Ad Libitum

Author(s): Feste
Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 80, No. 1159 (Sep., 1939), pp. 654-657
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/920972
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654

THE MUSICAL TIMES

the one-string fiddle ; it costs about ten shillings,

and the one I heard would pass for an excellent
'cello so long as you listened and didn't look. It
provided a capital and telling bass for several
items. Some admirable examples of bamboo
recorders were heard.
The pipes are well adapted for polyphony;
think of such music played on an organ Lieblich
and you won't be far out. But as the Lieblich
becomes less successful the lower it goes, so the
bass and tenor pipes need a little more ' bite.'
No doubt this will come as a result of experiments. I found myself wondering whether a,
good instrument could be made from an organ
pipe of the sort that has a touch of string tone-a Dulciana rather than a Bourdon.
The material used in pipe-making is normally
bamboo. In most houses you will find an old
bamboo curtain-rod stowed away in some odd
corner: a six-foot pole yields five pipes. From
the fact that such a pole costs tenpence comes the
claim that a pipe costs tuppence. This is a
picturesque tarradiddle if you make only one
pipe, for it leaves out the cost of tools-unless
you have at hand an auger, wood-file, rimer bit,
and hacksaw, in addition to your penknife and
ruler. Actually the complete outfit costs about
five shillings, and the more pipes you make for
yourself or for a band the nearer you get to the
tuppenny estimate. No other musical instrument
of such good quality costs anything like so little ;
hence the claim that it runs choral singing close
so far as cheapness is concerned.
Not the least of the merits of the pipe is that
you cannot be noisy with it. The pressure is so
gentle that, as somebody said to me at the School,
'you don't blow it: you just breathe into it.'
To the three families of instruments that we
strike, scrape, and blow, must be added this

Ad

September 1939

fourth, into which we breathe. Perhaps we should

add a fifth in the clavecin : even quiet conversation drowns it, and in any case you are out of earshot at a few yards. It seems absurd to speak of
striking a clavecin : call it stroking or tickling
and you are nearer the mark. As a refuge and a
relief from the noise of a blatantly advertising
world from which rises (as Mr. Cunningham so
aptly said at the R.C.O. recently) 'one vast
appalling cry of " Stop me and buy one!"'
nothing could be better than a duet for pipe and
clavecin. In fact, the revival of old instruments
and their music is among the most refreshing and
hopeful features of the musical world today.
(The pipe is a revival, for it is merely a homely
form of the recorder; and it will undoubtedly
lead to an increased use of that delightful English
instrument.)
The pipe repertory and literature are already
considerable: the guild 'Handbook' gives particulars (unfortunately omitting an important
one-the price).
It may b- necessary to add the reassuring fact
that the School I attended was run by wellqualified professional musicians. The fundamentals were well looked after, and in music and
performance alike the taste was impeccable.
This year's Summer School was the ninth, and
the attendance during each of its two weeks was
close on ninety. All grades of player were catered
for; there was plenty of social liveliness-folkdancing, excursions, games, etc.
But if you are a hitherto mute amateur on
the look-out for an instrument that is cheap to
buy or make, and easy to play, don't wait till
next August : there's a pipe waiting for you, and
very likely a branch of the Guild not far off.
The Guild Secretary is Mrs. Rigg, Stocksmead,
Washington, Sussex.
H. G.

Libitum
By 'FESTE'
CADENCES

'N your August article,' writes a protesting

correspondent, 'you describe the clotted
discords with which Kienek ends his set of
Twelve-Tone Pieces as "a final cadence."
Cadence my eye !'
And mine as well. But the term is still used to
describe the close of a piece, no matter how
unusual that close may be.
My correspondent goes on to ask me to discuss
the question of final cadences in general.
Literally, a cadence is a fall (the word being
derived from a Latin word with that meaning)
and early melodies usually conformed by descending to the tonic at the close. This primitive
tendency is perpetuated in the C.F. of strict
counterpoint, which (in my young days, at least)
always fell from supertonic to tonic. We used
to ask why, but nobody told us; perhaps some
recent treatises have given this or some other
explanation, but I haven't seen it.

The analogy between the cadences of speech

and early music is close : finality is expressed by
a fall. Questions have a rising inflection, answers
a descending. (Compare the inflections of plainsong.) When the Duke in ' Twelfth Night' said
'That strain again; it had a dying fall,' he
meant, no doubt, that the fall (cadence) died.
away-a morendo cadence, as we should say now.
(The fall that dies most completely, and takes
the longest time about it, is that at the end of the
Finale of Tchaikovsky's 'Pathetic.')
At first sight there appears to be little scope
for individuality in a cadence: having established your tonic for the last time you signify
your intention of ending by giving it a little extra
insistence, and by such devices as slackening the
pace, working up to a fortissimo or down to a
pianissimo, pausing on the final chord or cutting
it off abruptly in order to show that it is the last
one, and so on, the choice of device depending on

September 1939

THE MUSICAL TIMES

the style and mood of the piece. Yet composers'

finger-prints are shown here as unmistakably as
elsewhere. Handel's clinching type became a
mannerism; Bach had a greater variety, among
them being' The British Grenadiers' anticipation,
which every youngster knows, as one of its
occurrences is in the little Prelude in C :

of great interest). At the end of Op. 90 he even

gives us the tonic almost as if it were something
to keep quiet about :

SP

The *Rule Britannia' close of the Fugue in E

in Book II is by way of being a nuisance: one
doesn't want to be reminded of even the best of
tunes with a political flavour at the end of a piece
of music that is pure contemplation from start
to finish.
What was the origin of the protracted cadences
that came in with the symphonic composers ?
Fugues almost always ended with what Parry
(was it ?) called the tying of the contrapuntal
knot; and it is easy to see that anything further
would risk an anticlimax, especially if there had
been a particularly good sample of the stretto
just before the knot.
The pedal point was not given the alternative
name ' organ point' for nothing, and the longheld bass note that was easy on the organ
probably started the habit of hanging round the
tonic at the end of a piece. (It is significant that
of the few tonic pedal-points in the ' Forty-eight '
the only difficult one is that at the end of the
A minor Fugue in Book I-which happens to
have been written for a harpsichord with pedals.)
Yet a glance through Bach's organ Preludes and
Fugues will show surprisingly little use of the
device in final cadences. Apparently the insistence
on the tonic at the close came when the main
interest in music shifted from the contrapuntal
to the harmonic.
I have read somewhere that the repetitions of
the tonic chord at the close of classical symphonies
was a concession to uneducated listeners; their
sense of tonality being poor, composers had to
emphasize the change of key before starting the
second subject (the device which Wagner called
' the rattling of dishes ') and to hammer the tonic
at the end in order to show beyond doubt that
all concerned had got home.
I have never been convinced by this theory.
Were Haydn's, Mozart's and Beethoven's listeners less intelligent than those of the far
more exacting Bach ? In a sense, yes: there
were more of them, for music was emerging from
the home and salon into the concert-hall, and the
early audiences inevitably included a proportion
of listeners who were merely curious and impressionable. But this does not explain the twentyone bars of repeated tonic chords (preceded by
twenty bars of dominant and tonic) which wind
up the ' Eroica' ; the twenty-nine which amuse
(when they do not irritate) at the end of the
C minor, and the fourteen which add to the final
hullabaloo of No. 9. Beethoven never does this
sort of thing in the piano sonatas or in the string
quartets. He often emphasizes the tonic, but
more briefly, and not by merely banging it out:
there is invariably some decorative feature (often

655

PP

However, this is so exceptional that it may be

a little joke of Beethoven at his own expense:
knowing that the usual underlining is expected,
he cocks an eye at us and does little more than
hint.
Some day an interesting book will be written
about the ways in which the development of the
public concert affected the style and idiom of
music. Repetition, dynamics, length, virtuosity,
emotion, pace, key-contrast, climax-such features come to mind at once. The chief difference
is roughly that which distinguishes conversation
from public-speaking. The man who declaims in
conversation is a nuisance; the one who converses on the public platform is apt to be ineffective; and a point that is successfully made
by a single statement across the table has to
be driven home on the platform by repetition,
not so much for the sake of the unintelligent
hearer as for effect, on the principle of ' What I
And just as the man with
say three times...'
the telling voice and commanding presence finds
this method natural and effective, so the composer with an orchestra to play with makes the
most of it. He knows all about the virtues of
reticence and restraint, but he thinks they are
best practised when writing for some less opulent
and expensive medium.
To return to those hammered chords at the
end of the classical symphonies : we may dismiss
the idea of their being necessary for the untrained
listener. Beethoven's sonatas were played in
public, but (as we have seen) such endings do not
occur in them.
So we may reckon that Beethoven wound up
his symphonies in that way for two reasons: a
battery of repeated chords belongs to the orchestra rather than to a solo instrument; and they
are as effective as a singer's concluding top note
in bringing down the house. Haydn and Mozart
did it; Beethoven overdid it-simply because
it was his nature to use both fists where his predecessors were content with one.
It is odd that the repetitive cadence found its
way into the simpler kind of choral music, such
as glees, where it had no point whatever. (The
choral polyphonists, like the instrumentalfuguists,
said their say and left it.) I remember an
example much sung and enjoyed in my youth,
the last verse of which ran like this (so far as
memory serves; when it fails I fall back on the
community singer's refuge, ' la, la,' and I mayhave
inadvertently added to the superfluous cadences):
From yonder lone and rocky shore, The warrior
hermit to restore, The warrior hermit to restore.
FI never understood this restoring of a hermit,

656

THE MUSICAL TIMES

and still don't.] And la la la la breezes blow,

La la la la la time we row,
^

l k ,

NI/i'

"

ir

We row, we row,- la la la timewerow, we

row,_ we row, we row,

e row, e row

In short, we row.
However, this is no worse than the reiterated
'pacem ' at the end of some of the Masses of the
Viennese school-not so bad, in fact, for there
are no accompanying rapid scales to add pretentiousness to fatuity.
Of the traditional cadences the plagal is, I
think, better than the dominant-tonic. The
latter would have worn better had composers
been able to refrain from adding the seventh.
How refreshing is a dominant-tonic cadence with
plain chords ! But, without hunting for them,
can you name half a dozen examples in largescale works ? At the moment I can think of only
one, and it gives me pleasure every time I play
or hear it-that which ends Saint-Saens's fine
organ Fugue in E flat.
The plagal cadence is less easily spoilt than the
dominant-tonic: even now that composers often
stick on the supertonic and make the subdominant
chord into a chord of the added sixth, it still powerfully suggests the Sound of a Grand Amen. And
(talking of added notes) the once-daring sixth
tacked on to the final tonic is now a commonplace of the dance band. Here it is, preceded by
another shop-soiled progression-a cloying ninth
that has come down in the world:

Aidtiedpfence

is

you.- l--

A fate which perhaps it deserves;

for to give

I armonics much of the importance of fundamentals

is all very well if composer and medium are rightsay a Debussy and piano : all that happens then
is that their enriching and colouring qualities are
increased. Otherwise the process is apt to do no
more than give us too many notes and debase
the vague into the concrete. So we may well
leave these harmonic pimples to the Tin Pan
Alleys of New York and London.

September1939

Leaving cadences for a moment or two, I

should like information as to the origin and
object of the half-closes in the relative minor
which were sometimes interpolated between two
major movements. A familiar instance is the
G major Brandenburg Concerto, No. 3. After
the first movement these two chords occur:

We naturally expect this half-close to be

followed by something in E minor, but we don't
get it. Instead, Bach plunges into the Finale
in G. There are instances of similar procedure
in some Handel Concertos (I'm writing away
from home and can't specify) and no doubt in
other works of the period. Can a reader throw
light on this seemingly pointless feature ?
Apropos of Bach: I spoke above of the
variety of his cadences. This variety appears to
be more marked in the 'Forty-eight' than elsewhere, probably because the text is so often
concerned with the subject until the close, variety
of subject thus ensuring variety of cadence.
But I had never realized how great this variety
is until I looked through the ' Forty-eight'forthe
purposes of this article. My favourite 'Fortyeight ' cadence just now is this, from the B flat in
Book II:

__

To appreciate it fully it must be heard. Taking

in music through the eye is a useful accomplishment, but its pleasures are surely overrated.
When we see a passage that is specially good, we
ought to want to enjoy it through the ear: no
Barmecide feast should satisfy us. So I don't
mind admitting that when playing this Fugue
I wind up with several repetitions of its last three
bars. What is the secret of its charm ? To me
it lies in the alto, with its drop from B flat
through G to C. Rewrite this in four parts, and
the bar becomes ordinary-a useful reminder
of the beauty of good three-part writing. My
other favourite Bach cadence happens to have
the same bass for its penultimate bar: it is the
grindingly dissonant close of the Toccata in F :

THE MUSICAL TIMES

September 1939

Give a hundred composers the treble and bass

of this, and ninety-nine would produce :

or they would strengthen it by substituting

A for G. But wasn't it like the old man, at the
end of a long work rich in bold strokes (the
boldest of which, as Mendelssohn said, seems
likely to bring the roof down about our ears), to
have one up his sleeve for the very end ?

657

would dare to make a habit of winding up his

peroration with a platitude ? Doesn't every
writer worth his salt realize the importance of
not letting his final page flop in the last sentence ?
Analogies between music and letters are dangerous, and I've hardly got these on paper before I
see loopholes; but the fact remains that the
thrills which (I'm glad to say) my family circle
still gets from a Beethoven symphony change
to derision at its end. Those repeated chords
are ticked off (in more senses than one) with
mock. anxiety as to whether they really are the
tonic after all.
Composers now go too far in the other direction. This Kfenek 'cadence,'
120

Vivace-

I wish space allowed me to quote some of the

beautiful and really original cadences invented
(the right word) by some of the lesser and lyrical
piano composers, with Grieg as perhaps the most
fruitful. The revival of the modes (chiefly due
to the folk-song movement) has done a good deal
to enrich this detail of music; and the damper
pedal, with its almost infinite possibilities in the
way of lay-out and shading, must be given credit.
A glance through any collection of good modern
piano music will show how far behind we have
left the conventional cadence-so much of a
mere formula that you may interchange almost
any dozen of Handel's and any two dozen of
Beethoven's (when he wrote for orchestra).
Why should composers cease to invent when
within twenty bars of the end ? What speaker

Music

in

the

Moussorgsky
The April Sovietskaya Muzyka is a sp cial
Moussorgsky centenary number, containing general articles by A. Alschwang and G. Khubov,
one on 'Tsar Boris in Moussorgsky's Opera' by
V. Protopopov, one by I. Kubikov on ' Moussorgsky and Flaubert' (a contribution to the history
of his ' Salammb6 ' libretto), one by B. Steinpress
on 'Moussorgsky as a Pianist,' and one by Y.
Kremlev on his musical idiom. Moussorgsky's
letters to Golenishchev-Kutuzov, long regarded
as lost, and discovered a few years ago, are
published with notes by P. Aravin. They are
twenty-five in number, the first written on
June 20, 1873, the last in December 1879. Particularly interesting is one in which Moussorgsky,
after referring to his work on 'The Sorotchintsi
Fair,' goes on to say :
'Setting " The Marriage " to music has given
me experience of Gogol's prose. But " The
Marriage " was merely an exercise in which a
musician-or, more accurately, a non-musician
-attempted to study and to grasp, so far as
lay in his power, all the convolutions and shades
of human speech as faithfully portrayed in
Gogol's wonderful prose. " The Marriage " is
an 6tude for use in camera. Something rather
different is needful in a work intended for
performance on a big stage.'
B

ff

can be paralleled from many contemporary pieces

which do not end but merely leave off. Those of
us who were brought up to regard clearness of
tonality as a sort of musical good manners cannot
easily reconcile ourselves to these no-endings.
When they are abrupt as well as dissonant, we
even feel that their unceremoniousness has a
touch of discourtesy. It is like taking leave of
one's friends without saying goodbye, or at least
giving them a friendly wave of the hand.

Foreign

Press

Andrei Rimsky-Korsakov provides information

on two of Moussorgsky's friends: Apollon
Seliverstovitch Gussakovsky (1841-75), who was
regarded as a most promising composer, but had
given up composition long before his death at
the early age of thirty-four, and a certain Vassily
Vassilievitch Vassiliev, mentioned in RimskyKorsakov's memoirs and Borodin's letters, but
not identified so far. He has discovered two
short notes from Rimsky-Korsakov to Vassiliev,
one from Moussorgsky, one from Vassiliev himself to Alexandre Molas, and a photograph of
Vassiliev, who, according to the few documents
available, was a physician, gifted with a fine
tenor voice, and took part in the private readings
of Dargomyjsky's ' Stone Guest,' Moussorgsky's
' Boris,' and Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Maid of
Pskov.'
A noteworthy piece of information is that in
1859 Gussakovsky composed an 'Idiots' Scherzo'
for string quartet (MS. in the Leningrad Public
Library), which he inscribed 'To all idiots,
antediluvian and modern.' It is intentionally
primitive and crude in style, and has the following
programme:
Viol I
Viol II
Alto
'Cello

...
...
...
...

Rubinstein I.
Rubinstein II.
D. V. Kologrivov.
K. Schubert.