Stories of Symphonic Music / A Guide to the Meaning of Important Symphonies, Overtures, and Tone-poems from Beethoven to the Present Day

MACDOWELL

(Edward MacDowell: born in New York City, December 18, 1861; now living there and in Peterboro, N. H.)

"LANCELOT AND ELAINE," SYMPHONIC POEM: Op. 25

This symphonic poem was composed at Wiesbaden in 1886. The published score contains no indication of the specific moods, scenes, or incidents which gave rise to the music; there is merely the brief line: "After Tennyson," printed beneath the title. Yet it is known that MacDowell conceived his music to correspond, point by point, with certain definite happenings in the story of Lancelot and the Lily Maid of Astolat, as narrated by Tennyson; and this correspondence between the poem and the music it is possible to indicate here in some detail.

These are the incidents which are successively illustrated in the music:

I. "LANCELOT AND GUINEVERE.
THE QUEEN INDUCES LANCELOT TO ENTER THE LISTS AT CAMELOT." [101]
[An expressive theme for the strings, suggestive of the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, afterwards repeated by the wood-wind.]
II. "LANCELOT RIDES SADLY TO THE TOURNAMENT"—
[A knightly theme (the Lancelot motive) for the horns, against an opposing figure in the basses.]
III. —"AND, COMING TO THE CASTLE OF ELAINE'S FATHER"—
IV. —"SEES ELAINE"—
[An oboe solo, gentle and pensive, is heard against an exceedingly delicate accompaniment figure in the strings.]
V. —"AND GOES TO THE TOURNAMENT WEARING HER TOKEN."
VI. "THE HERALDS."
[Martial phrases (an expansion of the opening theme) for horns, trumpets, and trombones, declaimed "very forcibly, almost roughly."]
VII. "THE TOURNAMENT."
[An energetic figure in the violins (the Tournament theme), increasing in speed and force, brings a climax in which the Lancelot theme is heard fortissimo in the brass.]
VIII. "LANCELOT'S VICTORY"—
[The Lancelot theme is proclaimed, furioso, by horns and wood-wind.]
IX. —"AND DOWNFALL."
[A precipitous descent of the violins, followed by a dramatic pause. Clarinets and bassoons have a mournful reminiscence of Lancelot's motive.]
X. "THE COMING OF ELAINE."
("What matter, so I help him back to life?")
[Lancelot's theme, in the wood-wind and horns, is heard, diminuendo, against trills and tremolos, pianissimo, in the strings.]
XI. "THE SADNESS OF ELAINE."
("I fain would follow love, if that could be:
I needs must follow death, who calls for me.")
[The theme of the opening (the love-theme of Lancelot and Guinevere) recurs significantly in the muted[102] strings.]
XII. "LANCELOT GOES BACK TO THE COURT."
[The Lancelot theme is heard in the strings and wood-wind.]
XIII. "LANCELOT AND THE QUEEN."
("Take ...
These jewels, and make me happy, making them
An armlet for the roundest arm on earth.")
[An impassioned episode. Trumpets and trombones sound an imperious phrase, fortissimo, against tempestuous passages in the strings.]
XIV. "GUINEVERE THROWS THE TROPHIES INTO THE RIVER."
[A tumultuous orchestral outburst, followed by a sudden descent of the strings through three octaves.]
XV. "LANCELOT SEES THE BLACK BARGE BEARING ELAINE DOWN THE RIVER."
("In her right hand the lily, in her left
The letter—all her bright hair streaming down—
And all the coverlet was cloth of gold
Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white
All but her face, and that clear-featured face
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead,
But fast asleep, and lay as tho' she smiled.")
[A solemn episode for wood-wind, horns, and strings; the violins have a persistent tremolo.]
XVI. "ELAINE'S MESSAGE."
("I loved you, and my love had no return,
And therefore my true love has been my death.

"Pray for my soul, thou too. Sir Lancelot,
As thou art a knight peerless.")
[The Elaine theme is dolorously recalled, pianissimo, by the oboe, under a trill in the violins.]
XVII. "AND LANCELOT SITS BY THE RIVER-BANK"—
[Under a weaving accompaniment figure in the violins, ppp, two horns intone, very softly and tenderly, a variant of the Lancelot theme.]
XVIII. "—NEVER DREAMING THAT HE SHOULD DIE 'A HOLY MAN'"
[Long-sustained chords, pianissimo, for full orchestra.]

TWO FRAGMENTS (AFTER THE "SONG OF ROLAND"): Op. 30

THE SARACENS (Die Sarazenen)
THE LOVELY ALDÂ (Die schÖne AldÂ)

MacDowell, while living in Wiesbaden, Germany (from 1885 to 1888), projected a symphony on the subject of the Song of Roland, and a portion of it was composed; but the plan was afterwards abandoned, and the music which was to have formed part of the symphony was published, in 1891, in the form of two short tone-poems founded upon episodes in the poem, and entitled: Die Sarazenen; Die schÖne AldÂ: Zwei Fragmente (nach dem Rolandslied) fÜr grosses Orchester. MacDowell has quoted on the fly-leaf of the score those portions of the poem from which the conception of his music sprang.

"The Saracens," a tempestuous Allegretto feroce, is a sombre portrayal of the scene in which Ganelon swears to commit treason against Roland, while the Saracens feast amid the flaring of pagan fires and the wailing of sinister music. It is based on these lines from the Song (printed in the score in old German):

THE SARACENS
"With blasts of trumpets and amid festal and warlike scenes, tumultuously rushed forward the heathen hordes and all their high chiefs. Quoth Ganelon: 'I swear to you that of Roland I shall make an end.'" [103]

The second "fragment," "The Lovely AldÂ," an Andantino teneramente of grave tenderness, depicts the loveliness and the grieving of AldÂ, Roland's wife. [104] MacDowell uses as a preface lines from the German version, which, in translation, read thus:

THE LOVELY ALDÂ
"Then came forward the lovely AldÂ; graciously was she received by the Emperor himself and all his court. Spake she: 'Karl, consecrated sovereign, where is my Roland? Bring back to me my hero, he to whom you gave me as wife! Ah, what joy should I have in beholding him once more!'"

SUITE (No. 2), "INDIAN": Op. 48

This suite, in five movements, was composed in 1891-92. It is MacDowell's last and most important orchestral work. Its thematic material, as he acknowledges in a prefatory note to the score, is based upon melodies of the North American Indians, with the exception of a few subsidiary themes of his own invention. "If separate titles for the different movements are desired," he says in his note, "they should be arranged as follows [I give them here together with the expression marks at the head of each movement, which are highly indicative of their character]:

1. "LEGEND"

("Not fast; with much dignity and character")

2. "LOVE-SONG"

("Not fast; tenderly")

3. "IN WAR TIME"

("With rough vigor, almost savagely")

4. "DIRGE"

("Dirgelike, mournfully")

5. "VILLAGE FESTIVAL"

("Swift and light")

Although there is no reason to believe that MacDowell has here based his music upon such a detailed dramatic plan as underlies, for example, his symphonic poem "Lancelot and Elaine" (see pages 191-194), it is evident that he was inspired by moods and pictures the nature of which is sufficiently indicated by the titles of the different movements. It may be interesting to note that there is authority for the statement that the principal theme of the first movement ("Legend") was taken from a harvest-song of the Iroquois Indians in New York State; that for his second movement ("Love-Song") the composer used a love-song of the Iowas; that the dominant theme of "In War Time" is one to which the Indians of the Atlantic coast attributed a supernatural origin and character; that a Kiowa theme (a woman's song of mourning for her lost son) dominates the "Dirge"; and that the chief melodic ideas of the last movement are a war-song and a woman's dance of the Iroquois.

In this music, it has been said, MacDowell "has caught and transfixed the essential character of his subject: these are the sorrows and laments and rejoicings, not of our own day and people, but of the vanished life of an elemental and dying race: here is the solitude of dark forests, of vast and windswept prairies, and the sombreness and wildness of one knows not what grim tragedies and romances and festivities enacted in the shadow of a fading past."

[MacDowell's three remaining works for orchestra—the symphonic poem "Hamlet; Ophelia" (Op. 22),[105] the "Suite" (No. 1: Op. 42), and its supplement, "In October"—have no programmes whatsoever. The suite is in four movements, titled as follows: (1) "In a Haunted Forest" (In einem verwÜnschten Walde); (2) "Summer Idyll" (Sommer-Idylle); (3) "The Shepherdess' Song" (Gesang der Hirten); (4) "Forest Spirits" (Waldgeister). "In October," the supplement, is in one movement. This episode formed part of the original suite, but was not published until several years after (the first four parts were published in 1891; the supplement in 1893). Both are included under the same opus number.]

FOOTNOTES:

[101] The headings are those chosen by the composer.

[102] See page 12, foot-note.

[103] Ganelon (or Ganelonne) was the traitor in Charlemagne's camp through whose perfidy Roland met his death. After the war Ganelon was taken to Aix and was there sentenced by the Emperor to be torn in pieces by four horses, pulling apart his arms and legs; the execution took place before the entire court.

[104] This according to the German version used by MacDowell. In the French, AldÂ appears not as the wife, but as the betrothed, of Roland. This is the passage as it occurs in the (modern) French version:

"L'Empereur est revenu d'Espagne,
Il vient À Aix, la meillure ville de France.
Monte au palais, entre en la salle,
Une belle damoiselle vient À lui;
C'est Aude.
Elle dit au Roi, 'OÙ est Roland le capitaine,
Qui m'a jurÉ de me prendre pour femme?'"

[105] This work was composed at Frankfort in 1884, and was published in the following year with the title: "Hamlet; Ophelia: Two Poems for Grand Orchestra"; but the composer afterwards changed his mind concerning this designation, and preferred to entitle the score: "First Symphonic Poem (a. 'Hamlet'; b. 'Ophelia')." "Lancelot and Elaine" was published in 1888 with the sub-title: "Second Symphonic Poem."

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