Chapter VI: Part 6

IV. _The Lake._ Sated with adventure, my nurse firmly pushes me on, and before I recover my balance I am face to face with new excitement. The land comes to an end, and there at my feet is the Lake. All other sensations are joined in one. I see, I hear, I feel the quiver of the little waves as they escape from the big ones and come rushing up over the sand. Their fear is pretended. They know the big waves are amiable, for they can see a thousand sunbeams dancing with impunity on their very backs. Waves and sunbeams! Waves and sunbeams! Blue water—white clouds—dancing, swinging! A white sea gull floating in the air. That is _My Lake_!

V. _Dogs._ We pass on. Probably there is nothing more in the World. If there is, it is superfluous. _There_ IS. It is Dogs! We are coming upon them without warning. Not _one_ of them—all of them. First, one by one; then in pairs; then in societies. Little dogs, with sisters; big dogs, with aged parents. Kind dogs, brigand dogs, sad dogs, and gay. They laugh, they fight, they run. And at last, in order to hold my interest, the very littlest brigand starts a game of “Follow the Leader,” followed by all the others. It is tremendous!

VI. _Dreams._ Those dogs have gone! It is confusing, but it is Life! My mind grows numb. My cup is too full. I have a sudden conviction that it is well that I am not alone. That firm step behind reassures me. The wheels of my perambulator make a sound that quiets my nerves. I lie very still. I am quite content. In order to think more clearly, I close my eyes. My thoughts are absorbing. I deliberate upon my mother. Most of the time my mother and my nurse have but one identity in my mind, but at night or when I close my eyes, I can easily tell them apart, for my mother has the greater charm, I hear her voice quite plainly now, and feel the touch of her hand. It is pleasant to live over again the adventures of the day—the long blue waves curling in the sun, the Policeman who is bigger than my father, the music-box and my friends, the Dogs. It is pleasant to lie quite still and close my eyes, and listen to the wheels of my perambulator. How very large the world is! How many things there are!

CLAUDE ACHILLE
DEBUSSY

(Born at Germain [Seine and Oise], August 22, 1862; died at Paris,
March 26, 1918)

Debussy suffered at the hands of the ultra-orthodox and the snobs in music. The former could not find either melodic lines or the semblance of form in his orchestral and chamber works, his songs and pianoforte pieces. The snobs, secretly bored, thought it the thing to swoon at the mere mention of his name. In New York and Boston, as in Paris, there were “_Pelléastres_,” to use the contemptuous term coined by Jean Lorraine. There were some that spoke of Debussy as an ignorant fellow who, not being able to achieve greatness in the conventional manner, wrote in an eccentric way to attract attention, to make the bourgeois sit up. They forgot that Debussy had taken the chief prize at the Paris Conservatory, where harmony and counterpoint are taught rigorously. Debussy fashioned his own musical speech. It is easy to say that he learned much from Moussorgsky’s _Boris Godounov_—but no one has yet pointed out exactly what he borrowed or imitated. That Debussy sojourned in Russia was enough to excite those who are unwilling to admit that any innovator has originality, for Debussy was an innovator, not a developer of what was handed down to him. It is more probable that he learned from the gypsies in Russia than from Moussorgsky.

The question arises whether in his compositions of the few last years Debussy did not merely imitate himself, whether he had anything more to say. The believer in plenary inspiration of course shouts with joy on hearing the three sonatas that have been played in this country. Admiring Debussy greatly as we do, we cannot in this instance shout with him. Debussy can surely rest his fame on the string quartet; _L’Après-midi d’un faune_; _Gigues_, _Ibéria_, _Pelléas et Mélisande_, and some of the songs and the pianoforte pieces.

As for _Pelléas and Mélisande_, we believe it to be the perfect example in opera of music wedded to words and situations, an opera more remarkable in this respect than even _Tristan and Isolde_.

“PRÉLUDE À L’APRÈS-MIDI D’UN FAUNE” (ECLOGUE DE STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ)

Debussy’s _Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun_ is a masterpiece of imaginative poetry in tones; it is a thing of flawless beauty. It matters not whether the symbolism of Mallarmé be cryptic or intelligible. It matters not whether the explanation of Gosse or of another be ingenious and plausible. The title is enough to give a clue to the hearer, if a clue be needed. Debussy himself has composed nothing more charming in strictly orchestral music.

There is the suggestion of sunlight and warmth, forest and meadow dear to fauns and nymphs. There is the gentle melancholy that is associated with a perfect afternoon. There is the exquisite melodic line, and there is harmonic suggestion with inimitable coloring that is still more exquisite.

* * *

_Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune_, completed in 1892, was played for the first time at a concert of the National Society of Music, Paris, December 23, 1894. The conductor was Gustave Doret. According to Charles Koechlin, there had been insufficient rehearsal, so the performance left much to be desired, and the acoustics of the Salle d’Harcourt were unfavorable. When the second performance took place at a Colonne concert, a critic wrote: “This composer seems to dread banality.” “And yet,” says Koechlin, “the charm of this music is so simple, so melodic. But every _new_ melody should be heard several times. Besides, even the construction—a supple melodic line that is expanded—could be disconcerting. For certain writers about music, Debussy was a dangerous artist with a diabolical fascination: the worst possible example. Diabolical or not, the work has lasted. It has the votes of the élite: that is enough.”

The second performance was at a Colonne concert, Paris, October 20, 1895. In the _Annales du théâtre_, we find this singular note: “Written after a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé so sadistic that M. Colonne did not dare to print the text; young girls attend his concerts.”

To Debussy is attributed a short “explanation of his _Prelude_, a very free illustration of Mallarmé’s poem”: The music evokes “the successive scenes in which the longings and the desire of the Faun pass in the heat of the afternoon.”

Stéphane Mallarmé formulated his revolutionary ideas concerning style about 1875, when the _Parnasse contemporain_ rejected his first poem of true importance, _L’Après-midi d’un faune_. The poem was published in 1876 as a quarto pamphlet, illustrated by Manet.

Gosse gave this explanation of the poem that suggested music to Debussy: “It appears in the _florilège_ which he has just published, and I have now read it again, as I have often read it before. To say that I understand it bit by bit, phrase by phrase, would be excessive. But, if I am asked whether this famous miracle of unintelligibility gives me pleasure, I answer, cordially, Yes. I even fancy that I obtain from it as definite and as solid an impression as M. Mallarmé desires to produce.

“This is what I read in it: 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 that 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 in 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 worshiping the efficacious star of wine, that he may pursue the dubious ecstasy into the more hopeful boskages of sleep.

“This, then, is what I read in the so excessively obscure and unintelligible. _L’Après-midi d’un faune_; and, accompanied as it is with a perfect suavity of language and melody of rhythm, I know not what more a poem of eight pages could be expected to give. It supplies a simple and direct impression of physical beauty, of harmony, of color; it is exceedingly mellifluous, when once the ear understands that the poet, instead of being the slave of the Alexandrine, weaves his variations round it, like a musical composer.”

_The Afternoon of a Faun_ is scored for three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two harps, small antique cymbals, strings. It is dedicated to Raymond Bonheur.

The chief theme is announced by the flute, _très modéré_, E major, 9-8. Louis Laloy gives the reins to his fancy: “One is immediately transported into a better world; all that is leering and savage in the snub-nosed face of the faun disappears; desire still speaks, but there is a veil of tenderness and melancholy. The chord of the wood-wind, the distant call 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. 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 horns darkens the horizon. The theme comes and goes, fresh chords unfold themselves; at last a solo violoncello joins itself to the flute; and then everything vanishes, as a mist that rises in the air and scatters itself in flakes.”[23]

NOCTURNES

a. Nuages
b. Fêtes
c. Sirènes

Baudelaire’s prose poem, “The Stranger,” might serve as motto for the first nocturne, and for a hint to performance.

“_Enigmatical man, whom do you love best? Tell me—your mother, your sister, or your brother?_”

“_I have neither father, mother, sister, nor brother._”

“_Your friends?_”

“_You now use a word which to this day has been meaningless to me._”

“_Your country?_”

“_I do not know under what latitude it lies._”

“_Beauty?_”

“_I would love her gladly; goddess and immortal._”

“_Well, what do you love, extraordinary stranger?_”

“_I love the clouds, the clouds that pass, yonder, the marvellous clouds._”

_Festivals_, with its strange processional march, its whirring capriciousness, makes a more direct appeal. Does the third movement answer the old question put by Tiberius to the grammarians and repeated by Sir Thomas Browne, “What song did the sirens sing?” Here is music of waves and of sea-women: music that never was heard on a casino-lined coast, but sounds that might go with “The light that never was, on sea or land.” Here is music that is subtly poetic, music of ineffable beauty. Suppose that Debussy had put words to this song; how he would have cheapened the nocturne! To each hearer on the ship of Ulysses, or to each hearer of Debussy’s music, the sirens sang of what might well lure him.

* * *

The first two nocturnes, _Nuages_ and _Fêtes_, were produced at a Lamoureux concert, Camille Chevillard conductor, Paris, December 9, 1900, and they were played by the same orchestra January 6, 1901. The third, _Sirènes_, was first produced—in company with the other two—at a Lamoureux concert, October 27, 1901. The third is for orchestra with chorus of female voices. At this last concert the friends of Debussy were so exuberant in manifestations of delight that there was sharp hissing as a corrective. The _Nocturnes_ were composed in 1898, and published in 1899.

Debussy furnished a programme for the suite; at least, this programme is attributed to him. Some who are not wholly in sympathy with what they loosely call “the modern movement” may think that the programme itself needs elucidation. Debussy’s peculiar forms of expression in prose are not easily Englished, and it is well-nigh impossible to reproduce certain shades of meaning.

“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 diversified impression and special lights.

“_Clouds_: the unchangeable appearance of the sky, with the slow and solemn march of clouds dissolving in a gray agony tinted with white.

“_Festivals_: movement, rhythm dancing in the atmosphere, with bursts of brusque light. There is also the episode of a procession (a dazzling and wholly idealistic vision) 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 the universal rhythm of all things.

“_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.”

Alfred Bruneau with regard to the _Nocturnes_: “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.”

Questioning the precise nature of the form that shapes these _Nocturnes_, the reader may well ponder the saying of Plotinus in his “Essay on the Beautiful”: “But the simple beauty of color arises, when light, which is something incorporeal, and reason and form, entering the obscure involutions of matter, irradiates and forms its dark and formless nature. It is on this account that fire surpasses other bodies in beauty, because, compared with the other elements, it obtains the order of form: for it is more eminent than the rest, and is the most subtle of all, bordering as it were on an incorporeal nature.”

The _Nocturnes_ are scored as follows:

I. Two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, kettledrums, harp, strings. The movement begins _modéré_, 6-4.

II. Three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, two harps, kettledrums, cymbals, and snare drum, strings. _Animé et très rhythmé_, 4-4.

III. Three flutes, oboe, English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, two harps, eight soprano voices, eight mezzo-soprano voices, strings, _modérément animé_, 12-8.

Debussy before his death made many changes in the instrumentation of these _Nocturnes_.

“LA MER,” TROIS ESQUISSES SYMPHONIQUES

I. De l’aube à midi sur la mer
II. Jeux de vagues
III. Dialogue du vent et de la mer

As these sketches are frankly impressionistic, the enjoyment of the hearer depends largely on his own susceptibility and imagination. There are persons who do not like the ocean. Oscar Wilde was disappointed in the Atlantic; but there are more normal beings, far from being poseurs, who cannot exclaim with Jules Laforgue, “the sea, always new, always respectable!” We know a man who was doomed to spend a vacation in a summer hotel on a bluff looking down on Nantucket Sound. Whenever he sat on a bench he turned his back to the ocean and faced pine trees, giving as an excuse that “the sea got on his nerves.”

Debussy’s _Sea_ is not for them, neither is it for those who find pleasure in Mendelssohn’s overture, _Sea Calm and Prosperous Voyage_, for Debussy knows a wilder ocean, many-faced, now exulting in Æschylean laughter, now spasmodic, sinister, terrible, and never so terrible as when calm, or inviting mortals to sport with it, and smiling—as though it were forgetful of rotting ships and sunken treasure and the drowned far down that were for a time regarded curiously by monsters of the deep.

* * *

These orchestral pieces (I. _From Dawn till Noon on the Ocean_; II. _Play of the Waves_; III. _Dialogue of Wind and Sea_) were performed for the first time at a Lamoureux concert in Paris, October 15, 1905. Camille Chevillard conducted.

Debussy wrote in August, 1903, from Bichain to his publisher Jacques Durand[24] that he was at work on _La Mer_. “If God will be good to me the work will be in a very advanced state on my return [to Paris].” He wrote later that the sketches would have three titles: _Mer belle aux Îles Sanguinaires_; _Jeux de vagues_; _Le Vent fait danser la mer_; and in September he said the work was intended for Chevillard. In September, 1904, he wrote from Dieppe, “I wanted to finish _La Mer_ here, but I must still work on the orchestration, which is as tumultuous and varied as the sea (with all my excuses to the latter).” In January, 1905, he was not sure that the title, “_De l’Aube à midi sur la mer_” would do: “So many contradictory things are dancing in my head, and this last attack of grippe has added its particular dance.” He also wrote that he had remade the end of _Jeux de vagues_. He was disturbed because Chevillard spoke of the difficulties in the music, but if he gave the score to Colonne there might be a row. In July and September, 1905, he complained of “very curious corrections” made by someone in the proofs; and the idea of a performance at Chevillard’s first concert seemed to him as bad as a performance at the last one of the season. At rehearsal it was found that the proofs had been badly read.

The Sketches, dedicated to Jacques Durand, were published at Paris in 1905. Debussy made an arrangement for two pianos; André Caplet made one in 1908 for three pianos.

_La Mer_ is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons and contra-bassoon, four horns, three trumpets, two _cornets-à-pistons_, three trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam, glockenspiel, two harps, and strings.

Debussy and the Sea

Debussy loved and respected the ocean. In 1905 he wrote from Eastbourne: “The sea rolls with a wholly British correctness. There is a lawn combed and brushed on which little bits of important and imperialistic English frolic. But what a place to work! No noise, no pianos, except the delicious mechanical pianos, no musicians talking about painting, no painters discussing music. In short, a pretty place to cultivate egoism.”

At Le Puy near Dieppe, August, 1906: “Here I am again with my old friend the sea, always innumerable and beautiful. It is truly the one thing in nature that puts you in your place; only one does not sufficiently respect the sea. To wet in it bodies deformed by the daily life should not be allowed; truly these arms and legs which move in ridiculous rhythms—it is enough to make the fish weep. There should be only Sirens in the sea, and could you wish that these estimable persons would be willing to return to waters so badly frequented?”

Houlgate, 1911: “Here life and the sea continue—the first to contradict our native savagery, the second to accomplish its sonorous going and coming, which cradles the melancholy of those who are deceived by the beach.”

Pourville, August, 1915: “Trees are good friends, better than the ocean, which is in motion, wishing to trespass on the land, bite the rocks, with the anger of a little girl—singular for a person of its importance. One would understand it if it sent the vessels about their business as disturbing vermin.”

“IBÉRIA”: “IMAGES” FOR ORCHESTRA, NO. 2

I. Par les rues et par les chemins (In the Streets and By-ways)
II. Les Parfums de la nuit (The Fragrance of the Night)
III. Le Matin d’un jour de fête (The Morning of a Festival Day)

The _Images_, of which _Ibéria_ is the second movement, are remarkable in many ways and to be ranked among the first compositions of this genius. They are impressionistic, but there is a sense of form; there is also the finest proportion. This music is conspicuous for exquisite effects of color. There are combinations of timbres and also contrasts that were hitherto unknown. There are hints of Spanish melodies; melodies not too openly exposed; there are intoxicating rhythms, sharply defined, or elusive, and then they are the more madding.

This music is pleasingly remote from photographic realism. The title might be “Impressions of Spain.” There is the suggestion of street life and wild strains heard on bleak plains or savage mountains; of the music of the people; of summer nights, warm and odorous; of the awakening of life with the break of day; of endless jotas, tangos, seguidillas, fandangoes; of gypsies with their spells brought from the East; of women with Moorish blood. _Ibéria_ defies analysis and beggars description.

What phrase-mongering, however ingenious, would impart the beauty of _Odors of the Night_ to him that did not hear the music? The music that haunts should not be lightly or openly talked about. The impression made by it should be guarded or confided only to the closest friend.

To speak of Debussy’s use of instruments to gain effects, of his ability to reproduce what had not been heard by others, though they may have felt it feebly and had the wish to hear it clearly and put it in notation, would be a classroom task. To write of it for the general reader would be only to rhapsodize. Now Debussy is a rhapsodist of the rarest nature, and his musical speech is not to be translated by a rhapsody in words.

* * *

_Ibéria_ is the second in a series of three orchestral compositions by Debussy entitled _Images_.

The first, _Gigues_—it was originally entitled _Gigue Triste_—was published in 1913 and performed for the first time at a Colonne concert, Paris, January 26, 1913. _Ibéria_ was performed for the first time at a Colonne concert in Paris on February 20, 1910, Gabriel Pierné, conductor.

M. Boutarel wrote after the first performance that the hearers are supposed to be in Spain. The bells of horses and mules are heard, and the joyous sounds of wayfarers. The night falls; nature sleeps and is at rest until bells and _aubades_ announce the dawn, and the world awakens to life. “Debussy appears in this work to have exaggerated his tendency to treat music with means of expression analogous to those of the impressionistic painters. Nevertheless, the rhythm remains well defined and frank in _Ibéria_. Do not look for any melodic design, nor any carefully woven harmonic web. The composer of _Images_ attaches importance only to tonal color. He puts his timbres side by side, adopting a process like that of the _Tachistes_ or the ‘stipplers’ in distributing coloring.” The Debussyites and “_Pelléastres_” wished _Ibéria_ repeated, but, while the majority of the audience was willing to applaud, it did not long for a repetition. Repeated the next Sunday, _Ibéria_ aroused “frenetic applause and vehement protestations.”

_Ibéria_ is scored for these instruments: piccolo, three flutes (one interchangeable with a second piccolo), two oboes, English horn, three clarinets, three bassoons, double bassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, side drum, tambourine, castanets, xylophone, celesta, cymbals, three bells (F, G, A), two harps, and the usual strings.

Debussy wrote on May 16, 1905, to Jacques Durand, his publisher, that he was preparing these compositions for two pianofortes: “I. _Gigues tristes._ II. _Ibéria._ III. _Valse_ (?).” In September of that year he hoped to finish them. 1906, August 8: “I have at present three different ways of finishing _Ibéria_. Shall I toss up a coin or search for a fourth?” In September, 1907, the _Images_ would be ready as soon as the _Rondes_ were “_comme je le veux et comme il faut_.” In 1908 Debussy was hard at work on his opera, _The Fall of the House of Usher_, an opera of which, it is said, no sketches have been found. (Durand received Debussy’s libretto in 1917.) In 1909 he wrote that he had laid the _Images_ aside “to the advantage of Edgar Allan Poe.” He also worked on an opera, _The Devil in the Belfry_.

In 1910: “I have seen Pierné. I think he exaggerates the difficulties in a performance of _Ibéria_.”

Debussy wrote on December 4, 1910, from Budapest, where he gave a concert of his works, that _Ibéria_ was especially successful. “They could not play _The Sea_ no more the _Nocturnes_, from want of rehearsal. I was assured that the orchestra knew _The Sea_, for it had been played through three times. Ah! my friend, if you had heard it!... I assure you to put _Ibéria_ right in two rehearsals was, indeed, an effort.... Don’t forget that these players understood me only through an interpreter—a sort of Doctor of Law—who perhaps transmitted my thought only by deforming it. I tried every means. I sang, made the gestures of Italian pantomime, etc.—it was enough to touch the heart of a buffalo. Well, they at last understood me, and I had the last word. I was recalled like a ballet girl, and if the idolatrous crowd did not unharness the horses of my carriage, it was because I had a simple taxi. The moral of this journey is that I am not made to exercise the profession of composer of music in a foreign land. The heroism of a commercial traveler is needed. One must consent to a sort of compromise which decidedly repels me.”

ANTON
DVOŘÁK

(Born at Mühlhausen [Nelahozeves] near Kralup, Bohemia, September 8,
1841; died at Prague, May 1, 1904)

The winning and endearing qualities of childhood were in Dvořák’s best music: artless simplicity, irresistible frankness, delight in nature and life. His music was best when it smacked of the soil, when he remembered his early days, the strains of vagabond musicians, the dances dear to his folk. One of a happily primitive people, he delighted in rhythm and color. He was not the man to translate pictures, statues, poems, a system of metaphysics, a gospel of pessimism into music. He was least successful when he would be heroic, mystical, profound. It was an evil day for him when England “discovered” him, patronized him, ordered oratorios from him for her festivals, made him a doctor of music (as though he were a cathedral organist), and tried to turn this _Naturmensch_ into a drawing-room and church celebrity. When Dvořák is dull, he is very dull. His Slavonic Dances and such a song as “Als die alte Mutter” are worth a wilderness of “St. Ludmilas” and “Heldenlieds.” And his work as a creative musician was no doubt at an end when he left this country to go back to his beloved Prague.

Some have been inclined to think lightly of Dvořák because his best and vital qualities were recognized by the people. This popularity irritated those who believe that pure art is only for the few—the purists; they forget Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Verdi, Wagner, Tchaikovsky. But this popularity was based on the quick recognition of essential qualities: melody, rhythm, color. Slavonic intensity has a purpose, an esoteric meaning. Dvořák might have replied to lecturers, essayists, and the genteel in Whitman’s words:

_Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well, I have—for the
Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has._

_Do you take it I would astonish? Does the daylight astonish? Does the
early redstail, twittering through the woods?_

Dvořák had his faults, and they were tiresome and exasperating. His naïveté became a mannerism. Like a child, he delighted in vain repetitions; he was at times too much pleased with rhythms and colors, so that he mistook the exterior dress for the substance and forgot that after all there was little or no substance behind the brilliant trappings. We believe that he will ultimately be ranked among the minor poets of music. His complete works may gather dust in libraries; but no carefully chosen anthology will be without examples of his piquancy, strength, and beauty in thought and expression.

SYMPHONY NO. 5, IN E MINOR, “FROM THE NEW WORLD,” OP. 95

I. Adagio; allegro molto
II. Largo
III. Scherzo
IV. Allegro con fuoco

Dvořák was an Austrian of a sort, and lived his time in Vienna, like the others. But he had Czech blood in his veins, and had, moreover, pretty well formed his style before coming to Vienna; besides, he was a peasant and had not only been brought up in, but had a native affinity for, the peasant musical atmosphere; Vienna taught him no dancing-master tricks. It is at once curious and delightful to note how, in this symphony, Dvořák sticks to his peasant dialect. Once, in the _scherzo_, he rises to the Schubert pitch of civilization (and Schubert himself was an incorrigible man of the people), but for the rest remains peasant as he was born and bred. And as his dialect is really his native lingo, it has all the charm of reality and does not offend nor bore you—as so-called dialect novels do. Here in this symphony Dvořák has done, perhaps, the best work of his life; not the most genuine, for he is hardly ever anything but genuine, but the most thoroughly poetic and beautiful. There are parts of the _finale_ that seem clearly intended as a picture of—or say, rather, clearly inspired by memories of—a peasant’s Sunday afternoon _Keilerei_, or free fight (of the “where you see a head, hit” sort).

* * *

Dvořák in 1892-93 was living in New York as the director of the National Conservatory of Music. He made many sketches for this symphony. In the first of the three books used for this purpose, he noted “Morning, December 19, 1892.” Fuller sketches began January 10, 1893. The slow movement was then entitled “_Legenda_.” The _scherzo_ was completed January 31; the _finale_, May 25, 1893. A large part of the instrumentation was done at Spillville, Ia., where many Bohemians dwelt.

This symphony was performed for the first time, in manuscript, by the Philharmonic Society of New York on Friday afternoon, December 15, 1893. Anton Seidl conducted. Dvořák was present.

When this symphony was played at Berlin in 1900, Dvořák wrote to Oskar Nedbal, who conducted it: “I send you Kretzschmar’s analysis of the symphony, but omit that nonsense about my having made use of ‘Indian’ and ‘American’ themes—that is a lie. I tried to write only in the spirit of those national American melodies. Take the introduction to the symphony as slowly as possible.”

The symphony aroused a controversy in which there was shedding of much ink. The controversy long ago died out, and is probably forgotten even by those who read the polemical articles at the time and expressed their own opinions. The symphony remains. It is now without associations that might prejudice. It is now enjoyed or appreciated, or possibly passed by, as music, and not as an exhibit in a case on trial.

Yet it may be good to recall the circumstances of the symphony’s origin. In the feverish days of the discussion excited by the first performance of this symphony, it was stated that Mr. Krehbiel and others called the attention of Dvořák, who was then living in New York, to Negro melodies and rhythms; that the Bohemian composer then wept with joy and rushed after music paper; that he journeyed to a Western town inhabited chiefly by Bohemians, a town in Iowa, where he could find the stimulating atmosphere to write masterpieces of a truly American nature. Some may also remember that soon after the first performances of the symphony there was a distressing rumor that portions of it had been composed long before Dvořák came to New York; long before his eyes were dimmed and his knees turned to water by hearing Negro tunes.

The conclusion of the whole matter, according to several Czechs whom William Ritter (author of a life of Smetana) consulted, is as follows:

I. The _New World_ symphony expresses the state of soul of an uncultured Czech in America, the state of a homesick soul remembering his native land and stupefied by the din and hustle of a new life.

II. The uncultured Czech is a born musician, a master of his trade. He is interested in the only traces of music that he finds in America. Negro airs, not copied, adapted, imitated, tint slightly two or three passages of the symphony without injury to its Czech character.

III. The symphony leaped, Minerva-like, from the head of this uncultured genius. As nearly all his other compositions, except the operas, it was not stimulated by any foreign assistance, by any consultation of authors, or by quotations, reading, etc., as was especially the case with Brahms.

IV. The national Czech feeling in this work, quickened by homesickness, is so marked that it is recognized throughout Bohemia, by the learned and by the humblest.

These are the conclusions of Mr. Ritter after a painstaking investigation. That Dvořák was most unhappy and pathetically homesick during his sojourn in New York is known to many, though Mr. Ritter does not enter into any long discussion of the composer’s mental condition in this country.

Yet some will undoubtedly continue to insist that the symphony _From the New World_ is based, for the most part, on Negro themes, and that the future of American music rests on the use of Congo, North American Indian, Creole, Greaser, and Cowboy ditties, whinings, yawps, and whoopings.

The symphony is scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes (one interchangeable with English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, cymbals, triangle, and strings.

EDWARD WILLIAM
ELGAR

(Born at Broadheath, near Worcester, England, June 2, 1857; died at
Worcester, February 23, 1934)

Nearly one hundred years ago, William Hazlitt wrote a few words concerning a speech on Indian affairs by the Marquis Wellesley, the eldest brother of the Duke of Wellington. These words may be justly applied to Sir Edward Elgar, composer of _The Dream of Gerontius_, two symphonies, the popular march _Pomp and Circumstance_, and other works familiar to our concert audiences.

“Seeming to utter volumes in every word, and yet saying nothing; retaining the same unabated vehemence of voice and action without anything to excite it; still keeping alive the promise and the expectation of genius without once satisfying it—soaring into mediocrity with adventurous enthusiasm, harrowed up by some plain matter of fact, writhing with agony under a truism, and launching a commonplace with all the fury of a thunderbolt.”

VARIATIONS ON AN ORIGINAL THEME, “ENIGMA,” OP. 36

Theme: Andante.
Variations:
I. “C.A.E.” L’istesso tempo
II. “H.D.S.-P.” Allegro
III. “R.B.T.” Allegretto
IV. “W.M.B.” Allegro di molto
V. “R.P.A.” Moderato
VI. “Ysobel” Andantino
VII. “Troyte” Presto
VIII. “W.N.” Allegretto
IX. “Nimrod” Moderato
X. “Dorabella—Intermezzo.” Allegro
XI. “G.R.S.” Allegro di molto
XII. “B.G.N.” Andante
XIII. “X.X.X.—Romanza.” Moderato
XIV. “E.D.U.—Finale”

Elgar’s Variations were once regarded as a brilliant show-piece for an orchestra. There was a time when Elgar was held to be a “great” composer. Time, the Old Man with a Scythe, has a disconcerting way of handling it. The music with a few exceptions seems at the best respectable in a middle-class manner; the sort of music that gives the composer the degree of Mus. Doc. from an English university. In Elgar’s case, his music won him knighthood, and to this day there are “Elgar Festivals” in England. Was Cecil Gray too severe when he wrote of Elgar: “He never gets entirely away from the atmosphere of pale, cultured idealism and the unconsciously hypocritical, self-righteous, Pharisaical gentlemanliness which is so characteristic of British art in the last century”?

* * *

These Variations, composed at Malvern in 1899, were first performed at one of Hans Richter’s concerts in London, June 19, 1899. Mr. Felix Borowski, the excellent editor of the Chicago Orchestra’s Programme Books, says: “Richter had never met the English composer when, in Vienna, he received the score of the Variations from his agent in the British capital; but the conductor determined to exploit a work which appeared to him to possess qualities of strength and skill that had not been made evident in many English compositions. ‘The _Enigma_ Variations,’ wrote Robert J. Buckley, ‘toured by Richter’s band, set the seal on Elgar’s reputation. Richter did for Elgar what he had done for Wagner thirty years before. England was won for Wagner by Richter and the _Tannhäuser_ overture. England was won for Elgar by Richter and the _Enigma_ Variations.’[25] It should, however, be pointed out that the Variations, as produced by Richter in June, 1899, were not quite the same composition as that which has been made familiar to every concert-going audience in the world. After the first performance, Elgar, at the instigation of Hans Richter, added a _coda_, and he made various changes in the orchestration throughout the piece. In this revised form it was produced at the Worcester Festival, the composer conducting his work, September 13, 1899.” The Variations were first played in Germany at a concert of the Städtische Musikverein, Düsseldorf, February 7, 1901; Julius Buths, conductor.

The score, which includes a theme and fourteen variations, is dedicated by the composer to his “friends pictured within.” Elgar himself said: “It is true that I have sketched, for their amusement and mine, the idiosyncrasies of fourteen of my friends, not necessarily musicians; but this is a personal matter and need not have been mentioned publicly. The Variations should stand simply as a ‘piece’ of music. 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 chief character is never on the stage.”

Elgar’s work is scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, double bassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, snare drum, bass drum, triangle, cymbals, organ (_ad lib._), and strings.

THEME

The theme, or the “Enigma,” is an _andante_, G minor, 4-4, of a melancholy nature, with a halting and sighing melody. A few measures of musical notation would show more clearly the nature of the following variations than any verbal description, however graphic.

Elgar wrote to the late August Johannes Jaeger that he had composed thirteen variations, but, yielding to superstition, he had called the _finale_ the fourteenth.

VARIATIONS

I. “C.A.E.” _L’istesso tempo_, G minor, 4-4. The initials are Lady Elgar’s. The theme, changed in rhythm, is given to the second violins and violas tremolo; flute and clarinet in octaves. The close, _pianississimo_, is in G major.

II. “H.D.S.-P.” _Allegro_, G minor, 3-8. The theme finally appears in the violoncellos and basses under a staccato figure for wood-wind, later violins.

III. “R.B.T.” _Allegretto_, G major, 3-8. Fragments of the theme are played by oboe and violins (_pizzicato_) against a counter theme for wood-wind.

IV. “W.M.B.” A spirited, vigorous variation. _Allegro di molto_, G minor-major 3-4. Strings, wood-wind, and horns proclaim the theme. The last measures call for the full strength of the orchestra.

V. “R.P.A.” _Moderato_, C minor, 12-8 (4-4). A counter melody is developed against the theme (bassoons, violoncellos, and double basses), first above the theme and then below it.

VI. “Ysobel.” _Andantino_, C major 3-2. A lyrical movement with a cantilena for solo viola, while gentle phrases are given to the woodwind and horns.

VII. “Troyte.” _Presto_, C major, 4-4. Wood-wind and violins have a bold figure over a _basso ostinato_ for violoncellos, double basses, kettledrums. This figure, changed, is afterwards given to the basses.

VIII. “W.N.” _Allegretto_, G major, 6-8. Clarinets vary the theme.

IX. “Nimrod.” _Moderato_, E flat major, 3-4. This and the next variations are in strong contrast to each other and to those that precede. “Nimrod” is a tribute to Elgar’s friend Jaeger. Elgar’s Variations were performed at a memorial concert to Jaeger in London on January 24, 1910. Hans Richter conducted. Elgar wrote this note for the programme: “The Variations are not all ‘portraits.’... Something ardent and mercurial, in addition to the slow movement (No. IX), would have been needful to portray the character and temperament of A. J. Jaeger. The variation is a record of a long summer evening talk, when my friend grew nobly eloquent (as only he could) on the grandeur of Beethoven, and especially of his slow movements.” The strings (2d violins, violas, and violoncellos divided) sing the theme, _pianississimo_. Later the wood-wind and brass enlarge it.

X. “Dorabella—Intermezzo.” _Allegretto_, G major, 3-4, a sparkling, joyous variation, scored lightly for muted strings and wood-wind; a horn is heard in one measure, and there are a few strokes on the kettledrums.

XI. “G.R.S.” _Allegro di molto_, G minor, 2-2. An English reviewer says of this variation: “The furious pedaling in the basses seems to confirm our suspicion that this is the ‘picture’ of a well-known Cathedral organist.” This organist is probably Dr. George Roberton Sinclair, a friend and neighbor of Elgar at Hereford. The basses play a staccato variation of the theme. Later the brass has it _fortissimo_.

XII. “B.G.N.” _Andante_, G minor, 4-4. A song for violoncellos in which violas join later with first violins for the climax.

XIII. “X.X.X.—Romanza.” _Moderato_, G major, 3-4. The story is that “X.X.X.” was at sea when Elgar wrote this variation. We quote from Mr. Daniel Gregory Mason’s essay on Elgar: “Violas in a quietly undulating rhythm suggests the ocean expanse; an almost inaudible tremor of the drum gives the throb of the engines; a quotation from Mendelssohn’s _Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage_ (clarinet) completes the story. Yet ‘story’ it is not—and there is the subtlety of it. Dim sea and dreamlike steamer are only accessories, after all. The thought of the distant friend, the human soul there, is what quietly disengages itself as the essence of the music.”[26] Ernest Newman speaks of the “curious drum roll, like the faint throb of the engines of a big liner.”[27]

XIV. “E.D.U.—Finale.” _Allegro_, G major, with an introduction. There are various modifications of tempo; the final section is a _presto_. The organ part was added after the first performance. “The _finale_ is an elaborate movement, starting _pianissimo_, but soon developing strength and brilliancy in a richly scored marchlike strain, with which anon the _ritmo di tre_ of Variation IX, ‘Nimrod’ (but in augmentation) is combined in a grandiose and triumphant passage, which virtually forms the climax of the work.” There is also a reminiscence of the opening strain of Variation I, _pianississimo_.

MANUEL
DE FALLA

(Born at Cadiz, November 23, 1876)

BALLET-PANTOMIME: “EL AMOR BRUJO”

The suite derived from de Falla’s “choreographic fantasy,” _Love, the Sorcerer_, does not suffer so much by its separation from the theatrical situations, action, and stage settings as other suites arranged from ballets. There are many pages that are enjoyable as pure music without thought of a plot and the evolutions of a ballet, without the question of whether this number or that is illustrative of an episode in the ballet. If de Falla expresses the wildness of Spanish gypsy music in a fascinating manner, he is equally fortunate in the expression of gentle emotions. There is little that is sensuous or voluptuous in the suite. The music for the scene of the appearance of a ghost which cools the amorous ardor of Candelas when her new lover would approach her—here one is reminded of the chief theme of Anatole France’s amusing and satirical _Histoire comique_—is, perhaps, imbued with passionate fervor for performance on the stage.

* * *

This _Gitaneria_ (Gypsy Life) in one act and two scenes, a choreographic fantasy with voice and small orchestra, book by Gregorio Martinez Sierra (known in this country by the plays _A Romantic Young Lady_, _Cradle Song_, _The Kingdom of God_), was produced at the Teatro de Lara, Madrid, April 15, 1915, with the Señora Pastora Imperio assisting. A concert version was performed at Madrid in 1916, E. Fernandez Arbos conductor, at a concert of the Sociedad Nacional de Música. According to G. Jean-Aubry, “De Falla drew from the music certain symphonic excerpts, in which he suppressed the spoken or sung parts and enlarged the instrumentation.... But this did not alter the essential character of the work, which is to be found in its particular color, or the semi-Arabian style of its idioms.”

This suite was performed for the first time in London on November 23, 1921.

Sierra based the libretto of de Falla’s ballet pantomime on an Andalusian gypsy story. _Brujo_ means a wizard, a male witch. Mr. Trent, in his _Manuel de Falla and Spanish Music_, writes: “_L’Amour sorcier_ has misled both audiences and English translators. _Love the Wizard_ gives an entirely wrong impression; _Wedded by Witchcraft_, proposed as an alternative, is a description, more or less, of what happens; and even that would be better as _Wedded in Spite of Witchcraft_.”

There was a small orchestra when the work was first produced. As finally revised, the score calls for piccolo, two flutes, oboe, two clarinets, bassoon, two horns, two trumpets, kettledrums, bells (A, D, C), piano, and strings. A mezzo-soprano sings “behind”; but in concerts the voice is replaced by a horn, or in one place an English horn.

When Mr. Arbos conducted this work in St. Louis, the Programme Book, edited by Harry R. Burke, contained this synopsis of the story published as a preface to the piano score:

“Candelas, a young, very beautiful and passionate woman has loved a wicked, jealous and dissolute, but fascinating and cajoling Gypsy. Although having led a very unhappy life with him, she has loved him intensely and mourned his loss, unable ever to forget him. Her memory of him is something like a hypnotic dream, a morbid, gruesome, and maddening spell. She is terrified by the thought that the dead may not be entirely gone, that he may return, that he continues to love her in that fierce, shadowy, faithless, and caressing way. She lets herself become a prey to the past as if under the influence of a specter; yet she is young, strong, vivacious. Spring returns, and with it love, in the shape of Carmelo.

“Carmelo, a handsome youth, enamored and gallant, makes love to her. Candelas, not unwilling to be won, almost unconsciously returns his love; but the obsession of her past weighs against her present inclination. When Carmelo approaches her and endeavors to make her share his passion, the Specter returns and terrifies Candelas, whom he separates from her lover. They cannot exchange the kiss of perfect love.

“Carmelo being gone, Candelas languishes and droops; she feels as if bewitched, and her past love seems to flutter heavily about her like malevolent and foreboding bats. But this evil spell has to be broken, and Carmelo believes he has found a remedy. He has once been the comrade of the Gypsy whose specter haunts Candelas. He knows that the dead lover was the typical faithless and jealous Andalusian gallant. Since he appears to retain, even after his death, his taste for beautiful women, he must be taken on his weak side and thus diverted from his posthumous jealousy in order that Carmelo may exchange with Candelas the perfect kiss against which the sorcery of love cannot prevail.

“Carmelo persuades Lucia, a young and enchantingly pretty Gypsy girl, the friend of Candelas, to simulate acceptance of the Specter’s addresses. Lucia, out of love for Candelas and from feminine curiosity, agrees. The idea of a flirtation with a ghost seems to her attractive and novel. And then the dead man was so mirthful in life. Lucia takes up the sentinel’s post. Carmelo returns to make love to Candelas, and the Specter intervenes ... but he finds the charming little Gypsy, and neither can nor will resist the temptation, not being experienced in withstanding the allurements of a pretty face. He makes love to Lucia, coaxing and imploring her, and the coquettish young Gypsy almost brings him to despair. In the meantime Carmelo succeeds in convincing Candelas of his love, and life triumphs over death and the past. The lovers at last exchange the kiss that defeats the evil influence of the Specter, who perishes, definitely conquered by love.”

THREE DANCES TAKEN FROM THE BALLET “THE THREE-CORNERED HAT”

I. The Neighbors
II. The Miller’s Dance
III. Final Dance

The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, side drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, xylophone, tam-tam, castanets, celesta, harp, piano, and the usual strings.

When the Russian Ballet visited Spain, Serge de Diaghilev was so much interested in the work of de Falla that he commissioned him to write a ballet on the subject of Alarcón’s novel, _El Sombrero de Tres Picos_.

This ballet _The Three-cornered Hat_ was performed for the first time on any stage by the Russian Ballet at the Alhambra, London. Joaquin Turina says (_The Chesterian_, May, 1920) that the first version of _The Three-cornered Hat_ was produced at the Eslava Theater, Madrid, under the title of _El Corregidor y la Molinera_. Turina was then conducting this theater’s orchestra. The “pantomime” of de Falla was accompanied by only seventeen players. “The composer was confronted with one great difficulty, and that was to follow musically the action of the play without spoiling the unity of his score. The music therefore continually reflected a certain anxiety on the composer’s part, as if he were trying to disentangle himself, so to speak, from the external network. The transformation of the ‘pantomime’ into a ballet at once cleared away all these difficulties. This is quite natural, for in the new version the action became reduced to a strictly indispensable minimum, and the dances became predominant, those already existing being considerably amplified.”

Turina finds the Miller’s Dance the most interesting “because of its typically Andalusian character, its fascinating rhythm which is like an affirmation of Southern art, and its Moorish character.” In the Final Dance the _jota_ and the folk theme called _vito_ are introduced.

The _Daily Telegraph_ (London, July 24, 1919) said of the ballet:

“Over the whole brisk action is the spirit of frivolous comedy of a kind by no means common only to Spain of the eighteenth century. A young miller and his wife are the protagonists, and if their existence be idyllic in theory, it is extraordinarily strenuous in practice—choreographically. But that is only another way of saying that M. Massine and Mme Karsavina, who enact the couple, are hardly ever off the stage, and that both of them work with an energy and exuberance that almost leave one breathless at moments. The miller and his wife between them, however, would scarcely suffice even for a slender ballet plot. So we have as well an amorous _corregidor_ (or governor), who orders the miller’s arrest so that the way may be cleared for a pleasant little flirtation—if nothing more serious—with the captivating wife. Behold the latter fooling him with a seductive dance, and then evading her admirer with such agility that, in his pursuit of her, he tumbles over a bridge into the mill stream. But, as this is comedy, and not melodrama, the would-be lover experiences nothing worse than a wetting, and the laugh, which is turned against him, is renewed when, having taken off some of his clothes to dry them and gone to rest on the miller’s bed, his presence is discovered by the miller himself, who, in revenge, goes off in the intruder’s garments after scratching a message on the wall to the effect that ‘Your wife is no less beautiful than mine!’ Thereafter a ‘gallimaufry of gambols’ and—curtain!”

CÉSAR
FRANCK

(Born at Liège, Belgium, December 10, 1822; died at Paris, November 8,
1890)