Philip Hale's Boston Symphony Programme Notes

This overture was composed in 1810; it was published in 1811. The music to Goethe’s play—overture, four entr’actes, two songs sung by Clärchen, “Clärchen’s Death,” “Melodrama,” and “Triumph Symphony” (identical with the coda of the overture), for the end of the play, nine numbers in all—was performed for the first time with the tragedy at the Hofburg Theater, Vienna, May 24, 1810. Antonie Adamberger was the Clärchen.

When Hartl took the management of the two Vienna Court theaters, January 1, 1808, he produced plays by Schiller. He finally determined to produce plays by Goethe and Schiller with music, and he chose Schiller’s Tell and Goethe’s Egmont. Beethoven and Gyrowetz were asked to write the music. The former was anxious to compose the music for Tell; but, as Czerny tells the story, there were intrigues, and, as Egmont was thought to be less suggestive to a composer, the music for that play was assigned to Beethoven. Gyrowetz’s music to Tell was performed June 14, 1810. It was described by a correspondent of a Leipsic journal of music as “characteristic and written with intelligence.” No allusion was made at the time anywhere to Beethoven’s Egmont.

The overture has a short, slow introduction, sostenuto ma non troppo, F minor, 3-2. The main body of the overture is an allegro, F minor, 3-4. The first theme is in the strings; each phrase is a descending arpeggio in the violoncellos, closing with a sigh in the first violins; the antithesis begins with a “sort of sigh” in the wood-wind, then in the strings; then there is a development into passage work. The second theme has for its thesis a version of the first two measures of the sarabande theme of the introduction, fortissimo (strings), in A flat major, and the antithesis is a triplet in the wood-wind. The coda, allegro con brio, F major, 4-4, begins pianissimo. The full orchestra at last has a brilliant fanfare figure, which ends in a shouting climax, with a famous shrillness of the piccolo against fanfares of bassoons and brass and between crashes of the full orchestra.

Long and curious commentaries have been written in explanation of this overture. As though the masterpiece needed an explanation! We remember one in which a subtle meaning was given to at least every half-dozen measures: The Netherlanders are under the crushing weight of Spanish oppression; Egmont is melancholy, his blood is stagnant, but at last he shakes off his melancholy (violins), answers the cries of his country-people, rouses himself for action; his death is portrayed by a descent of the violins from C to G; but his countrymen triumph. Spain is typified by the sarabande movement; the heavy, recurring chords portray the lean-bodied, lean-visaged Duke of Alva; “the violin theme in D flat, to which the clarinet brings the under-third, is a picture of Clärchen,” etc. One might as well illustrate word for word the solemn ending of Thomas Fuller’s life of Alva in The Profane State: “But as his life was a mirror of cruelty, so was his death of God’s patience. It was admirable that his tragical acts should have a comical end; that he that sent so many to the grave should go to his own, and die in peace. But God’s justice on offenders goes not always in the same path, nor the same pace; and he is not pardoned for the fault who is for a while reprieved from the punishment; yea, sometimes the guest in the inn goes quietly to bed before the reckoning for his supper is brought to him to discharge.” The overture is at first a mighty lamentation. There are voices of an aroused and angry people, and there is at the last tumultuous rejoicing. The “Triumph Symphony” at the end of the play forms the end of the overture.

OVERTURE TO “CORIOLANUS,” OP. 62

Someone said—was it A. W. Thayer?—of this overture that he could not understand it—until he read Collin’s tragedy; that he could not reconcile the music with Shakespeare’s text. Pray, what would the gentleman have had? It is immaterial whether Beethoven had Collin or Shakespeare in mind. The name Coriolanus was enough, even if he knew it only from some schoolboy history of Rome; for in this music we hear the proud voice, we hear the haughty, inexorable bearing of the soldier-patrician. Nor does it matter whether the lyrical theme is the entreating voice of wife or mother. Possibly if one should read Collin’s play he would wonder that Beethoven should have written an overture for it. There it is—one of Beethoven’s greatest works. From his own disdain of the mob, from his own contempt of what the public thought of his music, he recognizes in Coriolanus a kindred spirit.

The original manuscript of the overture bears this inscription: Overtura (zum Trauerspiel Coriolan) composta da L. v. Beethoven, 1807. The words in parentheses are crossed out. The overture was published in 1808. The tragedy by Heinrich Joseph von Collin, in which the hero kills himself, was produced in Vienna on November 24, 1802. Collin (1771-1811) was jurist and poet. In 1803 he was ennobled. In 1809 he became court councillor. Other tragedies by him were Regulus and Polyxena. In 1807 Beethoven was expecting a libretto from him. Collin tried Macbeth, Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, and a Bradamante to which J. F. Reichardt set music. But Beethoven wrote to Collin:

“Great irate poet, give up Reichardt. Take my music for your poetry; I promise that you will not thereby suffer. As soon as my concert is over ... I will come to you, and then we will at once take in hand the opera—and it shall soon sound. For the rest you can ring out your just complaints about me by word of mouth.” The libretto before this had seemed to Beethoven “too venturesome” in respect of its use of the supernatural. Collin’s biographer, Laban, says that the Macbeth libretto was left unfinished in the middle of the second act “because it threatened to become too gloomy.” At various times Beethoven thought of Grillparzer’s Melusine, Körner’s Return of Ulysses, Treitschke’s Romulus and Remus, Berger’s Bacchus, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Schiller’s Fiesco, Grillparzer’s Dragomira, Voltaire’s tragedies, and Goethe’s Faust, as operatic subjects. He told Rellstab that the material must be attractive to him; that it must be something he could take up with sincerity and love. “I could not compose operas like Don Juan and Figaro. They are repugnant to me. I could not have chosen such subjects; they are too frivolous for me!”

It is in one movement, allegro con brio, in C minor, 4-4, as written, alla breve as played. It begins with a succession of three long-held fortissimo C’s in the strings, each one of which is followed by a resounding chord in the full orchestra. The agitated first theme in C minor soon gives place to the second lyrically passionate theme in E flat major. The development of this theme is also short. The free fantasia is practically passage-work on the conclusion theme. The tendency to shorten the academic sonata form is seen also in the third part, or recapitulation. The first theme returns in F minor with curtailed development. The second theme is now in C major. The coda begins with this theme; passage-work follows; there is a repetition of the C’s and the chords of the beginning; and the purely dramatic close in C minor may be suggestive of the hero’s death.

CONCERTO FOR PIANOFORTE, NO. 4, IN G MAJOR, OP. 58

I. Allegro moderato

II. Andante con moto

III. Rondo: vivace

This concerto was probably composed for the most part, and it was surely completed, in 1806, although Schindler, on advice from Ries, named 1804 as the year, and an edition of the concerto published by Breitkopf & Härtel states that the year 1805 saw the completion.

The concerto was performed by Beethoven in one of two private subscription concerts of his works given in the dwelling house of Prince Lobkowitz, Vienna, in March, 1807. The first public performance was in the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, December 22, 1808.

The score was dedicated “humbly” by Beethoven to “his Imperial Highness, the Archduke Rudolph of Austria.”

I. Allegro moderato, G major, 4-4. The first movement, contrary to the tradition that prevailed at the time, begins with the pianoforte alone. The pianoforte announces the first four measures of the first theme, five measures if an introductory chord be counted. (These measures are to be found in a sketchbook of Beethoven which is dated 1803, but in this book they end in the tonic, and not in the dominant.) The orchestra then enters in B major, but soon returns to G major, and develops the theme, until after a short climax with a modulation a second theme appears, which is given to the first violins. There is a third theme fortissimo in G major, with a supplement for the wood-wind instruments, and still another new theme, an expressive melody in B flat major.

II. Andante con moto, E minor, 2-4. This movement is free in form. Beethoven put a footnote in the full score to this effect: “During the whole andante, the pianist must use the soft pedal (una corda) unintermittently; the sign ‘Ped’ refers to the occasional use of the ordinary pedal.” This footnote is contradicted at one point in the score by the marking “tre corde” for five measures near the end of the movement. A stern and powerful recitative for strings alternates with gentle and melodic passages for the pianoforte. “The strings of the orchestra keep repeating a forbidding figure of strongly marked rhythm in staccato octaves; this figure continues at intervals in stern, unchanging forte through about half the movement and then gradually dies away. In the intervals of this harsh theme the pianoforte as it were improvises little scraps of the tenderest, sweetest harmony and melody, rising for a moment into the wildest frenzied exultation after its enemy, the orchestra, has been silenced by its soft pleading, then falling back into hushed sadness as the orchestra comes in once more with a whispered recollection of its once so cruel phrase; saying as plainly as an orchestra can say it, ‘The rest is silence!’”[12]

III. Rondo: vivace. The first theme, of a sunny and gay character, is announced immediately by the strings. The pianoforte follows with a variation. A short but more melodic phrase for the strings is also taken up by the pianoforte. A third theme, of a bolder character, is announced by the orchestra. The fourth theme is given to the pianoforte. The rondo, “of a reckless, devil-may-care spirit in its jollity,” is based on this thematic material. At the end the tempo becomes presto.

CONCERTO FOR PIANOFORTE, NO. 5, IN E FLAT MAJOR, OP. 73

I. Allegro

II. Adagio un poco mosso

III. Rondo: allegro ma non tanto

There are noble pages, also moments of tenderness, in the first movement; there is a majestic, compelling sweep. In the second movement there is simplicity, serenity of contemplation, Buddhistic music of singular detachment, found only in certain measures of Beethoven and Handel; but the finale with the endless repetitions of a Kangaroo theme leads one to long for the end.

Beethoven, having made some sketches in 1808, wrote this concerto in 1809 at Vienna. The town was occupied by the French from May 12 to October 14.

It is said that the first public performance of which there is any record was at Leipsic on November 28, 1811. It is also stated that this performance was late in 1810. The pianist was Friedrich Schneider. The Allgemeine Musik Zeitung described the concerto as “without doubt one of the most original, imaginative, effective, but most difficult of all existing concertos.” Schneider, it seems, played “with soul” as well as force, and the orchestra accompanied remarkably, for “it respected and admired composer, composition, and pianist.”

The first performance with which Beethoven was concerned was at Vienna on February 12, 1812, when Karl Czerny (1791-1857) was the pianist. The occasion was a singular sort of entertainment. Theodor Körner, who had been a looker-on in Vienna only for a short time, wrote home on February 15: “Wednesday there took place for the benefit of the Charitable Society of Noble Ladies a concert and a representation of three pictures after Raphael, Poussin, and Troyes, as Goethe describes them in his Elective Affinities. A new concerto by Beethoven for the pianoforte did not succeed”; but Castelli’s Thalia gave as the reason of this failure the unwillingness of Beethoven, “full of proud self-confidence,” to write for the crowd. “He can be understood and appreciated only by the connoisseurs, and one cannot reckon on their being in a majority at such an affair.” Thayer moralizes on this statement. “The trills of Miss Sessi and Mr. Siboni and Mayseder’s Variations on the March from Aline were appropriate to the occasion and the audience.”

The Vienna correspondent of the Allgemeine Musik Zeitung wrote that the extravagant length of the concerto diminished the total effect which the “noble production of the mind” would otherwise have made. As for Czerny, “he played with much accuracy and fluency, and showed that he has it in his power to conquer the greatest difficulties.” But the correspondent wished that there had been greater purity in his performance, a finer contour.

The tableaux pleased mightily, and each one was repeated.

The first movement, allegro, in E flat, 4-4, opens with a strong chord for full orchestra, which is followed by a cadenza for the solo instrument.

The first theme is given out by the strings and afterward taken up by the clarinets. The second theme soon follows, first in E flat minor, softly and staccato by the strings, then legato and in E flat major by the horns. It was usual at that time for the pianist to extemporize his cadenza, but Beethoven inserted his own with the remark, “non si fa, una cadenza ma s’attacca subito il seguente” (that is to say, “Do not insert a cadenza, but attack the following immediately”); and he then went so far as to accompany with the orchestra the latter portion of his cadenza.

The second movement, adagio un poco moto, in B major, 2-2, is in the form of “quasi-variations,” developed chiefly from the theme given at the beginning by muted strings. This movement goes, with a suggestion hinted by the pianoforte of the coming first theme of the rondo, into the rondo, the finale, allegro, in E flat, 6-8. Both the themes are announced by the pianoforte and developed elaborately. The end of the coda is distinguished by a descending long series of pianoforte chords which steadily diminish in force, while the kettledrums keep marking the rhythm of the opening theme.

CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN, IN D MAJOR, OP. 61

I. Allegro ma non troppo

II. Larghetto

III. Rondo

Beethoven composed this concerto in 1806 for the violinist, Franz Clement, who played it for the first time at the latter’s concert in the Theater an der Wien, December 23 of that year.

Beethoven, often behindhand in finishing compositions for solo players—according to the testimony of Dr. Bartolini and others—did not have the concerto ready for rehearsal. Clement played it at the concert a vista.

The first movement, allegro ma non troppo, in D major, 4-4, begins with a long orchestral ritornello. The first theme is announced by oboes, clarinets, and bassoons. It is introduced by four taps of the kettledrums on D. (There is a story that these tones were suggested to the composer by his hearing a neighbor knocking at the door of his house for admission late at night.) The wind instruments go on with the second phrase. Then come the famous and problematical four D sharps in the first violins. The short second theme is given out by wood-wind and horns in D major, repeated in D minor, and developed at length. The solo violin enters after a half cadence on the dominant. The first part of the movement is repeated. The solo violin plays the themes or embroiders them. The working out is long and elaborate. A cadenza is introduced at the climax of the conclusion theme. There is a short coda.

The second movement, Larghetto, in G major, 4-4, is a romance in free form. The accompaniment is lightly scored. The theme is almost wholly confined to the orchestra, while the solo violin embroiders with elaborate figuration until the end, when it brings in the theme, but soon abandons it to continue the embroidery. A cadenza leads to the finale.

The third movement, rondo, in D major, 6-8, is based on a theme that has the character of a folk dance. The second theme is a sort of hunting call for the horns. There is place for the insertion of a free cadenza near the end.

Beethoven’s great development of the symphony was in his use of the instruments—not in their number. For the most part, he called for virtually the same orchestra which his predecessors, Mozart and Haydn, evolved: two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, kettledrums and strings. This applies to Beethoven’s First, Second, Third, Fourth, Seventh, and Eighth symphonies (exceptions: the addition of a third horn in the Eroica symphony, and use of a single flute in the Fourth).

In the Fifth symphony, he gave greater sonority to his finale with three trombones, double bassoon, and piccolo.

In the Sixth, he added a piccolo for the storm, two trombones for the storm and finale.

In the Ninth, he increased his horns to four, added three trombones, and the following instruments in the alla marcia of the finale: piccolo, double bassoon, cymbals, triangle, and bass drum.

In the overtures here listed, Beethoven added to the above essential orchestration as follows: Egmont—two additional horns, piccolo; Leonore—two additional horns and three trombones. The concertos call for the minimum orchestration, “in twos.”—EDITOR.

HECTOR
BERLIOZ

(Born at La Côte Saint-André, December 11, 1803; died at Paris, March 9, 1869)

The more Berlioz is studied, the more the wonder grows at his colossal originality. Yet there are some who still insist that he had little melodic invention. They have ears, and they do not hear. They should read the essay of Romain Rolland, and the essay of Felix Weingartner in his Akkorde, for there are many, unfortunately, who do not trust their own judgment and are eager to accept the sayings of others who are considered men of authority.

Berlioz wrote his Fantastic symphony in a high-strung, hotly romantic period. Romanticism was in the air. Much that seems fantastic to us, living in a commercial and material period, was natural then. It was as natural to be extravagant in belief, theories, speech, manner of life, dress, as it was to breathe. And Berlioz was a revolutionary of revolutionaries. His “antediluvian hair” that rose from his forehead was as much of a symbol as was the flaming waistcoat worn by Théophile on the memorable first night of Hernani. We smile now at the eccentricities and the extravagancies of the period, but we owe the perpetrators a heavy debt of gratitude. They made the art of today possible.

It is easy to call Berlioz a poseur, but the young man was terribly in earnest. He put his own love tragedy into his Fantastic symphony; he was a man; he suffered; he was there; and so the music did not pass away with the outward badges of romanticism, with much of Byron’s poetry, with plays and novels of the time. The emotions he expressed are still universal and elemental.

SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE, IN C MAJOR, OP. 14 a

I. Dreams, Passions: Largo: Allegro agitato e appassionato assai

II. A Ball: Waltz: allegro non troppo

III. Scene in the Meadows: Adagio

IV. March to the Scaffold: Allegretto non troppo

V. A Witches’ Sabbath: Larghetto: allegro

When one remembers that Beethoven had died only a few years before Berlioz wrote his symphony; that Schubert also had died; that Schumann and Wagner were not known as composers, one must regard this audacious work of Berlioz as nothing less than marvelous. No predecessor had given him hints for orchestration: he invented his own system; he thought and wrote orchestrally. Liszt, Meyerbeer, Wagner, Strauss, the Russian School, in fact, the musical world of the last century is indebted deeply to Hector Berlioz. Without him all would have been sadly at a loss.

One may smile in this matter-of-fact age at the frantic love of Berlioz for the Irish actress; at the programme of the Fantastic symphony, written when he was not twenty-seven years old. But there’s no denying the genius in this work, the genius that has kept this music alive in spite of a few cheap or arid pages; for there is the imagination, the poetic sensitiveness that we rightly associate with genius. If one would gladly shorten the “Scene in the Fields,” what is to be said against that masterpiece “The March to the Scaffold,” with its haunting, nightmarish rhythm, its ghostly chatter of the bassoons, its mocking shouts of brass? Or who does not find beauty in the first movement, brilliance in the second, and a demoniacal spirit in the finale?

Ernest Newman has wisely said that the harmonies of Berlioz suited exactly his aims; that however strange they may seem on paper, they are justified when they are heard. As for the charge of failure as a melodist, there are the songs; there is the pathetic air of Marguerite in The Damnation of Faust, the “Farewell of the Shepherds” in The Childhood of Christ, the grand arias in Les Troyens.

This symphony forms the first part of a work entitled Épisode de la vie d’un artiste (Episode in the Life of an Artist), the second part of which is a lyric monodrama, Lélio, ou le retour à la vie (Lelio; or, The Return to Life). Berlioz published the following preface to the full score of the symphony:

“PROGRAMME OF THE SYMPHONY

“A young musician of morbid sensibility and ardent imagination poisons himself with opium in a fit of amorous despair. The narcotic dose, too weak to result in death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest visions, during which his sensations, sentiments, and recollections are translated in his sick brain into musical thoughts and images. The beloved woman herself has become for him a melody, like a fixed idea which he finds and hears everywhere.

“Part I
“DREAMS, PASSIONS

“He first recalls that uneasiness of soul, that vague des passions, those moments of causeless melancholy and joy, which he experienced before seeing her whom he loves; then the volcanic love with which she suddenly inspired him, his moments of delirious anguish, of jealous fury, his returns to loving tenderness, and his religious consolations.

“Part II
“A BALL

“He sees his beloved at a ball, in the midst of the tumult of a brilliant fête.

“Part III
“SCENE IN THE FIELDS

“One summer evening in the country he hears two shepherds playing a Ranz-des-vaches in alternate dialogue; this pastoral duet, the scene around him, the light rustling of the trees gently swayed by the breeze, some hopes he has recently conceived, all combine to restore an unwonted calm to his heart and to impart a more cheerful coloring to his thoughts; but she appears once more, his heart stops beating, he is agitated with painful presentiments; if she were to betray him!... One of the shepherds resumes his artless melody, the other no longer answers him. The sun sets ... the sound of distant thunder ... solitude ... silence.

“Part IV
“MARCH TO THE SCAFFOLD

“He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned to death and led to execution. The procession advances to the tones of a march which is now sombre and wild, now brilliant and solemn, in which the dull sound of the tread of heavy feet follows without transition upon the most resounding outburst. At the end, the fixed idea reappears for an instant, like a last love-thought interrupted by the fatal stroke.

“Part V
“WALPURGISNIGHT’S DREAM

“He sees himself at the witches’ Sabbath, in the midst of a frightful group of ghosts, magicians, and monsters of all sorts, who have come together for his obsequies. He hears strange noises, groans, ringing laughter, shrieks to which other shrieks seem to reply. The beloved melody again reappears; but it has lost its noble and timid character; it has become an ignoble, trivial, and grotesque dance tune; it is she who comes to the witches’ Sabbath.... Howlings of joy at her arrival ... she takes part in the diabolic orgy.... Funeral knells, burlesque parody on the Dies Iræ. Witches’ dance. The Witches’ dance and the Dies Iræ together.”

In a preamble to this programme, relating mostly to some details of stage-setting when the Épisode de la vie d’un artiste is given entire, Berlioz also writes: “If the symphony is played separately at a concert ... the programme does not absolutely need to be distributed among the audience, and only the titles of the five movements need be printed, as the symphony can offer by itself (the composer hopes) a musical interest independent of all dramatic intention.”

The score is dedicated to Nicholas I of Russia.

The symphony begins with a slow introduction, Largo, C minor, 4-4. Two measures of soft preluding lead to a plaintive theme played by the strings, pianissimo. This theme is a melody of romance composed by Berlioz in his youth and recurs in modified form in each movement. “Strange to say,” wrote Berlioz of the imagined artist, “the image of the loved one never comes into his mind without the accompaniment of a musical thought in which he finds the characteristic grace and nobility attributed by him to his beloved. This double idée fixe—obsessing idea—constantly pursues him; hence the constant apparition in all the movements of the chief melody of the first allegro.”

The symphony is scored for two flutes (and piccolo), two oboes (and English horn), two clarinets and E flat clarinet, four bassoons, four horns, two cornets-à-pistons, two trumpets, three trombones, two tubas, two pairs of kettledrums (three players) bells, snaredrum, bass drum, cymbals, two harps, and strings.

What was the origin of this symphony? Who was the woman that inspired the music and was so bitterly assailed in the argument sent to his friend Ferrand? Boschot describes her as she looked in 1827: “Tall, lithe, with shoulders rather fat and with full bust, a supple figure, a face of an astonishing whiteness, with bulging eyes like those of the glowing Mme de Staël, but eyes gentle, dreamy, and sometimes sparkling with passion. And this Harriet Smithson had the most beautiful arms—bulbous flesh, sinuous line. They had the effect on a man of a caress of a flower. And the voice of Harriet Smithson was music.”[13]

Harriet Constance Smithson, known in Paris as Henrietta Smithson, born at Ennis, Ireland, March 18, 1800, was seen as Ophelia by Berlioz at the Odéon, Paris, September 11, 1827, after engagements in Ireland and England. She appeared there first on September 6 with Kemble, Powers, and Liston. Her success was immediate and overwhelming. She appeared as Juliet, September 15 of the same year. Berlioz saw these first performances. He did not then know a word of English: Shakespeare was revealed to him only through the mist of Letourneur’s translation. After the third act of Romeo and Juliet he could scarcely breathe; he suffered as though “an iron hand was clutching” his heart, and he exclaimed, “I am lost.” And the story still survives, in spite of Berlioz’s denial, that he then exclaimed: “That woman shall be my wife! And on that drama I shall write my greatest symphony.” He married her, and he was thereafter miserable. He wrote the Romeo and Juliet symphony. To the end he preferred the “Love Scene” to all his other music.

Berlioz has told in his Memoirs the story of his wooing. He was madly in love. After a tour in Holland, Miss Smithson went back to London, but Berlioz saw her always by his side; she was his obsessing idea, the inspiring muse. When he learned through the journals of her triumphs in London in June, 1829, he dreamed of composing a great work, the Episode in the Life of an Artist, to triumph by her side and through her. He wrote Ferrand, February 6, 1830: “I am again plunged in the anguish of an interminable and inextinguishable passion, without motive, without cause. She is always at London, and yet I think I feel her near me: all my remembrances awake and unite to wound me; I hear my heart beating, and its pulsations shake me as the piston strokes of a steam engine. Each muscle of my body shudders with pain. In vain! ’Tis terrible! O unhappy one! if she could for one moment conceive all the poetry, all the infinity of a like love, she would fly to my arms, were she to die through my embrace. I was on the point of beginning my great symphony (Episode in the Life of an Artist), in which the development of my infernal passion is to be portrayed; I have it all in my head, but I cannot write anything. Let us wait.”

He wrote Ferrand on April 16, 1830: “Since my last I have experienced terrible hurricanes, and my vessel has cracked and groaned horribly, but at last it has righted itself; it now sails tolerably well. Frightful truths, discovered and indisputable, have started my cure; and I think that it will be as complete as my tenacious nature will permit. I am about to confirm my resolution by a work which satisfies me completely.” He then inserted a description of the work. “Behold, my dear friend, the scheme of this immense symphony. I am just writing the last note of it. If I can be ready on Whitsunday, May 30, I shall give a concert at the Nouveautés, with an orchestra of two hundred and twenty players. I am afraid I shall not have the copied parts ready. Just now I am stupid; the frightful effort of thought necessary to the production of my work has tired my imagination, and I should like to sleep and rest continually. But if the brain sleeps, the heart keeps awake.”

He wrote to Ferrand on May 13, 1830: “I think that you will be satisfied with the scheme of my Fantastic symphony which I sent you in my letter. The vengeance is not too great; besides, I did not write the Dream of a Sabbat Night in this spirit. I do not wish to avenge myself. I pity her and I despise her. She’s an ordinary woman, endowed with an instinctive genius for expressing the lacerations of the human soul, but she has never felt them, and she is incapable of conceiving an immense and noble sentiment, as that with which I honored her. I make today my last arrangements with the managers of the Nouveautés for my concert the 30th of this month. They are very honest fellows and very accommodating. We shall begin to rehearse the Fantastic symphony in three days; all the parts have been copied with the greatest care; there are 2,300 pages of music; nearly 400 francs for the copying. We hope to have decent receipts on Whitsunday, for all the theaters will be closed.... I hope that the wretched woman will be there that day; at any rate, there are many conspiring at the Feydeau to make her go. I do not believe it, however; she will surely recognize herself in reading the programme of my instrumental drama, and then she will take good care not to appear. Well, God knows all that will be said, there are so many who know my story!” He hoped to have the assistance of the “incredible tenor,” Haizinger, and of Schröder-Devrient, who were then singing in opera at the Salle Favart.

The “frightful truths” about Miss Smithson were sheer calumnies. Berlioz made her tardy reparation in the extraordinary letter written to Ferrand, October 11, 1833, shortly after his marriage. He too had been slandered: her friends had told her that he was an epileptic, that he was mad. As soon as he heard the slanders, he raged, he disappeared for two days, and wandered over lonely plains outside Paris, and at last slept, worn out with hunger and fatigue, in a field near Sceaux. His friends had searched Paris for him, even the morgue. After his return he was obstinately silent for several days.

At last Berlioz determined to give a grand concert at which his cantata Sardanapale, which took the prix de Rome, and the Fantastic symphony would be performed. Furthermore, Miss Smithson was then in Paris. The concert was announced for November 14, 1830, but it was postponed till December 5 of that year. But Miss Smithson was not present; she was at the Opéra at a performance for her benefit, and she mimed there for the first and last time the part of Fenella in Auber’s Muette de Portici. The symphony made a sensation; it was attacked and defended violently, and Cherubini answered, when he was asked if he heard it: “Ze n’ai pas besoin d’aller savoir comment il né faut pas faire.”

After Berlioz returned from Italy, he purposed to give a concert. He learned accidentally that Miss Smithson was still in Paris; but she had no thought of her old adorer; after professional disappointments in London, due perhaps to her Irish accent, she returned to Paris in the hope of establishing an English theater. The public in Paris knew her no more; she was poor and at her wit’s end. Invited to go to a concert, she took a carriage, and then, looking over the programme, she read the argument of the Fantastic symphony which with Lélio, its supplement, was performed on December 9, 1832. Fortunately, Berlioz had revised the programme and omitted the coarse insult (“She is now only a courtesan worthy to figure in such an orgy”) in the programme of the Sabbat; but, as soon as she was seen in the hall of the Conservatory, some who knew Berlioz’s original purpose chuckled, and spread malicious information. Miss Smithson, moved by the thought that her adorer, as the hero of the symphony, tried to poison himself for her, accepted the symphony as a flattering tribute.

Tiersot[14] describes the scene at this second performance in 1832. The pit was crowded, as on the great days of romantic festival occasions—Dumas’s Antony was then jamming the Porte Saint-Martin—with pale, long-haired youths, who believed firmly that “to make art” was the only worthy occupation on the earth; they had strange, fierce countenances, curled mustaches, Merovingian hair or hair cut brushlike, extravagant doublets, velvet-faced coats thrown back on the shoulders. The women were dressed in the height of the prevailing fashion, with coiffures à la girafe, high shell combs, shoulder-of-mutton sleeves, and short petticoats that revealed buskins. Berlioz was seated behind the drums, and his “monstrous antediluvian hair rose from his forehead as a primeval forest on a steep cliff.” Heine was in the hall. He was especially impressed by the Sabbat, “where the Devil sings the mass, where the music of the Catholic church is parodied with the most horrible, the most outrageous buffoonery. It is a farce in which all the serpents that we carry hidden in the heart raise their heads, hissing with pleasure and biting their tails in the transport of their joy.... Mme Smithson was there, whom the French actresses have imitated so closely. M. Berlioz was madly in love with this woman for three years, and it is to this passion that we owe the savage symphony which we hear today.” It is said that, each time Berlioz met her eyes, he beat the drums with redoubled fury. Heine added: “Since then Miss Smithson has become Mme Berlioz, and her husband has cut his hair. When I heard the symphony again last winter, I saw him still at the back of the orchestra, in his place near the drums. The beautiful Englishwoman was in a stage box, and their eyes again met: but he no longer beat with such rage on his drums.”

Musician and play actress met, and after mutual distrust and recrimination there was mutual love. She was poor and in debt; on March 16, 1833, she broke her leg, and her stage career was over. Berlioz pressed her to marry him; both families objected; there were violent scenes; Berlioz tried to poison himself before her eyes; Miss Smithson at last gave way, and the marriage was celebrated on October 3, 1833. It was an unhappy one.

“A separation became inevitable,” says Legouvé.[15] “She who had been Mlle Smithson, grown old and ungainly before her time, and ill besides, retired to a humble lodging at Montmartre, where Berlioz, notwithstanding his poverty, faithfully and decently provided for her. He went to see her as a friend, for he had never ceased to love her, he loved her as much as ever; but he loved her differently, and that difference had produced a chasm between them.”

After some years of acute physical as well as mental suffering, the once famous play actress died, March 3, 1854. Berlioz put two wreaths on her grave, one for him and one for their absent son, the sailor. And Jules Janin sang her requiem in a memorable feuilleton.

OVERTURE, “THE ROMAN CARNIVAL,” OP. 9

Berlioz’s overture, Le Carnaval Romain, originally intended as an introduction to the second act of Benvenuto Cellini, is dedicated to Prince de Hohenzollern-Hechingen. It was performed for the first time, and under the direction of the composer, at the Salle Herz, Paris, on February 3, 1844. The overture was composed in Paris in 1843, shortly after a journey in Germany. The score and parts were published in June, 1844.

The chief thematic material of the overture was taken by Berlioz from his opera Benvenuto Cellini, originally in two acts, libretto by Léon de Wailly and Augusta Barbier. It was produced at the Opéra, Paris, on September 10, 1838.

The success of The Roman Carnival overture was immediate. The applause was so long-continued that the work was repeated then and there. Berlioz gives an account of the performance in the forty-eighth chapter of his Memoirs. He first says that Habeneck, the conductor at the Opéra, would not take the time of the saltarello fast enough.

“Some years afterwards, when I had written the overture The Roman Carnival, in which the theme of the allegro is the same saltarello which he never could make go, Habeneck was in the foyer of the Salle Herz the evening that this overture was to be played for the first time. He had heard that we had rehearsed it without wind instruments, for some of my players, in the service of the National Guard, had been called away. ‘Good!’ said he. ‘There will surely be some catastrophe at this concert, and I must be there to see it!’ When I arrived, all the wind players surrounded me; they were frightened at the idea of playing in public an overture wholly unknown to them.

“‘Don’t be afraid,’ I said; ‘the parts are all right, you are all talented players; watch my stick as much as possible, count your rests, and it will go.’

“There was not a mistake. I started the allegro in the whirlwind time of the Transteverine dancers; the audience shouted, ‘Bis!’ We played the overture again, and it went even better the second time. I went to the foyer and found Habeneck. He was rather disappointed. As I passed him, I flung at him these few words: ‘Now you see what it really is!’ He carefully refrained from answering me.

“Never have I felt more keenly than on this occasion the pleasure of conducting my own music, and my pleasure was doubled by thinking on what Habeneck had made me suffer.

“Poor composers, learn to conduct, and conduct yourselves well! (Take the pun, if you please.) For the most dangerous of your interpreters is the conductor. Don’t forget this.”

The overture is scored for two flutes (and piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, kettledrums, two side drums, cymbals, triangle, and strings.

ERNEST
BLOCH

(Born at Geneva, Switzerland, July 24, 1880)

“SCHELOMO” (SOLOMON), HEBREW RHAPSODY FOR VIOLONCELLO AND ORCHESTRA

Mr. Bloch is most inspired when he stands firmly and proudly on Jewish ground. The well equipped composer is seen in all that he writes, but his three Jewish Poems for orchestra, his Psalms, for voice and orchestra, his Schelomo, are far above his what might be called Gentile work, even above his concerto, not to mention the cycloramic America. As he has written in an account of himself and his artistic beliefs, it is the Jewish soul that interests him: “the complex, glowing, agitated soul” that he feels vibrating through the Bible. No wonder that the despair of the Preacher in Jerusalem and the splendor of Solomon alike appealed to him; the monarch in all his glory; the Preacher, who when he looked on all his works that his hands had wrought and on the labor that he had labored to do, could only explain: “And behold, all was vanity, and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the Sun.” And so Mr. Bloch might have taken as a motto for this Hebrew rhapsody the lines of Rueckert:

Other composers have taken Solomon for their hero; as Handel in his oratorio; Goldmark, representing him as mighty and jealous in The Queen of Sheba; Gounod in the opera similarly entitled, based on the wildly fantastic tale of Gerard de Nerval; there are older operas, but all, or nearly all, are concerned with Grand Turke, the Sultan of the Ottomans. It was left for Mr. Bloch to express in music the magnificence and the pessimistic, despairing philosophy of the ruler to whom is falsely attributed the book, Ecclesiastes. Here is music that does not brook conventional analysis; music that is now purely lyrical, now dramatic, now pictorial; music that rises to gorgeous heights and sinks to the depths; with a conclusion that is not of the Preacher, the pious admonition after summing up the whole matter, but a conclusion voiced by the violoncello: “There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest.” Here is no Solomon, lord of all creatures at whose name Afrites and evil genii trembled, the Solomon of the “Thousand Nights and a Night,” here is the monarch that having known power and all the pleasures, enumerating them—even to “the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts”—reasoned that everything was futile; that all was vanity.

One might therefore infer that this rhapsody is distressingly somber, for nothing is more wearisome than a long-drawn-out complaint. The inference would be wrong, for Mr. Bloch has imagined in tones, in superbly exultant measures, the pomp and sumptuousness of the King enthroned. There are orchestral bursts of glorification; between them are recitatives and lyric reflections for the jaded voluptuary, the embittered philosopher. The ingenuity displayed is as remarkable as the individuality, the originality shown by the composer stirred in his soul not only by the story of Solomon; moved mightily by the thought of ancient days, the succeeding trials and persecution of his race. More than once in the rhapsody, if there is a suggestion of Solomon’s court and temple, there is also the suggestion of the Wailing Wall.