Part 9 (1/2)
In the last movement of his Ninth Symphony Beethoven calls voices to the aid of his instruments. It was a daring innovation, as it seemed to disrupt the form, and we know from the story of the work how long he hunted for the connecting link, which finally he found in the instrumental recitative. Having hit upon the device, he summons each of the preceding movements, which are purely instrumental, into the presence of his augmented forces and dismisses it as inadequate to the proclamation which the symphony was to make. The double-ba.s.ses and solo barytone are the spokesmen for the tuneful host. He thus achieves the end of connecting the Allegro, Scherzo, and Adagio with each other, and all with the Finale, and at the same time points out what it is that he wishes us to recognize as the inspiration of the whole; but here, again, the means appear to be somewhat extraneous.
Schumann's example, however, in abolis.h.i.+ng the pauses between the movements of the symphony in D minor, and having melodic material common to all the movements, is a plea for appreciation which cannot be misunderstood. Before Schumann Mendelssohn intended that his ”Scotch” symphony should be performed without pauses between the movements, but his wishes have been ignored by the conductors, I fancy because he having neglected to knit the movements together by community of ideas, they can see no valid reason for the abolition of the conventional resting-places.
[Sidenote: _Beethoven's ”choral” symphony followed._]
Beethoven's augmentation of the symphonic forces by employing voices has been followed by Berlioz in his ”Romeo and Juliet,” which, though called a ”dramatic symphony,” is a mixture of symphony, cantata, and opera; Mendelssohn in his ”Hymn of Praise” (which is also a composite work and has a composite t.i.tle--”Symphony Cantata”), and Liszt in his ”Faust” symphony, in the finale of which we meet a solo tenor and chorus of men's voices who sing Goethe's _Chorus mysticus_.
[Sidenote: _Increase in the number of movements._]
A number of other experiments have been made, the effectiveness of which has been conceded in individual instances, but which have failed permanently to affect the symphonic form. Schumann has two trios in his symphony in B-flat, and his E-flat, the so-called ”Rhenish,” has five movements instead of four, there being two slow movements, one in moderate tempo (_Nicht schnell_), and the other in slow (_Feierlich_).
In this symphony, also, Schumann exercises the license which has been recognized since Beethoven's time, of changing the places in the scheme of the second and third movements, giving the second place to the jocose division instead of the slow. Beethoven's ”Pastoral” has also five movements, unless one chooses to take the storm which interrupts the ”Merry-making of the Country Folk” as standing toward the last movement as an introduction, as, indeed, it does in the composer's idyllic scheme. Certain it is, Sir George Grove to the contrary notwithstanding, that the sense of a disturbance of the symphonic plan is not so vivid at a performance of the ”Pastoral” as at one of Schumann's ”Rhenish,” in which either the third movement or the so-called ”Cathedral Scene” is most distinctly an interloper.
[Sidenote: _Further extension of boundaries._]
[Sidenote: _Saint-Saens's C minor symphony._]
Usually it is deference to the demands of a ”programme” that influences composers in extending the formal boundaries of a symphony, and when this is done the result is frequently a work which can only be called a symphony by courtesy. M. Saint-Saens, however, attempted an original excursion in his symphony in C minor, without any discoverable, or at least confessed, programmatic idea. He laid the work out in two grand divisions, so as to have but one pause.
Nevertheless in each division we can recognize, though as through a haze, the outlines of the familiar symphonic movements. In the first part, buried under a sequence of time designations like this: _Adagio_--_Allegro moderato_--_Poco adagio_, we discover the customary first and second movements, the former preceded by a slow introduction; in the second division we find this arrangement: _Allegro moderato_--_Presto_--_Maestoso_--_Allegro_, this multiplicity of terms affording only a sort of disguise for the regulation scherzo and finale, with a cropping out of reminiscences from the first part which have the obvious purpose to impress upon the hearer that the symphony is an organic whole. M. Saint-Saens has also introduced the organ and a pianoforte with two players into the instrumental apparatus.
[Sidenote: _The Symphonic Poem._]
[Sidenote: _Its characteristics._]
Three characteristics may be said to distinguish the Symphonic Poem, which in the view of the extremists who follow the lead of Liszt is the logical outcome of the symphony and the only expression of its aesthetic principles consonant with modern thought and feeling.
_First_, it is programmatic--that is, it is based upon a poetical idea, a sequence of incidents, or of soul-states, to which a clew is given either by the t.i.tle or a motto; _second_, it is compacted in form to a single movement, though as a rule the changing phases delineated in the separate movements of the symphony are also to be found in the divisions of the work marked by changes in tempo, key, and character; _third_, the work generally has a princ.i.p.al subject of such plasticity that the composer can body forth a varied content by presenting it in a number of transformations.
[Sidenote: _Liszt's first pianoforte concerto._]
The last two characteristics Liszt has carried over into his pianoforte concerto in E-flat. This has four distinct movements (viz.: I. _Allegro maestoso_; II. _Quasi adagio_; III. _Allegretto vivace, scherzando_; IV. _Allegro marziale animato_), but they are fused into a continuous whole, throughout which the princ.i.p.al thought of the work, the stupendously energetic phrase which the orchestra proclaims at the outset, is presented in various forms to make it express a great variety of moods and yet give unity to the concerto. ”Thus, by means of this metamorphosis,” says Mr. Edward Dannreuther, ”the poetic unity of the whole musical tissue is made apparent, spite of very great diversity of details; and Coleridge's attempt at a definition of poetic unity--unity in multiety--is carried out to the letter.”
[Sidenote: _Other cyclical forms._]
[Sidenote: _Pianoforte and orchestra._]
It will readily be understood that the other cyclical compositions which I have a.s.sociated with a cla.s.sic concert, that is, compositions belonging to the category of chamber music (see Chapter III.), and concertos for solo instruments with orchestral accompaniment, while conforming to the scheme which I have outlined, all have individual characteristics conditioned on the expressive capacity of the apparatus. The modern pianoforte is capable of a.s.serting itself against a full orchestra, and concertos have been written for it in which it is treated as an orchestral integer rather than a solo instrument. In the older conception, the orchestra, though it frequently a.s.sumed the privilege of introducing the subject-matter, played a subordinate part to the solo instrument in its development.
In violin as well as pianoforte concertos special opportunity is given to the player to exploit his skill and display the solo instrument free from structural restrictions in the cadenza introduced shortly before the close of the first, last, or both movements.
[Sidenote: _Cadenzas._]
[Sidenote: _Improvisations by the player._]
[Sidenote: _M. Ysaye's opinion of Cadenzas._]
Cadenzas are a relic of a time when the art of improvisation was more generally practised than it is now, and when performers were conceded to have rights beyond the printed page. Solely for their display, it became customary for composers to indicate by a hold ([fermata symbol]) a place where the performer might indulge in a flourish of his own. There is a tradition that Mozart once remarked: ”Wherever I smear that thing,” indicating a hold, ”you can do what you please;”
the rule is, however, that the only privilege which the cadenza opens to the player is that of improvising on material drawn from the subjects already developed, and since, also as a rule, composers are generally more eloquent in the treatment of their own ideas than performers, it is seldom that a cadenza contributes to the enjoyment afforded by a work, except to the lovers of technique for technique's sake. I never knew an artist to make a more sensible remark than did M. Ysaye, when on the eve of a memorably beautiful performance of Beethoven's violin concerto, he said: ”If I were permitted to consult my own wishes I would put my violin under my arm when I reach the _fermate_ and say: 'Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the cadenza.
It is presumptuous in any musician to think that he can have anything to say after Beethoven has finished. With your permission we will consider my cadenza played.'” That Beethoven may himself have had a thought of the same nature is a fair inference from the circ.u.mstance that he refused to leave the cadenza in his E-flat pianoforte concerto to the mercy of the virtuosos but wrote it himself.
[Sidenote: _Concertos._]
[Sidenote: _Chamber music._]