Western ears are sometimes sadly tried by the uncouth harmonic progressions and by the savagery of the moods of this symphony. Symphony perhaps in the narrow meaning of the term it is not. A wordless music drama it could be better styled. All the keen, poignant feeling, the rapidity of incident, the cumulative horror of some mighty drama of the soul, with its changeful coloring and superb climax are here set forth and sung by the various instruments of the orchestra, which assumes the rôle of the personages in this unspoken tragedy.
How intensely eloquent in this form is Tschaïkowsky, and what a wondrous art it is that out of the windless air of the concert room can weave such epical sorrow, joy, love and madness!
Op. 65 brings us to six romances for voice and piano, and op. 66 the ballet of La Belle au Bois Dormant. Op. 67 is the Hamlet overture fantaisie, which evidently finds its form in Wagner’s unsurpassable Eine Faust overture. It is remarkable in that it begins in A minor and closes in F minor. There seems to be little attempt to paint the conventional Hamlet mood, the mood of atrabiliary sluggishness and frenetic intellection, but rather hints of the bloody side of Shakespeare’s purple melodrama. In it stalks the apparition, and the witching hour of midnight booms to the bitter end. There is the pathetic lunacy of Ophelia—a lovely theme limns her—and there is turmoil and fretting of spirit. At the close I am pleased to imagine the figure of Fortinbras thinly etched by staccato brass and the rest, that is silence to the noble spirit who o’ercrowed himself, is sounded in thunder that may be heard in the hollow hills. It is not Tschaïkowsky’s most masterly effort in the form, but it is masterly withal, and its mastery is mixed with the alloy of the sensational.
Op. 68 is an opera in three acts, La Dame de Pique; op. 69, Yolande, opera in one act; op. 70, the lovely Souvenir de Florence, a sextuor for two violins, two altos and two ’celli. It is Tschaïkowsky at his happiest and he makes simple strings vibrate with more colors than the rainbow. Op. 71 is Casse-Noisette, a two-act ballet, a suite that has often been played here. It is dainty, piquant and bizarre. Op. 72 consists of eighteen pieces for piano solo, variously called Impromptu, Berçeuse, Tendres Reproches, Danse Caractéristique, Méditation, Mazurque pour Danser, Polacca de Concert, Dialogue, Un Poco di Schumann, Scherzo Fantaisie, Valse Bluette, L’Espiègle, Écho Rustique, Chant Élégiaque, Un Poco di Chopin, Valse à Cinqtemps, Passé Lointan and Scène Dansante, which last bears the sub-title of Invitation au Trepak.
These pieces are of value; many are graceful and suitable for the salon. The polacca and the scherzo are more pretentious and might be played in public. The imitations of Schumann and Chopin are clever. It must be confessed, however, that Tschaïkowsky often bundles the commonplace and the graceful and does not write agreeably for the piano. Rubinstein surpassed him in this respect. There is always a certain want of sympathy for the technical exigencies of the instrument and the suavely facile and the bristling difficult are often contiguous. There is no mistaking Tschaïkowsky’s handiwork in these pieces, the longest of which, the scherzo, is twenty-one pages and quite trying. The most brilliant is the polacca.
It cannot be denied that the composer must have boiled numerous pots with his piano pieces, many of them are so trivial, so artificial and vapid. Op. 73 is six melodies for voice, and in these are four vocal romances without opus number. I have not said much about the songs, although they are Tschaïkowsky’s richest lyric offerings. Some are redolent of the sentimentality of the salon, but there are a few that are masterpieces in miniature. Pourquoi, words by Heine, in German Warum sind denn die Rosen so Blass? is popular, not without justice, while Nur wer die Sehnsucht Kennt is fit to keep company with the best songs of Schubert, Schumann, Franz and Brahms. In intensity of feeling and in the repressed tragic note this song has few peers. It is a microcosm of the whole Romantic movement.
Among the unclassified works I find a cantata with Russian words, three choruses of the Russian Church, the choruses of Bortiansky, revised and annotated by Tschaïkowsky in nine volumes; an Ave Maria for mezzo soprano or baritone, with piano or organ accompaniment; Le Caprice D’Oksane, opera in four acts; Jeanne D’Arc, opera in four acts and six tableaux; Mazeppa, opera in three acts; La Tscharodeika, La Magicienne ou la Charmeuse, opera in four acts, and Hamlet—the overture I have already spoken of,—which consists of overture, melodrames, marches and entr’acts, regular music for the play. Then there is the Mouvement Perpétuel, from Weber’s C major sonata, arranged for the left hand—Brahms has had an imitator—and an impromptu caprice for piano. Tschaïkowsky has also made a Manual of Harmony in Russian. The richness and variety of this composer’s music is remarkable. Not coming into the world with any especially novel word to speak or doctrine to expound, he nevertheless has been gladly heard for his sincerity—a tremendous sincerity—and his passionate, almost crazy intensity. If you were to ask me his chief quality I should not speak of his scholarship, which is profound enough, nor of his charm, nor of the originality of his tunes, but upon his great, his overwhelming temperament—his almost savage, sensual, morbid, half mad musical temperament—I should insist, for it is his dominant note; it suffuses every bar he has written, and even overflows his most effortless production.
The history of the symphonic Ballade called Voyévode is interesting. In 1891 Tschaïkowsky gave the work a rehearsal and, not liking it, tossed the score into the fire. It was rescued in a semi-charred condition by his pupil, Siloti, the pianist. It has no opus number, but through internal evidence it may safely be called an early and immature work of the composer. This ballade, with its crude realism, its weakness in thematic material and above all its imitative instrumentation, strongly savoring of Wagner, may be classed as a youthful sketch worked over. The programme is a dramatic one. The music attempts to depict the jealousy of a chieftain, who, finding his young wife in the arms of another, shoots her. But the bullet never reaches her heart, for the servant he has commanded to fire on the lover misses his aim—purposely perhaps—and the Voyévode is killed instead. The poem is by Pushkin. Tschaïkowsky has succeeded in writing a vigorous, even rough, dramatic episode, in which the galloping of the chieftain’s horse as he returns from the war, the amorous scene in the garden and the catastrophe are all fairly well pictured. Melodramatic is the word that best describes this music, which contains in solution many of Tschaïkowsky’s most admirable characteristics. The bassoon is heard, with its sinister chuckle, and there is a richness of fancy and warmth of color in the love music, sensuous and sweet, but lacking in distinction, that we look for in this master. The sharp staccato chord that symbolizes shooting is sensational. The close is evidently suggested by Siegfried’s Funeral March. The garden music is from the second act of Tristan and Isolde. Indeed, Wagner is continually hinted at in the orchestration. Tschaïkowsky’s freedom from Wagner’s influence, as hitherto evidenced in his other and more important works, leads us to surmise that this is the effort of a beginner. It has historical interest and shows us the dramatic trend of the Russian’s mind, but as absolute music it is not many degrees removed from the barbaric “1812” overture solennelle. It was first played here in the autumn of 1897 by the Symphony Society under Mr. Walter Damrosch.
I still have left for review the Roméo et Juliette overture-fantaisie without opus number, the sixth symphony, op. 74, in B minor, and the third piano concerto in E flat, op. 75. The Jurgenson catalogue goes no further than op. 74, so the piano concerto is posthumous. An unpublished piano nocturne is announced for early publication; that ends the list.