JAVS Fall 2024

In “Rêverie en sourdine,” Loeffler marks the music as “un peu à la manière hongroise” (a bit like Hungarian). 11 And indeed there are several characteristic Hungarian elements used in this song. The Hungarian minor scale—G, A, Bb, C#, D, Eb, F#, G—which can be identified in the viola in m. 20 and m. 40 is the first element we find. Second, the uneven rhythms, particularly the sixteenth note/dotted-eighth- note rhythmic figure with accents in the viola in m.49 and m.51 are strikingly similar to the beginning of the third movement (“Song) of Háry János by Zoltán Kodály. Kodály uses this rhythmic figure as a viola solo passage, while Loeffler utilizes it in the viola at the beginning of a new section—the coda, right after the voice finishes the poem.

But it is Loeffler’s originality that captures the surreal and extraordinary in this work. Through his use of harmonic special sound effects in the viola, the composer uses the instrument to symbolize “rossignol” (nightingale) in m. 47, shown in Figure 11. “Rêverie en sourdine” not only imitates the nightingale, but in general, the viola part also possesses the most bird-like singing quality with its fast, fluttering passages. For example, the repeated intervals in the viola part from m.13 to m.15 sounds like a nightingale’s singing. A unique marking also appears in the piano’s right-hand, with Loeffler requesting the performer to play “imitant le cembalo” (imitating harpsichord) in m.12—another indication of the transcendent quality the composer was reaching for.

Figure 11. “Rêverie en sourdine,” 46-48. This example makes use of the following edition: Charles Martin Loeffler: Selected Songs with Chamber Accompaniment, edited by Ellen Knight. Recent Researches in American Music, vol. 16. Madison, WI: A-R Editions, Inc., 1988. Used with permission. www.areditions.com.

Famous music critic Lawrence Gilman that asserted that: Au fond he [Loeffler] is a mystic, a dreamer, a visionary. A mystic: for Loeffler has the mystic’s bias toward that which transcends the immediate and the tangible phases of experience, his serene conviction of the reality of the extra-sensational. His imagination ranges most freely and familiarly in the psychic borderland where the emotions become indescribably rarefied and subtly heightened—where they become more the echo and reverberation of emotions than emotions themselves. 13 Both experts acknowledged the fact that they find certain parallels between Symbolist poems and Loeffler’s music. Unfortunately, since Symbolism in music is its own very small genre and is discussed among specialty groups, Loeffler’s exquisite compositions are almost completely forgotten by the public today. Loeffler created a novel

Conclusion Loeffler drew inspiration from late nineteenth-century French art—specifically the Symbolism literature movement. My analysis of the two songs above presents Loeffler as a Symbolist composer not only because he used symbolist poems in his songs, but more importantly because there is a strong kinship between Loeffler’s music and Symbolist poetry—both his music and the poetry evoke emotions, feelings, or event to transport the listeners to a distant and transcendental world. As Ellen Knight eloquently argues,

Loeffler’s music was Symbolist in its emphasis on color, nuance, emotional expression, and the evocation of atmosphere and mood. Like the poets, Loeffler was attracted to the exotic, extraordinary, and exquisite, to enchantment, to moods of longing and melancholy, and frequently to the macabre. 12

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