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The French Symphony at the Fin de Siecle
Style, Culture, and the Symphonic Tradition
Andrew Deruchie
Schulich School of Music, McGill University, Montreal
A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of
the requirements of the degree of PhD in Musicology
August 2008
© Andrew Deruchie, 2008
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Table of contents
Abstract
Resume
Acknowledgments
iii
v
vii
Introduction
1
i.i
i.ii
i.iii
i.iv
Prospects
Social Background
Review of Literature
Perspectives
1
6
19
23
Chapter 1 - Camille Saint-Saens, Third Symphony
36
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
A "Masterwork"
Themes and Motives
Death and Rebirth
The Rebirth of the Symphony
Chapter 2 - Cesar Franck, Symphony in D Minor
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
Genesis
Reception and Criticism
"Magical Object"
Mysticism
Chapter 3 - Edouard Lalo, Symphony in G Minor
3.1
3.2
3.3
36
45
59
72
86
86
88
.99
117
124
From (Symphony to) Opera to Symphony
Concision
Per aspera ad aspera
124
139
148
Chapter 4 - Ernest Chausson, Symphony in B-flat Major
157
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
Trumpet Calls
Tonality
"Theme"
Material and Plot
A Symbolist Symphony
157
163
174
184
192
Abstract
This dissertation examines the symphony in late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury France by way of individual chapters on the period's seven most influential and
frequently performed works: Camille Saint-Saens's Third Symphony (1885-86), Cesar
Franck's Symphony in D minor (1887-88), Edouard Lalo's Symphony in G minor (1886),
Vincent d'Indy's Symphonie sur un chant montagnardfranqais (1886) and Second
Symphony (1902-03), Ernest Chausson's Symphony in B-flat (1890), and Paul Dukas's
Symphony in C (1896). Beethoven established the primary paradigm for these works in
his Third, Fifth, and Ninth Symphonies, and the principal historical issue I address is how
French composers reconciled this paradigm with their own aesthetic priorities within the
musical and cultural climate of fln-de-siecle France.
Previous critics have viewed this repertoire primarily with limited structuralist
methodologies. The results have often been unhappy: all of these symphonies are in
some ways formally idiosyncratic and individual, and their non-conforming aspects have
tended to puzzle or disappoint. My study draws on recent methods developed by Warren
Darcy, Scott Burnham, and others that emphasize the dynamic and teleological qualities
of musical form. This more supple approach allows a fuller appreciation of the subtle and
sophisticated ways in which individual works unfold formally, and the spectrum of
procedures French composers employed.
My study demonstrates that the factors shaping the French symphony in this
period included imperatives of progress as well as the popularity of the symphonic poem.
Some of the earlier symphonists covered in this study also felt the need to confront
Wagner's influential theoretical writings: mid -century he had famously proclaimed the
death of the symphony. As many writers have argued, the archetypal heroic "plot" that
Beethoven's symphonies express embodies the subject-laden values—notions of
iii
individual freedom and faith in the self—that prevailed in his time. Different inflections
of this plot by French symphonists, I argue, reflect the variegated ways fin-de-siecle
French culture had received these values.
iv
Chapter 5 - Vincent d'Indy, Symphonie sur un chant montagnardfrangais
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
Ideology
The Principe cyclique
La Terre et les morts
Enracinement
Chapter 6 - Vincent d'Indy, Second Symphony
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
6.5
Introduction
Edifice
Progress
Misreading Chausson
Reaction
Chapter 7 - Paul Dukas, Symphony in C
198
198
205
216
224
239
239
245
254
270
275
284
7.1
7.2
7.3
7.4
Introduction
Musique and Anti-Musique
Beethoven and Traduction
Dukas's Heroique
284
288
304
306
7.5
A Cyclic Symphony?
321
Conclusion
333
Bibliography
339
ii
Resume
La presente these examine la symphonie frangaise a la fin du dix-neuvieme et au
commencement du vingtieme siecle, en sept chapitres portant sur les oeuvres les plus
influentes et interpretees de l'epoque: la troisieme symphonie de Camille Saint-Saens
(1885), la symphonie en re mineur de Cesar Franck (1888), la symphonie en sol mineur
d'Edouard Lalo (1885), la Symphonie sur un chant montagnardfrangais ainsi que la
deuxieme symphonie de Vincent d'Indy (1886 et 1902-1903), la symphonie en si bemol
majeur d'Ernest Chausson (1890) et la symphonie en do de Paul Dukas (1896).
Beethoven a etabli le paradigme principal pour ces oeuvres avec ses troisieme, cinquieme
et neuvieme symphonies, et cette these portera principalement sur les manieres dont les
compositeurs frangais reconcilierent ce paradigme avec leurs propres priorites esthetiques
au sein du climat musical et culturel de la France de la fin du siecle.
La majorite des chercheurs ont evalue ce repertoire au moyen de methodologies
structuralistes limitees, et les resultats ont souvent ete peu convaincants : ces symphonies
presentent toutes une conception formelle hautement idiosyncratique et individuelle, et
leurs aspects non conformistes ont souvent suscite confusion ou deception. Ma these
s'inspire de methodes recentes developpees entre autres par Warren Darcy et
Scott Burnham, qui mettent en lumiere les qualites dynamiques et teleologiques de la
forme musicale. Cette approche plus souple permet de mieux apprecier la subtilite et la
sophistication du deploiement formel de ces oeuvres, ainsi que le riche eventail de
procedures employees par les compositeurs frangais.
Ma these demontre que les facteurs ayant modele la symphonie franchise au
tournant du siecle incluent les imperatifs du progres de meme que la popularity du poeme
symphonique. Certains des symphonistes mentionnes ici ressentirent aussi le besoin de
reagir aux ecrits theoriques influents de Wagner, qui avait proclame, au milieu du siecle,
v
la mort de la symphonie. Comme plusieurs chercheurs ont soutenu, «l'iritrigue »
heroi'que archetypale des symphonies de Beethoven exprime les valeurs subjectives de
liberie individuelle et de foi en sa propre personne qui prevalaient a l'epoque. Les
differentes declinaisons de cette intrigue par les compositeurs francpais refletent les
manieres variees dont ces valeurs furent refues dans la culture frangaise a la fin du siecle.
vi
Acknowledgments
An orchestra-sized group of people provided the assistance I needed to complete
this study, and it is my unmitigated pleasure to thank some of the principals here.
Professor Steven Huebner supervised this project, and it benefited immeasurably from his
uncommon combination of expertise in fin-de-siecle French music and culture, command
of the symphonic repertoire, and, perhaps most important, musical sensitivity. His own
scholarship, moreover, served as a challenging model of excellence. My thanks are also
due to him for generously offering funds from his research stipend that enabled me to
travel to Europe to attend conferences and conduct research in the summers of 2006 and
2007. Professor William Caplin read a draft of this entire dissertation and offered much
astute and helpful feedback. My skills as an analyst also benefited from his seminar on
musical form in which I participated early in my degree.
This project was completed with the support of a McGill University Principal's
Dissertation Fellowship, and I would like to express my appreciation to the donors who
endowed that award. Special thanks are also in order to Erin Helyard and Meghan
Goodchild, who prepared the musical examples, and to Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, who
offered keen and timely editorial assistance. Many friends patiently listened to ideas and
offered advice, insight, and intellectual stimulation; I am particularly grateful to Alexis
Luko, Christopher Moore, Erin Helyard, Liz Blackwood and Nathan Martin. I also
benefited from the friendship of Colette Simonot, Michael Ethen, and Sarah GutscheMiller, among other colleagues in Montreal, and I enjoyed evenings with Markus
Gonitzke on the Pont-des-arts in Paris.
My parents constantly offered encouragement and provided crucial financial
assistance; I am more grateful to them than they know. Finally, Julie Pedneault
Deslauriers offered boundless amounts of every kind of support imaginable: intellectual,
vii
moral, material, analytical, linguistic, culinary, secretarial, and, most of all, love. At
moments it seemed as though this project would not reach fruition—and without her
support it might well not have. The few words of thanks I am able to offer her here
cannot begin to convey my gratitude.
viii
Introduction
Li Prospects
In an article titled "De la symphonie moderne et de son avenir" that appeared in
La Revue et Gazette musicale in June of 1870, the progressive critic Ives Keramzer
forecasted a bright future for the symphony in France. The nation's young composers
would take up the genre handed down from Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and
Schumann, and in a "fagon radicale" revivify it: "la maniere classique y a dit son dernier
mot," he believed, and "une formule nouvelle est a trouver."1 This was a bold prediction
for 1870. Quite apart from Keramzer's futuristic vision, his title alone likely seemed
audacious to some of his readers, many of whom would have seen little around them to
suggest that the symphony had much of a future in France. Berlioz, of course, had
written symphonies, but they were rarely performed. So too, in the 1850s, had the
youthful Saint-Saens and Gounod, but these works remained virtually unknown. Indeed,
Saint-Saens's Second, which by the end of the century would become a repertoire piece
(and is still occasionally performed today), was not published until 1878. Parisians could
hear orchestral music at the subscription-only Societe des concerts du Conservatoire, and
from 1861 onward at Jules Pasdeloup's accessible Concerts populaires. A handful of
ensembles performed chamber music. Opera and operetta dominated French musical
culture, and in 1870 the public showed relatively little interest in instrumental music of
any sort. The organizations that did perform it focused overwhelmingly on Germanic
classics, and when they programmed music by living French composers, audiences for the
most part cared little for it. Success stories like Felicien David's "symphonic ode" Le
1
Ives Keramzer, "De la symphonie moderne et de son avenir," La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, June
12, 1870.
1
Desert were rare; more typical was the jeering that greeted Pasdeloup's 1869 performance
of Bizet's Souvenirs de Rome.
The general artistic climate of the 1850s and 60s, which treated young, highminded musicians who might be inclined to cultivate the genre unfavourably, equally
encumbered the cultivation of the symphony. As Henri Duparc would later recall,
young composers had no means of becoming known, not only to the general
public, but even to a more limited public [...]. The only French artists who
counted were Boi'eldieu, Auber, Herold, Victor Masse, Adolphe Adam,
Maillart [all composers of frothy theater music] [...]. As for a French
Symphonic art, there wasn't one, nor was one possible.2
Gabriel Faure offered similar reflections: "before 1870 I would never have dreamed of
composing a sonata or a quartet. In that period there was no chance of a composer getting
a hearing with works like that."3 And so too did Saint-Saens:
The real public, that is the bon bourgeois, recognized no music outside the
opera and French comic opera [...]. There was a universal cult, a positive
idolatry, of "melody" or, more exactly, of the tune which could be picked up
at once and easily remembered. A magnificent period such as the theme of
the slow movement in Beethoven's Eighth Symphony was seriously described
as "algebra in music" [...]. Herold and Boi'eldieu were already accounted
classics and the laurels of the French school were disputed by Auber and
Adolphe Adam [...]. Outside these two large groups there existed a small
circle of professional and amateur musicians who really cared for and
cultivated music for its own sake, secret worshippers of Haydn, Mozart,
Beethoven and occasionally Bach and Handel. It was quite useless to try and
get a symphony, a trio, or a quartet performed, except by the Societe des
concerts du Conservatoire or by one or two private chamber music societies.4
2
Henri Duparc, "Souvenirs de la Societe nationale," Revue musicale de la Societe Internationale de
musique (December 1912): 2. Translated in Timothy Jones, "Nineteenth-Century Orchestral and Chamber
Music," in French Music Since Berlioz, ed. Richard Langham Smith and Caroline Potter (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2006), 53-55.
3
Gabriel Faure, Interview in Le Petit Parisien, April 28, 1922. Translated in Jones, "Nineteenth-Century
Orchestral and Chamber Music," 53.
4
Camille Saint-Saens, Portraits et souvenirs (Paris: Societe d'edition artistique, 1900). Translated in
Martin Cooper, French Music from the Death of Berlioz to the Death of Faure (London: Oxford University
Press, 1961), 9.
2
Saint-Saens exaggerated, but only a little. Martin Cooper summarizes the period as
follows:
There was very little good orchestral music, no lieder, not much chamber
music; and the little there was met for the most part with indifference or
hostility. It was the age of the catacombs and very few observers could have
foretold the sudden blaze of musical activity and life which was to spring up
on the eighteen-seventies.5
Nevertheless, Keramzer, perhaps correctly surmising that the winds of change
swirled among the war clouds that were gathering in the spring of 1870, proved correct in
his prognosis for symphonic music (though as we shall see, he very much underestimated
the tenacity of the early nineteenth-century models he felt had taken their final breaths).
When "a new French music was born," as Cooper put it, "like a phoenix from the ashes of
the war and the Commune," concert and chamber music would become an increasingly
central part of France's musical landscape. The 1870s witnessed a number of highly
successful and popular symphonic poems by Saint-Saens and Franck, concerted works by
Lalo and Saint-Saens, chamber works by all three and others, and an assortment of other
orchestral compositions (suites, marches, divertissements, and so on) by the likes of
Massenet, Gounod, and others.
In the following decade, French composers began to take up the symphony itself.
The earliest effort by a composer whose name is familiar today, however, proved
inauspicious. Faure composed a D minor symphony in 1884, but it suffered a disastrous
premiere and the composer destroyed the work.6 This failure, however, did not dissuade
Faure's countrymen, and they began to produce a string of remarkable symphonies a few
years later: Edouard Lalo's Symphony in G minor, Vincent d'Indy's Symphonie sur un
5
Cooper, French Music, 11.
The teenaged Debussy also began a symphony for Nadezhda von Meek in 1880, though it is unclear
whether he completed it. References to it later in his life as his "forever unfinished symphony" (and
strikingly, the work is in B minor) suggest he did not. At any rate, only the finale survives, and only in a
four-hand piano reduction.
6
3
chant montagnardfrangais, and Camille Saint-Saens's Third Symphony were all
completed in 1886, and were followed by Cesar Franck's Symphony in D minor (1888),
Ernest Chausson's Symphony in B flat (1890), Paul Dukas's Symphony in C (1896), and
d'Indy's Second Symphony (1903).
This study focuses on these seven symphonies. Each is the subject of an
individual chapter; each chapter offers a detailed analysis that seeks to shine fresh light on
its form as well as its historical and cultural significance. We shall approach these issues
by positioning each symphony against the genre's formal and rhetorical conventions,
paying special attention to how composers reconciled those conventions with the musical
climate and the broader cultural and ideological environment of fin-de-siecle France.
Composers faced a number of daunting challenges, including anxieties over working in a
genre that had become synonymous with Beethoven's towering masterpieces, and the
problem of negotiating a highly circumscribed genre in a modern era that placed a
premium on progress. For many composers, critics, and listeners, symphonies also
engaged with moral and ethical issues, and, by situating French composer's responses to
the genre's traditions in the context of the Third Republic's charged environment, I will
show that our symphonies span a spectrum of ideological orientations.
A few words about my choices of repertoire, and the motivations behind them, are
in order. Other French composers cultivated the genre during this period, especially from
the end of the century onwards. This group includes Eugene d'Harcourt, Benjamin
Godard, Guy Ropartz, Andre Gedalge, Alberic Magnard, and Jean Hure. Many of their
compositions, particularly the very fine efforts of Magnard and Ropartz, merit serious
attention. Nevertheless, the seven compositions upon which we shall focus here were the
most frequently performed, the most respected by critics, and ultimately the most
influential symphonies of the period. They remain, moreover, the works with which
readers are likely to be most familiar: Saint-Saens's Third and the Franck are major
4
repertoire pieces, orchestras perform d'Indy's "Mountain" Symphony and the Chausson
with some frequency, and the Dukas, Lalo, and d'Indy's Second also occasionally appear
on concert programmes. Delimiting a body of repertoire for a study such as this one
tends to be a problematic task, and critics' criteria often seem questionable, arbitrary, or
both. Given our current intellectual climate, germane as it is to the deconstruction of
canons and recovery of forgotten repertoires, some readers may justifiably be
disappointed that the likes of Magnard and Ropartz are not represented here.
Nevertheless, it is my view that the cause of the French symphony, and perhaps of late
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French instrumental music in general, is better
served by taking a closer look at fewer compositions than it would be by a broader survey
of the repertoire. For even setting aside the compositions of Ropartz, Magnard, and
others, it is clear that Paris suddenly became a hotbed of symphony composition in the
1880s and 90s. Indeed, on the basis of the seven works we shall consider in this study,
one might be tempted to say that France momentarily rivaled—or even eclipsed—Austria
as a center of the symphony, especially in the ten-year period between the Lalo (1886)
and Dukas (1896).
Conventional wisdom, however, holds otherwise. Few narratives of the genre's
history accord French symphonists places alongside Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler.
Louise Cuyler's assessment of the French symphony as a "tributary stream" to the
predominant Austro-Germanic current is typical.7 In the view of the influential—and so
often insightful—Carl Dahlhaus, even Franck's and Saint-Saens's symphonies are deeply
flawed.8 And histories of the genre tend to implicitly relegate the symphonies of Lalo,
Dukas, Chausson and d'Indy to the ash-heap of Kleinmeister ephemera with cursory
discussions or complete disregard. In Preston Stedman's 400-page tome on the
7
Louise Cuyler, The Symphony (Warren, MI.: Harmonie Park Press, 1995); 139-153.
See Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989), 274-276 on Franck and 289-291 on Saint-Saens.
8
5
symphony, for example, Franck alone represents late nineteenth-century France.9 Recent
scholarship has begun to redress this situation. But its scope has been limited, and
complex and large-scale compositions like symphonies tend to reward close and sustained
study. By devoting chapter-length discussions to seven well-known symphonies, I hope
to offer a fuller sense of the richness of invention, depth of expression, and striking
variety of French symphonic art. I ultimately hope to encourage listeners to approach
these symphonies with fresh ears and a renewed sense of their cultural importance, and to
stimulate further critical discussion of them—and perhaps encourage critics and listeners
alike to seek out less familiar works in the genre.
Lii Social Background
The issues around which this study revolves are rooted in the material, historical
circumstances of the symphonies' composition. Let us therefore begin by asking what lay
behind the sudden appearance of this striking cluster of symphonies? France, of course,
was not alone in experiencing a surge of interest in the symphony in the final quarter of
the nineteenth century. After the dry decades that followed Schumann's final essay,
during which time no symphonies that remain in the repertoire were composed, the genre
began to flourish again: in the Austrian Empire with the efforts of Bruckner, Brahms,
Dvorak, and then Mahler, in Russia under Borodin and Tchaikovsky, in England in the
hands of Parry and later Elgar and Vaughan Williams, and in Nordic countries with
Nielsen and Sibelius. This dramatic, pan-European revival led Dahlhaus to speak of a
"Second Age" of the symphony.10
As Richard Taruskin has observed, a "notoriously complex" and volatile mixture
of economic, social, and aesthetic forces led to this "massive infusion of new creative
9
Preston Stedman, The Symphony (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1979), 204-211.
Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, 265.
10
6
energy" into the genre.11 The growth of relatively affluent urban populations with
disposable income allowed the concert hall to become a viable entrepreneurial enterprise,
one with the potential to equal the profitability of the opera house. Across the continent
and in England, concert societies featuring professional orchestras began to offer
subscription series. They typically played in large halls, often specifically designed to
house orchestral concerts. High seating capacities (and some halls built during the
period, such as London's Royal Albert Hall, with a capacity of 6 500, were very large
indeed) allowed tickets to remain relatively inexpensive; low prices fueled demand which
encouraged further proliferation of orchestral concerts.
The wide-ranging revival of the symphony was not simply due to an increased
demand for new works brought about by the emergence of new orchestras. Had that been
the case, many of the composers who did turn to the symphony likely would have
responded with (or exclusively with) symphonic poems, concert overtures, and other sorts
of pieces instead: the genre had fallen out of favour in the first place at least in part
because it was widely thought to have exhausted its potential. The historicist ethic that
had compelled the likes of Wagner and Liszt to seek out new genres in the name of
"progress" remained an active force through the turn of the century and beyond. These
fledgling concert organizations were in fact largely committed to works that audiences
were coming to regard as timeless "classics," meaning music—especially symphonies—
by Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn. The sociologist
William Weber has compiled a fascinating statistic: whereas at the turn of the nineteenth
century approximately eighty percent of music publicly performed in Leipzig, Vienna,
London and Paris was by living composers, by the century's final decades this number
" Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 3, The Nineteenth Century (Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 676-832. Quote on 676.
7
had dwindled to a meager twenty percent.12 Why? Filling large halls meant guaranteeing
the music's quality, and invoking the test of time proved an effective way to draw
crowds. Social factors played an important role as well. Weber noted among nineteenthcentury populations a "desire to celebrate the emerging urban-industrial civilization with
a grand thronging together in public places," and "the need of the new industrial society
to manifest its economic and cultural potency through its own grand rites of secular
13
religiosity."
Large numbers could indeed throng together at orchestral concerts, held as
they were in very large venues, and the classics—a recognized body of work familiar to
concertgoers—represented an ideal "liturgy" around which to collectively celebrate
Weber's grand secular rites.
Performing organizations, then, effectively became museums, largely dedicated to
the preservation and perpetuation of a fixed group of masterworks. Any composer who
wished to take advantage of orchestral music's new prosperity was thus obliged to vie for
the limited programme space granted to living musicians by producing works that
somehow complimented or were compatible with the late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century music that formed the backbone of the newly established canon. One
acceptable way to achieve legitimacy was to re-cultivate the period's genres—and the
symphony, of course, was the flagship form of late eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury instrumental music.
To a certain extent, the forces that propelled the growth of the symphony in
France were the same as they were elsewhere. In the first half of the nineteenth century,
opportunities to hear symphonic music were limited. In 1828, Francois Habeneck, the
Inspector General of the Conservatoire, founded the above-mentioned Societe des
concerts du Conservatoire. The orchestra included students and alumni of the eponymous
12
William Weber, "Mass Culture and the Reshaping of European Musical Taste, 1770-1870,"
Journal of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 8 (1977): 5-21. Cited in ibid., 680.
13
Quoted in ibid., 681.
8
International
institution and numbered 101 musicians (76 strings and 25 winds).14 The ensemble
performed concerts in the Conservatoire's 1 055 seat Grande salle, designed by the
renowned Jacques Delannoy and built in 1811. There existed a handful of other, mostly
short-lived, concertizing organizations. These included the Concert des amateurs (held at
the Tivoli d'hiver in 1825), a series called L'Athenee musical which lasted from 1829 to
1844, Fetis's Concerts historiques (a mere four performances in 1832 and 1833) and
Berlioz's Societe philharmonique (1850-51). The Concerts du Conservatoire was the
only institution with any longevity. After Habeneck's death in 1849, the violinist
Narcisse Giraud took over the organization, and he was succeeded by Theophile Tilmant
(another violinist) in 1861, Francis Hainl (conductor of the Opera) in 1864, and a string
of others until 1967 when the Concerts du Conservatoire became l'Orchestre de Paris, the
name it still carries to this day.
As was the case elsewhere in Europe, orchestral concerts only really began to
proliferate in the French capital in the second half of the century. In 1852, the conductor
Jules Pasdeloup founded the Societe des jeunes artistes du Conservatoire. The
institution's finest students made up his orchestra of 62 players.15 By 1861, however, the
organization was running a serious financial deficit, and Pasdeloup turned his attention to
a new project based on an entirely different business plan. For his Concerts populaires de
musique classique he assembled a fresh orchestra of 56 strings and 25 winds; among
these 78 professional musicians were 44 who had won premier prix at the conservatoire.
Concerts were given at the mammoth Cirque Napoleon, which had a seating capacity of
5 000. Such a large hall allowed tickets to be sold very cheaply, with the least expensive
costing a very affordable 50 centimes and the priciest 5 francs (at the time, eighty-five
14
For a thorough history of this society, see D. Kern Holoman's excellent The Societe des concerts du
Conservatoire, 1828-1967 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
15
See Elisabeth Bernard, "Jules Pasdeloup et les Concerts populaires," Revue de musicologie 57 (1971):
150-178.
9
percent of French families earned 2 500 francs per year or less).16 The Concerts du
Conservatoire, by comparison, were much more expensive: even in 1828, spectators had
to pay at least 2 francs to hear Habeneck's ensemble, and the most expensive tickets cost
a very steep 12 francs. By 1833, seats were available exclusively by subscription and the
average ticket price was five francs. Pasdeloup made orchestral concerts accessible to
large numbers of Parisians for whom such events had hitherto been beyond their means.17
The enterprise was immediately successful: for the first season Pasdeloup had planned a
modest six concerts, and the society's start-up capital outlay was recouped after just the
first three.18
Pasdeloup's concerts would remain an important fixture in Parisian musical life
through the 1870s and their popularity encouraged the foundation of rival organizations.
Edouard Colonne's Concerts nationaux, launched in 1873, was initially the most
successful. (Colonne changed the organization's name in 1874 to the Association
artistique). Like Pasdeloup, Colonne employed a large professional orchestra and offered
inexpensive admission to Sunday afternoon concerts (tickets similarly ranged in price
from 50 centimes to four francs).19 In the abbreviated first season, the orchestra
performed at the Theatre Odeon, a strategically chosen venue that was more accessible
than the Cirque Napoleon to people living in the southern part of the city. The first
concert took place in March, and within a few weeks Colonne's high-quality
performances were filling the hall to capacity; the press reported that hundreds had to be
turned away. The following season the orchestra moved across the Seine to the much
larger Theatre du Chatelet and offered a full slate of twenty concerts divided into five
16
Jean-Marie Mayeur, Les Debuts de la 11f Republique (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1973), 89.
Ticket prices for the Conservatoire series are given in Holoman, The Societe des concerts du
Conservatoire, 122.
18
Bernard, "Jules Pasdeloup et les Concerts populaires," 158.
19
See Michael Strasser, "Ars Gallica: The Societe nationale de musique and its Role in French Musical
Life, 1871-1891" (PhD diss. University of Illinois, 1998), 231.
17
10
series. The Concerts Colonne (the press and concertgoers routinely abbreviated the
societies' official appellations to their conductors' names) continued to thrive through the
turn of the century and beyond. When Colonne died in 1910, Gabriel Pierne took over as
conductor.
In 1881, Charles Lamoureux founded another successful organization. Christened
the Societe des nouveaux concerts, the name changed in 1897 to the Association des
concerts Lamoureux. The conductor found enduring success with the formula Pasdeloup
and Colonne had pioneered: cheap tickets to Sunday afternoon concerts in large halls
(Lamoureux's orchestra played in several different venues). When the conductor died in
1899, the organization was taken over by his son-in-law, Camille Chevillard, and
L'Orchestre Lamoureux continues, like its counterparts founded by Colonne and
Habeneck, to give concerts today.
The Concerts du Conservatoire and the "Grands Concerts," as the societies of
Pasdeloup, Colonne, and Lamoureux were known, were not the only places Parisians
could hear orchestral music in the late nineteenth century. A steady stream of short-lived
concertizing organizations appeared (and disappeared) in the final decades of the
nineteenth century. Michael Strasser has inventoried many such ensembles that
materialized in the 1870s. A handful may serve as examples. In the autumn of 1871, the
conductor Jules Danbe launched a series with the financial backing of the Grand Hotel.
Danbe sought to offer a concert experience that was distinct from Pasdeloup's and more
exclusive: charging higher prices (tickets were two and a half to three francs), he
employed a small orchestra composed of the city's finest musicians and held his
performances in the hotel's ballroom—a far more intimate setting than the massive
Cirque Napoleon. Danbe gave some 120 concerts over a two-year period. The hotel's
residents, however, eventually complained about the noise. The orchestra was forced to
11
move and, deprived of the hotel's financial backing, soon folded.20 An orchestra
inaugurated in 1878 went in the opposite direction: Albert Vizentini conducted
performances in the immense Hippodrome. With a seating capacity variously listed
between 10 000 and 15 000, this space dwarfed even the Cirque Napoleon. The
organization gave just four concerts in late 1878 and early 1879. The reasons for its
discontinuation are unclear, however attendance was not a problem: for the first three
performances the hall was overflowing (one reviewer estimated 3 000 people had to be
turned away from the first) and the fourth also drew a large crowd.21 The Societe
philharmonique de Paris offers an example of an extremely short-lived venture.
Announced in January of 1872, the Philharmonique (like Danbe's ensemble) sought to
attract an elite audience. The orchestra featured "distinguished instrumentalists" under
the baton of Saint-Saens. Its first—and apparently only—concert took place at the Salle
Erard in April of 1872. Finally, the Societe nationale de musique was a small but vitally
important concert-giving organization. Founded in 1871 by Saint-Saens and Romain
Bussine, it was devoted, at least initially, to music by French composers. Compared to
the Sunday afternoon series, the society's concerts were low-key affairs held in relatively
small halls. Limited resources meant that only a few orchestral concerts could be
produced each year. Nevertheless, as Strasser has shown, the organization provided
young French composers with a vitally important forum; Chausson's B-flat symphony
counted among the influential works that premiered at these concerts.
What music did these orchestras play? From its earliest years, the Societe des
concerts du Conservatoire focused upon the repertoire that was starting to congeal into
20
Ibid, 247-248.
I b i d , 258-260.
22
For a thorough history of the Societe nationale and an assessment of its significance for French musical
life in the late nineteenth century, see Strasser, "Ars Gallica," as well as his "The Societe nationale and its
Adversaries: The Musical Politics of TInvasion germanique' in the 1870s," I9'h Century Music 24 (2001):
225-251.
21
12
the canon. Habeneck's inaugural concert opened with Beethoven's Eroica Symphony,
and five of the season's six other programmes also began with Beethoven symphonies;
one of Mozart's G-minor symphonies (probably number 40) opened the single concert
that did not. These early programmes would set the tone for the remainder of the century
and beyond. A survey of the society's programmes—all of which are transcribed on the
superb website that reproduces some 3 000 screens worth of documents that support
D. Kern Holoman's study of the organization—reveals that over 70 percent of the
concerts given through the turn of the century feature a symphony or overture by
Beethoven.23 Haydn and Mozart factored almost as importantly; Weber, Rossini and
Gluck were frequently heard; and older music (especially by Handel, Bach, and Rameau)
sometimes appeared on programmes. The orchestra performed recently composed French
works with some frequency, but as Holoman stresses, the Societe des concerts du
Conservatoire was primarily a "museum"—indeed it was sometimes called "the Louvre
of music"—devoted to the perpetuation of music by deceased Germanic masters.24
When Pasdeloup founded his Societe des jeunes artistes du Conservatoire in 1853,
his self-proclaimed mandate was to "present recognized masterpieces alongside music by
young composers." He did indeed program music by living French composers, including
the youthful symphonies of Gounod and Saint-Saens. Nevertheless, as David Charlton
has observed, Pasdeloup primarily continued "Habeneck's work by firmly establishing
the French reputation of the Viennese Classics and of Mendelssohn and Schumann."25
When the conductor took on the challenge of filling the Cirque Napoleon's 5 000 seats he
banked on the classics even more exclusively. In Elisabeth Bernard's words, "le but n'est
plus 'd'essayer les oeuvres nouvelles de nos jeunes compositeurs,' mais il s'agit
23
See D. Kern Holoman, "The Societe des concerts du Conservatoire (1828-1967)," UC Davis,
http://hector.ucdavis.edu/sdc.
24
Holoman, The Societe des concerts du Conservatoire, 109-110.
25
David Charlton, John Trevitt and Guy Gosselin, "Paris. 1789-1870," The New Grove Dictionary of Music
and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrell, vol. 19 (London: Macmillan, 2001): 101-111.
13
maintenant de 'mettre Mozart Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, et Weber a la portee de
toutes les bourses.'" 26 Perhaps most telling is a statistic compiled by Jeffrey Cooper: of
280 Parisian performances of symphonies between 1861 and 1870, all but three were by
deceased Austro-Germans or German-oriented composers (such as Niels Gade and Anton
97
Rubinstein).
The development of Parisian concert culture, then, seems largely consonant with
Taruskin's account of this continent-wide phenomenon. Most of the successful concert
ventures capitalized on Paris's growing urban population—the number of inhabitants of
the city doubled between 1831 and 1851 and continued to expand in the following
decades—by offering inexpensive tickets to concerts in very large halls.28 And at least in
the 1850s and 60s, the major societies (the Conservatoire and the Concerts Pasdeloup)
banked on the classics to draw audiences. There were, however, important factors that
had significant bearing on the growth of the concert, the striking proliferation of
orchestral and chamber music by French composers, and ultimately the emergence of an
indigenous symphonic tradition that were unique to France.
In July of 1870, war broke out between France and Prussia. A superior enemy
force routed the French army; in September the Prussians encircled Paris and began a
five-month siege of the city. France capitulated in January of 1871, and Prussian troops
triumphantly paraded down the Champs Elysees. The social unrest that followed the
French surrender culminated in March with the uprising that became the Paris Commune.
In late May, troops from Versailles entered the city and violently suppressed this
insurrection; thousands of suspected communards were summarily executed during the
"semaine sanglante."
26
Bernard, "Jules Pasdeloup et les Concerts populaires," 169.
Jeffrey Cooper, "The Rise of Instrumental Music and Concert Series in Paris, 1828-1871" (PhD diss,
Cornell University, 1981), 50.
28
On Paris's population see Robert Herbert, From Millet to Leger: Essays in Social Art History (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 40.
27
14
It scarcely needs to be emphasized that the humiliating military defeat, the
hardships of the siege, and the horrifying violence of the Commune profoundly impacted
Parisian life. One effect of the disasters of "l'annee terrible" was a sense that French
society needed ground-up reform. Emile de Marcere, in a history of the Assemblee
nationale, recalled the post-war atmosphere:
Nos desastres militaires n'avaient pas seulement ete pour nous une grosse
humiliation [...] on cherchait les raisons de notre inferiority [...]. On les
attribuait a la funeste influence des idees qui avaient domine pendant le
second Empire: relachement de la discipline morale dans toutes les parties du
corps social; predominance des satisfactions vulgaires et de 1'argent qui les
procure; un certain abaissement des caracteres, toutes causes de
demoralisation et d'un laisser-aller general, qui avaient penetre dans l'armee
elle-meme [...] La defaite avait imprime une forte secousse a 1'ame
nationale.29
Michael Strasser, among others, has noted that "in the great national self-examination that
took place after the war, no small amount of attention and criticism was directed toward
the musical tastes of Second Empire society."30 Many observers denigrated the era's
theatrical entertainments as frivolous and exemplary of the decadence that they felt had
brought the nation to disaster. In the words of Edouard Shure (who spoke for many),
serious concert music offered an altogether "more noble and more substantial" art. He
contrasted Pasdeloup's Concerts populaires with the Opera, a "salon for the highlife":
[the audience] comes searching for edification, comfort for the soul, a better
atmosphere. In this compact mass of humanity, you will find in these pensive
faces poets [...] who abandon themselves here to their dreams [...]. You will
see here thinkers tired of their thoughts who find again in this vibrant crowd a
sort of religious emotion and who ask of the accents of great music a breath of
the lost beyond. [...] Here in this profound collection of each inside of
himself, is produced an instantaneous and mysterious communication of each
with all.31
29
30
31
Emile de Marcere, L 'Assemblee nationale de 1871 (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1904), 1:231.
Strasser, "The Societe nationale and its Adversaries," 234.
Quoted in Strasser, "Ars Gallica," 222.
15
In post-war France, the "rite of secular religiosity" celebrated by the throngs at orchestral
concerts took on a significance it would not have held elsewhere: to attend a concert was,
in a sense, to participate in the regeneration of the nation. In Strasser's view, it was above
all the new sense of "virtuous sobriety" that prevailed in post-war Paris that made the
orchestral concert so appealing to the public, and encouraged the proliferation of new
societies such as Colonne's patriotically named Concerts nationaux, Danbe's Grand Hotel
series, and the Societe philharmonique de Paris.
Delphine Mordey has recently argued that historians have tended to overstate the
impact of "l'annee terrible" on the course of French music.32 She observes that changes
often attributed to 1870-71—the waning appeal of Auberian opera-comique and the rise
of concert and chamber music—had in fact already began, and that operetta and other
light music continued to proliferate during the early years of the Third Republic. The
notion that frivolous Second-Empire culture had contributed to the disaster, she
maintains, was an "apocalyptic narrative" that reform-minded critics constructed after the
fact. Facets of Mordey's important arguments are well-taken. The popularity of
Pasdeloup's concerts in the 1860s buttresses her position, and Parisian appetites for light
music certainly did not disappear after 1871. Nevertheless, as we shall presently see,
attitudes towards French instrumental music did change, and while the events of "l'annee
terrible" were not the only factor, they appear to have been an important catalyst.
Furthermore, although apocalyptic narratives attributing the nation's downfall to frivolous
culture may have been specious, they nevertheless had a reality and presence for those
who constructed and subscribed to them. Mordey's account perhaps understates the
extent to which such narratives galvanized the sense that cultural renewal was necessary.
32
Delphine Mordey, "Auber's Horses: L'Annee terrible and Apocalyptic Narratives," 19'h Century Music
30(2007): 213-229.
16
Many composers felt that the nation's musical culture needed to be reformed. In
1872, Saint-Saens observed
[L]e patriotisme musical commence a se montrer en France, a la grande joie
des musiciens fran^ais. Ce sentiment, grace auquel notre ecole nationale
pourra se developper dans tous les sens et chercher librement la veritable voie
de la musique fran^aise, au lieu de rester emprisonnee dans le genre frivole
comme dans une cage de filigrane, merite tous les encouragements.33
The young Vincent d'Indy, who had served in the National Guard during the siege,
numbered among those who believed that a new, high-minded French music would make
a significant contribution to the nation's recovery. Orchestral music offered one avenue
composers could pursue, and in the post-war environment conductors became newly
receptive to their efforts. Pasdeloup, for example, began to feature young French
composers at the Concerts populaires, a trend many contemporary critics enthusiastically
applauded. As Strasser notes, Pasdeloup performed at least one French work in fifteen of
the twenty-six concerts he gave during the first season after the war, and the conductor
continued to regularly program French music for the remainder of the decade.34 Colonne,
who devoted the final concert of his second season entirely to music by living French
composers, was hailed as a champion of French art right from the beginning, and when
Lamoureux launched his series, some held that he was even friendlier to contemporary
French composers than Colonne.35 The Concerts du Conservatoire would uphold its
traditional programming, but as Holoman has noted, after 1870 the organization did
perform more French music than it had prior to the war.36 Many of the smaller or shorterlived societies also devoted large proportions of their programmes to French composers.
These included Danbe's Grand Hotel series, which was particularly significant, as
33
Camille Saint-Saens, Musique, La Renaissance litteraire et artistique, December 28, 1872.
Strasser, "Ars Gallica," 224.
35
Brian J. Hart, "The Symphony in Theory and Practice in France, 1900-1914" (PhD diss.: Indiana
University, 1994), 283.
36
Holoman, The Societe des concerts du Conservatoire, 236, 253-254.
34
17
Strasser argues, because its popularity indicates that an affluent clientele—many of whom
had likely been patrons of Paris's theatres prior to 1870—could be drawn by
contemporary symphonic music. Vizentini devoted his Hippodrome concerts primarily to
French works, and Strasser attributes similar significance to them: French music could
attract 10 000 or more concertgoers.37 The Societe nationale performed music by French
composers exclusively, and was founded very much in a spirit of national renewal. A
symbiotic relationship thus existed between composers, audiences, and performing
organizations, which made the conditions ripe for the post-war "blaze of activity" (to
recall Cooper's words) in the sphere of French orchestral music.
As we have noted, France's leading composers did not take up the symphony right
away. Indeed, even those who would cultivate the genre did not do so until the mid
1880s (early and unperformed efforts by Debussy and d'lndy notwithstanding). In the
1870s Saint-Saens composed a Marche heroique, his four famous symphonic poems, and
a handful of works with solo instruments; Franck similarly cultivated the symphonic
poem; Lalo wrote his well known Divertissement, violin and cello concertos, and his
famous concerted pieces the Symphonie espagnole and Fantasie norvegienne; and
d'Indy's first serious orchestral essay was Wallenstein, a trio of programmatic concert
overtures.
Why did they wait, especially when the conditions were so conducive to highminded concert music? The standard explanation is logical: before turning to the
symphony French composers needed to cut their orchestral teeth on more compact pieces.
A complementary factor (to which we shall return) was likely also in play. The likes of
Saint-Saens, Franck, and Lalo may have delayed turning to the symphony for the same
reasons Brahms did: anxiety over working in a genre that in the 1850s and 60s had
37
Strasser, "Ars Gallica." On Danbe's series see 247-248, and on the Hippodrome conceits see 259.
18
become inextricably associated with the masterpieces of Mendelssohn, Schumann, and
the Viennese masters, Beethoven above all. Another possibility that cannot be discounted
is that some (or even all) of France's eventual symphonists were not initially drawn to the
genre, but eventually driven to it by the forces Taruskin describes. Although concert
societies—and their audiences—became more receptive to contemporary French music
after 1870, the Grands concerts and the Conservatoire remained first and foremost venues
for the classics. And as Strasser's survey of their repertoires reveals, "symphonies in the
German classical tradition continued to form the foundation upon which concert
programmes were built."38 Any composer who aspired to the highest standards of quality
in the sphere of concert music therefore had little choice but to turn to the symphony.
Liii Review of Literature
Lalo, Saint-Saens, Franck, d'Indy, Chausson, and Dukas numbered among
France's leading composers of instrumental music in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, and critics consistently viewed their symphonies as highlights of their
oeuvres. But despite the important place these works held in French musical life in the
period—and the continued prominence of at least some of them on present day concert
programmes—they have been the subject of relatively little critical work. There exists a
single full length, synthetic study of the French symphony in the period, Jean-Paul
Holstein's 1991 These d'Etat "Le renouveau de la symphonie fran?aise (1870-1900); Les
CEuvres."39 Holstein's dissertation offers background information, reproduces selected
reviews and critical articles from the period (briefly glossing each), and reproduces
sample pages of autograph manuscripts. At the core of the study are "thematic analyses"
of each work that trace motivic development across movements and entire symphonies in
38
Ibid., 275.
Jean-Paul Holstein, "Le Renouveau de la symphonie franfaise (1870-1900); Les (Euvres " (PhD diss.,
Universite de Paris IV, 1991).
39
19
minute (and often tedious) detail. Despite its monumental size—over 1 100 pages—
Holstein's study is fundamentally an introductory presentation of the symphonies and the
historical issues surrounding them, and its critical scope is limited. The analyses are
largely descriptive accounts, and in their preoccupation with minutiae they give little
sense of the large-scale formal strategies their composers cultivated. Moreover, Holstein
makes little effort to historicize the procedures he discusses. This dissertation is difficult
to obtain, and no part of it appears to have been published. The most ambitious, widely
available study is Brian Hart's recent contribution to the third volume of A. Peter
Brown's series The Symphonic Repertoire.40 Hart surveys French symphonies from the
beginning of the nineteenth century through approximately 1930. For each work he
provides relevant background details, discusses stylistic and aesthetic filiations, and offers
a detailed, although (in keeping with the format of the series) schematic, formal analysis.
There also exist, in single- and multiple-author volumes dedicated to the
symphony, a handful of chapter-length surveys of the French repertoire. These include
studies by Michel Chion, David Cox, Daniele Pistone, Laurence Davies, Preston
Stedman, Hart, a particularly sensitive contribution by Ralph Locke, and a chapter on
French orchestral and chamber music since Berlioz by Timothy Jones that gives good
coverage to symphonies.41 These studies briefly investigate the compositions' technical
40
Brian J. Hart, "The French Symphony after Berlioz: From the Second Empire to the First World War," in
A. Peter Brown with Brian J. Hart, The Symphonic Repertoire, vol. 3, The European Symphony from ca.
1800 to ca. 1930: Great Britain, Russia, and France (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 529722.
41
Michel Chion, La Symphonie a I'epoque romantique: de Beethoven a Mahler (Paris: Fayard, 1994), 154178; David Cox, "The Symphony in France," in A Companion to the Symphony, ed. Robert Layton
(London: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 193-220; Daniele Pistone, La Symphonie dans I'Europe du XDC siecle:
histoire et langage (Paris: H. Champion, 1977); Laurence Davies, Paths to Modern Music: Aspects of
Musicfrom Wagner to the Present Day {London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1971), 139-152; Stedman, The
Symphony, Brian J. Hart, "Wagner and the Franckiste 'Message Symphony' in Early Twentieth-Century
France," in Von Wagner zum Wagnerisme: Musik, Literatur, Kunst, Politik, ed. Annegret Fauser and
Manuela Schwartz (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitatsverlag, 1999), 315-338; Ralph P. Locke, "The French
Symphony: David, Gounod, Bizet to Saint-Saens, Franck, and Their Followers," in The Nineteenth-Century
Symphony, ed. D. Kern Holoman (New York: Schirmer, 1997), 163-194; and Jones, "Nineteenth-Century
Orchestral and Chamber Music," in Langham Smith and Potter, French Music Since Berlioz, 53-89.
20
resources and aesthetic affiliations, and assess their value and historical significance.
Similar discussions of some French symphonies, most frequently the Franck and SaintSaens's Third, may also be found in numerous histories of the genre.
Individual symphonies treated in this dissertation have been addressed in several
other types of studies. Articles by Serge Gut and Vincent Barthe respectively assess the
relationship between Franck's symphony and Beethoven's Fifth, and formal issues and
orchestral style in Chausson's symphony.42 Hart's dissertation "The Symphony in
Theory and Practice in France, 1900-1914" deals primarily with music that follows the
repertoire under study here. Nevertheless, it includes a thorough discussion of d'Indy's
aesthetics and a hermeneutic analysis of the Second Symphony that considers its
relationship to the institutional politics and aesthetic "camp wars" that characterized early
twentieth-century French musical culture.43 In a study of French music and politics
between the turn of the century and the Great War, Jane Fulcher has adapted Hart's
analysis of that work to her purposes.44
In addition to the aforementioned contributions, composer-specific volumes also
address these symphonies. Among the more important is Ruth Seiberts's Studien zu den
Symphonien Vincent d'Indys, which considers issues of form, the influences of Beethoven
and Wagner, and questions of nationalism as they relate to the Symphonie sur un chant
montagnardfrangais and Second Symphony (as well as the composer's much later
Symphonia brevis "de bello gallico").45. Daniel Fallon's dissertation on Saint-Saens's
symphonies and symphonic poems includes a chapter on the Third that offers much
useful information on the work's genesis, as well as a lengthy (though primarily
42
Serge Gut, "Y a-t-il un modele Beethovenien pour la symphonie de Franck?" Revue europeenne d'etudes
musicales 1 (1990): 59-79; and Vincent Barthe, "La Symphonie en si bemol majeur d'Ernest Chausson:
cadre, langage, choix interpretatifs," Ostinato rigore 14 (2000): 175-187.
43
Hart, "The Symphony in Theory and Practice."
44
Jane F. Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music from the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
45
Ruth Seiberts, Studien zu den Sinfonien Vincent d'Indys (Mainz: Are Editions, 1998).
21
descriptive) analysis of its thematic and tonal structure.46 Ralph Scott Graver's study of
Chausson's music features a substantial and sensitive account of the B-flat symphony that
persuasively argues for its independence from its putative model, the Franck 47 Brief
analyses of all of the symphonies studied here are also to be found in dozens of life-andworks volumes.
French symphonies (again, especially the Franck and Saint-Saens) receive some
coverage in general histories of (nineteenth-century) music. Particularly sophisticated
and nuanced discussions of these two works are found in Dahlhaus's Nineteenth-Century
Music and Richard Taruskin's recent Oxford History
48
Finally, there exists a good deal of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
French literature on the topic. Some of the more noteworthy studies include d'Indy's
history of the symphony in his monumental Cours de composition musicale (the
pedagogical programme of the Schola cantorum, an important music school he helped
found in 1894), which includes extensive analyses of his own symphonies as well as
those of Franck and Saint-Saens. Also insightful are Guy Ropartz's detailed analytical
essay on the Lalo, Franck, Saint-Saens, and d'Indy "Mountain" Symphonies; Julien
Tiersot's 1902 survey of French contributions to the genre; and his later Un demi-siecle
de musique frangaise: entre les deux guerres 1870-1917.49
46
Daniel Fallon, "The Symphonies and Symphonic Poems of Camille Saint-Saens" (PhD diss, Yale
University, 1973).
47
Ralph Scott Grover, Ernest Chausson, The Man and His Music (London: Associated University Press,
1980), 131-145.
48
Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, 274-276, 289-291; and Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western
Music 3:776-783 on Franck and 783-786 on Saint-Saens.
49
Vincent d'Indy, Cours de composition musicale, vol. 2, bk. 2 (Paris: Durand, 1933), 159-177; Guy
Ropartz, "A propos de quelques symphonies modernes," in Notations artistiques (Paris: A. Lemerre, 1891),
163-206; Julien Tiersot, "La Symphonie en France," Zeitschrift derlnternationalen Musikgesellschaft 10
(1902): 39.1-402; and Julien Tiersot, Un Demi-siecle de musique frangaise: entre les deux guerres 18701917 (Paris: Librairie Felix Alcan, 1918).
22
i.iv Perspectives
Carl Dahlhaus has argued that the nineteenth-century symphony evolved in a
"circumpolar" fashion: composers in the genre's "Second Age" (that is, after 1870) drew
their models from Beethoven rather than from the more recent Mendelssohn and
Schumann.50 Mark Evan Bonds has similarly shown that the shadow of Beethoven's
symphonies loomed as large over the likes of Brahms, Bruckner, and even Mahler as it
had Berlioz and Schumann.51 Although the canon that dominated the repertoires of late
nineteenth-century French ensembles included a number of composers, the Conservatoire
orchestra's propensity to programme Beethoven more than all others points to that
composer's relative stature. Indeed, anyone perusing contemporary French literature on
the symphony will soon see that Beethoven was the undisputed master of the genre in the
eyes of critics. Arthur Pougin, for example, bluntly noted
quand on songe que les symphonies de Beethoven datent aujourd'hui de pres d'un siecle,
on se demande si ce que quelques-uns appellent 'le progres de la musique' n'est pas une
simple aberration de 1'esprit. Ou est le progres symphonique accompli depuis
Beethoven?52
The influential critic Julien Tiersot succinctly summarized his colleagues' virtual
unanimity on this subject: Beethoven's symphonies represented a pinnacle that no other
composer had surpassed. "C'est entendu, et personne ne le conteste."53 Equally incisive,
and even more compact, was Camille Bellaigue's assessment. "II n'y avait qu'un
Beethoven," he wrote, "comme il n'y a qu'un soleil."54 Composers venerated Beethoven
no less than critics. According to Georges Servieres, the nine symphonies were Lalo's
"lecture preferee," and Dukas (a prolific and insightful critic) consistently appealed to
50
Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, 152-160.
Mark Evan Bonds, After Beethoven: Imperatives of Originality in the Symphony (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1996).
52
Arthur Pougin, Revue des Grands concerts, Le Menestrel, February 24, 1895.
53
Tiersot, "La Symphonie en France," 391. .
54
Camille Bellaigue, "Robert Schumann," Revue des deux mondes, December 1, 1885.
51
23
Beethoven's symphonies as the standard of excellence against which all others could be
measured.55 D'Indy, an influential teacher, spelled out at length in his pedagogical
writings what the views of Lalo, Dukas, and the critics implied: Beethoven was the
necessary starting point for any symphonist in fin-de-siecle France.
The principal historical question this study addresses is how French composers
reconciled the Beethovenian genre they inherited with the musical culture and the broader
intellectual climate that prevailed in fin-de-siecle France. Perhaps not surprisingly, much
of the literature outlined above has approached the topic from a similar perspective.
Nevertheless, a number of important historical and critical problems merit further
attention. The critic Paul Landormy, putting himself in the shoes of a would-be
symphonist at the fin de siecle, neatly adumbrated some of them:
Quelle entreprise! Rajeunir une forme deja vieillie, abandonnee deja par
beaucoup de musiciens pour le "poeme symphonique"!... [F]aire obstacle
aux idees repandues dans le public par Liszt et par Wagner! Se presenter
comme le continuateur de Beethoven, du Beethoven d'avant la "Neuvieme"!
Et Beethoven avait imprime si profondement a la symphonie le caractere de
son genie que le nom de ce genre musical n'etait plus seulement celui d'un
procede de composition, mais qu'il eveillait en meme temps dans l'esprit
l'idee d'un certain contenu expressif, d'une certaine profondeur d'emotion,
d'une certaine grandeur epique, d'un certain heroi'sme d'ame... 56
As Landormy suggests, Beethoven's prominence in concert life and critical writing posed
a daunting challenge for any symphonist: since that composer loomed so large over the
genre, anyone taking up the symphony was more or less forced into the sort of Oedipal
confrontation with his music that Harold Bloom calls the "anxiety of influence." That is,
composers had to take Beethoven as their point of departure, but success meant
negotiating one's own distinctive voice. Beethoven, as Landormy stresses, was not the
only figure with whom fin-de-siecle symphonists had to reckon. Wagner's influence was
55
56
Georges Servieres, EdouardLalo (Paris: Henri Laurens, s.d.), 76-77.
Paul Landormy, Brahms (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), 133. Originally published by Felix Alcan: Paris, 1920.
24
at its height in France during the period when most of the works treated in this study were
composed, and its bearing on the symphony was twofold. On the one hand, his music
opened new technical vistas upon which symphonists could capitalize. On the other
hand, Wagner had famously proclaimed the death of the symphony, which (he
maintained) had exhausted itself with Beethoven's Ninth. The only viable genres in his
view were music drama and programme music. Whatever one thought of Wagner, his
writings—and the historicist ethic that underpinned them—held significant cultural
capital in fin-de-siecle France. His prognosis for the symphony, moreover, seemed to be
confirmed by a dearth of high-quality exemplars in recent years: Wagner's polemics
needed to be confronted. Symphonies, in a sense, needed to justify their existence.
During the 1850s and 60s, when the symphony had fallen out of fashion, the symphonic
poem was concert-music's central genre, as Landormy noted. In Dahlhaus's view, when
the symphony returned for its "Second Age," it was in no small part a "dialectical"
synthesis of techniques borrowed from the symphonic poem that gave it new life.57
Parisian orchestras performed Liszt's seminal symphonic poems with some frequency,
and as we have noted, several French composers cultivated the genre in the 1870s,
including Saint-Saens and Franck (and though d'Indy called his Wallenstein works
overtures, he could have called them symphonic poems). Both of these facts suggest the
symphonic poem would have had a significant impact on the French symphony in the
1880s and 90s. As Jann Pasler has observed, "progress" was a central aesthetic concern
in French musical culture at the fin de siecle. Though musicians and critics
conceptualized progress in a variety of conflicting ways, virtually everybody agreed that
music needed to evolve in order to remain relevant to modern society.58 For a would-be
57
Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, 268.
Jann Pasler, "Paris: Conflicting Notions of Progress," in Music and Society: The Late Romantic Era, ed.
Jim Samson (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991), 389-412.
58
25
symphonist, maintaining the status quo of the genre was not a viable option: some sort of
progress was imperative.
Finally, Beethoven's symphonies were not generally understood simply as 'Tart
pour l'art." As Leo Schrade has shown in a remarkable study of the composer's reception
in France, the "idea" of Beethoven became bound up in the "forces of life" that shaped
thought and experience in the nation.59 For many well-known writers such as Romain
Rolland and Julien Tiersot—both of whom published influential studies on the
composer—Beethoven's symphonies carried profound cultural import and ethical
implications. The tropes are familiar. For Rolland, Beethoven's symphonies were
parables of triumph over suffering and mastering one's destiny through monumental force
of will.60 In Tiersot's volume, Beethoven's works breathe the spirit of 1789; the Eroica
Symphony inaugurated a "truly revolutionary music," and its hero was "people of
France" who rose up in the name of liberte.6] At some level, composing a symphony in
fin-de-siecle France meant addressing not only the formal model bequeathed by
Beethoven, but also the ideas, the "contenu expressif' with which Landormy observed
that model had become irreducibly affiliated.
Much of the existing scholarship on the French symphony is devoted to issues of
musical form, and Beethoven's symphonies usually represent, implicitly or explicitly, the
genre's norm. A great many writers have drawn attention to one way French composers
built upon their Beethovenian model. All of the works treated in this study pursue
"cyclic" form. That is, material set out in one movement is subsequently recalled,
transformed, or otherwise developed in subsequent movements. It has become a critical
cliche to enumerate cyclicism as a defining characteristic of late nineteenth- and early
59
Leo Schrade, Beethoven in France: The Growth of an Idea (New York: Da Capo Press, 1978). Originally
published by Yale University Press: New Haven, 1942.
60
Romain Rolland, Beethoven, trans. B. Constance Hull (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1924).
61
Julien Tiersot, "Beethoven, musicien de la revolution franfaise," La Revue de Paris 17 (1910): 733-760.
Translated in Schrade, Beethoven in France, 199.
26
twentieth-century French music. Nevertheless, this is arguably an inappropriate
conclusion. For beyond invoking often vague notions of "unity," critics have had
relatively little to say about how recalled, transformed, or developed materials function in
broader formal contexts. French symphonists, we shall see, in fact employed cyclic
technique to strikingly varied ends. Indeed, so variegated are those ends that we ought
not construe "cyclicism" as a shared formal strategy, but as an umbrella category that
encompasses a whole array of strikingly diverse and distinct formal procedures.
Many previous critics of the French symphony conceptualize symphonic form as a
schematic. That is, they view the symphony as a succession of movement types (allegro,
slow, scherzo, finale), each with its own standard schematic arrangement or arrangements
of materials (such as exposition, development, and recapitulation; each of these in turn
has its own normative schematic arrangement). This abstract template serves as a foil
against which writers assess French composers' contributions to the genre. Hart, for
example, argues that French symphonists built on their inherited model and distinguished
their works from those of their predecessors by cultivating cyclic procedures,
"embedding" movements (in Franck's ternary slow movement, for example, the
contrasting middle section is a scherzo), or seamlessly linking them together (as SaintSaens did in his Third), thereby giving the symphony's large-scale organization a fresh
aspect. French symphonists, Hart shows, also experimented with the internal schematic
arrangements of individual movements to analogous ends, as d'Indy did in the scherzo of
his Second Symphony (which in Hart's analysis follows an A-B-A'-B'-A" form instead
of the normative scherzo-trio-scherzo design). Serge Gut similarly positions the
schematic layout of Franck's symphony against that of Beethoven's Fifth and concludes
that the French composer treated his model with "profound originality."
To be sure, a composer's reception of the inherited schematic form is an important
issue, and analyses like Hart's and Gut's contribute much to our understanding of how
27
French composers treated the genre. Nevertheless, viewing the symphony as a static
arrangement of movement types and musical materials has limitations. Much insightful
scholarship on Beethoven's symphonic oeuvre—French composers' point of departure—
and indeed on symphonic music in general focuses on the dynamic and teleological
aspects of musical form. For Scott Burnham, a particularly sensitive student of
Beethoven's Heroic style, form is fundamentally a dynamic process: works such as the
Third Symphony's opening movement and the Coriolan Overture begin in incipient or
unstable states and drive, "with unbroken and intensified continuity," to endings that are
emphatically stable and affirmative. Others, such as the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, cast
this process into even higher dramatic relief by beginning somberly in the minor mode
and concluding triumphantly in the parallel major. For critics like Burnham, such
musical narratives of "becoming" lie at the very heart of Beethoven's Heroic style.62
This aspect of Beethoven's practice impacted the genre in profound and enduring
ways. Many nineteenth-century symphonies, including Schumann's Second, Brahms's
Second and Third, and many of Bruckner's and Mahler's begin, like the Eroica, in
destabilized, incipient, or fragmentary states and progress to consummation and
affirmation. Moreover, virtually all nineteenth-century minor-mode symphonies—
including Schumann's Fourth, Mendelssohn's "Scottish" Symphony, Brahms's First,
Tchaikovsky's Fourth and Fifth, Dvorak's Ninth, Bruckner's Third and Eighth, Mahler's
Second, Third, Fifth, and Seventh, and many others—follow the archetypal tonal
trajectory of Beethoven's Fifth and Ninth. Those that do not—Brahms's Fourth,
Tchaikovsky's Sixth, and Mahler's Sixth are the best known examples—have often been
called "tragic" symphonies. As Warren Darcy has suggested, in the nineteenth century
the per aspera ad astra ("through adversity to the stars") "plot" that originated in
62
Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). Quote on p. 54. See also
Janet Schmalfeldt, "Form as the Process of Becoming: The Beethoven-Hegelian Tradition and the
'Tempest' Sonata," Beethoven Forum 4 (1995): 37-71.
28
Beethoven's Third, Fifth, and Ninth Symphonies effectively became part of the genre.63
Reinhold Brinkmann has similarly written of a master "matrix" or "plot archetype" (a
coinage he borrows from Anthony Newcomb) of the nineteenth-century symphony that
originated in Beethoven's Third, Fifth, and Ninth Symphonies, which "might be
paraphrased as the resolution of a conflict of ideas through an inner formal process aimed
toward a liberating ending—in a nutshell, the 'positive' overcoming of a 'negative'
principle."64
In the minds of many French critics and composers, the heroic Third, Fifth, and
Ninth symphonies, together with the pastoral Sixth, stood out from the distinguished
company of Beethoven's other symphonies; they represented the very highest summit of
instrumental music. Pougin, in the review cited above, singled out these four works:
"qu'a-t-on fait de mieux, [...] que la Symphonie heroi'que, la symphonie en ut mineur, la
Pastorale, la symphonie avec choeurs?" Dukas too consistently accorded special status to
the Third, Fifth, and Ninth. Others singled out individual works, but they almost
invariably belonged to this select group. Eugene d'Harcourt, for example, felt that with
the Fifth "nous sommes arrives [...] au sommet de l'art musical, que l'auteur et qu'aucun
autre n'a jamais depasse, ni meme atteint." Henri Barbedette loftily declared that the
Ninth represented the apex not only of western music, but of all art:
[C]ette oeuvre gigantesque [...] est le plus grand effort qu'ait jamais realise
l'esprit humain dans le domaine de l'art et de l'imagination. Goethe realisa
quelque chose d'approchant dans son Faust. Michel-Ange tenta aussi une
ceuvre surhumaine; mais Beethoven les depasse tous de cent coudees.65
63
Warren Darcy, "Bruckner's Sonata Deformations," in Bruckner Studies, ed. Timothy Jackson and Paul
Hawkshaw (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 259.
64
Reinhold Brinkmann, Late Idyll: The Second Symphony of Johannes Brahms, trans. Peter Palmer
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 34.
65
Henri Barbedette, Revue des Grands concerts, Le Menestrel, February 24, 1895.
29
Although the Sixth often figures in enumerations of Beethoven's finest
achievements, in France, as elsewhere in Europe, the Third, Fifth, and Ninth, with their
per aspera ad astra plots, proved most influential for symphonists. As we shall see in the
pages that follow, all of the symphonies treated in this study in one way or another
engage this archetype. Viewing symphonic form as a dynamic, narrative (that is, plotproducing) process rather than as a static scheme opens important new analytical,
historical, and hermeneutic perspectives. As we have noted, value judgments of French
symphonies have been mixed and Dahlhaus is far from the only skeptic. Indeed, even
critics who are largely sympathetic to French music have sometimes taken dim views of
even the most successful French efforts. According to Laurence Davies, for example,
Franck's first movement is "more noteworthy for its faults than its virtues" and in his lifeand-works volume on Saint-Saens, James Harding expresses serious reservations about
the Third Symphony.66 As Anthony Newcomb demonstrated in an influential analysis of
Schumann's putatively problematic Second Symphony, juxtaposing formal events and
processes against the work's Beethoven-esque, "suffering followed by healing or
redemption" plot archetype enables a more nuanced and compelling account of its
internal formal relationships than earlier, structural approaches.67 James Hepokoski has
similarly focused on the dynamic and teleological elements of form to offer fresh and
68
sophisticated analyses of symphonic music by Sibelius, Elgar, and Strauss.
Warren
Darcy has done similar work on Bruckner's symphonies and Joseph Kraus has employed
66
Laurence Davies, Cesar Franck and his Circle (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970), 237; and
James Harding, Saint-Saens and His Circle (London: Chapmann & Hall, 1965), 172-173.
67
Anthony Newcomb, "Once More 'Between Absolute and Program Music': Schumann's Second
Symphony," 19"' Century Music 1 (1984): 233-250.
68
See James A. Hepokoski, Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1993); "Elgar," in Holoman, The Nineteenth-Century Symphony, 327-344; and "Fiery-Pulsed
Libertine or Domestic Hero? Don Juan Reinvestigated," in Richard Strauss: New Perspectives on the
Composer and His Work, ed. Bryan Gilliam (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 135-176.
30
a comparable strategy to arrive at a new and persuasive account of Tchaikovsky's Fifth.69
Positioning French works against the Beethovenian "suffering-leading-to-redemption" or
per aspera ad astra narrative archetype, we shall see, similarly allows us to arrive at
new—richer and more nuanced—accounts of their formal relationships, and in turn to
addresses (and redress) the vexing questions about their formal coherence that Dahlhaus,
Davies, Studd and others raise.
As noted above, all of the symphonies examined in this study in some way engage
the heroic, Beethovenian archetype. They do not, however, do so in a uniform or
uncritical fashion. Paying close attention to how they interact with this central aspect of
the symphonic genre offers us a fresh heuristic tool with which to historicize them, and
one that may offer particularly valuable insight into how composers responded to fin-desiecle imperatives of progress and the interrelated forces of anxiety. Chausson's
symphony may serve as a compact example. According to conventional wisdom, the
work is respectable, but relatively "conservative": allowing for some personal
idiosyncrasies, it is stylistically affiliated with Franck's symphony (and there is a long
tradition of viewing it as a clone of that work), though Chausson does not partake in his
mentor's celebrated formal innovations. Yet in a meaningful way Chausson's symphony
is qualitatively different from Franck's, and indeed any other French symphony of the
period. It "deforms" (in James Hepokoski's sense of that term) the heroic, per aspera ad
astra narrative: Chausson engages the paradigm (the parallel major and minor triads are
juxtaposed in the slow introduction and throughout the symphony), but does not follow
through with the triumphant, heroic conclusion. The development and coda of the finale
are unusually subdued and quiet, utterly lacking the flamboyant tumult characteristic of a
symphonic finale. The recapitulation is on B-flat minor, the coda is slow, and the D-
69
Darcy, "Bruckner's Sonata Deformations," 256-277; Joseph Kraus, "Tonal Plan and Narrative Plot in
Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 in E Minor," Music Theory Spectrum 13 (1991): 21-47.
31
natural/D-flat conflict remains unresolved even in the final measures. To close the work,
Chausson recalls the opening gesture, effectively negating the teleological thrust that is so
characteristic of the nineteenth-century symphony. Thus if on a schematic level
Chausson's symphony seems unremarkable or even derivative, on another level it is
strikingly original: Chausson forges a distinctive voice via his response to the genre's
narrative conventions.
As the above-cited studies by Rolland and Tiersot suggest, Beethoven's
symphonies were inextricably bound up in ideas, a conception that many French critics
and musicians extended to the symphonic genre itself. D'Indy, for one, stressed often and
at length in his pedagogical and theoretical writings that the symphony's fundamental
purpose was to impart lofty, metaphysical truths on listeners. The critic Remi de SaintLaurent similarly observed
le genre symphonique d'aujourd'hui n'est plus proprement [...] une suite
agreable, impressionnante, grandiose de sons, d'accords aboutes savamment,
une idee simplement musicale developpee selon les lois d'un art severe. Ce
n'est plus une oeuvre de rhetorique. La symphonie moderne veut dire quelque
chose et autre chose que des sons; c'est une pensee traitee en musique.70
As we noted above, Paul Landormy implied that the symphony revolved in particular
around the great ideas of the nineteenth century.
Paying careful attention to how symphonists engaged the narrative archetype they
inherited from Beethoven opens "hermeneutic windows," to borrow Lawrence Kramer's
well-known expression. This approach offers a conceptual apparatus that allows us to
historicize these symphonies by positioning them not only among other musical works,
but also in the broader contexts of cultural and intellectual history, and thereby glimpse at
the "contenu expressif' or "pensee" of which Landormy and Saint-Laurent wrote. As one
of his signal contributions to Beethoven scholarship, Burnham makes explicit the
70
R-A de Saint-Laurent, "La Musique symphonique et la litterature," Le Guide musical, February 9, 1890.
32
relationships between Beethoven's formal procedures and the ideas affiliated with his
works (by the likes of Rolland and Tiersot among many others). At the risk of
oversimplifying Burnham's nuanced formulations, the per aspera ad astra or "suffering
followed by redemption" archetype that Darcy and Brinkmann identify plays a central
role in his arguments. For him, it is above all through such narratives of "becoming" that
the Third, Fifth, and Ninth Symphonies give unimpeachable expression to the values of
the "Goethezeit," namely individual freedom, self-determination, and an "ennobling and
all-embracing concept of self'—or Landormy's "heroi'sme de l'ame," Tiersot's
revolutionary fervor, or Rolland's mastery of destiny.71
As critics with priorities as varied as Susan McClary and Reinhold Brinkmann
have argued, symphonies continued to express Beethovenian narratives of becoming
throughout the nineteenth century, but their "content," so to speak, evolved with attitudes
towards those "Goethezeit" values. Brinkmann lucidly summarized this issue in a
discussion of Brahms's First Symphony:
If Brahms took up this specific formal [Beethovenian] imprint... that must
also mean—however consciously—a coming to terms with the ideas
supporting it. Brahms lived more than half a century later than Beethoven. Is
the subject of Brahms's symphony the same as the subject of Beethoven's
Ninth? Certainly it is one taken from the same dynamic century of the
evolution of middle-class ideas. But, for all the historical continuity at the
end of that century, after the decades of restoration, and in a phase of
conservative consolidation, can it still give the same answers to presumably
analogous questions?72
Brinkmann answers negatively. Observing the liquidation of Brahms's Freudenthema in
the symphony's finale and its replacement by the alphorn theme and chorale in the
recapitulation and coda, he argues that the symphony's implied subject is transfigured not
by "the humanist fervor of freedom and brotherliness" as in Beethoven's Ninth, but by
71
72
Burnham, Beethoven Hero, 112.
Brinkmann, Late Idyll, 35.
33
nature (the alphorn) and religion (the chorale). The Brahms of the First Symphony,
Brinkmann concludes, was "a contemporary of the late nineteenth century who had
become a skeptic."73
The intellectual and political climate of Third-Republic France was variegated and
highly charged, and attitudes towards the subject-laden values that Beethoven's
symphonies were widely taken to express were complex and conflicting. Various notions
of subjectivity—of what constituted "an ennobling concept of self'—vied with one
another. Nearly a century after the revolution (and the Eroica Symphony) not everybody
shared Beethoven's apparently boundless optimism in the individual's potential to forge
his own course in the world, and some indeed found the conditions of the fin-de-siecle
entirely antithetical to that potential. For others still, the individualism that was so prized
in the nineteenth century represented the decay of a primordial, deterministic social and
political order, and therefore needed to be quelled if the nation were to have any hope of
recovering.
By positioning French composers' responses to the symphony's narrative
conventions against their backgrounds, experiences, political views, and ideological
outlooks, we shall see that these seven works may be understood to represent an entire
spectrum of attitudes. In doing so, we gain at least some perspective on what perhaps
mattered most to listeners of the time, and on what perhaps above all gave the symphony
the prestige it enjoyed at the fin de siecle. For Shure's image of Parisian concertgoers
seeking "comfort for the soul," "religious emotion," and "mysterious communication,"
and the writings of Rolland, Tiersot, d'Indy, Saint-Laurent, Landormy and many others,
indicate that listeners identified with what they heard in symphonic music. Symphonies
seemed to say vitally important things to them and about them.
73
Ibid., 45.
34
The organization of this study reflects the importance I attach to these issues.
Chapters 1 and 2 consider Saint-Saens's Third and Franck D-minor symphony. Both
express Beethoven's archetypal per aspera ad astra plot, though they reflect distinct
ideological outlooks. In the Saint-Saens, the implied subject "becomes" by realizing its
own latent potential, whereas in Franck's symphony the subject is transfigured by a
mystical, redemptive other. In chapters 2 and 3, we turn to a pair of works that "deform"
(in Hepokoski's sense of that term) Beethoven's characteristic plot. Lalo's G-minor
symphony concludes tragically in the minor mode, and Chausson's draws to a hesitant
troubled close; both may be understood as pessimistic, fin-de-siecle responses to
Beethoven's affirmative heroic works. Chapters 5 and 6 examine d'Indy's Mountain and
Second symphonies. For all the praise he lavished on Beethoven, d'Indy's politically and
socially conservative ideology was very much at odds with the liberal bourgeois values
that seem immanent in the Bonn master's symphonies. In both symphonies d'Indy takes
aim at Beethoven's subject-affirming formal procedures and navigates the genre's
conventions in ways that were consonant with his own values. Finally, like d'Indy,
Dukas was skeptical of the surfeit of subjectivity that he detected in Beethoven's
symphonies, especially the Heroic Third and Fifth. His own C major symphony tempers
Beethoven's narrative strategies with a classicist approach to symphonic form.
35
Chapter 1 - Camille Saint-Saens, Third Symphony
1.1 A "Masterwork"
The literature on Saint-Saens's Third Symphony, often called the "Organ
Symphony" on account of the prominent part he composed for that instrument, usually
traces its origins to London. There, the directors of the Philharmonic Society met on 4
July 1885 and decided an invitation would be sent to a leading French composer to write
a "new orchestral work" for the following season. Gounod was their first choice; if he
refused, the offer would be extended to Delibes, Massenet, or "St. Saens."1 It is unclear
what became of these invitations, but the Society eventually invited Saint-Saens to
perform a piano concerto of his choice during the 1886 season. He accepted (selecting
Beethoven's Fourth) and suggested the programme include one of his orchestral works.
He felt his A minor symphony in particular "would cut a very fine figure under the able
direction of Mr. Arthur Sullivan," and diplomatically added "[i]t is not my habit to ask for
the execution of my works in this manner, and if I make this exception, it is because I
know the great merit for the Philharmonic Society and its orchestra." The society, in turn,
proposed that Saint-Saens compose "some symphonic work expressly for next season."
The composer agreed in a letter dated 25 August to Francesco Berger (the society's
secretary) and without making a formal commitment promised "to make every effort to
respond to your wish, and write a new symphony for the Philharmonic Society."
Daniel Fallon has suggested Saint-Saens immediately commenced work on the
project, though there does not appear to be any corroborating evidence. Whenever he
might have begun the new symphony, Saint-Saens's correspondence with his publisher
Durand reveals that he had guiltily set it aside by early February 1886 to work on the
1
The composer's correspondence with the Philharmonic Society is reproduced in Daniel Fallon, "The
Symphonies and Symphonic Poems of Camille Saint-Saens" (PhD diss., Yale University, 1973), 450-458.
36
Carnival des animaux: "Vous me direz que je ferais bien mieux de travailler a ma
symphonie. Vous avez raison, cent fois raison. Mais c'est si amusant."2 Things were
apparently back on track by 19 February, when the composer promised Durand "the first
half' by 15 March, and the second half by the end of the month. By mid-March SaintSaens reported to Berger that the symphony was "well in the making," and the autograph
score is dated "Avril 1886."
Such is the genesis of the Organ Symphony, at least as it is revealed by the paper
trail of Saint-Saens's correspondence. The composer's quick and enthusiastic response to
the society's query (Berger's letter is not dated, but must have been written around 17
August, and Saint-Saens's affirmative reply is dated the 25th) suggests that he may have
been waiting for such an opportunity. Moreover, his decision to offer them a symphony,
when "some symphonic work" could have meant a symphonic poem, an orchestral suite,
or even a concerto, is indicative of a level of ambition not normally stimulated by a
commission, as is the composer's refusal to make a firm commitment: if the work were
not to proceed to his satisfaction, he would be under no obligation to deliver it.
Saint-Saens was no newcomer to the genre. Prior to the Organ Symphony he had
composed at least four others, of which two remained in his portfolio, and the Second (the
A minor composition he had recommended to the Philharmonic Society) appeared with
some regularity on Parisian concert programmes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. But it had been decades since he had worked in the genre (the First Symphony
dates from 1853, the Second, his latest effort, from 1859), and returning to the symphony
in 1885 was not simply a matter of revisiting the status quo he had known some twentyfive years earlier. As we observed in the introduction, the orchestral concert could now
legitimately be called a significant part of Parisian musical culture, with three major
2
Ibid, 479.
37
societies attracting weekly press coverage and large audiences seeking serious and highminded art. Since the 1850s, moreover, a canon of works that exemplified such music
had consolidated, and the repertoire of symphonies that orchestras in Paris (and
elsewhere) performed had ossified around it. The Societe des concerts du Conservatoire
had been committed to the performance of the classics since its foundation in 1828, as
had Pasdeloup's ensembles, though in the 1850s there had also been room for
newcomers, such as the recently deceased Schumann and Mendelssohn, and living French
composers like Gounod, Gouvey, and of course Saint-Saens. By 1885 things had
changed. The Grands concerts continued to programme French music—but not
symphonies. The genre had become the domain of dead Germanic masters, above all
Beethoven, whose symphonies (as Rolland, Tiersot, Shure, and others testify)
concertgoers revered as a source of the profound, quasi-religious experience many of
them sought. Composing a symphony in 1885 meant nothing less than composing a
"masterwork" that could make at least some sort of claim to the quality and highmindedness concert goers associated with the canonized classics.
Composing a symphony in 1885, moreover, would also have meant confronting
the Wagnerian historicist polemics that questioned the legitimacy of new efforts in the
genre. Whatever one might have made of Wagner's writings, as Landormy implied, they
carried considerable weight, and his prognosis for the symphony seemed confirmed by
recent music history.3 It cannot have been lost on Saint-Saens that his own oeuvre—he
had given up the symphony to pursue the symphonic poem in the 1870s—seemed to bear
out this aspect of Wagnerian ideology. In light of all of this, Saint-Saens's decision to
offer the Philharmonic Society a symphony is striking, and reveals substantial ambition
indeed.
3
See the Introduction, n56.
38
What might have driven the composer's ambition? One source might have been a
growing rift in the Societe nationale. As Strasser has shown, Franck's disciples,
especially d'Indy and Duparc, began to seize control in the early 1880s, and gradually
pushed Saint-Saens to the margins of the organization he had helped found.4 One major
point of contention was the question of whether the society ought to perform music by
foreign composers. The d'Indy faction felt the inclusion of non-French music was utterly
necessary, but Saint-Saens believed this was a betrayal of the organization's purpose.
The matter came to a head in late 1886, when d'Indy's party passed a resolution to
include foreign works on the society's programmes; Saint-Saens and Biissine both
resigned. Saint-Saens later recalled, "from that moment on the Cesarian and Wagnerian
party had imperial power, and the society became, what it is now, a closed shop, whose
values and aims I know nothing of but which is entirely out of touch with the intentions
of the founders."5 The intentions of the founders, of course, had been to nurture the
growth of serious and high-minded French music. With his influence in the Societe
nationale fading in the summer of 1885, Saint-Saens perhaps felt the best way to further
that goal now was to lead by example, and the symphony was recognized as the most
serious and high-minded genre of instrumental music—and one for which there was no
living indigenous tradition to speak of.
Saint-Saens's decision to compose a symphony may also have been fueled by the
state of his own career. When he began corresponding with.the Philharmonic Society, he
was forty-nine years old and a composer of considerable and international fame. Yet he
had earned that fame through a number of modest successes. The symphonic poems, the
piano concertos (especially the Fourth), and a handful of other pieces enjoyed popularity
with audiences and had established niches in the repertoire. Success in large-scale
4
See Michael Strasser, "Ars Gallica: The Societe nationale de musique and its Role in French Musical Life,
1871-1891" (PhD d i s s . University of Illinois, 1998), 375-415.
5
Quoted in Stephen Studd, Saint-Saens: A Critical Biography (London: Cygnus Arts, 1999), 156.
39
prestigious genres, however, had eluded him: Samson et Dalila, produced in Weimar in
1877 and Hamburg in 1882, would not receive performance in France until 1890 (and not
in Paris until 1892 after winding its way through provincial cities). Although met with
controversy at its premiere and seldom performed afterward, some considered the nowlargely-forgotten oratorio Le Deluge (1875) the composer's finest work. Unlike his
deceased contemporary Bizet, who had the massively famous Carmen, and his archrival
Massenet, who was in the process of scoring a major hit with Manon, Saint-Saens had yet
to establish a composition that could be considered a masterwork.6 Repeated frustration
and disappointment in the opera house may have nudged Saint-Saens toward the
symphony, which now seemed like a viable alternative for a composer in search of
success in a grand public genre.
Saint-Saens peppered his correspondence with remarks indicating that he felt his
symphony in progress was something exceptional. In a letter to Berger, he called the new
work "this devil of a symphony" and concluded by warning Berger "you asked for it; I
wash my hands of the whole thing."7 In February 1886 he wrote to Durand, "you ask for
the symphony: you don't know what you ask. It will be terrifying [...]." When he had
completed the work, he gleefully declared it "truly terrible."8 These remarks may have to
do with the composition's length. As Stephen Studd has noted, it does not exceed the
length of Beethoven and Brahms's symphonies, but compared to the composer's other
orchestral works it is massive. Such grandness of scale—a grandness comparable to that
of Beethoven's symphonies, no less—also suggests Saint-Saens sought to produce a work
that could stand side by side with the classics.
6
On Le Deluge, see for example, Charles-Marie Widor, Notice sur la vie et les oeuvres de M. Camille
Saint-Saens (Paris: L'lnstitut de France, 1922), 9-11.
7
Fallon, "The Symphonies and Symphonic Poems of Camille Saint-Saens," 456-57.
8
Letter to Durand, quoted in Studd, Saint-Saens, 153.
40
A completely different paper trail captures Saint-Saens in the act of jockeying
with the canonized masterworks against which his new symphony would be measured. A
small handful of sketches of the Third Symphony survive; these include the beginning
through the second theme of the opening movement, as well as two passages from the
slow movement. Up to the second theme, the sketch appears largely the same as the
finished product, though it reveals one important difference: it is in B minor. Several
critics, including Studd and Fallon, have noted similarities between Saint-Saens's main
theme and that of the first movement of Schubert's "Unfinished" B-minor symphony, a
staple of the Parisian orchestral repertoire (see Examples 1.1a and b).9
Did Saint-Saens attempt to stake out territory among the classics for his new
symphony—which, as we shall see would have both two movements and four—by
"completing" the "inachevee"? Perhaps, but if he did, the plan did not last long. The
sketch breaks off after a second theme that bears no resemblance to the one the composer
eventually adopted.10 There then appears a sketch of the second theme as we now know
it, and here the composer bumps the work up a semitone to the familiar C minor.11
Several critics have speculated on the reasons for this key change. Brian Rees has
suggested that Saint-Saens transposed the work to avoid the "many difficulties" of a
finale in B major,12 and Jean Gallois has proposed the new key allowed optimal use of the
organ's pedal board.13 Yet the composer may held had less pedestrian
9
Studd, Saint-Saens, 154; and Fallon, "The Symphonies and Symphonic Poems of Camille Saint-Saens,"
372.
10
The sketch is transcribed in Fallon, "The Symphonies and Symphonic Poems of Camille Saint-Saens,"
381-382.
11
See Ibid, 367-368.
12
Brian Rees, Camille Saint-Saens: A Life (London: Chatoo and Windus, 1999), 263. Rees does not
explain what these difficulties might have been, though he may have meant problems with woodwind and
brass intonation. However, Parisian orchestras were fine ensembles (as was the orchestra of the
Philharmonic Society), and there is no reason to believe they would not have been capable of playing the
finale the composer wrote in B major. Indeed, frequent modulations into sharp-side keys in Wagner's
music do not appear to have posed them any special problems.
13
Jean Gallois, Charles-Camille Saint-Saens (Sprimont, Belgium: Pierre Mardaga, 2004), 254.
41
Example 1.1
14
Example 1.1a) Saint-Saens, Symphony No. 3,1 mm. 12-17
Allegro m o d c r a t o 72=J.
7 ||
-
|
4}j4
p
J J J J,,J J •
—
||{{|Xg7 '—
J J J Jj I I 11
j j1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 I I I L
nn"
4fW J 4 J J J^J 4 J jI J- JvJ JbJ
p
arco
Violoncelles
7
J'
7
7
;
Conlrebasses
>
>
^
Example 1.1b) Schubert, "Unfinished" B-Minor Symphony, I mm. 9-14
14
Unless indicated otherwise, all examples and figures in this dissertation are drawn from or refer to the
symphony under discussion in each chapter.
42
motivations for the key change. Fallon has suggested Saint-Saens wanted to attach the
work, with its major-mode finale, to the tradition of the "festive" C major symphony
established by Haydn and Mozart, and continued by Beethoven.15 The Organ Symphony,
with its C minor to C major tonal trajectory belongs more properly to the heroic tradition
of the nineteenth century than to the festive one of the eighteenth, but at any rate, the
tradition would likely have mattered less to Saint-Saens than its most illustrious
representative, Beethoven's Fifth: as we have seen, in late nineteenth-century minds
Beethoven towered above the likes of Haydn and Mozart—and Schubert. In Oedipal
terms, Beethoven loomed as the father figure Saint-Saens had to confront, and by
transposing his new symphony to C minor, he would align it with nothing less than "that
model of models" (as Richard Taruskin has put it), the archetypal minor-to-major
symphony.16
If Saint-Saens's ambition was to create in the Third Symphony a masterwork, a
"modern classic," in the minds of many contemporary critics he succeeded. The London
premiere on 19 May 1886 was a success, but the Parisian premiere eight months later, at
the Societe des concerts du Conservatoire, was nothing short of a triumph. In Le Figaro,
Charles Darcours praised the work as a "manifestation artistique si importante, si elevee;
on ne savait meme pas qu'il y eut en France une tete musicale d'une telle puissance."17
The symphony even impressed the critic Arthur Pougin, not normally sympathetic to
Saint-Saens:
"pour ma part je ne me rappelle pas avoir jamais vu le public du
Conservatoire, peu enclin d'ordinaire a l'enthousiasme, applaudir avec autant
de frenesie autre chose qu'un virtuose. C'etait a croire que les bravos ne
prendraient jamais fin. II faut dire [...] qu'elle [the symphony] merite de tout
point l'accueil qui lui a ete fait. II me semble que depuis Mendelssohn on n'a
15
Fallon, "The Symphonies and Symphonic Poems of Camille Saint-Saens," 384-385.
Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 3, The Nineteenth Century (Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 694.
17
Charles Darcours, Notes de musique, Le Figaro, January 12, 1887.
16
43
pas entendu a Paris une symphonie de cette valeur, et l'eloge ne paraitra pas
banal si Ton songe que de tres grands artistes se sont depuis lors essayes dans
ce genre [...]. II ne m'est pas arrive souvent, dans ma carriere de critique, de
parler de M. Saint-Saens avec cette chaleur. Ceux qui me font l'honneur de
me lire peuvent m'en croire sur parole si je leur dis que la Symphonie en ut
mineur est une oeuvre de grande portee et d'un ordre tout a fait superieur."18
If an often-repeated anecdote is to be trusted, Gounod summed up the general tenor of the
premiere by heralding Saint-Saens as "the French Beethoven." The audiences of the
Conservatoire's two originally scheduled performances greeted the symphony with so
much enthusiasm that a third had to be added, an "unprecedented honour for a living
French composer," as Stephen Studd observes.19
The superlative mood that followed the premiere may have resulted in part from a
buzz of anticipation in the days leading up to it. The music journal Le Menestrel, for
example, had taken the most unusual step of publishing an "analyse preventive" which
the editors hoped would "permettre a ceux de nos lecteurs qui suivent les concerts de la
Societe [des concerts du Conservatoire] de s'orienter plus facilement a travers cette ceuvre
fort interessante," but would certainly also have suggested to readers that something
particularly special was in the making.
Such pre-concert attention, Darcours noted, was
highly atypical for an orchestral work and lent the event a sense of importance tantamount
to an opera premiere.21 This buzz owed in some measure to news of the symphony's
successful London debut, but it also appears to have been stoked (or even engineered) by
Saint-Saens and Durand, who made the unprecedented move of publishing the
composer's programme note before the performance.22 But such attention could just as
18
Arthur Pougin, Concerts et soirees, Le Menestrel, January 16, 1887.
See Studd, Saint-Saens, 155.
20
Francis Huefer, "Une Nouvelle symphonie (en ut majeur et mineur) de Camille Saint-Saens," Le
Menestrel, January 2, 1887.
21
Darcours, Notes de musique.
22
Camille Saint-Saens, Programme analytique de la 3e symphonie en ut mineur de Camille Saint-Saens;
Premiere execution a Paris par la Societe des Concerts, seances des 9 et 16Janvier 1887 (Paris: Durand,
n.d.). If the composer and/or his publisher hoped this pamphlet would generate talk before the premiere,
they appear to have been successful, as the Menestrel article cribs freely from it. Saint-Saens had written
19
44
easily have worked against the new symphony, and the fact that it did not indicates that
the work delivered what its listeners hoped and expected it would.
Let us turn now to the symphony itself, and ask how Saint-Saens undertook the
fraught task of cultivating a genre that was inextricably associated with masterworks of
the past in an age in which listeners and critics demanded progress and newness. We
shall see that his approach was to renew and renovate the genre, a goal he retrospectively
(and immodestly) claimed on more than one occasion to have achieved. This he
accomplished through a novel synthesis of the genre's formal and rhetorical conventions
with techniques borrowed from Liszt's symphonic poems. Saint-Saens, we shall see, also
invites us to interpret the symphony's Beethovenianper aspera ad astra trajectory as a
narrative of resurrection or rebirth—of the rebirth of a renewed and reinvigorated
symphony, but also as a parable of the sort of spiritual rebirth that many concertgoers of
his day sought.
1.2 Themes and Motives
The Organ Symphony is dedicated to the memory of Franz Liszt, who died shortly
after its completion. Saint-Saens had met the famous Hungarian in 1852 (coincidentally,
as Jean Bonnerot noted, the year the Frenchman wrote his First Symphony), and the two
23
eventually developed a warm friendship of mutual admiration and advocacy.
It was
Liszt who arranged the 1877 Weimar production of Samson et Dalila and Saint-Saens
was one of the most outspoken champions of Liszt's music in late nineteenth-century
France. Several commentators have suggested that the Symphony's dedication was not
the note for the Philharmonic Society, which customarily included such analyses of symphonic works in its
programmes. The original English text is reproduced in Fallon, "The Symphonies and Symphonic Poems of
Camille Saint-Saens," 459-471. Durand's publication of the note was apparently the first time such a
document had appeared in Paris (see Darcours, Notes de musique), and seems to have initiated a tradition as
similar analyses of works by Franck, Tchaikovsky, and others followed.
23
Jean Bonnerot, C. Saint-Saens, sa vie et son ceuvre (Paris: Durand, 1922), 127.
45
only a gesture of friendship and respect, but also an acknowledgement of a stylistic debt,
or even "la profession de foi d'un disciple" as the French critic Jean Chantavoine put it.24
For one of the work's most striking and innovative features is its use of "thematic
transformation," a technique developed by Liszt in his B minor Sonata and employed
extensively in his symphonic poems. Chantavoine succinctly described Saint-Saens's
adaptation of this procedure:
Depuis l'exposition du premier morceau jusqu'a la coda du second et dernier,
le motif principal parait sous plus de dix aspects essentiels (en negligeant
quelques formations derivees). Mais ces metamorphoses, si nombreuses et si
diverses soient-elles, gardent des la premiere audition cette clarte souveraine
et cette distinction [...] Elles sont coupees de place en place par des themes
secondaires, varies a leur tour et qui jouent a peu pres le role du second theme
dans la sonate classique [...] 25
Saint-Saens's treatment of his "motif principal"—which we shall call the "cyclic
theme" in order to distinguish its identity and/or function from the main themes of the
individual movements—has been discussed often enough, but it will be worth reviewing
here in conjunction with a broad overview of the symphony. As Figure 1.1 shows, the
work is cast in the traditional four movements, but is in two "parts" (Chantavoine's
"premier" and "deuxieme morceaux"): as in the composer's Fourth Piano Concerto and
Violin Sonata, the allegro and slow movement are fused together and heard without
pause, as are the scherzo and the finale. In its basic schematic layout, the allegro is a
conventional sonata form, in which the cyclic theme serves as the main theme (Example
1,2a). Transformations follow in the transition from the first to second themes (Example
1.2b; E to E +5), at the end of the exposition (Example 1.2c; H +9 to H +14), and
Chantavoine likely counted a fragmentary appearance in the development section
(Example 1.2d; K - 9 to K - 7 and K - 3 to K -1) to arrive at his total o f t e n or more"
24
25
Jean Chantavoine, Camille Saint-Saens
Ibid, 63.
46
(Paris: Richard-Masse, 1947), 61
transformations. In the recapitulation the theme appears at all the analogous places. The
adagio, where the organ enters for the first time, is a ternary form, and the cyclic theme
factors in its middle section (Example 1.2e; U to U +6). In Part II, the cyclic theme first
appears as contrasting material in the scherzo (Example l;2f; A to A +2). In the finale it
becomes a majestic major-mode chorale (Example 1.2g; S to S +7), and then returns as a
lively fugue subject (Example 1.2h; T to T +5). A new version of the chorale appears at
the recapitulation (Example 1.2i; AA +10 to AA +14), and a last transformation
materializes on the upbeat to the final C-major cadence.
Saint-Saens's thematic technique, however, is more complex than previous critics
have recognized, since much of what Chantavoine identifies as "secondary" material
actually derives from the cyclic theme. As Example 1.2a shows, the theme comprises
two principal motifs, "x" and "y" (to adopt Fallon's convenient nomenclature), which are
first heard separately in the slow introduction (Example 1.3). As we will presently see,
both, though especially "y", receive extensive treatment that is independent of the theme.
Indeed, some analysts, Gallois and Vincent d'Indy among them, have argued the
symphony features two cyclic themes and not one.26 Here we shall maintain a conceptual
distinction between "theme" and "motive": "x" and "y" are never in and of themselves
treated thematically. That is to say, when they appear in material that functions formally
as a theme, they are always—as in the main cyclic theme—cells in a larger unit.
Nevertheless, the divergent ways the symphony's thematic structure has been analyzed
are themselves instructive, for as we shall see, tension between the theme as a fully
formed entity and its constituent motives is fundamental to the symphony's narrative
unfolding.
26
Gallois, Charles-Camille Saint-Saens, 254-257; and Vincent d'Indy, Cours de composition
vol. 2, bk. 2 (Paris: Durand, 1933), 166-170.
musicale,
47
Reh. F
Baroque texture
(2-part invention)
Db+
Main th.
(organ enters)
Db+
(Virtuoso piano texture)
Main th. and cyclic th.
C-
48
TV.
Introduction
Reh. S -8
s
'theme'
Cyclic th. as
Chorale
'fugue'
Organ and virtuoso
C+
piano texture
Cyclic theme
Minor mode
Subordinate th.
Wagner pastiche
B+ D+ G+
Cyclic th. as
fugue subject
C+
Development
Y
V
Exposition
T
Db = b l l i n C
Main th. and cyclic th.
C-
Reh. C + 1 2
Db becomes functional (bll in C)
Scherzo
K +14
Trio
m. 1
Tristan
pastiche
V +9
III.
Scherzo
Main th.
(organ)
Db+
A
V
B
u
E+
no tonic, no cad.
...V of Db
Cyclic th.
P +9
With organ
A/WWWWWW
Cyclic th. as chorale
AA+ll
Recap, (thematic)
V - bVI
Wagner pastiche
E+ G+ C+
+6
Sub. th.
BB
V
Organ
C+
Coda (tonal recap.)
FF+9
Transition to finale (quotes main th. of II.)
O +2
F+
C-
E+
0+7
Subordinate th.
S+3
Cyclic th.
Recapitulation
M
Main th.
Development
G
Cyclic th.
H +9
Reh. P +35
Main th. =
Subordinate th.
cyclic th.
CV - bVI
= V in Db+
F+
11
Exposition
II.
A
I.
Intro.
m.l
Figure 1.1
Example 1.2
Example 1.2a) I, mm. 12-14
Allegro (Strings)
Example 1.2b) I, reh. E to E +2
Example 1.2c) I, reh. H +9 to H +11
Example 1.2d) I, reh. K - 9 to K - 7
m
Example 1.2e) II, reh. U
y
n
y
<
H
y
y
| ' ' Q j e
Example 1.2f) III, reh. A to A +2
/t\)>\ ft \ — . . ..
c y I'B f
2—/—
•
»— »
• —
7
7
Example 1.2g) IV, reh. S to S +3
l a rr r r r r f l
Example 1.2h) IV, reh. T to T +4
Example 1.2i) IV, reh. AA +10 to AA +15
r r rr r r
FfH
L
Example 1.3 I, Slow introduction, mm. 1-4
Adagio
^=76
2 Hautbois
Violons
Altos
Of previous critics, Fallon, d'Indy, and Gallois have been most thorough in
identifying "x's" and "y's" in the work's various themes: Fallon and d'Indy note that "y"
appears in the main cyclic theme (though curiously the former does not identify the "x" in
its second measure); Fallon finds "x" in the bass line of the opening movement's second
theme and suggests the first measure of the melody is "reminiscent" of "y"; he also
remarks that the first measure of the adagio's main theme is "reminiscent" of "y"; Fallon,
Gallois, and d'Indy spot "y" in the main theme of the scherzo; and all three note that the
melody heard in the transition from the scherzo to the finale and again in the introduction
to the finale proper is also based on "y." 27
Nevertheless, these analysts do not demonstrate just how systematically SaintSaens employs his motives. A survey of the symphony's thematic materials reveals that
all of them are based on one or both motives, often treated to complex and subtle
manipulations including retrograde, inversion, or both. The themes are given in Example
1.4. As Example 1.4a shows, not only is the beginning of the opening movement's
27
See Fallon, "The Symphonies and Symphonic Poems of Camille Saint-Saens," 371-425; Vincent d'Indy,
Cours de composition, vol. 2, bk. 2, 166-70; and Gallois, Charles-Camille Saint-Saens, 254-257. Ralph P.
Locke has noted "the symphony derives many of its themes, by some form of melodic or rhythmic
alteration, from one or the other of two motives in the work's restless opening theme." (Though the two
motives he identifies are "y" and the neighbour figure that initiates the theme.) See Ralph P. Locke, "The
French Symphony: David, Gounod, and Bizet to Saint-Saens, Franck, and Their Followers," in The
Nineteenth-Century Symphony, ed. D. Kern Holoman (New York: Schirmer, 1997), 175.
50
second theme "reminiscent" of "y", most of the theme is based upon it: minus its first
pitch, it initiates the melody, and a retrograde version factors in the second half of its first
bar. In the third measure, the entire motive appears in retrograde, with the third inverted
to a sixth (a form that is picked up here from contrasting material in the main theme; see
Example 1.7 below). "X" also factors in the melody (mm. 4-5 of the theme) in addition
to providing the bass line for its second through fifth measures. Saint-Saens builds the
primary theme of the adagio (Example 1.4b), about which Fallon suggests the opening
measure is "reminiscent" of "y," by stringing together many "y's" (again minus the initial
pitch), such that the theme seems like a series of minuscule "developing" variations on
this motive. In the scherzo, as noted above, the main theme (Example 1.4c) derives from
"y." Some of the most intricate motivic work in the entire symphony arises in the
movement's middle section, which comprises two subsections. The first has a frolicking
character that Saint-Saens described as "fantastic" and is development-like in its
harmonic instability, though it has its own quasi-thematic material; the second is more
like a traditional trio.28 The former alternates rapidly between three four-measure
melodic ideas. The first of these, Example 1.4d, is built from two "y's" followed by an
"x", and the second consists simply of arpeggios and scales played on the piano (and thus
is not derived from either motive). In the third idea (Example 1.4e), the chromatic pitches
of "x" are rearranged and then heard in order. The trio-like subsection features two, more
substantial, melodic ideas. In the first (Example 1.4f), an "x" and a "y" are interlocked in
a four measure model that repeats sequentially three times; in the third repetition, an
elaborated "x" extends the melodic line up to C, where the second "trio" melody begins.
This passage (Example 1.4g) strings together a "y" and an "x" and is similarly sequential.
In the transition to the finale, a new melodic idea (Example 1,4h) that is based on "y"
28
Saint-Saens's programme note, quoted in Fallon, "The Symphonies and Symphonic Poems of Camille
Saint-Saens," 466.
51
appears, and, in rhythmic diminution, this same idea serves as the maestoso introduction
to the finale. Finally, the second theme of the finale (Example 1.4i) is a series of
alternately ascending and descending arpeggios, each of which is paired with a "y."
Example 1.4
Example 1.4a) I, reh. F to F +5
1
1
0 i. „
k -1
>
^
•
Example 1.4b) II, reh. P +37 to P +48
J J J 'J i
•
m
J
j i j j ^ r i r ^ l i i
Example 1.4c) III, mm. 1-5
Example 1.4d) III, reh. C +12 to C +15
y
y
11
! 1m
fry
7
1 1
ULT 1
r
r
r
r
.
1
—L—1———
;
Example 1.4e) III, reh. C +20
0
V
r h*
r
m\
r
^£
P'
y
t *f
£ >
Example 1.4f) III, F +8 to F +14
f r '< *f ' t i l
Example 1.4g) III, reh. G
52
Pp r
y
^
Example 1.4h) III, Q +6
y
v\) " 8 r ''
M
Example 1.4i) IV, reh. V
f*
r«rT7n
r
^71,r'r'r«r r
^
Both "x" and "y" also factor prominently in connective and developmental
passages. Two will serve as examples here, though others are to be found throughout the
symphony. Saint-Saens builds the continuational material leading to the final cadence of
the scherzo's main theme (Example 1.5) by stringing together retrograde and inverted
"y's." In the finale, a fully harmonized "y" furnishes material for the transition (shown in
Example 1.6).
Example 1.5 III, reh. C to C +3
Example 1.6 IV, U +4
y.
J L
4
J
=H
r
i
i
f
hJ
1
r
53
"X" and "y" also function as motives in the strong sense of that term, in that they
"motivate" formal growth, and often strikingly "justify" unusual or unexpected harmonic
swerves. Again, examples may be found throughout the symphony, but we shall consider
just two here. The main theme of the opening movement is a small ternary form. The
contrasting middle section (Example 1.7; C to D +2) is based upon "y" with the third
inverted to a sixth (as in the second theme of the same movement; see Example 1.4a
above). In the sentence-like passage's continuation (from m. 11 of the example), the
sixth-figure becomes detached from the tune. Here "x" pairs up with "y" and leads the
music through a complete "octatonic" circle of minor thirds, from C through E-flat, Gflat, A, and back to C without touching on the home-key dominant. "X" also gives rise to
the unusual key of the movement's second theme. The end of the transition stagnates on
the dominant seventh of A-flat (in third inversion), but this chord does not resolve
normatively. Instead, "x" intervenes (in two voices) and leads the music to D-flat major
where the second theme follows.
Example 1.7 I, reh. C to D
54
Example 1.7 (continued)
mfespress.
(7=71 Flute I
|
MHautbois 1
^
-s^
mf espress.
(X)-
baKl
K-Hautboi^^
—
}
^ n r o
j r a a
Example 1.7 (continued)
56
Two conclusions may be drawn from our discussion of Saint-Saens's treatment of
the cyclic theme and its two principal motivic constituents. First, though critics have long
lavished attention upon the composer's adaptation of Liszt's transformational technique,
his treatment of the theme's sub-motives—which is considerably more complex and
subtle than has generally been recognized—may constitute a more impressive
achievement. Indeed, it would be fair to say that the motivic work in Saint-Saens's Third
is as sophisticated as anything encountered in the symphonies of his German
contemporary Brahms, the widely acknowledged heir to Beethoven's legacy of motivic
development. Yet it is qualitatively different, and Saint-Saens's approach here points to a
generalized preference for sustained melody among late nineteenth-century French
composers and listeners. Although Brahms did have his defenders in fin-de-siecle
France, notably Hugues Imbert and Adolphe Jullien, his music generally left French
listeners cold.29 Critics took a particularly dim view of his symphonies, which they by
and large considered to be overly complicated or even downright pedantic. The critic
Eugene Segnitz fingered one of the central objections when he complained that the
German's symphonies were simply not tuneful enough.30 One imagines he had in mind
passages such as the main theme of the First Symphony's opening movement, with its
handful of brief motives juxtaposed and superimposed in rigorous invertible counterpoint
to produce a dazzlingly complex and extraordinarily dense texture. Motives are
occasionally combined contrapuntally in the Organ Symphony, as they are in the opening
movement's second theme, where an x-derived bass supports the y-based theme (see
letter F). But the composer's treatment of "y" in this passage illustrates his prevailing
technique: Saint-Saens typically combines and develops his motives to create sustained
melodic lines (usually supported by relatively simple homophonic textures with many
29
See Hugues Imbert, Etude sur Johannes Brahms (Paris: Fischbacher, 1894); and Adolphe Jullien,
"Johannes Brahms 1833-1897," Revue Internationale de musique 15 (1898): 102-114.
30
Eugene Segnitz, "Anton Bruckner," Le Courrier musical, March 1, 1906.
57
doublings in the orchestra), rooted in foursquare phrase structures that are frequently
spiced and expanded (as in Example 1.4a) by unobtrusive syncopations. The main theme
of the slow movement, a twelve-measure cantabile tune built almost exclusively from a
single three-note motive heard at various pitch levels and metric positions, is a
particularly fine example of the composer's ability to create a motivically saturated, yet
sustained and uncomplicated sounding melody.
Our observations about the sophistication of the symphony's motivic work also
suggest that Chantavoine's normative analysis of the symphony's underlying thematic
procedure stands to be revised. Rather than a theme interspersed with largely unrelated
"secondary" materials, Saint-Saens's technique is better described as a rhythmic process
in which the theme dissolves, generates new melodic materials from its constituent
motives, and then reassembles itself in new, though always recognizable, forms. For a
compact example, we may look to the symphony's opening measures. As we have seen,
the cyclic theme pulls itself together from "x" and "y," heard separately in the slow
introduction. The movement's main theme, as mentioned, is a ternary form where the "a"
section is a sentence.31 The cyclic theme serves as its repeated three-measure basic idea.
In the continuation, the cyclic theme breaks down into its sub-motives: "y" appears first
(at m. 18 in the clarinets and bassoons) and is soon followed by "x" (at m. 22 in the
oboes, clarinets, and third horn) as the music drives toward the half cadence at rehearsal
A. An ornamented version of "x" then appears in the strings (at rehearsal A) to stretch
out the dominant before the whole sentence repeats. Thus, in a span of just 34 measures,
the cyclic theme has assembled itself from its constituent motives, broken back down into
them, and pulled itself back together once again.
31
I use this term according to William E. Caplin's typology of classical themes. See Caplin, Classical
Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
58
1.3 Death and Rebirth
Chantavoine nicely summarizes how Saint-Saens's thematic-transformational
technique interacts with the symphony's per aspera ad astra, minor-to-major tonal
design:
Reduit au schema le plus sommaire, le plan psychique [...] de la symphonie
consistera a degager cette melodie de son hesitation primordiale, a affirmer sa
ligne, a consolider son rythme, a la fixer et a l'eclairer enfin d'une lumiere
decisive en la faisant passer d'ut mineur a ut majeur (comme Beethoven a fait
dans sa propre Symphonie en ut mineur) [.. ,]32
Years earlier, Emile Baumann had glossed this same procedure in anthropomorphic
terms. For him, much as the Eroica Symphony had for Berlioz, the symphony's thematic
development expressed a hero's journey: beginning in darkness, the hero "harmoniously
traverses" the paths of desolation, carrying the fatigue of "trying hours" without sagging
or weakening, until he attains "resurrection and eternity."33
Baumann's death-and-resurrection interpretation evidently owed to an allusion
Saint-Saens worked into the cyclic theme: as may be observed in Example 1.1a, its
beginning sounds the first five pitches of the Dies Irae. Not all critics have been so quick
to acknowledge this allusion and its hermeneutic implications. Fallon leads the sceptics.
He insists that the theme shares a sequence of intervals with the famous chant merely by
chance, and claims the symphony can have nothing to do with resurrection because its
dedicatee (Liszt) was still alive when Saint-Saens composed it.34 But there is no reason to
assume the work's meaning must have anything to do with the life of its dedicatee, and
there is reason to assume contemporary concert audiences would have had a nose for the
Dies Irae: Berlioz, of course, had famously employed it in his Symphonie fantastique
32
Chantavoine, Camille Saint-Saens, 63.
Emile Baumann, Les Grandes formes de la musique: I'oeuvre de Camille Saint-Saens (Paris: Ollendorff
1923), 263-265. Baumann's book was originally published under the same title in 1905 by the Societe
d'editions litteraires et artistiques.
34
Fallon, "The Symphonies and Symphonic Poems of Camille Saint-Saens," 374.
33
59
(also in the key of C), Liszt had quoted it in his Totentanz, and Saint-Saens himself had
included a mocking parody in his Danse macabre, a crowd favourite.35 Baumann,
moreover, was by no means the only period critic who picked up on the allusion. D'Indy,
for example, simply noted that the theme's "premieres notes semblent provenir de la
Sequence Dies Irae," and his nonchalance suggests that this observation was no
revelation.36 Baumann's death-and-rebirth interpretation, then, seems salient. SaintSaens's dramatic treatment of the Dies Irae invites the sorts of questions that have long
swirled in criticism of the Eroica Symphony (to which Baumann likens Saint-Saens's
Third): whom or what is "reborn," and how? We shall speculate on these issues in the
final section of this chapter. But let us for the moment set aside hermeneutic questions
and, in relatively abstract, music-analytical terms, trace the path the cyclic theme takes
from its dark beginnings to its "rebirth" in the finale. We shall pay special attention to
how Saint-Saens breathed fresh air into his per aspera ad astra plot by carefully
synthesizing the genre's received formal shape with procedures (including the distinctive
thematic process described above) that were innovative and new.
As Studd underscores, the beginning of the symphony is austere and dark indeed:
the "bitter irony" of some of the composer's earlier works is here "fully blown into bleak
intellectual despair, as deep as the night sky [...]. It is a profound, [...] menacing, [...]
anguished pessimism" that seems to bear all the metaphysical weight of the age's
anxieties.37 This darkness owes not only to the allusion to the Dies Irae, the grave Cminor tonality, and the forward rushing theme's anxiety-laden off-beat rhythm. Also
contributing is the layout of the main theme area, in which Saint-Saens ironically or
grotesquely deforms the formal design of the Eroica Symphony's first-movement main
35
It is also worth noting that in the development section of the Organ Symphony's opening movement, the
first five notes of the cyclic theme appear in the trombones and bassoons (mm. 196-198 and 202-204) in
rhythmic proportions that strikingly recall the entry of the Dies Irae in Berlioz's finale.
36
D'Indy, Cours de composition, vol 2, bk. 2, 167.
37
Studd, Saint-Saens, 154.
60
theme, probably the symphonic repertoire's most quintessential^ heroic theme. Like
Beethoven's theme area, Saint-Saens's is organized around three statements of the theme
proper, with the second and third separated by development-like material, and builds to a
powerful fortissimo climax. But whereas Beethoven's fortissimo climax coincides with
the return of the theme over root-position tonic harmony, Saint-Saens's (at rehearsal D) is
a sustained cry on a motivically empty first-inversion C-minor chord and descending
scalar figures. The 16 chord launches a cadential progression during which the energy of
the climax steadily dissipates, and at the cadence the theme finally returns at a piano
dynamic, seemingly as an afterthought. As in the Eroica, then, the theme is
"recapitulated" at the return of root-position tonic harmony. But whereas Beethoven's
theme returns with a triumphant roar, Saint-Saens's returns with a hushed and anxious
whisper. Put differently, Saint-Saens turns the Eroica theme's rhetoric inside out: in
Beethoven the climax is the theme's triumphant reconstitution (after the brief
development); in Saint-Saens the climax (the motivically hollowed-out C-minor chord) is
the complete negation of the theme.
In an insightful article on Bruckner's symphonies, Warren Darcy observes that
many nineteenth-century minor-mode symphonic movements express a plot that he calls
the "redemption paradigm." In a minor-mode sonata movement, he theorizes, the second
theme (which characteristically appears in the relative major in the exposition) may
"redeem" the movement from the darkness of the minor mode by steering it into, and
cadentially securing, the parallel major in the recapitulation. In Bruckner, Darcy shows,
this paradigm is usually "deformed." The second theme of an opening-movement sonata
form functions not as an agent of redemption that secures the major mode in the
recapitulation (closure is always somehow undermined in Bruckner's first movements).
Instead, it seems like a remote and distant "visionary world—perhaps Utopian, Arcadian,
or eschatological—but in any case, an alternative world which, Bruckner seems to say,
61
cannot possibly be realized in the here and now." Redemption in a Bruckner symphony
comes about only in the finale, where the impossibly remote, Utopian condition
"envisioned" in the first-movement second theme is somehow achieved or
consummated.38
Saint-Saens almost certainly did not know Bruckner's symphonies, as none of
them appear to have been performed in Paris before he wrote the Organ Symphony, but
he nevertheless underpinned his work's per aspera ad astra plot with a remarkably
similar strategy. Darcy describes one technique Bruckner employed to make his second
themes seem remote and other worldly as "tonal alienation," whereby the theme appears
in a distantly related key (such as D-flat in the E-flat major Fourth Symphony) and often
arrives there by way of an abrupt or unprepared modulation, and thus seems severed (or
"alienated") from the preceding music. As we have noted, Saint-Saens's second theme
lies in the remote, "alien" key of D-flat major. This tonality is foreshadowed in the slow
introduction, but in the immediate context the theme seems disconnected from what
comes before it (although the effect is less pronounced than in Bruckner) because of the
abrupt and unprepared modulation that takes it there. The transition (letter E) implies the
dominant of D-flat, though "x" redirects the music to the Neapolitan itself (E +10 to F).
Like Bruckner's second themes, the Organ Symphony's seems like a Utopian
"alternative world." Its lyrical warmth, major tonality (and sunny major-sixth leap), and
soothing, gently syncopated rhythm give it a prevailing "sentiment de tranquillite" (as
Francis Huefer put it) that contrasts markedly with the Dies-Irae inflected "inquietude" of
the main theme and its hard staccato, dark C-minor tonality (and heavy, pathos-laden
38
Warren Darcy, "Bruckner's Sonata Deformations" in Bruckner Studies, ed. Timothy Jackson and Paul
Hawkshaw (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 259. See also James A.
Hepokoski, Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 9395.
62
minor-sixth leaps in its contrasting middle section), and insistent, disorienting off-beat
rhythm and three-bar phrase structure.39
Darcy's metaphor of a "vision," implying as it does a goal or desirable condition,
is also appropriate, since the theme area features not only the "tranquillite" described
above but also music that is representative of the rhetorical destination of the symphony's
per aspera ad astra plot. Moreover, the exposition concludes with an unmistakably
positive, major-mode transformation of the cyclic theme (at H +9; see again Example
1.2c) that prefigures (or envisions) the C-major variant in the finale that Chantavoine and
others identify as the crux of the symphony's plot. Saint-Saens's opening movement
presents a variant of a common nineteenth-century second theme type in which traditional
"feminine" (soft, flowing, songlike) materials give way to martial, heroic music.
Beethoven's Fifth is the locus classicus of this type. The sentence-like theme's
presentation is a gentle, legato phrase. The continuation begins with a crescendo and the
material at the cadence and in the codettas is characteristic of Beethoven's vintage
rhythmically-charged, percussive heroic idiom. The first movement of Tchaikovsky's
Fifth offers another example: the delicate second theme's gently bouncing introductory
measures return as a fortissimo brass fanfare to conclude the theme. In other symphonies,
lyrical and heroic materials are distributed over the second and third tonal areas of a
three-key exposition; as we shall see, Dukas's C major Symphony is an example. SaintSaens offers a novel synthesis of these two approaches. After two D-flat statements of
the theme, a broad crescendo ensues over a tonic bass pedal. The pedal eventually drops
down to C, and the crescendo culminates in the return of the theme, now transferred to the
brass, and now a rhythmically energized fanfare over a dominant six-four, which resolves
to F major at the passage's fortissimo climax. (We might note in passing that just as the
39
Huefer, "Une Nouvelle symphonie," 37.
63
second theme's tonality composes out the D-flat chord heard in the introduction, the
large-scale bass motion here composes out its counterpoint: in the slow introduction, "x"
begins on D-flat, and drops to C—forming an F-minor triad with the other static voices—
before settling on B; see again Example 1.3.) The same theme, then, appears in two keys
and in a different rhetorical guise each time. Finally, as this brief description of the
thrice-stated theme may suggest, it too exemplifies the "Eroica type." This theme,
however, "corrects" the anti-heroic main theme by delivering the form's rhetorical punch:
just as in Beethoven's famous work, the theme returns for its third statement (after the
developmental pedals on D-flat and C) with an electrifying roar.
Darcy's metaphor of a "vision" is also appropriate in light of the rhythmic
liquidation and re-formation of the cyclic theme described above. As we have noted,
Saint-Saens spins the second theme out of "x" and "y," the cyclic theme's constituent
motives. To anthropomorphize his thematic procedure (as Baumann does), one might say
that the theme-hero probes its inner constitution and discovers potential to "become," to
attain a higher, more ideal condition. One might also say that the theme brings about its
incipient, premonitory major-mode transformation (at H +9) by folding some of that
newly-discovered potential back into its re-constituted whole.
The beginning of the development (letter J) links up with the end of the main
theme, further reinforcing the sense that the second theme area is a bracketed-off
"vision." Here the minor mode returns, and with it the held note/scalar figure that was
heard immediately prior to the perfect cadence that closed off the main theme (that is, at
the theme's climax discussed above). Hepokoski has observed that nineteenth-century
symphonists often sought alternatives to the familiar development-section strategies of
motivic fragmentation and recombination, sequential patterns, and "generic storm and
stress," and over the course of this study we will see that French composers handled
64
developments in a variety of ways according to divergent narrative purposes. 40 In the
Organ Symphony's opening movement, the function of the development section is to
regenerate the main theme. Given the role the material that initiates the section plays in
the exposition—the held note/scale figure appears only at the motivically empty climax of
the main theme—one might say the theme regenerates itself out of its own negation. This
happens bit by bit. First, "y" distinguishes itself from the scale figure (starting at J +2);
then, at J +15, the Dies Irae allusion emerges, Berlioz-like in the low brass; and finally,
the entire first measure of the theme, at pitch and in its original rhythmic configuration,
sounds in the winds at rehearsal L over the dominant upbeat to the recapitulation, where
the full theme returns.
To this point, the movement adheres enough to conventional practice in its broad
lines. As we shall presently see, the remainder of the movement is more unusual, and its
idiosyncrasies reverberate across the rest of the symphony. One of the most immediately
obvious ways Saint-Saens "deforms" the genre's normative four-movement shape is by
seamlessly linking together the first and second, and third and fourth movements. He felt
this was one of the work's more innovative aspects: "the composer has sought to avoid
thus the endless resumptions and repetitions which more and more tend to disappear from
instrumental music under the influence of increasingly developed musical culture."41 A
number of contemporary writers agreed with him 42 More recent critics, however, have
expressed skepticism. Fallon dismisses Saint-Saens's movement linking as facile
novelty, Richard Taruskin has pointed out that the first movement's recapitulation is
40
James Hepokoski, "Beethoven Reception: The Symphonic Tradition," in The Cambridge History of
Nineteenth-Century Music, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
2002), 451.
41
Saint-Saens's programme note, quoted in Fallon, "The Symphonies and Symphonic Poems of Camille
Saint-Saens," 460.
42
See, for example, Francis Huefer, "La Musique en Angleterre: Rubenstein et Saint-Saens," Le Menestrel,
May 30,1886.
65
virtually complete (so Saint-Saens doesn't really avoid "endless repetitions"), and both
view the allegro and adagio (and the scherzo and finale) as self-sufficient movements.43
On one level, Taruskin convinces: the first theme is recapitulated in its entirety
and is followed by a slightly recomposed transition, a much abridged version of the
second theme, and even a brief snippet of the major-mode transformation of the cyclic
theme that rounded off the exposition. Though it includes all of the movement's thematic
materials, on another, arguably more important level, the recapitulation remains
incomplete since it fails to deliver tonal closure: the second theme returns in F and then
slides down to E (mimicking the D-flat to C slip in the bass during the second theme's
exposition), in which key the cyclic theme is suggested. Such off-tonic recapitulations of
secondary thematic material are common enough in nineteenth-century practice and add
drama to sonata-form movements by postponing large-scale resolution to the coda. But
this does not happen here. Indeed, there is no coda, and the tonic-key cadence that
conventionally wraps up a sonata movement's formal business never materializes. In
fact, the tonic never returns at all: just as in the exposition, the major-mode
transformation of the cyclic theme soon becomes harmonically unstable, and the music
arrives in the key of D-flat major (the development begins in D-flat minor) as the organ
enters, and the adagio follows in that key. The C/D-flat relationship between the key
areas of the allegro's two themes—the tonal dialectic that is central to sonata procedure—
is thus left open and unresolved at the end of the allegro. Indeed, it is written across the
adagio movement, and thus becomes magnified or dilated. The first movement, in short,
does not properly conclude but spills over into the second.
Pace Taruskin and Fallon, Saint-Saens's allegro and adagio are neither causally
soldered together nor properly independent of one another. The composer's procedure
43
See Fallon, "The Symphonies and Symphonic Poems of Camille Saint-Saens," 426-427; and Taruskin,
The Oxford History of Western Music 3:784.
66
here owes as much to Liszt as does his thematic transformational technique. In the
Hungarian composer's symphonic poems, sonata form and sonata cycle are overlaid:
themes (or theme areas) and formal sections function as the movements of a sonata
cycle.44 Les Preludes offers a well-known example of such a "two-dimensional" sonata
form (as Steven Vande Moortele calls this technique): the main theme assumes the
character of an opening allegro, the second theme that of a slow movement, the
development section is often scherzo-like, and the recapitulation rounds out the cycle as a
triumphant "finale." Saint-Saens similarly conflates sonata-form sections and symphonic
movements: the adagio becomes an extension of the syntactically incomplete allegro's
second theme, such that the first and second movements come to function like "themes"
in a higher-order sonata argument.
Tonality is not the only point of contact between second theme and second
movement. The adagio also shares the lyrical "tranquillite" that helped give the second
theme the character of a "vision" that represented a Utopian alternative to the main
theme's Dies Trae-inflected "inquietude." Interpretations that resonate with this metaphor
dot the movement's reception history. Chantavoine, for example, called the adagio a
"meditation" and Huefer characterized it as "contemplatif." For Watson Lyle, it
expressed by turn "consolation," "care-freedom," and the "mystical," all of which
opposed the "materialistic" and the "earthly desires" he heard in the opening movement
(and particularly in the cyclic theme).45 Saint-Saens's melodic technique also contributes
to the sense that the theme-hero (as Baumann might have it) again probes its inner
constitution in a search for self-transforming potential. Just as in the allegro's second
theme, Saint-Saens recombines sub-motives (especially "y") of the cyclic theme to forge
44
See Steven Vande Moortele, "Two-Dimensional Sonata Form in Germany and Austria Between 1850 and
1950: Theoretical, Analytical, and Critical Perspectives" (PhD diss., Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2006),
especially 89-114.
45
See Chantavoine, Camille Saint-Saens, 62; Huefer, "Une Nouvelle symphonie," 37; and Watson Lyle,
Camille Saint-Saens (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), 111-112.
67
a new, sixteen-bar melody. The adagio, then, seems like a dilation or amplification of the
second theme's Utopian vision. It amplifies or dilates that vision not only by extending it
in time and adding formal weight (the vision becomes a fully-fledged movement rather
than a mere theme), but also by adding a new, timbral, element. At the beginning of the
adagio, the organ enters for the first time, and its "very churchy sound" (as Taruskin puts
it) reinforces the meditative qualities Chantavoine, Huefer, and Lyle detect.46 The new
material that the theme forges from its constituent motives here seems to conjure an
entirely new timbre.
It is the business of "Part 2"—the scherzo and finale—to somehow consummate
or realize the Utopian condition "envisioned" in the second theme and adagio, and thereby
complete the symphony's per aspera ad astra journey. To see how this goal is reached, it
will be useful to pursue further a "two-dimensional" sonata form analysis. The scherzo in
this scheme does duty for the development. Saint-Saens employs an array of
conventional development-section techniques in the movement's contrasting middle
section (C +12 to K +13). The music passes through a series of keys (which tend to
remain stable for only a few measures) and brief snatches of thematic material rapidly
alternate with one another. The more traditionally trio-like materials (at F +8ff and Gff)
are presented as model-sequences rather than as conventional theme types. Moreover, as
we shall see, the passage bridging the scherzo and finale resembles a retransition, in that
it prepares the home-key dominant and the "recapitulation" of the cyclic theme at the
beginning of the finale. The scherzo portion of the movement is developmental primarily
in the sense that it works through the central formal problem posed in the first and second
movements, the tonal relationship between the tonic C and the "visionary" D-flat. The
scherzo is in C minor, and D-flat is conspicuously copious, as Figure 1.2 shows. D-flat
46
Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music 3:784.
68
first appears as the Neapolitan in the scherzo's contrasting subsection (see A +7), where
tonicization via its dominant seventh adds emphasis.
Figure 1.2
III.
A
C-:
B
I -V
HC
A
Reh.A
I . V
. v / b l l - bll - aug 6' - V - 1
HC
HC
A+7
A+10
A+17
[V-I]
of bll— AAA C-: V® -I
No
cad.!
B+16
C+6
HI--
V ^ -1
PAC
Example 1.8 III, reh. A +14
This local harmonic move is composed out upon the return of the section's main theme,
where the continuation phrase modulates to D-flat (A +17; Example 1.8). This D-flat also
comes to function as a large-scale Neapolitan in the much-expanded sentence (A +18 to C
+12) that leads to the scherzo's concluding cadence. The composer stretches this
sentence out by carefully manipulating phrase rhythm. From a purely harmonicsyntactical point of view, the cadential dominant appears to arrive at B +12 and resolve
two bars later. The movement, however, has thus far been organized almost exclusively
into four-measure phrases, and the insistent hypermetric rhythm overrides any sense of
cadence at this point: the tonic "resolution" falls in a weak metrical position, and the
music consequently seems to steam straight through to the next hypermetric downbeat at
B+16. The harmony on that downbeat is once again D-flat major, which progresses to
69
the "real" dominant at C +6. Clearly, the role of D-flat has evolved. In the allegro
moderato and the adagio (insofar as it represented a "two-dimensional" extension of the
allegro's tonal argument), D-flat was a disruptive harmonic presence that destabilized the
sovereignty of the tonic; in the scherzo, D-flat invariably—and repeatedly—functions as
the Neapolitan and thereby affirms the tonic by preparing the dominant. In other words,
D-flat has become "domesticated" and absorbed into the syntactic fold of C.
Following the movement's middle section, the whole process of domestication is
repeated in the reprise of the scherzo, which is literal until the final cadence. At this
point, a similar domestication process begins with D-flat's dominant. A-flat first appears
in an important capacity in the opening movement's exposition, where it arises as the
deceptive resolution of C minor's dominant and launches the transition (letter E; see
again Figure 1.1). Although it does not properly function as the dominant of D-flat (that
key arises "motivically" via "x" rather than through strictly syntactic motion), it
nonetheless mediates between the tonic and secondary key areas by destabilizing C minor
and tilting the harmony towards the flat side. A-flat functions in the same capacity at the
analogous place in the recapitulation, and there too the music winds up in D-flat for the
adagio. At the conclusion of the scherzo (O +2), A-flat arises in precisely the same
fashion (that is, as a deceptive resolution of C minor's dominant at rehearsal), leaving the
movement (like the opening allegro) tonally open and threatening to once again route the
music away from the home key. (We should note that although the dominant appears to
resolve to the tonic at rehearsal O, here again the C-minor chord holds a weak
hypermetric position, and the four-measure phrase rhythm is so insistent that the
dominant surges through the tonic and resolves to the A-flat chord on the hypermetric
downbeat).
The transition to the finale, which lasts some 80 measures and features its own
thematic idea (Example 1,4h), remains in A-flat. This time A-flat winds up neither
70
leading the music to D-flat nor truly destabilizing C: after lingering fragments of the
scherzo are purged from the texture and a brief fugato on the new idea is heard, the
passage settles back onto the dominant of C, and the finale follows in the major mode.
Just as D-flat was "domesticated" in the scherzo, the once harmonically disruptive A-flat
here assumes its "proper" syntactic and contrapuntal role as a neighbour to the dominant.
This A-flat nonetheless still mediates between D-flat and C, though it does so now
as a harmonic channel through which both materials and mood originally associated with
the former pass into the latter. The transition to the finale, particularly the fugato passage,
exemplifies the lyrical "tranquillite" of the slow movement and the allegro's second
theme. Moreover, its thematic idea quotes at pitch, as Ralph Locke has noted, the first
three notes of the adagio's main theme, now re-harmonized as scale degrees 1-2-4 instead
of 5-6-1 (see Examples 1.4b and 1.4h).47 This "passage" of material is completed at
rehearsal S -8: following a C-major blast from the organ—the adagio's most
characteristic timbre—a maestoso transformation of the transition's thematic idea settles
in the symphony's tonic to initiate the finale.
At rehearsal S, the transformation of the cyclic theme that Chantavoine identified
as the telos of the symphony's minor-to-major "plan psychique" emerges (see again
Example 1.2g). The theme here assimilates many of the qualities and characteristics of
the "visionary" D-flat episodes: it is in the major mode, has a warm, lyrical character and
is subtly coloured by the organ. It is also coloured by the piano, which first entered in the
third movement's middle section. Though not in D-flat, this section nevertheless
resembles the visionary episodes in that the theme similarly seems to explore its latent
potential by reconfiguring its constituent motives to produce new materials; as in the
adagio, these new "discoveries" seem to call forth the new timbre of the piano. The
47
Locke, "The French Symphony," 176.
71
whole eight-measure theme is immediately repeated and rhetorically transformed in a
manner that recalls the heroic transformation of the opening movement's second theme.
The dynamic swells to fortissimo, the organ comes to the fore, and the theme is
punctuated by brass fanfares (the likes of which have not been heard since the firstmovement exposition). To highlight this transcendent rebirth of the theme, Saint-Saens
fashions a chorale, one of the grand traditions of the nineteenth-century symphonic finale,
and one that leads back to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
1.4 The Rebirth of the Symphony
As we noted in the introductory chapter, "progress" was a central aesthetic value
in French musical culture at the fin de siecle. The concept could mean a number of
things, though it usually involved building upon musical tradition. This was a
problematic prospect for the symphony in a way it was not for most other genres, because
influential Wagnerian wisdom (which was itself considered "progressive") held that
Beethoven had exhausted that tradition, and that no further progress was possible. The
challenge Saint-Saens faced with his Third Symphony was in some ways analogous to the
one faced by Brahms with his First, and his solution was at least in part similar to his
German contemporary's. As Mark Evan Bonds has argued, Brahms felt compelled to
confront "the hinge on which the history of music turned" (at least according to Wagner),
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. He did so by "misreading" the finale, which in Wagner's
eyes dramatized the exhaustion of "absolute" music: Brahms evokes Beethoven's famous
Freudenthema near the beginning of his own finale, but—pointedly—with instrumental
means alone. In the words of Brahms's friend Chrysander, the composer created "a
counterpart to the last sections of the Ninth Symphony that achieves the same effect in
72
nature and intensity without calling on the assistance of song."48 Brahms also dispels the
"specter" of the Ninth, as Bonds and others show, via his finale's formal processes.
These processes gradually marginalize the Freudenthema as other, explicitly
instrumental, ideas usurp its status as the movement's main theme.49 In short, Brahms
"argued" through musical narrative that a vocal finale was not inevitable and that the
purely instrumental symphony was still viable.
Saint-Saens, as suggested above, also seems to evoke Beethoven's "Joy" theme,
and he does so similarly to dispel it, along with the Wagnerian polemics that sought to
foreclosure on the genre and "musique pure" in general. Though Saint-Saens's chorale
does not allude to the Freudenthema in the nearly unmistakable ways Brahms's melody
does, its context alone is enough to invite comparison: it too appears near the beginning
of the finale as a theme of transcendence after much turbulent music. Saint-Saens's
chorale also makes other, more subtle points of contact with Beethoven: it is in four
phrases, its rhythm features steady quarter notes spiced with the odd pair of eighth notes,
and the melody hovers about the third degree and moves predominantly by steps within a
narrow registral compass.
As in Brahms's First, the most obvious way Saint-Saens dispels Beethoven's
Freudenthema is by "not calling on the assistance of song." Yet the instrumental means
Saint-Saens employs—particularly the organ and piano—point to important differences
between his vision of the modern symphony and that of Brahms. If Brahms set out to
revitalize the Beethovenian tradition of the purely instrumental symphony, Saint-Saens
made an aesthetic agenda of injecting something entirely new into it. Indeed, later in his
career (and particularly when his symphony was compared to Franck's) he often claimed
48
Quoted in Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music 3:722.
Mark Evan Bonds, After Beethoven: Imperatives of Originality in the Symphony (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1996), 138-174. Quotation on p. 147. See also David L. Brodbeck, "Brahms,"
in Holoman, The Nineteenth-Century Symphony, 229-236.
49
73
to have renewed or renovated the genre. In October 1918, for example, he wrote to Pierre
Aguetant "si une symphonie pouvait pretendre a l'honneur de renouveler la forme de la
symphonie, ce serait ma symphonie en ut, par sa coupe inusitee [.. ,]."50 As we have
observed, the work's "unusual division" is really just the surface; Saint-Saens's more
substantial formal innovation was to borrow strategies—thematic transformation and twodimensional sonata procedures—from Liszt's symphonic poems.
The letter to Aguetant indicates that Saint-Saens felt the organ also counted
among the work's most innovative touches, and he could have said the same of the piano.
In his programme note, he similarly stressed that his instrumentation added something
new to the genre: "symphonic works should now be allowed to benefit from the progress
of modern instrumentation."51 Not surprisingly, the organ and piano parts (though
especially the former) have been the subject of plenty of commentary, much of it
compelling. Some critics have suggested the composer included the organ part because a
fine instrument was available in the St. James Hall where the Philharmonic Society's
orchestra performed.52 Stephen Studd has proposed that the organ and piano were
included to bring together in a single artistic utterance Saint-Saens's three principal
vocations—pianist, organist, and composer—and thereby give the work an
autobiographical dimension.53 Others still, James Harding among them, have suggested
that the two keyboard instruments were a tribute to the symphony's dedicatee Liszt, who
wrote an organ part for his symphonic poem Hunnenschlacht and was, of course, the
greatest piano virtuoso of his era.54
50
Camille Saint-Saens to Pierre Aguetant, October 25, 1918, in Saint-SaSns par lui-meme d'apres des
lettres regues et commentees par Pierre Aguetant, ed. Pierre Aguetant (Paris: Alsatia, 1938), 41.
51
Saint-Saens's programme note, quoted in Fallon, "The Symphonies and Symphonic Poems of Camille
Saint-Saens's," 460.
52
See, for example, Fallon, "The Symphonies and Symphonic Poems of Camille Saint-Saens," 391.
53
Studd, Saint-Saens, 154.
54
James Harding, Saint-Saens and His Circle (London: Chapmann & Hall, 1965), 172.
74
Early criticism, though, suggests contemporary listeners were struck above all by
the sheer newness of these instruments that the composer stressed. Charles Darcours, for
example, lauded Saint-Saens's "instrumentation moderne," and the organ and piano
headed his list of the composer's innovations.55 Julien Tiersot echoed him, writing that
the composer draws upon all of the "ressources de la sonorite connues a l'epoque
moderne," and similarly singles out the organ and the piano.56
The newness of the organ and the piano is perhaps felt most strongly in SaintSaens's instrumental Freudenthema. When heard piano in the strings, organ drones and
piano figuration give it an iridescent backlit texture that is unlike anything heard in any
prior symphony (and one that would not be out of place in a 1970s-era minimalist
composition). At the fortissimo repeat, triple-stopped staccato strings on each beat subtly
shade the organ's timbre, making the orchestral texture nearly as striking. Not
surprisingly, the chorale has provoked some particularly colourful and evocative
commentary, of which Watson Lyle's is particularly vivid: "it is as if we gazed upon a
profile of the Christ, in bas-relief of snowy marble, standing out [...] from a shimmering
base of silver and purple."57 The striking novelty the piano and organ bring to the sound
of the chorale is significant and resonates with the broader aesthetic objective Saint-Saens
pursued by way of formal innovation: here not only does he misread Beethoven's choral
theme in such a way as to re-affirm the tradition of the purely instrumental symphony, but
also to "renovate" (as he put it) that tradition by colouring his chorale with timbres that
were pointedly alien to the genre.
The organ and piano are not the only striking aspects of the symphony's sound
world. If we momentarily turn back to the adagio movement, we may also observe some
55
Darcours, Notes de musique.
Julien Tiersot, "La Symphonie en France," Zeitschrift der Internationalen
398.
57
Lyle, Camille Saint-Saens, 114.
56
Musikgesellschaft
10 (1902):
75
conspicuous allusions to distinct historical styles. The movement is a large ternary
structure, though as Figure 1.1 (above) shows, it feints at variation form. The "variation,"
the beginning of which is shown in Example 1.9 (S +3 to S +10), is self-consciously in a
baroque decorative style and, as Fallon has observed, strikingly resembles a two-part
invention. 58 Later in the movement we encounter another, equally self-conscious stylistic
reference. The main theme returns after the contrasting middle section (where the cyclic
theme makes its only appearance in the movement) and builds to the ecstatic climax
shown in Example 1.10 (V +8 to X). The passage's suspension-laden contrapuntal
texture, intensely chromatic harmony, and fluid, non-periodic rhythm (which contrasts
sharply with the movement's otherwise largely regular phrase rhythm) mark it as a fairly
obvious pastiche of Wagner's Tristan idiom.
Example 1.9 II, reh. S to S +5
Bassons
Clarinette basse
Contrebasson
Cors/Trompettes/Trombones
t! o
lL -
r -
ESS
58
~J=f=-
—|p r t ^ ^ T f -
>
r
f
Fallon, "The Symphonies and Symphonic Poems of Camille Saint-Saens," 395. See also Gallois,
Charles-Camille Saint-Saens, 255-256.
76
^ |
78
These stylistic references are charged with significance. For like the organ and
piano, they are "foreign" to the genre of the symphony: the baroque, of course, predates
its invention, while Wagner epitomizes the putatively post-symphonic "Music of the
Future." Dahlhaus chides Saint-Saens for such stylistic "eclecticism," claiming it
contributes to a fatal rift between the symphony's "musical logic" and its "acoustical
facade." Saint-Saens's stylistic and timbral eclecticisms, however, are in fact integral to
the symphony's musical logic. As we noted above, throughout the symphony the DiesIrae inflected cyclic theme rhythmically dissolves, generates new ("visionary") materials
with its constituent motives, and re-assembles itself; it brings about its re-birth in the
finale by assimilating visionary elements (the major mode, lyrical warmth, heroic brass
fanfares, and so on). As Figure 1.1 (above) shows, the eclectic timbres (the organ and
piano) and the eclectic styles (baroque and Wagner pastiche) remain carefully separated
from the cyclic theme right up until the finale: the organ is heard throughout the adagio's
main theme, and the baroque texture is heard in the "variation." When the cyclic theme
appears in the middle section, the music is not marked by any timbral or stylistic
eclecticism, but when the eclectic organ returns, the cyclic theme is pushed out of the
texture and is eliminated altogether by the time the Tristan-pastiche climax arrives.
Similarly in the scherzo movement, the eclectic piano appears only in the middle section,
where the cyclic theme is nowhere to be found.
All of this changes, of course, at the symphony's telos, the C-major
transformations of the cyclic theme that launch the finale. Here, as we observed above,
the composer associates the fully-formed theme with the "extra-symphonic" piano and
organ to spectacular effect. It also becomes associated with extra-symphonic style: as
soon as the chorale finishes the theme becomes the subject of a fugue exposition (see
Example 1.2h above)—perhaps the baroque period's most quintessential procedure. This
fugal passage, moreover, evokes the diatonic contrapuntal idiom that Wagner cultivated
79
in his Meistersinger overture (and elsewhere in that opera): Saint-Saens folds the presymphonic and the post-symphonic into the same passage. To put all of this slightly
differently and link it to our analysis of the symphony's narrative plot: the theme attains
its goal not only by assimilating the lyrical, meditative, and heroic qualities "envisioned"
earlier, but also the extra-symphonic timbres and styles those visions seem to conjure.
Put differently still, the story of the theme's rebirth allegorizes Saint-Saens's aesthetic
agenda of renovating or renewing the genre by infusing it with new timbres and technical
procedures (Lisztian thematic transformation and two-dimensional form). To rephrase
yet again and summarize our argument: as Brahms did in his First, Saint-Saens argues his
vision of the modern symphony through a musical narrative of resurrection via infusion
of the extra symphonic.
The remainder of the finale consummates the newly reinvigorated symphony.
Studd characterizes the movement as a "magnificent kaleidoscope of mood, texture, and
tone colour," and extra-symphonic music is indeed predominant throughout.59 The
above-mentioned fugue exposition serves as the sonata form's main theme, and the organ
returns for the transition. Saint-Saens described the subordinate theme as "pastoral in
character." The composer's pastoral technique is of distinctly Wagnerian pedigree. The
theme (see again Example 1,4i above) oscillates between "y"-extended arpeggios of two
third-related chords (B major and D major) whose functional statuses are difficult to
determine: one can hear D as the flat third of B major, but just as easily hear B as the
major submediant of D. (As it turns out, the theme is "in" neither, since a cadential tag at
V +14 unexpectedly leads to G major.) The theme, at least until its very final measures,
exemplifies what Dahlhaus calls a Klangflache ("soundsheet"): the music, is "outwardly
static but inwardly in constant motion;" it "remains riveted to the spot motivically and
59
Studd, Saint-Saens,
80
154.
harmonically." 60 The Klangflache was Wagner's favourite procedure for pastoral or
nature episodes; examples include the "Forest Murmurs" in Siegfried and the storm in the
Prelude to Act I of Die Walkiire.6]
To sustain momentum and interest through the finale, Saint-Saens draws on the
rhetorical strategy that Beethoven employed in the Fifth-Symphony's analogous
movement. In the body of the finale, Beethoven famously "re-stages" the great moment
of victory with which it begins: he recalls the menacing "fate knocks" motive from the
scherzo so that the C-major military march can once again crush it in the recapitulation.
At the beginning of his development (rehearsal Y), Saint-Saens abandons the "extrasymphonic" textures and timbres that have constantly coloured the music up to this point.
A fragment of the cyclic theme—now back in the minor mode—repeats ostinato-like and
the thematic idea from the scherzo-finale transition, also in the minor mode, joins it at
rehearsal Z. This threatening sounding music gathers steam, but a new version of the
major-mode chorale that launched the finale soon squashes it (AA +10 in the strings and
AA +23 in the brass). This Beethoven-esque re-staging of the theme's major-mode "rebirth" once again allegorizes the composer's renovation of the genre: the organ returns
when the chorale vanquishes the Dies-Irae inflected darkness of the minor-mode cyclic
theme.
Critics sometimes interpret the reappearance of the chorale as the onset of the
recapitulation, an analysis that is supported by the fact that the transition follows (at BB 9) and leads to the subordinate theme (BB +6). The chorale, however, is not in the tonic,
nor is it even harmonically stable. Indeed, its sequential treatment (initially stated in Eflat, then bumped up a step to F) is distinctly development-like. The "pastoral"
60
Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century
California Press, 1989), 307.
61
Ibid., 307.
Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of
81
subordinate theme nominally occurs in the tonic, but only on account of its surprise
cadential tag; otherwise it appears to be in either E or G major.
Saint-Saens spreads the function of recapitulation over two separate passages: the
thematic recapitulation that we have just observed and a tonal recapitulation that he
postpones until the coda (see again Figure 1.1). Splitting the recapitulation in this fashion
allows the composer to once again re-stage the triumphant re-birth of the symphony. The
beginning of the coda (CC) references the development section. The organ falls silent,
the minor-mode fragment of the cyclic theme returns, and, just as before, the thematic
idea from the scherzo-finale transition joins it (C +12). This time, the music grows even
more threatening when a rhythmically augmented version of the cyclic theme's Dies-Irae
motive materializes in the low brass at EE +3. The eclectic organ, however, intervenes at
EE +15 and steers the music to a home-key dominant pedal at FF, a classic gesture of
retransition that draws attention to itself with its sheer length, a full sixteen measures. In
the tonal recapitulation that follows at FF +16 (see Example 1.11), C major and the
eclectic organ vanquish the ominous minor-mode materials once and for all, and the
twenty-five measures that remain boisterously celebrate the renovated symphony. SaintSaens's procedure also relates to the work's formal affiliation with the Lisztian
symphonic poem: the C major introduction to the finale functions as the "recapitulation"
of the symphony's overarching, two-dimensional sonata design, obviating the need for
another full recapitulation (or, as Saint-Saens might say, "endless repetitions") later in the
movement. By spreading this function across two passages, the composer satisfies the
formal needs of the sonata-form finale while avoiding redundancy.
An upshot of this procedure is worth stressing because it is so unusual. The
finale's main theme, which is none other than the symphony's main theme—the subject
whose struggle and ultimate triumph we follow over the course of the work—never
82
Example 1.11 IV, reh. GG - 4 to G +5
tfoito Al? MZO
83
returns in the home key after the exposition. The composer certainly could have crafted a
magnificent climax by bringing the chorale (or some other transformation of the cyclic
theme) back on the structural downbeat after the dominant pedal, but pointedly chose not
to. Indeed, Saint-Saens—who exclaimed to his publisher Durand that "the coda of the
finale is really extraordinary"—makes a point of negating this generically classic
gesture.62 Much of the theme appears over the first measures of the pedal (FF),
mimicking the opening allegro's retransition, out of which the complete theme emerges
at the recapitulation. But here, the crescendo swallows up the theme, and when the
structural downbeat arrives, the theme does not (see Example 1.11). Unlike the vast
majority of symphonies from the time of Beethoven through the early twentieth century,
Saint-Saens's Third does not feature a culminating, tonic-key thematic apotheosis (in the
recapitulation, coda, or both) that marks the ultimate stabilization of the subject.
Some listeners were troubled by the symphony's conclusion. According to
Francis Huefer, who reported on the London premiere for the Parisian music journal Le
Menestrel, one critic complained "ce n'est que l'emphase vide vers la fin [,..]." 63 D'Indy
provocatively wrote that the symphony's conclusion left a feeling of "doubt and
sadness."64 Studd echoes d'Indy and opines that "all the storming victories of the finale"
are not enough to dispel the feeling of "insecurity" that haunts the first movement and
parts of the scherzo.65 Such impressions perhaps owe to the finale's lack of a thematic
apotheosis. But this lack points to a broader aesthetic issue. The conclusion is perhaps
where the symphony departs most strikingly from Beethovenian practice. For
Beethoven's symphonies arrive at conclusions that are absolute. As Scott Burnham has
underscored, Beethoven's thematic and especially tonal processes express completion
62
63
64
65
Quoted in Studd, Saint-Saens, 153.
Huefer, "La Musique en Angleterre: Rubenstein et Saint-Saens."
Vincent d'Indy, Cesar Franck, trans. Rosa Newmarch (New York, Dover, 1965), 172.
Studd, Saint-Saens, 154-155.
84
and articulate closure to such a degree as to foreclose on all possibility of continuation.
One need only think of the numbing stretch of C major at the end of the Fifth Symphony:
nothing could follow the final chord.66 The Organ symphony's ending is altogether
different. Though the movement arrives at firm tonal closure, the thematic process—the
rhythmic liquidation and reformation of the cyclic theme—that plays out across the work
continues right through the final measures. As Example 1.11 shows, when the final
dominant resolves, the theme's constituent motives are once again rearranged—the
chromatic "x" precedes the neighbour-note head, and a fragment from the finale's
transition is then heard—to once again generate new material. Whereas in Beethoven the
subject Becomes and stabilizes for eternity, in the Organ Symphony, the subject Becomes
and continues to develop and grow—implying an endless cycle of metaphorical death and
re-birth.
66
Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 53-59.
85
Chapter 2 - Cesar Franck, Symphony in D Minor
2.1 Genesis
Cesar Franck began his Symphony in D minor late in the summer of 1887.
According to Guy Ropartz, the 65-year-old composer took up the genre at the behest of
his students (Ropartz numbered among them), who had been urging him for some time to
compose a symphony "digne de ce nom."1 Ropartz and Franck's other students were
perhaps anxious to see their teacher match the success Saint-Saens had scored with the
Organ Symphony earlier that year. A real sense of urgency consumed certain members
of the "bande a Franck": d'Indy, Duparc, Chausson, Ropartz, and others were at the time
earnestly launching a campaign in support of their teacher, whose under-appreciated
oeuvre, they firmly believed, represented the finest of contemporary French music and its
necessary future course. Saint-Saens, who had achieved far more public success, was in
their eyes their mentor's rival. The growing rift between the Franck party and the
composer of the Organ Symphony, on account of the recent Societe nationale dispute and
other squabbles, would have made it seem all the more important that Franck soon
counter with a symphonic work of his own.2 Indeed, in d'Indy's perception, such was the
rivalry between the two composers that he would infamously falsify the date of Franck's
symphony in the Cours de composition musicale in order to position Franck as an entirely
independent progenitor of the symphony in France.3
In his recent biography of the composer, Joel-Marie Fauquet acknowledges that
Franck's students exerted a measure of influence upon their teacher and echoes Ropartz's
claim that Franck composed the symphony in response to their pressure.4 There is little,
1
2
3
4
Guy Ropartz, "Symphonies modernes," in Notations artistiques (Paris: A. Lemerre, 1891), 182-183.
On the Societe nationale dispute, see Chapter 1, n4.
Vincent d'Indy, Cours de composition musicale, vol. 2, bk. 2, (Paris: Durand, 1933), 120.
Joel-Marie Fauquet, Cesar Franck (Paris: Fayard, 1999), 716.
86
however, to suggest that the modest and self-effacing Franck saw Saint-Saens as his rival.
Indeed, it seems likely that the Organ Symphony's success encouraged Franck, as his
earlier biographer Leon Vallas suggested.5 In the winter of 1887, Franck attended the
premieres of Lalo's G-minor symphony, d'Indy's Mountain Symphony, and SaintSaens's Third. The latter, Fauquet notes, made such a strong and positive impression on
the composer that he would not hear "la moindre critique sur l'oeuvre et son auteur."6
Franck, moreover, bought the score as soon as it was available, and studied it with "vif
plaisir."7
Whatever Franck's motivations may have been, he quickly produced a two-piano
draft of the symphony. He completed the first movement by 12 September, sketched the
allegretto second movement by 30 September, less than three weeks later, and completed
the finale of the three-movement work shortly after on 27 October. Franck then took a
hiatus from his activities as a composer for several months to attend to his duties at the
Conservatoire and did not resume work on the symphony until the spring. In a letter of
April 1888 he informed Franz Servais that he had commenced the orchestration "pendant
les quelques heures de vacances de Paques."8 According to Jean Gallois, Franck reported
to Chausson around the same time that he had finished "a peu pres le quart" of the
scoring.9 On 6 August 1888 the composer advised Ropartz that he had been back to work
on the symphony for a month, and the completed score bears the date 22 aout.10
According to Chausson, Franck hoped that Lamoureux would give the premiere.
An unsuccessful performance of Les Eolides in February of 1882, however, had soured
5
Leon Vallas, Cesar Franck, trans. Hubert Foss (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1951),
209.
6
Fauquet, Cesar Franck, 717.
7
Ibid., 718.
8
Cesar Franck to Franz Servais, April 1888, in Cesar Franck: Correspondance, ed. Joel-Marie Fauquet
(Sprimont: Pierre Mardaga, 1999), 186.
9
Jean Gallois, Ernest Chausson (Paris: Fayard, 1994), 221.
10
Fauquet, Cesar Franck, 719.
87
the conductor's feelings towards Franck's music and he refused, despite Chausson's best
efforts to persuade Lamoureux to give his teacher another chance.11 Jules Garcin, the
principal conductor of the Societe des concerts du Conservatoire, was more receptive.
The programme committee auditioned the symphony (as per the society's policy for new
compositions) on 12 November and accepted it by a margin of six votes to two, with one
member abstaining.12
2.2 Reception and Criticism
The premiere took place on 17 February 1889, and, as was customary at the
Concerts du Conservatoire, the symphony received a second performance the following
week. Initial reactions were mixed. Franck's students hailed the symphony as a
masterpiece, and by most accounts the performances pleased the composer. The press,
however, was generally negative or lukewarm. With its mixture of faint praise and
skepticism, Arthur Pougin's review in Le Menestrel typifies the morning-after criticism:
L'oeuvre est bien confpue, bien ecrite, cela va sans dire, les developpements en
sont logiques, l'ordonnance generate est sage, 1'instrumentation est solide,
tout ce que l'etude et le savoir peuvent donner s'y trouve reuni. Ce qui
manque dans tout cela c'est le feu du genie, c'est 1'inspiration, c'est la
fraicheur et, sinon l'abondance, du moins la generosite des idees. L'orchestre
manque de nerf et de couleur, la trame harmonique est grise et comme
enveloppee de brouillard, et le tissu melodique, en quelque sort empate, laisse
trop desirer les elans, les caresses, les surprises que la forme symphonique
appelle imperieusement. L'oeuvre est estimable assurement, mais elle
n'excite qu'insuffisamment l'interet et l'attention de l'auditeur.13
11
During the summer 1888, Chausson wrote to Paul Poujaud about an evening he had spent with
Lamoureux: "nous avons passe toute une soiree a nous disputer [...] a propos de Franck. II n'y comprend
absolument rien, mais rien de rien. II lui reconnait une grande science et des qualites morales rares, mais
c'est tout. [...] Naturellement, au bout d'une heure ou deux, nous n'avions change d'opinion ni l'un ni
l'autre; nous en avons ete quittes pour nous eponger et demander a boire. Le pauvre Franck espere tant
faire executer sa Symphonie au Cirque d'ete [the hall in which Lamouruex's orchestra performed at the
time]." Ernest Chausson, "Lettres inedites a Paul Poujaud," La Revue musicale (December 1925): 159.
12
Fauquet, Cesar Franck, 722.
13
Arthur Pougin, Concerts et soirees, Le Menestrel, February 24, 1889.
88
In his journal, Romain Rolland noted the audience's similarly cool reaction.
Dans la salle, trois publics: — des applaudissements frenetiques, peu
nombreux, — de nombreux: 'Chut!' (ils sont rares d'ordinaire, au
Conservatoire.) Ils partent surtout des premieres loges. Pendant l'execution,
je voyais des auditeurs se boucher les oreilles avec affectation. Enfin, la
masse du public, indifferente.14
The "applaudissements frenetiques" largely came from the handful of Franck's students
and supporters granted admittance to the hall (tickets to the Conservatoire concerts were
sold primarily by subscription, and only limited numbers were available to the general
public), as Pierre de Breville lamented.15
Nevertheless, as Fauquet notes, certain critics (including Julien Tiersot and
Camille Benoit) also sensed that the symphony was something special, and their voices
prefigured the public and critical acclaim it would soon enjoy. Unfortunately, Franck did
not live long enough to enjoy his symphony's success: it was apparently performed only
twice (both times in Belgium) in the twenty remaining months of his life. Shortly after
Franck's death in November of 1890 (and perhaps because he was now dead, as some
commentators wryly suggested), Lamoureux began programming the symphony. Other
conductors soon followed suit, and the work rapidly became a staple in the repertoires of
all of Paris's orchestras. Indeed, in the following decades it became the single most
frequently performed French symphony—by far—in the capital: Brian Hart's selective
survey of concert programmes reveals that between 1900 and 1914, Franck's symphony
appeared at least forty-five times. The second most frequently heard French symphony in
this period was Saint-Saens's Third, which appeared on at least twenty-two
programmes—about half as many as Franck's did.16 As early as 1901, just twelve years
14
Romain Rolland, Memoires (Paris: Albin Michel, 1952), 171.
Fauquet, Cesar Franck, 724.
16
Brian J. Hart, "The Symphony in Theory and Practice in France, 1900-1914" (PhD diss., Indiana
University, 1994), 327.
15
89
after the premiere, Alfred Bruneau could write that the D-minor symphony had already
achieved the status of a "classique."17 To the extent that popularity gauges canonic status,
Hart's numbers indicate that it ranked alongside the most venerable symphonies of all:
Beethoven's Fifth and Ninth each figured on at least forty-seven programmes, and the
Eroica on forty-five.
Critical views in this period were also largely positive. In the Cours and
elsewhere, d'Indy heralded the symphony as the first worthy successor to Beethoven's
magisterial oeuvre—the highest possible praise for a work in the genre—and Ropartz
similarly peppered a ten-page analysis with superlatives.18 Less partisan writers opined
with near unanimity that Franck's symphony represented a jewel of the French
symphonic repertoire. Gustave Robert concluded a detailed analysis that appeared in Le
Guide musical in September of 1897 by stating "[ceci est] une ceuvre qui fait le plus
grand honneur a notre ecole franchise moderne."19 Following a 1901 performance at the
Conservatoire, Jean Marnold wrote "la Societe des concerts nous donna [...] cette
admirable symphonie du 'Pere Franck,' cette delicieuse composition a laquelle, parmi son
oeuvre tout entiere, il est permis le plus justement peut-etre d'accorder la qualite de chefd'oeuvre ingenu. [...] Ceci est l'oeuvre d'art par excellence."20
In some ways fortune continued-—and continues—to smile on Franck's
symphony. In a lecture Ropartz gave at the Conservatoire de Lyon in 1937, he worried
(ironically, given that half a century earlier he and others members of the bande a Franck
had loudly protested the neglect of Franck's music) that orchestras performed the
symphony too often: "[C]ette symphonie est a l'heure actuelle universellement connue.
17
Alfred Bruneau, La Musique frangaise: rapport sur la musique en France du XllF au XJf siecle; la
musique a Paris en 1900 au theatre, au concert, a I'Exposition (Paris: E. Fasquelle, 1901), 115.
18
D'Indy, Cours de composition, vol. 2, bk. 2, 159-166; and Ropartz, "Symphonies modernes," 179-190.
19
Gustave Robert, "La Symphonie de Franck," Le Guide musical, September 12,1897.
20
Jean Marnold, "La Symphonie de Cesar Franck," Le Courrier musical, March 15, 1901.
90
Je serais tente de dire qu'elle est trop connue car, a force d'etre jouee, elle risque de
91
devenir mal connue."
Although perhaps not performed quite as frequently now as in the first half of the
twentieth century, the symphony remains a major repertoire piece the world over.
Nevertheless, the prevailing critical winds shifted in the second half of the century, and
shifted dramatically. Whereas in the fifty or so years that followed the symphony's
composition writers tended to see an unambiguous "chef-d'oeuvre," critics in the late
twentieth century came to see a deeply flawed composition. According to the influential
Carl Dahlhaus, Franck (like other second-age symphonists) strove for "monumentality"—
organic unity across the symphony's three movements—and failed: in Dahlhaus's view
the cyclic thematic relationships Franck forged (putatively for this purpose) are salient in
"form," but not in "substance."
Louise Cuyler also finds the symphony weak, and
Preston Stedman harshly summarizes Franck's contribution to the genre: "as a symphony
composer of the late nineteenth century, Franck undoubtedly reflected France's
disinterest in symphonic music."23 Even advocates of Franck's music often take a dim
view of the symphony. Laurence Davies, for example, is nothing short of hostile. He
castigates the symphony on grounds of faulty construction, finding poor thematic links,
an excessive number of tempo changes, a vexing sonata exposition, and orchestration that
sometimes manages to undo whatever tension Franck successfully builds. Davies's
summary judgment of the opening movement—"balancing its claims, [it] is more notable
for its faults than its virtues"—encapsulates his view of the work as a whole.24
21
Guy Ropartz, unpublished lecture given at the Conservatoire de Lyon, December 16, 1937. M S in the
Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Departement de la musique, Res. Vma 146.
22
Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 274-276.
23
Louise Cuyler, The Symphony (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 1995), 150-151; and Preston Stedman,
The Symphony (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1979), 212.
24
Laurence Davies, Cesar Franck and his Circle (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970), 237.
91
Davies reserves his harshest words for Franck's melodic materials. The phrase
that opens the slow introduction and reappears as the first movement's main theme is
fragmentary and unimaginative, and the syncopated main theme of the finale is vulgar
9c
and "vitiated by its weak-beat emphasis."
Most problematic of all, however, is the
famous tune from the opening movement's subordinate theme group (see Example 2.2a
below). The pitch A, complains Davies, sounds eleven times in eight measures, resulting
in "one of Franck's typically polarized subjects in which everything turns back on to the
same note of notes."26 Davies is by no means the only critic who finds Franck's thematic
material (and this theme in particular) difficult to justify. For example, Ralph Locke,
otherwise an admirer of the symphony, states that
certain of the tunes themselves are either nagging in quality (often pivoting
obsessively around a single pitch, especially the third or fifth degree) or else
somewhat platitudinous (as at the beginning of the finale) or both (as in the
97
[subordinate theme group of] the first movement).
What brought about such a dramatic reversal in the prevailing sense of the work's
value? As Anthony Newcomb has demonstrated, the career of Schumann's Second
Symphony followed a similar path. While the nineteenth century judged it to be one of
Schumann's highest achievements, "the twentieth is generally puzzled by it and tends to
reject it as defective."28 The symphony's change of fortune, Newcomb convincingly
reasons, owed to shifting epistemological ground in the musicological discipline.
Clearly it is not the text, but our way of understanding the text, that has
changed. This suggests that our problems with the piece may be rooted in
current analytical tools for absolute music. Other ways of approach may
25
Laurence Davies, Cesar Franck (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1973), 103.
Ibid., 102.
27
Ralph P. Locke, "The French Symphony: David, Gounod, and Bizet to Saint-Saens, Franck and Their
Followers," in The Nineteenth-Century Symphony, ed. D. Kern Holoman (New York: Schirmer, 1997), 176
177.
28
Anthony Newcomb, "Once More 'Between Absolute and Program Music': Schumann's Second
Symphony," l^-Century
Music 1 (1984): 233.
26
92
permit us to make a better argument for the symphony, and to restore it to its
former place in the canon.29
In 1951, Martin Cooper obliquely cautioned his readers not to allow Franck's
symphony to fall victim to the same forces:
Franck's symphony is not really a symphony. [...] A symphony is before all
else a musical structure; it is an architectural form. In the symphony,
therefore, any emotional element that cannot be expressed in lines and
masses, any predominantly colouristic or literary element, is not only alien
and out of place, it actually saps the symphonic character of the work. [...]
Franck was well trained and founded in the forms of the classical school, but
hopelessly removed from their spirit, and his symphony—like the symphonies
of Borodin and Mahler—is one only in name and, loosely, in form. To deny
its musical worth and many moments of great musical beauty because it is
misleadingly named is pedantry; but the very beauty and subtlety of the
middle movement [...] remove it from the symphonic class. It most nearly
approaches genuine symphonic status in its least original passages.30
Cooper's eyebrow-raising insistence that Franck's symphony is not a symphony at all is
best understood not as a critical evaluation of the work itself, but as a meta-critical
admonition about how it ought to be approached. If we are to fully appreciate its
"musical worth" and "great beauties," he seems to say, we must disassociate the work
from what Newcomb calls the "analytical tools for absolute music." That is, we ought
not to approach the symphony as a working-out of an abstract formal problem (like
Dahlhaus's "monumentality") or of a schematic plan (like the sonata exposition Davies
finds so awkwardly handled), or with structuralist assumptions about how a theme should
be put together.
Cooper does not say how vie, should treat Franck's symphony, but the "other ways
of approach" to which Newcomb turns in order to build a better critical case for
Schumann's Second would seem to hold potential. Newcomb attempts to re-cultivate
29
Ibid., 233.
Martin Cooper, French Music from the Death of Berlioz to the Death of Faure (London and New York:
Oxford University Press, 1961), 49-50.
30
93
some of the strategies of the period critics who celebrated the symphony and pays special
attention to the expressive qualities that those critics valued above all else. In particular,
he juxtaposes the symphony's form (especially its motivic development and tonal design)
with the culturally defined plot archetype—"suffering followed by healing or
redemption"—that many period listeners perceived as the work's basis.
When Marnold extolled the virtues of Franck's symphony, he had little to say
about the structural issues upon which more recent critics focus. Indeed, in his review,
the word "forme" always appears in scare quotes, indicating a certain suspicion of its
relevance. Marnold did detect the "unity" upon which Dahlhaus places such a premium,
but sensed that it was of secondary importance. "La merveilleuse unite n'est tout d'abord
ressentie," he stressed, "que comme une impression psychologique."31 Marnold
emphasized instead the symphony's expressive (or "psychological") qualities. Franck, he
felt, had sublimated in the music's ebb and flow the "primordial essence" of a wide range
of human experiences:
ici l'artiste de genie joue avec les forces de la nature: le fracas de l'ouragan,
les eclats de la colere, de l'orgueil, l'audace ou la timidite de la jeunesse, les
effusions de l'amour; ce qui devaste, ce qui hait, ce qui domine ou meprise, ce
qui charme, repose, enivre [...]. 32
D'Indy and Ropartz did have plenty to say about the symphony's construction, but
both, as a matter of principle, subordinated structure to expression. In his biography of
his venerated teacher, d'Indy distilled for his readers what he believed mattered most
about Franck's music. He characterized the symphony simply as a "continual ascent
towards pure gladness and life giving light."33 Ropartz stressed that "on peut penser en
musique comme on peut penser en prose et en vers" and ascribed high value to Franck's
31
32
33
Marnold, "La Symphonie de Cesar Franck."
Ibid.
Vincent d'Indy, Cesar Franck, trans. Rosa Newmarch, (New York: Dover, 1965), 172.
94
symphony because it articulated "de vraies pensees philosophiques et de sublimes elans
religieux." In Ropartz's analysis, Franck's symphony expresses the triumph of Christian
faith over Darkness.34
But how did the symphony express an ascent into gladness or articulate true
philosophical thoughts? The Cours de composition musicale includes an extensive
analysis of the symphony, although d' Indy intended it as a technical lesson for his
students—the Cours was the Schola cantorum's composition curriculum—and here he
does not mention gladness or life-giving light. Nevertheless, d'Indy extensively theorized
"musique pure" (by which he meant non-programmatic instrumental music) elsewhere in
the Cours, and these discussions offer much insight. Brian Hart has summarized these
theoretical formulations. He observes that for d'Indy the purpose of musique pure was to
impart moral or ideological lessons or "messages" that would enrich listeners' lives (we
shall consider d'Indy's aesthetics and their ideological foundations in greater detail in
chapters 5 and 6). The general "topic" of the message was the triumph of "Light" over
"Darkness," which might represent concepts such as faith overcoming doubt, good
defeating evil, or truth vanquishing error.
Such messages were articulated by way of narratives that would play out in a
composition's tonal and thematic processes. Not surprisingly, d'Indy's theoretical
writings suggest the D minor to D major tonal trajectory of Franck's symphony bore a
substantial responsibility for the expression of its message. Though he does not expressly
advise his students to adopt such a minor-to-major scheme, he does specify that
modulation by ascending fifth (i.e. "sharpward" movement on the circle of fifths)
represented motion toward Light, and modulation by descending fifth toward Darkness.
Hence, by progressing from the one-flat signature of D minor to the two sharps of D
34
Ropartz, "Symphonies modernes," 190.
95
major, the work as a whole advances from Darkness to ("pure gladness and life-giving")
Light.
D'Indy explicitly advocates cyclic thematic technique. The initial theme (or the
germinal motive that generates it) of the first movement should serve as something of a
thesis statement for the entire work. The composer should adopt this theme (or its
germinal motive) as a thematic basis for other movements in the cycle.35 A second cyclic
idea, ideally subordinate material from the opening movement, must oppose the initial
theme or motive and "engage it in battle."36 As Hart summarizes, "the two ideas reappear
in transformations and generate subsequent ideas, so that the symphony becomes a largescale working out of the small-scale conflict between the two cyclic ideas."37 D'Indy
stresses that "le role du theme dans la composition est tout a fait analogue, ainsi que nous
l'avons constate, a celui du personnage dans la litterature."38 He also likens cyclic form
to Wagnerian practice:
Richard Wagner semble avoir pousse jusqu'a ses extremes limites cette
conception veritablement cyclique des themes dont il se sert pour signifier les
sentiments eprouves par les personnage[s] de ses drames. [...] Car le theme
cyclique dans le domaine symphonique, et le motif conducteur (Leitmotiv)
dans l'ordre dramatique, sont en definitive une seule et meme chose.39
Ropartz heard cyclic themes similarly, and in his analyses he often attached specific
meanings to them; in the case of Franck's symphony, he named the problematic tune
from the subordinate theme group (Example 2.2a below) the "motif de croyance" (Faith
Theme). In Franckiste aesthetics, then, cyclic ideas functioned as agents of the opposing
35
36
37
38
39
D'Indy, Cours de composition, vol. 2, bk. 2, 106.
Ibid., 153.
Hart, "The Symphony in Theory and Practice," 87.
Vincent d'Indy, Cours de composition musicale, vol. 2, bk. 1 (Paris: Durand, 1909), 276.
Ibid., 384-385.
96
forces, "Light" and "Darkness" (or Faith and Doubt, Good and Evil, and so on), in the
work's narrative.
As we have already noted, d'Indy believed that Franck's symphony was a worthy
heir to Beethoven's legacy. It was so in no small part because Franck had correctly
grasped the historical implications of Beethoven's symphonies and pursued the direction
that they mandated. We shall consider d'Indy's aesthetics in greater detail in Chapters 5
and 6, but let us for the moment observe that that direction was toward a greater degree of
cyclic integration, and that d'Indy seems to have based his theoretical model of the cyclic
symphony (outlined above) on his teacher's example. Just as d'Indy recommends,
Franck's symphony features two cyclic themes. The first, shown in Example 2.1, appears
at the very outset of the work, and returns as the first movement's main theme. Franck
subsequently embeds transformations of its head motive in the main themes of the slow
movement and the finale. The second, shown in Example 2.2, is Ropartz's Faith Theme;
it appears in the first movement's subordinate theme group, and its transformation serves
as the slow movement's subordinate theme. Though it does not function as a proper
theme in the finale, the Faith Theme does make an appearance in the coda (see rehearsal
Q/m. 346ff ), alongside a major-mode transformation of Example 2.1a.
Let us, then, reconsider Franck's symphony by bringing the issues that mattered
most to d'Indy and Ropartz to the critical foreground. That is to say, let us set the
symphony against the darkness-to-light plot that for these early commentators formed its
expressive core, and treat its cyclic themes not as abstract structures, but as agents
(analogous to characters in a novel or leitmotives in a music drama) that develop, interact
with one another, and interact with tonality to unfold a drama that begins in the Darkness
of D minor and concludes in the Light of D major. By foregoing the structural approach
of Dahlhaus, Davies, Locke and other recent critics in favour of something like the
97
strategies that the symphony's late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century champions
pursued, perhaps we may build a better case for this putatively problematic work, much
as Newcomb has done for Schumann's Second.
Example 2.1
Example 2.1a) Franck, Symphony in D minor, I, mm. 1-6
L e n t o (VI., V C . , C b . )
i
i
i
—-—i—
>r j >—
—
r
s
v
i
+
P
Example 2.1b) I, reh. A +12-15
Allegro (strings)
I
h
kj
\
»
I J.
j j
»
I
r j j
J
J
I - H j
J 3 J
Example 2.1c) II, reh. A +1
Allegretto (English Horn)
^ W J U ^ U 'Jutq-IJ
P
Example 2.1d) III, mm. 7-10
Allegro (bn., VC)
•—
9
Example 2.2
Example 2.2a) I, E +18
Allegro (tet., Strings)
98
^
w
P
•
-m
f
M
\
m
1
Example 2.2b) II, reh. C +1
tor~Tr
r r If r f i T r r if r r f | f = g
2.3 "Magical Object"
Beyond its broad progression from the darkness of D minor to the light of D
major, what kind of plot does Franck's symphony express? What sorts of roles do its
themes/leitmotives/characters play, and how do they interact with one another? In the last
twenty-five or so years, theories of musical narrative have come to hold an important
position in the musicological discipline, and some of this work has focused on the kinds
of stories music tells. Susan McClary has been a leader here. For McClary, the
ideological tensions that certain feminist theorists argue are fundamental to western
narrative's most basic plot—identity and difference, masculine and feminine, protagonist
and other—are inscribed in tonality and sonata form. McClary's familiar arguments may
be briefly summarized as follows: a work's main theme, securely grounded in the tonic
key, assumes the attributes of a hero, a protagonist that is marked as masculine via
musical semiotics. Over the course of the work, the hero is plunged into crisis:
modulation away from the tonic key and the appearance of an Other (in the form of the
feminine-coded subordinate theme) fragments his identity. After a protracted struggle,
the crisis is resolved: the main theme returns in the tonic key (the hero thus re-establishes
a stable identity) and the Other is conquered as the feminine theme's danger is neutralized
by its appearance in the tonic key. 40
40
McClary's narrative theory is set out in a series of publications including Feminine Endings: Music,
Gender, and Sexuality (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1991); "Narrative Agendas in Absolute
Music: Identity and Difference in Brahms's Third Symphony," in Musicology and Difference: Gender and
Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed. Ruth Solie (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 326344; and "The Impromptu That Trod on a Loaf: or How Music Tells Stories," Narrative 5 (1997): 20-34.
99
The Franckiste rubrics of Light and Darkness seem ideologically congruous with
McClary's categories of masculine hero and feminine Other. D'Indy, moreover, insisted
that the first cyclic theme (Example 2.1 above) "commande toute l'oeuvre, dont il, est
pour ainsi dire, 1'alpha et 1'omega," which suggests he attributed a protagonist-like role to
it.41 Nevertheless, there are some obvious problems with the application of McClary's
reductive scheme. For one, the first cyclic theme could hardly be said to express
idealized heroism, at least not before the finale. Indeed, the minor mode, piano dynamic,
grumbling low register, and bleak timbre of the work's opening measures immediately
establish (in Davies words) "a grief-stricken" mood.42 Franck, moreover, marshals
intertextual references (much as Saint-Saens does via the Dies Irae allusion in his main
theme) to reinforce the music's dark and foreboding character. As Example 2.3 shows,
the opening three-note figure belongs to a family of doom-laden gestures that includes the
"Fate motive" from Wagner's Ring (Example 2.3a), the principal cyclic cell of Liszt's
apocalyptic Les Preludes (Example 2.3b), and perhaps most strikingly, the famous "Muss
es sein?" motive from the finale of Beethoven's quartet, Op. 135 (Example 2.3c).
(Although Beethoven's quartet probably represents the "object" of Wagner's and Liszt's
allusions, J. S. Bach too had used this motive in the C-sharp minor fugue in the first book
of the Well-Tempered Clavier.) Franck's allusion to Wagner's Fate motive at the very
beginning of his symphony perhaps also implies an oblique reference to Beethoven's
Fifth: Schindler's account wherein Beethoven's famous four-note rhythmic figure
represented "fate knocking at the door" was well-known in contemporary France. When
the opening measures reappear as the movement's main theme (Example 2.1b above), the
mood is no brighter; the theme seems charged with angry and violent energy rather than
expeditious heroism. Also dissonant with McClary's theoretical formulations is that the
41
42
D'Indy, Cours de composition vol. 2, bk. 2,160.
Laurence Davies, Cesar Franck and His Circle, 237.
100
major-mode subordinate theme (m. 99/D +8ff) and especially the Faith Theme seem like
positive forces (as Ropartz's appellation implies), not menacing Others. Indeed, the
fortissimo Faith Theme, scored for violins, winds, and trumpets, seems more heroic than
any music heard up to this point.
Example 2.3
Example 2.3a) Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Fate motive
J
i—
f ! —
-4—
^jj
TT
Example 2.3b) Liszt, Les Preludes, cyclic motive (mm. 1-2)
Example 2.3c) Beethoven, Op. 135, IV, "Muss es sein?"
v ^ r
muss
p i
=
es sein?
In an infrequently cited 1994 response to McClary's arguments, James Hepokoski
argued that some pieces, particularly nineteenth-century minor-mode symphonic works,
articulate other sorts of stories. Citing the overture to Wagner's Flying Dutchman and
other examples, he observes that the plots of many such works revolve not around the
fragmentation and reconstitution of the subject (as McClary has it) but the transfiguration
of the subject. 43 In the Dutchman overture, "a minor-mode work seeking resolution into
the major," the main theme (in the minor mode) reflects "an aggressive, forte image of
the tormented male in extreme crisis." 44 The subject ultimately emerges transfigured
43
44
James A. Hepokoski, "Masculine-Feminine," The Musical Times 135 (Aug. 1994): 494-499.
Ibid., 498.
101
(much as the Dutchman is in the opera proper) by a spectacular, major-mode apotheosis
of the feminine subordinate theme in the overture's recapitulation.
Warren Darcy has further codified this minor-mode plot type. He calls it the
"redemption paradigm," an appellation that resonates strongly with Ropartz's reading of
Franck's symphony: in a minor-mode sonata form, the subordinate theme group (which in
the Franck includes the Faith Theme) may "redeem" the piece from the darkness of the
minor-mode by appearing in and cadentially securing the tonic major in the
recapitulation.45 Darcy's formulation may be re-framed in the critical-theoretical
vocabulary that informs McClary's work. In an influential study of Russian folk tales, the
formalist critic Vladimir Propp devised an extensive taxonomy of character types based
on their function in the plot. To adopt Propp's typology, a minor-mode sonata
movement's subordinate theme may function as a "helper"—the Ewig Weibliche in the
case of the Dutchman overture—that contributes to the hero's cause, rather than an
"enemy" that represents an obstacle to be conquered.46
Franck's Faith theme (Example 2.2a above) seems particularly well suited to a
redemptive role—by virtue of its putative flaw. As many critics have complained, the
theme pivots around the pitch "A". Serge Gut has defended the structure of this theme
(and some of the symphony's other themes); he compellingly finds melodic interest in the
systematic intervallic expansion that takes place around its anchoring "point d'appui." 47
Central to the symphony's plot, however, is the "point d'appui" itself: in the local
harmonic context (F major), "A" of course is the major third scale degree—the pitch that
spells the difference between the darkness of the minor triad and the light of the major.
45
Warren Darcy, "Bruckner's Sonata Deformations," in Bruckner Studies, ed. Timothy Jackson and Paul
Hawkshaw (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 274-276.
46
Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, trans. Laurence Scott (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1968).
47
Serge Gut, "Y a-t-il un modele beethovenien pour la symphonie de Franck?" Revue
europeenned'etudes
musicales 1 (1990): 59-79.
102
To pursue the "helper" trope a little further: in the body of narratives studied by Propp,
the helper usually contributes to the hero's cause by furnishing him with a magical object
(though other material assistance or sage advice are also common). Whatever the case,
this assistance is absolutely indispensable; the helper provides the key element that
enables the protagonist to ultimately prevail.48 Franck's Faith Theme similarly possesses
the indispensable "magical object" upon which the subject's fate hinges—the
transfiguring major third scale degree.
Other facets of Franck's slow introduction and exposition also set the stage for the
redemption paradigm to play out in the music that follows. A remarkably clear and stable
D-minor tonality delimitates the slow introduction and main theme. Unlike Beethoven's
prototypical minor-mode symphonies, which begin in harmonic ambiguity (tonal in the
Fifth and modal in the Ninth), Franck solidifies D minor from the outset. In the first two
measures the melody clearly outlines the tonic triad, and the unison tune winds its way
back to the tonic pitch four measures later. Tonic stability remains the rule throughout
the introduction. Although the surface of the music becomes intensely chromatic, D
minor is never truly obscured. The following phrase concludes with a half cadence
(followed by a four measure tonic pedal), and after a sequential passage replicates the
tune's head motive beneath an upward-creeping chromatic line (m. 17/letter Aff), the
music dutifully settles on the home-key dominant-seventh chord that prepares the allegro.
Moreover, for all the music's surface chromaticism Franck fastidiously avoids any
suggestion of D major: little in this introduction insinuates that the major mode will figure
prominently in what follows, let alone that a major-mode conclusion will emerge.
Structuralist critics might complain that Franck fails to plant the seeds of the symphony's
D-major conclusion, but the complete absence of the major mode here conforms to the
48
Ibid., 43-46, 79-83.
103
redemption paradigm: the subject, mired in the darkness of D minor, needs the Faith
Theme and its magical major third scale degree.
Like the structure of the Faith Theme, Franck's first-movement exposition has
tended to puzzle critics (though it has not drawn quite as much scorn). The section's
form is unusual in that the slow introduction and main theme are repeated in F minor
before the F-major subordinate group appears (see Figure 2.1). This repetition serves two
closely related purposes. First, it pits the mode-defining flat and natural inflections of the
third scale degree directly against one another (that is, it juxtaposes them in the tonal
space of F), and thereby establishes the tension between the parallel minor and major
modes around which the symphony's plot will revolve. Second, it thoroughly undercuts
the sense of tension between two tonics that a sonata exposition normally generates:
rather than positing D and F as rival keys, Franck's exposition isolates D—the symphony
seems to start over in F minor when the introduction repeats—and projects it as the longterm site of closure, the tonal space in which the minor/major conflict established in F
will ultimately be resolved.
Figure 2.1
I.
Exposition
A+12
Slow Main
intro. th.
DD-
B+2
Slow
intro.
F-
C+16
D+8
Main Sub.
th.
th.
FF+
Development
H+5 M -11 M+9
Main Sub. Main th.
th.
th.
juxtaposed
with sub.
th.
Recapitulation
N+14
O
Slow intro Main th.
(canon)
D- BEb(F#=S) (Ftt/Gb=3)
Coda
T
Q
Sub. th. Slow intro
(canon)
D+
GD+
(F#=§) (F#=7) (no
PAC)
How does Franck's "redemption" plot play out? As the placid conclusion of the
second group fades into the development section, the main theme's basic idea—Franck's
allusion to Wagner's Fate motive and Beethoven's ominous "Muss es sein" figure, and as
d'Indy suggests, the work's protagonist—brutally reinterprets the Faith Theme's
"magical" third degree (here, E-flat of a C-flat major triad) as the dominant of the bleak
104
A-flat minor (m. 190/rehearsal Hff). Motivic fragments from both the slow introduction
and first theme swirl as the music wanders through a tortured series of intensely
chromatic modulations and three violent climaxes (I +12, K, and L +12), each more
forceful than the last. As in the Dutchman Overture, Franck's development section "sets
the plight of the hero [...] into frenetic motion."49 Through the remainder of the
development and into the recapitulation, Franck stages a real coup of "leitmotivic" drama.
The redemptive subordinate theme returns at M - 3 and the skies seem to brighten, but
only momentarily: the main theme's dark head motive jumps back into the texture four
measures later. The two themes alternate, and this exchange quickly escalates into a duel
as the music cycles through third-related keys. The main theme gathers strength,
managing to string together back-to-back statements of itself (m. 309/M +13 and m.
313/M +17), but the Faith Theme appears to gain the upper hand before a massive
crescendo swallows both as the music drives toward the development section's ultimate
home-key dominant. This duel seems decisively resolved at the recapitulation. The slow
introduction returns in D minor, now fortissimo and scored for the brass, and the theme
doubles itself up in canon. In late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century recapitulations,
composers often fill in textural gaps in thematic materials so as to achieve greater
rhythmic continuity, much as Franck does here. In Franck's hands, however, this
convention also becomes part of the unfolding leitmotivic drama: the canon seems to
stifle any possibility that the Faith Theme might continue the duel by leaping into the
openings in the second halves of the theme's first two measures.
At the recapitulation, then—the first potential site for a major-mode resolution of
the minor-major conflict—the Faith Theme's magical major third degree seems violently
suppressed, and the grim minor third seems solidly locked in. But is it? As the canon
49
Hepokoski, "Masculine-Feminine," 498.
105
nears what we assume will be its end, a problem becomes evident. This lento theme,
concluding as it does on a whole note, must by be elided with the beginning of another
idea, as it is in the slow introduction. As Example 2.4 shows, an analogous elision cannot
occur on the downbeat of the sixth measure this time around because the canon's second
voice has yet to complete the theme. Once it has done so, the problem with the whole
note remains—both voices cannot come to rest together on D, even for just the two final
beats of the canon's sixth measure, without dissipating the recapitulation's rhythmic
energy and sheer mass of sound. To compensate, the leading voice repeats the theme's
final four notes. The second voice then offers a chromatically altered version of the same
fragment to maintain the canon; the first voice follows it in lockstep. Unable to end, and
now becoming paralyzed, the canon latches onto the pitch that happens to be at hand and
begins again in B minor. After going through all of its paces and arriving at the same
problematic point, the canon momentarily threatens to turn into a nightmarish, perpetually
modulating round. This time, however, it abruptly disintegrates. The music, once again
latching onto the "B" that happens to be at hand, awkwardly cuts to the sequential,
upward-creeping chromatic passage that leads to the slow introduction's ultimate,
fortissimo dominant (see Example 2.4). In its haste to escape the canon-gone-wrong, the
music has become disoriented and ends up in the wrong place: the dominant-seventh
chord is built not on A, but on B-flat. Consequently, the allegro main theme ensues not in
the tonic, but in E-flat minor.
These wide-ranging modulations have significant implications for the symphony's
unfolding "redemption" plot. For one thing, the dark D minor that was so fiercely
asserted at the beginning of the recapitulation has been completely undone. More
importantly, its grim F-natural (as shown in Figure 2.1 above) has been replaced by Fsharp: this "magical," redemptive pitch finds its way into the music as the fifth degree of
B minor, and then becomes the all-important third degree (interpreted in E-flat minor and
106
Example 2.4 I, reh. N +14 to O
[woodwinds, timpani, horns omitted]
Lento
ek V
i
(F(t/Gb=3)
respelled as G-flat) when the allegro begins. In other words, the main theme, the
symphony's protagonist (as d'Indy suggested), assimilates the "magical," transfiguring Fsharp—although only as the "wrong" scale degree (i.e. 5), or the right degree in the
wrong key (i.e. 3 of E-flat minor). The subordinate theme group, however, soon sets
things right: it follows as expected, and the Faith Theme repeatedly trumpets F-sharp as
107
the third degree of D major.
Unlike Beethoven's Fifth, the archetypal minor-to-major symphony (and Franck's
model in the view of Serge Gut, an issue to which we shall return in the final section of
this chapter), Franck's first movement ends in the tonic major. This affirmative
conclusion, however, is tentative. The second theme group approaches the structural
cadence that should wrap up the movement's formal business and confirm D major as its
tonal goal at measure 473/rehearsal T. At the last minute, however, the notes of the
dominant-seventh chord shuffle chromatically to become the dominant-seventh of B-flat,
and the cadence derails. The B-flat major that initiates the coda quickly darkens to B-flat
minor (m. 479/T +6), and the music ominously gathers steam for the next thirty-five
measures as a motivic fragment from the main theme group (in the winds) forces a
contorted version of the Faith Theme (in the bass instruments) out of the texture. The
coda culminates in an explosive, threefold fortississimo statement of the protagonist-like
three-note motive at measure 513/V +12, still in the minor mode, and once again lento (as
at the movement's outset) and in two-voice canon (recalling the recapitulation's dark
beginning). In spite of the negative force with which this motive asserts itself, it retains
the redemptive F-sharp it had absorbed earlier in the recapitulation: the miniature canon
appears in G minor and its leading-tone sounds five times in five measures, leaving only
one possibility for the final tonic. The movement, then, concludes in D major, but there is
little sense of denouement in the unfolding drama. Nowhere does the music arrive at a
home-key perfect authentic cadence; only a weak (though redemptive-sounding?) G-D
plagal cadence establishes D major as the tonal destination. Although the main theme has
assimilated the potentially transfiguring F-sharp, at the movement's conclusion this pitch
(as the leading-tone of G minor) remains on the "wrong" scale degree.
Most critics view the symphony's middle movement as the finest of the three and
have especially celebrated its innovative design and haunting main theme (see again
108
Example 2.1c above). With respect to the former, the movement is a generic hybrid; the
composer embeds a scherzo (complete with its own miniature trio, as Figure 2.2 shows)
in a slow movement. Franck drew attention to the seamless rhythmic integration of the
two sections in a brief (and disappointingly superficial) programme note-like analytical
pamphlet published by Durand; one beat of the allegretto becomes one perceived measure
of the scherzo.50 The composer might also have pointed out that he integrated material
from the slow-movement portion of the movement into the scherzo; the pizzicato chord
progression that accompanies the English horn tune returns to support the scherzo's agile,
hypnotic violin obbligato, and Franck even suggests the theme itself in the winds after
letter G. This hint of contrapuntal combination is "realized" at the reprise of the slow
movement, where the composer superimposes the scherzo obbligato upon the main
theme.
Figure 2.2
II.
Allegretto
m. 1
C+l
Main th.
Second th.
Bb+
Bb+
(F=S)
Scherzo
Allegretto
E+9
F
1+2
M+2
N+6
O +4
Main th.
Bb-
Scherzo
G-
Trio
Eb+
Scherzo
G-
Main th.
Bb-
Second th.
B+
(D+)
(F#=5)
Bb+
Such movement embedding and integration techniques suggest the influence of
Liszt's symphonic poems (where multiple movement types are united in a continuous
span) and, in the more immediate French context, of Saint-Saens's Organ Symphony.
Franck knew Liszt's music and admired it (as Fauquet and other biographers emphasize)
and, as we noted above, the composer voraciously studied his French colleague's
symphony. The influence of the symphonic poem and the Organ Symphony extends
beyond Franck's movement-embedding technique. Like Liszt and Saint-Saens, Franck
50
Cesar Franck, Notice analytique et thematique de la Symphonie en re mineur de Cesar Franck,
reproduced in Fauquet, Cesar Franck, 971-975.
109
also pursues a "two-dimensional" formal strategy, whereby a continuous harmonic
argument runs across the symphony's three discrete movements. The D minor to D major
"redemption" plot we traced across the first movement, in other words, continues to play
out in the second and third.
In the second movement, a collapse back into the darkness of the symphony's
opening counters the first movement's warm and promising D major conclusion. The
allegretto begins in the five-flat darkness of B-flat minor, and the main theme's
interaction with this tonality also implies a setback. Most critics agree that this English
horn melody, a fresh development of the thematic protagonist (see again Example 2.1c),
is the symphony's finest. Davies praises it as "a far happier example of the composer's
genius," and Locke calls the tune a "perfect gem."51 Nevertheless, the theme is
susceptible to the same charge both level against the problematic Faith Theme; it too
pivots on a single scale degree (the fifth), which sounds on seven of the first eight
downbeats. Whatever intrinsic melodic interest the theme may hold, its "point d'appui"
(like the Faith Theme's) bears significantly on the symphony's plot. In the context of Bflat, the fifth degree, of course, is the "dark" F-natural—which now displaces the
transfiguring F-sharp that the protagonist had tentatively assimilated in the firstmovement recapitulation and coda.
To continue telling the story of the symphony, a transformation of the redemptive
Faith Theme (Example 2.2b above) materializes as the movement's B-flat major
subordinate theme. Its characteristic motive initially emphasizes the third scale degree,
but the theme soon turns its attention to the now more problematic fifth degree. Bound
by its B-flat tonality, however, it is unable to correct the F-natural, and indeed highlights
it. No progress towards light accomplished, the main theme returns as before to round off
51
Davies, Cesar Franck and His Circle, 238; and Locke, "The French Symphony," 177.
110
the allegretto in the dark B-flat minor. The plot does, however, take a significant turn in
the recapitulation of the allegretto after the embedded scherzo. Here the main theme
returns as expected, and a perfect authentic cadence in B-flat minor closes it off just as
before. A new and unexpected development follows: At measure 221/0 +3, the music
abruptly modulates to B major, where the beginning of the subordinate (Faith) theme
appears (see Example 2.5). As the enharmonic spelling of the Neapolitan, this tonality
might seem to imply an even greater intensity of darkness. Beyond the immediate
harmonic context, however, this modulation to B major recalls the move to B minor in the
opening-movement recapitulation and it brings the same positive plot development. The
Faith Theme's characteristic neighbour motive highlights the D-sharp third degree, and
then skips up to and settles upon the fifth, the magical F-sharp, stretched out by a fermata.
To pursue Propp's typology, one might say that the redemptive Faith Theme, powerless
to address the dark F-natural in the face of B-flat tonality, steers the music into a key in
which it can. F-sharp remains a focal point through the following measures. As the
example shows, at measure 226/0 +8 a dotted melody from the trio highlights B major's
fifth degree, and F-sharp is the only pitch held (again by a fermata) through a quarter rest
at measure 233/P +4. In the following bar, this pitch is reinterpreted as scale degree 3 of
D major(!), which serves as a common-tone pivot back to B-flat, where the movement
concludes warmly in the major mode.
The dramatic and sudden modulation to B major, and the re-entry into the
discourse of F-sharp, proves to be the turning point in the symphony's plot, a
"breakthrough"—an unexpected formal turn that sets the music on a fresh and positive
course—to borrow Adorao's terminology.52 The finale opens with a moment of
52
Theodor W. Adorno, Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy,
Chicago Press, 1992), 5-6, 10-11.
trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of
I l l
Example 2.5 II, reh. O +3 to Q +1
B: V
112
I
(Example 2.5 continued)
113
(Example 2.5 continued)
- Tempo I
§
114
i j
*r *
UjSMT.
/
suspense—two measures of modally ambiguous octave Ds—before five affirmative
shouts on B-flat seventh and D major chords assert the parallel major. These shouts,
moreover, twice convert the dark F-natural (5 of B-flat) to the magical F-sharp (3 of D
major) and synopsize the tonal relationship between the second and third movements.
The D-major main theme (Example 2.Id above) follows in the seventh measure.
According to Dahlhaus, Franck's pretense to "monumentally" collapses at this point. In
his view, the motivic continuity between the main theme of the finale and those of the
allegro and allegretto (Examples 2.1b and 2.1c) is salient only in "form" but not in
"substance. 53 From a purely structural perspective, Dahlhaus probably convinces: buried
in the theme (and then inverted), the three-note motive is hardly conspicuous. Whereas
the main themes of the allegro and slow movement seem like transformations of the
material that opens the symphony, this theme seems more distantly related. In the context
of the redemption plot, however, this "insubstantial" relationship becomes significant;
having assimilated the magical, redemptive F-sharp, the subject is transfigured. The dark
hues of fate and doubt conjured by Franck's allusion to Beethoven, Wagner, and Liszt
have been bleached out; the motive remains merely as a point of continuity with, or
vestigial trace of, a former identity.
By arriving at the telos of the symphony's plot at the beginning of the finale,
Franck set himself a classic problem: how to maintain momentum and interest through a
full scale movement after this climactic moment? Beethoven's solution in the Fifth
Symphony was to "re-stage" the climactic breakthrough that launches the finale: material
from the C minor scherzo is recalled at the end of the development so it can once again be
crushed by the military-march main theme at the recapitulation. In the Ninth he opted to
amplify the transcendental Freudenthema via a set of variations. As we noted in the
53
Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century
Music, 274-276.
115
previous chapter, Saint-Saens took the route of the Fifth; a major-mode chorale in the
recapitulation squashes a menacing minor-mode transformation of the cyclic theme. As
in the finales of both Beethoven's Fifth and Ninth, Franck recalls material heard earlier in
the symphony. As Figure 2.3 shows, the main theme of the slow movement (itself a
transformation of the first movement's main theme) returns as the subordinate theme of
the finale, and both the Faith Theme and a major-mode transformation of the symphony's
initial three-note motive appear in the coda. According to Franck's student Pierre de
Breville, the composer himself invoked the Ninth as a precedent. "Le final, ainsi que
dans la Neuvieme, rappelle tous les themes; mais ils n'apparaissent pas comme des
citations, j'en fais quelque chose, ils jouent le role d'elements nouveaux." 54 Serge Gut,
however, has convincingly observed that Franck's wholesale recall of previously-heard
material in the body of his sonata-form finale suggests the influence of the Fifth rather
than the Ninth. 55 Nevertheless, Gut is careful to observe the element of originality to
which Franck drew attention. Franck's thematic recall, he stresses, takes place in the
exposition (and recapitulation) and not in the development.
Figure 2.3
III.
Exposition
m. 1
Main th.
D+ (F#=3)
Reh. F +4
Sub. th. (Main
th. of II)
B- (F#=5)
Development
Recapitulation
G+2
N+6
0+4
Coda
Main th.
Subordinate th.
D+
D--+D+
P
D+
Gut might also have observed that Franck's re-use of his second-movement theme
serves different rhetorical ends. In the Fifth Symphony (and Saint-Saens's Third is
similar in this respect), the recalled scherzo theme represents an element of darkness that
creeps back into the music, momentarily mounts a challenge to the subject, and is
54
55
Pierre de Breville to Vincent d'Indy, Concerts Lamoureux, Revue musicale SIM, November 1, 1913.
Serge Gut, "Y a-t-il un modele beethovenien pour la symphonie de Franck?," 59-79.
116
violently subdued. Not so in Franck. In the exposition, the recalled theme evokes (in
Cooper's words) a "weird and melancholy atmosphere," but in its elegant, legato lyricism
it does not seem menacing.56 Significantly, the theme, which as we recall repeatedly
articulates the fifth scale degree, appears in B minor: the protagonist thus retains the
magical, transfiguring F-sharp. The subordinate theme, in short, seems more like a past
condition or experience remembered from a safe distance than a fresh crisis. The
recapitulation is similar. Here the recalled theme becomes a sober though majestic
chorale heard in the winds and brass. Although the tune itself assumes a D-minor profile,
the supporting harmony prolongs the dominant throughout, and the passage resolves to
the tonic major. Like the Beethoven of the Fifth Symphony, Franck negotiates the finale
problem by momentarily interrupting the boisterous celebration with darker, recalled
material. But whereas in the former composition that material serves as an obstacle to be
crushed, in Franck's symphony it suggests a memory. The subject, so to speak, pauses to
reflect upon what was.
2.4 Mysticism
Many period critics sensed that a strong current of mysticism pervaded much of
Franck's music. As Julien Tiersot, a professor of music history at the Conservatoire,
explained, "it is not a question of establishing the fact the Franck's genius had received
the impress of the religious spirit. [...] [F]rom his earliest years his musical inspiration
bears an imprint of mysticism."57 Across the English Channel, the "impress of the
religious spirit" on Franck's music seemed equally evident to Ernest Newman, who stated
that "Franck represents a type of imagination that had not previously appeared in music,
though it had frequently in painting, in literature, and in philosophy. [...] Cesar Franck,
56
57
Cooper, French Music, 50.
Julien Tiersot, "Cesar Franck (1822-1922)," The Musical Quarterly 9 (1922): 37.
117
CO
as every one exclaims at his first acquaintance with his music, is a mystic."
For d'Indy
and certain of the composer's other students, "Father Franck" or "Pater Seraphicus"
embodied divinity, and his saintly Catholic piety pervaded his every act, especially
composition. Franckistes promoted this image aggressively. D'Indy's Franck biography,
for example, teems with passages such as this one:
Yes, in truth, the creator of The Beatitudes passed through life his eyes fixed
on a lofty ideal [,..]This untiring force and [his] inexhaustible kindness were
drawn from the well-spring of his faith; for Franck was an ardent believer.
With him, as with all the really great men, faith in his art was blent with faith
in God, the source of all art [...]. [W]hile the ephemeral renown of many
artists who only regarded their work as a means of acquiring fortune or
success begins already to fall into the shadow of oblivion, never again to
emerge, the seraphic personality of "Father" Franck, who worked for Art
alone, soars higher and higher into the light towards which, without faltering
or compromise, he aspired throughout his whole life.59
Ropartz, as we have observed, understood the symphony as a parable of faith
overcoming darkness. In the above-cited Franck biography, d'Indy indicated his
approbation for this interpretation.60 Other critics also detected mystical tones. Rene
Dumesnil, for example, sensed that Franck
semblait toujours poursuivre quelque reve interieur, ecouter des voix; et en
verite, l'ange de la musique le visitait. II y a quelque chose de celeste dans les
Beatitudes et dans la Symphonie en re mineur, et si le reflet des passions
humaines se laisse voir en cette derniere ceuvre, c'est pour mieux faire
ressortir la serenite, la certitude apaisante d'une foi que rien ne doit ebranler.61
Hugues Imbert wrote of a "caractere reveur et mystique," and the always insightful Paul
Dukas pointed to the Beatitudes as the symphony's hermeneutic cipher.
58
62
Ernest Newman, Review of Cesar Franck, by Vincent d'Indy, The Musical Times, March 1, 1910.
D'Indy, Cesar Franck, 68-69.
60
See n33 above.
61
Rene Dumesnil, La Musique contemporaine en France (Paris: Armand Colin, 1930), 18.
62
Hugues Imbert, La Symphonie apres Beethoven. Reponse a M. Felix Weingartner (Paris: Durand, 1900),
48; and Paul Dukas, "A propos de la Symphonie en re mineur de Cesar Franck," in Paul Dukas, Chroniques
musicales sur deux siecles, 1892-1932, ed. Jean-Vincent Richard (Paris: Stock Musique, 1980), 125-126.
59
118
Few modern critics, however, hear overtones of mysticism in the symphony.
Davies adopts the Faith-Theme appellation, though it is clear that he does so only as a
matter of analytical convenience. Fauquet, Gut, and most other late twentieth-century
critics make no mention of mystic qualities. The shifting of disciplinary priorities
towards greater emphasis on structure was certainly a factor here. But a debunking
backlash engendered by the zeal with which d'Indy and other Franckistes promoted the
image of "Pater Seraphicus" has also encouraged skepticism. This backlash began in
1930 with Maurice Emmanuel's brief biography of Franck, and was enthusiastically
continued by Leon Vallas, who sought to "lower the composer down from heaven, back
to his Franco-Belgian earth."63 Vallas took direct aim at d'Indy in his preface: "it is our
hope that this book will establish without any distortion the complex picture of Cesar
Franck and make known to all, in place of the pretty d'Indyist legend, the true history
j- j »64
D'Indy wrote his Franck biography in 1906, the year after the French state officially
separated from the Catholic Church. This confluence points to the motivations behind
Emmanuel's and Vallas's debunking critiques. D'Indy, as is well known, was a social
and political conservative, and Catholic faith lay at the centre of his cosmos. We shall
consider d'Indy's ideology in Chapters 5 and 6, but let us for the moment observe that he
viewed music primarily as a didactic medium through which he could promulgate his
values. His image of Franck as a fundamentally Catholic composer transparently served
his own interests.
Nevertheless, most of the critics who heard mystical currents in Franck's symphony
(and in his other works), were more disinterested: Tiersot, Lnbert, Dukas, and certainly
Newman did not stand to profit from a Pater Seraphicus myth in the ways d'Indy did.
63
Maurice Emmanuel, Cesar Franck (Paris: H. Laurens, 1930); Leon Vallas, Cesar Franck, trans. Hubert
Foss (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1951).
64
Vallas, Cesar Franck, 5.
119
Important contextual factors, moreover, invite us to take the idea that the work expresses
religious faith seriously. In his excellent analysis of French musical aesthetics, Carlo
Caballero has recently underscored that composers, critics, and listeners in the period
placed enormous value on the concept of "sincerity." In brief, they expected music to
distill and express the essence of the composer's character, and to reveal the depths of his
or her soul.65 Emmanuel and Vallas vigorously debunked d'Indyiste myth, but neither
questioned Franck's commitment to Catholicism, and more recent biographers have
painted the composer as a profoundly religious figure. Franck's was a soul steeped in
faith.
Musical factors also encourage us to hear mystical currents in the symphony.
Ropartz's account of its "message"—Faith vanquishes Darkness—is a remarkably salient
gloss of the plot that we have traced through the work: the main cyclic theme, mired in
the darkness of D minor through much of the symphony, is transfigured through the
agency of the Faith Theme, which furnishes the F-sharp that brings about D major. But
can such a particularized interpretation be sustained? The minor-to-major tonal trajectory
was, of course, a commonplace in nineteenth-century symphonies, and Darcy has shown
that the "redemption paradigm" became a generically normative sub-species of the
symphony's basic per aspera ad astra plot.
The English critic Percy Scholes likened Franck's symphony to those of Elgar on
account of the mystical qualities he perceived.66 Like Serge Gut, he invoked Beethoven's
Fifth as a foil. But where Gut focuses on structure, Scholes focused more on the music's
expressive qualities. To his ear, Franck had infused "a drop of the subtle essence of the
Sanctus of the great Bach mass" into the symphony's Beethovenian rhetorical framework.
It is a critical commonplace to characterize the Fifth as a narrative of Kampf und Sieg
65
Carlo Caballero, Faure and French Musical Aesthetics (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2001), 11-56.
66
Percy Scholes, "Cesar Franck," The Observer, December 10, 1922.
120
("struggle and victory"). Beethoven's percussive and driving rhythms, forward-surging
harmonic style, restless motivic development, crashing register shifts, dense scoring, and
other factors project a nearly constant sense of often violent struggle. Indeed, Scott
Burnham has suggested that Beethoven's heroic music, like many of the most popular
dramas of its day (by Goethe and Schiller, among others), seems to glorify struggle as
"the fundamental condition of Western [...] humankind—its saving grace [...]." 67 The
final C major victory of Beethoven's Fifth seems to come about through superhuman
force of will (as do the premonitions of the finale's military march in the slow
movement).
In Franck's symphony, listeners will certainly hear moments of violent struggle.
But whereas Beethoven's heroic style seems to celebrate struggle as a means of
"becoming," of achieving an elevated or transcendental condition, in Franck's symphony,
forceful struggle seems futile and altogether more negative. Such passages are found
only in the first movement, and they are always associated with the main theme (in the
exposition, the first segment of the development, the recapitulation, and the coda). That
is to say, violent struggle forms part of the protagonist's "dark" identity. Struggle,
moreover, leads nowhere: in the exposition, development, and recapitulation, the
pugnacious theme seems to exhaust itself and fizzle out.
In Beethoven, on the other hand, struggle always reaps rewards. Significantly,
Scholes set Franck's symphonic style against the central turning point in Beethoven's
Fifth, perhaps the composer's most quintessentially heroic passage: the transition from
the scherzo to the finale. Here, a C-major military-march wells up from the mysterious
depths of the orchestra and crushes the ominous rumblings of the "fate knocks" motive
with a degree of force that was unknown to the symphony prior to Beethoven. Victory
67
Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 114.
121
comes about through seemingly superhuman willpower. In Franck, things are otherwise.
Let us consider the analogous turning point in his symphony, the breakthrough near the
end of the middle movement, at which point the transfiguring F-sharp definitively enters
the texture via the sudden modulation to B major (Example 2.5 above). Beethoven's
breakthrough, the triumphant entry of the march, is the loudest, most thickly scored, and
most forceful moment to this point in the symphony. Indeed, Beethoven has the
trombones add their weight to the texture for the first time to guarantee a visceral quality
to the moment. Franck's breakthrough, on the other hand, is one of the symphony's
quietest and thinly scored passages: the dynamic marking where the winds enter on the
dominant of B major (O +3) is pianissimo, and Franck carefully labels each entry pp for
the full twelve measures of B major that follow. The trumpets, trombones, and timpani
remain silent, and Franck keeps the strings and winds separate so the texture remains
delicate and thin. Indeed, at P +4, the orchestra is reduced to just a single instrument, the
bass clarinet, which holds the transfiguring F-sharp through the fermata. In Beethoven,
struggle and force of will overpower adversity; in Franck, darkness dissipates in a
moment of quiet, serene lucidity. Whereas Beethoven's breakthrough is a proper victory
or triumph, Franck's, one is tempted to say, is an epiphany.
We might also juxtapose the coda of Beethoven's finale with Franck's. The former
features a steady crescendo from loud to louder and accelerando from fast to faster; wave
after crashing wave of C major solidify that tonality and the victory it represents,
evidently for eternity. Franck's symphony does end with a fortissimo flourish, as was
virtually mandatory for the genre. Nevertheless, most of the coda is very quiet—through
letter R, the only dynamic indications are pp and ppp—and serene. The principal motives
are isolated in D-major warmth, recalled here seemingly as memories, and delicately
bathed in the ethereal sound of the harp arpeggios. Franck, we should note, planned this
timbre from an early stage: in his two-piano draft there are very few indications of
122
scoring, but the arpeggios in the coda are marked "Harpe.") Whereas the "worldly pomp
and pageantry" (as Scholes put it) of the military march resounds through Beethoven's
coda, Franck's seems altogether different: other-worldly, in a word, mystical.
123
r
Chapter 3 - Edouard Lalo, Symphony in G Minor
3.1 From (Symphony to) Opera to Symphony
Edouard Lalo wrote most of his Symphony in G minor in 1886, and Lamoureux,
its dedicatee, premiered it in February of the very next year. The work's long and
circuitous genesis, however, extends at least as far back as the early 1860s. Like both his
contemporary Gounod and the slightly younger Saint-Saens, Lalo (1823-92) composed
two symphonies relatively early in his career (their exact dates remain unknown, but he
apparently completed both by 1862).1 As Lalo recounted in an often-quoted letter to A.
B. Marcel, he presented one to Pasdeloup in the hope of securing a performance. The
eminent conductor rejected the work, and, in the composer's account, burst out laughing
at the scherzo. Believing that "the great man could not be wrong," Lalo put the
symphony in his drawer and eventually destroyed it—but not before salvaging parts of it
for another project.
Lalo enjoyed virtually no public profile as a composer until relatively late in his
career. In the 1850s and 60s, even his fellow musicians knew him primarily as a teacher
and performer; in 1855 he co-founded the respected Armingaud Quartet in which he
played the viola and later second violin. The two symphonies aside, he mainly wrote
chamber music during this period, producing a number of fine compositions, including
two piano trios and a string quartet. Unfortunately, there was relatively little enthusiasm
for chamber music in Second-Empire France, and Lalo apparently grew discouraged and
more or less gave up composition for a period. Nevertheless, in response to a competition
organized by the Theatre Lyrique with backing from the Minister of State, Lalo put pen to
staff paper once again in 1866 and began work on an opera. The composer evidently felt
1
See Hugh Macdonald, "Lalo, Edouard," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley
Sadie and John Tyrell, vol. 14 (London: Macmillan, 2001): 151-154.
2
Edouard Lalo to A. B. Marcel, May 1889, in Edouard Lalo, Correspondance, ed. Joel-Marie Fauquet
(Paris: Aux amateurs de livres, 1989), 302.
124
strongly enough about his abandoned symphony to resurrect at least some of its material
and incorporate it into Fiesque, a "grand opera" in three acts on a libretto by Charles
Beauquier after Schiller's early play Fiesco, or the Genoese Conspiracy. It is difficult to
determine exactly which parts of Fiesque originated in the symphony, since no
manuscripts or sketches of the earlier work appear to have survived. In the letter cited
above, Lalo claimed to have re-used "all of its themes," but he only elaborated on the
destination of the scherzo (which became the offstage choral dance heard at the beginning
of Act I and again in Act I, Scene 2) and the trio (which became the lament that
immediately follows the dance).3 Lalo submitted his score in August 1868, and it made a
short list of five finalists announced in June of 1869. The jury judged Fiesque an
"ouvrage egalement, consciencieusement et savamment ecrit par les auteurs du poeme et
de la musique," but ranked it third behind Gustave Canoby's La Coupe et les levres, and
Jules Phillipot's Le Magnifique, the winner.4
After the competition, both the Paris Opera and the Theatre de la Monnaie in
Brussels showed interest in Fiesque (the latter even announced a cast), but a production
did not materialize. Lalo subsequently attempted to arrange a performance in Germany
and had the piano-voice score published at his own expense with a German translation,
but these efforts similarly came to naught. Excerpts were performed in several Paris
concerts in 1872 and 73, and in December of 1872 Lalo recycled the entr'acte before Act
II as the first movement of the Divertissement for orchestra (eventually one of his best
known works).5 But the complete opera did not reach the stage until it was given at the
3
Ibid., 302.
The opera and its genesis, background, and eventual dismemberment are surveyed by Hugh Macdonald in
"A Fiasco Remembered: Fiesque Dismembered," in Slavonic and Western Music: Essays for Gerald
Abraham, ed. Malcolm Hamrick Brown and Roland John Wiley (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press;
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 163-185; quote on p. 164.
5
Ibid., 164-165.
4
125
Festival de Radio France et Montpellier in a performing edition by Hugh Macdonald (and
largely owing to his advocacy) on 27 July 2006, nearly 140 years after its composition.
After 1873 Lalo apparently gave up on Fiesque, and it joined the symphony in his
drawer of abandoned compositions. It remained there for some ten years until he began
to reuse scraps of it (just as he had with the symphony) in the wake of another failure. In
1881, as compensation for reneging on a promise to stage Le Roi d'Ys, Auguste
Vaucorbeil, director of the Opera, engaged Lalo to compose the ballet Namouna.
Circumstances conspired against him. Before the premiere, the conservative press
attacked the ballet as the work of a "Wagnerian" symphonist, a misleading label
calculated to arouse suspicion among the Opera's clientele. This hostility probably owed
in part to Lalo's status as a complete newcomer to Paris's stages and his reputation as a
chamber and concert composer. But as Steven Huebner has suggested, a tussle with
Ambrose Thomas, the director of the Conservatoire and an established figure in Parisian
opera culture, was also to blame. Vaucorbeil gave Lalo just four months to complete his
score, a cruelly tight timeline. He worked at such a frenetic pace that he eventually fell ill
with hemiplegia (partial paralysis). Gounod stepped in to help with the orchestration, but
the production was delayed. Thomas, meanwhile, was ready and waiting with his freshly
composed Frangoise de Rimini, scheduled to be staged immediately after Namouna, and
the Opera's administration proposed switching the two premieres. Lalo successfully
protested—it was professionally advantageous to have the earlier slot when two works
were premiered back to back—infuriating Thomas and his supporters. The resulting
rumpus poisoned the pre-premiere atmosphere, and the ballet's progressive (and indeed
symphonic) tenor sealed its fate: Namouna's run lasted just fifteen performances.6
6
Steven Huebner, French Opera at the Fin de Siecle: Wagnerism, Nationalism,
York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 231-234.
126
and Style (Oxford and New
Lalo's illness and his ballet's cruel fate seem to have taken a heavy toll on him;
Georges Servieres claimed the composer never really recovered from the ordeal.7 As a
result of these, or perhaps other factors, Lalo wrote very little new music after 1882: most
of his later compositions are based on material from earlier ones. (Although Le Roi d'Ys,
the composer's greatest triumph, was premiered in 1888, it had been drafted in its entirety
in 1876. Lalo claimed to have "rewritten" the opera in 1886, but he appears to have
exaggerated the extent of his revisions.8) The composer fed on several of his earlier
pieces (including Le Roi d'Ys and some songs), but it was Fiesque above all that he
mined. He lightly re-worked numbers from the opera (and in some cases supplied new
texts) to produce several minor compositions including an O Salutaris, the Litanies de la
Sainte Vierge for women's chorus and organ, the Humoresque, and the duet Au fond des
halliers? Lalo also pillaged Fiesque for some major works: the choral pantomime Neron
draws heavily on the abandoned opera, as does the only act he composed for the opera La
Jacquerie on a libretto by Edouard Blau, the librettist of Le Roi d'Ys (Arthur Coquard
supplied the remaining three acts after Lalo's death, and the work premiered in Monte
Carlo in 1895).
Lalo also borrowed Fiesque material for the Symphony in G minor. The motto
that opens the work and reappears cyclically in the third and fourth movements—Lalo
called this the "phrase maitresse" of the symphony—is drawn from the introduction to no.
14 (in Act III, Scene 1), and material for the slow (third) movement, including the main
theme, is borrowed from no. 20 (also from Act III, Scene l). 10 Finally, the secondmovement scherzo is essentially an orchestral arrangement of the choral dance from Act
I, Scene 2, and the trio is drawn from the lament that immediately follows in the opera: it
7
Georges Servieres, Edouard Lalo (Paris: Henri Laurens, n.d.), 108.
Huebner, French Opera at the Fin de Siecle, 242.
9
See Macdonald, "A Fiasco Remembered," 165-166.
10
Edouard Lalo to Adolphe Jullien, 7 March 1887, in Correspondance,
8
169.
127
thus came to pass that music composed for the early symphony, but transformed into
material for the opera, wound up in a symphony after all (the possibility that the motto
and slow-movement material, or perhaps even other elements not used in Fiesque also
originated in the early symphony cannot be discounted).
Lalo's late works are generally considered inferior to his efforts of the 1870s, the
decade of his best known compositions, including the Symphonie espagnole and the Cello
Concerto (both of which remain in the orchestral repertoire) and probably most of Le Roi
d'Ys. Hugh Macdonald has called the final years of Lalo's career a period of "creative
slumber."11 In many cases such views seem justified. The Piano Concerto of 1889, one
of Lalo's few entirely new late compositions, has none of the Cello Concerto's brilliance
and verve, and the derivative Neron—of which Macdonald has observed "not a note was
new" (what didn't come from Fiesque was borrowed from other works)—struck many
contemporary critics as bland and unimaginative.12
The symphony's reliance on material from Fiesque has also raised certain critical
eyebrows. Brian Hart has suggested it is merely a "compiled and arranged" score.13
Servieres went even further: "La symphonie en sol mineur [...] n'est pas une veritable
symphonie, malgre la reproduction du theme initial dans les divers mouvements; elle est
une mosai'que tres ingenieuse de motifs empruntes a la partition de Fiesque.'" But others
have seen things differently. Robert Pitrou felt the symphony stood apart from Lalo's
other "mosaic" works,14 and the anonymous author of a programme note printed for a
performance by Colonne on 22 December 1901 gave nuance to the symphony's Fiesque
borrowings. He acknowledged the work's debt to the opera, but suggested it would be
' 1 Macdonald, "A Fiasco Remembered," 163.
12
Ibid., 166.
13
Brian J. Hart, "The French Symphony After Berlioz: From the Second Empire to the First World War," in
A. Peter Brown, The European Symphony from ca. 1800 to ca. 1930: Great Britain, Russia, and France
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 584.
14
Robert Pitrou, De Gounod a Debussy: Une "belle epoque " de la musique franqaise (Paris: Editions Albin
Michel, 1957), 55.
128
misleading to lump it in with pale and half-hearted compositions like the Piano Concerto
and hasty re-arrangements of Fiesque fragments like Neron and other products of Lalo's
late "creative slumber:"
En faisant passer du drame a la symphonie quelques-uns de ses motifs, le
compositeur les a transformes; il en a modifie le caractere et la couleur; il a su
les approprier aux necessites d'une ceuvre purement instrumentale; il les a
sertis comme de fins bijoux, en leur donnant l'eclat d'une orchestration
chatoyante et variee. Des souvenirs epars d'un ouvrage ancien et
volontairement detruit, il a tire une ceuvre nouvelle et vivante, ou desormais
s'affirme la maitrise, ou se melangent et se fondent dans un ensemble
harmonieux la grace et la force, le charme et la grandeur.15
Scrutiny of Lalo's score bears this writer out. For one thing, it is expressly not,
pace Hart and Servieres, a "compiled" or "arranged" score like Lalo's choral pantomime.
Indeed, the only wholesale borrowing from Fiesque is found in the second movement,
where Lalo did little more than orchestrate the choral scherzo and lament and arrange
them in the conventional scherzo-trio-scherzo pattern (as had probably been the case in
the original symphony) and add a coda. Apart from the transplanted motto, the opening
allegro and the finale are entirely new movements, and although Lalo borrowed the slow
movement's thematic material, he developed it in a substantially different fashion—and
one might fairly say that in the context of a symphony, creativity resides as much, if not
more so, in the treatment of material as it does in its invention.
The adagio in particular is a very fine movement that gainsays the notion of creative
slumber. Lalo clearly invested real effort here, and produced from his borrowed material
a movement that compares favourably with the symphonies of Franck and Saint-Saens in
terms of formal innovation, organic continuity between formal levels, and the composer's
ability to spin a substantial structure out of minimal material. The introduction is a
miniature set of variations. The "theme" (mm. 3 through 8) is a half-cadential phrase that
15
Anonymous programme note for the Concert Colonne, December 22, 1901. Bibliotheque nationale de
France, Departement de la musique, Fonds Montpensier: "Edouard Lalo, compositeur."
129
Lalo borrowed from Act III, Scene 1 (no. 20) of Fiesque. Three variations spin fresh
material out of its two-measure basic idea, but all conclude with the same half-cadence,
and in the first and third the cadence is preceded by light variations of the ominous tritone
bass figure and half-diminished seventh chord heard in the theme's fourth and fifth
measures.
Much as some of Haydn's slow introductions articulate compressed sonata forms
(see, for example, the first movement of Symphony no. 104), this miniature variations set
expresses a miniature symphonic form: the second variation is developmental (it features
sequential motion and chromaticism, and concludes on a dominant prepared by an
augmented-sixth chord) and hints at a second key (flat VI, G-flat major in the second
bar). The third variation is a recapitulation, in which the melody returns as before but is
now fully harmonized. There is no marked break between introduction and theme, which
begins at letter C. Nevertheless, the miniature recapitulation at letter B brings some sense
of formal closure to the introduction, and the scope and formal complexity of the unit
beginning at letter C—a fourteen-measure sentence—encourage us to perceive it as a
fully-fledged theme. Lalo builds this theme by mixing and matching phrases and gestures
from the introduction: the miniature theme and first variation are fused to become the
sentence's presentation segment (C to C +8), and in the five-bar continuation phrase (C
+9 to D) the bass tritone (from m. 6, A +4, and B +3) is transposed to G-flat/C (at C +9)
and the half-diminished seventh that prepares each half-cadential dominant in the
introduction becomes fully diminished at C +9. Two new motivic elements also emerge,
the triplets in the bass and inner voices (at C +9), and, in the theme's tenth measure, the
leap to the high C that Lalo interprets as an appoggiatura to the dominant 6/4 (over the
implied bass F) at C +10.
The movement's large-scale form is a dilation of the slow introduction (see Figure
3.1). Three variations follow the main theme, and elements of sonata procedure overlay
130
the set, just as in the introduction: a brief development section separates the first and
second variations, and the second variation establishes G-flat major—the same tonality
the introduction's analogous variation implies—as a secondary key. The final variation
functions as a recapitulation. The theme returns largely in its original form but, as in the
introduction, with richer scoring and thicker inner-voice counterpoint.
Figure 3.1
Introduction
"Theme" "Variation 1"
Reh. A
A+7
Bb+
Gb+
HC
"7-V
Var. 3 ="Recap."
(B)
Var. 2 ="Dvt."
HC
"7-V
V-I
Bb+
HC
aug. 6th -V
0
HC
7-V
Main body
Variation 1
Theme
Dvt.
Var. 2
Var. 3=Recap.
Coda
Reh. C
E
F
J
K
Gb+
Bb
D
Bb +
IAC
V-I
IAC
V-I
V-I
PAC
V- i
motto
I
PAC
Lalo's movement is not a "theme and variations" in the manner of eighteenth- and
early nineteenth-century practice. That is to say, the theme does not remain a fixed and
more or less recognizable melodic and harmonic structure that the composer elaborates,
decorates, and embellishes. The variations relate to the theme much as the theme relates
to the introduction's miniature variations. That is, Lalo builds them by variously
recombining salient elements of the theme, previous variations, and sometimes injecting
fresh material. His deft and original technique merits some close attention. The first
variation (letter D) grows out of the theme's initial two pitches, here compressed into
triplet figuration. Lalo reverses the pitches' structural roles by placing the tune over a
tonic pedal: whereas D is an appoggiatura to C in the theme, C becomes a neighbour to D
in the variation. In the variation's first two measures, the diminished seventh from the
theme's tenth measure gently decorates the tonic triad. The third measure picks up the
131
skip to F and descent back to C from the theme's first and second bars, and in the
variation's seventh and eighth measures, the descent from G to B-flat from the theme's
analogous bars becomes fused to the C-B-flat appoggiatura into the V6/4 drawn from
measures 10-11 of the theme. Finally, the variation's climactic push from A up to F
strikes the ear as a new element, however, Lalo derives it from an inner voice (the first
violins) of measures 1-4 of the theme.
The second variation (letter F) begins with new material, but this soon flows
seamlessly into the theme's first two measures (F +2), the formal function of which Lalo
effortlessly alters from basic idea (in the theme) to contrasting idea (in the variation). The
variation's continuation phrase (F +4 to F +9) begins with a rhythmically modified and
extended version of the first variation's climactic upward push (see the first beat of D +7
to the first beat of D +9), which is here crowned by the main theme's upper-octave
appoggiatura-6/4 figure. Lalo further explores the form-functional potential of the main
theme's basic idea at the ensuing cadence, where its descent from scale degrees 5 through
2 continues to the tonic (I +2 to I +3). Finally, we should here observe a component of
linear development that Lalo weaves across the entire movement. The triplets that
unobtrusively enter the bass and inner voices in the theme's final measures, and become
an prominent melodic characteristic of the first variation, continue to grow in importance
through the brief development and assume even more prominence here: without
consulting a score a sensitive listener would be hard pressed to say whether this variation
is notated in simple meter with an abundance of triplets or in compound meter spiced
with frequent duplets.
As noted above, in the final variation (letter J), the theme returns to its original
state save some minor ornamentation, richer scoring, and thicker voicing. The rhythmic
profile of the bass is also altered, now featuring a constant triplet pulsation that continues
to pit threes against twos, as in the development and second variation. However, in the
132
ninth measure, the recapitulation breaks off and the first variation's climactic push from
A through F and back down to A (see D +7 to D +9), now in triplet rhythm, ensues over
the cadential dominant. At the dominant's resolution (letter K), the symphony's motto
appears in the tonic minor. Some writers have suggested the motto and its tonality seem
out of place here. We shall return to this issue later, but for the moment let us observe
that the motto's triplet rhythm may be heard as the goal or ultimate product of the
rhythmic "narrative" whereby triplets become increasingly copious across the movement.
Lalo perhaps most fully displays his skill as a symphonist in the brief development
section between the first and second variations. The passage is propelled by what could
fairly be called the movement's central motive, the appoggiatura into the fifth of the
chord that initiates all four of the introduction's phrases, and factors prominently
elsewhere in each (as it does, of course, in the main theme derived from them). The
section begins in B-flat and cycles sequentially through D-flat (E +3), E (E +6), and G (E
+9), before modulating to G-flat for the second variation. As Example 3.1 shows, the
bass of each segment's initial root position chord slides down by whole step to form a
second-inversion triad, which Lalo interprets as the dominant 6/4 of the following key.
As shown in the harmonic reduction (Figure 3.2), the descending bass step is effectively a
6-5 appoggiatura into next tonality in the sequence: a conspicuous surface detail here
assumes a structural role.
Throughout the symphony, Lalo handles his Fiesque borrowings with the same care
he takes in the slow movement. Let us consider his treatment of the cyclic motto. Mere
introductory scene-setting in no. 14 of Fiesque, Lalo compellingly weaves the figure into
the symphony's argument. In the slow introduction to the first movement, the motto is
exposed in a twofold statement, first on scale degree 1 and then on degree 3. As may be
seen in Figure 3.3, throughout the movement (and indeed the symphony) Lalo continues
to pair motto statements on these same degrees, though they become separated to control
133
Example 3.1 III, reh. E - 1 to E +6
Flutes
Hautbois
Clarincttcs
Trompcttcs
Cors
Contrcbasscs
jf
=>
bk
1/lb
J)
V
1
pizz.
i
Dkvi
V
t
ip
0
If
1/—.
bd'7 '
f
f
^
—
vnr
tip fc
1—3—1 1
Cor
t
Figure 3.2 Harmonic reduction, III, E - 1 to E +3
t
' u JwjVi
A
A
(6-5)
£
m
r
bb: V
Db:<i
134
^ r
6
V4
5
3
=
Figure 3.3
I.(G-)
Slow intro
Expo, m.22 Development reh. E -l l
J =52
J =106
E-4
motto motto main sub.
th.
th.
\
3
motto
\
T
T
T
E +10
main
th.
motto
3
t
III. (conclusion only; in Bb +)
(var. 3)
Coda
IV. (G-)
Intro.
J =54
J. =100
m. 1
motto
Reh. K
motto
l(=Bb)
V- i
T
1(=G)
sub.
th.
Recapitulation reh. I
Coda
I
N-4
motto
main
sub.
motto
3 (=Bb)
t
th.
th..
1(=G)
[Rondo]
_T
Coda
N+l
motto
1 (=G)
I
t
successively larger spans of time. As in the first movement of Schubert's Eighth, the
motto plays an important role in the development section. Derivatives of its triplet
rhythm enter eight bars before rehearsal E, and the motto itself appears (on scale degree
1) four measures later. If Lalo's metronome markings are observed, it is here
proportionally very similar to its initial statement in the slow introduction (quarter=52 for
the introduction and quarter=106 for the allegro). The development section is rotational,
that is to say it first develops main-theme material and then moves on to the subordinate
theme; the second statement of the pair (on scale degree 3) intersperses the main-theme
and subordinate-theme portions of the development. The motto next appears at the
beginning of the recapitulation, once again in augmented note values such that it is
proportionally related to the initial, slow-introduction version. This passage may have
been the inspiration for a more celebrated one composed two years later: Franck would
similarly begin his first-movement recapitulation with a forte, tutti recall of his slow
introduction. The motto statement that complements the one heard at the beginning of the
recapitulation does not arrive until the coda, the pair thus encompassing the entire
135
recapitulation. Contrary to the first two motto pairs (in the slow introduction and
development), the first statement here begins on B-flat, the third degree: Lalo withholds
the tonic degree statement for the motto's final appearance in the movement (M +6),
where he climactically transposes this initially dark and foreboding figure into the parallel
major just prior to the allegro's structural cadence. The reversed order of this motto pair
becomes the basis of a link Lalo forges between the slow movement and the finale with
the next pair. The motto itself does not factor in the scherzo (though as we shall see,
similar material substitutes for it) and is withheld until the final cadence of the slow
movement, where it appears in B-flat minor fifteen measures from the end. (Lalo marks
the tempo quarter=54, so the motto once again relates rhythmically to previous
statements). Its paired statement opens the G-minor finale, and Lalo encourages us to
hear the cross-movement connection by extending both statements up to the flat sixth
degree as an appoggiatura to the fifth in similar triplet rhythm. Both members of this pair
appear on the first degrees of their respective scales, and those tonics—B-flat and G—
parallel the pitches on which the motto sounds in the recapitulation and coda of the
opening movement. The motto makes a final, isolated, appearance in the finale's coda.
The time signature here is 12/8 and Lalo specifies a tempo of dotted-quarter=100. As in
the first-movement development section, the motto sounds in augmented note values such
that it once again relates proportionally to previous statements.
To conclude our discussion of Lalo's Fiesque borrowings, we should note that he
took great care both to select materials from the opera that meshed nicely with one
another and to compose fresh material with which he could successfully integrate his
borrowings. The main theme of the finale (mm. 5ff), for example, shares the persistent
triplet pulse and stepwise descending melodic profile of the scherzo's main theme (mm.
9ff). Lalo is thus able to recall the latter to stand in for the former in the finale (see letter
J +4) and thereby forge a smooth and natural sounding cyclic relationship.
136
As noted above, the motto is absent from the scherzo movement, but other material
(borrowed from the destroyed symphony via Fiesque) stands in for it. The trio is made
up of two melodic lines that are first heard separately and then in counterpoint (as they
are in Fiesque). The second to appear (see Example 3.2a) rises from the first through
third degrees of the minor scale, just as the motto does. The perceptive Guy Ropartz felt
the relationship between the two figures was substantive enough to call Example 3.2a a
"developpement" of the motto (Example 3.2b).16 This same tune is also cyclically related
to the first movement by way of its double-dotted rhythm, which factors prominently in
the earlier movement's main theme, subordinate theme (see letters C and D),
development section (especially from E to E +8), and coda. (Borrowed as it was from the
destroyed symphony, Lalo obviously composed the trio tune first, but in the context of the
work he managed to make it appear to grow out of first-movement material.)
Example 3.2a) II, reh. F
A
2
3
jJ-
^
Ju..
3
pil
P r-
Pir
p1
Example 3.2b) I, m. 2
j j J
j1 J i J ^ -" fl J J J JJJ J ^ H'1
1
The twice-repeated basic idea of the first movement's main theme comprises three onebar motives (see Example 3.3a). The first, (in the double-dotted rhythm) relates obliquely
to the motto by reversing its 1-2-3 melodic profile. Once again, the proportional tempo
relationship between introduction and allegro encourages us to hear this connection. This
shape, like the motto itself, is continually developed across the symphony's span. In the
16
Guy Ropartz, "Symphonies modernes," in Notations artistiques (Paris: A. Lemerre, 1891), 176.
137
second movement's trio, it links up with the borrowed material from Fiesque (Example
3.3b), where its 3-2-1 melodic profile is expanded to 5-3-2-1. Lalo recalls these four
scale degrees in the movement's final measures, so they are fresh in our ears at the
beginning of the adagio. In that movement's opening phrase—another Fiesque
borrowing (Example 3.3c)—the fourth degree is added to the melodic descent, though
here it halts on the supertonic. Finally in the main theme of the finale (Example 3.3d), the
descent from scale degrees 5 through 1 is completely filled in, and Lalo concludes the
whole work by recalling the 3-2-1 profile of the first measure of the opening movement's
main theme in a compound-time version of the double-dotted rhythm.
Example 3.3a) I, mm. 22-24.
A
3
Be
i
Example 3.3b) II, E +14
A
A
5
A
A
3
2
1
dt
Example 3.3c) III, mm. 3-6
A
A
A
A
A
A
3
2
5
4
3
2
^ j j j j l j j j l j J r h" f P 7
Example 3.3d) IV, mm. 5-6
A
A
5
^ff P *
138
4
tf
%
j
n
11
3.2 Concision
Lalo's symphony is rarely performed today, and compared to the symphonies of
Franck, Saint-Saens, and d'Indy it has stimulated relatively little academic discussion. In
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, it frequently appeared on
French concert programmes. Servieres's cool appraisal was the exception, and some
critics considered the symphony a jewel of the French symphonic school. Guy Ropartz
placed the work on par with the now more highly regarded Franck, Organ, and Mountain
symphonies, and Jean d'Udine judged the first two and the Lalo the finest French
examples of the genre.17 D'Udine elaborated:
Vraiment je ne sais dans notre musique rien de plus caracteristique, de plus
original que cette symphonie [...]. Telle m'a apparu cette oeuvre parfaite, ou
regnent la legerete de touche, la discretion et la vivacite qui [...] peuvent allier
[les] emotions les plus intenses, aux pensees les plus hautes [...]. 8
Tiersot lauded:
Rien n'est scolastique en la forme exterieure: pourtant rien n'est plus etudie ni
plus savant. [...] Cela certes est de la musique fran9aise au premier chef [...]
le style s'en est epure au contact des modeles les plus purs, en meme temps
que son essence a garde le parfum qui lui est naturel.1
And A. Landely summarized "c'est l'ceuvre d'un maitre symphoniste [...] qui, sans
rompre completement avec la tradition, a su la rajeunir avec les ressources modernes."20
One of the most striking aspects of Lalo's symphony is its concision. It spans
only 721 bars (205 in the first movement, 245 in the second, 109 in the third, and 162 in
the fourth), and typically clocks in at around twenty-five minutes. As Tiersot noted, the
17
Ropartz, "Symphonies modernes," 173-78; and Jean d'Udine, Les Grands concerts, Le Courrier musical,
April 1, 1910.
18
Jean d'Udine, Paraphrases musicales sur Les Grands concerts du dimanche (Colonne et Lamoureux),
1900-1903 (Paris: A Joanin, 1904), 141-42.
19
Julien Tiersot, "La Symphonie en France," Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft 10 (1902),
399.
20
A. Landely, Revue des Grands concerts, L 'Art musical, January 31, 1889.
139
work "ne vise pas a la grandeur, et son developpement est moindre que celui des oeuvres
similaires de Saint-Saens, de Cesar Franck, et de Vincent d'Indy." 21 The symphony,
Tiersot felt, was cast in the mould of Beethoven's relatively compact Seventh rather than
that of the more grandiose Third and Ninth. "Comme telle," he continued, "elle offre les
qualites les plus eminentes et constitue un des meilleurs modeles qu'on puisse presenter
de la musique fran^aisc fecondee par l'esprit moderne."
The very compactness Tiersot praised, however, may well account for the work's
change of fortune. The late nineteenth-century symphonies that have become chartered
members of our present-day academic and repertorial canons—works by Brahms,
Bruckner, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Sibelius, Franck, Saint-Saens, and others—are
without exception considerably larger in scale than Lalo's (and some of them much more
so: the first movements of Mahler's Third and Bruckner's Eighth alone dwarf Lalo's
entire composition). Indeed, for a critic like Dahlhaus, "monumentality" (organic unity
on a grand scale) was arguably the central aesthetic pursuit of "Second Age"
symphonists.22 However appropriate a model Tiersot felt Lalo offered his countrymen,
the symphonies of Chausson (1890) and Dukas (1896) would assume Franck-like
dimensions, and d'Indy's Second (1903) would swell in scale relative to his Mountain
Symphony, composed a few months after Lalo's.
Was Lalo simply out of touch with the fin de siecle's musical Zeitgeist? Other
aspects of his symphony suggest he was not: like most of the better-known symphonists
listed above, Lalo employed cyclic procedures, scored the work for a large, postWagnerian orchestra (augmenting the full compliment of brass with two cornets, as
Franck would do), and cultivated a piquant harmonic vocabulary replete with pungent
21
Julien Tiersot, Un Demi-siecle de musique frangaise entre les deux guerres 1870-1917 (Paris: Librairie
Felix Alcan, 1918), 113.
22
Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989), 265, 276.
140
dissonances that would have struck contemporary French ears as modern. He was not
consciously bucking the trend either, as Sibelius would later do in his concise Fourth
Symphony. At the time Lalo composed his symphony, Saint-Saens's Third had not yet
received a performance, and the Franck was still two years off. And though Lalo
followed recent musical developments in the German-speaking world more attentively
than the majority of French composers, Brahms's symphonies had by no means fully
established themselves in the repertoire in 1886, Bruckner's remained obscure, and
Mahler's First dates from 1888 (the same year as Tchaikovsky's Fifth).
Certain of Lalo's other late works also tend towards compactness. Hugues Imbert
noted this with the Piano Concerto (1889), which he contrasted with the composer's
earlier efforts: "Lalo parait avoir fait un retour sur lui-meme."23 Imbert considered this a
positive development; like Tiersot and certain other critics, he had little tolerance for
sprawling instrumental compositions and thought concision a real (and French) virtue.
Schubert's lengths, for example, were far from heavenly:
[E]tudiez ses symphonies, sa musique de chambre; vous verrez que l'artiste
s'est peut-etre trop laisse aller a l'inspiration, sans revenir sur son travail; il se
contentait du premier jet. Tout manque de proportion; les motifs abondent et
reviennent avec une satiete qui amene la fatigue chez l'auditeur. [...] Sa
symphonie en ut majeur, consideree come la plus belle, est, malgre des
beautes incomparables, beaucoup trop developpee et cette longueur a toujours
nui a son succes. [...] Si, aujourd'hui meme, on n'execute plus dans les
grands concerts que de simple fragments des symphonies du maitre allemand,
c'est que leur dimension hors mesure ne permet pas de les faire entendre dans
leur entier.24
Imbert attributed Lalo's change of direction to the influence of critics' complaints.
In his more nuanced analysis of the issue in Le Roi d'Ys, Steven Huebner has suggested
concision offered a means by which Lalo forged a distinctive voice in the anxiety-fraught
23
24
Hugues Imbert, Nouveauxprofits
Ibid., 166-167.
de musiciens (Paris: Fischbacher, 1892), 167.
141
arena of French opera.25 The composer had originally planned to write a drame lyrique.
However, he confessed in a revealing letter to the critic Adolphe Jullien that he ultimately
did not feel up to the Oedipal confrontation with Wagner that such a project would
inevitably entail. Taking recourse to more conventional number opera (which
distinguished his work from the Wagnerian syntheses of Saint-Saens and Massenet), he
adopted a threadbare musical approach that gave his opera a pace and tightness that set it
apart from both the likes of Meyerbeer and the prolix Wagner of Lohengrin.
Lalo revised Le Roi d'Ys in 1886—the same year he wrote the symphony—and
his letter to Jullien also shines valuable light on the instrumental composition. Of his
return to the opera eleven years after drafting it, Lalo wrote:
I had an inclination to turn it into a drame lyrique in the modern way of
thinking; but after several months of serious reflection, I backed away,
frightened by a task too daunting for my powers. Until the present time, only
the giant Wagner, the inventor of true drame lyrique, has had the stature to
bear such a burden; all those with the ambition to follow in his footsteps, in
Germany and elsewhere, have failed, some pitiably, others honourably,
though always as imitators; I know them all. It will be necessary to go
beyond Wagner to fight on his terrain with any advantage, and that fighter has
not yet revealed himself. As for me, I recognized my impotence in time and
wrote a simple opera—as the title of my score indicates; this form, elastic,
allows one still to write music without pastiche of one's forebears, in the same
way that Brahms writes symphonies and chamber music in the old form
without pastiche of Beethoven. In reconstructing Le Roi d'Ys, I used very
short forms by design: the advantage that I expected was to accelerate the
dramatic action in such a way so as not to exhaust the attention of the
spectator.26
In light of Lalo's frank and humble estimation of his creative powers, it seems
reasonable to postulate that anxiety similarly lay behind the agenda of brevity he pursued
in the symphony. As Lalo's analogy acknowledges, Beethoven towered over nineteenthcentury symphonists, casting a shadow that was (at least) as daunting as the one Wagner
25
Huebner, French Opera at the Fin de Siecle, 242-251.
Lalo to AdoJphe Jullien, 19 May 1888, in Correspondance,
the Fin de Siecle, 242.
26
142
289. Translated in Huebner, French Opera at
cast over fin-de-siecle opera. Although he felt that Brahms had been able to compose
symphonies that were not mere pastiches of Beethoven's, French critics and musicians
were virtually unanimous in the view that symphonists who came after Beethoven
(Brahms included) had failed to match his accomplishments—just as Lalo felt all those
who had followed in Wagner's footsteps had. If Lalo was not prepared to "fight" on
Wagner's "terrain," it seems unlikely that he would have been any more eager to engage
in combat on Beethoven's. Avoiding the specter of Beethoven altogether was impossible
for a fin-de-siecle symphonist, but one way one might minimize the level of anxiety
would be to steer well clear of the "terrain" Beethoven had staked out in his Third, Fifth,
Sixth, and Ninth, the epoch-defining masterpieces that stood out in his distinguished
oeuvre. One way to accomplish that would be to compose a symphony that made no
pretension to the monumental scale that those very individual works share.
How did Lalo set about this task? Had he composed his symphony with the
hindsight of successful three-movement symphonies by d'Indy, Franck, Chausson, and
Dukas, he might have left the scherzo in Fiesque. As it was, he resorted to fairly radical
compressions of the symphony's standard movement types, especially the first-movement
sonata (the first movement of Schumann's Fourth may have been a model) and the
sonata-rondo finale. One way he achieved such compression in these movements was by
avoiding cadences whenever he could; he was thus able to dispense with lengthy postcadential passages where tonic harmony is reinforced and/or energy dissipated, much as
he did in Le Roi d'Ys?1 Transitions also tend toward the succinctness Schubert achieved
in the first movements of his Eighth and Ninth Symphonies. Lalo, for example, moves to
the secondary key in his opening-movement exposition in a mere four measures (letter C
- 4 to C). This transition, moreover, is effected with real harmonic economy: the G-minor
27
Huebner, French Opera, 248.
143
chord at C - 5 becomes a common-tone diminished seventh (G, B-flat, D-flat, E); three
measures later the bass slips down by semitone to imply an augmented-sixth chord, and
the second theme then appears over a dominant pedal. Lalo thus manages to avoid the
normative half-cadence and "standing on the dominant" (to invoke Caplin's terminology)
that often ensues.
Lalo compressed his development sections by having tiny fragments perform the
duty of themes. In the opening movement's rotational development, for example, the
main theme is represented only by the one-measure double-dotted rhythm and the
sixteenth-note triplet (letter Eff), and the second theme (F +2ff) by its two-bar basic idea
(with a third measure here tacked onto it). Lalo also compresses his developments by
radically limiting what might be called their "eventfulness." Development sections in the
nineteenth-century repertoire tend to feature a number of discrete formal segments
(statements of thematic materials, sequences, contrapuntal passages, lyrical episodes, and
so on), that cover substantial tonal territory. Lalo's opening-movement development, on
the other hand, comprises a mere three such "events": the first features a prolongation of
the subdominant (E -11 to F -1) in which a double-dotted figure, framed by the motto
and decorated by the sixteenth-note triplets, descends through the eleventh between the
tonic and the dominant; the second continues with a chromatic sequence on the secondtheme fragment (F - 1 to F +7), which rises from the dominant of C to B-flat; and the third
initiates a brief retransition (F +7 to I), based upon the motto and material cleverly
transplanted from the slow introduction (compare mm. 15-18 to 14ff), which concludes
the development section.
In formal regions where organization was less flexible and more tightly
circumscribed by the conventions of the symphonic genre than it was in development
sections, dispensing with post-cadential material and lengthy transitions could only take
Lalo so far. In his first-movement sonata exposition and the theme and episodes of the
144
rondo finale, he would also need to find other means of compression that would allow
him to include all necessary formal elements without making the musical surface seem
excessively rushed. His novel solution to this problem was to "telescope" formal
functions and harmonic-structural levels. For an example of the former, we may turn to
the finale's first rondo episode (Example 3.4). In the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
repertoire, such a section usually includes a transition, a fresh theme, perhaps some postcadential material, and a retransition to prepare the return of the main theme. The fresh
theme would normally comprise of a series of what Caplin calls "intra-thematic"
functions (such as, presentation/continuation/cadential, antecedent/consequent, or some
combination of these), such that the formal arrangement of the whole episode would look
something like Figure 3.3. Lalo's episode indeed includes the necessary theme and
retransition, but he compresses the section into a ten-measure sentence in which the
presentation phrase does duty for the former and the continuation for the latter. Intrathematic functions, in other words, are raised to the status of higher-order formal sections.
The movement's main theme offers an example of Lalo's harmonic telescoping
technique. The theme is a ternary, "A" (mm. 5-10) "B" (11-16) "A" (17-22) form, in
which the subsections themselves are telescoped much as in the episode (in a normative
small ternary theme, each section would feature its own set of intra-thematic functions,
whereas here the "A" section is simply presentational, and the "B" section is nominally
continuational). Unusually, the entire theme appears over a tonic/dominant pedal, and
there is no real sense of harmonic motion. Two neighbour harmonies, a piquant E-major
triad in the fifth and sixth measures (and the corresponding bars in the return of the A
section), and the subdominant in the middle section, merely decorate the tonic triad. A
typical theme (see the main themes of Saint-Saens's first three movements, Franck's slow
introduction or the main theme of his slow movement for a handful of examples) would
begin with a prolongation of its tonic (by IV, V, vii, or some other chromatic neighbour
145
Example 3.4 IV, B +2 to B +13
presentation=theme
[woodwinds, brass, timpani omitted]
b.i.
Violons
Altos
Violoncelles
Contrebasses
PP
PP
continuation=retransition
Figure 3.3
Transition
AAAAM—>V
146
Theme
Sentence
Presentation
I
1
Continuation;
cad.
V-I
Closing section
Retransition
I
MAMMA—»V
1
chord), then move definitively away from the tonic through one or more pre-dominant
harmonies to the dominant (or another dominant) for a half or authentic cadence. Lalo,
on the other hand, stretches the first "phase"—tonic prolongation via neighbour chords—
across the whole theme and dispenses altogether with the other two and thereby with
higher-order harmonic progression.
Finally, Lalo similarly telescopes harmonic-structural levels in his first-movement
exposition. As in the finale's main theme, Lalo here makes extensive use of bass pedals
(see Figure 3.4 for a reduction showing the structural bass). The main theme is a small
ABA' ternary (the sections respectively occupy measures 22 to 30, rehearsal A to A +8,
and A +9 to B +2); the bass remains on the tonic throughout the initial "A" section,
leaps up to the dominant for the "B" section's first phrase, then drops back to G (here
decorated by some figuration) for its second, and remains there until the brief transition to
the second theme where, in the final measure, it slides down a half step to imply an
augmented-sixth chord to the dominant of B-flat. The second theme (letter Cff) follows,
as we observed above, almost entirely over a dominant pedal (at rehearsal D the bass rises
chromatically from D back to F, and one might hear B-flat in the bass at C +11), before
the bass passes through F-sharp back to G for the repeat of the exposition and beginning
of the development. As in the finale's theme, bass pedals here allow Lalo to keep
harmonic activity to a minimum. As Figure 3.4 shows, the exposition expresses a
remarkably succinct harmonic progression: the main theme prolongs the tonic by way of
its dominant; two chromatic chords (the diminished seventh and augmented sixth) lead to
B-flat major where we hear an abandoned cadential progression (that is, the cadential
dominant does not resolve to the tonic). In comparative terms, the harmonic scope of
Lalo's whole exposition is approximately what we would expect of a brief theme like the
hypothetical Figure 3.3 (above).
147
Figure 3.4
Main theme
A
Second theme
B
Exposition
repeats
C
[ED
[EH
[E3
3.3. Per aspera ad aspera
Although Lalo turned his back to the grandeur of Beethoven's Third, Fifth, and
Ninth symphonies (and perhaps inadvertently to one of the late nineteenth-century
symphony's most significant aesthetic trends), we shall see in this final section that he did
not categorically avoid their influence. For the work, like most of the others treated in
this study and so many late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century symphonies from
elsewhere in Europe, engages the per aspera ad astra, darkness-to-light plot of which the
Fifth and Ninth collectively represent the locus classicus. But Lalo added a wrinkle or, in
Hepokoski's terminology, "deformed" this narrative: unlike Beethoven's Fifth and
Ninth—and the vast majority of minor-mode symphonies that followed in their wake—
Lalo's does not progress to the major mode and concludes tragically in the minor.
The symphony's narrative dimension impressed itself upon some early critics.
Adolphe Jullien, for one, felt there was such a sense of "poetic or dramatic intention," that
Lalo ought to have made it known. 28 In a letter of 7 March 1887, Lalo acknowledged the
symphony's "dramatic" and "poetic" elements, but distanced the work from the literary
quality Jullien thought he detected:
[L]orsque j'ecris de la musique sans texte litteraire, je n'ai devant moi et
autour de moi que le domaine des sons, melodique et harmonique; pour un
28
See Ralph P. Locke, "The French Symphony: David, Gounod, and Bizet to Saint-Saens, Franck, and their
Followers," in The Nineteenth-Century Symphony, ed. D. Kern Holoman (New York: Schirmer, 1997),
191n59.
148
musicien cet immense domaine possede en lui-meme, en dehors de toute
litterature, ses poesies et ses drames. (Emphasis in original.)
Focusing on the motto, Lalo continued,
[J]'ai expose dans une breve introduction la phrase maitresse que vous avez
bien voulu remarquer; elle est predominate dans le no. 1, et je la rappelle
dans les autres n[umer]os toutes les fois que mes intentions poetiques ou
dramatiques musicales (ne riez pas) m'ont paru necessiter son intervention.29
Nevertheless, not all critics felt Lalo's symphony engaged Beethoven's archetypal plot.
Tiersot, for one, attempted to detach the work from Beethovenian tonal symbolism,
insisting that "ici, comme dans Mozart, la modalite mineure n'a rien de sombre ni de
melancolique."30 The critic, possibly puzzled by the minor-mode conclusion, may have
been dissimulating, or perhaps the work's brevity led him to invoke eighteenth-century
aesthetics. As Ropartz noted, Lalo's minor-mode material invariably is ominous,
foreboding, stormy, or otherwise "somber." The critic attached interpretive labels to
certain themes (as he did with Franck's symphony): he called the motto the "motif de
fatalite" and dubbed the first movement's stormy main theme the "motif de revolte." His
analysis stresses the motto's interactions in the first and last movements with the "motif
de tendresse" (the first movement's subordinate theme)—and Ropartz carefully pointed
out that the "motif de fatalite" gets the final word.31
Lalo, moreover, juxtaposes tonic minor and major modes throughout the
symphony, arousing anticipation of a triumphant conclusion. The opening movement's
main theme is a small ternary form in which the contrasting middle section (letter A to A
+8) is in G major. The subordinate theme, as Ropartz observed, grows motivically out of
this brief G-major section (both melodies begin with the double-dotted figure on scale
degree 1 of their respective dominants, move up to its sixth degree and then down to the
29
30
31
Lalo to Adolphe Jullien, 7 March 1887, in Correspondance,
Tiersot, "La Symphonie en France," 399.
Ropartz, "Symphonies modernes," 173-178.
169.
149
fifth) and appears in the relative major, setting the stage for the movement to conclude in
the major mode by way of the "redemption paradigm" (as in Franck's opening
movement). However, Lalo's second theme is carefully structured—as we have noted, it
sounds almost entirely over a dominant pedal, and lacks a cadence—such that when it
returns in the recapitulation the tonic major displaces the minor, but does not truly
stabilize. The beginning of the coda teeters between G minor (letter L +4) and G major
(L +12) before embarking on a chromatic sequence. At rehearsal M +2 the sequence
culminates in the anticipated breakthrough: for the first time in the movement, a stable Gmajor tonality (confirmed by V-I harmonic motion) materializes, and at M +6 the
motto—Ropartz's "motif de fatalite"—emerges triumphantly transformed into a tutti,
fortissimo fanfare. The triumphant mood, however, soon collapses into darkness: the
motto leads to the final cadence, at which point the music, as in the first-movement coda
of Beethoven's Fifth, is violently wrenched back into the tonic minor, which Lalo
reinforces with fifteen stormy measures to conclude the movement.
The Sturm und Drang character of the allegro's conclusion spills over into the
scherzo, which begins with a series of diminished-seventh blasts. The diminished seventh
is a clever touch that allows Lalo to smooth out the jarring relationship between the
allegro's G minor and the scherzo's E major (the two keys share this same leading-tone
seventh chord). It also offers Lalo a smooth pivot between the two movements' moods:
as the diminished seventh morphs into a gentler sounding dominant seventh (at m. 7), the
storminess of the allegro gradually gives way to the frolicking, pastoral character of the
scherzo. As he does in the opening allegro, Lalo here juxtaposes the parallel major and
minor modes: the movement is based on the conventional scherzo-trio-scherzo plan, with
the middle section in E minor. The composer maximizes the trio's rhetorical contrast by
writing, dark, pathos-laden music; in Fiesque this material was used as a lament. The
meter also changes from 6/8 to 4/4, and so too does the tempo, from dotted quarter=108
150
to quarter=84. Indeed, the section seems less like a conventional trio than an embedded
slow movement (and as such may have been the inspiration for Franck's more famous
scherzo/slow movement synthesis). Pasdeloup's hostility apparently owed in part to this
exaggerated contrast, and Servieres also found the juxtaposition of the idyllic scherzo and
dark trio "assez bizarre."32 This sharp contrast contributes to the symphony's large-scale
rhetorical design. The foreboding darkness of the trio seems entirely overcome when the
scherzo returns, re-orchestrated and with a mobile bass, as a loud and confident march.
However, Lalo's movement was also a forebear of Franck's allegretto in that he
integrated the middle section's mood (though only a hint of its material) into the reprise:
at letter M, the tonality darkens to E minor, and a stern and ominous bass ostinato and a
soprano-voice variant of it in the scherzo's triplet rhythm recall the pathos of the trio. E
major seems to recover four measures before letter O, but at the final cadence (O +6) the
tonality remains ambiguous: the cadential tonic is represented by unison E's, decorated
by augmented-sixth chords to the tonic and dominant (which enharmonically spell V and
V/V of B-flat, the tonality of the following adagio movement). The mode only becomes
clear in the final two measures where, in the tempo of the trio, Lalo recalls the 5-3-2-1
descent of its first "theme" to strikingly conclude the movement in E minor. The piece
offers a most unusual example of Darcy's "redemption paradigm" because it is played out
in reverse: recapitulation of the trio (here represented primarily by its character and
tonality) leads to harmonic closure in the parallel minor, an arresting collapse that echoes
the allegro's "failed" breakthrough and foreshadows the symphony's tragic conclusion.
An analogous collapse into the parallel minor takes place in the adagio third
movement: as we have noted, at the final cadence the motto ominously appears in B-flat
minor. Critics have sometimes dismissed Lalo's treatment of his motto as a forced or
32
Georges Servieres, La Musique franqaise moderne: Cesar Franck—Edouard
Ernest Reyer—Camille Saint-Saens (Paris: G. Harvard Fils, 1897), 95.
Lalo—Jules
Massenet—
151
superficial means of achieving cyclic unity, and they have been wont to point to this
appearance in particular. Hart, for example, complains "one finds no discernable
rationale" for its appearance at this juncture.33 However, its B-flat minor tonality is
thoroughly prepared over the course of the movement. Lalo plants the seeds early on. As
we have noted, in three of the introduction's four phrases the half-cadential dominant is
approached by way of a half-diminished seventh chord on the second degree—a sonority
that tints the major tonality with the flat-sixth degree. Lalo liberally sprinkles the third
phrase with D-flats and G-flats (the minor-mode defining flat third and sixth degrees),
touches on a G-flat triad, and again folds both pitches into a single sonority by
substituting the "German" sixth for the half-diminished seventh as the phrase's
penultimate harmony. As we have also noted, this suggestion of G-flat major is
composed out in the second variation, where the flat submediant becomes the local tonic.
Therefore, when the motto arrives eighteen measures later, the flat third and sixth degrees
have been well-worked into the music at multiple structural levels: the collapse into the
minor mode is an organic consequence of the movement's tonal unfolding.
As in the first movement, Lalo arouses expectations of a major-mode
breakthrough in the G-minor finale: the sonata-rondo form's three 'B' sections (see again
Example 3.4) are based on the first movement's warm and promising second theme
(Ropartz's "motif de tendresse"), heard here in the tonic major (or more accurately, over
its dominant). Such recall of material from earlier in the symphony gives the finale a
culminative sweep and a weight that compensates for its compact dimensions. The sense
of culmination intensifies in the final 'B' section, where Lalo brings back the scherzo's
main theme, and again still at rehearsal L +4, where another quotation brings the
movement to its climax: the anticipated G-major breakthrough seems to materialize in the
33
Hart, "The French Symphony After Berlioz," 534.
152
form of the four measures that preceded the triumphant fanfare version of the motto in the
first movement's coda (compare L +4 to M +2 in the first movement). But as in the
opening allegro, this hint of triumph is violently snuffed out when the G-minor main
theme abruptly cuts off the quotation. The "motif de tendresse" twice more attempts to
assert its G-major tonality, but each time a G-minor blast halts it after just one measure.
Lalo wraps up the work with a quotation of the allegro's grim concluding measures
(compare M +4ff with Nff in the first movement), an apocalyptic final statement of the
motto—the "motif de fatalite"—and the citation of the first-movement main theme's
initial measure.
It scarcely needs to be emphasized that Lalo's minor-mode conclusion is
uncharacteristic of the late nineteenth-century symphony, especially given the work's
date (1886): of the well known minor-mode symphonies that do not progress to the major
mode—Mahler's Sixth, Tchaikovsky's Sixth, and Brahms's Fourth—only the latter
predates Lalo's, though merely by a year and it is unclear whether he knew it. Lalo,
however, did know Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony, which even more extraordinarily
begins in A major and concludes in A minor. There are some striking parallels between
the two works' finales. Servieres called the main theme of Lalo's finale a "saltarelle,"
and Ralph Locke has suggested the same theme is "something of a gloss on the saltarello
finale" of the Mendelssohn.34 Mendelssohn, like Lalo, prepares or foreshadows his
minor-mode conclusion earlier in the work: one might hear the A-minor saltarello finale
as a reverberation of the minor-mode dance tune that unexpectedly appears in the firstmovement development section and returns to give that movement's coda an A-minor
shading before its A-major conclusion. But there are also important differences.
Mendelssohn conceived and partially wrote his symphony during an extended sojourn to
34
Servieres, La Musique frangaise moderne, 95; and Locke, "The French Symphony," 180.
153
Italy, and his correspondence makes it clear that he sought to capture his "exotic"
experiences in the music. The finale, though in the minor mode, is lively, folksy, and
festive. Thomas Grey (among many others) observes that its formal layout is strikingly
unusual. He likens its idiosyncrasy to the suspension of social order that in Mikhail
Bakhtin's classic analysis characterizes the "carnivalesque" atmosphere that Mendelssohn
sought to evoke. Grey might well have extended this postulation to the symphony's
convention-defying A-minor conclusion.35 Lalo strikes an altogether different note. The
ominous collapses into the parallel minor in the inner movements and the "failed" majormode breakthroughs of the opening allegro and finale seem to invert the heroic rhetoric of
Beethoven's Fifth, and invite hermeneutic gloss along the lines Ropartz's theme labels
suggest: the implied subject struggles—and fails—to master Fate and "become."
How might we account for Lalo's dark deformation of Beethoven's archetypal
symphonic plot? Anxiety may have been a factor: Lalo may simply have been attempting
to forge a distinctive symphonic voice. He may also have hoped a tragic conclusion
would lend his extraordinarily brief work a seriousness that would better its chances of
holding its own with the weighty canonized masterpieces that reigned supreme in concert
halls.
Another possibility is that Lalo sought to engage in a critical dialogue with the
broader cultural values that Beethoven's heroic Third, Fifth, and Ninth Symphonies were
widely felt to articulate. As we have noted, nineteenth-century French critics frequently
affiliated these works with the Revolutionary, liberal-humanist ideals of individual
freedom and self-determination. Did Lalo, like many fin-de-siecle artists and
intellectuals, feel that boundless, Beethoven-esque optimism in the individual's potential
could no longer ring true? A vexing question, this, since there is very little biographical
35
Thomas Grey, "Orchestral Music," in The Mendelssohn
Greenwood Press, 2001), 437-448.
154
Companion, ed. Douglass Seaton (Westport, CT:
literature on the composer, and the existing material is virtually mute on the subjects of
his worldview and politics.
Circumstances nevertheless invite a certain amount of speculation. Lalo, born in
1823, came of age during the Second Empire, and was old enough to remember the failed
revolution of 1848 and Louis Napoleon's coup. The symphony's genesis, as we have
already observed, is bound up in Fiesque—whose misfortunes during the Empire's
waning years, Macdonald has suggested, may have owed in part to its republican tone.
Charles Beauquier, Lalo's librettist, was better known as a radical leftist politician than as
a man of letters; he was the depute of Doubs for thirty years, and "had numerous
publications seized by the police."36 He based his libretto on Schiller's early drama
Fiesco, subtitled "Ein republikanisches Trauerspiel." No details of the Lalo-Beauquier
collaboration are known, but it seems reasonable to assume that the composer in some
way identified with his subject matter. The opera revolves around a 1547 conspiracy led
by the Count of Lavagna, Giovanni Luigi Fiesco, against the tyrannical Doria family,
Doges of Genoa. Fiesque is the leader of the republican resistance. As he organizes the
insurrection against the Dorias, his ambition and thirst for power grow; when Fiesque's
party successfully liberates Genoa he proclaims himself Doge. Verrina, a fellow
conspirator, sees through Fiesque and repeatedly implores him to renounce his new title,
but is rebuffed. Pledging allegiance to the old Fiesque, Verrina murders his now corrupt
leader, and the opera concludes with his cries of "Vive la patrie!"
Had Fiesque reached the stage in Lalo's day, spectators might have seen in the
title character—who betrays the republican values of his revolution and becomes a
tyrant—a Napoleon III figure. With the shadow of Fiesque looming over the symphony,
it is tempting to interpret the tragic plot of the latter against that of the former—especially
36
Macdonald, "A Fiasco Remembered," 167.
155
since the opera revolves around the crumbling of the very liberal humanist ideals that for
so many listeners were affirmed in Beethoven's heroic Third, Fifth, and Ninth, and which
were consequently at some level bound up in the genre of the symphony. Might Lalo's
deformation of Beethoven's archetypal heroic plot therefore be interpreted as a musical
allegory for the German master's legendary destruction of the Eroica Symphony's
dedication, an episode that was as much a part of Beethoven lore at the fin de siecle as it
is in our day? Again, the limitations of current Lalo scholarship make it difficult to
pursue the argument much further. Lalo, however, was not the only fin-de-siecle French
symphonist to reject the genre's per aspera ad astra narrative. Let us turn now to another
work that in this respect parallels Lalo's symphony—and around which we may more
fully build a similar case.
156
Chapter 4 - Ernest Chausson, Symphony in B-flat Major
4.1 Trumpet Calls
Ernest Chausson debuted as an orchestral composer in 1882, with the symphonic
poem Viviane. He based its simple programme upon Arthurian legend:
Viviane et Merlin dans la foret de Broceliande—Scene d'amour.
Appels de trompette—Des Envoyes du Roi Arthus parcourent la foret a la
recherche de l'Enchanteur.
Merlin se rappelle sa mission; il veut fuir et s'echapper des bras de Viviane.
Scene de l'enchantement—Pour
le retenir, Viviane endort Merlin et l'entoure
d'aubepines
en fleurs.
The plot of Chausson's composition makes two interrelated points of contact with Liszt's
well-known symphonic poem Les Preludes, as its programme (based on Lamartine's
Meditations poetiques) suggests:
Notre vie est-elle autre chose qu'une serie de Preludes a ce chant inconnu
dont la mort entonne la premiere et solennelle note? -L'amour forme l'aurore
enchantee de toute existence; mais quelle est la destinee ou les premieres
voluptes du Bonheur ne sont point interrompues par quelque orage, dont le
souffle mortel dissipe ses belles illusions, dont la foudre fatale consume son
autel, et quelle est l'ame cruellement blessee qui, au sortir d'une de ces
tempetes, ne cherche a reposer ses souvenirs dans le calme si doux de la vie
des champs? Cependant l'homme ne se resigne guere a gouter longtemps la
bienfaisante tiedeur qui l'a d'abord charme au sein de la nature, et lorsque "la
trompette a jete le signal des alarmes," il court au poste perilleux quelle que
soit la guerre qui l'appelle a ses rangs, afin de retrouver dans le combat la
pleine conscience de lui-meme et l'entiere possession de ses forces.1
' Liszt in fact added the programme after he had composed the music, and there is some controversy over
the extent to which Lamartine's text influenced the work. See Alexander Main, "Liszt After Lamartine: Les
Preludes," Music & Letters 60 (1979): 133-148; and Andrew Bonner, "Liszt's Les Preludes and Les Quatre
Elemens: A Reinvestigation," 19th-century Music 10 (1986): 95-107.
157
Both plots revolve around an archetypal encounter between a masculine hero and a
dangerous, destabilizing feminine figure. Liszt's confident, youthful protagonist
experiences his "first delights" of love, "the enchanted dawn of all existence." Love,
however, brings a "storm," which discharges a "mortal blast" of "fatal lightening" and
cruelly wounds the hero's soul. Merlin's allegiance, meanwhile, is supposed to lie
exclusively with the Round Table, so the seductress Viviane represents a threat to that
holy brethren.
In both works, the outcome of the crisis hinges upon a trumpet call, which (as the
programmes carefully stress) summons the hero to his senses. The trumpet call-asturning-point was a gesture that Liszt borrowed from Beethoven's second and third
Leonore Overtures. In the darkest passages of Beethoven's development sections,
trumpet fanfares sound from offstage to dispel the doom and send the music on a fresh
course towards an affirmative, heroic conclusion. (The overtures' plots thus adumbrate
the action of the opera proper, in which Leonore rescues Florestan from the dreary depths
of the dungeon.) In Les Preludes, a two-dimensional sonata form, the turning point lies in
the recapitulation, where the love music (the second theme) returns before the main
theme. Here, as the programme emphasizes, the trumpet intervenes and "sounds the
alarm" to summon the hero to his strength. A stormy passage ensues, and a muscular
military march based on the trumpet call tramples the love music. The feminine threat
thus contained, the way is paved for the recapitulation of the main theme, which
concludes the piece in a martial blaze of trumpets and drums, the hero now in "the entire
possession of his energies."
Other nineteenth-century composers would adopt similar procedures. As Adorno
famously argued, the "breakthrough" counted among Mahler's favourite strategies (that
is, material from outside the movement proper intervenes and alters the music's course).
As paradigmatic examples, Adorno cites the trumpet fanfare from the First Symphony's
158
slow introduction, which returns, like Beethoven's Leonore calls (a historical connection
that Adorno overlooks), at the darkest passage in the development to produce the first
movement's magnificent D-major climax, and the radiant brass chorale that similarly
intervenes in the second movement of the Fifth Symphony.2 Use of the trumpet call in
this manner was not restricted to symphonic works. As James Parakilas has noted,
trumpet calls sound at critical junctures in Carmen and Lakme; in both operas they
effectively sound "alarm signals" that (just as in Les Preludes) summon the protagonists
to their senses.
Chausson's programme suggests his trumpet call—a suitably archaic figure
supposedly derived from a street cry the composer heard in Marseille—will function as a
"breakthrough" and lead to a positive resolution of Merlin's crisis, just as in Les
Preludes.4 It first sounds derriere la scene (like the Leonore fanfares), then in the
onstage trumpets, and rallies Merlin to his senses. Just as in Liszt's symphonic poem,
stormy "battle music" follows (the trumpet call tangles with the love theme) as Merlin
attempts to flee Viviane's clutches, and the battle music similarly leads to a powerful
climax. But the outcome is utterly different: the climax is a terrifying tutti dissonance
that, as the harp glissandos suggest, represents the Scene de I 'enchantement. After the
climax dissipates, the trumpet call reappears, but only to fade into the distance and
disappear entirely. The sinuous chromatic music of Merlin and Viviane's tryst in the
forest returns as does the love music, which gets the last word. Chausson, then, invokes
the Beethovenian-Lisztian trumpet call only to deny its "breakthrough" impact on the
work's course. Ultimately, whereas Liszt's hero conquers the feminine threat, Merlin is
conquered by it: Viviane literally ensnares him, and she figuratively emasculates him by
2
Theodor W. Adorno, Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1992), 5-6,10-11.
3
James Parakilas, "The Soldier and the Exotic: Operatic Variations on a Theme of Racial Encounter, Part
I," Opera Quarterly 10 (1994): 33-56.
4
On the source of Chausson's trumpet call, see Jean Gallois, Ernest Chausson (Paris: Fayard, 1994), 405.
159
turning his magical power against him. Merlin fails to fulfill his obligation to the Round
Table.
Liszt's composition offers weighty subject matter; the opening line of the
programme questions nothing less than man's relationship to destiny. The piece
resoundingly expresses the nineteenth century's quintessential answer: man can
heroically persevere, struggle against adversity, and emerge victorious. As Goethe put it,
he can take the reins of fate's chariot, steer his own course, and determine, at least in
some measure, his own destiny.5 Chausson's composition, by contrast, does not seem to
carry such epoch-defining, metaphysical connotations. For one thing, he dedicated it to
Jeanne Escudier, who would soon become Madame Chausson. In this context, Merlin's
powerlessness to overcome the "femme fatale" seems to advocate domesticity.
Moreover, Viviane lacks the bite of some other fin-de-siecle narratives of emasculation.
It does not, for example, carry a hint of the bitterness that runs through Mahler's Lieder
eines fahrenden Gesellen and is a far cry from the expressionist nightmare Schoenberg's
Buch der hangenden Garten would be. Indeed, the forest/love music is as alluring as it is
threatening: being trapped in Viviane's clutches doesn't seem like such a bad fate.
Nevertheless, the difference between Liszt's archetypal romantic narrative and
Chausson's fin-de-siecle "deformation" of that archetype is striking: Merlin's struggle
(and the intensity of the battle music leaves no doubt that his effort to escape Viviane is
sincere) proves futile. His fate is imposed upon him and he is ultimately powerless to
control it. Viviane, moreover, prefigures future products of the composer's pen. As it
was for some of the symbolist figures with whom Chausson associated (and with whose
work he identified), the theme of powerlessness in the face of threatening external forces
would reverberate throughout Chausson's oeuvre and would become more sharply
5
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Egmont: A Tragedy in Five Acts, trans. Charles Passage (New York:
Frederick Ungar, 1980), 49.
160
pronounced in later works. Between 1893 and 1896, for example, he set five poems from
the symbolist poet Maurice Maeterlinck's collection Serres chaudes. Here, any impulse
toward romantic struggle is completely given over to lassitude. The sentiments of ennui
and spleen that dominate the cycle are conditions to be endured rather than actively
resisted, and the work ends in total resignation to impotence with "Oraison," a desperate
plea for divine intervention in a world where the moon no longer shines, dawn is black,
and even negative emotions are trapped like grass under ice. Painted in stark and
exaggerated symbolist hues, the forces that paralyze the speaker seem altogether more
ominous than the aubepines in which Viviane ensnares Merlin.
In 1890, eight years after Viviane and three years before he began Serres chaudes,
Chausson composed his Symphony in B-flat major, his only complete effort in the genre.
At the time, he, d'Indy, Ropartz, and other former students of Franck had fully mobilized
in support of their recently deceased teacher, whose music, they felt, was not getting its
due. In Ralph Scott Grover's view, this militant championship of Franck would haunt the
reception of Chausson's new work for decades to come. The Franckistes' flamboyant and
immodest support of their mentor drew the ire of critics, who retaliated by insisting that
some rather obvious similarities to Franck's symphony (the three-movement design, use
of canon, the English horn solo in the slow movement, and so on) represented servile
imitation.6 Critics have since done much to counter this view, with Grover himself
arguing over no fewer than fifteen pages that such parallels are superficial, and that the
younger composer's symphony is ultimately an original and independent work.7
Nevertheless, Grover and others have remained hard pressed to accord Chausson's
symphony a place in history next to the Franck and Saint-Saens's Organ Symphonies.
Both of these works are clearly more boldly "experimental" in their large-scale schematic
6
Ralph Scott Grover, Ernest Chausson, The Man and His Music (London: Associated University Press,
1980), 130.
7
Ibid., 131-145.
161
organizations, and both seem to employ the cyclic procedures that were becoming
synonymous with progress in the genre in more rigorous and creative ways.8 In sum,
received critical wisdom views Chausson's symphony as a competent, at times inspired,
work, but one that ultimately added little to what Saint-Saens and Franck had
accomplished.
In the remainder of this chapter, we will see that although Chausson's symphony
is indeed more traditional in these respects than the efforts of his two predecessors—and
Chausson ultimately owed Franck a larger debt than Grover and the symphony's other
defenders acknowledge—the composer nevertheless struck a radically different course in
other ways. In his summary appraisals of the Franck and Chausson symphonies, d'Indy
suggests this course: the former (as we have seen) expresses a "continuous ascent toward
pure gladness and life-giving Light," whereas the latter exudes a "voile de tristesse."9
These words incisively capture the aesthetic ambience of Chausson's symphony, and are
consonant with Jean-Pierre Barricelli and Leo Weinstein's conclusion that the "soul" of
the work's implied subject remains in the end "resigned to suffering."10 The "tristesse"
and resignation these critics detect are rooted in Chausson's treatment of the per aspera
ad astra plot archetype that he inherited from Beethoven (by way of Schumann,
Mendelssohn, Saint-Saens, and Franck). The work relates to the Eroica or Franck
symphonies much as Viviane does to Les Preludes. Chausson, that is to say, engages the
archetype but withholds the triumphant conclusion that it promises, bringing the piece
instead to a troubled, insecure close. There had always been room for a variety of
8
Among the many critics who have articulated this position are Martin Cooper, French Music from the
Death of Berlioz to the Death of Faure (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 65; and
Norman Demuth, Cesar Franck (London: Dennis Dobson, 1949), 191.
9
Vincent d'Indy, Cesar Franck, trans. Rosa Newmarch (New York: Dover, 1965), 172; and d'Indy, Cours
de composition musicale, vol.2 s bk. 2 (Paris: Durand, 1933), 176. See also Jean-Pierre Barricelli and Leo
Weinstein, Ernest Chausson: The Composer's Life and Works (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1955), 175-176.
10
Barricelli and Weinstein, Ernest Chausson, 175-176.
162
narrative shapes in the symphonic poem. Franck's Chasseur maudit, Saint-Saens's Rouet
d'Omphale, d'Indy's Medee, and of course Viviane number among the French exemplars
of the genre that do not articulate the sort of heroic plot that Les Preludes expresses. But
the symphony was another story. We have observed that in the wake of Beethoven's
immensely influential Third, Fifth, and Ninth, the per aspera ad astra plot effectively
became part of the genre. Chausson's "deformation" of that plot takes on particular
significance in light of the cultural values and ethical implications that critics tend to
affiliate with it: the work not only forsakes a central tenet of nineteenth-century
symphonic tradition, but also seems to question the subject-laden values that had become
bound up in the genre. In this way, Chausson's symphony stands apart from Franck's and
Saint-Saens Third. Whereas those works affirm (in their own ways) nineteenth-century
notions of subjectivity, Chausson's, we shall see, reflects the darker, more pessimistic
worldview that haunts his Serres chaudes, and the works of many of his fin-de-siecle
literary and artistic colleagues.
4.2 Tonality
Chausson's symphony is a major-mode composition: it begins and ends in the
tonic major, and the first movement's main theme also resides in that key. Nevertheless,
tension between the parallel major and minor modes underpins the work, just as in
Franck's symphony, Saint-Saens's Third, Beethoven's Fifth and Ninth, and many other
nineteenth-century minor-mode symphonies. As Julien Tiersot noted not long after the
premiere, minor-mode inflections appear almost immediately: "il ne faut pas attendre
quatre mesures pour trouver le re ou le sol altere par le bemol!"11 Example 4.1 shows that
a D-flat indeed destabilizes the B-flat major tonic within three measures. In the following
" Julien Tiersot, "La Symphonie en France," Zeitschrift der Internationalen
399.
Musikgesellschaft
10 (1902):
163
phrase, numerous D-flats and G-flats completely undo the major mode. The halfcadential phrase that follows (mm. 6-9) reconfirms B-flat minor before the introduction
develops material through F minor, B minor, and C-sharp minor. When the music reconverges on the home key to prepare the allegro portion of the movement, harmonies
containing D-flats and G-flats once again decorate the dominant (see A +19ff).
Example 4.1 I, mm. 1-8
mi
m
f-
H—*
r > r T
T
T~
As Figure 4.1 shows, the remainder of the symphony continually vacillates
between the tonic major and minor modes, much like Franck's symphony and
Beethoven's Fifth. On the downbeat of the allegro, the major mode abruptly snaps back
into place, and the confident, rhythmically crisp main theme effortlessly brushes off the
gravity and pathos of the slow introduction. The tonic major, however, soon begins to
collapse back into the minor, just as in the symphony's opening measures. In the
transition (letter D), the bass settles on a C-sharp (D-flat!) pedal, which serves as a
common tone link between the three pentatonic collections through which the passage
cycles (D, D +6, and D +12). Chausson interprets the last of these as the dominant of Fsharp major, and the subordinate theme follows in that key. F-sharp should here be
understood as the enharmonic spelling of G-flat, the flat submediant. This tonality is
significant in a way secondary keys rarely are. For not only does it register as a
dissonance against the tonic (as secondary keys always do), but it also implies what might
be called a "modal reorientation:" G-flat major lies not in the diatonic orbit of B-flat
major, but in that of B-flat minor, suggesting that the prevailing mode of the global, B-flat
164
Figure 4.1
I.
Dvt.
Exposition
Main th. Sub. th.
Coda
Recap.
Main th. Sub. th.
L +32
M +16
P
(Bb-) (Eb-)
Bb+
G
D
min.
(maj)—•solidifies—> —> —>
A+29
E
G -14
Tonality
Bk>+
Gt>+
Tonic +/orientation
Pitch
inflections
maj.
min.
L+7
min.
Gb->Gfc|
GfcMab
D^—>Db
Q
Bb+
—>maj.
Db^-Dfcl
II.
Tonality
A
a
m.l
A-
Tonic +/orientation
Pitch
inflections
|b
B
A
B+ll
F
F +17
Bbmin.
A-
D+
min.
| a
Reh. A
B
AA D-AAD+
maj. —'decays—•
Fl^—>F#
Gb=F#
F#=Gb
III.
Tonality
Tonic +/orientation
Pitch
inflections
Exposition
Main th.
Sub. t h .
Dvlpt
Reh. A + 1 4
C +26
E-7
Bbmin.
D+
maj.
(Bb+)
F#=Gb
Db^Dfc]
Gb=Ftt
V/Bb
Recap.
Main th.
Sub. t h .
Coda
K
M-7
0
Bbmin.
G+
Maj.
Bb+/-
Gb^Gfcl
Db^Dt]
Example 4.2 I, reh. E
tonic has shifted from the positive major to the negative minor. The theme itself, in the
manner of some of Franck's themes—which interpret F-natural or F-sharp in secondary
keys to orient the music around D minor or D major—repeatedly articulates D-flat
(spelled as C-sharp) to emphasize the tonic minor (see Example 4.2). The modal
reorientation implied by the G-flat secondary key and theme is confirmed or
165
consummated at the beginning of the development section (letter G-14), where the main
theme appears in B-flat minor. Thus the "decay" of B-flat major into the parallel minor
that was heard in the symphony's opening measures is composed out across the entire
exposition.
As in the opening movement of Franck's symphony, material from the slow
introduction prefaces the return of the main theme in the recapitulation, although as
Grover and others have been careful to point out, Franck's reference to his introduction
initiates the recapitulation proper, whereas Chausson's concludes the development (see
letter Kff). 12 The tonality of the introductory material following L +7, the six-flat key of
. E-flat minor, links the development section's final measures to the secondary key of the
exposition, G-flat major. Thus the downbeat of the recapitulation not only parallels that
of the exposition rhetorically—here again the buoyant main theme and tonic major key
seem to brush off the gravity of the slow introduction's material—but also implies a
reversal or "correction" of the second theme's "flatward" slip into the tonal sphere of the
parallel minor.
Nevertheless, the recovery of the tonic major in the recapitulation is a more
complex event than it was at the beginning of the exposition, where the music simply
snapped confidently back into B-flat major. Here, the tonic major gradually solidifies by
way of a subtle and tightly controlled process that continues until the final measures of
the movement. At the beginning of the recapitulation, the tonic key does not remain
stable for long enough to seem firmly established (and as we shall see in the final section
of this chapter, the weak, common-tone preparation of the development section's final
dominant also undercuts the stability of the ensuing tonic). The exposition features three
statements of the theme proper. In the recapitulation there are only two, and in the second
12
Grover, Ernest Chausson, 132.
166
(M -18), the previously consonant, diatonic supporting harmonies become highly
chromatic and dissonant, obscuring the tonic. B-flat major returns in the continuation (at
M +2), but only fleetingly and over an unstable walking bass.
Chausson omits most of the transition; the walking bass line simply descends to
G, and the second theme follows in G major (M +16) and modulates to D major (letter P).
As in a great many nineteenth-century symphonic recapitulations, the sonata process
"fails" (in Hepokoski's lexicon) because the second theme returns off-tonic, leaving the
harmonic argument unresolved. The two tonalities that the theme covers nevertheless do
represent progress toward a stable B-flat major, in that they successively "correct" the
chromatic inflections that reoriented the music towards the tonic minor in the exposition.
That is to say, G-flat here becomes G-natural, and D-flat becomes D-natural. And that is
not all. The second theme actually does end up satisfying sonata-form convention by
arriving at a cadence in B-flat major, though only by way of a sleight-of-hand modulation
(letter Q -13 to Q). This surprise move is very much analogous to the home-key cadence
of the second theme in the recapitulation of the Organ Symphony's finale, and to similar
effect: the cadence is in the home key, but the theme that proceeds it is not, and the lastminute effect detracts from the weight of the cadence just enough that B-flat major does
not seem fully stabilized.
The consolidation of the tonic major is only complete after some lingering minormode inflections are shaken out of the music's surface in the coda, which begins with the
"withheld" third statement of the main theme. Here, the second theme (in the violins)
accompanies it as dissonant counterpoint (see Example 4.3). Both melodies are primarily
pentatonic, but at this moment Chausson bases them on different collections, each
distilling a different major key, B-flat major and A-flat major for the main and second
themes respectively. The latter draws a D-flat into an inner voice (see Q +3 and Q +9),
though in the next phrase, it gets "corrected" back to D-natural. In the following phrase,
167
a conventionally functional progression harmonizes the main theme for the first time in
the movement. Up until the fifth chord, the progression is identical to the one heard in
the movement's opening measures (compare Examples 4.1 and 4.4). At this point, the Dflat that set the movement's harmonic adventure in motion appears as a C-sharp, which
dutifully resolves to D-natural as the third of B-flat major. The destabilizing dissonances
thus finally resolved, the movement ends confidently.
Example 4.3 I, reh. Q
Example 4.4 I, reh. Q + 2 0
f»
** r
, « f r — « f
g
.
f
ft
f
£
c.
To summarize the tonal adventure of the allegro: the tonic major "decays" into the
parallel minor in the slow introduction and again between the downbeats of the exposition
and development, then gradually re-establishes itself over the course of the recapitulation
and consolidates in the coda. This tonal adventure continues in the slow movement. Its
D-minor tonality lies in the diatonic orbit of B-flat major, implying the continued stability
of that key (and not the parallel minor) as the reigning global tonic. The movement,
however, spends remarkably little time in its home key. The antecedent-like opening
phrase reaches a half cadence in A minor in measure 6, and the subsequent continuation
ends on another half cadence, this time on the dominant of C, its relative major (m. 10).
A third phrase picks up the antecedent's basic idea and finally reaches a perfect authentic
cadence in D minor at rehearsal A, although it winds up there at the last minute: the
phrase begins to project D as a goal only when the C-sharp appears in the first violin two
measures before the dominant arrives at letter A - 3 . The movement is a ternary, ABA'
168
form, as Figure 4.1 shows. The opening 'A' section is its own, small ternary form; the D
minor cadence at rehearsal A closes off its first section. The contrasting middle section
(on the small scale) follows with no post-cadential reinforcement, and the tonic is
immediately abandoned. In the measure after the cadence, the fifth of the chord slides up
to B-flat in one voice and down to A-flat in another to form the dominant seventh of Eflat, and similar voice-leading transforms the ensuing E-flat minor triad into a B-major
chord (see Example 4.5 below). The middle section concludes with a cadence on D (two
measures before B), and here again the music only ends up in the tonic at the last moment
after appearing to head toward C major. The tonality is once again immediately
abandoned as the bass descends chromatically to A for the return of the movement's
opening material. Thus while D minor is unquestionably the movement's tonic, the
music is only in the home key for perhaps eight or nine of the forty measures heard to this
point.
By contrast, the B-flat tonality of the movement's middle section is much more
stable. After initially wavering between major and minor modes (the horn arpeggiates the
minor tonic after the double bar; the B-flat triad on the following downbeat is major; a Gflat major chord follows; then the tonic major, and so on) the passage settles in the minor.
As we have noted, some critics view Chausson's symphony as a clone of the Franck, and
they often point to the haunting English horn solo heard in this section. Grover stresses
that a solo cello here doubles the English horn, differentiating the passage's timbre from
Franck's. 13 Fair enough, although the parallel nonetheless remains striking. More
striking still is that the two passages function in the context of their respective tonal
adventures in a similar way. The main theme of Franck's slow movement (in B-flat
minor) repeatedly articulates F-natural, which contradicts the F-sharp that was tentatively
13
Ibid., 132-133.
169
established as the third degree of the global, D-major tonic in the first movement's
recapitulation and coda, and thereby tilts the music back toward the darkness of D minor.
In Chausson's slow movement too, the tonic major (which gradually solidifies over the
course of the first movement's recapitulation and coda) slips back into the tonic minor.
Example 4.5 II, reh. A to A + 1 3
0
|A+4|
| A+6j
u' y ^ Q ^ l
| A+81
i iv
fr
| A+10|
fnif^yfo
6
d
V7
B,
B
G.
°7
I1
G
|A+13|
°7
°7
g#
V.?
6
. V
4
/
0
1
D: V 7
I
As in the first movement, the decay of the major into the minor is not abrupt, but
is effected by a process that spans the movement's "A" section. The movement as a
whole progresses from D minor to D major, and the two authentic cadences in the
opening formal section adumbrate this progression (the first is in the minor and the
second in the major). Example 4.5 shows a harmonic reduction of the passage connecting
these two islands of tonic sonority. Chausson prepares D major early on by introducing
F-sharp (spelled as G-flat) at A +3. This pitch is reinterpreted, first as the fifth of a Bmajor chord and then as the root of G major's diminished seventh. Over the next several
measures, the same diminished-seventh chord is treated to three different resolutions; the
F-sharp is subsequently interpreted as the third of an applied dominant seventh and then
becomes a member of a half-diminished seventh chord. This procedure keeps F-sharp
constantly in play, without granting it a stable diatonic role until it finally settles as the
third of D major at the cadence. But as we have seen, D does not remain stable for long
and the F-sharp is soon reinterpreted (and re-spelled) once again—this time as the flatsixth degree of B-flat minor (see Figure 4.1 above).
This process sheds light on Chausson's unusually attenuated treatment of the slow
movement's tonic key. D, through movement from its minor to major forms, seems to
170
serve more as a pivot between the B-flat major of the first movement's recapitulation and
coda and the B-flat minor of the slow movement's middle section than as an autonomous
centre of attention. The composer thus gives D enough emphasis that we recognize it as a
temporary tonal focus, but little enough so that B-flat does not seem merely like a
secondary or subordinate key. This passage also brings into focus a debt owed by
Chausson to Franck that has remained unrecognized. The symphony's tonal design is
probably its most Franck-like aspect. Indeed, as what we have so far observed may
suggest, Chausson's strategy for building and sustaining tension between tonic major and
minor very much resembles Franck's, in that he chooses secondary tonalities for their
capacity to tint tonic-key scale degrees with major or minor-mode inflections.
Nevertheless, we may claim in Chausson's defence that in his hands this procedure—as
exemplified by the subtle treatment of F-sharp in the slow movement—is even more
refined and sophisticated than in Franck's.
As Figure 4.1 shows, this pitch story continues through the conclusion of the slow
movement and into the finale. The G-flat of the slow movement's middle section is
reinterpreted as F-sharp in the D-major coda (rehearsal F +17). Chausson's
contemporary, the Belgian critic Stephane Risvaeg, noted irony in the movement's
seemingly warm conclusion: "nous retombons dans la morne douleur du commencement,
mais cristallisee et eternisee, si l'on peut dire ainsi, en re majeur." 14 He was perhaps
responding to the beginning of the finale, where the F-sharp is picked up and re-spelled
yet again: a unison B-flat blast initiates the movement, and G-flat (in the string figuration)
immediately marks the mode as minor. (And it is the only pitch to do so; D-flat does not
appear until the fourth measure.) In the finale's introduction and main theme (A +14), Bflat minor seems more firmly ensconced than anywhere else in the work to this point.
14
Stephane Risvaeg, "La Symphonie en si bemol d'Ernest Chausson," Le Guide musical, April 9, 1899.
171
Nevertheless, the sonata-form finale begins to swing back towards the tonic major mode
when the D-major second theme arrives (C +26), and Chausson masterfully leaves the
music teetering in balance between tonic minor and major throughout the remainder of
the movement. As we have noted, in the slow movement D major acts as a pivot between
the B-flat major of the allegro's conclusion and the B-flat minor of the slow movement's
middle section. As the finale's secondary key, it seems to function similarly although it
orients the music in the other direction: D major's tonic pitch negates or corrects B-flat
minor's D-flat, much as the second theme's D-flat/C-sharp contradicts the main theme
area's D-natural in the opening movement. This broad modal reorientation seems
consummated when the development section begins (letter E -7) in B-flat major (again,
much as in the first movement's development, where the tonic minor confirms the modal
reorientation implied by the G-flat second theme). Nevertheless, as one would expect of
a development section, Chausson does not allow this tonality to stabilize, and the hint of
tonic major is fleeting.
The second theme offers additional promise of a B-flat major conclusion:
appearing as it does in D major, it holds the potential to "redeem" the music (in the
manner of Franck's opening-movement second theme) in the recapitulation. Moreover,
as a brass chorale it seems particularly suited to a redemptive function. Both the apparent
major-mode reorientation and the redemptive potential of the second theme, however, are
confounded in the recapitulation. B-flat minor muscles its way back for the return of the
main theme (letter K), and the second theme follows not in the tonic, but in G major (7
before letter M). As in the opening movement, the tonality of the second theme
nevertheless represents a step in the "right" direction: G, of course, does not lie in the
diatonic orbit of the B-flat minor of the main theme's recapitulation, but in the orbit of the
symphony's harmonic goal, B-flat major.
172
The anticipated consummation of B-flat major seems to materialize in the coda
(letter O). The opening measures of the symphony return as a brass chorale—the brass
chorale "missing" from the recapitulation—in B-flat major. The victory of the tonic
major seems confirmed when the chorale "fixes" the slip into the parallel minor mode that
first set the symphony in motion in the third measure (the B-flat minor triad of measure 3
becomes B-flat major at O +4). The coda, however, continues to parallel the slow
introduction, and B-flat major decays into the parallel minor (O +7), where the music
remains for two more half-cadential phrases. A major-mode transformation of the
finale's main theme joins the introduction material at letter P and seems to set things back
on track, but here again B-flat major survives just one phrase before first G-flats and then
D-flats spread through the texture (starting at P +5). The music makes one last push
towards a decisive major-mode breakthrough, building to a massive climax at P +20. The
harmony at the climax, however, is not the anticipated dominant six-four of B-flat major,
but a half-diminished seventh chord—linking this moment up with the "morne douleur"
of the slow movement, where half-diminished sevenths are legion—and its dissonant
sting immediately deflates any expectation that this will be the grand major-mode
apotheosis that had become a near obligatory gesture in the nineteenth-century symphonic
finale. The dominant six-four does arrive in the next measure, but the energy of the
climax has already begun to dissipate, and it resolves lamely to the submediant. In the
following measure the bass settles back onto the dominant, which resolves quietly to Bflat major to conclude the symphony.
The work, then, concludes in the major mode, but one does not get the sense that
it truly prevails over the minor. There is no trace of the heroic bravura so characteristic of
nineteenth-century symphonic codas; indeed, only at the ill-fated climax does the
dynamic level exceed mezzo forte. Moreover, the minor/major conflict that plays out
across the entire work persists right until the end: the paltry three measures of B-flat
173
major that conclude the symphony pale in comparison to the affirmative waves of tonic
major in the codas of Franck's symphony and Saint-Saens's Third or the numbing stretch
of C major at the conclusion of Beethoven's Fifth. Perhaps more significant in the
immediate context is that more substantial stretches of tonic major—seven measures at
letter O, and then five at letter P—collapse into tonic minor elsewhere in the coda.
Indeed, we sense that the final B-flat major tonality would similarly decay into B-flat
minor if the music were to continue for a few more measures. Ultimately, Chausson's
conclusion is not nearly emphatic enough to project a decisive victory of the major mode
over the minor.
To put all of this differently, the work fails to attain the goal it projects in its
opening measures. By juxtaposing tonic major and minor in the slow introduction, and
cultivating tension between them throughout, the composer engages the plot archetype
that underwrites virtually all nineteenth-century minor-mode symphonies. Chausson,
however, withholds the affirmative conclusion that this archetype promises. While the
symphony's tonal design is perhaps its most distinctly Franck-like aspect, it is also what
sets his symphony apart from his mentor's. For Chausson rejects the Darkness-to-Light
trajectory that his colleagues d'Indy and Ropartz so valued in Franck's symphony, and
along with it all the metaphysical connotations that made it so important to them. We
will further consider the ideological implications of Chausson's "failed" narrative in the
final section of this chapter, but let us first turn to the work's thematic design, where we
shall discover that an analogous process plays out.
4.3 "Theme"
The "cyclic principle" has long been recognized as a formal strategy that most late
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French symphonists employed. Critics have often
identified the above-mentioned recurrence of material from the slow introduction in the
174
finale's coda as Chausson's contribution to this technique. Ralph Locke has added that
the first movement's main theme returns in the finale's development section (see letter
E).15 Jean Gallois and Vincent Barthe have (independently) put forward more ambitious
arguments, both proposing that the symphony's opening figure contains the seeds of all of
its subsequent materials. In particular, the interval of the third outlined in the first and
second measures, they argue, appears in most of the themes, and is especially prominent
in the first movement's main theme, both themes of the slow movement, and the main
theme of the finale.16 However salient one may find the notion that a rising third unifies
the symphony's (or any symphony's) themes, Gallois and Barthe represent a dissenting
position: critics generally agree that Chausson's work, with its simple reminiscences of
first-movement materials in the finale, is (in the words of Barricelli and Weinstein) "not
as rigorously cyclic" as the Franck, Saint-Saens's Third, or d'lndy's "Mountain"
Symphony.17
This statement is essentially accurate, but requires significant qualification. As
we shall see, a network of motives ties the symphony's themes together—although these
motives are discrete, often vague, and Chausson employs them sparingly. The resulting
inter-thematic connections often seem ambiguous, fleeting, and very much attenuated
when compared to the cyclic relationships in Franck's symphony or Saint-Saens's Third.
I would like to suggest that we may understand this attenuated quality as a deliberate and
purposeful compositional strategy rather than an index of the composer's aesthetic
success (or failure). Chausson's less "rigorous" cyclicism stands vis-a-vis the thematic
procedures of Saint-Saens and Franck much as his treatment of tonality does, and to an
analogous rhetorical end. Chausson engages the paradigm, but only to deform it (in
15
Ralph P. Locke, "The French Symphony: David, Gounod, and Bizet to Saint-Saens, Franck, and their
Followers," in The Nineteenth-Century Symphony, ed. D. Kern Holoman (New York: Schirmer, 1997), 178.
16
Gallois, Ernest Chausson, 251-255; Vincent Barthe, "La Symphonie en si bemol d'Ernest Chausson:
cadre, langage, choix interpretatifs," Ostinato rigore 14 (2000): 175-187.
17
Barricelli and Weinstein, Ernest Chausson, 165. See also Grover, Ernest Chausson, 131.
175
Hepokoski's sense of that term). The cyclic procedures of Franck and Saint-Saens project
unambiguous thematic presences, musical protagonists whose vicissitudes and triumphant
transformation we are invited to follow. In Chausson's Symphony, we shall see, the
"theme" is a much more shadowy entity, one that strains for a fundamental degree of
coherence—a goal it ultimately fails to achieve.
Few listeners are likely to hear the arpeggiated thirds in the main themes of the
first movement and finale, or even the filled in third of the slow movement's main theme,
as derivatives of measures 1 and 2, as Gallois and Barthe would have it. In and of itself, a
melodic third is hardly substantial or distinct enough to function as a unifying motive in a
large-scale symphony. In measures 7-8, however, Chausson couples the rising third from
measures 1 and 5-6 (where it spans C to E-flat) with the half cadence from measures 3-4
(similarly approached by a rising melodic line) to form a more distinct figure (see
Example 4.6a). Even though this figure is relatively "conventional" (that is, stylistically
commonplace), an issue to which we shall return shortly, it comes to function motivically
in the music that follows. It reappears in the opening movement's second theme, where
all three cadences are approached by rising melodic thirds (half cadences at E +19 and F,
the latter in a rhythmic profile that is very similar to measure 8 in the introduction, and
then the authentic cadence that closes off the theme at F +32; see Example 4.6c). In the
slow movement, the motive becomes part of the main theme's basic idea (see Example
4.6d), the rising third here leading to what proves to be the minor dominant before it
settles into its familiar role of preparing a half cadence in measure 6. This turns out to be
the last time this motive as such is incorporated into a theme. However, coupled with the
other motive that comprises the basic idea of the slow movement's main theme, it forms
the basic idea of the finale's main theme, which similarly articulates scale degrees 1, 3,
#4, and 5 (see again Example 4.6d and compare with Example 4.6f). Finally, the coda of
176
the finale quotes the motive, back in its original form, along with other material from the
slow introduction (see O +10).
Example 4.6
Example 4.6a) I, mm. 1-8
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i •
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Example 4.6c) I, reh. E to F +1
Example 4.6d) II, mm. 1-6
y
j
ipi
^
^
16 - 5!
S J
ta
16 - 5!
K J fcu
16 -5"!
|
1
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Example 4.6e) II, reh. B +14 to B +21
<J J J_J_Jj)
190
Example 4.6f) III, reh. A +14
D
'J
R
;J J
LU(J
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R
;J J
XUI
J ,J 'J
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Example 4.6g) III, reh. C +26
Example 4.6h) I, m. 1
(uU
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Example 6.4i) I, mm. 12-13
r jr ' j,)1
lr
(J
J
-
J
,j
The pentatonic scale also links several of the work's themes, as Ralph Locke has
noted: both of the first movement's themes, the transition between them, and the second
theme of the finale have distinctly pentatonic shapes.18 Beyond this loose affiliation, the
main theme of the first movement and the second theme of the finale place considerable
emphasis on the sixth degree, particularly as a neighbour to the fifth (see Examples 4.6b
and 4.6f). A minor-mode, diatonic variant of this characteristic pentatonic melodic turn
appears in a number of other places. The slow introduction is replete with b>6-5 melodic
motion (see, for example, the half cadences at measures 10-11, the beginning of the
following phrase, and the final half cadences before the allegro begins), and 5-b6-5
neighbour figures also begin and end the slow movement's second theme (Example 4.6e)
The main theme of the finale is an open-ended small ternary form, and the half cadence
18
Locke, "The French Symphony," 178.
178
that concludes its "a" section is articulated by melodic degreesfc>6-5.This figure is then
isolated and spun out sequentially in the "b" section, the concluding dominant of which is
again approached by the flat-sixth degree. Finally, as with the melodic third/half cadence
motive, the (b)6-5 neighbour motive is again prominent in the coda of the finale.
In addition to these two contour motives, a rhythmic cell is an important unifying
motive, often as part of a larger rhythmic figure. The basic cell first appears as the
syncopated rhythm of measures 1-2 (shown in Example 4.6h). It returns, embedded in
the larger figure, in measures 12-13 (Example 4.6i). The larger figure is heard many
times, passed from instrument to instrument from rehearsal A to A +12. As Examples
4.6b through 4.6g show, the syncopated cell (marked with the bracket), often within the
broader figure (reduced below the staves), appears in every one of the symphony's
themes. In a post-Wagnerian style, rhythmic fluidity and syncopations are conventional,
but even given this context, Chausson's development of this cell/figure throughout the
introduction marks it as a salient motive and listeners are likely to hear it as such when it
reappears in subsequent themes.
Chausson, then, employs a pair of contour motives to bind together his
symphony's themes, just as do Franck and Saint-Saens (in their own ways), and he adds a
rhythmic motive to the mix. There are, however, some important differences, both in the
quality of Chausson's motives and in how they are absorbed into themes. Franck defines
his motives exactly as most composers do: he employs distinctive shapes and repeats
them often enough that they become and remain familiar. The "Muss es sein?" motive,
for example, has an unmistakable profile (and, of course, is especially distinct on account
of its intertextual resonances). Moreover, it circulates constantly in the slow introduction,
so when it reappears in the allegro's main theme it is easily recognized. Chausson's
motives, on the other hand, both seem much less distinctive and he employs them
altogether more sparingly. The rising third/half cadence motive, for example, is (as
179
suggested above) a relatively neutral, stylistically conventional gesture. After sounding
in the slow introduction, moreover, he withholds it for some 175 measures. When it
reappears, creeping into the tail end of the second theme's initial phrase, it is both
unfamiliar and conventional enough that its relationship to previously-heard material
seems, like a deja-vu, at once absolutely certain and nebulously vague. A spark of
association flashes, but does not quite ignite—at least not until the figure reappears
twelve measures later (at F). Indeed, one might say the figure's "status" as a motive
develops, much like a memory progressively recovered, and solidifies only with the half
cadence at letter F.
As soon as the rising third/half cadence figure becomes "marked" as a motive,
Chausson alters it: in the following phrase, the melodic third rises into a cadence on the
tonic (F +32)—not on the dominant—a gesture that strikes the ear as both an obvious
development of the motive and an utterly unremarkable imperfect authentic cadence. The
composer continues to play on the ambiguity inherent in the motive's conventional
quality at the beginning of the slow movement. Here (see again Example 4.6d), the threenote melodic line rises into what turns out to be the minor dominant (though this is not at
all clear until well into the movement). Its third no longer tethered to any sort of cadence
at all—though still rising into a sustained triad—the motive once again seems
tantalizingly familiar but enough of a stylistic commonplace that the associative spark
perhaps does not ignite—until measure 6, when the third is re-attached to its familiar half
cadence. The motive repeats four measures later, but then once again morphs into
material that could be taken as stylistically neutral. Chausson continues to "develop" the
motive in this fashion throughout the ternary movement's "A" section.
The 5-6-5 figure is even more stylistically neutral, though its "status" as a motive
is vouchsafed by more frequent repetition. Nevertheless, Chausson treats it much as he
does the rising third/half cadence motive: he continually cultivates tension between its
180
distinctiveness and its stylistic banality, and masterfully avoids tipping the balance
decisively in either direction for very long. The distinctive profile of the rhythmic
motive, on the other hand, remains stable enough that it tends to be more immediately
recognizable (as Examples 4.6b through 4.6g show). Yet Chausson's treatment of this
motive is altogether more reserved than it might have been. The famous four-note master
rhythm of Beethoven's Fifth was likely the precedent Chausson drew upon. When
present in the Fifth Symphony, the "Fate knocks" motive tends to utterly dominate the
texture. Beethoven, for example, builds the entire main theme of the first movement by
relentlessly piling it on top of itself; indeed there seems to be nothing else until the second
theme arrives. The only place in Chausson's Symphony where the rhythm comes close to
similarly saturating the texture is at letter A of the slow introduction, where it continually
passes between instrument groups. But even here it competes for attention with a
sequential melodic figure in the violins. (And in performances, it usually loses:
conductors tend to bring out the sequential line and relegate the rhythmic figure to an
accompanying role.) When Chausson incorporates the rhythm into subsequent thematic
materials, he does so in a (sometimes much) more subtle fashion than Beethoven does.
Even in the principal themes of the slow movement and finale (Examples 4.6d and 4.6f),
where the motive factors prominently, the surface rhythm remains on the whole much
more variegated than in the Fifth Symphony's themes: the "Fate Knocks" motive
monopolizes rhythm in the slow movement's "march" theme, the scherzo's second idea,
and the finale's second theme, where it repeats time and again, with baroque-like
regularity. In sum, Chausson's motive makes appearances in his themes whereas
Beethoven's motive dominates to the point where rhythm and theme become irreducibly
identified with one another.
The issue of how Chausson integrates motives into his themes, and how they
shape the identities of those themes, brings us to the crux of what distinguishes his cyclic
181
approach from those of Franck and Saint-Saens. In Franck's slow introduction, the
"Muss es sein" figure functions as a basic idea that immediately repeats to form the
presentation phrase of a sentence. Franck incorporates transformations of the motive into
other themes in precisely the same fashion, and it is by way of this common presentation
phrase that the introduction's "theme" becomes the main themes of the allegro and slow
movement. The same is true of the Faith Theme: the presentation phrase of the allegro's
second theme changes as a unit into the presentation phrase of the slow movement's
second theme. Each motive, then, spawns its own distinct theme, and these function in
their various transformations as the agents that Franck invites his listeners to follow. For
all its differences in motivic and thematic technique, Saint-Saens's Third is in this last
respect very similar to the D-minor symphony. Here, the two motives occur separately in
the slow introduction and quickly congeal into the cyclic theme, which (like Franck's
main theme) functions as the work's thematic protagonist.
Chausson's motives, like those of Saint-Saens, first appear in discrete and separate
fragments in the slow introduction. As Example 4.6 makes clear, however, they do not
immediately coalesce into a single theme as in the Organ Symphony, or spawn their own
separate themes as in the Franck. Rather, Chausson freely distributes them among the
themes in various combinations (though the rhythmic motive is present to a greater or
lesser degree in all of them): the allegro's main theme contains the 5-6 figure and hints at
the rhythmic motive, the rising-third/half-cadence and rhythmic motives appear in the
second theme, all three factor in the slow movement's main theme, and so on. The
motives, moreover, usually do not appear in analogous formal positions from theme to
theme, as they do in Franck's Symphony. The rhythmic motive, for example, appears in
the continuations of all three phrases in the allegro's second theme, but in the basic idea
of the slow movement's main theme.
182
The symphony's thematic materials, then, are all related to one another by a pool
of motives, but owing to these factors—and to the often vague and uncertain quality of
the (contour) motives themselves—later themes do not seem like transformations of
earlier ones, with a possible exception to which we will return shortly. The "presence,"
the main thematic agent that the Symphony projects, is thus an altogether more diffuse
entity than in Franck and Saint-Saens. Indeed, Chausson's "theme" is only an implied
centre, a potential projected by the (actual) themes' irregular combinations of (sometimes
vaguely defined) motives and their shifting formal functions. Whereas the themes of
Franck and Saint-Saens, as clearly circumscribed entities that develop over the course of
the work, are very much analogous to the characteristic romantic hero as exemplified in
countless nineteenth-century novels and plays, Chausson's "theme" is at least loosely
analogous to the shadowy sketches of characters that populate Maeterlinck's symbolist
dramas. To continue this analogy, whereas Franck's and Saint-Saens's main themes
strive towards, and (like archetypal romantic heroes) ultimately attain higher,
transcendent conditions, Chausson's "theme" yearns to attain a basic degree of identity.
In the course of the symphony, it seems to make some progress. As we have
noted, all three motives finally converge in the basic idea of the slow movement's main
theme. Over the span of the movement, the theme, naturally enough, is developed. One
shape in particular, which materializes at letter A +2 and returns in the recapitulation—
where it is the last version of the theme heard in the movement (at F +8)—suggestively
prefigures the main theme of the finale in its rhythmic profile and melodic contour
(compare Example 4.7 with 4.6f).
Example 4.7 II, reh. A +2
r
'
H
— ^
r r
kr
rhi 'f
»
183
Not all listeners will hear the latter as a transformation of the former in the manner of
Franck or Saint-Saens, but the themes' contours and rhythmic profiles are similar enough
that they seem related in a way that none of the other themes do. The associative spark at
the very least flashes and smolders, though perhaps does not ignite. (And it is worth
noting that Chausson encourages it not to: the main theme of the finale does not arrive
until measure 29, and the melodic kernel that prefigures it lacks the downward turn that
Examples 4.6f and 4.7 share.)
Nineteenth-century symphonic convention would encourage us to expect this
process of consolidation to continue and come to fruition in the coda, a formal region
normally given over to thematic stabilization and often apotheosis. However, precisely
the opposite actually happens. As we have observed, Chausson recalls the slow
introduction, nearly phrase for phrase, in his coda: the fledgling theme collapses back into
its original state, its motives scattered once again among discrete, fragmentary phrases.
Ironically, the most obviously "cyclic" gesture in the entire symphony—the wholesale
recall of the slow introduction in the work's final measures—represents the failure of the
very thematic process that cyclic form guarantees in the symphonies of Saint-Saens,
Franck, and other nineteenth-century composers. The subject that develops over the span
of the symphony does not "become," it disintegrates.
4.4 Material and Plot
In sections II and III of this chapter, we have seen how Chausson "deforms" the
tonal and thematic strategies that had become axiomatic to the nineteenth-century
symphony. By recalling the slow introduction—where tonality is highly unstable and the
"theme" is an embryonic, fragmented entity—in the coda of the finale, the composer
utterly negates the genre's characteristic teleological thrust. In this section, we shall see
that the symphony's decidedly "anti-heroic" plot is organically bound up in its raw
184
thematic materials, and the idiosyncratic—and decidedly modern—approach to locallevel harmony that they mandate. This fraught relationship between material and
narrative trajectory, in turn, suggests that the symphony articulates a modernist critique of
the romantic worldview that had been central to the genre since Beethoven: Chausson,
suggests that the material conditions of modernity were antithetical to the subject-laden
values that nineteenth-century thought idealized, a view that many of his fin-de-siecle
literary and artistic counterparts shared.
As I have observed, Chausson bases much of the symphony's material on the
pentatonic collection, including both of the first movement's themes, the transition
between them, and the second theme of the finale. The 5-6-5 neighbour figure that is so
characteristic of pentatonic music becomes (in its complete or incomplete forms) one of
the symphony's central cyclic motives, binding together these themes as well as other,
non-pentatonic, materials. As Figure 4.2 shows, 5-6 contrapuntal motion—where two
voices are held while the fifth of the triad steps upward or the root slips downward to
produce a third-related chord—also typifies a natural harmonic gesture in the pentatonic
context, moving as it does between the only two triads that are subsets of the collection.19
Figure 4.2
m
5
-
6
5-6 motion, along with more complex common-tone progressions that elaborate
on this basic contrapuntal paradigm, factors prominently in Chausson's Symphony.
Indeed, in the main theme of the first movement, the melodic motive audibly becomes a
19
For an overview of 5-6 motion in the so-called common-practice repertoire, see Paulin Daigle, "Les
Fonctions harmoniques et formelles de la technique 5-6 a plusieurs niveaux de structure dans la musique
tonale" (PhD diss., McGill University, 1999).
185
harmonic motive. The theme area comprises three statements of the theme proper. As
Example 4.8 shows, a sustained B-flat major triad harmonizes the first. At the beginning
of the second, the harmony takes up the 5-6 motive as G joins the B-flat triad to create an
added-sixth chord. This 5-6 contrapuntal gesture then becomes a motive in its own right,
"motivating" the succession of third-related triads (sometimes adorned with added
dissonances) that harmonize the remainder of the theme. A brief developmental passage
intersperses the second and third statements of the theme. Here, as the example shows, 56 counterpoint continues to generate the harmony, and the composer again often adds
additional pitches (such as the G-sharp that joins the B-diminished triad at letter B - 4 to
produce a diminished seventh) to create more complex common-tone progressions.
Example 4.8 I, A +29 to B +24
[A+29]
[A+45]
T h e m e x2
flHol
|B+8|
]B+16|
|B+24|
Development
T h e m e x3
o°Co"Co"Cog
nil
V
I
Such common-tone progressions dominate large swatches of the symphony, and
with them Chausson weaves a richly chromatic texture that was undeniably forwardlooking and modern by the standards of 1890. Critics from Chausson's time onward have
often remarked upon the symphony's harmonic style. Paul Landormy noted simply that
Chausson's "fafon de moduler est bien a lui." 20 More typical, however, was Pierre Lalo,
who felt the composer "luttait encore contre 1'influence de Wagner." 21 The Wagnerian
label, which critics continue to apply to the symphony, is appropriate only insofar as the
symphony's texture is extremely chromatic and dotted with a conspicuous number of
half-diminished seventh chords. Otherwise, Chausson's harmony is, in a palpable way,
20
Paul Landormy, "Ernest Chausson (1855-1899)," Victoire, December 22, 1925. See also Rene de
Castera, "La Symphonie en si bemol d'Ernest Chausson," L 'Occident, March 1902.
21
Pierre Lalo, "Les Symphonies de Saint-Saens et de Chausson," Le Temps, March 18, 1902. See also
Grover, Ernest Chausson, 138; and Locke, "The French Symphony," 178.
186
distinctly wn-Wagnerian (or at least un-"Tristanian")—and, as we shall see, ultimately unsymphonic for the same reason.
David Kopp has recently developed an analytical model that allows him to
assimilate chromatic third-relationships to traditional understandings of tonal function.22
Nevertheless, Kopp's formulations say little about the kinetic properties of such
progressions, a key issue in Chausson's symphony. Chausson's treatment of the "Tristan
Chord" may serve as an example of the problem. In Tristan, Wagner exploits the
teleological quality of functional harmony to breathtaking dramatic effect, and the halfdiminished-seventh chord serves as a potent expedient. In its characteristic harmonic and
contrapuntal context, the bass drops by semitone to the root of a major-minor seventh
chord and the top voice slides chromatically up to the fifth: the chord thrusts toward the
dominant, loading it with tension (which Wagner, of course, does not allow to dissipate
through resolution to the tonic). The chord thus contributes to the music's relentless
forward drive, through which Wagner builds torrents of libidinal energy.
The half-diminished seventh marked in Example 4.8 exemplifies Chausson's
treatment of the chord. He both approaches and leaves it via his characteristic voiceleading. Such counterpoint effectively neutralizes the chord's directional tendency: while
Chausson's Tristan Chord, like Wagner's, moves to a dominant seventh, there is little
sense of progression from the one harmony to the other owing to the three common tones
they share. Indeed, the half-diminished chord in Chausson's passage does not so much
drive toward the dominant as morph into it, and consequently contributes little charge to
it. Over longer spans, the attenuated sense of progression from chord to chord inherent in
such voice-leading comes to undermine the teleological quality that is characteristic of
normative tonal syntax. The music does not project clear goals, and, on account of both
22
David Kopp, Chromatic Transformations
Cambridge University Press, 2002).
in Nineteenth-Century
Music (Cambridge and New York:
187
this and the relatively small amounts of tension that accrue in Chausson's strings of
common-tone chords, important arrivals and cadences do not seem particularly emphatic.
This brings us to the crux of the problematic relationship between Chausson's pentatonic
material and the counterpoint he derives from it on the one hand, and symphonic form on
the other. For the nineteenth-century symphony is by nature a teleological species, and
the formal processes that guarantee its characteristic per aspera ad astra plot depend
upon the tension-and-release dynamics of conventional tonal syntax.
The main theme area of the first movement of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony
offers an example of symphonic form writ small, a miniature heroic narrative unto itself.
Beethoven's theme area is similar to that of Chausson's first movement: it comprises
three statements of the theme proper; the third is a triumphant fortissimo reprise that a
brief development prepares. The development (see mm. 19ff) moves crisply away from
the E-flat tonic with a sequential move to F minor and drives toward the dominant by way
of the subdominant and an augmented-sixth chord. Once in place, the dominant is
prolonged for some fourteen measures by its diminished seventh and the subdominant.
Owing to this preparation and post-arrival prolongation, the dominant becomes highly
charged, a harmonic monolith fraught with tension. When it resolves to the tonic, the
release of accumulated energy is nothing short of explosive, and the theme's reunification
seems like a hard won triumph.
As Example 4.8 shows, Chausson's theme area also moves broadly from the tonic
to the dominant, which similarly arrives at the end of a developmental passage. However,
it takes nothing like the syntactic path through dominant-projecting harmonies that
Beethoven's passage pursues. Chausson's tonic simply dissolves, like an ice sculpture
slowly melting on a warm day: the second time through the theme, the chord's B-flat root
becomes destabilized, and at the beginning of the development it disappears altogether.
D and F are held over as vestigial, common-tone traces until rehearsal B +8, then they
188
lazily descend chromatically over a freely-floating bass (and a sometimes-present inner
voice) to gently settle on C and E-flat, the fifth and seventh of the dominant chord. The
harmonic progression that the passage's common-tone voice-leading produces does not
project the dominant of B-flat (or any tonality for that matter) as a goal. Indeed, this
embedded development could easily be taken for the beginning of the transition to the
second theme. It only becomes clear that the dominant is the passage's harmonic goal
when the music actually arrives on it. Thus reached, virtually no tension accrues to the
dominant, and although Chausson adds a minor ninth to intensify the chord, it
accumulates nothing like the high-voltage charge of Beethoven's monumentalized
dominant. Consequently, the crescendo and textural swell that usher in the tonic and
return of the main theme seem forced, and the fortissimo bravura of the theme itself at
this point seems underdetermined and hollow. In short, the tonic return of the theme does
not seem like a genuine telos, a product of a goal-directed process, let alone a hard-won
victory.
Other important arrivals and cadences, at deeper structural levels, are similarly
inflected. Indeed, as Example 4.9 shows, the symphony entirely lacks an emphatic, fully
prepared arrival or cadence on the tonic major.
Example 4.9
Example 4.9a) I, reh. L +8 to L +24
|X+T4]
[L+8|
I
|L+18]
L+201
—kS—h.tr^W
, b-g-r
o
|
'teo
o
4
VT. /
07
o7
°7
°7/
/El>
n
vV
Bb
189
Example 4.9b) I, reh. O +21 to Q - 1
0+21
Jtd
lilt- ^
S3
|Q+25 |
Jit
^
. n,
...
n
-eB k vi
D: v
Example 4.9c) III, reh. N - 1 0 to O
|N-I0|
[N]
N+18
ft
s
| N+27 [
| N+301
CODA
liEE
The first movement's development section concludes with material from the slow
introduction (see Example 4.9a). The melody of the chorale texture implies E-flat minor,
though a string of diminished-seventh chords largely obscures that tonality. Much as in
Example 4.8 above, the music finds its way to the dominant of B-flat by way of chromatic
common-tone voice-leading, and the effect remains exactly the same: the dominant
accumulates little charge, so the tonic on the recapitulation's downbeat seems neither like
a goal achieved, nor an emphatically established tonality. The ensuing destabilization of
B-flat major (as we have noted, it crumbles the second time through the theme) seems
almost inevitable. As Example 4.9b shows, the structural cadence that closes off the
recapitulation is approached similarly. The second theme appears in G, then D;
Chausson's characteristic voice-leading subsequently takes the music from the minor
dominant of D (Q -12) to the dominant of B-flat. This time, diatonic harmonies prepare
the home-key dominant. Nevertheless, the submediant arrives a mere three measures
before the dominant itself, and the quick harmonic progression that it initiates does little
to set up the movement's home key as a goal. The music simply slips into B-flat from D
just before the cadence. Finally, Example 4.9c shows the arrival of the tonic major in the
coda of the finale. The G-major recapitulation of the second theme (rehearsal M - 7 )
pursues a new continuation, which collapses into the half-diminished seventh chord at N
190
-10. As the example shows, a string of common-tone chords leads to the tonic major.
Although an augmented-sixth chord implies the dominant at rehearsal O -4, this time the
dominant does not actually appear. As in the development passage in the first
movement's main theme, the progression shown in Example 9c does not strongly project
the tonic (or any tonality) as its goal; the restless harmonic motion simply comes to a halt
on B-flat major at letter O. Yet again, this tonic major arrival is hardly emphatic; there is
none of the heroic explosiveness of the tonic arrival in the main theme of the Eroica
Symphony's allegro. Indeed, B-flat is here so weakly articulated that it does not even
seem like a stable tonality. And, as we have observed, it is not: within eight measures,
the minor-mode inflections that have destabilized the tonic throughout the symphony
creep back into the music.
To summarize: there is tension between the symphony's raw materials and the
harmonic procedure that they mandate on the one hand, and the per aspera ad astra plot
archetype that had become axiomatic to the genre on the other. Chausson folds the
pentatonic pitch structure of his themes into his harmony as 5-6 counterpoint, which in
turn forms the basis of a distinctive and highly modern harmonic technique. However,
this technique yields common-tone related chords, and these relationships attenuate the
sense of harmonic progression from sonority to sonority. The sense of forward, goaldirected drive that is crucial to the genre's characteristic teleological thrust is sapped from
the music. Little tension accrues; dominants do not become highly charged, or even
strongly articulated, and consequently their resolutions into tonics do not seem emphatic.
Ultimately, this leads to the failure of the work's narrative to arrive at the expected heroic
conclusion: the tonic major is never established emphatically enough to definitively purge
minor-mode inflections from the texture, or to make a grand thematic peroration seem
anything but hopelessly underdetermined.
191
4.5 A Symbolist Symphony
None of this should be taken to imply compositional ineptitude on Chausson's
part; the failure of the symphony to attain its culturally defined goal must not be mistaken
for aesthetic failure. We may more profitably understand the tension between the work's
material and the genre's archetypal plot as a purposely cultivated means to an expressive
end, just as we have understood the other tensions (between the presence and absence of
"theme" and between tonic major and minor keys) that underwrite the symphony. For a
critic of Adorno's persuasion, these ends would not only be aesthetic, but more broadly
ideological. Indeed, he might view the work's deformation of the heroic archetype as a
modernist critique of the romantic, subject-laden values that had become irreducibly
associated with the genre since Beethoven. Burnham, as we have noted, has persuasively
argued that Beethoven's heroic symphonies embody the worldview of what he calls the
"Goethezeit." In these works—which were the primary models for symphonists from
Mendelssohn and Berlioz through Mahler, d'Indy, and Chausson—notions of individual
freedom and self-consciousness epitomized by Goethe and Schiller fuse with a Hegelian
faith in a self that generates its own destiny and culminates in absolute completion and
fulfillment, to unimpeachably express an "ennobling and all-embracing concept of self."23
The "Goethezeit" concept of the self, of course, would remain a central ideal for
decades after Beethoven (and in important ways it remains one today). However, by the
fin de siecle such an optimistic view of the individual's potential no longer seemed
tenable for many, including many symbolist writers and artists. Chausson's biographers
note that his tastes in literature and art favoured the symbolists. Gallois has pointed out
that nearly a quarter of the composer's enormous library—he owned about 2 300 volumes
by some 830 authors—consisted of works written after 1885, above all by symbolist
23
Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 112.
192
writers.24 Chausson, moreover, personally knew many members of the symbolist
movement. He developed warm friendships with Mallarme (who for a brief period in
1890 taught him English), and Camille Mauclair (in whose roman a clef l e soleil des
morts he appears as the composer Rodolphe Mereuse), as well as the painters Odilon
Redon and Maurice Denis (and his extensive collection of art included several canvases
by each).25 The composer also came to know Maeterlinck, maintained a close
relationship with Belgian lawyer and art critic Octave Maus, and became involved with
the symbolist group Maus founded, Les XX (later la Libre Esthetique).26 The habitues of
the renowned soirees Chausson hosted at his palatial home on the Boulevard de
Courcelles—now the Lithuanian embassy—included prominent symbolist figures, such
as the young Andre Gide, Henri de Regnier, and others.
A number of critics have linked Chausson's attitudes and music to the symbolist
movement. Grover, for example, feels that "some of the same artistic impotence and
'tendency to reduce life to inaction and the dream, the withdrawal from the mainstream'
[...] are observable in his life." He also suggests that the "over subtilizing refinement
upon refinement" some critics have observed in symbolist writing applies to at least some
of Chausson's music.27 In the estimation of Barricelli and Weinstein, had the composer
lived longer, he might have become the "musical counterpart" of the poet Paul Verlaine:
"Chausson was a member of that nervous generation of 1880 to 1900 which recognized
itself in Verlaine. A 'tristesse saturnienne' in Chausson's music does remind us
unequivocally of the poet of 'Poemes saturniens,' 'Fetes galantes,' and 'Romances sans
paroles.'" 28 Muriel Joubert has proposed a wide array of parallels between the surface
24
Gallois, Ernest Chausson, 363-364.
See Susan Youens, "Le Soleil des morts: A fin-de-siecle Portrait Gallery," I9'h-Century Music 11 (1987):
43-58.
26
On Chausson's involvement with Les XX and La Libre Esthetique, see Sylvie Douche, "Ernest
Chausson, les XX et la Libre Esthetique," Ostinato rigore 14 (2000): 87-94.
27
Grover, Ernest Chausson, 32.
28
Barricelli and Weinstein, Ernest Chausson, 113-14.
25
193
style of Chausson's music and symbolist art and writing, including the "sweet colours" of
the symbolists' pre-Raphaelite precursors, the romantic symbolism of Bouchor, the
mysticism of Maurice Denis and Puvis de Chavannes, the "fragility" and "balbutiement"
of Maeterlinck and Van Lerberghe, and the "discontinuity" of Mallarme and
Maeterlinck.29 To cite a final example, Gallois has noted that the Poeme de I 'amour et de
la mer (on texts by Maurice Bouchor)
se degage du substrat poetique une atmosphere de camai'eu faite, comme chez
Maeterlinck et les poetes symbolistes, d'ennui bleu, de tristesse nonchalante,
d'amours frustrees qui convenait evidemment fort bien au temperament
nostalgique de Chausson. [...] (Euvre qui devient ainsi reflet de la vie
interieure. (Euvre symboliste tout autant, a travers notamment le jeu des
tonalites.30
What lay behind the ennui bleu and tristesse that characterizes certain symbolist
writers and artists? In a recent study of symbolist aesthetics, Patricia Mathews has
observed that the movement emerged from a fin-de-siecle mentality of crisis, and in
particular from perceptions that romantic ideals of subjectivity—the ideals Burnham and
many others find so eloquently expressed in Beethoven's heroic symphonies—were
crumbling under the weight of modern social conditions.31 As the historian Eugen Weber
noted, the "existence of the Third Republic, practically to the First World War, was one
long crisis, every lull overshadowed by disbelief that it could be the last, every relaxation
of tension flouted by some new alarm."32 The threat of war and revolution stalked the
early years of the Republic, a severe economic crisis plagued the country from the early
1880s through the mid 90s, the battle between clericals and anti-clericals escalated, and
the workforce shrunk on account of a declining birth rate. These crises and others made
29
Muriel Joubert, "Quels symbolismes dans l'oeuvre musicale de Chausson?" Ostinato rigore 14 (2000):
29-36.
30
Gallois, Ernest Chausson, 307.
31
Patricia Mathews, Passionate Discontent: Creativity, Gender, and French Symbolist Art (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1999). See especially 29-45.
32
Eugene Weber, France, Fin de Steele (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1986), 107.
194
for volatile circumstances that gave rise to a pervasive pessimism and aroused anxieties
about individual identity.
The disorienting effects of modernity—industrialization and mass consumption,
increasing urbanization and the concomitant rise of the metropolis, feminist challenges to
traditional definitions of gender, fluid and ambiguous class boundaries, and so on—also
conspired to destabilize notions of a stable, unified self. The devastating effect of an
urban, industrial mass culture on individual identity and experience, Mathews notes, had
particular importance for the symbolists. As Georg Simmel wrote of these effects:
[In the metropolis, people] can cope less and less with the overgrowth of
objective culture. The individual is reduced to a negligible quantity [...] [he]
has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers
which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to
transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective
life. It needs merely to be pointed out that the metropolis is the genuine arena
of this culture, which outgrows all personal life[...] [The individual] has to
exaggerate [his] personal element in order to remain audible even to
himself.33
Symbolists, Mathews argues, also on some level recognized the threats posed to
individual identity by market capitalism that Adorno and Horkheimer identified in their
famous essay "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception:"
[T]he breaking down of all individual resistance is the condition of life in this
society. [...] The most intimate reactions of human beings have been so
thoroughly reified [by the culture industry] that the idea of anything specific
to themselves now persists only as an utterly abstract notion: personality
scarcely signifies anything more than shining white teeth and freedom from
body odor and emotions.34
The retreat into a rarefied realm of aestheticism and refinement that characterizes
symbolist poetry, art, and literature—along with symbolist constructs of a superior
33
Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life," in Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities, ed. Richard
Sennett (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969), 58-59.
34
Quoted in Mathews, Passionate Discontent, 31.
195
individual such as the isole and aesthete—represented an effort to transcend these
decadent and oppressive conditions and forge a space in which ego boundaries could be
re-established and stabilized. In Mathews's words, the symbolists'
insistent individualism and the production of challenging and difficult art was
an antidotal act of resistance. [...] By way of constructs such as the isole and
aesthete, [they] refigured their individual social alienation as a privileged
status. Alienation became a force to reinvent and thus redeem and reify the
unity of the subject in the face of the social order's suppression and
fragmentation of subjectivity.35
Despite the movement's transcendental aspirations, a dark and pessimistic
current pervades much symbolist art and literature. Maeterlinck, perhaps more than
any other figure, represents this strain. In his works, the very conditions the
symbolists sought to transcend often seem reified. The characters that populate his
plays have virtually no agency. One need think only of the well-known Pelleas et
Melisande, where pale sketches of characters seem like marionettes—a favourite
metaphor of Maeterlinck—controlled and ultimately crushed by oppressive forces they
cannot control or even understand.
As we have noted, Chausson set five of Maeterlinck's Serres chaudes between
1893 and 1896, a few years after he composed the symphony. Here, as in Pelleas, the
subject is stifled by forces it cannot master. The image of the hothouse functions as a
classic symbolist trope: a sheltered realm that offers protection from an unfavourable
climate and conditions germane to the delicate growth of subjectivity. Nevertheless, in
Maeterlinck's poems—and Chausson's songs—isolation, ennui, and sheer
unnaturalness become unbearable: rather than fostering the growth of the ego, the
hothouse paradoxically becomes suffocating.
35
Ibid., 43.
196
Set in the context of Chausson's symbolist affiliations and the broader
ideological climate that fueled the symbolist movement, his treatment of the
symphony's per aspera ad astra plot becomes more than simply a manifestation of the
"tristesse" that d'Indy and others felt characterized the composer's aesthetic. In this
light, the work may also be understood to express certain anxieties of its historical
moment. For the irreconcilable tension between the work's distinctly modern surface
and the genre's archetypal narrative trajectory is broadly analogous to the forces that
paralyze the speaker in Chausson's Maeterlinck settings: the material conditions of the
modern world undermine the romantic—Beethovenian—ideal of a secure, stable self
that is able to exert a measure of control over its destiny.
With its anti-heroic narrative, the work also stakes out for itself territory in the
history of the French symphony. The historian may legitimately claim modernist
progress for the symphonies of Franck and Saint-Saens. Both updated the genre
aesthetically (in Franck's hands it became something like a post-Wagnerian "invisible"
music drama, and in Saint-Saens's, an eclectic synthesis of genres, timbres, and
historical styles), and both experimented with its gross schematic shape. One would
be hard pressed to make a case that Chausson's symphony matches either in these
areas, and this has been a matter of occasional embarrassment for the work's
defenders. However, both Saint-Saens and Franck unquestioningly adopted the
symphony's traditional plot, and preserved its concomitant cultural values. By
deforming this archetypal plot, and questioning continued faith in romantic notions of
subjectivity—the moral bedrock of the genre—one might fairly say Chausson pursued
a far more radical and modern course than either of his more illustrious predecessors.
197
Chapter 5 - Vincent d'Indy's Symphonie sur un chant
montagnard
frangais
5.1 Ideology
"Le style, c'est l'homme. L'homme, c'est l'oeuvre. Vincent d'Indy est, tout
entier, l'homme de son style et son oeuvre." Thus summarized a critic identified only as
"Fodege" the inextricable entwinement of aesthetics and ideology that characterized
d'Indy's thought. While it is a truism that a composer's values, experiences, and
ideology will colour his or her work, d'Indy tended to wear such connections on his
sleeve in a way few others did. The very purpose of art, he stated at the beginning of his
Cours de composition musicale (the pedagogical programme of the Schola Cantorum)
and echoed frequently through its four volumes and elsewhere, was to teach:
Nous definirons done l'Art: un moyen de vie pour l'ame, e'est-a-dire, un
moyen de nourrir l'ame humaine et de la faire progresser, en lui procurant le
double aliment du present et de l'avenir, car l'ame humaine, ce n'est point
seulement l'ame individuelle, mais encore l'ame collective des generations
appelees a profiter de l'enseignement fourai par les oeuvres.1
The lessons he envisioned art would instill in the "collective soul" of humanity were the
cornerstones of his eminently conservative ideology.
Scholars have frequently discussed D'Indy's ideology, so it need only be briefly
outlined here.2 Born into an aristocratic family with a long tradition of military service
(which he continued in the war of 1870), he opposed the Republic and was a lifelong
legitimist; as his biographer Leon Vallas recounts, he twice visited the Comte de
1
Vincent d'Indy, Cours de composition musicale, vol. 1 (Paris: Durand, 1903), 9.
For a concise overview of d'Indy's ideology at the fin de siecle, see Steven Huebner's "Vincent d'Indy
and the Moral Order" in his French Opera at the Fin de Siecle: Wagnerism, Nationalism, and Style (Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 301-07. See also Jane F. Fulcher, French Cultural Politics
and Music (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 21-26 and passim; Jann Pasler
"Deconstructing d'Indy, or the Problem of a Composer's Reputation "ltf*1-Century Music 30 (2007): 230256; and Brian J. Hart, "The Symphony in Theory and Practice in France, 1900-1914" (PhD diss., Indiana
University), 18-25, 44-46.
2
198
Chambord, the exiled Bourbon pretender and a political extremist who advocated a form
of government that dispensed entirely with democratic and parliamentary institutions.3
The Catholic Church was at the centre of d'Indy's cosmos, and he fiercely defended its
place in the affairs of the state and was even prepared to admit direct influence of the
pope. The Revolution, "that egg from which all the greatest benefits to humanity were
supposed to have been hatched," had proven to be a "fetid omelette," and he believed the
conditions that prevailed in its wake—secularism, social equality and government that
pandered to the lowest strata of society, individualism and the materialistic pursuits it
fostered—had plunged the nation into decadence and had led to its military defeat in
1870.4
D'Indy believed the same forces had led the nation's musical culture into a
parallel decline: "pride" and pursuit of material gain had sapped it of its spiritual
sincerity; vitriolic assaults on the putative frivolity of grand opera streak his prose.
French music was in desperate need of grass-roots reform. And in the manner of an
aristocrat, he believed it incumbent upon himself to lead the way. As Steven Huebner has
observed, d'Indy, like some other figures of the Right, notably the philologist and
philosopher Ernest Renan, felt that "taking heed of the victor's strengths" was a key to
rehabilitating both the nation and its music: the great Germanic art of the nineteenth
century offered admirable models to this end.5 D'Indy initially saw himself as primarily a
man of the theatre and envisioned a type of drame lyrique that would incorporate
Wagner's most striking innovations. After casting about for a suitable subject, he settled
on the narrative poem Axel by the Swedish romantic author Esaias Tegner and drafted
much of a libretto.6 Nevertheless, d'Indy soon came to recognize that he would face an
3
Leon Vallas, Vincent d'Indy: LaJeunesse
(Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1950), 168-169, 258.
Quoted in Huebner, French Opera at the Fin de Siecle, 301.
5
Ibid., 303. See also Michael Strasser, "The Societe Nationale and its Adversaries: The Musical Politics of
L 'Invasion germanique in the 1870s, I9'h-Century Music 24 (2001): 230-233.
6
Huebner, French Opera at the Fin de Siecle, 317-320.
4
199
uphill battle to have such a work staged in Paris, so he decided it was thus "necessary to
write dramatic symphonic music."7 In this venture he had a number of successes, notably
with the trilogy of programmatic concert overtures titled Wallenstein, and especially the
hybrid "legende dramatique" Le Chant de la cloche, for which he earned the prestigious
Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris in 1885; when it was performed by Lamoureux the
following season it was a popular success and by most accounts was the work that
marked d'Indy's arrival as a first-rate composer.8
Nevertheless, if d'Indy wanted to make the most profound of statements with
symphonic music, he would need to turn to the domain of that other German giant of the
nineteenth century, and the genre d'Indy came to regard as the highest summit of
instrumental music: the symphony itself. D'Indy's biographer Leon Vallas recounts the
composer's encounter with a folk song during a hike in the Cevennes that would nudge
him toward his first mature essay in this venerable genre:
Un jour de l'ete 1886, a Perier, lieu du voisin des Faugs [the opulent chateau
the composer was having constructed], d'ou Ton a une tres belle vue sur les
Cevennes, d'Indy l'entendit chanter par une voix lointaine; il la nota sur un
petit agenda de poche.9
D'Indy wasted no time in getting to work. He originally planned to compose a "fantaisie"
for piano and orchestra but, according to Vallas, came to feel the material was more
suitable for a symphony along Beethovenian lines. He composed quickly, completing the
work later that year, and the Symphonie sur un chant montagnardfrangais premiered on
20 March 1887 to considerable acclaim.
D'Indy began his composition around the same time Saint-Saens was putting the
finishing touches on his Organ Symphony. In embarking on this enterprise for the first
7
Quoted in ibid., 320.
See Andrew Thomson, Vincent d'Indy and His World (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996), 58.
9
Vallas, Vincent d'Indy: La Jeunesse, 229.
8
200
time as a maturing, publicly recognized composer (like Saint-Saens, d'Indy had made a
youthful foray into the symphony in the early 1870s) he would have faced all of the same
pressures and anxieties as his older colleague: by the mid 1880s, the symphony had
established itself in French concert culture as the flagship genre of the canonized classics
and the domain of deceased masters, above all Beethoven, with whose towering
masterpieces it had become irreducibly associated. Beethoven's legacy would also have
been problematic for d'Indy in a way it does not appear to have been for Saint-Saens. For
over the course of the nineteenth century, Beethoven—and especially his symphonies—
had become closely affiliated with the Revolution and the values for which it stood.
A French translation of Anton Schindler's biography appeared in 1864. His
portrait of a Beethoven brought up on Plutarch met with much approbation among French
writers of d'Indy's generation. Schindler described Beethoven as
an upholder of unlimited liberty [...] he desired that everyone should take
part in the government of the State [...]. For France he desired universal
suffrage and hoped that Bonaparte would establish it, thus laying down the
proper basis of human happiness.10
Camille Bellaigue, who like d'Indy most highly valued the "moral beauty" of music,
regarded Beethoven's compositions as "the ideal embodiment of individualism."11
D'Indy's friend Julien Tiersot claimed that virtually everything Beethoven wrote echoed
"events in France that made the soul of this instinctive republican tremble." The hero of
the Eroica Symphony was "the people of France who started the revolution [...] this work
of Beethoven is originally inspired by French ideas, and, what is even more, by the ideas
10
Quoted in Romain Rolland, Beethoven, trans. B. Constance Hull (K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, and Co.:
London, 1924), 17. See Anton Schindler, Beethoven as I Knew Him, ed. Donald W. MacArdle, trans.
Constance S. Jolly (Faber and Faber: London, 1996), 112.
11
Quoted in Leo Schrade, Beethoven in France: The Growth of an Idea (New York: Da Capo Press, 1978),
198.
201
of the Revolution."12 Romain Rolland's influential Beethoven biography proclaimed:
The revolution had reached Vienna. Beethoven was completely carried away
by it. [...] He dreamt of a triumphant Republic [...]. [B]low by blow he
forged the Eroica Symphony, Bonaparte, the Iliad of Empire, and the Finale
of the Symphony in C minor, the grand epic of glory. This is really the first
music breathing the revolutionary feeling. The soul of the times lives again in
it with the intensity and purity which great events have for those mighty and
solitary souls who live apart and whose impressions are not contaminated by
contact with the reality. Beethoven's spirit reveals itself, marked with stirring
13
events, coloured by the reflections of these great wars.
In his prose, especially his Beethoven biography of 1911, d'Indy did his best to
dismantle this "Republican" image of Beethoven and replace it with one more in keeping
with the values he espoused.14 He pursued various lines of argument. Revolutionary
values, he insisted, were in fact the farthest thing from the great composer's mind. "[I]t
was left for writers of our own time to [...] present to us a Beethoven not merely
enamored of Plato's Republic, but eager to glorify the French Revolution," to which he
added the barb "including the September massacres, the Terror, etc."15 Schindler was
merely "steeped in republican ideology and yielding to the mania for appearing
progressive (this was in 1840)" when he "bethought himself of imputing to Beethoven
political intentions." Napoleon's name was associated with the Eroica Symphony merely
as a dedication to a head of state, like the first two cello sonatas (to Friedrich Wilhelm II
of Prussia), and the three violin sonatas (to the emperor of Russia); "no one would ever
dream of discussing the origins of the Third Symphony, had not political toadyism seized
12
Julien Tiersot, "Beethoven, musicien de la revolution franfaisc," La Revue de Paris 17 (1910).
Translated in Schrade, Beethoven in France, 199.
13
Rolland, Beethoven, 17.
14
For a thorough study of the composer's reception of Beethoven, see Steven Huebner, "D'Indy's
Beethoven," in French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870-1939, ed. Barbara Kelly (Rochester,
NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008), 77-89.
15
Vincent d'Indy, Beethoven: A Critical Biography, trans. Theodore Baker (New York: Da Capo Press,
1970), 65.
202
upon it in the obstinate endeavour to make Beethoven appear [...] as an apostle of the
Revolution." Lest his readers not be convinced by this tack, he offers another:
[A]t the time when Beethoven wrote and dedicated his symphony [...]
[Napoleon] was no longer the spokesman of the Revolution, the redoutable
consummator of the principles of '89 [...] but far rather the glorious hero
crowned with laurels, the vigorous soldier, vanquisher of anarchy, who with a
gesture, and by a formal violation of the republican constitution, had just
'assassinated' national representation; he to whom he inscribed the Heroic
Symphony was the Man of Brumaire. 16
Similarly, the Ninth Symphony was no paean to freedom or "apology for liberty." When
seen with the "eyes of the soul," the work is a hymn to God's glory: "look upward, ye
millions, beyond the stars, and ye shall see your heavenly Father, from whom all love
floweth."
D'Indy also pursued some more subtle strategies. Steven Huebner has drawn
attention to the composer's unusual organization of Beethoven's oeuvre. Like many
writers, d'Indy divided Beethoven's career into three creative periods, though he
idiosyncratically viewed the middle one merely as a "transition" to the third, the "periode
de reflection."17 Only in this final period did Beethoven arrive at his full genius. D'Indy
thus positioned the great heroic works—the "Republican" Eroica and Fifth Symphonies,
Fidelio, the Egmont and Leonore overtures—as stepping stones to the "pure beauty [...]
Faith [...] [and] Love" of the late-period Missa Solemnis and Ninth Symphony. D'Indy
was also careful to emphasize the centrality of variation procedure to the late-period
works, especially the quartets and the Ninth Symphony. Elsewhere, he drew a theoretical
distinction between the techniques of variation and development, and his writings suggest
the latter was central to Beethoven's middle-period symphonic works. Variation, in
d'Indy's tripartite division of Beethoven's creative career, thus came to supersede
16
17
Ibid., 66-67.
Huebner, "D'Indy's Beethoven," 82-85.
203
development, and this evolutionary step, as we shall see, packed significant ideological
import that was both relevant to d'Indy's own symphonies and (though he did not spell
out the argument) helped shore up his case against the "Republican" Beethoven.
In sum, d'Indy viewed the prevailing image of Beethoven the impassioned
individualist and "apostle of the Revolution" as a distortion of the underlying truth and a
critical gloss fabricated in bad faith by writers wishing to harness the great composer to
their own political agendas. Anyone who listened "honestly" and with the soul would
recognize that it had no basis in the music itself. "Everything we know," he concluded,
"about what the Master loved, and what he hated, about his hatred as an exiled patriot for
the revolutionary invasion, rises up against such an interpretation. Jacobinism could be
only repugnant to his honest heart."18
Other critics have proposed such "Republican" ideas are woven into the very fabric
of Beethoven's music. Perhaps the most elegant account is that of Scott Burnham, who
has proposed that the idea of an "ennobling and all embracing concept of the self' lies at
the heart of the heroic style and accounts for the sustained pride of place that the Third
and Fifth symphonies and other middle-period works hold in the canons of western art
music.19 More specifically, this concept of the self conflates the thought of two principal
thinkers of the era, Goethe and Hegel. Goethe's poetics idealize a process of selfactualizing in which the subject is in a constant condition of struggle, endlessly striving to
achieve freedom and spiritual growth; for Hegel, subjectivity is a closed and teleological
process wherein the Spirit achieves a transcendental state by traversing the successive
stages of its history, from a primitive condition of sensory perception to a state of
absolute self knowledge. But for both, the self is fundamentally dynamic, and
subjectivity is a process of Becoming: of growth and progress, and of forging one's own
18
19
D'Indy, Beethoven, 66.
Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hew (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). Quote on p. 112.
204
unique identity. These values find "phenomenological bases" in Beethoven's formal
processes. Continuously unfolding waves give the impression that the music is in a
constant state of struggle, restlessly building to great climaxes or grinding impasses,
which momentarily disperse only to begin building anew. Treatment of scale degrees as
harmonic monoliths makes arrival upon them seem like an act of immense will. Largescale form seems to grow out of thematic development, so themes appear to generate their
own objective worlds. But most important, Beethoven's music is intensely forward
moving and teleological. Heroic works begin in destabilized or negative states and drive,
with "unbroken and intensified continuity," all the way to endings that are so emphatic
and affirmatively stable that they foreclose on all possibility of continuation: the heroic
20
works articulate narratives of Becoming.
Beethoven's music, in this view, emphasizes history and change rather than stable
and timeless truth; the subject does not abide by a deterministic social order but struggles
to forge its own destiny. The individual self lies at the centre of the cosmos; it does not
remain subordinate to some greater purpose or submerged in a collective consciousness.
In sum, the values Burnham teases out of Beethoven's music—the values to which the
likes of Romain Rolland, Tiersot, and others were presumably responding—grate against
d'Indy's right-wing ideology at virtually every turn.
5.2 T h e Principe
cyclique
D'Indy the critic never directly confronted the rift between Beethoven's subjectaffirming formal procedures and his own thought. This may owe in some measure to the
critical conventions that prevailed in fin-de-siecle France. French writers of the period
cultivated two basic "genres" of symphonic criticism. In the first, critics attempted to
1
Ibid., 29-65.
205
apprehend the music's philosophical, psychological, or ideological significance. Such
prose tends toward the broadly descriptive and involves little or no discussion of the
music's technical aspects; the aforementioned Beethoven volumes by Rolland, Tiersot,
and d'Indy are examples. The other "genre" was purely analytical. A writer would
typically proceed through a given work, enumerating its themes, commenting on their
quality, and pointing out cyclic connections (when they existed). He might also devote a
few words to tonal design, and assess the degree to which the work conforms with or
departs from generic norms. The programme-note-cum-pamphlet Saint-Saens wrote for
the Organ Symphony and Franck's brief analysis of his symphony exemplify this type of
criticism. The same writer might very well practice both genres (d'Indy certainly did)—
but rarely on the same page. Thus for d'Indy, Franck's symphony was a unified cyclic
whole by virtue of one critical genre, and a "continuous ascent into pure gladness and
life-giving Light" by virtue of the other, but the relationship between these assessments is
never made entirely clear: there always remains a gap between the notes themselves and
what d'Indy took them to mean.
As we shall presently see, d'Indy the composer did confront the
"phenomenological bases" of Beethoven's heroic style in his Mountain Symphony. That
is, for all the praise he heaped on the German master and his symphonies in his prose, we
may observe an element of critique in d'Indy's reception of Beethoven as a composer.
The history of the symphony that d'Indy traced in the Cours de composition stands very
much in alignment with the notion of a "circumpolar" evolutionary trajectory proposed by
Dahlhaus, with Beethoven as the pivotal figure.21 According to d'Indy, Sammartini,
Cannabisch, Stamitz, Gossec, and Gretry invented the symphony, and Haydn and Mozart
gave it its definitive shape. Beethoven enriched and perfected this shape, and with him it
21
Vincent d'Indy, Cours de composition musicale, vol. 2, bk. 2 (Paris: Durand, 1933), 113-197; and Carl
Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1989), 152-153.
206
reached its apex: the symphony became decadent in the hands of Schubert, Schumann and
Mendelssohn, who failed to correctly apprehend Beethoven's lessons and pursue the
direction he indicated. Later composers such as Brahms only magnified their errors.
D'Indy was quite explicit about their shortcomings. Among his cherished beliefs was an
understanding of music history that was fundamentally modernist in outlook but
consonant with his political and religious conservatism. We shall consider d'Indy's
views on this topic in greater detail in Chapter 6, but they may be briefly outlined here.
Progress in music (as in any art) was imperative, imperative because the purpose of art
was nothing less than the betterment of humanity. As Jann Pasler has stressed, progress
for the conservative d'Indy was only possible when rooted in "Tradition" (always
capitalized by the composer), which he felt was timeless, stable and immutable. He often
likened.Tradition to a grand "edifice" that was in perpetual construction. True progress
added to it and bettered it, but never violated or falsified it.22 Founded on unchanging
truths, progress in art would thus allegorize the evolution of a society rooted in Catholic
faith, collective consciousness, and other cornerstone values of d'Indy's right-wing
ideology. The nineteenth-century symphonists enumerated above all erred in this
mission: they either falsified Tradition with misguided innovations, or failed to add
anything new to the edifice. It was thus necessary for (and indeed, morally incumbent
upon) the fin-de-siecle symphonist to look back to Beethoven (and not to Schubert,
Schumann or Mendelssohn) as a starting point, and build upon his achievements.
For d'Indy, an increased degree of unity across the multi-movement span of the
symphony represented the greatest of Beethoven's achievements. The key means to this
end was cyclic thematic procedure. In his Cours de composition analyses, d'Indy went to
considerable lengths to show inter-movement connections in Beethoven's symphonies.
22
Jann Pasler, "Paris: Conflicting Notions of Progress," in Music and Society: The Late Romantic Era, ed.
Jim Samson (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991), 401-405.
207
To cite just a handful of examples: in the Second Symphony, the main theme of the
larghetto derives from the subordinate theme of the opening allegro; the trio of the Eroica
Symphony's scherzo movement grows out of the first-movement main theme; and the
beginning of the Shepherd's Song in the finale of the Sixth elaborates on a codetta figure
from the end of the first movement's exposition.23 Critics have sometimes derided these
analyses and not without justification: the above-listed examples of cyclic organization
are marginally convincing at best.24 However, in fairness to d'Indy, he never claims
Beethoven's cyclicism was the fully-formed technique it would later become in the music
of Franck and others (except in the examples of the finales of the Fifth and Ninth
Symphonies). Indeed, the very dubiousness of the inter-thematic connections he draws
appears to have been their point. For d'Indy's historicism—a cornerstone of his ideology,
as we have noted—mandated progress, and finding an embryonic or incipient technique
in Beethoven's symphonies offered an avenue to the fraught task of "building" upon these
towering achievements. Put differently, the marginally convincing inter-movement
connections d'Indy draws may be understood less as analysis per se than as a
manifestation of anxiety (an anxiety that furthers the pedagogical project of the Cours):
they justify further symphonies—including, of course, d'Indy's own.
The analysis of the Symphonie sur un chant montagnard franqais that appears in
the Cours de composition positions it very much in this spirit: d'Indy argues the work is
fundamentally classical in construction, but the "principe cyclique" is more fully realized
than in its Beethovenian predecessors.
Sans pretendre innover, en ce qui concerne la construction thematique et
tonale instauree par Haydn et elargie par Beethoven, la Symphonie en sol
marque surtout une tendance a renforcer le caractere cyclique des motifs
conducteurs, a les relier plus etroitement les uns aux autres, jusqu'a les unifier
23
D'Indy, Cours de composition, vol. 2, bk. 2; on the Second Symphony see 123; on the Eroica, 127; on the
Sixth Symphony, 110,133.
24
See, for example, Hart, "The Symphony in Theory and Practice," 92.
208
meme par moments: consequence normale d'un etat de chose cree plus ou
moins consciemment par Beethoven [... ] ,25
Here d'Indy is quite convincing. The opening movement has much in common with
classical sonata forms: a slow introduction is followed by an exposition with two distinct
themes, a clearly delineated development section, a recapitulation in which the second
theme returns in the tonic, and a brief coda. The slow movement similarly features a
schematically unremarkable large ternary form ("lied" form in d'Indy's terminology), and
the finale is a sonata flavoured with rondo-like reprises in the development section. (The
movement is also unusual in that the rondo-like rhythm is broken in the coda, though this
anomaly, to which we shall return, is motivated by d'Indy's cyclic procedure.) As
Examples 5.1 and 5.2 show, the symphony's cyclic relationships, as d'Indy claims, are
unquestionably more salient than the incipient inter-movement connections he finds in
Beethoven's symphonies: the Cevennes folk song (which we shall call the Mountain
Theme) appears at the outset of the slow introduction (Example 5.1a), and its head motive
subsequently generates the main themes of each of the three movements (Examples 5.1b
to 5. Id), and a final version (Example 5.1e) appears in the coda of the finale. D'Indy also
recalls the subordinate theme of the slow movement (Example 5.2a) as an ostinato at
several points in the finale (Example 5.2b).
Example 5
Example 5.1a) I, Slow introduction, mm. 1-11
n
^
^ ^
< P
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25
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7 1
rn Jl
D'Indy, Cours de composition musicale, vol. 2, bk. 2, 170-71.
209
Example 5.1b) I, reh. A +16 to A +19
Example 5.1c) II, mm. 1-4
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Example 5.2a) II, reh. A +5 to A +8
•
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simile
Violons
Since d'Indy sought to advance the history of the genre by unifying the three
movements of the symphony—and thereby offer a lesson through which humanity could
better itself—we should look to his cyclic strategies for a critique of the formal principles
210
that Burnham and others have argued embody the "Republican," subject-laden values that
grated against d'Indy's ideology. The composer's theoretical writings orient us in this
direction. In the first sentence of his definition of cyclicism, d'Indy implies that it yields
a two-dimensional form in which a larger, over-arching structure subsumes individual
movements (as in many symphonic poems):
La sonate [he uses this term here in its broadest sense] cyclique est celle dont
la construction est subordonnee a certains themes speciaux reparaissant sous
diverse formes dans chacune des pieces constitutives de l'oeuvre, ou ils
exercent une fonction en quelque sorte regulatrice ou unificatrice.26
That d'Indy conceived the relationship between "construction" and the exigencies of
cyclic "themes speciaux" in hierarchical terms is key here. For while he stresses that his
symphony's "construction" (the sonata, "lied," and rondo schemes of its individual
movements) adheres to received practice, it effectively becomes subordinate or secondary
to some higher-order thematic procedure, one that was unbounded by tradition. By
employing cyclic technique, in other words, d'Indy could follow Beethovenian practice
on one level while on another mitigating or superseding whatever he may have viewed as
its imperfections.
What sort of higher-order, cyclic thematic strategy does the Mountain Symphony
pursue? In an early review, the composer and critic Ernest Reyer offered an important
insight. He felt the work was simply a "suite" of three movements "qui ne sont euxmemes que des variations, ou plutot des variantes, sur un theme montagnard fran?ais,"
and contrasted it negatively with the rich "developments" he admired in d'Indy's Le
Chant de la cloche?1 The view that the symphony is inferior to the earlier "legende
dramatique" is unlikely to find many adherents today, and it might be easy to dismiss
26
Vincent d'Indy, Cours de composition musicale, vol. 2, bk. 1 (Paris: Durand, 1909), 375. On "twodimensional form," see chapter ln44.
27
Ernest Reyer, Revue musicale, Le Journal des debats politiques et litteraires, March 27, 1887.
211
Reyer's summary statements as facile morning-after criticism. But while d'Indy would
bristle at having the work labeled a suite (and denied the prestige of the symphony),
Reyer's observation that the procedure of variation binds together its three movements
would have doubtless pleased him. Though he does not explicitly link the Mountain
Symphony to this technique in his analysis, in theoretical portions of the Cours, he
repeatedly likens cyclic form to variation procedure. Franck's A-major violin sonata, for
example, offers a
modele accompli de la forme cyclique. Entre ce dernier mode de construction
et la variation, il y a de telles affinites qu'une delimitation respective n'est
guere possible: le theme cyclique qui se transforme est veritablement varie ou
meme amplifie: la variation qui circule dans les pieces constitutives d'une
oeuvre a, par cela meme, une fonction cyclique.
Similarities between the two procedures are such that they even impact the rigorously
logical layout of the Cours itself:
Les transformations cycliques d'un Theme [...] tiennent souvent beaucoup de
1'amplification thematique [a type of variation to which we shall return], et
c'est pourquoi l'etude de ces transformations devait etre suivie immediatement
dans cet ouvrage de celle de la Variation.29
D'Indy's title appeals to the theme-and-variations genre. Though sometimes
called "Symphonie cevenole," the composer himself always called the work "Symphonie
sur un chant montagnard fran^ais" (or the generic appellations "Symphonie en Sol" or
"Premiere symphonie), which echoes the formulaic appellations of many variation sets,
including d'Indy's favourite Trente-trois variations sur une Valse de Diabelli. So too
does the form of its opening. After a simple arpeggio of the tonic triad, the Mountain
Theme appears in its entirety, and a variation immediately follows (more precisely, what
d'Indy called a "variation decorative," a type derived historically from the passacaglia
28
29
D'Indy, Cours de composition,
Ibid., 448.
212
vol. 2, bk. 1, 487.
and chaconne, in which the theme itself remains intact, but the counterpoint woven
around it changes).30 A brief transition leads to another variation at the beginning of the
allegro: the movement's main theme, which d'Indy would call a "variation
amplificatrice." (In this type, motivic details trigger new continuations or elaborations
such that the amplification's phrase structure and underlying harmonic progression will
differ from the theme.)31 At this point, the paratactic succession of variations breaks
down and a normative sonata form follows. Nevertheless, the variation series resumes
with the main themes of the second and third movements, and the coda of the latter adds a
final variation (all "amplifications" of the Mountain Theme, as Example 5.1 shows). A
theme-and-variations form is thus draped over the three-movement span of the work, in
much the same way that Saint-Saens writes something like a large-scale sonata argument
across the four movements of the Organ Symphony (see Figure 5.1 below). To re-phrase
in light of d'Indy's hierarchical scheme, the procedure of variation reigns at the highest—
cyclic—level of form. Ornamental and decorative variations of the Mountain Theme that
appear in transitional, developmental, or episodic passages in each of the movements
periodically buttress this overarching theme and variations form (for example, at rehearsal
D in first movement, letters F through G in the second, and rehearsal L in the finale).
How does d'Indy's variation-based cyclic form represent a critique of the
Beethovenian symphony that he regarded as the high point of the genre's history and the
necessary point of departure for the fin-de-siecle symphonist? The procedure of variation
is fundamentally concerned with extracting richness and variety from a given theme or
other musical unit. Intrinsically iterative and additive, and, based on varied repetitions of
that unit, it yields a form that is paratactic, open, and since it does not motivate its own
ending point, potentially ongoing. Variation sets inherently depend on other procedures
30
31
Ibid., 457-465.
Ibid., 466-487.
213
(involving texture, dynamics, tonality, and so on) to generate large-scale shape and
articulate closure. As Elaine Sisman has indicated, variation thus stands in opposition to
periodic, rounded, or otherwise formally closed and thus teleological, "developmental"
form-building procedures. 32 D'Indy recognized this distinction himself (though on a
more abstractly theoretical level) and even employed the same terminology:
Dans le developpement, en effet, un theme agit: il se demembre et module; il
est en marche pour arriver a un autre etat [...] Dans la variation, au contraire,
un theme 5'expose: il peut se completer et revetir des ornements nouveaux;
mais ces modifications, si profondes qu'elles soient, ne le mettent pas en
33
mouvement; il demeure en repos [...]." (Emphasis in original).
Activity and motion versus static exposition: development engages change and progress
from one state to another, whereas variation involves iteration and aims to "renouveler et
d'en accroitre l'interet [i.e. of a theme], sans en alterer jamais la signification, ni, en
quelque sorte, la substance meme." 34
Figure 5.1
I.
Intro.
m. 1
Reh. A
Mountain Variation
Theme
T
Expo.
A +16
D +15
Main
th. =
variation
Sub. th
t
Recap.
II
A
H
L+2
m. 1
A +5
Main
Sub.
th. =
th.
variation
t
III.
Rondo
B
A
C+8
G+2
Middle Recap.
section
t
Coda
D +16
m. 1
Dvt.
F +15
U-12
Main
Episode Theme Episode
th. =
(etc.)
variation
Variation
t
32
T
Elaine Sisman, "Variations," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie and
John'Tyrell, vol. 26 (London: Macmillan, 2001): 284.
33
D'Indy, Cours de composition, vol. 2, bk. 1, 448.
34
Ibid., 435.
214
In the review quoted above, Reyer implies that "development" (which he praised
in Le Chant de la cloche) is, in some essential way, axiomatic to the symphonic genre.
His relegation of the Mountain Symphony to the genre of the suite on account of its
appeal to variation reiterates this stance. In this respect, Reyer accords with Burnham, at
least to the extent that Beethoven's Heroic symphonies had become avatars of the genre
itself. "Development" in this broadly conceived sense, Burnham shows, lies at the
technical and ideological core of Beethoven's heroic style. In the first movement of the
Eroica Symphony, the initially unstable theme, with its restless impulse to move forward,
reaches consummation in utterly stable tonic/dominant alternations in the climactic coda.
In the Fifth, the dark fatalism of the C-minor first movement yields to the triumphant Cmajor military march of the finale. The Egmont overture progresses from a fragmentary
and tonally ambiguous opening to a coda that seems absolutely conclusive. In all three
examples, teleological progress characterizes large-scale form; as d'Indy might have it,
the music is constantly "en marche pour arriver a un autre etat." Whether one likens such
processes to a Hegelian evolution of the Spirit, a Goethean struggle to attain a higher
state, or the spiritual development of a Bildungsroman hero, it is through such narratives
of musical Becoming that Beethoven's symphonic works resonate with the great ideas of
individual freedom and self-determination and "breathe the Revolutionary feeling" as
Romain-Rolland put it.
D'Indy's variation-based cyclic procedure cuts the ground from under the
Beethovenian heroic archetype: the beginning of the symphony is neither incipient nor
fragmentary. As noted, and true to variation form, it opens with a statement of the
Mountain Theme, fully formed and completed by a perfect authentic cadence. Nor is
d'Indy's beginning semiotically negative (like Beethoven's Fifth), nor still does the theme
thereafter disintegrate or decay: a full variation immediately follows, and then another
when the allegro begins. There is no impetus for the theme to reassert its identity in the
215
face of otherness or to progress to completion or to a higher or more positive condition.
Indeed, a "decorative" variation (in which d'Indy re-harmonizes the otherwise fully intact
theme) appears in the first-movement coda to give the movement a circular, rather than
linear, aspect. Whereas the developmental cast of the Beethovenian heroic symphony
embodies liberal bourgeois values, d'Indy's variation-based procedure seems more
consonant with his right-wing ideology. Over the course of the work, the theme evolves
but does not truly change: its "signification" and "substance," as the composer would
have it, always remain intact. The theme in musical time functions like Tradition in
historical time: it serves as an anchor for progress as new material seems to reach back, in
the manner of the spiral that d'Indy sometimes employed as metaphor for history, to an
original theme that simply is. Like the timeless and non-negotiable truths on which
civilization needed to be based, and like—as we shall presently see—the world of the
montagnard peasants who inspired the symphony, the Mountain Theme seems
permanent, immutable, and beyond the realm of history.
5.3 La Terre et les morts
A folk song from the Cevennes might seem an unlikely basis for an orchestral
work by a young French composer in 1885 in light of the subject matter other musicians
had recently treated. Saint-Saens had dipped into Greek mythology for his well-known
symphonic poems Phaeton, Le Rouet d'Omphale, and La Jeunesse d'Hercule, and so too
had Franck for Psyche. The latter had also appealed to the supernatural via the
romanticism of Gottfried August Briiger {Le Chasseur maudit) and Victor Hugo (Les
Djinns), and Chausson had based his Viviane upon Arthurian legend. D'Indy himself,
moreover, had opted for a historical subject, Schiller's Wallenstein, for his eponymous set
of three interlinked concert overtures, his first major orchestral work, and turned to the
Gothic world of medieval Switzerland for Le Chant de la cloche, which he completed
216
shortly before he began the symphony. All seem remote from the peasant villages of the
Cevennes.
Andrew Thomson, echoing a view sometimes put forth by the composer's
contemporaries, has opined that d'Indy's treatment of a folksong reflected a desire to
found a specifically French form of the symphony (the fact that d'Indy composed the
work before he heard the Organ Symphony or Lalo's G-minor symphony might lend this
position support).35 Brian Hart has similarly suggested that the Mountain Symphony
responded to Wagner's admonition that French composers pursue "nationalist" subjects
drawn from their mythology and folklore and so too has Ruth Seiberts.36 Nevertheless,
interpreting the Mountain Theme as an expression or marker of Frenchness contradicts
the composer's own thinking. As James Ross has recently stressed, d'Indy approached
the notion of a distinctly French music with much skepticism:
In reality, there is no such thing as French music, and in general terms there is
no such thing as national music. There is music that belongs to no country;
there are musical masterpieces that do not in themselves belong to any nation.
One can hardly say that these are national qualities that are revealed in the
music of composers of each country; further it would be still more difficult to
tell what would constitute a uniquely French type of beauty in music.
Ross summarizes, "writing music that could be defined as fundamentally 'French' was
not d'Indy's prime artistic aim; his opinion confounds the rhetoric about searching for
national identity so beloved by his contemporaries."38 D'Indy's appeal to a peasant
mountain song, as we shall see in the remainder of this chapter, was motivated by
ideological concerns that, while at some level bound up in his views of what the French
35
Thomson, Vincent d'Indy and His World, 66.
Brian J. Hart, "Wagner and the Franckiste Message Symphony," in Von Wagner zum Wagnerisme, ed.
Annegret Fauser and Manuela Schwartz (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitatsverlag, 1999), 318-319; and Ruth
Seiberts, Studien zu den Sinfonien Vincent d'Indys (Mainz: Are Editions, 1998), 90-93.
37
Quoted in James Ross, "D'Indy's Fervaai. Reconstructing French Identity at the 'Fin de Siecle," Music
& Letters 84 (2003): 222-223.
38
Quoted in ibid., 223.
36
217
nation ought to be like, were more fundamentally moral and ethical than they were
nationalistic.
As art historian Robert Herbert has noted, peasant imagery was common in late
nineteenth-century French novels, poetry, and popular music, and grew in importance in
visual art to the point that "peasant subjects enjoyed a widespread popularity never before
equaled" in the last quarter of the century.39 Examples well-known today include oil
paintings by Millet, Pissarro, and Van Gogh, but peasants also factored prominently in
large numbers of lithographs, etchings, and engravings by both famous and forgotten
artists that, in their time, reached much larger audiences than canvasses ever did. The rise
of the peasant motive in visual art came at a time when real-life peasants were dwindling
in number. From the early 1830s on, the population of Paris mushroomed, doubling
between 1831 and 1851 alone, and this occurred despite the fact that the country's birth
rate was low: most of these new Parisians came from villages in the provinces. Indeed, in
the 1850s, the populations of most of France's departements (save the heavily
industrialized Nord) actually declined as their inhabitants were siphoned off by big cities,
especially the capital. Behind this "depopulation of the countryside" (as this phenomenon
was known in the parlance of the times) lay the urban-industrial revolution: traditional
uses and ownership of the land changed under the impact of new transportation and new
agricultural techniques, and peasant labourers were increasingly drawn to the city by the
new employment opportunities its rapid expansion offered. The prominence of the
peasant motive in art, however, was less a reaction to the plight of the villagers
themselves than it was a critical response to the generalized conditions brought about by
the phenomenon that underlay their displacement: mechanized production and massconsumption economics that rendered many metiers obsolete, a capitalist mindset that
39
Robert Herbert, From Millet to Leger: Essays in Social Art History (New Haven, CN: Yale University
Press, 2002), 40.
218
sapped away traditional spirituality, stifling metropolitan conditions that (as Georg
Simmel argues) tended to negate one's sense of individuality, and a whole host of other
factors that conspired to fracture traditional ways of life.40 For some writers and artists,
the peasant represented a counterblast to all of this, a reassuring icon of a simpler, purer
way of life and a point of continuity with a pre-modern past.
As Herbert shows, this was possible because a number of "myths of primitivism"
converged on the figure of the peasant in the second half of the century. Rural society
came to be viewed as un-evolving and organized around stable religious and secular
traditions; peasants were believed to be creatures of instinct, "free from the restraints of
industrial culture based on time clocks and the division of labour [...] and other signs of
the rule of materialism;" and peasant ways represented a primordial human condition that,
in the view of some, had since the renaissance increasingly become obscured by the
growing influence of scientific reason and "bookish knowledge."41 Exactly how such
myths were developed and harnessed naturally varied from artist to artist. In Millet's
canvasses, for example, peasants are typically shown with old-fashioned hand tools (hoes,
wooden plows, pitchforks, and so on), and engaged in traditional agricultural activities.
The spinner is a favourite subject—-and "one of the chief victims" of mechanized
production. As a contemporary bitterly observed, "it is rigorously true to say that the
most skillful spinner does not earn 10 centimes a day: she earns nothing. The city has
taken from the country this precious resource [.. .]"42 Herbert concludes, "to preserve
such old-fashioned institutions as the spinner, in the face of the industrial revolution, was
[...] Millet's self-appointed task." For Camille Pissarro, a political radical and follower
of the anarchist-communist theorist Pierre Kropotkin, villages, fields, and the oldfashioned ways of peasants were a vehicle for critique of the capitalist Republic: they
40
41
42
See Chapter 4, n33.
Herbert, From Millet to Leger, 50-56.
Quoted in ibid., 38.
219
offered images of health, honest labour, and dignity that represented a desirable
alternative to the decadent modern city where oppressive economic and institutional
forces held workers captive. Nevertheless, a theme common to the peasant works of both
artists (and those of many others) was that modern life was decadent and the peasant's
primitive condition somehow offered an anchor of stability in a disorienting or troubling
time.
Given d'Indy's conservative ideology—his rejection of materialism, belief in a
deterministic "natural" order, disdain for scientific rationalism (which he maintained had
corrupted music and society alike since the renaissance)—and the premium he placed
upon continuity with musical, religious, and political tradition, it is not difficult to see the
appeal that the myths of primitivism conjured by the peasant would have held for him.
The intellectual relationship some writers have posited between d'Indy and the wellknown novelist, politician, and polemicist Maurice Barres may help us sharpen the focus.
James Ross has noted that d'Indy's conservative thought resonates with the doctrine of
"la terre et les morts" Barres was developing in the late 1880s, a doctrine that shares its
basic premise with the visual artists' peasant aesthetic.43 Briefly, Barres felt that the finde-siecle French self (the "moi"), moulded as it was by the overwhelmingly centralized
state and its abstract institutions (particularly its positivist, neo-Kantian education system)
and individualistic, rationalistic ideological foundations, was doomed to a condition of
perpetually aimless drifting. To reach its full potential, the "moi" needed to shake off
these nefarious influences and "root" (enraciner) itself in the metaphorical soil of its
ancestral land and its traditions, namely its sense of collective identity, its religiosity, and
social structures, from which it would draw the vital energies it needed to flourish.
43
Ross, "d'Indy's Fervaal," 226-230.
220
As Ross and Jann Pasler have observed, d'Indy, like Barres, defended regional
identity, and for reasons that were ultimately similar.44 He numbered among the original
members of the Federation regionaliste frangaise (as did Barres) that Jean Charles-Brun
(with Charles Maurras, a chief theorist of the regionalist movement in France) founded in
1900.45 Charles-Brun himself wrote to d'Indy in 1901 to request that he address the
federation on the question of musical regionalism. D'Indy delivered his speech in
January of 1902, and L 'Action regionaliste (the FRF's press organ) published a brief
summary:
Vincent d'Indy a preconise la creation d'ecoles de musique regionales [a
vision that would later be realized in the form of the succursales of the Schola
Cantorum that opened in the provinces], dont le principal propos serait, apres
des recherches exactes sur les chants, les legendes et les coutumes de chaque
region, de renouer avec la tradition esthetique et d'exprimer la sensibilite
particuliere a chaque coin du terroir. La reforme radicale des societes dites
musicales, l'appel a l'initiative privee, aux municipalites et, dans une certaine
mesure, a l'Etat (remplacement du Prix de Rome par des Prix de France) lui
paraissent les plus efficaces moyens de realiser ce plan. 46
In a well-known essay, d'Indy argued the Prix de Rome was anachronistic, largely
because Rome was "absolutely degenerate from an artistic point of view;" the Prix de
France he envisioned would send the winners to their native regions to continue their
studies 47 The Pays, he believed, would offer an "infinitely more fertile" stimulus than
large, centralized cities. Elsewhere he elaborated further upon this theme:
II faut le dire, chaque province est susceptible de devenir une partie d'art au
meme titre que la grande patrie; mieux encore: chaque province, par sa
situation, par ses paysages, par ses coutumes particulieres, doit etre une
source d'art infiniment plus feconde que la grande ville, ou tout est centralise,
44
Jann Pasler, "Race and Nation: Musical Acclimatization and the Chansons populaires in Third Republic
France," in Western Music and Race, ed. Julie Brown (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2007), 159, 164-166; and "Deconstructing d'Indy," 239-240.
45
Stephane Giocanti, "De l'histoire a l'esthetique regionalistes," Les Cahiers de memoire d'Ardeche et
temps present 53 (1997): 31.
46
"Conference de Vincent d'Indy," L 'Action regionaliste, February 1902.
47
Quoted in Ross, "d'Indy's Fervaal," 228.
221
catalogue [...] Le jeune artiste aimant son pays d'origine [...] saura exprimer
dans ses oeuvres ce paysage qui l'entoure et qu'il n'a jamais cesse d'aimer,
ces coutumes qui ont berce son enfance, ces heros que les conte du pays ont
fait legendaires [...].'48
Behind d'Indy's advocacy of regional culture lay his self-appointed task of
rescuing French music from a state of decadence. Following Wagner, he came to label
the music of the first two thirds of the nineteenth century the "periode judai'que," and
wrote of a decadent "Italianism."49 Both smears implied "deracinement" very much in
Barres's sense of the term: "Italian" meant foreign, and "Jewish" for d'Indy implied
(among other things) cosmopolitanism, eclecticism, and utter rootlessness. French
composers needed to liberate themselves from this oppressive aesthetic by rooting their
music in "la terre et les morts." Folk music represented an obvious resource, and in
d'Indy's view offered a powerful expedient. In 1887 he began systematically collecting
folk songs of his ancestral Vivarais, and with the collaboration of Julien Tiersot, he
published two volumes.50 These songs, he stated in the preface to the first, embodied the
essence of the region's culture and would "devoiler l'ame vivaroise, sous l'un de ses
aspects les plus attachants, celui de 1'expression traditionnelle de ses sentiments, de ses
peines, de ses joies."51 They also offered a point of contact with the religious faith the
composer believed lay behind all art, and indeed with its original musical expression. For
d'Indy believed folk song grew out of plainchant:
Les melodies primitives vraiment populaires, celles qui ont subsiste a travers
les ages, et se chantent encore dans les pays ou n'a point penetre l'ignoble
chanson de cafe-concert [he doubtless had his own Vivarais in mind], sont
presque toutes, il est difficile d'en douter, des interpretations de monodies
liturgiques.52
48
Vincent d'Indy, "Des Ecoles regionales," Revueprovengale,
March 15, 1902.
Vincent d'Indy, Cours de composition musicale, vol. 3 (Paris: Durand, 1948), 103-117.
50
On d'Indy's folk song collecting, see Pasler, "Race and Nation," 159,164-166; and Giocanti, "De
l'histoire a l'esthetique regionalistes," 30-31.
51
Vincent d'Indy, Chansons populaires du Vivarais (Paris: Durand, 1900), i.
52
D'Indy, Cours de composition, vol. 1, 84.
49
222
And when toward the end of his life d'Indy lovingly waxed lyrical about an excursion
into the Cevennes some forty years earlier that yielded material he employed in Fervaal,
he even imagined folk song emanated from the terre itself:
Je quittais, de tres bon matin, la maison forestiere du Mezenc avec l'intention
de descendre a Boree, en suivant la ligne des cretes jusqu'au Gerbier. A peine
arrivais-je au col du Mezenc, que les grands nuages bas sommeillant aux
creux des montagnes commencerent a s'etirer lourdement, et je me vis bientot
entoure de blancheurs etranges, obstruant de partout le panorama des cretes et
ne laissant a ma vue qu'un champ de quelques metres ou je ne distinguais que
vaguement le sentier cependant si connu de moi.
Et je fas saisi d'un sentiment indefinissable, comme si mes vieilles montagnes
unissaient leurs forces pour m'interdire d'aller plus loin ... [in original.]
J'etais presque tente de retourner sur mes pas, lorsque, de cet epais silence
que connaissent bien les habitants des montagnes et qu'on pourrait nommer le
silence du brouillard, se detacha soudain une lente melopee psalmodiee par
des voix feminines.
Cela venait de tres loin, du cote de l'Est; cela semblait sortir des fonds
escarpes que surplombent les falaises de la crete. Impossible de discerner
aucune parole..., et, du reste, eusse-je entendu ces paroles que je ne les eusse
point comprises, car c'etait, a n'en pas douter, la voix meme de la montagne
qui se manifestait dans son langage musical.53
When we recall that for d'Indy, art was fundamentally didactic—its ultimate purpose was
to nurture the soul and "foster its progress"—his vision of French music comes to
resemble Barres's doctrine strongly indeed. Music's decline in the "epoque judai'que"
had mirrored the broader decay of "l'artiste, l'homme, les moeurs [...], en un mot, la
civilization" into materialism, positivism, and other Revolutionary values.54 The
"enracinement" of music via folk song thus offered a lesson to the listener: the path to a
higher, fuller existence led back to the "primitive"—uncorrupted, and timelessly
traditional—ways of life of one's ancestral pays.
53
54
Vincent d'Indy, "La Voix de la montagne," Almanach vivarois (1928): 12-24.
D'Indy, Cours de composition, vol. 1,211.
223
5.4
Enracinement
Such "enracinement" forms the ideological basis of the Symphonie sur un chant
montagnardfranqais.
Indeed, it is manifest in d'Indy's title, which vis-a-vis the work's
folk-song basis implicitly defines the nation as an agglomeration of regions rather than a
centralized structure (for this reason he did not like appellation "Symphonie cevenole").
It is also manifest in the musical discourse. To appreciate this, we must recognize that the
symphony's primary objective is not to represent or depict the naive, bucolic existence of
the mountain folk or the picturesque landscape of the Cevennes, or even express the
emotions evoked by the composer's ancestral homeland. The work, in short, is not a
pastoral symphony cast in the expressive mould of Beethoven's Sixth. The beginning of
the symphony, where the Mountain Theme sounds in the English horn, indeed expresses
"pastoral melancholy" (as Andrew Thompson puts it), and other passages that dot the
work (such as the return of the complete Mountain Theme in the first-movement coda, the
peasant dance at the beginning of the finale, and passages in horn fifths throughout)
similarly evoke the pastoral.55 But contrary to Beethoven's Sixth, such passages remain
"marked." That is, they stand apart from a prevailing sound world that is very much at
odds with the harmonic, textural, and rhythmic simplicity that Robert Hatten, Leonard
Ratner, and others have singled out as the essential characteristic of the pastoral "topic"
or "expressive genre."56
One of the most distinctive aspects of that sound world is the prominent part
d'Indy composed for the piano. In contrast to Saint-Saens's Third, the instrument is
heard throughout, and plays such a significant role that d'Indy (and countless other
commentators) felt obliged to stress—with an eye to keeping ambitious pianists in their
55
Thomson, Vincent d'Indy and His World, 67.
Robert Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation
(Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1994), 91-111; and Leonard Ratner, Classic Music: Expression,
Form, and Style (New York: Schirmer, 1980), 21.
56
224
place, among other reasons—that the work was indeed a symphony and "in no way a
en
piano concerto."
The composer may have come to regret dedicating the work to
Leontine Bordes-Pene, the "soloist" at the premiere. Broader generic issues aside, the
work at times sounds like a concerto in its moment-to-moment flow. The piano on
occasion takes a commanding soloistic position, as it does at rehearsal C in the first
movement (where it gets its own "exposition" of the main theme), or after letter A in the
slow movement, where it introduces the second theme; in both passages the orchestra
retreats to a distinctly subordinate role. In passages where the piano and orchestra seem
on more equal footing, deep booming bass and dense voicing or right-hand octaves ensure
a registral span and density of texture that match the orchestra (see, for example, the
exchanges at letter G in the first movement), and where the orchestra carries the melodic
or motivic material, it is often adorned by dazzling piano figuration in a manner very
characteristic of the nineteenth-century piano concerto (as in the slow movement's B
section before F). Equally characteristic of the piano concerto, and more central to our
present purposes, is that the piano writing throughout is highly virtuosic. As may be
observed in the lead-up to the first-movement recapitulation or at letter J of the finale, the
part is as technically demanding as the early nineteenth-century piano concertos of
Beethoven, Hummel, Schumann, and Chopin, even if it does not require the super-human
heroics called for by Liszt. To briefly revisit an issue addressed in section 5.3 of this
chapter, d'Indy may have alluded to the concerto genre in the context of the symphony to
allegorically "contain" the surfeit of subjectivity that seems implicit in the soloist's role.
The "heroic" virtuoso, d'Indy stresses, here becomes just another anonymous member of
the orchestra. But with respect to our present purposes: it scarcely needs emphasizing
that such density and complexity of texture is utterly removed from the placid simplicity
57
D'Indy, Cours de composition, vol. 2, bk. 2, 171.
225
of the pastoral genre. Indeed, one would be justified in invoking its opposite: the virtuoso
concerto might be called the epitome of highly studied urban sophistication.
So too with harmony. As David Wyn Jones and others have noted, through vast
stretches of Beethoven's Sixth the only chords heard are the tonic, subdominant, and
dominant.58 In the Mountain Symphony, on the other hand, d'Indy routinely draws upon
the full richness of the post-Wagnerian harmonic palate: half-diminished seventh chords
are legion, and added-dissonance dominants, chains of mediant-related harmonies, and
pungent chromatic suspensions routinely spice the texture. Chromatic middle-ground
voice-leading often gives the music a restlessly directional thrust over substantial spans
(as at rehearsal F through G in the slow movement). D'Indy's harmony often recalls
Franck, and in places (see, for example rehearsal Dff in the same movement) his chord
progressions would be at home in Ravel's Jeux d'eau or Sonatine. Indeed, by the
standards of French concert music of the mid 1880s, d'Indy's harmony could fairly be
called state of the art: again, studied sophistication, not naive simplicity.
The beginning finale well exemplifies the nature of the relationship between the
rustic, bucolic character evoked by d'Indy's title and the pastoral passages that dot the
work on the one hand, and the prevailing state-of-the-art concert-music style on the other.
Here, d'Indy evokes village festivities—much as Beethoven had in the celebrated trio of
the Sixth Symphony's scherzo movement—by mimicking the clumsiness of a peasant
band with purposefully crude orchestration: flutes, oboes, and clarinets, all a 2 and in
unison, shrilly belt out the dance tune, joined a second time around by strings in similarly
"vulgar" octaves. At rehearsal B, however, the dramatic swell of the full orchestra
drowns out the quaint, rustic sound of the village band, and the theme, now fully
harmonized, migrates to the brass with the accompaniment of cymbal crashes and drums
58
David Wyn Jones, Beethoven, Pastoral Symphony (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1995), 57.
226
at letter C: the peasant dance becomes a military march. The juxtaposition of the opening
movement's slow introduction and allegro main theme is rhetorically similar. Here, the
"pastoral melancholy" of the English horn and flute solos gives way to (again in
Thompson's words) "Lisztian grandeur" when the theme assumes the characteristic
dotted, upward thrusting, masculine profile of a sonata-allegro main theme.
In both cases, pastoral music (in the manner of Beethoven's Sixth) becomes
muscular and heroic (in the manner of the Eroica and the Fifth) by way of Lisztian or
Wagnerian thematic transformation. Given that the heroic manner of the Eroica and Fifth
had become a stylistic norm of the symphony over the course of the nineteenth century,
this might be put differently: the transformation into the generically characteristic military
march and heroic masculine main theme neutralizes the explicitly pastoral character of
the beginnings of both movements. In this sense, the Mountain Symphony represents the
antithesis of Beethoven's Sixth: in the latter, the symphony becomes a container for
pastoral content; in the former, the pastoral triggers typically symphonic music. Put
differently still, d'Indy's characteristically symphonic music is enracinee in the timeless
traditions and unchanging ways of Cevennes village life, and, as the composer might have
it, in the terre itself.
D'Indy's music is also rooted in the Mountain Theme in more subtle ways. A
number of critics have suggested that the composer successfully transferred the general
character of the original tune to its variations and to the symphony as a whole. Rene
Chaillon, for example, wrote
En edifiant sa composition sur l'emploi d'un authentique chant de terroir,
d'Indy [...] a su eviter la fadeur d'une simple transcription. II ne s'est pas
borne a reproduire purement et simplement; s'assimilant la substance meme
de l'air recueilli, le respectant dans son esprit mais le transformant dans sa
lettre, il en a tire des trouvailles elles-memes pleines de seve, de naturel,
auxquelles le theme original semble avoir transmis son parfum authentique
227
dans toute son integrite. Au lieu de l'imitation servile : 1'interpretation
geniale."59
Rene Dumesnil similarly noted
c'est au folklore qu'il demande l'inspiration, c'est aux sources rafraichissantes
de l'art populaire qu'il puise ses idees musicales. Mais cela ne veut pas dire
qu'il se contente de noter les airs recueillis sur la montagne ou dans la plaine :
ce n'est point l'aspect exterieur de cette musique que l'artiste reproduit, c'est
sa substance meme qu'il assimile.60
One way d'Indy "assimilates" the substance of the Mountain Theme is by employing its
characteristic motives as seeds from which form develops. We have already noted that
the theme's head motive (scale degrees 1-2-3-5) produces the "amplifications" that serve
as the main themes of the three movements. Equally characteristic is the pentatonic
Mountain Theme's drop to the sixth degree in the second measure of its original form.
The harmonic relationship that this emphasis on the sixth degree implies typifies
pentatonic music (as we observed in the last chapter, only the tonic and submediant triads
are subsets of the pentatonic scale), and becomes integral to the music's syntax at a
number of levels (though d'Indy does not actually harmonize the theme this way in the
introduction). Third relationships, of course, are legion in nineteenth-century music.
Stylistic commonplaces, however, may hold hermeneutic significance in certain contexts.
The premium d'Indy placed on the concept of enracinement—of deriving a modern music
from the timeless folk song—invites us to pay special attention to links between the
motivic details of his source melody and the symphony's musical style.
D'Indy works the theme's emphasis on the sixth degree into the tonal
organization of the slow introduction: at rehearsal A +7, the second statement of the
theme concludes not on the tonic, but the submediant (and the basses add another minor
third beneath the triad's root to elide this deceptive cadence with the next phrase). The
59
60
R. Chaillon, "La Premiere symphonie de Vincent d'Indy," L 'Education musicale 5 (October 1950): 4.
Rene Dumesnil, Portraits de musiciens frangais (Paris: Plon, 1938), 135.
228
slow introduction concludes (A +15) not on the home key's dominant, but on that of the
sixth degree. The allegro, of course, begins in G major, but d'Indy nevertheless folds the
submediant triad into the tonic harmony in the form of an added sixth chord, and the
theme itself emphasizes the "pentatonic" sixth degree. An added sixth similarly adorns
the subdominant chord to which the theme moves in its fifth measure, and in the ninth
and eleventh measures, d'Indy adds sixths to minor triads to produce half-diminished
seventh chords. As noted above, the half-diminished sonority features prominently
throughout the symphony: this showpiece of d'Indy's richly coloured, post-Wagnerian
harmonic palate grows out of his timeless and "primitive" folk-song source.
Deeper levels of structure also reflect submediant harmonic relationships. The
transition arrives on the dominant of D (at rehearsal D -2), setting up the "default"
second-theme tonality (to borrow Hepokoski's terminology). At rehearsal D +8,
however, the root of the A7 chord drops a minor third and the upper voices shuffle
chromatically to form the dominant-seventh chord on F-sharp that crystallizes at D +13.
The second theme follows (at D +15) not in the projected D major, but in the parallel of
its submediant, B major. A submediant relationship similarly initiates the recapitulation.
At K +11, the music settles on what sounds like the home-key augmented-sixth chord
(see Example 5.3). This chord, however, does not resolve in the expected fashion: the G
slips down to G-flat (the enharmonic spelling of the tonic-key leading-tone) and the
basses begin to oscillate between E-flat and D, but the other two pitches of the chord (Bflat and D-flat) are held. The E-flat therefore continues to sound as the structural bass
(and the root of a minor-seventh chord) right through to the arrival of the tonic. D'Indy,
then, does not prepare the recapitulation with the conventional "standing on the
dominant" (to adopt William Caplin's terminology), but with a "standing on the flat
submediant." The tonic arrives by way of a major third relationship that mirrors the slip
229
from the dominant-seventh of E to G major that initiates the exposition (see A +14 to A
+16). In the Cours de composition, d'Indy insists that his recapitulation unfolds in an
Example 5.3 I, K + 1 2 to L + 2
Piano
Violons
Altos
Violonccllcs
G: 6
e n a n i m a n t d e p l u s en p l u s
r
A
V
'
=
=
Iffi
[contrcbasses non
230
1
tremolo]
poco a poco cresc.
—<
molto
Example 5.3 (continued)
Glt-Gb
[contrcbasses loco]
eb?
231
Example 5.3 (continued)
1 M o u v e m e n t ( M o d e r e m e n t anime.)
r
J
J T
3
G
"entirely classical" manner save some chromatic intensification of the tonic key.61 This is
not entirely true. In a normative classical recapitulation, the transition is recomposed so
as to lead back to the tonic for the second theme. In d'Indy's recapitulation, however, the
transition remains largely as it was in the exposition (Figures 5.2a and 5.2b compare the
two passages in harmonic reduction). D'Indy instead recomposes the main theme in such
a way that the (intact) transition emphasizes the dominant of B-flat. He is thus able to
recover the G-major tonic for the "classical" recapitulation of his second theme by way of
the same submediant substitution that produced B major (instead of the projected D) at
the analogous spot in the exposition.
61
D'Indy, Cours de composition,
232
vol. 2, bk. 2, 171-172.
Figure 5.2
Figure 5.2a) I, exposition, transition
reh. C
G+
C+7
j
I,1'}
I
b
VI
D+ 41
C+8
D
tt
Jlj
f
D+4
111 \ti
D+7
^
i
b*».
D+13
'j|»|j
B+ V 7
V7
V7
(«)
b
VI
V7
Sub. Th.
D+15
#lj
I
l»VI*
Figure 5.2b) I, recapitulation, transition
reh. L+16
M
M+4
'1 h.b«
F+
V
7
I
V
(iv)
V7
Sub. Th.
M+12
M+7
tyl
'1
V7
1>VI
hft
„f
x
G+ V 7
* I
I
In the opening movement, then, d'Indy composes out at various levels of structure
the submediant harmonic relationship that the pentatonic Mountain theme's drop to the
sixth degree implies. This harmonic relationship continues to reverberate through the
remainder of the symphony. In the slow movement, the submediant inflects the B-flat
major tonality at virtually every turn. The first pitch—a unison G pickup—casts a
submediant hue over the tonic triad that appears on the downbeat, and an augmented triad
on the measure's second beat tonicizes G minor on the third (see Example 5.4). A
cadential progression to the dominant in the third measure asserts B-flat major as the
prevailing tonality, but the ensuing tonic triad is again coloured by the sixth-degree
pickup as the entire three-measure passage is repeated. The submediant inflections that
colour B-flat major in the opening measures intensify over the course of the movement.
In the retransition, a submediant slip from E minor (rehearsal F) brings about G major at
rehearsal F +7. This chord is prolonged for eleven measures as the bass ascends
chromatically from D to G, and at the downbeat of the recapitulation (rehearsal G +2), G
is held over as the structural bass (which is embellished by upper and lower neighbour
tones). The cadential progression to F in the theme's third measure again implies B-flat
233
major tonality, but d'Indy now withholds the actual sonority of the tonic chord altogether,
substituting a chromatically inflected submediant on the downbeat of the recapitulation's
fourth measure.
Example 5.4 II, mm. 1-4
piano
The submediant's parallel major plays an important role in the sonata-rondo
finale, as the composer stressed in his own analysis: the second theme (D +16) is in E
major, and so too are two main-theme refrains in the development section (F +15 and J
+16).62 The sixth degree (chromatically inflected) continues to resound right to the
symphony's final measures (from Z +16), where E-flats (in the orchestra) strikingly
decorate the tonic triad (in the piano), recalling the flat submediant-to-tonic progression
that ushers in the opening movement's recapitulation and other major-third harmonic
relationships heard throughout the symphony.
D'Indy stylistically "roots" his symphony in the Mountain Theme not only by
abstracting its pitch motives, but also its rhythmic character. In the slow introduction, the
theme unfolds with rhythmic fluidity. The organization of the first two phrases into
groups of 3+2 dotted quarter-note beats denies it a sense of metric regularity. Although
the theme seems to settle into a 9/8 rhythm in its fifth and sixth measures, the time
signature shifts to 6/8 the following bar (to accommodate the melodic cadence on the
tonic), suspending the sense of regular metric grouping as soon as it is established.
62
Ibid., 173.
234
D'Indy transfers the theme's rhythmic suppleness to much of the music that follows in the
first two movements. Certain passages seem as meter-less as the slow introduction. The
main theme of the slow movement, for example, is organized into groups of 3+2 quarternote beats (much like the "original" Mountain Theme), and shifting time signatures
periodically suspend metric regularity elsewhere in the movement. And even when a
given meter is palpable, this requires some effort on the listener's part. In the opening
movement's second theme, for example, the two-beat rhythmic pattern in the violin
accompaniment, d'Indy's unequal phrase markings (which group together nine quarternote beats then seven), and changes in melodic direction that stress the second beat all
undercut the notated triple meter. Indeed, as the theme unfolds, the melodic contour
suggests an almost seamless shift from 3/4 to 2/4 (at D +17) and then back to 3/4 (one
measure before E). Even when the meter is strongly emphasized, the music virtually
never falls into complete rhythmic regularity. In the opening movement's main theme (A
+16), for example, the shifting metrical position of the pairs of even eighth notes creates a
gentle syncopation in the fourth measure and produces a subtle hemiola in the sixth
through eighth.
All of this changes at the beginning of the finale. Here the 2/4 meter is utterly
firm and four-measure phrases regulate the music in the manner of the peasant dance that
d'Indy evokes with his rustic orchestration. But even after the orchestral tutti drowns out
the village band (at rehearsal C), the meter and phrase rhythm remain rock steady, in stark
contrast to the preceding two movements. The second theme (D +16ff), featuring 2against-3 cross rhythms, is metrically more supple, but it too is organized into rigidly
symmetrical four-measure phrases. And so the finale continues; indeed the movement
remains almost perfectly foursquare right through to the beginning of the coda, a
remarkable stretch of some 400 measures. (D'Indy momentarily disrupts the four-bar
phrase rhythm only at letter F +15, where he shortens the grouping structure to intensify
235
the perfect cadence at the end of the second theme, and at I +12 and K, where he
interpolates extra two-bar groups.)
As noted above, d'Indy idiosyncratically believed that folk song had evolved from
plainchant, as "le peuple" adapted religious music to their secular purposes, especially
dance. Despite his advocacy of regional culture, the composer's writings imply that such
adaptation represented a form of debasement and corruption. "Le peuple" adapted chant
by imposing periodic, cadence rhythms upon it. Such symmetrical structure made the
music easier to remember, but it also "vulgarized" it and eviscerated the highly expressive
rhythmic character of its plainsong source. Form came to dominate content. This
development was progressive. The very oldest songs retained the rhythmic characteristics
of chant, but in time, la carrure, the "division symetrique des mesures en quatre et en
multiples de quatre," came to utterly dominate.63 D'Indy stresses that such squareness
was
a peu pres inconnue avant le XVIIe siecle: elle est done posterieure a la
Renaissance [by which d'Indy means what music historians usually call the
early baroque], et doit certainement une grande partie de son succes au
mauvais gout pretentieux de toute cette epoque. 4
Here, d'Indy's history of folk song joins his history of art music. A capital sin of
"renaissance" composers had been to impose metric regularity on music. In the great
medieval art of the church, "le rythme seul [...] regnait en maitre souverain sur la
musique." However,
[a]u XVIIe siecle, au contraire, sous l'influence chaque jour croissante des
mensuralistes, [...] la barre de mesure cesse d'etre un simple signe graphique;
elle devient un point d'appui periodique du rythme, auquel elle enleve bientot
toute sa liberie et son elegance.
63
64
D'Indy, Cours de composition,
Ibid., 89.
236
vol. 1, 89.
He continued, "[d]e la proviennent ces formes symetriques et carrees, auxquelles nous
devons une grande partie des platitudes de l'italianisme des XVIII6 et XIXe siecles."65
This was a lamentable state of affairs, d'Indy concluded, which needed to be redressed.
The Mountain Symphony recapitulates the broad lines of d'Indy's history of folk
music and the decline into carrure that it shared with art music. The free, non-metrical
character of the Mountain Theme represents the "original" state of folksong, in which
"pure rhythm" reigned in chant-like fashion; this character, as we have seen, is retained
through the first two movements. The highly metric, four-square, cut of the finale
embodies the rhythmically impoverished condition into which the secular needs of "le
peuple"—that is, dance—eventually led their music, and in which art music had been
mired since the seventeenth century.
D'Indy recapitulates history so he can proclaim the future—a future rooted in the
most remote past. Through most of the finale, the Mountain Theme forms part of a
double theme, an ostinato that accompanies the dance tune proper. (The dance also
reproduces the Mountain Theme's third and fourth measures in its third through fifth; see
again Examples 5.1a and 5. Id). Although this variant of the theme sometimes appears by
itself (as at F +15), it always remains confined in accompaniment-like two-bar ostinato
units. At the coda (U -12), however, a final variation (or "amplification" in d'Indy's
taxonomy) of the Mountain Theme appears instead of the dance tune and/or ostinato,
which rondo-like appearances in the development section (at F +15 and J +16) encourage
us to expect. The Mountain Theme here breaks free from the oppressive dance: it
becomes a proper, tuneful theme instead of a supporting ostinato. But more important, it
also breaks out of the carrure in which the entire movement has been stuck. The coda's
first phrase extends over six metrically ambiguous measures (instead of the prevailing
65
Ibid., 216-17.
237
four-bar length): the strong right-hand accents on the second beats of the second and fifth
measures imply groups of three quarter-note beats and thus contradict the harmonic
rhythm and downbeat emphasis of the left hand's chords. The phrase, moreover,
concludes with a heavily accented weak-beat half cadence that both clouds the meter and
creates a hiccup effect when the passage begins again in the following bar. A variation of
this variation, now in 3/8 time, follows at letter V +6. This phrase is, at seven measures,
irregular in length, and also concludes with an offbeat cadence and the resulting rhythmic
hiccup. Here too disagreement between the melody (in which sharp syncopations in the
second and third measures imply groups of two eighth notes) and the accompaniment
(where block chords emphasize the notated downbeats) undercuts the meter. This
metrically supple character persists through to the end of the piece: d'Indy treats the
Mountain Theme to more rhythmic variation at X +8, recapitulates the second theme
(with its 2+3 cross rhythms) at Y, and at X +22 broadens out the version of the theme
introduced at V +6 to conclude.
By breaking free from the decadent clutches of the "epoque metrique," d'Indy's
coda picks up where his written history leaves off and takes the necessary next step in the
evolution of music. And that step was to re-root music in the flexible, varied, and (in
d'Indy's opinion) highly expressive rhythmic style of early folk song—of the theme upon
which the symphony stands—and ultimately the religious song from which it was
derived.
238
Chapter 6 - Vincent d'Indy, Second Symphony
6.1 Introduction
In 1930, the composer Albert Roussel forecasted a bright future for d'Indy's
Second Symphony: "Elle peut etre citee parmi les quelques rares oeuvres dont la patine du
temps ne fera qu'augmenter la valeur."1 Roussel had good reason to be optimistic. The
work's premiere in 1904 had been a resounding success. The symphony immediately
entered the standard repertoire of Parisian orchestras and continued to appear regularly on
concert programmes in Roussel's day in France and abroad. Superlatives swirled in
period writing. Shortly after the premiere, the always thoughtful Paul Dukas proclaimed
the work a crown jewel of contemporary music.3 Dukas's friendship with d'Indy—and
the fact that he was the work's dedicatee—likely coloured his appraisal, but other, less
partisan critics, reached similar judgments. Pierre Lalo considered the finale "l'un des
plus beaux morceaux de symphonie, le plus beau peut-etre, qui ait ete ecrit depuis
Beethoven."4 The young Michel Dimitry Calvocoressi declared that the symphony
represented the height of d'Indy's achievements: "c'est la une oeuvre qui decele chez M.
Vincent d'Indy la presence de cette serenite a laquelle l'artiste parvient une fois qu'il est a
l'apogee de son savoir et qu'il sent sa volonte toute-puissante. Je n'en saurais, je crois,
faire de plus bel eloge."5 Rene Dumesnil opined "n'eut-il ecrit que ces deux symphonies,
Vincent d'Indy resterait au premier rang de l'ecole frangaise."6 As Brian Hart has shown,
1
Albert Roussel, "La Symphonie en si bemol de Vincent d'Indy," Latinite: Revue des pays d'Occident 3
(1930): 282.
2
See Brian J. Hart, "The Symphony in Theory and Practice in France, 1900-1914" (PhD diss, Indiana
University, 1994), 215, 484-487.
3
Paul Dukas, "La Deuxieme symphonie de Vincent d'Indy," in Les Ecrits de Paul Dukas sur la musique,
ed. Gustave Samazeuilh (Paris: Societe d'editions franfaises et internationales, 1948), 610.
4
Pierre Lalo, "Concerts Lamoureux: Deuxieme symphonie de M. Vincent d'Indy," Le Temps, March 26,
1912.
5
Michel-Dimitry Calvocoressi, "La Symphonie en si bemol de M. Vincent d'Indy," Le Guide musical, May
8,1904.
6
Rene Dumesnil, "Vincent d'Indy," Mercure de France, January 1, 1932.
239
d'Indy's Second extended considerable influence over an entire generation of
symphonists (including Roussel) at a time when symphonies proliferated as they had
never before in France.7 Conditions, in short, seemed germane to the work's continued
prosperity.
As things turned out, however, Roussel was dead wrong. In the latter half of the
century, the Second Symphony—along with most of d'Indy's oeuvre—fell into obscurity
and now rarely receives performances. What happened? The composer's politics have
certainly worked against him. As is well known, d'Indy's right-wing ideology came to
include a streak of virulent and publicly articulated anti-Semitism. In his posthumously
published book on Wagner and in the third volume of the Cours, he laced vicious attacks
against some of his predecessors with racist vitriol; he declared Meyerbeer and certain
other nineteenth-century opera composers representatives of a decadent "style judai'que."8
D'Indy's catalogue, moreover, includes the notorious opera La Legende de SaintChristophe, which he styled a "drame anti-juif."9
The position that historians have accorded to d'Indy in late twentieth-century
narratives of music history proved just as damaging. Historians of turn-of-the-century.
music most often associate the highly valued ideals of modernism and progress with the
strikingly new harmonic, formal, timbral, and expressive paths blazed by Debussy.
D'Indy, on the other hand, is typically cast as Debussy's antithesis: an epigone who
denounced modernist innovation and ferociously clung to traditional syntax, genres,
7
Brian J. Hart "Wagner and the Franckiste 'Message Symphony,'" in Von Wagner zum Wagnerisme:
Musik, Literatur, Kunst, Politik, ed. Annegret Fauser and Manuela Schwartz (Leipzig: Leipziger
Universitatsverlag, 1999), 315-338; and Hart, "Vincent d'Indy and the Development of the French
Symphony," Music and Letters 87 (2006): 237-261.
8
For a sensitive account of d'Indy's anti-Semitism, see Manuela Schwartz, "Nature et evolution de la
pensee antisemite chez d'Indy," in Vincent d'Indy et son temps, ed. Manuela Schwartz (Sprimont, Belgium:
Pierre Mardaga, 2006), 37-65.
9
For a reading of the opera that highlights its anti-Semitic aspects, see Jane F. Fulcher, "Vincent d'Indy's
drame anti-juif and its Meaning in Paris, 1920," Cambridge Opera Journal 2 (1990): 295-319; see also her
French Cultural Politics and Music from the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War (Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999), 66-74.
240
forms, and expressive ideals. History, in short, has cast d'Indy as a musical, as well as a
political, conservative. Brian Hart and Jane Fulcher have recently re-articulated this
view. In their accounts, the composer is an archetypal conservative, suspicious of modern
developments and concerned above all with promulgating the traditions of the past in his
pedagogy, prose, and especially his music.
For both Hart and Fulcher, the Second Symphony represents a flagship of
d'Indy's oeuvre, a composition in which he emblematically, and even polemically,
declared his most cherished aesthetic and ideological values. Hart offers a detailed
narrative reading: cyclic themes representing "healthy tradition" and the nefarious
influence of "modern music" battle until the former decisively vanquishes the latter.
Setting this analysis against the composer's loudly and frequently-voiced commitment to
tradition, Hart concludes that the symphony unequivocally proclaims its composer's
unwavering allegiance to the music of the past, and rejection of the modernist innovations
of Debussy and his followers.10 Fulcher broadens Hart's conclusions. For her, the
symphony's anti-modern narrative also expresses d'Indy's traditionalist—anti-republican,
anti-Dreyfussard (and anti-Semitic)—political convictions.11
Fulcher and Hart are but the latest critics who find special significance in the
Second Symphony. The composer's early biographer Leon Vallas similarly positioned it
as an aesthetic and ideological keystone of d'Indy's oeuvre. Others echoed him,
including Norman Demuth, who suggested that with the Second, d'Indy confirmed his
Schola Cantorum lectures "by his own musical example" and "irrefutably carried out his
theories."12 The composer's theoretical and pedagogical writings encourage such
interpretations. As we observed in the last chapter, d'Indy believed the chief purpose of
10
Hart, "The Symphony in Theory and Practice," 156-158,211-224; and "Wagner and the Franckiste
'Message-Symphony,'" 323-328.
11
Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, 65-66.
12
Norman Demuth, Vincent d'Indy, 1851-1931: Champion of Classicism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1974), 48.
241
art was "enseignement," moral or ideological "teaching," and deemed certain genres
particularly well-suited to this mission. He divided music into two broad categories. On
the one hand was "music pure," or "musique symphonique" which he defined as "pieces
instrumentales, consistant uniquement dans le groupement esthetique des sons, sans
aucune intention d'application a des paroles." Standing in opposition to musique pure
was "musique appliquee aux paroles" or "musique dramatique," defined as "musique
ayant pour but l'expression d'un sentiment determine, par la juxtaposition, effective ou
sous-entendue, d'un texte litteraire aux sons musicaux."13 D'Indy implied that "musique
pure" was in some ways the loftier of the two because, unbounded by the relatively
determined meanings that texts brought to music, it could traffic in generalized ideas.
The symphony represented the summit of this category, and thus stood as the highest (or
at least the most ideal) form of musical expression. D'Indy's portfolio features three
symphonies, but only the Mountain Symphony and the Second properly exemplify
musique pure: the Third, the "Sinfonia brevis de bello gallico," is programmatic (and so
affiliated with "paroles"). As one of his two essays in this privileged genre, the Second
Symphony holds a particularly important position in d'Indy's oeuvre. Also relevant is the
fact that he composed the symphony shortly after he implemented his rigorous
composition curriculum (later codified in the Cours de composition) at the Schola
Cantorum. Demuth's inference that the composer sought to exemplify his pedagogical
principle in the symphony thus seems particularly salient.14 In sum, if one looks for a
composition in which d'Indy flies his aesthetic and ideological colours in full, the Second
Symphony fairly leaps to mind.
13
Vincent d'Indy, Cours de composition musicale, vol. 2, bk. 1 (Paris: Durand, 1909), 6-7.
The view that the symphony was a compositional manifesto had been expressed as early as 1904, when
Jean Chantavoine suggested it opened a rift between d'Indy the composer and d'Indy the pedagogue and
suffered for that. Jean Chantavoine, "L'Esthetique de M. Vincent d'Indy," La Revue hebdomadaire 18
(1910): 369-410.
14
242
The symphony's status as an emblem of d'lndian ideology, then, seems solidly
grounded in the composer's theoretical writings and in the broader context in which he
composed it. Recent reappraisals of d'Indy's thought and music, however, raise
questions about the anti-modern message Hart and Fulcher impute to the composition.
Jann Pasler and Steven Huebner have proposed that canonizing narratives have been too
eager to cast the composer as Debussy's antithesis and have flattened out the contours of
both d'Indy's aesthetics and the richly variegated landscape of turn-of-the century French
music. Huebner underscores that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
perceptions of what was progressive and modern were rapidly and continuously shifting.
By the First World War, d'Indy's works indeed seemed old-fashioned. The composer's
position on the modern/retrograde spectrum, however, had shifted dramatically over the
course of his career: tura-of-the-century audiences and critics received his compositions
as some of the most progressive and daring of the time.15
Pasler has traced the origins of d'Indy's anti-modern reputation to an exaggerated,
"oppositional" identity that the composer, his disciples, and his opponents constructed.
This identity served the interests of all of these parties, but d'Indy's views on music were
in reality not nearly as rigid as period discourses sometimes made them out to be.16
Indeed, d'Indy's writings reveal a commitment to change and progress that equals his
17
commitment to tradition.
As we observed in the last chapter, the composer believed that
the principal purpose of art was to nourish "humanity's soul" and foster its future growth.
Humanity's future pressingly concerned the aristocratic, legitimist, and staunchly
15
Steven Huebner, "'Striptease' as Ideology," Nineteenth-Century Music Review 1 (2004): 3-25; '"Le
Hollandais fantome: Ideology and Dramaturgy in L 'Etranger," in Schwartz, Vincent d'Indy et son temps,
263-282; and "Fervaal," in French Opera at the Fin de Siecle: Wagnerism, Nationalism, and Style (Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 317-350.
16
Jann Pasler, "Deconstructing d'Indy, or the Problem of a Composer's Reputation,"19 lh -Century Music 30
(2007): 203-256.
17
Jann Pasler, "Paris: Conflicting Notions of Progress," in Music and Society: The Late Romantic Era, ed.
Jim Samson (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991), 402-405.
243
Catholic d'Indy who, like many of his right-wing contemporaries, felt that individualism,
social equality, secularism and other poisons of the Revolution had ravaged "humanity's
soul." Progress and change in music could allegorize the sort of social evolution he
judged necessary for a brighter future. Modern, progressive music, he insisted, needed to
maintain continuity with and build upon the great traditions of the past. "[A]fiter
endeepening his knowledge of the great earlier expressions of art," he wrote in
L 'Occident in 1911, "the artist worthy of the name, [...] will build on those immutable
foundations."18 Near the beginning of the Cours he defined the artist's mandate similarly.
The ideal composer would bring "to the old artistic edifice, eternally in construction, new
materials that are solid and coherent with the old ones [...] with the goal of serving the
good of mankind and feeding the progressive life of humanity."19 By firmly rooting a
modern art in timeless and inert traditions, d'Indy sought to demonstrate that in modern
times humanity's "collective soul" could draw sustenance from and flourish under the
similarly timeless values of the ancien regime.
Huebner's recent studies of Fervaal, L 'Etranger, and Is tar emphasize how those
compositions musically instantiate d'Indy's ideal of progressive, modern music. In this
chapter, we shall reconsider the Second Symphony along the same lines, asking how this
emblematic work exemplifies the values that the composer held at the turn of the century.
It will be our task in the first section to establish how d'Indy understood the "edifice" of
the symphony. In the second part, we shall see that the symphony models d'Indy's ideal
of progress founded in tradition both symbolically, in its "leitmotivic" plot, and
stylistically, in its integration of the modern whole-tone scale into conventional
nineteenth-century syntax. In the final section, I suggest that the Symphony sounds a
reactionary note against the Debussyste tendency to fetishize the sensuous qualities of
18
Vincent d'Indy, "L'Artiste moderne," L 'Occident, December 1911. Translated in Jann Pasler, "Paris:
Conflicting Notions of Progress," 404.
19
D'Indy, Cours de composition musicale, vol. 1 (Paris: Durand, 1903), 9. Translated in ibid., 403.
244
timbre and colour. For d'Indy, modern music had to nourish the soul, not pleasure the
senses.
6.2 Edifice
How did d'Indy understand the tradition of the symphony? As we noted in
Chapter 5, his writings on the history of the genre accord nicely with Dahlhaus's notion
of a "circumpolar" evolutionary trajectory. After Beethoven, the genre became decadent
in the hands of Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn, and the efforts of more recent
Germanic composers (especially Bruckner and Mahler) were so far removed from the
Beethovenian model that they were not symphonies at all.20 With a single exception,
d'Indy identified the "old artistic artifice," to which new symphonists would bring new
materials, with Beethoven's symphonic oeuvre.
That exception was the symphony of Franck, who had retained the genre's core
conventions while further developing Beethoven's embryonic cyclic technique.
Nevertheless, for all the praise d'Indy lavishes on that symphony, his own example
suggests that he did not whole-heartedly embrace the direction his mentor had pursued.
D'Indy's writings accord well with Dahlhaus in retaining Beethoven as the "Second-Age"
symphonist's principal model. However, he categorically opposed conflation with the
symphonic poem—the source to which, Dahlhaus shows, many composers turned to
reinvigorate that model.21 Like many turn-of-the-century French writers, d'Indy
admonished symphonists to avoid declared or implied programmes, and he also insisted
that the "dramatic style" of the symphonic poem had no place in the "symphonie
proprement dite."22 Hence his relegation of Bruckner and Mahler symphonies to
20
See Chapter 5, n21.
Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989), 265-276.
22
D'Indy, Cours de composition, vol. 2, bk. 2, 100.
21
245
symphonic-poem status: though he does not single out passages or spell out his
objections, the theoretical portions of the Cours make it clear that unprepared or
unexpected modulations (which typify Bruckner) belonged to the "dramatic style," as did
pictorial and descriptive effects such as the string harmonics and bird calls at the
beginning of Mahler's First. (D'Indy would unknowingly echo Mahler's effects to similar
programmatic purposes at the opening of his Jour d'ete a la montagne). He would also
likely have objected to the cowbells and celesta in Mahler's Sixth, and to the general
preponderance of topical references in that composer's symphonies.
The example of d'Indy's Second suggests that he also found certain of the
symphonic poem's characteristic formal procedures antithetical to the symphony. In its
broad schematic layout, d'Indy's Second is the most Beethovenian of the symphonies
examined in this study. Unlike the essays of Franck, Chausson, Dukas, and the
composer's own Mountain Symphony, the work follows the standard, four-movement
(fast-slow-scherzo-finale) pattern. Each movement is either schematically normative by
Beethoven's standards, or finds a Beethovenian precedent. The first is a typical sonataallegro: the exposition sets out two themes (the second is even in the dominant), the
development is clearly delineated, both themes return in their original order in the
recapitulation, and the movement concludes with an affirmative coda that is firmly in the
tonic key. In his Cours analysis, d'Indy describes the slow movement as a "grand lied" in
five sections, though it perhaps more closely resembles a set of variations, in which the
theme is interspersed with a recurring march tune, much as in the slow movement of
Beethoven's Fifth.23 The third movement, a scherzo, is also a set of variations. The
broad finale is the symphony's most unusual movement from a schematic standpoint.
Nevertheless, d'Indy based it on a rondo form (in his view, Beethoven's standard finale
23
D'Indy's analysis of his Second Symphony appears in the Cours de composition, vol. 2, bk. 2, 175-176.
246
design), which he framed with a substantial slow introduction and a chorale that
substitutes for the final appearance of the main theme. At any rate, the composer might
have invoked the formally unusual finales of Beethoven's Third and Ninth to justify his
relatively unconventional ground plan.
As this brief overview perhaps suggests, the symphonic poem did not leave the
traces on d'Indy's Second that it left on Franck's symphony and Saint-Saens's Third.
Franck's slow movement/scherzo embedding and Saint-Saens's allegro/adagio and
scherzo/finale conflations seem directly derived from the four-movements-in-one design
of Liszt's seminal compositions. Saint-Saens in particular wedded such generic crossfertilization to ideals of progress: he claimed to have "renewed" or "renovated" the
symphony by infusing it with new techniques. Saint-Saens and Franck set influential
precedents. As Hart has shown, Ropartz, Jean-Baptiste Ganaye, Louis Vierne, GeorgesMartin Witkowski, Charles-Marie Widor, and Sylvio Lazzari composed symphonies with
embedded or linked movements, and critics viewed such formally experimental works as
the most advanced of their time.24 The four-movements-in-four-divisions layout of
d'Indy's Second perhaps seems unremarkable when set against the symphonies of
Bruckner, Brahms, Dvorak, and Tchaikovsky. But in the context of contemporary French
practice, d'Indy's orthodoxy becomes pointed: he shunned the period's most modern and
advanced formal strategies in favour of a more traditional, Beethovenian shape. The
evolving edifice of the symphony had evidently not assimilated Franck's important
movement-embedding technique.
The harmonic dimension of the symphonic poem's characteristic, twodimensional overlay of sonata form and sonata cycle also offered an important source for
Saint-Saens, Franck, and Chausson. In these symphonies, the composer subordinates
24
Hart, "The Symphony in Theory and Practice," 195-202.
247
tonal designs of individual movements to a higher-order tonal argument that runs across
the entire multi-movement span. In Saint-Saens Third, the adagio picks up the D-flat
tonality of tonally open allegro's second theme; the allegro/adagio pair thus becomes
something like a higher-order sonata exposition. In the Franck, the opening allegro is
syntactically complete, but the sense of tonal closure is weak, and Franck continues to
develop the D minor/D major conflict across the slow movement and into the finale.
Chausson's large-scale tonal design, where tension between the parallel major and minor
develops continually across the three movements, reflects Franck's influence. This too
was a procedure d'Indy chose not to pursue. The Second Symphony's opening allegro
arrives at a complete and unequivocal resolution: an emphatically prepared perfect
authentic cadence in the tonic occurs at rehearsal 33, and B-flat major remains rock solid
throughout the coda. D'Indy's allegro, like virtually all of Beethoven's symphonic
movements, expresses a complete, self-contained tonal process, and so too do the
symphony's subsequent movements.
With this matter, we rub up against questions of cyclic organization and
concomitant issues of musical narrative. In the Franck, Chausson, and Saint-Saens
symphonies, the above-described tonal strategies interlock with cyclic thematic
procedures to unfold continuous linear plots across their multi-movement spans, much as
in Liszt's symphonic poems. Not so in d'Indy's Second. It scarcely needs emphasizing
that d'Indy vigorously championed cyclic technique. Indeed, in his historicist view,
Beethoven had mandated it, and Franck's cyclic approach was largely what made his
symphony such a worthy contribution to the genre. But might d'Indy have felt that the
sense of plot projected by Franck's (and Saint-Saens's) pairing of cyclic technique with a
through-composed tonal scheme was excessive? Might he have felt that in combining
these two techniques these composers had strayed too closely to the "dramatic style" of
the symphonic poem?
248
Elements of plot are readily-found in d'Indy's Second. Like the symphonies of
Franck and Saint-Saens, it begins in a hesitant, unstable state (and in the minor mode),
and concludes securely in B-flat major with a triumphant chorale and affirmative coda.
As we shall see in the following section of the present chapter, the symphony's cyclic
themes contribute an additional stratum of plot. Nevertheless, the sense of plot that the
symphony projects is much attenuated relative to the examples of d'Indy's countrymen on
account of the composer's treatment of tonality. D'Indy's movements, in their tonal
completeness and self-sufficiency, relate to one another less like acts in a play or chapters
in a novel—appropriate analogies for the Franck, Chausson and Saint-Saens
symphonies—than panels of a triptych in which the artist paints the same subject matter
in variegated or evolving conditions. As in the majority of Beethoven's symphonies, the
movements contrast with and buttress one another to form a satisfyingly balanced whole,
and d'Indy's cyclic thematic technique adds a further layer of continuity. But whereas in
Saint-Saens, and especially Franck and Chausson, thematic development interlocks with
tonality to give a sense of continuously unfolding linear drama—indeed, in the latter two,
virtually every modulation marks a twist in the plot—d'Indy's Second, with its tonally
autonomous and independent movements, seems on the whole less (and less often)
preoccupied with the development of an overarching plot.
This aspect of the Second Symphony reflects a certain ambivalence in the
composer's theoretical writings. On the one hand, d'Indy likened cyclic themes to
Wagnerian leitmotives, suggesting that he viewed plot as an important aspect of the
symphony: "le theme cyclique dans le domaine symphonique, et le motif conducteur
(Leitmotiv) dans l'ordre dramatique, sont en definitive une seule et meme chose." On the
other hand, he also applied plastic metaphors to the sonata cycle. He often called the
traditional four-movement design an "edifice"; in the Cours he famously likened the
sonata cycle to a "cathedrale sonore" (the slow introduction resembles the front portal, the
249
allegro is the nave, the slow movement is the transept or the decorative altar screens, and
so on).25 The ideological implications of this metaphor have been discussed often
enough—d'Indy linked all worthy art to faith—but it also says something important about
how he conceived cyclic form: a cathedral is stable and constituted in space as opposed to
a drama which is dynamic and constituted in time. The various parts of the cathedral
exist simultaneously and may be taken in by the observer at a glance. Dynamic and
forward moving plot had its place in the sonata cycle, but d'Indy clearly felt that it needed
to be tempered by stasis or plasticity.
Also relevant to the issue of plot in the Second Symphony and its relationship to
the plastic or architectural characteristics d'Indy believed should be present in the sonata
cycle is the distinction he drew between "amplification" and "development," which we
invoked in Chapter 5. Steven Huebner's succinct explanations of these concepts may
serve to remind us of d'Indy's usage. In "development," themes are broken up and
transformed, and move from one state to another; the procedure "engages change and
momentum, the plot." Conversely, with amplification "melodic and harmonic details of a
theme trigger new enlargements and elaborations"; the procedure "explores depth, the
fabric of the moment and quality of a character."26 D'Indy implies that development and
amplification should be present in more or less equal proportions, and Huebner shows
balance between them to be a strength of Istar (1897). Unusual for a symphonic poem,
Istar is a set of variations, with the added wrinkle that they are "in reverse, where the
theme appears only at the end," and progress from complex textures to simple ones.
Variation form afforded d'Indy plenty of opportunity for amplification: each variation, for
example, moves briefly to the Neapolitan, though this detail unfolds differently each time.
25
Vincent d'Indy, Cours de composition, vol. 2, bk. 1, 377-378.
Huebner, "'Striptease' as Ideology," 6-7.
27
Vincent d'Indy to his father (Antonin d'Indy), September 17, 1896, in d'Indy, Ma vie: journal de
jeunesse, correspondance familiale et intime, 1851-1931, ed. Marie d'Indy (Paris: Seguier, 2001), 548.
26
250
D'Indy weaves this local move through the Neapolitan, Huebner shows, into Istaf s largescale tonal design: each of three "modules" encompasses two variations a tritone apart,
and the variation lying at the symmetrical centre of the work is itself in the key of the
Neapolitan. The point of d'Indy's unusual form may have been in part to redress a
perceived imbalance between development and amplification in the symphonic poem, a
genre by nature preoccupied with plot development. To momentarily return to
symphonies by d'Indy's colleagues that he perhaps found in this respect problematic: one
would be hard pressed to find the sort of deep-structural amplification that d'Indy realized
in Is tar anywhere in the Franck or Chausson. As we have seen, secondary tonalities in
those works seem chosen for their capacity to inflect tonic-key scale degrees, (especially
the third and sixth), and thereby orient the music toward the darkness of the tonic minor
or the light of the major. That is, tonal design gives the music a dynamic, forward
moving character; it contributes, in a word, to development.
As many analysts have noted, d'Indy derives much of the Second Symphony's
material from two cyclic motives, which he labeled "x" and "y" in his Cours de
composition analysis. Examples 6.1 shows the motives along with some of the themes
they produce. These motives share a common intervallic core (an issue to which we shall
return): a skip of a third followed by a semitone slip in the opposite direction and, if
motive y's seventh is compressed to a sixth (as it often is; see Example 6.If), another skip
of an (inverted) third. The semitone/third shape also factors in important ways at deeper
levels of structure. As Figure 6.1 shows, this shape is composed across the first
movement's transition. The passage begins in B-flat. The bass soon drops a semitone to
A, and d'Indy reinterprets A's lower fourth as the leading-tone of the new key in an inner
voice (cleverly prolonged by interlocking "x's" that climb through the octave) while the
bass finds its way to C, the dominant of the new key. The semitone/third motive is
similarly composed out in the second theme, as shown in Figure 6.2. The theme begins
251
Example 6.1
Example 6.1a) I, mm. 1-3
m. 1
Motif x
W S J
^
J ^ ^
o
double-bass
Example 6.1b) I, mm. 2-4
m. 2
£k
Motify
flute
Example 6.1c) I, reh. 8 (second theme)
r
8
1st vlns.
Example 6.1d) II, reh. 34 (main theme)
34
1 Jni
1 / J J1
§
n 9 —f—P^—
L-
cl., eng. horn
F
Eb
I
Db
CI.
BU>
whole-tone scale —
Example 6.1e) II, reh. 37 (march theme)
ua
37
i
g
ob.
Example 6.1f) IV, reh. 63 +11 (fugue subject)
63 + ii
dble-bass, cello
252
i
y
11
y
Figure 6.1 I, reh. 4 to 8
M
9
F: V
Figure 6.2 I, reh. 8 to 9
£
k
S
m
V-I
V- i
Figure 6.3
II
y i r
III
IV
Hp t,
with a sentence that is classical in design (a repeated two-measure basic idea followed by
a four-measure continuation phrase that concludes in an authentic cadence), save its
abrupt "x"-motivated modulation to E major; after four measures in that key the music
modulates again, to G-sharp minor. The semitone/third shape similarly factors at the very
highest structural level: as Figure 6.3 shows, the tonalities of the symphony's second,
third, and fourth movements outline it. The relationship between the tonal organization
of the transition, the second theme, and the key scheme of the symphony's movements on
the one hand, and the shared motivic core of "x" and "y" on the other, is best understood
as one of "amplification." Here, large-scale tonality does not further some tonal plot as it
does in Franck, Chausson, and Saint-Saens (in their own ways) so much as it probes the
depth and structural potential of the motive. As d'Indy might put it, the motive remains
"in repose": a static, unchanging shape that he quite literally amplifies through
Auskomponierung at successively higher structural levels and across larger spans of time.
As d'Indy might also have it, the work's large-scale tonal organization emphasizes the
253
"architectural" rather than "dramatic" side of the plastic/dynamic duality: over the course
of the symphony, the sonorous cathedral becomes the image of its bricks.
6.3 Progress
Let us now turn our attention to the other, dramatic, side of that duality. Hart
roots his interpretation of the symphony as a "parable on the defeat of modern music" in a
narrative reading of its surface-level motivic development.28 He draws upon an oftencited 1904 article in which d'Indy's acolyte Rene de Castera attached concrete meanings
to the two cyclic motives:
Le premier ["x"] dessinant un intervalle de triton (diabolus in musica) [...] a
un caractere sombre et mena^ant qui symbolise [...] l'element moderne de
mauvaise influence. Le second ["y"] [...] lui repond comme une plainte
douce, c'est l'element traditionnel, de bonne influence.29
The two antagonistic motives and the themes they generate, Hart argues, engage in
an apocalyptic battle throughout the symphony until "y," the motive of "tradition,"
claims victory in the final coda by "stamping out" "x," the "villainous agent of
modernity."30
Castera, as Hart stresses, claimed to speak on d'Indy's authority, though the
composer himself does not appear to have ever assigned meanings to the work's cyclic
motives. Regardless of their provenance, Castera's labels are appropriate: "x" outlines
the dissonant tritone and it often generates the whole-tone scale, a self-consciously
modern sonority; and "y", with its Sehnsucht-laden upward leap is evocative of
nineteenth-century expressive ideals. Nevertheless, a closer look at the motives suggests
they are not as antithetical as Hart would have it. As suggested above, "x" and "y" share
28
29
30
Hart, "The French Symphony in Theory and Practice," 212.
Rene de Castera, "La Symphonie en si bemol de M. Vincent d'Indy," L 'Occident, April 1904.
Hart, "The French Symphony in Theory and Practice," 211-224.
254
a common intervallic configuration (see again Example 6.1). Both begin with a leap of a
third (spelled as an augmented fourth in the prime form of "y"), followed by a semitone
slip in the opposite direction. The similarities appear to end here ("x" rises by third while
"y" rises by seventh); however, motive y's seventh is compressed to a sixth—the
inversion of motive x's concluding third—almost as often as not (as it is in Example
6.If). As d'Indy might have it, the motives' structural continuity implies a symbiotic
relationship between modern music and tradition.
Over the course of the symphony, "x" and "y" interact in a manner that strikingly
resonates with d'Indy's analysis of motivic development in Wagner's Meistersinger.
D'Indy stressed that the plot of Wagner's famous opera explicitly advocated his ideal of
artistic progress: the youthful Walther integrates his progressive tendencies into the
Meistersingers' traditional bar form and thereby both brings his natural genius to full
bloom and reinvigorates the Meistersingers' musical tradition.31 D'Indy divides
Wagner's leitmotives into three categories, "Jeunesse," "Tradition," and "independant."
He takes great care (and makes some doubtful stretches) to show that the "Jeunesse" and
"Tradition" motives mingle in subtle ways in the first two acts. Wagner emphatically
unites the "Jeunesse" and "Tradition" motives in the Act III "Prize Song," the fruit of
Walther's apprenticeship and (in d'Indy's words) the "bapteme de la nouvelle maniere,"
and then superimposes them in the opera's final scene.32
According to Hart, most of the symphony's themes derive from either "x" or "y"
(the main and second themes of the first movement are based on "y," so too is the main
theme of the slow movement, the second theme is based on "x," and so on). Closer
scrutiny, however, reveals that "x" and "y" often mingle like Wagner's motives in
d'Indy's analysis of acts I and II of Meistersinger. Let us consider the example of the
31
D'Indy's Meistersinger
1948), 162-174.
32
Ibid., 173.
analysis appears in the Cours de composition musicale, vol. 3 (Paris: Durand,
255
first movement's main theme, which seems to grow out of both "x" and "y." The theme's
descending-fourth head motive begins to form near the end of the slow introduction (see
rehearsal 1), where the descending major third of "y" is isolated and then expanded to a
perfect fourth in the dotted rhythm of the main theme. The figure, however, continues to
expand, becoming a tritone—that is, an attribute of "x"—an interval it retains until the
downbeat of the allegro. The theme incorporates motive y's seventh leap (in its tenth and
eleventh measures), and when it nears its end, both "x" and "y" factor unobtrusively in
the counterpoint ("x" appears in both the bass and soprano starting four measures before
rehearsal 3; "y" follows in the soprano at 3, its rising seventh inverted to a descending
second).
The "tradition" and "modernity" motives similarly mingle in the introduction and
main theme of the slow movement. The introduction proceeds through a series of rising
tritones produced by shadowy outlines of "x." As Example 6.2 shows, these tritones are
subsequently folded into the block chords that accompany the theme: for the first five
measures at least one harmonic tritone sounds on virtually every beat. In the first phrase
of the theme itself, the lyrical "y" is clearly foregrounded. Although in the continuation
"traditionally" expressive appoggiaturas continue to abound, the phrase outlines a
"modern," "x"-derived whole-tone scale (see again Example 6.Id).
Over the course of the work, the "tradition" and "modernity" motives also join
hands in a more emphatic and easily perceptible fashion, again much as Wagner's
"Tradition" and "Youth" leitmotives do in d'Indy's Meistersinger analysis. This
rapprochement begins in the second movement, and involves a third—perhaps
"independant"?—motive, labelled "a" in Figure 6.4, that is implied by both "x" and "y"
though properly present in neither of their prime forms. As shown in Example 6.3a, the
second movement's "y"-based main theme produces motive "a," which the continuation
spins out sequentially. Later in the movement, a march tune based on "x" (Example 6.3b)
256
Example 6.2 II, mm. 1 to reh. 34 +5
Introduction
[trumpet in
trombones, tuba and harps are tacet]
M o d c r e m e n t l e n t (J=72)
257
Example 6.2 (continued)
Main theme
258
Example 6.2 (continued)
Figure 6.4
4a. Motif a
A
M6
4c. M o t i f y
4b. Motif x
A
F:
5
«J
A
A
1.6
5
i-J
Bl>:
A
A
6
5
(1)
~~P~L
1
r
259
Example 6.3a) II, reh. 34 to 34 +5
i
r
l ^ p
a
1
J11
j j
'r
r r ^
Example 6.3b) II, reh. 37 to 37 +3
x
a
M
i
r
N T
J
L4J
a
i
a
Example 6.3c) IV, reh. 63 +11 to 63 +18
x
11
a
also produces "a," and "a" is similarly spun out here; indeed the two continuations are
strikingly alike. This narrative thread is picked up again in the finale. In the introduction,
the three motives intermingle as discontinuous melodic fragments: "a" is stated plainly at
the beginning; at measure 5, it becomes the main theme of the third movement, which
seems to be cut off by "x" in the bass. "Y" then appears as a quotation of the slow
movement's main theme, and it too is cut off (by "a"); at measure 17 "a" becomes the
third-movement's main theme once again, and so on. D'Indy's introduction, in both its
recitative-like texture and aborted reappearances of themes from previous movements,
calls to mind Beethoven's introduction to the finale of the Ninth Symphony. In
Beethoven's famous introduction, recitative gives way to continuous melody with the
appearance of the Freudenthema—which,
in the context of the symphony's plot, marks
the transcendental victory of unity and fraternity over strife and suffering. In d'Indy's
finale, discontinuity similarly becomes continuity at 63+10, where a fugue begins in Bflat minor. Like Beethoven's Freudenthema, this fugue represents a moment of
transcendence and the consummation of unity. The head of the subject (see Example
260
6.3c) is clearly based on "x," extended as it was in the slow movement's march section
(and in a similar rhythmic profile). Just as in the slow movement, "x" generates "a."
Here, as the example shows, "a" goes on to generate "y" to round out the fugue subject.
As d'Indy might have it, the "leitmotives" of modernity and tradition join hands—much
as the "Tradition" and "Jeunesse" motives do in Walther's Act III "Prize Song"—in a
passage that, as a fugue, is self-consciously traditional, yet modern in its bold and angular
chromaticism (particularly in the seventh and eighth measures of the subject), and in its
post-Wagnerian rhythmic fluidity. The fugue is not the end of the story: once again like
Wagner, d'Indy effects a grand synthesis of his "tradition" and "modernity" motives at
the end of the movement, where he superimposes them in a majestic B-flat major chorale
(at rehearsal 87 +2; "y" is in the soprano and "x" is in the bass). Like the fugue, this
grand peroration is, as a chorale, generically traditional but modern (by the standards of
1903) in its blunt chromaticism, far-ranging modulations, and rhythmic organization.
The Second Symphony expresses d'Indy's ideal of progress founded on tradition
not only by way of its motivic plot, but also by way of its style. Throughout the work,
d'Indy integrates self-consciously modern materials into (what he viewed as) traditional
nineteenth-century syntax. We have noted that passages based on the modern whole-tone
scale dot the work. D'Indy invariably derives this collection from more conventional
pitch materials. The first-movement transition offers a representative example. The
material at the beginning of the passage (see Example 6.4) derives from the pentatonic
subset of the B-flat major scale. At rehearsal 5, the bass drops a semitone and the same
material is transposed to a different pentatonic collection. As the example shows, a gap
of a minor third bisects each of these pentatonic scales into segments of contiguous whole
tones. Near the end of the transition (rehearsal 6), "x" returns dramatically in the bass,
and here (as shown in the example) d'Indy cross matches the whole-tone segments of his
two pentatonic collections to build the two whole-tone scales.
261
Example 6.4 I, reh. 4ff
Whole-tone scales
Example 6.5 III, m. 1 to reh. 49 +9
il
1
4
L J
'c-r
r
?
m
*
1
*
0
r
msfm
.ID*1
<0
a
~d—1—r "1
J
J
J
J
1v
J~J.
-Jf-k
The third movement offers another example. Here, a lengthy whole-tone passage
audibly grows out of the main theme, the modally coloured folksong shown in Example
6.5. As the example shows, the folksong's flat seventh and Phrygian second combine
with the other pitches of the D-minor scale to form whole-tone tetrachords (the
Mixolydian C couples with B-flat, D, and E; and the Phrygian E-flat with F, G, and A).
After the folk theme's final cadence (rehearsal 50 -9), d'Indy begins to realize its wholetone implications. He isolates the flat leading-tone and tonic and soon adds "x" (see
rehearsal 50), which fills out the whole-tone tetrachord; B-flat appears in the inner voice
to complete the six-note collection. As the tempo and surface rhythm accelerate (starting
at 50 +5), and whole-tone "x's" multiply in a compressed triplet rhythm, the flat leadingtone and tonic continue to oscillate in an inner voice right through to 50 +14, where this
262
0
e)
last vestige of the folksong disappears. Here, a scherzo-like passage ensues. "X's"
interlock to form a one measure ostinato (based on the C-D collection that grew out of the
folksong's flat leading-tone), and a whole-tone theme joins it at rehearsal 51. The other
whole-tone collection (that is, the scale projected by the folksong's E-flat Phrygian
inflection) soon also makes an appearance (51 +8ff). An admirable detail: in the melodic
line, the pivot between the two collections is E/E-flat, the folksong's 'variable' Phrygian
inflection.
As we noted in Chapter 5, folksong occupies a privileged position in d'Indy's
writings. He valued it so highly in part because he believed that it descended directly
from chant—the great musical expression of religious faith, and also the origin of the
western art music tradition. Thus the organic relationship between the folksong and the
self-consciously modern scherzo theme is highly charged: the most modern and
progressive music—the scherzo passage is exclusively built from whole-tone scales and
could thus fairly be called 'atonal'—grows out of the oldest and most traditional, and
takes as its basis the religious faith that d'Indy insisted was the foundation of all art.
D'Indy not only derives the whole-tone scale from more conventional materials
but also integrates it into more traditional, functional harmonic syntax. At times the
composer employs the collection to intensify a dominant, as he does in the slow
introduction. When "y" appears in the second measure, the harmony derives primarily
from the C/D whole-tone collection. A transposition of "x" produces the other wholetone scale at rehearsal 1, and the two collections continue to factor throughout the slow
introduction: the soprano line (in the first flute) ascends through the C-Gb whole-tone
tetrachord, and tritones abound in the inner voices. Nevertheless, diatonic function
remains manifest in the passage. Beginning in the seventh measure, "x's" interlock in the
bass to climb to the home-key dominant to prepare the beginning of the allegro. When
263
the dominant arrives, the C and G-flat that bracket the soprano line's whole-tone
tetrachord get folded in as the fifth and minor ninth of the chord.
More frequently, d'Indy treats the whole-tone collection itself as a harmonically
functional sonority. As Figure 6.5 shows, a number of dominant-functioning chords may
be extracted from the whole-tone scale (including augmented triads and altered dominant
seventh and ninth chords) and, as he does in Istar, d'Indy here typically treats the entire
collection as a dominant. 33 In the first-movement transition, for example, d'Indy
interprets the C/D whole-tone collection as the dominant ninth of F, the exposition's very
conventional second key area. The other whole-tone collection—the two alternate from
the time they appear through the beginning of the subordinate theme—functions as the
secondary dominant. The entire whole-tone passage from rehearsal 6 therefore prolongs
the secondary key's dominant. D'Indy thus negotiates symphonic convention quite subtly
here. The subordinate theme lies in the dominant, the most conventional of relationships.
Though the route taken to that tonality seems utterly unconventional and strikingly new, it
nevertheless has its basis in the normative procedure of dominant preparation and
prolongation.
Figure 6.5
Tf
tJ o
a
©
|
b-
n
g o ft"
»
"
I
V
x
7
V iA.
9
"
V7v
The slow movement offers another example of functional treatment of the wholetone collection (see Example 6.6). Here d'Indy extracts the augmented triad E-G#-B#
from the C/D collection to prepare an A major variation of the movement's main theme at
rehearsal 39 +2. As in the first movement transition, the other whole-tone scale
33
See Huebner, "Striptease as Ideology," 17-19.
264
Example 6.6 II, reh. 39 - 2 to 39 +2
M o u v e m e n t initial
39l
<j=72)
Grandcs Flutes
Cor Anglais
Clarincttc Bass
Trompcllcs
Harpcs
ff
violonccllcs
whole-tone scale
A: Fr 6
265
Example 6.2 (continued)
intensifies this dominant, although d'Indy's voice-leading—the outer voices move in
contrary motion by semitone to the octave—implies that it here functions as a Frenchsixth chord rather than a secondary dominant. The tonal-syntactic treatment of the wholetone scale also mediates the striking semitone relationship between the tonalities of the
second and third movements (D-flat to D). Over the slow movement's final dominant
(rehearsal 46), the march tune first heard at rehearsal 36 reappears, its modal tritone now
extended to span an entire whole-tone octave. After the dominant resolves, the march
repeats on the other whole-tone scale. In the immediate context, this collection
substitutes for the tonic triad and converts it into the dominant of the subdominant, a
conventional post-cadential gesture. It also reverberates beyond the end of the
266
movement: in this symmetrical collection, any pitch may function as the "root" of a
dominant chord, and if A is so interpreted, this whole-tone collection becomes the
dominant of D, the tonality of the third movement. Finally, let us briefly return to the
beginning of the scherzo episode in the third movement (rehearsal 51) to note that the
"modulation" between the two whole-tone "keys" at rehearsal 51 +7 is effected by fifth
motion in the bass (Gb-B): even in this exclusively whole-tone context d'Indy implies a
dominant/tonic relationship.
To summarize, d'Indy routinely generates the whole-tone collection from
conventional pitch materials and treats it as a harmonically functional sonority. To these
observations we should add that the whole-tone scale at times resonates in manifestly
diatonic passages and sometimes even serves as a structural scaffold that supports them.
Both are true of the opening movement's F-major subordinate theme (rehearsal 8ff). As
we have noted, an extensive dominant-functioning whole-tone passage prepares the
theme. Though itself diatonic, reverberations of the C/D whole-tone scale nonetheless
linger in the theme. In the initial measures, G-sharp becomes an appoggiatura to A, Enatural sounds constantly in an inner voice, and G-flat (approached by a tritone leap from
C) factors prominently in the dissonant bassoon counterpoint. The same collection also
impacts the theme's broader tonal structure: the modulations to E and G-sharp (at
rehearsals 8 +7 and 8+10) compose out not only the common intervallic core of "x" and
"y," but also the C/D whole-tone scale. The main theme of the slow movement (see again
Example 6. Id) offers a similar example. The theme is in the key of D-flat, though as we
noted above, its continuation phrase traces a whole-tone scale across an entire octave.
D'Indy's statements about artistic progress reverberate strongly in his treatment of
the whole-tone scale. As he himself might have it, the creator builds upon the "old
artistic edifice" with "new materials that are continuous and coherent with the old ones."
This new material enriches and revivifies the moment-to-moment flux of the late
267
nineteenth-century chromatic idiom d'Indy inherited from Wagner and Franck. D'Indy's
assimilation of the whole-tone scale does the same for certain received affective
conventions. As we just observed, traces of the whole-tone scale linger in the opening
movement's subordinate theme as piquant dissonances; these dissonances intensify the
lyrical and expressive character typical of a subordinate theme in a sonata-form context.
The modulations to E and G-sharp minor similarly reinforce generic convention: d'Indy,
like many period theorists, attributed gendered characteristics to sonata-form themes; in
his reckoning, a subordinate theme's "feminine" character owed in large part to tonal
instability.34
The new materials d'Indy brings to the edifice of tradition also enrich and revivify
a formal convention more specific to the symphony, especially the Beethovenian heroic
symphony that remained the reigning model at the end of the century. As Scott Burnham
has shown, a continuous, large-scale upbeat/downbeat rhythm is an important formbuilding technique in the heroic works. The music comes at us in great crashing waves,
as harmonic and rhythmic tension accumulates, dramatically discharges, and accumulates
again.35 A century after the Eroica symphony, d'Indy cultivated a similar procedure to
perhaps even more visceral ends—now using the whole-tone scale as his primary
expedient. Let us turn once again to the third movement. After the folksong main theme
concludes (rehearsal 50ff), charge builds as "x's" saturate the pitch field with whole
tones, and in the scherzo that follows, d'Indy continues to wind the spring by relentlessly
piling on whole-tone dissonance for a full forty-eight measures. When the passage finally
discharges into a diatonic version of the scherzo theme (at rehearsal 53), the effect of
release is breathtaking. To be sure, this effect owes in part to d'Indy's scoring—the
tightly packed orchestra suddenly expands in register and into a divisi (nine-part) string
34
35
D'Indy, Cours de composition, vol. 2, bk. 1, 261-262.
Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 46, 54-55, 62.
268
texture. But the sense that a high-voltage charge dramatically dissipates at rehearsal 53
owes primarily to the resolution of intense whole-tone dissonance into the utter
consonance of a B-flat major that for a full eight measures remains uninflected by a single
accidental. The effect in Example 6.6, from the slow movement, is similar. The march
that begins at rehearsal 36 becomes increasingly chromatic and tonally unstable after 38,
and two measures before 39, the C-sharp minor tonality dissolves altogether into the
whole-tone scale (as shown in the example). As in the third-movement scherzo discussed
above, d'Indy treats this mass of whole-tone dissonance as a springboard with which he
dramatically launches an A-major variation of the movement's main theme at 39 +2.
Throughout the symphony d'Indy builds large-scale form by linking such diatonic
downbeats to whole-tone upbeats, particularly in the first movement where, as Figure 6.6
shows, he does so with rhythmic regularity. A whole-tone upbeat in the slow introduction
discharges into the diatonic main theme. The cadence-less theme surges directly into the
transition, which, as we have seen, culminates in another highly charged whole-tone
upbeat, which in turn discharges into the diatonic subordinate theme. The development
cycles through the same materials (and, at rehearsal 16, d'Indy carefully references the
whole-tone transition), and so too does the recapitulation. The whole movement, then,
unfolds in a Beethoven-esque systolic/diastolic, upbeat/downbeat rhythm.
I.
Intro.
Exposition
m. 1
Reh. 1 +4
t 1
(upbeat)
Wholetone
(downbeat)
main th.
g
Recapitulation
Development
reh. 4
reh. 8
t
(upbeat)
trans.
/WW WhT
as V of
reh. 11
reh. 16
1
reh. 16+10
reh. 2 1 + 8
reh. 25
reh. 28
t 1
t 1
(downbeat)
Sub. th.
F+
main th.
trans.
WhT
Sub. th.
main th.
Bb+
trans.
WhT
Sub. th.
Gb+
269
6.4 Misreading Chausson
D'Indy's Second alludes to Chausson's symphony in some provocative ways.
The two works are in the same key, a key in which there are not many important
symphonic precedents. Their first-movement main themes (shown in Examples 6.7a and
6.b) show strikingly similarity: both are heard on solo horn against a quiet background of
rustling strings. Both are pentatonic, both continuations feature an ascending chromatic
push, and both are in a rapid 3/4 meter (which resembles "scherzo time" in that it is rapid
enough that either the notated time signature or hypermetrical groups seem acceptable to
the ear as the perceived meter). D'Indy's allusions to Chausson continue into the
transition (see Examples 6.8a and 6.8b), and again they are striking: both composers
arrange the pentatonic scale in remarkably similar active rhythmic profiles heard over
slow-moving basses.
D'Indy would in some ways have been troubled by his friend's symphony. In
particular, he would have disapproved of its unconventional plot: d'Indy, as we have
noted, insisted that art impart moral "enseignement," and uplift the soul. For all its
virtues, Chausson's symphony, drawing as it does to a quiet, troubled conclusion that is
far removed from the boisterous affirmation that is characteristic of the genre, is hardly
uplifting. Might d'Indy have intended his symphony, at least in part, as a response to
Chausson?
D'Indy's allusions to the Chausson begin with the main theme and end with the
transition. Nevertheless, d'Indy's composition also parallels Chausson's in another, less
direct way and does so right from its beginning. All of the symphonies examined in this
study feature slow introductions, save the Dukas. Composers treat this formal section in a
remarkable variety of ways, but in each case it introduces or initiates a formal problem
that is worked out over the remainder of the composition. Saint-Saens, for example, lays
out the two principal motives separately, and at the beginning of the allegro they
270
Example 6.7
Example 6.7a I, reh. 1 +4 to 1 +15
T r e s vif ( J - 8 0 )
1 cor
Example 6.7b Chausson, Symphony in B-flat, I, reh. A +29
[harps omitted]
271
Example 6.8a) D'Indy, Second Symphony, I, reh. 5 - 1 2 to 5
flutes
flutes
272
Example 6.8b) Chausson, Symphony in B-flat, reh. D +6 to D +15
1 hautbois
te
Hi- .
immediately coalesce in the cyclic theme. This juxtaposition of the full cyclic theme and
its motivic fragments initiates a rhythm of formation, liquidation, and re-formation that
continues for the remainder of the symphony. In the Mountain Symphony's introduction,
the Mountain Theme sounds and a variation immediately follows, prefiguring a procedure
that similarly continues throughout the work: further variations serve as the main themes
of each of the three movements. Chausson handles the slow introduction differently still.
273
Here, the principal cyclic motives are embedded in separate, quasi-thematic ideas that
develop throughout the section. As the symphony unfolds, Chausson has these motives
appear in proper themes with increasing density and clarity, and thereby seems to promise
a grand synthetic peroration.
The slow introduction of d'Indy's Second is most like that of the Chausson. He
similarly introduces the principal cyclic motives ("x" and "y") separately and repeats and
develops them. And as in Chausson's symphony, d'Indy's motives subsequently mingle
in the work's sundry themes. The two symphonies nevertheless end up taking radically
different directions. The grand motivic synthesis that Chausson seems to promise, of
course, never materializes. The coda ends in collapse, with the cyclic motives scattered
among discrete melodic fragments just as they were at the outset of the work. In d'Indy
things turn out differently: the finale delivers, in the fugue and especially the final
chorale, what Chausson promises but withholds. D'Indy, then, may have encouraged
comparison with Chausson's symphony by way of allusions to its first-movement main
theme and transition in order to correct the negative "moral" of its thematic story. To
rephrase, d'Indy "misread" his friend's composition, though not as an anxiety-fraught act
of Oedipal confrontation, but as one of paternal benevolence. D'Indy's symphony
ultimately uplifts, whereas Chausson's ultimately exudes "tristesse"; the former affirms
unity and consummates progress, whereas the latter concludes in fragmentation and
(insofar as it eschews the teleological shape that is so characteristic of the genre) failure.
D'Indy may also have wished to address the "lesson" implied by the organic
relationship between Chausson's unconventional plot and the music's decidedly modern
surface. As we observed in Chapter 4, Chausson's common-tone voice-leading can
generate neither sufficient tension nor a strong enough sense of goal-directed drive to
make a generically normative, heroic conclusion (or any heroic music) seem anything but
underdetermined. D'Indy forges an altogether different relationship between the
274
symphony's stylistically modern surface and the genre's formal conventions. Indeed, he
marshals the whole-tone collection's dissonance to intensify the tension/release dynamics
of traditional harmonic syntax and thereby gives the music the very forward-driving
quality that is so attenuated in the Chausson. To extrapolate on an ideological level:
where Chausson (like many of his symbolist colleagues) seems to say that the conditions
of modernity suffocate "humanity's soul," d'Indy replies that the soul may be richly
nourished by the modern—as long as the modern is continuous with the great and
immutable traditions of the past.
6.5 Reaction
D'Indy expressed ambivalence towards the music of Debussy, his putative
aesthetic antithesis. But our discussion of the Second Symphony suggests that pitchstructural innovation did not figure among his objections, as Hart and others have argued.
His chief complaint, rather, was "formlessness."36 He levelled this charge not in its usual
nineteenth-century meaning of incomprehensibility. Rather, he felt that Debussy's music
de-emphasized form—meaning motivic development, directional harmonic motion, and
perhaps the sort of large-scale rhythmic organization we just observed—and
foregrounded the sensuous qualities of timbre and harmony. D'Indy complained
son esthetique est une esthetique de sensation, et c'est la un principe peu
compatible avec le but veritable du grand art.[...] Debussy a ete un apotre du
sensationnisme harmonique, tout comme Rossini l'avait ete dans le domaine
melodique. Et malgre tout l'interet qui s'attache au langage debussyste, il faut
bien avouer que ses harmonies, pour delicatement choisies qu'elles soient,
n'ont pas davantage eleve les esprits et les cceurs que les cavatines du
Barbier, ecrites pour faire valoir le charme et l'agilite d'une voix. En cela,
cet art est inferieur, malgre son raffinement et son charme [...]. [Emphasis in
•yn
original.]
36
See, for example, d'Indy's review of Debussy's opera, "A propos de Pelleas et Melisande,"
June 1902.
37
D'Indy, Cours de composition, vol. 3, 231-232.
L'Occident,
275
Western culture's classic mind/body duality looms over d'Indy's central aesthetic tenet,
and forms the backbone of his critique of Debussy: if music were to instruct and nourish
the soul, it couldn't be primarily preoccupied with stimulating the senses. Indeed, d'Indy
stresses early in the Cours that an art "repondant aux besoins de la vie du corps"
represented an altogether inferior species; true art, he repeated, offered a "moyen de vie
•50
pour l'ame."
Debussy's famous dictum "pleasure is the only law" grated against
d'Indy's most cherished beliefs.
D'Indy nevertheless was prepared to tolerate and to some extent admire his
younger compatriot. Indeed, despite his reservations, d'Indy acknowledged that Debussy
had real genius; Pelleas, for example, displayed "immense talent."39 But one Debussy
was enough: d'Indy denounced debussysme vigorously and often. He even took a dim
view of as talented a composer as Ravel, who was starting to make a real name for
himself when d'Indy sat down to compose the Second Symphony.40 He directed his fire
at excessive emphasis of timbre and harmony:
II faut les qualites exceptionnelles d'un Debussy pour qu'un tel art de
sensation puisse demeurer a la fois haut et grand artistiquement. Si l'on
faisait abstraction de ces qualites, il ne resterait que de sensationnisme,
comparable a celui de Scarlatti [a decadent "renaissance" composer] ou meme
des cosmopolites du XIXe siecle.41
A composer of Debussy's talent, he concluded, could "realiser admirablement ces
tendances." However, "il ne peut faire ecole, ni constituer un pas en avant."42 The
last phrase is key: "sensationnisme" did not constitute progress.
38
D'Indy, Cours de composition, vol. 1,11.
D'Indy, Cours de composition, vol. 3, 231
40
On d'Indy's attitude towards Ravel, see Arbie Orenstein, Ravel: Man and Musician (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1975), 31,42.
41
D'Indy, Cours de composition, vol. 3, 236.
42
Ibid., 231.
39
276
I want to conclude by suggesting that the Second Symphony sounds a reactionary
note against what its composer saw as debussysme's excessive appeal to corporeal
pleasure. For by turning its back to music's cardinal purpose, this growing modern
tendency was pursuing a false and dangerous path. D'Indy responded by cultivating a
predominantly ascetic and harsh orchestral sound, one that contrasts markedly with the
warm and luxuriant timbre that prevails in his earlier Symphonie sur un chant
montagnardfrangais, as some perplexed period critics noted. He accomplished this in
part through atypical instrumentation for the period: the pointed and rasping timbre of the
bass trombone replaces the more mellifluous sound of the tuba as the brass section's bass,
and the piccolo trumpet joins the top of the brass section to give tutti passages a sharp
bite. In most tuttis d'Indy also doubles the soprano line at the octave with the piccolo
flute, which makes them sound more piercing still.
A number of other scoring techniques, including thick unisons, unusual and top
heavy voicing, and unidiomatic instrumental writing, combine to give the work a
prevailingly acerbic and at times even caustic orchestral sound. We will consider three
examples, though similar passages abound throughout the symphony. But first, we
should stress that d'Indy possessed great skill in orchestration. Whatever contemporary
critics and fellow composers thought of his music, most of them acknowledged his
mastery of the orchestra. The effects I am about to describe should be considered
deliberate and purposeful, not evidence of incompetence. Example 6.9 is drawn from the
third movement's whole-tone scherzo episode. The passage strikingly recalls the villageband episode at the beginning of the Mountain Symphony's finale. Divorced from the
folksy festivities that that variation of the Mountain theme conjures, d'Indy's
orchestration here seems grotesque. In Example 6.9a, d'Indy scores the theme for five
unison winds. Slight intonation problems are inevitable with such a dense woodwind
unison, and here the fortissimo dynamic compounds them, making the passage sound
277
Example 6.9
Example 6.9a) III, reh. 51
m^mam
278
Br- f = j . » f =
r—3—i -—
few?-., - - h
>••
-
Example 6.9b) III, reh. 52
Example 6.10
Example 6.10a) I, reh. 24 - 5
279
Example 6.10b) I, reh. 25 - 6
280
Example 6.11 IV, reh. 9 1 - 7
I'll
281
extremely tense, pressed and laboured. The English horn, moreover, approaches the top
of its range and thus contributes a further edge to the timbre. The effect is similar a few
measures later (Example 6.9b): the tune is now in exposed bare octaves (nearly as
problematic as the unison); the clarinet is in its squeakiest register and the shrill piccolo
doubles the flutes.
Example 6.10 is drawn from the first movement recapitulation. Example 6.10a
shows an exceptionally high soprano tessitura: the piccolo, piccolo trumpet and violins—
all above the treble staff—carry the melody. While the orchestra's bottom end is firm,
this high soprano line is supported by very little in the middle of the orchestra: just the
horns, a single trumpet, and the violas fill out the treble-clef pitch range. This odd
spacing becomes even more pronounced in Example 6.10b, where d'Indy really loads the
top of the orchestra: the winds now join the piccolo, piccolo trumpet, and violins, and
again everybody is above the treble staff. And again there is very little in the middle: just
the horns and violas fill out the treble-clef register, and they are not much of a match for
the masses of instruments on the bottom and top ends. The orchestra sings from the head
and from the diaphragm, but there is no throat in the sound; as a result, the music sounds
loud and piercing rather than rich and full.
In Example 6.11, a few measures from the symphony's conclusion, the spacing is
more balanced. But there is a most unusual doubling: trumpets and violins, a
combination for which Ravel famously took Franck to task with reason. More striking
still is the purposefully unidiomatic trumpet writing: calling for unison double-tongued
sixteenth notes over awkward leaps of sevenths and sixths at this tempo—tres vif—is
asking for hash. The passage can only sound laboured and frantic.
Owing to scoring strategies such as these, D'Indy's symphony often sounds, in a
word, unpleasant. But again, this is not to suggest that he could not have done otherwise
if he had wanted to. For d'Indy, progress was imperative, but a modern art that
282
emphasized music's sensuous qualities to the detriment of form represented a wrong and
decadent turn. Pleasure had little place in art. Modern music needed to nourish the soul,
and the Second Symphony's acerbic sound world emphatically underscored this central
tenet of d'Indy's aesthetics at a moment when he felt that an aesthetic of
"sensationnisme" was mounting a challenge to this timeless truth.
283
Chapter 7 - Paul Dukas, Symphony in C
7.1 Introduction
Many of Paul Dukas's contemporaries ranked him among the finest composers of
his era. Yet he wrote very little music. His output, which counted a meager half-dozen
major compositions—including a symphony, L 'Apprenti sorcier, the opera Ariane et
Barbe-Bleue, the ballet La Peri, and a piano sonata—was perhaps the slimmest of any
musician to have ever earned such recognition. Dukas held himself to the most rigorous
of standards, and had a remorseless and even paralyzing sense of self-criticism that
appears to have intensified over his career. After 1912 he completed no large-scale
compositions, and just a handful of smaller ones. During these years, he began and
sporadically worked on several major projects, including another symphony, but these
became victims of doubt, and the composer burned all of them before his death in 1935.
It thus came to pass that Dukas joined Franck, Lalo, and Chausson in the ranks of French
composers who left just a single symphony.
Composed in 1895, the Symphony in C premiered on 3 January 1897 under the
conductor Paul Vidal, its dedicatee. The venue was the Concerts de l'Opera, a series that
ran at the eponymous institution from 1895 to 1897. Its official mandate was "to give
young composers the opportunity to have their works heard [...]. Half of [each] concert
programme, at least" was to be dedicated to music by living French composers.1 As
Elinor Olin has shown, its unofficial—though more pressing—purpose was to counter the
Opera's reputation as a bastion of conservatism and give the impression that the
venerable institution was evolving with the times.2 The premiere was not auspicious. As
the conductor and composer Desire-Emile Ingelbrecht (at the time a sixteen year old
' Quoted in Elinor Olin, "The Concerts de l'Opera 1895-97: New Music at the Monument Gamier," 19th
Century Music 16 (1993): 255.
2
Ibid.
284
second violinist in the orchestra) would later recall, the symphony met with hostility, not
only from the audience, but also from many of his fellow musicians:
Qui pourrait croire que l'oeuvre qui nous parait aujourd'hui si claire souleva,
lors de sa creation, non seulement les protestations du public le jour du
concert, mais auparavant celles des musiciens de l'orchestre? Au cours des
nombreuses repetitions, les lazzis ne cessaient de fuser autour de moi, et il
faut meme dire que les tentatives de sabotage ne furent pas toujours epargnees
a l'oeuvre nouvelle comme au jeune chef, Paul Vidal, qui en avait assume la
direction.
-5
Arthur Pougin, reporting for the influential music journal Le Menestrel, panned the
symphony:
J'aurais, pour ma part, le plus grand plaisir a dire de son oeuvre tout le bien
possible, mais je trouve qu'elle peche surtout, et d'une fa?on tres grave, par
1'inspiration; les themes manquent absolument de saveur, et aucun d'eux ne
s'impose a l'attention. L'orchestre du premier allegro est bien touffu, bien
embrouille, et l'andante ne met pas en relief une idee appreciable; et si le
finale ne manque pas de verve et de cranerie, on n'y discerne pas non plus
l'idee maitresse qui doit servir de guide a l'auteur comme a l'auditeur.4
Nevertheless, Dukas remained undeterred. In a letter of December 1899, he
thanked Guy Ropartz for programming / 'Apprenti sorcier in Nancy, but indicated that he
would have preferred a second performance of the symphony instead, perhaps hoping
Ropartz would agree to a substitution.5 Dukas, however, would have to wait until 1902 to
hear the work again. This time, under Lamoureux's baton, the symphony met with
widespread acclaim. 6 Pierre Lalo, the critic for Le Temps, was enthusiastic:
[L]'andante developpe avec largeur une idee d'une emotion profonde et
contenue a la fois; et la finale, qui des trois morceaux est le meilleur a mon
gre, bati sur des themes d'une grande force rythmique et faits a souhait pour
3
Desire-Emile Inghelbrecht, Mouvement contraire, souvenirs d'un musicien (Paris: Editions Domat, 1947),
290-291.
4
Arthur Pougin, Les Grands concerts, Le Menestrel, 17 January, 1897.
5
Paul Dukas to Guy Ropartz, 27 December 1899, in Correspondance de Paul Dukas, ed. Georges Favre,
(Paris: Durand, 1971), 32-33.
6
Georges Favre, L 'CEuvre de Paul Dukas (Paris: Durand, 1969), 36.
285
le developpement symphonique et orchestral, a une solidite de structure, une
unite, une puissance d'elan superbe. C a et la, dans cette symphonie on peut
discerner l'influence de Cesar Franck ou de Berlioz, ou de M. d'Indy. Mais
ces influences superficielles ne touchent point au fond [...]. 7
The colossal success of L 'Apprenti sorcier perhaps encouraged Parisian ears to be more
receptive to the symphony than they had been five years earlier.
After this success, the work established itself in the repertoire of Parisian
orchestras. With familiarity came thoughtful and reflective critical assessments of its
aesthetic orientation. A common refrain in the early decades of the twentieth century
held that the work displayed a fundamentally "classical" disposition. Andre Coeuroy
insisted that an "esprit classique" dominated, Jean Hure felt Dukas drew heavily on the
music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Paul LeFlem noted the composer
maintained "les cadres classiques," and Julien Tiersot wrote of a "very classical"
orientation. Jean d'Udine similarly stressed that the symphony rejected nineteenthcentury tendencies (especially sentimentality and "literary" qualities), in favour of "an
intense musical life."8 And the sensitive Guy Ropartz wrote of a
sensibilite tout en profondeur qui ne se repand pas en expressions
grandiloquentes. II n'y a evidemment en lui nul romantisme, nul besoin de
mettre a nu son ame dans quelque attitude theatrale. Bien au contraire la
sensibilite de Dukas se voile de pudeur, mais, par l'oubli du moi, s'eleve a un
humanisme qui est proprement classique.9
The "classical" label has remained with the symphony. According to Brian Hart,
7
g
Pierre Lalo, "La Symphonie en ut majeur," Le Temps, January 28, 1902.
Andre Coeuroy, Panorama de la musique contemporaine (Paris: Kra, 1928), 109-110; Jean Hure,
Musiciens contemporains, premier album (Paris: Editions Maurice Senart, 1923), 14; Paul LeFlem, "La
Sensibilite raisonnee du musicien Paul Dukas," La Tribune des nations, February 24, 1935; Julien Tiersot,
"La Symphonie en France" Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft 10(1902), 400; and Jean
d'Udine, Paraphrases musicales sur Les Grands concerts du dimanche (Colonne et Lamoureux), 19001903 (Paris: A. Joanin, 1904), 151.
9
Guy Ropartz, "Les (Euvres symphoniques de Paul Dukas," La Revue musicale 17 (May-June 1936): 63.
286
the work merges "classical form and style with Franckiste expressiveness."10 In
Ralph Locke's view,
Dukas recaptures some of the thought processes, though not the 'sound'
(harmonic vocabulary, orchestral texture) of the classical and early romantic
masters. [...] Dukas seems to be looking back self-consciously, finding
strength in the compositional logic typical of music from what someone of his
generation must have seemed a quite distant era."
These appraisals, Ropartz's most of all, would have pleased Dukas. In addition to
his activities as a composer, he was also one of the era's most sensitive and insightful
critics, writing some 410 articles for the Revue hebdomadaire, the Chronique des arts et
de la curiosite, La Gazette des beaux-arts, Le Figaro, La Revue musicale and Le
1J
Quotidien between 1892 and 1932.
Dukas's criticism is extraordinarily erudite,
displaying a formidable intellect and a wide-ranging command of music from the
Renaissance to his time. These writings, as we shall presently see, reveal a profound
commitment to classicism. Music, Dukas felt, had reached in Mozart an apex from
which, at least in some ways, it had since been in a steady decline. Dukas identified the
veritable cult of the self that had come to dominate music in the nineteenth century as the
central problem, and he traced this decadent trend back to Beethoven. For Dukas, no less
than for his contemporaries, Beethoven was the master of the symphony, and his
necessary model. But like d'Indy, Dukas approached the excess of subjectivity he
detected in the Bonn composer's works with much skepticism. When he sat down to
compose his own symphony, then, a chief priority would indeed have been "l'oubli du
10
Brian J. Hart, "The French Symphony After Berlioz: From the Second Empire to the First World War," in
A. Peter Brown, The European Symphony from ca. 1800 to ca. 1930: Great Britain, Russia, and France
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 626.
1
' Ralph P. Locke, "The French Symphony: David, Gounod, and Bizet to Saint-Saens, Franck, and Their
Followers," in The Nineteenth-Century Symphony, ed. D. Kern Holoman (New York: Schirmer Books,
1997), 182.
12
See Manuela Schwartz, "Dukas, Paul," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley
Sadie and John Tyrell, vol. 7 (London: MacMillan, 2001): 670-674.
287
moi:" Dukas the composer, suggests Dukas the critic, strove to re-infuse the genre with
the "classical humanism" of which Ropartz wrote.
7.2 Musique
and Anti-Musi
que
In an 1893 article on the relationship between words and music, Dukas selfconsciously echoed Wagner's account of music's historical development. The western
tradition began in Greek antiquity. At this time, music served simply to reinforce verbal
drama:
Qu'etait la musique alors? Rien d'autre chose qu'une sorte de renforcement
sonore de la Parole, une simple ligne homophone infiniment modulee selon les
regies les plus delicates de l'eurythmie. Cette Parole [...] conduisait tout,
animait tout; c'est par elle que se produisait l'impulsion qui mettait en
mouvement les autres rouages de la grande ceuvre d'art collective que fut alors
13
la tragedie.
With the collapse of the antique world, music became detached from tragedy and matured
alone. It developed its own unique and autonomous means of expression, and gradually
became its own complete and independent language, and one that held tremendous
expressive potential. The development of harmony was particularly important:
/
"l'harmonie [...] lui a ouvert l'empire illimite des mysteres de l'ame; elle s'y est plongee
avec ardeur; elle y a pris conscience d'elle-meme. C'est ainsi qu'elle est devenue la
musique, notre musique, un tout autre art que la regie des choreges et des mimes."14
Other formal conventions and principles that evolved over centuries also became central
to music's independence from the word and contributed much to its unique expressive
power. Elsewhere, Dukas placed these under the general rubric of "developpement,"
which he viewed as the backbone of instrumental music. He contrasted this with
13
Paul Dukas, "La Musique et la litterature," in Chroniques musicales sur deux siecles, 1892-1932, ed.
Jean-Vincent Richard (Paris: Stock Musique, 1980), 162.
14
Ibid., 162.
288
"accent," which functioned as Greek music's chief expressive strategy and continued to
prevail in much opera:
Les phases de [la musique d'accent] sont determinees par la suite logique des
divers sentiments que l'auteur se propose d'exprimer. [La musique de
developpement] s'ordonne exclusivement suivant les derives purement
musicaux que comportent ses themes essentiels. [...] Tandis que le musicien
dramatique concentre toute sa pensee sur des phrases expressives completes
en soi et susceptibles d'une interpretation caracteristique, le musicien
symphoniste [the composer of instrumental music] rapporte la meme intention
a un groupement de periodes sonores dont la succession presentant tour a tour
des aspects varies du theme principal en des motifs secondaries, n'en exprime
que graduellement le sens emotionnel.15
The highest and most characteristic manifestation of such an independent and
autonomous music—the genre in which the expressive potential of "developpement" was
realized to the fullest—was the symphony. Not surprisingly, in Dukas's view Beethoven
reigned as the supreme master of this genre.16 Dukas evidently felt that the latter
assertion required little justification or explanation. It appears that all of his articles in
which Beethoven's symphonies are a focal point are concert reviews, and his focus
invariably falls squarely on the performance in question; sustained discussion of
Beethoven's symphonies as works are not to be found.17 Nevertheless, Dukas often
invokes Beethoven's symphonies as foils in discussions of other music, so his criticism is
dotted with brief glimpses of what he thought the composer had accomplished.
Beethoven had discovered a "great secret:" large-scale form could develop from thematic
material. Each of Beethoven's works was thus distinct and highly individual to a degree
that Mozart's or Haydn's were not:
15
Paul Dukas, "A propos de la Symphonie en re mineur de Cesar Franck," in ibid., 125-126.
Dukas, "La Musique et la litterature," 162-163.
17
For examples of performance reviews, see Paul Dukas, "L'Enfance du Christ—La IX e Symphonie," in
Les Ecrits de Paul Dukas sur la musique, ed. Gustave Samazeuilh (Paris: Societe d'editions franfaises et
internationales, 1948), 82-83; "Les Concerts Spirituels," in ibid., 412; and "Fidelio—Les concerts," in ibid.,
436.
16
289
Beethoven a cree de toutes pieces un style nouveau, et c'est bien a lui que la
musique est redevable de son emancipation: par ses sonates, ses symphonies
et ses quatuors, il l'a fait passer du domaine des formes scolastiques a celui de
l'art general, et le titre de ses oeuvres n'est plus chez lui qu'une etiquette qui
ne peut nous en faire pressentir le contenu. Quand un musicien intitule son
ceuvre sonate ou symphonie, nous savons, pour l'ordinaire, ce que nous allons
entendre. Avec Beethoven nous l'ignorons tout a fait. Si telle symphonie de
Haydn, par exemple, nous est revelee, nous n'en apprendrons guere davantage
avec une nouvelle symphonie de Haydn. Mais si nous Ton nous joue
l'Heroi'que, nous ne savons et ne pouvons rien savoir de la symphonie en ut
mineur ou de celle en la, chacune de ces oeuvres, malgre leur titre commun et
si modeste de symphonie, differant au fond l'une de l'autre a peu pres autant
18
qu'un drame grec d'une feerie de Shakespeare.
Dukas also admired what Beethoven had been able to express in his symphonies. The
"infinite power" of Beethoven's art, he wrote (echoing Wagner) in an article on Fidelio,
was such that in the Eroica Symphony he had articulated nothing less than "l'heroisme
pur, l'hero'isme de l'humanite entiere."19 Elsewhere he wrote that in Beethoven's
symphonies "on entend la voix persuasive qui, sans s'expliquer [...] se fait reconnaitre
immediatement comme la revelation de tout ce que le cceur de l'homme contient
d'aspirations vers l'absolu." 20 In the Fifth Symphony Dukas heard a "repercussion
profonde du sens auditif sur les mouvements de l'ame [...] qui fait que la musique vibre
91
encore en nous longtemps apres avoir cesse effectivement."
Elsewhere still he argued
that with Beethoven, music became a "universal drama" that captured "la tragedie
interieure de l'ame humaine."
Like Wagner, Dukas sensed that Beethoven's efforts to articulate pure heroism or
the vicissitudes of the soul had stretched instrumental music's expressive resources to
their absolute limit:
18
19
20
21
22
Paul Dukas, "F-G Rust, un precurseur de Beethoven," in ibid., 186.
Paul Dukas, "Fidelio," in ibid., 432-433.
Paul Dukas, "Romeo et Juliette, d'Hector Berlioz," in ibid., 234-235.
Paul Dukas, "La Symphonie en re de J. Brahms," in Chroniques musicales,
Dukas, "La Musique et la litterature," 164
290
129.
[A]pres avoir atteint sa plus haute signification, et manifeste le plus
energiquement sa nature par la symphonie instrumentale, cette musique [...]
toucha sa borne. Elle tendait desormais vers une expression trop definie a
laquelle ses seules ressources ne pouvaient suffire. [...] La musique, disonsnous, s'aventura si loin sur son propre domaine qu'elle finit par en trouver
ses limites.
Dukas did not, however, believe that Beethoven had mandated any particular future
direction or had had the last word in any genre. Dukas himself composed an opera,
programme music, and "musique pure," and he vigorously defended the latter category in
his criticism. A November 1893 article, ostensibly on Franck's symphony, was primarily
an apologia contra Wagner for the continued production of the genre, and in a review of
Debussy's quartet that appeared six months later, Dukas extended his arguments to
"musique pure" in general. He pursued a number of tacks: Wagner's views reflected the
bias of a musician who naturally gravitated towards opera; he was too quick to draw
generalizations from Beethoven's Ninth (symphonic demands unique to the work
necessitated the choral finale); the sublime genius of the late quartets proved that
Beethoven himself saw no reason to abandon "musique pure" (and he moreover planned
and sketched a purely instrumental Tenth Symphony); and finally, Schumann,
Mendelssohn, Saint-Saens, and d'Indy had managed to write very respectable symphonies
(they may not have equaled Beethoven's, but the world was unlikely to soon see a drame
lyrique as accomplished as Parsifal, and nobody seriously thought Wagner's final work
ought to mark the end of opera). Wagner, Dukas concluded, had misunderstood
Beethoven, or at least understood him incompletely and from a perspective conditioned
by his particular moment in music history.24
But Dukas did share with Wagner the belief that the aporia Beethoven had
reached in his symphonies—the apparently irreconcilable tension between expressive
23
Dukas, "La Musique et la litterature," 162.
Dukas, "A propos de la Symphonie en re mineur de Cesar Franck," 124-126; and "Le Quatuor de
Debussy," in Chroniques musicales, 141-143.
24
291
goals and music's means—had had a profound and unsettling impact upon the subsequent
course of music. For Dukas, moreover, the ramifications of this aporia remained very
much an issue at the end of the century. Indeed, they were in some ways one of
contemporary music's central problems. To gain a sense of how Dukas felt Beethoven's
symphonies had impacted music history, and to ultimately gain perspective on what he
believed was at stake when he sat down to compose his own symphony, let us turn to his
assessments of two of his contemporaries and their historical pedigrees.
"Je ne vois, en effet, personne," he wrote of Richard Strauss, some sixteen months
his senior, "qui se soit aventure avec une telle audace et d'un pied aussi sur au bord de
l'abime de / 'anti-musique."25 (Emphasis in original.) Strauss, Dukas acknowledged, was
undeniably a master of the orchestra and possessed astonishing facility with counterpoint.
His symphonic poems, however, were "anti-musical" because "l'element litteraire"
dominated over "l'element musical." By this Dukas meant that the demands of the
programme determined the form of the piece, and not the logical, organic unfolding of its
materials. Somewhat in the manner of the ancient Greeks, for whom music had simply
reinforced verbal drama, the composer approached his art as a medium into which he
could "translate" (traduire) literary or dramatic action. His approach was to string
together passages that were immediately expressive or illustrative of the programme's
successive episodes. Dukas did detect vestigial traces of conventional symphonic
practice, particularly in Ein Heldenleben.26 But, to invoke the Dukasian duality outlined
above (though one he does not employ in this article), Strauss's chief means of expression
derived from "accent:" building form was a matter of juxtaposing "phrases expressives
completes en soi et susceptibles d'une interpretation caracteristique." The result was
often thrilling:
25
26
Paul Dukas, "Richard Strauss," in ibid., 151.
Ibid., 154.
292
a certains moments de ses oeuvres, la respiration vous manque, on fremit, on
est tente de fermer les yeux pour ne pas voir l'horrible chute. Puis, sans
transition presque, Ton se rassure: l'auteur revient aux sentiers battus comme
s'il n'avait voulu nous effrayer. Dix pas plus loin, il recommence. De sorte
97
qu'on ne reprend haleine qu'a la fin du morceau [...]."
But such music, marginalizing as it did "developpement," the formal conventions that had
made instrumental music capable of plumbing the depths of the human soul like no other
medium could, was ultimately hollow and false.28
Strauss was by no means the first or only composer to pursue this path; he was
merely the worst offender. Indeed, an aesthetic of "traduction" had largely dominated the
nineteenth century. Prior to Strauss, Liszt and Berlioz had been the chief culprits.
Dukas directed much of the same invective at the Faust Symphony as he did at Strauss:
"Ce n'est pas la raison musicale qui gouverne ici, mais une raison litteraire dont les
exigences peuvent a certains moments sembler abusives [...]. [E]lle l'incite a la violation
de toutes les lois par lesquelles s'edifie normalement 1'architecture sonore
[...].
He
similarly complained of Berlioz's symphonic music: "la musique n'est que la traduction
d'une ideepoetique."3{ (Emphasis in original.) And he bitterly lamented that in his own
day far too many composers turned their backs to the careful cultivation of delicate
though profound expression by means of organic development of material, in favour of
"translating" narrative plots, imagery, and other sorts of ideas. Even if most did not
magnify this basic error as grossly as Strauss did, music had nevertheless changed
fundamentally, and for the worse: "la musique ne saurait plus etre pour nous un langage
27
Ibid., 151.
For a similar critique of Also sprach Zarathustra, see Dukas, "Fidelio—Les concerts," in Les Ecrits de
Paul Dukas, 437.
29
Dukas, "Richard Strauss," 152.
30
Paul Dukas, "Le 'Faust' de Goethe et la musique," in Chroniques musicales, 194.
31
Dukas, "Romeo et Juliette, d'Hector Berlioz," 61.
28
293
en soi. Nous traduisons, sans doute parce que nous ne sommes plus assez musiciens."32
(Emphasis in original.) Music at the fin de siecle was no longer "musique."
In his critiques of Strauss, Liszt, and Berlioz, Dukas rubs up against venerable and
familiar debates on the merits of programme music versus "absolute" music or musique
pure.
But the issue was not clear-cut for Dukas; he did not simply advocate the latter
and reject the former. Indeed, he stressed that programme music was "parfaitement
legitime et raeme necessaire"—but only when done right.34 Dukas divided programme
music into two loose categories, which amounted to the good and the bad. In the first, the
"laws" of musical form continued to prevail (that is, expression was achieved through
"developpement"); in the second, the "genre" practiced by Strauss, Liszt, and Berlioz,
they did not.
To be sure, the matter was at least in part one of music fulfilling its potential:
since potent means of expression had evolved over the centuries, composers who aspired
to high art were ethically obliged to employ them. But there was more. Dukas's
objection to the Berlioz-Liszt-Strauss stream reaches right to the romantic, ideological
roots of programme music. The problems for these composers began with their selection
of subject matter: the material they chose to treat either necessitated a "mise en ceuvre
trop compliquee" or led "le musicien a decrire une series d'evenements opposes ou des
conflits de sentiments trop subtils" to be successfully conveyed via normative formal
processes.35 Desire to project an excess of artistic personality led composers to such
materials. Strauss, for example, was
entraine par son temperament [...] hardi et volontaire, par son amour du neuf,
de l'etrange, du demesure [...] a rechercher les sujets qui paraitraient a
32
Paul Dukas, "Mozart," in Chroniques musicales, 38.
For a sensitive account of these debates and their ramifications for criticism, see Vera Micznik, "The
Absolute Limitations of Programme Music: the Case of Liszt's 'Die Ideale,'" Music and Letters 80 (1999):
207-240.
34
Dukas, "Richard Strauss, 153.
35
Ibid., 153.
33
294
beaucoup d'autres irreductibles musicalement. II s'est attaque au Zarathustra
de Nietzsche. II a choisi ensuite Don Quichotte. Et la ou beaucoup se fussent
contentes de prendre un episode, ou du moins eussent tente une synthese tres
generale, appropriee a une forme musicale intelligible par elle-meme, il a
pretendu tout resumer.36
A near megalomaniacal desire to project ego and individuality led Strauss to anti-musical
subject matter. The root of Dukas's objection to the music of Strauss, Liszt, and Berlioz,
then, was that a surfeit of subjectivity coursed through it. Elsewhere, he more explicitly
linked the "traduction" aesthetic (and the vertigo-inducing music it often engendered) to
an impulse to exaggerate the ego and reiterated that this was a fundamental problem in
modern music:
[0]n pourrait meme affirmer que la majeure partie du plaisir que l'auditeur
d'aujourd'hui prend a la musique, lui est fournie par l'impression de la lutte
que le compositeur doit engager pour parvenir a exprimer musicalement des
phenomenes interieurs de plus en plus compliques [i.e. to "translate" them],
De la ces heurts, ces explosions soudaines, ces dechirements, et toutes ces
etranges beautes que Ton se plait a considerer comme les caracteristiques de
l'art d'a present. Envisages au point de vue de la musique absolue, ils ne
peuvent apparaitre que comme des signes evidents de degenerescence.37
Debussy was a shining exception to this malignant trend, a rare example of a
composer who wrote real "musique." According to Dukas, Debussy believed that "la
musique instrumentale porte en elle sa propre fin et que, loin de chercher a revetir une
signification plus ou moins etrangere, elle doit nous emouvoir sans sortir de son champ
d'action particulier."38 He was thus fundamentally unlike Strauss, Liszt, or Berlioz, as
Dukas stressed: "le compositeur s'affirme avant tout soucieux d'eviter ce qu'on pourrait
nommer la traduction directe des sentiments." Debussy, rather,
voit dans la musique non pas le moyen, mais le but, et [il] la considere moins
comme un levier de l'expression que comme l'expression elle-meme. [...] S'il
traite un texte determine [in vocal or programmatic music], il s'efforce moins
36
37
38
Ibid., 153-154.
Ibid., 37.
Dukas, "Le Quatuor de Debussy," 142.
295
d'y asservir sa pensee que de notifier, par une sorte de paraphrase pe
les impressions musicales que lui a suggerees la lecture du poeme. 9
Dukas amplified these ideas in an article on the Trois nocturnes, an ideal example
of programme music. In "Nuages," his favourite, the programme was the "lent
deroulement des nuages sur un ciel immuable, de leur marche lente s'achevant 'en une
agonie grise doucement teintee de blanc.'" 40 Immediate, pictorial representation of
clouds, however, was not Debussy's goal:
la musique n'a pas pour objet l'expression sensible d'un tel phenomene
meteorologique, comme bien on pense. Elle y fait allusion, il est vrai, par le
continuel flottement d'accords somptueux, dont les progressions montantes
et descendantes evoquent le mouvement des architectures aeriennes.
Limitation, lointaine, existe. Mais la signification derniere du morceau
demeure encore symbolique et [...] ce Nocturne [...] traduit l'analogie par
l'analogie au moyen d'une musique dont tous les elements, harmonie,
rythme et melodie, semblent, en quelque sorte, volatilises dans Tether du
symbole et comme reduits a l'etat imponderable.41
"Nuages" does not "use" music to describe or represent its subject matter in the manner
of Strauss. The mystery of the night sky, rather, is "paraphrased" into musical materials
(harmony, rhythm, and melody, to which Dukas might have added timbre). Their logical,
organic "developpement" across the piece comes to express, with "l'eloquence d'un verbe
nouveau," the sensation that the constantly shifting play of the night sky's dim light
aroused in the composer. As Dukas emphasizes, there is an element of the subjective
here too, but it never breaks through the frame of formal convention. Music for Debussy
was not a means to realize self-aggrandizing or hyper-individual aspirations, but an end in
and of itself: the unfolding form seems to embody the subtle ebb and flow of the ego's
energies. Debussy does not impose himself on the work ("asservir sa pensee"), although
it is nevertheless "personal." There remains, implies Dukas, a sense of equilibrium
39
40
41
Ibid., 141.
Paul Dukas, "Nocturnes de Debussy," in Chroniques musicales,
Ibid., 145.
296
144-145.
between subject and form. The composer might have defended L'Apprenti sorcier in the
same way. Carolyn Abbate and Carlo Caballero have recently drawn attention to that
composition's explicitly literary and narrative aspects: it indeed seems to "translate"
Goethe's poem.42 Dukas, however, would probably argue that he responded to his subject
matter much as Debussy did in "Nuages." That is, certain key elements (the magic spell,
the diabolical broom, and so on) find "paraphrases" in musical gestures, which become
the bases of symphonic processes that remain rooted in the principles of
"developpement." These processes bear the responsibility of conveying the
composition's programmatic plot. Dukas would also likely stress that Der Zauberlehrling
offered appropriate subject matter, since it was possible to treat it in this way and without
recourse to the radical formal techniques that (he thought) subjects like Zarathustra and
Don Quixote necessitated. The composer's ego, in other words, does not break through
the frame of musical convention.
How had music lost its way in the nineteenth century? In his review of Debussy's
Quartet, Dukas quickly proposed two evolutionary lines from his present day back to the
late eighteenth century. The purer comprised composers "[ayant] manifeste une sorte
d'horreur pour la dramatisation outree de la musique;" this line extended back from
Debussy through Schumann and Chopin to Mozart 43 In Dukas's view, Mozart's greatest
virtue was the synergy between form and subjective expression he admired in Debussy:
"Mozart [...] n'est jamais sorti de l'expression musicale. Tout ce qu'il eprouvait se
transformait naturellement en musique sans que jamais on ressente, a l'entendre,
1'impression qu'il ait cherche, d'un sentiment quelconque, une traduction pour l'enonce
42
Carolyn Abbate, "What the Sorcerer Said," in Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the
Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 30-60; and Carlo Caballero, "Silence,
Echo: A Response to 'What the Sorcerer Said,'" 19lh Century Music 28 (2004): 160-182.
43
Dukas, "Le Quatuor de Debussy," 142.
297
de laquelle il ait du faire subir a sa musique la plus legere deformation [,..]." 44 He
echoed these ideas in an 1894 review of the Jupiter Symphony:
Elle porte a son apogee un style tout de clarte, de force et de grace, dans
lequel, la part de la convention etablie, on trouve un equilibre merveilleux
entre la forme et le fond. Ne cherchez [pas] dans cette musique lumineuse
[...] l'accent tragique de Beethoven [...] elle n'est la traduction d'aucun etat
d'ame etranger a elle-meme; c'est par ses seules ressources internes, par le jeu
ondoyant et subtil des combinaisons sonores qu'elle atteint a l'expression.
Mais cette expression demeure purement musicale [...]. 45
Dukas's other evolutionary line comprised "des compositeurs qui ont manifeste [...] une
sorte de malaise en face de la musique pure sans signification precise," for whom music
served primarily as a vehicle by which to translate excessively particular ideas; the
examples he gives in the Quartet article are Berlioz and Wagner, though it is clear that he
would also have included Liszt and Strauss 46 Dukas located the origin of this
evolutionary line in Beethoven. "[D]epuis Beethoven," he wrote, "la musique a pris en
general cet aspect de traduction de l'ordre psychologique dans l'ordre musical."47 That
composer, he continued, at times "treated music with violence" in order to "bend" it to his
expressive needs ("en violentant parfois la musique pour la contraindre a se plier a toutes
les exigences de l'expression"). What is more, Dukas explicitly linked the lamentable
condition of modern music, which he attributed to the subjective excesses of Strauss,
Liszt and others, to Beethoven's influence: "de Beethoven a M. Richard Strauss, en
passant par Berlioz, la musique traductrice a fait de grands progres."48
As he had been for Wagner, Beethoven was the hinge upon which the history of
music in the nineteenth century pivoted in Dukas's account. Tensions between music's
resources and the "interior phenomena" Beethoven wished to express occasionally
44
45
46
47
48
Dukas, "Mozart," 37.
Paul Dukas, "La Symphonie en ut majeur de Mozart," in Les Ecrits de Paul Dukas, 231.
Dukas, "Le Quatuor de Debussy," 142
Dukas, "Mozart," 37.
Ibid., 37.
298
reached a violent breaking point. At these moments the conventions of "developpement,"
the "derives purement musicaux que comportent [les] themes essentiels," were simply not
adequate to his expressive needs. It was evidently at such points that Dukas felt
Beethoven's music skipped into another expressive register, that of "traduction."
Nineteenth-century composers, especially the likes of Berlioz, Liszt, and Strauss, ripped
these occasional fissures in Beethoven's music asunder and plunged into them with
unchecked enthusiasm. Where Beethoven occasionally treated music with violence,
others followed this lead, took it to absurd extremes, and founded a new and inferior
aesthetic upon it. As Dukas explained when contrasting the Pastoral Symphony
favourably with Liszt's symphonic oeuvre, the difference between Beethoven and his
successors was only one of degree:
[0]n peut juger qu'il y a bien des degres dans l'application d'un principe
["traduction"] que l'on semble vouloir pousser aujourd'hui jusqu'a des
consequences absurdes [...]. II suffit pour cela qu'elle [the Pastoral] ne se
laisse pas conduire par des lois etrangeres et qu'elle soumette son sujet a
celles qui la gouvernent. C'est pour avoir souvent meconnu ce principe
essentiel que le poeme symphonique est tombe dans un facheux discredit
The excess of subjectivity that Dukas found so reprehensible in Berlioz, Liszt, and
Strauss had already been present in Beethoven. The master of the symphony had sown
the seeds of "anti-musique."
It bears stressing that Dukas did not value Mozart more highly than Beethoven.
Nevertheless, he wrote wistfully of Mozart's classicism, once likening his oeuvre to a
Paradise lost: "[l']euphonie de Mozart, sa grace ailee, [...] voila ce qui, j'en ai peur, est a
jamais aboli pour nous. Nous pouvons nous refugier dans son oeuvre comme dans un
Eden oublie."50 Dukas, moreover, felt that the genius of Debussy, arguably the finest
49
50
Dukas, "Le 'Faust' de Goethe et la musique," 196.
Dukas, "Mozart," 38.
299
composer of his day, fed on Mozart and an evolutionary line that bypassed Beethoven
altogether. And Dukas admonished his fellow composers to follow Debussy's lead and
heed Mozart's example: "que de choses encore pourrait nous apprendre Mozart, et avant
tout a ne pas sortir de la musique!" though he fatalistically added "mais, je l'ai dit, je
crains que la lefon n'arrive trop tard."51
Dukas's writings, then, reflect a d'Indy-like ambivalence towards Beethoven. On
the one hand, Dukas, like d'Indy, expressed immense admiration for his music, and
viewed the symphonies as a pinnacle of the western tradition. On the other hand, Dukas,
again like his colleague, expressed anxiety over the values he took those works to at least
occasionally project. But there are important differences in background and outlook
between the two French composers, which are reflected in their critiques. In his prose,
the aristocratic, monarchist, and Catholic (and anti-semitic) d'Indy vigorously debunked
the prevailing image of Beethoven as a rugged individualist, insisting instead that the
great composer was an apostle of the Moral Order, a "man of Brumaire" who was
committed to faith, authority and national integrity.52 In his own symphonies (especially
the Mountain Symphony), he marginalizes the subject-affirming, teleological formal
procedures that underwrite the influential Heroic symphonies.
Dukas came from a family of bourgeois Jews that had prospered under the
Republic. He received his training at the state-sponsored Conservatoire, and would
eventually join its faculty. Unlike d'Indy, Dukas (as we have noted) emphasized the
individuality of Beethoven's symphonies. The Bonn master had "emancipated" music by
discovering the "great secret" of thematic development's organic potential to produce
unique large-scale forms. His approbation for the "pure heroism," or the revelation of the
heart's greatest aspirations that he heard in those works, moreover suggests he identified
51
52
Ibid., 38.
See Chapter 5, n l 6 .
300
with the narratives of becoming that Scott Burnham, Janet Schmalfeldt, and others locate
at the core of Beethoven's heroic aesthetic.53 Dukas's reservation was merely that
Beethoven's restless quest to express "phenomenes interieurs" had occasionally gone too
far. Dukas, in short, celebrated the subjectivity he heard in Beethoven, but worried that it
was at moments excessive, and was most disturbed by the impact these moments had had
on the present state of music.
In Chapter 4, we observed that the material conditions of fin-de-siecle modernity
threatened earlier nineteenth-century ideals of the stable and autonomous self. Mass
society characterized by the metropolis, mechanized and specialized vocations, and
bureaucratized states tended to stifle individuality; geographical and social mobility
alienated people from their origins. Influential critics have applied various labels to this
problem: Heidegger's loss of authentic being, Nietzsche's nihilism, Barres's
"deracinement," and Emile Durkheim's "anomie." Georg Simmel observed that mass
society encouraged the exaggeration of the "personal element" so that the individual
could "remain audible to himself;" this was the solution Nietzsche pursued via the
construct of the "Ubermensch."54 Other critics, Durkheim among them, proposed more
moderate courses. If Strauss's compositional approach reflects a Nietzschean vacillation
between existential angst and positive overcoming, as Charles Youmans has recently
suggested (and as Dukas implied in his characterization of the Strauss composition as
constantly flirting with annihilation), Dukas's rejection of excess in favour of greater
equilibrium between subject and form resonates strongly with Durkheim's formulations.55
53
Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); and Janet Schmalfeldt,
"Form as the Process of Becoming: The Beethoven-Hegelian Tradition and the 'Tempest' Sonata,"
Beethoven Forum 4 (1995): 37-71.
54
See Chapter 4, n33.
55
Charles Youmans, Richard Strauss's Orchestral Music and the German Intellectual tradition: The
Philosophical Roots of Musical Modernism (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2005).
301
Known today as a founder of modern sociology, Durkheim (1858-1917) was
Dukas's contemporary and a major figure in the political and intellectual life of ThirdRepublic France up to the First World War. Like Dukas, he was of Jewish origins and a
staunch Republican who owed his career to the opportunities for advancement afforded
by the Republic's economy, culture, education and other state institutions. Intellectual
historian Jerrold Seigel has observed that Durkheim theorized modern society in a way
that both validated the individualism that he championed (and which his own career
exemplified) and constrained and checked it with social responsibility.56 Society in
Durkheim's account was not merely a field in which people interacted, but a distinct
being with its own unique intelligence. That intelligence comprised logic, conceptual
thought, morality, and other mental attributes, which Durkheim reasoned were collective
57
in origin.
The isolated individual was little more than a body and a sensory apparatus;
although he possessed the germs of conceptual and moral thought—the higher attributes
of human existence—only society could develop them to fruition. As Seigel summarizes,
"in whatever had to do with independent thought, individuals owed their being to
collective activation."58
Durkheim laid out his theory of society (which he framed as the groundwork for a
new moral code for French society) in his 1893 book De la division du travail social and
further developed it in subsequent publications.59 People would take advantage of the
opportunities afforded by the state's modern institutions to develop themselves into
unique individuals with highly diverse skills (much as he himself had done). Yet
56
Jerrold E. Seigel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe Since the Seventeenth
Century (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 480-493.
57
On concepts, for example, Durkheim wrote "the nature of the concept [...] bespeaks its origin. If it is
common to all, it is the work of the community. Since it bears the mark of no particular mind, it is clear
that it was elaborated by a unique intelligence, where all others meet [...] and come to nourish themselves.
Quoted in ibid., 482.
58
Ibid., 483.
59
Emile Durkheim, De la division du travail social: Etude sur I'organisation des societes superieures
(Paris: Librairie Felix Alcan, 1893).
302
individuals were ethically bound by the fact that their personalities were "made up in
great part of loans" to direct their energies back into the social collective: "because the
individual is not sufficient unto himself, it is from society that he receives everything
necessary to him, it is for society that he works."60 Durkheim characterized the modern
society he envisioned as an "organic solidarity," where people developed "different skills
and capacities" in order to support each other "in the way that heart, lungs, and liver do in
the body."61 Thus in Durkheim's view, to be a person was "to be an autonomous source
of action," but an excess of personality, "egoism," was detrimental to organic solidarity:
Where the dignity of the person is the supreme end of conduct, where man is a
God to mankind, [...] where morality consists primarily in giving one a very
high idea of one's self, certain combinations of circumstances readily suffice
to make man unable to perceive anything above himself. Individualism is of
course not necessarily egoism, but it comes close to it; the one cannot be
stimulated with the other being enlarged.62
The values we have drawn out of Dukas's criticism are largely consonant with the
ideal of subjectivity Durkheim theorized. Just as the influential sociologist did, Dukas
placed a great premium on the notions of becoming and individuality: he celebrated the
heroic narratives of Beethoven's Third and Fifth symphonies and those works'
distinctness and difference from one another. He stressed, as Durkheim did, that
"egoism"—which he also detected in Beethoven, though especially in his followers
Berlioz, Liszt, and Strauss—was dangerous and ultimately self-defeating. Once again
like Durkheim, Dukas felt that an individualism circumscribed by a social contract—the
"personal" expression that Debussy (like Mozart) had achieved by negotiating inherited
formal conventions—was a necessary and ideal course for modern music.
60
61
62
Quoted in Seigel, The Idea of the Self 487.
Ibid., 486.
Quoted in ibid., 489.
303
How then did Dukas articulate this ideal in his symphony, his sole effort in a genre
that more than any other had become bound up in notions of subjectivity? His approach,
we shall see, was to critique Beethoven's symphonies in such a way as to resolve
problematic tensions between individuality and "egoism." Dukas composed his own
Heroic symphony in which he strictly maintained the sort of equilibrium that he believed
Beethoven had occasionally lost—and which subsequent composers had forsaken
altogether. The work thereby makes an agenda of correcting a pivotal juncture in music
history—one which had led to music's exile from Eden—and thereby of righting
contemporary music's listing ship.
7.3 Beethoven and Traduction
Let us first ask where in Beethoven Dukas might have heard "anti-musical" (or
anti-social) excesses. A vexing question, this, because, as I have already observed, he
wrote fairly little about Beethoven's symphonies as works and does not appear to have
singled out any passages in which he felt Beethoven "treated music with violence" or
skipped into the expressive register of "traduction." But in light of his objections to
Strauss and Liszt (where form is supposedly determined by the programme and not by
"musical logic") on the one hand, and his admiration of Mozart (where everything
unfolds according to rigorous logic) on the other, we may gather that Dukas had in mind
moments where Beethoven enlists formal rupture, discontinuity, or imbalance as an
expressive device. Critics have sometimes characterized such passages as "willful," since
they seem discontinuous with the music that precedes them and do not appear motivated
by formal convention, and therefore convey a sense of effort that the composer often
underscores with sundry means.63 Such passages are relatively rare in Beethoven's
63
This trope extends back to nineteenth-century writers such as Alexandre Oulibicheff and A. B. Marx. For
examples, see Oulibicheff, Beethoven, ses critiques, ses glossateurs (Paris: Gavelot, 1857), 178; and Marx,
Ludwig van Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen (Berlin: Otto Janke, 1857), 284.
304
music, but they seem momentous enough to have both turned the head of a sensitive
listener like Dukas and serve as points of emulation for the composers he saw as
Beethoven's historical descendants, Berlioz, Liszt, and Strauss.
For a well-known example that Dukas perhaps had in mind—and one that shares
the tonality of his symphony, an issue to which we shall return—we may look to the Fifth
Symphony's central turning point, the triumphant breakthrough of C major at the
beginning of the finale. This turn is not, strictly speaking, motivated by conventional
musical logic. Indeed, it violates the formal canon that a work must end in the key in
which it begins. Beethoven draws attention to this moment of rupture and maximizes its
impact by setting it up with the mysterious and tension-fraught link from the end of the
scherzo that William Kinderman calls "one of the most remarkable transitions" in all
music.64 The English novelist E. M. Forster elegantly captures the willful character of
this passage in Howards End in language that resonates with Dukas's critique of
subjective excess. At the beginning of the finale (recounts Helen Schlegel), "Beethoven
took hold of the goblins and made them do what he wanted. He appeared in person. He
gave them a little push, and they began to walk in a major key instead of in a minor key,
and then—he blew with his mouth and they were scattered."65 To Forster's ear, the Cmajor breakthrough is not a logical consequence of what came before it. Rather, it is a
kind of Deus ex machina: the composer himself enters the piece, alters its course, and .
saves the day.
The Eroica Symphony's massive first-movement coda offers another example of
Beethovenian excess. As Burnham has argued, the heroic-style Beethovenian coda is
typically an extravagant response to the foregoing music. It tends not to be a "strictly
necessary, organically and structurally inevitable continuation of that which precedes it."
64
65
William Kinderman, Beethoven (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 157.
E. M. Forster, Howards End (New York: Signet Books, 2000), 27.
305
The Beethovenian coda, moreover, tends to close the piece with far more force than
seems necessary—force that betrays anxiety, and therefore the sort of subjective presence
Forster detected in the Fifth Symphony's finale.66 In the case of the Third Symphony,
virtually all of the first movement's important formal business is transacted in the
recapitulation. The main theme makes a triumphant home-key appearance in mm. 430448, all other major arrivals fall squarely on the tonic, and E-flat major is emphatically
secured by a perfect authentic cadence at the end of the second theme group.
Nevertheless, the music abruptly drops to the flat-seventh degree, and grinding parallel
fifths and octaves make it seem as though the harmony is wrenched away from the tonic
with great effort. Development resumes, and eventually leads to a grand E-flat major
apotheosis of the main theme, and an even more emphatic cadence concludes the
movement. As with the major-mode breakthrough in the Fifth, the Eroica coda, in its
extraordinary length, supererogatory development, and redundant tonic emphasis is a
formal extravagance. And as in the Fifth, Beethoven's heroic rhetoric—the movement's
implied subject is "completed" at the coda's climax—here rides on that extravagance.
7.4 Dukas's Heroi'que
Dukas's symphony begins with a number of allusions to the opening of
Beethoven's Third (see Examples 7.1a and 7.1b). A forte, tutti blast begins the work—
and Dukas leaves space for a second. As in the Eroica, the main theme follows without
delay, and Dukas's theme strikingly recalls Beethoven's in its rhythmic profile and
melodic contour (Beethoven's triple-time beats become compound-meter pulses, and his
triadic leaps are compressed into neighbour-note steps), as well as its murmuring string
66
Burnham, Beethoven Hero, 51-55, and 121-122. Quote on p. 53. Susan McClary builds a similar case
for Brahms's Third Symphony in "Narrative Agendas in 'Absolute Music:' Identity and Difference in
Brahms's Third Symphony," in Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship,
ed. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 326-344.
306
Example 7.1
Example 7.1a) I, mm. 1-8
Allegro non troppo vivace, ma con fuoco J-=92
307
Example 7.1b) Beethoven, Symphony no. 3,1, mm. 1-8
Allegro con brio
Violino 1
Violino 2
Viola
Violoncello
Contrabasso
accompaniment. Again as in the Eroica, Dukas's theme appears three times in its initial
exposition (mm. 3, 9, and 24), the last a forceful tutti statement prepared by a
developmental passage and dominant pedal. Moreover, Dukas superimposes exposition
and development in the opening measures. Much as in the Eroica, where the famous Csharp impinges on the E-flat tonality, chromatic pitches infiltrate the main theme's
accompaniment in its initial measure. The flat-side colouring of these simple passing
tones and appoggiaturas (B-flat, E-flat, A-flat G-flat, and C-flat or their respellings)
produces a D-flat major triad that jarringly decorates the tonic in the theme's fourth bar.
Two measures later, this semitone slip is inverted to produce a B-major triad, which
Dukas reinterprets as a dominant to launch the theme's E-minor second statement (m. 9).
Dukas also shadows the Eroica at the other end of the movement: in the coda, the music
abruptly drops from the tonic to the flat-seventh degree (letter N), sets out afresh, and
builds to the movement's triumphant conclusion.
Dukas's opening movement (as my remarks about its beginning and ending
perhaps suggest) also expresses a narrative of becoming: its beginning is tonally de-
308
stabilized, nervous, agitated, and impetuously forward rushing, and its conclusion is
triumphant and unequivocally stable. Like the first movement of the Eroica Symphony,
and Beethoven's heroic works in general, Dukas's opening allegro is "about" progress
from an initial state that is somehow lacking to a higher or more ideal condition. But
contrary to Beethovenian practice, Dukas negotiates this plot exclusively by way of the
"lois essentielles" of musical form, and pointedly without recourse to formal rupture or
excess.
The exposition sets out three themes in three keys: after the C-major main theme
(shown above), a second theme emerges a third lower in the relative minor (Example
7.2a), and then the third theme follows another third lower in the subdominant (Example
7.2b).
Example 7.2
Example 7.2a) I, reh. B to B +7
calme
Example 7.2b) I, reh. C to C +7
Allegro non troppo
l<>. Jnir
J}\
J*
1
J
ff
d
J
J.
i r ^ i j mj P*— > J
J J.
-
fr—
Dukas admired Schubert's music, the instrumental works only slightly less so than the
lieder, and his use of three-theme/three-key technique perhaps owes something to the
Viennese composer. 67 The exposition, however, also shares a good deal with those of
Franck's D minor symphony and Saint-Saens's Third. Although neither has a threetheme/three-key design (in the Franck there are three distinct themes in two keys, and in
the Saint-Saens two themes spread over three keys), both do set out three distinct
67
Paul Dukas, "Les Lieder de Franz Schubert," in Les Ecrits de Paul Dukas, 241-245.
309
thematic types or "characters": the dark and foreboding (both main themes); the lyrical,
legato and "feminine" (Saint-Saens's second theme, and Franck's F-major tune heard
before the Faith Theme at rehearsal D +8); and finally the heroic (Saint-Saens's second
theme transferred to the brass and Franck's "Faith Theme"). Dukas's three themes
exemplify these same broad types. Though the first theme is neither dark nor foreboding,
as we have noted, its anxiety and instability suggest a "lack," a condition away from
which the music must progress. Inclusion of Dukas's tuneful, cantabile second theme in
the "lyrical/feminine" category probably requires little justification. The third theme,
played by four horns, forte and in unison, employs the brassy sound and crisply dotted
rhythms that are mainstays of the heroic type, as Ropartz noted.68 Chromatic inflections
(the flat sixth and seventh degrees, harmonized as the roots of minor triads), however,
give the theme a stratum of queasy, scherzo-esque irony that is not entirely congruous
with the conventions of that type.
The thematic organization of Dukas's exposition, incorporating as it does these
three types, sets the conditions for an idiosyncratic version of Darcy's "redemption
paradigm."69 To briefly recall: in a minor-mode sonata movement, the second theme
(which characteristically appears in the relative major in the exposition) may "redeem"
the movement from the darkness of the minor mode by steering it into (and cadentially
securing) the parallel major in the recapitulation. As we have observed, much of this
scenario plays itself out in Franck's first movement, where the recapitulation of the heroic
Faith Theme solidifies the D-major tonality in which the movement concludes, although
cadential closure is ultimately averted and deferred to the finale. (The situation is
somewhat more complicated in the,Saint-Saens, where tonic tonality is abandoned
68
Ropartz, "Les (Euvres symphoniques de Paul Dukas," 63.
Warren Darcy, "Bruckner's Sonata Deformations," in Bruckner Studies, ed. Timothy Jackson and Paul
Hawkshaw (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 259.
69
310
altogether in the recapitulation, though the "promise" of a C-major conclusion is
eventually fulfilled in the finale.)
For Darcy the redemption paradigm is solely a matter of modality. Thematic
character, however, is clearly also an essential factor, especially in the symphony, where
a noisy, triumphant conclusion was virtually an axiom in the nineteenth century. Had
Saint-Saens opted to pursue the paradigm to completion in his first movement, he could
hardly have dispensed with the brass-fanfare version of his second theme, and one can
scarcely imagine that Franck could have placed the burden of redemption on the lyrical Fmajor tune.
As we shall see, tension between parallel minor and major modes is an important
element in Dukas's opening movement. But let us defer detailed discussion of modality
for the moment and observe that the succession of thematic types or characters "redeems"
the movement. In the recapitulation, the three themes return in their entirety and initial
order (the main theme at rehearsal H, the second at J, and the third at K). Via this
straightforward and normative procedure, Dukas brings the movement most of the way to
its ad astra rhetorical goal: just as the major-mode return of a second theme may
"redeem" a minor-mode piece from tonal darkness, the character of the third theme—its
heroic timbre and rhythms—represents a higher, more ideal state than the anxiety-fraught
instability of the movement's opening. The redemption paradigm is consummated in the
remainder of the movement. After its recapitulation, the third theme remains prominent,
as though Dukas compensates for its complete absence from the development section,
which, by rotating through the main theme (rehearsal 8ff), transition (13 +3), and second
theme (letter G), seems to promise an appearance. The theme's belated "development"
after rehearsal 21 sees its unsettling flat-sixth and flat-seventh degrees (and their minortriad harmonizations) expunged in four momentous C-major appearances (at letters L, M,
R -6, and 25 +4 through the end of the movement). Shorn of its initial scherzo-esque,
311
ironic modal mixture, the third theme becomes pure heroic fanfare, with C-major
arpeggios tossed between the groups of the brass family with effortless virtuosity in a
breathtaking display of confidence and strength.
The straightforward and seemingly unremarkable fashion in which Dukas's
movement progresses from its tense beginning to its heroic conclusion requires further
comment. Let us begin by observing that the recapitulation is literal not only in that the
three themes return unabridged and in their original order. We might add that they all
return in the tonic key. Their scoring also remains unchanged from the exposition, and so
too do the dynamic, articulation, and phrase markings. In fact, save for tonal adjustment
and some miniscule details of voicing and register that it mandates (and a single chord in
the third theme), the recapitulation is, bar for bar and harmony for harmony, identical to
the exposition. To effect the tonal adjustment of the second theme, Dukas alters just a
single harmony midway through the transition: at J -16 the exposition's analogous chord
(2+17) becomes a dominant ninth of C instead of an appoggiatura to the dominant of A;
after this one harmony the transition continues, transposed up a minor third but otherwise
exactly as it was. This literal repetition continues through the second theme and into the
brief transition to the third. Tonal adjustment here also hinges upon a single chord: the
diminished seventh at 19 +9—the same diminished seventh as at 4 +9, since the
recapitulation at this point is a minor third higher than the exposition—resolves as a
leading-tone chord to the dominant of C-flat instead of as a common-tone seventh to the
dominant of E. Here again, after this one altered resolution, the transition continues into
the third theme transposed up a fifth, but otherwise identical to the exposition.
Dukas, then, attains something like Beethovenian expression: like the archetypal
first movement of the Eroica—to which Dukas makes multiple allusions-—the movement
articulates a narrative of heroic "becoming." But it does so by adhering to the "lois
essentielles" of sonata form to the letter, and indeed exaggerating them: nothing more
312
extravagant than recapitulation, the simple restatement of thematic material—surely one
of the symphony's most fundamental procedures—brings the piece to its rhetorical goal.
The remainder of the movement seals the heroic conclusion with equally impeccable
"raison musicale": the development section's aborted thematic rotation justifies continued
emphasis on the third theme, and the "loi" that dissonance must resolve mandates the
elimination of that theme's chromatic inflections. There are no miraculous
breakthroughs, no supererogatory formal swerves, no derailed processes. In short, the
movement lacks the Beethovenian discontinuity, rupture, and imbalance in which Dukas
heard a surfeit of subjectivity, and to which he traced the lamentable state of
contemporary music. Here all is "musique."
A similar case may be made for Dukas's tonal plot. Like Beethoven's archetypal
Fifth, and the symphonies of Franck, Saint-Saens, Chausson, and Lalo that followed its
lead, the movement pits the tonic major against the tonic minor. Dukas drew heavily on
the strategy Chausson employed to generate and sustain this conflict. As we observed in
Chapter 4, in the opening measures of Chausson's slow introduction, the B-flat major
tonic "decays" into B-flat minor. Much the same happens at the beginning of the Dukas.
As noted above, the chromatic passing tones and appoggiaturas that colour the opening
measures coalesce into a D-flat triad that decorates the tonic (m. 6). After the brief
excursion through E minor, the D-flat sonority reappears (m. 15), now assuming its
normative syntactic role as a pre-dominant harmony, and after the bass drops to the
dominant at measure 17 the Neapolitan lingers for several measures as a pungent
dissonance over the G pedal. In the first eighteen measures, then, there is considerable
flat-side emphasis, and this emphasis comes to impact the music's prevailing modality:
when the Neapolitan chord "finishes" resolving at measure 21, E-flat and not E-natural
colours the dominant 6/4 chord. This appoggiatura to the dominant, in other words, spells
the tonic-minor triad, and therefore implies a Chausson-esque modal reorientation.
313
Figure 7.1 shows how the major/minor conflict develops across the movement.
Figure 7.1
I.
Exposition
Main th.
m. 2
Tonality
C+
17
23
V/C- C+
maj. min.
Tonic +/orientation
Pitch
Eb Eb
inflections Ab Ab
Tonality
Development
Sec. th. Third th.
reh. B
C
reh. 6
A-
F+
V/Db
maj. —> decays
D-8
F+ V/C-
— > — » — >
min.
Eb
Ab
Eb
Ab
G#=
Ab
Recapitulation
Main th.
Sec. th. Third th.
H
G
K
C+ V/C- C+
C-
C
Reh. 8
C- G- Ab+ Bb- F- Gb- G- Eb- V/C
min.
Coda
V/Ab
c
L
L+7
C+
V-I V-I
no
cad.
maj. min.
Tonic +/orientation
Pitch
Eb Eb
inflections Ab Ab
maj.
min.
maj.?
Eb
Ab
M
no cad.
N
Bb-
P
Flat
V/C V-I
keys -
cad.!
min. min. maj.
Eb
Ab
Eb
Ab
Just as at the downbeat of Chausson's allegro, the slip into the minor is reversed when the
dominant resolves to the tonic major at measure 23 for the theme's third statement.
Dukas continues to shadow Chausson. The main theme's short-lived "decay" into the
parallel minor unfolds in the exposition, which (as Figure 7.1 shows) draws to a close on
a minor-inflected home-key dominant. "Dark" flats (to appropriate d'Indian vocabulary)
accumulate across the exposition much as they did in the opening eighteen measures.
Dukas's second theme appears in A minor (letter B). The signature, of course, is the
same as that of C major, though its G-sharp leading-tone is the respelling of the flat-sixth
degree. Dukas encourages us to hear this enharmonic potential when, in the theme's third
bar, G-sharp slips downward to a G-natural that is interpreted as the fifth of a C triad.
The ternary third theme (rehearsal C) drifts "flatward" into F major. In the 'A' section (C
to C+7), the tune is spiced by D-flats and E-flats that are harmonized by secondary
mixture chords (D-flat minor and E-flat minor). B-flat, E-flat, A-flat, D-flat G-flat, and
314
F-flat thus enter the pitch field. This collection of flats impacts the contrasting middle
section (rehearsal 6 to 6 +7), which hovers on and around the dominant of D-flat. It also
comes to impact the movement's global modal orientation: when at 7 +13 the home-key
dominant settles in for the exposition's final nineteen measures, it is decorated by E-flats
and A-flats (just as at measure 21). The modal reorientation that these flats imply is
confirmed at the beginning of the development section (rehearsal 8), where the main
theme appears in C minor.
Dukas's development section (like Chausson's, which begins in B-flat minor and
ends in E-flat minor) remains almost exclusively on the "dark" flat side. After leaving C
minor, it passes through G minor (rehearsal E -13), A-flat major (Letter E), B-flat minor
(E +5), F minor (rehearsal 10), G-flat minor (rehearsal 11, respelled as F-sharp minor),
and G minor (letter F). The second theme appears in G minor (at letter G), and the music
touches on E-flat major (G +17) before working its way to a home-key dominant that is
decorated by C-flat major triads and the Neapolitan. Still shadowing Chausson's opening
movement, at the downbeat of the recapitulation the music snaps back into a tonic major
that remains stable only momentarily (as we have seen, Dukas's main-theme
recapitulation is identical to the exposition, so the swerve into E minor and "decay" into
the parallel minor recur).
From here, Dukas parts ways with Chausson. In the latter work the tonic major
gradually solidifies over the recapitulation as the tonal scheme "corrects" the minor-mode
inflections of the exposition's secondary key. In the Dukas, the music heads, at least
initially, in the other direction: the implication of the main theme's minor-tinted dominant
6/4 (rehearsal 16ff) is again realized, this time in the C-minor reprise of the second theme.
The recapitulation of the third theme seems modally equivocal. It begins with an
unambiguous C-major harmony, and the first bar of the tune itself outlines a C-major
triad. Nevertheless (as we have noted), the theme retains its flat-sixth and seventh
315
degrees, and its middle section (K +8) hovers on and around the dominant of the dark Aflat. Furthermore, it is here that Dukas relaxes the absolute strictness of the
recapitulation: he does not harmonize the third theme's flat-seventh degree as the root of
a minor triad (as it was in the exposition), but as the fifth of an E-flat minor triad. (Thus,
while Dukas breaks with the exposition in one way, he maintains continuity with it in
another: in the theme's F-major exposition, an E-flat minor triad also harmonizes the flatseventh degree.) The roots of these two striking chromatic chords are thus the flat-sixth
and flat-third degrees: C.minor remains very much a presence in the third theme's
recapitulation.
The final victory of C major over C minor is thus deferred to the coda. As noted
above, Dukas invites comparison to the coda of the Eroica Symphony's first movement
by strikingly alluding to it in his own coda: at letter N, a C-major harmony drops to the
flat-seventh degree, development resumes, and music works towards the final climax. As
we have also noted, the excess of Beethoven's famous coda may have troubled Dukas,
and a case may be made that he "misreads" it, that is, he alludes to it for the purpose of
correcting what he would have viewed as its aesthetic "error." Our discussion to this
point has already suggested one way that he corrects that error: his coda is structurally
vital, since the tonic major/minor conflict does not achieve resolution in the
recapitulation. As we shall presently see, virtually every turn the coda takes—including
the Eroica-esque letter N—similarly seems necessary to the resolution of that conflict.
A key point in what I am suggesting is that it is not entirely clear where the
recapitulation ends and the coda begins. Many listeners will sense that the coda is
underway by letter L or M, but Dukas problematizes the conventional cue, the perfect
cadence that concludes the second (or third) theme group. A candidate for such a cadence
might be letter L, where an emphatic dominant resolves to the tonic. The third theme,
however, assumes a ternary form, and the return of its 'A' section (rehearsal 20 to 20 +7)
316
seems to round off and conclude that form. The phrase beginning at rehearsal 20 +8
consequently seems like the beginning of some fresh section and not the continuation of
the third theme. From a phenomenological perspective, this new section is much like a
transition that follows directly from a tonally open main theme. Because the phrase at 20
+8 seems transitional, the tonic at L is detached from the third theme and is therefore not
heard as a cadential goal, but instead to initiate a new, 8-measure formal unit. That unit's
conclusion (L +7) is another candidate for a perfect cadence, but it too is problematic. A
perfect cadence, as William Caplin has recently stressed, by definition effects formal
closure and therefore requires a fully-fledged formal unit—minimally a theme—to
70
close.
In the context of a fifteen-minute movement in which all of the themes are at
least two-dozen bars long, the eight-measure phrase ending at L +7 hardly seems like a
fully-fledged unit capable of motivating a perfect cadence. Although the end of the
phrase expresses, to invoke Caplin's terminology, "cadential content" (a bll-V-I
progression), it does not express "cadential function."71 From a qualitative standpoint,
this phrase resembles what we might expect (again, in the context of Dukas's large-scale
movement) of a codetta, a quick-fire progression that follows the arrival of a cadential
tonic. The passage beginning at L +7 merely repeats the previous phrase in invertible
counterpoint and adds some extra-dominant preparation, so the tonic arrival at letter M,
while perhaps more strongly articulated, does not seem like a cadence for the same
reason.
Nevertheless, jubilant codetta-like phrases celebrate C major as though the music
had unequivocally attained cadential closure. Put somewhat differently, the music seems
to become syntactically confused: an initiating tonic (at L) launches an "after-the-end"
function (the codetta-like phrases at L), although there has been no actual, formal end (a
70
William E. Caplin, "The Classical Cadence: Conceptions and Misconceptions," Journal of the American
Musicological Society 57 (2004): 51-115; sec especially 56-66.
71
Ibid., 81-85.
317
cadence), and the one codetta is followed by two more (L +7 and M). In the coda, then, C
major seems to consolidate, but it has not yet been cadentially sealed as the movement's
ultimate goal. In order for this to happen, the music has to abandon the C-major
celebration, straighten out its syntax, and make a fresh start towards that goal.
That fresh start comes in the form of the Eroica-esque letter N. The tempo
abruptly slows, the dynamic level dramatically recedes, and the drop to B-flat minor
plunges the music back into the flat-side darkness that prevailed through the third theme's
recapitulation. The minor flat seventh at N initiates a tour of keys that recalls the
development section in its flat-side emphasis: D-flat minor at N +4, followed by the
dominants of A-flat (N +8), D-flat (N +10), A-flat again (N +12), A (or is it B-doubleflat?) at letter O, C (O +2), E-flat (O +4), and D-flat (O +6). When the coda arrives on
the home-key dominant 6/4 at rehearsal 24, it once again spells the tonic-minor triad.
This dominant launches the movement's final gambit. The tempo quickens, the dynamic
swells, and a fully-fledged theme—a sixteen-measure compound period—begins at letter
P. This theme finally delivers the perfect cadence (25 +4) that did not materialize earlier
in the coda. The minor/major conflict continues to persist through much of its span
(Dukas's movement here once again shadows Chausson's), as C-minor inflections (Bflats and A-flats) linger in the bass line and contradict the C-major tonality implied by
emphasis on E-natural in the soprano, and there is a three-bar stretch of dark Neapolitan
harmony at P +4. C minor, however, is dramatically vanquished once and for all at the
arrival of the cadential tonic: the codetta that it launches—the phrase heard at letter M
reappears here in its proper, post-cadential, syntactic position—is pure, uninfected C
major. Dukas does not linger on this victory any longer than necessary. After the
cadence, he wraps up the movement with a mere eighteen rapid bars of raucous postcadential C major, momentarily interrupted at R +2 by a D-flat minor triad (respelled as
C-sharp), a gesture of "structural framing" whereby the final measures recall the
318
harmonic turn (the decorative Neapolitan heard at bar 6) that set the movement's tonal
adventure in motion.72
In Dukas's coda, pace that of the Eroica's first movement, all is "musique."
Whereas in Beethoven's composition the fresh beginning and the drop to the flat-seventh
degree seem extravagant and willed, Dukas's analogous gestures follow more
continuously from the preceding music: the former is a syntactic necessity and the latter
logically continues the harmonic argument that we have traced through the movement.
Indeed, the drop to B-flat minor brings the music back around to the movement's central
(modal) crisis so that it may be definitively resolved. The only passage that might seem
extravagant or extraneous (particularly given its syntactic ambiguity) is the stretch of C
major that follows the third theme's recapitulation (letters L through M). In the context
of the movement as a whole, however, this passage seems entirely necessary.
Throughout, Dukas places much emphasis on flat keys and the parallel-minor modal
orientation that they imply. Indeed, prior to the coda, the movement spends virtually no
time at all in C major: just a few measures at the very outset and at the analogous spot in
the recapitulation. Therefore, the movement needs a prolonged stretch of C-major
celebration in the coda to counterbalance several hundred measures of flat-side darkness.
Dukas had options here: such a passage could have gone before or after the cadence. His
solution reflects his preoccupation with balance and suspicion of Beethovenian excess.
By choosing the former option and placing the passage parenthetically between the
modally ambiguous third theme and the minor-oriented slow segment of the coda, Dukas
could keep the movement's harmonic plot open and thereby avoid what might have
seemed like an extravagant denouement after the structural cadence.
72
Don McLean and Brian Alegant, "On the Nature of Structural Framing," Nineteenth-Century
Review 4 (2007): 3-29.
Music
319
Dukas's harmonic plot may similarly be understood to exemplify a healthy (from
the composer's perspective) way of harnessing the Beethovenian symphonic tradition.
The piece hinges upon the same C minor/C major conflict that underwrites the Fifth
Symphony, a work that would have in some ways troubled Dukas. As Forster sensed, the
triumphant breakthrough of C major at the beginning of the finale suggests the sort of
subjective excess—the composer appears in person to disarm the minor-mode goblins—
that Dukas rejected. Rooted in a strategy similar to the one Chausson had employed five
years earlier, Dukas's movement (like the Fifth) expresses a narrative of heroic becoming.
Nowhere, however, does that narrative take an arbitrary, willful, or (in a word) subjective
turn. Plainly stated, Dukas's allegro is a major-mode composition that "decays" into the
parallel minor. This decay follows logically from the opening measures' Neapolitan
colouring, and, through the course of the movement, Dukas emphasizes the tonal orbit of
the parallel minor (via flat-side keys) to the point that the tonic major seems in real
jeopardy of being entirely overwhelmed. Modally ambiguous passages (like the third
theme) and apparent resurgences of C major (such as the main theme's recapitulation and
letters L through M) that decay back into flat-side darkness contribute a sense struggle
against an immanent, fatal collapse. These factors combine to make the ultimate victory
of C major seem as hard-won as it is in Beethoven's Fifth. Yet as with Dukas's treatment
of thematic character, there are no unmotivated swerves, no magical trap doors. The
piece arrives at its triumphant C-major destination according to tonality's central
principle: the resolution of dissonance.
The victory of C major is not, in short, a "breakthrough", a radical formal turn in
the manner of the Fifth Symphony's finale. The composer's treatment of tonality (in this
respect unremarkable) takes on significance in light of key ideas that we have drawn out
of his criticism. Adorno famously celebrated the breakthrough in the symphonies of
320
Mahler, Dukas's contemporary.73 He implicitly positioned Mahler's music against the
fin-de-siecle crisis of subjectivity that (as we noted above) critics variously diagnosed as
nihilism (Nietzsche), "deracinement" (Barres), and so on, and therefore felt that this
gesture carried profound ethical implications. The Mahlerian breakthrough represented a
heroic act of resistance to the normalizing and oppressive forces of modernity: the subject
emancipates itself from the "world's course." For Adorno, to "become" was to assert
difference. Dukas's writings, as we have observed, suggest that he heard formal rupture
and extravagance much as Adorno did. Dukas, however, subscribed to an altogether
different ethics. His views resemble those of Durkheim, for whom "becoming" was a
matter offollowing the "world's course": people developed individuality within the
constraints of a social contract that held them accountable to one another. For both
Durkheim and Dukas, the excess of difference that Adorno celebrated was destabilizing
and dangerous. For these reasons, he may well have hoped that posterity would recognize
his contribution to the genre as Ropartz did, and as we have done here: Dukas composed
a heroic symphony, but one in which, "par l'oubli du moi, s'eleve a un humanisme qui est
proprement classique."
7.5 A Cyclic Symphony?
In a letter of December of 1899, Dukas congratulated Ropartz on his recent
Quatre poemes d'apres 1'Intermezzo de Henri Heine. He wrote glowingly of the songs,
but he did question the cyclic approach by which Ropartz linked them together: "je
n'approuve guere le lien artificiel d'un theme schematique, a la fagon de d'Indy," he
declared, though he mollified these words by adding "je reconnais tres volontiers qu'il
n'enleve rien a la liberie et la variete d'expression." 74 Dukas's E-flat minor piano sonata
73
74
See Chapter 4, n2.
Paul Dukas to Guy Ropartz, 27 December, 1899, Correspondance
de Paul Dukas, 33.
321
(apart from the symphony his only surviving multi-movement instrumental composition)
reflects his skepticism of the cyclic procedures that so many of his colleagues cultivated.
Brian Hart has asserted that the symphony "is not cyclic," and Ralph Locke shares this
view.
Indeed, the work does not employ germinal motives or wholesale thematic recall.
Nor does a continuous harmonic plot run across the three movements, as in the Franck,
Chausson, and Saint-Saens's Third. That is to say, the C minor/major conflict that we
traced through the first movement is not resumed or developed in the second or third
(although the finale itself articulates a similar plot). Dukas does, however, add weight to
the end of the work. The finale's three themes are superimposed and juxtaposed in a
chorale-like apotheosis at rehearsal 11 that gives a strong sense of culmination (the
composer produces a climax in the E-flat minor piano sonata's finale exactly the same
way). This grand climax may well have been d'Indy's model for the analogous chorale
peroration in his Second Symphony—which he dedicated to Dukas—where multiple
themes are similarly united. Nevertheless, Dukas's movements (like d'Indy's) are tonally
autonomous. Dukas's symphony stands as the only major fin-de-siecle French essay in
the genre that does not employ any of these standard cyclic techniques. The composer
was bucking an important trend. Why?
Critics generally view Dukas as an "independent," and with good reason. Like
Faure, he tended to steer clear of partisan squabbles, and his contemporaries did not
usually associate him with any "isme." He did not proclaim allegiance to any "school"
(and viewed them with skepticism), and unlike d'Indy (and Wagner) he did not believe
that history mandated any new genres or compositional procedures.76 Dukas therefore
would not have felt anything like the sense of obligation that compelled d'Indy,
Chausson, and others to pursue cyclic techniques. The composer's writings shed
75
76
Hart, "The French Symphony After Berlioz," 626; and Locke, "The French Symphony," 182.
See Paul Dukas, "La Question d'ecole," in Chroniques musicales, 203-207.
322
additional light on the matter. Dukas traces cyclicism back to Liszt's symphonic poems.
The extreme formal liberties Liszt took necessitated the discovery of a new unifying
principle.
Ce principe dont il apparait, a present, que le drame wagnerien devait tirer le
plus grand benefice, derive de l'emploi systematique des themes conducteurs.
Avant Liszt, personne ne s'etait avise de personnifier des sentiments et des
passions par des phrases musicales dont les transformations diverses devaient
s'appliquer a en rendre les diverses nuances. Personne du moins n'avait mis
ce mode de variation a la base d'une composition symphonique. [...] C'est a
Liszt que revient, sans conteste, l'honneur de les avoir frayees aux jeunes
generations. C'est a lui qu'il faut attribuer le merite d'avoir cree une musique
qui, imprimant a chaque motif un sens defini, remplace le developpement
purement musical par un melange de themes dont les metamorphoses doivent
correspondre a des associations d'idees[.. .].77
This was no glowing tribute to Liszt, as the final sentence makes clear. "Accent" replaces
"developpement:" Liszt's themes are immediately evocative of precise sentiments, and
transformations of those themes add further nuance to those sentiments. The whole
enterprise was motivated by desire to boost the level of subjective expression, and was
therefore "anti-musical." Dukas did not believe that Franck, d'Indy, Chausson or other
important French symphonists employed cyclicism to the same dubious ends Liszt did.
As his letter to Ropartz makes clear, cyclic techniques did not necessarily harm a
composition. Indeed, Dukas marveled at the thematic development in d'Indy's Second.78
Nevertheless, as the fruit of an anti-musical tree, Dukas seems to have concluded that the
use of cyclic themes (as he put it) "in the manner of d'Indy" and others was unnecessary
and would contribute nothing to his instrumental music.
Dukas nevertheless still did unify his symphony's three movements; he simply
devised his own distinct means. As Brian Hart has observed, the composer drew attention
77
78
Dukas, "Le 'Faust' de Goethe et la musique," 194-195.
Paul Dukas, "La Deuxieme symphonie de Vincent d'Indy," in Les Ecrits de Paul Dukas, 610.
323
to his work's tripartite division with the subtitle "Symphonie en trois parties."79 Like
Franck and Chausson, Dukas opted for a fast-slow-fast design, with no "dedicated"
scherzo movement. But as with Franck's symphony, there nevertheless is scherzo-like
music. We have noted that the opening movement's third theme bears a stratum of
scherzo-esque playfulness, and we might add that it is scherzo-like from a metrical
standpoint: just as in the scherzos of the Lalo and Saint-Saens symphonies, one measure
of compound duple time sounds like a group of two rapid triple-time measures. One may
therefore speak of a tiny scherzo "movement" embedded in the allegro. One may also
speak of a tiny slow movement embedded earlier in the allegro: the second theme is
marked "calme et dans un mouvement sensiblement ralenti." The three themes of the
first-movement exposition thus express not only distinct rhetorical characters, but also, in
the manner of Liszt's symphonic poems, the generic characters of three symphonic
movement types: allegro, slow movement, and scherzo. A fourth is added at the end of
the movement, where the third theme is shorn of its chromatic inflections to become a
heroic fanfare: the scherzo becomes a finale, completing the sonata cycle's fourmovement collection. Dukas held serious reservations about Liszt's music, but evidently
80
felt that multi-level use of sonata-form categories was a worthy technique.
Dukas's solution to the challenge of unifying his symphony's three movements
was to extend Liszt's conflation of theme and movement somewhat as Saint-Saens did.
The Organ Symphony's second-movement main theme takes up the tonality, character,
and structure (in the sense that it recombines the cyclic theme's motivic constituents) of
the opening movement's subordinate theme, such that the adagio becomes a dilation or
extension of that theme. Dukas, we shall presently see, did much the same, though he
79
Hart, "The French Symphony After Berlioz," 624.
On Liszt's two-dimensional sonata forms, see Steven Vande Moortele, "Two-Dimensional Sonata Form
in Germany and Austria Between 1850 and 1950: Theoretical, Analytical, and Critical Perspectives" (PhD
diss., Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2006), 89-114.
80
324
forged links not only between the second theme and the second movement, but also
between the third theme and the third movement. In Liszt's works, sonata-form sections
take on the characteristics of movements, and in the Organ Symphony full movements
become something like sonata-form sections. In Dukas, it is both ways: the opening
allegro's themes resemble miniature symphonic movements, and in the remainder of the
symphony those themes become the bases of the corresponding, fully-fledged
movements.
Example 7.3
Example 7.3a) I, reh. C
Allegro non troppo
hn, tb.
ff
Example 7.3b) III, mm. 1-7
Allegro spiritoso
hn, bn, vc.
Ralph Locke has noted a certain likeness between Dukas's opening-movement
third theme (Example 7.3a) and the main theme of the finale (Example 7.3b), calling the
latter a "more resolute version" of the former. 81 The similarities are manifold. The
themes share a similar metrical character (the third theme's eighth-note pulses correspond
to the finale theme's triple-time beats, and the finale theme's clear two-bar groups
correspond to the third theme's compound-time measures). The finale's theme takes up
the third theme's crisp, dotted rhythms, brassy scoring, and forte dynamic. Their melodic
shapes are even suggestively similar: both start on the tonic, ascend stepwise to the third
degree then land strongly on the fifth, and both are coloured by the flat-sixth degree. The
Locke, "The French Symphony," 182.
325
two themes are not the same, but they are cut from the same cloth. As in Mendelssohn's
A-major Italian Symphony, where the A-minor saltarello finale seems like an outgrowth
of the stylistically kindred (though not motivically related) A-minor dance heard in the
first-movement's development section and coda, Dukas's themes are similar enough that
they seem substantively related.
The main theme of the slow movement (Example 7.4b) is likewise related to the
second theme of the opening movement (Example 7.4a). Both are piano, lyrical, and
legato, and bass pedals and unobtrusive inner-voice counterpoint support both. The two
themes also share the minor mode. (And we might note that the tonalities of both the
second and third movements are related to those of their "source" themes by fifth. That
is, the C major of the finale is a fifth above the F-major tonality of the third theme's
exposition, and E minor is likewise a fifth above the A-minor tonality of the firstmovement second theme's exposition.) As Example 7.4 shows, both themes also begin
with a minor-sixth leap from the fifth degree to the third, and the second-movement
theme makes much of its "source" theme's initiating sixth.
Example 7.4
Example 7.4a) I, reh. B to B +7
ealme
vln.
A
A
5
3
Example 7.4b) II, mm. 5-12
Andante espressivo ^=50
326
5
5
In both the second and third movements, Dukas derives other thematic materials
from their respective main themes by way of d'lndy-like "amplification" of certain
motivic details. In this way, the entire movements may be said to grow out of their
respective main themes, and indirectly out of their sources in the first movement. In the
slow movement there are several important melodic elements, and all of them amplify the
above-mentioned sixth-leap from the fifth to third degree. In the codettas that follow the
main theme's concluding cadence at letter B (see Example 7.5a), this interval becomes a
descending sixth. This minor sixth is then expanded into a major sixth to become the
basis of the little E-major chorale that appears at B +3 (see again Example 7.5a). Shortly
after the chorale reaches another cadence at letter C, there appears a pastoral, birdcall-like
figure (at C +8; see also Example 7.5b) that is soon transformed into a lugubrious horn
call at D +3 (also shown in Example 7.5b); both are based on the rising sixth between
scale degrees 5 and 3, the former in C major (G to E) and the latter in E-flat minor (Bb to
Gb). A final melodic element, an E-flat major second theme, follows closely at D +6
(Example 7.5c). In the tune itself, the sixth is discrete but nevertheless present, as the
third and fifth degrees mark out the melodic ambitus of the four-measure presentation
phrase. The sixth is very much present, however, in the inner-voice accompaniment,
which is based upon the bird/horn call: always as 5 and 3 of the local harmony, the figure
spans Eb-C at D +6 (in the cellos), C-Ab at D +7 (in the violas), Eb-C again at D +8
(violins), and F#-D at D +9 (in the violins again). The sixth returns after the cadence at
letter E (again in the first violins; not shown in the example), and is equally prominent in
the theme's repetition beginning at E +4, and remains so through much of the
movement's central development section.
The finale is a large, rondo-like form in which regular appearances of the main
theme are interspersed with two other themes. As in the slow movement, the second and
third themes derive from the main theme, now with primarily rhythmic relationships.
327
Example 7.5
Example 7.5a) reh. II, B - 1 to B +4
chorale
Example 7.5b) II, reh. D
328
Example 7.5c) II, reh. D +6
Second theme
As Example 7.6 shows, the second theme (Example 7.6b) largely maintains the main
theme's rhythmic profile (Example 7.6a); Dukas simply moves the bar line of the latter
back by a beat. The melodic contours are also vaguely similar, as in both themes the
dotted figure is approached by step from above, and skips upward to a chord tone.
329
Example 7.6
Example 7.6a) III, mm. 1-5
Allegro spiritoso
hn, bn, vc.
•)=» f r r r ?f|f Err
f?..
f~[>ririr r f i
Is
e
Example 7.6b) III, reh. I
Plus modere
J
/
VlT' pi&ljgjJ
Jl
vl, ob.
In the slow movement, cadences clearly demarcate the thematic materials, which
closely follow one another. The finale, on the other hand, resembles the opening allegro
in that thematic boundaries are often unclear and transitions intersperse the themes. In
the transitions, Dukas usually motivically prepares the theme that will follow. The
transition from first theme to second begins around rehearsal 2. Here, the dotted figure
that becomes the latter theme's characteristic rhythm is extracted from the main theme
and isolated by the trumpets and horns (at rehearsal 2 +2ff). A few measures later, at B
+4, the semitone that saturates the main theme's accompaniment (see, for example, the
first violins) and will become the second theme's characteristic pickup-to-downbeat
semitone slip, is isolated and heard ten times in rapid succession (in the flutes, piccolo
trumpet, and second violins). In this way, the second theme seems to grow organically
from the first over the course of the transition.
After the second theme, the main theme makes a very brief, rondo-like
reappearance at letter F. Dukas begins to isolate the motivic elements that will form the
third theme (Example 7.7) almost immediately. At F +3 and F +9 (horns and trumpets),
he extracts from the main theme the amphibrachic (short-long-short) rhythmic figure that
will become the third theme's characteristic motive. This figure is slightly modified
330
seven measures later and transferred to the bass, where it remains prominent for a dozen
bars. The short-long-short figure returns at rehearsal 6 +8 (in the horns and trumpets) and
continues to sound through H, twelve quick measures after which the third theme arrives.
Example 7.7 III, reh. I
Molto meno vivace
• j V h ,
J
J
J=92
-IqJ-Z—* J *
—
y—-L-
l j v
r$\t ^
— • •
—
P
As with the second theme, the third theme's initial and characteristic interval, the minor
third (doubled up to become a tritone in the second measure), is also derived from the
main theme in the transition. The main theme's first two downbeats span a major third.
Beginning at F +12 this interval is progressively compressed into the third theme's minor
third. Here the main theme's first measure is repeated sequentially, rising by thirds from
F-sharp through A-sharp, (a major third), C-sharp, E, and G (all minor thirds). Again at
letter G the one bar model is stated on A-flat and rises sequentially through C (a major
third), E-flat, G-flat, and A (all minor thirds). The main theme continues to outline minor
thirds (Bb-Db at rehearsal 6, C-Eb at 6 +4, and D-F at 6 +8 and 6+10), until it is
liquidated to become diminished-seventh arpeggios at H. When the third theme appears,
the music has become utterly saturated with minor thirds
Hart's assertion that the symphony is "not cyclic" needs qualification. It is true
that unlike Saint-Saens, Franck, and the d'Indy of the Second Symphony, Dukas does not
derive themes from cyclic motives, and nowhere are whole passages from one movement
recalled or transformed in another, as they are in the Lalo, Franck, Chausson, and SaintSaens's Third. Nevertheless, Dukas unified the three movements of his symphony in a
highly original way. His approach most closely resembles that which d'Indy pursued in
the Mountain Symphony, where "amplifications" of first-movement material become the
331
main themes of the slow movement and finale. But there are important differences. In
d'Indy, the Mountain Theme alone is the subject of amplification, such that a large-scale
theme and variations set is superimposed on its multi-movement span. Dukas, perhaps
via the mediating influence of Saint-Saens, folded Liszt's conflation of theme and
movement into this technique. The opening movement's second and third themes assume
the characters of a slow movement and a scherzo/finale respectively, and the motivic
details of these themes are amplified to produce the main themes of the symphony's
"actual" slow movement and finale. Dukas also added another step that perhaps lends his
work an even greater degree of thematic integration than d'Indy achieved. Further
amplifications of those main themes' motivic details yield their respective movements'
other materials. Subordinate themes produce main themes, main themes in turn produce
further subordinate themes: in this way, the whole symphony grows out of the materials
laid out in the first movement's exposition.
332
Conclusion
As Ives Keramzer boldly predicted in 1870, the symphony flourished in fin-desiecle France. Indeed, through the efforts of Saint-Saens, Franck, Lalo, Chausson,
d'Indy and Dukas in the ten years between 1886 and 1896, a nation that had no living
symphonic tradition to speak of came to rival and perhaps even eclipse Austria as a
centre of the symphony. The works we have examined here met with much popular
acclaim and enjoyed frequent performances in Paris and elsewhere. Critics, too, often'
viewed them as jewels of the French school.
French symphonists inherited a highly circumscribed genre. Although the
compositions of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Berlioz, and Schumann
numbered among the canonized classics that formed the backbone of the repertoire, the
great majority of critics and listeners associated the symphony with Beethoven. In
particular, the heroic Third, Fifth, and Ninth represented the standard against which all
other symphonies were measured. In this study, I have striven to shine light upon the
nuance, subtlety, and creativity that French composers brought to the genre and to draw
out some of the cultural significance of their symphonies. Beethoven's paradigm
represented a common starting point, but France's fin-de-siecle musical culture and
intellectual climate, filtered through composers' individual aesthetic temperaments and
ideologies, engendered remarkably variegated responses.
Saint-Saens loftily claimed to have "renovated" the symphony by injecting it with
newness that came in the form of techniques that he borrowed from the symphonic poem,
including thematic transformation and two-dimensional sonata procedure. Saint-Saens
also expanded the orchestra's resources by incorporating the organ and piano to striking,
and indeed decidedly new, effect. Franck too appealed (perhaps via Saint-Saens) to
certain procedures that Liszt had developed; his movement-embedding technique in
333
particular suggests the influence of the Hungarian's symphonic poems. Like Saint-Saens
and the Beethoven of the Fifth Symphony, Franck spread the genre's characteristic per
aspera ad astra plot across his symphony's three-movement span. Although Franck's
symphony and Saint-Saens's Third share this basic plot, the two composers negotiated it
in distinct ways. In the Franck, a mystical other redeems the subject from the darkness of
the minor mode, and certain contemporary critics compellingly interpreted the work as
an expression of the composer's faith. The Organ Symphony, on the other hand, seems
more consonant with Beethoven's heroic narratives: the subject discovers transfiguring
potential in its own constitution and remakes itself.
Critics have sometimes denigrated Lalo's symphony as a mere arrangement of
materials salvaged from his abandoned opera Fiesque. I have attempted to show that his
borrowings served merely as thematic bases from which he forged a fresh, genuinely
symphonic, and at times highly original composition. The work is very compact. While
perhaps not squaring with late twentieth-century narratives of the genre's history that
privilege grandiose expression, contemporary critics celebrated Lalo's concision; it
seemed a perfectly viable solution to the problem of composing a symphony in the postBeethoven era. Lalo also staked out fresh aesthetic territory by deforming the
symphony's narrative conventions. The tonic minor and major modes clash throughout,
i
but the work concludes tragically in the minor, not triumphantly in the major. Similar in
this respect is Chausson's B-flat symphony. Although "in" the major mode, the work
vacillates throughout between the tonic major and minor. Chausson, like Lalo, thereby
promises a grand victory of the major mode, yet this victory never comes, and the work
draws to a troubled close. The plot of Chausson's symphony is bound up in the work's
raw materials and the highly modern harmonic style the composer derives from them:
common-tone voice leading undercuts the kinetic quality of more conventional harmonic
progression, such that insufficient tension accrues to motivate a decisive breakthrough.
334
This uneasy tension between the music's modern surface and the symphony's narrative
conventions, we have observed, resonates with symbolist anxieties over the integrity of
the individual self in a modern, mass society.
D'Indy championed the symphony not only as a composer but also as a
pedagogue and theorist. Like most writers of the period, he positioned Beethoven at the
summit of the genre. Nevertheless, the liberal values that seem immanent in Beethoven's
symphonies grated against his conservative ideology. In the Mountain Symphony,
d'Indy responded by rejecting Beethoven's characteristic teleological procedures in
favour of a cyclic approach based on variation. He thus imparted a circular rather than
linear aspect upon the work. We have also observed that the Mountain Symphony
pursues an agenda of "enracinement," whereby a folk song (upon which he believed a
gamut of traditional values had crystallized) becomes the thematic and stylistic basis of a
modern, progressive symphony. D'Indy's Second Symphony may be understood to
exemplify the composer's ideal of artistic progress founded in timeless and stable
tradition. Its leitmotivic plot advocates a Meistersinger-like synthesis of tradition and
innovation. The composer also integrated the modern whole-tone scale into, and (in his
view) thereby enriched, the musical syntax he inherited from earlier nineteenth-century
composers.
Finally, Dukas (like d'Indy) expressed ambivalence towards Beethoven. On the
one hand, he admired the symphonies immensely. But on the other, he felt they
occasionally expressed an immoderate element of subjectivity, and he believed that this
had had a profound and negative impact on subsequent music. Dukas responded by
composing his own Heroique, which pointedly avoids the excess, rupture, and
arbitrariness in which he sensed a surfeit of ego in Beethoven, instead maintaining
throughout a classical balance between form and subject
In the hands of the six composers represented in this study, one might say that the
335
French symphony itself "became": it matured into one of the nation's most important
musical forms. The impact of the compositions we have studied here, moreover, would
endure. Brian Hart's important work has shown the extent to which the genre continued
to thrive in France after the turn of the century. Institutions gave it greater emphasis than
ever before: the pedagogical programme that d'Indy implemented at the Schola cantorum
in 1897 placed the symphony on an equal level with opera; the Conservatoire,
particularly after Faure took over the directorship in 1905, likewise began to encourage
symphonists. Institutional support also came in the form of contests such as the Cressent
Prize. Formerly devoted to operatic works, the Minister of Fine Arts Henri Marcel reinaugurated it in 1904 as a concours for symphonic compositions. The competition
offered prizes of up to 20 000 francs; symphonies by Eugene Cools and Guy Ropartz
owed to this important incentive.
Under these conditions, large numbers of composers wrote symphonies. They
included many now forgotten figures such as Antoine, Mariotte, Henri Dallier, and Louis
Thirion. However, more influential turn-of-the-century composers including Theodore
Dubois and Charles-Marie Widor also produced symphonies, as did Albert Roussel and
Charles Tournemire, both luminaries of post belle-epoque French music. After them,
Darius Milhaud (who wrote a dozen full-length symphonies), Arthur Honegger, and
Olivier Messiaen (the composer of the enormous TurangaUla-symphonie) continued the
French symphonic tradition that Saint-Saens, Franck, Lalo, Chausson, d'Indy, and Dukas
had inaugurated.
Future studies will perhaps explore the ways the issues upon which we have
focused here continued to factor in the French symphony beyond the turn of the century.
A composition like Roussel's First Symphony, "Le poeme de la foret" (1908), seems
aesthetically removed from its fin-de-siecle predecessors in its emphasis on nature
painting and episodic design, but nevertheless employs the certain kinds of cyclic
336
procedures that were so central to the French symphonic tradition. How did composers
reconcile the genre's formal and rhetorical conventions with an evolving musical
language and shifting aesthetic priorities? Given the central role that conventional
tonality had hitherto played in the symphony, critics might make a priority of
investigating how the pervasive chromaticism of Tournemire's Third (1913) or the
bitonality of Roussel's austere Second (1919-1921) relate to the genre's traditions. What
of the nineteenth-century symphony's ethical dimensions? Future critics similarly may
wish to ask how Honegger's symphonies, composed against the dark backdrop of the
Second World War and the horror and uncertainty of its aftermath, come to terms with
the optimism and confidence that the symphonies of d'Indy, Franck, and, of course,
Beethoven exemplify.
337
338
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