How Some Famous Musical Pieces Got Their Names

By Clement A. Harris

Were the world's books and pictures gathered into one building and its instrumental scores into another, there would be as few items in the latter with a name as in the former without one. To turn from the catalog of a library or art gallery to a concert program or publisher's list is to turn from a series of expressive, interesting and often poetic titles to an arid enumeration of class-names and opus-numbers.

Probably the oldest known piece of instrumental music, the famous Country Dance, a copy of which is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, illustrates out point, for, unlike some later dance tunes, it has no name.

It is believed to date from about 1300, and would doubtless be played on wind and string instruments. The keyboard, save for that of the organ, then in its infancy if known at all, was of a later period. Not till a century and a half later do we come across a piece of instrumental music with a title. This honor and the much greater one of being the earliest known clavier music, belongs to the Fundamentum Organ-isandi of Conrad Paumann, a collection of short organ pieces brought out in 1452. Generic names such as A Vonuntarie, Fantasia Pauana, Galliarda, Preludium, become common shortly after the time of Paumann. And specific titles were not unknown in the case of program music. Thus La Battaglia, by Francesco di Milano, appeared about 1530. An English piece, Mr. Bird's Battle, to be found in a collection of pieces for the Virginal known as My Ladye Nevell's Booke, in which each separate movement has its own heading, describing "The Marche before the Battell," "The Souldier's Summons," must have appeared not much later. The same remark applies to John Munday's Fantasia on the Weather, representing Lightning, Thunder and A Faire Day.

Old English Pieces

The famous Fitzwilliam (perhaps better known as Queen Elizabeth's) Virginal Book contains many compositions with names derived from the form of the pieces--Pauana, Galliarda, etc., or titles derived from folk-songs on which variations have been written--Goe from My Window, The Hunt's Up, etc. Also pieces named after their composer, as Giles Farnaby's Dream, or after some noble patron, as The Earle of Oxford's Marche.

The headings to the Biblical sonatas for harpsichord by Bach's predecessor, Johann Kuhnau, representing Jacob's Wedding; David's Cure of Saul, and the Fight between David and Goliath were program indications rather than titles pure and simple. Handel did not formally name any of his clavier or orchestral works. Bach named only three of his, all of them collective works, these being the world-famous Well-tempered Clavier, the Art of Fugue and his Musical Offering to Frederick the Great. The six Brandenburg Concertos might, however, be added as they were so-called from the composer's dedication of them to the Margraf of Brandenburg. So, perhaps, might the Clavierubung (Clavier-practice) and the Italian Concerto, though strictly considered, the terms are rather a description than a title.

Haydn is only know to have given a name to two of his 125 Symphonies--La Reine de France and the Military Symphony. He also, however, made no secret of having composed and named the burlesque Jacob's Dream sonata, which he sent anonymously to a violinist of that name absurdly addicted to playing on the high notes of his instrument. Mozart named none of his forty-one orchestral works. Beethoven bequeathed nine immortal symphonies to the world, but, like Haydn, named only two, the Eroica and Pastoral symphonies. (The Pastoral pianoforte sonata was not so named by him.) Spohr also wrote nine and named only one--The Power of Sound. Schubert wrote ten, but like Mozart, named none of them.

Works are frequently named not by the composer, but by titles more or less indiscriminately bestowed upon them by the general public, very much as boys acquire nicknames at school. There is often a romantic interest about such names not usually attaching to those bestowed at a more formal investiture. This may be seen in the very various and often curious origin of such names.

In vocal music the title, or first line, of the libretto becomes almost as a matter of course the name of the musical setting, though this is not invariably the case. One of the earliest, perhaps the very earliest, of tunes to receive a title was a vocal one. This was the Tonus Perefrinus of the Gregorian system of chants. Among secular pieces probably one of the earliest may be found in the Hanging Tune, a term applied to the melody of Sathan my foe full of iniquity, because, it is said, the lamentations of extraordinary criminals were always chanted to it.

In the case of instrumental music the most prolific source of nicknames is some characteristic circumstance connected with the composition. Domenico Scarlatti's Katzen Fugue is a well-known example. The subject consists of notes played by a feline friend of the composer which happened to walk across the keys of his harpsichord.

The music which Handel wrote for performance during the progress of the barge in which George I proceeded on August 22, 1715, from Limehouse to Whitehall naturally became known as the Water Music; and that which he wrote for the firework display in the Green Park in celebration of the Peace of Aiz-laChapelle, as the Fireworks Music. The practice of following military victories by a solemn thanksgiving also makes the name Dettingen Te Deum, taken in connection with the date 1743, quite self-explanatory. That Handel actually owed his Harmonious Blacksmith to the musical rhythm with which a Son of Vulcan swung his hammer when the composer was sheltering in his smithy one day is extremely doubtful. But the name has become wedded to one of his most popular melodies and not all the musical savants in Christendom will divorce them!

How Haydn's Pieces Were Named

Haydn's Ox Minuet, known in Paris as Le Menuet du Boeuf, owes its accepted title to a story that in return for a dance composed in celebration of his daughter's wedding, a butcher sent Hayden a live ox. The truth appears to be that the ox was not alive; that it was not sent; that there was no ox, and alternatively, as the lawyers say, if there was, that its owner had nothing to do with the composer; and that the minuet in question was not written by Haydn at all!

The "Father of the Symphony" can the better afford to be robbed of this little romance since so many of his compositions are associated with incidents of less dubious origin. Thus a publisher calling at such an unconscionably early hour one morning--or Haydn rising at such a late one--as to hear the composer declare that he would give his best quartet for a good razor, ran out for one and promptly clenched the bargain. Hence the Razor Quartet. The story of the Farewell Symphony, during which all the performers but two went out by turn, as a hint to their Prince that their holidays were overdue, is well known. It may also be mentioned that the compositions known in England as the Imperial mass is in Germany called Die Nelsonmess, because it is said to have been the one performed during Nelson's visit to Eisenstadt in 1800. The great seaman asked the composer for his pen and gave him his own gold watch in exchange. The Oxford Symphony is so-called because selected, though not expressly composed, for performance at one of the three concerts given when Haydn was in the university city for the purpose of receiving the honorary degree of Mus. Doc. In all, some twenty of Haydn's symphonies have appellations not given by the composer. Only one of Mozart's works seems to have what may be called a circumstantial name: his Hafner's Symphony is so-called from having been composed for the wedding of a daughter of a great German merchant family of that name. Why the term Jupiter should have been applied to Mozart's 49th and last symphony--it is believed, by J. B. Cramer--is not so easy to explain. Decidedly the most celebrated piece owing its name to a tradition is the Lauben-sonate of Beethoven, the first movement of which is said to have been composed in the leafy-alley (Laubengang) of a garden. But it is the piece and not the name which is well-known, for under this title few outside Vienna will recognize the Moonlight Sonata--of which more anon.

Curious Names of Bach Pieces

Bach did not himself name any of his organ fugues separately, but in the case of at least three, the omission has been made good by his admirers. Anyone who either hears the subject of the long fugue in E minor, or sees it written, will at once understand why it should have been named The Wedge Fugue.

Somewhat less obvious in origin is the designation Giant Fugue applied to the well-known choral prelude in D minor. Presumably the persistent and symmetrical figure of which the pedal part consists has suggested to some one the striding of a Goliath. Less obvious still, to those unacquainted with English popular songs, must seem so coquettish a term as Dolly Varden applied to a solemn fugue in a minor key. Yet the name has been applied to the shorter of the two fugues in C minor, owing to a melodic resemblance between its subject and a ditty which was once in everybody's mouth.

Reverting once more to Haydn, no one who has been startled out of his wits by the sudden and thundering explosion of the full orchestra following a pianissimo passage in the Hungarian master's best know Andante is likely to ask why it is called the Surprise Symphony. The tic-tac effect produced by the monotonous reiteration of two staccato notes a third apart, in another of Haydn's orchestral pieces, makes The Clock Symphony a self-evident title. And the carillon effect in the Finale of one of the Salomon symphonies offers an easy solution to tits being known in some orchestras as The Bell. I must confess myself unable to account for the titles of those known as The Philosopher and The Schoolmaster.

Undoubtedly the best known of such character-titles is that of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. It is said to have been derived from an Expression of Rellstab, the critic, comparing the first movement to a boat wandering by moonlight on the Lake of Lucerne. Though the title has been declared "absurd" it is that by which the composition is universally known both in Germany and England; indeed, to call it by any other would be to court misunderstanding. There are various other legends surrounding this piece--all apparently without foundation.

The Hunting Song, Spinning Song and Bee's Wedding, among Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, are also well-known examples of titles based on "internal evidence," but not given by the composer. With the rise of the romantic school and development of program music came, as an almost necessary consequence, a great extension in the practice of name-giving. Schumann gave titles to a greater number of his works than any previous composer. Of his pianoforte works seventeen have names as distance from mere classifications, such as Fantasiestucke. Of the forty-three little pieces forming his Album for the Young, only three are without a heading of some sort. Nor was the practice confined to the Romantic School. Probably no name every given to a work occasioned its author so much anxious thought as that bestowed by Mendelssohn on the English edition of his Songs Without Words. They were at first known as Instrumental Lieder fur Clavier (see translation of Moscheles' Life, Vol. 1, page 267), and afterwards as Six Songs for the Pianoforte Alone, and Original Melodies for the Pianoforte. Concurrently the original six were published in Berlin as Sechs Lieder Ohne Worte, and it was not till after much searching of mind that a simple translation of this heading was adopted as the English title. Of the separate contents the titles of only six were given by Mendelssohn himself.

Curiously enough it is not their most important works which composers seem most disposed to distinguish with a verbal label, but their smaller ones. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are comparatively few. Among the more prominent are Berlioz' Harold en Italie symphony; Mendelssohn's Scotch and Italian symphonies, and Herbrides or Fingal's Cave, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, Fair Melusina and Ruy Blas overtures, and his Scotch Symphony--all names which, whether appearing on the score or not, Mendelssohn appears to have used himself; Brahm's Academic and Tragic overtures; Tchaikovsky's 1812, Ouverture solunnelle and symphonic poems, Francesca da Rimini, Manfred and Romeo and Juliet; Dvorak's New World symphony, and MacDowell's Celtic, Tragica and Eroica sonatas.

The reason for this comparative scarceness of names among the products of the makers of music lies almost on the surface. It is to be found in one of the most striking characteristics of music--its abstract quality. The poet and the painter represent either concrete subjects or abstract subjects by means of the concrete. The sculptor represents Liberty by an allegorical figure in human form. Not so the composer. He deals solely with abstract ideas. He does not represent Ideas by Things, but--so far as he attempts the concrete at all, for instance, in some program music--Things by Ideas. And to find a name for an idea is much harder than to find one for an object.