III
The same loyalty to emotional truth that dictates all these processes of detail, guides also d'Indy's treatment of a composition considered as a whole. His conception of form, though set forth in the Cours in largely intellectual terms, can be thoroughly understood only when traced back to its emotional basis. Because for him a piece of music must hang together emotionally, must proceed, that is, all from a few ideas, and must evolve these freely and variously in obedience to the logic of emotion, he takes as his central principle Variation, or germination from root themes. Not only, he believes, should the single movement thus proceed from a few themes, but the entire work, according to what is called cyclic form, should result from their transformation and recombination. In other words, just as the rhythmic waxing and waning of the emotions embodied in a few themes gives rise to the single movement, the regarding of the same themes from different points of view, or under the domination of varying moods, will naturally generate the contrasted movements, all thematically related, of cyclic form.
It may at once be admitted that such a conception of form has its pitfalls. The same process that in the glow of creative emotion is a spontaneous reshaping of a theme to meet a new situation may in the absence of such emotion degenerate into a hammering of recalcitrant matter into mere distortion and ineptitude. That is what we note too often in Liszt's similar theme transformations in his symphonic poems, as when in "Les Préludes" he makes his love cantabile do reluctant duty as a trumpet call to war. D'Indy, let us confess it, is by no means guiltless on this score; in uninspired moments he becomes too easily the slave instead of the master of his process; living form stiffens into dead formula; and we have a more or less mechanical rearrangement of notes, as for instance that of the main theme of the finale in the B flat Symphony, based on the choral at the end, masquerading as a genuine reincarnation. Such scholastic passages do indeed appear as blemishes in too many even of his finest works. But it is fair to judge a process not by its occasional abuse, but by the possibilities a felicitous use of it opens up. These possibilities in the case of cyclic form are a maximum of diversity without diffuseness, and a maximum of unity without monotony or platitude.
That a development of something of the sort was indispensable to the progress of composition is evident when we reflect how intolerable literal recapitulation has become to the modern ear. Much of the prejudice against the sonata form in our day is due to the literal recapitulations of bunglers in the use of it. The remedy is, not to throw overboard the form, which is a natural, flexible, and convenient one, but to bring to it a freshness of feeling which penetrates at once to the spirit of it, ignoring the letter. Thus d'Indy, in the slow movement of the B flat Symphony, recapitulates the main theme, shown at Figure XXVI, a, not literally but in subtlest reincarnation, one step higher in the scale, though still in the same key, and transferred from the sultry tones of clarinet, horn, English horn, and viola to the pure, pale sonority of a single flute, supported by lightest violin harmonies (Figure XXVI, b). It is the same theme, but breathing now a quite new sentiment.[48]
Figure XXVI.
(a) Theme of slow movement, B flat Symphony.
(This follows immediately after the introduction shown in Figure XX.)
(b) Return of theme in flute.
It is but a step from such a recreated recapitulation to a theme transformation such as we find in the last movement of the "Summer Day on the Mountain." This work is not only its composer's masterpiece in the sphere of program music; it is the latest and best of a whole series of works[49] in which he has expressed his love of his native country of the Cévennes in southeastern France. "At this moment," he once wrote in a letter from his château of Faugs, near Boffres in Ardèche, "I see the snowy summits of the Alps, the nearer mountains, the plain of the Rhone, the pine woods that I know so well, and the green, rich harvest which has not yet been gathered. It is a true pleasure to be here after the labors and the vexations of the winter. What they call at Paris 'the artistic world' seems afar off and a trifling thing. Here is true repose, here one feels at the true source of all art."
Figure XXVII.
Finale of "Jour d'Été." Très animé et joyeux
(b)Très lent
The "Jour d'Été à la Montagne," in three movements, "Aurore" ("Dawn"), "Jour—Après-midi sous les pins" ("Day: Afternoon under the Pines") and "Soir" ("Evening"), is characteristic of the composer in that, despite its program, there is in it little scene-painting, such as we find so constantly in Strauss and others. A memorable suggestion of dawn, with its vague shapes in the half-light and its bird songs, in the first movement[50]; a whiff of peasant dance-tune in the second, coming up through the baking heat under the pines; in the third some evening chimes from the valley: that is all. It is the emotional significance of the scene in its varying aspects, its appeal to the sympathies and associations of a poetic observer, that interest the musician. The main theme of the last movement (Figure XXVII, a) thus suggests the joy of life in the bright summer afternoon; its activity depicts no mere external scene, we feel, but reflects the elation of the sensitive heart, witnessing this scene. And when, at the end, after the suggestions of descending night and the distant jangle of chimes tempered by the evening air, the same melody returns in softest sonorities of strings and in quietest motion (Figure XXVII, b), we hear in it again no merely objective facts, but the tranquil evening thoughts of a poet, spiritualized in meditation. Never since he first essayed such theme transformation in a large work, in the "Symphony on a Mountain Theme" of 1886, which M. Paul Dukas called "a single piece in three episodes," has d'Indy been more successful in drawing together the most opposing moods by the single subjective point of view from which they are regarded, as incarnated in a common theme. Never has he written a more characteristic page than that lovely breath of evening tenderness, the meditation of a lover on the world toward which darkness and sleep gently approach.
Figure XXVIII.
(a) Lentement
(b) Animé
(c) Second theme.
(d) Très animé
(e) Très lent
A work in which the cyclic method is applied with almost unparalleled rigor and resourcefulness, and which is therefore worthy of detailed analysis, is the String Quartet in E major,[51] built up from four notes of a Gregorian chant, shown at Figure XXV. The swinging main theme of the first movement, derived from this fragment by a natural rhythmic and tonal proliferation (see Figure XXVIII, b), is not immediately stated, but is rather anticipated tentatively, and gradually allowed to take shape, by a process dear to the composer, first through imitative bits for the different instruments and then through a serious fugato (Figure XXVIII, a). Once achieved it is broadly treated, with a richly conceived tonal digression into E flat major and return. A second theme, of sinuous curve and fluent movement (Figure XXVIII, c), is reached through a transition passage of more animated rhythm. The themes thus stated, development begins: not a perfunctory worrying of the themes such as the "free fantasia" often degenerates into in the hands of composers possessed of neither freedom nor fancy, but a dynamic action and reaction of the themes such as d'Indy conceives development essentially to be. "Development," he says, "is ... the action of the themes and ideas, and consequently their reason for being, since an idea is of value only through the action it is capable of exercising. When there are several ideas ... the development expresses usually all the phases of a struggle between them, with the final triumph of one and submission of the other.... The themes comport themselves like living people: they act and move according to their tendencies, their sentiments, and their passions. These modifications show themselves both in the thematic elements which are elaborated as if to surpass themselves, or are restrained as if to become absorbed, and in the tonal trajectories which orient themselves toward light or toward darkness."[52] It will be seen that in this case the development first (pages 9 and 10) takes the aspect of a quiet presentation of the first theme in dark keys (E flat major, etc.) and then (from index number 10, through the whole of page 11) of a brief recurrence of the second theme and elimination of it with the reviving force of the first, moving through more energetic rhythms and brighter tonalities to final victorious reassertion. The themes are then recapitulated and the movement ends with the beautiful coda we have already examined.
The two middle movements, too complex to analyze in detail, are based on themes strikingly illustrative of what was said a moment ago as to cyclic form arising from the approach to a common theme from different angles, or under the influence of varying moods. That of the scherzo is the theme envisaged playfully (Figure XXVIII, d); that of the slow movement (Figure XXVIII, e) shapes itself in response to a more serious contemplation. It may be pointed out that these are no mere clever or learned jugglings with notes, such as arise sometimes from the abuse of the method; not only are they true textually to the theme, but each is a faithful expression of its own mood; the resulting music accordingly convinces us emotionally as well as intellectually.
The finale is a piece of writing extraordinary for the manifold resources developed out of the original theme, for the bold ingenuity of its polyphonic and rhythmic combinations, and for the variety of its emotional content. Its main theme comes from the original motive by inversion (Figure XXIX, a), and derives a certain amplitude from its three half-note rhythm proceeding deliberately against the more agitated two-four of other parts (especially the viola, at first, with a persistent figure taken also from the theme). Its second theme also traces its ancestry back to the first movement, but in a more elusive way; a comparison of Figure XXIX, b, with Figure XXVIII, c, will reveal the connection. The elaboration of these themes, and of the quaint staccato bridge passage between them, leads to most unexpected combinations. The fugato of the first movement reappears, but now inverted (Figure XXIX, c). At the top of page 58 we find the main theme in the second violin answered canonically by the viola, while the first violin sustains, high above, the original motive. Finally, after the themes have met all manner of vicissitudes and wandered through all sorts of keys, the original motive in its most conclusive form brings the final cadence in E major.
Figure XXIX.
(a) Main theme of Finale of String Quartet.
(b) Second theme.
(c) Fugato lentement