Liszt never was in this country, but we can gain some idea of the success that would have been his from the triumphs of Ignace Paderewski. Other famous pianists have come to this country—Thalberg in 1856; Rubinstein in 1872; Von Bülow, Joseffy, who took up his residence here; Rosenthal, Josef Hofmann. But Paderewski’s success has been greater than any of these. Americans are said to be fickle; but although Paderewski no longer is a novelty, his name still is the one with which to fill a concert hall from floor to roof.
Why this is so is no secret. Hear him and you will understand the reason. To a technique which does not hesitate at anything and an industry that flinches at nothing—no one practices more assiduously than he—he adds the soul of a poet and the strength of an athlete. He looks slender and poetical enough as he sits at the piano on the concert stage; but if you watch him from near by you will be able to note the great physical power which he can bring into play when necessary—and which he never brings into play unless it is necessary. Therefore he combines poetry with force; and back of both is thought—intellectual capacity.
In a frame on the wall of a New York trust company 156 is a check for $171,981.89. It represents the net receipts of one virtuoso for one concert tour, and is believed to be the largest actual amount ever earned in this country by an artist, whether singer or player, in a single season. This check is drawn to the order of Ignace J. Paderewski.
An opinion regarding the piano by a man who by playing it can earn so large a sum, and earn it because he is the greatest living exponent of pianoforte playing, would seem worth having. Paderewski believes that, save in one respect, the pianoforte has reached perfection and is incapable of further improvement. He does not think that anything more should be done to add to its volume of tone. If anything, he considers this too great and the instrument too loud already. Instead of more power, rather less would be satisfactory. Wherein, however, he considers the instrument still lacking, notwithstanding its wonderful development during the last century, is in its capacity for sustained tone—for holding a long-drawn-out tone with the facility of the violin, for example. He is convinced, however, that the means of imparting this capacity for sustaining tone to the pianoforte will be discovered in due time and that the invention probably will be made in this country. That increased tone-sustaining power for the instrument is a great desideratum doubtless is the opinion of many experts; but that the greatest master of the pianoforte considers it perfect in other respects is highly interesting and significant. After all, it remains the greatest of all solo instruments, because, within the smallest compass and with the simplest means of control, it has the range of an orchestra. For 157 this reason it is the most popular of instruments and, in its manufacture, extends from the polished dry-goods box with internal organs of iron, wire and felt and with a glistening row of celluloid teeth ready to bite as soon as ever the lid is raised, to the highest-class concert grand.
The “Piano Doctor.”
We who have our pianofortes in our own homes and are content with an occasional visit from the tuner, little dream of the care bestowed upon the instrument on which an artist like Paderewski plays. Instrument? I should have said instruments; for, when he is on tour, he has a whole suite of them, no less than four, and each is coddled as if it were a prima donna fresh from the hands of Madame Marchesi, instead of a thing of wood, metal and ivory. True, these pianos do not have their throats sprayed on the slightest possible occasion, but they are carefully protected against extremes of heat and cold, and, while the prima donna consults her physician only at intervals, a “piano doctor” is in constant attendance on these instruments.
Paderewski’s “piano doctor” has traveled with him for several seasons, occupying the same private car and practically living with him during the entire tour. He was with him on the tour, in fact at his table at breakfast with him, when his special train was run on to an open siding near East Syracuse and left the track, Paderewski being thrown forward on his hands against the table and straining the muscles of one arm so severely that he was obliged to cancel his remaining 158 engagements. Up to that time, however, his net receipts from seventy-four concerts had been $137,012.50, while before this American tour began he gave thirty-six concerts in Australia with average receipts of $5,000. His record concert was at Dallas, Texas, some years ago, when the receipts were $9,000. It occurred during a Confederate reunion. While he was at the pianoforte, the various posts marched up to the hall with bands and fife-and-drum corps playing. Paderewski, however, kept right on through the blasts and shrilling. But when one of the posts let out the famous “rebel yell,” the pianist leaped from his seat as if he expected a tiger to spring at his throat. Then he realized what had happened, smiled and continued amid laughter and applause. He had heard of the famous “rebel yell,” but this was the first time he had heard it.
Pianofortes on Their Travels.
But to return to the pianofortes on tour. When Paderewski came to this country from Australia, his piano doctor met him at San Francisco with four instruments which had been selected with great care in New York and been shipped West in charge of the “doctor.” One of these the virtuoso reserved for his private car, for he practices en route whenever there is a stop long enough to make it worth while. He rarely plays when the car is in motion. Of the other three instruments, the two he liked best were sent to his hotel, where during four days preceding his first concert, he practiced from seven to eight hours a day, notifying the “doctor” twenty-four hours in advance 159 which pianoforte he would use. This instrument became, officially, No. 1; the others No. 2 and No. 3.
The pianist’s route took him from San Francisco to Oakland, San José, and Portland, Oregon. To make certain that he always will have a fine instrument to play on, a method of shipping ahead the instruments not in use is adopted. Thus, while he was playing on No. 1 in San Francisco and Oakland, No. 2 was sent on to San José and No. 3 to Portland. Of course, none but an expert could detect the slightest difference in these pianofortes, but a player like Paderewski is sensitive to the most delicately balanced distinctions or nuances in tone and action. One of his idiosyncrasies is that always before going on he asks the “doctor” which of the three instruments is on the stage, because, as he himself expresses it, “I don’t want to meet a stranger.” After each concert, at supper, this conversation invariably takes place:
Paderewski: “Well, ‘Doctor,’ it sounded all right to-night, didn’t it?”
“Doctor”: “Yes, sir.”
Paderewski: “Well, then, please pass me the bread.”
There never has been occasion to record what would happen if the “doctor” were to say, “No, sir.” For he always has been able to answer in the affirmative, with the most scrupulous regard for veracity.
Paderewski is as careful to play his best in the least important place in which he gives a concert as he is in New York. This high sense of duty toward his public accounts in part for his supremacy among pianists Paderewski is not a mere virtuoso. He is a man of fine intellectual gifts who plays the piano like a poet. Paul 160 Potter, the playwright, who lives in Geneva, Switzerland, and occasionally has dined there with Paderewski, tells me that he has conversed with the pianist on almost every conceivable subject except music and always found him remarkably well informed. His knowledge of the history of his native land, Poland, and of its literature is said to be quite wonderful. Chopin, also a Pole, he idolizes and regards as far and away the greatest composer for the piano. To the fund for the Chopin memorial at Warsaw he contributes by charging one dollar for his autograph, and two dollars for his signature and a few bars of music. From the money received as the proceeds of one season’s autographs he was able to remit about $1,300 to the fund.
When the amusing little dialogue at the supper table, which I have recorded, takes place, the pianoforte which the virtuoso has used at his concert already will be on the way to its next destination. For it is part of the “doctor’s” duty to see it safely out of the hall and onto the train before rejoining the party on the private car. The instrument is not boxed. The legs are removed and then a carefully fitted canvas is drawn over the body and held in place by straps. The body is slid out of the hall and slowly let down onto a specially constructed eight-wheel skid, swung low, so as to be as nearly as possible on a level with the platform. This skid is part of the outfit of the tour. The record time for detaching the legs of the pianoforte, covering the body, removing the instrument from the stage and having it on the skid ready to start for the station, is seven minutes.
“Thawing Out” a Pianoforte.
The instruments never are set up except under the “doctor’s” personal supervision. Before each concert the pianoforte on which Paderewski is to play is carefully gone over and put in perfect condition—tuned and, if necessary, regulated, and this no matter how recently he may have used it. Defects so trifling that neither an ordinary player nor the public would notice them, would jar on the sensitive ear and nerves of the virtuoso. Sometimes the instrument has been exposed to such a low temperature that frost is found to have formed not only on the lid, but even on the iron plate inside. In such cases the pianoforte is set up and, after the film of frost has been scraped off, is allowed to thaw out slowly and naturally before it is touched for tuning or regulating.
There was an amusing incident in the handling of one of the Paderewski instruments at Columbus, Mississippi, where Paderewski played for seven hundred girls at the State College, although it was more exciting than diverting at the time it happened. The “doctor” relies on local help for getting the pianoforte from the skid to the stage and back again. Usually efficient helpers are obtainable, but at Columbus, where the college hall is upstairs and reached only by a narrow flight of steps, there was no aid to be had save from among the negroes lounging on the public square. The “doctor” went among them.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Nawthin’.”
“Want a job?”
“Naw, too busy,” was the usual reply.
At last, however, a band of twenty “colored gentlemen” was secured in the hope that muscle and quantity would make up for lack of quality. But never before has a high-grade pianoforte been in such imminent peril. It was got upstairs well enough, in spite of the fact that the negroes walked all over each other. But the descent! The “doctor,” Emil C. Fischer, stood at the top of the stairs directing; J. E. Francke, the treasurer of the tour, below. Around the latter fell a shower of fragments from the wall, the rail, the posts; and at one time it seemed as if the whole banister would give way and the pianoforte crash in splinters on the floor. There were other moments of suspense, for the pianoforte as well as for the two watchers, who drew a long breath when the instrument safely was on the skid.
Fortunately such untoward incidents are forgotten in the general atmosphere of good-humor which the pianist diffuses about him. He enjoys his little joke. During the last tour he handed a photograph of himself to Mr. Francke inscribed: “To the future Governor of Hoboken.” At the Auditorium hotel, Chicago, Millward Adams’ brother, about leaving on a trip, asked for an autograph. Paderewski, quick as a flash, wrote:
“For the brother of Mr. Adams on the Eve of his departure from Chicago.”
Paderewski travels on a special train. With him usually are his wife, his manager, the treasurer of the tour, the piano “doctor,” a secretary, valet and maid. His home is a villa on Lake Geneva, where he has a 163 beautiful garden and vinery, his dogs, his room for billiards, a game of which he is very fond, and unlimited opportunity for swimming, his favorite exercise. Apparently slender and surely most poet-looking at the piano, he is a man of iron strength as well as of iron will.
The appreciation and consequent enjoyment of an orchestral concert will be greatly enhanced if the listener is familiar with certain details regarding the orchestra itself and some of the compositions he is apt to hear. This I have borne in mind in the chapter divisions of this portion of my book, and, as a result, I have divided the subject into the general development of the orchestra, the specific consideration of the principal orchestral instruments, a cursory commentary on certain phases of orchestral music and a chapter on Richard Strauss who represents its most advanced aspects.
The first music of which we moderns take account was unaccompanied (à capella) singing for church service. It was composed in the old ecclesiastical modes, which are quite different from our modern scales, and the name which comes most prominently to mind in connection with this beginning of our musical history is that of Palestrina. With the influence of this old church choral music so dominant, there is little wonder that the first efforts to write music for instruments were awkward. It may be said right here that this awkwardness, or rather this lack of knowledge and appreciation of the individual capacity 168 of various instruments, is shown throughout the school of contrapuntal composition, even by Bach. When Bach wrote for orchestral instruments he did not consider their peculiar tone quality, or their capacity for individual expression, but simply their pitch—which instrument could take up this, that or the other theme in his contrapuntal score, when he had carried it as high or as low as he could on some other instrument. This also is true of Händel, although in less degree.
But just as we have seen that Domenico Scarlatti worked along original lines for the pianoforte and created the germ of the sonata form, while Bach was weaving and plaiting the counterpoint of his suites, partitas and “Well-Tempered Clavichord,” so in Italy, during a large part of this contrapuntal period, a distinct kind of orchestral music was springing up. Again, just as we have seen that in Italy the pianoforte shook off the trammels of counterpoint when it began to be used as an accompaniment for dramatic recitative in opera, so the instruments in the orchestra, when composers began to use them for operatic accompaniments, were employed more with reference to their individual tone qualities and power of expression.
Primitive Orchestral Efforts.
Although, strictly speaking, not the first composer to use orchestral instruments in opera, and to display skill in utilizing their individual characteristics, the most important of these early men was Claudio Monteverde (1568-1643). In his “Orpheo,” which he produced 169 in 1608, he utilized, besides two harpsichords (and it may be of interest to note here that instruments of the pianoforte class were long used in orchestras as connecting links between all the other instruments), two bass viols, two tenor viols, one double harp, two little French violins, two large guitars, two wood organs, two viola di gambas, one regal, four trombones, two cornets, one octave flute, one clarion, and three trumpets with mutes—a fairly formidable array of instruments when the period is considered. Of especial interest are the “two little French violins,” which probably were the same as our modern violins, now the prima donnas of the orchestra and far outnumbering any other instrument employed.
It was Monteverde who in his “Tancredi e Clorinda” made use for the first time of a tremolo for stringed instruments, and it is said so to have astonished the performers that they at first refused to play it. Before Monteverde there were operatic composers like Jacopo Peri, and after him Cavalli and Alessandro Scarlatti, who did much for their day to develop the orchestra. This is a very brief summary of the early development of instrumental music, a story that easily could fill a volume—which, probably, however, very few people would take the trouble to read.
Beethoven and the Modern Orchestra.
The first really modern composer for the orchestra was Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), who also may be considered the father of the symphony. Born before Mozart, he also survived that composer. His music is gay and 170 naive; while Mozart, although he had decidedly greater genius for the dramatic than Haydn, nevertheless is only a trifle more emotional in his symphonies. The three greatest of these which he composed during the summer of 1788, the E flat major, G minor and C major (known as the “Jupiter”), show a decided advance in the knowledge of orchestration, and the E flat major is notable because it is the first symphonic work in which clarinets were used. Haydn’s and Mozart’s symphonies—that is, the best of them—sound agreeable even to-day in a concert hall of moderate size. But because modern music with its sonorous orchestra requires large auditoriums, like Carnegie Hall in New York, these charming symphonic works of the earlier classical period are swallowed up in space and much of their naive and pretty effect is lost.
Beethoven may be said to have established the modern orchestra. Very few instruments have been added to it since his time, and if an orchestra to-day sounds differently from what it did in his day, if the works of modern composers sound richer and more effective from a modern point of view than his orchestral compositions, it is not because we have added a lot of new instruments, but because our composers have acquired greater skill in bringing out their peculiar tone qualities and because the technique of orchestral players has greatly improved.
It is for precisely the same reasons that Beethoven’s symphonies show such a great advance upon those of his predecessors. The point is not that Beethoven added a few more instruments to the orchestra, but that, so far as his own purposes were concerned, he 171 handled all the instruments which he included in his band with much greater skill than his predecessors had shown. Many writers affect to despise technique. But in point of fact the development of technique and the development of art go hand in hand. An artist, be he writer, painter or musician, cannot adequately express his ideas unless he has the means of doing so or the genius to create the means.
How He Developed Orchestral Resources.
In following Beethoven’s symphonies from the First to the Ninth, we can see the modern orchestra developing under his hands from that handed over to him by Haydn and Mozart. In the First and Second Symphonies, Beethoven employs the usual strings, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets and tympani. In the Third Symphony, the “Eroica,” he adds a third horn part; in the Fifth a piccolo, trombones and contrabassoon. Although employed in the finale only, these instruments here make their first bow in the symphonic orchestra. In the Ninth Symphony Beethoven introduced two additional horns, the first use of four horns in a symphony. The scoring of these symphonies is given somewhat more in detail in the chapter “How the Orchestra Grew,” in Mr. W. J. Henderson’s “The Orchestra and Orchestral Music,” a well conceived and logically developed book, in which the full story of the orchestra and its growth is clearly and interestingly told.
Beethoven not only understood to a greater degree 172 than his predecessors the peculiar characteristics of orchestral instruments, he also compelled orchestral players to acquire a better technique by giving them more difficult music to execute. In point of greater difficulty in performance, a Beethoven symphony holds about the same relation to the symphonies of Mozart and Haydn as the Beethoven pianoforte sonatas do to the sonatas of those composers.
Beethoven and Wagner.
Just as Beethoven added only a few instruments to the orchestra of his predecessors, but showed greater skill in handling those instruments, so the modern musician—a Wagner or a Richard Strauss—achieves his striking instrumental effects by a still greater knowledge of instrumental resources. The Beethoven orchestra practically is the orchestra of to-day. Few, very few, instruments have been added. Modern composers steadily have asked for more and more instruments in each group; but that is quite a different thing from adding new instruments. They have required more instruments of the same kind, but have asked for very few instruments of new kinds. Let me illustrate this by two modern examples.
Firm, compact and eloquent as is Beethoven’s orchestra in the Fifth Symphony, it cannot for a moment be compared in richness, sonority, tone color, searching power of expression and unflagging interest, with Wagner’s orchestra in “Die Meistersinger.” Yet Wagner has added only one trumpet, a harp and a tuba to the very orchestra which Beethoven employed when 173 he scored for the Fifth Symphony; while for his “Symphonie Pathétique,” one of the finest of modern orchestral works, Tschaikowsky adds only a bass tuba to the orchestra used by Beethoven. The simple fact is that modern composers have studied every possible phase of tone color and expression of which each instrument is capable. Furthermore, by skillfully dividing the orchestra into groups and using these groups like separate orchestras, yet uniting them into one great orchestra, they produce wonderfully rich contrapuntal effects, and thus make the modern orchestra sound, not seventy-five years, but five hundred years more advanced than that of Beethoven, however great we gladly acknowledge Beethoven to have been.
Berlioz, an Orchestral Juggler.
Following Beethoven, the next great development in the handling of orchestral resources is due to Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), and it is curious here how nearly one musical epoch overlaps another. Scarlatti was composing sonatas, and thus voicing the beginning of the classical era, while Bach was bringing the contrapuntal period to a close. It was only five years after the completion of the Ninth Symphony that Berlioz’s “Francs Juges” overture was played. A year later his “Symphonie Fantastique, Episode de la Vie d’un Artiste,” was brought out. Yet the Berlioz orchestra sounds so utterly different from the Beethoven orchestra that it almost might be a collection of different instruments. Even more than Beethoven, Berlioz understood 174 the individuality, the potential characteristics of each instrument.
Berlioz composed on a colossal scale, so colossal that his music has been called architectural. The “Dies Irae” in his “Requiem” calls for four brass bands, in four different corners of the hall, and for fourteen kettledrums tuned to different notes, in addition to the regular orchestra, chorus and soloists. This has been dubbed “three-story music”—the orchestra on the ground floor, the chorus on the belle étage, while the four extra brass bands are stationed aux troisième. Unfortunately for Berlioz, his ambition, in so far as it related to the art of orchestration and the skill he showed in accomplishing what he wanted to with his body of instrumentalists, was far in excess of his inspiration. His knowledge of the orchestra was sufficient to have afforded him every facility for the expression of great thoughts if he had them to express. But his power of thematic invention, his gift for melody, was not equal to his genius for instrumentation. Nevertheless, through this genius for instrumentation—for his technique was so extraordinary that it amounted to genius—and through his very striving after bizarre, unusual and gigantic effects, he contributed largely toward the development of the technical resources of instrumental music.
Wagner, Greatest of Orchestral Composers.
Berlioz wrote a book on instrumentation, which has lately been re-edited by Richard Strauss. In it Strauss, modestly ignoring himself, says that Wagner’s scores 175 mark the only advance in orchestration worth mentioning since Berlioz. It is true, the technical possibilities of the orchestra were greatly improved, so far as the woodwind was concerned, by the introduction of keyed instruments constructed on the system invented by Theobald Böhm; while the French instrument maker, Adolphe Sax, also made important improvements by perfecting the bass clarinet and the bass tuba. But whatever aid Wagner derived from these improvements merely was incidental to the principle which is illustrated by every one of his scores—that technique merely is a means to an end. Wagner is the greatest orchestral virtuoso who ever breathed. Never, however, does he employ technique for technique’s sake, but always only to enable his orchestra to convey the exact meaning he has in his mind or express the emotion he has in his heart, and he spares no pains to hit upon the best method of conveying these ideas and expressing these emotions. That is one reason why, although no one with any knowledge of music could mistake a passage by Wagner for any one else’s music, each of his works has its own peculiar orchestral style. For each of his works reproduces through the orchestra the “atmosphere” of its subject. The scores of “Tannhäuser,” “Lohengrin,” “The Ring of the Nibelung,” “Tristan,” “Meistersinger” and “Parsifal” never could be mistaken for any one but Wagner’s music. Yet how different they are from each other! He makes each instrument speak its own language. When, for example, the English horn speaks through Wagner, it speaks English, not broken English, and so it is with all the other instruments of the 176 orchestra—he makes them speak without a foreign accent.
If Wagner employs a large orchestra, it is not for the sake of making a noise, but in order to gain variety in expression. “He is wonderfully reserved in the use of his forces,” says Richard Strauss. “He employs them as a great general would his battalions, and does not send in an army corps to pick off a skirmisher.” Strauss regards “Lohengrin” as a model score for a somewhat advanced student, before proceeding to the polyphony of “Tristan” and “Meistersinger” or “the fairy region of the ‘Nibelungs.’” “The handling of the wind instruments,” writes Strauss, “reaches a hitherto unknown esthetic height. The so-called third woodwinds, English horn and bass clarinet, added for the first time to the woodwinds, are already employed in a variety of tone color; the voices of the second, third and fourth horn, trumpets and trombones established in an independent polyphony, the doubling of melodic voices characteristic of Wagner, carried out with such assurance and freedom and knowledge of their characteristic timbres, and worked out with an understanding of tonal beauty, that to this day evokes unstinted admiration. At the close of the second act the organ tones that Wagner lures out of the orchestra triumph over the queen of instruments itself.”
How Wagner Produces His Effects.
The effects produced by Wagner are not due to a large orchestra, but to his manner of using the instruments in it. Among some of his special effects are 177 the employment of full harmony with what formerly would have been merely single passing notes, and above all, the exploitation of every resource of counterpoint in combination with the well developed system of harmony inherited from Beethoven, but largely added to by himself. In fact, Wagner’s greatness is due to the combination of several great gifts—his melodic inventiveness, his rich harmony and his wonderful technical skill in weaving together his themes in a still richer counterpoint. This counterpoint is not, however, dry and formal, because his themes—his leading motives—are themselves full of emotional significance and not conceived, like those of the old contrapuntists, merely: for formal treatment.
Richard Strauss is such a master of orchestration that I am inclined to quote his summary of the development of the art of orchestration, from his edition of the Berlioz book, which at this writing has not yet been translated. I should like to recall to the reader’s mind, however, the fact that Strauss’ father was a noted French-horn player; that Strauss himself has a great love for the instrument; and that when, in summing up the causes of Wagner’s primacy among orchestral writers, he finds one of them in the greater technical facility of the valve horn, it is well to take this with a grain of salt and attribute it somewhat to his own affection for the instrument. The symphonies of Haydn and Mozart, according to Strauss, are enlarged string quartets with obbligato woodwind, brass and tympani, and the occasional use of other instruments of noise to strengthen the tuttis.
“Even with Beethoven, the symphony is still simply 178 enlarged chamber music, the orchestra being treated in a pianistic spirit which unfortunately shows itself even in the orchestral work of Schumann and Brahms. Wagner owes his polyphonic string quintet not to the Beethoven orchestra, but to the last quartets of Beethoven, in which each instrument is the peer of the others.
“Meanwhile, another kind of orchestral work was developing, for, from the time of Gluck on, the opera orchestra was gaining in coloring and in individual characteristics. Berlioz was not dramatic enough for opera nor symphonic enough for the concert stage, yet his efforts to write programmatic symphonies resulted in his discovering new effects, new possibilities in tone tints and in orchestral technics. Berlioz misses the polyphony that enriches Wagner’s orchestra, and makes instruments like the second violins, violas, etc., second horns, etc., weave their threads or strands of melody into the woof. Wagner’s primacy is due to his employment of the richest style of polyphony and counterpoint, the increased possibility of this through the invention of the valve horn, and his demand of solo virtuosity upon his orchestral players. His scores mark the only advance worth mentioning since Berlioz.”
An orchestra is an aggregation of many instruments which, under the baton of an able conductor, should play as one, so far as precision and expression are concerned. Separately, the instruments are like the paints on a palette, and the result of the composer’s effort, like that of the painter’s, depends upon what he has to express and his knowledge of how to use his materials in trying to express it.
The orchestra has developed into several distinct groups, which are capable of playing independently, or in union with each other, and within these groups themselves there are various subdivisions. It is the purpose of every modern composer who amounts to anything, to get as many different quartets as possible out of his orchestra. By this is meant a grouping of instruments in such a way that as many groups as possible can play in independent harmony.
It is through this system of orchestral groups that Wagner has been able to enrich orchestral tone coloring, and to say everything he wishes to say in exactly the way it should be said. We cannot, for example, imagine that the Love Motive in “Die Walküre” could be made to sound more beautiful on its first entrance in the score than it does. Nor could it. In that scene 180 it is exactly suited to a solo violoncello, and to a solo violoncello Wagner gives it. In order, however, to produce a perfectly homogenous effect, in order that the violoncello quality of tone shall pervade not only the melody, but also the supporting harmony, he supports the melody with eight violoncellos, adding two double basses to give more sonorousness to the deepest note in the harmony. In other words he has made for the moment a complete orchestra out of nine violoncellos and two double basses, and produced a wondrously rich and thrilling effect—because, having a 181 beautiful melody to score, he knew just the instruments for which to score it. This is an admirable example of what technique accomplishes in the hands of a genius. Another composer might have used an orchestra of a hundred instruments and not have produced the exquisite thrill that Wagner with his magical orchestral touch conjures out of this group of violoncellos, a group within a group, an orchestra of violoncellos within the string band.
The woodwind instruments are capable of several similar subdivisions. Flutes, oboes and bassoons, for example, may form a group capable of producing independent harmony, so can the clarinets, and the same is the case with the brass instruments. One of Wagner’s most beautiful leading motives, the Walhalla Motive in the “Ring of the Nibelung,” is sounded on four trombones. In brief, then, the modern composer strives to constitute his orchestra in such a way that he secures as many independent groups, and as many little orchestras, as possible, not, however, for the purpose of using them independently all the time, but merely in order to do so occasionally for special effects or to combine them whenever he sees fit in order to enrich his tone coloring or weave his polyphony.
The grand divisions of the orchestra are the strings—violins, violas, violoncellos and double basses; the woodwind, consisting, broadly speaking, of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; the brass—horns, trumpets and trombones; and the instruments of percussion, or the “battery”—drums, triangles, cymbals and instruments of that kind.
The Prima Donna of the Orchestra.
The leading instrument of the string group, and in fact the leading instrument of the orchestra, is the violin. The first violins are the prima donnas of the orchestra, and one might say that it is almost impossible to have too many of them. The first and second violins should form about one-third of an orchestra, and better still it would be for the number to exceed that proportion. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, which has about eighty-one players, has thirty violins. Theodore Thomas’s New York Festival Orchestra in 1882, consisting of three hundred and fourteen instruments, had one hundred violins.
Great is the capacity of the violin. Its notes may be crisp, sharp, decisive, brilliant, or long-drawn-out and full of emotion. It has greater precision of attack than any other instrument in the orchestra. And right here it is interesting to note that while the multiplication of instruments gives greater sonority, it also gives much finer effects in soft passages. The pianissimo of one hundred violins is a very much finer pianissimo and at the same time infinitely richer and further carrying than the pianissimo of a solo violin. It is the very acme of a musical stage whisper.
In this very first and most important group of the orchestra we can find examples of utilizing subdivisions of groups. Although the violin cannot be played lower than its G string, which sounds the G below the treble clef, the violin group nevertheless has been employed entirely by itself, and even subdivided within itself. The most exquisite example of this, one cited in every 183 work on the orchestra worth reading, is the “Lohengrin” prelude. To this the violins are divided into four groups and on the highest register, with an effect that is most ethereal.
Modern orchestral virtuosity may be gauged by the statement that while Beethoven but once dared to score for his violins above the high F, Richard Strauss in the most casual manner carries them an octave higher.
A little contrivance of wood or metal, with teeth, can be pressed down over the strings of the violin so as to deaden its vibrations. This is called the sordine, or mute. A famous example of the use of the violins con sordini is the Queen Mab Scherzo in Berlioz’s “Romeo et Juliette Symphonie.” Another well-known use of the same effect is in Asa’s Death, in Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” Suite. Nothing can be more exquisite than the entrance of the muted violins after a long silence, in the last act of “Tristan und Isolde,” just before Isolde intones the Love Death.
An unusual effect is produced by using the back of the bow instead of the horsehair. Liszt uses it in his symphonic poem, “Mazeppa,” for imitating the snorting of the horse; Wagner in “Siegfried,” for accompanying the mocking laugh of Mime; and Richard Strauss in “Feuersnot,” to produce the effect of crackling flames. But, as Strauss remarks in his revision of Berlioz’s work on instrumentation, it is effective only with a large orchestra. The plucking of the strings with the fingers—pizzicato—is a familiar device. Tschaikowski employed it almost throughout an entire movement, the “Pizzicato Ostinato” in his Fourth Symphony.
Viola, Violoncello and Double Bass.
The viola is a deeper violin, with a very beautiful and expressive tone. Méhul, the French composer, scored his one-act opera, “Uthal,” without violins, employing the viola as the highest string instrument in his score. This, however, was not a success, the brilliant 185 tone of the violin being missed more and more as the performance of the work progressed, until Grétry is said to have risen in his seat and exclaimed: “A thousand francs for an E string!”
Meyerbeer, who was among the first to appreciate the beauty of the viola as a solo instrument, used a single viola for the accompaniment to Raoul’s romance, “Plus blanche que la blanche hermine,” in the first act of “Les Huguenots.” Strictly speaking, he wrote it for the viola d’amour, which is somewhat larger than the ordinary viola; but it almost always is played on the latter. Berlioz made exquisite use of it in his “Harold Symphony,” practically making a dramatis persona of it, for in the score a solo viola represents the melancholy wanderer; and in his “Don Quixote,” Richard Strauss assigns to the instrument an equally important rôle.
The violoncello is one of the most tenderly expressive of all the instruments in the orchestra. Beethoven employs it for the theme of the slow movement in his Fifth Symphony, and although the viola joins with the violoncello in playing this melody, the passage owes its beauty chiefly to the latter. One of the most exquisite melodies in all symphonic music is the theme which Schubert has given to the violoncellos in the first movement of his “Unfinished Symphony.” They also are used with wonderfully expressive effect in the “Tristan Vorspiel.” Rossini gives a melodious passage, in the introduction to the overture to “William Tell,” to five violoncellos. But the most striking employment of the violoncellos as an independent group is in the Love Motive in the first act of “Die Walküre.”
Double basses first were used to simply double the violoncello part in the harmony. But through Beethoven’s employment of them in the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, in the former for a remarkably effective passage in the Scherzo and in the latter for a highly dramatic recitative, their importance as independent instruments in the orchestra was established. Verdi has made very effective use of them in the scene in “Otello” as the Moor approaches Desdemona’s bed. In the introduction to “Rheingold,” Wagner has half his double basses tuned down to E flat, which is half a note deeper than the usual range of the instrument, and in the second act of “Tristan und Isolde” two basses are obliged to tune their E string down to C sharp.
Dividing the String Band.
I have pointed out several examples in which the groups of instruments in the string band are divided within themselves, as in the prelude to “Lohengrin” and in the first act of “Die Walküre.” The entire string band can be divided and subdivided with telling effect, when done by a master. When in the second act of “Tristan” Brangäne warns the lovers from her position on the watch-tower, the accompaniment stirs the soul to its depth, because it gives the listener such a weird thrill of impending danger that he almost longs to inform the lovers of their peril. In this passage Wagner divides the string band into no less than fifteen parts. In the thunder-storm in “Rheingold” the strings are divided into twenty-one parts. Richard Strauss points out how in the introduction to “Die 187 Walküre” much of the stormy effect is produced by strings only—sixteen second violins, twelve violas, twelve violoncellos and four double basses—a storm for strings where another composer would have unleashed a whole orchestra, including cymbals and bass drum, and crashed and thrashed about without producing a tithe of Wagner’s effect! He also cites the tremolo at the beginning of the second act of “Tristan” as a wonderful example of tone painting which produces the effect of whispering foliage and conveys to the audience a sense of mystery and danger.
Theodore Thomas always was insistent that the various divisions of a string band should bow exactly alike. It is said that he once stopped an orchestra because he had detected something wrong with the tonal effect, and, after watching the players, had discovered that one violoncellist among sixteen was bowing differently from the others. Richard Strauss, on the other hand, never insists on the same bowing throughout each division of strings. He thinks it robs the melody of intensity and beauty if each individual is not allowed to play according to his own peculiar temperament.
A Passage in “Die Walküre.”
In the Magic Fire Scene in the finale of “Die Walküre,” Wagner wrote violin passages which not even the greatest soloist can play cleanly, yet which, when played by all the violins, simulate in sound the aspect of licking, circling flames. Indeed, the effects that Wagner understood how to draw from the orchestral 188 instruments are little short of marvellous. In the “Lohengrin” prelude the tone quality of the violins is absolutely angelic in purity; while in the third act of “Siegfried,” the upswinging violin passages as the young hero reaches the height where Brünnhilde slumbers, depict the action with a thrilling realism.
Besides the regular string band, Wagner made frequent use of the harp. It is related that at the Munich performance of “Rheingold,” when the harpist Trombo protested to him that some of the passages were unplayable, the composer replied: “You don’t expect me to play the harp, too, do you? You perceive the general effect I am aiming at; produce that and I shall be satisfied.” Liszt, in his “Dante Symphony,” uses the glissando of the harp as a symbol for the rising shades of Francesco da Rimini and her lover, and a very beautiful use of harmonics on the harp with their faint tinkle is to be found in the Waltz of the Sylphs in Berlioz’s “Damnation de Faust.”
The Woodwind.
Flutes, oboes and clarinets form the woodwind. One of the best known passages for flute is in the third “Leonora Overture” of Beethoven, where it is employed with conspicuous grace. Probably, however, more fun has been made of the flute than of any other orchestral instrument, and a standard musical joke runs as follows:
“Are you musical?”
“No, but I have a brother who plays the flute.”
It has also been insinuated that in Donizetti’s 189 “Lucia” the heroine goes mad, not because she has been separated from Edgardo, but because a flute obbligato accompanies her principal aria. The piccolo is a high flute used for shrill effects.
The instruments of both the oboe and clarinet families are reed instruments, with this difference, however: the instruments of the oboe family have two vibrating reeds in the mouthpieces; those of the clarinet family, only one. The oboe family consists of the oboe proper, the English horn which is an alt oboe, and the bassoon which is the bass of this group of instruments. In Italian the bassoon is called a fagotto, a name derived from its supposed resemblance to a bundle of fagots. “Candor, artless grace, tender joy, or the grief of a fragile soul, are found in the oboe’s accents,” says Berlioz of this instrument, and those who remember the exquisite oboe melody, with which the slow movement of Schubert’s C major symphony opens, will agree with the French composer. Richard Strauss, in his “Sinfonia Domestica,” employs the almost obsolete oboes d’amore to represent an “innocent, dreamy, playful child.”
The English Horn in “Tristan.”
The most famous use of the English horn is found in the third act of “Tristan,” where it plays the “sad lay” while Tristan awaits news of the ship which is bearing Isolde toward him, and changes to a joyous strain when the ship is sighted. The bassoon and contrabassoon, besides their value as the bass of the oboe family, have certain humorous qualities, which are admirably 190 brought out in Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth Symphonies and in the march of the clownish artisans in Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” music. In opera, Meyerbeer made the bassoon famous by his scoring of the dance of the Spectre Nuns in “Robert le Diable” for it, and he also used it for the accompaniment to the female chorus in the second act of “Les Huguenots.” The theme of the romanza, “Una fortiva lagrima,” in Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore,” which Caruso sings so beautifully, is introduced by the bassoon, and with charming effect.
The clarinets have a large compass. Usually three kinds of clarinets (in A, B flat and C because they are transposing instruments) are employed in the orchestra, besides the bass clarinet. The possibilities of the clarinet group have been enormously developed by Wagner. It is necessary only to recall the scene of Elsa’s bridal procession to the cathedral in the second act of “Lohengrin”; Elisabeth’s sad exit after her prayer in the third act of “Tannhäuser,” in which the melody is played by the bass clarinet, while the accompaniment is given to three flutes and eight other clarinets; the change of scene in the first act of “Götterdämmerung,” when clarinets give forth the Brünnhilde Motive; and passages in the second act of “Die Meistersinger,” in the scene at nightfall; while for a generally skillful use of the woodwind the introduction to the third act of “Lohengrin” is a shining example.