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Romain Rolland discovers alone in the Fifth Symphony reminiscences of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, Bach and Chabrier. Schubert flits persistently through Mahler's scores, particularly through that of the Third Symphony, whose introductory theme for eight horns recalls almost pointedly the opening of the C-major of Schubert, without, however, in the least recapturing its effectiveness.
Throughout this scene the characteristic contrast between the ardent vigour of Peter and the sweet serenity of Jesus is well delineated in the music. After Peter's stirring aria, "My heart is glad," the dramatic climax is reached in the C-major chorus, "The Church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets."
For the last time, the old conceptions of tonality obtain in his music dramas. One feels throughout "Tristan und Isolde" the key of D-flat, throughout "Die Meistersinger" the key of C-major, throughout "Parsifal" the key of A-flat and its relative minor. Rhythms that had been used all through the classical period are worked by him into new patterns, and do service a last time.
His resort to Gregorian principles is, it has been observed, far from being a matter of recent history with him. Almost twenty years ago we find him writing in the spirit of the old modes. Examine the opening phrases of his song, Harmonie du Soir (composed in 1889-1890), and note the felicitous adaptation to modern use of the "authentic" mode known as the Lydian, which corresponds to a C-major scale with F-sharp. Observe the use of the same mode in the introductory measures, and elsewhere, of his setting of Verlaine's Il pleure dans mon coeur , the second of the "Ariettes." Five years later, in Pelléas et Mélisande, the trait is omnipresent too extensive and obvious, indeed, to require detailed indication. One might point out, at random, the derivation from the seventh of the ecclesiastical modes (the Mixolydian) of the phrase in the accompaniment to Arkël's words in the final scene, "L'âme humaine aime
The modulations of the noises of wind and water, the infinite gradations and complexes of sound to be heard on the planisphere, seemed to ask him to include them, to become conscious of them and reproduce them. He required other more subtle scales. And with Wagner the monarchy of the C-major scale is at an end. "Tristan und Isolde" and "Parsifal" are constructed upon a chromatic scale.
If before Calvisius C-major was the erotic key, in the seventeenth century G-major was considered so; in the eighteenth, on the contrary, when love poetry jumps from the merry and playful over to the sentimental, the musical ear likewise altered accordingly, and even before the time of Werther and Siegwart the languishing, gently melancholy G-minor was the fashionable tone, for the erotic Matheson, indeed, even goes so far as to declare that it is the "most beautiful of tones" an opinion which is certainly characteristic of the state of nerves of the world of culture at that day.
In the seventeenth century, Sethus Calvisius, speaking of C-major, the Ionian key, says it was formerly a favorite key for love songs and therefore had acquired the reputation of being a somewhat wanton and lewd melody; in his day, on the contrary, it resounded clear, warlike, and was used to lead the warriors in battle.
D-minor, therefore, had for the ear of the ancient world about the same character that C-major has for us. That is indeed a jump a dorio ad phrygium. What, however, was for the ancients not proverbially, but literally, a jump a dorio ad phrygium namely, the contrast between D-minor and E-minor is for us no longer such a very astonishing antithesis.
The octave and the fifth, the bases of the system, are of course, to be found only in the human voice. They are, roughly, the difference between the average male and the average female voice, and the difference between the average soprano and alto. It is upon those intervals that the C-major scale and its twenty-three dependents are based.
Had he not, in his "Contributions to the Theory of Harmony," proposed one hundred examples of cadences modulating from the common chord of C-major through every possible key and transpository sequence? Had he not written two books of canons displaying the most amazing technical ingenuities; found it simple, as in his "Sinfonietta," to keep five or six strands of counterpoint going?
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