Op. 59 is a Doumka, a rustic Russian scene for piano solo. Op. 60 consists of a dozen romances for voice, and op. 61 is the delightful fourth orchestral suite, Mozarteana, in which Tschaïkowsky testified in a lively manner to his love for Mozart. He has utilized the Ave Verum in a striking way, and not even Gounod himself was ever so saturated with the Mozartean feeling as the Russian composer in this suite. It is a great favorite.
The Pezzo Capriccioso is numbered op. 62 and is for violoncello, with orchestral accompaniment. It is as wayward and Slavic as anything Tschaïkowsky ever wrote, ending in mid air, as is occasionally his wont. More songs comprise op. 63, and the opus that follows, 64, is the fifth symphony in E minor. It is the most Russian of all his symphonies and its basis is undoubtedly composed of folksongs. Its pregnant motto in the andante, which is intoned by the clarinets, is sombre, world weary, and in the allegro the theme, while livelier and evidently bucolic, is not without its sardonic tinge. The entire first movement is masterly in its management of the variation, the episodical matter, the various permutations in the Durchführung all being weighed to the note and every note a telling one. Not themes for a symphony in the classic sense, Dvorák thinks, yet not without power, if lacking in nobility and elevation of character. But what an impassioned romance the French horn sings in the second movement! It is the very apotheosis of a night of nightingales, soft and seldom footed dells, a soft moon and dreaming tree-leaves. Its tune sinks a shaft into your heart and hot from your heart comes a response; the horizon is low, heaven is near earth and carking life beyond, forgotten in the fringes and shadows. Some pages of perfect writing follow; the oboe and the horn in tender converse, and you can never forget those first six bars; all youth, all love is clamoring in them.
How that slow valse, with its lugubrious bassoon and its capering violins in the trio, affects one! A sorrowful jesting, quite in the Russian style. It is a country where the peasants tell a joke with the tears streaming down their faces and if the vodka is sufficiently fiery, will dance at a funeral. The clatter and swirl of the finale is deafening, the motto in the major key is sounded shrill, and through the movement there is noise and confusion, a hurly-burly of peasants thumping their wooden shoes and yelling like drunken maniacs. All the romance, all the world-weariness has fled to covert, and the composer is at his worst with the seven devils he has brought to his newly garnished mansion. It is this shocking want of taste that offends his warmest admirers, and his skill in painting revelries is more accentuated than Hogarth’s. Certainly you can never affix the moral tag.
Tschaïkowsky is often possessed by these devils, and then the whole apparatus of his orchestra is shivered and shaken. His chromatic contrapuntal scales on the heavy brass, his middle voices never at peace, the whir and rush of the fiddles and the drumming and clash of cymbals are the outward evidence of the unquiet Calmuck man beneath the skin of Peter Ilyitch. That he can say obscure things I am willing to swear, and his neurotic energy is tremendous. This fifth symphony has its weak points; structurally it is not strong, and the substitution of the valse for the familiar scherzo is not defensible in the eyes of the formalists. But there are moments of pure beauty, and the mixing of hues, despite the Asiatic violence, is deft and to the ear bewildering and bewitching.
Just here I should like to make a digression and examine more fully the predecessor of the symphony in E minor, the fourth in F minor. In symmetry, beauty of musical ideas, suavity, indeed in general workmanship, it is not always the equal of the fifth symphonic work, but in one instance this may be qualified: The first movement is full of abounding passion, is more fluent in expression than the first allegro of the fifth symphony.
The theme in the introduction of the F minor symphony bears a strong resemblance to the opening of Schumann’s B flat symphony, but not in rhythm. It is used in several movements later as a sort of leading motive or perhaps to give an impression of organic unity. The theme proper is romantic in the extreme and charged to the full with passion and suspense. The halting, syncopated phrases, the dramatic intensity, the whirl of colors, moods and situations are all characteristic.
The episode which follows the principal theme can hardly be called a theme; it is a bridge, a transition to the second subject. Tschaïkowsky can sometimes be very Gallic, for Gounod is suggested—a phrase from the tomb music in Roméo et Juliette—but is momentary. Musically this first movement is the best of the four, more naïve, full of abandon and blood-stirring episodes.
The second movement in B flat minor, andantino in modo di canzona, is a tender, sad little melody in eighth notes, embroidered by runs in the woodwind—Cossack counterpoint. It has a sense of remoteness and dreary resignation. It is uncompromisingly Slavic. It is said to be the actual transcription of a Russian bargeman’s refrain. This is treated in a variant fashion—the second subsidiary in A flat being delivered by clarinets and fagottes, a middle part piu mosso in F, the whole concluding with the fagotte intoning the first melody. Sombre it is and not the equal in romantic beauty of the lulling horn solo in the slow movement of the E minor symphony.
The scherzo allegro in F, plucked by the string choir, is deficient in musical depth, but its novel workmanship fixes one’s attention. It is called a pizzicato ostinato, although the pizzicati are not continuous. It is full of a grim sort of humor, and the trio for woodwind, oboes and fagottes is rollicking and pastoral. The third theme—smothered staccato chords for brass with sinister drum taps—is thoroughly original and reminds us of the entrance of Fortinbras in the composer’s Hamlet. The working out is slim but clever.
The last movement in F is a triumph of constructive skill, for it is literally built on an unpretentious phrase of a measure and a half. It is all noisy, brilliant, interesting, but not of necessity symphonic. The main theme, almost interminably varied, is not new. It may be found in a baritone solo, Mozart’s Escape from the Seraglio, and in a slightly transformed shape it lurks in the romanza of Schumann’s Faschingschwank aus Wien. Tschaïkowsky’s wonderful contrapuntal skill and piquancy of orchestration invest this finale with meaning.