The orchestra and orchestral music

by W. J. Henderson

His First and Second Symphonies belong to the former; the rest to the latter. The modern romantic school of music sprang from Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony, his opera “Fidelio,” Schubert’s marvellous songs, and Weber’s “Der Freischütz.” In so far as purely orchestral music is concerned, however, Beethoven was the master of them all. It was he who first showed musicians how to project emotion through the orchestral melos. If Mendelssohn’s fanciful little piano pieces are songs without words, then Beethoven’s Third, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh symphonies are dramas without text.

In form and technical method these works follow the general plan of the classic symphonies of Haydn and Mozart. Indeed, the C minor symphony of Beethoven is the finest and most fully developed specimen of that form. But Beethoven made certain changes which came from the nature of his search after emotional expression. He modulated into foreign keys with greater freedom than his predecessors, and he made wider gaps between the keys of his successive movements. A complex and changeful harmonic basis has always been associated with emotional expression in music. Simple harmonies are restful, peaceful, and suggestive of serenity of the soul; frequent modulations and unfinished cadences express uneasiness of mind—largely because they create it.

In addition to this advance, Beethoven also found it possible to knit the melodic structure of his works much more firmly. He introduced his second subjects, for instance, by means of transitional passages made out of some of the materials of his first subjects. His working-out processes were infinitely broader and grander than those of his predecessors, and they invariably led to strenuous and stimulating climaxes, not found in the earlier symphonies. Beethoven substituted for the old minuet movement the scherzo, which resembles the minuet in form, but differs wholly from it in spirit. The word scherzo means “jest,” and the movement was at first intended to be humorous or playful; but Beethoven sometimes gave it the grim mystery of tragic suspense, as in the Fifth Symphony.

Beethoven’s manner of instrumentation has already been discussed to some extent. It is necessary only to add that it shows a profounder insight into the special character of each instrument than that of any writer who preceded him. This was the result of the composer’s search after influential emotional expression, and of his complete dependence for it upon his instruments. The advances of Beethoven in the treatment of orchestral forms led the romantic composers to perceive that they could make still larger changes without infringing the fundamental laws upon which the artistic development of musical ideas proceeded.

Robert Schumann’s symphonies are notable examples of the methods adopted by the romantic writers. His symphony in D minor is intended to be played without any pauses between the consecutive movements, and melodic material introduced in one movement is employed in the development of another. Thus the principal theme of the first movement recurs in a significantly modified form in the last, and an idea heard in the introduction is repeated with much meaning in the scherzo.

These innovations were the direct result of attempts to give to music a more definite emotional force, and they were brought about by Beethoven’s convincing demonstration of the dramatic expressiveness of orchestral music. The highly wrought overtures of Weber, as well as those of Beethoven, had an additional value in showing later composers how to utilize the suggestive power of a title in combination with characteristic methods of instrumental utterance. Haydn, in his “Creation,” had invented some of the now conventional figures of orchestral utterance, such as the rolling of waves and the raging of storms. Beethoven’s storm in the “Pastoral” symphony went farther, and, mild as it sounds now, was a remarkable achievement in its day. Spohr began to write symphonies with descriptive titles such as the “Leonore” (founded on a poem by Burger) and “The Power of Sound.” Mendelssohn wrote descriptive overtures such as “Fingal’s Cave,” and in his “Midsummer Night’s Dream” music suggested how far the purely illustrative powers of orchestral song might go.

It required very little experimenting in this kind of composition to show musicians that the prescribed forms of the classic symphony and overture were unsuited to it. It was quite impossible to embody in music, developed strictly on lines designed for the exploitation of pure musical beauty, a series of emotions which moved according to wholly different laws. The famous pianist, Franz Liszt, to meet the requirements of the new school, invented the symphonic poem, a composition symphonic in style, but smaller in extent and without any pause between the movements. These are welded together by connecting matter which causes the passage from one to the other to be barely perceptible. The movements themselves are distributed wholly according to the sequence of the principal emotional moods of the story which is to be illustrated. The fundamental laws of musical form are, of course, observed; but conventional formulæ are not followed.

Liszt employed all the symphonic devices of thematic development in his symphonic poems, and his immediate imitators followed his example. But many later composers have abandoned almost the whole symphonic scheme, so that the works of the first masters of the romantic school belong to a period of transition between the late classicists and the ultra-romanticists of our time.

The reader must not understand me as intending to say that the form of the classic symphony has been universally abandoned. On the contrary, one of the most agreeable of living composers, Antonin Dvořák, clings to it, and there are many others who still find that they can say all they wish to say through the medium used by Beethoven. Brahms was the finest recent exponent of the classic symphony. But there is undoubtedly a growing tendency among composers to make their orchestral works vast color-pictures. The themes in these works are subjected to little or no real musical development, but are brought forward again and again in new instrumental garbs, and instead of reaching climaxes by devices of melodic evolution, the composers aim at producing dramatic effects by imposing or vivid instrumental coloring.

At the same time these composers employ a most complex polyphony, for their scores teem with melodic utterance in all the principal voices. Richard Strauss, of Munich, is the leading writer of this school of orchestral colorists. His works show supreme mastery of the technics of orchestration, the most intimate acquaintance with the special characteristics of the various instruments, and a really remarkable knowledge of the results to be gained by the mixture of tone-tints. It is the opinion of the present writer that Strauss seeks to express in music things which cannot, and some which ought not, to be so expressed; but that is a matter which need not be discussed here. It is undeniable that in form and treatment this composer’s works are in the direct line of the general tendency of orchestral music in our day, and it is equally undeniable that his mastery of the technics of the present style of writing is greater than that of any other composer.