Weber: Invitation to the Dance, Op. 65
Critics have generally ascribed to this composition the honor of inaugurating a new and important department in the realm of tonal creation—namely, that of descriptive or program music; that is to say, music which attempts to embody in tone something more than mere ideal beauty of metrical form and rhythmic symmetry, and to express something more than vague emotional states, too intangible for utterance in words; music which conveys not only sensuous pleasure and indefinite moods, but a distinct, realistic suggestion; which gives, against a background of harmony, with its general emotional coloring, an actual picture of some scene in nature or experience in life; music, in a word, which takes its place in line with the advanced position of the other arts, in progress toward dramatic truth and worthy realism. Descriptive music, like landscape painting, has been the latest, and in some respects the loftiest, phase of the art to be developed.
We can scarcely with justice credit to Weber, as a strictly original departure, the opening of this new path in the domain of musical art, which was in modern times to lead so far and to such important and magnificent results. Descriptive music, of a more or less pronounced character, had already appeared from time to time, though rarely so labeled, and mostly in detached fragments, in the works of most of the greatest composers, preëminently in those of Haydn, Mozart, Gluck, and Beethoven. Even the austere Handel was not entirely free from occasional digressions into this field. But we may safely ascribe to Weber the honor of being one of the first to have the full courage of his convictions and to declare himself boldly for this phase of creative art, by giving to this distinctly descriptive composition an unmistakably descriptive title, thus fearlessly unveiling and emphasizing its realistic intentions.
The work opens with a simple but serious passage of recitative in single notes, in the baritone register, conveying the “Invitation to the Dance” as if by a mellow masculine voice. Then comes the reply, in a soft soprano, brief, kindly, but as if offering some playful objection, as the lady, true to her sex, waits to be asked a second time before saying yes. The invitation is repeated more urgently, followed by the assenting treble, as the lady steps upon the floor on the arm of her partner. A brief dialogue ensues, in which the two voices can be distinctly traced by their differing registers, alternating and interwoven, as the pair pace the polished floor, exchanging those airy nothings of the ball-room. Then the orchestra enters, with a passage of brilliant resonant chords, full of spirited life and gay challenge, calling the dancers to their places, and the waltz proper begins. Its crisp, piquant rhythm and free elasticity of movement, its bright, graceful melody and cheerful major harmony, all express youthful elation, fresh, joyous excitement, thoughtless, hence unmixed, gaiety.
As the steps and the pulses quicken, there comes on that exhilaration of mood familiar to all dancers, caused by the lights, the flowers, the perfumes, the music, the gay costumes, the beauty and the gallantry of a ball-room, the rhythmic exercise of the muscles and free circulation of the blood, all acting together to produce upon the senses and the fancy an effect amounting almost to intoxication; an echo of which is awakened in every breast, which has felt it often and keenly, on catching a strain of distant dance music, to the end of life. This mood is depicted in the composition before us by an exuberance of runs and ornamentation, following the first simple enunciation of the waltz melody.
After rising to quite a little climax of ecstasy, this mood lapses abruptly into the second waltz theme, slower, more lyric, dreamy, languorous, almost melancholy in tone, conveying that impression which every susceptible person feels, to the verge of rising tears, after listening long to waltz music, which is quite different from its first inspiring effect, and which every devoted dancer feels equally surely in the prolonged waltz. The time has come when one has grown so accustomed to the waltz movement as to be scarcely conscious of it, seems rather, in a state of rhythmic rest, to be floating on the atmosphere, which ebbs and flows to a three-four measure. Thoughts, breath, pulses, flying feet, the murmur of voices, all existence has adapted itself to this waltz tempo, as to its normal element, and the very planets seem to swing through space in triple rhythm. The true waltz has but two moods, which touch the opposite poles of emotion—that of joyous elation and of dreamy languor. We may call them the Allegro and the Penseroso of the waltz. And Weber, in the “Invitation to the Dance,” has recognized this and woven his composition of but two themes, representing the contrasting phases of feeling described.
In the midst of the second warm and sinuous melody, we hear again the masculine voice, in less conventional accents, and the soft responses of the treble, through quite a colloquy, while the accompaniment keeps ever steadily to the undulating waltz movement, till the two voices merge gradually into the general murmur and are drowned in the flourishes of the orchestra, as our couple disappears in the whirl, with which the waltz, taking up again the first sparkling melody with accelerated pace, draws with increasing confusion to its close. When the dance has ceased, and the orchestra is silent, the introductory theme recurs, as the gentleman leads his lady to a seat and expresses his thanks with the sedate courtesy of his first greeting; and thus ends this charming composition and this glimpse into that gay social world, where the hand some, talented, but rather dissolute young composer was only too great a favorite in his early years.
In spite of a certain baldness and primitive naïveté noticeable in the treatment at times, the “Invitation to the Dance,” so widely and justly popular, is one of Weber’s ablest pianoforte compositions, both from a musical and a dramatic standpoint. Regarded from that of pure music, it is especially interesting from the fact that it was the first composition to raise the waltz, used up to that time only as an accompaniment for dancing, to the level of legitimate and recognized artistic musical forms. In the hands of Schubert, Chopin, Strauss, Rubinstein, and Moszkowski, these successive kings of the waltz, it has since reached its present development.
The “Invitation to the Dance” was written a few months after Weber’s happy marriage with the opera singer, Caroline Brandt, and is dedicated to “My Caroline.”