There appeared in Vienna in 1901 a little pamphlet entitledMeine Erinnerung an Anton Bruckner. The writer was Carl Hruby, a pupil of Bruckner. The pamphlet is violent, malignant. In its rage there is at times the ridiculous fury of an excited child. There are pages that provoke laughter and then pity; yet there is much of interest about the composer himself, who now, away from strife and contention, is still unfortunate in his friends. We shall pass over Hruby’s ideas on music and the universe, nor are we inclined to dispute his proposition (p. 7) that Shakespeare, Goethe, Beethoven, Wagner, were truer heroes and supporters of civilization than Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon, who, nevertheless, were, like Hannibal, very pretty fellows in those days. When Hruby begins to talk about Bruckner and his ways, then it is time to prick up ears.
As a teacher, Bruckner was amiable, patient, kind, but easily vexed by frolicsome pupils who did not know his sensitive nature. He gave each pupil a nickname, and his favorite phrase of contentment and disapproval was “Viechkerl!”—“You stupid beast!” There was a young fellow whose name began “Sachsen”; but Bruckner could never remember the rest of it, so he would go through the list of German princes, “Sachsen”—“Sachsen”—“Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha, Sachsen”—and at last the name would come. Another pupil, afterwards a harp virtuoso, was known to his teacher only as “Old Harp.” Bruckner had a rough, at the same time, sly, peasant humor. One of his pupils came into the class with bleached and jaded face. Bruckner asked what ailed him. The answer was: “I was at the Turnverein till two o’clock.” “Yes,” said Bruckner, “oh, yes, I know the Turnverein that lasts till 2A.M.” The pupil on whom he built fond hope was Franz Nott, who died young and in the madhouse. When Bruckner was disturbed in his work, he was incredibly and gloriously rude.
Bruckner was furious against all writers who discovered “programmes” in his music. He was warmly attached to the ill-fated Hugo Wolf, and was never weary of praising the declamation in his songs: “The fellow does nothing all day but compose, while I must tire myself out by giving lessons,” for at sixty years Bruckner was teaching for three guldens a lesson. Beethoven was his idol, and after a performance of one of the greater symphonies he was as one insane. After a performance of theEroica, he said to Hruby—would that it were possible to reproduce Bruckner’s dialect—“I think that if Beethoven were alive, and I should go to him with my Seventh symphony and say, ‘Here, Mr. Van Beethoven, this is not so bad, this Seventh, as certain gentlemenwould make out’ ... I think he would take me by the hand and say, ‘My dear Bruckner, never mind, I had no better luck; and the same men who hold me up against you even now do not understand my last quartets, although they act as if they understood them.’ Then I’d say to him, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Van Beethoven, that I have gone beyond you in freedom of form, but I think a true artist should make his own forms for his own works, and stick by them.’” He once said of Hanslick, “I guess Hanslick understands as little about Brahms as about Wagner, me, and others. And the Doctor Hanslick knows as much about counterpoint as a chimney sweep about astronomy.”
Hanslick was to Bruckner as a pursuing demon. (We are giving Hruby’s statement, and Hanslick surely showed a strange perseverance and an unaccountable ferocity in criticism that was abuse.) Hruby likens this critic to thePhylloxera vastatrixin the vineyard. He really believes that Hanslick sat up at night to plot Bruckner’s destruction. He affirms that Hanslick tried to undermine him in the Conservatory and the Imperial Chapel, that he tried to influence conductors against the performance of his works. And he goes so far as to say that Hans Richter, thus influenced, had never performed a symphony by Bruckner in England. As a matter of fact, Richter produced Bruckner’s Seventh in London, May 23, 1887. There is a story that when the Emperor Franz Josef asked Bruckner if he could honor him in any way, he asked if the Emperor would not stop Hanslick abusing him in print.
He was never mean or hostile toward Brahms, as some would have had him. He once said that Brahms was not an enemy of Wagner, as the Brahmsites insisted; that down in his heart he had a warm admiration for Wagner, as was shown by the praise he had bestowed onDie Meistersinger.
Just before his death Bruckner’s thoughts were on his Ninth symphony: “I undertook a stiff task,” he said. “I should not have done it at my age and in my weak condition. If I never finish it, then my ‘Te Deum’ may be used as afinale. I have nearly finished three movements. This work belongs to my Lord God.”
Although he had the religion of a child, he had read the famous book of David Strauss, and he could talk about it reasonably. Someone asked him about the future life and prayer. “I’ll tell you,” he replied. “If the story is true, so much the better for me. If it is not true, praying cannot hurt me.”
(Born at Park Ridge, Ill., February 28, 1876)
Mr. Carpenter has told us in music the outing of a child. One of his first compositions was a collection of humorousImproving Songs for Children. This fondness for children as subjects for art he shares with Victor Hugo; with Swinburne, who abandoned the shrine of Venus to sing of children’s beauty and innocence—after Watts-Dunton had docked him of his rum. In thePerambulatorthere is no sentimentalism, no Sunday-school address to “you, little girl with the blue sash”; but his music is as his child saw and thought, when wheeled about.
This suite is not only an ingenious work: it has true fancy, true humor, pages of truly poetic feeling. Mr. Carpenter displays imagination; witness his glorification of the lake that supplies Chicago with water. But even his imagination was dormant at thethought of the Chicago River. An unflinching realist would have introduced the child’s visit to the stockyards and slaughter houses.
The composition of this suite was begun in July, 1914, and completed in December of that year. The suite was performed for the first time at the concerts of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Frederick Stock conductor, March 19-20, 1915.
The suite is scored for these instruments: three flutes (and piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, xylophone, glockenspiel, bells, harp, celesta, pianoforte, and the usual strings.
This programme is printed as preface to the score:
I.En Voiture.Every morning—after my second breakfast—if the wind and the sun are favorable, I go out. I should like to go alone, but my will is overborne. My nurse is appointed to take me. She is older than I, and very powerful. While I wait for her, resigned, I hear her cheerful steps, always the same. I am wrapped in a vacuum of wool, where there are no drafts. A door opens and shuts. I am placed in my perambulator, a strap is buckled over my stomach, my nurse stands firmly behind—and we are off!
II.The Policeman.Out is wonderful! It is always different, though one seems to have been there before. I cannot fathom it all. Some sounds seem like smells. Some sights have echoes. It is confusing, but it is Life! For instance, the Policeman—an Unprecedented Man! Round like a ball; taller than my Father. Blue—fearful—fascinating! I feel him before he comes. I see him after he goes. I try to analyze his appeal. It is not buttons alone, nor belt, nor baton. I suspect it is his eye and the way he walks. He walks like Doom. My nurse feels it, too. She becomes less firm, less powerful. My perambulator hurries, hesitates, and stops. They converse. They ask each other questions—some with answers, some without. I listen, with discretion. When I feel that they have gone far enough, I signal to my nurse, a private signal, and the Policeman resumes his enormous Blue March. He is gone, but I feel him after he goes.
III.The Hurdy-gurdy.Then suddenly there is something else. I think it is a sound. We approach it. My ear is tickled to excess. I find thatthe absorbing noise comes from a box—something like my music box, only much larger, and on wheels. A dark man is turning the music out of the box with a handle, just as I do with mine. A dark lady, richly dressed, turns when the man gets tired. They both smile. I smile too, with restraint, for music is the most insidious form of noise. And such music! So gay! I tug at the strap over my stomach. I have a wild thought of dancing with my nurse and my perambulator—all three of us together. Suddenly, at the climax of our excitement, I feel the approach of a phenomenon that I remember. It is the Policeman. He has stopped the music. He has frightened away the dark man and the lady with their music box. He seeks the admiration of my nurse for his act. He walks away, his buttons shine, but far off I hear again the forbidden music. Delightful forbidden music!
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 isMy Lake!
V.Dogs.We pass on. Probably there is nothing more in the World. If there is, it is superfluous.ThereIS. It is Dogs! We are coming upon them without warning. Notoneof 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 easilytell 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!
(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’sBoris 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 hadanything 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 forPelléas 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 evenTristan and Isolde.
Debussy’sPrelude to the Afternoon of a Faunis 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 performanceleft 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 everynewmelody 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 theAnnales 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 hisPrelude, 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 theParnasse contemporainrejected 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 theflorilègewhich 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 outyonder. 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 Faunis 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 violoncellojoins itself to the flute; and then everything vanishes, as a mist that rises in the air and scatters itself in flakes.”[23]
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 putwords 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,NuagesandFêtes, 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. TheNocturneswere 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 titleNocturnesis 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 theNocturnes: “Here, with the aidof 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 theseNocturnes, 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.”
TheNocturnesare scored as follows:
I. Two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, kettledrums, harp, strings. The movement beginsmodéré, 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 theseNocturnes.
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 normalbeings, 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’sSeais 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 onLa 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 finishLa Merhere, 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 ofJeux de vagues. He was disturbed because Chevillard spoke of the difficulties in the music, but if he gave the score to Colonnethere 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 Meris scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons and contra-bassoon, four horns, three trumpets, twocornets-à-pistons, three trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam, glockenspiel, two harps, and strings.
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.”
TheImages, of whichIbériais 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.Ibériadefies analysis and beggars description.
What phrase-mongering, however ingenious, would impart the beauty ofOdors of the Nightto 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 Debussyis a rhapsodist of the rarest nature, and his musical speech is not to be translated by a rhapsody in words.
Ibériais the second in a series of three orchestral compositions by Debussy entitledImages.
The first,Gigues—it was originally entitledGigue Triste—was published in 1913 and performed for the first time at a Colonne concert, Paris, January 26, 1913.Ibériawas 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 andaubadesannounce 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 inIbéria. Do not look for any melodic design, nor any carefully woven harmonic web. The composer ofImagesattaches importance only to tonal color. He puts his timbres side by side, adopting a process like that of theTachistesor the ‘stipplers’ in distributing coloring.” The Debussyites and “Pelléastres” wishedIbériarepeated, but, while the majority of the audience was willing to applaud, it did not long for a repetition. Repeated the next Sunday,Ibériaaroused “frenetic applause and vehement protestations.”
Ibériais 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 finishingIbéria. Shall I toss up a coin or search for a fourth?”In September, 1907, theImageswould be ready as soon as theRondeswere “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 theImagesaside “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 ofIbéria.”
Debussy wrote on December 4, 1910, from Budapest, where he gave a concert of his works, thatIbériawas especially successful. “They could not playThe Seano more theNocturnes, from want of rehearsal. I was assured that the orchestra knewThe Sea, for it had been played through three times. Ah! my friend, if you had heard it!... I assure you to putIbériaright 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.”
(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 thisNaturmenschinto 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?
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.
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 thescherzo, 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 thefinalethat seem clearly intended as a picture of—or say, rather, clearly inspired by memories of—a peasant’s Sunday afternoonKeilerei, 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.” Thescherzowas completed January 31; thefinale, 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 sheddingof 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. TheNew Worldsymphony 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 doesnot enter into any long discussion of the composer’s mental condition in this country.
Yet some will undoubtedly continue to insist that the symphonyFrom the New Worldis 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.