“THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS,” SUITE, FIVE PICTURES FROM LEWIS CARROLL, OP. 12
Ia. Dedication Ib. The Garden of Live Flowers II. Jabberwocky III. Looking-Glass Insects IV. The White Knight
It is a pleasure to find an American composer of talent who is willing to write music that is cheerful, not portentous; whose fancy is delicate; who uses a large orchestra discreetly, not chiefly to make a thunderous noise. Mr. Taylor for his inspiration went to a book that for years has pleased children from the tender age to that of white hair; he did not ransack the Grecian or the Scandinavian mythology; he had no thesis, no exposition of colors; he did not attempt to portray in music cave life and the rude rites of primitive man. Nor did he strive painfully to be ultra-modern in the French, Italian, or German manner. He remembered Lewis Carroll’s story. Pleasant and amusing musical thoughts came into his head, and he expressed them musically, without laboring after transliteration. Even his narration of the Jabberwock’s fate is not too realistic, and in this movement the measures that may be taken to picture the peaceful scene while the hero waited “with vorpal sword” in hand by the Tumtum tree the approach of the fearful monster are charged with poetic beauty. Charming also is the “Dedication.” The whole work shows genuine fancy, a gift of expression in an individual manner. Whether without titles the music would identify this or that episode is not to the point. The suite is frankly programme music, but of the better kind; natural, not pretentious; amusing, but as a man of talent amuses first himself, then those who are privileged to be with him.
This suite, inspired by Through the Looking-Glass, by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-98), was written in 1917-19 for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, pianoforte, and strings. It was produced in this form at a concert of the New York Chamber Music Society in New York on February 18, 1919. The suite was then in three movements. In September, 1921, Mr. Taylor began to revise the suite for full orchestra. He added “The Garden of Live Flowers.” The first performance of the revised work was by the New York Symphony Orchestra in Brooklyn, March 10, 1923. The performance was repeated in New York the following afternoon.
The score, dedicated “To Katharine Moore Taylor from a difficult son,” calls for these instruments: three flutes (and piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, double bassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, a set of three kettledrums, snare drum, tambourine, cymbals, triangle, glockenspiel, xylophone, pianoforte, and strings.
When the suite was produced by the Symphony Society of New York, the programme contained a description by Mr. Taylor:
“The suite needs no extended analysis. It is based on Lewis Carroll’s immortal nonsense fairy tale, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, and the five pictures it presents will, if all goes well, be readily recognizable to lovers of the book. There are four movements, the first being subdivided into two connected parts.”
Ia. Dedication
Carroll precedes the tale with a charming poetical foreword, the first stanza of which the music aims to express. It runs: