Ballade on Böcklin´s Painting “Villa by the Sea” (Balada k Böcklinovu obrazu „Villa na moři“, H 97) lasts about fifteen minutes, and was inspired by the painting Villa by the Sea, by the Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin. This curiosity hardly deserves its sub-title – ‘Symphonic Dance’ – since it contains little symphonic development and is completely devoid of any dance-like material. Its treatment of the piano is somewhat bizarre, as the opening of the work already suggests. Three subdued chords of E flat, G flat and C minor on the full orchestra are succeeded by five bars for solo piano, playing gentle syncopated E flat chords with only the bass drum for accompaniment. For a while thereafter, the piano is well integrated into the texture, either supplementing the frequent tremolo of the upper strings or doubling the cellos and basses. Later, it starts to re-assert itself, exchanging brief phrases with the orchestra at short range. By the end of the Ballade, it has achieved total domination.
The title of Böcklin’s painting suggests a picturesque scene, but the reality of his vision is quite different. The villa is but partially glimpsed in the background behind a screen of trees being buffeted by the wind. It would appear to be early evening, with a single ray still lingering from the departing sun. The swell of the sea suggests a storm either breaking or on the wane. In the foreground, a single female figure leans pensively against a rock. The whole picture is dark, Gothic in character and rather oppressive. Its mood is well captured by the repeated procession of three themes forming the main body of Martinů’s piece. After the syncopated piano chords, the first theme appears in the lower strings, tortuous and angular. It is accompanied by tremolo writing for violins and violas, typical of Martinů’s orchestration at this time, although its awkward, strangely expressive intervals also recapture the spirit of Tintagiles. Indeed, in several respects the Ballade feels like an amalgam of Martinů’s earlier Straussian phase and his more recent Impressionist leanings.
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Compared with the scintillating mastery of instrumental colour displayed by Nipponari [H 68], or the sonic attractions of H 90 [Composition for Large Orchestra (Skladba pro velký orchestr)], the rather tame and unimaginative sound world of the Nocturne and Ballade comes as something of a disappointment. Admittedly, Martinů aims for a crepuscular atmosphere in both pieces, for which the restrained orchestral sonorities, with trumpets again omitted, are well suited. Yet the infallible judgement of timbre he displayed just a few years earlier seems to have deserted him: some of the gestures in these later pieces are clumsy and unsatisfying. The Nocturne and Ballade are the earliest of Martinů’s orchestral pieces which have ever been performed. They deserve an occasional hearing since, despite their undoubted awkwardness, they possess some charm and an undeniable fascination for anyone interested in the composer’s development.
Michael Crump, Martinů and the Symphony, Symphonic Studies No. 3, Toccata Press, London, 2010, s. 28–31. [shortened by Jana Burdová, 2024].