"A PAGAN POEM," FOR ORCHESTRA AND PIANO: Op. 14
This tone-poem was written originally (in 1901) for a small combination of instruments,[99] and was intended for performance as chamber-music. It was afterwards arranged for two pianos and three trumpets, and was performed in private in this form. In 1905-6 the work was recast in its present shape—for orchestra with piano. Its inspiration is derived from the Eighth Eclogue of Virgil, the subject of which consists of two love-songs, placed in the mouths of Damon and Alphesibœus. The poetic basis of Loeffler's music is found in the second of these love-songs. A Thessalian girl has resorted to magic incantations in the hope that she may bring back to her cottage her truant lover Daphnis. The passage which inspired the mood of the music, and which is quoted as a preface to the score, is as follows (beginning, in the original, at the line Effer aquam, et molli cinge hæc altaria vitta):
"Fetch water forth, and twine the altars here with the soft fillet, and burn resinous twigs and make frankincense, that I may try by magic rites to turn my lover's sense from sanity; nothing is wanting now but the songs.
"Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
"Songs have might, even, to draw down the moon from heaven; with songs Circe transformed the crew of Ulysses; by singing, the cold snake is burst asunder in the meadows.
"Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
"Threefold first I twine about thee these diverse triple-hued threads, and thrice round these altars I draw thine image: an odd number is god's delight.
"Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
"Tie the threefold colors in three knots, Amaryllis, but tie them; and say, 'I tie Venus's bands.'
"Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
"As this clay stiffens and as this wax softens in one and the self-same fire, so let Daphnis do for love of me. Sprinkle barley-meal, and kindle the brittle bay-twigs with bitumen. Cruel Daphnis burns me; I burn this bay at Daphnis.
"Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
"So may Daphnis love, as when the heifer, weary with seeking the steer through woodland and high grove, sinks on the green sedge by a water-brook, in misery, and recks not to retire before the falling night: so may love hold him, nor may I care to heal.
"Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
"This dress he wore of old the traitor left me, dear pledges of himself; which now I even in the doorway, O earth, commit to thee; for these pledges Daphnis is the debt.
"Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
"These herbs, and these poisons gathered in Pontus, Mœris himself gave me; in Pontus they grow thickest. By their might I have often seen Mœris become a wolf and plunge into the forest, often seen him call up souls from their deep graves and transplant the harvests to where they were not sown.
"Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
"Fetch ashes, Amaryllis, out-of-doors, and fling them across thy head into the running brook; and look not back. With these I will assail Daphnis: nothing cares he for gods, nothing for songs.
"Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
"See! the embers on the altar have caught with a flickering flame, themselves, of their own accord, while I delay to fetch them. Be it for good! something there is for sure; and Hylax barks in the doorway. May we believe? or do lovers fashion dreams of their own?
"Forbear: from the city—forbear now, my songs—Daphnis comes." [100]
The refrain—Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim—is intoned by three trumpets behind the scenes.
FOOTNOTES:
[90] La Mort de Tintagiles is one of the Trois petits drames pour marionnettes published in one volume in 1894. The two others were Alladine et Palomides and Intérieur.
[91] The viola d'amore, or viole d'amour, is a member of the now virtually obsolete family of viols. Its characteristic feature is a supplementary set of strings, passing beneath the fingerboard and through holes drilled in the lower part of the bridge, which vibrate sympathetically with the strings actually engaged by the bow. The tone produced is of a singularly rich and beautiful quality. Until Loeffler wrote for it in La Mort de Tintagiles, the only conspicuous modern use of the instrument was by Meyerbeer in his opera Les Huguenots, where it is employed in the accompaniment to Raoul's air in the first act, Plus blanche que la blanche hermine. This obbligato part, written by Meyerbeer especially for Chrétien Urhan (see foot-note on page 39), is now commonly given to an ordinary viola.
[92] This work is issued, as is all of Loeffler's published music, by G. Schirmer.
[93] One of a set of four songs (Timbres Oubliés, Adieu pour jamais, Les Soirs d'Automne, Les Paons), to words by Gustave Kahn, published in 1904 with the title, Quatre Mélodies pour chant et piano (op. 10).
[94] La Bonne Chanson was published in 1870, the year of Verlaine's marriage to Mathilde Mauté. In his Confessions he praises it as "so sincere, so amiably, sweetly, purely thought, so simply written." On another occasion he spoke of it as follows (the English is Mr. Arthur Symons's): "The author values it as perhaps the most natural of his works. Indeed, it was Art, violent or delicate, which had affected to reign, almost exclusively, in his former works, and it was only from then that it was possible to trace in him true and simple views concerning nature, physical and moral.... Life had its way, and distress soon came, not without his own fault, to the household of the poet, who suddenly threw up everything and went wandering in search of unsatisfying distractions." Verlaine and his wife were divorced a few years after their marriage.
[95] Translated by Mr. Philip Hale.
[96] A "canon" is the most strict and rigid form of what musicians call "imitation." In canonic writing, two or more parts, or "voices," take up and repeat, or "imitate," in succession precisely the same phrase or subject. A theme is said to be "inverted" when it is repeated in contrary motion, turned upside-down, as it were, ascending intervals being represented by descending, and vice versa.
[97] An orchestral implement used to produce a bell-like tone.
[98] Maurice Rollinat, a godson of George Sand, was born in Châteauroux, France, in 1853 (some authorities say 1846). He was both poet and composer—though his music has not compelled respect among the knowing. He was a celebrity in Paris during the early eighties, when his volume of poems, Les Névroses, appeared, the volume which contained La Villanelle du Diable. He died in a mad-house at Ivry on October 26, 1903. Two other poems from Les Névroses—L'Étang and La Cornemuse—have suggested music to Loeffler: they form the poetic bases of his two "Rhapsodies" for oboe, viola, and piano, published in 1905.
[99] Piano, two flutes, oboe, clarinet, English horn, two horns in F, three trumpets (behind the scenes), viola, and double-bass.
[100] From the English version of F. W. Mackail, London, 1889.