The orchestra and orchestral music

by W. J. Henderson

PART V

How Orchestral Music Grew

XVI
From Bach to Haydn

A book on the orchestra might be regarded as complete without this chapter, yet it seems to the author that a few suggestions as to the nature and aims of the different kinds of orchestral music heard at concerts may not be unwelcome to the reader. It is always desirable to know what to listen for in a musical composition, because many disappointments are thus avoided. A person who hopes to hear in a Bach fugue the gorgeous masses of tone which are characteristic of a contemporaneous orchestral piece, will certainly declare Bach to be a dry and uninteresting composer. Equally he who hopes to discover in Rimsky-Korsakow’s “Scheherezade” suite the intellectual development of the Eighth Symphony, will assert that the talented Russian is no composer at all.

The compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) lie a little to one side of the direct path of orchestral development, and many of them were contemporaneous with works which are in form and treatment of a more modern style. Nevertheless, Bach’s works mark the epoch from which any review of orchestral music must start. During the Middle Ages the artistic composers of music were almost wholly absorbed in writing for the Roman Catholic Church. Their compositions were for voices without accompaniment, and consisted of great Gothic structures of polyphonic music. In this kind of music every voice was at the same instant engaged in singing different parts of the same melody, the melody being so cunningly made that these different phrases, when heard together, would produce harmony. It was late in the sixteenth century that instrumental music began to develop independently, and the composers employed for it the same style as they had used in their church masses. Early instrumental music is polyphonic, and the full and final development of this style of composition is found in the fugues and concerti grossi of Bach. Handel also wrote concerti grossi, and they, too, partake of the polyphonic character.

The essential trait of this kind of music is the interweaving of the various melodic voice-parts and the effects obtained by their working against one another. Polyphonic writing is the most profound and serious style of composition, and it is also that which best endures the test of time. Modern composers have fully realized that fact and have introduced a new polyphony into their works. It is what is called free counterpoint, by which is meant the working together of several voices which do not sing different parts of the same melody at the same time, but only at points suitable to the composer’s purpose, while at other points new melodic ideas may be introduced. But in the early polyphonic music the listener will hear chiefly the interweaving of voice-parts of the same melody, and he will miss all the beauty and intellectual finish of these works if he seeks simply for the sensuous sweetness of instrumental tints. Usually the orchestral color is distinguished by sobriety, and the profoundly thoughtful nature of contrapuntal music causes a general austerity of instrumental diction. I have already mentioned the historical fact that orchestral tone-coloring began with Mozart. But this was necessarily the case, for the early contrapuntal writers were too wholly absorbed in the development of form to study the resources of color. The operatic writers were the first to seek for color-effects, just as they were the first to use abrupt changes of rhythm and startling dissonances in their search after dramatic expression.

The working out of formal perfection filled the early classic as well as the late polyphonic period, but the form was different. With the birth of opera there entered into modern music a new power, that of the vocal solo with subordinate accompaniment; and composers at once sought for a new form in which they could cast their melodic ideas so that they would be interesting and artistic when sung by one voice instead of several. The development of these monophonic forms occupied the early classical composers. They obtained their most pregnant suggestion from the operatic aria da capo. In this kind of song there are three sections, the first and third being the same melody, and the middle one being different and contrasting. This form suggested to instrumental composers the cycle, which lies at the foundation of most instrumental compositions of the classic period. The classic overture, for example, consisted of three movements (without breaks), slow, fast, and slow, or fast, slow, and fast. And it was customary to repeat in the last one the principal melodic idea of the first. The first movement of a symphony or a piano sonata (for a symphony is a sonata for orchestra) is built on a similar plan. Certain melodic ideas, called themes or subjects, are set forth in the first section. Then follows a middle section called the free fantasia or “working-out,” and in this the melodic subject-matter is literally worked out. It is submitted to various processes of musical development, such as changes of harmony, changes of rhythm, different instrumental treatments, polyphonic expression, etc., till there is nothing more to say, and then the third section restates the original matter in its first shape and adds a coda (tail-piece), by which the movement is brought to a conclusion. The development of this form was aided by the instrumental suite, a form which consisted of series of dances of different kinds. These suites helped the symphonic composers to perceive the value of alternating different sorts of movements, so that symphonies began with an allegro, constructed on the cyclical pattern just described, and continued with an adagio, a minuet, and a finale.

The development of this form occupied the attention of instrumental composers from, say the publication of Corelli’s first sonata (so-called), in 1685, till the close of the seventeenth century. By that time it was fully developed, and was ready for such modifications as might be suggested by the entrance of a new purpose into the field of instrumental composition. The symphonies of Haydn and Mozart and the first two of Beethoven belong to this period of the development of the symphonic form, which is also known as the Classic Period.

The lover of music who desires to listen with intelligence and to bring the faculty of judgment to the guidance of his fancy, should study the history of music, because from an acquaintance with that subject he will acquire a correct point of view. It is impossible in the limits of two short chapters in a volume of this size to do more than indicate in the most general manner the salient points in the development of orchestral music. Therefore, I must content myself with inviting the reader to note that these two early periods of musical history, the Polyphonic and the Classic, were occupied chiefly with the labors of composers engaged in the establishment of methods. Two general classes of forms, the polyphonic and the monophonic, were developed, and the manner of elaborating musical ideas and of instrumental technic suitable to each was fairly established. But it cannot be said that the early classic composers advanced beyond the exclusively musical limits of their art. The music-lover will look in vain for the note of profound human emotion in the symphonies of Haydn and Mozart.

The dramatic power of unsupported instrumental music had not yet been felt by composers, because they were engaged, not in studying the capacity of their art for the symbolism of ideas extraneous to itself, but in exploring its purely æsthetic resources. Music was still to them an end, not a means. They sought only for beauty, and they aimed at producing it by the employment of the technical details of forms and idioms peculiar to their own art. While the polyphonic writers had utilized the interweaving of different parts of the same melody, the classic composers exercised their taste, ingenuity, and feeling in developing melodic subjects in a vocal solo style, with a support of harmonies built on chords, of which the melody was an inseparable part. Their orchestral method differed from that of the polyphonic school because their manner of composing compelled a change. Bach’s way of using every instrument as a solo voice was no longer available. The melodic subjects of a symphony must always predominate. Now they flow to us from the strings, now from the wood, again from the brass; but always with chord harmonies. Hence, we find the classic composers using wind-instruments in pairs and making different combinations of the various groups of instruments, so that simultaneously with the process of thematic development and working-out (which is the drawing of the symphonic tone-picture), there is a constant change of the color-scheme, and thus the melodic and harmonic details are heightened by a judicious use of the tonal qualities of the voices which sing them to us. The skill of composers in using these tonal qualities and the technical expertness of orchestral players grew so fast that in the course of time, as we shall see, they came to a position of undue prominence in orchestral music; but this state of affairs was largely hastened by the employment of vivid color-effects by the romanticists in their endeavors to obtain dramatic utterance from the orchestra.

The music-lover who listens to orchestral music of the classic period must not expect anything but a clear and perspicuous presentation of music for its own sake. Sunny transparency is the chief characteristic of the instrumentation of Haydn and Mozart, while the technical construction of their works makes it incumbent upon the listener to follow the purely musical working-out of the subjects announced. The instrumental color-scheme is neither wide nor brilliant, but it is as admirably adapted to the subject-matter as the subdued greens of Corot are to his peaceful bucolic scenes. To appreciate thoroughly the works of Haydn and Mozart a music-lover should have the fundamental principles of musical form at his fingers’ ends, and he should know the voices of the instruments. The rest is child’s play. The knowledge of musical form is indispensable to the right enjoyment of all music, but it is peculiarly necessary in these classic works, in which pure beauty of form was the ultimate object.

XVII
From Beethoven to Richard Strauss

Of the early classic writers only Haydn and Mozart have survived the test of time, and neither of them figures frequently in contemporaneous concert programmes. This is a pity, for their music would often serve as a corrective to a taste which is inclined to clamor ceaselessly for “ginger hot i’ the mouth.” But it is beyond dispute that the romantic composers awaken more sympathetic chords in the modern bosom. Beethoven is the connecting link between the classic and romantic schools.

His First and Second Symphonies belong to the former; the rest to the latter. The modern romantic school of music sprang from Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony, his opera “Fidelio,” Schubert’s marvellous songs, and Weber’s “Der Freischütz.” In so far as purely orchestral music is concerned, however, Beethoven was the master of them all. It was he who first showed musicians how to project emotion through the orchestral melos. If Mendelssohn’s fanciful little piano pieces are songs without words, then Beethoven’s Third, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh symphonies are dramas without text.

In form and technical method these works follow the general plan of the classic symphonies of Haydn and Mozart. Indeed, the C minor symphony of Beethoven is the finest and most fully developed specimen of that form. But Beethoven made certain changes which came from the nature of his search after emotional expression. He modulated into foreign keys with greater freedom than his predecessors, and he made wider gaps between the keys of his successive movements. A complex and changeful harmonic basis has always been associated with emotional expression in music. Simple harmonies are restful, peaceful, and suggestive of serenity of the soul; frequent modulations and unfinished cadences express uneasiness of mind—largely because they create it.

In addition to this advance, Beethoven also found it possible to knit the melodic structure of his works much more firmly. He introduced his second subjects, for instance, by means of transitional passages made out of some of the materials of his first subjects. His working-out processes were infinitely broader and grander than those of his predecessors, and they invariably led to strenuous and stimulating climaxes, not found in the earlier symphonies. Beethoven substituted for the old minuet movement the scherzo, which resembles the minuet in form, but differs wholly from it in spirit. The word scherzo means “jest,” and the movement was at first intended to be humorous or playful; but Beethoven sometimes gave it the grim mystery of tragic suspense, as in the Fifth Symphony.

Beethoven’s manner of instrumentation has already been discussed to some extent. It is necessary only to add that it shows a profounder insight into the special character of each instrument than that of any writer who preceded him. This was the result of the composer’s search after influential emotional expression, and of his complete dependence for it upon his instruments. The advances of Beethoven in the treatment of orchestral forms led the romantic composers to perceive that they could make still larger changes without infringing the fundamental laws upon which the artistic development of musical ideas proceeded.

Robert Schumann’s symphonies are notable examples of the methods adopted by the romantic writers. His symphony in D minor is intended to be played without any pauses between the consecutive movements, and melodic material introduced in one movement is employed in the development of another. Thus the principal theme of the first movement recurs in a significantly modified form in the last, and an idea heard in the introduction is repeated with much meaning in the scherzo.

These innovations were the direct result of attempts to give to music a more definite emotional force, and they were brought about by Beethoven’s convincing demonstration of the dramatic expressiveness of orchestral music. The highly wrought overtures of Weber, as well as those of Beethoven, had an additional value in showing later composers how to utilize the suggestive power of a title in combination with characteristic methods of instrumental utterance. Haydn, in his “Creation,” had invented some of the now conventional figures of orchestral utterance, such as the rolling of waves and the raging of storms. Beethoven’s storm in the “Pastoral” symphony went farther, and, mild as it sounds now, was a remarkable achievement in its day. Spohr began to write symphonies with descriptive titles such as the “Leonore” (founded on a poem by Burger) and “The Power of Sound.” Mendelssohn wrote descriptive overtures such as “Fingal’s Cave,” and in his “Midsummer Night’s Dream” music suggested how far the purely illustrative powers of orchestral song might go.

It required very little experimenting in this kind of composition to show musicians that the prescribed forms of the classic symphony and overture were unsuited to it. It was quite impossible to embody in music, developed strictly on lines designed for the exploitation of pure musical beauty, a series of emotions which moved according to wholly different laws. The famous pianist, Franz Liszt, to meet the requirements of the new school, invented the symphonic poem, a composition symphonic in style, but smaller in extent and without any pause between the movements. These are welded together by connecting matter which causes the passage from one to the other to be barely perceptible. The movements themselves are distributed wholly according to the sequence of the principal emotional moods of the story which is to be illustrated. The fundamental laws of musical form are, of course, observed; but conventional formulæ are not followed.

Liszt employed all the symphonic devices of thematic development in his symphonic poems, and his immediate imitators followed his example. But many later composers have abandoned almost the whole symphonic scheme, so that the works of the first masters of the romantic school belong to a period of transition between the late classicists and the ultra-romanticists of our time.

The reader must not understand me as intending to say that the form of the classic symphony has been universally abandoned. On the contrary, one of the most agreeable of living composers, Antonin Dvořák, clings to it, and there are many others who still find that they can say all they wish to say through the medium used by Beethoven. Brahms was the finest recent exponent of the classic symphony. But there is undoubtedly a growing tendency among composers to make their orchestral works vast color-pictures. The themes in these works are subjected to little or no real musical development, but are brought forward again and again in new instrumental garbs, and instead of reaching climaxes by devices of melodic evolution, the composers aim at producing dramatic effects by imposing or vivid instrumental coloring.

At the same time these composers employ a most complex polyphony, for their scores teem with melodic utterance in all the principal voices. Richard Strauss, of Munich, is the leading writer of this school of orchestral colorists. His works show supreme mastery of the technics of orchestration, the most intimate acquaintance with the special characteristics of the various instruments, and a really remarkable knowledge of the results to be gained by the mixture of tone-tints. It is the opinion of the present writer that Strauss seeks to express in music things which cannot, and some which ought not, to be so expressed; but that is a matter which need not be discussed here. It is undeniable that in form and treatment this composer’s works are in the direct line of the general tendency of orchestral music in our day, and it is equally undeniable that his mastery of the technics of the present style of writing is greater than that of any other composer.

I have endeavored in this brief survey of orchestral music to show the reader how it began with the most rigid and logical forms, in which the laws of thematic evolution were applied with the intent to attain purely musical beauty; and how, as the technics of instrumentation became better understood, the employment of instrumental coloring led composers away from rigorous thematic development toward a species of composition in which dramatic effects were obtained by a more free method of construction and a larger use of color-effects.

From this we appear at present to be passing into a period in which these color-effects alone are to be called upon as the means of orchestral expression.

It is quite impossible for us who are contemporaneous with this new school to decide as to its value. It is enough for us to recognize its tendencies and watch their evolution. What I have attempted to do in this chapter is to point out briefly to the reader the salient traits of the orchestral music of the different periods, to the end that in listening he might endeavor to find his enjoyment where the composer intended that he should find it, and not be disappointed from an unwise attempt to find it somewhere else. The observant music-lover will find, I think, that the development of orchestration has been perfectly normal, and that the instrumentation of each period is perfectly fitted to its music. A symphony of Mozart orchestrated in the Richard Strauss style would be a tinted Venus; while a tone poem of Strauss scored à la Mozart would be like one of Cropsey’s autumn landscapes reduced to the dead level of a pen-and-ink drawing. It is largely because of this organic union between music and its orchestral garb that the amateur ought to strive to understand the nature and purpose of orchestration. The addition to his enjoyment of all orchestral music will be far more than sufficient to pay for the labor of the study.