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Updated: May 3, 2025
In order to have first-hand information, Bok attended the concert that Saturday evening. The symphony, Dvorak's "New World Symphony," amazed Bok by its beauty; he was more astonished that he could so easily grasp any music in symphonic form.
Olivier showed Christophe the work done in the last thirty-five years, and the amount of energy expended in raising French music from the void in which it had slumbered before 1870: no symphonic school, no profound culture, no traditions, no masters, no public: the whole reduced to poor Berlioz, who died of suffocation and weariness.
The artist was rehearsing in Philadelphia for an appearance with the orchestra, and the pianist was telling Bok and his wife of the desire of Leopold Stokowski, who had recently become conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, to eliminate encores from his symphonic programmes; he wanted to begin the experiment with Hofmann's appearance that week.
But what was almost entirely lacking was an outlet for symphonic music and chamber-music. "Before 1870," wrote M. Saint-Saëns in Harmonie et Mélodie, "a French composer who was foolish enough to venture on to the ground of instrumental music had no other means of getting his works performed than by himself arranging a concert for them."
Hofmann explained to him the entity of a symphonic programme; that it was made up with one composition in relation to the others as a sympathetic unit, and that an encore was an intrusion, disturbing the harmony of the whole. "I wish you would let Stokowski come out and explain to you what he is trying to do," said Hofmann.
Grisi came on after the rising of the curtain and received a most cordial burst of applause. At length the great audience was hushed to silence, and the orchestra played the symphonic prelude which introduces the contralto air "Eccomi alfin in Babilonia." Alboni glided from the side and walked slowly to the footlights.
The beginning of both symphonies is, of course, a slow introduction representing the torpid gloom of winter, out of which spring aspires and ascends. Paine's symphony, though aiming to shape the molten gold of April fervor in the rigid mold of the symphonic form, has escaped every appearance of mechanism and restraint.
Cornelius had a pretty gift for humorous orchestration, and his accompaniments often anticipate the dainty effects of 'Die Meistersinger. 'Das Rheingold' being still unwritten in 1858, it would be too much to expect a systematised use of guiding themes, but they are often employed with consummate skill, and in the Muezzin scene the music of the call to prayer forms the basis of a symphonic passage, which is thoroughly in the style of Wagner's later works.
He was spared no trial: and in the disorder of his creative striving he never knew what was of greatest worth in what he created. He tied himself up in absurd projects, symphonic poems, which pretended to philosophy and were of monstrous dimensions. He was too sincere to be able to hold to them for long together: and he would discard them in disgust before he had stretched out a single movement.
Sweet and low at first, and in the faint, broken suggestion of his kindling fancy, the symphonic poem he had heard in the garden began again, but at last his imagination made it almost real. He listened once more to Ida's girlish, plaintive voice blending with the murmur of the brook, the sighing wind and rustling leaves, and the occasional trill of a bird.
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