American’s attempt to depict such characteristically British humor.

The reviewer of the “Evening Standard” said: “... his suite is curiously uneven. In places it is heavy and long-winded; Lewis Carroll was neither.”

The critic of the “Daily Express” was more complimentary, as was the “Daily Sketch,” but the writer for the “Morning Post” stated:

“... his capacity for detail misleads him. Instead of creating a
vision by a wave of his hand, he fills in his picture inch by inch,
carefully balancing his outlines and masses, and filling the whole
of his rectangle with subject matter. A good musician, no doubt,
but far from catching the white rabbit.”

With these adverse comments we cannot agree. The pages of the Suite are not smothered with detail, the episodes and pictures of the book are impressions clearly delineated, and painted with a sparkle and brilliance that prove irresistible and dazzling.

The _Portrait of a Lady_ was composed shortly after the _Looking Glass_ Suite, and rewritten in 1924. Ernest Newman wrote of it in the “Post”:

“... he stood up like a man to Schubert, Juon and Novak; and at the
end of the concert only he and Schubert had survived.”

Lawrence Gilman of the “Tribune” said:

“Out of the empty, agitated air he conjured an image that had
line and color and background, substance and character; something
coherent, vivid, personal. And when he was through ... we found
ourselves richer by an experience and a possession, and wondering,
as we never fail to do, at the mysterious potency of the art of
music.”

The work was composed for strings, wood-wind and piano, and, according to the composer, follows no definite program, but was designed to be “somewhat analogous to what a painter would call an ideal head; an attempt to convey the impression of a human personality in terms of music.” According to the music this personality has two phases: one grave, meditative and tender, the other capricious and somewhat worldly. The music has warmth and depth, and as W. J. Henderson wrote in the “Sun,” “makes one wish to see the woman.”

The incidental music to _Beggar on Horseback_ included the delightful pantomime _A Kiss in Xanadu_, to a scenario by Winthrop Ames. Taylor wrote this for two pianos, and we may well hope that he carries out his intention of scoring it for orchestra.

The music radiates moonlight and romance, and its humor enhances the spirit of satire. The opening measures establish the atmosphere with a 5-4 theme:

[Music]

The Royal Bedchamber episode is ushered in with this vigorous motive:

[Music]

The Princess is introduced with a Valse:

[Music]

In the public park incident, a stirring little march:

[Music]

leads to a more coquettish mood:

[Music]

The third scene finishes as the pantomime began, with a colorful reminiscence of the opening themes.

Taylor’s next important work is _Jurgen_, a symphonic work for full orchestra, based on Cabell’s famous novel. His own statement of his aims in regard to it are as follows:

“_Jurgen_ was originally planned as an orchestral suite that
would follow as faithfully as possible the sequence of events in
James Branch Cabell’s book. But when I started work on the music
it became increasingly obvious that such a program was not only
impracticable, but hardly to the point. It would take a cycle of
suites to do adequate justice to the bewildering multitude of
scenes, characters and episodes with which the pages of _Jurgen_
are crowded. Moreover, the importance of Cabell’s romance as a work
of art lies, not in its qualities as a diverting tale of amorous
adventure, but in the vividness, the sardonic gusto, the humor and
wisdom and pathetic beauty with which the tale is told.

“So, _Jurgen_, annotated in terms of music, has come to be
concerned much more with the man Jurgen than with his deeds.
In brief, I have tried to show Jurgen, facing the unanswerable
riddle of why things are as they are; Jurgen ‘clad in the armor of
his hurt’, spinning giddily through life, strutting, posturing,
fighting, loving, pretending; Jurgen proclaiming himself count,
duke, king, emperor, god; Jurgen, beaten at last by the pathos and
mystery of life, bidding farewell to that dream of beauty, which he
had the vision to see, but not the strength to follow.”

Continuing his explanation of the work, Taylor writes:

“The music is built upon four themes. The first of these, which
is Jurgen’s own, is announced at the outset, in its broadest and
vaguest form, by the bass

[Music]

clarinet. The second follows immediately, a simple series of major
and minor triads given out in turn by muted strings and muted
brass. Its first appearance

[Music]

is also the first appearance of the third theme, which is really
only a motto of four notes in length, which rises a major second
and falls back a minor second.

[Music]

Neither of these themes can be assigned a very specific
significance. Theme number two might be taken as symbolic of
Koshchei, the Deathless, who made things as they are, just as
theme number three is a reminder of Mother Sereda, who bleaches
the color out of all things and renders life generally futile. The
fourth theme, broadly lyric, is first heard in the cellos, at the
beginning of the love scene that follows the first development of
Jurgen’s theme. This might

[Music]

be called—again not too literally—Dorothy la Désirée, or Helen of
Troy, or the vision of beauty; or what you will.”

_Jurgen’s_ performance in 1925 by the Symphony Society was met with mixed emotions on the part of the press reviewers. Mr. Chotzinoff, Taylor’s successor on the “World,” was laudatory with reservations; Mr. Henderson of the “Sun” felt that the score was too long, but added that this may have been because it followed Kallinikoff and Brahms on a lengthy program. He wrote:

“It is a broadly painted musical canvas which loses itself just a
little too much in the philosophical depths of Jurgen’s nature.
The reflective pages in the score are a little longer than the
reflective mood of a typical audience. These pages are saturated
with feeling, with poetic character, with musical emotion; but
they are pages to be read in the shadows of the twilight....
These pages Mr. Taylor has composed with a splendid verve, with
brilliant thematic conception, with opulence of color and his own
unquenchable spirit of defiant humor. There is music in every page,
music that should bring gladness to the American music lover in
that it was made by an American.”