ORCHESTRAL SUITE NO. 2, IN E MINOR, “INDIAN,” OP. 48
I. Legend II. Love Song III. In War Time IV. Dirge V. Village Festival
The music has the characteristic force and tenderness of this composer when he was writing for himself and not directly for the general public. It is not necessary to lug in any question of whether this be distinctively American music, for the best pages of the suite are not parochial—they are not national.
They are universal in their appeal to sensitive hearers of any land. The movements that are the most poetically imaginative, that have the greatest distinction, are the “Legend,” “In War Time,” and above all the “Dirge.” Music like this would honor any composer of whatever race he might be.
This lamentation might be that of the dying race. There is nothing of the luxury of woe; there is no conventional music for “threadbare crape and tears.” There is the dignity of man who has been familiar with nature, who has known the voices of the day and of the night on lonely prairie and in somber forest. There is serene yielding to fate.
This suite was composed in 1891-92. The first performance in public was by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, January 23, 1896.
The Indian themes used in the suite are as follows:
1. First theme, Iroquois. There is also a small Chippewa theme.
2. Iowa love song.
3. A well-known song among tribes of the Atlantic coast. There is a Dacota theme, and there are characteristic features of the Iroquois scalp dance.
4. Kiowa (woman’s song of mourning for her absent son).
5. Women’s dance, war song, both Iroquois.
The suite is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, a set of three kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals, and strings.
I. “Legend”: Not fast; with much dignity and character, E minor, 2-2. It has been said that this movement was suggested to the composer by Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s Indian legend, “Miantowona”; but MacDowell took no pains to follow Aldrich’s poem incident by incident, nor to tell any particular story; “the poem merely suggested to him to write something of a similar character in music.”
II. “Love Song”: Not fast; tenderly, A major, 6-8. One chief theme, which is announced immediately by the wood-wind, is developed, with the use of two subsidiary phrases, one a sort of response from the strings, the other a more assertive melody, first given out in D minor by wood-wind instruments.
III. “In War Time”: With rough vigor, almost savagely, D minor, 2-4. The chief theme is played by two flutes, in unison, unaccompanied. Two clarinets, in unison and without accompaniment, answer in a subsidiary theme. This material is worked out elaborately in a form that has the characteristics of the rondo. The rhythm changes frequently towards the end from 2-4 to 6-8 and back again.
IV. “Dirge”: Dirge-like, mournfully, in G minor, 4-4. The mournful chief theme is given out by muted violins in unison, which are soon strengthened by the violas, against repetitions of the tonic note G by piccolo, flutes, and two muted horns, one on the stage, the other behind the scenes, with occasional full harmony in groups of wind instruments. “The intimate relation between this theme and that of the first movement is not to be overlooked. It is answered by the horn behind the scenes over full harmony in the lower strings, the passage closing with a quaint concluding phrase of the oboe.” The development of this theme fills the short movement.
V. “Village Festival”: Swift and light, in E major, 2-4. Several related themes are developed. All of them are more or less derived from that of the first movement. There are lively dance rhythms. “But here also the composer has been at no pains to suggest any of the specific concomitants of Indian festivities; he has only written a movement in which merrymakings of the sort are musically suggested.”
GUSTAV
MAHLER
(Born at Kalischt in Bohemia, on July 7, 1860; died at Vienna on May 18, 1911)
Those who without undue prejudice discuss Mahler the composer, admitting his faults, discussing them at length, dwelling on undeniable fine qualities, assert that his artistic life was greater than his own musical works, which, greatly planned, did not attain fulfillment and were often imitative. The sincerity of the composer was never doubted; the failure to secure that for which he strove is therefore the more pathetic.
He was of an intensely nervous nature. His life as a conductor—and he was a great conductor—the feverish atmosphere of the opera house, his going from city to city until his ability was recognized in Vienna and later at the Metropolitan, the death of a dearly loved child, the fact that he was a Jew, who had turned Catholic: these, with musical intrigues and controversies from which he suffered, gave him no mental or esthetic poise. It was his ambition to continue the work of men he revered, Beethoven and Wagner. In spite of his indisputable talent he was not the man to do this. In the nearer approaches to the ideal that was in his mind he was simply an imitator; not a convincing, not even a plausible one.
One has found through his symphonies restlessness that at times becomes hysterical; reminders of Wagner, Berlioz, Strauss; melodies in folk-song vein, often naïve, at times beautiful, but introduced as at random and quickly thrown aside; an overemployment of the wood-winds, used too often as solo instruments; passages for the brass which recall the fact that as a child Mahler delighted in military bands. Sudden changes from screaming outbursts to thin and inconsequential instrumentation; trivial moments when the hearer anticipates the movement of a country dance; diffuseness, prolixity that becomes boresome; an unwillingness to bring speech to an end; seldom genuine power or eloquence; yet here and there measures that linger in the memory.