Symphonies By Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Program Music, Lyrical Form

Program Music, Lyrical Form

Tchaikovsky's view of program music was ambivalent. He disliked the genre personally but generally needed some sort of subject upon which to write. Whether that catylist was a literary source, an overt program or a more subjective one based on an abstract theme such as love or fate did not necessarily matter. He needed something to fire his imagination and get his creative juices flowing. One indisputable fact was that Tchaikovsky had a flair for the genre. When he was caught up in the drama or the emotional states of the characters, as in Romeo and Juliet, the results could be spectacular. When the work became difficult, as it would when he worked on the Manfred symphony, he became discouraged and complained that writing to a program was unpleasant and it was easier to do so without one.

In a letter to von Meck dated December 5, 1878, Tchaikovsky outlined two kinds of inspiration that would inspire a symphonic composer, a subjective and an objective one:

In the first instance, uses his music to express his own feelings, joys, sufferings; in short, like a lyric poet he pours out, so to speak, his own soul. In this instance, a program is not only not necessary but even impossible. But it is another matter when a musician, reading a poetic work or struck by a scene in nature, wishes to express in musical form that subject that has kindled his inspiration. Here a program is essential.... Program music can and must exist, just as it is impossible to demand that literature make do without the epic element and limit itself to lyricism alone.

Writing to a program, then, was apparently a matter of course for Tchaikovsky. Technically, for him, every piece of music could contain a program. The difference for him lay in the explicitness or implicitness of the program itself. A symphony generally followed the lines of an implicit program, while a symphonic poem followed an explicit one. This also meant that, technically, any alternatives or amendments to sonata form used to underline either specific events or the general tone of a literary program in a symphonic poem could also be used to illustrate the "feelings, joys, sufferings" conveyed in a symphony; the only difference was in the type of program being illustrated. In fact, Brown claims, there is a considerable amount of Tchaikovsky's symphonic manner contained in the symphonic poem Francesca da Rimini, which the composer wrote not long before the Fourth Symphony. The Allegro vivo section where the composer evokes the storm and whirlwind in the underworld is much like the first subject section of a Tchaikovsky symphony, while Francesca's theme in A major takes the place of a second subject.

Also, Tchaikovsky was apparently expanding his conception of the symphony from one where Germanic models were to be followed slavishly to a looser, more flexible alternative more in keeping with the symphonic poem. Sonata form, according to Wood, was never intended to be a musical straightjacket but, rather, to leave the composer "innumerable choices for building up a coherent movement" that would offer variety and, "by the relationships of its successive thematic elements and the management of its transitions ... have the appearance of organic growth." The problem for Tchaikovsky, however, was whether "organic growth" was even an option in building a large-scale piece of music. He wrote to von Meck, after he had written the Fourth Symphony,

You ask if I keep to established forms. Yes and no. There are certain kinds of compositions which imply the use of familiar forms, for example symphony. Here I keep in general outline to the usual traditional forms, but only in general outline, i.e. the sequence of the work's movements. The details can be treated very freely, if this is demanded by the development of the ideas. For instance, in our symphony the first movement is written with very marked digressions. The second subject, which should be in the relative major, is minor and remote. In the recapitulation of the main part of the movement the second subject does not appear at all, etc. The finale, too, is made up of a whole row of derivations from individual forms....

Cooper suggests that for Tchaikovsky the symphony had become "a form, a convenience, no longer the natural, instinctive channel for his musical imagination" that it could or should have been had he followed strict Germanic practices. Even if this could have been the case with Tchaikovsky, the path would have been difficult. Cooper explains "that lyrical emotion should find its natural expression in sonata form is perhaps not unthinkable, but only if that form is so natural to a composer, both by instinct and habit, that it has come to be really an acquired instinct, a 'second nature,' as we say; and this was certainly never true of Tchaikovsky." Brown writes that while Tchaikovsky "was not without a certain measure of the true symphonist's gift for organic thematic growth," he concurs that for him "to create the sort of complex organic experience" that would allow him to meld lyric expression with sonata form "lay beyond his abilities."

Nor, again, was this solely Tchaikovsky's dilemma. "The Romantics were never natural symphonists," Cooper writes, for basically the same reason as Tchaikovsky—"because music was to them primarily evocative and biographical—generally autobiographical—and the dramatic phrase, the highly melody and the 'atmospheric' harmony which they loved are in direct opposition to the nature of the symphony, which is primarily an architectural form."