Symphonies and Their Meaning Part 12

[Music: _Lento lugubre_ (Woodwind) (Strings)]

with later _pizzicato_ figure of low strings.

An answering strain is one of the most important of all the melodies:

[Music]

On these, a bold conflict and climax is reared. If we care to indulge in the bad habit of calling names, we might see "Proud Ambition" in the first motives, intertwined with sounds of sombre discontent. The pace grows _animando_,--_piu mosso_; _moderato molto_. Suddenly Andante sings a new, expressive song, with a dulcet cheer of its own, rising to pa.s.sionate periods and a final height whence, _Andante con duolo_, a loudest chorus of high wood and strings, heralded and accompanied by martial tremolo of low wood, horns, ba.s.ses, and drums, sound the fateful chant that concludes the first scene, and, toward the close of the work, sums the main idea.

[Music: (Strings and flutes) (Ba.s.ses, wood and horns) (Same continuing rhythm)]

The apparition of the Witch of the Alps is pictured in daintiest, sparkling play of strings and wood, with constant recurrence of mobile figures above and below. It seems as if the image of the fountain is fittest and most tempting for mirroring in music. Perhaps the most beautiful, the most haunting, of all the "Manfred" music of Schumann is this same scene of the Witch of the Alps.

Here, with Tschaikowsky, hardly a single note of bra.s.s intrudes on this _perpetuum mobile_ of light, plas.h.i.+ng spray until, later, strains that hark back to the first scene cloud the clear brilliancy of the cascade.

Now the play of the waters is lost in the new vision, and a limpid song glides in the violins, with big rhythmic chords of harps, is taken up in clarinets, and carried on by violins in new melodic verse, _con tenerezza e molto espressione_. Then the whole chorus sing the tune in gentle volume. As it dies away, the music of the falling waters plash as before. The returning song has phases of varying sadness and pa.s.sion. At the most vehement height,--and here, if we choose, we may see the stern order to retire,--the fatal chant is shrieked by full chorus in almost unison fierceness.

Gradually the innocent play of the waters is heard again, though a gloomy pall hangs over. The chant sounds once more before the end.

The third, "Pastoral," scene we are most free to enjoy in its pure musical beauty, with least need of definite dramatic correspondences. It seems at first as if no notes of gloom are allowed to intrude, as if the picture of happy simplicity stands as a foil to the tragedy of the solitary dreamer; for an early climax gives a mere sense of the awe of Alpine nature.

Still, as we look and listen closer, we cannot escape so easily, in spite of the descriptive t.i.tle. Indeed, the whole work seems, in its relation to the poem upon which it is based, a very elusive play in a double kind of symbolism. At first it is all a clear subjective utterance of the hero's woes and hopes and fears, without definite touches of external things. Yet, right in the second scene the torrent is clear almost to the eye, and the events pa.s.s before us with sharp distinctness. Tending, then, to look on the third as purest pastoral, we are struck in the midst by an ominous strain from one of the earliest moments of the work, the answer of the first theme of all. Here notes of horns ring a monotone; presently a church-bell adds a higher note. The peaceful pastoral airs then return, like the sun after a fleeting storm.

The whole of this third scene of Tschaikowsky's agrees with no special one in Byron's poem, unless we go back to the second of the first act, where Manfred, in a morning hour, alone upon the cliffs, views the mountains of the Jungfrau before he makes a foiled attempt to spring into the abyss. By a direction of the poet, in the midst of the monologue, "the shepherd's pipe in the distance is heard," and Manfred muses on "the natural music of the mountain reed."

The last scene of the music begins with Byron's fourth of Act II and pa.s.ses over all the incidents of the third act that precede the hero's death, such as the two interviews with the Abbot and the glorious invocation to the sun.

From Tschaikowsky's t.i.tle, we must look for the awful gloom of the cavernous hall of Arimanes, Byron's "Prince of Earth and Air." The gray figure from most ancient myth is not less real to us than Mefistofeles in "Faust." At least we clearly feel the human daring that feared not to pry into forbidden mysteries and refused the solace of unthinking faith.

And it becomes again a question whether the composer had in mind this subjective att.i.tude of the hero or the actual figures and abode of the spirits and their king. It is hard to escape the latter view, from the general tenor, the clear-cut outline of the tunes, of which the princ.i.p.al is like a stern chant:

[Music: (Wood, strings and horns)]

The most important of the later answers lies largely in the ba.s.ses.

[Music: (Low wood) (Rhythmic chords in strings)]

There is, on the whole, rather an effect of gloomy splendor (the external view) than of meditation; a sense of visible ma.s.sing than of pa.s.sionate crisis, though there is not wanting a stirring motion and life in the picture. This is to speak of the first part, _Allegro con fuoco_.

The gloomy dance dies away. _Lento_ is a soft fugal chant on elemental theme; there is all the solemnity of cathedral service; after the low-chanted phrase follows a tremendous blare of the bra.s.s. The repeated chant is followed by one of the earliest, characteristic themes of the first scene. And so, if we care to follow the graphic touch, we may see here the intrusion of Manfred, at the most solemn moment of the fearful revel.

As Manfred, in Byron's poem, enters undaunted, refusing to kneel, the first of the earlier phases rings out in fierce _fortissimo_. A further conflict appears later, when the opening theme of the work sounds with interruptions of the first chant of the spirits.

A dulcet plaint follows, _Adagio_, in muted strings, answered by a note of horn and a chord of harp.

[Music: _Adagio_ (Muted strings answered by horn and harp)]

It all harks back to the gentler strains of the first movement. In the ethereal _glissando_ of harps we see the spirit of Astarte rise to give the fatal message. The full pathos and pa.s.sion of the _lento_ episode of first scene is heard in brief, vivid touches, and is followed by the same ominous blast with ring of horn, as in the first picture.

A note of deliverance s.h.i.+nes clear in the final phrase of joined orchestra and organ, clearer perhaps than in Manfred's farewell line in the play: "Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die." To be sure, Schumann spreads the same solace o'er the close of his setting, with the Requiem.

The sombre splendor of romance is throughout, with just a touch of turgid. In the poignant ecstasy of grief we feel vividly the foreshadowing example of Liszt, in his "Dante" and "Faust" Symphonies.

_FIFTH SYMPHONY (E MINOR)_

With all the unfailing flow of lesser melodies where the charm is often greatest of all, and the main themes of each movement with a chain of derived phrases, one melody prevails and reappears throughout. The fluency is more striking here than elsewhere in Tschaikowsky. All the external sources,--all the glory of material art seem at his command. We are reminded of a certain great temptation to which all men are subject and some fall,--however reluctantly. Throughout there is a vein of daemonic. The second (Allegro) melody grows to a high point of pathos,--nay, anguish, followed later by buoyant, strepitant, dancing delight, with the melting answer, in the latest melody. The daemon is half external fate--in the Greek sense, half individual temper. The end is almost sullen; but the charm is never failing; at the last is the ever springing rhythm.

[Music: _Andante_ _pesante e tenuto sempre_ (Clarinet) (Low strings)]

The march rhythm of the opening Andante is carried suddenly into a quick trip, _Allegro con anima_ (6/8), where the main theme of the first movement now begins, freely extended as in a full song of verses. New accompanying figures are added, contrasting phrases or counter-melodies, to the theme.

[Music: _Allegro con anima_ Solo clarinet (doubled below with solo ba.s.soon.) (Strings)]

One expressive line plays against the wilder rhythm of the theme, with as full a song in its own mood as the other. A new rhythmic motive, of great charm, _un pocchetino piu animato_, is answered by a bit of the theme. Out of it all grows, in a clear

[Music: _Molto espr._ (Strings)]

welded chain, another episode, where the old rhythm is a mere gentle spur to the new plaint,--_molto piu tranquillo, molto cantabile ed espressivo_.

[Music: _Molto piu tranquillo_ _Molto cantabile ed espr._]

To be sure, the climax has all of the old pace and life, and every voice of the chorus at the loudest. In the answering and echoing of the various phrases, rhythmic and melodic, is the charm of the discussion that follows. Later the three melodies come again in the former order, and the big climax of the plaintive episode precedes the end, where the main theme dies down to a whisper.

_Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza._ After preluding chords in lowest strings a solo horn begins a

[Music: _Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza_ (Horn) _dolce con molto espr._ (Strings)]

languis.h.i.+ng song, _dolce con molto espressione_. It is a wonderful elegy, a yearning without hope, a swan-song of desire, sadder almost than the frank despair of the Finale of the _Pathetique_ symphony,--pulsing with pa.s.sion, gorgeous with a hectic glow of expressive beauty, moving too with a n.o.ble grace. Though there is a foil of lighter humor, this is overwhelmed in the fateful gloom of the returning main motto.

The abounding beauty with all its allurement lacks the solace that the masters have led us to seek in the heart of a symphony. The clarinet presently twines a phrase about the tune until a new answer sounds in the oboe, that now sings in answering and chasing duet with the horn.

The phrase of oboe proves to be the main song, in full extended periods, reaching a climax with all the voices.

[Music: _Con moto_ (Solo oboe) _dolce espr._]

Well defined is the middle episode in minor reared on a new theme of the clarinet with an almost fugal polyphony that departs from the main lyric mood.

[Music: _Moderato con anima_ (Solo clar.) (Strings)]

At the height all the voices fall into a united chorus on the original motto of the symphony. The first melodies of the Andante now return with big sweep and power, and quicker phrases from the episode. The motto reappears in a final climax, in the trombones, before the hushed close.

We must not infer too readily a racial trait from the temper of the individual composer. There is here an error that we fall into frequently in the music of such men as Grieg and Tschaikowsky. The prevailing mood of the Pathetic Symphony is in large measure personal. Some of the more recent Russian symphonies are charged with buoyant joyousness. And, indeed, the burden of sadness clearly distinguishes the last symphony of Tschaikowsky from its two predecessors, the Fourth and the Fifth.

The tune of the _valse_, _Allegro moderato_, is first played by the violins, _dolce con grazia_, with accompanying strings, horns and ba.s.soon. In the second part, with some loss of the lilt of dance, is a subtle design--with a running phrase in _spiccato_ strings against a slower upward glide of ba.s.soons. The duet winds on a kind of _crescendo_ of modulations. Later

[Music: (_Spiccato_) (Strings) (Horns) (Ba.s.soon)]

the themes are inverted, and the second is redoubled in speed. The whole merges naturally into the first waltz, with a richer suite of adorning figures. The dance does not end without a soft reminder (in low woodwind) of the original sombre phrase.

Almost for the first time a waltz has entered the shrine of the symphony. And yet perhaps this dance has all the more a place there. It came on impulse (the way to visit a sanctuary), not by ancient custom.