A book on the orchestra might be regarded as complete without this chapter, yet it seems to the author that a few suggestions as to the nature and aims of the different kinds of orchestral music heard at concerts may not be unwelcome to the reader. It is always desirable to know what to listen for in a musical composition, because many disappointments are thus avoided. A person who hopes to hear in a Bach fugue the gorgeous masses of tone which are characteristic of a contemporaneous orchestral piece, will certainly declare Bach to be a dry and uninteresting composer. Equally he who hopes to discover in Rimsky-Korsakow’s “Scheherezade” suite the intellectual development of the Eighth Symphony, will assert that the talented Russian is no composer at all.
The compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) lie a little to one side of the direct path of orchestral development, and many of them were contemporaneous with works which are in form and treatment of a more modern style. Nevertheless, Bach’s works mark the epoch from which any review of orchestral music must start. During the Middle Ages the artistic composers of music were almost wholly absorbed in writing for the Roman Catholic Church. Their compositions were for voices without accompaniment, and consisted of great Gothic structures of polyphonic music. In this kind of music every voice was at the same instant engaged in singing different parts of the same melody, the melody being so cunningly made that these different phrases, when heard together, would produce harmony. It was late in the sixteenth century that instrumental music began to develop independently, and the composers employed for it the same style as they had used in their church masses. Early instrumental music is polyphonic, and the full and final development of this style of composition is found in the fugues and concerti grossi of Bach. Handel also wrote concerti grossi, and they, too, partake of the polyphonic character.
The essential trait of this kind of music is the interweaving of the various melodic voice-parts and the effects obtained by their working against one another. Polyphonic writing is the most profound and serious style of composition, and it is also that which best endures the test of time. Modern composers have fully realized that fact and have introduced a new polyphony into their works. It is what is called free counterpoint, by which is meant the working together of several voices which do not sing different parts of the same melody at the same time, but only at points suitable to the composer’s purpose, while at other points new melodic ideas may be introduced. But in the early polyphonic music the listener will hear chiefly the interweaving of voice-parts of the same melody, and he will miss all the beauty and intellectual finish of these works if he seeks simply for the sensuous sweetness of instrumental tints. Usually the orchestral color is distinguished by sobriety, and the profoundly thoughtful nature of contrapuntal music causes a general austerity of instrumental diction. I have already mentioned the historical fact that orchestral tone-coloring began with Mozart. But this was necessarily the case, for the early contrapuntal writers were too wholly absorbed in the development of form to study the resources of color. The operatic writers were the first to seek for color-effects, just as they were the first to use abrupt changes of rhythm and startling dissonances in their search after dramatic expression.
The working out of formal perfection filled the early classic as well as the late polyphonic period, but the form was different. With the birth of opera there entered into modern music a new power, that of the vocal solo with subordinate accompaniment; and composers at once sought for a new form in which they could cast their melodic ideas so that they would be interesting and artistic when sung by one voice instead of several. The development of these monophonic forms occupied the early classical composers. They obtained their most pregnant suggestion from the operatic aria da capo. In this kind of song there are three sections, the first and third being the same melody, and the middle one being different and contrasting. This form suggested to instrumental composers the cycle, which lies at the foundation of most instrumental compositions of the classic period. The classic overture, for example, consisted of three movements (without breaks), slow, fast, and slow, or fast, slow, and fast. And it was customary to repeat in the last one the principal melodic idea of the first. The first movement of a symphony or a piano sonata (for a symphony is a sonata for orchestra) is built on a similar plan. Certain melodic ideas, called themes or subjects, are set forth in the first section. Then follows a middle section called the free fantasia or “working-out,” and in this the melodic subject-matter is literally worked out. It is submitted to various processes of musical development, such as changes of harmony, changes of rhythm, different instrumental treatments, polyphonic expression, etc., till there is nothing more to say, and then the third section restates the original matter in its first shape and adds a coda (tail-piece), by which the movement is brought to a conclusion. The development of this form was aided by the instrumental suite, a form which consisted of series of dances of different kinds. These suites helped the symphonic composers to perceive the value of alternating different sorts of movements, so that symphonies began with an allegro, constructed on the cyclical pattern just described, and continued with an adagio, a minuet, and a finale.
The development of this form occupied the attention of instrumental composers from, say the publication of Corelli’s first sonata (so-called), in 1685, till the close of the seventeenth century. By that time it was fully developed, and was ready for such modifications as might be suggested by the entrance of a new purpose into the field of instrumental composition. The symphonies of Haydn and Mozart and the first two of Beethoven belong to this period of the development of the symphonic form, which is also known as the Classic Period.
The lover of music who desires to listen with intelligence and to bring the faculty of judgment to the guidance of his fancy, should study the history of music, because from an acquaintance with that subject he will acquire a correct point of view. It is impossible in the limits of two short chapters in a volume of this size to do more than indicate in the most general manner the salient points in the development of orchestral music. Therefore, I must content myself with inviting the reader to note that these two early periods of musical history, the Polyphonic and the Classic, were occupied chiefly with the labors of composers engaged in the establishment of methods. Two general classes of forms, the polyphonic and the monophonic, were developed, and the manner of elaborating musical ideas and of instrumental technic suitable to each was fairly established. But it cannot be said that the early classic composers advanced beyond the exclusively musical limits of their art. The music-lover will look in vain for the note of profound human emotion in the symphonies of Haydn and Mozart.
The dramatic power of unsupported instrumental music had not yet been felt by composers, because they were engaged, not in studying the capacity of their art for the symbolism of ideas extraneous to itself, but in exploring its purely æsthetic resources. Music was still to them an end, not a means. They sought only for beauty, and they aimed at producing it by the employment of the technical details of forms and idioms peculiar to their own art. While the polyphonic writers had utilized the interweaving of different parts of the same melody, the classic composers exercised their taste, ingenuity, and feeling in developing melodic subjects in a vocal solo style, with a support of harmonies built on chords, of which the melody was an inseparable part. Their orchestral method differed from that of the polyphonic school because their manner of composing compelled a change. Bach’s way of using every instrument as a solo voice was no longer available. The melodic subjects of a symphony must always predominate. Now they flow to us from the strings, now from the wood, again from the brass; but always with chord harmonies. Hence, we find the classic composers using wind-instruments in pairs and making different combinations of the various groups of instruments, so that simultaneously with the process of thematic development and working-out (which is the drawing of the symphonic tone-picture), there is a constant change of the color-scheme, and thus the melodic and harmonic details are heightened by a judicious use of the tonal qualities of the voices which sing them to us. The skill of composers in using these tonal qualities and the technical expertness of orchestral players grew so fast that in the course of time, as we shall see, they came to a position of undue prominence in orchestral music; but this state of affairs was largely hastened by the employment of vivid color-effects by the romanticists in their endeavors to obtain dramatic utterance from the orchestra.
The music-lover who listens to orchestral music of the classic period must not expect anything but a clear and perspicuous presentation of music for its own sake. Sunny transparency is the chief characteristic of the instrumentation of Haydn and Mozart, while the technical construction of their works makes it incumbent upon the listener to follow the purely musical working-out of the subjects announced. The instrumental color-scheme is neither wide nor brilliant, but it is as admirably adapted to the subject-matter as the subdued greens of Corot are to his peaceful bucolic scenes. To appreciate thoroughly the works of Haydn and Mozart a music-lover should have the fundamental principles of musical form at his fingers’ ends, and he should know the voices of the instruments. The rest is child’s play. The knowledge of musical form is indispensable to the right enjoyment of all music, but it is peculiarly necessary in these classic works, in which pure beauty of form was the ultimate object.
XVII
From Beethoven to Richard Strauss
Of the early classic writers only Haydn and Mozart have survived the test of time, and neither of them figures frequently in contemporaneous concert programmes. This is a pity, for their music would often serve as a corrective to a taste which is inclined to clamor ceaselessly for “ginger hot i’ the mouth.” But it is beyond dispute that the romantic composers awaken more sympathetic chords in the modern bosom. Beethoven is the connecting link between the classic and romantic schools.