III
Strauss's characterization is consummate. Superlatives are dangerous, but probably no other musician has ever carried to such a point the power of music to depict, or at least, to suggest, varieties of character, both in human beings and in inanimate objects. Strauss's reported remark that music was becoming so definite that we should soon be able to portray a tablespoon so unmistakably that it could be told from the rest of the silverware is probably an instance of his sardonic delight in hoaxing the public; but if anyone is going to subject the art of tones to this curious test, we are all agreed, doubtless, that it should be Strauss himself. Meanwhile, failing a tablespoon, we have a sufficiently varied collection of portraits in his gallery, each sketched with a Sargent-like penetration.
We have seen, for example, in Figure Ia, Till Eulenspiegel the arch mischief-maker, irrepressible, incorrigible. Here, on the other hand, is Till sentimental, making love to a village maiden, his original insolence tamed into a simpering persuasiveness, his theme, at first so galvanic, now languishing in its plaintive downward droopings (Figure II, page 57). Later we see him, repulsed by the maiden, storming in ungovernable fury.[7]
Figure II. "Till" in love.
Figure III. Don Quixote, the knight of the sorrowful visage.
Here, again, belonging to a quite other world, is Don Quixote, "the knight of the sorrowful visage," aging and broken, yet full of chivalrous and idealistic notions, and thus at once inspiring and pathetic (Figure III, page 57). What a contrast is his rascal of a servant, Sancho Panza, good-natured and irresponsible, sauntering through life with a minimum of effort and a maximum of diversion:
Figure IV. Sancho Panza.
We find a somewhat similar principle of contrast, though between very different types of character, in the themes of the husband and the wife in the "Symphonia Domestica." The latter has been cited at Figure Ie. Its suggestion of coy graciousness and feminine charm is due in part to the tender downward inflections of the opening figure, and partly to the anacrustic rhythm (beginning with unaccented notes). The theme of the husband, with which the work opens, starts out with an "inversion" of this three-note figure of the wife: the motives complementary to each other, so to speak, as if Strauss had wished to suggest the reciprocal relation of marriage. Yet the rising inflection and the falling rhythm of the husband version give it a vigor that completely differentiates it from the other, even if we ignore for the moment the effect of the contrasting keys of F major and B major, a matter of which we shall have more to say presently.
The subtlety of the composer's use of rhythm for characterization can hardly be exaggerated. It almost justifies the extreme detail of his annotator's analyses, as for example of Mr. Wilhelm Klatte's diagnosis of the hero's character in "Ein Heldenleben." This reads like an old-fashioned phrenological chart. Mr. Klatte finds in his hero "a genial nature, emotional and vibratory" (measures 1-6 and 9-12 of the opening theme), a "haughty and firm step" (measures 6-8), and an "indomitable will" (measures 13-16). Furthermore the continuation in B major and A flat, Mr. Klatte tells us, shows that the paragon has "richness of fantasy, warmth and elasticity of feeling, allied with lightness of movement—whose tendency is always toward buoyancy and onward and upward effort, thus imparting an effect of inflexible and well-directed determination instead of low-spirited or sullen obstinacy." Mr. Klatte makes a considerable demand on our powers of credence. Yet we must be reluctant to place limits to a power of rhythmo-melodic suggestion that can give us such extremes of opposed character as the naïve innocence of the "Childhood" motive in "Tod und Verklärung," and the degenerate superstition and pathological fear of Herodias, with her eerie whole-tone scale, in "Salome."
Highly characteristic of Strauss, both in its subtle use of rhythmo-melodic characterization and in the rather malicious quality of its humor, is the "Science" section in "Also Sprach Zarathustra." This powerful if over-ambitious work deals with a matter that can hardly be put into music, even by Strauss: with the opposition, namely, between the Christian ideal of self-abnegation and Nietzsche's philosophy of self-fulfilment. In this particular section of it Strauss is trying to suggest the dustiness, mustiness, and inconclusiveness of "Science" from the standpoint of the passions; this he does by making a frightfully complicated fugue from his main theme. How slyly does he here satirize science! How to the life does his fugue theme, starting off boldly in C major and square-cut rhythm, and presently wandering into chromatic harmonies and indecisive triplets, symbolize the initial arrogance and final futility of scholastic systems!
Figure V.
"Of Science." Fugue theme from "Also Sprach Zarathustra."
In the use of harmony for characterization Strauss is no less skilful than in the more important matters of melody and rhythm. The essential quality of his harmony is perhaps less "ultra-modern" than is sometimes supposed. In spite of the sensational innovations of "Salome" and "Elektra," he is so intensely German in feeling and so well founded on the German classics that the nucleus of his harmonic system is the diatonic scale, simple and rugged. One thinks of such powerful themes as that of "Transfiguration" or the "Hero" as the essential Strauss. Even "Salome" has its Jochanaan, and the "Symphonia Domestica" is surprisingly diatonic. Strauss is more nearly related to the virile Wagner of "Die Meistersinger" than to that other more sensuous Wagner of "Tristan und Isolde." Of course, there are wondrously expressive chromatic passages in Strauss, as for instance the "Grablied" in "Zarathustra"; but on the whole his musical foundation is tonic-and-dominant, like Mozart's, Beethoven's, and Brahms's.
Figure VI.
Cadence from "Don Quixote."
It is in the boldly imaginative and unconventional arrangement of simple material that Strauss gets his most striking harmonic effects. Plain "triads" and "dominant sevenths," the small musical change of hack composers, turn to gold in his hands. The touchingly expressive cadence of Don Quixote's theme will illustrate. The material is of the most ordinary, yet the effect is magical and its dramatic appropriateness surprising. In the words of Mr. Arthur Kahn,[8] "These confused harmonic windings through which the central chords of the previously established key are reached, characterize strikingly the well-known tendency of Don Quixote towards false conclusions. He goes carefully out of the way of natural sequences and palpable facts, in order not to demolish therewith his fancy structures."
Strauss has carried this principle of the close juxtaposition of chords more or less foreign to each other, and even of different keys, to greater and greater lengths in his more recent works, and to the effects of "queerness" which result when these foreign tonal groups quickly follow each other, and of more or less extreme dissonance when they occur simultaneously, he owes much of the violently adverse criticism to which he has been subjected. Indeed, nothing has more retarded his general acceptance than these abrupt transitions and unaccustomed discordancies. The matter is of sufficient importance to intelligent appreciation of him to justify a brief digression here. For any composer who conceives music as a number of melodies proceeding together in greater or less amity, but preserving the measure of independence that individuality and vigorous movement demand—and Strauss is to a peculiar degree such a polyphonic composer—a certain amount of physical harshness at moments when the melodies happen to clash is not only unavoidable but positively desirable, as tending to throw each into relief. According to the degree of his experience the listener follows the composer in this respect: that is, he accepts with something more than passive endurance, yes, with active pleasure, the physically disagreeable clashes (dissonances) which by setting off the differing contours of the melodies emphasize for him their mental and emotional appeal; but not—and the point is of prime importance to the would-be music-lover—not if he does not follow the melodies, that is, not if he cannot hear consecutively as well as moment by moment—for it is only by following the threads, so to speak, that we can untangle the knots. Accordingly most untrained listeners dislike, probably, music that contains many of these knots, the presence of which makes it so interesting and exciting to the experienced ear. The woman who confessed to her piano teacher that she did not like Bach's Two-part Inventions because they were so "ugly" was not less cultivated but only more frank than many who have not discovered that Bach has to be heard "horizontally" (to borrow a figure from musical notation) rather than "vertically."
This gift of horizontal hearing is peculiarly necessary to anyone who would disentangle the tonal knots in which Strauss delights, working as he does with many more than two voices and with the vast fund of harmonic possibilities accumulated since Bach's day to draw upon. And he is not the man to use his resources timidly, or to make any concessions to laziness or inexperience in his listeners. Here is a reduction of a passage from "Ein Heldenleben" to its essential elements.
Figure VII.
The heavy brass gives the foundation harmonies; the strings and woodwind have an upward-moving melody, and the eight horns blare forth at the same time a slower-moving downward melody. If we read almost any single chord vertically, we shall find it has its measure of harshness, sometimes considerable. If we listen to the coherent voices, none of these dissonances will trouble us in the least. This is a very simple example of what Strauss is constantly doing in a far more complex way.[9]
It is a real difficulty in the way of Strauss appreciation that while only familiarity can enable us to follow the intricate windings of the threads that make up his gorgeously rich fabrics, frequent hearings of his later and more complex symphonic poems are not to be had, even in the large cities. In the meanwhile we have no recourse but piano arrangements, unsatisfactory for two reasons. In the first place, it is physically impossible to play with two hands even a respectable fraction of the melodies that Strauss delights to elaborate for two hundred; and four-hand versions are better only in degree, not in kind. Secondly, piano versions fail us precisely in this matter of unraveling dissonance, since by reducing a colored pattern to monochrome they diminish the salience of the lines we are trying to follow, and by juxtaposing in one tone-quality tones that in the orchestra are softened by difference of timbre they notably increase the physical harshness of the combinations. Obviously, then, we must be exceedingly chary of condemning Strauss, or any other composer, for orchestral dissonance that we have either become acquainted with insufficiently, or only through piano arrangements.
After making these subtractions, however, there undoubtedly remain many puzzling clashes of tone in Strauss's scores, which can be accounted for only as introduced either for color or for dramatic expression.
The use of dissonance for the sake of color enrichment is a familiar proceeding in modern music, especially in that of impressionistic type like Debussy's and Ravel's. Such use is essentially decorative. To a more or less clearly defined harmonic nucleus are added softer tones, clashing with it, and thus forming about it an aura or atmosphere elsewhere compared to the mist which softens the outlines of the landscape.[10] Strauss is too fond of clear outlines and solid mass to employ these impressionistic methods habitually, or even frequently; but when he does, it is with his usual skill and daring. The theme of the silver rose in "Der Rosenkavalier" is the inevitable example: the last pages of the score are crowded with those silvery, scarcely audible triads of celesta and flutes, shifting and settling on the stronger G major chord like snowflakes on a leaf (Figure VIII, page 70).
Figure VIII.
The silver rose motive, from "Der Rosenkavalier."
Delicious as are these shimmerings, a use of dissonance on the whole more characteristic of the masculine nature of Strauss is the harsher, more insistent juxtaposition of clashing tones for the sake of their potency in the expression of the tragic, the gruesome, or the abnormal. Naturally this is pushed furthest in the treatment of such pathological subjects as "Salome" and "Elektra," where its effect is carefully enhanced by contrast with strong or clear consonant harmonies—"Salome" has its Jochanaan and "Elektra" its Chrysothemis. The close juxtaposition of foreign tone groups, either successive or simultaneous, is carried to great lengths in these operas. The theme of the chattering Jews in "Salome" is an example of the successive, as is the curious succession of the chords of F minor and B minor at Chrysothemis' entrance in "Elektra."[11]
The simultaneous kind was foreshadowed in the famous ending of "Also Sprach Zarathustra," where the woodwind instruments sound the chord of B major against the softly plucked C of the strings; but we have to go to the operas again to find it carried to its logical and sometimes cruel extreme. There we find alien triads marching uneasily together in double harness;[12] dominant sevenths similarly shackled;[13] and strange passages in which the upper parts move naturally, but above a dislocated bass.[14] Such procedures, which, it must always be remembered, because of differences in tone quality between instruments of different families, sound far less harsh in the orchestra than on the piano, even if they are no less queer musically, can theoretically be carried to any extent. How far Strauss sometimes carries them, a single example must suffice to show.
Figure IX.
Passage from "Elektra," vocal score, page 63.
Whether one "likes" such passages as this or not is of course a question of taste. But one thing at least is certain: it will not do to charge Strauss with mere musical anarchy in writing them—his work as a whole shows too keen a sense of the traditional harmonic values. That æsthetic insensibility, posing as "freedom from rules," "independence," "liberalism," and the like, to which in the minds of so many modern composers all keys are the same, is happily not one of his failings. That he has the keenest possible sense of the individual qualities of the different keys, and of the structural importance of their interrelationships, each one of his long series of symphonic poems has by its masterly design shown afresh. How remarkable, for example, is the antithesis of C, minor and major, and B, minor and major, which is the constructive principle of "Also Sprach Zarathustra!" How interesting is the choice of F major for the easy-going husband in the "Symphonia Domestica," and of the keener, more brilliant B major for the wife! And how this strong tonal sense not only guides the design as a whole, but suggests endless charming and imaginative details! At the end of the lullaby, in the same work, when the child has fallen asleep and the music has sunk to a tranquil G minor chord, this quietude is irradiated by a flash of B major and three notes of the wife-theme,—the loving tenderness of the waking and watching mother over the sleeping infant. Twice this happens, and each time the somnolent G minor returns. Thus does genius use tonality.
Being thus brought back to consider how Strauss uses all the elements of music, even this subtlest one of contrasting tonalities, in the interest of characterization, we may ponder with profit one final interpretation which might seem over-ingenious had we not the example of Mr. Klatte to spur our critical imaginations. Why is it that we so seldom hear the four tones of Till Eulenspiegel's main theme on any other degrees of the scale than A, F, B, C? Why is it that, in spite of the constant movement from key to key of the music, this theme is hardly ever carried also into the new key?[15] Why does Strauss so insist on this A, F, B, C, not only when the music is in F major, but when, as at Till's anger, it is in D minor, when, as in the procession of the burghers, it is in A minor, and when, just before the return of the main theme, it is in C major? Why always A, F, B, C, whatever the key? Is it not because Till, half-witted, perverse, self-imprisoned, is not subject to social influences, and remains unplastically himself, whatever his environment? To transpose a theme into the key prevailing at the moment is to make order—but Till represents disorder.... Such at least is the ingenious explanation of a woman who understands character as well as Strauss understands keys.