By: Annie D

Xue is not only a virtuoso performer, having honed her craft at leading music institutions and captivated audiences at the world’s prestigious festivals and concert halls, but she is also a gifted writer. As a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate at Stony Brook University, she seamlessly bridges her artistic passions, expressing herself through music and the written word. Her award-winning article, “Charles Loeffler’s Two Songs With Viola and Piano Accompaniment and Their French Influence,” earned her the American Viola Society’s David Dalton Research Competition award and has been published in their distinguished peer-reviewed journal.

In an interview with David Lasocki,  Xue shares her journey of discovering the music of Charles Martin Loeffler, a composer whose work is not widely known but whose artistry offers a fascinating glimpse into the Symbolist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She delves into the unique qualities of Loeffler’s songs, their significance in the viola repertoire, and how they reflect their time’s poetic and musical innovations. Join us as we explore the intersection of music, poetry, and history through the eyes of a passionate performer and scholar.

Q: Loeffler is not exactly a household name. How did you hear about him in general and this piece in particular?

A: Over the years, through my studies and participation in summer festivals, I’ve performed a great deal of standard chamber music repertoire, particularly string quartets. However, I’ve always been drawn to exploring new and lesser-known works. When I began my DMA program, I decided to delve into chamber music with unconventional instrumentations. In my first semester, I performed Brahms’s Zwei Gesänge, and in the second semester, I discovered Loeffler’s pieces. Coincidentally, I was also taking a seminar on modernism, where we discussed Symbolism as one of the key movements. This inspired me to write my final paper on Loeffler’s works. As I began learning and performing these pieces, I was struck by how distinct they were from Brahms’s  Zwei Gesänge.

Q: What attracts you to Loeffler’s music and these songs in particular?

A: Having spent much of my career playing string quartets, collaborating with a singer in a chamber setting was a relatively new experience. What drew me to Loeffler’s songs were the poems he chose to set to music—they profoundly shaped the tone and character of the pieces. Loeffler employs inventive musical techniques to reflect the beauty of the poetry, which I found fascinating. For example, in “Harmonie du soir,”  he uses a ¾ time signature to evoke the word “waltz” in the poem. Similarly, when the word “violin” appears in the lyrics, the viola part shifts to the treble clef. These “word painting” moments were particularly intriguing to me as someone new to vocal collaboration. They reminded me of concepts I had studied in music history during my undergraduate years, bringing theory to life meaningfully.

Q: What was Symbolism? Did any other composers of the time use Symbolist qualities in their music?

A: Initially, I associated Symbolism in music with using specific musical elements to represent characters or ideas, such as Wagner’s leitmotifs or Berlioz’s I idée fixe. However, through my research, I discovered that Symbolism in Loeffler’s music—and the poetry of Baudelaire and Verlaine—was entirely different. Symbolism emerged in 1880s France as a literary movement opposing the realism and naturalism of the time. It sought to express intangible subjects like dreams, spirituality, and emotions through subtle, suggestive language. As Stéphane Mallarmé, a leading Symbolist poet, once said, “To name an object is to suppress three-quarters of the enjoyment to be found in the poem… suggestion, that is the dream.”

Symbolist poets rejected rigid conventions, opting for more fluid forms and structures. This freedom is reflected in Loeffler’s music, particularly in his harmonic and tonal choices, which became a focus of my research. I was fascinated that he incorporated church modes, which I had studied for my DMA entrance exams, to create a unique sound in “Harmonie du soir.”

Another composer influenced by Symbolism was Claude Debussy. While many associate his style with Impressionism, Debussy never used that term. Like Loeffler, he set Baudelaire’s poems to music, including “Harmonie du soir,” in a collection of five songs. However, Debussy’s settings are more traditional in instrumentation, using only voice and piano.

Q: What other Symbolist qualities do you find in these two songs?

A: Loeffler’s songs embody Symbolism not only through the use of Symbolist poetry but also through the unique tonal colors, harmonies, and forms. His music often transports listeners to an imaginative, almost otherworldly realm, perfectly complementing the transcendental nature of Symbolist poetry. As The New York Sun aptly described him, Loeffler was “the blond musical Verlaine of Boston.”

Q: What makes these songs a significant addition to the viola repertoire?

A: First, the poems Loeffler chose are masterpieces in their own right, and his settings elevate them further. Notably, the viola is not merely an accompaniment in these pieces—it plays an active role in the “word painting,” serving as a crucial part of expressing the poems’ meanings subtly and evocatively. The viola’s role becomes even more essential in a smaller chamber setting.

Second, the instrumentation of these pieces is exceptionally rare. Before Loeffler, Brahms’s Zwei Gesänge was the only work I knew of for this combination of voice, viola, and piano. Interestingly, just last month, in January, the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center premiered two new pieces by Joel Thompson for the same instrumentation. This suggests a growing interest in this unique ensemble, making Loeffler’s songs even more relevant today.

Published by Drake M.