A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Storm

by Frederick Corder

STORM, representation of, in music. The endeavour to portray the strife of the elements has always had a fascination for composers. Most of the best-known efforts in this direction are catalogued in the article Programme Music, and it only remains here to glance at the technical means by which the effect has been produced. These vary but little. In many musical tempests, especially the older ones, an agitated movement with plenty of tremolos and semiquaver passages is deemed sufficient to convey the idea, but many composers have sought accurately to imitate the sounds and even the aspect of nature during a storm, with varying success. Haydn has an exceedingly impressive movement in his 'Seasons.' The four bars of hesitating quavers before the storm bursts convey vividly the idea of the first few heavy drops of rain, an effect which Beethoven produces by rather different means in the opening of his inimitable movement in the Pastoral Symphony. With regard to this latter piece it should be noticed that its general idea is anticipated in the 'Prometheus' ballet-music introduction, some passages and modulations pursuing an identical course, the descending bass with double bowed violin figure above, and the latter bars especially. As to the famous passage which imitates lightning and thunder

we believe it has never yet been pointed out that the lightning comes after the thunder throughout; a rather startling violation of nature's laws, when one comes to think of it!

One grave absurdity should here be alluded to; namely, the imitating, by the appearance of a written passage on paper, the form of soundless objects! It is quite admissible to represent the howling of the wind by rising and falling chromatic scales, but to imitate a flash of lightning by a zigzag passage on the piccolo, as is done by Haydn (Seasons) and Wagner (Die Walküre); or, still worse, to depict the form of waves by broken chords and arpeggios, as is done by almost every composer, is an immemorial custom as ridiculous as was Mattheson's attempt to represent the rainbow round about the throne by quavers arranged in circular arcs, or the practice of the composers before Palestrina, who wrote the notes expressing blood in red and those expressing grass in green.

To the kettledrums has always been confided the task of imitating thunder. Rossini, in the 'William Tell' Overture, rather misses his effect by one long-continued roll; Beethoven's thunder in the Pastoral Symphony is realistic, and at the same time idealised, while Berlioz, in the 'Episode de la vie d'un artiste' is startlingly true to nature. Wagner presents us with several striking examples of storms. A storm at sea is vividly depicted by the Overture and other portions of the music to the 'Fliegender Holländer,' although the absurdity above alluded to, of a wave-passage, is here very prominent.

The most original treatment, perhaps, of a storm is in the prelude to 'Die Walküre.' Throughout this drama the weather is very bad, and there are various kinds of storms, but the first is a magnificent one. The tremolo D held by the violins and violas for nearly 70 bars against the rushing wind of the basses,

is surprisingly effective, and were it not for the comical lightning effect

the artistic value of the movement would be much greater. In Act 2 a theatrical 'thunder machine' is used to enhance the effect, but this cannot be said to belong to the score, though it stands there.

[ F. C. ]