Old Fogy Part 7

XVIII

OLD FOGY WRITES A SYMPHONIC POEM

"Definite feelings and emotions are unsusceptible of being embodied in music," says Eduard Hanslick in his _Beautiful in Music_. Now, you composers who make symphonic poems, why don't you realize that on its merits as a musical composition, its theme, its form, its treatment, that your work will endure, and not on account of its fidelity to your explanatory program?

For example, if I were a very talented young composer--which I am not--and had mastered the tools of my trade--knew everything from a song to a symphony, and my instrumentation covered the whole gamut of the orchestral pigment.... Well, one night as I tossed wearily on my bed--it was a fine night in spring, the moon rounded and l.u.s.trous and silvering the lake below my window--suddenly my musical imagination began to work.

I had just been reading, and for the thousandth time, Browning's _Childe Roland_, with its sinister coloring and spiritual suggestions. Yet it had never before struck me as a subject suitable for musical treatment.

But the exquisite cool of the night, its haunting mellow flavor, had set my brain in a ferment. A huge fantastic shadow threw a jagged black figure on the lake. Presto, it was done, and with a mental snap that almost blinded me.

I had my theme. It will be the first theme in my new symphonic poem, _Childe Roland_. It will be in the key of B minor, which is to be emblematic of the dauntless knight who to "the dark tower came,"

unfettered by obstacles, physical or spiritual.

O, how my brain seethed and boiled, for I am one of those unhappy men who the moment they get an idea must work it out to its bitter end.

_Childe Roland_ kept me awake all night. I even heard his "dauntless horn" call and saw the "squat tower." I had his theme. I felt it to be good; to me it was Browning's Knight personified. I could hear its underlying harmonies and the instrumentation, sombre, gloomy, without one note of gladness.

The theme I treated in such a rhythmical fas.h.i.+on as to impart to it exceeding vitality, and I announced it with the English horn, with a curious rhythmic background by the tympani; the strings in division played tremolando and the ba.s.s staccato and muted. This may not be clear to you; it is not very clear to me, but at the time it all seemed very wonderful. I finished the work after nine months of agony, of revision, of pruning, clipping, cutting, hawking it about for my friends'

inspection and getting laughed at, admired and also mildly criticized.

The thrice fatal day arrived, the rehearsals had been torture, and one night the audience at a great concert had the pleasure of reading on the program Browning's _Childe Roland_ in full, and wondering what it was all about. My symphonic poem would tell them all, as I firmly believed in the power of music to portray definitely certain soul-states, to mirror moods, to depict, rather indefinitely to be sure, certain phenomena of daily life.

My poem was well played. It was only ninety minutes long, and I sat in a nervous swoon as I listened to the _Childe Roland_ theme, the squat tower theme, the sudden little river motif, the queer gaunt horse theme, the horrid engine of war motif, the sinister, grinning, false guide subject--in short, to all the many motives of the poem, with its apotheosis, the dauntless blast from the brave knight as he at last faced the dark tower.

This latter I gave out with twelve trombones, twenty-one ba.s.sett horns and one calliope; it almost literally brought down the house, and I was the happiest man alive. As I moved out I was met by the critic of _The Disciples of Tone_, who said to me:

"Lieber Kerl, I must congratulate you; it beats Richard Strauss all hollow. _Who_ and what was _Childe Roland_? Was he any relation to Byron's _Childe Harold_? I suppose the first theme represented the 'galumphing' of his horse, and that funny triangular fugue meant that the horse was lame in one leg and was going it on three. Adieu; I'm in a hurry."

Triangular fugue! Why, that was the crossroads before which Childe Roland hesitated! How I hated the man.

I was indeed disheartened. Then a lady spoke to me, a musical lady, and said:

"It was grand, perfectly grand, but why did you introduce a funeral march in the middle--I fancied that Childe Roland was not killed until the end?"

The funeral march she alluded to was not a march at all, but the "quagmire theme," from which queer faces threateningly mock at the knight.

"Hopeless," thought I; "these people have no imagination."

The next day the critics treated me roughly. I was accused of cribbing my first theme from _The Flying Dutchman_, and fixing it up rhythmically for my own use, as if I hadn't made it on the spur of an inspired moment! They also told me that I couldn't write a fugue; that my orchestration was overloaded, and my work deficient in symmetry, repose, development and, above all, in coherence.

This last was too much. Why, Browning's poem was contained in my tone-poem; blame Browning for the incoherence, for I but followed his verse. One day many months afterward I happened to pick up Hanslick, and chanced on the following:

"Let them play the theme of a symphony by Mozart or Haydn, an adagio by Beethoven, a scherzo by Mendelssohn, one of Schumann's or Chopin's compositions for the piano, or again, the most popular themes from the overtures of Auber, Donizetti or Flotow, who would be bold enough to point out a definite feeling on the subject of any of these themes? One will say 'love.' Perhaps so. Another thinks it is longing. He may be right. A third feels it to be religion. Who may contradict him? Now, how can we talk of a definite feeling represented when n.o.body really knows what is represented? Probably all will agree about the beauty or beauties of the composition, whereas all will differ regarding its subject. To represent something is to exhibit it clearly, to set it before us distinctly. But how can we call that the subject represented by an art which is really its vaguest and most indefinite element, and which must, therefore, forever remain highly debatable ground."

I saw instantly that I had been on a false track. Charles Lamb and Eduard Hanslick had both reached the same conclusion by diverse roads. I was disgusted with myself. So then the whispering of love and the clamor of ardent combatants were only whispering, storming, roaring, but not the whispering of love and the clamor; musical clamor, certainly, but not that of "ardent combatants."

I saw then that my symphonic poem, _Childe Roland_, told nothing to anyone of Browning's poem, that my own subjective and overstocked imaginings were not worth a rush, that the music had an objective existence as music and not as a poetical picture, and by the former and not the latter it must be judged. Then I discovered what poor stuff I had produced--how my fancy had tricked me into believing that those three or four bold and heavily orchestrated themes, with their restless migration into different tonalities, were "soul and tales marvelously mirrored."

In reality my ignorance and lack of contrapuntal knowledge, and, above all, the want of clear ideas of form, made me label the work a symphonic poem--an elastic, high-sounding, pompous and empty t.i.tle. In a spirit of revenge I took the score, rearranged it for small orchestra, and it is being played at the big circus under the euphonious t.i.tle of _The Patrol of the Night Stick_, and the musical press praises particularly the graphic power of the night stick motive and the verisimilitude of the escape of the burglar in the coda.

Alas, _Childe Roland!_

Seriously, if our rising young composers--isn't it funny they are always spoken of as rising? I suppose it's because they retire so late--read Hanslick carefully, much good would accrue. It is all well enough to call your work something or other, but do not expect me nor my neighbor to catch your idea. We may be both thinking about something else, according to our temperaments. I may be probably enjoying the form, the instrumentation, the development of your themes; my neighbor, for all we know, will in imagination have buried his rich, irritable old aunt, and so your paean of gladness, with its brazen clamor of trumpets, means for him the triumphant ride home from the cemetery and the antic.i.p.ated joys of the post-mortuary hurrah.

XIX

A COLLEGE FOR CRITICS

Yes, it was indeed a hot, sultry afternoon, and as the cla.s.s settled down to stolid work, even Mr. Quelson s.h.i.+fted impatiently at the blackboard, where he was trying to explain to a young pupil from Missouri that Beethoven did not write his oratorio, _The Mount of Olives_, for Park and Tilford. It was no use, however, the pupil had been brought up in a delicatessen foundry and saw everything musical from the comestible viewpoint.

The sun blazed through the open oriel windows at the western end of the large hall, and the cla.s.s inwardly rebelled at its task and thought of cool, green grottoes with heated men frantically falling over the home-plate, while the mult.i.tude belched bravos as Teddy McCorkle made three bases. Instead of the national game the cla.s.s was wrestling with figured ba.s.s and the art of descant, and again it groaned aloud.

Mr. Quelson faced his pupils. In his eyes were tears, but he must do his duty.

"Gentlemen," he suavely said, "the weather is certainly trying, but remember this is examination day, and next week you, that is some of you, will go out into the great world to face its cares, to wrestle for its prizes, to put forth your strength against the strength of men; in a word, to become critics of music, and to represent this college, wherein you have imbibed so much generous and valuable learning."

He paused, and the cla.s.s, which had p.r.i.c.ked up its ears at the word "imbibe," settled once again to listen in gloomy silence. Their dignified preceptor continued.

"And now, gentlemen of the Brahms Inst.i.tute, I hasten to inform you that the examining committee is without, and is presently to be admitted. Let me conjure you to keep your heads; let me beg of you to do yourself justice. Surely, after five years of constant, sincere, and earnest study you will not backslide, you will not, in the language of the great Matthewson, make any m.u.f.fs." Professor Quelson looked about him and beamed benignly. He had made a delicate joke, and it was not lost, for most sonorously the cla.s.s chanted, "He's a jolly good fellow," and in modern harmonies. Their professor looked gratified and bowed. Then he tapped a bell, which sounded the triad of B flat minor, and the doors at the eastern end of the hall parted asunder, and the examining committee solemnly entered.

It was an august looking gang. Two music-critics from four of the largest cities of the country comprised the board of examination, with a president selected by common vote. This president was the distinguished pianist and literator, Dr. Larry Nopkin, and his sarcastic glare at the pupils gave every man the nervous s.h.i.+vers. Funereally the nine men filed by and took their seats on the platform, Dr. Nopkin occupying with Mr.

Quelson the dais, on which stood a grand piano.

There was a brief pause, but pregnant with anxiety. Mr. Quelson, all smiles, handed Dr. Nopkin a long list of names, and the committee fanned itself and thought of the _Tannhauser-Busch Overture_ which it had listened to so attentively in the Wagner coaches that brought it to Brahms Inst.i.tute.

The only man of the party who seemed out of humor was Mr. Blink, who grumbled to his neighbor that the name of the college was in bad taste.

It should have been called the Chopin Retreat or the Paderewski Home, but Brahms--pooh!

Dr. Nopkin arose, put on a pair of ponderous spectacles, and grinned malevolently at his hearers.

"Young men," he squeakily said, "I want to begin with a story. Once upon a time a certain young man, full of the conviction that he was a second Liszt, sought out Thalberg, when that great pianist--"

"Great pianist!" whispered Blink, sardonically.

"Yes, I said great pianist--greater than all your Paderewski's, your--"

"I protest, Mr. President," said Mr. Blink, rising to his feet; at the same time a pink flush rose to his cheek. "I protest. We have not come here to compare notes about pianists, but to examine this cla.s.s."

The cla.s.s giggled, but respectfully and in a perfect major-accord. Dr.

Nopkin grew black in the face. Turning to Mr. Quelson he said:

"Either I am president or I am not, Mr. Quelson."