Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935)
Rhapsody no. 1, for oboe, viola, and piano (1901)
Charles Martin Loeffler was a German-born composer and violinist who spent most of his career in the United States, particularly in Boston, where he was assistant concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for over twenty years. He remains one of the most fascinating American composers of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, honing a style that was very difficult to pin down: though often regarded as an Impressionist, Loeffler was equally at home with medieval music, Eastern European folk music, and jazz.
His two Rhapsodies for oboe, viola, and piano, reflect his tendency towards rich chromaticism and his love of literature – both are arrangements of songs written in 1898 on texts by the French Symbolist poet Maurice Rollinat. The first Rhapsody is named after Rollinat’s poem “The Pond,” a macabre verse that begins: “Full of old fish, stricken blind long ago, the pool, under a near sky rumbling with thunder, bares the splashing horror of its gloom between centuries-old rushes.” And so forth.
The music isn’t quite so grim, though there are references to the ripples on the water’s surface throughout the piano part and a quotation of the “Dies irae” plainchant from the viola in the middle of the piece. The closing bars are particularly striking: though the final cadence is in C minor, Loeffler created a striking sense of tonal ambiguity by alternating C minor and C major in different voices.
© Jonathan Blumhofer
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