(Charles Martin Loeffler: born in MÜlhausen (Alsace), Germany, January 30, 1861; now living in Medfield, Massachusetts) "THE DEATH OF TINTAGILES" SYMPHONIC POEM: Op. 6 La Mort de Tintagiles: PoÈme Dramatique (d'aprÈs le drame de M. Maeterlinck),[90] pour grand orchestre et viole d'amour, was composed in 1897. It was written originally for orchestra and two violas d'amore [91] obbligato, and was played in this form, for the first time, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, on January 8, 1898. The score was subsequently remodelled, the second viola-d'amore part being eliminated and the prominence of the remaining solo part reduced; the instrumentation throughout was changed, and the score amended in other ways. In its present form it dates from September, 1900. Loeffler has not essayed a literal and detailed paraphrase of Maeterlinck's play. His music is rather the expression of moods which it suggests, of emotions aroused by the singularly potent and haunting conception of the dramatist. A description and condensed paraphrase of the action of the play, written by Mr. Philip Hale, is printed on a fly-leaf of the score.[92] It reads as follows: "La Mort de Tintagiles, a little drama for marionettes, is in five short acts. The characters are the tender boy Tintagiles; his older sisters, Ygraine and BellangÈre; Aglovale, the warrior retainer, now very old and tired; and the three handmaidens of the Queen. "Tintagiles is the future monarch of the nameless land in the strange years of legends. He and his sisters are living in a gloomy and airless castle far down in a valley; and in a tower that shows at night red-litten windows lurks the enthroned Queen. The serene ancients portrayed Death as beautiful of face; but this Queen in the nameless land is not beautiful in any way; she is fat as a sated spider. She squats alone in the tower. They that serve her do not go out by day. The Queen is very old; she is jealous, she cannot brook the thought of another on the throne. They that by chance have seen her will not speak of her—and some whisper that they who are thus silent did not dare to look upon her. 'Tis she who commanded that Tintagiles, her orphaned grandson, should be brought over the sea to the sombre castle where Ygraine and BellangÈre have passed years, as blind fish in the dull pool of a cavern. "The sea howls, the trees groan, but Tintagiles sleeps after his fear and tears. The sisters bar the chamber door, for BellangÈre has heard strange muttering in rambling, obscure corridors, chuckling over the child whom the Queen would fain see. Ygraine is all of a tremble; nevertheless, she believes half-heartedly and for the nonce that he may yet be spared; then she remembers how the Horror in the tower has been as a tombstone pressing down her soul. Aglovale cannot be of aid, he is so old, so weary of it all. Her bare and slender arms are all that is between the boy and the hideous Queen of Darkness and of Terror. "Tintagiles awakes. He suffers and knows not why. He hears a vague something at the door, and others hear it. A key grinds in the lock outside. The door opens slowly. Of what avail is Aglovale's sword used as a bar? It breaks. The door is opened wider, but there is neither sight nor sound of an intruder. The boy has fainted, and the chamber suddenly is cold and quiet. Tintagiles is again conscious and he shrieks. The door closes mysteriously. "Watchers and boy are at last asleep. The veiled handmaidens whisper in the corridor; they enter stealthily and snatch Tintagiles from the warm and sheltering arms of life. A cry comes from him: 'Sister Ygraine!' a cry as from some one afar off. "The sister, haggard, with lamp in hand, agonizes in a sombre vault, a vault that is black and cold; agonizes before a huge iron door in the tower tomb. The keyless door is a forbidding thing sealed in the wall. She has tracked Tintagiles by his golden curls found on the steps, along the walls. A little hand knocks feebly on the other side of the door; a weak voice cries to her. He will die if she does not come to him, and quickly; for he has struck the Queen, who is hurrying towards him. Even now he hears her panting in pursuit; even now she is about to clutch him. He can see a glimmer of the lamp through a crevice which is so small that a needle could hardly make its way. The hands of Ygraine are bruised, her nails are torn, she dashes the lamp against the door in her wild endeavor, and she, too, is in the blackness of darkness. Death has Tintagiles by the throat. 'Defend yourself!' screams the sister: 'don't be afraid of her! One moment and I'll be with you! Tintagiles? Tintagiles? Answer me! Help! Where are you? I'll aid you!—kiss me!—through the door!—here's the place!—here!' The voice of Tintagiles—how faint it is!—is heard through the door for the last time: 'I kiss you, too—here—Sister Ygraine! Sister Ygraine! Oh!' The little body falls. "Ygraine bursts into wailing and impotent raging. She beseeches in vain the hidden, noiseless monster.... "Long and inexorable silence. Ygraine would spit on the Destroyer, but she sinks down and sobs gently in the darkness, with her arms on the keyless door of iron."
Loeffler's music opens with a suggestion of the sombre and portentous scene which begins the drama; a suggestion of the gathering storm, the tossing trees, the wild and sinister night. A mood is created—a mood appropriate to the prevailing emotional atmosphere of the play; and this mood is developed in the music without particular relation to the progress of the drama until near the close, where the composer takes up the thread of the action at the point in the last act were Ygraine, waiting in agonized vigil before the keyless door of iron, hears, from behind the barrier, the despairing voice and piteous appeals of the doomed Tintagiles. Here the music becomes definitely dramatic in its expression: "There is the plaintive voice of the timorous child; there are the terrifying steps in the corridor, the steps as of many, who do not walk as other beings, yet they draw near and whisper without the guarded door." As the themes of the score were conceived in accordance with the spirit of the play, it may be pointed out, on the authority of the composer, that there are musical symbols for certain of its principal characters and events. Thus a forbidding and threatening phrase which occurs persistently throughout (its first appearance is near the beginning, where it is declaimed, forte, by double-basses, 'cellos, bassoons, and bass clarinet, against string tremolos and agitated runs in the higher wood-wind) typifies the Dread Queen, the Queen of Darkness and of Terror—or, not to put too fine a point upon it, the idea of predestined and over-shadowing death: for, as it has been observed of another of Maeterlinck's plays, "the symbol floats like a flag" in this drama. The plaintive and dolorous tones of the viola d'amore may be said to voice the pathos of those who are foredoomed—typified in the play by the child Tintagiles. The culminating and concluding scene of the tragedy has its counterpart in the climax of the symphonic poem: an anguished crescendo ascent of the strings and wood-wind, allegro frenetico, punctuated by gasping ejaculations of trumpets and cornets, is suddenly cut short, as it were, in mid-air, while above a roll of the drums and the sinister vibration of the gong the theme of the Evil Queen—the theme of Death—is proclaimed fortissimo by violins, English horn, and clarinet. Then begins an epilogue which has no actual equivalent in the drama—which transcends yet fulfils it. The ending of the play is grievous and terrible in the extreme, but the ending of the tone-poem, while it is conceived in a mood of deep and piercing sadness, is at once elegiac and tender: violins and horns intone, molto dolente, a poignant phrase most acutely harmonized; 'cellos and double-basses recall the Death theme; the 'cellos alone sing an expressive phrase which bears a striking resemblance to a melodic idea in the composer's song, Les Paons, [93] and this introduces a cantabile passage, of intense and vivid sweetness (likewise suggestive of Les Paons), for strings, brass, wood-wind, and harp. The music dies away with long-sustained chords, piano, in the trombones, trumpets, horns, and higher wood-wind.
"POEM" ["LA BONNE CHANSON"]: Op. 8 In 1901 Loeffler wrote, as a companion piece to his Villanelle du Diable (see the following pages), an "aubade" for orchestra inspired by Paul Verlaine's ecstatic lines addressed to his bride, Mathilde MautÉ, and printed in the volume of poems entitled La Bonne Chanson.[94] Loeffler's paraphrase was originally entitled Avant que tu ne t'en ailles, after the opening line of the poem; later this was changed to La Bonne Chanson; the title finally chosen by the composer is the French of that given above—PoÈme. Verlaine's poem, in English prose, is as follows: "Before you fade and disappear, pale morning-star—a thousand quails call in the thyme— "Turn towards the poet, whose eyes brim with love—the lark mounts skyward with the day— "Turn your face which the dawn drowns in its blue—what joy among ripe wheat-fields!— "Make my thought shine yonder—far off, O so far!—The dew shines brightly on the hay— "In the sweet dream wherein my love still sleeping stirs—Quick! be quick! for, lo, the golden sun!" [95]
Loeffler's tonal translation of Verlaine's poem is in spirit a rhapsody, in form "a fantastic kind of thÈme variÉ" (theme with variations), as he describes it, "the theme appearing even in canonic form and in inversion."[96] The music opens with a passage suggestive of the opening verse of the poem: harp, glockenspiel,[97] and strings evoke the thought of the early dawn, the fading and disappearing star. The strings sing the principal theme. After an allegro passage (some will find here the thought of the ascending lark), there is a return to the serener mood of the opening; antique cymbals hint at the sparkle of the dew on the hay. The music keeps pace with the mounting eagerness and desire of the poet-lover; the excitement grows, reaching its climax in an effulgent outburst of the full orchestra, announcing the rising sun.
"THE DEVIL'S VILLANELLE," SYMPHONIC FANTASIA: Op. 9 La Villanelle du Diable, d'aprÈs un poÈme de M. Rollinat, Fantasie symphonique, pour grand orchestre et orgue, was composed in 1901. Its subject is Maurice Rollinat's[98] strange poem, La Villanelle du Diable. A "villanelle" (in the sense in which the term is used by Rollinat) is an old verse-form in which a couplet is followed by a refrain. In Rollinat's poem there are two alternating refrains, or burdens, which are united at the end. The first is: "Hell's a-burning, burning, burning."
(L'enfer brÛle, brÛle, brÛle.) the second: "The Devil, prowling, runs about."
(Le Diable rÔde et circule.) Each refrain has been given a musical counterpart by the composer, and each couplet is illustrated, though suggestively rather than in literal detail. The following prose translation of Rollinat's verses, made by Mr. Philip Hale, is prefixed to the published score of Loeffler's fantasia: "Hell's a-burning, burning, burning. Chuckling in clear staccato, the Devil, prowling, runs about. "He watches, advances, retreats like zig-zag lightning; Hell's a-burning, burning, burning. "In dive and cell, underground and in the air, the Devil, prowling, runs about. "Now he is flower, dragon-fly, woman, black cat, green snake; Hell's a-burning, burning, burning. "And now, with pointed mustache, scented with vetiver, the Devil, prowling, runs about. "Wherever mankind swarms, without rest, summer and winter, Hell's a-burning, burning, burning. "From alcove to hall, and on the rail-ways, the Devil, prowling, runs about. "He is Mr. Seen-at-Night, who saunters with staring eyes. Hell's a-burning, burning, burning. "There floating as a bubble, here squirming as a worm, the Devil, prowling, runs about. "He's grand seigneur, tough, student, teacher. Hell's a-burning, burning, burning. "He inoculates each soul with his bitter whispering: the Devil, prowling, runs about. "He promises, bargains, stipulates in gentle or proud tones. Hell's a-burning, burning, burning. "Mocking pitilessly the unfortunate whom he destroys, the Devil, prowling, runs about. "He makes goodness ridiculous and the old man futile. Hell's a-burning, burning, burning. "At the home of priest or sceptic, whose soul and body he wishes, the Devil, prowling, runs about. "Beware of him to whom he toadies, and whom he calls 'My dear sir.' Hell's a-burning, burning, burning. "Friend of the tarantula, darkness, the odd number, the Devil, prowling, runs about. "—My clock strikes midnight. If I should go to see Lucifer?—Hell's a-burning, burning, burning; the Devil, prowling, runs about."
"A PAGAN POEM," FOR ORCHESTRA AND PIANO: Op. 14 This tone-poem was written originally (in 1901) for a small combination of instruments,[99] and was intended for performance as chamber-music. It was afterwards arranged for two pianos and three trumpets, and was performed in private in this form. In 1905-6 the work was recast in its present shape—for orchestra with piano. Its inspiration is derived from the Eighth Eclogue of Virgil, the subject of which consists of two love-songs, placed in the mouths of Damon and Alphesiboeus. The poetic basis of Loeffler's music is found in the second of these love-songs. A Thessalian girl has resorted to magic incantations in the hope that she may bring back to her cottage her truant lover Daphnis. The passage which inspired the mood of the music, and which is quoted as a preface to the score, is as follows (beginning, in the original, at the line Effer aquam, et molli cinge hÆc altaria vitta): "Fetch water forth, and twine the altars here with the soft fillet, and burn resinous twigs and make frankincense, that I may try by magic rites to turn my lover's sense from sanity; nothing is wanting now but the songs. "Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home. "Songs have might, even, to draw down the moon from heaven; with songs Circe transformed the crew of Ulysses; by singing, the cold snake is burst asunder in the meadows. "Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home. "Threefold first I twine about thee these diverse triple-hued threads, and thrice round these altars I draw thine image: an odd number is god's delight. "Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home. "Tie the threefold colors in three knots, Amaryllis, but tie them; and say, 'I tie Venus's bands.' "Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home. "As this clay stiffens and as this wax softens in one and the self-same fire, so let Daphnis do for love of me. Sprinkle barley-meal, and kindle the brittle bay-twigs with bitumen. Cruel Daphnis burns me; I burn this bay at Daphnis. "Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home. "So may Daphnis love, as when the heifer, weary with seeking the steer through woodland and high grove, sinks on the green sedge by a water-brook, in misery, and recks not to retire before the falling night: so may love hold him, nor may I care to heal. "Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home. "This dress he wore of old the traitor left me, dear pledges of himself; which now I even in the doorway, O earth, commit to thee; for these pledges Daphnis is the debt. "Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home. "These herbs, and these poisons gathered in Pontus, Moeris himself gave me; in Pontus they grow thickest. By their might I have often seen Moeris become a wolf and plunge into the forest, often seen him call up souls from their deep graves and transplant the harvests to where they were not sown. "Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home. "Fetch ashes, Amaryllis, out-of-doors, and fling them across thy head into the running brook; and look not back. With these I will assail Daphnis: nothing cares he for gods, nothing for songs. "Draw from the city, my songs, draw Daphnis home. "See! the embers on the altar have caught with a flickering flame, themselves, of their own accord, while I delay to fetch them. Be it for good! something there is for sure; and Hylax barks in the doorway. May we believe? or do lovers fashion dreams of their own? "Forbear: from the city—forbear now, my songs—Daphnis comes." [100]
The refrain—Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim—is intoned by three trumpets behind the scenes.
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