Although Tschaikowsky wrote light operas, he is chiefly known for his orchestral music—his magnificent symphonies and his symphonic poems. So immense are these works in their effect that the hearer often imagines that Tschaikowsky called for an orchestra with as many additional instruments, new and old, as Richard Strauss. This is not the case, however. For instance, in the Symphonie pathetique he has the Beethoven orchestra with the addition of the bass tuba.

“A remarkable feature of his scoring is the extreme modern effect secured with comparatively modest means. He expressed himself in a language of profound pathos which was in part due to the embodiment of weird and gloomy orchestration. He made prominent use of low woodwind, which were constantly combined with the violas, and he evinced peculiar predilection for clarinets in their low range and bassoons in their upper range.”[85]

In the Casse Noisette Suite (Nut-cracker Suite), which is so charming in its playfulness, his instrumentation is particularly novel. In it he introduced the celesta (see page 128).

Tschaikowsky should be described as a follower of Berlioz, Liszt, and Mozart. He was particularly devoted to Mozart as his fourth orchestral suite, entitled Mozartiana plainly shows. In a preface to this work Tschaikowsky says: “A large number of the most admirable compositions of Mozart are, for some inexplicable reason, hardly known not only to the public but even to the majority of musicians.”

Tschaikowsky died of cholera in Petrograd in 1893.

We have seen that in the days of Berlioz the French public cared more for operatic than for symphonic music. After Berlioz, composers devoted much more thought to the Orchestra; and French music now contains a long list of masterpieces and admirable works.

Orchestral concerts under the direction of Habeneck and Pasdeloup and afterwards under Lamoureux and Colonne did much to make symphonic music popular in Paris.

The greatest name in the development of Orchestral music since Berlioz is that of Saint-Saëns, whose orchestration, although rich and elaborate, is always clear and polished to the last degree. The exquisite Symphonic Poem, called Le Rouet d’Omphale, may be taken as an example. It is not merely a beautiful piece of descriptive writing, but it is beautifully scored.

Camille Saint-Saëns is the oldest living French composer. He was born in 1835 in Paris and early showed his great talent for music. At the age of seven he began to study the piano with Stamaty and harmony with Maleden. In 1846, at the age of eleven, he appeared at a concert in the Salle Pleyel; and a year later entered the Conservatory. Here he made a name for himself. His Symphony, composed at the age of sixteen, was successfully performed. In 1858 he became organist at the Madeleine in Paris and astonished everyone by his feats of improvisation. Meantime, he continued composing. He has produced an immense number of works that include every kind of composition from operas to chamber-music, songs and pieces for the harp.

Saint-Saëns has also been an extensive traveller and has spent much time in Algiers. He is an incomparable pianist, a fine musical critic, and an excellent writer. Saint-Saëns is another instance of the general culture required of the modern musician—the type that came into existence after the Revolution of 1830 (see page 244).

Saint-Saëns was made an officer of the Legion d’Honneur in 1884. On June 2, 1896, the fiftieth anniversary of his first public appearance was celebrated in the Salle Pleyel, on which occasion Taffanel conducted the orchestra and Sarasate played a sonata by Saint-Saëns (see illustration facing 268), with the composer at the piano. At the age of seventy he came to America and astonished his audiences by playing his five piano concertos, accompanied by Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony Orchestra, with marvellous skill and the fire of youth.

Debussy is a modern of the moderns; and, moreover, he has led music into a new path.

Debussy is, however, but one of a group of French musicians who, for the last thirty or forty years, have been developing French music more according to the traditional taste of their nation than it had been since the days of Rameau. In fact, these musicians have carried music back to its fountain head; and we may say that the same spirit that characterized the works of the trouvères of the Fifteenth Century (music such as is being played by King René’s musicians in our frontispiece); the same spirit that was expressed in the music of the French Renaissance; the same spirit that was heard in the operas and ballets of Lully and Rameau lives again, though in a new form.

Of all these modern French composers—Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel, Albert Roussel, Emmanuel Chabrier, Vincent d’Indy, Ernest Chausson, Henri Duparc, Paul Dukas, Florent Schmitt, Déodat de Séverac, and Ernest Satie—Claude Debussy is the leading spirit; and, perhaps, the greatest genius.

Claude Achille Debussy was born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in 1862. He entered the Conservatory in Paris at the age of twelve and studied under Albert Lavignac, Marmontel, Durand, and Guiraud. In 1884 he took the prix de Rome; and from the Eternal City he went to Russia. On his return to Paris he became one of the frequent guests at those famous soirées of Mallarmé, where painters, poets, sculptors, and musicians gathered.

His piano works, songs, instrumental pieces, and orchestral compositions, such as L’Après midi d’un faune, were admired by many persons on their first hearing; but his audience was comparatively small until the opera of Pelleas et Mélisande made him known throughout the world. Here was an entirely new idea in music. The Orchestra did not annotate, nor emphasize the actions of the persons on the stage, but it became a soft, melodious atmosphere, a delicious web of harmony enfolding the entire work. It was like nothing that had ever been written.

One idea of Debussy’s in orchestral writing is to get the greatest effect with the simplest means. To produce these effects Debussy employs many old scales and harmonic chords. His instrumentation, therefore, seems diaphanous, ethereal, and suffused with delicate, opalescent colors. He is in sympathy with the impressionists in painting and the symbolists in poetry. The fluid quality of his music lends itself to the description of water. His works are full of the sound of water—the sea, fountains, and silvery rain falling upon dim gardens. He creates a sense of mystery and atmospheric beauties as no one else has ever done.

In the Afternoon of a Faun:

“The ascending and descending introductory bars given out by an unaccompanied flute convey an idea of pastoral charm. A characteristic bucolic horn motive follows, and the first theme is repeated with muted string accompaniment. The whole scoring of the composition is of cobweb delicacy. The Orchestra is composed of three flutes, oboes, clarinets, four horns, two harps, antique cymbals, and strings. The principal themes are given by clarinets, oboes, and harps respectively. A scale of whole tones is heard on the clarinet; this leads to another section marked più animato, in which the oboe voices the principal theme. These subjects are all interwoven with and linked to other themes. They are heard sometimes as solos, sometimes concerted. The rhythm of the whole work is free and varied. The strings, muted or otherwise, are often used as a kind of background to the wind solos, which is most effective. A veil of palpitating heat seems to be suffused over the composition and corresponds to the glow of Eastern sunlight in the poem and also to the remote, visionary nature of the poet’s imagery and fancies. The tone poem also recalls the golden noon of an Idyl of Theocritus. All through the piece the composer preserves this feeling of elusiveness, of mirage: he attains it by the use of delicate unusual harmonies and by the silvery, web-like tracery of his phrases. The frequent use of the scale of whole tones and the unresolved dissonances produce a distinct charm of their own. The chords are of an exceeding richness and present a depth of glowing color. The interspersed solos for violin, oboe, clarinet, cor anglais, resemble dainty broidery, and portray intimately the ramifications of doubt and longing in the faun’s mind, which he likens to a multitude of branches with slender pointed sprays and sprigs.”[86]

Debussy thus explains some of his titles: “The title of Nocturnes is to be interpreted in a wider sense than that usually given, and most especially it should be understood as having a decorative meaning. Therefore, the usual form of Nocturne has not been considered, and the word should be accepted as signifying in the fullest manner diversified impressions.

“Nuages (clouds)—the unchanging aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn movement of the clouds dissolving in gray tints lightly touched with white.

“Fêtes (festivities)—the restless dancing rhythm of the atmosphere interspersed with sudden flashes of light. There is also an incidental procession (a dazzling imaginary vision) passing through and mingling with the aërial revelry; but the background of uninterrupted festivity is persistent with its blending of music and luminous dust participating in the universal rhythm of all things.

“Sirénes (sirens)—the sea and its perpetual rhythm, and then amid waves silvered by moonbeams are heard the laughter and mysterious song of passing sirens.”

Some critics have called Debussy a revolutionist. They are wrong. Debussy’s musical ancestors are Rameau and Couperin; and his works show us that “revolution is merely evolution made clear for all to see.”

Such is the French music of the present—beautiful, refined, clear, polished, delicate, enchanting!

We, in our great country, like to hear all schools of music, and our wonderful orchestras are able to play equally well the works of all composers and of all schools and nationalities. Some of us prefer the French, some of us the Russian, and some of us the German Schools; but our taste is broad and cultured, and we wish to hear the various ways in which the musical minds of the day are expressing themselves.

What an advance since the days of “a consort of lutes, or viols”! What a development since the Fifteenth Century, when gentle ladies played the psaltérion and flute and vielle, as seen in our frontispiece! But to appreciate the evolution of the Orchestra, let us look at the picture of an Orchestra of the Eleventh Century (facing page 274), the earliest known representation of any Orchestra, taken from the capital of a column of a church near Rouen, and then compare it with the picture of the Symphony Society of New York (facing page 272).

Between these two Orchestras, separated by a period of eight hundred years, we can realize the progress of “music’s ever welling spring, which has flowed through the centuries until it has become an ocean.”