Halley's 5th: The Concerto Of Deliverance or Ignorance? It's Both

It seems appropriate that my first blog post here on Halley5.com concerns the topic which serves as the inspiration for the site: the so called “5th concerto” or the “Concerto of Deliverance” by fictional composer Richard Halley from Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged.  The appeal of co-opting such a work which symbolizes perfection in music and political ideals that are consistent with my own beliefs is obvious considering that the goal of this site is to promote artistic music, which gets overlooked in the mainstream, and “libertarian” oriented thinking.  Though I greatly admire Rand’s work, it’s clear that her area of expertise was clearly not music and since my purpose here is to educate, I will clarify some of her “musical” errors.  Readers may find it ironic or even bizarre that I would choose a flawed literary reference to build a site around, but it’s not the concept that is lacking, it’s the musical details.

First though, some terms need to be defined.  Most people have heard of symphonies and concertos, but so often they have no idea what that means or how they are different.  Without going into the history and evolution of the forms nor the exceptions to the rule, the strict traditional definition of a symphony is a multi-movement work for orchestra (usually four movements) while a concerto is a multi-movement piece for a soloist and orchestra (usually three movements).  Movements are essentially individual self-contained sections of music within a larger work.  A concerto is a showcase for a particular instrument and therefore that would also be in the title.  So for example, an orchestral piece featuring the cello would be a cello concerto or a concerto for cello and orchestra, not a cello symphony or a symphony for cello and orchestra.  Furthermore, one would never call something a concerto without defining what it is for.   It is also important to note that works like symphonies and concertos may also have nicknames.  For example, Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony is known as “Eroica” and his 5th piano concerto is called the “Emperor Concerto.”

If you haven’t read Atlas Shrugged (this post will likely be of little interest), the so-called Concerto of Deliverance by Richard Halley is an alleged piece of music which is meaningful to the heroes in the novel.  It is mentioned in the very beginning of the story when the protagonist Dagny Taggart hears music on a train ride.

She had never heard that symphony before, but she knew that it was written by Richard Halley. She recognized the violence and the magnificent intensity. She recognized the style of the theme; it was a clear, complex melody—at a time when no one wrote melody any longer. . . . She sat looking up at the ceiling of the car, but she did not see it and she had forgotten where she was. She did not know whether she was hearing a full symphony orchestra or only the theme; perhaps she was hearing the orchestration in her own mind.

So right from the beginning we are told this is a symphony.  Then the reader is informed that the source of this music was someone whistling.

He was whistling the theme of the symphony. She realized that he had been whistling it for some time and that this was all she had heard.

Dagny then inquires what he is whistling and the following conversation ensues.

"It's the Halley Concerto," he answered, smiling.
"Which one?"
"The Fifth."
She let a moment pass, before she said slowly and very carefully, "Richard Halley wrote only four concertos."

Wait a second? I thought this was a symphony?  Now, say I heard someone humming a melody and I was trying to identify it.  If I initially thought it came from Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and it was actually from his 5th piano concerto, then that’s no big deal because I’m just trying to remember what piece of music the melody came from.  So the fact that Dagny assumed it was a symphony at first is not necessarily problematic, however the response, “it's the Halley Concerto” begs numerous questions.  The first is what is it for?  Is it a piano concerto, a violin concerto, a cello concerto, a flute concerto?  We aren’t told.  Now, if Richard Halley only wrote one concerto and it was for piano, “the Halley Concerto” would be an appropriate answer because it can only be one thing and a fan of his music would know and understand this.  However, we are told that he wrote four concertos.  This leads to other questions.  Is this four piano concertos or is it one piano concerto, two violin concertos and an oboe concerto?

I should mention that there are also circumstances where a composer has written one piece which is so famous that people just know what you mean.  For example Felix Mendelssohn (1809 –1847) wrote one of the most famous violin concertos in the world.  Even though he wrote other concertos, if someone said the Mendelssohn Concerto, anyone with such arcane knowledge would not require further clarification, but this is clearly not in play here with the Halley example, especially considering the confusion as to whether a fifth concerto even exists.

Now the layperson may think “what’s the big deal?”  If that is your reaction, consider this analogy.  If you walked into a McDonalds, went up to the counter and said, “I want THE burger,” just imagine the puzzled looks you’d get.   Do you want a regular hamburger, a quarter pounder or a Big Mac?  The cashier has no idea and you would look pretty strange to most normal people used to frequenting the fast food restaurant.

It’s very clear as the novel progresses that Rand was not aware of these musical realities.  She never defines what kind of concerto Halley’s 5th is.  When Dagny calls Ayers Music Publishing Company, who publishes all of Halley’s music, to inquire whether a 5th concerto was written, Mr. Ayers seems to be clueless about what a concerto is as well or else he would have asked a followed up question.  What kind of concerto?  Rand describes Halley’s last known 4th Concerto with all sorts of descriptive adjectives but never says what instrument is featured, though she does call it a “hymn to a distant vision” and a “song of rebellion.”  Though there is room for artistic license with language sometimes, song and hymn traditionally indicate music with words, not an instrumental piece like a concerto.   Dagny continues to ask others throughout the novel whether Richard Halley wrote more than four concertos or if he had written a fifth one?  Francisco d'Anconia even replies:

"why did you think of Halley writing a Fifth Concerto?  Why not a new symphony or opera? Why specifically a concerto?"

Exactly, why did Rand choose the concerto as her musical symbol?   She clearly didn’t understand what it was.   She uses the 5th concerto to signify heroic qualities.  For example, when Dagny shows off her new John Galt line, she is the first to take a ride on the new train route. 

She heard the rising, accelerating sound of the wheels—and some theme of music, heard to the rhythm of wheels, kept tugging at her mind, growing louder—it burst suddenly within the cab, but she knew that it was only in her mind; the Fifth Concerto by Richard Halley—she thought: did he write it for this? had he known a feeling such as this?

A concerto actually makes sense because Rand’s focus is on the individual just like a concerto which aims to showcase the ability of a soloist’s proficiency on their given instrument.  It almost seems as if Rand chose this example by a happy accident, not realizing how well it fit.  The fact that she didn’t explore these parallels and never defines Halley 5th concerto properly reinforces that she was musically ignorant.

Later in Atlas Shrugged, we discover Richard Halley playing the 5th concerto at his home on his piano.  It is largely due to this that I and most other musically educated people assume that the “Concerto of Deliverance” was a piano concerto. Why though?  Since a concerto is for a soloist and orchestra, a musician practicing by himself would likely be playing the soloist part.  Since it is mentioned that Halley was playing a piano, that is probably the featured instrument.  The orchestral part could have been made into what is called a piano reduction so that the whole orchestral accompaniment  could be performed on a piano, but that is usually to facilitate rehearsal with a soloist.  In that case the orchestra is replaced by one pianist to accompany the featured player largely for convenience during practice before getting the whole orchestra together.  It is unlikely that Richard Halley was playing the accompaniment part on the piano by himself, but it’s also clear that Rand never considered why this would even be in question.

While music plays a largely insignificant role in the grand scope of the novel and the composer Richard Halley is a very minor character, his “Concerto of Deliverance” serves as a recurring metaphor which embodies the ideals of the heroes.  As the story begins to wind down, Rand writes:

the reality of Halley's Fifth Concerto, this was the reward they had wanted, fought for and won.

In this sense, her use of music as a symbol is highly effective.  It is just unfortunate that her command of musical terms is problematic and her ignorance remains consistent.  In the final pages of Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand offers this description of Halley 5th concerto:

It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance.

A symphony again?  Well perhaps that’s what she meant and just used the wrong word.  A song?  This is a real pet peeve of most educated musicians.  Instrumental classical works are not songs.  Songs have words, unless artistic license is in play as with the aforementioned Felix Mendelssohn who wrote a group of instrumental solo pianos pieces collectively called Songs Without Words.  In any case, it is clear from all the musical references in this otherwise excellent novel, that Rand really had no idea what she was talking about when it came to music.  Her mistakes were not creative use of artistic license as she demonstrated no understanding of the terms.  It’s unfortunate that she didn’t have greater command of the topic or at least made an attempt to research her music references better.

Ayn Rand had one other particularly odd musical quirk which does not relate to Atlas Shrugged directly, but is still worthy of mentioning.  The author’s dislike for Beethoven’s music is well documented.  The major irony is that at their core both Rand and Beethoven were visionary Romantics and her description of Halley’s music could easily apply to Beethoven’s.  Of course, Richard Halley’s music, if it actually existed, would not have sounded like Beethoven at all as they were both from very different time periods with a good century and a half give or take in between.  People are always going to be opinionated when it comes to music, and classical music is no different, but you generally don’t find anyone who dislikes Beethoven, unless they just don’t like music of the late 18th and early 19th centuries at all.  Not liking Beethoven is about as strange as US history enthusiasts who don’t like George Washington.  Just like Washington, those who came after Beethoven treaded very carefully in his footsteps and the influence had been inescapable for a long time.  He was a truly transformative figure.

It’s important to remember that those we admire and the geniuses among us are flawed and not perfect.  Ayn Rand certainly had her contradictions, but this does not diminish her work as a whole.  The literary concept of Richard Halley and his “Concerto of Deliverance” is still inspiring and serves the story well.  Despite the musical errors, Halley’s 5th concerto is a strong enough idea that it served as the inspiration for my work here.

Not wanting to complicate the issue with all sorts of musical jargon, variations and specious exceptions to the rule, it should be mentioned as a postscript here that a concerto can be written for several instruments.   For example, Brahms wrote a Double Concerto for violin, cello and orchestra and Beethoven composed a Triple Concerto for violin, cello, and piano and orchestra.  There are many others as well.  Since the 20th century, many composers have written Concertos for Orchestra.   The most famous is the 1943 work by Béla Bartók (1881–1945), which the Wikipedia appropriately says:

It is perhaps the best-known of a number of pieces that have the apparently contradictory title Concerto for Orchestra. This is in contrast to the conventional concerto form, which features a solo instrument with orchestral accompaniment.  Bartók said that he called the piece a concerto rather than a symphony because of the way each section of instruments is treated in a soloistic and virtuosic way.

Here we have an appropriate use of artistic license.