Philip Hale's Boston Symphony Programme Notes

by Philip Hale

SYMPHONY NO. 2, IN B MINOR, OP. 5

I. Allegro moderato II. Molto vivo III. Andante IV. Allegro

Only a Russian can do justice to this music, which is wildly Russian; that is to say, the Russia of the Orient. One is tempted, hearing the repetitions of the first leading theme, a motto phrase it may be called, to say with Hamlet: “Leave thy damnable faces and begin,” but the monotony of repetition becomes irrepressive. A Russian critic was reminded more than once in the course of the first and last movements of the ancient Russian knights in their awkwardness, also in their greatness. We are told that Borodin intended to portray them in tones. He himself said that in the slow movement he wished to recall the songs of Slav troubadours; to picture in the first movement the gatherings of princes, and in the finale the banquets of heroes where the Russian Guzla and bamboo flute were heard while the mighty men caroused. It is easy in the lyrical passages to be reminded of corresponding phrases in Prince Igor, nor is this surprising, for he was working on the symphony and the opera at the same time. He was then obsessed by the life of feudal Russia.

No composer can be called great simply because he is a nationalist in his music. The folk tunes of a nation have often worked damage to the composer relying on them for his themes, and content with the mere exposition of them. Rimsky-Korsakov and Moussorgsky were nationalists, but their music passed the frontier; it gives pleasure in every country. Is Borodin to be ranked with them?

Eric Blom, speaking of Borodin as a pioneer, remembers how he was once condemned as an “incompetent amateur who wrote hideous discords because he did not know the rules of harmony”—an unwarranted and foolish condemnation, as unjust as Tchaikovsky’s characterization in the bitter letter he wrote to Mme von Meck in 1878 the year after this symphony was first heard. Admitting that Borodin had talent, “a very great talent,” he said that it had come to nothing for the want of teaching, “because blind fate has led him into the science laboratories instead of a vital musical existence.” The reference was to Borodin’s fame as a chemist at the Academy of Medicine. This was written when Tchaikovsky was accused of that atrocious crime, cosmopolitanism, by his fellow laborers in the Russian vineyard.

There are pages of splendid savagery in this symphony; there are a few wild, haunting melodies. No, the composer of the two symphonies, one at least of the string quartets, and a handful of exquisite songs is not to be flippantly dismissed.

Borodin’s Symphony in B minor was written during the years 1871-77. The first performance was at St. Petersburg in the Hall of the Nobility, February 14, 1877, and Eduard Napravnik was the conductor.

Borodin’s First symphony, in E flat major, was begun in 1862 and completed in 1867. Stassov furnished him with the scenario of a libretto founded on an epic and national poem, the story of Prince Igor. This poem told of the expedition of Russian princes against the Polovtsi, a nomadic people of the same origin as the Turks, who had invaded the Russian Empire in the twelfth century. The conflict of Russian and Asiatic nationalities delighted Borodin, and he began to write his own libretto. He tried to live in the atmosphere of the bygone century. He read the poems and the songs that had come down from the people of that period; he collected folk songs even from Central Asia; he introduced in the libretto comic characters to give contrast to romantic situations; and he began to compose the music, when at the end of a year he was seized with profound discouragement. His friends said to him: “The time has gone by to write operas on historic or legendary subjects; today it is necessary to treat the modern drama.” When anyone deplored in his presence the loss of so much material, he replied that this material would go into a second symphony. He began work on this symphony, and the first movement was completed in the autumn of 1871. But the director of the Russian opera wished to produce an operatic ballet, Mlada. The subject was of an epoch before Christianity. The fourth act was intrusted to Borodin: it included religious scenes, apparitions of the ghosts of old Slavonic princes, an inundation, and the destruction of a temple; and human interest was supplied by a love scene. Faithful to his theories, Borodin began to study the manners and the religion of this people. He composed feverishly and did not leave his room for days at a time. Although the work was prepared by the composers—Minkus was to write the ballet music, and Borodin, Cui, Moussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov the vocal music—the scenery demanded such an expense that the production was postponed, and Borodin began work again on his Second symphony and Prince Igor. He worked under disadvantages: his wife, Catherine Sergeïevna Protopopova (she died August 9, 1887), an excellent pianist, was an invalid, and his own health was wretched. In 1877 he wrote: “We old sinners, as always, are in the whirlwind of life—professional duty, science, art. We hurry on and do not reach the goal. Time flies like an express train. The beard grows gray, wrinkles make deeper hollows. We begin a hundred different things. Shall we ever finish any of them? I am always a poet in my soul, and I nourish the hope of leading my opera to the last measure, and yet I often mock at myself. I advance slowly, and there are great gaps in my work.”

Borodin in a letter (January 31, 1877) to his friend, Mme Ludmilla Ivanovna Karmalina, to whom he told his hopes, disappointments, enthusiasms, wrote: “The Musical Society had determined to perform my Second symphony at one of its concerts. I was in the country and did not know this fact. When I came back to St. Petersburg, I could not find the first movement and the finale. The score of these movements was lost; I had without doubt mislaid it. I hunted everywhere, but could not find it; yet the Society insisted, and there was hardly time to have the parts copied. What should I do? To crown all, I fell sick. I could not shuffle the thing off, and I was obliged to reorchestrate my symphony. Nailed to my bed by fever, I wrote the score in pencil. My copy was not ready in time, and my symphony will not be performed till the next concert. My two symphonies then will be performed in the same week. Never has a professor of the Academy of Medicine and Surgery been found in such a box!”

The Second symphony was at first unsuccessful. Ivanov wrote in the Nouveau Temps: “Hearing this music, you are reminded of the ancient Russian knights in all their awkwardness and also in all their greatness. There is heaviness even in the lyric and tender passages. These massive forms are at times tiresome; they crush the hearer.” But Stassov tells us that Borodin endeavored by this music to portray the knights. “Like Glinka, Borodin is an epic poet. He is not less national than Glinka, but the Oriental element plays with him the part it plays for Glinka, Dargomijsky, Balakirev, Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov. He belongs to the composers of programme music. He can say with Glinka: ‘For my limitless imagination I must have a precise and given text.’” Of Borodin’s two symphonies the second is the greater work, and it owes its force to the maturity of the composer’s talent, but especially to the national character with which it is impregnated by the programme. The old heroic Russian form dominates it as it does Prince Igor.

The symphony is scored for three flutes (and piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, three kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, harp, and the usual strings.

It appears from the score that this symphony was edited by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazounov.

I. Allegro, B minor, 2-2. The first movement opens with a vigorous theme given out by the strings in unison, while bassoons and horns reinforce each alternate measure. This theme may be taken for the motto of the movement, and it is heard in every section of it. Another motive, animato assai, is given to the wood-wind. After the alternation of these two musical thoughts, the expressive second theme, poco meno mosso, 3-2 time, is introduced by the violoncellos, and afterward by the wood-wind. The vigorous first theme is soon heard again from the full orchestra. There is development. The time changes from 2-2 to 3-2, but the motto dominates with a development of the first measure of the second subject. This material is worked at length. A pedal point, with persistent rhythm for the drum, leads to the recapitulation section, in which the theme undergoes certain modifications. The coda, animato assai, is built on the motto.

II. Scherzo, prestissimo, F major, 1-1 time. There are a few introductory measures with repeated notes for first and second horn. The chief theme is followed by a new thought (syncopated unison of all the strings). This alternates with the first theme.

Trio: Allegretto, 6-4. A melody for the oboe is repeated by the clarinet, and triangle and harp come in on each alternate half of every measure. This material is developed. The first part of the movement is repeated, and the coda ends pianissimo.

III. Andante, D flat major, 4-4. There are introductory measures in which a clarinet is accompanied by the harp. A horn sings the song of the old troubadours. Poco animato. There is a tremolo for strings, and the opening melody, changed somewhat, is heard from wood-wind instruments and horns. Poco più animato, 3-4. A new thought is given to the strings with a chromatic progression in the bass. After the climax the opening theme returns (strings), and the movement ends with the little clarinet solo. Then comes, without a pause, the

IV. Finale. Allegro, B major, 3-4. The movement is in sonata form. There is an introduction. The chief theme, forte, is given to the full orchestra. It is in 5-4. The second subject, less tumultuous, is given to clarinet, followed by flute and oboe. The chief theme is developed, lento, in the trombones and tuba, and in a more lively manner by strings and wood-wind. The second subject is developed, first by strings, then by full orchestra. The recapitulation section is preceded by the introductory material for the opening of the movement.

JOHANNES
BRAHMS

(Born at Hamburg, May 7, 1833; died at Vienna, April 3, 1897)

Those who like to know about composers as human beings rejoice in the knowledge that Beethoven was irascible, the despair of his landladies, given to rough joking; that Haydn was nagged by his shrew of a wife and fell in love in London with a widow; that Mozart was fond of punch and billiards; that César Franck’s trousers were too short. There are many anecdotes about the great, some of them no doubt apocryphal.

In the excellent biography of Brahms by Walter Niemann[17] there is an entertaining chapter entitled “Brahms as a Man.”

He was not fussy in his dress. At home he went about in a flannel shirt, trousers, a detachable white collar, no cravat, slippers. In the country he was happy in a flannel shirt and alpaca jacket, carrying a soft felt hat in his hand, and in bad weather wearing on his shoulders an old-fashioned bluish-green shawl, fastened in front by a huge pin. (In the ’sixties many New Englanders on their perilous journeys to Boston or New York wore a shawl.) He preferred a modest restaurant to a hotel table d’hôte. In his music room were pictures of a few composers, engravings—the Sistine Madonna among them—the portrait of Cherubini, by Ingres, with a veiled Muse crowning the composer—“I cannot stand that female,” Brahms said to his landlady—a bronze relief of Bismarck, always crowned with laurel. There was a square piano on which a volume of Bach was usually standing open. On the cover lay notebooks, writing tablets, calendars, cigar cases, spectacles, purses, watches, keys, portfolios, recently published books and music, also souvenirs of his travels. He was passionately patriotic, interested in politics, a firm believer in German unity. He deeply regretted that he had not done military service as a young man. Prussia should be the North German predominant power.

A Viennese musician once said that whenever he heard one of Brahms’ symphonies he was inclined to prefer it to the other three; but he was a passionate Brahmsite. The second has a freshness and a spontaneity that are perhaps not found in the others, though the third presses it hard in these respects; but there is a rugged grandeur in the first that puts it above the others.

Professor Schweizerhoffsteinlein, the celebrated Wagnerite, once said: “To me, however many movements there are in an orchestral work of Johannes Brahms, to me—hear me once—there are only two: he makes the first, and I make the second.” But the eminent professor was no doubt unjust toward Brahms, in his clumsy ponderous way.

The sensuousness of Brahms is cerebral; it might be called Platonic. There are various kinds of sensuousness in music, as in human life. Some years ago Joséphin Péladan, the fantastical Sar of dark corners, likened the music of Brahms to a gypsy woman dancing in tight-fitting corsets. He detected “latent heat beneath the formal exterior.”