Symphony

“ A symphony is a wonderful symbol. In the first place, it is music. In the second place, it is a name of praise with four syllables. Then it completes a cycle, and returns on a higher plane to the motif with which it began. It is the history of a soul, and in its last movement typifies the resurrection of the body, by means of this very return,—a return to the order and disposal in which it was created and which it now reassumes to praise its Creator for all eternity by the harmony of the original Thought. ”

“ The chief difference between a symphony and any other form of artistic expression—such as a novel, a play, a painting, or a piece of sculpture—is that a symphony is not a record of something else; it is not a picture of something else; it is itself only. And it is this quality or property of being itself that gives to all pure music its remarkable power. ”

“ Music is so fully suggestive; and, after all, if you abandon yourself to that you are very apt to find yourself only among corresponding images. The adagio of the Fifth Symphony reminds me in one part of majestic waves, black and crowned with creamy foam; and they swell as if the whole sound of the ocean thundered in each, and when they have almost gained a height through which the sun may shine and reveal the long-haired mermaids, and the splendid colors which hide so much, then they fall upon themselves and stream backward into the sea, the foam uppermost like a shroud. ”

“ If during an orchestral symphony you look steadily enough at one musician or another you can always hear his instrument above the rest and follow his part in the symphony. In the same way when I look at fairy throngs I can hear them sing. If I single out one of them for observation I hear him or her sing—not words, never words; they have none. I saw once, like a driven cloud, the spirits of the North-west [48] wind sweep down the sky over the bare ridge of a chalk down, winged and shrouded, eager creatures, embattled like a host. They were grey and dun-coloured, pale in the face. ”

“ The Finale is conceived in mystical retrospect, beginning in vein of prologue: over mysterious murmuring strings, long sustained notes of the reed and horn in octave descent are mingled with a soft carillon of horns and trumpets in the call of the Scherzo. In broad swing a free fantasy rises to a loud refrain (in the brass) of the first motive of the symphony. ”

“ Symphony as everyone knows is a play of music upon given themes—it develops and varies them in a thousand ways, making them pass from one key to another, ornamenting them, combining them, and constantly reshaping their physiognomy by all the resources of harmony and counterpoint, breaking them up and embroidering on their fragments one new fancy after another, bringing them back to view in their original form and key, and after that making them run through a second and third cycle of transformations. ”

“ So one after another, or all at once, the bells go pealing on, now as the musical theme that rises clearly above the full orchestra in a grand symphony, now as a fantasia that lingers and recedes, dilating on the wind. ”

“ Simple melody or harmony appeals mostly to the sensuous love of sweet sounds. The symphony does this in an enlarged and complicated sense, but is still more marked by the marvelous suggestive energy with which it unlocks all the secret raptures of fancy, floods the border-lands of thought with a glory not to be found on sea or land, and paints ravishing pictures, that come and go like dreams, with colors drawn from the "twelve-tinted tone-spectrum." ”

“ There is, indeed, an action in this symphony, but it is wholly in the music: the putting into play of two principal themes, which present themselves at the beginning side by side, follow each other, war against each other, or, on the contrary, are each developed separately, associate with themselves new ideas which complete or serve as commentary, and at the end of the work are blended in an immense triumphal chant. ”

“ The muted trumpet blows a strain (to trembling strings) that takes us back to the first (quoted) tune of the symphony in the wistful mood of dawn. For a symphony it proves to be in the unity of themes and thought. Now unmuted and unrestrained in conflict of crashing chords, the trumpet blows again the motto of the roving sea. In various figures is the pelagic motion, in continuous coursing strings, in the sweeping phrase of the woodwind, or in the original wave-motion of the horns, now unmuted. ”

“ Whoever has imagined in hearing the Andante of the 7th Symphony, that nothing could ever equal, not to say surpass it, has but to hear the movement of the same kind in the present composition in order to change his sentiments. In truth, the movement is altogether divine, the interchanges and combinations of the motives are surprising, the tasteful conduct of the whole is easy and natural, and in the midst of the rich exuberance of the subject, the simplicity that prevails throughout is truly admirable. ”

“ We suppose, the first symphony was when "the morning stars shouted together for joy;" and the mystic world-tree, Igdrasil, with its "leaves of human existence," and myriad manifestations, maketh a symphony for ever in the ear of the Eternal. As music is sound, so perhaps all sound is music, to a higher being—even the discord of pain, and the half cadence of sorrow being justified by a soul of meaning; just as music proper, itself would not be half so sweet or complete without its profound minors and expressive dissonances. ”

“ How should one comprehend and imagine it? Was it not, after all, the most wonderful thing about the great instrument on which the symphony was played?
While the Music-Lover, leaning back in his seat, was idly turning over this thought, the Andante began, and all definite questioning and reasoning were absorbed in the calm, satisfying melody which flowed from the violas and 'cellos. ”

“ Coming to Art's two highest spheres,--music of sound and music of speech,--we find that Beethoven and Mozart, and Milton and Shakespeare, have written. But the symphony is sacred only because, and only so far as, it renders the joy or the sorrow which we have felt. ”

“ As one who loves wind-instruments, I like to think that the flutes, oboes, and clarinets are the flowers of my vernal orchestra, decorating the great mass of stringed instruments with streaks and flames of colour.
In real music, we cannot say why certain sounds make an appropriate opening for a symphony ”

“ The cheerful serenity pervading the symphony, and the occasional stronger accents of passionate feeling, are, as it were, prefigured in the introduction, where we hear the rolling of the storm which is to clear and freshen the atmosphere. ”

“ The burden of the hymn heard above the symphonic struggle of the orchestra is joy, love and brotherhood for all mankind, or that charity which is the true essence of the Christian religion. Like Dante's Divine Comedy or Bach's Passion Music, the Ninth Symphony will live as one of the greatest monuments of genius. ”

“ For the hum of wheels we have the songs of birds, the music of waterfalls, the purr of mountain brooks and the harmonies of the winds playing through the thousand different species of trees, each one differing in melody, but combining in one grand symphony. Orchestras are muffled music when compared to nature’s lute. The pipes of Pan is but a poet’s struggle to embody in speech such a symphony. ”

“ It is clear that the symphonic poem is in very essence opposed to the symphony. The genius of the symphony lies in the overwhelming breadth and intensity of its expression without the aid of words. Vainly decried by a later age of shallower perception, it achieved this Promethean stroke by the very magic of the design. At one bound thus arose in the youngest art a form higher than any other of human device,—higher than the epic, the drama, or the cathedral. ”

“ Such are the man and woman, and such are the scenes depicted in the Fifth symphony. No words of ours can make clearer the contrast between the first and second subjects of the opening movement, the one tremendous in its overbearing passion, the other meek, yearning, and tender. ”

“ And that the mere hearing of the Symphony, even accompanied by the appropriate emotion, is not sufficient, may be easily seen, if we consider what would be the state of a man, who should hear all the notes, but should not be aware of any of those melodic and harmonic relations, which are necessary to constitute the smallest beautiful elements in the Symphony. ”

“ The night breaks into a bright purple light, and, with an unspeakable longing, we follow the forms which invite us with friendly glances into their ranks as they fly through the clouds to the eternal music of the spheres.” Immediately following this came the exceedingly powerful and life-like symphony in G minor, and the Jupiter symphony. ”

“ The most memorable moments with me have been those in which pain and pleasure, yearning and satisfaction, knowledge and seeking, have been so exquisitely and so intangibly blended, in listening to some deep sonata, some stately and pathetic old ciacconna or gavotte, some concerto or symphony; the thing nearest heaven is to sit apart with closed eyes while the orchestra or the individual performer interprets for one the mystic poetry, or the dramatic fire, or the subtle cobweb refinements of some instrumental poem. ”

“ And yet, withal, a rhythm and a lilt that held him there,{347} gently receptive as one who listens to a well-studied symphony, finding it new.
Rather a dream than a recapitulation. The one measured thing was the little watch, singing away that monotone, the time. Yet, since all the rest lay like a mighty matrix for that beat, it too must have had measure. Perhaps the master of this symphony was a complex composer—too complex to be measured, yet too great not to be enjoyed.
Two years.
What must two years be, in which is nothing that outweighs their number. Not failure. ”

“ It is almost incredible that any one should suppose otherwise; the real difficulty is in getting the ordinary person to suppose anything! So I say that the symphony is a mirror of life, and that all the great symphonies taken together are like a book of life in which everything is faithfully set forth in due proportion and balance. ”

“ Concerning symphony, he shows how sounds harmonize. A quick sound is acute, a slow is grave. Therefore acute sounds move the senses the quicker; and these dying and grave sounds supervening, what arises from the contemperation of one with the other causes pleasure to the ear, which we call harmony. And by what has been said, it may easily be understood that air is the instrument of these things. For sound is the stroke upon the sense of the hearer, caused by the air; and the air strikes as it is struck by the thing moving,—if violent, acutely,—if languid, softly. ”

“ When the prologue recurs, the phrases are in ascent, instead of descent of octaves. A climactic verse of the main dulcet melody breaks out in resonant choir of brass and is followed by a soft rhapsody on the several strains that hark back to the beginning. From the halting pace the lyric episode rises in flight of continuous song to enchanting lilt. Now in the big heroic fantasy sing the first slow phrases as to the manner born and as naturally break into a paean of the full motive, mingled with strains of the original legend of the symphony, that flows on to broad hymnal cadence. ”

“ The rhapsody seems too vague for melody; yet there are motives, one in chief, winding to a pause; here is a new appealing phrase; the ending is in a
return to the first. Over the whole symphony is cast the hue of this rhapsody, both in mood and in the literal tone.
All opposite, with sudden spring of buoyant strings, strikes the Allegro tune ending in a quick, dancing trip. The first voice is immediately pursued by another
in similar phase, like a gentler shadow, and soon rises to a passionate chord that is the main idiom of the movement. ”

“ Symphony, which, though unwarrantable in a symphony of the older pattern, seem to many of us surcharged with the most direct psychological significance. Right through, from recitative to the symphonic poem or the programme symphony, we see that the fusion of the literary or pictorial with the musical interest necessarily leads to a modification of the tissue of the musical theme and of the musical development. ”

“ The one evident and perhaps fatal lack is of intrinsic beauty of the melodic ideas, and further, an absence of the strain of pathos that sings from the heart of a true symphony. While we are mainly impressed by the workmanship, there is no denying a special charm of constant tuneful flow. At times this complexity is almost marvellous in the clear simplicity of the concerted whole,—in one view, the main trait or trick of symphonic writing. ”

“ When science comes and the nature of sound itself is understood as a property, instruments are invented and improved by the husbandry of mind until a great variety of musical instruments are developed; thus symphony grows from the soil of time. What, then, is symphony? It is a succession of melodies, every one of which is produced by a group of instruments, one of which may be that of the human voice. Now, as these instruments play in unison, one or another is selected to play the leading melody, and the other instruments are made to play subsidiary melodies in harmony with the leading melody. ”

“ These therefore appear as attempts to develop an independent orchestral work analogous to the Symphony, upon the basis of a form which had the same reason for existence and the same general purpose as the Italian Overture, but a distinctly different general outline. Their chief connection with the actual development of the modern symphony lies in the treatment of the instruments; for all experiments, even on different lines, if they have a common quality or principle, must react upon one another in those respects. ”