The perfection of instruments; emotionalism of the romantic period; enlargement of orchestral resources—The symphony in the romantic period; Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann; Spohr and Raff—The concert overture—The rise of program music; the symphonic leit-motif; Berlioz’s Fantastique; other Berlioz symphonies; Liszt’s dramatic symphonies—The symphonic poem; Tasso; Liszt’s other symphonic poems—The legitimacy of program music.
Most typical of the romantic period—more typical even than its art of song—was its orchestral music. Here all that was peculiar to it—individuality, freedom of form, largeness of conception, sensuousness of effect—could find fullest development. The orchestra in its eighteenth-century perfection was a small, compact, well-ordered body of instruments, in which every emphasis was laid on regularity and balance. The orchestra of Liszt’s or Berlioz’s dramatic symphonies was a bewildering collection of individual voices and romantic tone qualities. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that, whereas a Haydn symphony was a chaste design in lines, a Liszt symphony was a gorgeous tapestry of color. Between the two every instrument had been developed to the utmost of tonal eloquence which composers could devise for it. The number of kinds of instruments had been doubled or trebled, thanks partly to Beethoven, and the size of the orchestra in common use had been increased at least once over. The technique of orchestral instruments had increased astonishingly; Schubert’s C major symphony, which was declared unplayable by the orchestra of the Vienna Musikverein, one of the best of the age, is a mere toy compared with Liszt’s or Berlioz’s larger works. Such instruments as the horns and trumpets were greatly improved during the second and third decades of the century, so that they could take a place as independent melodic voices, which had been almost denied them in Beethoven’s time. As an instrument of specific emotional expression the orchestra rose from almost nil to its present position, unrivalled save by the human voice.
It is doubtless true to say that this enlargement resulted from the technical improvements in orchestral instruments and from the increase of instrumental virtuosity, but the converse is much more true. The case is here not so much as with the piano, that an improved instrument tempted a great composer to write for it, but rather that great composers needed more perfect means of expression and therefore stimulated the technicians to greater efforts. For, as we have seen, the musical spirits of the romantic period insisted upon breaking through conventional limitations and expressing what had never before been expressed. They wanted overpowering grandeur of sound, impressive richness of tone, great freedom of form, and constant variety of color. They wanted especially those means which could make possible their dreams of pictorial and descriptive music. Flutes and oboes in pairs and two horns and two trumpets capable of only a partial scale, in addition to the usual strings, were hardly adequate to describe the adventures of Dante in the Inferno. The literary and social life of the time had set composers thinking in grand style, and they insisted upon having the new and improved instruments which they felt they needed, upon forcing manufacturers to inventions which should facilitate complicated and extended passages in the wind, and the performers to the acceptance of these new things and to unheard-of industry in mastering them. Thus the mere external characteristics of romantic orchestral music are highly typical of the spirit of the time.
Perhaps the most typical quality of all is the insistence upon sensuous effect. We have seen how the denizens of the nineteenth century longed to be part of the things that were going on about them, how, basing themselves on the ‘sentimental’ school of Rousseau, they considered a truth unperceived until they had felt it. This distinction between contemplating life and experiencing it is one of the chief distinctions between the classical and the romantic spirit everywhere, and between the attitude of the eighteenth century and that of the nineteenth in particular. When Rousseau offered the feelings of his ‘new Heloïse’ as justification for her conduct, he sent a shock through the intelligent minds of France. He said, in substance: ‘Put yourself in her place and see if you wouldn’t do as she did. Then ask yourself what your philosophic and moral disapproval amounts to.’ Within some fifty years it became quite the craze of polite society to put itself in the new Heloïse’s place, and George Sand did it with an energy which astonished even France.
Now, when one commences thoroughly to reason out life from one’s individual feelings, it becomes necessary to reconstruct philosophy—namely, to construct it ‘from the bottom up,’ from the demands and relations of the individual up to the constitution of the mass. And it is quite natural that when insistence is thus laid on the individual point of view the senses enter into the question far more largely than before. At its most extreme this view comes to an unrestrained license for the senses—a vice typical of Restoration France. But its nobler side was its desire to discover how the other man felt and what his needs were, in place of reasoning on abstract grounds how he ‘ought’ to act. Besides, since the French Revolution people had been experiencing things so incessantly that they had got the habit. After the fall of Napoleon they could not consent to return to a calm observation of events. Rather, it was precisely because external events had calmed down that they so much more needed violent experience in their imaginative and artistic life. The classic tragedies of the French ‘golden age’ were indeed emotional and in high degree, but the emotions were those of types, not of individuals. They were looked on as grand æsthetic spectacles rather than as appeals from one human being to another. It was distinctly bad form to show too much emotion at a tragedy of Racine’s; whereas in the romantic period tears were quite in fashion. However great the human falsity of the romantic dramas, they at least pretended to be expressions of individual emotions, and were received by their audiences as such. The life of a follower of the arts in Paris in the twenties and thirties (or anywhere in Europe, for that matter) was one of laughing and weeping in the joys and sorrows of others, moving from one emotional debauch to another, and taking pride in making the feelings of these creations of art as much as possible one’s own. It was small wonder, then, that musicians did the same; that, in addition to trying to paint pictures and tell stories, they should endeavor to make every stroke of beauty felt by the auditor, and felt in a physical sensuous thrill rather than in a philosophic ‘sense of beauty.’
And nothing could offer the romantic musicians a finer opportunity for all this than the timbres of the orchestra. The soft golden tone of the horn, the brilliant yellow of the trumpet, the luscious green of the oboe, the quiet silver white of the flute seemed to stand ready for the poets of the senses to use at their pleasure. In the vibrating tone of orchestral instruments, even more than in complicated harmonies and appealing melodies, lay their chance for titillating the nerves of a generation hungry for sensuous excitement. But we must remember that if these instruments have poetic and colorful associations to us it is in large measure because there were romantic composers to suggest them. The horn and flute and oboe had been at Haydn’s disposal, yet he was little interested in the sensuous characteristics of them which we feel so acutely. In great measure the poetic and sensuous tone qualities of the modern orchestra were brought out by the romantic composers.
The classical orchestra, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, had originally been based on the ‘string quartet’—namely, the first violins, the second violins, the violas, and the ‘cellos, with the double basses reënforcing the 'cello part. The string section completely supported the musical structure. This was because the strings alone were capable of playing complete and smooth scales and executing all sorts of turns and trills with nearly equal facility. Wind instruments in the eighteenth century were in a very imperfect condition. Some of them, like the trumpets, were capable of no more than eight or ten notes. All suffered from serious and numerous restrictions. Hence they were originally used for giving occasional color or ornamentation to the music which was carried by the strings. About the middle of the century the famous orchestra of the court of Mannheim, under the leadership and stimulus of Cannabich and of the Stamitz family, reached something like a solid equilibrium in the matter of instrumentation, and from its disposition of the strings and wind all later orchestration took its rise. The Mannheim orchestra became renowned for its nuance of effect, and especially for its organized crescendos and diminuendos. The ideal orchestra thus passed on to Haydn and Mozart was a ‘string quartet’ with wood-wind instruments for the occasional doubling of the string parts, and the brass for filling in and emphasizing important chords. Gradually the wood-wind became a separate section of the orchestra, sometimes carrying a whole passage without the aid of strings, and sometimes combining with the string section on equal terms. With this stage modern instrumentation may be said to have begun. The brass had to wait; its individuality was not much developed until Beethoven’s time.
Yet during the period of orchestral development under Haydn and Mozart the strings remained the solid basis for orchestral writing, partly because of their greater practical efficiency, and partly because the reserved character of the violin tone appealed more to the classic sense of moderation. And even with the increased importance of the wood-winds the unit of writing was the group and not the individual instrument (barring occasional special solos). The later history of orchestral writing was one of a gradually increasing importance and independence for the wood-wind section (and later for the brass) and of individualization for each separate instrument. Mozart based his writing upon the Mannheim orchestration and upon Haydn, showing considerable sensitiveness to timbres, especially that of the clarinet. Haydn, in turn, learned from Mozart’s symphonies, and in his later works for the orchestra further developed freedom of writing, being particularly fond of the oboe. Beethoven emancipated all the instruments, making his orchestra a collection of individual voices rather than of groups (though he was necessarily hampered by the technically clumsy brass).
Yet, compared to the writing of Berlioz and Liszt, the classical symphonies were in their orchestration rather dry and monochrome (always making a reservation for the pronounced romantic vein in Beethoven). Haydn and Mozart felt orchestral contrasts, but they used them rather for the sake of variety than for their absolute expressive value. So that, however these composers may have anticipated and prepared the way for the romanticists, the difference between the two orchestral palettes is striking. One might say it was the difference between Raphael’s palette and Rubens’. And in mere externals the romanticists worked on a much larger scale. The string orchestra in Mozart’s time numbered from twenty-two to thirty instruments, and to this were added usually two flutes and two horns, and occasionally clarinets, bassoons, trumpets, and kettle-drums in pairs. Beethoven’s orchestra was little larger than this, and the capabilities of his instruments only slightly greater, but his use of the various instruments as peculiar and individual voices was masterly. All the great composers of the second quarter of the nineteenth century studied his instrumentation and learned from it. But Beethoven, though he sought out the individual character of orchestral voices, did not make them sensuously expressive as Weber and Liszt did. About the time of Beethoven’s death the use of valves made the brass possible as an independent choir, capable of performing most of the ordinary diatonic and accidental notes and of carrying full harmony. But it must be said that even the most radical of the romantic composers, such as Berlioz, did not avail themselves of these improvements as rapidly as they might, and were characteristic rather in their way of thinking for instruments than in their way of writing for them. The valve horns and valve trumpets came into use slowly; Schumann frequently used valve horns plus natural horns, and Berlioz preferred the vulgar cornet à pistons to the improved trumpet.
But the romantic period added many an instrument to the limited orchestra of Mozart and Beethoven. Clarinets and trombones became the usual thing. The horns were increased to four, and the small flute or piccolo, the English horn, and the bass clarinet (or the double bassoon), and the ophicleide became frequent. Various instruments, such as the ‘serpent,’ the harp, and all sorts of drums were freely introduced for special effects.
Berlioz especially loved to introduce unusual instruments, and quantities of them. For his famous ‘Requiem’ he demanded (though he later made concessions): six flutes, four oboes, six clarinets, ten bassoons, thirty-five first and thirty-five second violins, thirty ‘cellos, twenty-five basses, and twelve horns. In the Tuba Mirum he asks for twelve pairs of kettle-drums, tuned to cover the whole diatonic scale and several of the accidentals, and for four separate ‘orchestras,’ placed at the four corners of the stage, and calling for six cornets, five trombones, and two tubas; or five trumpets, six ophicleides, four trombones, four tubas, and the like. His scores are filled with minute directions to the performers, especially to the drummers, who are enjoined to use a certain type of drumstick for particular passages, to place their drum in a certain position, and so on. His directions are curt and precise. Liszt, on the other hand, leaves the matter largely to ‘the gracious coöperation of the director.’
Experimentation with new and sensational effects made life thrilling for these composers. Berlioz recalls with delight in his Memoirs an effect he made with his arrangement of the ‘Rackoczy March’ in Buda Pesth. ‘No sooner,’ says he, ‘did the rumor spread that I had written hony (national) music than Pesth began to ferment. How had I treated it? They feared profanation of that idolized melody which for so many years had made their hearts beat with lust of glory and battle and liberty; all kinds of stories were rife, and at last there came to me M. Horwath, editor of a Hungarian paper, who, unable to curb his curiosity, had gone to inspect my march at the copyist.’
'“I have seen your Rakoczy score,” he said, uneasily.
'“Well?”
'“Well, I feel horribly nervous about it.”
'“Bah! Why?”
'“Your motif is introduced piano, and we are used to hearing it fortissimo.”
'“Yes, by the gypsies. Is that all? Don’t be alarmed. You shall have such a forte as you never heard in your life. You can’t have read the score carefully; remember the end is everything.”
‘All the same, when the day came my throat tightened, as it did in times of great excitement, when this devil of a thing came on. First the trumpets gave out the rhythm, then the flutes and clarinets, with a pizzicato accompaniment of strings—softly outlining the air—the audience remaining calm and judicial. Then, as there came a long crescendo, broken by the dull beats of the big drum (as of distant cannon), a strange restless movement was perceptible among them—and, as the orchestra let itself go in a cataclysm of sweeping fury and thunder, they could contain themselves no longer. Their overcharged souls burst with a tremendous explosion of feeling that raised my hair with terror.’
This bass-drum beat pianissimo ‘as of distant cannon’ has never to this day lost its wild and mysterious potency. But it must not be supposed that the romanticists’ contribution to orchestration consisted mainly in isolated sensational effects. Their work was marvellously thorough and solid. Berlioz in particular had a wizard-like ear for discerning and developing subtleties of timbre. His great work on Orchestration (now somewhat passé but still stimulating and valuable to the student) abounds in the mention of them. He points out the poetic possibilities in the lower registers of the clarinets, little used before his day. He makes his famous notation as to the utterly different tone qualities of one violin and of several violins in unison, as though of different instruments. And so on through hundreds of pages. The scores of the romanticists abound in simple effects, unheard of before their time, which gain their end like magic. Famous examples come readily to mind: the muted violins in the high registers in the ‘Dance of the Sylphs’ from ‘The Damnation of Faust’; the clumsy bassoons for the dance of the ‘rude mechanicals’ in Mendelssohn’s incidental music to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’; the morose viola solo which recurs through Berlioz’s ‘Harold in Italy’; the taps and rolls on the tympani to accompany the speeches of the devil in Der Freischütz or the flutes in their lowest register in the accompaniment to Agathe’s air in the same opera—all these are representative of the richness of poetic imagination and understanding of orchestral possibilities in the composers of the romantic period.
It was inevitable that the pure symphonic form should decline in esteem during the romantic period; for it is based primarily on a love of pure design—the ‘da capo’ scheme of statement, development, and restatement, which remains the best method ever invented for vividly presenting musical ideas without extra-musical association or aid. It is primarily a mold for receiving ‘pure’ musical material, and the romantic period, as we have seen, had comparatively little use for music without poetic association. Of the best symphonies of the time the greater part have some general poetical designation, like the ‘Italian’ and ‘Scotch’ symphonies of Mendelssohn, or the ‘Spring’ and ‘Rhenish’ symphonies of Schumann. These titles were in some cases mere afterthoughts or concessions to the demands of the time, and in every case the merest general or whimsical suggestion. Yet they can easily be imagined as fitting the musical material, and they always manage to add interest to the work without interfering with the ‘absolute’ musical value. And even when they are without specific title they are infused with the spirit of the age—delight in sensuous effects and rich scoring, emotional melody, and varied harmonic support.
For all this, as for nearly everything else in modern music, we must go back to Beethoven if we wish to find the source, but for purposes of classification Schubert may be set down as the first romantic symphonist. He adhered as closely as he could to the classical mold, though he never had a predominant gift for form. A beautiful melody was to him the law-giver for all things, and when he found such a melody it went its way refusing to submit to the laws of proportion. Yet this willfulness can hardly be regarded as standing in the way of outward success; the ‘Unfinished’ symphony in B minor could not be better loved than it is; it is safe to say that of all symphonies it is the most popular. It was written (two movements and a few bars of a scherzo) in 1822, was laid aside for no known reason, and lay unknown in Vienna for many years until rescued by Sir George Grove. The mysterious introduction in the ‘cellos and basses, as though to say, ‘It happened once upon a time’; the haunting ‘second theme’ introduced by the ‘cellos; the stirring development with its shrieks of the wood-wind—all are of the very stuff of romantic music. A purist might wish the work less diffuse, especially in the second movement; no one could wish it more beautiful. In the great C major symphony, written in the year of his death, Schubert seems to have been attempting a magnum opus. If he had lived, this work would certainly have been regarded as the first composition of his ‘second period.’ He labored over it with much more care than was his custom, and showed a desire to attain a cogent form with truly orchestral ideas. The best parts of the ‘Unfinished Symphony’ could be sung by the human voice; the melodies of the C major are at home only with orchestral instruments. The work was all but unprecedented for its time in length and difficulty; it is Schubert’s finest effort in sustained and noble expression, and, though thoroughly romantic in tone, his nearest approach to ‘absolute’ music. It seems outmoded and at times a bit childlike to-day, but by sheer beauty holds its place steadily on orchestral programs. Schubert’s other symphonies have dropped almost completely out of sight.
Mendelssohn’s four symphonies, including the ‘Italian,’ the ‘Scotch,’ and the ‘Reformation,’ have had a harder time holding their place. It seems strange that Mendelssohn, the avowed follower of the classics, should not have done his best work in his symphonies, but these compositions, though executed with extreme polish and dexterity, sound thin to-day. A bolder voice might have made them live. But the ‘Scotch’ and ‘Italian’ in them are seen through Leipzig spectacles, and the musical subject-matter is not vigorous enough to challenge a listener in the midst of modern musical wealth. As for the ‘Reformation’ symphony, with its use of the Protestant chorale, Ein feste Burg, a technically ‘reformed’ Jew could hardly be expected to catch the militant Christian spirit. Yet these works are at their best precisely in their romantic picturesqueness; as essays in the ‘absolute’ symphony they cannot match the nobility and strength of Schubert’s C major.
Schumann, the avowed romantic, had much more of worth to put into his symphonies, probably because he was an apostle and an image-breaker, and not a polite ‘synthesist.’ The ‘Spring’ symphony in B flat, written in the year of his marriage, 1840 (the year of his most exuberant productivity), remains one of the most beautiful between Beethoven and recent times. The austerity of the classical form never robbed him of spontaneity, for the ideas in his symphony are not inferior to any he ever invented. The form is, on the whole, satisfactory to the purist, and, beyond such innovations as the connecting of all four movements in the last symphony, he attempted little that was new. The four works are fertile in lovely ideas, such as the graceful folk-song intoned by ‘cellos and wood-wind in the third, or the impressive organ-like movement from the same work. Throughout there is the same basic simplicity of invention—the combination of fresh melodic idea with colorful harmony—which endears him to all German hearts. It is customary to say that Schumann was a mere amateur at orchestration. It is certainly true that he had no particular turn for niceties of scoring or for searching out endless novelties of effect, and it is true that he sometimes proved himself ignorant of certain primary rules, as when he wrote an unplayable phrase for the horns in his first symphony. But his orchestration is, on the whole, well balanced and adequate to his subject-matter, and is full of felicities of scoring which harmonize with the romantic color of his ideas.
Of the other symphonists who were influenced by the romantic fervor the greater part have dropped out of sight. Spohr, who may be reckoned among them, was in his day considered the equal of Beethoven, and his symphonies, though often manneristic, are noble in conception, romantic in feeling, and learned in execution. Of a much later period is Raff, a disciple of Liszt, and, to some extent, a crusader on behalf of Wagner. Like Spohr, he enjoyed a much exaggerated reputation during his lifetime. Of his eleven symphonies Im Walde and Leonore (both of a mildly programmistic nature) were the best known, the latter in particular a popular favorite of a generation ago. Raff further developed the resources of the orchestra without striking out any new paths. Many of his ideas were romantic and charming, but he was too often facile and rather cheap. Still, he had not a little to teach other composers, among them the American MacDowell. Gade, friend of Mendelssohn and his successor at Leipzig, was a thorough scholarly musician, one of the few of the ‘Leipzig circle’ who did not succumb to dry formalism. He may be considered one of the first of the ‘national composers,’ for his work, based to some extent on the Danish folk idiom, secured international recognition for the national school founded by J. P. E. Hartmann. Ferdinand Hiller, friend of Liszt and Chopin, wrote three symphonies marked by romantic feeling and technical vigor, and Reinecke, for many years the representative of the Mendelssohn tradition at Leipzig, wrote learnedly and at times with inspiring freshness.
In the romantic period there developed, chiefly at the hands of Mendelssohn, a form peculiarly characteristic of the time—the so-called ‘concert overture.’ This was based on the classic overture for opera or spoken drama, written in sonata form, usually with a slow introduction, but poetic and, to a limited extent, descriptive, and intended purely for concert performance. The models were Beethoven’s overtures, ‘Coriolanus,’ ‘Egmont,’ and, best of all, the ‘Leonore No 3,’ written to introduce a particular opera or drama, it is true, but summing up and in some degree following the course of the drama and having all the ear-marks of the later romantic overture. From a mere prelude intended to establish the prevailing mood of the drama the overture had long since become an independent artistic form. These overtures gained a great popularity in concert, and their possibilities for romantic suggestion were quickly seized upon by the romanticists.
Weber’s overture to Der Freischütz, though written for the opera, may be ranked as a concert overture (it is most frequently heard in that capacity), and along with it the equally fine Euryanthe and Oberon. The first named was a real challenge to the Philistines. The slow introduction, with its horn melody of surpassing loveliness, and the fast movement, introducing the music of the Incantation scene, are thoroughly romantic. Weber’s best known concert overture (in the strict sense), the Jubel Ouvertüre, is of inferior quality.
Schumann, likewise, wrote no overtures not intended for a special drama or a special occasion, but some of his works in this form rank among his best orchestral compositions. Chief among them is the ‘Manfred,’ which depicts the morbid passions in the soul of Byron’s hero, as fine a work in its kind as any of the period. The ‘Genoveva’ overture is fresh and colorful in the style of Weber, and that for Schiller’s ‘Bride of Messina’ is scarcely inferior. Berlioz has to his credit a number of works in this form, mostly dating from his earliest years of creative activity. Best known are the ‘Rob Roy’ (introducing the Scotch tune, ‘Scots Wha’ Hae’) and the Carnival Romain, but the ‘Lear’ and ‘The Corsair,’ inspired by two of his favorite authors, Shakespeare and Byron, are also possessed of his familiar virtues. Another composer who in his day made a name in this form is William Sterndale Bennett, an Englishman who possessed the highest esteem of Mendelssohn and Schumann, and was a valuable part of the musical life of Leipzig in the thirties and later. The best part of his work, now forgotten save in England, is for the piano, but the ‘Parisina’ and ‘Wood Nymphs’ overtures were at one time ranked with those of Mendelssohn. Like all English composers of those times he was inclined to the academic, but his work had much freshness and romantic charm, combined with an admirable sense of form.
But it is Mendelssohn whose place in this field is unrivalled. His ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ overture, written when he was seventeen, has a place on modern concert programs analogous to that of Schubert’s ‘Unfinished Symphony.’ This work is equally the delight of the musical purist and of the untechnical music-lover. It is marked by all Mendelssohn’s finest qualities. Not a measure of it is slipshod or lacking in distinction. Its scoring is deft in the extreme. Its themes are fresh and charming. And upon it all is the polish in which Mendelssohn excelled; no note seems out of place, and none, one feels, could be otherwise than as it is. It is mildly descriptive—as descriptive as Mendelssohn ever was. The three groups of characters in Shakespeare’s play are there—the fairies, the love-stricken mortals, and the rude mechanicals—each with its characteristic melody. The opening chords, high in the wood-wind, set the fanciful tone of the whole. For deft adaptation of the means to the end it has rarely been surpassed in all music. In his other overtures Mendelssohn is even less descriptive, being content to catch the dominant mood of the subject and transmit it into tone in the sonata form. ‘Fingal’s Cave,’ the chief theme of which occurred to him and was noted down on the supposed scene of its subject in Scotland, is equally picturesque in its subject matter, but lacks the buoyant invention of its predecessor. The ‘Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage’ is a masterpiece of restraint. The technical means are exceedingly simple, for in his effort to paint the reigning quiet of his theme Mendelssohn dwells inordinately upon the pure tonic chord. Yet the work never lacks its composer’s customary freshness or sense of perfect proportion. His fourth overture—‘To the Story of the Lovely Melusina’—is only second to the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in popularity. In these works Mendelssohn is at his best; only the ‘Elijah’ and the violin concerto equally deserve long life and frequent repetition. For the overtures best show Mendelssohn the synthesist. In them he has caught absolutely the more refined spirit of romanticism, with its emphasis on tone coloring and its association of literary ideas, and has developed it in a classic mold as perfect as anything in music. Nowhere else do the dominating musical ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries come to such an amicable meeting ground.
Yet this ‘controlled romanticism,’ which Mendelssohn doubtless hoped would found a school, had little historical result. The frenzied spirits of the time needed some more vigorous stimulation, and those who had vitality sufficient to make history were not the ones to be guided by an academic gourmet. The Mendelssohn concert overtures are a pleasant by-path in music; they by no means strike a note to ring down the corridors of time. ‘Controlled romanticism’ was not the message for Mendelssohn’s age; for this age was essentially militant, smashing idols and blazing new paths, and nothing could feed its appetite save bitter fruit.
This bitter fruit it had in full measure in Berlioz’s romantic symphonies, as in Liszt’s symphonic poems. Of the true romantic symphonies the most remarkable is Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, one of the most astonishing productions in the whole history of music. It seems safe to say that in historical fruitfulness this work ranks with three or four others of the greatest—Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo, in 1607; Wagner’s Tristan, and what else? The Fantastique created program music; it made an art form of the dramatic symphony (including the not yet invented symphonic poem and all forms of free and story-telling symphonic works). At the same time it gave artistic existence to the leit-motif, or representative theme, the most fruitful single musical invention of the nineteenth century.
The Fantastique seems to have no ancestry; there is nothing in previous musical literature to which more than the vaguest parallel can be drawn, and there is nothing in Berlioz’s previous works to indicate that he had the power to take a new idea—two new ideas—out of the sky and work them out with such mature mastery. One might have expected a period of experimentation. One might at least expect the work to be the logical outcome of experiments by other men. But Berlioz had no true ancestor in this form; he had no more than chance forerunners.
Nevertheless program music, or at least descriptive music, in some form or other, is nearly as old as music itself. We have part-songs dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which imitate the cuckoo’s call, or the songs of other birds. Jannequin, contemporary with Palestrina, wrote a piece descriptive of the battle of Marignan, fought between the French and the Swiss in 1515. Even Bach joins the other program composers with his ‘Caprice on the departure of his brother,’ in which the posthorn is imitated. Couperin gave picturesque titles to nearly all his compositions, and Rameau wrote a delightful piece for harpsichord, suggestively called ‘The Hen.’ Many of Haydn’s symphonies have titles which add materially to the poetry of the music. Beethoven admitted that he never composed without some definite image in mind. His ‘Pastoral Symphony’ is so well known that it need only be mentioned, though strict theorists may deny it a place with program music on the plea that, in the composer’s own words, it is ‘rather the recording of impressions than painting.’ Yet Beethoven wrote one piece of downright program music in the strict sense, for his ‘Battle of Vittoria’ frankly sets out to describe one of the battles of the Napoleonic wars. It is, however, pure hack work, one of the few works of the master which might have been composed by a mediocre man. It is of a sort of debased program music which was much in fashion at the time, easy and silly stuff which pretended to describe anything from a landscape up to the battle of Waterloo. The instances of imitative music in Haydn’s ‘Creation’ are well known. Coming down to later times we find the ophicleide imitating the braying of the ass in Mendelssohn’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ overture, and since then few composers, however reserved in manner and classic in taste, have wholly disdained it.
Yet all this long, even distinguished, history does not fully prepare the way for the program music of Berlioz. It is not likely that he was familiar with much of it. And even if he had been he could have found no programmistic form or idea ready at hand for his program pieces. The program music idea was rather ‘in the air’ than in specific musical works. From the literary romanticists’ theory of the mixing of the genres and the mingling of the arts his lively mind no doubt drew a hint. And the influence of his teacher, Lesueur, at the Conservatory must be reckoned on. Lesueur was something of a radical and apostle of program music in his day, having been, in fact, relieved of his duties as director of music in Notre Dame because he insisted upon attuning men’s minds to piety by means of ‘picturesque and descriptive’ performances of the Mass. Program music! Here was a true forerunner of Berlioz—a very bad boy in a very solemn church. Perhaps this accounts for Berlioz’s veneration of his teacher, one of the few men who doesn’t figure somewhat disgracefully in the Memoirs. At any rate, the young revolutionist found in Lesueur a sympathetic spirit such as is rarely to be found in conservatories.
To sum up, then, we find that Berlioz had no precedent in reputable music for a sustained work of a close descriptive nature. Works of picturesque quality, which specifically do not ‘depict events’—like the ‘Pastoral’ symphony—are not program music in the more exact sense. Isolated bits of description in good music, like the famous ‘leaping stag’ and ‘shaggy lion’ of Haydn’s ‘Creation,’ offer no analogy for sustained description. And the supposed pieces of sustained description, like the fashionable ‘battle’ pieces, had and deserved no musical standing. The Fantastique, as we shall see, was detailed and sustained description of the first rank musically. The gap between the Fantastique and its supposed ancestors was quite complete. It was bridged by pure genius.
As for the leit-motif, it is even more Berlioz’s own invention. The use of a particular theme to represent a particular personage or emotion was, of course, in such program music as had existed. But only in a few isolated instances had this been used recurrently to accompany a dramatic story. Mozart, in Don Giovanni, had used the famous trombone theme to represent the Statue, first in the Graveyard scene and later in the Supper scene. Weber had somewhat loosely used a particular theme to represent the devil Samiel in Der Freischütz. We know from Berlioz’s own description[98] how this work affected him in his early Parisian years and we may assume that the notion of the leit-motif took hold on him then. But the leit-motif in Mozart and Weber is hardly used as a deliberate device, rather only as a natural repetition under similar dramatic conditions. The use of the leit-motif in symphonic music, and its variation under varied conditions belongs solely to Berlioz.
True to romantic traditions, Berlioz evolved the Fantastique out of his own joys and sorrows. It originated in the frenzy of his love for the actress, Henriette Smithson. He writes in February, 1830:[99]
‘Again, without warning and without reason, my ill-starred passion wakes. She is in London, yet I feel her presence ever with me. I listen to the beating of my heart, it is like a sledge-hammer, every nerve in my body quivers with pain.
‘Woe upon her! Could she but dream of the poetry, the infinite bliss of such love as mine, she would fly to my arms, even though my embrace should be her death.
‘I was just going to begin my great symphony (Episode in an Artist’s Life) to depict the course of this infernal love of mine—but I can write nothing.’
Why, this is very midsummer madness! you say. But the kind of madness from which came much good romantic music. For the work had been planned in the previous year, not long after Miss Smithson had rejected Berlioz’s first advances.
But the composer very soon found that he could write—and he wrote like a fiend. In May he tells a friend that the rehearsals of the symphony will begin in three days. The concert is to take place on the 30th. As for Miss Smithson, ‘I pity and despise her. She is nothing but a commonplace woman with an instinct for expressing the tortures of the soul that she has never felt.’ Yet he wished that ‘the theatre people would somehow plot to get her there—that wretched woman! She could not but recognize herself.’
The performance of the symphony finally came off toward the end of the year. But in the meantime a new goddess had descended from the skies. The composer’s marriage was to depend on the success of the concert—so he says. ‘It must be a theatrical success; Camille’s parents insist upon that as a condition of our marriage. I hope I shall succeed.
‘P. S. That wretched Smithson girl is still here. I have not seen her.’
And a few weeks later: ‘I had a frantic success. They actually encored the Marche au Supplice. I am mad! mad! My marriage is fixed for Easter, 1832. My blessed symphony has done the deed.’
But not quite. He was rewriting this same symphony a few months later in Italy when there came a letter from Camille’s mother announcing her engagement to M. Pleyel!
As explanation to the symphony the composer wrote an extended ‘program’—in the strictest modern sense. He notes, however, that the program may be dispensed with, as ‘the symphony (the author hopes) offers sufficient musical interest in itself, independent of any dramatic intention.’ The program of the Fantastique is worth quoting entire, since it stands as the prototype and model of all musical programs since:
‘A young musician of morbid sensitiveness and ardent imagination poisons himself with opium in an excess of amorous despair. The narcotic dose, too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep, accompanied by the strangest visions, while his sensations, sentiments and memories translate themselves in his sick brain into musical thoughts and images. The loved one herself has become for him a melody, like a fixed idea which he rediscovers and hears everywhere.
‘First Part: Reveries, Passions. He first recalls that uneasiness of the soul, that wave of passions, those melancholies, those reasonless joys, which he experienced before having seen her whom he loves; then the volcanic love with which she suddenly inspired him, his frenzied heart-rendings, his jealous fury, his reawakening tenderness, his religious consolations.
‘Second Part: A Ball. He finds the loved one at a ball, in the midst of tumult and a brilliant fête.
‘Third Part: In the Country. A summer evening in the country: he hears two shepherds conversing with their horns; this pastoral duet, the natural scene, the soft whispering of the winds in the trees, a few sentiments of hope which he has recently conceived, all combine to give his soul an unwonted calm, to give a happier color to his thoughts; but she appears anew, his heart stops beating, painful misapprehensions stir him—if she should deceive him! One of the shepherds repeats his naïve melody; the other does not respond. The sun sets—distant rolls of thunder—solitude—silence——
‘Fourth Part: March to the Gallows. He dreams that he has killed his loved one, that he is condemned to death, led to the gallows. The cortège advances, to the sounds of a march now sombre and wild, now brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy steps follows immediately upon the noisiest shouts. Finally, the fixed idea reappears for an instant like a last thought of love, to be interrupted by the fatal blow.
‘Fifth Part: Dream of the Witches’ Festival. He fancies he is present at a witches’ dance, in the midst of a gruesome company of shades, sorcerers, and monsters of all sorts gathered for his funeral. Strange sounds, sighs, bursts of laughter, distant cries and answers. The loved melody reappears again; but it has lost its character of nobility and timidity; it is nothing but an ignoble dance, trivial and grotesque; it is she who comes to the witches’ festival. Sounds of joy at her arrival. She mingles with the hellish orgy; uncanny noises—burlesque of the Dies Irae; dance of the witches. The witches’ dance and the Dies Irae follow.’
The music follows this program in detail, and supplies a host of other details to the sympathetic imagination. The opening movement contains a melody which Berlioz avers he composed at the age of twelve, when he was in love with yet another young lady, a certain Estelle, six years his senior. And in each movement occurs the ‘fixed idea,’ founder of that distinguished dynasty of leit-motifs in the nineteenth century:
In the opening movement, when the first agonies of love are at their height, this theme undergoes a long contrapuntal development which is a marvel of complexity and harmonic energy. It recurs practically unchanged in the next three movements, and at its appearance in the fourth is cut short as the guillotine chops the musician’s head off. In the last movement it undergoes the change which makes this work the predecessor of Liszt’s symphonic poems:
The structure of this work is complicated in the extreme, and it abounds in harmonic and contrapuntal novelties which are strokes of pure genius. Many a musician may dislike the symphony, but none can help respecting it. The orchestra, though not large for our day, was revolutionary in its time. It included, in one movement or another (besides the usual strings) a small flute and two large ones; oboes; two clarinets, a small clarinet, and an English horn; four horns, two trumpets, two cornets à pistons, and three trombones; four bassoons, two ophicleides, four pairs of kettle-drums, cymbals, bells, and bass drum.
A challenge to the timid spirits of the time; and a thing of revolutionary significance to modern music.
The other great dramatic symphonies of the time belong wholly to Berlioz and Liszt. The Revolutionary Symphony which Berlioz had planned under the stimulus of the 1830 revolution, became, about 1837, the Symphonie Funèbre et Héroïque, composed in honor of the men killed in this insurrection. It is mostly of inferior stuff compared with the composer’s other works, but the ‘Funeral Sermon’ of the second movement, which is a long accompanied recitative for the trombones, is extremely impressive. ‘Harold in Italy,’ founded upon Byron’s ‘Childe Harold,’ was planned during Berlioz’s residence in Italy, and executed under the stimulus of Paganini. Here again we have the ‘fixed idea,’ in the shape of a lovely solo, representing the morose hero, given to the viola. The work was first planned as a viola concerto, but the composer’s poetic instinct carried him into a dramatic symphony. First Harold is in the mountains and Byronic moods of longing creep over him. Then a band of pilgrims approaches and his melody mingles with their chant. Then the hero hears an Abruzzi mountaineer serenading his lady love, and to the tune of his ‘fixed idea’ he invites his own soul to muse of love. And, finally, Harold is captured by brigands, and his melody mingles with their wild dance.
Berlioz’s melodies are apt to be dry and even cerebral in their character, but this one for Harold is as beautiful as one could wish: