In the romantic period there developed, chiefly at the hands of Mendelssohn, a form peculiarly characteristic of the time—the so-called ‘concert overture.’ This was based on the classic overture for opera or spoken drama, written in sonata form, usually with a slow introduction, but poetic and, to a limited extent, descriptive, and intended purely for concert performance. The models were Beethoven’s overtures, ‘Coriolanus,’ ‘Egmont,’ and, best of all, the ‘Leonore No 3,’ written to introduce a particular opera or drama, it is true, but summing up and in some degree following the course of the drama and having all the ear-marks of the later romantic overture. From a mere prelude intended to establish the prevailing mood of the drama the overture had long since become an independent artistic form. These overtures gained a great popularity in concert, and their possibilities for romantic suggestion were quickly seized upon by the romanticists.
Weber’s overture to Der Freischütz, though written for the opera, may be ranked as a concert overture (it is most frequently heard in that capacity), and along with it the equally fine Euryanthe and Oberon. The first named was a real challenge to the Philistines. The slow introduction, with its horn melody of surpassing loveliness, and the fast movement, introducing the music of the Incantation scene, are thoroughly romantic. Weber’s best known concert overture (in the strict sense), the Jubel Ouvertüre, is of inferior quality.
Schumann, likewise, wrote no overtures not intended for a special drama or a special occasion, but some of his works in this form rank among his best orchestral compositions. Chief among them is the ‘Manfred,’ which depicts the morbid passions in the soul of Byron’s hero, as fine a work in its kind as any of the period. The ‘Genoveva’ overture is fresh and colorful in the style of Weber, and that for Schiller’s ‘Bride of Messina’ is scarcely inferior. Berlioz has to his credit a number of works in this form, mostly dating from his earliest years of creative activity. Best known are the ‘Rob Roy’ (introducing the Scotch tune, ‘Scots Wha’ Hae’) and the Carnival Romain, but the ‘Lear’ and ‘The Corsair,’ inspired by two of his favorite authors, Shakespeare and Byron, are also possessed of his familiar virtues. Another composer who in his day made a name in this form is William Sterndale Bennett, an Englishman who possessed the highest esteem of Mendelssohn and Schumann, and was a valuable part of the musical life of Leipzig in the thirties and later. The best part of his work, now forgotten save in England, is for the piano, but the ‘Parisina’ and ‘Wood Nymphs’ overtures were at one time ranked with those of Mendelssohn. Like all English composers of those times he was inclined to the academic, but his work had much freshness and romantic charm, combined with an admirable sense of form.
But it is Mendelssohn whose place in this field is unrivalled. His ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ overture, written when he was seventeen, has a place on modern concert programs analogous to that of Schubert’s ‘Unfinished Symphony.’ This work is equally the delight of the musical purist and of the untechnical music-lover. It is marked by all Mendelssohn’s finest qualities. Not a measure of it is slipshod or lacking in distinction. Its scoring is deft in the extreme. Its themes are fresh and charming. And upon it all is the polish in which Mendelssohn excelled; no note seems out of place, and none, one feels, could be otherwise than as it is. It is mildly descriptive—as descriptive as Mendelssohn ever was. The three groups of characters in Shakespeare’s play are there—the fairies, the love-stricken mortals, and the rude mechanicals—each with its characteristic melody. The opening chords, high in the wood-wind, set the fanciful tone of the whole. For deft adaptation of the means to the end it has rarely been surpassed in all music. In his other overtures Mendelssohn is even less descriptive, being content to catch the dominant mood of the subject and transmit it into tone in the sonata form. ‘Fingal’s Cave,’ the chief theme of which occurred to him and was noted down on the supposed scene of its subject in Scotland, is equally picturesque in its subject matter, but lacks the buoyant invention of its predecessor. The ‘Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage’ is a masterpiece of restraint. The technical means are exceedingly simple, for in his effort to paint the reigning quiet of his theme Mendelssohn dwells inordinately upon the pure tonic chord. Yet the work never lacks its composer’s customary freshness or sense of perfect proportion. His fourth overture—‘To the Story of the Lovely Melusina’—is only second to the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in popularity. In these works Mendelssohn is at his best; only the ‘Elijah’ and the violin concerto equally deserve long life and frequent repetition. For the overtures best show Mendelssohn the synthesist. In them he has caught absolutely the more refined spirit of romanticism, with its emphasis on tone coloring and its association of literary ideas, and has developed it in a classic mold as perfect as anything in music. Nowhere else do the dominating musical ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries come to such an amicable meeting ground.
IV
Yet this ‘controlled romanticism,’ which Mendelssohn doubtless hoped would found a school, had little historical result. The frenzied spirits of the time needed some more vigorous stimulation, and those who had vitality sufficient to make history were not the ones to be guided by an academic gourmet. The Mendelssohn concert overtures are a pleasant by-path in music; they by no means strike a note to ring down the corridors of time. ‘Controlled romanticism’ was not the message for Mendelssohn’s age; for this age was essentially militant, smashing idols and blazing new paths, and nothing could feed its appetite save bitter fruit.
This bitter fruit it had in full measure in Berlioz’s romantic symphonies, as in Liszt’s symphonic poems. Of the true romantic symphonies the most remarkable is Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, one of the most astonishing productions in the whole history of music. It seems safe to say that in historical fruitfulness this work ranks with three or four others of the greatest—Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo, in 1607; Wagner’s Tristan, and what else? The Fantastique created program music; it made an art form of the dramatic symphony (including the not yet invented symphonic poem and all forms of free and story-telling symphonic works). At the same time it gave artistic existence to the leit-motif, or representative theme, the most fruitful single musical invention of the nineteenth century.
The Fantastique seems to have no ancestry; there is nothing in previous musical literature to which more than the vaguest parallel can be drawn, and there is nothing in Berlioz’s previous works to indicate that he had the power to take a new idea—two new ideas—out of the sky and work them out with such mature mastery. One might have expected a period of experimentation. One might at least expect the work to be the logical outcome of experiments by other men. But Berlioz had no true ancestor in this form; he had no more than chance forerunners.
Nevertheless program music, or at least descriptive music, in some form or other, is nearly as old as music itself. We have part-songs dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which imitate the cuckoo’s call, or the songs of other birds. Jannequin, contemporary with Palestrina, wrote a piece descriptive of the battle of Marignan, fought between the French and the Swiss in 1515. Even Bach joins the other program composers with his ‘Caprice on the departure of his brother,’ in which the posthorn is imitated. Couperin gave picturesque titles to nearly all his compositions, and Rameau wrote a delightful piece for harpsichord, suggestively called ‘The Hen.’ Many of Haydn’s symphonies have titles which add materially to the poetry of the music. Beethoven admitted that he never composed without some definite image in mind. His ‘Pastoral Symphony’ is so well known that it need only be mentioned, though strict theorists may deny it a place with program music on the plea that, in the composer’s own words, it is ‘rather the recording of impressions than painting.’ Yet Beethoven wrote one piece of downright program music in the strict sense, for his ‘Battle of Vittoria’ frankly sets out to describe one of the battles of the Napoleonic wars. It is, however, pure hack work, one of the few works of the master which might have been composed by a mediocre man. It is of a sort of debased program music which was much in fashion at the time, easy and silly stuff which pretended to describe anything from a landscape up to the battle of Waterloo. The instances of imitative music in Haydn’s ‘Creation’ are well known. Coming down to later times we find the ophicleide imitating the braying of the ass in Mendelssohn’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ overture, and since then few composers, however reserved in manner and classic in taste, have wholly disdained it.
Yet all this long, even distinguished, history does not fully prepare the way for the program music of Berlioz. It is not likely that he was familiar with much of it. And even if he had been he could have found no programmistic form or idea ready at hand for his program pieces. The program music idea was rather ‘in the air’ than in specific musical works. From the literary romanticists’ theory of the mixing of the genres and the mingling of the arts his lively mind no doubt drew a hint. And the influence of his teacher, Lesueur, at the Conservatory must be reckoned on. Lesueur was something of a radical and apostle of program music in his day, having been, in fact, relieved of his duties as director of music in Notre Dame because he insisted upon attuning men’s minds to piety by means of ‘picturesque and descriptive’ performances of the Mass. Program music! Here was a true forerunner of Berlioz—a very bad boy in a very solemn church. Perhaps this accounts for Berlioz’s veneration of his teacher, one of the few men who doesn’t figure somewhat disgracefully in the Memoirs. At any rate, the young revolutionist found in Lesueur a sympathetic spirit such as is rarely to be found in conservatories.