Chapter III (6)

The player and listener will do well to have in mind Shelley’s lines, describing the “clear, keen joyance” of that “scorner of the ground,” the English skylark.

Gretchen am Spinnrad

A striking contrast to the composition just described is afforded by the equally able but intensely mournful transcription entitled “Gretchen am Spinnrad.”

The text of this song is taken from Goethe’s “Faust.” It is the song of Marguerite, sitting at her wheel, in the gathering dusk of evening, spinning mechanically from the force of long habit, but with her thoughts engrossed by memories of her lost happiness, her ruined life, and blighted future. The mood is one of overwhelming melancholy, of crushing despair, whose dark depths are fitfully stirred from time to time by a rebellious surge of passionate but hopeless longing, as her heart throbs to some passing recollection of departed joys and love’s fateful delirium.

Her dashing but faithless lover, Faust, after winning and betraying her affection, robbing her of the innocence and tranquil happiness of girlhood, has abandoned her to face her bitter fate alone; and she moans in her solitary anguish:

“My peace is gone, my heart oppressed,
And never again will my soul find rest.”

The music perfectly voices the piteous sadness of her mood, with the occasional intermittent outbursts of passion; while the monotonous hum of the spinning-wheel, literally imitated in the accompaniment, as in every good spinning song, seems in this case to adapt itself to the song of the maiden, to harmonize with its sadness, to take on a corresponding melancholy, reflecting the emotions expressed in her voice and words, as a stream reflects the somber cloud that shadows it—a good illustration of that universal principle in art, which invests inanimate things with a fancied sympathy with human experiences.

Nothing could be more complete or perfectly appropriate than the musical treatment of this subject; but its unmitigated sadness probably prevents its becoming a popular favorite; and its extreme, though not at first apparent, difficulty places it beyond the reach of most amateur players.

Liszt: La Gondoliera

Like many of Liszt’s contributions to piano literature, this dainty and most pleasing little work is not exclusively his own; that is, it is not an original melodic creation, but the admirably clever arrangement or setting of an old Venetian boat-song. The melody has been in existence for many decades, perhaps centuries, and may be heard by any one who visits Venice, as sung by the gondolier in time to the swing of his dextrously handled single oar. It is called “La Biondina in Gondoletta” (“the blond maid in a gondola”), and was originally composed by Pistrucci, to words by Peruchini, and harmonized later by Beethoven, in his folk-songs, entitled “Zwölf verschiedene Volkslieder.”

It is a distinctly Italian melody, with no pretensions to great depth or dramatic intensity, but simple, tender, and sweet, winning rather than commanding—a lyric of the sensuously beautiful type, but not to be despised, as it is a spontaneous product of the sunny-tempered, warm-hearted children of the South. It contains no hint of the Venice of mystery, of secret cruelty, of world-wide powers, of the Council of the Ten, that masked midnight tribunal of former days; but breathes only of Venice the fair, in her moonlit beauty—of Venice, “the Bride of the Sea.”

Liszt’s setting gives us not only the melody enhanced by effective harmonic coloring and delicate embellishment, but a characteristic and picturesque background of accompaniment suggesting the scene, the mood, and the environment; the low murmur of the Adriatic, at the distant water-gate, pleading to be admitted to the presence of his Queen; the soft ripples stealing up the long winding canals, whispering their love secrets under the palaces of Juliette and Desdemona, and creeping fearfully beneath the Bridge of Sighs, and past the dreaded dungeons of the doges; the silvery moonlight gleaming upon marble frieze and column, and touching to soft brilliancy the fadeless tints of glass mosaic; the dip and sway of the graceful gondola as it glides on its silent way along those water streets between rows of stately buildings, every carved stone of which is alive with history or with some romantic legend.

All these are delicately yet graphically depicted, while the boatman’s song rises and falls, seeming now near, now distant, as it is borne to us on the varying breath of the light sea-breeze. The whole picture is one of subdued evening tints, of half-disclosed, half-hinted outlines, with a pervading mood of dreamy fancy, of wistful tenderness. It seems to me one of Liszt’s most perfect and ably sustained efforts in the purely lyric, yet suggestively descriptive vein.

At the close, the great, sonorous bell of St. Mark’s Cathedral strikes midnight, its grave, deep-toned voice majestically commanding the attention. The F sharp here used to produce the bell effect, and at the same time serving as bass in a prolonged organ-point throughout the coda, is the actual keynote of the St. Mark’s bell, ingeniously utilized for this double purpose. Meanwhile, the last notes of the song die away in the distance, and slumber, like a veil of mist floating in from the summer sea, envelops the city.

The Music of the Gipsies and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies

Liszt, in his able and unique but somewhat prolix work, entitled “The Bohemians and Their Music in Hungary,” which, so far as I can learn, has never been translated into English, gives some most interesting information concerning these much-played and much-discussed Rhapsodies, their origin, character, and artistic importance, their relation to the national music of the gipsies and the racial peculiarities of this strange people, which I believe will be new to most readers.

I present here what seem to me the most valuable facts and ideas in Liszt’s book in connection with these Rhapsodies, using, so far as possible, his own words translated from the French. I have used the word “gipsies” for “Bohemians” in the translation; this being the usual English name for the race, as “Bohemian” is the French.

It should be distinctly borne in mind that, contrary to the generally prevailing impression, these so-called Hungarian Rhapsodies are not in any sense derived from or founded upon national Hungarian music, or the national life and racial traits of the Hungarians. The floating fragments of wild, fantastic melody and strange, weird harmony which Liszt has gathered and utilized in this form, came neither from the Huns nor from the Magyars, whose blended tribes compose the present Hungarian race; but they are of purely gipsy origin. It is distinctly and characteristically gipsy music which Liszt has merely adapted to the piano. His reasons for calling these works Hungarian Rhapsodies he states as follows:

“In publishing a part of the material which we had the opportunity to collect during our long connection with the gipsies of Hungary, in transcribing it for the piano, as the instrument which could best render, in its entirety, the sentiment and the form of the gipsy art, it was necessary to select a generic name which should indicate the doubly national character which we attach to it.

“We have called the collection of these fragments ‘Hungarian Rhapsodies.’ By the word ‘Rhapsody’ we have wished to designate the fantastically epic element which we believe we recognize therein. Each of these productions has always seemed to us to form a part of a poetic series. These fragments narrate no facts, it is true; but ‘those who have ears to hear’ will recognize in them certain states of mind, in which are condensed the ideals of a nation. It may be a nation of Pariahs; but what difference does that make to art? Since they have experienced sentiments capable of being idealized, and have clothed them in a form of undisputed beauty, they have acquired the right to recognition in art.

“Furthermore, we have called these Rhapsodies ‘Hungarian’ because it would not be just to separate in the future what has been united in the past. The Hungarians have adopted the gipsies as their national musicians. They have identified themselves with their proud and warlike enthusiasms, as with their poignant griefs, which they know so well how to depict. They have not only associated themselves in their ‘Frischka’ with their joys and feasts, but have wept with them while listening to their ‘Lassans.’

“The nomadic people of the gipsies, though scattered in many countries, and cultivating elsewhere their music, have nowhere given it a value equivalent to that which it has acquired on Hungarian soil; because in no other place has it met, as there, the popular sympathy which was necessary to its development. The liberal hospitality of the Hungarians toward the gipsies was so necessary to its existence that it belongs as much to the one as to the other. Hungary, then, can with good right claim as its own this art nourished by its cornfields and its vineyards, developed by its sun and its shade, encouraged by its admiration, embellished and ennobled, thanks to its favor and protection.”

These compositions, then, according to Liszt’s own statement, are called “Hungarian” only by courtesy and a sort of national adoption. They are called “Rhapsodies” because of their resemblance, in form, character, and content, to those detached, fragmentary poems sung or recited by the wandering bards, troubadours, and rhapsodists of the olden time—poems embodying the collective sentiments, the heroic deeds, the touching or stirring experiences of a people, which were later collected and welded together, with more or less coherency, by some master mind, to form the national epic of that people. This music, of an authentically gipsy parentage, of which Liszt speaks as “the songs without words” of the gipsies, and to which he has merely stood sponsor at its rechristening and its introduction, in new civilized dress, to the musical world, is the only art form in which this enigmatical race has ever expressed itself—the only channel through which its ill-comprehended but intense inner life of emotion, imagination, and vague idealism has found vent. It is the inarticulate, but none the less expressive, cry of the soul of a race struggling with that universal human longing for self-utterance.

Liszt’s aim, pursued for many years, at great pains and with masterly ability, was to collect and preserve for the world at least certain representative portions of this music, and construct from them a tone epic of the gipsies, possessing, not only from the artistic, but from the historical and anthropological standpoint, an interest and value similar to that of other epics in verse, as, for instance, those of the Greeks, the Persians, the Germans, the Finns, Scandinavians, etc.

Of the actual history of the gipsies little is known, save that they are the strangest and most anomalous people of the globe. Numerous theories as to their origin have been advanced, only to be abandoned. But the best belief of to-day is that they originated in India, being of the lowest Soodra caste or Pariahs there, driven out by the terrible Mongol invasions between the tenth and thirteenth centuries A. D. They first appear to the historical world in Egypt, and their name, “gipsies,” given them in this country and Great Britain, is but a corruption of the word “Egyptian”; and hence they were long erroneously supposed to have originated there. In other countries they have received various names, as Bohemians in France, Gitanos in Spain, Zigeuner in Germany, Zingari in Italy. But they always and everywhere designate themselves as Romani, or Roma Sinte, meaning, “Roma” (men) and “Sinte,” probably from Scind, or the Indus River. They did not appear in Western Europe till the early part of the fifteenth century, first in Bohemia, then in France and Germany, and thence they spread, in wandering bands, from natural increase, and, perhaps, from further immigration, over most of Europe and other large portions of the world, everywhere abused and hated, and by most governments cruelly persecuted. The Austrian government, under Maria Theresa, was the main, modified exception to this harshness. She encouraged and protected them in some localities in Hungary, and, under this more humane care, they have there lived, in very considerable numbers, a more stable and localized life than elsewhere on earth, affording some modifications and improvement of their general habits and character, as nomad, oriental vagabonds.

Liszt, in the book referred to, has eloquently and strikingly characterized this strange people, as follows: “Among the nations of Europe there suddenly appeared one day a people, whence no one could definitely say. It cast itself upon the Continent without showing any desire of conquest, but also without asking any right to a domicile. It did not desire to appropriate to itself an inch of ground, but it declined to give up an hour of time. It had no wish to conquer, but it refused to submit. It avowed neither from what Asiatic or African plateaus it had descended, nor from what necessity it had sought other skies. It brought no memories; it betrayed no hope. Too vain of its sad race to condescend to merge itself in any other, it was content to live repulsing all foreign elements.... This is a strange people, so strange as to resemble no other in any respect. It possesses neither country, nor religion, nor history, nor any law whatever.... It permits no influence, no will, no persecution, no instruction either to modify, dissolve, or extirpate it. It is divided into tribes, hordes, and bands which wander here and there, following each the route dictated by chance, without communication with each other, largely ignoring their collective existence, but each preserving, under the most distant meridian, with a solidarity which is sacred to them, infallible rallying signs, the same physiognomy, the same language, the same manners.... The ages pass. The world progresses. The countries where they sojourn make war or peace, change masters and manners, while they remain impassive and indifferent, living from day to day, profiting by the preoccupations caused by events which decide the fate of nations, to secure their own existence with less difficulty.... This people that shares the joys, the sorrows, the prosperities, and misfortunes of no other; that, like an incarnate sarcasm, laughs at the ambitions, the tears, the combats, and festivals of all others; that knows neither whence it came nor whither it goes; ... that preserves no traditions and registers no annals; that has no faith and no law, no belief and no rule of conduct; that is held together only by gross superstitions, vague customs, constant misery, and deep humiliation; this people, that nevertheless is obstinate, at the price of all degradation and destitution, to preserve its tents and its tatters, its hunger and its liberty; this people, that exercises upon civilized nations an indescribable and indestructible fascination, passing as a mysterious legacy from one age to the next, all defamed as it is, offers nevertheless some striking and charming types to our grandest poets; this people, so heterogeneous, of a character so indomitable, so intractable, so inexplicable, must conceal, in some corner of its heart, some lofty qualities, since, susceptible of idealization, it has idealized itself; for it has poems and songs which, if united, might perhaps form the national epic of the gipsies.”

It is from such a people, so understood and described by him, that Liszt has taken the musical fragments inwrought into his Hungarian Rhapsodies; and he reasons at length and ingeniously as to his right to call these musical cycles parts of what could be enlarged and made to cohere into a national tone epic. This people, being unfitted to express itself nationally in any other mode save through its wonderful, though rude and uncultivated, instinct for music, “as it drew the bow upon the strings of the violin, inspiration taught it, without its seeking, rhythms, cadences, modulations, songs, speech, and discourse. Hegel was not wrong,” says Liszt, “when he gives to the word ‘epic’ more of the signification of the verb ‘to speak,’ or utter, than of the substantive, ‘recital’; and these tone pictures are fragments of an epic, because they speak sentiments which are common to all the race, which form their inner nature, the physiognomy of their soul, the expression of their whole sentient being.” And therefore, in summary conclusion, Liszt says: “Believing that the scattered fragments of the instrumental music of the gipsies, properly arranged, with some understanding of the succession necessary to make them reciprocally valuable, would afford the expression of those collective sentiments which inhere in the entire people, determining their character and customs, one feels himself authorized to give to such a collection the name of National Epic.”

Regarded from a purely musical standpoint, the Rhapsodies have occasioned much controversy and considerable adverse criticism on the part of certain musicians who pride themselves on their loyalty to conservative traditions. They have been decried as trivial, superficial, and sensational; as lacking in depth and dignity, in symmetry of form and nobility of sentiment. These critics seem to forget that the object of all art is primarily, not instruction or elevation, or even abstract beauty, but expression. Its mission is to portray, not exclusively the highest and grandest emotions of humanity, but every experience, every shade of feeling, every psychological possibility of the race, with equally sympathetic fidelity. Humanity is the broad theme; and the various forms of art, on which the specialist is apt to lay undue stress, are only the means of expression, not the supreme end. That form is best, in any given case, which best serves the artist’s purpose.

It should be remembered that the music under discussion does not purport to embody the loftiest or profoundest sentiment which Liszt was personally capable of feeling or portraying, but the life, scenes, and moods of the gipsy camp, presented in the primitive, but spontaneous and vividly graphic, tone imagery of the gipsies themselves. Who shall say that, as a representative racial art, it is not precisely as legitimate, as worthy, and as genuinely artistic as the characteristic national art of the Germans, the Italians, or any other people? Who shall presume to dictate to the artist what subject, or class of subjects, he may or may not select for treatment? I repeat, all art has for its mission the expression of life, all life; not the establishment or maintenance of standards either of morals or emotions; still less of mere forms of expression. Is not the gipsy maid, with her ungoverned caprices, her moments of exuberant gaiety, or passionate grief, just as much alive, hence as legitimate a theme for the artist, and certainly as interesting and romantic a subject for art treatment, as the staid German _Hausfrau_, or the frivolous American society girl? The beggar boy has been as ably painted, and is considered as artistic a figure as the king. Poets have sung the loves of shepherds and shepherdesses as fondly as those of lords and ladies. Is not, then, a good portrayal of a gipsy camp, whether in words, colors, or tones, just as legitimate a work of art as an equally able picture of an imperial palace, or an imposing cathedral? Will not “Carmen” live as long on the operatic stage as even that paragon of all feminine virtues, “Fidelio”? Is not Don Juan as immortal a personage in art as Lohengrin? Goethe says: “We have only the right to ask three questions of any art work: First, what did the artist intend? Second, was it worth doing? Third, has he succeeded?” Judged from this, the only true standpoint of esthetic criticism, I venture to maintain that the Hungarian Rhapsodies are just as good and just as legitimate music, in their own peculiar way,—that is to say, they fulfil the essential conditions of their special artistic purpose, as well and as completely,—as the Bach fugues, or the Beethoven sonatas.

Granting, if need be, that the Rhapsodies are sensational, heaven protect us from music that produces no sensation! And, in this case, it is the sensation, or startling effect, not of mere brilliancy, but of the unfamiliar contact with the spirit of a race radically differing from our own; not sensuous and superficial, but profoundly temperamental, possessing all the fresh charm of new thought expressed in a novel idiom. Granting again that their melodies are capricious and fantastic, their harmonies strange and half-barbaric, their form incoherent and wholly at variance with our established notions of musical structure, all this but renders them the more characteristic. The picturesque gipsy could not appear to advantage, nor as a typical figure in conventional evening dress, with punctilious drawing-room manners; and the sentiments imputed to him, to be true to life, must not be those of the cultivated modern gentleman, expressed with the stately precision affected by the scholastic world; but primitive, elementary, to some degree chaotic, uttered with the rude force and directness of the undeveloped nature. In brief, he must be represented against the background and amid the surroundings which are his natural environment.

These Rhapsodies are to be taken as rough but faithful self-portraitures of the gipsies, strictly on their own standards of merit, as art works in a department by themselves, with a pronounced individuality and a definite purpose. They are sixteen in number, and all constructed on the same general plan, made up, like mosaics, of widely varying fragments of melody, each expressing some particular mood or phase of life, but combined so as to give a comprehensive impression of the scenes and conditions of gipsy camps, familiar to Liszt for many years, through frequent and lengthy visits, as vividly described by him in the book from which we have so largely quoted.

Roughly speaking, the melodies so interwoven in the Rhapsodies may be divided into three classes, all of which appear in about equal proportions, and with their ever startling sharpness of contrast, in each and all of these works: the “lassan,” a slow, mournfully lugubrious song, expressing the uttermost depths of depression; the “frischka,” a bright, playful, capricious dance movement, full of grace, humor, and witching coquetry, and the “czardas,” a furious, almost demoniac dance portraying the dance delirium at its most intoxicating extreme, resembling somewhat the Tarantelle of Spain and the Dervish dance of the Orient. These three, with an occasional brief strain from a fugitive love-song, shy and elusive as the notes of some timid night bird, or a march-like movement of wild but distinctly martial character, formed the crude material from which Liszt has wrought these always effective and thoroughly pianistic compositions. A brief, special reference to two or three of the best known among them will be sufficient to indicate an intelligent interpretation of them all.

The No. 6, for instance, begins with one of the march movements referred to. It is rhythmic and pompous, with a bold, half-barbaric splendor. Next comes one of the slower forms of the “frischka,” which is often sung in Hungary to the words of a half-tipsy drinking-song. Then follows one of the most doleful of the “lassans,” the words to which, in free translation, run as follows: “My father is dead, my mother is dead, I have no brothers or sisters, and all the money that I have left will just buy a rope to hang myself with.”

The work closes with one of the wildest, most impetuous of the “czardas” dances, which Liszt has wrought up to an irresistible, overwhelming climax.

The No. 12 begins with a slow, gloomy recitative delivered with an impressive dignity so exaggerated as to border on the bombastic; a tale of strange adventures, it may be, narrated by the chief of the tribe at the evening camp-fire, while the flickering firelight plays upon the picturesque figures grouped about against the somber background of the pines, and the thunder mutters sullenly in the distance. Then a quiet bit of lyric, evidently a love-song, gives a touch of softness to the scene, and hints at a covert courtship among the shadows. Later, the crisp, piquant music of the “frischka” calls the young people to the dance, which gradually increases in speed and brilliancy, till it finally merges in the “czardas,” in which all join, and which is given with the greatest possible dash and abandon.

No. 15 is founded upon, and mainly consists of the Rakoczy March, composed by a gipsy musician in honor of Rakoczy, that Hungarian patriot, popular general, and hero, whose daring exploits as leader, in the Hungarian struggle for independence, made him a prominent historical figure of his time, and the idol of his countrymen. This march has been adopted as the national march of Hungary, and Liszt’s setting of it for piano is among his most stupendous works.

These few illustrations may serve as guides in forming a correct conception of all the Rhapsodies. I have given to the foregoing article more space than seems, at first thought, to be warranted; partly, because it gives a somewhat unusual point of view in considering Liszt, not only as a composer, but as a thoughtful and philosophic student of esthetics, and as an eloquent, forceful writer; partly, because I hope it may produce in the minds of some readers a more favorable, because more justly discriminating, attitude of mind toward these Hungarian Rhapsodies as musical art works; but mainly, because it emphasizes, with the powerful support of Liszt’s authority, certain general principles of art which seem to me all-important, but which are too often ignored in considering the special art of music.

RUBINSTEIN
1830 1894

Rubinstein: Barcarolle, in G Major

Strictly speaking, the “barcarolle” is an Italian boat-song—“barca” being the Italian word for boat. But in musical terminology it has been localized and signifies distinctly a Neapolitan boat-song associated as exclusively with the Vesuvian bay as is the gondoliera with the lagoons and canals of Venice. In each case it is the song of the local boatman, sung to the rhythmical accompaniment of the swinging oar, and enhanced in poetic charm by the beauty and romantic atmosphere of the surroundings. In each case also it has served as a suggestive and grateful artistic subject for musical treatment, used by nearly all the modern composers, great and small, and one which is particularly suited to the pianoforte and facilely adapted to its characteristic resources.

In many respects the barcarolle, in this its idealized form as a musical art work, closely resembles the gondoliera, similarly developed; for instance, in its graceful six-eight rhythm, its gliding, swaying boat-like movement, its suggestions of dipping oar and rippling water, and in its sustained song-like melody which we may easily consider as representing the voice of the boatman.

These descriptive elements are common to all works of both classes, but the characteristic mood of the typical barcarolle is less tender and passionate, more cheery and fanciful than that of the gondoliera. It has less of the human element, more of the sea and its slumbering mystery; less of the lover’s sigh, and more of the half-seen witchery of sea-sprites and mermaids in the clear depths of inverted sky beneath. To appreciate this mood to the full, one must have drifted, with suspended oars, in a small boat, upon the far-famed bay of Naples, just as evening fell, with the lofty banner of blue-black smoke waving majestically above the summit of Vesuvius, in the distance, like the pennon of some mighty earth giant, an ominous reminder of his terrible, through slumbrous, power; with the city rising in the background, terrace on terrace, from the water’s edge to the stern old ducal castle, which crowns the height and looms dark and forbiddingly against the sky, a memory in stone, with the fairy island of Capri lying to seaward and the cool breath of the Mediterranean filling the sails of the countless fishing-boats gliding shoreward, while the boatmen sing to the subdued accompaniment of the evening chimes softened by distance. Seen at midday from the height, under the glare and scorch of the noonday sun, with the discordant, jangling sounds of busy life rising harshly to one, like the cries from some pit of torment, Naples seems a hell; but at the evening hour, viewed from the bay, it is a veritable dream of heaven.

No one has caught and embodied in music the mood and scene of this hour, with its caressing coolness, its murmuring ripples, whispering secrets of other days, like Rubinstein, though many have attempted it with more or less success. Of his five barcarolles, all beautiful and characteristic, the most faultlessly typical seems to me the one in G major which I have selected for special mention.

This is not only one of the most graceful and characteristic, as well as most perfect in form and finish, but also decidedly the most realistic of the five. The rhythmic play of the oars, the undulating movement of the boat, and the constant plash of the water, are all vividly suggested, and the melody of the boatman’s song, original with Rubinstein, is very appropriate and typical, heard in intermittent fragments as if sung fitfully in broken snatches. The chords accompanying the melody should be given lightly, though in nearly strict time, in regular, rhythmic pulsations, but with a broken arpeggio effect, that may well coincide with the representation of rippling water, which idea is to be kept in mind.

The passages in double-thirds, which form the principal difficulty of the work, must be rendered with the utmost smoothness and delicacy. It is a good plan to begin each passage with a very low and extremely loose wrist, raising it gradually till quite high toward the middle of the run and then lowering it as gradually and easily to the end. This insures absolute flexibility and enhances the undulating effect. The following little verses, by T. Buchanan Read, express exactly in words the mood of this barcarolle, and I never play it without thinking of them:

“My soul to-day
Is far away,
Adrift upon the Vesuvian bay.
My winged boat,
A bird afloat,
Glides by the purple peaks remote.
Across the rail
My hand I trail
Within the shadow of the sail.
With bliss intense
The cooling sense
Glides down my drowsy indolence.”

Rubinstein: Kamennoi-Ostrow, No. 22

Kamennoi-Ostrow is the name of one of a group of islands situated in the Neva River, some miles below St. Petersburg, “Ostrow” being the Russian word for island, and “Kamennoi” the specific name for this particular island, signifying at once small and rocky. This island is a favorite pleasure resort, both winter and summer, for the wealthy and aristocratic classes of St. Petersburg; one of the imperial palaces is situated upon it, besides many cafés, dance halls, summer and winter concert gardens, and the like. In winter it is the objective point for countless gay sleighing parties, in which the lavish Russian nobles vie with each other in the display of elaborately decorated sledges, fine blooded horses in glittering harness, and piles of almost priceless furs. At this time the highway to and from the island is the smooth, solid ice of the frozen river. In summer the transit is made by boat, and the gaiety is higher during those gorgeous summer nights, when the midnight sun, never quite vanishing below the southern horizon, floods the scene with its wondrous, mystical light, unlike either moonlight or the ordinary light of day, but described by enthusiastic beholders as possessing a peculiar, magical charm wholly its own and scarcely to be imagined by those who have never witnessed it.

Rubinstein, who spent many years of his later life at St. Petersburg, was naturally a frequent visitor at Kamennoi-Ostrow. In fact, on several occasions he spent a number of weeks consecutively at one of its summer hotels and became very familiar with all phases of gaiety at this festive resort and well acquainted with most of its habitués. His set of twenty-four pieces for the piano, entitled “Kamennoi-Ostrow,” is a series of tone sketches suggested by and representing various scenes and personages which his sojourn there brought within his experience. The No. 22, which is probably the best of the set and certainly the most widely known, is intended as the musical portrait of a lady, Mademoiselle Anna de Friedebourg, a personal acquaintance of Rubinstein, to whom the composition is dedicated. It is a portrait drawn in tender yet glowing tints against the soft background of the summer night, outlining, however, the spiritual rather than the physical charms and characteristics of the lady, affording us a conception of her individuality as well as the mood of the surroundings. The first and principal subject, a slow and song-like lyric melody, enunciated by the left hand, with its peculiarly warm and mellow character, reminding one, in color and quality, of the tone of the G string on the violin, is intended to suggest the personality of the lady, or perhaps, more strictly, the emotional impression which this personality produced upon the composer; while the delicate, vibratory accompaniment of the right hand indicates the poetic setting or background, the luminous midsummer night, in one of those island pleasure gardens, the weird light quivering down through tremulous leaves, the mingled scent of flowers and faint sea-breezes, the hum of summer insects, and the whisper of the reeds stirred by the lazily flowing river.

Upon the dreamful hush of this audible silence sounds clear, but sweet and silvery, the little bell of a Greek Catholic chapel, not far distant, calling to midnight mass and ringing out at regular intervals, with soft persistency, through the whole of the second strain or movement. Below and subordinate to it is heard a curious series of colloquial phrases of melody, subdued and fitful, like the fragments of a murmured conversation, as if a low and interrupted dialogue were taking place. Then the full, rich chords of the organ roll out upon the quiet night, flooding it at once with ample waves of grave, solemn harmony. This is followed by a brief passage of recitative in single notes, suggesting the voice of the priest intoning the service within the chapel. It is said to be an exact reproduction, note for note, of a fragment of very ancient Hebrew music, once forming a part of the religious exercises of the Jews and long ago incorporated into the Greek Catholic service.

Then comes an effective, but seemingly irrelevant, cadenza in double arpeggios which, though pleasing, has no apparent connection either with the subject or the mood of the rest of the composition, but which serves indifferently well as a means of leading back to the first theme, presented this time with full, flowing accompaniment in a more impassioned guise, as if to indicate the deeper, more intensified emotions developed by the romantic scene and poetic surroundings.

The composition closes with a momentary return of the little conversational strain, merely suggested and only just audible this time, like whispered words of farewell; and then a few quiet chords of the organ, lingering and slowly fading into the silence, as a pleasant memory reluctantly dissolves into slumber.

GRIEG
1843 1907

Grieg: Peer Gynt Suite, Op. 46

Grieg is the chief living exponent of Norwegian music, as Ibsen is of its literature. “Peer Gynt” is a versified drama by Henrik Ibsen, to which Grieg has written an orchestral suite of that name, from which arrangements for piano have been transcribed, both for two and four hands.

The scenes, incidents, moods, and characters of Ibsen’s drama are essentially Scandinavian; wild, gloomy, fantastic, often vague and incoherent to the reader of more classic and polished literature. Peer Gynt, the hero, is a lawless adventurer, of wild and uncouth personality, undisciplined instincts and passions, and most chaotic career.

The various parts of the Grieg suite are founded upon various scenes of the drama, but the numbering of the different movements will mislead the player, as the chronological progression of the drama is not always adhered to in the music. The following is the order in which the numbers should be presented to fit the scenes which they represent in the life and adventures of Peer Gynt: (1) Peer Gynt and Ingrid; (2) Troll Dance; (3) Death of Ase; (4) Arabian Dance; (5) Anitra’s Dance; (6) Solveig’s Song; (7) Morning; (8) Storm; (9) Cradle Song. I have included in their proper places two of the songs of Solveig, the principal heroine of the drama, which Grieg has also set to music and which should be rendered by soprano voice.

1. Peer Gynt and Ingrid

This is also called “Ingrid’s Complaint” and _“Brautraub_,” or the robbery of the bride. It is the first of the scenes in the drama which Grieg has rendered into music, and represents one of the earliest escapades in the life of the hero, when he attended the rustic festivities of a wedding in the neighborhood, and, seized with a sudden infatuation for the bride, Ingrid, ran away with her to the mountains, in the face of the assembled company. The first four measures, marked “allegro furioso,” suggest the furious movement and delirious excitement of the flight and pursuit, contrasting ludicrously with the dazed, helpless astonishment of the disappointed bridegroom.

The following protracted plaintive minor strains embody the complainings and reproaches of Ingrid, grieving for a life ruined and happiness destroyed, from which Peer suddenly makes his escape, brutally leaving her to her fate in the hills; and the first four measures are repeated at the close, to indicate that the only lasting impression made upon him by the whole affair was that of the exciting and triumphant moment of his success.

2. Troll Dance

This is the most graphic of all the numbers, and is sometimes called “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” The _troll_ seems to be the Scandinavian mountain spirit, but more of the nature of gnomes, kobolds, and goblins than of the gentle elves and fairies of English lore. After deserting the unfortunate Ingrid in the forest, Peer fled still deeper into the rugged fastnesses, where he was surrounded at nightfall by a pack of trolls, who alternately teased and entertained him with their pranks and antics, until scattered at dawn by the sound of church-bells in the distance.

The grotesque character of this movement admirably depicts the uncanny mood and nature of the trolls. The opening measures are light and weird, fantastically suggesting the stealthy footsteps of the gathering pack of trolls, emerging on tiptoe from the mists and shadows of the night, and cautiously surrounding their uninvited guest. Little by little the movement becomes more impetuous, as the hilarity and excitement increase, until toward the close it grows to an incoherent whirl and rush, above which ring out sharply the gruesome shrieks of the infuriated goblins, balked of the continuance of their vindictive delight in tormenting their victim, by the approach of dawn.

3. Death of Ase

On returning to his mother’s hut in his native village, after these and many other adventures, Peer finds her on her death-bed, and remains with her through the night, during which she passes away, enlivening her last hours with the most preposterous tales and pantomimes. This scene of the drama, in spite of its solemnity and sadness, carries the fantastic to the extreme verge of the grotesque.

The illustrative music is cast in the mold of a “funeral march,” without trio and with but one well-developed theme. In it Grieg has emphasized only the somber and tragical aspect of the situation, ignoring entirely its touches of ghastly humor. The utter and crushing despair of a wrecked and disappointed life, of shattered hopes and unrequited and unappreciated maternal affection, sobs through its strains, enhancing the pangs of approaching dissolution. Its mood is that of unqualified gloom, unrelieved by a single vibration of hope or consolation.

4. Arabian Dance

In the interval which has elapsed since the death of Ase, our hero, now in the prime of life, driven by his erratic spirit and love of adventure, has landed upon the coast of Africa, after being fairly hounded out of his own country by the ridicule and contempt of his neighbors. This scene takes place in an oasis of the Great Desert, where an Arab chief has pitched his tent, and where Peer, mounted on a stolen white charger and clad in stolen silk and jeweled robes, has arrived in the rôle of the prophet to the Bedouins. A bevy of Arabian girls are dancing before him in oriental costume, pausing to render homage at intervals to the supposed prophet, who reclines among cushions, drinking coffee and smoking a long pipe. The music begins with a monotonous rhythmical figure in the accompaniment, suggesting the beat of tambourines and castanets, and the melody of the opening strain is weird rather than bright, stealthily playful rather than openly gay, rising soon to a considerable degree of excited movement. The trio, with its double melody and its languorous warmth of cadence, tells of increasingly involved figures in the dance and a more voluptuous, seductive grace of motion among the dancers. Then the opening strain is repeated, with its clash of tambourines, its tinkle of silver bangles and anklets, and its mood of repressed, but jocose, humor, beneath a flimsy veil of fictitious gravity.

5. Anitra’s Dance

Anitra, the light-limbed and dark-eyed daughter of the chief, has won the especial favor of the prophet, and dances alone before him after her companions have retired. Peer is enraptured and promises to make her an houri in paradise, and to give her a soul, a very little one, in return for her love and service. She is not much tempted by the soul, but finally consents to fly to the desert with him for the gift of the large opal from his turban. Anitra’s dance is more warmly subjective, more distinctly personal in character than the preceding, at once lighter and more rapid, more tender and winningly graceful, full of arch defiance, playful witcheries, and the coquettish confidence of the high-born maiden and practised solo-danseuse, certain of her power and bent on using it to the full, for the complete subjugation of their prophet guest. We can almost feel her smoothly undulating movements, her swift, but seductive, changes of pose, and those sharp, stolen side-glances, skilfully blended of shyness and fire, flashing from beneath her drooping black lashes, fascinating, but dangerous, like lightning gleams from a fringe of somber cloud.

6. Solveig’s Song

Solveig, a Norwegian maiden of Peer’s own village, the earliest and only worthy love of his life, whom he has deserted in a spasm of virtue, feeling himself unfit to remain with her, sits spinning at the door of a log hut, in a forest far up in the North. She is now a middle-aged woman, fair and comely, and as she spins she sings of her unfailing faith in Peer’s return, her own ever-constant love, and her prayers to God to strengthen and gladden her lover on earth or in heaven. In the music to this song Grieg has admirably depicted the character of Solveig: beautiful, tender, joyous, and full of hope. The English translation of the words, which is but a poor and inadequate representation of the original, runs as follows:

“Though winter departeth,
And fadeth the May;
Though summer, too, may vanish,
The year pass away;
Yet thou’lt return, my darling,
For thou, love, art mine.
I gave thee my promise,
Forever I am thine.

“God help thee, my darling,
If living art thou;
God bless thee, O my darling,
If dead thou art now.
I will wait thy coming
Till thou drawest near;
Or tarry thou in heaven,
Till I can meet thee, dear.”

7. Morning

This, the most musical and sensuously beautiful movement of the whole suite, represents daybreak in Egypt, with the desert in the distance and the great pyramids, with groups of acacias and palms in the foreground, against a rosy eastern sky. Peer stands before the statue of Memnon in the first hush of the dawn, and watches the rays of the rising sun strike upon it, when, true to the ancient tradition, the statue sings. Soft and mysterious strains of music, monotonous and prolonged, are drawn by the sunbeams from the venerable stone.

The melody of this movement is of extreme simplicity and lyric beauty, pure and fresh as the dawn. Its cadences swell in power and volume as the sun rises higher; and the full flood of light is transmitted into a full flood of song, as the statue thrills and vibrates with the first kisses of the ardent Egyptian sun.

After the climax, which is full and joyous, but never passionate, the music diminishes and dies away in broken snatches, as the statue, now thoroughly impregnated with light and warmth, ceases to emit those sounds with which it has been said to salute the daybreak for four thousand years.

8. Storm

Peer Gynt, now a vigorous old man, is on board a ship on the North Sea off the Norwegian coast, trying to discern the familiar outline of mountains and glaciers through the growing twilight and gathering storm. The wind rises to a gale; it grows dark; the sea increases; the ship labors and plunges; breakers are ahead; the sails are torn away; the ship strikes and goes to pieces, a shattered wreck, and the waves swallow all. Peer, true to his nature, saves his life and adds to the list of his sins by pushing a fellow-passenger from an upturned boat which will not support both, and floating to shore.

This, the final instrumental number of the suite, is by far the most difficult, important, and pretentious of them all; and whether regarded from a musical or descriptive standpoint, is unquestionably the crowning effort of the whole work. It portrays the mood and the might of the tempest with startling vividness, the blackness of the storm-racked clouds, the rage of the wind-lashed waters, the shrieking of the gale through snapping cordage, the almost human complaining of the noble ship, struggling hopelessly with her doom. In brief, the strength, the power, and the manifold phantom voices of the storm are simultaneously and graphically expressed, and the mood and movement, both in duration and completeness of development, exceed those in any of the other numbers. At length, however, after the catastrophe, the force of the storm is broken, the fury of wind and waves subsides, and the receding thunder clouds mutter their baffled rage and threats of deferred destruction more and more faintly as they disappear, and the light of morning breaks upon the scene. Then softly, like the audible voice of the sunlight, comes an instrumental transcription of Solveig’s song of love, previously sung, whose familiar strains symbolically express the idea that her sleepless affection, her guardian thoughts and prayers have watched over her loved one and brought him at last safely through danger and tempest to his native shore. This symbolic use of Solveig’s song, with its suggestive significance, is in my opinion the happiest and most poetic touch in the whole composition.

9. Solveig’s Cradle Song

Solveig, the guardian angel of Peer’s life, represents and appeals to all that is good in his nature. Her influence, even in the midst of his maddest escapades, has never wholly deserted him, and serves at last as the magnet to draw him back to her and home. The last scene in the drama represents Solveig, now a serene-faced, silver-haired old lady, stepping forth from the door of the forest hut, on her way to church. Peer, who in his chaotic fashion has become a prey to disappointment, to remorse, and to fear of death, appears suddenly before her, calling himself a sinner and crying for condemnation from the lips of the woman whom he has most sinned against. Solveig sinks upon a bench at the door of the hut. Peer drops upon his knees at her feet and buries his face in her lap. The sun rises and the curtain falls as she sings her lullaby song of peace and happiness. Grieg has set these last stanzas of the drama to music under the title of Solveig’s Wiegenlied, or Cradle Song. They are translated as follows:

“Sleep thou, dearest boy of mine!
I will cradle thee, I will watch thee.
The boy has been sitting on his mother’s lap,
The two have been playing all the life-day long.
The boy has been resting at his mother’s breast
All the life-day long. God’s blessing on my joy.
The boy has been lying close in to my heart
All the life-day long. He is weary now.
Sleep thee, dearest boy of mine!
I will cradle thee, I will watch thee.
Sleep and dream thou, dear my boy!”

These lines seem to indicate a transition from wifely love to maternal love in the affection of Solveig, with the advent of age.

The moral of the drama, not a very ethical one, but one which has possessed the minds of many devoted women since the world began, appears to be that in love alone is salvation. Whatever the errors and sins and follies of the man, he is won at last and saved, even at the eleventh hour, by the faith, the hope, and the love of one devoted woman.

Grieg: An den Frühling (Spring Song), Op. 43, No. 6

Among the very few strictly lyric compositions for the piano by Grieg,—a vein in which he was singularly unproductive for so eminent a genius,—this spring song must unquestionably take rank as the best, the most evenly sustained throughout, the most perfect in form and finish, and decidedly the finest as well as most emotional in quality.

The opening notes of the right hand accompaniment fall light and silvery as the soft drops of the April shower upon the waiting woods, when the first faint shimmer of tender green begins to tint the tips of the waving boughs. Then the melody enters in the left hand with subdued, repressed intensity, warmly, sweetly vibrant, like the upper register of that most passionate of instruments, the ’cello, a melody telling of mild, languorous days and soft, dream-haunted nights, thrilled through by the mysterious throbbing of a new life in the earth’s long-frozen veins; telling of Nature, surprised but radiantly happy, awakening at the touch of her ardent lover, the sudden spring, from her ice-locked sleep, like the slumbering, frost-fettered bride in the old legend of Siegfried and Brünnhilde; telling of summer joys and brightness begotten of their union, of bird songs, sweeter for the long silence, of many-tinted flowers springing in fragrant profusion where the cold white drifts of winter lay but yesterday, as if the snowflakes had all been transformed to blossoms by the magic kiss of the sun; of love as sudden as the spring, as tenderly sweet as its violets, strong as its rushing torrents, but alas! too often as transient as its fleeting glories. This sudden, startling thought of pain and disillusion strikes sharply across the mellow, golden current of the stream with a somber threatening note of danger and distress rising to a swift, strong climax of indignant protest or fierce defiance, a contrasting reactionary mood common to certain minds, like those, for instance, of Byron and Heine, aptly illustrated by the following lines, translated from the German of Amentor:

“Sing not to me of spring, its flowers and azure skies,
Fleeting delusions all to cheat unwary eyes.
Talk not to me of love, its dreams of Paradise.
The charms of spring, the joys of love, are brilliant lies.”

But this dark mood is of but brief duration; it is soon exorcised by the plenitude of sunshine and the exuberance of springtime happiness, and the first melody returns with all its glowing beauty and seductive sweetness, and with a fuller, more fluent, voluptuous accompaniment, suggesting the mingled voices of many streams exulting in their new freedom, or the irregular, intermittent sighs of May breezes, impatient with having to rock all the baby leaves at once.

This composition is technically of only moderate difficulty, but requires for its proper delivery a fine taste, great warmth of feeling, and a telling, sensuous quality of tone for the melody, while the right hand accompaniment in the first movement is kept almost infinitely light and delicate. The sudden burst of passionate pain and resentment in the climax should be given with extreme intensity and a decided acceleration of tempo, as well as increase in power; followed by an abrupt fall to a caressing pianissimo, and a long lingering hold on the final chord just preceding the return of the first melody, to accentuate the renewal of the softer, sunnier mood.

Grieg: Vöglein (Little Birds), Op. 43, No. 4

A charming and effective supplementary companion piece to the spring song is that exquisitely, daintily fanciful, yet exceedingly brief piece of descriptive tone painting, called “The Little Birds,” published in the same volume of lyrics with the preceding number. It may be played as an added and appropriate coda to the spring song. It is one of those graphically realistic productions which tell their own story. It portrays very literally, by more than suggestive imitation, the blithe twitter of the spring birds fluttering amid the dancing leaves and sunlight, engaged in their delightful occupation of nest-building. Notice, too, the sudden touch of facetious drollery, so characteristic of Grieg, where the delicate little bird motive is abruptly transferred to the bass register, producing a peculiarly comical, grotesque effect, reminding one of the gutteral hilarity of the spring-awakened frogs in some neighboring pool.

Exceeding lightness and delicacy, combined with a certain playful staccato effect, are the chief technical requisites for the correct performance of this work, which, though small, will well repay careful study. The tone produced should be crisp and bright, though never rising above piano, and the tempo not exceedingly rapid.

Grieg: Berceuse, Op. 38, No. 1