Charles Tomlinson Griffes was part of the early generation of American composers who received their musical higher education in Germany. But the course of his musical development was reoriented to a new direction after he heard a performance of Ravel's Jeux d'eau (Fountains). This work with its brilliance, its mysterious and new harmonic language, and its unsettled harmonic ambiguity suited Griffes well. The French Impressionists' tendency to write brief descriptive movements rather than music of German formal structures also was closer to Griffes' natural inclinations. (It would not be until the end of his sadly shortened life—he died of complications from the disastrous influenza epidemic of 1918-1920—that he turned back to academic forms with stunning originality in his Piano Sonata.)

If one must seek, for description's sake, a comparison to the Three Tone Pictures in the works of the French Impressionist masters, Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit and Debussy's Images for piano (particularly Reflets dans l'eau, Cloches à travers les feuilles, and Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fût) seem to come closest. In common with many of these six movements by the French masters, Griffes uses a hypnotic ostinato rhythm, obsessively tied to one note, as a leading harmonic and structure device. In common with Debussy, Griffes was drawn to the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe and uses epigrams from Poe as headings for two of the Three Tone Poems. The important thing is that Griffes' music, despite their being strongly influenced by Debussy and Ravel at this point, is fully capable of withstanding any sort of comparison with the works it is modeled after.

The first movement, "The Lake at Evening," was inspired by a line from Yeats, "lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore." It is the prettiest and most purely melodic of the Tone Pictures, with a tender melodic line that still retains the feeling of German Romanticism, creating a charming effect against the French harmonies and the disturbing repeated note.

"The Vale of Dreams" is more thoroughly tied to French Impressionism in its style, though there is a streak of Scriabin's harmonies involved here, also. The music seems to descend sadly to the place of dreams, depicted in the harmonic stillness that prevails in the last measures.

"The Night Wind," the final movement, is not a strong storm, but is a portrait of a gusty wind that seems to come from some mystic source. When its chromatic scurrying abates and the music rests on a shimmering dissonant chord, it is as though the wind has brought with it the breath of a mystic realm.

Griffes revised "The Night Wind" in 1915, when the suite became the first of his piano music to be published. He also arranged it for woodwinds and harp in the same year, and in 1919 made an orchestration for piano, wind quintet, and string quintet or string ensemble.

© All Music Guide

1.The Lake at Evening

The Lake at Evening is No. 1 in a set of three tone pictures that Charles Griffes wrote for piano in 1910. This was the beginning of Griffes' break from German period music, the style in which he had previously written, to the Impressionistic style. This was to become one of his first diversions from the German mode of composition in which he had been taught at music school in Berlin. The other two tone pictures in the set are, No. 2, The Vale of Dreams, and No. 3, The Night Winds.

It wasn't until 1915, when Griffes was preparing the piece for publication, that he chose the descriptive title of the work from a poem of William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939) called "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." Griffes took a part of the poem and placed it as a text to preface the music. The text states, "...for always...I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore." What is unconventional about this is that although Griffes was considered an American Impressionist, and this is called a tone picture, he apparently wrote the piece without the scene from this poem in mind, since he chose the poem he is describing after he had already written the piece. He did this with the other two tone pictures also, but for these, chose his texts from Edgar Allen Poe (1809 - 1849).

Impressionistic music is believed to portray the "mood" of a scene. Griffes accomplishes this in his music, even though when he wrote "The Lake at Evening," he did not have Yeats' "Lake" in mind. Still, the piece easily suggests an imagined lake. This is evident when listening to the lush harmonies and the long-held melodic lines, along with the rhythmic beats of the piano in the lower notes. The chromaticism gives the work a feel of forward movement, and the melody roving slowly over the top of the chords portrays the atmosphere of a lake's lapping waters. The long phrases project the mood of a smooth lake, mostly undisturbed, except for a few musical jolts here and there. The projected mood of the piece is exemplified by the fact that publisher G. Schirmer told Griffes in 1912 that his piece was "too shimmering" for them to publish at that time. Even they could possibly see the "lake" with the sun shining on the water. But in 1912 Schirmer was looking for something more conventional, such as Griffes' earlier German period piano works, and did not publish the Three Tone Pictures until 1915.

The Lake at Evening was written first for piano. In 1915, Griffes arranged the piece for a woodwind-harp chamber combination, written especially for the well-known flutist Georges Barrere. Then, in 1919, the Three Tone Pictures were arranged by Griffes for double quintet (winds and strings) and piano. The latter gives the music an even more Impressionistic feel and quality of beauty different from that of Griffes' earlier works.

© Sylvia Typaldos, All Music Guide