JAVS Fall 2024

Featured Article

2023 Dalton Competition Second Prize The French Influence in Charles Loeffler’s 2 Songs for Mezzo-Soprano, Viola, and Piano by Xue Ding

Charles Martin Tornov Loeffler’s (1861-1935) music is often considered avant-garde, idiosyncratic, and exotic by American audiences. This paper will examine two of the nine songs that Loeffler composed for mezzo soprano, viola, and piano: “Harmonie du soir,” and “Rêverie en sourdine.” Composed between 1893 and 1897, these works are rarely performed today. I believe the obscurity is partly due to Loeffler’s unique music aesthetic and style, which are amply demonstrated in these compositions. Both songs by Loeffler are heavily influenced by late nineteenth-century French art, particularly the Symbolist movement in literature, with which Loeffler shared the same artistic and aesthetic values. The poems Loeffler used are by two prominent Symbolist poets—Baudelaire and Verlaine; furthermore, we can describe Loeffler’s music as Symbolist not only because he used Symbolist poetry in these songs, but also because the unique color, harmony, and form in Loeffler’s music transports listeners to an imaginary world, therein matching the transcendental aspect of Symbolist poetry. The connections between Loeffler and Symbolism was so apparent that even the newspaper The New York Sun described Loeffler as “the blond musical Verlaine of Boston.” 1 While musicians were commonly influenced by Symbolist poetry, it was not uncommon for Symbolist poets to be equally influenced by music. For example, an important principle of Symbolism in literature is that poetry is more akin to music than to any other art forms because of the equivocal and vague qualities they both possess. 2 Additionally, in order to imitate the fluidity of music, Symbolist poets applied more flexibility in their versification. 3 This expanded level of freedom in form can also be seen reflected in the form of Loeffler’s songs. I argue that these two songs are Symbolist not only because Loeffler used Symbolist poems, but also because he used various compositional techniques that mirrored the

transcendental effect relative to the Symbolist movement in literature.

The Symbolism Movement Symbolism is an art movement that started in the late nineteenth-century, originating in French literature. Symbolism developed in response to Realism and Natu ralism, whereas the artists of Symbolism grew to be more concerned with the imaginary and spiritual world than that of the objective depiction of the world. 4 A key aspect of Symbolism includes the use of a tangible object or im age to convey intangible emotion or ineffable thoughts. French poet and critic Stephane Mallarmé described Symbolism as “evoking an object little by little so as to re veal a mood,” which indicates that the symbols should be disclosed gradually, with subtlety. 5 Symbolism is also the pursuit of transcendentalism—the surpassing of normal, into the realm of extraordinary. In this respect, a symbol does not merely represent a certain feeling or emotion anymore; rather, it depicts a perfect, ideal, or exceptional world beyond the reality artists and composers live in. 6 Jean Moréas—a Symbolist writer until the mid-1890s— published the “Symbolist Manifesto” in the newspaper La Figaro on September 18, 1886, in which he attempted to redeem the reputation of young Symbolist writers who had been painted as decadent and licentious by the press. The “Manifesto” argued for a blunt definition of the Symbolist movement, its beliefs and priorities, providing an explanation of the style itself, including the rhythm of their writing. Furthermore, Moréas labeled Baudelaire as the true precursor of the movement, applauded Mallarmé for giving Symbolism its mysterious and ineffable quality, and lauded Verlaine for breaking the rigid rules of versification.

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 40, No. 2, Fall 2024

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