Gwendoline: Overture

Another formative experience in Chabrier’s development as a composer, before the extended holiday in Spain that produced España, was a trip to Munich in 1880 to see Tristan und Isolde for the first time. He was so moved by the production that he was inspired to give up a safe job in the French equivalent of the Home Office, where he had been employed as a civil servant for nearly twenty “wasted” years, and devote himself to composition full-time. Gwendoline, which was completed five years later, is Chabrier’s equivalent of Tristan und Isolde, just as Le Roi malgré is his Meistersinger and, as he himself acknowledged, his unfinished last opera Briséis is his Parsifal.

It would be wrong to assume, however, that all Chabrier’s operas after L’Etoile, which is an essentially Parisian opéra bouffe, are slavishly Wagnerian in style and content. They are not, least of all Le Roi malgré lui. It is true that the libretto for Gwendoline by the insufferable Catulle Mendès - Chabrier was singularly unfortunate in his librettists - is not without Wagnerian situations and even Wagnerian terminology. It is also true that on its first performance of Gwendoline at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels in 1886 the score was also reproached for the Wagnerian influence that could be detected in it. Certainly, it does owe something to Wagner, in its system of leitmotifs and in some aspects of its orchestration, but for every echo of Wagner there are dozen details unmistakably characteristic of Chabrier.

Without Wagner’s example, Chabrier might never have written anything as dramatic as the beginning of the Gwendoline Overture: the obsessively aggressive rhythms on trumpets and violins and the urgent theme rising through lower strings and woodwind represent the Danish marauders about to descend on a Saxon fishing community on the east cost of England. But when this splendidly sustained opening section eventually gives way to a more lyrical episode the sound is pure Chabrier: the material introduced by clarinet here is associated with Gwendoline, the Saxon leader’s blonde sixteen-year-old daughter who is about to tame the fierce Danish King Harald, and the romantic melody that so tenderly emerges on cor anglais, horn and violas is dedicated to Gwendoline and Harald’s love for each other. The climax of the Overture anticipates the closing scene of the opera where, inspired by that romantic melody, Gwendoline chooses to die in a kind of Liebestod with the cruelly betrayed and mortally wounded Harald.

George Enescu (1881-1955)

Romanian Rhapsody in A major, Op.11, No.1

There are some pieces, like Beethoven’s Septet and Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C sharp minor, which achieve such excessive popularity that their composers become positively embarrassed by them. Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody in A major is another of that kind. Enescu had scored an early success in Paris with his Romanian Poem, Op.1, in 1898 and he was still only twenty when he excited similar enthusiasm with the first of his two Romanian Rhapsodies, Op.11. Fifty years later - after an uncommonly distinguished career as a violinist, a composer and a Romanian national hero - he regretted that the continuing popularity of that early sensation obscured his later and more considerable achievement in such works as his five symphonies and his large-scale opera Oedipe.

Inspired by the folk music of the country he had left at the age of eight, to study first in Vienna and then in Paris, Enescu’s Op.11 scores are the Romanian equivalent of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies. Unlike his more scientifically minded contemporary Bela Bartók, he was not very interested in the source of his material: Romanian, Slav, Hungarian, Gypsy, Arab… it didn’t matter as long as it was melodically or rhythmically entertaining. He was not indiscriminate, however, in the expressive nature of the material he chose for the two Rhapsodies, which are quite different in character, or in the way he linked his tunes into a continuity. From its teasing beginning with a potentially lively hora to its culmination with a ciorcilia (a virtuoso country fiddler’s imitation of lark song), the Rhapsody in A major is irresistibly abundant in dance tunes, brilliantly varied in orchestral colour and magically evocative in atmosphere. What a pity that the young composer sold the rights to this and the other Rhapsody, which would have brought him a lifetime’s income in royalties.

Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936)

Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome)

symphonic poem

I Pini di Villa Borghese (The Pines of the Villa Borghese)

I Pini presso una catacomba (Pines near a Catacomb)

I Pini del Gianicolo (The Pines of the Janiculum)

I Pini della Via Appia (The Pines of the Appian Way)

Whatever the status of Respighi’s reputation at any given time - and it has varied enormously, depending on the political and aesthetic values of the day - his three Roman tone poems have always retained their popular appeal.

It is true that the Fountains of Rome could scarcely have been regarded as progressive even in 1916, still less the Pines of Rome in 1923 and Roman Festivals in 1928. It is also true that, while Respighi’s musical language remained much the same in the three works, his view of the city of Rome changed in accordance with the developing imperialist politics of those years. But Respighi was no Fascist - Toscanini would not have been so keen on performing the Roman tone poems if he had suspected anything of the kind - and he wasn’t entirely reactionary in his music either. He was well ahead of his contemporaries in turning to classical and baroque sources for fresh inspiration and, while he was far from being the first to adopt ancient modes to enrich his harmonic vocabulary, he did make a special study of Gregorian plainsong and he used it extensively in his music. He was also as expert in orchestration as any composer of his generation.

All that is missing from the Pines of Rome is the pines. The true subject of The Pines of the Villa Borghese is not the trees which adorn Rome’s largest public park but the popular tunes associated with the place and presented by Respighi in much the same way as the Russian folk songs in Stravinsky’s Petrushka. There is a shadow of pine-trees on muted lower strings round the opening of the catacomb in the second movement but the true subject here is modal melody, above all the Gregorian chant which enters sotto voce and rises to a climax in the middle of the movement. The pines on the Janiculum, the hill overlooking Rome to the west, inspire a luxuriously synthesised kind of impressionism with an actual recording of the song of the nightingale integrated into the closing bars. As for the pines of the Appian Way, if they are present at all it is as retainers of ancient echoes of the marching feet and the splendour of Roman trumpets as the consular army makes its way to the Capitol.

Respighi’s own description of the programmatic thinking behind the four movements (which follow each other without a break) is as follows:

Children are at play in the pine groves of the Villa Borghese: they dance round in circles, they play at soldiers, marching and fighting, they are wrought-up by their own cries like swallows at evening, they come and go in swarms. Suddenly the scene changes and…

…we see the shades of the pine trees fringing the entrance to a catacomb. From the depths rises the sound of mournful plainsong, floating through the air like a solemn hymn, and gradually and mysteriously dispersing.

The air quivers: the pines of the Janiculum stand distinctly outlined in the clear light of a full moon. A nightingale is singing.

Misty dawn on the Appian Way: solitary pine trees guarding the magic landscape: the muffled ceaseless rhythm of unending footsteps. The poet has a fantastic vision of bygone glories: trumpets sound and, in the brilliance of the newly risen sun, a consular army bursts forth towards the Sacred Way, mounting in triumph to the Capitol.

Gerald Larner©

Gerald Larner is a writer and critic associated mainly with The Times. His study of the life and music of Maurice Ravel is published by Phaidon Press.