This concerto was completed probably in 1848 or 1849, from sketches made in the early ’forties. According to a letter of Hans von Bülow’s, the concerto was completed in June, 1849. Revised in 1853, it was published in 1857. The first performance was at Weimar, at a Court concert in the hall of the Grand Duke’s palace (during the Berlioz week), on February 17, 1855; Liszt, pianist; Bülow, conductor. The concerto is dedicated to Henri Litolff. The orchestral part is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, kettledrums, cymbals, triangle, and the usual strings.
The form is free. A few important themes are exposed, developed;they undergo many transformations in rhythm and tempo. The first and leading theme is at once given out imperatively by the strings, with interrupting chords of wood-wind and brass. This is the theme to which Liszt used to sing: “Das versteht ihr alle nicht!”—according to Bülow and Ramann, “Ihr Könnt alle nichts.” This theme may be taken as the motto of the concerto.Allegro maestoso, tempo giusto, 4-4. The second theme, B major,quasi adagio, 12-8, is first announced by muted violoncellos and double basses and then developed elaborately by the pianoforte. There are hints of this theme in the preceding section. The third theme, E flat minor,allegretto vivace, 3-4, in the nature of ascherzo, is first given to the strings, with preliminary warning and answers of the triangle, which, the composer says, should be struck with delicately rhythmic precision. The fourth theme is rather an answer to the chief phrase of the second than an individual motive. Thescherzotempo changes toallegro animato, 4-4, in which use is made chiefly of the motto theme. The final section is anallegro marziale animato, which quickens to a finalpresto.
The introduction of the triangle in the score caused great offense in Vienna. Hanslick damned the work by characterizing it as a “‘Triangle’ concerto,” when Pruckner played it there in the season of 1856-57. It was not heard again in that city until 1869, when Sophie Menter insisted on playing it. Liszt wrote a letter in 1857 describing the concerto and defending his use of the triangle.
(Born at Mühlhausen [Alsace], January 30, 1861; died at Medfield, Mass., May 19, 1935)
The music of thePagan Poemis highly imaginative. Its pages are pages of beauty and passion. The strangeness of the opening is not forced or experimental. The composer himself first saw in his mind’s eye the scene and heard the sorcerer’s chant. And here is no love song of familiar type given to caterwauling ’cellos. There is no conventional lament of approved crape and tears. A dolorous theme, broadly and nobly thought, is sung by the English horn. The spell works. Daphnis now hastens toward the long empty and expectant arms. There is frantic and amorous exultation.
In this instance a rich and rare orchestral dress covers a well shaped and vigorous body.
This tone poem was suggested to Mr. Loeffler by certain verses in the eighth Eclogue of Virgil, which is sometimes known as “Pharmaceutria” (the Sorceress). The Eclogue, dedicated to Pollio, was written probably in 39B.C.It consists of two love songs, that of Damon and that of Alphesibœus. Each song has ten parts, and these parts are divided by a recurring burden or refrain. Alphesibœus tells of the love incantation of a Thessalian girl, who by the aid of magical spells endeavors to bring back to her cottage her truant lover Daphnis. Virgilhelped himself freely here from the second Idyll of Theocritus, “The Sorceress,” in which Simaetha, a Syracuse maiden of middle rank, weaves spells to regain the love of Delphis.
Mr. Loeffler does not intend to present in this music a literal translation of Virgil’s verse into tones. The poem is a fantasy, inspired by the verses.
The poem opens,adagio, 2-2, with a short motive, which, with an inversion of it, is much used throughout the work. The first chief theme is announced dolce,mezzo-forte, by viola solo and three flutes. It may be called the theme of invocation. The latter half of it may be divided into two motives, the first a phrase descending in whole tones, the second a rising and falling wail. These two motives are used separately and frequently in all sorts of ways. After the exposition of this theme the pianoforte entersfortissimowith a harmonized inversion of the introductory motive; acrescendofollows with use of the foregoing thematic material, and aglissandofor the pianoforte leads to anallegro, in which now familiar thematic material is used until the second theme appears (first violins, harp, pianoforte). This theme is developed. A pianofortecadenzabuilt on thematic material leads to alento assai, 6-4, with a dolorous theme (No. 3) for the English horn. The trumpets behind the scenes give out the burden of the sorceress. Thepiù vivosection may suggest to some a chase of wolves (“I have often seen Moeris become a wolf and plunge into the forest”).Tranquillo: a fourth theme, 4-4, is given to the pianoforte.Calando: the refrain is heard again from behind the scenes.Moderato: the second chief theme, 6-4, now appears, and it is used extensively.Largamente: the trumpets, now on the stage, announce the coming of Daphnis, and there is the suggestion of the barking Hylax. The ending is a fanfare of frantic exultation.
This poem, dedicated to the memory of Gustave Schirmer, was written originally in 1901 for performance as chamber music.
In 1905 and 1906 the work was remoulded and treated much more symphonically. The first public performance was by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Boston on November 23, 1927, Mr. Gebhard pianist.
The poem is scored for three flutes (and piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets (and three trumpets off-stage), three trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, glockenspiel, tam-tam, harp, pianoforte, strings.
(Born in New York, December 18, 1861; died there, January 23, 1908)
The music has the characteristic force and tenderness of this composer when he was writing for himself and not directly for the general public. It is not necessary to lug in any question of whether this be distinctively American music, for the best pages of the suite are not parochial—they are not national.
They are universal in their appeal to sensitive hearers of any land. The movements that are the most poetically imaginative, that have the greatest distinction, are the “Legend,” “In War Time,” and above all the “Dirge.” Music like this would honor any composer of whatever race he might be.
This lamentation might be that of the dying race. There is nothing of the luxury of woe; there is no conventional music for “threadbare crape and tears.” There is the dignity of man who has been familiar with nature, who has known the voices of the dayand of the night on lonely prairie and in somber forest. There is serene yielding to fate.
This suite was composed in 1891-92. The first performance in public was by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, January 23, 1896.
The Indian themes used in the suite are as follows:
1. First theme, Iroquois. There is also a small Chippewa theme.
2. Iowa love song.
3. A well-known song among tribes of the Atlantic coast. There is a Dacota theme, and there are characteristic features of the Iroquois scalp dance.
4. Kiowa (woman’s song of mourning for her absent son).
5. Women’s dance, war song, both Iroquois.
The suite is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, a set of three kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals, and strings.
I. “Legend”: Not fast; with much dignity and character, E minor, 2-2. It has been said that this movement was suggested to the composer by Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s Indian legend, “Miantowona”; but MacDowell took no pains to follow Aldrich’s poem incident by incident, nor to tell any particular story; “the poem merely suggested to him to write something of a similar character in music.”
II. “Love Song”: Not fast; tenderly, A major, 6-8. One chief theme, which is announced immediately by the wood-wind, is developed, with the use of two subsidiary phrases, one a sort of response from the strings, the other a more assertive melody, first given out in D minor by wood-wind instruments.
III. “In War Time”: With rough vigor, almost savagely, D minor, 2-4. The chief theme is played by two flutes, in unison, unaccompanied. Two clarinets, in unison and without accompaniment, answer in a subsidiary theme. This material is worked out elaborately in a form that has the characteristics of therondo. The rhythm changes frequently towards the end from 2-4 to 6-8 and back again.
IV. “Dirge”: Dirge-like, mournfully, in G minor, 4-4. The mournful chief theme is given out by muted violins in unison, which are soon strengthened by the violas, against repetitions of the tonic note G bypiccolo, flutes, and two muted horns, one on the stage, the other behind the scenes, with occasional full harmony in groups of wind instruments. “The intimate relation between this theme and that of the first movement is not to be overlooked. It is answered by the horn behind the scenes over full harmony in the lower strings, the passage closing with a quaint concluding phrase of the oboe.” The development of this theme fills the short movement.
V. “Village Festival”: Swift and light, in E major, 2-4. Several related themes are developed. All of them are more or less derived from that of the first movement. There are lively dance rhythms. “But here also the composer has been at no pains to suggest any of the specific concomitants of Indian festivities; he has only written a movement in which merrymakings of the sort are musically suggested.”
(Born at Kalischt in Bohemia, on July 7, 1860; died at Vienna on May 18, 1911)
Those who without undue prejudice discuss Mahler the composer, admitting his faults, discussing them at length, dwelling on undeniable fine qualities, assert that his artistic life was greater than his own musical works, which, greatly planned, did not attain fulfillment and were often imitative. The sincerity of the composer was never doubted; the failure to secure that for which he strove is therefore the more pathetic.
He was of an intensely nervous nature. His life as a conductor—and he was a great conductor—the feverish atmosphere of the opera house, his going from city to city until his ability was recognized in Vienna and later at the Metropolitan, the death of a dearly loved child, the fact that he was a Jew, who had turned Catholic: these, with musical intrigues and controversies from which he suffered, gave him no mental or esthetic poise. It was his ambition to continue the work of men he revered, Beethoven and Wagner. In spite of his indisputable talent he was not the man to do this. In the nearer approaches to the ideal that was in his mind he was simply an imitator; not a convincing, not even a plausible one.
One has found through his symphonies restlessness that at times becomes hysterical; reminders of Wagner, Berlioz, Strauss; melodies in folk-song vein, often naïve, at times beautiful, but introduced as at random and quickly thrown aside; an overemploymentof the wood-winds, used too often as solo instruments; passages for the brass which recall the fact that as a child Mahler delighted in military bands. Sudden changes from screaming outbursts to thin and inconsequential instrumentation; trivial moments when the hearer anticipates the movement of a country dance; diffuseness, prolixity that becomes boresome; an unwillingness to bring speech to an end; seldom genuine power or eloquence; yet here and there measures that linger in the memory.
No. 1. D major. Begun in December, 1883; completed at Budapest in 1888; produced at Budapest, Mahler, conductor, on November 20, 1889; published in 1898. The Budapest programme described it as a “symphonic poem in two parts.” When it was performed at the Tonkünstler Fest at Weimar on June 3, 1894, through the insistence of Richard Strauss and Dr. Kretzschmar, it was known as “Titan” (after Jean Paul Richter’s romance).
No. 2. C minor. Begun and completed in 1894. First performed at a Philharmonic Concert in Berlin, Richard Strauss, conductor, on March 4, 1895. Only the three instrumental movements were then performed. The second and third met with great favor; Mahler was called out five times after thescherzo. The majority of the Berlin critics distorted or suppressed this fact and represented the performance as a fiasco. The whole of the symphony was performed for the first time at Mahler’s concert at Berlin on December 13, 1895. According to Ernst Otto Nodnagel, the critics again behaved “indecently”; took the purely orchestral movements for granted, and heard only thefinalewith the tenor and contralto solos. One of them spoke of “the cynical impudence of this brutal and very latest music maker.” Nikisch and Weingartner were deeply impressed, and the greater part of the audience was wildly enthusiastic.
No. 3. F major, known as the “Summer Morning’s Dream,” or “Programme” symphony. Sketched in 1895, completed in 1896. Produced piecemeal in 1896 at Berlin and Hamburg; in 1897 at Berlin. First performance of the whole symphony at a concert of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein at Krefeld in June, 1902. Published in 1898.
No. 4. G major. Composed in 1899-1900. First performance at Munich by the Kaim Orchestra on November 28, 1901. Mahler conducted. Published in 1900.
No. 5. C-sharp minor, known as “The Giant” Symphony. Completed in 1902. First performance at a Gürzenich concert in Cologne, October 18, 1904.
No. 6. A minor. Composed in 1903-04. Performed under Mahler’s direction at the Tonkünstler Fest at Essen on May 27, 1906. Published in 1905.
No. 7. E minor. Composed in 1904-06. Produced at Prague on September 19, 1908. Mahler conducted. Published in 1908.
No. 8. In two parts, with soli and double chorus; first part, hymn, “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” as a sonata first movement, with double fugue; second part, the last scenes ofFaust, in form of anadagio,scherzo, andfinale. Composition begun in 1906. First performance at Munich as “Symphony of the Thousand” on September 12, 1908, the year of publication.
No. 9. Begun in 1906. Produced at Vienna late in June, 1912, Bruno Walter, conductor. The last movement is anadagio.
No. 10. Composed in 1909-10; left unfinished by Mahler. First performance at Prague on June 6, 1924, Alex von Zemlinsky, conductor.
“Das Lied von der Erde” (Song of the Earth), a symphony in six parts for tenor and contralto soli with orchestra, the text taken fromThe Chinese Flute, a collection of Chinese lyrics by Hans Bethge. Composed in 1908, first produced at Munich November 10, 1911, Bruno Walter, conductor.
Some of Mahler’s symphonies are described as programme music, but he was no friend of realism as it is understood by Richard Strauss. Mahler was reported as saying: “When I conceive a great musical picture, I always arrive at the point where I must employ the ‘word’ as the bearer of my musical idea.... My experience with the last movement of my second symphony was such that I ransacked the literature of the world, up to the Bible, to find the expository word.” Though he differed with Strauss in the matter of realistic music, he valued him highly: “No one should think I hold myself to be his rival. Aside from the fact that, if his success had not opened a path for me, I should now be looked on as a sort of monster on account of my works, I considerit one of my greatest joys that my colleagues and I have found such a comrade in fighting and creating.”
One reason why Mahler’s symphonies were looked at askance by conductors was the enormous orchestra demanded. No. 2 called for as many strings as possible, two harps, four flutes (interchangeable with four piccolos), four oboes (two interchangeable with two English horns), five clarinets (one interchangeable with bass clarinet—and when it is possible the two in E flat should be doubled infortissimopassages), four bassoons (one interchangeable with double bassoon), six horns (and four in the distance to be added in certain passages to the six), six trumpets (four in the distance, which may be taken from the six), four trombones, tuba, two sets of kettledrums, bass drum, snare drum (when possible several of them), cymbals, tam-tam of high pitch and one of low pitch, triangle, glockenspiel, three bells, a Ruthe (a bundle of rods to switch a drumhead), organ, two harps. In the distance a pair of kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals, triangle. Soprano solo, contralto solo, mixed chorus.
The symphony is like unto the great image that stood before Nebuchadnezzar in a vision. “And the form thereof was terrible. The image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass; his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.”
There are musical thoughts that are lovely and noble. By their side are themes of a vulgarity that is masked only by adroit contrapuntal treatment or by the blare of instrumentation which gives a plausible and momentary importance. There is excessive reiterationof subjects and devices, and the skill displayed in embellishment and variation of orchestral color, color rather than nuance, does not relieve the monotony. The opening is imposing, but the chief theme of the Dead March disappoints. The first pages of the second section, “stormily restless,” are a stroke of genius, the free expression of wild imagination. There are charming ideas in thescherzo, and there is also much that is only whimsical, as though Mahler had then written solely for his own amusement, and said to himself, “Let us try it this way. I wonder how it will sound.” Theadagiettois the most emotional portion of the work, and here Mahler employed simple means. Here the thought and the expression are happily wedded, nor does the ghost of Wagner, seen for a moment smiling, forbid this union. It may be that in thefinalethe composer could not help remembering the wondrous theme, D major, in theadagioof Beethoven’s Ninth symphony; but the resemblance is after all only a suggestion, and thisfinaleinrondoform, with the majestic peroration, is worked so that there is a steadycrescendoof interest. As a whole Mahler’s symphony, with its mixture of the grand and the common, with its spontaneity and its laborious artifice, is like unto the great image referred to above.
This symphony, known to some as “The Giant” symphony, was performed for the first time at a Gürzenich concert at Cologne, October 18, 1904. The composer conducted. There was a difference of opinion concerning the merits of the work. A visiting critic from Munich wrote that there was breathless silence after the first movement, “which proved more effectively than tremendous applause that the public was conscious of the presence of genius.” It is stated that after thefinalethere was much applause; there was also hissing.
When the symphony was performed in certain German cities, as at Dresden, January 27, 1905, at a symphony concert of the Royal Orchestra, and at Berlin, February 20, 1905, at a Philharmonic concert, the programme books contained no analytical notes and no argument of any sort. The compilers thus obeyed the wish of the composer. Mr. LudwigSchiedermair tells us, in hisGustav Mahler: eine biographisch-kritische Würdigung, of Mahler’s abhorrence of all programme books for concert use, and he relates this anecdote. Mahler conducted a performance of his Symphony in C minor at a concert of the Munich Hugo Wolf Society. After the concert there was a supper, and in the course of the conversation someone mentioned programme books. “Then was it as though lightning flashed in a joyous, sunny landscape. Mahler’s eyes were more brilliant than ever, his forehead wrinkled, he sprang in excitement from the table and exclaimed in passionate tones: ‘Away with programme books, which breed false ideas! The audience should be left to its own thoughts over the work that is performing: it should not be forced to read during the performance; it should not be prejudiced in any manner. If a composer by his music forces on his hearers the sensations which streamed through his mind, then he reaches his goal. The speech of tones has then approached the language of words, but it is far more capable of expression and declaration.’ And Mahler raised his glass and emptied it with ‘Pereat den Programmen!’”
Yet Mr. Mahler’s enthusiastic admirer and partisan, Ernst Otto Nodnagel, of Darmstadt, contributed to “Die Musik” (second November number and first December number of 1904) a technical analysis of the Fifth symphony, an analysis of twenty-three large octavo pages, with a beautiful motto from Schiller. This analysis, published by Peters, and sold for the sum of thirty pfennig, is within reach of the humblest.
The symphony was completed in the spring of 1903. It was written in 1901-02 at his little country house near Maiernigg on Lake Wörther. Other works of this date are theKindertotenliederand other songs with Rückert’s verses. The symphony is scored for four flutes (and piccolo), three oboes, three clarinets (and bass clarinet), two bassoons, one double bassoon, six horns (in third movement a horn obbligato), four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, kettledrums, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, Glockenspiel, gong, harp, and strings.
Let us respect the wishes of the composer who looked on analytical or explanatory programmes as the abomination of desolation. Yet it may be said that in therondo finale, after the second chief motive enters as the subject of a fugal section, one of the lesser themes used in the development is derived from Mahler’s song, “Lob des hohen Verstands” (relating to the trial of skill between the nightingale and the cuckoo with the ass as judge).
(Born at Hamburg, February 3, 1809; died at Leipsic, November 4, 1847)
Mendelssohn in his maturity wrote his music as he looks in his picture, smiling and with a stickpin in his ruffled shirt. When at seventeen he wrote his overture toA Midsummer Night’s Dream, he was a romanticist. What might he not have accomplished if he had been poor and less respectable! He wrote this overture before he had been spoiled by flattery; before he became a composer of priggish formulas. Aubrey Beardsley pictured the later Mendelssohn in that forgotten magazine, theSavoy. There you see the man that was shocked by the resurrection of the nuns inRobert the Devil, by Terlina undressing inFra Diavolo, by Hugo’sRuy Blas, although he condescended to write an overture for it. The spotless Mendelssohn who delighted Queen Victoria and her spouse by playing the organ to them. But the overture to Shakespeare’s comedy is from another Mendelssohn, the composer ofThe Hebrides, portions of theWalpurgis Night, not the man of the oratorios and the sentimentalSongs without Words.
How much of Italy is there in this symphony of Mendelssohn? Suppose there were no title. The last movement might easily berecognized as asaltarello; but how about the other movements? The first is light and gay, but there is no geographical or national mood at once established, there is no authoritative characterization. I doubt whether even a tambourine would be of material assistance. It was not necessary for the composer to go to Naples to write theandante. As for thescherzo, the horns with their pleasant sentimentalism might represent today Germans in Rome, armed with red guide books, and now and then bursting out in songs of the Fatherland, something about the forest, or spring, or the blissfulness of sorrow and longing. Thesaltarellopart was done much better by Berlioz. Compare this symphony, so far as local color is concerned, with a page of Bizet painting in tones a Southern scene, or with Richard Strauss’ Italian suite, or with the suite of Charpentier, and Mendelssohn’s music seems without marked distinction, rather tame and drab. Yet the first movement and thefinaleare amiable music, pages that may awaken a gentlemanlike joy, and there is no denying the clearness of the musical thought, the purity of expression, the sure and polished workmanship.
The symphony was completed in Berlin. Mendelssohn wrote to Pastor Bauer, “My work about which I recently had many misgivings is completed, and, looking it over, I now find that, contrary to my expectations, it satisfies me. I believe it has become a good piece. Be that as it may, I feel it shows progress, and that is the main point.” The score bears the date, Berlin, March 13, 1833.
The first performance from manuscript and under the direction of the composer was at the sixth concert of the Philharmonic Society that season, May 13, 1833. “The concerts of the Society were this year, and onward, given in the Hanover Square Rooms, which had just been remodeled. The symphony made a great impression, and Felix electrified the audience by his wonderful performance of Mozart’s Concerto in D minor, hiscadenzasbeing marvels in design and execution. His new overture in C was produced at the last concert of the season.”
Mendelssohn began to revise the symphony in June, 1834. On February 16, 1835, he wrote to Klingemann that he was biting his nails over the first movement and could not yet master it, but that in any event it should be something different—perhaps wholly new—and he had this doubt about every one of the movements. Towards the end of 1837 the revision was completed. Whether the symphony in its new form was played at a Philharmonic Society Concert in London, June 18, 1838, conducted by Moscheles, is doubtful, although Moscheles asked him for it. The first performance of the revised version on the European continent was at a Gewandhaus concert, Leipsic, November 1, 1849, when Julius Rietz conducted. The score and orchestral parts were not published until March, 1851.
Grove remarked of this work: “The music itself is better than any commentary. Let that be marked, learned, and inwardly digested.”
Reismann found the first movement,allegro vivace, A major, 6-8, to be a paraphrase of the so-called “Hunting Song” in the first group ofSongs without Words. The tonality is the same, and this is often enough to fire the imagination of a commentator. The chief subject begins with the violins in the second measure and is developed at length. The second subject, E major, is for clarinets. The development section begins with a new figure treated in imitation by the strings. The chief theme is then used, with the second introduced contrapuntally. In the recapitulation section the second theme is given to the strings.
The second movement,andante con moto, D minor, 4-4, sometimes called the “Pilgrims’ March,” but without any authority, is said “to have been a processional hymn, which probably gave the name of ‘“Italian” symphony’ to the whole (!).” Lampadius remarks in connection with this: “I cannot discover that the piece bears any mark of a decided Catholic character, for, if I recollect rightly, I once heard Moscheles say that Mendelssohn had in his mind as the source of this second movement an old Bohemian folk song.”[38]The two introductory measures suggested to Grove “the cry of a muezzin from his minaret,” but, pray, what has this to do with Italy? The chief theme is given out by oboe, clarinet, and violas. The violins take it up with counterpoint for the flutes. There is a new musical idea for the clarinets. The first theme returns. The two introductory measures are used with this material in the remainder of the movement.
The third movement is marked simply “con moto moderato” (A major, 3-4). “There is a tradition (said to originate with Mendelssohn’s brother-in-law, Hensel, but still of uncertain authority) that it was transferred to its present place from some earlier composition. It is not, however, to be found in either of the twelve unpublished juvenile symphonies; and in the first rough draft of this symphony there is no sign of its having been interpolated. In style the movement is, no doubt, earlier than the rest of the work.” The movement opens with a theme for first violins; the trio with a passage for bassoons and horns. The third part is a repetition of the first. In thecodathere is at the end a suggestion of the trio.
Thefinaleis asaltarello, presto, 4-4. There are three themes. The flutes, after six introductory measures, play the first. In the second, somewhat similar in character, the first and second violins answer each other. The third is also given to the first and second violins alternately, but now in the form of a continuously moving, not a jumping figure.
Thissaltarellowas undoubtedly inspired by the Carnival at Rome, of which Mendelssohn gave a description in his letter of February 8, 1831. “On Saturday all the world went to the Capitol, to witness the form of the Jews’ supplications to be suffered to remain in the Sacred City for another year, a request which is refused at the foot of the hill, but, after repeated entreaties, granted on the summit, and the Ghetto is assigned to them. It was a tiresome affair; we waited two hours, and after all, understood the oration of the Jews as little as the answer of the Christians. I came down again in very bad humor, and thought that the Carnival had begun rather unpropitiously. So I arrived in the Corso and was driving along, thinking no evil, when I was suddenly assailed by a shower of sugar comfits. I looked up; they had been flung by some young ladies whom I had seen occasionally at balls, but scarcely knew, and when in my embarrassment I took off my hat to bow to them, the pelting began in right earnest. Their carriage drove on, and in the next was Miss T——, a delicate young Englishwoman. I tried to bow to her, but she pelted me, too; so I became quite desperate, and clutching the confetti, I flung them back bravely. There were swarms of my acquaintances and my blue coat was soon as white as that of a miller. The B——s were standing on a balcony, flinging confetti like hail at my head; and thus pelting and pelted, amid a thousand jests and jeers and the most extravagant masks, the day ended with races.”
It is a singular reflection on “local color” in music that Schumann mistook the “Scotch” symphony for the “Italian” and wrote of the former: “It can, like the Italian scenes inTitan, cause you for a moment to forget the sorrow of not having seen that heavenly country.” The best explanation of this Symphony No. 4, if there be need of any explanation, is found in the letters of Mendelssohn from Italy.
Translations by Schlegel and Tieck of Shakespeare’s plays were read by Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny in 1826. The overture,A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was written in July and August of that year.
Klingemann tells us that part of the score was written “in the summer, in the open air, in the Mendelssohns’ garden at Berlin, for I was present.” This garden belonged to a house in the Leipziger Strasse (No. 3). It was near the Potsdam gate, and when Abraham Mendelssohn, the father, bought it, his friends complained that he was moving out of the world. There was an estate of about ten acres. In the house was a room for theatrical performances; and the center of the garden house formed a hall which held several hundred, and it was here that Sunday music was performed. In the time of Frederick the Great this garden was part of the Thiergarten. In the summer-houses were writing materials, and Felix edited a newspaper, called in summerThe Garden Times, and in the winterThe Snow and Tea Times.
Mendelssohn told Hiller that he had worked long and eagerly on the overture: “How in his spare time between the lectures at the Berlin University he had gone on extemporizing at it on the piano of a beautiful woman who lived close by; ‘for a whole year, I hardly did anything else,’ he said; and certainly he had not wasted his time.”
It is said that Mendelssohn made two drafts of the overture, and discarded the earlier after he completed the first half. This earlier draft began with the four chords and the fairy figure; then followed a regular overture, in which use was made of a theme typical of the loves of Lysander and Hermia, and of kin to the “love melody” of the present version.
The overture was first written as a pianoforte duet, and it was first played to Moscheles in that form by the composer and his sister,November 19, 1826. It was performed afterwards by an orchestra in the garden house. The first public performance was at Stettin in February, 1827, from manuscript, when Karl Löwe conducted. The critic was not hurried in those days, for an account of the concert appeared in theHarmoniconfor December of that year. The critic had had time to think the matter over, and his conclusion was that the overture was of little importance.
The overture was performed in England for the first time on June 24 (Midsummer Day), 1829, at a concert given by Louis Drouet in the Argyll Rooms. Sir George Smart, who returned from the concert with Mendelssohn, left the score of the overture in a hackney coach. So the story is told; but is it not possible that the blameless Mendelssohn left it? The score was never found, and Mendelssohn rewrote it. The overture was played in England for the first time in connection with Shakespeare’s comedy at London, in 1840, when Mme Vestris appeared in the performance at Covent Garden.
The orchestral parts were published in 1832; the score in April, 1835. The overture is dedicated to His Royal Majesty the Crown Prince of Prussia.
The overture opensallegro di molto, E major, 2-2, with four prolonged chords in the wood-wind. On the last of these follows immediately apianissimochord of E minor in violins and violas. This is followed by the “fairy music” in E minor, given out and developed by divided violins with somepizzicatiin the violas. A subsidiary theme is given outfortissimoby full orchestra. The melodious second theme, in B major, begun by the wood-wind, is then continued by the strings and fuller and fuller orchestra. Several picturesque features are then introduced: the Bergomask dance from the fifth act of the play; a curious imitation of the bray of an ass in allusion to Bottom, who is, according to Maginn’s paradox, “the blockhead,thelucky man on whom Fortune showers her favors beyond measure”; and the quickly descending scale passage for violoncellos, which was suggested to the composer by the buzzing of a big fly in the Schoenhauser Garten. The free fantasia is wholly on the first theme. The third part of the overture is regular, and there is a shortcoda. The overture ends with the four sustained chords with which it opened.
In 1843 King Frederick William the Fourth of Prussia wished Mendelssohn to compose music for the playsAntigone,A MidsummerNight’s Dream,Athalie, which should be produced in September. During March and April of that year Mendelssohn, who had written the overture in 1826, composed the additional music for Shakespeare’s play. Tieck had divided the play into three acts and had said nothing to the composer about the change. Mendelssohn had composed with reference to the original division. The first performance was in the Royal Theater in the New Palace, Potsdam, October 14, 1843, on the eve of the festival of the King’s birthday. Mendelssohn conducted.
The score was published in June, 1848; the orchestral parts in August of that year. The first edition for pianoforte was published in September, 1844.
Mendelssohn’s music to the play consists of thirteen numbers:
Many of the themes in these numbers were taken from the overture.
Thescherzo(entr’acte between Acts I and II) is anallegro vivacein G minor, 3-8. “Presumably Mendelssohn intended it as a purely musical reflection of the scene in Quince’s house—the first meeting to discuss the play to be given by the workmen at the wedding—with which the first act ends. Indeed, there is a passing allusion to Nick Bottom’s bray in it. But the general character of the music is bright and fairy-like, with nothing of the grotesque about it.” Thescherzopresents an elaborate development of two themes that are not sharply contrasted; the first theme has a subsidiary. The score is dedicated to Heinrich Conrad Schleinitz.
In theHebridesoverture, Mendelssohn shook off his priggish formalism. He had been deeply affected by the sight of Staffa and Fingal’s Cave; he was not ashamed to translate his emotions into music without obsequious obedience to the old pedagogic traditions.Here he is poetic, picturing the wildness of the far-off scene without too deliberate attempt at realism. Here is the suggestion—and with the small orchestra of the period!—as Mr. Apthorp put it, of screaming sea birds, whistling winds, the salty smell of the seaweed on the rocks. For once Mendelssohn showed himself more than a careful manufacturer of music when he revised his score, saying that the middle section smelt more of counterpoint than of train oil, sea gulls, and salt fish.
Mendelssohn saw Staffa and Fingal’s Cave on August 7, 1829. He at once determined to picture the scenes in music. He wrote to his sister on that day: “That you may understand how extraordinarily the Hebrides affected me, the following came into my mind”; and he then noted down twenty-one measures inalla breve, which coincide for the first ten and a half measures with the later measures in 4-4. Ferdinand Hiller, who lived with Mendelssohn in Paris during the winter of 1831-32, tells how Mendelssohn brought to him the sketched score. “He told me how the thing came to him in its full form and color when he saw Fingal’s Cave; he also informed me how the first measures, which contain the chief theme, had come into his mind. In the evening he was making a visit with his friend Klingemann on a Scottish family. There was a pianoforte in the room; but it was Sunday, and there was no possibility of music. He employed all his diplomacy to get at the pianoforte for a moment; when he had succeeded, he dashed off the theme out of which the great work grew. It was finished at Düsseldorf, but only after an interval of years.” Hiller was mistaken about the place and time of completion.
The overture was first performed on May 14, 1832, from manuscript, in London, at the sixth concert of the Philharmonic Society at Covent Garden. Thomas Attwood conducted. The composer wrote: “It went splendidly, and sounded so droll amongst all the Rossini things.” TheAthenæumsaid that the overture as descriptive music was a failure. George Hogarth wrote in his History of the Philharmonic Society (1862): “It at once created a great sensation—a sensation, we need scarcely add, that has not been diminished by numberless repetitions. At a general meeting of the Society on the 7th of June, 1832,Sir George Smart read a letter from Mendelssohn requesting the Society’s acceptance of the score of this overture; and it was resolved to present him with a piece of plate in token of the Society’s thanks, which was forthwith done.” TheHarmoniconpraised the overture highly, and found the key of B minor well suited to the purpose.
The concerto does not call for any true depth of emotional display. The sentiment is amiable and genteel, with a dash of becoming melancholy, and the strength is the conventional strength of a man who in music had little virility. Beautifully made, a polished piece of mechanism, the concerto always, under favorable circumstances, interests and promotes contagious good feeling.