Part 7 (1/2)

XVIII

OLD FOGY WRITES A SYMPHONIC POEM

”Definite feelings and e embodied in music,” says Eduard Hanslick in his _Beautiful in Music_ Now, you composers who make symphonic poems, why don't you realize that on its merits as a musical composition, its theme, its form, its treatment, that your ill endure, and not on account of its fidelity to your explanatory progra composer--which I a fro to a syaht as I tossed wearily on , thethe lake belo--suddenly an to work

I had just been reading, and for the thousandth ti and spiritual suggestions Yet it had never before struck me as a subject suitable for ht, its haunting e fantastic shadow threw a jagged black figure on the lake Presto, it was done, and with a mental snap that almost blinded me

I had my theme It will be the first theme in my new symphonic poem, _Childe Roland_ It will be in the key of B ht who to ”the dark tower came,”

unfettered by obstacles, physical or spiritual

O, how my brain seethed and boiled, for I aet an idea must work it out to its bitter end

_Childe Roland_ kept ht I even heard his ”dauntless horn” call and saw the ”squat tower” I had his theht personified I could hear its underlying harlooladness

The theme I treated in such a rhyth vitality, and I announced it with the English horn, with a curious rhyths in division played tremolando and the bass staccato and muted This may not be clear to you; it is not very clear to me, but at the time it all seemed very wonderful I finished the work after nine , hawking it about for hed at, admired and also mildly criticized

The thrice fatal day arrived, the rehearsals had been torture, and one night the audience at a great concert had the pleasure of reading on the progra what it was all about My symphonic poem would tell them all, as I firmly believed in the power of music to portray definitely certain soul-states, to mirror moods, to depict, rather indefinitely to be sure, certain phenomena of daily life

My poe, and I sat in a nervous swoon as I listened to the _Childe Roland_ theme, the squat tower theaunt horse the, false guide subject--in short, to all the many motives of the poem, with its apotheosis, the dauntless blast froht as he at last faced the dark tower

This latter I gave out with twelve trombones, twenty-one bassett horns and one calliope; it alht down the house, and I was the happiest man alive As I moved out I was met by the critic of _The Disciples of Tone_, who said to ratulate you; it beats Richard Strauss all hollow _Who_ and as _Childe Roland_? Was he any relation to Byron's _Childe Harold_? I suppose the first the' of his horse, and that funny triangular fugueit on three Adieu; I'ue! Why, that was the crossroads before which Childe Roland hesitated! How I hated the man

I was indeed disheartened Then a lady spoke to rand, perfectly grand, but why did you introduce a funeral march in the middle--I fancied that Childe Roland was not killed until the end?”

The funeral ly ht I; ”these people have no ihly I was accused of cribbingit up rhythmically for my own use, as if I hadn't made it on the spur of an inspired ue; that my orchestration was overloaded, and my work deficient in symmetry, repose, development and, above all, in coherence

This last was too 's poe for the incoherence, for I but followed his verse One day many months afterward I happened to pick up Hanslick, and chanced on the following:

”Let theio by Beethoven, a scherzo by Mendelssohn, one of Schuain, the most popular themes from the overtures of Auber, Donizetti or Flotoould be bold enough to point out a definite feeling on the subject of any of these themes? One will say 'love' Perhaps so Another thinks it is longing He ion Whorepresented when nobody really knohat is represented? Probably all will agree about the beauty or beauties of the co its subject To represent so is to exhibit it clearly, to set it before us distinctly But how can we call that the subject represented by an art which is really its vaguest and most indefinite elehly debatable ground”

I saw instantly that I had been on a false track Charles Lamb and Eduard Hanslick had both reached the sausted withof love and the cla, roaring, but not the whispering of love and the clamor; musical clamor, certainly, but not that of ”ardent combatants”

I saw then thatto anyone of Browning's poes were not worth a rush, that the music had an objective existence as music and not as a poetical picture, and by the fored Then I discovered what poor stuff I had produced--howthat those three or four bold and heavily orchestrated theration into different tonalities, were ”soul and tales norance and lack of contrapuntal knowledge, and, above all, the want of clear ideas of forh-sounding, poe I took the score, rearranged it for s circus under the euphonious title of _The Patrol of the Night Stick_, and the raphic power of the night stick lar in the coda