I
Most typical of the romantic period—more typical even than its art of song—was its orchestral music. Here all that was peculiar to it—individuality, freedom of form, largeness of conception, sensuousness of effect—could find fullest development. The orchestra in its eighteenth-century perfection was a small, compact, well-ordered body of instruments, in which every emphasis was laid on regularity and balance. The orchestra of Liszt’s or Berlioz’s dramatic symphonies was a bewildering collection of individual voices and romantic tone qualities. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that, whereas a Haydn symphony was a chaste design in lines, a Liszt symphony was a gorgeous tapestry of color. Between the two every instrument had been developed to the utmost of tonal eloquence which composers could devise for it. The number of kinds of instruments had been doubled or trebled, thanks partly to Beethoven, and the size of the orchestra in common use had been increased at least once over. The technique of orchestral instruments had increased astonishingly; Schubert’s C major symphony, which was declared unplayable by the orchestra of the Vienna Musikverein, one of the best of the age, is a mere toy compared with Liszt’s or Berlioz’s larger works. Such instruments as the horns and trumpets were greatly improved during the second and third decades of the century, so that they could take a place as independent melodic voices, which had been almost denied them in Beethoven’s time. As an instrument of specific emotional expression the orchestra rose from almost nil to its present position, unrivalled save by the human voice.
It is doubtless true to say that this enlargement resulted from the technical improvements in orchestral instruments and from the increase of instrumental virtuosity, but the converse is much more true. The case is here not so much as with the piano, that an improved instrument tempted a great composer to write for it, but rather that great composers needed more perfect means of expression and therefore stimulated the technicians to greater efforts. For, as we have seen, the musical spirits of the romantic period insisted upon breaking through conventional limitations and expressing what had never before been expressed. They wanted overpowering grandeur of sound, impressive richness of tone, great freedom of form, and constant variety of color. They wanted especially those means which could make possible their dreams of pictorial and descriptive music. Flutes and oboes in pairs and two horns and two trumpets capable of only a partial scale, in addition to the usual strings, were hardly adequate to describe the adventures of Dante in the Inferno. The literary and social life of the time had set composers thinking in grand style, and they insisted upon having the new and improved instruments which they felt they needed, upon forcing manufacturers to inventions which should facilitate complicated and extended passages in the wind, and the performers to the acceptance of these new things and to unheard-of industry in mastering them. Thus the mere external characteristics of romantic orchestral music are highly typical of the spirit of the time.
Perhaps the most typical quality of all is the insistence upon sensuous effect. We have seen how the denizens of the nineteenth century longed to be part of the things that were going on about them, how, basing themselves on the ‘sentimental’ school of Rousseau, they considered a truth unperceived until they had felt it. This distinction between contemplating life and experiencing it is one of the chief distinctions between the classical and the romantic spirit everywhere, and between the attitude of the eighteenth century and that of the nineteenth in particular. When Rousseau offered the feelings of his ‘new Heloïse’ as justification for her conduct, he sent a shock through the intelligent minds of France. He said, in substance: ‘Put yourself in her place and see if you wouldn’t do as she did. Then ask yourself what your philosophic and moral disapproval amounts to.’ Within some fifty years it became quite the craze of polite society to put itself in the new Heloïse’s place, and George Sand did it with an energy which astonished even France.
Now, when one commences thoroughly to reason out life from one’s individual feelings, it becomes necessary to reconstruct philosophy—namely, to construct it ‘from the bottom up,’ from the demands and relations of the individual up to the constitution of the mass. And it is quite natural that when insistence is thus laid on the individual point of view the senses enter into the question far more largely than before. At its most extreme this view comes to an unrestrained license for the senses—a vice typical of Restoration France. But its nobler side was its desire to discover how the other man felt and what his needs were, in place of reasoning on abstract grounds how he ‘ought’ to act. Besides, since the French Revolution people had been experiencing things so incessantly that they had got the habit. After the fall of Napoleon they could not consent to return to a calm observation of events. Rather, it was precisely because external events had calmed down that they so much more needed violent experience in their imaginative and artistic life. The classic tragedies of the French ‘golden age’ were indeed emotional and in high degree, but the emotions were those of types, not of individuals. They were looked on as grand æsthetic spectacles rather than as appeals from one human being to another. It was distinctly bad form to show too much emotion at a tragedy of Racine’s; whereas in the romantic period tears were quite in fashion. However great the human falsity of the romantic dramas, they at least pretended to be expressions of individual emotions, and were received by their audiences as such. The life of a follower of the arts in Paris in the twenties and thirties (or anywhere in Europe, for that matter) was one of laughing and weeping in the joys and sorrows of others, moving from one emotional debauch to another, and taking pride in making the feelings of these creations of art as much as possible one’s own. It was small wonder, then, that musicians did the same; that, in addition to trying to paint pictures and tell stories, they should endeavor to make every stroke of beauty felt by the auditor, and felt in a physical sensuous thrill rather than in a philosophic ‘sense of beauty.’
And nothing could offer the romantic musicians a finer opportunity for all this than the timbres of the orchestra. The soft golden tone of the horn, the brilliant yellow of the trumpet, the luscious green of the oboe, the quiet silver white of the flute seemed to stand ready for the poets of the senses to use at their pleasure. In the vibrating tone of orchestral instruments, even more than in complicated harmonies and appealing melodies, lay their chance for titillating the nerves of a generation hungry for sensuous excitement. But we must remember that if these instruments have poetic and colorful associations to us it is in large measure because there were romantic composers to suggest them. The horn and flute and oboe had been at Haydn’s disposal, yet he was little interested in the sensuous characteristics of them which we feel so acutely. In great measure the poetic and sensuous tone qualities of the modern orchestra were brought out by the romantic composers.
The classical orchestra, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, had originally been based on the ‘string quartet’—namely, the first violins, the second violins, the violas, and the ‘cellos, with the double basses reënforcing the 'cello part. The string section completely supported the musical structure. This was because the strings alone were capable of playing complete and smooth scales and executing all sorts of turns and trills with nearly equal facility. Wind instruments in the eighteenth century were in a very imperfect condition. Some of them, like the trumpets, were capable of no more than eight or ten notes. All suffered from serious and numerous restrictions. Hence they were originally used for giving occasional color or ornamentation to the music which was carried by the strings. About the middle of the century the famous orchestra of the court of Mannheim, under the leadership and stimulus of Cannabich and of the Stamitz family, reached something like a solid equilibrium in the matter of instrumentation, and from its disposition of the strings and wind all later orchestration took its rise. The Mannheim orchestra became renowned for its nuance of effect, and especially for its organized crescendos and diminuendos. The ideal orchestra thus passed on to Haydn and Mozart was a ‘string quartet’ with wood-wind instruments for the occasional doubling of the string parts, and the brass for filling in and emphasizing important chords. Gradually the wood-wind became a separate section of the orchestra, sometimes carrying a whole passage without the aid of strings, and sometimes combining with the string section on equal terms. With this stage modern instrumentation may be said to have begun. The brass had to wait; its individuality was not much developed until Beethoven’s time.
Yet during the period of orchestral development under Haydn and Mozart the strings remained the solid basis for orchestral writing, partly because of their greater practical efficiency, and partly because the reserved character of the violin tone appealed more to the classic sense of moderation. And even with the increased importance of the wood-winds the unit of writing was the group and not the individual instrument (barring occasional special solos). The later history of orchestral writing was one of a gradually increasing importance and independence for the wood-wind section (and later for the brass) and of individualization for each separate instrument. Mozart based his writing upon the Mannheim orchestration and upon Haydn, showing considerable sensitiveness to timbres, especially that of the clarinet. Haydn, in turn, learned from Mozart’s symphonies, and in his later works for the orchestra further developed freedom of writing, being particularly fond of the oboe. Beethoven emancipated all the instruments, making his orchestra a collection of individual voices rather than of groups (though he was necessarily hampered by the technically clumsy brass).
Yet, compared to the writing of Berlioz and Liszt, the classical symphonies were in their orchestration rather dry and monochrome (always making a reservation for the pronounced romantic vein in Beethoven). Haydn and Mozart felt orchestral contrasts, but they used them rather for the sake of variety than for their absolute expressive value. So that, however these composers may have anticipated and prepared the way for the romanticists, the difference between the two orchestral palettes is striking. One might say it was the difference between Raphael’s palette and Rubens’. And in mere externals the romanticists worked on a much larger scale. The string orchestra in Mozart’s time numbered from twenty-two to thirty instruments, and to this were added usually two flutes and two horns, and occasionally clarinets, bassoons, trumpets, and kettle-drums in pairs. Beethoven’s orchestra was little larger than this, and the capabilities of his instruments only slightly greater, but his use of the various instruments as peculiar and individual voices was masterly. All the great composers of the second quarter of the nineteenth century studied his instrumentation and learned from it. But Beethoven, though he sought out the individual character of orchestral voices, did not make them sensuously expressive as Weber and Liszt did. About the time of Beethoven’s death the use of valves made the brass possible as an independent choir, capable of performing most of the ordinary diatonic and accidental notes and of carrying full harmony. But it must be said that even the most radical of the romantic composers, such as Berlioz, did not avail themselves of these improvements as rapidly as they might, and were characteristic rather in their way of thinking for instruments than in their way of writing for them. The valve horns and valve trumpets came into use slowly; Schumann frequently used valve horns plus natural horns, and Berlioz preferred the vulgar cornet à pistons to the improved trumpet.
But the romantic period added many an instrument to the limited orchestra of Mozart and Beethoven. Clarinets and trombones became the usual thing. The horns were increased to four, and the small flute or piccolo, the English horn, and the bass clarinet (or the double bassoon), and the ophicleide became frequent. Various instruments, such as the ‘serpent,’ the harp, and all sorts of drums were freely introduced for special effects.
Berlioz especially loved to introduce unusual instruments, and quantities of them. For his famous ‘Requiem’ he demanded (though he later made concessions): six flutes, four oboes, six clarinets, ten bassoons, thirty-five first and thirty-five second violins, thirty ‘cellos, twenty-five basses, and twelve horns. In the Tuba Mirum he asks for twelve pairs of kettle-drums, tuned to cover the whole diatonic scale and several of the accidentals, and for four separate ‘orchestras,’ placed at the four corners of the stage, and calling for six cornets, five trombones, and two tubas; or five trumpets, six ophicleides, four trombones, four tubas, and the like. His scores are filled with minute directions to the performers, especially to the drummers, who are enjoined to use a certain type of drumstick for particular passages, to place their drum in a certain position, and so on. His directions are curt and precise. Liszt, on the other hand, leaves the matter largely to ‘the gracious coöperation of the director.’
Experimentation with new and sensational effects made life thrilling for these composers. Berlioz recalls with delight in his Memoirs an effect he made with his arrangement of the ‘Rackoczy March’ in Buda Pesth. ‘No sooner,’ says he, ‘did the rumor spread that I had written hony (national) music than Pesth began to ferment. How had I treated it? They feared profanation of that idolized melody which for so many years had made their hearts beat with lust of glory and battle and liberty; all kinds of stories were rife, and at last there came to me M. Horwath, editor of a Hungarian paper, who, unable to curb his curiosity, had gone to inspect my march at the copyist.’
'“I have seen your Rakoczy score,” he said, uneasily.
'“Well?”
'“Well, I feel horribly nervous about it.”
'“Bah! Why?”
'“Your motif is introduced piano, and we are used to hearing it fortissimo.”
'“Yes, by the gypsies. Is that all? Don’t be alarmed. You shall have such a forte as you never heard in your life. You can’t have read the score carefully; remember the end is everything.”
‘All the same, when the day came my throat tightened, as it did in times of great excitement, when this devil of a thing came on. First the trumpets gave out the rhythm, then the flutes and clarinets, with a pizzicato accompaniment of strings—softly outlining the air—the audience remaining calm and judicial. Then, as there came a long crescendo, broken by the dull beats of the big drum (as of distant cannon), a strange restless movement was perceptible among them—and, as the orchestra let itself go in a cataclysm of sweeping fury and thunder, they could contain themselves no longer. Their overcharged souls burst with a tremendous explosion of feeling that raised my hair with terror.’
This bass-drum beat pianissimo ‘as of distant cannon’ has never to this day lost its wild and mysterious potency. But it must not be supposed that the romanticists’ contribution to orchestration consisted mainly in isolated sensational effects. Their work was marvellously thorough and solid. Berlioz in particular had a wizard-like ear for discerning and developing subtleties of timbre. His great work on Orchestration (now somewhat passé but still stimulating and valuable to the student) abounds in the mention of them. He points out the poetic possibilities in the lower registers of the clarinets, little used before his day. He makes his famous notation as to the utterly different tone qualities of one violin and of several violins in unison, as though of different instruments. And so on through hundreds of pages. The scores of the romanticists abound in simple effects, unheard of before their time, which gain their end like magic. Famous examples come readily to mind: the muted violins in the high registers in the ‘Dance of the Sylphs’ from ‘The Damnation of Faust’; the clumsy bassoons for the dance of the ‘rude mechanicals’ in Mendelssohn’s incidental music to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’; the morose viola solo which recurs through Berlioz’s ‘Harold in Italy’; the taps and rolls on the tympani to accompany the speeches of the devil in Der Freischütz or the flutes in their lowest register in the accompaniment to Agathe’s air in the same opera—all these are representative of the richness of poetic imagination and understanding of orchestral possibilities in the composers of the romantic period.