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From: cmpbsdb@gitpyr.UUCP (Don Barry)
Newsgroups: net.music.classical
Subject: Re: Tone poems
Message-ID: <720@gitpyr.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 1-Sep-85 03:05:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: gitpyr.720
Posted: Sun Sep  1 03:05:13 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 2-Sep-85 04:24:18 EDT
References: <478@petrus.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 93
Summary: More Tone-Poem-Like Images


So much music conjures images in my mind (even the non-programmatic
and "pure" music) that it is difficult to select the most evocative
examples.. Surely anyone who has ever heard the Sibelius 4th (what
I call the "Antarctic" symphony) sees desolate drifts, empty swirls
with an absence of humanity and lifelessness.  And of lifelessness
a more vacuous, primordial aspect is present in "Neptune" from the
Planets by Holst.  

The famous sunrise in Also Sprach Zarathustra is interpretable in
more ways than the literal.  The fabled Zarathustra, having 
spent years in isolation and contemplation, has arisen to bring
his learning into the world.  The awakening is spiritual, physical,
and a metaphoral life turning point.  The sequence is of such
import that Strauss can only vaguely quote it in the body of the
work, lest he suggest a similar step of evolution has occurred.
Naturally, this was perfect music for the allusory steps of genesis
of mankind in the movie 2001.

In the grand climax of the Adagio in Mahler's 10th symphony, I 
see and *feel* a terrorized break with reality - a shocked
descent into tumult and death - a trial by fire with the outcome
entirely ambiguous.  The few bars, all too short, form one of the
most moving phrases in Mahler's total oeuvre.  

Beethoven's pastoral contains quite a realistic storm, but unlike
even more purely physical depictions that were to come later
(Eine Alpinsinfonie, Cloudburst(Grofe), etc) the storm's generic
destruction fits all universal calamities.  Berlioz was terribly
impressed by this movement and claimed it as a personification of
Nature's destructive element.  Far more than a game for Zeus (as
in Fantasia), there is a calamatous air to this movement and the
violins remind us of constant paralysis in the face of overwhelming
force.  

I, too, love the opening of Das Rheingold by Wagner.  I always
think of how much music had progressed since Haydn's perhaps
initial attempt to bring order out of Chaos in The Creation.
The cyclic, ever rising arpeggii out of a pedal tone form a 
perfect description of fulminant, primordial power.  This power,
too raw for human control, is encapsulated in the ring with its
creation, and never released in pure form until the final scene of
the tetralogy.  

But somehow, I always find my strongest impressions, if not strongest
visions, in pure symphonic music.  Especially in the music of
Bruckner and Mahler, I find palettes of emotion, that though 
not forcing pictures upon me, admitting pictorial description.
The Bruckner 8th is most varied in this sense for me.  The first
movement suggests to me a celestial rotisserie, with the listener
alternately faced with the searing heat and frigidity of naked
space.  The second movement is often termed a dynamo, and perhaps that
image has been too firmly planted in my mind to admit an original one,
but it seems remarkably correct.  The third movement, withdraws one
again into a human setting, but a profoundly introspective time
of contemplation punctuated by bursts of unrestrainable yearning
and unfulfilment.  The final movement, the implacable march, leads one
to victory in the most forceful way.  Especially the final 4 minutes, like
in all Bruckner symphonies, so impeccably cast.  Robert Simpson termed
this coda as the smoky phrases in the strings incandesced by the sunny
brass that alights upon them, the ending in flame.  I see a more tragic
element that lasts until the final tortured repeated phrase in the beginning
of the coda is resolved and the sun shines unimpeded.  

I have never seen indifference in the Bruckner symphonies - Even in
the 9th, the evanescent trio of the scherzo with its descending
woodwind quotes, truncated by a note at the beginning on each repeat,
reminds me how lighthearted it is.  The Scherzo aside from the trio is
very harsh, but always the flutes and cyclic accompaniment enter and
assuage it.  How does this reflect on Bruckner?  Although intensely
religious and gullible beyond belief in normal subjects, his music was
remarkably free from overt influence.  He may have used Wagner tubas,
but contrary to Edward Hanslick, his embracing of Wagner's ideas 
did not greatly exceed this.  I see a celebration of life, both
physical and mystical, in his works.  The Scherzo represents to me
the onset of fear in Bruckner's work, always hidden by supreme nobility
until now, but still a fear that however unshakeable, could be 
lived with until the grand analysis of the adagio starts.  How I
wish Bruckner had lived to finish the work.  It would be wonderful
just to hear snippets of the (disjointed) sketches of the fourth
movement he completed.

I would be interested to hear more impressions of the images in
the Bruckner and Mahler symphonies.  What about the Marche Funebre
of the Mahler 5th?  The implacable horn solos in its Scherzo?
The giant fresco-like Bruckner 5th?  The all-too-moving Mahler 9th?


Don Barry (Chemistry Dept)
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta Georgia, 30332

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