When Pacific 231 was first performed in Paris at Koussevitzky’s concerts, May 8 and 15, 1924, Honegger made this commentary:
“I have always had a passionate love for locomotives. To me they—and I love them passionately as others are passionate in their love for horses or women—are like living creatures.
“What I wanted to express in the Pacific is not the noise of an engine, but the visual impression and the physical sensation of it. These I strove to express by means of a musical composition. Its point of departure is an objective contemplation: quiet respiration of an engine in state of immobility; effort for moving; progressive increase of speed, in order to pass from the ‘lyric’ to the pathetic state of an engine of three hundred tons driven in the night at a speed of one hundred and twenty per hour.
“As a subject I have taken an engine of the ‘Pacific’ type, known as ‘231,’ an engine for heavy trains of high speed.”
Other locomotive engines are classified as “Atlantic,” “Mogul.” The number 231 here refers to the number of the “Pacific’s” wheels 2—3—1.
“On a sort of rhythmic pedal sustained by the violins is built the impressive image of an intelligent monster, a joyous giant.”
Pacific 231 is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, double bassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam, strings.
The locomotive engine has been the theme of strange tales by Dickens, Marcel Schwob, Kipling, and of Zola’s novel, La Bête humaine. It is the hero of Abel Gance’s film, Roué for which it is said Honegger adapted music, and the American film, The Iron Horse.
PAUL MARIE THÉODORE
VINCENT d’INDY
(Born at Paris, March 27, 1852;[34] died at Paris on December 2, 1931)